#james: ‘okay so In Retrospect-‘

[sp0o0kylights]

You know what I want to see, I want to see more of Steve, Eddie, and Robin being 1980s small town kids from Indiana, by which I mean;

Robin is The Source of Gay Knowledge purely because her parents host Hippie Christmas and she managed to sneak away to find a neat bookstore in Indiana once. 

Her knowledge is not in depth. It's patchy, woven together through rumors, stories she heard or things she picked up from her parents' old pictures. She's got a handful of zines, one book, and some movies she managed to order for Family Video behind Keith's back.

She acts like she's Queen of the Queers because in Hawkins she pretty much is.

(Max and El ask her what a lavender marriage is once, something they overheard snooping around. 

Robin confidentially answers that it's code for when one woman dresses up as a man, fooling officials into wedding two woman.

She does not live this down two years later when they find out what it actually means.) 

Eddie doesn't spend every weekend in Indianapolis. 

Gas is expensive, his busiest days of his "job" is Friday and Saturday, and he has no fucking clue what the hanky code is. 

He's wearing that bandana because Metallica front singer James Hetfield has one on all their tour posters. 

Eddie does make it down to a gay bar though, by accident. Rick needed some back up for a shady deal. Promised Eddie a boatload of free drugs to sell if he agreed to just stand there and look mean. 

He was warned the bar they were meeting in was 'weird' and to not 'freak out' --which Eddie thought was hilarious given his nickname and general appearance, but whatever.

He doesn't understand when they get there, because it's just a bunch of hot men with hanky's in their back pockets everywhere.

Then he sees two women kissing and it clicks. 

He can't out himself in front of Rick, but one of the bartenders playfully dresses him down for his own hanky, letting him know all about the code and teasing him through his embarrassment. 

He's got an offer to come back and learn what color and which pocket his hanky should actually be in, a prospect Eddie was salivating at until Chrissy Cunningham up and died on his ceiling.

(He still wore the hanky, because the feeling of that bartender tugging it out and stuffing it back in might be the closest thing he's ever had to sex and he absolutely wants a repeat. 

He's young and horny, sue him.) 

Steve Harrington may not be academically smart but he's not dumb. 

He figured out a while back that the basketball team as a unit probably crossed the queer line more than once--or at least it did before Hargrove came in. 

( Brad Handly for example, went around slamming kids into lockers and screaming slurs like a fucking movie villain one Monday because the varsity team got dead drunk at Laura's party on Sunday and hey, look, there weren't that many girls there, okay?

They all had fucking hands and mouths. Everybody but Tommy was single and hot to trot. Nothing gay about it.

Its not even like they were kissing or treating each other like chicks. It was just Brad's first time and they got to tease him later for overthinking it. 

Dude graduated soon enough after and given Steve was on the team as a sophomore, he hadn't thought about the guy and why he might be freaking out so bad in years.) 

Robin's entire panic attack at Starcourt, and a few more after had Steve replaying that whole incident. Reframed it a bit, and, yeah.

In retrospect that had been extremely gay, actually. 

It sat with him a lot easier than he'd thought it would. Partially because of Robin, but mostly because that's just who he was.

Stranger things had happened to Steve and this one didn't want to kill, maim or otherwise eat him, so it got filed under 'interesting facts he should never tell his parents if he wanted to keep his trust fund' and then he went about his day. 

(Or he tried too, anyways.

It caught up to him when Eddie and Robin somehow figured out the other was queer and dragged him along to some bar Eddie had a standing invitation at, with demands for Steve to do what he did best.

Babysit.

Their magical trip was utterly destroyed when Brad Handly happened to be the very same bartender who had given Eddie the invite.

 Considering Brad's immediate bark of laughter followed by a hug and introducing himself as "Steve's gay awakening", Steve ended up having to speedrun through Eddie and Robin both having a crisis for him.

It didn't help that Steve had politely, and laughingly, corrected Brad with a casual; 

"Pretty sure that was Tommy man, but if it helps I think that tongue of yours gave Matt Burdon a crisis."

--which ended up with him answering a lot more gay sex questions with Brad than he cared too. 

At least he, through Brad, was able to help Robin connect to some local lesbians and--after a second crisis from Eddie regarding how Steve managed to have more sex than "the resident town freak and guy who actually knew he was gay, Steve!"-- even helped Eddie out by catching the metalheads tongue with his mouth later that evening.

The last one landed him a boyfriend, trust fund be damned.) 

[lokislittlemidgardian]

Hi friend :) can please write Bucky x little reader where our therapist recommends we try age regression and how we are very hesitant at first but he just makes us feel loved and comfortable?

Let’s try it

Content - age regression, cg!bucky, psychologists, anxiety, apprehensive!reader, light swearing, soft toys, dummy use, bottles, slight angst, fluff cuddles, not proofread, don’t like don’t read.

Summary - when your psychologist gives you a new coping mechanism to try bucky helps makes you feel comfortable with trying it.

Authors note - thank you for the request my love sorry it took so long I hope you enjoy it!, reblogs are greatly appreciated<3

Translation - honey love = med lyubov'

“Age what?” You questioned your psychologist curiosity, you never got over how many things you’d never heard of before in terms of the mind.

“Age regression dear, I think it might benefit you” dr irin said plainly with a reassuring smile plastered across her lips “what does that entail?” “Well age regression therapy is when you revert to a childlike mindset in order to heal your inner child so to speak.”

You sat there for a minute trying to process the information given to you. “So how old would I go back too?” “It’s hard to say dear, it depends on what your mind does” she smiled reaching into her desk to pull out a pamphlet and some recommended websites.

“Now I was also thinking that some people who experience age regression find it easier when they have someone to take care of them, so maybe your partner James-“ “Bucky, yeah no I’m not bothering him with this” you said butterfly’s making their way into your chest.

“Okay hon” dr irin said softly “just know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s perfectly healthy” “okay” you sighed looking down at the pamphlet.

───── ⋆⋅◇⋅⋆ ─────

“Hi baby” Bucky smiled putting down the spatula and turning down the heat on the stove before walking over too you.

“Hi Bub, what’re you making?” You asked curiously walking over to the frying pan “pancakes, figured you might like some after your session” he smiled kissing your temple.

“Aww thank you, you bloody softy come here” you smiled pulling him in and kissing his soft lips “your welcome, so how’d you go?” He asked returning to the stove and flipping a pancake over on the other side.

“Yeah it was okay” you sighed sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs “what did you talk about?” “Not much she just gave me some strategies” you sighed smiling as you watched Bucky place the pancakes on a plate “what do you want on ‘em bub?” He said walking over to the fridge.

“Can I have one with maple syrup and fruit and another with lemon and sugar please?” “Of course you can my love.”

───── ⋆⋅◇⋅⋆ ─────

A few hours went by eventually turning the sky dark.

You were currently sitting on the sofa your favourite show playing on the telly while scrolling through your unanswered messages of the day.

Suddenly you realised your phone was about to run out of charge “buck can you get me my portable charger please?” You called out to Bucky who was sitting in the kitchen reading a newspaper.

“Sure where is it?” “In my bag I think” “okay”

In retrospect you probably should of remembered that you took your bag to your appointment. A few minutes later bucky came out with your portable charger in one hand and the pamphlet in his vibranium one.

“Here you go doll, hey what’s this?” He asked as he scanned the contents “what’s what?” You asked plugging in your phone and looking up at him “oh shit.”

“It’s nothing” you said quickly attempting to snatch it off him only to have him hold it up higher still accessing the words “it’s just something dr irin gave me give it here” “sounds interesting” he said gently giving it to you.

“Don’t judge it please I don’t even wanna do it it’s stupid” you whispered “hey hey no it’s not stupid if your doctor said it might help you should give it a go” he said kindly sitting next to you gently making you look at him.

“But I don’t know how and what if it doesn’t work it’s gonna be weird I just don’t-“ “hey dolly look at me yeah deep breaths in for 5 hold for 4 out for 5, that’s the way” he said softly guiding you through your breathing.

Once you calmed down you talked Bucky through what your psychologist had told you and he was completely on board.

During the next few days things went back to normal, that was until bucky received a large package “Bucky” you said suspiciously watching him sign for it seeing his cheeky smile.

“What have you done now” you said accusingly “ahh it’s actually for you sweetheart” he said kindly placing the box on the kitchen bench and ripping it open.

Inside there was a selection of soft toys, colouring in books, some bottles and a teal dummy. “Oh buck” you said breathlessly moving to embrace him.

“I told you angel I’m on board with this 100 percent”

───── ⋆⋅◇⋅⋆ ─────

A few days later you finally slipped after lots of research and trying out different approaches. You were currently sat on the sofa with your dummy in your mouth and alpine laying down beside you her soft breathing and snores alerting you to the fact she had fallen asleep.

“Daddy” you whispered to Bucky watching his face light up when you called him that “yes little one?” “Look at pine pine” you giggled pointing at her “aww she’s asleep, what do you think cats dream about baby bunny?”

“I dunno, mice?” “Mice” he chuckled heartily “yes” you said definitively “dada” “hmm?” “Can I have a cuddle?” “Of course you can my little angel” he said softly.

Repositioning yourself to lie between his legs your back of resting against his chest you felt his vibranium arm gently come to play with your hair “do you feel better med lyubov'?”

“Mhm” you hummed feeling yourself grow sleepy in the embrace of your caregiver.

───── ⋆⋅◇⋅⋆ ─────

Taglist - @bootlegmothman420 @littlephia @whippedforhongjoong @youngstarfishdinosaur @patchesofwork @buggyateabug @autisticbeauty @friendlyneighborhoodkillerbunny @sparklybuck @2-gay-possums-in-a-trench-coat @hopelesswritergall @stuckysgirl27 @sleepyprinc3ss @chaotic-little-witch @looksthatkilledd

[fortheloveoffanfic]

Prettier When You're Mine

Andy Barber x Reader

Author's Note: Slowly trying to finish a few of these ongoing stories.

Summary: One year into working with a young, bright and beautiful junior prosecutor, Y/n, who bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Andy’s late wife, Laurie, he finds himself developing feelings for her. Though, when she brushes off his advances, Andy proves that he’ll do whatever it takes to recreate his family.

Disclaimer: 18+ This work contains dark themes, including stalking, dub-con, infidelity and manipulation. Read at your own discretion.

Masterlist Playlist Chapter 5

Chapter 6

A trip to Andy's house to reclaim her lost ring causes tension between Y/n and James, and unveils some dark truths. Warning: dubious consent, SMUT/NSFW, coerced/forced sex. Please do not read if you are even remotely uncomfortable with any of these warnings.

Dumping the contents of her bag on the kitchen counter, Y/n hastily sifted through it. Compact, cell phone, a couple pens, a packet of tissues, wallet, loose change and no ring. “Shit, shit, shit,” she swore under her breath, on the verge of tears. It hadn’t been anywhere that she'd looked, not in her office, her coat pocket or even in the damn coffee cup she’d checked on a whim. Calls to the doctor’s office and the bus station as well as a visit to the coffee shop and the place that she’d bought lunch had also been completely unhelpful and Y/n was beginning to fear that the ring was gone for good. 

But it couldn’t be, not James’ mother’s ring. Precious family heirloom and the first material sign that she’d been accepted into their fold. 

For the millionth time that day, Y/n found herself asking; why me? Was it because she’d almost been willing to let things go too far with Andy? Because part of her wanted them to? Or was it because she’d gotten herself in a self-pitying funk over something she was supposed to have made peace with? 

Was it a sign that she simply didn’t deserve a man like James? 

Standing in the middle of their loft’s small kitchen, she didn’t feel like she did. Because how could she be deserving of him and still spend rare, private moments fantasizing about her boss- who had proven himself to be just like any other jerk in a position of authority. 

In retrospect, she should have seen the signs; his penchant for initiating physical contact, his apparent desire to know her on a personal level, his insistence that they work together. She couldn’t believe she actually thought he just saw potential in her- no strings, no expectations. 

“Babe?” Hearing the bathroom door open, Y/n worked quickly to clumsily repack everything into her handbag. She hadn’t told James that she’d lost the ring, and had spent the entire car ride home trying to hide her left hand.

“Yeah?” Y/n’s head snapped up and her frenzied gazed noted James standing near the foot of their bed, wrapped only on a towel, with his skin still damp and his hair dripping. “What?” Then, hearing the haste in her tone, she cleared her throat and tried again, “I mean….what’s up?” 

James’ lips fell again and he stuttered before continuing, “I was just gonna ask if you wanted to get Chinese,” he padded barefoot across the wood floor, “But I think I can ask you the same question.”

“If I wanna get Chinese….?”

“What’s up?” He quoted with emphasis, “Or better way; are you okay?” 

Sneaking a cautionary glance at her hand, Y/n dropped it at her side and didn’t dare make a move towards James. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” 

Not believing her for a second, James shook his head and made the final steps towards her, rounding the kitchen counter so he could lay his wet hands on her shoulders, “No you’re not." He searched her teary eyes, worry pooling in his, “Did something happen at the doctor's?”

Sniffling as slow tears trickled down her cheeks, “I’ve just had a really rough day,” her voice broke pitifully and James didn’t miss another beat before pulling her against his chest. One hand cradled the back of her head while the other fell to the small off her back, and as she clung to his waist, she finally let a couple sobs break through.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" He probed gently. 

How was she supposed to tell him that she was irrationally insecure about them never being able to convince? Or that Andy had come onto her in a moment of vulnerability. Or that she'd lost his mother's ring.

"No," she whimpered, "Not yet. I just wanna….I just want to forget the whole thing." Forget that she'd always secretly want something she would never have. Forget that she'd lost a very expensive and precious symbol of their union. 

Forget that she was still thinking about what would have happened if she'd been brave enough to give in when Andy had come on to her. 

Forget that she was above betraying the man she loved. 

“Alright,” James murmured, kissing the crown of her head, “Well we don’t have to until you’re ready,” he added, lips still pressed to her hair. He was so good, so patient and she loved that. 

Andy was so brooding and dangerous, she liked that. 

Hugging James tighter, Y/n squeezed her eyes shut and tried to regulate her breaths; she didn’t deserve to cry about it when she’d come so close to acting on selfish impulse. They might have stayed like that for a while, if it were for her phone ringing loudly from where it sat on the counter. Sniffling loudly, Y/n pulled away and brushed her tears away with the sides of her fingers, “I should….” Trailing off, she moved towards the phone, sluming her shoulders when she saw Andy’s name on the screen, “Its my boss,” she reported sullenly. 

Coming to stand behind her, James rested his hand on her shoulder, “Just let it go to voicemail.”

Y/n sighed, “Its not that easy.”

“You don’t owe him anything,” James reminded before letting go of a heavy breath and reluctantly adding, “But if you feel like you need to then, I can’t stop you.” 

As James retracted his hand and started walking away, Y/n looked at Andy’s name on the screen and frowned as she glanced back up at her fiancee, “Don’t be mad, please.”

“Not mad,” he said, not looking at her as he tugged one of his drawers open, pulling out a pair of sweatpants, “Just….I’m worried about you, okay? This guy keeps you at the office at these weird hours and then today you come home crying.”

“What happened today has nothing to do with, Andy,” she lied, “He…he tried to help-”

“So you told him what was wrong but you didn’t tell me?” James knitted his brows, stepping behind the bamboo privacy screen that they kept near their wardrobe to get changed. 

By then her phone had stopped ringing and the screen had faded to black, “That’s not….I didn’t tell him. I was really vague about it-”

“Yeah, well all I got was you had a rough day,” stepping out from behind the screen in low riding sweats and a t-shirt, James moved to hang his towel on a rack they kept next to the bathroom door. 

“I…its complicated,” just then, her phone started ringing again, the urgency evident in the blaring tone, “I really have to take this,” Y/n snatched her phone off the counter and swiped the green icon. “Hey, what’s up?” Y/n answered cooly, defiantly matching eyes with James, whose gaze had hardened. 

“I have something that I think belongs to you.”

Knitting her brows, Y/n stuttered, “What?”

“Three carats-”

“You have it,” Y/n gasped; she must have lost it in the haste to vacate his office, everything had been so jumbled and messy, from her feelings at the time to the physical situation. 

“Yeah. Why don’t you come by and get it?”

Turning away so her back would be to James, Y/n drew in what she hoped would be a calming breath, “You’ve had it all day and said nothing?” She hissed as quietly as possible. 

“Well, let’s not get accusatory.”

“God,” Y/n suspired, “Are you at the office?”

“Of course not,” Andy sounded amused by the whole situation, like he was baiting her, and it made Y/n’s blood boil. “You should come get it, tonight. Wouldn’t want James to think you’re trying to seem like an available woman.”

Exasperated, Y/n sighed, “Yeah, well, I don’t know where you live.”

“I’ll send you the address now,” she heard the phone moving on his end of the line and then less than a minute later, her phone pinged with an incoming text. “See you soon, sweetheart.”

There was that name again, that involuntary thrill up her spine. 

Without another word, Y/n hung up and turned to James who was looking at her expectantly. “I have to go, some stuff came up late in discovery and its a lot so we’d have to start going through tonight to finish in time for Thursday.”

She wasn’t sure if James believed her, but he did play along, “Alright, well you should take the car,” he suggested and she was grateful that he didn’t offer to drive her. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, approaching her once more, that time grabbing the keys off the coffee table and pressing it into her hands from over the counter, “Go do your job, we’ll talk when you get back.”

Leaning over, Y/n smiled tightly and reached to cup his cheek with her free hand, “I love you,” she kissed him briefly, hoping to chisel away some of the lingering tension. 

James hummed softly, “Yeah, I know, I love you too.” When they broke, she grabbed her bag and coat quickly and hurried out of the apartment, letting a slow breath vacate her lips when she pulled the door shut behind herself; caught between being excited to see Andy again and combating worry over what would happen when they did. 

Stuffing the hand with the car keys into the pocket of her camel coat, Y/n inhaled deeply before bringing her fist to Andy’s front door. His house was nice, it was one of the first thoughts she had upon pulling up at the curb; it was kind of like the one she had in her mind when she thought about the perfect place to live; big enough to comfortably raise a family with a gable roof and big windows that made you wonder what was happening inside. It looked like something out of HGTV or one of those home and garden magazines- sweet and picturesque. 

“You came,” Andy determined when the door swung open. He was still half dressed from work; sleeves of his navy shirt rolled up to his elbows, black and blue tie from earlier gone and top two buttons of his shirt open. 

“Yeah,” she squared her shoulders and straightened her back, “Well I want my ring.”

Andy smirked and Y/n ground her teeth, “Its upstairs, come in and I’ll get it for you.” Y/n couldn’t tell if it was an invitation or condition but Andy didn’t leave room for explanation, instead leaving her to follow him as he turned and delved further into the house. 

The hall light was off, making the glow emanating from the kitchen up ahead to seem dim and ominous. Their shadows seemed bigger and in even in the low lighting Y/n could make out some of the framed photographs on the wall  and she slowed down to see some of them. She recognized the people, a woman and a teenage boy, from the one personal picture that Andy had in his office- a small, family portrait taken on what she'd assumed was a taken at a beachy resort, contained in a shiny gold frame. 

Mexico, he'd explained when he'd caught her staring once. The last vacation they'd taken before Laurie and Jacob's accident. 

It must have been so hard for him to lose everything like that, especially since he had no other family. Worst yet, he was still a social pariah; the things she'd heard around the office were brutal and they seemed to follow him around like a dark cloud. It was why she'd tried to befriend him when they'd started working together, no one should be that alone. 

But Andy had crossed a line.

Though, she hadn’t been very good at drawing one in the first place. Maybe she should have told him about James sooner. Maybe she didn’t want to. 

When they finally broke off into the kitchen, Y/n stopped abruptly and folded her arms defensively. Andy didn’t head upstairs immediately, instead he poured two glasses from an open bottle on the dark veined marble counter. “I think you’ll like this one,” he offered her the glass. 

Rolling her eyes, Y/n kept her arms folded, “I want my ring.”

“Have a drink,” Andy inched closer, causing Y/n to have to tip her chin to match his gaze. Swallowing a hitch breath, she tried to not react too much. He was so much bigger than her though, it was hard to keep the thrill contained. If the past couple months had taught her anything it was that there was a darkness that resided within Andy- behind the sad blue eyes and the strong silence was something akin to a tornado strong enough to rip an entire country to shreds. 

Dangerous and violent. 

And she liked it. 

“I don’t want one,” she countered definitely, his proximity chipping her resolve away. 

“I wasn’t asking, sweetheart,” Andy offered her the glass again, “Take it.” Reluctantly, Y/n relieved him of the glass but hesitated on taking a sip. Something might stir inside her when he was around, but it wasn’t trust. “Relax, I wouldn’t do that to you,” Y/n glared and in response, Andy downed his entire glass in one go, stepping away to fill it up again- that time a little more than the last. “See?” He took a generous swing, “I’m not that kind of guy,” he got close again, that time offering his glass for a toast, “To good men.” 

She’d called him a good man, that had aged pretty badly. 

“To good men,” she retorted sarcastically, taking a large sip of the wine. He was right, she did like it. 

“Do you like it?” Y/n could have been wrong, maybe she had a little too much faith in him, but his question seemed genuine. Like he was eager to know if he’d made the right pick. 

“Its alright,” the lie must not have been a very good one because Andy smirked. “I want my-”

“I know, finish your drink,” he gritted. Then, after polishing off his second glass at an alarming rate, Andy wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. With just the slightest stumble in his usually confident gait, he set the empty glass down with a thump and started walking towards the stairs, “I’ll go get you’re fucking ring,” he mummbled, leaving her downstairs without another word. 

Not thinking much of it, she took periodic sips of the wine. It was good, and judging by the label, it must have cost upwards of a couple hundred dollars, but it wasn't particularly strong- definitely not strong enough to get a man of his size drunk after two glasses.

That was when she put it together; the slightest scent of liquor on his breath when he’d answered the door, his outwardly aggressive behavior, the way he’d swallowed the wine like it was water- Andy was already drunk. He’d probably been that way since he’d called earlier. 

And he was obviously playing some kind of game with her. Laying a trap. Luring her to danger. 

On heavy steps, Andy returned downstairs about five minutes later, prowling towards her and prompting Y/n to absently inch backwards into the wall. “Your ring,” he held it up with a little, wicked grin. She put her hand out for it, but Andy took it instead, turning it over so her palm would be face down. Their chests were inches apart at that point and he kept his darkened eyes matched with hers, presumably in a defiant act above all else, as he slid the ring back onto her finger. “All better?”

Clenching her jaw, Y/n tried to pull her hand away but Andy tightened his grip and lunged; within the second his lips were on hers. Reacting instinctively, she kissed him back- it was completely impulsive, submission to a primal desire. She could taste the mixture of liquors on his lips and his kiss could have been as inebriating  as the poison he’d poured down his throat. She might have gotten drunk on him- she would have- But the minute she caught herself, deserting carnal yearning in favor of what was true and right, Y/n tried to use her free hand to shove him away. 

But he wouldn’t budge. 

Andy was solid, immovable. Like a gray stone wall or a bear boxing in its prey. 

She could feel a bulge pressing into her lower stomach, making it hard to focus

“Stop,” she fought against his lips, a frustrated noise escaping her lips when grabbed the wrist of the hand she as using to push against his chest. “You need to stop,” Y/n struggled against his hungry lips. It doesn't matter that she actually doesn't want him to, that she'd traded hours of sleep for fantasies that looked just like that. A moment where they'd be alone and he'd do things to her that James might be scared to.

But none of that mattered- they were fantasies and she was engaged.

When she attempted to use her legs against him- knee him in the groin or kick him in the shin- Andy reacted swiftly positioned both his legs between hers, consequently pressing his crotch against her.

“No,” he easily positioned her hands over her head, closing his fingers in around her wrists and pinning them to the wall above her head, rendering her defenseless. “You want this,” Andy snarled into her mouth, hooking his now free hand around the back of her thigh, guiding it harshly to his hip. “Say you want this.”

Wiggling against frantically, Y/n tossed her head back, hitting it on the wall, as she tried to tear her lips from his. “No, get off me,” she protested, voice rising above a harsh warning. 

Deserting her thigh, Andy brought his hand to her neck and held her like that for a moment, “We’re doing this,” he managed through gritted teeth, “I know you, you want this. All those nights we spent together, just the two of us. Everytime I asked you if you wanted to go home, what did you say?” He was squeezing her throat, applying enough pressure to limit airflow. 

“N–no,” it was getting harder to breathe and speak, and her vision was dancing  but something in the back of Y/n’s mind doubted that he genuinely wanted to hurt her, “I-I said….no.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re engaged?” He pulled her forward a little, only to slam her head into the wall again, though not hard enough to inflict any more damage than a sore spot. 

“Exactly,” Andy hissed, “You said no. We went on a fucking date and you didn’t tell me you were engaged.”

Hot tears were racing down her paling cheeks and Andy was beginning to seem more and more like a blur. “Because,” she gasped, desperately trying to suck in some air, “I…” A hitched sob punctuated her words, “I….I didn’t want you to know.”

She really didn’t. It was wrong, misguided and shamefully selfish, but at some point, Y/n had thought that bringing up her engagement would ruin the closeness that she so enjoyed with Andy. She enjoyed being the only person he opened up to, in a way, it felt like he was hers and as long as she kept her relationship with James hidden, nothing would change.

“Exactly,” he growled, seeking her lips once more, “You’ve wanted me exactly the way I’ve wanted you since that first case.”

A broken sob fell into his mouth and Y/n occasionally found herself punctuating her failing resistance with sloppily returned kisses. “I don’t wanna do this,” she cried weakly, breaths short and throat dry, “You don’t wanna do this,” halfheartedly, she kissed the corner of his lips and tried to turn her face away again, “You’re drunk, this isn’t you.” 

Pressing his forehead to hers, Andy chuckled and his grip on her neck loosened so he could flatten his hand on the top of her chest. She could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric of her dress as he dragged it slowly down her body, and as she got a clearer sense of where his hand was going, she was breathing quickly. “I promise you, sweetheart” he rasped, fingers creeping under the hem of her skirt, which had ridden up her thigh, “This is exactly me.” 

Pushing aside the crotch off her underwear, Andy slipped two of his digits into her folds and started pumping slowly. “See?” He taunted in response to the slickness that had gathered there shortly after she’d felt his member pressing into her stomach. Try as she might, it was impossible to deny the effect that Andy had on her and she hated that she did want him- a man like him, who was proving to be worse than the rumors. She hated that the only reason she was resisting was because she didn't want to be branded as a cheater. 

“You want this,” he coaxed, curling his fingers and extracting a sharp inhale, “Admit it sweetheart.”

Not because she loved her fiance- she did- but she didn’t want that love questioned. Not by Andy, not by herself. 

But love and sex, they were different. She could love James and want Andy. It wasn't wrong, it was just human.

His beard grazed her skin, and the sensation coupled with her mounting arousal made a shiver run up her spine. “Please….” Her plea was teary, and Y/n wasn’t sure what she was begging for; for him to spare her the consequence of a nasty truth or give her more. 

Biting down on her lower lip, Y/n hoped a little pain and blood on her tongue was enough to keep her mouth shut and ward off the obvious truth, but when his lips sought her jaw and he added another finger to his quickening ministrations while pressing his thumb to her nub, she succumbed. “Yes…” She heaved, sobbing, “I want you,” she cried, head bending forward and her face consequently nuzzling the side of his.

She was only human, after all.

Finally satisfied, Andy let Y/n’s wrists go and she immediately loomed her arms around his neck, holding him to her. Meanwhile, he removed his fingers from her arousal and started pushing her underwear down, letting it pool at her feet. Without thinking, she kicked it away and when Andy curled his fingers under her ass after sparing a bare moment to undo his pants and free his cock, she let him lift her off the ground and wrapped her legs around his waist. 

But when Andy slid into her with unfettered ease, girth stretching her to the point of a delicious burn, an erotic moan tumbled off her lips and her fingers curled in his nape. Immediately, he struck up a pace of pronounced but aggressive thrusts, giving off the sense that he was barely containing himself. 

She still felt guilty. Y/n still knew it was wrong. 

“Fuck….Laurie….” In the heat of the moment, her name dripped off his lips, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that it wasn’t even about her;

'Because you remind me of someone. Someone special.'

'Keep the length, try a couple shades darker'- just like the woman in the photographs. 

“I’ve been thinking about this since we met,” he admitted, liquor stained breath hot on her face and distracting her, “God, you feel so fucking good, you take me so well.” 

He felt good too. 

Steadying her at the hip with one hand, Andy used the other to free her blouse from the waist of her skirt. Delving under the hem, he groped her breast through her bra, kneading harshly. As the rhythmic roll of his hips grew rabid, Y/n found herself demanding, “Harder,” and, “Faster,” with the occasional obscene praise peppered in between. 

Reveling in the feel of his bulging veins rubbing her sensitive walls with each purposeful, aggressive thrust and the way the curve of his member seemed to probe at the lowest part of her stomach, Y/n sunk her nails into his back, clawing at Andy through his shirt. Breathy moans and low grunts bounced off the walls as stifling heat cocooned them, hardly remedied by the air conditioning. 

With each jerk, her back hit the wall with an audible thump and as Y/n felt herself inching closer to insurmountable gratification she tightened her legs around his hips, driving the back of her feet into his thighs. “Andy,” she hitched headily when his lips met hers again, not really in a kiss but a stretch of shared breaths. “Fuck,” Y/n heaved into his mouth, “You feel so….”

Grinning wickedly, he tried to meet her lust blown eyes but their faces were so close that it was hard. “Feel so….?”

“So-uh,” a small fraction of her was readily able to recognize that there was no coming back from the words she wanted to say. Her silly admission that he was the best she’d ever had. Y/n’s mind though had fallen into some kind of sex-crazed limbo, caught between what was inherently right and what felt incomparably good. 

“Tell me,” he demanded, kissing her roughly, biting her lips before pulling away a few centimeters.

“Good,” at the back of his head, she grabbed a fistful of his hair, causing him to bite her lips when they kissed again, “So fucking good.” Pressing her face close to his, the rise and fall of her chest became erratic and her heart was galloping in behind her ribs and she became acutely aware of just how close she was to toppling over with gratification. 

“I wanna feel you,” he encouraged, quickening his pace a little, fingers digging into her waist. 

The fabric of his shirt was crumpled in her grip and eager for release, Y/n struggled to buck her hips towards his. With a gasp, Y/n’s legs stiffened and her head lolled back against the wall. Unrestrained ecstasy started in a burst at her center, spreading like an untamed wildefire to electrify her every nerve. Clenching around him, her frame quaked and she drenched their thighs in silky moisture. She didn’t think it had ever felt like that; like watching fireworks on an LSD high or speeding on the freeway after a night of tequila shots. There was a rush she’d never experienced before, one she fittingly thought could only ever be achieved with drugs. “Andy! Fuck!” Her throat hurt and her words were loud and a little hoarse.

Andy’s pace didn’t falter through the crest of her euphoria, though just as her high settled, leaving behind a pleasurable sensitivity and colours on her vision, his hips sputtered. She should have pushed him away, begged him to pull out, but much too consumed by the threads of pleasure still running through her veins, Y/n clung to him as generous ribbons of his hot product shot into her. By then, he’d shifted his feet slightly and moved both his hands to hold onto her hip, as if he were keeping her in place so she’d take every drop of him. 

Even after it was over, Andy remained sheathed between her sore walls for a handful of slow moments. They kissed, lips taking on a leisured pace that time and Y/n leaned forward so he’d be supporting most of her weight. She could have sworn that every sensation in that moment was raw and amplified; the roughness of his beard scratching the area around her lips and tickling her palms, the fullness of him still settled inside her, the heat of his touch seeping through her blouse and the rhythm of his heart matching hers. 

Suddenly, she couldn’t remember if her heartbeat had ever matched James’. 

She hated that she was comparing them. He was a good man and Andy was…..Andy. 

Gingerly, he pulled out, and simultaneously, she untangled her legs from around him, knees almost buckling as her feet finally hit the ground. Shutting her eyes as she slumped against the wall, Y/n could hear the soft clink of his belt as Andy tugged his pants up, and while she made no effort to pull her skirt down, she could feel the fabric slowly creeping back to his proper place. 

When he lazily leaned forward, braced by one arm pressed to the wall diagonally over her head, Andy  reached out to ghost the  outline of her face with his rough fingertips, thumb tracing tear stains and then the shape of her kiss-swollen lips. His breathing was just as heavy as hers and it was only after his touch hand trailed down her neck and had reached the valley of her cleavage did he disturbed the heavy silence. “Can I tell you something?” His hoarse whisper elicited a pitiful whimper and shiver from her. His large hand skimmed the contour of her curves and settled to a firm grip on her waist, “You’re prettier when you’re mine.”

Mine. 

His. 

A hitched sob escaped her throat just as her guilt doubled; how could she? That time, when she pushed him away, Andy complied. There was so much she could say to him; curse him, lie and say she hated him, blame him but it would really only be words born from her own guilt and after he’d spent the past forty minutes or so ruining her, Y/n didn’t think he deserved the satisfaction. 

Sucking in a big breath to contain her shameful tears, she shuffled away from Andy, who didn’t even put a toe towards trying to stop her; she supposed it was because he’d already gotten what he wanted. Blindly, Y/n stumbled towards the door, letting herself out without a word and not bothering to shut it as she left. Approaching the car parked on the curb, Y/n rummaged through her coat for the keys and after she got them out, she shrugged off the coat using it to lap up some of the moisture on her face and neck before getting in. 

Immediately after getting the engine going, Y/n put down the windows and turned on the air conditioning, hoping the inescapable chill would do something for her appearance. Then reaching into the glove compartment, she hastily extracted a wad of napkins and did her best to clean up before discarding them on the passenger seat  and  grabbing up her phone. 

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”

“Drive safe. Text me when you get there.”

“Y/n?” 

“I get it if you’re still upset but please let me know that you’re safe.”

“Ordered your favorite for dinner. Waiting till you get here. I love you.”

“Shit!” Y/n banged the wheel with the side of her fist and hot tears rained from blurry eyes. She’d been at Andy’s for just over an hour. Trying to slow the erratic rise and fall of her chest and quiet her sobs, she quickly typed a response, telling James that she’d forgotten her phone in the car and would be home within the next half hour. 

Then, as she wiped her eyes and pulled off, hoping she could bring herself to face James by the time she got home. 

[delightfulcollectivetyphoon]

is it just me or does this pic radiate MAJOR predator/prey vibes? like he's just rawdoggin your soul. just me? okay

anyways, smutty thoughts below the cut

tw: loud concert, mentions of anxiety, mentions of wolves, mentions of smut, cuss words, kinda daddy issues?, fluffy angst (or angsty fluff)

a/n: so um yeah I meant for this to be like 10 sentences and I wrote a goddamn novel oopsies. and this ain't even the full thing.

You were sitting on the balcony all the way to the right of the entrance, at one of the smallest gigs you'd ever seen Metallica play. Wolf and Man was pounding into your ears, your senses blurring from the thrill of it all. You were watching Robert and Kirk run circles around each other, and you smiled at how silly these old men could be, like they were being kids again. You felt eyes burning into the side of your head and just 100 feet away was James, staring you down in a fierce manner. He didn't break eye contact as his tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip, he was hypnotizing. Your smile fell slowly as your lips parted, lost in his sultry glare. One of the spotlights fell on him so perfectly; you could see every beautiful outline and shadow of this masterfully sculpted man; his sweat covering his skin with a thin sheen. The massive screen behind the band was focused on him, and you saw up close how his eyes were clouded with something more than lust, a wolfish need, like he wanted to tear you apart, make you squeal, savor every inch of your skin. Something you had dreamed of ever since walking through the venue door and saw him in his vest and tank top. He smirked at you as he played the last few notes of the song and brought his tank to his mouth to wipe the sweat off his upper lip, the drops glittering his silver hair no more. The crowd screamed and clapped as the men gave their thank-yous and till-next-times.

-----------------------Backstage, a half hour later------------------------

The bag and ticket checks were brutal, and you started to wonder if this was a bad idea. Meeting Metallica seemed like a good idea in retrospect, yes, but now your anxiety was getting the best of you. Your palms were sweaty, your heart was racing, and your mouth was dry as the Sahara. The bottle of water sitting in your bag suddenly came back to mind as you snatched it from its pocket and tried to take off the cap. Your hand was shaking, making it difficult. You finally managed to get it off and sipped it for the next few minutes. Jesus Christ, was meeting 4 60-year-old men this fucking stressful? Some quick self-reflection brought you the idea that meeting Rob, Kirk, and Lars was exhilarating, but not stress-inducing. Meeting James was your main problem. It wasn't really a problem, he was just your favorite of the band, whether for his look or his playing, you didn't know, but you had chalked it up to a fair 50/50. This was a problem you were excited to have. Some parts of you were more excited than others, but you pushed that thought to the very recesses of your brain. If you had the scenario of screwing a man old enough to be your dad in the back of your head, it would definitely make its way into your conversation, which was more or less bound to get you a weird look and a premature "it was nice meeting you!" But God, his stare made you anxious in all the right ways and you just couldn't stop thinking of him staring into your soul as he chased you down, captured you, and made you his. You snapped out of your little thought bubble as you neared the platform. James was shaking the hand of a middle-aged man, someone you guessed was a father because of the 5-ish-year-old girl standing at his feet, holding onto the bottom of her father's shirt. James squatted down so he could be eye-level with the girl, and you instantly knew that he looked differently at others. He had reserved that stare just for you. Your brain ran rampant with the possibility that he might actually just want you, and that he wasn't generally so domineering and intense, but just when he saw you. In fact, his eyes returned to what you thought a 60-year-old's should look like, soft and sweet, teddy-bear-ish. He shook her tiny hand, and she shook it back and moved in for a hug. You couldn't blame her; he looked like just about the most huggable person there. He laughed as he closed her arms around her, telling the dad that it was okay after he tried to apologize and pull her away.

"Be good for your dad, okay," he asked, almost commanded as he straightened her jacket, ruffled from the embrace. He gave her one last smile as she nodded and walked off with her dad. The attendant ushered you forward as James picked up his water and took a sip at the same time you did. When he tilted his head back down, he saw you staring at his battle vest, or more importantly the tank top covering his chest and tummy. God, his tummy was hotter from up close. He caught you staring, and your faced burned with embarrassment.

"You like it?"

Your breath caught in your throat at his raspy tone.

"What?"

He laughed and set the bottle down on the table behind him. He gestured you to the chairs and table set up on the platform, probably decades-old wood that squeaked when you settled into it.

"My jacket, you like it? Saw you starin' at it, figured it interested you."

He was subtly fucking with you, letting you know he had caught you staring at his tummy, imagining it colliding with your back as he drove deeper and deeper into you, owning you. He had known that you were awe-struck by the idea ever since he saw you staring back during Wolf and Man. He had all the confirmation he needed.

"Oh, yeah, it's an awesome vest! I have one like it, just not as many patches. It's also a little less worn; I just bought it and started adding stuff about a week ago, actually."

He smiled and leaned back. The angle allowed his tank top to stretch tighter across his stomach; allowed his vest to cling to his shoulders, accentuating how broad he was. You involuntarily inhaled through your nose like it was the last sniff of oxygen you'd ever get. You'd tried your best not to gasp, that would for sure get his attention. He smirked.

"I know you're not here to talk about vests. I can tell something's on your mind. C'mon I have 3 kids, I can tell when something's wrong by poorly masked facial expressions," he joked, and you softened, comforted by his willingness to peer into your thoughts.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

thanks for reading, this is my first ever fic! i think i did fairly well, but feedback is appreciated! should i do a part 2?

[belle-keys]

The Elephant in the Room: Matthew is the only one who knows about Jessa (Theory)

I believe that Matthew is the only one of that generation who knows that Herongraystairs is a, uh, arrangement between three people, and that Jem and Tessa remained having feelings for each other even while Will and Tessa were married. I do not think James and Lucie and Cordelia and the rest of the gang know.

After finishing Chain of Thorns and personally being of the opinion we needed more love triangle content instead of less, this scene at the end of Chain of Gold has gobsmacked me in retrospect. This is during James and Cordelia’s engagement party and it’s in Magnus’ POV. Magnus has caught on to the fact that Matthew secretly loves Cordelia.

Magnus cleared his throat. "I see why my waistcoats cannot hold your attention, Fairchild. I've been where you are. Wanting what you can't have will only rip your heart apart." Matthew spoke in a low voice. "It would be one thing if James loved her. I would go into the quiet dark like Jem did and never speak of her again. But he doesn’t love her.” “What?" Magnus was unpleasantly startled.

This is the first and only instance of a mention in The Last Hours of the fact that Jem and Tessa ever had or still do have romantic feelings for each other, and that Will was the one of the two of them who "got the girl". I do not believe Lucie, Cordelia, or James know of the true events of Clockwork Princess or the reality of Herongraystairs. Let me enumerate some reasons why:

This is the first and only instance in TLH of Jem and Tessa’s feelings for each other being acknowledged by any character, despite Wessa being happily married. This is only one of the only instances of us being reminded of Jem’s past as a Shadowhunter in the series. Note the lack of “Uncle Jem”. He’s just talking about our Jem. Magnus gets startled by everything Matthew has just said. It's clear they're also speaking strictly in confidence.

In ChoT, we have two parabatai who are in love with the same woman, and said woman has feelings for both of them. Yet not once in ChoT throughout that whole love triangle drama do Lucie, James or Cordelia or anyone even liken their own situation to the near-identical version of it that happened between Herongraystairs. They treat the idea of two best friends loving the same woman and said woman having feelings for both of them in return as something alien. Because they don’t know it even happened before.

And what's also weird in ChoT is that Tessa had pulled Cordelia aside in the carriage to ask her if everything was "okay" with her and James, but also if everything was “okay” with her and Matthew. Yet Tessa doesn't even ever allude to having been in a similar situation to the one Cordelia was in. It's obvious that Will and Tessa know that Cordelia had feelings for Matthew and that something went down in Paris between them, and yet Will said nothing to James about being in that very specific situation. Because James doesn’t know.

We get so many instances of James and Lucie talking about Will and Jem being the best of parabatai, and also many instances of them musing about Will and Tessa and their parents’ love. Yet not once did James ever even think to ask his favorite Uncle Jem for any advice about "hey, what do you do when you and your parabatai love the same woman?”, the same Uncle Jem that he goes to when he needs advice about any and every thing. It’s not knowledge to them that Jessa was ever a thing, or a serious thing.

Blackfriars Bridge was absolutely happening throughout TLH, yet not once do James or Lucie even think of or acknowledge that their mother and Uncle Jem were meeting once a year for their whole lifetimes at the same spot in London, and without Will. Seems like the kind of thing you’d at least passively think about if you'd had the knowledge. They don’t know.

In ChoT, Will tells the story of how he rescued Tessa from Mortmain in Wales and he alludes to the events of Clockwork Princess a lot in TLH. He absolutely never mentions that it was at that point in the story that he had "broken up" Jessa and that it rested on the fact that Jem also was very, very close to death. He never tells the story factoring in Jem as “the other man” at all. Likewise, in ChoG, both Lucie and James laugh at the Lightworm story a couple times, yet neither of them mention they know that it happened when Tessa was about to marry… Jem, and not their own father.

What sealed the deal in ChoT for me: "It was something James loved about his father, but it also meant he could not approach him to talk about Matthew and Cordolia. James was sure Will had never been angry with Jem in his life". James doesn’t know that there were, uh, conflicts between Will and Jem, because he doesn’t even know the context behind those, uh, conflicts that he doesn’t know about. He is clueless.

Here’s why I think it’s a secret, why only Matthew knows, and what the implications are:

Tessa would be ruined as a woman, as @amchara pointed out, if the information was known. Eugenia had an understanding with that one irrelevant douchebag, and her reputation has suffered for it incessantly since the understanding was broken off. Tessa had, uh, more than just an understanding with Jem. Lol. She already has a demonic heritage. I’m certain if the Clave knew she’d once had a thing with her husband’s parabatai-turned-Brother Zachariah in addition to being the daughter of a Prince of Hell, she’d be presque-crucified for it.

We simply don’t get Matthew POVs. That’s probably intentional as it relates to issues like this. He clearly knows about Jessa and the Jessa business. He was the first person that knew that Cordelia was in love with James all along. According to Cordelia in ChoT Ch24, she was sure Matthew knew something had “changed” between her and James. Matthew was also like, the first of the gang to hate Grace and hate her being with James without even knowing about the gracelet. Matthew had also picked up that James' feelings for Cordelia had “returned” or manifested themselves when they broke the gracelet at the end of ChoI. Matthew knows everything, which is impressive, as he’s only spent a mere fraction of the series not inebriated.

Matthew sees himself as a Jem figure, which he is in my humble opinion. Matthew told Cordelia in the games room scene (Christmas Party) that he would “wait for her” to change her mind about him. But moreover, he’s the one who coined the infamous “love is a creeping vine” phrase. That type of slower, more gradual love is very reminiscent of Jem and Tessa (Will and Tessa are more like burning twin flames in love, more like James and Cordelia). It’s also rather interesting that at the end of ChoT, Matthew is leaving London to take himself out of the equation completely, kind of like how Jem simply had to be out of the equation so that Tessa could have both him and Will, just at different times. Matthew thought he could play the long game with Cordelia, in the way Jem was always playing the long game with Tessa.

On the assumption that Matthew knows as much about Herongraystairs as us, Cordelia ending things with him in that “I will never love you the way you deserve to be loved, Matthew” way would have hurt him a lot. Cordelia will never live a lifetime where James will not be in the equation (very different to how Jem and Tessa are), and Matthew knows that.

I don’t know exactly how Matthew knows. I’m absolutely certain he didn’t learn the information he does have from Charlotte or Henry, because that means Charles would have known, and Charles would have absolutely weaponized any sketchy information about Tessa that he could have during the Wessa Witch Hunt episode in ChoT. I don’t believe Magnus said anything to Matthew either. I think Matthew’s just sneaky and observant, because he was the first person to notice many, many important things in TLH.

Anyways, the TLH gang don’t actually know everything that happened in TID. Not saying anything is wrong with that. Just saying that I think they have a certain, slightly whitewashed version of events. That’s fine. We’ll never really know our own parents. But I do think that what the gang knows (or does not know) has shaped the way they see love, trust, and friendship, for better or for worse.

[wrathfulrook]

WIP Wednesday

I've applied to my schools and I'm writing again <3 I've been tagged by a million people these past few months... sorry

Tagging @skoll-sun-eater @socially-awkward-skeleton @adelaidedrubman @trench-rot @cassietrn @dumbassdep @thedepyuty @direwombat @josephslittledeputy @locustandwildhoney @roofgeese @voidika @afarcryfrommymain @purplehairsecretlair @strafethesesinners @deputyash @inafieldofdaisies @josephseedismyfather and anyone else with something to share! As always, no pressure and apologies for duplicates... <3

Here's a bit from something that is blatantly not Wrathling. I'm still working on Wrathling but here's an AU instead...

When it all ended, when the National Guard came, they all ended up behind bars. Joseph, Jacob, John, and Faith. Tucked away where they could never hurt anyone ever again. In the aftermath, her own name and face were plastered all over the news. Her statements were used in each trial, printed in papers nationwide. And so the courts had been all too willing to grant her petition for a name change. Patience Ekner ceased to be, and Patience Rook was born.

Patience Rook left Hope County, left Montana, never to go back. She put it all behind her and moved forward, the only reminder she chose to keep the new surname she took, her nickname from those brutal, bloody days. Of course, there were other reminders she hadn’t chosen. The tattoo of her sin, for one. Wrath, he’d assigned her. Not that she ever believed, but she found wrath fairly fitting at the time.

In hindsight, he’d chosen wrong. It shouldn’t have been WRATH she spent hours getting covered up with flowers that she didn’t think particularly suited her. No. In retrospect, it should’ve been LUST.

But the tattoo wasn’t her only reminder of that time, of him. There was also the child she’d birthed, the child she adored. Her son. Hers. But, oh, did he look like his father. His hair dark where hers was blonde, eyes blue where hers were grey. He even had that same charming smile, the one that had worked so well on her those many years ago. The only thing of hers she could see on her child were her numerous freckles. But while her freckles remained always, her child had outgrown them by the time he hit high school.

Every now and then, he would say something, make some face, talk with his hands in a way that she was hit full force with the memory of his father. Both the horrible things he’d done and those stolen, secret nights they couldn’t keep apart from each other…

But mostly, usually, she looked at her boy and saw only him. James. Her perfect miracle baby. The gift that made everything about those dark days worth it in her eyes. He was such a happy, smiley baby. Always giggling and gurgling. He’d been talkative long before he learned how to speak. Always so sweet and kind. Petting her hair and telling her “Okay mommy… s’okay mommy…” as she purged herself of a stomach bug he’d brought home from daycare when he was too small to even form full sentences, while she in turn tried to reassure her baby that mommy was ok.

Even now, he was her perfect child. Still sweet, still happy. But now his own person. And she was so amazed by the person he’d become. He was funny. Funny in a way she never was. And so clever. Amazing grades as well as a quick wit. Patience loved her child and she knew how much he loved her too.

Even despite how he’d recently been pulling away.

~~~

James wondered how many signs he’d missed over the course of his life. How obvious it should have been. His mom had always told him she didn’t know who his father was. He recalled once, in one of his earliest memories, that she’d told him she chose his name because she’d always liked it, but also because she thought his father would like it too. He’d asked her about it later, and she said that she’d never said it. And he believed her. He was so little at the time; it could’ve easily been a false memory. He still wasn’t sure it’s not. After all, he had a memory from around the same time of flapping his arms and flying like a bird throughout the house, and that memory feels equally as real.

But whether or not she’d told him his father would like his name, she knew. His mom knew who his dad was the whole time. Because he looked exactly like one of them. The Seeds. The cult leaders. He looked exactly like John Seed. The Baptist. The sadistic monster who tortured and murdered and starved innocent people. Just reading about his crimes had been enough to give James nightmares for a week.

James had spent the past weeks learning everything he could about the Project at Eden’s Gate. And he was horrified at the thought his mom would ever willing have any sort of relationship with any of those men. He almost hoped she hadn’t. But if one of those men was his father, and his mom had in fact not been voluntarily involved with any of them… No. James couldn’t stomach the thought of that either.

No matter what the circumstances were back then, the situation now was that James was had told his mom he was spending the long weekend camping with a friend’s family, when in reality he was on a bus to Montana to meet the man who might be his dad. It had been surprisingly easy to contact John Seed.

James’ first letter hadn’t received a response. Probably because he had intentionally been a bit light on the details. Eventually he’d tried again, this time including his mom’s former name and, after much mental back-and-forth, a photo of himself.

And that had received a response.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 31 – An Unauthorized Fan Treatise by Lauren James

This was a book (or, web fiction piece. Web serial? I’m not actually sure how it was initially released) that I read basically on a lark after getting curious seeing a few people talk about it on tumblr. So, score one for viral marketing and the convenience of reading free webfiction, I suppose – I was up until half past three in the morning barrelling through it all in one sitting. Which is all just incredibly appropriate for this story in particular.

So, the story’s a thriller/murder mystery, but specifically one about the actors on a trashy CW-style hot-young-adults-playing-supernatural-creatures-having-teen-drama style tv show, as told in the form of a sprawling series of essay-length posts by a fan devoted to proving that the two male leads are fucking in real life but forced to hide their live by the homophobic network. Things get more tangled from there.

So, as I said, very appropriate that I learned about this on tumblr. Basically everything about it is about online fan culture – there’s tens of thousands of words devoted to recounting livejournal sockpuppet drama, every chapter ends with a ‘comment section’ that’s mostly a Greek chorus but occasionally relevant to the plot, and almost literally every single aspect of the story and framing are a reference or pastiche to some famous online clusterfuck or other of the kind you’ve probably watched far-too-long video essay retrospectives of on youtube. Or I have, anyway (but then again, ninety percent of the references were a bit before my time anyway, so the cultural education was pretty crucial to me understanding what this was going for at all).

And, given all that, I ultimately found this pretty disappointing? It was absolutely readable, and enjoyable in the moment, but the metatextual commentary element meant the thriller plot at the heart of it just ended up seeming like, well, cheap soap opera. Beyond that, the framing device just seems like one giant missed opportunity, the commentary on fandom culture was in the end pretty shallow, and the shocking twist in the epilogue was, I think, just a mistake.

So okay, lets justify all of that in order.

When I say the plot didn’t really hold together for me, that might be more the fault of the word-of-mouth marketing that pointed me towards the story more than any promises the text itself makes, honestly. But I went in expecting a story about fan obsession and hallucination, projection and parasocial relationships, and all that. And downstream of that, I was expecting something a bit grounded? And the story just wasn’t either of those things; to begin with, the two celebrities the ‘fan treatise’ is about really are secretly dating and being forced to hide it, which seemed like kind of inexplicable decision to me as I read it. It’s not just that, either. Like to be clear this story absolutely has an unreliable narrator, but for a story ostensibly about fan obsession, it seems a bit odd for, lik, there to be an extended digression about how a famous actor was totally of an asshole in a livejournal fanfic community a decade previously, and then have that be revealed to be totally and unambiguously correct.

It’s less of an issue, but as I said the actual murders and intrigues at the core of the story are kind of just..ridiculous? Which I honestly normally wouldn’t mind, but- wen your story spends so much time talking about trashy supernatural tv shows and fanfic, it becomes kind of important that the ground-level narrative seem real by comparison, you know? And this had altogether too much talk of ‘the dark web’ for that.

I’m very possibly going to be putting my foot in my mouth hear (most of the specific fan cultures and pieces of drama being referenced, I only really know second hand through various salacious youtube gossip rags), but for all that the entire story’s utterly preoccupied with, in the end I found the commentary on fan culture really..shallow? Sure, the entire premise is having a laugh at larry stylinson-style RPF shipping conspiracies, the entire livejournal plot is a pastiche of the MsScribe drama, there are plenty of jokes about how m/m shippers literally forgetting about te female lead in te show she headlines, etc, etc. And they’re, largely, well-done references and jokes! Not really complaining about that.

But I’m kind of left feeling like there’s nothing really underneath it all. Which- if James had sat down a story with the explicit purpose of Saying Something About Fandom, it would almost certainly have been terrible. But between the murder plot and the revelations of Gottie’s byzantine revenge scheme (which honestly I’m consciously choosing not to think about too hard lest this just turn into cinemasins-for-books), in the end all the fandom stuff almost felt like window dressing? Elaborate, detailed, and impressive window-dressing, to be sure, but as the story went on and the plot became more clearly thriller-ish, increasingly revealed to be surface level and ornamental.

Speaking of ‘surface level’: the web serial medium and use of links here was such an incredible missed opportunity. You have an utterly unreliable narrator with a secret agenda and a grudge writing tens of thousands of words of livejournal essays about celebrities, and then you go to the effort of making actual accounts on twitter/insta/whatever to leave real links to when you cite them, and then you have her actually faithfully relate what the cited paged say? What a waste! This would have been so much better if it was 50% more postmodern and up its own ass about playing with the format. And doing so would even let you have that (incredibly obvious on one level, entirely out of nowhere and dramatically dead when it’s dropped as the literal last word of the story) reveal in the epilogue actually work!

Anyway, this all sounds incredible negative. Which isn’t entirely inaccurate, honestly, but I should reiterate that I googled this out of idle curiosity on a Friday evening and only realized it was 3am when I finished it. The negativity is more because this seemed so close to being amazing than because it was anything heinous.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

okay so as suggested by @fromkenari (big thank btw), ive decided to make a post about one of my idols who happens to be a part of queer history i dont hear people talk about much.

and said icon is james whale.

he was an english director working in early hollywood, as well directing theatre and acting. his most well known films are probably the invisible man (1933), frankenstein (1931) and bride of frankenstein (1935).

(you might also know him from the road back (1937) if films about ww1 are your thing)

and while part of why i idolise him is those films and making horror art, i bring up the dates specifically because james whale was openly queer throughout his entire hollywood career.

said career began in the 1920s and continued up to 1950. he was pressured to step into the closet but he never did, and its likely a big factor as to why his career ended.

a lot of his films are packed with queer subtext, particularly bride of frankenstein. that film has so much camp packed into it and pretorius is so damn queer coded. theres a lot of queer readings of it you can explore, its fucking incredible.

and mind you, the hays code went into effect in 1934.

the hays code also happened to massively effect frankenstein in retrospect due to scene-cuts in re-releases, and bear with me on this one:

see the original cut had a scene where the monster meets a young girl named maria who asks him to play a game with her. in the game, they sit together and throw flowers onto a lake where they float. when the monster runs out of flowers, he throws his new friend, maria, in, assuming that she would float like the flowers. she doesnt; rather she drowns.

and this scene was specifically created by james whale in reaction to a then moral panic in america basically about the creepy man in the shadows who lures your child away and molests them. this deviant shadowy figure was essentially synonymised with gay men, who were falsely arrested on sodomy charges or died at the hands of mob "justice".

the flower scene challenges that idea because the monster isnt, well, a monster. in 1931, the monster was almost unilaterally perceived as this perverted evil thing that would steal your children; he was practically the same as these "predatory gay men", and then the monster wasnt a monster.

he was misjudged, he wasnt inherently evil, and he was unjustly punished. and if that applies to the monster, surely it applies to whale and all the other openly queer men.

as a scene in 1930s hollywood , it was so divisive because it portrayed the "villain" in a more morally grey area, and essentially said "hey, maybe this queer witch hunt is misguided"

unsurprisingly, producers at universal wanted to end the scene before the drowning. ending the scene there would leave it to the imagination as to what the monster did to maria, and given the sex offender moral panic sweeping the nation, the implication would be that he raped her.

but james whale fought for the scene to be kept and he won. specific states still forced the studios to censor parts of the film, but his film was intact.

BUT when this film was re-released in 1938, they entirely cut out this scene. and this fundamentally changed the character of the monster and the film itself.

by some fucking miracle, the scene was found in the british national film atchive in the 1980s, and modern cuts of the film now include. unfortunately, whale himself would not live to see that as he committed suicide in 1957.

what james whale did with frankenstein in 1931 was revolutionary in the same way that tod brownings freaks (1932) was. both men created films that portrayed the people society called monsters as real, complex beings who are not pure evil, and both faced censorship hell for it.

(go watch freaks btw, its so good)

and, you know, i get emotional talking about james whale. both because i have so much admiration for him as a queer person who refused to lock his queerness away, and because his name is never one i hear in discussions of queer history, and also because hes from the same area as me.

(im yet to find any clips of him speaking so i dont know if he has our accent or not. i like to think he did. he was the sixth out of a seven child working class family and first worked as a cobbler so its as likely as it could be.)

i would like for more queer folks to know about him because i think he deserves more of a legacy.

ian mckellen plays him in gods and monster (1998), and if youre ever in england with spare time, he does have a memorial sculpture. its in dudley which is where he was born, and if you know it, its right at castlegate.

but yeah no, this is my ramble post about a lesser known queer icon. originally i wrote an abridged version in the tags of a different post but @fromkenari was right, it deserves its own post.

[phantomram-b00]

To Hell with you

So, I was listening to songs. And then an epiphany hit me hit me harder than this fixation of the show; what if…the roles were reversed? Like what if Azirapahle first said no to the promotion yet Crowley said yes instead? I think I saw a fanfic that did this (I don’t remember) but I wanted to take a crack at this, and I feel like I want to cry myself so imma do a fanfic of it, hope you enjoy. And if you still haven’t seen good omens season too, this will contain that so uh spoiler warning ahead. Have fun!

Aziraphale was just done talking with Nina and Maggie just a while ago whilst Crowley walk away; while profusely apologizing for the whole ordeal both for last night and overall, they did give him advice on his love life. Something he never thought he could describe it given their status from their opposing side, but he’ve been in love with Crowley since 1941, so the label wasn’t exactly far off. But nothing official, and thanks to their advice, he though maybe they can? Why not? To hell with both parties that been trying to separate them for millennia now they’re on their own side.

“Right! Let me at least tidy this up before he comes” he spoke to himself while he put some books in their respective spots as well covered the symbol on the floor and make sure nothing was out of the ordinary. Oh ironic given their day to day life on earth. As he does so, he start preparing for the talk as he turn the sign on the front to “very closed”

“Okay, so Crowley!” He chuckled as he talks to himself yet again. “There something I must tell you about, I think it been long overdue for the past 6000 years at this point. And I know I’ve told you you go to fast but-“

He shook his head throwing away that thought like a piece of crumbled paper. That won’t do at all.

“Crowley! Wily serpent! I believe there are thing to be discussed about if that all the same to you…” he said as he put the Jane Austen book in order since Gabriel- err Jim decided to put them away separate by the first sentence they start it. Oh how problematic that organization was it nearly discorperated him the second time. “So we’ve known each other for quite a long time, at this point in time we can even guess each other sentences or predict other moves like Agnes Nutter.” He laughs. “W-well, what I’ve been meaning to say is, w-well, remember when I told you you go to fast? Well, I think I want to retract that statement since I think we can go fast, faster than a rollercoaster as Buddy Holly said-“

He again shook his head, and threw that idea away. But he blushes just thinking about Crowley, how he does want them to make it happen finally, been waiting since 1941 or maybe even longer; his mind begin to wonder around, become a habit for him at this point. He began to think about their life, all the time they’ve been together. Always a risk to be together but deep down, Aziraphale would take that risk all day to see Crowley, the one person that didn’t treat him like an annoyance or dare judge him but instead treated him like an equal, the one person that he would rather dine at the ritz and go on many restaurants with, the one person that he would maybe one day want to live with for all eternity. That feel more like heaven in his eyes than the actual place. In retrospect, he wished if it wasn’t for their side that maybe they could been more braver. Or at least he could’ve been. But he had a smile, maybe they can be now? And they can make up for lost time? And maybe one day, they can move into a cottage? Oh he can never be bored of living with him for all eternity. It make him more giddy just thinking about that possibility.

“Crowley!” He started again. “We need to talk, but I think maybe, this would be best suited if we go to St. James park? You’ve always love that place with the ducks. We can get frozen peas. And we can talk as we sit? Or if you prefer, we can dine at the ritz? I can feel an reservation was just open for two” he giggles while hugging the first edition Jane Erye by Charlotte Brontë. “Or maybe, we can talk here, and have drinks? I’ve got an expensive—“

Ding

Aziraphale look at the door and see Crowley back, couldn’t content his smile even if he tries.

“Crowley!” He said putting the book down and walking over to him.

“Angel” said giving him a smile back in return. He take off his glasses to reveal his Sunny eyes. “Listen angel, there something I need to talk to you about.”

“So do I!” He chuckled lovingly whilst look at his sun. “funny how two minds think alike, but I think first I would like to ask you if-“

“Hold that thought for just a moment angel,” Crowley said as aziraphale stopped his laughter. “Listen, Shax and I talked.”

“I’m quite aware, seen you guys had much to talk about despite what the stunt she pulled.” Aziraphale spoke. “Nearly started a war.”

“Right yeah, uh, so, during the talk, she granted me something. And, well, okay cutting to the chase here angel, she want me to be Duke of hell.”

“Oh.” He said taken aback. “Surely you said no didn’t you? I mean you always complained about how they’re the worst and not to mention that they even have a sign on not licking walls? Frankly you saying…”

He stop to look at Crowley face, reading it carefully like it was one of his books. Only this time he does not appreciate this sudden twist.

“Crowley please tell me…” he choked out. “Please..”

“Angel, maybe I can make this right. If I’m Duke of hell-“

“Oh Crowley” he look away running his finger through his white hair. He then lightly laugh. “Please tell me this is one of your devilish jokes you wily serpent!”

“Shax said…she said I can even bring you down to hell with me. We can make hell nicer, no, we can make hell a better. We can even maybe prevent whatever is happening—“

“Ohhhhhh! Crowley I thought you were better than this.” Aziraphale said choking back the tears. “You should be better than that Crowley!”

“Angel—“

“If I didn’t need heaven then it fairly certain that I don’t need hell neither!” He paced around trying to calm himself but avoiding his eyes. “You know Heaven told me to come back to them with a promotion to be supreme angel before this whole Gabriel and I said “no I will certainly not go back to you” and you shouldn’t neither.”

“Well of course you said no angel, heaven are a bunch of self-righteous arseholes and certainly no better than hell I’ll tell you that much.” Aziraphale face continues to be horrified. “But hell, I know hell isn’t the best neither but angel, if you’re by my side, we can make it better.”

“Crowley are you realizing that if hell ends life here on earth it be just as dead as if heaven ended it.” Azirapahle said this time he open the flood gates and tears are streaming down with his voice cracking. “Crowley… tell me you said no.”

Crowley tries his best to choke back his tears too. Seeing his angel distraught was the last thing to see. The last thing he ever wanted to do. He look away from aziraphale feeling his heart growing heavier the more this conversation prolongs.

“Crowley…?” Aziraphale said not even trying to wipe his golden tears away.

“Angel. Maybe I can make an actual difference. I can try to stop it.”

Aziraphale shook his head, he was too shocked yet to upset to form any form of a sentence. His glossy eyes was enough for Crowley to start his water works, he look away once more. Aziraphale turn around and let out a sigh.

“Right guess you got everything out then, it my turn to say my piece—“ despite this, Crowley waited patiently. “We’ve known one another for quite a long time. We’ve been on this planet more than the human that roam on earth. We can always rely on one another and we can or at least I had hoped we trusted each other. We’re on our own side as you said even four years ago at the ritz. To hear those words was more heavenly than what heaven could’ve ever offered to me.” He feel his heart growing heavier. “And I would love it if we—“ he stop again as he feel his tear roll down his cheeks once more. “Crowley, how is it that Beelzebub and Gabriel can go off to Alpha Centauri, the place you yourself have been dying to run off, then we could too right? Just the two of us.” Crowley wanted to smile, but he was too distraught himself to bring himself to do so. “You’ve always said, that we don’t need heaven or hell, they’re toxic Crowley! We can still run like you always said, we can even go to Alpha Centauri with them” Crowley shook his head repeatedly. “We can— what why are you saying what is it?” He said showing curiosity and concern.

“Angel then come with me. I can run it and you can be right by my side. We can make a different please.” Crowley said pleading now. He want to cup his hand on his face wiping away those golden tears, but even when he toke a step, aziraphale toke a step back shaking his head.

“You can’t leave—“ me. “You can’t leave this bookshop.”

Crowley would never want to leave him alone. He would do anything to stop time just to stay in this bookshop for all eternity with him, basking in their love they been so desperately trying to achieve. To listen to angel’s ramble of a book he know he read for the millionth time. To have quality time with him whether it just them drinking wine or even just them holding each other in their embrace while they listen to classical music to bebop as azirapahle would call his taste. But that not what he said did he?

“Oh Aziraphale..” Crowley said giving a sadden smile. “Nothing last forever.” He wanted to kick himself just for saying those fatal words. The words that finally push azirapahle over the edge as now he can’t hold back. He hold his hand in his face as he let it out, just for a moment. Even in that moment, Crowley want to hug him. But he stopped after a moment, as to try to revert back to his calm demeanor.

“No.” He said grabbing his glasses and giving it back to Crowley. “I suppose you’re right about that one.” Crowley look as he see the glasses. Trying to process what he was even doing. “I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.”

He proceed to walk out of his own bookshop.

“Best of luck..” then it hits him. “Angel!” He doesn’t stop walking away. “Aziraphale come back!” Aziraphale turn around, he was completely drained. His angelic happiness is no where to be found in his hazel blue eyes. “Work with me.” He still pleads, even aziraphale let out a sigh as he continues. “To hell..we can be on our side even down there. Doing our own things down there.” Aziraphale wince from that sentence as he look away to avoid his eyes. “I-I need you aziraphale!” He finally said which prompted him to finally look at him. Both their watery eyes met. It felt like time stopped again. Maybe Crowley finally convinced him. Maybe they can be in their side even in hell. Maybe they could make things better. Him and Aziraphale against them—“you have to understand what I’m trying to offer here Angel..”

“Oh I think I know quiet well. Maybe even more than you can Crowley.” He said. But he realize it wasn’t his usual tone. He sounded apathetic. Is this really it? This shouldn’t be. Why does it feel…

“Well. If that the case, is there really anything else to say at this point?” Crowley said as he put on his glasses as his tears starts to appear yet again.

“Listen.” Aziraphale said pointing up. “Can you hear anything?”

“No. Angel what are you trying to…”

“That’s exactly my point. No nightingale.” He said, that was it for him. He feel he can’t hold it back any longer. “You stupid snake. We could have been us.” Aziraphale said emphasizing on the term us. Crowley looked away to let tears run, even closing his eyes to hope it be all over. But then he felt his lapel of his blazer being pull and the feeling of soft lips pressed again his own. His eyes shock open as he see aziraphale. Principality. Angel of the eastern gate. Kiss him. This wasn’t what he expected their first to be, not one where tears are mixing with each others. He wanted it to be more romantic, more on a happier note. One that both can enjoy. Not this. Not when his angel is obviously hurt. Oh Satan, what have he done. He lift his hands couple times but he was able to place his hand behind Aziraphale’s back and kiss back. He felt his head spin around like all the planets he created, can feel like he seeing stars he help create. And here he is, kissing the biggest star he’ve every laid his eyes on.

Soon they pull away from each other, Crowley having to catch his breath, not hiding his cries anymore. Aziraphale just stand there in hope, can this finally convince him? Crowley look at Azirapahle, many emotion can be battling each other, anger, lament, happiness, shocked? Maybe all above.

“I…I…” love you. Do it again. “TO HELL WITH YOU” he wanted to cover his mouth. Why did he let them escape. Where the soap when you need it. Aziraphale let out a silent gasp as golden tears escape him once more.

“I forgive you.” Aziraphale said walking out of the bookshop.

“Wait angel!”

He walks out of the bookshop, he almost push people down, forget for a moment that London can get busy. He look around to try to find him. “Aziraphale! Please, come back!”

No avail. He can’t find him anywhere, no white haired tartan wearing angel. He feel down to his knees.

“What have I done?” He said to himself. His scales emerged feeling intense emotions, he wanted to scream as he feel smoke coming out of him.

“Crowley?” He look up and see Shax. “Right, I take it he didn’t take it well.”

“What do you think?” Shax was gonna talk again before he stop her. He stands up “Right don’t answer that. Let just go.” He said drained. Feeling empty. Betrayed.

“Jolly good. Now I will say, I’ve heard word from upstairs.” Shax said as they walk, Crowley look at her but not in interest but he had to know.

“And what do the holier than thou angel say?”

“Well. Something about ahhh. The second coming as they like to call it. We got a role in this too, so best get a move on” Shax chuckled as she walked as she talked more about this role. Crowley stopped. He turn around just for a moment and see Aziraphale, he was far away about to turn the corner. But he can easily see that he left enough room for him to come with him to walk, the finale plead. He can’t make out what his expression was but it didn’t matter, he look at him one last time. Before he start walking backward and turning back to Shax. Completely disappearing from the crowd. “You know. Pity your boyfriend didn’t come. Me and Furfur were betting on it, guess no matter. We got work to do.” He stopped listen as she went on. He wanted more than anything to just run back to him. He wished he didn’t take this. But part of him felt that maybe he can still try. If not fro earth, for aziraphale. To keep him safe as he try to stop this plan. To stop armageddon from happening once more. Even if that meant he can’t see Aziraphale ever again.

Meanwhile Aziraphale just nodded. Understand this was it. It truly was over. He saw Maggie and Nina walk away holding hands as if God was rubbing salt in his wound. He then see Muriel waving at him in glee. He would’ve wave back in mutual respect but not now. Not today. He just walked away leaving them feeling concern. Aziraphale walked, unsure where exactly he walking to but his feet keep moving so he might as well walk wherever his shattered heart take him. He then heard a radio from one of the stores singing the song. That song meant for them.

Snap

Just like that the song stopped. He continues to walk. Walk as far as he can. As golden tears fall once more.

(Reference for the golden tears and Sunny eyes)

[popculturebuffet]

It's Not the Years, It's the Mileage Finale: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy archelogists and welcome to the final installment of my Indiana Jones Retrospective, It's Not the Years, It's the Milleage. For those just joining us for the epic conculsion, i've covered all four previous Indy films over the past few months, from the good with great action set pieces, iconic lines, and deft character work, to the bad with the uncomfortable amount of brown face, temple of dooms theme park version of india and support of colonolisim, and Crystal Skulls sterotpyical 'savage tribesman", to the just plain weird with aborted ideas such as a haunting in scottland, a chess game to the death, sun wukong vs indiana jones, and an out and out alien invasion which Indy makes out during suprising no one.

IT's been one long, LONG journey and today.. it ends, as does the film franchise. With Dial of Destiny. Dial is the main reason we did this: a fresh fim with ford, with a fresh director in Logan maestro James Mangold, a final chapter for the ages.. and it has been recived with a resounding

Yeah while there was some hype for this film from Fans of Mangold or Indy (Of which i'm now both) it's now gotten to the point Wikipedia has out and out labeled it a box office bomb and Naturally the failure of this film has been taken with grace and restraint by the internet

It hasn't helped that Indy has come out in a summer with plummeting box office from usual money makers, so people are only more on their "Why aren't people seeing these films" kick. When really the reasons aren't new. We have "Doing the same shit a diffrent day instead of going with what was new and working " (Transformers rise of the beasts), "Another film outboxing it" (Elemental), "The company behind it simply not promoting it at all" (Ruby Gilman, which I intend to review at some point), " or "Oopsie we hired a pedophile as our leading actor, have no idea where we were taking this franchise when we started this film, and our company is ran by an evil overlord no one likes whose actively made the media landscape worse ever since he took over, better hope our promotoinal tactics work..."

The issues aren't new, their simply finding hitting people over the head.. and that's what happened here. Indy had an uphill battle: I was only invested at first because James Mangold was directing it and Logan is still one of the best superhero movies ever made. I got more invested thanks to this retrospective. Given Disney's slipshod treamant of star wars and terrible treatment of last jedi as well as the mcu being a mess right now, it's not a huge leap that many audiences really didn't want to gamble on ANOTHER disney live action movie that just looked okay, no matter how much Phoebe Waller Bridge or Antonio Bandareas it had. While it's sad as I honestly don't think the film deserved THIS much of a bomb.. I can't blame audiences for waiting for Disney Plus. We simply live in an era now where most people have tons of streamers or will get one for a month to watch one movie and anything else they've caught up on. We're simply entering an era where having a big brand name isn't a guarantee and in this case can be a curse if that name is disney. Big franchises can work, see Spider-Verse and Scream VI making great money, but you have to have something to offer.

So come with me under the cut as we see if Indy has just that or is best left in the past

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHOYHOY

When I'm Gone, He's Gone

As you'd expect, Lucas still wanted to make a 5th film after Skull, with Speilberg and Ford on board as always. This time though..

Lucas himself went to the press saying he wanted to do something new and Speilberg was stuck in the past... which I translate as Lucas once again went kinda nuts on the premise while , much like after Temple of Doom, Speilberg wanted something a tad more grounded to avoid making the same mistake twice. It comes off as the two just could never quite agree on what to do and eventually.. decided to let the franchise move on without him, selling it and the rest of Lucasfilm to Disney. Disney naturally wanted an indy film right away and after getting the distribution rights one year later in 2023.. it took them a decade.

Yeahhh while we got the sequel trilogy pretty fast in hollywood time it took a good decade for Indy to put his hat on. At first there were rumors floated about about recasting, then it was settled on ford, then Speilberg was set to direct and the film proceded to go through a ton of writers, from Crystal Skull's david koepp

And even Dan Fogelman of This is Us royalty was floated as one of the writers. The film also got delayed thanks to Speilbergs work on Ready Player One and the Post, before he eventually stepped off all together. He claimed it was to pass it on to a fresh director, but it really feels like his heart wasn't in it anymore, and it was best someone whose heart was took the lead.

Enter James Mangold, director of The Wolverine, Logan and Kicker of ass. Mangold was a solid choice and my book and along with his usual co-writers Jez and John Henry Butterworth, who I assure you are real people but cannot assure you aren't old timey prospectors sent forward in time, hashed out the script.

Casting went smoothly, as did filiming, with the only hiccup being production's start being delayed because of COVID. They shot in morocco, england, ireland and spain, along with the us as you'd expect. Speilberg wasn't entirely detached as he still advised and watched dalies, ultimately loving the final product. So now we can actually look at that product let's start with how it writes Indy himself. The Mileage Adds Up

One of the things that made me not really enjoy Doom or Crystal.. was a lack of character work. Indy was about the same as when he started the adventure in contrast to Raiders and Last Crusade taking him on a wonderful character journey, in the former getting his passion back and in the later reconcliing with his dad. Dial of Destiny dosen't reach those highs, but I still think it does a decent job. The opening.. is okay detailing Indy having an adventures in the last day sof the third reich, setting up both Helna's Dad and our big bad, as well as Archimedes Dial, basied on the real life Antyhkiera Mechanism. I really do love the dial as a plot device as it's a departure, being the only one of the five to not involve a god of some sort, and yes the alien counts. It's just a time machine a famous philospher made. It's still fucking neat, I mean IT'S A TIME MACHINE A FAMOUS PHILSOPHER MADE, but it's a bit more grounded while still being pretty damn nifty.

So while the intro is mostly.. eh for me, what it does really well... is contrast the indy we know.. with where he is in 1969: Unlike Crystal Skull, which glossed over the massive amount of time passed, here were with an indy who feels both his age.. and that he's been left behind by the world. That time has taken everything from him: his friends, his father, his marriage.. and his son. He's left to yell at the neighbors, go to a class that dosen't pay attention and have a retirment party he clearly dosen't want. Granted his retirment does feel like a missed opportunity as wikipedia mentioned it pre-release as being forced out due to speaking out against operation paper clip, something that I either missed.. or more likely simply ISN'T in the film. It's a real shame, the idea is great it's just not present. This creates a really intriguing Parallel: Indy at the start of the last adventure of his we'll see is a broken down man whose years of adventuering have left a mark on him, who is estranged from Marion, has not a ton to live for, and is clearly only loosely holding it together. And the Indy we met in Raiders.. is a broken down man whose years of adventuring left a mark on him, is estranged from marion, has not a ton to live for and is clearly only loosely holding it together. The diffrence is how tired Indy is. In his late 30's he's beaten a bit and reduced to graverobbing.. but the minute he gets a real assignemnt int he grail, he jumps to it. He has his job, he has his friendship with marcus, and he's able to fix things with marion. He's not completely gone, he's just lost. Indy in Dial... has watched all his friends and his son, more on that in a minute, die, his marriage fall apart, and his job slip out under him. Without his job.. he's a man without a purpose.

This also ironically creates another Scrooge McDuck parallel, another bit of symmetry and one I didn't plan on till I started writing this and thought of the story: Indy reminds me a lot of Scrooge in the final part of Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Both are seasoned adventueres who have either pushed away anyone they have left or lost them and feel they just have nothing left but to slowly rot away.

And like Scrooge it takes a bolt of inspiration from the new generation after him to get Indy back in the game. In this case it's the highlight of the film, Helena Shaw, played by the wonderful, funderful fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. WB likely dosen't need any introduction but just in case she was showrunner of the successful and inventive stage show turned amazon prime show fleabag, showran killing eve and in general is pretty delightful. So it's no huge suprise she's great as Helena Shaw, daughter of Marcus Indy's sidekick for the intro who became obessed with our titular macguffin, Archemedis Dial, which can travel through time some time, though not to the end of all man kind. Helena is a neat character in that they managed to make her distinct while still giving her enough similarties to indy to serve well as his shadow, his ghost of sins past, him in his prime. She's also a brilliant archelogist, has a kid sidekick like indy did in temple of doom with Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidoore), sells priceless artifacts for a profit, has a messy love life, kicks plenty of ass, and tries to command every room she's in. What helps seperate them is their demeanor: Indy is gruff, snarky and surly. While Helena can snark with the best of them, she's fast talking, fast thinking, and tends to use charm as much as the old Indy Guile both heroes posses. The main diffrence is rather than sell to museums, she sells to private collectors...

Okay the REAL difference is that she's only in it for the money while Indy at least, on some level, cared about the history even at his lowest. Helena just sees all her father could do and all she learned from being around him before his passing as a way to get. Once again like Indy.. she had a father who cared more about some big treasure than her child.. and a godfather who cared more about what was going on in his life than ever checking up on her. She's a person whose been left to her own devices and feels she's doing just fine.. but honestly could be putting her talents to better use. Maybe not in a school like indy, but she could help return artifacts to their countries... probably still for a pretty penny, but not just to some random asshole to sit in his den.

You can tell dealing with her just makes Indy feel even more tired, which is somehow possible after all he's been through. He's once again seeing a ghost of his past and this time can't seem to get it through her head. When she celebrates shortly after his friend Renaldo dies, he has to sharply remind her. Nothing seems to get through to her.. till we get to THAT scene. Probably the best scene of the film. The climax is awesome.. but it's this one moment. On a boat at night, Helena asks Indy what he'd do with the dial, clearly thinking some grand adventure.. instead Indy: I'd stop my son from enlisting Helena: And how would you do that? Indy: I would tell him that he would die, that his mother would be overcome with a grief so intense that his father would be unable to console her, and that it would end their marriage. The sheer PAIN Ford conveys during that monologue.. may be the finest acting he's ever done. You can just FEEL Indy's loss; his son is gone, his marriage is torn, and he blames himself for both. It gives a horrible pathos to why he's so broken down. Both developments.. coudl've been really cheap. With how much everyone but me seems to hate mutt, and how rightly no one can stand shia suprise these days, most were expecting..

Instead Mutt's death is used as the catalyst for Indy's slow spiral into dispair. He would've been happy in retirment.. but he lost his son, his wife.. he's a man truly with nothing left he feels. And while he gets some old spark back unlike Scrooge.. he's fighting it every step. He dosen't want an adventure, he dose'nt want anything but his son back, and he knows damn well that even if the dial could... the sad truth is it likely has some horrible cost to it. The grail gave eternal life but bound you to a spot. The Skull gave you the knowledge of an unknowable alien god, but drove you mad. The arc killed anyone who looked. If the Dial even works... he knows it can't bring his son back, and he's only going after it because it's better in a museum than in the hands of Nazis. We also see a change in Helena. She goes from following Indy's lead out of nececity, to seeing his point, to seeing the beauty of the world instead of just the dollar signs. She still wants the money.. but she starts to see the beauty in history instead of the dollar. I also like that this isn't easy on Teddy, who sees her postive changes as coming between him and his surrogate mom, when really she fully intends to stick with Teddy no matter what and shows nothing but loyalty.. and in the end.. they dont' really finish that arc

I like Teddy a lot, and I wish this had more of a bow on it, though we do get him taking down a nazi and trapping him to drown and later getting into a dogfight. Teddy slaps is what i'ms aying> He dosen't have a ton of deep character to explore, but he's fucking great.

This all really cumulates in the climax.. which is so great i'd rather save it for after we cover one last major character, our antagonist. Our big bad is Mads Mikkelsen as Jurgen Voller, a thereoticain who wants the dial. At first Indy assumes, as most of the audience would that Voller simply wants the dial, which he's shown to obess over to win the war for hitler. Turns out Voller's plan is more complex. We see in the intro how Voller is the ONLY one who both sees the dial's value among the nazi's and the writing on the wall: Hitler is almost gone, he fucked them over. It's over. And thus the horror of Voller isn't like with Thot , at the giant horrifying nazi machine and all their power, and more at evil allowed to hide in plain sight. At a society who forgives horrible people because their useful. Voller got a free pass thanks to operation paperclip.. and the film shows while that idea got us tons of advances including space flight.. it came at the cost of giving horrible people real power and influence. The president is outright giving voller a MEDAL. And he hasn't changed: a truly chilling bit has him talking to a black bellhop delivering meal and asking where he came from.. and dismissing him saying he came from america. Voller is every bit the white supremacist monster he ever was, he's completely loyal to the idea of the nazi's. .just not to hitler. Voller's whole plan isn't to help hitler.. but to take him out, replace him and have someone compitent win. And he only gets as fara s he does because the goverment willingly works with him, gives him agents, goes after Helena and the dial. They know what he his but fully aid and abet him. Sure they eventually realize he's gone rogue, that his pet agent is entirely in his pocket.. but they don't turn on him till far too late and with one of their great agents dead. Concidentaly I feel Agent Mason is wasted: she's the calm rational agent.. but she's also the only major black character in the film and gets killed by a nazi. That's.. entirely fucked up and while I suspect inteitonally fucked up it just dosen't work for me.

Voller is also once again, much like with Belloc, an evil mirror of indy: Both are geniuses who adore history.. but one's a good person despite being gruff while one seems harmless when we first meat him but is actually a total monster. Mads does a great job showing just how evil the guy is without going over the top. Voller is determind to change history... and he does.. just not how he wanted to.

This Ain't 1933!

The climax.. is fucking awesome. Like Crystal Skull it goes beyond what the series had done before, if not more so. It's arguably even MORE over the top. But it works. For those who haven't seen the film... INDY GOES BACK IN TIME. The dial DOES indeed work.... but it's set up to ONLY go back to this point. Helena points out the idea of "loaded decks' earlier.. and realizes the dial is one. Archimedes only left it behind to create a stable time loop.

Indy going back into actual history is nuts, entirely and my jaw dropped at it.. but it's so damn fun. Our heroes not only have to escape the plain and get the dial back after it drops onto the coast, but survive the Siege of Syracuse, the roman invasion that eventaully resulted in Archimedes end. So we have two planes flying overhead, arrows everywhere and nazis versus romans. It's over the top but not in a way that really undermines the franchise, and frankly as what's intended to be the final act of indy ever, it's a fitting finale: the man whose explored history in the present.. gets to LITERALLY go to the past for his final adventure. I do get how not everyone will agree, and it won't work for everybody, this may be a bit tooo over the top, but I love it and feel it nicely ties up everyone's character arcs.

For Voller he gets to join history.. but instead of "fixing" it like he wanted he dies horribly and is forgotten to history only the "dragon" (his palne" is left.. and cleverly foreshadowed earlier when Teddy watches a puppet show. His nazi's all die and it's glorious to watch nazi after nazi go down from arrows or our two heroes escaping the plane while teddy takes the rest down with the help of a hapless pilot.

We then get the payoff for both Helena and Indy, as Indy gives the dial to archimedes.. and plans to stay. After all we established he's lost everything... why would he go back? He'll die soon.. but he's cconvinced he'll die soon back in the present. It's Helena who'se ultimately changed realizing both the value of history.. and ultimately the movie's moral: you can't change the past, but you can live for today. Helena can't change her awful upbringing or the things she's done.. but she can be better. And Indy can't save his son from death, save archimedes from death or be a better husband to marion during the greving process.. but he can be better to her and still live now. He still has so much to offer. He taught helena to love history and to try and be better. He gave his son a better life even if it was sadly cut short. He can be better. And when he can't be convinced the easy way she proves she's fully earned her way to being indy's succesor and just clubs him and takes him back (the dial has to go back with them as archimedes needs to make his own). The end scene also mostly works for me: Indy is back at his apartment.. but finds he's not alone as when he woke up there last time: Not only has Helena forgiven him, having realized much like Indy himself that warts and all, he's family, but Sallah, who I haven't gotten to talk about is here. Sallah is great in this film, not only helping Indy when he needs to lay low but enocuraging his friend it's not over. It's also nice to see Indy helped him and his family immigrate and that he's teaching his grand kids egyptian. It's also a nice way to still have davies play the roll.. but have him get a bit more depth and make up for a white guy playing the roll.

And last but not least.. Marion returns, and the two reconcile. I thought it was a bit easy when I frist saw it.. but I see now i'ts more the idea they have a long road ahead.. but both are willing to see it together.. Indy admits he was wrong and Marion is willing to give him another shot. For the third time but at least this time it's likely she just needed some psace to realize he wasn't being callous he just wasn't processing his grief.. and now he's ready to.. maybe they have a shot. It's a nice way to close out the films: Indy's life isn't over, he's got friends, he's got his wife.. and there's always another rainbow.

Assorted Other Stuff: The action set pieces as usual are fucking great, my faviorites easily being the climax and the diving adventure. The latter reminded me a lot of Tin Tin, Red Rackam's Treasure. Antonio Banderas is great as Reynaldo and I only wihs he had a bigger part.. and survived. It's not a huge suprise, saying Antonio Banderas is great. While I LIKED the finale with Marion, I'm with Karen Allen. They could've used her more. She deserves better dammit. WHy is it with the sequels they just can NEVER get bringing her back right?

Last but not least.. ther'es this weird subplot only brought up in the first two acts where the government frames indy for Murder that just.. never gets resolved? Like they never adressed it and as far as I can tell there's no resolution. Now granted I still think Indy isn't going to be arrested: He's clearly been unconcious for a week and Helena did have to get him back into the US, so it's likely the goverment found out about voller, got a debrief from helena.. and agreed to clear her and indy's record and absolve him of murder in exchange for never talking about this to anyone, as a Nazi escaping and killing one of their agents , after they pardoned the guy wouldn't look good. But we needed a line. It's easily the most baffling decision in otherwise a really godo film.

So finally we're , like indy back where we started.. was the film that bad?

When writing the reviews for Crystal Skull and Temple, I honestly hated the films MORE the more I thought abotu them, the more I found wrong, the more I realized how little they did. With this film. it's the opposite. The more I examine dial, the more I find to like. The character arcs, the action, the payoff. It's not perfect, again Indy is still kinda wanted for murder among other little plot gaffes, but I do think Dial is a solid entry in the series and better than both temple and skull at capturing what made the series graet. It dosen't nail it perfectly.. but it's still a fun ride with some really good character work and phenominal performances. Really indy failed.. because no one cares outside of fans of the franchise. As my brother put it when talking about this very film recently, kids don't know indy. It's not the big hit with kids star wars was and is. Star Wars will likekly rebound someday because Kids still dig it and kids will grow up with the sequels the way I grew up with the prequels, warts and all. Disney just assumed Indy was enough to carry it and he wasn't. I'm sad at it because not only is this a good film, but I was hoping for more pulp adventure films. But i'm also happy at what we got and to have done this journey. I saw the good, and the bad. And I saw a franchise I ended up really loving. In the end I got what I needed out of this franchise

[spaceorphan18]

Glee Musical Retrospective : Highway to Hell (Hell-O)

Sung by: Jesse St. James w/Vocal Adrenaline Original Artist(s): AC/DC

Hey - we're focusing on the first syllable again. (Again - I can just picture the writers coming up with music ideas with this one and getting giggly when they could use the word 'hell'.)

I don't really love this one - mostly because it's over-the-top showy with the intention of looking intimidating but there's not much going on with what is literaly a snippet.

Story Analysis

The whole point of this song is to paint Jesse as a bad boy. (And sneak in a famous AC/DC song I suppose.) There's not really a point in breaking down any lyrics because it's not really about the lyrics -- or the meaning of the song. It's about what the song represents.

Highway to Hell is a much harsher sound than we're used to on the show (and honestly, the show rarely dips into heavier rock). But's all about the look -- about the black leather and intense looks and the fiery choreography. Vocal Adrenaline has already shown to be an intimidating group with their professional dancing and showy choreography - but now they have a front man -- Jesse -- who isn't fooling around.

This is villain coding -- it's like we're seeing Jesse in his lair (VA's auditorium) and the real Jesse is not a good guy. So we're on edge as Rachel gets closer to him. Compare Jesse's performance to Finn's earlier -- Finn's singing classic rock -- familiar, safe, charming.... But Jesse is singing hard rock -- he's on that highway to hell and loving every minute of it.

One can only take it so seriously, though. I mean, Glee is still trying to hold onto its satirical roots begun in the Front 13. Despite they angle their pushing for - Jesse (and really Jonathan Groff) doesn't really scream dangerous, misunderstood bad boy but I don't think he really is supposed to either. Sure, it's about an image Glee wants to sell -- but its under the lens of parody. At the end of the day - Jesse is still presented as wild card for Rachel and an antagonist for Finn, and that's really what Glee is going for.

Plus - taking the opportunity to show off Vocal Adrenaline as an intimidating foe.

Technical Thoughts

Okay. Time to peer behind the curtain. I think there's a lot going into this to make it look flashier and more hard core than it really is.

First of all - the lighting. There's not really fire but a projection of it, as well as the orange lighting on the steps making it look a blaze against the blue background. It's some great work here - and I feel like for a forty second clip, it's good at tricking the mind. And then there's the pyrotechnics. Which is hilariously over-the-top, but it works for what they're doing.

Then there's the costumes and choreography. The looks -- black leather with the hint of orange in them - are brilliant. And it's good to remind that one of the best selling points of Vocal Adrenaline is that they're using professional dancers as the 'students'. They're all jumping around the stage doing tricks and flips and visually it looks fantastic -- and nothing like our awkward protagonists who can't even hit a straight line together.

(I'd argue, as I always do, that good visuals do not equal great musicality; this isn't a dance competition but a singing one, but I digress...)

I don't love this song for Jesse. I don't think it necessarily fits his personality very well. And I don't think it really fits Jonathan Groff's strengths. But maybe that's coming from someone who has seen this show a thousand times and understands that the writers probably didn't know what kind of character they were fully making yet. I think there are other ways that you can create that discomforting -- possible villainous sound. But, as a reminder, this is Glee, where everything is big and bold and hitting a nail right squarely on the head. The writers wanted a bad boy for Rachel to fall in with, and they wanted to use a song that fit their theme, and this does exactly that.

The song is, if nothing else, dramatic -- and that does work for the introduction of Jesse as a lead. And it's a testament to Jonathan Groff's talent that he can physically portray the image they're trying to sell even if I'm not fully on board vocally.

Meanwhile -- the woman they have accompanying him is fantastic. Her voice fits this song wonderfully, and while I have no idea who she is -- I love her gritty sound.

So, a small detail I noticed because I had it paused -- when Will walks in the room, the word 'fire' can be seen three times -- as there's a fire alarm, fire hose, and fire extinguisher all in the same place. Was it intentional? I wonder.

vs. The Studio Version: So, it's the full song instead of just a small portion. It's a cleaner mix -- and you can definitely hear the back up singers better. Idk, I think I'm just not a fan overall that colors my judgment of this one a little.

vs. The Original Version: Oh wow - okay, the original version is way slower and lower in pitch -- which makes me wonder if they sped up the recording for show (instead of having them sing it at a faster/higher pace). No wonder the show one feels somewhat out of control and uncomfortable. I'm sure it's partly out of time constraints that they speed things up - but that might be why the track sounds a little weird. Huh.

Also - whenever Glee takes a song like this and turns into a showchoir song, it can't help but feel a little 'kidz bop' to me. There's a relaxed, grittiness to the song that is just lost in the frantic absurdity that is Vocal Adrenaline.

[waffles-for-brunch]

20 questions for fic writers!

tagged by @lovevamp

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

4. One's an okay oneshot, then I did a fix-it after 15x20, then I lost my mind completely and spent three years on a season 12 rewrite and now I'm back again writing another fix-it. My twilight zone is self-inflicted.

2. what’s your total Ao3 word count?

540,492 (insert kevin james shrugging meme here)

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Just Supernatural. I started writing a fic for Baldur's Gate Bloodweave but then Destiel dragged me back to the dark side. Maybe I'll finish that one eventually.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

they're not gonna be in order bc I'm just gonna go thru my bookmarks real quick but - "And this, your living kiss" by opal_bullets "On labor" by a_good_soldier (i reread this one twice this week) "The Nanny" by Kitmistry and those are the ones i feel like mentioning. :)

5. do you respond to comments?

Admittedly rarely. Mostly because I'll open my email when I'm getting up in the morning and read them and then work all day and forget to respond. I do appreciate all the comments I get tho. And a lot of the really kind ones I send to my groupchat and/or save in a folder on my email labelled "nice comments" also just sometimes I don't feel like I have anything to say. Like idk sometimes thank you just seems too small or something you know. It's strange. Then I'll just get in my head about it and say nothing and the cycle repeats lmao. But I do read them all.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Dog you know I'm not writing any angst without a happy ending. I can't take that shit lmao. It's happy endings only in this house. Happy and found family and loveliness. :)

7. what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I literally end everything the same way. Please I have the worst case of projection imaginable with these fics.

8. do you get hate on fics?

If I do I'm unaware. But I'd probably know it if I do, I stalk my own name and fics wherever I can because I'm insane and nosey. But nah the most I've gotten is just people being mad about a certain character's actions, but like that's not even hate it's just frustration with a character which is a given in certain circumstances. Now if someone was like "wow bad characterization" I'd be like girl, but no I think people are pretty respectful in my corners for the most part.

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Bro let me tell you in "Our Old Heroes" I wrote like a singular sex scene and like maybe one or two other hot and heavy ones and good god did they take me so long to write. Like I'm not a very sex oriented person in general so writing this stuff out? Bro it's embarrassing how much poetry I put into that in retrospect (i jest, it's fine) but like I don't generally orient towards it just because it's very time consuming for me. It has to be very intimate and just right.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written?

So short answer no, I haven't. Longer answer I love the concept and would be open to it. Particularly if it involves Dean being psychoanalyzed in some way because that's my favorite thing to write so it would probably be criminal minds. I think crossovers have so much fun and wonky potential tho.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope someone printed my fic to bring into prison and make a black market hot commodity. It would be the highest honor. I guess that's not theft, it's just the free market. But so I guess really no, if I have I'm unawares.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware of but I have had people comment in other languages or on twitter people will talk about it in a different language, which is pretty crazy. It's so wild we can be so connected to a story in that way despite not speaking the same language or growing up in the same environment.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

no! but as @lovevamp has said we've talked about a few that I'm certain one day we will follow through on. I've also talked with @icaruspendragon about maybe doing one at some point bc we seem to have the exact same mental illness that is the dean winchester brain disorder.

14. what’s your favorite all time ship?

I live breathe and bleed destiel, it's truly unfortunate for me.

15. what’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I just have a lot of ideas in my docs that will probably never become more than the ideas they are. Usually when I start a fic like for real I follow through with it. I would feel bad if I didn't lol.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I've been told my characterization is pretty good, which I appreciate. If it was bad I'd probably kms (jk). But fr idk that's the biggest comment I'll get is in regards to that which I really do like because I spend a lot of time trying to find a balance and make sure I'm expressing everyone the correct way they'd express themselves or not express themselves.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Sex scenes aside I do struggle with action mostly because I find it boring to write out. You just have to try and find so many different words. Ugh. I love dialogue. That's really where I start getting going. But writing action? I tend to do that last because I wanna get through all the good bits first then circle back and do the boring bits.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language?

listen I can barely remember english i'm sorry

19. first fandom you wrote for?

i'm an og baby i started here (destiel) and this is where i'll die (maybe not, we'll see)

20. favorite fic you’ve written?

Well, I don't really have many so it's probably the massive one. "Our Old Heroes" by adelaclancy (that's me). I was really in a bad place when I started it and I kind of just gave myself this crazy project for several reasons. One I was stopping drinking so I needed something else to do with my time. Second I was jobless and goalless and really didn't have a lot going for me and writing was really the only thing I have ever had consistently so I was like okay well I'll start this stupid project and it's gonna be like 26 chapters and 500,000 words long and it's gonna delve into all my issues through projection of these fictional characters and if I actually manage to finish it I can finally say I finished something. So I did. And I actually managed to work on myself a lot in the process. So over all that time I went from living in bad straights as an unemployed drunkard to a full time worker with a few years sobriety under their belt and a better sense of my own boundaries and thriving friendships and I dunno man, in a way that fic really was a bridge for me and I think in that too for a lot of the readers they get to see that now too. Like they can see my little notes at the beginning of chapters and how they change over time alongside the characters in the book and it's kind of an experience in that way I suppose. If not through Dean Winchester and Castiel then maybe through me, if someone out there finds a little bit of hope from that silly little mess of words then I suppose that's something to be proud of then, isn't it? Anywho...

tagging: @icaruspendragon

(Bro I know like two people sorry)

[kirk-says-wah]

𝐊𝐨𝐤𝐨𝐦𝐨

Lars promised them a beach day, which is exactly what they get. Eventually.

Pairings: Poly!Met

- fluff

This is part of a series - you can find more here

It’s ten o clock and Lars is the only one up.

He’d been banging on about going to the beach for that long that they’d all promised to be up at half nine, ready to head to the bay, now that they’ve got a week off.

Instead, Lars is sitting with a packed bag full of beer and towels and no boyfriends in sight.

He sighs, turns on the tv, decides to occupy himself with whatever shit is on mtv. It doesn’t stop his mind from going over and over how much he’d wanted this, and how none of them had lived up to their word.

He grabs a beer from the bag, deciding quickly that they’re not going. It’s not fair, he had the whole day planned with swimming and drinking, and he’d even made sandwiches (which in retrospect, they could’ve probably bought there instead because they look like he’s squished some bread together over some ham - cheese for Kirk - and they’ve gone all sweaty in the heat).

He takes a gulp, wipes his chin, and puts his legs up on the couch. It’s too hot for clothes, and he’s still just in his swimming trunks, but he can’t be bothered to go change.

Another fifteen minutes go by until he hears a commotion from the bedroom, followed by Jason running into the front room, still hiking his swimming shorts up and a toothbrush in his mouth.

“Fuck I’m sorry,” he says between a mouthful of bubbles. “I didn’t realise the time.”

And he’s pulling that face, the one that always makes Lars go soft. So he can’t help it when he gives a small smile instead of chewing him a new one.

“It’s okay. It looks like it’s just you and me anyway.”

Jason pauses, squints, and says “fuck that,” before running back into the bathroom to spit in the sink.

Lars can’t help the slight laugh that inflicts, and follows Jason, who heads into the bedroom.

On the bed lie two sleeping figures. James is on top of the cover, butt naked, lying on his front. He’s snoring loud enough Lars wonders how he’s not woken himself up yet.

Kirk is next to him, but he’s under the covers, which confuses Lars because it’s way too fucking hot for that. All they can see of their guitarist is tufts of curly hair peeking out from under the duvet.

“Oi,” Jason shouts, moves to jab a finger into the side of James’s ribs. “Beach day.”

James swats at him, eyes still closed.

“Fuck beach day,” comes the muffled reply. 

Lars rolls his eyes, but Jason doesn’t give in, instead climbs on James, straddling his back. James shrieks at the body holding him down, twisting to look up at Jason.

“You promised Lars you’d come, so you’re getting up.”

James huffs, hides his face back into his pillow.

“Too fucking hot for that.”

“But that’s the point. You can go swimming and cool down.”

“And I’ve bought beer,” Lars inserts, which finally gets James to perk up.

“Beer?”

“Are you more excited about spending the day with beer or with us?” Jason says, cocking his head.

“Beer.”

Jason jabs him in the ribs again. “Fucker.”

“Alright I’m getting up,” James finally says, and Jason climbs off of him, letting him stand up.

James stands, stretches and yawns, completely nude, and Lars can’t help the way his eyes linger on his body. His lean stomach, beefy arms, golden hair-

“Are you gonna keep ogling me or are we gonna wake this princess up?” James says with a smirk, gesturing to Kirk who’s still sound asleep under the covers.

Lars blushes but quickly hides it as he moves to the side of the bed, bending down to be face to face with Kirk.

Kirk’s got most of his face mashed against the pillow, but Lars can clearly see the flush high on his cheekbones and the sweat dripping down his nose.

“Wake up,” he says, gently shaking him.

“Why the fuck didn’t I get this treatment?” James exclaims, crossing his arms.

“I like Kirk better,” Lars says, continuing to shake gently, ignoring James’s curses thrown at him.

After a moment, Kirk moves, but instead of opening his eyes, he just pulls the covers over his head.

Lars sighs, and looks to the other two for help. Jason just shrugs, but James steps forward, yanks the duvet down in one quick pull.

Kirk mumbles something illegible, but rolls over to look at them properly.

“What?” He sounds grumpy, but that’s not unusual. Kirk’s not a morning person at all.

He’s rubbing at his eyes, squinting up at them, lying there dressed only in one of Jason’s shirts.

“We’re going to the beach,” Lars says, but Kirk just sniffs, shakes his head, tries to grab the blanket back from James’s grip.

“I don’t feel like it,” he says, finally stops  pestering James, folding his arms around himself. He’s shaking slightly. Lars frowns.

He leans forward, presses the back of his hand to Kirk’s forehead. It’s hot, too hot, even with the heat around them. Lars chews at his lip and pulls back.

“I think you’ve got a fever.”

“What?” Jason says, stepping forward to feel for himself, but Kirk just whacks his arm away.

“Will everyone stop trying to feel me up? I’ll be fine, go without me.”

The three of them protest, and Lars sits on the edge, a hand smoothing of Kirk’s bare thigh.

“Well, we’re not leaving you on your own. And being here probably won’t do you any more good than if you came with us.”

Kirk sniffs, lifts an eyebrow. “So?”

“So you’re coming with us.”

Kirk sighs deeply, falls back against the pillows.

“Oh come on,” Lars urges, “it’s not that bad. You can sit with me and we’ll watch Jason and James get all hot and sweaty playing soccer.”

Kirk smirks, lets Lars pull him up into a sitting position.

“Yeah okay, I’m in.”

— —

The beach is packed.

Lars was kind of expecting it to be busy, but not this busy. They only just managed to find a space to park the truck, never mind on the sand, so they end up having to hike their stuff to the other end of the beach.

James shoots ahead with a pair of deck chairs and the beer cooler, gunning for a more secluded spot up by the dunes.

Jason has the other bags and the umbrella, practically sprinting to keep up with James, and well, Lars has Kirk. He’s got an arm around the guitarit’s waist as they lag behind the others, and Kirk keeps complaining that he’s gonna puke.

“Oh quit being a drama queen,” Lars says, pulling Kirk in closer as they stagger their way through the sand.

Soon enough they’ve caught up, and Lars pushes Kirk down into one of the deck chairs James set up.

“Why did you bring me again?” Kirk moans, hiding behind his sunglasses  as he pulls his knees up to his chest.

“Cmon, fresh air’s good for you,” Jason says, leaning down to give him a quick peck on the cheek.

Kirk just grumbles, moving slightly to shelter under the umbrella as James puts it up.

“Here,” James says, passing them all a beer after a moment. “You two sit here and sun yourselves while me and Jason go nick someone’s football.”

Lars laughs. “Good luck with that.”

James gives a salute before hooking Jason’s arm in his own, and marching off in search of a ball.

“D’ya think we’re gonna see them for another hour or so?” Lars grins, taking a long pull from his beer.

“Not likely,” Kirk replies, sighing under the shade.

James and Jason don’t appear for a good while after that, but when they do it’s with a red football and mischievous grins.

“I hope you didn’t steal that from a child,” Lars says.

“Nice to know you think so highly of us,” James replies, throwing the ball at Lars.

Lars catches it before it can hit him.

“Well go on then,” Lars says, throwing the ball at Jason. “We’ve been waiting over an hour for this.”

Kirk snickers next to him. It’s the most he’s moved in half an hour.

“Alright but no jacking off til we get in the car,” James calls, kicking the ball into the sand.

“No promises.”

Lars and Kirk then watch on as James and Jason play an awful game a soccer, where neither of them score, but do end up getting all hot and sweaty, which was Lars’s goal all along.

“See, didn’t I tell you it’d be worth it?” he says, throwing a glance at the guitarist next to him.

Only, Kirk’s fast asleep, snoring away softly, beer tipped slightly to dribble in his lap.

Lars watches on fondly, takes the beer from Kirk’s limp hand and places it on the floor, letting him doze under the shade of the umbrella.

The day didn’t start out the way he’d planned, but it’s the best day he’s had in a long time.

And even when James is too fucking tired to drive back so Lars has to, he still wouldn’t change it for the world.

[nickmaghighlights]

Nick Mag Highlights - #20 April 1996

Greetings and various apropos felicitations. Once again it’s time for another issue of Nick Mag Highlights! Today we’ll be heading back to the 90’s and taking a trip through issue #20. Ready to see if this “Mega Movie Issue'' is really as mega as it says? Then let’s get on with the show!

Man, that cover is a blast from the past for me, and it might just be the same for some of you. I haven't seen the film adaptation of James and The Giant Peach ever since I was a kid. I forget how I even first experienced it, since I couldn’t have seen it in theaters and I never owned a physical copy. I think a babysitter put it on for me once. 

Whatever the case, despite the time it's been I can still envision a smattering of visuals and emotions from the experience. So it must’ve been good if it’s managed to still stick with me positively all these years later. I guess a grade-a art style and memorable visuals will do that for a film. So as shallow as these behind-the-scenes “previews” tend to be when it comes to Nick Magazine, I’m still excited to go down memory lane and hopefully gleam one or two cool bits of trivia. 

Beyond my nostalgia bias though I’ve gotta say I’m surprised by the lack of promises this cover is making. A preview of James and The Giant Peach and a “Special Flip Book” is all you’ve got to wow the proverbial audience here, Nick? Even issue #1 promised more content on its cover to grab your attention if Ren & Stimpy weren’t enough for you. Let’s hope 20 issues in they weren’t starting to struggle for content.

You can read along too, if that’s what you wanna do. The issue’s right here.

Alright, go ahead and roll your eyes, but I’ve got a thing or two to say about this Cheetos ad. Or rather, “Chee●tos”, as it's called here and would be titled as such until Frito-Lays dropped the hyphen from the name in 1998. Not the worst name change, if I’m being honest.

First off, let’s just bask in the moment for a second. This is a wacky snack from the 90’s, even a “spinoff snack”, if you will, of a still very popular snack brand… that hasn’t been brought back to capitalize on nostalgia! 

Yes, Cheesy Checkers have yet to return to shelves since their discontinuation in ‘98. Suffice to say, I’m stunned. In a world where Ecto-Cooler returned from the grave, Trix Yogurt is still readily available, Boo Berry, Count Chocula and all those other monster-themed cereals manifest themselves every Halloween, and the McRib seems to come back whenever the heck it feels like, Cheetos Cheesy Checkers of all things is barred from re-entry into the mainstream to take advantage of your sorely missed childhood. 

Guess they really just weren’t popular enough? You can’t capitalize on nostalgia if there’s no nostalgia to capitalize on, after all. And yet it seems like a foolproof idea for a snack if you ask me. Waffles and waffle fries have already proven that checkerboard patterns are naturally delicious. And on top of that it even had a rad commercial featuring an awesome Chester Cheetah puppet. What’s not to like? I guess 33% more cheese is crossing the line of “Dangerously Cheesy” into something more like… “Hazardously Cheesy”.

Oh, and by the way. I may have never had a bag of Cheesy Checkers, but I sincerely doubt the snack pieces were that big. You really want me to believe one checker is nearly 1/3rd the size of this magazine page? They don’t even look that big in the commercial.

Just like the cover said, this is indeed a movie-themed issue. And I’ve got good news regarding this: I actually know about movies! Well, I like movies, anyway. Okay, I know more about movies than I do about music, which should mean my dissection of the content at hand will be a little more thoughtful than my retrospective of the music-based issue from last time. Hopefully, anyway.

Can’t help but feel these jokes are trying a little too hard. I guess when you’ve got to come up with twenty and base them all off of movies and TV shows, it can’t be easy. It probably doesn’t help either that there’s only like, three or four good puns in the whole world to begin with.

Anyway, look. Bugs Bunny in Nickelodeon Magazine. Woah.

Well, it’s a little less surprising for those, ahem, in the know. 

Nickelodeon actually aired Looney Tunes shorts for more than ten years, from 1988 to 1999. Once Warner Bros. established their new kids’ entertainment channel, Cartoon Network, they were pretty quick to take back their old school cartoons to bolster their numbers a bit. Although even following the departure of the classic Looney Tunes, Nickelodeon would go on to license other Warner Bros. content for their channel in the following years, airing shows such as Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures in the early 2000s.

Oh, how convenient! Now I can prove my film expertise by trouncing this quiz and- 

Hey! Some kid already answered two of the questions. Well now there’s no point in doing the quiz now. Its sanctity has been compromised.

But yeah, this book’s been written in just a bit. Sorry if that bothers you, but it’s not like I can clean the pages off. I do kinda wish the scan was totally clean just for the sake of archival purposes, but as long as the marks stay minor I’m not too picky. If anything I guess it helps make things a little more interesting. Kinda adds to the whole “time capsule” aspect of it, doesn’t it?

Shouldn’t be an issue so long as it’s not-

Ah, criminy! The kid got me again! Now this is stepping over the line. Answering a quiz question or two is one thing, but completely solving the hidden pictures puzzle promoting the home video release of Babe? That sours my mood. I don’t even feel like watching Babe now.

This a neat activity: a screenplay for two kids to act out and potentially film like a home movie. It actually caught me off guard with its originality, and in hindsight it seems like a no-brainer. Kids love to play pretend after all, and I know I certainly loved shooting little movies with my family’s cheap digital camera. Well, here kids, we came up with the story for you. Go nuts. Not to mention it's a good excuse to whip up a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches.

Here’s a nifty fun fact for you: The writer of this screenplay activity, David Lewman, has basically been on Nickelodeon’s speed dial since the 90’s. He’s written tons of Nickelodeon tie-in books, spanning a bunch of different franchises including SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, Rugrats, among many others. If you’ve read a SpongeBob book before, I say look him up. There’s a good chance you were reading something of his. 

Kind of nice of them to make a whole game out of their adspace, eh? I mean, I’m guessing the amount of people who played isn’t particularly high, but… uh… The art is cool!

Speaking of the art, you never see these mascots in 2D anymore. Which I find unfortunate because I think they look a lot cuter and tolerable here.  

Also wow, you can see the orange and brown candies before their designs were finalized. Or before their transitions, either or. Very proud of them regardless!

Pretty awesome article here about some of the gimmicks that filmmakers tried out during the black-and-white days of cinema. Love a bit of history alongside my Nickelodeon.

While we’re here, I’d like to contribute my own similar black-and-white movie gimmick factoid that I find amusing:

In 1961, a film called Mr. Sardonicus featured a gimmick called the “Punishment Poll”, where each audience member was given a card to decide the fate of the titular villain, Mr. Sardonicus, by either showing the side of their card with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on it right before the end of the film. Once the total was tallied, the theater was supposed to show the ending with the most votes.

The funny part is that the movie only has one ending. The gimmick was just a total lie and the only ending filmed was the one with the negative outcome for Mr. Sardonicus, so I guess the director was pretty confident that potential audiences would mostly be comprised of sadists that want to see a bad guy get his comeuppance. 

Speaking of the director, Mr. Sardonicus just so happened to be directed by a mister William Castle, who also directed four out of the six films listed in the magazine article here. Guess those gimmicks really were good for profits.

Imagine watching a whole movie while sitting in a pool. Now stop imagining! I don’t like that very much. Your eyelids would prune shut before you could even see the ending. 

Man, all these movie gimmicks and funky types of theaters is making me wish I was around when movies were more of an event. Y’know? The movie theater experience has pretty much been ironed out at this point, so the idea of watching the big screen outside or with the looming possibility of a big plastic skeleton popping out and waving around is particularly alluring. Take note, modern movie theaters, this may be your way of competing with streaming!

What? No, it doesn’t bother me at all that whoever owned this magazine already filled out this Sanrio quiz advertisement. Why would I be ENRAGED and UPSET about that!?!? IT'S NOT EVEN A BIG DEAL!!

… Anyway this ad is weird. I guess they didn't know how to market Sanrio in the west yet*. Cause I'm not exactly the most familiar but I'm pretty confident blaring red and yellow colors and funky multicolor Wow! text isn't exactly befitting of the Sanrio spirit. Also there's not really any point to the quiz. It's not like you can mail in your answers and get a free Hello Kitty lunchbox or something. I guess they just figured that kids love quizzes and will always jump at the opportunity to do them, circling the correct responses in permanent pen ink, and causing them to not consider the possibility that someoNE MIGHT WANT TO READ THE MAGAZINE AD AFTER THEM AND WOULD WANT IT MAINTAINED IN PEAK CLEANLINESS FOR THE SAKE OF THE SANCTITY OF THEIR ONLINE BLOG i must calm myself.

*Which is weird to me, because Hello Kitty feels like one of those characters who’s always been popular. Like Mickey Mouse or Steven Spielburg.

Don’t mind me, just gonna insert this contest page here so that if I ever do the issue that contains the actual responses, I can link back to here and go full circle. Pretty excited to someday see the responses! I wonder what they could be. I also wonder why you had to include a phone number with your response. Maybe Tommy Pickles congratulated you on the phone? 

Okay, so I think this issue might be missing pages. I can’t prove that exactly, considering I don’t have the real thing sitting in front of me, but the way this ad has text that’s oddly cut off on the right side leads me to believe this was a two page spread originally. Maybe not, maybe the magazine was really like this and it's a printing error, maybe they spilled juice on the design document for page two and couldn’t fix it in time for publishing. 

Whatever the case, I really wish I had that Aaahh!!! Real Monsters hat.

A rather understated cover for this edition of The Comic Book, and I can appreciate it. Simple and effective bit of zaniness with a spin on the old “fake-can-with-a-scary-thing-that-pops-out-when-you-open-it” gag. This comes to us from award-winning illustrator Jim Woodring, who’s got probably one of the nicest websites of any artist I’ve mentioned on this blog so far, so kudos. I took a look through his gallery, and it’s a lovely trip, so go take a look if you want some eye candy.

Been a while since we’ve last seen the Southern Fried Fugitives on this blog, one of Nick Magazine’s earliest recurring comic series. Unfortunately they’re not exactly in top form here, I’d say, even as someone who’s not the biggest fan of the comic to begin with. This is essentially a bit of filler so they could make their deadline and finish up the next “all new real adventure” that this episode tells you of at the end. I mean, I get it, this comic usually spanned a full three or four pages, I’m sure they took quite a bit of time. I just don’t really appreciate being shown a gross naked stitched up chicken. 

A great hidden picture puzzle here, I could see kids having a lot of fun with this one and just looking through all the art. I guess my only issue would be that none of the answers are exactly hidden, since almost every figure in the page is related to one of the film titles below. But that’s a small nitpick considering that for just one activity of a much larger publication, it’s still pretty entertaining and eye-catching.

And here we’ve got ourselves what the powers at be call Smudgy and Scribbly. A comic about two inventive robots that I thought were supposed to be pencil erasers at first considering their names. I’m not sure if these abstract little guys ever had more than one or a couple of comics, but I know they didn’t stick around forever, since this is the first time I’m hearing of them. They’re cute! They’re fun! They don’t have a lot of personality per se, but that’s okay, because they eat fruit cocktails. And that’s a lesson for the kids.

I’ve been really impressed with this issue so far! They’ve really been making the most of the movie theme, what with aforementioned stuff like the quality movie gimmick article and the nice hidden picture puzzle. And to top it all off now we’ve even got an interview with Siskel & Ebert, two of the most famous film critics of all time. I’m not even sure how many kids at the time would appreciate this sort of thing, but whoever did must’ve been pretty happy. Said interview was conducted about three years before Siskel’s incredibly unfortunate passing, and three years after being parodied in an episode of Doug.

Anyway, yeah the interview questions are really silly, but that’s pretty par for the course by now. I just think it’s just cool they’re even in an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine at all.

Talking about the calendar included with each issue has become a bit of a tradition for this blog by now, hasn’t it? Although I’m sure I probably forgot to mention it one time. Overall this one’s not bad, it’s chock-full of facts and the little set-up & punchline at the Charlie Chaplin section is a ‘lil funny. And I think it’s sort of themed around artisans, maybe? Well worth being pinned on your bedroom door if you ask me, the only problem is that you’d also be ripping out a page of the Siskel & Ebert interview that’s printed on the back of this. At least the kid who wrote all over the magazine showed some restraint there.

Oh come on… I spoke too soon about showing restraint. The kid ripped out the flip book! What a trick… now I’ll never know what it looks like. At least we have the instructions here, which also could be doubly used for instructions on how to make your own flipbook by following the format, which is cool. Sorry for anyone who clicked on this post because you wanted to see the flipbook specifically. Sorry to you.

Moving past a five page article about the history of movies and movie effects (which is solid but doesn’t have much for me to say about), we now come across the cover story: James and the Giant Peach. And this is an alright interview, but it’s especially good  for Nickelodeon Magazine! The questions for the film’s director, Henry Selick (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, among others), actually allow for some pretty nice informative detail regarding the process of stop-motion animation and how aspects of it work. For an interview intended for kids, this is great, especially for ones with an interest in the medium.

Interviews, interviews, and more interviews! If you’ve ever wanted to learn all that you could ever want to know Kenan & Kel, these are the pages for you. It’s nice to hear that apparently these guys were good friends off set, I guess. But y’know it’s never really bothered me finding out that seemingly inseparable co-stars actually aren’t best friends in real life like it does for a lot of people, I can still watch MythBusters perfectly fine even if I know Adam and Jamie aren’t going to go get drinks together after they finish dropping a car off a mountain for science. Acting’s still a job and I’m not expecting people to become friends just because they both stand in front of the same camera. 

But hey, if K&K really were as good of friends as this magazine says, that’s really cool for them. Pretty lucky too, since this was just mere months away from the premiere of their own All That spinoff show, Kenan & Kel, which ran for four years, and less than a year before the premiere of their own movie, Good Burger*, so being friendly must’ve helped when they were spending that much time together. Not to mention they’re getting back together for Good Burger 2, so I guess when your legacies are so intrinsically tied together, I guess you’re bound to find some things to like about each other.

*One of my favorite comedies by the way, and no I’m not sorry. There’s very few films that match its vibes.

Feels like I should mention the 9th annual Kids’ Choice Awards was just around the corner, which featured such notable moments like Jim Carrey taking home two awards for Ace Ventura and his performance in Batman Forever, alongside Free Willy winning “Favorite Animal Star” for his(?) performance (?) in Free Willy 2: Willy Goes to Chile*. That category in particular got pretty heated, considering he was up against fierce competition in the form of Babe from… Babe. “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio won best song. Although Brandy would beat out both Coolio and Michael Jackson for winner of “Favorite Singer”, so it wasn’t exactly a Coolio sweep, per se.

But of course, the real big winner of that night was Tim Allen, for winning “Favorite TV Actor” and being enacted into the Nickelodeon Hall of Fame (yes, for real). All while Home Improvement won ”Favorite TV Show”, which I find is an outright snubbing of the also nominated Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Again, just my opinion.

*(Okay, it was actually called Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, but I like my idea more).

Before we go, I’d just like to draw attention to this winner of a parade float idea contest held in a previous issue, finally presented in all its glory here. No offense to the kid who designed it but I can only imagine the type of child nightmares that could spawn from a giant Elvis making its way down the street, pulled along by his Elvis impersonating minions. Just a thought.

This was a really good issue, I’m actually pretty shocked with how much of it I found interesting and entertaining, even now as an adult. They really put their all into this one and I think the movie theme really paid off.

Some parts I didn’t get to were the aforementioned article on the history of film and film effects, which isn’t a bad read, especially if you’re into the good old days of practical effects. 

There was an interview with at-the-time child star Michelle Trachtenberg, to promote the upcoming release of the Nickelodeon film Harriet the Spy, which featured her in the starring role. I partly didn’t talk about it because I didn’t think there was much to say, and partly out of spite because that movie was pretty bad. Also because I’m running out of available image slots on this post. But mainly the first two reasons! Sort of.

Oh, yeah, and that alien mongrel QZ made another appearance, answering kids’ questions and just looking gross as usual. Avoid page 52 at all costs!

So yeah, that’ll do it! I’m glad I got to tackle another 90’s issue. I’ve also been thinking about branching out a bit, maybe talking about other Nickelodeon books, or heck, maybe even doing retrospectives of some of their shows! If anybody’s interested or has any requests (Nickelodeon Magazine related or otherwise), feel free to let me know. Otherwise I’ll just keep using my little spinner board that I use to make all decisions related to this blog. 

Until next time, have a good one, and keep on reading!

[whatstruthgottodowithit]

The Other Evans Girl [Part Thirty Four]

Fandom: Harry Potter [Marauder’s Era]

Pairing: Sirius Black x Original Female Character, Sirius Black x Daisy Evans, James Potter x Lily Evans

Characters: Sirius Black, Original Female Character, Daisy Evans, Lily Evans, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Alice Fortescue, Frank Longbottom, Marlene McKinnon, Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort, Peter Pettigrew, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix LeStrange, Walburga Black, Orion Black, Jasper Thicknesse, Barty Crouch Jr, Mulciber, Walden McNair

Word Count: 3454

Rating: Mature

Summary: Hogwarts is a safe haven, a home for many, but it’s often a place where heartache, love and complex emotions dwell and none know that better than the Marauders. Lily Evans just wants to make it out as a successful witch though the oncoming war and the ongoing advances of James Potter threaten that. Daisy Evans, her twin, has other goals. Join the Evans sisters as they make their way through Hogwarts, prepare for war and eventually find love.

Tags/ Warnings: Hogwarts, Friends, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Marauder’s Era, Teenage Angst, Babies, Weddings, Dating, Crying, Loss of Virginity, First Wizarding War, Love, Kissing, Teenagers, James Potter is a bit of a dick, Hogsmeade, 1970s, Fighting, Loss of Parents, Grief, Babies, Injuries, Gore, Harm, Christmas,  The Potter’s Mansion // Daisy’s Dress // NYE Lily’s Dress // NYE Daisy’s Dress // Lily’s Ring // Daisy’s Ring

Notes: Okay so I’ve been working on updating this and I’ve finally gone through all the chapters already written before I start writing more. It’s changed a lot so I’ve decided it’s just better to completely re-upload it.  

If you want tagging let me know

LINK TO AO3 // LINK TO PINTEREST // LINK TO ALL PARTS

After Remus had gone to bed Daisy and Sirius decided it was probably best if they went to their retrospective bedrooms and tried to catch up on whatever sleep they could manage. And after a few kisses goodbye, which admittedly took longer than either of them planned, Daisy left Sirius at the bottom of the dormitory stairs watching her with an adoring smile as she disappeared around the spiral.

Daisy’s heart was still thudding in her chest as she climbed towards her room still thinking about the dark-haired boy at the bottom. Her boyfriend. Sirius was her boyfriend, and she had never felt so happy because after months of wondering, worrying and trying to convince herself they were better as friends they were finally together. She was who he wanted to be with, her, and she still couldn’t quite believe it.

As she crept into the dormitory she realised just how cold the morning air was around her not that her bunkmates were impervious to the cold as they were all tucked up in their beds blissfully unaware of Daisy who had padded quietly through the room and jumped into bed still awash with excitement. Daisy lay in her bed for a moment, recapping the night over and over in her mind, reliving it all as if it was all happening again and as she thought about Sirius her eyes drifted shut, a smile on her face.

Sirius, however, could not sleep because if it wasn’t his excitement keeping him awake it was his friend. Though Remus looked dog tired, his eyes growing more sunken and purple the longer he remained conscious, he had waited for Sirius to walk through the door and immediately bombarded him with questions. Sirius, who was also tired, managed to keep himself awake to answer every single thing his friend threw at him until finally he felt like he couldn’t keep his eyes open much longer and he said, ‘Moony, let’s call it a night eh?’ 'Sorry,’ Remus said bashfully, 'I guess I didn’t realise how excited I was for the two of you to actually get together.’ 'And I thought I was the one who was supposed to be overjoyed eh?’ Sirius chuckled, settling down in his bed. Remus paused, he was still sitting up, watching Sirius worriedly as he asked, ‘you are though, right? I mean you’re not going to do anything daft are you?’ 'No Moony,’ Sirius said rolling his eyes. Remus nodded. 'Good, good,’ he replied, shuffling down in his bed allowing the two to fall quiet for a moment before he asked, ‘how are you going to tell everyone? I mean Prongs won’t be happy you were able to ask an Evans out five times quicker than him.’ 'I’m sure Lily can find a way to comfort him,’ Sirius quipped, 'besides I don’t know if we have to think of that just yet.’ 'Why?’ Remus asked, pushing himself onto his elbow so that he could see Sirius who was staring up at his canopy.

'Well I don’t know if we want to tell everyone just yet,’ Sirius said.  'For god’s sake,’ Remus sighed, forcing Sirius to roll over and look at him with a scowl on his face as he hissed, ‘don’t be like that!

‘I’m not being like anything you’re not playing this like a game are you?’ Remus asked.

‘No I’m not,’ Sirius sulked, ‘in fact, I’m fucking terrified I’m going to mess it up. I really love her mate.’ 'I know,’ Remus said shaking his head, 'sorry I didn’t mean to upset you.’ 'You didn’t,’ Sirius said, waving him off with a sigh, ‘I guess I just wanna make sure she’s okay. So, as far as I’m concerned I’m going to let her call the shots y'know?’ 'Yeah, I get it,’ Remus smiled, ‘though don’t think you’ve got much to worry about for what it’s worth. She’s crazy about you.’

And before Sirius could think of what to say back he could hear the faint sound of snoring as his friend fell asleep, unable to fight the fatigue any longer. Sirius succumbed too soon after.

✵✵✵

When he awoke the dormitory was empty which wasn’t a surprise as given that when he checked his clock and found that it was half-past eleven which explained everyone’s absence. James would no doubt be training, Peter would be at the gobstones tournament he had been rabbiting on about for most of the week and Remus would be with Madam Pomfrey, who liked to double check on him the morning following a change.  Figuring there wasn’t much reason to lounge around in bed he got up and changed so that he could head downstairs only as he got to the bottom step he found Daisy sitting on the girl’s staircase, her elbows on her knees propping her head up. At the sound of his approach she looked up, smiling when she realised who it was, before quickly coming over to meet him. Fortunately they were hidden away from the bustle of the common room by the thick stone wall which meant that she was able to wrap her arms around his neck, allowing him to hold her by the waist as she leant up and kissed him tenderly. Sirius’ stomach fluttered slightly as she pulled away watching him with sparkling green eyes.

‘Good morning to you too,’ Sirius grinned. ‘Morning,’ she smiled back, ‘finally decided to climb out of bed huh?’ ‘If I’d have known you were waiting for me I would’ve got up a little earlier,’ Sirius teased. ‘I wasn’t waiting,’ Daisy rebutted though she smiled as Sirius raised an eyebrow, ‘okay maybe I was but I wanted to talk to you before…’ ‘Before?’ Sirius asked. ‘Before everybody harangues us,’ Daisy said. ‘Ah,’ Sirius said. ‘I just,’ Daisy sighed dropping her gaze. Sirius waited patiently, not missing the look on her face which was now absent of the happiness that had only just been there. ‘Come on babe,’ Sirius said, ‘whatever it is just tell me.’

‘I just…I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,’ Daisy started. Sirius looked as if he was going to stay something but she soldiered on, ‘I’m really happy we’re together. Honestly, I am.’

‘Okay,’ Sirius said, as she bit her lip nervously.

‘It’s just that well, up until yesterday we sort of looked as if we were with two other people. And I know people have been whispering about me and Lily since Christmas, Lily even more so now that she and James are together-’ ‘You don’t want to tell people we’re together,’ Sirius finished. Daisy looked at him meekly and nodded.

‘Okay,’ he replied without deliberation. ‘Okay?’ she asked perplexed. ‘Yeah, if that’s what you want then okay,’ he stated, ‘personally, I couldn’t give a monkeys what the gossips of Hogwarts think but I get it.’ ‘You do?’ she asked hopefully. ‘You’ve had a lot going on besides this way we get to enjoy it a little more. Just the two of us,’ he smiled kissing her forehead. ‘Well and Remus,’ Daisy giggled. ‘Okay but he doesn’t get to kiss you like this deal?’ Sirius said leaning in and kissing her. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she mumbled into his lips, allowing him to push her back until she was boxed in against the cold stone wall, only breaking apart as they heard the sound of someone approaching.

Luckily they managed not to get caught, the pair of them a reasonable distance apart when a brown-haired first year appeared in stairwell. He looked startled to see them in the stairway and scuttled quickly past them and up the boy’s stairs without a word. Once the boy was out of sight Sirius pulled her back towards him but she stopped him, putting her palm against his chest.

‘Not here,’ Daisy whispered, looking around self-consciously. ‘Babe, we could’ve been naked in front of him and I don’t think he would’ve said anything,’ Sirius chuckled. ‘True,’ she giggled, ‘but still.’ ‘Well that’s a shame because I don’t think I can go all day without kissing you again,’ he whispered in her ear making a shiver run down her spine. ‘Well in that case why don’t we find somewhere you won’t have to,’ Daisy mused, pulling away from him and heading to the common room, a cheeky smile on her face. Sirius followed straight away.

✵✵✵

Luckily for Sirius and Daisy dodging their friends for the whole of Sunday wasn’t hard to do. With everyone busy with their own stuff the two of them chose to spend the day in the attic listening to music, reading and kissing, lots of kissing. Now that they could do it whenever they wanted they couldn’t resist the temptation and since they had decided not to tell their friends just yet they figured they better make the most of it before they were forced to act as if nothing was going on. Which is why they were surprised when they got down to breakfast on Monday morning and found people staring at them, furtive whispers and glances following them as they walked between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables.

‘Why is everyone staring at us?’ Daisy whispered as they headed to the end of the table where their friends were congregated. ‘So I’m not imagining it then,’ Sirius grumbled making Daisy frown.

‘You don’t think Remus told anyone, right?’ she asked worriedly. ‘No, he wouldn’t do that to us,’ Sirius said firmly, relieving her nerves just a touch. He was right whatever was going on wouldn’t be because of him, as happy as he was for them he was a good friend.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed.

James, Lily, Peter and Alice were already sitting at the table when they reached it, with Alice saying hello to the pair of them as Daisy slid in beside her, Sirius opting to sit on her other side though as Daisy replied to her friend he stayed quiet, smiling politely at her before pouring himself a cup of tea. He could already feel Lily’s eyes on Daisy, her porridge now abandoned as her gaze homed in on her sister and he thought it best to busy himself for whatever was coming.

‘So,’ Lily said, staring solely at her sister who looked up from the toast she had just grabbed upon hearing her speak. If she had been nervous about all the eyes on her Lily’s piercing gaze was another matter altogether. She felt Sirius tense beside her, though neither of them looked at each other. Instead Daisy mustered the most casual voice she could and replied, ‘so?’

‘What’s going on?’ Lily demanded. ‘What do you mean?’ Daisy asked, hanging back before she offered explanation, after all, she didn’t know what ammo her sister had and it would be foolish to rush in and explain herself when Lily might not have a clue as to what was truly going on. If anything Daisy didn’t really know what was going on, the stares and suspicions just as much a mystery to her as anyone.

‘What happened after you left the pub on Saturday? I figured it was something since I didn’t see you all yesterday and everyone’s gossiping today,’ Lily said. ‘Gossiping about what?’ Sirius said casually. Daisy glanced at him and saw his expression was cool and collected but there was something behind his eyes that showed different, a hardness to it. ‘I don’t know,’ Lily said, ‘Mar said something about Michael telling Pierre about the two of you in his dorm room but I don’t know what he’s said.’ ‘Oh,’ Daisy said, her mind reeling as she wondered exactly had Michael been saying to people. Under the table, she felt Sirius’ hand rest on her thigh reassuringly. ‘Well?’ Lily said expectantly. ‘Lil maybe she doesn’t want to tell us,’ James said nervously, ‘and I don’t know if I want to know what the two of them were doing anyway.’ ‘Nothing, nothing was happening between us, whatever people are talking about I don’t care,’ Daisy lied, trying to ignore the hammering in her chest. This was why she had been reluctant to be open about her and Sirius just yet. Even without whatever Michael had been saying people had seen them together and for her to be with a new boy just a couple days after that would make the gossips of Hogwarts even worse she was sure.

‘Are you sure because there must-’ Lily started but Sirius cut her off, the casualness gone from his voice, the hard edge in its place as he said, ‘Lil maybe just drop it for now, yeah?’

Daisy watched as Lily glared at him, his warning making her lips purse in a way that didn’t leave her looking too dissimilar to Professor McGonagall but nevertheless, she dropped the subject. Daisy heaved an internal sigh of relief and though she engaged as they told her and Sirius about winning the pub quiz trophy, and Alice’s subsequent vomiting in said trophy, she couldn’t help but shake that uneasiness.

It didn’t even lift as they made their way to their classes as the stares and whispers followed her from lesson to lesson meaning that by the time school was over she as exhausted. She and Sirius even chose to go to the library after dinner as it was emptier than most places and people were so focused on their own work they didn’t bother her much but come the next morning, when gossip was still abuzz, she couldn’t help herself.

‘Where are you going?’ Sirius asked as he watched her march away from him towards the Ravenclaw table. Daisy could see people turning to watch her but she didn’t care. Even Sirius sensed there was no point getting involved and he simply sat down beside his friends at the Gryffindor table which consisted of the Marauders watching with amusement and the girls who seemed frantic about what she was going to do.

As Daisy reached her destination she could feel all eyes on her apart from one set, Michael, who was still facing his friend until Daisy cleared her throat, forcing him to turn and look at her, his expression cool yet sheepish as he said, ‘what do you want?’

‘I think we better talk,’ she replied. ‘Oh yeah?’ Michael snorted. Daisy clenched her jaw, trying to understand that her actions towards Michael weren’t exactly justified and that she should expect some animosity even if it was hard to do so. ‘Yeah,’ Daisy said. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you,’ a blonde girl Daisy didn’t know the name of sneered from across the table which was unfortunately enough to make her lose any understanding as she grabbed Michael by the arm and yanked him up off the bench as she said, ‘yeah well I want to talk to him.’ ‘Daisy,’ Michael grunted as she dragged him to the end of the table meaning that more eyes were on them even if they were out of earshot. As she let him go he huffed, pulling at his sleeve irritably to get it back into position.

‘Look I know you’re angry at me,’ Daisy started, earning a glare as he said pointedly, ‘can you blame me?’ ‘No,’ she said guiltily, ‘I didn’t mean to run out like that.’

‘I still don’t even know why you did. I mean we were having fun or at least I thought we were and then you, well, throw yourself at me and somehow it’s my fault,’ he ranted, ‘then you run way and disappear on me for days.’ ‘Just one day,’ Daisy reasoned, her tone too indignantly given she knew he was right. ‘Either way I was left with no explanation,’ he countered.

‘I wish I could explain,’ she said, biting her lip, ‘but I can’t all I can say is that I thought I liked you, I did like you but just…not enough. I’m sorry.’

‘Well at least now you’re being honest with me instead of running away,’ he said, sighing as she frowned, ‘apology accepted.’  

‘Thanks,’ Daisy nodded.

She was going to leave it there, everything she wanted to say out in the open, but Michael glanced around the hall, looking to see if they were still out of earshot as he said, ‘I want to say sorry too.’

‘What for?’ she asked confused.

‘Well after you sorta left me all confused I was upset and in the morning some of my mates were talking about how they’d seen us together in the dorm and,’ he hesitated. ‘And?’ Daisy said worry now creeping into her stomach. ‘And they were ragging on me for us two y’know,’ he said, blushing as realisation set in. ‘But we didn’t!’ Daisy protested. Now it all made sense, the stares and glares. People didn’t care they weren’t a couple, they were just under the impression she’d used him. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but when they said it I didn’t correct them and then word got out.’ ‘And now everyone thinks we slept together,’ she grumbled. ‘Yeah,’ Michael said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. ‘Great,’ Daisy said snarkily. ‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said. ‘Well I guess I can’t blame you,’ she reasoned. Sure he should’ve corrected his friends but after the whiplash she’d given he she supposed she understood how he’d gotten to that situation. And it wasn’t as though she could afford enemies, not with half the school on her back, so she asked, ‘so we’re alright?’

‘Yeah we’re alright,’ he nodded, ‘I er, should probably…’

‘Yeah, yeah me too,’ she agreed, offering him one last smile before they made their way back to their respective tables.

Of course when she got to her friends they were all watching her with anticipation, the most concern on Sirius and Lily’s faces though it was only her sister who spoke up, trying to sound casual as she said, ‘so is everything sorted?’ ‘Well, all of the school thinks I shagged Michael and then dumped him but other than that yeah we’re sorted,’ Daisy grumbled.

‘Wait so you two didn’t? Because I heard Melanie Fisher talking about it in Care of Magical creatures and she said that-’ Peter said stopping with a grunt as a distinct thud was heard underneath the table, James smiling sympathetically at her a moment after. ‘Trust you to only listen to the wrong things Wormtail,’ Sirius said and though his tone attempted to be light it was an edge to it, one that everyone bar Marlene chose to ignore. ‘Well we know the truth whatever else is just gossip,’ Remus said, smiling sympathetically at her.

‘Yeah and if we hear anyone gossiping they’ll have to answer to us,’ James added. ‘Yeah we’ll show them,’ Peter said trying to grasp and use the clout James’ response had had. Daisy smiled, the support of her boys a small compensation in the face of high school drama but even so she didn’t want to dwell on it and said, ‘just forget it. The more you defend me the longer it’ll go on.’ ‘Daisy’s right,’ Sirius agreed, ‘the more you address things the longer it takes them to go away.’

‘Yeah besides there’ll be something else they’ll be talking about by the end of the week,’ Alice said.

Once the group agreed conversation was swiftly moved on until eventually everyone was forced to disband and head for lessons with Marlene, Alice and Peter accompanying Daisy down to Care of Magical Creatures. Yet, as Alice and Peter reached the edge of the paddock where they were having their lesson Daisy felt Marlene’s hand on her arm slowing her down and away from their others, and more importantly out of earshot. When they were far enough away, Marlene leaned in, ignoring Daisy’s confused expression as she whispered, ‘you didn’t sleep with Michael right?’ ‘No,’ Daisy said, ‘I already told you I didn’t.’ ‘But that’s not the end of the story right?’ Marlene replied, stopping altogether and looking at her friend inquisitively. Daisy tried to pull away, ‘Mar we’re going to be late.’

‘And?’ Marlene challenged. ‘Fine,’ Daisy grumbled looking at her pal who was watching her expectantly, ‘after I left Ravenclaw tower I went back to the common room and… Sirius was there.’ ‘And?’ Marlene pressed. ‘And we talked and…he kissed me,’ Daisy said, unable to stop a small smile from adoring her face. ‘Finally!’ Marlene squealed causing a few other students to look around at them though she ignored them, ‘so you two are together now?’ ‘Yes but no one knows, well apart from Remus, so you can’t tell anyone,’ Daisy said. ‘Why not?’ Marlene asked her face falling into a confused expression. ‘Because of this whole Michael thing. I mean it’s bad enough already without everything thinking I’m making my way around the school, Sirius too given that he looked like he was dating Penny up until yesterday,’ she said, ‘besides it’s been so long we kinda just wanted time to ourselves you know?’

‘Yeah I get you,’ Marlene said, ‘still I told you you’d get together didn’t I?’

‘Apparently everyone has,’ Daisy giggled, ‘Remus didn’t seem very surprised about it.’

‘That’s because the pair of you are as obvious as James and Lil,’ Marlene chuckled.

SIRIUS BLACK/SERIES TAGS

@maeisafangirl @mysteriouslydelicateface @caitlin1996 @imthebadguyyy

[wrathfulrook]

James Rook

James Rook is 15 years old and has never known who his father is. But when he finds out who his father is, he realizes it's his mom he may not know. AU, no collapse.

Ship: John Seed x Patience Ekner (deputy oc) [past relationship]

Rating: T

Word count: ~4.9k

Read it on ao3.

Maybe James Rook was naïve. None of his friends trusted their parents the way he’d trusted his mom. None of them considered their parents their friends. Until recently, he’d thought his close relationship with his mom was simply a result of being raised by a single mother. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

It was easy to sneak away.

Now 15 years old, his mom had assumed his recent distance from her was just a bit of teenage rebellion. But it wasn’t him. It was her. All of her lies and secrets. He hadn’t even known his mom’s real name until recently. What kind of mom does something like that?

The more generous part of James’ mind reminds him that he grew up happy and loved. That his mom gave up a lot for him; he knows that. Based on what he’d been able to find – and he’d found quite a bit; it had been national news at the time – changing her name was likely just a desire to protect herself, to protect him. That generous part of his brain tells him that there’s no way his father was a good man. If he was, James wouldn’t have been on a Greyhound and travelling cross-country to visit a prison.

James loved his mom.

But the less generous part of him seethed in anger. What kind of mom hid her kid’s origins from him? That part of him also ached, felt shattered. He felt like a fool. And he felt betrayed. How was he ever supposed to trust her again?

~

When it all ended, when the National Guard came, they all ended up behind bars. Joseph, Jacob, John, and Faith. Tucked away where they could never hurt anyone ever again. In the aftermath, her own name and face were plastered all over the news. Her statements were used in each trial, printed in papers nationwide. And so the courts had been all too willing to grant her petition for a name change. Patience Ekner ceased to be, and Patience Rook was born.

Patience Rook left Hope County, left Montana, never to go back. She put it all behind her and moved forward, the only reminder she chose to keep, the new surname she took, her nickname from those brutal, bloody days. Of course, there were other reminders she hadn’t chosen. The tattoo of her sin, for one. Wrath, he’d assigned her. Not that she ever believed, but she found wrath fairly fitting at the time.

In hindsight, he’d chosen wrong. It shouldn’t have been WRATH she spent hours getting covered up with flowers that she didn’t think particularly suited her. No. In retrospect, it should’ve been LUST.

But the tattoo wasn’t her only reminder of that time, of him. There was also the child she’d birthed, the child she adored. Her son.

Hers.

But, oh, did he look like his father. His hair dark where hers was blonde, eyes blue where hers were grey. He even had that same charming smile, the one that had worked so well on her those many years ago. The only thing of hers she could see on her child were her numerous freckles. But while her freckles remained always, her child had outgrown them by the time he hit high school.

Every now and then, he would say something, make some face, talk with his hands in a way that she was hit full force with the memory of his father. Both the horrible things he’d done and those stolen, secret nights they couldn’t keep apart from one another…

But mostly, usually, she looked at her boy and saw only him. James. Her perfect miracle baby. The gift that made everything about those dark days worth it in her eyes. He had been such a happy, smiley baby. Always giggling and gurgling. He’d been talkative long before he learned to speak. Always so sweet and kind. Petting her hair and telling her “Okay mommy… s’okay mommy…” as she purged herself of a stomach bug he’d brought home from daycare when he was too small to even form full sentences, while she in turn tried to reassure her baby that mommy was ok.

Even now, he was her perfect child. Still sweet, still happy. But now his own person. And she was so amazed by the person he’d become. He was funny. Funny in a way she never was. And so clever. Amazing grades as well as a quick wit… Patience loved her child and she knew how much he loved her too.

Even despite how he’d recently been pulling away.

~

James wondered how many signs he’d missed over the course of his life. How obvious it should have been. His mom had always told him she didn’t know who his father was. He recalled once, in one of his earliest memories, that she’d told him she chose his name because she’d always liked it, but also because she thought his father would like it too.

He’d asked her about it later, and she said that she’d never said it. And he believed her. He was so little at the time; it could’ve easily been a false memory. He still wasn’t sure it wasn’t. After all, he had a memory from around the same time of flapping his arms and flying like a bird throughout the house, and that memory felt equally as real.

But whether or not she’d told him his father would like his name, she knew. His mom knew who his dad was the whole time. Because he looked exactly like one of them. The Seeds. The cult leaders. He couldn’t know which was his father, but one of them was. He looked exactly like John Seed. The Baptist. The sadistic monster who tortured and murdered and starved innocent people. Just reading about his crimes had been enough to give James nightmares for a week.

He didn’t know whether or not that man that was his father, but he was related to him. There was no way he wasn’t. He’d been able to find some footage of the court proceedings against him, and it filled his stomach with an uncanny dread. Like watching an older version of himself. The same smile he saw every day in the mirror, the same gestures, speaking with his hands in the same way James did. Even his voice sounded familiar. Not the same, but certainly not very different from the way James sounded to himself in videos.

If John Seed wasn’t his father, he was at least his uncle. One of those men – John, Joseph, or Jacob – was his dad. His mother, the woman regarded nationally as a hero, the deputy who brought the cult to justice, had had a child with one of the cult’s leaders.

James had spent the past weeks learning everything he could about the Project at Eden’s Gate. And he was horrified at the thought that his mom would ever willingly have any sort of relationship with any of those men. He almost hoped she hadn’t. But if one of those men was his father, and his mom had in fact not been voluntarily involved with any of them… No. James couldn’t stomach the thought of that either.

No matter what the circumstances were back then, the situation now was that James had told his mom he was spending the long weekend camping with a friend’s family, when in reality he was on a bus to Montana to meet the man who might be his dad.

It had been surprisingly easy to contact John Seed. Apparently, you could write a letter to anyone as long as you knew their name and which prison they were at. James’ first letter hadn’t received a response. Probably because he had intentionally been a bit light on the details. Eventually he’d tried again, this time including his mom’s former name and, after much mental back-and-forth, a photo of himself.

And that had received a response.

John Seed had written back, though he didn’t say much. And via snail mail, they had arranged to meet. John Seed had even offered to fund the excursion, but James had declined, instead saving his allowance and taking small amounts from his mom’s purse every now and then, little enough each time not to be noticed.

He’d never stolen before, and he didn’t feel good about it now. But James liked to think himself honorable, and he would find a way to pay his mom back every cent he’d taken once he’d figured out who his dad was.

And hopefully John Seed could tell him.

~

Patience wasn’t nearly as obtuse as her son thought. Oh, how she sometimes missed those simple days when he believed she knew everything.

No, Patience knew that James had something going on. She didn’t know what it was, but she had a few ideas. As a mother, she had quite a few worst fears – drugs, alcohol, vaping… But those were just fears. James was a smart boy. He knew better than to get involved in something like that. Plus, he’d been exhibiting no signs of substance abuse. He was just suddenly more secretive and private than before. She had a more realistic suspicion than drugs.

Sex.

She feared her baby boy had become sexually active. 15 was so, so young for that. Patience had never even been kissed until she was 19. She’d been a little awkward growing up, a bit of an ugly duckling. Not James, though. Yet another way he took after his father. He’d always been a cute boy. Her son had taken a girl to the middle school dance. Kids had had crushes on him his whole life. He’d already had three “girlfriends” in his young life.

And so, what if his recent distance was a result of him starting to have sex?

Moms were meant to worry after their children, and Patience was no exception to that rule. But she’d always tried to be open, honest, and educational about sex. He should know enough, be responsible enough, to do what he was ready to when he was ready to. And inform her when he was ready for her to know. After all, a child asking where babies come from while only having one parent… James had been aware of the concept of sex from a very early age, especially with her claiming not to know who his father was.

Patience sometimes felt like she should feel guilty about lying to her son about something so serious as his parentage. Especially because that one lie involved a million more. James didn’t know about her time as a deputy. He didn’t even know she’d ever lived in Montana. He didn’t know their family name was actually Ekner. There were a lot of tiny lies that went into covering up who his father was. But she didn’t feel bad. Not even a little.

Because she was keeping her baby safe. Safe from publicity. Safe from her past. And safe from John Seed.

~

James had never felt more out of his element than when he was checking in as a visitor at the prison. That is, until about twenty minutes later when he was sitting across the table from John Seed.

John Seed wore a beige correctional jumpsuit and his hands were cuffed to the table, which James hadn’t been expecting. Despite this, the man seemed completely at ease. He was well-coiffed, his salt and pepper hair slicked back, his facial hair neatly trimmed, and the crows feet around his eyes creasing when he smiled genially at him. He had clearly aged in the past 15 years since the news coverage James had found, but he was certainly recognizable, and still eerily familiar.

“So, you’re the deputy’s son… It’s nice to meet you, James.”

“Nice to meet you…” James floundered on what to call the man across from him. John? Mr. Seed? He opted to let the sentence dangle awkwardly.

“You can call me John.”

James nodded. “John.”

“I’m assuming you have many questions for me.” John dove right into it and James felt a bit flustered. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, though, and doubted anything would seem normal in a situation like this.

After a brief pause, he spoke. “Yes… Like I wrote in my letters. I think you or one of your brothers may be my father and I-“ James swallowed uncomfortably, a too-obvious tactic to buy time to build courage. “I was wondering if you knew who my father was.”

John smiled. The smile seemed friendly on the surface, but there was something in his eyes that James couldn’t place.

“I am. I’m your father.”

James nodded, surprised that he didn’t feel surprised. Logically, he knew it could have been any of the brothers. Logically, he knew that it was likely his close resemblance to the man across from him that made him feel any sort of connection. But the moment John confirmed it, he realized he’d known. He felt, somewhere deep inside of himself, that John Seed was his dad.

“So… you and my mom…?” James let himself trail off, not really sure what he was asking, or how he should ask it.

John nodded, one eyebrow raised, as if impressed by the audacity of the unspoken question. “Yes. We were involved. In secret, of course. We met up more than a few times, none of which were terribly romantic.”

James understood the implication and asked no follow up questions. John and his mother hadn’t been in love. They weren’t dating. They just… were. James didn’t love the idea of his mom being some guy’s late night booty call and didn’t particularly want to think about it. But at the same time, he’d spent his whole life believing his mom didn’t even know who his father was, so it wasn’t exactly an unbelievable idea.

“Is she well, your mother?”

James nodded.

“And where does she think you are right now?”

James blinked in surprise. “How-?”

John laughed, not unkindly. “She’d never let you come here. Not in a million years. Not to see me.”

James didn’t like the emphasis he’d put on the word “me,” some red flag going off somewhere in the back of his mind.

“She thinks I’m at a friend’s.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes when he spoke. “No, she doesn’t.”

James didn’t know what to say to that.

“Tell me, James, have you been raised in the faith?”

“I- what faith?” Surely John knew his mother never subscribed to the cult’s beliefs.

He shrugged. “Any faith.”

He shook his head no. “No. We’re not religious.”

John just hummed contemplatively but didn’t look surprised. Nor did he look surprised at the next, sudden question.

“Did you know about me?” He hadn’t even known he was going to ask the question until it was out, tumbling past his lips.

For the first time since his arrival, John’s face lost all traces of humor, of ease, of amiability. His eyes, the same eyes James saw every day in the mirror, bored into his own.

“No. No, I never had any idea. If I had known I had a child, I’d have been there for you. For her.”

James doubted that very much. Not because he doubted John; he had no idea whether he meant that or not. He doubted it because, even if he wasn’t locked away behind bars for the rest of his life, he knew his mother would never let this man near them. That’s something he would have known even before he found out just what his mother was capable of, what she’d done in Hope County. More than he trusted that the sun would rise tomorrow, he trusted that his mom would do anything and everything in her power and beyond to keep him away from any perceived threat.

And he knew his mom considered John Seed a threat.

John brushed past the serious moment easily, that same easy smile sliding back into place. “Tell me about yourself, James. A father should know some things about his son, don’t you think?”

James warily nodded. “…Like what?”

“Anything. Everything. What classes are you in? Do you have any hobbies? You’re 15, right? When is your birthday?”

“Uh- yeah. 15. I’m a sophomore. My birthday is June 21st.”

Though his facial expression didn’t change, James knew he was doing the mental math. And given that he didn’t say anything about it, the math clearly checked out.

“Are you driving?” John asked.

James shook his head no. “No. All the summer birthdays have driver’s ed in the spring semester. I have my permit, but mom’s only taken me out driving once, in a parking lot. I didn’t do very well, though.”

“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. It’s like anything else – you just need practice.” John smiled kindly, and James could almost forget the horrible crimes he was convicted of. In fact, if he wasn’t wearing the khaki jumpsuit, he was sure he would’ve let himself. “And what about school? How’s school? Your grades?”

“Fine. As and Bs, mostly. I’m taking all the regular classes. And my electives this semester are Spanish, debate, and study hall.”

“Debate? How are you enjoying that?”

James shrugged, uncomfortable bragging about himself. “It’s fun.” He left out that he was captain of the underclassmen debate team.

“And Spanish is an elective?” John asked in an interested voice. “Does your school not have a language requirement?”

“No, it does. Two years. But I want to take Spanish for all four. I just meant, I’m taking Spanish as opposed to French or German.”

John nodded. “That’s a very intelligent choice. Does your mother help you with your Spanish studies?”

James nodded, a bit taken aback that John knew his mom spoke Spanish. It wasn’t like she spoke it often. He was surprised it came up in their time together. “Yeah, sometimes. When I was first learning last year, she labelled everything in the house. And she’ll speak to me in Spanish sometimes when I want to practice.”

“She sounds like a wonderful mother.” John spoke softly, kindly, genuinely pleased.

“She’s the best.”

~

James had returned when he said he would, but he was very light on the details. When she’d asked how camping had been, all he said was “fine.” But she knew he hadn’t gone camping. She’d called the parents of the family he claimed to be camping with, and they were home.

James was lying.

Would he really lie about spending the whole weekend with a girl? He never used to lie to her.

Patience had gone out and purchased condoms, dental dams, and a few other small but useful things and left them in the top drawer of James’ bathroom. She considered leaving him a note, assuring him they didn’t need to talk about it if he didn’t want to, but eventually decided that leaving no note would convey the same message.

She was fairly certain she had James’ sudden secrecy figured out until a few days after his return. James had just gotten on the bus for school, and she was about to head to work. She pulled out her phone to check her banking app, debating the financial pros and cons of stopping for a coffee on the way.

She froze.

She double-checked that the name at the top of the account was hers. Then triple-checked. It was. She went into her checking account, to see where the staggering windfall of cash had come from.

And then she threw up.

~

James couldn’t focus at all. He hadn’t taken a single note, hadn’t read anything his teachers wrote on the board. He’d even been called on in government class, but he hadn’t even heard the question. His mind was elsewhere. Back in a Montana correctional facility with his dad.

His dad who was friendly, who missed flying his planes, who wished his siblings were housed in the same facility. His dad told him what each of the small tattoos on his hand meant, who laughed kindly when James clarified the latest teen slang he’d used, who promised to keep in touch and had already kept his word – a letter had arrived in his secret PO box just yesterday.

The same dad who was and remained a religious extremist, who’d used his legal knowledge to cheat people out of their homes and businesses, who’d cut off food supply to the Holland Valley. The same dad who’d tortured people, who’d skinned people, who’d murdered people.

James thought that meeting his dad would clear things up, but he’d never felt muddier…

~

John had aged well in the intervening 16 years. He had lines around his eyes, and his hair and beard had gone salt-and-pepper, but it worked. He looked just as good, if not better, than he had when she last saw him. How was it possible to age so well in prison? It hardly seemed fair.

He smiled at her from across the table, with that same charming smile and those sparkling white teeth. “Deputy. What a wonderful surprise.”

Patience glared at him. “Cut the shit and don’t call me that.”

“Patience Ekner.” The smile didn’t leave his face. “Or Rook, now, isn’t it? Cute.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you find this amusing, truly, but I actually need to speak with you.” They fell back into their old banter so easily that it startled her.

John leaned easily, comfortably, back in the cold metal chair. He nodded for her to continue.

“What the hell is that money?”

“It’s for my son,” he answered easily. Too easily. As if it were the most normal, natural statement in the world.

Patience had to restrain herself from leaping across the table and throttling him like she should’ve all those years ago.

“My son!”

All the mirth drained from his features and she was faced with the stony, terrifying look that lingered in the nightmares of so many Hope County residents.

“Our son. That you hid from me for 16 years.”

“He’s 15.”

“Pregnancy, dear. Also hidden.”

“And for good fucking reason!”

He scoffed. “I don’t think there’s any reason good enough to keep a father from his son. And James agrees with me.”

If looks could kill… well, John would’ve been dead long before he got her pregnant. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you even say his name.”

“Why not? It’s a perfectly good name. Strong, masculine, Biblical. I’m pleasantly surprised. I’d have expected you to name a child Björn or something ridiculous like that.”

Patience rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, John, your opinion didn’t actually factor into what I named my child.”

He smiled softly. “Yes, it did.”

“John, I am only here to tell you to leave us alone. And to take your money back. I don’t need it.”

“It isn’t just for you. It’s for James.” How calmly he spoke did nothing but piss her off even further. “I’m assuming you didn’t react well when James told you he’d visited me.”

Patience stayed silent and John grinned as she fell into the obvious trap.

“Oh…?” His tone was thick with blatantly-faux surprise. “He didn’t tell you? And I suppose you didn’t tell him you were here now?”

She remained silent, glaring.

“Interesting. It seems you’re both talking more to me than to each other.”

“Stop it. Just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.”

John shrugged. “I can leave you alone, yes, but if James wants a relationship with me, I have no interest in denying him.”

As Patience left, she heard him call out to her back, “You still look wonderful, Deputy!”

~

James heard his mother slam her bag down onto the table first thing when she came home. He walked into the kitchen to greet her.

“Bad business trip?”

His mom looked at him with a look he couldn’t place, one he’d never seen before.

“…Mom?”

“I wasn’t on a work trip, James. I was in Montana.”

Oh. That was the look. She knew. Of course she knew. James had never lied to his mom and he was apparently not very good at it. Not like her. He tried to quash down the unkind thought.

He also tried to quash down his initial impulse to apologize. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Well- at least, looking into this and contacting his dad wasn’t wrong. And he wasn’t going to apologize for that. The stealing and the sneaking off to Montana… that might warrant an apology.

“James…” Then his mom was rushing towards him, taking him into her arms, holding him so tightly she was practically crushing him.

And then he was hugging her back.

“How? How did you find this out?”

James sighed. “I was doing a Wikipedia deep dive on cults…”

His mom raised one eyebrow, perplexed. “Why were you doing that?”

He felt his face redden as he thought about Millie from geometry class. But he explained nonetheless, “My friend Millie is into true crime. She was interested in Jonestown, so I just… did a little research.”

He nearly jumped, he was so startled when his mom burst into raucous laughter. Seeing the look on his face, she tried to pull herself together.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry; it’s not funny. Just, that we got into this mess so you could impress a girl!” She laughed again and kissed his forehead. “Oh, you are so my son…”

James grinned at the joke.

“So. How did you realize?”

“I look like him.”

She nodded. “You really, really do.”

“I saw some videos of some of the trial.”

She nodded again, squeezing his arm in support. “That must have been hard.”

“I saw lots of interviews with you, too. Ekner?”

“Yes, Ekner,” she smiled kindly. “That was my grandpa’s name. It’s Swedish.”

James nervously chewed his lip, in much the same way his mom often did. “Yeah. You look Swedish.” He paused. “I don’t.”

“No. You don’t. I don’t know where John’s family is originally from.”

They were silent for a long moment until he finally spoke again. “Why?”

“Why what, honey?”

“Him.”

“Oh.” His mom looked down, as if gathering strength. And then she was honest with him. Truly honest. “You have to understand, it was like the world was ending. Not like the Peggies thought – that’s what we called the cultists, Peggies. Not literally, like them. But like the world as I knew it was ending. We had no phone, no TV, no internet. I was the last law enforcement officer left, and I wasn’t enforcing any laws. I was just trying to save people where I could.

“Everyone was armed. And everyone was using their arms. There was no food. I went hungry a lot. Hunted and fished when I could. My home, along with lots of others, had been burned down. I slept in abandoned cabins, unoccupied bunkers, and in trees stands. People were trying to kill me and I killed people. Always in defense of myself or others, but I’ve taken lives.

“I never thought I’d see a day where I could check the news on my phone, drive to work, go out to eat with friends, go on a walk unarmed… It was a completely different world. It was a war. Horrifying. The things I saw… well, I’m sure you read about them.”

James nodded. “I saw some pictures.”

He was once again pulled into his mom’s arms. “I’m so sorry, James. I never wanted you to see anything like that. I’m sorry you had to. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. I want- Just keep going.”

“Ok.” She nodded and continued, “It was basically the end of the world. And in spite of everything he was doing, he was charming. And we became… well, obsessed with each other. Rivals, almost, though that makes it sound trivial. Taunting each other over the radio, going out of our ways to make each other’s lives harder, even in ways not specifically related to the cult or the resistance…

“And then it just sort of happened.

“And then it kept happening. In spite of everything he was doing. I knew it was wrong. And it’s not that I didn’t care… it’s that I didn’t care enough.”

“…Oh.”

“But I can’t regret it because it brought me you.”

He returned her small smile.

“And I’m sure you’re angry with me. And I’m sure you’re hurt.”

Yes and yes. But he didn’t respond.

“You’re allowed to be upset, you know.”

“I am,” James admitted.

“Everything I’ve done has been to protect you. He’s not a good man.”

“I know.” He looked down at the linoleum flooring beneath them. “But he’s still my dad.”

“Just biologically.”

James simply shrugged. “Maybe. But shouldn’t I get to decide that?”

His mom’s eyes watered with unshed tears and her face became pink in an effort not to cry. “You can’t trust him, honey.”

James wasn’t sure he could trust her either anymore. But he knew in his gut he would trust her again someday. So, he spoke honestly. “I don’t trust him. I just want to know him.”

“I don’t think he’s the kind of person anyone can truly know.”

“Did you know him?”

His mom hesitated a long time before telling him, “I’m not sure.”

“Oh.”

She gently squeezed his arm again. “I can tell you what I do know?”

James looked into his mom’s eyes and nodded once. And for the first time, she began to tell her son about his father.