#keefe and i are having similar nights it seems

[eyes-above--the-waves]

WHAT THE EVER LOVING HELL IS THIS OFFICIATING?!?

[myfairkatiecat]

Team foster keefe headcannons?

YES YES YES OMG

So first, the angst

Sophie and Keefe have some hard stuff near the end of canon bc Keefe has a really hard time letting go of his urge to never trust, to separate off, to run away, and to steal from Sophie to do it (has anyone else noticed the sheer amount of times his little rogue plans involve stealing from Sophie?? Because I DEFINITELY HAVE)

There’s a scene similar to the one in nightfall where Sophie tells him off for it again but then she realizes that what he really needs to hear isn’t that he has to work as a team, but that whatever he’s thinking or planning or considering—he doesn’t have to do it alone. It can be the worst idea in the universe and Sophie won’t immediately shut him down. She’ll head him out and brainstorm with him and she PROMISES. She tells him she wants to be there for him and she can’t do it if he keeps shutting her out.

And when that seems to be working, she adds, “I promised you I wouldn’t let you mess this up, didn’t I?”

Tearful hugs.

Sophie realizes that actually being willing to listen to Keefe’s most outlandish ideas both broadens her own horizons and strengthens her connection with Keefe. Also, in some ways, it’s really helpful for Keefe as he heals from years of never even trying to be someone who could be taken seriously (because that always hurt too much. Because he’d come home to-)

For a while after the ending of canon, Keefe and Sophie spend a lot of time in the forbidden cities just… existing together. And they’re able to get therapy and a human understanding of mental health is HUGELY helpful for Keefe (not writing off abuse as a thing that doesn’t happen) but also for both him and Sophie (PTSD->insomnia and all the things)

And they’re able to heal from everything that happened in canon together. And eventually they’re able to come back to the lost cities.

And these two are freshly mentally strong and also have been around humans for a long time and they’re ready to dismantle the whole lost cities political system bc abskdhskshssj

And now they’re back to a fluffy, lighthearted Sokeefe dynamic that we all miss.

Keefe keeps up all the silly flirting and Sophie loves it.

Did I mention they’re dismantling Elvin political systems? Also matchmaking. Bye bye. Discrimination against talentless people? Twins and triplets? NO MORE. Not if Sophie and Keefe say so

They do some of this by being really huge figures from a well known rebellion that a lot of people used to hear about, sure. But also I think that as a couple they just sorta become the Elvin version of social media influencers, and become sorta this idolized power couple by the lost cities. This is how they’re able to sway public opinion, bit by bit, to question all the stupid systems the elves have

Silly fun flirty Sokeefe is back in the picture, just like they deserve.

Obviously their pasts aren’t erased

Sometimes Sophie still is kept up at night

Sometimes Keefe needs to be reminded of things

Sometimes they aren’t totally okay

But they’re better than they were. Their hearts aren’t broken in the same way. There are still scars, of course, but they’re healed.

And honestly they deserve to be a power couple taking on the lost cities injustices (oh did I mention their friends are TOTALLY IN on this part? Including their Elvin social media campaign. Biana and Marella handle their public image ofc)

Anyway this is definitely a roller coaster of angst and crack and fluff but WHATEVER HERE HAVE THE HEADCANONS!!

Thanks for the ask!

[smolandweirdwriter]

Serafina and The Black Cloak Reread Thoughts: Chapter Three

Babe wake up new slang just dropped: “gnawin’ on leather” 

Her pa doesn’t like mr poe gives “my dad won’t let us watch horror movies so you have to sneak them over in a different dvd cover if we’re gonna watch a horror movie when you sleep over later tonight” omg rowena & serafina girltime au?? (Lol sorry)

Oooooh the dynamo’s busted I wonder what thaaat meeeaannnssss (hehehe)

Biltmore being one of the few homes to have electricity is a nice reminder of the time period

“she’d been trying to follow [her pa’s] rules at least some of the time” lol

“Spotting an upholstered chair she felt an overwhelming desire to run her fingernails over the plush fabric” REAL

Her being shocked at flower vases & the idea of flowers INSIDE the house is so funny

Awwww poor sera, looking for her momma and siblings everywhere…

Serafina is super smart. just putting that out there. She’s brilliant and I love her

Oop the first description of Edith Vanderbilt kinda gives chatgpt-generated ngl (obviously it wasn’t bc it predates chatgpt & shitty ai writing generators, & this book is SO MUCH BETTER than anything an AI could generate regardless) 

“A refined and attractive woman, Mrs. Vanderbilt had a pale complexion and a full head of dark hair, and she seemed at ease in her role of hostess as she moved through the room.” Idk what about this makes me think “AI generated” but it just DOES

“Serafina loved to climb the tapestries at night and run her fingernails down through the soft fabric” AGAIN SHES SO REAL FOR THIS

OHOHOHO MR THORNE NAMEDROP:

“I’m sure that most of you already know Mr. Montgomery Thorne,”… Mrs. Vanderbilt said with a gentle sweep of her arm toward a gentleman. “He has graciously offered to play [the violin] for us today.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” Mr. Thorne said with a smile as he stepped forward. ... To Serafina, who’d been listening to Biltmore’s visitors her entire life, he didn’t sound like he came from the mountains of North Carolina, or from New York like the Vanderbilts. He spoke with the accent of a southern gentleman, maybe from Georgia or South Carolina.”

Serafina having an eye for fashion was NOT what I was expecting from this reread lol (she describes mr t’s outfit then says “all of which she thought went nicely with his silvery-black hair and perfectly trimmed sideburns”)

Hmmm interesting she actually sympathizes with/likes mr Thorne at first?? I did nOT recall that

Lol serafina liking to watch mr Thorne’s fingers move as he plays and wanting to pounce on them is so Cat of her

OMG BRAEDEN BRAEDEN BRAEDEN BRAEDEN

Apparently he looks “sickly, a little frail even” which I do not recall, but hes also got “watchful, sensitive brown eyes” and “a rather fetching tussle of wavy brown hair”

“Are you lost?” WE GOT IT WE GOT THE LINE but more importantly we got the NEXT LINE which is “May I help you find your way?” And hes described as not timid or shy but also not overly confident which I LOVE (fun fact this line is very similar to one of the characters of my other favorite kid’s book series, Keefe Sencen’s “you must be lost” line)

Lol Braeden always sharing his food with Gideon annoys the chefs i LOVE him

OMG HE BOWS TO HER WHEN SHE GIVES HIM HIS NAME LIKE SHE’S A PROPER LADY!!!!! MEN!!!! TAKE NOTES!!!!!! THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE!!!

Name drop at last, missing girl’s name is Clara Brahms. Honestly I’m a little sad Clara isnt a recurring character later on. Braeden, Serafina, and Clara could’ve been a good trio 

OOOOHH “She had heard the servants in the kitchen joke that their master must have secretly found the Fountain of Youth” what a NICE SET UP for how the black cloak keeps people young & serafina’s suspicion of mr Vanderbilt

Mr Vanderbilt: *wears dress shoes to go riding*

serafina: criminal activity right there. Lock him up

This was my favorite chapter so far, probably because it introduces us to so many different characters and moving parts. I like Mr. Vanderbilt a lot more than I remember (as a historical figure now that I know more about him & also as a character) and Braeden is, of course, perfect in every way.

[iam1withthepeggy]

Greetings mutual of mine, tis I, completing my duties as a mutual to randomly send you questions :D

If the main KotLC gang (Sophie, Keefe, Fitz, Biana, Dex, Linh, Tam, Marella, Maruca, Stina and Wylie) were in WoF, what dragon species would they be?

Sophie- I’m gonna have to say a SandWing. Like Sunny, because she’s sweet and caring. Also, their tails are like ten times more dangerous than any other dragons, there’s like poison in it or smthn, because she’s definitely the most powerful elf

Keefe- SilkWing. He’s been manipulated his whole life, similar to how Wasp was holding control over the entire continent of Pantala. He also cares SO MUCH about his friends, and (like some) bad luck with parents. I feel like he would be a flamesilk, so there’s an extra level of control right there 👀

Fitz- NightWing- some can read peoples minds (if born under a full moon) and others get prophecies, but anyways he’s a night wing.

Biana- RainWing. They’re definitely the prettiest dragon, and they may seem peaceful, but their magical death spit makes them so dangerous. Also, they can camouflage…

Dex- LeafWing because most of the time people forget he’s there (beginning of lost continent) (also it’s like more like no one knew they exist but I’m using it anyways)

Linh- Definitely a SeaWing. SeaWings are like the hydrokinetics of Pyrrhia lol

Tam- There’s not a doubt in my mind that he’s a NightWing

Marella- I would say probably a MudWing??? They can breathe fire, but only when it’s warm enough. I’m saying this one instead of SandWing or NightWing or anything because she’s a pyrokinetic (duh) but she needs people who make her feel wanted, so it’s kinda a metaphor.

Stina- I think she’s an IceWing because she makes other people feel so cold (like she’s mean not have frostbreath)

Wylie- I don’t know why but I get HiveWing vibes here???? Anyone????? Help?????

Maruca- SkyWing because it’s the only one I have left.

[rayniscatstatue]

Spice Night

Word count: 1641

Prompts: 21. "What's the point in having powers if you don't get to have fun?"

29. “That’s hot… what?”

71. “Why do you make loving you so damn hard?”

Character relationships: Biana Vacker and Tam Song (romantic), Sophie Foster and Tam Song (platonic), Biana Vacker and Keefe Sencen (platonic), Fitz Vacker and Biana Vacker (platonic), Keefe Sencen, Sophie Foster and Fitz Vacker (romantic)

Summary: Biana and Tam are both gamers that are rivals. They are end up falling for each other after some time gaming together. Little do they know their best friends Sophie Foster and Keefe Sencen are dating.

————————————————————————

Biana’s pov-

I see a known player to me in the distance as I move my mouse across my rose mouse pad that Keefe got me for my birthday. Well my best friend Keefe anyways.

The player had his classic black hair with silver highlights.

Tam fucking Song.

My known rival and enemy on Spice Night. A game that Keefe and his girlfriend introduced me to. Even though she reads for a living. She claims it has similar vibes to her favourite book.

Honestly Sophie is just so much like my brother. Speaking about Sophie and Fitz they are technically both dating Keefe. Who knows how those 3 got together.

Getting back to my worst enemy. I make my way into the rooftop looking over at him. Going through my inventory to take out a potion.

That's the fate of choosing witch at the start of the game. I'm fairly sure Tam chose vampire. I mean like that will do anything to help him. 

"I can see you up there, Love." I hear a voice, a familiar one too.

"Fuck off Tam, and don't call me that." I grit my teeth as I tap the keys on my keyboard. The glitter being distracting that frames the edge of my pc.

"Calm down, Vacker." I can practically hear him smirking through the mike. "Like that purple hair will do anything."

"You don't even get to call me by the last name. And I don't actually have purple hair." I spit back to the boy.

"Damn, spicy today." I click some keys and move my mouse so I fling across the buildings. Splashing down a potion of slowness on Tam as I grab out the broom and fly away. 

“I mean what is the point of having powers if you don’t get to have fun?” I ask him right in era shot.

“Because I l-” His words get cut off.

"Loser." I mutter to him through the mike as I fly away into the night. My character's purple hair flying wild in the wind as her gray eyes look into the distance.

I should really log off and say goodnight to my brother. I mean speaking about how him and Keefe are rooming in our beach house while Sophie is at her best friend's apartment. I think his name was like Tristan or something.

She never actually told us through. Just seeing photos from "T"'s plastered around the place.

I shut down the tab as I turn off the pc for now.

"Keefe, Fitz! When are we seeing Sophie again?" I shout as I run out into the hall. The strip lights going across the top of the hall currently dark blue.

"I think in three days, why?" I hear Fitz reply from the kitchen as I walk out into the living room.

"I want to meet her best friend, we still haven't." I twirl my hair around my finger as I see his boyfriend's arms wrapped around him.

"I think we all do." Keefe mutters, leaning his head on Fitz's shoulder. "I mean the guy seems emo from what we have seen of Foster's apartment."

"So did you see your rival?" Fitz gives a meaningful look as if it means anything.

"Yeah, Tam was a dick." I grab an apple from the fruit bowl as I take a bite.

"Anyone want to go in the pool?" Keefe asks.

"It's winter!" Fitz and I shout back to my best friend. "Why do you like him?" I ask Fitz.

"Honestly, who knows."

"Hey!" Keefe plants a kiss on Fitz's cheek.

"Just don't start making out you two." I throw the apple up in the air as I catch the half eaten thing.

"Biana Amberly Vacker!" Fitz grabs an apple from the counter as he throws it at me.

I catch it with my other hand while I take a bit from my first apple. "Thanks." I smile as o turn my heel.

"By the way, we are staying at Foster's for three nights!" Keefe calls after me as I head up the stairs.

Tam’s pov-

"My boyfriends and their sister and or best friend are staying for three nights." My best friend Sophie informs me as she walks into my room.

"Right, what are their names?" I ask as I spin around in my desk chair.

"Keefe, Fitz and Biana."

"Oh, I actually did forget."

"Oh my god Tam! How could you forget?" She pauses. "Isn't Biana that girl your always trash talking on Spice Night?"

Shit, she is fast.

"Possibly, just she is an annoying bitch." I brush my silver bangs to hide my eyes behind. It's like how Sophie always hides behind her hair.

"I sometimes don't get why I am your best friend, I should replace you with Linh." Sophie rolls her eyes as she takes a sip from her apple juice.

"How dare you replace me with my sister!" I just my hand up to my chest. Being dramatic. "Wait."

"What?" Sophie tugs out an eyelash.

"Dose that mean I have to meet them?" I clarify with the blonde girl in front of me.

"Yeah, Biana is going to kill me." She taps her foot on the ground.

"Aren't they also friends with Linh's girlfriend Marella and her best friend?" I ask.

"Yeah, So Keefe, Fitz, Biana, Marella and my cousin Dex are all friends. While it's kinda just you, me and Linh. Sometimes Jensi." Sophie walks out of my room.

"Righttttt, I hate this." I rest my head in my hands.

The next three days are going to be living hell. Especially if we invite Linh over and they invite Marella and Dex.

I take a sip from my orange juice sitting on my desk. I will be fir ver grateful that Sophie and I got two juice dispensers for our kitchen. One for her apple juice and another for my orange juice.

I hear a ring on the doorbell, the day that Biana, Fitz and Keefe will be here.

“I’ll get it!” I shout to Sophie as I make my way to the door holding onto my glass of juice.

“Thanks, Emo!” She uses the classic nickname for me because we all know what will happen if she says Tam.

I reach for the handle as I open the door. I am faced with a boy with perfect blonde hair and ice blue eyes. A boy and a girl with both dark brown hair and beautiful teal eyes.

Biana Vacker, my rival.

“So your Sophie’s best friend!” Biana chimes up.

“Yeah, nice to meet you.” I nod as I take a sip of my juice.

“Aren’t you like Marella’s girlfriend Linh’s brother or some shit?” Keefe asks. I see he is holding onto Fitz’s hand.

“Hey.” I hear Sophie’s voice from behind me as she runs up to hug Fitz and Keefe. “Thanks, Tam.”

Keefe looks stunned.

Fitz looks ready to punch something.

Biana looks betrayed by Sophie.

“Hehe.” I tug my bangs in front of my eyes. “That’s me, Love.” I cross my arms and use the name.

“No, no, no.” She steps forward and slaps me. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She shouts at Sophie.

My face stings. A red mark left there.

Probably for days.

“Because I knew that would happen, I just didn’t think you’d slap him?” Sophie throws her arms up in the air.

My glass slips out of my hand and shatters on the floor. Sending juice spilling and glass chunks flying.

Heads turn, the room feels like it is closing in on me.

“Just move on, fans will love to see us play together.” Biana brushes past me, purposely knocking into my shoulder.

“I’ll clean, it’s fine.” I turn my heel to go get a towel and the broom.

“Tam, wait.” Biana follows me.

“What?” I ask as I pull a towel from the cupboard.

“Why do you make loving you so damn hard?” The world stops as Biana grasps onto my hand.

Did. She. Just. Say. That.

“What?” I lean back against the counter.

“I like you, I have for a while I would say.” Biana takes a few steps back.

“Wait.” I grab her hand to pull her back. “I like you too, maybe this can be a different type of rivalry?”

“Your saying, I can kiss you?” The girl in front of me clarifies.

“Nah, I’m saying that I can kiss you.” I let go of her hand leaning on my hands. My hand now feeling cold not being in her’s.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

Biana steps towards me as she wraps her arms around my neck. I snake one arm around her waist as I lean on my other. She brings one hand up to pull me in.

My lips connect to her’s as the sparks fly.

Electricity within us.

And damn dose she taste good. Cranberries on the top of her lips. It’s like berries everywhere. The taste overwhelming me.

She pulls me closer as I cup her cheek with one hand. Leaning fully back on the counter.

I break away from the kiss. “So?”

“Finally!” I hear someone say instead of Biana.

We turn around to see who it is. Sophie standing there with a look on her face like she is a proud mother.

“Sophie!” Biana shrieks.

“Sorry.” She waves goodbye. “I’ll go find my boyfriends, probably making out on my bed waiting for me.”

“Sorry about her.” I say.

“Nah, I’m sorry for my best friend and brother.” Biana shrugs it off as she reaches for my hand. “That was hot…. What?”

“How was that hot?”

“Just was, Shades.”

“Your are not calling me that, Love!”

“Am so.”

We die down into a conversation making our way to sit on my bed. The rest of the day flying by together. If only this was a soulmate au.

[bookwyrminspiration]

New wings au, wooo!!

I absolutely loved it so much, I love how Fitz is stressed and scattered in a composed kind of way, idk if that makes sense but it's a particular vibe that you nailed

I love how he absolutely despises The Being as well, it's very funny

Also, that ending tho!!!

Biana, baby, are you alright? Do you need a hug?

I feel like their mental states would get a lot better if they just accepted their new behaviours and incorporated them into their persons

Fitz could be frazzled in his burnt out gifted kid way as he skims across the ground, occasionally flapping his wings as he walks and humming along to a tune in his head, probably a song that he heard from Sophie that he enjoyed (He seems like a pop person, like "Runaway" by Bruno Mars, maybe "Teen Idol" by Marina and the diamonds) because birds, as he compares his notes on "What The Fuck Happened To Us" and going into a fight or flight when someone surprises him, like puffing out his feathers and getting very ruffled and almost preparing for a fight, just instinctively, or flapping his wings when he jumps and just shooting out of the area and climbing back to his house.

Like, I can imagine him getting very skittish around unfamiliar things but also very cocky and confident about things he knows very, very well. Maybe he even gets an ego boost and preens his wings to make them perfect at all times and getting a fascination with his his reflection and how his eyes work.

Also skitting up the side of his house and falling asleep on top of it instead of in it. I can't describe the skitting part but like, half crawling up the side while flapping his wings to give himself a boost and having to remind himself that he is an elf and that elves stand and walk and don't snap at his friend for touching his things or getting into his personal space, a friend that very well knows that it's his area and his stuff and his bed and some stupid little owl isn't going to disturb it like how they disturb his nights and prey-

And then banging his head against a wall while trying to get it back into elf mode and a very sleep deprived Dex just standing there being so confused because all he did was inspect Fitz's pen when Fitz made a low squawking sound and glared at him and puffed out his feathers

Also Dex going through similar changes, except now he's super conscious of every noise he makes and goes out of his way to be as silent as possible.

Also Fitz making a high pitched "Brr?" noise whenever he's surprised or someone's getting his attention and staring at them with wide eyes and being very unnerving, considering he's Fitz

-Heathen

!! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I wasn't 100% sure with this chapter because like...I do not know how Keefe would actually react to his mom dying and the trio just kept making jokes when I was writing everything and I was just sitting there like blease you guyys. this is serious. I actually took out some in editing because when I was writing it I was like this is too many humor. But that's besides the point! the point is I'm thrilled you enjoyed the new chapter <33

(got long so under cut!)

also hell yeah I was going for exactly that vibe with Fitz!! Throughout the whole chapter he was just going "don't freak out everything's fine don't freak out everything's fine dont--" over and over to himself. He is trying so hard to be there for Keefe and to be supportive but also he has no idea what is going on because he doesn't have a monster and has never been to the room and Sophie and Keefe are acting like it's normal so he's gonna act like it's normal too but the walls are fucking moving

I'm not sure he despises the being, but he is definitely very very stressed around it. The last time he saw the thing it was thrashing around and screaming its head off as the place collapsed around them and it nearly took them out on accident with all that flailing, so he doesn't exactly trust it. He doesn't hate it it's just like if you got bit by a dog and then you were nervous around dogs. But he's tolerating it for Keefe's sake and because it seems calmer now...

Biana is going through some things right now, though I can't say what or whether she's okay without spoiling the next chapter. But herougaern that ending gave me so many problems because I kinda have this method of slightly winging things where I've got an idea of what I want but then I like to let it figure itself out in the story. smaller examples include what Sophie stole from the store at the last moment (I didn't actually know what she stole when I wrote that she stole it) and what Fintan told Marella about the stars and the dreamers (I had kind of an idea, but no concrete plan for what it meant). and then in this chapter Biana's thing came up before it'd entirely figured itself out so then I was just there like...what is up with Biana actually. someone please tell me. but I did figure it out, now she just has to!

you know what? I think your assessment is fair. Sophie seems to be doing better now that she's not freaking out about the wings or the new world she find herself in; she's back in contact with her parents and working towards taking down Phoenix and the Neverseen! Now that she's had her moment, it's time to focus on everyone else...we'll just see how they end up coping or accepting things if they do!

also wait hang on I love the idea of birds and humming songs, that's so cute wait a minute. frazzled Fitz comforting himself with music is so so precious. Also I literally drew on the fight or flight idea you said when writing today's chapter that's wings au canon right there baby!! His feathers puffing up when he's annoyed/embarrassed/scared etc. That is canon! He's trying to take up more space so people leave him alone and he can calm down, though the being didn't really seem to be paying him any attention.

Cocky but skittish...you may be onto something there. He's just trying to be there for his friends and acting like everything is under control, but also all of this is very very weird thank you very much and he's in way over his head and has no idea what to do about it. He has eagle wings he just woke up and grew eagle wings his life is very much not normal. How can he not be on edge in a situation like this?!

The preening I've typically attributed to Keefe, but there's nothing stopping that from infecting Fitz as well!! he's gotta make sure all his feathers are in order and that everything's set so he can go out there and. idk do something. what do you do when you're living in a group of your friends on the surface during an apocalypse of monsters. scrabble?

Fitz honey you don't have to sleep on the roof you have. You have a bed. It's canon we've seen it. Sophie watched you sleep that one time remember. when she broke into your house in the middle of the night. Please sir please don't sleep on the roof there are monsters outside that's kinda. that's kinda the whole premise of the au there are monsters outside. especially around where you are there are many monsters.

elf-mode vs bird mode is hilarious! I don't really think it'd fit with what I have planned for Fitz, but the contrast between the two is incredible. also you're so right Dex is sleep deprived. he hasn't figured out how to sleep yet. one day he'll learn how to sleep but not today. today he is chronically tired--sophie infected him with insomnia or something. perhaps the reason Dex likes to be up so late is partially because he's owl based and partially because it's quieter at night! not that the kotlcrew is very loud but being alive tends to make some noise. I personally like to think that Tam and Dex have a kinda night time friendship where they're existing in the same space at the same time when everyone else is asleep. they don't necessarily talk but they enjoy someone else being awake

Fitz *handshake* Echo: going brrr apparently. also you've just made me realize how unnerving he could be. like he's speifically got the funky teal eyes so him staring at people is like...why. your eyes are so bright stop it. stop looking at me like that. and because he usually only stares at Sophie during telepathy things when it's mutual, so having that intense focus on you is like sir what are you trying to do

anyway the point of all this is that Fitz is very dear to my heart and I love him immensely and I'm ecstatic to learn that you enjoyed the chapter!! now I gotta write the next one because this one gave me so much trouble. the end of my semester is nearly upon me, so perhaps I can write extra before the next semester starts...

[octoberobserver]

Hello again😉

So, my new idea is: living together but at Keefe's flat. Idk, Kelvin's house is invaded by rats or has problems with water/light whatever and he needs a place to stay.

Keefe obv is the hero of the day and offers his humble place to stay.

And it's minuscule, compared to kelvin's. And they are always touching, being millimetres apart and sleeping to closely if not together. Kelvin can see and hear Keefe taking a shower and he looks after he is done bc Keefe's hair is still wet and dropping water on his tan skin and Kelvin wants to go where they go.

Another idea but I don't know where it could be go is reverse time! Kelvin, ex Christian, decides to try everything he was always too scared to do and goes to the Satanist club (you can see i love this location). Here he meets Keefe, a sweet albeit a bit lost satanist/metalhead/what he was before Kelvin and the magic happens. It could be darker, with Keefe being not so sweet and naive and corrupting Kelvin piece after piece and it would be hot and smut as fuck. Obv no violence a part from consensual (or is it?) bdsm and similar. Not for everyone but interesting.

Other darker but hilarious idea: Keefe is a sex worker. He works on the streets and it's very dangerous and not the best for his health. You can put here all the violent and horrible clients you want. A night he is more down on his luck than usual and while sporting a black eye he meets Kelvin. Kelvin doesn't really want to pay for sex (he is celibate! The son of the major congregation's boss!) But he can't leave Keefe/he doesn't really understand that he is a sex worker and brings him to his home. Accidental sugar baby acquisition.

It's funnier if Kelvin has no clue and he is very oblivious to every effort of Keefe, who is totally in love with this man who just likes him so much as a person and is so generous without wanting anything bc Kelvin loves buying him everythjng). Obv they fall in love and pining and ecc. Maybe another spike of angst towards the end when Kelvin understands Keefe is a sw and thinks he loves his money and Keefe thinks Kelvin doesn't want him anymore bc he is damaged goods but everything ends fine.

Another very silly idea is this: first meeting era, Kelvin wants to convert Keefe, who is convinced this is a date. They clarify and become friends ecc. Then Kelvin wants to date Keefe but he thinks he is still converting him/doing church things. Even more bc Kelvin brings him only to church events as dates and quotes the song of salomon but he did these things even before so Keefe is justified to be so blind.

Other idea: bj (he is the best) and Kelvin's sister decide to have a wedding ceremony with everyone, finally. They invite Kelvin and Keefe as a couple. At the beginning they suppose that being such bffs deserves to have a shared invite but more they stay at this wedding more talking about being the next ones, anniversaries and buying home together and adopting they have to do and listen to. Everyone, even Kelvin's family, thinks they are together and it's embarrassing but Kelvin has thought about sharing all these life steps with Keefe before.

Ok, I have to stop, too many ideas!

I would love to finish many many series but if I could begin a new one, I think I would like to watch the knick or a very English scandal. But often I watch things bc I saw a bit before and thought it was cool so probably this doesn't help at all😅 I really follow too much my whims😣

I really like historical dramas and funny shows, better if they are secretly heart breaking.

Which is your fave character in Ted Lasso? Which was your first fandom/the first fandom you wrote for?

💫

Hi 💫Anon!

So sorry for the late reply. Oh wow I love these ideas 😍 I have always wondered what Keefe's place looks like. I'm still not 100% sure if he's moved in with Kelvin permanently? Though, it seems like he is after s2's events? Still, if he isn't, I would love to see his apartment in the future. And your idea is *chef's kiss*. I do love the notion of Kelvin being shown his privilege, and I know the show would do it in a hilarious way.

I adore the 'OMG they were roommates' trope so seeing them just living their shared lives together (even more), in whatever form, would be amazing on screen, tbh. And YES! Kelvin being subjected to the sheer hotness of his best friend and in such close proximity is just 🔥🔥🔥

Oooh that AU is very intriguing too. Almost a Pretty Woman homage with a more dangerous twist.

I want a first-meeting scene so bad in the show! I love your idea here, the misunderstandings are so in character for them both. And the potential for mutual pining is off the charts. I wanna know how these two loveable weirdos came to be and I hope we get to see that. This show loves flashbacks so fingers crossed!

BJ is the best! I was so sad we didn't get to see his and Judy's wedding on-screen so would really like to see this. BJ's baptism was so funny, I can only imagine what a wedding ceremony would be like lol. And yes, definitely, Kelvin getting all of the elbow-to-the-ribs nudges and winks about how "it'll be you next," and "when are you gonna put a ring on it" etc. So. GOOD! And poor Keefe is all confused and pining and not realising that Kelvin wants all of those things and more.

Oh, you've very good taste in shows! If you're a fan of historical shows and funny ones, I recommend Our Flag Means Death. It's about real-life pirates, is also an HBO show, and has a lot of mutual pining between friends. It's also funny and pretty heartwarming, considering the plot lol.

Oooooh that is a tough question! I love loads of people on Ted Lasso for all different reasons. I adore Rebecca and Keeley's friendship, and the relationship between Rebecca and Ted too. But I think my favourite character (by a small margin coz I really love pretty much everyone) is Roy. He's just so grumpy but also sweet. And it's a not-so-secret secret that he's based on a real-life footballer Roy (*cough* Keane *cough*) known for being particularly grouchy and that just really amuses me 😂😂

My very first fandom that I wrote for, if I remember correctly, (it was a VERY long time ago,) I think was Harry Potter? I was around 12 or so, so it was properly back in the day haha. It was a Ron/Hermione fic, I think? Harry Potter was pretty much the first fandom that I had an online presence with anyway.

What about you? What was your first fandom? What is a popular fandom you never got into?

My fic is almost done! Hoping to post it very soon. Hope you're well 😊😊

[an-absolute-travesty]

Elwin’s house

this uhh...may or may not be the first fanfic I’ve written O_O it’s just a oneshot and maybe it’s because it’s 1:30 AM but I don’t think it’s too awful!

Word count: 826

About: supportive dadwin, sad keefe

Keefe stood at the base of Elwin’s towering house. It was similar to Candleshade in some ways, only significantly smaller and made of clear glass like Havenfield. It stood at around 20 levels, minuscule compared to the massive Sencen residence. 

It was called Infirmary, supposedly Elwin’s husband had come up with the name but Keefe didn’t believe it for a second.  

Nonetheless, Keefe stood 10 feet from the door. Unable to convince his body to move any further. Tears streamed uncontrollably down his face.

Slowly, he inched forward. His arms wrapped around his body as if it would protect him from the world. 

Once he reached the door that had seemed 100 miles away, he opened it. Not even bothering to knock. He had done this so many times that he knew he didn’t need to warn anyone. 

The foyer of Elwin’s home was much more inviting than any of Keefe’s homes had ever been. A small hallway led to a room filled with comfortable couches, the harsh light the glass walls would’ve brought in stifled by warmly colored curtains. One of the dozens of pets Elwin owned lay napping on a soft rug. Upon closer inspection, it was Bullhorn, the demented little creature that seemed to have a fondness for Sophie.

Dammit, he had nearly forgotten about her. 

A new stream of tears ran down his face just as the others dried. 

He plopped himself down on one of the couches. He reached out for Bullhorn but a low growl from the creature reminded him to pull away. 

So there he sat, in utter silence, sobbing until he was out of tears. 

Finally, he heard the door behind him open.

“Oh gosh Keefe, you scared me.” Elwin stood just passed the door, holding a collection of shopping bags. He suddenly seemed to realize Keefe’s slumped posture and tear-stained face. Keefe could feel the worry from the couch...which only normally happened with a certain telepath girl that he’d rather not be thinking about at the moment. 

Elwin sat down his bags and walked to the couch, sitting down right next to Keefe and placing a supporting hand on his shoulder. 

“What’s wrong? Do you need to talk about it?”

Keefe squeezed his eyes shut and slowly shook his head. 

Elwin sighed, a gesture that meant ‘I know you need to talk about it but I guess I can’t push you’. 

This time it was Keefe’s turn to sigh.

“It’s just...it’s Sophie”

Elwin’s eyebrows furrowed. “What happened? Is she hurt?”

“No, no, it’s not like that” Keefe let out an embarrassed laugh. “It’s stupid, it doesn’t even matter” He shook his head. 

“Well it clearly matters at least a little”

Keefe hesitated to tell the story, but after he started he couldn’t stop and it all came tumbling from his mouth. 

“We...we were under the panakes tree, everything was perfect, the alicorns were playing in the field, the sun had just risen because we spent all night working on Black Swan stuff. So...I decided that I’d tell her how I felt. 

She didn’t even say anything. She just sat there for a minute before she got up and just...ran away. She kept just shaking her head. I’m guessing that’s a hard no.” 

A sharp laugh escaped Keefe’s body before he covered his face with his hands.

“It’s just...it’s so stupid. She’s just a girl, I shouldn’t be so upset. I just...I can’t help it”

Elwin upgraded his hand on the shoulder to a full arm hug.

“You of all people should know that emotions are natural, Keefe. It’s ok to be upset about stuff. Like that one time I spilled my cup of slumberberry tea and cried because I couldn’t sleep and it was the last that we had.”

They both chuckled, the lighthearted story a brief distraction from the conversation at hand.

“My point is, it’s okay to feel things. Maybe Sophie didn’t mean it that way and it was all a misunderstanding. Or...if she did then everything will still be okay. Trust me, kid, I’ve been around since human Victorian times. Life goes on, but for the moment you should be able to let your feelings out.”

Elwin pulled Keefe into a giant bear hug, Keefe buried his face to his neck like an upset child would do to their mother. 

Once they finally pulled away, Elwin grabbed Keefe by the arms.

“Tell ya’ what kid, how about we invite over all the guy friends, Fitz, Dex, Tam, and we all play a game of base quest.”

“No way, you and your husband always win. We don’t stand a chance”

“Exactly, losing a game of base quest for the 5th time in a row will give you a different thing to cry about, perfect distraction if you ask me.”

Keefe laughed a real laugh and knocked him in the arm.

Maybe everything would be okay after all.

[stellarune]

kotlc yt au hc bc i want to write but cant *actually* write so its the next best thing

biana makes historical versions of famous costumes (disney, barbie, you name it) shes basically the cosplay queen. she did a lot of stitching by hand before her accident which cost her her arm, so now she mostly does it with a machine (look, amputee!biana is in every single on of my human aus). her videos are very chaotic bc shes mostly just making it up as she goes, but in the end, she gives a proofed step by step how to for the dress/coat/wtv. since shes so rich, all of her paterns are free as well. she has around 3m subscribers. she does charity streams.

dex is a maker. he does reproductions of weapons he likes from video game, movies, animes you name it. he has an ongoing series called “will i finally manage to make a lightsaber this year ?” it comes out every year in july, and is one of hs most viewed videos. he also works to make his own patinas and experiment with different kinds of finnish for his pieces. he took a year off off youtube at one point to learn how to make jewellery, and now hes back with a store, and some custom rings ! he has around 1.5m subs, but some of his videos can get as many as 10m views. he never monetizes his videos.

fitz is a baking youtuber, in theory. the first few years on his channels were basically just baking tutorials without voiceover. but he did one live strem for 100k and the fans were absolutely shook at his voice and face, and he just never could go back to anonimity. how did he get that many subs ? well, all of his videos had the fuck ups included, and step by step guides on how to fix these mistakes. also the editing job was flawless. now he does baking experiments, and some cakes on request. he has a few monetized videos, but only with small companies that really need advertizing, or ridiculous products. (hes been known for doing a video sponsored by chin workout equipent) he has around 3m subscribers as well.

keefe is the random guy. he does art challenges, and trends, and just videos that seem pulled out of nowhere (”i set up a fake shower in the middle of the street lol”) he takes part in drama, as in he watches from the sidelines, then makes a shitty edit summarising the whole thing. hes never pretended to eb serious, and the people watching him know hes not. hes released one song on spotify that is just a compilation of everytime katherin bennett said urinoirs in That Video. hes fairly unproblematic though, and everytime he sets up soemthing crazy like the bathroom stall, he finds a way (legal or not) to let anyone that might need it use it. he has arund 6m subs, and definitely does big charity dnations

linh and marella are gamers. they dont have the same channel, but their content is fairly similar, even though their approch to it is wildly different. marella always tries to follow the rules so much she creates chaos, and linh generally gets distracted by side quests for a whole episode. theyre mostly known for their extremely different DBH gameplays, with marella ending up with the bad ending somehow, even though she mostly followed the good storyline, and linh killing way too many people unnessessarily by panicking. they both have around 5m subs

tam and sophie both are editors. theyre the ones that make the videos. sophie works with biana keefe and fitz while tam works with linha and dex. marella has jensi. theyre the ones that get the crew together. 

linh and marella decide to do a collab, but jensi cant edit marellas half, since he has to leave for college or wtv, so sophie, who watches a lot of tams side videos (conspiracy theories) sends him an email being like “hi, i heard you needed an editor, and i dont sleep ever and editing keeps my mind off things i dont wanna think ab, so im here if you need me. oh and btw, links to the channels im the editor of” 

since sophie is a vv good editor, tam answers like “oh yeah thatd be great heres my number !” and now theyre chatting, both for work and just as friends. 

then comes the actual collab

its nothing special, ut its a fan fave, both linah and arella win a ton of subs from it

then fitz, one night, is like “oh, btw, do you know anyone who lives near **** bc im looking for a roommate” and sophie is like “yeah i gotchu, y cous dex lives nearby, and hed appreciate a bit of help for the rent so ill hook u up” 

anyways, theres a small “wait youre THAT sophie ????” from tam, but it doesnt matter, fitz and dex move in together. 

soph and biana are long suffering parents looking at their children who have a crush on each other, without realizing they also are the children who have a crush on each other. 

marella and linh get together quite easily, comparing to the rest 

they simply did a qna; and one of the questions was like “are you dating ???” and marella is like “nah, i wish” and linhs like “id be down”. and thats it.

dex and fitz egt together after an accidental kiss

sophie and biana are tipical oblivious wlws, and start dating after a kiss to piss off homophobes (its in character dont @ me)

no one knows wtf keefe and tam are. they dont know if they are dating, or hate eachother, or have the bromance of the century. its confusing to everyone and they like it that way.

does anyone want a part 2 ??

[fieldsofplay]

Favorite Albums of 2020

25. Dehd – Flower of Devotion

Rather than look back on the shit year that was 2020, lets keep our eye on the hope of the horizon.  Speaking of which, Dehd herald much of what’s to come on this here list.  While as previously mentioned a shit year for most everything besides presidential politics, 2020 proved to be a great year for good old fashioned guitar music.  Could I be accused of curling up with my version of musical comfort food? Perhaps.  But starting off with Dehd, we have a type of band that used to be everywhere and now seems to be almost nowhere.  Jangly lo-fi guitars, perky drums, and straightforward unadorned singing.  About five years ago you couldn’t throw a rock in Brooklyn without hitting a band like this, but now that that fad is long gone.  I’m glad that Chicago’s Dehd are still carrying the torch.  

24. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

I’ve always liked Perfume Genius, but for whatever reason Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is the album that took him out of the realm of casual background musical encounter to something I sought out.  Chamber pop has never really been my thing (except for those couple summers where Grizzly Bear was totally my jam), but here the torch songs catch fire by the compressed force of Michael Hadreas’ longing.  This record also pulls off the impressive feat of each song gradually morphing just a bit from what proceeds it, so that the whole record sounds similar and yet each song carves out its own little generic niche, the whole thing united by the quivering power of that pleading voice.  

23. 2nd Grade – Hit to Hit

If you ever found yourself wondering what Guided by Voices would sound like if they wanted to be Big Star instead of punk rock Kinks, we now have the answer, and it’s Phily’s 2nd Grade.  In the noble tradition of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, Hit to Hit’s 24 tracks breeze by in a mere 41 minutes and 8 seconds.  An earworm sunny melody, a quick guitar hook, a second verse (maybe), and poof, each song is gone before you could ever miss it.  You would think variation would be difficult working within such tight musical corners, but while each song clearly shares common DNA, there is actually a lot of variance here, from weepy country ditties (“Bye Bye Texas”) to overdriven stompers (“Baby’s First Word”) though they all tend to orbit the same (big) star.  

22. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush

I’ll be the first to admit that The Slow Rush isn’t my favorite Tame Impala record, not by a long shot.  Having said that, this album still feels like it got short shrift this year (not that anyone can really complain about that in these here times).  If we never knew that Lonerism or Innerspeaker or Currents existed, I wonder how much people would be head over heels for this album.  “One More Year” “Is It True” and “Posthumous Forgiveness” are all top notch Impala jams.  Seems like this album is the soundtrack for the chilled out summer hangs that we never got to have, and thus it’s fitting that it seems condemned for the ash-heap of history rather than the late-night come downs we never got up to.

21. Against All Logic – 2017 – 2019

Ah, speaking of complicated musical relationships, I can never seem to chart a clear course with Nicolas Jaar.  The music he puts out under his own name never seems to do much for me, but I dug his collaboration with Dave Harrington as Darkside, and I really love most everything he’s put out as Against All Logic.  While admittedly not a great year for house music—normally a liberating genre of communal interconnectivity, now a cruel reminder that we all live in Footloose—a banger remains a banger, and 2017-2019 is full to the brim with them.  While I honestly can’t remember the last time I went dancing, I’ll still crank up “Fantasy” and bop around my living room, literally dancing by myself (lets be honest, something I would have done pandemic or no).  

20. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Fetch the Bolt Cutters has had a lot of great things said about it this year, so I don’t really have to add that much.  What I will say is this is perhaps the most interesting percussion I’ve ever heard on a record.  There is percussion all over the place, but almost none of it in the form of full-kit drumming.  Fiona always used the left hand on the piano as the rhythmic center of her songs, but here there is drilling, tapping, rapping, patting.  The phrase DIY gets tossed around all the time (and almost never applied to big money, big label Fiona) but to me the most impressive thing about this record is how it always sounds like she is sitting at a rickety upright piano in the corner of a living room, while everyone congregating around keeps the beat by tapping on pots and pans, the walls, whatever is at hand.  I’ve truly never heard anything like it.  

19. Advertisement – American Advertisement

Godbless Seattle’s Advertisement. So long as there is cheap beer, old shitty cars driving with the windows down, and the U-SofA, there’ll be bands like Advertisement.  Straight out of the vein of Cheap Trick and the more recent White Reaper, Advertisement play power pop with the emphasis on the power.  Sometimes this type of music gets called sleazy, but honestly I don’t get it.  I think its probably because you can imagine it playing while Wooderson drives around Austin looking for redheads. While we rightfully cancelled the song of summer this year, “Upstream Boogie” would have gotten my vote, perfect for backyard bbqs and cannonballing into creeks.  

18. Nation of Language – Introduction, Presence

I didn’t set it up this way, but if Advertisement has a diametric opposite, its probably Nation of Language.  Where Advertisement is all frayed edges and foam, Nation of Language is as buttoned up as those terrible sports jackets people wore in the early ‘90s.  While its not as good as my beloved Black Marble, those bands share enough DNA to make me a big fan of this synth pop gem.  It’s not as dark as the cold-wave Black Marble, but it does share that bands fondness for stark baselines and crisp arpeggios.  If you’ve ever envisioned your life as a scene from a John Hughes movie, Nation of Language could easily be playing in the background.

17. The Soft Pink Truth – Shall we Go on Sinning so that Grace May Increase?

Indulge me in a moment of naval gazing.  Every year as I put these things together I reach a point where I’m lack “damn, this album is this low on the list?” And the point at which that thought enters my head is usually indicative of how good a year for music it was.  Now 2020 wasn’t a good year for anything, and I probably spent the least time of any year listening to music, new, old, whatever.  For the most part I just listened to the Grateful Dead and ambient albums.  However, for my idiosyncratic tastes, 2020 was actually a pretty fucking incredible year for new music, as evinced by the fact that this album is all the way down at 17.  

Earlier on in 2020 as I was bombarding my poor local music text thread with yet more of my inane musings, I think I declared this a top 3 album of the year.  And I wasn’t lying!  “Pretty” is often a dirty word in aesthetic appreciation, but this is certainly the “prettiest” album of the year in the best sense of the word.  From the Drew Daniel half of Matmos comes Shall we Go on Sinning so that Grace May Increase?  A record that is somehow simultaneously deep house and feather light, so much so that it needs its own dumb internet music writing moniker—shallow house? wide house? vacation house? (actually kinda like that last one).  With vocals from Jana Hunter, Angel Deradoorian, and Colin Self (with whom I wasn’t previously familiar) this thing will simultaneously make you want to tap your foot and drift off into the clouds.  This is album is like the prayer Madonna sang about all those years ago.  

16. Kurt Vile – Speed, Sound, Lonely KV

It’s not at all surprising that if Kurt Vile decided he wanted to go country western he’d be really fucking good at it.  First of all, he’s an exceptional acoustic guitar picker.  Secondly, his voice, while always befitting his hazed out urban rockers, has just enough twang to it that in retrospect it always sounded a little bit country.  This record also gives me room to offer up an homage to the late great John Prine, for whom the EP is essentially a tribute.  Vile covers two Prine songs, dueting with the man himself on “How Lucky.” Saying goodbye is never easy, but on Speed, Sound, Lonely (both the album, and the song more or less by that name) Vile manages a fitting tribute to a lost legend.  

15. Lomelda – Hannah

The reviews of Hannah really did Lomelda a disservice.  Sure, they were glowing, but they made it sound like this was some weepy milquetoast singer songwriter affair, when it’s actually a knotty album full off elliptical piano and fuzzed out electric guitar.  Its 14 tracks hurtle by, largely due to the fact that almost all of them are under 3 and a ½ minutes.  Things really get going with the second track, “Hannah Sun” with is squiggly synth effects and driving acoustic strums carrying on Hannah Read’s musings.  It’s an album of relentless forward musical movement even if the vibe feels like it’s always looking back over its shoulder.  Basically this album is what emo would sound like if it wasn’t made by the worst people in the universe.  

14. Shabaka and the Ancestors – We are Sent here by History

Jazz! Another great year for jazz (Asher Gamedze’s Dialectic Soul and Keefe Jackson, Jim Baker, & Julian Kirshner’s So Glossy and So Thin are with a strong group that just missed the cut).  In the midst of an excellent jazz renaissance (you gotta use super annoying words like “renaissance” when talking about jazz) Shebaka Hutchins remains my absolute fave of the bunch, and We are Sent here by History is probably my favorite thing he has put out so far.

13. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

While I really liked Waxahatchee’s low-fi emoish debut—American Weekend—I’ll readily admit I wasn’t much about the popier albums that followed, frequently jesting, honestly, that Allison was my preferred musical Crutchfield sister.  All that changed for me with Saint Cloud.  I’ve certainly drifted far off into country and Americana as I’ve aged, and it appears the same came be said for Katie Crutchfield.  These songs have a giddyup to them but they never break out into a gallop, allowing the strength of the melodies to carry them along across the plains, with just the right hint of twilight.  Saint Cloud is the sound of Patsy Cline if she played to roadside inns rather than the Grand Ol’ Opry.  

12. Neil Young – Homegrown

This was the hardest album to place on the list this year.  For starters, should it even count? Clearly I say yes.  While some of these songs have been available for over 30 years, as an album, Homegrown was a “new” release here in 2020, even though it was originally slated to come out in ’75 between On the Beach (my personal fave Neil record) and Zuma.  As a pure piece of music, is it better than most, if not all, of the records that follow? Of course yes.  But what does a new Neil Young record mean in 2020? As a thought experiment its fascinating.  Do we value this album within the musical context of 2020 or 1975? Fortunately, it’s an even more enjoyable listen than it is a thought experiment.  From the first strums of “Separate Ways” you’re like “oh shit, this is the vintage stuff.” Gentle amber acoustic numbers (“Try”) share space with electric stompers (“Vacancy”).  The best thing you can say about Homegrown is that if Neil had originally decided to release this instead of Tonight’s The Night, it would have fit right in amongst his unimpeachable run from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere up through Zuma.  A classic is still a classic, no matter what year it finally sees the light of day.  

11. Destroyer – Have we Met

Ah Dan Bejar, boy was I wrong about you.  I kinda got into Destroyer’s Rubies, I loved his contributions to Swan Lake and The New Pornographers, but yet when Chinatown started really making waves, I just couldn’t do it.  It was soft rock! I hate soft rock! I hate everything about it!  This preconceived notion wasn’t helped by the fact that I saw him open for the War on Drugs in Pontiac once and he was so drunk he could barely stand up and had to read his own lyrics from a sheet.  And yet, for some reason I never really gave up on it. I can’t tell you why exactly, but two summers ago Chinatown just slowly became my go-to for early morning / late afternoon strolls. I found comfort in giving myself over to its pillowy soft embrace / cheating on my own aesthetic judgments.  Now that I’m card-carrying Bejarhead, I greeted Have we Met with open arms, and I was not disappointed.  The synths glimmer, the guitars add just enough punch, and his lyrics remain sharp as ever.  Its fitting that this was the last concert I saw before the iron curtain fell.  The one thing I had always turned my back on ended up being the last memory of dionysian group enthrallment I had to carry with me out into the desert of social isolation.  Come back soon Destroyer, come back soon, everyone.

10. Deeper – Auto-Pain

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because post punk is back! I always say my favorite genre is ‘sad songs you can dance to’ but post punk is a close second.  When I was in college post punk underwent a bit of a renaissance in the form of Interpol (back when they were still good), Bloc Party (ditto), Franz Ferdinand, and a whole slew of British one hit wonders (Maximo Park, Futureheads, Art Brut, the Bravery).  Fortunately, as is always the case, what’s old is new again, and stark melodic bass lines, angular guitars, and moody introspective speak-singing are back in full force.  Of the three post punk bands gracing this here top ten (Deeper, Fontaines DC, and Crack Cloud) each has its own little slice of the generic pie.  Fontaines have the deep gloom of Interpol/Joy Division, Crack Cloud ripple with the staccato energy of Gang of Four, and Deeper have the wiry dancieness of, well, Wire. So long as leather jackets and black and white photography remain cool, there’ll always be bands like this, and thank god for that.  In a true sign o’ the times, I learned about this band from some random girl’s Tik Tok in my for-you feed.  She repped five bands, two of which are in my top three, so I was like, sure I’ll give this band Deeper a go.  God bless the internet.  Finally, Deeper get bonus points for naming a song “This Heat,” who I’ve been spending a lot of time revisiting this year, and whose spikey guitars are all over this record.  

9. The Flaming Lips – American Head

There are few things as satisfying in art as being genuinely surprised by a beloved artist you had given up as culturally dead.  Since putting out their last masterpiece (2009’s Embryonic) the Lips have put out a string of good, if inconsequential, albums that befitting the ethos of the band could best be described as half baked (The Terror, Oczy Moldy, and a series of collaborative experiments).  Basically, they had reached that dreaded nadir where I was no longer interested in listening to their new output (cough The National, cough cough Arcade Fire).  So what made me give American Head a chance? That reader, is the point of art criticism! I can’t remember how the blurb on pitchfork read exactly, but I knew it referenced Tom Petty and a return to a preoccupation with more Earthly concerns—namely ‘70s heartland rock.  Well, this sounded intriguing, and boy was I not disappointed.  Sure, the Flaming Lips have already reached their sell-by date twice over (first in 1992, immediately followed by their MTV reinvention on 1993’s Transmissions from the Satellite Heart; and then again in the late ‘90s with the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones, followed by their creative pinnacle, ‘99’s symphonic masterpiece The Soft Bulletin), so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that this band could rise from the dead a third time.  Only, for the most part, they didn’t.  I guess I’m not surprised that American Head failed to reach a broader audience. Most people probably aren’t even aware that they are still a going concern, and after the failures of the last decade it makes sense that most weren’t interested in more tunes from the Oklahoma freaknicks.  But for those willing to give the band another chance, American Head easily delivers their best album since Embryonic, if not all the way back to Yoshimi.  Mixing ‘70s Americana with the star gazing of Soft Bulletin’s “Sleeping on the Roof,” the Lips deliver their best album in decades by foregoing the parlor tricks and returning to what they do best, taking trips to distant galaxies while keeping their feet firmly planted in the soil and songcraft of Oklahoma.

8. Cut Worms – Nobody Lives Here Anymore

This one is pretty easy.  Do you like George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass? If yes, listen to Nobody Lives Here Anymore and revel in this double album’s upbeat acoustic rock mediations.  If no, well there’s plenty of other good stuff out there.  Not quite as metaphysical or orchestral as All Things Must Pass, Nobody Lives Here Anymore still manages to hit that rockabiliy-pop sweet spot that Harrison used to mine.  I’m not quite sure what the definition of “troubadour” is, but it feels safe to call Cut Worms a troubadour, which is certainly better than his terrible stage name.  

7. Cigarettes for Breakfast – Aphantasia

Similar to Cut Worms, Cigarettes for Breakfast also involves a simple influence equation.  Do you pray at the altar of Loveless? If so, Aphantasia is just the record for you.  Sure, it’s a bit of My Bloody Valentine paint by numbers (“Breathe” even features the same squally guitar noise [it’s really hard to try and describe My Bloody Valentine effects ha] as “Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)”) but when you’re as into shoegaze as I am, that’s never really a bad thing.  Plus, I’m being a bit unfair.  Everyone with textured tremolo heavy wall-of-sound guitars and cooed vocals is going to inevitably be compared to MBV, and Cigarettes for Breakfast do enough to chart their own course.  Perhaps most interesting is the musical journey this record charts.  Its loudest moment is its opening, where pummeling guitars more reminiscent of Sonic Youth with a touch of Dinosaur Jr. rip across hardcore style drumming. From there each song becomes a little more ambient, until closer “If Someone Could Help Me, Please” more or less floats away on its shimmering sheets of beautiful noise clouds.  In this sense, it bears a resemblance in structure, if not in sound, to Deerhunter’s Cryptograms, another album I spent a lot of time revisiting this year.  A shutout here is owed to the fine folks at Radio K, who had me diving for my shazam as this thing ripped across their airwaves.  So long as there is college radio, there’ll be a new crop of kids discovering via Kevin Shields that the electric guitar contains endless sonic possibilities.  

6. Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death

The second entry in our top-ten post punk trio is A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.  I’ll admit, on first blush it’s kind of a dumb band name (I just assumed they were some hardcore band from Washington DC chasing those Dischord Records glory days), but when you learn that the “DC” stands for Dublin City, it all clicks, as this band is sorta inescapably Irish in the way that James Joyce is.  Now this fact at first was also off-putting—if I went the rest of my life without ever hearing the Dropkick Murphy’s again I’d be quite content—but eventually it becomes integral to their sound, and not just because of the brogue in Garin Chatten’s vocals.  “Love is the Main Thing” is an incredible song in many ways, most notably because of the hypnotic quality of the drumming with its counterpoint between riding cymbal and staccato toms, but perhaps in the main (*wink*) for the way it manages to connote the weariness of a grey urban environment without ever being explicitly about it.  Just as Turn on the Bright Lights managed to perfectly capture New York in 2001, A Hero’s Death to me is the aural equivalent of a dense urban center like Dublin, especially after nightfall.  

5. Imaginary Softwoods – Annual Flowers in Color

It should come as no surprise that I listened to A LOT of ambient this year, and to me there was no better electronic record to chill the fuck out to during this insane year than Annual Flowers in Color.  I absolutely loved Emeralds’ Does it Look Like I’m Here? and was devastated they never followed that gem (*wink*) up.  In the immediate aftermath of the demise of Emeralds Mark McGuire’s solo albums got a lot of attention, but apparently the person I really loved in Emeralds was Imaginary Softwoods’ John Elliot.  Annual Flowers in Color is like if Dead City’s, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts were waiting in the departure’s lounge of Eno’s airport.  At the heart of the album lies the 10 plus minutes of “Another First/Sea Machine.” I could listen to this song forever, and on some particularly WTF 2020 lakewalks I more or less have.  Chunky synths, arpeggios that drift off to infinity, ‘80s soundtrack nostalgia.  I could live in these Softwoods for the rest of my sonic days.  

4. Pottery – Welcome to Bobby’s Motel

In another moment of nostalgia for my college years, Pottery are a welcome return to weird ass experimental Canadian bands.  They don’t sound anything like the Unicorns, but in spirit Pottery kind of remind me of them.  I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink here and elsewhere bemoaning the fact that Pitchfork (or perhaps, me) isn’t cool anymore, and to me no band embodies this more than Pottery.  They take a bunch of fun disparate elements—Talking Heads dance art rock, periodic weird pitch shifted vocal effects, hazy deep purple style guitars, and Queen style machismo disco—throw them into a witch’s cauldron, and come up with something off the wall that sounds like nothing else but is also instantly familiar.  This is the type of thing Pitchfork would have been all over in 2007, but instead now they’re too busy chasing conde nast clout clicks.  Oh well, nothing gold can last. But enough negativity, this here is a celebration of the joy of new music, and no new band embodies that unbridled joy like Pottery.  Along with Fontaines DC, this is the band I wish I most could have bopped around to with a bunch of sweaty strangers in the 7th St. Entry or Turf Club.  You can just imagine the call and response vocals and funky grooves getting the people moving.  Oh well, hopefully we’ll soon all be rocking the vaccine, they can breeze through town, and I’ll be the first person on the dance floor embarrassingly pumping my fist a half beat behind the rhythm.  

3. Pure X – Pure X

To paraphrase Same Elliott in the Big Lebowski, sometimes there’s a band, and well, sometimes there’s a band.  For me this year, that band was Pure X.  I absolutely loved their debut Pleasure way back in 2011, when lo-fi reverb heavy slow guitar music (ie, Galaxie 500) was all the rage. Their follow up Crawling up the Stairs was so bad I didn’t even bother listening to Angel, though perhaps that also owed a decent amount to just how terrible the art on that record is.  (I’ve since remedied this mistake; turns out that record rules).  Being that as it may, I can’t particularly tell you what drew me in to this year’s self-titled album, a full nine years after Pleasure first graced the stage.  In one sense it’s probably because Pleasure is one those albums that just never went out of my rotation.  Whenever the fahrenheit tips past 90 and the walk to the bodega is a few blocks longer than you’d like, that record always hits the spot.  Maybe I just knew this was the record I needed this year.  Either way, from the first bars of “Middle America” I was hooked.  The guitars crash over you, but never in a threatening way. Rather, they envelop you like a weighted blanket, comforting you in their sonic embrace.  Nowhere is this more true than on “Fantasy,” easily my favorite song of 2020 (especially since this was a year entirely devoid of dance floor bangers).  If this album came out in 1999 rather than 2020 I would have hit the repeat button on my discman and listened to this song forever.  

2. Crack Cloud – Pain Olympics

Pain Olympics is the answer to the question that no one asked: what if Arcade Fire’s (back when they were good) communal uplift was paired with Gang of Four’s stark anthem’s of industrialism’s collapse?  While on first blush this might sound like your standard album of punkish fist pumping angst, from when the female vocals (sorry there are too many people in this band for me to be able to figure out whose who) come in on opener “Post Truth (Birth of a Nation)” Pain Olympics reveals itself to be a very strange animal (likely a unicorn of some sort), especially as little orchestral swirls creep into the mix, giving it an almost Judy Garland (in hell) quality.  This subtle genre pastiche is given its best effect on stunner “The Next Fix.” That song starts out as an elastic spoken-word call and response addiction rumination, at the minute mark it starts to segue into a vocoded chill raver, then some horns crop up out of nowhere, then a spoken word passage, then at the two minute mark a chorus of voices come in, doing their best Broken Social Scene in the truest sense of the phrase.  This is perhaps one of the strangest records I’ve ever heard, but what is strangest of all is just how beautiful it is.  Crack Cloud are not for everyone, but if you really give it a chance, the returns are limitless.  

1. SAULT – Untitled (Rise) / Untitled (Black Is)

You cannot tell the story of 2020 without SAULT, which is why this pair of records is here at the top, even if under the influence of sodium pentothal (lets be honest, veritaserum) I might lean more towards Pain Olympics.  In June, the “anonymous” London project put out Untitled (Black Is), and then quickly followed that gem up with September’s Untitled (Rise).  Perhaps more amazing still is that these two albums, released so close together, have unique personalities.  Black Is is more pop/R&B whereas Rise has a dancy, electr(on)ic feel.  I lean more towards the latter, but honestly, both albums are so overstuffed with amazing moments that it’s borderline unbelievable that one outfit could put out so much amazing music in such a short span.  While these records would chart high even if sung in Hopelandic, there’s no escaping the social import of the lyrics.  One need look no further than Black Is’s “Don’t Shoot Guns Down” for the 2020 dance party at the end of the world.  As if that weren’t more than enough, it finds its analogue on Rise’s “Street Fighter,” and that’s SAULT in a nutshell: two albums in constant communication with one another, and more importantly, with the state of the world.  Guns down.  Don’t Shoot.  Let’s dance.  

[zaedtalost-writes]

SendMeAPrompt - “Pirates?!” [T]

Prompt Transcript

Anonymous Said:  You are an aristocrat preparing for a long voyage by steam airship. While inspecting the ship the night before departure, your vessel is invaded by pirates. You hide inside a large trunk when you hear the ruckus above and hope to survive the robbery – when suddenly, to your horror, the airship takes off. [end]

Fic below the cut for space-saving reasons; one of these days, y’all will let me say that without it being a pun 😂

The last thing he’d expected was for the airship itself to begin to lift away from its dock.  The robbery did not seem to be the sort of robbery that was intended to steal an entire ship, but now that it had been revealed it was that sort of robbery, what was he to do?

Taking several moments to gather his thoughts, he’d finally convinced himself to gather his strength and leave the trunk in which he’d hidden.  

Lifting the lid of the trunk with the same apprehension of a child lifting the lid of the cookie jar, he scanned the room:  Empty.  Good.  This would give him more time to gather his wits and contemplate his next move.

Slipping gingerly from the trunk and taking great care not to let the lid slam once both feet were firmly on the deck again, he went to the porthole window to take a look on what progress the pirates had made.  They had already gained quite some distance from the dock, making it nearly impossible for him to return.  He had to give them credit, whoever was flying the ship, they certainly weren’t cowards in that aspect.  But stealing an airship in the dead of night?  Hardly the work of brave men.

Turning back to examine the cargo hold, the young man sighed what was left of a breath he didn’t know he was holding in; there was no sign they’d even been down here, so it was possible that their goal was the ship itself.  Glancing around further, he found a prybar that was meant to open the crates when they’d reached their destination and, in silent haste, armed himself with it.  Taking a deep breath that chilled him to his core, the dapper young man smoothed out his royal blue coat, buttoned it from belt to chest, and silently made his way up from the cargo hold.

Ascending the decoratively gnarled wooden stairs, he flattened his hat to the top of his head, hoping not to give himself away prematurely as he peaked out from his hiding place in the bowels of the ship.  The particular set of stairs he had just ascended lead not through the galleys and dining halls, but through the lesser-traveled areas of the ship:  What many would consider to be crewing quarters, he thought.  Not a soul was in sight.  Presumably, the pirates were busy rummaging other parts of the ship and making a mess of the travelers’ quarters.

Quietly moving through the shadows, he ascended the decks until, finally, he breached the surface deck.  Despite the noise, it was empty.  It would seem that the pirates that were there had gathered in the captain’s quarters for the moment.  At least, that is what he’d hoped for the brief moment before he realized that such was not the case.

In a panic, as he realized that the pirates were coming up from one of the galley stairs, he ducked into the nearest door.  This nearest door, of course, happened to be the captain’s quarters, which he was now praying would be empty.  Ducking behind one of the ornate support posts of the ceiling, he closed his eyes for a moment to catch his breath; his heart rate was finally beginning to slow, and when he opened his eyes, he began to notice  the ornate details that had been carved into every inch of the ship.

The walls and beams had been carved with flowers, inlaid with what shimmered like precious metals but held colors of paint.  It was quite a beautiful ship, really.

“Th’ bloody hell’re you doin’?”  A voice asked, breaking the trance the ship’s architecture and design had put him under.  “Who are you?”

“I,” he replied, straightening the navy velvet coat he’d buttoned up to his neck and fixing his grip on the metal bar he carried, “am Sir Thomas Tarleton.  Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“Aye,” The figure sitting on the bed, who was currently covered by a shimmering coat of sky blue and a brown hat similar in style to Thomas’ replied, “I’ve heard of you.  Ya’ en’t no sir, that’s f’r certain.”

“Common courtesy dictates that you should at least tell me your name.”  Thomas said flatly, his expression growing in frustration and annoyance.

“Captain Keef da Blade.” They replied, leaning back against the headboard of the bed, though still quite obviously staring at Thomas.

“You, I’ve heard of...  I am armed.”

“And I’m going to do what about it?”

“You will yield to my demands and take me back to the docks.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”  Keef slid from the bed, turning to take something out of the sheets.  “You can come with us if you like, but we’ve no time to be turning back now.”

“You will yield!”  Thomas barked, lifting the prybar and pointing it at the pirate captain with empty intent.

“I’m sorry?”  Keef turned on their heel, now facing Thomas; their face now eerily lit by the lamp on the table managing to shine under the wide brim of their leather hat.  The expression they carried was one of solemn animosity; an expression their regal features carried and expressed quite well.  “I didn’t catch that.  What did you say to me?”  The pirate asked, words dripping with venom.

“You.  Will.  Yield.”  Thomas foolishly repeated.

With little warning, the pirate placed one foot squarely in the center of the chair that had been left pulled out and vaulted over the table, landing with against Thomas with one hand gripping the wrist that held the prybar in such a way that would have made it painful to move that arm.   “Now you will listen to me:  I do not care that you are on the ship, I do not care that you are free on this ship, I do not care that you are here and not a part of my crew.  However, I do not take orders from anyone, least of all from a posh little rich priss like you!  Understood?”

Thomas nodded, and the pirate, Keef, turned loose of him with a shove, returning to sit on the bed and presumably gather their wits.

“I’m sorry.”  Thomas said softly, rubbing at the part of his wrist where Keef had left fingernail indentations.

“Pardon?”

“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.  You’re a person, after all.  I’m sorry.”

“Many people say things they come to regret in the heat of the moment.  Especially when they are afraid.  I forgive you, but I do not retract my warnings.”

“Fair enough...  You weren’t afraid of me?”

“No.  Should I be?”

“Most people who are a foot shorter than me would be.”  Thomas said softly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,”  Keef stood and pulled a pistol out of the front of their pants and laid it on the table, earning a scoff from Thomas, “did I disappoint you?”

[trevorbarre]

Shane MacGowan: A Crock of ****? Part One

So, we had Julian Temple’s film about Shane MacGowan on BBC4 the other night, called The Crock of Gold.. And hard work it was too; I had to watch it in three separate viewings. Just like having to spend an evening with an unpleasant and patronising drunk. (Think Sid Vicious in Temple’s film of the Sex Pistols,The Filth and the Fury, nodding out by the side of Nancy, and making about as much sense.) Now, I’m a big fan of Temple’s work, including his peon to London, London: the Modern Babylon, and the city in some way provides a link between all three of Temple’s documentaries. I’m not proposing to discuss MacGowan’s ‘Irish  poetic genius’, but do want to explore why he has been proposed as such, and to why some (mostly) men are so sycophantic and brown-nosing around and about him. An alternative title for this blog was Just like Keith Richards, in that both men have been lionised by a particular type of music fan, despite having produced nothing of any value for several decades. Both have been spuriously celebrated for being still alive at this point in time - the difference is that Richards is quite likeable and seemingly modest, and seems to be in reasonable shape. MacGowan lacks both qualities.

The Crock of Gold was financed by Johnny Depp, in the news recently for his own particular contribution to #MeToo. Depp clearly so wants to be ‘rock and roll’, and seems to find McGowan’s every utterance unutterably hilarious (they aren’t, being mostly incomprehensible). Ditto the usual suspects, Bobbie Gillespie and Nick Cave (similar exponents of macho posturing, vide Murder Ballads and Vanishing Point, for example). Even Bono gets in on the act. MacGowan’s  posturing about the IRA (in person to Gerry Adams, ffs) invites similar ridicule to Gillespie’s around The Black Panthers and Cave’s around Stagger Lee and the reductio ad absurdum of the utterly tedious ‘O’Malley’s Bar’ (on Murder Ballads). Add The Clash to make a toxic stew of white male testosterone (beefed up by unhealthy doses on narcotics, in most of these cases, Strummer excepted). Despite the incredibly loyal Victoria Clarke, MacGowan’s audience seems to be overwhelmingly masculine. (The live Pogues film clips show the audience to almost entirely consist of shouty, sweary and sweaty blokes, intoxicated with their own belligerence and pissed swagger.) The violence against women in Cave’s oeuvre has drawn much comment, but MacGowan mainly reserves his own ire for those who have somehow upset him for whatever reason, Bob Gelfof (now I wonder why?), the English generally (”I feel guilty for not joining the IRA” is one of his more preposterous  bon mots), W.B Yeats.

MacGowan’s self-presentation of a horny-handed man of the Irish soil and public house seems rather contradicted by his obvious tipple of choice (and it ain’t Guinness or whiskey): the sheer fact that he’s nodding out in nearly every ‘shot’ is testament to Thailand’s favourite export. Despite the whole ‘survivor’ shtick (which has served Keef so well), he seemed confined to a wheelchair at the time of the film, having apparently fallen down the stairs (can’t think how), coincidently the mode of death of Sandy Denny and John Balance (or lack of same, unfortunately). He looks absolutely TERRIBLE, and yet this seems to only spur on the sycophants and celebrants, who giggle at his every pronouncement and tablet from the mountain. (Sample: “the most popular Irish word is “fuck”, cue side-holding and tear-wiping from the likes of Depp and Clarke: ‘feck’ might have been more accurate?) The down side of this sort of hagiography is that it continues to promote decades-old ‘jazz cliches’ about substance abuse and creativity: McGowan’s brief spurt of creativity (approximately 1984-8) seems to have finished once he discovered the joys of narcotics.

The Pogues’ first three albums were wonderful (up to a point), but I think comparisons to Yeats himself, Joyce, Behan, O’Neill, Synge, etc. (as on the inside sleeve of If I Should Fall from Grace with God) stretch credibility, and underestimate the considerable contribution of the other band members. (For example, the best track on the latter album was by Phillip Chevron, ‘Thousands are Sailing’ and the ‘ka-ching’ fave, ‘Fairytale of New York’, was co-written with Jem Finer, it needs stating.)

To be continued...

[girlofmanyfandoms]

Gone

A/n: So this is my first angst, and if by some chance it happens to hurt, blame the genius of @an-absolute-travesty, their beautiful angst inspired me to self-project write this. Special thanks to @a-lonely-tatertot for beta-reading!

Trigger Warnings: Death, Mentions of violence

Warnings: Sorry, not sorry

Word Count: 1,133

Tag list:  @everyonehasthoughts @imaramennoodle @bookwyrminspiration @holesinmyfalseconfidence @percabetn @an-absolute-travesty @linhammon-roll-bromance101 @linhamon-roll @ anyone who cares

Fitz was shivering, but he refused to put on any more layers. He would endure this, just as he had endured everything else. Keefe squeezed his shoulder comfortingly, but there’s no hiding the pain in his own eyes. Cold, it was very cold, and not at all the day Biana Vacker would’ve wanted her Wanderling to be planted.

As fresh fallen snow graced the floor, Fitz relived her last moments. His training with Grizel had paid off, he was an expert with throwing stars, always hitting his target. He aimed one at Fintan’s neck, and sure enough, a strangled cry followed. Biana appeared behind him, dagger in hand, and finished the job. But that wasn’t the last of it. And he couldn’t warn her in time. A shiver ran through his spine. He couldn’t take much more of this.

Sophie ran up next, throwing her arms around the two boys. She didn’t try to hide the puffiness of her eyes or her tear-stained cheeks. They all had a rough night. Linh and Tam showed up to, hand in hand, Linh toying with a locket that hung around her neck. The letters M and L shined brightly despite the sun reaching the end of its path. Tam gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. That was it. Linh broke down, bawling into her brother’s shoulder. He held her tightly, trying to keep the tears in. But, just like so many others, he lost the battle. Silently they fell, streaking tracks down his face.

Vika and Timkin Heks made sure to stay as far away from Sophie as possible. And Fitz could understand it. Stina called for Sophie to retreat, but she was stubborn. Determined not to leave Sophie behind, Stina took a leap of faith and yanked Sophie back, just in time for Ruy to unleash a deadly force field. Shock ran up her spine, and she twitched uncontrollably before collapsing to the ground. Sophie ran to her fallen friend, holding her hand. “You always were a stubborn one, Foster,” she whispered with her last breath.

Wylie looked off into the distance, his mind in another land. One where he could hug his dad, and pinch his little cousin’s cheeks whenever she came over to visit. Prentice escaped from Elwin’s grasp, knowing his son was in danger. He threw himself in front of a shamkniv, shielding him. Slain by a blade. Maruca met a similar fate. The abilities of a Psionipath are only useful when you can time it right. Wylie was dodging Vespera’s attacks with her help. He tried to warn her, but Gisela was quicker. Wylie warned her not to enter this life. And because of her defiance, she left it.

Elwin was shaking incredibly by the time he arrived, guided by Magnate Leto with every step. Della smiles weakly at Fitz, indicating it was time to plant the seed. He has spent hours staring at his sister’s hairbrush, a feeling of dread overcoming him as he realized he would never get to hear her talk on and on about all the different hairstyles she wanted to try. Ones she would never get to try.

They linked arms. Together they dug up the soil, planted the seed, and covered it. Della hummed a melody, one Fitz knew by heart. He joined her, singing it until the end. It was their lullaby. The song she would sing whenever they had a bad day and just needed a hug. Magnate Leto gave them a look, asking for permission to approach. Della nodded and stepped to the side a bit, allowing for a trembling Elwin to place Lady Sassyfur right by the seed. Fitz smiled bitterly. Someone behind him, probably Keefe, squeezed his shoulder twice, asking him to stand. But Fitz wouldn’t budge.

“I’m not ready to move on to the next one, I need... a breath of fresh air.”

They respected his wishes, and Fitz wandered off a little bit away. Not so much that he’d get lost, but not so little so that anyone could interrupt his thoughts. Though maybe it was best if he did get lost. It was better than suffering this pain. Fitz watched the clouds of breath coming from his mouth for a while until he was brought on guard by the snapping of a twig.

“Who’s there? Show yourself!” Fitz demanded.

The same melody he had hummed seconds before was hummed again. The voice was too deep to belong to his mother. Fitz shook his head violently, backing up until his back was against another tree. These were echoes of a past life, a distant dream where all the could-haves dwell. The tune didn’t stop as a familiar figure stepped out from a clearing in the trees. Tall, skinny, and tear-filled cobalt blue eyes, there was no doubting who it was.

“Alvar,” he said coldly. “I don’t see why you would be here. I thought Dex had finished you off when he-“

Fitz’s voice failed him. Another horrible loss. Dex had thrown a small gadget at Alvar to give Keefe time to pick up his melder. Fintan’s Everblaze nicked it, and the gadget backfired. Got him right through the chest. Killed by his own genius. The cry of agony he let out was heartbreaking. At least they wouldn’t have to go to another planting.

“Well, he didn’t. And do you really think I would miss my own sister’s planting?”

“You didn’t seem to care before.”

Alvar nodded in understanding. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he looked down guiltily.

“When Sophie hugged you, the day we were going to flood Ravagog,” Fitz spoke up suddenly. “When she ran to you. Do you have any idea how much she depended on you? How happy she was to see you?”

“Yes,” he whispered, flinching at the harshness of his little brother’s words. “I... I wanted to amount to something, to be noticed, to make a change.”

“You made a change, alright,” Fitz spat.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well it’s not worth much.”

They stayed in silence for a while before Fitz completely broke down. He sobbed, sitting crisscross in the snow, head in his hands. Alvar sat next to him, burying his nose in his brother’s neck as he hugged him, swaying back and forth. For once, Fitz didn’t object.

They must’ve fallen asleep like that. When he woke up, there was only a blanket, a pillow, and an envelope from his brother. Alvar himself had disappeared. Fitz held onto the delicate piece of paper, staring sadly at the loopy handwriting. He stuffed the letter into his inside pocket, both grateful for and pained by this last piece of his brother. Sure, he left a letter, but other than that, he was gone. Just like everyone else. Gone.

[minaim-blog]

DaTr Date Night - Chapter 3

The weekend is finally here and Dib is anxious to get the night started. But Tak being late might just be the least of problems. Can tensions be managed or was this whole party a mistake?

“Dib, if you’re going to pace do it in your room.” Gaz said as she laid on the living room couch, her Game Station in hand. Dib was consumed with his thoughts and paced unaware Gaz had spoken to him. “Dib!” Gaz said to him forcefully as she lowered her Game Station from her face, it pulled him out of his trance and she continued, “Do you mind? You’re giving the whole house anxiety.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry…” Dib said apologetically as he writhed his hands together and then said as he continued to pace, “It’s just… Don’t you think we should have heard something by now?”

Gaz returned her attention to her game and said, “You told her to text us if there’s a problem. As far as I’m concerned no news is good news.”

Dib went over to the back of the couch and looked down at Gaz as he said, “But not even a status message, or saying she got home safe?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be her boyfriend or something?” She said raising an eyebrow. “You know she never texts us.”

“She texts me…sometimes.” Dib glanced to the side as he finished. Usually it was him who texted first. Tak preferred meeting face to face if she wanted to talk but she wasn’t completely averse to texting or calling if she needed company.

“She messages us if there’s a problem.” Gaz said as she paused her game still very annoyed, “Or if she’s feeling lonely and wants to hang out. But she’ll never text us just for the sake of it.”

“But she was really worried at Skool and-”

Gaz interrupted him, “She seemed fine when I saw her. And she was fine walking home on her own. So something tells me she’s fine.” Gaz gritted her teeth and brought all her attention to her game as she finished.

“But what about Zim?”

“What about him?” Gaz said completely indifferent.

“He should have been here half an hour ago. Do you think it’s related?”

“Jesus Christ!” Gaz set her Game Station down on the couch and sat up to give Dib the evil eye as she said, “You’re seriously with Tak on the whole hunter thing?”

“Well…I mean it’s a possibility.” Dib said as he straightened up and looked away from her, he could never meet Gaz eye to eye when she gave him that look.

She laid back down onto the couch and brought up her Game Station as she said, “He had to shake off Keef, and Gir’s probably being more than a handful as usual. I haven’t heard from either of them, so shut-up and relax. We can worry about it tomorrow if we don’t hear from them.”

Dib didn’t say anything else related to the matter after Gaz finished and only rubbed the back of his head. He sat down on the armchair across from the sofa with his hands folded, and was still visibly anxious.

“Don’t you have your phone, or a book to read, or something?” Gaz said without looking up from her game.

“No. Keef has it.” Dib said tired as he leaned his head back on the chair.

“Right.” Gaz drawled out, but didn’t say anything else on the matter. The two of them were now silent in the living room. With nothing else to do Dib sat in the chair as his mind wondered. He was somewhat hopeful that Keef didn’t have his phone and that it was just sitting in the office at Skool. If he did, the worst he could try to do with it would be to unlock it and maybe get Zim’s phone number. He dreaded the conversation that would lead to between Zim and himself if that happened. It wouldn’t have been the first time Keef got ahold of his number, but it was a pain every time that happened. That meant Zim would have to rewire his phone to a new number and give it out to everyone so they could be in contact. Dib thought that more than likely would not be enough, as recently whenever Keef got Zim’s number he had been able to connect even after it was rewired. None of them were sure how he was able to do it. Tak thought he was able to connect directly to the sim card of Zim’s phone, but the term “sim card” was lost to Zim as he never tried to perfectly mimic Earth technology the same way Tak had. All of the phones Zim made for himself followed the basic principles of how a phone worked, which according to him was to send and receive messages from other phones. The exact way in which he accomplished this technologically Dib was unsure of, as he never got a chance to inspect a phone made by him. The few gadgets of his Dib had seen were indistinguishably Irken in terms of capabilities, but their outer façade passed as Earthly. Dib guessed that Zim’s phone number was treated similar to a forwarding protocol and that there was another physical address connected to his device like the MAC address of a computer. This would explain why Keef was able to connect to his phone after the number was changed, and why Zim had to make an entirely new phone to throw him off. Regardless of how Keef could stalk Zim, Dib only hoped he didn’t tag along with him to tonight’s meetup, or else it would be completely ruined.

His father was out for the weekend on an important business trip, not even his roaming monitor would be in the house. Dib and Gaz wanted to take advantage of his complete absence by having a game and movie night at their house, and then the two of them had planned to sleep over. Their father respected their privacy so he never had any cameras installed anywhere in the house except for his lab. This meant both Zim and Tak would be able to come over and completely be themselves and no one would have to guard against any kind of conversation. They could even turn off their disguises if they wanted to, but Dib thought this was rather unlikely. The only time Tak would remove her disguise was when she was in her home base, when she was in the underground portion of Zim’s, and when she was off the planet. Anywhere else and she always had her disguise on. Compared to Zim who was much more relaxed and would probably take off his disguise the moment he entered the house. This was assuming Tak didn’t show up tonight, as she was always very strict with him and usually “persuaded” him to keep his disguise on when she was with him. Dib and Zim did hang out without his disguise if it was just them and they could get away with it, or sometimes Zim would wear his old one, but Tak didn’t need to know about their outings. All of this only brushed through his mind as he came back to worrying about her. As he sat thinking, the doorbell rang at the front door and he jumped to attention.

“That’s probably them. Why don’t you get it?” Gaz said, but it was unneeded as he was already getting up before she spoke. He made his way to the front with apprehension and excitement, but before he could open it the door slammed opened. Gir squealed with glee as he paraded past him with junk food in arms into the living room. Dib brought his attention from him as he looked to the doorway where Zim was now walking through. He had on his hard-light disguise and was carrying a plastic bag slung over his shoulders. His outfit was slightly modified from when he was at Skool to be a bit more casual, and from what he could tell he was already wearing his pajamas underneath a pink sweatshirt.

“Hey Dib. We brought snacks and a few movies to choose from like you asked. Is Tak here?” Zim said as he let himself inside and closed the door behind him.

“No she hasn’t made it yet. Did you hear from her?” Dib asked hopefully.

“Nope.” Zim said without inflection. He was trying to hide the pleasure in his voice but gave up as he went on, “Maybe she won’t come at all I can take off this crappy disguise.” He laughed slightly to himself as he walked past Dib. He tossed the bag to him but Dib fumbled and dropped it which caused candy and a few DVD’s to fall onto the floor.

“Aw, come on Dib I was right next to you.” Zim groaned slightly as he went down to the floor to pick up the mess. Dib did the same and said,

“Sorry. Guess I’m just out of it tonight.” He ended his statement with a small forced laugh.

“Don’t be sorry it’s your house.” Zim said indifferently as he unwrapped a small candy while cleaning up. He threw the wrapper into the bag and said while chewing, “Tak’s still eating you, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess you could say that.” Dib said as they finished putting the candies and DVD’s back into the bag. When they finished they were still sitting on the floor and he asked Zim, “You really think it was just sun spots?”

Zim shrugged where he sat facing Dib and still spoke indifferently, “Honestly I have no idea. It could have been sunspots, or a programing loop that was always running in the background that just decided to kick in today. Or maybe it was an attack.” He got up to his feet with the bag slung over his shoulders again. He reached his hand down to Dib, and he could see a small trace of worry in his eyes, but Dib knew it was worry over him and not for Tak. After Dib made it to his feet Zim asked, “If you’re worried why don’t you text her?”

Dib felt a small wince at Zim’s question, he tried to choose his words carefully. He didn’t want to start a fiasco by saying Keef might have his phone, especially since he wasn’t sure if he actually did. “I can’t. I…lost it at Skool.” Dib was worried he was too vague after he spoke and couldn’t help himself from glancing away from Zim for a moment.

“You did? Aw that sucks man.” Zim said consolingly, not noticing any irregularity in the way he was talking. “Do you want me to make you a new one?”

Dib turned back to Zim slightly shocked from his offer, “You’ll make me one? And, and a cool one too? With alien gadgets and stuff like I always wanted?” Dib ended with excitement trickling into his voice.

“Uh….? Yeah. Like, it’s not a big deal. Why didn’t you ever ask me before if you wanted one?”

Dib’s excitement cooled for a moment at Zim’s question. “Yeah, why didn’t I ever ask you?” He thought to himself as he was in deep reflection, which was broken by Zim’s disguised hand snapping in front of his face.

“Uh, Dib? Hello? You in there Dib?” Zim said as he snapped in front of his face.

Dib waved his hands away from him and said in a slight daze, “What? Oh yeah sorry. I spaced out there for a second.” He brought his hand to the back of his neck and stretched before he continued, “I guess…I don’t know. I just never thought to ask you. When Tak showed me hers it was just something cool at the time. And when she didn’t offer to make me one I just figured that was it, and moved on.”

While he was talking Zim’s look of confusion faded away into mild frustration, and then ended in a smug grin. “Let me guess.” Zim started to say as his grin grew into a smile and he walked into the living room, “She told you that, ‘you don’t need one’ or that she couldn’t be bothered to make one for you.” He made his way to the couch Gaz was hogging and gestured her to move her legs to make room for him at the end. She groaned as she did but did not look up from her game. “Weren’t these her exact words?” He finished as he sat down and spread his arms over the back of the couch.

Dib went to the same chair he was in a moment ago and said, “Yeah. That’s pretty much what she said.”

“Yup, yup. Classic Tak!” Zim said sarcastically. He hunched over after he finished, and his expression returned to annoyance. “Why did you guys even invite her? You know she’s a party pooper.”

“She’s not a party pooper, she’s…” Dib started to say as he tried to find the right word to use.

“She’s high strung.” Gaz chimed in from her game, and Dib replied with agreement.

“High strung? That’s putting it lightly.” Zim said and leaned his head against his hand on the armrest. He was quiet before he glanced to Dib and said, “She still hates me you know.”

Dib was shocked, not so much at what Zim said as he was by his abrasiveness.

“She’s annoyed by you.” Gaz said once again chiming in. “I am annoyed by both of you.” She said as she glanced to both Zim and Dib.

“Yeah you too Gaz, thanks.” Zim dismissed her with a wave of his hand playfully.

“She definitely doesn’t hate you Zim.” Dib started to say.

“No she definitely does.” He snapped back to Dib. “She goes out of her way to avoid me unless it’s for a prank (and those usually cause me bodily harm), and whenever the four of us are together she’ll either pretend I’m not here or put me down any chance she gets.”

“Aw come on, it’s not that bad.” Dib tried to reassure him but he felt himself getting red in the face as he spoke, “She was really grateful to you for helping her earlier.”

“No. She really wasn’t, and she only took my help because you pushed her to.”

“Yeah but you guys had a moment though right? You know, when you were talking about Mimi?” Dib was growing tense and shot finger guns at Zim as he spoke.

“What moment?” Gaz paused her game and looked to the two of them.

Zim sighed and said, “I can’t really even remember, but earlier when I was looking at her disguise she said she didn’t know where Mimi was or something. So I said I’d help her and send Gir out to go look for her, and then she thanked me for it. You know? Like a normal decent person.”

“You haven’t always been what I’d call a ‘decent person’, and I probably wouldn’t call you one now.” Gaz said.

“Hey, I think I’ve been more than decent!” Zim said as he brought his hand to his chest in pride, “Especially more decent that Tak has, considering how long she’s been friendly to you two. And how long has that been exactly?” He looked to Gaz and Dib with outstretched arms as he ended.

Dib scratched his head as he thought. “More than two years now, I think? There was a good bit of time between you and her becoming friends with us.”

“Yeah, and then how long have the three of us been friends?” Zim said.

Dib took off his glasses and wiped them as he continued, “I think about two years after you came, you and me officially became friends. Unless you want to the count the time after you realized you were banished and were just messing around here.”

“I wouldn’t. So four years?” Zim said.

“I’d say three and a half at most.” Gaz chimed in again from her game and continued, “I didn’t believe you were friends until after the first six months. I think even a year later I was still expecting you or Dib to make this big show of it just being a lie to get close to each other or something.”

“Oh I know, that sounds like something I would do.” Zim chuckled to himself lightly, some pride in his voice. “So yeah. I’ve been your friend for three, almost four Earth years. Then Tak has been your friend and my ‘friend’, and I’m using that term loosely.” Zim gestured his hands into air quotes as he said the word, “For only two years now. So um, yeah.” Zim crossed his arms over his chest as he ended

“So…what are you saying?” Dib asked Zim somewhat confused, but he had an idea as to what he was suggesting.

“Nothing! Nothing.” Zim curled up on the couch and didn’t say anything further for a moment and seemed to be thinking about what to say next, “It’s just… why do you- why does she still hate me after two years?”

“Aren’t you the reason she had to spend fifty years on planet Shit or something?” Gaz said from her game.

“It’s planet Dirt, and no. Kind of. Yeah.” Zim tossed his hands back and forth as he spoke, “But it wasn’t really fifty years (probably). Tak knows this, and I’ve explained it to Dib, and I’m pretty sure I’ve even explained it to you. Time doesn’t really work when you’re out in space. It’ll feel like you’ve spent fifty or a hundred years somewhere but really it’s only a few months at most. Like Foodcourtia!” Zim tapped his head as he remembered the planet he spent the first few years of his original banishment. “They get this weird period of gravitational pull that prevents anyone from leaving the planet for a few months, but it will feel like fifty years on the planet even though your body won’t age like fifty years actually passed.”

“I don’t know if I really believe or even get that Zim.” Dib said as he scratch his head, “I mean I’ve brought this up with my dad and he said something like that shouldn’t even be remotely possible.”

“Yeah, but how far into space has your dad ever gone?”

“He’s gone through a lot of our solar system.”

“That’s small potatoes for me, and even for you now.”

“But I’ve never experienced any ‘time displacement’ like what you’re talking about.”

“What about that black hole you fell into a month ago? You told me it felt like you were in there for a week but it was only a few minutes.”

“That’s from the event horizon.”

“Well it doesn’t matter.” Zim concluded their argument with an aggressive tone, “It’s a real thing and it’s been a big problem for the empire. It’s made their communications with different planets really inconsistent, and with so many Irkens all across the universe all at different times no one’s sure how much time has really passed.”

“Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to ask you.” Gaz paused her game and looked to Zim as she spoke, “How old are you really?”

“Oh? Couldn’t tell you.” Zim waved his hand brushing aside the topic, “I’ve experienced what feels like over 100 years, but how old I really am and how long I’ll live I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Gaz said plainly, “Just curious on your life cycle.”

“Irkens don’t really know what our normal life cycle is, since we never hang out on one planet for long. So who knows? I could die next week or live on this planet forever…” Zim was silent for a moment as he ended his explanation and felt a small stare from both Gaz and Dib during it. After his pause he spoke violently, “Anyway, anyway, Tak! Why did we invite her?” He folded his hands together and pointed outwards when he finished.

“Dib’s girlfriend.” Gaz said simply.

“And your friend.” Dib said to Gaz, “And she’s yours too.” He said turning to Zim, “She just…has a lot to get over.”

“Well she’s had plenty of time to.” Zim’s tone indicated he didn’t want to explore the matter further. He rearranged himself on the couch and laid his legs over the armrest. He leaned back onto Gaz’s legs, who let out a small groan but only moved her legs slightly closer to herself. “So what are we doing?”

“I guess we can watch a show or play a game until Tak gets here. And maybe we can get something to eat.” Dib sniffed the air, and smelled the hot grease of bacon, and warming pancake batter. “Who’s making pancakes? And where’s Gir!?” Dib stood up and ended in a slight panic as he realized Gir wasn’t in the living room with them.

“He’s in the kitchen.” Gaz said calmly, still barely looking up from her game.

“Why is he in the kitchen cooking?” Dib looked to her confused.

“I like breakfast for dinner and he’s a good cook.”

“Better make sure you tell him to make something you can actually eat. I’ve made that mistake before and he put motor oil in my cereal, and worse too.” Zim said and shuddered.

Gaz looked to Dib and said, “Can you go check since you’re already up? And tell him I want blueberry pancakes.”

Dib sighed annoyed and said, “Yeah, I guess I’ll go do that.” He then went off into the kitchen.

After Dib left Zim sat back up, and patted his hands on his legs before he looked to Gaz and said, “So…Want to finish our Sonic marathon?”

She looked up to him from her game and after putting it down said, “Whatever you say Tails.” She then got up and started setting up the game and controllers.

“Hey I’m not being Tails again! You got to be Sonic last time.” Zim whined.

“Yeah, and you’re going to be Tails again. It’ll be easier, that way we don’t have worry about you dying and slowing us down.” She finished setting up the game and tossed the second controller to Zim as she went back to the couch.

Zim flinched slightly but caught the controller in his lap. After Gaz sat back down he crossed his arms and said, “Hump! I bet Dib never has to deal with this when he’s with Tak.” Gaz snorted in response to which Zim replied, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Gaz chuckled to herself slightly as she started the game.

As she sat back down on the couch Zim got in her face and said, “You say that but you really mean ‘it is something’, right?” Gaz didn’t say anything and tried to ignore him. Zim was always nosey about anything he wasn’t in on, so she was regretting her comment that sparked his interest. Even with her ignoring him, Zim was undeterred and said persuasively to her, “Come on. You can tell me.” She had enough of his begging so she turned and gave Zim the evil eye. Unfortunately he was unfazed, and all he did was pull his fingers across his lips and ‘zipped’ them shut. Gaz was fed up with him and was about to give in before she groaned aloud. “Come on. What’s going on with them? Is Dib whipped?” He asked innocently after she finished.

“No.” Gaz finally responded to him with a firm response, bur after a brief moment of thinking she drew out the words, “Kind of…”

“I knew it!” Zim says ecstatically, “What happened?” All of his attention was drawn away from the game and he was sitting on his knees on the couch facing her.

The way Zim acted over any little secret he could be in on was always funny to Gaz. She thought he acted like a kid that couldn’t bear to be out of the loop. She laughed slightly to herself as she said, “Oh my God…You’re like a Karen for gossip.”

“Wait, who is this Karen? And what does she have to do with this?” Zim asked confused.

“Nothing. Dumb Earth slang, look it up on your own time.”

“Right. Anyway you were saying?” Zim said eagerly, not allowing the two of them to be distracted from the topic.

Gaz groaned aloud again. She had been trying to play the game the whole time Zim spoke to her and was now setting it aside to speak to him. “You know how they went to the arcade the other night?”

“No. But continue.”

“Well I guess Tak lost to Dib on DDR and she had a fit over it or something.”

“Really? Just over losing to him?” Zim said confused, but after he thought about it briefly he thought that it was unsurprising.

“Well yeah, but I guess she went off on this whole thing about the empire and not accepting failure and she was really upset over it.” Gaz finished her brief explanation and then picked up her controller to continue playing in hopes that Zim would be satisfied.

She was surprised to find that he was. He said sympathetically to her and to himself, “Oh. That sounds about right.” After that he picked up his controller and continued playing with her.

The two of them were silent as they played and Gaz was the one to break the silence as she said, “She should probably talk to someone, besides you know, me and Dib.”

“Like how you’re seeing someone?”

“Yeah. I was thinking that.” Gaz said quietly to herself.

“Did you mention this to Dib?”

“No. And don’t you dare.” Gaz responded quickly with agitation.

“Hey my lips are sealed. Nobody knows anything you tell me. Not even Gir.” He reassured her.

“Yeah well, just forget about what I said for now.”

“Sure thing.” Zim said and the two of them continued playing. They weren’t silent as they played but the conversations they had only pertained to the game, which suited her just fine. The closest people in Gaz’s life were her father, and Dib; and more recently Tak, Zim and Gir had entered into her life, but she rarely shared her feelings with any of them. She knew this was out of a copping mechanism she developed when she was younger. Her father was somewhat absent from her and Dib’s life growing up, and they each had their own ways of dealing with it. Dib had his obsession with Zim and the supernatural and Gaz had her video games and reclusiveness. She thought that both Dib and herself had mellowed out over the years, which was a very good thing. She was still reserved with others and Dib was still very much into the supernatural, how ecstatic he must be to have an alien girlfriend, she thought to herself. Zim was Dib’s best friend, and his only friend besides Tak, but recently Gaz had found herself able to confide in him things she didn’t or couldn’t talk to her father or Dib about. About a year ago she started seeing a counselor. After having very little success with them as a child and going through about a dozen until she found one she liked. While she had been seeing them for a year nobody but Zim knew about this. When she thought on her reasons for confiding in Zim what she couldn’t to others she realized it was because Zim was an alien. As one he had very limited or no preconceived ideas about anything she could tell him about. Everything was foreign to him, so he was the perfect person to hear a unbiased opinion from, apart from his still very much present ego. Still she was happy to call him her friend, and as she thought about the past few years she spent with both him, Tak, and Dib she found herself to be very happy, even if she didn’t always show it on the outside.

______________________________________________________________

Dib saw a thin haze as he entered the kitchen, and heard bacon and pancakes sizzling on the stove. Gir’s disguise gave him the appearance of a fourteen year old boy, and he stood at the counter next to the stove stirring a bowl as he hummed to himself. He turned his head 180 degrees around and said, “Hey Dib! You here to help?”

Even though Dib knew Gir was a robot, he couldn’t help but feel disturbed by him turning his head around completely as he said, “Uh no, I’m just checking in. Gaz wants blueberry pancakes, and she wanted me to make sure you were making something the rest of us can eat.”

Gir turned his head around into the same direction completing a 360, and whined to himself, “Aw, but I already started.”

Dib went up to the counter where Gir was working. He had four pancakes on the grill that were uncooked side up, and a pan of bacon in the back. Dib also saw a few questionable ingredients out, one of the worst was rat poison, but he remembered hearing somewhere that it wasn’t lethal to humans. Even so, he thought it was best to dispose of the batch. “That’s alright Gir. You can have those pancakes for yourself. What did you put in the batter?” He said pointing to bowl he was stirring.

“Nothing. Just the mix.”

“Just the mix?” Dib said dubiously.

“Well the mix, orange juice, turmeric, garlic powder. Uh, whatever this stuff is.” Gir picked up the container of rat poison as he finished and shook it into the bowl. Dib grabbed his arm and took the rat poison away from him as he said,

“Maybe we should just start over.” He took the bowl away from him and dumped it into the sink. “What did you put on the bacon?”

“Nothing.” Said Gir innocently.

“Nothing?” Dib asked and Gir replied with affirmation. Dib continued, “Just bacon? No rat poison? Soap? Bleach? Sewage?”

Gir replied no to all of them as he listed and ended with, “Just bacon!” as he brought up his arms in exclamation.

Dib was satisfied enough to trust him, but probably not to try it later himself. He finished dumping the bowl and left it in the sink to wash later. “That should be fine then. But I think I’ll stay and help you finish.” Gir hugged him and squealed with glee, Dib pushed him off and said, “Just follow the directions, okay? And we should probably rinse off the grill once yours are done.”

“They should be good now.” Gir said and immediately scoped up the four unfinished pancakes with the spatula and placed them into his mouth which unhinged like a hatch. He chewed obnoxiously as he told Dib he didn’t know what he was missing and finished them in only a few seconds.

Dib considered Gir one of his friends along with Zim and Tak, even despite his oddities. In truth he liked Gir because of his oddities, but he also found him overbearing and even disturbing at times. He reeled slightly as Gir finished eating and said, “I think I’m good.” He went over to the stove and activated the self-cleaning functionality for the now open grill. One of the many benefits of having the smartest man on Earth for a father was that all the contraptions in the house were state of the art. They were upgraded or replaced repeatedly throughout the year as his father used his own home as a testing ground for his inventions. Sometimes this meant having to deal with a faulty device until his father found the time to iron out the issues. Thankfully the stove had no such problems, but their dishwasher was currently out of commission so they would have to hand wash everything else. “That should be good in a few minutes. We can start making the batter in the meantime.” He reached over to get the bowl in the sink but was stopped by Gir as he grabbed his arm and said excitedly, “I want to clean it!”

“Okay, just make sure you only use the dish soap.” Dib said a bit concerned.

“Okay dad.” Gir replied annoyed and went to the sink to begin cleaning.

Dib brought his hand to his face and squinted, “Please don’t call me dad.”

“Can I still call your dad that?” Gir said somewhat concerned.

“Yeah sure, whatever.” Dib said disregarding what he said. He saw Gir rummage through the cabinet underneath the sink where they kept the soap and sponges when his father’s inventions had a malfunction. Gir had been to the house plenty of times before, and Dib thought he probably knew the layout of the place better than he did. “Gaz wanted blueberries. Do you know if we have any?” He asked Gir.

“Fridge, second shelf down from the top, back right. They should be Membrane brand.” Gir replied without hesitation as he cleaned the bowl. Dib went to the fridge and followed his instructions, and sure enough there was an unopened bag of Membrane brand blueberries there. His father had an entire line of packaged food products ranging from meat to produce. All grown in the lab to be identical to the real thing and free from any moral inconveniences or pollution. Dib had tried almost all of them before at least once. His father claimed they were both chemically and biologically identical apart from any impurities that shouldn’t be there, but Dib could still tell the difference between the lab grown and the real thing. His father told him it was purely a psychological fallacy his mind was creating, and Dib wondered if his father still thought of him as his insane son. He set aside that thought for a moment and asked Gir if they had any pancake mix left. Gir replied that it was inside the box, so he went back over to the counter and found it, along with Gir at the sink. He didn’t seem to be cleaning the bowl and instead filled the sink halfway with water, and soap bubbles overflowed from it which he played with. He gently called Gir’s name and he replied with a confused, “What?”

Dib paused for a moment before he said, “Never mind. Just clean yourself off and come help me.” Gir shook and wiped himself clean and then the two of them began preparing the next batch. Dib produced a new bowl from the cabinet and gathered the ingredients for Gir to mix while he supervised and manned the grill. As they worked Gir asked,

“Have you heard anything from Kitty?”

“What?” Dib asked surprised.

“You know Kitty. Meow, meow.” Gir imitated a cat’s claws with his hands as he mewed.

“Oh, Mimi. No I haven’t. Have you heard anything from them?” Gir replied that he hadn’t and then the two continued in silence before Dib started, “Hey Gir, I know you and Mimi get along good, but what do you think of Tak?”

“Angry lady? She’s okay. She doesn’t like my master for some reason though.”

“You still call Zim your master?” Dib was surprised, he couldn’t remember the last time Gir called Zim ‘master’ and he thought either he stopped doing it or Zim told him to stop.

“Only when he’s sad sometimes.” Gir said absentmindedly, he was intently focused on stirring the batter.

“Oh.” Was all Dib replied for a moment. He looked behind him to the doorway leading to the living room where Zim and Gaz were. He pondered over what Gir said and began putting together the pieces from Zim’s words earlier. “Is he said right now?” He tried to ask quieter in case someone would overhear.

“Kind of…He doesn’t really want to be here with angry lady.”

Dib moaned quietly to himself and said, “He said he was fine with it when I asked him last week. Are they going to be at each other’s throat the whole night?” Gir shrugged as a response and Dib asked himself what he was going to do.

“Maybe you don’t need to do anything.” Gir said, and Dib was confused by what he meant but he continued, “I mean I really like Kitty and she really likes angry lady, so she can’t be that bad, and I think you like her too.”

“Tak? Yeah, she’s cool I guess.” Dib said in pretend indifference as he smirked to himself.

“Well Kitty said she really likes you and Gaz, and my master likes you too. So maybe they can like each other if they want to try.”

At Gir’s simplistic but rather optimistic statement Dib’s mood improved immensely, “Hey yeah, you’re right Gir! If they can like me and Gaz they must have something in common, so why can’t they like each other if they try to?”

“Yeah! And if angry lady and Zim try to kill each other just be friends with the one left.”

“Uh, yeah. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. And maybe don’t call Tak ‘angry lady’ if you can.”

“Can I call her the names Zim uses?” Gir asked eagerly.

Dib was about to say yes but thought about it for a second and then recanted, “No! Just call her Tak, or if you need to give her a nickname just something that isn’t bad.” While the two of them talked the doorbell rang and interrupted Dib from his sentence. “That must be them, I’ll be back in a minute!” He left abruptly and heard Gir say behind him to tell Mimi he said hello. He made his way from the kitchen to the front through the living room and saw Gaz and Zim sitting on the couch playing Sonic together on the television.

Zim turned around for a moment to yell to him on his way by and said, “Hey Dib! If it’s the pizza guy I’ll pay you back later. I forgot my Earth money at home.”

Dib stopped in his tracks to the door at Zim’s statement and said annoyed to him, “Why did you order pizza if we’re making food?”

Zim’s only response was a shrug, then Gaz said, “What’d you order?”

Zim said candidly, “Bloaty’s. What else?”

“If you don’t have money I’ll pay for it.” Gaz said back to Dib. Then the two of them returned to their game.

Dib groaned out loud and went over to the door with decreased excitement. The last thing he wanted was to answer the door for the weird, greasy, pizza delivery guy Bloaty’s always sent them. On his way to the door the bell rang again and with that Dib was convinced that it was the pizza guy at the door. “Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.” He said irritated and dreaded the conversation he would have with him. Dib imagined he would struggle to make change for the money he gave him and worse, as they always seemed just barely above brain-dead. He opened door and almost said, “What do you want?” but was stopped by a familiar sight.

Tak was standing under the dim light of the front porch in her human disguise as she looked to the side off into the distance. She was caring a backpack and had on Gaz’s burgundy Game Station hoodie from earlier today, and the hood was pulled back showing her face. Her hair was in the style of a longer somewhat messy bob, and it was black instead of her usual dark purple. Her hands where placed in her front jean’s pockets, which were skinny and black. At her feet where her usual style of boots she wore and Mimi, who rubbed against her legs as she mewed hello to Dib. Tak turned away from whatever she was looking at towards Dib. She had a look of indifference and disinterest on her and only said the word, “Hey.” As a small grin grew across her face.

Dib replied similar with only the word, “Hey.” Then he stepped out the front door and went to hug her, and she followed his embrace. The two of them stayed there under the front porch light in the twilight of the sky that was drenched in orange with light pollution of the nearby city. The only sound between any of them was the soft and barely noticeably sound of Mimi purring as she rubbed against their legs. After a moment they stopped hugging and Dib brought her inside and closed the door behind them as he said, “I like your hair.”

Tak stepped into the house and startled slightly at his comment, then she turned to look at herself in a mirror on the wall. “Yeah I tried to match Zim’s wig, since Zita saw me.” She touched and readjusted her hair as she looked into the mirror. “I don’t know how long I’ll keep it. Probably not too long, I miss the purple.”

Dib joined her in the mirror and said, “Yeah, me too. Not that black doesn’t look good on you.” Dib added quickly, “The purple is just…” He rotated his hand in a circular motion as he tried to find the word he was looking for, “I don’t know. More you. I guess.” He turned from the mirror to face her and said, “Did you ever figure out what was wrong with your disguise?”

Tak responded, “No, I brought it home and did a full analysis and ran every troubleshoot I could think off. Part of the reason why it took me so long. Well, that and I was working on this.” She swung her backpack around from her and took out something. She extended her arm out with it to Dib, and in her open hand he saw what looked like a new phone. Dib took it from her and it activated on its own in his hand. When it turned on he saw Tak’s modified Irken insignia light up on the screen. “To replace your old one. I know you didn’t really lose it yet, and it’s probably just sitting at the office in School-” Tak fidgeted with her hair and spoke quickly as she gave her explanation. Then she calmed herself down and continued coolly, “But, considering what happened today I thought it was best that you and I had a better way to communicate in case something like this happened again…that and I know you wanted one.” She added in a tone that feigned to be unsentimental.

“Tak! This is really…” Dib started unsure what words to use to express his thanks. She rarely used her own insignia, as she was afraid someone would recognize it as Irken. So he took it as a sign it was unique in its abilities. He continued, “Just… thanks. It’s really cool.”

“You’re welcome. And you’re right if you think it’s more than just a phone that’s off the grid. It can do a whole lot more than anything on Earth, but I’ll leave what it can do up to you to figure out. Since I know you like that sort of thing.” She looked into her backpack and rummaged for something before she looked back up to Dib and said, “Did I get here first or did Zim-?”

Zim called to them from the living room and interrupted her as she spoke, “You okay back there Dib? Is the pizza guy still here?”

“-No. Of course he didn’t.” Tak said aggravated, lowly to herself.

Dib yelled back to the living room, “No it’s just Tak, she made it.”

“Oh. Okay.” Zim said from the living room and the two of them could sense some disappointment in his voice. They then heard Gir as he entered the living room and excitedly said, “Who wants breakfast!?”

“And he brought Gir?!” Tak almost yelled out loud in her shock, which surprised Dib. Mimi either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as she mewed in excitement and ran over to meet Gir in the living room. Tak called out shrilly to her to not interact with him to no avail. They heard Gir exclaim, “Kitty!” Then she groaned to herself as she went off into the side room opposite of the living room. Dib followed her and saw her lean against a window looking outward with an expression of disgruntlement. She said, “I thought you said you only invited Zim.”

“We did.” Dib started to say to her, “But him and Gir are kind of a package deal. You know, like you and Mimi?”

Tak brought her hand up to cover her eyes in exhaustion and said, “Tell me they’re at least wearing their disguises?”

“They are. But I don’t think they really need to. You’re all safe here, you could probably take off your disguise for the night if you want too.”

“I’ll keep it on.” Tak said flatly, “No offense, but considering your father’s the smartest member of your species I’d rather not have him see me without my disguise on. Even with his supposed respect for your privacy I can’t believe he doesn’t have any monitoring of his home.”

“He does. But only in and around the lab. The rest of the house is safe.”

“I’m sure it is.” She stopped leaning on the window, straited up, and exhaled deeply. “Even so. Considering the fiasco that was this afternoon I’d rather just keep it on.” She turned to Dib and said, “And please tell me you'll make sure they keep their disguises on too.”

“Yeah. Like I said, they already have their disguises on. And I don’t think they have a problem with them either.”

“Good.” Tak relaxed a bit and brought her hand to her face to brush her hair away. “The idiot’s finally smartening up.”

Dib exhaled in frustration as he brought his own hand up to his hair. He said, “Why do you treat him like this? He’s not an idiot you know.” Tak responded with a deadpan expression as she lowered her hand from her face to stare at Dib. “Okay he has plenty of lapses in judgement, I’ll give you that. But he’s hardly what I consider an idiot.”

“Sure. He’s brilliant.” Tak deadpan demeanor seeped into her tone as she spoke, and she looked away from him to the window as she crossed her arms over her chest.

As things were turning out Dib was worried that Gir’s worst case scenario was coming close to happening. He choose his words carefully before he spoke again, “He was a big help today at Skool.” Tak was unphased. “And he even offered to help you find Mimi when we didn’t know where she was.” Tak readjusted herself as she looked out the window. Finally she said,

“He can occasionally think of someone other than himself, but one good gesture hardly makes up for everything.”

“What does he have to make up for?” He reached out and touched her shoulder, but she shook him off and refused him as she stepped closer to the window.

“He’s a selfish, conceited, and annoying little brat.” She started to say, still looking away from him. “That, and combined with everything he’s done to ruin my life I think I’ve been exceptionally kind to him.”

“What, by insulting him and sometimes hurting him every chance you get?” Dib said angry and let his emotions show unguarded. Tak didn’t say anything to his question but he saw her posture visibly tighten and could make out a girted expression on her face in the faint reflection of the window. Dib brought his hand to his face as he looked away and tried to cool himself down. He didn’t want to start a fight with her and ruin the party. He also realized he hasn’t always been the best influence for her. Considering he’s ignored or even encouraged Tak’s pranks he knows he’s partially to blame for her actions. He began again calmer and said, “He’s not the same self-centered, annoying little green alien that came to this planet six years ago. He’s still pretty selfish and full of himself, but he’s getting better.” Tak was unmoved by what he said but he still continued, “And he is sorry. He’s told you multiple times now. The most recent was today actually.” Dib regretted his tone right after he finished. It wasn’t angry, but it certainly felt like he was accusing her. Tak’s posture seemed to loosen at his remark and she turned around to face him with an annoyed, mocking look on her face, and had one arm cradling the elbow of the other as she said,

“You know, one thing I could never get over about Earth is that you guys seem to think just saying ‘sorry’ is enough to make up for something. But I don’t think it could even be remotely close to makeup for what happened to me.” She ended her statement in anger.

“I don’t think saying ‘sorry’ is enough either, and I don’t think that’s all he’s done.” Dib began to say frustrated now, “He’s tried to make things better and he’s helped us out multiple times, again, he most recently helped you! Just…” Dib brought up his hands to his face to wipe it and tried to cool himself off before he continued, “Look, I know the four of us do hang out sometimes but when we do the two of you just kind of imagine the other doesn’t exist or worse. He’s doing a lot just by being here tonight, but he’s doing it because he likes me and Gaz, but so do you. Do you think maybe you could admit you two have something in common? Or at least tolerate him the same way he is you for us tonight?” Dib tried to end it there with Gir’s insight from earlier, and hoped it would put things into perspective for her. Instead, after he finished he was surprised to see an angry look wash over Tak as she brought up her hands and squeezed them in anger.

“You-Idiot! Don’t you think I realize this, and it’s the whole reason I agreed to this in the first place?”

“What?” Was all Dib could say in his confusion.

She went right up to his face and said still very angry, “I already know he likes you guys! I’m expecting him to behave because of it, if he didn’t I’d be furious with him!”

“Oh.” Was all Dib could say and he thought to himself, “Yeah idiot.” With that sudden outburst Tak seemed to cool off, or at least she tried to. She turned away from Dib and pulled at the back of her hair as she squinted in annoyance and pain. “Are your antennas hurting again?” He asked her concerned, she opened her eyes and stopped pulling at her hair and looked very self-conscious.

“They’re fine. Just sore.” She fixed her hair as she said this but would not look to Dib as she finished.

“Want to go upstairs and I’ll massage them for you?” He approached and reached out to her shoulder as he said this. She didn’t notice Dib, and was considering his offer but as she saw him she jumped back and said tensely while touching her hair,

“I said I’m fine. Can you stop doing this?”

“Doing what?” Dib said confused.

“This.” Tak gestured to all of him, “What you always do. You always try to be the ‘voice of reason’ or the mediator, but you’re not very good at it.”

“I don’t…” Dib was about to go on but as he thought about how he’s acted, particularly over the past few days, he realized he has definitely tried to be the mediator. “…Okay yes I do.” Tak didn’t say anything else but crossed her arms over her chest irritated, he continued “But I don’t really think that’s a bad thing, somebody has to.”

Tak unfolded her arms and brought them up at a loss for words. “No, you don’t, you don’t have to. Tonight would have been just fine if you hadn’t brought this up. Zim and I would have tolerated each other enough to be on the opposite ends of the room without making eye contact and then we would have all just gone to bed after tonight.”

“Yeah but-” Dib was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell as he started talking. Both him and Tak looked to the door the latter of which said,

“Who else did you invite?” She hissed as her eyes darted back to him.

“No one. That’s probably the pizza they order.”

Tak tensed up at Dib’s explanation and he could see her physically fight not to pull her hair, “Why did they order pizza? Are they trying to drive me insane?”

“Relax the pizza guy’s not going to notice anything.” Dib said trying to reassure her.

“I know that.” Tak said less stressed, “But it’s always the same weird one that likes to hang out as long as possible and is probably half brain dead.”

“Yeah, so we’ll just pay and shoo him off.” Dib went up to the door and opened it to the pizza guy.

He was tall but had horrible posture as he hunched over holding the pizzas in one arm. He had long greasy black hair and acne all over his face. His uniform was bright pink with a fat pig eating a pizza sewed onto his right chest and on his left side was an upside down name tag that read “CJ”. He let himself into the house past Dib and said, “I got a large cheese pizza, and a large half pepperoni, quarter anchovies, and quarter no cheese for a Mr.…Uh, I can I can never get this guy’s name right.” He said the last part to himself annoyed and read the name on the receipt phonetically, “In-va-der Zim?”

Tak jumped slightly at the pizza guy’s words but before she could say anything Dib went to him and said, “That’s us! He’s busy right now but we can pay you.”

The pizza guy looked up from the receipt, “Oh hey Dab.” He said with a smile, “How you doing man?”

“It’s Dib, and I’m fine uh…” Dib started to say dubiously.

“CJ. Did you forget my name man?” He said annoyed and crossed his free arm.

“No.” Dib lied, “Your name tag is upside down.”

CJ looked down to his name tag and saw that it was, “Oh, yeah it is.” He then tried to fix it and nearly dropped the pizzas doing so. Tak then came over and took them away from him. “Thanks,” He said uncaringly. She carried them off to a table in the side room as he continued, “It’s twenty six, sixty seven for the guy’s pizza. And is that really his name?” He asked regarding the name Zim used to order.

“Nope.” Said Tak flatly, “He’s just a child who likes to play pretend.”

“Oh…Really? What’s he pretending?”

Tak nearly slammed the pizzas on the table and said, “Dib, give the deliver drone his money so he can go.”

Dib reached for his pocket quickly but realized he didn’t have his wallet on him. He said he would be back as soon as he got some money.

“Don’t bother.” Tak said as she went over to her backpack on the ground and reached into it. She produced a wad of bills and presented a one hundred note to CJ and said, “This should cover it. You can go now.”

CJ looked at it and said slowly, “Uh…you’ll have to wait for me to get the change for this.”

“That’s not required, you may keep the rest.”

“Really?” CJ asked excitedly, “You like me that much?”

“No. Let me be perfectly clear.” Tak started to say slowly and deliberately, “I’m paying you one hundred dollars to fuck off. You should take it and leave before I remove you myself.” She then produced another one hundred note and gave it to him.

CJ accepted it but pondered over what she said with a quizzical look on his face and then said skeptically, “I don’t know how I should feel about this.”

“Decide later. Goodbye!” Tak said quickly as she turned him around and pushed him out of the doorway and slammed it shut behind him. She leaned on the door after it closed and let out a relieved sigh.

“Well that went better than expected.” Dib said, “I’d pay you back but I know you pretty much print money.”

“Your welcome.” Tak said as she brushed a hand through her hair while still leaning on the door. “Why did they order pizza? Didn’t Zim’s SIR unit say he made food or something?”

“Miscommunication. Gaz told Gir she wanted breakfast for dinner, and I guess Zim ordered pizza on the way here or something.”

“That sounds about right.” Tak said annoyed. She got off the door and went to her backpack and began rummaging through it.

Dib watched her and then went over to the side table where she left the pizzas to bring them to the rest of the party. As he did so he said, “And uh…Tak?”

“Please don’t start again.” She said flatly as she went through her backpack.

Dib grabbed the pizzas off the table and said, “I’m not, it’s just…Is everyone going to have a good time tonight?”

Tak stopped going through her backpack and turned around to look at him as she said, “I don’t know. I can’t speak for everyone but I actually wanted to be here. I find most of the party amicable so I just figured I’d have a good time if I just focused on them.” She stood up and crossed her arms over her chest, “I assume you think the party’s already off to a bad start.” There wasn’t any unrest in the way she spoke or even in her posture, she was simply stating what she observed.

“No, at least I don’t think so.” He said this more to himself than to her, “Look, I’m sorry we had a fight, maybe putting you and Zim in the same house for the night wasn’t the best idea.” He could see Tak tense up as he continued, “I’m not saying one of you should leave but…I don’t know, maybe I was just dumb to think we could all get along for the night.”

Tak took a deep breath, and relaxed slightly as she said, “Look: the night hasn’t even started and Zim and I haven’t even seen or spoken to each other. He is…something.” She looked off to the living room where everyone else was as she said that word. “But I wouldn’t have agreed to come tonight if I couldn’t handle him.” There was a small pause before she reluctantly finished, “And you might be right when you say he isn’t the same annoying little alien from six years ago.”

“Dammit Gaz! Just grab onto me and let me fly your fat ass!” The two of them heard Zim yell out from the living room. After hearing it Tak said annoyed,

“Or maybe not.”

“You’re not the same either. You’ve both changed a lot. For the better I think.” He went next to her with the pizzas in hand and nudged her side with his playfully, “I know you have a lot to get over, but try to get along with him tonight, at least a little bit more than usual. Okay?”

Tak breathed deeply again and then said, “Whenever I have to be around him you know I tolerate him. That’s the best you can hope for out of me.” She bent down to her backpack and took something out of it. “But maybe tonight I can tolerate him a bit more than usual. Maybe anyway.” Out of her backpack she took the wig and contacts Zim gave to her earlier today and showed it to Dib who gave a smile as he said cheerfully,

“That will probably be a good way to start.” He thought to himself for a moment before he asked, “You didn’t do anything to them, did you?”

“Apart from clean them, no.” Tak said as she crossed her arms slightly insulted, “I’m trying to behave myself tonight, at least as long as he does anyway.”

“Well, I guess that’s as good as I can hope for.” Dib said with mock cheer and then made his way into the living room with Tak beside him. When he stepped into the living room he could see Gaz and Zim on the couch playing their game and two partially eaten plates of pancakes on the coffee table. He also spied Gir playing with Mimi on the ground with what he assumed was some mess of string. He lifted the boxes above himself and said to the room, “Tak’s here, and so is the pizza!”

“We heard you guys in the other room.” Gaz said dryly from the couch, she looked away from the game for a moment to the two of them and said, “Hey Tak.”

“Hello Gaz.” She said simply, “I have the sweater you lent me earlier.” She then began to remove it from her person revealing a dark purple tee shirt she had on underneath. “Where do you want me to put it?”

“Just leave it anywhere, I’ll put it back in my room later.”

Tak then laid it down carefully over the armchair by the couch. “I also have your ridiculous disguise from earlier today.” Tak said playfully before she threw the disguise at Zim. It hit him in the side of the head, and even though it did not hurt him, when Zim was hit he let out a resounding, “Ow!” as he rubbed the side of his head that was hit and looked to the two of them. “Oh don’t be such a smeet.” She said as she collapsed onto the armchair slouching. “And you can thank me later for disinfecting them.”

Zim placed down his controller to inspect his wigs and contacts, he felt something was off with the texture of the wig and brought it to his nose to smell it, after which he gaged and said, “Aww, Tak! What did you do to this?”

“Nothing.” Tak said innocently, “I just put them through a cleaning solution to try and get some of the grime off. You should thank me for taking the time to clean it.” She ended her statement with satisfaction in her voice.

Zim was unimpressed and brought the wig an arm’s length away and covered his nose in the pit of his elbow as he said, “Well whatever you put it in, it’s making me nauseous! If you were expecting me to put them on tonight you’re out of luck.”

“I wasn’t!” Tak began saying annoyed, “And if you know what’s good for you you’ll keep your real disguise on.”

“Hey….” Dib interrupted entreatingly, “I’m bringing the pizzas into the kitchen and helping myself to them if anyone wants to join me.”

“I’ll have some pizza. Gir, cover for me.” Zim said as he stood up from the couch and went over to Gir.

Gir was still on the floor with Mimi, who was on her back as he dangled a piece of string above her to swipe at, “But Kitty!” He implored looking to Zim.

“He doesn’t have to play for you. You’re Tails.” Gaz said.

“But what if you need to fly over something?” Zim asked.

“I won’t. The whole game’s meant to be played without that.”

Zim was satisfied enough with Gaz’s explanation or at least eager to join Dib in the kitchen. As he went away he called out, “Well just don’t do anything exciting without me, I don’t want to miss anything!”

“No promises.” Gaz said playfully in her dull tone which earned a small gruff from Zim who none the less went off with Dib into the kitchen without another word.

With Zim and Dib in the kitchen, Gaz and Tak were left with each other in the living room. Gaz was focused on her game and Tak didn’t feel any need to distract her from it, so she fixed herself slightly up in the chair and watched Mimi. Gir was kneeling on the ground above her and dangling a mess of string for her to swat at as she laid on her back. Both of them had happy faces as they were completely focused on their game, and neither one of them noticed Tak as she glared daggers at the two of them. She had given Mimi explicit instructions not to interact with Gir both in the past and now just a moment ago, so she was very annoyed that Mimi decided to disobey her orders. She used her communicator and said to Mimi, “What do you think you’re doing?” Her tone was icy and did not portray any other type of emotion besides her annoyance which she could not hide in her thoughts.

Tak was satisfied and surprised that Mimi payed attention to her and slowed in her swatting as she adjusted her head slightly to turn to face her. Mimi communicated to Tak, “I’m fulfilling my disguise Ma’am.”

Mimi gave her response with disinterest, and her tone angered Tak slightly. She then said to her somewhat venomous and still icy, “Really…? Because it looks like you’re playing with the enemy.”

Mimi stopped her swatting completely at Tak’s statement and brought her front legs down to her belly and said to her, “If he’s the enemy Ma’am, then why are we here with him and his superior?”

Tak didn’t say anything to her question but couldn’t help herself from glancing from her to Gaz for a brief moment as she continued to glare daggers at her. Mimi noticed her eye movement and looked to Gaz and then back to Tak as an exasperated expression washed across her face. It was still there even as Gir noticed she stopped playing, and playfully pushed the mass of string into her head as he entreated saying, “Kitty?” gleefully unaware of the conversation she was having with her superior. She was still glaring at Tak as she complied with Gir and resumed her swatting.

Tak broke the silence as they glared at each other and said, “I gave you a direct order not to interact with him.” Some feelings of disloyalty were present in her tone as she spoke to Mimi.

She responded plainly, “I’m not in danger. And we’re not bothering you Ma’am. If anything, I’m keeping him from bothering you by occupying his time.”

Tak relented with a condition and said still annoyed with her, “Just behave yourself.”

Mimi was satisfied with that response but before she resumed her playing with Gir she said back to her, “I’ll only follow your lead Ma’am.” The way she said it equated to, ‘I will if you do’ which Tak didn’t like, but she had enough talking with her.

As far as she could tell all Gir was doing with Mimi was playing with her, so she didn’t feel too strong of a need to separate them. She brought her attention away from them and focused on the television screen as Gaz marched her blue character across the screen and got lost in her thoughts. She still felt very negatively about Gir, not only because he was a creation of Zim’s and she found him irritating, but because his interactions with Mimi had been very hazardous in the past. Since the first incident six years ago when Gir was able to remote access and control Mimi, Tak felt she had never fully reverted back to her old self. Tak had been able to correct the problem and reinstate her autonomy and old programming but she felt something in Mimi was off, not to say she was exactly the same then as she is now. She operated smoothly and never disobeyed or performed detrimentally to their mission, but over time she found Mimi’s personality had developed increasingly into something she had unanticipated. The phrase, ‘gone native’ went through Tak’s mind, and were Mimi’s own words when she described the state Tak was in. She said it back to her as a joke the other night, but when she thought back on it she found the description fits Mimi perfectly. The original parts she used to create her where unique in that her “brain” was designed to observe, learn, and in a sense grow over time. Due to this any and all information she took in, whether it was combative, technical, or even cultural, was assimilated and compiled into her inner processor. The entire design purpose behind a SIR unit like Mimi was to create a robot that could, ‘go native’ so as to assist an Invader in blending in on an enemy planet. Hence the reason why Mimi perfectly mimicked the habits of a domestic house cat, and preferred them over acting as a robot. Tak thought perhaps that was the reason she found her parts discarded on Dirt. All modern SIR units used by Invaders today could collect and analyzed data, but they couldn’t understand it the same way she or Mimi could, so their programming remained static throughout their existence. More than likely Tak thought this was a conscious choice by their designers to avoid any complications a constantly changing AI could bring. Tak almost felt the same way, she appreciated having Mimi as a companion for as long as she has, but she also found that sometimes she could be a bit of a nuisance. If only because of her uncalled for opinions she continued to provide without being asked to. Oddly, she briefly thought there was some similarity between Gir and Mimi. If only because it seemed to her that Gir seemed to change over the years similar to her. She thought perhaps  Zim and herself had been rummaging through the same bunch of garbage when they made their SIR units, but she couldn’t even bare that similarity so instead she chalked it up to poor design choices and dumb luck of Zim on creating Gir.

In the middle of her thought she came back to reality at the sound of Gir squealing over something Mimi was doing. She turned quickly to face the two of them and saw Gir grab Mimi into a hug. She was about to say something but noticed Mimi didn’t look displeased, if anything she looked quite happy. She decided not to intervene since as far as she could see there was no danger to her, but she made a mental note to herself to analyze her when they returned home tomorrow night.

“How was your walk home earlier?” Gaz said to Tak suddenly, jumping her out of any other trail of thought she was in.

“Oh, thankfully nothing happened.” She started to say coolly, “But I’m also infuriated that nothing did.” She ended her statement gritting her teeth.

Gaz let out a small chuckle and said, “Didn’t I tell you everyone’s dumber than a sack of bricks?”

“You did, but this is just uncanny.” Tak said exasperated, “If I brought you or Dib anywhere in the Empire in an Irken costume twice as good as what I wore home, the two of us would be shot dead in seconds.”

“I doubt that.” Gaz said unimpressed.

“It’s a lot different in the Empire.” Tak retorted quickly, “Your planet doesn’t even believe in other planetary life, but we constantly have to be alert in case of infiltration.”

“Uh…maybe.” Gaz said still unconvinced. She hadn’t turned her head away from the game the whole time she spoke to Tak, and she was now focusing intently on beating a boss. Tak watched her as she played. The game didn’t interest her as much as the fighting games she’d gone against her in, if only because it seemed to lack depth compared to them, but she still found the motions of the main character mesmerizing. Tak thought the overall design of the game was lacking as she had difficulty decerning what some objects were supposed to be. She assumed the background of the level was meant to be water or a forcefield of some kind and the boss was some fat man riding a orb shaped hover craft. She watched Gaz hop the blue creature into the boss for a total of eight times all while avoiding shots from it. After she finished the level Gaz said, “So nothing happened at all?”

Tak brought one of her hands to her face again and rolled her eyes as she groaned, “Actually the most infuriating and insane thing of the day happened on my way back. Some weird-o, for some unbelievable reason, decided to cat-call me on my walk home.”

“That doesn’t sound crazy.” Gaz said disappointed, “That’s just whatever.”

“But I was green!” Tak said in disbelief of what she was telling her, “What-What on Irk kind of thing was he thinking?”

“Everyone’s dumb, but guys are dumber.” Gaz said to her plainly, “What did you do to him?” She asked, some excitement in her voice.

Tak blew air and sighed, “Nothing. Normally I would have but with everything happening I just wanted to get home in one piece without any attention.”

“That’s far.” Gaz said understanding. “You still got plenty of test subjects back home anyway.”

“More than I know what to do with.” Tak said and chuckled softly to herself. She then remembered who was in the room with her and turned to see Mimi and Gir still playing. She said a bit quitter to Gaz, “Do you think he heard us?”

Gaz responded unconcerned, “I don’t think they’re paying attention to us, and he won’t say anything.”

“Of course.” Tak said with some concern in her voice and looked over to Mimi and Gir. She had forgotten they were in the room with them as she chatted with Gaz, but they seemed to be distracted with whatever game they were playing. For a moment she wondered if her mind wiping technology would work on Gir, and whether she would be able to do so to him discreetly. She’s been experimenting on humans since she arrived on the planet, even after she became friends with Dib and Gaz. Her first experiment was with the owner of the Deelishus Weenie corporation as her surrogate father, but following ‘developments’ as Tak put it, she began other more involved experiments of human biology. Once Dib found out about her experiments, as well as her most recent project, he had her release all of the livings ones and the ones who could be repaired. She did release all her test subjects, with the exception of her father which she was able to convince Dib was necessary for her survival on the planet. But she still had further experiments to run, so not too long after releasing them she began collecting again. To her credit she only collected criminals and other undesirables afterwards and employed a catch and release policy for some of them in hopes that Dib would accept her interests. But she never told him she was still experimenting on humans. She figured what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, and what she was doing was done in hopes of better understanding herself, so Tak thought he would have to understand her if he wanted to be a good boyfriend.

“Oh, and speaking of freak experiments.” Gaz started to say absentmindedly in between her game, “Did you fix your phone? You know, since Keef probably has Dib’s?”

“Already taken care of.” Tak said assuredly, “And I gave Dib a new phone as a precaution.”

“You bought him one on your way here?” Gaz asked confused.

“No. I made him one.” She said proudly. Tak was well aware of her technological accomplishments, and wanted to be sure Gaz knew her work when she saw it.

“Cool, could you make me one?” Gaz said absentmindedly.

Tak didn’t respond immediately, as the request itself caught her off guard slightly. She remembered that she initially rejected Dib’s request to make him a phone when she first joined their friend group. That seemed ages ago to her, and she assumed it did to them as well. Even so, she had a small fear that Dib would find some grievances with her if she agreed to make one for Gaz so easily. She decided that it would be unfair to make one for Dib and not Gaz, so somewhat reluctantly she replied with, “I - Sure.”

“Sweet.” Gaz said pleased, leaving Tak to dwell on her thoughts. She was jostled from them by the sound of Zim and Dib laughing in the kitchen as she looked off into that direction. “Sounds like the idiots are having fun.” Gaz said to herself.

Tak didn’t say anything at first and only fixed herself in her chair to watch the television and sighed lightly before saying, “Yeah.”

Gaz looked to her from the corner of her eye and said, “Do you want to play?”

Tak came to attention at her question and said, “I’ve never played this game before, so it probably won’t be very exciting to watch.”

“Didn’t you wipe the floor at the arcade the other day on games you never played?” Gaz said opening an eye wide to her.

           “Dib told you about that?” Tak asked somewhat surprised that Gaz knew about the particulars of her date.

Gaz replied simply, “Yeah.”

           Tak was about to ask, ‘how much did he tell you?’ But thought better not to ask and said with a small amount of annoyance she couldn’t hide, “Well all those games were dumb.”

“Well this isn’t dumb, so play with me.”

“This game doesn’t look too interesting to me, and I don’t really want to play as the little orange thing following you around.” Tak said with her arms crossed.

“Play as Sonic then, and I’ll be Tails.”

She was about to say that she didn’t want to play as the blue thing either when she heard a call from Zim in the kitchen. “Gir your stuff is ready!” He yelled to the living room, and then repeated his name after he didn’t hear a response. Gir replied that he was busy. Tak let out an annoyed pout and was about to get up and yell back but Gaz stopped her and said,

“Don’t worry about it. They’re dumb but they can handle it. You playing or what?” Tak was running out of excuses, it was clear to her that Gaz wanted to play the game with her but she still wasn’t sold on it. She had been mesmerized by the way Gaz moved her character quickly across the screen, even in the slower pace of the water level she was finishing up. She watched her beat the boss in style after which the title “Hydro City Zone Act 2” lit up on the screen. Gaz paused the game and handed her controller towards her and said, “Well? Are you at least going to try it?”

Somewhat begrudgingly, Tak gave in and said, “Just to humor you. Sure I’ll try it, don’t expect me to like it.” She moved on to the couch next to Gaz and setup with their respective controllers. She un-paused the game and said, “So what’s the purpose of this game?”

“You gotta go fast.” Gaz said as a small smirk grew across her face.

“I can see that.” Tak said unimpressed. After the game was un-paused she saw the characters consumed in a vortex as they went behind geometry and appeared on a lower level. “Any other goal? I see this game has rudimentary combat with the bosses you fought. Does it get anything like that fighting game?”

“Tekken? No, you just hop on enemies until they die like Super Mario.” Gaz said as she demonstrated with her own character in the game.

“Which one is that? Not the one with the yellow disk eating ghosts or something?”

“Pacman? No, it’s the one with the Italian guy and giant mushrooms.”

“Ugh!” Tak let out a disgruntled moan as she continued, “What is with all these Earth games and their ridiculous settings?”

“Less talk more speed.” Gaz said as she nudged Tak back to the game.

Tak obeyed and began her process of analysis of the game as she played. She noted it had fairly limited physics based upon the speed and momentum of her character, that most enemies could damage her simply by touch, and that to prevent death she had to carry at least one golden ring. “Very simple in concept.” Tak thought to herself, “Not as graceful as Gaz yet, but in no time at all I should be able to master this little game.” With that thought in mind she brought all of her focus onto the game and began her conquest of it, as she knew any true Invader would achieve.

______________________________________________________________

Dib and Zim made their way into the kitchen. There was still a faint haze of smoke from Gir’s cooking that permeated the air. None of the dishes had been cleaned but there was still a tower of suds in the sink from when Gir was playing in it. The stove looked dirtier than Dib would have expected from bacon and pancakes, with grease and batter all over it in places where it shouldn’t be, but he assumed that was normal for Gir. Along with that it seemed he had helped himself to the rest of the kitchen. Cabinets where open with pots and pans everywhere; milk, eggs, and cookie mix were open out on the table, there was something cooking in the oven (he hoped cookies), and the fridge was left open.

As they entered and saw the state it was in Zim said apologetically, “Uh…Sorry about Gir wreaking your kitchen. I usually let him do whatever he wants at ours but I should probably tell him to be more considerate at your house. You have a cleaning robot right?” He ended looking to Dib.

“No, not really.” Dib started to say as he made an open spot on the table for the pizzas. “Since the whole Foodio-self-destruct thing dad’s kind of been turned off from domestic robots.”

“Oh yeah, ‘Destructio’” Zim said reminiscing to himself, “Your dad hasn’t made any robots since then?”

“You almost had it blow up our whole family Zim.” Dib said in a huffy as he went to the fridge door to close it, “That, and he still can’t get over the poached eggs it used to make.”

Zim sat down at the table and said callously, “Well sorry. It was only a few years ago.” He opened the box of cheese pizza and said, “I hope they didn’t ruin my order. I swear every time I think about how they could mess it up they end up doing that exact thing. They must have mind reading technology or something.” He then took out a slice and began eating, while doing so he said, “I’ll be sure to have Gir clean up everything before we leave.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Dib said as he sat down to join Zim. He took a slice of the cheese as well and said, “The stove should be able to clean itself. It’s just the dishes that need cleaning really.”

“Well I’ll have him clean it anyway. It’s good to keep him busy.” Zim placed his wig and contacts on the table between him and Dib while they were eating and said, “What do you think? Some skin burning chemicals or some stuff to make me itchy?”

“I don’t think Tak would sabotage your disguise while we’re all in the same house.” Dib said picking up both the lenses and wig. He worried Tak did do something to them, but he didn’t think they would notice immediately if Zim wore them, but he also didn’t share this with him. He felt the texture of the wig and even brought it to his face to smell it.

“So no sewage this time?” Zim asked slightly peeved.

“I told you, I didn’t know about it.” Dib asserted.

“But you assumed?”

“Yeah, I did.” He said flatly and went back to inspecting the disguise. The wig was ratty when he gave it to Tak and it still was, but any grime that it had before was gone. The only problem was that it smelled like she dipped it in a very harsh chemical solution. Besides that it looked fine. The contacts where noticeably cleaner now than they were when Zim gave them to her, but they seemed to have a slight gloss to them which he chalked up to them being cleaner than usual. He rubbed the wig over his hand, and while he did feel a slight irritation he chalked it up to the strength of the chemicals Tak used and not out of some malicious intent of hers. At any rate Tak didn’t expect Zim to wear it tonight so he would be fine without wearing it until later. “Your disguise is fine by the way. It smells like she put it through bleach or something but you should be fine. Maybe just rinse it before you decide to wear it out again.”

Dib slid the wig and contacts across the table to Zim who inspected it once more and said, “Maybe something ten times harsher than bleach. It smells like my skin would burn off if I wore it too long.”

“Well don’t. She’s not expecting you to, so just take it home and clean it yourself.”

Dib’s reasoning satisfied Zim enough, so he took the disguise in a pout. Dib saw him take the wig and contacts in hand and place it around his back where it disappeared into his invisible pak, the only flaw in his otherwise perfect disguise. “How’s the pizza?” He asked lightly after he put his disguise away.

“It’s okay. Bloaty’s is too greasy for me but it’s still pizza.”

As he said this Zim opened the other box of pizza and inspected it briefly as he said, “How much do I owe you for it?”

“You don’t. Tak paid for it.”

Zim slouched back in his chair and continued eating as he said, “So she doesn’t expect me to pay her back. Right?”

“I don’t see why we’d ever have to pay either of you back. Don’t you guys both print money?”

“Kind of.” Zim said as he finished his slice of pizza without the crust and picked another out of the box. “I don’t know what Tak does but I sometimes make Earth money. The Earth authorities sometimes get pissy if I make enough to be noticed, but if I need a lot I just sell some off my stuff on the internet.”

“You sell alien technology on the internet?” Dib said in a slight shock, and then wondered why he was surprised.

“I mean unless you want to buy some. I never post it as alien tech. Just stuff like ‘foreign blender’ or ‘butt scratcher’ or something. That usually sells.”

“I bet they do.” Dib said slightly miffed. He was reminded of the countless times he posted proof of aliens on the web, only for it to go unnoticed or ignored. “If Tak finds out about it you’re dead though.”

“I think we’re both dead once she finds out about what we do on Guy’s Night.” Zim said as the cheese to his pizza fell off, which he caught with his tongue and slurped up.

Dib brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and said embarrassed, “Please stop calling it ‘Guy’s Night.’”

Zim smiled wryly and said smugly, “Why not? Would you prefer it if I wore my feminine disguise more often?” He said as he fluttered his eyelashes.

“No.” Dib almost choked on his pizza as he laughed lightly. “Your wigs are great, but your makeup skills could use some work.”

Zim wasn’t satisfied enough with Dib’s reaction, so he said “I could dress up like Tak again if you want.”

“Hell no!” He said entirely at end with Zim as he let out a loud laugh. He brought his hand to his face, “Why did I bring you there?”

“Because it was hilarious! Wasn’t it hilarious” Zim said laughing to himself.

“Yeah it was.” Dib said unable to keep himself from chuckling, “But I’m pretty sure there were Swollen Eye Balls at the convention. And they’re…smarter, you know?”

“Not really. And besides” Zim started to say flamboyantly, “All my disguises are flawless.”

“Yeah well never dress up like Tak again. After today I’m worried someone there would have actually thought it was her and not someone dressed in a shitty costume.”

“That’s okay I’m still trying to perfect my Gaz disguise. I just can’t manage to capture the glare. Hhmp.” Zim closed his eyes and mimicked Gaz’s scowl as he ended.

Dib laughed at his impersonation of Gaz and said, “I don’t know who I’d rather have angry at us. Tak or Gaz?”

“Gaz probably.” Zim said almost instantly, “She doesn’t have death beams like Tak does.”

“That doesn’t stop her.” Dib said proudly. Years ago he would have been hesitant to admit the capabilities Gaz held, which at many times seemed to surpass his own abilities. Recently he’s come to terms with that fact, and appreciated her more as a result, though he still wished he could convince her to take an interest in his hobbies.

“Yeah, it doesn’t.” Zim said almost to himself as he also reminisced on Gaz’s past accomplishments. “Guess that’s why we all became friends in the first place. You guys really are exceptional humans.”

“I don’t really think so. Or at least that’s not all of it. You and Tak are pretty exceptional Irkens. Least out of all the Irkens I’ve ever meet.”

“Yeah…” Zim trailed off as his gaze left Dib and then ended somewhat arrogantly, “I am pretty amazing compared to most.” Dib was about to say something in response to Zim and his typical egotistical response, not to say he was upset by it. Over the years of their friendship he’s found his bombastic personality to be a charming quality of his, but he always liked to take him down a peg when he could. Before he could say anything, he was interrupted by the sound of the oven’s timer going off. After which, Zim yelled out to the living room, “Gir your stuff is ready!” He yelled out Gir’s name a second time after he failed to hear a response.

“I’m busy!” Gir yelled back to the kitchen in sing-song.

Zim was about to yell back at him, but Dib interrupted him as he yelled and said the two of them could take care of it themselves. They made their way to the oven and Dib opened the door while Zim crouched next to him, and inside was a full tray of cookies. It was also splattered with what they assumed to be batter all along the inside, and it smelled like it was starting to burn. “They look done enough.” Dib said, “And we should probably turn off the oven before whatever’s on it burns any worse. We just need some oven mitts.”

“Don’t worry, I got it.” Zim said as he gently pushed Dib out of the way. He backed up a bit and saw two of Zim’s pak legs extrude from his back, breaking his disguise again, and reach into the oven to pull out the tray and place it on top of the oven. “There we go.” Zim said happily as he retracted his pak legs and brushed off his hands, “I’ll have Gir clean everything else some time tonight or tomorrow before we leave.”

“Sure, but the oven should be able to clean itself.” Dib said as he went to activate the oven’s self-cleaning function and was surprised when it failed to work. He opened the oven and tried to activate it again before he called out annoyed, “Gir, what did you break?”

“Nothing!” Gir called out cheerily from the living room.

“Gir, get in here now!” Zim yelled to him, stating it as a command. The two of them heard a shuffle from the living room as Gir skipped into the kitchen and said hello to them.

“Did you do anything to the oven?” Dib asked concerned.

“Besides use it, no.” Gir said uncaringly

“Well whatever you did broke it.” Zim said disappointed with his arms folded to him.

Gir was surprised by Zim’s claim and walked over to the oven and said, “It was working fine a minute ago.” He turned the oven to its max setting and stuck his hand inside of it to feel the heat. He brought out his hand as it glowed with heat and said satisfied, “Yeah it’s still working.”

“No, not the heating part. The cleaning part.” Dib said worried as he shut off the oven and closed the door.

“Oh.” Gir said blankly as he stared for a moment at Dib, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Zim asked skeptically and Gir replied with affirmation. After which he continued, “I find it hard to believe that it just stopped working suddenly all on its own. Especially since you were the last one to use it.”

“Uh…” Gir trailed off as he rubbed the side of his arm and looked away at the ceiling. Dib was unsure of the exact reason for his reaction, he thought it was possible Gir was just afraid of the bad situation the oven being broken put him in. He wanted to subdue Zim from him so he said,

“It’s probably not him. Our stuff breaks all the time, even our dishwasher broke last week and we’re still trying to get it fixed.”

“Well whatever, I still want you to clean up this mess you made.”

“But the party’s just started.” Gir pleaded as he grabbed onto Zim who was unphased by his begging, “I’m still playing with Kitty. Please!” Gir wailed as he clung onto Zim, who was unphased as he crossed his arms disappointed with him.

“Let him go play with Kitty. Mimi – I mean Mimi.” Dib said as he corrected himself, “So long as he cleans up before you guys leave I’m okay with it.”

Zim let out an annoyed grunt before he relented and said, “I want you to clean this up tonight while we’re sleeping. We need a clean kitchen tomorrow for us at breakfast. That’s an order.”

“Yes Sir!” Gir said as his voice and demeanor morphed into duty mode, but as quickly as it came it faded away and they saw him hop away back to the living room, joyful and relieved to go back to his games.

Neither of them spoke for a moment as they watched him skip into the living room. A moment after he was out of sight Zim went back to the table and said disgruntled, “You were too easy on him.”

“You’re one to talk.” Dib jabbed at him as he went back to the table with him, “When have you ever not given into his begging?”

“I’ve been trying not to.” Zim defended quickly as grabbed another slice from the box, “You at least have to be hard on him when does something wrong. I don’t really like seeing him that way but it’s the only way he learns.”

“You sound like a parent when you talk about it like that.” Dib said absent mindedly as he helped himself to more pizza.

His comment gave Zim a moment of pause between his chewing before he replied, “I wouldn’t call our relationship a ‘parental’ one.” He said with a full mouth and then finished before he continued, “I’ve paid attention to human parents and their kids, apart from you guys and your dad. I don’t coddle Gir as much as they would, I think anyway. If I had to compare us to a human relationship for me and him I’d say friends but closer, maybe brothers?” Zim ended in a question. It was clear to Dib that’s he’s thought about this before, but he was still very unsure what they were exactly to each other. “We’re definitely not just coworkers, even if that’s what we were supposed to be.”

“But you’re still his superior? I mean military style, which I guess is how Irken society works.”

“Yeah that’s close enough.” Zim said absent mindedly, “I mean I still have him do stuff for me, but a lot of the time we just hang out if it’s just us two. So we’re kind of closer to equals but not quite.”

“That’s why you gave him the human disguise and bigger body?”

“Not really. You know he wouldn’t stop bothering me about making him taller after it started happening to me. The ‘brother’ disguise just seemed like the easiest way to take him out. That, or I’d make him into a Great-Dane, which I was thinking about for a while.”

Dib chuckled at Zim’s reveal, “Could you imagine it? He’d be walking on two legs all the time, bright green, and probably just as talkative if not more. Oh, Tak would have gone crazy when she upgraded your disguises.”

“She still goes crazy. I don’t get why, especially after today.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry too much about. Gir definitely likes his disguise, and you don’t hate yours. Do you?”

Zim was quiet for a moment as he brought up his arms to turn over and examine them. Taking note of his disguised skin, its texture, and his five fingers which sometimes made him forget he only had three. “It’s okay.” He finally said after his inspection. “You know we’ve been dealing with it since she joined our friend group, and I still like to wear my old one out every now and again. But being able to walk into Skool or down the street with Gir and not get weird looks everywhere I go…It’s pretty good. Not going to lie.”

They were both quiet for a moment after he finished, and Dib was nodding in quiet satisfaction. “Yeah, you two could get along if you really wanted to.”

Zim let out a huff of air as he looked off to the ceiling, “Don’t expect a miracle.” He said annoyed, “But if you want me to give her a peace offering tell her the pizza without cheese is for her. It’s supposed to be anyway. Since she has a problem with Earth cheese for some reason.”

“She likes cheese, she’s just kind of picky.” Dib said. He’s had some success with introducing her to Earth cuisine, but he wasn’t sure if her body had a sensitive reaction to some of the food here or if it was more of a mental thing. She’s been trying more Earth food lately, but it still had to be heavily processed, and even if it was it could still cause her problems like the nacho cheese the other night at the arcade. “But that’s really cool you did that for her. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.” Zim didn’t say anything but looked to him with an exhausted and skeptical expression. “She will.” Dib assured him, “She might not say it aloud or maybe even admit it to herself but she does. She likes when people think of her. We all do.”

“Yeah well…” Zim started but paused before he continued, “Don’t expect us interacting much tonight, if at all. At least if we don’t want a problem.”

“That’s fine. Tak wants the same thing.” Dib said but was worried for a moment that what he said may have insulted Zim a bit. He showed no signs of being upset so he continued, “Want to head back to the living room and see what everyone else is doing.”

“Sure. I don’t think you guys want to watch me and Gaz play Sonic, but I could go for a movie.”

The two of them made their way to the living room. Mimi was still playing with Gir, who was now cuddling and petting her where they sat. Then they were surprised to see Tak and Gaz sitting on the couch playing a video game together, and as they entered they were greeted by a frustrated grunt from Tak. After her grunt she turned to Gaz and said annoyed, “I thought you said the goal of this game is to obtain speed?”

“It is.” She said back smirking to her.

“Then why on Irk would they punish me for it?” Tak said brushing a hand through her hair as she gestured to the television. Dib went up to the back end of the couch and leaned on it while the two of them were talking. He asked them what happened, then Tak replied, “I just finished killing the boss, and I was running down this hill until I fell into this pit with jump pads and each side, so I used the momentum I got from them and jumped out. And immediately after doing that I run straight into this giant swinging ball with spikes! And I couldn’t react to it, or the controller couldn’t read my inputs in time, so I just ended up eating it!” She brushed her hand through her hair again still upset at what happened and said, “What is the point of this design?”

“It’s to keep you own your toes.” Gaz said teasingly to her. The game was paused now and she reclined back on the couch stretching.

“But even from an objective standpoint, there was no way I could have reacted to it in time unless I knew it was going to happen. The only point this is trying to say is preparatory memorization of an area before exploring is key.” She stated coldly and crossed her arms after she finished.

“There isn’t supposed to be a point. It’s a game.” Gaz replied to her. She had no further response and was silent for a moment until Zim chimed in,

“If it makes you feel better Sonic One has a worse trap. You just run down this hallway into a wall of spikes. I think I moaned about it for half hour when it happened. And I think it was on level with a similar name. Marble zone right?” Tak stared at the television the whole time with her arms crossed as he spoke. His last comment was to Gaz, but before she could have given a response Tak replied,

“It doesn’t matter.” She said as she raised her arms up, “It’s all stupid anyway.”

“Well if you’re all set, I think we can do something else.” Gaz as she started to grab up the controllers.

Tak snatched her own controller out of her lap away from Gaz and said tensely, “No. I’m not done.”

“What happened to us playing Sonic?” Zim said somewhat peeved raising an eyebrow to Gaz.

“You were taking too long in the kitchen. But honestly right now I could just go for watching a movie or something.”

“So we’re just done playing then?” Tak asked somewhat confused.

“I’m down for anything.” Dib said not reading Tak’s confusion as he left the back end of the couch and went over to the armchair. “What movies did you guys bring?”

“Nothing too crazy.” Zim started to say as he went to collect the plastic bag he brought the movies in, “Scary Movie, Spirited Away, Aliens, Star Wars. What are you guys feeling?”

“I haven’t seen Spirited Away in a while, I could go for that.” Gaz said.

“What’s that movie about?” Tak asked interested. She hadn’t seen too much Earth media besides what Gaz and Dib showed her. She found most of what they showed her to be unappealing, with her and Gaz’s taste having a bit more overlap than Dib’s. She knew part of the point of showing up tonight was to watch more Earth media, but besides Star Wars (a movie she found both boring and unrealistic) she was unfamiliar with the other titles.

“It’s good. You’ll like it.” Was all Dib said to her, which didn’t win her over but she felt better about her chances of liking it knowing that both Gaz and Dib liked it.

“That works for me. So are we watching it?” Zim asked, which caused Dib and Gaz to look to Tak, and at feeling the slight pressure from them she gave in. She sighed and said,

“Yeah, let’s watch it.”

“Nice.” Said Zim as he jumped onto the couch next to Gaz, opposite from Tak. This caused Gaz to be pushed to the side into her, which took up more of the couch. Tak was slightly annoyed by the decrease in room and noted Dib had the entire armchair all to himself, which she thought was really her chair as she claimed it when she arrived here first. She considered moving from the couching and sitting on top of Dib on the armchair, but she found she wasn’t brave or bold enough to act on her feelings in that way.

The party went smoothly for the rest of the night after they agreed to watch the movie. Tak found it interesting to say the least, it was her first time seeing it. At first she found the story and the main character annoying, unbelievable, and too fantastical for her taste, but by the end of the movie she wished it could have been longer. Zim provided his commentary throughout it, as per usual with any piece of media he took part in. Tak made her best effort to ignore him at first, but by the end of the movie when she was engrossed in it as she hugged a pillow and was actively shushing him. The rest of the night continued in similar fashion, as they all consumed movies and shows while talking with one another. Tak had even tried one of Gir’s cookies, which she was pleased to find (but also loathed to admit) was actually quite delicious. She was able to enjoy the company of Dib and Gaz, and ignore Zim and Gir, the latter of which having been of no concern or bother to her at all. So she found it somewhat acceptable that Mimi had occupied his attention, but she was still upset she disobeyed her orders. As the night went on Dib, Gaz, and even Zim had changed into their pajamas, so towards the latter half of the night Tak wanted to change into hers as well. She excused herself from the party and went to Gaz’s room to change, and brought Gaz’s hoodie for her as a favor.

She grabbed her backpack from the front door and made her way up the stairs of the Membrane’s house. She heard the mixed noise of the living room from the movie and everyone’s commentary on it as she made her way up. She’d been in their house multiple times now, both as an infiltrating enemy, which seemed so long ago to her, and now more recently as a visiting friend. The house itself was beginning to gain some sense of familiarity for her because of this, but she still found herself taking in the finer details of it from time to time. She found the primitivity of it rather quaint, yet she told herself she could never live like this. She’s use to her lab, with her experiments, her new ship which she flew out every now and again, and above her main base the expansive human mansion, empty save for robot servants and all the comforts Earth could provide. While she thought about her nearly empty home she examined the family photos littered across the wall of the stairs, as she was habit to do. Even though she found the photographs quaint she always wondered why their father, The Professor Membrane, would keep their home so relatively primitive. She thought something even as simple as a screen would be more efficient for displaying all their images, rather than still photos. She knew his underground lab was much more advanced than their above house, nowhere near as advanced as her own base, or maybe even Zim’s, but she thought it would be almost impossible to tell if she didn’t already know. “Maybe he’s just used to the way he used to live.” Tak thought to herself as she spied what looked to be a very old photo of who she assumed to be a young Professor Membrane. He was small but still wearing a lab coat with goggles, conflicting with the rural farm area in the background. She looked further up the wall and spied a more recent photo of the three Membranes together, posing for a family photo. Gaz looked to be much happier than she normally looks, same as Dib, while The Professor held the two of them in a hug on either side of him. “I’m sure he’s a good father.” Tak thought, “Even with all their slight misgivings they have with him.” She was distracted from her thoughts as she caught Mimi following her up the stairs from the corner of her eye. She was slightly surprised, since she had been spending nearly the entire night with Gir even at her initial forbidding. She was about to say something to her about her change in behavior, but thought there was no point to it. She continued up the stairs towards Gaz’s room without addressing her, and Mimi followed her in tow without a word.

She opened the door to Gaz’s room and saw Mimi scoot under her legs into it, then she hopped unto Gaz’s bed and sat down as she began grooming herself. Without speaking Tak let herself into the room, turned on a light switch, and closed the door behind her lethargically. Tak had been in Gaz’s room multiple times now and thought it wasn’t typically what a human girl’s room would look like, if what she had seen in Earth media was anything to go by. There were no bright colors, no posters of movie or rock stars on the wall, and it didn’t reek of perfume. Her bed was against a wall on one side of the room, on it was a plain blanket burgundy in color, and on the floor were two sleeping bags she assumed her and Gaz would be using tonight. The room itself had very dark colors, which was only exacerbated by the fact that the light in her room needed a bulb changed. The only thing on the wall was a photo of her family above her bed and a few posters of video games Gaz enjoyed. She saw a few other clothes littered on the ground by her closet, so she decided to add to the pile and throw Gaz’s Game station hoodie there. As she did she looked at her desk where she kept her video game equipment and spied a half-eaten sandwich with a drink. Every time Tak went into her room she was reminded how atypical Gaz was compared to other females of her species, and was delighted every time she was as it made her own isolation feel lessened.

She threw her backpack next to the desk and stood in front of the mirror on the closet door. Then she began changing into her pajamas she brought with her. She didn’t get much further than removing her t-shirt, after which she stood in front of the mirror and examined her disguised body. She made her human disguise as convincing as possible, but she also tried to create a human body that was similar in proportions to her Irken form, if only because she wanted to feel comfortable in her disguise. Her body had none of the curves a typical human female would have, because of this she had even been mocked by some of the more preppy school girls for being ‘flat’ as they called her. She considered altering her disguise to give her more pronounced curves that the other human females had. Both to potentially improve the validity of her disguise and because she thought perhaps Dib would prefer it, though she was very ashamed to admit it. She had even brought up the idea to Dib of potentially updating her disguise, but he told her that he liked the way her disguise looked, which did help to alleviate some reservations she had about it. Regardless, she still found herself looking at her half-naked torso in the mirror with some disfavor. She passed her hand over her body and sighed to herself as she looked in the mirror. As she did she saw in the background that Mimi had stopped grooming herself and was now staring at her from the bed.

Tak turned around, feeling oddly violated and said to her irritated, “Would you stop staring at me!?” She threw her shirt at Mimi in retaliation, which she was able to avoid. Tak then knelt down to her backpack and rummaged through it for her pajamas as she said still annoyed, “What on Irk are you doing that for anyway?”

Mimi didn’t respond immediately, as she seemed to be deciding what to say. Mimi then communicated to Tak in telepathy in a tone that feigned innocence, “Ma’am, Why do you wear human clothes on top of your disguise?”

Tak was taken slightly aback by her question, not so much at the question itself but at the fact that Mimi choose now to ask it. She didn’t wear human clothes all the time but she’s been doing it off and on over the past few months. She decided to do it one day on a whim after seeing clothes in a store that captured her interest, but instead of merely altering her disguise to match it she went in and bought the outfit. Mimi didn’t comment on the act immediately when it happened but she later gave a brief remark on her ‘going native’ after she was wearing them, which Tak laughed off at the time. She wasn’t entirely sure why she decided to wear human clothes with her disguise. Part of it was simply an impulsive decision, and part of it was the fact that she knew Zim’s been doing it for years, which put the idea into her head, but she would hate to admit that. She stopped for a moment in rummaging through her backpack to give her response and said, “It’s…to make my disguise more convincing.” She lied through her teeth, but she didn’t even know what the full truth was.

Mimi merely nodded her head slowly in agreement but said afterwards in the same tone as before, “Is that the reason why you’ve rendered human genitals and other body parts on your disguise as well?”

“Yes.” Was all Tak said in response. She was close to ignoring her as she brought out her pajama shirt and held it up to look at. It was a light gray t-shirt with the bottom cut short, and it would expose the naval of her disguise once it was on.

As she was dressing Mimi said, “May I ask what the point of doing that was Ma’am? Considering no one will ever see that?” The innocent tone she had was gone now, and she was now communicating in one that was clearly aggravated.

Tak pulled her shirt over her head and said with growing annoyance, “I don’t know. Isn’t that the point of all the human experiments we’ve been doing? To better understand their biology?” She ended spreading her arms out in question as she stood up.

“I thought our experiments were for something else Ma’am.” Mimi said matter-of-factly.

“They were, and still are.” Tak responded plainly and began going through her backpack again. The human experiments she’s been completing have become two-fold, but their primary goal still remained the same. It has always been to better understand human biology, but the main purpose behind it was to understand what has happened to her body, and if the planet or its residents could supply an answer. Relatively soon after arriving on this planet Tak began growing taller, but that was the tamest of things to happen. The chemical composition of her entire body has changed and developed into new ways that amazed and horrified her, mostly horrified. She found some similarity in the change that humans undergo when they mature and originally thought of ways to revert or at least stall her changes by experimenting on humans. The initial desire to revert the changes has mostly left her, but she still experiments in hopes of understanding them so that she won’t be completely caught off guard. Similarly, just as she wanted the silhouette of her human disguise to match her Irken form, she also found it fitting to match the intricacies of her disguise to her own body, to the best of her knowledge. She of course did not share this information with Mimi. Tak finished going through her backpack and found the bottoms to her pajamas, a pair of purple short-shorts with an elastic band.

She began removing her jeans to change into them as Mimi laid on the bed and said to her with some concern, “We haven’t made much progress on our original goal Ma’am.”

Tak wasn’t paying too much attention to her as she changed and said absent mindedly to her, “Well, that’s kind of taken a back seat now. If you haven’t noticed.”

Mimi didn’t say anything else to her after she replied. She merely laid on the bed and watched her superior change. She took note of her thin legs and feet that were now barefoot, and studied the plain black underwear she was wearing as she slipped on her pajamas. Mimi rolled on the bed for a moment agonizing over something until she sat up slightly and said accusingly to Tak, “Why are you pretending so hard to be human?”

Tak stopped changing for a moment in shock as she registered what her SIR unit said to her. She had already finished changing but she left her hands by her hips after she put on her bottoms. She turned around and said to Mimi, “I’m not pretending to be anything. It’s a disguise.” She emphasized the word as she gestured to herself while she spoke.

Mimi replied exasperated as she rolled on the bed, “A disguise that’s clearly more work than necessary. As we saw today all that’s needed is a wig and some contacts to pass for human.”

“Oh I’m sorry.” Tak said insulted, “Should I deactivate your disguise and just have you walk around in a rabbit suit all day? Like you said my disguises are more work than their worth.” Tak folded her arms over her chest and turned away from Mimi as she finished.

“Your disguises are wonderful, same as everything you do Ma’am.” Mimi said apologetically sitting up on the bed. “It’s just that…” Mimi started, trying to find the right words to use.

“I’m going native?” Tak finished for her turning around with a raised eyebrow.

“No.” Mimi started, “You’re deluding yourself Ma’am.”

Tak entire body tensed up at Mimi’s accusation, “I am not deluding myself.” She began to say enraged. She brought he hands to her hair and swept it back violently. As she finished she left her hands at the end of her hair where her antennas would be and pulled them. She hurt herself by doing so but it’s easier for her to focus on the pain than on how she felt. “Look.” She began again, “I know we’re a long ways from Irk and being the Invader we deserve to be, but we can’t do anything about it.” She picked up her clothes and violently stuffed them into her bag as she spoke, “The only thing we can do now is accept what happened and live our life in peace on this miserable planet.”

“Well you haven’t always been fighting back as hard as you could be.” Mimi communicated to her, it sounded like something she meant to think to herself. Even if it wasn’t she clearly regretted what she said when Tak turned around and glared holes into her.

Mimi shrank down in fear on the bed as Tak said mockingly, “Really? Cause I can recall you saying plenty of times, ‘you need to be more cautious Ma’am’ or ‘You’re taking these experiments too quickly,’ and ‘you’re only hurting yourself Ma’am.’ Why it seems to me that whether I’m just trying to live my life in peace or mutilating myself to try to resemble something close to what I was before all this you can’t help but find some fault in whatever it is I’m doing!”  Tak stood up and walked over to the bed where Mimi laid down. She looked small, afraid, and very sorry. None of these things instilled any emotion in Tak as she picked up her shirt she threw at Mimi earlier. As she did and stuffed it into the bag she said still mockingly to Mimi, “I know what this is about by the way.” Mimi didn’t say anything but looked up at her from the bed confused. “You’re upset that I didn’t give you my permission to play with the defective little SIR unit.” Mimi’s ears pricked up at that and her expression changed to indignation, but she didn’t speak and let Tak finish. “Even though you disobeyed my orders and played with it anyway.” She picked up her shirt and violently stuffed it into her bag as she said, “That’s why you’re up here, being all pissy with me on changes you’ve embraced harder than I have. Ever thought about how hard you pretend to be a cat?” Tak ended her statement in harsh accusation as she glared at her SIR unit.

Mimi expression changed to one calm and obedient. She said to Tak, “I’m only following my programming Ma’am. What protocol would you prefer me to follow?”

Tak didn’t say anything for a moment and threw her bag to the side of the bed by her boots and then said sternly, “You are going to remain quiet, for the rest of the night, and for as long as we’re here.” She began walking towards the door and added before she opened it, “You are permitted to play with the defect.” She turned around and pointed at her as she added, “But any sign of interference from him on your design, whether purposeful or not, and I will take you back to the base and take you apart bit by bit and turn you into something less disrespectful and more obedient. Are we clear?”

Mimi didn’t respond via her communicator but nodded her head up and down in affirmation.

“Good.” Was all Tak said in response. She opened the door and said to her, “You are dismissed.” Mimi complied as she jumped off the bed and walked out of the room past Tak and down the hall to downstairs. Tak slammed the door as she herself stepped out and heard something fall and break inside the room after she did. She cringed in worry as she heard it and turned back to open the room and see what it is she broke. She looked inside the room for anything out of order. All of her posters where still on the wall, the mirror was untouched, the glass on her desk was fine and so was her gaming equipment. “That’s a relief.” She thought to herself. She would make a new setup for Gaz a hundred times better than anything she has now but would hate to have the conversation that she was the one who broke it. Being satisfied and relieved that nothing inside the room was wrong to her knowledge she closed the door and looked around the hallway. Nothing was out of sorts. She leaned against the door to Gaz’s room, let out a sigh of relief and said, “Stupid door. Why does The Professor keep this place so primitive?” As she said this she looked down at herself and the outfit she wore. She picked at her shirt in her hand and groaned to herself, “What on Irk am I doing?” After she said this she looked up at the pictures on the wall of the Membranes. Various pictures of Dib, Gaz, and even their father in various places, all of them happy and enjoying whatever the occasion was that called for a photograph. “I’m here to enjoy myself and have fun.” Tak thought to herself as she admired them. She thought Dib and Gaz would be on her for being so bummed out about something somebody said to her, even if the one who said it to her was Mimi. She decided to push all those feelings away, she’s been looking forward to tonight for weeks. She was going to enjoy it.

She walked down the hallway and downstairs back to the living room where everyone still was. Zim and Gaz took up the space of the entire couch, and Dib was in the chair. The show they watched was just about over and they talked to one another while they ignored whatever was on the television. She spied Mimi and Gir playing on the ground, with less enthusiasm than before, but everyone was still enjoying themselves, so she decided she would too.

“What’d I miss?” Tak said as she went to the back of the chair Dib was in.

“That took a bit longer than expected. Everything good?” Dib said to her from the chair, some concern in his voice.

She brushed his concern away and said, “Mimi and I were just talking for bit. Nothing to worry about.” After she gave her explanation she hopped onto the chair Dib was in and laid across the armrests of the chair over his lap. The hesitation she had that prevented her from doing it before was gone, or at least she wanted to distract herself and him from what was bothering her. “So, what are we doing?” She said cozily as she hugged the side of him.

“We were thinking of a Smash tournament in teams.” Gaz said.

“What is that again?” Tak asked.

“You played it with Gaz before.” Dib said, “It’s the fighting game with all the different characters.”

“Gaz, didn’t you call it Tekken earlier?”

“What? No.” Gaz said slightly disgusted with Tak’s confusion, “Smash is the one that’s a cross-over of a whole bunch of video games characters. They look like cartoons, you played as Samus. The girl in the orange robot suit.”

“Oh.” Tak said as she remembered being introduced to that game by her. Gaz had shown it to her after she played against her in Tekken for the first time and enjoyed it. Gaz had hoped that she’d enjoy it, since it was also a fighting game, but Tak found the depth of the video game somewhat lacking, and also said the art style did not appeal to her. “I vaguely remember you showing me that, yes. Has everyone already decided on playing it?”

“Yeah but we haven’t figured out teams yet.” Dib said, “I thought it could be me and you Vs. Gaz and Zim.”

Almost immediately after Dib finished Zim interjected, “Which I refused!” I’m still annoyed that Gaz decided to play Sonic without me, and with you all people. So I’m ready to carry Dib and enact my rightful vengeance against you!” He finished pointing to Gaz who merely brushed his hand away lazily and replied unimpressed,

“Which I’m more than fine with. I could go for boys Vs. girls.”

The idea delighted Tak. Partly because she knew she would win easily with Gaz and because she was interested with the idea of a battle of the sexes. The differences of male and female was not something acknowledge in the empire, apart from visual differences. She thought that was better than one side thinking that the other was inferior, but she liked the idea of belonging to a group. She said happily, “And I would be more than happy with winning. Sounds good to me.”

After they agreed the four of them began setting up to play their competition. Mimi and Gir were not included nor were they interested in playing. Gir was quietly sitting in their corner of the room while he played a small hand held video game and Mimi was resting on his lap as he did so. Zim and Dib won rock-paper-scissors for the couch, so they got to sit in it while Tak and Gaz had to sit on the floor. Tak had originally chosen Samus the first time she played, as she found its armor very neutral in appearance, so it was easy for her to relate to it. Once she was at the character select screen she noticed the blue character from the game she was playing with Gaz earlier was a choice. So she opted to play as it instead. Gaz choose Luigi, Dib choose Link, and Zim choose Mr. Game and Watch. Gaz had originally opted to play without items in their fight but Dib and Zim insisted they were aloud, she relented on the condition that friendly fire was turned on as a condition.

After the details of the competition was decided, the game finally began. Tak had to learn the particulars of her character as she played but found it rather easy, as most of the principles she learned in her first playing still applied to her knew character. She also noted that unless she was a total detriment to the team Gaz would be able to defeat Dib and Zim easily, but they were their own worst enemy. With friendly fire on the two of them caused damage to each other multiple times and by the time they were beginning to lose they were bickering with one another and completely ignored the game. Tak found the two of them bickering quiet amusing, and was also pleased that her victory was assured. She let out a light laugh as the two of them continued, but was surprised to hear a small groan come from Gaz beside her. “Your boyfriend is an idiot.” She said annoyed to her as she played.

Tak had to keep herself from laughing but still said very amused, “Hey, he’s your brother.”

“Don’t remind me.” Was all Gaz said. That was the end of their discussion and in very little time the two of them had achieved victory over the two of them. Zim had actually killed Dib at the last moment when his character was on his last bit of health, and Tak let out a laugh after seeing it. Once everything was done Zim had his arms crossed and sulked as he claimed Dib was responsible for their loss. Gaz didn’t say much to any of their bickering but Tak was quiet pleased with their accomplishments. She stretched her arms up and said, very please,

“Well that was fun. So, what’s our plan for the remainder of the night?”

“I don’t know.” Said Dib somewhat annoyed with Zim still, “We could watch another movie or just hang out for a bit.” He turned and looked to a clock on the wall that read 11:47 PM and said, “It’s not even midnight so…”

At the word ‘midnight’ he was interrupted by the sound of Gir repeating the word in shock. He got up from his place with Mimi and ran over to the back of the couch and grabbed lightly onto Zim as he said, “Master, we missed my walk! Can we go now please?” Zim only responded with an annoyed and drawn out, “Gir.” As he attempted to shake him off.

“Walk?” Tak asked confused.

“From back when he was a dog.” Zim began, “He got into this annoying habit of begging me to take him on one every other week for like two hours at night.”

“But the first one we did was so much fun!” Gir replied gleefully.

“Wandering around for two days looking for our base was not fun.” Zim said sternly.

“We don’t have to go that long. Maybe just around the neighborhood, or to our house and back, maybe we can stop at Taco-Shack on the way?” Gir began prattling on as he got lost in the places he wanted to go to tonight and Zim interrupted him by calling out his name again irritated. “Please! Please! Please!” Gir began begging incessantly after Zim spoke.

Tak snickered slightly to herself as she watched the scene unfold. While she found the two of them annoying and worried about Gir’s influence over Mimi, she couldn’t help but laugh at Zim’s inability to control his SIR unit and the rather childish way in which he acted.

“I thought you were having fun tonight?” Zim started to say, “Haven’t you been doing almost nothing but play with Mimi since we got here?”

“Can Kitty come too!?” Gir stopped his pleading immediately and beamed at the possibility of Mimi coming for their walk.

At that suggestion Tak’s smirk subsided and was replaced with a scowl. She had agreed to let Mimi interact with him but she wasn’t about to let her leave the property in their company.  She found herself glaring up the couch at Zim and Gir but neither of them seemed to notice her. Zim expression changed at Gir’s suggestion and looked somewhat concerned. He said, “Uh, no. Mimi should stay.”

Gir whined quietly as he let up on Zim’s shirt. He looked down to the ground for a moment before he looked up to him with a sad expression and said, “We’re not going then?”

Zim still couldn’t handle an entreating stare from Gir, so rather reluctantly he conceded to him. He let out an exaggerated groan as he said, “We can go but we’re not staying out long.” At Zim’s agreement Gir let go of him and ran off to his spot to grab his belongings before they left.

“Are you guys really going on a walk for the rest of the night?” Gaz asked dubiously.

Zim got up from the couch and grabbed his sweatshirt and shoes to put on as he said, “No, we’re not. I’m just taking him around the neighborhood a few times until he’s satisfied.”

“How long are you guys going out?” Gaz asked.

Zim finished putting on his sweater and shoes and said shrugging, “I don’t know. Maybe ten, twenty, thirty minutes? Why, want to tag along?”

Gaz shrugged and stood up as she said, “Eh, I’ll pass. I need to take a shower.” She went to the stairs and called out from it, “I’ll be in my room afterwards, let me know if we’re doing anything else.”

Zim waved to Gaz as she went up and then looked to Dib, “You coming?”

“No. I think I’m good here.” Dib said as he tried to subtly place his hand on Tak’s shoulder. She didn’t say anything about it even though she noticed and was sure Zim did too. He shrugged and said nothing further if he did.

Gir walked up to him as they talked. He had on his dog backpack and green sweater, and a big smile on his face. “You ready?” Zim asked slightly annoyed. Gir gave the affirmative that he was and then they went on their way. “No running off this time. I don’t want the neighbors to have to see me walking you around with a leash on.” He said as they made it to the door.

“Can we hold hands then?” Gir asked hopefully.

“No Gir.” Zim said flatly and Gir responded with a disappointed moan. The last thing heard from them was the door slamming shut. As silence came to the room after the noise of the door faded away Tak stood up from her spot on the ground and sat back down on the couch next to Dib.

“I don’t understand why he tolerates that behavior from his SIR unit.” She began to say as she looked towards the door, “If Mimi acted that way I’d reprogram or maybe even disassemble her.”

Dib exhale a small breathe through his nose as laugh and smiled to her as he said, “I don’t think you would, and he isn’t always easy on Gir. He can be more than a handful, but I think he has his own way of dealing with him.” He made a small yawn and an exaggerated stretch as he brought his arms up and around the back of the couch. “Things went pretty well tonight, all things considered.” He said after he finished.

“Yeah.” Tak said somewhat nervously as she adjusted her hair, “I guess they did.” A small smile creeped up her face as she scooted a bit closer to him, but it left her as something caught her eyes. Mimi sat at the opposite end of the room and watched the two of them; Tak thought with mild judgment. Dib looked around after he noticed she was looking beyond him and also spied Mimi, but he didn’t seem too concerned with her, or at least didn’t say anything if he was. Tak gave her a stern look after Dib turned away, but she did not communicate anything to her. Even without doing so Mimi understood the order, she nodded and walked away, where Tak didn’t know, but she didn’t care so long as she had privacy.

After Mimi was gone Dib turned back around to Tak and noticed she still had a hard look on her face and said a bit concerned, “Everything good?”

She was startled out of her thoughts and replied dismissively, “Yeah, yeah. I just told her to give us some privacy and watch for us.”

“Oh.” Dib said, a little nervous. After she heard his tone the same feeling crept into Tak as well. She brought up her legs and hugged her knees to her chest as she sat on the couch. Dib patted the couch repeatedly and blew a small raspberry.

“Do you mind if I change into something more comfortable?” Tak said breaking the silence.

“Sure.” He said as his voice cracked slightly.

Tak did not notice and only let out a relieved, “Finally.” As she brought her hand to her forearm and turned off her disguise. Her disguise faded away and she was left on the couch as a tall Irkern in human pajamas. She brushed her hands through her antennas repeatedly and looked to Dib, who she thought gave her a more quizzical than normal look. A small panic came over her as she misinterpreted what his look could mean and she said very nervously, “You said your father doesn’t keep cameras in the house right?” She said as she frantically looked around the room for any signs of cameras she may have missed.

Dib laughed and brought down his hands from the back of the couch to his side. “It’s a bit late for that. But yeah, no cameras. That’s not why I’m staring though.” He pointed at Tak’s shirt which caused her to look down at herself to find what he was pointing at, still confused as to what it was. “You’re wearing human clothes.” He said.

The realization finally came to her, she fiddle with one of her antennas with her fingers as she trailed off looking away from him, “Yeah, I haven’t really been doing this very long. Just a few months, and I don’t even know why I’m doing this. It’s stupid.” She finished saying the last part under her breathe to herself.

“No.” Dib reassured her as he grabbed her free hand on the couch. “You look good.” He looked at her and their eyes meet each other’s. They did not say anything further and only stared, after what seemed like both an instant and an eternity the two of them found themselves moving their faces closer towards one another. Before their faces meet Tak broke the silence of the room and asked,

“Earlier today,” she attempted to speak smoothly, but she felt her entire body was laced with stress. “What did you think I called you to the closet for?” It was something that was bothering her mind the entire day, and he never gave an answer to her when she asked.

Dib retreated from her and a pained look came over his face as it turned slightly red, he did not realize she was nervous as well. He removed his hand from hers and rubbed the back of his neck with it as he struggle with what to say and admired the ceiling. “That…Oh that…I was just-really I was just…uh…”

Before he could stammer further he was interrupted as Tak placed her hand on him. He stopped immediately at her touch and looked at her. Their gaze meet each other’s again and Tak tried to find words for what to say. She was unable to find any and silence entered the room again, and in the silence and tenderness of the moment the two found themselves leaning towards each other again until they kissed each other. Tak wasn’t sure what Dib misinterpreted her messages as, but she had a few ideas. She decided whatever it was, was not important now, but if it was what she thought was most likely she was sure she was not ready for that level of intimacy. Not to say she didn’t want to be close to him, far from it.  

As they kissed she found her arms around the back of his head and felt her antennas bend of the top of his head. The later was an involuntary reaction that would sometimes happen to her when she was more intimate with Dib, but the exact reason and purpose behind it eluded her, as many parts of her body still did. Their kiss grew more passionate and involved, and Tak felt her tongue and his explore each other’s mouth more heavily. Dib leaned into her as they kissed and caused her to lean back onto the couch, leaving Dib lying on top of her as they did. As she laid on her back one of her hands found itself leaving the back of his head and down his back. Then Tak felt the warm touch of one of his hand on her waist as it began going up her shirt and reached the bottom of her pak. She wondered that if things went any further whether she would have resisted or merely gone along with it, and experience what could happen. In that moment however, she was interrupt by a familiar voice in her head,

“Ma’am…? Ma’am…hear me?” Mimi was attempting to communicate with her and she sound very concerned, but for whatever reason her signal was coming through with interference. It could have been the problem from earlier today resurfacing, or it was caused by Tak’s mind being preoccupied. She did not care what the reason was, much less why Mimi was bothering her, as she had ordered her to be silent for the rest of the night, and was still upset with her. She ignored her but another message came, “…There’s a…We have to…”

“Then take care of it.” Tak communicated to her sternly in between her kisses, which she found difficult and annoying to do.

Her messages still continued, and from the little Tak could tell from them it seemed with increasing urgency, “I can’t! You n-…”

Tak meant to communicate ‘I’m busy’ to her, but she was too preoccupied to do even that. All she did was pull away from Dib for a moment as she mouthed, “Busy.” In a short of breath exhale that was barely more than a whisper. In the moment their lips where apart from each other Dib noticed that she said something but did not understand her, which caused him to reply with a brief “Huh?” After he did Tak pulled his face back into hers and they continued kissing. Mimi replied for the last time,

“Ma-… -‘re disg-…h-…door!”

Almost immediately after Tak registered her message, she heard the sound of the front door opening, and after that the boisterous sound of Professor Membrane’s voice, “Oh family, I’m home!”

After hearing that, the two of them stopped in their kissing and looked to one another as they laid on the couch together in a moment of collective shock. Dib looked her up and down and said in a hoarse whisper, “Tak! Your disguise!”

After she came to attention, and realized what was going on she immediately went to her system, only to find a similar issue with it from earlier. She swore under her breathe as she tried to fix it but before she could Professor Membrane had already entered the living room. “Hello, Dib? Are you in here?” He said as he entered, and after seeing Dib on top of an undisguised Tak he let out a shocked exclamation.

Dib sat back up instantly and leaned over the back end of the couch, he had his head cradled in one hand as he titled it slightly and said as cheerily as possible, “Oh dad, home already?” After Dib was off of her Tak slithered out from under him and rolled off the couch as she ran towards the door, still with her disguise off. She ran past the professor as he turned around to look at her in surprise. Dib exclaimed, “I can explain!” and fell off the couch face first into the floor.

His father spun around from Tak for a moment and said to him, “Explain what?” in shocked confusion. Tak made her way to the door and grabbed Dib’s trench coat that hanged on the wall while the two of them were distracted. She put on his coat to hide herself and went out the front door. She stood there leaning against the door as she fiddle with her system, she entreated and swore for it to work, but to no avail. She heard the sounds of dogs barking and car alarms going off which made her anxiety flare to the nth degree. It was one thing to walk through the city in a wig and contacts, but another thing to be seen in Dib’s neighborhood without anything at all. Finally, she was able to collect herself and managed to work part of her system and activated her cloaking device, just in time. The door she leaned on swung open behind her, and she stumbled forward and spun around to see Professor Membrane staring out of it. Although she knew he was not able to see her and that her best course of action should have been to run away, she was frozen in fear like a deer in headlights. The Professor had always been an intimidating figure for her, even when she first meet him in person. Dib was tall but The Professor towered above most humans, and he looked gigantic to Tak as she hunched over in fear under his front porch. In the dim light of the night the lab goggles he wore looked like the eyes of an Irken, and in many ways Tak had thought him similar to The Tallest. Skilled and experienced beyond belief, enigmatic and impossible to understand, and distant from the world and those who loved him most. In many ways she saw herself in a position she feared most, the weak and unworthy presented before The Tallest only to be shunned and discarded. And then, as quickly as this vision came, it ended. He removed his goggles from his face and Tak saw his eyes, they were human and like Dib’s, hazel in color. He looked through her and then extended his head out the door to look at either direction, once he was satisfied he closed the door behind him, and Tak could hear him say, “It looks like your little friend is gone.”

_______________________________________________________________

It felt like an eternity between the relief hitting her and the sound of the door clicking shut. When she came to, she ran a few housed down from the Membrane’s and dove into a bush to huddle in as she tried to fix her system. She turned down her cloaking device so she could see her system as she worked, and entreated with it again as she tried to get it to comply. Finally, after some minutes of fiddling she was able to reactivate her disguise. She felt her face and hair in her hard light disguise and felt she was in the clear. Then she wrapped Dib’s coat close around her and hugged her knees to her body as she buried her face into them. Later, how long Tak was unsure of, Mimi found her and poked her head through the bush with Tak’s boots in her mouth. She asked if she was okay, but Tak didn’t respond. Mimi continued,

“I was able to grab your boots but your backpack is still at the house. Their parental unit went to his lab, but I didn’t want to risk being caught.” Tak still did not respond and she continued now very concerned as she went to her, “Ma’am, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Tak said coldly with her voice muffled between her legs. Then she slowly raised her head up and Mimi saw sadness in her eyes as she said slowly, “I have never been more humiliated in my entire life.” There was a pause before either of them spoke. Then Mimi asked timidly,

“What are we going to do now?”

Tak sighed deeply and buried her face in her hands as she said defeated, “Let’s just go home.” Mimi hung her head at her statement and looked dejected as she watched her put her boots on in silence. Tak crawled out of the bush and shook it off as she stood up, then Mimi followed in suit behind her. Tak looked at her for a moment then turned away to begin their long walk home. As she did a thought came to her, which caused her to tighten her fist and clench her teeth. She turned around to her and said angrily, “Why didn’t you do anything!?”

“I did.” Mimi shot back offended. “I was trying to message you.”

“And why wasn’t it working?”

Mimi was slightly confused by her question and responded likewise, “I don’t Ma’am. I thought we fixed it.”

“I thought-” Tak began but stopped midsentence as she reflected and looked down at her hands as she squeezed them and said to herself, “I thought we fixed it too.” She looked up from them after she finished and said still angry, “Why didn’t you do anything else?”

“What else was I supposed to do?” She shot back also growing angry, “It’s not like you sent me to keep watch. I only left cause of the look you gave me. You’re lucky I said anything at all, considering you told me keep quiet for the rest of the night.”

“Oh, so I’m supposed to be thanking you?” Tak said condescendingly, “For sending me a staticky message, and not doing anything to stop him?”

“What was I supposed to do to stop him?”

“I don’t know. Where on Irk were you that you could see him but not do anything?”

“I-I don’t know.” Mimi said panicking and deflected, “Why is it my fault you couldn’t pay attention to me while you were exchanging bodily fluids with your freak lab experiment!?”

At her comment Tak let out an enraged groan and yelled, “Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” Then in a fit of rage she went over and kicked Mimi. Her kick did no damage but the act itself frightened and shocked Mimi. She coward in fear as Tak approached, she bent down to her and said, “You are going to keep quiet. Forever! No more comments, no more advice, and no more making me feel more disgusted with myself than I already am! Do you understand?” Mimi tried to communicate with Tak, but she was too angry to register any communication from her. She yelled again at her, “Do you understand!?”

“Yes.” Mimi almost cried out her response. She had the ability to make vocal communications but Tak forbade her to normally unless they were within their base. She could have coded her response in the noise of a cat’s meow but she was worried Tak was too angry to even understand that. Tak breathed heavily as she stood over Mimi and without another word she turned around and once again began her walk to her base. Mimi followed in tow, crouching low and quietly. After a few minutes of walking Tak had mostly calmed down. She made it to a cross road near the border of Dib’s neighborhood and heard the voice of Zim who said,

“I don’t know Gir. We’re probably not going back tonight.” She turned up the road where the voice came from and saw Zim and Gir sitting on the side of the road as they ate popcorn and watched a small handheld screen in their hands. “You really should have washed those dishes when I told you to, and the suds in the sink didn’t help.”

“I was going to do it.” Gir said annoyed as he grabbed a handful of popcorn and ate it, Zim grabbed another handful and did likewise. Tak was completely bemused at what she was seeing and walked up to them without saying a word. Zim noticed Tak approach them and said unconcerned with a full mouth,

“Oh hey Tak.” He took out more popcorn and said still chewing, “You got kicked out?”

Tak looked at the screen they were watching and saw a live feed of the Membrane household. At the sight of the two of them on the road and everything that was happening she was beside herself with how to formulate any of the questions she had. So she asked the least important one. She brought her hand to her face and brushed her hair up as she asked, “Where did you get this popcorn?”

“I made it!” Gir said excitedly to her. Then the head portion of his disguise disappeared in a flash of light, which revealed his robotic face. The top of his head opened up to show cooking popcorn and he asked her if she wanted any.

Tak stood in front of him and extended the flaps of her coat to her sides to cover him from prying eyes as she said angrily and deliberately, “We are in hiding here. Put your disguise on!”

Zim interrupted her and said unconcerned, “Hey, he can do whatever he wants.” He then turned to him and said flatly, “Gir. Put your disguise back on.”

Gir replied, “Okay!” and in anther flash of light his disguise returned with a wide smile over his human face. Tak relaxed at seeing his disguise back and let out a relieved sigh as she stood over him for a moment. Then Gir playfully poked at her belly, commenting that it was squishy. She slapped his hand away and wrapped her coat around her tightly. Then she looked to Zim and asked,

“What are you two just doing here sitting on the side of the road? And how on Irk do you have a video feed of the Membranes? I thought they didn’t have cameras in the house.”

“They don’t. They’re my cameras.” Zim stated without even the slightest hesitation.

Tak was once again beside herself at his response and asked, “Where do you have the cameras? The whole house?”

“No.” Zim said firmly with a shake of his head. Then Gir added,

“I like to watch him using the bathroom.” He then grabbed the screen from Zim’s hands and showed it to Tak. He hit a button on it which showed an empty bathroom in the house. Then Zim grabbed it back from him hurriedly and said nervously,

“I uh, keep telling him not to do that.”

Tak didn’t say anything for a moment and stood crossing her arms. She glared and said annoyed but not angry to him, “Does Dib know you have cameras in his house? Does Gaz?”

“Dib does.” Zim replied as he gave the screen back to Gir and had a face off with Tak as he also crossed his arms. While the two of them were talking neither of them noticed Mimi had snuck up to the side of Gir as she curiously examined the screen herself. Gir excitedly but quietly exclaimed “Kitty!” as he petted her gently and offered her some popcorn, which she ate happily.  

“Why is he okay that you have cameras all over his house?” Tak said with angry skepticism.

Zim unfolded his arms and raised them up in a shrug as he said, “I mean he has cameras in my house. It’s only fair.”

It seemed to Tak that more she prodded him for information the more outrageous the situation seemed. She knew Zim was eccentric, and that Dib was much more than a little obsessed with him in their early years, but their continuous surveillance of each other was too much for her. She shouted, “Why the fuck do you have cameras in each other’s houses!?”

Zim covered himself with his arms at Tak’s yelling but before either of them could continue Gir shushed them and said quietly as he pointed to the screen, “Dad’s back.”

Tak knew there could only be one “Dad” he was talking about. So she went behind them and joined in huddling around the screen to watch the events unfold in the membrane household. The video feed was the living room, Gaz sat on the couch with a towel on her head as she played on a handheld video game. Dib sat next to her hunched over with his hands folded, and their father had just entered and sat in the armchair.

“What is he going to do to them?” Tak said with hushed concern. She knew their lives weren’t at risk but some of her fears of The Professor were seeping back to her.

“Don’t know.” Zim said, absorbed in the feed, “After he caught you and Dib, he went over to the kitchen and saw the mess. Then got kind of angry and called for Gaz to come down before he went to check on things in his lab.” He spoke carelessly as he went over the events Tak missed, but as he finished he noticed Tak had placed an arm on his shoulder and began tightening it to an uncomfortable degree. He looked up at her and saw her face contorted in rage as she said dementedly between her teeth,

“You fucking saw that?” Tak was still very shy about letting others see her intimate with Dib. The idea that Zim was gawking at her as she exchanged spit with him made her want to drag Zim to her base and vivisect him.

“I got a silent alarm that somebody entered the house and checked the feed to make sure it wasn’t anything bad and when I saw it was just their dad I wanted to see what would happen. That’s it I swear.” Zim blurted out in a rushed panic as he turned to Tak.

She replied with building anger, “You watch Dib and Gaz go to the bathroom and expect me to believe that?” Before they could continue, they were again interrupted by Gir as he brought their attention to the feed as the Membrane family talked. They caught the professor in mid-sentence as he said:

[-completely and totally irresponsible. I leave the two of you home alone for the weekend and when I’m able to come home early - I see that you decided to host some, ‘wild party’.]

The Professor wave his hand up in exaggeration for his comment. Gaz replied from her game: [It wasn’t a ‘wild party’. We had three people over. Four if you count the cat.]

The Professor said eminently: [That mess in the kitchen does not look like ‘four people’. Maybe a dozen or twice that.]

Gaz said indifferently: [Well Gir can do that.]

The Professor said:[Gaz, would please shut off your game when we’re having a discussion?]

[I can hear you fine dad.]

[Gazlene, please.] Her father more ordered than entreated her. She begrudgingly obeyed and put her game down as she folded her arms in annoyance. Her father continued:

[And who was that with you on the couch when I walked in?]

He ended pointing to Dib who replied: [It was Tak.]

The Professor: [Then why was she green with antennas and bald?]

“Heh, he noticed that.” Zim said with slight surprise.

“No fucking shit he noticed it. Now be quiet.” Tak hissed out at him as she watched the screen. Dib replied:

[It was a costume.]

The Professor was completely bewildered and said: [Why was she in a full body costume?]

Dib trailed on “Because” as he tried to find an answer until Gaz blurted out: [She’s into roleplay.]

The Professor repeated the word “roleplay” in confusion and Dib brought his hand to his face to cover in embarrassment as he said, [Yeah… She’s into roleplay.]

“Oh my fucking…” Tak said in between her teeth as she brought her own hands to her face in embarrassment, but was interrupted by Zim who said assuredly,

“The good a cover. That’s a really good cover. I think you’re in the clear Tak.” He said pleased as he turned around to look at her.

“What’s roleplay?” Gir asked confused.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.” Zim replied quickly as he pushed the subject to the side.

“What do I care if it’s a good cover. He thinks I’m a weirdo!” Tak almost screamed her worried response at them.

“He’s not going to think you’re a weirdo.” Zim dismissed her concern and continued after he grabbed a fistful of popcorn and said confidently, “And he’s not going to think you’re an alien.” He chewed for a bit before he continued with a full mouth, “Honestly I’m proud of after tonight. You just need to admit you’re weird like the rest of us. That make-out session was a bold move for you. I thought you found that stuff gross.”

At Zim’s light hearted but ill timed jeer, Tak grew angry and kicked their bucket of popcorn into the street. They yelled out an annoyed “Hey!?” after which Tak stormed off as she yelled to them, “I’m going home! I am going home!” Snarling as Mimi followed in suit low to the ground without a word. Tak was beyond furious with the night, and everything that happened. She walked down the street for a moment until she said to Mimi in almost a growl, “We are going home. And I’m going down the first dark alley way I see, and whoever is ugly enough to want to try to attack or rape me is getting dragged to our base so I can fucking mutilate them.” More than likely, she would do that before the end of the night. There was still plenty of it left, and the weekend hadn’t even started.

[lankonleafs]

At Long Last: Covid Camp Finally Opens

It’s felt like a full calendar year since we last saw the boys in blue hit the ice in the city of Toronto and boy am I excited for January 13th to roll around. It was the team’s first official on ice day and we had our first look at the new Leafs additions and to say that the fanbase seems excited would be an understatement. 

Sheldon Keefe mentioned his starting forward line up yesterday and it set Leafs Twitter abuzz: 

Thornton - Matthews - Marner Vesey - Tavares - Nylander Mikheyev - Kerfoot - Hyman Simmonds - Spezza - Barabanov 

That is not a typo. Jumbo Joe Thornton is not only a Toronto Maple Leaf - he is slated to be on the number one line with two of the best young players in the NHL. There’s a couple schools of thought with this line. The first being that Thornton can be used as a guy to get the puck off the wall for the young studs. The guy can still dish the puck, if he can get the puck to not only Matthews but to Marner as well this line can put up some big numbers. The one thing that concerns me with him on the line is keeping up with Matthews and Marner’s speed, if he can catch up with them in the offensive zone i don’t think his speed becomes a massive issue holding those two up as they can dictate the play on their own. The second school of thought that has been passed around has been that his veteran presence can help Matthews and Marner stay on track and not lose too much focus if/when the going gets tough. Joe can keep the kids a little loose and take a little bit of the heat off of them. Do I think that this line will stay together for the entire regular season? No, i think he will end up on the taxi squad for the odd game and work his way up and down the line up depending on how the rest of the offence is looking.  

The second line is also intriguing to me. Tavares and Nylander does not surprise me being together at all. The two have seemed to have good chemistry in the past and being able to start together may help them grow their chemistry further. The surprising part of the line is Jimmy Vesey. On a one year “prove it” type of deal, he has a lot to prove. If he can be the player that almost all 30 teams in the NHL were fighting for coming out of college this line could be deadly. 

The line of Mikheyev - Kerfoot - Hyman will be a huge pain in the ass to play against. Mikheyev and Hyman play a similar role where they are both tough on pucks along the wall and annoying the living H-E-double hockey sticks out of opposing teams d-men. Kerfoot is the speedy centre that we’ve all grown used to and may benefit from both guys getting the puck to him. 

And finally, the fourth line. Wayne “I’ll punch your head off” Simmonds was always thought to start on the fourth line with Spezza but seeing his name on the Toronto Maple Leafs roster still makes me smile. Spezza proved last year that he may not be the young gun he once was but can still play at a decently high level and seemed to show up to every game in the playoff bubble. There isn’t a ton of info on Barabanov quite yet but everything i seem to read seems that he will be a stud in the big show if he can be the same player he is overseas.  

Outside looking in to start: Robertson, Boyd, Engvall, Anderson 

These four players were listed as outside looking in but i don’t think that their necessarily out. Robertson was held back from playing in the World Junior Championship in order to participate in Leafs camp which is a huge sign on what the Leafs are thinking when it comes to his future in the NHL. Boyd was always thought to be a guy that may be in this role and be a “fill in” type of player. If a player needs a night off or someone isn’t playing well we will see him in the line up. Pierre Engvall is someone that a lot of fans expected to be in the line up. He has shown some swings in his game and it seems that Sheldon Keefe is a fan of his game. I think he may find his way into a second or third line role. Anderson is thought of to be a Mikheyev/Hyman type player so again, it’s no surprise that he is on the outside looking in as there is only so much room in the line up for that role. I believe he will find his way into a handful of games to give some guys a rest on some longer stretches or when the Leafs need a little more grit in puck battles. 

Today, we had a look at what Keefe projects as the Leafs starting defence pairings: 

Rielly−Brodie Muzzin−Holl Lehtonen−Bogosian Sandin−Dermott 

I LOVE that first pairing. FINALLY, the Leafs have a competent d-man to play with Rielly. If Brodie can play at the level he did in Calgary this pairing should have no issues. Muzzin and Holl seemed to have great chemistry and the two big boys will be intimidating to play against. Lehtonen coming back from the KHL was an early indicator that he had a great chance of making the team to start the season off. He’s a young d-man that put up a point per game in the KHL earlier this year. With him being paired with Bogosian (for now) he should have a little protection to play his game. Bogosian was signed as a free agent after clearing waivers last year by the Tampa Bay Lightning and played some big minutes in their cup win. His added veteran presence will help the young guns in the Leafs room. Sandin-Dermott caught some off guard when this was released earlier today as most fans expected that Sandin would finally make the jump in the top six to start the year. It seemed to be that he could never get his game consistent enough to earn the trust of Keefe and the Leafs coaching staff may be looking to see what he has this year. Travis Dermott signed a very friendly team deal in the off season and most fans are excited to see what he brings to the table for the 2021 season. If he can stay healthy look for him to also jump into the top six.  

As for goalies was there ever a doubt we would see these two listed? 

Andersen Campbell  

Andersen has been a key part for the Leafs in making the playoffs in his time with the club. With  a shortened season Freddie will have to start the season hot and stay hot but with no preseason it could be tough for starting goalies around the league. Campbell was picked up last year and he proved that he can be a true back up and/or take some heat off the rest of the team if Andersen has a bad night or needs a night or two off. By all accounts, he seems to be a huge locker room guy and keeps the players loose. 

So far on paper this is a Leafs team that shows promise. In a shortened season and an all Canadian division the season will be a grind but they have as good as a shot as anyone in their division to make a run. All you need is a seat at the table and anything can happen. We’ll see what the season brings.  

[ethereal-esg]

* * CARTI ALBUM @ 12* +am ok !

written by: Elijah S. Green

With no prior promotion, no press runs, or any talk about an upcoming album until 4 hours before it’s release, Die Lit seemed to be an album that quite literally came out of nowhere. Emerging just a year and change after his self-titled project, “Playboi Carti,” the Atlanta rapper’s official debut album is one that exemplifies the saying that “less is more.” While he lacks the skills of being a traditional lyricist, Playboi Carti makes up for that with the plethoric energy that he provides on each track. While it wouldn't exactly be true to say that the instrumentals carried him, it almost feels as though Playboi Carti acts as a mere accent to some of these beats. For some reason, the flow and repetitiveness that he utilizes on each song work extremely well with the production going on throughout the album, and it is easy to just sit back and vibe along to. The refreshing production, ad-libs, and repetition all come together to produce refined psychedelic energy that exhibits the new wave of rap minimalism.

Ditching production from his traditional producers Ethereal and Mexikodro, the majority of the production on Die Lit comes from Pi’erre Bourne, the same producer that appears on his 2x platinum single, Magnolia.

Upon pressing the play button, we’re blessed with the otherworldly synth cords on the Art Dealer produced track, “Long Time.” This track serves as a perfect introduction, creating a bittersweet nostalgic feeling. Playboi Carti reflects on how long it has taken for him to reach the level of fame and popularity in the rap game that he is at now, and it almost feels like a coming of age story. “No cap and gown, I ain't go to class, I'd rather die before I come in last, I ain't felt like this in a long time.”

The euphoric rush that ‘Long Time” provides listeners are instantly disrupted, when the adrenaline-inducing bass-line comes in on “R.I.P,” the Pi’erre Bourne produced track. “R.I.P” feels like you’re being pushed around in a mosh pit, with almost no way out, but there is just something about the aggressiveness here that makes you want to stay there and join the rage, “I GO PSYCHO B**CH.” The track is very punk-esque, with a sense of hectic energy that is also displayed in the music video as well. This track is a perfect example of how the production of a song can heavily influence the mood it sets off, and the pair of Pi’erre Bourne on production along with Playboi Carti providing the vicious energy does an excellent job here.

We are also blessed with features from Skepta, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, Pi’erre Bourne, Young Thug, Young Nudy, Chief Keef, and more. Although there is a surplus of features, it is clearly evident that Carti can also hold his own weight as well.

Along with the first sign of a feature on the album, “Lean 4 Real” serves as a great intermission from the high energy that the previous song brings. The track starts off with a sound of playful giggles, and it feels like walking out onto the street after an unforgettable night out. IngdigoChildRick proves himself next to the nostalgic and ethereal feeling production of Pi’erre Bourne, who’s production credits are spread out all over the album. The catchiness is incomparable, and it is the sight of some of Carti’s best work. “I'm on 'em beans for real, I'm on the lean for real, that bag loaded, yeah, got it all the time, Nickelodeon, way I got that slime.” The crafty hook, along with both verses from Carti and Skepta take us on a memorable ride, and it proves to be one of the standout tracks, along with “Shoota” feat. Lil Uzi Vert, “Flatbed Freestyle,” and “R.I.P Fredo.”

A few weeks before the official release, an alternate version of “Shoota” feat. Lil Uzi Vert was leaked. Coming under the title “Rocket,” there had also been an extra Lil Uzi verse, but it had been removed upon the official album version. On this track, Carti and Uzi prove that they do not miss whenever they are on a song together. “Used to want a G-Shock, now I'm walking with a bust down, pull up and I'm flooding with an iced out watch, whip it look like butter baby, pecan drop.” The reminiscing verse from Lil Uzi Vert, accompanied by the buildup of the beat supporting him, come together with the catchy hook and bass-drop, from Playboi Carti, and production from Maaly Raw. “Woke up with my toolie, what it do? Meet me in the alley with the troops.”

On Flatbed Freestyle, and R.I.P Fredo, we are provided with high tempo energy on production from Pi’erre Bourne once again. Although both instrumentals sound very unique to each other, what is truly noteworthy is the synths and melodies that both tracks utilize. On Flatbed Freestyle, we hear the first sight of “baby voice Carti,” that we have also heard on a number of later features such as “100 Racks” with Offset “Earfquake” with Tyler, the Creator, “Almeda” with Solange, and more.

Die Lit has been successful in its release and has sold more than 100k units in 2020 alone, 2 years after the initial release. It does not meet any expectations created by any of Playboi Carti’s previous works with In Abundance and Self-Titled but is instead in a lane of its own creativity. It is beautifully put together, and although no song sounds similar or blurs together in terms of sound, its unorthodox approach works very well. Every song is a back-to-back euphoric rush, and everything blends together to give us one of the best albums of 2018. Next Stop: Whole Lotta Red.

Just to feel like this it took a long time, yeah!