#like carrie (have not heard it yet) and spongebob (heard it and its good but i cant get over spongebob not sounding like tom kenny)

[suguwuus]

Could you write a connor x daughter of Athena. Where she has been at camp for a year, but they have known each other for about two weeks and he flirts a little too much in training and she thinks he is being mean. but in the end they make up.

★ nice

oh em gee my first req i feel like spongebob on his first day with his shiny lil spatula and squeaky shoes

p.s. so sorry this took so long i was so very sick when you sent it in and then exam week left me bruised and broken and so sleepy 😭

wc: 2.4k words

Who the Hades is this guy? Or more like, who the hell does this guy think he is?

You stared at the hunched-over figure wiping your bronze weapon down with a cloth, whistling as he went. It was too casual for someone like him to be doing something like that, especially with your weapon.

You recognized him as one of those Stoll brothers. They had been at camp for almost as long as you had, yet it seems that he's been popping up and about into your business these past few days. And he had been doing it a lot. Offering to carry your things, greeting you good morning and good night, even going so far as to try and make your bed for you. It was strange. Suspiciously strange. And you didn't trust him. From what you've heard and seen around camp, he was a prankster, an awfully resourceful two-faced troublemaker who could ruin your day with two paperclips and a cup of orange juice.

You thought he was no match for you, though. After all, you were equally crafty and clever as well, if not more than him. You thanked your mother, Athena, for both those skills and the grace to notice the signs this early on.

Gods, what was the purpose of all of this? You couldn't figure him out. You had some ideas, some guesses, but you couldn't pinpoint anything exactly. You needed direct contact with him; you needed to observe him up close so you could finally see his true intentions. Did he get bored and were you his new target? Was he doing this for a bet? Did you do something recently to catch his attention?

So, it was strange. Strange that you two have been skirting around each other for the past few years, not talking unless forced to and if you did, you only exchanged small talk. Why was he now all up in your business? Was he plotting something? You remembered when he put a tarantula in your half-sister Annabeth's bunk. You thought that was the last time you'd see those two boys.

"You look like you're plotting to kill him."

You jumped. Said Annabeth stood behind you, holding a plastic bag full of something you could only guess was your cabin's deposit of trash. Every other morning someone would do this to keep the cabin clean—and every morning Connor would greet you. Today, he added an offer to wipe your weapon down. You reluctantly agreed, vulnerable at 7 in the morning.

You knew you shouldn't be driven by rumors and gossip, shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But your overly paranoid self just refused to try and get to know the boy.

You pursed your lips and turned to Annabeth, sucking in a breath. "What's he like?" You asked.

"A little shit," Annabeth replied, and your heart sank. "But," she continued. "He's a reliable little shit. He's not evil or anything like that. He just has a talent for getting on people's nerves, him and Travis. It's a Hermes kid thing. Why?"

You glanced nervously to the side. "He's been doing the absolute most for me recently. Asking if I need help with anything, greeting me every time we see each other. We're not close. We're not even close to being close."

Annabeth took a few moments looking over at him as well, a small smile on her face. "Hmm. Well, I can't say anything for sure. But there's a very low chance he's doing this out of malice."

You cringed. "So..."

"Just wait and see where this goes," She advised, swinging the plastic bag. "If he hurts you, beat him up." Then she went away.

You scratched your head, starting to walk away from your cabin. That was...sort of helpful? No worries. You could handle this. It wasn't everyday you dealt with someone with the first name Connor and last name Stoll, but it wasn't everyday that you climbed the lava tower, either, no? And you survived that. So how hard could a boy be?

Quite hard, as it turned out to be.

You watched him stand up, stuffing the dirty cloth in his pocket. He then looked around the camp, walking in circles as if searching for someone. You knew he was looking for you, so when he turned in your direction you reluctantly waved a hand, but not enough to be obvious or easily noticed in the bustle of the camp.

When he spotted you, he jogged up to you like an excited dog, haphazardly swinging your weapon. He held it out with calloused hands. "Here!"

"Thanks. Erm, Connor." You added his name for good measure and took your weapon back. You inspected it quickly. No tampering, as far as you could see. It was clean, too. You looked back up at him and nodded. He had done a decent job. An honest, decent job?

"Did you just wake up?" He blurted out, sporting a smile that made you feel...what, self conscious? His words didn't help.

"No, I've been doing errands while waiting for you." You kept your answer plain and simple. "Why?" Without realizing it, you smoothed out your shirt.

He saw where your hands were going and chuckled, his eyes crinkling as if you just cracked a joke that amused him twice as much as the average pun did. "Don't worry, sunshine, you're not the ugliest thing I've seen in my life."

And the he walked away whistling, probably going off to tie someone's shoelaces together to trip them up. What the fuck? You thought, still processing what had just happened. What was that all about? Don't worry, sunshine?

You bet Apollo was laughing at you from Mount Olympus with the way the sunlight was shining right onto your face as Connor walked away, blinding you as you stood there in confusion.

You eyes searched the assortment of campers for Annabeth, some tiny bit of support you could anchor yourself to. She wasn't there. No striking grey eyes of hers among the orange shirts. You grit your teeth, accepting your defeat.

Well, not exactly your defeat. Not yet, at least. Hopefully not.

You gave Connor your best glare as he walked up to you in the middle of the arena. He swung his sword in his hand back and forth as if this was a game to him. Luckily for you, you also saw it as a game. A fun game to try and get to learn a thing or two about him. You wanted to observe him, close up? Here was your chance.

Sword practice. Sparring. Percy as the instructor overseeing the match. Perfect.

"Shake hands, guys," He said, standing between you and Connor. He then nodded at the boy. "No cheating, alright? No extra tricks."

"Yeah, yeah," He said, tapping his foot. You saw how he seemed almost giddy, but when he met your eyes, his smile melted and he cleared his throat.

You held a hand out. He shook it, not taking his eyes off you. He had a serious expression on, devoid of all humor or teases. "Nice shirt," he mumbled. And then he was off, stepping backwards until he was a reasonable distance away from you.

Shaking the confusion out of your head, you got into position, holding your weapon as you adjusted your stance.

Percy gave the signal and you two were off, celestial bronze clashing against one another. Your ears rung and you tried to not let the sun blind you.

Frustratingly enough, you couldn't observe much except for his physical traits (a light spray of freckles across his nose bridge, a nasty looking scar on his knee and a bruise on the other one, a hand with only one fingernail painted cherry red; unsurprisingly enough for a son of Hermes, he seemed to be ambidextrous) and that he was awfully talkative.

"I might have trouble focusing, but I'm multitasking right now, see? Your face is distracting, but I can handle it." "You're nice to look at when you're cornered like this, you know? Cute and mad, I should piss you off more!" "I really like your lack of enthusiasm all the time!"

Parry. Strike. Slash. Clang! The tip of his sword grazed your jaw and you swiped at his shins. Contrary to his blabber, you stayed silent except for grunts and the like, determined to finish him off.

Someone in the audience of campers yelled for Connor to focus. Instead he laughed. Soon you ended up with your weapons pressed against each other, screeching as the material of each grinded against one another. You were face to face with him now.

"You seem a little rusty, maybe you should consider practicing with me—"

That was your last straw. You pushed him back, so hard that you ended a few feet away from him, and charged, but at the last second swung to disarm him from his waiting sword instead of striking. With your momentum, you wrapped an arm around his neck, pushing his head upward, and stepped behind him, holding your weapon to his throat.

Victory.

"You know, I'd say something, but I don't think it's very audience friendly, I think it should be reserved for someplace without overbearing coordinators or nine year olds," He giggled.

You released him after Percy gave you the signal. Of course, you had to be somewhat polite. So you maneuvered his body so he was facing you, standing properly now. You took his clammy hand and shook it, looking him straight in the eye.

"Good duel," You said, nodding, chest still rising and falling from the intense practice match.

"Yeah, yeah, good duel," Connor replied, stumbling over his words. "Percy didn't...didn't have any comments for us, y-yeah, that's...that's good, right?"

You nodded again, and he let go of your hand, swallowing and glancing at the floor. He wet his lips, as if there was something he was itching to say, something stuck in his throat.

"You...you have nice eyes." He walked away with something you might have called a scurry.

Tilting your head in utter confusion, you heard a voice and felt a hand tap your shoulder. You turned around to see a little girl of about 12 years old. Strands of her dark hair stuck to her chubby cheeks from sweat. "Return the compliment. That's pamahiin, you know." She shot a cautious glance at Connor's turned back.

"It's what?"

"Superstition where someone curses you in the form of a compliment. He's been saying all kinds of things since the start of your match!"

"That doesn't sound like a Greek superstition to me. Where'd you hear that?" The girl left before you could finish. You shook your head. Silly kids.

You decided you had some business to attend to, so you jogged after Connor, following him down the path to the archery range.

"Hey," you called. "Connor!"

He slowly turned around, looking anxious. "...Yes?"

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"You're being strange. You kept talking during sword practice—you never do it that much, and you keep offering to do things for me. Are you following me around? Why did you compliment my shirt out of the blue right before we started?"

His brain seemed to load. And then he smiled. "You watch me during sword practice?"

"Sometimes, when there's nothing else to watch. The point is, you're acting off!"

He cleared his throat. "Well, erm, you know, I've just been seeing you around and I wanted to get to know you more. Wait, I complimented your shirt? We're all wearing the same ones."

You stepped closer. "No, are you up to something? Trying to get under my skin? Everything you say is somewhat backhanded and it feels like you're planning to get me in trouble, or both of us in trouble. If you don't like me, just say it straight to my face." You clenched your fists as you finished.

His expression morphed and looked horrified. "Oh, my Gods. No, I'm sorry."

You stared hard, waiting for him to explain himself.

"Shit, Y/N. That, uh...that wasn't...oh man, I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I mean, I am mouthy all the time, but I didn't want you to think of it like that! I do, I'm complimenting you, I guess we just don't match up in terms of what's a 'nice' gesture or not.

"I'll say it straight, then. I'm being nice to you, trying to say nice things. Because I think you're nice."

You raised a brow. "...Nice?"

"Yes, nice. And I really liked practicing with you. And greeting you in the morning and at night. And you. I like being nice to you even if you don't understand my little pickup lines sometimes."

"So you weren't trying to be mean?"

"No, absolutely not."

"Ah...okay. I see. That's...fair. I guess I was just paranoid." You slowly nodded, understanding his defense. You could see him nervously putting his thumbs through his belt loops.

"Mhm." He looked to the side. "Oh, and by the way, maybe the thing I said this morning was confusing, you're not ugly at all, I think you—everything about you, is very, pleasing to the eye."

You chuckled. "—Is nice."

He let out a relieved laugh at how you had caught on. "Yes, exactly that. Oh," He perked up, looking behind your shoulder. When you followed his gaze you saw some campers walking towards him, and they did not look very happy. He put his sword back into his scabbard and tied his shoelaces, which had come undone.

So he was a prankster. Obviously. But he wasn't as bad as you thought. Not mean, just a little mischievous at times. You definitely were just paranoid. It's not everyday you got that many compliments. Puzzling ones that needed comprehension, yet still compliments. And he was easy to talk to. Not mean at all. Come to think of it, you hadn't fallen victim to his or Travis's pranks lately, not in a long while—

"That's my cue," he reached over and awkwardly patted your shoulder, averting your gaze. Despite that, he was smiling ear-to-ear. "See you sometime, okay? Bye!"

"Bye...!" And he dashed away, leaving you beaming in amusement. Wait, pickup lines? Those were pickup lines to him?

Nice? Nice as in flirting?

[chaeryybomb]

stray kids as anime boys: bang chan [part 1] [part 2]

✎ᝰ┆bang chan as the sports captain

(feat. stray kids && some of the 97liners)

listen

this is the only role I am 100% convince chan will be in an anime

u can't change my mind ᕦ(ò_ó)ᕤ

S O let's get into it

what sports captain is he??

the question should be what sports captain is he not 

d-does that make sense?? HDHS U GET WHAT I MEAN

look chan is build™ with muscles (and brains) he's gonna use those muscles

for s p o r t s

"chan u can't join all the sports club"

“watch me felix”

ya boi tried out for every sports club available in school and he got into to every one of them

THANKFULLY felix made him reject some(most) of them bc chan already doesn't sleep enough

everyone say thank u felix

so chan is in the volleyball and basketball club

and he's the volleyball captain!!!

chan is the secret weapon lemme tell u that

his spikes?? they can BREAK A WALL

so if u see chan practicing spikes pls be careful

avoid him

avoid the gym in general

unless ur asking for a concussion SKSKS

no joke there's a dent in one of the gym's wall bc he spiked too hard

his excuse was "bambam ur supposed to block it!"

"I WAS TRYING NOT TO DIE CHRISTOPHER!!!"

so how does that apply to u dear reader

well, ur not a huge sports fan

u rather stay at home and watch netflix than go under that cursed fireball u call a sun

but yk who is a huge sports fan???

ur best friends chaeyeon and lisa!

well technically bc chaeyeon is dating jaehyun who's also on the volleyball team

and lisa swears she doesn't but obviously she's there to look at jungkook

"y/n! there's a game after school today, and you're coming with us to watch it"

"just admit u wanna look at jungkook and go"

"WITH WHAT PROOF????"

"WITH THOSE HEART EYES LALISA"

"HHHHHHH CHAEYEON, Y/N IS BULLYING ME AGAIN"

Σ(°ロ°) "WHAT DO U MEAN AGAIN??? WHO WAS THE ONE WHO PUT CHILLI PEPPERS IN MY SANDWICH HUHH LISA WHOOOO—"

mama chaeyeon saves the day, "alright children no more fighting" 

"SHE STARTED IT FIRST!"

"FIGHT ME LISA" (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

in the spongebob narrative voice 2 hours later

u find urself in sandwiched between chaeyeon and lisa, sitting on one of the gym's bleachers

chan and the boys are down there warming up

and u can't help but drift ur gaze to a certain (crispy)blond hair boy, who's stretching at the moment

maybe u were starting too long, but lisa nudges ur elbow with a sly smirk

"ohohoho y/n, what do u see??"

u shove her elbow away and glare at her, "ur about to see my fists in a minute"

the entire game ur gaze was set on chan and u don't even know why

jokes on u reader, it was the anime magic kicking in

up until the second half of the game, u had the sudden need to go to the bathroom and who are u to deny ur bladder dhhshd

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom," you tell lisa and stood up to squeeze ur way out of the bleachers

ur earbuds almost burst due to all the screaming dhshhd

but hey! u successfully made it to the end

＼（＠￣∇￣＠）／

u make ur way towards the exit when u hear lisa and chaeyeon scream your name

and suddenly the world went black

y/n?? y/n??? oh my god she fuckin dead

maybe u regain conscious for a few seconds bc the last thing u remembered was a pair of feet running and the scent of someone's sweat mixed with cologne

yk the typical anime shit dhsjdjs

when u wake up, ur laying down a bed and ur in a room where u don't recognise

"holy shit y/n, you're awake! lisa go get the nurse!" chaeyeon exclaims from beside you and you hear the door close

you squint your eyes, trying to adjust from the bright light

chaeyeon's face comes into view and she has a worried expression on

"w-what happened?? where am I??" you ask she helps you sit up on the bed

"you're in the nurse's office!"

"why,,, am I in the nurse's office?" you furrow your eyebrows at chaeyeon

"well you see—"

the door slams open to reveal lisa and the nurse

"oh good, y/n you're awake," the nurse smiles at you

she walks toward you and gently grabs your chin with her gloved hand to examine your face

"fortunately nothing is broken but that's gonna leave a bruise on your forehead for a while, you took quite a hit."

"a hit???" u furrow ur eyebrows even deeper if you could sjdjsk

"yeah! you got hit by a volleyball!! you should've seen what happened, the ball went flying like WOOOSH at you and BAM u were knocked out!!" lisa explains with many hand gestures

"it was a good thing that chan boy carried you here, you were out cold," the nurse adds.

wait

Σ(゜゜) c-chan???

CHAN CARRIED YOU HERE???

u don't even notice your face starts to heat up until the nurse looks at you with concern again

she places her hand against ur forehead and says, "oh my, you're heating up, I think you got a fever coming—"

"no! no, I'm completely fine!" you reassure the nurse

you bring your hands up to your cheeks and rub it harshly and slap it a few times in hopes the redness will go away

HAH SIKE UR BLOOD SAYS NO

the nurse let's you stay in the office for awhile, thank god school was already over

lisa and chaeyeon, like the best friends they were, stayed with u and walked u back home

the next morning when u wake up—

━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━

HOLY SHIT THE NURSE WAS NOT KIDDING WHEN SHE SAID IT WAS GONNA LEAVE A BRUISE

THERE'S A HUGE ASS BUMP ON THE MIDDLE OF YOUR FOREHEAD

WHAT THE FUCK

HOW THE FUCK ARE U GONNA COVER THAT UP

U ARE THIS )( CLOSE IN CUTTING UR BANGS AT 7 IN THE MORNING JUST TO COVER UR FOREHEAD* U WOULD'VE IF UR BRAT OF A BROTHER DIDN'T KNOCK ON THE DOOR

"y/n hurry up you're gonna make us late!!"

"SHUT UP HYUNJIN I'M HAVING A MID LIFE CRISIS AT THE MOMENT"

"YOU CAN HAVE IT IN THE CAR"

in all honesty u should be thanking hyunjin for saving u from the future regrets

otw out of the bathroom u curse at hyunjin, who sticks his tongue out in return, and grab one of ur beanies from ur dresser and slip it on

"why the fuck are you wearing a beanie in the middle of summer??"

"it's called fashion hyunjin, look it up"

(hyunjin, snorting) "please, we all know I'm the fashionable one in this family"

so yes, u walk into school with a beanie on ur head, in the middle of summer

it definitely caught weird looks from people because again, why the fuck are you wearing a beanie in this heat???

it's equivalent to having a "I'm stupid" sign taped on ur forehead

u walk into class, already tired from everything and everyone and first period hasn't even started yet!

what a mood

chaeyeon looks at you weirdly and opens her mouth to ask but you stop her

"don't. a lot of people already asked," you groaned, pointing at the black beanie on your head, specifically the spot where u got hit at

chaeyeon looks at you with sympathy and pats your head

when lunch rolls on, lisa basically slams into ur classroom

"why are u wearing a beanie??"

"because I can and it's a free country!!!" u snap at her

"geez fine," lisa puts her hands up

(lisa, mumbling under her breath) "someone woke up from the wrong side of bed today"

"HEY I HEARD THA—"

"OKAAAAY let's go I wanna get pizza bread before it's gone," chaeyeon interrupts aka stopping another fight from happening by hooking her arms through yours and lisa’s* (¬､¬) hnnggg u win today jung chaeyeon

u turn to walk out of the door when u stop in your footsteps

to see the PERSON WHO CAUSE UR FOREHEAD BUMP BRENDA

YES U NAMED IT BRENDA IN THE CAR

IF SHE'S GONNA STAY ON UR FOREHEAD FOR A WHILE

AT LEAST SHE SHOULD HAVE A NAME

AND SHE'S NOT EVEN PAYING RENT

y/n's forehead:

brenda the bump: it's a free real estate

anyways

the three of u stop and stare at chan

like hullo, why u here???

chan coughs awkwardly and rubs the back of his neck. "um, can I speak with y/n?"

chaeyeon and lisa exchange a look and shrugs, "yeah sure," they say and pushes u out of the door

and u stumbled into his arms

again, the anime shit™ working its magic

u immediately push urself off chan and clasp ur hands behind ur back while chan takes a few steps back

"so,,," you start

"oh right! uh, I'm sorry for yesterday, hitting u with the ball and everything"

"oh! it's fine, it really is!" you assure him

"no, it's not! lemme treat you to lunch, it's the least I can do," chan says

"nononono you really don't have to!" you shake ur head at him

"please!" he begs, "I hurt you and I should do something for you"

"n—"

"JUST SAY YES" lisa yells from across the hall

you whip ur head towards her direction and flip her the bird

chaeyeon mouths an apology and drags lisa away, but her laughter rings through the empty hallway

you turn back to chan who's looking at you with pleading eyes

"pleaseee" (´･ᴗ･`)

GOD HE'S ADORABLE

"fine!"

"YAY"

"but!" u wag ur finger at him, "ur only allowed to buy me chocolate milk"

"yes!!" he cheers and drags u off to the school's convenience store to buy you a bottle of chocolate milk

u thought he was gonna get u the cheap one but nO

HE GETS U THE EXPENSIVE ONE

THE ONE THAT COSTS LIKE 3 DOLLARS

FIRST OF ALL, CHOCOLATE MILK SHOULD NOT BE THAT EXPENSIVE

FUCK CAPITALISM

secondly, if u thought this was a one time thing

hAH READER YOU ARE SO SO SO WRONG

it soon becomes a regular thing and every morning, there is a chocolate milk on ur desk with a cute stick it note saying "good morning ♡´･ᴗ･`♡"

GAH UR HEART

and everyday after school, chan walks up to u and ask "hey y/n! did u get the chocolate milk?"

and he will pout if u show him the untouched bottle of milk

so u make sure that u drink it during lunch where he can see u drinking it

and it makes his insides all mushy and squishy

and that escalates to him waiting by ur locker every morning!!

he waits for u by ur locker and when u walk in

he fucking beams at you

the sun who??? u only know a bang chan

he hands u the chocolate milk and greets u

"good morning, y/n!"

and ur hearts does it usual schedule bang-chan-caused-flips

AND THAT ESCALATES TO U GOING TO HIS GAMES

"I thought u hated these things??"

"well I do but chan asked me to come so—"

(lisa, wiggling her eyebrows) "oh chan huh"

"hdshhdshutup"

so here u are again, sandwiched in between lisa and chaeyeon

o wow ur feeling a sense of deja vu

chan spots u in the crowd and runs over to u

"try not to get hit by any balls this time," he grins as he ruffles ur hair

"friendly reminder, I got hit by a ball from you," u retort and smack his hand away

"YOU PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T BRING THAT UP ANYMORE"

"I CROSSED MY FINGERS BITCH"

the coach whistles for chan to get into place and u grab onto his arm, shocking both of u

o wow u got bold moves there reader

"uh, good luck out there," u smile at him

chan's heart doubles over in LOVE and smiles back at you "thanks!"

he runs back to the team, who are all looking at him with a sly look

"so when are u gonna ask y/n out?"

"i'll purposely aim the ball at ur head mingyu"

tbh u don't even know much about volleyball and all u see are balls being hit back and forth

im writing the match based on what I've seen my school's team done and it may be inaccurate pls correct me

sometimes u involuntary wince when u see chan spikes and the ball bounces off the floor bc the other team failed to block it

u pity the floor

it's the last match and both teams are tied

chaeyeon is gripping onto ur arm for dear life bc out of the three of you, she's the only who understands the most about volleyball

both teams are fairly powerful

they have a really strong setter aka lee hyunjae

boy may not look like it but he's strong!!!

the coach whistles and jaehyun serves the ball

jacob from the other team returns the ball and it goes flying across the net

in a blink of an eye, chan yells "mine!" and he spikes the ball with force* hyunjae rushes to block it but misses by a milimetre and the ball bounces off the floor

the entire gymnasium erupts into cheers

and u are pulled up from ur seat by a screaming chaeyeon

they won???

OH MY GOD THEY WON DJSJDJ

chaeyeon runs down to congratulate her boyfriend and u follow in suit

but u run straight into chan's arms to hug him

"congrats!" u squeal as he lifts u off the ground and spins u around

when he sets u down, the both of u finally realizes the position ur in and back away from each other awkwardly

"ahaha,,, congratulations!!" u tell him

chan grins at u "what can I say, ur my lucky charm"

ur cheeks start to heat up again and chan laughs

the rest of the team comes over to drag chan to the changing room, leaving u alone with lisa and chaeyeon

once the boys disappear behind the doors, the two girls turn around to look at u

"what was that???" lisa asks, referring to the hug between u and chan, as she whacks ur arm

she tryna whack the answer out of u HDHS

"STOP HITTING ME WOMAN THAT HURTS!!!"

"NOT UNTIL U TELL ME WHAT WAS THAT BETWEEN U AND BANG CHAN, Y/N"

"it was a hug! nothing more!" u say, more like ur trying to convince it was nothing more

"that was not just a hug," lisa mimics ur voice "that was one of those couples hug chaeyeon and jaehyun does!"

(chaeyeon, pipping up from the side) "she's right!"

"he totally likes you!" lisa smirks at u

 "no he does not!"

"uh yes, he does! jaehyun says so!" chaeyeon says in a matter-of-fact tone

"and you—" lisa points her index finger at u "—like him too!"

"WITH WHAT PROOF???"

"WITH THOSE HEART EYES HWANG Y/N"

before u can continue bicker and PROVE THAT U DO NOT LIKE BANG CHAN

jaehyun comes into view and says "hey y/n, chan is waiting for u outside, he has something to tell u"

[ part 2 ]

[brokutosan]

Title. How Do You Mend When You’re Worlds Apart? (We Carry On)

Pairing. Iwaizumi Hajime x Fem!Reader

Summary. In which long distance is hard. Inspired by the song ‘Make It Better’ by Anderson Paak.

Warnings. Pure angst, also doesn’t have much dialogue. Manga spoilers up to the latest chapters and strong language included. Title is a line from the song ‘Make It Better’ by Anderson Paak.

In highschool, Iwaizumi and Y/N were inseparable. Wherever one is, chances are the other is nearby. They were the perfect model couple, proof that highschool sweethearts aren’t always doomed to be just that. Maybe it’s because both were equally mature, or maybe it’s because of the fact that the two of them kept Oikawa on a leash, but anything the world threw at them, the two felt ready for it.

So when Iwaizumi decided to purue his dreams across the ocean, she was fine with it. And so were all of their friends. If anyone could handle long distance, it would be Iwaizumi and Y/N. Because they were Iwaizumi and Y/N, and Iwaizumi and Y/N were inseparable.

Turns out putting an entire ocean between an inseparable couple could, in fact, separate them. Iwaizumi and Y/N became Iwaizumi, student at UC Irvine, and Y/N, student at Tokyo University. The distance between them grew harder to ignore over time.

It wasn’t something that happened overnight. And to be fair, they lasted a good three years making it work before going down the hell hole of late night (or morning, for one of them) arguments and distrust clouding their judgements. After a while, the two realize that the distance has taken its toll on them. Y/N thinks that it’s because they’re too used to being around each other, but now that they’re not, they’ve become more sensitive to even the tiniest matters. Iwaizumi thinks it’s all just bad communication.

Either way, anyone could tell that they’re only uselessly holding onto something that’s very clearly broken. Perhaps it’s the fact that they’ve already put in over six years into their relationship, and that giving it up now would mean giving up those six long years together. And no one wants to be the one that says, “Yeah, I wasted six long years with an idiot only for it to all go down the drain.”

Y/N first realizes this was the case after a night of drinking with her college classmates. She definitely had too much alcohol in her system that night, but she’s always been the type to be hyper aware of her surroundings. She wasn’t the type to do something she knows she would regret the morning after.

Her first explosive fight with Iwaizumi happens a few hours after she drunk herself under the table, at around three in the morning (or dinner time for Iwaizumi). Y/N made sure to be responsible enough to get herself home safe, under her own sheets, but Iwaizumi thought different. Y/N spent the following hours until her first class to explain to her enraged boyfriend that no, that woman in the background of Takahiro’s snapchat story sucking some douchebag’s face off isn’t me!

The months that follow that catalystic event were spent like they were walking through a minefield, any small argument setting off a bigger one that usually ended in tears. At one point Y/N was nearly tempted to throw her phone out the window and completely cut off connections with Iwaizumi, but knowing him, he’d probably catch the first flight back home just to chew her ear off.

What seems to be the worst fact of it all is that they were never like that in the beginning. But at this point there’s no more going back. It’s like they’re stuck in a burning car, but they don’t want to jump out. They’re only options are to just try and put out the flames or wait for the car to crash and burn.

Today is no different.

Y/N is invited by her old highschool friends, Matsukawa and Hanamaki, to go out for drinks. Y/N complies because no one would refuse a free dinner and drinks. But as she steps out her apartment, dressed casually enough but still putting in a little effort in her appearance, Y/N receives a facetime call from none other than Iwaizumi himself, who looks more pissed off than usual.

“What’s wrong?” Y/N asks as she notices his frown, genuinely concerned.

“Are you going somewhere?” Iwaizumi evades the question. Oh well. She expected this. Y/N has known her boyfriend long enough to know that there really is something wrong, he’s just too pissy to admit it.

“Yeah. With Takahiro and Issei.” She replies curtly, grabbing her purse and house keys from the side table and unlocking the door. Iwaizumi freezes, not saying anything. Y/N almosts hangs up thinking it’s due to poor connection, until he speaks up again.

“Oh. Nevermind then.” What the fuck? Y/N thinks to herself, though has half the mind to know not to say it out loud. Instead she says, “If there’s something bothering you, just tell me. Hiro and Issei can wait.” Her offer is met by another few seconds of silence, before Iwaizumi sighs and says, “No, it’s fine. Have fun. Stay safe.” The - once usual - ‘I love you’ is lost somewhere, probably amidst his pride and whatever the fuck was bothering him.

As he ends the call, Y/N decides to press any further. Lately she’s realized that the best way to prevent arguments with him was to just ignore the things bothering her. Destructive? Definitely. But is it effective? One hundred percent. Y/N argues that it’s the lesser of two evils, and if one of those evils is a furious Iwaizumi, then she’d rather take her chances with whatever’s the other option.

The whole commute to the izakaya she agreed to meet her friends in is filled with a mental dilemma of whether or not she should call him back. And she stays that way ‘til she gets to the place and Matsukawa, the attentive bastard, is asking her, “Why do you look like shit?”

“Damn, you really hate the thought of seeing us that much?” Hanamaki adds on, because Hanamaki and Matsukawa come in pair and when one is teasing you, then chances are the other one is too.

“Kinda regretting it now. Is it too late to turn back?” Y/N jokes, but is only ushered over by her two smirking friends. Y/N, despite her contempt, complies and sits down on one end of the booth.

“You can’t run away from us. Like you physically can’t. You love us too much.” And she hates how much she knows he’s right, but she’s not telling them that because they’ll never let her live it down.

“Disgusting. Someone kill me right now.” Y/N fake gags, smiling at the waiter as he passes by with a weird look on his face. Hanamaki and Matsukawa laugh, before Hanamaki’s face straightens into a serious look.

“Oh yeah, did Iwaizumi tell ‘ya yet?” He mentions nonchalantly. Y/N wants to say, ‘no, because talking to that moron only makes my head hurt,’ but she doesn’t, mostly because they’d probably obsessively worry over it. Instead she says, “Tell me what?”

They share a look.

“Wait, seriously? I thought you’d be the first to know.” It’s Matsukawa that speaks up first, with a bewildered look on his face. “I mean no offense but aren’t you two usually the lovey dovey jackasses that can’t keep secrets from each other?”

“Yeah. I’m still not over you telling him about my Hatsune Miku shrine.” Hanamaki adds, though it’s unappreciated by Matsukawa, who throws him a dirty look and a, “What the fuck, man. Stop bringing that shit up.” Hanamaki looks at his friend with ‘hurt’ laced in his face before firing back, “Stop disrespecting my wife, asshole!”

“Are you two done?”

The two supposed grown men halt their little ‘back-and-forth,’ and Hanamaki perks up again remembering the previous topic at hand.

“Oh yeah! So Iwaizumi really didn’t tell you?” She could only shake her head ‘no,’ taking a sip of the mediocre beer in her hands. She makes a mental note to remind herself never to let Hanamaki pick which izakaya they’re going to.

“You’re both pissing me off, what did he not tell me?” Y/N grumbles, growing impatient. It could just be because the beer is far too stale for her taste. Why is this place still open?

“Apparently Oikawa went to visit him two days ago and the two idiots had a big fight. I heard it almost got physical this time.” So that’s wny he looked so pissed off earlier. Lately the only facial features he’s shown her are anger and discontent, so maybe she thought nothing of it when he did it again just an hour ago. She feels horrible, but not too much.

“Something about Oikawa not taking his bad knee seriously enough. Honestly I think Iwaizumi got mad because he’s been studying about it for three years now.” Hanamaki adds, raising his glass to ask for another cup of beer. Y/N doesn’t care as much anymore about the shitty beer, but she still gives him a weird look for being so into it.

“Oh.” Arguments be damned, Y/N still had to save face. If anyone were proud supporters of her and Iwaizumi’s relationship, it’s these two idiots arguing over a meme on Hanamaki’s phone right across the table. She racks her brain for any plausible excuse as to why she wasn’t made aware of something this big, but her mind drew a blank.

“It is kinda weird you weren’t the first to find out. Granted we had to find out from Oikawa, but if anything I was sure Iwaizumi would’ve already went crying to you.” Hanamaki muses. Oh no. Y/N knows that tone, and when Hanamaki, of all people, uses it...then she’s thoroughly fucked.

“Is there something you’re not telling us?” Matsukawa completes. Y/N tries not to laugh at the fact that they still try to complete each other’s sentences, despite the fact that they were just arguing about which Spongebob meme is better just a few seconds ago.

“Nothing, really. I haven’t really gotten the chance to check in on Hajime, with exams and all.” Y/N lies through her teeth. They were just arguing three days ago about something Y/N can’t even remember now.

“Uh huh, sure. Let me know when you pull your head out of your ass.” Hanamaki retorts. Y/N resists the urge to reach over the table and wipe that stupid smirk off his face.

“Shut up, blondie.”

“Uh, that’s strawberry blondie to you.”

“You’re both completely going off topic. Y/N, why didn’t Iwaizumi tell you anything?” Matsukawa leans over the table, wearing that unreadable facial expression he used to wear back in highschool, during a match, going up for a block. Y/N momentarily thinks how fortunate she is for not being one of those they’ve went against in highschool.

“Shouldn’t you be asking Hajime that?”

“We should, but he’s not here right now. You are. I mean you two were always like two halves of one whole, right?” Hanamaki presses on, forgetting all about their previous argument. She lets his words settle in. Two halves of one whole, huh? Suddenly Y/N is brought back to one of their most recent arguments. About their future together. Or lack of one.

Y/N looks down at her stale mug of beer, feeling hypnotized by the amber color that’s reflecting her face with a look of concern. Though she has no reason to be. Ever since getting into a relationship with Hajime, and faling into the same crowd, most conversations around her usually revolved around the topic of their relationship. It never bothered her before, so why is it bothering her now?

And it hits her. Not as a life changing revelation, but rather something she’s always known deep, deep, deep down.

That just like how she’s been needlessly obsessing over the horrible tasting beer, she’s been needlessly clinging onto something that’s not there anymore. Just like how despite this izakaya being their usual meeting place whenever they found the time to hang out, the beer tasted different today, of all days. Just like how now, Y/N finally snaps herself awake and completely understand that her and Iwaizumi, just aren’t in love anymore.

They tried, the past few months filled with arguments being a testament to how they fought tooth and nail to salvage what’s left of a bygone feeling.

Right. The argument. Three weeks ago, Iwaizumi had called her a few hours past midnight in Tokyo, excited to reveal that “Yes! I’m going to start my internship with Takashi Utsui right after graduation!” And instead of being excited for him too, Y/N picked a fight. That one was totally her fault, she admits. She pressed him on the importance of their relationship, on the importance of distance, and how the one between them is slowly eating them alive. Iwaizumi cut off communication with her for a week, before Y/N finally apologized only for them to be amidst another argument now, just two weeks later.

Y/N realizes she’s been quiet for too long, when the noise of the izakaya draws back in and she’s rudely brought back to her senses by an annoyed Matsukawa snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Are you okay?”

The question lets loose an abundance of emotions, some she can’t quite put a finger on, but she knows is bothering her. It’s been too long since someone checked in on her like that, so genuinely. So concerned. Oh god. Was she turning into a touch starved idiot like Oikawa?

“Uh, I - I don’t know.” Is her pathetic response. The two men in front of her share another look, before Hanamaki simply sighs, “We’ll drop it, sorry. You can talk when you’re ready.”

And as if a switch has been flipped, they fall into a smoother conversation, one about school and their social lives. How Hanamaki heard that Yahaba and Kyoutani went to New York together for God knows why, and how Kindaichi’s finally starting for his Division 2 team. Y/N, on the other hand, can’t seem to focus. Perhaps it’s the thing she was thinking about earlier. Okay. It’s definitely that.

Eagerly, Y/N shoots up and slings her bag over her shoulders, muttering, “Sorry, I have to go.”

“Pay for your drinks, cheapass!” Hanamaki half-jokingly calls out, also standing up. Matsukawa grabs his wrist, seemingly understanding something and leaving the strawberry blonde out of the loop.

“Don’t. I think this might just be serious.”

-

Upon stepping back into the comfort of her room, Y/N turns on her phone, fingers hovering just above the call button. She was so sure of it before, at the izakaya, but now that she’s had time to think, she doesn’t know what to say.

Wait - no, she’s breaking up with him. That’s for sure. She’s not exactly confident she could take another second being in ticking time bomb of a relationship, but how does she even begin the conversation? Iwaizumi was her first everything, and that might just include first break up. How do people even do this? She feels like she’s about to rip the guy’s heart out of his chest, and that’s not something she could live with.

Fuck it, Y/N thinks to herself as she presses the call button. Iwaizumi picks up after three rings, voice grumpy as ever. “Yeah?” Now Y/N feels like a bitch for doing this over a phone call. But it’s not like she could book a flight to California with the money she doesn’t exactly have, just to break up with her boyfriend of six years. So she improvises.

“Can you get on Skype?”

She hears rustling on the other end of the call, and the telltale sound of a zipper being unzipped. “Sure.”

A few moments later, she’s connected to the call, and now that she’s looking directly at Iwaizumi’s face through her laptop screen, does Y/N finally realize what she’s about to do. Before the guilt could even start to settle in, Iwaizumi opens his mouth and starts the conversation.

“I thought you were going out.” He states, face still scrunched up into that nasty scowl from earlier. Knowing the reason behind it, a fight with his best friend, Y/N isn’t as bothered by it. Okay maybe it’s bothering her. Dumping him while he’s down? She didn’t even know she was capable of something so heinous.

“I was out. I just got back home though.”

“Oh.” He looks like he wants to press further, but something’s holding him back. The same something that’s been causing him to lash out for the past few months. Y/N doesn’t miss the conflicted look on his face, nor does she miss the sigh that he lets out. Good. He’s just as exhausted as she is. Might make this a whole lot easier.

“Is there a reason why you wanted to call?” He offers an olive branch first, and Y/N happily accepts it. “Yeah, actually, there is.” She gulps, probably hard enough for him to hear, but her nerves are starting to get the best of her.

He stares at the camera, probably waiting for her to go on, then. Well, jokes on him. Y/N’s waiting too. Waiting for her to gather enough figurative balls to say what needs to be said.

“Um - okay, so,” Y/N starts, very lamely, “it’s about us.” Iwaizumi looks like he’s about to say something, but Y/N is quick to interject, “Wait! Let me just let it all out. Before I go completely crazy. And then you can talk. Yell. Curse, whatever you feel like doing after I say what I’m about to say.”

“I’m not gonna do any of that.”

“Okay. Good. Because I might cry if you do. And if I cry then I definitely won’t get to say what needs to be said.” Y/N is speaking out of her ass, that much she could tell. She could also tell he’s losing his patience, which she doesn’t totally blame him for.

“I think I know where this is going. You can say it.” Iwaizumi sounds a lot calmer, which is good, because Y/N doesn’t really know how she’d take it if he wasn’t. And then she looks down, fiddling with her fingers on her lap and the ring on her pinky finger that Iwaizumi gave to her before leaving for college.

And then Y/N decides to rip the bandage off, “I think we should break up.”

A sigh.

Not exactly her first choice of a reaction, but she’d take a sigh over a full blown confrontation any day. In fact, she’s probably a little too relieved that that was his first reaction. Means he’s thought about it too, and that she’s not the only one feeling guilty about all this.

“I’m sorry.” Y/N finds herself saying, still not daring to look up into the computer screen. She realizes how ironic it is that the calmest conversation they’ve had in months is when they’re about to break up.

“Don’t be. It’s both our faults.” He reassures her. And she finally looks up, catching her reflection on the webcam and how her eyes are slightly red and watery. (But so are his).

“Trust me I know,” Y/N finds the strength to force out a bitter laugh, and adds, “but I just...am. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work. I really wanted it to work.”

“So did I.” Iwaizumi offers a bittersweet smile, reminding her that this probably hurts for him just as much as it did for her. “But we couldn’t. And that’s on both of us. Don’t feel the need to take all the blame.”

“God, Oikawa’s gonna fucking lose it. He rooted for us so hard.” Y/N lets out a genuine laugh, remembering her chocolate haired friend that’s probably going to cry harder than they do combined. And then silence engulfs them. Conversation that used to flow so smoothly between them long gone, and the connection they had as lovers severed.

“Um, I’ll catch up with you soon. Take it easy okay?” Iwaizumi finally speaks up, probably sick of the silence. “Yeah, sure. Talk to you soon.” Except she doesn’t. In fact, the next time Y/N hears from Iwaizumi is at his welcome home party, two years later. And by then they’ve both probably moved on (she can’t really speak for Iwaizumi), to bigger and better things, and hopefully to other people.

-

“And it’s easier to walk away, than to look for what would make you stay.” - Anderson Paak.

A/N. Reposted because I wanted to edit it a bit. An izakaya is basically a traditional Japanese bar! Ending is a bit rushed, but I kinda just wanted to finish it on a slightly bittersweet note?? Thank you for reading tho, I’m gonna go cry now :) - chuu

[aion-rsa]

Rick and Morty: A Guide to Every Voice Actor

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The world of Rick and Morty has grown to absurd proportions. The show spans multiple planets, galaxies, timelines, and multiverses, meaning there’s always an opportunity to meet strange new people and creatures. 

As such, Rick and Morty’s voice cast has grown along with the adventures of its titular pair. While co-creator Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer, and Sarah Chalke have reliably voiced the central Smith-Sanchez family this entire time, the show also relies on a large crop of other voice actors. Some actors recur while others pop up only a time or two as very special guests. But all contribute to the rich aural tapestry of Adult Swim’s very ambitious animated series. 

Gathered here is a list of (to the best of our knowledge) every voice actor who has popped up on Rick and Morty, who they played, and where you may have heard (or seen) them before. 

Justin Roiland

Rick, Morty, Mr. Meseeks, Mr. Poopybutthole, Mr. Always Wants to Be Hunted

Justin Roiland is not just the co-creator of Rick and Morty but also the vocal engine for how much of the show sounds. Roiland portrays Rick, Morty, Mr. Meseeks, Mr. Poopybutthole, and countless other distinctively voiced characters in the show’s weird world. From the pilot on, Roiland’s tic-filled voice patterns have driven a lot of the humor behind the show. 

Roiland has been an animator and a voice actor for quite a long time, getting involved with his eventual Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon and his Channel 101 imprint back in 2004. There he made Internet-only cult animated series like House of Cosbys, and 2 Girls One Cup: the Show. His voice was previously well known as Earl of Lemongrab (“Unacceptable!!!”) in Adventure Time. 

Chris Parnell

Jerry Smith

Former SNL cast member Chris Parnell has had a prolific career in comedy both as a live-action and voice actor. Parnell is best known for playing Garth Holliday in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Dr. Leo Spaceman in 30 Rock, and many more roles in film and television. In the animation world he’s voiced characters on Archer, Robot Chicken, Gravity Falls, and beyond. His voice is often perfect for the “everyman” role and as such he has only been required to embody the sad form of Jerry Smith on Rick and Morty thus far. 

Spencer Grammer

Summer Smith

The daughter of Kelsey Grammar, Spencer Grammar got her start as Casey Carywright on the ABC Family college dramedy Greek. Since then, she has done chiefly live-action work on shows such as CSI, Chicago PD, and Grey’s Anatomy. 

Sarah Chalke

Beth Smith

Canadian actress Sarah Chalke brings two enormous roles from TV comedy’s past to her work on Rick and Morty. At first she was best known as the “second Becky” on ABC sitcom Roseanne. She would then go on to portray Dr. Elliot Reid for nine seasons of the classic Scrubs. Chalke is still chiefly a live-action comedic actress today but has done some more voice work in the past, including on Clone High and American Dad. 

Kari Wahlgren

Jessica, Cynthia, Samantha, Mother Gaia

Kari Wahlgren works extensively as a voice actress for animated movies, TV shows, and video games. As evidenced by her character list above, she is often Rick and Morty’s go-to voice to portray one of Summer’s teenage peers. 

Brandon Johnson

Mr. Goldenfold

Brandon Johnson is a familiar face and voice to Adult Swim audiences. He has previously popped up on NTSF:SD:SUV and American Dad. On Rick and Morty he voices Mr. Goldenfold, who is seemingly the only teacher at Morty and Summer’s school. 

Phil Hendrie

Principal Gene Vagina

Philip Hendrie is best known for hosting The Phil Hendrie Show, a proto-Comedy Bang Bang-esque talk radio show in the 1990s where he portrayed both a fictionalized version of himself and many other wacky characters. He broke into animated voice acting in the late ‘90s, voicing dozens of characters on King of the Hill and popping up in Futurama as well. On Rick and Morty he plays the unfortunately named principal of Morty’s school. 

Ryan Ridley

Frank Palicky, Lighthouse Keeper, Concerto

Ryan Ridley is a writer and producer on Rick and Morty, and like many of the show’s writers is sometimes called upon to lend his voice to a character or two. His best known creation is the Lighthouse Keeper on the Purge planet obsessed with his terrible screenplay. Ridley has also written for Ghosted, Blue Mountain State, and Community. 

Rob Paulsen

Snuffles, Centaur

Rob Paulsen is a legendary voice actor best known for voicing two Ninja Turtles (Raphael and Donatello) and several Animaniacs characters. His filmography is truly impressive and includes the important role of Snuffles the Smith family dog on Rick and Morty.

Jess Harnell

Scary Terry, Ruben

Harnell is another Animaniacs veteran. After voicing Scary Terry and some additional voices in season 1, Harnell has yet to return to Rick and Morty. 

Patricia Lentz

Joyce Smith

Patricia Lentz provides the voice of Jerry’s mom. She’s had a long, impressive career of live-action and voice acting with some highlights including Runaways, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Happy Days. 

Dana Carvey

Leonard Smith

The voice of Jerry’s dad is provided by one of SNL’s better known alums in Dana Carvey. A master impressionist, Carvey was an important figure on SNL during the ‘80s and would go on to star in Wayne’s World, The Master of Disguise, and Trapped in Paradise. Shortly after his SNL career, he hosted The Dana Carvey Show, which did not last long but is notable in TV history for having an incredible cast of writers including Louis C.K. Charlie Kaufman, Jon Glaser, Robert Carlock, and frequent Dan Harmon collaborator Dino Stamatopoulos. 

Echo Kellum

Jacob Philip, Brad, Triple Trunks

“I throw balls far. You want good words? Date a languager.” So sad that we had to leave Brad behind in C-137. Echo Kellum provides the voice of Brad and several other Rick and Morty characters.. Kellum is a UCB grad who has appeared in Key & Peele, Comedy Bang! Bang! and most notably Arrow as Mister Terrific. 

John Oliver

Dr. Xenon Bloom

John Oliver now carries on the legacy of The Daily Show in his superb HBO news series Last Week Tonight. Prior to finding his perfect comedy news niche, Oliver had a lengthy comic acting career starting in his native England and extending into his new home in the U.S. Oliver previously played an important recurring role in Harmon’s Community and pops up just once on Rick and Morty. 

David Cross

Prince Nebulon

David Cross is one of several sketch comedy legends who lent their voice to Rick and Morty as part of their lengthy careers. Cross created and starred in sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David alongside co-creator Bob Odenkirk (how has he not popped up on Rick and Morty yet?). Since then he’s had a successful stand up career and been a part of some impressive TV ensembles such as Arrested Development. 

Dan Harmon

Birdperson, Kevin, Mr. Marklovitz, Davin, Ice-T, Dr. Glip-Glop, Nimbus

Dan Harmon is the co-creator of Rick and Morty alongside Roiland. The two share a long history going back to the Channel 101 days. While both Roiland and Harmon are skilled storytellers, Harmon has truly delved into the science of story throughout his career. Harmon is best known for creating and showrunning Community, which became an onscreen sensation for fans and an offscreen nuisance for NBC due to Harmon’s at times difficult behavior. On Rick and Morty, Roiland and Harmon deploy Harmon’s deadpan delivery to good use, with him often playing monotone characters like the beloved Birdperson. 

Tom Kenny

King Jellybean, Squanchy, Conroy, Million Ants, Etc.

Tom Kenny is an incredibly successful voice artist who you likely best know as none other than SpongeBob SquarePants. On Rick and Morty, Kenny’s roles are decidedly less wholesome than the sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Kenny was a big factor in season 1 playing King Jellybean and Sqaunchy. He’s popped up sparingly in seasons 2, 3, and 4 as well, most notably as Million Ants of the Vindicators. 

Cassie Steele

Tammy Gueterman, Tricia Lange

Somebody’s gotta play Tammy Gueterman, that traitorous monster. And that “honor” goes to Cassie Steele. Steele’s name is recognizable to Canadian (and some American) audiences due to her role as Manny Santos on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Rick and Morty was her first voice acting role. She will continue her voice acting career as the lead in Disney’s upcoming Raya and the Last Dragon.

Claudia Black

Mar-Sha/Ventriloquiver

Claudia Black has turned up on Rick and Morty twice, once in season 1 and once in season 4. It’s a surprise she hasn’t done so more often as she’s built up quite the voice acting career. After becoming well known in sci-fi series like Farscape and Stargate SG-1, Black continued on into a successful gaming career, providing her voice to Uncharted, Gears of War, and Dragon Age. 

Maurice LaMarche

Morty Jr. Brad Anderson, Abradolf Lincler, Crocubot

Maurice LaMarche’s smooth baritone is quite familiar to many animation fans. LaMarche has voice acted in everything from Animaniacs to Futurama. He’s got a killer Orson Welles impression and that seems to be the starting point for many of his Rick and Morty characters. 

Alfred Molina

Mr. Needful

Many of us know Alfred Molina from his incredibly successful film career in projects like Boogie Nights, Spider-Man 2, and The Da Vinci Code. But Molina has also had quite the career as a voice actor as well. In the past couple decades, Molina has lent his sturdy voice to Rango, Monsters University, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, and more. He was clearly a shrewd choice for the Lucifer-like Mr. Needful. It’s a wonder why he hasn’t turned up on Rick and Morty more. 

Richard Fulcher

King Flippy Nips

Richard Fulcher is best known as the unofficial third member of British comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh, though he himself is American. Fulcher wrote and acted in every incarnation of The Mighty Boosh. He has also had a prolific career in comedy acting outside the troupe. As of late, Fulcher has leaned into his voice acting abilities including this sadly one-off role on Rick and Morty as King Flippy Nips, ruler of Pluto. 

Nolan North

Scroopy Noopers, Multiple Others

Nolan North has done extensive videogame work in franchises such as Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, and the Arkham series. That’s right: the voice of shrimpy Plutonian Scroopy Noopers on Rick and Morty is both Nathan Drake and Desmond Miles. North also voices many other characters in positions of authority for the show. 

Aislinn Paul

Nancy

Aislinn Paul is another Degrassi: The Next Generation alum who has broken into the voice acting world. On Rick and Morty, Paul plays only Nancy, Summer’s nerdy classmate who everyone is always mean to. Hopefully one day there will be justice for Nancy. 

Alejandra Gollas

Lucy

Alejandra Gollas is a bilingual Mexican actress who has acted in films, TV shows, and stage productions for decades. Her only Rick and Morty role was that of creepy Titanic enthusiast Lucy. 

Scott Chernoff

Revolio Clockberg Jr.

Originally referred to as “Gearhead,” Revolio Clockberg Jr. is one of Rick and Morty’s most recognizable recurring characters. Embodying this important role is veteran voice actor and TV writer Scott Chernoff. Chernoff has lent his voice to dozens of animated properties and has even written for many successful comedies including BoJack Horseman, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and School of Rock. He is one of many Channel 101 veterans involved in Rick and Morty and pitches in with some other background voices on the show here and there. 

Keegan-Michael Key

Schleemypants

Keegan-Michael Key is likely best known as half of the ultra successful sketch comedy duo Key & Peele. (Wonder whatever happened to the other guy!) Key has had an enormously successful career as a comedic actor on television. On Rick and Morty he plays testicle-looking time cop Schleemypants. 

Jordan Peele

Second Fourth-Dimensional Being

Oh, here’s Peele! Schleemypants’ unnamed partner is the only character Peele has played on Rick and Morty. 

Jemaine Clement

Fart

New Zealand comedic actor Jemaine Clement is best known for being half of the Grammy award-winning comedic musical act Flight of the Conchords alongside Bret McKenzie. Clement has also worked extensively with fellow Kiwi Taika Waititi to produce recent classics like What We Do in the Shadows. His deadpan delivery was a perfect choice monotone gaseous being “Fart.”

Andy Daly

Krombopulos Michael

Krombopulos Michael is Rick and Morty’s Boba Fett: he looks cool but ultimately does nothing. Playing K.M. was one of the most sought-of “character voice actors” in the industry. Daly’s cheerful everyman delivery has proven useful on dozens of comedy shows across the entertainment landscape. Perhaps best known for his starring vehicle Review with Forest MacNeil, Daly has also lent his voice to series such as Harley Quinn, Bob’s Burgers, and Big Mouth. He can also be heard as a crucial role on Roiland’s Solar Opposites. 

Christina Hendricks

Unity

Christina Hendricks is best known for her role as Joan Holloway on Mad Men. In addition to that, however, she’s appeared in quite a few genre films and shows like Firefly, Life, and The Neon Demon. Hendricks has done some voice work here and there and her only role on Rick and Morty to date is assimilation expert and one-time Rick Sanchez paramour Unity. 

Patton Oswalt

Beta-Seven

Patton Oswalt is basically the dark matter of the comedy universe. He and his voice turn up just about everywhere. Perhaps his best known voice acting role is that of lead character Remy in Ratatouille. On Rick and Morty he has played only Beta-Seven thus far and is surely due for some more appearances. 

Keith David

The President

Even if you’ve never heard of Keith David, you have surely heard his voice. An unmistakable baritone with gravitas, David has leant that voice to projects such as Gargoyles, Halo, and Spawn. David has worked with Harmon before on the final season of Community. Surely, there is no better voice for Rick and Morty’s unnamed President…or its Reverse Giraffe.

Kurtwood Smith

General Nathan

Not sure if you recognize Kurtwood Smith’s voice? You would if he called you a dumbass. Yes, Smith is best known to TV audiences as Eric Forman’s ornery dad Red on That ‘70s Show. He provides that same ornery spirit to the role of General Nathan on Rick and Morty in “Get Schwifty.” 

Stephen Colbert

Zeep Xanflorp

Stephen Colbert is of course a longtime comedic actor, host of The Colbert Report, and now host of The Late Show on CBS. The Late Show understandably takes up most of his time nowadays but he was nice enough to portray the intelligent alien living inside Rick’s flying saucer’s Miniverse battery. 

Nathan Fielder

Kyle

“The Ricks Must Be Crazy” has quite the star power among its voice cast. In addition to Colbert’s Zeep, the episode also introduces another Microverse populated by Kyle. Kyle is played by Nathan For You’s cringe comedy maestro Nathan Fielder. 

Jim Rash

Glaxo Slimslom

Jim Rash is another frequent Dan Harmon collaborator, best known for his role as Dean Pelton on Community. Rash is an accomplished comedic actor and an Oscar award-winning screenwriter. He’s the perfect choice to play alien couples counselor Glaxo. 

Matt Besser

Fungo

Matt Besser is an improv comedy specialist who is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. Over his long career, he’s appeared in just about everything. On Rick and Morty he portrays alien diplomat Fungo, who tries to convince Jerry to donate his penis to Shrimply Pibbles. 

Werner Herzog

Shrimply Pibbles

Werner Herzog might be the strangest inclusion in the Rick and Morty voice canon. Herzog is a towering figure in the cinema world as a director, screenwriter, documentarian, and occasional actor. His German accent and generally serious and pessimistic disposition has made him a natural target for comedies looking to inject a bit of weird humor into the proceedings. 

Chelsea Kane

Arthricia

Chelsea Kane has appeared in several TV series targeted to tween audiences like Disney Channel’s Jonas and Freeform’s Baby Daddy. Her brief role as the Purge planet’s Arthricia was a jumping off point to try more voice actor roles on shows like Hot Streets, Regular Show, and DC Super Hero Girls. 

James Callis and Tricia Helfer

Pat and Donna Gueterman

James Callis and Tricia Helfer portray the parents of double-agent Tammy Gueterman for a very specific reason. Callis and Helfer are best known for their roles on Syfy’s classic series Battlestar Galactica, with Callis playing brilliant scientist (and traitor to humanity) Gaius Baltar and Helfer playing Cylon model Number 6. Pat and Donna Gueterman on Rick and Morty look just like the actors playing them, which should have been our first clue that something is amiss.

Nathan Fillion

Cornvelious Daniel

Who is Nathan Fillion if not nerd culture’s best friend? Fillion came into prominence by playing Captain Mal Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly. Since then Fillion has had a solid career on shows like Castle and The Rookie. In his spare time, however, he provides his voice to animated series like Rick and Morty and Big Mouth, often playing a thinly-veiled version of himself. Cornvelious Daniel is notable for being the first character onscreen in Rick and Morty to enjoy that sweet, sweet McDonald’s Szechuan sauce. 

Tony Hale

Eli

Tony Hale won two Emmys for playing the Vice President’s bagman Gary Walsh on Veep. Before that he was the youngest Bluth child, Buster, on Arrested Development. As of late, however, he’s getting more into the voice acting scene. You (or your kids) may best know him as the beloved Forky in Toy Story 4. But prior to that, he popped up as a cheery Mad Max-style biker named Eli on Rick and Morty. 

Joel McHale

Hemorrhage

Joel McHale is, of course, another Community alum. He played lead character Jeff Winger on Harmon’s old NBC series. In addition to that, McHale has had a lengthy career in comedy, having hosted The Soup and Netflix’s recent Tiger King special. He was also a tight end of the University of Washington football team but that’s neither here nor there. He voices bucket-wearing post-apocalyptic warlord Hemorrhage on Rick and Morty.

Susan Sarandon

Dr. Wong

Perhaps no character on Rick and Morty has delved deeper into Rick’s psyche than Smith-family psychologist Dr. Wong. Lending her voice to Dr. Wong in the infamous “Pickle Rick” episode is legendary actress Susan Sarandon a.k.a the Louise in Thelma and Louise. 

Peter Serafinowicz

Agency Director

Peter Serafinowicz is a British comedian and actor who used his role voicing Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace as a launching pad to befriend some truly talented creators and get some truly fascinating roles. Serafinowicz has popped up in Shaun of the Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy, Parks and Recreation, and more. He also portrayed the titular Tick in Amazon’s The Tick. His role in Rick and Morty is briefly that of a Russian villain agency director who tries to take down the ever-elusive Pickle Rick. 

Danny Trejo

Jaguar

“Pickle Rick” really has quite the impressive guest voice cast. Danny Trejo joins Peter Serafinowicz and Susan Sarandon in lending his voice to this episode. Trejo plays Rick’s loose canon action hero ally, Jaguar. Outside of Rick and Morty, Danny Trejo may be one of the most recognizable faces in entertainment. A frequent collaborator of Robert Rodriguez, Trejo has leveraged his fascinating upbringing and tough guy appearance into countless roles. 

Gillian Jacobs

Supernova

Another Community alum! Superhero team The Vindicators requires a lot of guest voice talent and clearly Dan Harmon knew one place to turn. Jacobs played Britta on Community (she’s the worst). The Pittsburgh-born actress has also appeared in Girls, Don’t Think Twice, and Ibiza. 

Christian Slater

Vance Maximus

Christian Slater is a big get for Vindicators leader Vance Maximus. While he’s best known to modern audiences as the titular Mr. Robot in Mr. Robot, Slater got his start as an actor with popular roles in movies like Heathers, Interview with the Vampire, and Broken Arrow. Slater has had a fruitful voice acting career as well, having previously played “Slater” in Archer. 

Lance Reddick

Alan Rails

Alan Rails is another one of the hallowed Vindicators crime-fighting team. Playing the ghost train-summoner is Lance Reddick. Reddick has been a mainstay on television for decades, turning up in Oz, Fringe, Lost, and more. Most notably he played Cedric Daniels for the entirety of The Wire’s run. 

Logic

Logic

Logic is one of the few Rick and Morty guest stars who gets to be an animated version of himself.  This Maryland-based rapper has released five successful albums and enlisted Rick and Morty to help promote his sixth mixtape Bobby Tarantino II. 

Clancy Brown

Risotto Groupon, Story Train passenger

Talk about a guy with a commanding voice. Clancy Brown has been a successful actor for a long time, going back to his roles in Highlander, The Shawshank Redemption, and Lost. He’s undoubtedly best known to animation fans, however, as the voice of stingy Krusty Krab owner Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants. On Rick and Morty, he’s played alien restaurant manager Risotto Groupon and a Story Train passenger in season 4’s “Never Ricking Morty.” 

Thomas Middleditch

Tommy Lipnip

Thomas Middleditch is likely best known to television audiences as overmatched tech tycoon Richard Hendrix on HBO’s Silicon Valley. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Middleditch’s comedy career. The prolific improviser played Tommy Lipnip in Rick and Morty and must have impressed Justin Roiland enough to give him a lead role on his Hulu comedy Solar Opposites. 

John DiMaggio

Multiple Minor Roles (Death Stalker, Leader, Knight, etc.)

John DiMaggio is an incredibly busy voice actor. If you’ve ever enjoyed an animated comedy, there’s a good chance DiMaggio contributed his voice to it. His best known roles include Bender on Futurama, Jake the Dog on Adventure Time, and Scotsman on Samurai Jack. 

Sherri Shepherd

Judge

Sherri Shepherd is an actress, comedian, and TV personality best known for being a co-host on The View for seven years. Since then she’s turned up as an actress or talking head on many shows and lent her voice to portray a judge that deals with Morty in the season 4 premiere. 

Sam Neill

Monogatron Leader

In addition to having one of the best Twitter accounts in the world, Sam Neill is also an actor best known for playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. The New Zealander has continued to work quite a bit in recent years, turning up in Thor: Ragnarok and Peaky Blinders. On Rick and Morty he plays the leader of the  Monogatron alien race in “The Old Man and the Seat.”

Taika Waititi

Glootie

Playing another Monogatron, this one named Glootie, is New Zealand actor/director Taika Waititi. Waititi got his start in the New Zealand comedy scene alongside other Rick and Morty guest star Jermaine Clement. Since then he has only gone on to become one of the most in-demand filmmakers on the planet. Waititi is behind Thor: Ragnarok, JoJo Rabbit, and an upcoming Star Wars film. 

Kathleen Turner

Monogatron Queen

Kathleen Turner is what you would call a “get” for Rick and Morty. Turner has won two Golden Globe awards and been nominated for an Oscar and several Tony awards. She is best known for her roles in ‘80s movies Romancing the Stone, Prizzi’s Honor, and The War of the Roses. Turner has also been working as a voice actress since the ‘80s, voicing Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and going on to act in The Simpsons and King of the Hill as well. 

Jeffrey Wright

Tony

Jeffrey Wright is no stranger to sci-fi, having toiled away as sad robot Bernard on Westworld for three seasons. Wright got three-quarters of a way to an EGOT in one role by playing Belize in Angels in America. Since then he’s acted in several Daniel Craig Bond films, Boardwalk Empire, and The Hunger Games. On Rick and Morty he plays the role of an alien who vexes Rick into an existential crisis by continuing to use his private toilet. 

Elon Musk

Elon Tusk

Elon Musk is a South African/Canadian/American engineer and industrialist who serves as the founder and CEO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, along with numerous other ventures. Presumably he did not call anyone behind the scenes of Rick and Morty a pedophile but you never know. 

Justin Theroux

Miles Knightley

Justin Theroux has had quite the career in Hollywood. He first came to prominence acting in the David Lynch films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. He then continued to appear in major films while also writing some for good measure like Tropic Thunder, Iron Man 2, and Rock of Ages. On television he played Kevin Garvey in HBO’s The Leftovers. For Rick and Morty, he played the role of “heist artist” Miles Knightly in “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty.” You son of a bitch, I’m in. 

Pamela Adlon

Angie Flint

Pamela Adlon is the rare case of an actor who was first best-known for voice work breaking into the live-action arena in a big way. Adlon is best known for giving voice to Bobby Hill on King of the Hill, while also voice acting in other animated projects like Recess, and 101 Dalmatians: The Series. A longtime collaborator of Louis C.K. (though not so much anymore), Adlon appeared on FX’s Louie and got a well-received FX show of her own, Better Things. On Rick and Morty, Adlon portrays Angie Flint – a lock-picker who Rick recruits to his heist team.

Matthew Broderick

Talking Cat

Matthew Broderick is a longtime stage, film, and television actor best known for his roles on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, WarGames, The Producers, and much more. Most recently he turned up on Netflix’s sadly-departed post-apocalyptic comedy Daybreak. On Rick and Morty, Broderick plays a Talking Cat with a secret so heinous it will drive anyone to near insanity. 

Liam Cunningham

Balthromaw

To portray the voice of a wizened dragon, Rick and Morty turned to an actor best known for a series filled with them. The Irish actor Liam Cunningham is known to most people as Ser Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones. Though not usually a voice actor he must have enjoyed his role on Rick and Morty as he turns up again briefly in Roiland’s Solar Opposites. 

Phil LaMarr

Multiple Minor Roles

The first two things most people (and by most people I mean me) think of when they think of Phil Lamarr are his time on Mad TV and the moment his head explodes on Pulp Fiction. But aside from sketch comedy and head explosions, LaMarr has had a remarkable voice acting career. He portrayed the title character in Samurai Jack while also providing his voice to Justice League, Static Shock, and countless video games. It’s surprisingly hard to figure out what voices Phil LaMarr plays on Rick and Morty but given his talents it’s certain to be quite a few.

Christopher Meloni

Jesus

When Rick and Morty briefly presented the savior of mankind in season 4’s sixth episode, surely there was only one choice to play him. Christopher Meloni has had one of the more fascinating careers in entertainment. After playing the deadly serious role of Elliot Stabler on Law and Order: SVU for years, Meloni has re-embraced his comedic side in projects like Happy!, Harley Quinn, while reprising his role in the Wet Hot American Summer franchise.

Paul Giamatti

Story Lord

Paul Giamatti once joked in a late night talk show interview that his role in any given heist or action movie would be the guy wearing a headset in a van, typing on a computer, and telling the hero to “get out of there, man!” He has since parlayed that character actor sensibility into a remarkable, multi-award-winning career. Giamatti is best known recently for portraying Chuck Rhoades on Billions and producing AMC’s Lodge 49. Prior to that he played lead roles in American Splendor, HBO’s John Adams, and much more. The guy has a good handle on stories and therefore makes perfect sense as Rick and Morty’s Story Lord. 

Alan Tudyk

Chris, Observant Glorzo, Multiple Minor Roles

Alan Tudyk is a nerd culture mainstay. Very few comic-cons come and go without Tudyk involved in at least one project presenting within them. Tudyk has played Hoban “Wash” Washburne on Firefly and its spinoff movie Serenity, Mr. Nobody on Doom Patrol, and many more beloved characters. His live-action appearances are just the tip of the nerd iceberg, however, with Tudyk providing his voice to everything from Solo: A Star Wars Story (K-2SO) to Harley Quinn (Clayface/The Joker). On Rick and Morty, Tudyk plays several unnamed characters. 

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Rob Schrab

God

Rob Schrab is a Channel 101 veteran and longtime Harmon collaborator. Schrab is best known for his work as a director of projects like Monster House, Community, Parks and Recreation, and more. On Rick and Morty he plays none other than God…or at least the Zeus-like god of a remote planet. 

Jim Gaffigan

Hoovy

Jim Gaffigan is a wildly successful standup comedian who co-created and starred in a TV show about his life for TV Land called The Jim Gaffigan Show. While he’s appeared sparingly in films, of late he’s dabbled in voice acting, lending his voice to Hotel Transylvania 3, Playmobil: The Movie, and Luca. His kindly Midwestern accent lends itself nicely to the helpful but doomed Hoovy on Rick and Morty.

Planetina

Alison Brie

Five seasons in and Rick and Morty is still finding old friends from Community to make their debut. Alison Brie played Annie Edison on Dan Harmon’s classic series. Since then she’s become quite the star, serving as a lead on GLOW and voice acting in BoJack Horseman and The Lego Movie 2. She even provided the voice of Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow in the video game Marvel Avengers Academy.

Steve Buscemi

Eddie

Steve Buscemi is a prolific and talented character actor known for his classic roles in Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, The Sopranos, and more. That he plays such a relatively minor role on Rick and Morty suggests that he might be a fan of the show and just wanted to stop by and say hey. Buscemi is also notable for being a New York firefighter prior to his acting life.

Christina Ricci

Princess Ponietta

Once known as a talented child actor, Christina Ricci has continued her creative work into adulthood. The actress has starred in films like Speed Racer, Black Snake Moan, and the upcoming fourth Matrix movie. Bless her for dropping by Rick and Morty only to play an CHUD horse-person princess pregnant with Rick’s heir.

Kyle Mooney

Blazen

Kyle Mooney is an SNL cast member and writer who specializes in offbeat characters and sketches. He also wrote and starred in 2017’s Brigsby Bear. His role hasn’t been officially confirmed on Rick and Morty yet but it seems as though he voices the Mortal Kombat-esque faux badass Blazen.

The post Rick and Morty: A Guide to Every Voice Actor appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[electric-marrow]

mouth dreams review but it was typed live while i was listening to it and completely unedited

under the cut because it’s 1800+ words. also, swearing. actual review to come soon!!

mouth dreams' first track is ephemeral and beautiful, spine-chilling and moving. it rocks you into this world in a beautiful passageway, like the entrance to sakaar, and the moment it peaks over into the twilight opening you are almost on the verge of tears.

and then we will rock you kicks in.

/and then the spongebob squarepants opening theme kicks in/.

and then the two motherfucking /sync/.

a beautiful piece of childhood, worked over another. beautiful guitar overlaid with beautiful chanting almost powerful.

the next song uses extensive sentence mixing, but is cut so smoothly that we are convinced Cash is offering up an absurd, painstakingly honest tale. "it's probably a good train." fuck, fuck, yes, it probably is. "my mama was my train." fuck, she was...

the instrumentals are soul-rising, and the "baby, baby, baby" undercurrent is eargasmic. everything about it feels like you're listening to your dying mentor's backstory.

it moves you, and you keep moving. this whole album keeps you in constant motion, as if you yourself have some falling to do.

and then he says "i shit my pants". and you realise, this is it, this is NEIL'S ALBUM, oh, how foolish you were for forgetting.

HELL YES IT'S FUCKING PSYCHO KILLER. let me pause the review of that song, fuck yes.

a heavily sentence-mixed "pyscho killer" focusing on david byrne's bed, overlaid atop the iconic instrumentals of super freak.

this makes the talking heads classic seem like an upbeat song you might hear on the radio. it's much less somber, more passionate.

neil's humor pokes through visibly, shining like a beacon of light that brings a smile to your tear-stained face.

there's no room to breathe on this album; the songs come running together in the most gorgeous of ways. holy shit, am i only twelve minutes in? i think i might sob.

this one is unfamiliar at first—i only saw the partridge family once or twice as a kid. the remixing is smooth, so that it sounds natural.

so natural that when it starts to sound unnatural, it's a terrifying work of art that made me shake. a plea with you to be happy, almost a demand, like they're outside your windows.

the music starts to dance from ear to ear, and it's almost masterful in the horror it invokes.

and then there's scatting. or, what sounds like it.

and then you realise it's the chili's babyback ribs ad. it's soulful, placed atop everybody wants to rule the world in smooth ease.

that's when marilyn manson starts shrieking. the roughness, the rasp, smacking against that smooth drawl. it's a beautiful juxtaposition.

oh, and then the lion sleeps tonight is there. somehow, it fits. you start to revel in neil's genius. no one will ever be able to achieve this again, not in the same way. this is the beacon that you needed in these dark times.

you wonder if you'll cry the next time you hear this.

it's a pretty effective ad, actually. if marilyn manson advertised everything, i might buy it.

the next song makes you jump to attention. the track teased in the trailer, with its jumping guitar and its congested vocals. this sounds almost natural, like an authentic goth song.

of course, he has to say "mouth". aerosmith and green day and, most importantly, neil cicierega, combining to create a mouthy ballad that echoes through you.

—oh, goddamnit, green day. september 30th. neil woke up when september ended. fuck. dammit. is that insensitive? maybe. shit.

i'm not well-versed with music, so these songs were both pretty alien. however, their mixing is masterful, and the removal of the singer's objections to his situations form a sweet little ballad.

my own worst enemy. this one is  familiar, and it makes heads turn as you realise what music is slowly remixed.

a rocking tribute to sleeping with your clothes on. short, sweet, rockin' and rollin' as hard as it can.

the segue is beautiful, like it's natural.

the lyrics make your chest heave, and the sound itself is heavily distorted to a dreamy state, as if you are as drunk as the singer sounds. anything can be amore, you realise.

the distortion is noticeable without ruining the track, and neil has gotten significantly better.

it ends a little more nightmarishly, and makes you feel very real. very in your skin. fuck yeah, neil.

the following "stop" is even more jarring, and it's almost welcome.

and then, stacy's mom. i think the instrumentals are where is my mind, i don't know. but it /works/, and it fits together, with stacy's mom slowed down considerably but not so that it ruins the track. the pitch is shifted properly so that it becomes an angry slow ballad about stacy's mom. rife with heartbreak.

and then it stops, breaks off into a cry for "mom" that might awaken buried maternal issues in the listener. maybe just me, though.

here comes fred durst. it gets the "wow wow" treatment, and its nookie theme becomes sweet, bouncing around with innocent sentimentality. i thought i heard seinfeld around there somewhere.

this is a good point in the album to close your eyes and really hear the album, to feel what ou are truly experiencing. it can move by too fast if you're not paying attention. listen to that iconic sledgehammer guitar. listen to—mario?

fuck. fuck. fuck.

fucking christ. not the fucking ewok celebration.

almost nonsensical lyrics play over the nookie instrumental (reversing the last track's roles), and the combination is natural and rowdy. you slowly realise what those ewoks reflected in neil's glasses /mean/, and it horrifies you just a little.

god, that's good. fuck you, neil.

jingles? is that—jingles?

a moment of confusion. and then, THX.

the iconic, crawling note, invading your ears and then slowly fading out. "she drives me crazy" is playing, and the THX sound is its backing track.

only neil.

it gets better as it goes on, from a joking track to a genuinely orchestral sensation. it's good music. it's beautiful. it feels like an action movie soundtrack, as the hero discovers a massive secret.

maybe you are dreaming.

the next sound sample is jarring. the announcement. the outsiders cast. and then more, and then more. it feels like a list of gods left in a dying world. johnny.

and then there is johnny cash.

and then it isn't.

what neil plays is heartbreaking. it feels like your world is crashing down around you. it's a betrayal that could bring anyone to their knees. the booing played behind it is appropriate.

but he builds that world right back up, with soft, strumming guitar. it's forgiveness and vitriol all rolled into one.

actually, you can forgive him for the next track. yes. fireflies. let's fucking go. closer overlaid with fireflies. yes. hell yes.

it's like a gift, a peace offering.

the nostalgic, upbeat lyrics, feel deeper atop the warbling, warped backing track. it's like owl city's song about dreaming feels like it could be a teenage angst anthem.

it's art.

the plucked guitar fades out, and the lyrics start to distort. everything fades away...

nevermind, time for billy joel.

the shrieking, screaming, rasping lyrics of nightmare are mixed atop the bouncing piano music, so the song lays halfway between an upbeat piece of joy, and a warning.

it ain't over yet.

xylophone. why is there xylophone?

the iconic "powerhouse" track serves as our instrumentals, the classic sound one from our childhood as the droning sound of jack white forms a buzzing piece of heartbreak. only neil, right?

only neil.

the "War" sample is iconic, and it makes you jump.

the "Wannabe" sample will make you writhe.

iconic, jamming guitar, and also wario. the spice girls, and also wario. yes. yes. this is it.

the following laughter brings back your childhood. elfman's work on the peewee soundtrack, peripatetic in nature, running up and down your ears as gorillaz croons a bittersweet sound. it becomes almost triumphant against the instrumental, re-energized like the monster in frankenstein's lab.

peewee is laughing. maybe we should laugh too.

the next one up is soft, plucked note by note, until alanis morisette goes completely off the deep end. the spoons, alanis.

holy shit, is that knight rider?

this mashup is classic, expertly remixed without a single hitch. it's neil at his finest, neil at his neiliest, alanis' quiet "Don't you think?" almost smug.

the sound of rain, followed by the crooning iconic "raiiiiin" is enough to make you break down. this is a blessing from an unknowable god.

two backstreet boys lines run up against each other, forming a surrounding sound that envelopes you in shaking guitar until the distorted sound in the back becomes noticeable.

there it is. there's the song you were waiting for.

your savior has arrived, and it is in a horrible form. it rises from the tomb in an unholy abomination. you fall to your knees.

"wake up."

i can't. i'm trapped here. i can feel every single one of my vertebra. i'm crying.

and then beethoven and britney make a duet.

"hit me baby one more time" runs along iconic dashing violin.

you start to hear it, and then it's there even more.

the hall of the mountain king, slowly building, the suspense enough to bring you to the edge of your seat. weezer's lyrics are pronounced like an oracle's prophecy, sardonic and yet grim, delivered with its iconic "say it ain't so" almost ironic.

then the crescendo hits, and the singing feels like it's declaring your fate. it rocks you, and never lets you still.

...and then there is the dial-up. you're staring at neil's face, and you realise the title itself has a secret. the starred letters spelled out "nice modem."

the screeching dial-up sound, and then nothing. you're sitting in the silence, with this quiet revelation.

he's carried you through the greatest adventure of your life, and then left you in the nothingness, tearing away a world that could only be imagined in the dreams of a 90s kid raised on the internet.

it's heartbreaking, but it mends every single tear of that vital organ. it's alright. neil's got you. this is his gift, this is his message.

he shares this dream with us, because it's the only piece of hope we can hold onto. someone else's dream, forged on childhood memories and ambition, woven together with years of experience until it culminates into an hour-long album of cultural mashup and musical blasphemy.

it brings tears to my eyes, and then wipes them off. it wants you to feel, it wants you to bleed, and then it wants you to heal. rejoice, says mouth dreams. rejoice. rejoice in what the world has given you.

you're going to be alright.

definitely, like, a solid 9/10. pretty good album. i think my favorite track was either brithoven or superkiller, tell me what yours was in the replies!

i can see new colors.

[0poole]

Humor in Writing

    Most of the time I feel like dismissing what might seem like “faults” in writing because I haven’t actually made anything myself, and especially haven’t gotten any attention to what I make, but every once in a while something really ticks me off. Of course, I still try to take it with a grain of salt because of my lack of true experience in writing, but considering I’m hoping to actually become some degree of a writer I feel like it’s worth actually trying to explain what I think is a fault with things and why. 

    There always seems to be one specific thing that bothers me a lot when reading/watching stuff, and it’s the hard switching of tone from comedy to sincerity, or something similar to that, or vice versa.

    Honestly, even though it sounds like the motive of a cartoon villain, I kinda think there’s too much humor in the world. It’s probably just entirely driven by opinion and preferences, but I feel like so many people are striving and looking for comedy that it hinders so many other things. I feel like, both in real life and in writing, having so much humor everywhere creates a pretty big gap between that tone and sincerity, which is pretty much always needed at some point. The big line between comedy and sincerity makes it so much harder, emotionally speaking, to feel good about the switch. I’ll try to explain…

    First of all, this whole line of thought, even though I’ve been thinking it forever, was spawned by me watching Epithet Erased. Took me long enough, because I’ve seen some of the characters around and really loved their designs, but I finally watched it all, and I gotta say… It was interesting. Also, this is probably just going to be very ranty and opinionated but I will (hopefully) have something more valuable to say after. But, anyways, for one, it felt just barely too close to some of the premises for the stories I’ve thought of in various ways, but I guess that’s just bad luck on my part. Second, I feel like its humor really brought it down for me. Some episodes felt so long winded (although not necessarily “boring” I guess) because I felt like I got the joke they were trying to tell relatively quickly after they started it, but carried it so far. It didn’t help that, at least for a few of them, some of the characters felt like archetypes that I’ve seen a lot around the internet, or at least were simple enough that I understood what they were instantly, and when they are carried out through long character-focused moments it felt like nothing was happening. I feel like some of the characters are fine enough, even if I may not like them, but Giovanni and Indus were the two big ones that I thought had a little too much time given to them…

    But more relevant to what I’m trying to say, sometimes the writing jumps way too far from the very comedic tone it’s trying to put out and into it trying to be sincere. The worst case of this was when Sylvie met Mera in the museum storage, and Sylvester tried to out Mera’s nightmares, only to see that her nightmare was the reality she was already in. With the scene change, and Indus becoming more serious with Molly, it felt like a good enough departure from the usual comedic tone to warrant the deeper motive of the character. But, then, of course, they had to trash the whole tone by adding the line about her also being afraid of ducks. There was absolutely no good reason to warrant that line and I will die on that hill. Not only was it just humor, but it was spontaneous “random” humor, and so on… I honestly hope people could just understand where I’m coming from there by how out of place it seems. I feel like the only defense they could use, apart from “just liking it,” would be that it’s comedic relief, but I genuinely feel like since practically the whole thing up until this point was comedy there was absolutely no need for comedic relief. The scene itself is like the opposite of comedic relief, like “Sit down and pay attention” or “Turn your brain back on” or whatever. The climactic point of the scenes before it were reached, meaning the sincere conflict there should be focused on, and apart from that one tiny little line it worked well enough. The fact that it was so tiny and insignificant is basically why I hated it so much. They literally could’ve just scratched it off of the script and only good things would have happened. 

    Something a bit similar happened before when Molly revealed her backstory to Giovanni. It wasn’t quite as bad, but when a scene goes from comedy to “my mom’s dead and my life sucks” you do feel the shift a little too quickly. I feel like it’s not as bad because it could just be Molly’s character, seeing the tragedy of her life as just sort of normal and not really that remarkable, meaning she’s more likely to just randomly bring it up. 

    But I definitely wouldn’t be going off this much about it if there wasn’t at least a little bit more. Zora was literally the reason I wanted to watch the show, because I saw a drawing of her a while back and thought she was just some random OC, but when I heard she was from this show I instantly wanted to watch it a lot more. I think the same thing happened with Molly, but I think I knew she was from the show to begin with. Anyway, Zora was the main character who I loved from the get-go and loved even more the more I learned about her. She’s such a perfect amount of diversion from being a generic cowboy in the little design details, while still being 100% cowboy material. Then, when I saw that her power was “Sundial,” or more generally just time powers, I loved it. The big thing that seems little conceptually is making her key term “sundial” instead of just “time” or whatever, because of how much it relates to her cowboy-ness, with it being associated with the “sun” people often associate with Death Valley and the Wild West and whatnot. Not to mention, it’s just a cool power.

    But that’s kinda the thing, though. She’s so insanely strong. She could literally kill anyone on a whim. I don’t see how anyone could be cracking jokes in her presence. It’s kinda more general of a gripe, but when she aged up Howie it was borderline terrifying, and yet… right after, they’re cracking jokes again. It’s just so jarring. She could have literally reduced him to dust, and they’re so casual about it. I know Percy is supposed to be kinda blind to some obvious things, but I feel like even she could see the horror. That said, though, Percy is also one of my favorites. Her powers feel so natural yet interesting for what she is for some reason. 

Frankly, the visual character designs alone for this show are all really good. Whether or not I’m into the writing, I can’t deny that the show kept me coming back just because it feels so good to just look at it, you know? The minimal animation, vocalized stage directions, and top-down scene view was really interesting to watch, since I’ve never seen it before, and seems like a perfect way to produce more content with less budget. It made everything feel super crisp and tidy, despite being animated so simply. Not to mention that the general lack of animation meant the few scenes where there was traditional-level animation felt really good. The voice acting was also amazing, (again not directly tied to the writing) especially when the voice actors carried their character and emotion from the scene into the stage directions, instead of just reading them out plainly. And, at the very least, the premise of the show is also really interesting (at least to me, mainly because I created 2 stories with a similar idea without even knowing anything about it. Simplified, specific superpowers are just perfect for character designing, you know?) 

But I am kinda acting like the writing was bad, but it really wasn’t all things considered… I’m just not really into comedy, and when the comedy I don’t like is paired with writing and practically everything else I do like it doesn’t sit right with me. Considering this idea and some of the story beats were adopted from a DnD(-esque?) campaign, I feel like it’s much more fine. Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t realize it sooner. Once I read about that, everything just fell into place. I’m not really into DnD either, though…

So, I feel like there are things to gain from thinking about this. While Epithet Erased is still on the mind, I feel like I’ve realized something about the juxtaposition of comedy and sincerity, that being that comedic characters can exist in sincere surroundings, and vice versa. Zora specifically could be one of these characters, because she’s so powerful that she probably sees everything around her as trivial, while the other characters have more sincere reactions to her obscene power. She could easily crack a sick joke that no one laughs at because she’s the only one who can find humor in whatever’s going on. By contrast, the thing about Mera’s fear of ducks was a product of the scene and not of the character, so it just ruined things. Nothing about it was made to be funny to the characters, it was made to be funny to the audience, even though the audience should be in sincere mode then. 

Another character that I think works like this is Charlie from Hazbin Hotel, who is the sincere personality in a world of complete and total insincerity. She’s basically a more unique kind of straight man (despite being neither straight nor a man), who are always the grounding in comedic casts, like Squidward in Spongebob. I guess in sincere stories there are comedic relief characters, and in comedies there are straight men. You know, these are probably all things other people have figured out already… at least I can feel good knowing I sort of reached them on my own…

    I think a good solution for stuff that’s primarily meant to be a comedy is to make it almost entirely comedic, at least with the inclusion of a straight man if needed. The big name that comes to mind is good ol Monty Python, the backbone of 14 year old boys’ humor style. At some point I realized why I like the humor of The Holy Grail, at least above other comedic movies, is that they don’t hold back at all. At no point whatsoever do they pull back the veil and put in a sincere moment. And, of course, since I can basically recite the entire movie from memory I think it did wonders. I think when it comes to comedies like this, trying to be too sincere at certain points makes it feel even less sincere than if it didn’t have the sincere moment at all. This might be a product of the 00s American family-rated live action comedies who all feel like they fall into that same boat, where the entire movie is hijinks, but then at the very end they pull that all back and have something really impactful happen, with the idea being having some shoehorned message about “family” or whatever. I can group so many movies into that category that it feels almost corporate how many there are like that, and because it’s both overdone and geared towards too generalized of an audience, trying to capture the comedy-lovers and sincere-lovers, it really just fails in both ways. Or, maybe people love them because they’re just barely bad enough to enjoy it in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way. I dunno. If I wasn’t a little nostalgic for the time those types of movies might be my all-time least favorite.

    But I’m a stick in the mud who hates comedy so I’m not really equipped to tell anyone how to do it right. Instead, I feel like there’s some seriously untapped potential in other forms of “feel-good” tones, like casual lightheartedness and just plain fun. I feel like those two things really work towards creating sincere stories that are still enjoyable, and not just one shot of sadness after another, while still having a dash of impactful emotion in them.

    I feel like this is where Pixar really shines. People say “It’s not a true Pixar movie if you don’t cry at the end” because I think Pixar movies are great at making the audience lower their guard, and when the moment is right, hitting you right in your heart to make you feel the right emotions. For example, what I’d call my favorite movie of all time (for intents and purposes, if not for real), Inside Out, is all about emotional sincerity, where it’s trying to get across how it’s okay to feel sad, even though the world around you tends to say happiness is always what you want. For most of the movie, it’s a pretty casual romp around the inner workings of Riley’s mind, with some jokes thrown in (because it doesn’t have to be completely without jokes). I’m not really sure how to explain it, but the various jokes in Inside out feel like they’re sort of blended with the interesting workings of this fantasy mind-world, like the fact that earworms are just the little blobby workers in our minds sending the memory of the song back up to the control panel for the hell of it, or that our dreams are a product of a Hollywood-like place in our minds. These things definitely are there for humor, but something about them feels much more fun than just any kind of generic comedy. 

    Then, I feel like the most important thing about fun and lightheartedness is that they feel like they blend so much better with the sincere moments. Obviously if it’s too quick it’ll still be bad, but I think it’ll be much less bad than with comedy. Maybe you could think of it like a spectrum with pure comedy at one end and pure tragedy at the other, with fun and lightheartedness just barely crossing the midpoint towards the comedy side. Since there’s less of a gap between it and tragedy compared to pure comedy, it feels less jarring. Plus, it just feels more reasonable logically speaking, since comedy sort of puts up this insincere barrier to sort of suspend the disbelief that the events in question are supposed to be taken seriously, which makes breaking that barrier harder once it’s established. With fun and lightheartedness, there may be an expectation of it sort of maintaining itself but there isn’t as much to say there isn’t something hiding in the background. In Inside Out at least, throughout Joy and Sadness’ journey they are pretty determined to get back to the control panel to save Riley, but they’re for the most part confident they can do it (or, you know, just Joy’s confident), so they sort of interpret the world around them in a more casual light, but with that lower-level need still there. But when Joy falls into the abyss of forgotten memories and the hopelessness sets in, you feel it much more, because it was sort of already there to begin with, and it was just made perfectly clear at that moment. I think Bing Bong’s emotions during the scene also make it pretty emotional, since he’s being casual about his death while also being sincere about his sacrifice for Riley’s sake. Not to mention his inner sadness was outed while talking with Sadness.

    I feel like if I were trying to write an actual essay I could probably phrase all this a lot better. I just think there’s a ton of value to lightheartedness in stories, as opposed to comedy, for the sake of “feeling good.” Pretty much all of my favorite things have that tone to them to some degree, like Wander Over Yonder, my for sure favorite TV show. It definitely feels fun in a way that can elicit laughs, but it’s not a lot like “This is a joke and you should laugh” most of the time (Disregarding the Evil Sandwich, my least favorite character in the show). I also think Steven Universe succeeds very well with that tone, creating an extremely comfy atmosphere when it comes to the less climactic episodes. 

    I also vastly prefer the lighthearted resolutions to the conflicts in lighthearted stories. Frankly, I am infinitely more likely to cry to a comfy and happy resolution than I am to the actual sad parts. I’m not really sure what it is about them, but I guess the characters finally being happy again after emotional turmoil warrants a happy-cry. I swear, if I think too hard about the scene where Riley finally admits her sadness to her parents and just sits in their warm embrace, I tear up. It feels so much better than hijinks-danger-hijink resolution. 

    But yeah, the stories I want to write the most will all inevitably have that sort of lighthearted flair to them, unless of course I choose to go more inherently serious with a story. There’s nothing wrong with that either. 

    With regard to the really big claim I made before about there being too much humor in the world, the themes of Inside Out, and what I said about comedy’s insincere barrier, I really think the world as a whole would benefit from valuing humor a little less. It feels like there are so many situations where people sort of want to maintain their good feelings with humor instead of more directly dealing with issues in a sincere mindset. For example, if people say something disagreeable (but not insane), It feels like too many people resort to making jokes at that person’s expense and not dealing with the issues directly. Obviously if someones saying some insane bullshit it’s fine, but when the more reasonable takes that are just barely put under the same umbrella as the insane shit are made fun of, it really deepens the trench between the people of different opinions. Of course, humor isn’t the only thing deepening that trench, but it really feels like one of them a lot of the time.

    Apart from that, I feel like using humor as a way to distract from general negativity and negative emotions like what Inside Out sort of warns against can be pretty detrimental too. Obviously happiness can still be around, but putting up that kind of barrier between you and the necessary sincerity for emotion with comedy just makes the unpleasantness of the unpleasant stuff that much more unpleasant. I’m saying this one at least out of personal experience, since I have sort of developed to be too subconsciously against super sad and sincere real world scenarios. I haven’t personally felt too many of them myself, but I definitely feel myself blocking off some of my own emotional vulnerability, especially around other people. I can consciously talk against it, like I’m doing now, but I feel like it’s going to take a long time for that barrier to really break. Is humor to blame for that sort of thing? Maybe, with a dash of toxic masculinity and other buzzwords people often avoid for reasons I mentioned in the last paragraph. 

    Even though this one is much more unreasonably generalizable than the last two things, I feel like the popularity of self-deprecating humor across the internet also (probably?) takes a toll on some people. Obviously some people might just use it to their genuine benefit, but since it seems so common surely some people are putting on a self-deprecating face to get along, and eventually maybe even believing what they used to joke about themselves. Either way, it might be a product of an extreme departure from any kind of narcissism, making being self-confident and self-loving just that little bit harder for people.

    But, while I’m not the most equipped to judge writing, I’m even less equipped to actually debate for the existence of all those things, so just know I’m kinda speaking with my heart and not my brain here. People obviously want and need different things, and I’m probably just projecting. Hell, maybe that’s me self-deprecating to not make me seem weird to everyone else. I dunno.

        No matter what, all this reliance on humor really just shows who is and isn’t funny. Sometimes, people really need to get a grip. Frankly, I don’t think I’m that funny either, which is why I’ve kind of had the humor beaten out of me by one too many awkward silences after a weird joke in my elementary/middle school days. I guess that’s my cartoon villain origin story. 

[seokjxnnie]

celestial (pt. 1) | kth (m)

genre: (future) smut, angst, demon au, incubus!taehyung x reader warnings: blood and violence, aloof asshole taehyung length: 5.3k

↳ her flesh and blood imparts immortality to any demon, but the incubus protecting her from the hunt requires something else of her body.

masterlist | part 2 ↠

a/n: let me know if you would like to be tagged in future updates! thanks!!

Everything was a little out of focus, but those piercingly red eyes were impossible to dismiss. Long, slender fingers unbuttoned her shirt. A heavy, aching fatigue paralyzed her, yet she still managed quiet mewls when a pair of lips cascaded tender caresses down the side of her waist. A scarce twinge of pain followed each stroke of a tongue, inspiring her to lightly squirm, but strong hands held her hips down. Eventually, with each kiss against her skin, she felt better, revitalized. Her vision gave to a slow fade.

She stirred in her sleep, rousing awake.

A dream. An inexplicable yet vivid dream. She wasn’t sure how long she napped for, but it must’ve been for too long if she felt this lightheaded. Sluggishly, her eyes opened, adjusting to the light as she stretched in silky sheets.

Her body suddenly went rigid, remembering she didn’t have silky sheets. A jolt upright and she found herself in a foreign environment. She was in a bed she didn’t know, in a room that wasn’t hers, wearing clothes that didn’t fit her. Before fear crippled her limbs, the door opened and revealed a kind face.

“Oh, Princess, you’re awake.” Soft eyes greeted her. “My name is Seokji—”

She flinched and tousled back when he approached and extended a glass of water to her. There was a throb in her head that elicited a pained exhale from her.

“Don’t move so suddenly! You’re probably still a little weak from all the blood you lost.”

An unearthly chill swamped her skin at such menacing words with inference she couldn’t grasp. Her heart thumped violently against her chest. Her throat tightened with the threat to suffocate. “Where am I? Who are you? Who changed me out of my clothes?” she assaulted him with panicked questions.

“Taehyung did. He had to heal your wounds and your clothes were soaked with blood. I’m washing them right now.”

Although he was seemingly speaking to her in an incomprehensible language, his words somehow brought on an ambiguous, fleeting series of images of her mind, bursts of what she could only hardly make out to be violence and gore. Even so, they were just passing visuals that failed to illustrate a coherent recollection.

Plagued with confusion and terror, her limbs quaked and her head pulsed. She darted her gape around the room in search of means of escape. “Please just let me go,” a frail, fractured voice pried from her quivering lips.

Seokjin swallowed, lips tautening into an apologetic frown. “Listen, I know this all might seem crazy and scary, but try to stay calm so you don’t overexert yourself.” Gingerly, he attempted to extend the glass of water to her once more, “I can explain everything.”

Her breaths fell as tremoring wisps before she contemplated whether it was idiotic or in her best interest to believe in the sincerity the stranger projected. She peered down at her foreign attire, finding herself in basketball shorts and a Spongebob t-shirt – both of which were too generously sized for her. The harmless image of the apparent pair of men’s pajamas she was in seemed to suggest something far from a hostile kidnapping. Then briefly, her gaze shifted to the drink stretched out to her, recognizing that her pounding head was begging for it.

“It’s safe, I promise. I’ll show you,” he insisted, bringing it to lightly touch his lips before he took a gulp in hopes of evaporating any of her apprehensions of it being contaminated. “See?”

Wary hands reached out to accept it. Reluctance quickly turned to eagerness when she felt how good it was to soak her dry tongue and quench the dense throb in her temples.

She’s never had a hammering headache in this magnitude before. She’s also never ‘lost of a lot of blood’ before which, according to him, was why she was feeling the way she did. All over again, she was swathed by a haunting uneasiness.

Hence, in spite of his warm smile and seemingly benevolent efforts, when his hand extended out in offer of taking away her quickly emptied glass, she instead tossed it at him. In the distraction of having him fumble to catch it, she made a hasty lunge off the bed and a beeline for the bedroom door – the alternative of the bedroom window was unhelpfully high and would’ve instead made for a slow and clumsy escape. Veering around him and his wide blinking eyes, she threw open the door and sped out, her bewilderment readying her to weave through whatever she has to in order to make it outside and scream for help. Unfortunately, it was a swift transition from the bedroom’s doorway into a face-first collision with a broad chest of another unidentified figure. Dizziness returning in an amplified form, she stammered back.

“Jesus, take it easy,” a tongue clicked before big hands claimed her shoulders and held her upright.

She peered up to find familiar eyes – the same eyes from her dream. They didn’t have the same red quality, but the matchlessly penetrative glance they delivered couldn’t be mistaken. Was her mind so inundated that it had fabricated a dream of the man now standing in front of her trailing his lips down her side?

Taehyung, she recalled Seokjin’s mentioning earlier. The visual prompt of his familiar face suddenly made for an enrichment of her memories, triggering another barraging flash of bloody imagery. Nausea settled down on her and her sights started spinning again.

He caught her when her knees submitted to a buckle. “You’re not supposed to be up and about yet,” his criticism resonated with a deep voice. Arm swinging around under her knees, he picked her up. A quick nod at Seokjin reassured the older that he can handle it from here.

She would’ve struggled if she wasn’t entirely crippled by fatigue and anxiety. However, as he began carrying her down the hall, she was suddenly confronted with a strong sense of nostalgia. The humble and rustic walls looked as if she’s been acquainted. It wasn’t until he sat her down on a couch of a living room that she then taken back to an amicable elderly face eight years ago.

“This is the town shrine,” she mumbled to herself after the fragments of reminiscence assembled to refine a certain memory.

For as long as she could remember, the girl could see supernatural beings. In childhood, they had never bothered her more than a brush of curiosity. And so, as a kid she had even called the things her imaginary friends, being that apparently no one else was able to see them and she was consistently being dismissed as having a wild imagination. Approaching adolescence, she began to recognize the eeriness in their ghastly looks, becoming increasingly concerned that she wasn’t growing out of her ‘imaginary friends’. Her developing maturity allowed her to find the fear in seeing things others couldn’t.

As a result, at 12 years old her parents took her to a shrine seeking advice from a gentle-faced elderly monk. There was a brightness behind his crinkled eyes when he smiled, and a cosiness played in his voice whenever he talked. He assured her parents that it was nothing to worry about, that all her visions were the product of a creative mind. Nonetheless, he still imparted her with a bead bracelet, assuring that as long as she kept it on it would protect her. Her parents appreciated the monk’s white fib in an attempt to help her feel better. Although it didn’t dispel the monsters, she felt an attachment to the bracelet and kept it on till present day.

Now in the same shrine eight years later, she blinked at and fingered the same beads around her wrist. Their original dark brown colour was now tinted a deep red. Before she even had the chance to add to her amassing puzzlement, she stiffened as five other strange men joined them in the room.

“Oh, the Princess is awake!”

“I thought I heard voices.”

Seokjin followed, entering and setting down her folded clothes on the table in front of her. “I managed to get the stains out,” he greeted her by her name with a lively grin, “but I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything about the rips and tears.”

Her eyes broadened, terrified, when she held up her shirt with a monstrous bite taken out of its side. She gasped and jerked back in retreat when she at last remembered the earlier pain that had thoroughly conquered her body. All too vividly was the reminder of the demonic face of the child that clamped its teeth onto her ribs. All the overwhelming emotions from the entire day suddenly barraged her, provoking her to shake uncontrollably. Stinging tears welled up in her eyes.

“How do you know my name? Who are you guys?” she whimpered through a broken and frail voice, sinking into the couch to increase her distance from everyone.

__________

The day was eerie from the start.

The walk from her dorm room to campus was darker than usual. It wasn’t due to gloomy weather of any sorts – it was actually a sunny morning, perfectly characteristic of the budding summer season. The shadows were actually casted by the blankets of monsters that spread, hardly leaving any landscape vacant. Two-headed cats hung on trees, three-eyed foxes sprawled across garden beds, double-ended snakes spiralled around stair railings, crows two feet tall enveloped benches and stone sculptures. It was routine to see them often, so much so that it was often hardly a chore to walk on through as if she didn’t see anything, to pretend as if she wasn’t stiff with anxiety and fear. But today was different. Their presence has never been so ample. While none of them flocked to her, she could feel their hungry stares searing into the back of her head, as if stalking her as prey. A chill snaked up and down her spine.

“What are you staring at?” A classmate joined her side and reeled her out of her troubled daze. Their paths often overlapped, heading to the same lecture.

She had long ago given up on talking about the things that she could see. “Oh, nothing, just thinking about the lengths I’m willing to take to get out of that argumentation assignment due tonight. If I asked you nicely, would you hold a knife to my throat?”

The classmate snorted. “Christ, relax! It’s your birthday tomorrow! You get it done tonight and won’t have to worry about it when we celebrate.” Excited pats warmed the girl’s shoulder. “You think I’d let myself forget and let you off that easily?”

With such an uncanny start to her morning, even she forgot.

She tried not to act distracted and insincere when she thanked her peer.

While eager to find distance from the horde as she entered the school, she instead found dismay in her lecture. Windows lined the side of the class, and lining the windows were an abundant layer of more demons. The students carried on as if the room wasn’t dramatically dimmed by the obstruction of the copious densities of the monsters, as if they didn’t see the multitude of brutish, ghastly faces glowering at them – at her.

She sank into her seat. Not only the horror, but the loneliness has never felt as smothering as it did now.

What’s going on? Why was today as unusual as it was? She didn’t know, and will probably never know. It’s been this way of her whole life – no one around her could ever answer her questions about her experiences with anything other than a look of concern. Nonetheless, she swallowed the fear accumulating as a swell in her throat and reminded herself that she’d just have to carry on and hope that the strange themes will curb on its own by the end of the day.

So, once she finished her classes, she found refuge in a deep, quiet corner of the library away from the windows to finish her assignment due at midnight. Hours bled into the tedious clicking and typing of her laptop, and although mind-numbing, it adequately served as a distraction from the eeriness that lurked a just a few walls away. So much so that the anxiety of the supernatural gradually dispersed to instead make room for the fatigue of her studies.

The library was completely silent – it was now late and the occupants must’ve cleared out. She, however, just had a couple more paragraphs to refine before she could leave too. Eyes strained and dry, face stretched by frequent yawns, and mind dazed from the droning of the past few hours, she remembered submitting to the droop of her heavy eyelids.

Just for a minute, she promised herself, just to rest my eyes.

Regardless of what she insisted, the brief moment of ease and tranquility was mesmeric. So much so that when she finally did bring herself to stir and scarcely open her eyes, she found the time to be 11:42pm with no accomplishment of additional work from when allowed herself the break an hour ago. The panic surged through her, bolting her upright with consciousness and playing her fingers in a hurried and tireless employ.

It was 11:59pm when she clicked on “submit” and a green checkmark responded on her screen to inform her of a successful submission. She threw herself back in a slump with a sigh of relief. Stretching in her chair, she relished in the release of tension in her body to accompany her close-call victory.

Happy birthday to me, the girl quietly tittered to herself when the time on her laptop blinked midnight.

Packing herself up, she was drawn from the excited thoughts of being engulfed by her bed when she heard a childish sobbing coming from another corner of the library.

She froze, stiff and cold. What was a child doing on a college campus at midnight? The catalog of horror movies she’s watched could provide some ideas, none of which too kindly for her. Pulse thumping so rapidly that it seemingly burned a hole in her throat, she remained unmoving, waiting to see if the cries continued. Maybe she was so worn out that she was hearing things, she tried to rationalize. She remembered a psychology article she read, outlining something along the lines of the mind tending to fabricate false stimulations to the senses amidst a backdrop of paranoia, which was easy for her to develop in the dark and isolated environment she was in now. Although she might just be desperately reaching.

A rigid breath of distress pushed past her gritted teeth when she heard the whimpering continue. She wasn’t imagining it.

Prompted by the sliver of concern that it was actually a child in the need of help, pale and clammy fingers dug for her keys before wedged them between her knuckles as a makeshift tool of defence. Then, she cautiously made her way towards the sound. An attempt to console herself came with the reminder of her phone’s function of a blaring SOS alarm. She thumbed the power button in preparation to hold it down and trigger just that if necessary.

Up ahead, she saw a little boy sitting at a table with his back turned to her, whines and sniffles produced from the face that rested down on folded arms. The child’s shoulders quivered up and down as he sobbed. Gingerly closing their distance, she didn’t see any other company.

Someone’s visiting little brother? A staff member’s wandering son?

“Hey, are you alright? Are you lost?” she asked, employing a soothing and reassuring tone before reaching out a hand to tap his shoulder.

The kid spun around to reveal a demonic face – pale blue skin, eyes beady and red, teeth jutting and serrated, far from the anticipated face of innocence and vulnerability. Gasping, the girl would’ve lurched back if the thing didn’t latch onto her shoulder with its claws, breaking skin and drawing blood. She cried in pain, only wailing louder when his jaw widened and protruded to clamp down onto the left side of her ribs. An agonizing ache thundered throughout her entire body and forced her to her knees. It felt like the monster child had started lapping at the blood he drew from the wound he created. Then, it felt like his robust set of jaws was curtly removed from her side. With her senses blurring towards a deterioration from the sudden trauma that rendered her faint and close to unconsciousness, she was losing the ability to perceive reality as anything other than indistinctive and uncertain.

Her pale face dropped to the floor when she lost control of her movements over the immense pain. Under hooding eyelids, her hazy and departing vision managed to dimly distinguish a set of legs that straddled and knelt down on the demon’s chest. Vaguely, she watched as its thrashing and resistant body abruptly drop to a limp when a fist brutally landed on the creature’s face. Puncturing through its skull, a gaping hole was left when the hand retreated.

Everything dulled to a black.

A dream. A stir awake. A jolt upright in a bed she didn’t know, in a room that wasn’t hers, wearing clothes that didn’t fit her. The door opened and Seokjin entered with a glass of water.

__________

It was just past 3am, she learned. She had been unconscious for three hours.

A man named Namjoon was seated next to her on the couch, a wary distance away in consideration of her comfort amidst a disorientation. Next to him, Seokjin. Across from her on the other sofa, they introduced themselves as Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook, who was perched on top of the backing of the couch. Taehyung remained leaning against the frame of the living room’s doorway.

Her eyes were darkened with exhaustion and dewed with distraught. Hoseok had reached out to offer her a box of tissues. Soon, fibres of the damp and crumpled napkin in her hand produced a speckled and velvety texture on her fingertips.

Although still on edge, she’s decided to submit to cooperation. She couldn’t fight back anyway, burdened by not only the physical stress and wear, but also by its allied emotional strain when complete recollection of tonight’s dreadful events returned to her. Or at least for what she was conscious enough to record.

Moreover, this group of seven men might’ve been strangers, but they were strangers who promised answers to her confusion. For the first time in her life, she just might be able to finally understand… everything. Her fear of them had grown less aggressive – if they wanted to hurt her, they would’ve done so by now, as opposed to all keeping a sympathetic distance and projecting similar looks of concern from their eyes.

“When you visited the shrine as a child, the monk knew exactly why you could see things others couldn’t. But, you were still a kid, you weren’t ready to understand yet,” Namjoon spoke softly, prudently.

Jimin, foreseeing her overwhelming plunge into a reality different from what she’s known, moved mindfully not to further rouse disturbance within her when he departed and quickly returned with a hot cup of tea to soothe. She took the mug from him with a timid thanks, deciding to trust the gentle qualities reflected in his consolatory smile. It came as a reward, the hot sips calming the sharp strikes to her temples and dissipating the bloat in her airways.

“What wasn’t I ready to understand?” her voice came out feeble and splintered by a stubborn sniffle.

He replied, “You come from what our people consider a line of royalty.”

A loaded statement. A challenge to process. She only registered the first half of it. “’Our people’...?” she tentatively repeated.

“Demons,” Yoongi uttered the word she’s been waiting to hear, “the kind you’ve been seeing since you were young.”

An indecisive gaze trailed over their faces, unsuccessful in realizing any severe differentiations. No one had colourful skin, excess limbs or features, barbaric and unearthly characterizations, none of what she was used to seeing.

“But you all look human.”

Demons come in different forms, they explained. The stronger ones were able to suppress their demon traits and resemble humans, with the trade-off of being able to be seen by them. They’ve blended in, even walking among society, undetected and only perceptible to other demons.

It all sounded like an exert straight out of a supernatural young adult novel. It only escalated from there when she questioned the latter half that addressed her relation in all of this.

Every century, a human is born with the blood that can prolong a demon’s life if consumed after the ripening of adulthood. Devoured in its entirety, the celestial flesh and blood granted immortality. That celestial being was her.

The hammering in her head resurfaced. An apprehensive throb in her chest imitated the same pattern. Denial was the overpowering emotion in this instance, however. The girl scoffed a slight laughter of disbelief that accompanied the shake of her head. “That’s ridiculous. That can’t be. It… I can’t be…”

Except it would’ve explained why a mass of monsters stalked her yesterday morning. They were waiting. And right on time, at the stroke of midnight that marked her 20th birthday, the demons that mainly left her alone her whole life suddenly wanted to make a meal of her. Most of all, it would’ve explained why she was the only person she knew that could see the supernatural element.

Tautness abruptly overcame her once again when she made the connection that the seven men in front of her were also demons, possibly with the same intentions. Had they only brought her here just to surround her and have her all for themselves? The tips of her digits drained pale by the deathly anxious grip she had on her cup.

Jungkook realized the brewing fright and unease in her silence. With wide eyes, he threw his hands up in defence. “Woah, wait! Not us though! We don’t eat humans,” he exclaimed.

“Not all demons have desires for immortality and intend to hurt humans. But, we are here to protect you from those that do, Princess,” Jimin added, a trustworthy look glossing over his irises to complement his promising words.

She grimaced, “Don’t… call me that,” she muttered under her breath.

“Most of us have been under the monk’s care since we were young,” Seokjin explained. “He knew what would happen when you turned 20, and he wanted to protect you. We all grew up knowing that. When he passed away a couple years ago, the seven of us took over the shrine as well as the responsibility of making sure you’re safe.”

Her shoulders deflated at the solemn news, reminiscing the elder’s kind eyes that had comforted her many years ago. “So,” her wilted gaze reluctantly flickered up at them, “that demon earlier… it was you guys that stopped him?”

Hoseok nodded, “Taehyung did. If he had come any later, you would’ve…” he shivered at the thought of it.

She swallowed, disturbed as well by the recollection of the grisly red eyes and the agonizing pain that came with the sinking of its jagged teeth, how she was likely seconds away from being reduced to an indistinguishable pool of blood and guts. Her eyes stuttered in their peer up to Taehyung, who had remained quiet and still by the door the entire time. He was stoic and difficult to read, but she had been deprived of the resilience necessary to look at him for longer than a blink. This was because she was uneased by the idea that he had been the one to undress her from her red-stained and tattered clothing earlier. Whatever he did though, the claw and bite marks no longer marked her skin.

Stammering fingers traveled to graze her side, acknowledging the lack of an anticipated ache upon contact. “H-How did you…?”

Namjoon gestured to her wrist. The bracelet that the monk gave her, he also gave it to Taehyung. He was apparently faster and stronger than any of them. Wearing the beads simultaneously for a long interval formed a bond between the two of them. Taehyung was her familiar, was the term Namjoon used. It was a bond that meant Taehyung’s duty protect her overpowered his instincts as a demon. It was what provided him the ability to close her wounds and prevented him from personally gaining vitality from her flesh. They had scented the beads with his blood, Namjoon continued to explain, which will come as a warning to other demons. They shouldn’t be bothering her anymore for the most part.

Dwelling in such a prolonged stage of bewilderment was exhausting. Being awake in the middle of the night after just barely recovering from a penetrative pain that spilled her blood was exhausting. Wrestling between knowing to believe and wanting to deny such outlandish fables was exhausting. She sat still, quiet, numb, tired, fingering the bracelet around her wrist, now understanding why they produced their red tint.

“Someone’s going to tell her, right?” Yoongi blurted.

She looked up. What now?

Namjoon sighed, eyes dropping as if he was about to disappoint her. “Taehyung is…” he paused, clearing his throat and shuffling a nervous hand through the hair at the back of his head, “an incubus.” The air surrounding them seemingly tightened. “Which means—”

“I know what that means,” she deadpanned, stopping him before he had to embarrass himself— embarrass her any further, and before the red tips of her ears spread to blot more of her face.

A reminiscence of the elective mythology course she took during freshman year reminded her that incubuses gained life energy through sex. Incubuses were also supposed to be nothing more than a myth, but how could she be surprised when monsters and familiars and immortality-granting blood were a factual aspect in her reality?

No longer being able to stand emotionally smothering herself, she leapt to her feet.

__________

While finally in her own bed, in her own room, wearing her own clothes, she was restless. In spite of her relentless tiredness, she couldn’t sleep. Swaddled in an uncomfortable warmth prescribed by the summer heat and a fidgety apprehension, the ensuing sticky layer of sweat that draped over her skin made for a painstakingly long journey until the state of drowsiness.

She had politely asked to leave. She had thanked them for their care and for their explanations, but she was in dire need to be alone in her state of exhaustion and disorientation. They didn’t stop her, however Hoseok and Jimin insisted on walking her back to campus residence at this time of night. She declined and asserted her request to be unaccompanied. Again, they didn’t stop her, perhaps out of sympathy and condolence.

Alone at last, the girl was lost in her thoughts and it kept her up. While her eyes idly traced the uneven patterns of her ceiling, her mind tirelessly ran several trains atop numerous winding tracks that overlapped, each one trying to make sense of her situation, trying to assess how she was going to handle the disarming truth she had still so desperately sought for. Most rails ultimately ended in collision.

The sun was already beginning to rise, peeks of radiance generously filtered in through her opened blinds and made for an unaccommodating setting for sleep. A huff of frustration sat her up and trudged her towards her window to drop close the shades. Already a crack open, her fingers first wrapped on the underside of the window’s frame to open it further in hopes of it catching a heavier breeze. She had just started to lift the glass pane when a tall, dark silhouette came into view.

She gasped and recoiled backwards, her release of the window allowing it to fall. Her hand hadn’t retreated far enough yet, she realized when her finger got caught in the panel’s drop. Pain surged up the length of her arm when the frame slammed down on her index. Yelping, she dropped to her knees before wrenching her digit free, finding a bloody trench framing her nail.

She didn’t have more than a second to grimace at her injury when the complete opening of the window required her immediate attention. Clambering back, fear seized her lungs when the shadowy figure that was suspended on the tree branch immediate to her window had climbed in. Before a scream managed to pry her throat open, their closing distances allowed her vision to sharpen the facial features of the stranger.

“Jesus, you humans scare so goddamn easily,” Taehyung huffed, sitting on the sill with one leg hovering above her bedroom floor and the other swinging five storeys above ground.

Anger surfacing, she exclaimed through gritted teeth, “Were you there this entire time?”

“Yeah,” he replied, curt and without a shred of shame or penance. “I actually followed you the entire way home, but I guess humans are inattentive too.”

She would’ve clenched her hands into fists in resentment if she wasn’t met with an immediate aching jolt from her fingernail. “I told you not to,” she instead spat an irritated murmur, which promptly transitioned into a hiss of discomfort when she wiped the blood from her finger.

Her scent flooded his senses. “Yeah, well look how easily you hurt too. How your species has survived this long completely escapes me.” After a patronizing scoff, he leapt down from the window and slumped down onto the floor next to her, legs folded in front of him. He captured her wrist with the injured finger and brought it close to his face. She resisted, face contorting into a scowl, knees withdrawing to her chest, and hand tugging back in response. He reinforced his grip. “Just relax. I’m trying to help,” his tongue clicked with impatience.

The girl swallowed, eyes locking with his unwavering, assertive gaze. The echoing reminder that the supposed ‘familiar’ had healing abilities prompted her to retire her defences, although she was unsure of how it was exactly going to unfold.

Another sharp inhale dropped open her jaw, stunned when he plunged the tip of her finger into his mouth. “What the fuck are you do—” she began to shout before wrenching herself free from his lips, only to reveal undamaged skin that made her abruptly pause in disbelief. Rotating it in view, she confirmed that her finger was no longer bleeding, the nail was no longer cracked, and the likelihood of bruising was no longer promising.

Is this how he does it? She only briefly pondered. But just as quickly, her eyes dropped closed when disrupted by the recollection of her supposed dream of him running his lips down her shoulder, down her waist, before she had woken up suddenly unscathed.

This is how he does it.

And that wasn’t a dream.

Taehyung interrupted her silent stupor, “A ‘thank you’ will do—"

“Get out,” she lowly rasped. A series of troubled and shuddering winces debilitated her upon remembering the unintended mewls and whimpers he had drawn out of her in half-consciousness. “Get out!” her snarl escalated to a roar. She reached behind her before hurling a pillow toward him off her bed.

He jumped to his feet, his tensed lips sputtering a string of frustrated profanities and curses at her apparent unexplained outburst, especially after his kind deed. “Fine!” he barked. Spotting his basketball shorts and Spongebob tee slung on her computer chair, he snatched them up. “And I’m taking these back!”

The incubus leapt out her window and disappeared, which she firmly made sure of with her own eyes. The girl threw herself back flat on the ground, flustered, burying her face in her damp palms when she couldn’t strip herself of the lingering sensations of his tongue against her skin.

[gentlemanmendes]

First times:

A/n: series of simple first times that are cute little scenarios I guess. I hopefully will make a part 2 but no promises.

Cooking together for the first time:

"Shawn you're not supposed to put the," y/n began but cut herself off with laughter as Shawn carelessly ignored her and continued melting the butter on the stove.

He was going to learn the hard way what happens when you melt way too much butter on the stove while making pancakes.

"Don't worry babe I got this." He reassured her as he cut yet more butter and added to the now melted pool of it in the frypan.

"I'm regretting suggesting pancakes for dinner now." Y/n laughed although she knew she didn't regret it.

She was having more fun now than she would have watching a movie. They had some playlist blasting in the background and were dancing around like crazy.

She didn't care that her hair was a mess from the lazy day she had shared with Shawn or that there was batter and flour everywhere thanks to Shawn putting the electric mixer on high.

Shawn poured some batter into the pan after y/n had poured the excess butter into a measuring cup for later.

"Do you think I can flip it the way spongebob flips krabby patties?" He wondered as he played around with the spatular while waiting for the pancake to bubble so he could flip it over like the recipe said.

Y/n liked this side of him. She hadn't seen it before due to the fact that he was always so stressed out or tired due to his busy schedule. For the first time she was able to really see him and spend time with him while he was at ease and she loved it.

"Don't you dare!" She warned but it was no use.

She moved out of the way but it was too late. Shawn had flipped the pancake but failed miserably and the uncooked side of the pancake landed on y/n.

Before she could grasp what had happened she heard shawn's booming laugh fill the air over the music causing her to playfully glare at him but she couldn't help laugh along with him.

Giving each other a knowing look for the first time:

To say y/n was bored out of her mind would be an understatement.

When Shawn had said a house warming party she had thought a mixer where she could dance, laugh, and meet new people. But that's not what this was. It was a group of ten people max who had absolutely nothing in common and an awkward and forced tension filled the air.

She saw Shawn on the other side of the room being polite and smiling to the stranger he was talking to but she knew him well enough to know that he was just as miserable here as she was.

She waited until she caught his attention not even bothering to fake listen to the person next to her as she gave him a knowing look as if pleading to leave which he seemed to be mirroring. Without a second though she excused herself Shawn soon following hot on her tracks.

When you gossip about your friends the whole ride home for the first time:

The car was dead silent but after the dinner they just had it was almost understandable. Both were in Shock by the way their friend had carried on the whole night. It was not only embarrassing but annoying which was why they had lied about needing to leave early.

Shawn slowed as they approached a red light and let out a long, dragged out sigh.

"Is it just me or was (random friends name) being...." Shawn broke the silence first only to have y/n cut him off.

"A real bitch, yes!" She huffed out in it retraction disgusted by how her friend could act in such a way especially in front of so many other people, her boyfriend included. Shawn laughed in response as he sped off when the light switched to green.

"I wasn't sure how to put it in an appropriate way but I'm glad you agree." He couldn't help but feel relived that his girlfriend agreed.

"She was! I've never seen her act that way before. It's probably because her boyfriend cheated on her with her sister, she's in an I hate everyone mood now." Y/n was not impressed not was she going to excuse her friends behaviour. She would never dare say this kind of stuff to anyone else but she knew she could trust Shawn not to say anything.

"I'm going to be honest I don't blame the guy if that's how she behaves, I feel sorry for him." Shawn laughed and although she knew he was just joking she agreed one hundred percent.

"Right!" She hollered in agreement causing them both to burst out in a fit of laughter.

The first time you get hooked on a tv show together:

"Shhh, this is a good part." Y/n hissed as she put another handful of popcorn into her mouth, her eyes glued to the screen as if breaking contact would end her life.

"Wait. How do you know this is a good part?" Shawn pondered suspiciously cussing y/n's eyes to widen in alarm.

How could she have been so careless with her actions?

She should have just kept quite.

"Did you watch it without me?" Shawn gasps horrified causing y/n to laugh guilty.

"No, no, I promise I didn't. I just saw spoiler on line and one spoiler led to another and then..." She trailed off sheepishly knowing she shouldn't have because she and Shawn had made a pact to not to watch an episode without each other.

"Wow, I'm honestly so hurt right now. I feel betrayed." He responded truthfully causing y/n to continue to give a guilty laugh in response.

"No baby I'm sorry, it was a mistake. I swear it will never happen again." Y/n attempted to defend herself lamely.

"I swear it would have hurt less if you cheated on me. This, this was just going too far." Y/n rolled her eyes in response knowing that Shawn was now just being overdramatic.

"Oh hush, you're missing it." She dismissed him effortlessly.

First time you stay up all night together:

"I really wanted to explore the city." Y/n sighed longingly as she looked out of the window of their hotel room.

The view that lay before her was almost a tease as if rubbing it in her face that they wouldn't get to go out and see the foreign city that was a dream come true for y/n to visit.

It was late and they had an early start tomorrow so she would have to simply suck it up and wait until the next day Shawn had off on tour but with his busy schedule who knew when that would be. She wouldn't be with Shawn on tour for much longer and seeing how his schedule was always so jam packed she didn't like the odds she was facing.

She had to suck it up though. She should be grateful that she was here and with Shawn.

"Then let's do it." Shawn said pushing himself off of the bed that he had slammed himself on just mere moments before.

"Pardon?" Y/n chuckled in bafflement not quite sure she had heard her boyfriend correctly.

That was until she saw him standing up right in front of her pulling on his jacket getting ready to walk out the door.

"You want to see the city, let's do it." He shrugged as if it were nothing causing y/n's insides to both melt and tighten.

He was willing to give up the few hours of peace and quite he had to relax just to make her happy, she wasn't sure whether to fall more in love with him or to feel guilty for making him choose her needs over his.

"No Shawn it's fine, you have an early start tomorrow." She sighed in defence.

No matter how much she wanted to go out she wouldn't allow him to sacrifice his minimal relaxing time for her.

"let's go." Was shawn's response determination written all over his features letting y/n know he wasn't giving this up.

She should have just kept quite but an annoying selfish part of her was glad to have this time to make memories with Shawn.

"Fine." She gave in unable to hide the smile that made its way onto her face as she took Shawn's extended hand and allowed him to pull her out the door.

"Only a few streets though, then we come back." Y/n declared.

Oh what a lie that had been.

Hours and hours passed as the wondered the streets; popping in and out of Cafes trying new things, running through the streets like children, taking silly photos of one another not caring if they were blurry or bad quality because of the dark.

By the time they realised they were lost and on the other side of the city dawn had struck. As they climbed into the taxi instead of giving the driver the name of the hotel Shawn asked for the best place to watch the sunrise.

The first time you do something you hate just because they asked you to:

"Well."y/n bit down on her lip nervously as she stepped in front of Shawn waiting for his honest opinion which was what he was giving her knowing that y/n would get mad if he lied or didn't show interest.

Like most guys Shawn hated shopping but when y/n had asked him to go because she needed a dress to a relatives wedding and her friend had bailed on her in the last minute. He hated seeing her upset and had offered to go with her before he could think it through.

Now here they were in the third store with y/n trying on yet another dress, standing before him sheepishly as if she were nervous to get his opinion.

"I think the colour washes you out." He noted causing y/n to nod in agreement.

"I was wondering why it felt off." She sighed the look on her face as she assessed herself in the mirror letting Shawn know she was just as over this whole thing as he was. "Just one more." She reassured him before stepping back into the change room.

Shawn let out a long sigh leaning back in his chair as he waited. He didn't understand why girls loved shopping so much, it was a nightmare. Walking around and looking at a million and one different stores for hours on end made his feet hurt, his tummy growl, and most of all sweat like he was hitting the treadmill at the gym. 

He had been looking forward to having a day off but somehow being here with y/n had felt like a priority. Almost like a basic human instinct such as breathing. Second nature.

Letting out an exaggerated puff Shawn stretched his legs out as his butt and back began to hurt, these chairs were not designed to sit people his size that was for sure.

"If you don't like this one I'm just gonna call the quits." Y/n's voice came closer causing him to look over to her and as he did the words that played on the tip of his tongue evaporated as every thought in his mind disappear while his eyes raked up and down her body.

She look absolutely stunning without even trying. It wasn't just the dress although the dress fit her perfectly, it was the way she nervously shifted her weight from one leg to the other, the fact that she had taken off her converse showing off her teddy bear socks without a care in the world, how she bit down on her bottom lip and narrowed her eyes as she assessed her reflection in concentration, how her hair was lazily swept to one side so it would be in the way.

All these small, little, pointless things made her, they made y/n perfect in his eyes. The little traits he hadn't realised he had taken note of until this very moment. As he watched her he felt his heart rate rise as if he were looking at her for the first time all over again.

"I like this one." She said with determination and a nod of her head in finalisation. Turing to Shans she gave him an expectant look as if awaiting an answer.

"You're perfection." He breathed out in awe causing a small, shy, smile to take place on her features as she turned her attention to the ground and mumbled something about needing to get changed before walking back towards the change room.

[justreviewingokay]

D.C. Beetlejuice Review

Let me cut to the chase.  I know what you’re gonna ask, is Beetlejuice “good”?  Now I have a very complicated answer, but I will say this: if a Tim Burton styled stage show is what you’ve always wanted, then should probably be off to see it as soon as you can.  Hold your sandworms, I’m not done yet.  Beetlejuice may be a visual masterpiece, but it is also a work in progress.  If you’re looking for more than high caliber Broadway comedy actors and half-baked humor, it may be better to wait and see what the move to the Winter Garden Theatre has in store for us.  

Now for the complicated answer.  If spoilers aren’t your thing, turn back now, for the surprises of Beetlejuice are extremely rewarding.

Making it Beetlejuice’s given job to usher the dead into the netherworld is an excellent addition to the character, except there isn’t very much character to begin with.  The opening makes the blind mistake of relying on the audience already knowing who Beetlejuice is.  A newcomer to the show might find him confusing or vague.  “The Whole Being Dead Thing” is an explosively entertaining number where BJ bashes some funeral goers.  Cutting in half way is Lydia mourning with “Invisible”.  Although the long arm gag is good and the bus driver costume from the film is much appreciated, the big B is introduced all too soon. The buildup is killed rather quickly and consequently, the anticipation.  Alternatively, since the scene starts off with a dirge, Lydia could plunge right into “Invisible” with Beetlejuice popping out of the casket and delivering the brilliant line “a ballad already?” The audience cheers as he climbs out and begins “The Whole Being Dead Thing”, uninterrupted.   Act One’s pacing is quite tangled, so this jumpy establishing song is important.  Alex Brightman is an absolute tour de force and does his best with the often immature dialogue.  It’s obvious that Brightman is doing a good job of balancing the voice, but it’s still a bit much when he’s singing.  His vocal talents are betrayed in this respect and some of the lyrics are hard to understand because of it.  

The Maitlands are brilliantly portrayed by green clad Rob McClure and Kerry Butler, known for Something Rotten! and Little Shop of Horrors, respectively.  “Ready, Set, Not Yet” is funny, but far too frantic to be endearing. Contrary to the writers’ belief, Adam and Barbara can be thoroughly lame and likeable simultaneously.  In the following scenes one could argue that too many pelvic thrusts are performed.  The scene progression is quite choppy, with so many reprises that one wonders if the song ever ended in the first place.  “Fright of their Lights” has a weird 1980’s sound and it has a great joke where Adam informs BJ that they can still hear him, with BJ responding “Well that was a soliloquy, so you’re the one being rude.”  BJ’s interactions with them are typically crass, but not in a clever adult way, an almost childish mentality instead.  Many of the jokes end with an unnecessary “F You,” which often feels like it’s only there to keep children out of the theatre.

The show really begins to pick up when the Deetz family begin to move in and Lydia sings “Dead Mom,” easily one of the best numbers. Sophia Anne Caruso plays the iconic goth girl in a way that doesn’t leave you cringing at all.  As the show progresses, Lydia upstages everyone.  An odd thing to note though, Lydia comes downstairs to dinner wearing a yellow dress to confuse her dad, which is exactly what Wednesday Addams does in the Addams Family Musical.  

Slapstick is the name of the game, considering BJ himself isn’t given many witty lines in the first act.  The sight gags are what work best, so you’d assume that the iconic Day-O scene would be the hit.  Instead of ascending to a new level of ridiculousness, it stays at relatively the same length.  A puppet roasted pig is added to the song which is funny by itself, but they didn’t stop there.  The pig’s male organ begins to invade Delia’s personal space.  Leslie Kritzer (a delightful scene stealer) appeared to be having troubles realistically interacting with it, awkwardly thrusting herself into the pig’s appendage for the remainder of the song.  Even though it garnered some laughs, initially it was a distraction from more clever effects such as the shrimp hand.  This is a perfect example for most jokes in the show; something clever is undermined by something vulgar.  They say a funny person can make a good joke, but a comedian can take it to the next level.

Act Two is significantly better than the first, giving the ghost with the most just the right edge.  “That Beautiful Sound” is my personal favorite, showing off the comedic prowess of Beetlejuice and Lydia as a pair, only seen before during “Say My Name.” Casting actual teenagers as the girl-scout and Lydia was a great move, considering the big concern among fans after the misfires in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“Children We Didn’t Have” is a wonderfully somber piece, (beautifully sung I might add) but would have made a larger impact if the audience had learned to see the Maitlands in a more positive view throughout the first act. If any song is to be removed, I hope that this one survives instead.  

Otho’s lines aren’t too brilliant, but luckily for them, they’ve got Kelvin Moon Loh to deliver.  Brief as the character is in this version, Kelvin’s comedic talents make the scenes memorable.  His days on SpongeBob SquarePants especially prove that he deserves a bigger spotlight.  

“Everything is Meh” by Boy Inferno is quite brilliant considering… well… boy bands are dead.  The netherworld has a well-designed look and the characters are quite faithful to the film, including Mrs. Juno Shoggoth exhaling smoke through her neck, Miss Argentina, a shrunken headed hunter, (the effect works surprisingly well) and that one guy who appears to have been run over.  “Running Away” has a nice tune to it and its enjoyable right up until the “woah-oh’s” start off.  This trope feels almost anachronistic and quickly evokes the desire to attempt Miss Argentina’s “little accident” on yourself.  It does end up being a good moment though, with character development for Lydia and Charles.  

The ending is hilarious and pretty unexpected. Beetlejuice’s exit is somewhat delayed though; every time you think he’s done, he turns around and delivers another cheesy one-liner.  BJ being carried off into the netherworld was quite enough. Even though it doesn’t really make sense, (does Lydia somehow have a karaoke record?) it is indeed surprisingly pleasing to hear the cast sing “Jump in the Line”… and the levitation effect is flawless.    

In fact, probably the best aspect of the show is special effects and scenic design.  David Korins has done an absolutely astounding job of fulfilling Tim Burton’s vision, all while presenting his own take.  Michael Curry’s puppet design is not to be missed, with smooth movement and grand scale. Enough cannot be said about the visual aptitude of Beetlejuice.

The music by Eddie Perfect is ironically not… perfect.   Sorry.                                Rock and Roll style ballads may be a good choice for the musical, but a few things it still lacks.  Remnants of Danny Elfman’s original score are always welcome and can be heard during some cues.  After all, the music is half of what makes Beetlejuice feel like Beetlejuice. Thankfully, the keys and trumpets are pretty prominent in Perfect’s score, which helps greatly to set the tone. It’s important to mention that one thing is missing… strings.  Violins are either utilized very little or are nonexistent.  Sound design should be looked in to, most of the time the music overpowers the voices or the voices hide the music.  Even though I have no hearing problems whatsoever, the lyrics were frequently hard to understand.  (I do realize that this could entirely be the National Theatre sound system’s fault) When you come down to it, the music needs beefing up. Giving it a fuller, more orchestral sound to complement the rock instruments is the exact way to accomplish this.  (See Hans Zimmer, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Kansas, or Foreigner with the David Eggar Orchestra)

Overall, Beetlejuice is a spectacular show with immense potential.  That fact is, frankly, quite enough to satisfy considering it could have been a huge misstep, similar to the fate of Moulin Rouge.  With the fabulous cast and crew carrying it through, Beetlejuice could be an absolute Broadway hit in the making.

We’ll see at the Winter Garden Theatre on April 25th, 2019.  

[birdiethebibliophile]

{fic} All They Were And Something More

Fandom:  The Adventure Zone:  Commitment Rating:  G Warnings:  ABSOLUTELY NONE, this fic is nothing but fluff!!! Word Count:  1,368

Here on AO3.

For @halleluland​. The promised movie night fic. The pure fluff I said would come sooner or later.

Technically takes place in the universe of That Old Sweet Feeling, but can be read on its own - you just won’t understand some, um, inside jokes.

Title from The Beautiful Not Yet by Carrie Newcomber.

Summary:    Every Thursday night, the Wonder Triplets plus Mary get together for a movie night. It goes the same way every time.

__________________

The first one to movie night was always Irene, of course, whether she was hosting or not. She had keys to all their apartments, so she’d walk on in, immediately vacuum the living room, and start setting out any snacks she’d brought. Nadiya and Mary Sage would get there next, bearing hot chocolate fixings and the fluffiest blankets they owned. The last to arrive was always Remy, who would appear at the door clutching the chosen DVD and a sheepish grin.

They would spend half an hour squabbling over places on the couches and/or chairs, and inevitably end up all squashed together on one couch, Mary Sage half in Nadiya’s lap, Remy perched on an arm because he couldn’t sit still, and Irene with her legs cross-legged under her in a way that seemed to take up way too much space for someone as small as she was. Nadiya would criticize any scientific impossibility, Mary Sage would loudly complain about the lack of explosions, and Remy would cry at the sad bits. It would end with them saying they should head home until they all fell asleep one by one, using the others for armrests and pillows and blankets. The next morning, Irene would make blueberry pancakes and Nadiya would make the coffee and Mary Sage would scramble the eggs and Remy would wash the dishes afterwards.

It was a routine Nadiya loved beyond reason or logic, and she hoped it would continue every Thursday night from now until eternity.

“Nadiya, here’s yours,” Remy said, handing Nadiya her mug of hot chocolate with marshmallow fluff and caramel drizzled on top. “Irene.” Irene liked hers with chocolate syrup and peppermint. “Here, Mary –” Hers was topped with what looked like half a can of whipped cream. Remy finally settled down on the couch, squeezed in between Mary Sage and Nadiya. His cup was overflowing with mini marshmallows. “Okay, captions on? Sliders stacked? Sewer granola within easy reach?”

“That was one time, Remy, we were on the run, and they were Power Bars, not granola bars –”

“Yep, we’re all good!” Remy said cheerily, derailing Nadiya’s rant before it could go too far. Irene, always in charge of the controller, started the movie.

“Is there kissing in this one?” Mary Sage asked. “I don’t like kissing.”

“Liar,” Nadiya said.

Mary Sage scowled. She had whipped cream on her nose already. “In movies!”

“Yeah, there’s kissing, but it’s not a kissing movie,” Remy said, already bounced up to the back of the couch and perched there with his legs dangling towards the cushions. “I knew better than to bring one after Titanic.” Nadiya remembered that movie night clearly – it had resulted in all four of them agreeing on how good-looking Kate Winslet was and disagreeing, loudly, on whether there really had been room on the door for Jack. (Kardala made an appearance to decisively say that there was absolutely not. They tried to shout her down, but shouting down a thunder goddess was an exercise in futility.)

“Ugh, fine,” Mary Sage said. “I get to pick next week, though.”

“You always pick Die Hard ,” Remy protested. “Or a Veggie Tales movie.”

“Not always,” Mary Sage said. “One time I picked Die Hard 2.  At least I don’t pick Flubber every time.”

“Wasn’t every time. It was just the first five,” Remy said.

“We still haven’t gotten around to watching my favorite movie,” Nadiya put in.

“The Fly is horror, Nad!” Remy said, nudging her with one Spongebob-socked foot. “No horror except for on Halloween. That’s my rule.”

“It’s barely horror! It’s a classic!” Nadiya said. “Plus, Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, come on –”

“Three things,” Irene said in her small voice. “One, we also haven’t watched The Royal Tenebaums,  which is my favorite movie, if you’ll remember. I haven’t been able to find a copy on DVD. Second, we’re missing the intro.” (“As if we ever don’t,” Nadiya mumbled.) “And third,” Irene continued, standing up from the couch and nearly doubling in size, her voice dropping an octave and a half, “I want popcorn,” Kardala finished. “Did anyone bring any?”

“We have some in the cabinets,” Nadiya said. “The ones above the microwave.”

Kardala headed into the kitchen. They heard the cabinets open and close, the popping of popcorn, and twelve minutes later, Kardala returned with what appeared to be five bags of popcorn, all poured into the biggest mixing bowl Nadiya and Mary Sage owned.

“Thank you, Nadiya Jones!” Kardala said loudly. She sat down on the couch, effectively taking up ninety percent of the cushion space and nearly toppling Remy, who steadied his hot chocolate and himself with a yelp.

“What, you think we’re gonna host movie night and not have popcorn for you?” Mary Sage said with a grin, and Kardala smiled back and held up her bowl so Mary Sage could set her mug on the coffee table and fling herself across both Nadiya’s and Kardala’s laps. Kardala, unperturbed, set her bowl back down on Mary Sage’s stomach.

“They’re as sacred to movie night as sliders and hot chocolate,” Remy said. “Maybe more so.”

“But not as sacred as the sewer granola?” Mary Sage said slyly.

“For the LAST TIME, MARY –” Nadiya started, even as Mary Sage burst into laughter. Nadiya couldn’t help laughing along with her. Mary Sage just had that kind of laugh.

“It’s good granola,” Kardala said, though it was unclear whether she was defending Nadiya or Irene. “Irene’s mothers taught her the recipe.”

“No thanks, Irene’s kind has unshelled pistachios in it,” Nadiya said. “Ick.”

“No, that’s her pgorp,” Kardala said, eating a handful of popcorn that could easily have comprised an entire bag. “Her granola is much better. It has chocolate chips. The mini kind.” Suddenly, Kardala got a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Sometimes Irene eats it for breakfast.”

“Hell yeah, chocolate for breakfast!” Remy said. He high fived Mary Sage in Kardala’s place, since Kardala’s hands were full of popcorn.

Nadiya finished her hot chocolate, set the mug down, and pulled one of the fluffy blankets up and wrapped it around her shoulders. Mary Sage promptly sat up, nearly knocking the popcorn bowl from Kardala’s hands in the process, positioned herself squarely in Nadiya’s lap, and wrapped herself in both the blanket and her girlfriend’s arms. “No blanket without me,” she mumbled, rubbing the soft edge across her mouth.

“You’re a holy terror,” Nadiya said, half-squished under a rather heavy double armful of Mary Sage. “I’m dating a holy terror. A wild child. An enfant terrible , if you will.”

“Mmhmm,” Mary Sage agreed, making herself comfortable on top of Nadiya. “Comfy girlfriend.”

Remy made a gagging noise from above them. “PDA alert, girlfriends too cute, call the cute lesbian cops!”

“There are no cute lesbian cops,” Mary Sage responded immediately. “Only cute lesbian communists.”

“Are you a communist?” Remy asked curiously.

“Probably,” Mary Sage said. “Statistically speaking.” Then, before he or Nadiya could incredulously question her about what statistics, exactly, she was referring to, she added, “Also, if cute lesbians aren’t allowed, Irene’s gotta leave, so tough beans.”

Kardala beamed. “Irene says to thank you for the compliment,” she says.

“She’s welcome,” Mary Sage said. “Kardala can stay, though.”

“Am I not cute?” Kardala asked.

Mary Sage turned and squinted at her, then leaned back and tilted her head. Kardala was wearing Irene’s favorite Hello Kitty pajamas, and, as always, looked vaguely like she’d just stuck her finger in an electrical socket. “Sure,” Mary Sage said finally. “But are you a lesbian?”

“Probably,” Kardala said agreeably, and went back to her popcorn.

Predictable , Nadiya thought, rubbing her hand through Mary Sage’s curly hair. Routine, she thought as the kissing scene came up on the screen and Mary Sage made retching noises and Remy kicked her and Kardala threatened to throw them both across the room. Ordinary, she thought as Remy dozed off like a cat spread over the top of the couch, and Kardala shrunk back into Irene as her eyes started to droop, and Mary Sage began snoring loudly from Nadiya’s lap, where her legs had fallen asleep.

Nadiya couldn’t remember ever being happier.

[insomniaticgoblin]

okay being sick and having one of those ultra-vivid sleep paralysis dreams is not a fun experience - do not recommend - just nope.

I was starting to feel better but tonight i feel like crap, and now even more so and like the world has been tilted on its axis and moved two degrees to the left.

I haven't had an ultra vivid sleep paralysis dream in a while - like, a long while. which is fine, it's good, except it's not because I don't feel good.

the dream was fairly simple but it was like real life mixed with Minecraft - like some parts of the world were real and others were just - Minecraft blocks but in High Definition.

this is a long post so I'm going to put a "keep reading" line below. and sorry if it doesn't make sense. I'm kinda just gonna write it to help ground myself and I don't think I'll bother with rereading it.

the dream started with me playing myself and I was in what was basically a small apartment but I called it a hotel room despite it being connected to some sort of facility - the facility looked like a fancy hotel but it was actually a hospital? idk man, it was weird.

there was some fairly normal stuff going on - just me hanging out in the bedroom area waiting for something. then it jumped to a small get together between staff and patients - tho it was in my room which idk why - I even questioned it in the dream [one of the perks of vivid dreaming]. apparently the get-together was just that - people getting together for an activity - and this activity was watching Minecraft Spongebob explore Minecraft Bikini Bottom, and I mean that literally.

like in my dream, the concept of a Spongebob cartoon existed but it was an MC youtuber-esque person who played this "Spongebob" character that lived in a Minecraft-Bikini Bottom mash up world. It was weird.

anyway, eventually I got tired of socializing after one of the nurses (though she didn't dress in scrubs, she was just in normal clothes) was asking the others if they should hook up the other Nether portal. Apparently, everyone each had their own portal (some had two like myself).

I went back to my bedroom to hang out by myself, as I do, then decided I had to go to the bathroom, as one occasionally has to do. I opened the bathroom door and the first thing I noticed was that it was broken - like someone had kicked it in in order to steal from me. I questioned this. then I questioned the bathroom itself.

it was still a bathroom but it was like the back wall was a greenhouse, but one that had barely survived a bad storm - like a couple windows were broken, there was a tree branch poking through one small section of the greenhouse wall, there were branches piled up on the outside and the plants inside were messed up.

I questioned this because: A) the backwall wasn't a normal solid backwall and was instead a greenhouse wall when I knew it should be a normal backwall; and B) we were several stories above the ground so how in the heck could branches be piled up outside.

then I heard a weird scratching chattery noise, looked up, and saw a red tailed hawk except it had black soulless eyes. It was wrong - bad vibes all around. I noped the fuck outta there and went to my grandpa to tell him that our bathroom door was busted.

he then, like a normal irl adult, was a bit angered ["Who broke our door?! Did someone try to steal from us?!"]. I tried to caution him against going into the bathroom but he burst in anyway, then I tried to tell him about the hawk but he ignored me - or it was more he was like a normal dream person and thought everything was Normal and Not Weird, as dream people often do.

he inspected a corner of the room for damage while I stood in the doorway because hey, bad vibes, ain't going in there again, just nope.

the hawk started moving and making that strange scratching chattery sound, then it got into the room. I tried to tell my grandpa to look out but he ignored me again. then. it changed into a man. except it wasn't a normal human man.

the man was old, ancient even - both in looks and spirit - and he stood like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. his eyes were hallow, just black endless pits that stared right into your soul, judging you. when he spoke, it was low and with a creak like a forest of ancient trees blowing in the wind, but it was also dry like a vast desert under the burning sun and there is no water, no life, for hundreds of miles.

his presence sent chills down my spine. he was just standing there passively and yet, I was terrified.

he spoke to me, told me to follow him, told me there's a place I need to go to, that there's a secret that needs to be uncovered.

I was helpless, I could not disobey.

so, I followed him.

and he led me to an underground canyon - one that was as dark as hit eyes and colder than the vacuum of space. it was a massive ravine with all kinds of resource blocks [Minecraft section of the world now], the most prominent being diamonds - the diamond ore blocks lined the walls of the canyon in groups of 3-6 (on the surface) and they were cast in a gentle glow.

I asked him - where did you bring me? why am I here?

he told me to protect the secret here and that I was chosen specially for the job. he told me to follow and -

I came back to myself in the hallway of the facility, confused and disoriented. I remembered the old man and the canyon but I have no idea why I was there or what he wanted from me. I was also not who I originally was - I was now in the body of another, someone genderless but still human in appearance, and my short brown hair was long and turning grey.

I became distraught over the missing memory and the change in appearance.

two men, both residents of this facility, came up to me and started asking me questions. they were rude, demanding for answers and information about the secrets I've seen, about the canyon.

I questioned how they knew of the canyon and why they wanted to know the secrets of it - my secrets. when they refused to tell me, and then threatened me with violence when I didn't tell them, I broke away from them and ran.

I was scared again, but it wasn't the same type of fear I had felt when the ancient man first revealed himself to me.

I ran into a friend after some time of running through the halls and they walked with me to help calm me down. she didn't question why I looked different, only commented that "this skin is a better fit of your soul."

we eventually crossed paths with one of the councilors employed at the facility, but she wasn't the one I normally visit. she was thin and short, muted tones to both her complexion and hair. she wore a simple grey blouse with a brown pencil skirt. she was quiet, gentle, and her eyes were sad like she'd seen one too many tragedies in all her years of life.

- very unlike my councilor who was vibrant and bubbly. he lived like he didn't have a care in the world, like the world was good and everyone living in it were his friends. his smile rivaled the sun in both brilliance and warmth. his favorite color was the bright green of the slime cubes in Minecraft. [*side note, he actually kinda reminded me of solidaritygaming (minecraft youtuber)] [also, my councilor never appeared in person in the dream, only as a thought and an image in my head]

I was still distraught and had to talk to someone, and it may as well be this other councilor even though I wanted to see mine instead.

the three of us went into her office and she asked me what the problem was, what was bothering me. I couldn't find the words so I started pacing, thinking of how I wanted to word my thoughts. she and my friend sat patiently, waiting.

when I finally found the words, I opened my mouth to speak - I swear I'm not crazy but I had this weird experience from -

my friend interrupted me, apologizing for doing so, and stood. she was cautious, suspicious, and past me to a locker cabinet against the wall. she found a recorder inside and questioned it, why was it here? who's trying to listen in on our conversation?

the councilor was just as questioning and asked for the recorder. she looked it over and found there were several files already on it. she pushed play on the device and we sat around her desk, listening.

the first four files were fairly normal, though, they were broken bits of conversation. the fourth one referenced someone named or nicknamed "Tango". and the fifth one - it was unnerving. the fifth file had two voices - one voice was low in tone and confused, questioning; the second voice was the same person but as if they'd been grinding sand and gravel in their teeth and their throat had been scorched. in both voices of the same man, he spoke in a language not of this world.

the fifth file played to the end and -

I found myself in another time, a different place, but still in the same genderless body, my hair was fully grey now. I felt years older, tired and world-weary but confident and fearless. I was wearing a simple outfit - a black long-sleeved shirt that clung to my skin, dark green denim pants that were a bit loose and tucked into my worn combat boots. it was an outfit that I could fight in.

my friend stood at my side, though she looked different. she had been tall before but now, they barely half my height, and petite. their dark hair was white and they were dressed in a simple silvery blue dress and sandals. their eyes were opened to the secrets of the world.

"this skin fits your soul," I told them. they smiled at me and it was warm, like sunlight streaming down over an open field of wildflowers in spring.

they thanked me and told me that flattery wouldn't get me out of negotiations - we have a job to do and a war to prevent.

[*more Minecraft-Real Life mash up] I agreed and we walked across a barren landscape that reminded me of the bastions of the Nether. Piglin-Human hybrids watched us pass, their eyes narrow and suspicious. we came to a fortress, broken and ancient, made of gilded blackstone.

there, we were led to the owner of the fortress, the ruler of the barren land.

she was in the forge, a good two feet taller than the average man and twice as thick. she was hardened from years of working in the forge, and scarred from the battles she had seen. she wore the traditional outfit that a Minecraft weapon smith wears, and she had soot staining her clothes and skin.

she, unlike her subjects, was human.

we greeted her with blessings and she laughed. she asked us in her rough voice what we thought we were doing here and why she shouldn't run us through with her sword. we told her that we want to bring peace and mend the tears between our kingdoms. [*this is where real me, outside of the dream, is now like "wot" "since when do I have a kingdom?"]

she laughed again, full and hearty. but nonetheless, she agreed to negotiate a peace treaty with us.

- and this is where I woke up. there was a bit with a spa at the end of the dream but I don't really remember it. honestly, this whole dream was kinda weird but it wasn't all-together bad. and I know it seems like it was really long due to the length of this post but the dream itself wasn't very long at all - I was only asleep maybe about an hour.

and when I woke up, I was a bit disoriented, as per usual when I have a vivid dream, but I think after writing this out, I'm doing better. I had some ice cream while writing and I'm not coughing as much which is nice. still a bit sick tho which sucks.

anyway, that's all. I'm gonna go watch some youtube or something. bye!

[swordwhale]

Stardate: 2020.04.12

  It is, according to the traditions of my Lutheran ancestors, Easter Morning. That’s the river I grew up on, with new Easter outfits in pastel colors (I loathe pastels), big baskets of chocolate (the Gift of the Goddess), Lutheran voices lifted in a kind of solemn dirge, and Sunday services about resurrection and redemption and Life reinventing itself in the form of a guy named Jesus. He had some things to teach humans, a lot of it seems to have been misinterpreted or forgotten. But that’s a discussion for another time.

I’ve paddled, sailed and swum many other rivers since. They all lead to the sea.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Fyrdraca under sail on the 6 day voyage

Sae Hrafn under full sail

when you need a smaller boat

This year, we are in the midst of the latest Plague. Anybody remember the Spanish Flu of 1918? The Black Plague of the Middle Ages? The Serum Run of 1925? I knew a lady who survived the Polio epidemic. And met folks suffering through aids. Humans survived all those, enough of us to explode our population again and wreak some more havoc on our ecosystem.

We”ll probably survive it again, hopefully a bit wiser.

Meanwhile, the birds are singing, my cat is in the window singing the ek-ek-ek song at the birbs, the forsythias and daffodowndillies are doing their yellow fireworks, and some fifty foot tall thing is flowering… cough…snort….sneeze. The grass is green enough the ponies are ignoring the hay stuffed into slow feed hay bags and chomping off the quarter inch of new green they can get their teeth on.

My paddocks are set up for ponies, who cannot be on lush grass without foundering or colicking. They are annoyed. But healthy. I heard spring peepers over my friend’s phone (peeper frogs love swamps, I don’t have any, I do have tree frogs). The hawks and owls are busy trying to catch new spring bunnies.

Shuri

Toothless on the banks of the Sassafras River MD

Nightcrawler and Shuri

chickory

Bunnies. I got bunnies. Lots of bunnies. The Eastern Cottontail is native, but the Easter Bunny apparently came here with my German ancestors, in the 1700s. They had a tradition of an egg laying hare called Osterhase or Oster Haws. Kids made nests in which the bunny could lay its colored eggs.

The origin of the Easter Bunny as symbol of spring (and hence, Easter) lies far in the pre-Christian past of Europe. “One theory is that the symbol of the rabbit stems from pagan tradition, specifically the festival of Eostre…a goddess of fertility whose animal symbol was a bunny. Rabbits, known for their energetic breeding, have traditionally symbolized fertility.”

In Christian tradition, Easter is about resurrection. The rabbit “resurrects” its life by reproducing yet more rabbits… the base of the food chain… thus giving life to all in the spring. In PA, Great Horned Owls are sitting on the nest while it is still cold and snowy. The young owls hit the ground at the same time the first new rabbits are emerging, ensuring better survival.

A hare and a rabbit are two different things. Related, but different. As different as sheep and goats. They are both mammals (class) of the order Lagomorpha of the family Leporidae. You can remember the taxonomy, without King Philip, by repeating Krabby Patties Cook On Fry Grills Spongebob. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

There is also: Kangaroos Paddling Canoes On Fairly Gentle Streams.

After the Fried bit (Leporidae) hares and rabbits diverge into different genuses and species. The main bits to know are: rabbits (like pet rabbits and the Eastern Cottontails in my yard) are born blind and naked in a nest or burrow… the Eastern Cottontail is unique in its use of a shallow bowl rather than an underground burrow… has short ears, is compact and cuddly (don’t, they die easily of shock), social. Hares are longer, leggier, have bigger ears, and do not burrow. Their “leverets” pretty much hit the ground running, like a foal: born with all their fur and ready to go. “Hare-brained” and “mad as a March hare” refer to the hare’s lightning quick reflexes and speed… necessary for a prey item living in the open. The western jackrabbit is a hare. It’s so large that it gave rise to its own myth, the jackalope: “around here the hares are so big they mate with antelope”.

When I was a kid, every store had chicks, dyed in bright colors, to sell individually as pets. The ones that survived chickhood (several of mine did not, ugh) grew up to be chickens, a useful birb, but often ended up at a relative’s farm, or on the table.

Nowadays Tractor Supply has a rule that you have to buy a certain number. No chicks as pets. You must be a real farmer. Good rule, chickens aren’t that hard to raise, but you do need to have a clue. And dyeing them was never a good idea. My cousin just got some…

Cous: “I’ll take 20…”

TSC Guy: “ if you take all 40 I’ll give you a price break”…

They now have 40 chicks. Most will make it to egg laying status. The excess roosters will become fried chicken. That’s the thing. You often buy them in lots, unsexed. You have no idea if hens or roosters. Roosters do not lay eggs. The point here is egg layers. Poor roosters. I remember my Grandpa’s farm, it was terrifying to go “out back” because of the mean roosters. Even my friend with her own farm carried a big stick to do kung fu blocks on exuberant Foghorn Leghorns. Roosters are, however, one of the most gorgeous birds on the planet. The colors and flowing feathers rival any parrot or bird of paradise. Hei Hei, in Disney’s Moana, represented on of the finer aspects of the chicken: its portability. Even the Polynesians, the most fantastic navigators and explorers the planet has ever seen, carried chickens across the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.

Eggs… I adore eggs. My relatives made red beet eggs: red beets, vinegar, sugar, some cooking. The result is a brilliant purpley red egg, red all the way to the yolk, with a sharp, sweet flavor. I modified the recipe for simplicity: red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar, a can of beets with juice, pour into quart mason jar, drop in hard boiled eggs. In 3 days perfect eggs.

There are also Church Lady Eggs. In March, Church Ladies from all over bake chocolate and peanut butter or chocolate and coconut eggs. They are usually the size of a real chicken egg, and far better than commercially made chocolate. Despite the Plague, local stores, like Ace Hardware, had boxes of them!

  Meanwhile, the night before Easter, all through the barnyard, not a creature was stirring, not even a…

wait, is that a late evening bunbun?

A small quick bit of shadowy motion, darting out from under the hay shed, to where Goliath had dribbled some of his feed. Nibble nibble, dart, duck…

The motion was not lagomorphic. It was not bun bunish. It was low and flowy.

Oh hey, there’s my Rat.

The Rat had left calling cards on the hay bales in the shed weeks back. Living under my hay, shed, fine. We are out here, not in the house, the feed bins are secured and made of metal. Pooping on my hay bales is Not Cool though, so I bought a rat sized trap. I never deployed it.

Now Le Rat is zooming around on Easter Eve, cleaning up Golli’s leftovers. I had pet rats in the past, they are smart, social, interesting critters. They have a complicated history with humans. They carried Plague fleas. They raided food stores. They became food. In the wild, they are an important part of the ecosystem like all creatures. I have round bale now. Less opportunity for pooping upon.

Do I set my trap?

Do I end a life that’s just trying to thrive?

Is it doing me harm?

I watched Rat trundle in and out from under the shed and snatch bits of Golli’s leftovers, cleaning up the mess. A small life just making its way like the rest of us.

Carry on little fur beast.

Let this be a new start for all of us.

The Power of Hope: DO this at home…

At the UU online service this am, Matt did a neat science experiment. A sunken carrot in a glass of water. It sinks. Add “hope”… a teaspoon of salt. Stir. It rises slightly then sinks.

Add more salt. Rise… sink… but slower.

Add more hope/salt.

A bit more. Stir. The carrot slowly rises… and floats.

Hope floats.

The Easter Rat, Church Lady Eggs and other wonders Stardate: 2020.04.12 It is, according to the traditions of my Lutheran ancestors, Easter Morning. That's the river I grew up on, with new Easter outfits in pastel colors (I loathe pastels), big baskets of chocolate (the Gift of the Goddess), Lutheran voices lifted in a kind of solemn dirge, and Sunday services about resurrection and redemption and Life reinventing itself in the form of a guy named Jesus.

[ask-bluesman]

This is two questions, but I'm combining them into one ask!: 1. Are there any songs you listen to that you associate with your characters? Why? 2. What types of music do your characters like (if they like music at all!)?

This topic is quite challenging for me because I listen to pretty much anything: from 18th century classics to some modern metal covers! My musical tastes are all over the place, but here’s to hoping that I’m able to provide a somewhat satisfactory answer. Thank you for this ask, music isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about fictional characters, so your inquiry is a breath of fresh air!

None of my creations have their theme songs, but there are some musical pieces that do remind me of them.

Boatswain: three words - “The Sailor’s Hornpipe”! Especially the orchestral version (https://youtu.be/hfJ9QLlYIXU), which happens to be my favourite. Most popular sea shanties fit him too, as well as some of the background music that can be heard in SpongeBob sometimes. Speaking of cartoons, “Turkey Trot” from Ren and Stimpy also does the job right. I never watched the show because it didn’t air in Poland, but as soon as I heard that melody on YouTube, bos popped up in my head. He walks with a slight but noticeable limp and this music nails it in a funny, lighthearted way!

As for boatswain’s musical tastes, he isn’t particularly finicky, although he prefers simple, upbeat tunes over emotional, sophisticated pieces. He will hum anything that gets stuck in his head. Wind instruments are his favourite and he can play quite a few of them, with harmonica being on top of the list! He carries it in his hat and likes to play it in the evenings, when all of his work is done. He absolutely adores captain’s singing and whistling too.

Captain: this may sound odd, but I’ve been associating Red Hot Chili Peppers’ songs with this character for several years now. Definitely not their lyrics, just the laid-back tunes and the soft voice of their vocalist. It sounds similar to how I imagine cappin’s voice. Similar is the key word here - it’s not supposed to be the same! Anthony Kiedis is a solid baritone, whereas Patrick is a tenor (perhaps even a countertenor). Still, they share the same pleasant, calm tone. I think “Snow” is the closest example of what I have in mind, its chorus in particular! I love listening to RHCP whenever I draw captain because it sets the right mood, haha.

Patrick is extremely enthusiastic about music himself! He can’t play any instruments too well, yet his singing and whistling are spot-on. He’s especially fond of folk music, both Polish and foreign. Judging by his personality, I think he would enjoy Southern European and Latin American songs a lot. He isn’t familiar with them since he lives in a world that is much less globalised than ours - still, he appreciates whatever he has in his existence.

Admiral: this might also come as a surprise to you - I think that music created by Russian composers is the best to define this character. Tchaikovsky, Schostakovich and Prokofiev. Especially Prokofiev! Admiral doesn’t have any affiliations with Russia, yet he has a lot of fondness for Russian classics and artists in general. “Dance of the Knights” is probably the best to describe him as it has both bold and tender moments. Besides, I feel like certain musical pieces made by Russians connote all the hardships this nation went through. This is also a good fit for admiral because his life has been a rocky road so far!

Admiral has a broad taste in music. He’s the only one to own a radio and he listens to it every day, he enjoys older and newer pieces just the same. Apart from that, he has a rather impressive collection of phonograph records with classical music and these can often be heard as a quiet background sound in his house. And as for his musical skills, he can play the piano! How he manages to do that with his short, plump fingers is a mystery to everyone, probably even to himself, haha.

I’m skipping Taffy and Mia because right now I don’t know any tunes that would remind me of them. Sorry about that! This will hopefully change over time. Thank you again for the questions, my apologies if the answers weren’t up to your expectations - my personal musical preferences tend to change (and get even weirder) whenever I find something new and catchy!

Click the link to see the image in bigger version: https://www.flickr.com/photos/151644223@N04/47525279091/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

[saltyace-defunct]

A (Somewhat) In Depth Analysis On Why (And How) Danny Phantom Should Go Ghost Again

Part One - Three Possibilities

There are three possibilities as to what is going on with all the hype surrounding the return of Danny Phantom, and these can be simplified as the “good,” the “bad,” and the “ugly.”

The good option, which I personally believe is the least likely, is that Nickelodeon HAS greenlit a fourth season, and we just don't know about it yet because it's so early in production. If this is the case then we probably won't see any news or promos until at least 2018, seeing as how the hype train really got its start around August 24, 2016, when Butch uploaded a video called “Danny Phantom 10 Years Later” and the green light would have happened not long after that. Again, this seems extremely unlikely, but if it's true, then Butch has been doing a good job building up hype while keeping it a secret.

The bad option, which will be the main focus of this post (and also isn’t so bad), is that as much as Butch wants to bring the show back, Nickelodeon isn’t so keen on the idea, and that's why he’s turned to the fandom to build up hype, and THEN maybe Nick will listen.

The ugly option is… Well, it’s ugly. I hate that this is even a possibility, but as I’ve stated before, the good option is the least likely, making this one a decent possibility. Maybe there are no plans to #goghostagain at all, and the hype is all just a ploy to rake in the views and attention. Maybe it's all just one big promotion for Bunsen Is A Beast (which by the way I think is a sub-par show, but I'll get to that later). It’s disappointing to think about, but if it is the case, then here's what I have to say: Butch, you are better than this. If you aren't serious about this, then don't go around trying to get people excited for something that doesn't exist. Please and thank you.

Part Two - Forget The Hype

I wouldn't be surprised or upset if nothing ever came out of all this hype, but since we’ve come this far we might as well take the extra step to convince Nickelodeon this is a good idea. Of course, there's not a whole lot the fans can do to sway the opinions of the executives, and at this rate we’re DEFINITELY not going anywhere. Most of what I've seen has been “I love this show so you should bring it back” with no other reasoning. It's all based on pathos with little to no logos or ethos, and that's what I'm hoping to make up for with this analysis. There are plenty of reasons for Danny Phantom to get a fourth season, it's just a matter of letting them be heard through the multitude of YouTube videos saying “Look, Butch said this one thing this one time!! Season 4 confirmed!!!! I am so HYYYPE!!!1!!!!1!”

Part Three - The Passage Of Time

Like many good shows, it ended too early. Apparently the ratings were a bit too low for Nick’s liking, so they told Butch to find a way to end it. (I don't have a very good source, so if you can find one with real numbers and add it in, that would be great.) This is a common trend. Good shows don't get the advertising and promotion they deserve because the network wants to spend more time on their cash cows like SpongeBob and Teen Titans Go, and then the good shows get cancelled because, “Well no one was watching it, so it's not worth keeping, right?” Then, as the years go by, more and more people find the show and say “Why was it cancelled? It’s so good!” The good news here is that if an old show comes back with a much larger and stronger fanbase, it will do really well! Unfortunately there is one problem with the way the fans will probably watch it, and that is the internet. After watching the original episodes online, that's the way they’re probably going to expect to continue watching them. This was a HUGE problem with The Legend Of Korra! (Again, source needed) So I guess this is more of a message to the fans than the executives: Watch the show on the TV, or AT LEAST set it to record!

Another problem that The Legend Of Korra had (it's really only a problem in the eyes of the execs) is that the audience was mostly adults and older teens. You know, the people who either 1) Where the same people who originally watched The Last Airbender and are now a bit older, 2) Were old enough to use the internet in a way that allowed them to find ATLA in the first place, or 3) Are the type of people who enjoy more in-depth, plot-driven, mature-themed shows. I think that the third option is what networks like Nick, CN, and Disney are most afraid of when it comes to choosing which shows to pick up and air. These channels are supposed to be for kids, right? Well, first of all, these networks are wrong to think that kids can't enjoy more complex shows than SpongeBob or that the most important thing in determining a show's worth is how much money it brings in, but I digress. Instead, I’d like to talk about how Nickelodeon SHOULDN'T worry about having a repeat of TLOK if they were to continue Danny Phantom.

Part Four - Plot And Audience

Unlike the Avatar series, which were extremely plot-driven and weren’t afraid to get a bit dark, Danny Phantom is a lot more episodic in nature. Now, if it were too episodic, then I probably wouldn't be arguing for it to come back. I mean, I love My Life As A Teenage Robot, but there’s no real reason for it to come back other than the usual “This is one of my favorite childhood shows! Why did it have to end?” You see, Danny Phantom had a nice balance of episodic plot vs overall plot that made for a great show for kids and teens alike. If it were to come back using the original formula, it would probably do really well with the “intended” audience of preteens. Hardcore fans (the ones who have been begging for a fourth season ever since it ended) might have mixed reactions, though. It all depends on the direction the show goes.

Again, the original formula will work, but what exactly should the plot be? Should there be a time skip or not? These are all questions that I’ll talk a little bit more about later, but ultimately can not answer. The biggest question that I CAN answer, though, is should it cater more towards the new preteens audience or the older, hardcore fans? The answer is a resounding “HARDCORE FANS!!!” We KNOW there are plenty of things that were planned that didn't make it in, and we want to see them happen in a way that satisfies our nostalgia and our (slightly) older tastes. I personally think that even though the episodic nature works from a business standpoint, this continuation should have just a little bit more of an overarching plot. Just a little bit.

Part Five - Butch’s Other Shows

I don't want to dwell on this topic too long, but it's important enough that it's worth mentioning.

Fairly Odd Parents: To put it bluntly, it's dying. We could talk about how Sparky and Chloe are terrible characters, but there's no point because the whole show has been moved to NickToons. It's the channel where Nickelodeon shows go to die, and as unfortunate as it is that FOP has been drawn out to the point that the original fans don't like it anymore, soon enough it will get low enough ratings that it will finally be cancelled. Rip

TUFF Puppy: I didn't really watch this show, but from what I've seen and heard, it's not that great. I mean, it's not horrible, but it just doesn't have a whole lot going for it that makes it worthwhile to talk about. It ended in 2015, so whatever.

Bunsen Is A Beast: This is another show that I haven't seen a whole lot of, and I don't really want to. I feel that even though it has a good message of being inclusive and stuff, it doesn't really go about it in a unique way. You know what show has a similar setup of a character from another dimension going to a human school but is actually good? Star vs the Forces of Evil. I know I'm not the intended audience for Bunsen, so I'm not really in a position to complain, but between it's obnoxious loudness, ugly characters, and seemingly random-for-the-sake-of-random humor, it isn't as good as it could be. Don't get me wrong, I respect Butch for trying new character styles and whatnot, but it just isn't working.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there IS room for Danny Phantom to return. FOP is dying and it wouldn't hurt for Bunsen to die off as well. Good programing is what we should be after, not money makers.

Part Six - Questions And Suggestions

This is the part where I re-introduce the hype and fangirling. It’s not part of the main message that the show should come back, but it is important for the follow up question of how. So here are some important questions for Butch. *Takes a deep breath*

How will season 4 go? What’s the plot? Is it gonna pick up where it left off or will there be a time skip? How big of a time skip will it be? Will the intro be the same or will it be something new? What, if anything, will be retconned? What new characters will be introduced? When and how will Vlad return from space? Did Vlad meet Wheatley? Will Dark Danny make a return? Is Danielle gonna be adopted by the Fentons like you said? How are you gonna make up for the fact that the technology is so outdated? What about the Unworld and the Elsewhereness? What is the meaning of the universe??? *Incoherent screaming*

…I might have gotten a bit carried away just then.

Well, time to answer some of my own questions. I think that a decent sized time skip would be a great way to have the characters age with the show’s original audience, and it would also avoid any weirdness with the outdated technology. I’m not sure how big it should be, but 10 years does seem like a good benchmark number. If there is a time skip, this could also be a convenient excuse to brush over a lot of nothingness and say “It took Vlad [this long] to find a way to return, and now, after a long time of peace and quiet, the main antagonist is back to wreak some havoc.” Maybe the first episode of the new season could be a recap and summary of everything that happened between seasons 3 and 4, including an introduction to the new plot. There should be little to no retconning because this is a continuation, not a reboot. If something small needs to be changed to help the overall flow of the story, then so be it, but don’t go erasing the entire last episode just so Danny’s powers are still a secret or something like that. There should definitely be a new intro and theme song that are more related to the new story, even if there isn’t a time skip. The overarching plot should heavily focus on that Elsewhereness stuff mentioned in the video “Secrets of the Ghost Zone Revealed” and somehow include the conflict of ending up in the Unworld. As far as new characters go, I would much prefer to see older characters more in depth, but a few new villains couldn’t hurt. Dark Danny NEEDS to return because he’s my favorite character of all the one-off villains, he’s the only one with an entire two-part episode dedicated to him that basically ended with the promise of his return that never got the chance to happen. I only mention this guy above all the other villains because he’s my fave he is literally an alternate version of the main character. And if there is a 10 year time skip, then that would make Danny the same age as his evil counterpart and--

You know what? I could go on about this hours, but this post is already long enough as is, and I don’t want to turn it into a fanfiction. I think I’m going to leave this here for now and allow all of you to add on to it as you wish.

Part Seven - Sources???

    I’m really bad at including sources, so if any of you can find good and relevant ones for me, that’d be great. Just reblog this post and add them along with any other comments or theories you have related to the return of Danny Phantom. Let’s make this one big cluster of ideas, and hopefully we will one day see that our efforts have paid off.

[listentome-ok]

God is a Woman

‘Space stuff is cool, right?’ asked Ms. Moder, and then she crossed the length of the whiteboard to get to the other side. 
‘No,’ said Tim, without a beat, ‘space stuff isn’t cool, computer stuff is cool.’ His confusion was painted across his face - in acrylic - and his pencil was held in stillness only a centimetre from his paper.
 ‘I like space stuff nonetheless.’ Ms. Moder replied. Tim looked at her despairingly. He had just had the sudden realisation that, once again, they would not be doing any computer stuff today. 
‘Actually,’ piped in Sandra from the other side of the classroom, ‘space stuff is very cool. Technically. Isn’t it?’ 
 ‘And in here,’ added Eddie, ‘can we turn up the heating, Miss, please?’ 
 ‘Eddie, I’m afraid we still can’t jig the heating problem in this room, but you’re welcome to keep your coat on if it makes you more comfortable. Now,’ announced Ms. Moder, rubbing her almost purple hands together, ‘let’s take a trip to outer space. For the next few weeks of our classes together, you will be working on your projects for the upcoming science fair. This is an exciting opportunity to explore any part of space that you make be interested in. I am giving you all complete reigns today, but you must stick to the theme of outer space, using and expanding on the things we have been learning in our previous classes.’ 
 As Ms. Moder flicked through a powerpoint of examples of previous science fair success stories, an idea began to germinate in Susan’s mind. ‘Miss!’ She stretched her arm up as far as it could reach, so that it would be the most noticeable. She felt as though she could almost touch the ceiling, and her bottom lifted slightly off her seat in the effort. ‘Miss?’ 
 ‘Yes, Susan.’
 ‘Can we make a diorama?’
 ‘Dioramas are a fantastic idea, Susan.’ Ms. Moder replied, ‘They’re a creative and interactive way to explore an aspect of space you may be interested in.’ 
‘Can we make a diorama of an ideal planet, and the conditions it would need to host life?’ 
‘Ooh!’ said Ethan, ‘I want to make up a planet too!’ 
‘Me too!’ added Tim. 
‘You can’t make up a planet! That’s not in space - it’s inside your own head, dumdums’ said Sandra, scowling out at the rest of the classroom from her front row perch. 
‘Actually, I think a diorama of a model planet could work very well. It could be a great opportunity to showcase some scientific research. Of course, you would need to use the scientific method, as all good scientists do, you would need to find out the right conditions for a habitable planet, and then be able explain clearly how you found them.’ Susan nodded her head vigorously, then noticed Sandra doing the same, and abruptly stopped.

-

Susan’s brain prickled with activity on the walk home, so much that it was hard to contain, and seemed to be spilling out of her physically and making her restless. She was anxious to get home and get out her notebook - all the sooner so that she could write everything down. Her homework for the weekend was to ‘begin preparing and working on the project’ - she knew that her lofty ambitions required her to start right away. She knew that she needed to make sure she was remembering everything clearly; she knew, after all, that she had a habit of forgetfulness. She also knew already that she was going to need a very big jar to be successful in what she was going to undertake.

All of the thoughts swimming in her head were making her anxious of forgetting them, and she broke into a jog, her bag bouncing on her lower back, its straps smacking at the back of her knees. Once home, she desperately unlocked the door, desperately picked up the mail from the floor where it had fallen, desperately ran to the kitchen and put it on the table - while there desperately pouring herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge - and finally, desperately, she pulled and pushed clumsily at the zips and pockets of her bag until she had a blank page and a notebook in front of her. Then, finally relieving herself, it all poured out of her, everything she could remember and then some, page after page after page, so much that she continued to ache for many minutes after she had finished her task.

Then, Susan grabbed herself a bag of crisps from the cupboard and turned on Spongebob - because it was 3:30 - and sat down to wait for her mother to get home from work so that she could talk to her about it. But, with all the mechanisms having so recently been alive in her head, she found that she simply couldn’t focus on the TV, so she took her notebook over to her perch on the sofa and began to re-read what she had just put to paper. Soon, she found herself ripping out pages and writing them more coherently. She made one list of things she had to do and one list of materials she had to acquire in order to build her experiment, and then quickly added another list of things she would need to properly read up on in order to ensure it all ran smoothly. She slowly turned over and admired all of the pages she had written, and the neat lists. 

Then, more out of a want to continue working on her project than anything else, she wrote out a timeline of events for the course of the experiment, and then the goals of the experiment. For now, her work was done, but she was not finished with it. So she opened up her pencil case and pulled out her special glitter pens, and then she went upstairs and found the box of craft paper that she had used for her car boot sale that summer, and wrote on it in large bubble letters, ‘Susan’s Year Eight Science Project’. Immediately, she regretted not waiting to think of a more original name. There it was now. She knew she was burning past her wick at this point. Maybe she would be able to spare another piece of craft paper. But she would save that for another day. She turned to the bookshelf in the living room, pulled down the King James Bible and the Encyclopaedia, and began to conduct her research.  

By the time that her mum arrived home, Susan had become so immersed in her design that she felt she couldn’t simply let anyone see it, at least not at these rudimentary stages. What if she told her it couldn’t work? Or spilled on her notebook and ruined her research? Susan had an innate fear of sabotage - she felt everyone must - and so, just to be careful, she sneaked to her room when she heard her mother unlock the door, carrying her papers, her pens, her Bible, and her juice.

-

At school on Monday, Ms. Moder appeared perplexed by Susan’s efforts. She had almost ripped the seams of her book-bag when bringing in all her pages of research and plans, and she had even already bought the jar using three weeks of pocket money savings, which she read was the correct amount of money to spend on a large jar. So, though Ms. Moder was concerned by such an ambitious feat, her admiration of Susan’s hard work and dedication shone through it. She felt as though she could sense in Susan’s eyes a rare glint of astounding potential: she felt as though this glint in her eyes was Susan’s soul reaching out to Ms. Moder’s soul with this promise, and this plead to just trust in her young body. She felt a strange sense of deja vu, or possibly veja du, at their position, at being thrust into such blind faith in her own student. 
‘This is absolutely remarkable, Susan. What an inspiring commitment to detail. I am sure the project will exceed all of our expectations.’ She placed a sticky gold star right in the top corner of Susan’s front page, and then, for measure, handed Susan herself another, larger sticker, saying ‘Good Job!’ with a cartoon boy with large, outstretched hands. Susan beamed with joy at this. Ms. Moder sighed with relief at having made the right move in this gamble.

In the following days, Susan toiled incessantly at her project. In her few years, she had never felt as sure about anything. In her English class, they were reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and now, though she was only 12, she understood the terror, toil and unimaginable sweat that flowed from Victor throughout the book - or up to the part she had read - and yet his duty to continue his work despite it. She amassed glue-sticks and batteries in her room, she read all of the books on the matter she could find in the house, and then went to the library for some more. She used dinner to grill her mother about the principles of gravity and of red paint. She was working hard, and she trusted it would lead to good things. After her long slog, encountering splinters, sleepless nights, glitter in places it shouldn’t be, and hands clumped together by glue, she finally had it. After seven days and nights, she stepped back to admire her completed diorama. She had not only built a planet, she had built an entire solar system for it to fit into. All of her calculations appeared to have paid off: she had needed to enclose her experiment in both bigger and smaller planets, protecting it from its life-giving ‘star’. She had spent a whole afternoon meticulously calculating the distance from the sun that would be required to allow days, nights, and water. She had used the bottles under her kitchen sink to create a unique reaction that made the gases of the sun, and she had even painstakingly crafted moons for each planet out of tin foil.

Indeed, after all of the work put into the solar system as a whole, which seemed to take centuries, the planet itself looked like a small blip: it reminded her of a snow globe. Indeed, other planets were grander. One was a beautiful blue, one was mighty and massive, and one she had even given rings on a whim, and she felt that in the sun she had achieved a brilliant brightness and size. Yet, this little planet of the middle of it was her raison d’être. This little planet was very special.

For a start, it had water. Therefore it could conduct carbon life. And this potential for carbon life, though simple, did have the possibility of growth. This wouldn’t just be single-cell organisms, oh no, this world, like her own, would be able to create many different types of cells, cells that could - hopefully - work together to conduct developed life. Maybe, like her world, there would be multiple different species working in harmony together. Maybe there would be development and evolution. As she peered down into her terrain, in the early morning moments after she had finally completed her work and before she headed off to her day at school, she watched as the first amoeba in the first ocean began, slowly, to multiply, and she felt it was the start of something very exciting.

-

By the time that she returned home, loaded with the dramatics of Sandra’s new jumper and Kevin’s sacrilege in bringing a smelly sandwich, she found that everything she had hoped of her little planet and more had already begun. Now, there weren’t just amoebas, plants and small amphibians had developed as well. There was algae and kelp, and she watched with her own eyes the burgeoning passage of photosynthesis that she had learned about the year before. She saw plants turning, in harmony with the rotation of the earth and the rotation of the moon and the rotation of the sun, and the orbit of the earth and the orbit of the moon and the orbit of the sun, turn to greet the light and bloom and blossom. She watched surprising animals with scaly, leathery green skin slither out onto the sand banks to bask in the warmth of the sun, with tails so long they reached the tip of their noses. She was excited to see that the mass itself was beginning to change shape: to it was beginning to grow hills and mountains, in a funny, lethargic way, like slowly stretching into its new skin. Unfortunately, she discovered while we watched earthly life growing and wilting, it did have a surprising, funny little feature that she just couldn’t quite jig, possibly a consequence of her test-tube creation, and it was that time was very linear, and therefore, mortality was a given.

Susan was surprised by how quickly growth was taking place. There seemed to be continuous motion and energy on her little planet. She was worried that it would burn out. Well, this was her first crack at it - perhaps if she ever tried it again she would be able to make this all happen a little bit slower. Perhaps it was because it was so small. It always seemed that small things grew and died a lot more quickly. That would be no good for her purposes though: the science fair was the next day, and she needed to make sure it would last so that she would be able to showcase it.

She took a quick inventory of the other planets to make sure that everything was running at the same speed with them as well. It seemed that, although they too were stretch in and changing shape, none of them showed this change quite so alarmingly, because none of them conducted life in the same way. She enjoyed watching the ice storms and the volcano eruptions and valleys and mountains forming and gases shifting and clouding over. She found it very calming, and carefully looked at them all, in turn, for a long time. By the time she turned back to her earth, however, it had already grown even more! There were, she could see in one corner, multiple species of animals, interacting with each other and with their surroundings. Some were as tall as the trees - some even seemed as tall as mountains, some had wings and could fly, others had great teeth and seemed to fight and even eat the others. Susan couldn’t believe her eyes. She had not anticipated this at all in her plans. How could this have come about? Why was this happening? This was so not what she had planned for! She looked over at Venus, beautiful Venus with its moonless sky and its cool, effortless glow. She wished earth could be more like that. She looked at Mars, fierce and red and  completely devoid of life, and she wished that earth could be more like that too.

She felt frustrated. These amoebas had betrayed her. She gruffed,but she couldn’t turn her eyes away. She watched the animals fighting and killing, and her temper rose and rose. Did they not have plants for their food? Couldn’t they just learn to photosynthesise like her plants? Why did they have to be so violent and dramatic about everything?! They were destroying each other, and it was ruining her diorama. She couldn’t take this mess into school tomorrow! What would Ms. Moder say? What would Sandra say?! She had to act quickly. She decided to scrap the issue of animal life. She would leave it at plants, if that was possible. If not, she would simply leave it as an inhospitable planet, like Venus and Mars. She sensed the urgency, she saw that the little planet was beginning to advance its rock formations. With these cave-like structures, she would have no way to prevent these animals from rising up and still maintain her beautiful order.

Susan ran down the stairs and out of the front door, passing her confused mother on the way. Before she could answer her questions, she grabbed a handful of gravel from the little square of it outside her house, and then turned and ran with equal energy back up the stairs, perplexing her mother even more on the way.

Back in her room, with careful aim, she skimmed the pieces of gravel one by one into her gravitational force, praying that her hand-eye coordination was enough that they would just land on earth. Sure, some ended up shattering off of Venus and one even hit the moon, but the intention was met: the gravel rained through the cool atmosphere of the planet, crashing to the surface of the earth, and destroying the fighting and killing of the strange, scary, aliens. Susan stepped back and commended herself on her quick problem-solving abilities. She had a feeling that now everything else was going to work out as planned.

-

Susan woke up with the light of the morning. Today was the day she had been dreaming of for the last three weeks! She had waited for this day with more anticipation than she had ever waited for anything before. In the bright light, she could see her poster, her portfolio, and her page of notes all ready and waiting for her on her desk. She knew her speech off by heart. She had answers for any questions she might be asked. She felt good. Somewhere, on the other side of the town, on the other side of the universe, Kyle was desperately trying to meld a biro to a shoelace with a hairdryer and hoping he could make something out of it.

Before anything, Susan took extra care in putting on her special science fair outfit - she didn’t have a lab coat, but had managed to find everything else typical of a scientist in the long forgotten nooks and crannies of the house: slacks, mismatched socks, a jumper that smelled like wet wool, and a half melted Twix that she tucked into her back pocket. Then, she walked over to her experiment. She sat down at her desk, and peered into the solar system. What she saw did not please her. Not at all. What she saw, what she imagine had developed over the course of the evening, was little creatures, like ants or morphins, walking around on their back two feet and frequently bumping into each other. She saw materials she could not recognise, materials she imagined these creatures themselves had developed. And she felt… overwhelmed. She felt emotions that she was unfamiliar with, on scales she was unfamiliar with. She felt confusion, panic, dread, and joy. She felt the emotions of these small animals, and they were very complex! What she was looking at here was, she concluded, more dangerous than the beasts she had thrown rocks at. What she felt was ambition, envy, greed and passion. And what she felt, removed from the feelings of these animals, was a foreboding sense of regret. She didn’t know how these beings had emerged, but it seemed far too late to worry now. So, facing the world she had created, she did the only thing she felt was possible, she called her mum.

When her mum peered down at the diorama she couldn’t feel anything but impressed. She clapped Susan on the back. ‘This is brilliant, darling!’ she exclaimed, ‘who could have imagined this?! I am so, so amazed. You must be so happy!’ 
‘Mum!’ Susan glared, ‘get with the picture! Look closer!’ 
‘At the little morphins? I love that touch.’ 
‘They’re not morphins, mum. They’re something else and they’re very complex beings! I don’t like them! I don’t want them! Mum, what am I going to do? I only want flowers.’ ‘Well, when life gives you lemons, dear.’
‘But these aren’t lemons, mum!’ 
‘How can you not enjoy these little things?! Look at that one over there: it seems to be drawing on the walls. Painting something, maybe. Oh, look, it’s a little stick man. Isn’t that sweet?’ 
‘Mum, these things are far from sweet. I know what they’re thinking.’ 
‘Well, Susan, you must be so impressed with yourself! Look at this whole world you’ve created - now it’s gotten up and started walking on its own feet! I am so proud of you! Don’t worry too much about these little beings. Remember who’s boss! Ms. Moder is going to absolutely love this, I promise you.’ ‘She won’t,’ Susan stropped and crossed her arms across her chest. ‘She’ll call me a Prometheus’ 
‘She won’t call you a Prometheus! Don’t be silly!’ 
‘Or Sandra will!’
‘Sandra will be blown away by this. Come on, you’re worrying too much - and this is a good thing! I like this little creatures. They’re attractive and endearing, and look, they’re so capable, they don’t need any help from you at all! Easy! This is the perfect result of your experiment, don’t you think?! Now, let’s get this downstairs before we’re late!’ 

With that, she picked up the diorama and whisked it out of her daughter’s reach before she could hear any other doubts. In the haste of this, she accidentally knocked the outermost planet off of its field of rotation, and into a different field entirely. ‘Oh dear Susan, clumsy me, I’m so sorry, I hope I didn’t spoil anything by doing that - let me put it better when we get downstairs.’ 
Susan was shocked. For the first time in her short life, she was speechless. But then, somewhere in her body she heard rather than felt herself talking, and the words we spoke were ‘don’t worry, mum, that one doesn’t really matter too much - it’s more for decoration. But please be careful for the rest of the way down!’ Susan’s mother couldn’t reply to that because she was sticking out her tongue and letting it curl up over her top lip in concentration as she descended the stairs, one by one by one by one.

By the time that they had got to the school and unloaded the solar system diorama onto Susan’s table spot, it seemed that things on earth had already developed quite a bit. Indeed, it seemed that the creatures were doing different things on the different patches of land, separated by large spans of water. And, looking in, Susan discovered something quite amazing: a boat taking the creatures from one part of the planet to another. Multiple boats, in fact, in multiple different designs and sizes. She was impressed with her little people, impressed by their independent development. She would have never been able to figure out how to make a boat! To her, that seemed incredible and they appeared to have complete power over their little world.

She looked closer. She saw wagons and wheels, and she was pleased. She saw clocks and timekeeping, and she was astounded. She saw actors in play, lovers in rapture, scientists in the midst of discovery and geographers on the edge of the world. She saw tropical palm trees and dry oak trees, bubbling streams and gushing rivers, salmon and hedgehogs and bush babies and stilettos. She was awed by the beauty of it all. She felt proud. She felt as if she knew this planet inside out. She had never worked on anything so hard, or for so long, or had such amazing results. Once, she had made a fruit bowl out of paper mache, but when she placed a bunch of freshly washed grapes into it, the bowl became soggy and covered all of its contents with glue. This time, things were different. Things were moving. She could hear the thoughts and feel the emotions of these beings and - wait a minute, she could hear the thoughts and feel the emotions of these beings! And she felt frightened, scared, hungry and alone! She took a closer look. She saw daggers and guns, racism, classism, sexism and homophobia. She heard speakers lying, babies crying, people hungry and people dying. She saw volcanoes that could hurt the beings, and beings that could hurt volcanoes, and tsunamis and warfare and cruelty and uncertainty. She was disgusted by the horror of it all. She felt ashamed. She felt as if she did not know this planet at all. This was all she had worked on for the last weeks, this, she felt, was her magnum opus. This was not appropriate for a preteen!

Susan kept a brave face as Ms. Moder came over. ‘Wow, Susan, this is beautiful work.’ Ms. Moder was almost speechless for the fifth time that day, ‘this must have taken you hours. I am so impressed!’ She knelt down to have a closer look, ‘Oh, uh, Ms. Moder?’ Susan asked, panicked. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ Ms. Moder’s attention was diverted back to her. She didn’t want her to see the mess she had made of everything. She didn’t want to fail this project after putting so much work into it, after all. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me where the bathroom was?’ Susan knew this was a risk, but based on all the panicked and dilly-dallying voices in her head and all of the sweat that she could intrinsically feel waving off of her beings, she also knew that it was going to pay off. 
‘Oh, err, don’t you know where the bathroom is, Susan?’
‘I don’t know the way from here. I have never before been to P.E. class because I’ve always found a way around the linear nature of time and timetables too. This is the first time I’ve set foot in this gym.’ 
‘Oh, pet, well it’s just through that door and to the right, you’ll see the sign when you go out.’ 
Susan had absolute faith as she was walking out of the gymnasium with her back to her science teacher that Ms. Moder would not stay at her station without her, feeling awkward and intrusive, and would instead go and have a look at Kyle’s shoelace. She was absolutely right.

-

That was a close call, thought Susan as she splashed her face with cold water. It didn’t help. It only made her wet. She rolled all her eyes at herself in the mirror. Then she twisted up the nose of the hand dryer and pushed the big silver button, letting the calm, warm air blow across her face and flatten those tendrils of her she had gotten wet against her forehead. Now, what was she going to do about this whole earth situation? Holy hell on high water! What was she going to do about this whole earth situation?! Ok, she took one pacing lap around the space between the bathroom sinks and the bathroom cubicles. Then she turned and took another lap, this one counter-clockwise. Ok, she needed to go back out there. She felt an urgent need to hide her diorama from her teachers and her peers. At least as well as she could at a science fair where she was showcasing it. She needed to destroy her creation. Did she need to destroy her creation? Ok. You know what, she flapped her hands out to her sides, it’s going to be fine. She watched herself do this in the mirror, and she looked directly into her eyes. Her confidence faltered. She caught it immediately. She straightened her back. It’s just a science project, Susan. It doesn’t even matter. They’re not going to smite you for messing up a science project. She cocked her chin up in the mirror. Everything’s going to be sorted out before dinnertime and mum said we can have pizza tonight. Yes. She turned a full 90 degrees to face the door from whence she came. Yes. And she walked back out to where she had come from.

Susan took long strides as she walked back to the gym. She was feeling more and more human by the second. She enjoyed the feelings and thoughts that her beings were charging her with. She felt strong, alive - more alive than she had ever felt before. She felt nervous, but, more than anything, optimistic. No, faithful. She had complete confidence that everything would turn out fine. And she knew how stupid that was. Nonetheless, she could win this science fair. Eat your heart out, Kyle. The next hours passed in a nervous slowness, though, in fact, they were rather underwhelming. Susan resumed position at her table. She spoke about her diorama and undermined how long it had taken to build it, especially when Sandra came over. She accepted the inevitability of people seeing her beings and what they were doing, but in fact, everyone passed over her diorama with such a glazed eye that it seemed nobody noticed them. She made sure her jumper was still damp and her Twix still half-melted, then she took some time to walk around and looked at everyone else’s projects. She learned some facts about clouds, and she enjoyed looking at photographs of nebulas. She loosened her gait and she found that, despite her worries, she was able to enjoy much of the rest of the day.

It was on this day that Susan learned something she would frequently use. Sometimes, if you can get through a long, hard afternoon, it means you can get through anything. The strength of her faith in this, and knowing that the fair would soon end, helped her to get through it all the more. It was one of those funny deja vu moments that she felt in her shoulders whenever she thought about time and timetables. At the end of the day, driving home with her mother, her ice cream, and her blue ribbon, Susan felt on top of the world.

-

By the time they got home, however, her attitude had changed. ’Everything OK, Susan?’ asked her mother once they had got back home and laid the diorama on the kitchen table, ‘You’ve seemed a little quiet since the end of the fair. Are you worried about something?’ ‘Mum, I think we have to destroy the planet.’ Susan replied, ‘before it destroys itself.’ 
‘Oh, darling, don’t say that. What’s got you into such a fizzle? Is it those little morphins?’ 
‘Yes mum, those things are ruining my diorama!’ 
‘I think they’re nice.’
‘They’re evil, I think.’
‘They mean well, Susan! I think it’s quite hard down there! They keep slipping on glitter and - look at this, love, look how steep these cliffs are! You couldn’t file them down, could you?’ 
‘I don’t think I can let these morphins see me in their atmosphere. They’ll freak out. Their fingers are these weird brown shades - I don’t think they like purple very much.’ 
‘Oh, darling, don’t go worrying about your skin now.’ 
‘Mum, no, I’m serious. I think the best thing for us to do would be to destroy it. Many people want it anyway, I can feel it.’ 
‘Darling, now how would that ever be the best thing to do?’ 
‘Well, the morphins are hurting each other!’ ‘They’re helping each other too! And look how far they’ve come in just one day!’ 
‘No, mum, I can’t condone this suffering.’ ‘Darling, you have to be aware that you would also be destroying the good. This isn’t your fault, love. It happened, and nobody expected it to. It happened by its own design. These morphins have been taking care of themselves all day, and they didn't even get you into any trouble! Come on, let’s leave them be for a little longer. They’re not your responsibility anymore - you can have nothing more to do with them, if you’d like! But aren’t you excited to see what they ‘ll have done by tomorrow?!’ 
‘If I’m not allowed to throw it away, then can we at least put it somewhere out of sight?!’ 
‘Oh, Susan,’ her mother put an empathetic hand on her shoulder, ‘don’t feel guilty or embarrassed by these little things. You know what, why don’t we store it is the garage until later. I’m sure you’ll get this old thing out years from now and be amazed at how brilliant you were!’

Together, they carefully placed the diorama into a box in the garage that held a few of Susan’s other snippets of school life: early drawings, a diary of her summer, a hat she knitted, and a project on rain forests. they closed the lid on it and slowly ploughed up the stairs together to order a pizza and finally and deservedly rest their tired knees.  

-

When Susan uncovered the box, many years later, in a particularly zealous burst of spring cleaning, she found that it had independently come to its own end. The sun, which she remembered to be so bright and massive, now only let out a faint glow, and the planets seemed dulled and shrunken, like rotten oranges. She couldn’t tell if this was the strange and unfortunate passage of time, or simply her romantic memory. But it didn’t bother her too much because by that time she had moved on from her science projects and gold stars. Now, she was working on a prototype much more advanced.