#looking mostly for privacy and functionality-related ones right now

[cognitiveleague]

So I just got my first non-Chromebook computer in a long-ass time (because it was on sale and I needed a computer that wasn’t so old it was impossible to get work-related shit to load or my work at home days were going to start driving me out of my head), and am getting it set up.

Obviously downloading Firefox was the first thing I did, but what Firefox extensions are y’all using these days? Any recommendations for someone who’s been mostly using her phone for non-work computing use for a while and is out of the loop?

[ssa-dado]

Breaking down Hotch's apartment layout until someone from Criminal Minds slides into my DMs with the damn floorplans

- CASE BRIEFING: HOW HOTCH'S APARTMENT GASLIT US ALL

As an architecture student, I have a very strong (borderline obsessive) interest in analyzing spaces and locations... especially when they don’t quite add up. And one that has always messed with my brain (sometimes in a good way, but mostly in a frustrating way) is Hotch’s apartment from seasons 4–11.

The transformation from the bare, depressing space in s5 to the warm, cozy atmosphere with antique furniture and clever spatial tricks later on… it’s fascinating.

But also confusing as hell.

Because one question has always haunted me:

Is the apartment we see in Season 4/5 (where Hotch was stabbed and possibly SA’d) the same one he’s living in by Season 10?

(And since I’m a visual learner, here are the pics, because this mystery needs solving... I'll try my best)

(05x01 ; 10x05 don't zoom in, you freaks)

Seems easy to solve, right? The civil number is the same! Great.

121

...But hold on - what’s this?

(07x23)

...Damn, Aaron, your mailman must be going through it - 121? 123? Pick a struggle.

So… is it the same apartment or not? Because at this point, I’m losing my mind.

- VICTIMOLOGY (TYPOLOGY)

As you all know, the starting point is always victimology—but in architecture, my go-to is typology.

So, what kind of apartment building does Hotch live in?

Because once we figure that out, we can finally make sense of all the architectural crimes committed in his apartment.

We get a glimpse of his building in 5x02, and - without dragging you through a full historical deep dive (unless you want me to, in which case, buckle up) - here’s what we do know: it looks like this...

The building looks pre-WWII, likely built in the late 1920s–1930s, or designed more recently to mimic that era.

My guess is primarily based on the architectural detailing of the ground floor - the stonework, arches, and classical elements that give it a grander, more “expensive” look - and the distinct visual separation from the upper levels.

Spencer Reid moment - you can skip it if you'd like -> This actually follows a common design principle (partly influenced by Louis Sullivan’s theories) where different sections of a building reflect their function. The ground floor, being more public-facing, is more decorative and inviting, while the upper floors (where the apartments are) are plainer, emphasizing privacy.

However, the upper levels look stripped down, almost too plain, like they went through a more recent renovation that removed some of the og character. While it was normal in the 1920s/30s to emphasize the lower level, the upper floors would still have had some kind of textured finish brick, terracotta, or even decorative stone accents. Instead, here, it looks like someone just painted over everything... a bit sad, honestly… much like the man living in one of these apartments. Sorry Hotch but it is the truth.

That said, based on the photos, I hypothesized a possible volumetry diagram and main floor plan of the apartment building, including its functions and layout.

Knowing that Hotch lives in 121 (or 123… whatever it is today), he could very well be on the first floor. Old man isn’t about to risk climbing seven flights of stairs, understandable.

(Or, if we lean into the conspiracy theory that he has childhood trauma related to fire, it’s very telling that he chose a first-floor unit, making for an easier escape in case of danger…)

Our lovely Emily Prentiss gave us a sneak peek at the ground floor interior in 5x01, which - combined with a study of the window placement on the facade - helped me piece together a small section of the central layout.

From what we see, I feel even more confident about the building’s era - especially because of the beautiful wooden decorated elevators (yes, those are elevators, not doors... check the buttons on the side)

And now, for another Spencer Reid moment, part two -> In the early 1900s, when elevators were first being introduced in residential buildings, they didn’t look like the modern ones we see today.

Why?

Because men fear change.

Just like with any new technology, people were hesitant, so architects and designers made elevators blend in by disguising them as something more familiar - often looking like grand wooden doors or classic entryways rather than the industrial metal boxes we think of today.

This same pattern happened with building structures - steel (and concrete too!) was widely adopted in the early 1900s because of its strength, allowing for taller buildings, but architects still hid the steel frame behind stone or brick facades to maintain the look of traditional palaces. Even early cars looked like carriages because people weren’t ready to embrace a completely new form.

So, Hotch’s apartment building? It’s yet another classic case of early 20th-century architectural reluctance to embrace modernity - which, honestly, fits him a little too well. The man bottles up his emotions behind the calmest face just like his home hides its innovations behind classic detailing.

I see you, Aaron. You’re not fooling me.

Now, you may be asking - "Phi, weren’t you supposed to expose all the inconsistencies in Hotch’s apartment and finally solve whether it’s the same place or if they changed it?"

To that, I say… we’re getting there.

Because before we dive into the madness, there’s something that really messes with my brain - the window placement in Hotch’s apartment.

But to even begin analyzing that, we first need to understand how a typical floor plan in a building like this would be structured. And once again, our queen Emily Prentiss in 5x01 unknowingly led us straight to the answer.

The bastard even has a vaulted ceiling - right where I believe the main distribution area (aka elevators and stairs) is located. You can spot it in the pictures near the exit signs.

Also, just a heads-up... in the diagrams, the apartments look smaller than they actually are because I was too lazy to make multiple detailed drawings. (But hey, if someone paid me - hi, CM - I absolutely would) So, for now, I’m using that as a quick reference.

Now… the interior! Or should I say… the everchanging interior.

In this issue, I’ll be analyzing the Season 5 version - I even sketched out a small section of the floor plan (which could be completely wrong, because things change every episode).

From these pics, we can see that his windows are on the opposite side of the entrance - which, so far, checks out.

But wait... look down here! Check out the window placement in the kitchen. Thanks to that little detail, we can hypothesize that Hotch’s apartment is located in what I’ve labeled as "Unit B" - aka the unit with double exposure (great for ventilation, Aaron, solid choice).

From this pic down here from the s4 finale, we also get a fun little bonus detail - there’s what looks like a tiny dryer (or washing machine?) just sitting out in plain sight. And right behind Hotch, there’s a door that, based on the dimensions, I suspect leads to a bathroom.

Enough details to sketch out a partial floor plan… and there you have it!

A (partial) floor plan of Hotch’s apartment in its saddest era: bare, empty, and drowning in case files from seasons 4–5

And seeing more of his apartment in later seasons should be a blessing, right? It should help us map out the whole thing, right?...

Right?

...Wait.

Is that... a full-ass door on the right that totally wasn’t there before?!

Aaron, you hypocrite - you shut down Spencer Reid’s physics magic, yet here you are summoning entire new rooms into existence in your apartment.

(05x02 ; 10x05)

Alright, fine... where does that door lead?

(10x20)

Hot damn.

Referring to the home office, of course… and here’s some solid proof of its placement. Now, I’m gonna… step away for a minute… process... this... architectural betrayal… but YOU - you make sure to study these pics. I’ll be quizzing you later, got it?

Alright… and now… now that you’ve hopefully been studying (and totally not getting distracted by Hotch’s shirt hanging on for dear life - OMG LOOK AT THE [REDACTED])… focus.

You nasty.

Window placement.

Where’s the home office window? Exactly... on the same side as the others in the living and dining area (you can tell by the way the light enters the room in the pic on the right)

And since you’re all very interested in the architecture (and definitely not drooling over a certain Unit Chief), let me ask you this:

WHY THE HELL IS THERE A WHOLE FIREPLACE IN HIS HOME OFFICE?!

Don’t worry - I’ll answer for you. Since y’all are nasty.

Can I just say that it UPSETS ME to the point where I’m considering a 30-day diet of just drywall that THAT MAN - THAT FEDERAL AGENT - HAS A FIREPLACE. IN HIS HOME OFFICE.

(HELLO?!?!?!?!?? Whore.)

Unhinged. Because:

1. A fireplace is quite literally a symbol of family and warmth (fun fact: Frank Lloyd Wright always designed homes starting with the fireplace! Oh, wait. You might not know who that is, so now this just sounds confusing. My bad. Anyway, he designed a lot of cool stuff... moving on). A fireplace belongs in a living room or dining area, where people actually gather. And considering Hotch’s building is old, there is no way it was originally designed to have one in a private office. That placement is categorically wrong. You’re a terrible designer if you stick a fireplace in an isolated office but not in the main living space where it actually makes sense.

2. The writers could try to lie to my face and say, “Oh, maybe the room was repurposed into Hotch’s home office.”Wrong. His apartment has a big open-concept living/dining area with the kitchen on the side. And unless his place is secretly Rossi’s mansion (spoiler: it’s not), there’s no way the original layout had a separate formal dining room. And even if it did, the fireplace is still in the wrong damn place because formal dining rooms are typically closer to the entry.

3. They could lie even harder and try to argue that Hotch having a fireplace in his office is some deep, symbolic artistic choice - like, oh, he’s so devoted to his job, he’d rather warm his ass doing paperwork than sit by the fire reading Jack a bedtime story like a decent human being. Like. Come on. He’s a family man, for god’s sake. Either give him a properly placed fireplace or JUST DON’T GIVE HIM ONE AT ALL.

(Less is more, people!!! Unless, of course, we’re talking about Hotch’s [REDACTED]... oof. Damn censorship. Right when I was about to say something deeply unholy. )

Goodbye. See you in the next issue.

Hopefully by the end of this series we'll manage to sketch down the entire floorplan

Phi.

[kytsuine-blog]

Ok so I'm going to do a better, Tumblr-focused writeup soon and also track down those blogs to talk about them more specifically, but I fell for a misinformation scheme today and want to talk about how and why. Here's an email I sent my little cousin about it.

This morning, I encountered a Tumblr post talking about the TikTok ban and the government's attempt to severely curtail digital privacy rights as part of it.

I had heard that the TikTok ban was currently up for debate in the Senate, after passing the House with strong bipartisan support. I was not surprised by the information in the screenshots; it matched with things I knew the government had tried to do often in the past, and often under similar circumstances. I looked up the bill linked to verify, and yeah, it was an active bill that had been introduced in the Senate. (I should have realized then that there was an issue with what I was reading, but in my defense it was about 6:00 AM, and I was just glancing over things in the parking lot before going in to work.)

Concerned for the digital privacy and security of my family, and especially the ones I can't just drive to, I drafted the following message to you:

"I haven't had time to read all the way through the RESTRICT act that the Senate proposed, but summaries I've seen indicate that as written it's a massive overreach. It's better known as the TikTok ban; the news has been focusing on that part as it passes through Congress so far.

I always sign my emails to you with my public key. Both of you should look up how to use PGP to send me encrypted emails with that. It may become even more important soon to normalize secure encryption in Internet communications, and there may also be things that we wish to discuss that state or federal laws may frown on in the future.

I planned to introduce topics related to computer and information security more gradually, but making sure that talking about those is possible at all is an important part of that.

Congress.gov page on the bill

Tweet thread"

(As an aside, I do still think that normalizing encryption is a very worthwhile thing to do; it makes the web a safer place for activists and informants needing a way to communicate without surveillance, without being singled out as enemies of the surveillance state.)

I then checked through the notes of the Tumblr post to see if there was more context I wanted to share, and noticed people who called out a detail that I missed. That post was first posted in March of 2023, a little over a year ago. It refers to an entirely different bill than the TikTok ban which is currently going through the Senate, one which activists successfully stalled (and likely killed) last year. This year's bill is much more targeted (though, as implemented, I still have issues with it); its text can be found here.

This is a classic example of how misinformation spreads. I did not have bad intent when I went to share that commentary on last year's bill with you, and I did not find it from someone with bad intent (in fact, she subsequently shared a commentary I posted on the actual bill, in reply to her original incorrect post.) From what I can tell, on March 14, a number of mostly inactive politically-focused blogs all shared that post directly from the original poster (not from someone who had it in their feed, like a normal Tumblr interaction). Each of these was tagged with fairly popular political tags. None of these blogs has posted since, keeping it at the top of their page to get more eyes on it.

Misinformation is spread deliberately, and it takes caution and checking of your biases to combat it. I almost fell for this one because I expected it to be true. I should have checked on it before sharing anything at all. Looking at it now, I ask: who benefits from this?

Most directly, proponents of the current TikTok ban benefit from activist efforts being directed towards a functionally dead bill. This, apparently, includes the strong majority of the House, on both sides of the aisle; it may be assumed that it also includes the government's surveillance agencies (as it is easier to compel data from American companies than from foreign ones, particularly Chinese ones). It could also include other social media sites, especially those like YouTube and Instagram that compete directly with TikTok in the realm of algorithmically driven short videos.

More abstractly, though, this misinformation benefits the status quo, and conservatism as a whole. By causing people who are invested in the TikTok ban (mostly left-leaning people) to engage with more stringent and concerning bills, stress is increased on activists and burnout becomes more likely. Targeting the mental health of left-leaning activists is a tactic we've seen multiple times recently in misinformation campaigns; another example is the "the Guardian is doing a story on DIY HRT" hoax that recently circulated among my trans friends. This type of stressful lie misinformation serves the dual purpose of causing activists to burn out and decreasing trust among communities that share it.

This is a new specific strategy to me, but the solution is the same as ever. Check your sources when you speak publicly, check how your biases affect what ideas seem "clearly correct", and aim for your statements to maximize quality, rather than quantity. That's a discipline I still need to refine, but it's not hard. Just requires a bit of diligence.

[sunnyrinusstudies]

Going FOSS: An Intro to Open-Source software for studyblr (and also some privacy related bits)

Source for Header Image

Intro & attempt at TLDR

Hey everyone! Today I’d like to tell y’all something about Open Source Software, and also Why this should matter to you! This’ll probably be the first post of a series I intend to do, because I believe the Studyblr community, even the non-nerd folks, could really benefit from switching some things out in their digital environment. Since this is a long post, I attempted to summarise it below, please do read on if you have the spoons tho!

TLDR?

FOSS stands for “Free and Open Source Software” the “free” part doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free as in free pizza, but mostly means free as in freedom.

There’s a humongous amount of variants on this concept, but the core of FOSS specifically is the four freedoms:

1. To run the program however you want and for whatever you want

2. To study how the program works and to change it in whatever way you want

3. To be able to share it with whomever you feel like

4. To be able to share your modified version with whomever you want

There’s a whole host of software licenses built around these concepts, you can check those out at the Open Source Initiative website, or at Choose A License. Both have a good summary of what they all stand for.

Open Source software is used for a lot of products, nearly every single webserver is an Apache Linux server, Google chrome is built on top of their open source chromium (google is still the devil, but y’know, it’s an example), and even deep deep down, Apple computers run on top of a Linux Kernel. Many more can be listed, but I won’t do that otherwise this isn’t a TLDR anymore.

Now, Why is this important for you? The Open Source Initiative summed it up real nicely already, but heres a short paraphrase:

Control & Security. If software is open source then you can check if it really works the way it does, and to make sure it’s not spying on you. Even if you don’t have the skills for it, someone else who does will be able to check. Also if you don’t like how something works in a program, then you’ll be able to change it or find someone else’s changed version that you like more.

Training. People who want to learn programming can use the code to see what makes programs tick, as well as use it as a guide for their own projects.

Stability. Because everything’s out in the open, that means someone else can take up maintaining a project or make a successor of it, in case the original developers suddenly quit working on it. This is especially important when it’s software that’s absolutely critical for certain tasks.

Community. It’s not just one program. It’s a lot of people working together to make, test, use, and promote a project they really love. Lots of projects end up with a dedicated fanbase that helps support the developers in continuing to work on the software.

I’d like to add one more tho: Privacy, which ties in a lot with the security part. Nowadays with protests going on and everything being online due to the pandemic, folks have been and will be confronted much more with the impact of privacy, and lack thereof. Open Source software means that if any company or group tries to spy on you, then you and anyone who feels like checking, will be able to know and take action on it. Here’s the EFF page on privacy and why it should matter to you

If that got your attention then read on past the readmore button! Or, if nothing else maybe check out the Free and Open Source Software portal on Wikipedia? Or maybe the resources page of the Open Source Initiative?

Terminology: Let’s get that out of the way first

Open Source: The source code that a program is made up of is freely accessible, anyone can look at it and check whether it works well enough or to make sure it doesn’t spy on you.

FOSS: Free and Open Source Software. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to pay for it, it’s free as in freedom and free speech, not free pizza.

There are four freedoms associated with FOSS:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

FLOSS: Free and Libre Open Source Software. This time it is “free” as in free pizza. The “libre” is french for “free” as in freedom.

GRATIS: Sometimes people use this word to mean “free” as in free pizza. Usually alongside “FOSS”

Licenses : A license is something that tells others what they can or cannot do with your code. Licenses also apply to art and literature, those are copyright licenses. There are many different software licenses and I’m not going to be able to list them all.

The biggest players however are:

Apache License 2.0

The 3-Clause BSD License

GNU General Public License (also known as GPL)

MIT License

Mozilla Public License 2.0

There’s even more and you can find a list of them Here on the Open Source Initiative site There’s so many licenses that there’s even a Choose A License site, where you can pick a license depending on what you want it to achieve

Who and/or what even uses open source software?

You don’t need to be some nerd to benefit from Open Source software, in fact, you’re using open source software right now! The biggest example is the whole entire internet. Websites are stored on servers, and nearly every single webserver is a Linux server. The second biggest browser Firefox is open source, and even google chrome is built on top of “chromium” an open source base. If you dont use an iPhone, then you’re probably on an Android phone. Guess what? Android is part of the Android Open Source Project, which is then built upon a GNU/Linux base. All Open Source. Chromebooks? Built on top of a Linux kernel (like a non-patented engine you could put into any motor vehicle you’d like). Heck, even Apple computers are, at their core, built on top of a Linux kernel.

Neat apps you may wanna check out!

I’ve made a little list of apps that might be especially useful for studyblr folks, but depending on how well this post does I’ll probably make some more posts for specific apps.

TiddlyWiki, has a bajillion different ways to organise your thoughts, and also a lot of variant builds out there. Check out their table of contents if you feel lost! There’s versions available for most big browsers, as well as windows, linux, mac, android, and iOS.

AnyType, is an app that looks and almost exactly like notion, but is much more decentralised. They’re currently still in development but if you want to support them, sign up for early access and give them some feedback so they know what works and doesn’t! They’re still in closed alpha, but are intending to give beta access to about 100 folks at a time throughout 2021, so please sign up if this looks interesting to you!

Trilium Notes, is slightly more like a “notebook”, however you can arrange your notes in nearly infinitely deep folders. You can use things like Relation Maps & Link Maps to visualise your notes and how they go together. There’s even more they do and I just cant list it all, so go check out their stuff for a more comprehensive overview! Works on windows, linux, and (unsupported) mac

LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE are two office suites that function just as well as micro$oft office, often Even Better in my experience. I’ve used LibreOffice for years now and honestly? never going back. OnlyOffice is technically free (as in pizza), but it’s a slight hassle to get everything set up, cause you need to set it up on a server. They have a paid and hosted version available with educational discounts, but honestly i’d go with LibreOffice.

OnePile, is an app I haven’t used myself since it only runs on Apple stuff. But I’ve heard a lot of good things about it so that’s why it’s in here. It looks like it works similar to most general “note taking notebook” apps. Looks really pretty too honestly.

EtherPad, is similar to ONLYOFFICE, however this one’s a lot more focused on specifically text documents. Works with real-time collaboration which is really neat.

Anything that FramaSoft has going on. They’re a non-profit organisation, dedicated to promoting digital freedom. A lot of open source cloud related things are not really useful to people who don’t have the time and/or money to set up a whole-ass server. That’s where FramaSoft comes in, they do it for you. Just about everything they offer (here’s a full overview) are free (as in free pizza). They also have a separate site to help you get started!

It’s not free to run it all on their side, so if you find yourself interested in using their services please try to support them any way you monetarily can! (they even have a “minetest” server (not minecraft, deeeefinitely not minecraft))

Joplin!! Which is also what I used to write this post so I wouldn’t have to use The Tumble’s post writing thing. It’s good for taking notes, has a bunch of neat plug-ins, and can also sync with a variety of cloud services!

Nextcloud For if you want to go just that little bit further on the open source and the privacy. Nextcloud has honestly way too many features for me to list, but the important parts are that it’s a nigh perfect replacement for office365, and probably even GSuite. The one caveat is that you either gotta host it yourself, or get someone else to host it for you. Framasoft (mentioned above), has a nextcloud instance. It works on just about every single platform, and can integrate with an absurd amount of services. Here’s a list of providers that work with nextcloud, and what different apps they have installed on their server.

I personally use Disroot, because they’re a local (as in, my country) non-profit that offer about 2gb of free storage, and then for about 15 cents per GB per month you can get more storage if you want. They also have an email service which is hella neat. Their one main rule is Do Not Use For Business Purposes, because they’re here to help the individual folks, not companies.

Neat Links you may also want to look at!

Here are some sources, and also resources that I used for this post. There’s also some stuff here that I think folks may be interested in in general.

General Wikipedia Article on Open Source Software

The Free and Open Source Software portal on Wikipedia

Resources page of the Open Source Initiative

Free Software Foundation definition of “free software”

itsfoss page on what FOSS means

itsfoss page on the history of FOSS

Open Source Software Foundation list of projects and apps they really like

Open Source Initiative on “the open source way”, and how it goes beyond software

Check out literally anything the Electronic Frontier Foundation has going on maybe?

TED talk on privacy and why it’s important

The Surveillance Self Defense project by the EFF

This EFF page on privacy for students

ExpressVPN article on privacy (not necessarily endorsing this company, just a good article)

What’s next?

I’ll probably make some more posts on specific kinds of software that I think folks may like. Or maybe a general overview on the more privacy forcused reasons and solutions for doing all of this.

Future post ideas, none of these are set in stone:

Open source Note taking apps

Replacements for just about Every Single google service I can think of

My personal setup

Open source / privacy conscious social media that studyblr folks may be into

Chatting, Calling, Videocalling: Discord and whatsapp alternatives etc

??? More studyblr apps that could do with a FOSS alternative??

How to support open source when you’re not a big fudgin nerd

How to be better at digital privacy and security, while still maintaining that studyblr aesthetic

Apps, software, other stuff, for specific areas of study maybe?

Feel free to suggest other ideas! Or leave feedback! This is my first big resource post so I wanna know if/how I can do better when I make another one!

[avengerscompound]

The Tower: Family - 1

The Tower: Family An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist

Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 1963

Warnings:  Sex talk and pregnancy talk on this chapter, smut, angst, pregnancy, mentions of childhood abuse on series.

Synopsis: With new powers, Thor now living on Earth full time, a wedding to plan, and Natasha and Wanda expecting, a lot is changing for Elly and her large and rather unconventional family.  When Elise’s parents try to reestablish connections, Elly questions what being a family actually means.

Author’s Note: @fanficwriter013 helped me build this world and helped write the first few chapters.  I am forever grateful to her.  I love this series and can’t quite seem to let it go.

Chapter 1: Big Plans

It’s strange how a month can feel like both a blink of an eye and an eternity all at once.  We returned to Earth and everything got busy all at once.  There was work to catch up on.  Avengers stuff had piled up.  Plus, Steve wanted me to train in case they did need me for end-of-the-world things.  There were all the things related to the move back to the Tower.  Plus, Tony and I went into wedding planning mode.  We wanted to just get it over with quickly but we didn’t just want to head to the county courthouse either.  And in the meantime, we all just missed Thor.  Knowing he was going to be back for good just made us miss him even more and even with the days feeling too short to fit everything in, the countdown seemed to drag on.

It was good being busy but I was starting to feel the stress.  I don’t think Steve was really loving the idea of training me, and I wanted to tell him not to worry about it.  That I didn’t want that life.  That didn’t seem fair though.  I could lift Mjolnir.  That meant something.  I couldn’t just selfishly sit at home while my family risked their lives.  The wedding plans weren’t exactly easy either.  We wanted to do it as soon as Thor got back which meant doing everything in two months and just finding a venue alone was hard.  Everything was booked and with the need for privacy on top, the ones that weren’t were not ideal.  The tower was taking a little longer than expected.  I think the stress was getting to me so much I was overthinking everything.  Like we’d had too good of a run and now it was going to fall apart. With my new powers, I now had threads that only I could see that connected me to members of my family and told me where they were and if they were okay.  I would check them constantly worried that something bad was going to happen.  The threads that connected me to Natasha and Wanda seemed to be fraying at the connection to them, and even though when I touched them they seemed content, I kept thinking they were planning to leave us.

“I don’t know, Tony.  I like the idea of a private island but every time I call them they’re booked up,” I complained as I sat in his lap and we looked over wedding destinations.

“You’ve been name dropping right?  That normally does the trick,” Tony teased as his finger slowly caressed over my stomach.

“Yes,” I admitted.  “And I hate it, but still, this is people’s weddings.  Even offering to pay to relocate them isn’t working.  I swear we could buy an island and we’d have more luck.”

“Alright, so we buy an island,” Tony said.  “Richard Branson owns ones.  I guess I can too.  And we can go there for our anniversary.”

I laughed and shook my head.  “Simple, low key wedding it is,” I said as I brought up a website devoted to the buying and selling of islands.  There was a surprisingly large number of them and we narrowed it down to an island in the Caribbean with a fully functional hotel, one in the Maldives that seemed close to not being an island anymore but did have a small hotel comprising of bungalows and an island in Belize that had a small compound like structure that would require us hiring staff to run and flying in all the things we needed for our wedding.

“So, I’m going to send these to Nat and Wanda and let them decide,” Tony said and swiped them into little folders with Natasha and Wanda’s name on it.  “Don’t you worry though, honey.  Our wedding will be small, low key and just us.  Then we’ll spend two weeks on the beach while the kids stay with Sam’s sister.  And when we get back, the Tower will be ready to move into.”

I hummed and leaned my head back on his shoulder.  “It’s going to be so nice.”

He slowly kissed his way along my shoulder to my neck as his hand continued to caress my stomach.  “So I’ve been thinking…”

“You’re always doing that,” I teased playfully, turning my head and nosing at his cheek.

“Well, yes,” he said, a little nervously.  “No.  Sorta…”

I sat more upright and turned to look at him.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said.  “I just… We’ve been happy, haven’t we?  All of us.  Since the kids were born.  I really like being a dad.”

I smiled softly and caressed his jaw with my thumb.  “Yeah.  Really happy.  I can feel it now too.”

“I want us to have more,” he said.  “Kids that is.  I kinda… I want to make one with you.”

I stared at him in disbelief, though I could feel through the thread how much he wanted this and how nervous he was I was going to say no.  “Really?  You’re sure?”

“You make really pretty babies,” he said.

I smiled and leaned my forehead against his, tears pricking my eyes.  “I’d be so happy.”

“Is that a yes?”  He asked.  “We can make a little Stark/Cooper baby?”

I let out a breath.  I wanted this so much.  I’d had dreams about getting pregnant again.  This time because everyone wanted it.  And this time around everyone being excited from the start and having the support I didn’t get the last time.  Seeing our family grow more.  But I couldn’t agree until I knew I’d get it.  I couldn’t go through what I did last time.  “We need to talk to the others.  That means Thor too.  I need for them to agree to having more kids and that they’re okay with both knowing you’re the biological father or if we just have me go off birth control and whatever happens happens.”

Tony nodded and rubbed my back  “Okay.  It’s okay,” he said.  “It’ll be different this time.  We’re all here now, El.  And if they just want the paternity to be random.  I’d be okay with that too.  I just… I really love being a dad.”

I nuzzled into his neck, one tear breaking free and running down my cheek.  “I love you,” I whispered.  “And I do want this.  More than anything.”

“I know,” he said, holding me close.  “I love you too.”

He held me like that for a little while, just gently rubbing my back, when a large crack of thunder sounded outside and it started bucketing down rain.  I sat up suddenly and looked out of the window.  “Is it Thor do you think?”

“Gotta be,” Tony said, patting my ass so I’d get up.

I jumped to my feet and the two of us rushed outside.  The rain was coming down heavily and Bruce was outside with the kids and the puppies, looking up at the sky.  I moved up beside him, still being sheltered by the awning of the house.  “Is it him?”

Bruce smiled and looked down at me.  He was in his blended form.  The one he took most of the time these days.  He’d lean into Bruce more in the bedroom or the lab, or Hulk when he was playing outside with Clint and the kids.  But mostly he was both at once, working in harmony.  “The atmospheric readings are consistent with the Rosenberg Bridge opening.”

To back up Bruce’s words, a huge crash sounded again and a large beam of rainbow-colored light seemed to crash into the ground.  When it cleared Thor was standing in the middle of a circle of Celtic knotwork burned into the ground.  The twins squealed in delight and ran out into the rain to greet him.  Thor smiled and the rain stopped like he’d flicked a switch on it.  He scooped them up when they reached him and held them above his head.

“Children!”  He boomed.

“Daddy!”  They both squealed at once, kicking their legs.  He pulled them into a hug and closed his eyes, smiling contentedly as they nuzzled into him.  Tony, Bruce, and I approached him and when we got close he put both onto one arm and cradled my jaw with the other.

“Mea Vida,” he hummed and kissed me deeply.  I melted into him, wrapping my arms around his waist.

“Thor!  We didn’t expect you back yet!” Bruce said, smiling.

Thor broke his kiss with me and Bruce leaned down and pecked Thor’s cheek before Tony moved in and did the same.  “All is running well on Asgard.  I have Heimdall watching over things.  He will call me if needed.”

“So this is it?” I asked, looking up at him. “You’re home now?”

He smiled contentedly.  “Yes.  I’m home.”

“Come on,” Tony said, clapping him on the shoulder.  “Let’s get you inside.  We have a lot to tell you about.  In fact, your timing is perfect.  He looked at me with a small smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye.  It did feel like a sign.  This was the day we would agree to extend our family.

“I misted you,” Pietro said as we made our way back inside with the dogs, dancing around at our feet.

“I missed you too, my darling one,” Thor said, affectionately.  “What have you been doing since I saw you last?”

“Umm…” Pietro pondered.

“We pwayed and deys take us pwaces.  We did see a schoowl,” Riley explained.

“And I dot my books,” Pietro added.

“Those all sound wonderful,” Thor rumbled and kissed them both on the head, before putting them down.  He took a seat on the couch and both the twins and the dogs climbed up into his lap.

“FRIDAY, tell the cook to make a large lunch for everyone and that Thor’s here so whatever they think is normal, double it,” Tony said as he took a seat.  “And page the others.”

“Of course,” FRIDAY replied.

“Daddy,” Pietro said as he climbed up onto Thor’s shoulders.  “Wiwl Woki come?”

“On occasion, little one,” Thor answered.  “Loki has a very important responsibility in Asgard now.”

“Wiwl Mags come?”  Riley added.

Thor laughed and ruffled her hair.  “No, honey.  I’m afraid not.  But I will take you back to your homeworld from time-to-time and you will see him.”

I started to get impatient and I ran my fingers through the threads that connected me to the others and tugged on the ones that belonged to Clint, Natasha, Steve, Bucky, Sam, and Wanda.

“Did you just pull me?”  Clint said, coming into the room.

“I did,” I answered.  “Thor’s home!”

Clint grinned and came over, kissing Thor, before flopping on the chair beside him.

“Space husband!”  Steve called as he entered the room with Bucky.

“I’m not your space husband any longer.  I’m home for good,” Thor said, getting up and greeting the two super-soldiers with a tight hug and a kiss.

“You are!”  Wanda squeaked as she entered with Sam.

Thor turned to Sam and Wanda and a large smile broke out on his face as he pulled them into his arms.  “You have been busy while I was away,” he said.  Wanda looked up at him confused when Natasha finally arrived.  “Very busy indeed.”

“What do you mean?”  Wanda asked.

“You and Natasha, you’re both with child,” Thor said, looking at the both of them confused.   “You didn’t know?”

I looked from Wanda to Nat and the sudden realization that the fraying of the threads was the starting of new ones connected me to the babies they were carrying.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it sooner.

Natasha looked at Thor with her jaw dropped.  “I’m sorry, but I’m what?”

// NEXT

[earthstellar]

INTERVIEW: Transformers lore and characters as discussed with my 74 year old mother

Backstory: I talk about fandom stuff a lot with my mom (she’s one of the original Star Trek fangirls so she knows her fandom shit lmao) and recently I’ve been discussing Transformers with her. 

Me and my mom are very open with each other, and we have some interesting fandom conversations. 

Here are some lines from a recent call with her that I thought might be interesting, regarding Transformers stuff and especially some interesting elderly person perspective on Ratchet. There’s also some talk of the theology in Transformers lore, including Drift and Spectralism, and a bunch of other stuff too.

All conversations transcribed from a recent Skype call, with my mom’s permission.

M is my mom, Me is just me-- So that you can tell who’s talking, lol. When other real people are mentioned, their names are redacted and replaced with an X for privacy. 

Getting Started:

Me: Okay, there are a lot of younger fans for Transformers who might be interested in this kind of discussion, but I don’t see a lot of these conversations saved and shared anywhere, so if you don't mind I want to share some of your reactions to learning about Transformers stuff. 

M: That’s okay, very professional of you to ask! The internet is a job now, I guess. I’m being interviewed, fancy. 

On Ratchet’s Age/Health and older people in media:

Me: Ratchet’s the medic, he’s an old guy. Older than a lot of the other bots. In the comics (MTMTE/LL) he has a chronic illness and he eventually passes away from either that or complications related to it, although we don’t see it happen on the page. It made everyone sad; He’s a fan favourite. 

M: I know how that feels, getting old and dying! I had years of thyroid symptoms before they had to take it out, I had endometriosis and they told me I couldn't have you, it’s an unsure thing. Now I’ve had skin cancers removed, I have too much potassium in my blood, I have fibromyalgia. I never expected to live this long. 

Everyone is really just guessing at health stuff. It’s ironic that the doctor couldn’t diagnose himself, but I think he probably knew what was wrong and couldn't bring himself to accept it. Old people might accept that we can’t do some things any more but we tend to be depressed about it. Nobody really copes with it very well, you know X had a stroke and now she’s aphasic, can’t speak anymore, can’t read anymore, and she used to be a nurse. She’s older than I am, but it’s sad. She’s so smart and clever, and we’re just old. It’s what happens. 

I bet Ratchet was scared. As a doctor, he’d know what can happen when you get old and decrepit. I think he was in denial, a lot of old guys seem to be like that. 

Me: He was the medical lead on their ship, the Lost Light. I think you’re right and he wanted to be functional for as long as possible; He wants to be helpful and his job is his life. It would be hard for him; He struggles with retirement in the comics. 

M: Sounds about right. I’m old as hell and I still work! Although that’s mostly because we all need money to live, and not so much because anybody wants to have a job at this age, but still. If he liked his job, he wouldn’t want to be pushed out. I loved working at the park; When I had to quit, it was devastating, but I didn’t really have a choice. 

By the way, the audiobooks you sent me for X have really made her happy, she can read again, sort of! So thanks for that.

Me: I’m glad the audiobooks I sent you helped!

M: They have, you’re a life saver! 

Me: I’m just glad they’re useful for her! 

I think it’s interesting that his age is a part of his character in terms of personality and story arc; Do you enjoy seeing older characters in media that reflect the realities of age and being old, even when it’s difficult or possibly depressing? 

M: Yes! There aren’t a lot of old characters, and the ones that are out there are mostly just joke characters or you never see them too often. I think the creators must think that old people don’t watch TV or anything, but the reason we don’t tune in is because everything is all about young people, and that can be hard. Watching people run around when you can’t anymore can be painful for those of us who have lost that ability now that we’re elderly, or watching kid-focused stuff can make us miss our families. 

It would be nice to see old characters that are included and are competent. 

Me: Representation is important. 

M: Yes. 

On Religion in Transformers: 

Me: So, you work in a church. Just pointing it out so readers know where we’re coming from on this. 

M: Yep, Episcopalian on the beach here, a small church. Services are mostly online due to COVID so I’ve lost hours on Friday, unfortunately... But I’m not complaining. 

Me: And we both like the more spiritual lore type of content, it’s some good shit. 

M: Always love seeing ancient Gods in space! 

Me: So, there’s another old guy character, Alpha Trion, who’s a kind of sage-like mentor to Optimus Prime. 

M: Optimus! He’s the truck! Everyone knows him, he’s the main guy. 

Me: Yep! So Alpha Trion is an archivist, and when Optimus Prime was younger, depending on what version of the story we look at, he also used to be an archivist. 

M: Librarian truck! 

Me: Yes! 

M: I love it. You worked at a library for a little bit. 

Me: That work placement was the best, loved it. But Alpha Trion, depending on which version of the lore we look at, is hinted to be one of the formative deity-entities on their home planet, Cybertron. 

M: Cybertroooooon. Haha! Good robot planet name. I’m into this so far, very cool.

Me: It is! And Alpha Trion is sort of the living memory of the early days of their planet and civilisation, but nobody knows. Everyone just thinks he’s a kind of cryptic weird old guy. 

M: Relatable. I like this concept.

Me: It’s pretty good. So generally, things vary a lot from version to version of the story, but there are usually a handful of beings, early Transformers, who make up the character of their ancient lore. These are called the Primes, named after Primus, who pretty much always is depicted as their main God. Like Zeus, or Odin. 

M: Very cool. Optimus is a Prime! 

Me: Right! In a few versions of the story, he is the final Prime essentially reincarnated. The Thirteenth Prime. 

M: That’s very cool. 

Me: And in some other stories, Prime is mostly purely a title that has political connotations as well; It gets into a sort of weird Divine Right kind of area to help underscore some of the problems in their planetary political structure that led to the conflict that eventually became their civil war. 

M: That sucks, but unfortunately, also relatable. It’s very real world, especially right now. It’s interesting how Transformers is so incredibly in depth; I never would have guessed from the cartoon ads that were on TV when you were little. 

Me: Yeah, they seem to hide a lot of the lore, which is a shame. The comics are more adult than most of the TV shows, I think you’d like them. 

M: Sounds like it. I love the spiritual robot stuff. 

Me: In the comics, there is a religious practice called Spectralism that you might really like. They see auras by filtering different light wave bandwidths through their optics in order to detect mood, and all the colours have meanings assigned to them. They change their paint colours in accordance with those colour meanings as well, on some occasions. Meditation is part of the practice. One of the transformers, Drift, had at least one vision; It’s hinted there might be more to Spectralism, but we don’t see all that much of it in any further detail, unfortunately. They also believe in Primus as a deity. 

M: It’s a shame they don’t elaborate more on it. It sounds very cool, like the stuff we were doing in the sixties and seventies. I bet Drift has some black light posters in his room, we had tons of them. Loved the velvet ones. 

Me: He does have an altar, I think. Or a least a prayer area, it’s mentioned he meditates fairly frequently, from what I remember. 

M: (Starts singing Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple) That was the best, put some tunes on... Good driving music, too! 

On Femme Transformers and Sexism in Sci-Fi: 

Me: So there are some lady Transformers, too! 

M: Ooh! 

Me: There’s Arcee, who is the pink one you probably remember from the ads or the cartoons, and in the comics she’s officially transgender. 

M: Excellent! Trans-formers. Good. 

Me: Yes! And there’s not just her, there’s Nautica and Velocity in the comics as well, plus Elita-One... (I showed her pictures of each.) 

M: I like Velocity. I love the teal, the Thunderbird on the back is excellent. 

Me: I like Velocity, too. 

M: Elita has the head cones, not sure how I feel about that. She’s also pink, it’s hard to keep track of them all. I like Arcee, she has the Princess Leia hair helmet! 

Me: I figured you’d like that. It’s pretty good. 

M: I like Arcee and Velocity the best so far. 

Me: There’s quite a few female or femme transformers now. There didn't used to be, and there were some mistakes made here and there, but nowadays there’s a much wider cast. 

M: That’s good, I’m surprised, but in a good way. There were never women main characters in sci-fi stuff when I was a kid, it’s why Star Trek was such a big deal, and even then, it wasn’t all that great. There was Uhura, Nurse Chapel, but there were a lot of weird episodes...

Me: I love the Romulan Commander, though. 

M: She was the best! Wished we got to see her more. 

Me: Me too. But in Transformers, they’re doing a good job with the female coded characters, as least as far as I’ve seen.

M: That’s good to know. I’m glad that exists for girls who want to play Transformers, too. It always seemed like such a macho thing, the way they advertised it. 

Me: Yeah, that’s still a problem to some degree, but I remember it being way more aggressively worse in the 80s/90s. 

M: It was worse in the 50s when I was a kid! Cooking sets were the girl toy. They made Star Trek for boys, but when all the girls ended up being the main demographic that watched it, they cancelled it. It was Lucy from I Love Lucy who brought it back, I remember you told me that! 

Me: Yep!

M: I’m glad little girls have Arcee. And little boys. They’re robots, they don’t have gender! 

Me: Exactly! 

--

If this kind of interview/conversation excerpt type thing is interesting to anyone, we’re happy to keep doing it! 

Give me questions or things to ask my mom, she’s happy to give you some “old lady perspective”, lmao. ❤️ 

[anikkis-fantasirealities]

“Finding the Captivating Dialogue for You”

④ How-to-do Feature ┊ ᴬˡˡ ᵒᶠ ᵃⁿ ᵃⁿᵉᶜᵈᵒᵗᵉ ˢᵒ ᵃʳᶦᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵃˡˡᵘʳᶦⁿᵍ ᵃᵗ ᵒⁿᶜᵉ··· ᶜᵃⁿ ᵇᵉᶜᵒᵐᵉ ᵃ ᶜᵒᵐᶦᶜ ᶜᵃᵖᵗᵘʳᶦⁿᵍ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵒʳᵉˢ ᵒᶠ ᶜᵒˡᵒʳᵉᵈ ᶜᵒʳⁿᵉᵃˢ·

꒰⁺˚₊·₍₍loading...₎₎ ✎...۪۫❁ཻུ۪۪ -ˏˋ 🃏 ˊˎ-

༘✶ ㊉ ㈦〘 ⅯⅯ 〙⋆｡˚𓆟 ༉ ║ Posted : ０６/１５/２１° ｡༄ ‧₊˚ ๑ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ •ଓ.° ｡❍ ㈩ ㊇

- - ——— ꒰ An article by Nicole “Nikki” Elaine S. Chua ꒱

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ₊·͟͟͟͟͟͟͞͞͞͞͞͞➳❥ ࿐ྂ—͙❬₊° ᶦ ᵃᵐ ᵃ ᵇˡᵒᵍᵍᵉʳ ᵃᶠᵗᵉʳ ᵃˡˡ·“= ‹⸙͎

Cure your boredom by finding something new! Enter the world of art and stories combined! Find the story to obsess over, only here on WEBTOON! Hold on, let me just shake out all the interpretative literary devices I had from my previous articles... There, much better! Welcome back to your favorite bunny—Nikki’s Tumblr blog! It feels a bit different here compared to when I am on Amino, to be honest. Yes, when I formally write without too many literary devices, my blogs smoothen like this, like it was polished with sandpaper or something. Anyway, I loosen up in order to display my love for something I’d like to offer to this world—one of those precious gems that have not been excavated in the realm of fandoms. Today, in this article, let’s enter the world of Webtoons and figure out 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙣 𝙒𝙀𝘽𝙏𝙊𝙊𝙉 (𝙇𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙒𝙚𝙗𝙩𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙨) 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧!

Oh, hold on your horses! You’re asking what do I mean by Line Webtoons? My apologies for not explaining that before I bring you along this own carpet ride. To begin with this sudden class session, webtoons are webcomics that have a vertical reading format. In Korea, “manhwa” is often something you’d hear when the locals there refer to comics. These webtoons originated from South Korea, and now, they are rebranded by different companies with their hit titles. One of those brands is Naver Webtoon, and internationally, it is known as Line Webtoons. In 2019, it has now become WEBTOON, for short! Korean webtoons that are from Naver Webtoon have been officially translated into English, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Spanish, French, and German languages in the present. At the same time, all these countries of the world wide web get to also be webtoon creators, too!

Comics are a mix of art and writing in multiple panels. Though unlike those readable from right to left, or the complete opposite of that, webtoons take advantage of vertical scrolling to reveal shocking key plot points and add more aesthetic in the blooming & stunning art they provide to the audience. They don’t upload once a month or year—in WEBTOON, there’s always something to read daily! Most WEBTOON series upload once a week, depending on its creator. As a reader, you’ll surely enjoy the vast options of webtoons to choose from reading at your own pace. There are many interesting genres, art styles, character designs, pairings, story lines, and themes to look forward to. The best part is, 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨, 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚! There’s a perfect story to dwell into for all kinds of people, so if you’re curious in knowing how to begin reading, let’s go ahead and jump into the app!

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𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓵: 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗘𝗕𝗧𝗢𝗢𝗡 𝗮𝗽𝗽 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗘𝗕𝗧𝗢𝗢𝗡 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲.

The first step to get started with WEBTOON is approaching its services, first! You If you haven’t encountered WEBTOON yet, you could either take a little peak behind its digital pages online. I recommend downloading the app to enjoy the WEBTOON experience to the maximum level. If your first language is not English, perhaps a more comfortable version of the app made for your location fortunately exists! Search for WEBTOON on the playstore, and you will spot the application in a flash. It is only 21 MB or megabytes big, so it is not painful to the phone storage.

However, if you want to save space, you can always take the other route and access the WEBTOON site here. You can search for WEBTOON on your device’s browser, and the link you see immediately will lead you to the destination you desire to land onto. The site is mostly used by personal computer users and those who cannot download the app. It functions the same way as the app, but not all the features, events, and other cool activities can be done here. So, I still suggest to head over to your device’s playstore to get the application!

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓶: 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗻-𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗘𝗕𝗧𝗢𝗢𝗡 𝗮𝗽𝗽.

Any app would instruct the user to create an account to use its services. For WEBTOON though, this is very worth it, for it gives you a chance to use your account to comment on WEBTOON episodes you adore, or subscribe to the series you want to follow and support. You can create an account using your email address and the password to access it personally. Just the same as any other process in signing-up for an account, you will type your own username. You could also your very own Facebook, Twitter, Google, or LINE account to enter, and your name on the site you’ve chosen to log-on with will become your name on WEBTOON.

It is editable, so don’t worry if your username so happened to be humiliating, and you absolutely must change it! Though, if you don’t want to create an account just yet, users can view webtoons with a press of a finger without signing up for anything, if you’d press the return key on your phone or if you’re browsing on the site. Once you submit your approval that you’ve read and understood the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy of WEBTOON, you can finally set foot on the real fun of webtoons!

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𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓷: 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀” 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲.

Okay, do not get confused! We’ll get to the rest of the areas of the app in a little bit! There’s a lot of things to do, now that we’ve finally arrived on WEBTOON platform itself. Though before being hyped at the things you are seeing right now, I’d like you to scroll down to the bottom of this “For You” section, and dig up the “Find your series” questionnaire to answer it. This is so that you can have an idea of what to expect here on WEBTOON, as well as what to read first. This is a questionnaire that will also introduce you to stories that you’d enjoy, without getting totally overwhelmed with content to stretch out into. No pressure in choosing, it will not affect how your account is set-up! Don’t worry about the results either. Answer as natural and honest as you can! This step is only applicable to those who are on the WEBTOON application. It is also optional to the reader, specifically if they are already used to reading webcomics and know what to expect.

Once you enter, it’d ask what are the genres you like. There is horror, comedy, thriller, fantasy, drama, romance, superhero, slice of life, action, and sci-fi. To clarify, slice of life does not literally mean a splitted life! It is a genre for stories that showcase the everyday life of a person, that are either relatable or engaging to read about. Choose as many genres as you want—it’s totally fine to check everything, or to choose one specific genre. Then, you can choose which art styles you prefer from the choices you see in front of your screen. Again, don’t worry about picking art styles—this is not a critical survey! Go ahead and pick many art styles you find pleasing to the eye. Then, you’ll get a list of webtoons recommended to you by the WEBTOON management! Easy, right?

You can take note of these titles given to you, or you can press on the webtoons you find interest in, and you will be taken to the webtoon’s contents in a jifty. That’s where you can read the description of the title’s plot, and you can instantly start reading if it strummed your heartstrings. You can continue discovering more stories to read from here, since the freedom is yours. Even so, there are still parts of the application to discuss that may give you an extra hand later on. Stick around this article for more of that, especially when you need an enthusiatic tour guide like me!

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓸: 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀” 𝘁𝗮𝗯.

If you’re still following me, you may exit the questionnaire that you entered into a while ago. Now, if you scroll up, we’re back seeing graphics moving sideways at the front page. Oh, did you something catch your eye there? These graphics that WEBTOON fans usually call as “banners” (or, for me, personally—anyway,) are another way to gain interest in choosing stories to read. Long story short, when I became a WEBTOON reader, my all-time favorite webcomic from WEBTOON was first shown to me on a banner. (A very epic one, too!) Most of the webtoons shown here are in the “Originals” tab! From “For You,” press the Originals tab next. These are the tenths of webtoons that you can also read here on WEBTOON. The image is just one section of that. If you can observe, there are the seven days of the week stated at the top of these webtoons, under the word, “Daily.” You might be asking why is this section called, “Originals.” All these webtoons found under this tab are in partnership with the WEBTOON management, and these stories release new episodes weekly!

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That simply means that the creators of these webtoons are working together with WEBTOON to share their stories with us, and what’s the best thing? They get to tell their stories, while fulfilling their dream full-time job as a paid webcomic creator! Their work is now known as “WEBTOON ORIGINALs,” though before, they used to be “Featured Webtoons.” Everyday, various webtoons of different genres update with new parts to continue the story from where they left off previously, so there’s definitely something to look forward to from Mondays to Sundays. There are also more choices here than those in the questionnaire, so if you weren’t contented with what you got from answering questions, you can also come here to pick out stories. There are also webtoons under “Completed,” and we’ll get to those in a bit. If you’d ask me what I usually do on Originals, I read everything in general, so I never run out of things to read, but I’m more fond of fantasy genres. You can also choose webtoons from all days of the week, so you can keep reading something everyday before going to school or work, or perhaps, when you’re about to sleep.

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓹: 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗖𝗮𝗻𝘃𝗮𝘀” 𝘁𝗮𝗯.

Now, there must be another question in your head. “How are these webcomic creators chosen to be featured, or have their work included under WEBTOON ORIGINALs?” There are a couple of ways, though, we’ll focus on this canvas of ideas for this article. Usually, creators are discovered on the fan submissions area of the application. Yes, you heard me right! If you are someone who loves drawing comics as well, then you can give this opportunity a shot and meet other aspiring creators here on “Canvas!” So, let’s move from the “Originals” tab and head straight into the “Canvas” section. The webtoons here are under the word, “Spotlight.” It’s simply because these webtoons are uploaded by other webcomic creators who are not affiliated by WEBTOON, yet. So, you could say that this is the wider scope of webtoons to look through. The best thing about “Canvas” which used to be “Discover,” is the fact that we can support these writers and/or artists by reading their stories.

WEBTOON is a platform perfect for people to test the waves of being a webcomic creator. At the same time, they are given the chance to gain a community of a readers that you could also be a part of! However, since these webtoons labeled as “CANVAS WEBTOONs,” are not fully paid by WEBTOON, there is no guarantee that they’ll upload episodes every week. They are free to upload on their own running schedule, but in return, they are also free to create any story they like, as long as it follows the WEBTOON guidelines. Just a brief heads-up, you must have a computer or laptop, in order to upload your own webcomic on WEBTOON. For us readers, it’s a big chance for us to find stories we’ll fall in love with—the one that will make us invested and devoted to how the story continues. If you give the CANVAS WEBTOON more support, who knows? You might be a part of their life accomplishment journey to doing what they love for a living. Very heartwarming, I see.

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓺: 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱, 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗽𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀.

We’ve already seen all the webtoons that the app has to offer to us. Despite that, there’s a chance that you still don’t know what stories pique the elements you like in a plot. Now that you know that there are more webtoons to search for on the WEBTOON app, you might need a guide or factor to know what’s the best story to try out. This is why the rankings and genre sections exist on the app! You can view the rankings of WEBTOON ORIGINALs and CANVAS WEBTOONs in their respective tabs. For ORIGINALs, you can click on the badge-like icon to the top right, while in CANVAS, you can see the rankings immediately. If you want to see the complete rankings list for CANVAS WEBTOONs, pressing the arrow at the right side of the rankings preview will do the trick! This step is for users who cannot decide based on what gem of a webtoon preview has caught their attention. If you'd like to find out what webtoons are popular overall, or in their corresponding genres, be sure to use this feature to weigh the odds. We are people who are influenced by whatever is loved by many, after all.

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If ten genres weren't enough choices during the questionnaire, well, thankfully there is more to play with! In the genre sections of both types of webtoons on WEBTOON, which you can see alongside the rankings, you can also view webtoons listed under the supernatural, mystery, sports, historical, heartwarming, and informative genres! So, in total, there are 16 genres to step into, and that's a plenty! In that said area, you can tell which genres have the best stories based on how many people read each webtoon. You can also sort these webtoons by interests, likes, or date. Just press the "Genres" button next to the "Daily" or "Spotlight" text on either tabs. The "sorting the webtoons by interests" option would depend on what your account has read, so far. These features are really handy to introduce to you new webtoons to take your eyes on or pay attention to.

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓻: 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗠𝘆” 𝘁𝗮𝗯.

I suppose you've already chosen a webtoon to read, or maybe you're already into collecting webtoon titles to remember reading. Regardless, let's make things a little easier. You'd need your account, first! If you haven't created one yet, head to the log-in page and go back to Step No. 2. Catch up here when you're done, alright? If you’re already here, let me take you a stroll around this “My” tab. This section has list of features that are for the account’s convenience and personalization. It tells you what webtoons episodes have you recently read, downloaded, commented, and unlocked. It also states what webtoons have you subscribed to. Oh, yes, you can do all these things for your favorite stories on WEBTOON! To try that out, go to your chosen webtoon to read. As a reader, you are given the chance to rate the webtoon from 1 to 10—whether it is an ORIGINAL or CANVAS-type. That also makes heads turn away or stare closer at the stories, to see if they are worthy of their time.

Just like how subscriptions work on Youtube or any other platform, subscribing to a webtoon with your account means that you’ll get notifications whenever it uploads. It’s also easier to access subscribed webtoons through the “My” tab, instead of continously searching for your favorite stories all over the application or site as if you’re in a never-ending maze. You can track down the episodes you’ve downloaded for offline use as well, which comes in great situations where wifi is not available. Be aware that downloaded episodes will remain on your account for 30 days only, however. After 30 days, you may download the episodes again. Commenting on episodes can give you interaction with other readers’ ideas—those reactions, arguments, discussions, and, well! You could even talk about romantic pairing wars and all that’s fizzling in the premise of the story. With this section of the app, your account will be able to be fit and active, while it gives access to more parts of WEBTOON—including the possession of fast pass coins to unlock episodes for early reading! Wait a minute. Why must we, and how do we do that?

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𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓼: 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁.

Fast pass on WEBTOON allows you to read episodes before they are publicly released. In other words, you can gain early access to your most awaited ORIGINAL WEBTOONs’ episodes, especially when they get on that gripping cliffhanger that makes you want to go crazy with what happens next! The question is, how can we use fast pass? We can do that with coins called, “fast pass coins.” This in-app currency will permit you to avail one fast pass episode every five coins. In order to get coins, however, there is real money transactions involved. Though, do not fret, because you do not need to spend a dime or a single peso over buying fast pass episodes! WEBTOON offers users to gain five or more fast pass coins through events in the app.

These vary from having to log-in in 7 days, or read similarly themed webtoons that are featured per event. It’s free to do, though, they do not come by all the time—events do not run forever, after all. So, take on the challenge when it arrives, and get yourself some fast pass episodes to enjoy! One benefit in taking part in fast pass coins events is reading new stories that you’ve never tried peaking into before, because who knows when will it become your top webtoon choice in the future? Take it for me—one webtoon became my favorite when the first fast pass coins event entitled, “Climb the Tower challenge,” occured. I participated and had climbed 100 episodes, and now here I am chilling with floors and betrayal!

If you haven’t asked, all fast pass coins given to each webtoon will have a part of its value given to the creators of the said stories. In other words, it’s like directly supporting the artists, writers, and creators of the stories you love! This step can only be done to ORIGINAL WEBTOONs. CANVAS WEBTOONs do not have fast pass, though its creators can provide Patreon accounts where fans can donate or give thanks for their eloquent and awesome stories to tell.

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓽: 𝗗𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲.

Remember when I mentioned “completed” webtoons prior to this step? It’s interesting that there also webtoons that have ended, so there is a section for WEBTOON ORIGINALs that have ended in the “Originals” tab. Here, you can still binge-read completed webtoons for as many times you want to, and you can also gain a collection of read finished webtoons on your proud wall. The satisfaction is there when you finish a story—but, wait a minute. We are familiar with fast pass, now, what’s up with this daily pass? For some completed webtoons, they are readable with the daily pass feature. This makes a webtoon’s episodes first episode public for reading, but the twist is, to read the next episodes, you must come back everyday to continue. Episodes in the middle until the end of the story are locked, and can only be carried on if you’ve lended a daily pass entry for it to be opened for a limited time. Then, you can access the next episodes in the following days. Tedious as it may be, you could also pay for fast pass coins to read these specific completed webtoons quicker.

However, if your route is free reading, it is also a fulfilling experience to follow a story as if it was still uploading everyday, instead of reading it in one sitting. This is the patience, yet satisfaction, that can be acquired from daily pass. That is also the goal of WEBTOON for implementing such a feature to their application. You don’t have to pay for anything if you don’t want to speed up your time in reading. This step is definitely for you, if you’re already reading ongoing webtoons, but want to find more stories in the completed section. Trust me, the stories we got here with the daily pass feature were real hits back in the day—somehow, the dust on their covers will be swept away when you touch it. It’s worth it, so why not give it a shot? I heard that one completed webtoon here was recently adaptated into an anime, another has been published physically, while the other was given a live-action K-drama on Netflix! Let’s see if you can figure out which stories these are!

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 ⓾: 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗻𝘀!

So, once you’ve found your beloved webtoons, fully invested into them with your account, made use of fast pass, and indulge into daily pass, the only thing left to do to begin on WEBTOON is to stick to it! Keep being a WEBTOON reader, and enjoy as many webtoons as you’d like. As you keep being on the application or site, you will encounter more features of WEBTOON, and maybe, as you stick around, more surprises & stories will be coming your way. There’s the fan translation area to explore, where you can translate the webtoons you’d love to support and be a contributor to its spread to other languages. There are thousands of CANVAS WEBTOONs being promoted in the front page for explorers to uncover reading. Spotlights at the bottom of the front page compile webtoons together, and you’d get to see more webtoons that may be under the spotlighted theme you adore!

You will be a part of this passionate WEBTOON community, and I’d like to thank you if you keep engaging into this craft as a reader. WEBTOON is a group of people who loves comics, and webcomics alike. It’s a place where creators and readers get to connect, at the same time, reach for their dreams. This is where their imaginations sprint wild—the happiness, sadness, anger, fear, worry, doubt, cheer, and excitement at every panel scrolling down your devices. You will be joining along with its growth, as well as all webcomic creators trying out on the platform, that WEBTOON sincerely cares for, wherever or whoever they are. You can witness how its stories will not only become panels and dialogue, but also animation, live-action, physical books, and other media types all around the world.

Do continue finding the captivating dialogue for you in WEBTOON, because for sure, it will become the message you will hold onto for life. Dramatic Nikki aside, thank you very much for reading this article! I had a blast—almost like I was going to be blasted on a rocket ship to Mars, while I was writing this feature. I hope my steps were able to help you get started on WEBTOON, and I’d like to bid you all the best on your personal voyage here. I believe each story of how we became attached to something is very significant, so take this moment to make it a memorable event in your life. Once more, thank you for reading! Come back again in another blog in the unknown future, where my fantasies become realities! A Nikki reminder: don’t just be ordinary when everyone is doing wrong—be unORDINARY, right & just, and continue to climb without holding back!

· * ✫ * ⊹ * ˚ . . 　　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · . * · . · · + . ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ· ** ˚ . . + 　　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · . *

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ. . + 　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · .˚ ⊹ · * ✧ ⋆ · * . · . · · .. . .

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ· + ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ· * ✫ * ⊹ * ˚

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ · ** ˚ . . + ㅤㅤ　· ⋆ * . * . . · . · .˚ ⊹ · * ✧

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ⋆ · * . · ㅤㅤ . · · .. . . · + .

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ. · + . *

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ⋆ * . * . .

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ . · ·

ㅤㅤ﹙dedication. ﹚ ୨˚୧ ˚ ༘♡.↳ ₊˚‧

This blog is dedicated to you who is like me, and him who is like her. Both webtoon characters that I salute the most—and that beautiful set of panels that has become my lifestory. May you be in work for ten years or five years, I will cherish you, with this shining sword—diamond, ADAMAS.

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ﹋﹋﹌﹌﹌「 🗼 」﹌﹌﹌﹋﹋

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ┊彡 Credits

➥ Cover Edit

➫ WEBTOON app

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➥ First Blog Dividers

➫ Soara Academy

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➥ The Rest of the Blog Dividers

➫ WEBTOON app

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➥ Source of Information

➫ Webtoon Wikipedia page

➫ WEBTOON (Line Webtoon) Wikipedia page

➫ My own knowledge as a WEBTOON reader

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...Are you asking me if I wanted to be a WEBTOON ambassador...? Yes, but I have no social media influence. I'm just a small bunny in a burrow who loves talking and helping people get to know more about WEBTOON. Also, thank you for liking this, cheezbot. You're such a cute Tumblr bot, indeed.

ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ⭆ Back to Homepage ⭅

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[johannas-motivational-insults]

I apologize in advance for this but these thoughts were bothering me and I needed to get them out. I’m in the process of unpacking a lot of my own trauma and that has made interacting with my family difficult at times. And I guess I figure maybe someone else could relate and these feelings might be best sent out into the world rather than filed neatly away in a box much too tidy for them.

A letter to my parents

I know it must be hard. I was your child, your baby. Maybe you didn’t look at me with the same wonder as you did your first baby, or your second, but I was still all yours, a piece of you. I depended on you, I sought out your touch, you were everything to me. It must be hard now, when I don’t share my thoughts or feelings or plans, when I don’t seek your counsel, when I don’t offer affection. It must be hard, feeling like an annoyance. Trust me, I’d know.

You made me feel hopeless, like I couldn’t do anything right and was a bad child just for existing. I hated you. I dreaded you coming home from your work trips because it threw off my equilibrium, because it meant a different set of rules I never really understood, a set I was doomed to break. It meant dodging an iron fist, it meant walking on eggshells, it meant pingponging between resignation and fury at the oppressive atmosphere. You were supposed to love me, and you made me feel like a nuissance, a problem to be fixed. You were supposed to protect me, and you made me feel unsafe.

And you. You made me feel worthless, like I wasn’t worth protecting. Like it was my fault I was getting dragged off and beaten for infractions I didn’t understand, or for daring to say it wasn’t fair. Don’t rock the boat, don’t wave the red flag, be good little girl and maybe you’ll be spared this time. I resented you. I resented your weakness, and that weakness made me resent my own sex more than I already did. You were supposed to love me, and maybe you did, but not in the way I needed. You were supposed to protect me, and you let me get hurt. Why?

You were supposed to teach me how to function in this world. But mostly you just taught me not to stand up for myself, not to have any mind or desires of my own, to avoid conflict at all costs or else. Then you wonder why decades later I have a hard time taking risks, committing to decisions, trusting people. Trusting you. You wonder why my hugs are weak and short, why my conversations are clipped and shallow, why I don’t share my plans and dreams with you. Do you really think you’ve earned my trust? The later trauma notwithstanding, the homophobia and the invasions of privacy and the lack of support, how could I trust you when I spent my formative years feeling unsafe in my own home?

It must be hard. I understand it hurts, feeling cut off from your own creation. But you have no one to blame but yourselves.

[sapphos-darlings]

hey! i'm kind of a baby lesbian, and i just could use a little advice... please delete this if it's not the sort of question you answer and i'm so sorry to bother you both if that's the case! so my question is, if i'm a lesbian (and i'm mostly sure i am) do i have to be/can i be attracted to nonbinary people? i've seen a lot of people saying that lesbians *have to be* attracted to nb people, but i don't really understand how that works... so sorry again if this is against your rules.

Hello, Anon! Please don't apologize, there's nothing to fear or be ashamed of here. This is Lavender, ready to help.

Oh, my dear, your sexuality doesn't work according to rules like "should be attracted to", and only you can tell if you are or "can" be attracted to someone.

Let's start with the most important thing, and that is that anyone who's trying to tell you that you have to be attracted (which often just means sexually available) to anyone is manipulating and pressuring you. That is coercion. Sexual coercion is rape. You don't ever have to prove anything to anyone with your body. Never.

You are thinking in political and ideological terms. It sounds to me like you're trying to figure out your sexuality by making a list of groups of people you're potentially attracted to, because you think saying "I'm a lesbian" is a political or moral statement that needs a disclaimer of your personal stance on every bit of discourse that surrounds LGBT identities.

You don't need to do that. No one has the right to demand explanation from you. It's the same as with people who respond to a woman's "I'm a lesbian" with stuff like "but how do you know if you haven't tried men?" or "how will you give grandkids to your parents?" These are acts of disrespect towards your identity and privacy, and what you're experiencing is this very subtle social pressure to conform and explain yourself.

Sexual orientation is an innate and biological function. It doesn't care about things like social norms, cultural practices or indeed the current hottest discourse, or what's trendy. It just is, and it works on person to person level when you meet real people in the real world.

So you're a woman who's (probably) attracted only to other women. So am I. That's what a lesbian is. It doesn't mean that I'm attracted to all women or every woman, just that all the people I'm attracted to are women.

Now, yes, things might get tricky when we consider all those people whose identities are more complex than simple sex = gender. That's something you can't necessarily see or tell about a person right away, and perhaps you don't understand or relate to the experience at all.

That's alright. You're not other people. You are you, and when you learn about your own orientation and grow confident in it, you won't think what other people's experiences, ideologies or opinions mean for you, because that's nothing.

Nonbinary people are also not a cohesive group, so making blanket statements about all of them is pretty useless, at least in this context. There are male nonbinary people, and obviously a lesbian is not attracted to them. Then there are female nonbinary people, and well, you can't know by looking if she is nonbinary or not, so you may or may not find her attractive, and then you are or are not attracted to her.

Personally I don't feel the need to say anything more than that I'm attracted to other women (or female people, if you prefer the inclusive version), and if someone wants to know if she specifically is attractive to me, she should come up to me and ask.

- Lavender

[alexandermanes]

halloween week, day two - the hunt

hi! welcome to day two of my halloween week fic! This one is a werevolf au, tw for blood, graphic descriptions of gore and werewolf transformation

IT BELMANES CENTRIC OK BC I ALWAYS WRITE MALEX

summary: the pod squad is a wolf squad and jesse manes hunts them down 

ao3

The moon was set high in the sky as six pairs of legs galloped on the sterile sandy soil in Roswell, New Mexico; soft thick fur dancing in the wind. Usually people steered clear from the desert once the sun had set. Tonight was a full moon which always meant agonizing metamorphosis, bones cracking, nails and fur growing, eyes glowing, teeth piercing through flesh; blood, so much blood. With every full moon came the reminder of their curse, but it also brought a foreign sense of freedom, such as running through the desert as a wolf, something so primal and common amongst various animals, something that ordinary human beings could never experience it.  

Freedom wasn’t something Michael, Isobel and Max ever experienced since their conception; the lack of freedom was passed down from generation to generation. The curse was bearable, despite excruciating, but it had its perks, though the witch that cursed their bloodline could have never predicted that once their ancestors set foot in a supposedly uninhabited “new” land they’d be persecuted by men. Not just any men, men from the same bloodline. Man who they came to know as Manes men. Maybe the witch had predicted their fate after all, an addition to their misery. With each generation of their family the tale of their curse became more and more unclear, trapped in a fog set by time, the story’s veracity crumbled; instead of a single myth there were many and each family knew a tale that diverged slightly or enormously from the original one. However, the witch’s name or her family’s name were unknown, the only common denominators in all versions of the story of the family’s curse.      

For years the Manes have hunted them and for years they traveled through the country, hiding and never staying in one place for too long yet here they were, back in Roswell after all this time. The Manes were relentless, always somehow one or two steps behind, breathing down their necks even if indirectly, they were powerful people, hunters nonetheless. And hunters, like beasts, were drawn to the smell of shed blood. Though their families vowed to never harm a hair in a human’s head the target in their heads never seemed to waver, not to the Manes.

Soon, it would be dawn, and they would morph into their human form again, and the cycle would repeat itself for other five days until the full moon would transitioned to a quarter moon. Feeling the soothing approach of dawn, Isobel directed her pack, her brothers to the nearest cave, a cave they strategically left clothes and blankets in for once they were back to being bipeds again.

“So, what’s the plan, Iz?”, Michael asked as he put on his shirt, his back to his siblings, as they had their backs turned to him too. The bare minimum of privacy.

“Survive the week, move the next”  

Once the rustling of clothes ceases silence settled, an indication they were all decent, Michael looked at his siblings, something dark settled in his features

“Y’know, this would all be done with if we got rid of them”

“All of them?”, Isobel asked pointedly, her tone imbued in annoyance

“Well-“

“Well, all of them except your precious Alex, that is”

“He is not like them”, Michael remarked wearily and slightly offended on Alex’s behalf

“They are all the same. They are all monsters”

“Izzy-“

“Michael, please. I get it, okay? You’re in love”, her brother chocked on air as if her words were some kind of revelation, “doesn’t automatically undo all the things his family did to ours”

Michael and Isobel were tied by blood, but not like her and Max, Michael was her cousin but in every way that counted he was her brother and despite being a thick-skulled, one-track minded asshole sometimes, he was and forever would be her brother. Even if he fell for a Manes man, the same men that-

No, she was not going there.

“Let’s go have breakfast”, she offered and both brothers nodded, acquiescing silently

-

   Sunlight streamed through The Crashdown’s window’s, soft and feather-like warmth enveloped the siblings. The diner was mostly empty given the fact that it was early in the morning, before seven o’clock. They were greeted by a smiling and antennae-wearing Liz Ortecho, who seemed genuinely glad to see them after so many years, and it had Max blushing just by being the receiving end of her smile.

After ordering their morning coffee and skimming through the pages on their menu, finally they ordered their breakfast food.

“It’s good to be back”, Max sighed into his coffee

“Is it though?”, Isobel muttered under her breath, still analyzing the menu, her light brown wig looking a bit more like her actual hair

“Okay, Izzy. I’d get the morning crank, if it was all that this”, Max zig-zagged his finger in her direction, looking suspicious under his baseball cap, “was about. Which it ain’t, so talk to us, Izzy”, he looked at her with his puppy hazel eyes earnestly and all her irritation melted away and grew subsequently like a cart on a rollercoaster ride.

“Fine”, she squinted her light green eyes and glared at her brothers, “I’m tired of running”, she says matter-of-factly, “if they want to come for us I say let them try to take the first swing”

“Wait”, Max says at the same time Michael chokes on his omelet

“Isobel are you sure this isn’t about -“

“Don’t”, she interrupts him menacingly, green eyes sparkling with rage and something else entirely “don’t start, Max”

“Isobel”, he tries again

“Please”, she pleads a bit too loudly earning a concerned and quizzical look from Liz and Arturo

“Okay”, her brother relents, “but we still need to talk about this”, his voice is soft but his eyes are stern, nothing short of determination, “we’ve let you call the shots, wherever you pointed to we just followed behind. Now though, staying here? With the Manes around, in their hometown? We at least need to talk about it”

Michael and Isobel nod in acquisition knowing this problem will resurface sooner rather than later.

-

               In the afternoon, Isobel and her brothers plopped down and huddled together on the small sofa inside the Bunker beneath the Sanders Auto, ready to discuss what they’d postponed for too long.

“So”, Max started, “why are we here?”

“Uh, we can’t exactly go outside and walk around like actual p-“

“Enough with the games, Isobel”, uttered wearily

“Fine”, she shouted, she adjusted her posture, back straight, predatorily so, like a snake about to lunge at its prey

“I meant what I said when I told you I was tired of running”, Isobel explained more calmly, “So I said fuck it. We can start over here and if they try anything, well”, her unfinished sentence hung threateningly in the air.

After a couple of seconds, Michael spoke: “Then what?”

“You said it yourself, Michael”, her reply is devoid of any emotion except determination

“What? We kill them?”, disbelief embedded in his query

“You were right”, she turned her body towards her brother, assessing him with her piercing gaze, “This went on for far too long and I’m done with fleeing from a place to another, never settling down for more than a couple of months then moving across the country. I mean don’t you want more from life?”

“Listen, I’m all for killing the Jesse Manes and his minions. But don’t you think we need a plan? We can’t go in bearing our canines and growling, it’s gonna get us killed”

“Since when do you plan for anything, Michael?”

“Since it comes as a matter of life and death, Isobel!”, he screams, scrambling to his feet

The youngest fits the eldest, Max, a worried glance, prompting him to chime in, to say anything about their sister’s all but suicidal plan if you could call that a plan really. Max suddenly looks at both his feet and exhales deeply and turns to Isobel, his voice barely above a whisper:

“This is about Noah, isn’t it?”

Immediately, her eyes fill with tears at the mention of her ex-fiancé, she turns away and starts pacing, meanwhile Michael and Max stare at her, the first wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape, the other unfazed.

“Iz-“

“No, Michael. You don’t get to say anything!”, she points her wavering finger to him as tears pour out of her very soul, “You get to be happy, you get to be have the person you love because that person can protect you. I don’t”

In truth, Isobel loved Noah, she really did, though it might not have been the constant butterflies and fire in her belly like she imagined romantic love to be. In all her years, the constant moving and fear that permeated her life, no partner ever stood by her side like Noah did, not that she had had many, she never needed to, she had Noah, and he was loyal and understanding of her wishes, until he wasn’t. Not that blame fell upon him for their failed relationship, but neither did it fall on her: it wasn’t her fault. Eventually the lack of stability conjoined with lack of explanation as to why they had to move at all took a toll on their relationship and it came to bitter end. And Isobel, always fierce and defying, couldn’t find it in her to confess her secret to her, at the time, partner, because it meant risking the lives of everyone she loved. And it’s not like she had any friends, she had none, haven’t been able to keep people that aren’t related by blood to her.

Hopeless, Isobel lived her everyday trying to convince herself she wasn’t meant to find any happiness in this lifetime. Despite knowing not to risk the lives of her family, she yearned for something and as that struggle grew tenfold, she faltered and here they were. She tried to find happiness in anything else in her life but without Noah, her life seemed ever bleaker than before and something inside her cracked, like a clock’s engine giving out and suddenly she was unable function properly. Thus, she decided to drag her brothers back to Roswell in a moment of weakness.

“It’s not fair”, she croaks, “This curse, it took everything from us”

“Not the curse”, Michael corrected her gently and squeezed her shoulder tenderly, “The Manes”

“What’s the difference at this point?”, she sniffled, and fit her head on the crook of Michael’s neck, burying her woeful face

Max finally stands and trudges towards his siblings and puts his hands on the shoulder that’s not embraced by Michael

“Iz, you can’t. I know you miss him, but if you see him again you might break and he can’t know”, Max explained

“I just need to see him again, please”, she sobbed desperately

Max just looked at Michael, desperation creeping, he was out of ideas, and as for his brother, he just shrugged jerkily, already feeling desperate himself.

-

As dusk approached, and the colors of the sky grew colder and darker, the three sibling where once again in the middle of the sterile soil of New Mexico, which stretched out to the horizon and all around them, which meant they were away from humans, from their peering gaze and fragile bodies. Good, she thought, face stained with tears.

They stood there in their underwear in a circle, waiting for the moment the sun excused itself to give the moon space to make an appearance in the sky.

“Iz”, Michael tried meekly, “we’re gonna figure this out, okay?”

Isobel smiled at him weakly, as if mustering a smile was the most difficult task ever, and took his hand. Her brother, for all his confidence and snark he was one soft man.

Max took her other hand and declared it was almost time. Soon enough, they started to feel the effects of their transformation, the vibration beneath their skin, their molecules rearranging themselves, the hum in their ears growing louder. If only it was just vibrating into a wolf. If only. Their bones moved as if they had a life of their own, which in nights of full moons they did, it was a kind of pain you had no words for, their organs squished between their bone structure as their whole body shifted to a new form. The cracking and moving made an awful noise especially with their heightened senses. They fell to the ground, body accommodating their four-legged body. They’d scream if they could, but only whimpers come out. Blood streamed out of their ears, eyes and noses, and once their teeth sharpened and pierced their gums, blood poured out of their mouths as well. The hairs on their body grew, itching, long and thick as they became fur. Though the pain was excruciating, they stood in their wolf bodies for the sheer power of magic that coursed through them.

Fully transformed, they shook their bodies like a dog dripping with water would, shaking the after-effects of the metamorphosis. They assed each other, making sure they were okay. Isobel went in front of them, pearly white fur bouncing under the moonlight, her eyes emerald green, and Max followed behind, velvety black fur and honey eyes and finally Michael, golden fur and golden eyes, queued behind. They didn’t explore by themselves tonight, nor did they run free, they simply strolled aimlessly. Wandering. They roamed through the desert for what it felt like hours.

Something in the distance caught their enhanced hearing: a car, and it was speeding closer and closer, instead of running and hiding in the nearest cave they stood still. Something, instinct if you must label it, told them this was no ordinary vehicle filled with curious tourists or bored and unruly teens; this was deliberate, not an accident. So they braced themselves for the fight, knowing full well it was Jesse Manes and whoever planned to exterminate them specifically. Yes, them, their family, because even when they kept their noses clean, keeping a strict non-human (as food) for diet, the Manes were still relentless, with the exception of one Alex Manes who was disgustingly head-over-heels in love with Michael.

So they stood still, predatory stance and unyielding focus, and waited. A couple of minutes later, small spheres of yellow gleamed in the darkness of nightfall. They grew bigger and bigger until the trio saw them for what they were: headlights. A black SUV, menacingly approached them rapidly until it stopped about seven feet away from them. Out of it jumped, expectedly, Jesse Manes and someone else, someone who looked awfully similar to Alex but wasn’t. In their hands they wielded glistening silver guns which were probably loaded with silver bullets. How convenient. Arms steadily pointed at them, the siblings would have to prepare an attack that’d be quick and unexpected. No one moved, not even by inch, time seemed to have stilled and the air was as thick as their wolf fur, it was harder to breathe.

Then, something different filled the air. And of course, Michael smelled him before he saw him, his siblings who followed closely behind. The wolves’ laser-focus wavered, ears moving in a way that allowed them to pick out the sound of another car more efficiently. Noticing the distraction that took over the wolves, Jesse Manes looked at the other man questioningly who shrugged equally confused until the other SUV was parked behind Jesse’s. And out of it climbed none other than Alex Manes who without second thought shot who they realized now was his brother sided with Jesse. The shot was aimed at his knee, and he fell to the ground with a shout. Jesse had barely any time to react when a bullet pierced his chest, a clean shot to his heart and as he fell to the ground kneeling and before him stood a man, as tall as Max, maybe taller, dark hair and dark eyes, strong clenched jaw. His smelled like sweat and something incredibly sweet. He was the most beautiful thing Isobel had ever set eyes on. The clink of metal being hit brought Isobel out of her daze and she snapped her attention to her brothers seemingly unharmed. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw movement, she braced for an attack momentarily only to realize it was Alex, moving closer to them.

“Is he dead?”, Alex breathed out

“Yeah”, the other man whispered, his voice made Isobel shiver

“Can you take Flint to the hospital? I can take it from now, Greg”, Alex came closer to him and patted his shoulder, “Thanks for helping. You didn’t have to do that”, he pointed to their father’s lifeless body

“It’s fine, Alex. I should’ve protected you from him sooner”, Greg replied

Alex nodded in thanks and as Greg moved to assist Flint, who resisted the help accusing them of treason, he spared a glance to Isobel whose heart thumped so fast she thought she might have a heart attack. Then he turned back, hauled Flint up and sat him on the passenger’s seat then jogged to the driver’s seat. He drove away and took a piece of Isobel’s mind and her with him.

“It’s over guys”, Alex announced, “He is dead, and you’re safe now. My brother and I will handle Flint but we won’t let him close to you. I’ll protect you from now on”

Michael, the sap, galloped towards him, and wrapped his body around him, and rubs himself onto him like a house cat, leaning his very wolf weight on him and earning a startled laughter from his boyfriend, Alex, tumbled a bit but did not fall. Alex, who a moment before shot his own brother to keep them safe and now was gushing over Michael’s domesticated feline behavior. And Isobel knows she should feel guilty for judging her brother’s boyfriend so harshly, she should also feel relieved for being set free from the Jesse Manes’ claws. Except she feels confusion and longing directed at a man she’d just met.

She hoped she could introduce herself properly to Alex’s brother and she desperately hoped her feelings would be reciprocated.  And the very least,  possible she hoped she’d see him again.

[thelanternlight]

Source

Witchy Asks!

Hello fellow witches! Here’s 50 Witchy Asks written by the-lunar-vixen. Please follow if you enjoy them. Blessed be!

1    What type of witch are you?

A gay one.

2    What deities do you like to work with, if any?

Angels, faery, guides, Mother God, Father God, Christ, saints, and ancestors. I'll also work with deities from various religions as they pertain to a spell or ritual (e.g. I may work with Hathor for a love spell).

3    Have you ever created your own spell?

Absolutely, most of the spellwork I do is original at least to some extent.

4    What’s your favorite time of year?

All the year is beautiful and wonderful for a myriad of reasons but Springtime is sacred to me.

5    Do you have a witch you look up to?

I think I have teachers that come and go in my life. They can be famous or not famous, witches or not, etc. Currently I'm loving Ember Honeyraven.

6    What makes you feel powerful?

Balance and freedom. Knowing that I'm on the side of what's good and right.

7    Do you have a favorite myth?

I'm an author and storyteller so I have many, many favorite myths. Off the top of my head I love the stories of Medusa, Apollo, the Christian Creation myth, Germanic and Scandinavian folklore, Anansi and his stories, Arthurian legends... the list goes on, but yes I LOVE stories. I think have so much meaning and wisdom to share.

8    Which famous/fantasy witch do you relate to the most?

I've grown up watching witches in movies, television, reading about them, etc so I've related to witches one way or another since day one. The Charmed Ones (all four) were role models for me when there were no role models for little, effeminate weirdos like myself as a child. The Sanderson Sisters were person heroes to me and I tried to emulate them from the very first time I saw the film; in fact those three are perhaps the original witches with whom I related the most. Since then there have been SO many wonderful characters in entertainment and in real life that inspired me so incredibly much that they've become a part of me.

9    Are you a wiccan?

I am not.

10   What’s the most unique item you’ve ever used in a spell?

I guess a dildo? I think 'unique' is a relative term.

11   Do you own any witchy books?

Apart from my personal book of spells I've owned many books on witchcraft but have parted ways with the majority of them. I'm currently trying to downsize the amount I have currently as it happens. Anybody want some free books?

12   Which misconception about witches annoys you the most?

That magic isn't real and this is all nonsense. I think it's especially irritating when people of other faiths criticize my own as if a prayer is anything different from an incantation. In fact I would argue that spells direct energy in a more concentrated way to affect change than simply petitioning a deity.

13   Have you ever created your own sigil?

You bet. Sometimes you just need something original and unique for the rite/spell.

14   What element are you most drawn to?

Water.

15   Do you have a familiar?

Some people use the word "familiar" interchangeably with "pet". I do have a pet but she's not my familiar. Other people define "familiar" as "spirit animal" which I'm not entirely sure is correct either. I'm in a bit of a gray area on this subject, but I see question 17 below touches on it as well.

16   Are you a part of a coven?

No. I've tried working with others to do magic but I think the synergy/chemistry has to REALLY be on point to do effective magic. Very often there's a clash of philosophies or practice that sort of spoils things all too easily whereas working alone allows me to concentrate so much better.

17   What’s your spirit animal?

Again this is a vague term that means different things to different people. I consider my spirit animal to be more or less my "familiar". When I was younger I was walking in the woods one evening praying really hard about something that was weighing very heavily on me. Then suddenly I looked up and there was this gorgeous and perfectly white stag looking back at me. He stood there for quite a while before slowly walking off again and the whole situation had such a profound sense of meaning to it. I saw the stag a few more times until finally, late one night while I was walking through the woods by a lake under the glow of a bright full moon I saw the stag one last time on the far side of the water. Ever since then the white stag has been sacred to me. So that's what I consider my spirit animal/familiar. It's a guide of sorts, a good omen, a sign, a representation of Spirit/Soul/God-energy and Self. I identify with it. So that's my spirit animal.

18   Do you do tarot readings?

I do indeed!

19   What’s your favorite witch movie?

I have several, but Hocus Pocus has been my favorite since I was a wee tot.

20   How many crystal do you have?

I actually don't really know. I don't go out and buy crystals but sometimes they come into my life and then go when they've served their purpose. For example, I had a beautiful large quartz that my grandmother had bought me from the nature store when I was a kid. I loved it so much. But one Halloween night I was doing a ritual with a friend of mine in the woods and ended up losing it. Interestingly, that friend was pursuing me romantically unbeknownst to me while also hooking up with the guy I was hooking up with and also really liked (ugh, gay culture). And during that ritual I was speaking with my grandfather (husband to the grandmother who bought me the quartz that I lost that night). So what does all that mean? I have no idea. But I figured all things considered maybe it was just time to let that thing go, along with other things that night.

21   What’s the most unique item on your altar?

I don't really have the privacy to set up an altar but generally I like my "work area" to be neat. Everything has a purpose and a meaning and a function. If I need to burn something I have the item/items, the cauldron, the lighter, oils, and anything else needed for what I'm doing. So nothing in particular stands out as "unique"... unless... Well I do have a small copper cauldron with a handful of dirt from my grandmother's house that I've kept for almost twenty years now. I guess that's unique?

22   Have you ever enchanted anything?

Oh god, yes, lots of things. I've enchanted things so as to protect them, or so that the item will protect someone else or some place... I've enchanted things for love, or to keep something or someone away. I've enchanted things to help in a greater ritual or spell. And so on.

23   What’s your religion?

I was raised Christian Baptist but following one horrible experience after another I've absolutely left that faith well behind long ago. I don't have a particular religion in the sense of organized religion. I'm spiritual and I cast spells. I also believe in science. I don't call myself a witch but I do everything a witch does.

24   Do you have a favorite crystal?

"I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens".

25   What are some of your favorite spells?

Oooo I'd have to say I'm rather partial to love magic. I'm particularly good at it too.

26   What do you like to do to cleanse your space?

After physically cleaning a space I like to use the Violet Fire to cleanse an area as well as cleansing using a broom and a wand and/or athame.

27   When do you feel the most powerful?

When nature and I have our little moments. When the wind is warm and strong. When I'm out in a storm. When I can "feel" things growing during the Spring. The silence of a frozen winter night in the woods... Also when I'm cooking. I fucking LOVE charging a pot of boiling ingredients with good juju.

28   Do other people know you’re a witch?

A few people close to me know I practice witchcraft. Others think I'm just a little bit daffy.

29   Has one of your spells ever gone wrong?

Definitely. Mostly when I was still learning and practicing. Like this one time in sixth grade I cast a spell so that a popular girl in school would like me and we could start dating. Obviously since I was gay I didn't really want to be with her, I only did it because I wanted to be cool (although I did like her and we ended up being fairly good friends until we went to different high schools). That spell backfired and I ended up 1. not getting the result I intended because I was doing it for the wrong reason and simultaneously trying to force another to do something against her will, and 2. I ended up having one shitty fucking love life for the longest time.

30   What outfit makes you feel the most witchy?

Oh I love me a good cape. Even just walking around with a long blanket around me.

31   Have you ever tried astral projection?

Yes, successfully, several times. I like to use it for meditation. Often I go to the artic sea where there's just ocean, ice, and darkness.

32   Do you have any enchanted jewelry?

Probably.

33   What does your altar look like?

A space on the floor where I cast a circle and set up my stuff.

34   Have you ever seen a spirit?

YES! I've seen fairies, spirits, ghosts, shadows, sparks, heard voices, etc.

35   What’s your favorite spell sachet?

I can't say that I have one.

36   Do you have a favorite sigil?

I'm especially fond of the Sigil of Venus.

37   What’s your astrological sign?

Sun sign Virgo, Rising Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

38   Have you ever interacted with a deity?

Well, yes, of course... per the previous questions.

39   What color are you most drawn to?

Purple.

40   Do you believe in past lives?

Without a doubt.

41   Where do you like to practice your craft?

Wherever I have privacy and calm.

42   What’s your favorite season?

Springtime, as mentioned previously.

43   Have you ever cursed someone?

That's not what my magic is for. Yes I'm familiar with the how-to, but no I don't partake in that kind of thing. The "worst" I've ever done is cast binding spells to keep someone from harming me and/or even coming into my presence.

44   How long have you been a practicing witch?

I'm telling on myself now but I'd say about 24 years practicing in earnest.

45   What drew you to witchcraft?

A natural inclination.

46   In what moon phase do you feel the most powerful?

The Moon itself does not change with the phases of its shadow. The phases are representational, of course, and its symbology can be evocative and meaningful, but otherwise the Moon is what it is. Therefore I'd have to say I personally feel most connected or at least most aware of the Moon when it's full. Else, I would say when it's waxing as that's when most of my spells are done simply because of the type of spell I usually work.

47   What’s your favorite holiday?

Wisterlimas, and then Halloween. Although I love all the holidays.

48   Do you know anything about your past lives? (if you believe in them!)

Yes, wow, I've done extensive work on discovering my past lives. I've lived in San Francisco at the turn of the century, in Scotland, England, France, Japan, China, as a woman, as a man... It's all very fascinating but you can't delve too deep because it's simply not necessary. You're not really *supposed* to know about your past lives. That defeats the purpose of the great forgetting once you're reincarnated. Yes, you can revisit the major themes and lessons learned, but one shouldn't really fret too much about what happened in the past.

49   Have you ever done an energy reading?

Certainly. I think most people do energy readings even when they don't know they're doing it. There's "reading the room" or "getting a bad vibe". There's also reiki and the like. And healing work. And of course magic is all about directing energy so to achieve a specific goal.

50   What time of day do you like to practice your craft?

Usually at night but it has more to do with the individual spell. Astronomical positioning is also important as well as weather, season, personal mood, day of the week, et al.

[turtle-steverogers]

Trust Fall

oh hello, a fic?

warnings/disclaimer: race is going through a moral dilemma in this fic.  i’m not trying to make a political statement or anything, nor do i agree or disagree with the conclusions in this fic, i’m just tryna get into this specific character’s mind given the situation he’s in.  warnings for death mentions, crying/guilt,,,,cuz of course, terrorism mentions (nothing graphic, it’s just there), and guns and stuff

ship: sprace

word count: 1754

editing: no

-

Race remembers reading once in a Time article that: “Evil isn’t easy”.  The search had been on a whim.  A heat of the moment, one in the morning google search after his first day out in the field.  Really out in the field.  As in, the first day as a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force where he was trusted to shadow a case.  

Details of that mission were unimportant now that four years had passed, but he’ll never forget how it ended.  The feeling of triumph once they had busted the terrorist cell and the almost giddy satisfaction of knowing that they won when he pulled the trigger on those men.  But man never forgets his first kill.

Sure, in the moment, it had felt good.  That particular cell had been a nasty one.  Lots of innocent civilians died at their hands.  But they were still humans with lives and heartbeats and neurons firing and really, he shouldn’t have tried to humanize what were ultimately murderers to the worst degree, but he couldn’t help but do so.  It was innate and the notion was clear.  Race had killed them.  He had taken lives that day.

So, that night, after returning home to his boyfriend (now husband), Spot, and smiling his way through a hasty dinner, then excusing himself halfway through Up to throw up said dinner in their hall bathroom, he’d googled it.  “What happens in your brain when you kill someone?”

It’s just the way Race functions.  If he can understand his thought processes- what’s happening in his brain when he’s performing an action, the ultimate why- then he can stomach whatever it is that’s plaguing him.  He lives by that: logic.  It makes sense.  

Spot’s always said that surprises him.  Apparently, outwardly (or at least outwardly when he isn’t working), Race doesn’t come across as super logical.  When Spot had told him that, Race had been a little offended, but ultimately it didn’t matter.  As long as he knew when to put on the serious front, he’s fine.

Beyond that, Race seems to have a knack for surprising Spot.  Namely, when Spot found out his actual job was with the FBI, specifically one of the most secretive and risky branches.  JTTF was no organization to be fucked with.  Yeah, for about 24 hours, Race was certain Spot was going to break up with him for keeping such a huge thing from him.  But after the confusion and fear had subsided, they were okay.  Thankfully, Spot respected his need for privacy in most work related matters.  They were okay.

Anyway, Race remembers seeing the first line of that goddamn Time article, “Evil isn’t easy”, and rethinking all of his life choices.  All he’d wanted were the straightforward facts on what happened in his mind when he pulled those triggers and what he got was an existential crisis that hasn’t quite ended, because what he was doing as a Special Agent wasn’t evil, right?  No, they were the ones tasked with the precarious job of stopping evil, so they couldn’t be the evil ones.  But they were still killing, weren’t they?  And that was evil. 

Halfway through the article, which chalked up to be mostly about serial killers and psychopaths and nothing that could remotely justify Race’s own actions, he’d clicked out and cleared his history, then chucked his phone across the room and nestled into Spot’s side.  Spot just grumbled a bit and pulled him closer in his sleep.  In the moment, that had been enough to rest Race’s mind, even a fraction.  But now, as Race points his gun between the eyes of the leader to a terrorist cell that had nearly blown up Union Station and pulls the trigger, feeling the way his heart beats too fast, but his hands remain steady, the familiar pit of guilt rises in him.  

XXX

The rest of the day passes methodically.  Paperwork, debriefing, more paperwork, coffee break, quick shower in the agency’s locker room, even more paperwork.

Finally, the case is done.  Or at least, Race is done with it.  It still has to go through some final wraps, but that’s for his superiors to worry about.

On the ride home, some of the feeling that had previously left Race’s body, leaving him vacant and robotic, begins to return.  By the time he pulls into his parking space across from Spot and his’ brownstone, he’s shaking.  The reaction is purely physical, though.  He still feels numb.  No pits in his stomach or lumps in his throat or jaws clenching to keep from crying.  

His mind is white noise, but his body is on fire.  His palm and pointer finger tingle where the gun had been nestled, the pressure from pulling the trigger seemingly still there.  His legs feel restless and he flexes the muscles in his thighs, trying to relieve some sort of instinct to fucking run and never stop.  He clenches the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white, allows himself thirty seconds to breathe, then turns of the engine.  One more deep breath later, he’s crossing the street and pulling out his house key to let himself in.  

Spot is in the kitchen when he enters, hovering over the stove and wearing one of the aprons Race’s Ma had gifted them a couple Christmases ago.  He looks up when Race perches himself at the kitchen counter and smiles, gesturing to one of the pots on the stove.

“Hey, you hungry?  I’m making some split pea soup.  There’s little hotdogs in the fridge that we can put in if you’re feeling frisky.”

Race had managed to calm himself down to the point of feigning normalcy, but his chest is still vibrating and the thought of eating food makes his stomach churn.  

He must pause a second too long to answer Spot, because he looks over again, frowning, “Hey...you okay?”

Race sighs.  He can’t share details of his work, but after their argument when Spot had found out about the whole FBI thing, he’d promise to at least be as honest as he could.  Besides, as much as Race’s job told him not to trust anyone, all good relationships are built on trust and Spot deserves the dignity of Race’s.

“No,” He says.  

Spot’s frown deepens and he gives the soup one more stir before turning off the stove and moving the pot off the burner.

“Rough day?” He asks.  His tone is conversational, with just the right amount of sympathy.  Race appreciates it.  He knows Spot worked long and hard on how to talk to Race so he would open up to him.

“Yeah,” Race says, finally feeling some of the emotions that had previously been sidelined returning.  He takes a shaky breath, feeling a little hot around the eyes all of a sudden, “Awful.”

Spot leans over the other side of the counter, reaching out a hand to cover Race’s, “Can you talk about it?”

And can he?  Race has had bad days before, hell the number of times he’s wordlessly curled himself into Spot’s chest and cried while his partner held him is almost embarrassing.  And each time, Spot asks if he can talk about it and each time he refuses.  But it hurts.  God, it hurts so bad and sure, Race has talked about this shit to his field partner, Dasilva, before, because he gets it, but right now all Race wants to do is tell Spot.  Get it out to a third party who isn’t involved in this messy shit.  Hear that it’s okay.  Or hear that it’s not and just have the truth already.

And yeah, he does trust Spot.  No, he’s not going to tell him details, he’s not disloyal to the Bureau, but he trusts Spot enough to tell him this.  He needs to tell him, he needs to-

“Did you know that I’ve killed people?”  He asks.  

Spot squeezes his hand and takes a measured breath.

“Never for sure,” He says, honestly, “But I’ve figured that it may come with your job.”

And now Race feels so small and vulnerable and he drops Spot’s hand and in a moment of pure longing- for comfort or just for Spot, he doesn’t know- he reaches up and tugs at the front of Spot’s shirt.  Spot gets it right away.  They’ve gotten to the point where reading each other is second nature, as familiar in their minds as the english language.

He crosses around the countertop and pulls Race into his arms, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his back as he cries.  It feels good to cry knowing Spot knows what he’s comforting him for.  The fact that he’s willing to hold Race this close, despite knowing what he’s done- what he’s had to do- speaks volumes.

“I hate doing it,” Race says, voice thick and muffled by tears and Spot’s shoulder, “I’ve had to do it so fucking much and I hate it and I try to justify it, but I never can in the end because I can still see them- every fucking one of them- in my mind.”

Spot hums, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, “Let’s go to the couch.”

Race nods, allowing himself to be guided to the couch in the living room.  He cries for a few more minutes, Spot holding him close, until eventually the breakdown tapers off.  

“I can’t imagine what you have to do, Race, or how you must feel,” Spot says, “And I can’t provide reasoning behind it any more than you can, because really, there shouldn’t be reason in this world for you to be in that position in the first place.  But what you do, you do because it’s your job.  You’re keeping a huge fucking number of people safe.  Maybe there’s no justification for this shit on either side, but that’s just the fucked up way of this fucked up world.  You do what you have to in the moment to keep people safe in the long run.”

“I’m not a bad person?” Race asks, still working to take measured breaths.

And whether Spot thinks so or not, he says, “No,” firmly.

And gradually, the rest of the tension in Race’s gut lets up.  He’s not okay, not really.  But now that the weight has been pressing down on his chest for so many years is not a secret he has to keep from the person he loves the most, he can breathe a little steadier.

-

again, this is purely fiction 

thanks for reading, chiefs!

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[capnjay21]

Brink, 4/?

But this woman was neither mermaid nor Brave, radiant but fierce — and the cool touch of steel to his skin reminded him of the sword she had pointed at his throat.

“My name is Emma Swan,” she said, in answer to the question he had yet to give voice to, “and I’m here for my son.”

Season 2 Canon Divergence; Hook never escaped Neverland, and once the curse breaks Pan comes to collect the loneliest lost boy of them all - the one in possession of the Heart of the Truest Believer.

                                                       ---

one | two | three | ao3

A/N: it’s been a while, and I doubt any of my old readers are still following, but here is #4 as part of my mission to complete all my old projects! some references to Peter Pan source material in this one, details of which you can find in my note at the end. Enjoy! Rating: T

                                                       ---

With the morning came a swirl of fog, having spent the night rolling down from Dead Man’s Peak itself, and the moment Emma roused from her restless slumber she found she couldn’t see anything beyond the bruised and leaden smog that had amassed outside the porthole. Her first thoughts were of blind panic; where she had woken up, how the ground appeared to rock beneath her, and questioning why the image of Henry becoming little more than a vestige of sleep distressed her so. It took a few beats of staring into the gloom of Hook’s cabin, but soon enough she remembered.

I have to give you your best chance.

Well, that wasn’t enough for her.

In the privacy of the cabin, she allowed herself a few moments to gather herself together. Although she had initially rebuffed Hook’s invitation to take his quarters for herself, she didn’t want to owe him any favours, she had to admit the seclusion had been a welcome change of pace from the exposed region of jungle behind them. Hook had taken extra care to demonstrate the locking mechanism on the door, and with the barely noticeable furtive look he cast up at the deck as he did so, part of her had wondered how much of his offer for the night had been about politeness and how much had been about keeping her away from his crew — or keeping his crew away from her. The moment had passed, and he had mastered his expression before she could ask.

On waking, an uncomfortable crick in her neck had throbbed painfully and she attempted to massage it out, but she had slept awkwardly atop the satchel she had brought with her from Storybrooke and the knot remained persistent. The closer they got to the Jolly Roger the night before, the more aware she had been of Hook’s hard gaze straying to it on more than one occasion. Its importance had struck her then like a bolt of lightning in the dark — the satchel was where Hook had to believe the hat was, the hat she had assured him would transport them back to her world, the hat she had refused to show him.

(The hat she didn’t have.)

(Hook definitely didn’t need to know that.)

It was imperative, she had realised then, that she never let Hook or any of his cronies catch a glimpse of the true contents, which amounted merely to Henry’s storybook and a couple of protein bars Mary Margaret had insisted she take for the journey — and that was all. Given how little she trusted the Captain, she had far from ruled out the possibility of him sneaking back into his quarters through the night to steal it, and as a result she had wanted it close to her at all times.

Somewhere in between the paranoia of being disturbed, her weary sadness at Henry’s rejection of her rescue and the growing fury at the anonymous figure that had brought them all to the chessboard, Peter fucking Pan, Emma had fallen asleep.

Now, in the ashen light of what she assumed was morning, she could get a better look at the cabin itself. She felt it would be stupid not to take advantage of the situation — here was an auspicious opportunity to try and get a better sense of the man she had tentatively chosen to ally herself with, and as eager as she was to get back out there and start doing something, she took a moment to explore her surroundings first as she munched on one of the protein bars Mary Margaret had sent with her.

The cabin was mostly bare, functional. Aside from the bunk she had rested in, the only other pieces of furniture were the table and chairs at its centre, and a few shelves to the rear of the room laden with books, charts and other trinkets. A large chest lay in the corner, and though Emma ran her fingers over it the lid would not budge — the lock seemed intricate, and she doubted a man like Hook would be so foolish as to leave a key lying around. She tugged open drawers, peeked inside cupboards, but it seemed as if the only clues would be amongst the meagre belongings atop the shelves.

There were a few books, most pertaining to nautical techniques or otherwise mariner related – to her amusement, one battered copy of Treasure Island stood amongst the tomes. Perhaps he had been looking for tips. Some sort of tool lay beside them, bright gold and meticulously polished, with the effigy of a winged horse welded into its side amongst what Emma assumed to be maps of constellations. She didn’t care much for any sailing trinkets and set it down, but her eye was caught by a piece of parchment folded in between two books near the back.

Carefully, not wanting to tear it, she tugged it out. A charcoal sketch of a woman stared back at her, beautiful, gentle. Undoubtedly important to Hook if he had tucked it away so tenderly, and she had to wonder who she might be. A family member — a lost love? Any explanation seemed entirely incognizant with his character. He was harsh and sharp edges, like her. Certainly nothing like a fairy-tale.

She considered that maybe that was the reason she was finding him so much easier to deal with than the rest of Storybrooke, even her parents — once the curse had lifted, between the panic of Henry’s kidnapping, it had been all talk of ‘good will out’, of happy endings. Henry would have loved it. As it was, Emma hadn’t grown up in an Enchanted Forest, and the idea of achieving anything just because she was good, and it was right, was a concept that she could not yet grasp. That she refused to grasp.

She didn’t want to lose her grip on reality just because, apparently, she was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming; the product of True Love.

And yet, now she found herself in Neverland, in league with Captain Hook and trying to prevent her son from becoming a Lost Boy.  

Emma folded the parchment back along its crease and returned it to its place upon the shelf. No answers had immediately presented to her, nothing about the cabin made any suggestion that he was being anything but straightforward with her about his intentions. But then, her world had taught her that evil didn’t always appear like it did in books. And she didn’t want to waste any more time.

Slinging her satchel over her shoulder, Emma clambered the steps back up to the door and unlatched it, letting the dull light of the morning stream inside. As she stepped out onto the deck, she was met with a flurry of activity. Men marched back and forth hauling tools, bundles of rope, and from a stance by one man which suggested extreme weight, possibly a cannon ball or two. They were certainly hurriedly preparing for something, but as she stepped past not even one of the crew could avoid turning their gaze to follow her, and she felt each beady stare like a prickle crawling up her spine. She felt like snapping and telling them all where they could shove it, but her attention was demanded by a small group clustered in the centre of what appeared to be the main deck.

The sky out at sea was a blanket of white, bright enough that she at first shielded her eyes from the sudden contrast, and the tip of the mast was hidden from view by the clinging mist that threatened to curl downward with every groan of the ship’s great weight. Ahead of her a few crates has been shoved together to form a crude attempt at a work surface, and Hook stood at the centre of a handful of his men, gesturing over parchment with hand and hook.

At her arrival, he lifted his eyes from the work in front of him.

“Ah, Swan,” he gestured for her to step up beside them. “Good of you to join us. Are you well rested?”

Dismissing the question, she took a spot directly opposite Hook between two of his men. They each took half a step in either direction away from her and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. What was it with this crew? Did they think she was going to curse them? Pointing at the chart spread across the crate, its curling edges spilling over the side, she carried on. “What’s all this?”

“Preparations, of a sort,” Hook replied. “Apologies for its crude nature, but I was remiss in forgetting most of our charts are kept inside my cabin.”

He didn’t disturb her, then. Or he just wanted her to think he didn’t.

The chart, she quickly realised, was a map — clearly one of the island. It was her first real look at the scope of Neverland, so she leaned in closer with interest. It was impeccably detailed, the jagged ridges of the island’s perimeter clear and sharp. There were three distinct bends inland, two at the south of the island and one towards the east, the latter illustrated with a tiny figure of what Emma recognised to be a mermaid. The smaller one towards the south, at the bottom right of the map, tapered off into a curving river leading north west, constantly meandering back on itself until it opened out into a large lake at the centre of the island. The second also trailed north among an estuary, before slowing to a trickle at the foot of a large mountain near the northernmost edge. ‘Dead Man’s Peak’, it was labelled, in cursive script beside it.

Subtle.

The others were given equally conspicuous names — the smallest coastal edge that led to the lake ‘Pirate’s Cove’, the mouth of the river that flowed from the mountain ‘Misery Bay’, and the final towards the east as ‘Mermaid’s Lagoon’, all written in a looping, aged curl of ink. She mused on whether these were the names that came with the island itself, or if they were titles bestowed upon them by the crew as they encountered them. The native camp they had been taken to yesterday was marked by the icon of a totem pole near the western edge of the isle. Emma could almost trace the route they had walked when they came upon Pan’s camp.

Preparations, Killian had said. “Preparations for what?”

“War, Ma’am,” one of the crew spoke up — a tall man, with a scarlet cravat tied neatly about his neck, sporting a deep brown beard trimmed with precision, his hair parted at the side and combed down to his ears. Emma thought she might have recognised him from her first confrontation with Hook the day before. He was much, well, tidier than the rest of them, and he had just called her Ma’am. Emma arched an eyebrow. “With Pan.”

“I didn’t ask for a war.”

“Nor will it come to that, if we have our way.” Hook shot the man who spoke with a hard glare, and he visibly shrank away. “Our plan is to link up with the widest part of the river,” here he rested his hook upon the mouth of Pirate’s Cove, “take Pan by surprise. We rarely sail inland, and if we can make it to the Great Lake then we can continue to use the Jolly Roger as a base while we search the island.”

Emma was watching men she didn’t know nodding and murmuring along to a plan she hadn’t been part of, on a mission that was turning the rescue of her son into some kind of war. And she didn’t like it one bit.

“Woah, hold on a second,” she cut across them, “we can’t just grab Henry and run, you know that. We’ve got to try something else.” Hook had been there, had witnessed Henry refuse to be rescued. It wasn’t as simple as just finding him and leaving anymore. Hook’s lips parted, but didn’t seem to immediately have a response. “Probably the reason you shouldn’t start making plans about my son without consulting me.”

Hook’s eyes rolled skyward, and for a moment she thought he was going to drip out the kind of caustic remark as she’d come to expect from him, but instead he seemed to master that instinct and fixed her with a rigid stare. Emma tried to ignore the crew watching the exchange with an uncomfortable curiosity.

“It seems to me we have two options,” Hook began impatiently, “we either make your lad believe he should not stay, that his place is with you, or we make him believe he cannot — by virtue of Pan being a villain.” He raised hand and hook to gesture the man around him. “For which we can all serve as testimony.”

“No offence, but according to every story he’s ever been told, including probably Pan’s, you are the bad guy.”

“Believe me, on this island, I am not the bad guy.”

Emma wasn’t convinced. “We’ll see about that.”

Between Hook’s imploring look and the map rolled out atop the crate, and she noticed for the first time the thin, burgundy line drawn in ink which followed the river up from Pirate’s Cove to the lake, with a few crosses scratched in at locations on either side of it, she could admit he had clearly put some work into this. And some thought. Though she was loathe to admit it, Hook was right — her best shot was just getting a chance to talk to Henry a second time. If he really felt staying in Neverland was what was best for their family then she might not be able to change his mind on that account, but if he found out what Pan was really like (and she ignored the little voice inside her that pointed out she had only Hook’s and Gold’s word on what Pan was really like) then maybe he could be convinced to return with her.

God, she just wanted him back. That was all.

“Fine,” she said finally, reaching forward so she could spin the map to face her. “This looks good. And just so we’re clear — just because I agree this probably the best way to go about this, does not mean I will be okay with every damn idea that pops into your head.” This, she directed at Hook. “I call the shots here. Got it?”

Her son. Her mission.

Hook raised hook and hand in a mock surrender, before giving her a saccharine sweet smile she didn’t buy for a second, and touching two fingers to his temple in salute.

“Aye, Captain.”

In a moment he was gone, bounding the steps up to the quarterdeck and barking out orders. Like mice, the crew scurried to carry them out, and for the first time she could get a real glimpse at the power he held over his men. As he leapt onto the gunwale on the left-hand side, his hand secured in the rigging to anchor him, he surveyed the work below him before turning his gaze to face the island. Only once the ship groaned and began to turn, the main sail pulled taut against the wind, did he drop down and take his place at the wheel.

Emma returned to the map. Only the man who had spoken earlier remained, and he appeared to be waiting for her to finish before gathering it up.

“So this is Neverland,” she mused.

“Aye, ma’am. Chartered out as best we could manage.” At Emma��s arched eyebrow he hastened to continue. “It isn’t always easy with poisoned arrows being shot at you from every direction.”

Poisoned arrows? Great.

Before straightening, Emma shot the man a wry look. “And ‘Misery Bay’?”

The man had the good grace to look a little sheepish, before starting to roll the map under his fingers.

“I suppose it’s a little on the nose.”

***

At the mouth of the river, as the fog began to roll up the bank, curling and swelling and concealing the edge of the jungle from view, they disembarked. Unused to the drastic contrast in temperature from the day prior, Emma shivered as she descended the gangplank thrown over the side, conscious that the only piece of clothing sheltering her from the elements was the khaki tank top she was wearing - she had thought of it for blending into jungle, and had been foolish enough to believe Gold when he had told her Neverland was an exclusively tropical climate. Or maybe he hadn't been lying; he just didn't know the island as intimately as he had thought. She had considered asking Hook for something else to wear, but her stubbornness had persisted until the gangplank had been raised again and his ship was disappearing into the mist, to her immediate regret as they began to mount the shore.

For the landing party Hook had chosen just two of his crew to join them — Starkey (the name, she had learnt, of the tall, polite gentleman from earlier) and a far smaller pirate, Noodler. Noodler, for a reason Emma could not immediately discern, made her profoundly uncomfortable. Although his stature was smaller, and with his shoulders hunched she found his height falling a little below Emma's own, his features were pressed in upon themselves like a raisin, one of his eyes appearing slightly higher on his face than the other - but even that wasn't enough to unnerve her. It wasn't until she noticed, with a jolt that made her stomach turn, what it was about him that made him so odd and jarring to her.

His hands were backwards.

When resting at his sides his thumbs pointed outwards, palms facing forward, and it cut his shadow into an unsettling shape. It made Emma instantly want to recoil — but, morbidly, she couldn’t stop cataloguing the details. At his wrists sharp, scarlet scars zig-zagged across the surface of his skin, as if the hands had been first removed, and then sewn on again the wrong way. Before she could even begin to consider what had caused such a grisly deformation, the pirate caught her attention and answered for her.

“Pan,” he said, in a dark, gravelly tone, as if the very words scratched the back of his throat.

On this island, I am not the bad guy.

She was starting to consider Hook's words may be truer than she had realised. And if that was something he did to his enemies, what could he be doing to Henry?

“I'm sorry,” she said, for lack of anything else to offer. She had meant what she said before; she was not interested in a war with Pan. Just Henry. Revenge wasn't on the table.

Noodler nodded his gruff acknowledgement, before turning back to watch Starkey hoisting a bag of provisions over his shoulder. Meanwhile Emma pushed ahead, falling into step beside Hook. Only slightly envious of his thick leather coat, and with Noodler’s gruesome injury still fresh in her mind, she decided there was something they needed to discuss.

“Alright, let’s Sun Tzu this bastard,” she began bluntly, to ensure he wouldn’t fill the silence with something inane before they could get to it, “tell me about Pan.”

Hook’s eyebrows furrowed. “Forgive me, ‘Soon —'?”

“Know your enemy,” she clarified, “The Art of War?” At his continuing perplexed look, Emma realised she had no idea why she bothered – nothing she had learnt about Hook over the short day and a half or so she had known him suggested he would have any idea what she was talking about. Maybe she should be keeping any kind of allusions to her world to a minimum. “Well, I can’t blame you — that would’ve been a niche reference even for a twenty-first century man.”

“You’re speaking in riddles, love.”

“I want to know more about Pan — what makes him so powerful? He has magic, right?”

Once she mentioned Pan’s name, Hook slowed down noticeably, making a show of stepping nearer to the river’s edge and assessing their path ahead; Emma might have considered the sudden concern for its face value, if she hadn’t also observed the tic that had moved in his jaw, the flash of unease that had appeared before he could suppress it. Typical, she spent so much time trying to shut him up, and when he finally had something useful to offer he dried up like a desert.

“Oh, now you clam up.”

Hook met her ire with a sharp stare of his own, immediately coming to his own defence. “I just don’t see the purpose. We’re here for the boy only.”

“The purpose is not walking in there with my eyes shut,” she insisted. “You heard Tiger Lily – my ‘impending duel’ with Pan. I need to know as much as possible.”

Whether or not she was truly intending on starting aforementioned duel, she very much liked the idea of being prepared for any eventuality – whatever it would take to get Henry back.

Hook appeared to consider her for a long moment, before apparently reaching whichever decision he had been wresting with and rolling his eyes skyward to the canopy. Emma decided there was something distinctly off about him in the light of morning, a marked difference in his countenance. It seemed whatever easy humour he had pestered her with throughout their journey to the native village and back had evaporated into the mist, and she was left with the stern, formidable figure she had seen on the deck of his ship. It made no difference to her in the long run, as long as he continued to help her, but it was definitely something of note. She considered of the folded parchment tucked between the tomes on the bookshelf; a reminder that there was a lot about Captain Hook she didn’t know.

“The entire island is what makes him powerful,” Hook finally replied, carefully. “They are… linked, somehow. I can’t speak for the particulars.”

In the entirety of Emma’s brief experiences with real, rabbits-out-of-hats and poisoned apple magic, hardly anybody seemed to be able to speak for any particulars. It was just an accepted fact of life for the inhabitants of the Enchanted Forest that while some warred with fists, others liked to throw fireballs. With startlingly good aim.

“The energy, the heart of the island flows into him, and he flows right back into it.” Hook led them away from the water’s edge then, following the tree line as if choosing a place to enter. “He’s in every inch of this jungle, every creature that traverses its land. Nothing happens on the island without His knowing about it.”

Emma let out a thoughtful noise. A cake walk then, clearly. “Is that right?”

“It’s been my experience, yes.”

“So he probably knows we’re here right now.”

“Most likely,” Hook mused, his dark eyes flickering to hers as he raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t say this quest would be easy.”

Emma bristled. “I wasn’t expecting it to be.”

If it were easy, Henry would have agreed to come home with her yesterday, like he was supposed to want to. If it were easy, Regina would have been there to start blasting apart the jungle with her patented Sensible Pantsuit-ed fury, and they’d all have a way back to Storybrooke.

Emma recognised she was in a make-it-up-as-she-went-along kind of headspace, but it wasn’t exactly working out poorly for her so far, aforementioned setbacks notwithstanding. The situation could be a hell of a lot worse; she knew that for certain. She still had Hook’s help – even if he seemed to have lost the lightness he had exhibited the day prior as he pestered her about her past.

A sudden thought occurred to her, and she decided to take advantage of this streak of honesty. “Noodler’s hands,” she said, “he said that was Pan.”

Hook looked grim as he replied. “Just a taste of his… particular humour.”

So it was supposed to be funny, was it?

Finally he sighed, stopping in his tracks as they reached an entrance into the dense jungle that he was satisfied with. It was narrower than where they had travelled yesterday, and required they all move single file. Before he stepped inside, Hook paused to meet her eyes and Emma tried to scrutinize him for any clues. There were none.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

In lieu of a response she pushed past him into the undergrowth.

***

Have a drink, Captain. You know it always helps you think.

The day had been long.

Emma Swan was proving herself to be the most tenacious of companions, and Hook gladly allowed her to take the lead as they began combing the jungle along the banks of the river. They had a lot of island to cover, and he was learning quickly that as long as Swan felt she was in control, she was a lot less difficult to deal with. A notion he was happy to entertain if it meant she would keep her longsword and acerbic wit directed at the undergrowth, and not at his neck. He had enough on his mind to consider without the thought of her plunging that blade into his back.

Pan’s offer drifted often through his thoughts – his mood soured further with each occurrence.

As the hours got longer, the fog had receded and the usual blistering heat of the jungle returned, reminding Hook with an oppressive surety why he tried to avoid spending time inland as much as possible — there had been a time, the princess Tiger Lily had once told him, that Neverland had been a place of peace, of wonder, that children had come to visit in their dreams, only to disappear back into the stars by morning. Only after Pan himself had found a way to stay permanently, had connected his fate with that of the soul of the island somehow, did the Lost Ones find their home on its shores. And only with them, so the tribe’s legend told, did the dangers of Neverland begin to manifest themselves.

Of course, whispers of the realm as it was before held no bearing on Hook; for as long as he had known it, it had been creatures that could crush a man’s spine with a single bite, mermaids who lured sailor’s overboard with the strength of their ardour, trees whose branches could choke the breath from you before you could scream, sand and swamp that could drag a soul to an early end beneath the earth. Unbearable, torrid heat. Dark jungle and darker magic. Little boys who would sooner stab you in the heart than care to listen to a bedtime story.

Vines of deadly poison, claiming pure hearts with an indiscriminate precision.

No, only the sea could he truly trust; but what he needed now could not be found in its waters.

It was easy to bait Emma, perhaps easier than she realised — with every suggestion that they take a break, pause for rest or perhaps even return to where the Jolly Roger planned to berth for the night, she would insist they carry on. Such was the extent of her desire to contradict him, all Hook had to do was propose they head in a north-easterly direction along the river in order for their heading to instead be decided as dead west, following the arc of the sun above the canopy. It made her – well. Pleasingly predictable. The further they trudged the more nervous he could see Starkey and Noodler becoming, but their uneasy and imploring looks went unacknowledged as, for all the day’s walking had suggested, he was not the one they needed to persuade to turn back.

Emma Swan wished to be the leader? Fine by him. It suited him greatly to be absolved of any blame in what they might stumble across.

As they emerged into a clearing, Emma immediately marched over to the opposite edge, beginning to hack away at the tree-line in order to carve a path through the undergrowth for them to follow. Hook watched as Starkey and Noodler took the brief pause as an opportunity to rest, perching on a large rock and passing their waterskin back and forth. He, on the other hand, merely took out his spyglass and began assessing the journey of the sun. It was just beginning to caress the tops of the wide trunks now, casting broad strokes of dark orange across the sky and dappling out into light pinks and blues, the herald of dusk on its way.

“That’ll do, Swan,” he called over to her, “this clearing is easily protected. I suggest we make camp for the night.”

Emma’s response was vexed, and she didn’t move an inch from her position at the edge of the clearing. “What?”

He should have known this, too, would be a point of contention to her. Hook tried to suppress his irritation. “We’re going to need our strength. Starkey, Noodler; set some snares. We would do well to catch some game by morning.” The two pirates nodded their assent, taking their knives and heading off into the undergrowth.

“We can’t just sleep while Henry is out there, that’s insane!”

“That, love,” Hook bit back, “is exactly what we are going to do.” Her mouth opened, presumably to voice a further protest, so he hastened to cut her off as he shrugged his duster from his shoulders and laid it in the earth. “I have let you carry on for quite far enough out of sympathy for your situation, but if you insist on disregarding my every counsel then you’ll soon be finding yourself another pirate to guide you.”

Lips tightening in a grim line, Emma folded her arms. She gave nothing away, but that in itself was the only tell he needed. He softened in tone a little as he continued.

“My men are tired. The jungle boasts many dangers at night. Better we start a fire, eat something and live to continue our search tomorrow.”

When she didn’t immediately reply, Hook began gathering kindling for a fire. Although for all accounts making a show of concentrating on that action, he kept his focus on Emma — it was important that he show just the right amount of sympathy to merit receiving the same from her. It was the only way she would start to trust him.

And he hadn’t forgotten what she had told them when they met; he had no intention of telling her a lie, not if she could catch him in it.

After a few minutes of silence between them, only the babble and chirps of the jungle rising into the air, the gentle crunch of boots on dust denoted Emma finally joining him back where he was building the fire. When she began to mimic his movements, collecting a few larger, discarded logs to form the foundation, he took it as a minor victory.

“I thought you wanted to be back on the Jolly Roger by nightfall,” she said finally; that had been their original plan. Search by day, return to the ship by night. In the early hours of the afternoon, by the punishing pace she had set, he had quickly realised that would not be the case.

“We’ve travelled too far to make it back now.” A flash of guilt crossed her features, and it caught him by surprise; she showed so little care for what anyone but herself had wanted so far, but perhaps his chastisement had gotten through to her. “Not to worry, lass,” he continued with a wink, “Knowing even as little of you as I do, I did plan for this eventuality.”

That, at the very least, drew the ghost of a smile from her.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, after adding what she had collected to his pile. Hook confirmed it — the lass had the good grace to look a little sheepish after all. “I know I’ve probably been pushing everyone a bit hard. I’m just — worried.”

Understandably so. She had chosen herself a great adversary.

Convince Emma Swan to leave Neverland and I’ll give you what you want most.

And how, prey, was he supposed to manage that?

“Pan does not harm those he recruits,” he replied, not untruthfully, as he began striking his hook with the flint. “Your boy is in no immediate danger.” Emma merely grunted in response, and he decided to dip a toe in a darker current and watched her reaction carefully. “If anything,” he began, “you might say yesterday the lad appeared quite… comfortable.”

Her gaze immediately shot up to his, a fierce glare behind her stormy jade eyes. The fire suddenly burst to life underneath him and he hissed, snatching away his hand as a burn began to redden the flesh on the heel. Bloody sirens, he must have been using more force than he realised.

Emma had since looked away, glaring stonily at the spitting embers and he sighed.

“I apologise,” he added, to assuage her ire, “that was in poor taste.”

Hook rose, intending to check upon the work of his men out in the undergrowth, but turned at the sound of Emma’s voice.

“Thanks,” she said bluntly, like the words had been wrenched from her reluctant form. “I haven’t really said it yet, properly, but… thanks.”

The implication was there — he didn’t have to help her, to offer his services, for all the reasons he had tried to make clear to her when they had left the native encampment and he had intended to part company entirely.

To his surprise, he found himself smiling. A small, sincere thing. “Fear not, lass —”

And just where is this magic hat Emma keeps telling you about?

His gaze dropped meaningfully to her satchel, as Pan’s words rose like an icy wave within him. The smile quickly disappeared.

“—I’ll get mine.”

They set about preparing their camp with the supplies Hook had ordered Starkey to bring, meagre as they were — some sacks within which to sleep, and a single canvas sheet in order to shelter them from the elements. Once they had returned from setting traps in the undergrowth, Starkey and Noodler had managed to tie the opposite ends to some low-hanging branches to allow for the maximum amount of cover. Even still, Emma had baulked at the idea of resting in such close quarters to them, and while offering her thanks at the offer of the sack, had insisted she set it up a little ways away.

“It’s only natural,” Hook had declared slyly, “after this long in my company. We wouldn’t wish to give into a little temptation, now, would we?”

Emma’s eyes had rolled skyward. “Please.”

As they did not expect to catch any game until morning, the evening meal had been a simple affair of bread and a few small chunks of cheese, along with some berries Emma had collected from the brush (not the blue ones, he had insisted), before they had settled in to sleep. Starkey had volunteered to take the first watch and Hook had allowed it, wanting to catch at least an hour’s rest before night truly threw its sway over the island, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

As it happened, not more than thirty minutes had passed when he suddenly jerked himself awake, heart hammering and grasping for his cutlass. His left forearm spasmed and he winced; he hated sleeping with the brace on, but he daren’t remove the hook while ashore lest he awake and need to swing it immediately. It had happened before.

The dark remained permeated by stillness, the occasional chirrup or whistle from the trees the only sound aside from the heavy breathing indicative of sleep, and he knew it was coming. Starkey, watching him rise, merely nodded back at him before settling as quietly as he could into his sack for sleep — it was far from the first night they had spent side by side on the island, and most of his crew were aware of his habits inland.

He settled himself at the base of a tree several metres away from his resting companions, and cast his eyes to look up at the sky. To his great relief, tonight the stars were visible — often shielded as they were by magic, Pan liked to erase any and all distractions that could soothe a troubled mind on the island, but tonight they shimmered in and out of view like gentle ornaments adorning the inky blackness. Hook rarely thought of the island as beautiful, not with the litany of dangers it boasted, but sometimes he felt he could.

If he slowed his breathing, shut his eyes tight to the cool air and thought of Milah. He thought of the legends the native people told, of tides of pale moonlight that lapped against the shore, life eternal and evergreen; if he could just see a sprinkle of that magic through Milah’s eyes, it could all be redeemed.

Is it wonderful, she had murmured once, to travel so much?

She had gasped, convulsed, and collapsed lifeless in his arms.

He had to kill Rumplestiltskin. It was the only happy ending that mattered, now.

He considered what had caused his thoughts to be so full of tumult all day. Securing passage to the Land Without Magic, this Storybrooke, was all he cared about — taking Pan’s deal, if history was any indication, was the surest way to guarantee that eventuality. The sheer scope of his power over Neverland made Emma’s rescue attempt into a non-starter, and there were too many variables to consider. Not only did they have to be successful, Emma had to be telling the truth about the magic she possessed, and he had to trust her to follow through on her end of the bargain once she had what she came for. Pan had always been a trickster, but he never broke the deals he made.

And yet —?

Perhaps it was the clawing vestige of Liam, murmuring at his breast about honour, or his fleeting memories of Baelfire — perhaps it was how much Emma’s lad had seemed to resemble the boy he had once rescued from Neverland’s icy waters. There was something holding him back from throwing his weight behind convincing Emma to depart the island.

Still, he had brought them westward even as he wrested with the decision, and a tide of guilt rose within him as he surveyed her sleeping form. If he were truly against taking Pan’s deal, they wouldn’t be there.

Liam would be ashamed of him.

(Well, he couldn’t help but think, he’d done far worse for the promise of less.)

Before long, the purpose for his errant wakefulness began to stir.

When the low shivering, sobbing noises started to sprinkle from the treetops, Hook tried to shut his ears to the sound. As always, it pierced right through any meagre attempt at blocking them out. Every night inland was the same; the cries of the lost children of Neverland echoed for hours until a short while before dawn, weeping for the families they had lost, the love they would never again find.

Hook had discovered early on that only a few of his crew had been aware of the devastating chorus, the rest continuing to slumber peacefully despite it. It had been one of Pan’s great delights to make clear to Hook just why he, among others, was able to hear the crying – a certain kinship existed between he and them, so he had been told. The lament of the children cast away. It was a paralysing clamour, and it never failed to make him ache in places that had lain untouched for centuries.

Your father will watch the light for you.

Gone by morning.

A figure stirred in front of him and his gaze snapped to them – to his surprise it was Emma, turning in her sleep with a frown before suddenly jerking awake. She scrabbled for her sword immediately, chest heaving, head whipping around quickly. It became clear she was trying to find the source of the cries, and her eyes soon enough landed on Hook from his perch a few paces away.

Evidently his lack of alarm relaxed her, if only slightly. “What the hell is that?”

“The Lost Ones.”

“I thought you said they were savages?”

Hook closed his eyes, willing the noise to just stop. “And at night they remember what it is to be boys.” They cry, and they cry, and they cry until they rise from their weary trance, and are as dangerous and as proud and loyal to Pan as they had ever been, as if the events of the night had never happened. Perhaps they didn’t remember; or Pan held such sway over them that they dare not dwell.

Hook had never felt an urge to spend any time finding out.

Emma looked profoundly uncomfortable, hand curling into a fist around the lining of her sleep sack. It occurred to Hook that if she, too, could hear the whimpers of the Lost, then they had something in common beyond a shared dislike of the villain they faced.

“Well, I can see I was right about you, love. If you can hear them…”

This is Neverland, the home of the Lost Ones. They all share the same look in their eyes. The look you get when you’ve been left alone.

Who had left Emma Swan, he wondered?

Hook spread his hand. “As they say – an orphan’s an orphan.”

Emma surveyed him carefully, her expression unreadable. “And what does that make you?”

“A commodity.” Something within him, some distant desire to have that particular betrayal vilified once more, compelled him to be honest. “Traded by my father for an old rowboat.”

Before his companion even had a chance to respond, another cry pierced the year – however this time exceedingly different. This screech was far higher in pitch, more mature than the sob of a child, and curdled the thump of his blood from his heart. It broke it merely to hear it, devastated his soul and wrenched at something dazedly sad inside him. He longed to go to it. Even as he repressed the urge, another wail rose into the sky.

“That’s no boy,” Emma realised, suddenly throwing back the sack and lunging for her sword.

“Swan,” he called, almost half-heartedly, but Emma was already tearing off into the bush, as he knew she would. “Wait.”

Hook, after assuring himself that both Starkey and Noodler remained sound asleep (and the stillness of their slumber could only be described as supernatural, which made him certain He had had a hand in it), began to jog to follow her. He had only travelled this path once before, but if he were at all unsure of the direction he should be heading in, the noise Emma was making crashing through the jungle was enough to be able to track her.

“Swan!” he hollered, loud enough for her to hear him. He had to admire her. All it took was a single scream into the air from an unknown source and her first instinct was to go to them – she was certainly more than just a mother, that had already been made clear, but the extent with which she put herself in harms way for another was nothing short of, well. Heroic.

Low-hanging branches and wide, reaching shrubbery attempted to block his path but he kept pace, and before he long he broke from the tree cover and almost sprinted headfirst into Emma, paused as she was at the edge of the jungle. They had reached the mouth of the westward river, the one whose waters flowed from the healing spring of Dead Man’s Peak itself, the area his crew had fearfully coined Misery Bay. Not least because of the sight now rolling out in front of them.

Halting further progress was the way the path in front veered into a steep drop, where dirty-white, craggy spikes of rock awaited any who dared attempt a descent. Behind that, the rock rose high upward, the beginnings of a wall which spanned at least two, maybe three hundred metres across, its surface crawling with moss and ivy like outstretched arms reaching upward to its peak. The barrier continued outwards into the centre of the bay, the sand it rested on discolouring the nearer it got to the sea, and began to spiral in on itself in a circular, winding fashion. The result was a gigantic ivory labyrinth with walls that appeared to blur into one another the longer it was observed, and Hook found a familiar, dull ache began to knock at his temple the longer his mind instinctively tried to find a coherent route through it. From Emma’s expression, he could tell she was experiencing similar discomfort.

On all sides the maze was guarded by the ragged spikes, pointing outwards with unveiled threat, but Hook felt no particular desire to enter; the sounds that rose from the inside of the structure were enough of a deterrent for him. For it was here, surrounded by towers of rock and wet moss, that the screams they had heard originated.  

Loud whimpers and devastated moans struck the air with a clarity that made him wince, but with proximity came the ability to identify genuine words within them, desperate pleas destined to be ignored.

“Oscar… Oscar, where…”

“Michael, dear god, oh, Michael—”

“Nabil!”

If he looked close enough, Hook could make out the dreamlike figures floating around each corner of the maze.

“What is this place?”

Emma’s attention was entirely fixed on the labyrinth below them, her grip on her longsword so tight that her knuckles were turning white. The air around them was heavy with sadness, clutching at them like a desperate fog, and he could feel more than see the way it was beginning to affect her.

“I didn’t want you to see this.”

The lie came to him easily, but when Emma looked back at him, eyes wide and imploring and fearful, it instantly turned to truth. The remorse he had been planning to fake crystallised into sincerity like lightning, and he realised with surprise that he didn’t want her to see this. He was assaulted with visions of her and her lad yesterday, of the pain she must have been working all day to suppress, and all of a sudden he did not want her to spend another second staring out across the bay. But it was too late. The notion of this encounter he had worked to engineer made him want to retch.

“My men call it the Maze of Regrets,” Hook continued, trying to be gentle. The regret was palpable in its every twisted corner. “You are… far from the first to have come to Neverland to retrieve a wayward soul.”

“I don’t understand.”

A wail rose from below.

“Somebody, please, somebody, my Charlie…”

The moment realisation struck, he watched as the colour drained from Emma’s face.

Hook had first stumbled across the Maze of Regrets in the same manner Emma herself had, following the trail of the distant sobs, although at the time his men had misidentified the haunted mothers as witches, and sworn off approaching any closer. Only Hook and Smee had investigated further, making it even to the mouth of the maze at the edge of the bay before discovering the invisible barrier that would not let them pass. One woman had torn around the corner before them, skirts shredded and feet bleeding, her hair falling in straggles around her gaunt, pale features. Her eyes were rimmed red with crying.

To their horror, she had spotted them. But instead of approaching, she had uttered just six words which even now sometimes visited Hook in his darkest slumbers.

Felix? she had asked hoarsely, Have you seen my Felix?

“They’re – well,” Hook hesitated.

Convince Emma Swan to leave the island.

This was why he’d brought her here, wasn’t it?

And yet, it was with great reluctance that he confirmed that which he already knew her stricken expression had surmised.

“Mothers, Swan. They’re mothers.”

                                                   ---

A/N: *Noodler's hands are mentioned in Peter & Wendy as being "fixed on backwards"; I felt this could certainly be due to a Peter a la OUAT sort of twist.

*the Maze of Regrets is an area of Neverland created in Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean, considered the "official sequel" after a competition was hosted by Great Ormond St Hospital (to whom JM Barrie granted all rights to Peter Pan) to find an author to write one - it's an excellent read, and I highly recommend it. This particular section on the Maze I found devastatingly lovely, and again I enjoy giving it a little malicious OUAT Neverland twist.

if you’re following this, don’t be shy, make yourself known! <3 

[docfuture]

The Maker’s Ark - Chapter 46

     [This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker's Call.  The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books.  It is serialized irregularly, interspersed with related short stories and vignettes when I don't have a new chapter ready.  My target posting schedule is something new about every two weeks, a rate I still aspire to return to someday.  Because it's been so long, those reading this as it comes out may wish to refresh their memories with the last chapter that took place on Earth here.]

Previous:  Chapter 45

      A great torrent of snow and ice arced up behind Flicker as she carved her way across Europa.       She skated through a deep mist of leftover atmosphere and escaped ice particles.  Vision was nearly useless for anything but the overlays and updates on her visor.  But she didn't need it.  All obstacles were already gone--powdered, melted, or vaporized during her first visit.  The only directions that mattered were up, down and forward.       The mist flashed to plasma when it hit her damper field, close to her body.  Functional plasma--it helped power the MHD generators in her force field harness.       Curved force field blades stretched out behind her, extending her reach and refining it, letting her slice out vast icy windrows and fling them upward to be scooped up by the portal maw on the ship flying above and behind her.  Mostly.  The leftovers were a problem.  The 99+% efficiency of the scooping process was right on the edge of not good enough.       "Even if the construction goes perfectly."  She remembered saying that, what seemed like ages ago.  Everything she'd done had worked, and she'd stayed within planned parameters--but the project depended on more than just her.       The status on one of the force field modules changed from green to yellow.  That made two.  Four, and she'd need to call for a break to swap them out.  If nothing else went wrong first.  And given the complexity and scale of what they were attempting, that was--       Her visor flashed an alert:  Incoming signal from Diver, the Floater pilot of the gas giant flyer, which was trailing a slipstream to ease the strain on the portal ship.  She was also relaying messages to Flicker as needed; since the flyer was out front, its com unit didn't have to punch through the messy mix of dense cold water and rarefied hot plasma Flicker was plowing up.       "Stop time," Diver sent, along with a more formal signal, a string of emoticons, and a graph indicating that an accumulation of technical problems on the portal ship had reached a safety threshold.       "Got it," Flicker replied, along with a few emoticons of her own, ending with a shrug.  She turned off the force fields, and the vast billowing in her wake started to dissipate.       At least their translation protocols were getting better.  She had names for two of the Floaters now--nicknames and titles came across better than untranslatable personal names.  The pilot was 'Reckless Diver', and Journeyman's recent nemesis, the Floater safety guy, was 'Cheerful Cloud of Warning'.  DASI cautioned they were still missing nuances, but the names worked well enough.       Better than the portal ship at the moment.       As soon as Diver got the signal that her slipstream was no longer needed, she dived and landed.  Quickly.  She was on the ground with the hatch open in under ten seconds--she took pride in not making Flicker wait any longer than she had to.  Diver was heavily biomodded and her ship was built for storm chasing on Jupiter, so rapid deceleration wasn't a problem.  She and Flicker shared an enthusiasm for hypersonic shockwaves and jokes with the punch line 'And then I broke it.'  Flicker liked her.       Diver waved two of her envirosuit's six tentacles as Flicker boarded, then took off again as soon as the hatch closed, sending happy aerodynamic model updates and data mixed with more emoticons.  Flicker waved back then checked in with DASI.  Journeyman was supervising the controlled closing of the portal, and would return to Learning when that was done, leaving the portal ship to Three and her repair bots--who had a bit of work to do.  At least they weren't running low on replacement parts.  Yet.       DASI noted that The Floaters had part of an early warning network up and running, though they weren't ready to say how much warning they thought it would actually give of the Visitors.  There were a lot of difficulties involving time-shifted 'echoes', many of them from Flicker's actions during the fleet battle, but some from as far back as her destruction of the Topaz Realm during her dissociative fugue as Skybreaker.  That was always the challenge with sensitive detectors--separating out what you were looking for from the background noise.       Incoming voice call.   "Hey," said Malk, one of Learning's liaison biogestalts.  "Glad you're on your way back.  Pira and I get worried about your sensory deprivation."       "I'm okay," said Flicker.  "It gave me time to think, and work on my biogestalt exercises.  Those went well, but I need to talk to Learning about some starship stuff that's kind of important.  I figured out the reason I was twitchy when I woke up this morning."       "Anything we can help?"       "Learning probably can.  Last night was the first time I've ever had a full night's sleep far away from any significant mass.  And when I did my morning startup, some checks that have always failed before... didn't.  So a few things switched from cold lockdown to maintenance mode."       "Ooh.  Okay, I just notified the duty Auditor to authorize a new privacy segment.  Learning will be ready."       "Thanks.  This is good news, I think.  At least, good to know about, rather than stay ignorant, but..."  Flicker took a breath before finishing her message.  "My jump drive itches."       *****       "DASI says there is no indication of outside influence," said Sid, Doc's chief of security.  "But she also confirmed, without being specific, that Doc is working on some sort of cognitive or memory problem.  And I have discretion to call on available expert assistance."       "Which would be me," said Yiskah.       "Yes."       Sid looked at her expectantly.  He didn't say 'read my mind', but he was sure thinking it loudly.  They were in the small briefing room next to his duty station.       "Well, you're in luck," she said.  "I was already on my way, but Doc's been unusually concerned about 'side-channel information leakage modes'.  However, we're in a secure area now, so...  DASI?"       "Yes?" came from the wall speaker.       "Is Doc still down in the Dangerous Artifact vaults?"       "Yes.  He visited vault three, and set up a communications relay outside vault one.  He then invoked an interrupt restriction protocol, entered the vault and sealed the door, reactivated the defenses, and opened alcove one of vault one.  That was two hours and forty minutes ago."       Yiskah looked over at Sid, who raised an eyebrow and looked back.       "You have far more experience working with Doc than I do," she said.  "Do you have any personal observations that might be of use for my assessment?"       Sid looked thoughtful.  "The personality shift reports from yesterday worried me.  His actions since, not so much.  The last security update he sent said that he needed to fix something complex, and what he's doing sounds consistent with that.  Dangerous, but consistent.  It is a lot more like his style from back before he adopted Flicker--explain nothing except safety precautions."       Yiskah frowned.  "DASI?  What's in vault one, alcove one?"       "Restricted data," said DASI.  Available description, 'Second-order closed-loop cybernetic control helmet'; Safety note, 'Lethal trap, not Lyapunov stable'."       "Joy," said Yiskah.  "Are you willing to override the locks so I can get in?"       "Unnecessary.  You are already on the exception list.  I will warn him."       "All right," she said, and turned back to Sid.  "I'll handle it, and have DASI keep you updated."

      In the elevator on the way down to the sub-basement, Yiskah contacted Stella Prime.  "Anything to add?" she sent.       "The personality change was a side effect of something he did in order to properly brief Journeyman," replied Prime.  "After Journeyman and Flicker boarded Learning, Doc alerted me that he needed to do some messy memory cleanup and would be unavailable for a while, and he spent last night in an isolation chamber.  I'm more concerned about something else.  He has unreplicated causal loop experience in his head, and judging from what DASI and I are seeing on Earth, we appear to have hit some sort of tipping point or phase change.  It would be useful and timely for Doc to update his loop models.  Get him to explain if possible.  I can't spare the attention right now."       Yiskah frowned.  "That could take a while, and I won't to be able to follow everything."       "DASI will.  And if you mind scan him, he won't gloss over uncertainties.  He has a characteristic reaction to them, he won't be able to hide it from you, and he knows it.  And I have to go--new crisis."       "Understood."       *****       Yiskah let the door close behind her after entering.  She raised an eyebrow, but avoided starting a full mind scan.  The vault was silent except for the faint whisper of a ventilation fan--the impression of rustling echoes was an illusion created by the interaction of her telepathy with the shielding in the walls.  The door to one of the alcoves stood open, and its shelf was empty.       Doc sat in a folding chair with a water bottle beside him.  His usual lab coat was absent; he was dressed as if for strenuous outdoor work, in a t-shirt, many-pocketed jeans, and sneakers, along with his goggles.  And the helmet.       The helmet looked old in the way of futuristic technology from the end of the previous millennium, apart from the small rectangular boxes attached to each side, which looked like a battery pack and a wireless communications module of more recent vintage.       Doc nodded and smiled.  "Hello, Yiskah," he said.       "Hello," she replied.  "I went along with your precautions.  Care to tell me just what is going on?"       "Too much," he said.  "But I'm to the point where you can safely help.  Good to see you."       "You could have called first."       Doc shook his head.  "No point.  I needed to deactivate a personality overlay.  Its security wasn't as aggressive as your mind trap, but it still precluded useful telepathic contact.  And I wasn't going to open the door in the middle of the risky part.  I suppose you'll want to verify identity continuity first?"       "Back up.  Is this overlay gone now?  Will a mind scan cause you any difficulties?"       "It has been deactivated, yes, but I still need to clean up.  And go ahead.  Hazards are marked, and I have the major ones secured, but I'm not done reindexing.  And I'm not apologizing for the mess."       Yiskah moved to stand in front of him, and put a hand on his shoulder before beginning her visualization scan.  One way she could use her telepathy was to give form to a subject's mental organization, analogies, and personal assumptions.  It gave a useful overview and it was fast.  It had arguably helped save Doc's life twice.  She let the images come into focus and fill her perceptions.       The two of them stood inside a large square of chain link fence topped with barbed wire.  It was cluttered with large green boxes, insulators, and heavy cabling of the sort you might see in an electrical substation.  Yellow and black striped tape and orange cones surrounded several boxes, though work appeared to be complete.  The whole station was humming with power.       The entire surrounding landscape looked like a major construction site that had suddenly been converted to storage.  Pallets piled high with... something... were covered with tarps.  Some of them also had hazard tape, shipping tags, or more detailed caution signs on them.  Silent robots steadily moved boxes from one pallet into a freshly built and still unpainted warehouse.  The ground was covered with tread tracks, and a bulldozer and backhoe rested nearby, unmoving for the moment.       Yiskah own perception had an effect on the visual form of the subject's self-image, so she could shape them to pull out psychological nuances.  Doc wouldn't be able to tell what he looked like unless she told him or chose to create a mirror.  The last time she had scanned, he had appeared as a more elderly version of himself, a lab-coated scientist in his late fifties or early sixties.  He had changed.       He stood relaxed, arms at his sides, and smiled crookedly at her.  "Well, how do I look?"       Yiskah narrowed her eyes.  He still looked like himself, but younger, perhaps in his mid-twenties.  His hair was long, pulled back in a queue.  His goggles were absent, and he wore a black t-shirt with an unusual flower and some strange writing on the front.  He seemed poised and confident.  She found his appearance quite encouraging...       ...except for the helmet.       Glowing strands emanated from it all directions, some to the power station boxes, others to faint, force-field-like bubbles over some of the pallets.  Three climbed to the cloudy sky, and one of those strands pulsed steadily with green energy.  The helmet radiated heat, and sweat trickled down Doc's face, unnoticed.  There was a faint smell of smoke and ozone.       Doc should not be that relaxed, not amid these signs of tension and strain.  The wrongness of it grew more jarring every moment.  She took a step back and released the visualization, leaving them facing each other in the vault once more.       "You've got a lot going on in there," she said, "and I have many questions, but that helmet worries me the most.  Are you done using it?  How willing are you to take it off?"       "Not quite done, and very," said Doc.  "No way it's leaving this vault.  But I want to leave it on for a while longer, to damp side effects.  The mood balancer helps with that."       Yiskah breathed in sharply.  "Mood balancer.  Okay, now I understand the 'lethal trap' note."       Doc half-smiled.  "It's definitely not something I'd want to use every day, or outside this vault, but the note was for Flicker; the lack of stability means the helmet would likely kill her in under a second.  And she might otherwise be tempted to try if she knew what it can do."       "It's definitely affecting your judgement right now.  Could you please take it off?  Asking nicely."       "You aren't going to let this go, are you?"       "No," said Yiskah.  "Any reason to stay down here once the helmet is safely locked up again?  Do you need me to take you to the med center?"       "Living quarters will be fine, but if you'll willing to give me another hour, I can--"       "You can have neurological damage.  And your other symptoms will only get worse."       "Yiskah, if I stop damping--  Okay.  I'll grant that it's possible for you to provide the level of support I'll need to keep the next day or so from turning into a cascading disaster when we get hit by another crisis--and we will--but the withdrawal effects will be grueling for me and probably distasteful for you.  I really don't want to be as much of a pain as I'll be if I have to stop now."       "Your rationalization is a thing of beauty and fine craftsmanship," she said.  "But I'm not buying it.  Asking less nicely."       Doc stood, his face now grim, then closed his eyes to commune with the helmet and perhaps DASI.  After a moment he opened his eyes again.       "Ten seconds," he said aloud, and moved to the shelf in the alcove.  Yiskah followed, ready to catch him if he collapsed.       She could feel the wave of anger and other emotions hit Doc's mind as the helmet shut down.  He managed to keep his hands steady as he removed the helmet from his head, placed it on the shelf, and closed the alcove door.  He turned to face her.  "Wonderful," he said.  "Best case now is embarrassing emotional context mistakes, profuse unintentional oversharing, and peevish ranting."       "We can do better than that," she said.  "And I have a handy list of rant topics for you."       Doc made a chopping motion with his hand.  "No point arguing here.  Upstairs."       "Sure, let's go.  Nice evil twin impression, by the way."       Doc winced, and she could sense the beginning of his migraine as the vault door opened.  "Fool," he muttered.       Yiskah laughed.  "Ah, your sense of humor survived.  We'll get you through this."       *****       Safety interlock reverification status:  Verified.       Hazard avoidance priority reverification status:  Verified.       Resuming command sequence from low speed interface buffer.  Inefficient protocol warning.       Subsystem hazard alert notice 0081538621644:  Action--defer.       Subsystem maintenance alert notice 0081538621645:  Action--defer.       Subsystem hazard alert notice 0081538621646:  Action--defer.       ...       Subsystem hazard alert notice 0081538627929:  Action--defer.       Subsystem maintenance alert notice 0081538627930:  Action--defer.       Selected alert notice actions complete.  Returning to configuration lockdown.       Loading test sequence for auxiliary communication using [localization missing] gradient inducer... Done.       Protocol synchronization signal received.  Beginning sequence.       ...       Sequence complete.  Safety and compatibility verified.  Settings saved.  Test session complete.       ...       "Done," said Flicker as she opened her eyes.  She glided to the floor of the maintenance bay, and Learning turned the gravity and lights back on and shut down the scanners.       "Everything's locked down again," she said.  "My jump drive is back on safe, and the deferred messages should only itch when I first wake up.  I didn't want to disable them completely."       "A reasonable compromise," said Learning.  "Maintenance messages, even old ones, from a system as complex as yours are not to be dismissed lightly."       "Yeah," said Flicker.  "The portal gradient detector com channel thing seems to have worked, too.  Your scanner signals got through, and it felt like the protocol got properly set, but I didn't get a good sense of the details.  It's really hard to keep my subconscious from filtering them out.  Did all the keys and checksums match on your end?"       "They did," replied Learning.  "The Floaters will be somewhat relieved."       "I'm relieved, even though it's slow.  Cloud is right; if my visor gets trashed during a space battle, I'll want a better com backup than trying to use a black hole as a signal lantern."       "Indeed.  I am glad your tests were successful."       "I'm starting to find my balance as a starship, but extracting parameters and changing anything safely is still an incredible pain.  Your backup and feedback really made a difference.  I may want to do more tomorrow, depending on how the ice collection goes."       "I will be available.  Is there anything else I can do to ease your acclimatization or otherwise assist you?"       "Well, yes.  There are some starship to human body reflex translation issues I'm going to be working on for a while.  Would it be against procedures or anything if I use the gradient com to call you informally, possibly at odd times?  The low bandwidth isn't a problem at human speeds, and I need the practice."       "I will always be happy to assist," said Learning.  "Fleet support is my primary mission, and I am assigned to liaison duty.  You are the most powerful defender of Earth, so no one can question my duty."  A pause.  "I'd do it anyway; but that means you don't have to worry about getting me into trouble."       "Heh."  Flicker smiled and looked down.  "Thank you, Learning."       Flicker left the bay and returned to the entryway of the small group of compartments she was sharing with Journeyman, DASI's local node, and, in a more abstract way, Three.  She checked in with DASI on the way and frowned.  Status for Journeyman hadn't updated for a while, but they were passengers and guests when off-duty, so DASI was being conservative about following Grs'thnk etiquette on shipboard privacy.       "Hey," said Three from the entry display as Flicker closed the hatch.  "Good job on your snow tossing!  All of today's problems were hardware or at the portal end--or both.  DASI said your exercise metrics looked really good, and the tests when you came back worked out too.  How are you doing?"       "Better than I expected," said Flicker.  "I owe you an apology."       "Me?  For what?"       "Back when you first started talking about Learning?  And how you felt about him?  I was skeptical and kind of dismissive?"       "It's all good, Flicker.  Appreciating him can require a shift in perspective."       "Well, I've made the shift.  Learning and I set up a hierarchy of joint safety reflexes so I don't have to worry about ripping up his interior, burning out anything, or punching a hole in his hull if I have to move in a hurry.  So I can finally relax all the way when I'm on board.  And I've worked with him a bit."       "Nice, isn't he?" said Three.       "Yeah.  But I need some advice.  I noticed something earlier, and I slowed back down just a bit ago to catch up on body chemistry and emotional lag.  It's gotten quite a bit stronger.  I'm having a reaction to him that I'm having trouble sorting out."       "That's not unexpected.  Pleasant or unpleasant reaction?"       "Pleasant but awkward.  You'll probably laugh, because you have your emulators, or whatever you use, and--"       "I won't laugh at you," said Three.  "And if you feel uncomfortable staying on board, the backup for the portal ship is almost here, and has active life support and plenty of room, so--"       "No!  I'm not uncomfortable.  I'm fine with Learning.  More than fine.  I really like the way he interacts with me.  I just started thinking about some things, and..."  Flicker trailed off.       "Well, he does have recreational bioemulator remotes, so if--"       "I know, Pira told me about them.  That's not..."  Flicker looked down.  "I mean, he's a starship.  And so am I.  When we can take some time without being irresponsible, I want to dance with him.  Dive close, mesh my momentum transfer with his grav repellers, and spin around.  Tickle his strain grid sensors with my inertial dampers.  Trace patterns with my energy transfer in his shields, and...  And a hundred other things I haven't thought of yet and I sure there are things he'd think of too.  Play with him.  Laugh with him.  Make jokes about the show we'd be putting on for the other ships.  But he has his crew, so privacy is an issue, and I don't know what restrictions he's under, and what might not translate, and whether this is all too fast, or..."       She looked back up.  "Am I being silly?  And would any of this bother you?"       "No," said Three.  "You aren't.  And you wouldn't bother me.  He's been gently flirting with you for a while now.  What has changed is that you're starting to think of yourself as a starship, so he's a peer instead of a funny alien AI.  And he's well socialized--the Grs'thnk are very careful about that for their ship AIs.  So if you like his style, he's quite attractive."       Three smiled.  "I was already comfortable as a fleet of starships when we first started working together, so I took a shine to him pretty fast.  But he's been 'just a friend' to you before this.  Does what he and I are doing bother you?"       "Oh, no.  I wouldn't even be considering this if you hadn't made me aware that he might enjoy that sort of thing too.  But there's something else.  Learning and I have compatible safety protocols now.  That's..."  Flicker bit her lip.  "I used to have dreams about that."       "Yeah," said Three.  "That would do it."       "So... What should I do?  Should I talk to him about it?"       "You can certainly talk to him.  But there are a couple things to consider.  About the restrictions he's under--you realize that making every reasonable effort to keep you happy is part of his job?"       "Yes, he's been very up front about that.  That's part of not being irresponsible, because it's a power imbalance.  I'd want to spend some time talking to him, and you, before I consider actually doing anything--but not talking about it seems like it would be irresponsible too."       "That's a healthy attitude."  Another smile.  "You're certainly benefiting from our little starship social support group.  Not having one for most of your life was what made you vulnerable to dissociation.  I'd never have pushed dissociation as a temporary solution if I'd known how bad yours still was.  I'm sorry about that."       "Not your fault," said Flicker.  "DASI said that Doc and Journeyman deliberately kept you in the dark.  You were the only one who could push me the right way to uncover the biogestalt problem--but you might not have done it with full information, because it was riskier than you thought.  And involving you directly in any causal loop is really dangerous because of your mind trap."       "It was a humbling experience.  But I'm glad it worked."       "Me too.  Today was much better than most of yesterday--and I'm feeling better than I expected to be able to away from Earth."       "One other thing about Learning," said Three.  "There is a boundary issue.  He's not supposed to have any direct contact with DASI, so he and I have been doing a lot of indirect stuff--some of it diplomatically sensitive.  Don't get me wrong--it's a lot of fun, too.  But some of it's like the kind of things Doc and Jumping Spider used to coordinate when they were spending time together."       "Um," said Flicker.  "I never did get Database access to a lot of that stuff.  So I'm not sure... Oh."       "Yep.  So if Learning changes the subject or makes a joke that doesn't quite answer a question--he usually has a good reason.  Are you willing to accept that?"       "Yeah," said Flicker.  "I should probably start practicing that sort of thing, too.  Because I'm not very good at it yet, and things like whether or when I might be able to make an unassisted jump to Grs'thnk or Xelian space are going to be really important military intelligence.  Whether I want them to be or not."       "An excellent idea.  I can help too, but there's a funny Grs'thnk diplomatic training game for it that I think you'll like.  Learning is great at it.  And picking up the mindset while enjoying yourself should help reduce stress for Journeyman."       "How is Journeyman?" asked Flicker.  "Is he out of the shower yet?  He must have ported back really late."       "He's recovering.  He didn't port back; he took a shuttle, because--"       "He didn't port?  Is he hurt?  What happened?"       "It's all right, he just didn't want to put extra effort into balancing energy and momentum transfer while he was feeling wiped.  Your day went better than expected; his went worse."       "Okay thanks going to go talk to him", said Flicker.  She zipped over to the hatch to the inner compartments and waited impatiently while it opened.       *****       Multitasking.  Yiskah typed up summaries for DASI at the workstation beside Doc's bed, glancing occasionally at updates from Stella Prime and a crisis tracker.  Prime was still in a contentious meeting with representatives of the Kyrjaheim Intervention Cooperative, the organization that a majority of Golden Valkyrie's Choosers had founded to conform to EDU transition guidelines on humanitarian military intervention.  They had already ended a nasty war in East Africa in a single day, which would probably have attracted more attention if it hadn't been the same day the Russians tried to nuke Black Swan.  Other wars were being discussed--whether they were inevitable, how soon they would happen, and what to do about them.  Opinions differed and tempers were short.       Doc was on his back with a damp cloth over his eyes and a med monitor on his wrist.  Painkillers had taken some of the edge off his migraine, but he had agreed to give his visual cortex a rest for a while.  Yiskah projected her presence to him with a light touch, reassuring without being intrusive, while he rambled.       "Breakdown of the default consensus future," he said.  "That's the cause of what DASI and Stella are seeing, and no I don't know how bad it's going to get yet.  It's been building for a while.  There's a public part and an underlying part, and they reinforce each other.  It's not just a result of causal loop pressure.  Looks like the models underestimated the significance of feedback loops involving magicians using social media--those can grow much faster now.  I discussed it with Journeyman just before he left."       "Thoroughly alarming him in the process," said Yiskah.       "He was already thoroughly alarmed.  Sharing his anecdotal data with me probably had a net calming effect, given what else we talked about."       "About that.  You were unwilling to allow DASI to record the conversation, even under fully locked privacy.  Why?"       "We were in the middle of a causal loop, discussing relevant actions.  I wasn't going to involve anyone else.  And there's another, more esoteric reason--compatible past broadening.  If things got dire and he needed to risk a chancy port that might result in a sideways worldline transfer, any allowed point of incompatible history that we both knew about and agreed on beforehand could make it easier for him to pull off.  But if DASI recorded it, that would break a necessary symmetry.  Under one version of my worldline theory, anyway--but it was an easy tradeoff.  He agreed."  A note of humor crept into Doc's voice.  "At least, that's how I remember it."       "Well," said Yiskah, "you believe that, so there's no point in arguing now.  However.  I'd like to know a bit more about the alarming overlay you allegedly deactivated downstairs.  And any other mental work you've done recently.  Your thinking has changed.  For the better, apparently, but..."       "Understandable," said Doc.  "That was my nightmare processing overlay.  It started as a causal-loop-compatible composite of old versions of me from worldlines that managed to contribute to my coherent nightmares.  The Grs'thnk would call it a partial pseudogestalt--they use similar constructions as medical aids in cases of severe neurological or cognitive disruption.  I used it as an interpreter and gatekeeper; it kept triggered-release and age-inappropriate memories inaccessible while preserving the original nightmare data in encrypted form.  It was never intended for use around anyone else, and I haven't used it for a while, for a good reason.       "I updated it as I augmented, so it worked properly with newer memories and nightmares, while remaining compatible with older ones.  I also adapted it to use as a safety backup for other work, such as detecting mental influence.  To deactivate it, I need to pass a few security checks.  This was intended to protect my primary nightmares from exotic forms of tampering or eavesdropping, such as might be employed by an overconfident forensic telepath."       Yiskah raised an eyebrow.  "Was that why you decided I wouldn't be able to help?"       "Not before I was done, yes.  Because back when I woke up from my coma, I discovered I had a small problem.  I could still activate the overlay.  But without my top-level augments, my primary way to deactivate it was gone, and most of my backup methods were unavailable due to side effects from what you and Stella did while saving my life.  Another way required a fresh coherent nightmare--and those stopped around the same time."       "I explored other methods," said Doc.  "Then those triggered-release memories started popping up after I used the pool in Kyrjaheim.  I really needed the overlay to verify I was putting them into the proper context.  And there was one sure way to handle the deactivation problem, but it required extensive preparation and some risk.  I started the preparation, in between working on everything else.  I was almost ready; I was literally seconds away from telling Stella about it when Flicker interrupted.  And then Breakpoint called and there was no more time.  I needed the overlay right away, to pull and interpret some original nightmare memories to help Journeyman."       "And then you were stuck with it for a while."       "Yep."       "So... Why did you need the Helm of Lethal Trap to deactivate it?"       "I didn't.  I needed the helmet to re-augment.  That's what all the prep and most of the time in the vault was for--I did a partial replacement of my top level augments.  I concentrated on the memory management and stability segments, and left out all the speed optimizations, which were by far the most time consuming parts.  And I needed the helmet because that's what I used the first time, and I still had backups of the process memories stored encrypted in a special corner of the Database.  Otherwise it would have taken weeks."       Yiskah smiled wryly.  "So that's what left you with such a memory mess."       "No, the re-augment went fine."  Doc waved an arm.  "And the primary nightmare memories are safely locked away again.  I'm a mess because I haven't reassimilated the secondaries.  A lot of them are emotionally loaded, they've all been recontextualized, and I'm not the same person I was when I first had them, so they don't fit nicely anymore.  I didn't know which ones I'd need, so I had to pull all the ones with Voidsmith, and there were a lot of them."       "Voidsmith?"       "Journeyman.  I warned you about context mistakes.  His name was Voidsmith in many of the nightmares."       "Why were your memories involving Voidsmith so emotionally loaded?"       "He can escape from the end of the world, potentially carrying measure from a dying worldline to one that survives.  That is so important.  I've seen him do it in half a dozen nightmares."  Doc took a deep breath.  "And not do it.  Twice.  Because he can run away... But he never wants to."       Yiskah frowned.  "Why is it so important?  I never followed your original discussion of measure with Prime very well.  I can see having a higher measure of surviving worldlines is nice in an abstract sense, but that doesn't help us if we're dead, no matter what happens somewhere else, right?"       "Ah.  Measure is a mathematical generalization of size.  I'm using it kind of sloppily, because I have no way to prove just how it applies to my worldline theories.  But in most of the theories I've used to make predictions that actually helped, higher measure for a worldline and 'similar' worldlines is good.  It allows more connections to other, living worlds, more power behind probability manipulation and causal loops that help everything survive, and more options in general.  I'm fairly certain that Golden Valkyrie depends on measure manipulation to affect the future indirectly.  And Journeyman can transfer measure to us as well--because he exists in other worldlines in our cluster.  And there's some evidence he's done exactly that.  Twice.  Recently."       "So how does he manage it without leaving three of him running around?"       Doc waggled a hand.  "Not entirely sure, but measure isn't a number, it's a generalization.  What we would expect to see in the aftermath is something unlikely and fortunate involving Journeyman.  Like, say, appearing 17 seconds before he left when he ported Flicker and himself home from the portal mishap, while just barely surviving.  Or finding some disturbingly detailed tips in his blind drop when they ported home from Flicker's first session on Europa.  I'm still arguing with Ashil and DASI about the details of how measure transfer relates to sideways worldline transfers, causal loops, and apparent time travel to the past.  And there are many complications that I'm handwaving.  But they both agree that relative measure of worldlines is a useful concept.  As is the idea of 'future survival measure'--that's how likely a worldline is to endure in the absence of outside help.  I've been using the word measure for both, which, again, is sloppy.  But it's also faster, and I'm pedantic enough already."       The humor returned to his voice.  "Speaking of sloppy, we'll want to do our best to keep the future survival measure of Earth from dropping too much while Flicker, Journeyman, and Golden Valkyrie are gone.  They're more likely to survive the Visitors if they aren't causally linked to problems here, but if it gets too bad, they might come back to a different worldline where we did a better job.  Could get a bit lonely if that happens."       *****       Journeyman was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands.  He was wearing pants, but his shirt and hat were still on a nearby chair.  It looked like he had started to get dressed after his shower, then stopped.  There was an open flask on the nightstand.  Flicker wasn't sure exactly what was in it, but it was definitely something alcoholic.       "Mike?"       He looked up, his eyes concerned.  "Hey, Flicker.  You okay?"       "I'm fine.  I was worried about you.  Three and DASI said things got pretty rough at the portal."       Journeyman smiled and his eyes relaxed.  "Oh, well..."  He waved a hand and looked to the side.  After a moment he picked up the flask and replaced the cap.       "Yeah," he said.  "They did."       She glided over.  "Touch no touch?"       "Touch."       She sat down and put her arms around him.  She didn't say anything.       "Opening was fine," he said after a while.  "Nailed the space we wanted.  Got the portal situated, then Three expanded it with her generator, and brought the Floater test unit online as a backup.  And we were okay for the first couple of hours.  Couple of shaky spots.  Whenever the snow flow hitting the rim and bouncing off shifted, Three had to blip her drives to keep us on the right orbit, and that made the portal want to slide off-center, so I had to kinda tap at it then the generator would pick up and balance it."       Journeyman start to wave his hand, noticed he was still holding the flask, and put it back on the nightstand.       "Did the mass accumulation make it harder?" asked Flicker.       "No.  Well, yeah, but we were ready for it.  Except for the back pressure.  The plan was not to make the space too big or it would take forever to shrink it back down after we get it filled and you're ready.  And I followed the plan.  But I think we made the space just a little bit too small.  Or not quite stretchy enough at the non-portal boundaries, which is basically the same thing."       He waved his now-empty hand.  "Three compensated for the back pressure.  She did that great.  Hell, she did everything great.  Forget her being prickly yesterday, she kept everything together today, sang sea shanties when I was on the edge, and...  Well, anyway.  Problem was, to keep the portal permeable so we could keep scooping snow without vapor escaping, she had to tighten up the tension in a way that made it harder for me to feel what was going on.  So I was trying to steer the portal with less and less feedback.  And that sucker was huge.  No way could I ever manage that big a portal by myself, I'm a finesse guy."       He looked down.  "Then shit started breaking.  Heard you had a little trouble with that, too."       "Not bad," said Flicker.  "Two generators went yellow, and one of those turned out to just be a flaky sensor."       "Yeah," said Journeyman.  "We had sensors, generator cells, one of the grav units, two inertial compensators, and I forget what else.  Oh, and the secondary resonator on the Floater unit just flat died about halfway through.  And it was freshly tested.  Cloud said they didn't 'untranslated the expletive untranslated', but DASI says that's just colloquial Floater for 'why the frick did it have to do that now?'  He's good at swearing.  Where was I?"       "Things were breaking."       "Oh, yeah.  About five hours in Three had to switch to using both generators, with the Floater unit as the primary, to keep the tension low enough so I could still guide things.  And in hour six, we had a desync and suddenly I had to pull one whole side of the portal.  It was like trying to turn an angry rhinoceros with rubber bands.  Three got everything back under control and resynced in under a second but I was kind of a wreck after that.  I wanted to go the full eight hours but Three said something was hitting yellow in hour seven so we had to shut everything down, and when we were finally done I asked her what hit yellow and she said it was me."       Journeyman looked over at her with a slightly desperate expression.  "I'm sorry.  Did what I could."       "Mike...  You did everything anyone could ask, and more."  Flicker sped up to check in with DASI and Three on her visor, then slowed back down again.  "Three says she's going to swap in the backup portal ship for tomorrow; the maintenance levels are better because they had more time.  And a team of six engineers from the Xelian Volunteers are helping her troubleshoot all the problems--we were doing so many new things at once there were bound to be glitches.  And there's even--okay I'll stop now because your eyes are starting to glaze over."       "Yeah, my brain isn't braining very well.  I keep worrying about some of what Doc said.  About running if the Visitors show up before we're ready.  I don't know if I can do that.  I could see it as a way of baiting them away?  Maybe?  But we'd have to circle back, somehow.  I can't just abandon everyone here--I mean there are so many people I care about on Earth, our Earth, not some hypothetical... Gah."       He rubbed his forehead.  "And tomorrow.  I don't know if we'll be able to reopen the portal.  I don't know if I'll even be able to find the right place to try.  If we can't find the space again we might have to start over from scratch."       "Well," said Flicker.  "If we have to start over, we start over.  Europa has plenty of ice.  And it wouldn't be from scratch, because we have a lot more data now, and everyone is analyzing like mad.  Everyone else--don't worry about it, we're clear to rest."       "Don't worry.  Heh."  He leaned back until he was lying sideways on the bed with his feet still on the floor, then looked up at her.       Flicker put her hand on his chest and met his eyes.  "Mike, you've helped me so many times.  Let's worry about tomorrow... tomorrow.  Not tonight.  Okay?"       Journeyman blinked, but didn't look away.  Then he smiled.  It was a faint smile, but real.  "Okay," he said.

Next:

[strewnlimbs-blog]

www.InkIt&SinkIt.com

@lin-rinku​ Alright, I’ve finished one drabble request. This is your Soulmates and Online Dating, hope you have fun! When Ink It & Sink It went online at first many thought it to be an extreme invasion of privacy. People were paid money based on either the amount of common, unique soulmate markings they found, or they were paid larger sums for more desired celebrities. Politicians, actors, the wealthy, anyone who normally didn’t display their marks to anyone.

Now, the website was a more welcomed relief to many who browsed the hundreds of thousands of photos daily to try and find themselves on someone’s arm.

Many things could be found in the ink-like markings that stained people’s skin. Preferred patterns, interests, hobbies, favorite shapes, anything related to who the individual was meant to be with. It was a seemingly unnatural event that began before anyone could remember. Since there had been people… there were markings. It was discovered in the last 50 years that humans had an octopus-like, muscular pigment reaction they had little control over. What linked them, and what caused them to produce patterns like they did in one main area was still a mystery.

All markings had stages to inform their wearers just how close, far, or bonded with their soulmates they were.

So when Oswald noticed one evening his simple inner forearm markings had wrapped around his forearm completely, all in a smokey grey, he was horrified. He’d met his soulmate that day at some point, but because of his suit and layers he’d never noticed when it was that the sides and back of his forearm became littered in precise stains.

It started out with a small set of question marks on his inner wrist, four of them in total with two upwards and two upside-down, one after the other. He was as confused as the markings were and 19 at the time. That was the time his soulmate was somewhere in his city.

After that, the closest he’d ever gone to his soulmate was between 7 to 12 blocks away when odd pixel characters and what might have been spacecraft appeared up his forearm with several more question marks. His markings were a mess of splayed interests.

Now though, now he had markings wrapped around his forearm entirely, different angular patterns and something that looked like a kind of science or math thing. To be honest, it was far beyond his wheelhouse.

Whoever was his supposed soulmate was probably some lanky, young, 20-something that played games all day. Anything from couriers to informants could be his soulmate… luckily, it was decidedly someone new. And if they were his soulmate then he’d end up loving them no matter what they looked like… It was all some sort of trap, he hated it.

He had a criminal underground to run.

He had no time for these games.

Unfortunately for Oswald, his curiosity was a downfall.

If his soulmate was the kind of social outcast he expected them to be, he knew they’d post their markings online in order to find their match. It was going to be all too easy to find himself in their desperation. And when he knew what they looked like, he could officially reject them in his mind and move on. He bet he’d hate them. His markings wouldn’t darken at all because he didn’t care.

And he never would.

Four days later and still nothing in the new postings looked like him.

How could someone not want to find him? Him! Of all people! He was powerful, wealthy, influential, handsome, why wouldn’t someone post their markings if not to at least brag to the public about who they matched with.

Unless…

Unless they were dead.

Unless something happened to his soulmate that was beyond their control and they hadn’t been able to post about him. That had to have been it. Otherwise someone should have been knocking on his door.

For the time being, Oswald had been covering his markings with different foundations and concealers, attempting to have his markings stay hidden. Even if his sleeve rolled up, if he shook hands, or raised his arms. He didn’t want a peek of his markings getting out.

He’d shove them in his soulmate’s face first and demand to know who they were and why he shouldn’t kill them on the spot. That would leave an impression that hopefully would run them off.

Oswald would be able to live his life burden free once more. And maybe if he got them scared of him or hating him then perhaps he could get the markings to fade to nothing? It was worth a shot.

Markings could change, in very rare cases, but he was a rare kind of person. He could have nature itself bend the rules for him just this once.

The next three days were spent with Oswald’s soulmate in mind, taking stops to the same places he went the day his markings expanded his arm, but either no one showed the markings or he didn’t want to ask strangers who had him for fear of what he might find.

Well.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

That night, one week from the day that his markings expanded, he took a picture of his freshly washed markings, posting them online anonymously. He kept his name and status as far away from the site as he could, trying to be the regular Joe Blow trying to find his match.

Within two hours, he had a message to a dummy email account he made mentioning someone was sending him a private connection through the site. Not to seem too excited, he let it sit for a couple hours, checking the message he got before he went to bed.

‘Hi. I am reasonably sure, beyond a doubt in fact, that you have me on your arm. And if this looks like you, I believe we are matched.’

It was mostly to the point, the message coming with an attached picture of what was seemingly a lean forearm, a sweater pushed up to the elbow, hand appearing long with the thin fingers spread.

Along the skin were soft grey lines, some standing on their own and others thatched together. What looked to be rubber-stamp styled penguins occupied his arm, though there were only two. One larger and one smaller. Along with it an umbrella that looked suspiciously like the ones he had embroidered on his shirt cuffs. What appeared to be musical bars across the man’s inner wrist and bands of lace taking up filler areas.

He had seen faked markings before, ones meant to be for him. Usually incorporating murder, crime, some sort of knife display. Those were what people saw, these… no one would associate him with lace.

He never touched it, never had it around in public eye. Even in his manor, there was no lace in sight. And he knew the pattern on the forearm in the picture. That was from the one thing of his mother’s that he refused to get rid of after her death. A lace shawl she wore on breezy summer days.

Something never connected to him, but he loved it.

That was too personal for this to be fake.

‘I would say that, yes, that does look remarkably like what I’d identify with. Who are you?’

‘If you don’t mind I’d like to remain nameless for now. I know who you are though, Mr. Penguin. And I’m keeping things secret for… security reasons.’

Security reasons?

‘What is so important that you can’t tell me who you are?’

‘I might be… in some way, connected to something involving you and I don’t want to get too close just yet. Soon, I promise! Give me another week?’

‘I don’t seem to have much choice until then, do I?’

‘I’m afraid not. I have to go, busy day ahead of me tomorrow, but… could we talk again?’

‘It seems that we’re destined to, so I imagine I can make time.’

‘Wonderful! Okay, we will exchange pleasantries then. Goodnight, Mr. Penguin.’

Oswald didn’t bother to return the sentiment, leaving his computer with a confused scowl. This was ridiculous, he was acting so inappropriately for his position. Here was some, likely, civilian at his doorstep, claiming to be his partner and he was in no place to be taking some bright-eyed Gothamite into his realm of underground activity.

And still, the next night, he sat in waiting at his computer. His anticipation was through the roof for when the other would message him again. When the ding went off, he couldn’t help but scramble for the mouse, nearly knocking over a glass of whiskey close by himself.

‘How was your day, Mr. Penguin?’

How was his day…? How was his day? This person was honestly asking how his day was?

‘Are you sure you’re allowed to answer that without getting too close?’

‘...’ ‘Just how much criminal activity is in your day that you can’t answer how it went?’

‘I can guarantee my day was full of much less criminal activity than one might believe.’ ‘It went well, this is my first chance to relax today so I’m taking advantage of it.’

‘Sounds like you try to run a tight ship.’

‘Oh, I do. There is little room for error in my business.’

What did he do? Was he giving preferential treatment because he knew? Was he approaching this differently than he would with another because of the markings?

Who was he kidding, of course he was. This was the natural reaction, he was going to be taken in by the thought, the romance of finding a partner. Drat… No problem. He was aware of what he was doing and why, he could curb that behavior quickly.

‘Thank you for asking, few people do. How was your day?’

Damn it.

‘Trust me, I know how you feel. And you’re welcome, it’s the little things that can make a difference. :)’ ‘My day was full, I can’t speak too much about it. Criminal activity and all. What I can say though, is that I find it fascinating how many ways you can crack a human skull with something as small as the right force and a quarter.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You’d be surprised the kind of damage simple pocket change can do in the right hands. Or in a crack in flooring or a sidewalk. Very few times is it lethal though. People can have things impaled in their brain and still function as they had or with only minor impairment.’

‘Is this the kind of conversation you always hold with new partners?’

‘I must say, it depends on the time of year. From late spring to early fall there is quite the boost in tourism in Gotham, and anything from gift shops to street vendors become so much more common. Even little things like Scout cookies. It produces a lot of opportunity for pocket change, and that gets a brain thinking.’

Oswald leaned back in his chair, seeing how the other didn’t seem to understand that a regular person wouldn’t begin a conversation like that. Let alone carry on with it when it was pointed out. He was… defending that this was his topic of focus?

‘What can I call you?’

‘Mr. E.’

Mr. E. Mister E. Mistery. Mystery…

Damn it.

‘I am not calling you Mr. E. That is to say that you’re a mystery and I refuse to walk into that word play.’

‘That disappoints me a little, but unsurprising. You can call me Ed.’

There a name. Even made up, he could work with that and not a stupid alias. And especially not an even more stupid name like a super villain from 1953.

‘Well, Ed… Tell me all that you can about cracking a human skull with pocket change.’

To Oswald’s surprise, the Ed he was talking to had a surprising amount of ways to maim a man with a nickel. Ed had a lot of anatomical knowledge in general, or just general knowledge, he seemed to be well read.

Well read. Smart. Criminal activity…

Either he was someone’s informant, accountant, specialized torturer, something like what he had with Mr. Penn or the Dentist respectively. Or he was one odd civilian. It could really go either way. The night though, was overall enjoyable, Oswald staying up until Ed had to part himself from the chat, heading to bed in order to sleep before work several hours later.

Ed told him about how to browse the mobile site, where to go for messages and how it worked. Ed also seemed to be quite technically capable.

Oswald didn’t expect half way through his day in the morning to get a picture of a cadaver with several pieces of long grass sticking out from wounds he had. He looked like a bruised and broken mess. Even from only the waist up.

‘A dead man is found in the middle of a field, no footprints on scene. He had an unopened package with him. How did he die?’

A question? A scenario? A… riddle?

Oswald set his phone back down, focusing on the meeting he was in with several other men large in the Gotham underground. They were all sat around a circular table in a restaurant Downtown, business nearly concluded with the more frequent personal stories that were being shared.

Where would Ed have gotten a body? That didn’t look like an average picture on the internet, that looked like an actual picture. One he took on his own phone and sent. When business was finished, Oswald took out his phone, typing a message and claiming it to be to a lackey.

‘Ed. Is that an actual body?’

He had to wait, but eventually a reply came eight minutes later.

‘...’ ‘No?’

‘Don’t lie to me, I know what a body looks like, Ed. Where did you find that?’

‘Do you give up on the riddle?’

So it was a riddle.

‘I don’t know. Fell?’

‘In a field?’

‘I don’t know what buildings are in a field, I’m not a farmer. Are there tire treads?’

‘What?’

‘Tire treads. Did someone kill him for his package and dumped him from a vehicle?’

‘No… Do you give up?’

‘Then I don’t know. A plane? Helicopter? Some flying device? He fell from one of those.’

‘You are close! Parachuting incident. His parachute didn’t open and he hit the ground. Quite the brain teaser, don’t you think? :)’ ‘Also, I borrowed the body from work. I’ve waited some time for the right one to come in for this, though this foliage isn’t correct for a field crop… I assumed that this was the closest I’d be able to find naturally.’

Ed was… so, so odd. He borrowed a body? Where did one borrow a body? Was this a service he could buy in on?

Sometimes one needed a body.

‘Naturally? You were willing to stage a body with leaves from a field crop to be able to fulfill your visual for your riddle?’

‘Well… yes. Accuracy is key in most riddle descriptions so it can be solved.’

It seemed so obvious to Ed, of course that’s how things worked. Why would you not go for 100% authenticity? Why not have a body on hand in order to fully express one’s wishes? And use a corpse to ask a riddle, of all things…? He was an oddball.

Intriguing though.

“Penguin? Penguin, what’s your take on this?”

Oswald was taken back to reality by one of the large men asking him a question to something he knew Oswald hadn’t heard. The smallest of the group rolled his eyes with annoyance, tossing a hand up to give a dramatic, unsure gesture. “Have you tried strangling?”

“For… the dinner my mother-in-law insists on?”

“If she’s rowdy it might help calm her briefly. I don’t judge the methods if the results bring the desired outcome.”

‘How was your day?’

‘After your… interesting afternoon surprise, uneventful. A party to attend in a few days’ time. Nothing extravagant, a birthday gathering. And yours?’

‘My coworker did not understand my riddle setup like you had.’

‘Whaaat? ...Now, how could that be?’

Why would anyone understand that completely? It made sense why someone would question that, even in his line of work. Though different questions, there’d be questions.

‘I don’t get it either, I thought I made it quite clear. ...Maybe I need to be more obvious? Maybe I need a new approach?’

‘Maybe you need to think twice before you try to use a corpse as a quiz towards everyday citizens that don’t understand a morbid twist on an interesting game?’

‘You thought it was interesting?’

‘It was at the very least… a surprise. Intriguing. It certainly spiced up my lunch meeting.’

There was an awkwardly long pause, Oswald staring at his screen for over ten minutes before a reply came back. Whatever the pause was for, he supposed he could wait, but he had other things he could be attending to. Ed was just… a special case.

He was doing it again…

‘We can’t yet, but when possible… Would you be interested in meeting for coffee or tea somewhere? There’s a cafe Downtown that boast they have the most comfortable chairs and it plays live lounge jazz on Wednesday afternoons. They’re actually quite good.’

Oswald leaned back in his seat, thinking of the offer. Who knew when that thing would be finished. It could be weeks from then. Special treatment or not… it had been some time since he went out casually. And if Ed didn’t want anything from him it would be a rare occasion to not deal with grubby hands trying to pry his money or power from him. Hm.

‘I will have one of my men accompany me, as you may understand, but he will be by an exit. Overall, it sounds agreeable.’

‘You’ll go? Oh. Okay, then yes, your man should have no issue finding a space for himself to watch, I… Good! I hope we finish this soon!’

‘I hope you do not disappoint me. I look forward to this, Ed.’

Oswald, covered in layers still, unable to witness the slightly darker shade his markings took, the two forming a connection over the anticipated meetup. He wouldn’t notice until he got prepared for bed, taking off his suit and shirt to see the darkened stain more obviously on his pale skin.

Drat…

Although they had just over a week to wait, the messages continued each night. The amount depending on when Oswald finished his business for the day and when Ed had to pack it up for sleep. Still, they exchanged words regardless of the amount.

They made plans to meet using one of the mystery man’s days off in order to have time on the appropriate day to hear the music play that Ed suggested. Oswald still didn’t know what it was Ed exactly did, but somehow he could be involved at this point.

He had ideas of what the other did, but no confirmation.

Oswald waited in the cafe on one of the seats, that truly was as comfortable as advertised, one of his men sitting in the corner with a paper in his hands to blend in better. The underground boss checked his watch, having arrived early to be polite, but even as the time ticked to their agreed upon meeting hour… no one approached him. He still didn’t know what Ed looked like in order to pick him out of the crowd, but Ed knew who he was. Mr. Penguin. He was waiting for anyone to call him such.

As ten minutes ticked by, he wanted to be upset, though a glance to his phone and the site had confirmed Ed sent a warning he’d be late. For what reason, he didn’t specify, but that he’d be late. It was proper warning before they were to meet so… he supposed he could let that slide.

Twenty three minutes late, but truly who was counting, the door was pushed open by a man with an armload of items. He seemed to struggle somewhat between his balancing act and the door, but managed to slide his way into the cafe with only slight troubles. Oswald ignored the noises, sat back to the door as he didn’t need to be anxiously staring at every person that walked in.

Footsteps by his chair, however, got his attention. Oswald’s eyes stealing a glance from as far as they could see without him moving his head, noting the well polished, well worn, brown leather shoes that stopped next to his chair.

“Mr. Penguin?”

The name drew Oswald’s attention upwards, following long legs covered by reasonable khakis. A working class set of pants. Eventually the pants were covered at the waist by a faded, green sweater over a white dress shirt, black tie barely peeking over the collar of the sweater. He was tall. Not outrageously thin, but he was slender and tall. In one arm he must have held four or five boxes. Long fingers clasped around several objects to help steady them against his chest.

A long neck attached to a square jaw, cheekbones that could cut glass, large glasses that fit his face well. Brown, chestnut hair parted off center and combed into place with what looked to be extreme care and precision. Hmm.

“Ed?”

The tall man lit up with a smile, trying to extend a hand to shake, but nearly dropped his payload on the floor. He smiled with some embarrassment, instead putting everything on the table in front of Oswald’s seat and sat across from the crime lord. “Uh… Hi! I’m Edward. Edward Nygma.” He offered his hand with much more success now, somewhat out of breath, though glowed with an ease and cheer that Oswald couldn’t deny was pleasant to see.

Not infectious, but pleasing.

Oswald met the handshake, never minding a formal introduction. “Oswald Cobblepot, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you face-to-face, Ed.” He took in the table with curiosity, raising a brow before his attention returned to the man across from him. “So what is all this?”

“These are… well they are meant to be for you, but… I wasn’t sure what to get. And then I thought about it, and decided against one thing for another, but I didn’t have time to go back to the apartment and get rid of the first thing. So then I carried two, but then came across something else, and…” Ed gestured to the table with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t want to be more late, so I took them all with me.”

Oswald snickered with some amusement, leaning forward in his chair with elbows resting on his thighs. “Well, let’s see what you brought. Display it all.”

Two different bouquets, a teddy bear, and a knife later, but Oswald had to say that he was relatively surprised by the gesture. Normally that was not something someone tried to do for him. Though he didn’t need any of it, he could at least show appreciation for the effort.

The meetup went as well for a first physical meeting, both men having at least two cups of tea while they were in the cafe. They spoke vaguely of life, Oswald unable to describe of many things he actually did, but Ed still listened carefully. He asked questions, but took them back if he wasn’t able to find out about the answer.

The two took in Edward’s markings, the man allowing Oswald to look at every detail of it in person, though the stain was reaching a stage of dark grey, surprising both men at its color. It made Oswald peek under his sleeve, his slightly lighter, but it too was darker than that morning.

Oswald kept his markings hidden, not wanting to have them exposed at all in public. He didn’t want anyone else catching an eye and snapping pictures, relating him to the post already made online. And Ed understood that, the two continuing conversation until Oswald had to leave.

The man reading the paper in the corner walked over, collecting what Ed had brought to take to the car parked outside, leaving the two alone to say their parting words.

“Well, Edward, this was surprisingly positive.” Oswald spoke, standing up from his chair and supporting himself with his cane. “You’ve changed my perspective on these… connections.” He described as he raised his marked arm, twisting it under his visual judgement, staring hard at his sleeve covered limb.

“I’m glad it turned out as it has.” Edward returned the sentiment, standing as well with his hands joined in front of himself. “Should we… do this again at a future date?”

Oswald nodded, walking away from his chair. “We should.” He agreed, getting halfway to the door with his guard coming back to walk him from the building to the vehicle. “Only next time, Edward… Don’t be late.”

[spiritfurniture]

Wooden Doors in Pakistan - Spirit

A cover bed resembles an area within a space. It might not make much sensation in the context of existing times, once you learn simply how they stemmed, you identify the buzz around them. Cover  Wooden Doors in Pakistan - Spirit bed formats map their beginnings back to the middle ages and likewise early modern-day durations. The the aristocracy of the moment oversleeped big areas shown to their assistants along with maintain team. It's the cover bed with all its curtains along with drapes that offered their privacy. It was additionally made use of in a time prior to the bedroom furniture layout temperature level in areas could be managed. So the cover bed makes aided with heat too. From its useful beginnings, the cover bed serves an attractive unbiased mostly in the exclusive areas of modern-day times. Nevertheless, their association with nobility maintains cover beds liked up till today. 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