#none of this is how i would usually type but i cannot convey this any other way-

[fossys]

I think its so funny when i see stuff about my source because a lot of the time im written as this tired old parental figure (which is probably closer to my canon source maybe) but in system im just like. yea ive been around for centuries but i still just feel like a silly lil guy

[rabid-heart]

Intertwined

For @sefikuraweek 2021 Day 5: Prompt - Gloves

The fairytale of the Princess Cloud, and her SOLDIER, the General Sephiroth.

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Notes/Warnings: Genderbend/Royalty AU! Mentions of war. And, I guess, the fact that I watched too may royalty/period dramas and this is the brain-rot that resulted?

Read on Ao3 | Previous Day’s Post 

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It is a bittersweet affair, as farewells usually are.

The hall is decorated with luminous candlelight, flames flickering beautifully against the crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. It looks almost like starlight, like the cosmos, twinkling above, contrasting with the night sky and the dark curtains shadowing the windows. Equally as dazzling are the people of the Midgar Court, the men and women all in their finest garments and jewels, rounding out the perfectly glossy picture of prestige, wealth and power. The sight might have been pleasant, had it not signified something much darker. As it is, General Sephiroth has trouble hiding his frustration and his anger at this unfettered decadence.

The ball is meant to be a celebration of the General and his fellow SOLDIERs, an elaborate sending off before what would hopefully be the final few months of the Wutai War. The last round of negotiations following the temporary ceasefire between the Shinra Empire and the Wutai Kingdom had fallen through, largely in part to King Shinra’s greed and pettiness. Thus, in spite of the costly war effort, in spite of the numerous lives lost, in spite of the suffering of his men, they are to be forced to take up arms once more. When Sephiroth had delivered the news to trusted officers, the disappointment on their faces had be more than evident. But there was nothing more they could do: in the end, the world had been crafted for kings and emperors, and soldiers, no matter how powerful, merely played pawns in the grand scheme.                  

It leaves little choice now but to try and enjoy the evening, though that proves to be a far more difficult gauntlet than Sephiroth is currently willing to endure. It is a special type of torture, watching his men, his friends, his companions, try to hide their fear over the coming months behind pleasant smiles and fake laughter, all for the benefit of the nobility. For a moment, he thinks about destroying the whole thing, tearing down the castle stone by stone, setting fire to the greed and the cowardice to purify it from the face of Gaia. But he does not and knows he cannot – for many reasons, including one that he holds so secret in his heart.

As if on cue, the court pages begin to sound their trumpets, and all heads in the room turn toward the towering doors separating the grand hall from the rest of the castle. The orchestra simmers into silence and, in the ensuing quiet, a servant calls out, “The Royal Family of Shinra, the King, the Crown Prince, and the Princess!”

The grand doors open. There is the King, dressed in robes of purple and gold, the emblem of his dominion emblazoned across his chest. He stalks his way through the doors and down the steps into the ballroom, trailed by his two children. They say the King had once been a handsome man, and there are some shadows of his lost youth in the shape of his jaw and in his height and proud stature. In fact, the clearest sign of his former vitality is embodied by his son, the heir apparent Prince Rufus, debonair and devastating in his white suit and slicked back hair.

But the true beauty of the family belongs to the fair-haired Princess Cloud. She walks behind the men, dressed in a gown of blue, with cap sleeves that just dip from underneath her shoulders to showcase an enticing decolletage. Her arms and hands are encased in gloves of the most expensive white silk, and around her neck sits the sapphire jewels of the royal family, a brilliant blue that is remarkably overshadowed by the absolute beauty of her glowing eyes.

On this night, and every other night since he had first laid eyes on the Princess, Sephiroth finds he cannot tear his gaze away.

The family walks to the center of the room, and the king lifts up his hands to further corral attention. “My citizens, my Midgar, tonight we celebrate a truly momentous occasion. Because this night marks the beginning of the end of our Wutaian enemies.” The man turns to take a chalice from a servant standing nearby and lifts the golden cup into the air with a haughty flare. “To our brave men, our unparalleled SOLDIERs, who will bring the Shinra Empire the greatest glory and the highest of victories, this night is for you.”

A roar of applause sounds through the crowd in response. But Sephiroth does not care. His eyes are fixed on the Princess, standing beside her father in the middle of the hall, her head slightly bent. To all others, the gesture would have appeared to have been out of respect – and there is some truth to that statement. But Sephiroth knows better – because for the briefest of moments, her blue eyes turn to him, and there is nothing there but sorrow and regret.

The King, however, fails to notice the exchange. Instead, he offers another toast. “For the glory of Shinra, for the power of the Empire, for the strength of our nation!”

“Huzzah!”

The festivities begin anew, and music once again flows through the air. Sephiroth watches Cloud, the way she gracefully bows to her father and brother as the two leave the floor to talk to the other nobles, the way the candlelight of the room highlights the radiance of her eyes. He had spent hours upon hours getting lost in that blue, like flying through a mountain sky, airy and free. The imagery only exacerbates the irony of just how trapped they truly are – a Princess meant to sell her happiness out of duty to her family, and a SOLDIER crafted as the perfect weapon, whose only purpose was to destroy in the name of the kingdom. The very facts that they commiserated over, that drew them together, would likely be the very reasons they would be torn apart.

And yet, in her arms and looking into those eyes, Sephiroth lets himself imagine a different life, one full of beauty and liberty and light and promise and hope. How he longs for it, longs for her, how he cherishes the secret kisses and furtive couplings. It had been a love at first sight, an attraction he hardly knew what to do with, one that haunted his evenings and consumed his waking thoughts. It took every ounce of his trained discipline to stay away. And yet, to his surprise, the affection had not been one-sided. When Cloud sought him out, forced a confrontation, kissed him with a fierceness and a fire that seemed to pull his very soul out of his breath, Sephiroth realized then that he was not dealing with a delicate sapphire jewel, but a sword of the strongest steel.

It only made him fall for her harder.

Her companionship had brought him a relief and a joy like no other, but they always had known it was forbidden, that Cloud would eventually be promised to another nobleman, that he would eventually be shipped off to some far corner of the planet, a tool bent her father’s will. But those facts did not stop them from indulging in the beautiful fantasy, even though they both knew exactly how it would end.

It is this very conflict that stirs in Sephiroth’s mind now. He knows he should look away, knows that the Midgar Court already whispers about them with scandalized delight, knows that if her father ever found out about their relationship, he could very well be executed on the spot – grand General or not. But tonight, he finds himself caring little for the gossip, the royal protocol. Because tonight, in Cloud’s wonderful and ethereal beauty, the loss of her is almost too much for Sephiroth to bear.

(And if he is destined to die for the Shinra royal family, he is at least determined to do it on his own terms.)

That strange mixture of grief and defiance is what carries him forward, striding across the ballroom with a purpose so evident, it parts the crowds around him. He only stops when he stands in front of the Princess, her expression startled at his approach, and yet yearning all the same. Around them, the people murmur, though Sephiroth pays no heed to what they have to say. The tones of the current song have begun to fade away. That is when Sephiroth makes his move.

“Your Royal Highness,” he says smoothly. “May I have this dance?”

The Princess’ eyes flicker between surprise and joy and fear. Not once out of the several balls and banquets hosted at court have they done this, knowing full well that adding any more fodder to the rumor mill could push the King into forcing a separation. But that concern is now a moot point. Tonight, all he desires – and all he knows she desires – is for one last dance.

Cloud bows to him now, but even in that deference, she still displays her formidable nature, in the sharpness of her blue eyes and in her cool disregard of the stares and whispers that the court sends their direction.

“My dear General,”’ she responds, taking his hand firmly and confidently.

The music resumes and the two begin to move, swept up in the melodies and the steps and the notes. As they progress, Sephiroth begins to feel like he always does around Cloud. It is as if the entirety of the universe melts away, collapses to its center – and for him, that center had become none other than her. With his arm around her waist and their eyes locked on each other, he cannot resist the spell that she casts to hold his attention, keep him in her thrall. And from the way her smile lights up to her eyes, to the gentle touches of her hand caressing the back of his own, he can feel her affection for him, just as strong as his own.

But like all good things between them, the song ends all too quickly, the moment fading. The time to say goodbye creeps closer. Sephiroth steps back and offers a serene bow. “Thank you, Your Highness,” he whispers, hoping all the things he wants to say aloud but can’t are conveyed in those words.

Cloud lets out a breath, her eyes glistening with unfallen tears. This is the cycle between them, the beautiful rush of the fantasy falling away, crushed under the relentless malice of their reality. For what else could they be than this – stolen kisses, brief dances, whispered words? Tomorrow, Sephiroth will begin his journey to Wutai, and they will be apart again in all ways, once more. He wishes desperately that it would not be so, but that is a choice that he cannot make.

But then, suddenly and in the quick and determined and bold manner that made Cloud so powerful and so alluring, the Princess chooses for him. She takes his hand and begins to run, pulling him along, out of the ballroom, out of the castle, into the gardens. In the rush, she ignores the startled gasps and hushed commentary of the courtiers, the guards, the servants, and even the King, with whom Sephiroth locks eyes with for a brief and revelatory moment before being swept up and away by Cloud.

He knows, he realizes. He knows.

If this is to be their last night on Gaia together, that fact hardly matters. And regardless, Sephiroth cannot pull away from Cloud, cannot help but run after her, because in his heart, he knows he would follow her to the very edges of creation itself.

Cloud finally stops in a quiet corner of the grounds, pushing him up against the wall of shrubbery and kissing him, gasping and desperate. Her sentiments spill into him, and Sephiroth finds his hands clinging to her waist, roaming over her shoulders, cradling her neck. Any modicum of distance between them feels like an aching sore, and tonight, of all nights, he would do anything to take away her pain.

His lips move, from hers, to her jaw, to her ear, her neck. She sighs, in that lovely way she does, in the way that drives Sephiroth to the very edge of his restraint. His fingers find purchase around the buttons on the back of her dress, and almost as if on instinct, they begin the process of undoing them, one by one.

Cloud’s breath hitches, and she pushes back and away slightly. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispers. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I won’t,” Sephiroth promises, reaching forward to kiss her again.

She dodges the kiss but wraps her arms around his shoulders anyway. “You are fighting a war that you do not believe in. That does not lend itself well to success.”

“Do you suggest I run, then?”

Cloud places her hand on the back of his neck, runs her fingers through his long silver hair. “Maybe we should. We could run. Find a corner of the world that is just the two of us. Where no one could ever reach us.”

For a moment, Sephiroth is tempted by the beauty of the wish – the idea of Cloud, forever his, on a house by a lake somewhere where wildflowers grow. Somewhere he could kiss her without fear of scorn, derision, discipline, or death. Somewhere he could love her, freely and truly. But it sounds too good to be true, because it is, and they both know it.

“I cannot abandon them, my friends and my men,” Sephiroth whispers back, squeezing her tightly in apology.

Cloud lets out a quiet whimper, but he knows she understands, knows that his loyalty is one of the reasons she loves him so deeply. “Then what do we do?” she asks, burying her head in his chest. “I can’t keep living like this. Knowing that I love you and I can’t be yours.”

Instead of responding outright, Sephiroth reaches down and takes her left hand, bringing it up to his lips. He slips the glove off her finger gently, tenderly, with all the love he has in his entire being, allowing the silk to slip to the ground. Then, he himself begins to fall, down to one knee.

“When I return, I’ll put a ring here,” he says, gently kissing her fingers. “And I’ll make even greater vows to you.”

Cloud watches him, eyes wide. “You…are serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“My father will not let you.”

“I don’t care about your father,” Sephiroth says, turning her hand to press more intentional kisses to her palm and her wrist. He then pulls back and gazes up at her with expectant eyes. “I’ll fight his war, because that is my only way back to you. But once I return, I have no intention of letting you go. If you let me fight for you, then I swear to you that nothing will stop me until you are freely and truly mine.”

The tears now stream freely, slipping softly from those dazzling blue eyes. But Sephiroth knows Cloud enough to recognize that they are not from sadness, not in the slightest.

She bends over to cradle his face and tug him gently upright. Once he stands in front of her, she takes his left hand, and just as he did hers, slides off his glove with equal affection, dropping the black leather atop of her own white silk.

As she kisses his knuckles, Cloud whispers with all the passion and fire in her soul, “Then as you fight, so will I. For us. So I too can make more promises to you when you return.”

Their fingers intertwine. And in the garden, underneath the real starlight and away from the prison of the palace, they seal the first of their many vows with a loving, hopeful kiss.

[fablesrose]

Of Kings and Shadows XXVIII

Description: Y/n, a girl who seems to have found her calling. Being a SHIELD agent is like a dream come true. With a friendship starting to form with the Avengers, she’s the Queen of the world! What could go wrong?

Pairings: Avengers x reader, Loki x reader (eventually)

Warnings: Pain

Series Masterlist

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I'm starting to think that you guys all remember me through rose-tinted glasses.

I had been thinking about how the team had talked about and to me. The way they acted, it was like I was the sweetest girl to ever walk the earth. My suspicions grew after the reaction to my initial report. The fact that I killed someone blew their minds. For fuck's sake, I'm- I was a Shield agent! None of our hands are clean. 

Perhaps you're right...

 It's been a couple of days since I gave my final report. It was mostly to fill in a few gaps that the previous ones didn't fill. 

I'm sure it was just luck at this point that I didn't break down telling the story. I've lost it for a lot less. I keep telling myself I was just doing my job. That I pushed all the feelings away. I didn't have any support, so I supported myself. I felt like I was lying. To the team and myself. I wasn't that strong. I've never been that strong. I never will be that strong.

Maybe I had a hand in painting those lenses.

Either way, we're just glad to have you back Y/n.

Awe, princey, you old sap.

Loki grumbled a bit, Really?

In return I put on an innocent facade, Whatever do you mean, princey?

I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. 

... So what're we gonna do?

He sighed, I guess we'll just take it one day at a time, my dear.

That's what we did. One day at a time. We talked, we sang, sometimes we would just sit there and play some cards. Time seemed to fly by, so much that I couldn't recall when I got back. And for the first time in a very long time, I loved not knowing.

I occasionally asked how long it's been and currently, it must have been close to four months. 

It was a music day today. I had eventually gotten Loki to sing along with me, especially after I found out he listened to my music while I was away. Song after song we would sing together, in my head of course. Loki had a lovely voice, just the right octave for the types of songs we were singing but had a pleasant contrast of smoothness to the usual roughness of the original vocalist.

I can't believe I was just thinking about that.

Hello? Hello? Hello?

Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me Is there anyone at home? Come on now I hear you're feeling down Well I can ease your pain Get you on your feet again Relax I'll need some information first Just the basic facts Can you show me where it hurts?

I loved getting lost in the music, letting it not only flow around me but through me as well. The steady rhythm was an easy distractor of everything going on. I could feel myself reaching for the notes, my fingers pleasantly stretching with the highs and lows.

There is no pain you are receding A distant ship smoke on the horizon You are only coming through in waves Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying When I was a child I had a fever My hands felt just like two balloons Now I've got that feeling once again I can't explain you would not understand This is not how I am "I have become comfortably numb"

The music just drowned everything out. With the tide, I could feel it extending my shores, the push and the pull of the tempo. I wanted to smile as Loki's voice paired with my own could have caressed the stars to sleep. 

"Okay Just a little pinprick There'll be no more, ah But you may feel a little sick Can you stand up? I do believe it's working, good That'll keep you going through the show Come on it's time to go"

Sometimes it was better to not feel at all instead of all the pain. With the odd senseless feeling from the shadowy powers running through my veins, music had a similar effect that led to comfort. Or maybe it was the needed distraction from all the previous pain. A way to escape.

"There is no pain you are receding A distant ship, smoke on the horizon You are only coming through in waves Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown The dream is gone I have become comfortably numb"

I dragged out the last line as long as possible as the closing notes played out. I just reveled in the feeling that encompassed me. A lovely feeling of peace.

A voice came on through an intercom, "Holy shit."

I knew he wouldn't hear me but I figured Loki could convey my thoughts, "Holy shit, what Tony?"

"Holy shit I can hear you Y/n!"

I rolled my eyes, "What are you talking abo-" I paused and realized I could hear myself talking. "Loki?"

"It's not me." He sounded excited but was holding his breath.

"Holy shit!" I looked at my hand and watched as I flexed, fisted, and relaxed it, all to my own will and pleasure. I raised my head to look at the wall where I assumed Loki would be hanging out on the other side, "Holy shit!"  I stretched my arms wide, "Whoo-hoo!" I started to laugh, a wave of endorphins and adrenaline taking over. 

It was only a couple of minutes before the outer section of my cell was flooded with my friends. They all chattered excitedly at the development. I could hardly tell who was saying what, but it was so good to see them. Everyone looked a little older, little rougher, but they were still the same Tony, Clint, Natasha, Bruce, Thor, Steve, and Loki. There was one new face, but the way she held herself gave me a guess.

"You must be Wanda." I would have offered my hand, but there was still a thick sheet of glass that separated us.

She nodded, still looking a little closed off.

"Well, it's nice to see you." I smiled softly at her before turning to talk to the rest again. I struggled to focus, but I was so happy I didn't really care.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Loki sat a little apart from the group, letting them have their moment with Y/n. Right when he realized he heard her voice come out of her mouth, not the twisted version, he withdrew from her mind. He let her be free and by herself. At first, Loki wasn't sure if he could believe it. He had been hearing her voice for the last four months in her head, it almost didn't register that it wasn't supposed to be heard through his ears.

It was shocking. One minute it was just any other day, she and Loki were singing where no one could hear them but each other, and then the next she was able to... Do whatever she wanted. She could sing, she could dance, she could see. Loki wasn't sure how it happened. He felt a change, of course, but he didn't know that it was the change they were waiting for, working for.

He was broken out of his thoughts by a hand placed on his arm. He turned towards Wanda and looked at her expectedly.

"She's going to fall apart, Loki." She seemed concerned, but it didn't downplay the final-ness of her tone. 

Loki furrowed his brow, "What are you talking about?"

She grew a bit frustrated, "What a friend you are if you can't tell she's about to break!" She kept her voice low as to not alert the rest of the team.

Loki turned his eyes towards Y/n to look her over. He did notice that her smile seemed a bit strained, but that could have been from several factors.

"She- she's..." Loki stuttered to defend himself in not finding anything wrong with her but decided to drop it, "How would you know?"

Only then did Loki notice the shine coming from Wanda's eyes.

"Because I'm in her head, and for another, she's not yelling at me to get out."

Before Loki could respond a large thump was heard from Y/n falling to her knees heavily. She clenched her hands against her head and an ear-splitting shriek came pouring out of her mouth.

In an instant, Loki teleported into the inner chamber and knelt next to her. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the team clutching their ears and looking worriedly through the glass. Wanda looked like she wanted to help and ran towards where the door through the glass was. 

Y/n didn't seem to recognize that he was there. Not even when he placed his large hands over her own to try and slow her rocking. 

"Come on, Y/n, look at me. Talk to me! You're going to be fine, what's going on?" Loki tried to talk to her, but tears kept streaming down her face and the only time the deafening cry stopped was when she took a breath.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It felt like every headache I had ever had had been reincarnated at twice the strength. They were all pounding against my skull with jackhammers. I thought maybe if I squoze my head it would still the throbbing.

Nothing was registering except for the pain. I vaguely remembered that I was talking to people, but the only thing on my mind was the agony. I could barely even recognize that I was screaming. I wanted to retract back into what it was before. It sucked. It sucked horribly. But at least it didn't hurt.

I tried to pull back from the pain; I tried to make myself as small as possible, but it was like clenching my fist, there was only so small I could go. 

Since that wasn't working, I desperately pushed at the pain, begging it to go away. It seemed to have worked at least a little bit because I started to hear someone talking to me through the shrill shriek coming from the back of my throat.

"Please! Y/n, talk to me. What can I do?" 

Instead of the pain, I tried to focus on his voice. I tried to anchor myself to the warmth of his hands. His thumbs would gently brush against my temple and right then did I realize how long it's been since I've been touched.

I let out a whimper, "It hurts... Please, it hurts so much!"

I heard Loki let out a sharp breath, "Okay, okay! We're making progress. Wanda is trying to find what's making you hurt alright? Stay with me. Keep talking to me."

I let out a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush, "I would very much enjoy slamming my head against that glass right about now." I clenched my teeth as I felt myself slipping back into the anguish. I kept my eyes closed tightly as if I let up just a little bit of pressure, my brain would come pouring out of my eyeballs.

I thought I heard a soft thump next to me and I snapped my eyes open to see what was the matter. Almost instantaneously I shut them again at the bright lights.

"What's happening?" My voice sounded strained.

"Uh, nothing for you to worry about. Wanda just passed out next to you-"

I felt myself start to tip over, "What?"

"Would you like to sleep? Would that make you feel better?" Loki softly laid me down to the floor, his hands cradling my head.

I softly nodded, speaking became difficult as my little hold on control started to slip again. 

"Alright, everything is going to be fine, my dear. Just rest."

A soothing feeling washed over me and I felt my whole body almost involuntarily relax. Before I knew it I was at peace in a lovely dreamland.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I awoke with a whimper. My head was pounding with what felt like the mother of all hangovers. I curled into a ball wishing for nothing more than to slip back to the world I awoke from. I couldn't quite remember what that world was, but I knew it was pleasant. And that's all I could ever want, something pleasant.

"Hey! She's awake!" Tony was probably just speaking excitedly, but it sure felt like he was yelling right into my ear.

I let out an aggressive grunt and tucked an arm over my eyes and ear.

Another voice came much closer and much gentler, "Easy Tony, you never enjoy us yelling about when you have drunk too much the night before."

"I guess that's true, sorry kid." I heard the squeak of someone's shoes against the smooth floor I was lying on.

I peeked out from my arm to see Tony squatting next to me with a glass of water and a handful of pills. I started easing myself up from my curled body, and someone's hand hooked under my elbow and helped me prop myself up against the curved glass. I looked over to see Loki sitting next to me. I wasn't sure how long they'd been there, but before I hurt my brain too much thinking about it I greedily swallowed the pills Tony gave me.

I tilted my head back against the glass and closed my eyes as I felt the water slide down my throat effectively soothing the roughness.

"I'm sure you would want to know what caused you that much pain," Loki spoke quietly for my benefit, and I greatly appreciated it.

I hummed in agreeance.

"As far as we could tell it must have been some sort of extreme growing pains."

I groaned, "I'm too old for growing pains."

"Yeah, tell that to Clint every time he hurts himself from his growing stupidity." I could practically hear the eye-roll coming off of Tony and I had to let out a chuckle that I immediately regretted. 

There was just the steady sound of the three of us breathing for a little bit. Eventually, I reached my hands out to where the two men were positioned until they both took hold of my hands. I squoze them gently, showing my thanks.

Tony squeezed back before letting go, "I'll let the team know that you're okay, they'll be relieved. Technically, we aren't supposed to be in here, so me and Rock of Ages over here better beat it."

I didn't open my eyes, "Mmm, alright."

I heard them stand and walk towards the door. Before they could walk through the door I couldn't help with a remark.

"Why don't you get me a book? Or a deck of cards? I need to see if I can still make card houses."

A/n: Hey, if you enjoyed it please leave a like and a reblog? Thanks!!

 Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrOQC-zEog

Tag List: @kitkatd7 @snarky--starky @confetti-its-an-imagine-blog @kaogasm

[under-the-lake]

‘I enjoyed the [DA] meetings, too. It was like having friends.’ - Luna, Friendship and Loyalty: Why She is NOT a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

This quote from Half-Blood Prince, Chapter Seven, is one of the blunt yet calm and non-judging statements Luna can come up with occasionally, and that usually startle people because of their accuracy and/or bold honesty. While Luna can be very Berkeleyan in her conception of reality, her friendship once given seems to be given forever. Contrary to many characters in the Harry Potter series, she’s loyal to people before being loyal to her House. Luna has also been deemed to meet the requirements for being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG). I beg to disagree with that statement. Maybe she ticks some of the boxes, but many of her traits and actions stand in opposition to that. So I’ll also explore that side of her here. These two short paragraphs already showcase Luna as ambiguous. Exciting, right?

Loyalty, Friendship, Empathy and MPDG

I’ve been asking people around me what they thought of Luna. Many put her loyalty, friendship and empathy forward. First it might be useful to define those terms. I know we all have some idea of what they are, but I was thinking of a more academic point of view (still wondering why Louhi was not sorted in Ravenclaw). I’ll try and make it short (I can hear you snort…).

Loyalty

Loyalty has been a theme running throughout the series from the very first chapter. Mr Dursley’s loyalty to the family principle of not mentioning the Potters is tested a few pages into the first book (Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter One). Dumbledore’s loyalty to the Potters is shown straight in as well (PS, Chapter One). I mean why would the headmaster bother bringing a baby to their foster parents himself if there was not a good reason? Harry’s loyalty to the Dursleys is settled rapidly as well, and further into the book (PS, Chapter Two), Hagrid’s loyalty to Dumbledore is stated by the gamekeeper very soon after he meets Harry (PS, Chapter Four). Loyalty as a virtue is associated with Gryffindor House by the Sorting Hat in each of its three songs (PS Chapter Seven; Goblet of Fire, Chapter Twelve; Order of the Phoenix, Chapter Eleven). It is therefore associated straightaway with the hero of the story, and by default, and tacitly, slyness and unreliability are associated with the ‘enemy’ that are Slytherins. None of these traits is mentioned in so many words, but Gryffindors are the ‘brave at heart’ whilst Slytherins ‘use any means to achieve their ends’ (PS, Chapter Seven) and that doesn’t change throughout the books.. Luna is a Ravenclaw. So what then?

What is loyalty? I mean we all have a sense of what it is, of course. Supporting our friends, our family, fly high the values we share with a society, support them whatever the circumstances, swearing allegiance to a master or an institution (sometimes even to social constructs). Loyalty is a virtue, albeit, as many point out, a complicated one, because it puts the person in front of hard choices, for instance telling their friends the truth or being bold, or honest, or doing things that they wouldn’t normally do, or acting against their own inclination. Some say loyalty is only a feeling because it’s always grounded in some sort of attachment for a person/institution/society. There’s no denying that loyalty cannot be affectless, but it doesn’t follow that the feeling is a positive one. You can be loyal out of fear, for instance. Take Wormtail. Of course one can question the very use of the term ‘loyalty’ in his case, but it ticks most of the boxes. What are the boxes, then? After reading the ‘loyalty’ entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Kleinig, 2017), I decided to make the boxes as follows: a) there needs to be some strong form of attachment that can go as far as devotion via professional commitment (like for a lawyer), b) this attachment makes the person want to secure (or at least not to jeopardize) the well-being/interests of the person/object/concept they are loyal to, c) this attachment makes the person put their interest and well-being after those of the object of loyalty, and d) there might be an interest for group survival (either genetic or other). That last one is one of the boxes that relate to family relationships, friendships, house loyalty etc…

The question is, how does Luna relate to loyalty? I reckon she’s one of the most loyal characters in the whole Harry Potter series, because she doesn’t question the concept. Her friendship, therefore her loyalty, once given, is given forever. Whilst she can be very Berkeleyan in many ways, Luna is full black or white when it comes to friends.

Friendship

Aristotle (him again) devoted a big part of his thinking to what friendship might be. Peoples (or some people among the peoples) have been discussing the topic of love and friendship as something fundamentally human (I don’t think I agree with that, but that’s not the point here). Ancient Greeks and Romans put friendship above romantic love in their scale of feelings (and I must say I do agree with that): it’s philia, friendship-love (Deavel & Deavel, 2010). That’s why there’s such a canyon of difference between the words ‘pal’ or ‘mate’, and ‘friend’. It has to do with the level of intimacy you share with the person (mentally and/or physically), but also with how much you embrace that person with all their qualities and faults, not trying to change them for your or their sake, but also being able to tell them truths in their face that nobody else would dare utter without fear of losing them.

If we go back to Aristotle, he defined three types of friendship (which, for him, is a kind of virtue, meaning people must constantly work on it): friendship for use, for pleasure, or complete friendship (Aristotle, in Mogg & Tully, 2012). It is easy to understand the first: the person whom the ‘friendship’ is bestowed on is only a means towards an end. For instance, take Peter Pettigrew. He never loved his three Marauder companions, but he used them to get protection. In the second type of ‘friendship’, the person who bestows his ‘friendship’ on someone wants to derive something pleasant out of it, still not considering the feelings of the other. That could be, for instance, the kind of relationship Romilda Vane would like to have with Harry, or again Pettigrew and the Marauders. A complete friendship means that the person desires positive things for their friend, for their sake and not their own. It’s valuing the friend for themselves, and not as a tool. Usually, in analysis of the Harry Potter series, only the friendship between Harry, Ron and Hermione is viewed in this light (Mogg & Tully, 2012). That might be because it indeed develops over seven years, involves living together not only in the comfort of Hogwarts or the Burrow, but in a tent (granted, with all comforts as well), on the run, on a mission, not really knowing where they are going. As Mogg & Tully put it, the evolution of friendship in Harry, Ron and Hermione goes from being a working group of complementary units to sharing and learning from each other and supporting each other’s psychological development.

Yet, I question this exclusivity in the sense that Luna’s character makes her a good candidate for that kind of friendship. She might not tick each box, but I’ll explore the concept, as well as try and state that Luna is NOT a MPDG among other reasons because of her take on friendship and loyalty. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe not. That’s the excitement of research, isn’t it?

Empathy

Empathy is a fashionable word nowadays, so it tends to be used to convey many things. However, primarily, it means the ability one person has to feel ‘in the stead’ of another, to step into their shoes and feel ‘with’ them. It is a central concept to the building of human societies, because it allows people to create bonds with one another. Empathy can lead to altruistic motivation, meaning that one who feels empathy towards others might want to help them. In the Sandford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stueber (2019) says that according to one of the philosophers who currently studies empathy, Batson, the predominant trait of empaths is selfishness (sic), that the altruistic bit of empathy is not the most common, and what determines if a person will help another or not depends on how strong they are personally, and what the cost of helping the other would be. To be truly altruistic, moreover (and quite obviously), the helping behaviour must not be directed towards a personal goal. That’s sort of logical, given the name is ‘altruistic’, but again, there are different forms of help. Other researchers (Ciladini et al., in Stueber, 2019) state that when in extreme conditions, this altruistic behaviour stems from a sense of oneness between the actors, the emergency or extremity of the situation leading them to behave as one body, therefore saving limbs rather than individuals. Empathy could go that far.

Of course I chose to mention those bits of the article because they serve my purpose, my question being Luna and empathy. I guess one could write books about all those three topics, but what is given here will be enough to shed some light on Luna.

A Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

For those who are into sociology and pop culture, the term is familiar. For those who are not, it requires a definition. The phrase was coined in 2007 by Nathan Rabin (in Nilson, 2020) but this type of characters actually were always there in pop culture in various forms. However, Rabin said that since this character was growing more and more common in films, it might be useful to coin a concept, and so he did: a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a female character whose only role in the plot is to guide a soulful young male character towards embracing life and its mysteries. My inner feminism starts at such a phrase and all sorts of arguments come to mind to destroy it. After all, I am Louhi, The Witch Of Pohjola. However, it is true that MPDG characters exist and must be taken into account. Now the question is, what defines a MPDG?

A MPDG is a character who, at first, seems to have none. She stands out of the crowd, and represents something mythical or otherworldly at first, for the males around. That makes the MPDG attractive, along with some sort of dreaminess. Among the other ‘symptoms’ of the MPDG (Pasola, 2014) are innocent bluntness, lack of self-consciousness, and a propensity to desert conversations she doesn’t find interesting. There is even a ‘test’ (Bechdell-Wallace test) to assess MPDG-ness in a female character, and it consists of three statements: 1) the plot must contain at least two women, 2) who talk to each other and 3) discuss something else than men. This test has apparently been widely used to analyse films and culture (quick google scholar search… didn’t have time to read) since its appearance in 2005. Bechdell says that if a female character fails that test then she can be deemed a MPDG. I think it is a bit too straightforward.

Appearances… can be misleading. Therefore, while Luna fails the test (Pasola, 2014), there’s more to see than meets the eye, and Luna is worth the analysis. So, my stance is that Luna is NOT a MPDG, however much she looks the character at first sight.

Luna: what about her, then?

Luna is sort of vapoury, has a mythical or mystical je-ne-sais-quoi about her, conveyed by her waist-long blonde hair, protuberant eyes that give her ‘a permanently surprised look’ (OoP, Chapter Ten), and her rather peculiar choice of jewellery (butterbeer-cork necklace or radish-earrings). In the films, this effect is carried on further by Evanna Lynch’s voice, which gives Luna an ethereal quality. Therefore she physically sort of fits the MPDG trope. Moreover, according to literature, as said before, she fails the Bechdell test.

BUT. I don’t agree Luna is anywhere near a MPDG.

Let’s start with the definition of a MPDG. According to it, Luna should be a sort of muse to a man and guide him to embrace life and its mysteries. Well. Er… aha. There’s already a problem here. Because Luna guides nobody to embrace life and its mysteries. She sometimes says things that are just plain true and takes a rather original stance when it comes to relationships with others. She doesn’t guide anyone. She never seeks people to help them or offer any kind of advice. If she happens to be there at a moment when she can say something that seems relevant to her, then she’d do it. That’s not guiding. It’s a chance meeting. At least that’s how I see them. You could argue that she guides Harry. Why yes, but the bias is that we see the whole story from Harry’s point of view, so there’s no way we can be sure Luna doesn’t give the odd piece of her mind to anybody outside Harry’s presence. She doesn’t act like a muse either. Harry doesn’t daydream about her, his thoughts don’t get back to Luna every now and then. He basically doesn’t give a damn about her, at least at first, and if he occasionally does, it’s either by chance or for lack of a better option, like when he invites her to Slughorn’s Christmas party, or when he has no choice but to take her along to the Ministry. After that last adventure, though, his attitude towards Luna changes, she has grown on him, but in no respect is she a muse to him. He’s too much entangled with his love life, his loyalty to his parents, the Order and Dumbledore, and his need to save the world every now and then, to care much about others. To add to this, nowhere in papers analysing MPDGs do the words friendship, empathy and loyalty appear to describe the characters. And Luna can feel all three, and shows them throughout her appearances in the Potter saga.

Luna is empathetic, though in her own way. She can sense how others feel and offer comfort, yet it’s not the usual kind. ‘You’re just as sane as I am’ (OoP, Chapter Ten) is not exactly comforting at first to Harry, when he thinks he’s being mental, seeing the Hogwarts carriages being pulled by winged skeletal horses. He has just seen how unusual Luna is, reading the Quibbler upside down and believing the cock-and-bull stories her father prints about Fudge’s army of Heliopaths. However, at the end of the same book, they discuss Sirius’ and Luna’s mum’s deaths, and ‘as [Harry] watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly’ (OoP, Chapter Thirty-Eight); Luna sort of comforts Harry in spite of herself with her optimism, and she couldn’t do that without being empathetic. In Deathly Hallows Luna is the one person who keeps Ollivander alive while both are imprisoned in the cellar at Malfoy Manor, as he acknowledges to her on leaving Shell Cottage: ‘I’m going to miss you, Mr Ollivander’, said Luna, approaching the old man. ‘And I you, my dear,’ said Ollivander, patting her on the shoulder. ‘You were an inexpressible comfort to me in that terrible place.’

Luna doesn’t seem to ‘need’ friends. As in, she’s not actively looking for friends. She probably has a whole world in her head that fills her. That doesn’t mean she’s not happy having some friends, as the mural in her bedroom at home is proof enough of. When she acknowledges friends, then she’s loyal to them. Had she not been so, she wouldn’t have stood alongside her dad and advocated Harry’s interview to be printed in the Quibbler. She wouldn’t have fought with Neville in the renewed Dumbledore’s Army in Deathly Hallows. She wouldn’t have stood to the Malfoys while being held captive. In return of her loyalty, one of the next offspring in the Potter family is called Lily Luna. I think we can reasonably say, along Aristotle in Mogg & Tully (2012), that when Luna bestows her friendship on someone, it is a complete one. She doesn’t want to change people, doesn’t want to use them, just wants the best for them, whatever the cost for her.

Luna doesn’t question her feelings. What she gives, she does fully. To the Trio, Neville, Ginny, and also Ollivander and Dobby. That leads her to not talk about her friendships, and therefore, maybe, people to think that she doesn’t have any. However, she expresses them in sometimes odd ways verbally, like when she agrees to go ‘as friends’ to Sulghorn’s Party with Harry (HBP, Chapter Fifteen), and sometimes in hidden ways, like in that ceiling painting she did in her room back home, and that the trio discovers when visiting Xenophilius during their hunt for clues about the Hallows (DH, Chapter Twenty-One).

Luna doesn’t forgive. She doesn’t need to. She’s so detached that it sounds like she’s not hurt by people being mean to her. A fine example of this is the finale of OoP, when Harry meets her on his non-way to the End-of-Year Feast, and Luna is looking for her possessions (OoP, Chapter Thirty-Eight). She doesn’t hold a grudge towards her fellow Ravenclaws for being mean to her. Therefore, she doesn’t need to forgive either.

Some people have suggested Luna could have autistic traits (Belcher & Stevenson, 2011; Guha, 2020). There are indeed traits that could lead into that direction, and the web is full of people discussing that possibility. However, Rowling has denied that (it’s all over the web, but I cannot get my hands on the place I read that bit of interview…). Luna is just… Luna, the moon girl, whose name is maybe only the moon, or, as Le Callet (2018) suggests, a tribute to an Assyrian satirist from the 2nd century AD, Lucian of Samosata, who wrote A True Story, a fantastic tale about creatures like tree-women, or Selenites living on the moon and grilling frogs (moonfrogs, ring a bell?), breathing the vapour that wafts from them. He was also a known critic of the belief in the paranormal and of religious superstitions. Then part of him stands in opposition to Luna’s: she does believe in weird stuff, has odd superstitions (Nargle infested mistletoe and all that), which she eventually has to give up (like Crumple-Horned Snorckacks). Luna’s name might also be a tribute to Cyrano de Bergerac, the French 17th century author of Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon which is a classic in the field of early French science-fiction (see illustration below, by Henriot, 1900, Cyrano in front of the Moon). After all, Rowling is learnt in French and French literature, so we cannot rule this hypothesis out. In this book, Cyrano travels to the Moon using rockets powered by firecrackers… The inhabitants of the Moon are four-legged creatures who have talking earrings which are used to teach children.

All in all, all well considered, there is not much to back up the idea of Luna being a MPDG, and I am quite relieved to see that my small researches and musings have led me to that conclusion. You could say I am biased, wanting my conclusions to fit my hypothesis. Who wouldn’t? However, it is reassuring to find that one’s mind goes not astray, somehow. I find, after all this thinking, that we can learn a huge lot from Luna, even if she appears only sporadically in the story: human values that make people strong in a moral sense: resilience, trust, loyalty, friendship, self-confidence.

Now this has been done, I want to delve further into Luna’s character by exploring the job of Magical Naturalist (that appeals to me a lot, being a biologist myself, with specialisations in botany, zoology and ecology), as well as exploring her relation to Death, comparing it to how the other characters embrace it (or not). But these are completely different stories.

Thanks to Little My, Purple, Andromeda, Kikimora, Dawn, and Thetis, for sharing their opinion of Luna with me.

Sources:

https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-original-forty  

https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/thestrals

http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/0730-bloomsbury-chat.html

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-resiliency-of-luna-lovegood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian

Belcher, C. L., & Stephenson, B. H. (2011). Entering the Forbidden Forest: Teaching Fiction and Fantasy in Urban Special Education. In Teaching Harry Potter. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. 121-142.

Chaillan, M. (2016). Harry Potter et Berkeley. In Harry Potter à l’école des philosophes, Philosophie Magazine, Hors série n°31, novembre - décembre 2016. 70-71.

Granger, J. & Bassham, G. (2016). Just in Your Head? J.K. Rowling on Separating Reality from Illusion. In Bassham, G. (2016, Eds.). The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy, Hogwarts for Muggles. Wiley Eds. 185-197

Guha, S. (2020). Luna Lovegood or Loony Lovegood? - Reading Luna Lovegood as a victim of Asperger’s Syndrome. In P Barry, N Pederson, L Kang (2020, Eds.) Proceedings of the Two-Day Conference: Questioning Attitudes and Labels: Mental Health Versus Madness,  St. Mira’s College for Girls, Pune, 45-48.

Kleinig, J. (2017), “Loyalty”, in Zalta, E. N. (2017, Ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/loyalty/  

Le Callet, B. (2018), Le Monde Antique de Harry Potter, Stock, Paris.

Pasola, K. (2014). The Integrity of Luna Lovegood: How JK Rowling Subverts the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Trope. In Martín Alegre, S. (2014, Ed.). Charming and Bewitching: Considering the Harry Potter Series. 153-161.

Mogg, J., & Tully, K. (2012). Harry gets by with a little help from his friends: An Aristotelian reading of virtue and friendship in harry Potter. Reasons Papers, 34(1), 77-88.

Nadal, C. (2014). Magical Science: Luna Lovegood’s Beliefs, Discoveries and Truth. In Martín Alegre, S., Arms, C., Blasco Solís, L., Calvo Zafra, L., Campos, R., Canals Sánchez, M., … & García Jordà, L. (2014). Charming and bewitching: considering the Harry Potter series. 148-153.

Nilson, M. (2020). A Magic Manic Pixie Dream Girl?: Luna Lovegood and the Concept of Postfeminism. In Jarazo-Alvarez, R. & Alderete-Diez, P. (2020, Eds.). Cultural Politics in Harry Potter: Life, Death and the Politics of Fear.  32-41. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2000). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2003). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K. (2007). The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bloomsbury, London.

Scamander, N. (2001; 2018; [1927][J.K. Rowling]). Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Bloomsbury, London, in association with Obscurus Books, 18a Diagon Alley, London.

Stueber, K. (2019) Empathy, in Zalta, E.N. (2019, Ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/empathy/

[enthusiasticsobrietyabuse]

Parent Manipulation Part 1 - Originally posted in 2005 OnTheEmmis.com, a Meehan Program Survivor Website and Discussion Forum. (ICECAP is the former incorporation of enthusiastic sobriety programs, it has since dissolved due to the effectiveness of OnTheEmmis.com)

Part of ICECAP’s selling point is just HOW unorthodox they are. Counselors are trained to peddle the ‘shock’ value of a non-traditional program. It makes sense to many parents, because they see the professional community pathetically limping in the dust of young drug addicts in America today. Then they see ICECAP. Within its walls are dozens of young souls who are just absolutely ecstatic about being there. Where else is this happening in the world of rehab? While I am sure these places exist, my experience has been that they are few and far between.

ICECAP milks that point to no end. On the surface, I can see it being very difficult to deny that any ICECAP facility is producing some kind of positive results. Desperate and nearly to the point of hopelessness, many parents are willing to cloud their better judgment for the sake of something…ANYTHING that will help their children recover from their current nightmares. To these parents, ICECAP is a godsend. They see something different…that is apparently working, and they submit to the fever of potential miracles.

Even the skeptical parent will have a hard time denying the lure of ICECAP. Eventually they become involved with the parent group, and there they meet average Joe Dad and Jane Mom, who are just like them and are saying all these wonderful things about ICECAP. All the red flags are carefully lowered and the cautious and suspicious parents are disarmed through a process that involves the meticulous coordination of staff/parent group/younger group/client and then finally parent…though not always in that order. They have an answer for everything…from the late nights and no school, to the smoking and irresponsible lifestyle. All the answers make sense and seem so logical…

If I may, I would like to take some (a lot of) posting space to poke some holes in this seemingly infallible construction of moral high ground and loving happiness that ICECAP claims to be delivering from.

To begin, ICECAP is in fact extremely attractive. Not just because of the reasons I pointed out above, but for many reasons. Walk down the hall and through the doors of an ICECAP meeting. What do you see? A bunch of cool guys wearing slick clothes, hot girls adorned in the latest fads that the mall has to offer, rock star counselors and smiling suburban parents. Wow.

What you don’t see is the ugly sight of a genuine crack head detoxing. You don’t see the sickness of heroin withdrawal, or the brutality of the world that real addiction and drug abuse/alcoholism has to reveal. Rarely, if ever, will you find in ICECAP the wild madness and insanity that drug addiction has to offer humanity. When these unfortunates do happen to stumble through ICECAP’s door, they almost invariably do not recover there. I know, because I have seen it, but more on that later.

I find it interesting that ICECAP targets white middle/upper middle class families almost exclusively. There is absolutely no effort by ICECAP to reach beyond this demographic at all. Why? When you think about it, wouldn’t someone who comes from the depraved background that Meehan claims to come from be at least slightly interested in helping those whose stories are more like his? How many ICECAP clients are repeated felons, heroin junkies, or murderers? Almost none of them are. In my opinion, this set up is the first element of being disarmed that a parent encounters.

What wealthy, or semi wealthy parent wants their kid in a place where a bunch of ex-violent criminals hang out at? My guess is that when presented with the ICECAP pitch, which at nearly every ICECAP facility includes the line about how they do not accept insurance; your average suburban upper tax-bracket parent takes a silent sigh of relief. If they don’t accept insurance, then they know that the place does not harbor certain ‘undesirables’, because those types of people would never be able to afford ICECAP treatment. In that there is a certain mutual agreement of ‘silence’ going on between the parent and ICECAP. ‘We won’t ask why this facility is full of white suburban kids as long as you keep my kid around safe white suburban kids’.

That would be fine except for one thing: the reason there are so many ‘attractive’ kids from well-off families in ICECAP is because ICECAP primarily does not target true drug addicts. If they did, you would certainly see more of those ‘ugly’ cases that I mentioned above. The truth is; ICECAP primarily targets kids who have quite commonly and naturally stumbled into experimentation with mind altering substances. Left to their own devices, I am of the opinion that most of the kids that become involved in ICECAP would have gone through their adolescence just fine, despite some dabbling in the drug and alcohol culture.

I realize that it may sound as though I am condoning the use of drugs and alcohol by adolescents to some extent. Believe me; I know there are kids out there, even particularly young ones; that need some sort of intervention and rehabilitation when it comes to drugs and alcohol. However, there are few of those kids in ICECAP.

To put what I am saying into perspective, let me share with you an experience I had when I was 15.

I was at a party full of teens from my high school. There were perhaps 50-60 kids at this get-together. Every one of them were drinking and/or smoking pot, many of them were participating in sexual activities, and every single one of them WANTED to and was trying to do all of the above. This was not a party exclusively for ‘dope fiends’ or ‘freaks’ or anything like that. Most of the kids at this shindig were truly just your average high school teens, and many of them were at an identical party just a week before. Many of them would be at an identical party the next week.

Tell me, what seems to make more sense to you: That EVERY ONE of these kids was in need of being yanked out of school and subjected to an outpatient rehabilitation facility, or that they were for the most part kids being kids? I can’t say that I’ve kept up with each of those teens at that party, but I find it really hard to believe that they are every one of them sitting in gutters right now with needles hanging out of their arms.

The truth is that almost NO PARENT likes the idea that THEIR kid is in fact one of those kids at that party. However unfortunate it may be, chances are your kid IS one of those kids. ICECAP knows this, and knows it well.

The truth is that as far as ICECAP is concerned, every single one of those kids at that party IS fit for and IN NEED of their $6,000 outpatient program.

Of the 50-60 kids that were at that particular party, each one of them has one of two kinds of parents that could potentially find themselves in an ICECAP intervention: The ‘worried sick and hopeless parent’, and the ‘clueless’ parent. ICECAP has a brilliant line for both of these types of encounters.

For the worried sick and hopeless parent, they are already full of fear; so that is one obstacle that the given ICECAP counselor does not have to overcome, and can proceed directly to its exploitation. After meeting for over an hour with their child, the counselor then asks the parent/parents to then sit down with him, without the child. They are usually first presented with the structure of ‘enthusiastic sobriety’, and then carefully guided through the counselor’s ‘diagnosis’ of the child, at which point the fear they walked in with is thoroughly taken advantage of. He tells them, ‘first of all, to what extent you THINK your child is using, you can safely double or triple that. Your son/daughter has been for quite some time falling into the pitfalls of a very attractive and powerful drug and alcohol counter culture. It is nearly impossible to wrench young people today from the grip of this diseased phenomenon once they are into it to the extent that your child is. I know this because…’ At which point the counselor shares a true or untrue account of his own experiences with drugs and the drug culture. By the time he is finished, thanks to all of that plus clever little catch-phrases such as ‘true, Billy/Jenny may not be shooting heroin today, but at his/her rate of progression, you can bet on that nightmare down the road’ the parent has gone from being terrified to utterly mortified. The hook has been cast at this point, and it is here that the counselor begins to discuss the ‘solution’.

A recap of how brilliantly ‘enthusiastic sobriety’ competes with this vaunted ‘counter culture’ is usually in order here, followed by a description of outpatient. Another testimony by the counselor involving his own experience with IOP is conveyed, and then the cost.

If the parent is reluctant, or can’t afford it, emotional blackmailing goes into overdrive here, and is perhaps the most insidious aspect of the ‘intervention’. The parent/parents is told in so many words that their son/daughter will DIE if they do not get the ‘intensive level’ of ‘necessary treatment’ that outpatient provides, that the support group alone cannot hope to accomplish.

If the parent continues to flounder after this underhanded attempt to ‘guilt’ them into paying for IOP, then the counselor will usually back down and explain that while he feels the support group (just meetings and functions) is at this point a ‘disservice’ to the child, if that is all they can do then that’s the route they’ll go. He convinces the parent to attend parent meetings and functions rigorously for at least 30 days (same commitment as the kid), and thanks them for their time.

None of this ends here, of course. After the parent has left, this is what a ‘good’ counselor does:

He offers the name of the parent to either the ‘parent coordinator’ or a trusted parent on steering committee. He tells them that he felt as though the kid really needed IOP, but Mom/Dad couldn’t afford it or was skeptical of the idea, and that he would like this ICECAP parent to ‘work on them’. As the ‘intervention’ parent continues to attend parent meetings, they are relentlessly pushed by other parents at the direction of the parent coordinator to figure out a way to get their son/daughter into IOP.

Meanwhile, the kid is going to meetings and being told by other kids that he/she should go into IOP…that it is the ‘coolest’, and you really get the ‘gnarly’ shit about the group in IOP. This will turn from innocent prodding to downright peer pressure very quickly, and eventually the kid is going home and asking, sometimes begging mom/dad to get them in IOP.

If by now the parent is still not willing to do the $6,000 dollar shuffle, what usually occurs is sad and much of what continues to anger me about ICECAP’s tactics. The counselor will keep tabs with the parent, keeping them updated and developing a ‘relationship’ with the parent. Often, this is what goes down: The kid feels so much pressure from both staff and peers to attend IOP that he/she will quickly realize (usually with the help of the counselor), the reasons why he/she cannot go. Kids aren’t stupid, and Billy knows that either mom doesn’t think his problem is serious enough, or she just isn’t willing to call up grandpa for the dough. So he goes out and gets high one night.

The counselor, of course is ALL OVER THIS ‘relapse’, and schedules an appointment immediately with the family. After 30 minutes of what pretty much amounts to ‘I told ya so’ from the counselor, the parent takes out a second mortgage or calls up grandpa or takes out a line of credit and coughs up the $6,000 for outpatient.

ICECAP staff would argue that these are merely ‘imperative measures’ to take in order to ‘help this kid get better’, to ‘save his/her life’. I argue that this is a carefully constructed sequence of manipulation to paint a false picture of a fairly normal kid as a ‘dope fiend’ in order to sucker well-off families out of six grand.

The ‘clueless’ parent is dealt with in almost the same way, except the counselor must first instill the fear into the parents who have ‘no idea’ that their kid is so ‘sucked in to the world of drug and alcohol abuse’.

I challenge anyone to tell me the story of the family who was told: ‘Your kid really doesn’t have much of an issue. He/she could probably be a bit wiser about what friends they choose, maybe come to some meetings and see a more positive lifestyle…but really they don’t need intensive treatment from us…’ by ICECAP.

The only instance that I can think of in the ten years I was involved with ICECAP, was that of a young man who convincingly conveyed to everyone that he truly was a non-abuser, and that he simply went to a meeting to see a friend. IOP was not pushed on to this kid or his family, but being on staff at the time, I can tell you that the idea to somehow worm this kid into treatment was definitely kicked around.

I went into this aspect of ICECAP as the first part to a series about the structure of ICECAP and its functions. The intent is to provide sound knowledge and information to potential or current clients of ICECAP. The reason I wanted to expose this particular area of ICECAP’s doctrine first is because I believe that there are more clients there who fall into this school of thought than any other. These are the kids who aren’t quite ‘non-abusers’ as ICECAP would like to call them, but certainly aren’t ‘dope fiends’ as ICECAP would have you believe.

Next I intend to focus on the consequences of these manipulative tactics. Where’s the harm? If they never are at one of those high school parties ever again and spend the next two to five years of their lives steeped in the principals of love, patience and understanding…then what’s so bad about it?

PLENTY.

To be continued…

[feelieking]

Series 12

A somewhat belated post - I started typing up my thoughts about Series 12 shortly after it ended, but only found the energy for a sustained bout of typing while taking a few days off work.

Season 12 of Doctor Who is now over. Readers may recall that I felt season 11 was pretty lacklustre. Season 12… has been an improvement, but a lot of the issues remain. The cast are great – Jodie Whittaker is fantastic, and I honestly cannot understand the vocal subset of fandom who insist on saying she can’t act – but there are too many regular characters, which means that none of the three companions get a decent share of screen time or character development. There’s been an improvement in the number and development of the guest characters, but many episodes have really suffered from the problem of scooping up all of the NPCs into the TARDIS and carting them along. As a consequence, a lot of episodes really struggle to cultivate a sense of location, and having guest characters in the TARDIS becomes run of the mill.

It’s also very interesting to me that, after making his first series almost entirely continuity-free, Chibnall’s second series is probably the most fanwanky we’ve ever had. Spoilers for all of the episodes follow.

Spyfall is a strong start to the series. The aliens were far scarier and better realised than anything for the preceding series, and part one benefitted from a strong sense of style and place, a slow build of the plot, and a genuinely shocking and tense cliffhanger. Part two floundered a bit by comparison, choosing to rattle through both Ada Lovelace in Victorian England and Noor Inayat Khan in Nazi-occupied Paris. Either one of these pairs of characters and settings would have been strong enough for an episode on their own; smooshed together, neither was really given a chance to develop. Still, the Doctor/Master scene on the Eifel Tower was very well done.

Orphan 55 seemed to go down very badly with my friends when it was transmitted, but I rather enjoyed it. It was a very trad base under siege story with a proper cast of supporting characters and some genuinely tense and scary moments. The “twist” of it being Earth all along, however, fell very flat – it’s a bit of a cliché by now, added nothing to the story, and has been done better before by earlier Doctor Who stories! The Doctor’s moralising speech at the end also made me grind my teeth – as others have said, it’s not that I disagree at all with the moral, but that we were bright enough to work it out from the episode without needing to have the Doctor break the forth wall to address the audience directly. I also question the logic of the Doctor taking the entire supporting cast, including a frail elderly lady and a young child, with her on her monster hunt, rather than leaving a group behind at the more defensible holiday camp.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror was really good, and felt like the most Doctor Who-y story of the Chibnall era by some margin. Great cast, great monsters (despite the usually reliable Anjili Mohnidra hamming it up as the scorpion queen) – all three of the main human guest cast were proper, fleshed-out characters – and a strong sense of location. The thing that struck me afterwards, however, as I rhapsodised about how much I’d enjoyed this episode and that it was the best new Doctor Who story in ages, was that in a Davies or Maffatt season, this would have been a good middle of the road episode, and not the showstopper it was here.

What can I say about Fugitive of the Judoon? The whole episode is one big slight of hand, which is pulled off very well – but as a consequence, it’s difficult to think on the plot as a whole. The Judoon are back as a returning monster at least in part to distract from the surprise reappearance of Captain Jack, which I suspect in turn was at least in part to keep the audience’s mind off of who Ruth could really be. The pay-off to that, when it comes, is a satisfyingly shocking moment that raises a lot of intriguing questions.

Praxaeus, sadly, was a bit of a damp squib. It’s one of the worst offenders for the Chibnall-era trope of gathering all of the guest cast in the TARDIS and setting big chunks of the story there. The idea of the Doctor and her companions investigating a global crisis at different locations around the world had a lot of promise, but because the Doctor was able to just swoop in and scoop them all up in the TARDIS whenever needed, that idea never really came to fruition. Because the guest cast were all thrown onto the ship, a lot of them never really got the chance to shine – and it’s never explained exactly how captured astronaut Adam is able to text his location to grumpy policeman husband Jake – though at least kudos goes to the episode for a really down to earth portrayal of a same-sex marriage.

Can You Hear Me? was hugely frustrating – this could have been a gem of an episode, but as it is it sinks like a lead balloon. The problem is that the writer has thrown far too many ideas at the story in the hope of seeing what sticks. A mental hospital in Fourteenth Century Aleppo being terrorised by monsters from the nightmares of one of the patients would have been a really good episode. The Doctor’s companions and their friends being trapped in their dreams in modern day Sheffield would have been a really good episode. A ship full of experiments orbiting two colliding planets would have been a reasonably decent episode – but by trying to do all three at once in fifty minutes, nothing is given any chance to breathe and develop. Again, supporting characters are just thrown into the TARDIS and moved from arbitrary location to arbitrary location, and then the monster is defeated by… the dialogue saying that they’ve been defeated. It’s such a shame, because there’s so much good stuff here – Ian Gelder is superb as Zellin, and could have easily been a great recurring villain if they’d chosen to make more than one episode from these ideas – but sadly the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati, by contrast, is superb – one location, really well developed and realised, a strong, well-drawn cast of supporting characters (and some very handsome gentlemen as well!) and no TARDIS scenes. The early parts of the episode are fantastically tense and creepy, with the horror of being trapped in a moebius strip of a house very effectively portrayed. Like any haunted house story, it loses some interest once the reason for the “haunting” is revealed, but the second half remains strong not least because Ashad the emotional Cyberman is superbly well portrayed.

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children is very much a game of two halves. Part one is pretty effective – Ashad continues to be an excellent villain (his big virtual confrontation with the Doctor is superb) and the grim reality of the Cyber Wars is very well conveyed. Showing the potency of the Cybermen by having them effortlessly destroy all the Doctor’s clever gadgets and scatter her companions is an excellent touch, and Graham and Yaz’s fight for survival is compelling and convincing. The wheels very much come off in part two, however – I like Dhawan’s Master (more on him later) but the fact that he perfunctorily kills off the far more interesting Ashad is a mistake, as is halting the episode for what feels like half an hour of tedious Gallifreyan story time. The “Cyber Lords” are a bad fan fic idea, look derisible and do absolutely nothing before they’re dispatched. The actual Cybermen, terrifying in small numbers last week, are unable to hit a single human with dyspraxia running away from them in their dozens this week. The big questions of the episode – why is there a magic portal to Gallifrey? How did the Master destroy the entirety of his own race singlehandedly? – are never even asked, let alone answered. And as for the awful deus ex “death particle” suddenly jumping out of the plot with no set-up – eugh! Pretty much the only thing this episode has going for it are the excellent Graham/Yaz scenes.

The two things this series is likely to be remembered for are the new incarnation of the Master, and the revelations about the Doctor. Sacha Dhawan is great in the role – his Master feels genuinely unhinged and properly dangerous, with a real predatory cunning – but given how perfect Missy’s arc and final scenes were, I’m genuinely a little disappointed to see the character back, especially in full-on villain mode. However, I will concede that jealousy over discovering that the Doctor really is “special” is a very in-character motivation for him to renew his vendetta.

As for the shock revelations – the idea of a secret incarnation that the Doctor herself does not remember is intriguing, and Jo Martin really makes the role her own. There was a lot of speculation at the time that she’s the “Season 6B” Doctor, between Troughton and Pertwee, and that’s still the idea that I like, and seems ripe for development. If she’s pre-Hartnell, then why does she call herself the Doctor, and why is her TARDIS a police box?

The whole “Timeless Child” nonsense however – why on Earth did anyone think that a protracted subplot to explain away a moment from the Brain of Morbius (transmitted forty-four years previously!) was a good idea? How alienating must this have been for casual viewers? As an idea, I think it stinks, not out of a slavish insistence that the Hartnell incarnation must have been the first but for the fact that the Doctor only really became the Doctor – the hero – as the series was starting. Chibnall tries to have his cake and eat it by erasing the Doctor’s knowledge of her previous lives, and reminding us on screen that the interesting thing about the Doctor is not her origins, but who she is now – but as that’s the case, why are we supposed to care about her Timeless Child incarnations? What was the point of it? Even if you subscribe to the idea that “who is the Doctor?” is an interesting and worthwhile mystery, the Timeless Child isn’t a mystery answered, just a mystery deferred. If I had to sum up my feelings in one word, it would be “meh.”

[bloodstarved]

luca ✧

BASICS.

FULL  NAME : luca kalevi (formerly ra’luca oroh) NICKNAME : n/a AGE : 29 BIRTHDAY : 5/10 ETHNIC  GROUP : seeker miqo’te NATIONALITY : ilsabardian LANGUAGE / S : eorzean (fluent), thavnairian (passable), hingan (proficient) SEXUAL  ORIENTATION : bisexual RELATIONSHIP  STATUS : widowed HOME  TOWN / AREA : garlemald CURRENT  HOME : frequently bounces between ul’dah & kugane PROFESSION : former trophy wife, currently without purpose

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : deep brown EYES : blue FACE : high cheekbones; curved nose; eye makeup often smudged LIPS : full; bearing marks of frequent biting COMPLEXION : olive-toned; bags under eyes BLEMISHES : hands are slightly raw SCARS : prominent scars of varying types on back, thighs, & wrists/forearms TATTOOS : n/a HEIGHT : 5 fulms, 2 ilms WEIGHT : 140 ponzes BUILD : chubby; curvy; pear-shaped FEATURES : third “eye” on forehead: an elaborate tattoo whose “iris” seems to be some sort of aetherically-imbued stone; darkened hands/forearms; small, black dots under eyes; triangular, tufted ears; thick eyebrows ALLERGIES :  n/a USUAL  HAIR  STYLE : long, wavy hair often tied up or elaborately braided USUAL  FACE  LOOK : light makeup & contouring; heavy mascara; smudged eyeliner USUAL  CLOTHING : luca’s attire is always of fine, masterly-woven fabrics; that being said, she prefers forgoing pants the majority of the time

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : death; being trapped ASPIRATION / S : to find happiness living on her own terms POSITIVE  TRAITS : compassionate, clever, & charitable NEGATIVE  TRAITS : tendency to go apeshit, fearful, & distrusting MAJOR ARCANA : the wheel of fortune ZODIAC : pisces, the fish TEMPERAMENT : phlegmatic SOUL  TYPE : the server ANIMAL : rabbit VICE HABIT / S : dermatophagia, among many other nervous tics FAITH : a devout follower of nald’thal, often seen in or around the ossuary, especially during religious ceremonies GHOSTS ? : yes AFTERLIFE ? : yes REINCARNATION ? : she certainly hopes not POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : privately pro-nanamo, publicly pro-monetarist EDUCATION  LEVEL : well-educated & highly intelligent; luca is proficient in both eorzean & hingan (speaking, reading, & writing) as well as able to understand passable thavnairian; she is versed in many varying subjects & is a competent, if not timid, conversationalist

FAMILY.

FATHER : ra’oroh nunh MOTHER : ra’miha zhio SIBLINGS : many, estranged EXTENDED  FAMILY : the ra tribe, estranged; the kalevi family, currently avoiding as much as possible

FAVORITES.

BOOK : various pseudo-scientific texts relating to the twelve DEITY : nald’thal HOLIDAY : none MONTH : february SEASON : winter PLACE : her small estate in shirogane, well away from the bustle & intrigue of ul’dah WEATHER : sunny & chilly SOUND / S : a murmured prayer & a softly-sung lullaby SCENT / S : fresh linen & sweet vanilla TASTE / S : copper & rolanberry FEEL / S : fine silks & sharp bone NUMBER : 4 COLORS : sky blue & occasionally warmer tones

EXTRA.

TALENTS : singing, dancing, calligraphy, harp-playing, tea-serving, etc. BAD  AT : asserting herself, expressing any negative emotion whatsoever, not going apeshit TURN  ONS : who even knows TURN  OFFS : pretty much everything HOBBIES : reading, writing poetry, & sleeping QUOTE : “I’m sorry.”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie,  what would it be called,  what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about? A1 : gone girl already exists, my guy

Q2 :  What would their soundtrack/score sound like? A2 :  something sad yet ominous, with a fast-paced, anxiety-inducing part in the middle

Q3 :  Why did you start writing this character? A3 :  tbh i’m kind of insane and i HATE having an uneven number of male/female characters, so that’s what started it. i dug around in my bottomless bag of designs, yoinked one out, and voila--luca was born. i had some help from friends fleshing out her personality; ultimately, i wanted to try playing a morally ambiguous character who ISNT super confident/charismatic

Q4 :   What first attracted you to this character? A4 :  she’s an anxious mess who bottles up her feelings until she can’t take it anymore and goes totally apeshit. rinse & repeat. we LOVE a feral woman.

Q5 :  Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 :  i don’t dislike this, per se, but her biggest flaw is definitely her shitty communication skills (in terms of conveying her true feelings/thoughts)

Q6 :  What do you have in common with your muse? A6 :  i, too, am an anxious mess who cannot stop biting the skin off their fingers & lips. that’s life, babey!

Q7 :  How does your muse feel about you? A7 :  idk dude it’s like 12am don’t make me think

Q8 :  What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with? A8 :  probably pushy characters with a tendency to (intentionally or unintentionally) step all over others. that would trigger her Apeshittery, which is always fun.

Q9 :  What gives you inspiration to write your muse? A9 :  mrs amy dunne herself from gone girl, ava from ex machina, clarice from silence of the lambs, & daisy from the great gatsby (im so sorry)

Q10 :  How long did this take you to complete? A10 :  :(

[dazaaaaaaaai]

Can we get a couple of how Dazai, Atsushi and Ranpo (separately) would treat their s/o? :3c

ok ok so I wasn’t sure if you meant treat as in how they would treat their s/o as in how they would like, behave towards their s/o in a relationship or like how they would treat their s/o to like dinner or something idk lmao (I’m not even sure if this makes sense. Engrish is h a r d). i kind of went with the first, but it kind of turned into general relationships hcs , sorry. I do hope you will enjoy it tho because I kind of overdid it lol 

How Dazai, Atsushi, and Ranpo would treat their s/o: 

They areall good boys and would treat their s/o well!!!!!

Dazai

Dazai hastrouble letting his guard down around people since he has a hard time trustingpeople. He’s really afraid of being disappointed by people. He doesn’t wantpeople to be the superficial people they too often end up being in his eyes.Although, if he’s serious about his relationship with his s/o, and if his s/ois serious about trying to understand him, then he would gradually lower hisguard and he would allow his s/o to at least attempt to unravel him. Dazaidoesn’t fully understand himself, having someone trying to understand him isweird for him. Building a good, healthy relationship with his s/o is going totake time. Trust is important in relationships but Dazai really needs to workon it. Dazai would never treat his s/o badly but warm feelings for someone andbeing accepted for who he is, is new for him, so in the beginning of arelationship there might be some reluctance from his side. This does not meanthat he’s going to treat his s/o badly. No, he just does not completely trustthem as of yet but he really is working on it. He does want this relationshipto work out.

Dazai isn’tthe type to just start a relationship (Although he definitely is the type to sleep around a lot).  He doesn’t even like himself a whole lotso he likely wouldn’t understand why someone would actually like him. He mighteven be afraid of himself, afraid of being even less a human than all of thepeople in the world. His s/o would probably (unless they are assholes and soonto be dumped) really come to accept him completely for who is and it would makeDazai so so happy.

Woulddefinitely do everything for his s/o and would be willing to die for them. Hewouldn’t just tell his s/o that though, but his s/o would just know that theymean the world to him. Dazai isn’t the best at conveying his own emotions eventhough he is really great at reading others. Still, through small gestures andremarks, through the soft look in his eyes, through letting his s/o in, his s/owould know what and how much they mean to him.

Dazai willgrow fiercely protective of his s/o. He will use his wits to his advantage ifanyone even dares to hurt them. He will and sure that they regret it for therest of their lives.

Dazai isvery observant and if his s/o is having an off-day/not feeling well, he willdefinitely notice and will do everything to make his s/o feel better.

He’s stilla brat though. He’s a huge tease and would definitely try pranking his s/o just towind them up. He loves pushing buttons. He thinks it’s cute when his s/o reactsto his pranks and his teasing, but he does not mean any ill will and knows whento stop but he just loves to push buttons just a little. He won’t cross the line but he will try to come as close to that line as possible. 

Would enjoybuying his s/o gifts every now and then. None of his s/o’s most secret desiresare a secret to him. He will definitely notice when his s/o quietly eyes a niceblouse just a bit longer than usual while they are quickly passing by thewindow of a shop. He will never get enough of the look in your eyes when hebuys them exactly the right thing.

Will show he cares through lots of spur-of-the-moment stuff like impromptu dates. If a great idea for a date just pops up in his mind he would be really excited to just do it and he will definitely make you drop whatever his s/o is doingand will take his s/o on the date! He loves taking his s/o anywhere really.

Woulddefinitely allow his s/o to use and take belongings that he normally wouldn’tlet anyone else use, like his headphones (but they shouldn’t use his headphonestoo much because they can’t hear him talking when they’re listening to musicand Dazai would definitely hate not getting enough attention from his s/o.)

Atsushi

Atsushi wouldprobably have no dating experience at first and would be at a loss. He’s the typeto freak out about lots of things will definitely kind of suck at the communicationspart of the relationship at first.

He mightnot pick up all of his s/o’s habits at first and he might misinterpret someactions and conversations. If a date for example doesn’t go as planned, he willpanic. He’s quite prone to overthinking, but that’s just mostly because of hisown insecurities. Will do his best to make up whatever mistake he thinks he hasmade, but chances are that his s/o didn’t even make a big deal out if it in thefirst place.

Will alwayswalk his s/o home, even during the day. He’s protective and he will lose it ifanyone dares to touch his s/o. Also, he just really likes chatting with his s/owhile walking somewhere and will try to compliment his s/o a lot, but not toomuch of course. Like a good boyfriend he doesn’t want to overcompliment themand come off wrong or weird.

Will growmore confident in himself in the relationship over time and will really open upand become so comfortable with just completely being hundred percent himself around his s/o and just tell his s/o all the small things he notices during the day that aren’t really big, but still interesting to him in some way and he will also really open up about his past in the orphanage. He will make sure that his s/o will be totally comfortable with being themselves around him. 

As time passes by he will have figured outhis s/o pretty well and will know how to make them flustered and he might evendare to tease them! He just really likes his s/o!

He’s really big on morningtexts and good night texts! He never forgets to text!  Not really the type to call unless it’surgent. His first thought in the morning and before bed will be about his s/oand he will let them know that. To Atsushi, it’s the little things that count! (Bonus points for his s/o if his s/o beats him to texting them in the morning or before bed!)

Lovestreating his s/o to whatever with whatever money he can miss. Will buy smallpresents and take them out for dinner whenever he can. He, too loves seeing the smile on his s/o when he buys them exactly the right thing. 

Ranpo

Ranpo likelyhasn’t been in many serious relationships, if any at all. So even though Ranpowould really want to treat his s/o well, he might not… As in, he’s a deeplytraumatized individual still acting like a child while he’s already 26. (Noshade! Don’t kill me)

Once he’sin a serious relationship with someone, his inability to perform well in aneveryday situation might actually frustrate him. Ranpo is often blunt, to thepoint of actually being rude. How he was to be perceived by society isn’tsomething that would really bother him (if he even notices. No, I think hedoes, but it’s not of high enough importance. His childish nature is probably acoping mechanism and welcome to another episode of all the bsd character need mentalhelp). He can’t do simple things like taking the subway either and those thingsmight complicate a modern, mutual, healthy relationship. Yeah, it will definitelyfrustrate him. It might frustrate his s/o. If he’s serious about his s/o and hewill be, then he will try. He will try his so hard to the point he mightactually break down at some point when he fails to not completely mess up thefairly easy recipe for boiled tofu again or when he’s a bit insensitive againto his s/o because he just really notices everything about them and he justcannot not notice.

So hetries. He tries really hard. He notices everything about his s/o. He deductseverything there is to know about their s/o from the way they put on theirshoes, to the way they advert their eyes while being teased, from the books theyread, etc. He will know when his s/o is not feeling well and will try so hardto make them feel better, but in the beginning he might not always be assuccessful, because not everyone loves his snacks as much as he does, but hewill learn over time. That’s a given. He will improve.

One day hemight actually take his s/o on the subway to show off just how well he knowsthe subway (he memorized the maps and knows every station) and he will cook hiss/o their favorite food someday without setting the kitchen on fire and he willdefinitely grow to know exactly when not to push his s/o’s buttons.

He will getthere and will be the best detective and the best boyfriend in the world! (Justbe there for him s/o don’t be a fucking coward!!!!!!)

He willalso really like sharing snacks with his s/o. One of his favorite dates will definitelybe just buying a shitload of snacks separately and then sharing them all togetherwhile sitting on his bed or something. 

y’all i really overdid this. don’t expect all my posts to be this long, especially when more than 1 character is requested. Also I’m not really content with Dazai’s and Ranpo, I can’t really figure them out as of yet.

I also didn’t proofread because I’m lazy and I probably wouldn’t be satisfied if I did proofread and change everything  but I do hope you enjoyed, anon. I did enjoy writing it tho yeeeeeeeeeeehaw

[eturni]

Day 25 - Love

It’s day 25 of @drawlight​‘s advent calender prompt list https://drawlight.tumblr.com/post/188869931294/aziraphale-crowley-for-half-an-hour-youve-been and today is Love.

I may have gone a little sideways in terms of specifically seasonal prompts and a lot of this is more an abstract meandering because, among other things, love can most definitely be a community of people who find beauty in stories and words and images and who use what free time and talent and heart they have to reach out to each other. For the most part this whole fandom is light and love and just wanting two disaster idiots to be happy. We found a love story that’s a call to arms: Be Kind To Each Other. I hope next year we’re even better at it than we have been this year.

The funny thing about love is that it comes in a hundred different ways and a million different forms.

Sometimes it’s an Alright, just this once.

Sometimes it’s I can’t do that. It would destroy you.

At other times it’s offering an olive branch while begging for more time, or setting up shop a 10 minute walk away from an enemy you could be half a world away from.

It’s oysters and making time and soft words and worried glances and knowing a person so well that you do before they ever think to ask.

It’s toasting to the world when your entire world is sat right next to you.

What love also is, is the bits of learning that happen slowly once things are finally out in the open and can be expressed and known.

For some this is the more difficult bit. Actual, straight forward words are difficult after six millennia of forced innuendo and carefully measured gestures.

The midwinter celebrations following Armagedidn’t are almost easier in this way. There’s a sense that it’s normal for them to be a little more affectionate. A little more vocal.

In the first year after the Apocalypse love is still coming in fits and starts. It still happens around nervous gestures and uncertain looks over the shoulder.

Continue reading on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638803/chapters/52410544 or:

In the first year love is still the careful placing of mistletoe: as though it could ward the shop from the places that could have, should have, loved Crowley and Aziraphale, and instead turned their backs on them and branded them traitors.

Love is supposed to come from those who made you. In the case of demons, and a fair number of humans, this unconditional love was not the reality. In the case of Aziraphale it was not the idea that he was not loved but the harsh realisation that his own love for the humans was indeed unconditional and that this was not what angels were in fact expected to practise.

So they create wards and hand talismans and follow traditions and there is something of comfort in the light of a Menorah, the warmth of a Yule log fire, the memories captured in blown glass and glittering tinsel.

There is comfort in these old traditions and they wrap themselves in them like a blanket, holding hands underneath and whispering things into the darkness of the longest night that feel too fragile to say in the light of day.

“I thought I lost you angel, and I don’t know what I’d do. You’ve always just been there y’know?”

A hand reaches and brushes fingers through fine firelight hair. “I’m sorry. From now on it’s our side, I swear.”

Crowley shakes his head regardless, throat thick with words he still doesn’t know how to say. “No, when it was burning. I thought it was hellfire. Thought- ‘M sorry too, about the holy water. I know what you meant. I never wanted it for that but I know what you meant.”

Aziraphale’s answering smile is an uncertain line painted in a trembling hand but it’s loving and real in the firelight. “Yes. I couldn’t think of a world with you destroyed either.” He admits quietly.

It’s as close as they get, that year, to the words that they want. But love is patient and it hopes and perseveres. It is also many things and many forms The words wait for another year.

Crowley had felt every second as the love he was built with was ripped from his chest. Felt himself sundered from the host that had been a continuous echo chamber in his ethereal core. Then the garden. Once again he had known love, of a type. He hadn’t the words then but the song bubbled in his chest and at his lips. It was strange and new, and for millennia he hadn’t felt it returned even as it grew and changed in his chest

Love is a funny thing. It doesn’t always come back to you from the people it should. It doesn’t always manifest for the people or in the ways it should. It does, however, always find it’s way in in one form or another. Only so long as space is left.

By the second year of a post apocalyptic world words have had time to become difficult. The gestures are always there, as they always have been, but more frequent and more open. I’m here for you. Anything. You can come to me with anything. Picnics, the Ritz, a last minute rescue: I’ll remember your plants like you remembered my books. The Word for love, though, is still difficult even with all of the gestures there.

Communication has never been their strong point. Everything understood below the surface in things they cannot ever say. Things they missed because they were supposed to just know somehow.

Love, more often than not, is a thing that you choose. It’s the thing that’s found and cobbled together, and it’s made into a better one even than you thought you deserved. It’s found family and learned self care, and it’s our side.

But Love is still something that Crowley learned to grab at and store up for the lean months; so it only makes sense to him to continue. To never push and accept only what was given to safely tuck into his aching chest. There is more of it by the second year but it’s still difficult.

Midwinter had always been a tricky time. The human psyche seemed designed equal parts to pull together and to backstab each other. The leanness of the season brought stress and anger but also brought humans to their best when they truly chose love

Aziraphale and Crowley had been using it as a way to choose kindness (perhaps, choose love) for millennia. Ever since their first truce with mistletoe it had been easier to settle in each other’s company and set aside the usual judgements over midwinter. Humans rarely needed much nudging to either side of good or bad anyway.

In the second year they trim up and there is no mistletoe on the wreath on the door. None directly inside or sheltered in the window.

“You giving it a miss this year? Suppose we don’t really need it on our side.” Crowley finally finds the place in him to ask. Straight forward question, really. It just makes him nervous that they’re missing a tradition, especially given that Aziraphale was usually all too happy to continue with all of his comfortable behaviours (and clothes, and things) well outside of what was fashionable for comfort’s sake alone.

“Not quite,” Aziraphale smiles, looking smug enough that Crowley feels a thrill rush through him at what the bastard might have potentially done “just relocated it my dear.”

Aziraphale looks up. Crowley knows what he’ll find but he looks up too; feeling the heat of a blush even with just less than a year of kisses behind them. “I mean come on angel. It’s not like we’ve never-”

“Well no,-” Aziraphale allows with the slightest tilt of his head and a sigh that tells Crowley that this is another thing that he should be understanding without the words. “I suppose that I just thought it was a lovely alternative to the tradition that I would like to try with you.”

Crowley blinks, uncertain about the odd sense of formality that it brought to actually turn up with mistletoe for kissing.

With no other answer Aziraphale reaches out and carefully cups Crowley’s cheek. “May I?” He prompts.

There shouldn’t be nerves. There still are, but Crowley tells them where to stick it and leans in regardless. He had sworn on more than one occasion to commit every moment of Aziraphale to memory and to never waste an opportunity. He isn’t about to start here.

Their lips meet under the mistletoe and there is, in fact, something quite novel in the whole thing that leaves him smiling against Aziraphale’s lips even as his tongue tries to work his way in. There are hands on his body, moving a slow searching shift of his torso. His own go to press at the back of Aziraphale’s neck and his waist to keep him held fast.

When they part Aziraphale is still holding Crowley and the demon can feel the clear imprint of every single finger against the back of his waist as he’s held, secured and cared for. He feels Aziraphale pull away and feels his unnecessary breath go with him. Being pulled out of him in an “I love you.” That he hadn’t meant to say but would never want to take back.

There’s a moment that he looks like he might; mouth dropping open and closed. He feels Aziraphale’s hands tighten reflexively; sees the worry in his angel’s eyes, and strangles any denial that might have been trying to climb his throat.

The set of Aziraphale’s shoulder relaxes and he lets out a breath of air that sounds almost thankful, if a single huff could convey that. “I’m rather glad, Crowley. I love you too, and it would be a terrible shame if it was all to waste. I would very much like to love you until the next Armageddon. After that, if it could at all be arranged.”

It was the first time Crowley considered singing for his angel, to open up fully to him. He didn’t sing. That wouldn’t happen for another few years yet, but that was okay. Love lives and grows wherever it is nurtured, and it’s languages are many.

[songwritingtipsandtricks]

Hey lads, here is the transcript for the second episode of the podcast. 

Hello and welcome everyone out there listening to this program.

Thank you for tuning in once more for another episode on songwriting tips & tricks

Have you ever been searching for a better way to rephrase an idea, or maybe you've been looking for a word that fits the meter or beat or paints a more beautiful image in the audiences head? If that is the case, then today's episode will help you with just that.

Today's episode is dedicated to a powerful weapon that should be an essential tool in your songwriting. Of course, we are talking about synonyms.

What is a synonym? Or instead, what is the definition of the word synonym.

1 one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses

2 a word or phrase that by association is held to embody something (such as a concept or quality) a tyrant whose name has become a synonym for oppression

So close your eyes for a minute, or think back to the last song you have been working on. Are you there? Great. Now try to remember writing the lyrics and what you have been thinking about. Did you write the words straight from your mind? Did you contemplate the pictures and how you could clarify or rephrase it more colloquial? If you did, then you are already implementing this powerful tool. If not, don't worry, it is rather tedious work and may take a lot more time than your usual writing.

But how do we use a Thesaurus properly, and what is the intention behind it.

So in general, firstly we open our Thesaurus, may it be digitally or analogue. Then we search for a word we want to get a synonym for, so you search for the entry like you would in a dictionary, or you type it in a digital option. Let us simulate this for a second. So given we are looking for a sharper word for the rather common word heart. In the right context, that word could be compelling on its own, and maybe your style of writing could be based on an everyday style of speech. However, perhaps you want to re-illustrate the picture.

So we search for the entry heart in our Thesauruses. Type it in on MacMillan.And on the left, I have already searched for the word in the rather heavy book (which may be the significant disadvantage of an analogous one). And from here it is quite easy. When we have found the word, we have to think about the meaning we want it to convey. In this case, heart does not only stands for an organ in a body but has various meanings depending on the context. So in the internet version, in our case, the MacMillan dictionary, this is quite easy and well-organised. We search for the right meaning, and just beneath the definition of the word, there is a button for the Thesaurus. As easy as that. Then there is an array of general terms about the concept behind the word heart. So as some of you might know there is a theory in linguistics or language studies in general which is called the semiotic-triangle. This triangle tries to explain the cognitive work when we read, write or speak a word or vice versa. So when we think about a picture we want to convey may be the heart, in this case, we might immediately know the word in our native language. Still, if you are writing in your second language, it might take some more time. So the logic behind this triangle is that the word heart, of course, is just defined term in your language. At the same time, in another language, like in German, there is a different word for the concept behind this. Anyway, you get the point. A word is not bound to the picture. And of course, both the idea and the word are not the real thing.  

And this is excellent news for us songwriters. This means that writing has seemingly endless possibilities for rephrasing and conveying pictures. So rephrasing is an essential and essential part of speech.

So let's get to work. We have found the Thesaurus online an see where the internet comes in handy, not only do we have it at hand at any location, but it is easy to handle. The offline version of this is not as fast as the online one. However, we might get more information and an interesting choice of words that are not available on some platforms and has a special sophisticated touch to it. But that depends on your choice of Thesaurus.

Now you might ask, where do you get neat synonyms and how can you use it in your songs?

Perhaps just have a look in a nearby library, book or antiquities shop or do a little online research for a suitable Thesaurus. For my taste, MacMillan, Merriam-Webster or the Oxford dictionary are reliable sources with high esteem. Analogous Thesauruses should also be adequately collected and published by a renowned publisher. If you are a student at a university, there may also be a table in the linguistics faculty giving away old books that and if you are lucky like I was with my Oxford Thesaurus, you get a tremendous Thesaurus for free. Having one at home comes in quite handy when you are writing.

So there is a little poem we are going to write together now. It intentionally is not sophistically well written nor rhyming, as we think about the synonyms to rhyme it with.

The pain I try to drown in bottles.

The hole it left me with alone

The broken heart lies down in pieces

You swept away so easily

So well, not much of a story, it is quite open and un-rhyming. However, some pictures could be coherently connected. So, we need to look for the nouns adjectives and adverbs, as they convey the most pictorial meaning.

The PAIN I TRY to DROWN in ALCOHOL.

The HOLE it LEFT ME with ALONE

The BROKEN HEART is DOWN in PIECES

YOU SWEPT away so EASILY

The nouns are the most critical conveyors in language, as they determine the verbs that follow it and also have specific attributes. So in order, we will look up nouns first, then think about the verbs and then have a look for the adjectives and adverbs. In this case, I will be using the MacMillan Thesaurus.

A suitable noun for pain would be agony or distress, I find as it paints a picture of great pain and is more specific.

Next up Alcohol, MacMillan does not have the word I am searching for, so I head over to Merriam-Webster. I like the bottle, as it is quite illustrative and fits the broken pieces in the next line.

Another word for HOLE would be crack, and I like this one as it has a delicate touch to it.

Heart, we had earlier, and a suitable word which is quite the contrary to the picture is virtue. And if the protagonist is a man, it leaves the impression of weakness and weariness. Let's try this once and change the to my as well as it is more personal. To my mind, I'm going to drop the is. We are also going to stick with pieces in this case as I cannot find a suitable word that is of my liking.

So this far we have got:

The distress I TRY to DROWN in bottles

The cracks it LEFT ME WITH alone

My broken virtue down in pieces

and you SWEPT AWAY so easily

The last line is mainly verbal and adverbial, so we're going to proceed with the verbs.

For verbs, I prefer Merriam-Webster, as there is a whole section between a noun synonym that find synonyms for the verb.

To try, we are going to trade in to strive, as it also has the same sound as try but has a more zealous feeling and in this context seems more vulnerable. Drown is left the same. The next line is also staying just as it is for now. The next line is without a verb, and the next line suits the picture of shattered glass and erasing all evidence.

So far, we have:

The distress I strive to drown in bottles.

The cracks it left me with alone.

My broken virtue down in pieces.

And you swept it away so easily.

So next up adjectives and adverbs.

The first line has none, the second one only has the alone. And the Thesaurus has on one's own as a suggestion. And thus I'm rephrasing the line to The cracks I'm left with on my own. The broken virtue could also be sinking to pieces as it gives an exciting connotation to the act of falling and cracking open. Perhaps a slow-motion memory or a submerged feeling of shock. The easily is quite dull and common, so the Thesaurus also suggests naturally. In this picture, I find it rather suitable, as he/she appears to be emotionally cold and perhaps a notorious heartbreaker. I'm adding a pronoun in the last line, and we are about done.

So eventually we end up with something like this:

The distress I strive to drown in bottles.

The cracks I'm left with on my own.

My broken virtue sunk to pieces.

And you swept it away so naturally.

Well, it is not a Shakespearean masterpiece. However, this is the first synopsis perhaps, from where we can continue with the next part of the story.

So for now, I think this is a great start. Maybe some of you want to try using my poem with your Thesaurus and start telling your own story from there. I'd be thrilled to hear some of your own interpretations that have different twists.

As you can see, you can find synonyms for nearly every word you might be searching for. Maybe you understand now, how powerful this tool can be. An interesting exercise is using a verse or chorus from one of your favourite songs and try rephrasing it. It opens up a whole world of opportunities, as suddenly there are so many words you can choose from. While pop-music today sometimes is somewhat stodgy in its choice of words, maybe you can go this extra mile to add appealing pictures to your lyrics.

So if you have a few minutes, look up your favourite song and rephrase a few lines from the song. If you like, just send me a message with your poem, and I read it out in the next episode.

Okay, just one more thing that pops up in my mind right now. I guess that most of you listen to music in the language you are using in songwriting as well. An inspiring approach to new inspiration or idea could be to use a song in a language that you are not writing in, in my case that would be German, roughly translate it and do the same thing we did earlier. You might come to entirely different ideas and pictures that lead to a number one hit while telling the same story with different words.

So thank you for listening to this episode. There is more to expect in the next month, and I am so thrilled to continue this program.

I want to leave you with a song recommendation today, and I am really inspired by the style of writing that is implemented. An artist I discovered a few weeks ago. Boy In Space, if you haven't heard of him, has heartbreaking lyrics that are so illustrative. His song Drown is a touching ballad and really well-written. So not only the song is really catchy and flawlessly performed, but the lyrics in themself carry a lot of meaning and fit the music so beautifully. He has recently been the opening act for Alec Benjamin, and his social media is really down to earth and fun to follow. Give it a listen and note down some pictures, rephrase his songs if you want to as well and happy songwriting.

So long I hope you enjoyed today's episode and stick around for another round next time. If you like the format, please feel free to support it by subscribing to it and marking it 5 stars. More tips are available on the Tumblr-blog on songwriting tips & tricks. I wish you all the best and see you next time.

Have you ever been searching for a better way to rephrase an idea, or maybe you've been looking for a word that fits the meter or beat or paints a more beautiful image in the audiences head? If that is the case, then today's episode will help you with just that.

We are about to discuss different reliable Thesauruses, be it digital or analogue, rephrase a sample poem and devise a scheme on how to rephrase a line. In the end, you'd be fully aware of using synonyms properly, finding new approaches to writing original lyrics and getting new ideas from rephrasing your favourite songs.

If you like the format, leave a quick review and subscribe to the show. If you know friends who are searching for a program just like this, just let them know as well. If you have any suggestions or feedback, leave it in the comments or send me a message on any social media platform.

Until the next episode, as always, happy songwriting.

Kieper

[julian-devosnack]

Hey can you write something for Julian where the Reader is singing can’t help falling in love by Elvis Presley to him

A Late Night Lullaby

Julian Devorak x Reader Fic

Aww this is such a cute ask! I had tons of fun writing this super fluffy piece, I hope you enjoy it! 

P.S. Obviously I don’t own the song so don’t come for me please! 

Late nights with Julian had always been pretty slow. Not only was he usually tired after a long day, but he was also desperate for any form of physical contact, and therefore much preferred spending his time curled up somewhere with his head in your lap to anything else. Tonight it seemed, was no exception, because mere seconds after walking through the door and chucking his coat onto the dinner table Julian was all but launching himself into the bed beside you, his face buried in the pillow as he let out a loud groan which only served to provoke laughter from you. You ran your free hand that wasn’t holding the book you had been reading through his hair gently, rolling your eyes at his dramatics as he let out a huff, turning his head to face you. “Have you ever” He began, moving to sit up beside you as he moved his arms around dramatically, “Tried to have a serious conversation with a patient while being all but squeezed to death by a snake?” You scoffed and shook your head, leaning in to kiss the tip pf his nose teasingly, “I’m afraid I haven’t my dear, but then again I’m not a doctor and therefore I don’t have patients. And on top of that the only snake I know is Faust, who I know you can’t be talking about because she is far too small to do any real damage while squeezing you.” Julian crossed his arms at your words, “That snake has the strength of one thousand men thank you very much!” You laughed at his dramatics as he let out yet another huff, “Not that I would expect you to understand, she doesn’t try to kill you each time she sees you.” You giggled softly, rolling your eyes once again, “She doesn’t try to kill you, she’s just saying hello. She’s playing.” Julian doesn’t respond to that, he just lets out a groan and allows himself to fall to the side, his head landing in your lap as he stares up at you through his lashes, he is then silent for a moment before finally speaking, “How do you do it? How can you be so pretty from every possible angle.” You blush at that, moving your hands to gently cradle his face, running your fingertips along his skin gently, “The same way you do.” You murmur playfully, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to his lips before pulling away just to see that dopey grin you loved so much splayed across his lips. You couldn’t help but smile at that, it made you so damn happy to see him happy. You couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more. “I love you.” The words are sudden and almost unexpected as they fly forth from your lips, and Julian looks surprised by your sudden proclamation for a moment before he seems to digest what you’ve said and smirks proudly, acting cool as if his cheeks aren’t on fire as he moves his hand in order to lace his fingers through your own, allowing him to bring your hand to his mouth so he can kiss it gently, the soft feeling making you shiver slightly as you watch him. The moonlight shines in through the window and casts an almost ethereal looking glow on his pale skin. He looks beautiful. He always looks beautiful. You can’t help but let out a peaceful sigh as you lay your book down on the bed beside you, using that free hand to run your fingers through his hair now that he’s claimed your other one as his own momentarily. You watch as he sighs, closing his eyes and allowing the peacefulness of the silence and the loving feelings your actions provoke to consume him and fill him with a type of serenity he is still getting used to even now. You watch him carefully, continuing your actions slowly as you take all of him in, committing every inch of him to memory as if he would be leaving tomorrow, which was a silly thing to do really knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He wasn’t going anywhere without you ever again. You were his home now, you were where he belonged, and you wouldn’t have it any other way, because he was your home too.

You sit there in that position for a little while longer, a peaceful and happy smile playing on your lips as you watch the man you love rest his eyes while you dote on him endlessly, your love for him fueling your every move. And suddenly in one single moment you’re overcome with this feeling of adoration, this feeling of love that is so strong it almost physically jolts you. There is nothing in this world that you love more than the man in front of you, he is your everything, your beginning and your end, your sunlight and your rain, and never have you been so in love with someone in your life. He’s your soulmate, and you are struck suddenly with the realization that you don’t know how to express that, and the emotions inside you make you feel as if you’re fit to burst. You almost want to wake him up from the nap he seems to be taking just to tell him how much he means to you, but you know how little sleep he gets and you just can’t bring yourself to do that to him for the sake of your own comfort. So you sit there for a few minutes longer, hoping that the feeling will fade back to normal only to realize that as you’re gazing down at him that it’s only growing stronger. And as absolutely amazing it feels to be in love you aren’t exactly loving the feeling of your heart being on fire with the need to express the love you feel. It almost hurts with how intense it is. And you aren’t truly sure what happens in that next moment that makes you remember this, because it is a memory from so long ago that you can hardly focus on, blurred with the passing of time and the circumstances of the memory itself. But you remember nonetheless. You remember feeling exhausted, being almost completely asleep as a voice sings a song to you, a song you had heard only once before in that one instant. But almost as if you had known it for all of your life you can suddenly remember all the words even though you find you cannot quite identify who had been singing them to you. It had been years ago, although not so long ago that you hadn’t been with Julian, and you were nearly asleep, in what bed you could not quite remember, but you did remember that it was different from normal, the way you had sunk into that mattress stuck with you even now as you tried desperately to identify that voice. Had it been Julian? Or perhaps it had been at the time you had still lived with Asra and you were remembering a memory from long ago when you had barely even known Julian at all. Was this memory somehow just a dream? Something your brain had conjured up simply to give you an idea of how you could sate your need to express your feelings for the man you loved? You had no way of knowing, but you did know that by this point you didn’t really care. The lyrics from the song swam around your brain and finally you let them travel through your lips, singing a song you had only heard once for a few short minutes simply to convey the love you felt for the sleeping man on your lap. And even as you feared you would forget the words they just kept on flowing as if it was natural and well known, as if you had done this a million times despite the fact that you had never sung to Julian in this lifetime. But none of that mattered.

“Wise men say only fools rush inBut I can’t help falling in love with youShall I stay?Would it be a sinIf I can’t help falling in love with you?Like a river flows surely to the seaDarling so it goesSome things are meant to beTake my hand, take my whole life tooFor I can’t help falling in love with you Like a river flows surely to the seaDarling so it goesSome things are meant to beTake my hand, take my whole life tooFor I can’t help falling in love with youFor I can’t help falling in love with you”

You looked up at the ceiling above you as you finally sang the last few words of the song, your hands continuing to run through your lovers hair gently as you sighed, jumping slightly when you heard a light sniffle sound from your lap. You turned your gaze downward only to find Julian with tears in his eyes and a hand over his mouth, and you worried for a moment that you had somehow upset him before he wrapped his arms around your waist and buried his head against your stomach, pressing himself as close to you as he could possibly get as he let out quiet sobs of what you could only assume was joy against your body. You rubbed his back soothingly for a few minutes until finally he pulled away, eyes glossy with tears and lips trembling slightly as he spoke, “You remembered.” You raised a brow at him, confused about what he meant as you ran a hand through his hair, watching as realization dawned on him that you had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “That song.” He said gently, sitting up beside you so he could take both of your hands and look you in the eye, “I sang it to you on one of our first nights together more than three years ago. I didn’t think you were awake to hear it, and I certainly didn’t think you would ever remember it. I used to hear my father sing it to my mother while they danced around the kitchen together, and then Mazelinka used to sing it to Portia and I whenever we had a nightmare to help lull us back to sleep.” And suddenly with those words you understood why he was crying. This was much more than an ordinary song for him “That song means so much to me.” He said, chuckling awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his neck, “So hearing you sing it… I’ve never heard anything more beautiful before in my life.” You blushed softly and leaned in to press your forehead against his own, “Well then get used to it my love.” You murmured softly, “Because now that I know it makes you happy there’s no chance in hell I could ever stop singing it to you whenever I get the chance.” Julian hummed softly, his arms wrapping around your back to pull you closer as he sighed happily, “I don’t deserve you.” You giggled at his sweet words, rolling your eyes as you shook your head gently, “I’m afraid that just isn’t true my love, you deserve the world.” You watched as Julian chuckled softly, moving to press a gentle kiss to your temple as he smiled against your skin, “How fitting then,” He murmured out, pulling away gently to look deep in your eyes as he spoke, “That you are my world.” You smiled at him, wrapping your arms around his neck, “And you, mine my love, and you, mine.”

[pomrania]

Speech overlap in conversation between close male friends

((So this is the final paper I did for my Gender and Language course, looking at an All Work No Play clip with the conversation between Sam and Liam. Posting it here now, because why not. Word count: 1913 words.))

Introduction

Too many things are incorrectly ascribed to gender. So many relevant variables, from power to intimacy to social status, are all folded into “gender” like it's the real reason for any finding, even without gender stereotypes interfering with what researchers believe they see. I felt that what we were given as features of female conversation, particularly between friends, was not due to gender, rather openness between the parties involved. In our society, unfortunately, emotional intimacy between men is often stigmatized, leading to some avoiding it for fear of repercussions; there is also pressure on them to constantly posture their masculinity and heterosexuality.

  If one looked specifically at close male friends, would their conversational features be the same as those of female friends who aren't afraid to be open with each other?

  I selected speech overlap as a focus, because it encompasses a wide variety of purposes, from supportive back-channelling to violative interruption. I chose a pair of friends whose interactions were already on publicly-available video, whose work and relationship I was familiar with, who were conversationally proficient, and who didn't subscribe to toxic masculinity.

Methods

  Liam O'Brien and Sam Riegel, the participants for this paper, are colleagues and close friends. They are both white cis men in their 40s, reasonably well off, and established voice actors noted for their involvement in Critical Role.

 I chose for analysis a clip from the beginning of “All Work No Play: Sword Fighting”, the first video in an online series that follows Sam Riegal and Liam O'Brien as they chat about whatever comes to mind, engage in various activities, and discuss “the fun [they] done”. This clip begins with them talking about their earlier podcast and how this show began, and goes to such varied places as the identity of a particular Schwarzenegger movie, children's birthday parties, geocaching, and finally introduces the sword fighting they had done. The conversation took place in a studio, with both participants sitting across from each other at a round table. They had beverage available throughout, presumably alcoholic.

 The total duration of the analyzed clip was 11:42. Except for one hard cut done as a joke, and one sound effect added, the video has unbroken unedited audio, of an unscripted conversation between friends. The visuals switched between camera sources, but only the auditory aspects are under consideration here.

I transcribed the clip, and noted any overlaps. I classified the overlaps according to five categories:

"simple" overlap, where the second speaker began before the first speaker was entirely finished, but after the meaning was clear

successful interruption, where the second speaker took a turn from the first speaker before that one was done

failed interruption, where the second speaker tried, unsuccessfully,

back-channelling, or supportive listening

"additional", which covers both "interruptions" to add information with no intent of seizing the turn, and instances where both parties are talking at once with nobody yielding; the former corresponds to Coates' (1988) Type V

I came up with those classifications myself, in absence of prior widespread definitions. With the exception of "additional", I noted who initiated each overlap.

Results

Failed interruptions are, by far, the least common type, with only five instances out of a total of 111 overlaps. Back-channelling was the most common type of overlap, primarily due to Liam's contributions. “Additional” had the second-highest frequency, possibly due to its use by me as a “catch-all” category.

  As shown in the table, Sam and Liam have similar total numbers of overlaps, but they differ when broken down by category. Simple overlaps and failed interruptions occur in roughly equal number between participants; there are faint trends, but not to a significant enough degree to justify declaring, as those might be pure randomness.

  Liam has a drastically higher amount of verbal back-channelling, while Sam had substantially more successful interruptions.

  Of interest is the fact that Liam has roughly the same amount of failed and successful interruptions, which shall be discussed further later on.

  Some other results aren't apparent from the table, being qualitative rather than quantitative. While many topics occurred as a result of natural conversational drift, some were brought up intentionally; and in all four instances, this was done by Sam. None of the overlaps or interruptions was received negatively by either person; this accords with both Hunt (2005) and Coates (1988). The division and location of back-channelling will also be discussed later.

Conclusion/discussion

 Although “knowledge of being observed and recorded” can change people's speech behaviours, I have reason to believe that such was not the case here, making this video a valid representation of their casual conversations. The participants are professional voice actors, who have also had their weekly D&D games filmed and broadcast for the past four years. Having watched almost all of said D&D game broadcasts, which often run for four hours per session unscripted, I can confidently say that their verbal behaviour, in the examined video, does not appear to differ from that which I have previously seen, at least when they are not acting in-character.

Asymmetry in conversation, even across multiple features, is not unusual, and greater or lesser use of one feature is not necessarily linked to usage of a different feature (Freed et al., 1996). However, I only have the one pair to work from. There might or might not be a general correlation between frequency of back-channelling and simple overlap and failed and successful interruptions; I have no data to tell me one way or the other.

 The conversation in question is very obviously cooperative and not competitive. Aside from the usual purpose of social bonding, and that All Work No Play is designed as an “excuse” for these two to hang out, this conversation was also explicitly filmed for fans of a show that both Liam and Sam appear on, so that they can see them interact.

 “Interruptions” can be violative, an attempt to steal a turn, or they can be from enthusiasm. Prior knowledge of Sam's behaviour, along with Liam's reaction or lack thereof, leads me to believe that his “interruptions” are the latter kind. Sam has an outgoing and “active” nature, he always needs to be doing something; and I am like that too.

 Liam has roughly equal (low) numbers of failed and successful interruptions, and Sam has a much higher number of successful interruptions than Liam. For an interruption to be successful, it requires two things: an attempt, and acquiescence on behalf of the other party. These pieces of information tell a story about the relative natures and dynamics of the participants. Sam feels a greater urgency to speak than Liam does, and Liam is happy to play along with it. I would expect this pattern to continue whenever active extroverts and more passive introverts are friends and have a conversation together, although I have no data to back that up, only intuition; this could be the subject of a future study.

 Even though Liam had the highest rate of back-channelling, Sam still did a decent number. Back-channelling, by definition, is supportive and displays involvement in the conversation. However, a high amount of back-channelling alone does not denote a friendly conversation. Hunt (2005) recorded a group of three friends who had a similar rate of back-channelling to this study, but only if laughter and sound effects were included as such, whereas I did not count them.

 Something interesting concerns instances of narration by each person, and how the other responded to it. Sam's longest stretch of narration, describing a birthday party he attended recently, was frequently interspersed with Liam's back-channelling. Liam has comparatively long uninterrupted stretches of speech, where he describes geocaching, or how birthdays change as children age. This cannot be explained simply as Sam being less supportive than Liam, when viewed in context. Liam's narratives are intended to convey information, while Sam's described an experience of his. Sam also left much more room for responses in his narrative. This difference in how they narrated might or might not be responsible for the difference in amount of back-channelling.

 Not much can be definitively said from this about the overall nature of gender and conversation, although it provides evidence for features between two particular people. Some of the relevant apparent features of female friend conversation are simultaneous speech due to high involvement, high rates of back-channelling, and cooperative conversation-building. All of those were found here.

 There is evidence to support that gender matters less than specific variables, when it comes to speech outside of public contexts. As follows, two studies examined pairs, controlling for conversational needs and other factors.

 Freed et al. (1996) looked at pairs of same-sex friends, and usage of “you know” and various types of questions. They found that “you know” was used in the same ways, at the same frequency, regardless of gender, and its variation depended upon discourse needs, what type of talk there was. Question frequency did not vary by gender, although particular types of questions were used somewhat more often by the male or female pairs. They concluded that most of the observed gender differences, in natural environments, came from how gender affects what discourse requirements one is exposed to, and therefore how one would speak.

 Kollock et al. (1985) looked at same-sex and opposite-sex intimate couples who live together, and found that for most features, dominance was more important than gender. Much of those results are outside the scope of this study, but it provides additional evidence that “gender” is often a confounding variable. One interesting tidbit is that in their study, less than half of the interruption attempts were successful, a start contrast to my findings, where the vast majority were successful. There are however some substantial differences in situation between their and my research, such as the nature of the participants' relationships (couples vs friends), and their research methods invoked potential conflict between members of a pair.

  There are five great limitations in this study. First, although there have been attempts to create a system for classifying types of overlaps (Roger et al., 1988), nothing has of yet been commonly accepted. Therefore, one cannot easily compare results between studies, including my own, at least not in a statistically valid manner. Second, I only looked at a segment of one conversation, between one pair; I don't have as much data as I would like. Third, there is little-to-nothing available with which I can compare my results. My results may be generally applicable to all male friends of similar closeness, or they may be unique to Liam and Sam, I have no empirical evidence to direct me one way or another, only vaguely similar studies, and gut instinct. Aside from that, I only know two studies that examined conversational features between female friends, both of which I cited here; they are separated by a continent and two decades, and look at vastly different participants, so their actual comparative value is limited. Fourth, my classification system was flawed, specifically with the “additional” type; I should have noted an added comment or question along with its attribution, and kept the unattributed type for instances where it's unclear whose “turn” it might be. Fifth, I failed to account for transition-relevant places specifically.

  Despite those, the overall findings of my research are valid, even if they could be better.

  In conclusion: while I may not have conclusively proven my hypothesis, I have provided evidence that supports it, and taken a much-needed look at an understudied field.

References

Coates, J., Cameron, D., & Coates, J. (1988). Gossip revisited: Language in all-female groups. Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language & Sex, 94–121.

Critical Role. (2018, September 30). All Work No Play: Sword Fighting. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD1CXWE7KwM

Freed, A. F., & Greenwood, A. (1996). Women, Men, and Type of Talk: What Makes the Difference? Language in Society, 25(1), 1-26.

Hunt, S. (2005). Some (more) features of conversation amongst women friends. Southern African Linguistics & Applied Language Studies, 23(4), 445–458.

Kollock, P., Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1985). Sex and power in interaction: conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review, 50, 34–46.

Roger, D., Bull, P., & Smith, S. (1988). The Development of a Comprehensive System for Classifying Interruptions. Journal of Language & Social Psychology, 7(1), 27–34.

[eldritchsurveys]

276.

Looks and Personality

What do you look like? >> I was going to just paste a selfie in here but I felt weird about having a big photo of my face just... here, like that, so here’s a link to one instead. Which is also ideal because then people can choose to look if they want to know, or not look if they don’t care. How often do you bathe? >> Three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday). How do you wear your hair? >> I just keep it short. The longer it gets, the worse my ability to take care of it gets, so it’s way better for my sanity to just buzz it and call it a day.

What colours do you tend to wear? >> Black, mostly. At this point it’s largely just convenience (a black garment will automatically match everything else in my wardrobe), not because I don’t like other colours. Do you have any tattoos? What, where and why? >> The number 19 in Roman numerals with a spider dangling from the “I” on the inside of my wrist (Dark Tower reference, and a reference to me); a Mannaz rune on the back of my hand (it’s the Norse rune I like best); “scully, it’s me” on the inside of my elbow (I’ve been an X-Phile for literally most of my life and it really does define me at this point. Sparrow has the matching version -- “mulder, it’s me” -- but I had been planning on getting this even before we decided to do it this way).

What kind of clothes do you wear? >> A lot of band shirts and branded lounge pants and hoodies. I like to be comfortable but also advertise the things I like. What kind of jewellery do you wear? >> A few important pieces, but nothing much. Jewelry annoys me because I love the way it looks but it can be such sensory bullshit. Is there anything else you often wear? >> Not really. Would you say you had a “look”? >> I don’t think so, no. I used to, but I don’t have any of the clothes I used to have and finding new ones to match the look I like is... so fucking hard. I cannot convey to you how much of a nightmare trying to shop for clothing is for me. Another reason why I just buy a lot of t-shirts. :T When going out, do you dress up or down? >> That obviously depends on the outing. And how I feel that day. What do you wear to bed at home? >> Lounge pants and an undershirt. What do you wear to bed when your somewhere else? >> The same. Is there a place you keep any prized/secret things whilst you’re away? >> If there was, I wouldn’t tell you. What’s your favourite food? >> I don’t have one specific favourite food. What’s your favourite drink? >> Non-alcoholic? Jasmine green tea (cold). What’s your favourite desert? >> I don’t have one. What’s your favourite type of food (e.g Mexican)? >> That’s really difficult to choose. Do you have any mental problems? >> Sure. Do you have any phobias? What? Why do you think you have this/them? >> I don’t have any phobias, no. Why might somebody dislike you? >> There are a variety of reasons someone might dislike me, and I’m sure I can’t even think of them all, because I can only see myself from the inside. But everyone’s dislikeable to someone. What skill do you possess that you are most proud of? >> I think I have a way with words. I mean, I spent most of my developmental years really interested in language and story-telling, and I guess it paid off. Or maybe it’s a Gift(TM), I don’t know. Who knows, really? It’s just the only kind of charm I have, so I’m glad I have it. :p What is your greatest strength (e.g. honest, loyal, brave)? >> Resilience, adaptability, curiosity. They kind of all go hand-in-hand. What’s your greatest shortcoming or flaw (e.g. cowardly, alcoholic)? >> My tendency to treat myself harshly for even the slightest things. But whereas my greatest strengths are innate, this greatest flaw is definitely learned behaviour from how I was treated. Who do you most admire? >> *shrug* Who do you most love? >> *shrug* What three things do you look for most in a partner? >> I don’t really look for partners in the first place. Do you like crowds? >> Crowds tend to be sensory hell for me, so I avoid them whenever possible. What are your hobbies? >> Mehhhhhh. If you can’t get to sleep in the middle of the night, what do you do? >> Read, usually. What is your favourite animal? >> Otters and capybaras. What is your favourite colour? >> Gold. If you could ask God (to athiests - IF there was one) one question, what? >> Well, as neither a monotheist or an atheist, I really don’t know what to do with this question. If I have a question for a god, I usually just... ask them. Rate yourself on these traits from 0 to 10. 0 - do not possess this trait. 10 - you have great amounts of this trait. Calm temper >> Number scales are so arbitrary to me and my personality traits are dependent on situation, person, etc. None of this is set in stone like I’m some kind of character trope. Skipping. Charm Cheerfulness Confidence Courtesy Curiousity Forgiveness Generosity Greed Helpfulness Honesty Loyalty Optimism Patience Self-sacrafice Wit

Background

Where were you born and raised? >> New Jersey. Briefly describe your family. >> I really would rather not. You must choose one - your childhood was calm/peaceful or tragic/turbulent? >> My assessment of my childhood is extremely unreliable because I really wasn’t too present for most of it. I spent most of my childhood inworld. Outworld was just this incomprehensible mess that I couldn’t make any sense of until well into adulthood. Did you have any rolemodels? >> No. What is the worst thing that has ever happened to you? >> Hmm. How did it affect you? >> All in all, I had a maladaptive development, still have remnants of post-traumatic behaviour, and still lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds with other people. Have you ever had any recurring nightmares or themes in nightmares? >> I mean, maybe when I was younger, but I don’t remember. What were they? >> ---

Do you currently have a boyfriend/girlfriend? >> Something like that. Do you have any close friends? >> No. Briefly describe your best friend: >> --- Any enemies? >> No. What’s even the point, really. Who? What are they like? >> --- Would you risk your life for your best friend?(not lover or family member!) >> I... can’t imagine risking my life for anyone. With who was your most important romantic relationship? >> --- Of what are you most proud? >> I don’t know. I guess the fact that I kept living, and kept fighting for a better day. Of what are you most ashamed? >> Maybe that I can’t just... fix everything wrong with me through brute force, by myself. Which is stupid, because no one can do that. But I feel like I have no other choice, so if I can’t fix me, then...????

Alignment, Ethics and Religion

What is your religion? >> I am my own religion. --Facetious answers aside, I don’t have a religion because none of them suit me. At best, I’d be a syncretist, but mostly I’m just irreverent. Where do you stand on abortion? >> I am pro-choice. Where do you stand on the death penalty? >> I really don’t see a point to it. I mean, I can see what other people regard as the point, but it doesn’t sway me personally. Where do you stand on wearing fur? >> I really don’t care. Wear all the fur you want; that’s not a hill I care to die on. Do you have a moral code that you follow? What? >> Meh, not really. My take on morality is really just... everything is situation-dependent and moral codes are always subject to revisions -- and when people refuse to revise them, messy shit tends to happen. Could you kill somebody? >> I mean, maybe. For what reason would you kill somebody? >> I don’t know. I feel like self-defense would be a pretty solid reason for me to kill someone. But if I’m honest, “curiosity” is just as solid a reason, for someone like me. (Fortunately for everyone involved, the law exists, and I like my freedom.) Would you SERIOUSLY CONSIDER killing anybody right now? >> No. Do you trust easily, or not? >> Not. What are your political beliefs (anarchy, communism, democracy etc.)? >> I have no political beliefs. I literally could not be bothered to give a fuck, and I certainly couldn’t imagine seriously arguing with someone about this shit. What, if anything, WOULD you sacrifice your life for? >> I really can’t imagine sacrificing my life for anything. My life is the most important thing to me, and it’s the only one I’ve got. Would you ever, for any reason, abandon your friends in an hour of need? >> I mean, yeah, there are certainly situations and unforeseen circumstances that would necessitate me abandoning a friend in their hour of need. But I think I would do my best to not do that unless it was extremely necessary.

Motivation

What are your dreams/ambitions/goals? >> Hm. How do you plan to reach them? >> --- How would your ideal partner look? >> *insert a picture of Cenarius from World of Warcraft here*

Do you ever want to have a family someday? With children? >> Oh, I don’t know. I think a lot about what it would be like to raise a child with all my sensory issues and... unorthodox approaches to life. I’m still not entirely convinced I could do it, especially if I’m the only parent at home most of the time. I’d prefer to help raise a child, like in a communal kind of setting, and contribute to the child’s development by being someone who will encourage their creativity and curiosity and sense of wonder and sense of humour. But the real messy shit (literally) about raising children? The noise and smells and dirt and all of that? I’d do it if I could, but I’m pretty sure it’d be at least mildly disturbing for a child to see their parent or parental figure having a meltdown while trying to clean up after them. Children tend to take shit like that real personally and there’d be nothing I could do to persuade them otherwise. Who would you want to start this family with, or do you not yet know? >> --- What would stop you from reaching your goals (e.g. death, retirement fund)? >> --- What do you see yourself doing next year? >> I have no real comprehension or concept of anything past a couple of weeks into the future, at most. What do you see yourself doing in twenty years? >> See above. Would you ever have an affair? >> I’m not in a strict monogamous relationship, so that’s not even necessary. Would you ever have a one night stand? >> No, those days are over. What are your greatest fears? >> A bad death is a great fear of mine. I don’t think I’m particularly afraid of death itself, I’m just afraid of a bad death.

More information

If you had a month of nothing (no work, no obligations) what would you do? >> My life is mostly like that already. How do you relax? >> Eh, it depends. What one thing would you change in this world (free Tibet, abolish Sweden)? >> *amused look at “abolish Sweden”* I don’t have anything like that. Would you ever choose a career or job where your life was at risk? >> No. How would you like to be remembered after your death? >> I think I would just settle for being remembered for a while. I don’t like to focus too much on how I’m seen by other people, because that’s completely out of my control. Plus... I’ll be dead. It’s not like I’ll ever find out how people remember me, so what’s the point in caring?

Random questions

Where you present at any major historical events (e.g. 9/11)? >> Nope. How did they affect you? >> --- Do you have any famous relatives? >> Not that I know of. Wouldn’t really care if I did, either. Do you have to try and live up to your family’s expectations? >> --- Are you a loyal member of any organizations? >> No.

General Information

Name: >> Mordred. Age: >> 31. Date Of Birth: >> May 28. Race: >> Black. Height: >> 5′5″. Weight: >> 148lbs. Are you happy with this? >> No, but I’m trying really, really hard not to hyperfocus on it, because all it’ll lead me to do is punish myself and we’re trying to move away from that kind of behaviour. Desired weight: >> 130lbs. Sexual orientation: >> Inworlders only. First language: >> English. Second/Third/Fourth etc. languages (if any): >> --- Why did you take this survey? >> It looked interesting enough, and I hadn’t already taken it.

[officialthiamlibrary]

Hello! Hello! So excited to share another fantastic creator this time on BTS. Thanks to everyone who’s given this series love and interest. It’s because of you that we keep highlighting the lovely talent in this fandom and today, is no exception. The writer of Compared to the Moon, Six/Seven, and more, parttimehuman, somehow stumbled into our ship and we’re damn happy she’s decided to stay haha. Read on to learn more about her.

Mercy! Ayyy, thanks for letting me besiege you with questions lol. Since the Thiam fandom is quite familiar with one another by now, any facts about you or your life that we’d be surprised to know?

I have a bachelor degree in financial mathematics. (Although I’m not sure how surprising that is.)

That’s wild, mostly because I can’t imagine beasting through an entire degree of math alone. Completely random, but I doubt I’ll have a chance to ask this again. In Shows/Movies, when the characters are in Math class and answering questions on the board, have you ever looked at their solution and thought, “wrong.” I always wondered if those were accurate.

Bold of you to assume that I still know high school math just because I’ve studied the more advanced stuff. Still, it has happened, yeah.

Ahh, touche, touche. Why don’t we actually talk about Teen Wolf and Thiam now lol. How did you find your way to the Thiam fandom? What about them drew you in?

It was a long and not very easy way, to be honest. I think I didn’t get beyond the pilot episode of Teen Wolf until the third try. I had over a month of free time after I graduated from uni, so naturally, I was bored. I finally watched all seasons. Thiam as a ship? Yeah, I’m not going to pretend like it was anything other than Cody Christian’s sexy ass that made that happen. And Theo’s heart-eyes for Liam in 6b of course. I wrote two fics, didn’t mean to stick around for long, and then I was invited to a certain Discord…

What do you think changed between your first time watching and your third?

You want me to be really honest? I had more time, was a little more bored out, had less other options. That’s about it.

Alol nothing but the truth here. Well, now that you’ve fully accepted the TW lifestyle, how would you put your own touches on a Season 7 spin off. What would be your very first scene and very last scene of the pilot episode? As an artist, how would you put your personal touch on those two scenes?

The first scene would be a steamy face-punching/make-out session between Liam and Theo. With proper lighting. Brett would be alive. Liam would look exactly like Dylan Sprayberry does. The last scene would be Theo falling asleep in an actual bed. With Liam’s arms wrapped around him. And forehead kisses. There would be a fist bump somewhere in that episode. And probably a lacrosse game. It would basically be an AU where it never gets dark because we all deserve to see properly after 6 seasons of TW.

“Proper Lighting,” *Slow Clap.* Honestly, we are owed that at this point. As a creator, do you only write Thiam? Any other fandoms or Pairings? Novels or Stories with Original Characters?

No. Actually, I believe these days I write slightly more for other pairings from Teen Wolf. I also have a longfic for another fandom in the works (The Raven Cycle). I will probably write a novel one day, I have quite a collection with abandoned attempts, actually. Apart from that, just like I do in the Thiam pack, I like to write my friends from real life little stories. I guess none of my characters are truly original, strictly speaking, because they’re always either borrowed from a fandom or I insert people I personally know in my stories.

Yessss! Just started the Raven Thieves and it’s my everything. Of all your stories, what’s been your favorite(s) to write or reread thus far?

Compared to the Moon. If I were to make a list here, the 26 chapters of Compared would be the first 26 points on it. After that I’d put My Sister’s Keeper, although it had me crying like a baby. As for smut, I’d say The Hot Cop Showdown, which is about Theo and Liam both turning up at a bachelor party in a police uniform, only that one of them’s an actual police officer, and one’s a stripper. The fun in that was that I wrote it live for a bunch of people who were guessing who was who, and I made my decision completely spontaneously.

Yass let’s definitely talk Compared to the Moon quickly because the worldbuilding is quite intriguing. First, for anyone unfamiliar could you offer a quick summary? How did you come up with what colors corresponds with an emotion? On an average day, what would your color undertone be?

Compared to the Moon is a High School AU where everyone is human, with the little bonus that people show their emotions as colors beneath their skin. While Liam, captain of the lacrosse team, bears a quite prominent red mark in his neck and back and is generally unable to control his colors, Theo, who’s new in school and the lacrosse team, doesn’t have any. They get off on the wrong foot, become roommates, fall in love. There’s a whole lot of drama. And a happy ending, but they do have to work a lot for it.

The idea to that fic came from a drunken conversation with my best friend who doesn’t give a single shit about Teen Wolf or my fics, but the thought had stuck with me. I did a bit of research on the meaning of different colors, but as I continued writing it, I more and more decided to not pay too much attention to that. One of the messages I wanted to convey was to not judge a book by its cover, which, of course, happens a lot in a world where people carry their emotions right under their skin. But the point is that you still never know. What exactly does Liam’s red stand for? Anger? Aggression? Pain? Blood? Or maybe passion? Leadership? Courage? Love?

And what does it mean that Theo doesn’t show them? Is he any less of a human being because of that? Does he not feel?

By the time I got towards the ending of the story, I’d realized that I didn’t want to answer any of these questions. And even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t have.

As for me, I feel like I’d be a little more blue and a little more yellow than I’d be other colors, for reasons I cannot explain.

That’s honestly lovely, especially since each color has a myriad of hues and therefore meanings. Including Compared to the Moon, would you say there’s one trope weaving your stories together?

Probably some form of bed sharing/sleeping together/cuddling. One of them watching the other. Someone who’s usually kept awake by nightmares finally getting some rest. Lazy mornings in bed together. Hand holding. Eskimo kisses. Innocent touches. Just a whole lot of vulnerability and trust and softness.

And I remember reading way back when (like Truth or Chimera haha) days that you write all of your stories by hand. Can you go into your writing process a little? Do you still keep everything you’ve written?

I don’t do that anymore. I write my notes per hand, also sometimes a few lines or ideas, but that’s about it. I’ve published around 600k words in the last year, so at some point I gave it up with the handwriting. I still have all my notes, though, among them the letter Theo wrote to Liam in Compared to the Moon. I’m a notebook hoarder, and I find that there’s a certain aesthetic to handwritten things, but now I mostly just sit in bed with my laptop and a kitty when I write.

Whatttt, live writing!?! How does it feel to write openly like that? Do you think it’s changed the way you create?

I mostly write my smut live. It’s amazing because the people who are following it can throw in their own ideas and make wishes. Many times that’s resulted in me taking a story into directions I wouldn’t have thought of myself. It’s a challenge, because you have to let go of the idea of changing something you’ve already written. Ultimately, I do it because the pressure of people literally waiting for the next sentence gets me to actually sit my ass down and type words.

I think it’s made me more spontaneous and more open to the idea of going into unknown directions. Most of the time, I have no idea what I want to write when I start writing it. But I’ve definitely learned not to stress myself about that. Some of the best things happen while live writing. By the way, almost all of Six and Seven has been written live.

Ok, it’s got to be asked lol. Six and Seven. How?! How do you write such steamy scenes and still retain the essence of the characters. Any writing wisdom to impart for writers who want to improve their smut skills?

This is a tough question, because if I’m being honest, I think the least about what I’m doing when I’m writing smut. I just go with it. I think a few good things to keep in mind are these: Call a dick a dick. Please and thank you. Consent is sexy, safe sex is sexy. There is no such thing as too much lube. Bananas and sex should never be combined. Communication is key. Literally. Dirty talk is the absolute best thing a smut writer can do, if you ask me. Them talking about their likes and preferences? Hot! One of them making the other ask for what they need? Hot! A nickname, a “Sir”, a praise, some begging? Hot, hot, hot, hot.

Other than that, one thing I really want to say here: Forget about who tops and bottoms. That is literally the least important decision to make. It doesn’t even cross my mind when I start writing a story. It also doesn’t have anything to do with who’s the taller or stronger one, or who’s the dominant one, or more experienced. That’s all bullshit.

Apart from that, your kinks are valid. Write the fucking hell out of them, seriously.

Everything. Everything about this is the best. I’m so tempted to say, “Introducing Behind the Screen with parttimehuman!” without the wrap of questions because of how helpful your advice is lol. I suppose, one final random question before we close up: If you were in a Breakfast Club detention situation with five characters from Teen Wolf, who would give you the wildest, most satisfying day. Who would be your teacher? And what’s one thing the six of you would end up doing?

I feel like Liam and Theo would be there, probably because they started punching each other in the middle of class. Stiles seems like the most likely one to have annoyed a teacher into giving him detention. Malia is there for skipping maths too many times. And Isaac. Nobody knows how exactly he ended up there, but everyone’s pretty appreciative of his sarcastic comments. We’d pass the time discussing conspiracy theories about what the hell is wrong with Beacon Hills. Coach Bobby Finstock would let us go early, because remember, Stiles is canonically like a son to him. And Daddy Finstock just can’t say no to his chaotic favorite boy.

Hahaha, Daddy Finstock. Finally, what’s next for you? In life or fandom or both?

In life? If only I knew. I might leave my home town (again) and go to uni (again), but I generally enjoy having no plan.

In fandom? A fucking lot. The Big Bang is getting closer and I am thrilled. I’m working on a whole list of other things, as always. Then there’s a special project that is for now a secret, a couple of awesome people will celebrate their birthdays soon, and Christmas presents are in the works. The Snow White AU will finally break some hearts soon. In case anybody reading this is still waiting for something, I swear that if I made you a promise, then I have it on a sticky note somewhere. Don’t give up on me! Prompts are always welcome (just don’t make me write angst).

And anything else you’d like to share?

If there’s anything I’d like to share, then it’s encouragement. From one introverted fandom lunatic to all the others out there. Never feel weird for loving something. Never feel ashamed of being passionate about what you love. Never let anybody stop you from obsessing over a character, or a ship, or a show, or whatever thing. Write that fic you think nobody will want to read. Draw the thing that’s been in your head forever. Share your love. There are more people out there waiting for exactly that thing to exist than you think. Write that comment, share your obsessions, never feel afraid to reach out. As for the Thiam fandom, some of the kindest people you will ever meet are in there.

My inbox is always open. For anybody.

On a proper cyclical endnote, Behind the Screens presents Mercy to you! You know what I’m going to say: the conversation doesn’t stop here. Meet her at these places:

Main Tumblr: flyde

Inbox/Ask: flyde  ask

AO3: parttimehuman 

Thank you for letting us get to know more about you! And thank you all for reading and requesting her. As always, if you have a Thiam Creator that you fan over, send us their names. Likewise, if you as the creator, would like to be a part of the Behind the Screens series, give us a shout too! We’d love to get to know you, as well.

@flyde

[tobns]

SNOWED IN: A (Tragic) Christmas Story — part one.

In Which Jackie Jinxes It (Hell Freezing Over, That Is)

There’s a saying that exists – a tad obscure, but a rather accurate saying nonetheless: a true friend’s silence hurts more than an enemy’s rough words. I’m not quite sure who came up with that soundbite of wisdom, but they must have lived on the same wavelength as me for a short period of time. Silence coming from the people that at one point, meant the most to you, stings more than digging out bullets that came from the gun of someone who hates your guts. It’s a bitter pill that’s hard to swallow down, and the only cure that I’ve ever found is to dilute the hollow ache into overall numbness is to just fill yourself with endless other things and people as best you can, and leave absolutely no time to dwell on other thoughts. It’s relatively foolproof.

Relatively is the operative phrase, of course; somehow, I got tripped up in a few loose wires in my oh-so-easy, rock-solid method in avoiding the aftermath of radio signals going quiet. The push that triggered my fall was unlocking my phone to see a new text message waiting for me on the lockscreen.

Jennifer Lawrence is the type of person that swears they don’t need a cell phone, regardless of the situation they find themselves in. She could be out in the middle of the Nevada desert, stranded, on the verge of dehydration, and her chances of survival would be better without the aid of a phone to call for help. She’s attained the level of fame that having only one cell phone no longer cuts it; there’s a work cell phone, a celebrity-personal cell phone, a personal personal cell phone, the whole nine yards and then some. Jen never even liked being the owner of a laptop, so the fact that I’m supposed to believe she has actually picked up a phone for a reason other than being within an inch of her life, much less having used emojis (Jennifer Lawrence is not an emoji person) doesn’t fly. In fact, all it does is signal the arrival of the body snatchers to Planet Earth.

So, there I was, staring down at the glowing screen of my phone with a well-written, proper grammar and punctuation included, paragraph long text message from none other than my former costar whom I haven’t heard from since I turned seventeen looking back up at me, the three emojis tacked on at the end a downright mockery. I briefly contemplated on checking the Internet to see if any news had broken on Jennifer Lawrence’s phone falling into the possession of hackers, and when I tried sending a response to debunk the ridiculousness once and for all (asking if it was really her, if she was sure she had the right number, and the request of a picture of her holding up three fingers for solid proof) all I got was evidence that it really was her and she was as serious as a heart attack. I very quickly decided that the body snatching alien theory was the soundest – I’d give them credit too; these body snatchers were outrageously convincing.

Most of the feeling of having the rug ripped out from underneath my ass came from a place of solitude that I’ve somewhat cocooned myself into over the last few years. Isolating myself away from my former core group of friends just…happened, really. It wasn’t like it took that much work. We were all on different paths, and we still are – just because we all avowed to be friends for life doesn’t mean that life isn’t going to have a few surprises up its sleeve. I’m not fourteen anymore, and I tried not to take too much offense when the numbers started dropping. Most, if not all of us have grown up substantially. It’s completely normal to grow apart and go our separate ways without being the wiser, it’s simply a part of life that occurs. And it didn’t bother me any either, until I’d catch a glimpse of the picture on my night table of myself, Jackie, Dayo, Alexander, and Amandla that I for some reason cannot bring myself to change out and get the overwhelming urge to call all of them at once or cry. I’d usually go with the third option, which was stuffing myself up underneath the covers and sleeping it off.

But now, morning has arrived and Jennifer’s got both hands on the curtains as she yanks them open to wake me up and almost blind me in the process. I’m slightly disoriented, trying my best to remember how in the hell I got to this point. Once upon a time, I had the hard reputation of being the most optimistic in the group – which is a hard lie, seeing as how for as long as I have known him, nothing has been able to sway Dayo of his belief that Tupac is still alive on an island somewhere – and yet here I am, triple-checking the truth value of a text from Jen because I’m simply finding it all that hard to believe.

I took Jen’s long, emoji-filled invitation and ran with it regardless, all the way past my frowning mother to JFK where I’m now waiting on a red-eye flight to Aspen, Colorado. Spending the holidays with Jen was something that didn’t even make the list of things that would ever possibly cross my mind, but I didn’t have anything else to do. It seemed like it’d be fun, much more so than trying to help carry the last-minute Christmas tree up the stairs in the high-rise apartment complex my mother lives in.

Airports are less than pleasant, especially late at night and when alone. I don’t like them much to begin with, but usually I have Madeline or Elina to keep me company – my mom being the preferred choice, as Madeline is on one of two wavelengths at an airport: talk to no one, or bitch at everyone. It’s just me this go ‘round, my only companion the steady flow of noise as surrounding gates are called to board, televisions playing the news, and people around me engage in actual conversations with one another. This is the last place on Earth I want to be, and my face conveys that plain as day.

I’m halfway towards a cat nap, the only plausible option as of what to do with myself before they call my flight to board, when my ears pick up the sound of one particular voice over all the rest.

“Excuse the hell out of me, I didn’t realize that I would be boarding Air Force One this evening!”

On instinct, I sit up a little straighter in this ridiculous chair that is designed to give its occupants a future of poor posture. There’s only one voice that I’ve ever heard in that strangled of a tone, and there’s only one person that would string such words together in the most inappropriate location possible. Spoiler alert: they belong to each other.

Turning around in my seat, I wish I could say that I’m surprised to see Jack Quaid huffing and puffing his way towards the same empty gate I’ve stationed myself at, but I’m not. Surprise is no longer an emotion I feel whenever I come into the vicinity of Jack Quaid.

“Honestly, you’ve been to enough airports in your measly lifetime, why are you acting as though the world has ended over TSA confiscating your bear repellent?” Another voice is added into the mix over the commotion, and the options of who could possibly be with Jack and discussing bear repellent like it’s the daily weather report quickly dwindle down to one. I ask myself if there will ever come a day when I don’t accidentally run into these people. “And why the hell did you have bear repellent in your bag to begin with?”

“We’re going to fucking Colorado, Jacqueline, why would I not pack bear repellent?”

“We’ll be in Colorado, not the middle of fucking nowhere!” she barks in retaliation. I don’t see how they haven’t drawn anyone else’s attention – they’re not exactly good at keeping things at a volume that is to themselves. Jack lets out a long, agitated groan, before puffing out his chest and his voice lifts an octave, all matter-of-fact.

“You just remember this when a bear comes along and you need me to save you.”

Judging by the look on Jackie’s face, she’s considering taking her suitcase and using it to run Jack over. “We are not going to be attacked by bears, and like you would ever be able to hold your own against a bear that wasn’t Winnie the Pooh!”

“I genuinely do not know why I bother spending any time with you,” Jack declares dramatically. The two of them go strolling right past me without giving me so much as a second glance – really feeling the love – when I decide to make my own grand entrance into their conversation.

“It’s because you two are lowkey lovers; you just don’t bother admitting it to anyone even though we’ve all known that you’ve had this little fling going on since the Catching Fire premiere.” Jackie’s head is the first to whip around, fast enough to break her neck and her eyes feral as they land on me. Jack drops his suitcase handle, it clattering onto the floor. It looks as though he may have suffered a minor heart attack from my little intrusion.

They’re burning holes in me as they gape, not a single word to be had between the two of them – which, really, is a feat – and I shrug. “What?” I ask, my lips already beginning to curl up into a smirk. “Did I get it wrong or something?”

It seems as though I have shorted the circuit in Jackie’s brain as she blinks at me in a rapid secession. “Yes, hi Isabelle, it’s so lovely to see you too!” I mimic her, standing up with my arms outstretched for a hug.

Jack seems to shake free of his dumbstruck state before Jackie does, claiming the hug meant for her as his own. “Are you sure you’re actually Isabelle?” he questions. “I mean, the whole evil genius bit is still true to character, but last time I checked, Isabelle was much scrawnier. Had real chicken-y legs and bony elbows.”

To prove a point, I ram one of my elbows into his chest. He winces, nodding. “Yep,” he mutters. “Still bony.”

I turn to face Jackie, holding my arms open once again for her. The look of shock has somewhat dissolved from her features as her eyes meet mine. One of my eyebrows quirks. “Going off on a honeymoon?” I tease.

Jackie’s voice is back from wherever it vanished off to for a few moments. “Nope, try Jen’s.” She folds into my hug at an angle, tucking herself underneath my arm. Those last few inches of my growth spurt, as well as Jackie’s barely-there sandals finally set me taller than her, even though it’s not a hard thing to do to start. Jackie’s always been the shortest out of us Hunger Games kids.  

Jackie has also been the only one out of the bunch I’ve bothered to keep in touch with over the years. There was no trial or tribulation life could hurtle in the way of our friendship that could scratch the surface – she and I had become instant best friends meeting all those years ago and nothing really had an effect on that. She and I liked to think that we were platonic soulmates, and nothing as pesky as distance could dent that. Jack was sort of part of the package deal that came along with Jackie. Just like her mood swings, impromptu Harry Potter marathons, and week-long vegan stints, Jack was something that you got when you signed up for a friendship with Jackie. I saw him less than I saw Jackie, but much more than anyone else out of our little Hunger Games cult.

“Am I wrong to assume you’re here for that very reason as well?”

“Nope, because you’d be very correct.”

“Then I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you got the exact same text message as us,” Jackie continues, glancing up at me.

“What, the one with perfect grammar and more emojis than we thought Jen knew how to use?”

“That’d be the one.”

Jack sidles up beside me, draping one of his arms around my shoulders. “Isabelle,” he begins, channeling his inner car salesperson. “You’d agree with me that because we’re going to be out in the wilderness for the next few days, it’s only sane that we arm ourselves with necessities such as bear repellent—"

“Give it a fucking rest already!”

After only just barely serving as the wall between Jack’s throat and Jackie’s claws, the two of them join me in my little corner of our flight’s gate. Not only has Jen apparently decided to play the ever so gracious host over the holidays by extending her vacation home to us, but she’s posted the three of us up with first class plane tickets. Here I’d thought it was just Jen trying to make up for the missed birthdays by at least letting me fly in style halfway across the country.

It’s easy to fall back into a routine of sorts with Jackie and Jack, like no time has passed at all. Jack’s telling me all about the alcoholic beverages I ought to try in February (I hate to crush even more of his dreams and tell him that I’ve spent my fair share of time in Europe over the last few years and for my nineteenth birthday, Madeline got me a fake ID as a present) and Jackie’s giving me the full synopsis of her musical, practically trying to sell the lead role to me. For a moment, I almost feel like I’m fifteen once again and time hasn’t passed me by at all. There’s a part of me that’s tempted to check my phone’s background and see if it’s reverted back to me on Dayo’s back with a giant sparkler held over his head from my birthday party.

“Can I ask you a question, Izzy?” Jack asks for permission, the arm that isn’t draped around Jackie’s shoulders lifting in mock arrest. “And you have to promise me that you won’t get offended or throw the knife in your underwear at my head when I do.”

I roll my eyes. “I haven’t thrown a knife in years, Jack,” I tell him. “And besides, TSA would have swiped it just like they did your precious bear repellent.”

Jack slouches a little, the sulking expression returning to his face. “Do you know how much that bear repellent cost?” he groans. From beside him, Jackie’s shooting me daggers for even bringing the subject back up.

“Just ask the question already, Quaid,” she prompts him.

“Right, yeah – okay, so why in the world did you start running for Nike? I love you and support you and all that other bullshit, but you are not the athlete type. You could barely walk on the hotel carpet barefoot without having a near emergency-room-worthy disaster.” He then reaches up to cover his face, most likely a protective gesture.

“I’m not gonna kill you, Jack, Jesus,” I bark. He slowly lowers his arm, still housing a great deal of hesitation. “Besides, you’re not the first person to ask me that, Madeline tried to declare me incompetent when I told her about the gig. One of my hands begins to mess with the ends of my hair absentmindedly. “It was just something different. Nothing wrong with getting outside of your comfort zone.”

“You know what’s outside of my comfort zone?” Jackie pipes back up. “Seeing Ludwig on the History channel. I didn’t even know he knew what history was, aside from that of his browser’s.”

“Ha, ha. Become a comedian, why don’t you?” A new voice enters our conversation, and as if right on cue, I can feel all the blood in my body turn to ice water.

Scratch that – I now feel like I’m fourteen again.

I turn around, and sure enough, there stands Alexander Ludwig. Or at least, who I think is Alexander. I haven’t seen him in person in nearly four years, only going by the guide that Instagram has given me, and even that was a recent development. Somewhere up above, I can hear God laughing at me, because this has to be the doing of his need for quality entertainment.

Alexander is somehow able to avert from the death stare Jackie’s giving him, his eyes finding me. “Hey, Isabelle,” he says, face softening ever so slightly.

From the seat across from me, I hear Jack give a strangled cough, one that sounds oddly similar to, “Just fuck already.” It’s followed by the sound of Jackie slapping Jack in the shoulder.

“Uh…hi?” I now know how the happy couple felt when I materialized out of thin air – at a complete loss for words. Alexander offers me a hopeful smile and still relatively unsure of what I’m supposed to do with myself, I stand up and go in for the hug. It’s awkward, and I’m sure Jackie is snickering behind my back as we attempt to figure our hug out. We both move in the same direction as we extend our arms, stopping almost halfway before we wordlessly try to determine who’s coming in from the left and who isn’t. If there was an award for it, this would win for the most awkward reunion hug ever, hands down.

It takes a second, but we get there – Alexander folds me up underneath his arms, both of them encircling around my shoulders as my hands slip around his waist. It’s been four years since I’ve so much as seen him in the flesh, so I’m sure this sort of hug is too far of a leap forward back into anything resembling the relationship we once had. Throwing caution to the wind just so happened to always be Alexander’s trademark. We stay like that for much too long, but help myself I cannot. I’ve already fallen down the rabbit hole of the familiar, might as well set up shop there.

“Good to see ya,” he mumbles as we pull away. Right back to the formalities, I suppose.

“Yeah, you too.”

Jackie is burning holes in me when I turn back around, tugging down on the hem of my shirt as I head back to my seat. Alexander has never really been Jackie’s favorite person, and I don’t think time and distance has made her heart grow any fonder.

“I suppose that you being on a flight that isn’t to Aspen is too much for me to wish for?” Jackie sighs as she quickly redirects her attention to Alexander, one of her eyebrows kinking in question.

“It’s nice to see you too, Jackie,” Alexander says, the beginnings of a smirk forming on his lips. “If I didn’t already know any better, I’d cross my fingers and hope my seat was next to you.” He then shifts his gaze to Jack, winking.

Both of Jackie’s hands fly out of her lap in exasperation. “How do you people know about this?!”

My reply is simultaneous with Alexander’s.

“You two are about as subtle as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

“Because I have eyes.”

She frowns. “Whatever.”

Alexander sets his backpack down in an empty seat and sits down in the one next to it, which happens to conveniently be right next to mine. He’s glancing right in my lap, and I’m about to beat Jackie to the punch of telling him to fuck off before I realize what he’s looking at. “6A,” he notes, referring to the seat number on the boarding pass that I’ve had sitting underneath my leg – not the most responsible way to keep up with it, but I really hadn’t planned on moving from this chair unless it was to board the plane itself. “I think we’re sitting next to each other.”

For emphasis, he holds up his own boarding pass for me to see. Sure enough, his seat number is the one right next to mine. Even across the way, I can hear Jackie growl under her breath, and Jack moves his arm from around her shoulder to rest on her thigh. I can’t fight my grin – not because of the thought that I get to spend the next few hours next to Alexander, but at how fucking adorable Jack and Jackie are. The only thing more adorable than that, perhaps, is how oblivious they’ve been towards how oblivious they think we are.

Yep, my mind flashes. Welcome back to 2013.

                                                              …

I don’t know why we decide to bestow the job of chauffer from the airport to Jen’s onto Jack, seeing as how Jackie and I concluded that Jack only ever got his driver’s license by bribing the DMV with signed headshots of his father’s, but we do it. The three of us are much too lazy to be behind the wheel on foreign terrain, and Jack’s never one to turn down a challenge. All Alexander has to do is volunteer to drive since he’s used to driving in the wintry weather and Jack all but pushes him out of the way. Reverse psychology is real.

It’s late when we land, almost the same time now as it was when our plane took off from JFK. Jackie fortunately gives up her shotgun seat to Alexander, the two of us sprawling out in the backseat as we try to get in a few hours of sleep. Jen might have gotten us first class seats on the plane, but she certainly didn’t take note of where the hell the plane was going to be landing in regards to her location.

The plane landed at Denver International, roughly three hours from Jen’s place in Aspen and a small detail that apparently Jack didn’t take into account until our captain was announcing our arrival. Along with his fellow wolf pack buddy Dayo, Jack is an avid conspiracy theorist in the most aggravating way – he doesn’t believe in any of the plausible conspiracies, only the off-the-wall ones. One of those conspiracies that he does opt to buy in on just so happens to be the one about the Denver airport being the gateway to hell.

As we were trekking off the plane, half-dead, Jack was the only one who seemed apprehensive about disembarking. In fact, I had to ram him along using my suitcase, threatening to run over his ankles if he didn’t pick up the pace.

“What’s your deal?” Jackie grumbled sleepily, tugging him along through the terminals only for him to put up quite the deal of resistance as they moved along.

“Hell, Jackie, we’re in hell,” Jack hissed.

Jackie stopped in her tracks, turning around to give him a few love pats to the face. “Are you okay? Did you smuggle more fucking bear repellent onto the plane and accidentally detonate it on yourself?”

The way Jack looked at her, one would have assumed he thought she had three heads. “No!” he demanded, his voice lowering as he pulled me, Jackie, and Alexander closer to him as though we were about to begin trading government secrets. “Look, you cannot tell me that this is not the sketchiest place you’ve ever been in your life.”

“Untrue,” Jackie dismissed almost immediately. “I grew up in a neighborhood of second-rate politicians.”

Jack had glared at her, before turning to look at me and Alexander for some sort of backup. Alexander merely shrugged. “Don’t look at me dude, I’ve been to the red-light district four times.”

“Yeah, of course you have,” Jack muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes. “Have none of you seen pictures of this airport? Been here before? This is literally the entrance to hell – for Christ’s sake, there’s a giant fucking Satanic horse guarding this place like it’s Lucifer’s lapdog!”

“Pretty sure Isabelle and I flew through here for the mall tour stop in Aurora, and we weren’t chased through the concourses by Beelzebub and his horde of demon friends,” Jackie pointed out dryly.

“Jackie, there are goddamn Nazis with rainbows behind them on the murals here, nothing about that strikes you as terrifying?”

“Racism is alive in America, you know.”

“If we’re going to have a riveting discussion on what modern airport art means, can we at least go to Starbucks first?” Alexander asked, raising his hand.

Both Jackie and Jack looked at him, shooting him a resounding, “No!” before going right back to their debate as to whether or not we were standing at the flaming gates. It was at that point that I had to intervene, wedging between them and pulling Jackie away from the conversation and towards the baggage claim. Jack, of course, wasn’t done with his running commentary about how he was convinced Satan was going to pop out from behind a kiosk at any second, mumbling under his breath the whole way through the airport.

“You’ll agree with me and my being right on this,” he avowed as we made our way to our rental car, after swearing that someone was breathing down his neck despite bringing up the rear.

“Yeah, when hell freezes over,” Jackie retorted.

“Well, the weather app says the temperature outside is below freezing, so we’re not too far off.”

I’m not too entirely worried about Jack falling asleep behind the wheel, since his close brush with hell and getting a good look at Blucifer shook him wide awake.

All four of us are running on fumes by the time we make it to Jen’s place. Jackie and I have our noses pressed to the glass of our opposite windows, watching as the snow falls down on the four cars out in the driveway. Snow is no longer uncommon now that I’ve been living in New York City for the last few years, but out here it isn’t interfered with by large construction sites and millions of people. It’s pure, untouched, lazily floating down from the sky and covering the ground in a pristine white blanket.

“God, has she invited us to her family’s Christmas?” Alexander asks quietly. “I didn’t know Jen knew this many people.”

“Oh yeah,” Jackie snorts. “Because being an Oscar winner means you lead a lonely, lonely life.”

Swiveling around in his seat, he turns around and feigns cheerfulness as he smiles at Jackie. “You haven’t changed a bit, Emerson.”

“Right back at ‘ya, Ludwig.”

“Alright,” Jack announces as the engine stops running. “I’m not running the risk of getting trapped in by any other Lawrences in case we need to run for the hills, so the curb it is.”

Jackie leans forward, snaking her upper body around the edge of the driver’s seat to look at Jack. “You know how to overnight park?” she asks cheekily, and I have to turn the rising laugh in my throat into a strangled sort of cough.

“Well, duh,” Jack replies, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “Don’t you have to know how to do that in order to pass your driver’s test?”

“You do.” Jackie falls back in her seat, winking at me as she does.

While I’m almost positive that unloading our luggage would have been a struggle regardless of the weather around us, the snow and steadily picking up wind makes things that much more complicated. Jackie’s doing her best to balance her bags on her back so she doesn’t have to stick them in the snow, which is already up to her ankles, but Jackie isn’t Supergirl – she doesn’t have super strength, and her kryptonite happens to be her inability to pack lightly. Jack and Alexander are currently debating over whose generic black suitcase belongs to whom, preventing me from reaching my last duffel bag and going inside where there’s heat.

I’m about to tell them to either move out of the way or help the short person out, when a new voice rings out over all of us.

“Hey guys!”

Peering around the edge of our car, I see Jen standing on the porch wrapped up in a blanket that looks incredibly toasty, smile stretching from ear to ear at the sight of us. She must be really deprived of quality company.

Taking the opportunity of Jack and Alexander being temporarily distracted from the luggage, I dart back around and all but dive into the trunk to get my last duffel bag. It accidentally hits Jack in the gut as I scramble back out, maneuvering around them to make a break for the stairs up to Jen’s porch.

“Damn, Isabelle!”

“It’s cold and I have thin blood, sue me!” I yell over my shoulder.

Jack is happy to yell right back, “You’re a fake New Yorker!”

Jackie is right on my heels as we climb up the stairs to greet an open-armed Jen. The house is massive, as to be expected, and perhaps it’s the sleep-deprived part of me controlling my brain, but I have never been more thankful for Jen and her vast net-worth, being able to afford a vacation home where even with many guests I will still have a large probability of getting my own bed. I barrel right into Jen, mostly because she’s warm and everything else outside is not.

“Aw, Belly,” she croons playfully. “Didja really miss me that much?”

“You have body heat,” I inform her, wrapping my arms tighter around her.

Jen laughs, prying me off of her and away from the thick blanket that I’d been tucked underneath for a few seconds. “So now I fall second to my temperature?” she asks as she gives Jackie a hug, and I simply shrug.

“Hey, next time invite us to the Caribbean.”

“I’ll put it on the list.” Her eyes avert away from me, most likely landing on the boys that are still trudging their way up the stairs. “You guys are late, I thought your flight landed earlier than this?”

“Yeah, you shipped us right through Satan’s abode, which happens to be three hours from here,” Jack informs her. Jackie, Alexander and I all roll our eyes. “And I’m pretty sure the snow has picked up ever since Blucifer and I locked eyes, which I’m sure is some sort of sign.”

“Late?” Alexander asks before Jack can continue his Denver spiel. Jen nods, gesturing towards the front door.

“C’mon in.”

Everything is all warm and glowing inside, the smell of sandalwood and vanilla embracing me in a comforting hug. We walk right in to what I’m guessing is the living room, a large sectional and a few lounge chairs littered around a crackling fireplace, the TV overhead playing A Charlie Brown Christmas on mute.

Jen wiggles her way up to the front of our lineup, pointing towards the spiral staircase behind the fireplace. “You guys are gonna be in the guest rooms upstairs if that’s okay,” she begins, tugging her blanket around her neck tighter like it’s a cape. “It better be okay, seeing as how I had to ward the hellions away from them.”

“Does this place have an elevator?” Jack asks. “Because my soul has already been compromised once today, I’m too tired to climb up some stairs.”

Jackie’s eyebrows furrow together, still hung up on Jen’s words. “Wait, what do you mean by hellions?”

A shadow falls over Jen’s face almost instantly, quickly diverting any and all eye contact with us. “Well,” she starts, her voice rising an octave. My mind is racing much faster than she can speak. Four other cars out in the driveway, the use of the word hellions, the convenient fact that I just so happened to bump into Jackie, Jack, and Alexander at the airport, all of whom had the same destination as me…

“Wait,” I say slowly as the realization starts to crash over me, and already Jen is beginning to cower into the back of her couch. “You don’t mean—"

“Oh hell to the nah.”

The one and only Dayo Okeniyi comes strolling in from god only knows where – probably the kitchen, seeing as how he has an entire pie in one hand and a fork in the other – stopping dead in his tracks the minute he sees us. Or, rather, Alexander.

“What the hell?” Alexander says, equally as stunned.

Jackie, like myself, seems to have put all the pieces together quickly. “Jen,” she utters out. “Have you done what I think you’ve done?”

“Maybe?” she squeaks.

Right on cue, a leggy blonde comes up behind Dayo. “Dayo, are you talking to yourself again, I thought—” Leven’s voice falls off the deep end the second she lays eyes on the five of us, her face falling. “Oh.”

“Oh is right,” Dayo grumbles.

“What is this, the Hunger Games reunion?” Jackie asks, her eyes still on a hoping-to-disappear Jen.

Ever the wise one, Alexander takes it upon himself to answer that question. “I mean, we’re missing a few people, Josh and ‘Mandla aren’t—”

Alexander, apparently, has spoken too soon, because as soon as the names slip off his lips, out emerge Josh, Amandla, and Willow from the kitchen. The three of them may as well be mythical creatures strolling past the way my eyes bug out of my head. It’s been so long since I’ve heard from any of them to the point I began referring to them in the past tense, like they’ve gone on to greener pastures or some shit.  

Josh seems to be the only person who doesn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest by our arrival. He moves past a frozen Amandla and Willow, making his way to one of the recliners in the living room. Something tells me that a) the Charlie Brown Christmas was his idea, and b) he was absolutely in on whatever this is. “Hey Belle, Xander, happy couple!” he greets to each of us individually, a warm smile on his face.  

“Alright Liam, come on out!” Jack calls mockingly, in reference to the only person missing from this shebang aside from Gary Ross himself.

Jen’s face falls a little. “Oh no, Liam’s not here,” she confirms as she shakes her head. “He’s in Australia.”  

“Well he’s about the only one,” Jackie mumbles.

“Okay, seriously Jen,” Leven pipes up. “What is this?”

“What is what?”

“This,” Dayo repeats, motioning his fork in a circle.

“What?” Jen cries out, holding her arms up as she does her best to feign innocence we all know she doesn’t have in this situation. “I can’t want to have a little holiday get together with old friends, all of whom just so happen to be you guys?”

If looks could kill, Dayo would have Alexander’s blood on his hands and this get together would become a burial service. I never did get the full story as to how the great wolf pack fell apart the way it did, but just going out on a limb, my guess is that it wasn’t pretty and left a little bit of bad blood. Their demise, I think, was the other reason aside from life itself that lead all of us to going our own ways – no one wants to break up a fight between men large enough to have their own area code, and most of us wouldn’t have been able to do so just based on physical means alone. “Yeah, no; sorry, Jenny,” Dayo quickly apologizes, breaking his steely glare off of Alexander for only a split second.

“I mean, no offense to you guys, but isn’t this a bit…y’know, outdated?” Leven says, gesturing around the group as she leans up against the wall. “It’s been years since we all hung out together.”

“Yes, which means we’re overdue,” Jen tries to persuade us, her selling smile not very convincing. “No time like the present to remedy that, right?”

My arms fold over my chest. “Why wouldn’t you just tell us the truth, that this is what our ‘holiday extravaganza’ was gonna be?”

“Hey, I didn’t lie to you guys,” Jen protests, and Jackie is quick to counter that.

“You just left out the whole truth.”

We’re all turning on Jen at a rate she didn’t foresee and doesn’t appreciate, because her fuse is beginning to shorten on us. “Look,” she huffs. “I’m sorry I lied by omission, or whatever; I knew if I told you guys that I was inviting the whole gang, I wouldn’t have even gotten some of you to reply to my text. Hell, some of you didn’t anyways.” Her eyes cut over to Alexander, who takes a step behind me. I don’t know what he’s expecting, if I’m going to service as a shield or what. Our hug at the airport and the several-hour conversation we’d wound up in the air might have been nice, but I’m not standing in the line of fire for him.

“Jen, I get the sentiment of wanting to do this…kinda, I guess,” Jackie says, unable to sell even herself on what she’s saying. “But Leven’s right. We haven’t all hung out together in years, you ever think that maybe that was for a reason?”

Jen’s face quickly falls into a deadpan. “I don’t know why all of you are suddenly bitching, you didn’t complain any when I flew you out first class and let you eat my whole fucking chocolate pie.” From behind her, Dayo guiltily lowers the fork from his mouth. “And to be fair, Jackie, you had the chance to make a run for it the minute you realized Alexander was on the same flight as you, but you didn’t.”

“I mean, I certainly thought about it—”

“Really?!”

“Okay, can we just sort this mess out in the morning? I have had to quite literally go through hell this evening,” Jack whines, and Jackie and I both groan. I’m suddenly missing his griping about the bear repellent right about now, and I’d bet serious money Jackie feels the same. “We just all go to sleep for now, and if anyone wants to bow out, they can do it in the morning.”

Never in my life have we all been on the same page as Jack Quaid, and on the same page as a fairly decent idea that came from him at that. Leven nods, Dayo gives him a three-fingered salute before going right back into the pie, and if my eyes aren’t deceiving me, I think Jackie’s already looking for flights back home for three people – either she and Jack have packed a kid in that suitcase, or they’re sweeping me under their wing and providing me with my get out of jail free card.

Jen doesn’t seem too pleased with this, and I can tell she’s about to argue it. Before she even opens her mouth, a shrill alarm goes off without any warning. It scares all of us but really gets me (what can I say, the skittishness never went away) and causes me to jump nearly ten feet in the air. I stumble back against Alexander, who seems more than pleased to catch and steady me. Jackie is less than thrilled by this, her eyes making Alexander’s hands on my shoulders even hotter than before as she tries to set them ablaze.

“What the fuck was that?” Dayo spits, hand resting over his heart as he tries to regulate its beat back to normal.

“Is that your way of punishing us for not liking this little plan of yours?”

“No, it’s my phone,” Jen replies, rolling her eyes. “Although if it’s working, then yes.” She pulls her phone out from her pocket and her eyes quickly begin flitting over the screen. The expression on her face changes as she reads, and already I can tell something is wrong by the time she lifts her head. “Um, so, the whole leaving here tomorrow morning thing you guys have come up with might not be happening.”

“Why not?” Dayo asks. “Are you going to hold us hostage?”

Jen holds up her phone as an explanation. “That was my dear friend the National Weather Service. We’re currently under a winter storm warning for…heavy snow and blowing snow,” she reads off, before looking back up at the rest of us.

“So a blizzard?” Alexander repeats.

“Near blizzard,” Jen corrects. Alexander looks at her, befuddled.

“It’s the same thing as a blizzard, why not just…call it what it is?”

“Because it’s not!”

“Okay,” Leven sings disarmingly. “We can discuss the National Weather Service’s classification criteria later, let’s just go back to the real issue for a second. Are you saying that we’re stuck here?”

Jen nods. “Says that this is in effect until tomorrow night, maybe later—"

“Tomorrow night? Maybe later?!” Jackie splutters.

“Yes, your hearing is as on point as ever, Jackie. There’s no telling how much more snow it’s gonna bring our way.” I can tell that Jen is trying her best not to look too overly pleased at this development fate has seemed to deliver her, while everyone else is in their varying states of shocked, irritated, or flat out tired – I happen fall into the third category, along with Amandla, who is about two steps away from knocking out in Willow’s lap and not moving until morning.  

Josh leans back a little farther in the recliner, both of his hands folded behind his head. “Well, let’s just hope that we don’t get trapped in here or something. That sure would suck.” Everyone immediately turns from wherever they’re standing in the room to glower at him.

Some things just don’t ever change, I guess.