#she figures herself out sometime after the events of trolls 3

[ducktbm]

Floyd’s a trans woman your honor

[shellyseashell]

2023 FIC REC LIST

I did this last year, and I thought I’d do it again. To close out 2023, here’s a list of some of my favorite fics I’ve read this year. These aren’t everything, just of course the highlights. If the author has a tumblr, I tried to tag them, but if I missed anyone let me know or feel free to tag them yourself!

WILLOW

did i dream (that we were so perfectly entwined) | General | Tanthamore | One Shot | 8.9k

Jade and Kit, from childhood through season one. Jade’s pov.

Our hardest battles are the oaths we keep by @rehizle28 | Mature | Tanthamore | 7/25 | 50.9k

Jade grows up as a Knight of Galladoorn. When Graydon and Kit are engaged, she travels to Tir Asleen as Graydon’s personal guard. Words cannot describe how much I love this. The pining and shenanigans these two get into is so so good. Kit causes problems on purpose and Jade Cannot figure out what the princess’s deal is. King Hastur is perfectly normal and has Totally Good intentions.

be my mirror (my sword and shield) by @onlyshestandsthere | Explicit | Tanthamore | 30/? | 228k

Bone Reaver Jade helps the Crone’s followers bring Kit to the Immemorial City. Quite easily one of the angstiest fics I have ever read. But for all 100k of angst there’s another 100k of fluff and that’s only vaguely an exaggeration. The magic is absolutely horrifying but it feels totally realistic to what we’ve seen in canon. Jade and Kit both need a hug.

if we’d turned a corner (if i had waited) by @sugarfey | Mature | Tanthamore | 5/? | 13.9k

Soccer au! There’s plenty of angst in this one, but it focuses on the healing. I love everything about this fic. Kit and Jade are so dumb as usual and I love the social media bits.

The Flawless Five, Vol. 1: Rise of the Five | Teen | Gen | 2/6 | 11.9k

Superhero au! It’s silly and goofy and so so much fun to read. I’m really liking the mystery so far, and I’m looking forward to how it unfolds.

Triumph of the Wyrm | Mature | Tanthamore | 3/12 | 13.8k

Series still currently in the first book. Kit successfully runs away, and every attempt to rescue Airk fails. Twenty years later, the world is under the rule of the Wyrm. Kit and Jade work in smuggling, unaware what happened to the other. Until, of course, they end up working together on a job. The world is so so horrifying but so well done. Also, Kit is allies with Sarris the Troll.

Let’s take a knife and cut the world in two by @spybrarian | Mature | Tanthamore | One Shot | 7.9k

Exorcist Jade and possessed Kit! Very angsty. The worldbuilding is very very well done and so so horrifying.

these walls come tumbling down by @onlyshestandsthere | Teen | Tanthamore | 4/? | 28.8k

Vet Jade and Perfectly Normal Human Kit. After Jade hits Kit (as a cat) with her car, she takes it upon herself to take care of her. Told in two timelines, one in Kit’s pov before the accident, and one in Jade’s pov after. I have laughed so much reading this I absolutely adore it.

One Night in October | Teen | Tanthamore | 9/9 | 29.k

Slasher fic! Angsty, mysterious, but it has a bittersweet ending.

Sink or Swim | Mature | Tanthamore | 7/7 | 16k

Lifeguard Jade and disaster Kit. Seriously she is so, so dumb and it is so, so funny.

LEGENDBORN

Rescue | General | Gen | 1/1 | 4k

Valec’s point of view of Chapter 42. I love Valec okay.

A Place at the Table | General | Gen | 1/1 | 7k

Legendborn/Merlin cross over. Basically, Arthur is a lot better than in canon and it’s so nice to read after Bloodmarked.

Beach Day Memory Walk by @justbrainrot | Mature | OT3 | 1/1 | 3.5k

Bree takes Sel and Nick on a memory walk during Sel’s birthday. Super cute and fun.

Mother, Merlin | Mature | Gen | 4/? | 13k

Natasia healing Sel after the events of Bloodmarked. Very very angsty, but also very very good. I love how Natasia is written.

Dancing in the moonlight by @nightworldlove | Teen | Willark | One Shot | 3k

William and Lark dance. Uh. In the moonlight. Very cute one shot.

Sometimes Hunting and Running Blur Together… by @ficnoire2 | Explicit | Other | 4/? | 11.9k

Valec backstory and I absolutely adore it

DESCENDANTS

Yeah I’m pretty sure we’ve all probably read most of these but nevertheless

Blessed Art Thou Among Women | Mature | Gen | One Shot | 1.3k

Claudine and the Catholic virtues

Descendants: A Different Tale by @kanzakurawrites | Teen | Gen | 9/? | 17.9k

I think this altered my brain chemistry tbh Mal deserves the best parents

Dark Fire by @dragoneyes618

Yeah just go read these if you like Claudine

Obligatory @isleofdarkness shoutout I am quite literally obsessed with this au

Let Dead Men Lie by @dragoneyes618 | General | One Shot | 2.6k

Everyone takes the blame for killing Frollo. Ben is struggling.

Death threats on Dead Beauty by @panthera-tigris-venenata | Mature | Gen | 2/3 | 2.7k

Listen I think Harry should be this feral all the time

the devil had done for the rest | Teen | Gen | One Shot | 2.5k

Harriet! Harry! Yeah that’s all.

Cursed || Harriet Hook | Teen | One Shot | 10.7k

Any Harriet content makes me insane and this is no different. Harriet backstory.

THE MECHANISMS

love in his own eyes by @nonbinarylowkey | General | Gen & Multi | One Shot | 5k

Arthur’s first night as a father

(im)mortality by @nonbinarylowkey | Teen | Multi | One Shot | 7.7k

Arthur handles Mordred’s “death” in a perfectly normal way. Sometimes I think about this fic and take physic damage.

From The Wastes His Child Came (Bringing Revelations Of All Things) | Teen | Other | 3/3 | 7k

Arthur forgets trans people exist and finds Mordred. I’ve reread this so many times I adore it.

la soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre by @ladydragonkiller | General | Gen | One Shot | 6.4k

Brian falls from the gallows and stops the Battle of Camlann, as he should

Inverse Suspension | General | Gen & Multi | One Shot | 3.4k

Mordred frees Brian, and everything turns out okay

no path past kindred’s stain | Teen | Multi | 3/3 | 9.8k

Pendragon backstories my beloved <3

[shoichee]

hello! may i ask some tips about the instragram acccunts the GoM + kagami could have? like of sort of post, amount of followers, stuff like that THANK U and have a great day !!

THIS IS ACTUALLY HILARIOUS SINCE I BREATHE OFF OF INSTAGRAM LFMAO

[Headcanons]

Kuroko Tetsuya

HELP WHAT IF HE HAS NO PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA TOO—

professional lurker

never comments on anything unless it’s to congratulate under a friend’s post or something like that

probably started using it because Ogiwara moved from letters and texts to just... instagram (technology advancements, jazz hands)

his account is on private, and he only lets people he knows follow him

all of his posts are pictures to commemorate something or just really wholesome group pictures

DEFINITELY has that picture of the GoMs at his birthday OVA

DEFINITELY also posted the big birthday picture taken at the end of the party

and also had typed very sappy BIG paragraph captions for both of these posts, talking about the journey and him being grateful… y’know, him being him

HIS ENTIRE COMMENT SECTIONS ARE JUST EVERYONE SOBBING AND KEYBOARD SPAMMING??? ONLY LIKE MIDORIMA AND AKASHI POST COHERENT RESPONSES UNDERNEATH

@kiseryouta: kuROKOCCHIIIII!!NEJWIEISK

@momoiowo: TETSUU (ʃƪ˘･ᴗ･˘) YOURE SO SWEET REEEE

@a_daikiii: i stg quit being so corny no one died yet🙄 and @momoiowo relax smh

@shin_chan77: I suppose I can express some form of gratitude for being in my life despite you being a blood type A. (insert a giant paragraph after this)

@4k4shi: This was very touching to read, Kuroko. I’m very glad that our… (insert him going down memory lane)

Murasakibara has no comment LMAO

his entire Seirin team are his hype men under his posts

his profile picture is literally the gray default blank head because he didn’t even set up a profile picture for himself

he has like 20 followers max or something?

8 posts? like, he only posts on special occasions or big events

his occasional stories are always comprised of Nigou and blurry Kagami pictures/videos running away from Nigou UH OH (courtesy of @dust-of-fandoms)

@tetsuya11 for his user handle

@dust-of-fandoms JUST MADE AN INSTAGRAM FOR HIM HERE!!

Kise Ryota

uses his instagram account as a portfolio for his modeling career

majority of his posts are actually pictures he managed to snag from his frequent model shoots

it looks SO professional… but then you look at his IGTVs and his reel videos

his reels are either short clips of mini vlog series he does whenever he visits the GoMs or when he’s recording his Kaijō teammates doing tricks and dunks

his IGTVs are either skincare tutorials, fashion advice… or just… unexplainable, out-of-context shitposts of Kise running away from what fans assumed “a green-haired man” or some “captain”

follower account?? 124k

who wouldn’t resist a hot model?

DEFINITELY HAS A TIKTOK I CAN FEEL IT

@kiseryouta with an official verification next to it

people either love him or hate him

posts a casual selfie from time to time, and people praise him for “being real” LMAODOA AND HE’S JUST STARING AT HIS PHONE LIKE “??? IMIG BUT I JUST FELT CUTE TODAY”

his captions feel fake LMAO like: “Wow! today’s so pretty today!” as he puts a selfie post OR “What’s your favorite game?✨” under a professionally-shot model picture that does not correlate with the caption???

has posted shitposts on his stories and his fans are utterly confused… only the GoMs get it LMAO

Midorima Shintarou

ONLY reason why he has social media is because Takao convinced him that he could let everyone know the daily lucky items for each signs for every post he makes

so for the first 2 months of having instagram he just casually posts a “daily horoscope” report(?) for the day

his content attracted in all the astrology fans and people who are devoted to tarots

and he’s CONFUSED.

… Takao may or may not have played a hand in messing with the algorithms to expose his account to bigger audiences

once Midorima finds out he’s MAD LMAO *insert Takao pain noises*

either goes down two paths: just casually continuing to post the daily Oha Asa predictions without interacting with anyone OR deleting his account and making a new PRIVATE one just for communication/lurking purposes

so he can honestly have 10k followers if he chooses to be a horoscope account or like 3 followers on his private, take it or leave it

maybe he has two accounts if he feels that having instagram has its merits

definitely has a shit ton of random stuff/posts in his saved collections

boomer energy, like… what’s a “reels” feature?? people talk to their phone camera and record that?? he’s squinting really hard and scratching his head

either has 356 horoscope posts on his “main” or like 19 posts on his private

has a rubber duck as a profile picture for BOTH ACCOUNTS HELP HIM

@oha_asa_ for his horoscope account or @shin_chan77 as his personal because he doesn’t know how to change his username (thanks, Takao LMAO)

Aomine Daiki

he doesn’t give a shit about instagram LOL

it’s MOMOI who handles his account because he doesn’t wanna bother with it LMAOO

she would tease him and try to “encourage” him to stop lazing around by taking pictures of him whenever he’s snoozing and posting it

but he’s so damn good-looking that his sleeping pictures got some traction with new fans

Aomine is still sleeping

his account also has pictures of him eating at Maji burger or at a café, and of course Momoi is the one snapping these photos of him

he started caring about it a little more once Momoi told him that he can post videos of himself doing trickshots and one-on-ones to potentially find worthy rivals over the internet and meet up

so now his account (videos, reels, IGTVs) are all riddled with basketball/small parkour footage shot by yours truly, Momoi

so his fanbase is split between thirsty people and people who genuinely admire him for his skills… but I mean there’s also people in both categories, anywho

he’d totally follow his favorite Japanese idols on IG if they had one

also would follow any NBA-related accounts/players he admires

has like 2.7k followers (but growing really fast) with like 176 posts of videos and random pictures of him

his profile picture is literally a picture of him sleeping by Momoi

@a_daikiii

Momoi Satsuki

LOTS OF REALLY cute, playful selfies, and a lot of them are used with cute filters from the Snow app

sometimes would post herself doing a really cute Tiktok dance while in her school uniform

she doesn’t post too much; she’s actually more into posting IG stories and making highlights out of them and then making highlight covers have a coordinating theme together

very aesthetic theme on her feed overall hehe

definitely uses her account to comment on other GoMs posts, often commenting something snarky on Aomine’s and Kise’s

actually has 1-2 IGTVs on the Vorpal Sword’s big game against the Jabberwocks

doesn’t have much of full-body shots/outfit pictures other than mirror selfies because Aomine refuses to take good pictures of her

only when she sees Kise or Kuroko is when she can ask either to be a photographer

she’s definitely gotten a few small collab offers from small businesses, but she usually ignores them because it’s not exactly her thing

her profile picture is just a selfie with a sketch-line cat ear filter

uses a bunch of emoticons on her bio, captions, comments, everything

⌒(ㅇㅅㅇ❀)⌒ or ☆⌒(＞。≪) or .₊̣̇.ෆ˟̑*̑˚̑*̑˟̑ෆ.₊̣̇.ෆ˟̑*̑˚̑*̑˟̑ෆ.₊̣̇.ෆ˟̑*̑˚̑*̑˟̑ෆ.₊̣̇.ෆ˟̑*̑˚̑*̑˟̑ෆ.₊̣̇. you get the picture

967 followers… that looks way too specific, but it’s somewhere around there; a lot of them came from Aomine’s account after they saw who’s been taking his pictures, and they wanna learn more about her??

around 40 posts?

@momoiowo

Murasakibara Atsushi

Himuro showed him how to use the app, but Murasakibara doesn’t find ANY USE FOR THIS LMAOO

he’d probably only get on it to look at food on the explore page and drool about the cuisines

keeps tabs on local places/restaurants/shops on instagram; those are probably the only accounts he’d follow tbh

it’s probably like ONE post and it’s an old picture of a dango on a plate he ate like 2 years ago

I have this image in my head that he has a really cute bento art as his profile picture?? can you imagine a Rilakkuma-shaped rice as his PROFILE PICTURE?

his bio is definitely: “hungry”

and that’s it

27 followers, and it’s literally just his Yōsen teammates, the GoMs and probably some other classmates of his

his captions are literally empty or 1-2 words

@oomaib0

Akashi Seijuro

only uses instagram because it’ll be beneficial for his company and to expand social networks, plus getting those sweet business deals and engagement

he doesn’t mind seeing really wholesome videos on the explore page though

when he wants to relax, a cat video melts his stress away

laughs to himself while he reads all the shenanigans underneath the GoMs’ posts

DEFINITELY loses a few brain cells seeing trolls and idiots on the internet… especially on controversial or political ones LMAO

he at first had to REFRAIN himself and take deep breaths before he just scrolls on, but he eventually got used to them and can now easily ignore them as easy as he breathes air

he actually enjoys shitposts and meme videos?? like he may not completely understand the meme trends sometimes, but he’ll still find it amusing enough for a chuckle

he ends up being the one who uses instagram the most? like Kise posts a shit ton, yeah, but Kise doesn’t really sit down and just scroll endlessly; Kise releases out content, while Akashi consumes the content

he reasons with himself that it’s to study his current demographics for the company, and while that may be true, Akashi just enjoys social media, plain and simple LOL

he does get to study the behaviors of all the generations using the platform, young folks and old folks alike, and it does get him excited in using his analytical skills to try to figure out people BEHIND a screen rather than those in front of him

it makes a really good challenge for him when he wants a good mental exercise

he has a post or two about his horses, his manor, and a video or two on him playing his violin?? but most are business-related, them being advertisements or business contracts/offers… things like that

his highlights are all about Q&As regarding the company, his background, his skillsets, etc. like an actual resumé

actually links current world issue cards/petitions on top of his company website; he’s quite an advocate

he actually doesn’t post about basketball because that’s something very close to his heart since it reminds him of his late mother… having that mixed in with his company-related posts feels wrong to him

27k followers, most of them are business-related accounts AND some are some followers his father bought for him without Akashi’s input to inflate engagement, etc.

@4k4shi… oh he thinks he’s SO CLEVER FOR MAKING THIS USERNAME LOL with the 4 being his jersey number and the 4s looking like As… AKASHI PLEASE—

his profile pic is like a professionally taken picture, nothing less for our king

his grammar and syntax are impeccable on social media; after all, he’s still being judged for how he carries himself even on the media

Kagami Taiga

mukbang guy… DEFINITELY

hot guy eating nine plates of steaks

IGTVs are filled with mukbang videos because Kuroko said he could make a living off of his appetite

HE COULD MAKE MONEY OFF OF JUST EATING? SIGN HIM UP.

on his posts, he posts dishes he makes for the day/is proud of and talks about the dish and ingredients briefly in the caption

that, or he has pictures of his new basketball shoes LMAO

or all of his basketball merch

HE’S DEFINITELY POSTED PICTURES OF LANDMARKS AND OTHER ICONIC PLACES HE’S TRAVELED TO (*cough* in America)

has a generic Jordan brand logo against a dark background as a profile picture

doesn’t have his face anywhere unless it’s in a mukbang video

279 followers or something

why do I have a feeling that he’ll accidentally blow up when Alex takes his phone to do a quick selfie on it?—

@taiga10

[cartoon-savant]

Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego Season 3 Watch Ramblings

So I already said my crack theories prior to this post for Season 3 of Carmen Sandiego before release/watching, so now here are my thoughts on what went down. Spoilers, of course.

- First off, I always love when villains have personality outside of just being evil/the bad guy or doing evil things. Like last season when they were just doing a meeting at the diner. I loved their Halloween fun time shenanigans. Also The Cleaners seem to be having fun with the dress-up.

- So I didn’t know that Season 3 was only five episodes. Guess we reached that point in the Netflix animated series where they cut a season in half to cut down hiatus time and/or stretch the series out. Also, have I missed that opening music and all. It’s so good.

- A little on the nose with the new VILE headquarters but sometimes you gotta do it up classic villain style.

- Carmen still has some PTSD when dealing with Coach Brunt. Like there seems to recoil when she becomes directly confronted with her and I guess that will always be there since she always saw her as a mother figure.

- I did believe Julia would be sidelined someway after everything Season 2, I just didn’t think she would do it herself so forcefully. With The Chief becoming embittered to Carmen after the hack she was less receptive to Julia’s analysis of her activities. She had a whole backup career ready to go and everything. Though unlike Chase she gets to come back whenever due to being a valuable agent. Bringing in Chase was less for his skills and really more for his persistence and knack for always getting close to Carmen.

Side Note: I just love that throughout Season 2 Chase was out of action and little to no mention of him from Carmen whenever she runs into Julia. We get the flip Season 3 and every chance she gets Carmen makes note of Julia’s absence and preference to her in a situation, even after Stockholm and the ACME hack she seems to still trust Julia to do her right.

-So most likely events in Season 4 will have her new job site be the spot for a new caper. Seeing her separated from ACME will probably have Carmen constantly interact with Julia like with Graham when the chance arrives. Though when ACME/VILE gets wind of this in some form it may just complicate things for everyone.

- I wonder if we’ll get new agents besides Spinkick and Flytrap or just for this and next season before new VILE operatives start showing up. Though, with Roundabout no longer being their man on the inside who could pass around “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards to VILE when someone gets arrested, we’ll probably start seeing more one-off agents so they can have ACME start getting wins and possibly making Devineaux look better. VILE lost a major safety net so now they’ll walk a very dangerous high wire. Also Chase’s experience in Season 2 has raised his perception well. If the pieces lay before him he’ll connect the dots. The gears started turning to him thinking that maybe La Femme Rouge is not the person he thought and Julia was right.

- Speaking of agents, Mime Bomb is still MVP for VILE isn’t he? Like even on missions he is a part of that fail it never seems to be on him for the failure. He does his part perfectly, putting up with everyone else’s antics on either side. Watch Mime Bomb never get caught by the end of this series, no longer VILE and just out in the world. Or the moment he gets put out of commission everything just starts to go way south fast for VILE operatives. Also, does this mean Neal The Eel is mind wiped the next time we see him or was Graham really that unlucky with his failure and capture?

- Zack and Ivy seem to be toned down this season. Well, Ivy at least. She feels like her humor factor is being given more finesse so she can still be funny but not obnoxiously so. Zack gets less of a jokester back and forth with her because of it and becomes the funny guy to her straight man. So his antics get toned down to a degree and they show more personality outside of being constant comedy relief or having a showcase episode.

- Player didn’t really get to stand out much this season. Shadow san always get to be at his best and even got an episode for him. So with VILE introducing their own elite hacker in The Troll Season 4 might give Player some great moments to shine as a character.

- Looks like Graham gets to be brought in to meet ACME and whether the mind wipe also left him as a sleeper agent or not I can’t wait to find out. But before that I wonder how ACME will approach him and how he and ACME will speak of their activities with Carmen.

- All in all, when seasons get split like this they sometimes feel more like build up to the next season and this left me wanting more because of how short it felt. Like it was a long Halloween special. There was a building overarching plot but not big enough of a payoff that the season finale couldn’t have happened at any time during the season and Roundabout being defeated and outed as a VILE agent so quickly probably feels better together with Season 4 and its plot. A good season, but just shy of feeling entirely like filler. Depends even more on how key points are brought up next season.

[earth-ambassador-jim]

All These Voices: Chapter 3

Scapegoat

Jim was killed in his match against Draal. Those who knew him deal with the fallout.

Sequel to “Sorry that I let you down”

Fanfiction - AO3

~~~~

Nomura is in a rather testy mood when her doorbell rings. She just got home from the museum and was hoping to spend a little while relaxing before she went back for her night shift.

A small growl crawls up her throat as she stalks toward the entrance. If this is Stricklander, coming to harangue her for not telling him about the fetch, she’s going to tear his throat out. The bastard keeps waxing poetic about how they are working for the glory of changeling kind, and a whole bunch more bullshit that she stopped buying centuries ago, but the minute something doesn’t go his way he doesn’t hesitate to throw his nearest ‘comrade’ under the bus.

She switches back to human form before looking through the peephole. A blond man in a police uniform is at the door. She feels herself go tense and forces it back down.

When she opens the door the officer holds out piece of paper: A warrant.

“You are under arrest for the suspected murder of James Lake Jr.”

She stares at him blankly fighting the urge to laugh incredulously. How incredibly ironic to be arrested for a crime that she planned but failed to commit. She suspects mentioning that would not help her case, so she keeps silent as they lead her away to the police car.

~~~~

Detective Scott sits straight in his chair as Tobias Domzalski comes into the room. It’s clear from the uncertain way he looks around the room that he doesn’t know why he’s been called back.

“Sit down, please.”

The boy obeys, settling into the chair across from him. Scott takes a moment to study his face. There are dark shadows under his eyes and a redness to them that shows that he has been crying recently. He’s far too young to be going through something like this…

Detective Scott straightens in the chair and shoves those thoughts down. He needs to focus.

“Can you describe for me again the events that took place when you and Mr. Lake broke into The Arcadia Oaks Museum?”

Domzalski’s head jerks up, brows furrowing, as he stares at Detective Scott.

“Why?”

“I will explain afterward,” Detective Scotts says.

He doesn’t want to affect Domzalski’s story by telling him the investigative team’s suspicions.

The teen starts telling the story. It is almost the same as the one in the file. Some variance is to be expected of course do to the nature of human memory.

Or rather Detective Scott might have chalked the variances up to memory if it weren’t for the careful way the teenager sometimes pauses and looks away. There are things he’s leaving out. That is what the investigative team suspects.

“I have a few more questions.”

Domzalski nods for him to go on.

“What was Ms. Nomura doing when you encountered her?”

Domzalski blinks, surprise clear on his face.

“I… um… well… she was taking something out of a box,” He says.

“Did you see what it was?” Detective Scott prompts.

“No…” He says slowly. His eyes flicker away when he says it.

Interesting.

“Mr. Domzalski,” Detective Scott says firmly. “I need to know exactly what happened.”

The teenager’s eyes look up into his face studying them. His eyes widen for a moment then narrow.

“Is this about Jim…?”

“I will explain afterward,” Detective Scott repeats.

Domzalski frowns and then stares blankly down at his hands. For a moment he is completely silent and still. The veins in his arms clench and he lets out a quiet scoffing laugh.

“I guess it doesn’t matter anyway…” He says more to himself than Detective Scott. When he looks up there’s something in his expression that the detective can’t quite read.

“She came after us… well mostly Jim…”

“Came after?”

“Like tried to… you know…” Domzalski draws a line across his throat.

“How exactly?”

“She had some… knives,” Domzalski says slowly. From the way his forearms are tensing Detective Scott suspects he’s clenching his fists. “She moved really fast but we managed to fend her off… I threw some of the museum artifacts. Then we ran…”

That does line up with the fact that several of the helmets from the Viking exhibit looked like they’d seen recent action.

“And why didn’t you say this when we questioned you?”

“I… We… We didn’t think you’d believe us if we told the truth,” Domzalski says, looking away.

There’s resentment in his voice.

Detective Scott sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. There is something still missing from this case but the pieces are beginning to come together.

~~~~

Nomura is quietly debating whether she should just transform and break out of the cop car she’s riding in the back of. It will definitely make sure everyone believes she murdered James Lake, but well… This whole thing stinks of a set up.

Her lip curls slightly as she runs the pros and cons through her mind.

She doesn’t get very far before something slams into the police car sending it rolling off the road like a deranged roller coaster.

When it finally stops the ceiling is much closer than before. She peers at the front and notes that the driver appears to be unconscious. She mentally debates for a moment between staying to keep playing on her innocence or just getting the heck out of here.

She thinks of the impending trial and investigation and the stash of poisons she had unfortunately hidden in her apartment. (Rookie mistake really. Hopefully the order has managed to make those things disappear.)

Yeah… She isn’t sticking around.

How to get out though… If she switches to her troll form, Nomura can easily cut through the door, but that would leave suspicious marks. Not to mention that police vehicle has recording equipment that may or may not have been destroyed by the crash.

There is a violent shriek of metal and the door is ripped off its hinges.

Nomura’s back hits the wall of the vehicle as she stares at the dark silhouette and glowing red eyes of her boss.

“She’s still here,” Bular snarls.

“Excellent.” Strickler, looking as insufferable as ever in his human form, appears beside the troll.

Bular sniffs the air and abruptly turns to the left. Nomura follows his gaze and meets the wide eyes of the police man. There is a beat of silence before he screams and runs. Bular charges after him. He won’t make it far. Nomura turns back to Strickler.

“What’s going on?”

“It seems that young Mr. Domzalski has decided to tell the police about your attempted murder of the erstwhile Trollhunter… sans a few details of course,” Strickler pulls out his pen to examine it. “Unfortunately that, combined with you drugging the Trollhunter’s mother, is creating the basis for a very convincing case that you did indeed murder him.”

Lovely.

“Then there’s that fact that it seems that the police found a part of the previous nightwatchman that Bular missed when he… disposed of him.”

Nomura grimaces.

“So you will be disappearing,” Strickler finishes.

“Where will you be transferring me?” Nomura asks.

She is honestly going to miss Arcadia. She has really enjoyed her museum job, but it can’t be helped. With the police now suspecting her of two murders, they will be investigating more thoroughly. It would not be surprising if they manage to link her to a crime she actually did.

Strickler’s eyes glint as he studies her indifferently for a moment. The hair on the back of her neck lifts as she feels hot breath and smells the tang of blood.

“I never said anything about transferring you.” Strickler, the hypocrite, shows no sympathy as Nomura transforms and tries to escape.

Bular grabs her. The policeman’s blood is dripping from his jaws.

Unlike last time Nomura has no hidden trump card to buy herself a little more time.

She strikes upward with both hooves, catching him in the jaw, but it isn’t enough. His claws pin her down and crack her stone skin. Her struggles weaken as she accepts the inevitable.

She’s always known that she couldn’t run forever. She just thought that she might have a little longer.

~~~~

Author Notes:

Nomura was already on thin ice after Jim found out about the bridge, so I figured she probably wouldn't survive one more incident. (Yes, she'd dead now.)

Toby has just started heading in a direction.

[pixelpoff]

Unrecognizable

I haven’t written a fic in 5 years minimum, and I wrote this in 30 minutes, don’t be mean. @savannahsdrabbles @dogdaydoodles-sr dedicated to you two, hehe. Season 3 spoilers!! Jim/Claire!!

---

It didn’t recognize him anymore.

“Promise me you’ll be back before dawn.”

“I promise.”

With a reassuring smile, Jim leapt off into the darkness of the woods that surround the troll’s camp. Claire gave a small wave, despite Jim likely being a few hundred feet away, already. He was so fast now.

It had been a week since the trolls left Arcadia in care of their Trollhunters, Jim and Claire. In fervent search of their new Heartstone. Every day, the trolls set up camp in a sheltered area of the nearby woods, while every night, Jim and Claire searched for where this new Heartstone could be hiding.

This evening, Jim insisted he search alone. “I’m quick. In and out. It’ll be faster if I search this area by myself. Besides, I’m positive nothing dangerous is around here.” He had said.

Claire didn’t like the thought of Jim doing any Trollhunting business alone. That had gotten him into trouble too many times before. She’d much rather be available to help him if any danger arises.

But even more so now, when her biggest fear was not losing her boyfriend to death, but losing her boyfriend period.

As a goodbye present, to aid Claire in her future excursions, Merlin had made her a new staff. Designed specifically for her; Morgana’s magic was a thing of the past. But just like the Skathe-Hrün, this staff didn’t recognize Jim enough for him to act as an emotional anchor. The staff couldn’t find him anymore.

He was different now. He had changed so much. Claire wondered if Jim even knew who he was anymore.

Claire sat on a rock, gazing at the woods that Jim had just departed into. With a heavy sigh, she rested her chin on both hands. This was scary. Being away from home. Being one less Trollhunter down. And now, being so distant from the boy she was falling in love with.

And she was positive she loved him. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind. “I doubt I could stop myself from loving him now, after all we’ve been through”, she thought to herself. Horns, teeth, and all.

But her staff.

She always calmed her anxieties with the quiet knowledge that, in an emergency, she would be able to be at her boyfriend’s side in an instant with that staff. And now, what? What would she do if one night, he didn’t return? And then another? And another night, with no sign?

“Thinking hard?” A voice asked from behind Claire. She turned and met the eyes of Blinky.

Another sigh. “Yeah, Blink. Real hard.”

Blinky approached and took a seat on a stone nearby Claire. He crossed both sets of arms. “About Jim, I presume?”

“Yeah. I’m... worried. I know he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Probably even more so now, than ever. But...”

“Is it your inability to locate him that’s bothering you so badly?” Blinky asked calmly. He was so wise. Sometimes Claire felt like he could see right through her skull and read her thoughts like one of his books.

She nodded her head. “It doesn’t know who he is anymore, Blinky.” Claire felt her throat tightening. “I don’t know who he is anymore. If I did, I could find him. It’s all based on my emotions, after all.”

Blinky was silent for a moment. Soon, he spoke up quietly. “Then may I ask who, exactly, you think Master Jim is now?”

Claire furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you say you don’t know who Master Jim is anymore. And if he isn’t himself, he’d have to be someone else.” Blinky says matter-of-factly. “So, lets figure out exactly who he is.”

Claire sits up a little straighter. Confused, but listening.

The troll places a hand upon his chin in thought. “Does this Troll Jim posses a vast knowledge of fighting and stealth tactics?” Claire warily nods once. “Odd, because if I recall, Master Jim did as well.”

“Have you seen Troll Jim express a drive to protect others, lately?” Claire nods again, a little more knowingly this time. “How interesting! I believe Master Jim made it his life’s purpose to protect trolls and humans alike!

Now what about you? Has Troll Jim shown you any affection as of late?”

Claire lets out a small laugh. She sees what Blinky is doing now. She nods once more. “Yes. He kissed me today. And... told me he loves me.”

“Ah.” Blinky smiles a warm smile. He quickly regains his air of confusion. “How curious. I could have sworn Master Jim was the one who had captured your heart. But it seems like Troll Jim and Master Jim each have very similar qualities. They share a mother, they share Merlin’s amulet, and,” He grins genuinely. “they both love you with all of their being.”

Claire’s face is hot. Her parents rarely spoke good of Jim, so to have a parent figure like Blinky speak so openly and positively about her relationship was something she wasn’t quite used to.

“I get it, Blinky.” She says with a chuckle. Blinky laughs with her. “Don’t be afraid, my dear. Jim may have changed, but not enough to where you would not be able to recognize him. Not enough to have changed his heart.”

Blinky stands, and with a stretch he says “Well, I must head back into camp to keep an eye on everyone. By Deya’s name, I pray for a strength like Vendel’s every day.” He chuckles. Claire does as well.

“Thank you, Blinky. You always know what to say. You’re wonderful.”

The old troll smiles gently. “My pleasure.”

As Blinky walks out of sight, Claire lets out a sigh and stands from her place on the rock. She pulls out her staff and opens it fully. Holding it out in front of her, poised to create a portal, she thinks of Jim. Hunter Jim, Master Jim, Troll Jim; everything that Jim is.

She remembers the first kiss they shared. Their time dancing on the night of the Spring Fling. Their terrifying battles through the Darklands, and against Angor Rot and Gunmar. All the events both before and after his physical change.

She thinks about what he looks like. What he feels like. It’s different. But she knows it’s still Jim.

“I love you”, she had told him on the rooftop of their school. She meant it. And thinking of those words, she lets them spill out of her mouth in this moment.

A portal emerges from the tip of her staff. Creating it felt... different.

But she knows it’s Jim on the other side.

[ponyregrets]

"it’s 3 am and I’m still in the library studying for finals and I’m losing my grip on reality and I think I just saw a ghost" & dear david & bellarke

brit has a dear david problem. AO3!

About 90% of Clarke doesn't believe in anything even a little bit supernatural. She doesn't think there's an afterlife, magic isn't real, fortune tellers are bullshit, astrology could be done just as well by a well-programmed robot, there's a scientific explanation for yeti and Bigfoot sightings, mummies are embalmed dead people who will never rise again, and ghosts and zombies are as much of a fiction as trolls and elves. Aliens probably exist, admittedly, but somewhere in the vastness of the universe, not here, abducting people for weird experiments. They're just around, on some distant planet, doing their own thing, leading their own lives, not caring about humanity.

But there is that last ten percent of her, and that's the part that's freaked out by Dear David.

Obviously, she doesn't think it's real. These are all things you can fake. It's on Twitter, and Twitter is full of fake things, including videos and images. Everything has a perfectly logical explanation, especially if the guy is using Twitter for longform storytelling, which he must be, because if this was real, surely he would have done something more.

But at the same time, what would she do, in his place? Moving out of her apartment because she thought it was haunted would be giving a lot of power to a supernatural phenomenon, one she doesn't even believe in to begin with. And she thinks the Dead David guy is living in New York, with two cats. Clarke hasn't rented a lot of property, but she had to sublet in DC for an internship last summer, and she remembers seeing NO PETS on most of her potential rentals. If she was him, she might not move.

So in a horror movie, she would probably be the white lady everyone yelled at for being stupid. But it makes sense to her. How hard would it be to actually make major life decisions based on a dream and some weird noises? Her mother would never let her hear the end of it.

Luna puts an almost immediate moratorium on Clarke reading Dear David updates in their room, less because she about sixty percent believes in the supernatural and more because, in her words, listening to Clarke rationalize how she would deal with a haunting is exhausting, and she doesn't want to deal with it.

It's a fair criticism that Clarke can't argue with, so she starts checking the updates at the library, as a study break.

In theory, it's a perfect solution. She already does most of her studying at the library, and she needs things to do about once every forty minutes to give her brain a rest from her actual work. If a Dear David update is actually posted while she's at the library, she reads it then and there, and when she sees an update other times of day, it serves as an incentive to go and study later. She's not allowed to read the updates anywhere except the library, after at least thirty minutes of productive work, and every time she sees one, that's all she wants to do.

It's really a great system right up until it's two a.m. the night before her midterm English paper is due and she sees something in the back of the stacks.

It's obviously not a ghost. It's obviously not anything. When she goes back to look, with her phone camera on just in case, it's just an empty row of books with a window at the end. The movement she thought she saw was probably just the curtain, blowing in the air conditioning or something.

Or this is the part of the horror movie where she dies.

Leaving the library is an obvious option, but it feels like an overreaction to just one weird event, especially one she probably imagined. Her paper isn't done yet, and it's not like the library is empty. The part of the library she's in is pretty quiet, but she doesn't have to be there. Grabbing her laptop and finding another living human to sit sort of near is a good compromise between fleeing the scene and dying like the horror-movie white girl she definitely would be.

The first person she spots is asleep on a table and drooling, which isn't very comforting, and the next is watching a movie with headphones in, so if something happens, they probably won't notice.

The third is a guy she's seen before, another library regular. They've never spoken, but he's very noticeable. He's in her top five library crushes, and many days he comes out on top of that list; it's hard to go wrong with messy hair, freckles, muscles, and glasses. Plus he's always buried in a pile of history books. He might look like a jock, but he's definitely not one of those jocks who skates by without doing any work.

She's considering the best way to approach him when there's a crash, and she and the guy both look up, but she's the only one who jumps and squeaks a little. It's just the sleeping kid, who pushed a book off her table and woke herself up with the noise. She blinks at it, confused, and then shrugs and goes back to sleep.

When Clarke turns her attention back to the hot guy at the table, he's watching her with his head cocked. "Everything cool there?" he asks.

He has a nice voice, low and a little rough, and his eyes are sharp in the best way. Sharp with concern, if that's possible.

"Can I sit with you?"

He makes a show of looking around at the free tables near him, but then he shrugs and moves his books a little. "If you want to, yeah."

"Thanks."

"It's a big table." He drums his fingers on the table, still watching her. "Are you on something?"

"What?"

"You look kind of--" He waves his hand. "I'm not an expert on illicit substances, so I don't know if you look drunk or stoned or, uh, cocained or what, but--"

"I'm not high. I'm freaked out," she admits. "Are you on Twitter?"

"No, but it does freak me out, so I can relate."

Clarke can't help a smile. "It's not all of Twitter. There's, uh--this is going to sound stupid."

"Don't worry, that ship has sailed."

That earns him a glare, but he is honestly making her feel better, so there's no real heat in it. "There's this guy who's live-tweeting his apartment being haunted."

"Wow, you're right. That does sound stupid."

"Shut up," she says, laughing. "I know it's not--I'm pretty sure it's not real."

"Pretty sure?"

"There are videos. And I'm hedging my bets, okay? I don't want to say it's all bogus and then he actually dies or something."

"If you were being haunted, why would you tweet about it?" the guy asks, sounding thoughtful. "Is he tweeting about other stuff too? How does it work?"

"Sometimes. He's an artist, so he posts comics and stuff too, but it's been more and more content for this."

"Probably gets more attention than his comics. Good marketing. So, what happened?"

"What?"

"Did he have a really freaky update or what?"

"Oh, no, I--" She smiles, sheepish. "I freaked myself out being alone in the stacks. I thought I saw a ghost."

"Yeah, okay."

"That's it?"

He shrugs. "I don't need a weird Twitter scam to know that being alone in a library in the middle of the night is creepy. That's just basic primal fear. I've been there. You just needed someone to talk to?"

"Basically. A witness."

"If you seem haunted, I'll let you know." He offers his hand. "Bellamy, by the way."

"Clarke. Thanks for being my ghost buddy."

He snorts and turns his attention back to his laptop, and Clarke opens hers up to do the same. She doesn't have a ton left to do on the paper, and she's got the first draft done by three-thirty, which is later than she'd like, but she can get some sleep, go to class, and have time to edit and submit before the four o'clock deadline tomorrow afternoon.

Plus, she hasn't been killed by a ghost and she managed to introduce herself to a cute boy. A successful night, all things considered.

She stands and stretches, and Bellamy looks up from his laptop, glasses sliding down his nose. "Heading out?"

"Yeah. Luckily I don't need to do an actual all-nighter."

"Where do you live? I'm leaving too," he adds quickly. "Not stalking you."

Clarke feels herself start to smile. "Were you hanging out waiting for me to be done?"

"I've been playing Hearthstone for like twenty minutes, yeah. I don't have class until noon tomorrow anyway."

She has to smile. "I live in Alpha."

"Cool, I can walk you home. I'm in Mech."

"Really?"

He shoulders his messenger bag. "Sorry, do you think I'm lying about where I live?"

"You stayed late to keep me company and didn't tell me, so you might just be making up an excuse to walk back with me. Which I would appreciate," she adds quickly. "That's sweet. But you don't have to."

"I really live in Mech," he says. "But thanks for giving me theoretical credit for lying."

"Good lying. Chivalrous lying."

"Yeah, that makes me feel so much better. You ready?"

"Ready." She smiles. "Really, thanks for waiting."

He shrugs, playing it off with only slight awkwardness. "What was I going to do with an extra twenty minutes of sleep?"

*

On their walk back to Ark Quad, Clarke learns that Bellamy is a senior history/political science double major who would like to be a professor, even though he knows academia is basically a clusterfuck.

"If you get tenured somewhere you like, it's a total racket, from what I can tell," he explains. "But both of those are kind of a crapshoot. But I got funding for grad school here, so I figure I should take it. Then if I'm unemployable, I'm not in that much debt, and I can call myself a doctor."

She doesn't manage to find a casual way to ask if he's single and interested in women, but that seems like something that they could work towards. After all, the ice has been broken. Once you've confessed middle-of-the-night spooky ghost feelings, everything else is less awkward.

She hopes, anyway.

Between classes, she finishes and submits the paper, which means she's actually in pretty decent shape, academically speaking. But Wells sent her a translation of a bunch of tweets from some Spanish guy who's being stalked by his own clone from an alternate universe or something, which doesn't sound particularly plausible, but if it makes her get a head start on her bio problem set, that's not a bad thing.

And if Bellamy happens to be at the library to sit with while she reads it, all the better.

He's at the same table he was at before, surrounded by the usual pile of books, scowling at his phone like it's personally offending him, but his face clears when she sits down across from him.

"Hey," she says. "Bad time?"

"My mom and my sister both text me when they're arguing so I can mediate remotely, which doesn't work well for anyone. I would love to remove myself from this narrative."

"You could just not answer."

"You make it sound so easy." But he puts the phone down. "How'd you sleep?"

She frowns. "Fine?"

"I thought you might have ghost nightmares."

"Oh, no. I don't usually get dreams like that." He cocks his head, and she makes a face, trying to explain. "You know how in books and movies people have dreams that directly relate to what they were doing during the day? I don't have those. I can't really draw a straight line between what I was doing and what I dream about."

"So you're not going to worried you're going to have any nightmares about--I don't even know what the haunting looks like here. What's his evidence that he's haunted?"

"You want a summary?"

"It's either that or actually doing my homework," he says, not unreasonably, and Clarke grins.

"Okay, so, it does actually start with a creepy dream."

"Oh good, I'm thematic."

"Shut up. I'm explaining."

He doesn't interrupt again as she walks him through the Dear David narrative thus far, just looks increasingly amused as she goes on.

When she's done, he says, "I can't tell if you want to believe or not, honestly."

"I don't want to be wrong. I'm about ninety-percent sure it's fake, but part of me still thinks that if it was actually happening, this is all a logical response. Like--he's setting up stuff, he's documenting, he's even taking advantage of it."

"So if you thought you were being haunted, you'd use it to boost your social media brand?"

"Why not? If I survive the haunting, I want to leverage it to my advantage."

"I haven't put enough thought into the mercenary side of paranormal phenomena. Well, I guess I have," he grants. "I spent years when I was a kid trying to find cryptids living in the woods near my house."

"Were there stories about something living there?"

"No, it just seemed like a good thing to do. I should have just faked it for Twitter."

"It's not too late. You could still fake it for Twitter."

"Not until I'm done with grad school. Too busy."

"You're never going to have a viral tweet with that attitude."

"Yeah, I'll live." He wets his lips, looking her up and down. "So, are you planning to be freaked out again tonight?"

"My best friend from high school sent me a new viral thread to obsess over, so, yeah, definitely."

"Cool," he says, pulling his laptop in front of him. "Let me know how that goes."

*

As it turns out, friendship with Bellamy actually does not help the situation at all. He's at the library all the time, and that means Clarke wants to be there all the time because he's both single and interested in women, in addition to being great company.

But every time she sits down, he expects her to have some new viral tweet about paranormal activities to share with him, and she doesn't want to disappoint, which means she's spending her free time scouring the internet for creepypasta posts and saving them to a special bookmarks folder to read in the library with Bellamy and freaking herself out.

As seduction techniques go, it's not the best, but she likes to think of it as a work in progress.

"Have you considered asking him on a date," Luna says, not even a question. She already knows.

"These are like dates. Study dates."

"Where you sit together in mostly silence, punctuated by you reading him ghost stories from the internet?"

"It's a work in progress," she says, scowling. "You're the one who said I couldn't read this stuff here. I had to find someone who appreciated me."

"And once you find him, you should date him. But don't listen to me. Enjoy your bizarre courtship."

"Thanks," says Clarke, with an overly bright smile. "It's pretty awesome so far."

*

It's been about a month when Bellamy collapses into the seat across from Clarke at their regular library table and says, "I think you broke me."

"Yeah?"

"I had a nightmare about being haunted."

Clarke pauses. "Are you fucking with me?"

"Swear to god. It really freaked me out."

"So what happened?"

"It wasn't that bad to start with. Kind of funny. We were on one of those ghost hunting shows."

"We?" she asks, perking up.

"Yeah, you're my supernatural guru. Of course you were there."

"Okay, so we're ghost hunting. What do we do?"

"So it's a dream, I'm making it sound a lot more linear than it was. That's another reason I don't trust the Dear David guy," he adds. "All his dreams are really coherent."

"Because they're being influenced by ghosts, obviously."

"Then I guess I'm safe." He rubs the back of his neck. "Anyway, yeah, we're in my high school, and it's haunted. And it's still fun right now, we're not taking it very seriously, but then--something starts following us."

Clarke actually feels herself shiver a little. "Follow us how?"

"Like--when you're alone in your apartment in the middle of the night and you start thinking about how something could be behind you, and then you tell yourself it must be and you're really fucking paranoid even though you know nothing's there?"

Clarke puts her head down on the table with a groan. "Did you have to be that specific?"

"I'm painting a word picture." She hears the scuffs of movement, and then his hand is rubbing her back, like she's the one who had a nightmare and needs comfort. "But, yeah, it sucked. And I kept losing you."

"Losing me?"

"We were supposed to have radios, but I couldn't hear you, so I was freaking out. And my sister was there too and I couldn't find her either, and the setting kept changing, so I didn't know my way around. I was just looking for you guys and I had no idea how to get to you."

Clarke looks up to see him watching her with soft eyes, and she returns the expression. "That's a really shitty dream."

"Yeah. I don't think it means I'm haunted, but I might need you to start reading me stories about heroic animals instead."

"Sorry."

"Hey, I asked." He considers her. "I am kind of worried, though."

"You think you're haunted?"

"I think this could be the start of a recurring nightmare. I probably shouldn't sleep alone tonight."

Clarke lets out a sharp laugh, half surprise and half delight. "Are you seriously using your traumatic nightmare to pick me up? Really?"

"If I'm going to have a traumatic nightmare, it might as well get me laid. Assuming you want--"

She leans over and presses her mouth against his, quick and soft. "I could live with switching genres to romance. Horror's getting old."

Bellamy grins. "Yeah. That's what I was thinking."

*

"Dear David update," Clarke says, burrowing into Bellamy's side.

"It's still fake."

"If it's fake--"

"Which it is."

"If it is, it's still compelling, well-done storytelling. Stuff doesn't have to be true to be scary. Have you never seen a horror movie?"

"Not if I can help it. I don't get the appeal of purposefully freaking yourself out. And I just get mad at everyone for being an idiot."

"So you don't want to snuggle with me while I read the new tweets?"

"I never said that. I just want it on the record that I think it's fake and you should stop reading it."

"It's on the record." She leans up to kiss him. "Come on, don't you want to know how it ends?"

"Is it over?"

"I don't know. But when it does, you're going to want to know."

"I'm expecting you to keep me posted, yeah." He tugs her closer, propping his chin on her shoulder. "And if it gives me nightmares, you'll protect me, right?"

"Yeah," she says, petting his hand. "I've got you. Now shut up and let me read you the scary story."

"Yes, ma'am," he teases, and settles in to listen.

[raining-v-coffee]

Naruto time travel fic recs

~ My notes       * Multichapter

Just the Usual Habits

Sakumo has no idea where all of these habits of Kakashi's are coming from. In which five-year-old Kakashi forgets the existence of his left eye, loses his ability to lie believably, and is a little too knowledgeable about the Birds and Bees. Still, no matter what oddities went on in Kakashi's head, one thing is certain – the boy will always love his father, through thick and thin.

Rebirth

Kakashi dies. He wakes up to a second chance.

shut up & dance

sakura just wants to eat in peace, unfortunately the founders won't let her.

Hardest of hearts *

Orochimaru gets one more chance. Just maybe, it will be enough to save him—and the entire world as well.

Do Over

Naruto and Kurama accidentally end up in the past, on the day of Naruto's birth, and are forced to live their lives all over again. They make the best of it, to everyone else's extreme confusion. (Alive Minato and Kushina, humor.)

It's For A Good Cause, I Swear!

After receiving a time travel jutsu as payment for a mission, the original four members of Team 7 each get a chance to go back to one event in their life and change it. Surely they will use such an awesome power responsibly...right? Don't count on it.

~ Crack, utterly perfect crack.

ghosts in her heart

She had no idea what compelled her to do it, but she poked his forehead with her index and middle fingers.

"Do not be foolish, otouto."

(Sakura is the reincarnation of a future that she cannot let happen.)

let life lightly dance on the edges of time

Time-travel fics written as a birthday present for their twin brother.

The life and times of Hatake Kakashi, the long-suffering jōnin-sensei

Kakashi is being trolled. He doesn’t know how that can be, but he knows with utmost certainty that he’s being trolled somehow.

OR

Kakashi gets saddled with the cheekiest little brats ever and wonders if it's too late to become a missing nin.

It's a Mad, Mad World

Kakashi was a weary ninja who'd had this dream (nightmare) too many times before. And until the pain of the kunai stabbed in his arm kicked in, he'd never even considered the possibility it was real this time. Time-travel? One-shot.

How To Raise Your Ninja Child

Kakashi is six years old again, sent to the past. After his father dies, Minato acts as his caretaker, and chaos ensues: well-meaning chaos, but poor Minato doesn't know what to do.

How To Save The World With No One Even Realizing *

Minato knows at the beginning of the week that it's going to be a hellish one. Mostly because it starts with the kidnapping of one of his two remaining students, only a year after they'd lost the first one. He just doesn't realize at the time that it's not going to be a hellish week - it's going to be hell for quite a bit longer than that.

It all starts with Rin's kidnapping, and her subsequent rescue at the hands of a mysteriously appearing, monstrously strong, murderously violent woman.

A woman with cotton candy pink hair.

It only devolves from there.

hands like houses *

Sakura finds herself trapped in the past and discovers a new family along the way, however unwilling she may be.

How Long is Forever?  WIP

Time Travel AU. Sakura has come back to do good deeds and fix some shit. Not posted in chronological order.

Tempest  WIP

Back in time and armed with years of future knowledge, Sakura is ready to take the world by storm. Except... she's four again, not twelve. Ah well, nobody said she couldn't start a little early. Gen, time travel, AU, Sakuracentric.

Jagged Pieces  WIP

On his way back from a mission, Minato gets ambushed and suffers injuries before being rescued by a mysterious blond. Meanwhile, Naruto gets blasted into the past and tries to save the day (and subsequently, the world), not understanding why Minato seems so taken with her.

(Or in which a pregnant Naruto is a victim of time travel, and Minato just wanna be her baby's daddy.)

now, for the second act  WIP

After his death at Pein's hands, Kakashi finally makes his peace with his father. But when he opens his eyes, it's not to the the ruins of his village. Instead, he's thirteen again, armed with all the knowledge he has of the future and the skill set of a thirty year old ex-ANBU Commander. He's ready to save his precious people.

Except, he's not the only one to make it back.

[Team Minato wakes up in the past after their deaths, a week before the mission to Kannabi Bridge. Yes, all of them.]

Steps We Take  WIP

After being hit by an unknown technique, Sakura's in the past - or rather, an alternate universe that's running slightly behind schedule, judging by her continued existence. Thing is, she's totally satisfied with her happy ending. All she wants is to find her fellow time traveler (and master of dimensional-warping jutsu) and get back home.

...Still, it wouldn't hurt to push a few people in the right direction (or totally mess with them, that's cool too.)

[Formerly 'been loop the looping']

Reflection  WIP

His nose itches with the long dead scents of incense, saltwater, and spice but he doesn’t look back until -

A choked, “Kakashi?”

He closes his uncovered eye, takes a deep breath, and turns.

Three ghosts stare back.

-

In this world, Team Minato returns as heroes.

(This time, there was no disgraced Hatake runt carrying the most prized doujutsu of the famed Uchiha clan, no questions of theft or accusations of treason, no doubts of Minato’s abilities as a teacher let alone Hokage, no back-stabbing comrade killers-

-no Kakashi.)

An Inch of Gold  WIP

Team 7 is sent on a mission to investigate a disturbance outside of the village, where they encounter an unconscious girl in a crater. The mysterious Sarada insists she's a shinobi from the Hidden Leaf trying to rescue her teammates, but something about her is suspicious. When the team discovers she possesses a Sharingan, things become even more unbelievable.

Ten Years Gone  Mature *

Kakashi goes back in time.

Force of Nature  Mature

He had died- honorably, he'd like to think, despite living as a villain and an assassin for over half a century- and that, as far as Xanxus had ever figured, would be the end of that. No heaven. No hell. Just life when you were breathing and nothingness when you stopped.

Except that it didn't, quite, turn out that way. Except he came back as the son of the kindest, sometimes saddest father in the world. In both worlds. A father that he knew, without a doubt, to be his flesh and blood. All at once, Xanxus had everything he'd wanted as a child. A home. A family. Stability. And he was going to fight like hell and beat down anyone who tried to take it from him, no matter what his age.

(In which Sakumo raises a son who speaks multiple languages from birth, all of them gibberish to the poor single father jounin, spits vulgarity with the same ease as he does his praise and burns with an unshakable determination to build himself a family that will not fall, no matter who or what is thrown against it.)

Second Wind  Mature

Waking up alone in a deep forest made her believe she had died. Naruto had done a lot of crazy things in her short life, like challenging the Kyūbi and fought against the powers of a God. But this just might be the most incomprehensible thing she'd ever managed. What do you do when being unwillingly thrown back in time?

Wasting Time  WIP Mature

Sakura was not the type of person to linger over her own demise, but sitting at a dinner table with Itachi and Sasuke as her flesh and blood cousins she realises that perhaps her death should have been more thought out. Well, being an Uchiha instead of a Haruno couldn't be that bad, right?

AU Time-Travel fic in which Sakura is totally screwed over.

(Though isn't she always?)

Tampering with Time  WIP Mature

When Kyuubi was extracted from Uzumaki Naruto, it was the Nidaime Hokage that came up with an unconventional solution. An experimental reincarnation jutsu on Namikaze Minato and a one-way trip, with his Kurama, to the past.

Deathless  WIP Mature

Mortality is for losers. So is time as a linear concept.

In other words, the entire planet is dead, Sakura is over five hundred years old, and she's bored as fuck.

Time-travel is clearly the only option.

Hush  WIP Mature

He really hated hospitals. The novelty of being in one again disappeared as quickly as it came when Tsunade forced a cup full of pills down his throat.

Being stranded in another world really wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Especially when people start dying and Naruto is at a complete loss of what to do.

After the Rain  WIP Mature

Never had Naruto predicted she'd end up in the past. Not even the one who caused her to go back had anticipated she'd be dragged along for the ride. The kyūbi had been trying to save himself, not her. She'd once said that the hero always arrive late, this was quite the opposite. Naruto would be very, very early this time.

To my Masterpost of Naruto Fic recs <3

I also have rec lists for Harry Potter and Doctor who.

[bestmovies0]

The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus

On May 3, 2 008, a sunny Saturday in Copenhagen, a mob amassed along a dock to watch a 58 -foot submarine be lowered into the sea. Part art project, component engineering achievement, the submarine weighed 40 tons and had been has been established by volunteers at minimal cost from donated iron and other portions. The spectators cheered as the submarine swam for the first time. Peter Madsen, the designer of the vessel and the organisers of the day’s event, climbed into the hatch, smiling in a white skipper’s hat, before the submarine motored into the water.

Madsen christened the ship the UC3 Nautilus , after the fictional submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea . Jules Verne’s antihero Captain Nemo was a figure who lived outside social statutes, sailing the seven seas in search of total freedom. Unlike Nemo, Madsen had stayed close to home in Denmark, but he had devoted his life to constructing audacious vehicles of his own design, ones that might venture high above the atmosphere or down into the depths of the ocean.

Shortly after the launch of the Nautilus , Madsen started another undertaking. He and a former NASA contractor named Kristian von Bengtson cofounded a company called Copenhagen Suborbitals. Their programme was to launch the first manned built-from-scratch rocket. The two set up shop on Refshaleoen, a zone of the city that extends into Copenhagen’s harbor and once had been the heart of Denmark’s shipping empire. That industry’s wane “d left” empty warehouses and mills, which had been reclaimed by artists, engineers, and other creative characters. Madsen and von Bengtson were among them, occupying a hangar, and financing Copenhagen Suborbitals with crowdfunded donations. It was, von Bengtson wrote in 2011 on a WIRED blog he started that year about the rocket build, “the ultimate DIY project.”

The programmes made Madsen a kind of antiestablishment celebrity in Denmark. “You had a sense that he was doing something different. It was something bigger. It was something worth being part of, ” Robert Fox, a filmmaker who made a 2009 documentary about Madsen called My Private Submarine , told me. A biography of Madsen was published some years later. Madsen parlayed this fame into speaking engagements.

In 2016, another filmmaker released a documentary called Amateurs in Space , about Madsen and von Bengtson and their efforts to build a rocket. To watch the cinema is to see the men’s relationship fall apart. In June 2014, Madsen opened a new workshop of his own, Rocket Madsen Space Lab, in a hangar across the paved lot from Copenhagen Suborbitals.

In March 2017, a freelance columnist named Kim Wall learned about the rival rocket manufacturers. Wall had been raised in a Swedish township called Trelleborg, simply 40 miles from Copenhagen. She had left home for schooling in Malmo, Sweden, then London, Paris, and eventually New York, which she was calling home for a while. She was in Refshaleoen visiting her collaborator, Ole Stobbe, a Danish designer who had just moved there. The two were walking around one afternoon, past the vestigial houses of the old shipyards, when they came in all the regions of the rocket-building workshops.

In the four years Wall had been a reporter, she had traveled to Haiti to write about practitioners of voodoo; to Sri Lanka to document the tourism on former battlefields of the long civil war; to Cuba to follow the underground network of people delivering TV proves and internet culture. Wall was fascinated with what she called “the undercurrents of rebellion.” Here was just such a tale simply minutes from where she was staying.

Wall reached out to various publications, and had email exchanges with editors at WIRED, working towards getting an assignment to write about the rocket builders. She and Stobbe had also decided to move to Beijing together, and their departure date was approaching. She had interviewed one of the builders at Copenhagen Suborbitals and was hoping to speak with Madsen, but she hadn’t will reach him. She had only a few periods left in town.

Wall got the text she had been waiting for: Madsen was inviting her to tea.

On August 10, a Thursday, Wall and Stobbe were preparing to hurl a goodbye party. In the late afternoon, just as they were setting up for a barbecue on the quay along the water in Refshaleoen, Wall got the text she had been waiting for: Madsen was inviting her for tea at his workshop. Madsen’s hangar was not far, so she set off. About half an hour later, she returned to let Stobbe know that Madsen had submit a report to take her out on his submarine. She decided to forgoes her own goodbye party for the interview. She asked Stobbe if he wanted to come. Stobbe was “insanely close to saying yes, ” he told me, had it not been for the group he had assembled. Because she was going out to sea, Stobbe committed Wall a bigger kiss than he would have had she gone out for, say, ice or lemons. Wall promised to be back in a few hours.

Just before boarding the submarine around 7 pm, Wall texted Stobbe a photo of the Nautilus . A little later, she mailed a photo of windmills in the water, and then another of herself at the steering wheel. A while afterwards, Stobbe was tending to a quayside burn when a friend told him to look up. He watched the fix sunlight and Wall aboard the submarine in the distance, waving toward him.

By most public accounts, Madsen was a charismatic rebel. He had a weathered face with the prominent features of a plaything troll. His habitual uniform was coveralls and hiking boots. Fox, the filmmaker, calls him a “modern-day Clumsy Hans, ” for the apparently dimwitted suitor in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale who wins the princess’s favor over his more intelligent brethren. Wall was in the early stages of her reporting, and she would not be aware of this much more about Madsen than what had already been published. It was only later, after everything that happened, that the details of his private life would become important.

Refshaleoen had once been the heart of Denmark’s shipping empire.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

Madsen was born in 1971 and grew up in a small town south of Copenhagen. His mom, Annie, was more than three decades younger than Madsen’s father, Carl–a pub owner. She had three boys from two previous wedlocks, and the union with Carl did not last long. Madsen was six when his mothers split up. Annie moved out with her other sons while Madsen remained with his aging father.

According to Madsen’s biography, writes to Thomas Djursing, Carl was a brutal boy who beat his stepsons, though not Madsen. It was Carl who stoked his son’s fascination with rockets, telling him , among other things, about a human who would become a hero to Madsen: Wernher von Braun, the Nazi aerospace engineer who later came to the US and helped develop the Apollo missions. Carl died when Madsen was 18, and for the next few years, Madsen ricocheted around, starting several degrees and apprenticeships–in welding, refrigeration, and engineering–before falling out of each.

As a adolescent, Madsen detected the Danish Amateur Rocket Club but was eventually kicked out because he wanted to use fuels that others in the group seemed weren’t safe. He invested his twenties and thirties organizing their own lives around the building of submarines and rockets. He often slept at the workshop where he built things.

Madsen’s obsession with submarines and rockets was all-consuming, but not to the exclusion of sex. I get in contact with Camilla Ledegaard Svendsen, an age-old friend of his, through Facebook. She told me that Madsen became a regular at sex fetish parties. These were a place of community, she said, “where everyone was relaxed about everything, including their bodies, ” and where women felt safe. He also availed himself of Travelgirls.com, a website that advertises meeting “thousands of adventurous girls who want to travel.” Deirdre King, who was Madsen’s close friend for more than a decade, told me he could be doting. “I broke both of my hands once, and Peter came by every day for two months and brushed my hair, ” she told me. “He is a man who loves women.”

Fox, who spent 100 periods with Madsen and his crew while attaining My Private Submarine , said that “women discovered him fascinating” and that the Nautilus sometimes played important roles in his seduction strategies. “’This is my submarine. You want to see my submarine? ’ He kind of used to draw that off a lot, ” Fox recalled.

After he split from Copenhagen Suborbitals, Madsen moved his rocket-making workshop simply across the lot.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

The goodbye party continued into the night that Thursday in August and finally moved to a nearby bar. When Wall still had not returned, Stobbe began to worry. The couple was supposed to leave for a wedding early in the morning, and it was unlike Wall to not stay in touch. Stobbe waited for his partner by the wharf. Then he went back to his room, tried to sleep, get up, grabbed his bicycle, and ride around the island in search of her. Around 1:45 am he called the police; a half hour later he called the navy. Wall was missing.

Just before 4 am, the police were notified of a possible accident by the local maritime rescue middle. Soon after, helicopters and ships began searching the water around Copenhagen. At 10:30 am, the Nautilus was spotted near a lighthouse in Koge Bay, near a desolate stretch of coastline southwest of Refshaleoen. According to a local news report, at 11 am a man out on his craft helping with the search discover Madsen in the submarine tower. He read Madsen go down the hatch, then reemerge as the sub began to sink.

Madsen then began swimming toward a nearby motor craft, where he was pulled out and turned back to land. By now, newsrooms had learned about the search for a missing submarine. Upon Madsen’s rescue, reporters headed to the dock. When he stepped ashore, a reporter called out to Madsen, asking if everything was OK. Madsen turned around and committed the reporter a thumbs-up. He said he was fine but sad because his Nautilus had dropped. There had been a defect on the ballast tank, he said.

Related Stories

Sarah Scoles

What Happens Now? Learns of Sexual Harassment Can Show the Way

Julia Angwin

How Journalists Fought Back Against Crippling Email Bombs

Issie Lapowsky

The Year Women Reclaimed the Web

Stobbe was at the dock where the press had amassed that morning as Madsen devoted his thumbs-up. He knew that something was off and braced for the worst. Still, he wasn’t prepared for what was to come. Afterwards that day the police put under a statement saying that Madsen had told them that he had dropped off Wall on the tip-off of small island developing. The police clearly did not believe him; they arrested him and accused him with involuntary manslaughter “for having killed in an unknown route and in an unknown place Kim Isabel Fredrika Wall of Sweden sometime after Thursday 5 pm. ”

The next day, a Saturday, Madsen appeared in courtroom at a closed-door conference. He hadn’t dropped Wall off on the island; she died in road traffic accidents onboard the submarine, he said. His tale was changing. A hatch had fallen on her psyche, and he panicked, he would claim. He said he dragged her body out of the submarine by a rope and “buried her at sea.”

On August 21, a cyclist journeying along on Amager Island , not far from where the submarine drop, came across a torso that had washed ashore. The next day, DNA analysis confirmed that the torso is accountable to Wall. On September 5, a court approved the prosecutor’s request to change the charge against Madsen to manslaughter. An autopsy afterwards revealed that she had been stabbed 15 hours in and around her vagina. Then, one month afterwards, divers procured her psyche, attire, and a knife in plastic bags, in the seas not far from where her torso was discovered. They also detected both her legs, tied to pieces of metal. Despite these breakthroughs, Madsen stayed to his tale: Wall had made her chief and succumbed, and he disposed of her body, but he denied killing her or dismembering her. Even after divers acquired a watch that might have been used to dismember Wall’s body, even after the police searched Madsen’s computer and discovered videos that appeared to show females being strangled, beheaded, and tortured–he stay to his story.

Kim Wall and I were both freelance novelists, both young and female, both reporting from abroad. Our relationship began after we followed one another on Instagram and Facebook. Then, a year or so later, in 2016 we found ourselves in New York. We invested most of the summer sitting across from each other in a glum coffee shop in Williamsburg, working on our laptops. We didn’t yet know where reporting objective and living began. We ensure in one another a companion, but likewise a guide. She was my friend and likewise the closest thing I had to a colleague. When I left for Afghanistan that autumn and she for Denmark and later Cuba, we kept in touch by text, talking each week if not more often.

When I learned that Kim had disappeared, my instinct was to find out everything I could about what happened to her. I could say that I was trying to control grief by examining the source of that sorenes, but that would be reasoning in hindsight. All I knew was that it was painful to think about Kim, and it pained me simply a little less to try to report about Madsen.

In the weeks and then months following Kim’s death, I read local news stories, watched the documentaries about Madsen, and scrolled the posts on the blog he maintained on an engineering website. I went on Madsen’s Facebook page and mailed friend requests to every one of his contacts there. I spoke to dozens of people are attached to Madsen–family members, buffs, collaborators, fans, and childhood friends, many of whom would not let their names to be used for this story. I spoke with lawyers, a forensic pathologist, and an oceanographer. In late September I flew to Copenhagen. I met with members of the police division leading the investigation, but they did not uncover much and did not want to speak on the record. I objective up committing them a statement. They asked about my friendship with Kim, and I told them what kind of person she was and why it wasn’t surprising that, as a columnist, she would have chosen to go with Madsen on the submarine.

On my first afternoon in Copenhagen, I met with Jens Falkenberg at a restaurant on Dag Hammarskjolds Alle, in an affluent part of township. Falkenberg is a 58 -year-old roof salesman. He first heard about Madsen years ago, when he saw a segment about him on television and, by coincidence, gratified him the next day at a diving store. He started volunteering at his workshop and helped build the Nautilus . He told me that the police had been calling, asking about a ascertain that was missing from Madsen’s rocket workshop.

If something did not please Madsen, “he would behave like small children who just lost his toy.”

Falkenberg was like many of the others who volunteered with Madsen, who called himself “a maker of extreme machines.” They expended their weekdays in regular undertakings but were weekend builders. They wanted the feeling of community the workshop made them. At the center of their alternating cosmo where boys constructed submarines and rockets was Madsen himself.

Some volunteers “was talkin about a” Madsen as a generous spirit, the various kinds of guy who would invite a pal who was feeling down “to take part in his little adventures as a means of applauding him up, ” as a friend named Lars put it.

Others reexamined old incidents and behaviours. Madsen could sway between rage and euphoria. One volunteer at Copenhagen Suborbitals told me that if something did not please Madsen, “he would behave like small children who just lost his toy or plummeted his ice cream or something.” When his feeling turned, “most people would know what was going to happen, so they would stay away from him before material started flying.” Volunteers said Madsen threw hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools. One volunteer, who asked to be identified by his initials, S. W ., helped build the Nautilus . He recalled how Madsen would go from being supportive to “pensive, jubilant, irritating, and sarcastic.”

“It’s hard for us to understand what drives a madman, because we are not mad, ” Falkenberg told me. He then described a recurring gag: Madsen would pretend to be a violent Nazi and would mime reaching Falkenberg, saying “Should I punch you in the kidneys? ” or Madsen might joke: “What if I inject battery acid into your veins? ”

There was also a lot of joking around about Nazis in the workshop. Crewmembers called each other by Nazi-inspired names. Madsen was called Kaleun, for Kapitanleutnant, a nod to the 1981 film Das Boot , about a fictional German U-boat unit during World War II, Falkenberg said. When they went out in the sub, the crew spoke German, reciting lines from the film.

Madsen’s fascination with space and rockets and technological sciences could hoodwink you into thinking he was a man of the future; you are able miss the fact that his obsession was rooted in nostalgia. He was enamored with the early Apollo missions in American space exploration. The venerate he held for the Third Reich was hard to detect as it was framed as irreverence, but it was there. “Some of the behavior the Nazi regime worked, they did horrible things and they should be executed and everything. But some of the things they did, it ran, ” the former workshop volunteer told me. “They built the biggest military machine in just four years. They constructed it virtually out of nothing.”

Building something out of nothing was central to Madsen’s philosophy, as was his sentiment that he should be able to play by his own rules and control his own destiny. He seemed down on people for being cautious. He talked about wanting “to be free from authorities” in attaining his submarines. After he left Copenhagen Suborbitals, he continued a blog about the progress at Rocket Madsen Space Lab. In one enter from 2015 he described his team as people who “all know that they are taking part in a Peter Madsen project, just like they would do if it was a von Trier movie … the unqualified impression that Madsens crasy[ sic] dreams tend to become reality … induces these people invest period and money.”

Windmills on the water.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

I had been in Copenhagen a week when I moved looking for a woman I knew did not want to talk to me. She was a friend and recent sexual collaborator of Madsen’s. She lived in a converted building in Refshaleoen. One afternoon I walked through its vast hallways until I managed to find her chamber. I knocked on her doorway, and she let me in. I had twisted my ankle on the way over and was limping. She let me sit on her carpet and keep my injured foot elevated while she ate toast. Her eyes seemed heavy with sleep.

We ended up spending the rest of the working day together. She missed a concert; I skipped an appointment. We smoked Bahman cigarettes, an Iranian brand I had brought from Afghanistan. We boozed home-brewed kombucha. Music filtered in from another studio down the dorm, filling the occasional stillnes between us.

Like others I spoke with, she said she was enormously angry at Madsen and felt guilty for what she believed he had done. Her ache about Kim’s death seemed deep and genuine. And like others, she was reaching back into her remembrance of every exchange she had with him in search of clues that might explain this misfortune. She told me that she had either considered or talked to Madsen nearly every day in the weeks leading up to Kim’s death. Then she told me about a particular exchange that was still bothering her.

Wall was early in her job but had already reported narratives from Cuba, Haiti, and the Marshall Islands( above) in 2015.

Courtesy of Jan Hendrik Hinzel

Some periods before Kim stepped onto the Nautilus , the woman and Madsen were exchanging notes via iMessage. “It was a joke, ” she said, pulling out her phone and scrolling through the white and blue text. Like many people I met in Refshaleoen, this woman was typically resided with an art project of one kind or the other. “Shes been” be very difficult finishing a video, and she’d asked Madsen to motivate her with a threat. The dialogue began as a casual sexual exchange but speedily intensified. She read the texts to me, translating into English as she went.

“He says he has a murder plan ready in the submarine, and I tell him I am not afraid, you have to be more threatening. He talks about the tools he wants to use, and I say,’ Oh it’s not threatening.’ ” The scenario darkened to inviting a friend to the submarine, where they would suddenly change the feeling and begin cutting her up. At the time, the woman didn’t give the exchange much imagine; it was not something she took seriously. After a letup in the backward and forward, she responded by sending him a video of ponies. The minute passed. The police now have the texts.

Kim and I often “was talkin about a” the challenges of reporting while being young, while being a woman. Harassment, come-ons, and our panic of not being tough enough were perennial concerns. This is particularly true on the road leading. During a reporting trip-up to Cuba in 2016, Kim texted me to say that as a strategy against unrelenting harassment, she had devised a “fictional NYC fiance.” The incongruity of the go-to deflecting move being to proclaim attachment to another man was not lost on us.

Lately I have been thinking about a question Kim posed in a series of texts last spring: 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> i only have questions 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> about organization as a woman 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> and if we will ever be free , no matter what we do 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong>( leaning towards no)

In the working day after she disappeared, I hear people ask questions that betrayed a misunderstanding about reporting–couldn’t she have done the interview over the phone ?– and casual sexism–why was she there alone so late? On nighttimes when I couldn’t sleep, I would end up on internet chat room where specific comments parts filled me with fury: “She is a woman–how could she go alone with a boy she does not know? ” And: “She had skirt and pantyhose–how could she egg on a poor uncle in that way.”

In Afghanistan, where I worked mainly with men, I never wanted to show any sign of weakness or panic. In reporting this story, my editor attained me promise that I wouldn’t set myself in harm’s style. But much of the submission of reports is just that–routinely putting yourself in uncomfortable points. In the four months I spent on this story, I did things that in other circumstances might have seemed foolish. I went on long drives at night with sources. I satisfied strangers on their doorsteps and entered their homes. In stepping onto that submarine, Kim was doing what any reporter onto a good story would have been able to done.

My love for Kim has turned into devotion for her parents and for Ole. I’ve invested time with them in Copenhagen, Trelleborg, and New York when they came for a commemoration for Kim; it was held at Columbia University, where she had received her master’s degrees in journalism and international affairs. We talk online and discuss the fund we are setting up in her name. I want to alleviate their suffering, but I also know that the one thing they genuinely crave is Kim.( They did not wish to be interviewed for this article, and I understood .)

Ole and I speak on the phone, to talk about heartbreak, and what is to be done about it. He is still moving to China. Movement is good, he says.

Wall and Stobbe stayed in a converted building in Refshaleoen.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

On October 30, the Copenhagen police reported that Madsen had changed his account of that night in August yet again; he said Kim might have died from carbon monoxide gas poisoning. He likewise admitted to dismembering her body. Three a few weeks later, the police detected an arm in Koge Bay, weighed down with pipes. Eight periods after that, they found another limb. Madsen’s lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, declined to comment for this story.

I wrote Madsen two letters at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen, where he was being held before trial. I FedExed the first and dropped off the second in a mailbox near the prison. I told him who I was, who Kim had been, my sadness over losing her, and my wish that he would tell me what happened. One afternoon in January, several months after I’d returned to New York, I went to pick up my mail and acquired an envelope with no return address. It was postmarked from Denmark on December 6, 2017, but that didn’t register until after I’d opened it and started scanning the neat, hand-written pages. It was only when I got to the word “submarine” that I realized Madsen had written to me from his detention cell. I remember telling myself to keep breathing as I tried to fold the pages back into the envelope. I did not succeed. The envelope was small-scale and thin and rent in my hands.

When I ultimately forced myself to look at the letters–there were three, dated in September and November–I was struck by their terrifying cliche. He spoke patently about the boredom of prison–he had few visitors and few pastimes besides penning. He described recognizing Terminator 2 in prison and identifying with the specific characteristics played by Linda Hamilton. He explained what he had access to( paper and pencil) and what he didn’t providing access to( nearly everything else ). He also wrote about Kim. He wrote that he thought about Kim every day and that they are able to “feel her feeling somehow.” There was a disturbing friendship to his words, as if he were writing to an age-old friend. He flattered my writing style and extended an invitation to visit. He asked me, “What are you? An explainer trying to understand? A terminator sent to terminate me? … Without exception–whatever you are–you are welcome, I am all yours.” He aimed one of the letters by saying “I will try to get this letter out to you as soon as is practicable, and hope that you will stay in touch as things get easyer[ sic ]. ”

On January 16, the police released the following statement announcing that Madsen was being indicted for homicide that “took place with prior plan and preparation, ” and likewise charged him with “sexual relations other than intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature, as well as for dismemberment.” A week subsequently, the full indictment provided more excruciating details: Madsen had brought onboard “a understood, bayonet, sharpened screwdrivers, straps, zip ties, and pipes.” Madsen had bound, thump, and stabbed Kim before killing her, possibly by choking or cutting her throat, the indictment said. Madsen’s lawyer told The New York Times that she was “puzzled” by the indictment. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial on March 8, with a judgment anticipated in April. In between is March 23, who had allegedly been Kim’s 31 st birthday.

“What are you? An explainer trying to understand? A terminator sent to terminate me? ”

The case has been deeply unsettling to people in Denmark, a country of five. 7 million people where there were only 54 reported homicides last year. It is hard for Danes to fathom the gruesome discoveries and to imagine that someone as well-known as Madsen could be responsible for them. In December, the Danish publisher Saxo withdrew the first book in a true-crime series about the example, written by Djursing, after it comes down under criticism.

Before my trip to Denmark, I talked on the phone with a humankind who had worked with Madsen off and on for nine years. He was in shock. But he likewise allowed for the possibility of setting up unseen perversion. “Some are walking around with a fantasy like this for perhaps 10 times, ” he said, “and one day they will do this thing.” Madsen had expended his adulthood pushing against the bounds of society, of reason, of the present, of gravitation. Did he think he could get away with committing the ultimate act of brutality? The trial may offer some answers.

On one of my last day in Copenhagen, I returned to Refshaleoen. I stopped by a eatery to ask directions to the building where Kim and Ole had lived. The line cook didn’t know the building, so I asked if he knew where the reporter who had died had lived. He cut me off midsentence as I was explaining how I knew Kim and asked, “Why are you doing this? ”

I didn’t have a ready answer. I said something about how I wanted to know what had happened. But saying this out loud, to this stranger, I knew I could never actually know, could never measure the precise weight of her agony. Trying to find out what happened to Kim, in hopes of seeing meaning in the senselessness of her death, is a selfish act, designed to serve the living. It feels like an act of betrayal.

I still don’t yet know where reporting aims and living begins. All I know is that it hasn’t sink in yet that she is dead. I’m still wishing for a smaller tragedy: that she was kidnapped but will soon be rescued, or injured but healing somewhere, or lost but will find information. I wish for life. I wish for a different story.

Read More

There &# x27; s a reason women in tech are finally speaking out

Why female photographers matter now more than ever

How one correspondent use social media to get inside the minds of ISIS

May Jeong (@ mayjeong) is a novelist and a visiting intellectual at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University . em>

This article is displayed in the March issue. Subscribe now . em>

Additional reporting by Andrea Powell

Related Video

Culture

How a Virtual Reality Journalist Takes Viewers Inside Stories

At Nonny de la Pena’s Los Angeles-based Emblematic Group real tales, from melting glaciers to solitary confinement, are construct in full virtual reality.

Read more: https :// www.wired.com/ story/ final-terrible-voyage-nautilus /~ ATAGEND

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/02/17/the-final-terrible-voyage-of-the-nautilus/

[rcgnata]

questions for the mun, regarding the muse - sending in numbers 2, 3, 10, 11, 15 (lol sorry for so many but I'm curious)

ssh not a problem nonny i always like talking about my wife =v= under the cut since i kinda ramble rip ( meme )

(2) What made you decide to write this muse?

when i first started reading noblesse i fell in love with it instantly. and as protocol, when i love a series a lot i tend to want to try out a muse from that series, just to see how much more i can get into it and such. as it stood, i usually roleplayed female characters but noblesse didn’t??? really have any compelling females (chapter wise i was around the 100s); all the girls were villains and dead so i was like… welp.

when they introduced seira, i didn’t really… like her instantly. i didn’t hate her, mind you, i was just pretty impartial to her. she had potential for death but at the time i didn’t know it, and she barely talked- she would definitely be a challenge for me haha.

so, when they first introduced raskreia, i fell in love instantly. her initial impression came off as harsh but she just didn’t seem like she’d be another villain, so when they revealed that she was paranoid and hurt because she was betrayed a long time ago, my heart felt for this character. when i caught up in noblesse and reread it again i just loved her more and more. even though back then the noblesse rp fandom (when i found it) was liTERALLY NONEXISTENT… i made her. and then i met latte and angie… and then more and more people joined ;v;

(3) If you could change one event in your muse’s life (in their main or canon verse), what would you change?

ah, it’d definitely be the fact that she didn’t know why her father went into eternal sleep suddenly, as in, DAMMIT PREVIOUS LORD IF U DON’T TELL THEM THAT U DON’T WANT THEM TO FOLLOW IN THEIR PREDECESSORS FOOTSTEPS THEN THEY’RE GONNA FOLLOW IN UR GOSHDARN FOOTSTEPS. the entire point of his eternal sleep was for the new generation to change and not be tied down to old traditions, and yet this troll of a father decides to go “welp! they can figure it out for themselves 320 years later after my daughter attacks raizel!”

previous lord…

that, and it really is along the same lines as telling raskreia raizel is the freaking noblesse. WHY DID SHE NOT KNOW? she had every right to know. yet she’s in the dark for all those centuries and only gets to find out after the fact :/

(10) What do you love about your muse?

hm, what made me fall in love with her was just… her burden. and the kind of dissonance between her appearance and her personality. by her visage, she’s serious and harsh and seems apathetic to everything. yet we know she’s just the opposite; she cares too much, she’s curious about everything and she’s actually not very harsh at all. 

look, she tried to hide the fact that she was hurt from the traitors’ betrayal with anger. that’s a flaw but it’s such a flaw that seems so uncharacteristic of her character archetype. and what’s better is that she doesn’t even hide it well. she probably think she does, but gejutel could see through her, which is a concern he expresses to rajak (i believe it was rajak…)

we all think she’s someone who we’d be unable to read the emotions of… but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. ludis figured out that raskreia was blaming herself for being weak, such that the traitors in turned decided to betray lukedonia. yet she had such a sad look when edian died… sighs. if she really hated the traitors, i think she wouldn’t have shown sympathy. even if it was revealed edian didn’t really want to betray her, if raskreia was as close-minded as the stereotype is, then she would’ve been cold to her death.

but that’s the great part about raskreia pfft- she’s more emotional than you think

(11) What do you hate about your muse?

in words that i paraphrase, i hate that she “blushes stupidly for a guy that will never turn to see her”

yes, i’m looking at her infatuation with raizel.

i GUESS it’s canon that she “likes” him (even if i refuse to acknowledge this at all) but it’s the most arbitrary thing to happen in this frigging webtoon. how did she go from hating him for centuries to going gaga eyed at him???????? i don’t give a hoot that the misunderstanding was cleared, it doesn’t mean she’ll fall in love with him instead

there was no build-up, no platonic GOOD relationship that built up between them (frankenstein even said raskreia and raizel didn’t get along before she became lord), and certainly no basis for either of them to hold romantic feelings for each other. they helped each other, but that’s more out of obligation than personal feelings. on raskreia’s part, she feels guilty for making him use her life force and for wrongly accusing him, that’s why she helps him.

well, i also dislike that she does things in a roundabout way. it’s cute but i wish she’d be more direct sometimes haha

(15) Would you like your muse as a person if you met them in real life?

hmm, i wouldn’t dislike her, but i’d… probably be intimidated of her LMAO. one) she’s pretty. two) on first impression she’s serious and i’m bad at handling serious ppl |D

she’d be kind to me since i’m a human, but i definitely wouldn’t be able to make much on our interaction lmao. first of all i’m not good at talking to ppl….

oh, but the question is if i’d like them as a person. the answer is yes i guess??? she doesn’t have the personality type that i’d hate in real life normally, so that’s… yeah, i’d like her as a person.