#shes not even religious herself so help. but yeah I zeroed on in this being the explanation and sometimsometimes I'd be like

[alexihollis]

War Torn

"Who's Jackson?"

Cochise stared at Swan as their cart moved away from the Wonder Wheel loading dock, her horror mounting at the same speed as the cart rising off of the boardwalk.

"What?" Cochise forced herself to respond, trying to play it cool. Casual.

Based on Swan's expression? Her attempt appeared less than successful.

"Jackson. Thirties, looks exactly like you. Came by Cleon's looking for you," Swan said. "Cleon said she'd put the word out, see if you were around."

"And you couldn't have asked me this anywhere else?" Cochise asked, her voice getting a bit too high, a bit too thready.

"Call it payback," Swan deadpanned.

Damn. Cowgirl did always say this would come back to bite her in the ass. "I am not nearly as avoidant as the rest of you."

"Then why does it matter?" Swan cocked her head to the side.

Because Cochise wanted to be avoidant. "He's no one. Tell Cleon I don't want to talk to him."

"Why?" Swan asked.

"Does it matter?"

"Did it matter when you made me talk about my sisters?" Swan shot back. The words hung heavy in the air for a moment. "He's your brother, isn't he? The one who made it home?"

One of three, blood-related at least. One of far too many others. Vaguely, Cochise remembered telling Swan about her brothers being sent off to Vietnam. About only one coming back, only a handful left of the older neighborhood boys who used to run their block and left behind scared kids who grew into angry teenagers and didn't understand the people who returned to them wearing the faces of their lost siblings.

Cleon swallowed, thickly, before nodding. "Yeah."

"He's doing well," Swan said. "Married. Has two kids."

"That's great for him," Cochise forced herself to say, looking out over the ocean.

"He wants to get dinner or something," Swan said. "Catch-up."

"How'd he even find me?" Cochise asked.

Swan shrugged, "You'd have to ask him."

"I don't want to."

"That's your right."

Swan told the truth. Cochise remembered crystal clear what happened when Swan's sister, the one barely more than a year younger than her, tracked her down to Coney a few months after Swan joined the Warriors. Within two seconds of Cochise watching the Not-Swan talk to Cleon, two things became clear: 1) Swan was very much understating the religious aspect of her upbringing, holy shit and 2) Not-Swan had absolutely zero nice or helpful things to say to Swan. Cleon chased off Not-Swan, saying she would let Swan know she came, but back off, then brought the conversation to Swan to let her make the decision. When Swan said no, it had been easy enough. Not-Swan was skittish and not very stubborn at all, so after a week of vague-threats and Ajax silently glaring with her arms crossed, Not Swan stopped coming around.

Jackson would not be as easily run off, but it would be the same game plan and Cochise would never have to even look at him.

Jackson didn't deserve that, though.

"He's not a bad guy," Cochise said.

Swan nodded. "Okay."

Cochise shifted, uncomfortable on the vinyl seat. Okay. Maybe everyone else had a point about getting trapped on the Wonder Wheel like this.

After a minute of Swan just staring at her, Cochise cracked. A bit. "Seriously. He's a good guy. Even when he came home, he was just depressed and slept all the time."

"How old were you?" Swan asked.

"Thirteen. By the time he got home," Cochise said. "Eleven when he left. Ten when most of the older kids left."

"That must have been difficult."

"I didn't understand what was happening, at first." Cochise remembered that the most. Remembered her neighborhood gathering together when the letters first coming in. Her mom sobbing at the kitchen table, then other moms sobbing at their kitchen table.

One family vanished out of nowhere one night. Someone said they ran to Canada, but Cochise didn't know if that was true or not.

When Jackson's time came, a few months after their older brothers' orders and a year before they died, Cochise remembered hearing her dad yelling. Telling him to say anything. Do anything. Pretend he couldn't see colors. Pretend he couldn't walk right. Pretend he was too dumb to take orders or too queer to be trusted on the frontlines. Anything.

Jackson refused and Jackson got sent away.

"The adults were a disaster," Cochise said. "We were usually left alone, the older kids did a lot around the neighborhood, but I don't think we really realized how much until they left. I tried to help, when I could."

Jackson had told her, too. You're the oldest now, he had said, the same words everyone Cochise's age heard when their older siblings left. You need to step up, he said, watch out for the younger ones.

Cochise tried, but it was hard. Then, the teenagers started leaving. The sixteen year olds all the way down to twelve, sometimes. They just started running away. One by one. Breaking their parents hearts all over again, but unable to stay and Cochise tried. She babysat for kids not even two years younger than her and learned what mom liked to get from the grocery store. She learned what beer dad drank after work and what cigarettes grandma smoked.

It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to make grandma's heart survive the pain of losing two grandchildren or stop her parents from fighting, day in and out.

"It was hard and Jackson coming home didn't help."

She remembered Dad yelling at the lump sleeping in her brother's bed. Telling him to get up. Go to a bar, go on a date, do something, do anything. Then, Mom yelling at Dad to not yell, to give him space, and Dad hollering about World War II, because Cochise always forgot her dad served, he never talked about it.

"Everyone said a lot, but no one talked, you know? It made everything worse."

"You're always yelling at us about that," Swan said, her voice soft, but still strong. "You're really good at getting people to talk about things they don't want to. That's saved us a lot of problems."

Cochise smiled, half-heartedly. "Thanks." Then, "I didn't know how to do that back then."

"You were a kid."

"Yeah, maybe."

She didn't feel like a kid, back then. Some days, she felt more like a kid now. Running around on the boardwalk, getting in trouble with Cowgirl, Cleon chasing after them making sure they ate lunch and drank water. No matter what she did, Cleon would be there, looking out.

"When did you leave?" Swan asked.

"I kind of didn't," Cochise said. Swan looked a bit confused, so Cochise elaborated. "Mom and Dad split not long after Jackson got home. Dad took me and got an apartment in Coney, then he died not long after I graduated high school. Heart attack."

Same as grandma, but more sudden. Cleon remembered she had been making them dinner when the knock on the door came and she opened it to one of Dad's friends from the factory. She knew what it was before he opened his mouth.

"Same apartment, even," Cochise said.

Swan blinked, before the dots connected. "You still live in that apartment? With Cowgirl?"

Cochise nodded. "It was Cleon, first, when we were with the Destroyers. We got the bigger apartment when the gang started growing and we had more girls crashing on the couch, so Cleon moved in there and I stayed put."

"I always forget you were the first soldier," Swan said.

"Yeah, don't go reminding people." It made people weird. Ajax still thought it was weird that Cochise never even angled for number two.

"So why are you surprised Jackson could find you, then?"

"Because my mom and Jackson thought we moved out of state," Cochise said. Dad said it was for the best and Cochise had never thought to question it. Never wanted to question why she still followed orders after his death.

"Damn," was Swan's only response. Then, "If you're sure you don't want to talk to him, I'll let Cleon know."

Except...that didn't...

That felt wrong. The felt really wrong.

"Don't," Cochise said.

Swan stayed silent, but Cochise did not elaborate.

"You want her to tell him something else, then?" Swan asked.

"No." At Swan's unimpressed look, Cochise continued. "They live in the same house. I'm going to go pay them a visit myself."

Swan's eyebrows raised. "You know that?"

"Yep." The cart started to close in on the loading dock. Freedom. "We don't need to dissect why I know that."

"We can go another round," Swan said, half-teasing.

"I'm good!"

[esther-dot]

Daenerys destroy everything she touches. It’s just INSANE just how much damage and chaos her incompetence, stupidity and entitlement has done to Astapor.

She took the city’s entire defense force, the Unsullied, with her when she left, with no real thought as to what will happen when you leave a power vacuum, and set up a council to govern the city that had absolutely no means to enforce its will or its laws. One of the men on the council is specified as being a “priest,” but since the clergy of the Ghiscari Harpy religion are only ever described as female (the Graces), it seems quite likely, if not outright definite, that she appointed someone to govern a city wherein he had zero cultural, social, religious or political authority.

She doesn’t leave military support to the council she leaves behind to rule and it was overthrown very quickly after she left, and the new king, Cleon, a tyrant, promptly reinstated slavery, kidnapping noble children and attempting to turn them into new Unsullied (this didn’t work, for obvious reasons).

Astapor ends up ridden with disease and famine the minute it falls under siege of the slavery-restoration alliance led by Yunkai, with competing claimants killing each other and trading power until they’re subsequently replaced. Daenerys learns about this once she’s set up in Meereen but doesn’t commit any forces to help, fearing that she’ll lose Meereen if she goes back to Astapor. Meanwhile, the Astapori practice cannibalism by lots and many eventually commit mass suicide. The pale mare plague wipes out a huge number of people (even refugees who make it to Meereen die of it in camps outside the city), and most of the rest are displaced refugees, killed when Yunkai eventually sacks the city, or re-enslaved. By the time Quentyn Martell arrives, it’s functionally ceased to exist. (A lot of people skip over Quentyn’s chapters in the fifth book, and in so doing miss how APPALLING the Astapor situation is.)

Astapor is a ghost town except for dead and dying people and enemy soldiers. A total blood bath. It’s absolutely obliterated, just on a longer timeline than a one-off firebombing.

The criticism of Daenerys’s actions in Astapor is not that she freed the slaves, it’s that after freeing the slaves she just left and abandoned them to their bloody fate. You cannot destroy a city’s government and economy and then walk away. Even if it is a terrible government, with an economy built on slavery, you have to stabilize things afterwards. Daenerys have a responsibility in kickstarting new industries and find a new form of PAID work for these people. And there’s also the fact that Daenerys herself is a slaver but that’s a discussion for another day.

(I know that GRRM has said that his books are not allegories for the Iraq war but the parallels and similarities are truly unsettling.)

Yeah, I’m gonna have to forbid talk about Quentyn. I just got teary eyed at the mere mention of him. 😂 I got attached quick and was horrified by his death. But yes, I agree, it was meant to show us how horrible the situation is. Absolute hell.

I actually thought Martin had compared it to Iraq because I've seen people say that, but you're right. This is the quote I found:

Q: A Dance With Dragons spends quite a lot of time in Essos, which is kind of the analog to Asia and the Middle East in the world the story takes place in, as opposed to Westeros, which seems to owe a lot to Western Europe. When I was reading about Dany, who has become a light-skinned, foreign ruler of an exotic land, it reminded me of The Man Who Would Be King, the Sean Connery and Michael Caine movie that is based on a Rudyard Kipling story. Do you think about these parallels — colonialism, the "white man's burden" — when you're writing? A: I've said many times I don't like thinly disguised allegory, but certain scenes do resonate over time. Other people have made the argument, which is more more contemporary, that it might have resonances with our current misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm aware of the parallels, but I'm not trying to slap a coat of paint on the Iraq War and call it fantasy. (link)

I'm not sure how reliable this source is, but I also found this:

Finally, in a stunning revelation, when an audience member put the ridiculous question, “JRR Tolkien strenuously denied that his books were in any way an allegory for World War II, have you ever been accused of writing about climate change by proxy? You know, it being a bit of a thing in your works, the long Winter?” George replied, “No, I haven’t, not until now,” and continued, “Like Tolkien I do not write allegory, at least not intentionally. Obviously you live in the world and you’re affected by the world around you, so some things sink in on some level, but, if I really wanted to write about climate change in the 21st century I’d write a novel about climate change in the 21st century. Sometimes things happen that are hard to believe. You have to remember I’ve been writing these since 1991, in a couple of the recent books Daenerys Targaryen wielding the massive military superiority offered to her by three dragons has taken over a part of the world where the culture and ethos, and the very people are completely alien to her, and she’s having difficulty ruling this land once she conquered it. It did dawn on me when George W Bush started doing the same thing that some people might say, ‘Hmmm, George is commenting on the Iraq War’, but I swear to you I planned Dany’s thing long before George Bush planned the Iraq War, but I think both military adventures may come to the same end, but it’s not allegory.” (link)

This isn't about ASOIAF, but it feels relevant to this ask and some of the other anti Dany asks I've been getting. He said this after he saw Spielberg's War of the Worlds:

I kept thinking of the story as a metaphor for our invasion of Iraq… regular people trying to live their lives and survive as a technologically superior invader comes in and smashes their world all to hell. (That metaphor is very much implicit in the novel. H.G. was talking about the British imperialism of the Victorian Age, of course, not the American imperialism of the 21st century, but one of the strengths of science fiction is its ability to transcend the specifics of time and place and culture and assume new meanings for new audiences). (link)

So, I think just because he didn't have a specific invasion in mind, doesn't mean he wasn't criticizing the result of these actions or the ideology behind it. He writes a lot of material to showcase the horror of war, each generation has one that looms large in their minds, so we naturally relate it to that. He knows this, other writers do this, he as an audience member does it!

[cleoselene]

Handmaide's Tale eps 1-3 liveblog

putting this behind a cut because at this point I am only watching this shit show to see it though, so much venom underneath the cut, you have been warned don't complain if i hate your favorite rapist/collaborator/traitor. I watch this show as a Margaret Atwood fan to begin with and I've stayed for the unbelievable mess that is like, so bad it's almost galling, and this is the last season and I might as well see it through even though I'm sick of the secondhand cognitive dissonance of Elisabeth Moss being in a cult and on this show and I'm really sick of the Serena Joy redemption arc and basically if you expect anything but haterizing under the cut and get mad, that's on you. I like to hate from an educated POV and also like to finish things out if i've watched most of it. I think i rolled my eyes approximately 778 times at perhaps 23 different characters

but this gif is my non-spoilery summary and applies to multiple characters:

lmfao Serena needs to watch her fucking mouth, she is being way too goddamn sharp with her rape victim on this train.

I have zero feelings toward Nick. I don't care. He was a means to an end for June and some solace but whatever. He's still part of the fucking system and I don't think he's doing a very good job of sabotaging from the inside

OMG SERENA STOP TALKING ABOUT GOD YOU NASTY RAPIST.

tbh I'm not really sure why I watch this show. I hate Serena. I hate June kind of at this point. but I've come this far, I might as well.

Serena as a character was written based on Phyllis Schlafly and frankly that bitch would never have nuance so I think that's my major barrier to like, giving Serena even one single break? I cannot sympathize with women who pickme stand for oppression of women and then get shocked when they're oppressed too. When Fred cut her finger off? What the fuck else did she expect? The leopards to not eat HER face?

Every time Serena Joy mentions God, I should get to punch a Republican

oh no June is going to help Serena evade capture JUNE DO NOT, LET THIS BITCH FRY THE DOCTOR IS RIGHT SHE IS A FUCKING WAR CRIMINAL

YEAHHH EXPOSE THIS BITCH

OH PLEASE JUNE, THEY TOOK HER FUCKING PINKY FINGER? GOOD LORD. YOU REALLY TROT OUT THE GODDAMN PINKY FINGER TO A TRAIN FULL OF WOMEN WHO HAVE LOST THEIR CHILDREN? YOU ARE SO DUMB I CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO LIKE YOU ANYMORE IT'S A PROBLEM.

hahaha and here's Serena fucking digging her own goddamn grave with her goddamn god and sin shit. SHE HAS NOT CHANGED.

tbh they should let the women on this train just pull her apart limb from limb

me at Serena Joy crying:

OH FUCK YOU JUNE. The cop being perfectly willing to let Serena get mob-murdered though... maybe not ALL ACAB?

Serena and her stupid evil baby (yeah yeah babies aren't evil but this is the spawn of the Waterfords, kill baby Hitler) both deserve death. I'm sorry. This show is just so dumb sometimes. BUT I'M STILL HERE. I can only hope she and the brat died jumping out of the train but I know they didn't because this show lives to redeem this evil white witch Serena and I AM NOT BUYING WHAT YOU'RE SELLING ME, WRITERS.

also like no major character dies on this show. Emily and Janine should be dead like 12 times over by now. Wait did Emily end up killing herself? Or did she just fuck off? I don't remember I just remember I hated they couldn't give fucking anyone a happy ending on this show not even fucking Emily

i will not be watching the goddamn Aunt Lydia spinoff lmfao her background episode was so goddamn underwhelming and with all respect to Ann Dowd's acting, I don't give a fuck about Aunt Lydia anymore. She has outlived her interestingness. And i could NOT with her shocked pikachu faces this whole episode

OMG JUNE'S MOM? awwwww. Wow Cherry Jones looks so much older than she did in S1.

of course Serena landed in a community religious nice people. I'm not buying this, show. This is a show about christofascism I'm not into these sweet jesus freaks

Luke and Moira and the CIA guy are ten times more interesting than Serena and June lol those two just make me mad out of stupidity but it was sweet to see June with her mom

everyone in Gilead has such uniform codes how is Bradley Whitford getting away with his dapper scarves. they seem a little metrosexual for Gilead.

ilu Moira but no one should be allowed to be rude to Rita or tell her what to do, let her find her sister.

HARD fuck you to Nick for talking down about Mayday, you fucking traitor

oh, fuck you, tv show, for trying to make me feel bad for the monster who raised Serena Joy by giving him Parkinson's. my grandma died of that and she didn't oppress a whole society

I WILL NEVER FEEL ONE OUNCE OF SYMPATHY FOR SERENA OR HER FAMILY

this is a feeling that has only grown as real life has gone on

Nick really is a black hole of charisma. could another actor have made him compelling? probably. This guy is very much in the "go on gurl, give us nothing" method of acting.

IRL + this show + especially this scene of Serena proudly telling her too-gone-to-care father about her plans to be the worst traitor of all time is making me want to become a really militant fucking atheist, with the exception of hoping the only part of Christianity that's real is Hell for Serena, her dad, her dead husband, and probably her future Hitler child

I can't believe I'd rather watch more of Lawrence maneuvering than of June doing anything but this show butchered her character like two seasons ago and he's at least interesting and Bradley Whitford's acting ability extends beyond strained extreme close-ups

see like Lawrence saying New Bethlehem is "kinder, gentler" is more interesting as one sentence than everything June has done all fucking season because of the Bush family reference. I don't like him he's also a fucking traitor but he is at least interesting.

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER JUNE, THEY'RE ALL LIKE THAT. NICK IS A FUCKING COLLABORATOR AND HIS REBELLION IS TEPID.

"My daughter fucked a Nazi" MOM I AM WITH YOU. And she didn't even tell you the story about raping Luke!

okay the new Mrs. Lawrence attempting to pray = hilarity. Ruined when Serena starts babbling her insipid dogma

my eyes are going to fall out of my head at all these fucking prayers from Serena

too much Serena too much June not enough Lawrence, Moira, Luke. but then there's never been enough Moira, has there? They lured us in with Samira Wiley and then barely fucking used her. Poussey DIED for this role you should show more fucking respect

also what is the passage of time on this show? Shouldn't Nicole be like.... older? Is she like Gilly's baby on Game of Thrones who never ages beyond early toddlerhood? They're going to show us a 20 year old Hannah while Nicole is breastfeeding i swear

I do think leaving Nicole with Mom is the best course but this poor kid. she has been shuffled from home to home in the five years she's been alive that it's stunted her growth and she still looks like 2

THANK YOU FOR RENAMING NICOLE I NEVER LIKED IT BEING NICOLE ANYWAY WELCOME TO THE WORLD BABY HOLLY

it's a prettier name anyway

crying a whole river of tears that Serena is being forced to leave her commune of uwu christian ladies -_- poor rapist fascist, guys, let's feels sorry for Eva Braun and her big sadness

I really want her to die screaming watching her child be taken away by atheist hippies who say "we're going to raise them agender and let them choose who they want to be!" are the last words she hears before she dies

also it occurs to me the whole conceit of Gilead is kind of dumb? If climate change is fucking up the world the USA is not going to be the only clean place we will also be a pile of toxic trash

fundamentalist religious conservatives do NOT believe in environmental cleanup like they are presented here, they do NOT try to repair the world they do whatever they can to END the world because they are all horny for total annihilation as a religion

and they do NOT care about children enough to address environmental issues in order to have more

I hope Aunt Lydia spent the entire night after talking to Janine sobbing and wailing and flogging herself for being such a piece of shit and then closed her stupid shocked pikachu mouth and we never see her again but we know that's not true because she's getting a fucking spinoff

June marveling at Nick's multitasking abilities -- you are so easily impressed by this lump of nothing, my girl

I definitely think my problem with Nick is the actor. he just. doesn't fucking emote. That's why he makes me feel nothing. It's especially glaring when he's next to Elisabeth Moss doing over 9000 extreme close-up facial expressions at once

oh BARFORAMA at Serena acting like Gilead happening was not her entire fucking plan and that any of her regret is genuine. I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, YOU ARE STILL THE SAME SELF-INTERESTED BITCH YOU ALWAYS WERE.

yeah here we are at this fantastical idea that religious nutjobs would be the best at environmental cleanup. the Gilead freaks would be too busy wondering why they haven't been zoomed up to the rapture. the premise of this is bad and I love you Margaret Atwood but this has never been your best book but I also don't know why I never noticed the entire premise being so stupidly applied??? It's just fucking idiotic to represent people who don't even accept climate change as the Earth cleaners.

more eye rolling at Nick and June bickering. OF COURSE SHE CHOSE LUKE, NICK, LUKE ISN'T A NAZI.

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE ADAPT THE BLIND ASSASSIN IT'S ACTUALLY SO MUCH BETTER

[robinyourcreator]

so! gaem progress update!

finished up at the githyanki creche yesterday, with much save scumming and poking through guides, got the elminster bit, then wrapped up act 1 and sprinted to Isobel

so! did just enough to get Vlaakith and the inquisitor to betray us and most importantly Lae'zel, then gently prodded her along towards "hey your evil god queen sucks, actually."

Adana really WANTED to kill her dream visitor in the prism because she's EXTREMELY pissed it's still wearing Adran's face, and if it had ONLY risked herself to do so, she might have called its bluff and stabbed it. As is, the combination of "this could screw over my friends," that stabbing it would mean having to deliberately choose to stab her perfect dream of a boy, AND it pretending it wasn't going to fight back was enough to stay her hand. she still loathes the bastard and DEFINITELY doesn't trust it, but the risk is just Too High for her to call its bluff.

I think bards and wizards just have juvenile rivalries in general from both being arcanes who have to go to college, but Adana I think takes hers a littttttle farther than most do. Condescension is a BIG fat red button of hers, and unfortunately it is the habit of wizards to be the Worst in that way, so.

also had a funny realization the other day that Adana VERY easily could have been the bard equivalent of Gale if her upbringing had been a bit more supportive and/or religious, and a bit less of her being dehumanized into alternatively a Tool To Be Used or Extension of Her Mother without wants or a mind of her own. she WAS a prodigy as a teenager, and in that arena the Hubris and Ego were DEFINITELY in the right league to think she could fuck with gods-- once upon a time she WOULD have bet her soul on it, without hesitation. but nah.

as far as the devil's bargain Elminster brought, she found the man insufferable in general but tried to play polite host bc girl Does Not go around making powerful enemies if she can at all help it

and well. Adana has a mild death wish and a mile wide self-sacrificing streak. if she could Guarantee she would be the only casualty on their side, she'd suicide bomb the absolute in a heartbeat. Cannot articulate why it's okay for Her to feel that way and not Gale-- she doesn't even have forgiveness or a particular goddess's embrace to look forward to, she's largely Played the Field as far as pantheons go, except for the times she Explicitly pissed off Bhaal as a teenager (on purpose!) and Accidentally became a special favorite of Loviatar. (as a joke.) nothing to terribly pleasant to look forward to. Mostly mumbled mealy mouthed promises that they should keep their options open and that she'd support him no matter what, but it'd make our friends sad if you died, yeah?

she has done zero self reflection and she has learned Nothing, lmao.

very funny that as soon as you get into the Shadowlands you can pout at Shadowheart for not paying as much attention to you anymore :(((((, so I Did click those options just to get rid of them even though Adana would a) rather die or b) have been drugged, tied up, and edged for HOURS before she would even DREAM of being needy like that.

Raphael being at the inn was fun! Adana has grown enough confidence that her response to seeing him was Rage and not fear. Adana is the way that she is because she has Deliberately reforged herself into the sort of person she so desperately wanted to Save Her as a child, so Raphael w Mol and Marcus w Isobel both IMMEDIATELY hit berserk buttons for her. No, fuck you, GET OUT, get away from them, I'll kill you.

Karlach approves!

Isobel is VERY funny, I didn't expect her to come across as so bratty or showboaty at all from what I'd seen on my dash and in wiki diving, but I and Adana were both quite charmed by the funnee ladee, I like her quite a lot. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised though, takes a fair amount of ego to Pull a demigod, lmao.

and now i have to go back and talk to everyone and everything at the inn before going to Isobel bc i just sprinted there and missed a Lot, whoops.

[manyothermusingsofmine]

Quick Step || Drabble

Fandom: Xmen

Warnings: None (let me know)

Wordcount: 3013

Summary: Miranda got upgraded to a new opponent and uh she's having A Time TM about it.

Cause trying not to love you, only makes me love you more

------------------------------------------

She had about ten more minutes before she actually needed to be in the danger room for the session she very much didn't want to have. Clutching onto the staff she had recently been given at Gambit's recommendation, Miranda was trying to strong will herself into not just turning the other way when a voice came from somewhere behind her

'Sugar? What are ya standing by the door for, actin' like it's gonna sprout teeth to bite ya?"

Sure, have Rogue see this, that would definitely stop this feeling of being pathetic that rang through her torso. Shooting a sideway glance at Rogue, Miranda clung onto the staff like it was her only lifeline left in the in the world.

"… Think there's still a chance for me to book it to the nearest church and beg for sanctuary? Do they still do that?"

"Thought ya weren't religious?"

"I'm not, but this might be the day that changes."

Rogue rolled her eyes at that, though it was far more out of amusement than anything else. If the girl really thought she could just vanish out of an appointment like this she was sorely mistaken. Watching as Miranda made absolutely zero progress in getting a move on, she placed her hands on her sides.

"Oh for heaven's sake, girl, just go in. Standing 'round here worrying what's waiting for ye on the other side of the door ain't helping anyone, now. Go on, or need I make ye go myself?!"

“Okay, okay, fine, damn; I get the hint!” Miranda snapped, her response fueled by her nerves.

Entering by herself instead of being dragged in by another resident of the mansion didn't mean she entered the danger room with any more confidence to her, and whatever she did had sank a little at seeing Kurt stand there. Yeah, okay. Facing a swordsman. What could possibly go wrong? Aside from just about everything.

"Och, meine Freundin, you seem even paler than usual. Are you feeling alright?"

"As alright as anyone can feel having to face someone with three swords."

"That I didn't bring."

".... Come again?"

He crossed his arms over his chest, clearly feeling at ease in the room as he claimed his space there, tail lightly and calmly swishing around him. He looked at her with a light smile on his face; was that because he was glad she showed up when she really felt like bolting several times over before even starting?

"I'm not bringing swords to a staff fight; that doesn't seem very fair with you being a beginner."

Miranda quirked an eyebrow at that, taking one hand off the staff so she could twirl it with the other, easily making it go airborne and catching it on the way down. With a similar ease she flipped it over her shoulders, letting her wrists rest on the staff while shifting her weight to her hip.

".... Not that much of a beginner. Impressive."

"Yeah well," she huffed, "turns out Gambit's favorite variety of lies is 'by omissions,' so I guess he got us both there. If you didn't bring swords, what did you bring?"

"Myself."

She blinked twice at him, not really following where he was going with this whole thing. If this was meant to be some kind of weapon training, then him not having any didn't seem fair either. He said nothing, merely shifting to a position where he held out his hand, gesturing at her to come and attack. Okay. sure. She could do that. Could she? Did she want to?

"Well, wait, hold on a minute. Just exactly what is off limits here? Are we using our powers?"

"I'm not."

"How wonderfully vague that leaves me on my end, but fine, and you sure you don't want to run out and grab a weapon? This hardly seems reasonable if I'm supposed to attack an unarmed-"

"Miranda," how did he manage to sound both so polite and so firm at the same time- However he did it, it shut her up immediately as he continued; "you're stalling."

Okay, fine. Actually, not fine; she didn't want to do this if he was unarmed from the start. Maybe that was why her attack was so halfhearted that Kurt avoided it completely by smoothly stepping aside.

"Ach, Drifting, please, I do expect a little better from someone who I've been told 'fights like a stray street cat once cornered'. Gambit's words, not mine,” he ended as a conclusion, and though it was clearly meant to be critique on her choice the tone of his voice was calm and polite

A deep sigh left her, as she slowly turned back around to him. That had been incredibly easy to dodge, but.....

"I don't want to hurt you."

She was so soft and genuine about it that Kurt couldn't help but feel his heart flutter at it ever so slightly, but he shook it off because in reality, that made the root issue clear. What if the opponent didn't give her the luxury of that choice?

"We deal with more than just Sentinels eager to destroy us. Sometimes it's other mutants we have to fight, for a myriad of reasons. If we happen to need to restrain or help a mutant who's just discovering their mind control abilities, there's a high chance you'll end up fighting someone you don't want to face off against. I want you to feel like you can hold you own in a situation like that; for your own sake."

He had been calmly and slowly approaching her, in no rush to be anywhere as he gave her a soft, reassuring smile. As soon as he felt like he had eased her mind a little, mischief started to mix itself into the smile.

He grabbed onto the staff, pushing backwards with enough force and direction to make her spin around. Getting his hand in between her and her grip on the weapon he easily twirled her hand around until it made her let go of the staff, gently pushing her off balance and claiming the weapon for himself by grabbing hold of it with his tail. As she wobbled for a moment to regain her footing, he calmly held the staff to his shoulder like it was the lower part of an umbrella.

"Besides," he said, an airy tone to his voice in order to lighten the mood, "I sincerely hope you don't assume I got where I am just by batting my eyelashes at the right people. I appreciate that you don't want to hurt me, truly; but I've been through far worse than a danger room fight with a newcomer."

"... they just gave me that," Miranda huffed, realizing how much of a completely valid call out that was as the heat of shame burned in her cheeks, "the staff."

"I'll be honest, I don't feel much for seeing you claw and bite your way out of a fight to the death today. You don't want to hurt your friend? Disarm them instead."

She exhaled sharply, something in her attitude towards this whole thing changing. At the very least, he deserved to be treated with the same respect she had for any of the Xmen and the genuine hard work they put in- and for her to put in the effort as well.

But charging with the appropriate valor did nothing as he blocked her, redirecting her energy by twisting, turning and flowing all with the pure grace of a gymnast. He guided her along his back, half spinning her by the end to throw her off balance once again, with her desperately trying to stay on her feet. Tossing the staff into his hand, he used his tail to spin her back around his way.

"I do have to say," he started, blocking her hand as it reached towards the weapon and easily guiding her backward by moving his feet in between hers so she had no choice but to back up, "our Cajun Freund was right about one thing-"

Hooking his foot right behind one of her heels he fully tripped her up, only to easily and gently catch her with his tail so she didn't actually fall flat on the floor

"Your footwork is really poor."

For a moment she didn't respond, needing to comprehend just how easy it had been for him to change her trajectory like he had- and how all of a sudden it actually sank in just how physically capable he was- had she really never noticed before just how much power he held behind his kind nature and gentle touch? She tried to ban the thought out of her head and resummon her focus

"... Okay, first of all, he called it horrendous. Secondly, how am I supposed to overpower you when you could easily throw me across the room if you wanted to?!"

"I was trying to be nice about it; and it has nothing to do with brute strength. Here," his tail pushing her back up on her feet while he held his arm out to her, "let me show you. Put your wrist against mine. The opposing one."

She wanted to give some kind of dry remark to that, but the soft look in his golden eyes made it die down in the back of her throat and she just sighed, following his instructions. He simply and slowly showed how he rolled and hooked his hand over her wrist, giving it little choice but to go in the direction he wanted it to turn.

"Try it."

She mirrored what he did, surprised when his wrist reacted much the same way and obeyed the direction she send it in.

".... And how do I know that's not you going easy on me to give me a false victory?"

"Because I would never patronize you like that. It has nothing to do with strength and all with how to block and dodge. As for Gambit, minus the decorative ways he uses to asses you, he is right. You leave your flanks wide open, your footwork needs quite a bit of help, and for a mutant so dependent on her peripheral and perception you tend to focus so hard your mind becomes a one way track dead set on completing the task at hand. Which begs the question; how did you beat Gambit?"

"By playing dirty?"

"By taking enough time to think about your plan of attack. When put under pressure you have enough insight to whisk yourself away from the line of fire to assess what your plan of attack should be. You need to start doing the same for your defense. I truly don't care how dishonorably you get out of any given fight you're in; I just want you getting out. Alive. Because I don't want to see you hurt."

Her gaze went to the ground, a small sigh leaving her as she knew he spoke the truth with the same kindness he always possessed, and her breathing seemed to ease up a little when his feedback came caveated with compliments.

"Und so," he said as he easily stepped back, twirling the staff in his hand, "challenge still stands. Want this back? Disarm me."

Okay, he knew that was never going to happen, right? ... Eh, it was worth another try if she followed his instructions and advice.

Though knowing what she was doing and what she was up against didn't mean it was suddenly easy for her to copy him. Sure, she now managed to actually turn the tides a few times, making his limbs bend to the direction she wanted to go instead of being rag dolled around with no control over the situation, but her staff remained tantalizingly just out of her reach, constantly pulled away from her grasp as she felt like she was just about to actually reach it.

Kurt even managed to use it against her, guiding the staff along her lower back and grabbing onto the end he wasn't holding yet before pulling her in and closing what gap was left between them. He had her caught- did he?

Ignoring the way her heart had skipped a beat when they were suddenly chest to chest, she seemingly trapped herself further by pulling her arms in close and dropping them down, but it was only to twist and hook both around his hands as she gave a sharp pull upwards.

He dropped the staff; and thats where she realised she had miscalculated where he would drop it. It pretty much immediately rolled under her own feet, completely tripping her up. Kurt reacted faster; grabbing onto her wrist and pulling her back the way she came- as her own feet crisscrossed each other he gave her a slight twirl and caught her in his other arm as if they had ended a dance routine in a dramatic dip.

"Don’t worry; I've got you."

Dance- it really had felt like that, and not like a slow waltz which seemed like the more logical choice for the resident German. It had felt much more like a ballet routine with a partner, or- or a tango.... When had this room become so incredibly, uncomfortably warm? She found herself suddenly, genuinely, deeply concerned that he could somehow hear her heartbeat as it raced in her chest and almost seemed to throb against her ribcage. That was just from the exercise and fear of falling at the end, right? Right?!

"Miranda?"

"Please don't drop me."

She mentally facepalmed at just how damn obvious of a request that was. Of course he wasn't going to drop her; if he didn't care about keeping her from falling on the ground he wouldn't have caught her in the first place

"I won't," he answered in a soft, warm tone, gently pulling her back up, paying it little mind that she held onto his other arm as she still felt wobbly on her feet.

'We are so close together right now; it would be so easy to kiss him,' and at that thought from somewhere in the back of her skull her entire brain just absolutely panicked.

She tapped the arm she was holding three times, handing the victory to him. Before he could see how the heat was tinting her face red, her invisibility switched on as it finally realized it had to do damage control on the situation, all while her brain was somewhere in the middle of just panic screaming and hard crashing and- She had to get out of here. Now.

 

Shoving her foot under the staff on the floor as she walked towards it, she smoothly kicking it up and grabbed it while b-lining it for the door; hitting the button to open the mechanical door with her fist.

"Miranda," she heard him call after her, "are you alright?"

God, he sounded so sweet and concerned it almost felt criminal to- would some braincell deign to formulate a damn response instead of leaving him hanging like that?!

"... Uhuh," she responded, sounding as if she was in a daze, and she hoped that later on that would help in playing the whole thing off as another bout of nausea and vertigo instead of- Her mind almost hissed at her to not repeat it, slipping out the door and finding somewhere to hide out until her heart stopped feeling like it wanted to leap out of her chest.

Kurt just stood there, gaze to the side for a moment as he thought of what happened and what made her rush out like that all of a sudden- Oh. Uhm…

As red heat mixed with blue fur, the slightest hint of purple dusted itself onto his cheeks. Maybe he had overstepped some boundary by how close this fighting style required people to be. If that was the case, he better apologize to her about it later. Or now. Sticking around here wasn't going to help much either way. He waited until the heat in his cheeks left, opening the door only to immediately run into Gambit. Wait, into who?

"... Weren't you supposed to be otherwise occupied?"

"Oui," Remy calmly responded, arms lazily draped over his chest as he stepped out of the way and leaned against a wall, "in about an hour or so- Did Gambit fail to mention that?"

"Wh- Oh, are you for real?! What was this whole set up for, then?!"

"Gambit does genuinely want your opinion on her skills, is all."

"... Well, it's as your own commentary says; flanks, footwork, one track mind. But she's a quick learner, once she's willing to listen and stops putting herself down."

"So can you help her?"

"Of course I can," Kurt answered with a small smile, as Remy barely moved from his spot while observing the blue mutant. The Cajun couldn't keep a small amused huff of air from escaping him, only slightly distracted by something rather telling.

"Well, if you're wanting to be ‘professional teacher lingo’ about this," and with his index finger, middle finger and thumb he grabbed onto Kurt's tail to stop it from wagging like it was, "you gotta stop doing that, mon ami. It's giving you away."

As it went from happy puppy wagging to cat deeply offended you dared to touch them, Gambit let go as soon as he felt the tail giving even the slightest hint that it was going to yank itself back, lest it would fling him down the corridor instead.

"Let go," Kurt said firmly while pulling his tail back to himself, "don't you have somewhere better to be?"

"Don't you?"

".... Shut up," and with that Kurt disappeared in a puff of purple smoke to get out of the conversation, leaving Gambit there laughing to himself.

"Ai, mon ami, sounds like Drifting is starting to be an influence on you. In more ways than one," he said just to himself now, before pushing himself off the wall and leaving to tend to his own business.

[haneys]

whenever i start wondering whether I really could have did i think of this one old memory that I can for some reason still t remember so clearly, it was the day of my first communion sacrament, my mom and dad were getting me ready in the upper floor of my grandparents house where I lived, and thruout that whole time i couldn't stop "thinking" (or rather hearing) swear words, threats and other awful things ring in my head. And I was so scared and stressed over it because you have to be pure for rhis sacrament as of course u can't take a communion if youve sinner, but i couldn't make it stop and i started crying because i thoight that now I can't attend. I told my mom what was happening, and to calm me down she told me it's okay, I'm just stressed and it's satan messing with me because he doesn't want me to get mt communion, and that it's not my fault and I'm good to go. And I went ok, satan, got it :) 👍 it did calm me down because I was like it's okay these bad thoughts don't define me, but also i like internalized this Satan thing because since then I thought there were demons possessing me or tempting me 😭

[newtonsheffield]

Hi! I was the Hair Massage anon. Thank you so much for that it was beautiful 😭😭. The Good Girl AU really just wants me to throw fic/Drabble ideas at you based on so many Indian things. But you have so many asks! Just one more. If you don’t mind. So I don’t know how many people do this but I did this in my wedding. When the bride does henna on her hands (and arms) it’s really detailed and hidden in the design is the grooms name which he needs to find a cute wedding night game so he can get “it”

WAIT!

Is this a thing?! This is so cute! Oh My god, I can't, White people, our weddings are so basic.

Anyway, as we know it's my opinion that Good Girls Kate and Anthony had a traditional wedding (Just imagine Anthony's face when he realises that they don't get to kiss at the end bless him)

So yeah, let's do it

"Do you want to have a traditional wedding?"

The question from Anthony's lips had pulled her up short, in the early days of their engagement when they'd bee wrapped up together, Kate about to graduate university, Anthony finishing his apprenticeship, no real effort being made to plan anything just yet.

"Traditional for you or me?"

He'd rolled his eyes at that, "Well your Dad's yet to issue me with betrothal paperwork yet so he's already behind there."

"You mean you're not getting any money for marrying me? Tragic."

His smile was still the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, "Yeah you're worth zero cows apparently, we're gonna have to buy milk forever now."

Silence had fallen over them for a moment, stupid happiness, radiating from them, but it had gnawed at her stomach.

"Are you serious? You'd have a Hindu wedding if I asked you?"

And she wasn't sure why she was surprised, Anthony had always been so ready to embrace her culture, all the parts of herself, even sometimes more than she had. He got excited about Diwali and Holi, and had the days marked as off so they could visit her family, knowing it was important to them. He sat with her grandma who gently explained traditions, his eyes alight with curiosity. He'd even said at Holi this year, when his eyes had got stuck on a young family, the tiny baby laughing delightedly as the colours hung in the air

"I can't wait to do this with our kids."

And it had caught in her throat.

While he might not act like it, his family was old money rich and white and steeped in tradition, and he had to know that this would raise a few eyebrows amongst is more distant relatives.

"Well my family isn't really that religious, and I've been to weddings with your family, this is important to them. But if you don't want to, then we don't have to, we can do the macarena and form a conga line, I just wanna be married to you at the end of it." He'd looked so earnest, his eyes bright, his hair braided on the top of his head and tears had pricked at her eyes.

"My Grandma is going to love you even more now."

So they'd started planning, Anthony's eyes alight with curiosity, Violet curiously following Mary's gentle instruction her own gentle curiosity nearly bubbling over.

And then it was done, over in what seemed like a flash, Mary helping her dress in the most intricate Sari she'd ever wear in her life, The tears in Anthony's eyes when he saw her walking towards him, is hand tight on her as they'd taken the first seven steps of their new life together, his little wink as she'd lain the flowers against his chest, both their families cheering as turmeric hung in the air and the rice showered down on both of them. His smile so beautifully, perfectly content, just like her own.

"This is really pretty."

They'd snuck out the side just for a minute, one minute alone before being engulfed by their families again.

His finger was tracing the intricate design running over the palms of her hands, tickling up her forearms. "My Mum and the girls said it was fun."

He'd been so surprised when she'd mentioned casually that his Mum and sisters would be at the mehndi party almost as though he had been worried they'd be shut out of it. The groom's family always comes it's nice. Kate had said , before he could try and thank her.

Kate smiled, "It was fun, though sitting still for four hours was a little bit of a challenge."

"You've never done it like this before." He was staring down at it in the dim light outside so curiously, one of his arms wrapped around her waist, the other turning her hand over curiously.

"Well I wasn't the bride before." She rolled her eyes, resting her chin against his shoulder, "The darker it is the more you love me."

Anthony huffed curiously, "Well then I don't think it's dark enough."

It was stupid, how much she loved him, how his eyes wrinkled with his smile made her heart beat faster. "Traditionally I'm also not supposed to do any housework until it comes off, so look out for that."

Anthony rolled his eyes, "I already do all the cooking what else are you trying to get out of Princess?"

"And your name's in there."

That stopped him, his eyes flashing brightly, "Where?"

he was turning her hand over pulling her arm away from her body her eyes scanning, and it made her love him even more, his brow furrowed in concentration.

"Ahh but that's the game, Anthony, you have to find it."

He gasped delightedly, "Do you know where it is?"

"Yes, so you can't just pretend to find it." She rolled her eyes.

"What do I get if I win?" He looked like a tiny excited boy, his hair falling in his eyes, and then he gasped again, "No, No, I want a kiss, that's what I want if I find it!"

"I was going to give you a little more than that, but yes Anthony, if you find your name I'll give you a kiss."

"Right, silence please, I need to concentrate." His brow was furrowed, his jaw set determinedly she finger tracing up her hand.

"Katie! Mary's looking for you!" Her Dad's voice had interrupted them, calling across the grass.

Anthony whined, "But I haven't found my name yet!"

trying to tug Kate back as she walked back towards their families, Her Dad laughed, slapping Anthony on the shoulder.

"I spent 5 hours looking for my name when I married Kate's Mum only to discover, they'd forgotten to put it in."

Anthony gasped, looking accusingly at Kate.

"It's definitely in there, I had your Mum do it."

"I'm going to find it!" He called at her retreating back.

"I hope you do!"

If there was one thing to be said for Anthony, he was diligent, even when she tried to slap his hands away while she spoke with her aunties, Anthony's hands were tugging at hers turning them over, his eyes scanning, barely listening.

"He's looking for his name." She explained needlessly,

Anthony's ears turning red when her grandmother hollered, "Have you really not found it yet Anthony?"

And in the end, she was sure it was an accident, She was walking ahead of him, headed towards Edwina a Sophie, huddled in the corner of the room, walking across the dancefloor when he let out a gasp.

"I've found it!" He yelled triumphantly, catching her left hand, spinning her by it so she faced him, his finger tracing the outline of his name, written on the knuckle of her ring finger, just below where her wedding ring would rest forever.

"I found my name!" He called out a little louder so that everyone could hear him over the music still playing, and he looked so delighted, so happily, boyishly delighted, that oddly, Kate felt like she fell in love with him all over again.

'You did."

"and now," He said a little delightedly shuffling closer to her, "I think you owe me a kiss."

Heart hammering in her chest, she leaned up and pressed their lips together lightly, while their family cheered around him.

"You can have the rest of your prize later."

And Anthony's little Whoop! Was truly, her favourite part of the day

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High: The Seven Ep 3

Let’s Split Up and Look for Clues! 

Welcome back to the Seven and the Museum of Adventuring. My previous pronouncement of combat was a little premature but hold tight, we’ll get there. For now, we’re back with Antiope who just saw a glimpse of the Ending of Things (aka, Ending) and is freaking out a bit. She tells the others and they all do various checks to see what they can find out.

Ostentatia casts Commune With City and clocks that there is some kind of abjuration shield magic on the government buildings in town, stopping them from being spied on. She also clocks some lingering undead-ish magic and a weird divination effect on Antiope, specifically on the Aguefort logo of her jacket, like someone scryed on her and just got that she had something to do with Aguefort. At this, Penny reminds her that the only true piece of info they gave Ending when they broke her out is that they were from Aguefort.

Sam with a 19 Insight still feels the connection she and Ant have with Ending because of their spells turned against them in the initial encounter. Yelle does a Perception check (27) and once again doesn’t really get bad, dreadful, menacing vibes. But also, she recognizes that she’s chill with a lot of things most people don’t love. 

Antiope reiterates that she texted Charity that she’s interested in the internship so she can learn more info--even better now that they know the buildings are safe from scrying. Yelle remembers Aguefort’s warning about people watching them and Sam asks Zelda if her “weird boyfriend” (“he’s actually really cool”) is friends with the elven oracle. Zelda says yeah, they’re both friends with Adaine, she can ask about any weird divination stuff. Sam makes sure to specify she should look into TK but NOT Ending, no doubt remembering what happened when she tried to do a spell on her. 

It’s been a big day as Zelda says so they all go to the TGIF-esque Slappy McFinnigans to celebrate (which Sam has problems with--the fact that they’re celebrating I mean, but she’s mainly ignored). They’re quickly kicked out because Katja can’t help herself from trying to brush the mane of their centaur server and they reconvene at the more their speed SlamBurger, where a horse can fully destroy a soda machine to absolutely zero reaction.  Zelda says that Ostentatia was right in that they should all do the quest because it doesn’t close any doors and they have the 2 weeks to figure things out. They all seem a bit more on the same page (though Sam is still pretty frosty towards Ant) and start making plans.

Before they leave, Yelle pulls aside Ant and Sam and says hey, first of all, you two are still linked to Ending from before. Second of all, I know y’all are Going Through It right now and you don’t have to talk about it or make up right away but you need to get your heads in the game and you need to know that you’re both loved and still family. 

Penny, Zelda, Katja, and Ostentatia go back to the museum to try and get more information for their quest. Katja goes to the information desk (horse in tow, of course) and just starts asking information about TK. She’s told that she’s one of the museum’s benefactors and has been missing for years, and hey, do you understand that a museum’s info desk is about where the water fountains and exhibits are, not just random information about the world?

Ostentatia bails her out by calling her over so she can do her plan which is just to walk into the back area like she owns the place. Now, Aguefort students do have a certain level of clearance to be back there and she does have her school ID. But instead of explaining that, she tried to use her Earrings of Diamond Charm to charm the employee she runs into which fails. And then she does a pretty good tag-team lie with Katja about how they NEED to pass a class but that doesn’t fly. Then Ostentatia tries flirting which ALSO doesn’t work. Zelda at this point steps in and just headbuts the dude so they can book it away. I personally would have gone with, “Do you know who we are? We killed the dragon that’s your current main exhibit,” but you know. No backseat adventuring. 

While this is happening, Penny is stealthing like a pro, looking for anything Arcana related. Ostentatia and Katja also did checks (O getting a nat 20) and we’ll go through all their info gathered now. 

Katja basically gets info on TK we kind of already knew. She was a benefactor of the museum. She’s centuries old like Aguefort. She was concerned with consciousness and divinity and specifically how will and divine will manifested, as well as elemental magic.  

Ostentatia gets a lot of info with her Nat 20. She gets a full map to the temple where TK went which is called the Temple of Earth Defiant. The point of the temple is that it’s up in the open air and harsh winds--wind being a symbol of chaos and unpredictability to dwarves--but they still use it as a place to honor their heroes and they rebuild and upkeep it despite the erosion and how hard it is to get there. It’s hallowed from evil and lots of stories about it involve heroes racing there for sanctuary. It was made by dwarves but it’s a pilgrimage site for other primordial beings like goliaths and earth genasi (which is what TK is). There are 3 heroes who have big statues here: Asha Hammerheart (a SUPER dope name I must say), Yvonna of the Sundering Hills , and Kora Ironbrow.

Penny finds that, amongst Kalvaxus’s hoard there were 7 unrecovered artifacts--the Mirrors of the Eidolons (which are the smashed mirrors they found it seems). Eidelons are kind of like the elemental plane version of angels/celestials. They’re primordial (remember Katja saw primordial language on the wall of the dragon cave) and kind of aligned with things like titans and genies. Raw element with no agenda (unlike celestials and demons and such which have a clear alignment which makes up the D&D religious system). It is said by wizards--who look at these things in more of a nuts and bolts way than say clerics who take the fuzzier religions view--that Eidolons are the hands of the gods because gods are beings of spirit--how could they form the physical world. Will of the divine manifested by elemental beings? Sounds right up TK’s alley.

Sam decides she’s desperate enough for information that she calls her mom who she is understandably snippy with. Her mom gives her a contact to talk to when she asks about TK but Sam stonewalls her on show business talk. She tries to play the “mother knows best, you’ll thank me later,” in a kind of Gothel-y way while acting like anything in the past never happened and says Sam is attacking her but when Sam accuses her of neglect, she proves her right by hanging up the phone.

Sam then calls the number and it turns out to be Lola Embers (Fig’s agent) who has been waiting for Sam’s call for ages and wants to talk to her, even though she’s currently chasing her dog across the park. She says she met TK once at a genasi woman networking thing and also says she once saw Charity get into an argument with TK over government funding or not getting a grant or something similar. She then says she’s in a lake trying to get her dog and Sam, being a water genasi who can breathe underwater and also a fundamentally good person even though she’s currently being aggro as hell, goes to the park to help her. Lola assures her that if she’s ready, she’ll help her get new acting gigs and that the world is ready for the new her. 

Yelle meanwhile casts Speak With Plants on some trees near TK’s office and, after a super stoner to stoner conversation, gets a magical footprint trail of where she ran off to when she absconded 12 years ago. 

Antiope (who is in a sports bra because she destroyed her top with the Aguefort logo since that’s what was pinged, revealing in a wild, nat-1 fueled retcon that she got a tramp stamp reading “Leader” in the Red Waste) goes to see Charity to fill out some paperwork, ingratiate herself, and perhaps get some info. Charity has her hot, young, assistant (who Antiope is instantly crushing on) give Ant his shirt (and Charity’s lack of surprise at seeing his 4 horses pulling a chariot tattoo makes the group think they’re def banging). She kind of explains what the Ministry does and Antiope boils it down a bit to snitching on other adventurers. Charity says it’s more of a who watches the watchmen situation and visibly twitches when she has to say the word “snitch”. 

When she takes a second to call Antiope’s dad, she accidentally leaves a tab open on her computer which has TK’s file open (probably up from when the Maidens asked about her earlier). Antiope sneaks a peek and learns that the artifact that TK stole is called the Legendarium Extrodia and it tracks quests. It seems that at some point TK must have had top level access to get her hands on it. It also shows that TK was marked for assassination (which seems like a pretty good reason to get the heck out of dodge). Brennan also says she’s learned enough that she can use the L.E. if she finds it. 

At this point, Yelle tells everyone to come back ASAP so they can follow the magic footsteps. Antiope wants to come but doesn’t want to burn bridges with Charity (or chances with Preston--equally important) so she, at Katja’s suggestion--pretends to have diarrhea and is Nat 20 convincing. Interesting choice for the end of the first meeting with a person you’re crushing on. But Preston is actually pretty supportive as she races out the door as fast as possible.

The Seven follow the footsteps out of Solace and it becomes clear that TK was headed to the dwarven temple Ostentatia learned about. This is a multi-day journey so Cinnamon sings a glorious, magical, horse song and summons mounts for everyone which I will now name because this is obviously the most important part of the episode:

Snowfire - Danielle

Taffodill - Sam

Alagonia - Antiope

Candyheart - Penny

Starforge - Ostentatia 

Strawberry Dancer - Zelda 

Crucial info. 

As they travel, Antiope casts Primeval Awareness and gets that there is something ancient in the mountain. They travel through Pilgrim’s Pass (a village area most travelers to the temple pass through) but find it completely razed to the ground. They investigate. 

With an 18 Survival check, Antiope finds tracks that seem halfway between dog and cat. There are more than 4 legs and it’s hard to tell how old they are because there’s not a lot of rain in the area. They could have been left long ago and been undisturbed. Regardless, these are clearly from monstrosities. On a 26 History Check, Katja knows that this area used to be protected by Blink Dogs (teleporting dogs) but they seem to be all gone now. On a 22 Nature check, Yelle sees a weird feather made out of plant material. It seems like fae stuff but bad vibes. On an 18 Insight check, Sam knows this was a purposeful slaughter.

And on Penny’s 30 Arcana check, oh boy. Penny finds broken common scrawled on the wall in human blood talking about a queen of the mountain who rules the skies. That only the queen may see and none may see themselves. And that the people were told to destroy the seeing glass and did not obey. In from of that message is a bear hide covering something magic. Penny lifts it with reckless abandon and sees tons of mirror shards.

Friendship bracelets! She thinks.

Gotcha bitch, the thing in the mirror says.

Uh-oh.   

Penny calls over her friends to let them knows she may have made a tiny mistake. The group is pretty split between, “Understandable,” and “Girl, WHAT?” In her defense, she did try to cast Friends on the person on the other side of the mirror shards but that’s not enough to stop an entire pack of 50-60 Displacer Beast (magic tentacle cats)/Blink Dog hybrid monstrosities along with the Harpy Queen (voice from the mirror) and her plant feathered harpy minions to start rapidly making their way to their location. 

It is at this point that Ostentatia remembers that abominations and monstrosities cannot step into the temple which means it’s time to RUN. 

And NOW it’s combat time. 

The premise of this fight is that the girls are on their horses, moving towards the center of the temple as fast as they can while fending off the closest enemies. I won’t give an exact play by play but the two highlights are as follows:

Yelle conjures up a bunch of geese with raptor stats (...so normal geese) to swarm the head cat/dog abomination and has to do a truly stunning amount of math for which she is rewarded with SEVENTY POINTS OF DAMAGE. 

Antiope does some insane arrow trickery and gets the Queen Harpy in the wing (which Ostentatia helpfully gets on video so she can show Preston later) and then forces her to take damage as she falls. If not for an extremely lucky Box of Doom nat 20, she may have been down for the count. Antiope still comes away with more than FIFTY points of damage on her though. 

And we end the episode mid-combat! We will catch up on our girls next time!

Superlatives 

Penny: Most Likely to Make Friends During a Hostage Situation 

As a companion to Danielle’s superlative last episode, Penny gets this award for reading or misreading every situation as an opportunity to make friends or make friendship bracelets for the ones she already has. 

Random Thoughts

Did you guys notice that with Katja having Cinnamon and Charity’s assistant being Preston, that’s two of the main pet NPCs from A Crown of Candy?

Antiope’s Reaction to Yelle Saying That Maybe Things Ending Isn’t So Bad: Rail against the dying of the light! Why are you OK with this?

Penny’s Reaction to Yelle Saying That Maybe Things Ending Isn’t So Bad: Entropy is TERRIBLE! Everything needs order!

The greasy cashier’s response to Ostentatia’s flirty, “Come here often?” is “To my job? Honestly no.” Brennan? Chef’s kiss. 

My other fave line this episode is from Sam. “I believe Cinnamon fucks.”

It’s very cute that Penny is like, “I gotta text Riz about this Eidelon stuff!” Not because she wants help. Just so they can geek out together. 

The joke that Brennan didn’t think about the birds is so funny considering all the bird facts in Misfits.

Also re Birds attacking: “They made a movie about this Brennan!” 

Good on Ant for refusing an Aguefort sweatshirt from Charity when offered after the little scrying incident before. Remembering things like this saves lives. 

It has been brought up several times that Ending isn’t necessarily Bad just Ancient and Powerful and I trust Yelle’s vibe check but also, like, a forest fire doesn’t have malice behind it but it can still devastate a city while it clears out dead trees that need to be cleared, you know? Not ready to start wild speculation yet but I am curious. And am similarly curious about the sisters Ending has mentioned. Oh and the parallels of 7 Maidens, 7 mirrors. It’s all there, we just need a little more info. 

Honestly, get you a man who will see you rushing out of a building, loudly claiming to have diarrhea, and instead of being grosses out will just supportively confess his own stomach issues. I wish he was just a little younger cause I want that for Ant. 

I do like that D20 has been playing a little more fast and loose with the RP ep/combat ep format. I think it really helps with story flow. 

In this episode Antiope and Brennan as various non-Zelda NPCs rolled 2 Nat 20s. O rolled one. Ant rolled 1 Nat 1--which was on a self imposed roll to see how she responded to Sephie’s tramp stamp improv. And O may have rolled one for initiative also but I wasn’t sure. 

[crimeronan]

no supernatural au concept i haven’t been able to stop thinking about since considering ronan and opal were once the same age

the lynch family has a reputation.  partly it’s because they’re fucking weird, but let’s be real -- every rural town has its share of characters.  weird farmers are par for the course.  if the lynch family just kept to themselves at the barns, no one would know they existed.  however niall lynch is a swaggering larger-than-life storybook hero who loves attention and scandal, so: the lynch family has a reputation

by and large, the household is made up of known entities.  niall, the irishman who never shuts the fuck up.  aurora, the quiet beautiful wife with the bizarrely gorgeous beadwork at craft fairs. declan, the eldest son who’s got one foot in DC and won’t ever look back when he gets there.  matthew, the youngest boy with the enthusiasm and adoration and intellectual prowess of a golden retriever puppy

however.  the lynch twins are largely folkloric

it’s not just that they never seem to appear in public.  it’s that there are a dozen decade-old stories told by knitting folks on their porches that cannot POSSIBLY all be true, including:

the lynch twins set fire to the post office

the lynch twins stole four pallets of soda from the back of a truck unloading at the henrietta general store and drank all the evidence

the lynch twins lured a man into the woods and stabbed him in the leg

the lynch twins helped the local vet’s office coordinate 30 TNR procedures because they’ve befriended a colony of feral cats

the lynch twins trained a rotating cast of corvids to shit on the mayor when he leaves his office every evening

the lynch twins were banned from three local churches after incidents involving a statue of mary, stained glass worth several thousand dollars, and the preacher’s microphone respectively

adam doesn’t give much of a shit about local gossip but has gleaned quite a bit of it when being deferential and polite to middle-aged women at the dollar store.  it takes him a month of attending aglionby to put together that ronan and declan are siblings (they look unbelievably alike, but their body language and speech are SO different) and another week after that to realize ronan’s one-half of the unidentified lynch family variables

“isn’t there another one of him?” adam blurts

declan looks up and blinks, nonplussed rather than smooth for once in his life.  “excuse me?”

adam’s eating lunch and has ended up at a table with declan not because of friendliness, but because declan’s taking a break from his roving cast of intransient social interactions to work on college apps and adam’s getting a head start on homework.  neither is here to make friends.  adam nods across the room at ronan, who appears to be constructing a fully landscaped mountain sculpture out of french fries

declan says “god, i wish” as ronan upends a bottle of ketchup over the fries and causes a volcanic eruption that obliterates everything in the lunch table’s path

that tells adam absolutely nothing but also he doesn’t really care.  later, when he and gansey are friends, and he’s no closer to understanding ronan but much more actively annoyed by him, he asks gansey the same thing

“oh, his sister!” gansey says, and beams.  this at least explains why she doesn’t go to aglionby.  “she’s great.  she’s taught me a lot about what plants want to kill you”

adam can’t decide what to make of this.  once upon a time he’d think that the affection of someone like gansey predisposed the mysterious lynch sister toward being like declan, but it turns out gansey reserves that ebullient expression for losers like him and ronan and noah alone, so.  more data necessary

it’s important to note that this isn’t like, occupying a huge part of adam’s mind.  it’s just idle querying because he likes knowing things.  to that end, he asks ronan once if he’d ever met ronan’s sister when adam attended the public junior high.  they’d be in the same grade, right??

ronan gets weird and evasive with some response about how she homeschools with his mom, and adam’s like okay, some religious cult thing with the women running the farm. whatever. not my issue

adam and ronan get slowly closer over time, etcetc, you know how it goes.  eventually adam's invited to the barns.  his first few visits are normal.  suspiciously normal.  aurora is loving and gentle in a way that makes adam skittish - probably more due to his own issues than any Actual malevolence, but who knows - and there is zero mention or sign of a girl living there

it doesn’t Really bother adam, but it kind of bothers him.  less because he’s dying to meet her and more because equations that don’t add up make him nervous.  his running list of theories include 1) she doesn’t exist 2) she’s dead 3) she’s at some elite boarding school for girls in connecticut 4) she’s an emancipated minor 5) she’s not an emancipated minor but has run away anyway 6) she’s a fugitive from justice 7) she’s in prison 8) she’s dead but, like, worse this time

adam carefully and subtly raises his concerns to ronan by asking, “so is your sister being tortured in your attic or what?”

ronan, reasonably, is like, “the fuck?”

adam’s like, “look, all i’m saying is that when a twin goes missing in a story and no one seems to care, something sinister’s afoot.  that’s all i’m saying here.”

ronan’s like, “say the word ‘afoot’ again.  you sound like gansey.  come on”

he takes adam out for a walk in the woods, which seems like a pretty murdery way to respond.  adam, uncomfortably aware of that rumor about luring people to the woods and stabbing them in the leg, is like okay i’m about to die here.  i’ve uncovered a lifetime movie plot and now i’m gonna be buried in unmarked barrel #457.  what a way to go

this is pretty much confirmed when he gets attacked

he hits the ground before he’s really registered anything beyond a surprise impact.  it drives the breath out of his lungs. he flips onto his back right away.  ronan’s got half a foot of height on him and stupidly long legs so a sprinting escape doesn’t seem viable.  he’s gonna have to rely on the old-fashioned power of fingernails and kicking

he has time to see a pair of blown-pupil eyes WAY too close to his face before the weight disappears from him.  the culprit is a girl, late teens, with hair that’s probably blonder when the matted dirt is washed out of it.  “for fuck’s fucking sake,” ronan is saying, hauling her to her feet and blessedly away from adam’s vulnerable internal organs, “why. WHY.”

“holy shit.”  adam sits up, clutching his chest.  he can feel every bone in his body.  “god. god. god”

the girl is almost as tall as ronan.  she’s dressed in some kind of baggy coverall-ish getup that might once have been an army parachute.  she is not wearing any shoes.  there’s some blood on her face from a recently-opened scab, and also a black speck on one cheek that adam thinks is a smashed fly

“you didn’t jump gansey!” ronan is saying, extremely exasperated.  “why!”

“i didn’t have my hammock yet when gansey first came,” she says.  she does not sound remotely sorry

adam looks up and discovers that there is in fact a hammock stretched between the trees.  it’s one of those heavy-duty camping numbers with thick canvas and a full insect net.  it’s also thirty feet in the air.  there are branches on the way down, but they are very precariously spaced.  adam does not want to know how she parkoured to leap onto his shoulders

“when you snap someone’s neck,” ronan says, “i’m not helping you hide the body”

“who says i haven’t already?”

“the fuck? and you didn’t ask me to help hide the body?”

she darts a few feet away and pulls herself into a tree.  adam watches with slight fascination as she shimmies out along a long branch until it dips under her weight.  as he gets to his feet, trying to piece together his wilted dignity, she rides her makeshift nature elevator down until she’s staring into his eyes again.  hugging the branch like a snake.  absolutely no consideration for how normal human beings behave. it’s almost marvelous

“sufficiently free of my attic, parrish?” ronan asks

“uh, yeah. yep”

“so this is opal,” ronan says

opal flips over so she’s hanging from the branch like a sloth.  then hooks her legs around it and reaches down until her palms are flat on the ground.  cartwheels out of the tree like a particularly feral acrobat.  adam jerks back to avoid being smacked by a faceful of twigs at the whipcrack slingshot of the branch bouncing back

opal pulls a pocketknife from one of the folds in the DIY parachute sewing machine tick protection onepiece from hell.  adam eyes her warily

“opal, this is parrish. or adam. whichever. don’t stab him”

“god,” adam says again

opal beams.  she opens the pocketknife, but all she does is start cleaning bits of plaque from between her teeth with the tip, which is somehow so much worse than stabbing.  adam looks at ronan and finds him pinching the bridge of his nose.  it occurs to adam that this is the only time he’s EVER seen ronan express any sense of embarrassment in any social situation.  ronan has no sense of propriety.  adam didn’t know he was capable of feeling embarrassed

he immediately likes opal just for that.

“yes,” opal says, unconcerned, answering a question no one’s actually asked.  “ronan is the normal one”

[lynenspray]

alleyway sunsets

irwens x lynenspray collaboration

seungwan drags them far enough into the alley to muffle the street noise before backing her against the wall, hands steady at her hips. the whole while, there’s a mischievous smile dancing across her face. “you have to stay quiet, seul.”

(wenseul, cunnilingus, semi-public sex)

— 

europe is a dream. 

seulgi loves it. there’s just something about the cobblestone streets, the glowing shop lights, the warm and welcoming atmosphere of being in a new place with the one person she would promise a lifetime and several more with.

she sighs as the sea breeze from the bay caresses her face and lifts up the ends of her hair. seungwan had the right idea to suggest they take a trip to this island; this is the perfect vacation. instead of their schedules being filled to the brim with countless mind-numbing tasks for work, the couple instead had hours and hours together to visit museums, taste the exotic food, and best of all, drink to their hearts’ content. 

“i love it here,” seulgi admits after taking another sip of their delicious red wine. “especially the museum. the black figures juxtaposed with the bright backgrounds are just… jaw-dropping—they’re so different to witness in person. you can really tell the age of the artifacts once up close, all that history.”

seungwan smiles and leans against her side. “yeah?”

“yeah!” seulgi exclaims. “not to mention that those marked the beginning of when their narrative scenes started, so they also tell a story both in religious and daily contexts, and, uh,” she feels her cheeks burn from embarrassment when seungwan keeps her eyes focused entirely on her, an unreadable expression on her face. “am i boring you? i’m sorry—i’m literally just repeating what the museum guide said, too,” she worries with a frown. “i should stop—”

but seungwan interrupts her by snaking an arm around her waist, over her thick overcoat. “what? why on earth would you stop? i love listening to you ramble,” seungwan replies, eyes shaping into crescents as she smiles at her. she smiles at seulgi like she could offer the world in her hands “i think your rambling could actually give me a run for my money, paired up against mine.”

“i don’t think i could ramble that much,” seulgi disagrees, teasing seungwan right back as the younger woman laughs her large, hearty laugh. the kind that made one of her eyes wink close. seulgi will never get enough of that. “no one can beat you at that,” she hums, tucking a few loose strands of the smaller woman’s hair away from her slowly reddening cheeks.

“that was mean,” seungwan scrunches her nose. “but also very true. touché.” she then grins, raising her glass to clink against seulgi’s before sipping from it, seulgi eyeing the slow bob of her girlfriend’s throat and staring at the moisture left on her lips afterwards. “and for what it’s worth,” seungwan’s voice drops to a whisper, startling seulgi as she leans in closer, so close that their noses are almost touching. “i love it here too.”

maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe it’s the fact that they were on holiday in europe. maybe it’s just the fact that seungwan is here with her in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. seulgi thinks any and every country is beautiful with seungwan by her side.

it makes seulgi really, really want to kiss seungwan. by the looks of it and how seungwan’s cheeks are turning rosy and how her eyes are locked in on seulgi’s lips, it seems like she does too. all they have to do is lean forward, tilt their heads, close their eyes and—

“another bottle?”

seulgi quickly jerks away, almost tripping over herself if that was even possible while being seated, and awkwardly laughs in front of the smiling waiter. seungwan just pouts. 

the expression on the waiter’s face lacks judgement, but their eyes do have a knowing glint in them as they gesture to the empty wine bottle on the couple’s table. “shall i?” they ask, the hint of an accent tinting their words.

seungwan takes a look at seulgi, then their half empty glasses, and then decides for them. “this is enough, thank you. in fact,” she says, and seulgi melts at seungwan’s perfect english and the way her arm around her waist tightens. “we’ll take the bill.”

“of course.”

the waiter leaves, but now seulgi is conscious of the hustle and bustle of the people around them, also partaking in late evening drinks after a hot summer day. the city is old and worn in a homey sense and romantic in every way, along every street—seulgi doesn’t blame herself at all for wanting to inch closer to her lover. she wants to feel their sides press together, to have seungwan’s leg over one of her thighs and hold her down, to have seungwan’s fingers card through her hair.

it isn’t because of the alcohol, and it isn’t because of the town set aglow. it’s purely seungwan, and seulgi wants her. she feels the heat of a blush light up her cheeks when seungwan notices the hitch in her breath, holds back a whimper when seungwan’s pupils are blown black and shining as they zero in on her, bites her lip when seungwan leans in close to whisper, “i want to—”

“we hope you had a good evening with us.”

seulgi hides her snort behind a hand when seungwan yelps and hisses out a curse in surprise before she turns to the person to blame; the waiter is back with their bill and looks too amused to be sorry for disrupting their time together. “right, thank you,” seungwan responds before placing cash on the tray, telling them to “keep the change, please,” as the waiter takes their leave and finally leaves them alone. hopefully.

and then seulgi just finds herself staring at seungwan. there’s a slight furrow on her brow when she turns back to the older woman, but it smooths out almost immediately when they find themselves lost in each other again.

“you were saying something?”

seungwan blinks, and seulgi watches the flutter of her eyelashes like it happened in slow motion. it seems like anything seungwan did seemed to catch her attention. 

“before the waiter came and, uh,” seulgi bites back a laugh at seungwan’s slowly growing pout. “—ah, you were telling me something. what did you want, wan-ah?” the taller woman asks, almost breathless from the way the lights shone against seungwan’s eyes and lit up her face.

“you.”

“you want to—me? what?” seulgi teases further, her grin widening when the tips of seungwan’s ears start to pink. “what do you want to do to me, wan-ah? tell me,” she whispers once she’s close enough.

seungwan looks around and is decent enough to notice the children around that could possibly hear their conversation. “i uh, i want to…” she trails off, looking for the words, harshly sucking in a breath when seulgi breathes against an ear and nips at it. “i want to—love—you. can we get out of here?” she barely finishes her sentence before grabbing her glass and chugging the rest of her wine, seulgi following suit. she would follow seungwan anywhere.

they leave their outdoor table with a last smile to the waiter and eventually proceed to walk along the paved road arm-in-arm, seungwan pulling her along slowly at first until her pace quickens, becoming hurried, almost carrying seulgi along with her.

“wannie?” seulgi questions, the frantic stride seungwan set almost unbecoming of her gentle girlfriend. seungwan’s head whips from side to side every few seconds, eyeing the buildings around them, yet the only things seulgi takes note of are the salty sea breeze and the warmth of seungwan beside her. the smaller woman’s next statement knocks some sense into her, however, and the heat pooling in her belly comes alive once again.

“i won’t make it as far as our room. i want to kiss you senseless, i need to have you right now.”

seulgi would have said something else, but instead her mouth snaps shut at the image. of seungwan taking her, right here, against a corner of one of the historic buildings, her hands all over her, her weight pressing against her, seulgi’s limbs becoming useless as her body completely surrenders to the whims of the other woman. 

“here, quickly,” seungwan whispers, inciting a giggle from seulgi. it feels like they’re teenagers again, with their fingers intertwined as they run through the corridors and sneak secret kisses between them sitting under the bleachers. 

“this will do,” the smaller woman decides as they come across a tiny, empty alley that’s hidden from view. the cobblestone path continues inwards, but that’s all that can be seen from where they stand, and unlike other alleys that were wide and commonly used, this was narrow and clean. 

seungwan drags them far enough into the alley to muffle the street noise before backing her against the wall, hands steady at her hips. the whole while, there’s a mischievous smile dancing across her face. 

seulgi can’t help giggling, her arms automatically coming up to wrap around seungwan’s neck and pull her in closer. in the dimness of the evening shadows, she can only make out seungwan’s rose-tinted cheeks and darkening eyes before her own slip close as seungwan presses their lips together. 

the kiss is slow, simmering with the heat of their bodies and the pleasant buzz humming beneath their skin. seulgi tilts her head, sighs, lets seungwan deepen the kiss as she’s pressed further into the wall. somewhere in the midst of it all, she feels seungwan wedge her thigh into the space between her own, and a soft moan slips from her mouth that seungwan is quick to swallow up. 

of course, seungwan knows too easily how to unravel her: the evidence is in how steadily seungwan builds her up, stoking the fire burning inside her until seulgi is practically quivering with need. when her girlfriend keeps her pinned down with her own body and grinds her thigh up into her core, hands deftly sliding up her shirt to cup and squeeze her breasts, seulgi can do nothing but gasp and whine into her mouth, senses entirely overwhelmed.

she isn’t sure where to focus her attention, and she knows seungwan is aware of what she’s doing, of the effect she has on seulgi—there’s a little, telling smile that remains on her lips as seulgi clutches desperately onto her shoulders, legs trembling and almost unable to hold herself up on her own. 

“you have to stay quiet, seul,” seungwan whispers softly, sweetly, lips brushing against seulgi’s. she presses their foreheads together as seulgi pants hot puffs of air between them, though it’s hardly a given reprieve. 

seulgi can feel fingers teasingly circling her nipples over her bra before kneading them firmly, and she keens, chest arching forward into seungwan, who is pressed right up against her. 

her reaction, if anything, only seems to encourage seungwan rather than dissuade her. “can you do that for me, baby?”

for a moment, seulgi finds herself unable to answer, too focused on trying to muffle her whimpers as seungwan’s thigh rocks into her, the friction sending sparks through her veins. a light nip to her earlobe jolts her back to attention then, and she manages to stutter out a shaky “yes.” 

a pleased hum leaves seungwan’s lips. she gives seulgi an affectionate kiss on the nose before finally stepping back, allowing her a moment to try to collect the frazzled bits of her remaining thoughts. 

in dazed confusion, seulgi can only emit a soft noise at the lost contact, but then her throat dries as seungwan sinks to her knees, gazing up at her with dark, suggestive eyes. she whimpers as seungwan’s thumbs press down along the junction between her pelvis and inner thighs, as they slowly spread her apart.

desperately, seulgi grabs at her shoulders. “w-wannie, wait,” she manages to gasp out, and seungwan instantly stills, looking up at her in concern.

“is something wrong? do you want me to stop?” seungwan asks worriedly. 

"no!" she quickly responds, only for the rest of the words to get stuck in her throat. seungwan gives her a confused look, but she remains as patient as ever, infinitely attentive and understanding. 

still unable to formulate words and entirely too captivated by the tender expression on her girlfriend’s face to even try, seulgi simply begins to shrug out of her overcoat and slide it off. understanding dawns on seungwan then, and she gives her an amused but fond smile, taking it from her hands and carefully placing it by seulgi's feet. 

"it’s going to get dirty, you know,” she murmurs as she kneels down onto the fabric, hands settling once more against seulgi’s thighs. 

the touch seems to burn through her jeans as heat coils low in her belly once again, but seulgi only laughs breathlessly. “i don’t mind, i just don’t want you to hurt yourself.” 

seungwan softens immediately. before seulgi has time to react, she feels her thighs being nudged apart by seungwan’s insistent fingers, and a small gasp escapes her. “thank you, seul,” seungwan says gently, a coy smile slowly curving along her lips. “now let’s continue where we left off, yeah?” she leans forward to plant a kiss on her inner thigh. 

“wannie,” seulgi begins weakly, but seungwan just softly hushes her this time. her hand trails up to cup seulgi between her legs, giving her a firm squeeze that has seulgi buckling over with a groan. another hand comes up to pin her hips back, keeping her both from either bucking forward or falling over.

“unbuckle your belt, baby,” seungwan purrs, her eyes never leaving her. sweat drips down seulgi’s forehead as she struggles to comprehend through the heady feeling fogging up her head, but then seungwan gives her another squeeze, and it spurs her forward as she lets out a strangled gasp.

slowly, obedient as always, seulgi begins to undo her belt with shaking fingers. she feels the hand between her legs start to massage her then, fingers digging in through the fabric of her jeans, and seulgi clamps down hard on her lower lip, poorly muffling her whines as shocks of pleasure wrack through her. her thighs tremble from how helpless she feels, completely at the mercy of seungwan’s every titillating touch.

“unzip too, seul, i want these off,” seungwan says lightly, thumb tapping against her jeans, right above her clit. there’s a pleased look on her face as she carefully gauges seulgi’s expression, taking in the way her eyes squeeze shut at her words. 

seulgi complies, of course, fingers dragging down the front of her pants to unbutton and unfasten her jeans. seungwan doesn’t stop kneading her core the entire time, and it leaves seulgi feeling utterly wrecked by the time she manages to completely undo her pants, flushed and quivering. she manages to tug the fabric down at last, but only until just past her hips, before seungwan takes pity on her and helps pull them down to her lower thighs. 

cooing softly, seungwan presses her palm up against the front of her panties, which are damp and sticky with her arousal. the teasing pressure causes seulgi to jerk forward instinctively, sucking in a breath as the tips of her ears redden. “good girl, seulgi-yah,” she hears seungwan murmur. 

almost immediately, her knees go weak as she lets out a gasping whimper. they nearly buckle under herself if not for seungwan’s knowing grip at her hips, keeping her pinned back against the wall just in time. 

seungwan chuckles quietly. “i’ve got you, baby, i’m here,” she soothes, tracing along sharp, narrow hip bones. seulgi shudders with every brush of her hands, shivers still tingling along her spine. she’s panting heavily, feeling all of a sudden too weak, too sensitive. her body is overheating, every nerve inside her on fire.

when seungwan runs her fingers along the fabric covering her underside, seulgi mewls. she doesn’t realize she’s biting her knuckles to muffle herself until she hears seungwan let out a soft coo.

“that’s it, seul.” fingers hook beneath the band of her underwear, slowly beginning to tug them down. “not too loud, or i’ll have to stop. you don’t want that, right?”

coolness kisses along her folds as they’re exposed to the evening air, causing seulgi to suck in a breath. frantically, she shakes her head. there’s a beat of silence, one with still anticipation, before hands settle along her inner thighs and she feels hot air washing over her core, quickly replacing the chill that had begun to set into her skin. the contrast is startling, unexpected; the slightest whimper slips past her lips.

“i think i’ve teased you enough. you’re soaking, baby,” seungwan murmurs. she’s so close that seulgi feels the words against her more than hears them. before she has the time to flush in reaction, a hot, wet tongue slides against her heat, licking up slowly, tantalizingly.

a strangled moan tears itself from seulgi’s mouth, just barely covered by the back of her own hand. she only has a second to recover her bearings before seungwan’s tongue presses up between her legs again, lapping steadily, hungrily at her dripping core. sparks go off behind her eyes as she feels herself getting wetter, the muscles in her abdomen clenching. biting back a breathless whine, seulgi shoots her free hand out to brace herself against the wall, against the sudden onslaught of sensations.

she has no idea whether or not she’s successfully quelling her noises; each wash of seungwan’s tongue over her center, every teasing dip of it into her entrance leaves her reeling, desperately empty and begging for more.

seungwan, who has kneeled between her legs on countless occasions, knows seulgi like the back of her own hand. by now seulgi understands that every move her girlfriend makes against her for her pleasure, every thrust of her tongue and her fingers is deliberate. she could make seulgi scream if she wanted to. and if the mood and the setting were different, she has no doubt that seungwan absolutely would. 

the fact that seungwan isn’t is just because she knows how to show mercy; even with her on her knees, they are both markedly aware of who exactly is in control.

and so seulgi is left to do her best to muffle herself with her own hand, whining quietly and bucking helplessly into seungwan’s mouth, into the relentless thrust of her tongue inside her. fingers scrambling for purchase against the wall, whitened knuckles bitten between her teeth. seulgi pants, feels seungwan lick hotly into her, nose nudging against her sensitive clit. her head knocks backward, eyelashes fluttering wetly. 

the heat coils, builds inside her, mixes with the sweat trickling down the back of her neck. she sees the sun dipping out of sight, a sliver of light disappearing in the vision of her closed eyes, before seungwan’s tongue presses deep into her one last time and seulgi cums hard with a breathless moan. 

her every limb is still tingling as seulgi floats down from a moment of pure-white pleasure; faintly, she’s aware of seungwan still lapping against her, licking up her slick and oversensitive folds as if to not waste a single drop of her release. she whimpers uselessly, at the mercy of the aftershocks prickling up her thighs as seungwan attentively cleans her up. 

“w-wannie,” seulgi stutters weakly between gasping breaths, finally mustering the strength to open her eyes. her girlfriend is looking up at her with a satisfied set to her expression, and seulgi knows she must have watched every single second as seulgi fell apart against her mouth. the thought has seulgi biting her lip, tampering down a sudden ebb of want that pulses through her.

with a final little kiss to her clit that has seulgi jerking forward, seungwan carefully rises to her feet, the same smile that had started all of this once again adorning her face. seulgi can only stare back, still and breathless, as seungwan cups her face, slowly drawing her into a kiss.

of course, as their mouths curve against one another, as seungwan hums pleasantly into her, seulgi can taste herself on seungwan’s lips. it mixes in with the sweetness of seungwan, with the wine that lingers from earlier evening. all of it combined causes seulgi to groan quietly into the mouth joined against hers, hands trembling as they settle around seungwan’s hips. 

when they part, even in the space of a breath between them seulgi can see a gleam in seungwan’s eyes saying they haven’t finished yet. the thumb that glides along her lower lip, dipping into her mouth to trace the ridges of her teeth, only confirms it; a low gasp escapes from her mouth before her lips obediently close around seungwan’s finger, suckling lightly. and she watches as seungwan’s gaze begins to darken once more.

“you were so good for me, staying all quiet when i told you to, weren’t you, baby?” seungwan murmurs, grasping seulgi by the hip, pressing her thumb in deeper. 

seulgi groans around the intrusion, nostrils flaring sharply. she feels seungwan’s body heat bear down on her as she’s pinned against the wall, stomach to stomach with her girlfriend. the brush of fabric against her inner thigh reminds her suddenly of how naked her legs still are, of the thigh easing in between her own to keep them spread apart. the fingers trailing along her pelvis, dangerously near her center, only makes her tremble even more in anticipation.

“such a good girl,” seungwan continues softly, smiling knowingly when a deep flush blossoms across seulgi’s cheeks. her eyes all of a sudden feel watery, and the faint arousal that had been lingering between her legs promptly comes roaring back in full force. “i should give you a reward for being so well-behaved, right, seul?”

seulgi whimpers, nodding timidly around seungwan’s finger. she feels so weak, knees shaky all over again. in the end, her greatest weakness has always been seungwan’s words, seungwan’s praise. knowing she’s been good for her girlfriend, that she’s made her happy—it makes seulgi feel incredibly good too. incredibly proud. happy on a level she sometimes can’t even comprehend.

the palm that cups her center drags seulgi back to the present, and she moans softly, eyelids fluttering, as seungwan gives her a teasing squeeze. “that’s it, baby, come back to me,” seungwan coaxes, beginning to stroke her dampened folds. “you’re doing so well. always so wet and ready for me, hmm? always eager to please, always easy to be pleased. obedient. such a good girl.” 

seulgi mewls desperately, flushed and heated as she rocks into seungwan’s hand. her breath feels caught in her throat, stuck somewhere in her lungs as she gasps and whines around seungwan’s thumb. 

seungwan always knows how good seulgi wants to be. and she’s always telling seulgi how good she is. her words anchor seulgi down, lets her fall into the secure grasp of her girlfriend, who cares for her with such deep-seated sincerity. 

fingers sink into her, long and reaching as they quickly fill her up. seulgi pants out a whimper, spine arching and chest pressing forward, hands trembling as she clutches onto seungwan’s back. when seungwan leans in, the praise comes in whispers, soothing words breathed out against the shell of her ear. 

“look at you, baby, so pretty and full for me. dripping, stretching open for my fingers.” seungwan’s hand pistons in and out of her, smooth and steady, unrelenting. seulgi chokes on a moan, feeling a finger rubbing firmly against her clit. “you like that, don’t you, seul? of course you do, darling. always so good for me.”

for the second time, the muscles in her stomach tighten, and the heat inside her builds up into a roaring flame beneath her skin. a breathless groan leaves her every time seungwan’s fingers slide back into her, and something like stars flash across her vision at the pressure against her sensitive nub. seungwan’s words, her touches, the physical weight of her body holding seulgi down and into submission—it has her shaking on the edge of a cliff, desperate, wanting and waiting— 

seungwan presses into her with one final thrust, fingers curling as she brings her lips to the corner of seulgi’s mouth. “go on, baby,” she coos gently, finally. “let go for me.” 

eyes clenched shut, seulgi tips over, and the waves crash into her as she falls apart in seungwan’s arms with a shuddery, high-pitched cry. 

when her legs finally give out and she buckles forward into seungwan, an arm instantly wraps around and steadies her. seulgi can only pant hotly into seungwan’s shoulder, shuddering with every shallow thrust of the fingers inside her as she rides out her release. 

her every nerve feels overloaded with sensation, electricity tingling up and down her spine. seungwan coos, gently pats her back. “i have you, seul. i’m right here.” 

seulgi can only whimper as she feels seungwan’s fingers leave her. but she stays limp in her grasp, chest heaving for breath. faintly, she’s aware of her underwear being pulled back up her hips and then her pants soon after; the click of her belt buckle follows a few moments later, along with seungwan's shifting to pick her overcoat off the floor.

a soft kiss is pressed to the side of head, and seulgi blearily tilts her face back to look up at seungwan’s beaming smile. “how do you feel?” she asks gently, curling a stray hair behind seulgi’s ear.

“really good,” seulgi whispers with a happy sigh, returning seungwan’s hug. she finally has enough strength in her legs to hold herself up again, and she takes the opportunity to straighten up and then nuzzle her nose against seungwan’s. the movement elicits a faint laugh from the younger woman, and seulgi feels her heart soar. “do you want . . . your turn now?”

seungwan only snorts. “there’s no rush,” she replies. “we can continue this later.” she leans back in seulgi’s arms to begin patting down her hair, straightening her collar and softly caressing her face. “besides, it’s already dark out, seul.”

seulgi answers with a hum as seungwan steps away; the chilly air hits her all at once as soon as she leaves her side. the absence of seungwan’s heat makes seulgi even more conscious of how it felt to have seungwan in her arms, pressed up against her. she wants more of her. and seungwan doesn’t deny her when she invades her lover’s space again for another kiss, and then another, and then another.

“not here, love,” seungwan cuts her off with a giggle. when seulgi leans back the moonlight curves over seungwan’s features in a way that makes her glow. “we have a warm bed waiting for us. yeah?” seungwan gives a final kiss before stepping back out into the street with seulgi by her arm.

a soft bed. dim lights. seungwan’s moans echoing throughout the room.

“seul? hey—!” seungwan laughs now that it’s seulgi’s turn to tug her along, weaving in between the crowd, excited to get her alone and have her way with her now.

[alovevigilante]

Me: Ok. I’ve made an executive decision on behalf of all of us...

Me also: are you an executive?

Me: yes.

Me also: at what company?

Me: ours. Yours and mine.

Me 3: and mine too!

Me: yes, at threes company, ok? Will you just listen to me? (The other me’s sit, silent) thank you. Now, we have all come to terms with the fact that we’re 46 and still not sure where the hell we fit in in society, let alone a career to help aid it, right?

Other me’s: yes, Agreed, (hub hub etc...)

Me: ok, good. Well, not good, but yes, we all concur. Now, we, collectively, are a fucking mess, so I propose this: we start from scratch. At zero point, ok? Ok! Great!

Me also: um, question?

Me: yes?

Me also: I don’t mean to be a contrarian or anything, but we’ve been here on earth now for 46 years, and we’ve experienced a butt ton. So, how do you just scrap it all, and have that be something that’s widely accepted by society as a whole?

Me 3: yeah! Cause I saw this one “I love Lucy” where she couldn’t even audition for a tv show without having some experience.

Me: yeah, but we’re completely walking away from the entertainment industry...

Me also: yeah, but what are we going to do? Walk into a different profession, let’s say, being an astrophysicist, and they say, “hey lady, where are your degrees and your on the job training, & oh, I see here on your non resume that you have never even taken a physics class. Were you in a coma for 50 years or something?” And then we’ll look like an asshole.

Me: good point. So, since we can’t start at a zero point, how do we make life ok from where we’re at if we’re feeling lost and confused about what to do next?

Me 3: I dunno.

Me also: well, maybe we can mediate.

Me: eh. You feel like that?

Me 3: not particularly. Me also?

Me also: I was hoping one of you would do it for me...

Me: no.

Me 3: no.

Me also: fine. Any other ideas?

Me: well... how about thinking about shit.

Me also: that’s what got us in this mess to begin with!

George Carlin: hello ladies! May I be of some assistance here?

Me 3: why not? We’re plum out of ideas...

George: ok, well, let’s simplify a bit, Kari, singular, let’s chat.

Kari: hey George.

George: love the pic you choose to rep me.

Kari: yeah. You’re being a lil Italian when you talk with the garlic clove shaped hand you got going there. 🤌 🧄 🇮🇹

George: Yeah. I’m diggin it. But you know, in your mind, I’m one of the reasons you’re here in this ass place.

Kari: you are? how do you figure?

George: people don’t like the fact that you write on behalf of the deceased.

Kari: well, Tim burton did it in beetle juice and a lot of folks love him..

George: ok Kari, can I be Frank... Sinatra-like with you?

Kari: I dunno, can you?

George: yeah. Just pretend I’m sporting a fedora, a cigarette in one hand, and throwing my jacket back over my shoulder with the other looking at you coyly.

Kari: ok... if you want to... but is the cigarette in his pocket? Cause if it’s lit, that shits gonna hurt his Netherlands eventually....

George: (like Sinatra) no. Now listen up, baby, it’s not normal to write on behalf of a dead person that was not a character, and that whom was once alive. People get touchy about it. We have friends still alive that knew us and probably don’t dig it.

Kari: I see.

George: so it seems like we’re at a crossroads here. What do you want to do about it?

Kari: do about what?

George: your writing! It’s freakin everyone out! Kari, look, you know how normal Hollywood is, ok? They are all normal, non creative, in the box gladly thinker kinda people...

Kari: they are?

George: yes!!! Come on, keillor, get with the program! You are too far fetched for these folks! They want normalcy, and sameness, and only all the shit that’s ever been shat!

Kari: George, are we talking about Hollywood California, here? Or Hollywood podunk nah? Because Hollywood California is where all the creatives go to create!

George: right! And guess what, Kari Keillor! You are not welcomed in Hollywood, California! They have a sign up with your picture on it at the airport that says, “beware! No to this woman! Too much with the weirdness! She writes dead people!”

Kari: I write live people too... hey, do I have a cowboy hat and a mustache on for my mugshot on that sign?

George: nice one Cookie Monster! Well, Keillor why not?! You may as well, because this story has as much validity as any other story you make up and make worse in your head cause you’re sensitive about of your writing...

Kari: you’re the one that said all that shit! You planted it in my head!!!

George: so I did, but remember, I’m a facet of you. So, decide. Is there any validity to what I/you said?

Kari: how the hell should I know?! I haven’t been in lax recently...

George: right! So you never know until you try talking to some people.

Kari: I’ll call the airport... Listen, George, I’ll be perfectly Frank Sinatra with you now, ok.?

Don rickles: no mere woman can be like ole blue eyes...

Kari: Shut your misogynistic, ass-kissing pie hole, Pickles.

Pickles rickles: oh fuck... she does it to me every time...

Frank Sinatra:, you tell him, baby!

Kari: I’m 46. (Back to George Carlin) Anyway, look George, I have had a few successful people from my entertainment past either shun or block me for no apparent reason, so I’m pretty sure that I’m not well received again, for whatever reason... probably because I wrote the truth about a second city class I took when I was 16, about the current state of snl which I am completely unfamiliar with because I do not watch it, and the way comedy has changed or not over the last many years. Come to think of it, maybe it was because I love frank oz, and frank was mad cause I wrote that belushi John was teasing him and calling him an asshole, another ironic statement because clearly frank oz, NOT an asshole, was many of the muppets for years, and Frank is one of my idols! (Not a true central religious figure to me, but someone I admire a lot...)

Frank Sinatra: who loves ya, baby??

Kari: (to Frank) kojak. (Back to herself) Or it could be because i called bill murray, the beloved patron saint of comedy, an asshole like me, yes, I said like ME, out of jest and irony, because yes, he cared about the kid in meatballs making friends, ok?! That’s probably it. & yes, i was kinda stoned when I wrote it, and also yes, I still can’t figure out why the movie was ducking named “meatballs”, cause there wasn’t an Italian to be seen in it! Ok?! And come to think of it bill as Peter venkman in ghostbusters 2, written in part, by him I think but let’s just say yes cause it supports my point, called all of New York City and it’s tri state area, all 3 million people, miserable assholes, and they took a head count, & they still (probably mostly) all love him! & that shit was good (I love that movie so much) and it was made in 1989, and that was a long ass time ago, ok? And some of those people, have procreated since then, and again, they all love bill Murray and now those “miserable asshole’s” kids, ALSO love Bill now! Double the miserable assholes! Why?! Because he’s funny, and much like me when I’m being tongue and cheek, he didn’t mean for people to take the shit he says seriously! See for yourself! https://youtu.be/t1gkRAWvxOs (1:15 on)

So yes!!! I just think people are not into that kind of talk from me and me alone, even though it wasn’t coming from a mean or spiteful place. It was coming from a place of love for my craft, and of both frank oz, and bill Murray. The rest, as I say once again... I dunno....

George: Kari, frank just told you he loves you, and you blatantly ignored him...

Kari: no, he asked who loved me. He didn’t say he loved me.

George: Keillor, stop being so mean to the dead crooners, ok?

Kari: pickles isn’t a crooner! He’s a ye olde well paid curmudgeon who made fun of everyone like a jerk fach.

George: um, Kari...

Kari: no, ok? No! The difference between me and pickles, besides everything under the sun other than the fact we’re both human, is the fact that I am pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of the way we are set up as society, and wanting to heal it within myself to make it a more palatable world for me and my family and friends and acquaintances to live in. And pickles thought making fun of people was ok. What royal lineage did pickles come from that he’s able to rip on everyone the way he did? And even if he was of a royal bloodline so fucking what?! And dude got paid to be mean! And normal people made him rich and famous! And how did that become prevalent, let alone celebrated in this world?! Roast em! Yes! Hilarious.

Dean Martin: oh noooo... hey, listen pally...

Kari: dean, don’t get me started, ok? Cause I like you, I really do, but you know how I feel about that shit... Listen, Dean, you left a legacy here that was mostly great, but in my opinion needs a lil tweaking. Instead of “roasts” which people do to this day, and I can’t see how it can make the honoree feel anything other than like major ass, we should have “toasts” (copyright Kari keillor 3/19/21 actually before this date but I never published publicly...)

Pickles rickles: toasts?!? What is THAT supposed to mean?!

Kari: it means, my curious lil ornery pickles, that instead of roasting someone and being a mean rotter egg to them, you can “toast” them. Cheers to you, honoree, we salute you, in a hilarious way, by being honest about you but not vicious, viper like, and cruel. It’s where everyone laughs together cause it’s not a character assassination, instead of ripping on someone. It’s being funny, and yes, in a KIND and uplifting way. Where you actually celebrate the person being honored. Now, will that take a lil more brain power then the go-to usual jerk fach? Yes. But, it’s a challenge I hope everyone will accept for the good of all of us. Cause I guarantee that no one walks out of a roast feeling great. And if they do, cause they thought they killed or whatever, they probably did. And not in a good way. And that, again, is ass. No one wins. It’s a short lived feeling, the feeling of “one upping” a person. It never makes you feel better about you in the long run.

Dean: I see. I think I’ll go work on my volare now...

Kari: see?!? Now THAT I like! It’s not at anyone’s expense!

George: oh shit.... kari.... Why do you give a fuck about all this?

Kari: you know why George? Cause this has become our accepted collective energy! The haves and the have nots! Take away your money and what have you got?! Who are you, without the people who have made you who you are?! People, make other people in the 3D reality we live in. So take away everyone’s cash money, homes, clothes, and all the cars, and all the shit, and what do ya got? A bunch of naked humans starring at our different body bits, ok?! We’re All the f’n same. So think about it. What are we each individually contributing energetically to the whole of us? What message are we sending the next generations In our every day lives? I’ll tell you what message. Whatever we feel about ourselves individually both good and bad. THAT’S what energy we all give, and receive from one another. That’s what we’re teaching the kids. They model themselves after how we feel, and how we choose to think, and how we decide to act toward others. So let’s all collectively recognize that, and how we treat other human beings and wake up first inside ourselves then beyond ourselves so we can all make the whole, better.

I am not an asshole or a human joke or any other kind of joke. I’m not going to cry over the fact that I’m not accepted by people who’s energies don’t match mine. And by the by, no one is a joke, no matter who they are, or what their socioeconomic standing is. So I don’t wear an ascot and a smoking jacket, and a neck full of gold chains and chest hair, holding a whiskey on the rocks with an umbrella in it saying “see that?! be somebody!” ok?! I’m not Steve Martin in the jerk, ok? https://youtu.be/tBfXTyzaUfQ

I’m not even close to Hollywood! I live in the Midwest! I’m Kariwood, ok? And I’m not even kari wood, I’m no woods, ok? cause I’m pretty much never in the woods or the outdoors for that matter, so much so that I just purchased a sweatshirt that says, “indoorsy” on it, ok? True story! So yeah. Cause one time I was in Wisconsin in the woods, and I was thinking, “look at me! I’m in the woods! Weird, no?!” (Cause never in the woods, but I thought, I’ll give it a shot! What’s the worst that can happen?) And guess what? Despite my shower the night before, I felt something on the base of my skull the next morning, and I picked out a really nasty, creepy and scary tick. And it was alive, and disgusting, and wiggly. And I started screaming. And I am still freaked out to this day about it. And that happened at least 17 years ago. And I didn’t like it. So that’s how “non woods-y” I am... I’m not even a fan of woodsy the owl, ok?

So I don’t know how I feel about all that. All this to say that I am definitely not Hollywood, but yes, I am included, as a “somebody”. I may not be an award winning, keillor, but I am still somebody, and I may not be rich and famous, but yes, I am somebody, and I may have been on one trajectory and now I do t know what the heck I am now, ok? It’s true, and yes, I’ve posted this before and I’ll keep posting it until everyone in me gets on board with it, yes! I am still somebody because yes, dear me, we are all this: somebody! : https://youtu.be/tu0lNcrZjG8

George: hard to argue with that.

Kari: eh. You know what I am, George?

George: yes, Kari. I know what you are. But do you?

Kari: well, I feel, like I’m one of those kids on Sesame Street sometimes, looking up at and intently listening to Jesse Jackson, wondering how to get from small to big, and from where I am, to the success that he reps, you know? The importance of being admired by many. Having a big platform to play on. A huge soapbox to stand on, you know?

George: yes. I get it, Kari, I really do. And we’ve all been there. But everyone’s story about themselves, is different. How we all got to where we are, was our own personal trajectory that we designed with our beliefs. And our thoughts. There’s no set pattern or manual to follow. The only energy you must follow, is your passion and your joy, aka the love. That’s it. So, if you want to be, and decide to be, you ARE Hollywood,. Because Hollywood isn’t a specific person or group of people, it’s a place, and an energy. Hollywood is what you make it to be with how you view it. You don’t have to “be” Hollywood to be in Hollywood...

Kari: you said I wasn’t allowed in Hollywood..

George: you may not be. All I’m saying, is that you are whatever you decide you are. The end.

Kari: well, am I or not? Cause I don’t want to go and be turned away. Besides, I love visiting olvera st.

George: Its a fine street, it is. Great margaritas... listen Kari, you cannot achieve anything in this life that you don’t truly believe is in the realm of your possibility. So yes! You can be, and pretty much are are Hollywood keillor, even if it’s in the Midwest in your own home.. You are creative, and love the arts, and are nutsy, and ballsy, and you may hold the title as being the first person to ever separate the two, and bring them back together in a scote sack, ok? So keep writing, and be yourself.

Kari: I dunno. But what I do know is this: I did it again...

George: did what?

Kari: reactivated all the shit memories and feelings from the past that I’ve felt about my career, allowing myself to relive all those fun feels of inadequacy and upset alllll over again.

George: aww, it’s happened to the best of us. Listen Kari, you are, in my humble not so humble opinion, since I’m still you, a loving person. So you reflect that way; with humor, and yes, absurdist, surreal comedy.

Kari: well, I’ll try.

George: You already do. Your credentials are superfluous. Your love and support of you no matter what you do moving forward is what you’ll feel when you choose to, and it’s available anytime you want to feel it. And when you feel that, it really doesn’t matter what you do.

Kari: ok, well, thanks George. It’s nice to know I have you around.

George: Kari, you were once told that you are golden, no?

Kari: well, I was told that I’ll be golden at some point moving forward doing whatever it is I choose to do.

George: right. So, when are you going to decide to experience that?

Kari: hopefully soon.

George: Kari, why do you chop to talk to and write about us “passed over folk”?

Kari: I dunno. I guess it’s cause I love and miss you guys in theory, even though I didn’t know you personally. And I like to re-experience your energy, as I appreciated and admired it. It helps me feel better.

George: you’re now golden.

Scene.

Appendices: if you choose to perform this scene, good luck. I’d like you to do it all in one breath, if you are a more advanced, and professional actor. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💕💕💕💕

[apple-grass-and-smiles]

Shiny Toy With a Price

Once again I have committed the fandom version of a hit-and-run by delivering a single story based on a Taylor Swift song and then fleeing the scene of the crime. This one is based on/around Cruel Summer and there are a few little hints buried throughout the story that reference it. I hope you enjoy.

Summary: That summer was particularly hot and cruel and it hadn't rained since May. (Or Bruce wants to label his relationship with Selina and she is adamantly against such an idea.)

If asked to describe the summer of Year Zero, Selina would immediately respond that it was the hottest summer of her life. Whether or not this was actually the case is up for debate, but it certainly felt like the hottest summer. And a lot of Gothamites agreed. It hadn’t rained since May and by the time July rolled around, any plant that hadn’t been tended to religiously was dead and people were desperately praying for any amount of rain. The streets were full of people in as few items of clothing as they could be, water with ice in it was treated like pure gold, and people would huddle in groups to be in front of one of the few working air conditioners.

What only a handful of people knew, and one of the secrets you couldn’t pay Selina to spill, was that Bruce and Alfred’s small apartment was one of the only places with a working, refrigerated air conditioning system. Bruce has claimed the apartment early enough after the bridges blew and Alfred has booby trapped it enough that no one was ever able to really vandalize the small 3-bed, 2-bath apartment. That apartment, with it’s pink wallpaper that Alfred and Selina had painted a deep blue in the early morning one of the first days she was able to walk and the doors that squeaked no matter how much oil she and Bruce poured on the hinges, quickly became her refuge during the Hottest Summer Ever.

The apartment was about four blocks away from the GCPD and a five-minute walk if you used the roofs (seven minutes if you used the regular streets). It wasn’t unusual for Bruce to get up before the sun and head to the police station, at which point Selina, who had usually camped out on the small fire escape outside his window, would sneak in and take her turn getting a couple of hours of sleep. It was a weird set-up, which seemed fitting considering how Selina had no idea how this year would be remembered once the bridges were back and Bruce lived in a mansion that wasn’t full of board games with mismatched pieces and her clothes and the truly disgusting alcohol that Alfred had gotten from Lucius that one time. But then again, things had always been weird for them and there was nothing to indicate anything would change any time soon.

Looking back on it now, years after the incident and years after Bruce left and years after she became Catwoman and a socialite and years before Bruce will return dressed as a bat, Selina doesn’t know if she regrets the night they stole Alfred’s vodka or if she just wishes it has happened sooner so that maybe they could have figured everything out before he jumped on a plane headed to somewhere Selina wasn’t.

Rule one of nights that Alfred was out was that Selina must always supply snacks. The rule had started when they were much younger and Selina had taught him how to get snacks out of a vending machine without paying. He had, of course, refused to try this more than once because it was all about the “research” and would be “irresponsible to steal something as small as a pack of potato chips”. Selina had found the sentiment to be one of the most ridiculous ones he had ever shared and then promptly determined that she would always have some stolen vending machine snacks on her when she saw him. That had quickly stopped meaning that she brought the food back to her squat where he’d be waiting and started to mean that she snuck Twinkies and gummy worms and flat soda into his mansion where the small offerings seems stupid and inconsequential in comparison to Alfred’s expertly-made quiches and chocolates from Germany and steakss that cost more than Selina wanted to think about. But the bridges blowing had changed things and once again she was able to offer a valuable commodity and she certainly loved that more than shyly passing Bruce a half-eaten oatmeal creme pie when he could have bought the factory that made it with his pocket change.

So, it was for that reason that Selina snuck through the window that July evening with her arms full of treats with enough processed sugar to kill a man. She had found a vending machine a few blocks away that was mostly full since it has been vandalized past the point of being recognized as a vending machine many years earlier. Bruce, who looked like he hadn’t even considered sleeping for at least a month, greeted her with an exceptionally jubilant smile.

“We figured it out!” he exclaimed as he helped her unload the snacks on the small table.

“The water?”

“Yeah! We just altered one of the old water purifiers and then added on... “ he paused, looking at her with a slightly resigned face. “We made a new water purifier from some old ones and some other tech.”

“Thanks for the dumbed down version. Do you want Twizzlers or Red Vines?” Selina asked holding up one packet in each hand. Bruce paused for a moment, considering, before grabbing the Twizzlers. Selina smiled to herself; Bruce hated Twizzlers and must have known the ones he had just taken would be as hard as a rock, but he also knew that Red Vines were her favorite. Even if that wasn’t the thought process that had gone into his candy selection, she was going to assume that it was. She was in a city full of criminals, cut off from the rest of the world and would probably die of heat stroke if the weather didn’t let up soon; she should be allowed to entertain some slightly romantic ideas.

“So,” she said as she plopped down on the couch with Red Vines in one hand and her arms and legs slung over every inch of the piece of furniture. “What now? You wanna lose another game of Monopoly?”

Bruce shot her a glare from the kitchen before he came and settled on the coffee table next to the couch. “I would have won if you hadn’t cheated and you know it.” (Selina rolled her eyes at that.) “But I actually have something much better.”

“Do tell…”

“Yahtzee.”

If Selina’s eyebrows could have risen any higher they would have touched her hair line. “Yahtzee?”

“Yahtzee. Plus some gambling.”

“Okay… Explain.”

Bruce laid out the rules. The game would play normally, but they would have to place bets on what they would roll. Each round they would bet something small and as the game went on, what they bet would have to increase in value.

By the time they had finished the first game (Selina won), the pair had discovered some issues with the rules of the game as they stood. Namely, they ran out of things to bet very, very quickly and it had reached the point where Bruce was betting Alfred’s things and Selina was trying to bet random items she found in Bruce’s room (she had bet a very pricey watch his father had bought him for his tenth birthday and her heart had nearly stopped thinking about the price what she likely saw as simply a shiny toy) and it had simply devolved into a very low-stakes game once it became clear none of the items would actually change hands at the end of the night.

Bruce, always one to try and fix any problem presented to him, searched around the apartment to find any way to spice up this game that was rapidly becoming boring when Selina threw a couch pillow at him.

“I’ve got it. You remember that vodka Lucius gave Alfred a couple months ago? The stuff they found in that raid?” Bruce nodded slowly, not entirely certain where Selina was going with this train of thought but pretty certain he would be regretting going along with it in the morning. “We play the game the same way, but, instead of betting objects, we bet how many shots we take.”

“That seems like a great way to get alcohol poisoning.”

“C’mon! It won’t kill us and we can come up with some excuse about, I don’t know, someone stealing it if Alfred ever notices that it’s gone. It’ll be fun.” Selina, who at this point was standing on the couch to talk to Bruce from his vantage point in the kitchen, did her best to give him a sweet face. Instead of a response, Bruce simply grabbed the vodka and rolled his eyes as the setting sun behind him gave him a faintly angelic halo. One day, Bruce figured, Selina would realize she wouldn’t ever have to try and convince him to join her in things. One day she’d figure out that he followed her not because he thought her ideas were good or because he was curious or because he had no other choice. Hopefully, one day she’d realize that he was ready to follow her off of a cliff not to figure out what was at the bottom of siad cliff, but because she was the one to walk off of it.

Another hour passed and as the sun finally set a cool breeze began to blow through the apartment. It was with all the windows open in the apartment and the faint sounds of music coming from the apartment’s kitchen that Selina screamed ‘yahtzee’ and emerged from the game victorious once again. Both teens laughed as Bruce finished the bottle in resignation. Neither of them were strangers to alcohol, but this was the first time they had actually been drunk at the same time. Normally they simply had angry confrontations where one was sober and the other was not, but this situation, with both more than a little high on each other’s company, the sinking temperatures, and the relief of having survived another day, was infinitely preferable to their other drunken encounters. Bruce swept the dice into the mostly destroyed box they had found them in as Selina laid back on the couch, playing with one of the die she had snagged at the end of the game.

Once the game was put away, Bruce came to sit down, lifting Selina’s legs and settling down on the couch before lowering them onto his lap. The two sat in companionable silence for a few minutes before Bruce broke the silence.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Confused what would spark such a random question, Selina looked at him quizzically. “Uh. Yeah. Why?”

“I was just thinking that I really don’t know where you sleep and we have an extra room here and it just seems ridiculous that you’d be wandering around Gotham where you can get hurt when you could be here and with us and safe and I just don’t know why you’d risk everything just to avoid staying here-”

“You think I’m avoiding staying here? Why would you think that?” Selina was sitting up on the couch now, curling her legs under her to look Bruce in the face.

Bruce played with his hands and stared out the window, “I just figured you wanted to keep us a secret, like you did when we were younger. You didn’t like labeling things and I figured you stayed away and didn’t live with us because you were scared of being labeled.”

“Okay,” Selina held up her hands. “What exactly do you think we are? Because I thought we were just friends hanging out and friends don’t live with friends when they’re stuck on an island full of criminals and separated from the rest of humanity.”

“Really? You think we’re just friends? Then what on Earth was up with you kissing me in Haven or sleeping in my bed when I leave in the morning or coming over for a date whenever Alfred is out? Do you kiss all your friends? What are the rules here, Selina? Because you may not need to know them but I do.”

“Why do there need to be rules and labels? Can’t we just be us? We’ve never needed rules before.” Selina tries not to shout but this conversation was tired and pointless the first time they had it all those years ago and it hasn’t gotten any better in the intervening time. He knows that labels freak her out and he knows that setting rules freak her out and he knows all of this because they’ve been over it so many times that she feels like she could have this argument in her sleep.

“Are you kidding me?” Bruce stands up and drags his hands over his face. “I’ve always needed the rules and the labels! And I can’t figure out why you don’t want them. Are you ashamed of me? Am I your dirty little secret?”

Selina is up in an instant, glaring up at Bruce. “That is insane and you know it! Everyone knows we’re connected. I’m not trying to keep that a secret.”

“Then why can’t I call you my girlfriend?” Bruce’s voice is raised at this point and it’s becoming painfully clear to both parties that this has escalated from their usual labels conversation to a drunken argument.

“Why does it matter that you call me that? It’s not going to change anything!”

“It’ll change everything! I’m tired of keeping you a secret!”

“From who? Who are you keeping me a secret from?  Because I’m pretty sure everyone knows that we’re-”

“We’re WHAT? When Jim asks me about you, do I say you’re just my friend? My girlfriend? An alley cat that spends more time in my apartment than Alfred does? I feel like I’m carrying us around as a secret everywhere and I can’t keep doing that. If we’re going anywhere with this, I need a label. I’m not going to keep you if it means keeping you as a secret.”

“Oh my… Bruce what does that even mean?”

Bruce’s hands are in his hair as he stares up at the ceiling in frustration. “It means that this is the ultimatum.”

Selina snorts before biting her lip and replying, “An ultimatum. Really? That’s where we’re at? I came over to hang out with you and now you’re giving me an ultimatum?”

“Yeah because every day I’m dying over trying to figure out what I mean to you and I can’t keep doing it. If I’m just your boyfriend then I’m happy to do that and if I’m just your friend then I’ll be honored to fill that role, but I cannot keep living in a realm where some days you’ll kiss me and other days you just want to be friends and then the other days where you’ll ignore me. I just need to know.”

For a moment, everything is silent except for the sound of the crickets outside and the quiet ticking of the clock. Selina shakes her head ever so slightly and stares at the ground as she whispers, “I could be bleeding and you’d be the last to know.”

“What?”

Slightly louder now as the tears begin to well in Selina’s eyes: “I could be bleeding and you’d be the last to know.”

“That’s ridiculous. What do you mean? We’re together constantly and of course I would know if you were bleeding and-”

“No,” there’s a small flame in Selina’s eyes now. “No, you wouldn’t because you don’t know that every day I’m bleeding and lying and saying I’m fine when really I'm dying and trying to figure out how I feel and waiting for you to cut me to the bone.”

“Then why don’t you tell me? Selina, I just want you to tell me these things so that I can-”

“HAVE A LABEL? Bruce, you want a label so badly and I don’t have one! We’re both feel like we’re always trying to make it work but we’re never making any progress and me sneaking in here every day is just sealing our fates so now we’re tied together and you want to know how I feel and I can’t tell you -”

“WHY? Why can’t you tell me? What could possibly be so bad that you can’t tell me?”

“What’s so bad? Bruce, don’t you get it? I LOVE YOU AND IT’S THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME!”

Silence falls over the apartment again as Bruce sinks down onto the coffee table.

And then he looks up at her, meeting her eyes with his, and grins the most devilish grin she has ever seen and, for the first time since May, it starts to rain outside.

[cielleduciel]

okay okay, Black Eagles/Crimson Flower. this is very long and very rambly bc i was mad and i probably repeat myself a lot but whatever

keep in mind going forward that this was my FE3H first route and the only one i've played so far, and it was... disappointing. i really, really want to like Edelgard as a character bc she seems interesting and she has so much potential, but fact is the game never allows her any sort of true depth, and never lets you interact with her in any meaningful way

and i hate to say it bc i ALWAYS go to bat for complex underappreciated female characters, which is what i was expecting out of this, but that's not... even what she is. none of her potential is ever realized. she's one-note and static and the writers seem to think that just throwing in a traumatic backstory (that never gets explored, even as it very obviously relates directly to her worldview) and a few cute/quirky character moments will give her depth, but it doesn't

the game really LOVES to try and play up this special bond between Edelgard and Byleth and how much Byleth means to her, but it never feels earned. she always says that she feels like she can tell Byleth anything and everything, but she doesn't. i have no better understanding about why she felt like she needed to do the things she did than i did at the end of part 1. all she ever says is that she has to do it all in the name of her ideals and a better future and it's the only way, and all i ever wanted throughout the entire route was to ask WHY ? WHY is this the only way ? WHY do you feel like this is the only thing you can do ? WHY are all other options off the table ?

she's cooperating directly with Those Who Slither In The Dark (TWSITD), who not only experimented on and tortured Edelgard herself and killed her siblings, but also killed Byleth's father, but we never explore the implications of that. hell, Edelgard's issues aside, Byleth themself has their own stake in this, their own very good reasons to question Edelgard and the lengths she's willing to go to in order to achieve this future of hers, but they're NEVER given the chance. if you choose her route, the game apparently assumes that you've decided to follow her without question or reserve, regardless of everything that happened, even though it makes no sense in context. at the end of the route, Edelgard even admits that she couldn't understand why Byleth wound up taking her side, and i wanted to SCREAM !!! LIKE YEAH, I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT EITHER ??? i was HOPING we would get to explore that at some point but I GUESS NOT ????

at most, Edelgard offers platitudes by saying that she too hates TWSITD and regrets everything they've done but still maintains that her alliance with them is necessary for the time being, because they are the best allies she has against the church, and she needs their strength. again, my question is: WHY ? because while i can see how they may have been useful to her in part 1, i didn't see them do ANYTHING to help her during the entirety of part 2. they had literally zero presence in any of the battles, were not even shown or mentioned aside from the moments where they were being CLEARLY ANTAGONISTIC towards her, like when they NUKED ARIANRHOD AS A "WARNING" as soon as Edelgard captured the city bc they were mad she killed one of their officers,

and yet she felt like she needed to spin the story to say it was the church's doing so as to like, save face and rally morale while maintaining their alliance, i guess, but why ?** even in the FINAL BATTLE AGAINST RHEA HERSELF, Arundel shows up ONLY to literally say "yeah i'm just here to watch lmao". so like, as far as i know from everything i have physically seen, we defeated the church without their help at all--in SPITE of their "help", even--which does not help me understand why her alliance with TWSITD is so necessary that Edelgard has to just grit her teeth, bear it, and cover for them until the war is over so that she can finally turn on them

(**i get not telling the entire army about Arianrhod to avoid panic and questions, but what was the point of lying to the rest of the Black Eagles ? why is it that Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert seem to be the only ones allowed to know about the empire's workings with TWSITD ? like what was even the point of Edelgard revealing herself as the Flame Emperor at the end of part 1 ((which was also a totally botched scene but i'm not even gonna get into that here))? i thought the reason for that scene WAS to reveal the truth to everyone that she was working with TWSITD, we even had that whole dramatic battle where Edelgard had to fight her own house and professor bc of it ? but i guess it wasn't, bc none of them ever bring it up again, and the game still treats it like they should all still be in the dark about it, so ???)

on top of that, i still don't understand why she felt like she needed to antagonize the Alliance, or even the Kingdom, when her enemy is the church. like i get it, there’s no negotiating with the church as it is, violent conflict with them is inevitable and i’m not against that, i understand it and i can get behind it. but why didn't she ever try talking to the other two factions or working together w them or FORGING ALLIANCES instead of resorting immediately to violence ?** maybe i can believe that Dimitri and the Kingdom are a lost cause, but for example--and again now i haven't played the GD route, but from what i understand-- Claude's values are fairly similar to Edelgard's, and he does a lot of digging into the church on his own and is able to discover much of the truth. her alliance with TWSITD is apparently "necessary" but it never occurs to her to reach out to GOOD PEOPLE like Claude who would share her interests ? why ? why can’t we even bring it up ?

(**my confusion with this is best summed up by that one interaction she has with Dimitri in part 2, where before they're about to fight, he asks her, "Must you continue to conquer? Continue to kill?" and her response is literally, "Must you continue to reconquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" like WHAT ? WHAT KIND OF CHILDISH "NO U" NONSENSE IS THAT ? YOU'RE LITERALLY THE AGGRESSOR HERE, ARE YOU REALLY TRYING TO TELL HIM HE SHOULD'VE JUST SAT BACK AND LET YOU TAKE THE KINGDOM WITHOUT EXPLAINING ANYTHING ? HE'S TRYING TO REACH OUT TO YOU, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS REFUSE TO GIVE HIM A STRAIGHT ANSWER. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO OBTUSE ABOUT THIS. WHAT IS THE REASON)

this isn't even getting into the fact that it becomes very obvious that Edelgard does not have the whole story behind the church and TWSITD, but there's no way to call that into question either. from what i understand from a few spoilers i've been given, she even gets some parts of the story flat-out wrong. this is The Story that she uses to justify all her actions, to herself and to others, and yet she's clearly missing key details, but we never get to question it, or investigate it further, or do anything about it

and what makes it suck extra is that, as i said, i really wanted so, so badly to love Edelgard. i wanted that bond between her and Byleth to feel real, and earned, and substantial. i wanted to work together and interact with her, to  understand her, bc i genuinely sympathize with her goals. let’s erase inequality, abolish the nobility, destroy the crest system that sustains it, and tear down an oppressively intolerant religious institution ? hell yes sign me up bitch !!!! i don't like that we can't GUIDE her in her pursuit of that, or at least even try to understand why she's so committed to this horrific warpath she's on. bc why else would i have chosen to join her side and play her route ? why else is Byleth there, as her teacher ?

or maybe i'm not even supposed to sympathize with her or her cause, but they never make that point either ! like let's ignore what i want and entertain the notion that perhaps Edelgard's meant to be seen as clearly, dangerously radical and beyond all reason, that her route is supposed to be as close to a "bad" route as this game gets and you're supposed to feel guilty for helping her. i mean there definitely are points that made me go “uh, hey, what we’re doing here is kind of terrible”. the thing is they could've easily made that point at any time during her route, had moments where they highlighted the destruction left in Edelgard's wake as she "carves a bloody path" to her future with Byleth by her side, had her experience some kind of consequence for her actions or a "falling from grace" moment, exposed all the flawed logic behind her actions and examined how she came to be the way she is--but nothing like that ever happens. it’s just like “hooray we successfully invaded and conquered an independent nation :) on to the next one !” even in the epilogue, there's no downside to helping her win, no sort of realistic consequence like, idk, malcontent spreads, people aren’t happy that Edelgard took over their nation by force despite the reforms, riots flare up, etc etc., nothing that asks the player to stop and think about all this. they play everything straight but then refuse to give it meaning or make sense of any of it

and there's PLENTY of ways to make sense of it. even i can imagine some potential in-universe explanations to a lot of the "why" questions i have about Edelgard--why does she preemptively isolate herself from everyone that hasn't already demonstrated unconditional allegiance to her, why does she refuse to seek other allies or reach out to her peers like Dimitri or Claude for help and yet continue to associate with the dangerous group that is the source of her trauma, why does she rightly question one narrative while she never thinks to question the other, why does she resort to violence so quickly and easily even as she laments it, etc etc. the problem is that *the game itself* doesn't even THINK to try and address any of this, and so it's never able to make a point about any of it

so yeah, the point COULD'VE BEEN that she is too stubborn, too far gone, too caught up in her own narrative to comprehend that her actions are not as necessary as she thinks they are, too self-righteous to see the parallels between herself and Rhea as she needlessly sacrifices countless lives for her cause while she claims that HER life is too important to lose, too stuck in her own head to see the hypocrisy in her denouncement of the nobility and church and their treatment of the masses while SHE, Miss Imperial Royalty herself, throws others' lives away for her war--BUT the point is never made !! there's no statement from that point of view either ! there is literally no message ! Edelgard goes through no character development, positive or negative, despite all the groundwork for it being laid out plainly. she does not get a chance to grow, nor does she ever regress, nor is she ever faced with the consequences of her actions, and so no statement is ever made about her character or anything she represents

all the potential was there for Crimson Flower to have been a really good story, and that's why i'm so frustrated that i'm writing an essay about it. and it didn't HAVE to be a positive one with a happy ending, or even a mixed, bittersweet one, which i think would've been best. it easily could've been a tragic story about like, Byleth witnessing the fall of their misguided student firsthand as they try and fail to reach out to her, powerless to save her from herself as she drifts away from everybody, being forced into a position where her death becomes necessary in order to preserve the lives of others, or something--but it didn't try to do anything like that. it didn't try to do ANYTHING ! in fact, i would say her character is much more compelling in all the other routes where she DIES, if only bc at least then it feels like SOMETHING is being said about her character

the real kicker is that, at the end of Crimson Flower, it's said that Edelgard goes on to abolish the nobility, and yet in the epilogue she remains the emperor, and all your other units of noble birth still...... have noble titles and landholdings. not to mention i can't even be sure if the scene where Byleth's crest disappears is supposed to represent the disappearance of all crests, or just Byleth's ? so like i don't actually know what i'm supposed to think Edelgard accomplished ? what was the point of mindlessly helping her commit war crimes ? if not a character arc, or a plot resolution, or some greater message, or even the world state i was promised to get from siding with her, what exactly am i supposed to get out of this route ???

i keep thinking about how it feels in contrast to her progression in every other route, and to how Dimitri is written. bc when Byleth joins anyone else, Edelgard always dies, as Dimitri does. but unlike with Dimitri, intsys didn't adapt Edelgard's progression to Byleth's presence, beyond the simple facts of whether she wins/loses and lives/dies. what i’ve gathered from the other routes is that they portray her as a senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous kid with too much power who became consumed by it and then dies/is killed as a natural consequence of her own actions. i was expecting the difference in her route to be that we get to explore her side more and understand her inner workings and what could have led her down this path, and then to either get the chance to make a difference, or to be dragged down with her as a cautionary tale. but she STILL comes across as senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous and power-trippy, except now i get to enable her, and that’s presented as like, a genuinely wholesome thing ?

my gf has said that it feels like you're not meant to side with Edelgard, just from how poorly written and constructed her entire route is**, and i've been getting the same feeling. having finished it, the whole thing felt hollow. her actions and choices always feel absurd and frustrating because we never get any insight into what she's thinking, there's too much Telling and not enough Showing to back up any of the Telling, there are so many aspects of the route that don't make sense, and there's no ATTEMPT to make them make sense

(**seriously the production value felt so low at times that it got embarrassing to watch. like after part 1, Jeritza just dropped off the face of the planet with no explanation, and no one in the game ever brought him up again or even wondered where he was, not even Edelgard. then the recent game update suddenly added him to my roster right before i was about to finish the route, again with no explanation, and no in-game acknowledgement of this. which can only lead me to believe that Jeritza was actually SUPPOSED to be there the whole time but intsys.... forgot about him ? LIKE... THEY FORGOT TO WRITE THE DEATH KNIGHT INTO EDELGARD'S ROUTE ? WHAT)

in fact, it feels to me a lot like death was always the intended resolution for her character and everything was always written around that, but then they decided that wasn't an appropriate tone/direction to take for a route in which Byleth joins her, but then they weren't even bothered to really revise the route in any meaningful way so they just went "fuck it" and gave us.... whatever this mess is. but if so, if intsys really was so set on having her be this tragic misguided villain, i don't understand why they didn't commit to that narrative in her route as well, instead of just half-assing everything and doing nothing meaningful and wasting my time. hell i don't understand why they even bothered to include an Edelgard route if their hearts clearly weren't in it to begin with. just let her be the villain that you guys obviously wanted her to be and go

but, whatever. at least all the OTHER Black Eagle characters were great

[serenagaywaterford]

It’s aggravating to see aunt Lydia get some sort of redemption arc both in the new book (Why, Margaret?!), and possibly in season 4. She should be the last person to get it, as far as I am concerned. She is a real believer, the only one who’s totally devoted to Gilead, 100%. Not even Fred, or other commanders, and certainly not Serena. Yet, people scream bloody murder if there is even a hint of Serena turning to the good side. But they want it for aunt Lydia, fuck’em!

RIGHT?!

Without going into how bad a book The Testaments is (cos, lbr, it isn’t a good novel), I was just SO disappointed that even Atwood went that route. I mean, it was a bit obvious that Miller wanted to soften Lydia and that absolutely atrocious, nonsensical, bullshit S3 episode was proof of that (and what an insult to Ann Dowd tbh. She deserved so much better).

I literally cannot buy any of the “Aunt Lydia isn’t THAT bad! She’s not like Serena! She just a true believer!”

And...???

I don’t see how she’s not worse than Serena? The only thing people seem to think about is 2x10. 

“Well, Aunt Lydia didn’t help Fred pregnancy-rape June!” 

No, she didn’t. That’s right.

She just chained her up in a basement, force fed her, and threatened her with death over and over and over until she completely broke her psychologically and made her into a walking zombie-womb to serve her One True Purpose -- to such a degree that even Serena (Serena! The one who wanted a perfect obedient Handmaid!) is like, “WTF?! This is too much, yo. Where my snarky baby factory at?” 

She beat and maimed other women in front of June as payback because she knew she couldn’t touch her. (Hmm, familiar? Except Serena slapped Rita. Aunt Lydia literally burned Alma’s arm over open flame.)

She took Janine’s EYE for merely talking back(!), and Lilly’s TONGUE, and attempted to get the Handmaid’s to murder Janine themselves. She’s had June’s feet lashed so hard she can’t walk--MULTIPLE TIMES. And those are only the abuses we know about. But, no, she didn’t help any husband rape June, that’s true. 

“UWU LYDIA! She’d never suggest such a thing like Serena did!” 

No, she wouldn’t but not because she cares about JUNE lolololol; she cares about the BABY and it is a terrible idea medically for a healthy birth (which is incidentally why I don’t buy that whole 2x10 episode. Serena’s disgusting and furious but she’s not fucking stupid.) That is all Lydia is concerned about. That is her validation and her raison d’etre; if she doesn’t produce obedient Handmaids that give men healthy babies, she’s failed. And I don’t believe that it’s entirely fear that motivates her. She seems to get a very clear sort of power trip and glee from exercising such brutality on young women. Hence, her attitude and acceptance towards how the system treated Natalie. Babies above all! Fuck women, they’re literally just machines. They are BROOD MARES.

“Aunt Lydia didn’t hold June down to be raped every month!”

No, she didn’t. That’s right.

She just trained 100s or 1000s of girls with brutal torture to lie down and take it. She fully supports the Ceremony. Fully. 100%. Even horrible Serena hates it and VISIBLY is uncomfortable with it (but she’s a selfish, delusional coward with anger & jealousy issues so she abides it).

Absolutely everything else Serena has done, short of writing an anti-feminist book and making speeches pre-Gilead, Aunt Lydia has also done. Randomly beat June? Check. Lock June in a room? Check. Scream at June? Check. Uphold the ideals of Gilead? Check. Aunt Lydia ACTIVELY abused, tortured, maimed, bullied, and straight up murdered numerous women. Not just one or two. How many Handmaids has she “trained”? COUNTLESS. Without a hint of remorse. Sometimes she has a soft spot for Janine, or very occasionally, June, but mostly she seems to just treat them as her troublesome pets. Like cattle--to the point of literally using a cattle prod on disobedient ones. A farmer can care about his cattle but it doesn’t make him not a farmer.

Hell, there’s that episode in S1 where Lydia is beating/electrocuting the shit out of June for talking back and Serena swoops in to stop the assault. (Her motives are shitty, and she snaps back to own horrid self not long after, but still...)

Yeah, considering they’re reworking S4 to be more in line with The Testaments is just... sad. Not that we didn’t see them attempting to woobiefy Lydia in S3 already, but I will guess S4 will see her suddenly and randomly taking Handmaids’ concerns seriously. HOW OOC IS THAT? Like, there’s been NO emotional journey for Lydia. It’s why her behaviour in 3x06 didn’t make sense to me. She goes from savagely assaulting Janine in 3x04 to “Oooh, June! This muzzle is so sad! Alexa, play Despacito!” I didn’t buy ANY of Lydia’s randomly swerving and flaky narrative in S3. I have no problem with her expressing her humanity and the audience seeing reasons to sympathize with her (like 2x08) but it was SO ALL OVER THE PLACE in S3 that I can only shudder and how they’re going to do S4. Especially using The Testaments as a roadmap... like suddenly Lydia is a resistance fighter?

Give me a fucking break.

And I think the problem I have with giving Lydia the so-called “redemption arc” on THT is that...

I don’t care.

Who really does?

Lydia is at best a secondary character who has had zero to little development. She’s literally had one (terrible) background episode that was shitty and full of sexist tropes, that only went to show what a snivelling, vengeful, crazy religious bigot she is--and that’s supposed to set her up for THT Redemption™? Suddenly she’s going to switch sides, just like that? Because White Saviour June has spoken to her? (Again, don’t get me started on the sheer idiocy of June (the woman (directly/indirectly) responsible for multiple women DYING in S3 alone) being touted as some precious saviour of women on Jesus-like levels.) Aunt Lydia is magically going to see the light of her wrongdoing?

PLEASE.

And meanwhile, they had a female character who is also a monster on about the same level--just in a different way, who is arguably a lead character and has had PLENTY of background and development, and even started--a few times--down a path that could slowly and ORGANICALLY lead her to remorse and change, and ultimately something vaguely like a redemption arc... but nope! LMAO. PSYCHE!!! Too easy, I guess? Too predictable? 

Yes, because I watch THT to be shocked by the unpredictable... /sarcasm. C’mon.

Why bother giving Serena ANY sort of development just to do her so dirty like S3 did, and switch it up so she stays repulsive but AUNT LYDIA MAGICALLY and OUT OF NOWHERE suddenly changes all her long-held and incredibly cemented beliefs? Meanwhile we’ve seen Serena wavering in hers THE ENTIRE SERIES. We’ve seen her try to break the system, to fight against it. Weakly, and she’s a sissy, but hey, it’s SOMETHING. More than we ever saw with Lydia.

No, giving Janine a nicer eyepatch after YOU RIPPED HER EYEBALL OUT FOR TALKING BACK is NOT the same as Serena standing up in front of a council of men and reading in order to give all females the chance to read. Giving Janine a piece of cake for not making a scene at a gala is NOT the same as Serena giving “her” baby away to make sure she has a better life outside the hellscape that she knows is Gilead. What Aunt Lydia has done for “her girls” pales completely with what very little Serena has done for both June, Nichole, and women (/herself lol).

It’s like saying Fred deserves redemption because he let the Handmaids have devilled eggs in 3x04. Or gave June a photo of Hannah. (Which incidentally, Atwood wrote Serena giving that to June. So, let’s just keep taking things away from Serena, Miller. Good job.)

I just......

I...

No.

Aunt Lydia deserves a redemption arc as much as Fred Waterford does. But even Fred--yes, even Fred--has more substantial character development to sustain such a story, and a shift in his arc. Well, I should say nobody “deserves” a redemption arc. But rather, it makes SENSE for a particular character to experience one.

Honestly, I just don’t understand the flagrant Serena hate when people like Fred and Lydia exist. I don’t see why it makes more sense and is less offensive for either of those monsters to get this mythical redemption arc over Serena, the second most developed character in the entire series.

“We need a foil for June! We need her to have a villain to fight against!” 

Yes, I agree, dipshit, it’s called Gilead. It’s called female oppression. It’s called the inherent rampant violent misogyny there, and even in “normal” society. It’s the stealing of children. It’s every man in any position of power. It’s religious and ideological extremism. It’s the commodification of women’s bodies as machines for baby-making and male sexual gratification. It’s the Sons of Jacob. It’s international governmental complacency. It’s war.

THERE ARE SO MANY EVIL, VILLAINOUS THINGS IN THT. Serena does personify some of these things, sure. So do ALL the other characters everyone is less upset about getting redemption arcs. But Serena doesn’t need to be the be-all of all these things. She doesn’t have to be the visceral manifestation of all those things forever.

Okay, I just have to stop here cos I can go on forever. 

To me, it’s only makes narrative sense for Serena--and ONLY Serena--to get this highly-prized yet still completely imaginary THT Redemption Arc™. And that’s my controversial opinion lol.

[twoghostys]

the one where they’re soulmates

10.6k words

Zayn handed her glass of water and a pair of Alanna’s best heels, “come on,” he rushed, “you’re going to be late.”

Dawn sat on the edge of Zayn's couch and took her time drinking every drop of water before bending forward to strap the shoes belonging to Zayn’s soulmates into her feet. She fumbled with them a bit, confused as to how to wrap the strips around her ankles before huffing in exasperation and sitting back. Zayn sighed and knelt down without a word to wrap them himself. “Anna can’t do them herself either, don’t know why she bought them. I always end up having to fix them for her.”

“You’re her soulmate,” Dawn responded, “it’s what you’re made for.” Zayn smiles fondly, the way he does whenever anyone mentions that Alanna’s his soulmate. Dawn couldn’t help but mirror his smile as she watched him, her best friend was absolutely smitten with his girlfriend. His countdown had gone to 00:00 on the same day Dawn had gone into a shelter to adopt a kitten. They were standing at the front desk, waiting for an employee to bring her new pet when Alanna walked up with a cat in her arms. Dawn remembers how Zayn tensed, grabbing her arm and shoving his wrist in front of her eyes for her to see his countdown rush to zero. Just as it did, Alanna looked up, clueless that her countdown was mirroring Zayns. She handed Dawn the cat and was telling her some last minute details, but Dawn was gaping at Zayn and he at the beautiful chestnut skinned beauty across from him. They’d been inseparable since, and Dawn still claimed she was the one that brought them together.

Zayn tsked, “I know what you’re doing. Don’t try to distract me, you have to go to this release party!”

Dawn groaned, kicking her leg at him in a small fit, “you know I hate these things.”

Her best friend nodded, “it’s why we’re friends, we’d both rather stay here and marathon Jurassic Park instead of going to a bougie social event. But this is for your future, and I’ll be your date. So how bad can it get?”

“I don’t know anyone there, they’re all going to be Ph.D. owning rich people and I’m going to humiliate myself.”

Zayn finished tying the last strap and clapped in celebration, “it’s a good networking event, plus, you were invited by the author of the book! You belong there.”

Dawn took the hand he had extended for her and let him pull her up, “he’s only inviting me so we can meet face to face before the school year starts. He’s my thesis advisor.”

“He could meet you at a coffee shop, this is him introducing you to his academic circles. The man’s already started mentoring you.”

But Dawn was still nervous to go. Realistically, she knew she had too, and that it would be good for her. But the list of reasons not to go was a mile long. For one, she knew that all those accomplished academics would make her feel stupid. Hell, they probably think she’s stupid. And, she’d have to explain over and over again that No, Zayn isn’t my soulmate. Just my friend. Yes, I’m a woman in my twenties and haven’t found my soulmate yet. My countdown is broken.

As Zayn locked the door to his apartment behind them, Dawn pulled out her phone to double check the address her advisor had sent her. She read over his email one last time before locking her phone. Her eyes shifted to the numbers on her wrist, and she couldn’t help the feeling of devastation that clawed at her chest as she watched her countdown continue to glitch, like it had been for the past three months.

30:00

05:00

00:00

20:00

02:04:00

She doesn’t know what caused it, and the experts she consulted were just as baffled and lost. So Dawn had since accepted that her countdown was broken, that something was wrong with her, and she wouldn’t find her soulmate. Quickly, she covered her wrist with the sleeve of her blue dress before Zayn saw her moping. He always got upset when he saw her looking at her countdown. “Ready to go?” he asked, a comforting hand finding its place on the small of her back. Dawn hummed her response, and they set off.

~~~

The book release party was a bigger event than she thought it would be. Dawn had been there for almost 20 minutes and hadn’t yet met her advisor. She knew what he looked like from his info page, and because she had a multitude of his books on soulmate research stacked on her desk at home, so there’s no way she could have missed him. In her time at the book release, two people had walked up to her and started a conversation. It seemed like everyone knew that the author had taken on a new graduate student, and she must have looked like a grad student because they both assumed it was her. The two conversations were nice, they started off asking questions about her research, and Dawn explained that her thesis would be about the impact of the soulmate culture on societal rules. For example, there have been many articles about how two men in a very religiously dependant culture find out they���re soulmates, and how it had devastating consequences for everyone. The people were always amazed at her idea and knowledge, one even gave her his card and said he’d like to discuss it further! Then came the haunting part of the conversation.

“Well,” the second one had started, “it’s no news you’re so passionate about soulmate culture, since your soulmate here is ever so handsome.”

Zayn practically choked on his cocktail that time, trying not to laugh at the compliment he was given as he gave Dawn a cocky glance. The man knew he was good looking, but loved when he heard it from other people. Dawn then tried to ignore him as she smiled at the professor in front of her, who was clearly confused by Zayn’s reaction, “he’s not my soulmate,” she would throw in a lighthearted laugh with that, “just a close friend.” Then they would ask her why she didn’t bring her soulmate, because she had to have found them by now. “I haven’t,” she would force a smile, “not yet.”

That time, she was spared the sad oh, and attempt at awkward comfort by an accented voice behind her. “Professor Harmon! I see you’ve met Dawn before I have.” Dawn and Zayn turned to see her advisor walking towards them, a large smile plastered on his dimpled face. Dawn knew he was good looking, she’d seen him before. But the countless pictures on the back of his books did the man standing in front of her no justice. His heeled boots clicked on the wooden ground as he walked to them in his patterned, and clearly expensive, well fitted, suit. But the beauty of his wardrobe choice was dwarfed by the leafy green eyes that fixed themselves on Dawn with a friendly look. She could see little swirls of brown circling the irises and felt as if she could lose her bearings just by looking at his eyes. And his hair, wonderfully styled to make it seem like he didn’t style it at all, with brown curls perfectly circling around the back of his ear and a few falling onto his face. He was perfect, one of the youngest professors in his field (just a few years older than her) and one of the most successful, and now he’s also one of the most beautiful beings she’s laid eyes on. Dawn snapped herself out of her trance as her advisor finished talking to the professor and turned to face her. “Well, I was starting to think you stood me up.”

She must have still been gaping at him, because Zayn elbowed her in the rib to stir her into action. “Oh, of course not! I’ve been here for almost 30 minutes, you’re just too popular is all.”

He chuckled, definitely just humoring her, “ah, all of these people probably think I’m a nut. Anyway, nice to finally meet you Dawn! I can’t wait to discuss your research. I’m Harry Styles.” He extended his hand, introducing himself as if she didn’t already know who he was. The gesture somehow comforted her though, almost as if he were telling her they’re on the same level.

“Nice to finally meet you Dr. Styles,” she shook his hand, ignoring the goosebumps that spread across her body at the contact. “This is my friend Zayn.”

Harry turned to look at Zayn, who was once again in the middle of downing another drink. He looked at the two of us wide-eyed before forcing himself to swallow a big gulp, “it’s nice to meet you,” he coughed, shaking Dr. Styles’ hand, “I’ve heard great things about you.”

“Are you in academics as well?” He asked, his eyes not leaving Zayn’s, as if his answer was incredibly important and he didn’t want to miss a word.

“Um, no I’m an artist,” Zayn smiled.

“Have I seen any of your work?” Once again, Dr. Styles was invested in this conversation, and Dawn could see Zayn perk up at the attention.

“Probably not? I do a lot of contemporary work and it only features in small galleries downtown.”

Dr. Styles nodded, “I go to those all the time actually.”

“Really?” Zayn and I asked at the same time, and he nodded. “What are some of your favorites? Zayn asked.

He thought for a moment before saying, “last week there was this exhibit, it was three paintings set up next to each other and they were absolutely breathtaking. You could tell they were all of the same woman, but each was drawn so differently, yet I couldn’t imagine them not being together. There were no facial features, but the way her hair and body were drawn had an expression to it. I must have stood at that one for fifteen minutes just taking it all in.”

Dawn’s jaw had reached the ground long before he had finished talking, and now she looked over at her best friend, who seemed like he’d forgotten how to breathe, his eyes were practically popping out of their sockets. “That’s uh… that’s mine. Yeah, wow! I can’t believe you saw that.”

“No way!” Now it was Styles’ turn to gape, “you are incredibly talented! What inspired those?”

“My girlfriend,” Zayn had that smile again, “they’re of my girlfriend.”

Styles’ eyes softened, “that’s lovely, your soulmate?” Zayn nodded, and he was practically radiating fondness that all Dawn wanted to do was just coo at him. But before she could, he thanked my mentor again before saying he’d leave them to talk.

It was silent between the two for a while, Dawn could feel him studying her and busied herself by picking up a drink from one of the caters walking by so she could have something to do with her hands. “I see why Zayn keeps drinking these,” Dawn laughed, “they’re wonderful.”

“Don’t let him drink too much,” Styles responded, “most academics need to be loaded with alcohol to socialize like this, so they’re pretty dangerous.” She hummed in response, looking around to spot Zayn grabbing another drink as he made his way to the garden outside.

“This is a lovely home,” Dawn finally spoke up. It truly was, the place was grand and screamed professor. The walls were a calm beige and the decor had a cozy, vintage feeling to it. It reminded Dawn of her own apartment, which had a similar decor style, but everything she had was from thrift stores.

“Thank you,” he responded, “have you had a chance to look at the book?” As he said that, he reached for a stack and opened one, “not to brag but there’s some interesting stuff in there. I think it would perk your interest, considering your work.”

“I was planning on purchasing one before you even said that,” Dawn nodded, “I have all of your books, your work is amazing.”

He rolled his eyes and waved off the compliment with his hand, “here, take this one. Lord knows I have plenty.”

Before Dawn could say anything, a man with a camera walked up to them. “Hello,” he smiled sweetly at the two of them, “Dr. Styles, I’m Liam, the photographer you hired.” Liam nodded his head at Dawn politely. “Would you mind if I take a picture of you as you hand her the book?”

“Um, if it’s okay with you?” he looked at Dawn, his eyebrows quirking up curiously, and she couldn’t say no.

So Liam helped them pose for the picture and snapped it. Before he left, he looked over at Dawn once again, “you look lovely in that dress. Blue is your color.”

Dawn’s face flushed as she thanked him and he walked away. Her mentor gave Liam a tight-lipped smile as he was leaving before turning to Dawn. They talked for a while about meeting times and how she plans to go about her research before he excused himself to go see the other guests. “Find me before you leave,” he gave her a dimpled smile before walking away.

Dawn turned to find Zayn, suddenly feeling drained and unreasonably upset that she was standing alone. She tried not to think that it was because she wanted to talk to Styles’ more. As that thought crossed her mind, she remembered to find the photographer and ask him for that picture. Dawn continued to weave through the people in search of Zayn, growing more and more agitated before realizing that the source of the agitation was the bracelet on her hand. “Must be allergic or something,” she mumbled, slipping it off and folding her sleeve back to itch at the spot. She looked down at the redness, and her heart stopped.

There on her wrist, it read 00:00. And it wasn’t glitching anymore.

~~~

She finally remembered that she’d seen Zayn go to the garden and ran out to find him crouched down amongst the flower bushes, snapping pictures with his phone. He knew she was walking up without looking, “I think I’m going to paint these, there are so many colors it kind of turns me on. Is that weird? Nah, I’m allowed to be weird. You know what else turns me on? Your advisor, kind of. Now that’s weird, but he’s like really pretty and he likes my art. His soulmate is so lucky. Of course, I’m lucky too, I think I’m a little drunk. Those–”

“Zayn shut up.”

“Oi!” he snapped his head to glare at her, “ok! No need to be rude, what’s got you all wound up?” Without a word, Dawn shoved her wrist down to his eye level. Zayn grabbed it and pulled it closer, yanking her down with it. “Holy shit! What does this mean? Did you find them?”

“I don’t know!” Dawn squeaked, trying not to panic. “I stopped looking at that thing a long time ago! I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Okay, okay don’t worry!” Zayn stood up a little too fast and wobbled a bit, “yeah I’m definitely drunk.” He shook his head, “okay focus. Who did you talk to since we got here?”

“You, the two professors, and Dr. Styles?”

Zayn nodded, “who else?”

“No one! What if it’s just broken? I didn’t talk to anyone else I– Oh my god!”

“What? What!” Zayn yelled, still holding onto her wrist and jumping up and down anxiously. He always got loud and weird when he was drunk.

“The photographer!”

“Who? He hired a photographer? This guy’s loaded” he exclaimed, then shook his head. “I don’t care. Focus Malik. Let’s go find your soulmate!”

They found Liam leaning against a wall, deep in concentration as he cleaned one of his camera lenses. Once Dawn pointed him out, Zayn started to pointedly walk towards him until he was pulled back by his best friend. “I don’t know about this.”

The tipsy Zayn rolled his eyes and let out a childish groan, “why? He’s right there! You had given up and he’s right there!” When Dawn chose to bite nervously at her nails instead of respond, Zayn softened, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “Hey, it’s okay to be nervous, yeah? I’ll be right here the whole time. I was terrified when I met Anna, and you helped me through it. So this is the least I can do.”

Although his words soothed her nerves, Dawn was still hesitant to approach the photographer. Something in her was screaming no! That this wasn’t right. Zayn was patient as she stood there, trying to sort through her thoughts. Dawn had read a multitude of books about soulmates, and you were supposed to know the minute your clock struck zero and you looked into their eyes. Everything was supposed to click immediately and make perfect sense. You were two parts of a whole, and you were supposed to feel the countdown to zero in every atom of your body. But she didn’t feel that, and right now, looking at Liam, she didn’t feel anything.

But if it wasn’t him, he’d tell her, right? He’d confirm all of her doubts and it would be a little humiliating but she’d get it over with. Then she’d know for sure that she doesn’t have a soulmate and she could go on living her life as normally as she could. Right, he’d fix this. With that resolve, Dawn walked up to Liam, conscious of how Zayn was practically vibrating beside her with excitement. “Hi,” she greeted, and Liam’s gaze met hers.

“Hello, would you like a picture?”

Dawn was thrown off, did he not know his clock had gone to zero? Maybe, if he was her soulmate, what was wrong with her was wrong with him too, and he hadn’t noticed yet. “This is going to sound weird but–”

“She’s your soulmate!” Zayn nearly screamed, turning a few disapproving heads. “I’m sorry I couldn’t contain myself. I’ll leave you guys alone. I think they have more cocktails somewhere.”

Before either of them could say anything, he had disappeared. Dawn turned sheepishly to Liam, “are you?” Liam’s face was skewered in a confused frown, and she had to admit he was kind of adorable, reminded her vaguely of a puppy. She tried to explain everything to him, about her countdown and seeing him and the itch that happened when she remembered him. She watched as his expression changed, and Liam then slowly lifted his long sleeve and looked at his wrist, head snapping up to look at her.

“Holy shit! It’s you!”

Something snapped inside of Dawn, and she cried in relief while rushing to hug him. She wasn’t broken, she had a soulmate! Liam held onto her for dear life, and she to him. He smelled like vanilla, her favorite lotion was vanilla scented.

~~~

Dawn cared about him, a lot. But it wasn’t as smooth sailing as she thought it’d be at first. The feelings weren’t as intense as Zayn’s were for Alanna. When he had first met her he hated being apart, and he kept telling Dawn about these crazy similarities in their lives and these intense feelings that made him want to punch a wall or do cartwheels. Dawn didn’t feel any of that. She knew, from her research, that not everyone had intense feelings when they first met their soulmate. It’s very rare, but sometimes there’s awkwardness and a lot of avoiding each other. Sometimes the feelings come slowly, in slow bursts. That’s what kept her going, the slow bursts. Because butterflies always seemed to spread from her stomach to her toes when Liam bought her gifts or called to wish her goodnight. And she always felt a little light headed when they kissed. She liked him, but it was slower than she would have liked.

He gave her all the space she needed, that was one thing she loved about him. Liam understood that her feelings weren’t as intense as his and he wasn’t hurt by it. Usually, soulmates move in together right away, because when they meet it means they’re ready. But Liam didn’t push her to do that. Sometimes he spent the night with her, when she asked, and during those nights he cuddled her and cooked for her and tended to her in ways that made her toes curl. She liked having him over for nights, but then she’d always wake up with a nasty feeling in her stomach if they did something remotely sexual during the previous night. She felt like she’d betrayed herself, or cheated on someone. They hadn’t even actually had sex yet and she was already feeling terrible. So she always asked him to leave, and he did. Then she’d shower and go to work, Dawn always felt better at work.

When she wasn’t in her office doing research and writing, she was either doing her job as a teaching assistant or going over her work with Dr. Styles. Dr. Styles was her favorite part of the week. They met twice a week to discuss her work, and he was always excited and amazed at everything she did. He’d read her work and shower her with compliments that made her warm. And he’d listen as she spoke with his eyes glued to hers, a soft smile playing on his lips. “I love how passionate you are,” he had said once, “your eyes almost literally light up and your energy captures everyone in the room. It’s inspiring, really.” His words made dawn feel dizzy, she felt her heart beat faster and her face turn red, and that feeling was followed by guilt as Liam’s face floated into her mind. She should be feeling this for Liam, not her advisor.

Dr. Styles must have sensed that it made her uncomfortable, “I’m sorry,” he shook his head, confusion etched on his features, “I don’t know why I said that.”

That conversation was weeks ago, since then her and Dr. Styles had developed a friendship. They no longer just talked about their work but also their favorite books and TV shows. Dawn guiltily told him she sometimes watches kids TV shows and he nearly fell off his chair with laughter. Then, to comfort her, he told her about his love for children’s books, and how he tells people they’re for his nephew but really they’re all his. She knew small insignificant things about him that he admitted no one else knew, and it was the same for her.

She knew that he developed emotional connections to some of his shoes, and wore them until they fell apart, then he’d get sad when he had to throw them out.

He knew that she named her cat Tika after the elephant from Barbie and the Island Princess

She knew that the nighttime made him anxious and he didn’t like to spend it alone, although he did a lot.

He knew that she got angry when she watched sad movies instead of crying.

She knew he started studying soulmates so he could understand his own better someday, and she knew it was hard for him to talk about so she never pushed.

They were friends. He knew her in ways that Zayn didn’t, in ways she didn’t want Liam to know her. And it scared her a little. Is it possible to fall for someone else when you’re already with your soulmate?

~~~

“Sloths! Of course it’s sloths. End of discussion!”

Liam snorted, “wrong, the cutest animal on the planet is a baby chimpanzee.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting your information but it’s wrong.”

He rolled his eyes, reaching over his empty plate for one of her french fries, “I could say the same for you.”

Dawn whacked his hand away, but he caught hers in his before she could pull away and left a light kiss on it. It had been a little over three months since she met Liam, and she could now confidently say she was absolutely smitten with him. She didn’t know when exactly it clicked for her, maybe it was when they were talking during a movie and he said, “sometimes I’m convinced I have an extra finger on my right hand. I know I do!” and it was so out of the blue that she soda spewed out of her nose because she was laughing so hard. Or maybe it was when Zayn got food poisoning and Alanna called Dawn in a panic, then Dawn called Liam and he somehow got to Zayn before she did, and took him to the emergency room. She found him comforting Alanna when she rushed in, and he assured her that everything was alright.

The food poisoning night was when she told him she loved him. It was when she threw all her anxieties out of the window and let him in because Liam was so good. And he made her feel amazing so of course, he was her soulmate.

“So,” Liam said, giving her back her hand and snatching a hand full of french fries, “I have a gift for you.”

Dawn raised her eyebrows at him, he was always showering her with gifts. And she knew by now that rejecting them was hopeless, “oh yeah?”

Liam dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a black velvet box the size of Dawn’s palm. Her breath hitched in a panic and Liam laughed, “don’t worry, I’m not proposing. I know you’re not ready for that.”

She hummed gratefully, pushing away the feeling of unease in her gut as she took the box from him and opened it. It was a necklace chain, and right in the middle of the box, attached to the chain, was a key. “Think it’s time we moved in together, yeah?”

Her nerves seemed to freeze, her brain refusing to work. Liam sat across from her, his smile slowly fading into confusion and then hurt. He sat back, his lips forming an ‘oh,’ and he suddenly found the grease stains on the table incredibly interesting. “I...I’m not saying no,” she croaked, although it still felt weird, “can you give me a few days?”

He shrugged, “I thought we were moving forward is all, I’m sorry if it made you feel uncomfortable.”

Guilt gnawed at her chest, “just a few days, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

Liam sighed, then nodded. “Ok, whatever you need.”

“I love you.” She said, and she meant it.

He smiled, “I love you, too.”

~~~

Alanna’s face lit up when she opened the door, “hi! come in! Zayn! Dawn is here!” she shooed Dawn in and went into the kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out the pomegranate juice they always kept around specifically for her. Alanna was amazing, she and Zayn were total opposites, kind of like Dawn and Liam. Where Zayn was quiet and mellow, only getting loud when he had a few drinks in him, Alanna was talkative and energetic. She was always doing something. If she wasn’t working at the shelter she was volunteering or working out or helping Zayn with his art. There were days when Zayn and Dawn would lounge in his apartment and watch movies and she’d bustle in and out, doing a million things while they barely did one.

“I feel like it’s been forever since I saw you! I keep telling Zayn that the three of us should hang out more together but you know how he is at making plans. How’s Liam?” she handed Dawn a glass of juice and waited patiently as she drank the whole thing.

“I’m actually here about Liam.”

Zayn ambled out of their bedroom, zipping up his jeans and throwing a jacket over his shoulder. “Hey Dawn, you alright?” while Alanna was clueless to Dawn’s sour mood, Zayn picked up on it the second he saw me. “What is it?”

But she saw that he had a nice jacket on his shoulder and Alanna was wearing those fancy heels, and knew she couldn’t ruin their date. They’d both stay here if he even suggested she might want them too and throw their whole night away. But ruining one pairs day was enough for Dawn, so she waved it off. “Nothing, I just came to pick up some books I left here.” She got up and picked up a stack of books she left there from the yesterday before hugging them both goodbye and humming as she walked towards the door so as to seem casual. From the quizzical look Zayn was giving her, she knew he didn’t buy it, but he wasn’t going to push, so he waved goodbye as she shut the door.

~~~

Dawn didn’t know what she was doing, she felt dumb and pathetic and her arms hurt from carrying all those books all the way to campus. And now she stood in front of Harry’s office, staring at the closed door and wondering how she got here. She was just deciding to turn and run before he sees her when she heard his voice, “Dawn? Did we have a meeting?”

She shook her head, refusing to face him because for some reason there were tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, “no, I was around, just thought I’d drop by and say hello.”

Her feet had finally started carrying her away when she felt a gentle grip on her shoulder, “you’re crying.”

Then she couldn’t hold it in anymore, Daw let a sob rack through her body as she continued to fade away from Harry, “sorry, I don’t know why I came here I just couldn’t go home and I didn’t want to ruin Zayn’s day because I seem to be ruining all the men in my life’s days and now I’m here ruining yours I’m so—”

Harry shushed her, “stop that. Come in, let’s talk.”

Dawn rushed to decline his offer, “no you’re probably busy I don’t want to—”

“I don’t care,” he interrupted again, “I don’t care how busy I am. Let me take care of you.” He tugged on her sleeve, taking the books from her hands then fixing his in between her fingers. Dawn tried to ignore how her breath hitched and she instinctively squeezed his hand. He pushed his office door open and lead her in. Dawn reluctantly let go of his hand and walked towards the couch at the far end while Harry started to make some tea. “This should calm you down, it’s not as great as tea made properly with a kettle, but that’s a fire hazard and they told me to stop bringing portable stoves into my office so this electric one will have to do.” Dawn cracked a smile at that, and Harry chuckled, “that wasn’t a joke, but I’m glad it cheered you up. Now, what’s wrong poppet?”

Dawn’s heart squeezed at the new pet name, it made her feel warm and comforted, but it also hurt her, making her unexplainably sadder. “Is it…” she huffed, closing her eyes and taking a sip of her tea as she scorned herself for asking this question, “is it possible to end up with the wrong soulmate?”

Harry cocked his head, “what do you mean?”

She huffed, knowing it was too late to go back now because she knew Harry and he wouldn’t drop this. “I mean our countdowns went down at the same time, and I love him,” she ignored how his jaw tightened when she said that, “but I don’t have those intense feelings or that feeling of completeness with him. If anything I feel like something’s missing.”

Harry nodded, “there are cases where two pairs would meet at the same time, and then get their partners confused. But they always find their way back, because if you’re with the wrong person after your timer has stopped, your body starts to reject them. Even if your mind doesn’t, those people may think they love their partner but they always get sick until they find their true soulmate.”

Dawn sighed, a little upset and a little relieved because her body wasn’t doing that. She wasn’t rejecting Liam, and she did love him. She would die for him. So he had to be the one. “What if, it is the right person but you still have those doubts?”

Harry played with his lip, something he did when he was deep in thought, Dawn loved that habit, she’d even started to pick up on it herself. “Soulmate is an imperfect science, you know that, because everyone is so different. No two minds and bodies are the same or react the same. Again, there have been cases, although very rare, where it took the couple a longer time than usual to get into the swing of things.”

“But we are in the swing of things!” Dawn couldn’t help her voice cracking in frustration, “and he doesn’t feel any of this. He’s fine! It’s just me.”

Harry places a comforting hand on her knee, and again, Dawn tried to ignore how her mood immediately lifted but her heart hurt even more. “Do you think that could just be you being in disbelief? You said you had started to think you didn’t have a soulmate. So maybe you’re just doubting it because you can’t believe you do?”

“Maybe,” she nodded, although her heart tugged at that. “What do I do in that case?”

Her advisor shrugged, “fake it ‘til you make it. You said you love him, and that you're certain he’s your soulmate. All those doubts will go away if you stop mulling over them.”

Dawn exhaled, “you’re right. You’re right! I just need to stop running away every time I voice in my head whispers for me too. Thank you, Harry.”

“Anytime love, you can always come to me.”

Dawn doesn’t know what pushed her to say what she said next, but once she said it surprised her more than it did him. “What’s your deal? With your soulmate.”

Harry’s eyes widened, he always shifted the conversation when she tried to get information about his soulmate. Now it’s been months and she still didn’t know. He was studying her, playing at his lips again, before finally saying, “I don’t have one.”

Dawn’s heart broke for him, because he looked so defeated after that confession, playing with the fabric of his pants and refusing to meet her eyes. “What about your countdown?”

He showed it to her, 00:00. “It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why. An expert once said that maybe they died when we were young. But if they did I’d feel it, and I don’t. So I just don’t get a person like everyone else does.”

She shifted closer to him, not knowing why tears sprung at her eyes from his confession. All she knew was that someone with as much love in his heart as Harry deserved to be loved, and the world was cruel and unfair for not giving him that. “Harry, I’m—” but he shook his head, silently asking her not to apologize. He never liked pity, but it was so hard not to feel sad for him when he looked so broken. Dawn ran her fingers through his hair, he once told her that always comforted him, and her heart seemed to sour when his eyes fluttered closed and he leaned into her touch.

He was so beautiful, in every possible way. Harry was kind and generous and passionate and loved everyone. He also had the most mesmerizing eyes and the perfect curve of his nose. He had a voice that calmed Dawn’s biggest worries, and a dimpled smile that made her want to coo every time she was granted one. Harry also has unbelievably pink lips, lips she always found herself staring at. Ones he liked to play with and cones that drew out every word he chose with care and precision. She knew his lips were soft, she knew it like she knew her name. And she wanted so badly to feel them.

His eyes were still closed, a comforted hum slipping out of his lips as Dawn massages at his hair. That sound was enough to make her lean closer and brush her lips against his.

Harry’s eyes shot open and he straightened up so quickly that Dawn's hand fell limp onto his led.  Neither of them said anything, Dawn didn’t know what he was thinking. As she waited for him to say something, a fire seemed to grow inside her, getting hotter and hotter until she felt like she was going to melt. The brush wasn’t enough, she wanted more, needed more and she was certain she’d suffocate if she didn’t get it.

Dawn didn’t get a chance to think of what to do because Harry leaned in, his lips crashing with hers so quickly it knocked the wind out of both of them. He kissed her hungrily, with a monstrous passion as if his whole life was building up to that moment. And Dawn kissed back, she pulled at his hair as he sucked on her lower lip and pushed him closer to herself, so close that she could almost feel his heartbeat through his lips.

He sucked at her lips and she bit at his, his tongue danced around hers and she let out sounds she’d never heard before. His hands held onto her face, directing her where he wants her to be and Dawn was certain she’d have a mark on her face for days because his touch was so hot. Liam would definitely—

She pulled away with a gasp, and Harry tried to lean in again but she shook her head, “this was wrong,” she said, almost trying to convince herself, because she felt no remorse, and wanted more than anything to continue to kiss him. She finally looked at Harry, who’s swollen red lips were now pointing down in a pout, “I have a so— I have Liam. I’m sorry.”

Harry seemed to want to argue with her, and she wished he would. She wanted him to give her a reason to stay with him all night. Instead, he coughed and said, “right. Liam.” Dawn waited for a little bit more before forcing herself to walk out of his office, out of his building, without turning back. If she turned back she’d go all the way back, and say screw Liam. Screw soulmates and kiss me.

The guilt started to seep in when she was a few minutes away from her apartment. It was a nasty feeling, she was used to feeling guilty but it didn’t hurt her stomach the way this did. It didn’t make her hands shake until she dropped her phone, and it didn’t make her lose her bearings until she was crying in the middle of the street. This is what happens when you cheat on your soulmate, she thought, I’m going to die. It hurts so much it’s going to kill me.

She didn’t want to go back to her apartment and be alone, so she kept walking until she was at the one place that never filled her with confusion and turmoil. Zayn opened the door this time, and only saw her face for a second before pulling her into a hug, “oh, button.” Dawn blubbered, in the middle of sobs and sighs, her apology about ruining their night. “Nonsense, love. We just got back and Anna’s tired anyway. Come on, let’s clean you up.”

Alanna and Zayn forced her into the shower, and now she had on a pair of Alanna’s softest pajamas and socks. She was laying on the couch, covered with a blanket and her head in Zayn’s lap as she recounted the events of the day. From Liam asking her to move into kissing Harry, and Zayn listened quietly through the whole thing, humming at the right parts and playing with her hair to keep her calm. Her body still aches, especially as she explained how guilty she felt. Zayn squeezes her arm when she told him it felt like dying, and he peppered her hand with soft kisses and comforted her with kind words when her body started to ache again. Dawn wondered then if Zayn was her soulmate, not in the way he was Alanna’s, but as her friend. She sometimes felt like he was her other half, like him and her were made from the same fabric and sent down to watch over each other, even though most of the time it was him protecting her.

“You know what you need to do, button.” He said softly, massaging circles into her scalp, “it’s the only way to make yourself feel better.”

“But what about him? It’ll break Liam, I know it.”

“He’s stronger than you think. And he loves you so much.”

Dawn groaned, covering her face with her hands, “I’m the worst soulmate ever. Why did he have to get stuck with me?”

“No, you’re not. No more of that, okay? You’ll stay with us for a couple of days until you feel better, I’ll tell Liam you’re sick and I’m taking care of you. Then you can tell him, he’ll understand. Soulmates always do.”

“Soulmates don’t cheat.”

“Yeah well, your story was never like everyone else’s was it?”

~~~

Soulmates always understand.

Liam understood. Of course not at first, at first. At first, there was yelling and crying and Dawn feeling so sick she had to run to the bathroom before she emptied her stomach on his carpet. But then he took care of her, he helped her clean up and made her some lemonade. Liam sat down across from her, his head in his hands for what seemed like an eternity before finally speaking up, “what are you going to do?” Dawn didn’t understand, “do you want to fix this?”

“Yes! Of course I do Liam I’m so sorry! Please let me fix it, it’s killing me.”

“What are you going to do to fix it?”

She fixed it, she did. Dawn emailed Harry the next day and requested a new advisor. She didn’t see him or think about him again. For a very long time, the guilt still ate at her. She was sick and fatigued and irritable, “a proper monster,” is how Zayn described it. But Liam was patient and tended to her all throughout that. And the more time that passed between her and Harry, the better she felt. Yes, every now and then she’d get sick again. And sometimes she couldn’t bear being near Liam or the guilt would eat her up. But that was better than before, things got better.

Harry did give her good advice. She faked it until all the bad feelings about Liam were gone, and she only got them when she thought about Harry. It worked. And a year later, when Liam proposed, she was able to say yes without a second’s hesitation. They were soulmates after all.

Everything was wonderful. They were engaged and living together, Liam’s photography was getting more recognition, and Dawn was almost done with her thesis. Her new advisor was kind, strict, but kind, and she respected her. It was almost Christmas time, and nothing could go wrong.

Liam and Dawn were gift shopping, walking hand in hand through a pet store as Dawn looked for a cute Christmas outfit for Tika. She had met Liam at the mall after a meeting with her advisor. Harry had walked in during that meeting, not knowing that Dawn was there. And when she saw him she felt her hands start to shake again. Her mouth was dry and her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest, so she excused herself and came back when he left. Other than that, the meeting went great, and Dawn was telling Liam about all of her research and the possibility of it getting published when someone approached them.

“Liam? Liam is that you?”

Liam froze, squeezing Dawn’s hand once before turning to face the voice. Dawn saw it was a woman, maybe a few years older than the two of them. She had a short blond bob cut and big blue eyes, and she her face was one of wonder when she saw Liam, but then her eyes turned to Dawn and were confused. And when they saw their interlocked hands they got angry, was she an ex? Sometimes people dated others before they found their soulmate, it was rare, but it happened. But usually, there are no hard feelings when the soulmates are found.  “Daisy,” Liam forced a smile, “it’s been a while.”

Something felt off, Liam was being so cold, and he was such a sweet person. Daisy cocked her hip and crossed her arms, “yeah no shit, you told us you were leaving town to deal with everything. Yet here you are.”

Dawn wanted to ask what was going on, but the tension between her fiancé and Daisy made her keep quiet. “I was out of town.”

“Yeah?” she cocked her eyebrow, “and who’s this missy?”

Dawn responded before Liam could do it for her, “I’m his fiance, his soulmate. Who are you?”

Daisy gasped, then threw her head back and laughed. When she stopped, she looked from me to Liam, “his soulmate? Well I know that’s not the truth.”

Dawn’s mind was reeling as she tried to keep up with everything, “I’m sorry?” she asked, confused.

“His soulmate’s dead baby girl,” Daisy rolled her eyes, “I should know, I’m her sister.”

Dawn froze, not being able to comprehend what was going on. The girl didn’t seem to be lying, and Liam was frozen as well, unable to say anything. Was it true then? He already had his soulmate? There’s no way, because that would mean Dawn wasn’t his soulmate, and that would mean he’s been lying to her. “Liam?” was all she could force out.

Liam threw daisy a dirty look and pushed Dawn away gently, “ok listen to me, she’s right. I had a soulmate before you. Her name was Sophia, and she passed away. But you’re my soulmate too! You’re my second one.”

Second soulmates were rare, but they happened. When someone loses their soulmate, their clock resets again, and they find another. “But that’s like... everyone in a million,” Dawn choked out, starting to calm down, “and why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want it to bother you, babe,” he comforted, “you’re my one in a million.”

Daisy wasn’t done yet though, “another lie!” she cackled, “oh my God Liam, I can’t believe you. You’ve always been a snake.”

“What?” Dawn questioned, “what is it now? Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

“I’m trying to help you, baby, his clock never reset after Sophia. He doesn’t have a second soulmate.”

Liam growled, “she’s lying, Dawn.”

That seemed to push Daisy off the edge, “lying? I’m not a liar! I have proof.” She opened her phone and after a few long seconds, turned it to me, “this was before the funeral. We were all standing outside and my mom snapped a picture, remember that? Then she wanted to process it and put it with Sophia so she could have us all with her but she didn’t have time? Remember when we were all there together grieving for your dead wife?”

Liam made a sound at the back of his throat, no doubt saddened by the mention of his late soulmate. But Dawn paid that no mind, because she zoomed into the picture, where Liam was fixing one of his sleeves, and his wrist was turned towards the camera.

00:00

It felt as if the air was taken out of her, like she’d been hit in the head and forgot how to breathe. She looked at Liam, who was frozen, guilty. She spent her whole life looking for him, only to find out after two years of them being together, that he wasn’t him. Everything she felt, or didn’t feel, it was all valid and she was made to be the bad person in the relationship because of it, while he knew the whole time, that she didn’t feel everything because he wasn’t hers.

Liam reached for her, but she dodged him, not wanting to touch him ever again. All she could do was force out a “don’t follow me.” Before turning and walking away.

She wound up in the apartment they shared, surrounded by pictures of them and the things they owned together. Tika pawed at her foot, wearing a collar Liam bought her. Dawn knelt down and took the collar off, tossing it across the room and it hit the front door, which swung open right after to reveal Liam. “Dawn,” he breathed, “please listen to me.”

“Get out.”

Liam stepped into the apartment, shutting the door behind him, “Baby, please we can get through this.”

“So it’s true?” she asked, part of her hoping he’d say no.

“Yes but that doesn’t matter! I love you, and you love me. This whole soulmate thing is shit anyway.”

Dawn scoffed, finally getting angry, “the past two years have been a lie! Everything about us is built on your pathetic lie! You’re shit, you are. You’re a liar and a psychopath and I want you out.”

Liam’s face twisted, “oi, this isn’t on me! You’re the one that walked up to me and told me you were my soulmate!”

“And you didn’t think to deny it? Instead, you had me believing that I was your soulmate! And that I was a shit soulmate at that because I didn’t love you at first, and I didn’t trust you. My whole being was telling me something was wrong about this, but every wrong feeling I got just made me feel worse, and you let that happen.”

He stepped closer, his arms extended towards her, but Dawn stepped back. Tika looked from her owner to the man she’s grown used to, sensing the negative energy and decided to go hide in a room. “But we got through all of that, right?” Liam continued, “every time you had a doubt or started pulling away I was understanding! I took care of you and loved you even when you treated me like shit and ignored me all the time. I was patient with you. I was patient with you when you wouldn’t sleep with me for a month and I was there even when you cheated on me! You’ve hurt me time and time again and I always forgave you. Now it’s your turn.”

Dawn was disgusted, she wanted to throw up. The thought that she fell in love with him, slept with him, has lived with him and was going to marry him without knowing all of this. “I didn’t lie to you about being your soulmate! I thought you were mine and I tried so hard to love you! I did love you!”

“You’re crazy! What were you going to do when we got married huh? When we couldn’t have kids because you’re not my soulmate? Tell me it was my fault?”

“Dawn please.”

“Get out! I don’t want to see you again.”

Liam clenched his jaw, “this is my apartment love, if you’re going to refuse to talk to me then you get out.”

Her blood was boiling, and if she didn’t get away from him she’d either hurt him or hurt herself. “Fine, I’ll fucking leave. Can’t stand this stupid place anyway.” Dawn stormed to the room they shared and started shoving her belongings into a stray backpack. “I’ll send Zayn for my stuff, don’t talk to him, and that’ll be it.”

Liam then started to grow desperate, “no, I’m sorry Dawn don’t go. Please, Dawn, we can work this out. I love you. I’m sorry I lied please just stay I can’t lose you.”

“I’m just your fucking replacement, Liam.”

“But I fell in love with you. We can fix this, I can fix this and we can still get married.” He blocked the door, “please, Dawn. You probably don’t have a soulmate anyway, this is better for both of us.”

That was it for her, she swung her backpack onto her back and shoved him out of the way, “anything is better than being with you. You stay the fuck away from me.”

She forced off her engagement ring and threw it at him, “Dawn!”

Dawn picked up Tika and grabbed her purse. “If you bother me or my friends, I’ll tell the police you faked being my soulmate. And you’ll go to prison. Stay. Away.”

Liam finally gave a defeated sigh, “fine, ok. Just don’t turn me in, please.”

“You’re pathetic.”

~~~

When she told Zayn what happened, he was livid. If it wasn’t for Alanna yelling at him to stay put, he would have gone and done who knows what to Liam. Zayn was gentle, but he had a temper and it was scary when he got mad. Instead of taking it out on Liam, he put all his energy into caring for Dawn. He and Alanna set up the guest bedroom for her, “you’ll literally live with us until our grandkids kick you out. Shut up about being a bother it’s really annoying.”

Zayn didn’t trust that Liam would stay away, and he insisted on driving Dawn to and from work. In order to try and forget everything, Dawn threw herself into her work. She increased her office hours and helped more of her students, and spent all her days in the office, working on her research or studying for her classes. The deadline was approaching fast, and she had allowed herself to get distracted with all the wedding planning, but now she was back on track, she’d get her masters on time.

Dawn was typing away at her laptop, so lost in her work that she didn’t notice a figure at her door until he knocked on the wall. Harry stood at her office door, looking nervous and holding a wrapped present in his hands, “Hello, can I come in?”

There was no longer a reason for her to say no. Harry sat on a chair, “I just wanted to congratulate you on your thesis almost being done. I’m a little upset I couldn’t read it but I will when it’s published. I got you something to celebrate.”

He handed her the present and Dawn opened it to find two CDs. A Dragon Tales, seasons 1-5 and CD featuring three Barbie movies. She laughed, her eyes springing tears because he remembered such small insignificant things about her. “These are wonderful,” she breathed, “thank you so much.”

Harry beamed, his dimples pinching in and giving her a feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time, one she only felt around him. “Your welcome. Maybe I’ll get you Teletubbies as a wedding gift.” Her smile faded and she didn’t respond. “How is Liam,” Harry pushed, clueless to everything that happened.

“Harry,” Dawn sighed, “thank you for the gifts, but I really don’t want to talk about him right now. And I have a lot of work to do.”

His smile dropped and he looked like she wounded him, “right. Sorry, I overstepped once again.”

As he was walking out, Dawn spoke up, “I’m sorry, Harry.” He turned around, “I didn’t mean to snap like that. You never overstepped, it was always me. You shouldn’t feel bad about anything.”

He gave her a small nod, “I don’t think you overstepped either. With me.” Dawn didn’t know what to say, so she just gave him a forced smile and looked back at her computer. “I miss you.”

Her head snapped up, her blood feeling like electricity at those three words. But Harry left before she could say anything.

~~~

She couldn’t sleep, every time she closed her eyes she saw Liam, and it made her afraid to sleep. She also had a pounding headache. It was three in the morning, and she couldn’t stop thinking about everything. Her countdown had turned to zero, which means someone else’s must have too, right? Her real soulmate was out there somewhere. She wished she could remember the party clearer, but it was too long ago.

There was also a possibility that she didn’t have a soulmate. Her countdown had been glitchy and maybe that was just it finally breaking down. Maybe she still was broken.

She had to do something, so she got out of bed and went to get a glass of water. Once she returned to her room, Dawn started rummaging through her unopened boxes, looking for something to make her feel better.

“Dawn?” Zayn’s sleep filled voice yawned and he flicked on the lights, “what are you doing up?”

“Did I wake you?” she said guiltily, “Sorry.”

He shook his head, squinting at her as he tried to keep his eyes open, “was going to get a drink and heard you. Can’t sleep?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

Dawn sat back on the bed and Zayn joined her, she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, feeling dizzy. “The picture.” Zayn hummed for her to go on, “the one Liam took from the party, I don’t want it around anymore. I have to get rid of it. God!”

“What?” Zayn asked, concerned this time, because Dawn had knelt over, gripping her head. “Dawn what’s wrong?”

“Dizzy,” she croaked, “my head hurts. My whole body hurts.”

Her best friend stood up, “ok lay down, I’ll go get you some medicine.”

“No, I need that picture.”

“Dawn that’s not important right now.”

“Yes it is!” she yelled. She didn’t know why she needed the picture so badly, but she just did.

“Okay, okay. Lay down and I’ll find it for you.”

She must have dozed off, because the next thing she remembered is Zayn waking her up, the picture in his hand. Dawn sat up and took it from him, studying it. Harry was giving her his book, his dimpled smile present as he looked at her. Dawn was enamored by the book, probably focused on not dropping it. The picture made her sick, “this is what started everything,” she hissed, going to tear the picture.

“No, no! Dawn wait!” Zayn practically tackled her for the picture, taking it out of her hands before she could tear it in half. She glared at him, hoping he had a good reason for doing that, “look.” He said, pointing to the book. But Dawn didn’t see anything, she cursed Zayn for being too sentimental and went to take the picture back. “No stop it! Look!” This time he pointed at her wrist, where the numbers were grayed and rapidly approaching zero. Her breath hitched, Liam had captured the moment her countdown went to zero. But that wasn’t what Zayn was referring too, because after he made sure that Dawn saw her countdown, he moved his finger and placed it just above Harry’s wrist.

~~~

This was stupid, this was so stupid. But Dawn could barely think straight over her heart beating so fast. She had taken Zayn’s car as soon as she noticed what he was pointing too, the picture was crushed between her hand and the steering wheel. She didn’t know if he’d be at his office at three in the morning, who’s at their office at three in the morning? But she had to go.

Dawn practically ran to the building, the door was open. That was a good sign, nevermind the fact that it could be any of the hundreds of people that worked in this building. She rushed up the stairs and down the hall, stopping short in front of his office. Her hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped the picture multiple times, so she shoved it into her pocket before putting a shaky hand to the door and pushing it open.

Harry was laying on the couch, a mug of black coffee sat on the floor beside him and he was reading a paper, a red pen settled behind his ear. His legs kept warm by sot grey sweatpants and instead of a dress shirt, he wore an old Rolling Stones T-shirt. He turned when he heard the door open, startled, then confused when he saw who it was. “Dawn?” he sat up, taking in her pink pajamas, the bun of hair toppled on her head, and the star wars slippers that belonged to Zayn, “are you alright?”

“When did your countdown go to zero?” she was panting.

“What?” Harry tilted his head, “Dawn what are y–”

“Tell me! Please,” she calmed down, “when did your countdown go to zero.”

“I already told you, love,” his eyebrows knitted in concern, “are you drunk?”

“You lied.”

His eyes widened, “excuse me?”

“You lied! Tell me the truth, please, Harry.”

Something in her voice unwound him, and he leaned back onto the couch before saying, “at the book release.”

“Why didn’t you notice it?”

“Dawn what’s going on?”

“If you knew that your time was approaching, why didn’t you notice it and know who your soulmate was?” Harry’s jaw twitched, he was embarrassed of the answer, and she knew why. “Because you didn’t expect it to ever get to zero, right? Because it was glitching for months before that and you had given up, so you didn’t notice it was at zero until way after.”

He stood up, eyes wide, “until after the party, when it was too late. How do you…” his jaw dropped when the realization hit him. Harry looked at his wrist, then back at her, then at his wrist again. He went to sit down, putting his head in his hands and exhaling through his nose. “What about Liam?”

“He lied to me.”

Harry fell silent, he laid back on the couch, then sat up straight. Dawn watched him repeat the motion over and over, then stand up and pace the length of his office. He was in shock, she understood that. Harry had thought he lost his soulmate forever and now here she was, in oversized pink pajamas, wide-eyed and panting like an animal. She looked away, trying to give him some privacy. “What are you doing?” Harry spoke, she turned around to answer, but was stricken silent by his dimpled smile, “come over here so I can kiss you.”

She practically jumped on him, and Harry laughed as he stumbled from her weight to the couch. Dawn tried to take in all of his features, to look at him and take in two years worth of him. Everything made sense then, why she was always drawn to him, why she felt guilty when she was with Liam. Why she kissed him, and didn’t feel guilty about that. Even why she started getting sick after they kissed. Her heart knew, it always knew that Harry was her person, it just took two years and a Zayn for her to catch up.

Harry’s lips captured hers, and he hummed happily as she kissed him back. Dawn could swear she heard their souls clicking together. She knotted her fingers with his hair, and Harry pulled her closer until all that's separating them was the clothes on their bodies. Between his kisses and their happy giggles, Dawn felt like she could finally breathe. His tongue on hers was fresh air, his lips on her cheeks and neck and mouth were fresh air, she felt like her soul could have floated all the way to heaven if it staying here and kissing Harry wasn’t more enticing.

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 11

The One With All the Lore (in which the Bad Kids do a Lot of Reading and we are Forcibly Reminded the Plot is Happening)

We are back in the Land of the Lomenelda where the Bad Kids and Co. are waking up (well, those who went to sleep anyway). Fig and Ayda wake from their sleepover that Fig decides to keep going into the day, confusing Ayda immensely in the process. 

Kristen decides to look at the research she found in Calethriel Tower and on a 22 religion check, she gets a lot of info which I will do my best to summarize here:

The information is older than what she read in the pirate book. It’s probably from 850-900 years ago--around the time of the last great Sylvan War.

The text is by high elven clerics of the Moon Goddess Galakaya (Tracker’s goddess).

There used to another goddess worshiped in Sylvere--a goddess of night, mystery, and magic and the younger sister of Galakaya. This goddess was worshiped by all of the races in the forest (and it sounds like this is who all the oblique references in the earlier research was pointing to). Doubt and the unknown were parts of worship to her which Kristen is very into. Religious differences between the races about how to worship the mystery goddess was part of what sparked the war.

Some high elven clerics came in to help broker a truce which ended up leading to the invention of the “Sylverian Heresy”. Basically, the Moon clerics advised the Mystery clerics to “unmake” the name of their goddess because, “Hey, she’s a mystery goddess, right? So isn’t knowing anything about her a contradiction of her whole thing?” They think that sounds legit and proceed to do that but it seems that it wasn’t actually altruistic advice as much as a ploy by the high elven clerics to weaken the mystery goddess. 

Fabian has been dancing all night and he is feeling exhausted but super good. This becomes even more of a family affair when none other than Hilariel Seacaster shows up! She joins the dance! Cathilda joins the dance! Fig plays her bass! Riz is skanking? It’s one of those classic D&D moments where the plot utterly grinds to a halt while everyone takes turns describing the ridiculous nonsense they’re doing and it’s fantastic. Once that calms down a bit, Fabian goes on a walk with his mom and Cathilda where Hilariel tells him that the grapes 1000% do not work, which honestly checks out.

Shifting to the Abernant sisters, Aelwen (this is the canon spelling and I’m gonna try to use it for these recaps but we’ll see how that goes) has just regained her pre-torture memories. To be specific, she seems to have backed them up between being broken out of jail in Solace and the torture starting. They have a little bit of a standoff, not sure whether one of them is going to attack the other. Once it becomes clear that blasting each other isn’t on the top of their respective to-do lists, they settle into a semi civilized conversation. Adaine wants Aelwen to read her thoughts so she’ll have the memories of what happened to her and the past day (at least from Adaine’s P.O.V.) and not go back to working with their parents. Aelwen seems resistant to the prospect and asks Adaine to just tell her what happened. While they’re talking, Adaine rolls an Insight check of 10 which doesn’t net her any information (we’ll come back to this).

Aelwen tells Adaine that their parents are not on the same side but refuses to elaborate, much to Adaine’s annoyance and frustration. They kind of dissolve into almost normal sibling bickering except that it’s about stuff like, “Oh come on, I only tried to kill you one time. Don’t be dramatic.” When questioned, Aelwen says that she only joined up with Goldenhoard for fun and she didn’t really think he’d win against her and her friends. The argument ends with Adaine casting Tasha’s Hideous Laughter which knocks Aelwen out in one shot because she’s still three or four levels of exhaustion deep.

Fig goes to Telemein to ask if he knows Planeshift (which she needs to get Gorthalax out of the ruby he’s trapped in). He does not and she doesn’t trust him to figure it out in a timely manner (or to even know what a timely manner is). 

Kristen goes into the Van where Aelwen is to check on her (she’s fine, just trancing). Then, she helps out while Adaine tries to rifle through Aelwen’s brain for information on their Mom. Aelwen saves from the first Detect Thoughts but she’s sleeping so Adaine just tries again. Second time’s the charm. Her sleeping brain is a little hard to read but what Adaine sees is that when she failed her Insight check with a 10, what was happening was THE SHADOWCAT WAS STANDING BEHIND HER AND TALKING TO AELWEN. And I (roughly) quote, “Don’t keep looking at me. Look at your sister. Your mom is working for me. She has the crown and she’s taking it to Sylvere. Get away from Adaine so we can talk.” On an 18 Insight check, she can tell that Aelwen and Kalina have spoken before and seem familiar with each other.

Now that Adaine has seen Kalina through Aelwen’s memories, she decides to Scry on her. Oh, and she has a Nat 1 portent roll to give her. Eat your dice Brennan! The Scry goes really weird though. Instead of just showing one person, it cycles through a bunch of people, ending with Ragh, Tracker, Sandra-Lynn, that elf Ragh slept with, and Kristen. Then, it flashes to a creepy-ass forest where she sees a wood elf covered in festering wounds and claw marks. Vines are dripping with blood. The elf stands, grabs an old spear, and scratches into the ground, “Hello Adaine. Glad you could join me.” Then, it moves back to Kristen. Um, como se dice, CONCERNING. 

Adaine gets a 27 to Detect Magic on Kristen and pings nothing that shouldn’t be there. Gorgug (who is also there btw) gets the pic and asks Ragh’s hookup if he can see the tabaxi and he can. The group gets together and they realize that everyone who can all of a sudden see the Shadowcat either had sex or exhanged blood with someone who initially could (ie: Garthy got it from Sandra-Lynn, as did Tracker when she blood healed her and Kristen got it afte she hooked up with Tracker in Leviathan). Shout out to everyone who called that. And I guess the Thistlespring STD talk at the top of the season was less of a wild detour than it seemed (I wonder if it would have transferred if said people specified that they used protection). 

Fabian and Fig are very down to drink some blood so they can also see the picture but they are warned off with the idea that it very likely means Kalina can see through their eyes or something similar. After they all exchange their info, Riz theorizes that Kalina is not just a servant of the Nightmare King and rather the Mystery Goddess herself, powered down. Adaine starts a private message (w/ magic, not on their crystals) with the non-infected people.

Kristen recently learned the spell Hallow which can basically turn the Van into a permanent Moon Haven. She tells Tracker and on a 15 Persuasion check, Tracker seems to have warmed back up to her a bit and is down to help. Telemein offers his library which has zero useful books but lots of meditation guides and essential oils which Adaine and Kristen respectively grab.    

Having learned her lesson, Kristen tells Tracker EVERYTHING she learned from the religious texts (and Tracker notices what she’s doing). She feels weird about something that bad having been done in the name of her goddess and also she’s sorry she gave Kristen a magic STD. She does the head bump thing that dogs and wolves do and says that just cause she was mad at her, it didn’t mean she didn’t love her. She goes to talk to Sandra-Lynn and it seems like they’ve patched things up. 

The Bad Kids split up again to get some stuff done before they leave (which they want to do since they are dangerously close to the elves who are probably looking for them). Adaine and Gorgug (who was also given Aelwen’s spellbook to hold) work on fixing the Hangman. Riz wants to do some research/investigating. Kristen and Tracker work on the Hallow spell. Fig guards Aelwen. Fabian hangs out with his mom.

After spilling his guts about the past week to his mom, Fabian is given an uncharacteristically lucid and touching speech from Hilariel which basically boils down to: you’re your own person and being able to get through hardship is better than never facing hardship. She also drops the information that post-yesterday’s shenanigans (grabbing the sun and all that), Aguefort has lost a LOT of funding. They won’t be able to pay their hirelings. Also, she kinda sorta wants Cathilda back because she’s out of yogurt and cannot cook. Cathilda has a little sidebar heart-to-heart with Fabian where she gives him a choice on whether she stays or goes and he decides she should go home with Hilariel. Says Cathilda, “There’s only one Seacaster left to take care of and she’s out there in a kimono.”

Oh yeah. Hilariel showed up to the woods in a black kimono. As you do. 

Cathilda asks Fabian which sword he’s going to fight with now since he has two and he chooses the elven one he got last episode over the Sword of the Seacasters.

Riz, with a crazy 28 Investigation check gets a bunch of information from the stolen research which I will summarize below:

Ragh, who is also there, reminds Riz that he saw Adaine’s mom talking to Jace post-prom and then saw the Shadowcat after on his way home.

Adaine’s mom was looking for a way to pin down the Shadowcat and also how to rename the goddess of mystery. She pulled 200-300 year old records on the execution of a wood elf named Landryn Leer in the elven secret service (called the Third Court). 

Landryn was a cleric, ostensibly of Galakaya, but she was actually a cleric of the goddess of mystery and was killed for espionage. When she was supposed to be healing, she was also infecting people with some kind of virus--probably whatever magic STD that lets you see Kalina in the picture.

Mom Abernant was also researching Abyssal demonic texts while she was working for Falinel (which I think is connected to the next bullet but my notes are a little hectic here).

After the first fall of Kalvaxus, a group of infernal warlocks came to help the good guys by making a boundary around the forest of the Nightmare King so no one could get in or out. The devils helped because devils hate demons and demons were on the other side. 

This isn’t new information but we’re reminded that the Crown of the Nightmare King can be used to anchor a being to the material plane.

Pok, Riz’s dad, also checked out the same information (about the fall of Kalvaxus and stuff) for himself and Kalina earlier. 

(Riz wonders whether the Nightmare King and the Mystery goddess are opposed rather than allies).

Anyway, the only way to pass through the barrier the devils put up is by a high ranking devil allowing passage. Mom Abernant had notes about binding a devil into a gem (Ragh recognizes that bit because of his mom’s condition) and doing a ritual to put the devil in a freshly dead body. Riz realizes that this is what was happening with him and Fig and Gorthalax in the Hotel Cavalier. 

This is actually from research that Kristen does but I’ll put it here because it’s related. Apparently, only a certain kind of dead body would give the Shadowcat the gem.

Meanwhile, Fig is watching Aelwen. She hexes Aelwen (giving her disadvantage of Strength checks), disguises herself as her (Aelwen’s) mom, and smokes cloves. Ragh’s hookup shows up, recognizes Fig because she’s still carrying her bass, and asks for the hot goss on her and Ayda. He says the elves told Ayda that she’s a rockstar and therefore probably promiscuous which made Ayda teleport away. That pisses Fig right off and she gets Gorgug to take over watching Aelwen while she goes after Ayda (with a parting, “CHOKE ON GRAPES BITCH,” to Fathethriel or whatever his name is). 

Aelwen wakes up but Gorgug realizes after about a minute that he’s not talking to the real Aelwen, it’s a water elemental like the one she made in her S1 battle episode. A decoy. At about the same time, Fig goes to where she was told Ayda left through a door but the door isn’t there. Then, she’s made to roll a Wisdom saving throw. Dirty 20 passes and whatever spell was happening doesn’t land. She rolls initiative but, even with a 5 turned to a 17 (she took the Lucky feat) she can’t beat a 19. Another Wisdom saving throw and this one she fails with a 10. She’s frozen with a Hold Person spell. Someone invisible grabs Gorthalax’s gem from her pocket.

She breaks out of the Hold Persons spell and casts Bestow Curse on the person--clearly Aelwen--to give her wicked gas (which is a hilarious on its face but smart after a second of thought Axford Gambit--Invisible Aelwen w/ gas = trackable by scent). Aelwen (who has the gem and her spellbook because she was in the Van, invisible and snagged it from Gorgug) drops invisibility, tells Fig, “Sorry but goodbye for now,” rips a huge fart, then teleports out. Adaine isn’t mad at Fig and Gorgug. She says she should have been watching Aelwen. The group tracks down Fathethriel who tells them Aelwen bribed him with the promise of 10 gold (the promise, not the actual gold) to mess with Fig. Fabian and Riz backhand him. Fabian calls him mean which is somehow the worst thing he could have said. Fig is ready to straight up kill this dude with Booming Blade but ends up just doing non-lethal damage and knocking him unconscious. But even Telemein hates that dude so it’s probably fine. 

The group discusses the hireling situation now that school is no longer paying their stipend. Sandra-Lynn and Tracker are both willing to keep on with them without being paid but the Bad Kids insist that they’ll still pay them from their own money. Riz thinks Aelwen might be the new sacrifice and Adaine is kinda like, “Sure. Of course. Why wouldn’t this be happening.”

Cathilda has a nice goodbye with everyone. Adaine gets cookies. Fig isn’t suspicious of her anymore. Fabian puts his eyepatch back on and calls her the best surrogate mother a boy could ask for (while standing like two feet away from his actual mom who, though hurt, is like, “Valid.”) 

Once they’re back in Leviathan, Sandra-Lynn gives a speech that’s half pep-talk, half apology. Then she asks Ayda to use her Sending spell and Kristen can tell even without an Insight check that she’s gonna talk to Jawbone. 

After terrifying Fabian with the idea that they might track down Chungledown-Bim, they decide to talk to Garthy instead--they being Fabian, Fig and Ragh. We’ll get back to them in a second. First, Adaine goes to the Library to read over her research. Nat 20 arcana check so here comes another info-dump:

The info she found was written by mystics and shamans of wood elves, centaurs, treents, and sprites (the forest races). 

Before the name of the goddess was destroyed, there were clerics driven out as heretics because they were having dreams sent by the mystery goddess which were ignored by the clerics in Sylvere. She was trying to tell everyone not to do the whole un-naming thing because it would destroy her. 

There were 4 miracles called the 4 transubstantiations followed by 1 bigger transubstantiation that happened before the unmaking of the goddess’s name. 

The mystery goddess was not just a goddess of magic but specifically, a witch goddess. 

Anyway, the transubstantiations were these:

Her spellbook was turned into a coin.

Her familiar was turned into a plague.

Her sanctum was turned into a curse.

Her focus (a broomstick) was turned into a tree.

Her name was turned into something unknown before it could be unmade (this was the major transubstantiation).

Riz is also doing some investigation and on a 23 check, the main piece of new info he gets is that in the original alliance of Kalvaxus and the Nightmare King, the NK gave Kal a coin for his hoard to seal their alliance. They realize that they got Kal’s hoard but they don’t know if they got the exact coins he owned or just an equivalent amount of money. Riz also sees notes from the government of Falinel saying that Mom Abernant was doing this research for them with the promise that they would release Aelwen and restore their family to some level of prestige. When the government went back on their promise, she started looking into other people that could help her, like Garthy (and the government eventually found out).  

Speaking of Garthy, back to Fig, Fabian, and Ragh. They try to persuade Garthy to come with them to help but Garthy is staying put. They do have some news though. Mom Abernant actually isn’t Falinel bound. She’s on the way to a town close to Sylvere (which the group kinda already knew but now they have confirmation and more specifics). The town is called Arborly and Fig actually knows someone who has a mansion (called Hollyhill) there who, while she was on tour, said she could stay there any time. With teleportation, they should be able to get there before her. Fabian has Garthy check their coins for anything fishy (looking at the aforementioned transubstantiated coin) but nothing seems amiss.   

As they leave, they suddenly hear a weird rumbling and then something leaps onto Fabian and starts giving him rubber burn. It’s the Hangman! Gorgug continued working on him in Leviathan and we learn that he took a level in Artificer and was able to fix him with a 22, some help from Adaine, and a little of the wax Fabian got last season. He’s back! And he wants to shit in Chungledown-Bim’s mouth! 

The next day, Kristen finishes casting Hallow with Tracker. She taps into some of the mystery goddess energy which seems like a questionable thing to do so very on brand for her. Ayda wants to come with them but she has to look after the library. However, she plans to shrink down the entire library, book by book, so she can carry it around and continue adventuring with the Bad Kids. Until then, she teleports them all to Arborly and the gates of Hollyhill.  

Detention

Fathetriel for Being an Ass

Even Telemien thinks he sucks. Choke on grapes bitch.

Honor Roll

Gorgug for Fixing the Hangman

I’m going to be less than entirely predictable here any instead of giving Adaine this spot for the objectively clutch move of scrying on the Shadowcat by forcing a Nat 1 on her save, I’m going to give it to Gorgug for taking a level of Artificer and fixing the Hangman. It’s just such a sweet move. All this insanity going on around them and he took the time to figure out how to fix his friend’s bike/dog. He didn’t have to do that but he did, and in such an understated way. Plus, it totally makes sense for him being the son of two tinkers. I wonder if he can build that cell tower for Zelda now. This also seems like a good move story-wise because I feel like having these extra skills ups Gorgug’s potential for shenanigans/helpfulness out of combat a lot.  

Random Thoughts

What did I say? What did I say at the end of last recap? I KNEW we’d gone too long without a Shadowcat sighting. I KNEW we were about to get wrecked! 

Made a couple of oblique references to this in the recap but I’ll say it outright now. The gang is all level 9 now!

There was a LOT of lore in this episode so, if I got anything wrong and you notice, please tell me and I’ll fix it when I get the chance. 

Sad to see Ayda go but happy that the Hangman’s back! I hope The Bad Kids take a page from Jester’s book and Sending her all the time.

Good on Fabian/Lou for letting Cathilda go in a move that was right for the story but objectively worse for the inevitable coming battle. 

“I couldn’t have one nice day with my sister.”/”No.” (“He’s all the bad guys,” Siobhan says in a resigned tone.)

Speaking of the Abernants, I think Arianwyn is how you spell Adaine’s mom’s name which I am going to try and get used to before she shows up again and I have to type it 47 times. Also, very funny that Ally/Kristen learned the name Adaine and was like, “She is the only valid Abernant. I refuse to learn any more names.” Anyway, this campaign needs less elves and more goblins. Riz. Pok. Sklonda. Things I can spell. 

I question whether the Mystery goddess is actually going to be an antagonist. Both because it seems like she got majorly screwed over by a bunch of uptight high-elves who have been nothing but trouble so far (sans Adaine and Hilariel to a degree) so I’m inclined to be on the side they’re not on and also because this was clearly a plot point written with Kristen in mind. So I guess the question is, is this going to be a temptation for Kristen or a safe harbor? 

Did the curse on the NK’s crown get properly dispelled by Adaine’s mom? Wondering because of the whole sanctum being turned into a curse thing. Though, I guess breaking the curse could be what turned it back into the sanctum.

Lol at all the people in the comments questioning whether Brennan ripped his lore from My Little Pony when all the Moon goddess, sister goddesses stuff was being explained. 

Did Brennan say how Hilariel knew where Cathilda was? She doesn’t have magic, she’s some kind of Fighter. Does she have Cathilda Magic Lojacked?

“Yes, The Ball! Feel it! Yes, Ball, skank!”

Hilariel, like Jareth the Goblin King, can contact juggle, which checks out. 

I’m very curious about what Brennan has planned for Aelwen because I think Adaine offering to willingly fail a save so she could read her mind was a very clutch, “I had a week to think about this and you better believe I thought about it,” move from Siobhan and I don’t know why Aelwen would be hesitant to take that opportunity (besides maybe thinking it was a trap?) except for the meta reason that a quick reality check would joss some important story beats. I could be wrong but that’s just the vibe I got. Also if any of y’all are inclined to write the alt version of this scene where Aelwen *does* do that, def tag me so I can read it. 

The vibe that was going on when Adaine and Aelwen was talking was fascinating. I kinda loved it? Like, they were still fighting and Aelwen was still being a bitch and Adaine was still super annoyed but it felt almost blunted? Like they were shooting at each other but with Nerf guns instead of AK-47s for a change. My read on Aelwen is that she enjoys having a relationship with Adaine, even if it’s antagonistic. I think that Aelwen would much rather fighting with Adaine every day than for Adaine to not care about her at all. It’s like the horseshoe thing, you know? Love and hate are much closer to each other than they are to indifference. Better to have her care about you in the wrong direction than not at all. Anyway, this is so the vibe that I was expecting from them when they linked back up post-rescue. Wish we had gotten a little more before she escaped but I’m really liking this plot thread.

Also, curious about how truthful Aelwen was being when she said she only joined up with Kalvaxus for fun and was counting on Adaine and Co. to stop them. And, while we’re wondering about things, I’m curious about what Aelwen’s previous relationship with Kalina was. Like, besides creating a diversion to steal the crown, how do the events of this season hook up with the events of last season in a way that explains the relationship? Or is it not related? What is the timeline of events here?

And was Kalina actually there talking to her do you think or was it more of a projection type deal?

Sidenote: I think Brennan is taking liberties with what Detect Thoughts can do (in this and especially last episode) but I think it’s a very good creative choice and it makes things a lot more interesting.

Also, gotta say, the way the plot ended up turning out re: Aelwen’s Escape was just *chef’s kiss*. Like, you had Fig bring up the ruby, unprompted earlier in the episode--reestablishing it as a thing that exists. Then they gave the spellbook to Gorgug. Then, Fig was the one who took up guard duty and she happened to switch up with Gorgug, giving Aelwen and, by extension, Brennan a perfect series of events to get her out of there. Wild. 

This episode explains how the Shadowcat/picture thing is spreading but not where Riz and Sandra-Lynn got it from initially. Like, I assume Sklonda got it from Pok. And it’s very plausible Riz got it from one of them somehow but when would they have shared blood? That’s not a normal family thing to do. Did his dad give him a kidney or soemthing? I’m probably overthinking this. 

Emily, I’m begging you. Please keep bringing up those rock and roll babies until Brennan is forced to make it plot relevant.

Speaking of, I was getting so many Night Yorb vibes from that mystery goddess “don’t speak her name” conversation and if the Night Yorb becomes plot relevant I swear I’m gonna personally make Brennan eat his dice.

“I mention everything to Tracker from now on.” You know what that is? Growth 

I loved Fig saying “I don’t know enough about you to know if we wanna kill you,” to the Shadowcat by directly looking at Riz and him being like, “UMMMMMMMM.”

Gilear, wildly, was not mentioned once in this episode and you think he would have been since his girlfriend showed up.  

I wonder if Fandrangool has better stats than the Sword of the Seacasters. I also wonder if I’m spelling that correctly. Doubt it.

“My vices rule.”

One thing I didn’t recap but should have were the dreams in the first episode and I feel like I should go back and watch them because they feel like they could become relevant any time now but that sounds like a lot. I’ll try and watch them before next recap though so I can connect any obvious dots.

Is there anything more pure than Murph cracking up at Emily’s shenanigans. 

I have a note in my notes that says “Fig/Virgin” but it’s like that one gif. “Why am I gasping? I already knew that.”

We originally thought the Shadowcat didn’t want people to be able to see her but now it’s seeming like the opposite is the case. It looks like this is a systematic way to *force* people to be able to see her. If that’s what’s going on then that’s a brilliant reversal from Brennan.

Aelwen, when she gets her memories back, says something like, “Since I’m in a hot tub and you found what you found, I’m assuming you’re not gonna kill me this second.” And one, funny that she can’t even directly reference the one compliment she ever gave Adaine while in her right mind but also, the implication seems to be (at least partially) that she thought, “Let me say something nice about Adaine on this charm to buy me some goodwill so she doesn’t immediately kill me once she restores me,” which is so calculated and I kinda love it.

I had a conversation with drinkingdeadpeopletea while the ep was going on that basically went like: Me: They better watching Aelwen so she doesn’t escape. Her: lol she’s def gonna. 

“Does your mom smoke cloves?”

The goddess’s familiar being turned into a plague and the thing going on with Kalina and being able to see her being like an STD and Goldenhoard presenting as a dragonborn but being an actual dragon and Kalina being a tabaxi and cats being the most classic familiar for witches and the goddess being specifically a witch goddess all feel possibly related to me, but that could just be my brain playing the association game and connecting things that don’t necessarily connect. 

The fact that other characters (read: Fathethirel) read Fig and Ayda’s relationship as possibly romantic (in an attempt to mess with her of course, but still) and Fig reacted so strongly (well strongly and in that specific way because I have no doubt she’d also beat a dude within an inch of their life for messing with, say Gorgug or Adaine) is something I’m going to star for later. [Edit: Brennan clarified on the Discord recently that Ayda (or at least this version of her. Phoenix reincarnation and all) is 17 so y’all are all good to go shipping-wise). As is Tracker, by the by, but I think we were all pretty sure Brennan was keeping that above board.] 

Siobhan’s face when Fig says that she’s “straight edge except for hallucinogens.”

“I’m gonna buy you an orange.”

This episode, Adaine, with advantage, rolled a nat 20 (the other roll being 1). Brennan got one natural 1 (though it wasn’t rolled, it was a portent roll) and Gorgug also rolled one Nat 1 but it’s important that I note it was for giving the Hangman an ass to shit in Chungledown-Bim’s mouth.