#siblings in media make me bonkers

[kindofsortofmaybe]

do you ever think about how amity blight was raised in an abusive household and often didn’t get along with her siblings and had fake friends and treated people poorly because that’s all she knew how to do because that’s how she was treated. and do you think about how she still came out of that with the capacity and willingness to do good and improve herself and mend the mistakes she made, and how she and her siblings were able to become close and look out for each other even though they were pitted against each other, and how amity’s first really good relationship was with willow park as children and now she has the chance to have that friendship again and she found those people that don’t make her feel like everything is an opportunity to prove herself and she can breathe a little and she can love people again, she can love people again, she can love her siblings and her best friend willow park and her goofy human luz, and she can love this weird kid named gus that she never really knew but now she gets to and he’s like a little brother and she likes feeling like a big sister, and she can love hunter, this boy who grew up a lot like her and is on the same kind of path towards healing and she can love him like a brother because they just understand each other and when she loves him she remembers that she can love herself. if she can love someone who made a lot of the same mistakes that she did then she can love herself. and do you think about how amity blight has so much potential for interesting dynamics with every other character in the show. do you think about how she is one of the most beautiful and hopeful stories in the owl house because she’s all about love. and hope. and redemption. and receiving grace. do you ever just think about amity blight

[eerna]

Kudos to Noragami for being one of the few pieces of media to say “you can mend/maintain your relationship with your past toxic family members, bcs forgiveness can help you” while also saying “SOME OF THEM ARE TRASH THO AND IT’S OK IF YOU DGAF WHEN THEY DIE”

Enough of both extremes, give me more of the middle, thank you Noragami

Hell ye! I am often gleefully munching on toxic sibling relationships in fiction, and one thing I've noticed is that brothers are often allowed to redeem themselves, but sisters rarely are. And even if they do choose redemption, they are still disliked by the fandom. So Adachitoka going absolutely bonkers and making Nora betray the gang like 10 times between the first moment of her redemption and the final one and STILL giving her a happily ever after is SO refreshing and SO fun and I am SO thankful for it!!!!!

[thestalkerbunny]

Is part of why you dislike shojosei the fact it seems weirdly obsessed with random incest? It's not even just crap like "Love Slave of the Dark Prince" schlock that has it, it feels like even otherwise normal mangas throw it in.

I MEAN. PART OF THE REASON IS THAT.

Like It makes me want to run up to someone, clothesline them by their neck and WWE BODY SLAM them into the ground, taking me down with them so we BOTH snap our fucking necks.

Let me tell you the ACTUAL DEEP LORE on why I hate 'oh it's a technicality' incest plot points CAUSE BESIDES OBVIOUS BLATENT NORMAL HUMAN DISGUST, I have a deep grudge with it.

It's called My BEEF with that BITCH VC ANDREWS.

So I feel like. At some point, everyone has seen or had the misfortune to TOUCH this book.

Flowers in the Attic. Brief lazy man synopsis. Woman hides her kids in the attic so she can marry hot new hubby, grandmother abuses them. They eventually get out. My mother had this book and the cover weirdly haunted me as a child.

BUT A FUCKING MAJOR PLOT POINT. IS THE ELDEST TWO SIBLINGS JUST START FUCKING.

And they get away with THAT I GUESS.

But that's not what got me mad.

Cause homie let me tell you.

I Fucking *WATCHED* the movies.

The Life Time Movie Network Channel, or as I call it, the Women's Horror Channel because everything BAD that can happen to a woman will happen, was doing a marathon of ALL THE MOVIES based on the books. Bored and with nothing else to do. I watched them.

I watched all of them.

All Fucking 4 of them.

And it was one of those viewings where you're like 'maybe it'll get better with the next one. MAYBE consequences will rear their heads. MAYBE We can pull this off as a 'don't fuck your brother' moral play with something bad happening.' It was honestly like a train wreck you couldn't stop looking you just kept staring in horror.

Nearly 4 whole movies-INCLUDING the alleged ORIGIN movie about the grandma. And when it stopped being about the two eldest siblings incesting it up.

*It went to FUCKING STEPFATHERS, EMOTIONAL INCESTING GRANDMA, TO UNCLE AND NIECE* and I don't know WHO ELSE cause at that point my brain CLOCKED the FUCK OUT and I think I blacked out for the rest of the afternoon. I'm still waiting on my 'time wasted' refund.

I Hate those plot points SO MUCH. The only time I tolerated it was in Crimson Peak which at LEAST THEN IT WAS REACTED TO CORRECTLY AS SOMETHING INHERENTLY FUCKED UP THAT ONLY ABSOLUTELY BONKERS PEOPLE DO. I fucking HATE the ROMANTIZATION of it. I can't fucking FATHOM that bullshit happening in real life but it fucking DOES. IT FUCKING DOES AND I HATE THAT TOO. I wish the body had a fucked up adverse effect the same way our bodies have adverse effects when we consume human flesh.

If it must be a plot point in a story or a movie-then let it be something to be viewed with revulsion. A thing to be UPSETTED by. Not romanticized with 'oh how cute this is' no-fucking bullshit. I read a Lot of fucked up pieces of media. I go out of my WAY to do so by indulging in Splatterpunk. At least when it pops up THERE-it's regarded as disgusting.

I have gone on a long enough tangent, I fear I may give myself another headache if I go on.

[pulchrasilva]

What's an anti-anti? Or an anti for that matter

Oh my friend I am so sorry to introduce you to the shitpile that is antishipping discourse

Anti is short for "antishipper", which is someone who believes certain types of ships are immoral and nobody should ship them or engage with media about them. Exactly what types of ships that includes varies (because morality will always be vague at best and you can't meaningfully categorise anything into "always good" and "always bad"), but people usually take issue with incest, ships involving one or more minors, age gaps, etc.

I consider myself a proshipper/"anti-anti" purely because I think this kind of discourse is extremely inane and potentially harmful.

Antis tend to say "problematic" ships "normalise" harmful dynamics in real life, ignoring that exploring these ideas in fiction is a safe way of engaging with darker topics and sometimes people do so to process personal trauma. Personally I've found that reading fanfiction about dark topics made me wayy more emotionally prepared to handle discussion of them in real life.

And, as I said, it's nearly impossible to draw a solid line between what should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed. Age of consent is an arbitrary number that's chosen because legally you need a strict number if you're going to enforce the law, but a person 1 year older and 1 year younger than the age of consent aren't actually that much different. Plus the law varies from country to country, but antis tend to choose the US age of 18 because the US dominates the internet. Age-gaps between two non-minor characters get even more blurry!! And let's not forget that a ship between two men is way more likely to be flagged as pedophilia than a ship between a man and a woman. Imo if you can't make a concrete rule about it there's no point in making a rule at all.

Plus it's fiction, and not even mainstream fiction, so it's hardly gonna cause any significant shift in real life culture. These ships get criticised to hell and back in fan spaces and people get properly harassed over it, but there are plenty of professional writers portraying these things in well known media and don't get much flack for it at all - because it's way easier to tear down a fan, your equal, than a creator. It seems to me that the problem isn't really "normalising" these behaviours, because if that was the case mainstream media would be a much bigger contributor than fandom

For some reason, toxic/abusive ships are less commonly criticised despite being objectively harmful to the characters involved, and incest is the one people hate the most despite it being (imo) the one least likely to cause actual harm to the characters. Also depictions of rape and sexual abuse are usually considered off limits but you rarely get the same criticism of, say, depictions of murder. The sexual aspect of the topic seems more important than the actual harm.

AND THEN there's the fact that antis generally only argue against the ships that make them personally feel uncomfortable. Different people have different boundaries for what they consider too far, and I lose my shit every time I see antis shipping something I know other antis claim is the devil. And often the whole thing gets coopted by someone who doesn't like people shipping characters A and B because they ship B and C. ("You can't ship these unrelated characters because they're sibling-coded which makes the ship basically incest" is something I've seen a truly bonkers amount of times)

So yeah. That's the whole mess. Like I said I dont really care about whether or not antis follow me? I'm proship purely because I don't think this is a conversation that needs to be had at all. Like who cares But, go wild, romanticise the hell out of the most repulsive things!! It's nobody else's business but yours. But if I see a mutual who followed me first reblogging "any proshippers who follow me should explode and die teehee ^-^" ONE MORE TIME I might actually explode

[veritylarsen]

20230903

it's been much longer than about time to be transparent about decisions i've made in the past. i strongly recommend reading the entirety of this if you wanna keep in touch with me and my work. in my opinion, these are situations with legitimate weight that can't just be covered casually on social media within limited text boxes. i just wanna be on the same page as y'all that what i did was unjustifiable, and that i'm getting help as a result. i won't be referring to people by their names, but if you know any of the people involved, please bother me with your concerns before bothering them. these are events that have already been settled, and i don't wanna kick up a storm by merely talking about them again.

some contextless apologies: my deepest apologies to any minor i interacted with during 2020-21 in billings for making the line between friend and adult be far too blurry to be acceptable, especially giving you guys drugs as a way for me to be on cooler terms. i'm sorry you guys took the brunt of me not being able to handle a long duration of loneliness and my own trauma, and to one person specifically i considered myself best friends with for taking the majority of it. i also apologize for publicizing my lack of maturity during a heated situation in the billings scene during 2021, and spreading misinformation that ended up causing harm to someone who was already receiving plenty of it.

the following is more explanation, with no intention of me excusing myself, here's just more context #1: i had just turned 21 when covid first hit, and was going to college in bozeman, montana. having to suddenly return to my hometown (billings, montana), and quarantine in a home i had plenty of trauma associations with after being liberated from leaving it, was something i had no clue how to manage in my brain. a local who i didnt know and had never talked to before, but was mutuals with on instagram, was making a music scene groupchat. i DM'd them and was soon added to it, ecstatic that i was finally feeling like i was a part of something. soon after, it was moved from instagram to discord, and it wasn't until -18 and 18+ roles were added that i realized the majority of these people were 16-17 years old, and that i was the oldest one there at the time. i didn't quite realize the inherent dynamic i had above them because all i wanted were just people to talk to, and the immature self-loathing way i treated myself still made me believe i was beneath them. i was SO scared of even casually talking to people in general, something i had felt all of my life for miscellaneous reasons. i didn't want anything except to be noticed and regarded, and felt that my genuine lack of wanting anything nefarious from these people gave me some sort of moral pass. i proceeded to talk to them as much as my anxiety could allow, and gained a closer relationship with one of them as a result, who was 16 years old at the time. i really admired this person far more than a 21 year old should be towards a 16 year old. i had no sexual attraction towards them (if anything i was deathly afraid of having sex with anyone on the planet, but i truly do not want to speak about my sexual trauma publicly), and once again thought i saw the clearer boundary because of it, that it would be a moral pass for me to hang out with them on a fairly often basis (sometimes they brought their younger sibling along, who was 14 at the time. intensely fucking bonkers of me to think this was an ok thing to let happen), which i continued to do with them and some others in that groupchat, even well into 2021. since i was hanging out a lot with this one person in particular, i made sure to let them have their own life to live, telling them i was just happy to just be a person within it, yet i still wanted to be best friends with them and acting so much out of my own insecurity. i still thought i was "facing the line" by giving them weed and alcohol, not having realized i had already stepped well over it by involving myself in their lives as i had already done. good intentions can only do so much when you're also contemplating being their partner once they turn 18/19, which is profoundly fucked up. that's way too close to grooming to be accepted. i once again want to say i'm sorry to this person specifically for wanting to be a large part of your life due to my own intense fear of loneliness and my own intrusive attention-seeking behaviors, not allowing you the space you really deserved. please continue to live your life on your own terms, keeping your own will dear and having the serenity within yourself to hold it within you forever.

#2: later in 2021, one of my friends accused two of my other friends of sexual assault towards them. i was met with a whirlwind of defenses from both sides, who were all friends i have put my deep trust into for years, and was dumbfounded not knowing who to believe. i thought i could do something of importance by joining everyone else on instagram and posting on my story about how the situation is far too messy for me to really have a side. seems ridiculous typing that down and reading that back, but that was my weird intention at the time. as a result, i ended up putting out there a lie from the accused that the assault actually happened the other way around. as of about a year ago, people are apparently still spreading that notion around, which i find to be gross as well. i'm deeply sorry for contributing to the weird hivemind of defense and a need to express opinions that much of, if not all of, the scene expressed back then. i have to be completely honest and say that to this day, i still do not know the complete story. both sides acted with ridiculous fervor, mixing in important points with suggestible actions with deep trauma, a bunch of hurt people hurting each other. all i can say with certainty is that i've seen/heard some people in the situation mature and become different people for the better, and have seen/heard some people want to insist they are entirely correct while ignoring the harm they've caused.

thank you so much for reading. lesson of the story is to please go to goddamned therapy already. i'm still continuing to do so. please message me privately if you have any concerns.

[videogamevvizard]

hi guys im having snorpy brainrot (more then usual) so. Character analysis + i just talk about him a lot.

Snorpington (Snorpy) Fizzlebean, if you don't know, is a character from the game Bugsnax (I WILL TALK ABOUT IT LATER i need to finish replaying it) and the guy in my pfp.

Snorpys a Engineer (i think im not the making things expert im the video game expert) whos also a paranoid recluse, mainly scared of the "Grumpanati" getting to him cuz his past work in the government and firing from a government project.

I like him mainly because the paranoid recluse part is also something I've, and still do, deal with and seeing a character like that not played as "Oh haha the joke is hes looney crazy bonkers in the head and no one likes him" is very nice to see.

Anyway, he has connections to other characters in the game, most obvious being Chandlo Funkbun (his boyfriend), who he loves dearly but if confused of what their relationship is, and Floofty Fizzlebean (his sibling), who he has a very strained relationship with. His relationship with Chandlo is the best thing ever its extremely cute and I love them dearly its been one of the few extremely good gay relationships ive seen ever. Im the game him and Floofty also make up near the end which is very nice. Other notable connections are his friendship with Lizbert, very weird suspicion of Wiggle, and friendship with you the player he is you friend your pal your chum. I find it interesting the journalist status isn't a problem with him, cuz media stuff, but it absolutely is with Floofty. Floofty hates journalism its mean to them.

I also think hes autistic, for many reasons two I drew examples for

Hes so me hes so me I'm autistic and we are very simular. I GUESS his lack of understanding of social cues is also another thing but thats entirely unimportant same stim raptor arms more important. Hes just a funny little guy that i like a lot and deserved a little ramble :)

[mateodoodle]

Do you have any OCs? feel free to talk about them if you do

What was the first piece of media you engaged with on the internet? Are you still interested in it?

What's something you made or did that you're proud of?

What's something that made you smile this month?

I have a few! Both are my dnd characters from different campaigns. A couple irl friends from one campaign follow me so i wont talk about Wil much but Yevga is my full-orc barbarian character and I love them so much!!! When they were a kid, their favorite rock (shaped like a bunny) was "lost" in the fae realm and when it vanished they conencted it to a loss of innocence that came with the trauma of all the fucked up stuff that happened on the same day. They finally got the rock-bunny back but are really torn up abt it not restoring that childhood innocence and happiness so they shaved their head with their greataxe and gave themselves a couple stick n poke tattoos. They used to try and be really cheerful to make up for the fact that they're really sad and scared all the time, but they're letting that go now. Yevga's siblings are a half Yuan-Ti/half elf, a half orc/half elf, and a half Yuan-Ti/half orc (or snorc, short for snake-orc) and they all have races that live much longer than full orcs so Yevga's really afraid of dying and leaving them behind

I think my first media I engaged with on the internet (don't quote me on thos my memory is VERY bad) was Percy Jackson and the Olympians. As I'm very VERY excited for thr show, I'm not just still interested in it, I will also interact with art/fics/info abt the series whenever I stumble across it, though I'm not actively seeking it out

I'm proud of every fic I published on AO3 (ImANerdAndLikeToRead) and piece of writing I've done for a class! It's shocking actually, that so little of my writing makes me feel bad about my skill since I'm generally a very self-depricative person, especially when I first started writing fics, but I poured so much love into each fic that I can't help but reread them amd think "damn... This author is great!" And it's me! It helps that I've only taken writing classes abt things I really enjoy, like short story writing or Slavic Folklore (I wrote a 1.7k fic that was ASSIGNED FOR CLASS about a werecat movie I watched in class... Bonkers)

Right before the end of the semester, I went caroling w my choir around campus. I don't do Christianity and i'm not even that big on Christmas and mostly celebrate it because my family does, but the carols are so fun and there's something so joyful about caeoling in particular that makes me feel like I'm overflowing with happiness :¬> strangers fuckin LOVE impromptu Carol of the Bells and I love to sing it, so being surrounded by dozens of strangers who took time out of their day to listen to me and my friends sing and then raucously applaud afterward... It goes to my head a little and I couldn't help but grin like a madman

Thank you so much for asking! I don't even remember if this was part of an ask game or just a fun lil reach out but I really enjoyed it! I didn't mean to take so long to answer but I was thinkin really hard abt my responses

[somewherenearcool]

rich people need to be stopped

generally speaking, but i want to talk about nepo babies and music.

this isn't a new discussion, we have all heard about king princesses great grandpa who founded macys and died on the titanic, and yeah, even if they didn't receive any sort of inheritance as they claim, there is still some generational wealth that allowed their dad to become a sound engineer and start his own business, which allowed king to get musical training and record music and blah blah blah.

but i don't want to talk about king princess i want to talk about this band called Lawrence.

specifically, these two: Clyde and Gracie Lawrence.

you may have seen them across other social media platforms. they identify as an R&B/soul group...

and they all look like this. which i guess is fine, live your truth.

but what is really interesting is the way they market themselves.

They often describe their collective as "just some siblings and friends making music." and it is really easy to take this at face value considering none of the members have their own wikipedia pages, despite the band having been established for over a decade.

However, if you go to the bands wikipedia page you can learn about The Lawrence Family.

What is the significance of the Lawrence Family? Clyde and Gracie's father is Marc Lawrence. Who's Marc Lawrence?

Marc Lawrence is a well established screen writer, producer, and director. His portfolio is massive and includes works such as Miss Congeniality and Did You Hear About the Morgans amongst other Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant collaborations. Suffice to say-- this guy is loaded.

This guy-- Marc Lawrence-- also has a habit of including his children in his work. When Marc was working on Miss Congeniality, he claims that Clyde (at age five) actually wrote the pageant song, thus making him the youngest ever inducted member of the Song Writers Guild of America. Good on you Clyde. From that point on, as a child, Clyde composed several songs for several of his father's movies, and Gracie acted in several of them.

Both Clyde and Gracie attended the prestigious Dalton School on the upper east side of Manhattan, and both of them went on to study at Brown, where Clyde eventually formed his band "the Clyde Lawrence Band" (classy).

But okay whatever, rich kids gonna rich.

Here's the part that i really feel is so insidious. As i've mentioned before, neither Clyde nor Gracie have their own wikipedia pages, EVEN THOUGH they have both been established in the film industry since childhood. I cannot comprehend how the youngest ever member of the Song Writers Guild of America and his child star sister are able to evade the all powerful forces of wikipedia and yet somehow they have managed.

What is doubly insidious is that their newest single is called "23," and it was released this year. The entire song is sung from Gracie's perspective, and the chorus goes:

"you said that 23 would be the best year,

well i'm 23 and that's a lie.

you said that 23 would be our best year,

but at 23 you said goodbye."

and all the marketing around this song has been birthday themed, as if to insinuate that Gracie Lawrence is 23 now, wrote the song as a 23 year old, reflecting on presently being 23.

and listen that's not me reading too far into it

that's

literally

what they are doing.

What's bonkers about this is i'm 23 right now. I graduated high school in 2018 and i graduated college in 2021. Gracie Lawrence graduated high school in 2015, took a gap year, and was set to graduate from Brown in 2021. So unless Gracie Lawrence skipped three grades in school, which seems unlikely considering that while she was in school she was also acting and touring with her brothers band...she's not 23, she's at least 26.

AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING 26, BUT THERE IS DEFINITELY SOMETHING WEIRD ABOUT GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO MAKE YOUR ACTUAL AGE DIFFICULT TO FIND ONLINE AND MARKETING YOURSELF AS A QUIRKY GIRL IN YOUR EARLY 20s.

which brings me to my next point. their wardrobe.

people can dress how ever they want, but the outfit choices made by clyde and gracie feel deliberate in two ways.

A.) Gracie's outfits look like they are meant to age her down:

it's a lot of school girl outfits and cheerleading uniforms and shit. furthering my theory that they are trying to make her actual age difficult to discern

B. their outfits are but ugly.

not to be a bully, but i'm going to be a bully here, because they can take it. They are poor-baiting. their outfits are all mismatched, sized wrong, generally thrift store coded. As above you can see gracie has no problem wearing boxy shirts and mixing patterns.

if we examine clyde's wardrobe we see a lot of jerseys, faded t shirts, ball caps, and sneakers.

again, it's all very boxy, casual, not as uncoordinated as gracie's attire, but still it maintains this blue-collar image.

also

this isn't related to anything, i've just seen this outfit so many times on social media and it makes me want to tear my hair out.

their lyrics also hold evidence of poor-baiting, for instance, this song "i'm confident that i'm insecure", which boasts the opening lines:

"well shucks,

i think i need to go to therapy,

but i'm tough,

so i'm just gonna cry in bed for free"

But why wouldn't they want to be perceived as poor? If you're going to call yourself a soul artist or a soul group, you need something to be soulful about. You need to have life experience or else your callowness will shine through in your shallow, heavy handed, tiktok lyrics.

I guess my whole point is... these people are freaks. I think it's difficult enough that the pop genre and other major media is over saturated with the children of last generations famous/grotesquely wealthy. It's bad enough that we normals have to live with the fact that we will never have the time or resources to reach success that these millionaires have. it's bad enough that these two definitely went into that pizza place to have a photo shoot and they have definitely never set foot in a cheap by the slice pizza place earnestly.

But you're telling me that with all those resources, with all the training, the ivy league educations, and all of daddy's money...

the lawrence siblings couldn't have found a single black person to stand as a major member of their soul ensemble???

[arledrone]

I would say I send you patience and strength but boy am I at my fucking limit with how these tls actually handle everything else, like hornton? i can take it its cute and i will use it against anyone who hates it for sheer spite. The wack ass lingo's that been used? yeah that too because when you think about it, it makes sense bc technically speaking they arent from our world and TWST wonderland's worldbuilding has always been one step backwards and two steps forward kinda thing bc of the way there world works (modern enough but not as modern as ours since they still have magic which slows their process I think) Cater not being honest about his sisters also makes sense because i'd like to think that he just honestly wants people to leave him and his family life alone so yeah.

BUT EVERYTHING ELSE???? Sebek and Silver of all people not calling Malleus with his appropriate title?? etc. etc.?? BOY am I going to need to sit down and drink bc fucking hell the MISCHARACTERIZATION WILL FUCKING KILL ME.

Anyways, I hope you'll manage... to hang on.... somehow... lots of love anon <3

The "Hornton" was never meant to sound like a "good" nickname anyway. "Tsunotaro" is genuinely a silly little nickname so "Hornton" works just fine.

I wouldn't call it "whack ass lingo/slang" though. It's a majority of AAVE. But it's either used in unfitting situations or just not used properly at all. Cater of course being the biggest offender in the localisation, a lot of it feels forced/unnatural. But I get kinda 'ehhhh' seeing people call it 'cringey' JUST because it's AAVE. It's definitely overused and poorly handled though. IDK how to put it that's about it.

I think the TWST world is plenty modern tho. They have airplanes, phones, social media, etc. Plus it's established normal education and occupations exist, it's not like magic replaced everything. The only place it's genuinely predominant is Briar Valley.

The sisters thing with Cater is odd. Like it's made clear he says he's the "only brother" in his family. The "no siblings" thing is weird but I can see it as Cater being his usual swerve the topic self, but I feel like they could've just kept it at "brothers" and call it a day. Idia and Floyd I've seen a lot of comments on as well. But as far as Idia goes he's literally always been Just An Insufferable Redditor. Floyd saying "Yeet" is funny and that's about as much as I have to say bc I don't care enough for Octavinelle to investiage their TLs and them mistranslatiing Jade's countdown line is enough of a red flag for more.

It's a weird thing with changing "Doodle Suit" to "Paint the Roses". But IRC Toboso tweeted specifically about the translations for the UMs so???? Whomst knoweths. I know it's a localisation but they're just deadass making more work for themselves at this pointlk j;sdalgkjds.

The Sebek thing is absolutely fucking BONKERS to me.

Also a moment of silence for Rook and Vil. I may want to punt them across the country but them inevitably getting heterosexualised in the localisation is going to be painful. That's whole the point of how Vil changes his manner of speaking in Ghost Marriage. Replacing his 'atashi' with 'boku' and his more 'feminine' speech for talking Like A Straight Guy is the whole joke there.

I haven't dedicated much time to leveling stories, so I can't say a lot about how Scarabia's generally translated. All I know is that i like the "merciful sands" saying and that Jamil saying "that isn't alchemy, it's an atrocity" is the funniest shit. BUT from what I've seen Kalim's localisation is kinda. On the fence for me and the mouse has a gun pointed at him to have him say "oopsie doodles" or whatever the fuck. I understand these are teenagers with their own sayings and whatnot but also it is 2022.

Anyway TL;DR the Ep4 translation is going to be Pain and I Sense It In The Marrow Of Me Bones.

[timerainseternal]

New theory: the amount that the Hargeeeves' powers are confusing to me specifically is directly correlated to the amount of impact they have on the plot.

To be clear, I'm not talking about how much they break the laws of the universe. This is just a Certified Silly Post and I do not have the brainpower to debate whether monster tummy, Very Convincing, spooky scary skeletons, or the ability to manipulate physics in a very specific way, is the most glitch-inducing. Nor am I talking about how much we don't understand about the powers, just what we do know about them and how consistent they are with the stated power. (Could Diego yeet the moon into the Earth? The world may never know.) Basically, as I watched the show, how much my brain said "that works for me, I guess" is the metric I'm working off of. They're also grouped together, since I couldn't decide on a 1-7 scale, so there are instead three levels of confusing and plot-relevant. This is also entirely memory-based, so I may miss things, and does not account for the character's importance to the plot, only the power's.

The Completely Understandable:

Luther: Strong and Tough™ are not confusing, and nor are they brought up very often. A chandelier fell on him, he punched some things, but like, what did that change, plotwise? Not much.

Diego: Again, this one only sort of gets used, like with the bullets and all, but it's also not really a plot changer. We know he can change the trajectory of thrown objects, which is fairly straightforward to see and understand. Like in my moon example, we don't know how far that extends, but while there are a lot of questions about his powers, what is directly shown is neither too confusing or too contradictory to our understanding. I've seen people curve soccer balls before, and bullets and knives are not different enough from one another to surprise me when he switches.

Ben: Now, you may be wondering why this is here and not later, but that is because we are Not discussing logistics here. I do not know how this power works in terms of physics, and I do not know where the tentacles are when they're not out. However, Ben's power isn't confusing, practically speaking. Open chest: boom, tentacles. It's also not plot relevant because he's dead (oops), though if losing control was how he died it's a bit more important. That's conjecture though, and should be stricken from the record.

A Bit Weird, But I Get It:

Klaus: I'm gonna be honest, I debated where to put Klaus. His power is a major driving force behind his personal plot, but his personal plot doesn't tend to impact the course of events as a whole too much (sorry, Klaus). I guess it gives us Ben, which is nice, but also he's very rarely plot relevant since he's, you know, dead. Also Klaus' powers grow as he sobers up and practices, so it's pretty inconsistent, but given a general understanding of how ghosts work in media there's nothing too out of the realm of understanding. I'm...not sure how much of the Little Girl putting him back on Earth is part of his power--like whether his power annoys her or if he just does that through sheer force of personality--so I'm just...not gonna touch the strange not-immortality that is seemingly not caused by his own doing. In short, if ghosts were just dropped on us without general media context, he'd be way up there, but since it's not, and since the power averages out to kinda plot-important but not completely, I put him here.

Allison: Rumors are obviously very important to the plot as a whole, both in Allison's personal journey and with they key rumors of repressing Vanya's powers and then of being throat-slashed. This normally wouldn't line up with how confusing her power is--mind control is pretty understandable so long as we put away the questions about how it works--but the scene that really boggles me is the "I heard a rumor I blew your mind" part. Like, what? I thought it was just make a person do a thing they can do, not making brain explosions! What is that!!! I know it's in the doomed timeline, but it still counts as a thing she can do. Theoretically I could use this one example to put her in the next category because of how many questions it opens up, but Five and Vanya are so plot important and confusing that they are a class on their own, so Allison gets to be with Klaus on this one in the kinda plot-important, kinda strange section.

The Utterly Wild:

Five: On the surface, Five's powers kinda make sense, except that they don't because the Umbrella Academy categorically refuses to make rules about time travel. Time-travelling back made him thirteen! And also made his siblings briefly children again too, unless that was a metaphor! How does changing the past change the future? How does it change your personal past? He can just completely rewind everything, which is sort of fine except that it also rewound and unshot him, even though he should still be travelling forward in his personal timeline! Also his powers run out even though nobody else's seem to, and maybe if they explained why that happened with even one line I could let it go but they have not! And my, oh my, the plot relevance of Five's powers. They are there to solve everything and kick off the plot, and also create problems on accident. Very confusing in the presentation of the power's rules, and very plot-relevant.

Vanya: Oh, Vanya, destroyer of worlds. Her powers are the exact opposite of Five's in terms of plot: there to ruin everything and end the plot, and also solve things on accident. They are the thing the plot is working to stop, so they're very important. They're also wild. Okay, sure, turning sound into energy, that's fine, I can play ball. Blowing up the moon, sure, that just takes a lot of energy. Destroying the world in the original timeline to a level where things are not absolutely atomized nearby, but also it seems like absolutely everyone is dead, and that's only with an energy blast or something? That's...hard to figure out exactly how it got done, but I guess that's fine. Holding up your siblings with weird energy beams as your skin and eyes are bleached white? Uh... Using your sound-based powers to heal a drowned child and gIVE HIM POWERS TOO??? WHAT? WHAT?????? VANYA WHAT ARE YOU DOING???????

So, in conclusion, the plot relevance of a power is directly correlated to how absolutely bonkers it is. People are free to disagree with my ranking, especially since I did rank this under the caveat of "not touching how any of this works," but I think it's pretty funny that the more the writers have to use a power in the plot, the more they freak out and slap extra stuff onto it and absolutely refuse to explain any inconsistencies that arise. (This is a very fun show to analyze at 3am.)

[rotten-pain]

Hyperfixations and special interests as they apply to me; a person with both ADHD-C and autism.

Hyperfixations:

I'm not sure if I've experienced hyperfixations specifically, I hear they can take over so much of ur focus that u forget about ur own needs. They tend to be short lived, a few days to a month or so. I don't think I've experienced this much?

Unless I take away the whole interest aspect, then hyperfixation is when I get deeply invested in doing something, especially after a long episode of executive dysfunction preventing me from having hobbies. Today I've been hyperfixating on sewing, bc I want to make a bat plush. It started out with me attempting to make a pattern, realizing I need to relearn how patterns work, then spiraling into that and listening to/watching sewing videos for a few hours. I'm making mashed sweet potato now tho cuz all that was interrupted for me to do chores, which I continued watching sewing videos, then it transitioned into a plaster mold sculpture video?

Special Interests:

I ain't a huge fan of the term, so I shorten it to "spin" in my tags.

I've heard that special interests, like hyperfixations, are intense all-encompassing interests, sometimes described as becoming a whole part of ur personality like I am pretty well known for bein bonkers about rats, they make me extremely happy and I love learning about them and interacting with them. I think rats are rooted in my childhood interest of animals as a whole, which started with zaboomafu followed by wild krattz and included many other kids cartoons, which also includes my interest in cartoons! I dislike watching much else besides kids cartoons. Following the topic of cartoons; when I was 9 I discovered MLP:FiM and it became a very strong hyperfixation as well as an 8 yr and counting special interest, where at the time I refused to let my family watch anything but my little pony until I'd reach the maximum amt of episodes released at the time, and then it was a few years before I became invested again and have occasionally rewatched it and at some point I must have caught up with everything I missed in the years following.

I don't think MLP branches out to anything, but returning to the root of cartoons, I was introduced to Steven Universe through my former best friends as an 11 year old, 2 twins who are always late to leave class when my sculpture class fills in. They introduced me to SU: A very queer psychology filled fun little cartoon that starts with wacky adventures and ends in therapy. They had also introduced me to Warriors by Erin Hunter (of course) which reminds me that since I'd learned to read at 7 years old, I'd been both hyperlexic and very invested. In 4th grade I became invested in the unwanteds series, which I only had just finished the 7th book of the first series in HS bc the middle school had not renewed it and I had only read the 1st book in 4th grade. Which also reminds me of my former fixation on that filthy TERF media: HP. I will not elaborate.

Minecraft has made me very happy for many years; I think it started when I was 8 or older and my dad had bought us RC tablets on which he'd paid for MC PE. We were only allowed a 1-2 hrs time limit on them, but me and my 2 sisters would play multi-player creative mode.

When I was 11 or so, mom had a laptop that our former step sibling had downloaded many games on, which I consider my first genuine introduction to gaming. Back to minecraft: they had downloaded minecraft of course. I would sneak moms laptop and phone in the middle of the night, turn on her Hotspot, and play online all night. Then put them away and proceed to stare her down until she woke up from feeling her eyes on her, bc I was a creepy kid.

Speaking of creepy, I also loved scary stuff. I snuck out to watch stuff like the leprechaun in the middle of the night behind my dad's couch, I vividly remember the scene of that thing chewing off a man's ring finger. I remember watching chucky as well, but with my dad's permission, and likely many others that I don't remember. One of my favorite books/series were the "Scary Stories to tell in the Dark" I LOVED the movie too. Fantastic. Goosebumps is ok, my sisters loved it for a bit, but eh it's pretty cheesy. Courage the Cowardly Dog will always be a favorite of mine, the Scooby-Doo series' are pretty rad,

Anyway Both together;

I feel like they've been combined in many cases, I seem to keep interests for many years but they cycle back around. Maybe that's hyperfixations, idk. Like minecraft, I get heavily into it, then get burnt out and move onto something else before coming back to it after whatever amount of time I need.

Rats tho, rats are love. Rats are life. Rats are baby.

anyway infodumping is clearly a need bc that's all I've done all day [exaggerated]

[geshertzarmeod]

Favorite Books of 2020

I wanted to put together a list! I read 74 new books this year, and I keep track of that on Goodreads - feel free to add or follow me if you want to see everything! I’m going to focus on the highlights, and the books that stuck with me personally in one way or another, in approximate order. Also, all but two of them (#5 and #7 on the honorable mention list) are queer/trans in some way. Links are to Goodreads, but if you’re looking to get the books, I suggest your library, the Libby app using your library, your local bookstore, or Bookshop.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, illus. by Ned Asta (originally published 1977). I had a hard beginning of the year and was in a work environment where my queerness was just not welcomed or wanted. I read this in the middle of all of that, and it helped me so much. I took this book with me everywhere. I read it on planes. I read it on the bus, and on trains, and at shul. I showed it to friends... sometimes at shul, or professional development conferences. It healed my soul. Now I can’t find it and might get a new copy. When I reviewed it, in February, I wrote: “I think we all need this book right now, but I really needed this book right now. Wow. This book is magic, and brings back a sense of magic and beauty to my relationship with the world.” Also I bought my copy last July, in a gay bookstore on Castro St. in SF, and that in itself is just beautiful to me. (Here’s a post I made with some excerpts)

Once & Future duology, especially the sequel, Sword in the Stars, by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy. Cis pansexual female King Arthur Ari Helix (she's the 42nd reincarnation and the first female one) in futuristic space with Arab ancestry (but like, from a planet where people from that area of earth migrated to because, futuristic space) works to end Future Evil Amazon.com Space Empire with her found family with a token straight cis man and token white person. Merlin is backwards-aging so he's a gay teenager with a crush and thousands of years of baggage. The book’s entire basis is found family, and it's got King Arthur in space. And the sequel hijacks the original myth and says “fuck you pop culture, it was whitewashed and straightwashed, there were queer and trans people of color and strong women there the whole time.” Which is like, my favorite thing to find in media, and a big part of why I love Xena so much. It’s like revisionist history to make it better except it’s actually probably true in ways. Anyway please read these books but also be prepared for an absolutely absurd and wild ride. Full disclosure though, I didn’t love the first book so much, it’s worth it for the sequel!

The Wicker King by K. Ancrum. This book hurt. It still hurts. But it was so good. It took me on a whole journey, and brought me to my destination just like it intended the whole time. The author’s note at the end made me cry! The sheer NEED from this book, the way the main relationship develops and shifts, and how you PERCEIVE the main relationship develops and shifts. I’m in awe of Ancrum’s writing. If you like your ships feral and needy and desperate and wanting and D/S vibes and lowkey super unhealthy but with the potential, with work, to become healthy and beautiful and right, read this book. This might be another one to check trigger warnings for though.

The Entirety of The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty. I hadn’t heard of this series until this year, when a good friend recommended it to me. It filled the black hole in me left by Harry Potter. The political and mystical/fantasy world building is just *chef’s kiss* - the complexity! The morally grey, everyone’s-done-awful-things-but-some-people-are-still-trying-to-do-good tapestry! The ROMANCE oh my GOD the romance. If I’m absolutely fully invested in a heterosexual romance you know a book is good, but also this book had background (and then later less background) queer characters! And the DRAMA!!! The third book went in a direction that felt a little out of nowhere but honestly I loved the ride. I stayed up until 6am multiple times reading this series and I’d do it again.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. I loved this book so much that it’s the only book I reviewed on my basically abandoned attempt at a book blog. This book is haunting, horrifying, disturbing, dark, but so, so good. The character's voices were so specific and clear, the relationships so clearly affected by circumstance and yet loving in the ways they could be. This is my favorite portrayal of gender maybe ever, it’s just... I don’t even have the words but I saw a post @audible-smiles​ made about it that’s been rattling in my head since. And, “you gender-malcontent. You otherling,” as tender pillow talk??? Be still my heart. Be ready, though, this book has all the triggers.. it’s a .

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. This book called me out on my perspective on love. Also, it made me cry a lot. And it has two different interesting well-written romance storylines. And a realistic coming-into-identity narrative about a Black trans demiboy. And a nuanced discussion of college plans and what one might do after college. And some big beautiful romcom moments. I wish I had it in high school. I’m so glad I have it now! (trigger warning for transphobia & outing, but the people responsible are held accountable by the end, always treated as not okay by the narrative, and the MC’s friends, and like... this is ownvoices and it’s GOOD.)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. My Goodreads review says, “I have no idea what happened, and I loved it.” That’s not wrong, but to delve deeper, this book has an ethereal feeling that you get wrapped up in while reading. Nothing makes sense but that’s just as it should be. You’re hooked. It is so atmospheric, so meta, so fascinating. I’ve seen so many people say they interpreted this character or that part or the ending in all different ways and it all makes sense. And it’s all of this with a gay main character and romance and the central theme, the central pillar being a love of and devotion to stories. Of course I was going to love it.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom. “Because maybe what really matters isn’t whether something is true, or false. Maybe what matters is the story itself; what kinds of doors it opens, what kinds of dreams it brings.” This book was so good and paradigm shifting. It reminded me of #1 on this list in the way it turns real life experience and hard, tragic ones at that (in this case, of being a trans girl of color who leaves home and tries to make a life for herself in the city, with its violence), into a beautiful, haunting fable. Once upon a time.

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver. I need to reread this book, as I read it during my most tranceful time of 2020 and didn’t write a review, so I forgot a lot. What I do remember is beautiful and important nonbinary representation, a really cute romance, an interesting parental and familial/sibling dynamic that was both heartbreaking and hopeful, and an on-page therapy storyline. Also Mason Deaver just left twitter but was an absolutely hilarious troll on it before leaving and I appreciate that (and they just published a Christmas novella that I have but haven’t read yet!)

The Truth Is by NoNieqa Ramos. It took a long time to trust this book but I’m so glad I did. It’s raw and real and full of grief and trauma (trigger warnings, that I remember, for grief, death (before beginning of book), and gun violence). The protagonist is flawed and gets to grow over the course of the book, and find her own place, and learn from the people around her, while they also learn to understand her and where she’s coming from. It’s got a gritty, harsh, and important portrayal of found family, messy queerness, and some breathtaking quotes. When I was 82% through this book I posted this update: “This book has addressed almost all of my initial hesitations, and managed to complicate itself beautifully.”

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro.  I wasn’t actually in the best mental health place to read this book when I did (didn’t quite understand what it was) but it definitely reminded me of what there is to fight against and to fight for, and broke my heart, and nudged me a bit closer to hope. The naturally diverse cast of characters was one of the best parts of this book. The romance is so sweet and tender and then so painful. This book is important and well-written but read it with caution and trigger warnings - it’s about grief and trauma and racism and police brutality, but also about love and community.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden.  This is a sci-fi/fantasy/specfic mashup that takes place in near-future South Africa and has world-building myths with gods and demigoddesses and a trip to the world of the dead but also a genetically altered hallucinogenic drug that turns people into giant animals and a robot uprising and a political campaign and a transgender pop star and a m/m couple and all of them are connected. It’s bonkers. Like, so, so absolutely mind-breaking weird. And I loved it.

Crier’s War and Iron Heart by Nina Varela.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVED the amount of folktales they told each other with queer romances as integral to those stories, especially in Iron Heart. A conversation between the two leads where Crier says she wants to read Ayla like a book, and Ayla says she’s not a book, and Crier explains all the different ways she wants to know Ayla, like a person, and wants to deserve to know her like a person, made me weak. It lives in my head rent-free.

Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston @ekjohnston . I listened to this book on Libby and then immediately listened to it at least one more time, maybe twice, before my borrow time ran out. I love Padmé, and just always wish that female Star Wars characters got more focus and attention and this book gave me that!! And queer handmaidens! And the implication that Sabé is in love with Padmé and that’s just something that will always be true and she will always be devoted and also will make her own life anyway. And the Star Wars audiobooks being recorded the way they are with background sounds and music means it feels like watching a really long detailed beautiful Star Wars movie just about Padmé and her handmaidens.

Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story by Jacob Tobia. I needed to read this. The way Tobia talks about their experience of gender within the contexts of college, college leadership, and career, hit home. I kept trying to highlight several pages in a row on my kindle so I could go back and read them after it got returned to the library (sadly it didn’t work - it cuts off highlights after a certain number of characters). The way they talk about TOKENISM they way they talk about the responsibilities of the interviewer when an interviewee holds marginalized identities especially when no one else in the room does!!! Ahhhh!!!

Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie. Disclaimer for this one that the author was rightfully criticized for writing a Black main character as a white author (and how the story ended up playing into some fucked up stuff that I can’t really unpack without spoiling). But also, the author has been working to move forward knowing she can’t change the past, has donated her proceeds, and this book is really good? It has all the fanfic tropes, so much delicious tension, a totally unexpected plot twist that had me immediately rereading the book. This book was super fun and also kind of just really really good Star Wars fanfiction.

How To Be a Normal Person by T.J. Klune. This book was so sweet, and cute, and hopeful, and both ridiculous and so real. I had some trouble getting used to Gus’ voice and internal monologue, but I got into it and then loved every bit after. The ace rep is something I’ve never seen like this before (and have barely read any ace books but still this was so fleshed out and well rounded and not just like, ‘they’re obsessed with swords not sex’ - looking at you, Once & Future - and leaving it there.) This all felt like a slice of life and I feel like I learned about people while reading it. Some of the moments are so, so funny, some are vaguely devastating. I have been personally victimized by TJ Klune for how he ends this book (a joke, you will know once you read it) but it also reminds me of the end of the “You Are There” episode of Xena and we all know what the answer to that question was.... and I choose to believe the answer here was similar.

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. I wish I had this book when I was in high school. I honestly have complicated feelings about prom and haven’t really been seeking out contemporary YA so I was hesitant to read this but it was so good and so well-written, and had a lot of depth to it. The movie (and Broadway show) “The Prom” wants what this book has.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. I never read horror books, so this was a new thing for me. I loved the feeling of this book, the way I felt fully immersed. I loved how entirely queer it was. I was interested in the characters and the relationships, even though we didn’t have a full chance to go super deep into any one person but rather saw the connections between everyone and the way the stories matched up with each other. I just wanted a bit of a more satisfying ending.

Honorable Mention: reread in 2020 but read for the first time pre-2020

Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. I couldn’t make this post without mentioning this book. It got me through this year. I love this book so much; I think of this book all the time. This book made me want to find love for myself. You’ve all heard about it enough but if you haven’t read this book what are you DOING.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan @sarahreesbrennan​ . I reread this one over and over too, both as text and as an audiobook. I went for walks when I had lost my earbuds and had Elliott screaming about an elf brothel loudly playing and got weird looks from someone walking their dog. I love this book so much. It’s just so fun, and so healing to read a book reminiscent of all the fantasies I read as a kid, but with a bi main character and a deconstruction of patriarchy and making fun of the genre a bit. Also, idiots to lovers is a great trope and it’s definitely in this book.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This book is forever so important to me. I am always drawn in by how tenderly Sáenz portrays his characters. These boys. These boys and their parents. I love them. I love them so much. This is another one where I don’t even know what to say. I have more than 30 pages in my tag for this book. I have “arda” set as a keyboard shortcut on my phone and laptop to turn into the full title. This book saved my life.

Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This book hurts to read - it’s a story about trauma, about working through that trauma, healing enough to be ready to hold the worst memories, healing enough to move through the pain and start to make a life. It’s about found family and love and pain and I love it. It’s cathartic. And it’s a little bit quietly queer in a beautiful way, but that’s not the focus. Look up trigger warnings (they kind of are spoilery so I won’t say them here but if you have the potential to be triggered please look them up or ask me before reading)

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.  When asked what my all time favorite book is, it’s usually this one. Gail Carson Levine has been doing live readings at 11am since the beginning of the pandemic shut down in the US, and the first book she read was Ella Enchanted. I’ve been slowly reading it to @mssarahpearl and am just so glad still that it has the ability to draw me in and calm me down and feels like home after all this time. This book is about agency. I love it.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman @chronicintrovert . I’ve had this on my all-time-faves list since I read it a few years ago and ended up rereading it this year before sending a gift copy to a friend, so I could write little notes in it. It felt a little different reading it this time - as I get further away from being a teenager myself, the character voice this book is written in takes a little longer to get used to, but it’s so authentic and earnest and I love it. I absolutely adore this book about platonic love and found family and fandom and mental illness and abuse and ace identity and queerness and self-determination, especially around college and career choices. Ahhh. Thank you Alice Oseman!!!

Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray @claudiagray​ . I have this one on audible and reread it several times this year. I love the fleshing out of Leia’s story before the original trilogy, I love her having had a relationship before Han, and the way it would have affected her perspective. I also am intrigued by the way it analyses the choices the early rebellion had to make... I just, I love all the female focused new Star Wars content and the complexity being brought to the rebellion.

[lovelylogans]

honey, you’re familiar (like my mirror)

see other chapters, warnings, and notes here!

chapter three: psycellic consentia

psycellic consentia: psycellium (or psycelium) is a psychic nervous system that allows sensates to connect with one another. sensates have a solitary "above" existence, and are connected "below" via the psycelium. consentia, latin: knowledge shared with others, being in the know or privy to, joint knowledge; complicity; knowledge within oneself, consciousness, feeling.

ROMAN

It hasn’t even been five minutes since Sasha left to grab dinner, but Roman’s already feeling strangely jittery.

A nap would be a fruitless venture, he’s realized, so he’s gotten up to pace around the room, reciting the lines of the scene he’s meant to be filming tomorrow. He knows them all by heart, naturally, but it’ll be an odd scene to shoot anyways. His character, Pablo, would be escaping from the grasp of his friend-turned-betrayer (who would turn out to have been bluffing and truly Pablo’s friend all along by the end of the movie) by sprinting through the forest, making his getaway by leaping into a river and swimming away.

This stunt he doesn’t get to do; he’s already technically filmed the scenes when he’s in the water, and a stunt double will be “jumping off the cliff.” So tomorrow is going to be entirely on-location, acting then sprinting through the forest.

So Roman chants his lines to himself, pacing in his room with his eyes closed, trying his hardest to sink into Pablo’s mindset. And, after a few minutes of running his lines over in his head, it’s like he’s actually walking in the forest; the snap of a twig under his feet, the smell of leaves and dirt, the cooing of various birds.

Roman’s jaw drops, because—because no way. No way.

No fucking way is his brother standing there, with a bundle of twigs tucked up under his arms, staring at Roman the way a kid would stare at a particularly adventurous snail journeying along the ground.

Well, the way Remus would look at an adventurous snail, as a kid. Roman would have probably just fled the snail in favor of playing with wooden swords and rescuing imaginary damsels.

"Aw, c’mon, man, what the fuck," Remus grumbles, looking skyward as if asking for some kind of divine intervention, though Roman knows that's never been the case, much to their chronically Catholic abuela’s dismay.

She probably would have been pleased if Roman tacked on a God rest her soul there, but considering her abysmal reaction when her grandson decided to be an actor and an even worse reaction when her other grandson informed them all that he was, in fact, a grandson, he's never really wanted to please her anyway.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Remus says tightly, dropping his bundle of twigs. 

Remus. Remus is here. Or Roman is there? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, there he is. That’s Roman’s brother.

“What, are you trying to lure me in for the police to catch me? Because it’s not going to fucking work, Roman.” 

God, he’s alive, he doesn’t look hurt, he’s—well, actually, Roman has no idea if he’s safe or not. He just kind of looks like he’s dirty, with scraggly hair and smudges on his face. This alone isn’t entirely unusual for Remus, but the amount of it is. But—he’s here. He’s alive. He has some form of shelter, he’s probably been eating, he’s okay—

“Or are you just here to—”

Roman staggers forward and flings his arms around Remus’ neck, hugging him as tight as he can, almost as if he can feel what Remus feels, the arms wrapping around his neck and the arms wrapping around his torso in kind, feeling echoes of what he does, and what Remus does, bouncing between like a seismic shock.

Across the world, Janus smiles in his sleep; Emile wiggles happily in his chair while waiting for his next therapy session; Patton grins at a wall about nothing in particular; Logan touches his own shoulders, blinking rapidly in surprise at the weight of phantom arms holding him close.

REMY

Remy is used to experiencing emotions that aren’t his.

When he feels a near-violent joy sprouting up in his chest, he pauses briefly in pouring a customer a cup of coffee to put a hand on his chest and smile to himself.

He’ll ask Emile what’s got him so happy later. He’s just happy that Emile is happy.

REMUS

Remus blinks at Roman after Roman pulls back from the hug, hands on his shoulders, still beaming at him.

“—For a while I thought that you were coming to stay at my apartment with me, but then you never showed, and I was worried sick wondering where you were all this time. I’ve been reading all about the case—oh, that doesn’t matter now, we’re together! Now you can come here to the city, and I can post your bail so you can stay with me, and I can get you a really good lawyer, and—!”

“You’ve been reading about the case?” Remus says, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears.

Roman blinks at him. “Yeah?” There’s an unspoken duh in his tone.

“So you know that I’m the main suspect,” Remus prompts.

“Yeah…”

“So, you,” Remus says, “acting sweetheart of the nation with your dear fake girlfriend—you want to bring in a dirty gremlin accused of murder? The sibling the whole country doesn’t even know you have?” 

Roman looks suddenly anxious, as if expecting Remus to blow up and yell at him.

“Do you even think I’m innocent?” Remus continues, only faking his bluster a little.

“I mean,” Roman says. “It doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Does what matter?” Remus says. The bluster is much more faked this time.

“I mean, you’re my brother,” Roman says. “I don’t really care if you killed him or not.” 

Remus bursts out laughing.

Roman gawks at him, caught off guard, and Remus doesn’t know if it’s just from seeing Roman again, or the fact that he’s been on the run for over a week now and has only been eating the plants a hallucination taught him about, or what, but the expression on his face is just too good.

Roman! Who regularly gets caught in the tabloids! Getting a snapshot of him escorting a man wanted for murder into his warm, loving home! The mental image of the shocked expression on any pap’s face is just—oh, it would be so perfect.

“And your ‘girlfriend?’” Remus says, using air quotes. “Does she know about me?”

“No, but,” Roman says, still with that stupidly heroic, determined look on his face. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her tonight, even. She’ll understand.”

Right. If anyone else was as much of a media darling, it was Roman’s fake girlfriend, with her big, brown, innocent eyes and absolute inability to seem like she’s used to being famous.

“Oh, that’s too good,” Remus chortles. “Yeah, Roman. Okay. Sure. You go ahead and tell her.”

“I’m gonna!”

“Sure, fine,” Remus says, waving him off. “Make arrangements to bring your murderous brother home. I’ll catch a bus or something, I’m sure no cop is gonna see me and arrest me on the way to your apartment.” 

“I will,” Roman says, firm and resolute, and Remus just shakes his head, grinning still.

Of the pair of them, people seemed to think Remus was the crazy one when it was clear that Roman was absolutely bonkers. But at least he’d grown a pretty good sense of humor since Remus had been accused of killing someone.

JANUS

“Fucking finally, Jazza.”

Janus considers getting up and walking right back out, but unfortunately, his stomach is already set on fish and chips with the made-in-house sauce here. He wearily begins to weigh the costs of putting up with Key and the nickname “Jazza” against the benefits of sriracha aioli. 

And money. The money ends up winning out every time.

Three more jobs, Janus tells himself. Just three more jobs, and then you don’t have to put up with the risk anymore. Two, if one of them has a bigger compensation than average, and for the quality of my work...

It’s a lie, of course. Janus has been telling himself three more jobs ever since he clawed his way onto the bar standards board, years ago.

“What’s been going on with you, anyway?” Key says around a mouthful of chips, which garbles his speech beyond recognition. Unfortunately, Janus has known Key long enough that he can translate it with ease.

“Chew with your mouth closed and clean up your face,” Janus says, unable to stop himself. Habits are difficult to kill, Janus supposes.

Key rolls his eyes but obligingly blots at his face with a napkin. “D’you got it?”

Janus offers a small box wrapped like a present in answer. Inside is a hard drive containing the information their client had requested.

Key takes it, grinning, and stuffs it into his hoodie pocket.

“Be careful with that,” Janus scolds.

“You say that every time,” Key says. “Have I ever lost one of your—”

Janus glares at him.

“—one of the fruits of your labor?” Key says, quickly back-pedaling, realizing they’re in a public setting and a waitress is fast approaching with Janus's order.

“This smells amazing.”

Janus tries his best not to startle, but even with two days to process what the man in his mirror had told him, it’s still bizarre.

The actor beside him looks briefly embarrassed as if he hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Janus glances over at him—a member of his cluster, what an unappealing word—and sees a glimpse of a cramped little trailer. On a movie set, probably? He’s wearing leather pants and a leopard-print shirt that Janus has the feeling he’d never wear in real life.

Janus also feels the grumbling in Roman’s stomach. Janus sighs to himself.

“And another basket of chips with extras of that same sauce, please.”

“You got it, lovey,” she says, turning to go.

“Extra hungry, then?” Key says.

“Something like that,” Janus says neutrally. Without asking for Janus's permission—maybe knowing Janus was about to offer anyway—Roman reaches out and gulps deeply from Janus's Ribena.

“How’s,” Janus says, briefly casts about in his mind for the name of the latest love of Key’s life, and lands on, “Francesca?”

Key snorts. “Ancient history, mate.”

Not exactly surprising. Key’s always fancied himself a romantic, but he’s never been able to follow through on his commitment to anything ever.

“M’goin’ on a date with a bird tonight, though,” he says around a mouthful of chips.

“For God’s sake, Key, could you at least pretend you weren’t raised in a barn?” Janus snips at him, even as he’s dunking his own chips into the aioli.

Key grins at him, and Janus wrinkles his nose. He can tell Roman is doing the same beside him. They share the same sentiment at the moment, but it’s Roman’s “that’s disgusting” that falls out of his mouth.

He realizes why Key’s brow furrows a moment too late.

“Uh, bless you?” Key says; the closest he’s ever been to the Mexican vernacular of Spanish is ordering a fajita at a local Tex-Mex restaurant.

“Oops,” Roman says, not particularly apologetically. He grabs another handful of chips.

“I’m studying in my spare time,” he says and fixes Key with a look. “A hobby you could choose to emulate.”

“What’d I need more school for?” He scoffs. “Ten years was well enough.”

“To aspire for more for yourself—”

“Oh, here we go,” Key snaps, tossing down the piece of battered cod he was about to eat, splattering sauce on the wood table. “I am so sick of your “high and mighty” act.”

He mimics Janus's accent at high and mighty; Janus grits his teeth, and very purposefully enunciates his next few sentences.

“This cannot last forever, you understand.”

“No, just so long as you get rich off it, eh?”

“Um,” Roman says. “I’d offer to go and leave you two to duke this one out in private, but I’m not really sure how to stop this weird astral projection thing—”

Janus ignores him.

“Oh, as if being a lawyer doesn’t pay enough. Put your brain to some use and think, why is it that I keep helping you?!” Janus snaps, leaning across the table and softening his voice. “Why on earth do you think I continue with this?!”

“Spare me,” Key scoffs. 

“The only reason I keep doing this is because you keep doing this,” Janus hisses. “The only reason I became a lawyer was because of you getting us into trouble.”

“Don’t—” Key says, his face twisting up.

“It is because of me we are not rotting in jail, Quirinus. I’m sure it’s such a burden I want more for you.”

“It’s Key,” he grumbles before he rolls his eyes at Janus and tilts his baseball cap at him in farewell. “And since you have aspired to more for yourself, and since being a big fancy lawyer does pay so much, and since you saved me,” this is said with heavy sarcasm, “you fucking prat, you can get the bill. Much obliged, big brother.”

As he walks off, he tosses a “wanker” over his shoulder for good measure, jamming his orange cap onto his head.

Janus pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply.

There’s a pause. 

Then: the slurping of someone draining his Ribena.

Janus opens his eyes and turns his head to Roman, who’s chasing the last drops of Ribena about the glass with a straw.

“So, he’s probably not finishing that, right?” Roman says. Without waiting for an answer, he grabs a handful of chips and shoves them into his mouth. “‘Cause I’ve been waiting for Sasha to come back with dinner for like an hour now and I’m starving,” he says loudly while chewing.

Janus's jaw is slightly unhinged.

“You are a pestilence upon my life,” he says at last.

Roman smirks at him, mercifully close-mouthed, and swallows down the food that Janus supposes he’ll be paying for. Janus is certain that Roman is doing this to annoy him.

“Wait ‘till you have to deal with my brother.” He dunks the cod into the sauce. “Also, how much do you know about what’s going on here, anyway? Why do random people keep popping into my life?” 

Janus lowers his voice so they aren’t heard by any random passerby.

“Allegedly, we are known as sensates. I assume you’ve been seeing other people—we’re stuck seeing them psychically for the rest of our lives, as well as sharing specific skills, languages, emotions…”

Roman reaches for Key’s Ribena and drains that too.

“Tastes,” Janus adds pointedly. “That the other is paying for.”

“Yeah, exactly, you’re paying for it,” Roman says, and grabs another piece of cod. “It won’t go to waste now.”

“You won’t even get the nutritional benefits of eating food,” Janus says. “You’ll just get the taste of it.”

“Still, you’re getting your money’s worth. I’m helping.”

“Aren’t you rich?” Janus says. “Being an actor and all.”

“Aren’t you?” Roman counters. “Being a lawyer and all.”

Roman jams the cod into the ramekin of sauce.

“Either way, this place sure won’t take pesos, and it’s not like I can psychically transfer you money. Hey, how much do you know about Mexican law, anyways?” He takes a massive bite.

Janus puts his face into his hands for a few moments, before he reaches into his messenger pad and pulls out a legal pad and pen.

“Enough,” he says grudgingly—truthfully, not quite as much as English law. However, with this whole connection thing, they do share knowledge, so he certainly knows more now than he did before. He gestures at the waitress for another couple of Ribenas. “Why don’t you refresh me on the details of your brother’s case?”

PATTON

Patton frowns, tapping his pen against his chin as his kindergartners are all sprawled out on their mats for their post-lunch nap. He usually takes advantage of this time to catch up on marking (normally, just putting “good job!” stickers on their papers, they’re five) but right now he’s staring at something he’d written down out of the blue and trying to understand it.

He knows that he’s technically a sensate now, but does that mean his kindergartners are going to have to put up with scrawlings about Mexican flora when Patton had meant to be writing down the activities of the day?

“Aw, jeez,” someone grumbles, and Patton turns to look over his shoulder.

He grins sheepishly at the sight of an academic article plastered over with shiny star stickers. “Oops.”

The man is familiar and yet not; Patton doesn’t think he’s seen this one outside of briefly popping in and out. 

The man sighs, turning the paper over and then looking back at Patton.

“At least they’re purple,” he grumbles, and within a heartbeat, he’s gone. Patton returns his attention to his marking.

Oh, yay, he did end up putting stickers on the kiddos’ papers!

LOGAN

Not many people were particularly aware of this, especially considering the average population was generally unaware of the space research in Antarctica, but the cafeterias here are actually excellent.

In the history of Antarctic explorers and researchers, it had gone quite differently—Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean ate seal, dog meat, and biscuits mixed with melted snow during the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914—but chefs now seem to view it as an intriguing challenge, a way to sharpen their skills. 

Logan is an adequate enough cook, to the point where he can feed himself at home, but the food here is on another level. He’s finishing off his dessert, a lovely chocolate tart when a chef sits across from him at the dinner table, the same one that had served him his tray tonight.

He doesn’t know her well, so he hopes he’s disguised her squint at her nametag under the guise of adjusting his glasses.

“Very well done, Dot,” he says, lifting his fork to his mouth.

“Oh, good, you are one of us,” she says, with a level of relief that seems odd for hearing a compliment about her cooking. “I was wondering, Casimire gave me the oddest look when I told him to head off early so I could make eye contact with you.”

“What are you—?” Logan says, eyes narrowed, before his eyes flash to the kitchen, automatically looking for Casimire, the chef he’s most used to seeing.

True enough, Casimire isn’t there.

But Dot is here.

Dot is here twice.

Dot is sitting at the table with him. But Dot is smiling and chatting with one of the marine biology research team members, ten feet away. But—

“Oh, I can hear that brain working,” Dot says. She reaches out to pat his hand; it feels as warm and real as a hand can feel.

“What is this,” Logan forces through numb lips, appetite gone, chocolate tart entirely forgotten. “What are you—what is happening—?”

“Shh, shh, not too loud,” Dot says in a hushed voice. “To everyone else, it looks like you’re sitting alone. Here—you’ve got your bag with you, did you pack your earpiece?”

Logan nods.

“Put that in.”

He does as she says. What else is there to do?

The Dot in the kitchen turns to wink and smile at him reassuringly. He isn’t sure how to tell the Dot before him that there is absolutely nothing in this situation that could comfort him, and pointing out that there are two of her and that he is seeing things is not a particularly good way to go about it regardless.

He fumbles with the earpiece a few times, but he puts it in and clicks it on.

“There,” she says in satisfaction. “Now it’ll look like you’re talking over Bluetooth. Neat little trick, isn’t it? Keeps us from looking,” and she circles her ear with her finger and gives a two-note whistle, the universal sign for off your rocker. “I’m surprised your parent hasn’t taught you yet, but I suppose you are very new. Has your migraine stopped yet?”

Logan gawks at her. “How did you know I have a—?”

“Because I had one too when it all started,” she says. “All of us do. Let me tell you, I really wasn’t expecting to see a sensate down here, but I guess when you come to a place like this nothing should surprise you, right? That’s what my Larry said. But this’ll be handy, he was hoping I could meet a nice scientist to connect to the Archipelago! You’re an astronomer, right? That’s a very brainy subject.”

“Wait, go back,” Logan says. “How did you know I have a migraine? Why are you talking about my mother? Why should she have taught me about using Bluetooth? What does a group of islands have to do with anything, and what’s a sensate?”

The smile on Dot’s face slips.

“Oh dear,” she says. “Oh dear, you don’t know anything at all, do you?”

Logan gives her an offended look before he can really stop himself.

“Well,” Dot says thoughtfully. “A scientist. I bet you’d be really interested in the opportunity to send a question around the world within seconds, wouldn’t you?”

“Google exists,” Logan points out.

Dot smiles at him. “Where do you think they got the idea? Sapiens invented it in the 1990s; we’ve had it since the Neolithic.”

Against his better judgment to stop listening to what is most likely to be a hallucination, Logan finds himself very intrigued.

VIRGIL

Virgil is elbow-deep in papers about abrus precatorius, sorting them into piles for useful information or irrelevant when there’s the sound of someone hitting their knees beside him.

Virgil jumps, startled, and looks into the stunning blue eyes of Logan, the handsome Pole in Antarctica. His eyes are bright, eager, excited, and there’s a wide smile on his face.

“We’re not hallucinating,” he declares and spreads out an armful of his own notes; hastily taken, from the look of it, and he presses his fingers against an earpiece that’s blinking blue light. “Oh, and get one of these, by the way, technology has apparently made things much better for us, Dot said we’d get burned during the witch trials because we’d be talking to people who weren’t there and knowing things we shouldn’t know, but I think that’s an exaggeration. I wish there was a more central written history, but I suppose we’ve evolved in a way that word-of-mouth knowledge is the most efficient, haven’t we?”

There’s a lot of thoughts whirling around Virgil’s head—what do you mean, how do you know, why are we talking about witch burnings and evolution—but what comes out, a bit stupidly, is “You look good.”

Logan’s rambling stops in his tracks as he stares at Virgil, bemused, mouth slightly ajar.

“Um, I mean,” Virgil says. He coughs. “You look… less worried than last time. Which is. Good!” 

Logan keeps staring. With his lips parted like that, it’s all too easy to see that Logan must have licked them, recently; the sheen of it catches Virgil’s eye. He stares at Logan’s mouth. He stares at Logan.

Stop it stop it stop it he’ll think you’re weird, something in his brain shrieks, and that breaks the spell.

“So, uh, you’ve figured out what’s happening to us?” Virgil prompts.

Logan shakes himself, before he spreads out his papers, picking up one in particular. Virgil takes it, examining it; it’s two sketches of a brain. He’s familiar enough with biology by virtue of having doctors for parents to know that the sketch on the right side of the paper is not right. 

There’s something wrong with this brain.

“This,” Logan says, tapping the leftmost brain with his finger, “is the typical human brain.”

“Right, yeah,” Virgil says, frowning, and points to the rightmost brain. Their hands almost touch. “There’s something wrong with this one—something about the hemispheres, I think? It’s like there’s a growth.”

Logan moves to point to the rightmost brain, and this time, their hands do brush. But, before Virgil can think anything about it other than his hands are soft and he feels a little cold—

“This is what our brains are becoming.”

Virgil immediately panics.

“But it’s okay!” Logan says quickly as if he’s able to tell. Maybe he can—Virgil isn’t sure how clear it reads on his face. Or maybe, the way he’s been laughing at nothing or frowning at thin air, Logan can feel it. “It’s okay, it’s totally natural for us. For homo sapiens, no, but for homo sensorium—”

“Homo sensorium?” Virgil repeats, brow furrowed.

“It’s what we are,” Logan says. “Scientific name homo sensorium, colloquial name sensate.”

Sensate. Virgil hears the word, and something slips in place in his mind—it’s as if he’s heard that term before. It feels like breathing in a whiff of air and catching the scent of a sweet that sends your memory careening back to a time when you were seven and elbow-deep in dough with your grandmother. But it’s like he can’t quite fully grasp the memory. Something niggles just at the edge of it. It’s like his brain is trapped on the grandparent metaphor because he cannot stop thinking about his mother’s mother.

He sets the memory aside, for now; he’ll have time to think of it later.

Because, as Logan explains everything he’s learned so far, Virgil has absolutely zero chance of thinking about anything else. 

They spend most of the night talking about it. Even with all the bizarre aspects of what this new information brings, it’s easy to talk to Logan in a way that isn’t typical of Virgil speaking with other people. Virgil isn’t sure if that’s because they share this psychic connection, or if they’re both doctors, or if it’s some other connection.

“The way it was phrased is that we’re different types of human, but I don’t think we’re so different that it sets us apart from other people. From what I understand, the growth of our population is primarily due to epigenetic factors…”

Okay, so, primarily due to how behaviors and environments affect his genes. But what epigenetic factor triggered this in Virgil? Was this a dormant thing that could be triggered by ingesting some sort of chemical, or was it due to the way Virgil behaved? Had he done something in his life to cause all of this?

“A lot of the science is conjecture,” Logan warns, “and there was apparently some big corporation intent on doing medical experimentation on us ten or so years ago, but that’s mostly handled, you just have to be more careful about making eye contact with strangers in public…”

Oh, great, scientists hunted them down for medical experimentation so now he had to closely guard himself in any hospital! What a thrilling thing to hear for the son of two doctors!

“I’ve gathered that we can “share” certain skills or memories and that these things will become easier with practice. That’s why I could speak Xhosa and you Polish when we first met, it was the skill-sharing attribute, which could certainly come in handy for several reasons, but I also understand that we can visit each other at various times. There’s apparently a medicine you can take to block it, but it’s rather rare to come by, so unless you know a pharmacist willing to do some work under the table…”

That would almost definitely come to bite one of them in the ass at some point. What about privacy? Was he just doomed to have people from all over the world pop in on him while he’s in the shower or something?

“Dot said that she met her husband Larry through the connection, which drove off into a whole side-tangent. Apparently, romantic partners in clusters—that’s the widely accepted term, ‘cluster.’” 

Virgil pulls a face.

“I know, they could have picked literally any other more appealing word for it, couldn’t they? Bunch, group, flock, clique, assemblance—Anyways, romantic partnerships within clusters are somewhat common, and most of the sensate community finds it quite normal. I think our parent is in one, or at least that’s what Dot said.”

Logan clears his throat and adjusts his glasses. “Apparently some of the old-fashioned sensates think it’s like—what was it Dot’s parent said?—”the worst sort of narcissism.” Apparently, her parent was very displeased to be a parent and wanted nothing to do with creating bonds. I personally think that’s a rather backwards—humanity survives and thrives due to its ability to create bonds and care for each other—but I suppose I tend to think that way about a lot of old-fashioned things.”

“I guess I do, too,” Virgil muses aloud.

They sit quietly, for a while, so quietly that Virgil doesn’t notice when Logan slips away; the only thing that does bring him back from his swirling thoughts is when a voice breaks Virgil’s silence. It sends the emotions of knowing what’s happening to him shattering to the ground.

“Who on earth are you talking to?”

[theviscountbridgerton]

Well I myself love Kate's character very much but I'm trying to not even check all those actresses people are pointing out because I don't want to be disappointed later. But yeah, no matter who will be chosen fans will accept the casting. Did you have this account back when they were casting bridgerton siblings? What did you think about casting, especially JB portraying Anthony?

I didn't have this account then but I was following Nicola on social media and was immediately intrigued when she tweeted about playing Penelope and started reading the books and following the news about the show on social media. I thought most of the casting was great and I remember Julia Quinn posted headshots of all the cast on her Instagram and the comments under Jonathan's picture were quite negative because people didn't think he was good looking enough to play Anthony which shocked the hell out of me. I think she posted another picture of him from a magazine shoot right after because of the reaction. Something about his headshot didn't make him look like a convincing Anthony. Maybe it was really homophobia, because God knows there were complaints about Regé not having Simon's piercing blue eyes that was very thinly veiled racism. (Separate from the blatant racism that outright objected to his casting because he was black.) I was pretty happy with the casting because I read the books afterwards so the actors were how I pictured the characters.

My favourite thing around that time was before Luke Thompson was announced as Benedict. The cast was revealed in two groups, Luke Thompson was in the second group but before that was released, Nicola posted a picture of his arm beside a coffee cup, I think it was in black and white, and somebody analysed the freckles on his arm and identified it as Dylan O'Brien's arm and some fans were convinced that Dylan O'Brien had been cast as Benedict. It was pretty hilarious to watch.

So I'm hoping for some bonkers Kate casting rumours before it's officially announced.

[mymelodyheart]

Starting Over Chapter 2 ~Sassenach~

"Weel, weel if it isn't my favourite sportsman, James Fraser."

Christ! What now? 

He groaned inwardly and turned to find a petite blonde walking towards him. Jamie had just escaped a group of old family acquaintances, evaded some uncomfortable questions about his disappearance, and the last thing he needed now was some more awkward conversation with a person he vaguely recognised. Prior to that, he'd briefly spoken to his parents, Brian and Ellen and his brothers, William and Robert. Like Jenny, they hadn't mentioned anything about his long absence. Instead, they'd welcomed him with open arms as if he'd never ignored their calls during the past few weeks. Grateful for the breathing space and respite, he knew eventually he would have to talk.

The blonde girl waited for him to say something as she sipped her white wine. With so many things occupying his thoughts, he could only summon an absentminded nod in her direction.

She flipped her long hair back with a flick of a hand and laughed coquettishly. "Ye don't remember me, do ye?"

"Eh ...ye look sorta familiar," he replied without matching her smile, his gaze briefly drifting somewhere else. "Ye're at my nephew's party, so I guess ye're a friend of Jenny."

Her cool floundered for a split second, but she quickly recovered. "Our parents are friends, and we went to the same school together. Laoghaire ...Laoghaire MacKenzie. Our families sometimes attend the same parties. I'm here with my nephew."

"Ah, right," he said flatly. "That explains why."

There was an uncomfortable silence, but he made no effort to ease the strain. He was thinking about the girl with the crazy, big hair.  And the mindblowing kiss.

Undeterred, Laoghaire stayed put. She looked like she was waiting for him to make some sort of move. Shoving his hands into the pocket of his jeans, he dragged in an impatient breath. Here at Broch Mordha, the village was somewhat removed from the rest of the world. What happened outside its bubble only mattered when it indirectly affected its inhabitants. Looking at her expression, his image as a ladies' man had penetrated that bubble. It's true, he'd had a few casual affairs in the past, but nothing long term. He'd appreciated them for what it was, treated whoever he was with well and was always forthright about not wanting anything serious. His focus had always been on rugby and everything that entailed the sport. 

Unfortunately, the media had made him out to be an unrepentant philanderer, thanks to the reputation of his uncle Dougal MacKenzie, a retired rugby union great and a former mentor when he'd first started out.  Like Uncle, like nephew,  so they'd whispered behind his back. Dougal had been a notorious womaniser back in his days, and his antics were often featured in the sports column.  How many wives had he had?  Jamie had lost count. So much for promoting a public persona that had nothing to do with his passion for rugby!  Since when did hard work, glory and distinction in sports become synonymous with the shallow world of celebrities?  In Jamie's case, ever since the camera had panned a close-up of his face during a televised game and the social media had erupted into a frenzy.   Suddenly, Jamie's looks and his relation to his uncle had become as important as his rugby skills when it came to attracting the lucrative endorsements and sponsorship deals that made him wealthy. But at what cost? A reputation that refused to shift. Maybe there was a certain amount of truth to what was being said about him. After all, his uncle's womanising ways had soured the idea of him committing to a relationship.

"So, ye're back," the blonde girl continued, seemingly unfazed by his lack of interest. "Maybe we can meet up for coffee or maybe..." Face turning red, she squared her shoulders. "...ye'll probably need help refamiliarising yersel' with the village and surrounding area."

"Why? Has Broch Mordha changed much?" He knew he was behaving like a complete prick. Over a year ago, his charm would have turned on involuntary around people, especially with pretty girls like the one in front of him.  Good old Jamie, the golden boy of British sports, always up for a picture or two or lay with some female celebrity or fan.  Everyone had wanted a piece of him until he'd announced his retirement. Then his phone had stopped ringing. But his agent had wanted to milk whatever was left of his fame by suggesting to go on the popular British television dance contest for celebrities,  Strictly Come Dancing .  What the fuck did that have to do with rugby?  Nowadays the only newsworthy thing about his name was his love life or some rehashed stories of his past. But here's a girl showing genuine interest so why couldn't he muster an ounce of enthusiasm? "Look, I'm so sorry. I haven't seen my family for a long while and ..."

"Ach, nae bother. Think nothing more about it," she interrupted with a wave of her hand. "But if ye change yer mind, call me." She rummaged through her handbag and extracted a card, handing it to him. "I've a boutique shop in the square. Sew in Style. I usually take a break between one and two in the afternoon."

Jamie forced a smile, shoving the card in his pocket without looking at it. "Aye, if I ever need a perfect wee black dress, I'll let ye know."

She laughed out loud as if he just uttered the joke of the decade instead of a sarcastic comment. "And, by the way, I'm home tonight so, if ye fancy a glass of wine or two after yer nephew's party...my private number is at the back of the card."

His forced laughter was toneless. "A wine."

"Jamie! A moment please." A voice behind him called out.  Joe?    Ach, thank fuck!   

Jamie knew instantly his African-American friend was swooping in to save him from Laoghaire, and he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. They weren't close, but Joe was more than a professional acquaintance and team doctor. In and outside his training, it was their talks that had kept him grounded throughout his career. And it was he who had kept in touch with his family during his therapy. When the title Rookie of the Year had threatened to inflate his head, Joe had reminded him not to get too cocksure as rugby career tended to be very short. Quickly making an apologetic shrug at Laoghaire, Jamie turned to face Joe, this time a sincere smile, if not relieved, plastered on his face. "How are ye, mate? Good to see ye."

Realising she was being dismissed, Laoghaire's expression went flat; nevertheless, she smiled, and with a small nod, and a muttered, "see ye around," she turned and left. Part of him felt awful for being rude, but the other half felt good to not play the charming ladies' man as portrayed by the newspaper.

Joe let out a whistle. "Whoa! Who are you and what did you do to James Fraser?"

"He's still here somewhere." Jamie clapped him on the back as they made their way to the table where his brothers and brother-in-law were sat. The guests were already starting to leave, and his parents have retired to the house.

"Jenny said you might come. So I stopped by," Joe said, grabbing his drink from the table. 

Ian, Jenny's husband, stood up and offered Jamie a beer, but he shook his head and zeroed in on the whisky instead. "I sent Joe to get ye. Ye looked like ye were suffering from a bout of gout talking to Laoghaire," he chuckled.

Jamie smiled pensively, pouring himself a healthy measure in the tumbler, and taking a seat between Rabbie and Willie. Despite his moodiness, he was glad to be around his brothers. Willie, the oldest of the Fraser siblings at age thirty-four, had his own construction company,  W.Fraser  while the youngest, Robert, better known as Rabbie, age twenty-three was studying Biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh. But Rabbie's passion was more into the woodwork, and in his spare time, he helped Willie create masterpieces out of wood or restored antiques. And so that left the Fraser Distillery to Jamie. Although unspoken, Jamie knew he was expected to take over the family business now that his rugby career was over. "Just a lot to take in at the moment. I didn't realise there would be plenty of guests."

The men nodded sympathetically as they supped their drinks.

"Here, ye wanted this," Rabbie said, breaking the silence and sliding a business card on the table "Got it from Jenny. Ye planning a party or something? Mind, it's a children's party company."

Sassenach!  Jamie grabbed the colourful card, read it and flipped it twice between his fingers. Giggle Beans Children's Party Planner. "Geillis Duncan ...the name doesnae sound English to me," he said thoughtfully.

Joe took a swig of his beer and frowned. "Geillis Duncan? I know her. She's a good mate of mine. The party planning is a new business she just started."

"Aye? Brown-haired lass?"

"No. Geillis is ginger. Like you."

"Weel, I heard Jenny calling the entertainer Geillis. Maybe she dyed her hair?" Ian suggested. "I never saw her face. I thought it was bonkers she had that dog mask on the whole time in this heat. I guess she didnae want to disappoint the bairns."

"I can call her if you wish. Like what I said, she's a close friend," Joe offered, taking out his phone. "Is it for a party?"

"Ahh, no. I ..." Jamie didn't know what to say, so he took out his phone instead. "No. I'll call." Reading from the card, he tapped the number on his phone screen and glared at everyone in warning to shush. No answer. Just an answering machine. After a while, he placed his phone back on the table. "What kind of business that's just starting out takes a week off?"

"Ah! It's to do with the wedding," Joe explained. "Our friend is getting married this weekend. I'm the man of honour and Geillis is the bride's maid."

Everyone laughed, and Rabbie's eyebrow shot up. "Man of honour. Never heard of that before."

Jamie ignored his brother. "Mmm, doesn't she have the staff to answer phone calls? It would make perfect business sense if she wanted to succeed."

"Not yet, but she has a few close friends helping her out for now," Joe shrugged. "I have no idea which friends though. Want me to call Geillis' on her private number?"

Jamie shook his head. "No, it can wait."

"If it's not about children's party, what is it ye calling for?" Ian asked.

"Wait a minute," Willie interrupted as if something just dawned on him. "Has this something to do with wee Jamie telling me that ye snogged the dog? His words. Not mine."

"Fuck, he said that?" Jamie choked.

"Aye, my wee lad told me something along those lines," Ian piped in, suddenly perking up. "I thought he's making stories up."

"Ye snogged the children's entertainer? The one in Paw Patrol costume?" Rabbie asked. "How'd ye manage that?"

"Alright, Jamie. I'm all dog's ears. What happened?" Joe dead-panned.

Everyone at the table burst out laughing.

"Fuck off!" Jamie split a frustrated look between his friend, brothers and his brother-in-law over the rim of his whisky. His younger brother, Robert, looked like he had tons of follow-up questions which Jamie could really do without. 

"He definitely snogged the dog," Rabbie confirmed with a smirk and a wink.

"Jesus, Jamie. Ye come out from yer cave for the first time in a long time, and ye snogged wee Jamie's party entertainer? Ye definitely need yer head looking at," Willie quipped, shifting on his seat. "What the hell happened?"

Although Jamie promised his mother to cut down on his alcohol consumption, suddenly, he wanted to straddle his hangover with a fresher one in an attempt to forget the kiss with the fiery English lass and to veer the conversation to something else. Feeling cornered and left with no choice, he complied and told them the whole story.

When Jamie was done, everyone shook their head like he'd just been crowned idiot of the year. "Ye actually bribed her with 30 quid?" Rabbie asked, slapping his forehead in disbelief. "Man, she must be a student like me, forever hard-up for dough. She must think ye're a self-entitled prick for that. Does she even know who ye are?" 

"Aye, she does. She was actually nice. She's the first person since I retired from sports to mention the subject of rugby."

Actually, Jamie had liked her even before she had taken off the mask. She'd had this mixture of vulnerability and tenacity that had grabbed his attention the moment she'd started speaking. He could have talked to her all day and not been bored. And then she'd taken off the mask, and he'd known there, and then he was flummoxed.

He remembered her big amber eyes flecked with grey flashing in anger and thought of how her lips had felt moving with his. He squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.

"So, tell me, how did she grab the hundred-pound note? With her furry paws?" 

Willie threw a beer bottle cap at the younger Fraser. "Leave it to Rabbie to ask the mechanics of every minute detail. Jamie had a snogging session with a dog, so let's just appreciate it for what it is."

Jamie took no notice of the jest. "It wasn't even a proper snog. It was more like  take-that, ye-prick  kinda snog."

"Oh, man. This is bad. Look at ye. Ye really have it bad, Jamie lad. Ye're paying for yer past mistakes. Aye, that's it! That's karma. That's what happens when ye leave a trail of broken hearts in yer wake. A taste of yer own medicine." Willie shook his head at his brother in mock sympathy.

"What do ye plan to do then if ye manage to get hold of her? Ask her out? Do ye even want to have a girlfriend? " Ian asked, seriously this time.

So what's the plan?  If for no other reason, he wanted to track the English lass down just to correct her misconception of him. And if he was downright honest with himself, he craved to kiss her again—a lot. "I have nae idea. Truly, nae idea. But one thing for sure, she and I aren't done," he muttered before downing the rest of his whisky.

..........

I can't do this. I have to get out of here.

The four walls of the room felt like they're closing in on her. Claire tried to regulate her breathing as panic slashed mercilessly at her guts. The bodice of her dress dug into her ribs, and the choker pearl necklace felt like a noose binding her. She started to hyperventilate, and she reached up and ripped off the pearl-encrusted lace veil. Bending at the waist, she placed her hands on her knees and gulped in air.

In fifteen minutes, she was getting married to Frank. She tried to picture him in his tuxedo, his chocolate brown hair neatly brushed back, flashing his perfect smile at their waiting guests, most of them his associates and friends. Earlier while she was getting dressed, a box of white orchids from her fiance arrived with a handwritten note. It read:  I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you.  Beautiful. So why did those mere words sent a shiver down her spine? Everything was perfect. Frank was perfect. So what was wrong?

She thought of the people in her life. There were not many of them. Sure, there were plenty of acquaintances and work colleagues at the hospital, and she was well-liked. But those she held dear and was closest to, she could count on the fingers of one hand. Orphaned at the age of five, she was raised by her only living relative, her father's brother, Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, also known as uncle Lamb. Having spent her childhood travelling the world with her guardian while working on archaeological sites, their nomadic lifestyle didn't allow much room for close friendships and ties. At least until she started her medical studies when her uncle finally settled down to teach history at the University of Edinburgh. Although a loner, she had bonded with Geillis Duncan and Joe Abernathy one night while watching a televised rugby game at the local pub. Scotland had just won. After hugging as strangers in celebration and debating about  the man of the match  over pints of Guinness, they became steadfast friends ever since.

And then Frank came along. He was a specialist surgeon at the time when they first met. He was her boss and her mentor when she started her internship. Their shared love for the intricacies of medical and surgical art of healing brought them closer together, first as friends and eventually as lovers. He was a patient teacher, and she was an eager student, lapping up his knowledge and experience. But that's where their common interest ended. Outside work, they had different interests and sets of friends. Claire loved sports, hanging out in a pub, reading books and night-ins watching movies. She was laidback whereas Frank loved attending formal charity events and socialising with the upper crust professionals of Edinburgh. More often than not, their differences made her feel she had to make a choice between him and her friends.

Claire closed her eyes and tried to calm her rioting nerves. Over the past year, almost every instant she attempted to meet up with Joe and Geillis, Frank gave her a difficult time. Her fiance pointed out how limited time they spent together with their hectic work schedules and her little get-togethers with her friends were causing a division in their relationship. Although Claire considered herself independent, gutsy and opinionated, her resolve turned into mush whenever Frank turned on his charm and wholehearted devotion in getting his point across. And so she'd started making excuses. She hated lying to her friends, but Frank soothed her guilt by being more attentive and generous with his gifts.

He doesn't like your friends. He wants to change you. 

The voice in her head got louder, and her breathing became more erratic.

Run now before it's too late.

Lightheadedness threatened, and she staggered to her feet, swaying a little. She needed air so badly. Maybe the wedding pressure was finally getting to her. With her demanding job and long hours at work, she was bone-tired from fretting about every final detail of their wedding. Frank was a perfectionist, and he disliked disorganisation and lack of care. Every aspect of their nuptials needed to be perfect. And with almost four hundred guests, including the local press and his high-society associates, it was an event too important to muck up. It was her job to make sure everything was flawless.

What matters more, Beauchamp? Pleasing a bunch of hoity-toity or your friends? Is this really the world you want to live in?

She knew Frank didn't approve of her friends.  "They're a bit rough around the edges, darling. I hope they will not embarrass me at the wedding,"  he had said casually. But Claire had stood her ground and defended them. Besides uncle Lamb, Joe and Geillis were like family to her. They were her people.

The sound of violin music and the drone of voices drifting into the room alerted her. She knew Geillis, Joe and uncle Lamb were waiting outside, and soon the door would open. They left earlier when she told them she needed a moment alone. Any time now, they would come and fetch her. Feeling sick, she lurched toward the stained glass window and jiggled the knob. It budged a few inches, allowing hot air to flow through.  Breathe!  Why was she having second thoughts? Together they would be a power couple saving lives, attending charity events and helping change the world. So, what was the matter? 

Nothing is the matter. I love Frank. He's great, and he makes me a better person.

Ya-dah, ya-dah. What do you know of love, Beauchamp? You kissed the Fraser lad. Maybe the hot Scot is not for you, but if you really love Frank, the kiss wouldn't have happened.

The hot weather and lack of sleep muddled my brains.

Yeah, right. Get a grip, Beauchamp.

What now?

Get the hell out of there and run!

Sunlight caught the sparkle of her diamond engagement ring, making her wince. Quickly, she took it off and placed it on the table. No time for weighing the consequences, the rights and wrongs, the cost. No time to draw up statistical or pie charts and mull over percentages.

Trust your gut, Beauchamp. It has never failed you on the operating table.

But I can't leave him waiting at the altar.

Listen, you fool. Once you walk down that aisle, it's over. So straighten those panties and worry about the consequences later.

Her head was spinning in a frenetic circle, making her dizzy. Claire looked at the closed door and swallowed hard. What she was about to do would change the course of her life and maybe, the career she had worked hard for. But there was no time.

Go, go, go, Beauchamp!

Bugger it!  Heart pounding, Claire yanked the window with all her might, and to her astonishment, it opened like a shot nearly knocking her backwards. She didn't have time to analyse if it was her physical strength or the adrenaline increasing the blood flow into her muscles that made the window budge. Ignoring the judging eyes of the Blessed Virgin Mary statue, she squeezed her body through the opening and wriggled her way to freedom.

..........

"Thank you, Jamie. Sorry again to call you on such short notice. I owe you big time, mate," Joe said, saluting him as he opened the passenger door.

"Nae worries, Joe. Happy to help. Now, go before you miss the wedding," Jamie replied. 

Joe smiled one last time and got out.

Jamie waited and watched his friend run and disappeared through the door of the church before easing his car from the curb. The church bell rang, letting him know the ceremony was about to commence. There were a few reporters with cameramen lingering outside and thought, whoever Joe's friend was marrying must be well-known and newsworthy.

Joe had called Jamie earlier after his car broke down. Apparently, the bride's uncle had forgotten to bring something important, and Geillis had sent him to retrieve it, by hook or by crook. Luckily for Joe, he caught him as he was about to leave for Lallybroch for the weekend. 

Jamie was just turning right at the junction when a cloud of white material hanging out of a window on the far side of the church caught his attention.  What the fuck?   Not stopping to think, he slammed his foot on the brake and got out of the car, leaving it stranded in the middle of the road. He started to jog across the grassy area and over the bed of flowers, keeping his eye on the wriggling figure coming out of the window.  Christ, is that the bride?

Then his heart stopped and faltered. The person in the white dress was falling. His perception of time became distorted, slowing everything down until there was nothing, only the figure in white that was about to hit the ground.  No! No! Please, God!  Pushing himself, he bolted like a sprinter at the start gun, covering the uneven ground with a precise speed of a disciplined athlete, knowing full well his thighs had enough power to make it in seconds, each of his strides at least worth two of an untrained person. Barely breaking a sweat, he made it in the nick of time and caught the body in his arms.

His heart knocking uncontrollably against his ribs, he let out a massive sigh of relief and looked down at the bride. Her porcelain skin was flushed, and her fancy hairdo lay lopsided to the side with pins sticking out, making the dark curls spring wildly around her face. His gaze briefly landed on her parted lips before settling on a pair of snapping amber eyes. He fought past his lack of speech and wondered if the weeks he'd spent in a drunken stupor was causing him to hallucinate. "Sassenach!?!"

[kootenaygoon]

So,

He looked tanned. 

Spencer took a luxurious drag on his Belmont, the ember exploding like a mini-supernova in his aviator sunglasses, and exhaled swirling spirits into the early morning mist of Diefenbaker Park. It was two days after Christmas and I’d left my pregnant wife and baby daughter at home to visit his memorial bench, the day after my sister died, and together we sat looking down at the central pond in the distance. I liked that he’d finally grown out his beard again, so that it had a scraggly surfer quality. The afterlife was agreeing with him.

I sighed. “The crazy thing is I’ve been grieving this shit for years, you know? Like I knew this could happen any time, any moment. And then the universe custom-designs this perfect French Exit for her. It was like it was staged,” I said, unpacking the one-gram pre-roll I’d picked up from Vancouver.

“Like think about this: Kristina went into labour on Kathryn’s birthday this year, then one day later Celista is born. Now she dies exactly nine months later, to the day. There’s some weird math there I can’t figure out.”

Spence smiled. “You’re always looking for the patterns.”

There was sweat collecting in my hairline. I’d gotten four hours of sleep, maybe, and I’d smoked half a pack of cigarettes. My family was circling the wagons hard, my other sister flying back from Belgium, and I was being inundated with social media engagements. I knew what was on everybody’s mind: this was exactly the sort of event that could send me back into my hyper-manic tail spin, put me back in the psych ward for the third time.

The thing was, Kathryn was more than a sister. She was me. With our matching dolphin tattoos, our matching blue cars, our blonde hair and our outrageous emotions. She was the female version of me, the sister whose soul was most entangled with mine. For years I’d assumed that one day I would end up derelict in her basement, while she played at domesticity with her healthy suburban brood upstairs. 

She had my back when nobody else did.

“I know she’s still here, man. But I can’t talk to her yet. So I wanted to come to you, you know? See if she’s made it to the other side,” I said. I was crying now, taking puffs off the spliff and blinking heartbroken at the baby blue sky through the clouds. 

Spence took off his aviators. I hadn’t realized he was crying, but now I could see his eyes were red-rimmed. For a moment I wanted to lunge for him, to touch his face with my hands. Then I remembered that he wasn’t there, that he’d been dead for years. Our last meal at Royal Jubilee flashed before my eyes, the way he looked with Canuck-coloured toe nails in his boss robe. Goddamn, I loved him. 

“You know I loved your sister,” he said. “She was family to me.”

I nodded, took another drag. The last time I saw Kathryn, in the basement of our house, she was wrapped up like a Pharaoh in her bedsheets. I touched her little cheek, with Celista riding on my hip, and told her that she wasn’t alone. That she would never be alone, that we were right there with her and death wouldn’t scare us away. With my siblings lined up behind me, I kissed her forehead and ran my hands through her duck fluff hair.

“You were perfect to me.”

Spencer shifted uncomfortably. He hated when I got too demonstrative or weepy, mostly because his emotions made him uncomfortable. Years earlier, when we’d lived together in Victoria, he had a short-lived fling with my sister. I envisioned them being together, making him real family, but the circumstances weren’t right. Shortly later she was married to someone else.

Spence sighed. “I don’t know if I should tell you this.”

“What?”

He took another drag off his Belmont, then ground it into the grass. Slowly he began to explain to me how the afterlife works, how your soul stays connected to what’s going on in the contemporary timeline for a while, but eventually you transcend that. You stop haunting your friends, you stop wondering what’s going on in real time, because you’ve ascended to another plain of being. One with beaches.

“For a while there I was checking in on Taylor all the time, you know, and Shannon. It’s so much easier to be a Facebook creep once you’re dead. I know so much shit I can’t tell you yet,” he said.

“I know everything that happened to you before you met me, and I know everything that’s going to happen to you. I’ve read the whole story now, but we’re not supposed to give spoiler warnings to people who are still alive. That’s not how life works.”

I coughed a few times, and nodded guiltily at an elderly couple walking by with their dog. I hoped they hadn’t seen me talking to myself. I took a deep breath through my nostrils and tried to imagine how Spence’s consciousness was reaching me, whether this imaginary figure before me was a legit spectral presence or just another fucking delusion, like the time I thought J.K. Rowling was my Mom and G.R.R.M was my Dad.

Spencer bit his lip. “We’re not really allowed to intervene, is the thing. So I know when bad things are going to happen, but I can’t do anything to stop them. I’m at peace with it, but those are the rules.”

My heart was beating a little faster. “You knew. You knew this was going to happen and you didn’t tell me.”

A tear dribbled into his beard, and he pulled out another Belmont. “I’m sorry, man. I really am. I would’ve done something if I could’ve. I swear.”

Now I was really crying in public. “I was like twenty feet away, man. When she drew her last breath. It was like I knew I had to be closer to her, like she pulled me back into her orbit. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what I could’ve done. I could’ve done so many things,” I said.

“What-ifs are useless, man. You did what you could. You all did. She picked a fight with a demon and it killed her. That’s all there is to it.”

I was starting to get annoyed with Spence, like the time we went on vacation together and I spazzed out at A&W because he complained about the colour of the pickles on his burger. I was going to the trouble of conjuring up his apparition, I figured at least that he’d say something comforting. But that was the thing with Spence, he always told the unvarnished truth. Even when it was uncomfortable.

“So what’s this thing you were going to tell me?”

Spence took a few trembly drags, his fingers shaking. He took a long moment after exhaling. “When I found out what was going to happen to Kathryn, I told you I couldn’t change anything. I had to watch it happen, just like you. But while you were sleeping, I went into Kathryn’s room.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “She was laying on her face, half under the covers, wearing those designer white jeans. She looked so precious, Will. Like Marilyn Monroe.”

I gasped. “Or Princess Di.”

“Exactly.”

I’d never seen Spence this emotional. His eyes were like the Grinch’s as he took another puff. He looked off towards the sand cliffs, and the waterfall where we used to come to drink back in high school. He was pausing because he was trying to work up the courage to say what came next.

“So I crawled into bed with her, Will. I put my arms around her, with her face to my neck, and I cradled her like she was a newborn. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I whispered to her that I’d be waiting on the other side. With her Gran Dad. I told her she didn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

My joint was finished now. I pulled out a cigarette, and Spencer offered me a light. Was this a pleasing fiction, or was I grasping at some legit truth from beyond the veil? These were exactly the sort of strange thoughts that would get me in trouble, but I needed to have them. I needed to let them out. And I needed to believe Spencer was telling me the truth.

He smiled. “But I didn’t even get to the best part. This is some real Rick and Morty shit.”

I snorted. “What?”

“Again, the metaphor isn’t perfect, but time doesn’t exist once you’re dead. Everything is happening all at once, like the Tralfamadorians in that one Vonnegut book.”

“The Sirens of Titan, right.”

“So the thing is, I’m talking to you right here but you’re also hanging with me in the afterlife already. We’re all together here. And when I went into that room, I wasn’t the only one there. Your whole family was there, and not just the nine of you but all of your aunts and uncles and all these other people I didn’t know,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. “They were all there?”

“Packed in, shoulder to shoulder. All her boyfriends had to wait out in the living room. Then there was her swimming friends, her Sauder girls, her B.C. Ferries crowd. There was so many people they couldn’t even fit in the basement suite, so a bunch of them were out smoking in the driveway. And you know who else was there? Celista.”

I wanted to believe him so bad. “Would you believe that, if you were me?”

Spence shrugged. “Probably not. All I know is what I saw. And everyone wanted to be there, to let Kathryn know she wasn’t alone. That includes you. The future you was there, like a Force Ghost from Star Wars. And you were so proud of her for how hard she fought. She was a Jedi.”

“I’ve never heard you get this maudlin before. I mean, you didn’t even believe in God. This shit sounds pretty bonkers.”

He laughed. At first it was just a surprised blurt, but then it escalated into body-shaking belly laughter. He wiped his eyes.

“What’s the joke?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

Spence’s eyes gleamed with mischief. 

“We are God.”

The Kootenay Goon