#some people in the tags don’t seem to know Wizard island is a real island in Crater Lake Oregon

[soranatus]

"Gentle Giant of Wizard Island" 12x12", Ink and watercolor, 2023. By Emily Poole.

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep10: Kaiba Embarrasses Himself on International Television Again

We start off this duel by teasing us into believing that this is a part of a theme park:

The Kaiba theme park is a weird mix of actual horrorscapes and animal crossing cutesy stuff...you can really tell what parts were Mokuba and what parts were Seto in this park.

But Leon takes it well, just kinda standing there as he’s done this entire arc--being a general forgettable nice boy who just...doesn’t do anything. Like he gets up, he plays cards, he sits down. Having him on top of a rock with melodramatic Little Mermaid waves crashing at his feet is laughably the opposite of Leon’s whole vibe.

Leon just seems like the type that listens to coffee shop ambient Youtube videos when he wants to amp himself up. This kid appears to attend a private school...somewhere...I think, and just went to a dueling competition in his school outfit because he literally doesn’t have a style of his own hanging in his closet.

Like Yugi wears his school outfit, but he does that ironically, to off-set the amount of makeup and hair spray he has in his hair. Leon wears the school outfit maybe because he admires Yugi so much, but is like “time for my rogue bow I wear in my hair. That’ll scare my competition.” He completely missed the point of the 00′s alt school outfit scene.

I do way too much art to not see the imagery. I feel like this is half my job, and playing “where’s the hidden Freudian meaning?” is half the fun of going to any art museum.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, Seto got tired of no one paying any attention to him, so he stepped out of his 14-monitor mancave, he very quickly pulled his Dragon outfit out of the (dirty) laundry, flicked a couple sea crabs out of his pockets, spritzed it with Febreeze and called it “good enough.”

Like, is it just me, or has dragon jacket greyed out a tad from last season? Like it’s starting to get a little...worn? Like what funk is coming off of Seto Kaiba right now?

Also notice that he brought his giant stash of cards to the duel. He’s going to put on this show as if he’s not going to pull out the giant stash of cards. But like...he’s going to pull out the giant stash of cards. Like Hell boring ass Leon is going to play his deck of Candyland characters again.

Leon is declared a winner on Technicality and it’s like.

Damn Seto, for reals?

So congrats, Leon, you did literally nothing, again, and yet you mystifyingly  persist on this show. Clearly you aren‘t going to grow a second head out of that ponytail like professor Quirrel in the last act of this arc.

That’s when Yugi’s hazy memory recalls something from the Before Times of “that time period before I was possessed by a needy ghost that eats up 3/4 of my memories and time.”

So Schroeder is Atari. Neat.

Also, this makes Zigfrieds outfits a hell ton more endearing when you realize he’s this Willy Wonka game company owner making toys for children. Kinda makes you wonder why Seto’s such a stick up the ass in comparison when it’s like--dude Kaiba, maybe you could learn a thing or two about whimsy. It could really help out your inconsistent park.

Anyway, Kaiba quickly realized who hacked the park and so, understandably, he asked Zigried to leave, which...backfired?

Y’all card culture is a lot. Everyone in the audience covered their faces in shame because they were so embarrassed by Seto Kaiba and I’m like...not sure why? Because he didn’t do a duel? Against this guy who snuck into his tourney not unlike Rex and Weevil? This asshole?

Recall that the last time Seto played a guy who had a fake name it was Marik freakin Ishtar and he killed a LOT of people (actually, it was Alister, pretending to be Pegasus, but he also killed a lot of people so that still tracks). Card culture can’t seem to learn from their mistakes, although Seto clearly sees the problem with dueling a professional hacker in a digital card game on a hologram that may or may not be able to murder you. At least its not a magic.

And so, tired of being humiliated on television, Seto decides to bust out the dueling gloves (well, not those gloves. You know what I meant) and use the equipment he BROUGHT WITH HIM and clearly never intended not to use in the first place.

(I hope you enjoy this dutch angle that wasn’t quite dutch enough, so it just looks like they’re lounging)

Roland patiently walks over from...somewhere? I don’t know where Roland comes from whenever he pops up, but he waltzed over to hold onto this suitcase as if that’s a formal part of his job.

I say this so often but like...I don’t know what Roland’s job is. He’s like a valet/butler/duel referee/duel cheerleader/CEO/and I will spend the rest of this series trying to understand it. Part of me is like...could Roland be a temp worker at an agency who just gets rehired for a different Kaiba Corp job every couple of weeks?

That weird ass fourthKaiba, I will never understand Roland.

Just one letter away from being a Zigfriend, Kaiba. Just one letter away. I know this because I misspell friend a LOT.

Zigfreind? Zigfriend? Damn it, both of them look the freakin same to me, this sucks! Why can’t I spell friend without autocorrect!?

Just the amount these two fight when Seto clearly barely even remembers who this guy even is.

Leon shows up in the seats, pretending that he’s totally cool about winning on a technicality right after Zigfried went on a rant about how shameful, irredeemable, and mortally embarrassing winning on technicalities are.

He seems to take it pretty well, smiling, sitting next to Rebecca, and then dissolving right into the background because this kid’s whole deal is being way too nice to exist on this show.

Y’all we just had that art meme where people were redrawing that “How to draw manga face” and guys...that’s what our anime used to look like.

I mean look at that uncomfortable chin there, that tapers in for some reason. Those eyes melting off of her face. The lack of any 3d sense. This was an anime ideal for a very, very long time.

Anyway, the “how to draw manga face” is a perfect masterpiece and never needs to change. (But it is fun to make fun of it although I guess the person that drew it was actually a kid, which makes sense from a publishing perspective to have a kid make a book about how to draw stuff for kids.)

We see a little flashback of Schroeder and why he hates Seto Kaiba, and can I just say, I kind of love this little outfit. Kind of a shame that it’s stuffed into a flashback.

Which is when we found out that Zigfried thinks Seto Kaiba did a plagiarism.

Which is hilarious because it was Gozaburo Kaiba who was plagiarizing Seto, so like...who did it first?

OK guys. Lets talk about this.

APPARENTLY, there was some sort of contest to work with Pegasus...kind of like an architecture contest (which is a thing, when a city is doing a big project, they send out a call, and big firms will compete to see who builds it) and I GOTTA know what Pegasus’ theme was.

Like did he say to all the little rich kid geniuses “I would like something that makes my cards ALIVE, can you do that?” Then when Pegasus got a hell ton of holograms and was he like “But ALIVE--it makes it alive, right boy?” And when he was shaking the hands of each stupid kid was he like “So if I hypothetically put my dead wife on a card and slapped it into the machine--could she EXIST. Like...enough? I just need her to legally exist is all, and not like..literally of course...but enough literally to be a sin against God, can you do that?”

I just want to know if Willy Wonka Wonderkid Von Schroeder had any idea he was creating a resurrection chamber for a dark wizard. Like he has no idea that he dodged getting his business bought straight from under him and his soul shoved into a card. And it’s not like Schroeder was going to abduct Yugi’s Grandpa and ensure that Yugi would be there to save him down the road. Like I’m pretty sure Schroeder would have been sacrificed waaay before that whole island contest even went down.

Zigfried got so freakin lucky. I can’t believe he’s mad. But then again...

...the man swims in milk pools so like...maybe his logic center is busted? Maybe he wanted to die in a horrific murder island? I don't know what Zigfried is into, but I do know that because Zigfried doesn’t have millennium rod powers linking him to the millennium eye--so would it have mattered? There’s destiny reasons that Pegasus chose Kaiba.

Course...we never found out where the scales ended up, have we? We think it’s Shadi, but have we seen Shadi bust those out since Season Zero?

Man that would be a good plot twist that will absolutely not happen.

Yo, make horse guy into a dark wizard, show, I dare you!

Anyway, that’s all for now, but if you want to read from the beginning, here’s the link:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[weforgotthatwearethestars]

No Memory is Gonna Save You Now (part 2)

Told ya it’d be up tonight 😅

To reiterate (aka the summary):

While out on patrol, Peter looses most of his memories. Through the kindness of strangers, his friends, and his family, he learns exactly what those closest to him mean to him.  

Starker, so don’t like don’t read!

Also here on Ao3!

Tags: amnesia, temporary amnesia, team as family, canon-typical violence, fluff, angst, happy ending  

As it turns out, and much to Peter’s amusement, Tony may have overestimated his ability to ‘fix this’. 

The situation is stressful, sure. It took Tony showing him half a dozen videos of the two of them, relaxed, in and out of the suits they wear before Peter would be convinced to hand the suit he was wearing over to Tony. It takes Peter even more time to trust Tony to sift through the wires and code on his own, at Tony’s insistence to get cleaned up and have a damn nap already, your jaw is clicking when you yawn. 

But Peter trusted him. Not all at once, but after too many questions and Tony showing all the patience in the world it was hard not to. 

Besides, Tony’s name was written in his arm. 

Underlined. 

And Peter was still choosing to believe that meant a hell of a lot. 

So when Peter wakes up, still clutching the I.D. card, wrapped in a blanket and borrowed clothes, with no more memories than when he fell asleep, he looks around for Tony. And he can’t be blamed that he finds the sight of the genius arguing with a man in a red cape that’s twitching like it’s alive amusing. 

They’re going back and forth about time constraints, spell ingredients, and “ - he’s saved your ass before, Strange! You can’t just - ” 

“Talking about me while I’m asleep. Super classy of you guys.” Peter says as he sits up on the old couch in the lab, shoving the I.D. card into a pocket. Strange, The Asshole Wizard (as Tony has called him many times now) sighs in what sounds like relief and says something to Peter. He’s not too focused on what because the red cape has floated off his shoulders and is coming for him! 

Peter manages a squawk before it wraps around his middle in what he comes to realize is a hug….? He pats the bit of cape that’s over his chest and it ripples happily under his hand. 

“Y-you’re alive?!” he exclaims as the cape ripples around him a little more. Peter starts to giggle as the cape seems to be enjoying the petting and attention. After a point it starts to move him around and before long it sweeps Peter off his feet and tosses him like he just jumped off a trampoline. Peter shrieks, half delight half fear, as he’s launched toward the ceiling, the other two men shout as well. He reaches the apex of his toss at just the right height to calmly reach out and stick himself to the ceiling with all of his limbs. He laughs a little more as he arches to look over and down to see - 

“How the hell are you doing that!? That’s so cool!” 

A portal had opened just underneath him, Strange seemed to be holding it open while Tony had his arms out as if to catch him. The cape floating between them, twitching this way and that. Tony looked like he couldn’t decide between amused and annoyed, and honestly either would be a good look on him. 

Peter grinned and it seemed to tip the other man to begrudgingly amused. I’ll take it. 

“Let go, Pete. I’ll catch you.” 

Peter snorts because if he’s learned anything about his abilities in the hours before he fell asleep it’s that he could get down off the ceiling by himself, with or without the portal. 

But, he lets go without much of a thought, passing through the portal and landing in Tony’s arms, bridal style. 

As much as he’s learned about his own abilities, he’s also learned a decent amount about Tony and the amount of pure caring he’s got packed into himself for others. Or at least for Peter and his own creations. As soon as Peter is through, Strange lets the portal fizzle out. 

“I thought you said he didn’t have control of his powers.” Strange says, sounding smug. Peter expects Tony to have some sort of snappy comeback but when it doesn’t come immediately, he pulls his eyes from the fizzled out portal, face pulling out of the goofy grin and into something more concerned, to look up and over at Tony. Tony’s looking at Peter already, stunned and shocked at best, something deeper twisting in his eyes. Tony’s grip tightens on him minutely and it clicks. 

Possessiveness. 

Peter doesn’t have time to react to his revelation before, “I’m sorry, should I come back?” 

Tony and Peter’s heads whip around like they’ve been caught doing something far worse than staring at each other. Tony clears his throat while Peter blushes and both scramble to get Peter’s feet on the ground.  

“So, ah,” Peter stutters out, shaking himself mentally to get back to the issue at hand, “You guys were talking about my memories?” This seemed to reboot Tony completely as he looks sharply back at Strange and Strange’s smug amusement falls to generally disheartened and vaguely annoyed. 

“Yes, we were.” Strange replies, “As I was trying to explain to Stark, I can’t just put your memories back. It’s a process. And it’s going to take even more time to put them back because we were so quick with removing them to begin with.” 

Peter feels his eyebrows draw together and before he can really think it through, he asks, “Why were you rushing the first time?” Strange looks dubious while Tony just glares at him but both, somehow, look guilty. 

“You got kidnapped by aliens that are part of a hive mind that are trying to take over this planet. They’re highly advanced, technologically, but not magically. When you dropped off the map and Stark couldn’t find you, he called me.” 

Peter blinks at him once, twice, because how - “How did you just say all of that with a straight face?” he asks, completely at a loss. 

Strange rolls his eyes with a muttered, “Always a damn comedian.” while Tony snorts and says, “Good one, Pete.” Peter just blinks at the two of them. That seems to make them realize he’s not joking. 

“I explained all of this to you last night!” 

“I thought you were being dramatic! Or, just, like, making things up so I’d pay attention!” 

“I mean, that doesn’t sound far from your usual, Stark.” 

“I swear, Tinkerbell - ” 

“Guys!” Peter half shouts to get his voice above their bickering, grin growing as he looks between the two men and the floating cape. “Magic is real!” and now he’s really grinning like a lunatic, “That’s fascinating!” 

Tony has a fond, confused smile crawling up his face while Strange just rolls his eyes and mutters with a slight smirk. 

They discuss things a little longer, determining that they will have to at least wait until the alien threat is gone before they attempt to put Peter’s memories back. Strange is called away while they discuss the details of the ritual, which leaves Tony and Peter with more questions than answers, really. 

“He’s always so damn cryptic.” Tony mutters as he heads back to his project. 

But that’s before the banshee in Peter’s stomach decides to growl. 

Peter smiles sheepishly while Tony turns back around to raise an eyebrow at him. 

“Baby girl, what time is it?” 

“11:34 am, sir.” 

“With your metabolism, you must be starving.” Tony mutters as he saves his holos and shuts it all down with a few waves. Then Tony claps, rubbing his hands together on the way to the door and says, “To the kitchen!” with Peter trailing behind him. 

Peter tries to protest a little, managing to at least delay things mildly when he asks if he should be carrying around his memories in an I.D. card in his pocket. Tony just takes it from him, striding to one end of the lab, open a fucking secret panel in the floor that has five kinds of crazy locks before it opens up with a dull thud and a grunt on Tony’s part. Once the card is placed inside, Tony just strides back, grabbing his arm gently as he walks by, guiding him firmly out of the lab. 

He’s determined to feed Peter it seems. 

So Peter just keeps his mild panic to himself. 

Because Peter isn’t stupid he knows that, in a place this big, they’re likely to run into someone. And if they’re going to their usual haunts, then they’re much more likely to run into someone they know. The lab seemed like a place that was just for him and Tony (and the bots). Who knows if ‘the kitchen’ is a communal space or private. And this line of thinking just raises more questions for Peter. 

Because he doesn’t know anything. 

He doesn’t know what building this is other than the ‘Tower’. He doesn’t know if people live here, if this is a business place, or where literally anything is. There is apparently a lobby, a lab, and a kitchen and this, really is as far as he’s gotten. They’re on their way to find food and he doesn’t even know what he likes, for Newton’s sake! 

What if he has a food allergy? What if he manages to harm himself and he doesn’t know if he has any allergies to medication? Oh, nononono, what if he has pets and doesn’t feed them? What if they die and - ? 

“Are you coming? Or are you going to just…..stand in the elevator all day?” Tony asks, snapping Peter out of his internal existential spiral. 

“Do I have pets?!” Peter asks, a little frantic, wild eyed as he stares at Tony. 

He blinks once or twice then, “No? But we can go to your room after this, if you want? I mean, I don’t think you have a living pet but you make robots at random and, knowing you, you’ve adopted a rock and feed it, like, love twice a day or something.” Rolling his eyes fondly, Tony grabs Peter’s arm lightly and starts towing him out of the elevator, saying, “Come on, you’re not getting out of food.” 

For some reason, this makes Peter relax a bit. 

Peter lets himself be towed down a hall and through a living room with couches and a large tv and into a well stocked, modern kitchen. Tony drops his arm as he passes the stools tucked into an island and rounds, making a beeline for the fridge. Peter takes the hint and sits on a stool as Tony turns back towards him with a calculating look on his face. 

“If I ask you what you like to eat, would you know the answer?” It seems like an overly round-about way of asking if he even remembers what foods he likes but Peter shakes his head, frowning in response to his realization. 

Tony’s face softens though and with a flap of a hand he says, “Don’t worry. I know what you like. Sweet or savory?” 

Peter feels his face scrunch a little, then replies, “Savory?” 

“Got it.” Tony fires off with a grin before he’s on the move again. A green apple is soon tossed his way, a moment later a jar of peanut butter, too. He notes that it’s labeled with his name before a knife is placed on the counter in front of him. “Usually you just slap the peanut butter on the apple and bite into it all together.” 

The face Peter pulls must betray his confusion and mild disgust because Tony laughs as he pulls the peanut butter jar from Peter’s hand lightly. “I know how it sounds but usually when you’re hungry,” he starts as he works the lid of the jar then tilting the opening toward Peter’s face, “you get impatient.” Peter gets one whiff of the peanut butter and his stomach growls loudly as his mouth starts salivating. Shocked, Peter looks up at Tony, wide-eyed, as the other man grins at him, happy to have gotten Peter so right. 

He gently takes the jar from Tony, blinking down into the contents and wondering for the millionth time just how well this man might know him. Tony nods to himself, happy, like he’s ticking off something on a to-do list, then turns around to the fridge. 

He’s going about the kitchen, taking things out and settling into some sort of rhythm all his own so….Peter just watches. He contemplates offering his help once or twice as he makes his way through half the apple and a third of the jar but he never feels like he needs to. Like he’s expected to. It’s the first time he’s sat and just….existed since he woke up under those trees and it’s both oddly forgein and terribly comforting. 

He slathers on more peanut butter and munches more of his apple and tries his best to just, be. 

It doesn’t last long, sadly. 

A man walks in with too many muscles, long hair flung wildly around his face, and a metal arm in his hand. The man grunts in his direction before he turns to Tony, dropping the metal arm on the counter in front of Peter. Tony and the man start talking but, honestly, Peter couldn’t care less what they’re saying because the arm in front of him is beautiful. 

His hands are running all over it before he really ever gave himself permission or thought to ask for anyone else’s. The design is a thing of wonder but it’s heavier than he feels an arm maybe should be. He’s got about three ways to improve the weight as he articulates the limb only to find that there’s a snag in the elbow. There’s a memory in his hands as he checks over the plates of the arm, feels vaguely like he’s done this all before somehow. There’s no visual, techni-colored memory to pull up as a reference but he knows, in his fingers and his wrists, the way to twist the arm around, the way plates are supposed to shift, and where the access panels are. 

He’s got it open as easy as breathing and he’s got his hands on the issue in nothing flat. Pulling out the flat, floppy magnet with a content noise and a smile, seems to be what breaks Peter out of his mechanical-sleuthing trance. He drops the wrist onto the counter with a loud clang, causing the long haired man to look over at him sharply from where he was busy making what looks to be coffee. 

“You good, Queens?” Peter hears the man ask as he continues to stare at the arm, trying to figure out, understand somehow, that his fingers knew more than he did for a little while there. 

“Did you find something weird in it?” the man asks and Peter jumps. The man is standing at his side and he doesn’t remember hearing the guy move. The guy takes the magnet that’s still in Peter’s hand, inspects it quickly, before he seems to relax a little and almost, maybe does something with his lips that could be construed as a smile. 

If you squint. 

“Clint.” the man states, fond annoyance bleeding into his tone. He ruffles Peter’s hair which turns into some sort of shoulder squeeze. Then he leans over, taps all the panels closed, picks the arm up, and jams it holy mother of - ! 

It’s the guy’s own fucking arm, Peter thinks in complete and utter horror and fascination. 

The guy wiggles the fingers around, bends the elbow, rotates the shoulder then smiles, properly this time.

 He picks up his mug, waves at Peter and Tony vaguely, with a “Thanks, kid.” thrown over his shoulder before he’s gone again. 

Peter’s still gaping a little at where the guy disappeared out of. He’s probably been gaping for an inordinate amount of time when there is a hand (flesh and blood, because that’s a note we have to make now) wiggled in his face. 

Peter blinks once or twice to pull the hand into focus and, after a moment or two, sees that the hand is attached to Tony. 

A confused Tony. 

“Why didn’t you tell Elsa you lost your memories? Did you recognize him or something?” Tony asks and Peter just gapes. 

Tony’s about to add something when, “His name is Elsa?” 

Peter has a feeling that the incredulity is what startles the rawkus laughter out of Tony, but he supposes he can’t be sure. Further testing will definitely be needed, he thinks as he feels his lips curl into a grin at the warm, happy sound. 

Tony takes a little while to get a hold of himself before he manages, “I guess he’s not familiar then.” He smirks at Peter, laughter still in his eyes as he explains, “His name is Bucky. He’s got a metal arm and you fix it for him when it breaks, most of the time.” Peter makes a thoughtful noise as Tony continues chopping things and mulls the new information over. 

“Is he like a brother or more like good friends or something?” Peter asks. He figures it’s an innocent enough question and that it would fit with the man’s, Bucky’s, actions. He’d ruffled his hair, squeezed his shoulder, deposited his beautiful, malfunctioning, cybernetic arm for Peter to fix (and drool over). Peter figures that’s the kind of thing you do with someone you know and trust. 

Fixing someone’s arm is a big deal. But then being an arm down around someone is a vulnerable position as well. 

With this thought Peter adds, “You must mean something to him too, right?” 

There’s no immediate response so Peter looks back over at Tony only to find that the man is just staring at him with his kitchen knife half way through an onion. Peter frowns and asks, “Are you alright?” which seems to shake Tony out of whatever trance he’s ended up in. 

“Yeah, no, ah -” he coughs a bit then goes back to chopping as he continues, “We’re fine, mostly. But you’re pretty right. About you guys. He trusts you, you’re pretty good friends. He’s on the team, sorta. It’s similar to how you’re on the team sorta.” 

“How many superheroes are there? Do they all live here, too?” Tony chuckles at that but seems to relax a little more with the broader topic. Peter tries to remember to maybe avoid Bucky as a topic in front of Tony until his memories are back in his head. 

“Not all the hero's live here but there’s a decent amount who do. Want me to tell you a little about everyone?” 

Peter grins, “Please?” 

And Tony tells him. 

Tony tells him about how the first time Peter meant Captain America in the suit, he had stolen the shield from him and earned the nickname ‘Queens’ and how, after a long fight, everyone got their shit together and talked like adults. 

He told him about how the first time he met Natasha in the lab, out of his suit as Tony’s intern, she had narrowed her eyes at Peter, then Tony, then back at Peter and said, calm as anything, “If you hurt him I’ll kill you.” and walked out. Tony says it took him nearly two weeks to convince Peter to go back to the lab after that. 

He laughs through an explanation of the ‘severe fanboying’ Peter had done when he had met Bruce the first time and how happy Bruce was to science with Peter after he had gotten a feel for him. And he smiles fondly through the story of Spider-man meeting Hulk for the first time and becoming fast friends through junk food and play wrestling. 

By the time Tony is finishing up with the food Peter feels like he’s gotten to know the people he apparently lives with a bit better. Tony’s eyebrows draw together at some thought before he’s quickly adding in, “In case you were worried, anyone who has access to these floors knows your identity. And Friday’s programmed to warn you and make it harder for people to get to you if you’re in the suit but don’t have the mask on. You’re also my ‘intern’ and you live here so if you say you’re Peter Parker and that you live here, no one’s gonna think you’re Spider-Man just because of that.” 

Peter...honestly hadn’t thought about it too much. 

But - “Does that really happen all that often?” 

Tony snorts, actually snorts, at Peter’s look of confusion and replies, “To you, Pete? Too often.” Tony’s still chuckling to himself as he plates up the food he cooked which turns out to be spaghetti. 

Scratch that, Peter thinks as he takes his first bite, he made heaven in a food! 

Peter feels a happy noise crawl out of his throat around his mouthful before he starts trying to scarf it down as quickly as possible. 

“Woah, kid. Breath a little, please. There are several people that would kill me if you die from food inhalation.” 

Peter manages to swallow all the food in his mouth before he’s quipping back, “If they tasted this they would understand! How do you cook like this, it’s amazing!” 

Tony just waves him off saying, “It’s not that great, kid. You’re just starving from a high metabolism and currently have no memory of what a hot meal is.” Peter would have continued his uphill battle but in walked….someone who likely lived here as he was a man in sweatpants, an over large tshirt, and an exceptional case of bed head. 

“Hey,” Peter says at the guy, who looks up with a very confused look on his face, “tell Tony that his spaghetti is amazing.” 

The guy blinks, then blinks again, then, “There’s spaghetti?” 

His voice was gruff and very confused, but Peter being himself replies, “Tony just made some.” 

The guy grins like a puppy with a tennis ball and mumbles, “Tony s’ghetti.” before he shuffles to the stove to serve himself. Peter gives Tony a smug look that Tony just rolls his eyes at. But drinking from his glass of water doesn’t quite cover his blush. 

Huh. 

Before Peter has much time to think about the blush on Tony’s face or what that might mean, another person walks into the kitchen. 

“Hey! No class today, Peter?” Tony curses, scabbling off the stool he’s on before he’s running out of the kitchen. 

Peter blinks at where he’s disappeared out of but tries not to worry too much. 

Tony’s a) an adult who can likely take care of himself but also b) a seemingly chaotic person at best. Peter figures if something was terribly wrong Tony would tell him, or Friday would. 

Peter looks back over at the new person, trying to figure out what he's supposed to do now. 

He looks similar to the man now standing with a bowl of spaghetti and downing a separate bowl of coffee. They both have blue eyes, broad shoulders, and an inordinate amount of height. Both also have short, blonde, messy hair, though the man that's just looking at him in confusion seems to be sweaty and damp, unlike the sleep ruffled look of the other guy. 

"Do you know what that was about?" the sweaty guy asks, nodding toward the hall Tony had disappeared down. 

Peter just shrugs at him and keeps eating his food, hoping he won't be questioned further. What was he supposed to say anyway? Nah, I have no idea what just happened but I've been confused since 3am when I fell out of a tree and some girl called me Spider-Man so I may not be the right guy to ask. 

Yeah that would go over, swimmingly. 

After eating (i.e. practically inhaling) the rest of his food, Peter puts all his dishes in the sink and grabs Tony’s bowl from the counter. 

He’s about to ask Friday where Tony went so he can bring him his food when sweaty guy pipes up, “Did you have a rough patrol last night?” 

Peter half turns back to him, reluctance probably too clear in his posture, and just nods and sort of mumbles something vaguely affirmative sounding. 

He’s about to book it out of there when a deep sigh sounds like it’s pulled from the guy’s chest as he continues, “Look, Peter, I know we’re not on great terms but if you’re having a hard time please talk to someone? Maybe Nat? If we get called into the field and -” 

“Yeah! I’ll, uh, talk to Nat. I’m. Just, um. Gonna bring this to Tony really quick, sorry. Bye!” Peter manages to stutter out before he’s running down the hall and into the closest available elevator before anyone else has the time to stop him. 

Well, that could’ve gone worse, he thinks to himself as he directs Friday to take him to Tony. 

The thought rings a little hollow though, as he really has no idea how it could’ve gone worse than if someone had tried to physically fight him.

*****************************************************************************************

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[let-it-raines]

Betting on the Bullseye (23/30)

Summary: Emma Swan loses a drunken bet that means she has to ask her celebrity crush - if you can call him that - to be her date to her office’s annual fundraising gala for Boston’s Children Shelter. Killian Jones is that celebrity. She expects all kinds of humiliation and for her dignity to be completely lost all because of the ridiculousness of the situation. 

What she doesn’t expect is for him to say yes.What she truly doesn’t expect is to actually like the man.

Rating: Mature

A/N: I can never thank you guys enough for loving this story so much and letting me know whether by click, kudos, comment, reblog, or hiding out in your comfort zone and simply enjoying! It’s been an absolute thrill to write, and some of my favorite chapters are coming up! 💙

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 

Tag List: @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @wellhellotragic​ @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @artistic-writer @branlovesouat @dreadpirateemma @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @galaxyzxstark @lifeinahole27 @andiirivera @ultimiflos @hollyethecurious @thejollyroger-writer @superchocovian @cs-forlife @qualitycoffeethings @jonirobinson64 @notoriouscs

“So can you tell me again why I’m going apartment shopping with you today instead of Killian being here?”

“Because,” she begins, pulling on a jacket to fight off the early-October chill that’s really coming in this year, the temperatures dipping much lower than usual. All of September was like a blazing inferno until the calendar changed and suddenly a flip was switched for all of Boston to turn into a snow globe…just without the snow. Though, she wouldn’t be surprised if it decided to come early this year with how things are going. “Killian is meeting with the producers of his movie again so that they can do some screen tests with some other actors, so he can’t be here.”

“Okay, but, like, if he’s buying the place, shouldn’t he be here?”

“I mean, obviously Rubes,” she sighs, opening up her front door and holding it open for Ruby to walk through before she can lock it, “but he’s busy and I figured you could give me second opinions. Besides, we’ve already narrowed it down to these places anyways. He knows that he likes them. He just hasn’t physically seen them yet.”

“Well, my dear,” she begins, wrapping her arm around Emma’s shoulder as they walk toward the staircase, “I can be Killian for a day. Just don’t expect me to help you christen any of these places.”

“You know, some things that you think about, they should never be said out loud.”

“But I just love my darling Emma,” Ruby mocks, adding in what has to be the worst British accent she’s ever heard as she kisses her hair. “She’s just so damn pretty and has hair like gold. And my God, I want to marry her and let her have all of my beautiful babies so that we can be on billboards together.”

“Billboards?”

“Out of all of that, your focus was on billboards?”

She shrugs as much as she can with Ruby’s arm on her shoulder as they exit her building and walk to where her car is parked a few buildings over since she couldn’t get her usual parking spot last night. “Kind of seemed like an outdated thing. Figured you’d go with viral videos or something since we’re already so good at making those.”

“If I didn’t know you were talking about the Christmas video thing, I’d swear you were talking about a sex tape. Something to keep in mind if you ever say that out loud again.”

“You have issues.”

“Ooh,” Ruby gasps, moving her arm, “you two could be in Vogue. There we go. That’s where you and all of your pretty, pretty babies can have your pictures taken.”

She snickers underneath her breath, words escaping her for how to even respond to that as they load up into her bug. She is one hundred percent not ready to seriously think about babies right now, but she can indulge in the thought when Ruby is messing with her. She and Killian have casually talked about kids before, but it’s never been anything definite. They just know what they need to know for when their lives come to that point…sometime in the future. Right now they’re simply trying to find somewhere to live.

Plus, if she thinks about giving birth too much she really freaks out. Some shit goes down.

Sometimes literally.

Nope. No. not thinking about that.

“Whatever you say,” she laughs as she sits down in her seat and closes her car door, “but I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t be seeing my face on any billboards.”

“Eh, I could always rent one out myself. Anything is possible when you don’t care about wasting money and going into loads of debt just to mess with your friends.”

-/-

“Damn,” Ruby whistles as Emma trails her fingers along the marble countertop, tracing the gray line that moves throughout the island to break up the monotony of the white. “This is fancy. You’ve even got a view of the water out this window.”

“That would be all Killian’s preference,” she admits, walking away from the kitchen and through the living room to stand next to the open windows that look out onto the water, the docks filled with boats. “His house is on the beach, you know? And he likes to be near the water. I figure he should have at least that.”

“I mean, it’s not like the rest of this place is too shabby.”

“I know, I know. It’s just – ”

“What?”

“It’s so modern, and neither of us are very modern people, house wise. I mean, I’ve never really had the option to do anything other than thrift store ‘oh that’s kind of a cute chair,’ but I do like the traditional stuff. I think the clean lines kind of throw me off. It’s like it’s not lived in.”

“Well, it’s not. It’s new. Didn’t the realtor lady say that when she was showing us around? What was her name again?”

“Dorothy.”

“Like in the Wizard of Oz?”

“Yep,” she sighs, turning back around to go explore the kitchen now that they have free range of the place with Dorothy standing outside very obviously faking talking to someone else so that Emma thinks there’s another buyer. Sometimes she wonders if real estate agents know just how transparent they are. Not that she would ever tell Elsa that. She’s not about to mess things up there, and she’s sure that Elsa is fantastic at her job. Well, she knows she is. Elsa set them up with Dorothy’s agency and helped them find some of these places when they were in California last month. It’s like she’s sucking up even though literally no one can hear her thoughts. “She’s really sweet, but she kind of makes me nervous if only because I think I’m disappointing her whenever I don’t like a place.”

“Well, in all fairness, you probably are. She doesn’t get paid until you pay the big bucks.”

“True,” she admits before opening up the cabinets, checking their depth as if she knows how much space kitchen appliances take up when she owns the bare minimum. “She was flirting with you, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Ruby agrees, her voice rising in pitch. “That’s why I felt so bad that I couldn’t remember her name.”

“Did her beauty just make you forget everything?” she teases, leaning back to smile at Ruby who’s got her bottom lip between her teeth while her fingers tap across the countertop. “Oh my God,” she gasps, closing the cabinet a little too loudly, “you like her.”

“Possibly,” she huffs, rolling her eyes before she hops up on the counter, legs swinging and heels clicking against the cabinets. She sits on counters a lot, and the white will likely get scuffed. That’s probably something to keep in mind. Apartment shopping is so damn overwhelming when you have to think about things like your friend’s heels scuffing the counters or Brody spitting up on the carpet when Mary Margaret brings him over. And literally a million other things. “I mean, I’ve spent about forty-five minutes with the woman as she shows you apartments in Boston I’d never dare step into on my own, but yeah, I don’t know. I felt a spark.”

“Did you actually just use the word spark to describe it?”

“Yes, don’t judge me. So this place is a no go?”

She nods her head, looking around one last time. “This place is a no go.”

Despite the fact that she and Killian mapped out every one of these places online before requesting a showing, she goes through seven of them hating nearly every one. One of the apartments literally had a bathtub next to a window that could be seen by anyone walking by on the sidewalk, and a home they walked into honestly made it feel like she was on some kind of old Naval boat. Seriously, there were a million different levels that were not shown online and the staircases made her feel claustrophobic. They keep striking out on things, and it’s starting to get a little disheartening.

There’s about a ninety percent chance Ruby is going to have a date after today, though, so at least one good thing has come out of this, especially because she knows that Ruby hasn’t dated much since she and Victor broke up, just a few nights out with people she’s met online that have not turned into anything.

At least those people weren’t murderers. Dorothy doesn’t seem like the murdering type, but you never know.

Such a fun thing to think about.

“So are you familiar with the area?” Dorothy asks as she lets them into another apartment, their last one on the list before they drive to Back Bay to look at a house that Killian likes that’s next to the river. The pictures online looked nice, but she wasn’t completely sold on how close the bedroom window was to a public park. At least it’s not like the bathtub thing.  

The risk of murderers being Tinder dates and peeping Toms looking into bedroom windows is not one she’s willing to joke around about.

Her mind is a wonderful place to live sometimes. It’s too bad there’s no real estate there.

No. Wait. That’s weird. She’s really got to stop looking at listings. She might be going a bit mad.

“I’ve been around here to eat a few times,” she admits, walking inside and immediately noticing the floor-to-ceiling windows that she loved online, the view of the harbor in this apartment even prettier in person as miles of water stretch out before her, “but I’ve never looked at the apartments over here. This is gorgeous.”

“Isn’t it? The views are great, and you’ve got to see it at night when all of the lights are turned on. You’ve got a great patio out there with a firepit that’s great for a date or hosting company or even just a quiet night in. You’d also have room for a small garden or something if you wanted to bring a little life in. I think the people who live below here have a nice little vegetable garden.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, walking past the living space to look through the kitchen. It’s modern, but it’s got these wood and copper accents that she really likes that make it feel a little more homey. Killian will love the counter space too. And the appliances. He’s got a thing about the appliances. He’s got a preference about a lot of things, but she doesn’t blame him. She does too. Just not about her appliances. “How many bedrooms is this one again?”

“It’s two technically, but there’s a spare sitting room that can easily be used as a guest or a nursery. I’ve seen that a lot lately.”

“Ems, I think Dorothy might be John Mulaney’s realtor,” Ruby whispers in her ear, and Emma has to stifle her laugh at the reference.

“She also said a guest room.”

“Well, if it’s going to be a guest room, I need to see it for when I come to visit.”

“You live twenty minutes from here.”

“Details.”

She continues to walk around the apartment, snapping a few pictures and sending them to Killian like she’s been doing all day so he can see things a little more clearly. She wishes that he were here, but work is work and no matter where they’re living, they’re always going to miss some things. It just won’t be everything. It’ll be better. Besides, he’ll be able to look on another day because this definitely isn’t a decision she should be making on her own when this is going to be their place.

Damn, that’s still a weird thing to think about after a month of knowing that this is real and that this is happening.

After their initial conversations and telling their families about everything, the excitement of the move and over moving in together wore down a bit so they could seriously think about the practicality of it all. There were a few times where she felt like her heart was actually in her throat while they were talking, but that never lasted long. She loves him, she wants to be with him, and she’s ready to make this step that should be a giant leap but kind of feels like she’s simply walking up to the Nolans’ house, like it’s natural.

That’s terrifying.

It’s also exhilarating.

They’re good, she and Killian. They fit. She knows that they do, and she’s not going to question the good things she has going.

Okay, she’s not going to question them anymore. She’s already done that, and she doesn’t need to continue to do that. She loves him, and this is going to work. They’re going to have a place that is theirs. There’s not going to be as much traveling or as many plane rides. She’s no longer going to need to worry about always having her neck pillow or about time changes when Killian’s at home and not working. She’s not going to get a ticket for speeding to the airport because she’s running late for a flight, and when she wakes up in the morning, there’s going to be the man she loves next to her.

And he’s not going to have to leave.

That’s the best part.

He gets to stay.

She’s so glad that he gets to stay.

Her phone rings in her hand, and she smiles to herself at the face that pops up. “Speak of the Devil,” she sighs as she answers the phone, holding it up to her ear and walking down the hallway to the master bedroom for some privacy.

“Now, Swan, I know I’m devilishly handsome and that you get to benefit from that, but I don’t think that makes me the Devil.”

She hums into the phone as she twists the knob and walks in. The furniture in here is very obviously staged, but she likes it, the bed sprawling out in the middle of the room with a fireplace in front of it and more large windows looking out into the harbor that have blinds attached. She’d bet those are blackout, and if they��re installed already, that means they come with the property. Elsa told her that. There’s some technical term for it, but she can’t remember.

“It just does, babe. Are you on your lunch break?”

“Yeah, I’m about to go grab a sandwich or something from the cafeteria.”

“You sound like a kid at school.”

“I promise you I’m not. It’s been a solid fifteen years since I was in school getting a sandwich from the cafeteria. What apartment are you looking at now?”

“The Seaport District one. Um, I think it’s on Pier Avenue or something. I can’t remember even though we literally got here twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, I like that one,” he mumbles into the phone while a horn beeps behind him. Is he walking in front of a car? It’s probably a golf cart. There are a million golf carts at the studio. “There’s a view of the water no matter which room you’re in.”

“Yeah, I think you’d like this one even more in person. There’s a lot of room too, and it’s not too modern. I feel like the only options in this town is everything having not been updated for fifty years or it’s like it’s trying to be in the space age.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. What about the master bathroom and the closet?”

“Um,” she hums, walking away from the window and heading to the door that she assumes is the bathroom, “let me check now. You want to switch the facetime so you can see?”

“That’d be some smart thinking there, Swan.”

“Yeah whatever,” she sighs as she rolls her eyes, hitting the button to facetime him and waiting to for Killian’s face to pop up. When it does, it’s a slightly blurry version of him until she can clearly see his eyes under the baseball cap. “Well hello there, KJ.”

“Hello, darling,” he smiles, waving at her until he drops his phone, the device nearly tumbling to the ground before he catches it. Or she thinks he catches it because they’re still connected instead of the phone shattering. How the hell is he so clumsy sometimes? “Bloody hell, I was almost run over by a golf cart and nearly destroyed my phone. It’s rough having to look at your face.”

“Asshole.”

“Indeed,” he admits, moving his brows across his covered forehead and winking at her. “Now show me this bathroom, love. I need to see if all of your toothbrush accessories will fit in there.”

She groans, throwing her head back even as her lips curl into a smile while she walks into the bathroom, the light blue cabinets adding in a little color to the white marble that covers the countertops and the walls. It’s got the copper accents from the kitchen over both of the sinks, and she makes sure to show it to Killian so that he can see that there is indeed space for her toothbrush and all of its replacement heads. And toothpaste. She can also have toothpaste.

Dental hygiene and all.

Maybe she can have an entire drawer for her floss.

No, that’d be ridiculous. She’ll just share with Killian.

“See, there’s plenty of room.”

“It’s smaller than my house here.”

“Well, it’s an apartment in a crowded city. It’s not going to be like your house. I’ve still got an actual house to look at later today, but it’s smaller too. I really like this place though. I haven’t been too much of a fan of everything else.”

“Yeah, I’d seen a couple of your texts. Is the shower a good size?”

“It is,” she tells him, opening up the door before closing it and walking to the other end of the room for the closet. “And this is the closet. Is it big enough for your clothes and your ego?”

“The clothes, yes. The ego, not so much.”

“Well, I think you’d have to buy the building for that.”

“That is not happening. I guess you’ll just have to stuff it in there.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Well okay Michael Scott,” Killian laughs, his face crinkling with his laugher as he continues to move, the light fading as he enters a building. God, she loves when he smiles like that, and she loves when he’s smiling like that because of her. It’s such a little thing, but she loves when he’s happy.

And being happy isn’t a little thing. It’s a really big thing actually.

She’s glad that she makes him happy. Hopefully indefinitely.

If eighteen-year-old Emma could hear twenty-eight-year old Emma’s thoughts, she would be entirely convinced that they aren’t the same person. But they are. There’s just been some development. Some really damn good development that she’s proud of.

“I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”

“Indeed you did. I like the place, Swan. I mean, we’ll have to look again when I come into town on Wednesday, okay? Just jot down your top three places, and we’ll arrange it with Dorothy to see them. I’ve got to go. I’m going to eat with some of the kids who came in to possibly play my child.”

“Those poor, poor children.”

“Goodbye, Emma,” he sighs, smiling at her. His smile should not be that bright through a screen It just shouldn’t. He’s turning her into a cheesy mess. Mac and cheese would probably be good for dinner. “I love you.”

“I love you, KJ. I’ll keep texting you updates.”

“Thanks, love. Talk to you later.”

“Ems,” Ruby yells, sliding into the closet and nearly tumbling into her, “guess who has a date tomorrow night.”

“You?” she smiles, sliding her phone into her back pocket and stepping back so that Ruby has some room to freak out.

“Yes me. Obviously me. Can we go shopping after this? I’ve looked at apartments with you all day, so this is literally the least you can do for me.”

“Well excuse me, but I’m pretty sure that the only reason you even have a date is because of me.”

“Eh, that’s debatable. We could have met another way. Like, while running or something.”

“How many people do you meet while running?”

“You would be surprised. I’ve got a fantastic ass. It brings all of the peeps to the yard.”

“You don’t have a yard.”

“It was a thinly veiled reference,” Ruby mumbles under her breath as her finger points to count a shelf that Emma thinks is for shoes. Or possibly folded pants and shirts. She’s not entirely sure. It could be for all of it. “When we go shopping, we have to buy you some shoes. Yours aren’t going to fill this shelf.”

“I’m not spending money I don’t have on shoes just so I can fill that shelf. That’s ridiculous. I’m supposed to be saving, especially because I’m still negotiating the raise at work. I think they’re going to agree to it, but I don’t know yet.”

“Ugh, so economical. Why deny shoes when you finally have a way to display them that’s not having them scattered on the floor?”

“Money. You can buy me shoes for my birthday, okay? I have this pair of boots that I have my eye on. Or you can buy me dishes or something. I probably need some of those.”

Ruby literally groans before she starts walking out of the closet, Emma close on her heels. “You are not allowed to turn boring like Marg and David just because you’re getting all homey.”

“If Mary Margaret and David heard you called them boring, they would be the first people to try to prove you wrong by going out, drinking one beer, and then asking if they could go home before nine.”

“In all fairness, sitting on your ass on the couch is a pretty great way to spend a night. This bathroom is fantastic,” Ruby suddenly states, the change in conversation almost causing whiplash. “The lighting is giving me clear skin.”

“I think that’s just because you have clear skin.”

“But I never knew that until right at this moment.”

She snorts, actually snorts, as she walks over to the window that’s at the opposite end of the bathroom. She’s not quite over the view of the ocean from up here, and she wonders how long she’ll have to live here to get used to it.

Oh.

Oh wow.

This is definitely the place. She’s thinking about seriously living here. She can see herself here. She can see them here. She can see a future here.

This is going to be her home.

This is going to be their home.

“So do you like this place, Ems?” Ruby asks as she checks her eyebrow for stray hairs under the vanity lights.

“Yeah,” she admits, looking back out over the ocean, “I love it.”

They look at the house in Back Bay after that, but honestly, Emma knows that the apartment is the one. It really is. She knows the Killian will love it too, and she tells Dorothy that when she sets up another viewing of it for Wednesday when Killian will be back. She really hopes that Ruby’s date goes well because if it doesn’t, that might be the slightest bit awkward. But she thinks it will, and it’s nice to see Ruby excited as they drive the short distance over to Copley so that they can find something for her to wear. It doesn’t take nearly as long as Emma expected, especially with how Ruby can be, and they’re out of there within an hour once Ruby finds a red dress that she most definitely won’t wear with a jacket even though it’ll be cold tomorrow night.

She really might be turning into Mary Margaret, but she doesn’t want Ruby to get frostbite. That probably won’t happen but still. She’ll try to at least get Ruby to wear a coat for a little bit of time.

It’s likely impossible.

After dropping Ruby off at her apartment, she drives home, pulling into her usual parking space and hurrying inside the building so that she can change into her pajamas and fix herself something to eat. She still kind of wants mac and cheese, but since she doesn’t have any, she makes herself a grilled cheese sandwich and some tomato soup (the classics are classics for a reason) to eat in front of the TV. It’s a Friday night sitting on her ass on the couch, and she’s glad for it. Her life has been so hectic lately, and it’s kind of nice for a bit of calm.

Her phone buzzes next to her, and she reaches over to pick it up at the same time that some cheese falls out of the sandwich and onto her chin. She really is so graceful all of the time.

Liam: Do you want me to mail these pictures to you? Or are you going to pick them up when you’re here?

Emma: Can you mail them? I want to get frames for them and have them as soon as possible.

Liam: I’ll put them in the mail on the way to work tomorrow.

Emma: Thank you! You’re my second favorite Jones brother!

Liam: I’m both flattered and offended.

Emma: As you should be. Give Elsa and Aiden all of my love!

She’d called Liam last week and asked if he had any old family photos of he and Killian together or of the two of them with their mom. It’s a really small thing, but she wanted to give Killian a little piece of home in his new one. He’s really insistent that most everything at his house stay the same so that they always have that option for when he’s working there or for when they’re visiting his family and friends, so she imagines that he won’t be packing up many of the picture frames that are scattered throughout his house. The least she can do is ask Liam to go through the few albums of pictures she knows that he has to see if there are any pictures that she can get for Killian.

If they’re going to be living together, it’s going to be a home for the both of them. That’s how it works. She doesn’t have a lot of childhood photos, but Killian does – and they should most definitely be displayed. Liam sent her some pictures (of the pictures, which is obviously the simplest form of inception) of the ones he’s sending her, and there’s this one where Killian is apparently six and has his shirt off with a blue popsicle melted down his chest and his lips tinted the same blue. He’s got this toothy grin on his face, and his mom is sitting behind him in the grass of whatever park they’re in. She’s beautiful, and even through the blurry picture, Emma can see just how happy she is to be spending the day with her sons.

She looks a lot like Killian. They have the same eyes, and like always, her heart breaks for him to have lost someone who was so damn important to him. She wishes that she could have met his mom, but as she knows, it’s not possible. She can honor her memory though, even if it’s the smallest of things.

For the briefest of moments she thinks of her parents. She thinks of the stories she made up of them over the years. She used to want to meet them, to know if her thoughts about whether or not one of them had blonde hair like hers or if they had her eyes. She used to want to know where she got her height from or maybe if her dad had a sweet tooth like her. She wanted to know everything about them. Mostly, though, she wanted to know why they gave her up, why she wasn’t good enough for them.

She’s old enough now, been through enough, to know that it wasn’t about her. They were probably young and irresponsible and couldn’t provide for her. Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe they didn’t want kids. Maybe they weren’t young, maybe they weren’t irresponsible, and maybe life simply hadn’t worked out for them to keep her.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

She doesn’t know. She’ll never know. All she knows is that they didn’t keep her. They didn’t keep her, and it’s not her fault. She still struggles with that sometimes, with the fact that she knows that it isn’t her fault. Because she does know, but that doesn’t keep there from being nights where she doesn’t still feel abandoned and lost. That’ll likely always stay with her, but she’s learned to live with it.

She thinks she’s learned to overcome it.

She’s got this life that she’s built with family that she’s found along the way, and she’s proud of herself and the light that she lets herself live with. Sometimes she uses humor as a defense mechanism, but most of the time, she likes to laugh. She likes to have that light in her life that she missed for so long.

She likes to have a metaphorical blue popsicle melting on her because she was having too much of a good time to eat it all before it melted.

She loves that on the nights where the light fades away, the darkness encompassing her more than usual, she has someone right beside her who understands her in a way that no one else does.

And she loves that she gets to do the same for him, letting him tell stories of love and loss no matter how late into the night it takes.

It doesn’t matter. She’s got the time.

[carolynpetit]

Reason to Play, a Journal--Entry One: Fortnite, MGSV, and Finding Ourselves in the Act of Play

Hi. 

This is the first entry in what I hope will be an ongoing journal of play. I wanted to start by explaining my thinking behind this project.

Right now, I’m looking for a reason to play. I’m always wary of games that seem to offer nothing beyond a mildly pleasant occupation of my time, and right now, I find such games downright inadequate. Unworthy. These are horrifying times, and yet, like so many of us, I find myself exhausted by it all. Unable to maintain the levels of rage and resistance that the actions of the current administration demand. I see it all becoming normalized and I feel powerless to stop it. And as the days and weeks and months go by, I feel as if this numbness accrues. I become increasingly detached, not just from the horrors of the moment but from myself. I start to wonder where the person I believed myself to be has gone. 

I believe that art is most vital in times like this. I love this quote from Kafka: 

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?...We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

If a game isn’t going to be the axe for the frozen sea inside me, if it isn’t going to cut through the numbness, shake me up, break my heart, fuck me up, do something to rehumanize me, it is not worthy of this moment. 

But I might find what I’m looking for anywhere. I’m not talking just about games that explicitly comment on fascism or racial injustice or economic inequality. Yes, I think it’s essential that we have art, including games, that confronts these things directly, but it’s also true that a game can have the noblest aims and leave me cold, while a throwaway moment in a big-budget mainstream game of the sort that certain gamers like to call “apolitical” can crack my heart wide open. 

Like most of my writing about games, this journal will be a place where I fully embrace the subjectivity of my own experience with the games that I play.

Okay. Here we go.

Testin’ My Mind, Shakin’ My Body in Fortnite

Yeah, okay, Fortnite’s a Battle Royale. That’s just a fact. If you’re playing solo, which I almost always am--I’m uncomfortable teaming up with random players, though on occasion I’ll play duos with a friend, which makes for a completely different, really exciting dynamic--you drop onto the island with close to a hundred other players, and the way you win is by being the last player standing. Now, I encourage conversations about the violence inherent to the format, as well as about all the other aspects of Fortnite that people rightly raise concerns about--the way in which it’s monetized, Epic’s pattern of repeatedly profiting off of dances associated with artists and communities of color without compensating the artists or communities that created them. All of it. But if we’re gonna go to the mat with Fortnite on these aspects (and we should), let’s also at least have a full, multifaceted conversation about why we play Fortnite, how it feels, and the moments that can emerge from a fully invested experience of the game.

Did you know that earlier this year, a massive beast that had been frozen in ice under Polar Peak broke free, that huge footprints showed it had made its way to the sea, where it’s occasionally been spotted, roaming the waters around the island? Did you know that right now, a towering robot is being built in the remnants of the volcano? It seems inevitable that soon, a massive Pacific Rim-style fight between them will take place, almost certainly resulting in a new wave of major changes to the island. Indeed, the island is always a place in flux, changing in big and small ways. It’s alive in ways that I’ve always wanted my game worlds to be alive. Landing near Loot Lake a few weeks ago, I was excited to see that the massive power cable that runs through the area was shredded and sparking, as if perhaps the monster had taken a bite. 

But the life of the environment wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t for my encounters with the lives of other players. The other day, I was trying to complete a challenge that required me to get a certain score on a balloon board at one of the numerous little beach party setups that currently dot the map. Jumping from the bus, I swooped down to a spot in the desert, opened a chest, grabbed the weapon, and made my way over to the nearby board. Another player got there just before me, and I stood still, hoping to indicate that I didn’t want to stop them from completing the challenge. They froze for a moment, but then proceeded, and when they hit the necessary score, a little celebratory explosion of confetti occurred, and I got credit for the challenge, too. 

Basking in the glow of our shared little moment, I wanted to walk away then, wishing them nothing but the best in the match ahead. But then they took a shot at me. In that instant, a sinking feeling ran through my whole body, a physical expression of “Aw, why’d you have to go and do that?” and in an instant, I obliterated them. It wasn’t a victory. It was more like putting someone down. I didn’t feel good about it, but it sure was a real feeling. Something surprising and immediate that emerged from my encounter with another living person. And that’s what I’m here for. 

Yes, Fortnite is a Battle Royale, but so much of the experience of Fortnite is about unexpected occurrences like this, and about the things we do in the stolen moments between the shootouts and build battles. The other day, I got so caught up in playing a silly memory game I stumbled upon that I wound up getting caught in the storm. Not long before that, I danced with John Wick to raise a disco ball in an abandoned lair so we could snag a fortbyte, one of this season’s collectibles. These are the things I really remember, not my win-loss ratio or all the times I’m eliminated by players much better than I am before I quickly hit play and hop on the battle bus all over again.

I’m eager to return to the island because the island itself feels vibrant and alive, emanating a kind of Spielbergian Americana and optimism, but also because of the vigorous bodies and exuberant identities I get to inhabit while I’m there. The mix-and-match nature of Fortnite’s customization means that one round I might be a sprightly female wizard with a sleek laptop on her back, and the next a nerdy, purple-haired gamer girl with a satchel full of potions and spellbooks. “Fun” may be overemphasized in some of our conversations around games, but it certainly has its place, and playing as these colorful characters, well, it’s just fun.

Every character in Fortnite plays exactly the same, but they don’t all feel the same to me. I just unlocked a black variant of the character Sentinel, a robot or power suit that looks like it might have appeared on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and I think it looks kinda cool, but I sure don’t want to be it. On the other hand, playing as Elmira (pictured above) feels good. And oh, do I love the way that some emotes make me feel. Tweeting recently about an emote called the Laid Back Shuffle, I wrote:

I’m almost always pretty uncomfortable in my body, for a number of reasons related to my appearance and my transness and things. The easygoing physical exuberance of this emote, the way that the avatar performing it, whatever avatar that might be at any given moment, appears to feel so loose and free in their own body, makes it really appealing to me, like a virtual experience/expression of a sensation that I’ve never known IRL. I think emotes have some kind of power beyond whatever power we often think of them having, perhaps particularly for those of us who never really feel comfortable in our own skin. 

And all the kids playing Fortnite that we’re so worried about, let’s remember that their experience of this game isn’t as simple as just trying to slaughter everyone else on the island. Setting aside whatever value there may be in the particular type of complex thinking and skill-building that it requires to try to simultaneously outbuild and outgun your opponent, there’s also the fact that they, too, are experiencing the life of Fortnite’s island, having encounters with other players that play out in unexpected ways, and experimenting with self-expression. Yes, their opportunities for that exploration and expression are gated by money, and that’s a real issue, but that doesn’t change the fact that a young person finding that they feel particularly cool when playing as a woman in red with a bionic arm is valid, and maybe even valuable. 

II. MGSV and What I Know Is True

I set The Phantom Pain aside for a few years after hitting a mission that I found maddeningly difficult, but something called me back to it. Now I’ve powered through the mission that gave me so much trouble, and I’m making progress again. I enjoy the geographical roughness of its environments, and the way you really have to deal with that roughness, often lying flat and crawling along the ground. The truth is that I spend far too much time alone in my apartment, and though it’s no substitute at all for the real, natural world, when I take my time being rooted in one spot to scout out locations and tag enemies before making any dangerous moves, I feel the shape of the space around me in a way that I rarely do in games. 

The other day I fought a grueling boss battle and then, finally, when it was over, hopped onto the helicopter to return to base, exhausted by the ordeal. Just as we were about to lift off, Quiet hopped on, hanging off of the side of the chopper as the rotors above her head spun faster until we lurched up and away from the ground. She held my gaze the whole time. I think a lot of games look at the player too much. They want you to feel like the center of the universe, the only person who really matters. But that wasn’t the feeling I got from this moment. I’d just fought for my life, and the way she looked at me, without malice or sympathy for what I’d just been through or anything, made me feel like I was being sized up. Looked at in a real way. Seen.

Do you know that feeling--Does this happen to everyone or just me?--that feeling where, for a moment, your awareness kind of spreads beyond yourself and you’re suddenly very aware that what you’re experiencing is something real that is happening in physical, three-dimensional space at this exact moment in time? It’s a feeling I get sometimes when I’m in a moment that I wish I could make last, or that I really want to remember. Sharing a last drink with a friend before they move away, that sort of thing. This feeling of momentarily being very much rooted in myself but also outside of myself and acknowledging, This is real. This is something that happened. That moment where Quiet was looking at me in the wake of the momentous battle I’d just fought felt something like that. 

It didn’t happen in real, physical space, but virtual space is a valid space, too, a space where real things happen. Sometimes when I’m playing Fortnite I’ll see the hillside where a friend and I once sped away from attackers on a Quadcrasher, bullets whizzing past our heads, and I’ll think, We were there. That happened. These moments become part of my relationship with the ever-changing island, just as my memories of San Francisco become part of my relationship with the city.

On another recent mission, I was sneaking my way through an enemy outpost when, from a nearby building, I heard the familiar sounds of Spandau Ballet’s “True.” To be honest, I never liked “True” much. The Phantom Pain takes place in 1984, and as a kid in the suburbs of Chicago in that year who sometimes saw the video on MTV, the song felt too airy and ethereal to move me. But recontextualized in The Phantom Pain, I heard it differently. That precise ethereal quality made it such an effective contrast to the grim military seriousness and the tactile terrain that my heart began to ache. 

The presence of 80s pop songs in the isolated military outposts of the game is politically fascinating to me. It says something about how American and British cultural exports are absorbed by the entire world, but it’s largely a one-way street. A Pakistani friend of mine in high school had grown up with Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, but I’d never heard Pakistani music in my life. I don’t understand why so many players are so intent on not considering all the political dimensions of a game like this. They only make the experience infinitely more fascinating, even if and when they reveal the game’s failures.

The songs also allow for the creation of some great moments. I snuck into the building where the song was playing just so I could snag the tape, and the next time I was in the helicopter, I played it, and as the opening notes of “True” played, I panned the camera slowly around Big Boss, creating a very short music video that I honestly found exciting.

I tweeted the clip, jokingly commenting that I’d “won Metal Gear Solid V by creating this beautiful moment,” but it had really felt this way to me. Creating this moment had been as fun and rewarding to me as anything else the game offered. Playing MGSV isn’t just sneaking and shooting, or at least for me it isn’t. This, too, is play.  So obviously, I get frustrated with the “Git Gud” players, those who feel that games are at their best when they’re perfectly calibrated tests of raw skill, that the only thing that matters is having an awesome KDR, or earning the highest possible rating on missions, or whatever. 

But the truth is that it’s not just hardcore gamers who set limits on our notions of play by talking about games like this. A lot of us do it, even a lot of us who consider ourselves emphatically opposed to the “Git Gud’ brigade. We do it when we look at a game like Fortnite and see it only as one simple thing, a struggle to be the last remaining survivor, without at least acknowledging all the other things a player might go to the game for. We do it when we deny the possibility for moments of strange beauty to emerge from even a grim, ugly, grossly misogynistic game like MGSV. We do it whenever we, ourselves, adopt a limited, conventional understanding of what it means to really play a game, rather than fully engaging with all the different ways that we can find ourselves and each other in the spaces that games create.

-----

I’m currently looking for work. If you enjoy my writing and are in a position to do so, please consider supporting me on ko-fi.

[panticwritten]

New Taglist as of June 8, 2019

It sounds like some people on my current tag list want to be removed from it, so I’m making a new one! A list of my projects as well as the current tag list (save for those who spoke to me) will be under the cut.

Like this post if you would like to be on the new tag list. Reply to let me know if there are certain projects you do or don’t want to be tagged in. Reblog to spread around.

Please do not like this post if you don’t want to be tagged in my writing updates! I don’t want to annoy anyone and I’ll assume you want to be tagged in my posts if you hit like on this one.

Projects:

Maldrymt - Fantasy WIP! Jaks, Zach, Fin, Fantasy Jay and the rest of the Fantasy Collective all live in this universe! Magic, intrigue, and a bunch of queer dorks on several adventures involving a weird mark that blocks arcana, a shockingly exclusive club full of people who either absolutely love or absolutely hate each other, and the mysterious force that brought them all together. Theory, the first book in the No Such Thing as Coincidences is the focus of my work in this WIP right now.

The Cube Collections - Most of my writing falls into this project, which is me writing down and sharing my immersive daydreams. The Cube spans a ton of existing and original universes and this is where the OG Collective is from. Breaking Furnace, Sequence of Regrettable Happenings, Trollhunters: Subverted, A Study in Morals, Written in Blood but Not How You Might Expect, SCUBE, Gregor and the Interfering Prophet, 100 Shades Better, The In-Between Collection, and all those little snippets that take place in the Cube with Sawyer, Connor, Dominic and the rest of the gang are in this universe!

Collective AUs - This is pretty much me taking a bunch of the characters from the Cube and throwing them into different universes. There’s no way I can list all the ones I’ve thought of so I’ll just say the Harry Potter AU, Fucking Art Majors, the Superhero AU, and pretty much anything that has the characters from the Cube with no connection whatsoever to the Cube. 

‘But Sawyer!’ you may ask, ‘Doesn’t that make Maldrymt a Collective AU?’

The answer is, it doesn’t fit the criteria to be an AU project, even if it is an alternate universe ;)

Pearl-Handled Shotgun/Lady and the Tramp - This is a Supernatural OC/OC hunter/demon fic that I originally started as a co-lab with a friend of mine in high school. I’ve sent them what I have so far of this rewrite and they seem to be happy with how I’m portraying their character and the story so far so I definitely will be writing more of this.

There are a few other projects that I’ve written so little in and talked so little about that they aren’t worth giving their own mention. I might still post snippets and updates about them, though!

If you like the post and don’t make any specifications, I’ll just assume you want to be tagged in all of them!

Current main tag list:

@asinwolves @authorarsinoe @infinitelyblankpage​ @spirit-wizard-nerd @alextriestowritestuff @haileyavril @lota-author0413 @jade-island-lives

Maldrymt specific tag list:

@the-real-rg @ecritblr @hannahs-creations

[zippdementia]

Part 74 Alignment May Vary: The Big Secret

Welcome to our ongoing blog for our long long epic long adventure! The latest scenario is that the players just completed a huge air race on a planet inspired by the elemental plane of air. Now they need to collect their prize from the criminal organization, The Whispering Wind, whom they have asked to locate a crystal for them which can power their ship and bring them ever closer to home on Toril.

For the last several days, Carrick has been having a vision, a memory, of himself as a young child. It is a reoccuring nightmare: he is exploring the woods outside his home when he falls into a cave and breaks his leg. Stuck down there he... but no, he cannot remember...

The aftermath of the race is a rush of audience adulation and a proclamation from the Genie that the races are going to be shut down and reopened as arena battles (inspired by the bloodbath in the Tornado). Knick Knack also approaches the players and raises his hands to the sky as shackles suddenly appear there and are shattered, the result of them beating him fairly (or mostly fairly) in the race.

The players are also given gold, lots of it, something like 60,000 gold pieces in total, for winning both first and third place. There is a lot of hugging from Star, who jubilantly embraces all the party members (Carrick seems awkward, Aldric likes it, Imoaza despises it).

Aldric also shares a sad moment with the elementals, whom he asks to join his crew. They tell him that when he defeated their summoner, he cut their time short. Now they must return to the air, but they thank him for allowing them to ride with him and, for a brief moment, to be the wind. As a tribute to them, he empties some of his winnings out into the open sky, watching the coins fall and turn and glitter as they catch the sunlight.

And speaking of sunlight, as he does this, sun returns to the grey skies and a bright day breaks as far as the eye can see. Carrick thinks it is because of his gesture to the air elementals, and tells him so, but Aldric suspects otherwise and, watching him closely from the crowd, Imoaza does as well.

Aldric finds Immerstal from within the crowd and shares his idea: that the rod of storms has changed in his hands, no longer forcing dark clouds upon him but now directly reflecting his mood. Immerstal invites the group back to his brothel to celebrate their win and there examines the artifact. He tells Aldric that the rod has definitely bonded to him and has changed. It has taken a piece of this planet, an elder tempest, and is carrying its power within it. It has reached its true potential and could be devastating in the wrong hands.

“You are now its guardian,” Immerstal tells him. “You may never let it fall into the hands of those who would seek to gain power or authority with this.”

It is a solemn moment, broken when Immerstal curses and starts waving his hands in the air. Magic springs from them and he holds out a pocket of his robe, where pieces of furniture go flying into it from the brothel. The place empties out before the eyes of the companions, girls being pulled away from customers (and some of the customers being pulled with them), beer being yanked out of hands and people being shoved out of the door magically until the place is empty except for Star, Immerstal, Aldric, Carrick, Alyss, Jacobs, and Imoaza.

“I’m coming with you,” Immerstal announces. “The rod is too important to let just one pair of eyes watch it. I am officially requesting to join the Green Company.”

Aldric is overjoyed to bring his friend, and a powerful wizard to boot, into the company. Alyss says she and Jacobs will return to the ship and prepare it for departure and says the rest of them should go gather their prize from the Whispering Wind.

Indeed, as they leave the now defunct brothel (”best days of my life, running that place!” Immerstal says, wiping away a tear) they are approached by a silent genasi who alerts Imoaza to her presence by blowing softly on the Yuan Ti’s ear. Imoaza’s reaction is immediate, drawing Drosselgreymer and spinning to get ready for an attack. Star intervenes and explains the use of any breath by an initiate (who is sworn to silence for a period of time) is considered a great honor and an invitation to the Whispering Wind’s palace. “We’ll be there,” she tells the Genasi, who nods and leaves.

The Prize

It’s back to the palace of The Whispering Wind to meet with Lakosa, the leader of the Whispering Wind. Here, all of the players receive a prize that befits their story--in addition to the information that the crystal is being kept by a strange old man who lives alone on an island out in the sky, running a farm of Chi Chus (we’ll explain that in a moment). Perhaps biggest of all, Lakosa pardons Star and tells her she is welcome to call this planet her home again.

Aldric and Lakosa have taken a liking to each other and the sexually charged mercenary finally meets his match in her, the two pleasuring each other for a few hours while the Rod of Storms responds to their lovemaking by creating a sky full of sunshine, light rain, and eventually beautiful rainbows.

While all this is going on, Immerstal takes Imoaza and Carrick on a tour of the city’s finest bakeries, having learned of Imoaza’s recent discovery of sugar and total lack of knowledge of baked goods. Carrick satisfies himself with a single macaroon and tags along as Immerstal and Imoaza engage on a decadent and semi-crazed sugar fueled romp through the city, becoming food-drunk on such delicacies as only magical beings can make. The journey leaves Imoaza almost literally out of her mind as she has a transcendental experience due to the sheer amount of magic infused sugar she ingests. She amazingly manages not to throw up, though! Also, they spend 13,000 gold pieces on the trip, which makes Carrick throw up. There are some special items purchased as well, most notably Ink that can convince anyone that anything written in it is real, for a short time, and with a failed save.

As they travel, Carrick finds himself preoccupied with another thought. He is thinking on Star and the Aether Craw, Cookie, which used to belong to her lover, Fesserania. Both he and Imoaza bonded with the bird during the race, but now he feels that it is only right that Star be given a chance to claim the bird.

Still, it is Aldric who ends up talking to Star first. When the group comes back together, they all listen to Carrick’s stories about Imoaza’s and Immerstal’s sugar binge...

"It was horrible,” Carrick said. “There was this one place we went, where these little pastries had sugar spun legs and they walked around, all over Immerstal’s, uh, body, while Imoaza ate them off of him. Then they started using whipped cream... I don’t... I can’t... unsee it...”

While the group keeps listening to this, Aldric realizes Star is not with them. He walks away from the group, through a beautiful garden, and out to a ledge that stretches over the sky abyss. Here Star sits, swinging her legs over the edge, her tail wrapped up next to her. Beyond her the horizon is beautiful, filled with the light of two suns and over a dozen rainbows.

Aldric takes a seat next to her and she greets him with a sad smile.

“I wonder if Fesserenia ever got a chance to just sit and look out at a beautiful day and just appreciate it. I hope when I died, I didn’t take that from her.”

“I spent my life, my whole life,” she continues, “trying to get away from this place. I thought I had to escape to be happy. And then I spent the next century trying to come back. I realized too late it wasn’t where I was that would make me happy, but rather who I was spending my life with. Wherever she was, I could have been happy there. By the time I realized it, life was over.”

“You’re staying,” Aldric says. It isn’t quite a question, but Star nods.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day. Everyone on the ship, they are trying to go home. For me, this is home. It won’t be the same without Fesserania, but I feel like being here at least keeps me close to her memory. I’d like to work with the Aether Craw more. Not for racing this time, but just to care for them. Bond with them, not to use them, but just to have that connection.”

Star looks at Aldric. “You could stay too, you know. Lakosa would let you. You could make each other happy, for a time. You could help me with the birds, or do whatever you like.”

Aldric paused, trying not to let her see how stunned and moved he was by the offer. “I can’t,” he says at last. “I have things I still have to do. I have a task that was set on me.”

“The Green Company? Someone else could build it in your stead. Captain Krisp would take it on, and he’d probably do a good job of it.”

“No. It wouldn’t feel right to give it to someone else. My journey isn’t done yet. Maybe someday it will be, maybe someday I could be happy here, but not now.”

“You sound like I did. Just be careful that someday doesn’t come too late. Don’t make the mistake I did. Don’t spend your life thinking that happiness is just around the corner and miss it standing right in front of you.”

She smiles at him again, less sad this time. “Goodbye Aldric. For what it’s worth, I would have been happy to join the Green Company.”

The Old Man and the Sky

Presently the companions gather themselves and head off into the sky onboard Percy (they leave Cookie with Star, as a going away/homecoming present). They find the island that Lakosa told them about and land on it. It is an idyllic farm, though its main inhabitants, floating yellow puff balls with legs and beaks called “Chi Chus” are utterly foreign to them.

They come to an old, well kept farm house and knock on the door. An old man answers and, after they tell him that they are looking for a crystal, he invites them in. He strikes Aldric as seeming very familiar, but he can’t place a finger on it, not until they are all sitting at a table, the old man sipping at tea, Aldric drinking a glass of delicious Chi Chu milk, and Imoaza munching on a fresh cookie. Then it strikes him.

This man looks exactly like an aged Carrick.

“You’re him,” Aldric says. “You’re the surveyor.”

It turns out it is a little more complicated than that...

Long ago, before time began, there were two forces fighting over the fabric of reality like a wife and husband over bed sheets on a wintry night. Primus, being of pure order and balance, and the Abyss, the embodiment of everything that was disorder and chaos.

The two fought endlessly. Primus created the universe so that there would be order out of the endless chaos. The Abyss breathed life into the Universe, an immeasurable ever changing mess. Primus created time and death so that life had restraints. The Abyss split the timelines and created multiple planes and universes. Primus created Devils to walk all of the universes and gather lost souls. The Abyss created desire and many Devils came to embrace the Abyss fully and became Demons, so Primus directed the remaining Devils to fight them in an endless Blood War. Even then, Chaos was always one step ahead: it spawned the drive for power. Seeking power, some of the oldest beings became gods and soon Primus was forgotten, though his creations still wandered the planes, among them the Inevitables (like the Inevitable of Justice that eventually Abenthy finds and usurps).

But he did not stop fighting Chaos. He retreated for a time, and for a time the world was thrown into chaos, with many races and planets coming into existence and many others, now forgotten, ending forever. It was during this time that the Elemental Princes of Evil emerged, and the Mindflayers, and on Faerun, the Yuan Ti ruled as the supreme beings. But Primus was not idle. He was contemplating, meditating on the nature of the universe, and in his meditations he came to realize that hidden deep within even Chaos itself was a pattern, an order. Primus then saw that the way to defeat Chaos was not from without, but from within. So he built a new being, a being who would be called the Iskth’cya (Iskaya) but who would eventually become known to other races as the Surveyor.

The Surveyor had a singular purpose. His role (though it looked roughly manlike, it was in fact genderless) was to shape the being that would eventually contain Chaos. To do this, they had the help of a powerful energy device, filled directly with a piece of Primus’  own essence in the shape of a crystal. This crystal would be the Surveyor’s tool to shape reality, but also their own lifeline. Inevitably, the Surveyor’s timeline would run out, the crystal’s power nearly spent, and then it would be up to them to build the next Surveyor, transfer all of their knowledge and discoverings into that new shell, and then expire. In death, their essence would repower the crystal, fill it again with Primus’ directive and energy, and continue the journey of discovery.

Many centuries of experimentation would pass before the Surveyors would eventually create humans. And is that so surprising? Humans are a mess of chaos: individuals pursuing their own desires and whims, and yet always on whatever planet they appear on, humans also create society, laws, and on the largest scale, move as one being towards order. Thus did Primus envision order out of Chaos.

But even here, Chaos had some reign. For the Surveyors themselves were not perfect. Nearing completion of the task, one Surveyor determined that he should be allowed to see the end result of his work. So he cheated his mission and decided not to die, keeping the primary crystal for himself and breaking off only a piece of it, pouring some of his lifeforce into it and leaving the next surveyor with an incomplete power source. The process took its toll: the cheater aged significantly, but he stayed alive, leaving his spaceship to the next Surveyor and dropping himself off on the planet of air, where he remains today with the original crystal.

The next surveyor was not privy to the full glory of Primus’ plan, denied had he been of this connection by his proginator. He came out... strange. His pursuit of the final goal was erratic, plagued with visions and prophecies and filled with a quest not for discovery but for recognition. He found a way to mimic the energy of his own shard of crystal and put this energy into other vessels. These he placed around various planets, mostly to force life to spark into existence. But some of them had other purposes. He was constantly trying to “have children” and spawn more of himself, but the experiment never worked.

In his efforts, he captured a dark spawn of Cthulu in a Jade crystal, a crystal that would end up becoming split into many pieces over the course of history, one of them being made into a Jade Statue which would cause no end of trouble for a group of adventurers. In the course of his work he did manage to create humanity, but when he brought them them to life on Toril, he angered the Yuan Ti, who had come to revere him as a god. Now, believing he meant to supplant them as rulers of the planet, they turned on him and when he fled Toril, they used their magic to release the Dark Spawn of Cthulu, who crashed his ship back down to Toril and killed him before sinking back into hibernation to heal the damage done in the fight. The Yuan Ti fled their broken empire and the age of humans truly began. But the Surveyor was dead, the vision could not be completed, and all that remained to tell of its final form was a prophecy left behind by the Surveyor: a triad of creatures, an Angel, a Devil, and a Dragonborn, connected somehow.

So how did Carrick get wrapped up in all this? Close proximity to the first crystal has been awakening his memories and the dreams he has been having of the cave tell the true story: as a child, he fell into a cave and broke his leg. Trying to get out, he crawled through the cave and came across one of the Surveyor’s crystals, specifically one of the ones he had used to try and clone himself and had discarded when it didn’t work. For whatever reason, it works now, imprinting the Surveyor’s identity and soul on top of Carrick’s, forever changing him. 

The immediate effects are to heal his broken leg and wipe his memory of what happened. But soon he begins to physically change, his body reshaping itself to look like Primus’ vision for the Surveyor. He is young enough that his parents write off the changes as due to him growing into himself. And he is a half elf: sometimes they take on the appearances of the elvish soul within him. His mother even takes to calling him an old soul, thinking these changes represent the old elvish soul inhabiting his body. She’s almost right.

But the combination of two souls has other effects on Carrick’s life. Chances are, it led to his dark past as he sought power and killed in the name of a pure kind of justice. Psychologically, Carrick must now question everything he has felt and believed in his life. Which pieces of this were his true nature and which parts were due to the Surveyor inside of him? Now, as he becomes more aware of the truth, he can even begin to hear a second voice inside his head, urging him towards tendencies he has long thought were his own inclination.

Carrick tells the old man he will try to fulfill his purpose, he will try to finish Primus’ vision, but the old man tells him it is impossible. Carrick may hold onto a piece of the Surveyor’s soul and memory, but his body is not of Primus’ creation. His body is still half elven, half human. It is not designed to channel the energy necessary to create life. He cannot finish the vision.

At this, the companions grow angry. They now see this sad old man as not a victim, but as an instigator of horrors: a selfish being whose acts not only hurt Carrick directly, but also the death of empires and possibly the ending of all things in a victory for the forces of Chaos. Carrick feels his own pain most directly, of course, accusing the man of stealing both his future and his past. Without even a hope of fulfilling the Surveyor’s mission, what else does Carrick have?

The old man gives them the crystal and tells them that this means his time will soon come to a close. He also tries to give Carrick some kind words, though he is not a being who was made to feel empathy or sympathy.

“You must choose what to do with whatever time you have left,” the old man tells him, but it is of little consolation. “I am sorry, for what it’s worth. I wanted to see the end of Primus’ vision. It did not seem fair that I should work so hard towards it and have nothing to show for it, not even be able to see the work for myself.”

“You do have something to show for it,” Carrick answers. “You have me.”

But the words are not meant to be gracious or consoling. Carrick is angry, and in anger, the companions leave the farm. All except Imoaza, who decides to revenge Carrick, whom she is coming to think of as an actual friend. She summons Drosselgreymer and cuts the old man down, who dies with a smile on his lips...

... until Carrick brings him back with a spell.

“Why?” the old man begs. “Why did you not let me die?”

Imoaza is also confused and upset. “Do you wish me to kill him again? Make him suffer a dozen times? I can do that.”

“No. He doesn’t get to leave that easily. He needs to live. He wanted to see the end result of the work, now he has to. You hear me? Don’t you dare die until this is all over. You need to live and know what you have done. You don’t get to hide from it anymore.”

For the first time, the old man shows emotion, his face filling with despair as he sobs uncontrollably and is left behind by the companions. Imoaza isn’t very happy about it, this doesn’t fit her definition of revenge. So she takes a Chi Chu from his farm as a final payment for their troubles.

Meanwhile, through Carrick’s anger, he is able to realize that Imoaza cut down an unarmed man, however deserving, and the thought makes him wary and anxious, afraid that this is a hint of darker things to come.

The Rod of Storms amplifies the group’s dark mood, and they take off into a sky filling with heavy clouds and hard rain.

[readingsanctuary]

I started the month in a really bad reading slump, so my main goal for the month was to get over that. Thankfully I successfully revived my love and enthusiasm for reading, and managed to have a really successful reading month. I’ve never read so many books in a month before in my entire life, and I’m feeling really good about it. I picked up what I felt like, and that meant I read a lot of graphic novels.

The House with Chicken Legs – by Sophie Anderson

All 12-year-old Marinka wants is a friend. A real friend. Not like her house with chicken legs. Sure, the house can play games like tag and hide-and-seek, but Marinka longs for a human companion. Someone she can talk to and share secrets with. 

But that’s tough when your grandmother is a Yaga, a guardian who guides the dead into the afterlife. It’s even harder when you live in a house that wanders all over the world . . . carrying you with it. Even worse, Marinka is being trained to be a Yaga. That means no school, no parties–and no playmates that stick around for more than a day. 

So when Marinka stumbles across the chance to make a real friend, she breaks all the rules . . . with devastating consequences. Her beloved grandmother mysteriously disappears, and it’s up to Marinka to find her–even if it means making a dangerous journey to the afterlife. 

With a mix of whimsy, humor, and adventure, this debut novel will wrap itself around your heart and never let go.

This was such a quick, enjoyable read, and an interesting twist on the Baba Yaga story. It’s such a whimsical story, I loved all the interesting details that were woven throughout the book. I was quickly absorbed by Marinka’s life, and invested in her story. There are some really interesting themes explored throughout, and Marinka’s reactions always felt really genuine. I loved watching her character develop and grow throughout the story as she came to terms with her situation, and explored her identity. I can see why this book was released to so much praise, I’m just so glad I picked it up.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Their Fractured Light – by Amie Kaufman & Megan Spooner

A year ago, Flynn Cormac and Jubilee Chase made the now-infamous Avon Broadcast, calling on the galaxy to witness LaRoux Industries’ corruption. A year before that, Tarver Merendsen and Lilac LaRoux were the only survivors of the Icarus shipwreck, forced to live a double life after their rescue.

Now, at the center of the galaxy on Corinth, all four are about to collide with two new players in the fight against LRI. Gideon Marchant is an underworld hacker known as the Knave of Hearts, ready to climb and abseil his way past the best security measures on the planet to expose LRI’s atrocities. Sofia Quinn, charming con artist, can work her way into any stronghold without missing a beat. When a foiled attempt to infiltrate LRI Headquarters forces them into a fragile alliance, it’s impossible to know who’s playing whom–and whether they can ever learn to trust each other. With their lives, loves, and loyalties at stake, only by joining forces with the Icarus survivors and Avon’s protectors do they stand a chance of taking down the most powerful corporation in the galaxy—before LRI’s secrets destroy them all. The New York Times best-selling Starbound trilogy comes to a close with this dazzling final installment about the power of courage and hope in humanity’s darkest hour.

This book took me so long to read, it just seemed to go on forever. I know that this is mostly because of my reading slump which hit right as I was reading this book, but I also feel like a lot of this book was about moving the characters towards a meeting point where they could then go on and finish the story. It almost feels like it could have been two books in that sense. One following Sophia and Gideon, and then a final book following all the characters once they meet.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Before She Ignites – by Jodi Meadows

Before

Mira Minkoba is the Hopebearer. Since the day she was born, she’s been told she’s special. Important. Perfect. She’s known across the Fallen Isles not just for her beauty, but for the Mira Treaty named after her, a peace agreement which united the seven islands against their enemies on the mainland.

But Mira has never felt as perfect as everyone says. She counts compulsively. She struggles with crippling anxiety. And she’s far too interested in dragons for a girl of her station.

After

Then Mira discovers an explosive secret that challenges everything she and the Treaty stand for. Betrayed by the very people she spent her life serving, Mira is sentenced to the Pit–the deadliest prison in the Fallen Isles. There, a cruel guard would do anything to discover the secret she would die to protect.

No longer beholden to those who betrayed her, Mira must learn to survive on her own and unearth the dark truths about the Fallen Isles–and herself–before her very world begins to collapse.

Why aren’t more people talking about this book? It’s just so good, I loved every minute of it. I’m actually kind of mad that I don’t have the second book ready to start right away, but I will be pre-ordering that very soon. There is so much that I like about this book, firstly, this book has actual dragons in it!

Rating: 5 Stars

Bruja Born – by Zoraida Cordova

Three sisters. One spell. Countless dead.

Lula Mortiz feels like an outsider. Her sister’s newfound Encantrix powers have wounded her in ways that Lula’s bruja healing powers can’t fix, and she longs for the comfort her family once brought her. Thank the Deos for Maks, her sweet, steady boyfriend who sees the beauty within her and brings light to her life.

Then a bus crash turns Lula’s world upside down. Her classmates are all dead, including Maks. But Lula was born to heal, to fix. She can bring Maks back, even if it means seeking help from her sisters and defying Death herself. But magic that defies the laws of the deos is dangerous. Unpredictable. And when the dust settles, Maks isn’t the only one who’s been brought back…

This was everything I hoped it would be. I really enjoyed seeing more of the world in this book. I really love the magic system and the world building. I was worried about whether I would enjoy Lula’s perspective as much as I did Alex’s, but I needn’t have worried. This book was fantastic, and I already can’t wait for the next one.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – by

A brand new edition of this essential companion to the Harry Potter stories, with a new foreword from J.K. Rowling (writing as Newt Scamander), and 6 new beasts!

A set textbook at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry since publication, Newt Scamander’s masterpiece has entertained wizarding families through the generations. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an indispensable introduction to the magical beasts of the wizarding world. Scamander’s years of travel and research have created a tome of unparalleled importance. Some of the beasts will be familiar to readers of the Harry Potter books – the Hippogriff, the Basilisk, the Hungarian Horntail…Others will surprise even the most ardent amateur Magizoologist. Dip in to discover the curious habits of magical beasts across five continents…

I borrowed the audiobook from my local library, and I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure if this book could work well as an audiobook, but it really does. It’s narrated excellently by Eddie Redmayne, who is in character as Newt Scamander for the entire book. The whole thing is just really well done.

Rating: 4 Stars

Giant Days: volume 4

It’s springtime at Sheffield University — the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and fast-pals Susan, Esther and Daisy continue to survive their freshman year of college. Susan is barely dealing with her recent breakup with McGraw, Esther is considering dropping out of school, and Daisy is trying to keep everyone and everything from falling apart! Combined with house-hunting, indie film festivals, and online dating, can the girls make it to second year?

The Eisner Award-nominated series from John Allison (Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round) with artist Max Sarin delivers another delightful slice-of-life adventure in Giant Days Volume 4. Collects issues 13-16.

This was a birthday gift from my auntie, and I was so excited that I read it that same day. I loved it just as much as the previous volumes. It’s highly entertaining, and I definitely consider this to be one of my favourite graphic novel series.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Giant Days – by Non Pratt

Based on the hit graphic-novel series from BOOM! Studios, the publisher behind Lumberjanes, Giant Days follows the hilarious and heartfelt misadventures of three university first-years: Daisy, the innocent home-schooled girl; Susan, the sardonic wit; and Esther, the vivacious drama queen. While the girls seem very different, they become fast friends during their first week of university. And it’s a good thing they do, because in the giant adventure that is college, a friend who has your back is key–something Daisy discovers when she gets a little too involved in her extracurricular club, the Yogic Brethren of Zoise. When she starts acting strange and life around campus gets even stranger (missing students, secret handshakes, monogrammed robes everywhere . . .), Esther and Susan decide it’s up to them to investigate the weirdness and save their friend.

I really enjoyed this book, and was so happy when it lived up to the awesomeness of the comics. Non Pratt has done a fantastic job of writing something that can stand alone from the comics, while matching the tone of the comics, and making subtle nods to the source material.

My Review

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Giant Days: volume 5

Going off to university is always a time of change and growth, but for Esther, Susan, and Daisy, things are about to get a little weird.

Their freshman year is finally coming to a close and Daisy, Susan, and Esther say goodbye to Catterick Hall forever. Literally forever. It’s being bulldozed and re-purposed as a luxury dorm next semester. But as one door closes, another opens and between end of semester hookups, music festivals, and moving into their first home together, the life experiences are just getting started.

Written by Eisner Award nominee John Allison (Bad Machinery, Scary Go Round) and illustrated by Max Sarin, Giant Days Volume 5 finishes off freshman year in style, collecting issues #17-20 of the Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated series.

I’ve already said how much I love this series, and this volume changes nothing. It’s great. I love that they are showing the passage of time, and allowing the characters to move forward and progress through life. I’m really looking forward to finding out what the girls will get up to in their second year of university.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Ms Marvel: volume 9 – by G. Willow Wilson, Nico Leon

Kamala Khan has vanished! But where has she gone, and why? Jersey City still has a need for heroes, and in the wake of Ms. Marvel’s disappearance, dozens have begun stepping up to the plate. The city’s newest super hero Red Dagger and even ordinary citizens attempt to carry on the brave fight in Kamala’s honor. Somehow, Ms. Marvel is nowhere…but also everywhere at once! Absent but not forgotten, Ms. Marvel has forged a heroic legacy to be proud of. But when an old enemy re-emerges, will anyone be powerful enough to truly carry the Ms. Marvel legacy – except Kamala herself?

COLLECTING: MS. MARVEL 25-30

This is another of my favourite ongoing graphic novel series’, and one of the only Marvel titles that I’m interested in keeping up with. I really enjoyed this volume. I liked that they focused on Kamala’s friends, and how they cope without her while also covering for the missing Ms Marvel. It was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Rating: 4 Stars

Ancient Magus Bride volumes 2,3,4,5

Great power comes at a price…

Chise Hatori’s life has recently undergone shocking change. As a sleigh beggy–a person capable of generating and wielding tremendous magical power–she has transformed from an unwanted child to a magician’s apprentice who has been introduced to fae royalty. But Chise’s newly discovered abilities also mean a cruel fate awaits her.

I’m really enjoying this manga series, the anime is a pretty faithful adaptation so far, so no surprises, but I love the art, and I’m really enjoying reading the source material. I especially loved all the tiny details and explanations that weren’t in the anime, that really add to the story. I loved the anime, but I feel like I’m getting to know the characters and the world a bit better in this format, and I really like that. I love the magic, and the large, interesting world that’s being set out in these books. Also, I really like the bonus content in the collected volumes, it makes me so happy.

Ratings: 4 – 4.5 Stars

Sorry this post is a month late, I don’t know why I didn’t post it sooner, it’s been ready for a while. I’ve been such a mess this past month, I need to be more organised.

Want to chat, about books or anything else, here are some other places you can find me:

Twitter @reading_escape

Instagram: @readingsanctuary

Goodreads

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August Reading Wrap Up I started the month in a really bad reading slump, so my main goal for the month was to get over that.

[atc74]

Streets of Fire

Chapter 1 - Henrietta Prescott

Word Count: 1613

Pairing: Dean x OC Rory (yeah I know)

Series Warnings: Canon level case,violence, harm to loved one, implied smut

Summary: Dean meets a local girl on a case and as luck would have it, the evils of the world know she got involved with a Winchester. Will Dean sacrifice his chance at happiness to keep her safe or will her simply being alive put her in danger?

A/N: Thank you to @luci-in-trenchcoats​ for taking her time to beta this.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean grumbled, the heel of his hand hitting the steering wheel with such force it caused the car to swerve slightly. “Sam, you said this would be a milk run. Now here we are, two days later and we have exactly squat!”

“It’s bad intel, Dean. What else can I say? I will hit the police and coroners reports again tonight; try to find whatever it is we are missing,” Sam apologized, but really it wasn’t his fault. Another hunter had called them in for help on this case, then skipped town. The Winchesters had plans for him, but that would have to wait. The residents of Grand Island, Nebraska were in danger.

They knew they were dealing with a ghost of some kind. The body of the woman formerly known as Henrietta Prescott had been cremated upon her death over a half century ago. They had reasonably deduced they had a cursed object on their hands. The only problem with that was that Miss Prescott had owned an antique shop filled with all of her own belongings. Some were family heirlooms, some she had collected and held on to for quite some time, giving all of them meaning to her in one way or another.

When Ol’ Henrietta died, her estate, including the shop and all of its contents had been auctioned off, as she had never married and had no children or next of kin. The county, thankfully, had kept meticulous records, so the boys had in their possession catalogs of every item that had been sold, both in her house and the shop. There were five ledgers total, each over a hundred pages.

Dean let out an exasperated sigh as he pulled into the motel lot and up to their door. He shut off the car and turned his head to look at his brother. He knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault, but he was still frustrated.

“Sammy, let’s change out of these monkey suits and head to the bar, find some local talent and blow off some steam, maybe make a quick buck while we’re at it, huh?” Dean smirked in the dimly lit car.

“Ahhh, wouldn’t that be nice? You go, have some fun. I’ll hit these books again and try to find the object. Dean, there are hundreds, probably thousands of items there. We might be here a while,” Sam sighed in resignation and unfolded himself from the car.

~*~

“You sure you don’t want to join me, Sam?” Dean prodded his brother, one hand already on the doorknob.

“Yeah, you go ahead. I’ll be fine. Just, uh, don’t wake me up, okay?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, okay. I got it. You’re never gonna let me live that one down, are ya?” Dean laughed a little.

“Dean, you tried to bang the waitress...on my bed... with me in it! So, no!” Sam chided his older brother.

“Whatever, don’t wait up,” Dean rolled his eyes, then left the room. Sam listened for the rumble of the Impala to fade away before he cracked a beer and the first ledger.

Sam decided to dismiss furniture items; sofas, chairs, beds and anything of the sort. He tried to concentrate on anything that may have had real meaning; jewelry, mirrors, specialty clothing. He was midway through the second ledger when he caught something he’d missed before. There was a wedding dress on the ledger, along with pearls and a pair of nineteenth century shoes. There were several items that Sam thought held promise, but he kept coming back to the dress. Henrietta had never been married, so why did she have a wedding dress in her belongings?

Sam pulled up the county records, looking for any record of the person who had purchased the dress. Luckily all three items had been sold to the same person; Carolyn DeWitt. Sam was relieved to discover she only lived about forty minutes away. He grabbed his coat and his phone to call Dean, then noticed it was already eleven o’clock. A little too late for a house call, he decided, so he replaced his jacket on the chair and changed into his lounge pants and retrieved his original copy of The Wizard of Oz. Sam settled into his bed and cracked open the book. He didn’t get very far though, and it slipped from his hands as he drifted to sleep.

~*~

The shrill ringing of his phone woke Sam the next morning when Dean called to tell him to get dressed for breakfast. It was already nine; Sam never usually slept that late, and Dean was never up this early. Ten minutes later, Sam was dressed and leaning up against the side of the motel when his brother pulled up. There was a woman in Sam’s seat. He grumbled about not fitting in the back but opened the door and got it.

“Heya, Sammy! This is Rory; Rory, this is my brother Sam,” Dean smiled wide at his passengers, pulling back out onto the main road.

“Nice to meet you Rory,” Sam reached over the seat to shake her hand.

“Sam, I am so happy to finally meet you! Dean has told me so much about you, I feel like I have known you forever,” Rory gushed with excitement.

Sam hoped that years of lying to people about the evils of the world have honed his ability to hide the bitch face he wanted to sport. They had only been in town for going on three days now; when did Dean meet this chick?

Dean pulled into the only restaurant open this time of day and the three piled out of the car. The restaurant wasn’t busy, given it was a Tuesday and they found a table in the corner.

“Well, good morning, Rory, Dean,” the petite and plump server dragged out Dean’s name like she knew him. “What can I get you two this morning? Oh! Who is this handsome gentleman you brought with you today?”

“Hey, Gladys, this is my brother Sam. Sammy, this is Gladys,” Dean introduced them, placing his arm around Rory’s shoulders, pulling her close to him and nuzzling his nose in her hair. She giggled and looked at Sam, like they were sharing some secret at his expense.

“Hi Gladys, may I get a coffee and water, an egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms and feta, please, with a side of fruit?” Sam politely gave her his order, flashing her his best smile.

“Anything you want, handsome,” Gladys fanned herself a little with her order book.

“I’ll take the pancakes, today Gladys, side of pig and coffee,” Dean winked at the older woman.

“Hey, G, can I please get the eggs benedict, coffee and an orange juice,” Rory placed her order and Gladys gave a salute and headed back to the kitchen.

“So, Dean, come here often?” Sam looked quizzically at his brother, one eyebrow raised.

“Well, let’s see; breakfast yesterday, lunch yesterday, breakfast today, three times, Sammy. Gladys likes me,” Dean bragged.

“Sam, Gladys is my aunt, so I come here everyday for breakfast and lunch. I have been bringing Dean with me the last couple of days. She takes very quickly to attractive men. By the time you guys wrap up your investigation, she’ll probably convince you to give her your number!” Rory exaggerated.

“Rory, how did you meet my brother?” Sam couldn’t wait to hear this.

“He let me beat him at a game of pool the other night and I just can’t seem to get rid of him,” she replied easily, bumping Dean’s side with her shoulder.

“Her bed is better than mine, Sam. I have two words for you: tempur-pedic,” Dean whistled and Rory stared at him with doe eyes, her chin resting in her hands, like he was the funniest person she had ever met.

“Aurora Mae! You know better than to put your elbows on the table, child,” Gladys scolded her when she returned to the table with their beverages.

“Sorry, G,” Rory said softly, returning her hands to her lap.

“Aurora Mae?” Dean questioned her after Gladys retreated.

“Yeah, kind of a family name. All of the woman in my mother’s family were given the middle name Mae,” Rory admitted. “I didn’t care for it as a child, but it is part of who I am.”

“I like it, it suits you,” Dean commented, causing a blush, as it ran from her neck all the way up her cheeks.

The three chatted all through breakfast like they had known each other for years. Sam watched the most normal thing in Dean’s life since he can remember. With the exception of lying to her about who they really are and what they do, Dean seemed to have let this woman with the auburn hair, steel gray eyes and sparkling smile into his walled fortress. Sam sat back and witnessed the miracle.

Rory revealed she was a journalist for the small newspaper in town, but she was also a freelance writer for a few national papers as well. Sam knew he was going to like this woman and her naturally curious nature the moment she brought up the deaths they were in town investigating.

“Sam, Dean told me a little about the case you are working on. I have some research you might be interested in. I was just telling Dean on our way here this morning that my grandfather originally covered the auction for the paper in 1961. I still have all of his notes and the original print. I thought it might come in handy, since all the dead people bought something of Miss Prescott’s,” Rory added perceptively.

Forever Tags: @iwantthedean @chelsea072498 @paintrider13-blog @d-s-winchester @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms @just-another-busy-fangirl @winchesterprincessbride @waywardjoy @like-a-bag-of-potatoes @mamaredd123 @ellen-reincarnated1967 @sis-tafics @katymacsupernatural @tankcupcakes  @wonderange @meeshw777  @tmccarney @ruprecht0420 @theoriginalvicki @hexparker @nanie5 @docharleythegeekqueen @megansescape @notnaturalanahi @impalaimagining @mrswhozeewhatsis @blacktithe7 @emoryhemsworth @dracotomanddeansprincess23 @bringmesomepie56 @devilgirlsarah @spnbaby-67 @emilycollins11 @myoutletforfanfiction @deansangelgirl @mizzzpink @jerk-bitch-and-an-angel @kayteonline @rockhoochie @percussiongirl2017 @fanfreak07 @tattooedmomster13 @sandlee44 @moonstar86 @uttertrash--butlikecutetrash  @squirrel-moose-winchester @growningupgeek @charliebradbury1104 @evansrogerskitten @feelmyroarrrr @itseverythingilike @smoothdogsgirl @evyiione @ashstrom87 @supernatural-jackles @ryantherandomhero  @love-kittykat21​ @kathaswings​ @crispychrissy​

Dean tags: @akshi8278  @iamabeautifulperson18 @suzannebeaketa @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @deandoesthingstome @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester @boxywrites  @sparklesuperwholock88  @ericaprice2008   @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid   @tardis-full-of-fallen-angels

[1000-directions]

i almost forgot that @heartdevouring tagged me in a thing!! which is sad because i was so excited to get tagged <3

RULES : ANSWER all questions, ADD one question of your own and then TAG as many people as there are questions whoever i want cause i don’t even know 50 people on tumblr :)

i’m gonna tag at the top, because this is long. tagging people makes me so nervous, thanks anxiety!! feel free to ignore altogether. @akai-coat @bigbrotherlouis @jiksax @busy-nothings @alligatornyc @magicalrocketships @rickshawala @flora-flauna @gretawhy

live session or studio session? this is off to a bad start because i legitimately don’t understand what this question is asking! like a live recording or a studio recording of a song? i only enjoy live recordings like...while i’m there listening to it. i hate watching concert videos on youtube or whatever, and i never take photos or video at shows. i’ve been to around 80 live shows for various artists, so i love me some live music, but i still prefer to listen to the meticulously mixed and balanced music that comes from a studio session. IF THAT’S EVEN WHAT THIS IS ASKING?

coke or pepsi? i can’t drink soda because it hurts my mouth, and i don’t like fluids that much in general :( :( on the one hand, i’ve never even tasted pepsi? but i had coke exactly once and i hated it. so, neither.

disney or dreamworks? i guess disney but in a super casual “maybe i’ll watch ‘cinderella’ one more time someday” way and not like “i wanna get married at disney AND go there for my honeymoon AND go back every single year and never visit anywhere else ever disney disney disney” way.

coffee or tea? i love them both so much in so many varieties. if i had to choose, i would choose coffee, but i wouldn’t turn down either. i’ve been drinking a lot of taro milk tea lately and it’s fucking amazing.

books or movies? lol i’m one of those jerks who’s like “i’m too busy to read a book!!!!!!!!” but i have no problem getting through a 100k fic in one weekend. okay actually, i feel like these days i don’t super love books OR movies, i just love fanfic and tv shows, and that’s because both of them give you sooooooo much backstory and characterization, and you get to spend so much time living with them in a way you don’t get from a movie. that being said, when i was a kid i used to stay up reading in the bathroom with a flashlight until 3am like every night. i am a lapsed book lover.

windows or mac? mac

dc or marvel? ugh i love the old campy batman show, it was an important part of my childhood and my weird relationship with my father. and i LOVED “lois and clark: the new adventures of superman.” so i love that sort of nostalgia feeling i get from dc. actually you know what, i was gonna hedge and say dc for old stuff and marvel for new stuff, but i’m going dc regardless, because i’m not super into all the new marvel properties anyway. dc, final answer. batgirl could get it.

xbox or playstation? the last game system i played was a super nintendo, but i was always more of a sega genesis gal tbh

night owl or early riser? because of my schedule and my shitty decision-making, it ends up being both. i sleep like four hours each night :/

cards or chess? i’ll go cards, but i am probably garbage at both

chocolate or vanilla? like, you can’t ruin anything by adding a really beautiful freshly scraped vanilla bean to it, whereas there is a lot of extremely shitty chocolate in the world. or, i guess mostly in america, we’re pretty shit at chocolate :(

vans or converse? converse. i have like seven pairs of chucks right now, though most of them are falling apart.

star wars or star trek? star trek: the next generation. omg it’s on netflix??? i’m gonna marathon the hell out of that 🙃

one episode per week or marathoning? MARATHON. my attention span is too short to keep up with something i only see once a week.

gandalf or obi-wan? i literally don’t care at all

heroes or villains? i don’t know, just be nice?

john williams or hans zimmer? i have no opinion about this

disneyland/disney world or six flags? i kind of hate all theme parks, but i really especially hate disney theme parks because i think it’s a huge scam. it’s expensive as shit, and there’s this creepy mythology around it where we brainwash kids into wanting to go there before they even understand wtf it is, and you’re not a good parent if you don’t take your kids there, and it’s EXPENSIVE AS SHIT, and you wait in lines for ten million hours, unless you hire a kid in a wheelchair to pretend to be your kid so you can cut lines (this is a real thing, people are fucking monsters). it’s just extremely unappealing to me, but the corporation seems to be doing okay without my support. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

forest or sea? i like hiking and i don’t like swimming, so let’s go forest. however, i love birds, but i REALLY love fucking weird deep sea creatures, so this is tough. i don’t wanna go for a swim or anything, but i would get in some kind of boat and look at weird fucking rays and anemonefish and shit like that.

flying or reading minds? when i was a kid, i legitimately thought people could read my mind, and it was The Worst, so let’s go with flying. so i can hang out with birds :)

twin peaks or northern exposure? never seen northern exposure, so twin peaks

harry potter or lord of the rings? i really liked the lotr books and really did not care about the lotr movies. i am not super passionate about harry potter books or movies, but i fucking love one direction harry potter AUs, so let’s go potter. i found out today that my patronus is a chow dog.

cake or pie? both both both but if i have to choose i would pick pie but also both both both

you are banished to a desert island, which benedict cumberbatch character would you choose to take with you? THIS IS MY FAVORITE QUESTION IN THE WHOLE THING. BECAUSE. THIS MEANS I GET TO BE ON AN ISLAND WITH VICTORIAN SCIENTIST JOSEPH FUCKING HOOKER. DARWIN’S BEST FRIEND!!!!!!! he could teach me about plants, and then we could gossip about darwin and huxley!!!!! omg i want it so bad

train or cruise ship? i would rather drive, but i guess a train is fine.

brian cox or neil degrasse-tyson?  neil. he can be Too Much, but i like that he’s actively trying to defend science in a mainstream, accessible way.

wizard of oz or alice in wonderland? i’ve never made it all the way through wizard of oz because i was too scared of the flying monkeys :(

fanfiction or fanart? i am more into fic personally but good on you for creating something whatever it is <3

the hunger games - books or movies? books

be able to see the future or travel into the past? fuck the future, i wanna hang out with dinosaurs and/or victorian scientists

han solo or luke skywalker? yeah i don’t care. princess leia.

lilacs or sunflowers? omg don’t get me started on plants, i love em!!! turning sunlight into food, little legends :’)

spring or autumn? spring is good but it only lasts for about 14 seconds around here. we pretty much go from “ahhhhh it’s too cold!!!” straight into “ahhhhh it’s too hot!!!!”

campfire or fireplace? campfire 🔥🔥

french fries or onion rings? fries

truth or dare? truth. i’m pretty open about most things, but i ain’t doing shit and you can’t make me :) :)

winter or summer? i kinda hate them both. summer is too hot for me. but in winter, you have snow, which is the worst. and then you bundle up to go outside but when you get inside the heat is BLASTING and you’re overdressed for it, so winter ends up being too hot for me, too :( i’m always too hot :( :(

vampires or werewolves? vampire tv shows, werewolf one direction aus

red or blue? GREEN

eyes or lips? idk i mean they both serve an important purpose, i’d like to keep both

burgers or sandwiches? i don’t eat meat so let’s go sandwiches

friends-to-lovers or enemies-to-lovers trope? i guess friends to lovers but as long as louis is loved and cherished and gets everything he wants then i don’t care how it started

pizza or pasta? eating pasta right now :)

ancient rome or ancient greece? omg don’t make me choose. classical languages and civilizations and mythology, my first ever academic passion <3 guess who’s read the odyssey in three languages THIS GUY (guess who doesn’t remember any language except for english anymore, also this guy)

foxes or wolves? FOXES!! fennec foxes!! darwin’s foxes!! arctic foxes!! all the lil foxes 

mermaids or dragons? MERMAIDS. EXTREMELY MERMAIDS. the only reason i even started liking louis tomlinson is because i read a fic where he was a mermaid, but that’s a story for another day.

sci-fi or fantasy? ahhhhh don’t make me choose. gimme all the dystopian societies

watch a film in theaters or at home? going to the theater sounds exhausting, i’m good right here

fireproof or no more sad songs? fireproof, on account of louis tomlinson rolling and rolling until he changes his luck, which is basically my mantra

bands or individual singers? individual singers within bands

sweet or salty? if i only get one, i’ll choose salty, but i want both. both together!! salted caramel!!! cheese and caramel popcorn mixed in a bag together!! chocolate covered pretzels!!!!

monotype corsiva or comic sans? both of these make me itchy. BUT. i’m gonna go with the dreaded comic sans BUT ONLY BECAUSE i read a thing once that people with dyslexia have an easier time reading it, and i’m on board with it from an accessibility standpoint ONLY.

my question: turtles or frogs? i know this is tough because they are both so awesome <3

[pepperf]

Tagged by @bethanyactually, like whom my answers are mostly 'both'. :) I'm, like... pathologically agnostic.

Rules: Answer all questions, add one question of your own and then tag as many people as there are questions.

Coke or Pepsi? Mehhhh... Coke, I guess, but I'll drink either, so long as they're not diet. (That's the real question, right - diet or regular? I feel like diet is in fact not-so-secretly poison.)

Disney or Dreamworks? I have liked and disliked movies from both studios. I've probably liked more Disney movies, on balance.

Coffee or tea? I have coffee in the morning because otherwise I won't be awake, and green tea for the rest of the day because otherwise I can't sleep.

Books or movies? Read a book with a movie on the TV. :P

Windows or Mac? Both. :) That's seriously going to be my answer to about 90% of these questions. I prefer the customisability of Windows, and I prefer writing in Word, but you'll have to pry my iPad from my cold, dead hands.

DC or Marvel? I've liked each at different times in my life. Currently DC seems to be being less awful, but honestly I don't really read/watch either very much. Last comics I bought were Matt Faction's Hawkeye series. Next thing I intend to watch when I can tear myself away from The 100 is Supergirl.

Xbox or Playstation? What Bethany said - I don't play games so I don't really care.

Night owl or early riser? Oh, this is the one thing I am definite on, I'm a night owl for sure. Fuck mornings.

Cards or Chess? I really don't play games. I cannot emphasise this enough. Games are not my thing.

Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate, but I like vanilla too.

Vans or Converse? I've never owned either, I hate their flat soles. And they look the saaaaaaame. Doc Martens for me.

Star Wars or Star Trek? Oh, both. Star Wars was my childhood, Star Trek was my teenage years.

One episode per week or marathoning? I marathon if I have the option, because I have no self-restraint, but I'm currently enjoying watching The 100 week by week and squeeing with people afterwards.

Gandalf or Obi-Wan? Eh... I guess Gandalf. I had more of a sense for him, whereas Obi-Wan was a bit of a cypher. Oh, until Ewan MacGregor, of course... but those movies were so terrible that none of the characters really hold a place in my heart (sorry Padme, you were great, if only you didn't have to fall in love with Anakin for stupid plot reasons).

Heroes or Villains? It depends! Antiheroes, reluctant heroes, villains on the horns of an ethical dilemma... give me shades of grey.

John Williams or Hans Zimmer? John Williams.

Disneyland/Disney World or Six Flags? Not been to any of them, sorry. I have been to Universal Studios and loved that. :)

Forest or sea? Yeah, probably forest. I'm more of a land mermaid.

Flying or reading minds? Ugh, flying for sure, I don't want to know what people think.

Twin Peaks or Northern Exposure? I liked both... uh... god, I don't know. Twin Peaks was more innovative but Northern Exposure was much more likeable. Okay, Northern Exposure. I don't think I could sit through Twin Peaks again, a lot of it was incredibly tedious, even at the time (did anyone actually care what happened with that guy who thought he was James Dean?).

Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Lord of the Rings. I'm really not a Potter fangirl. :) However, I prefer HP fanfic to LotR fanfic, and I kind of love that HP AUs are a thing in almost every fandom - although they make more sense in some than others.

Cake or Pie? I made a pie in a cake once, trufax. It was great - cherry pie in chocolate cake. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME CHOOSE.

You are banished to a desert island, which Benedict Cumberbatch character would you choose to take with you? Ugh, has he ever played a character with whom I'd want to spend an extended period of time? Which one is likely to get me rescued sooner? Sherlock would probably get me killed, and would be seriously annoying in the meanwhile, so fuck him. Um... hell, I guess Alan Turing, because he was an actual genius so maybe he can figure a way off the island, or if not, all efforts will be made to retrieve him because he's essential to the War Effort. And because I read Cryptonomicon once, so at least I've got the start of a(n entirely awkward) conversation (that would go rapidly beyond my understanding).

Train or Cruise ship? Trains. I love trains. And I went on a Nile cruise when I was 16 and had an awful time, a combination of food poisoning, not being allowed to spend much time on things I wanted to see, and the maitre d' developing an obsession with me in a scary way I was not equipped to deal with at the time. He phoned me crying, and then tried to give me all his books in a way that suggested he was going to kill himself later. I spent most evenings with the door bolted, phone unplugged, and headphones on. I didn’t tell my family how bad it was because I didn’t want to make it a big deal, hahaha, so they thought it was funny. Ikd, maybe cruises aren’t bad if you’re not being stalked, but they’re not really my scene.

Brian Cox or Neil deGrasse-Tyson? Sorry, I was a teenager in 90s Britain so I have to go for Brian Cox, although Neil deGrasse-Tyson is clearly awesome.

Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland? I kind of dislike both, they're creepy and unpleasant. Um. Can I choose Wicked instead?

Fanfiction or fanart? Fanfic, but I am in awe of fanartists, I don't think they get enough credit.

The Hunger Games - Books or movies? Book for the first one, movies for the rest.

Be able to see the future or travel into the past? Travel into the past. Seeing the future would be dismal. No more surprises. Boring.

Han Solo or Luke Skywalker? Aww... Han was my crush, so I guess him, but Mark Hamill is just the best.

Lilacs or sunflowers? Sunflowers come out slightly ahead for me, but they're both lovely.

Spring or autumn? Autumn - and thank you for calling it that and not Fall. ;)

Campfire or fireplace? Hmm... fireplace, because indoors for preference, but, again, I like both. Setting fire to things is fun!

Watch a gory horror or a family-friendly animation? (My question, but I'm answering it.) Animation, almost every time - I've come to embrace the fact that I prefer anthropomorphic animals to chainsaw massacres.

No-pressure tagging @strivia, @shinewithalltheuntold, @rashaka, @bending-sickle, and anyone else who wants to play. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 17: Just Throw em on the Murder Pile

Ah, week one of the Stay-at-Home mandate. After a week of getting so little work done, I decided to get Animal crossing so I could get away from the people I live with to our own little virtual islands. So, I spent my time, fishing so many fishes and bugs for the the museum that wasn’t open yet, placing them all over the island so I could use them later. Went to bed having done all this wonderful work, my masterpiece, my beautiful island.

The next day I woke up an hour later than my brother, who spent that time logging into Animal Crossing, not realizing he was sharing an island with me (for some reason you only get one island per switch, which was a decision they made???) and he was like “the hell are all these fish everywhere?” So he sold all of them, made himself an Oricalchos shirt and a Yami third eye in the fashion editor, and then used all my fish money to buy so many oil drums and put them all over the trash side of his island.

I was asleep one hour. One single hour. It is all trash oil drums and fire and a poorly drawn Oricalchos t-shirt.

Ah, the irony when you get a game to escape the people you live with only to realize that you share the location of the game itself--with those same people. The irony. 

So anyways, we found out that our efforts were futile anyway, long story short we sort of...soft locked this children’s game, and had to restart the entire island. lol.

So while I recover from that shock, lets talk about Yugioh.

They’re still on the Caltrain and Yami is still appearing to have a lot of difficulty remembering how to use cards without Yugi. But, we find out at the end of the episode, he’s mostly just pretending to have difficulty. We’ll get to why this bluff is so mind boggling later--Yami just has a lot of weird layers to him, and most are just so...so lovingly stupid.

Anyway, Timaeus doesn’t work with him now, but honestly it wasn’t clear why Timaeus ever did in the first place since Yami is both two people and a dead person at the same time. Yami shouldn’t exist.

This doesn’t matter in the end, because Yami is good at cards when he isn’t actively trying to get cursed to give himself a handicap like he did with Raphael.

Unlike Yami, Joey decides to reflect upon the moral consequences of Hella Killing a Guy, which youknow...should mess you up a little bit.

But obvi, Rex has to die for the plot to move forward, so RIP.

(more RIP under the cut)

Yugioh made sure to give Rex a big send off that took waaaaay longer than Gurimo, just saying.

Lololololol

Just two u’s, sleeping so pleasantly.

And I’m just guessing, ps, but I feel like it’s a good guess. I feel like this wasn’t like this in the original.

Back at the train that should be crossing the ocean at this point, Weevil has pulled out some misdirection. Knowing that Yami has been misdirecting Weevil this entire time, it is just so baffling that he’d totally fall for this.

If someone did this to Seto Kaiba--that I would believe, instantly. But to Yami? OK there, Yami.

Mind you, Yami is grieving, and he’s not mentally all there in both the literal sense and in the mental sense, but wow, Yami. You fell for that.

Yami has lost his entire mind and is just kind of winging it until he gets arrested.

He has no reason to be better than this. He’s like “FML. I’m gonna go ape, I don’t freakin care”

Like, Yami has this anger problem, which the show has said out loud a few times this season, but we haven’t really seen too often in previous seasons to a great degree. So we have to give him some places where he can demonstrate getting super pissed, to make up for the fact that Yami’s character developed has mostly been about “I’m too lonely and cursed to make friends, Yugi.” and “I’m DEAD, Yugi, I don’t want to learn about my history.” and “Gods why are you always making problems for me to solve for you, Kaiba?”

Not saying he hasn’t been mad and vengeful before this moment, but he hasn’t been as explosive before this season--it’s always been a chill anger, a quietly menacing kind of crazy, youknow? But...characters change. Yami’s developed to be different now and that’s fine. Being pissed someone killed your soul bud that you share a body with, I feel, is a natural thing to be pissed about.

But, Yami is permanently in a state of anger and brooding since Yugi left, despite being pretty chill for most of the past 4 seasons. It’s like the first time we get to experience Yami be Just Yami since the beginning of Season 1 and it’s a completely different Yami anyway.

I guess this is to point out that they really did rely on the other to complete their personality. Which is weird, but that is a thing you do with people that you’re spend a ton of time with--you kind of forget how to do things solo.

Like there was this interesting study where they took married people and asked them simple grade school questions, and they answered them fine when they were together in the same room. But, when they were separated--they suddenly would blank on random stuff. They couldn't remember capitals or multiplication tables--simple stuff. But people who were single, were able to do these things fine alone or with a friend.

People who spend a hell ton of time together learn to help eachother answer the questions as a team, and the parts of the brain you use to like...memorize capitals and multiplication might decay because there’s someone else who will just always do it for you.

So anyway, the takeaway I get from this is that the part of Yami and Yugi that could read if Weevil is lying was Yugi and that’s a lot to take in. Yugi might be smarter than Yami? Weird. Low bar, but weird.

So, Yami won’t need to justify to himself like Joey, he’s just gonna kill this guy outright. Immediately. There was some card shenanigans, and I guess he had the opportunity to beat him even further after he was dead? I didn’t fully pay attention to the card logic but it was so brutal that Tea had to get involved.

She was quicker to save even S1 Seto Kaiba, just throwing that out there. Tea was like “I’ll step in between you two, but I’ll be run really slow about it.”

I think she was more worried about Yami going dark than Weevil who’s...already dead. And again, you don't have to worry about Yami going dark. I say it a lot but he’s a dark wizard. This is kind of his zone.

And then, they actually touched for the first time in like--kind of a lot of episodes. I kind of forgot about this ship.

How come when she’s wrestling him it looks more like a hug than the few times they’ve hugged? These writers, man. They’re just...so close to figuring out how to write a ship but just so, so far away.

I just want to remind y’all that the Oricalchos broke Valon’s arm but Tea and Tristan just walked away because they’re that hulk IRL.

I just love that Yugi is so short that Tea has to be on a ladder below him in order to have this pose happen.

After that awkward moment that Yami lost his entire mind and killed a guy, he had another weird moment where he just...looked down at his hands and was like “I’m the real monster?????”

He didn’t think about the moral consequences until AFTER he killed Weevil. And honestly, that feels a lot more like the Yami I know. That was maybe the most Yami thing he did this episode. Reminder, they got into this train duel while trying to stop a runaway train, and they did nothing about that.

So anyway, how’s this train going?

(San Jose has over one million residents but don’t tell Yugioh.)

And then, sadly, I had to say goodbye to my penultimate favorite character in Yugioh, second only to the storyboarder. Goodbye, forever.

At least the death sequence for the Caltrain seemed appropriately long, as it should be. Rex’s went ON but the Caltrain? Lets get that slowmo pan for it. Goodbye, first train in Yugioh (that wasn’t shaped like a dragon.)

And I just figured it was Darts who did this, but apparently Darts was just as upset as I was when he saw that train derail and then soar 500 feet above the track like a figure skater.

Y’ALL

First off congrats to Darts’ fluffy as hell lower eyelash extensions, I’m lowkey jealous.

Second off, every year on the ballot we get a measure that wants to funnel money into the Caltrain. Every single year. It almost never passes, and when it does, the money sort of vanishes into the aether. It’s really annoying.

To think that THIS ineptitude is what helped Darts loose track of Yami and I’m going to assume save the whole damn world.

I can’t believe the auto lobby and the corrupt Caltrain management just saved the world like that.

I can’t believe that’s Canon to Yugioh.

My expression when I found out that after we just mercifully cut the cast by two, they decided to stick in this new guy?

Ugh a new guy.

So Yugi and Tea do say at the end “you ok?” “yeah” so it’s nice that Tea can survive a train crash off a cliff into a ditch. Tea, and this reincarnated ghost. God tier.

Anyway if you just got here, this is a link to read these in order

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

I feel like I say every week “ah, I finally have time to catch up” but I still post at exactly the same rate anyway but...I guess we’ll see, huh?