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ma1dita · 9 days

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love me dry

a 'partners in crime' installment - luke castellan x dionysus!reader

words: 4.5k

summary: (post-TLT) The one where he meets you at his mother’s house, though both of you didn’t expect the other to be there. A glimpse into May Castellan’s perfect day (Luke Castellan x fem!Dionysus!reader)

a/n: sorry for the hiatus! been on the study grind and didn’t even notice, but i’ve been working on this for a bit! macbeth references (comment if you catch them/or ask and i’ll yap) and slight suggestive stuff under the cut—but anyways let’s just say the prophecy by taylor swift came out at the right time.

(posted 4/19/24, semi-edited)

—

The drive to Westport has become almost an afterthought in these past few years— in the way you unconsciously reach for your favorite hoodie on the way out the door or tuck in your chair before you leave a table, almost automatic but ingrained with a touch of care. With letters to May Castellan occupying your passenger seat instead of the boy who wrote them, you’d make the drive multiple times but stop short just before the property line. It took months of parking at the bottom of the hill and just watching the sun set on the little house, so clearly being able to imagine a smaller version of him running around and wreaking havoc.

Little Luke, with bandaged knees and feet that move as fast as his motor mouth, amber eyes glinting like windchimes in the summer breeze. His mom must’ve watched him play by himself through the bay window before calling him home when the clouds covered the horizon, wispy tendrils stretching over the rain gutter like how lovers hold hands. It must’ve reminded her a lot of his father, leaving nothing but the open air in his wake. Still, all of this was familiar to you too—despite having never stepped foot in the white house.

But knowing Luke meant knowing his home like it was a part of you.

The old hatchback’s engine gently rumbled against the quiet of the property each time you visited, and May would wait for you to come near— waiting for you to be ready to walk into a mausoleum of the boy you both once knew. You were familiar to her too, even as a blurry figure hunched over the steering wheel. She’s seen your face in the small glimpses between the shattering earth of her reality and the hazy foresight she lets herself succumb to remember what her son looks like. In every vision of him since he’s left, you’ve been there; and something about that quells the pain and anguish that it brings to her body when she sees it. But May Castellan is ever an observant woman, gift of prophecy aside. A mother always knows.

It also turns out that she makes excellent conversation over a plate of slightly singed chocolate chip cookies.

—

Luke Castellan is years older than the version of him that last sat at this kitchen table. He doesn’t know if he’s any wiser for it—wondering if he’s made a mistake in coming back here after all this time as he watches his mom hustle around the kitchen that’s suspiciously sparkling clean. A silver spoon clinks against the glass pitcher that May stirs mixed berry Kool-Aid in, his favorite, he remembers, and it makes him squint against the light that filters through the gauzy curtains of the windowpane above the sink. Luke could’ve sworn that there used to be badly patched rips in the fabric, but he attributes it to the dark corner of his memory he still hides away like a secret. Sitting there and taking it all in, he wonders what it would’ve been like to actually grow up here—to stay, for once.

But that’s something he doesn’t have the privilege of knowing. When his mom turns to hand him a glass with her shaking hands, wrinkles and laugh lines are mapped across the expanse of her face. He’ll never know how they got there. The wooden chair creaks under him, groaning under the weight that he carries and Luke once again feels uncomfortable in a place he once called home.

“Knew you’d come back. A mother always knows,” May mutters, voice disembodied like she’s floating just out of reach. Her hands clasped over his, rubbing her thumbs over the veins as if she’s checking his pulse (or the possibility of him being an apparition) and the crack in her smile mirrors his. But this isn’t the home he remembers—his frontal lobe was underdeveloped back then and the only plan it could form was the one to get him the hell out of Westport, there’s something different in the details. Tiny things, like the patio swing chain reattached to its post, a mended table leg, and ceramic tiles on the countertop unbroken and smooth. This is a home and a mother he once longed for as a kid, along with the feeling of comfort and safety you can only attribute to a place like this. Calculating eyes scan the perimeter of the kitchen, but no one knows he’s made the trip to Westport, not even his own crew. Surely nothing could mess this up for him, not here. This was his last step before his quest for redemption eats away at his physical body, and then it will all be out of his hands.

There’s not much left for me here, he thinks— there’s not much of me left here, either.

Then Luke hears you before he sees you—the sound of you humming under your breath mixed with the jingle of keys turning in the front door. With bags of groceries leaving marks on your arms and a soft smile he hasn’t seen you wear in ages, for once you look lighter again. For a moment, the thought crosses his mind that this must be what you look like when he’s not around. Nonetheless, he breathes easier when you’re near. Of course, you’re here, and the irony grips him by the neck almost as if to make it known why his home feels like home again.

“Yeah hon, I’ll have to call you back,” you laugh into your headphones before tapping them with one free finger to end the call. In a split second, your eyes meet. Staggering back at the sight of him sitting at the table and the absolute grin on May’s face, you decide to continue into the space ahead and start putting the groceries away like nothing is out of sorts.

“I see you have a visitor, Miss May. Is he staying long?”

Luke sips at his glass, juice extra tart just how he likes it. His lips pucker at the taste it leaves in his mouth and when he opens his mouth there’s a hint of blue. You try not to look too long.

“For the night,” he answers, even if you weren’t talking to him, but it makes May so vibrant with the notion of him not running again that she instantly hops to her feet and rushes to make the bed in his old room. “I won’t be in your way,” he swallows. You gravitate towards him like a moth to a flame, but move around his chair without touching him—further proving that Luke is, in fact, an obstacle you must overcome. He’s a stranger in his own home and you’ve found yourself at ease in it. You wonder if any of that will make a difference in the long run.

“She’s…”

“More peaceful. I’ve been practicing with my dad, so I do what I can to ease her fits but I’m not exactly equipped to lift a curse from Hades,” you mutter through a bitten lip. Luke stares at you but it feels nostalgic, like someone on the outside looking in. Well, shit. He’s been leading demigods to their deaths every summer and you’ve been trying to cure his mentally ill mother in the time you don’t spend trying to stop him.

“I don’t think I even remember the last time she made sense while talking to me,” he laughs hollowly. You purse your lips and shrug, “I visit her every two weeks. She still has her triggers, and she gets confused but she’s not in pain. Your letters helped.”

“Is that why you came here then?”

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” you joke feebly. It falls flat and yet he still smiles, even when you say, “They weren’t for me.”

“They were about you. All of them were.”

You know that too. May makes you read them to her before bedtime as you stroke her hair and send her off to Hypnos. You’ve relived your relationship with Luke a million little times, and he’s written about you and all of your yesterdays like it was the only glimpse of Elysium he’d ever reach. In those letters, you get to remember the good parts of being in love—laughing in the empty amphitheater, holding hands under the dining table, sneaking kisses in the strawberry fields.

You used to understand each other so well: every dream, every feeling. But there is nothing you understand about the man sitting across from you now. The both of you sit at the kitchen table and there is nothing more to say.

Luke doesn’t have to stay. While you were at the supermarket, he spent an hour trying to explain to his mother that he needed her blessing to swim in the River Styx. Through nuances and veiled simplicity in the words he weaved to convince her, there wasn’t much opposition in her half-empty, half-prophetic mind. May always knew that Luke loved to swim when she took him to the beach, and that was that.

There was nothing more to say.

—

He knows it’s too good to be true when moments later May’s screams carry through the halls of the little house, down the stairway you’re currently clambering up to reach her. By the time his boots reach the second landing, he finds the two women he loves most in a huddle against the linen closet, his mother’s glowing green eyes and empty groans rattling him to the bone. If he were any smaller, he’d be shaking. Even now he doesn’t know what to do— feet frozen as he watches you brush her curls away from her face and lull her to solace.

“Can’t find Luke’s sheets—he needs the Toy Story ones…” May mutters as she rocks on her heels, “My boy needs to be home…He’s meant to be home!” Her fingernails are cutting into your wrists and then she silences with a wave of your hand.

“He’s home, Miss May. He’s right there,” you whisper. When your eyes look at Luke, you watch him crumble—the cracks in his fortitude tumbling like fallen rocks at the sight of the two of you and then you see him. The boy you met at 14 who was angry at the world for making him run away from his mother and the hands of fate until it crept up to snuff him out for the sake of a prophecy foretold by deities who will never understand what it’s like to be human. But there are no second chances, and there is nowhere left to run. “He’s here for you. I’ll take care of him, don’t worry.”

“I see it, the two of you together. The worst will be over soon, and then it’ll all make sense,” she says breathily, licking her lips and straightening herself like nothing happened. Even after you send her off to prepare a basket for the beach, Luke doesn’t move when his mother pats his arm and walks around his body and towards the stairs. Neither of you speak until your fingers touch his jaw lightly, and Luke doesn’t know if you’re trying to help him or inspect him. He tilts down to look at you anyway.

“She thinks we’re still together.”

He blinks. Somehow that’s the most shocking thing he’s heard today. Fate is most definitely cruel and fucked up because he never expected it to be like this—once upon a time he hoped he could take you home to meet his mother when everything was said and done; no shackles from Titans or pressure from the gods. It was supposed to be different.

“The letters probably didn’t help as much as you thought they would then,” he mumbles, calloused hands guiding your hands over to his swiftly beating heart. You scoff, “Neither does bringing up my boyfriend. She thinks it’s you.” He’d believe anyone who’d say they watched you yank his heart out of his chest with that statement, everything bloody in your hands. It’s still yours, even if you don’t want it.

“Kit?”

You shake your head and shrug, “That was forever ago. But he treats me well.”

Luke wants to ask more but by the tension in your shoulders, he knows not to push. He’s not entitled to know anything more than what you give him. It’s not his place anymore. So his brow furrows at your next suggestion.

“Just pretend, Luke. For the day, so your mom doesn’t get agitated. I’m not asking for much here.”

It’s a terrible, terrible idea—even you know that. But you both have always been good pretenders. Liars, a voice corrects in the back of your mind. You reason that it’s for May and insist upon that fact, even if the heartbroken girl you left at Camp Half-Blood is raging at you from deep inside the recesses of your mind that you hide her in. What’s one day with him compared to the many you’ve gone without? You don’t need to know the rest of why he’s here, or what more he’s going to do— and you don’t ask.

Not knowing has always hurt less.

—

You’ve forgotten how good Luke is at playing the part of a good boyfriend. He offers to drive to the beach, carries the picnic basket and blanket for you all to sit on, and listens intently when May asks about your college classes. There’s no discomfort in the way he holds your hand as you walk in the sand or dusts your feet off before laying them across his lap. It’s easy to laugh at his bad jokes, it’s easy to act like the boyfriend you describe is anything like him (even if he’s the complete opposite), and it’s too damn easy to fall into the familiar rhythm that is you and Luke. The three of you lay down as the spring breeze covers you from the rest of reality, hiding away from the truth of a broken woman and two ex-lovers. By late afternoon, you find yourself enjoying it, and it’s cruel how the guilt isn’t rolling off you in waves, instead longing for him to follow you anywhere.

He meets you by the shoreline with both of you waist-deep in the water. May’s collecting seashells but she turns to look at you two every so often like she’s framing this memory in her fragile mind. Without saying it out loud, the both of you hope it will hold.

“She always talks about you, you know? Even without trying,” you mutter as saltwater pours from your fingers to the valleys made by the veins in his forearms. It’s like initiating touch without the consequences of actually doing it, and he immerses himself in the feeling as it spills over him, feet rocking against the tide.

“I do too. Can’t help it.”

When the sea ripples once more pushing you against the wall of his body, you end up holding on, and he doesn’t let go. You both smell like salt and sunshine, pressed together and nothing has made more sense. The silence goes on for a beat too long—he whispers, “You still talk about me? Your boyfriend must hate that.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk about you? For anyone to get to know me, they have to know you.”

Your shirt is stuck to your skin in the surf and Luke’s hands brush over the waistline of your underwear, daring to reacquaint himself with your touch and spur a reaction from you. You may be the best actress he’s ever known but anything is better than watching you be complacent with the false niceties of the day.

“There isn’t much worth knowing.”

“I’d never say that, Luke,” jaw tensing, you let out a breath when his hands encircle your hips, hidden in plain sight in the deep of the ocean. He chuckles and the sound tickles your brain to remind you it's the type of laugh he spits out when he’s hiding his anger, “There’s a lot we’re both not saying.” Your name slips past his lips, sneaking past your defenses and hitting you head-on like a bullet.

“Why?”

Why are you doing this? Why are you helping his mother, why aren’t you actively fighting and turning him in, why are you letting him hold you if he’s only going to leave again—there are too many questions and only one clear answer.

“Because it’s out of our hands, isn’t it, Luke? You love your mother but you wouldn’t have come here unless it’s too late. Annie told me you went to see her in San Francisco.”

He was never here to make amends or save face. There was no version of him that was going to ask you to run away with him because he knows you deserve more than always running from fate. He’d do it all over again as long as you got this— the life you’re living with your college degree, your boyfriend, and your happy family— and Luke has no place in that.

A dry laugh bubbles from his throat, sticking like seafoam when he says, “You hate San Francisco.”

You wouldn’t have come.

—

By the time you get home for dinner, your skin is sensitive and tingly from the heat of the sun. May’s tracing circles into the back of your hand as she leads you up the patio steps. There’s a sinking feeling in your stomach that makes you sway against the doorway.

“Too much time having fun,” she mumbles, patting your cheek, “Take a cold shower dear. Join us when you’re ready?” Luke’s eyes follow you all the way up the stairs and then again, he’s left to his own devices.

Most of the said shower was spent thinking about what your friends would say about you for playing house with the enemy. The guilt felt like ice along your spine, paralyzing you for wanting to be selfish, to choose what makes you happy even if it fucks the rest of the world. But looking in the mirror afterward was scarier—you recognized the girl that stared back at you as someone you thought you’d never see again. A version you left behind years ago, with her head held high and so sure of herself with your Luke by your side.

Surely, there’s no harm in indulging in this vice for the rest of the night. Not when you haven’t felt this relaxed in years.

Dinner is being served by the time you make your way back downstairs. It’s a simple dish you taught Luke how to make back at camp when you raided the kitchens at midnight. Nothing special, reminding you of your own home—but the fact that he remembered makes your smile widen as you take a seat and promise to wash the dishes. Luke chuckles the type that makes his eyes crinkle in mirth once he watches you dig into your meal, knees brushing under the table like old times.

Everything feels easier after that.

“Today was the best day,” his mother mutters as you tuck the covers under her chin. May kisses both of your cheeks before she shuts her eyes and you gently fold the letter she chose tonight back into her nightstand for safekeeping. This time, you read her the story of your first kiss with Luke sitting at the foot of her bed in the dim light of her room. It’s less scary here than he remembers, but maybe it’s because this time there’s no screaming and him running to hide in the closet. Your voice is much more pleasant than those suppressed memories, immersing you all in a more pleasant one— the both of you in the amphitheater kissing on the stage with his hands in your belt loops. Luke could recite every word on that page if it meant he could go back in time, not with Backbiter but with you, just to live through that moment again. I think I’m falling in love with her, is how the letter ended but by then he already knew. Writing it down to tell his mother always made it real.

This, you, right here—everything is real.

He’s silent even as he watches you smoke through the cracked window of his childhood bedroom, and you’re surprised when he steals a puff. His hands are shaking under the moonlight and suddenly it’s clear that he’s scared. Everyone feels fear, but in all the years that you’ve known him, Luke Castellan has never let you see it.

“Those things will kill you one day,” you mumble, watching him lean against the windowpane. It’s what he used to always tell you so that you’d quit, but old habits die screaming. It’s another vice you refuse to let go of.

“Wanted to try something new before I…” his voice drops off.

Lose myself.

Lose you.

Luke coughs as the smoke enters his lungs, a momentary rush hitting him brought by the nicotine. Your hands go to cup his jaw as you set your forehead against his, a silent plea for him to just be honest if there’s truly nothing left to lose.

“I’m out of time, trouble. It’s out of my hands.”

Shuddering at the feeling of him tracing every ridge of your spine, you think the way he says your nickname sounds like the way he used to say I love you. It’s raining outside now, the harsh pitter-patter of wet drops drowning out the sound of your voice, “What can I do? Is there anything left for me to do?” When his head shakes, your noses brush, and your breaths intermingle, almost magnetic. Perhaps the rain is getting in from the open window and you feel it hitting your cheek until you see the shine of his eyes.

“You think I did this because of you. I know you do, but you need to know I did all of this for you, trouble. I choose you and me. Every time,” Luke gasps, intertwining his fingers with yours, the both of you pushing and pulling in this embrace like the moon with the tide.

“Luke…”

You’re pressing yourself against him, face hidden in his shirt as your brain catches up to your heart, hasty breaths and every atom of your being screaming to be held together by him and then you’re on him, through tears and clenched fists tumbling towards the tiny twin bed. The only way he likens himself to his father is his yearning to be a true traveler, but what he knows best out of anything in this entire world is you. He knew this body once too— every birthmark, scar, and dimple. Who else has had the privilege to navigate the ridges of your spine, to know the pressure of your kiss? A tattoo peeks out to say hello at your hip bone. There are new stories and new marks, there are parts of you unknown to him now. Luke thinks that must be what hurts most about each time he leaves you.

But then why does this feel so good?

Warm palms caress your waist, nudging your shirt up in the hopes that this will be enough compensation for all his misdoings—the tears you’ve cried, the anger you’ve felt, the things you had to do and will have to do because of him. Luke is someone who’s gotten comfortable with manipulating time, but time has manipulated him and all of his plans for the both of you. Sleepy setback bedroom eyes meet his own that glow in the gentle light of the lamp on the nightstand. Maybe if you pretend again his childhood bedroom can turn into the star-speckled darkness of cabin 12. You can just lay down and tuck underneath his arms waiting for him to fall asleep. But he stays up this time, making you hiss at the feeling of his lips against your neck.

“We can’t… Angelface,” you say breathily, still leaning into the trail he marks across the valley of your collarbone, “We’re not together anymore.”

A kiss is placed on your pulsepoint, knocking against the cord of your necklace.

“We shouldn’t… I have a boyfriend.”

Another kiss rests against the warmth of your forehead.

“We’re on opposite sides of a war… You’re my enemy.”

Finally, his lips meet yours, for a moment as if to test the waters.

“Not tonight,” he says, and there is no other option but to agree. There is a lifetime to make up for in a night, and fuck it—they’ll crucify you anyway. You were never meant to be a hero, that’s what he always wanted. You just wanted him. Your head hits the pillow and he looms over you until you’re pulling him in for more than what’s necessary to accept an apology.

There’s nothing left to lose.

—

Before your mind can wake up dreading the consequences of last night, your socked feet take you to the kitchen to clean up the mess you’ve both left behind. The old floorboards creak underfoot and there’s a method in the way you’re washing the dishes, hot water and soap starting to seep through your shirt sleeve but you choose not to notice. Scrubbing at the dirt and grime left behind on the porcelain until your fingers start to prune, a lump forms in your throat before you can stop it. Maybe if you scrub hard enough at the glass that Luke drank out of last night it can eventually be clean. But it’s taking you longer than you thought, jaw tensing and fingers turning white at how hard you’re holding on. May appears behind you, guiding your hands away from the scalding water, and though you resist— the glass drops into the sink and shatters with a loud crack.

“Damn spot wouldn’t get out,” you sniff, turning away to look out the window and think of anything but him, but he’s everywhere even when he’s not here, so much so that it suffocates you. Guilt lines every shaking breath you take until lavender eyes meet amber at the sensation of her clasping your red and raw palms with a dishtowel.

You see him in her too.

“His fate is greater than the cards he’s been dealt with. You know that.”

It’s the clearest and most sensible May’s spoken in days. Perhaps when it comes to Luke, she’ll always know better. Eyes darting elsewhere to fight the tears that brim at your lash line, you look down at your swollen hands, palm up towards the heavens almost imploring, “Why couldn’t it be me?”

The question’s direction is unclear and you don’t expect to get an answer, turning away to grab some ice from the freezer and she remains standing there—staring at the windowsill at a compass that’s now found its home next to the faded picture of a man who’s left more times than there are reasons to stay. Just like his father, she thinks, a small smile quirking at the side of her lip where a scar would meet her son’s. Clicking it open delicately like how she used to hold his hand, there’s a photo of you and Luke resting against the cover ripped away from a memory frozen in time.

“It is you,” May says quietly, though you’ve already left the room.

A mother always knows, after all.

—

“Aphrodite,” I pleaded to the moon-drenched night sky. “Tell me; if love is meant to heal, then why does it destroy those who choose it?” From somewhere beyond the clouds, I heard the Goddess laugh. And I knew. -Nikita Gill

#made by ma1dita ♥︎#luke castellan x reader #pjo x reader #luke castellan fanfic #trouble!verse #percy jackon and the olympians

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heyitschartic · 6 months

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What do you think would've happened if Contessa simply picked Bonesaw up and put her somewhere else, where Jack couldn't reach. Like Earth Aleph. What would she do!!!

This is probably unsurprising, but I've thought about this idea a lot. First of all, I think it really depends on what Contessa wants to do with her. Really, in almost any circumstance, I could see a conversation first. Probably setting a room up so Riley feels safest, with Contessa sitting in just the right way that she looks like Riley's mom when she first sees her so she doesn't attack (similar to what she did with Taylor). She spars words with Bonesaw about capes, powers, and passengers, basically laying the ground work for how she'll start to question herself, then drops her through unceremoniously, before Riley can work up the annoyance to attack.

After that, I think Riley lays low. Maybe kills one or two people for parts she needs, but she has someone watching her who is powerful and she's probably still very unsure exactly what is going on and why. And she's been with the Nine for a while, she knows how to be inconspicuous. Her relative anonymity on Earth Aleph really helps. They just aren't prepared for a powerhouse like Bonesaw.

But things start to break down. Riley is not used to being alone and we know that she has horrible nightmares about the day of her trigger that she eases with comfort from Jack and the Siberian. Eventually all those issues are gonna start to pile up and with no one there to push them away, Riley's gonna be forced to confront. This probably goes badly. I could see her breaking down here, the stuff from Contessa's talk finally coming home to roost, and in absence of that comfort she goes and seeks it out.

It doesn't go well.

I think at this point she finally starts to catch the eye of the local heroes. I don't think they make the connection, I doubt they ever will, but they understand a dangerous villain and go to try and stop her. This could play out any number of ways, but I think in the end, Riley runs, probably doing some things she regrets. People she tried to latch onto hurt in the process and for the first time she's feeling genuine guilt about all this.

She moves around but things are getting worse for her, she's really questioning who she is and without Jack there to whisper in her ear she's not sure she even wants to be this anymore. Maybe the heroes catch up with her, and she allows herself to be brought in. In the end, finding out Cauldron's reach extends to the hero agencies even there and she willingly joins Contessa's side. Maybe she just disappears to reflect, waiting for Contessa to come out and finish their talk whereby they reach an agreement. Maybe she doubles down, bringing more destruction and pain until she feels hollowed out inside, turning to Cauldron because they're the only group she feels can redeem her.

Either way, I wish I could see it.

#wormblr #asks #Riley Grace Davis #Bonesaw #HER #Thank you for indulging me Peri <3 #I love Bonesaw so much

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cairavende · 3 months

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Worm Arc 16 first part thoughts (through defeating Dragon and Defiant interlude) cause it seemed likely there is going to be something major happening in the rest of the arc and I might as well split it here:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

MY BABIES ARE FIGHTING!!!!!

I might not have made the best choice in adopting both Taylor and Dragon

Ok so it's not technically my babies fighting. It's Taylor fighting simple AI Dragon created. But close enough.

Drone robot fucked up a perfectly good barbecue. That's just criminal.

I love that the robot sent after Bitch was basically designed to get fucked up over and over. Work with what you have.

Also Bitch was so willing to listen to Skitter! Not just listen but "come up with a plan like you usually do, we’ll make it happen"! She fucking trusts her so much! GAAAAAAAYYYY!

You put Skitter in charge and she is just instantly "Ok we're going to attack the Wards, the Protectorate, the PRT, and some of Dragon's robots. All at the same time. Cause I always gotta go BIGGER!"

I will give her this though - solo teleporting into the middle of the Protectorate and Wards (except for Clockblocker) and having Trickster swap her around while she just FUCKED SHIT UP? That was badass.

And throwing herself out the fucking window? TWICE? I'm very glad Trickster was on point there cause I would have fucking murdered him if he dropped my daughter.

Piggot trying to be all high and mighty and superior. Fuck off lady. You just a cop. You're like, the worst cop. I already called you out for having a full blown villain internal monologue in your first interlude. Some of the PRT might be trying to do right. Maybe. But you are just evil.

I will give Piggot one thing. She is good at what she does. It's just that what she does is not "leading the Brockton Bay PRT and Wards to better take care of the people of the city", but instead "be a terrible and manipulative person who would absolutely set of a nuke if she thought it would kill enough capes".

Also Trickster don't be an asshole. Being disgusted when Piggot admits she's fat and doesn't sound ashamed about it. Fuck off with that. She's a terrible person, there are so many better things to attack than her appearance.

Like the fact that she upset Tattletale! She made Tattletale sad! FUCK PIGGOT I HATE HER FOR THAT ALONE NOW!

Sticking a bunch of glass in some doors and riding around town on them oh my god. These are like, the scariest super villains in town. And they are door surfing. I love it.

Azazel is fucking fancy! I'm sad it got melted down in the end.

Dragon just needed a guy badly cosplaying as a DS9 starship for a few minutes and then she builds infinitely better shit than he ever could. Cause she is awesome.

Ok so I know it was technically being run by an AI that Dragon built but I'm counting it as Dragon. For one reason.

Skitter asking Azazel stupid questions until it broke was just a little sister annoying their older sister with really stupid questions! She starts off with some somewhat reasonable ones and just gets wild with it. It was perfect. That is the type of fighting I can tolerate from my daughters.

I'm a little worried about Imp clearly crushing on Regent. He hasn't had the best moral character in the past.

Wasn't expecting them to just *have* the city after beating Dragon. Definitely wasn't expecting that to happen mid arc.

“She’s out of it. Tattletale broke Skitter when she said we won” - GAY. Look sure there's lots of reasons Skitter would be distracted after hearing that the city was theirs and they had won. But Tattletale said it and there's something about a girl you like telling you "we won" that can just stop brain from working. Besides I wasn't getting enough Chatterbug content this arc so I'll find it wherever I need it.

So coming into this arc I had been making lots of jokes about Monarch referencing Skitter vs Dragon (both were controlling lots of minions, want to control the city, they're siblings cause I adopted both of them so they fight for the crown, etc) but Dragon is out of the city for now. So I really should have been focusing on Coil vs Skitter. Which is what I expect the rest of the arc to be.

It'll be fine.

I'm sure there won't be any issues at city hall with her dad. Nope.

PRT squad interlude (Piggot interlude round 2) thoughts:

Nilbog is terrifying but god his power is wild.

I had Left 4 Dead in my head the entire time. First thing they killed was a boomer. There was a spitter later as well. And they got the swarm once they shot the flare up for the evac.

PRT is endlessly badly managed. Given the unknowns they could have been more careful and used a better strategy. If they have the resources to wall off the town they have the resources to have done things better.

There is no way Thomas Calvert isn't Coil (more specifically becomes Coil). There is NO way. It has to be him. I don't technically have any proof but I know. It's him. (The way he is described, the way he talks, just everything about him. I could write up an entire post just on why I'm 100% positive he is Coil.)

I already knew Piggot was a horrible person to be running the Brockton Bay PRT and the Wards so this interlude didn't really give new information there. But it does just lock that down on an extra level.

Frank Miller's Armsmaster interlude thoughts:

I'm very sad I had to have this interlude from his perspective instead of Dragon's perspective. But I'll live.

Sucks to be this small town.

PRT failure again. It was made clear that the police of this town in no way expected the SH9. But the PRT knew when SH9 left BB and had a loose idea of their potential travel speed. And they knew SH9's M.O. in this situation of staying to back roads and hitting small towns. So every police department in every small town within a certain distance of BB should have known to be on alert. Like ya they aren't going to be able to stop the Nine, but they might be able to reduce losses a little. PRT is just bad at it's job. (Almost like Alexandria doesn't have the right priorities.)

I KNEW DRAGON WAS A TRUE TINKER! I HAD ALREADY MADE IT MY HEADCANON THAT SHE TRIGGERED WHEN LEVIATHAN ATTACKED NEWFOUNDLAND AND I'M SO HAPPY IT'S REAL!

Plugging my ears when I Was Insecure So I Made My Stick Even Longer Man talks about playing "ten by ten" with my robot daughter. Look she can do what she wants, no shame, but I do not want to hear about it from him if I can avoid it.

Of course Dragon knows about Cauldron. I should have expected that she did. My daughter is brilliant (and also maybe doesn't have a concept of privacy so gets all the information she can without explicitly doing something illegal and goes has a little bit of a "Big Sister is watching you" vibe).

#Worm #Worm Web Serial #Parahumans #Cairavende reads Worm #Taylor Hebert #Wolfspider #Chatterbug #Slugbug #Dragon #Frank Miller's Armsmaster #BITCH WAS SO GAY FOR SKITTER AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!#WOLFSPIDER WOLFSPIDER WOLFSPIDER #Also Bitch's continual insistence that they took down 3 robots and Tattletale eventually just agreeing was perfect. I love them both.#Sibling rivalry #Dragon is the much bigger older sister and Taylor is the annoying little sister. Obviously.#For real though the PRT is bad at their jobs. I constantly see them making poor decisions or just being horribly mismanaged.#And like they're cops so I'm not too surprised but still.#And it's mentioned that the Nine attacking small towns doesn't even always make the NEWS! Holy shit.#Like I know things are bad #but “super villain serial killers murder dozens in a small town” not even getting picked up by the media screams “PRT coverup”.#So fuck them.#Also from a certain point of view Sundancer killed a robot toddler. Melted it down to nothing. Clearly she is the evilest person in Worm. \

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sturnstvs · 3 months

Text

COVID

summary: matt ends up getting covid however his best friend has it to. maybe a sickness can turn into something more

warnings: none

when chirs said pray for nick in the previous car video and him shutting it down immediately thinking that it was just alergies, he didn't expect it to turn into a actuall sickness let alone covid-19

when nick found out he had covid, the first thing he did was tell his brothers as well as his best friend to take a test to see if either of them were sick as they had all hung out together. when it came down to the first set of tests all of them were positive except chris.

scarlet wanted to go home she really did, but at the same time that was the last thing that she wanted, she wanted to be by her best friends even if they were all sick, she wanted to get through this together. plus matt insisted on her staying with them saying that she shouldn't be alone.

he opted for her to stay in his room as it would make the most sense considering that the girl more then likely caught it on the same day that he did. what she didnt know however was the boy had harbored a little crush on the girl and thought that maybe this was the week they would be able to hopefully mend out their feelings for each other. he told his brothers this plan and they as well thought this was a stupid idea that would end badly but he insisted so they let him. which led to where they are now

the first couple of days into the quarantine was a mess, the two were miserable and couldnt even get up to eat. on around day two nick had informed them that they would each have to vlog separately in their rooms together for the wendsday video to be out in time. the others agreed which has led them to be vlogging about their days in quarintine.

scarlet was on matts bed scolling on her phone hearing matt talk into the camara about the quarintine life saying all they have been doing was sleep, play fortnite and watch movies witch was verry much true, however scarlet was getting bored of watching matt play on his computer, see she hadnt brought much for herself to do besides the few things she originaly had in her car, but other then that she was bored out of her mind.

"matttt..." scarlet winned

"what?" matt asked the girl turning around in his game chair

"im bored, can we please, please watch the eras tour movie again?" scarlet begged from the bed needing something for her to do

"again? really" matt sighed but he did feel bad because she did look really bored in his room, plus he had a soft spot for the girl

"yes, please, we can finish saltburn" she once again tried conveing him

"fine" matt told the girl getting into the sheets and pulling up youtube.

even though she was sick she couldnt get away from watching anything to do with taylor swift. as the intro to miss americana and the heartbreak prince played scarlet cuddled closer to matt making him lean into her body heat. as the movie went on he couldn't help but admire the girl laying next to him. her hair was a mess and looked like it hadent been washed in days, her skin was breaking out a little becuase of her little skincare, and she had slightly dark under eye circles, however she looked gorgeous to the boy.

she kept singing along to the songs while matt just looked at her in awe the whole time. when the cords of the 1 started to play scarlet got up to pause the TV, confusing matt in a second

"i thought you loved folklore" matt asked

"aww you pay attetion" scarlet teased the boy

"what of corse i do, now why did you pause it, is there something wrong?" matt asked concern laced all over his face

"no...you just keep staring at me like im this beautiful princess that just got out of the water" scarlet told the boy

"is that such a bad thing" matt asked once again confused

"no its just i look like a huge mess right now and youre looking at me more then you normaly do" scarlet told the now blushing boy running a hand through her hair

"i dont look at you. what??" matt defended scratching the back of his neck

"oh come on yes you do, its okay though im fine with it, if you don't want to watch this we can watch something else" scarlet told him letting the TV switch to saltburn

"scarlet, thats not what i said" matt told the girl

"no its fine"

sense neither of the two had seen the movie and didnt know what was happening they didnt even think that they were watching this movie with their best friend until a wired scene came up wich made matt immediately switch it back to youtube, wich made scarlet confused

over the next couple of days matt had been filming himself for the video witch has been making scarlet go crazy. see like matt she also harbored secret feelings for the boy she just didnt think he felt any where close to what she felt until she watched him do pushups.

"okay! thats it, i cant take it anymore, you cant just do that and expect me to be okay with it" scarlet sighed in frustration

"what are you talking about" matt asked

" first you're really wired with me while we were watching the eras tour, then you turned off saltburn, now youre doing pushups!" scarlet rabbled

" i still dont understand what youre talking about here, what am i doing wrong" matt asked really confused at his best friend right now

" because i like you, you idiot and you keep giving me these signals that you might like me back but at the same time not even egnologing im there sometimes. like sometimes i belive you actully like me then other times i think oh wow maybe he dosent actully like me and those little stares from across the room are really-"

scarlet gets cut off with a pair of lips on hers. the kiss was slow but filled with passion, she kissed back immediatly when she realized what was happening. years of pent up tension finally being realised into one kiss. matt was the first to break the kiss, his hand still on her check.

"i like you too, trust me i really do" matt told the girl leaning back in

the two kissing for about a minute longer breaking it, needing air

"is it wired that we just confessed our feelings for each other and kissed while also sick" scarlet asked throwing her head back with laughter

"yeah probably" matt said also joining the laughter

"when were not sick anymore let me take you out on a date" matt propsed to the girl

"i like that idea" scarlet said leaning back into the kiss

safe to say that they didnt get much filming done after that, and when nick didnt have as much footage for the video as he wanted he instantly called matt. and him saying that the two had finally confesed, which made nick call chris and the two exchanged words of suprise and proudness to their brother.

who knew covid would bring two people together

#sturniolo triplets #matt sturniolo #chris sturniolo #nick sturniolo #matt sturniolo imagine

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lakesbian · 6 months

Text

“I just don’t get why you want me,” I said, “I control bugs. That’s not going to stop Alexandria, Glory Girl or Aegis.”

I know I said I wasn't going to go for the low-hanging fruit when it comes to knowing turns to the camera. But this is really juicy low hanging fruit.

“Honey,” Lisa said, “Entire teams of capes have gone up against Lung and got their asses handed to them. That you managed as well as you did is fantastic. The fact that the asshole is lying in a hospital bed because of you is the icing on the cake.”

first time she calls her Honey is fucking. 2.6. in response to taylor's insecurity. [staring off into the distance] the thing about pity is that it's condescending by default

god. 2.6 is really good i forgot how much i loved seeing these little guys interacting w each toher. i think the point of lisa's longwinded explanation of how badly taylor fucked lung up probably is supposed to serve the two purposes of 1. talking her up to herself and 2. while doing so, hammering in how violent she was and setting those first seeds of doubt about her inability to continue hacking it as a hero. if that Was what lisa was trying to do, she did so very successfully, bc taylor does think:

I closed my eyes. I could see my reputation going down the tubes.

“You’d better hope he doesn’t escape,” Alec said, his voice still quiet but bemused, “Because if someone made my man bits fall off, I’d be out for blood.” Brian pinched the bridge of his nose, “Thank you for that, Alec. Way you two are going, our potential recruit is going to run off to have a panic attack before the idea of becoming an Undersider even crosses her mind.” “How do you know this?” I asked, within a heartbeat of the thought crossing my mind. When Brian turned my way with an expression like he thought he had said something to offend me, I clarified, “Tattletale, or Lisa, or whatever I’m supposed to call you. How do you know this stuff about Lung… or about the fact that I was at the Library, or that the cape was on his way, last night?”

leans over whispers to the crowd. alec isn't necessarily specifically attached to having a dick vs having a pussy but he would say this nonetheless. i love brian here i love how he is literally A Teenage Criminal but he still can't refrain from treating this like an actual job interview and becoming so exasperated when anyone is candid about the level of danger involved in being A Teenage Criminal. or even when they you know. act like a teenager. immediately worried he had done something to offend taylor! breaking out the brianisms when feels the need to help the team succeed (because the team succeeding = him being able to care for aisha). i like him. worlds first 40yo 17yo.

#wormtime 2 #wormtime 2 arc 2 #worm spoilers

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lostloveletters · 4 months

Text

Bruised Fruit Chapter 8 (Michael Corleone x OC)

Summary: The sound of no longer distant wedding bells loom in the air as the reality of Gloria's new life with Michael closes in on her.

Note: Pre-Cana is a retreat or series of courses that couples getting married in the Catholic Church attend (it varies by parish or diocese). It’s basically pre-marriage counseling from a Catholic perspective. Also, the novel doesn’t specify which battle Michael was wounded in, just that Life magazine ran the article on him at some point in 1944 and he was discharged in early 1945 after Vito bribed a military doctor to say Michael was too badly wounded for him to return to combat. With this in mind, I’m going with Peleliu, which would make the most sense considering the vague canon timeline and its high wounded and casualty rates.

Warnings: Descriptions of pregnancy symptoms, mainly morning sickness.

Chapter 7 | AO3 Link | Masterlist

Do not interact if you're under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content. I will block you.

The moka pot on the stovetop hissed at Gloria while she was looking at the showtimes for Rio Bravo listed in that morning’s issue of Newsday. Grabbing a pen, she circled a few evening showings to present to Michael. If they got out of Pre-Cana early enough, they could catch a screening of it on the way to pick up the kids from her parents’ house.

Her elbow knocked against the espresso glasses she’d set out on the counter as she moved the moka pot off of the flame and onto a free burner. One of them nearly rolled onto the floor, but she managed to catch it just in time.

The espresso glasses were a brand new crystal set she’d bought at Lord & Taylor not long after they’d moved into the Long Beach house, making the drive upshore to Manhasset with Sandra. They were technically shot glasses, but the shop assistant in the housewares department enthusiastically assured her the glasses could withstand hotter temperatures. So far, they’d held up to the three or four small pots of espresso being made in the Corleone household each day.

Michael always drank some in the morning and then in the afternoons, usually an hour or two after lunch. Al took his with sambuca, as did Connie. Sandra drank hers black and piping hot, and Tom sometimes drank his cortado, though he didn’t drink espresso after 11am, claiming the caffeine would keep him up all night otherwise. Ciro drank his with lemon, and Dominic, Al’s protegee and another newer face around the house, would drink his straight, unless Al was around, and he’d add sambuca, too. Anthony had even started drinking espresso, acquiring a taste for it at her parents’ house and shocking her and Michael one morning when he asked for some.

Making espresso for everyone was one of the few ways Gloria was actually helpful in the kitchen, otherwise leaving the cooking to one of the Corleones or their maid, Margaret. The older woman had patiently taught Gloria how to cook Michael’s preferred breakfast of poached eggs and toast so she could make it when Margaret was off on the weekends.

Al Neri had let himself in, quietly, as he normally did, though his near silent arrival didn’t startle Gloria anymore.

“Morning, Al. Michael hasn’t come down yet. Espresso’s fresh, though. Help yourself.”

Al nodded. “Thanks, Gloria.”

“Have you eaten? I’m gonna make eggs when Michael comes down, and I think we have some leftovers from last night in the fridge.”

She’d already had a plate of cold ziti for breakfast herself.

Gloria couldn’t concentrate on cooking for long enough to get any good at it, finding each step of the process mind-numbingly boring and would get distracted if she felt like something was taking too long to chop or boil or whatever she was supposed to do with the ingredients. One of the benefits of working with the casino’s restaurant in Vegas was getting free meals from the kitchen, usually extra food or untouched meals the picky patrons had sent back. Except to make coffee or heat up leftovers from work, she rarely ventured into her kitchen when living on her own.

Espresso took only a few minutes to brew, though, and she could multitask while keeping an eye on the pot.

He shook his head. “I got a sandwich from that deli by my place on the way here.”

Al had bought a house in Lynbrook with the move, only a twenty minute drive from them, less if traffic wasn’t too bad. His place turned out to be about ten minutes from her parents’ house in Rosedale, which made Michael feel better about letting the kids spend the night there sometimes. Gloria liked Long Beach, though, especially since summer was rapidly approaching and some of the seasonal places were starting to open up.

“Do you go to the movies?” she asked, eyes flicking back to the showtimes in the paper on the counter.

“Not in a long time,” he said.

“I was thinking of asking Michael to take me.”

“Ask me to take you where?” Michael asked, walking into the kitchen and giving Gloria a kiss on the cheek. “Morning, Al.”

“To the movies. We should go see Rio Bravo.”

“Isn’t that a Western? You don’t like Westerns.”

“I like Ricky Nelson,” she said. “We haven’t been to the movies since we saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last year.”

He conceded more easily than she expected. “Alright, darling. How about after Pre-Cana? We can get dinner and then go to the movies since your parents are watching the kids today.”

“Great! Oh, let me get your breakfast ready. Are you sure you’re not hungry, Al?” she asked.

He shook his head, opting for his espresso.

Michael poured himself some, and Gloria got to work on making his breakfast. The toast was easy enough, but she always felt like she could do a little better on the poached eggs. Though if Michael thought so, he never said anything to her.

Gloria wasn’t sure what to expect from Pre-Cana. Michael hadn’t taken it with Kay since they didn’t have a Catholic wedding, and the concept was brand new when Jackie and Vivian had gotten married. The church secretary at St. Catherine’s said it wasn’t exactly a requirement, but strongly encouraged, which meant that if they wanted to keep their late August wedding date, they better go.

As soon as she scooped the poached eggs from the boiling water, the scent hit her nose in an unfamiliar, nauseating way, and she clumsily dropped the egg on top of the slice of toast, gagging as she did so.

Michael and Al shared a perplexed look as Gloria ran past them into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her.

She could hardly look at the contents of the toilet, promptly flushing it. A knock at the door startled her, though she should have expected Michael to check on her when she made such a scene.

“Gloria? Are you alright?”

“Yeah I—just give me a minute.” She clumsily grabbed a bottle of mouthwash beneath the sink, filling her mouth with the burning mint taste and spitting it out into the sink. She washed her hands, accidentally splashing the mirror with water when Michael abruptly opened the bathroom door.

“What made you sick?” he asked, concern evident in his features as he took in the burst blood vessels in her face, leaving the skin splotchy and her usual eyebags even darker.

“Maybe someone left the milk out too long,” she said, avoiding his gaze as she dried her hands. “I put it in my coffee earlier, and it smelled a little weird.”

Michael was silent, staring at her for a moment before seemingly accepting her explanation. “Should I call the parish and ask them to reschedule our Pre-Cana?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. I’m just gonna sit outside. Get some air.” Because the mere thought of being in the room as those fucking eggs nearly made her gag again.

She knew Michael was watching her from the window as she made her way to one of the patio chairs next to the vegetable garden. It had been his late father’s hobby in his retirement. Everyone who lived there since had kept it up in one way or another, all friends of the family, Michael had told her. As the house had never gone to strangers, they tended to the garden in Vito’s honor. Tom’s wife Theresa usually busied herself with it. Gloria helped once in a while, though she could tell Theresa didn’t care much for her and only made polite conversation whenever she was around. Perhaps Gloria’s presence served as a reminder of her husband’s infidelity with her own sister-in-law, unless Theresa really didn’t know, and disliked Gloria on the principle of her having been Michael’s mistress. Regardless, Gloria certainly wasn’t one to snitch on such a situation, and she had no qualms about keeping whatever secrets she needed to from whichever Corleone she needed to.

Gloria kept secrets from Michael even after he told her about Apollonia. Hers was about his other ex-wife, the one who he probably wished were dead. Instead, Kay was back in New England, just outside of Hartford, to be exact. Gloria had gotten the address from Connie, who’d been keeping in touch with her former sister-in-law. Using her parents’ house as the return address, Gloria had sent Kay the colorful crafts Anthony and Mary had made in school for Mother’s Day earlier that month.

Trying to hide an almost certain pregnancy from him was becoming a near impossible task. She looked at the tomatoes growing in their vines, green in the late spring and soon to be ripe and red in the coming weeks. Michael would be glad she was pregnant, she had no doubt about that. It was exactly what he wanted, and just what she dreaded.

She brought her fingers to her temples in an attempt to massage out the dull headache that emerged. The screen door opened, and she didn’t bother to see who’d come outside. Michael stood next to her, his shadow shielding her from the sunlight that exacerbated her headache.

He handed her a glass of water. “Your head must be killing you.”

Gloria downed the water, cool droplets spilling from the corners of her mouth but paying it to mind. She set the glass down, wiping her face with the back of her hand, acutely aware of the way Michael was staring at her, deep in thought as he took in the state of her again.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I called the parish anyway, the secretary said there’s one we can go to next weekend. Think you’re up for a movie?” he asked.

She smiled. “I think I can manage that.”

“I checked the paper, we can go to the screening at two, get an early dinner, and then go to your parents’.”

“Alright, I’m gonna take a nap, then. Wake me by one if I’m not up?”

He nodded, taking her hand and kissing the top of it. “Get some rest, darling.”

The first thing Gloria did when she got to the master suite was brush her teeth, avoiding her reflection. How long would it be before she began losing teeth? She knew plenty of women who’d experienced that or hair loss or brittle bones, all a result of the baby leeching nutrients from its host.

When she got into bed, she buried her face in her pillow and screamed. So much had changed already, and the moment Michael caught wind she was pregnant, her life as she knew it would be his. There was no more hiding it, though, no possible way when there were eyes on her at all times. Every one of her soon-to-be in-laws were undyingly loyal to him in addition to the men he had at his disposal. Hell, he probably already knew.

Michael couldn’t have woken her up to go to the movies soon enough. Not that she figured she’s gotten any sleep anyway, too caught up in her thoughts to actually rest. But she needed to get out of the house and go somewhere. Maybe it’d be easier to tell him if they were in public, and she had to keep her composure.

In the theater, she focused on the movie, tried to enjoy herself despite Ricky Nelson not singing nearly as much as she’d hoped and her not caring much for Westerns to begin with. Michael had taken the time to go with her, though, and was trying to salvage the day so it wasn’t totally lost. His devotion, his attention was overwhelming at times, especially when so much of it belonged to her.

“I still don’t like Westerns, but I like that song Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson did,” she said as they walked out of the movie theater.

Michael nodded. “Dean Martin’s always good.”

“Did you get a chance to see him when he did that show with Jerry Lewis at the casino? What was it, four years ago now? It was a riot.”

“I did. Kay and I went.”

Right. Gloria hadn’t been scheduled to work the three days Michael and Kay were there. She didn’t see him for nearly a month after that and figured their affair of nearly a year was over, surprised it had even gone on that long. No hard feelings, no love lost, fun while it lasted. Then he returned to Las Vegas on business, something Fredo had avoided telling her in what he perceived as an attempt to spare her feelings. She was friendly when she and Michael crossed paths in the casino’s lounge. Less than an hour after she was off the clock, they were up in that hotel room again.

Thinking about Las Vegas felt like watching a movie itself, as though it were someone else’s life entirely. She still longed for it from her invisible cage of domesticity and privately mourned for it as if it were the greatest love of her life. Maybe it was.

“Anywhere specific you wanna eat?” Michael asked.

Gloria cleared her throat. “Maybe we could try that restaurant up the street, the one with the seashell on the sign? I’ve never been, but Janine was saying it’s good.”

“Who’s Janine?”

“Michael, she lives two houses down from us.”

“The Avon lady?”

Among their neighbors, Gloria liked Janine the most. She didn’t mind Gloria hanging out at her house a few days a week and was pretty good company. Her house wasn’t pristinely tidy, and she’d sometimes get tipsy on sherry by 3pm and end up ordering Chinese takeout or making TV dinners for her family. Or maybe it had something to do with Gloria buying something every time a new Avon catalog came out.

Gloria laughed. “Yeah, her. Mary’s going to her daughter Diana’s birthday party next month. She and my mom already picked out a gift.”

“Alright, let’s try it.”

“She said they have good Salisbury steak.”

“Salisbury steak? You must be feeling better from this morning.”

“I’m starving, actually.”

The few handfuls of popcorn she had in the theater certainly wasn’t enough to make up for two missed meals. Her stomach rumbled as they neared the restaurant, the smell of its kitchen mixed with the nearby sea breeze oddly enough to smell delicious in the moment. It wasn’t crowded for four in the afternoon on a Saturday. They were seated in a booth by a window that had a decent view of the beach.

“I’ll have a club soda, and she’ll have a rum and coke,” Michael said to the waiter.

Gloria shook her head. “Just a Coke for me, actually.”

Michael’s eyes shot over to his fiance, Gloria avoiding his gaze and playing with the corner of the tablecloth. The waiter took the hint to leave the couple alone, mumbling about giving them more time to look over the menu.

By the time Gloria let out a shaky breath, she knew he’d put two and two together, probably had since that morning. It wasn’t any easier for her to say it. “I think I’m pregnant.”

“Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?” he asked.

“My period’s a few weeks late.”

“You’re scared,” he observed softly.

“I’ve never done this before,” she half-joked.

He reached over the table, taking one of her hands firmly in his. “You and our son will want for nothing. The best doctors are a phone call away.” When he noticed this didn’t seem to assuage her nerves, he added, “I’ll be with you through all of it.”

“I know you will.”

“Then you have no reason to worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You’ve known for a while, haven’t you?”

“I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Monday morning I want you to make an appointment to be sure.”

“I sure feel like I can eat for two,” Gloria said.

Michael smiled. “Then go ahead and order for two.”

The waiter returned with their drinks, seeming to wait until the intense discussion was over. He gave them another few minutes to look at the menu, and suddenly, Gloria wanted to order everything. Even asking Michael what he was getting, a grilled pork chop with green beans, didn’t help narrow down her options.

Gloria’s Salisbury steak came with two sides, and she chose mashed potatoes and creamed spinach after some internal debate. Before the waiter could walk back to the kitchen, she ordered a plate of grilled scallops, too. One of the things she had missed about living in New York when she was in Vegas was the fresh seafood.

“What do you think of Ciro looking after you?” Michael asked as he cut into his grilled pork chop. “Just whenever you leave the house, to be safe.”

“I like Ciro,” she said. “He’s nice. Kept a close eye on us during the bachelorette party.”

“Good. I trust him,” he said. “How are the scallops?”

She nodded her approval, sliding the plate toward him while chewing a chunk of steak she’d shoved in her mouth. As far as she was concerned, Salisbury steak and hamburger steak were the same thing, but for some reason, it felt like the greatest meal she’d ever eaten. Some of it was relief from not trying to hide her pregnancy from Michael anymore, even though she dreaded the thought of what the following eight months would involve.

She glanced over at Michael. For all the rotten luck or poor decision-making in the world, he chose the one Sicilian girl without a maternal bone in her body. Then again, he always saw something in her no one else seemed to, and it even left her at a loss sometimes. For his sake, she hoped the baby was a boy, but personally had no preference and was already thinking of how often she could pass child-rearing responsibilities onto her mother. At least buying stuff for the kid and redecorating one of the spare bedrooms into a nursery would be fun.

“I should get decaf, shouldn’t I?” Gloria mused aloud when they finished their meals, ready to order coffee.

Michael nodded. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

“That stuff’s awful.”

“It’s only a few months.”

“God, and I won’t even be able to drink at the wedding,” she lamented.

“Don’t worry, most of our guests will drink more than enough for the both of us.”

“How crazy is it gonna be?”

“I’d be surprised if there were less than two hundred people there.”

“Jesus,” Gloria whispered. “Is that including family?”

“Yours and mine, and then some acquaintances and business associates as well. I figured since we’re having the reception at the house, it wouldn’t hurt to invite the neighbors.”

“Really?”

“Like you said when we first moved in, they’ll notice if we’re antisocial. Just remember to keep them at arms’ length.”

The drive from the restaurant to her parents’ house felt oddly long for a weekend, but it gave her a chance to actually think about the wedding for the first time in a while. Connie and Sandra had taken on most of the wedding planning duties of their own volition, with Gloria in charge of picking out her dress, the cake, and a band to play at the reception. The latter was a task she took seriously, wanting to find a group that could play music to her tastes and also to that of the plethora of old school Sicilians who’d expect to hear a tarantella or two at some point during the celebration.

Gloria was relieved to see Vivian’s car in her parents’ driveway when Michael pulled up. Having Jackie and Vivian around always lowered the tension between her parents and Michael. Vivian liked him well enough, even though they’d butt heads at times. Jackie and Michael carried on friendly conversations on their own. Gloria wasn’t sure what she’d have done if Jackie disliked her fiance the way their father did.

“Hey Mike,” Jackie said, shaking Michael’s hand when they walked inside.

Michael smiled. “Good to see you, Jackie.”

“Hi Michael,” Jack said. “The kids are upstairs painting with Julia.”

“I’ll go see what they’re up to,” Michael said. “The kids love that craft room.”

Jack smiled. “Good, we’re glad to have them over any time.”

Michael disappeared upstairs, and Gloria followed her family into the living room, declining Vivian’s offer for coffee. Might as well try to be responsible, though if she’d known the shot of espresso she drank earlier that morning would be her last for the better part of a year, she would have savored it more. Or at least tried harder not to throw it up.

“How was Pre-Cana?” Jack asked.

“I got sick this morning, so we’re gonna go next weekend.”

“Again?” Julia asked as she made her way downstairs.

“It was some spoiled milk. I’m fine. We’re going next weekend, wedding’s still on, nothing to be concerned about,” Gloria said.

“We just got the invitation in the mail. You can mark us as a definite yes,” Vivian said. “How many people are going to be there?”

“The guest list was a little over two hundred fifty people long, last I heard.”

“Two hundred fifty,” Julia repeated. “Jack, did you hear that? I don’t think we had more than thirty at ours, both our families combined.”

“That’s because theirs isn’t gonna be all family,” Jack said. “Your fiance’s business associates, I’m sure.”

“Dad, c’mon,” Vivian scolded, trying to keep the heat off Gloria.

“Oh, Gloria, that’s shameful if he uses your wedding day as a front for all of that,” Julia objected.

Jack scoffed. “What else is it for? A cover for all of those people slinking about for their debts and favors. Just watch, you’ll be surprised at who shows up for his generosity .”

“You two are ridiculous,” Gloria said. “That’s not what it’s going to be like at all.”

She actually didn’t know what the hell the wedding was going to be like, and it wouldn’t surprise her if Michael’s work did keep him away for some of the reception. Because there were things pertinent to running an olive oil importing company that required him to step away from family events for hours at a time. Even if he spent the day glued to her side, she was sure her parents would find something to pick apart.

Frustrated, she headed outside and couldn’t light a cigarette fast enough. Jackie followed her, though he kept his distance, standing closer to the back door than she was.

“Hey,” Jackie said. “Everything alright?”

“Just mom and dad being jerks about Michael and the wedding.”

“They’ll come around. He’s not a bad guy.”

“You really like him?”

“I don’t know what he does for a living, and I don’t really care. All I know is, this guy got transferred to my company after he got wounded on Peleliu. That article came out just before Christmas in ‘44. We got the magazines with these shitty rock-hard cookies that had nuts in them. But he said Michael was a good captain, saved his life. Some guys said it was a real shame he got discharged before Okinawa. They really admired him.”

Gloria took a long drag from her cigarette, letting out a shaky exhale. In nearly fifteen years, that was the most Jackie had said to her about his time overseas. All she knew was that he was with the First Marines and didn’t write many letters home, but when he did, it seemed like he was always on a different island and had less and less to say. After he returned to New York, he’d answer her questions with one-word responses or pretend he didn’t hear her at all.

She learned not to take his avoidance of the topic personally, though it took a while. The only person who knew the most about what Jackie experienced, besides the men he fought with–few of whom he kept in touch with over the years–was Vivian. In that case, Gloria didn’t pry, not wanting to pressure her sister-in-law to betray her brother’s confidence.

“Why is this the first time you’re telling me about it?”

“It wasn’t exactly a fucking vacation, Gloria.”

“I know that. Michael’s told me enough about it to have a clue. That’s why I talked to him in the first place five years ago, and that’s how I ended up back here. Because I wanted to understand what happened to you, but you shut me out.”

“What was I supposed to say to you back then? You were a thirteen-year-old kid!”

“I don’t know! Just…something. I missed you so much, Jackie, and it was like you left and never came back.”

“I didn’t. That’s what you have to understand, Gloria. Alright? Michael–he got fucking shot and came out of it better than most guys I know. Whatever the hell he does, he’s good at it. It’s like he can put his emotions in a box and leave them there. That’s why he’s good for you.”

“Compartmentalize.”

“What?”

“The emotions in a box thing. He compartmentalizes.”

“There you go.”

Gloria stubbed out her cigarette on her heel. “I’m glad you like him. I don’t think mom and dad ever will, though.”

“All that mob stuff’s true, huh?”

“He doesn’t tell me a lot, but probably.”

“I bet the cops are gonna be all over the wedding.”

“Oh, I can just see dad telling them all the details now.”

Jackie snickered. “It’ll be fine.”

“With two hundred fifty people there? Fat chance.”

#michael corleone x oc #michael corleone x ofc #the godfather #michael corleone #the godfather x oc #the godfather fanfic #michael corleone fanfic #the godfather part ii #bruised fruit fic

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911weewooshow · 19 days

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First time posting something like this and a bit nervous for some reason but fuck it, we ball anyway.

Okay, I had a whole idea of idea about who Buck would come out to first, and I kind of got stuck between thinking either Hen, Maddie, or maybe Bobby. But I honestly think (and hoping so badly) the first person he would tell would be Maddie and the way it is being processed by Maddie in my head is fucking hilarious. Buckle up as I try to get everything down in a coherent manner (the key word is try here)

Okay, so we all remember when Buck first came over to complain (rant really) about Tommy to Maddie. I gather it like mid-day or going on afternoon given the scene. And Buck is just going on and on about how upset he is that both Chris and Eddie like Tommy. And she just goes about her day, more than likely trying to be supportive but at the same time being very much over it (I know, well not really but I KNOW that that boy had been there for a bit). And Buck has a tendency to go into these tangents at times when he's hyper-focused on something (and there's no way she doesn't really know that, she's his sister after all).

So she just trying to get I guess lunch ready and setting the table and he just talking at her. Being utterly petty (those fucking air quotes) and making all these obviously very intimate connections with Chris's likes, Eddie's house/habits (like honestly he fucking knows what everything means on Eddie's calendar, like that... I will talk about in another post cause!!!). She ribs him even a bit as again, she is so over this conversation at this point. (and Chimney chaos agent that he is, doesn't fucking help). And I bet that Buck goes on again after that even more until he finally leaves (more like Maddie kicks him out cause boy pls.)

So we then fast forward to after the basketball game (which I know for sure Chimney complained so much to Maddie about "he make me his basketball beard Maddie"). Buck is telling her how he literally bodychecks Eddie and causes him to twist his ankle cause he is upset and jealous. And she's honestly reasonably upset at him (given her history especially) and basically tells him he needs to actually talk to Eddie like an adult.

So I imagine given that was the last bits of her conversation with Buck that day when he comes over the next day (probably super early cause I have no doubt his mind has been running since that kiss), practically glowing with post-kiss drunk vibes, she thinks it's due to something with Eddie. And for some reason, I feel like he would confess kind of similar to how he told Taylor he kissed Lucy. So all she will hear is "I kissed a guy" as his greeting which would be fucking funny (also probably due to his brain still processing, it's okay buck I get you).

Now Maddie knows about her brother's massive, can-be-seen-from-mars infatuation with Eddie even if he can't see it. And their obvious situationship from a mile away more than I feel even most people. She's tried to tell him but given how oblivious Buck is to his very blatant flirting when it comes to men, she probably decided it's best for him to figure it out for himself (and save herself the headache cause Jesus Christ).

So all I can imagine is the utter shock, the complete and all-consuming confusion of Buck explaining to her right after telling her that he kissed a man, that man in question was Tommy.

The very same Tommy that she had to listen to him complain about for what felt like a full day (probably at least an hr or 2). The same Tommy that she was told was quoted "so cool" in a petty tone by Buck. The same Tommy that Buck comes to her job (which I don't remember him really even doing on the scene) to further tell her about the disaster of the basketball situation and that he basically maimed his best friend over.

So Buck is probably freaking out a bit since the look on Maddie's face probably showcases her utter bewilderment at this whole thing and he's (as always) overthinking. And Maddie...

Maddie is so fucking confused at this point.

At this moment there are probably only two things going through her head. #1 being just white noise and "wut?" And the second (considering I'm not sure if she has physically met Tommy herself and is just hearing about him through people) is 'Who the fuck is Tommy Kinard'?

And I just find that so so funny. This is what was running through my head this morning and I just been chucking to myself throughout the day about it.

#911 abc #911 rambling #911 show #evan buckley #maddie buckley #Like imagine how confused she would be?#like someone complains to you about a person #and is being so petty about it too #and then???#they kiss that person????#like boy wut?#chimney han #tommy kinard #911 headcanons #thank you for coming to my ted talk

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lipstickchainsaw · 1 year

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Victoria/Lisa

So, the running joke here is that these two act like a divorced couple forced to hang out because of shared custody, and that's a good joke, but let's dig a little further!

Lisa is not interested in relationships for herself, in either the romantic or the sexual side. She is in no way attracted to people, but there are hints that she's still a little romantic at heart.

She sets Taylor up with Brian, for example. Now, how much of that is because of her desire to give Taylor a happy and fulfilling life to counteract her suicidal urges, and how much of it is Lisa living vicariously through other people is up for debate (and I'd probably lean on the former, personally), but let's look at it from both sides.

For the latter, despite Lisa's cynicism, she eventually admits to herself that she actually gives a shit about humanity, about people, and wants to see them survive and live. This is a conclusion she comes to at the worst possible time in Worm, and that drives much of her motivation in Ward. A part of her really does want to see people happy, including in ways she herself isn't actually interested in.

And for the former, well, Lisa put a lot of effort into saving Taylor (and is saved by Taylor in return), but, in the end, she could not stop Taylor from sacrificing herself when that seemed to be the one thing to do. This left Lisa adrift. She attaches herself to people like Taylor in order to save them, in order to make up for what she feels is her failure to save her brother (see my post about her name), but, after Worm, the loss of Taylor weighs heavy on her, and none of the people around her are doing badly enough to need her.

So instead she's trying to keep the world on the rails in her supervillain mastermind way, which is something she wants, but doesn't satisfy her, and she gets cranky because of it, and drives her friends away, and gets harsher in the choices she makes for the world, spiraling without anything to grab onto, to help her focus.

And then Victoria comes back.

Victoria's spent two years in the hospital, and another two years barely living, going through life as if by rote. She's deeply uncomfortable in her own skin for Amy related reasons, and not particularly happy with her power, also for Amy related reasons, and also not exactly willing to think about herself being in a relationship, also for Amy related reasons. Sexually, she is interested in guys, but a lot of this is because she has some seriously conflicted feelings about any potential interest she might have in girls, for, well, three guesses.

Throughout the early arcs of Ward, Victoria finds some zest in her life, and comes back to life, finding her passion in heroism, and that's because one of the villains of her old hometown, one of the catalysts for the Amy situation, one of her own failures, comes right back to poke at her, and is she going to let her? Absolutely not!

The relationship that forms following that is mutual antagonism, with Victoria not wanting to just let this villain ruin more lives, and Lisa incredibly annoyed this ill-informed hero starts getting in her way of saving people. Both of them are wrong about each other, of course (Lisa's motives are more altruistic than Victoria is assuming, but Victoria is absolutely right to stop Lisa's more callous tendencies).

More importantly, however, the mutual antagonism is healthy for them both. It gives Victoria a goal, someone to spite, and the antagonism and the barbs are honestly a kind of security blanket an almost safe way of dealing with her personal vulnerabilities, and Victoria hones Lisa's focus, with someone who can actually hold her to account when she starts messing up, and someone she starts giving a shit about, despite her own reluctance to get there.

They don't come up with the idea of working together themselves, because the hatred is genuine, but both their teammates are more willing to cross the hero/villain gap, and, eventually, they become each other's first thought when they need someone on the other side of that divide.

As things go on, they settle into some kind of weird absolutely not friendship, where the barbs never stop, and they don't even stop being genuinely mean, but they're also safe, because they know each other well, and their hatred of each other as 'evil villain' and 'ignorant hero' both softens and hardens into 'this bitch is so close to doing it right, but she just has to be an asshole/idealist'.

And the fun part is that they never stop doing this! They just start hanging out together more, without this making them like each other more. Them hanging out together changes how they view the world, and it makes them both better at their side of the 'keep the world together' job, but they never fully resolve this conflict, even when they both start mentoring the same teen superhero/villain team.

Which is why they have bitter exes vibes throughout, and it makes for a great relationship dynamic.

A: I love it

#ask game #parahumans #lisa wilbourn #victoria dallon #worm #ward #this one became a bit of a ramble #so if it doesn't make sense #i do apologise

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justzawe · 2 years

Text

ZAWE ASHTON

Through writing, actor Zawe Ashton is slowly shifting her role from object to subject.

Words by Hettie O’Brien. Photography by Pelle Crépin. Styling by Holly White. Hair by Bjorn Krischker. Makeup by James O’Riley.

FILMS ISSUE 45

The work of a convincing performer is to make a practice of disjunction, blurring fact and fiction until it’s no longer clear where the performance ends. Zawe Ashton, an actor and writer from East London, has been performing for so long that she sometimes feels as though she has “just woken up.” “There has been this eye, this gaze, that has followed me since birth,” she says. This is what it is to have grown up as a child actor, an experience that would be strange, were Ashton to have ever known anything different.

It’s only now, at the age of 37, that Ashton feels she has managed to “reshuffle the cards,” as she puts it. We’re speaking over Zoom: Ashton from the northwest London home she shares with her fiancé, the actor Tom Hiddleston, and me from an office room that I describe, when she asks, as a “Zoom booth.” “Are they the new thing? They sound sexy,” Ashton says with characteristic provocation. “They sound like the new location for a fresh scandal to me. It happened in a Zoom booth!”

There is a sense that runs through Ashton’s work of someone chafing at the limits of their discipline. She is best known in the US for her role in Velvet Buzzsaw, a satirical horror film set in the Los Angeles art world in which she starred alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. She grew up in Hackney, East London (her parents were both schoolteachers; her mother is Ugandan, her father English) and attended Anna Scher, a theater school in Islington that banned the words “star” and “fame” from the classroom: Stars burn out, Scher taught them, but the career of an actor persists regardless of fame.

Ashton’s first notable role was in the British kids’ TV show The Demon Headmaster. In her early 20s, she took bit parts in crime dramas and hospital soaps; her break came when she was cast, at 27, as the chaotic, drug-taking, straight-talking student Vod in the series Fresh Meat. One article from the time suggested Ashton was “the coolest thing on TV right now.” But Ashton felt herself growing increasingly frustrated. “I hit a wall in my life—whether it was burnout, or [an] existential crisis, where I was like, Hold on a minute . . . . I’ve spent the past 30-something years performing, and I have no idea who for.”

What Ashton really wanted to do, she tells me, was to be a writer. In the basement, her mother still keeps a box of the stories Ashton wrote as a child, including one, from when she was six, about a dinosaur having breakfast with Elizabeth Taylor. “I think language, and how surreal and expressive language is, has always been part of my wanting to be in this world.” So, alongside her acting jobs, Ashton wrote a play. For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad centered on the experiences of Black women in the corporate workplace and was praised for its darkly comic study of prejudice when it was staged at the Hackney Showroom in 2019.1 She also wrote a pilot for a TV drama about a woman having an early midlife crisis. “I was treated extremely badly at the hands of television executives,” she says. The pilot was passed over, and Ashton “put it in a drawer because it was just too traumatic.”

A book agent read that defunct script, and asked if Ashton would consider authoring something longer. “It’s one of the hardest, best things I’ve done,” she says of the resulting book, Character Breakdown, a playful, tragicomic account of an unnamed protagonist’s acting career. “So much of my life has been scripted; so much commitment has been to saying other people’s words and inhabiting other women,” she explains. “I thought . . . I can sit down and write this without anyone giving me permission.” Writing was an opportunity to stop acting—for a while. Ashton spent some time living in Margate, a blustery seaside town popular with people priced out of London. She nicknamed the book, which took two years to finish, “the cockroach in the nuclear disaster of my life.” For a while, it felt like the only continuity she could grasp at.

Character Breakdown defies the very definition of the word order—it is composed of fragmentary conversations retold in a weaving chronology. The protagonist receives different character synopses that are irritatingly sexist (a silent woman in a civil rights protest, a sexy spy, a dead body on a mortuary slab). She takes calls from her agent, sips lukewarm wine, changes her hair to appease casting directors and remembers being bullied at school after first appearing on TV. It is loosely fictionalized: Ashton says that if the book seems like an “actor’s memoir,” she has “done something very wrong.” “It was an attempt, or an opportunity, to try and crack open the difference between fact and fiction before slamming them wholeheartedly back together again,” she explains.

Although magnified in the acting industry, the banal occurrences of casual misogyny and racism that Ashton’s protagonist endures resonate far beyond the book. “Thinking about acting became like a blueprint for a way that I could look at my experience as a woman in the world,” she says. She missed her publisher’s first deadline, a misstep that turned into a gift. By the time Ashton submitted the manuscript, revelations of sexual violence in the film industry had started to break. “Me Too really reframed my writing completely, because I thought, No one is going to want to hear from an actress about stuff that’s gone down and how it might relate to the wider world. And suddenly it was all anyone wanted to hear.”

We’re speaking a month before the release of Mr. Malcolm’s List, a sugar-frosted Regency rom-com in which Ashton plays a lead role. The film revolves around the wayward schemes of Ashton’s character, Miss Julia Thistlewaite, and will please anyone who enjoyed Bridgerton.2 In period-drama obsessed Britain, it would have been unthinkable for a mixed-heritage British woman to land this role even five years ago. The multiracial elite portrayed in Mr. Malcolm’s List is a fantasy that omits the reality of colonial racism in Regency Britain, casting actors of color as dukes and duchesses. “There is a lucrative market . . . . for the depiction of racial difference in the absence of racial inequality,” the British author and journalist Gary Younge recently wrote of Bridgerton, taking issue with the genre. Ashton is critical of this argument. “What’s crazy is there’s only a handful of [similar] shows,” she says. “When you get real diversity is when there are so many . . . . that some can show one aspect [of history], some can show another aspect, and this is a spectrum.”

The protagonist of Character Breakdown reflects that “nothing good comes of being visible.” Together with this film, and her forthcoming role as a Marvel villain, Ashton seems poised to become the kind of highly visible celebrity who occupies a different plane of existence: rich, distant and chauffeured.3 Yet that’s not how she comes across in person. She is open and disarming, throwing back bigger questions to those I ask. I wonder if she enjoys the control of writing in her own words, as opposed to speaking those of others. “It doesn’t even feel like control,” she says. Ashton tells me about the American visual artist Lorraine O’Grady (about whom she made a film for the Tate). “She wanted to play with the idea of being subject and object,” Ashton says. “You want to shift the lens, shift the perspective on your work and life as much as you can. And that’s how I feel.”

#zawe ashton #kinfolk magazine #interview #article

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sirjuggles · 1 year

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Worm Reading - Part 6, Arc 6 Tangle

Ah we’re lying to dad again. Can’t keep this up forever. Also can we give a shout-out for a sec to Danny for being so incredibly supportive and understanding? He’s a single dad, his teenage daughter has been going through heart-wrenching trouble at school, she gets caught in a terrorist attack and wounded badly enough to be bedridden, as soon as she’s better she starts disappearing and not coming home for long stretches of time with little details about what she’s doing, and through it all he’s just like “I love you and I’m worried about you but you do what you have to do as long as you stay safe.” Like ok admittedly she’s super not safe, but he’s trying his best and giving way more than I think you could reasonably expect from someone in his situation!

Hrmmmm while reading the news, we get “...a brief update on a twelve year old girl that had gone missing two weeks before the ABB situation started, that was now presumed dead...“ Maybe my literary paranoia is too high, but sentences like this one set off my alarm bells like a TV News Report in the background of the diner talking about a “mysterious new virus sweeping the nation.”

Uh-oh Lung’s still at large, even without his eyes. So it’s almost like his power is working on a grander scale here: every time Taylor has fought Lung she has violated his body on a very personal level (intentionally or not), and this is only going to serve to make him a more dedicated enemy for her.

Actually, hah, I don’t know if this is really a thing among villains, but at this point Skitter is legitimately Lung’s Nemesis! She is the one who keeps foiling his plans and leaving him broken!

Building furniture with Brian. Seems like he’s got a nice apartment. Awww Taylor has such a crush on this guy. God between her mom passing away and the bullying at school she has zero romantic experience doesn’t she? Oof that’s such a tough time. Hope she doesn’t do anything too stupid...

Oh Aisha is a problem. That’s a girl who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut and enjoys attention. Alarm bells ringing, she is gonna get herself into something.

Alright, we have a dangerous mission proposed. I really don’t see any good that can come of this. The opportunity to meet the Boss as a reward feels like something that is being dangled specifically to convince Taylor to stick around. I’m wondering how much of that is Tattletale knowing more than she lets on. I’m not yet fully convinced that I’m wrong on the “Tattletale is Boss” angle.

Oh ok we’re just diving into a party fully of superheroes. Uhhhh this feels massively unwise.

Well, honestly this has gone more successfully than I expected, and still seems to have completely failed.

Ok we knew Armsmaster was a badass but he is very clearly on a whole different level when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. Dude is Batman with fancier weapons.

Ooof got out of that one by the skin of their teeth!

Oohp fight has moved to the parking garage! Can I just say, the Travelers are absolute nightmares in a fight!! I don’t know what their whole social drama is, but they have such a potent combo of distraction + offense that it is legitimately scary.

Oh. So the mysterious Boss was Coil. Ok, that’s... kinda obvious in hindsight. Almost anticlimactically so.

Interesting. So, if Coil is to be believed, he is basically right on the edge of successfully controlling the city. To hear him tell it, it sounds like a perfect solution. My biggest concerns are that he seems to be implying that individual teams such as the Undersiders and other capes will basically rule over their own territory. That is a sketchy form of governance, and is easily open to abuse. Also, he makes it sound as though a disorganized Protectorate would be a non-issue, but I’m not convinced that such a large national organization is going to sit by and just let a villain rule a whole city like this.

Oh Wow confrontation with Danny. That just sucked all around. The worst part is... I think I mostly sympathize with Danny. Just like I said before, he has been incredible supportive and flexible for his young daughter while being kept completely in the dark. As a parent that’s a nightmare scenario and he has given more freedom and understanding than many parents would. I get that Taylor doesn’t really feel like she has a choice, she can’t tell him the truth, but... I can’t help but wonder what would happen if she did? Of course no parent wants to hear their kid is a villain, has fought and hurt people. But after all the love and support he’s shown, even when she lashes out, I can’t help but think that he could maybe begin to understand that just because she’s not a Hero doesn��t make her a Bad Guy. Though to be fair, objectively she is committing crimes and hurting people, as much as Lisa would like to brush over that. It’s really easy to get taken in by that narrative isn’t it?

Interlude 6: Canary - Yeesh this is nightmarish. Though of course, in this case as in real life, the real nightmare is the justice system and incarceration system!

As soon as we heard the descriptions I went “OH it’s Lung and Bakuda! Honestly, they’re both monsters, but I do kinda hope they pull this escape attempt off.”

Yeah Bakuda is a psycho but you gotta give her credit for being tough and having determination. Almost got out of that truck too. It was a good plan.

I think I like Dragon.

Yeeeeesh that is a... shame of an ending. Like I said, both Bakuda and Lung are monsters but... in a story like this, they’re both entertaining monsters in their own way. I have some very small wonder as to whether we’ll see either one of them pop back up again at some point. That ending was not technically explicit for either one of them.

#Parahumans #Worm #Wormblr #Wildbow #Worm Readalong #Mine #worm spoilers

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grandtheftaristotle · 1 month

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Hey so I was inspired by @likeadevils's brilliant album reworkings to do one of my own cause I LOVE finding new ways to procrastinate on homework

I decided to do Speak Now cause it's one of my favourite Taylor albums and while I think the current order is great, it was a fun challenge to try and come up with something else. So here's what I have!

So first of all, I think I’m gonna call this rework The Story of Us. Not only is Speak Now the song not on this version, but The Story of Us fits these vibes better Each song is its own contained story that forms an overall narrative, kinda like folklore.

Timeless: It feels so much like a closing track that it gives off a nice ‘end at the beginning’ vibe. Also parallels nicely with the closing track.

Sparks Fly: I like the idea of the earliest written song on the record being track 2. Although she rewrote it to be less naive, I do like how Foolish One could be its answer. Also it leads into…

The Story of Us: ‘How we met and the sparks flew instantly’. Too obvious? Nahhhh. I like that it foreshadows the heartbreak of the later album but frames it in an upbeat way so as not to let us down too much. Plus the awkward party element leads us nicely into the next track.

Enchanted: Is it the same party? A later party? Not sure, but it continues the vibes of the last song, while also offering one last little piece of fairytale whimsy and romance before the latter half rips our hearts out.

Mean: As you can see, I am not adhering to the track 5 rule lol. But this is a set up for Castles Crumbling and Innocent, with the talk of fame and the different ways of responding to criticism.

When Emma Falls In Love: This song kinda makes me insane when I think about the context in which Taylor wrote it. She was dealing with everything surrounding JM when she wrote the line ‘she won’t lose herself in love the way that I did’. The last line (‘between me and you, sometimes I wish I was her’) is a GREAT set up for the next half of the album; it establishes everything Taylor didn’t do in these relationships and the person she wishes she had been. Part of me wants to do another rearrangement with this as the opening track, cause again, that last line.

Back to December: We have an excellent lead in with Emma; ‘I wish I was her’ and then a song about how badly she screwed up a relationship. Plus, the rest of the album is like an explanation of why she screwed it up. We’re slowly zooming in…

Last Kiss: Almost a flipped perspective of Back to December? I’m a little shaky on this placement, I almost feel like this song and the next could switch places, but idk how I feel about Last Kiss and Dear John back to back. Therefore, the next song is…

Ours: Getting into another relationship after heartbreak, one that others don’t approve of but that makes her happy. It’s a love song, but an understated one, not as bombastic as Sparks Fly or as sweepingly romantic as Enchanted. Cute, but careful.

Dear John: THE AFTERMATH. Christ. The parallel of Emma and the result of Ours and the events that led to Back to December. The fireworks line is a slight parallel to Sparks Fly and The Story of Us as well. It’s a moment of triumph amidst the heartbreak. ‘I lost you, but I’m still shining for the crowd. Oh wait…’

Castles Crumbling: AND NOW SHE’S LOSING THE CROWD. The formal demolition of her fairytale outlook and the parallel to Mean. She’s living in the big old city, but the big old city’s getting tired of her. It also looks ahead to the last track, where she hopes to be remembered regardless.

Haunted: I just like that we have Enchanted on the first half and Haunted on the flip side. She’s no longer enchanted by a stranger, she’s haunted by someone she thought she knew well. I also like how the word haunted works with Castles lol.

Innocent: Even on the OG record, I feel like this should’ve gone after Haunted if just for the ‘you and I walk a fragile line’ ‘lost your balance on a tightrope’ of it all. On some level I get why she didn’t cause it would’ve been this song and then Last Kiss, which, ouch. But anyway, I know this is about Kanye but FUCK that guy so now within the narrative it’s her talking to herself (just ignore the 32 part). Even after everything she’s been through she’s still an innocent, and it’s not too late to regain her balance.

Foolish One: Again, kinda shaky on this placement, I feel like it should be earlier in the second half. But as is, it’s a parallel to Sparks Fly where she’s cautiously optimistic about a guy; that song was sung by the voice in her head she talks about here. It’s also a follow up to Innocent; you may be innocent, but it doesn’t mean you have to be foolish. PLUS it’s a little bit of a hope spot after all the heartbreak (‘the day is gonna come for your confessions of love / he just wasn’t the one’). As an aside, I am fully convinced she added that line for the rerecord. She sings the rest of the song in a higher register matching her voice in 2010, but for that line she lowers her voice closer to her current register, making it seem like it’s her future self talking. Plus she recorded that when she was still with Joe; something something ‘this ain’t our fairytale’.

Long Live: Our moment of triumph!! After Castles Crumbling, this is where she says ‘hey, even if people run me off, we’ll still be remembered’. Parallels our opener both in title (Timeless / Long Live) and in subject matter; she and the guy weren’t timeless, but the legacy of her and her band will live forever.

BONUS TRACKS

Better Than Revenge: Really my only justification for this is that I couldn’t fit it on the main album but if she hadn’t released it in 2010 we NEVER would’ve gotten it. Plus it being a bonus track gives off the vibe of ‘oh you thought you were off the hook??? You thought I wasn’t gonna write about you??? Lmao fuck you’.

If This Was A Movie: Similar justification for this as with Better Than Revenge; since she kinda rebranded it as a Fearless song with the rerecord, if she didn’t put it out in 2010 we may not have gotten it at all (she wrote it in 2009 so I don’t think it could’ve been a Fearless vault track either). That said, it fits the ‘story’ themes of the album so I think it works. Plus I like how it interacts with BTR; from pure unfiltered rage to ‘BUT I’D TAKE IT ALL BACK NOW’.

Mine: It KILLED me to leave this off the main album, it really did. Maybe one of my all time favourite songs of hers. Part of me wants to switch this and Timeless, but I also like the idea of having Mine as the last track just because of how it rounds out the album. The narrator is very disillusioned with love at the beginning, so it could easily be taking place after this string of heartbreak she experienced throughout the record. I also love how it ends with ‘hold on, make it last’; after being burned so many times, she finally starts to believe in love again and the notion that they could be forever. The way it interacts with Timeless, which was a portrait of very idyllic fairytale romances that last forever (love letters during a war, forbidden lovers eloping, two people growing old together), this song focuses on the more mundane parts of life that still make up a beautiful relationship. Also if we’re thinking about this as part of her album timeline, the next album she puts out is Red, so we go from ‘there’s a drawer of my things at your place’ to ‘you’ve still got [my scarf] in your drawer even now’. OW.

And as vault tracks we have Speak Now, Superman, I Can See You, Never Grow Up, Electric Touch, and Battle. Because I’m still a little offended we never got an official version of that song :/

#taylor swift #speak now #ttpd prep #maybe?? doing this helped me to find interesting parallels between the songs so I think it counts

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newx-menfan · 1 year

Text

X-Men Monday with Erica Schultz

Spoilers!

🚩

“Later, in college, one of my best friends (still to this day) was a huge Marvel fan, and when I fell out of reading the books, he would always catch me up on things. Thanks, Kevin!” 😳😬

….🚩🚩

“I’ve read all her solo series, so I don’t know if I have a favorite. I like All-New Wolverine as it introduces Gabby, Zelda, and Bellona. It also allows Laura to branch out a bit. Tom Taylor was the writer, but there was a revolving door of incredible talent on that book. David Lopez, David Navarrot, Nik Virella… the list goes on and on. “

“I also enjoyed Mariko Tamaki and Juan Cabal’s work with the stories showcasing Gabby’s relationship with Laura. And who can forget Jonathan! Diego Olortegui, Marcio Fiorito, and Georges Duarte were also contributing artists on that run. It was interesting to see the Cuckoos and Old Man Logan, and even Deadpool show up.”

😳😳😬😬

….🚩🚩🚩

“That was the assignment. I was given the option to do a story that was set in the past to help flesh out some more of who Laura is.”

😳😳😳😳😬😬😬😬😬😬

….🚩🚩🚩🚩

“In the Utopia era, one of the things that made Laura feel ostracized from the younger X-Men like Bling was that she had no social graces. She was basically a feral animal. This was on display when the original X-Men came back from the past and Laura and Warren started a relationship. So Laura’s honest (like Tech in The Bad Batch), but she’s not entirely honest with herself. If she were, then she’d have an easier time understanding the uneasiness felt by her peers during this time.”

😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

——————————————————————— Yyyyeeeaaaghh- none of this sounds very reassuring 😬.

I personally tend to have low confidence in writers who aren’t comic book fans/more in the “comic book culture”- maybe that’s an unfair judgement call and “gatekeeping”… but the America Chavez solo series by Gabby Rivera, Chelsea Cain’s Mockingbird, and the MCU blatantly STATING they don’t want writers who read the comics ON THEIR projects are all PRIME examples of how often this goes BADLY 😬.

The fact that Schultz cited Taylor and Tamaki over KYOST (her CREATORS) or even Liu (who a lot of fans really LOVE and the fact that this story is supposed to take place during her solos time period…) ISN’T a good sign. Tamaki was undoubtedly the weakest X-23 book and it kind of shocks me ANYONE would mention it honestly…. It makes me think this will DEFINITELY be “Tamaki 2.0” and revolve around the SAME facility story beats instead of something actually creative. 😬

It’s also a bit weird to me that Schultz focuses more on the art than the actual writers…I’m not saying they weren’t amazing…but it seems a bit strange since the writing of Laura and the canon should be her primary focus…

I find the fact that she was ASSIGNED the Utopia time period also troubling…because there’s plenty of writers who would have LOVED to do Liu era Laura! Whether you agree or not- Liu’s solo is beloved by a large subset of fans and seen as their “iconic” Laura… Liu admittedly did some really great things in that series and her Laura was really complex and interesting! To basically talk about it like you would talk about a homework assignment…isn’t great. 😬

Hell….Craig Kyle is literally going on Twitter, BEGGING Marvel to let him write Laura again!

The BIGGEST RED FLAG to me though has GOT to be talking about Laura being “ostracized” (again…who BESIDES Surge ostracized her Marvel?!! That’s literally just ONE freaking person??!! Mayybbbeee Hellion and Rockslide in the beginning of NXM…but even THEN Mercury was telling them to knock it OFF…and Julian and Laura later were best friends. LAURIE was more bullied than Laura in Academy X! WITHER and SURGE were more ostracized than Laura EVER was! Come ON!!) and talking about the O5 and her relationship with Warren…

NO X-23 fan liked “All New X-Men” Schultz. 😐🙄. NO long term Laura fan thought Warren was a good boyfriend or liked Laura IN THAT BOOK! And what’s up with the random Bling mention? Like I like Roxy…but literally no one immediately thinks of HER when they think of “New X-Men”…? She’s a Milligan creation…When did Bling ostracize Laura? Did Schultz get Roxy and Noriko mixed up?? Does Bling appear in this book? Like why are you dragging poor Roxy into this mess??? She literally did NOTHING except not want to be X-Men canon fodder??!!

“During this time, Julian is an important part of Laura’s life, but he’s only really in a flashback panel or two, if I’m being honest. Laura has to do some self-care in this series, and that means cutting herself off from pretty much everyone in order to find where she’s really going to fit.”

OH THANK GOD!

At the point that we’re going into “Laura was ostracized by the NXM and never had ANY real friends at Xaviers” song and dance AGAIN…I would rather not have Hellion set foot in this book…!

All I can really say about this is…. I REALLY really hope Hellion is back with Wind Dancer in Krakoa era and has just chosen to opt out from all the Laura drama at this point, instead of being dragged in every time writers need “poor sssaaaaaddd maligned Laura” ! 😳🙄

“If I’m thinking about it in the grand scheme of comics, I don’t think any relationship is ever dead. I mean, how many times have Rogue and Gambit broken up and gotten back together? Storm and T’Challa? Scott and Jean? Scott and Emma? And don’t get me STARTED on Hawkeye and his escapades! So I think there’s always a chance for Laura and Julian. Whether or not I’m given the go ahead to make that happen, I couldn’t tell ya! Not that I can’t tell you, it’s because no one has told ME yet. Hahaha!”

I find it HYSTERICAL Marvel gets asked pretty much ALL THE TIME about Hellion during Laura projects….they know it’s super popular…and STILL they won’t do anything with it despite knowing it would sell 😐. You’re basically outing yourself Marvel by saying Hellion and Laura is on par with Jean/Scott, Scott/Emma, and Rogue/Gambit…some of your most ICONIC comic book ships you have. 😐

Hellion and Laura are honestly NEVER going to come back, the same way DC comics will always find a way to screw over “Young Justice” and “Wally West” in their books- it’s nostalgia from an era older comic book fans hate. YJ doesn’t deserve the respect “the New Teen Titans” does…because it happened in the 90’s instead of the 80’s AND because the team is made up of second Gen sidekicks instead of first Gen…

Hell the animated series couldn’t even be BOTHERED to feature the REAL YJ cast as the main protagonists…it was instead filled with classic Teen Titans.🙄

NXM and the characters from it will always have a black mark despite their popularity, because it’s not “Grant Morrison”…or “Generation X”…or “New Mutants”…

The ONLY possibility of Hellion EVER being ALLOWED to be back with Laura…is if the MCU chooses to feature him as a love interest in one of their movies or shows…and most likely Laura ISN’T even going to be in the MCU, just like Miles Morales hasn’t 😐.

“Hi Larisa, so Haymaker is an interesting villain. They’ve been a part of Laura’s story long before Laura even knew it. One of the things we explore in this arc is collateral damage. Haymaker/Jordan is just that type of character. Their life took a dark turn and their rage led them to where they are.

This story has a lot of healing in it. It also has a lot of pain. And it’s never comfortable to confront your past and try to make amends while still maintaining your pride. Let’s be honest, Laura is a prideful gal. So there’s going to be a lot of kick-ass action, and Laura is going to be put through her paces, but she’s also going to have to reconcile some of her past actions and how that affects others.”

Sooo it’s “Orphans of X”/Alex Cimini/Henry Sutter…taking some kind of serum…probably related to Laura and Logan’s healing factor…

Great. 😐

Overall the writing so far doesn’t ASTOUND me. Laura’s voice feels pretty “meh” and the art is pretty so-so. It’s not even Marjorie Liu levels of writing at this point. I am predicting this is going to be another forgettable and most likely skip-able “X-23 mini”.

It’s sad, because I think Laura has run essentially into more or less the SAME “clone” rut Superboy and Bey Reilly ran into….

Every story about Laura revolves more or less around the facility OR clones/Laura DOUBLES.

Her only consistent villain is perpetually Kimura and facility copies.

Her identity and story CENTERS around being a clone, instead of trying to branch out a bit by focusing in on her relationships with the NXM, NYX crew, Avengers Academy kids, ect…

There are other things you can DO with Laura, she’s not “out” of possible stories…but you would think it considering how writers have treated her the last few years. I will give Liu this, at least she TRIED to step away from Facility drama with the Hooded woman/enigma force/ect. The problem is- modern writers don’t WANT to be creative. The don’t want to have to break away from the “female Logan” or “clone” overused storylines. Even if it is making Laura’s character obsolete and forgettable.

Let’s be honest, Tamaki’s “Robo-Lauras” was the beginning of the end in, “How much can we stretch the clone/shadowy facility” storyline. At this point….just bring back Craig Kyle, Marvel. It may not be perfect…but it will probably be better than this 😐.

Maybe I am judging it too harshly (in my defense the “pitch” Schultz gives in the interview was pretty DANG awful!)…but nothing in this interview reassures me it’s gonna be good.

#aipt #Erica Schultz #x23 deadly regenesis #deadly regenesis #x 23 #x23 #laura x 23 #Laura Kinney #x men #new xmen #new x men #Marvel #academy x #new x men academy x #cringe #Spoilers

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booksandchainmail · 1 year

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Pale 7.8

Because Avery and Lucy were good at doing. Verona was good at the practice but not so good at the hairy situations.

At some point the three of them need to talk about how they all feel like they're each letting the other two down

Avery looked so wounded, somehow. Because of Laila?

that and being literally kicked aside

The feelings rolled over Verona and she wasn’t really equipped for it. She thought of her dad and how she’d left him.

I guess this is the flipside of how Avery commented that experiencing Verona's memories feels muted.

If she’d taken another path- if she’d stayed home, bit her tongue, got her dad that frigging flat ginger ale, changed the sheets, and let her friends go back, maybe let them go back without her, she could have helped out more at the perimeter.

Verona is really beaten down here. I get why she's fixating on how she could have stayed in Kennet and been dutiful instead of chasing what she loves, but I think being stuck at home, in a place she feels she can barely breathe, hearing secondhand about everything Avery and Lucy were learning, would hurt her worse. Not to mention how she'd feel knowing they were in danger and stuck far away.

And because everything's gone so badly now, she's not giving herself credit for how much her skill with the practice has been useful in setting up basically every ritual and diagram they've made.

He was going to fight them and it would be disastrous.

Toadswallow... he really is a good teacher

If you want a laugh or you want to be sadistic? He’ll be way more fun to go after than I will. I just shut down, guys.

"My trauma responses make me uninteresting to torture" is such a fucked up defense. Like, good on Verona for finding a use for everything, but man that's bleak

“I thought the brownies would carry you off, Miss Hayward,” Bristow said, as a brownie crawled up to his shoulder. It hissed. “And you made a challenge.”

welp, him knowing about it makes things considerably harder. I'm not sure what they can do, particularly if he knows he just has to wait Verona out for a few hours. I think at this point it might really be depending on Avery

“She’s not a real member of the family, she’s not privy to our methods, and, funnily enough, I wouldn’t make her wear that thing.”

wow, Musser is managing to be a dick to literally everybody

“This kind of knowledge doesn’t come with the package, or with the clarification as they refine their Self, as if they were taking progressively smaller chunks of clay out of their raw Self, to create more detail,” Musser said. “He’s either killed practitioners, or he’s seen others of his kind get bound.”

... or someone told him?

Everyone else is too complacent, too selfish, too wrapped up in what they’re doing.

... and Bristow isn't too selfish?

I have to ask, if you knew to the point of certainty that the well being of the world hinged on working with a man like him, would you?

very Taylor Hebert of you there

He’s good at heart

doubt!

It will take time and education and meeting the right people to get him to a better balance. Losing the right people, even.

... I am reluctantly forced to acknowledge that it sounds like Ted might be speaking from experience here, of knowing Bristow in another timeline

“We need a tyrant for a moment, and he has it in him to be a true hero. I know this in a way I couldn’t possibly convey to you.”

yeah. Blech!

A music box played a full concert in plonky, artificial instrument sounds. America hummed tunelessly along.

oh upside! If they're in the new building with America, that means the goblins (and maybe Avery, Zed, and Jessica?) have a way in.

The nine-ish minute intervals allowed her to keep track of the passage of time.

2.5 hours, more or less. Barely an hour to go until the deadline

“If I got two hours to watch TV, it meant two hours, and if I went a second over, then I’d have the same two hours with the music box, which usually meant a cold dinner, after.”

“And my mom is not horrible. I have a roof over my head, food, education, practice, and opportunities, thank you,” Talia said. The reply sounded automatic.

:( :( :(

Hadley reached over her head, sticking out a finger, and poked Estrella in the side. Estrella didn’t react. “Tickle tickle.” Estrella swung her hand down, lightning-fast, for a full-faced slap on Hadley’s face. Hadley shifted feet around and sat up, looking at Estrella, bewildered.

unfortunately these antagonists are fun. Gore-strewn violent girl who always seems to be moving and fae practitioner who specializes in those who have gone static is a nice combo. Also, the fact that Estrella's family was killed by witch hunters and Hadley spends her free time hunting them... could be a point of connection.

“The dead can be touched as necessary. But it should be respectful and mindful, not just of the quality of any materials, but of the sentiment for the dead. One day we shall be dead and we should be so lucky as to be made useful after, and treated with respect in the process.”

very harrowhark-core

A knife, black as night, almost invisible against the dark blue sky, except for the fact it was glossy.

oni knife throwing!

Kind of played off of ideas like how if a superhero on TV had a forcefield that let light and sound through, it shouldn’t protect against sonic or light based attacks.

you can take the wildbow out of the capefic, but can't take the capefic out of the wildbow

A sharp stomp of one high-heeled shoe crippled the goblin on the floor. “Again!” it cried out, voice high. “Again, please!”

lol

The goblins charged the table. Dolls intervened, the goblins bowled through the first dolls, started to pick themselves up, and headed for the table again. Estrella had to tackle them to protect the music box, and in the process, they wrapped Bristow’s underwear around her face.

I like how goblins keep turning these fights into slapstick

America kept going. So Verona did too, one eye wincing. If Lucy got hit, she’d- she didn’t know what she’d do. But it wasn’t pretty.

Torn between liking how Verona panics at Lucy potentially getting hurt, and disliking Lucy potentially getting hurt

Verona’s hand changed. One large cat’s paw, very nice, and cats paws had claws, and claws could cut binding. Or maybe not, but she was riding a high and buying her own bullcrap and it worked. The claws cut through the cordage.

catgirl mode!

“I leave, I’ll only protect myself, nothing aggressive unless I must, and I’ll avoid seeking out circumstances that force my hand. I’ll get my younger brother and we’ll step down from any fighting for the time being. I so swear.”

Oh this is a good angle to pursue. A lot of Bristow's allies seem to have defaulted into it, if they can convince them to act neutral that's a big improvement. And I'm all for arguing for clemency if/when Alexander regains power.

“And I want to stab you in the boob. Sorry hon. That’s my condition.” “You could stab me in the leg to make it even.” “I don’t want to make it even. I want to stab you in the boob.”

broadening my "goblins keep making fights funny" statement to include goblin practitioners

Verona saw Avery come running. She braced for the incoming hug better than Lucy did.

Zed, wearing his power glove, gave it a tap. The battery icon flashed on and then went to full.

incredibly useful bit of practice

She’d let Bristow do his thing and gainsay her. Hoping to hear some key words. Or rather, to use the apps that she’d bookmarked after trying to open lines of communication with Tashlit. One of them was speech to text and text to speech.

oh fuck yeah! I mean, I'm worried this might be similar to the brownie trick that backfired earlier, but good planning

“Or are your words true, and you’re pleased at this final outcome that you got with the help of the staff? You, grateful to the brownies, with all the implicit danger that comes with that expressed pleasure and happiness?”

hahahaha get fucked

“This is my first of three challenges put forward to you, regarding our back and forth,” she told him. She hung up and ended the message.

*mic drop*

#booksandchainmail reads pale #pale #wildbow

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whatiwillsay · 8 months

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I like Taylor’s music and I like Olivia’s music. I like Sabrina’s music too, I don’t care about their personal beef. But I actually don’t feel that sorry for Olivia with the Taylor situation. She learned a hard lesson about intellectual property rights. Taylor was legally in the right. Was it a bitch move? Maybe. It’s not like she needed the money. But also it’s not just chord progressions and songwriting credit, Olivia talking so much about being inspired by Taylor was also about attaching herself to Taylor’s image and fan base. It screwed her because she did basically publicly admit to everything Taylor’s team was able to use to ask for profits. But Olivia did also materially benefit, a lot, from the association with Taylor, and Taylor’s early support of her. It kind of seems that Olivia thought she could have these things for free, and was badly surprised to learn otherwise. Rightly or wrongly, music is an industry where you have to pay your propers. The funny thing is, even if the feud really is as deep and bitter as we’ve been led to believe, Olivia is also going to benefit from that! She does make good music, but there are plenty of people who make good music. But she’s now going to receive sympathy votes (so to speak) in addition to being set up as a kind of anti-Taylor who’s younger and cooler and got burned by the mean HBIC, but is also forever associated with a titan of the industry. It will always generate a certain amount of interest for her.

i do agree in general that it's very dog eat dog out there and liv had to learn that the hard way but at the end of the day i think taylor had the room to extend some grace and kindness and didn't and that sucks.

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thegoldenavenger · 1 year

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[first] [prev]

part three of the Swiftening where i listen to all of Taylor’s albums so i can better connect with my swifty friends and also because i just spent like 7 days sick and would now like to not remember that

We are still on Taylor Swift’s self titlet album from 2006. Last time we listened to A Place in this World, Cold as You, and The Outside. I really liked A Place in this World and The Outside as songs that aren’t necessarily romantic! Even if The Outside was a little confusing with some of the phrases used as lyrics.

The next song up to bat is Tied Together With A Smile

oh the violin intro is back that’s nice!

Ahh it’s a 2nd person pov that’s so cool! My good friend sapphicscience let me know she interpreted The Outside as a kind of Not-Fitting-In-With-Others(girls) kind of song, which, in retrospect makes a lot of sense. luckily i fit in with my eclectic friend group so i didn’t relate much to that reading BUT i like that the theme is carried on here because this feels like a classic kind of “you don’t know you’re beautiful” kind of song except instead of an unattainable boy telling you that it’s taylor swift! that’s fun!

okay not a second person pov but still cool because she’s doing that like, uh, this is an incredibly niche example but chara-as-narrator-theory where taylor is narrating your experience but is still a character in the narrative. it’s actually really fitting with Teardrops on my Guitar, where she is pining from afar and not really noticed AND the previous track The Outside where she is set (physically?) a part from being able to reach out and communicate. She is separate from the subject of the songs narratively and here she is separate from the subject of the song through her choice of POV. it’s a nice theme and reflection on the album!

so because sappicscience let me in on the highschool-ness-of-it-all i’m gonna go ahead and say this is, like, either taylor talking about herself but removing the perceived closeness of personal pronouns by singing in a semi-2nd person pov, OR she is dedicating this to the other Weird Girls by commiserating with these experiences?

i said before but high school and teenagerdom is a liminal space where everything feels super intense all the time probably, so it makes sense using language like “jumping into [high water]” and it be a metaphor for, like, diving head first into experiences you’re unsure about. (retroactively, those lines about ‘not caring if she’d died for you’ and ‘you should’ve noticed now it’s too late’ does make sense in a dramatic teenage feelings way? it was just jarring at the time) it definitely isn’t my first instinct to interpret it this way because i think Taylor Swift’s high school experience was very unlike my own but that’s okay.

i think she might be just singing about herself but from a removed perspective creating a narrative that can be projected on if you’re so inclined. I could definitely see this being about stress about her first album and singles and be worried about her performance, but it could also easily be about that quote unquote gifted kid burnout and such

where elementary school and/or middle school you’re doing great (and it doesn’t have to be academically, it could be socially or physically) and then graduating to higher grades starts stress testing your ability to continue being good at things. gifted kids can burn out academically, jocks grow out of their sports, social cliques start rearranging, etc. so “the golden one” could be a metaphor for anything when your a teenager, honestly, so anyone could theoretically relate to this song, especially because feeling unseen and like you’re showing a brave face but feel badly enough that other should be able to see that you need help is a really relatable feeling. OH that’s what The Outside meant, okay I see it now.

ooooh i love this line. It couples nicely with A Place in this World’s “I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve” but adding a more jaded angle. giving away love like extra change is an awesome metaphor. like, the images it implies. giving away love as charity? throwing away this major piece of yourself like it’s insignificant. sharing a part of yourself in a way that’s not detrimental to your own life to help someone else in an impactful way. from the context i think it’s more like, tossing a coin in a wishing fountain hoping to attract more (love) as opposed to like, giving your change to someone begging or busking as an act of charity or appreciation, because i... wouldnt want the almost disparaging tone to reflect on her views about giving as charity?

the way it’s phrased is like, “you’re naive to think you would get back what you’ve given” which isn’t the point of charity so i hope that’s not the metaphor.

ohhhh so yes most definitely like throwing change in a wishing well, or blowing on dandelion fuzz.

okay, lyrically, i really LOVE this extended metaphor. “it’s not his price to pay, it’s not his price to pay” is so good. this really gives off, again, that investment in a relationship where both parties are not getting the same that they put into it. IE taylor is giving and is not receiving enough, if anything, back. penny in the rain is a good way to phrase it, and it ties that weather theme from previous songs back into this one.

the outro is repeated chorus

i do like a lot of the world play in this one, not just the change metaphor but “you’re tied together with a smile” is extremely good. it’s a four minute song but i wish we got another verse instead of two choruses. i think it’s some of the best writing so far in the album. definitely a sleeper favorite.

that’s a way to end the song.

Now onto Stay Beautiful!

Cory! who’s cory? i’m so glad i don’t know a cory or this would be a Teardrops on my Guitar song all over again.

so normally I would say, i don’t understand how you can compare a smile to a radio but since we’ve established in A Place In This World that radios (and blue jeans) are comfort items for Taylor we can appreciate these lines!

Cory’s eyes may or may not be green but they’re definitely wild and enticing possibly hot and his smile is nostalgic and comforting like turning the radio on in your own beat up truck (about to take the road less traveled by)

this isn’t fair because i’ve listened to Our Song already (of course) but my first thought was the “tappin’ on your window” as a thematic couple with this. i think Our Song is near the end of the album or the end of the album so i wonder if there’s continued window-themes in the intervening songs? The Outside has windows as an implied theme, i think. Outside-looking-in often evokes window images even if they aren’t in the lyrics explicitly.

this is interesting! i wonder if it’s another “you better cherish him because i would if i had him” song like Teardrops on my Guitar but from a slightly different perspective? it looks like taylor is already with Cory, because he’s whispering songs into her window and the other pretty girls are jealous.

oh no, that’s really cute? so the pretty girls on every corner are telling Taylor that she’s beautiful and she’s gonna be someone?

wait, so azlyrics has the quote around “does he know?” end quote and then it leaps into what i’m assuming is the chorus so is, taylor telling the pretty girls they’re beautiful and gonna be someone and that she wants them to come back to her?

she bounces back to cory now, so maybe the chorus was about cory? i guess she was meaning it that way because she goes back to the chorus without any other characters intervening in the story. that’s totally fine but a pretty interesting way to phrase it, since it really gives off pining vibes instead of together vibes. which, i thought taylor and cory were together since he is, once again, whispering songs into her window.

oh it is a pining song, they aren’t together i guess. ahhhh the potentiality of it all. potentiality / potential energy is my FAVORITE trope in relationships. i love that pause before the actual moment. the suspense, the build up. the spaces between my fingers could be filled with yours, but we don’t know if they will be! it’s just a possibility!! nice

so i guess she’s waiting for him to live his life and everything before realising that what he was looking for was right there all along. another very classic country vibe. i do like the positivity of it all. there’s so much well-wishing here, it’s very wholesome content. less melancholic than Teardrops on my Guitar. again, the same theme of not speaking up and telling him she likes him. at least with drew it was understandable because he was already dating someone, but cory seems like he’s unattached?

interesting the communication barriers in taylor’s music.

i do want to say that this bit in the chorus is healing after the change metaphor last track. having so much love is beautiful! it’s not naive or childish. :>

Should’ve Said No

the title is concerning, i’m concerned

The opening is familiar, but i think it’s the country instruments being played in a country song instead of subverted or replaced or remixed is pinging my nostalgia cortex

oooh break up song! i really liked the relatively hopeful streak of songs we had about commiserating and well-wishing, but this sounds like it’ll be cathartic! still concerned about the song title.

this is NOT helping my amount of concerned with the song title...

obviously datemate has done something terrible and shouldn’t have so what is it. nothing done (directly) to taylor since she had to find out about it.

it’s about cheating! okay. much less concerned about the title. and i was right! this is a bop of a chorus!! very, like, carrie underwood-esque i’m about to tear up your nice car. can definitely imagine this on a karaoke roster. i hope she gets a little vengeful about it!!! one of my favorite country genres is the woman-scorned-revenge song!!

good to see she is carrying on the theme of sticking to her guns from Cold as You. do not let him back! good job! back into the chorus and i will say

this flows so nicely. rhyming word with her’d is hilarious but work and it feels very “i heard through the grapevine” i really like how punchy it is too. really gels with the tone and mood of the song.

oh NO

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

im ending this here im having EMOTIONS

#the swiftening #long post #taylor swift live blog #taylor swift 2006 #im very sorry for the ending my url is the goldenavenger what did you expect #i cant believe im going to be doing a st/ony edit to taylor swift music in 2022

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