#those Archaeologists done fucked up

[emacrow]

When Danny hides his corpses along with Elle and Dan.. those fucking Archaeologists are persistent little shits then shenanigans happens..

He hide them in the Antarctica, where barely any humans goes beside a couple groups of persistent scientists living there and the hidden society of cannibalistic humaniod yetis....

There was no way anyone could find their bodies under 60 feet of snow and frozen millennium ice...

Ancients be damned 4 months later, danny felt a disturbance in his hidden grave only to see History News found 3 preserved corpses perfectly intact in a solid crystallized looking coffin the God damn Antarctica.

Took him a solid 5 days to find the right God forsaken headquarters of those Archaeologists who already send their bodies to gotham...

He about to flip his lid, especially as it was getting to him very badly... by how sleep deprived his ghost side was being to the point that the disturbed.. eldritch part of his very being was slipping a bit..

Then the truck driving with their corpses got stolen by some low grade wanna be villain by the name of 'the penguin'.

Who has his goons trying to break the crystal coffin into pieces with how priceless it beholding.

Danny brought Elle and Dan into this because he doesn't know gotham and three heads work better then one with the search out.

By the time, they actually found the Right fucking Hideout; because how many fucking hideout does a fucking penguin needs.

They were too late by a fucking hour, because of course something had to take their coffin.

Penguins already look arrested and it seem Batman got their coffin, whom had sent it to the Watchtower to get analyzed after they found a heart beating after 40 minutes to the batcave..

Danny wanted to ghost screamed by then...

(Wayyy later in the plot that I'll never finish)

Constantine whom is about to drinking scotch whiskey before it slapped by the ghostly eldritch child who shoving an glowing green smoothie in his hands for the 3rd time.

He look at them with a begrudgingly look who glares back at him with the similar mom glare looks before he sighed and drink the smoothie.

He ain't admitting it taste so much fucking better then his usual whiskey for shit.

Meanwhile Elle is enjoying having a younger halfa to bother even if his core is all types of fucked up and looking worse then a apple that fell off the ugly tree, got shredded by a wood chipper, mashed back together and then peeled off by a potato peeler before stomped on.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"EUROPEANS ATE GROUND-UP EGYPTIAN MUMMIES!!!! ALL THE TIME!!!"

sounds much more dramatic than

"Europeans sometimes consumed ground-up Egyptian mummies, or fluid found inside the chest cavities of mummies, or a type of tree resin that became associated with mummies because it kind of looked like the bitumen used in the embalming process, or the dried and ground flesh of very specific European dead- most likely a bit of all of the above at various times in various places. but it's hard to say what the proportion of each was- and at least one early Middle Eastern physician, Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi from modern-day Iran, also advised the use of the Body Cavity Liquid variety hundreds of years before the first documented use of mummy by Europeans. so it was a medicinal thing in the areas from whence the mummies came, too. unsurprising seeing as a lot of cultures- including Europeans -have done Corpse Medicine with their own people for centuries. there was also been pushback against the medicinal use of mummies in Europe since at least the 16th century; it remains unclear how popular the notion was at any given time. so the answer to Is This A Good Symbol For The Effects of European Colonialism In Egypt remains a resounding 'ehhh...?'"

"because the whole idea is, is it not, that Europeans were literally consuming the dead bodies of a non-European people who would have had no reason to sell their dead without a European market. and that's kind of true! there was a market that created a demand! but they were also already putting the bodies to these uses closer to home before Europeans started, because this whole thing began with both Arab and European doctors misinterpreting other Arab doctors who were talking about the medicinal qualities of tree resin. so really it's not as simple a situation as we might like to believe."

"and Mummy Brown paint is like this whole other situation where it was supposed to be made from ground-up mummies but often wasn't because Cost-Cutting, and a lot of artists didn't really like it anyway, and others used it thinking the name only referred to the color, and one time Edward Burne-Jones attempted an Egyptian funeral for a tube of Mummy Brown paint because he was so horrified with the origins, so while that's a more straightforward as an Oh Shit Violent Colonialism situation, people merrily waltzing into shops and buying one tube of Dead Egyptian Person, please, my good man! wasn't quite as widespread as one might now think"

"for me, the more compelling image of Europe Fucking Egypt Over is that of a white archaeologist peering curiously into a pit where Egyptian people are working tirelessly to excavate a tomb, their names to be lost to history in favor of whatever rich white person they toiled for. even that image is not without complicating factors- I, imagining it, am a white woman who cannot ask those Egyptian men what they think and feel about all their role in all this -but to me it seems more reliable than the VERY complex and often misinterpreted history of the mummy trade, even as I understand it after like an hour of research"

"on the OTHER HAND, does it even matter if people in the Middle East were already doing mummy medicine, when Europeans increased demand? does it even matter if Europeans felt bad or at least grossed out about Mummy Brown paint or if it wasn't ~always~ real mummies? maybe it doesn't! maybe my instincts as a history worker to say It's More Complicated are clouding my judgment on the nature of colonialism! or maybe they aren't! or maybe different people will think I'm right or think I'm full of shit and that's just the nature of doing public history on The Tungles!"

"anyway I have COVID and should probably go to bed now"

"this article and the Wiki page for Mummia are very well-sourced"

[senseiwu]

As a Garmadon fan, seeing some of these people talk about Wu and Misako is fucking insane. Like, I’ve always been pretty indifferent to the two of them, not because of anything they’ve done, more just because I don’t find them all that interesting (to me). But damn I do not think they deserve some of the hate they get. People get fucking unhinged going on rants about how they’re bad people or whatever when all of their evidence is just twisting the truth or making shit out to be worse than what actually happened? Like, yes, Misako left lloyd in a boarding school for bad boys, do I think that was a mistake? Uh, probably. Perhaps a different school would have been a better choice, but whatever. She had Lloyd’s best interests at heart when she did so. It was not out of malice or anything but people just. Don’t get that. It’s so stupid. Anyway. Point of this: keep up the good work. Stand up for those two little Lego people, and don’t let the morons out there get to you. They are stupid and it shows

You wanna talk about unhinged?

A few years ago, back when Tumblr group chats were a thing, we had a lil one of Wu fans, cause it was nice to talk about him without getting crap. One day, we were talking about how depressing all the hate in the tags was, and a few of us made posts asking people to calm it down just a bit.

Some people thought this was hilarious and started posting more stuff, and some even sending awful asks.

Like bro??? Over a lego????

I just freaking hate seeing things get twisted, and my favourite characters getting painted as the villains in nearly every scenario, when it's just.... not true

Yeah, leaving Lloyd at Darkley's wasn't the best move, but we literally know nothing about Misako's situation at the time, other than Garmadon was succumbing to the venom or was already in the Underworld, and she knew Lloyd would be the Green Ninja. That's IT. We don't know if she HAD other options.

Also, it's really weird when people compare taking your kid to a BOARDING SCHOOL to leaving them at an orphanage???? Those are two different things???

And I wish people would stop saying she left him to "go exploring" or stuff like that.... she left him to research the prophecy. To find out all she could, maybe even stop it.

And since coming back into Lloyd's life, she's been there constantly.

Plus. She's an ARCHAEOLOGIST. That's so bloody cool.

I don't know where I was going with this but thank you for your message. I hope you're having a nice day.

Here is a Misako and Lloyd hug :)

[frasier-crane-style]

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a blockbuster so uncreative that it has two separate skybeams in it

Actually, what it really reminds me of is The Forbidden Kingdom, you remember, that movie where Jackie Chan and Jet Li finally teamed up, only it was all focused on some douchey kid? This is the same thing--the Autobots and Maximals finally team up!--only it's all about some douche. Because representation.

I'm serious. The Maximals are barely in this movie. The Autobots aren't in it much more. But we get a lot of this random dude, whose sole characterization is that he's from Brooklyn. Brooklyn! He's from Brooklyn, you guys!

Could it be? Are these characters in... GASP... Brooklyn?

There's also this chick, who delivers each line like she just bit into a sandwich. It makes you miss the days of Michael Bay. Sure, the actresses he cast couldn't act either, but at least they weren't 5/10. Let's admit it--the CGI model is hotter.

The plot makes no sense and is cobbled together from older blockbusters, which slightly made sense. Unicron--you know, Galactus for robots?--eats the Maximals' homeworld. He's trying to get today's MacGuffin, the Transwarp Key, which the Maximals hide on Earth in prehistoric times. Earth: The Transformers' junk drawer. Is there a single fucking widget those damn bots own that they haven't stashed here?

Now, Unicron wants the Transwarp Key because it will allow him to travel to other planets and eat them. The Autobots want it because it will let them go home to Cybertron (this movie is in continuity with Bumblebee, when they all left Cybertron).

This compels a few questions. How did Unicron get to the Maximals' planet if he can't already travel through space? Why can't the Autobots just return to Cybertron the same way they got to Earth? The movie says that Unicron is 'trapped in another galaxy,' presumably since the Maximals left, which I think the movie says happened a couple millennia ago. This seems like a short amount of time to devour every world in a galaxy, since Unicron says that he's starving--maybe he can only get around at sublight speeds? In which case you have to wonder why he can't travel FTL, but his minions can easily make it to Earth. Shouldn't Unicron be able to travel in the same manner his minions do?

Anyway, you know what all this means. Our heroes have to find two halves of the plot coupon*. The bad guys get the plot coupons instead and use it to summon up the worse guys with a portal, allowing for an endless stream of faceless CGI hordes. Rhinox has no lines.

*("This is some Indiana Jones shit," our Brooklyn protagonist from Brooklyn helpfully notes, since the movie is desperately trying to do MCU style meta humor--lots of characters talking about how silly it is that they are interacting with giant space robots)

The movie even rips off the scene from The Avengers where Loki astrally projected to talk to Thanos. Same exact visuals and everything.

Also, it's Representation now, so the first twenty minutes are about how our protagonists are oppressed by jerky white people who do evil, oppressive things like refuse them medical treatment unless they pay their hospital bills and not give them jobs because their references are bad. Which makes it unintentionally hilarious that Brooklyn guy is the first minority lead in a Transformers movie and the first protagonist to meet his Autobot buddy by grand theft auto instead of buying a car. Brooklyn!

The movie also really wants you to know that just because the Maximals came to Earth in prehistoric times, doesn't mean they created the Nazca Lines or anything. Which, bizarrely, is done by the archaeologist lady saying they must've created the Nazca Lines and Optimus Primal saying that humans did it. So... I guess she's racist for assuming Indigenous people couldn't create the Nazca Lines? It's one of those daft moments meant only to do numbers on Twitter.

Oh, and GI Joe shows up at the end. It's supposed to be one of those 'Samuel L. Jackson meets Tony Stark' moments, but that Snake Eyes movie flopped (and the movie is set in the 90s for no reason, so anyone they get would be retirement age if they did a movie in the present day), so they just give Brooklyn guy a business card that says GI Joe on it. That's the big surprise cameo. A business card.

[behindthesemasks]

11

One slow tear started its trek down her cheek.  How long she had wanted to hear those words after he had left the first time, yet they had never come.  It had never been spoken, but she knew what he’d done with Nic after Preston and Peru.  She was not a stupid woman, nor was she ignorant of the type of life her cousin and his friends led.  This tenderness though, this is what she had craved since she had seen him on the plane and while she had been livid in the hospital it would have destroyed her if he’d turned and left once again.  That’s what people did in her life, they left…or tried to kill her.

Words seemed to fail her; the silence that stretched on in the room was all encompassing.  She knew Klaus was waiting for her to say something, anything, but her heart and mind were at war with one another.  A broken heart is a delicate thing and she was not sure that she could take another blow to it from him after the last time.  On the outside she may have appeared to have shrugged off the pains of the past, but that was just a mask she wore so that no one would feel sorry for her.  Inside she was a mess.  Her trust was destroyed, her heart shattered, and the loneliness so overwhelming at times she felt as if she was drowning.  On the outside she was a self assured business woman, professor, and archaeologist; that’s what masks do, they hide the truth of the matter.

Still, the honesty and emotion in Klaus’s voice could not have been missed.  He wasn’t a man who asked, he was a man who took what he wanted and it had always been something that had drawn her to him.  Now he was asking, which meant that he was as broken as she was; unsure of his footing in this dance they’d been doing since the plane.  For him to have put voice to that, it spoke louder than any words he could have used.  Gently her hand lay upon the one that was at her waist, her fingers softly sliding between his as they stood there.

Her voice was choked with emotion when finally she found the words, “you never came back.”  The emotions changed in those four words.  Bitterness, hurt, anger and pain.  Each word held a different one and they all were meant to cut the one they were aimed at. 

Her breath caught at the last word, the name she wished to truly never hear again.  Anger flared anew within her at the man, as if he had not done enough destruction, it was his coming into her life that had destroyed one more thing.   A second tear formed and began to fall, this one born of anger and regret.  “I didn’t know…”  Her voice was soft, achingly so and Klaus longed to be able to see her face and dry the tears he could hear laced through her voice.  He wasn’t sure that she’d allow him to though.

The words were a knife to Klaus; the emotion she had put into them having accomplished their mission.  She didn’t know reality, but in her eyes this was the truth.  “I did.  I was just too late.  Preston had already…” He couldn’t even finish what he was going to say, guilt and regret that had been eating at him for over two years was now ripping him apart again.  Damn it, this wasn’t like him but there was only so much he could hide, and he was never good at hiding things from her.  His arm tightened around her slightly, his head pressing against the side of hers; there were no words to express what he was thinking and feeling.  He could only hope that she had some clue; as well as she knew him, he thought she would.

“I told Nic not to tell you.  I didn’t want to ruin your happiness, or what I thought at the time was at least.  Then there was Peru…and that plane….”  His voice broke and he hated himself.  Hated that he couldn’t control his own damn emotions.  He was a fucking trained killer and at the moment he was a mess.  This wasn’t like him, but damn it he couldn’t…wouldn’t hide shit from her anymore, but it didn’t mean he had to like it one bit.  Could he have backed up and closed the world off, hiding everything behind a mask of anger and hate?  Yes.  He’d done it before, fuck he’d been doing it since he’d found out she was married to someone else.  And that had been part of what led to them being in this situation now.

Mel felt as if her heart stopped.  Klaus had been in Peru?  Nic had never told her, nor had her grandfather.  Why had they never mentioned it?  They knew her ache…   Slowly sliding her fingers from his, she turned to face him.  Blue eyes, wide and slightly shocked, searched his face for some sign that he was lying.  That what he had just said had been to evoke emotion and was not reality.  Every emotion he was feeling was etched there, reading him was as easy as a written page.  The only time she’d ever seen him like this was when they were in private, only she could open him up like this.  What she saw there stole her breath.  “You were there?”  Barely more than a whisper, her voice still held so much emotion, but this time it was not accusatory.

His eyes dropped and a thumb ran over the scar on her neck where the assassin’s bullet had gone through Grant and grazed her.  His eyes closed as the memories of that day flooded his mind.  The fear and anger once again palpable to him.  His jaw clenched before he got control of himself and his eyes once again opened to look softly down at her.  “I’m the one that kept Nic from getting himself killed going after the bastard who hit you.  I was in that plane Mel.  Every single moment from when Nic pulled you in till you were in the hospital.  Then we went hunting…”  He didn’t need to finish that thought, she knew what they did.  That was how she knew who most of the men on the team were, they’d been in and out of her family’s mansions around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and even deep in the Bayou at a couple of the hidden ones.  “But again, I was too late when I got back…”  His eyes darkened and his jaw clenched, he didn’t regret hunting down the ones who hurt her but he hated that he hadn’t waited for those eyes of hers to be open before he had.  He should have done something, said something, to let her know…which is why he would lay his soul bare now.  At least then she’d know, even if she hated him for all of it.

[sideprince]

2, 8, 12, 27, & 48 for Snape, please! It’s a lot, feel free to pick and choose if you don’t want to answer them all :)

Someone else asked 2, 8, and 12 and I answered them here so I figured I wouldn't rewrite them again :).

27. Their guilty pleasure

I think he likes good food, especially sweets. He doesn't like indulging in things he enjoys in front of others, though, so he has a stash of treats in his office or private room and will eat second and third helpings of dessert alone in the kitchens in the middle of the night when he's done patrolling. This is compounded by how precious Dumbledore is with his own sweet tooth, always having treats in his office and his password always referring to some confection or other, and I think Snape hates the idea of making his sweet tooth a part of his personality so Dumbledore's whole thing makes Snape want to be even more private about it lest someone think he's also being precious.

I also think he likes good food in general and has quietly learned to become a great cook. Having grown up in poverty he always values the availability of quality and interesting ingredients and spices. (He definitely tastes things he's intrigued by while he's experimenting with potions, like the archaeologist who has to lick things they find.) I think he goes into the kitchens late at night sometimes just to do a bit of cooking for himself, but doesn't share this with anyone. It's a guilty pleasure because he doesn't feel entitled to it, he has some lingering guilt around it from his childhood (like with all things indulgent and pleasurable), and while he doesn't resist indulging in what's available to him, he also doesn't want anyone to see him doing it or even know about it. He likes it being something that's private and just his.

48. Scariest moment of their life

There's a lot of meta around about Snape being indoctrinated into the Death Eaters the way a radicalized youth is into a hate group or a vulnerable person into a cult. These kinds of groups bring people in by making them feel safe, valued, and seen. And then there's a moment where the recruit has cut ties with their friends and family and support networks and pledged themselves to the group, and all that attention that's been heaped on them starts to suddenly abate and become pressure and implied threats. Suddenly there are clear implications that they're in now, there's no way out and they have no one left to ask for help, they're reliant on the people they trusted and are now vulnerable because of. That moment when they turn around and realize the door was locked behind them and they didn't even notice.

I think the moment when Snape joined the Death Eaters and realized what they were capable of and willing to do not just to their targets but to those from their own ranks who were disloyal, and that he was even more alone and friendless and vulnerable than before he joined, I think that was the scariest moment of his life. Followed very closely by that feeling being exacerbated by the threat to Lily - but by that point he had gained some footing in that world and had become an asset to Voldemort so he would have had more of a sense of personal safety at least. There's something about him going to Dumbledore, who he didn't trust to ask for help for just himself (probably because of his lingering distrust of him after the werewolf prank) that makes me think Snape was beyond fucks at that point. He was willing to throw caution to the wind and something in him, a kind of bravery he hadn't been able to muster for himself, was with him. So I think the moment Lily was threatened was only the second most frightening for him.

When he was alone, committed to this group of people who he realized were violent, powerful people who brought him in to take advantage of him, not to appreciate him like he had thought, and he suddenly understood what they really were, and that Voldemort wasn't a visionary but an unhinged yet immensely powerful wizard, and he couldn't find his bravery or a way out, I think that would have been the most terrifying moment of his life.

[nehswritesstuffs]

except I walked out on you when your hair was starlight

I’ve been thinking about this potential theory for a long while now (I mean, like, since last year) and I can’t help but think that it’s one of the wilder things that might come even slightly true because it just aligns perfectly with what we currently know about the Monkey Dads just being very distant fathers who end up pulling the same shit.

9122 words; pure crackfic unless proven otherwise; has anyone else thought of this bc pls where are you I want to talk to you if you have; this is very much not my usual fare when it comes to relationship and family dynamics so don’t expect, like, actual parenting; I very much expect this to be considered null and void within five chapters of canon (very specifically 1084 lol) so pls humor me okay; is it canon compliant? We’ll find out; general warning for timeskips and me just making shit up

except I walked out on you when your hair was starlight; All Dragon wants to do is bring about a more just world by exposing the World Government for what it really is. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to deal with a child’s bounty poster that looks disturbingly like his ex. [9122 words; alternate interpretation as to why the Buster Call at Ohara was the last straw]

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“You shouldn’t be here,” Clover said. Dragon shrugged casually at that.

“You’ve never been upset to see me before,” he reasoned. The young man casually leaned on the desk, giving the scholar a smirk. “I’m here to see Olvia. She around?”

“Even if she was, why would I let you see her?” Clover huffed. “Last time you were here you nearly got bodily fluid on priceless tomes of knowledge.”

“I am not the first person to have gotten lucky in this tree, and you’re just jealous it was never you,” the young man smirked. A certain platinum blonde then caught his eye and Dragon made his way around the desk and over to her side, done with pleasantries. “Old Man Clover’s bullying me.”

“Now why would he need to do that?” she wondered idly.

Oh, she knew.

“He’s jealous,” he offered.

“Professor Clover is one of the most renown archaeologists in the entire world; what would you have that he could be jealous of?”

A functioning libido, but they weren’t going to go there with other people nearby.

“Maybe,” she smirked, “I’ll have to study this condition of yours. Make sure it’s not… lethal.”

“Read my mind; pick you up at seven?”

“Seven-thirty—there’s a meeting I can’t skip again.”

“Fair.” He leaned down and pressed a light kiss against her cheek, a giggle getting out of her before walking away. “Seven-thirty!”

“Oh, and Dragon?”

He turned around, only to see the library in flames.

“Run.”

Gasping for air, Dragon sat upright in his bed, his body slick with sweat. He shakily looked around the room in the darkness—Baltigo, not Ohara.

Besides, Ohara burned ten years ago.

After turning off his alarm—it was fuck-all ‘o clock—Dragon decided it was good a time as any to get a head start on his work for the day. A full day of work would make him sleep solidly, and solid sleep meant no dreams, and no dreams meant no ghosts. He put his feet on the floor and shivered—there was nothing that could be done about the chill that seeped into the base, no matter what they did to prevent it.

The base was usually quiet around this time, thankfully, allowing Dragon to slip down the corridors relatively unnoticed. There was always the skeleton crew that kept an eye on things at night, but even they knew better than to bother their commander with anything more than a polite nod unless it was a real emergency. He was able to get to the showers and stood under the spray for a whole ten minutes before actually doing anything.

Did he feel guilty? Of course he did, but Ohara wasn’t coming back, even if its knowledge was all saved.

Then again, that’s why they were there, he reminded himself as he scrubbed his face. Ohara had been the last straw and now someone was fighting back. He’d told Vegapunk those years ago that it was because of Clover… because of the severe loss of knowledge and human life… but really… how many wars over the course of history had been waged for a woman?

Fuck.

In the end, an ex was just an ex, weren’t they? They both moved on. He had moved on.

So why was it getting to him?

Clothes, a shave, some coffee; before long, Dragon was sitting down at his desk, the dawn twilight not yet creeping across the sky. He looked at the pile of papers that had been placed in a very important pile since he’d last been in his office and grimaced—something told him he would have given the top spot to that organizational freak Bart had he known there was this much fucking paperwork involved with running a revolution. Taking the top one off the pile, he slowly started to clear out the backlog that admittedly had been growing for a few days at this point. Getting lost in work was usually fairly easy for him, and yet, he couldn’t help thinking about the real reason why he founded this seas-forsaken venture…

“They said you didn’t eat breakfast!”

Dragon snapped out of his daze as a tray was placed on his desk, culprit tilting his head in curiosity. Fuck the kid could move quieter than a cat.

“Oh, thank you, Sabo,” he said, blinking heavily. The kid’s bandages had recently been taken off and he could see the fresh burn scars, pink and shiny and raw; it pissed him off every time he saw it, and not because he hated the kid. It was almost impossible to hate someone who brought him coffee and a sandwich at… ah, shit, the sun was well past being up. “Iva hunting me yet?”

“Nah; they said they were gonna let you relax today,” the boy replied. He looked at the pile of papers that barely had a dent in it and frowned. “That’s a lot of bounty posters.”

“Yeah—I haven’t seen a lot of them either, which is really saying something,” Dragon frowned.

“Why’s that?”

“These are reissues; every so often, the World Government will reissue bounty posters of those whom they consider dangerous, even if they haven’t heard of them in a while.” He took the top one off the stack and handed it to the boy. “That one’s been circulating since I was younger than you.”

“Humming Brook… he’d be an old man by now, wouldn’t he?”

“He would.” He watched the kid’s expression—he was sharp for being only ten years old. “Does this… help at all…?”

“Not really,” Sabo admitted, handing back the poster. “I still can’t really remember that much from before.”

“It’ll come in time,” Dragon said, unsure if he was lying to the boy. The kid stood there awkwardly; neither of them knew what to do with him. If only dumping him with his dad wouldn’t mean putting him within arm’s reach of the Marines… “Say, go through these and rank them by potential for recruitment. Let me know what you think.” He took a chunk of the bounty posters and handed them to Sabo. “Just… rank them.”

“Yes, sir!” Sabo left the room and Dragon instantly felt exhausted. He hated to think what it would have been like had he been able to take his son along like planned… it was tiresome just thinking about it.

Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a little bit… yeah. That would be good.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was ironic how if someone would ask Dragon what his dreams were, he could easily say any number of things. Toppling the World Government? True peace? An unveiling of all the dirty laundry that was the Void Century’s secrets? A society designed to lift up and support everyone and not the select few? Having the ability to tell his father off to his face? He had a veritable list ready and waiting.

Except, sometimes, dreams weren’t goals and ambitions. They were places one’s brain went when they were at their most vulnerable, gripping them at their core and forcing someone to relive the impossible time and time again.

What truly were Dragon’s dreams?

He didn’t like to think about it.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What are you thinking about?”

Dragon looked over at Olvia and saw her face remained calm in thought as she stared up at the night sky. All he could think about was how gorgeous she looked in the starlight, the galaxies reflected in her eyes as they laid on the deck of his boat.

“There’s an expedition that Clover wants me to co-chair.” Ah. “It would be about a year.”

“Don’t say you’re breaking up with me, because you know I’ll just follow you.”

“Actually, I petitioned the professor to let you come along.”

“You did?! And…?!” He waited for a response. “Olvia…? What did Old Man Clover say…?”

She finally turned her head and looked at him, her expression sharp and steady as ever. “Wake up.”

“…that was rude of him.”

“No, sir, wake up.”

For the second time that day, Dragon shuddered awake, this time being jostled by Sabo. The boy jumped back as he flung himself forward towards his desk, the present world grabbing hold of him in a vice grip. Dragon quickly caught his breath and rubbed his face with both hands—fuck, this was getting bad. He looked at Sabo and saw that the kid’s eyes were wide and confused.

“I… uh… sorry…” he squeaked.

“No, no; it’s alright,” Dragon replied. He tried to shake the sleep from his body, only making it more of a shiver instead. “Does someone need me?”

“No, sir. I have what you asked of me.” The boy held aloft the stack of bounty posters and their prior conversation came flooding back to the man. That’s right—the bounty re-issues from around the time he was too busy founding an army to pay attention to who was up next for his father’s bosses’ chopping block. “I triple-checked; there’s only three good ones out of the entire lot.”

“Are there now?”

“Yeah—most of the people this stack are either really old or already spoken-for in a pirate organization.” Sabo put most of the stack on the desk face-down, holding back three papers.

“How do you know that?”

“I cross-referenced everything with our database; some of the duds are officers in the Big Mom Pirates, or with someone called Doflamingo in the North; I doubt they’d change alliances too swiftly based on their established levels of loyalty.”

“Keep this up kid and you might be gunning for Iva’s spot,” Dragon frowned. He took a sip of his coffee—ice cold—and watched the boy’s face brighten.

“Oh, I don’t want to be the G Army Commander,” Sabo beamed. “I want to be the Chief of Staff!”

Dragon was neither awake nor drunk enough for this. “…and what does that entail?”

“Doing important things for you!”

“Sabo… you won’t even officially be a member until you’re sixteen,” he chided. “Just… show me the candidates.”

“Okay!” The kid put the first page down. “This one is called Karasu. He’s from the North and got his bounty by beating up Marines that were bullying some civilians. I think he’d be a good match.” Dragon nodded with a grunt; okay. “This one is Waters Lila. She’s Southern and is known for breaking up slaver ships en route to Sabaody. If we get her, we’d likely get her whole crew as well—forty-strong at last estimate, many former slaves themselves.” He then hesitated, staring at the last poster.

“Yes…?” Yeah… definitely not drunk enough.

“I don’t know about her, but I think it’s a good chance if we can find her,” Sabo nodded.

Dragon raised an eyebrow. “If we can find her?”

“She was younger than me when she got her bounty, so I don’t know if she still looks the same.”

“Younger than you…? Those were the ten-year re-releases.”

“Well, she apparently wants to destroy the world according to the rumors, so there is that. I would too if I sank six ships to survive a Buster Call.”

“She what…?”

“Yeah,” Sabo exclaimed, placing the poster down. “Apparently she’s from the West Blue, from this island of people who were…” Dragon stared at the photo on the page in horror, Sabo’s voice fading into nothing.

WANTED – DEMON CHILD NICO ROBIN – DEAD OR ALIVE

80 MILLION BERRI

APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION

Before him was the image of a small child, just a little older than his son was if he remembered correctly. His brow furrowed as he studied her face—there was no way she was anything other than Olvia’s blood. Her brother’s daughter, perhaps? It made him nauseous to think someone this small was listed for so much, so young.

“Sabo…?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How old would she be now? If she walked in through the door?”

“Eighteen!” the boy chirped. “I really think that she’s the best bet out of the lot—she has a pedigree.”

“I’m going to pretend you did not use that word,” he grimaced. Yeah, the kid was former nobility alright whether he hated it or not.

“Oh… well… her mom was pretty famous too! I found her bounty in the archives.” He took the top poster off the upside-down stack and held it out, making Dragon want to vomit.

Olvia.

It wasn’t her niece.

Oh, fuck, no…

Olvia’s daughter.

The only survivor of Ohara was Nico Olvia’s daughter.

A daughter who had her face, yet his coloring.

Seas almighty.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What the hell is your problem?!” he hissed at her. She had been sitting at her desk in the ship, a lantern illuminating the papers that were scattered everywhere. The rest of the expedition party had either long-since retired for the evening, or were on the shore around the bonfire—it was just them.

“I’m only doing my job. You knew that’s what this entire trip was about.” She hadn’t even looked away from the book and that seemed to just depress him more.

“Those have been here for hundreds of years; they’ll still be there in the morning.”

“I need to get this done before we ship out—there’s only two more days.”

“Two more days here, a week there, some hours elsewhere; it doesn’t end! It’s been three years of this!”

She put down her pen at that, closing her eyes to steel herself. “You knew what this was before we left Ohara.”

“I didn’t leave Ohara thinking I’d be ignored… that I’d go to bed alone most nights… that on the rare nights we are together, you’re too distracted to even fake it.” She stood, furious. “Oh, hey, an emotion—nice to see them again.”

“How dare you…”

“I think it’s the other way around, Olvia—we should have called it off while you were out on this stupid thing…”

“I thought you were behind what we were doing!”

“…when it didn’t mean I was being ignored by the woman I love!” He hunched his shoulders as he held hers, looking into her eyes. They were so fierce… so determined then that he had nearly lost himself in them. “I’m here now, Olvia. I…” He swallowed. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, playing second-fiddle to whispers and rocks.”

“We’re almost done. Just a few months and…”

“No.” His voice was quiet then—defeated, even—as realization settled on him. “We’re done.”

Tears ran down both their faces as he kissed her one final time.

When she went to bed that night, she went alone.

He was gone.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

All Ivankov knew was that Dragon was having a crisis.

He’d have those every once in a while in private, threatening to crack under the pressure of leadership. It was generally nothing, where he’d just do frantic laps of his office while attempting to talk himself out of whatever corner his assorted demons had shoved him into. If they were being particularly honest with themselves, it would have been a more troubling thing had Dragon not had a crisis now and then, given the sheer amount of pressure and obstacles that came from raising a revolution. All they, or Kuma, or both, had to do was simply stay with him until he calmed down and things would eventually be better again.

It had been nearly a whole day—he was not getting better.

“This is awful,” the man muttered for the fifty-second time that day. Ivankov poured themselves some tea from the service and raised a perfectly-manicured eyebrow.

“Are you havingk problems zat my Hormones vould fix?”

“No… just… fuck!” Dragon stopped his pacing long enough to take a swing at thin air before grabbing at his hair again. “I can’t believe I did that—fuck—how could I have done that?!”

Ivankov sipped their tea.

“Fucking hell, Iva! I’m having a mental breakdown here!”

“I can see,” they replied flatly. “You’re ze one vho seems to be very mum on details.” Dragon stopped moving and stared at his friend and comrade, nearly at his breaking point.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“You know I keep your secrets.”

“No, Iva… this isn’t a normal secret. This is a something that, should you ‘learn’ about it in the future, you need to pretend that this conversation never, ever happened.”

“Vhat is so drastick that I need to play ze fool?”

“I think… I think I have a daughter,” he said, his tongue feeling thick as he spoke. “I think I walked out on my daughter.”

“You don’t have a daughter.”

“…but I walked out on this woman nineteen years ago.” Dragon took the bounty posters from his desk and showed it to Ivankov, who took put down their tea before taking the papers. “That child—her child—is now eighteen.”

“Her fazer could have been a rebound and ve vould not blame zis Olvia one bit.”

“Iva, I walked because she was too busy with those damned Poneglyphs to give me the time of day—any time we did…” Dragon exhaled heavily. “She was always too out of it to concentrate on us, so I left. I can almost guarantee there was no rebound.”

“Zis is vhy you people are exhaustingk,” Ivankov sighed. “How did you know eachozer?”

“She… was from Ohara… was one of Old Man Clover’s top researchers…”

“…and so, vhen you vent to investigate Clover’s knowledge assets—drawn in by the pursuit of zingks your fazer kept you from—you fell in love viz a girl instead…? How cliché, candy.” They put the papers down on the low table and went back to their tea. “You know for a fact she is yours?”

“I had Sabo research a stack of re-issued bounties—if her registry information’s correct, she was born six months after I last saw her mother. Olvia was distant, but she didn’t sleep around.” He rubbed the back of his neck and groaned. “Fuck…”

“Vhat does her registry information say about her fazer?”

“Dead.” They had to hand it to themselves—Ivankov didn’t think that finally getting information about Dragon’s past meant that he was going to spill it all… or if he was spilling this now, it was titillating to think of what else the man might have been hiding. “She made it look like she got married, never changed her name, and quickly became a widow. I’m sure that’s why… she has her family name instead of mine.”

“I’d imagine it’d be rough on a child, carrying a name zey had no connection to,” Ivankov shrugged. “Besides, if she had your name, that fazer of yours vould have kidnapped her longk ago.”

“Bad enough what he does have,” Dragon grumbled. Ivankov waited for an explanation and never got one—it was folly to think they were getting any more out of their friend than this very specific and embarrassing tidbit. They watched as he stopped moving, instead putting his hands on his waist. “So… what do we do…?”

“Not vhat ve do… but vhat you do.” They regarded him carefully. “You alvays know vhat to do. Vill you admit to everyone zat zis is revenge for a former lover? Zat zis child is more zan ze last of her kind? Or vill you do somezingk else? Somezingk interestingk?”

“Olvia wasn’t my lover, Iva—I would have married her if I could.”

“Zat is not here nor zere. Now: vhat vill you do?”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“What will you do?”

It was a simple enough question—the royal brat and his footman were due back in the sandpit soon, so he didn’t blame her for wondering. It was just him and Olvia in his room, the pair having snuck up there while Clover was regaling the students with drunkenly-told tales of his adventures. They were sharing a bottle of cheap wine at the table by his window—no other activities until they heard their heavy-sleepers of charges snoring the next room over.

“Not sure,” he shrugged. He looked out the window at the night sky, knowing that soon the view would change. “This place… it fits, you know?”

“For technically being here as a bodyguard, you sure are quite the pacifist,” she replied. Olvia took a sip of her drink and let out a low huff. “It’s honestly more interesting with you here.”

“Then maybe… I can come back…?”

“…to do what?” He turned his gaze to her and saw that her expression was now completely deadpan. “You’re smart, yes, but you’re no scholar. The Professor does not take too kindly to lightweights.”

“Is that what he refers to people who’ve had sex as?” he asked. She nearly choked on her drink. “I just want to be with you.”

“I know.” She saw a flicker of something cross his face, with it leaving as quickly as it came. “What…?”

“If I could just stay here, I would. Let the kids find their own way back home. It’s peaceful here… serene… like nothing bad will happen here.”

“Oh, it shall eventually,” she shrugged. “Things always happen.”

“Not like…” he paused, “not like what I’m used to with my father. There’s a certain unease in the air in a lot of places he’s sent me to, and none of it shows up here. Yeah, there’s people being petty and bad storms and the occasional drought of traders, but it’s not…” he sighed, “this place is calming, Olvia. There’s no real hostility.”

“Then maybe it would do you some good to return here,” she agreed. “Though I have to warn you: I get buried in my work when I’m not tutoring.”

“I think I can handle that; that might be when you’re the most gorgeous.”

“You don’t need to flatter me—you know what we’re doing later.”

“Doesn’t hurt to have a little extra insurance on the matter,” he winked. She giggled and leaned over, pressing a kiss to his jaw. “How much time do we have again?”

“Not enough.”

“Hmm… I think it’s enough.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It’s easy to leave someone when you realize that you can’t stand one another. Sure, actually doing it might not be easy, but once you’re gone, the effort to purge them from your life is cathartic in its own way. It’s a refusal to give them power, as they never should have had any to begin with.

Conversely, it’s difficult to leave someone you’re still in love with, mostly because it is that much of a challenge to forget. It’s still wanting them there, despite their deep, deep flaws, and yet remembering the pain of why that is simply not possible. It hurts and claws at the heart, burning and stabbing until there is nothing that doesn’t make you think of them.

What’s worse yet is when you’re both still in love, and yet they don’t stop you.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Revolutionary Army Dispatch

Official Memo from the Desk of Founder and Supreme Commander Monkey D. Dragon

The following Legacy Bounty Individuals (LBI) are to be actively recruited into the ranks. Any contact with such Legacy Bounty Individuals needs to be reported to the appropriate level of hierarchy.

-_-_-

Karasu

Age at Bounty: 25

Current Age: 35

Origin: North Blue

Current Location: North Blue (confirmed)

Devil Fruit: unknown type – appears corvid-centric – proceed with caution until confirmation

Crimes: contempt of law; resisting arrest; repeated destruction of Marine bases; torture of varying Marine officers; coordinating largest mass-release of inmates in the North Blue in 200 years

-_-_-

Waters Lila

Age at Bounty: 47

Current Age: 57

Origin: South Blue

Current Location: Grand Line, Paradise (confirmed)

Devil Fruit: none known

Crimes: grand theft; destruction of slaver ships; being impossible to arrest; harboring runaway slaves; cussing out Celestial Dragons; repeated escape from Celestial Dragon “owners”

-_-_-

Nico Robin

Age at Bounty: 8

Current Age: 18

Origin: West Blue

Current Location: unknown; potentially West Blue or Grand Line

Devil Fruit: Paramecia – can replicate limbs elsewhere

Crimes: only surviving member of the Archaeological Scholarly Association of Ohara; can read Poneglyphs; evading arrest; varying smaller crimes related to survival

HIGH PRIORITY – report directly to Supreme Commander if contact is made – capable of becoming the Light of the Revolution

-_-_-

May we stay strong in the face of our uncertain times.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Ten years.

It took ten years before Dragon heard any more solid news of Nico Robin. He had to hand it to her—she was a difficult woman to catch. Most of what he’d heard were whispers. A few people even saw her, but no one was able to get in a conversation long enough to convince her to join their ranks.

She was still alive, however. No matter what, Olvia’s daughter was still alive, and some days it was all he could do to be proud.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“I have to say, sir, you sure do know how to pick them.”

Dragon was laying down on a camping cot, the tent he was currently occupying in the far-reaching backwaters of the East, the backdrop of a civilian uprising in the distance. Sabo and Belo Betty had insisted on helming this charge, which left him sulking back at camp with a cold compress over his eyes as he fought off an impending headache in the command tent.

“What do you mean, Ahiru?” He heard the young woman’s mechanical arm click and whir as it handled papers at the table.

“One of your High Priority LBIs just had war declared on the Government for her.”

“You know Sabo has been making over half that list for years now.”

“She’s been on the list for a long while,” she replied.

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“Nico Robin.”

Dragon sat up immediately, the compress falling to the ground. “What…? Who declared war for her?”

“The crew she’s with now,” the young woman said. She held out the newspaper as her boss stood and crossed the room. “A rookie crew from these waters, it seems.”

A small gasp left Dragon without him even realizing it: the Straw Hat Pirates.

Robin found Luffy.

His children found one another.

“…sir…?” He looked at her and saw the concern on her face. “Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just…” Ahiru gave a nod, avoiding eye contact. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” Good—he did always appreciate her discretion.

He looked back at the newspaper in his hand and allowed himself a breath of relief. After everything, his children were still finding their family—finding each other—despite his own failings.

Maybe… maybe this was how things were supposed to go.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The kids he was supposed to be babysitting were off with the old man on the first of many “field trips” to the bar when he first made his move. She was in his room going over their academic progress when he allowed his hand to reach across the table and rest atop hers. One of her eyebrows arched, curious.

“Bold,” she noted with a smirk, “but is it bold enough?”

In retrospect, it had been a miracle in of itself that they had gotten themselves put back together in time for her skunk-drunk boss to bring back his equally-drunk charges. The trio were so drunk, they found, that they completely ignored the fact they still smelled of sex and her blouse was on inside-out.

What they didn’t know wasn’t going to hurt them, right? Besides, all it took was twenty minutes and they smelled like the kids’ vomit instead.

None of this was going into the report.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

There were times where Emporio Ivankov, Ruler of Kamabakka Queendom, Founder of the Revolutionary Army, Establishing Force behind New Kama Land, really did not enjoy dealing with their varying colleagues. Out of them all, the best—also the worst—was Monkey D. Dragon. He wasn’t even all that easy on the eyes, and yet his drama was nothing they wanted to ever touch.

Except, it kept finding them.

“You. Office. Now.”

They didn’t even break stride as they entered headquarters for the first time in years, simply walking by Dragon as he was discussing something with Lindbergh and Hack. Inazuma seamlessly inserted herself into the situation instead, allowing Dragon to grouchily follow Ivankov to their office looking extremely cowed. Newer recruits could only gawk—so this was the power of the legendary Okama Commander?

“Any ozer spawn you have running around I should know about?!” Ivankov hissed. Fuck… the door was barely closed…

“Iva…”

“Don’t you Iva me,” they scolded. “I should not learn you have a son because I am savingk his life in Impel Down! Vhat is viz you?!”

“Thank you, by the way,” Dragon said. “You did an excellent job keeping Luffy alive.”

“You tell me to not pry into your past, and yet your past keeps poppingk up in ze oddest places. Vhy are you like zis?!”

“We all agreed to bring as little of our baggage into this job as possible,” he claimed.

“Havingk people ve care about is not baggage!” they argued. “Sharingk stories about our lives is not baggage!”

“If anyone knew about my family, that’d put a target on their backs they might not want!”

“Even from your friends and comrades?!”

“Yes, Iva! Everyone!”

“Tch… no vonder you vere never told about the girl…”

“Iva!”

“Zese are your secrets, Dragon! First, you have a daughter from an old flame, now zis boy one of my candies finds in Impel Down is your son?! Vhat more is zere?!”

“You know I can’t tell you that!”

“Then vhat can you tell me?!”

“That as the figurehead of this entire operation, I can’t be seen as having any potential weaknesses! I come in with nothing so I can leave nothing behind! There is nothing to complicate things! A venture was never compromised because they kidnapped my son and held him at ransom! By him remaining far away, we all were safe.”

Ivankov huffed, their scowl pointed and accusatory. “I believe in zis, and I believe in you, so you better not make me regret anyzingk from here on out. Ve cannot afford to be fightingk.”

“I’m trying, Iva,” Dragon assured. “You know that’s all any of us can do.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Sir…? The Tequila Wolf contingent has returned.”

Dragon glanced up from his coffee to see the fresh recruit standing there in the doorway of his office, absolutely quaking in his boots. It was almost adorable how the newbies were so easily categorized into either Hilariously Overzealous or Scared Shitless, with this one solidly in the latter category.

“Usually the leaders of such an expedition report to me themselves that they’re back,” Dragon noted. “Why did they send you?”

“There’s a bit of a commotion, sir,” the recruit admitted. “They were able to find a High Priority LBI while freeing the slaves.”

“Now who would that be?”

“Uh… Nico Robin of the Straw Hat Pirates, sir.”

Dragon’s stomach found his throat as he paused, taking the information in. After vanishing into nothingness on Sabaody, she was now there, in Baltigo. Ten long years and she was finally there, in the same building as him; it was terrifying to think of.

“Send her up once she’s been given the orientation,” he requested, keeping his stoic mask. “High Priorities always need a briefing from me personally as to discuss what they might bring to our cause.” It was the truth and the recruit saluted before leaving.

The wait was honestly one of the worst stretches of time in his life. Dragon wasn’t entirely certain whether was pacing for a few minutes or a few hours, but eventually there was a knock at the door and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He breathed deeply and collected himself.

“Come in.”

Olvia’s ghost walked in, almost as though no time had passed at all.

“Please close the door; I’d prefer this conversation to be private.”

“Since you asked nicely,” she nodded. Robin gently shut the door and took a few steps into the room, unsure if she should sit or remain standing like Dragon. “I hear you often debrief new additions and allies yourself. It’s commendable to be so active in the base of your organization.”

“I cannot do it on my own,” he claimed. She watched him as he walked over to the window, using it as an excuse to not look at her directly. “Does this mean you are going to join my ranks?”

“Consider me a loan of sorts,” she chuckled. “I have some time to burn while waiting to reunite with my crew and I might as well do something worth while in the meantime.” He could see her reflection in the glass; it was scary how much she looked like her mother. “Your son is something of a tricky individual to follow; it’s just a matter of chance that I’m keeping my alliances in the family.”

Oh, how little she knew despite how well she was informed.

“Has… anyone ever told you why we founded the Revolutionary Army?”

“…to rise up against the tyranny of the World Government,” she replied. He was silent. “Then again, something tells me that there’s more to it than that. There always is.” She watched him, pensive. “What was the final straw that drove you? A scuffle with the Marine Hero?”

“He barely cares about what he does on a daily basis, let alone care what I do enough to get into that big of a fight… no.” He did not turn around, instead preferring to look out the window. “It was Ohara.”

It was slight, but he heard her inhale slightly.

“What was your connection to Ohara?” Robin asked, her voice wavering slightly.

“I spent a lot of time there when I was younger than you are now,” he admitted. He sighed, then opened his mouth to talk again, only for Robin to grab his arm and turn him around to face her, eyes wild in shock.

“Did you know my mother?!”

“I… I fell in love with your mother.”

She let go of his arm and took a step back. “…oh. That must have been difficult.”

“It was,” he agreed. “Olvia was a wonderful woman. Sharp-witted, dedicated, kind, insurmountably intelligent…” He smiled to himself, letting his gaze slip out of focus towards a bit of wall. “She had hair like starlight and eyes that would reflect the galaxies.”

“Did she ever…?” Her question trailed off, unsure if she wanted to give life to the words herself.

“Your mother’s true love was knowledge, and by extension, her research. She had no room for me, so I left.”

She scoffed at that, almost relieved. “What do you have to be sorry about? It happened a long time ago.”

“Summer 1493, if you want to be precise about it.”

The only sound was the steady ticking of the clock on the mantle. Dragon focused his eyes again and looked at Robin, seeing the careful, calculating face he’d last seen over twenty-five years ago. She eventually nodded—everything fit.

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“I didn’t, though I don’t know how much good I would have been had I known and stayed.”

“You would have been there.”

“You’ve met my father—do you think I would have let him raise Luffy if I didn’t think it was the better choice?”

“That is true…” She looked him in the eyes, as though she was trying to see where the crack in the lie was. “What brought you to Ohara in the first place?”

“Initially? Babysitting. When all was said and done, it pissed off my father that I was in love, so I went back.”

“Then it is not just him that Luffy gets his defiance streak from,” she noted.

“I’m the one running a Revolution and you thought he got that from my father?”

“Merely an observation.” She smiled lightly at him, an expression so her mother that it nearly made him hug her. “Now, I think we have some negotiating involving the terms of my stay?”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Babysitting was a drag.

According to Aunt Tsuru, his dad owed the Queen of Alabasta a favor or eight and now it was Dragon’s turn to fulfill a request, as it involved the prince and his footman and not the old broad herself.

“We’re almost there!” the fifteen-year-old prince beamed. He turned towards his servant with a wide grin across his face. “Can you imagine?! That tree is thousands of years old! It doesn’t even have the Alabastian climate to help preserve it! Something that old! Still alive!”

“It truly is something, milord,” the young servant agreed. Igaram…? Yeah, Igaram and Prince Cobra. They were almost the exact same age and yet the difference between them was vast. Even though the princeling wasn’t an asshole about it, there was still that chasm Dragon knew was there… even if it was the footman that kept it there.

“Go pack up your shit,” Dragon said. “We’re going to be living on the island while we’re here, so you can’t leave shit onboard where it can be stolen.”

“Gotcha!” Cobra dashed below deck of the small clinker-built cog, Igaram close behind him insisting on doing it for him. Dragon rolled his eyes—this was honestly the last thing he wanted to be doing, but his father was… persuasive.

With his fists. The Hero of the Marines beat his son in a fistfight. Fuck.

It took another half an hour to get into the harbor at Ohara. It was a lively town, with the Tree of Knowledge dominating the landscape. Since he was contracted to be the teens’ bodyguard, Dragon went with Prince Cobra and Igaram as they went to the massive library that was carved into the tree itself, the entire building a living testament to knowledge.

“Ah, there you are.” Dragon saw a middle-aged man approach them as they entered the trunk. “Prince Cobra, I presume?”

“Yes; you must be Professor Clover?”

“That I am!” Dragon fought back rolling his eyes—everyone here was a nerd. “Queen Ouraeus told me you are almost as thirsty for knowledge as myself.”

“Indeed,” Cobra confirmed. “I have to be knowledgeable to become a great king one day, and Mother said you were one of the cleverest and learned men she’s ever met. It will be an honor to learn under you.”

“In that regard, I have to apologize,” Clover said. “Most of your tutoring will be conducted by one of my top pupils, who shall report to me on your progress. I’ve already written your mother and she has given her permission.”

“It must be difficult running this place,” Igaram noted, still staring at the interworkings of the library as they milled about.

“It is, unfortunately,” Clover sighed. “My apologies; you must be young Mister Igaram, which makes you…”

“Dragon—their babysitter.”

“Bodyguard,” the prince corrected. “He comes highly recommended from several high-ranking Marines as trustworthy.”

“Do you now…?”

“The Marine’s my old man, who can fuck off for all I care.” There was something about this Clover man that made him seem guarded… something wasn’t entirely legit. “I think he’s hoping his wayward son straightens himself out on this mission or some shit like that.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll get on splendidly,” Clover nodded. He then waved someone over, who gathered her books from the desk and approached them. “This is the one who is going to teach you lads.”

“Oh… I can’t…!” Igaram panicked. “I’m just here so His Highness…!”

“Nonsense—the Queen requested both of you be tutored,” Clover insisted. “This is Olvia-san. She is one of the most brilliant minds on this island and a native of Ohara. I leave your education in her care.”

Dragon swallowed hard—the young woman who walked up to them was one of the most gorgeous people he’d ever seen. Her brown eyes were the color of warm, lacquered wood and her platinum-blonde hair almost seemed to shimmer against her sun-bronzed skin.

“It is a pleasure to welcome the Alabastian delegation to our humble halls,” she said sweetly. Clover noticed that all three newcomers seemed overcome by her presence, which gave him an idea.

“How about if I take our newest young scholars on a tour of the library?” he offered. “Olvia, you can discuss the accommodations with their bodyguard. We can do the initial assessment after lunch.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” she agreed. Clover took the two teens with him and went off into the library, while Dragon stood awkwardly next to Olvia. “Would you like to see where you and your prince shall be staying?”

“He’s not my prince,” Dragon blurted out. “I mean… uh… my dad owes his mom some favors. It’s… complicated.”

“That must be awkward.”

“A little, but…” he shrugged, “you know.”

She gave a slight chuckle at that, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smile. “Let me show you to the dorms.”

He nodded—what else could he do?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was difficult having Robin around, all things considered. Although she fit in amongst the other Revolutionaries with wonderful ease, there was still the fact that Dragon could not look at her without feeling a pang of regret. He hated the feeling, but did not avoid her. It was difficult, yet he knew that bringing her into the organization after such a long effort only to ignore her would be suspicious… too suspicious for him to counter. He instead kept on, as though the woman was not the mirror image of his long-lost love. Hers was not the face he waged this war over, nor was it the one that would lob the final volley.

Their venture had grown much larger than Olvia’s memory, and yet to have her daughter in their midst? However temporary? It was priceless.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The rest of the day went by in a whirl. Cobra and Igaram were going to share a room during their yearlong academic retreat, with Dragon getting an adjoining one to himself. He followed along as Olvia showed him around the tree’s internal chambers—where she would be tutoring the teens to where the kitchens were—and it was extremely difficult to keep his mind on her words and not drift off into a daydream.

Seas, she was pretty.

“It looks like Professor Clover is only partway done with his tour,” she noted as they stopped on a staircase. They could see the academic with the teens as they scoured some shelves, looking for a specific book. “They’re good kids, it seems.”

“Yeah, they are as good as fifteen-year-olds are going to be, anyhow,” he shrugged. “It’s still going to be a pain in the ass.”

“So your contract is to stay here for the duration of their tutoring?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to bring them back to Alabasta myself, so I can’t just ditch them here and be done with it. That’s not going to be fun.”

“Well,” Olvia chuckled, “if you ever need anything, let me know. I’m sure I can help out.”

He hesitated before deciding to fuck it.

“Actually, I’d, erm, like to get to know you better, please. Outside of the kids.”

“…and why’s that?”

“…because one day, someone is going to ask me who that woman is teaching my charges, and I’d like to be able to say more than the pretty one with the books.”

She smiled knowingly. “Nico Olvia; nice to meet you.”

“Monkey D. Dragon; the pleasure is mine.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Her name is Nico Robin, sire.”

“Nico…? That is a name from the past, indeed.” Cobra frowned as he looked at the photograph of the woman who was reportedly conducting business on the behalf of Baroque Works. It was late at night after everyone else was in bed as he sat up in his chambers, one of the few times he could truly talk freely with his captain of the guard. “She looks enough like her, if my memory serves me right.”

“I’m surprised I remember anything about that trip at all,” Igaram groused. “Even the smell of beer is ruined.”

Cobra chuckled at that; few things made him laugh these days, and much of it involved the past. Seas… that had been before he had even met Titi…

“Possibly,” Igaram continued, “if we appeal to her on the shared admiration of her mother, we might be able to get her to cooperate.”

“No,” the king said firmly. “If she goes by her mother’s family name, then she is likely a sensitive subject. We cannot let it be suggested that we ever knew her.” He placed the photo down on his writing desk and exhaled heavily. “That was thirty years ago… and where were we when she was thrown to the wolves as a child?”

“Burying your lady mother and readying for your marriage, not to mention the chaos that a monarch change involves.”

“…which is why I wish to slowly abdicate, to give Vivi a better transition than what I had… if we even make it that long.”

“It is a fine goal, sire,” Igaram agreed. He watched his monarch—his life-long friend—stare into the middle distance, clearly wrapped up in thought. “Is there anything else you require tonight, milord?”

“No, thank you. You may go now, Igaram.”

“As you wish, milord.” He bowed deeply. “For the good of Alabasta.”

Igaram quietly left the king’s chambers, finding that the young princess was waiting for him out in the corridor. She was such a haunting image of the late queen that it was terrifying…

…but this was a child, even if some would mistake her for being grown.

“Is she the same one that you remember?” she asked, voice quiet. He shook his head.

“Even if she was, we would have no basis on which to build a parley. We are to function as though the name is a coincidence.”

Vivi nodded slowly, considering her options. “Then I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to infiltrate Baroque Works.”

“…but Princess…”

“I can’t sit by and do nothing, Igaram. That’s not what a monarch is supposed to do. I’m here to serve the people, right? That’s not always about fancy trips to the Levely and hosting other nobles.”

“You are correct way too often for my blood pressure’s liking, milady,” he sighed, accepting their fates. “When do you wish to leave?”

“Tonight.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Dragon-san…?” He glanced over from the map and saw Cobra standing there, the kid only growing into something more awkward by the day. “How did you know you were in love with Nico-sensei?”

“I just kind of did,” he grunted. They were a full day out from Ohara, sailing back towards the entrance to the Grand Line. “Why? Someone there catch your fancy?”

“No… it’s just…” the teen worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “I’ve been taught plenty this past year, but watching you and Nico-sensei reminded me that I still don’t know what it will be like when I love someone. I imagine it’s… difficult.”

“It is,” Dragon admitted, “but sometimes it just finds you. At first it’s a like—or maybe they’re just smoking hot—and eventually you just find yourself realizing that the world isn’t quite the same without them in it.”

“…but that’s how I feel about my friends… my mother… my people…”

“Love comes in a lot of versions, kid,” Dragon shrugged. “You’re pretty observant to be a noble and understand that you should love your people—something tells me you won’t have a problem figuring out the romantic part when it comes.”

“You sure…?”

“Yeah.” He then jerked his head towards the rigging. “Get your asses up there and secure the topsail; we’re going through a real windy area soon.”

At least as the kids were up in the rigging, he’d have some quiet.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Are you sure that going back is what you wish?” Dragon asked. Robin was chuckling softly as Koala sobbed in her arms, not wanting the other woman to leave. “You could do a lot of good here…”

“I will do a lot of good anywhere I go,” she claimed… and rightfully so. “My place is with Luffy. He’s my captain and we’re not done yet.”

“Just don’t tell him that I’m still around; I’d rather do that myself,” Sabo chuckled.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“So the kids… they’re doing well…?”

Olvia shrugged as she tied Cobra’s hair back as the teen slept—last thing they wanted was for the kid to wake up and get drunken vomit in his hair. She wasn’t entirely sure that getting a sovereign prince blackout-wasted-drunk every weekend was setting a good example, but Professor Clover was not one to be argued with when several pints were on the table.

“Well enough,” she replied. She glanced over at Dragon, who was peeling an ale-soaked jacket off Igaram, and shrugged. He would know if he had the ability to sit in place while the teens were at their studies, yet school hours were often when he went wandering around Ohara, taking in the local sights. “Unless there’s a sudden breakthrough, I think there’s one thing that they won’t be able to do, but it won’t be horrible in the long-run.”

“So not something Her Highness requested?”

“Oh, she requested it, but it’s notoriously difficult. People of all ages attempt to learn and some never get it, no matter how long they try.”

“What’s that? Some sort of arcane science?”

“Reading.”

He paused, watching her as she finished putting Cobra to bed. “You’re talking about a prince and his nursemaid’s son—they’ve long been able to read.”

“Do you promise?” she asked.

“Promise what…?”

“Do you promise?” Olvia went to his side and held out her hand. Dragon looked at it, then up into her eyes, before placing his hand in hers.

“I promise,” he replied. “Better yet: I trust you.”

With a nod, Olvia helped Dragon finish with Igaram before taking his hand again and leading him out into the corridor. They went through the labyrinthine maze of staircases until they reached one that had no light down it, only darkness.

“The fragile manuscript storage room?” he wondered. She shook her head before taking the handrail and carefully stepping down into the dark.

“You know how we here in Ohara strive to uncover the secrets of the world through our research,” she explained, not waiting for him to follow. He did, which made her smile in the dark. “If your father came here and asked what sort of research we were doing, we could honestly tell him that much of it involves ruins and old tomes, surviving fragments from over the centuries. It is different from Vegapunk’s research, yet it is no different in our dedication or the danger that follows.”

“Vegapunk is being courted by the Government,” he reminded her.

“True, yet this… this is something we’re been hiding for much, much longer, and the knowledge from which we glean from this will benefit everyone, from us to Vegapunk to the young prince and everyone who wishes for the truth.”

“Olvia, what are you…?” He felt her stop in front of him and heard a heavy latch open.

“Welcome, Dragon, to the Poneglyph Chamber.”

The light from inside the room was bright as Olvia opened the door and ushered Dragon in. Once his eyes adjusted, he gasped at the sight of the giant stone in front of him, scholars all around as they went about their duties. Some stared at them as they made their way across the room, but most remained unfazed.

“You… you are teaching them to read this…?”

“Attempting; there is one in Alabasta, a rubbing of which Queen Ouraeus provided us in her youth. The secret history lies in these markings, and if we are to understand the Void Century, then we must first understand these Poneglyphs.”

“…but he’s not getting it.”

“No; I would be impressed if he ever did, if we’re being honest. His language skills lie where he’s able to understand the practical applications. Although this limits him to things such as Alabastian and Celestial and sailors’ creoles, it means that academic languages are unfortunately beyond his grasp.” She watched as he placed his hand on the Poneglyph, taking it all in. “There is nothing else in the world like it, is there?”

“Dad’s bosses would have a field day with this,” Dragon marveled. He looked at Olvia, seeing that her face was concerned and distant. “That’s your true goal here, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“That’s wonderful,” he replied. “It’s never sat well with me that there’s so much we don’t know, and the fact you’re doing it here? Sticking it to Dad and his bosses and their bosses? It’s like a military brat’s dream come true.”

Olvia nodded at that, too choked up to respond properly. Something deep inside her said she was doing the right thing by showing him their biggest secret, and the sparkle in his eyes made her heart swell.

He was going to be the one to do it.

He was going to be the one to make all their research worth it.

All they needed to do now was wait.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was a beautiful day as the Thousand Sunny sailed towards their next destination. With Fish-man Island the the Ryugyu Kingdom behind them, the crew’s spirits were high as they enjoyed their time together.

“Hey, Robin, do you want to play with us?” Luffy asked. She glanced up from her book and saw her captain standing rather close, with Usopp in the background attempting to ride on Chopper’s full-reindeer form as though his back was a furry surfboard. “It’s a lot of fun!”

“I’ll pass for now, but thank you,” she replied. Luffy didn’t go away, the teen instead tilting his head at her. “Yes…?”

“Something’s different about you,” he noted. “It’s not bad. Just… different.”

“We’re all different than how we were before,” she reminded him.

“I know.”

“…but there’s something else…?”

“Yeah.” Luffy went and threw his arms around Robin’s neck in a hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad too,” she replied, patting his back. “I think you might want to get back to the others—Usopp seems like he’s getting rather good at that.”

“Oh! Hey! Usopp! Let me have a go!” Luffy was sufficiently distracted enough to run off and tackle the sniper right off the doctor’s back, all three of the teens laughing.

‘Maybe, we both always had an idea as to the truth,’ she thought as she watched her youngest crewmates roughhouse. They ran around silly until Sanji came out of the kitchen with snacks and drinks, snatching their attention. ‘The little brother I always wanted was right here after all.’

[marisferasiop]

we are “your natives” we are human beings who also have as much capacity for thought and free will, etc. as anyone else. the way you talk about us dehumanizes us further, we are not wild animals that need to be tamed. fucking wasicu

I'm going to start off here slightly combative and then try to wrap back up because this is kind of a wild take on what I said.

So.... Do you think non-indigenous have nothing to learn from natives/"those humans that have capacity for free will and thought?" Because that's how this message translates.

And that's not what I said at all. I feel like you saw the words "natives" and "missionaries" in my rb and just absolutely saw red and went on an "ask" spree on anon.

But this is an interesting take on someone literally advising people to learn in a thread of folks talking about learning versus coming across folks out there just being ignorant.

If you wanna be angry at white christian imperialist people through history, it doesn't make any difference to me, a random person on the internet in the post- apocalyptic year-of-our-lord Neil Gaiman 2023.

If you're on the side of telling people not to learn about their indigenous and attempt to be respectful by doing so (I guess out of some space of general rage that "other people" want to learn about those things, or about cultures other than their own, or think that indigenous "owe" us an education) I'd be interested to hear why you think ignorance is better than educating.

You can't squash human curiosity, and a monocultural world is just appalling on so many levels. (Do you think that diversity is useless? That if in the past we had all walled up big borders and never met or learned from one another we would somehow be better? That we have nothing to learn from one another's cultures and history? I think that if we could have done so and avoided atrocities, we would be better, but we didn't avoid those atrocities. We can be angry about them and still learn, and hopefully prevent more from happening)

There's a huge difference between seeing something different and wanting to learn about it versus seeing something different and wanting to assimilate it.

Also, not sure how anyone expects people to learn about problematic history without... studying cultures and history? and trying to change destructive behaviors for current studies so that they aren't repeated?

I can't go back in time and tell settlers to leave indigenous alone. That's like castigating the average white person in Walmart for a potential their ancestors could have been slave owners. Like.... No? I can condemn the actions of Chris Columbus and modern day missionaries and still be an archaeologist, because neither of those prior groups are respectful or trying to learn- they're forcing conversion and wiping out whole cultures and hiding their war crimes for the sake of overtaking some land? That's not the same thing as learning from a culture. And it's not the same thing as casework on a culture.

Maybe you thought I was saying that mission work was good- I'm absolutely saying the opposite, and so was my teacher that I mentioned. I think mission work is the disgusting, epitome of racism, and is inherently xenophobic. I am a deconstructed anti-evangelicism millennial raised by a boomer reverend and unfortunately sent to christian schools (which I shut up and angrily attended so I didn't have to pay out of pocket for my degree).

But way to go for going on anon and leaving an angry message, I guess. I hope you find the reaction you want in other folks' inboxes while spreading vitriol and misunderstanding; maybe a message will stick with someone who is actually just talking outta their ass and you'll get the snappy comeback you want 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm not going to stop learning about cultures, because I enjoy it. Admittedly my area of interest is decidedly outside of the US, but my field work was done here so that's what I commented on, though my mentioned case studies were south American.

I know this is long- winded for your short little angry attempt to spit in my face, but I do tend to ramble. I'm audhd like that.

I hope you understand more fully what I'm saying (if you even come back and read this- maybe you just spa and blocked me) and if not, I'm not sure what else to say. I'm not sorry for telling people to educate themselves and come from a place of understanding and respect instead of ignorance.

I am sorry for saying "your" since I suppose non-colloquially that implies ownership? Though I was referring to various nationalities or even regional natives, such as those whose territories and cultures cross the American/Canadian border, not like- actual ownership? There are so many people on here from all over the world that I didn't want to sound like I imagined only Americans have natives, because some Americans do a great job of pretending that only like, Africa and the US have tribes, because that's what our shitty public education teaches us. So by "your" I meant "in your country".

End of transmission. I need a drink now. Sheesh.

[the-lady-general]

Insomnia essay about LDS, Reflections, beware of heavy spoilers. Terrible spelling, very rambly. I'm not getting any sleep and neither will you :p

Tl;dr: latest lds is one of my new favourite episodes overall, they're showing that geniune nerd passion that makes star trek so amazing. also i love where this season is going and i love that the showrunners are catering to me personally specifically. (lds is The Most Trek.)

i think it's telling that what gets mocked in both plots are the uniforms and the optics and the whack fringe bs that starfleet have to deal with (the delta flyer as the culprit for threshold, the brain worms from conspiracy). it's also telling that cadet rutherford has some of the most vicious criticisms against starfleet. but look at him and the passion he has for making space hot rods! rutherford-of-the-present is so shocked at how angry rutherford-of-the-past is, but they both care SO MUCH. they just want to build spaceships and go fast and make friends! present rutherford can see that past rutherford's anger is infantile, and he's lashing out because he's scared and hurt, presumably by the institution he trusts. there are still entirely benign options for the line "he'll think it was elective" - it might have been a traumatic accident and a next of kin decided to take the chance and not saddle rutherford with the memory for example. of course "starfleet was problematic" does make for the more compelling story. but considering how this season is going ("trust the system!" and it works! because this is the utopian future!), it would surprise me if they did it in any other way than "starfleet was problematic, and the problem is going to get fixed".

the archaeologist and mariner likewise is a super compelling subplot. because mariner wants to be the Bad Boy so badly, but she saved the contact after the archeologist revealed she's a good guy - just stealing the elgin marbles from the british museum/those toras from the vatican museum rather than doing it the long-winded paper-based way that starfleet would have done. and i can't remember right now and i'm too lazy to look it up, but was it mariner who complained about federation scientists always "taking the shortcut & not going through the academy" and then needing starfleet to rescue them in minding the mind's mines? we also don't see the archeologists motivations at all - does she geniunely care about returning the grand nagus staff because it's the symbol of office for the head of the ferengi theocracy? or does she just want to be the Big Damn Hero who Doesn't Play By The Rules? and does it even matter to rom and the ferengi?

(as an aside: does rom care about the stick. does he have a new one. is the old one in any way significant to him or his people. was zek's stick auctioned off for his funeral. rom's the fucking nagus, he could have hired a ferengi crew to steal it back and wouldn't have needed to rely on a human.)

and can you imagine getting mocked for "aren't you guys a military" not even a decade after the dominion war? when you're representing ALL peaceful interests of ALL member species? because the mission isn't just about expansion or border protection or w/e:

the presumption is that the universe is enormous and full of friends, life that we don't even understand, amazing phenomena that make you reconsider your place in life/society/the universe, technologies and cultures that can elevate the standard of living on a massive scale - and then you constantly come across, like, abandoned drones that destroy planets, lifeforms like the horta or the space amoeba that are dangerous to the unwary, parasitic life that destroys entire cultures on purpose, expansionist empires, cultures that choose outright fascism or slavery or personal gain over societal welfare. and your own people are constantly running away to the fringes and settling somewhere to found Weird Cults without legal oversight. And ultimately, the Federation has its problems, because how WOULDN'T you have problems, but there is such an emphasis on self-determination of members and neighbours that the result is a massive collection of cultures who enjoy such a high standard of living that even participation in society (work, military service etc) is entirely voluntary for billions of people.

And it's all so incredibly fragile. so when there's a cemented windsock or a cube or a romulan with ambitions or fucking butt parasites are headed for earth, who are you going to call? THE GUYS WHO JUST WANT TO STUDY QUASARS. and then you laugh at them because their sincerest wish is to not be a military, but they are the ones fulfilling that role when necessary.

(because they put themselves into that role on purpose. but that's the set up, isn't it? what if the military'a first mission was humanitarian and scientific? what if they tried to protect everybody regardless of membership status?)

I think for fans and official writers it's always tempting to look for the grimdark in starfleet because on the one hand, that's what's missing from the original vision (not really, there's plenty of grimdark right from the start, but they're optimists about it.). on the other hand the whole thing is coming out of american exceptionalism, which isn't the worst basis for speculative fiction. and on the third (?) hand, there has been this fashion since the early 2000s (and i blame 9/11 and shrek, whomst i love) of doing everything ironically and deride the kind of passion that makes star trek so great.

So the last episode was SO GOOD and very cathartic. They just want to study quasars and protect the right to self-determination of all sentient life! that's what they care about! and it's so easy to point and laugh and call them nerds because, to steal from tolkien's lotr foreword, they've bared their heart for all the world to see and take a shot at.

[direwombat]

hmmmm how about, you’re my dad boogie woogie woogie and jake/syb period sex 🙈

you're my dad boogie woogie woogie:

the fic where ari and sully find out that they're father and daughter! the premise here is that ari is accompanying her boss (elena), nate, and sully on some adventure. they're exploring a cave and the baddies who are chasing them end up triggering some sort of cave in that separates ari and sully from nate and elena. the two of them have to navigate their way out of the cave system. along the way they start talking, and actually bonding, which isn't something they'd really done until this point.

anyway, they chatting, and sully asks how ari got into the whole business, and she's like "eh, my mom is an archaeologist. guess i got it from her," and they keep talking, and there's a point where sully's like, "y'know. you remind me a lot of someone i know," and he starts listing off some hauntingly familiar, but generic enough features about ari's mom. and then ari laughs and is like "next you're gonna tell me that this woman [lists some highly specific habits of her mom]"

to which sully responds, rather quizzically, "How did you know that?"

and ari's stomach just drops into a pit. because like. she knew her dad wasn't her biological dad. she figured that out a long time ago. but her mom never spoke of her actual dad much, just saying he was a handsome adventurer and that it would have never worked between them. but then she starts digging into her memory, searching for specifics in the few stories she has heard and...oh man. "Because those are all things my mom does."

and that just hits sully like a goddamn ton of bricks. because ari is exactly the age a child from that relationship would be and..."I'll be goddamned..."

anyway, the reunite with nate and elena and the two are just like "??? what the hell happened?" with ari being like "nate! sully is my dad! :D guess you're my brother now!" and sully being like "elena! your intern is my daughter! :D"

jake/syb period sex:

adfl;kajfda i mean...jake eats syb out while she's on her period. there really isn't much more to it than that 🙈🙈🙈 u kno he's into it, u know he is, like...syb is up in their cabin bc she needed to just chill for a while and ride out the waves of cramps and he radios her like "what are you doing there?" and she tells him to chill, she's on the rag, she'll clear out once she's feeling better, and then like 20 minutes later he's walking through the door like "i need to fuck you right now."

[survey--s]

469.

What is the best part of your life?  I feel like I’m in it, to be honest. I’m married, healthy, happy, child-free, earning a decent income and have no real stresses to worry about.

Do you care about gun laws? Not really, in the sense that I live in the UK and we have gun restrictions in place already. Knife crime is a MUCH bigger thing here and you can’t really legislate against that as much, for obvious reasons.

Would you ever consider getting a facial piercing? I’ve had my nose pierced for about a decade but I’m not really interested in any others.

Do you listen to '80s metal? Sure, I listen to songs from loads of different genres and decades.

Do you like acoustic or electric guitar better? Acoustic, though it does depend on how it’s being played.

What was the last major city you visited? Manchester.

Have you taken a painkiller today? Nope.

Have you ever had a pumpkin latte and if so, did you like it? I have - they’re decent enough but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get one - it’s just something I order if they happen to be available at the time.

Are you currently in a relationship? If so, do you think it will last? Yes, and yes - I wouldn’t have married him if I didn’t think that.

Have you ever been camping in the wilderness? No. Part of me quite likes the idea of sleeping under the stars and having a campfire, but I suspect the reality is somewhat different lol.

Did your parents go to college? If so, what did they study? Yeah - my dad studied medicine and my mum studied nursing, though she originally wanting to be an archaeologist.

Name the strangest game you’ve ever played (video game or real game): I don’t know - nothing specific is coming to mind.

Would you pay if your dog needed an operation? Yeah, of course I would. That’s what insurance and credit cards are for lol.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen in a grocery store? Live lobsters in a tank for sale.

Have you ever met any bands/band members before? Yeah, a few people.

What states have you been to in the past year? Zero.

Have you ever fostered an animal? No - I’d struggle to give them back lol.

Who did you last talk to in Facebook chat? My mum.

What do you think of guys wearing colored skinny jeans? People can where whatever they want.

Would you ever get blonde highlights? Sure, I got highlights a lot as a teenager.

Will you go to your high school reunion? Fuck no.

What animal have you always wanted as a pet but couldn’t have? Sugar gliders.

Have you ever been in a hospital and not felt safe? No, thankfully not.

What’s the highest fever you’ve ever had? I have no idea, I haven’t taken my temperature since I was about eight.

One thing you promised yourself you’d never do and then did? Quit my job without another one lined up. I’ve done that twice now lol.

Have you ever had to call 911? Yeah, twice for a client who was an alcoholic and in withdrawal.

Do you get along with your significant other’s friends? He doesn’t really have any friends, but the ones I know are nice enough.

Are you one of those people who will not use a public washroom? No, I use one pretty much everyday when I’m working.

What is something that you do often with your family? Go for walks.

Do you enjoy the sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning? Yeah, as long as they’re not keeping me awake or waking me up lol.

Do you need a haircut? I do.

What is the most expensive gift you have ever given someone? Uh, no idea - nothing much as I’m broke lol.

Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth? Yeah, when I was younger.

Do you feel bad when you kill bugs? Not really.

Do you like animal print things? No.

Do you have any pets that you had since you were born? No, we never had pets growing up.

Are all your pets micro chipped? The dog is and so is Purrlock as he was a rescue, but the others aren’t.

Would you ever cope in a jail? I mean, I’d do my best.

Have you ever seen an alligator in person? Yeah, at the zoo.

Are you a liberal? I’m more liberal than conservative.

Were you fearless or a coward in the face of the child hunter in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? I don’t even remember seeing that film. I must have done but it really doesn’t stick in my memory at all.

Did you ever hit anything while learning to drive? Yeah, but nothing major - just the curb a few times and maybe a rock?

Have you or a pet ever gotten a tapeworm? No, thankfully not.

Do you know any furries? Yeah - well, we’re acquaintances rather than anything else.

Do you snore? Steal the covers? Roll around in your sleep? I am guilty of all three of those things lol.

Is the lion the best character in The Wizard of Oz? I liked the Tin Man.

Would you immediately look for someone right after you broke up with your bf/gf? I mean, I wouldn’t do it intentionally, but I met Mike very quickly after I ended things with Chris and it worked out well lol.

Have you ever studied any new age or occult religions such as Wicca? No.

Do you want someone aggressive or passive in bed? More aggressive than passive.

Are you someone who actually likes to babysit children? No, not really. I’d rather dog-sit.

Do you find any of your friends’ parents creepy or really mean? No.

Who did you last have over your house, and why were they there? Uhh, I have no idea - we pretty much never have people over lol.

Recently, who in your house has gotten on your nerves the most? I only live with Mike and he annoyed me last night by keeping me up until 2am with his ridiculous snoring.

Ever kissed a friend’s crush? No.

If something was wrong who is the first girl you would go to? My mum.

What do you dislike about your smile? I just feel like it looks really awkward.

Have you ever kissed in the snow? Yeah.

Have you ever liked a football player? Yeah, one of my ex’s was really into football.

Has the last person you kissed taken their shirt off in front of you? Yeah.

Are you good at hiding your feelings? It depends on the situation.

When was your first kiss? I was eleven and a half.

What’s your most popular post? None of them, but I don’t post on here to be popular.

Is anyone in your family over six feet tall? My maternal granddad was about 6′4″ or something, apparently.

Has anyone lost their virginity to you? Yes.

What improvement would be the most beneficial to your life right now? An unlimited supply of money would be amazing thanks.

Have you ever merged finances with a significant other? Nope. We’re married and still have separate finances and bank accounts.

What’s the least amount you’ve weighed since reaching your full height? I have absolutely no idea.

What were your high school’s team colors? Dark blue, pale blue and white.

Who were your best friends in high school? Linnet, Agnes, Kirsty, Fiona and Becca.

Have you ever been to Chicago? No, I’ve never been to the US.

Are you close with your cousins? Nope.

Are you close to any aunts or uncles? No. That’s what happens when you’re raised on the opposite side of the world to all your family lol.

What was your favorite thing to do at sleepovers when you were younger? Gossip, watch movies, tell ghost stories, have midnight feasts, dance, play games - the usual stuff, really.

Does your town have a big fountain in it? No.

What’s your favorite rock band? The Beatles.

Who’s your favorite country singer? Dolly Parton.

Has your hair color changed since you were a toddler? No.

[the-book-in-the-mirror]

Mary Plays Pokemon Gaia - Part I: the beginning [Reposted from Twitter]

Hi! I'm @miyamoris and this is my blog for essays, let's plays and other more thought-out posts and conversations. To kick off the blogging, I'm bringing my Pokemon Gaia playthrough, styled after forums screenshot let's plays. (I'm not a video person. Sorry!)

I started this playthrough two years ago - it's hardly a long game but took me a while to finish it for... reasons. The first posts are reproductions from the original Twitter threads that I'd rather archive somewhere more reliable. The only thing I'll change is formatting so they flow better as blog posts. It's very likely the posterior updates will look different in style - instead of posting as I play like I did before, I have already finished the game and took a bunch of screenshots to organize while memory is still fresh. This is the first time I post let's plays on tumblr so I'm still discovering what works better.

For those who doesn't know, Pokemon Gaia is a Pokemon FireRed romhack created by Spherical Ice. Right now it's completed up to the Elite Four and thecomplete game with post-game and all is currently being overhauled as a Emerald hack. This hack is pretty popular for getting the exact feel of an official pokemon game plus some impressive technical achievements like perfectly reproducing the Mega Evolution system from gen VI into a 3rd gen rom.

Without more delays, let's begin. Enjoy!

[Original Thread]

let's goooo

-> #maryplaysgaia for my organizing and your muting convenience

Right off the bat, I already like the player sprite - it's visibly drawing from the FRLG sprite but it's well-done.

The Orbtus region map - the game seems to revolve strongly around archaeology (the professor in the intro says he's an archaeologist (typed it right on the first try!)) so it's unsurprising to find a lot of caves and ruins there.

Running shoes before even getting a starter! lovely game!!

I won't do a whole let's play-like thread summarizing every game bit but I'll try to keep threading the most notable game moments and whatever observation I have.

REALLY LOVELY GAME though tbh I am not sure if we even have gyms in this region

So for now an iffy lady asked back a book I got from the library, there's a lot involving earthquakes and instead of getting a mon in a lab, you meet the professor in a library.

Okay this is funny

The starters are 4th gen starters - this game has up to 6th gen mons and mechanics (updated type chart, physical/special split etc.)

Empoleon is easily my fave among those so I'm grabbing piplup. they tell you their nature right once you chose them too.

- there's no rival battle for now, it seems

- you don't see the exact pokemon IVs but they give you an idea how well the mon is faring there

...and yeah I ended up picking another piplup cause those E's were grating me. look, it only took five minutes.

Rival battles you (another neat sprite) after you talk to the professor and get a bunch of stuff and instructions. which is cool to me, cause I just got a neat taillow.😎

NOT CALM NATURE COME ON

Okay so there's the professor asking teens to help him investigate fucking earthquakes and a subquest about a missing weedle and I just got into this special room with a clefairy boss??

Girlboss team!

YOOOOOO

Ariados isn't too good but I could do a few things with this one in the early game.

Early game team: done ✅though I expect a few of these to stick around beyond that.

I just realized I've been writing this thread for nearly two hours and it's lacking a better overview of the game so:

- You're travelling through a region where an ancient civilization was supposedly wiped by earthquakes

- There are tremors happening again now so you're working with this region's ProfessorTM to investigate it. Your rival is very the May/Brandon 3rd gen type of rival (assistant that is pretty chill)

(Thread content will continue on the next post. Apparently tumblr does not want me to post more than 30 images. Ah well!)

[bronzeagepizzeria]

Oh fuck. The obsession with River. I hate this character. Okay, I'm lying there. I like her when she appears in season 4. But let's be realistic, we understand enough who she is at that moment. It's not difficult to understand that she is a future lover of the doctor, or even a future wife, between the insinuation to the old married couple, the way River talks about their various encounters, that she knows his "real" name, etc. Then she dies. The thing is that although we see her again later in the series, she is never really explored. I never recognized the River from season 4 in the sequel. It seems like she changed personality with each appearance? And then, anti people complain about Rose saying she's too obsessed with the doctor but uh… Have they seen River? His life was defined around him. It's downright scary. (She's even a downright sociopath?!) Even her damn profession as an archaeologist she did it for the doctor, and not for herself. Why do people complain about Rose? With Rose I feel a real human connection. She really looks like a real individual. Nothing but I love it when the actress plays the cry. Usually, and even in Doctor Who, there's no shortage of it, women's cries always seem so… I don't know how to say, clean? At least Rose's crying is realistic. Honestly, I think people hate Rose because she is very realistic in terms of a human character. River on the other hand… Well in the end despite the time we see it we never manage to grasp it. All the things we would have really wanted to know/see about her were never revealed. Even her fucking dates that she had described in her diary, we never see them? Even though I think she talked about it once? How, as a spectator, am I supposed to relate to this relationship? Also, I find her quite unhealthy… I think the worst are those who insist on saying that she is the doctor's great love. In what ? Did he like it? Yes. We can't deny this shit. But great love? In what ? For what ? What makes her so-called above? Because they are married? Are we talking about the marriage that the doctor didn't even want in the first place and that River forced and that the doctor had to do so that she agreed to help save the universe? Is this your ultimate proof of great love?! Nothing to do with it, but I must say that on top of that, as someone who's not really a fan of the idea of marriage, seeing one "forced" in a so-called romance frankly disgusted me. Did the doctor love River? Apparently yes in this shit scenario. But is their marriage proof of this? Absolutely not ! We're still talking about the guy who ended up completely dividing himself for Rose's happiness (and then who before that had actually done his tenth regeneration based on her) and spent 4 and a half billion years trying to bring Clara back to life… If a forced marriage that the doctor accepts is the ultimate proof of love for his people there is a problem. The night on Darillium is much more proof of this, although in the end, not really, since the Doctor often does crazy things for the people he loves, on any scale. Anyway, I don't even see how I can take most of River's fans seriously, since some try to deny all of the Doctor's other romantic relationships. Anyway , every time I hear someone try to insinuate that the doctor never really liked Rose (most of them are River fans) I just want to laugh. Yes of course… The guy literally says that Rose is his only religion in the face of the devil, but he doesn't love her. For that alone, Rose is the doctor's undeniable great love. Denial is so funny.

erm..not sure what you want me to say here, anon 😅 i don't ship river x doctor either

[dzpenumbra]

3/9/23

I slept like shit again. I woke up super dehydrated, my eyes were really close to doing that stick-to-my-eyelids sharp pain thing again, I got really lucky that didn't happen. I guarantee it's my contacts, it started right around when I got them. Dehydration too, but... it's gotta be directly related to my contacts.

I woke up, did yoga early, ate a bowl of cereal and passed out in the comfy chair for a few hours. It worked out, I'm just wiped now.

I got a lot of work done on the decorative sign thing I made. It's pretty much done, actually, I just... haven't decided if I'm going to mod podge it. I might even actually do the acrylic sealer spray I have. Just... to make it last a bit longer. Cardboard is not known for its ability to endure the elements. Trust me, I know cardboard. I did a test swab on a different piece of cardboard, it came out fine... I just took a bit of the ink off when I applied it, which is not a good sign... and it was pretty textured. I might have better luck if I water the mod podge down a bit first? It's not like I need a thick coat, I just need full coverage. I'm a bit worried about it... warping the cardboard? Like, the moisture when it soaks into the paper. Idk. I want to make sure I have a test idea before I commit the sealer to the project, because sealing it is the last step.

I was watching/listening to a live stream with the ESOTERICA guy and another woman from Germany who is a historian, linguist and archaeologist, who focuses on translating obscure texts, ritual incantations and studies inscriptions and artifacts too. I was just... completely engrossed. It was like 3.5 hours straight, they were both so passionate and brought me along on this big rollercoaster. I loved it!

It was really... validating, honestly. It was focused on this Demotic text from Egypt, having to do with some kind of exorcism or like... casting out a demon kinda ritual. And it was really cool to get a bit more in depth with Egyptian spiritual lore, which hasn't really been at the forefront in my life. Greek was the one I was most familiar with, being raised with several books of it. But the coolest and most personally validating part was how... the entire ritual was like... a massive fusion of all different deities and characters from different religions. And they were speculating that, in those times of cultural blending around the Roman era, it might've been that these rituals were kinda... adapted for each individual person's personal spiritual belief mix. Which I found very relatable and very appealing.

Which would obviously challenge the... set-in-stone traditionalist, purist spiritual types. And outcast this type of practice into the realm of... low-brow? Poor? Fake? Even evil? I mean, there is very clearly a stigma that has persisted for millennia. There's a line between "mainstream" spiritual belief (which is rife with magic and miracles, ritual and symbology) and... "magic" or "witchcraft" or spellwork. And they touched on that really directly today, which was a conversation and perspective I've never really overheard before... but completely related to and got onboard with 100%. It's like... bigotry, honestly. And the way it was referred to in the podcast was basically... it's... far-from-academic. And it happens especially within academia. Like... these people get mocked by their peers... because they are digging deep into the... the "layman's spiritual practices". As though the only spiritual practices worth investigating, the only legitimate ones, are the ones in the lavish tombs of royalty. And a slice-of-life look into the everyday practices and beliefs of the overwhelming majority of the population at the time is... a waste of time? It's chasing the "woo woo" foolishness of poor, uneducated folk or something.

And you see that prejudice today. Clear as fucking day. You tell someone you have a spiritual life, they ask you which vetted religion you ascribe to, which centralized church, temple or mosque you attend, what group you practice with. If you say you are praying by your bed to your god before going to sleep, you are given space, for the most part. We do have a growing portion of... I don't even know what to call them... militant atheists? Like... proselytizing atheists? Who just shit intolerance and... certainty... very liberally... and very loudly. Which I find just as uncalled for as someone carrying a sign telling you you're going to burn in hell if you don't accept Jesus. So, obviously that's messy, and it always will be... But... if you tell someone you practice astrology? XD Or read tarot, or other non-denominational divinatory practices... You get scoffed at by an overwhelming majority of people. And if you are a practitioner, you... more often than not... have a suspicious eye watching you as though your every move acts out of deceit with the intent to swindle them. And it's a very different type of prejudice. A prejudice that reminds me of the way that the Romani people have been, and continue to be treated. I feel like even with the atheist vs theist contempt, there's still this level of... empirical argument? Like it's just sorta a debate on whether their deity/deities exist. With occult practices, you get treated like an adult playing in a sandbox with a pail and a shovel. Just... speaking from experience.

It was really affirming to hear individuals within academia doing active historical and archaeological research, making brand new discoveries about the commonplaces beliefs and practices of people from ages passed. Doing research in these fields. And, at the same time, completely disheartening to hear how they get snubbed and refused funding by their own peers, their own institutions, who benefit from their labor and findings. The lack of respect is... well, it elicits a lot of emotions... But, on the flip side of that, it is so cool to hear about how the internet has changed all of that. That they can now raise funding directly from the people like me who have a passion and interest for the more obscure side of history and spirituality, the undiscovered, the documents no one else translated because the language was too difficult or they ignorantly assumed it was just... frivolous garbage, shit like that.

And they actually put out a call for help, for someone who is capable of coding a data entry kinda thing. And if I were qualified or capable, I would've immediately emailed both of them. They want to catalog and like... hashtag keyword associate... all of the symbols, words, terms, names of deities, all of it. The woman has already completed her Kickstarter for the project of archiving all of this, but they were floating the idea of having an online interactive database. Which would be incredible. Especially for the skull project I have coming up next, where I want to sorta craft my own ritual, my own process, and I want to meld in historic symbology as well. All revolving around death and rebirth, as kinda like...

I have had a few run-ins with Death this year. And the past few years, too. He's been lurking around my family for a while. Lots of very scary situations with my infant nephew, scares with both of my brothers, losing both of my roommates/pets/best friends. And my own PTSD state of feeling... my existence - both my life and my purpose - being in immediate threat. Like Death is lurking at the end of the hallway, slowly pacing down the corridor and softly hissing at my door. And, to be completely honest, I've been starting to chat with him, in a manner of speaking. Because... let's be honest. Death is important, and inevitable. And Death, innately, is not bad. It's just... scary, because it threatens You. It threatens your existence. Which is horrifying and hard to even conceive.

But Death itself, on an ecological (and spiritual) scale... is simply a transformative force. And my skull piece, I decided recently... is going to be my way of sitting down and having a little chat with Death. Have a cup of tea, get to know him, let him know I understand him, I respect him. But if he could show me the same respect, and give me a little space for bit... maybe cut me some slack... XD Maybe let me breathe a bit! Because what the fuck use is life if you're not living! And if you're just cowering from the threat of Death all day every day, you're hardly living!

So I really want to learn about like... rituals from history around that sorta idea. An idea of initiating a dialogue with the embodiment of the concept of Death, with the goal of... finding a healthy middle ground. Like... I don't know. Like being trapped in a garage with a wild animal or something, and you both know you're trapped in there together, and you just have a moment where it's like... okay... we're just sharing the space... and then once we figure out how to get this door open we go our separate ways. Like a momentary, peace treaty between two worlds or something? I don't know if that makes sense, because it clearly isn't going to be a mutual feeling like that. But I feel like working through this - as with spreading my dog's ashes, as... odd and clumsy a process as that was for a first-timer - is to not just find a sense of closure with Death, and let him know (in case he didn't know already) that his work... can be done here for a bit... but also to help me get a bit more acquainted with Death. Like... not just closing the book and tucking it away and saying "this is the graduation ceremony and this is the end of grieving", but to actually take that time of working on this carving and use it to reflect on what Death means. Because cleaning, drawing and carving this skull will not be a quick 20 minute ritual. It will be many many hours, in many sessions.

Good to get that idea out on paper, it's been built up inside me for a while now. I'm sure that was a bit scattered and hard to understand, the concept is still pretty amorphous and still taking form. So... what better way to find relevant symbology and practices that others have used for this kind of purpose for millennia... than the database and resources these two on the podcast were talking about.

So... I just had it in my head by the end of the podcast that I really want to reach out to this woman and offer to help. Any way I can. I can try to learn different written languages and help translate? But I have zero experience, and I have no idea if I would be any good at it. I can do data entry? Kinda... I actually type the wrong way and it might actually do some damage to me if I really focus on mass data entry for hours on end. Writing this stuff is bad enough. And again, no experience. And I feel bad writing this woman and offering her... everything, but also... nothing. Like... how is she ever going to say yes?

But then it hit me. I can just... tell her what I'm doing. I am a fine artist who is going through a phase of personal spiritual exploration through the crafting of spiritual artifacts. Some are physical relics, some are experiences, most are fusing both. A lot of what I have been up to has been deeply blending between artistic expression and spiritual practice, to the point of throwing the line out entirely... and now I'm struggling to be able to express to others what it is I'm even doing anymore! And that led me to the thought that I might be able to... if she was willing to be patient with me experimenting with new mediums... 1) create replicas of ritual artifacts using as close to authentic materials and methods as possible, 2) create new ritual artifacts using ritual instruction from ancient documents, 3) create replications of ancient rituals and practices (within reason, some of these things call for like... blood of someone who was murdered violently, and... I just don't really feel like going that far with it, ethically... XD), 4) create my own new modern ritual artifacts and practices by studying the process and thought behind ancient ritual practitioners - by trying to put myself into the shoes of an ancient spiritual practitioner, and think like they would, have some kind of a base of knowledge to the degree that they did... I should be able to craft my own processes and custom ones for others, the way these two were positing these ancient Egyptian priests did.

I have no clue how to phrase that clearly and not just... wall of text... like I normally communicate apparently... But... I think that'd be really cool, and would likely be of some value to her. Acquiring authentic resources might be a challenge... and not cheap... but the end result... would truly be one-of-a-kind. Like... recreations of items that are extremely rare.

So yeah, that got some gears turning in my brain, as I'm sure you can see.

I talked to my therapist, really good session today. Again... I end up in therapy with someone who... in any other reality... would likely be a very good friend. And, because of legality and shit... they can't be. But he's helping greatly. He seemed very insistent that creating a barrier between my artistic works and my personal self-worth was a very important thing. And... I struggled to relate to it. Honestly. I just... it felt like... he doesn't really know my story. I have gotten the worst critiques you could possibly get - silence. And I've gotten that pretty consistently. For over 15 years. I've lost entire bodies of work to studio accidents, natural disasters, and the homes of people who didn't treat it like art. At no point did I ever believe that my work deserved that. Or that I was less of a person for that. It pained me. I have often questioned my abilities, as a way of trying to find... direction. To figure out how to improve, where to go. To figure out how I can make this life stable. I tried to really emphasize to him... my primary problem here... is my ability to secure reliable funding. It's money. That's all. Paying rent, paying for bills, paying for food. That's it. I would love to connect with an audience. I said it very openly, like... without an audience, it's like I'm trying to have a conversation with a wall. All of my pieces, my stories, etc. They're all supposed to be conversation pieces. Like how, back in the old days, my friends and I used to meet up and gather around the old television (remember those?) and watch the weekly episode of a show called Surface. And afterwards we'd all talk about what we thought would happen next, and throughout the week we'd all chat about our theories and what it made us think and all that. DO PEOPLE EVEN DO THAT ANYMORE?!?! Or do you all just scroll immediately to the next dopamine hit with two 10-second ads hastily glued to the wrapper?

Sigh.

I really emphasized that my biggest problem with my life is financial stability. Which makes me feel like my life is in danger. Because it is. And since my life and my career are essentially... one and the same... because my career is... me sharing my experience of life, my perspective, my passions, my inspiration, my lens through which I observe the world... When I feel my life is in danger, I start to defend my career. And when my career is in danger? Yep... It gets messy. So I definitely do get why he was encouraging detaching the two and creating a boundary. And with some careers, that definitely works. But with the type of life I've decided to pursue? This multimedia stream-of-consciousness, inspiration-chasing, teach-as-you-learn creator role I have embraced. Because it's really... my natural state... like... leave me alone in the woods and I will live this life. Strand me in outer space and I will naturally do this. You know? I don't know if I can really... separate that. And I don't know if it would even be healthy if I could. Because it's like... trying to split "me" from "myself". And I don't even know what that looks like.

I mean, for fuck's sake, I don't even hear other people speak like this... that might be a hint that it might need to be treated a bit differently than others who don't seem to have this dilemma.

So I've really focused all of my energy into cultivating a secure safety net and drumming up whatever support I can. Trying to find a loving home for all of my creations, a home that appreciates the soul that is inscribed into each and every one. And hopefully these people - who don't really exist quite yet - can see it in their hearts to help me keep a secure roof over my head, and food in my cabinets, and utilities kept on, so I can keep imbuing my soul and my fingerprint onto more and more things. So I can keep making more beautiful and meaningful things, and sharing more stories. So I can continue communing with The Muse, carrying their inspirational spark, creating what they show me, and sharing the result with the world. Whoever cares enough to engage.

Otherwise, I'm gonna have to spend the majority of my time working some job for some other person and daydreaming half the time, and I'm afraid I'm going to fuck that up. And all the while, I'll have this other life that I know I would love so much more, because I've lived it. And it will be dangling eternally just out of my reach, like Tantalus.

I don't know if my therapist fully understood, I think he came close but probably not as close as I imagined. Which is okay, that's just... life. But he did seem very supportive of my interest in voice acting, and my fleeting thoughts of possibly going to see what's involved in like... guest teaching or teaching elective classes at the local community college that I used to go to back in like... '07?

That community college (before they relocated) was where I was introduced to two courses that changed my life forever, Comparative Religions and Science and Spirituality. I took those, along with Acting 1 and Vietnam in Literature and Film as my semester. That semester... it completely shaped the entire rest of my life to this day. And it was my first time in this city, and my first time living completely alone. And here I am... 16 years later? How fucking poetic would it be if I taught an elective course on occult spiritual practices, or prejudicial mass hysteria - like the Salem Witch Trials, or Satanic Panic. Or even just an entry level Comparative Religions course. Or... an art course! You know? Trying to leave the door open for that, and put my self-limiting fears cautiously behind me.

So yeah, the therapy session went well, they always run over time and always end too soon. I got chinese take out, a pretty expensive routine, but a comfortable one. Then I ended the night by streaming Session again. And the high school kid showed up again, and fell asleep or left mid-stream. But I got him excited about skating. Someone who clearly had never really been introduced to skating before. And I call that a major win. Any time I get a non-skater excited about me landing a line... where they're cheering and shit! That's such an amazing, uniting feeling. For real. Like, there really is no feeling like having a construction worker look over when he's on his break and see you land a kickflip or something, and just give you a solo standing ovation. Like, genuinely impressed. It makes you feel... connected. You know? Like... for that one split second, they get skating. Even if they immediately forget and go back to their lives. For that split second, they got it.

I can tell things are going well when I don't have to reset the vibes. :) Bed time.

[kaelio]

Our Flag Means Death is generating a lot of buzz. Good.

What does this mean? Why does this matter? Well, all right. If you’re asking. Although it’ll take a while before I circle back to this specific show. Are you with me?

A friend of mine once subjected me to a 20-minute rant about how stupid the movie Australia was, that it was hokey and lame, utter schlock. I’ll take her word for it; I never saw it. However, I saw a Blu-ray of Australia at her house. In fact, I saw it lying out in a different spot every time I went there. Clearly hated Australia for someone who had clearly seen it several hundred times. (To this day, I imagine an archaeologist in 4,600 years opening her tomb seeing her dusty skeleton hands eternally gripping the still-gleaming disc….)

Australia was a movie for women. If you’re a man reading this, I suspect you never saw it. You might not even know what this movie was about. Or… that it happened.

There are a lot of movies like that. Books. Shows. There’s an entire world of women’s media you probably never even think about at all, and are never exposed to. Much like the bond market being bigger than the stock market, it’s an unseen and underappreciated juggernaut. It’s quiet, but it matters. However, you’ll only see it if you’re out looking for it.

“B-b-b-but my wife made me watch You’ve Got Mail in 1998!” Shut up. Fuck you, also. Anyway.

Women’s media exists and major media players understand it. They also understand that it is part of the media language of women and related demographics. It operates by its own rules.

These rules are, for the most part, impenetrable to the uninitiated. To the extent that a lot of shibboleths associated with it don’t even scan unless there’s some pre-existing familiarity. It is kept obscure, in part because engagement with it is considered intrinsically shameful—even infantile. (Oh—and Black media is similar, by the way, although that’s not the topic here.)

Frankly, women’s media is treated like a joke only to the extent it’s acknowledged at all. … But let’s be clear: it keeps book publishers afloat. It has to be removed from Amazon metrics lest it—gadzooks!—appear in the rankings eclipsing “respectable” literature like Naked Lunch, a novel written by a man who murdered his wife by shooting her in the face at a party.

There are entire industries that produce media men are never meant to see, which are kept secret, even when they are entirely innocent. Crummy Hallmark movies and the like. How many of the Christmas Prince films have you seen? Have you seen advertised? Those don’t even have cock in them. They don’t even have tits.

Meanwhile, PornHub denies Russian IPs and it’s a news story. No shame there. Pseudo-pornographic ads that cater to men are nothing new.

Women (and those who, for a range of complicated reasons, are culturally aligned, in their media preferences and exposure, with women, which is a lot of extra words to say what we all know I’m saying, i.e. “gay people”) do have “their” properties, but they’re largely secret ones. And they are met with unabashed derision. Rom-coms are stupid. “Chick flicks” are dumb. Many men have never actually seen one, and it’s completely accepted that, if invited to watch one, they are to zone out and, eyes glazed-over, imagine breasts until their wives are done trying to share their interests like some sort of… life partner? (This same standard never applies to Bruce Willis movies, by the way, which are always cool, owing to the shooting and guns also.)

Well, I have news for you: women’s media is, for the most part, super stupid. Garbage through and through.

So is media for men. Differently. It is trash though. But come on…. People love trash. If people didn’t love trash, it wouldn’t get made. Doritos get made because they’re yummy, and they’re trash. Fireball whiskey gets made, and it’s trash. Fast & the Furious movies get made, and they’re trash. It’s crap and people love it.

The shame, though, is different. The idea that one is nevertheless subordinate is different.

Media content creators know women/LGBT+ people exist and have money, and they want as much of that money as possible in exchange for the absolute minimum delivery. I’m sure you’ve seen this rightfully highlighted for how half-assed it is—for example, the “Disney representation” of “live-action” LeFou dancing with a guy for like one second in their Beauty and the Beast remake. Or, of course, the fun one—the giant slug who appears to be overseeing the brief flash of lesbian content in Rise of Skywalker.

Acknowledging what women/LGBT+ people want and then teasing it as thinly as possible is, by this point, a time-honored tradition. It’s a channel that one doesn’t want to close off. (It kept Venom 2 above water, after all.) Movies have to lean on a multitude of markets to make back their investment, and that extends to TV and related media as well.

Disney isn’t stupid. They know full well that Falcon & The Winter Soldier or whatever it was called, would be watched by both men and women, and for different reasons. Tentpole properties and their peripherals are designed very explicitly to appeal to multiple demographics. We accept this; we take it for granted, but I think a lot of men in particular do not realize the extent to which they are normally watching two movie/TV shows at once. And though every woman will realize her boyfriend wants to kick ass in a robot suit (I haven’t seen this series, sorry, I think there’s a robot suit), very few men will bother circling back on whether their girlfriend is hanging out on Archive Of Our Own reading about the leads gargling chode. What’s key isn’t that one is stupid and the other isn’t. It’s the same movie and fundamentally it’s the same bowl of Hi-Chews. You’re reaching for the Green Apple and she’s reaching for Grape but it doesn’t make Hi-Chews any more or less the chemical residue mixed with subsidized corn ooze.

But interestingly, Revenge of the Sith, the third of the bad Star Wars prequel moves, gets far more flack for bad romance dialogue than its bad… everything else. Yeah, the “sand is coarse” scene is stupid. You know what else is stupid? That dumbass parkour laser sword fight that goes on for a million years. The ways that it accommodates its female audience get more scorn than the entire rest of the movie being garbage. That half of the movie catered more to people who care about “feelings” did not diminish the quality of…. Woah, wait a second, the “sand is coarse” is actually the second prequel movie, isn’t it? And the third one has the parkour laser fight. Whatever. There’s bad stupid action stuff and bad stuff for women in it and they’re just bad overall. Across the board. They’re not double-bad when it’s a scene intended for the female part of the audience. It’s the same level of bad as when Anakin jumps out of a taxicab onto some other car on the New York planet.

Most big movies like this are crass pop entertainment and no one is “better” or “worse” that a team of exhausted, nihilistic focus-group-informed functional alcoholics were talking about them when a specific 30-second scene was included in the final product.

When it gets particularly frustrating, however, is when only one side is even still around, and even then, they’re made to eat boot leather like a fin de siècle Amazonian expedition.

I’m going to take Supernatural as an example. Supernatural, a show from the rightfully contemptible “CW” label of unsalvageable trash, producing such brain-meltingly dismal entertainment as Charmed, was some sort of monster-of-the-week series about some sort of stuff happening. When I was in college, I was foolish enough to reveal the fact that I could draw decently well, which led to people trying to get me “into” media properties they hoped I’d make art for. Such was the case for Supernatural. I remember being sat down for three of the “best” episodes while I tried to astrally-project out of my body to escape the absolute agony of actually watching this series and to prevent myself from lashing out at my beloved cohort of friends with bad taste. It is front-to-back, top-to-bottom dogshit.

By season 61 or whatever, Supernatural—never good—was so bad even its most loyal viewers weren’t denying it. However, despite being exclusively watched by delusionally hopeful women with flamingo-salinity tolerance for bad writing, the creators still couldn’t pander to them because maybe there was one straight guy out there still accidentally watching it. I watched, from Tumblr-mutual-level “afar”, as people waited with bated breath to see if the ending would throw them a bone, which obviously it didn’t.

Supernatural was never going to cater to its female/LGBT+ fanbase. I knew that. I think every single person watching it knew that, intellectually. Still, if there was ever shameless hope, why not there? I mean, why not? The CW had every incentive to give them what they wanted. These were the people who’d done letter-writing (e-mail writing?) campaigns over and over to keep it on the air. These were the people keeping the ratings up. These were the people buying the merchandise and the DVDs. And realistically, if… whoever the brother was who they wanted with the angel guy?... became “canon”, they’d experience a resurgence the way that informing us that “the Impala went to heaven*” would not, if similarly reliant on the fervent enthusiasm of four or so men who passed out in front of their TVs in search of the remote.

*Yes, I know the car went to heaven. I know this because people were talking about it when I was trying to get up-to-date 2020 US election news. These memories are inextricable (thanks, everyone).

I mean, even Crisco leaned into being the cheap gay butt lube of choice for gay men. For god’s sakes, there was money in it.

… But it was never going to happen. When the “male” aspect of a property clashes with the “female/LGBT+” aspect, the male side always wins and the female/LGBT+ side always loses. Always. Every single time. 

It loses, even in this capitalistic society, even when the financial incentive is to cater to it. It is simply too important, culturally, societally, that you do not get what you want. That’s what it is telling you, over and over, explicitly.

Unless something was made exclusively for women/LGBT+ at the get-go, like Australia, it won’t, in the end, choose them.

It doesn’t matter how many times Sherlock pretended it would make Moriarty gay. Any viewer who made it past Moffat’s apparent insistence that a gong plays every time an Asian person appears onscreen (a season 1 threshold by the way), was going to be disappointed, because there might be a hypothetical guy out there who still really wanted to see how that garbage turned out. Again, since I’m basically making enemies of everyone for no good reason, come on, my friends. My buddies. My pals. What did you honestly think was going to happen? Yes, I know about the “secret episode” that was going to drop and make it all better. You knew it wasn’t going to happen. Realistically you knew the whole time, no matter how foppish they made anyone. They coded them gay to mock you for picking up on it—for being media literate.

To be clear though, you weren’t really to blame. The show did that, to induce that reaction in you. You just engaged in good faith. That was a good-faith reading. The problem is, however, the people who make these shows don’t respect you and they are not operating in good faith. Frankly, they think you’re stupid. They think you’re stupid for believing them, and watching media that relies on your viewership. This makes them bad, but you were still credulous.

You might notice I’m parenthetically noting that I haven’t consumed a lot of this media firsthand, which is true. In fact, I was somewhat struggling to think of examples of things with which I had direct knowledge. This is just a personality quirk—I’m a stubborn and cynical person, and I don’t like the sense I’m being jerked around. Now, as an example of a TV show I did actually watch with controlled hopes, though: MTV’s Teen Wolf. That is a show that made some relatively concrete promises about representation going in, and which had an overwhelmingly female audience—so, like, why not? Anyway it still completely failed in countless ways. Creators made promises directly to fans and then broke them.

And still I can hardly blame them, because true—it wasn’t implication, it was directly promised!—but it was just one level divorced from every other way female/LGBT+ viewers have been fucked over since forever. Same shit with one more step, so really, who’s the fool? So Lucy had a soccer ball this time. What’s the difference?

Oh, I guess now’s as good a place as any to mildly touch on why “female/LGBT+” are a combined category. The answer is, as far as I can tell, very little to do with what they are. It’s a category far more defined by what they’re not: “men” as men are “supposed to” be. In highly reductive terms, the “rest”. The culturally non-prioritized. Some guys, if they read this, will almost certainly take issue to this—“what about us short guys” etc.—but the truth is, you probably do belong in this category, too, except you don’t embrace that. Trust me, if you want to start hanging around dowdy women they’ll have you, provided you behave like you want to belong and not like they should be grateful you’ll resort to associating with them.

And the media for “the rest” is going to have motifs that resonate with “the rest”. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is going to be relevant to all members of “the rest”, even if its marketing was female-oriented, and… I’m really not the person who should be writing this… Love Simon? is relevant to “the rest” even if its marketing was LGBT+ oriented. A lot of mainstream-male-oriented media is going to feature power fantasies for the powerful who want to be more powerful, for the distilled ego. Many of “the rest” don’t think it’s a credible story for them; they won’t relate to it the same way they do about someone making a safe nest in a hostile environment, for example. Yes, there are obvious exceptions. But no one gets an Iron Man suit in Big Eden.

(On that note, “Girlboss” media is actually a move in the right direction. Catering to simple ego is a positive indicator for women. “Maybe if I can find someone safe, I can survive” is a common underlying theme in media for women and though yes, we like it, we should be clear-eyed about the fact that’s fucking sad. “I can actually thrive on Earth” is a good message. Stop overcomplicating things, everyone. While I’m here, no, you don’t want to live on a farm. Have you ever been to a farm.)

All right, circling back:

Our Flag Means Death is the TV equivalent of Big Eden, the old and dearly beloved rom-com. It told a neglected and constantly misled chunk of viewership that this time, we would come first. For once, we were the priority. And it did. It allowed “the rest” to win.

Pirates of the Caribbean leaned on effeminate characters. By all accounts, Depp’s choice of how to play Jack Sparrow catapulted the movie (met with hatred from Disney higher-ups, at a stage too late in production to recharacterize) from “predictable failure” to one of the most profitable film series of all time. But there was little doubt it would stay in that hazy world of implications and nods for the people who still clung to it but were also, importantly, subsidizing it. Black Sails finally put some LGBT+ characters into pirate fandom, but—okay, I never “got into” Black Sails—but largely briefly, and through a transgressive lens. Also it was on Starz, and I still don’t know what Starz is. Is that… like… HBO? I’m not kidding here. What the fuck is Starz? Okay, moving on….

Pirates were ripe for it, as a subject. But only Our Flag Means Death really delivered as the indulgent romp that people had been asking for since…. Okay, pulling up IMBD here for a second…. 2003?! Ah Christ, that is a long time!

While we’re at it, forget people carping about “objective quality” or whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m not even going to engage with that question. I think Our Flag Means Death and Big Eden are good but it wouldn’t matter if they weren’t.

It’s the thing we like. And for once, instead of insinuating we were going to get the thing we liked, and then mocking us for being so foolish as to believe that promise, we just got the thing. For fucking once, we’re not the fucking fool.

Our Flag Means Death is a show that chose us. We’re celebrating it. If you don’t like that, go pound sand.

 Ultimately, the point is this, and it is important:

Support media that doesn’t have contempt for you, and doesn’t lie to you. Stop accepting this social model that tells you that you have to be ashamed for wanting, when others no more deserving get to want, shamelessly, and get.

Be upfront and be honest about what you like, and who’s giving it to you, and who, conversely, takes your trust and spits in your face.

   Oh yeah, my favorite movie is Ravenous. Check it out.

[elliaze]

GODS WARRIOR - CHAPTER SIX

A/N: More of Gods Warrior, because I love this series.

Pairings: Steven Grant x fem!reader x Marc Spector

Warnings: age gape (everyone is an adult, nothing illegal), few curse, slow burning

Words Count: 2300+

MASTERLIST

THE WHOLE POLICE WAS ONE BIG FUCKING BULLSHIT.

Y/N could smell lie a mile away, yet she sat handcuffed next to Steven. The police car drove through one London street after another, and she tried to find some reasonable way out of the situation. Steven was visibly terrified by it, as all the accusations were directed only towards him. She was probably just sitting there for decoration and as she heard - possible testimonies. Although she did not know what she was supposed to testify.

For a moment, she found the whole situation extremely amusing. So many years she had served the Greek gods and done things that would normally fit into a few dozen crimes, and not once had she had the slightest contact with the police. There wasn't even a single ticket or note in her file. The only information that might interest someone was her involvement in a memorable accident, but other than that? She was an example of a perfect citizen. 

It didn't change the fact that it was still bullshit. And the scarab was in the pocket of her jacket, and at that moment it was the least safe place for it. 

"Look at this. Do you know who we have here, Billy?" A woman claiming to be a detective spoke up. Y/N glanced sideways at Steven and saw him squirming in his seat, trying to get his hands out of the handcuffs. It was no use, and she didn't even have a way to at least try to calm him down, as she had limited movements herself. Although, she was still in a better position because her hands were in the front instead of the back. “An authentic international fugitive.” 

“It's a mistake,” Steven immediately denied. “It wasn't me.” 

“Marc Spector was one of the mercenaries who raided the digs in Egypt. Are you curious what they did with the archaeologists?” The woman looked at her partner and then turned her gaze to Steven for a brief moment. “They tied them up and shot them. A regular execution.” 

Y/N watched Grant's behaviour carefully and saw him swallow his saliva with difficulty. Later he looked in the mirror above the steering wheel, but what he saw in it she could not tell. Maybe that was how he communicated with Marc? She had no idea. All she knew was that the situation was getting more complicated by the minute. 

“Didn't it occur to you that, just by pure chance, it was all just a coincidence?” Y/N asked calmly, leaning forward a little so that she could get a good look at the two in front. “According to research, there may be at least five of our doppelgänger in the world, and maybe you took the wrong one?”

The detectives laughed and didn't reply, and Y/N straightened up with indignation. She snorted quietly under her breath and sent a brief, not very cheerful smile to Steven. Grant sighed, but nodded to her, and she understood that this was his way of thanking her for at least trying. 

Later, the car pulled into some quiet neighbourhood and began to slow down until it finally came to a complete stop. And definitely not in front of a police station, which only confirmed to her that it was all a lie to bring them to someone. She clenched her fists tightly as she was practically certain who it was they wanted to meet so badly. 

Arthur Harrow. 

“I thought we were going to the station,” Steven spoke up uncertainly.

“Where did you get that from?” The stranger replied, adjusting his mirror so that a tattoo in the shape of a scale was visible on his hand. We're screwed. 

The two in front left the car, and Y/N's mind worked at top speed. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, took a deep breath, and tried to remember her training she'd had to do right after Poseidon had decided to save her. Each of the twelve gods was responsible for a different aspect, and...

“No, no! I saw what you did to those people there” Steven's voice practically made her almost jump up in her seat. When she looked at him, he was looking at his reflection in the window on her side, and everything looked like it was communicating with him. “I will never give up control to you. Do you hear me? Never.” 

“Are you talking to Marc?” She asked, but before Steven had time to open his mouth, a third voice, slightly distorted by the walkie-talkie that each of them already knew well, rang out from the car. 

“Loud and clear Steven Grant from the gift shop.” 

Just then the car door opened, Steven fell out, and Arthur Harrow stood on the pavement. 

“Forgive the wait, but we wanted to familiarise ourselves with the situation first,” said Harrow, crouching beside Steven. When he lifted his head up, he saw Y/H and smiled at her as if nothing had ever happened. “And we know each other, don't we? Although I still don't know your name.” 

“You won't know it soon anyway” she answered quickly, but the woman who claimed to be a detective revealed her identity without hesitation. 

“Y/N Y/L/N,” repeated Harrow, propping himself up on his cane. She didn't like the fact that the man was learning her identity. It was the first, small step for him to find out who she really was. “Do you mind if we leave you alone for a while? Steven and I need to talk about something important.”

Harrow slammed the car door and Y/N was left alone. She watched for a moment as the two men talked to each other. Harrow helped Steven up from the floor and even adjusted his jacket. As he began to shake the dust off his shoulder, she first furrowed her forehead and then raised an eyebrow at the sight. One of the many things she hated was the false concern of others, and at the moment everything the Ammit envoy was doing even screamed its duplicity. 

She wished she could have heard exactly what they were talking about, or rather what Harrow was saying, because she could see that so far he was the only one speaking. And a very good thing too, because she hoped Steven would keep quiet and not spill anything to him, and most of all not give away the most important information about the scarab. She knew that she had to do everything she could to get out of here, if only to hide the annoying shiny thing so far away and so deep that no one would know about it or try to find it. 

Y/N never took her eyes off the men talking, so she could easily observe the change in Steven's behaviour. He began to breathe quickly, his chest rising irregularly, and he seemed to scowl in terror. He looked over Harrow's shoulder, and Harrow squatted down and almost put his arm around him. She herself finally lifted her gaze to where Steven was looking, and was not at all surprised to see the silhouette of Khonshu. The god was standing upright, holding his sceptre with a crescent moon on the upper end, and addressing Steven directly with the order to kill Harrow. Even after all these years, she sometimes had trouble understanding how her abilities worked. Logically, she shouldn't be able to see anything at all that wasn't related to Greek mythology and its gods, yet she could see almost anything that was supernatural. Earlier she had been able to see an Egyptian jackal, and now she could not only hear Khonshu loud and clear, but she could also see him, just like any ordinary person. 

As a strong wind broke outside, she immediately sensed the presence of divine powers. Whatever Khonshu was doing, he scared Steven even more with it. Harrow, on the other hand, looked unmoved at all. As if he was perfectly aware of the presence of the god. And perhaps that was the case? But if so, she thought it was all even more twisted than she had previously thought. Harrow and Steven finally began to move away, and she had the impression that Khonshu glanced at her for a brief moment before he too disappeared from her sight. 

Suddenly the street seemed unusually quiet and only Y/N was still sitting trapped in her handcuffs. She closed her eyes again, repeating everything she had been doing before Steven knocked her off balance by communicating with Marc. She still wasn't one hundred percent sure, but she understood that there was no other option. She even wondered what Spector himself thought of the whole situation and hoped that once he regained control of his body, he wouldn't kick her in the ass like that. 

But wait a minute, I'm the one with the scarab.

Y/N opened her eyes, almost immediately knowing already what she should do. She lifted her restrained hands up and smiled to herself with satisfaction as she pulled the metal pin out of her bun. She straightened the pin, making it into a short, elongated wire, and then bent one end of it. She inserted the bobby pin into the keyhole and bent the makeshift key back. When she saw that the end of the keyring had bent in such a way that it resembled the letter Z, she was able to take the last and most important step. She put the key back in the lock and started to turn it in different directions. Up, down or sideways. She had no idea how much time she had spent trying to open the handcuffs, but she knew she was wasting too precious minutes anyway. She remembered that it could take some time to get out of that shackle, and her impatience at the moment wasn't helping at all. She felt the metal begin to scratch the skin on her wrists and the first drops of sweat appear on her forehead. She wanted to wipe them off right away, but she knew that if she did, she would have to start the whole process over again, and she didn't have time for that. 

Finally, though, she heard a quiet click and the lock let go. The handcuffs opened, and she pulled them off with the utmost relief. She threw them under the seat along with the broken pin and looked out the window. There was no one on the street, and this was the perfect opportunity for her to finally evacuate. She reached for the car door handle, pressed it, and for three seconds nearly had a heart attack as she watched to see if the exit would open. The door opened without a hitch, and Y/N grabbed all her stuff and exited the car. She bent down so that no one could see her and began to observe her surroundings. As much as she wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, she knew that before she could do that, she had to save Steven from the clutches of some sick, unpredictable type with a magic stick. Otherwise, the guilt wouldn't let her rest.

She touched the pocket in her jacket and when she sensed the golden scarab inside, she zipped it up just to be sure it wouldn't fall out. She took one last look around the area until she finally decided to get up and set off down the deserted alley where Steven had disappeared a few minutes ago. If it wasn't for the fact that she found herself in some sort of place of worship, she would have decided that nothing stood out about the neighbourhood. Except maybe a goat on the lawn, for such a sight in central London was rather unheard of. The road led her to a building that apparently stood out among the rest. It was definitely larger and looked older too. The door inside was ajar, and muffled voices came from behind it. She suspected that this was where Steven was, but also Harrow and a whole group of his followers, whom she was sure she wouldn't be able to handle on her own. She had to find some other way out. 

She began to look around for a second option and didn't look for long as she noticed how there was an abandoned scaffolding on the side of the building that led to a dilapidated, foil-covered roof. This was her entrance, and how she and Steven would later get out of the building she decided to leave to fate. 

“So you're alright,” she heard a female voice beside her, and when she looked at the person who had arrived, she immediately recognized Layla. 

Her blood boiled as she remembered that she had run away from them. Y/N pointed an accusing finger at her and jabbed it hard into the other woman's shoulder. Layla made a quiet and feigned pained sound and took a step back. 

“You left us there alone,” Y/N pointed out. “And you ran away.” 

“I prefer to stay away from the police” she answered simply. 

“Well, as it turned out, it was not the police at all.” 

“I have noticed that,” agreed Layla. “I followed you from the very beginning.” 

“That explains why you are here.” 

“Listen, Y/N” the older woman started calmly, coming closer to the girl. “I understand that you have some work to do with Marc. I know it may seem strange, considering that he and I are getting divorced, but I want him to be safe.” 

“So he can sign your divorce papers?” Y/N blurted out quickly, not really thinking about what she was saying. She furrowed her eyebrows and expected at least some kind of sharp retort from Layla, but all she heard was her quiet laughter. 

“That was one of the reasons. The other is that I myself want to punch him for disappearing without telling me.” 

“I'd love to see that, but first we have to get Steven out of Harrow,” Y/N announced. She smiled at Layla and then pointed her finger at the scaffolding she had discovered earlier. “And I've just found a way to do it.”

 ⸻

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