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youvebeenlivingfictional · 3 years

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I’m Always Curious Part Thirty Three

Previous Part | Next Part | Masterlist Notes: I hope everyone’s having a good week 💕

Warnings: Cursing, a lil fluff, a lil angst. Y’all know me. (I know these are the same as last week but they are.... Still True). Summary: I’d been on the Pinnacle for the last couple of days, once the briefing that Eli and I had completed was cleared by Command.

“I just hope that you are fully aware of the fact that you are never allowed to criticize me again.” “That seems a little extreme—” “Oh, that seems extreme?” I retorted, brows raising, “I’m going to have to disagree with you, Captain. You are not allowed to tell me that I have taken a reckless action or made a snap-decision ever again because you jumped on a Phaser.”

“Out of necessity!” Chris argued, “It’s not as though I did it for fun, just to see what it would feel like.” “Mm. And what did it feel like?” I watched Chris on the holo, and saw how he directed his eyes to the ceiling for a moment of consideration before he answered, “...Sharp, seering...Painful.” “I see.” “Mm.” “You know why that might be?” “I do know—” “Maybe it’s because you jumped—” “I get it—” “On a Phaser.” “This is a very rich argument from a woman that launched herself into a space without a tether.” I felt a shiver trickle down my spine and I shifted in my seat a little, pulling myself from a memory of a different mission— one undertaken in the midst of a war; I pulled myself from the darkness of a void, a sudden yanking at my ankle, my hands desperately clinging to the side of a K’Vek Class Battle Cruiser as the space around me rattled and filled with Warbirds. “Trust me,” I said, careful to keep my tone light, “It’s safer without the tether.” I averted my eyes, reaching for my glass. Even on the holographic communication system, Christopher seemed to have clocked that shiver and shift; I could see his brow furrowing and his head tipping, waiting for the story. It wasn’t one that I was itching to share. I nodded to the bandages wrapped around his midsection as I set my glass back down. “Pollard give you hell, at least?” He chuckled lightly, wincing with it as he nodded and patted over his bandage, “She did.” “Good. Someone needs to without Boyce and Una around to keep you in line.” Chris’ eyes narrowed minutely, but he couldn’t hide the smile that crept onto his lips. I couldn’t help mine, either. I’d been fighting off smiles since I’d gotten the message that Pike was calling me at all. I’d been on the Pinnacle for the last couple of days, once the briefing that Eli and I had completed was cleared by Command. Eli had yet to find a Communications Bridge officer for the Pinnacle, and until he did, I was subbing in. Christopher had called to ask about the briefing. But… Like the old days, when I had been called into his Ready Room to confirm the details of a report, we had drifted to other things. We’d actually been having a light, amiable conversation until I’d noticed the bandages wrapped around him. Jumped on a Phaser. Unbelievable.

“So how are you finding the Bridge?” He asked. “Fine,” I shrugged, “But it’s… Different. A little weird. I’m used to having someone else in charge— I mean, there’s Durling, obviously, but there’s always been another level of Communications above me and now there’s kinda just… Me.” “What about during the war? Durling was a strategy officer previous to this post, wasn’t he?” “...I guess I don’t really count the war as time spent in Starfleet,” I realized after a few moments, shaking my head a little, “Maybe that’s wrong, or...Or strange, but it’s not what I joined to do. I was still translating, sure, but it feels like there was such a dissonance between it and this,” I nodded back toward my current quarters. Christopher took a long moment with that, watching me, and I fought the urge to avert my eyes or turn my head from him. It was hard, talking to him about these things, but if we ever wanted any sort of friendship again, they did need to be discussed in some estimation. I did turn my head, though, as a message chimed from my PADD. “Sorry—” I leaned over, grabbing it and scanning it. I sighed softly. “I’m needed on the Bridge,” I gave him an apologetic look, but Christopher just smiled and nodded. “Be careful,” He urged. “... I’m so sorry, which of the two of us—” “Okay—” “Literally threw themselves—” “Thank you, Commander—” “On top of a firing Phaser?” “I’ll have to review the notes of this call and get back to you.” I shook my head, fighting the urge to mirror Chris’ smile. “Unbelievable,” I muttered. “Speak soon,” He tacked on, and I felt my smile push through, then. “We will,” I nodded before closing the channel. -- Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Dropping out of warp hadn’t been an issue the first time, but the Pinnacle had stalled jumping into it the second, and the drop out of warp that had followed was a hell of a bumpy landing. Our shields had been up, as had the shields of the ship that we’d nearly collided with— the Enterprise. We’d been hailed, and I’d expected to find Una on the other side, asking where the hell our helmsman had learned how to steer (though she’d never use those words exactly), but… But when the viewscreen had flickered to life, we’d been greeted by a man— a man with dark blonde hair and suspicious, narrowed eyes. His uniform was Command gold, but not in the form that we were used to— he had a black collar, and gold bands around his cuffs. I rose slowly, cautiously, taking in as much of the man and the ship behind him as I could. Eli’s brow furrowed as he glanced back toward me, as startled as I was. “Identify yourself,” The man requested. “Eli Durling, Captain of the U.S.S. Pinnacle,” Eli answered, “Yourself?” “James T. Kirk, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise.” I blinked dumbly at him before I reached out, briefly muting our Communications as I turned to Eli. “This is bad.” “An astute observation, thank you, Commander.” “You’re welcome, Captain.” I raised my hand from the mute to allow Durling and this… Kirk to speak. Their stardate was years ahead of our time, and my stomach twisted, concerned. We were in another time, possibly another universe, so— “What is it?” I turned back to Eli, unable to help my folded arms and clenched jaw. “If he’s captain,” I nodded to the man, who had turned to consult with his own crew, “Then where’s Christopher?” Eli frowned, “Maybe he retired,” He offered. And maybe I would’ve accepted that before. Maybe I would’ve accepted that explanation and allowed myself to refocus on the matter at hand-- but in my time spent on Somonia, I’d come to trust my gut instincts strongly. I shook my head, turning back to my console as I muttered, “Something feels wrong.” “If you could send the coordinates which you jumped from,” We turned back to the viewscreen at the request from a new voice, “That would be most helpful.” “An excellent suggestion, Mr. Spock,” Kirk smiled at the man that had said so. I stilled, staring. He was older, of course— but same haircut, same brows, same pointed ears. He caught sight of me staring, and he lifted a single questioning brow. I lowered my eyes, turning back to the console. If anyone was going to be able to tell me where Chris was, surely it would be him.

“You seemed quite alarmed by my name, Commander. Is it safe to assume that we are familiar with one another when you’re from?” “Yes,” I nodded, giving Mr. Spock a small smile. I had beamed over to the Enterprise, along with Durling, and two of his Science officers. “May I inquire about the nature of our acquaintanceship?” “We have been stationed on the same ship and we attended the Academy together. We’re friends.” I hesitated before, “Mr. Spock, if I may ask… Are you familiar with a man named Christopher Pike?” Spock’s brow rose again, his head tilting to the side for a moment as he seemed to contemplate both my expression and my question. “Quite familiar,” He nodded slightly. “Was he Captain of the Enterprise?” “Previously, yes.” “And now?” Spock went quiet again, eyes drifting briefly to the table. “You say that we are friends, in your time,” He said. “Yes.” “What relationship have you to Captain Pike?” I had to be careful. This Spock was not my Spock, but I could assume that he would reason through these things the same way: he wouldn’t want to tell me about anything, for fear that any knowledge on my part could lead to some change. So I was careful to keep my face neutral, and I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “He is as good a friend of mine as you are.” I could see Spock considering my answer, and his. “Captain Pike suffered an incident that left him unable to command.” My gut twisted, but I was careful not to suck in a breath or reel away as I wanted. It was possible that whatever occurred in this timeline would not necessarily occur when and where I was from— I seemed to not be on the Enterprise at all in this timeline; it was possible that I hadn't even joined Starfleet. Whatever may've happened to Christopher here may not happen to Christopher when I was from. But on the off-chance it did— I had to learn what I could before returning home. That was, of course, assuming that we could make it home. “...What sort of incident?” Tag list: @angels-pie ; @fantasticcopeaglepasta ; @mylittlelonelyappreciationtoo ; @how-am-i-serpose-to-know ; @onlyhereforthefandomandgiggles ; @inmyowncorner ; @tardis-23 ; @paintballkid711 ; @katrynec ; @hypnobananaangelfish ; @elen-aranel ; @blueeyesatnight ; @hotchswifey

#I'm Always Curious #captain pike x reader #captain pike/reader #captain pike imagine #Captain Pike x You #Captain Pike/You #christopher pike x reader #christopher pike/reader #christopher pike imagine #Christopher Pike x You #Christopher Pike/You #Christopher Pike fic #Captain Pike fic

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ialwayscomewhenyoucall · 4 years

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Seventy Two Hours

kirk/spock

star trek: tos

quarantined together!

~2.4k

for @wanderingcas ...’cause she asked for it. ;)

Fifteen steps.

Turn.

Nine steps.

Turn.

Fifteen.

Nine.

“It hasn’t changed in the past hour, Jim.” Spock doesn’t open his eyes, just speaks wearily into the echoey, empty space.

He wants to glare back at the Vulcan, but he’d probably see it even with his eyes closed. Of course it hasn’t changed in the past hour. It hasn’t changed in the past sixty eight hours and–he glances at the screen on the wall–thirteen minutes. And fifty-four seconds.

But what else is he supposed to do?

He goes back to pacing the perimeter of their isolation chamber.

Spock sighs. “Jim…”

“Yes, Spock?”

But Spock doesn’t seem to have an answer. Good. Kirk doesn’t need a lecture right now. Especially when he can’t escape.

“Bones, there’s got to be another way.” Kirk is frantic, practically pleading. “Don’t tell me there are no other isolation cells on this ship–I know every inch, she’s my ship. Hell, I’ve even been held in several of the other cells before, as I know you can recall, since you’re the one who gave the orders. So what’s this about?”

McCoy is not cowed by his captain’s protests. “Look, Jim, I can’t let you out, not when there’s a chance you could infect the crew. And none of the other cells are available, so I can’t beam you to one of them, even if I thought that was advisable.” At that Kirk smiles, sure he can convince Bones to beam him somewhere, anywhere–his quarters, back to the planet that got him into this mess, the vacuum of space–but the level gaze from the doctor knocks that idea flat. Bones crosses his arms over his chest and repeats, “If I thought that was advisable. Which I don’t.”

Kirk lowers his voice, makes it almost too low to hear, and this time he is pleading. “Bones. You know why I can’t stay here. You know what this’ll do to me.” He closes his eyes, then says one more time, “Please.” He can’t look when he says it. He already knows the answer.

“Sorry, Jim. It’s only three days. If it’s any consolation I don’t think you were actually exposed, but we have to be sure.” He looks at Kirk, then at Spock, then shrugs. He knows what he’s putting Kirk through. He reaches out like he wants to put his hand on Kirk’s shoulder, but of course he can’t. The wall may be invisible, but it still exists. Nothing can get through it, in either direction. There’s a small airlock in the corner for delivering food, and a bathroom in the other corner; the walls to that are invisible too, for the moment, but when someone wants to use it they become opaque, and the door appears. Quite clever, these isolation cells. Keep all the germs on one side or the other.

“Are you alright, Captain?”

Kirk turns to see Spock’s concerned look.

Yes, they do an excellent job of keeping the germs where they belong. And sometimes they also trap a man inside with another man.

“Fine, Mr. Spock. Just fine,” Kirk says, his voice infused with false cheerfulness.

The man he’s been in love with for months now.

When he gets tired of pacing, Kirk hops onto his bed, flops onto his back, and stares at the ceiling. There’s a crack about four inches from the wall. It’s about six inches long and is shaped like an elongated letter S.

It’s not actually a crack. He thinks it’s probably a scratch. But he can’t figure out what could scratch the ceiling.

He’s been puzzling it out, off and on, for nearly sixty nine hours now.

Anything, absolutely anything, is better than thinking about the man sitting on the bed next to his.

(This both is and isn’t the honest truth. Thinking about Spock fills him with a lightness, a warmth, he’s never really felt before, and in his clearer moments he knows he’s never experienced anything more lovely. It’s sometimes–quite literally–breathtaking. But it’s also an exquisite kind of torture, being trapped here in this tiny space, wanting to look his fill, wanting to touch, wanting to kiss, but being forced to keep his distance.)

“Why do they make these things so small?” he wonders aloud. “We can barely move in here. It’s a wonder we can even breathe.”

“I assure you there is plenty of oxygen, Captain. All scrubbed and filtered so as to be safe for us to breathe. Although I daresay the more dangerous would be for someone outside to breathe our air.”

“It doesn’t feel like it, Spock. It feels small and crowded and airless.” He risks stealing a glance, then looks fixedly back at the ceiling.

Spock is silent for a moment, as if he’s contemplating something. Then he says, “After Iowa, being anywhere on the ship must feel confining. I’ve never been there, but we have places like that on Vulcan. Wide open plains, big sky. After visiting a place like that, everything feels small. And you lived in Iowa for years.”

Kirk’s heart lifts at the mention of his childhood home. “I fell in love with the stars in Iowa,” he tells Spock. His voice hitches ever so slightly on the word love, but he keeps moving quickly, hoping Spock doesn’t notice. “You’re right about the sky, so big, and it always felt so close, like if you could just get high enough on your tiptoes you’d be able to run your fingers along it and feel something like velvet, only softer.”

He rolls onto his side, angling his body so he can look at Spock now; he feels vulnerable, talking about feelings with the Vulcan, but he’d been the one to bring it up. He goes on. “Most of the time my ship is enough. I’m quite literally among those stars now, Spock, though I still can’t touch them. But I’ve stood on other planets, and I live on a ship that navigates through starlight instead of waves. I just don’t like being trapped, especially when I can’t see outside.”

Spock is silent, contemplating, then says, “Were you ever trapped as a child?”

Kirk can’t stop the slight widening of his eyes, the small jerk of his head. But he manages to keep his voice steady. “Once. I was...small. Maybe five? Six? I don’t remember exactly, it’s…” He takes what he hopes will be a calming breath. “It’s somehow both a muddle and very clear in my mind.”

He’s probably imagining it, but he thinks he sees Spock’s eyes...soften.

“It was summer. We had a lot of storms in summer, thunderstorms rolling across the prairie, loud and fierce. But that summer, that hot July afternoon, the air suddenly stilled. It was eerie; the animals went quiet, even the birds roosting somewhere as if waiting for something to happen. And then the sky turned a sickly green, and we all knew what that meant.” He swallowed reflexively, remembering.

“I believe you call the phenomenon a tornado,” Spock says, his voice gentle.

“Yes,” Kirk says. He’s looking at Spock but he doesn’t see him. He sees a tree against a green sky. He hears Spock’s voice but only just; mostly he hears the rush of wind so relentless it eats houses and pulls one hundred year old trees up by their roots. “We had a shelter, everyone did. There was nothing about the shelter that should have made it any more frightening than any other place we lived, but somehow it was. It was just as brightly lit as my bedroom, but somehow it always seemed more shadowed, like something unfriendly was hiding just beyond my sight. There wasn’t, of course, it was just the fear of the storms that made me feel that way when we went down there, but you can’t make a small child understand a thing like that.”

Spock makes a small noise and Kirk looks up to see an odd look on the other man’s face. “Right,” Kirk says with a crooked smile. “Vulcan logic. I’ll bet you weren’t frightened of anything so mundane as storms when you were a kid.”

Eyebrow raised, Spock says, “On the contrary. I didn’t like storms at all. Or darkness, at least for a little while. But I learned to control my fear, so it couldn’t control me.”

A pang of sadness lances through Kirk’s middle, and at first he doesn’t understand why. Spock had mastered his fears, why should that be sad? And then he slips back into the memory of the tornado, of the stillness and the horrible green sky. He’d been out of his mind with terror; even that young he knew what those things meant. He’d been screaming for his mother, and when he found her he’d been shaking with fear. But she’d wrapped her arms around him, murmured into his hair, and together they’d run to the shelter, hand in hand.

Spock had mastered his fears. But who had been there to hold him, to reassure him, even to hold his hand?

But saying that out loud gets much too close to his own feelings, so he leaves those thoughts behind. “We survived the storm alright; our shelter was good and safe. But when the all clear came through the computer and we tried to get out the door wouldn’t open. The lock was disengaged, the latch opened, but the door wouldn’t move. Not an inch.” His heart races at the memory, the acrid taste of fear rises in his throat. “A tree had been dropped onto our shelter door. Later we realized it wasn’t even our tree–all of the trees on our property were right where they belonged. But tornados don’t care where they drop things, they just pick them up and let them go. It was a big, heavy tree, heavy enough to trap us in our storm shelter.”

Kirk looks back up at the ceiling, at the odd scratch, or crack or whatever, that he’s been staring at for hours on end. “We called for help, but we had food and water and air so we were low priority. It was nearly eight hours later when a rescue crew finally got the tree off our door.” He drapes an arm across his eyes. He’s not sure if he’s hiding or just changing positions. Possibly both. “The shelter seemed to get smaller by the hour. By the minute. By the time they opened the doors it felt about as big as a dollhouse.”

He’s so lost in the memory, so keyed up from being so close to Spock for so long, his body works on autopilot, jumping off the bed and preparing to resume pacing before he’s even conscious of his decision to move. “So that’s the story, Spock. I don’t like to be trapped. I much prefer open spaces, or,” he grins at his own cleverness, “just space, as it were.”

“Captain,” Spock says, reaching out a hand to stop Kirk’s attempt to begin nervously pacing again.

Kirk freezes.

“Jim.” Spock’s hand slides down Kirk’s arm until their fingers are a tangled mess; not perfectly twined together but truly tangled. Kirk lets out a small, breathy “ha!” that breaks enough of the tension that they can pull their hands apart and slip them together again properly.

“Jim,” Spock says again, his voice soothing and calm. “We only have a few hours left, as long as we don’t start to show symptoms. The chamber is not getting any smaller. You are going to be okay.”

Kirk hears the words, but from very far away. Instead he’s keenly aware of Spock’s palm against his, the way their fingers twine together, the tug on his arm. He follows the pull, let’s Spock guide him to sit on the bed beside him.

“Spock,” he says. He wants to say something else. Anything else. He’s usually so good at this, all smooth edges and easy words.

“Just relax, Jim. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t always have to fill every silence with explanations. Sometimes the silence is enough.”

Kirk tears his eyes away from their clasped hands so he can look into Spock’s eyes. With his eyes he asks, Really?

Spock doesn’t answer, not with words. But he squeezes Kirk’s hand. The corner of his mouth lifts in an almost smile. He leans forward, eyes still locked with Kirk’s, until their foreheads are just touching.

Oh.

“Spock?” He’s repeating himself, but Spock just finished saying he doesn’t need to overspeak.

Still, he has to know.

Spock squeezes his hand again. “Yes,” he says. No hesitation, no uncertainty. Something loosens in Kirk’s chest.

“Scan’s are all clear, you can get back to captaining your ship, Jim,” McCoy says, strolling into the ‘safe’ part of the isolation room, tapping at his PADD as he walks. Under his breath he adds, “Whatever those captaining duties actually are.”

“Shhh.”

He looks up, startled by the sound, and is even more startled by what he sees.

Spock’s bed is canted up so he’s almost sitting, a pillow behind his head. And sound asleep, the side of his face pressed against Spock’s chest and his limbs tangled around the Vulcan, is Jim Kirk.

“He’s asleep,” Spock says, rather unnecessarily, his voice pitched low so as not to wake his sleeping captain. “He’s been rather...distressed.”

“Finally opened up to you, did he?” McCoy asks with a grin.

Spock looks down at Jim, and McCoy sees a warmth he rarely sees come over the man’s face. “Indeed,” he says.

“Good,” he says with a nod. “I’ll be off then. Your walls are gone, by the way. You’re free to go whenever he wakes up. You could just carry him back to your quarters now, if you’ve got the notion…” He winks.

Not looking up from Jim, Spock says, “Thank you, Doctor, but no. I think I’ll just let him sleep.”

“Suit yourself,” McCoy says, amusement in his voice.

When he takes one last look over his shoulder, Spock is gently running fingers through Jim’s hair.

“Wonders never cease,” he mutters to himself once he’s in the corridor. “All it took was a little accidental exposure and mandatory quarantine. They’ll be telling this story for years.” Shaking his head, he grumbles, “Of course, they’ll forget it was me who stuck them in the same isolation chamber.”

Even though half the others were empty, he thinks with a grin. He congratulates himself for a job well done.

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soupandtissues · 4 years

Text

Old Friends

I needed fluff for Dr McCoy, because Into Darkness did my boy dirty and I know the best character to help make anyone feel better Spock Prime.

“Checkmate.”

Jim stared at the board trying to figure out how he’d missed that move, before tipping his queen over.

He smiled. “You are good.”

“I have had many years of practice,” the elder Spock said leaning back in the chair next to Jim’s hospital bed. “Though it has been a long time since I have had such a spirited opponent.”

“Care to play again?”

“As much as I would enjoy that, Jim, I believe visiting hours are over.”

The sound of a throat being cleared caused Spock to turn around to see Doctor McCoy standing in the doorway.

“Right on time to spoil my fun, Bones.”

“That’s because your idea of fun is going to give me a heart attack one day.”

He came over and checked Jim’s vitals, making notes on his PADD.

“And before you ask no you are not being released tomorrow.”

“Oh come on, Bones! I’m going crazy in here.”

“I don’t care,” McCoy answered, rubbing absently at his nose. “You’ve literally been to hell and back, Jim, I refuse to rush this. You will be doing a series of physical tests tomorrow and if we deem you stable you can go home on Friday.”

Before Jim could make a comeback Spock spoke up. “Then I shall take my leave, Jim, you should rest and save your strength for tomorrow.”

Jim seemed to pout for moment, but agreed. “Okay I will.”

“Sleep well, Jim.”

McCoy sighed as Spock stood up and they made for the door. Both of them hesitated there before McCoy gestured for Spock to go first.

“After you, Ambassador.”

Spock nodded and went out into the hallway McCoy followed and closed the door behind him, keying a code into it so the on duty nurse would know to check regularly to make sure Jim wasn’t trying to sneak out…again.

He glanced over to see Spock still standing beside him.

“Was there something else I could help you with?” he asked.

“I merely wished to inquiry if the cafeteria was opened twenty-four hours?”

“Sure, but don’t count on getting any real food now just old coffee and stale donuts, trust me I know.”

“That is quite all right I merely wish to have a chair and table for the night.”

McCoy quirked an eyebrow and rubbed at his nose again.

“Wait, are you saying you don’t have anywhere to go? You didn’t book a hotel room or anything?”

“With all the destruction caused by Khan I know so many are in far more desperate need of those lodgings than myself. If you will excuse me-”

“Wait! I…well I have a spare room at my place. It’s not much but it does have a real bed. I know you’ve just come on planet, Ambassador, you shouldn’t be spending tonight in a chair.”

“I appreciate the offer, Doctor, but I wouldn’t wish to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be imposing I…I…hahh-hah’ESSHUu!”

“Bless you.”

“Uh…thanks. Anyway you wouldn’t be imposing in fact I’d be grateful for the company.”

Spock stared at him with a look that McCoy for the life of him could not place and then relented.

“Very well I accept your generous offer, Doctor McCoy.”

“Okay just let me get changed.”

“Of course.”

McCoy went down to the staff locker rooms and Spock waited by the elevators for him, admiring the artwork the hung of the walls.

The where was a soft whoosh as an elevator opened. Spock turned in time to see McCoy step out and cup his hand over his nose.

“Huh’ISHu! ASSHu! Excuse me. My place is just a few blocks from here. I managed to get off campus housing while I was at the Academy.”

***

The apartment McCoy took them to was small, but well kept. Though Spock raised an eyebrow at the flowers painted on the one wall of the spare room he was given.

“Hope you don’t mind the artwork. Joanna really wanted a mural, but I’m not much of an artist.”

“It is perfectly acceptable.”

“Okay then. Well bathroom is down there on the left. You can help yourself to anything in the fridge that isn’t spoiled. You’re a Vulcan so even at your age I bet you don’t sleep in, but in case I’m gone before you get up I’ll leave n-note hah’ershu! Huh…huh’URSHuh!”

“Bless you. Are you all right, Doctor McCoy?”

“Yeah, I’m fine snf! something is just really bothering my nose that’s all.”

Spock was not entirely convinced, but he let the matter drop.

“Well goodnight, sir.”

McCoy started to walk down the hall.

“Doctor McCoy.”

He turned back around. “Yes?”

“It occurs to me that I have not thanked you.”

He shrugged. “It’s no trouble not like anyone was using the room.”

“That was not what I meant. While I am thankful for you providing me a place to stay I…there are so many things in this universe that are unfamiliar to me now. Jim however is not one of them. What you have done in bringing him back to us despite all the odds. I admit I could not bear the agony of losing him twice and because of your actions I don’t have to. I am eternally grateful.”

McCoy smiled at him, pleased by his words.

“You’re welcome, Spock.”

#s/tar t/rek #snz fic

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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134. Sonic the Hedgehog #75

I Am the Eggman!

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Frank Gagliardo

We have a very important question to address here at the beginning of this story. Apparently, all this time, it wasn't Robotnik who was activating the satellites and tormenting the Freedom Fighters in secret. If that's the case… who was it, then?

So! Do you remember, aaalllllll the way back during StH#19, when I said that that issue would introduce a very important character, someone who would shape the course of the entire comic? Didja forget about that? 'Cause I sure didn't! Here he is, ladies, gents, and enbies - Robo-Robotnik, AKA the alternate, roboticized version of Robotnik from another zone! Don't worry if you don't remember - he gives us a nice rundown of exactly how this all came to be, just for those of us who may have forgotten him between then and now. But first, just to make sure no one escapes or attacks before his villainous monologue is over, he encases the Freedom Fighters inside an egg-shaped energy field, which knocks Bunnie out when she tries to punch her way out.

So here's how it went down. Way back when Robo-Robotnik was taken back to his own zone after his interdimensional defeat, his consciousness was stranded aboard a space station in orbit of his own version of Mobius. Then, as chronicled in StH#22, Robotnik Prime ended up aboard the same station when he was thrown out of his own dimension, and gave Robo-Robotnik just the pep talk he needed to get back to hunting down his enemies and taking over the world. However, what we didn't know until now is that at the moment Robo-Robotnik sent Robotnik Prime back to his own world, he tapped into his memories, learning of the scattering of the Giant Borg suit's pieces across all dimensions. Yep, that makes him the mastermind behind the Crossover Chaos plot as well!

I just have to stop everything for a moment to go over what Robo-Robotnik said up there again. He straight up nuked Mobotropolis and killed everyone within. If you'll remember in StH#22, the Sonic and Sally of his zone had already grown up, gotten married and had two kids at this point. Their world followed basically the same general path laid out in the Sonic in Your Face! special - everyone had grown up, the world was idyllic, Robotnik was thought to be long defeated, new families had been born and peace reigned. They had absolutely no idea that they weren't safe. That one day, without warning, a goddamn nuke would drop onto their beautiful city, killing everyone within. Sonic, Sally, their two kids, and everyone else they ever knew - dead. Vaporized. That is ridiculously dark.

So, as we can see, this version of Robotnik is even more terrifyingly evil than the previous one. And apparently, his whole extended gambit with the satellites and random disasters was implemented not just to test the capabilities of this world's Sonic and friends, but also, to finally lure them out of the city for the culmination of his plan…

Okay, Nate, why the hell didn't you use your badass laser-eyeglasses to fight back against the thugs who captured you before? He and Amy rush to the palace, where Geoffrey is informing King Max about the resurgence of the swatbots. The king has the cryo-tube containing the queen carried out of the palace to safety, and orders that everyone within Mobotropolis be evacuated to Knothole. However, before they can get much further, Robo-Robotnik contacts them from a screen in the med-lab, mocking the king and informing him of his daughter's current captivity aboard his space station. The king immediately takes a knee and offers himself in exchange for the safety of everyone on the station, which is quite a notable gesture considering how traumatized his stay in the Zone of Silence had left him, but Robo-Robotnik simply laughs at him as at that moment more swatbots - or shadow-bots, as he calls them - burst into the room demanding their surrender for roboticization.

The more we see of Elias, the more I like him. Back up in the station, Sonic insists that they have to get free to help the Robians, but Robo-Robotnik only mocks him some more, and brings forward none other than Uncle Chuck, Muttski, and Sonic's mom and dad to enrage him further. Sonic begins flinging himself against the energy field trapping them, which only injures him every time he does it, despite Sally begging him to stop.

Within the city, Geoffrey and the other members of the Secret Service focus on rescuing civilians from the shadow-bots' attack. Valdez stays behind to cover their retreat as they rescue Rosie and the children she's looking after, and despite Geoffrey trying to go back for him, Hershey insists that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one," drawing a pretty bizarre parallel between her and Mr. Spock. Up in the station, the energy field trapping the Freedom Fighters suddenly disappears, and they turn around in shock to see who released them…

Snively insists that he needs them to be able to escape this station, and Sally agrees to bring him along. She uses Nicole to order their space shuttle to dock with the station (seems weird that that wasn't their plan from the beginning, rather than exiting the shuttle and entering the station through a damn trash chute) before setting an explosive charge to blow the place in five minutes. Sonic pulls out a power ring that Nate gave him before they left the planet's surface, saying he's going to go find his family before they leave. Sally tries to insist he shouldn't go, since Snively already mentioned Robo-Robotnik was loading the Robians onto a transport back to Mobius, but Sonic heads out anyway. Come on Sally, you should realize at this point that once Sonic has his mind made up about something he wants to do, literally nothing, not even you, can change his mind. He speeds through the corridors, soon finding Robo-Robotnik loading the last of the Robians onto the shuttle, including his family. The door shuts, and Sonic attacks Robo-Robotnik, thinking that at least his family will be safe when this place explodes. However, as Robo-Robotnik pins him to the ground, a pair of voices startle them out of their fight.

Noteworthy for being the third panel in which Sonic visibly cries, which if you'll remember is something that Sega put strict limits on in the comic later on. Been a while since we've seen that, and it's the first time it hasn't happened in a somewhat silly scenario. He races back to the shuttle with his parents in tow, and they make their escape just before the place blows. Sonic asks how his parents maintained their free will, and they explain that they were in Knothole just hours ago when every Robian suddenly turned and began to mindlessly file out of the place. Their wedding bands made out of power rings began to glow, protecting them from being affected by Robo-Robotnik's bug, but they followed anyway, playing along as though they were also being controlled and hoping to find out where everyone was going. As they fly back to the planet, safe for this brief moment, dusk falls over Mobo- uh, I mean, I guess we have to start calling it Robotropolis again. And underneath the city…

I really can’t express how funny this page is to me. I mean, can you imagine if Robo-Robotnik transferred his consciousness into the one in the middle, and was just going around looking like a gay 80's biker dude for the rest of the comic? Regardless, this is actually a good way for the comic to justify redesigning Robotnik into his more modern Eggman style. He laughs to himself that an explosion won't be enough to do him in, especially now that he has this new body… and as a somewhat jarring conclusion to this story, Sonic and the others smile and pose happily on the final page as though nothing devastating has happened, promising to us that if we liked these last 75 issues then the next 75 will be even more exciting. I suppose this is actually somewhat noteworthy however, as from here on moving into the fourth era of the comic, the inclusion of specials and sister series abruptly taper off, leaving us with just the issues of the main comic for quite a while. Unlike the third era we're leaving behind, where over half the content came from issues of KtE and Super Specials, the fourth era consists almost entirely of the main comic. But for now, I suppose we must say goodbye to this era of peace, as now that Eggman has risen from the ashes, the world is back to being embroiled in war…

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 75 #writer: karl bollers #pencils: steven butler #colors: frank gagliardo

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sleepynegress · 6 years

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Hi! I've seen your posts about Shuri and Bucky and I wanted to ask if you have the time if you could explain why a lot of people are not into it and why you think it's actually okay and would be cute? I haven't really gotten into the "discourse", I had only ever seen posts calling it wrong or disgusting and stuff like that and I would simply like to understand and consider somebody else's point of view, especially because you often post your thoughts about things and (pt1)

Aww, thank you. :) I’ve actually been going back and forth about whether I wanted to put down my full thoughts on it, because I like having an open mailbox.

…But ahh, what the hell.

I’ll say that when I saw that extra scene at the end of Black Panther, my eyebrows went up, I smiled and cleaned my shipper goggles and thought, “Hey, those two might be cute in a few years”. Then, I came home and checked the tag expecting some mad fangirls and foolishness and sure enough…

The thing is, this song and dance is an oldie, but not goodie.

Whenever there is even a hint of shippiness between a black girl and a popularly shipped white dude, concern trolling/virtue signaling nonsense comes up in abundance for why that’s just super-wrong and terrible and better off for the well-being and integrity of these characters for people to not imagine them together romantically and have fun creating fanwork for that. Because it’ll lead to moral decay or some such hyperbolic nonsense.

In actuality it’s just super-patronizing, clumsily veiled, bigotry. White fangirls who have the wildest incest and thousand year old supernatural man/teenager ships are squicked and threatened by even imagined relationships that don’t completely center on their all-white status quo. They are doing their damnedest to convince others and probably even themselves that the vein is throbbing in their foreheads out of genuine concern for the black girl half of the ship.

The top three greatest hits that I’ve seen on that front have been:

she’s being taken advantage of and that’s gross because power dynamic is unequal and therefore it’s “rape(!)” because he’s a teacher and she’s a student (Spock/Uhura)

she’s become a damsel in distress who the hero saves all the time and has no character traits apart from being his girlfriend (Iris/Flash)

she’d be having an affair with a married man and she would never do that, she’s better than that(!) because that’s immoral and she’s not (Abbie/Ichabod)

Now, for Bucky and Shuri it’s supposedly about protecting a nineteen year old black “child” (as of IW) from pedophilia. …Yeah, right. These people even went so far as to harass the white actor half because he either ships it himself and/or likes to flirt and joke like quite a few actors do with co-stars they like or are friends with in interviews about having a thing between his character and hers. Make no mistake, the true goal was to shame him, to make him feel bad for doing that for the lowly black girl and not for their ships.I used to be a theater kid. I remember a grown-ass 40+ married man playing against my 18 year old friend as husband and wife in a production. They flirted all the damn time, even when the wife came for the show she called her the second much younger production wife. NOBODY thought this was gross or serious because we weren’t being serious. It was bonding among friends; among players and it helped with the chemistry. If someone had come in talking about this guy was seriously taking advantage of my friend, we would have all backed away slowly from this person.Remember, when you were a kid and you’d claim certain aspects of pop culture stuff you like? You’d see a cool car on a movie or TV show and say “That’s my car!” or see someone hot or cool and you’d say “That’s my boyfriend!” That’s the spirit I get. These people literally get to play pretend for a living, and they get to continue to play that game while actually being a part of production process. So, when folks make a huge deal out of this? They are ones doing the thing they imagine the actors are doing. Taking it too far and thinking gross thoughts that those they were accusing of doing so, were not.With this, it’s been even more extra because Black Panther is literally the first black world with a massive budget that’s ever been embodied on screen and it’s a success, at that. Therefore there’s also lot of protective black fan helicoptering because of fear of white nonsense, and I get that but yeah… Sometimes it’s veers into stifling fan imaginings using respectability boundaries. So, the convergence of the bigotry and helicoptering created a sigh-worthy, popcorn-ingesting fanwank clusterfuck over what should have been nothing, IMO.P.S./EDIT Because I forgot the “why” part of the ship. Okay, so one character is literally a delicate ball of light, -fresh glowing positivity; a benevolent prodigy in wisdom/intelligence, curiousity, joyous humor, and freedom. The other is hardened, tainted and damaged, used (he thought beyond repair) for horrific acts of violence, and has been locked in a physical and mental prison of shadow for decades. The dynamics that are also wrapped up in that, -those ship tropes are doctor and patient, teacher and student, monster who only softens for his lady (similar to the movie canon dynamic for Nat/Bruce, but more interesting IMO), plus all of the forbidden and potential angst wrapped up in the class, age, culture/tradition, and racial gulf. He’s found paradise and he’s not worthy of it. She’s the only person who has seen and examined all of the horrific things he’s done in order to properly cure him and she still see’s the man and not the weapon, regardless. She’s in intimate proximity while also being untouchable and he has good reasons to be bound to her. There are so many angles to this that hit on potential depth of connection while also having barriers up to crossing those lines. …Which make for the basis of delicious slow-burn secret pining. It’s all ripe for some amazing shippy fanwork.

#winterprincess #shuri #I sighed extra-hard when white fans started going after mackie and winston #as the actual instigators #because stan would never imply his character is spending wakandan nights with shuri without their bad black influence #humans still aren't ready for the internet #seriously just ship it #bump these projecting fans #pineapplepizzaisadisgrace #lol when the replies prove your points better than you could

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pennywaltzy · 5 years

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At Long Last (A “Stuff Of Improbably Legends” Story)

And here is one of the two McMolly fics I have left as WIPs for this series! I think. I hope. I just need to find my notes for the other one and I can finish that, but for near, have some McMolly married smexy times (fade to black, though, I’m afraid, but since the first chapter is SFW, it’s up here).

At Long Last - After all the twists and turns their relationship has taken, McCoy and Molly take the plunge and get married the same day McCoy proposes.

READ @ AO3 | SERIES PAGE | HELP ME SURVIVE? | COMMISSION ME?

Surprisingly, it was May 5th, 2016 and he was getting married again.

He’d hadn’t even finished proposing after meeting her at the jazz club before she’d said yes. All he’d done was get down on one knee and she’d said yes, but one thing led to another and the next thing they knew they were taking a week’s vacation and she’d teleported them to Hawaii and they were about to get married. She hadn’t even bothered to change out of the sleeveless high neck red lace dress with the bateau neckline she’d worn to the jazz club. She’d laughed and said her mother would have gotten a kick out of her wearing a red dress and eloping and why the bloody hell shouldn’t she?

He honestly wouldn’t want it any other way.

He knew it wasn’t going to be anything grand like Jim and Rose’s ceremony was. It probably wasn’t even going to be very romantic. They hadn’t arranged to get married out on the beach or anything like that, choosing to get married as quickly as possible at the county clerk’s office in Oahu. Even with the five hour time difference neither of them had wanted to waste any time. They’d already wasted so much, it seemed. And maybe a very tiny part of him worried that he was rushing but it was only a tiny part. He’d been in love with her pretty much since the day he met her. He knew love at first sight was cliché and trite, and it wasn’t quite the case with them, but it was close. It had been more like love at first conversation, and the more time he had spent with her, the more he had gotten to know her, the stronger it had gotten. Even when they had denied it, even when they had fought it, it was there.

And now there just wasn’t any point in going against it anymore.

She reached over for his hand and laced her fingers through his, and he rubbed his finger against the engagement band. She had insisted on getting him a new wedding band, and that had been the only delay in getting to the clerk’s office. He had that in a small box next to the box that held her wedding band and soon he was going to wear it with just as much pride as he knew she would wear her wedding bands. After a moment she looked over at him. “Are you sure we shouldn’t at least go get Livvy and James?” she said.

Before he could answer the justice of the peace called for them. “No chance for it now,” he said, squeezing her hand. They stood up and made their way over. The entire process went by rather quickly, to be honest. He’d thought it might be more memorable than it was, that it should be more memorable, but all he could focus on was Molly standing there in her dress, looking at him with the wide smile on her face he hadn’t been sure he’d be privileged enough to see again, vowing to be his wife till death did they part. He knew in their case there was always the case there might be other forces that would tear them apart first but he had hopes they’d be lucky and have time.

And then it was time for the kiss, their first as husband and wife. He didn’t give a damn who was watching and apparently neither did she. She kissed him like there was nothing and no one in the world stopping her, like there was no one she’d rather kiss, and he responded in kind. When she pulled away, slightly breathless, there was a sparkle in her eye. “Congratulations, husband,” she said.

“I hope you know what you got yourself into, wife,” he said with a big grin before kissing her again for the hell of it.

At that point, it was just a matter of taking care of paperwork, but they were, for all intents and purposes, officially husband and wife. He didn’t use an alias like Jim did because he really didn’t give a damn, just playing it off as a coincidence, but knowing that eventually Molly was going to be known officially as Margaret Elizabeth McCoy had a silly stupid grin on his face.

“So how should we tell everyone we did it?” he asked as they exited the clerk’s office.

“You just want to know how you can irritate a certain unwanted ex of mine if he’s on the boards,” she said in an amused tone. He gave her a mild glare but her smile just got wider, and she pulled her hand from his and held up her hand with her wedding rings on them and them pulled out her cell phone. She snapped a picture, then began tapping a few things out on her phone. She looked over at her husband and showed him the post to the boards. “Public or private?”

He looked at the picture and her post. “Private, for now,” he said before leaning over to kiss her cheek. “Just close friends and family. Everyone else can find out when we get back.”

“In other words, you want to rub it in his face in person,” she said with a smirk as she hit post. “But it’s all right. I want to make it very clear that he see the fact that the wedding bands are on my finger.”

McCoy reached over and pulled her against him, tipping her face up to look at him, and she moved her arms around his neck, grinning up at him. They’d probably catch all sorts of hell when they got back to New Orleans. They wouldn’t be the first to elope; Alicia and Stefan had literally done it almost exactly two months. But he didn’t care. What was the point in waiting? They’d wasted all that time just being friends, ignoring that there could have been something more. He’d almost thrown it all away over her psychopathic ex and a stupid kiss she didn’t return. He loved her, she loved him. Why wait? “You’re amazing. Have I told you that recently?”

She shook her head for a moment. “Not recently,” she said.

“You are,” he said before leaning in to kiss her. “And I’m glad you agreed to marry me.”

“I said I’d marry you before you asked,” she murmured before his lips pressed against hers. He didn’t want to get too carried away; they had a week to spend here, a week to make up for the last few days of being apart, of his foolish pride causing a divide between them. And within mere minutes, the first reply came, from Spock, and soon they moved to a nearby bench to sit, his wife soon occupied with replying to the messages from everyone wishing them their congratulations. He even jumped on and left a comment himself and she shook her head and conversed with him on the boards, leaning against him and muttering that it was silly because he could simply have just said it to her in person. All he did was press a kiss in her hair and murmur that this way everyone could see. This was the way they should be: sappy and in love and not caring who saw.

This was the way he always wanted them to be.

Eventually, though, she stowed her phone and ten lifted her head up and looked at him. “We should go back to New Orleans and get my things and then go check in at our hotel here,” she said, reaching over to thread her fingers between his as she took his hand in hers. “Because I think I’d like to start the part of our honeymoon where it’s just us in our hotel room.”

“Yeah?” he asked with a grin, reaching up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, grinning back. She leaned in and then kissed him softly and he let his fingers slide back more to tangle in her hair. She was his wife now, and from here on out he could do this almost whenever he wanted, just about wherever he wanted, and she could do the same for him. And somehow, he had the feeling they would be doing quite a bit of that, and more.

CHAPTER 2

#IFD2019 #WIPBigBangChallenge #star trek aos #sherlock #fanfic #fanfiction #mcmolly #mccoy x molly #leonard mccoy #molly hooper #my au: stuff of improbable legends #queuel beans

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mirrorfalls · 3 years

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Lego Liveblogs ST: TOS, part 11 (of who-the-hell-knows-how-many?)

Miri, Miri on the wall, who’s the fairest script of all?

Probably not this one, another chronically under-discussed episode among the fandom, but you never know...

* Rand’s still here? I genuinely thought her actress had walked already... * There’s something very charming about this genre of sci-fi - the whole idea that you can find a completely parallel Earth just by flying out far enough, no dimension-jumping technobabble required. It showed up a lot in Atomic Age Superman stories, too. * Pretty big landing party, compared to the first dozen eps. Is this the first time we’ve had Kirk, Spock, and Bones all together? * “Where is everybody?” Someplace that’s friendlier to budgets, Yeoman. * Whoo. No lie, this guy’s got the best monster-makeup yet. By a mile. If I had any reservations about the whole “loooook upon our world if we’re not careful with the nukes OoOoOoOoO~” setting, this guy’s done a good job of sweeping them aside. ** (Hope that wasn’t supposed to be a twist, by the way...) * Holy crap, two Redshirts wander out of shot and live? This is one nice deathworld. ** (Okay yes, the irradiated guy died in their place, it’s Very Very Sad and stuff.) * Ah, here’s our titular girl. You’ll all recall how Kirk’s attempt to have a surrogate son went - how will a surrogate daughter go? * Miri’s actress really ain’t half-bad, given how demanding the role is. I wonder what else she’s been in... * A Cleverer(tm) writer would’ve had these murder-kids belting out nursery rhymes, but I really think it’s a lot more natural - and chilling - for them to use nothing more complex than “Nyah-nyah-na-na-na”. * On a somewhat-related note - you’d think someone in the crew would’ve at least suggested getting candy and toys to open the kids up. Even if it’s just for Spock to shoot them down with “We’re a military research vessel, why the hell would we have those?” * Yecch. It probably cost the effects department ten bucks tops, but that thing growing on Kirk’s hand legit made my skin crawl. * ... huh, so it wasn’t nukes that left the planet like this after all. It was some kind of biogenetic augmentation (aka The New Nuke). * “I think children have an instinctive need for adults. They want to be told right and wrong.” Kirk, your boomer is showing. ** ... but not as hard as the writers’. Are you guys seriously playing up Miri as a love interest? * Well, I guess we couldn’t keep the other kids off-screen forever. Not all them are up to Miri’s actress’ level of acting - it wouldn’t have hurt to put a few more of them in creepy masks - but I do like how this isn’t just a straight Lord of the Flies riff. The kids aren’t really feral; they just remember too well that it’s the grownups’ fault they’re in this mess to begin with. * Holy jumpscare! ** ... that’s nowhere near as effective as the first one, because that is one glowing head of hair you’ve got for a plague victim, kid. * ~sEVen DaYs~ * “Is that all, Captain?” Okay, Bones is the MVP of this episode on the strength of that line alone. * Oh for the luvva - why are you all rushing out sans communicators?! For that matter, where’d those two Redshirts go?! * Huh, I was wondering whether they’d have the guts to show Rand getting the blotches, too. Turns out they were just saving it for extra fan (dis)service. * Obligatory third-act twist: gasp shock Miri’s a turncoat! * Aw, c’mon, no fair time-skipping! At least give the crew a chance to not fall for this! ** I do like, though, that Kirk’s log actually mentions the welfare of all the kids before the fact his own crew are about to die. * ... well, on the one hand, this nicely explains why Miri doesn’t seem to hang out with her “real friends” a whole lot. On the other, it’s still creepy as fuck to symbolize - hell, literalize - her “maturation” as falling in love with a grown man. * So here’s the big climax. Shatner’s giving - probably overgiving - it his all, but I still think that the script level, he should at least try offering the kids something immediate instead of going for Big Ideals. Or, hell, steal their food supply and make a straightforward swap for the comms. Speechify later, if you must. * Another pitfall of running the clock down to a matter of hours: now getting the comms back ironically feels less important, because even if Bones did fuck up the vaccine there’s probably no time to brew a new one, anyway. ** And it looks like Bones agrees with me! Godspeed, doctor. May your guts and your main-character contract speed- ** Oops. * “Is he dead, Mr. Spock?” “No, but you’ll be if you don’t come up with a good explanation of where the fuck you were in the last two acts.” * Aaaand so it turns out Kirk’s big victory wasn’t that urgently-needed, after all! This doesn’t bother me quite as much as it probably should, since the script at least tried to establish he prioritizes saving the native kids at least as much. ** Also on the plus side: a shiny new colony for the Federation! * Nice save, Captain. Nice save.

So as a parable on the Generation War (and the follies thereof) this one’s kind of a wash, given that the moral pretty much comes down to “Children should always listen to grownups even when they’ve killed an entire fucking planet” - and that’s without getting into all the ways the plot creeps on poor Miri. As a straightforward adventure piece, though, it works nicely if you can overlook one or two big Idiot Ball moments, and I honestly love how the first act places Rand as an equal to Kirk, Spock, and Bones in examining the planet-of-the-week. Shame it couldn’t last...

Next: Our second Bard-inspired episode, and by all accounts a Classic to match Balance of Terror. We’ll see just how much it deserves that rep...

#Lego Liveblogs Star Trek #Star Trek: The Original Series

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hellyeahrpmemes · 6 years

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※ JENNA MARBLES SENTENCE STARTERS ※

starters from jenna’s 9 most recent videos as of november 8, 2017! feel free to change names/pronouns/etc.!

REACTING TO COMPILATION VIDEOS OF ME 2

“At any moment, the cleaner can walk in the front door.”

“If you don’t want to be disturbed, put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, and we’ll ignore it.”

“Have me and him beefed back and forth in our videos for a total of seven minutes?”

“Okay, I did not see that — what a little shit.”

“I’m trying not to be too loud, because we’re in a small hotel-thing.”

“I need to not comment on this feud because it’s between you and him.”

“Just gimme your neck so I can choke you out real quick.”

“I’m sorry, but that shit’s just funny.”

“I took chemistry in high school, it’s bleach.”

“Does this give you any moment of pause or remorse and be like, ‘wow, I really am gross to my girlfriend all the time’?”

“You know when you walk into your trophy room and you’re looking at all your accomplishments and you see your name on all those plaques and you’re reliving the glory days, and you’re like, damn, I did all that? That’s the feeling I have right now.”

“This is like torture. Maybe to some people, this is funny, but, to me, this is torture.”

“Somewhere, deep down inside me, I think you really like Nasty Julien.”

“You fuckin’ lick that up right now…!”

“This isn’t our house…!”

“How’d we get here…?! We were doing something…!”

“You need to get that wig on and look at 50 different camera angles in the room.”

“Did we leave that shot in a video? It wasn’t an outtake?”

“That was fucked up.”

GIVING MYSELF A SET OF GEL NAILS

“I found out about myself that I like to take my money and chuck it into the toilet and flush it.”

“I don’t know what it does, but she said I need it.”

“I ended up with some hot-ass witch nails.”

“It seems like you sort of just dip your brush in it and go for it, which I’m all about.”

“This seems like it’s getting out of hand already.”

“That’s what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“It’s very similar to eating spaghetti.”

“I feel like this is an incredible medium to jam things onto your nails with.”

“This is fucking magic.”

“It’s like the fossil of stupid.”

“Do you know what pain is? It’s a physiological response to tell you to stop doing something.”

“This is some real 2008 hot shit.”

“In order to perfect this part, you do have to have some level of technique, which I sincerely lack.”

“It looks… how you say… homemade.”

“I’m amazed that that worked even a little bit.”

“Now something that I am concerned about is how the fuck I’m gonna get this off.”

“Welcome to the diary of a 31 year old lady.”

“All I want for Christmas is to get this shit to stop.”

“I’m not saying I’m the best at what I do, but I’m the best at what I do.”

“I’m so pleased with myself…!”

“I’m just gonna go ahead and say what we’re all thinking: acrylic gel is the best invention that’s ever been invented.”

“I feel like you could do this and get okay at it.”

“I’d probably dial 911 while asking her out.”

MY BOYFRIEND COOKS MY FAVORITE MEAL

“Can’t you see what the fuck I’m wearing, bitch?”

“Can’t you see I’m fucking leisuring?”

“This was actually all inspired by the fact that I bought this leisure suit.”

“I’m gonna leisure in it, which means everybody else around me’s gotta do shit for me.”

“I’d say my favorite meal is a little bit interesting.”

“While they cook it for you, you can wear your leisure suit and tell them everything that they’re doing wrong and that it doesn’t taste right and to keep trying.”

“You’re gonna cook me my favorite meal and I’m gonna critique you the whole time.”

“You can’t even take a sip without a laughing.”

“It’s just — it’s terrible for you.”

“That’s by far my least favorite thing in the kitchen.”

“Boy, you’re chopping vegetables, like, chill out.”

“You’re just gonna leave that…!? I’m a virgo…! Please clean it up…!”

“This right here? This is what we call some aries bullshit.”

“Everything that Julien makes is so fucking bitter, and he’s like, should we add more lemon, and I’m like, no…!”

“Why was that in your sweatshirt…? That’s nasty…!”

“Go away, it’s my favorite meal…!”

“Hey, how do you spell cans backwards?”

“That’s right…! Don’t fuck it up. Don’t touch it, don’t put anything in it, don’t say it needs some lemon, don’t make it bitter as hell, it’s perfect.”

“My favorite part of this is the backhanded compliments.”

“Does it need lemon, you think?”

“I’m feeling pretty relaxed. Except for the fact that everything you’re doing right now is stressing me out.”

“Watch your mouth when you’re talking about my son pad thai.”

“Aren’t you glad I picked such a simple recipe for my favorite meal?”

“I’m not feeling very leisurely.”

“I feel like someone’s favorite meal says so much about them, and you know what mine says about me? I’m fucking trash.”

“I’m gonna cry actual tears.”

“Hell yeah, we know what the fuck we’re doing.”

“Now imagine, Julien, it’s 2 AM, and you’re wasted right now.”

“I feel like you treated me like the princess I am not.”

“Thank you, I love you.”

“Oh, man, the wine just really bounces off all the flavors.”

“This is my heart on a plate.”

MY DOGS TRY ON HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

“They’re raking it in over there. It’s not like George Lucas doesn’t have a bajillion dollars anyways.”

“I’ve had it with this wig…!”

“How is this an extra small? What’s with these sizes?”

“I love you so much, but you test me every day.”

“Okay, Spock’s hair is not this long.”

“I think this is too relaxed — this is like a dangerous level of relaxed.”

“This is a lot to ask of you, bud, but you’re doing amazing, sweetie.”

“He’s a real good boy. He’s a 10/10 good boy.”

“Alright, let’s see, do they glow in the dark? I think they do. …barely.”

BLEACHING MY EYEBROWS

“I didn’t invent it, it’s a thing…!”

“I want it to blend in with my translucent skin, alright?”

“Whenever I have to see people, I have the unstoppable urge to fuck myself up in the face."

"I feel very excluded by that product."

“Just for men. And Jenna."

"Nothing says ‘thanks for inviting me to your school’ quite like chemical burns on your face.”

"I was like, yeah, totally. And then I realized that I was lying because I don't fucking feel like it."

“I love fucking myself up. It feels good. It feels cathartic.”

“Like, this is a good look.”

“I wanna look like a beautiful snowy snow elf. Like, a snow owl personified.”

“It is a chemical burn. This is the definition of a chemical burn.”

"You and everybody else are so concerned about, like, safety and looking okay but, like, fuck off.”

“Don’t give me that look…! This is a judgement-free zone…!”

“I feel like I see a lack of people with this particular part of their hair dyed.”

“I feel like bleach is addictive. Can I get some research studies on how addictive bleach is? Because I feel like it is, and I feel like I have a problem.”

“Bleach on your face challenge!"

“Every time I go into that beauty supply store, that guy should be like, get out.”

“Just for fucking men… no it isn’t… I’m a man…”

“You have to go to your baseball game right now, son.”

“You really look like a Mii character and you just added a mustache to your character.”

“Just for men? I beg to differ. I’m a women, and I made it work for me…!”

“I feel like I look like a very rare and interesting fish.”

“Why do you look cute when you do the weirdest shit?”

I BUY MY BOYFRIENDS OUTFITS

“I am a fashion guru, okay?”

“I went and bought you some clothes, like the style icon I am.”

“I want to be dressed like a doll.”

“Let’s see how big you think I am… oh, that’s accurate.”

“I can guarantee you I’m will wear this entire outfit on 9 of the next 10 flights I take.”

“Are we done here? Cause I don’t want anything else.”

“I took your credit card, and I bought it.”

“Yo, these are soft as fuck, bitch…!”

“I wanna know what social rule says I can’t wear this everywhere I go.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’ll probably wear this all the time. It’s soft, it fits my body well, and I’m invisible.”

“Engage thicc mode.”

“I’m gonna take that fanny pack away from you.”

“I’m so disappointed, where is your thigh…!? I came here for the thigh…!”

“I was half kinda joking, but, like, why does that outfit look so fucking good?”

“I love all of the stuff you got me.”

“I’m gonna take that shirt, and I’m gonna burn it while you’re sleeping.”

REACTING TO COMPILATION VIDEOS OF ME

“I feel obnoxious. Am I obnoxious?”

“I’m not a weirdo who imitates people to their face.”

“I’m telling you — they misspelled ‘moments’.”

“I’m like a little kid. I start saying something or doing something, and then I can’t stop.”

“I’m not a snack…!”

“It’s just another example of you blatantly interrupting me because you wanted to.”

“You forget you have nothing to say, so that’s your default.”

“You don’t have a basketball game — you’ve literally never, ever had a basketball game, today or tomorrow.”

“I’ve never met a person that I’ve had that same hate like a sibling. That’s how me and Rome get sometimes.”

“It’s like one big, long incest joke.”

“Okay, this is literally gonna make me fucking cry.”

“It just ends with you screaming.”

“Don’t call me a snack again.”

“Oh, it’s hot? Now you know how I feel sitting next to you.”

MY DOG REVIEWS SOAP

“Stocked up with soap until forever.”

“If you’re dirty, come to my house, I got the soap, you know what I’m saying?”

“Alright, now we’re taking a fight break.”

“We’re not judging you; this is a safe place.”

“We only got 8 bars of soap, because I thought that was a lot of soap.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna throw any of the soap out, okay?”

“Please send help to my house. My dog is broken.”

MY BOYFRIEND BUYS MY OUTFITS

“There was a couple of items I got because I’ve always wanted to see you wear them.”

“While I was shopping today, I was thinking: what would go good at a step-grandparent’s barbecue?”

“I think this would be mad cute on you. And off of you.”

“You don’t have any step-grandparents.”

“We can go to Disneyland in it, cause I’ve never been.”

“This is my new favorite shirt!”

“Do not make me wear that capri-crap.”

“You got my nemesis in clothing form.”

“Please put this on.”

“I saw those and they literally yelled at me.”

“My nipples aren’t that far apart from each other, this is just gonna be a boob show…!”

“…I kinda like this.”

“I retract everything I said.”

“I can feel my legs suffocating from here.”

“Julien, I am a grown woman…!”

“Why do you want me to be a people that wears jeans?”

“Hey, guys, it’s me, Jenna, the regular people, here to do regular people things.”

“Tell me she doesn’t look cute in this.”

“As long as I’m wearing these sunglasses, I can wear jeans.”

“You look like you’re trying to hide from the cops.”

“Girl, you look cute as fuck.”

“If you’d ever like me to return the favor, I’m more than happy to.”

“Dear God, it’s me, Jenna. Please give me the strength not to punch my boyfriend.”

“I think I have permanent scars from those jeans.”

#rp memes #rp sentence starters #rp sentence meme #rp sentence prompts #roleplay meme #roleplay sentence starters #roleplay sentence meme #indie rp #hell yeah #mine

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beauty-grace-outer-space · 7 years

Photo

Ok, @sixclawsdragon (and others), prepare yourself for thoughts.

When I first saw it... I hated Beyond. To my untrained little Trekkie eye all they did was take these relationships they spent the first two movies slowly building and go “jk screw you”.

Spock is quitting? Jim is leaving? Uhura and Spock broke up? Everything I knew these characters to be was just... eradicated, and it was very upsetting. Then I didn’t get any of the Spock/Kirk bromance I had come to love? The last movie ended with Spock literally throwing all Vulcan control out the window and screaming his pain to the heavens as he cried and went running off in an illogical rage to avenge Jim’s death, and then standing vigil at his bedside until he recovered. How did we go from that to not even able to have a civil conversation about concerns and major decisions?

We went from Jim’s entire arc in the previous two movies being that his ship is everything, second only to his friend’s and their safety and happiness, to, “You know, I think I don’t want to do this anymore. Yeah, I’m gonna up and leave when we dock at the death snow globe.”

Visually it was beautiful. That’s about all I had to say for it after first watch. And they defeat the villain with cliche rock throwbacks to Jim’s youth? Come on.

I was so disappointed I felt the need to replace it with other Trek content, and thus I started watching TOS.

Now, having seen most of TOS I can say that I feel Beyond is the most true to TOS episodically. It has that “oh no, we’re stuck on a class M planet and only something ridiculous and our loyalty to each other can save us” vibe.

But generally? I still prefer the first two films. Now hear me out:

The characters are different. The are supposed to be different. They are the same people, morally, ethically, characteristically... but they have had very different experiences.

TOS Kirk had a supportive and loving family, mother, brother, father, who loved him and supported him. Starfleet arrived relatively quickly post Tarsus massacre, and his family was there to love him through it. His father lived to see him become a Starfleet captain, the youngest yet, but still a respectable 32 years old. He fell in love with Starfleet because of his father.

AOS Kirk? Abandoned. Mother: AWOL. Brother: left. Father: dead. He was left with neglect issues and a hell of a temper. He was left with an abusive man in the middle of nowhere, only ever hearing that his father was a good man, but only ever understanding that Starfleet took his father from him. If one chooses to believe Tarsus exists in AOS (and I firmly do), it was worse. It was bloody and brutal, and for a kid who had already learned to take care of himself, that would sure as hell drive the lesson home: watch your own back, because no one else will. But he’s got nowhere to go. So he stays. He’s brilliant. So what? Doesn’t matter. He joins Starfleet on a dare, because how dare anyone imply that he can’t? So he signs up and at 25... buckle up, kid. You’re in charge.

TOS Spock had a loving family, a long, proud, and supportive race and culture, and was old enough to have made his peace with being a child of both worlds. He’s brilliant and he knows it. He’s served with Kirk and Mccoy long enough to understand their humor and to be sure of his worth. He takes calculated risks and loves his position.

AOS Spock? Loses his mother, his home, most of his people in one fell swoop. He struggles with being half human half Vulcan, he struggles to find his place and consistently tries to prove himself. He gives in to emotion and is ashamed. He is suddenly thrust into command, and he hesitates, he questions: this is not what he wants. He doesn’t know these people, has not served with these people, and it is all uncertain and new. His journey is one of swallowing pride and learning to trust the illogical pattern of luck and genius that is Jim Kirk.

And to me, that was what was so fun about the first two movies. The audience, Trekkie or not going, “What do you mean they aren’t friends?” and then Boom... alternate universe. The same but different. Excellent. Endless possibilities.

Because where Star Trek is concerned, we’ve seen it all. We’ve seen evil alter-egos, we’ve seen time travel, we’ve seen whales, we’ve seen clones, we’ve seen a sweat virus, gladiator-esque hunger games, togas, ancient gods, giant green space hands... what haven’t we seen?

Their beginning. What they could have been if things had happened a bit differently, if, say, they despised each other at the beginning. What if...

And then we get Khan, and we know how this ends... but do we? Alternate universe.. the same, but different. And then it happens, and we finally get to hear them say, “You are my friend.”

So to me, the fun of Star Trek AOS is watching their relationship grow and knowing what it could become. Beyond took that from me. It gave me distrust and discomfort and hesitancy and it felt like they were saying, “We didn’t like the first two so pretend they don't exist. We’re going to undo everything we’ve done so far.” They changed the ship, the uniforms, their hair, the sounds, the effects, the overall look, the relationships, basically all of it had me going, “Wait... what?” And in my opinion, that’s not fair to your fans.

So while I have come to appreciate and enjoy Beyond for what it is, it’s by far my least favorite over all.

#long post #rant is rant-esque #it speaks #star trek #thoughts #beyond #ignore me #sixclawsdragon

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writing-zepher · 7 years

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DnD: Chaos Campaign-S2

Okay, so here is where things get interesting. As a brief recap, Naztae was a body guard for a bard in the mountains. The village was cursed by an evil committed in the past, and clay men were put to blame. It really was an old man’s fault, so Naztae had to dig up a corpse and the curse was lifted. To celebrate, everyone got toasted.

The next day, things go downhill very fast. Like I said a thousand times before in my previous post, alcohol and charlatan sorcerer of wild magic are a bad mix. Thankfully I am still by myself during this session, but the things that happened drove me to seek out a party because everything is impossible to do by myself.

So, after a night of partying, we start off with a Naztae hangover:

Woke up tied to a strange bed (not naked) and is extremely hung over. The room is very fancy and plush. There is a person another room, and when they come in, it is a teifling in a loin cloth.

Apparently Naztae woke up in a brothel as the teifling, known as “The Monk”, is a prostitute.

In Naztae’s drunken stupor, he was walking around town asking for “a monk”. The people decided to take him to the brothel and into Monk’s care. Monk ended up giving Naztae his money back as he threw up all over Monk’s bed before they got their clothes off.

Naztae is embarrassed and flustered as this situation is usually the other way around. Monk found his reaction to be charming.

After more talking, Naztae realized he’s not in Pika anymore. He’s actually in a another country called “Sowa” several miles away (I still don’t know how the hell he managed to do that in one night.)

Naztae tried to remember a little better. He remembered a female monk in his drunken state.

Thanking Monk, Naztae left the brothel and immidiately gets his ass beat by two orcs (I call them chuckle fucks) who serve a mob boss by the name of Grimm. Apparently Naztae did something to piss him off.

Grimm is a piece of work by the way. He’s a halfling with an Irish accent and is literally the HARDEST person to kill. He kept demanding to give him his money back and then he had Naztae hang out a window.

Despite giving him some money (which was a REALLY hard thing to do), he is given a choice to drop three stories or to make him laugh. Naztae, with very low health, chose laugh. All of his clothes get ripped off and he’s tossed into the streets for everyone to see.

Feeling extremely pissed and embarrassed, Naztae goes invisible and plots ways to kill Grimm.

Disguise kit: Naztae turns into a newsies Spock.

Naztae goes to a fancy bar to cheat at a dice game. The fancy bar sucked, so he went to Pattie’s (a rowdy bar) instead. I spot a gnome playing a game of dice in the corner and he has a large pile of money on his side. Jackpot.

Charlatans have a special trade when it comes to things that are crooked, and Naztae’s specialty is dice. He goes over to the table, and he starts winning. The gnome isn’t happy and said, “It’s time to get serious.”

Naztae decided this is a good time to switch his dice to the loaded ones. Since he is surrounded by people and all eyes are on him, he decides to start some noise in the bar to draw the attention away.

NAZTAE CASTS SHATTER

Several people die.

A brawl starts

The military police arrive

The DM congratulates me as Naztae successfully distracted the bar patrons and switched out his dice.

Naztae escapes through the bar and nearly lost as hand as he pick pocketed along the way, and ran out onto the streets. He turns invisible to hide from the police. The police can see through invisibility.

Naztae runs deeper into the slums and runs into a man with a mask. Seeing as a guard was chasing Naztae, he casts crown of madness and tells him to attack the stranger in the mask instead.

The stranger in the mask was Monk,

In a panic, Naztae looks for an innocent civilian instead. He picks a beefy looking butcher at a shop and directs the guard to attack him instead. The butcher is pissed and the guard is getting his ass beat

Monk: Why did that guard attack me?

Naztae: *crocodile tears* I don’t know. He just came after me and then he saw you. I don’t understand, I never did anything wrong in my life. The justice system is so corrupt. Please Monk, you gotta help me!

I take a rest in the brothel. Monk takes Naztae onto the roof and says Grimm is an investor of the mafia in the slums. The slums is literally under ground beneath the steampunk city. He also says the only way out is up as he looks up to the rich buildings on the upper level.

Naztae asks if he can escape, but Monk said he uses the money he makes to improve the home he had in the brothel. Naztae makes a special note to help him out when he can.

Something is going on in the streets. Monk quickly tells Naztae to hide. There is a hole in the wall. He fails athletics and fell into someone else’s bathroom. He has the option to go back down the hole, but he hears noises coming from the other room.

Naztae peeks in and sees a green butt on the bed. It was one of the orcs that beat the hell out of him and he was busy with one of the prostitutes. An opportunity to loot is always a good opportunity.

Naztae rolls for stealth to use mage hand to pick up the orc’s coin purse.

CRITICAL FAILURE! SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 60!

The shelf is knocked over and the orc and his prostitute see Naztae crouching by the door. At least he got his lowest spell slots back.

Naztae closed the door and tried to run back into the hole in the wall. The orc bursts in after him. Naztae makes an athletics check to see if he made it into the hole.

CRITICAL FAILURE! SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 2!!!!

FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS WE’RE GOING ON A RIDE

A 2 meant you surge for whole minute. That means we gotta do these surges 10 more times. YAAAAAY!!!!

Naztae tripped and fell while the orc burst into the room after him

1ST SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 100!

Naztae’s sorcery points come back even though he never used them in the first place.

2ND SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 76!

The orc takes a swing. Naztae panicked and started to glow. Both he and the orc go blind (The DM thought it would be better if we both went blind this time). The orc missed and Naztae can’t see shit.

He attempts to regain his sight and tried to run for the hole again. He makes it into the hole.

3RD SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 94!

Naztae goes from a size medium to large. His butt is stuck in the hole.

The orc regains his sight and is SUPER pissed. Naztae wiggles in panic as he tried to escape from the hole. The elvish woman is screaming. Someone is pounding on the door.

4TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 44!

For the next 10 rounds, Naztae can teleport up to 20ft in distance.

The elvish woman goes for the door.

Naztae cast crown of madness on the orc so he wouldn’t curb stomp him into the hole. He teleports out of the hole and into the bedroom.

Fun fact about crown of madness, your target needs someone to attack or else it’ll go back to their usual behavior.

Naztae chucks the prostitute at the orc before she can open the door.

5TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 15!

For 10 rounds, Naztae regains 5 hit points at the beginning of each turn.

Since the orc is busy and the prostitute is out of the way, Naztae decided to loot the room. He uses teleportation to make it faster.

The door busts down and the other orc, still putting on his pants, rushed into the room. Crown of madness fades as well. Naztae teleports down into the hole

6TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 74!

The orc with madness suddenly doubles over from poison.

Naztae teleports down to the ground level. He had a choice to teleport inside or teleport outside. Naztae teleports inside, but he turns invisible first. Good choice, as he was in another room with a prostitute.

A married couple and a prostitute were starting to flirt with each other, so nothing too bad. Naztae decided to sneak by and let them do their thing.

7TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 7!

Naztae cast a 3rd level fireball on himself. He survived.

The married couple and the prostitute are caught in the blast. All three of them are roasted to a crisp, but the prostitute didn’t quite die yet.

With a grimace, Naztae loots their corpses.

Once he hears voices on the ground floor, he teleports into the building next door. It is an abandoned dress shop.

Naztae sits down and does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

8TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 46!

Naztae levitates.

9TH SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 26!

An eye appears on Naztae’s forehead. He has advantage on wisdom and sight checks.

FINAL SURGE TABLE ROLL IS 66!

Three innocent civilians on the street are struck by lightning. One of them was a child.

Knowing that the surge is finally over, Naztae decided to sit until things calm down, then plans his next course of action (He needs to get out of the slums, and he needs to get out soon)

Okay, so that’s all I’m going to fit into this one. This session was a LONG one, so the next post will be 2.5. Yeah, a lot more happens than this, and it continues to go downhill from here.

As a result of everything that happened, security in the city is increased, and Naztae is pretty much an accidental terrorist. Why? Because he needed those coins. Again, feel free reply or reblog with your own DnD stories.

I don’t know how soon I’ll post the next one, but we’ll see.

#DnD: Chaos Campaign #Dungeons and Dragons #d&d #d&d 5e

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enterprisetrampstamp · 7 years

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heat and humidity

happy birthday to me! also on ao3

Jim lets Bones and Spock pull ahead of him, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips as he watches them.

Spock- hands clasped behind his back and torso turned, just slightly, towards the doctor- notes and dismisses his captain's withdrawal with a single flick of dark, expressive eyes, but Bones is too caught up in the story he's telling. He gestures broadly with his hands and continually gains momentum, his speed and volume increasing with every bouncing step.

He'd started the tale- an old med school epic that Jim knows ends with Bones in matching white-with-red-hearts binder and boxers on the steps of the library, drunk off his ass and singing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with his similarly-drunk lab partner- in the interest of proving to Spock that weeks of stress with no chance to vent lead to poor decision making, but Jim's pretty sure Bones has long since forgotten the point he was trying to make. Spock seems uninterested in reminding him, preferring to listen with an air of faint bemusement (and distinctly less faint indulgence).

Bones's good mood can be traced back to the morning's news; the landing party (for once comprising none of the senior crew but Lieutenant Sulu) had reported that the planet they're currently orbiting is well-suited for shore leave, assuming no one minded a little heat and humidity.

The good doctor had perked immediately. "A bit of sun and some air that's not dried out from being recycled a thousand times over sounds perfect," he'd declared. Jim had been less convinced, but he wasn't going to begrudge his crew shore leave after months stuck aboard the ship, and so Spock had been the one to protest.

(Jim is sure, if Bones stops to think about Vulcan's desert climate, that he'll realize Spock has no more complaint about the heat than he himself does. But any excuse to argue with Spock is a good excuse, in Bones's book, so he had launched himself into the debate without that second thought.)

Bones barks a laugh at the look on Spock's face- a subtle version of "What the hell were you thinking?"- after he finally describes the scene on the library steps. He claps a hand to the Vulcan's shoulder (physicality accepted without comment or complaint) and finishes his story with a joking, "That's why we need shore leave, Mr. Spock; no one on this ship wants to see me running around shirtless."

He finally seems to notice Jim's absence and draws to a stop, turning back to face him with one eyebrow raised in question. Spock stops as well, just a step further down the hall than Bones, and Jim meets his gaze over Bones's head. He knows without having to ask that Spock is thinking the same thing he is.

"If you say so, Dr. McCoy," Jim teases, opting for a flirty enough refutation that it can be interpreted as a joke.

And so Bones does, with a roll of his eyes and a heatless grouse of "Incorrigible."

"Your statement is doubly incorrect, in that it is also built on the implicit assumption that you would allow yourself to become drunken to the point of public nudity while on duty," Spock adds.

Bones looks conflicted between his desire to argue (or at least complain that Spock always takes things too literally) and the instinct to express thanks for the compliment on his work ethic (however roundabout). In the end, the other part of Spock's statement registers before he can come to a consensus, and he rounds on Spock with a flabbergasted, "'Doubly incorrect?!?' What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Jim breaks into a grin as Spock raises an eyebrow. "We are expected in the transporter room,” he points out calmly, and gently pushes Bones’s accusatory finger out of his face.

"Now, dammit, that is not an answer—"

"Bones," Jim insists, voice like honey, and wraps a hand around his CMO's elbow to guide him gently into movement. "Just take the compliment."

“I hate both of you,” Bones grumbles.

***

There are three places where Bones is most in his element.

The first, obviously, is his medbay, and by extension anywhere else his medical skills become necessary. He moves through diagnosis, research, and surgery with the calm self-assurance born of years of experience. (Jim, in all honesty, cannot picture Bones any younger than when they’d first met--Leonard McCoy, no MD, no PhD, no tried and true confidence in his abilities, is practically anathema to his very understanding of reality.)

The second, just as obvious to those who know the heart of gold beneath his prickly exterior, is with his daughter. They exchange communications nearly everyday, short commentaries on the day to day, and vidcall each other every time the Enterprise is close enough to Earth. Bones listens raptly to every pre-teen tale of woe or jubilation, offering advice and pithy commentary as appropriate, and it’s clear from the wistful smiles on their faces just how much they adore each other.

The third- unknown to Jim until precisely this moment, though perhaps if he were better able to picture a young Bones he could have guessed- is shin deep in the liquid of a silty, pale pink lake, uniform pants rolled up to his knees and boots discarded on the shore. His hands are on his hips, eyes closed and face tilted to the beaming suns, and Jim can practically see the stress melting off of him as he breathes in deep.

“Not quite a Georgian summer day,” he proclaims, “but it’ll do.” He sways slightly, his grin a whispy little thing in partial profile. “It’ll do.”

“If only we had some sweet tea,” Jim comments, half-joking, half-wishing. It truly is gorgeous on this planet, though he can already feel himself starting to sweat under the merciless gaze of the binary stars it orbits. He imagines a cool beverage would be particularly refreshing.

Spock has wandered off (though he would no doubt protest such a characterization of his methodical progression from flora to flora) by a dozen or so meters, tricorder whirring. When he first pulled it out, Bones had rolled his eyes and muttered goodnaturedly about Spock’s inability to take a break from work, but he and Jim both knew that to Spock, an aimless, thorough investigation of a new planet basically was a vacation.

“Amen to that,” Bones sighs, lowering his chin and turning fully back towards the shore. His gaze flicks over Jim’s shoulder, fond indulgence softening his grin for one split second, and then he purses his lips and glances over Jim from head to toe. “Just planning to stand there, Captain?”

“I’m not ‘just standing here’,” Jim protests. He gestures a hand, indicating Bones and the lake in general. “I’m appreciating the view.”

Bones narrows his eyes. With his hands still on his hips, it’s an even more intimidating expression than normal. “Would you quit that?”

Jim shrugs, smirking just a bit, and Bones huffs his annoyance before waving a hand in invitation. “Well, come enjoy it with your feet in the water; I can see you sweating from here.”

“Though similarly harmless to most humanoids, that substance is hardly water, Doctor,” Spock calls. They still, apparently, are well within range of his Vulcan hearing.

Bones turns his bright blue eyes to the sky, muttering something under his breath that Jim, at least, can’t catch. He laughs anyway, balancing himself on the yellow bark of the tall, thin, sparsely leafed tree on his right as he removes one boot and then the other. “You know he only corrects you because he cares, Bones.”

“He corrects me because he’s pathologically incapable of letting a fallacy pass without comment,” Bones retorts, taking a few splashing steps closer to shore to hold out a hand and help steady Jim on the step down into the lake. (The bank and its soft, mossy grass don’t transition smoothly into beach and then lake, instead crumbling into a small, foot high grey-blue cliff of clay.)

Jim grasps Bones’s hand with a smile that sparkles in his eyes, squeezing briefly and not letting go once he’s stepped down into cloudy pink. (Bones, as always, is right; he feels refreshed already.) “Nonetheless, he cares,” Jim says, soft but forceful, and the air is full of nothing but the gentle sound of the lake lapping against the shore.

Bones flushes red.

***

It’s hard to say what’s brought them to precisely this moment, after so many years of dancing around each other. Jim isn’t sure it matters, not when Bones’s jaw is cradled in his hands, when his fingers curl into the fabric over Jim’s chest as he sighs into the gentle kiss. The liquid of the lake splashes onto both of their pants as Jim presses recklessly closer, but that doesn't matter much either.

When they draw apart, Spock watches them from the shore with something not-quite-a-smile in his dark eyes, hands clasped behind his back and tricorder returned to its pouch on his hip. “I hope you’ll forgive me for refraining from joining you in the lake,” he remarks drily.

Bones’s eyes twinkle with mischief as he looks up at Jim from that scant inch between them. “Get Scotty to beam me down a decent glass of sweet tea and I might consider it.”

#mcspirk #spones #mckirk #leonard mccoy #jim kirk #spock #tos #star trek #bones #kirk #I wrote this #they're soft and I'm gay #a tramp stamp original

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kaitymccoy123 · 7 years

Text

Lost Days (p.t. 7)

Intro: Is this the end? OH NO! Once again requested by @missmle712 - the reason for all this angst. :)

Ok so I have a lot of feelings about the end of this series. I am actually so proud of this last part I thought I wasn’t going to get it to turn out how I wanted it but it definitely turned out much better than I could have hoped. I loved writing this series. I definitely did. It didn’t get a lot of hype or a lot of notes and I have to be honest and say that that did discourage me a little, but those who did love it, those who reblogged or left comments literally kept this series going because I didn’t want to disappoint you. And next time I have a series I am definitely writing the entire thing before I post it because it was actually quite stressful to keep up with it. But I am so happy with how it turned out. And I hope you are happy as well.

So thank you making the journey of Lost Days a memorable one. You guys rock.

Pairing: Jim x reader

Word Count: 3,450 (holy moly)

Summary: We have reached the end ladies and gents. Is it going to be a happy or sad ending? Read and find out!

Intro Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

-Enjoy!-

Jim:

As I waited for Bones, lying on the office floor in a pool of my own blood, I only entertained for a moment the possibility that I was actually going to die there. The only reason I really cared was that I didn’t know if Bones could find you without my help.

I had called him when I received the message that told me where you were, telling him that if I didn’t send him a com in an hour, to come in after me. Of course he had tried to get me to back down, to let him help me, but I didn’t have time. You didn’t have time.

He took a lot longer than I thought he was going to, and images played in my brain over and over. Your eyes on mine. The gun pressed to your head. The crazed look in Eve’s eyes. You finally remembering me. Then the gun pointed at my chest. Then a deep pain. Your hands on my face. You calling my name.

You.

As I watched them take you away, kicking and screaming and calling my name, as I watched them drug you, your body going instantly limp, an odd sense of happiness pulled at my brain. I was dying. But I was happy.

It could have been delirium, that’s what Bones would have said, or something to do with the blood loss, that would have been the logical reason, Spock would have informed. But I couldn’t help but think it was because of the way your eyes met mine when you remembered. The way your lips formed my name when you finally remembered. You remembered me.

I felt my entire world shift again, if that was possible. You were alive. And the entire world could have exploded and I wouldn’t have cared because you came back to me.

When Bones finally showed up, he went into full doctor mode, and I just let him work, let him fret over me because that’s what he did best. Eventually he stopped the bleeding enough to move me and then suddenly we were beamed aboard the Enterprise.

I asked Bones where you were, told him there was no way in hell he was operating on me until I knew you were safe. But it was a half-hearted response as he literally had his hands inside the hole in my chest, trying to stop the bleeding. So he called me a ‘god-damned idiot” and told me that he had already told Scotty and Spock about the situation, and that they were already searching for you. The only problem was how difficult it was going to be to find a small mission pod in the middle of the galaxy.

“Where did Eve and her goons go?” I asked, fading in and out of consciousness.

“I have no idea, Jim. They weren’t there when I got there, and for all they know their plan worked. They must have had a shuttle on the roof and taken off somewhere.” Bones informed.

I could only groan in response, stars bursting behind my eyes as Bones dug deeper, trying to find the bullet. Bones’ worried glare met mine many times, ordering me to stay awake, and I tried, I really did, but eventually sleep was easier than staying awake, and I slipped easily into darkness.

It hurt when Bones told me you didn’t want to see me.

But I understood, or at least tried to understand, so I rested, much to Bones’ bewilderment, and waited for you. I had waited three years already, what was one more week?

We would make up these lost days. We could find home again.

Because that’s what you were to me. What you are to me. Home.

The great blackness of space was a lot less magical when you had just been floating around in it for three days, waiting to die, praying that the love of your life wasn’t dead.

You looked wistfully out the windows in your quarters, into the great beyond. Nothing but stars and blackness and emptiness and space. You thought of all the miles and light years that you had spanned over the time since you boarded the Enterprise, since you’d been rescued, and you had to remind yourself that you had been on the ship for many miles and light years before, with Jim.

Thinking of Jim made your heart sink into your chest. Like your heart wanted to hide and disintegrate into your innards but was stopped by something. Was stopped by hope.

You had to constantly remind yourself that you weren’t lost anymore. That that feeling of emptiness and blackness and space was gone, had shattered the moment you met Jim. The moment you found Jim again.

It ached in you now, that pressing, sinking, empty feeling that made you unable to catch your breath and made stinging tears press at your eyes.

The sound of your name behind you shook you out of the maze of thoughts that you were lost in.

“Y/N.”

A sob almost escaped you, and your breath caught in your chest as you spun around, taking in Jim’s form standing near the door. He looked as lost as you felt. His shoulders slightly hunched and his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his whole demeanor not one of a fierce captain, but one of a lost soldier, a little boy who doesn’t know how to get home.

“Jay.” You gulped, trying to swallow down the lump in your throat.

“How do you feel?” His voice cracked, and the innocent question hung in the air as he met your eyes.

You felt your soul set on fire as you dove into the crystal blue-ness of his eyes. Oh, how familiar those eyes were to you, how beautiful.

“A lot better, thanks, and you?” You breathed.

“Just fine.”

“Bones told me what happened after they drugged me.”

Jim nodded.

It felt like someone was continually stabbing your heart with a blunt knife at the politeness of the conversation, how forced it was, like you didn’t have to suppress every fiber in your being that was screaming at you to run to him, to hold him again.

“I remember everything, Jay.” The words tumbled quietly out of your mouth without you telling them to.

Jim’s eyes snapped up to yours and your heart skipped a beat.

“You do?” He mouthed, and you could tell he tried to make his voice audible but couldn’t get the air past his vocal cords.

You nodded.

And then the tears came. Flooding down your cheeks, like a silent waterfall. Everything that had been building up inside of you in the past couple days released, like a dam breaking, and tremors wracked your body. All the emptiness, all the confusion and frustration and incomplete-ness that you had felt drained out of you, purged from your brain as you sobbed. A river flowed down your cheeks. An ocean surged inside your brain. Jim didn’t move to embrace you or wipe the tears away, as if he knew that you needed to let this out. That this act of sorrow was not about him, but about you, and all you had lost, all you had been through. Memories flashed before your eyes, happy ones and sad ones and terrifying ones and you just let them roll over you.

They all faded except for one.

“I died, Jim. I remember dying.” You gasped and grasped the fabric of your shirt with shaking fingers.

“I know, Y/N.” He consoled with a shaking voice, “Darling, I can only imagine how hard it must be to suddenly remember all this. To suddenly remember me.”

You almost laughed at his words, how absurd they sounded. How could you ever have forgotten him? This beautiful man who held your heart in his hands.

“That’s why I didn’t want you to come see me in the medbay. I needed time to process everything, and you would have just made it a lot more complicated.” A weak smile tugged the ends of your mouth up, and you wiped at stray strands of hair that found their way onto your face.

A soft smile reached Jim’s lips as well, and you felt as if all of your energy had suddenly drained from your body, a sense of calm pouring over you as you looked at him, memories now budding and blossoming before your eyes.

You noted a passing memory and unintentionally let out a laugh.

“Do you remember shore leave that one time, when you took all the Bridge crew to see a sci-fi move and Spock spent the entire time telling us how “scientifically incorrect” it was? You smiled.

Jim looked distant, as if he was remembering as well and a smile formed on his lips, “Yeah, Bones kept shushing him and then they started bickering in the row in front of us.”

You laughed as the images formed in your mind.

Jim continued, “and after 20 minutes you and I decided to ignore them and spent the rest of the time...”

“Making out in the back row like teenagers.” You both said at the same time.

This story had been told so many times that you had memorized it and you both chuckled, the tension in the room finally easing.

“I miss you.” You exhaled shakily and your smile faded, as well as Jim’s.

Jim cocked his head to the side and gave you a sympathetic gaze, taking a step towards you, “I’m right here, Y/N, I’m with you.”

You shook your head in disagreement to his statement, “I know that, Jay, but it feels as if I am missing you like I would have if I had remembered you before, after I had woken up.” It was hard to explain in words what you were feeling.

“Like I miss the years we lost. All the days and moments and memories that we are never going to get back. I miss those.” You gasped.

Now it was Jim’s turn to shake his head, “We have our whole future ahead of us, Y/N!” His voice grew with quiet excitement, and he took another step closer to you, “Screw the last three years! They are done. Gone. And don’t get me wrong, they were the worst years of my life. It destroyed me when I thought you were gone.”

He paused and took a few shaky breaths before his sparkling blue eyes met yours and his fingers brushed yours, tugging you closer by your fingertips.

“But there is so much ahead of us, Y/N. Years and years ahead of us. It’s all right there, waiting, years that I never thought I’d get with you.”

Tears began to prick your eyes again, your emotions rising up and becoming all tangled again, “I don’t know, Jay.” You paused, staring at the floor, “I don’t even know where to start.”

You were still ensnared in the feeling of being lost, and panic began to rise in your throat at the thought of never being found again. You couldn’t find the strength to pull your eyes off the floor, couldn’t meet those expectant blue eyes for fear of internally combusting.

A warm finger pressed under your chin, tilting your head up for you, and you didn’t combust when his eyes met yours, instead it was like a lock clicking into place. The memories stopped swimming around in your brain, and instead slotted themselves into your mind, the overwhelming feeling of the constant images finally receding. It was all you could do to push air in and out of your lungs as things settled in your brain, and Jim was patient, noticing your internal struggle and waiting.

“How about we start here.” Jim breathed and your eyes flitted closed as his lips found your cheek gently.

Another memory slotted into place.

“And here.” Another kiss, to your opposite cheek.

Things grew quieter in your brain.

“Here.” A kiss to the tip of your nose, making you smile.

Silence. Only one thing on your mind now. The man with his hands in your hair and his lips mere inches from your own.

Before you could take in another breath you pressed your lips to his. Your mind completely went quiet now. You were so enveloped in the feeling of him, of Jim, of his hands moving down to your neck and his lips desperately on yours that you almost forgot to breathe.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was a kiss of longing and waiting and hoping and missing and desperation. It was hands pulling and arms wrapping and lips pressing. It was like a storm. A hurricane.

You pulled away to catch your breath, but a hand on the back of your neck kept you from going too far, and Jim held your forehead to his. You ran your shaking fingers down his chest and moved them to wrap around his back, pressing your bodies flush together.

“I love you, Y/N.” Jim said carelessly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

You froze, but thankfully he kept talking, his hand now moving to cup your cheek and you wrapped your hand around his wrist.

“And I know this is way too much for you to deal with right now, and frankly I don’t know how you are actually holding it together as well as you are, so you don’t have to say it back right away. I just want you to know that I never stopped loving you. Never. Not when I met Eve, not when I was out exploring space, not even when they handed me your ashes.”

A few tears fell from Jim’s eyes now, and you released your grip on his wrist to wipe the tears away, and he leaned into your touch.

“I missed you so much I could barely breathe. When I found you again it was like a weight was lifting off my chest.” He was starting to panic now, you could tell, his eyes growing wide and big tears straining down his cheeks, “Like I was finally free. And when you didn’t remember me? It felt like someone stabbed me in the heart over and over. You were looking at me but you weren’t seeing me. It was like I was a mirage and you couldn’t believe I was real.”

You stopped his ranting with a gentle finger to his lips.

“Shhh...” You chided and gave him a smile.

Leaning in, you pressed your lips to his softly, slotting your lips with his, sending all the love and reassurance you could into the kiss, letting him know that you were here, alive, and his.

“I love you, Jay.” You whispered as you pulled away, and watched as his face broke open with relief and he smiled.

He pulled you in for another kiss, and you smiled onto his lips, unable to hide the giddy feeling that his lips on yours elicited from you. Happiness now dripped over you, slowly blotting out all of the nervousness, all of the unsureness that you had felt before, and you leaned into him, knowing deep within that you were exactly where you belonged.

“Captain Kirk to the Bridge. Captain Kirk to the Bridge.”

A voice sounded over the paging system, interrupting your never-ending kiss. Jim seemed to ignore the call, and it was you who finally pulled back, a smile never leaving your lips.

“Jay, you have to go.” You insisted, and laughed when he dove in, trying to capture your lips with his again and you held his face away with your hands.

“No way. I’m sure they can handle whatever it is without me.” Jim griped, his eyes now sparkling and full of life as he looked at you.

“Captain Kirk to the Bridge. Captain Kirk to the Bridge.”

The voice sounded again and Jim groaned, his head falling forward into the crook of your neck, his soft hair brushing against your skin. You laughed and held the back of his head, running your fingers through his hair as you rocked gently, as if to soothe him.

“It’s okay, little Captain.” You cooed and he chuckled into your skin, sending waves of happiness over you, “We have all the time in the world now, don’t we?”

Jim lifted his head now and smoothed his hands over your waist and hips, pulling your body tight to his and meeting your eyes fiercely. He let out a deep breath and smiled, his eye closing as you carded your fingers through his hair. You reveled for a moment in the fact that you could do this again, that you could touch him and look at him and kiss him.

“That we do, beautiful, that we do.” He sighed, and tilted his head so your fingers had better access to his hair.

A surge of happiness prompted you to kiss him again, wanting nothing more than to feel his lips against yours indefinitely, forever, to never lose another day without them, without him. Jim leaned into the kiss, and you could feel him smiling beneath your lips as his fingers hooked into the fabric of your shirt.

“Captain Kirk to the Bridge. Captain Kirk to the Bridge.”

With an exasperated gasp Jim pulled away, actually stepping away from you, the sudden loss of his body against yours making you frown.

“Okay, I better go. Spock’ll have my head if I ignore the com one more time.” Jim turned towards you, his words not matching his stance, as he looked like he wanted nothing more than to wrap you in his arms again.

“How about I come with you?” You suggested, and Jim’s features lit up instantly.

“Will you? I don’t think I can bear one more second without you by my side.” Jim roused, “I keep feeling like you are going to disappear again, slip through my fingers.”

You stepped forward and entwined your fingers through his.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jay.” You avowed, pressing a kiss to his cheek, “I’m staying right by your side as long as the universe allows it.”

Jim beamed at you now and pressed a quick kiss to your lips before leading you out the door.

It was strange, walking these halls, hand-in-hand with Jim. It was familiar and new at the same time. Like a memory becoming a reality. And for once in the past week your heart didn’t feel like it was going to disappear inside your chest, you knew it was safe, protected by the man who was walking beside you, hand in yours.

Reaching the Bridge, Jim didn't let go of your hand even as he was bombarded with information and began to give orders. He made his way to his chair and sat down in it, and you stood to the side, fingers still entwined with his, and he stroked your skin as he addressed Sulu and Chekov who both smiled at you in recognition. You were ecstatic to see them as well, to be back by Jim's side. Surveying the busy room with a smile, you nodded to Spock who sat at his spot in the corner, and he nodded back. You gave a little finger wave to Uhura at her station and she gave you the biggest smile you had ever seen.

A hand came to rest on your shoulder suddenly and you looked up to see Leonard smiling down at you, and you reached your free hand up to his. "Thank you." You mouthed at him, giving his fingers a quick squeeze before he removed his hand from your shoulder.

You looked down to Jim now, in his chair, doing what he does best, and you smiled fondly down at him. His head tilted back and his eyes turned to you, a shimmer of hopefulness laced in his features, and you gave his fingers a squeeze now, and he returned the gesture.

Turning your eyes forward, to the vastness of space and time that was laid out in front of you as the Enterprise and all it's crew hurtled through the universe, you felt content and light, like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders.

Whether Jim had found you or you found him still remains a mystery, but you couldn't care less, because as you stood next to him, your love, your heart, surrounded by your friends and family aboard this ship, you knew everything was going to be okay.

You had found those lost days. You were home.

-Thanks for Reading! I hope you liked it!-

Tags: @sistasarah-sallysaidso, @starr-trekkk, @mad4oak, @thebassoonerthebabetter, @cocosierra94, @mccoymostly, @mollyxpocket, @digitalmoonhowell, @cookieoffortune, @thundergirl007, @yourtropegirl, @missmle712, @wonders-of-the-enterprise, @kitchenwitchsuperwhovian, @starmission, @anyakinamidala, @vronwymorgan@highfunctioningfannibal, @dudahmautner, @the-witching-hours12-3, @newhappiness430 @star-trekkin-across-theuniverse @arrowsshootyouforwards @enterprisewriting @rampant-salamander @thedragonsaunt @emmkolenn @amoretheiwa @bridgetlemonade @summerealexander

That’s it folks? Thanks again for all the support and love. I couldn’t do it without you guys! <3 <3 <3

#startrek #startrekimagine #startrekfic #jimxreader #kirkxreader #lostdays #captainkirkangst #kirk #jamestkirk #jamestiberiuskirk #the end?

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avasilvugh · 7 years

Note

(wriggles eyebrows) superbabies at hogwarts

BRUH

so kara’s a muggle born hufflepuff and lena’s a pure blood slytherin (who like......easily could have gone to ravenclaw if she wasnt so terrified of what lillian would say or do if she didn’t end up in the luthor’s typical house) and they’re p sure the kiddos are going to have magic (like 90% on finn and maia?? stella’s a lil more murky bc they’re p sure that her birth mom was a witch but its not as if they’ve got like.......Offical Records on her or anything)

so finn and maia show magic p early?? from like toddlers tbh so they’re expecting their letters and then stella’s like nine and hasn’t shown any inclination to magic and she’s starting to ask when she’ll get her letter, if she can get a cat for a pet instead of an owl like finn and maia did and like?? they’ll obviously love her exactly as they always have but like they’re like lowkey worried she’ll be destroyed if she doesn’t get a letter

so they’re gearing up to sit down with her and talk to her about the possibility of her maybe not having magic and then one day she sneezes and sets the curtains on fire

finn!!! is the first, the oldest, and he like straight up cries when his letter comes bc he’s so excited?? but he’s also dreading being away from his moms, being away from his sisters, but kara wraps him up in a big hug and tells him all about how scared and sad she was when she got her letter, how much she desperately didnt want to go but she went and it was amazing and he’s going to have a wonderful time, she knows it.

the whole family goes to diagon alley and like the kiddos have been before, kara and lena take them p regularly for ice cream or for birthdays or hell just for funsies but now it’s Big and Important

his wand is alder, unyielding, with unicorn hair as the core. twelve inches even and like.......when he matches with it he literally makes flowers grow in every nook and cranny of ollivanders and stella’s literally six but she’s so entirely entranced, so finn just sort of thinks flowers and then she’s got a little bloom behind her ear, braided into her hair and she’s grinning and maybe she finally stops crying at the thought of her big brother going off to school for the year

meanwhile maia’s pretending like she’s not at all upset about this, bc she’s excited for finn?? she is!!! but he’s her best friend and she’s not ready to lose him for nine months out of the year, but by the time they make it to the owl shop, she’s grinning and talking about what type of owl she thinks finn ought to get, what type of owl she’ll get bc she’s not pleased with finn’s final choice (a small, sleek little barn owl that he stares at and finally decides to name spock bc he’s a nerd just like lena tbh)

so he goes!!!!! and he is a hufflepuff!!!!! a giant soft sweet hufflepuff!!!!!!! kara sends him her old scarf from when she was in school when he gets sorted, sends a rlly embarrassing howler that’s basically her and lena just crying and saying they’re so proud of him, they love him so much, call home as soon as you can and tell us everything! and he’s blushing a little bit but his house is full of kids with similar howlers and they’re all blushing a little, all making bashful eye contact with one another

and jesus does he belong in hufflepuff like. he is so happy, like he’s homesick for the first few weeks?? but it helps that lena does guest lectures for muggle studies on how magic and muggle technology can be combined, helps that he can see one of his moms every few weeks or so, helps that he has a smartphone bc this is the 21st century and he’s able to facetime his family a lot. but once the homesickness passes, once he falls into the rhythm of hogwarts, he just begins to belong u know?? like he makes friends across the board, in every house, in every year, often volunteers down in the infirmary when there’s need

jesus he writes his sisters so many letters bc they’re still young enough that getting mail is like A Thing. like?? he asks his moms for a camera, just so he can send maia a picture of the giant squid in the lake bc she’s so fascinated by it, just so he can send stella a series of photos of the quidditch matches his new friends bring him out to bc she watches the matches on tv and is so entranced

so his first year is so awesome and quite frankly so is his second year and then!!!!!! it’s his third year and maia’s coming and he legit cannot wait, like he knows all the secret passages and shortcuts and which house elf (no longer kept, but actually employed by the school !!! bc mcfuck off thats why) is the easiest to persuade for a midnight snack and he cant wait to share that all with maia

so maia!!!! she gets her letter and she literally screams, scares the fuck out of her moms and siblings but she’s like FUCK YES WHERE’S MY WAND WHERE’S MY GIANT SCREECH OWL SOMEONE GET ME SOME CHOCOLATE FROGS TO CELEBRATE like she’s been counting down the days to hogwarts since finn got his letter

her wand!!! is dogwood with dragon heartstring, rigid, twelve and a quarter inches and is a bit, well. it looks like a branch with a handle tbh but its kind of wild?? like a thing of nature and the minute it hits maia’s hand, she’s enthralled and there’s like a hum in the air?? like something’s clicked into place and she’s READY like hand her some SPELLS lets get this MAGIC HAPPENING

and she gets her giant ass screech owl, names it gene simmons bc why not (genie for short, obviously), gets her books and her supplies and asks if they can stop by weasley’s to grab a few things and her moms set her with a look and kara’s like maia you can’t prank any of the professors and lena’s like on that subject, you can’t prank any of your housemates until at least second term and maia’s kind of like fiiiiinnneeee but definitely slips in a few things that are definitely prank-worthy and grins when her moms pointedly look in the other direction as theyre paying

so then she gets to hogwarts and she’s sitting under the sorting hat for a solid ten minutes as it hems and haws between sorting her into gryffindor or ravenclaw and she’s a little sad she’s not even being considered for finn’s house, but she also knows she’d never fit in there, not ever. and this goes on for a bit bc maia’s wildly smart, and she loves learning but she’s also hard headed and reckless and intensely committed to the idea of justice, fairness, always steps up to a fight, never away. so FINALLY the sorting hat calls out GRYFFINDOR and then maia’s swept up in the celebration, catches finn’s eye as he gives her the biggest proud big brother smile and a thumbs up (meanwhile he’s secretly facetiming kara and lena so they can see this and what, they’re totally not crying)

and kara, secret old lady that she is, tries to knit maia a gryffindor scarf but its kind of terrible so they also buy her one but (and maia will never admit this) she sleeps with the fucked up one kara made her, tucked up next to her ratty old teddy bear from when she was a baby.

what?? it makes her feel safe, reminds her of home

so she doesnt have that same adjustment period as finn did?? like she’s not super sad for the first few weeks, its more protracted than that, lasts a little longer but doesnt hit as hard, and it’s a lot of help that finn’s there, pulls her over to eat at his table when she doesnt have friends to eat with the first few days, who invites her round to his common room to eat the sweets their moms have sent them and to catch up on tv on his laptop. but mostly??? she loves hogwarts. she LOVES it

she excels at potions, in the same way that finn excels at herbology, great at defense against the dark arts, and shit if she’s not even better dueling, like she gets an actual invitation to join the dueling club on parchment and everything

and like??? she’s on the choir and gets her friends to dare her to explore the forbidden forest and quite frankly she’s having the time of her life

and then little stella!!!!! she gets her owl and like. just stares at it for a bit, trying to believe its real and then lena’s coming downstairs and sees stella sitting in front of the big kitchen window and sees what she’s staring at and shes like !!!!! stella!!!! cmon sweetheart, lets go get that letter!!!! and stella’s so??? happy???? like its been weird like she’s basically been an only child in the three years since maia went to hogwarts, been on her own and now she’ll be back with her siblings and she’s so so happy oh my god

she very nearly cries when she finds her wand bc she takes the longest of all the kiddos. no wand feels right, feels like home and she’s nearly at her wits end with it, just about to say nevermind, take me home and then, well, she finds it. its pine, supple, fourteen and a half inches long with a dragon heartstring; god, it looks a little ridiculous when ollivander hands it to her, almost like its too long for such a small girl but then she’s holding it, then a hush is falling over the room and then there’s just light, everywhere and it feels right??? feels good, grounded

and she picks out a little black kitten!!! its the runt of the litter and maia kind of knocks her shoulder and says awwww just like you and their moms fix her with a look but stella’s smiling, nodding, saying that one, i want that one and that’s the end of that

what does she name the cat, you ask? well

she names it carmilla bc she’s a giant baby lesbian ok, like hell she didnt sneak the novella from lena’s bookshelf and struggle through it only to watch the series and then develop an as of yet unnamed crush on carmilla

so she finally gets to hogwarts, kind of terrified (she cried a lot on the train, only sort of soothed by her siblings refusing to go sit with their friends, instead squishing into the same bench and playing sudoku with her) but finn’s grinning at her from the hufflepuff table and maia’s giving her this steady look like you got this from gryffindor and stella’s like??? ok. i’ll be happy in either of those houses

but then the sorting hat barely touches her hair before its screaming SLYTHERIN and stella’s like um what.

this isnt to say any of the kiddos have that assbackwards belief that slytherin = evil bc like?? lena was slytherin and yeah, there’s some shit tied up with that but she did truly have a decent time and aunt alex was slytherin too and she’s good, the greatest, like none of them have grown up with that messed up idea

but at the same time stella’s like um. i am the softest bitch here. what the fuck bc while she knows slytherins arent evil, she also knows her mom and aunt alex, knows there’s an edge to slytherins that she can’t hope to ever match??? like ambition?? cunning/?? bitch WHERE

but its done, she’s sorted and she’s kind of in shock and most of slytherin is as well, kind of looking at her and then looking back to her siblings, kind of like??? the fuck???? the danvers kids are like........the Softest. why do we have this one???? and maia’s the first to holler her name, whoop and clap and stamp her feet and celebrate her baby sister getting sorted and then finn’s joining and then the whole of slytherin is doing the same and stella kind of smiles a little bc when she sits down, the girl next to her gives her this appraising look then sticks out her hand and says i’m ari, we’re friends now before shoving a plate of food at her

and lena’s like??? worried that stella doesnt want to be in slytherin but also incredibly proud and excited??? like shit, ok, all my weird trivia abt the slytherin dorms can finally come in handy and she digs out all her old stuff, packs it up with a weepy howler that’s literally her and kara just crying about how much they love and miss stella and stella literally wears that scarf basically every cold day for the rest of her life tbh

stella feels the homesickness more?? like a Lot more, bc she had a lot more one on one time with kara and lena after maia left, isnt used to not being around them in the slightest and she’s kind of inconsolable for a while after lena’s lectures, but maia sometimes sneaks her into the gryffindor dorms so she doesnt have to feel so alone at night and that helps a lot, helps that she finds some good friends p early on as well

OH SHIT it also helps that stella’s like. terrifyingly good at transfiguration and charms, and, later, divination and legilimancy (heh u see what i did there). probably also helps that she’s scary good at most curses and hexes like.........she’ll Fuck U Up. maia fights with her fists but stella doesnt hesitate to use her wand. like ppl are a lil tiny bit scared of her but she’s tiny and adorable and v sweet, sweet enough that most ppl get over their fear p quickly

so the kiddos do alright?? finn never joins the quidditch team even though kara played and he’s never quite as fond of flying as stella; in fact, its only stella that joins quidditch for anything longer than one season, as a chaser (stella MAY be a little bit of an adrenaline junkie and MAY have the time of her life dodging bludgers). maia joins as a beater for one season when gryffindor’s normal beater came down with dragon pox and had to go home to recuperate but she quits at the end of the season bc she hits a bludger that ends up knocking stella off her broom and like.......Fuck That ya know

hmmmmmm what shenanigans do they get up to

well finn’s like every professors favorite student like he’s there on time and prepared for class every day and god help every professor the day maia comes to hogwarts like they’re all expecting another mild mannered danvers kiddo (like?? even their moms were so well behaved.........that said. it shouldnt be a surprise bc alex was hell on wheels) but then maia sweeps into her first class, probably trailing glitter or something equally dramatic and like. professor snapper looks like he wants to die tbh. like just drop dead

i dont blame him tbh, maia is also hell on wheels, like constantly calling teachers out when they fuck up and starting fights when some punk kid starts saying shit about blood traitors like hey. fuck u buddy

so then after maia’s torn through, everyone’s a lil cautious with stella but she’s like........a small bunny or something. a small bunny that could probably murder you with some tricky non-verbal magic but a small bunny nonetheless

finn’s a prefect and eventually head boy!!! like he’s so proud of that and his sisters roll their eyes but theyre proud of him too and maybe kara and lena just.........dont shut up about how their son is head boy, their eldest daughter got an o in potions, how their youngest was the first in her class to cast a patronus charm successfully like they’re B R I M M I N G with pride tbh

hmmmm what else what else

finn goes on to be a healer!! one of the best at st. mungos, the one you’d want caring for you after you’ve been blasted with some curse or the other. maia first works for the ministry, in their muggle science department, but then decides to train as an auror (like why not, she’s got the grades and the grit for it). stella bounces around for a bit before eventually opening her own little shop in diagon alley. it’s a bit of an odds and ends sort of shop, somewhere halfway between an antique shop and a toy store tbh

and maybe she helps out on some of maia’s raids/cases

its not like there’s anyone more qualified to help, she is one of the foremost experts in legilimancy

#supergirl #supercorp #kara danvers #lena luthor #superbabies #hp!superbabies #triwiizard #human interaction

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Chief Gates Comes to Oakhurst: A Cop Drama

One day in late 1992, a trim older man with a rigid military bearing visited Sierra Online’s headquarters in Oakhurst, California. From his appearance, and from the way that Sierra’s head Ken Williams fawned over him, one might have assumed him to be just another wealthy member of the investment class, a group that Williams had been forced to spend a considerable amount of time wooing ever since he had taken his company public four years earlier. But that turned out not to be the case. As Williams began to introduce his guest to some of his employees, he described him as Sierra’s newest game designer, destined to make the fourth game in the Police Quest series. It seemed an unlikely role based on the new arrival’s appearance and age alone.

Yet ageism wasn’t sufficient to explain the effect he had on much of Sierra’s staff. Josh Mandel, a sometime stand-up comic who was now working for Sierra as a writer and designer, wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him: “I wasn’t glad he was there. I just wanted him to go away as soon as possible.” Gano Haine, who was hard at work designing the environmental-themed EcoQuest: Lost Secret of the Rainforest, reluctantly accepted the task of showing the newcomer some of Sierra’s development tools and processes. He listened politely enough, although it wasn’t clear how much he really understood. Then, much to her relief, the boss swept him away again.

The man who had prompted such discomfort and consternation was arguably the most politically polarizing figure in the United States at the time: Daryl F. Gates, the recently resigned head of the Los Angeles Police Department. Eighteen months before, four of his white police officers had brutally beaten a black man — an unarmed small-time lawbreaker named Rodney King — badly enough to break bones and teeth. A private citizen had captured the incident on videotape. One year later, after a true jury of their peers in affluent, white-bread Simi Valley had acquitted the officers despite the damning evidence of the tape, the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 had begun. Americans had watched in disbelief as the worst civil unrest since the infamously restive late 1960s played out on their television screens. The scene looked like a war zone in some less enlightened foreign country; this sort of thing just doesn’t happen here, its viewers had muttered to themselves. But it had happened. The final bill totaled 63 people killed, 2383 people injured, and more than $1 billion in property damage.

The same innocuous visage that was now to become Sierra’s newest game designer had loomed over all of the scenes of violence and destruction. Depending on whether you stood on his side of the cultural divide or the opposite one, the riots were either the living proof that “those people” would only respond to the “hard-nosed” tactics employed by Gates’s LAPD, or the inevitable outcome of decades of those same misguided tactics. The mainstream media hewed more to the latter narrative. When they weren’t showing the riots or the Rodney King tape, they played Gates’s other greatest hits constantly. There was the time he had said, in response to the out-sized numbers of black suspects who died while being apprehended in Los Angeles, that black people were more susceptible to dying in choke holds because their arteries didn’t open as fast as those of “normal people”; the time he had said that anyone who smoked a joint was a traitor against the country and ought to be “taken out and shot”; the time when he had dismissed the idea of employing homosexuals on the force by asking, “Who would want to work with one?”; the time when his officers had broken an innocent man’s nose, and he had responded to the man’s complaint by saying that he was “lucky that was all he had broken”; the time he had called the LAPD’s peers in Philadelphia “an inspiration to the nation” after they had literally launched an airborne bombing raid on a troublesome inner-city housing complex, killing six adults and five children and destroying 61 homes. As the mainstream media was reacting with shock and disgust to all of this and much more, right-wing radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh trotted out the exact same quotes, but greeted them with approbation rather than condemnation.

All of which begs the question of what the hell Gates was doing at Sierra Online, of all places. While they were like most for-profit corporations in avoiding overly overt political statements, Sierra hardly seemed a bastion of reactionary sentiment or what the right wing liked to call “family values.” Just after founding Sierra in 1980, Ken and Roberta Williams had pulled up stakes in Los Angeles and moved to rural Oakhurst more out of some vague hippie dream of getting back to the land than for any sound business reason. As was known by anyone who’d read Steven Levy’s all-too-revealing book Hackers, or seen a topless Roberta on the cover of a game called Softporn, Sierra back in those days had been a nexus of everything the law-and-order contingent despised: casual sex and hard drinking, a fair amount of toking and even the occasional bit of snorting. (Poor Richard Garriott of Ultima fame, who arrived in this den of inequity from a conservative neighborhood of Houston inhabited almost exclusively by straight-arrow astronauts like his dad, ran screaming from it all after just a few months; decades later, he still sounds slightly traumatized when he talks about his sojourn in California.)

It was true that a near-death experience in the mid-1980s and an IPO in 1988 had done much to change life at Sierra since those wild and woolly early days. Ken Williams now wore suits and kept his hair neatly trimmed. He no longer slammed down shots of tequila with his employees to celebrate the close of business on a Friday, nor made it his personal mission to get his nerdier charges laid; nor did he and Roberta still host bathing-suit-optional hot-tub parties at their house. But when it came to the important questions, Williams’s social politics still seemed diametrically opposed to the likes to Daryl Gates. For example, at a time when even the mainstream media still tended to dismiss concerns about the environment as obsessions of the Loony Left, he’d enthusiastically approved Gano Haines’s idea for a series of educational adventure games to teach children about just those issues. When a 15-year-old who already had the world all figured out wrote in to ask how Sierra could “give in to the doom-and-gloomers and whacko commie liberal environmentalists” who believed that “we can destroy a huge, God-created world like this,” Ken’s brother John Williams — Sierra’s marketing head — offered an unapologetic and cogent response: “As long as we get letters like this, we’ll keep making games like EcoQuest.”

So, what gave? Really, what was Daryl Gates doing here? And how had this figure that some of Ken Williams’s employees could barely stand to look at become connected with Police Quest, a slightly goofy and very erratic series of games, but basically a harmless one prior to this point? To understand how all of these trajectories came to meet that day in Oakhurst, we need to trace each back to its point of origin.

Daryl F. Gates

Perhaps the kindest thing we can say about Daryl Gates is that he was, like the young black men he and his officers killed, beat, and imprisoned by the thousands, a product of his environment. He was, the sufficiently committed apologist might say, merely a product of the institutional culture in which he was immersed throughout his adult life. Seen in this light, his greatest sin was his inability to rise above his circumstances, a failing which hardly sets him apart from the masses. One can only wish he had been able to extend to the aforementioned black men the same benefit of the doubt which other charitable souls might be willing to give to him.

Long before he himself became the head of the LAPD, Gates was the hand-picked protege of William Parker, the man who has gone down in history as the architect of the legacy Gates would eventually inherit. At the time Parker took control of it in 1950, the LAPD was widely regarded as the most corrupt single police force in the country, its officers for sale to absolutely anyone who could pay their price; they went so far as to shake down ordinary motorists for bribes at simple traffic stops. To his credit, Parker put a stop to all that. But to his great demerit, he replaced rank corruption on the individual level with an us-against-them form of esprit de corps — the “them” here being the people of color who were pouring into Los Angeles in ever greater numbers. Much of Parker’s approach was seemingly born of his experience of combat during World War II. He became the first but by no means the last LAPD chief to make comparisons between his police force and an army at war, without ever considering whether the metaphor was really appropriate.

Parker was such a cold fish that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who served as an LAPD officer during his tenure as chief, would later claim to have modeled the personality of the emotionless alien Spock on him. And yet, living as he did in the epicenter of the entertainment industry — albeit mostly patrolling the parts of Los Angeles that were never shown by Hollywood — Parker was surprisingly adept at manipulating the media to his advantage. Indeed, he became one of those hidden players who sometimes shape media narratives without anyone ever quite realizing that they’re doing so. He served as a consultant for the television show Dragnet, and through it created a pernicious cliché of the “ideal” cop that can still be seen, more than half a century later, on American television screens every evening: the cop as tough crusader who has to knock a few heads sometimes and bend or break the rules to get around the pansy lawyers, but who does it all for a noble cause, guided by an infallible moral compass that demands that he protect the “good people” of his city from the irredeemably bad ones by whatever means are necessary. Certainly Daryl Gates would later benefit greatly from this image; it’s not hard to believe that even Ken Williams, who fancied himself something of a savvy tough guy in his own right, was a little in awe of it when he tapped Gates to make a computer game.

But this wasn’t the only one of Chief Parker’s innovations that would come to the service of the man he liked to describe as the son he’d never had. Taking advantage of a city government desperate to see a cleaned-up LAPD, Parker drove home policies that made the city’s police force a veritable fiefdom unto itself, its chief effectively impossible to fire. The city council could only do so “for cause” — i.e., some explicit failure on the chief’s part. This sounded fair enough — until one realized that the chief got to write his own evaluation every year. Naturally, Parker and his successors got an “excellent” score every time, and thus the LAPD remained for decades virtually impervious to the wishes of the politicians and public it allegedly served.

The Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts burns, 1965.

As Parker’s tenure wore on, tension spiraled in the black areas of Los Angeles, the inevitable response to an utterly unaccountable LAPD’s ever more brutal approach to policing. It finally erupted in August of 1965 in the form of the Watts Riots, the great prelude to the riots of 1992: 34 deaths, $40 million in property damage in contemporary dollars. For Daryl Gates, who watched it all take place by Parker’s side, the Watts Riots became a formative crucible. “We had no idea how to deal with this,” he would later write. “We were constantly ducking bottles, rocks, knives, and Molotov cocktails. It was random chaos. We did not know how to handle guerrilla warfare.” Rather than asking himself how it had come to this in the first place and how such chaos might be prevented in the future, he asked how the LAPD could be prepared to go toe to toe with future rioters in what amounted to open warfare on city streets.

Chief Parker died the following year, but Gates’s star remained on the ascendant even without his patron. He came up with the idea of a hardcore elite force for dealing with full-on-combat situations, a sort of SEAL team of police. Of course, the new force would need an acronym that sounded every bit as cool as its Navy inspiration. He proposed SWAT, for “Special Weapons Attack Teams.” When his boss balked at such overtly militaristic language, he said that it could stand for “Special Weapons and Tactics” instead. “That’s fine,” said his boss.

Gates and his SWAT team had their national coming-out party on December 6, 1969, when they launched an unprovoked attack upon a hideout of the Black Panthers, a well-armed militia composed of black nationalists which had been formed as a response to earlier police brutality. Logistically and practically, the raid was a bit of a fiasco. The attackers got discombobulated by an inaccurate map of the building and very nearly got themselves hemmed into a cul de sac and massacred. (“Oh, God, we were lucky,” said one of them later.) What was supposed to have been a blitzkrieg-style raid devolved into a long stalemate. The standoff was broken only when Gates managed to requisition a grenade launcher from the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton and started lobbing explosives into the building; this finally prompted the Panthers to surrender. By some miracle, no one on either side got killed, but the Panthers were acquitted in court of most charges on the basis of self-defense.

Yet the practical ineffectuality of the operation mattered not at all to the political narrative that came to be attached to it. The conservative white Americans whom President Nixon loved to call “the silent majority” — recoiling from the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the hippie era, genuinely scared by the street violence of the last several years — applauded Gates’s determination to “get tough” with “those people.” For the first time, the names of Daryl Gates and his brainchild of SWAT entered the public discourse beyond Los Angeles.

In May of 1974, the same names made the news in a big way again when a SWAT team was called in to subdue the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical militia with a virtually incomprehensible political philosophy, who had recently kidnapped and apparently converted to their cause the wealthy heiress Patty Hearst. After much lobbying on Gate’s part, his SWAT team got the green light to mount a full frontal assault on the group’s hideout. Gates and his officers continued to relish military comparisons. “Here in the heart of Los Angeles was a war zone,” he later wrote. “It was like something out of a World War II movie, where you’re taking the city from the enemy, house by house.” More than 9000 rounds of ammunition were fired by the two sides. But by now, the SWAT officers did appear to be getting better at their craft. Eight members of the militia were killed — albeit two of them unarmed women attempting to surrender — and the police officers received nary a scratch. Hearst herself proved not to be inside the hideout, but was arrested shortly after the battle.

The Patti Hearst saga marked the last gasp of a militant left wing in the United States; the hippies of the 1960s were settling down to become the Me Generation of the 1970s. Yet even as the streets were growing less turbulent, increasingly militaristic rhetoric was being applied to what had heretofore been thought of as civil society. In 1971, Nixon had declared a “war on drugs,” thus changing the tone of the discourse around policing and criminal justice markedly. Gates and SWAT were the perfect mascots for the new era. The year after the Symbionese shootout, ABC debuted a hit television series called simply S.W.A.T. Its theme song topped the charts; there were S.W.A.T. lunch boxes, action figures, board games, and jigsaw puzzles. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be like Daryl Gates and the LAPD — not least their fellow police officers in other cities: by July of 1975, there were 500 other SWAT teams in the United States. Gates embraced his new role of “America’s cop” with enthusiasm.

In light of his celebrity status in a city which worships celebrity, it was now inevitable that Gates would become the head of the LAPD just as soon as the post opened up. He took over in 1978; this gave him an even more powerful nationwide bully pulpit. In 1983, he applied some of his clout to the founding of a program called DARE in partnership with public schools around the country. The name stood for “Drug Abuse Resistance Education”; Gates really did have a knack for snappy acronyms. His heart was perhaps in the right place, but later studies, conducted only after the spending of hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, would prove the program’s strident rhetoric and almost militaristic indoctrination techniques to be ineffective.

Meanwhile, in his day job as chief of police, Gates fostered an ever more toxic culture that viewed the streets as battlegrounds, that viewed an ass beating as the just reward of any black man who failed to treat a police officer with fawning subservience. In 1984, the Summer Olympics came to Los Angeles, and Gates used the occasion to convince the city council to let him buy armored personnel carriers — veritable tanks for the city streets — in the interest of “crowd control.” When the Olympics were over, he held onto them for the purpose of executing “no-knock” search warrants on suspected drug dens. During the first of these, conducted with great fanfare before an invited press in February of 1985, Gates himself rode along as an APC literally drove through the front door of a house after giving the occupants no warning whatsoever. Inside they found two shocked women and three children, with no substance more illicit than the bowls of ice cream they’d been eating. To top it all off, the driver lost control of the vehicle on a patch of ice whilst everyone was sheepishly leaving the scene, taking out a parked car.

Clearly Gates’s competence still tended not to entirely live up to his rhetoric, a discrepancy the Los Angeles Riots would eventually highlight all too plainly. But in the meantime, Gates was unapologetic about the spirit behind the raid: “It frightened even the hardcore pushers to imagine that at any moment a device was going to put a big hole in their place of business, and in would march SWAT, scattering flash-bangs and scaring the hell out of everyone.” This scene would indeed be played out many times over the remaining years of Gates’s chiefdom. But then along came Rodney King of all people to take the inadvertent role of his bête noire.

King was a rather-slow-witted janitor and sometime petty criminal with a bumbling reputation on the street. He’d recently done a year in prison after attempting to rob a convenience store with a tire iron; over the course of the crime, the owner of the store had somehow wound up disarming him, beating him over the head with his own weapon, and chasing him off the premises. He was still on parole for that conviction on the evening of March 3, 1991, when he was spotted by two LAPD officers speeding down the freeway. King had been drinking, and so, seeing their patrol car’s flashing lights in his rear-view mirror, he decided to make a run for it. He led what turned into a whole caravan of police cars on a merry chase until he found himself hopelessly hemmed in on a side street. The unarmed man then climbed out of his car and lay face down on the ground, as instructed. But then he stood up and tried to make a break for it on foot, despite being completely surrounded. Four of the 31 officers on the scene now proceeded to knock him down and beat him badly enough with their batons and boots to fracture his face and break one of his ankles. Their colleagues simply stood and watched at a distance.

Had not a plumber named George Holliday owned an apartment looking down on that section of street, the incident would doubtless have gone down in the LAPD’s logs as just another example of a black man “resisting arrest” and getting regrettably injured in the process. But Holliday was there, standing on his balcony — and he had a camcorder to record it all. When he sent his videotape to a local television station, its images of the officers taking big two-handed swings against King’s helpless body with their batons ignited a national firestorm. The local prosecutor had little choice but to bring the four officers up on charges.

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The tactics of Daryl Gates now came under widespread negative scrutiny for the first time. Although he claimed to support the prosecution of the officers involved, he was nevertheless blamed for fostering the culture that had led to this incident, as well as the many others like it that had gone un-filmed. At long last, reporters started asking the black residents of Los Angeles directly about their experiences with the LAPD. A typical LAPD arrest, said one of them, “basically consisted of three or four cops handcuffing a person, and just literally beating him, often until unconscious… punching, beating, kicking.” A hastily assembled city commission produced pages and pages of descriptions of a police force run amok. “It is apparent,” the final report read, “that too many LAPD patrol officers view citizens with resentment and hostility.” In response, Gates promised to retire “soon.” Yet, as month after month went by and he showed no sign of fulfilling his promise, many began to suspect that he still had hopes of weathering the storm.

At any rate, he was still there on April 29, 1992. That was the day his four cops were acquitted in Simi Valley, a place LAPD officers referred to as “cop heaven”; huge numbers of them lived there. Within two hours after the verdict was announced, the Los Angeles Riots began in apocalyptic fashion, as a mob of black men pulled a white truck driver out of his cab and all but tore him limb from limb in the process of murdering him, all under the watchful eye of a helicopter that was hovering overhead and filming the carnage.

Tellingly, Gates happened to be speaking to an adoring audience of white patrons in the wealthy suburb of Brentwood at the very instant the riots began. As the violence continued, this foremost advocate of militaristic policing seemed bizarrely paralyzed. South Los Angeles burned, and the LAPD did virtually nothing about it. The most charitable explanation had it that Gates, spooked by the press coverage of the previous year, was terrified of how white police officers subduing black rioters would play on television. A less charitable one, hewed to by many black and liberal commentators, had it that Gates had decided that these parts of the city just weren’t worth saving — had decided to just let the rioters have their fun and burn it all down. But the problem, of course, was that in the meantime many innocent people of all colors were being killed and wounded and seeing their property go up in smoke. Finally, the mayor called in the National Guard to quell the rioting while Gates continued to sit on his hands.

Asked afterward how the LAPD — the very birthplace of SWAT — had allowed things to get so out of hand, Gates blamed it on a subordinate: “We had a lieutenant down there who just didn’t seem to know what to do, and he let us down.” Not only was this absurd, but it was hard to label as anything other than moral cowardice. It was especially rich coming from a man who had always preached an esprit de corps based on loyalty and honor. The situation was now truly untenable for him. Incompetence, cowardice, racism, brutality… whichever charge or charges you chose to apply, the man had to go. Gates resigned, for real this time, on June 28, 1992.

Yet he didn’t go away quietly. Gates appears to have modeled his post-public-service media strategy to a large extent on that of Oliver North, a locus of controversy for his role in President Ronald Reagan’s Iron-Contra scandal who had parlayed his dubious celebrity into the role of hero to the American right. Gates too gave a series of angry, unrepentant interviews, touted a recently published autobiography, and even went North one better when he won his own radio show which played in close proximity to that of Rush Limbaugh. And then, when Ken Williams came knocking, he welcomed that attention as well.

But why would Williams choose to cast his lot with such a controversial figure, one whose background and bearing were so different from his own? To begin to understand that, we need to look back to the origins of the adventure-game oddity known as Police Quest.

Ken Williams, it would seem, had always had a fascination with the boys in blue. One day in 1985, when he learned from his hairdresser that her husband was a California Highway Patrol officer on administrative leave for post-traumatic stress, his interest was piqued. He invited the cop in question, one Jim Walls, over to his house to play some racquetball and drink some beer. Before the evening was over, he had starting asking his guest whether he’d be interested in designing a game for Sierra. Walls had barely ever used a computer, and had certainly never played an adventure game on one, so he had only the vaguest idea what his new drinking buddy was talking about. But the only alternative, as he would later put it, was to “sit around and think” about the recent shootout that had nearly gotten him killed, so he agreed to give it a go.

The game which finally emerged from that conversation more than two years later shows the best and the worst of Sierra. On the one hand, it pushed a medium that was usually content to wallow in the same few fictional genres in a genuinely new direction. In a pair of articles he wrote for Computer Gaming World magazine, John Williams positioned Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel at the forefront of a new wave of “adult” software able to appeal to a whole new audience, noting how it evoked Joseph Wambaugh rather than J.R.R. Tolkien, Hill Street Blues rather than Star Wars. Conceptually, it was indeed a welcome antidote to a bad case of tunnel vision afflicting the entire computer-games industry.

In practical terms, however, it was somewhat less inspiring. The continual sin of Ken Williams and Sierra throughout the company’s existence was their failure to provide welcome fresh voices like that of Jim Walls with the support network that might have allowed them to make good games out of their well of experiences. Left to fend for himself, Walls, being the law-and-order kind of guy he was, devised the most pedantic adventure game of all time, one which played like an interactive adaptation of a police-academy procedure manual — so much so, in fact, that a number of police academies around the country would soon claim to be employing it as a training tool. The approach is simplicity itself: in every situation, if you do exactly what the rules of police procedure that are exhaustively described in the game’s documentation tell you to do, you get to live and go on to the next scene. If you don’t, you die. It may have worked as an adjunct to a police-academy course, but it’s less compelling as a piece of pure entertainment.

Although it’s an atypical Sierra adventure game in many respects, this first Police Quest nonetheless opens with what I’ve always considered to be the most indelibly Sierra moment of all. The manual has carefully explained — you did read it, right? — that you must walk all the way around your patrol car to check the tires and lights and so forth every time you’re about to drive somewhere. And sure enough, if you fail to do so before you get into your car for the first time, a tire blows out and you die as soon as you drive away. But if you do examine your vehicle, you find no evidence of a damaged tire, and you never have to deal with any blow-out once you start driving. The mask has fallen away to reveal what we always suspected: that the game actively wants to kill you, and is scheming constantly for a way to do so. There’s not even any pretension left of fidelity to a simulated world — just pure, naked malice. Robb Sherwin once memorably said that “Zork hates its player.” Well, Zork‘s got nothing on Police Quest.

Nevertheless, Police Quest struck a modest chord with Sierra’s fan base. While it didn’t become as big a hit as Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, John Williams’s other touted 1987 embodiment of a new wave of “adult” games, it sold well enough to mark the starting point of another of the long series that were the foundation of Sierra’s marketing strategy. Jim Walls designed two sequels over the next four years, improving at least somewhat at his craft in the process. (In between them, he also came up with Code-Name: Iceman, a rather confused attempt at a Tom Clancy-style techno-thriller that was a bridge too far even for most of Sierra’s loyal fans.)

But shortly after completing Police Quest 3: The Kindred, Walls left Sierra along with a number of other employees to join Tsunami Media, a new company formed right there in Oakhurst by Edmond Heinbockel, himself a former chief financial officer for Sierra. With Walls gone, but his Police Quest franchise still selling well enough to make another entry financially viable, the door was wide open — as Ken Williams saw it, anyway — for one Daryl F. Gates.

Daryl Gates (right) with Tammy Dargan, the real designer of the game that bears his name.

Williams began his courtship of the most controversial man in the United States by the old-fashioned expedient of writing him a letter. Gates, who claimed never even to have used a computer, much less played a game on one, was initially confused about what exactly Williams wanted from him. Presuming Williams was just one of his admirers, he sent a letter back asking for some free games for some youngsters who lived across the street from him. Williams obliged in calculated fashion, with the three extant Police Quest games. From that initial overture, he progressed to buttering Gates up over the telephone.

As the relationship moved toward the payoff stage, some of his employees tried desperately to dissuade him from getting Sierra into bed with such a figure. “I thought it’s one thing to seek controversy, but another thing to really divide people,” remembers Josh Mandel. Mandel showed his boss a New York Times article about Gates’s checkered history, only to be told that “our players don’t read the New York Times.” He suggested that Sierra court Joseph Wambaugh instead, another former LAPD officer whose novels presented a relatively more nuanced picture of crime and punishment in the City of Angels than did Gates’s incendiary rhetoric; Wambaugh was even a name whom John Williams had explicitly mentioned in the context of the first Police Quest game five years before. But that line of attack was also hopeless; Ken Williams wanted a true mass-media celebrity, not a mere author who hid behind his books. So, Gates made his uncomfortable visit to Oakhurst and the contract was signed. Police Quest would henceforward be known as Daryl F. Gates’ Police Quest. Naturally, the setting of the series would now become Los Angeles; the fictional town of Lytton, the more bucolic setting of the previous three games in the series, was to be abandoned along with almost everything else previously established by Jim Walls.

Inside the company, a stubborn core of dissenters took to calling the game Rodney King’s Quest. Corey Cole, co-designer of the Quest for Glory series, remembers himself and many others being “horrified” at the prospect of even working in the vicinity of Gates: “As far as we were concerned, his name was mud and tainted everything it touched.” As a designer, Corey felt most of all for Jim Walls. He believed Ken Williams was “robbing Walls of his creation”: “It would be like putting Donald Trump’s name on a new Quest for Glory in today’s terms.”

Nevertheless, as the boss’s pet project, Gates’s game went inexorably forward. It was to be given the full multimedia treatment, including voice acting and the extensive use of digitized scenes and actors on the screen in the place of hand-drawn graphics. Indeed, this would become the first Sierra game that could be called a full-blown full-motion-video adventure, placing it at the vanguard of the industry’s hottest new trend.

Of course, there had never been any real expectation that Gates would roll up his sleeves and design a computer game in the way that Jim Walls had; celebrity did have its privileges, after all. Daryl F. Gates’ Police Quest: Open Season thus wound up in the hands of Tammy Dargan, a Sierra producer who, based on an earlier job she’d had with the tabloid television show America’s Most Wanted, now got the chance to try her hand at design. Corey Cole ironically remembers her as one of the most stereotypically liberal of all Sierra’s employees: “She strenuously objected to the use of [the word] ‘native’ in Quest for Glory III, and globally changed it to ‘indigenous.’ We thought that ‘the indigenous flora’ was a rather awkward construction, so we changed some of those back. But she was also a professional and did the jobs assigned to her.”

In this case, doing so would entail writing the script for a game about the mean streets of Los Angeles essentially alone, then sending it to Gates via post for “suggestions.” The latter did become at least somewhat more engaged when the time came for “filming,” using his connections to get Sierra inside the LAPD’s headquarters and even into a popular “cop bar.” Gates himself also made it into the game proper: restored to his rightful status of chief of police, he looks on approvingly and proffers occasional bits of advice as you work through the case. The CD-ROM version tacked on some DARE propaganda and a video interview with Gates, giving him yet one more opportunity to respond to his critics.

Contrary to the expectations raised both by the previous games in the series and the reputation of Gates, the player doesn’t take the role of a uniformed cop at all, but rather that of a plain-clothes detective. Otherwise, though, the game is both predictable in theme and predictably dire. Really, what more could one expect from a first-time designer working in a culture that placed no particular priority on good design, making a game that no one there particularly wanted to be making?

So, the dialog rides its banality to new depths for a series already known for clunky writing, the voice acting is awful — apparently the budget didn’t stretch far enough to allow the sorts of good voice actors that had made such a difference in King’s Quest VI — and the puzzle design is nonsensical. The plot, which revolves around a series of brutal cop killings for maximum sensationalism, wobbles along on rails through its ever more gruesome crime scenes and red-herring suspects until the real killer suddenly appears out of the blue in response to pretty much nothing which you’ve done up to that point. And the worldview the whole thing reflects… oh, my. The previous Police Quest games had hardly been notable for their sociological subtlety — “These kinds of people are actually running around out there, even if we don’t want to think about it,” Jim Walls had said of its antagonists — but this fourth game takes its demonization of all that isn’t white, straight, and suburban to what would be a comical extreme if it wasn’t so hateful. A brutal street gang, the in-game police files helpfully tell us, is made up of “unwed mothers on public assistance,” and the cop killer turns out to be a transvestite; his “deviancy” constitutes the sum total of his motivation for killing, at least as far as we ever learn.

One of the grisly scenes with which Open Season is peppered, reflecting a black-and-white — in more ways than one! — worldview where the irredeemably bad, deviant people are always out to get the good, normal people. Lucky we have the likes of Daryl Gates to sort the one from the other, eh?

Visiting a rap record label, one of a number of places where Sierra’s pasty-white writers get to try out their urban lingo. It goes about as well as you might expect.

Sierra throws in a strip bar for the sake of gritty realism. Why is it that television (and now computer-game) cops always have to visit these places — strictly in order to pursue leads, of course.

But the actual game of Open Season is almost as irrelevant to any discussion of the project’s historical importance today as it was to Ken Williams at the time. This was a marketing exercise, pure and simple. Thus Daryl Gates spent much more time promoting the game than he ever had making it. Williams put on the full-court press in terms of promotion, publishing not one, not two, but three feature interviews with him in Sierra’s news magazine and booking further interviews with whoever would talk to him. The exchanges with scribes from the computing press, who had no training or motivation for asking tough questions, went about as predictably as the game’s plot. Gates dismissed the outrage over the Rodney King tape as “Monday morning quarterbacking,” and consciously or unconsciously evoked Richard Nixon’s silent majority in noting that the “good, ordinary, responsible, quiet citizens” — the same ones who saw the need to get tough on crime and prosecute a war on drugs — would undoubtedly enjoy the game. Meanwhile Sierra’s competitors weren’t quite sure what to make of it all. “Talk about hot properties,” wrote the editors of Origin Systems’s internal newsletter, seemingly uncertain whether to express anger or admiration for Sierra’s sheer chutzpah. “No confirmation yet as to whether the game will ship with its own special solid-steel joystick” — a dark reference to the batons with which Gates’s officers had beat Rodney King.

In the end, though, the game generated decidedly less controversy than Ken Williams had hoped for. The computer-gaming press just wasn’t politically engaged enough to do much more than shrug their shoulders at its implications. And by the time it was released it was November of 1993, and Gates was already becoming old news for the mainstream press as well. The president of the Los Angeles Urban League did provide an obligingly outraged quote, saying that Gates “embodies all that is bad in law enforcement—the problems of the macho, racist, brutal police experience that we’re working hard to put behind us. That anyone would hire him for a project like this proves that some companies will do anything for the almighty dollar.” But that was about as good as it got.

There’s certainly no reason to believe that Gates’s game sold any better than the run-of-the-mill Sierra adventure, or than any of the Police Quest games that had preceded it. If anything, the presence of Gates’s name on the box seems to have put off more fans than it attracted. Rather than a new beginning, Open Season proved the end of the line for Police Quest as an adventure series — albeit not for Sierra’s involvement with Gates himself. The product line was retooled in 1995 into Daryl F. Gates’ Police Quest: SWAT, a “tactical simulator” of police work that played suspiciously like any number of outright war simulators. In this form, it found a more receptive audience and continued for years. Tammy Dargan remained at the reinvented series’s head for much of its run. History hasn’t recorded whether her bleeding-heart liberal sympathies went into abeyance after her time with Gates or whether the series remained just a slightly distasteful job she had to do.

Gates, on the other hand, got dropped after the first SWAT game. His radio show had been cancelled after he had proved himself to be a stodgy bore on the air, without even the modicum of wit that marked the likes of a Rush Limbaugh. Having thus failed in his new career as a media provocateur, and deprived forevermore of his old position of authority, his time as a political lightning rod had just about run out. What then was the use of Sierra continuing to pay him?

Ken and Roberta Williams looking wholesome in 1993, their days in the hot tub behind them.

But then, Daryl Gates was never the most interesting person behind the games that bore his name. The hard-bitten old reactionary was always a predictable, easily known quantity, and therefore one with no real power to fascinate. Much more interesting was and is Ken Williams, this huge, mercurial personality who never designed a game himself but who lurked as an almost palpable presence in the background of every game Sierra ever released as an independent company. In short, Sierra was his baby, destined from the first to become his legacy more so than that of any member of his creative staff.

Said legacy is, like the man himself, a maze of contradictions resistant to easy judgments. Everything you can say about Ken Williams and Sierra, whether positive or negative, seems to come equipped with a “but” that points in the opposite direction. So, we can laud him for having the vision to say something like this, which accurately diagnosed the problem of an industry offering a nearly exclusive diet of games by and for young white men obsessed with Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings:

If you match the top-selling books, records, or films to the top-selling computer-entertainment titles, you’ll immediately notice differences. Where are the romance, horror, and non-fiction titles? Where’s military fiction? Where’s all the insider political stories? Music in computer games is infinitely better than what we had a few years back, but it doesn’t match what people are buying today. Where’s the country-western music? The rap? The reggae? The new age?

And yet Williams approached his self-assigned mission of broadening the market for computer games with a disconcerting mixture of crassness and sheer naivete. The former seemed somehow endemic to the man, no matter how hard he worked to conceal it behind high-flown rhetoric, while the latter signified a man who appeared never to have seriously thought about the nature of mass media before he started trying to make it for himself. “For a publisher to not publish a product which many customers want to buy is censorship,” he said at one point. No, it’s not, actually; it’s called curation, and is the right and perhaps the duty of every content publisher — not that there were lines of customers begging Sierra for a Daryl Gates-helmed Police Quest game anyway. With that game, Williams became, whatever else he was, a shameless wannabe exploiter of a bleeding wound at the heart of his nation — and he wasn’t even very good at it, as shown by the tepid reaction to his “controversial” game. His decision to make it reflects not just a moral failure but an intellectual misunderstanding of his audience so extreme as to border on the bizarre. Has anyone ever bought an adventure game strictly because it’s controversial?

So, if there’s a pattern to the history of Ken Williams and Sierra — and the two really are all but inseparable — it’s one of talking a good game, of being broadly right with the vision thing, but falling down in the details and execution. Another example from the horse’s mouth, describing the broad idea that supposedly led to Open Season:

The reason that I’m working with Chief Gates is that one of my goals has been to create a series of adventure games which accomplish reality through having been written by real experts. I have been calling this series of games the “Reality Role-Playing” series. I want to find the top cop, lawyer, airline pilot, fireman, race-car driver, politician, military hero, schoolteacher, white-water rafter, mountain climber, etc., and have them work with us on a simulation of their world. Chief Gates gives us the cop game. We are working with Emerson Fittipaldi to simulate racing, and expect to announce soon that Vincent Bugliosi, the lawyer who locked up Charles Manson, will be working with us to do a courtroom simulation. My goal is that products in the Reality Role-Playing series will be viewed as serious simulations of real-world events, not as games. If we do our jobs right, this will be the closest most of us will ever get to seeing the world through these people’s eyes.

The idea sounds magnificent, so much so that one can’t help but feel a twinge of regret that it never went any further than Open Season. Games excel at immersion, and their ability to let us walk a mile in someone else’s shoes — to become someone whose world we would otherwise never know — is still sadly underutilized.

I often — perhaps too often — use Sierra’s arch-rivals in adventure games LucasArts as my own baton with which to beat them, pointing out how much more thoughtful and polished the latter’s designs were. This remains true enough. Yet it’s also true that LucasArts had nothing like the ambition for adventure games which Ken Williams expresses here. LucasArts found what worked for them very early on — that thing being cartoon comedies — and rode that same horse relentlessly right up until the market for adventures in general went away. Tellingly, when they were asked to adapt Indiana Jones to an interactive medium, they responded not so much by adjusting their standard approach all that radically as by turning Indy himself into a cartoon character. Something tells me that Ken Williams would have taken a very different tack.

But then we get to the implementation of Williams’s ideas by Sierra in the form of Open Season, and the questions begin all over again. Was Daryl Gates truly, as one of the marketers’ puff pieces claimed, “the most knowledgeable authority on law enforcement alive?” Or was there some other motivation involved? I trust the answer is self-evident. (John Williams even admitted as much in another of the puff pieces: “[Ken] decided the whole controversy over Gates would ultimately help the game sell better.”) And then, why does the “reality role-playing” series have to focus only on those with prestige and power? If Williams truly does just want to share the lives of others with us and give us a shared basis for empathy and discussion, why not make a game about what it’s like to be a Rodney King?

Was it because Ken Williams was himself a racist and a bigot? That’s a major charge to level, and one that’s neither helpful nor warranted here — no, not even though he championed a distinctly racist and bigoted game, released under the banner of a thoroughly unpleasant man who had long made dog whistles to racism and bigotry his calling card. Despite all that, the story of Open Season‘s creation is more one of thoughtlessness than malice aforethought. It literally never occurred to Ken Williams that anyone living in South Los Angeles would ever think of buying a Sierra game; that territory was more foreign to him than that of Europe (where Sierra was in fact making an aggressive play at the time). Thus he felt free to exploit a community’s trauma with this distasteful product and this disingenuous narrative that it was created to engender “discussion.” For nothing actually to be found within Open Season is remotely conducive to civil discussion.

Williams stated just as he was beginning his courtship of Daryl Gates that, in a fast-moving industry, he had to choose whether to “lead, follow, or get out of the way. I don’t believe in following, and I’m not about to get out of the way. Therefore, if I am to lead then I have to know where I’m going.” And here we come to the big-picture thing again, the thing at which Williams tended to excel. His decision to work with Gates does indeed stand as a harbinger of where much of gaming was going. This time, though, it’s a sad harbinger rather than a happy one.

I believe that the last several centuries — and certainly the last several decades — have seen us all slowly learning to be kinder and more respectful to one another. It hasn’t been a linear progression by any means, and we still have one hell of a long way to go, but it’s hard to deny that it’s occurred. (Whatever the disappointments of the last several years, the fact remains that the United States elected a black man as president in 2008, and has finally accepted the right of gay people to marry even more recently. Both of these things were unthinkable in 1993.) In some cases, gaming has reflected this progress. But too often, large segments of gaming culture have chosen to side instead with the reactionaries and the bigots, as Sierra implicitly did here.

So, Ken Williams and Sierra somehow managed to encompass both the best and the worst of what seems destined to go down in history as the defining art form of the 21st century, and they did so long before that century began. Yes, that’s quite an achievement in its own right — but, as Open Season so painfully reminds us, not an unmixed one.

(Sources: the books Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing by Joe Domanick and Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces by Radley Balko; Computer Gaming World of August/September 1987, October 1987, and December 1993; Sierra’s news magazines of Summer 1991, Winter 1992, June 1993, Summer 1993, Holiday 1993, and Spring 1994; Electronic Games of October 1993; Origin Systems’s internal newsletter Point of Origin of February 26 1993. Online sources include an excellent and invaluable Vice article on Open Season and the information about the Rodney King beating and subsequent trial found on Famous American Trials. And my thanks go out yet again to Corey Cole, who took the time to answer some questions about this period of Sierra’s history from his perspective as a developer there.

The four Police Quest adventure games are available for digital purchase at GOG.com.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/chief-gates-comes-to-oakhurst-a-cop-drama-2/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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sudsybear · 6 years

Text

Just Drive

We were left to ourselves most of that summer. We both worked, as did our parents. Dad was gone for weeks at a time. He worked in Phoenix, coming home only on weekends. Mom had earned her diploma, but still had to study for her state nursing exam. She was also busy monitoring my grandmother who had health problems and was in and out of the hospital. Mom also started a new job, and was going through orientation – full-time employment for several weeks. Toss in that I was a youngest child and the whole active parenting thing had gone by the wayside.

Ross’ parents both worked – his mom had taken a position at a greeting card company and was busy with a stuffed animal project. His dad was a devoted P&Ger. (All hail the soap works.) Ross was nineteen and had already been away from home for over a year. He hardly needed supervision.

We mostly abandoned the few friends who were around. Many of Ross’ contemporaries stayed away for summer internships, jobs, or traveled abroad. Over the school year, I’d fallen out with many of my friends. David was busy with a new round of people. Christopher’s and my friendship disintegrated the previous fall. Julie worked two jobs, desperately trying to save enough money for tuition. Erin was doing the same. Valli was madly in love with Jerry, a guy she met through her Young Life activities, and she worked full-time as a lifeguard, so she wasn’t around much. Shari left for her last summer of camp – this time as a counselor. Anna spent her summer abroad, Victor was required to attend summer Reserve training and broke his leg. He’ll deny it to the end of his days, but he spent his summer smoking pot on a neighbor’s back deck.

I literally lived at the J’s' for days at a time. I stopped by their house between baby-sitting jobs, entered through the unlocked garage/basement, left messages on the white-board in the breakfast nook and went on with my business. We slept in Ross' long twin bed and I fought with those damn high countertops in the kitchen. (Side note: Ross’ family is very tall – his mother is 5’11” if she isn’t 6’ tall. His dad is at least 6’2.” “Little” brother Scott topped out at 6’5 at least.) At some point in the late 70s or early 80s, they remodeled their kitchen and chose to have the countertops installed a few inches higher than is the industry standard. I am 5’4” tall. I could not reach the cabinets, and working at the counter was awkward. Ross found a step stool for me to use while I was there. Had we been ten years older, you could describe us as having moved in together. But we weren’t ten years older. We were teenagers, just seventeen and nineteen. We lacked experience to draw upon, and the confidence that comes with it.

Ross’ bedroom in his parents’ house was our haven. The stereo and speakers (all four of them), the albums and computers - all were strewn with laundry - clean shirts and dirty socks. Soldering tools, wires, pliers, and desk lamps were scattered over the “desk.” I never saw an actual work surface - it was littered with computer pieces; motherboards, hard drives, video boards. This masculine clutter was familiar. My father’s workshop at home, and my brother’s room before he left. To me, it was a very comfortable place…full of warmth. The door to Scott's room was open often enough to hear Scott playing guitar and to talk and chat and visit. We spent hours together there. Chaka Khan, Pat Metheny, Phil Collins, Joe Jackson, and Neil Diamond (his mom never seemed to mind when he cranked Neil Diamond or Phil Collins) were just some of the musical favorites that summer. I can still see him playing air guitar with a particularly fun riff from some album or the other. (These were vinyl albums – Ross was saving his money to buy a CD-player and a replacement for the guitar he’d destroyed in the Corral Show some two years previous. CDs were still new and the packaging was controversial – sold in the long cardboard boxes with plastic overwrap. In the mid-90s I got irritated with the lack of space in our basement, and convinced my husband to finally dispose of his collection of long-boxes from his own mid-80s CD purchases.)

We spent evenings in the TV room watching his dad flick through the thirty or so TV channels that were available when cable was new. We had been away from adult supervision for too long, so we settled into the couch in front of the television to make nice with the ‘rents. My head snuggled up under Ross' arm. Ross tried to make idle small talk with his dad - attempting to smooth the relationship. It used to drive me nuts the way his dad would flip, flip, flip through umpteen channels and seemingly watch four shows at the same time. What's sad is I do that today. Give me the remote control, and I flip, flip, flip and watch 3-4 shows at the same time. Damn commercials.

The TV room was just that – a TV room. Not a “family room” like so many homes have today, but a TV room. In years past the room had probably been a sunroom, a sitting room, perhaps an office. It was on the west side of the house, so in the late afternoon, you’d have to close the blinds against the glare of the sun in order to see the TV. The opening to the room was off the living room. A formal living room with couches, a curio cabinet and the grand piano. No doorway, no formal archway, just a large open space in the wall between the living room and TV room. The room was long and narrow and ran the length of the house. At one end was the couch, placed under the windows facing the television. And at the other end was a table and built-in shelves that held the fish tanks, the hermit crab and the encyclopedia set. There was no room to do much of anything else.

Late one night, after the eleven o’clock news, we watched C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) on cable. While the rest of the family slept upstairs, we curled up on the couch and stared at the blue flickering screen. The TV set provided the only light on in the house. I covered my eyes and squealed at the gruesome parts. I was fascinated and terrified at the same time. I’m not good with horror flicks – even bad ones. After the movie, Ross walked me out to my car, I got in, and to avoid waking his parents, he pushed it out of the driveway. I coasted down the street, popped the clutch and drove home. Ross taught me that particular bit of street knowledge, how to start a car by popping the clutch. Useful only if you’re driving an old-fashioned standard transmission.

Some nights we just drove. We put hundreds of miles on various vehicles - the VW Rabbit (1981 gray, two-door, hatchback - diesel, cloth seats) has especially pungent memories. We knew of only two or three gas stations in the county that supplied diesel, so invariably we drove to one of them to fill up the tank. The VW Vanagon and the Oldsmobile Station Wagon (with maroon vinyl seats and the compass on the front dash) were also driven more than once. We talked about our dreams, our insecurities, our parents, gossiped about what so and so was doing, and played the game of “identify the vehicle by the headlights”; Hondas versus Datsuns versus Fords, versus Chryslers – throw in an exotic Volvo or Saab. I never quite got the knack of that one. He was so disappointed when I mis-identified a vehicle. To this day, I can drive in reverse pretty well. For whatever reason, I had lots of practice. On a whim, Ross might decide to drive home from somewhere in reverse, just for the hell of it. He backed around parking lots, he backed down long driveways, he backed down the street. And believe it or not, I really think we always wore our seatbelts.

We spent the Fourth of July holiday together. In the morning I stood by the side of the road and watched the parade (Dad was involved because of council, mom was with the ambulance crew) then stopped at Moreno’s for lunch and volleyball. Finally, Ross and I spent the late afternoon in his bedroom. His parents were out with their own friends, Scott was gone, so Ross and I were contentedly alone. We spent the hours spooned on his bed, listening to music, enjoying uninterrupted togetherness. We were supposed to go to the town fireworks display at the high school athletic field, but never made it. We watched a few fireworks from the window, then fell back to bed and fell asleep. I got home to my own bed in my parents house sometime in the early morning hours of the fifth. And we both had to work the next morning.

* * *

Ross was very close with his brother. Though only 2 ½ years apart in age, due to the quirks of the school system they were three years apart in school. Even so, they shared everything. They read the same books, swapped albums, music, they played in the same band together. Ross passed on snippets of wisdom for dealing with teachers and peers. In one of his letters from Wooster, Ross had encouraged me to introduce myself to Scott, concerned for his younger brother’s well-being. A few weeks into the summer, Ross realized his little brother Scott had a crush on me. It stands to reason - I had first fooled around with his best buddy Mark and then was a constant presence not just in his home, but in his brother's bedroom, an open door away. He must have caught us more than once in various states of undress. (I never did understand that floor plan, why was there a door between Scott's and Ross' bedrooms?)

I felt a fondness toward Scott myself. He was my friend as well as Ross’ brother and we had enjoyed our own friendship and escapades before Ross came home. Aside from Scrabble games at Corral, Mark, Scott, Igor and their buddy Jon had the brilliant idea to make their very own episode of Star Trek. Jon had a ton of video equipment. Igor put together a set in his basement, and Scott, Mark, and Igor’s little brother Alex were recruited as actors. Mark starred as the Captain, Scott played Spock, Alex and Igor posed as the science officers, and they needed a girl to play “Lieutenant U-whor-a.” Whether I was doing a favor for Igor or Mark, or both, they managed to get me to agree in a weak moment. Jon was the director/cameraman, and we made up dialogue as we went along.

My character, as you might surmise from the character’s name, was the spaceship harlot. My scenes involved sitting in the captain’s lap (Mark), attempting sexual distraction; sitting in my chair at the communications center, showing off my legs whilst making obscene gestures; and rattling off one-liners like, “Why jack-off when you can have me for free?” Some “sweet’n’innocent” stuff, eh?

It took several days of filming in Moreno’s basement, and I couldn’t be there for all the filming days. I filmed the first day, and then was busy with other activities. My absence led to some creative explanations as to why U-Whor-A was absent from the bridge, including AIDS, Toxic Shock Syndrome, and other female ails resulting from monthly cycles. Igor and Alex’s dad got fed up with the “set” in the basement. He declared a deadline by which the crap had to be cleaned up. The guys begged me to return so they could finish the film.

Over the summer Jon and Scott edited the thing and roped Ross into designing credits for them. I didn’t see the finished product until years later. It is a rare masterpiece that someday I’ll have to explain to my children. I don’t look forward to the discussion with my children; explaining it to my husband was embarrassing enough.

And yet with all of that, I was Ross’ girl. So in deference to Scott’s feelings, Ross and I made a conscious effort to monitor our behavior. It just so happened those were the same weeks our parents had been coming down hard on us to behave ourselves. I suppose we had gotten a bit out of control, and needed to pull back and exercise proper decorum.

ot��

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