My first piece for the “Beyond the Divine Gate” project! The Tome of Isolation.

I just read a post a while ago about reviewing books not by their deficiencies but by what they actually do. like instead of saying the main character didn't have enough agency, you say the main character acts on simplistic goals without much nuance. You don't judge it based on something it was never set up against to do, you just say what it is.

and it makes the review a lot less harsh because it's not comparing it to other books that the reviewer obviously prefers, it's just letting you know what the book itself is actually doing so that people who want to see what that book is like can read it.

I think it was really important for me to see that post so that I could try to apply that to myself too. and the book I'm reading now that's making me cry, autistic world domination, it highlights the importance of reframing as well. I think I should stop thinking of myself as a failure and, if I can't see myself as positive or magical right now, then I can just see myself as different.

I prefer things I know. I like watching and doing the same things over and over. I like plain food that doesn't touch and I like to eat it one at a time. my favorite color is pink and I like jigglypuffs, because they're pink. I am super sensitive and very in tune with my emotions and I'm open and honest about how I feel. I'm still learning to be less self destructive. I think I'm starting that journey on a better foot now :)

Review of 6 creative prompt books

Can't get enough prompts? I sure can't! I have a horrible urge to buy any and all books I see that have any sort of theme related to creative prompts, and I've amassed quite the collection over the years. 

Today, I'm going to review some of them!

All of the following books are meant to be drawn in directly, which (at least ideally) makes them very satisfying to leaf through once you've worked in them for a while.

I will be making a separate post showcasing how I've personally used each book and link to it here, in case any if them pique your interest and you'd like to know more (coming soon!)

Books I am reviewing:

365 days of art by Lorna Scobie (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ Four out of five stars)

642 things to draw by chronicle books (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ five out of five stars)

642 fashion things to draw by Chronicle Books (⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ Three out of five stars)

Doodle a day by Chris Riddell (⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ three out of five stars)

Hirameki: Draw what you see by Peng and Hu (⭐️⭐️▪️▪️▪️ two out of five stars)

Illistration by Jaime Zollars (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ four out of five stars)

Warning: this is a very long post

365 days of art

By Lorna Scobie

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ Four out of five stars

What I like about it:

There's a great variety of prompts in this one. The prompts are mostly simple and straightforward, with space for doing your own thing. Most of the exercises also happen to appeal to me personally. 

The prompts are designed for being able to be completed quite quickly, which makes them very accessible for me, and of course, you can get more elaborate with them if you have the time and energy (I've spent the last five days adding details to fish, just because I wanted to).

The author uses the foreword to encourage you to use the book in whatever way you personally find the most fun, which I appreciate.

Most of the prompts feel like they're focusing on practice rather than results, which means it's open for all skill levels to enjoy.

Criticism:

While I do hold that this book can work for artists of all skill levels, it does have prompts that are meant to teach you something, and while I like some of them, there are some that feel targeted towards either less experienced artists, or artists who has, or strives towards, a similar art style to that of the author. A couple of times, I have felt that my art style did not match the exercise set up, and while I still managed to have fun with them, I did wish there were more space for (in my case) a more realistic art style.

On a similar note, there are sections geared towards calligraphy, and they start at the very basics. While I personally am a beginner, I can imagine that someone with experience would find these bits both boring and redundant. 

I will also mention that the book does encourage the use of different kinds of media, so you either have to be ready to break out some different tools or bend the prompts a bit if all you have is a pencil.

Recommended for beginner and intermediate artists, people who really like prompt books. Good for a little bit of daily practice with many different styles of art. Good for people who like patterns and colours in their art.

Recommended tools: brush pen, water-based paint, coloured pencils

642 things to draw

By chronicle books

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ five out of five stars

Of all the prompt books I have, this is my favorite. Hands down.

What I like about it:

This book is just prompts. No hand-holding, no presets for what to do with it, they just give you something to draw and you go from there. All you need is a pencil and your imagination. There are both straightforward prompts (a bottle opener, a spool of thread) and more abstract ones (girlish laughter, head in the clouds) and the variety means I usually find at least one prompt I want to do on each spread. 

The differing sizes dedicated to each prompt make for a really fun and pleasing result.

I also appreciate that this book is completely open to all skill levels, as long as you're willing to give a go at drawing a lot of different things.

Criticism:

While I personally adore the to-the-point, straightforward prompts, I do acknowledge that, unless you enjoy just drawing random objects, you're going to need to add some creativity on your own, in how you incorporate the prompts. I personally like adding either character interaction or to use the object as part of a scene, especially for the things I don't find super visually interesting on their own. I personally enjoy the level of thinking, but I'm sure there are people who don't. 

I also don't know if I would have enjoyed it as much when I was just starting out. I’ve always been quite result-based with my art, and while I think using reference to draw all the different things in the book would be an amazing skill-building exercise, it also sounds like a lot of work.

There are also a handful of pop culture references and prompts for famous people, which I personally prefer to avoid, because those are often based on social knowledge and interest, of which I personally have neither.

Recommended for artists of all skill levels, people who either have a big visual library or would like to build one. Recommended for people who like to draw a lot of different things.

Recommended materials: anything! Can be used with just a pencil

642 fashion things to draw

By Chronicle Books

⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ Three out of five stars

This one was actually my first prompt book ever! The start of a hoard, one might say.

What I like about it: 

This one is another one by Chronicle Books, in the same series. This one is really fun if you like drawing clothes, and/or your art is character oriented. Of all my prompt books, this one has the best potential for fanart, in my opinion. If you like drawing people and characters, this book is really fun

Criticism:

This one is, quite understandably, more specific. If you like drawing clothes, this one is ideal. If you don't ... don't pick this one. 

I was close to giving this one four stars, but I will withdraw a star for being very specifically tailored to one subject -- this could be a five star book for some people and a one-star for others.

Another thing I want to mention is that this book gets specific. I have to look up what about a third of the prompts mean. I'm okay with that, but if you don't want to do research and don't already know what a jaquard blouse or peplum waist skirt or houndstooth is, this is not the book for you.

Lastly, it has a good handful of both pop culture references and references to different brands, which is kind of alienating to me personally. It also assumes that you yourself care about your own clothes to some extent. And that you have at least one father and one mother. Who got married at some point. And your mom wore a wedding dress. Things like that.

Also my copy is from 2013 and let's just say some of the references have aged very poorly. ("D*nald Tr*mp power suit" being a very notable example. I drew him impaled on a stick. Which was satisfying. But it was very much an act of rebellion so keep it in mind)

Recommended for anyone who likes drawing clothes and the people wearing them, who are also willing to put up with a certain amount of heteronormativity in their prompt books. Some skill level will probably make the book more enjoyable. Clothes are hard.

Recommended materials: Anything! You can use this one with just a pencil

Doodle a day

By Chris Riddell

⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️▪️ three out of five stars

(Note: I own a translated version of the book; this is the danish cover)

Before we start, I would like to note that this book's target demographic is children. I’m not a children, I just thought it looked fun. And I was right! But do keep it in mind.

What I like about it:

This one doesn't take itself too seriously. Which means that in places, it gets wacky. And I appreciate that. It expects a child's untamed creativity and wish to go along with whatever. 

A lot of the prompts are really fun and inspiring for me as an adult. There are a lot of "complete this drawing" sort of things that get me to draw things I don't usually draw. 

It's nice to see a book geared towards children that dares to have a very detailed and complex art style. Whether you personally like Chris Riddell's art style is very subjective, but he's good at what he does.

Criticism:

You have to enjoy drawing along with what the author enjoys. We're talking robots and fairy tales and dancing bears. This book has less room for letting you steer the prompts in a direction that you personally like, which is good if you like to be told exactly what to draw. It is less good if, like me, you prefer your prompt-based art to have space for a lot of your own creativity and preferences. 

I've personally marked down the prompts I want to do with tape, and I'm planning to just plain skip the rest. This means about two thirds of the book that I'm just not planning on using. I'm okay with this! But I want to mention it.

The book also contains quite a lot of 'free days', which I always find disappointing. I came here specifically because I didn't want to make up my own stuff. Please. Tell me what to do, I beg of you.

I will also note that this book assumes that you have some sort of family that are present in your life to the point that you want to include them in your drawings, and that you have at least one friend who wants to partake in certain of the prompts. 

It also assumes cultural Christianity, having prompts for easter and christmas and halloween and so forth, with no other holidays mentioned. It's a little uncomfortable.

Recommended for people who like silly prompts and are very adaptable in their art. Probably really good for younger kids? I was a weird child, so my point of view might be skewed. Decide for yourself if this book is worth getting for you or someone you know!

Recommended materials: something to draw with, and something to colour with.

Hirameki: Draw what you see

By Peng and Hu

⭐️⭐️▪️▪️▪️ two out of five stars

The classic exercise of using vague blobs and turning them into drawings

What's I like about it:

The concept is really good. The idea of having a whole book of printed blobs to turn into drawings is so fun and appealing to me, as someone who loves having things in books. 

I really like that they have certain categories and themes, to make things a little different. I love the idea of having a theme for a whole page of blobs (turning everything on one page into birds, for example), and what made me get the book was specifically that they have pages with just the same blob ten times over, and the challenge is then to make them all into different things.

Criticism:

This book is the marketable brand flavor of prompt books, trying to be what mindful colouring books did, but with another concept, preferably in a way they can copyright. 

They're clearly trying to make pattern-making into a marketable invention rather than something that has been around since, like, literal prehistoric times. This would be little more than annoying and could probably be ignored, if it wasn't for the fact that the blobs aren't even ... random. 

The creativity is killed, because these blobs are clearly made to look like certain things. Which is the opposite of the point, of the shapes-in-randomness exercise. They don't do this with every page, but it is, like. More than half. The page dedicated to faces have defined noses and necks. There’s a beach themed spread and the crabs have defined pincers. 

I had the most fun on the intro pages, where there were no prompts, because that was the place where the blobs were truly random. These were not meant to be drawn on! They were decorations! I just did it anyway!

This is branded to be something that will allow you to be creative, but in reality, it is actually just a different way of playing connect-the-dots. And there's nothing wrong with connect-the-dots, but I was advertised something else and I'm disappointed.

Also, this is personal pettiness, but if you're going to make a gimmick out of every prompt rhyming, you have to actually know how to rhyme. "Gadget" and "uplug it" do not rhyme! Not even by a stretch!

I cannot recommend this book. The idea is good, and some of the pages I did enjoy filling out, but I would have gotten more out of just grabbing a blank sketchbook and adding some ink blots to every page, then started from one end.

Recommended materials: They specifically say that you have to use a pen that’s either blue or black. I used a bright red one just to be a contrarian.

Illistration

By Jaime Zollars

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️▪️ four out of five stars

This one is a little different -- it is essentially a make-your-own-prompts book!

What I like about it:

This book appeals right to my need to be part of the process, even when drawing for prompts. Basically, this book is all about producing creative lists of things to draw, and then illustrating your favorites.

I love how the author talks you through their process of creating each individual list to suit their own preferences, and encourages you to do the same, to create prompts that appeal directly to you.

I also really appreciate that this book fully assumes that the reader is just as capable as the author. It wants to teach you something, sure, but it doesn't outright assume that you've got more or less experience than the author. They're teaching you one specific way of generating ideas and that's what matters. The author is confident, but humble. I like that.

Criticism:

Honestly, this is a wonderful book. I wouldn't change anything about it. The only reason I subtracted a star is because it falls a little bit outside the category of a prompt book. It's a five-star book for what it is, but if you're just here to be told what to draw without having to make stuff up on your own, this one is not for you. 

I can't just pull this one out, open it up and start drawing -- using this book is a project. I have to do at least half of the work myself, if not more. And I personally have fun with that, but it has to be noted.

Recommended for artists of any skill level, who like to generate their own unique ideas. This is the one I would be most likely to recommend to a dedicated artist, or a professional.

Recommended materials: whatever you prefer to draw with, and something to write with.

-------------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading! 

If you found this review helpful and want to fund me and my constant purchasing of prompt books, you can tip me on TheNearsightedMicroraptor on Ko-fi!

Home (Baekhyun x reader)

DOMESTIC FLUFF (?) 

ENJOY! 

The jingling sounds of key and door carefully pushed open resonated through the half lit apartment. Baekhyun locked his door and carefully switched on the light. His foot steps brought him to the living room, which surprisingly was not neat. He flashed an apologizing smile when he saw the scattered books, papers, and highlighters on top of the coffee table and to the girl who fell asleep uncomfortably on the couch. 

A book was covering half of her face; Baekhyun giggled at the sight. He gently placed his gym bag on the other couch, took the book on her face, marked the page with a highlighter and closed it down. He bent to greet her with a kiss and gave a gentle stroke on her shining brown hair. The girl did not move at all, in which Baekhyun deducted she had been too tired this week. He shuffled into the bedroom, took a soft blanket and returned to the sleeping girl. He draped the blanket over her, and left to shower. That girl is Scarlet, the lucky girl who stole Baekhyun's heart and the one he's engaged to.

One of the room that Baekhyun loves other than the bedroom is the bathroom. His marvelous girlfriend amazingly turned this place's dull bathroom into a masterpiece. Baekhyun thanked his hard work which resulted this marble walls and tiles. He thanked his sweats for purchasing him a pulsing bathtub, but mostly, Baekhyun appreciated how his girl did the lights and ambience for this room. The dim relaxing lights and candles never failed in calming his nerves down. The pack of aroma oils she kept on one of the shelves helped Baekhyun breathe even lighter. 

Today he realized, it's not late yet to have a dip. It's only 10 (that's why he knew his girl had been tired, for she usually waited til' morning). Baekhyun opened the faucet, walked to the box of oils and chose his companion for tonight. He decided to go with vanilla and a blue bath bomb. He tossed the bomb when the water's enough and stripped down. In less than a minute, he was groaning from the pulses which hit his tired body and softly moaned from the comfort the oils and bubbles gave him. He closed his eyes for a moment, did some deep breathing, and reopened his eyes.

He scanned the room, his heart warming when he saw the things in this room came in pair. The tooth brush, the towels, and the vanity sets. His eyes traveled one more time to the rack of body wash collections Scarlet owns. He frowned a little when he realized her collections had changed. 

Baekhyun remembered seeing bottles of colorful and super sweet smelling soaps, but now it's replaced with plain bottles. He squinted his eyes and reached for each bottles. Reading off the titles and scents. He frowned when he read "aromatherapy edition". Though he admit the smells are wonderful, he tried to get her message. The bottles were labeled like Sleep, Stress, and Love. He returned them and glanced at the scented candles which Scarlet likes to light when she showers. The fun bakery or fruity smells was replaced too with another Sleep candle. He felt something’s wrong. Quickly he finished his bath, washed, and tugged on his shorts.

He walked out of the steamy shower, bare chested, then tip toed to the dining table. He made himself a glass of warm milk and sat down while looking at his sleeping girlfriend. Scarlet has always been a shining, restless ball of energy, with lots of positivity, just like him. But he was late to realize that she was going through a lot. 

Baekhyun's comeback activities have not allowed him to go home early, except today since two members started to feel sick, nor did it allow him to send texts and sneak calls. He tried to remember when was the last time he checked on Scarlet, and he felt bad when he figured out how much of an uncaring boyfriend he is. He looked at the engagement ring on his left finger and then to Scarlet, played a bit with it, and guilt flooded his body.

When was the last time Baekhyun asked how's she doing? When did he call first or texted first? When did he come home to ask her how her day went? When Baekhyun did accompany her to finish her mountain of home works? When did he really act like her man?

The answer was long time ago. It's always Scarlet who started the conversation, it's always her waiting for him. Scarlet's the one who forced her tired body to stay awake, just to welcome tired Baekhyun home. Scarlet's the one who always asked and listened attentively to how his day happened. She's the one who prepared his bath and bed. 

Every morning they still see each other. Drinking coffees and eating breads, Scarlet usually asked him how his sleep was while packing a lunch for her, and him. Not to forget how she always yawned from staying awake to finish her tasks and woke up early to fetch Baekhyun his breakfast and lunch. 

He felt like a shit, had he ever sit next to Scarlet all night when she typed words into her laptop, while chugging on cups and cups of coffee? Rarely. Yes he tried and failed miserably, but Scarlet never for once put a grudge on this. Baekhyun saw her charged phone on the island. He reached it and opened the lock, swiped until he found the calendar widget. He scanned through it and learned that this month is her final exam weeks; that explains the books and papers. He carefully noted down each day's exam. Baekhyun made a small plan on his mind. A small support which he hoped can help her pass the exams.

After finishing his milk, he walked to Scarlet, picked her up and put her down on their bed. He returned to the living room to pack on her belongings for tomorrow's class and tidied up the couch. After noting the clock, he turned off the lights and joined Scarlet to dream land. Baekhyun counted the hours of sleep, its 23.30, his schedule tomorrow starts at nine, while Scarlet's class starts at eight. He will wake up earlier tomorrow, make her breakfast, and walk her to campus. Baekhyun smiled at himself, then after another kiss he closed his eyes.

The sun rays woke Baekhyun up around 6. He carefully left his bed, washed, and walked to the kitchen. He turned the coffee machine on, heated the water, then prepared two cups. Baekhyun yawned as he checked on their fridge, surprisingly there are eggs, hams, and cheese. He threw his head to the counter and smiled when he saw bread. He noted he has to grab groceries on his way home, this fridge won't refill itself.

Baekhyun finished cooking the second egg, when a fresh showered Scarlet surprised him with a back hug.

"Morning bae, sorry for sleeping deep last night," Scarlet kissed Baekhyun's exposed neck.

"Morning too babe, no problem... I saw your tiring schedules, it's okay to fell asleep. I like it better, for you to stay healthy." Baekhyun said as he plated the egg on top of the bread, then topped it with cheese and ham then bread. He turned the stove off and returned the kiss Scarlet gave.

"Hmm the coffee's ready." Scarlet inhaled the sweet smell of coffee.

Baekhyun grinned, "Just sit down my lady; I'll prepare this for you." Baekhyun poured milk into one coffee. He knew her well!

Scarlet took a snap and updated her Instagram.

"What? I'm just going to post this so your fans can day dream on you."

Baekhyun said nothing to this, he's thankful though that even though some fans hated her in the beginning, by today they shifted to support them and Baekhyun's thankful Scarlet has been strong so far.

"Let's eat. Enjoy your breakfast." Baekhyun smiled.

"Thanks Baekhyun." She smiled and delicately finished her portion.

"How's your sleep?" Baekhyun asked this time, and he did not miss how Scarlet seemed surprised and happy he asked first. Gosh why did he not do this before? Seeing her surprised and happy made him happy too.

"Amazing! I dreamed that a handsome prince came to kiss my nightmares away, oh Baek it feels real," She gazed into the space.

Baekhyun giggled and brought his hand to ruffle her hair.

"How's yours?" Scarlet asked back.

They caught up with one another, exchanged small talks on how the comeback is going, annoyed conversation on Scarlet's never ending tasks, planned about visiting their parents, and many more.

"Come let's get ready. I can walk you to campus today." Baekhyun stood up and collected the dirty plates. He washed them quickly as Scarlet prepared herself.

They're ready. Baekhyun's wearing black and black with a black cap and black masker, on his left shoulder hung Scarlet's school bag, on his right hand the small hand of Scarlet. They walk while enjoying the sun and other couples.

"Baekhyun, I'm sorry if I sound rude.. But can you please return to the pastel and denim looks please? I'm tired of seeing your dark clothes in the laundry." Scarlet spoke.

He did not need to think and nodded, "Sure! I'll dress brighter after this."

Scarlet smiled, "Thanks! It's depressing for me to see your dirty clothes."

Their steps reached the end, Scarlet smiled brightly in front of the campus gate.

"I can take it from here, thanks jagi, good luck with your practice!" Scarlet rose to give a quick peck on his lips and they parted.

That afternoon, practice ended quickly. Baekhyun rushed to the parking lot after changing into a fresh tee.

"Yak, where are you running to?" Chanyeol asked before Baekhyun was gone behind the doors. It is normal for him to rush home, but Chanyeol always asked the details.

"A date probably?" Kyungsoo teased his friend.

"Any special day?" Sehun chimed in too.

"Nah.. I want to go to the market and prepare dinner."

"Wow, did something happen?" Kai asked

"Nothing bad, I just realize I'm not a caring namja..." He blushed

The rest of them laughed it off and just wished him good luck

Baekhyun was thankful today is a Friday and he can leave before 6! Yet he was sure that Scarlet's last class today will end at 6, which gives him enough time to shop and cook.

He rushed to the supermarket nearby the apartment and bought everything needed for dinner and the empty desolate fridge. He restocked the fruits, chocolates, pop corns. He bought home a bouquet of fresh flowers and a letter too.

Once back home, he arranged everything on the refrigerator and began to cook.

Right as he wait for the rice to cook, he arranged the tables and still got time for a quick fresh shower.

Once he he spit the light-blue mouthwash away, the jingles of key made his heart pound.

"Mwoya?" Scarlet gasped in surprise when she was greeted by the dim lit room only from the dining room. She took off her shoes and left her belongings on the sofa. Scarlet stood frozen in front of the dining room.

There stood Baekhyun, all in his boyfriend dreamy look and a bouquet of fresh flowers. Not to mention how perfect his oversized yellow pastel sweater matched his fluffy caramel hair. His eye bags showed naturally how tired he is, no heavy make ups and eye shadows. Just the plain glowing cheeks Scarlet love, to an extend that she will give everything just so his cheeks can glow.

She did not say anything, he was still frozen too, and Scarlet took the moment to melt Baekhyun in her deep meaningful kiss.

"You don't have to do this Baek," she whispered as her lips lingered close to his.

"I wanted to jagiya, here's your flower." He handed her the bouquet.

Scarlet took a deep whiff of the roses and placed it on the vase.

"Wow you cooked dinner!" She giggled as she saw the pile of dirty pans and pots in the sink.

"Don't worry I'll clean them up, before that shall we eat?" He raised his brow.

"One moment!" Scarlet turned to take a quick shower and change her clothes.

She returned only in Baekhyun's oversized baby blue knitted sweater and a messy bun.

"Jja, let's begin" She took her seat and Baekhyun lit the candles.

"I'll bring you to a proper place tomorrow or next week... sorry tonight I rushed.." He shyly said.

"Oh I love this better Baekhyun, anyways your food tastes better than mine! What secrets are you using?" Scarlet ate happily, savoring each spices and sweetness. Baekhyun felt full seeing her this happy. He got it now how mothers felt when their kids finished her meals. It's rewarding.

"Nothing much, I pour my heart into it." He cheekily replied.

Scarlet rolled her eyes on this, "You know what... I owe you something for this perfect surprise. I love you Baekhyun!"

"Well you could thank me with tonight's activity. How long was it again since we did it? Oh damn I've missed your touch." He smirked.

Scarlet's cheeks burned and she finished her glass of water.

"Will you be good for me tonight?" Baekhyun sipped his wine and put on his playful smirk.

Scarlet winked, "We'll see."

Yo! Can I have a match up for BSD,and AOT? I am 5’0 with blue eyes and brown hair that has sunstreaks in it. I am childish but can be serious if needed, I like to play around outside and draw. I love to run around and swim, reading is one of my favorite things to do. I like to pull practical jokes on friends and I am shy ( Surprise ) around people I don’t know very well. My love language is gifts and quality time, I hope you can get to this, have a good day!!!

Thank you so much for your request and we’re happy to fulfill it for you! It’s no trouble at all! 

For Bungou Stray Dogs, I match you with Dazai Osamu!

First off, he thinks you're absolutely adorable and beautiful. Your height makes it so much easier for him to tease and just wrap himself around you. You can bet that one day or another, EVERYTHING in your apartment will somehow find itself on the highest shelf. Still, if you ask him nicely, he might take them down. (If you whack him a few times, that will work even better.) When you first meet him, and he sees that you're shy, you’ve already won points. You’re already the cutest thing ever to him. He’ll love your more childish side, and will absolutely help you pull pranks on everyone. (Even better if it’s Kunikida.) And it’s definitely good that you have a more serious side, as things can get rather chaotic with him. I mean, if someone isn’t the adult at times, you can bet that somebody’s apartment is going to get caught on fire. He’s also just plain glad to have someone who while has their playful chaotic side, is also someone he can trust to take things seriously when necessary. 

He’ll adore frolicking about outside with you, and will love just doing stuff like play chasing you down to give you a giant bear hug. And swimming? He supports you. All. The. Way. He loves that you love to swim, and would definitely like to swim with you. If you guys are swimming together, you can bet he’s going to be an absolute horror. Will try to drown himself and will definitely ask you to commit double suicide with him. There’s just no getting out of that one. Also, splash fights. He’s going to be splashing water at you the moment he gets in the water. And once he sees that you’re a reader, well, he’ll be even more enthralled. He himself likes to read. (A.K.A. The Complete Guide to Suicide.) And will make sure to give you time to read. Though sometimes he might just start clinging to your waist while you’re reading begging you to spend time with him. (While Kunikida yells at him to do his work, of course.) And if you just read something and want to rant about your book, he’s all ears. If you’re super excited about something, you can bet that he’s going to be bouncing off the walls even more. He’s just happy to see that you’re excited and loves hearing you like this. 

He loves that you like giving gifts, and he has probably created a little shrine of sorts with even the smallest little things that you’ve given him. And if possible, he’ll probably keep at least one of them on him at all times, to remind him of you. Generally, he’s super sweet about it and will love giving you little things in return. And he is very much a quality time person as well, he just loves seeing your adorable face and just plain being with you. He’ll love spending time with you, and will be over the moon if you visit him at work. (Also will use you as an excuse to get out of work too.)

Overall, it’s a very cute relationship and Dazai is going to love you forever. 

For Attack on Titan, I match you with Armin Arlet!

First off, Armin will love how he’s taller than you. He just thinks it’s so cute! And you just look so bright! It’s dazzling to him. He’ll love the feeling of just holding you close to him, it’s something he can never get enough of. 

Armin will be understanding when you’re shy at first, and will be very supportive of you from the get-go. When you open up more to him, he’ll already be incredibly happy. He’s a good match for you as he can act as the voice of reason when you let out your more childish and playful side. And will still appreciate it and love you even more for it as well. He’ll often get dragged around by you, (not that he minds) and get pulled into playing pranks on Captain Levi. (He does mind that a bit more, he doesn’t really want to die young.) When Armin first sees your more serious side, he’s a tiny bit shocked, just a bit, as he’s used to your other sides. Still, seeing you like this spurs him into action about whatever has you acting seriously. Still, he’s glad to see that you have this side, as he doesn’t want to get hurt and so is glad you can be more mature when the time comes. It will provide him with some relief. 

When he can, he’ll really enjoy seeing you and joining you in just playing around outside. He finds it extremely cute, and if you tease him, Armin.exe has stopped working please try again later. He’ll just die with an impressively red face, but, you think that the color suits him. Given his situation, he hasn’t really gotten too many chances to go swimming, but will be very supportive of you doing so. He’ll admire how good you are at it, and will make sure to let you know that. And reading? Yes please. Armin’s really glad to know another bookworm like him, and will make sure to give you space to read. And will love chatting with you about said books too. Sometimes, you two will just sit next to each other reading a book. It’s moments like that that really makes him fall in love with you even harder. 

When he sees the little gifts you give him, he might just start crying. They mean the world to him, and he’ll make sure to leave them in a little box in his room, as he doesn’t want to lose them. When he’s not feeling great, he’ll look at them and be reminded of you. In return, he’ll want to give you little things too, and will likely get you a book or something small and cute. And he genuinely wants to spend more time with you, but often can’t, because of his job. However, he’ll make sure to make the most of the time he has with you and will treasure every moment of it. 

Overall, Armin is genuine and a bit shy in his love for you, and will always have you in mind.

Super Alce - Feature Bike

The Featured Super Alce in Location

Nestled unobtrusively among a row of 500 singles inside the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi, within a part of the structure which was historically an old sheep shearing shed lies one of Teo's Super Alces.  This Super Alce is presently flanked by an Alce and an Airone Sport.  The Super Alce was produced from 1946 - 1957 and it replaced "la gloriosa Alce".  The Alce was renowned as a tough and reliable military bike during "La Guerra" WW2.  It was a robust and powerful machine which distinguished itself everywhere from the large open plains in North Africa during the fighting and then equally as well in the tough mountainous terrain of "Le Alpi" the Alps.

The Alce, or the Elk in English, was always going to be a very tough act to follow but Moto Guzzi not only followed that act, they massively improved that tough act in 1946 with the Super Alce or Super Elk.  At first glance the Super Alce and Alce appear hard to differentiate.  Moto Guzzi stayed with the same sturdy frame and the proven girder fork suspension up front, the tank and seats look similar.  They both have the trademark (for the time) Guzzi horizontal single 500cc motor keeping the overall look of both models the same.  As the Super Alce was never sold to the public but only made for the military, both models generally (not always) share that military olive green colour in a flat paint to avoid reflection and detection but that's where the similarities end.  Some were offered to the Carabinieri and although still finished in green paint featured some chrome plating as well around the tank.

The Alce had a side valve engine but for the Super Alce there was an upgraded engine derived from the type V engine used in the GTV and GTW series.  This engine had a single port with two inclined overhead valves along with a four speed gearbox. The Super Alce had a twist grip throttle, a major improvement from the old lever on the handle which was present on the Alce.  During 1952 the Super Alce included a magneto with automatic advance rather than the old timing advance lever on the handle needing to be adjusted by the rider as the speed changed.

Earlier models continued with the short double muffler from the Alce on the left hand side which was replaced in 1955 with a single long muffler still on the left side.

Andy and Wayne communing with their Super Alces in the workshop

One, perhaps unique, and quirky optional feature of both the Alce and Super Alce models is the presence of a second set of handle bars available for the pillion passenger.  We have heard much conjecture as to the real reason for the second set of handle bars but frankly we have never met anyone who has convinced us they understand the factory rationale for this decision.  One of the better theories is that because both of these models were only for military use that perhaps the second set of bars was made available so that when soldiers of lower rank were transporting senior officers around the battle field terrain etc that the pillion handle bars were in place so the more senior officers did not need to physically touch or hold the more junior officers piloting those machines.  This is only a theory proposed by some and it is possibly not consistent with Italian culture.  My own father was a soldier in the Australian Army during "La Guerra" WW2 and as a corporal he did often have the responsibilities of ferrying senior officers around on motorcycles but to my knowledge there was no such option on any military motorcycles within the Australian Army.  He is no longer alive so I can't ask him about any touching while ferrying superior officers on a bike.  Please share with us your thoughts or comments on this feature and any ideas you might have in the comments section, we would be very pleased to hear your opinions and learn from any specific knowledge which our 'friends' may posses.

Teo at his best, challenging himself with a Moto Guzzi problem

Special Quiz Question

As a bonus for reading this article all the way through to this point we have a special quiz, or perhaps a test for the very knowledgeable.  Most Super Alce's have frame and engine numbers which commence with the letters SAxxxxxx with the SA being an abbreviation for Super Alce but some Super Alces come with the VAxxxxxx prefix on both the engine and frame.  Do you know what the VA stands for in this instance?  Do you know what differences there are on a Super Alce which has the VA prefix for the frame and engine?

As a clue I can advise that for the Alce model had the frame and engine prefix Axxxxx.  This was consistent through the model run but there were a few Alces which had the prefix Vxxxxx.  The V stood for Velocita and these bikes had different gearing and substantial chrome differences.

So the question remains to our collective brains trust, what differences in the Super Alce model came with the Vaxxxxx prefix.  At this point I will make two declarations before people provide their thoughts or facts:

We at the Friends of the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi do not know the answer to this question.

I own a Super Alce (just purchased from Teo) with the prefix VAxxxxxx.

The Statistics

Provenance of Feature Bike

While this article is about Super Alces in general, the feature bike in question nestled inside the old shearing shed in between the Alce and the Airone Sport has an interesting provenance of its own.  An Italian guy contacted Teo from Italy asking him if he wanted to purchase it some eight years ago. The usual discussions around price were had and before long this Super Alce was in a container bound from Italy to Melbourne, destination Cathedral of Moto Guzzi. The bike arrived exactly the same way it is presented in the museum now, eight years later with one exception.  It had an old ammunition box on the back which Teo removed to keep the bike in its very original condition.  When Teo finally got the munitions box open, he found inside a nice bottle of fine Italian wine made from the famed grape of Tuscany which is responsible for some of the most revered and celebrated red wines in Italy.  Yes it was a beautiful Sangiovese. Needless to say, Teo has received great pleasure from both the Super Alce and the Sangiovese.

The Friends of Cathedral of Moto Guzzi Workshop

Most of us in this group, The Friends of the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi, know that the cathedral is the private collection of Teo Larmers' but as well as the cathedral itself there is so much more going on every day at the site as there is an active and vibrant Moto Guzzi workshop here where many Moto Guzzi related repairs and ground up restorations occur.

We thought that as well as featuring the Super Alce in this article that we would also feature some recent work in the associated workshop relating to two Super Alces.  The first of these is my own Super Alce which I recently purchased from Teo. It had been sitting languishing on his farm (inside a shed) for 10 years before, so we had no idea what we would find and if it would start and the second of these Super Alce projects is one owned by Andrew Hawkes another Cathedral of Moto Guzzi regular who has owned his machine for circa three years.

Teo fettling with Andy’s bike

Wayne’s Super Alce in the Workshop

My own Super Alce story commenced a couple of months back when I told Teo I have a hankering to own a Super Alce.  Something about the unbreakable agricultural look and feel of these machines with their military lack of adornment was beckoning me.  I am beguiled by their primitive but effective engineering casually on display.  I am transfixed by the girder fork front end which like the Eiffel tower is strong, lasting and effective as a piece of engineering while hiding none of it's structural secrets.  One glance at the girder forks shows you how it works and after 82 years of service within the Italian military then abuse at the hands of us civilians these simple front ends are still functioning very well in 2021.  They held up to the constantly changing tide of attack and retreat at the hands of Rommel and the allies in the deserts of North Africa and they did it all again on the Italian mainland.  This engineering honesty proudly on display does not stop at the front end but extends to the rear end as well and then the most mesmerising example of engineering honesty exposed, watching the externally operating valve gear doing its work in front of your very eyes as the four stroke engine ticks over.

First is the induction stroke and you can see the intake valve open to suck in fuel and air from the Dell’Orto MD 27 F.

Next is the compression stroke when all the power is being built up and here both valves remain closed.

Finally comes the combustion stroke when all the power made is released in a fury of fire and brimstone.  Again both valves remain closed.

Then, in preparation for it all to start again is the exhaust stroke where all the spent gases are expelled and here the exhaust valve is open telling all what the engine is doing

The Super Alce power plant is no ‘blackbox’ keeping all its running secrets from prying eyes, no this engine is a open book ready to teach any of us willing to learn the finer details of how an internal combustion engine really works.

Modern motorcycles won't even permit you to view the outside of an engine which is cocooned in a secrecy blanket of accessories or plastic decoration let alone see the exposed workings of the valve train but for the Super Alce, there it is in front of your eyes for all to see and admire, the truth at the heart of it all.

So after telling Teo I wanted to own a Super Alce myself, he revealed that somewhere in the deep dark recesses of his sheds and containers he had a Super Alce which had been dormant for 10 years or more.  With that he located the Super Alce which would become mine.  We gave the old girl a new spark plug lead and new spark plug and new plug cap.  We used the kick starter to roll over the engine a couple times and deduced that it probably didn't have a lot of compression.  Not deterred by this we got some fuel, filled the tank, checked the oils and started the video running. (See the video of the bike's first kick below).  Teo and I had talked over how this would go.  I would pull the choke lever from Aperto to Chiuso (from open to closed), then I would prime the carburettor.  The throttle would need to be in just the right place, then, after locating Top Dead Centre using the decompression lever, I would give that one explosive kick which would bring the bike to life.  Sounds good in theory.  Well watch the following video to see what happened......... Yep, she started first kick after 10 years or more in a dark corner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13hvzKvvdm4 (First Kick)

https://studio.youtube.com/video/hCbFljGPb2M/edit (First Ride)

At first, despite the engine running well, there was a problem with the idling which could not be rectified even with a bit of fettling by Teo.  We opened up the carby and used compressed air to blow out the idle jet.  After that all was perfect, she ran well and idled beautifully.

It seemed we had a good engine, despite it feeling like it had so little compression.  I rode the old girl around a few dirt roads over a couple of weekends and she started reliably and pulled strongly enough.  We were both satisfied that it was ready to go.  But, life sometimes doesn't go as planned.  The next weekend I was ready to take her home and get some red plates for her and she was reluctant to start.  What had happed to our perfect machine which started first kick every time on queue!  We were able to start her and she ran fine but she just took way too much effort with me kicking so much my leg started to get tired before she would start.

As we were working from Teo's workshop nearby the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi it was no effort to pull off the head and barrel to see the condition of the piston, rings, valves etc.  First we poured some oil into the cylinder.  Wow, with oil providing a seal, suddenly I could easily find the compression stroke which had been elusive up to this point. I could even stand up on the kick-starter using all my weight without the engine turning over.  Oh dear, we obviously lacked compression despite the old girl appearing to run just fine.  First we removed the head.  The exhaust valve had a substantial leak and after removing the valves we could see there was so much wear to the valve guides, the valves had been rattling up and down the guides like a clackity old train.  How had this girl run so well!  But surprisingly the best, or should I say, worst was yet to come.  As we pulled the barrel off the piston the four piston rings fell onto the work bench in a myriad of pieces.  One of the piston rings was in seven separate pieces.  How had this old girl been running so well and how had the broken piston rings not caused any damage to the piston or the bores.  What a testament to the robustness of these old engines that with all this going on the old girl just kept running.

Bits of piston ring everywhere as we removed the barrel. 

Oh dear!

All the pieces of the puzzle.

Fortunately Teo was able to supply us with the necessary expertise and parts to reassemble the engine and voila, she will be back to starting with barely more than a simple well placed kick.  I can’t wait to see how this baby will go with even more oomph.   Another very happy customer and another amazing old Super Alce back on the roads or paddocks or wherever I choose to ride her.  Hope to see you out on the road one day while I am riding her.

Andy’s Super Alce

You may notice in the photos that there is also another Super Alce in Teo's workshop.  This fine example of a 1949 Super Alce belongs to our esteemed friend and fellow Friend of the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi, Andy Hawkes.

Andy’s bike in the foreground

To my eye, Andy's bike is one of the best examples of a Super Alce that I have ever seen.  It's not one of these perfect shiny examples that has magnificent paint with perfect finish to all the chrome and other fittings.  It has never been restored or made to look somehow better than it would have back in 1949.  No, Andy's bike has surface rust in all the right places.  It had dents which show the scars of a long and busy life.  It has the scars of a life lived to the fullest and evidence of many experiences which date back to its time in active service for the Italian military.  I suppose in today's parlance it may be described as a 'rat rod' but make no mistake, the scars on Andy's bike are not contrived or deliberately curated.  No the scars on Andy's bike came slowly over years and one by one by virtue of simply being used and enjoyed for the purpose for which it was designed.

Andy’s Super Alce story starts similarly to mine.  It started with an itch and hankering for a Super Alce which Teo was pleased to satisfy.  Teo sourced an appropriate Super Alce for Andy in Italy and thus started the long wait which Andy had to endure as his soon to be Super Alce was transported by boat from Italy to Melbourne Australia and onto the Guzzi Cathedral at Yea Victoria.

Andy’s bike arrived with a non functioning magneto and a few other foibles which were no problem at all in the workshop of Teo Lamers next to the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi.  With these minor issues quickly dispatched by Teo’s skill and tools in the workshop, Andy was soon riding his latest pride and joy.

In fact it was March 2018 when Andy was taking his maiden voyage on his ‘new’ Super Alce that I quickly developed my own hankering.  Andy has always been such a trend setter with the rest of us merely following.

See link below to Andy riding his Super Alce back in March 2018.  Apologies for the recalcitrant pillion passenger on the back of Andy’s bike.

https://youtu.be/yPm2uWIa4pE

The Boys Having Fun Riding Super Alces at the Cathedral of Moto Guzzi Workshop on a Sunday Afternoon.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/dP8Sn10X9wA/edit (Sunday afternoon ride)

https://studio.youtube.com/video/skMy4MJVVic/edit (Back at the workshop)

Written by Wayne Brundell

Author Interview: awickedplacethisis

Name: Simon

Tumblr: @awickedplacethisis​

Where else you can find them: ao3

What is the main pairing you write for?

Harringrove - Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington from Stranger Things

What inspired you to start writing for them?

The obvious tension between them in the show, and all the queer subtext I could see in Billy’s character! Plus, of course, all the amazing creators I found in the fandom. I wanted to contribute too!

Do you remember the first fic you ever wrote?

The first fic I ever wrote was definitely something Harry Potter related. The first fic I SHARED was a Simon vs. fic I wrote when the book came out, when that fandom was even smaller than it still is.

What fic/scene has been the hardest for you to write and why?

Billy’s relationship with his dad is always a challenge for me to write. Because we saw so little of it, and the little we saw was a mess. There’s a lot that hits close to home, whenever I write Billy in general. When I look back to the first time I ever wrote their relationship, I just want to go back and change it all. It’s a struggle, to capture something real, there.

What inspires you?

When I write, I get a lot of inspiration from thoughts running around in my own head, true events or just random things that COULD happen, to me. To someone LIKE me. But also, a lot of the beautiful fanart in the fandom give me real good ideas for fics. Just generally in life, my inspiration comes from fiction, I think. I’ve always read a lot, and that feeling of seeing something on paper that could happen to you, or would never ever happen, having that grip you and keep you in a whole different world, that feeling means a lot to me. Literature plays a big part in all aspects of my life, in the end.

Do you have a writing process? If so, what's it like?

Oh... I don’t think I even know my own process, really. I try to always have something at hand, a phone or computer or notebook, so I can write down ideas as soon as inspiration hits. That’s probably the only consistent thing, I write down all my ideas, big ones or small ones, because I know I forget them within the minute if I don’t. And from there, I usually try to find the “eye of the storm” first. What does the whole fic revolve around? How does it come to that place? Why does it change? Honestly, my projects are messes right until they’re done. Snippets of dialogue here, some author notes to myself there, delusional 2 am writing hidden away in a corner.

How would you describe your writing style?

My writing style is... messy. But that’s why I like it. It’s filled with cut off thoughts and italics, ‘cause that’s how I think. And that’s how I’d like to imagine those characters think. It’s also slightly influenced by the poetry I read, and just other literature in general. All though I try to be careful when it comes to that, ‘cause I’d rather something be plain when it comes to wording, than to be all fancy in a way the characters would never think. My writing style is like mundane poetry, if that makes sense.

Is there anyone that influences your style?

Not really, at least not consciously. I definitely take up tips from other writers, both in fandom and published authors. I see things I like in someone else’s writing and remember it for the next time I write. Something I think influences me a little is “The book of disquiet” by Fernando Pessoa.

What's your favourite line that you've written? This was a tough one, really. Probably this one, from my fic “the first time I saw the ocean (it was in your eyes)”

“to find darker blue in the lighter, specs of green so vivid that it’s weird he’s never seen them before. Maybe he’s never really looked , before.”

It’s really not a deep line or anything, but it really just captures Steve’s unknowing longing. The way he wants but he doesn’t know what. The way he sees so much that he’s never seen before, doesn’t really know what to do with that.

What do you find to be the easiest part of writing?

I don’t know if it counts, but nsfw content is definitely the easiest and non challenging stuff for me to write. ‘Cause just on a base level, it doesn’t really hold any depth. It can, depending on what you do with it, how you write the characters inner turmoil and everythin’. Other than that, I feel like it’s easy for me to write dialogue, all sorts of it. As a theatre kid, scripts have always had a big appeal, I guess.

What's the hardest?

The hardest is definitely getting to the point. I’ll spend too many words on building up a backstory, and then the actual plot just never happens. Backstory can be nice, but some fics call for that “being plunged right into the chaos”, from the start.

Why do you write?

I write ‘cause I’ve learnt no one else is going to give me the fiction I want. No ones gonna write characters like me if I do nothing. Sure, it’s starting, the whole diversity thing. But I won’t sit around and hope someone will write a book or script a movie with characters I can see myself in. I’ll write it myself. Of course, writing is a passion of mine. It’s not just that I wanna see myself on a page or a screen. The way we have languages, ways of creating stories and immortalize them, it’s so amazing to me. And I love it.

Why do you share your work?

I share my work in hope to make someone feel something. I want people to read words I’ve put together and feel things, feel pain or happiness or sadness or hope. Anything. ‘Cause it’s so baffling to me that words can DO that. I also want other people to be able to see themselves in something. A lot of people turn to fanfiction to find some kinda story they can see themselves in, and if I make even one person feel like they belong thanks to my work, I’ve succeeded.

Is there anything you’d like to share from a current WIP?

I’ve got quite a few of ‘em, and too little organization to finish them. Here’s an excerpt from my fic “the first time you said sorry (you used all the wrong words)” - part 2 of my “a series of firsts (in a way)”

“Nothing changes, except Steve can’t stop thinking about it. And he’s great at not thinking about it, but blue eyes and rough hands and deft fingers keep following him. That feeling, too. The one that gripped him, locked him in place. It choked him, left him heaving. Maybe it’s ‘cause it was Hargrove. He’d find some way of hurting him, even if he didn’t pound his face in. Maybe it’s the queer thing. The thing he’s never, ever thought about. The thing he locked away, kept away. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s not, that it’s so wrong that his body protested against it, locked itself in.”

(Italics got removed, but you can imagine I overuse the hell outta them)

Question from an anon: as a gay man, how do you feel about straight women who enjoy m/m fanfiction?

Now, this is quite the heated subject. And I do have a lot of feelings about that. Both as a gay man, and as a fanfiction writer. First, and most importantly, if what you enjoy is not harmful to you or anyone else, it’s okay to enjoy it. I’m all for enjoying things. As a content provider, my whole goal is for people to enjoy themselves. And I’d never restrict my content to one group of people, ‘cause everyone has the right to consume free media, and I want to share my work with everyone.

Straight women have the same right to enjoy content as any other person. Whatever floats your boat, do that. But, one thing needs to be clear. Enjoying m/m fanfiction in itself is nothing more than that. It doesn’t make you an ally of the community, and it doesn’t make you apart of it. Honestly, its just fetishizing. If you consume gay porn, it’s ‘cause it gets you going. If a straight woman consciously searches out gay porn or m/m fan fiction, its fetishizing.

And the extreme fetishizing of gay men in media is a problem. We’ve been given breadcrumbs of representation only to now be used as bait for straight girls who think it’s just sooo cute to see Timothée Chalamet get fucked on screen. And I get angry about that. I get angry that the representation we need is redirected to other people, people who really don’t care about the community as a whole further than their cute gay (and cis, and white) couples. I hate that. But i can’t sit and pretend like I have some sort of moral high ground. ‘Cause I make content that feeds into that. But it’s different, with fanfiction. I make content for MYSELF, and then whoever sees it, good for them. If all of my readers were straight women, I’d be fine with that. As long as they know that all they do is enjoy porn that fits their fetish. Or, if its not the smut, its still to an extent that. Fetishizing or romanticizing a group of people. And you do you, as long as you know that’s all you do.

Enjoy the harmless content you want to enjoy. And fanfiction is harmless. Just, this is the important part, don’t act like you’re doing more than that. You’re not a gay icon or an ally or super woke for reading about two fictional characters who interacted once fuck. You’re enjoying yourself, and thats fine. But in the end, its nothing more than that.  We’re a community, and you gotta stick up for everyone if you think you’re even close to an ‘ally’. Queer folk stick together. And when i say i don’t mind straight women reading my work, I gotta make one thing clear:

My work is to LGBT+ people, from someone in the community. I write because we deserve to see authentic people like us in fiction. And I’m doing my part to make at least one person feel like they can see a character and think “this is me”.

hhihihi!!! i saw your requests were open and i was wondering if you could do a Midoriya one where the two of them are like,,, perfect for each other. they both ramble a lot and are anxious often and have a lot of similar habits and mannerisms. only difference is Midoriya is pining super hard for them, and they’re pretty oblivious to it no matter how hard he tries to make them realize he has a thing for them. everyone else can tell BUT them. is this too specific? maybe. sorry lol! 💕💖

If there’s anything more envigorating than training with your classmates, it’s socializing with your classmates! You, Class 1-A, some kids from 1-B, and a handful of some support class students all planned a hangout in the common room for Game Night.

Of course, the Bakusquad teams up with Bakugou, Kirishima, Ashido, and Kaminari on one team and the 1-B kids on the otherside; Kendo, Shinsou, Monoma and uh oh—

“My, my, it seems one of our classmates would rather study than participate in this silly game night!” Monoma chorted obnoxiously. “I always knew our class was much more responsible and—”

“SHUT YOUR DAMN TRAP YOU BIT—” Bakugou exploded, but his shrapnel was covered by Kirishima’s hands over the angry hedgehog’s mouth; Arms wrapped around and over his shoulders to keep Bakugou in place, Kirishima laughs a bit awkwardly.

“What out buddy Bakubro over here means you bit-ter bring your A-games! Heh,” He says, squeezing a struggling Katsuki while he growled and kicked around. “We might wipe the floor with ya.”

“What about Midoriya? Where did he go?” Yao-momo asked, hope hanging on her tongue.

It was obvious (only to you) that the beautiful girl had a crush on your crush. And it made you even more discouraged, knowing that such a socialable and outgoing girl would win Deku’s heart before you could even try!

You knew where he was though, you saw him sneak away with a huge flush on his face after talking to Yao-momo. You had texted him wondering where he was going and he said he had to study for his internship. The thought of the two chatting made your nervous tick activate, your leg bouncing rapidly on your seat’s footrest. You couldn’t help but blush a look down at your hands, thinking that people would notice.

You thought, and second guessed, about the outfit you chose for tonight; a pair of black soffe shorts(the comfortable kind that dancers exercise in), a very baggy and black low v-neck top with over-the-shoulder short sleeves made of polyester. Of course you had a pair of black ruffles ankle socks, but you didn’t bother with slippers since the floors were always clean.

You bring out your journal, writing and doodling on the countertop. while you sat on a barstool, the game systems were set up and snacks were being heated/cooked in the oven and prepped onto the countertop. A good amount of time passed when they finally got it all done.

Your distracting thoughts ease your shaking a little, but it fires back up when you hear somebody respond to Momo;

“Oh! I forgot to say, Yao-momo, maybe ask (Y/Nn)-chan, you know how those two are, hehehe.” the ‘Alien Queen’ retorted as the festivities had already begun.

Pink coated the tips of your ears, dusting across your cheekbones when Momo’s eyes meet yours as you look over in their direction. A warm smile stretches across her face, earning a gulp from you. The lump in your throat disappears as she approaches you, and places a hand on your shoulder.

“Hey, (Y/N), you and Midoriya-kun are friends. I noticed he was acting funny earlier, but he wouldn’t tell me what was the matter and left. Would you min—”

You didn’t let her finish as a “I’ll go grab him!” sped out of your mouth, collecting your phone and journal as you raced to the elevators. Relieved to be out of the big crowd, you let out a deep exhale as the elevators ascends. Deku wouldn’t tell Momo what was wrong, so it was up to you as his best friend to figure it out.

You clentched your phone and journal in your hands, shaking a bit with every step towards his room. Soft japanese lofi hiphop playing from behind his door, making your anxiety skyrocket.

“Here we goooo—” You raise your hand to knock, “—OOH GOD. Oh goddddgod god!! I have to talk to Deku, and what if hes alone?! What if he doesn’t wanna see me? Did I make him upset?? Hmm, well he always feels better when bringing up All Might. Maybe I could go grab some movies and come back or..” You rambled on and on, talking to nobody but an empty hallway. In your daze, the door began to creep open.

You started taking notes, marking pros vs cons of talking to Deku right now. Mumbling something or other when a small squeak distracts you.

“U-Uh-uuHuh, he-hey there, (y/n)!!! Eh, wha—why aren’t you enjoying game night? Did somethi-

“DEKU! Oh— Hi, well you, aheh! uHmM What! No, I— I, I wanted to— oh geez, your room smells so good! Are you making cookies or something?” You blush profusely, biting your lip to stop your damn tongue from speaking.

His own blush flares up, backing up a bit and opening an arm to welcome you in as he looks harshly away from you, frozen in a flinch and sweat beginning to build on his forehead. He was in a pair of black joggers, a plain white v-neck on his torso and the bracelet you got him for his 18th birthday.

“I was just warming up some cookie dough, I, I know you’re not supposed to eat it uncooked but— It tastes g-good so.” He strays off, touching every other thing and making sure it was perfectly placed; a common occurance in his room.

A giggle escapes your lips, breaking a few layers of the awkwardness, and bringing a brighter hue of pink on his cheeks as you made yourself comfortable on his bed. It wasn’t noticed by you, but you were distracted by a gut feeling that you couldn’t ignore.

“D-Deku?” You squeak, nerves choking you up.

He looked over at you from his place on the floor, he was on his knees looking for a book in his bedside table’s drawers. “Ye-Yeah?”

“Do you actually have something to study, or is there something w-wrong? Yo-You can tell me— I wouldn’t tell a soul, I, I swear on it.” You say with a brave smile, clutching your journal to your body as you sat with your knees on the mattress

“Did Yaoyoroza put you up to this? I— I already told her it’s n-not worth worry-ING! UUHhhhHhh (Y/N)!! Y-Your, uhh— I!” He slaps a hand over his eyes and runs himself to his closet, blindly grabbing what seems to be a pair of sweats and holding them out at you with a shaking hand.

“W-What’s this?” You ask, eyes widening when you look down at your legs to see what made him react like that. A tear along the back side of your shorts had begun to spread from; The tight material usually form-fits itself around your “thicker” thighs and buttocks, but you must have caught them on your stool when sliding down and off it. (You’re short, so just stepping off high barstools will never happen).

“Th-Thank you!” You squeal, snatching the material out of his hands and slipping them on, and to your surprise— they fit! Even around your wider hips, tho your waist wasnt much smaller than his, the hem hanging a bit low, exposing about an inch of your lower torso(upper pelvis/low tummy and hipbone area).

“Is it okay now?” Midoriya asked. He looked so cute with his hand over his eyes, the prominent blush now being observed and imprinted in your mind.

You couldn’t help but reach out to touch his face, wanting to trace your fingers across every freckle that sprinkled across his person. Though, before you could reach his skin, he peeked through the cracks of his fingers; The heat becoming unbearable, and now your own body felt hot.

“(Y/N)...” He spoke softly, as if he was realizing something, removing his hand slowly. You were frozen in front of him; both visibly trembling, both staring into the eyes of your crush, both anxiously determining the next step.

You gulped harshly as he took in your appearance, subconsciously licking his lips as his eyes met the harsh grip your teeth had on your bottom lip, stepping forward and —without warning— he swept a strand of hair out of your face, both hands cupping underneath your jawline, and pulled your bodies together by gently tugging you forward and planting a slightly wet, deep kiss on your lips.

Your initial reaction was to freak out, but for some reason his warm hands kept you from falling apart. With your knees buckling, you grab the collar of his shirt, and almost fall into him— But his right hand steadied you, his calloused fingers pressing into your barely exposed lower back a bit, your bodies now insepedable as he continues to kiss you slowly but so deeply you thought he had some type of soul-sucking Quirk that happens when he kisses people.

After what felt like a life time, though it must have been 2 minutes, his lips leave yours. The absence of his mouth leaves you with a pout, but when your eyes flutter open you find he has a sweetest look in his eyes as he worriedly furrows his brows.

“S-Sorry, was that o-okay?” He asked, neither of you moving an inch.

“Does that mean yo-you like me?”

He chuckles, making your heart flutter. “I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you, (Y/N).”

HNNNNGGF I HOPE U LIKEd THIS I KNOW IT WASNT EVERYTHING U ASKED FOR BUT AKAOXOISOSD

Survey #314

“as above, so below  /  what you reap is what you sow  /  what you give comes back threefold  /  as above, so below”

What do you do for work? I'm currently unemployed. I only get paid now and again to do pictures for people. What would you ideally like to do for work? I'd love if I could just be a photographer. What are you doing in order to achieve this? Practice and shoving my extreme discomfort about it aside and trying to promote myself where possible and not in an overbearing manner. What do you think is the worst being on the planet? "Rapists, pedophiles, abusive people in general." <<<< This. Anyone who disrespects the existence of other and equal people. Have you ever been arrested? If so, what for? No. How big an age gap is between you and your siblings? My immediate sisters and I are two years apart. My half-siblings, I don't know. I don't have their ages memorized, but I do know 5+ years, some even 10. Do/did your siblings cause trouble? Not really, we were good kids. What's your dream vehicle? I don't really have one. Are you good at taking care of your finances? What finances? And I don't mean that happily. What's your favorite comic strip? I don't have one. How many people have you texted today? Zero. Someone cheats. Second chance? Nope, byyyyeeeee. Thoughts on kids? Clay that I'm not playing with. Are you a risk taker? No. What are you listening to? I'm currently going through a phase of playing The Evil Within 2's theme nonstop, jc. Is/Was your high schools dress code strict? Not like, mega strict, but it still was overboard. No spaghetti strap shirts, and I even once got in trouble for wearing a floral mesh shirt, despite having a normal tanktop underneath it. It was weird, like no one had ever had a problem with it before, it was just this one teacher that I passed in the hall. Who was the last person to request you on a social media network - and did you accept? Someone I didn't know, so obviously not. Who was the last person’s vehicle that you rode in? Mom's. Who was the last person to make you laugh or smile, and why? Another current obsession of mine: John Wolfe, another let's player who I think is super funny. He said something that made me snicker before I turned on music and started this. Who was the last person that you took a photo with? My half-sister while she was visiting. Who was the last person to pay you a compliment, and what did they say? In group therapy the other day, one of the other women told me that even if I don't believe it, I bring so much positivity to group and she was really happy to be there while I am. I was so so super flustered but flattered, too. Who’s the last person that you visited in the hospital? My mom, following her surgery. Who is the last person that you lent money to? Actually today to Mom. What was the last food that you ate? I warmed up a burger for dinner. What did the last pair of footwear that you wore look like? They're just black flipflops. What was the last kind of bread that you ate? Just plain white bread. What was the last app that you downloaded to your phone? Oh wow, I never do this. I want to say it was a game for my niece. When was your last work shift? I haven't worked in a long time, so idk. When is the last time that you had trouble falling asleep? This is literally every single night. When was the last time you saw a significant other? I ain't got one'a those. When’s the last time that you took a risk? What was the risk? Well, I did say I'm not a risk-taker... Where was the last place that you went on vacation to? You know, how long does it have to be to be considered a "vacation?" I would say not since I went to the beach with an old friend, but it was literally a day. Where was the last place you got lost? uhhhhhhh Why did your last relationship fail? We need to work on ourselves before we could properly support each other and stay in a healthy mindset. Why did you leave your last job? I couldn't handle the stress of serving people and having so many responsibilities at once. How long has it been since you last visited a doctor? How about a dentist? I literally went to the doctor today because I had a follow-up appointment about my weight gain again. I haven't been to the dentist in a few months; I had a normal cleaning my last visit. How big was the last fish you caught? Oh boy, this is stretching years back. It was probably something small, idr at all. Give me the first initial of your last name? D. Something in your home that’s on its last leg(s)? We just moved here, so nothing that's a part of the house itself. As far as items we actually own, idk. Where do you purchase most of your clothes? I haven't gotten new clothes in so long, idk. I would probably say Hot Topic. Describe your skincare routine. I don't have one, if I'm being honest. I just shower. What’s your typical morning routine look like? I don't have one of those, either. The only thing that's consistent is going to the bathroom, eating, and taking my meds. Even brushing my teeth, the time of day when I do that (if I'm not leaving the house) varies. Then it's time to just binge stuff on YouTube and do whatever on the laptop... Are you still playing Animal Crossing? I've never played it, actually. How has the pandemic specifically affected you? It's caused a lot of stress worrying about my mom falling ill, given her being immunocompromised. It's also held me back from searching for another job (even though I don't know what I'd go for, anyway...), because I absolutely refuse to risk bringing Covid into this house by leaving it daily or whatever. What is your main source of anxiety? Being mentally ill, really. It just affects a lot. Any bands or artists you’ve recently discovered? Not very recently, no. What kind of games do you play on your phone? Just Pokemon GO nowadays. Do you have a specific aesthetic? It varies. I love dark, gothic, and gory stuff, but then I also love everything pink and pastel?????? Pastel gore is especially where it's at. Describe the moment you realized you were falling in love with someone. I'd rather not. What’s your favorite sparkling water brand/flavor? I've never even tried it before. What’s your favorite makeup brand/brands? I don't wear nearly enough makeup to be even remotely familiar with any. What’s your all-time favorite movie? It'll probably always be The Lion King. Do you have any subscription boxes? No, but they're cool. What fictional creature would you like as a pet? On deviantART today I actually discovered a fantastic artist who does a lot of HTTYD fanart, and I would say as a dragon lover, Toothless would be soooo great. Have any local businesses closed that you’re sad about? I'm certain tons have closed, but none come to mind. How do you feel about TikTok? I don't feel anything about it. Did you/do you still have a Neopets account? Haha I've had like... two or three at different stages in my life. What were you doing at 9 o'clock this morning? That's actually when (virtual) group therapy starts. Are you wearing any jewelry? Yeah; my piercings (if you count them) and then two rings that I always have on. Are you good at hiding disappointment? No. I'm bad at hiding my emotions because they're so strong. What happened the last time you cried? lmaooo I was finishing watching a The Evil Within 2 LP yesterday, and like, the last hour or so of the game just rips me apart. I was hoping so bad that my mom didn't pass by and ask what the problem was. What would your parents be surprised to learn about you? Both would be stunned to know the situation I had with Joel/my former best friend's boyfriend when I was around 12. What fictional character do you have the biggest crush on? dARKIPLIER Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world? When all things are considered, like laws, seeing family, etc., somewhere in Canada, or maybe Alaska. Actually, Alaska would be really cool. What after school activities did you do in high school? I didn't have any, if you mean like, school sports and clubs. I did do dance once or twice a week, but it wasn't tied to my school. What’s the last book you really loved? I positively adored The Handmaid's Tale. If you could have been a child prodigy what would you have wanted to be skilled at? My writing was seen as very exceptional for my age as a kid, but it still would've been awesome if it was even better. If earth could only have one condiment for the rest of time, what would you pick to keep around? Uhhh I guess ketchup. I use that the most of all options. What is the scariest experience you have ever had? The night of the breakup. It was such an impossible concept to me that I genuinely thought my life was over, that I'd pull the plug at any moment. Who is a non-politician you wish would run for office? Oh, hunny, Markiplier lmao. Call it a bias all ya want, but he's just a genuinely incredible person that cares so much for everyone and is so serious about equality and just being a good person. Do you think it’s important to stay up to date with the news? It's very hypocritical of me to say, but yes, regardless. Do you own plants? If so, what kind of plants? If not, would you like to grow any? I've never been into growing plants, honestly. Is there a city that you have a particular fondness for? If so, what city is it and why? No, not really. When was the last time that you acted impulsively? Is this a common behavior for you? I dunno, I've gotten better at this. I probably said something I shouldn't have. If you received an allowance as a kid, what kinds of things would you buy with it? Were you more the type to save up for something big, or spend it on little things? I didn't get one. When you cuddle with someone, how do you prefer to position yourself? Would you rather be held, or do the holding? Or both? Are we sitting or lying down? Either way I think I have a tendency to lay my head on their chest while hugging them, and my legs generally curl up. If I'm upset, I definitely feel better and just a greater sense of safety if I'm the one being held, but if the roles are swapped, then I like to be the one doing the holding because I know that's what I want when I'm upset, so treat others how you wanna be treated, y'know. When you woke up today, did you find unread messages from anyone? No. Have you recently told anyone that you miss them? Yes. Can you recall the last time you turned down an offer, of any kind? Mom asked if I wanted to come with her to Ashley's a few days ago, but I said no. I wasn't in a social mood at all. Is there anyone you interact with every day on social media? No. What was the main character's name in the last fictional book you read? Sunny. Have you ever been rejected by a church? No. Is your family nice to you? Yeah. Are you comfortable with your gender? Yeah. What was your favorite Mary-Kate and Ashley film? I don't remember; we had a couple, though. What was your favorite book you had to read for school? The Outsiders. What was your favorite Nickelodeon show? ngl, I don't remember a lot of them and don't feel like looking up a list. Do you still live in the house you grew up in? No. Which Spice Girl was your favorite? I don't remember their names. Do you think you look the best you've ever looked? Oh hell no. Have you been hurt by religion? Yes, honestly. In Truth or Dare, would you rather choose Truth or Dare? I always choose "truth." Have you ever had more than one crush at once? Yeah, I think that's perfectly normal to feel, even for someone monogamous like myself. Just when you establish a relationship, then it's time to make a choice. What social issue do you care about most? This is hard to say with how passionately I hold my opinions, but probably LGBTQ+ rights. It's just... so disgusting to me that I was once homophobic. It's like I want to make up for it. Just the idea of being repulsed by love just because someone has "the wrong thing" in their pants is just... appalling. When was the last time you read a Bible? Many, maaaany years ago I started reading it, but I didn't get very far at all. Do you own a Bible? I personally don't, but I know Mom has one, maybe multiple. Do you discover new music regularly? No; I very much stick to what I know. It's great when I do, though, given that that's how I find new songs to repeat to the grave. What does your first name mean? "Of Britain" or something like that. What country do you live in? U.S.A. Do you believe that gays are born that way? Uh, yes? Who honestly believes a homosexual would *choose* to be in the discriminated minority? People are murdered and abused for simply their sexuality; no sane person would "choose" to risk that torture.

1068

What internet browser do you use?  Chrome. It’s what I’m used to, but I also think it looks the cleanest among the other available browsers.

What brand water do you drink? (Smart Water, Dasani, etc) I never reach for imported water brands like Evian because what is the point?? The local bottled water brands we have like Summit and Absolute work fine and already do a great job of quenching my thirst.

Do you have a job? Yes and I go back tomorrow and I’m cringing thinking about it. I love my job, but I wish it wasn’t so mercilessly hectic for 9 straight hours, 5 days a week. I like to think that I was hired right at the start of all the simultaneous Christmas campaigns of our clients which is why everything seemed busy; so I’m hoping the workload will start to die down a little bit now that all the holidays are over.

Are you full-time or part-time? Full-time.

Are you watching TV right now?  Nope. I was watching on YouTube earlier, but I decided to focus on this.

Or are you listening to music? No. It’s silent here in the living room, just the way I want it to currently be.

Would you go to jail for 3 years for $1,000,000? I don’t think that’s enough money for a dare that big.

When's your birthday?  April 21st.

Thoughts on kids?  I’m a lot less idealistic about them now. I used to want kids with my only formula being “I’ll do the exact opposite of what my mom did with me.” but I realized it’s so much more complicated than that. Raising a kid/kids is a whole damn job in itself and I see that with how my cousins of the same age, but from different families, have been acting. My cousins from one family are really spoiled and entitled, and I can’t last in a room with them for more than a minute; but my cousins in another family are so ridiculously well-behaved I can’t even start to fathom how respectful and kind they are. That observation has scared me away from kids in the meantime, because I still have to figure out how to not fuck such a responsibility up.

Worst punishment you've ever received by your parents?  The worst thing they ever did was take away my laptop privileges for an indefinite period when I was 11, when they caught me being a dumbass on social media and cursing all over the place. It’s a reasonable punishment per se, but that was also a time when the internet was starting to become a resource and requirement for homework and school projects; so my parents didn’t know how many things I failed to submit because they didn’t allow me on the internet.

Are you the type who is completely against abortion? I am pro-choice and pro-pregnant people should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies. I don’t like the idea of abortion, but I’ve always believed people should have access to resources to learn more about it, to a healthy culture that embraces it as an option, and to actual facilities that will enable them to receive one if the need be.

Have you ever read a book that actually changed your outlook on life? No, I don’t think so. Not yet at least.

Does your favorite flower hold any meaning to you? Peonies don’t mean anything in particular. I just think they look pretty.

What would you do if your favorite animal became endangered?  I can’t imagine dogs ever getting endangered, but hypothetically I’d be crushed. I’d do the same thing I would do with other endangered animals, which is to spread the word about their situation and what can be done to save them from getting even fewer in number.

Have you ever owned an expensive eyeshadow palette?  No. I never cared for makeup. I’m turning 23 and still don’t feel the need to invest in it...should I be worried?

Do you own a tripod for your camera? We used to, but I have not seen it in a long time.

Are your nails always painted?  They never are.

What's one thing you've had a toxic reaction to? A breakup. < This was true for me too, at least for a time. Another one would be the barbecue that my uncle bought for a family gathering once that was definitely contaminated with something...shit gave me food poisoning at 3 AM and made me think my half-naked self was going to die right then and there in the bathroom.

Which holiday is your favorite to decorate for?  We only ever decorate for Christmas, so I guess it wins by default.

Were you popular in school? By the second half of high school I was hanging out with the popular groups and getting invited to popular kid things, but I never wanted to claim to be popular myself. I still liked letting my friends take the spotlight.

Are there any foods that often give you heartburn or indigestion?  Is there something you intend to buy in the near future?  Is anyone in your family artistically talented? What about musically? What cute behaviors or characteristics does/do your pet(s) have?  What's the screensaver on your computer?  Crossing these out as I believe this survey is a shuffle of questions from many different surveys...? and I have already answered these five in a past survey I recently finished.

What’s the sexiest thing about a guy? I don’t really care for guys, I think... I still haven’t made up my mind about them yet, but all I know is I definitely have not felt seriously attracted to any irl man my whole life.

What’s the sexiest thing about a girl?  THIGHS

Who were you with at midnight on January 1, 2021?  Who was the last person to send you a message on social media?  ^ What qualities does this person have, that you appreciate? What was the last thing that caused you to scowl, or frown?  Have you smiled at any point during the last hour?  What was the last thing you consulted Google for? So, did anyone send you a "Happy New Year" message when midnight hit? When was the last time you were on a carousel?  What is the closest you have ever been to an elephant? Have you ever played Halo?  Have you ever read a National Geographic magazine?  When was the last time you had a pillow fight?  Name somebody who you think deserves more respect: In your own words, define what the word sexy means.  What is the most popular tourist attraction where you live?  Without looking - do you know what brand your underwear is? Are you any good at volleyball?  Have you ever had a water balloon fight?  Same situation as above. What an interesting order of questions, hehe. Still having fun with this though!

Do you think some babies are ugly?  Newborns are super wrinkly and make the strangest facial expressions from time to time. That won’t stop me from cooing at them, though.

Don’t you miss Chuck E. Cheese? I’ve never been there. Is it like a standard birthday party events place for kids?

Do you think Fall Out Boy is gonna be a classic band, like Queen or AC/DC? In time, maybe. 

Do you love stuff-crusted pizza?  Yessssss.

Do you apply lotion after you bathe? I don’t, but I should probably pick it up as a habit seeing how dry my skin can get.

What’s your favorite color? Pastel pink. < Same!

Who did you have your most amazing kiss with? Gabie.

Has a YouTube video of yours ever gotten over 10,000 views? I’ve never even posted a video on YouTube.

Would you ever get a tattoo on your collar bone? Not my spot of choice, so maybe not.

Do you like Robert Frost poems?  I’m only familiar with one and I’m having a little trouble remembering it rn haha.

Do you go to church every Sunday?  We used to go to church, yeah; back when it was okay to. Our local church has allowed face-to-face masses again (but with very limited attendees) but my mom has preferred for us to stay home, so for the last few months we’ve been watching livestreams of Sunday mass every week.

Have you ever been in a relationship on-and-off for more than a year?  I would say Gab and I were on-and-off, but it went on a lot longer than a year. The total time would amount to six years.

If you had to get famous for one of the following, which would you choose: music, acting, writing, modeling? Writing. Or modeling, if I could only pull it off.

What do you think of girls with huge boobs that don’t wear bras in public? I seriously don’t care. I skip out on bras all the time because I honestly personally don’t need them, and everyone should be allowed to feel and act the same way.

What is the last thing you tried on in a store? I never do this. Even before Covid, I’ve felt iffy about trying clothes that many others have already put on and were probably not washed 100% well. I’d rather get something, try it on at home, decide if it’s a good fit or not, and then return it ASAP if it ends up being the latter.

Is sleeping naked more comfortable than in clothes?  My mom doesn’t knock so I’ve always been scared to try sleeping naked (and she also throws a fit if she catches me locking my door, which is like - then why did you even buy a doorknob with a lock??), but I definitely see the appeal.

Have you ever had a dream in which you were making out, or more, with someone?  Yes for the more part lmao, but I don’t know if I’ve ever made out in a dream.

Do you feel as though you have a good memory, or are you forgetful at times? Do you feel that your short-term memory or long-term memory is better? Have you ever had a concussion or some other sort of brain injury before?  Do you have any sort of mental illnesses or disorders? What do they involve?  What’s the longest that your hair has ever been? How about the shortest? When is the last time that you got it cut? What are some ways that you style your hair? Do you use any sorts of products in it?  Who was the last person to truly get on your nerves? What do you think caused you to feel that way? 

Do you recycle? Is this through choice or do you live somewhere where it’s compulsory? Through choice. Waste management is sadly not much of a priority here, if at all.

Do you prefer plain, carbonated, or flavored water? Do you think you drink enough water throughout the day?  I have never tried the latter two. Water has always been tasteless and plain to me, and I never understood the point of customizing something that’s meant to be tasteless and uncarbonated. There are days where I’m able to have several glasses and other days where I unconsciously skip out on water until dinner.

Have you ever needed to call the police, ambulance, or fire department? Fortunately I’ve never had to call any of these.

When was the last time you visited the library? What was the purpose of your visit? I wasssssss maybe having something printed? If it wasn’t that, I was probably returning a book.

Do you see a lot of wild animals where you live? Are any of them dangerous? None of that here, especially since I live in the city. A sighting of a wild animal outside of a zoo or eco-park would definitely make national news, like that time an ostrich was seen running around a private village many months ago.

Aside from when you were born, have you ever had to stay the night in the hospital? Yep, from a dengue scare that turned out to be just a simple low platelet count.

Have you ever experienced a panic attack?  Yes, but they are extremely rare. The last time I had one was maybe two or three years ago. Unfortunately I think all my panic attacks were caused by and involved my mom.

Would you ever want to go into the medical profession? Was your answer different pre-COVID?  For a time, when I was hating journalism in college, I was daydreaming about the idea of shifting to biology and making the drastic swerve to med school. But I knew a love of memorizing and biology topics won’t be enough for me to be successful in the medical field, so I quickly shot the idea down.

Where you live, are people paying attention to whatever restrictions are in place to help control COVID? Many? People are definitely following and have been obedient with protocol in different places. Some cities are also still strict with maintaining their checkpoints and banning tourists from entering their area just yet. It’s the government that hasn’t really been making the effort to put measures to contain the virus.

Do you get a real or artificial Christmas tree?  Artificial. I don’t know if getting real trees for Christmas trees is a thing here.

What’s your favourite type/flavor of popcorn?  Cheddar cheese.

Do you drink oat milk? Nopes. I’d like to try it just to say that I have (and I might end up loving it too), but I have yet to look up what foods or drinks it works best with.

Do you love thrifting?  Sure, sometimes I get good finds from it.

Do you consider using only lowercase letters your aesthetic?  Sometimes I’ll use it in a Powerpoint or a tweet, but I wouldn’t say it’s an aesthetic that defines me as a person.

Do you say “mood?”  Too much.

Do you own fairy lights?  No. I wanted those before, but I’m not so sure if I still do now.

Do you own glass straws because the metal ones kind of gross you out because you can’t tell if they are clean or not? I don’t own glass straws. Most places have changed their cups into a design that you can sip directly from, anyway.

Have you made a TikTok? No, don’t care.

Do you own airpods?  No, but would like a pair.

Are you afraid of Mercury in retrograde? I really don’t care.

Do you make life choices based on astrology?  No, I don’t believe in it. It scares me how much some people rely on it and use it as an actual moral compass or judgment system. It doesn’t harm anyone so I never actively speak out against astrology, but it scares me nonetheless.

How many pairs of converse shoes do you own?  One pair. I used to own another one, but my mom threw it out several years ago.

Number of jeans in your closet:  I would say like 10-12.

What accent do you have?  Philippine English/Americanized Filipino, I guess.

Do you have a big butt? I’d say it’s decently-sized.

Do you count how long you and your gf/bf have been together? Yeah, before.

Have you graduated?  Both high school and college, yup.

Rihanna or Lady GaGa?  I like Rihanna’s music more, but I love Gaga’s outfits, concepts, and stage presence more. Do you use fake eyelashes?  No. I had to use them twice, but I’d never seek them out on my own.

Which was the last book that really captivated you? It’s been a while since I encountered a book like this.

What makeup brands do you use?  I don’t use makeup.

“So What’s Band Like” pt. 2

aka random stuff people in my marching band have done but make it reminiscing on my freshman marching season edition and more focused on general events then what specific people have done

okay so like just to cover bases that one good percussionist from part one is the only percussionist that continued on into high school band

which is a fucking upgrade if you ask me

also i’m the only flute of my grade so i was flute baby™ last year

and then oboe baby when concert season came around

or as i like to call it

boboe™

oh and don’t fool yourself into thinking we have an oboe section either

it’s literally just me and my friend

anyway lets get deeper in to it then your boyfriend/S.O will ever be in you

or then you’ll ever be in your girlfriend/S.O

I ain’t gonna assume your situation

first band competition of the year we got stuck in a very hot band bus in a thunderstorm for like probably over an hour

we ended up being one of the only bands that actually stayed and performed which was cool 

what was also cool is that we sang the 99 bottles of beer on the wall song and actually made it to 0

i’m also proud to say that one of the people who started that was my crush at the time, and my boyfriend now

how chaotic of him 

but then again

he’s a percussionist

also my section leaders piccolo decided to just d i e and she couldn’t play for our entire performance at that competition

moving on

catch us drooling over a 200 plus member band at an away game with an elaborate Aladdin themed show

that same band played megalovania as a stand tune and when I say my band dropped all conversation and bopped to that shit I mean it

also the sunset that night looked like the teletubbie sunrise

when i informed my now boyfriend and my section leader of this they both looked at me like “why the fuck did you just ruin that beautiful sunset”

it is what it is

one time we had a flute hangout after school and before a Friday night away football game 

except make it like the flute section featuring the alto sax section leader and my now boyfriend (who if you don’t remember is a percussionist)

oh and also briefly featuring one of our drum majors from last year and a trombonist 

anyway we ate little caesars pizza at a playground in a neighborhood near the school

we also played on said playground

in the process putting my kermit plushie, who will most likely be a reoccurring character in this series, in the baby swing and pushing him

we then made friendship bracelets but my now boyfriend didn’t know how 

so i did what anyone who knows how to make friendship bracelets and who’s crushing on someone who doesn’t know how to make friendship bracelets would do

i taught him how to make friendship bracelets

we also sat on the band bus together to and from that nights away game where I continued to help him make a friendship bracelet and then we looked at memes on the way back

some of them were funny, some of them weren’t

i laughed at all of them 

why?

because i was and am…

a fucking simp

we hosted a competition the same day that we marched a two mile parade so basically everyone went home and crashed that night

Me, my friend, and my now boyfriend spent like over fifteen minutes trying to find this one band just so we could hand them a single candygram to give to some kid

that kid better have appreciated that candygram

My two friends and I also received a joint airgram from our moms so we all prompted to split the tiny piece of card stock into three and we each have a piece

It’s almost like a friendship bracelet

but one hundred times easier to loose

moving onto big boy competition territory 

aka the Atlantic Coastal Championships 

or at least i think that’s what ACC stands for 

We were the first people to perform that day so we had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to get to the competition in time

Like legit imagine a bunch of tired band kids on a school bus at 6am

It was actually kind of nice and very quiet

My now boyfriend and I watched Coraline on my chromebook on the way there

We also watched Coco on the way back but we aren’t there yet

I brought my Kermit plushie, as I should’ve, but he did not escape unscathed 

My now boyfriend accidentally dropped him in his spilled chocolate milkshake which had made a fairly accurate rendition of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river on the stands

He was more upset about it then I was honestly and apologized a bunch while frantically trying to scrub the chocolate stain out of Kermit’s green plush flesh with his jeans

My now boyfriend also decided to spin Kermit up in the air like a helicopter and Kermit nearly flew over the back end of the bleachers since we were sat in the top row

Luckily he didn’t fly over but we quickly stopped throwing him around and Kermit promptly sat on the bleachers next to us for the rest of ACCs

Moving forward, I would highlight the game directly after I actually got together with my boyfriend but not a single fucking thing happened

Other then the fact that the concession stand ran out of hot chocolate 

But not before my boyfriend, our two friends, and I could get our hands on some

Flash forward, our football team, in an act of what was probably some form of witchcraft or just downright luck, qualified for playoffs and the first playoff game was a FOUR HOUR drive away

They really said “okay everybody lets travel to the other side of the state for a single football game”

And before you say “well it would take a lot longer to get to the other side of my state!”

pack it up west coast/midwest

I live on the east coast our states are  t i n y

we had to leave for this game in the middle of the school day right after lunch which meant i had to bring two separate book bags to school that day 

one bag for band and one bag for school

regardless we drove on the bus through mountains and trees for four hours before stopping off to have dinner at some rando restaurant

and no offense to old white people but like it must have been senior night or some shit because when I tell you the only people in that restaurant were like 70 to 80 band kids and a bunch of old white people I am not joking

It was terrifying

And I mean like I’m not inherently scared of old white people  

But what I am is non-binary growing up in a conservative area of a conservative state

And I was also holding the hand of my wonderful boyfriend who happens to be a person of color

I was scared I was about to be hate crimed 

Or he was about to get hate crimed

Luckily I think the fact that we were part of a flock of like 80 other teenagers all wearing red shirts and sweatpants scared them off

Or maybe they didn’t even notice and my social anxiety just said “they’re looking at you, love ;)” when they probably weren’t

We also ran the ice cream machine at that place dry

Anyway this was like November and it was super fucking cold outside so the home schools band invited us inside the school building when we got there since it was still a bit before the game

I got to talk to some of the flutes and they were super chill

We also made this weird ass dance circle where we went back and forth doing steps that I forget but remind me of the cotton eyed joe for some reason

Maybe that’s what we were dancing?

I don’t remember I just know like the entire low brass section plus a select group of the upper woodwinds/percussion were all in on it

I also remember what I think was one of the flutes looking at me and my boyfriend who was hugging me from behind and being very physically affectionate, as he usually is, and mentioning something about wondering what instrument he played

If in some miraculous event you are reading this mystery flute girl, he’s a percussionist 

you’re welcome

Nothing really stands out about the game itself other then how fucking cold it was and the fact that our football team won…

by a single point

We then all enjoyed the four hour ride back to the school

Most people spent it sleeping as it was like ten pm

Yeah you do the math we left at like 10pm

JK I’m not gonna make you do math we got back to the school at like 2am

Also notice how I said most people spent it sleeping

I probably would have been one of those people

However my lovely boyfriend, who again I do love, decided that a can of Mountain Dew at 10pm was a good idea

Baby, I love you, but why

10pm is too late for a Mountain Dew

We did end up sleeping for like an hour tho which was nice while it lasted

But then we had the glorious “Everyone we are about thirty minutes away from the school please call your parents to come pick you up” wake up call from our band director

And when I tell you that in that moment it felt like I was in between two different plains of existence

I am not kidding 

It is a very interesting vibe

Anyway I apologize for how painfully long that was but I literally could go into so much more detail. This is just grazing the surface of the experience that was my freshman marching season. However, I’m stopping myself here. If for some reason you want to read more of this and aren’t willing to wait for me to make the part three that will be directed toward this years socially distanced band season, you can read the first one of these which has a remarkably funnier collection of events and a lot less cussing. What can I say, I was an eighth grader in middle school band with an instructor who was very lenient on what we did when we weren’t playing. Until next time, this has been Elliot, signing off until i inevitably find something else interesting to share with the internet. 

Pluralistic: 21 Mar 2020 (Cool Tools, scientists predict cooperation, Don't Look for the Helpers, after the crisis, a people's bailout, judge vs unicorns, Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion)

Today's links

My appearance on Cool Tools: My favorite gadgets.

UK emergency science panel predicts mass altruism: Reality has a well-known collectivist bias.

Don't Look for the Helpers: The text version of my essay for the new Nightvale anxiety podcast.

After the crisis, a program for transformative change: Pandemic reveals the systems' failures, and what to do about them.

Pandemic stimulus, realpolitik edition: Stephanie Kelton and AOC on a people's bailout.

Beautiful judicial snark: "No, your unicorn trademark is not an emergency."

Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion: What if Marc Davis had sole control over the ride's design?

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

My appearance on Cool Tools (permalink)

This week, I appear on the Cool Tools podcast to discuss my favorite, most indispensible gadgets and services and why I love them.

https://kk.org/cooltools/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-author/

My top picks were my Crkt Snap-Lock knife – a one-handed-opening, lightweight, super versatile pocket knife that I carry everywhere.

https://www.crkt.com/snap-lock.html

I also chose my Chinese OEM underwater MP3 player. I swim every day for my chronic pain maintenance and this is how I make it bearable, getting through 1-2 audiobooks/month.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00GWV6GUO/cooltoolsshow-20

My third choice was Libro.fm, the DRM-free, indie-bookseller friendly way to listen to audiobooks. Basically the same catalog as Audible, at the same price, the only difference being that buying from them supports neighborhood booksellers, not Amazon.

It was a really fun! @Frauenfelder and @kevin2kelly are super smart about gadgets.

Here's the MP3:

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/7810/13374488/779800513-cool-tools-218-cory-doctorow.mp3

UK emergency science panel predicts mass altruism (permalink)

SAGE is the UK Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. This is their hour to shine.

They have just published a spectacular, plain-language set of technical reports on the pandemic.

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response

This is the most interesting: "on risk of public disorder."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/873736/08-spi-b-return-on-risk-of-public-disorder.pdf

The expert panel affirms the conclusions of Rebecca Solnit in her indispensable book "A Paradise Built in Hell," a closely researched history of disasters that finds that they are the moment in which people spring to the aid of their neighbors.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/05/a-paradise-built-in-hell

SAGE's expert panel on disasters: "large scale rioting is unlikely. It is rarely seen in these circumstances. Acts of altruism will predominate, and HMG could readily promote and guide these."

"Where public disorder occurs, it is usually triggered by perceptions about the Government's response, rather than the nature of the epidemic. A perception that Government response strategies are not effective in looking after the public may lead to an increase in tensions."

"Promote a sense of collectivism: All messaging should reinforce a sense of community, that 'we are all in this together.'"

For decades, Britain has been poisoned by Margaret Thatcher's sociopathic maxim, "There is no such thing as society."

It turns out that reality (and pandemics) has a well-known collectivist bias.

Don't Look for the Helpers (permalink)

I wrote a short essay about how I'm coping with The Current Situation for Our Plague Year, a new podcast from Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale, called "Don't Look for the Helpers".

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/17/pluralistic-17-mar-2020/#ourplagueyear

Today, PM Press published the essay in a new digital collection, "All We Have Is Each Other."

https://www.pmpress.org/blog/category/blog/all-we-have-is-each-other/

"Assuming things will break down does not make you a dystopian. Engineers who design systems on the assumption that nothing could go wrong aren't utopians, they're idiots who kill people. 'Nothing could go wrong' is why there weren't enough lifeboats on the fucking Titanic."

"Every disaster ends with mutual aid. By definition. That's the only way a disaster can end: with people pulling together. If there's one lesson to take from Mad Max, it's that pulling apart only deepens the crisis, and the it will not end until we pull together."

"I've been telling stories of humanity rising to crisis for decades. Now I'm telling them to myself. I hope you'll keep that story in mind today, as plutocrats are seeking to weaponize narratives to turn our crisis into a self-serving catastrophe."

https://www.pmpress.org/blog/2020/03/19/dont-look-for-the-helpers-by-cory-doctorow/

After the crisis, a program for transformative change (permalink)

The Current Situation has revealed deep cracks in our system: replacing public transit with gig economy drivers who don't get health care or sick leave; the gig economy itself; the lethal inadequacy of private-sector broadband and private-sector health-care, and beyond.

The fact that we can simply abolish data-caps (without networks falling over) and the liquid ban (without planes blowing up) reveals that these supposed existential threats were, in fact, arbitrary, authoritarian, rent-seeking bullshit.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#security-theater

The people who've spent 40 years convincing us that we're just not free-marketing hard enough continue to insist that all of these problems are merely the result of not having fully dismantled the state (so much for "state capacity libertarianism"):

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-20/coronavirus-killed-the-progressive-left

They're licking their chops for a 2008-style reboot: eviscerating public services, immiserating workers, fattening plutes and dissolving regulatory safeguards.

It's a playbook developed by Milton Friedman: the scheme to have "ideas lying around" when crisis strikes.

But as Naomi Klein reminds us, the Shock Doctrine cuts both ways. The manifest failures of plutocracy in the Great Depression got us the New Deal and the "30 Glorious Years" of shared prosperity and growth.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/17/pluralistic-17-mar-2020/#disaster-socialism

We haven't been idle since 2008. We have "ideas lying around" too. Ideas for a just and resilient society that reorients human life around sustainable and just practices. Motherboard's editorial staff gives us a manifesto for that society, so that this crisis doesn't go to waste:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxekvw/the-world-after-coronavirus-healthcare-labor-climate-internet

Free and universal healthcare ("healthcare is a basic human right" -B. Sanders)

Abolish ICE and prisons ("ICE is now a public health hazard")

Protect and empower labor ("Without these protections, everyone's safety and health is put at risk")

A healthier climate ("If the 2008-09 financial crash is any indicator, carbon could shoot right back up as soon as the crisis is over")

Fast, accessible broadband ("Community owned/operated broadband networks, long demonized and even prohibited by law are looking better than ever")

Smash the surveillance state ("This pandemic mustn't be used to infringe on the civil liberties and privacy of millions")

Billionaire wealth ("They're sending people to work while jetting off to luxurious doomsday bunkers, getting Covid-19 tests while normal people can't, and also singing 'Imagine' from bucolic getaways.")

Public transit that works ("Congress is poised to prioritize bailing out airlines and the cruise industry before it takes a look at public transit")

The right to repair ("Right-to-repair has become a matter of life and death.")

Science for the people ("We were caught flat-footed by a fixation on 'innovation' and lack of public options")

The future will not be like the past. Whether it is worse or better is our choice to make. It is in our (well-scrubbed) hands.

(Image: Jolove55, CC BY)

Pandemic stimulus, realpolitik edition (permalink)

I've been thinking a lot about what a covid stimulus package could and should look like, and what the possible failure modes and transformative changes could be. Obviously, there's real risk of inflation if handled wrong, because production has halted, so more money could end up chasing fewer goods. That gets ugly quick.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#covid-stimulus

Then there's the risk that we just infuse trillions of no-strings-attached dollars into the finance sector, who use it to make our society even more brittle and unstable by hollowing out reeling companies and grinding down brutalized workers.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#peoples-bailout

Writing about this stuff in public makes a lot of Twitter people with "investor" in their bios very, very angry. They want giant bailouts for the companies they own stocks in, not transformative change. They use the neolib tactic of throwing out a lot of jargon to instil a sense of your technical illiteracy. Complexity is a con-artist's go-to tactic, after all – it's why proposition bets are so complicated, so you can't do the odds in your head (see also: craps tables).

But not every economist believes that sociopathy is pareto optimal. Leading lights like Stephanie Kelton, the mother of Modern Monetary Theory, who can go toe-to-toe with oligarch-apologists from the Chicago School, explaining how public debt really works.

Kelton and AOC appeared on this week's Deconstructed podcast with Mehdi Hasan to discuss the true scale of the bailout that will be needed (far more than $1T) to get the economy working again. That number can come down (by lowering working peoples' outgoings through rent/mortgage/student loan holidays, etc). But the lesson of 2008 is that to be credible, stimulus must be transparent and aimed at the public good, not the donor-class.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/20/deconstructed-podcast-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-coronavirus-economy/

https://dcs.megaphone.fm/FLM7803427023.mp3

Otherwise, Congress risks having its hands tied: it might inject an inadequate and corrupt stimulus that benefits its cronies, then be unable to follow that on with a people's bailout that would help us all.

AOC: "Look at this kind of trash pile of legislation the Republicans have just introduced. I've never seen such a thing in my life of, we're going to give the neediest people less. And we're going to give people who are you know, need help but don't need as much help more."

Kelton: "What people mean when they say, you know, oh, Senator Sanders, you want Medicare for All or you want to make public colleges and universities tuition free, you want to cancel student debt, how are you going to pay for it? Where is the money going to come from? What that means in beltway speak is how are you going to offset all of that spending with new revenue from somewhere else, or by spending less in defense or some other category, the budget?"

"When you do a piece of legislation that's 'paid for,' it means you're putting the 50 billion in and it goes to some parts of the economy, and you're taking 50 billion out of some other parts of the economy so that you're not deficit spending."

"We've been so badly educated to respond to deficits as something that's fiscally irresponsible, reckless. It isn't. The government is committing to dropping dollars into the economy without ripping them right back out again. It's exactly what we want them to do right now."

Kelton's work on Modern Monetary Theory is transformative. Her lectures present both a powerful descriptive account of how money works in the economy and a prescriptive account of how we can use that knowledge to make a better, more prosperous world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9nP-BKa3M

She has a new book about this coming in June, The Deficit Myth. This would be a good time to pre-order it. These are scary times for writers with books about to come out (signed, I have three new books out in 2020).

https://stephaniekelton.com/book/

Beautiful judicial snark (permalink)

As Ken "Popehat" White is fond of reminding us, no one snarks quite like a federal judge. And despite being a Trump appointee, Steven C Seeger manages to rip off a couple zingers in this ruling.

http://loweringthebar.net/2020/03/unicorn-case-not-an-emergency.htm

At issue: Art Ask Agency is upset that someone is counterfeiting their unicorn-logo merch, such as this unicorn-scented candle:

https://artaskagency.com/our-licenses/anne-stokes/unicorn-candle/

But Illinois is in covid lockdown, so its case against a bunch of John Doe (alleged) counterfeiters is on hold. Their lawyer has sent a string of motions to the court asking for an emergency hearing so they can proceed, despite the fact that the court clerks are operating on reduced staff and only dealing with matters of the utmost urgency.

The judge is Not Impressed: "At worst, Defendant might sell a few more counterfeit products in the meantime. But Plaintiff makes no showing about anticipated loss of sales. One wonders if fake fantasy products are experiencing brisk sales at the moment."

The judge takes notice of the time a telephonic hearing would consume, "especially given the girth of the Plaintiff's filings."

"Plaintiff argues that it will suffer an 'irreparable injury' if this court does not put a stop to the infringing unicorns and knock-off elves."

"The world is facing a real emergency. Plaintiff is not."

(Image: Karen Neoh, CC BY)

Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion (permalink)

Along with Passport to Dreams Old and New, the Long Forgotten Blog is the best source of information on the history, design, and evolution of Disney theme-parks.

https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/

But Long Forgotten focuses on a single ride, the glorious, brilliant Haunted Mansion.

The history of the Haunted Mansion was completely upended in late 2019, when Christopher Merritt published his "Marc Davis in His Own Words," a two-volume compendium of journals and interviews with the legendary Imagineer, who was Merritt's mentor.

https://books.disney.com/book/marc-davis-in-his-own-words/

This is probably the best book of Disney/theme-park history ever published, and that's no surprise, as Merritt has already written the definitive history of Knott's Berry Farm:

https://www.angelcitypress.com/collections/authors-christopher-merritt

And Pacific Ocean Park:

https://www.yesterland.com/pacificoceanpark.html

Merritt is an Imagineer, an artist, and a historian, who has direct, lifelong connections with the original Imagineering team. He has unparalleled access, inside knowledge and perspective. So yeah, that is a fucking great book.

Marc Davis was the best character designer in the original Imagineer cohort: he created the Country Bears, the Pirates, and the Haunted Mansion ghosts. He was a spectacular visual gag master, too. And he was one of the (many) legendary Imagineers who had a hand in designing the Haunted Mansion. That ride had so many different iterations, drafts, plans and schemes, and the final product is so wonderful in part because of their remnants.

But Davis actually designed a full-on Haunted Mansion attraction, from start to finish, and those plans are kicking around. Based on those, Long Forgotten has created a narrative account of what it would be like to tour "Marc Davis's Haunted Mansion."

https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2020/03/marc-daviss-haunted-mansion.htm

It's…interesting. Davis had some really fun ideas like meeting up with a talking bust (or raven).

And there are great gags (Davis designed the "three-part" stretching portraits, after all).

I mean. this would have been so freaking boss.

But the real meat is something called "The Most Dangerous Ghost":

"The final picture is perhaps behind black drapes which raise as the ghost host calls out attention to it. As the drapes part we see a painting that has everything in it except a figure. There is perhaps a vague image where the figure should be. The ghost host reacts in a frightened manner. He explains that this is terrible because this is the most dangerous ghost in the mansion. When he climbs out of his picture he mingles with the guests until he has turned one of them into a ghost. He describes the ghost's appearance and its omnipotent powers. He suggests again that everyone should stay in a tight group; this evil ghost loves to pick off stragglers. He suggests that the group be wary of sliding panels, gusts of cold air and etc."

Long Forgotten: "The MDG character undercuts the intellectually sloppy notion that all Davis cared about was making the HM funny."

LF goes on to make a good case that Davis wanted to incorporate many of Rolly Crump's gorgeous "Museum of the Weird" designs into his Mansion.

Davis's seance room seems to flirt with MDG some more: "The presence of the villain ghost makes itself felt and these older retired ghosts are frightened. Whatever we have used to indicate the nearness of the villain ghost would be repeated here."

Davis once planned for a Mansion filled with "working class ghosts" (carpenters, soldiers, boxers, etc). The only ones that survived were the coachmen in the graveyard sequence.

And his bride sequence was very explicit about wedding-night murders, culminating with MDG manifesting amid the guests: "He starts a wild mocking laugh. It clouds up outside. The curtains blow inward. It starts to rain along with thunder and lightning. "Outside we see a figure take form and it moves into the room. The rain comes into the room with the figure and a pool of water forms around its feet."

This is gorgeously scary, but as Long Forgotten points out, it has little re-play value (similar to Tomororwland's Alien Encounter): "The gag about the Ghost Host revealing himself as the Most Dangerous Ghost has the obvious disadvantage that it can surprise you only once. Pretty soon everyone knows the 'secret,' and as its usefulness as a genuine shock or scare tactic fades its status as pure camp inevitably increases."

That all said, "We learn what we should already know but sometimes forget: Marc Davis was never an imperious, one-man show. He was a team player. He interacted creatively with the work already done by previous Imagineers, displaying in this outline nothing but respect for what was good in what they had done."

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Disney busts amateur Disneyland tour guide https://web.archive.org/web/20050323133504/http://jimhillmedia.com/mb/articles/showarticle.php?ID=1356

#10yrsago James Randi is gay http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/914-how-to-say-it.html

#5yrsago Windows 10 announcement: certified hardware can lock out competing OSes https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/windows-10-to-make-the-secure-boot-alt-os-lock-out-a-reality/

#1yrago Two arrested for hiding cameras in motel rooms and charging for access to livestreams https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/asia/south-korea-hotel-spy-cam-intl/index.html

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Ok børge (https://twitter.com/forteller), Beyond the Beyond (http://www.wired.com/category/beyond_the_beyond/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/16/the-masque-of-the-red-death-and-punch-brothers-punch/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

Nancy Drew #33 Midnight in Salem Game Review

So I gave in and paid the damn $30 to play the dribble that HER's pawning off as their latest game. While there has been major controversy within the fandom over the latest Nancy Drew Game and HerInteractive in general, I'm going to stick to just the game here. My thoughts and opinions on how HER managed the fandom after Penny Miliken came onto the scene have been made clear on my sh!tposts on my blog lol. So we're talking just the game here, nothing pre-start menu - that includes real world HerInteractive drama, none of that. So let's begin...

The Start Menu - Tbh I hated the start menu. It was like a FNAF game's opening menu, clearly made in Unity and the grass textures were nightmarish. If this were my first Nancy Drew game and this was the first sight I saw upon booting the game up, I would never buy another one again.

Voice Acting - Now before ya'll go off on "That's just your nostalgia talking, give it a chance" I will have you know that I tried, I really really tried to like the new voice actress for Nancy but ugh I can't stand it. She sounds like someone pretending to be Olivia Benson off Law & Order: SVU. Like I get they wanted Nancy to sound more like a modern teenager and less "Barbie voice" like Lani's voice would stray towards but letting go of Lani was their biggest mistake. If they had kept Lani as Nancy's voice - especially for such a drastically different game setup - would have helped keep fans fixed within the Nancy Drew world that we've been following for years. Everyone else was great, I especially liked Mei and Lauren's voices and the emotions expressed within them. Also Tourist Girl outside of the Town Hall needs to be brought back in the next game and have her lines recorded on actual recording equipment because what you did HerInteractive was hysterically pathetic and unfair. I don't know if that was a place holder that got overlooked or what but for a $30 game released by a company with so many quality games under it's belt - I expect better.

Storyline - Was pretty good. Fire, robberies, political unrest, sabotage, fraud, hidden wills, all things we've seen before a dozen times but they never get old. I think it's safe to say that the storyline itself is actually what kept me playing, however about half way through I did know it was one of two suspects who was the villian and the very next reveal ensured me which one it was. Still though good story.

Script - Whoever was in charge of the character conversations, for the love of all that is holy please water the interactions down! I felt like 99% of the game was never ending conversations about crap that wasn't useful to the plot. Like filler and fluff is great but conversations that drag on and on and on aren't fun. Have a character say a line or two, then it's Nancy's turn - all this monologuing has me flying through conversations just so I can move onto the next thing. Also some of the way the lines are written make it hard for the actors to read and sound authentic. Like "I can not." (versus "I can't.") levels of unauthentic lines.

Characters - Loved the different characters, would have appreciated more that had models you could interact with.

Puzzles - Needed way more puzzles. Like WAY more. It felt like there was less than 10 puzzles in the game and the majority were stupid easy, the only 'difficult' ones were easy once you understood what they wanted you to do which for some reason wasn't made clear at the start of the puzzle.

Mini Games - Loved making Johnny Cakes and mixing herbs.

Graphics - Horrific. I played on the highest settings of graphics on my HD computer, I had zero issues with it rendering or playing through as intended and smoothly - the graphics were still shit. I've seen better graphics in Barbie's Horse Adventures or The Sims 3. If you're entire argument of shifting onto Unity was for better graphics, HerInteractive, then you need to deliver and you failed miserably at that.

Navigation - I actually had zero issue with the 'swoosh' way we moved around. At times it felt a little restrictive (like in Town Square getting around the stage) but it was fine. I just actually didn't care for the camera tilt feature, it made things ten times more complicated trying to figure out what nooks and crannies they wanted you to notice and which they didn't. I'd happily go back to the old navigation and old engines but I'm fine with the new one so long as they work on making it better.

Cursor - Hated the new cursor, bring back the magnifying glass plz.

Location - I felt that the location of Salem, MA. wasn't utilized to it's fullest potential and that the layout of the town square and the maps of the city were surprisingly unsimilar to IRL Salem. I liked the aesthetic of Lauren's Shop, The Cemetary, The Hathorne House, and Olivia's Store but all of those locations fell victim to the game's graphics, still though props to the designer of those locations in the game.

Austrian Castle - This was jarring. To have a game so drenched in it's location of Salem then it starts off in Austria, it was weird. I get it that they were like "It's connected to the Salem Witch Trials cuz of da Judge dude" but it was super unnecessary and felt like a strange sub-plot location to a game set in Salem, MA. 

Music - I liked the music, felt a little Harry Potter-ish at times and the 'indie rock' music they had that had zero lyrics was annoying but overall it was fine.

Witchy Stuff - I myself am a real practitioning witch, I am an ecclectic pagan wiccan and I know I am in the minority here but some of the puzzles were obnoxiously easy if you know anything about witchcraft. Like even the most basic level of witchcraft. If you ever skimmed through a wicca book in highschool with your edgy friends than you already know more than this game expects you to know. What pissed me off is that it's never actually explained to you. Like they bring up Samhain and fling the word around so it's all spooky and mystifying but they never once have a book or person discuss real Witchcraft with you. Like yeah Olivia is a 'real witch' or whatever and Lauren teaches you about mixing some herbs but it's still not like "Here is The Wheel of the Year, These are Sabbats and Esbats, This is an Athame, This is what we use brooms for we call them Besoms, etc" like the fact that we didn't get a wise old lady who was a clear rip off of Laurie Cabot teaching us about real Witchcraft in a very censor friendly and warm way pisses me off to no end. MISSED OPPORTUNITY HER!!!

Nancy's Behavior - So many times in this game Nancy behaved out of character to me. Like I get it, ya wanted to be all like "let's challenge her belief in ghooooosts!!" but it wasn't done correctly. Nancy wouldn't react to seeing ghosts like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Call Backs/Easter Egg - I appreciated the Easter Egg in this game being a literal colorful egg but it was a lame spot to hide it considering it was in plain view. However I appreciated the call backs to previous games with KoKo Kringles, Robotic Cats, and the Dear Sweet Charlotte jack-o-lantern.

Ghosts and Jumpscares - 10/10 best aspect of the game by far. The witch ghost over the bed actually got me really good and the ghosts in the underground tunnels were the best graphics of the game.

Pumpkins - Another charming part of the game that I actually enjoyed more than I anticipated. It was really cute and a fun stupid little thing to work on through out the game to find all the candles and put a pumpkin on each one.

Hardy Boys - PLEASE BRING THEM BACK FOR MORE GAMES AND NEVER STOP THE FRANCY SHIPPING. Also I could be tempted for Joe/Deirdre shipping js.

Overall - I'd rate the game a 4/10 and that's being nice. I liked it more than RAN but that’s really not saying much. It doesn’t come close to classic Nancy Drew Games.

Final Thoughts - I can't see any person who isn't a die hard Nancy Drew fan playing this and being like "Yeah I'll buy more of HerInteractive's future games!" like no. But I do see potential. I can see this as a beautiful beginning on a new platform making more immersive games. Or you know this could be the last game we get from HER and they close and go bankrupt and get flushed away and then the Miss Clue crew buys the rights for Nancy Drew and they make new Nancy Drew Games on the old platform with the old team....whichever works just fine for me :)

Healing in a Graveyard

Fandom: Critical Role

For Fjorclay Week 2020′s Modern AU Prompt - a day early because I wrote something very short for today’s actual prompt and got super excited about this one. More chapters to follow.

Read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828932/chapters/57258880

Chapter One: Just For A Few Days

Fjord had never expected to agree when Beau and Jester first dragged him to see the place. The Blooming Grove.

“It’s a big house near campus,” Jester told him. “They’re very friendly to students, and the prices are very reasonable. Molly said there were lots of empty rooms they want to rent out.”

“Yeah, but it’s in a graveyard,” Fjord reminded her. She ignored him.

"We'll all have rooms near each other and share meals and hang out.”

"If our rooms are next to each other, we can learn morse code and tap messages!" Beau exclaimed, and that one got to him. So he went along to take a look at the place. Yasha and Molly were already living there, and it was Molly that showed them around in the absent landlord’s stead.

Fjord said no at first. He was with Avantika and her crew. He'd gotten in with Avantika early on, when it all first became overwhelming. Classes and a part time job, topped with the social pressures of a smaller school, it was all too much. Avantika had found him then, drawn him in and all but fed him to that…

If he was honest he'd just call it a cult. Like Jester's Traveler but instead of lighthearted mischief it was promising your eternal devotion and doing some mildly illegal shit. They found him at his lowest and made him feel wanted, welcome. Like he was family.

An entire year and some had gone by. And Fjord was getting thinner, more tired, more drawn out every day.

Beau burst into his room one day after class. He was living in a house with the rest of Avantika’s group, The Champions, in a room he shared with three other people. It was a cramped house, and it ate up all the money he made at his part-time job. But that was the price you paid to be family. A Champion.

No one else was home right now, off under Avantika’s guidance to do something in their snake god’s honor. Fjord still felt shivers every time they said its name. 

A rap on his window jolted him upright, books strewn around him on the bed. He went to the window to find Beau crouched outside it, perched on a part of the roof that met the house under his window.

He unlocked the window and flung it open. “Beau! What are you--”

She slid into the room past him. “Intervention!”

“Inter--”

“The semester is nearly over,” she said, starting to wander around the room, piling up his books and school supplies. “There’s only a few weeks left, tons of tests and shit. You said yourself that these...freaks or whatever...are distracting you, and you’re this close to losing your scholarship.”

“Yeah, bu--”

“They take all your money, force you to work with them, act super controlling all the time, and now you can’t even study.”

“They let me miss out today to stud--”

Beau found his duffel bag and began shoving books into it. “You’re staying with me for a few days. Just a few days! Swear. You need to get out of this creepy house--”

“And into the graveyard?’

She gave him a pointed look. “Isn’t it saying something that the graveyard isn’t half as creepy?”

He rolled his eyes, and she went on, “You’re getting a break, dude. You need it. Everyone agrees. We’re intervening and forcing it.”

“Beau--”

“Just a few days,” she insisted, a little softer. “Hang out with your friends, focus on school, then you’ll be back in this shithole selling your soul to whatever like you always dreamed.”

She shoved the open bag, stuffed with books, into his arms like it weighed nothing. He nearly buckled at the sudden weight. “Pack up your laptop and some clothes and shit.”

Fjord tried to argue further, but she was right. He was exhausted. And loud as their friend group was, they knew how to respect someone trying to keep a scholarship. They wouldn’t follow him to the library to drag him to a ‘mandatory meeting’ no one told him about, or burst into class in the middle of a test because he had a ‘personal emergency’ that was just another meeting. Or remind him at least twice a week that he could always drop out and just work full time with them.

With a deep, tired sigh, Fjord relented.

~~~~

It had been raining, a hot summer rain. Sticky and gross.

"C’mon!" Beau ordered, literally dragging him by the arm through the graveyard with her insane strength. "Just stay for, like, three days. Get your head on right."

"There's no way your landlord will let me stay."

"You haven't met the guy," she said with a strange expression. Like bewilderment met respect. It was always the look his friends who lived there wore when talking about their landlord and neighbor. "His family has owned this place since like forever. He acts like a major stoner though I rarely see him smoke, and all he wants is tenants that keep the place lively but not destroyed. And to feed us sometimes. But it's dope vegan shit."

"Sounds like the weirdest hippie ever."

"Oh, he is," she assured him.

And Fjord gave in and followed her up the last steps up to the building they called the “Xhorhas”. 

The building itself was old, but sturdy. A stone and brick structure that had stood longer than some of the Grove’s vibrant trees. It was almost mid-Spring then, and the garden-graveyard was bursting with color and flowers and bugs.

“Don’t be a baby,” Beau snapped when he jolted away from a fat little bumblebee. 

“There aren’t bugs in the house, are there?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes, which he hoped to mean ‘of course not’.

The front porch was a wooden structure, painted white then further painted in mis-matched designs and colors. Various plants covered the railings and hung from the room, and there was a little table, a white wooden bench - also painted - and a single, oversized rocking chair. 

“We painted those,” Beau said. “Caduceus had to tear down the old porch and rebuild, and Jester convinced him to let us paint all over it. Check this out!”

She led him to the bench and dragged him down to sit, then to look under it upside-down. There, painted neatly and lovingly under the bench’s seat, was a series of stylized dicks.

Fjord sighed as Beau cackled. Normally it might get a chuckle out of him, but he was too tired to be amused these days.

“Oh, c’mon you old man,” she said, leading him to the actual door. She pulled it open without a key.

“Is it always unlocked? Won’t people try to break in?”

“To a graveyard house?” she asked. “Honestly I’d like to see them try. You haven’t even seen--”

“Ah, Beauregard?” called a low, gentle voice from inside. “Welcome home.”

“Hey Caduceus,” she replied, wiping her feet on the entry mat - covered in a floral design - before stepping further inside. Fjord mimicked her movements.

The front entryway was probably larger than it seemed, with tall ceilings and a rectangular frame. But it was over-crowded with things. Plants everywhere, hanging and on window sills and standing at the edges of the room. There were plush rugs over stone flooring in muted, worn colors more likely due to age and use than style. There was, to the right, a door leading into another room with a curtain hanging down and a collection of plush, mis-matched chairs around a table. Slightly off center to the left were the stairs up to the actual rooms. To the left, a little shelf crammed full of books, endless plants, and was that a shrine?

“Oh, you brought a guest?”

Beau had stepped towards the left, where a tall figure was peering into hanging plants with a watering can dwarfed by his height.

“Yeah, Caduceus, this is Fjord. The friend we’ve mentioned. Fjord, this our landlord, Caduceus.”

Caduceus looked over and smiled, eyes a little droopy in that calm, might-be-a-stoner-but-might-also-just-look-that-way kinda way. He was a firbolg, a rare breed in this area these days, coated in a layer of gray fur, but with pink eyes, hair, and a neatly trimmed pink beard. He wore plain, loose clothing underneath a vibrantly teal, thin coat that stretched nearly to the floor, covered in pink branches and flowers and beetles. Through one ear looped a thick wooden spiral for an earring.

Caduceus made a face. “I don’t like that word, ‘landlord’. I prefer just being another neighbor. Hullo Mister Fjord.”

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you.” Fjord gave an awkward little nod towards the tall man.

“Right, well I wanted to ask if it’s cool if Fjord crashes here for a few days,” Beau said with no warning nor ceremony. Fjord twitched in discomfort. “Maybe a week.”

“I don’t want to impose,” Fjord insisted. “I do have a room--”

“Yeah, in a cultist house with your shitty whatever she is,” Beau snapped.

“Ah, Fjord,” Caduceus said, as if he was suddenly putting the pieces together. “It wouldn’t be any trouble at all.”

“I don’t have any money. I couldn’t pay.”

The firbolg smiled at him. “I didn’t ask for money. You’re a friend of everyone here, and they are my friends. Which, by extension, makes you a friend of mine as well. I wouldn’t turn away a friend who needs a little time away from things.”

Beau gave him a pointed look as if to say, “told you so!”

To Beau, Caduceus said, almost dreamily, “We still have that vacant room.”

“Molly’s old room,” Beau reminded Fjord. Molly, their wild and fabulous tiefling friend, had decided to transfer schools last semester. While it broke the heart of their friend group, he still visited, video chatted, and sent perfumed letters often.

“It’s not much, but there’s a bed and a dresser still. Good enough for a week or so.”

“I couldn’t accept such a generous offer,” Fjord told him. 

“Fjord!” Beau exclaimed. “Let people help you!”

“It’s an entire room, something everyone else is paying for!”

“For like a week, Fjord! And it’s not like people are breaking down the door to live here!”

Fjord glanced at Caduceus, but the man looked unaffected by the comment. Either he was completely vacant, or he was very much in touch with the reality of his home.

“If it’s so important to you,” Caduceus drawled. “I could use some help around the house and the Grove for a few days. I’ve got some projects that have piled up. We could consider that your rent for the week?”

Beau stared holes into Fjord, hands splayed and extended as if to say, “come on!”

“That’s very kind of you, Caduceus,” Fjord said. “I...I suppose it would be a nice break.”

“Finally!” Beau exclaimed. She leapt over to the stairs, thudding up them and shouting, “Jes! We got Fjord for a week!”

“A week!” came a shout from Jester’s familiar voice.

Fjord sighed. Caduceus looked up the stairs smiling. “Such a lively bunch.”

Turning back to Fjord he said, “Let me get you your key.”

~~

Caduceus had been right, the room wasn’t especially noteworthy. But it was clean, with a nice window that overlooked the Grove, including the largest tree there, and simple, sturdy furniture. 

He didn’t have much to his name with him. Avantika and The Champions had taken it poorly when he texted the group chat that he was staying with a friend for the week, but they hadn’t completely flipped out. Still, he wasn’t going to risk going back to that house until he was going back for good. When Beau had grabbed him, they’d focused on taking the things he needed for school so as not to draw attention, and only the bare minimum in anything else.

He had $20 to his name for food for the week, maybe longer. He had two day’s worth of clothes, so he’d be doing laundry every day. Maybe it’d be a good excuse to convince Caleb to let him clean his clothes as well. He somehow always got them covered in dirt and mystery stains. Chem majors.

Caduceus had left him with fresh sheets and linens, as well as a small potted plant. He rattled off instructions and odd musings, then promised it would survive almost anything as long as he watered it every few days and didn’t put it in direct sunlight.

Fjord sat on the edge of the bed, patchwork blankets neatly folded beside him, his duffle bag sitting by the door, and took a breath. There was a large mirror on top of the dresser that looked directly at him. He looked, well. He looked like shit.

His beard, never the full, lush thing he would have preferred, had grown in patchy and speckled with gray. That tiny sliver of gray he’d found at eighteen had expanded into a full-blown chunk at the front of his scalp. His hair was too long, disheveled at this length. His eyes looked sunken and almost bloodshot. He was frowning deeply, his default expression. He sat slumped and tired and worn. Worse than shit, he looked half-dead.

Maybe he could just ask Caduceus to dig him a hole.

~~

He shouldn’t have joked about that, because that was exactly what Caduceus asked him to do pre-dawn the next morning. Luckily, Caduceus was an early riser, which was the only time Fjord had reliably free before classes and work.

“Do I want to know what these holes are for?” Fjord asked gingerly, looking at the shovel handed to him.

“I would think it’s fairly obvious,” Caduceus said, a little perplexed and a little amused in one.

Fjord cleared his throat. “Right. Okay.”

Caduceus worked right alongside him, digging, then breaking from that to stay nearby. He cared for plants, cleaned gravestones, laid out flowers, and prepared these new gravesites. He worked in relative silence, occasionally humming some song or another seemingly without realizing. Sometimes Fjord heard him murmuring to the plants. He’d heard of people talking to plants, and, frankly, it would have been weirder if Caduceus didn’t.

Fjord finished his work as the sun rose, a little worn and sweaty, covered in dirt, but good. He hadn’t been exercising with Beau as much these past few months. Or the past year, really. He was just too damned tired these days. But it felt good to do something physical again.

“Ah, got that done much faster than I expected,” Caduceus said happily. He looked over the grave sites, then nodded in approval. “You did an excellent job. You’re stronger than you seem.”

“I spent a few years working on ships,” Fjord said. The reason he had started college later than most.

“On the ocean?”

“Yeah,” Fjord said.

“That sounds nice,” he said dreamily. “Never been to the ocean.”

“Really?” Fjord asked. “You, uh, you might like it. Not as many plants, at least not that you can easily see. But it’s beautiful. Calming.”

Caduceus leaned on his own shovel like a staff, closing his eyes for a moment as though he were picturing it. “Maybe I’ll go someday.”

They were quiet for a moment, seeing the sun cresting the earth, casting light over the graveyard. 

“Well, that’s enough for today, I think,” Caduceus said. “Let’s get cleaned up.”

Fjord followed him back to the house, bounding up the stairs to shower and change into his only other set of clothes. The biggest downside to the Xhorhas was that it only boasted two bathrooms to share between the residents, two and one more on the third floor for Caduceus. At least each shower was beyond its own door from the sink and toilet, which was something. 

Not many were up at this hour, so he had an entire bathroom to himself. He showered briskly, then took a moment to shave. His hair would have to wait. Maybe Yasha would cut it? She cut Caleb’s hair that one time. Or was that his beard? He couldn’t remember anything besides it involving a sword.

He passed Nott on the way downstairs, who griped at him for ‘taking forever’. Nott was the only non-student in the house, besides maybe Caduceus. She was staying there to save money while she waited for her husband and her son to be able to move to the area, where they hoped to get a proper house for themselves. And maybe Caleb.

When he reached downstairs, noting he still had time for breakfast and maybe some studying before class, he found an odd sight. Carefully arranged in the limited space of the front entry were two yoga mats, on which Caduceus and Beau were finishing up their yoga session.

“Oh, hey Fjord,” Beau said from a twisted stance that was certainly not human. 

Caduceus released a sigh as he unfurled himself. “Mister Fjord, we’re about to do some meditating if you’d like to join us.”

Beau’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah. Caduceus does the best guided meditations, man.”

“I’m not really one for meditation,” he said.

Before Beau could complain, Caduceus nodded, closing his eyes calmly and saying, “That’s quite alright. If you ever need to calm your mind or find some peace, you’re welcome to join us.”

“Uh, thank you,” Fjord said. 

He slung his bag over his shoulder and quickly left the house and The Blooming Grove. If he swung by the cafe he worked at, he might be able to get some day-old pastries or breakfast sandwiches for a discount. Of course, only The Champions worked there, so he’d be at a risk. 

He was scheduled for this afternoon, and he had to work. But he wasn’t ready to face any of them.

Might be better just to skip breakfast.

Witness : 20

Compromised

moodboard created by @chuuulip

Character(s): dark!Bucky, later dark!Steve, too

Masterlist

Warnings: this is a dark!fic, it contains non/dubious-consent elements. Some violence as well at the beginning. It goes without (and with) that this is 18+. In this chapter there’s not much but a set-up for the next. We'll go over warnings then.

Summary: The reader is invited out for some after-work drinks.

Notes: Okay! Sorry about being a bit late today but as promised here is another part! Hopefully, everyone saw yesterday's and is all caught up, if not you can always go back and catch up! And wowee, we're already on part 20! Thank you all so much and please leave a comment if you read :) !

The rest of the week saw Bucky at your apartment nightly. You weren’t sure what was going on but you didn’t dare to ask. If you did as he wished, he was pleased, even close to amiable. You found that if you behaved, he did what he wanted and left you with a few hours to yourself. You treasured that alone time and it was worth the momentary distraction. When he was done and you were alone, you felt empty; a mixture of physical longing and feeling of exploitation. The satisfaction never lasted beyond the act itself; after you couldn’t help but deflate, stewing in resent for him and disappointment in yourself.

Friday used to be a day of celebration for you. Those times seemed a distant past. You would hang with Allie or go home and order take out and watch something on Netflix. Now, you were too enamoured in anticipation and dread to focus on that. What use was it when it could easily be interrupted? It was worse when you were ready for a quiet night in only for the your solace to be shattered. Even so, you stared at the clock and waited for your cue to leave. Another hour...it felt like forever. What exactly were you so eager for? Based on the the last few days, you were to expect another visit from Bucky. You flipped back to Pepper’s emails which included forwards of every email sent to Tony. You guessed he had left so much on her plate that she needed to spread some onto yours. What were temps for but grunt work? That’s all you ever did. Down on your knees for Bucky every night, as good as bending over backwards for Pepper. You really were taking it in both ends. Your mind strayed again and you found yourself fixated on daydreams of a metal arm flexing around you, familiar grunts in your ear, an almost comforting sensation flowing from your core. You snapped up and touched your forehead in shame. No...he could have your body, but your mind was still yours. That small part of you was still there; you weren’t truly his, you were merely biding your time, but for what?

“Y/N,” A voice drew your head up and you masked your dilemma with a smile. Steve approached, Bucky not far behind. Not good. “You alright?”

“Fine,” You lied, “I was just working. It’s a bit repetitive so I was resting my eyes.”

“I imagine it’s very exciting,” His hands were on your desk as he leaned on it, biceps peeking out from beneath the sleeves of his tee. He was dressed more casual than usual and you couldn’t help but notice the lines above the vee of his shirt. For once, you were the one distracted. “Me and Buck were just about to grab some drinks, you wanna join?”

You glanced behind him and Bucky nodded, a smirk plain enough. You suspected this wasn’t entirely Steve’s idea and that stoked your anxiety. What was he playing at? You scrunched your lips and looked to the monitor. “I’m here until 6 today,” You said, hoping it was enough of an excuse, “I really can’t just leave.”

“No worries, we’re just headed down the street to Luis’,” His eyes strayed to your chest, admiring the top of your cleavage just visible above the frill. “We’ll have a drink and you can join us for the second round.”

“I don’t--”

“Come on, Y/N,” Bucky stepped forward, just opposite Steve and you felt like a cornered deer. “It’s Friday. You should get out, have some fun. I mean, me and Steve, we get our kicks out in the field but you just sit here all day and...type. One drink won’t hurt, will it?”

You looked between the super soldiers. This was not an invitation, this was an order. Steve was so hopeful, his eagerness underlined with his more sinister intentions. And Bucky was determined. You couldn’t say no unless you were prepared for the consequences and you suspected those were worse than whatever it is he had planned. Besides, he never asked, he told. “Sure, why not?” You tried to sound normal but you couldn’t help the jagged response. “I’ll just finish up here and head down when I’m done.”

Bucky winked and turned to Steve who grinned back at him. There was collusion in their eyes but it could very well just be the recognition of two adversaries. “Alright, see ya soon,” Bucky chimed, “We’ll keep a tab open.”

You mumbled a goodbye and watched them approach the elevator, pulling on their jackets as they disappeared behind the metal doors. You sighed and brushed back your hair as you leaned against your chair. What the fuck? You were prepared for Bucky but not both of them. Surely it was just another scheme to watch you squirm, you told yourself. You’d end up going home alone, if only to have Bucky follow, but Steve was just another pawn. Wasn’t he?

You did all you could to delay your departure for the day but you knew if you kept them waiting, Bucky would make you pay for it. That had to be the reason you were growing so anxious. It was fear, not excitement. Right? Right? Oh, fuck, you were going crazy. You left your jacket open as you walked the chill New York sidewalk, heels clicking as you hurried along. As you stopped before Luis’ shining red lights, your legs wobbled and you felt a peculiar pluck deep down. No, just one drink. Nothing more.

You stepped inside, wary of the other men along the bar who watched your entrance. This wasn’t exactly a joint you frequented. In fact you had avoided it for the shabbiness of its facade and the fact that you rarely saw any female denizens going in or out. It was a greasy corner in the heart of downtown with more than its share of regulars and unshaven drunks. This was like that tavern in London where that guy had shoved his hand up your skirt on that summer trip with Allie. Fond memories, indeed.

You spotted the two men in a booth near the back of the bar. You sidestepped a few reaching hands on your way to them and felt almost thankful when you came upon their table. “Hey,” You said quietly, looking around yourself to make sure no groping hands hovered behind you.

“Ah, just in time,” Steve stood and waved his hand to the curved bench around the table, “We saved you a spot.” You stared at the seat he offered, closed in between the two of them. Reluctantly you accepted it, sidling awkwardly around the table and to the space on the cushion. Steve sat and blocked you in, motioning to the waiter who sported a long grey ponytail and a greasy leather vest. “We’ll have a second round and whatever the lady wants.”

“Water is fine,” You smiled sheepishly.

“Whiskey for her,” Bucky corrected, “May as well unwind, Y/N.”

You resisted sending him a glare and just nodded, the waiter moving sluggishly to fulfill the order. You were starting to sweat already, trapped in the body heat of the men book-ending you in the booth. “Take off your jacket,” Steve said, “Stay a while, won’t you?”

You gave a weak laugh and peeled of your coat, Bucky swiftly moving it to lay atop his and Steve’s on the end of the bench on his other side. “So how was work?” Bucky prodded, leaning on his arm as if genuinely interested.

“It was work, I guess,” You could feel tendrils along your neck, the blush burning your flesh. “You two having fun without me?”

“No, but I’m sure we’ll have more now that you’re here,” Bucky smirked and your eyes nearly popped out of your head. You felt like the entire bar could hear the conversation and it was as clear to them as it was to you that this wasn’t just an after work get together.  Your whiskey arrived and you reached for it in your desperation. You hadn’t wanted to compromise your senses but the tension was overwhelming and your nerves were wild. You had to keep yourself from draining the glass entirely, lowering your glass and exhaling shakily. Steve and Bucky were watching you closely.

“Well, you must be thirsty,” Steve mused, stretching his arm across the bench behind you as he sipped from his beer.

“Working for Stark will do that to ya,” Bucky kidded, “How are you liking it?”

“It’s fine,” You shrugged, resisting the urge to finish your whiskey. This all seemed to casual. A farce.

“Come on, it must be exciting. All the people you get to meet, aside from the heroes like us you see almost every day,” Steve teased, “I mean, me and Buck are nice enough, but the others, they’re a bit--”

“Pompous,” Bucky added smugly.

Boy, they were really quite the team. Two murderers who fancied themselves crusaders. Sure, they used to fight the bad guys but now they were the bad guys. Ever since the Sekovia Accords had been overturned and Stark Industries had become entirely privatised. For every genuine criminal they were sent after, they killed a dozen civilians on behalf of the same brand of thugs. I guess money made morality an afterthought.

“Yeah,” You forced out and gulped back the rest of your drink. “It’s definitely the most famous company I’ve worked for but there aren’t many bigger than Stark himself.” Bucky squinted at you, catching the subtle jab. He wouldn’t forget that.

“Well, me and Steve were just talking about something that happened with Stark today.” Bucky began, “We were testing new armour, it’s good stuff; lightweight but it does the job well. Or at least we thought…”

You listened to Bucky and Steve as they told of the fiasco, soon trading war stories back and forth with little interjection from you. When the waiter returned, Bucky ordered you a double, then another upon his next check in. You were downing them out of nervousness, the burn of alcohol growing less as you tried to sink into the bench. You were giggling at Steve’s recount of Bucky getting his arm stuck in a wheel well when suddenly the attention turned to you. You suddenly remembered where you were and who you were with.

“Another?” Bucky asked as you found yourself sipping from an empty glass again.

“N-no,” Your words were almost slurred but you kept it together. “I think maybe I should have that water now.”

“Oh, Y/N, it’s fine to just kick back once in a while,” Steve’s arm was once more behind you, “We don’t mind.”

“Really, I like this side of you,” Bucky added, “Giggly and laid back. But I do wish you would speak up more.”

“How rude of us?” Steve announced with exaggeration, “We’ve been here talking all about ourselves. I mean, come on, we didn’t invite you hear just to sit and listen to two old men banter.”

“Surely not,” Bucky’s metal finger tapped on his glass. You stared at the half-finished beer and tilted your head. You couldn’t recall either of them ordering past their second round and yet your glass had been refilled on a loop. The suspicion quickly faded into the tipsy haze behind your eyes. “Actually, we were hoping to learn more about you.”

“Such a quiet little thing,” Steve’s voice was dusky as he leaned in, your head swiveling between them as they spoke. You were starting to get dizzy.

“I’ll start,” Bucky nearly sang, “Well, I mean there’s really only one question that I have.”

“Can I please get a water?” You asked, a hiccup rising in your throat.

“Here,” Steve pushed over his beer, “Have a sip of this.”

You hiccuped again and accepted, wanting to rid yourself of the bubbles more than anything. As you drank daintily from the pint, you realized both men were staring at you expectantly. “Anyways, what I was going to ask is…” He raised a brow, pausing dramatically before continuing, “Do you want to fuck Steve?”

You choked and the foam splashed in your face, causing you to slam the glass on the table. You were certain your drunken mind was betraying you, but the two men assured you otherwise. Their thighs were suddenly flush against yours, you felt as if you were crushed between them. Steve’s hand played with your hair and Bucky’s hand rested on your thigh. “Wh-what?” You tried to resist them but their touch felt so nice. “I…”

“Be a good girl and answer the question,” Bucky warned. You realized that this was a conspiracy. Maybe Steve didn’t know that Bucky had been fucking you for weeks but he certainly knew that he had some sort of hold over you. You suspected their conversations about you had gone well beyond the single kiss you had shared more than a week ago.

Your mouth opened and closed, you gulped and steadied your breath. You bit you lip before running your tongue across it as you steeled yourself. “Yes,” You whispered, trembling at the confession. Surprising even yourself.

“Hmm?” Bucky feigned deafness, “Sorry, I can’t hear you.”

“Yes,” You said more firmly, almost growling at him. Your drunkenness was not enough to mute your anger as the humiliation washed over you.

“Well that can be arranged,” Bucky smirked as Steve’s hand ran the length of your arm, “Right, Steve?”

You heard a dark chuckle in your ear and Steve’s lips graze your cheek, his chest pressed against you. “It can,” He confirmed, “What do you say we go back to mine for a night cap?”

You stared at Bucky, Steve’s hand slipping down and cupping the top of your ass. “I think she’d love that,” Bucky smiled, turned to grab your jacket and handed it to you. “Well,” He stood and Steve removed his hand as he mirrored his movements, “Shall we?” Bucky offered his hand, staring you down until you took it and stood, letting him guide you out from behind the booth. He let you go, walking behind you as you followed Steve, who dropped some bills on the counter along the way. The other patrons watched your exit and you were certain they knew everything. Hell, it must have been plain enough as you couldn’t wipe the dazed look from your face.

You stepped out on the street, Bucky came up beside you and wrapped his arm around you. He bent to whisper in your ear as Steve led the way, “Good girl,” He cooed, “You remember your rules.”

tags: @petit-funsize @alexakeyloveloki @ladyofmyst @kellyn1604

A Horror Movie ‘Hang-out’

Hello! I was in the mood to write fluff after 3x15 so this happened.

Summary:

Cyrus watched as the boy’s eyes scanned the board for a moment, before widening slightly. “Hey - they have a ‘limited time only’ discount for couples!” 

His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion at that, and he looked up at the sign before looking back over at TJ. “Okay...and?” 

~

Or the the one where Cyrus and TJ pretend to be a couple so they can get a discount on movie tickets. What could possibly go wrong?

Word count:  3786

~

(Keep reading for the fic, AO3 link in the reblog)

“Hey, underdog!” 

 Cyrus, who had been somewhat preoccupied with attempting to pry open in locker, spun around his surprise. 

 “TJ! How’s it going?” he asked, voice slightly higher than he would’ve liked. 

 He was going for nonchalance, but when Cyrus reached out to place a hand against his locker he missed completely and ended up stumbling to the side slightly. 

 Yikes.

 TJ just smiled though, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tomorrow?” 

 Cyrus’ face still felt warm as he leant back against the metal, taking a few long moments to consider the offer. TJ gave his arm a playful shove, smiling when the boy began to laugh.

 “No TJ, I definitely don’t wanna hang out with you.” 

 He gasped. “Fine then! I guess I’ll go.” 

 TJ made to walk away, but Cyrus pushed himself off of the locker and grabbed his arm, still smiling. 

 “No wait don’t go! I’m sorry!” 

 The boy glanced down at their arms, expression softening slightly. “How would you feel about seeing a movie with me?” 

 Cyrus reluctantly dropped his hand, forgetting for a brief moment how exactly to form words. When he looked up his face was ridiculously close to TJ’s, and that had him panicking and taking a step back. 

 “That sounds fun,” he managed, “what time?” 

 “Um...” TJ paused for a moment, face reddening slightly, “well there’s a new horror playing tomorrow at 7?” 

 “7 is good!” 

 “Cool,” TJ nodded, giving Cyrus a small smile. “I’ll text you the rest of the details this afternoon.” 

 He glanced over Cyrus’ shoulder at his locker, before letting out an amused huff. “Need help with that?” 

 “Psh, no...okay, maybe.” 

 Cyrus stepped aside, allowing TJ to move forward and reach for the top of the locker door, prying it open after a few small tugs. He watched with an embarrassed smile as the boy stepped back again, giving his shoulder a pat. 

 “See you, Cy.” 

 TJ was off after that, swallowed up by the crowds moving between classes. He let out a  love-sick sounding sigh, adjusting his shirt as turned back to his locker and grabbed his books. Not even the pouring rain outside could dampen his mood at that moment. 

 “You did it again,” came Buffy’s voice from behind him.

 Cyrus turned around again, an eyebrow raised in question. “Did what again?” 

 She gave the boy an exasperated look before adjusted her shirt, tugging at the fabric in an exaggerated fashion. Cyrus let out a huff and turned back to his locker.

 “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.

 Buffy began rustling around in her pockets for a moment, before pulling out a small piece of paper. She shoved it into Cyrus’ hands.

 “Here’s a flowchart, then.” 

 The boy looked over it for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief.

 Cyrus talks to TJ -> TJ does something ‘cute’ and/or walks away -> Cyrus nervously adjusts his shirt (because he’s in love) 

 He laughed slightly and turned back to the girl, handing her the paper. “I adjust my shirt all the time, not just around TJ. And I’m not in love with him!” 

 Buffy just nodded, pressing her lips together as she pocketed the paper again. She gave the boy a sympathetic pat on the back, unable to keep herself from smiling. “Okay, Cyrus.”

 He rolled his eyes. “How’s Marty going, again?”

 Buffy’s eyes widened for a split second. “Okay, well I have places to be now. Bye!” 

 Cyrus watched in amusement as the girl headed off in the opposite direction, before closing his locker and making his way towards Math. 

 ~

 “Cyruses first,” said TJ as he held the glass door open. 

 The boy couldn’t help but smile, walking through into the darkened cinema lobby. It was late evening and the sun was on the verge of setting, bringing shadows with it. As dusk approached, he and TJ had made their way to their local shopping mall. 

 The large lights above their heads were dimmed, and with each step towards the counter, the room seemed to grow darker. There was soft light emanating from the screen displaying the various movies that were playing, illuminating their face as they came to a halt. 

 “We’re early,” Cyrus pointed out.

 TJ shrugged and nodded. “No harm in getting tickets now though, I guess.” 

 Cyrus watched as the boy’s eyes scanned the board for a moment, before widening slightly. “Hey - they have a ‘limited time only’ discount for couples!” 

 His eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion at that, and he looked up at the sign before looking back over at TJ. “Okay...and?” 

 TJ looked nervous all of a sudden, the pink dusting his cheeks only barely visible in the dimly lit lobby. “Well...its ten dollars,” he continued, “that’s uh...pretty significant.” 

 Cyrus laughed uncertainly, not entirely sure where the boy was taking this. “May I remind you that we’re not a couple?” 

 TJ bit his lip, and Cyrus’ traitorous heart skipped a beat. He hesitated for a moment before speaking again, voice cracking slightly. 

 “What is it?” 

 They were already garnering a few looks from the people queuing up for tickets as they stood there, staring up at the board, but Cyrus couldn’t find it within himself to care at that moment. He glanced over at TJ again, eyebrows raised. 

 “The uh...the guy at the counter doesn’t know that.” 

 Cyrus’ eyes widened. He looked over at TJ in alarm. “Are you saying...?” 

 “We could pretend,” the boy rushed out nervously. “Or...or not! Either way is fine, but you know...10 dollars is dollars.”

 Cyrus contemplated the idea for a moment, still in slight disbelief that TJ would suggest such a thing. Everything within him was practically screaming at him that this was an awful idea, and that’d it’d only end up hurting him to have a taste of what he could never have. He supposed that was logical, but really, since when were things ever logical when it came to TJ? 

 He hesitated for a moment longer before giving a quick, nervous nod. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

 TJ took in a sharp breath. “Okay! Cool.” 

 They stood there for a moment, unsure of what exactly to do. A certain tension had appeared in the air around them, and Cyrus could feel his stomach tying itself into knots. 

 TJ turned to face him. “Can I um...Can I-“

 “You can do whatever you want,” Cyrus assured him. “Except kiss me. That’s off the table.”

 Yeah, because you’re afraid you’d like it too much, his brain supplied unhelpfully. 

 He brushed aside the thought and focused on breathing normally as TJ wrapped an arm around his shoulders and gently pulled him in. 

 “Okay, you’re gonna have to act like you’re super into me. Think you can do that?” 

 Cyrus laughed nervously. “Um...yeah. I can do that.” 

 They headed over to join the queue, marked out by small metal poles and velvet red ropes. There were only a few people in front of them, and none of them seemed to pay them much mind now. The entry to the theatres was to their left, and the entrance they’d come from was to their right, with windows displaying the setting sun. 

 “Brave of you to suggest a horror movie,” Cyrus teased. “Considering that last time you had your face buried in a pillow half the time.”

 TJ huffed. “Okay, half the time is an overstatement.” 

 “It really isn’t!” Cyrus laughed.

 “It really is!” 

 A wide smile was lighting TJ’s face up now, and Cyrus felt his heart skip a beat. His gaze travelled from the plain white he was wearing, to the (unfairly adorable) basketball necklace around his neck, to his green eyes, and the way they sparkled. For a moment, he began to doubt if this fake relationship thing was such a good idea after all. Not that it had been in the first place.

 “It’s okay, I’ll be there to protect you from the dolls,” Cyrus assured playfully, laughing slightly when TJ just rolled his eyes. 

 “You really think you’d win against a possessed demon doll?” 

 “Nope! For some strange reason, I think I’d survive longer than you though.” 

 TJ shrugged. “That’s probably true. My first instinct would be to hide under the covers.” 

 “Ah, yes - it’s a well-known fact that you’re invincible under the covers,” Cyrus said, nodding wisely. 

 TJ opened his mouth to respond, but they were called over at that moment by a tired-looking guy behind the front counter. Cyrus felt the boy’s grip on him tighten ever so slightly as they made their way over. 

 “Um, a couple for the Annabelle movie, please,” TJ told him. 

 The guy didn’t bat an eye at the request, although his gaze did briefly flicker from TJ to the arm he had wrapped around Cyrus. 

 “That’ll be fifteen dollars, thanks.”

 TJ grabbed his wallet from his pocket before Cyrus could, placing the cash down on the counter. 

 Once they’d successfully gotten their tickets, along with two raspberry slushies, they made their way over to a cushy-looking seat by the entrance to their cinema, waiting for the double doors to open. It was even darker in this section of the building, with the faint glow from the door numbers illuminating the people that walked past. TJ still had an arm thrown over his shoulders for safe measure, and Cyrus was still forgetting how to breathe every now and again.

 “You didn’t have to pay,” Cyrus murmured after a moment.

 TJ smiled. “Hey, it’s what boyfriends do, right?” 

 Cyrus had to look away to hide the blush on his face. This whole fake relationship thing was already getting to him and it had only been about ten minutes. A glance down at his phone confirmed they had about ten more minutes to waste before the doors would open, so, after some hesitation, he gently rested his head on the boy’s shoulder.

 TJ took another sharp inhale, before moving his arm to Cyrus’ waist and drawing him in.

 “How um...how was your biology test yesterday?” he asked softly. 

 Cyrus smiled. He’d spent an embarrassing amount of time texting TJ his worries about that particular test.

 He looked up at the boy, whose face was being illuminated faintly, and couldn’t help but pause for a moment to take him in. His features looked soft in this lighting, and Cyrus had another brief thought that yeah, maybe this really wasn’t something his heart could take. Why had he even agreed to this in the first place? 

 “Cyrus?” 

 “Oh! Right, sorry, um, it was okay! There was one question that I had no idea but um...the rest were pretty good.” 

 He placed his head back on TJ’s shoulder, and his heart leapt when the boy began to gently trace circles into his arm with his thumb. 

 Shit. 

 “How was maths?” he asked quickly. 

 TJ’s actions paused for a moment, before starting up again. “It was okay...I hope.” 

 Cyrus nodded, tilting his head to look up at the boy again just as TJ was looking down.

 “Are you okay?” he asked suddenly. 

 The question took Cyrus slightly aback. “Yeah,” he responded quickly, “why wouldn’t I be?” 

 TJ hesitated. “It’s just...you feel kind of tense. We probably don’t have to keep acting like a couple now that we have tickets-“

 “It’s okay,” Cyrus assured him. “I don’t mind. I’m just...always a little tense.”

 TJ nodded, resuming the patterns he was tracing into Cyrus’ arm. The boy took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself slightly, doing his best to relax into TJ’s side. 

 “It’s just until we’re out of his sight,” TJ said, looking towards the guy that had sold them their tickets.

 Cyrus nodded, pausing for a moment before blurting “did I tell you that I held a python over the weekend?” 

 TJ looked down at him in alarm, looking vaguely impressed despite his obvious shock. “What the hell? Where?”

 “At the local wildlife sanctuary. I have photos to prove it,” Cyrus told him proudly, taking his phone from his pocket and bringing up his camera roll. 

 TJ looked down at them for a moment, before laughing slightly. “You look so small!” 

 That earnt him a playful shove.

 “Not that small!” 

 The boy just smiled. “Cyrus the snake wrangler. I never thought I’d see the day.” 

 “I know, right? I thought my experiences with snakes would be limited to documentaries my whole life.” 

 When the double doors in front of them swung open after a few moments, and a staff member announced that they were allowed to head inside, TJ removed his arm from Cyrus’ shoulders and stood up, sending him a small smile. Something about his expression almost seemed disappointed, but there was a very high chance that Cyrus was just getting his hopes up. 

 The lights were on in the theatre as commercials played, meaning it was relatively easy for the pair to find their spots amongst the rows of cushy red seats and sit down, slushies in the cup holders beside them. They ended up having seats towards the back of the theatre, almost all the way up the stairs.

 TJ looked over at him with a smile. “Ready to get spooked?” 

 Cyrus raised an eyebrow. “By commercials?” 

 TJ let out an amused huff. “Yeah, sure - by commercials.” 

 “Commercials are kind of scary,” Cyrus shrugged, “they can have subliminal messages and stuff.” 

 TJ glanced up at the screen, where a McDonald's advertisement was playing. “Think we’ll be influenced to buy Mcdonald’s after this?” 

 “Not if we fight against it!” 

 TJ laughed, taking a small sip of his slushie. “Can’t be that hard, right?” 

 The pair continued to chatter as the commercials played and people gradually filtered inside, taking their respective seats. Surprisingly, they still seemed to have the row to themselves as the lights dimmed and the room darkened, indicating that the movie was about to start playing. 

 His phone lit up with a notification as he was reaching down to turn it off. 

 Andi: how’s your movie date with TJ going? ;) 

 Cyrus could feel himself blushing as he read over it, sending back a quick ‘aNDI it’s not a date!!’ before turning it to silent and pocketing it.

 He looked over at TJ, biting his lip slightly. Why did he have to be so cute? 

 The opening credits began rolling then, so he settled back into his seat.

 Throughout the movie, TJ (as expected) repeatedly brought his hands up to shield his face whenever he thought a jump scare was coming. Cyrus had seen his fair share of horror movies at this point from hanging out with Buffy, so he was slightly less terrified than the other boy seemed to be. 

 At one point, when the characters were all deciding what their course of action would be, TJ placed a hand on the armrest next to Cyrus’. He didn’t think anything of it at first, keeping his hand rested beside the boy’s, but his heart leapt when he felt their hands brush. He shifted in his seat, chancing a glance over at TJ, only to find that his gaze was fixated intently on the screen. Almost too intently, if you asked Cyrus. 

 He took a deep breath, before thinking ‘Screw it,’ and moving his hand closer ever so slightly. The movement had been subtle, but TJ seemed to pick up on it if the faint smile on his lips was anything to go by.

 What were they even doing? 

 “You know we don’t have to act like a couple anymore, right?” he whispered. 

 TJ hesitated. “I know,” he whispered back, barely meeting Cyrus’ gaze.

 Cyrus’ took in a sharp breath. He officially wasn’t paying attention to the movie anymore.

 He looked over at TJ, not even aiming for subtly this time. The light from the screen was the only thing illuminating his face, so the only time he could fully take the boy in was when there was a scene with good lighting. This happened to be one of those, funnily enough.

 TJ glanced over him, and a smile ghosted over his lips. “What’s up?” he asked casually. 

 Cyrus was on the verge of losing it, so he decided against saying anything. Instead, he attempted to shift his focus to the movie again. Just when he began to feel comfortable with their hands brushing the way they were, TJ gently placed his on top of Cyrus’. 

 A glance over at the boy confirmed his gaze was still on the screen, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere because he didn’t look scared at all. In fact - he seemed nervous more than anything.

 Cyrus took a deep breath and somehow managed to muster up the courage to turn his hand over. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw TJ smile, and he felt the boy intertwine their fingers. 

 Holy shit. He was holding hands with TJ. 

 He eventually managed to focus on the movie again, but his heart was still racing. Whenever there was a jump scare he’d feel TJ’s grip tighten, and he would give the boy a reassuring squeeze. It began to feel natural after a while, which was surprising to say the least. 

 When the lights came on again the end of the movie, flooding the room, Cyrus hesitantly pulled his hand away from TJ’s grip and stood up. The boy followed suit, looking anywhere but him as they grabbed their slushie cups and made their way towards the exit. 

 They didn’t exchange a single word as they made their way through the darkened lobby. Cyrus looked over at him as they stepped out into the cool evening air. 

 “What was that?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

 TJ sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know...whatever you want it to be?” 

 Cyrus gave him a hesitant look. “I mean...we held hands. That’s usually a couple thing, right?” 

 TJ shoved his hands in his pockets. “Right,” he confirmed.

 When he didn’t say anything anymore, Cyrus let out a small sigh. The sky had fully darkened by now, with only a few larger stars visible, and a cold breeze was beginning to set in. He tugged on his hoodie, shivering slightly. 

 “What um...what do you want it to be?” he eventually settled on saying. 

 TJ glanced over at him, taking a few moments to think about it as they crossed the parking lot. various coloured lights from traffic signals and storefronts lit up the street they were on, with cars passing by, clearly on their way home. The street lamps above them cast shadows across TJ’s face, but Cyrus could clearly see that he looked nervous. 

 “I don’t know,” the boy said eventually, voice soft. 

 Cyrus nodded and looked away, trying hard to conceal his disappointment. Silence fell for a few moments as they began to make their way back to TJ’s house.

 “Are you cold?” TJ asked, out of the blue. 

 Cyrus looked down at his hands, which had become numb from the icy winds, then back up at TJ. 

 He shrugged. “Yeah, kind of.” 

 TJ hesitated, before shrugging off the coat he’d brought along with him. Cyrus opened his mouth to protest, but before he could TJ was placing it over his shoulders with a smile.

 “I’ll be fine, I promise.” 

 Cyrus bit his lip, before giving in with a small, amused sigh. “Okay. Thanks.” 

 The coat smelt faintly of TJ’s cologne, and somehow that in itself had Cyrus feeling slightly giddy. He placed his hands in the pockets, giving TJ a confused smile when the boy began glancing over at him. 

 “What?” 

 “Nothing,” he said, looking down bashfully. 

 He hesitated for a moment longer, Cyrus still watching on in confusion. 

 “You uh...you look cute.” 

 Cyrus really wasn’t sure how much more of this boy his heart could handle. 

 He smiled, hoping desperately that the streetlamps wouldn’t expose the blush on his face. “Thanks.”

 Silence fell between them again, but somehow it didn’t feel so tense this time. They were walking a lot closer than they had previously by the time they reached TJ’s house, approaching the front gate.

 “Wait - um - Cyrus.” 

 Cyrus turned around, confusion written all over his face. TJ had stopped walking, and he was stood there nervously now, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. His hair was wind-swept and his gaze was hesitant, flicking between Cyrus and the ground. 

 “I like you,” he rushed out, “if that wasn’t obvious already. I wanna be together. If - if you want that too, obviously.” 

 Cyrus smiled and tipped his head slightly to the side. “I like you too,” he said softly.

 For a few moments neither of them said anything, then Cyrus was taking a step back towards the house.

 “Could we take this inside? I’m still kind of freezing.”

 TJ laughed slightly and nodded, moving forward to hold open the gate for Cyrus. They both left their shoes by the front door, making their way down the warmly-lit hallway towards TJ’s bedroom. 

 “We’re home, Ambs!” TJ called, to which he received a muffled “thanks for the announcement, TJ!” 

 He rolled his eyes, sending Cyrus an exasperated glance as they entered his room. Moonlight was filtering in through his blinds, falling onto the boy’s bed covers in strips. From the looks of things, the room had clearly been tidied beforehand. Varying statues were placed in an orderly fashion on top of his wardrobe, and his stationery was packed away neatly in the small boxes on his desk. 

 TJ sat down on his bed, looking up at Cyrus with a smile. “So...you like me?” 

 Cyrus smiled, moving to sit down beside him. “I thought it was obvious,” he teased.

 “Not to me,” TJ responded, looking down at the boy. 

 Cyrus leaned into TJ’s side, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Was that discount thing part of a genius plan, or what?” 

 TJ laughed. “No - I really did want that discount. This,” he paused for a moment to gesture between them, “was just...a very welcome side effect.” 

 Cyrus smiled down at his lap, before looking up hesitantly to meet TJ’s gaze. He swallowed, feeling a small army of butterflies begin to fill his stomach. TJ’s eyes not-so-subtly left his, flickering down to his lips. 

 “Is kissing still off the tables?” he asked softly.

 Cyrus huffed out a laugh. “What do you think?” 

 TJ shrugged. “Yes?” 

 The boy rolled his eyes, smiling fondly as he pulled TJ in. “No. It’s not. You can kiss me.” 

 A smile came to TJ’s lips, and he leaned down to do exactly that.