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transdemigod · 3 years

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Cutting Yourself Off from the Entities: A Comprehensive Guide

I am once again overanalyzing the Magnus Archives for fun. This topic is super interesting to me, and I haven’t seen it explored as much as other theories, so here we go.

So, you’ve pledged yourself to one of the Dread Powers, but decided that you’ve had enough of terrorizing others. Not to worry, there is a way out. Melanie King did it and lived all the way to the end of the series!

Here is the summary, though I’m sure a full explanation will be more satisfying:

To escape the Buried, lose yourself to the emptiness. To escape the Corruption, kill what loves you. To escape the Dark, give yourself to the sunlight. To escape the Desolation, choose kindness. To escape the End, cut yourself off from dreams. To escape the Eye, blind yourself. To escape the Flesh, give up control of your body. To escape the Hunt, tear out your teeth and claws. To escape the Lonely, bind yourself to others. To escape the Slaughter, remove your emotions. To escape the Spiral, destroy your voice. To escape the Stranger, make yourself known. To escape the Vast, trap yourself in a small place. To escape the Web, give up your autonomy.

The rest is under the cut. Let me know if you have any ideas that you think I missed, I would love to discuss theories.

We know for sure that the way to escape the Eye is to gouge your own eyes out. The other entities have less information, but we get a few clues here and there. In the season 4 Q&A, Jonny and Alex joke about leaving the service of the Stranger by running naked through the streets. They also mention that the Desolation can be left by an act of true altruism. With these details, as well as other details in the rest of the canon, we can make a list of criteria that must be satisfied for an act that will cut someone off from each of the 14 Entities.

Firstly, it isn’t enough to just stop feeding your god. Daisy and Jon both tried to abstain and ended up wasting away, and it is implied that they would have died if they had continued. Dying is certainly one possible way to escape the service of a Fear, but we’re going for living out the rest of your natural life here.

Secondly, there has to be some sacrifice made that relates to the specific power. This is where the Desolation’s explanation kind of falls apart; doing one good act doesn’t stop you from just continuing to be destructive, so the act must also include giving up the thing that ties you to your Entity. In the Stranger’s case, one could argue that exposing yourself does count as giving up your anonymity, and there are several Stranger avatars that seem to thrive on being unknown. My theory is that each Entity has a draw of some kind, a power that it gives its followers, which you would have to completely give up if you are to leave it for good. Jon mentioned that the blinding has to be permanent, so I’m assuming this applies to the others as well. Basically, the avatar who wishes to leave must give up something that one who does not wish to leave would never want to.

Third, the change can be physical or symbolic. Obviously blinding yourself is a very physical change, while committing acts of altruism or making yourself known are less so. Some of the Entities will have pretty clear parts of the body that connect you to the power, others will need a bit more of an explanation. In special cases where a person gets their power from an artifact or a Leitner, destroying the thing would probably be enough to cut them off from that power. And of course, if you are as lucky as Georgie Barker and manage to completely get rid of your fear, that would probably be enough to cut you off from them as well.

So, here are my explanations for what you would have to do to cut yourself off from each of the 14. I’m basing it on examples we get in the series, the few rules I have decided to set, and what would seem thematically or symbolically appropriate. Realistically, each individual would have their own personal journey and each avatar is different, but it’s more fun this way.

The Buried- The draw of the Buried is a little difficult to narrow down, we’ve heard about restfulness, the comfort of enclosed spaces, the desire to be a part of the earth, etc. The thing Buried avatars seem to dislike the most is wide open spaces, though I don’t know how that would translate to something you can change about yourself. How would a person cut themselves off from the earth? You could move to a place that is very open, but you could also just leave. I’m not sure if there is a way a person could give up the concept of space, so I’m probably going to have this same problem when I get to the Vast. Probably the only thing you could give up that makes sense is the type of space the Buried is tied to, so you’d have to keep away from enclosed spaces. However you’re supposed to do that, I have no idea. This one is just going to have to be a less satisfying answer, unless I find another idea later.

To escape the Buried, lose yourself to the emptiness.

The Corruption- Most people who get into the Corruption get filled with bugs, and we know from Jane that it is appealing because you have a sense of belonging and purpose. The Corruption focuses a lot on toxic love, and I think communities specifically because the things we think of as infections are multitudinous: insect hives, bacteria, fungal colonies, etc. Even in the case of that one guy with the beetle wife, it was implied that there would soon be many more beetles. So, I think to stop being fed by the Corruption, you have to get rid of the infection in whatever form it takes. The one woman in the statement about the cult ended up leaving, but she wasn’t a full avatar, so I think that would require a bit more drastic action. If Jane had wanted to leave, she would probably have had to kill every worm inside of her. Knowing what we know about her, she would never want to do that, but she also had no regrets about becoming the Hive. Someone like John Amherst would have to get rid of all the diseases inside of him, so it might be as simple as a hospital visit and getting pumped full of antibiotics. If you got hollowed out by bugs, you might have to fill in the space somehow to be able to move, but I’m sure you could find a way. Maybe some help from the Flesh? It does seems to be in opposition to the Corruption in many ways, so that would work thematically.

To escape the Corruption, kill what loves you.

The Dark- Another abstract one. What’s the opposite of blinding yourself? The Dark, aside from the literal definition, includes things like weird science and unknowable things that lurk in the dark. Seeking knowledge would be a good opposite to darkness, but that’s not making a sacrifice or a permanent change. It’s not very clear what avatars of the Dark would hate to lose. Manuela Dominguez describes hating the light, how traditional divinity and knowledge are unnatural as opposed to the dark state of the world. This might be another location based one. Apparently, the sunniest places in the world are in northern Africa and the southwest parts of America, so moving there might do it. There isn’t an easy permanent change to make, but committing yourself to being in the sunlight as much as possible would probably work. Change your sleep schedule, move somewhere sunny, just avoid the dark in general. Maybe even start worshipping the sun; that would be in opposition to the cult following the Dark has.

To escape the Dark, give yourself to the sunlight.

The Desolation- We know it’s an act of altruism. I think it might need some adjusting, though, to make it more of a sacrifice by the person who serves the Desolation. This fear is all about sacrifice and loss, so it’s a bit tricky to think of something a Desolation avatar could give up when they’ve already committed to giving up everything. Well, everything except themselves. Many avatars, like Jude Perry, have shown themselves to be selfish, but I don’t think even they would be opposed to going out in a blaze of glory. No, the hardest thing for them would be to settle down and live a prosperous life. This one probably would have to be continuous effort instead of one grand sacrifice. It doesn’t fit with the others, but it does fit the theme of the Desolation. Yeah, I’ve just gone in a big circle. Altruism does make the most sense. Just make sure that selfless gesture counts. It’s not a real choice if you don’t mean it. I guess that would be really difficult if you’re used to burning everything around you, so maybe it’s more of a sacrifice than I thought.

To escape the Desolation, choose kindness.

The End- We actually already have a canon answer for this one: lobotomize yourself. Adelard Dekker found an End avatar that was killing people with carbon monoxide through their dreams, and he stopped him by cutting through his pre-frontal cortex- the part of the brain that lets you dream. It’s implied that this didn’t completely work, but I think the reason for that is that the avatar was not the one to make the choice. It’s emphasized again and again that serving the fears is all about personal choice, so it makes sense that any attempt to cut someone off wouldn’t take if the person hasn’t decided to give up their connection. The End is associated with dreams in most appearances, so I believe that a person who chooses not to dream would no longer be bound to it. Oliver Banks could see those whose deaths were coming in his dreams, which directly led to him becoming an avatar, so if he had decided to stop dreaming, that would be it. This procedure might be a bit difficult, I can’t imagine performing your own lobotomy would go very well, but I’m sure getting someone else to do it would count if you were the one to make the decision. Of course, Terminus would still have you in the end, but that will happen no matter what you do.

To escape the End, cut yourself off from dreams.

The Eye- This one is already answered. The draw of the Eye is the power to watch, so you have to give that ability up. Simple, straightforward, and definitely fits the theme.

To escape the Eye, blind yourself.

The Flesh- Oh boy, this is a weird one. We have dysphoria, consumption, body horror, I can’t say this one sounds very appealing. But it must be, or else it wouldn’t have people serving it. A lot of the draw to serve the fears could be interpreted as dishing out what you can’t take. You don’t have to be afraid of being watched if you do the watching, you don’t have to fear harm if you harm them first. Maybe the appeal of Flesh is making others share that fear that you are nothing but meat. I don’t think it’s really possible for people to give up their corporeal form, unless it’s metaphorical but I have no idea what that could mean. I think those who serve the Flesh thrive on being “more” than others. More body parts, more mass in general. You could go on a diet or become a vegetarian, which I think the writers may have joked about once? I want a more concrete solution, though. Diets are easy to break. You can’t fully give up food without dying, so I guess you could give up the control of food. Giving up your sense of taste would be interesting, but I’m going to keep it more general. No easy answer for this one either.

To escape the Flesh, give up control of your body.

The Hunt- People are drawn to the Hunt by that deep, primal desire to chase and attack. Humans have both predator and prey instincts inside of us, so you would have to completely leave the predator behind to escape the Hunt. I think a good way to do this would be the get rid of your teeth, or nails, whichever you use to cause harm. Daisy was able to temporarily leave behind her power in the Buried, but as soon as she got out, she started starving. I think this is a good argument that you could partially cut off your power by using a power that opposes it in some way, but you would have to give up a part of yourself to make it stick. As soon as she had the freedom and ability to hunt again, that was when the urge came back, and she eventually succumbed to it. Getting rid of the parts of your body that do harm wouldn’t completely stop you if you were dedicated enough, but it’s the choice to do so that matters. This one is a bit more of a symbolic choice, and you could probably do something else to your body that would prevent it from hunting, but I am going with the cooler option.

To escape the Hunt, tear out your teeth and claws.

The Lonely- Probably all you have to do to escape the Lonely is just…be around other people. I’m sure this is easier said than done, but there are lots of ways to commit to other humans. Get married, join a club, make a blood pact and permanently bind yourself to another human. The possibilities are endless! This one, I think more than the others, would require a bit more of a continued effort. I know that the whole point is to make one drastic, permanent change, but the Lonely feels like something that’s easy to relapse into. Maybe it’s the depression metaphor, I don’t know, but I don’t think this one has as easy a solution as the others. It’s hard work forcing yourself to stay connected to others, and it’s something most people in real life struggle with. Giving up any of these powers is a difficult choice, which is the whole point. Life is hard, and we have to make tough decisions. Anyway, I’m okay letting this one be a bit more abstract.

To escape the Lonely, bind yourself to others.

The Slaughter- This one is very similar to the Hunt in terms of actions, so I think the solution might be similar as well. Destroying your weapon would fit well, but it is just way too easy to pick up something else and continue hacking and slashing away. To give up violence entirely, you might have to destroy a significant part of your body. For the Slaughter, I think we should go with a less physical act. The opposite of violence is healing, so maybe become a doctor? You would have to really commit to helping others instead of hurting them, and that is too easy to go back on. I think the sacrifice made here would have to be emotion. Anger and the desire to hurt would go away if you couldn’t feel anymore. I don’t know how you would do this, except through drugs, but that isn’t permanent. There is probably a part of the brain you could destroy that causes emotion. It’s not the same as the prefrontal cortex, which we destroyed back in the End section, so at least it’s not the same solution twice. Honestly, the drugs could work if you did them long term, it’s about the choice anyway. However you do it:

To escape the Slaughter, remove your emotions.

The Spiral- The draw of the Spiral is the power to lie and deceive. There are many ways to do this, and there are probably just as many ways to stop yourself from doing it. However, there is one way that I think fits very well and is absolutely a permanent change: destroy your voice. This is actually the first one I thought of because even though it’s not technically the only way to stop yourself from lying, it fits very well thematically. Michael as the Distortion calls itself the Throat of Delusion Incarnate, so what better way to break yourself off from the same power then by tearing out your throat? It’s not perfect, but I like it so much that I’m going to pick it. I don’t know how one would go about destroying one’s voice, except with very careful surgery. Or screaming for a very long time.

To escape the Spiral, destroy your voice.

The Stranger- We got our answer to this one in the Q&A. Run naked through the streets, and make sure to engage with everyone who talks to you so that you can’t hide. Utterly terrifying. It makes perfect sense though; we heard from the Not!Them that beings of the Stranger hate losing their anonymity. Whether by switching skins, tricking the mind, or looking so generic that no one can remember your face, being known is antithetical to the Stranger. There are probably other ways to go about losing your anonymity then running around naked. You could get up on a stage somewhere and pour your heart out, or publish an autobiography. Basically anything the Eye would like. As long as you are putting yourself out there in a way that you can’t take back, you should be able to successfully cut yourself off from that uncanny fear.

To escape the Stranger, make yourself known.

The Vast- This one might actually be easier than the Buried, because it’s not purely spatial. It includes things like longevity, our insignificance in the face of a massive universe, and large scary things in general. A Vast avatar would hate to be enclosed, but they would also hate to be made responsible. They enjoy making others afraid of their insignificance, but what if they were important to the universe? What if the world was actually very small, and they fit neatly into it instead of being lost? There’s a lot of different ways to go here, so narrowing down one sacrifice might not be the best answer. I can’t really think of any one action that makes a person feel as though the world is small and trapping them. Giving themselves to the Buried would, probably. A direct contrast is the easiest answer.

To escape the Vast, trap yourself in a small place.

The Web- Avatars of the Web are manipulators, through and through. There are so many ways to manipulate a person that no one action could prevent you from doing that, so this one would likely vary a lot between individuals. That movie director who had people puppet him in his own house comes to mind, I think giving up your freedom like that is a good way to do it. Being paralyzed wouldn’t stop you if you used your voice to control others, and giving up both would suck, but if that’s what you need to do, then I guess it’s your choice to make. Maybe all you would need to do is let someone else tell you what to do, and fully trust them. That would be difficult, coming from the Web where everything is tied together and you know how easy it is to manipulate you.

To escape the Web, give up your autonomy.

#tma #the magnus archives #the buried #the corruption #the dark #the desolation #the end #the eye #the flesh #the hunt #the lonely #the slaughter #the spiral #the stranger #the vast #the web #tma entities #tma analysis

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atlafan · 3 years

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a/n: Hello! My lovely patrons said it was alright to post the first part of my new miniseries here. I hope you enjoy this because it’s a fun story. If you’d like to see what happens next, subscribe to my patreon!

Warnings: angst and fluff, misunderstandings, some smoking of weed (THIS IS A SLOW BURN)

Words: 9.9K

Summary: Harry is 25, and decides to go to graduate school. He's in a film studies program, and becomes a GA for Dr. Casey Robertson, who he assumes is a man. When he goes to Casey's office for their first meeting, he realizes that Dr. Robertson is a woman. The two get along great as the semester progresses, and Harry starts to form a little crush on Casey. There's just one problem...she's engaged.

Harry thought he’d have his life together by now. His whole life he was told if he went to college, he’d be guaranteed a good job and a lasting career. He soon learned, however, that things wouldn’t be that simple. All he wanted to do was watch movies, and review them. He tried making a YouTube channel where he’d review the films he watched, but the videos didn’t get many views, and the few comments he’d get were pretty lewd.

He was sick of working at a grocery store during the day, and a bar at night. He barely had the time to do the things he liked, and he just wasn’t happy. So, he did what any other depressed twenty-five-year-old would do: he applied to graduate school. It made his parents happy since it would give him a break from having to pay off his student loans, and help him find some direction. Harry was able to secure a decent enough GA position that would pay him enough that he wouldn’t need to worry about a job, and he was able to find an apartment with some other graduate students.

So, there he was, enrolled into a Film Studies program, and he’d be a GA for the Writing, Literature, and Publishing undergraduate program. He wouldn’t be teaching or anything, but he would be helping out with a lot of grading and course design. He’d need to have office hours available, and be willing to work with students that have questions.

His roommates were nice enough. Two of them were in biology programs, and another was in art and animation program. Everyone had their own room, and they all had to share a bathroom, but it was okay. They were all adults, and all agreed on chores and how to keep things clean. The four all went out for drinks the first weekend they all moved in to get to know each other better. Harry could really see himself being friends with these people.

He was a little nervous about being a GA. He had to do a good job this semester in order to keep his grant money. It had been a while since he had been in a classroom, so he wasn’t sure how he’d do juggling his own classes and schoolwork along with helping a professor grade for their various courses. Luckily, a good chunk of Harry’s classes would be online, and he only needed to go to one in-person lecture. He got an email from the admin of the Writing and Literature department about meeting with a Dr. Robertson a week before classes start. This was the professor he’d be working with.

He wasn’t given a ton of information on what he needed, so he put his laptop in his backpack, threw on a pair of jeans and a nice button up, and headed out the door. He rolled up his sleeves and the ends of his jeans since it was a little hot out. His glasses were on, and his hair was still a little wet from his shower, but other than that he was feeling pretty confident in his look. He wanted to make a good first impression since he’d be working with this professor all year and not just the fall semester. Harry wondered what type of office he’d be given. He was hoping it would at least have a window, but he’d be grateful for whatever private area he’d be given. He was essentially being given a place to write and he wasn’t going to take it for granted.

As he enters the building, he realizes he has no idea where he’s going. He finds the directory, and sees that Dr. Robertson’s office is up on the second floor. He makes his way up, and takes a deep breath before heading down the hall to their office. As he approaches, he sees a woman with wild, wavy hair up in a high ponytail wearing black, high waist leggings, a slightly cropped tank top and sports bra combo, and was mumbling to herself as she rummaged through her bookshelves.

“Um, excuse me…” Harry speaks up.

“Oh!” The woman jumps. She sets her book down and pushes her glasses back up her nose. “You must be Harry, please, come in.” She waves him in.

“Are you Dr. Robertson?”

“I am.” She nods and extends her hand out for him to shake. “Have a seat.” Harry sits down in one of the chairs across from her desk. “You look a little confused.”

“It just doesn’t look like you were, um, expecting anyone…”

“I know, my office is a total disaster. I’m normally okay with organized chaos, but right now it’s just straight up chaos.” She chuckles. She notices Harry’s eyes drift to her cleavage for a moment. “I didn’t dress up for this since I knew I’d be cleaning things up around here, I apologize.”

“No! Uh, no need. I…I’m sorry, I thought you were a man…”

“Casey is a woman’s name.” She blinks.

“It’s also a man’s.” Harry runs a hand through his hair.

“Is it going to be a problem that I’m a woman?” She raises an eyebrow at him.

“No, of course not. I guess I was just picturing some older guy with a dark office and a bottle of whiskey in the corner that he sips on out of crystal.” He chuckles nervously.

“Ah, well, you know what they say about people who assume.” She smirks.

“I’m not making a very good first impression, am I.” It wasn’t a question.

“That depends.” She leans back in her chair.

“On?”

“What your favorite movie is.” She grins. “As long as it’s not The Wolf of Wallstreet you’ll be fine.”

“I mean, it’s not, but I don’t mind that movie. I thought Leo’s performance was good.” Harry shrugs.

“It definitely was, but I don’t think it needed to be three hours long, nor did I need full frontal of Margot Robbie’s vagina, but that’s besides the point. What’s your favorite movie?”

“This is going to sound cliché, but…it’s Citizen Kane.”

“Is that your favorite because it truly is, or is it your favorite because someone told you it should be?”

“No, it’s genuinely my favorite. I’m a big fan of Orson Welles, I think the film was extremely innovative at the time, it still is by today’s standards. And I love how it was blatant commentary on the harms of yellow journalism. It’s cool to think back on how much trouble Welles had with the distribution for it too.” Harry realizes how excited he’s getting, and clears his throat. “Sorry.”

“Never apologize for the things you’re passionate about.”

“What, uh, what’s your favorite movie?”

“The Wedding Singer.” She smiles.

“Isn’t that an Adam Sandler movie?”

“It sure is.” She says proudly. “Look, I can admit that some of his movies aren’t great. However, I’ve written a ton of academic pieces on The Wedding Singer.”

“Really?”

“Mhm, during a time of uncertainty with AIDS there was LGBTQ representation. The actor that played George ended up coming out as transgender, and lived out her days proudly as a woman. Not to mention that Adam Sandler doesn’t use being gay as a punchline, like, ever. There’re always people of color represented in his films as well. And on a personal note, as a Jewish woman, it was always nice seeing that his characters were Jewish. That type of representation was really important to me as a kid.”

“Wow, I guess I never really thought about that.”

“Well, that’s why I have a PhD and you’re going for your master’s.” She smirks. “Teasing.” She pulls some papers out of her desk. “Okay, so this fall I’m teaching Advanced Screenwriting, Analyzing Screen Media, and two sections of freshman Composition. I’ll need you physically there during the composition classes since those will be the ones I’m going to be having you grading the work for. I’m all for helping first year students learn the basics, but I just don’t have the strength to grade their papers this year. Plus, it’ll be good for you to learn how to properly grade an array of work.”

“All that sounds good…you won’t need help with your other classes?”

“Maybe next semester. I teach a scriptwriting class in the spring, along with some other writing courses. You’re going to be taking some pretty high-level stuff this semester, I don’t want you getting overwhelmed.”

“You know what classes I’m taking?”

“Of course I do. I’d be stupid not to look into the person I’m going to be working with. Even though I’m not your graduate advisor, I hope you know I’d be happy to help you with whatever you need. Are you coming right from undergrad, or did you take some time off?”

“It’s been a few years since I’ve been in school. I’m twenty-five.”

“Sometimes it’s good to take some time off, figure out what you want to focus on. What exactly are you hoping to get out of a graduate film program?”

“I want to write high-level film reviews. I was hoping to make a video series, but it’s really tough to build a base on YouTube. I got discouraged.”

“If you ever want me to watch what you have out there already, I’d be more than happy to.”

“Sure, that’d be great. So, uh, where will my office be?”

“Oh, honey, did you think you were getting your own office?” She can’t help but giggle. “We’re not in the science building, GA’s don’t get their own offices over here.”

“How will students meet with me if they have questions?”

“They won’t need to meet with you, you’re not teaching.”

“But I’ll be grading, what if a student wants to question me on a grade?”

“Then they can come to me.” She shrugs.

“Dr. Robertson, where am I supposed to get my own work done?”

“Mi oficina es tu oficina.” She smiles. “You can work in here any time you like. I actually have a key for you.” She opens a drawer and pulls out a key. “Here you go, don’t lose that.”

“What if you’re meeting with a student?”

“As you can see, we have a lovely lounge at the end of the hall, you can go there and set up shop if you need to. You’re a GA, Mr. Styles, pay your dues. Now, here are my syllabi, and you should have gotten an email stating that you’ve been given access to all my courses. There are rubrics for all of the assignments as well, as long as you follow those you should have no problem grading.”

“Alright.” Harry takes the different sheets of paper from her, catching sight of the ring on her finger. “Are you married?” He wasn’t quite sure why he asked, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Hm? Oh, no.” She laughs. “Just engaged.” She extends her hand to look down at her ring. “Been engaged for over a year, we can’t seem to decide on a date. My fiancé is a lawyer, and a highly sought after one at that.”

“Why not just pick a random day to go to a courthouse?”

“Well, we both have big families, and we don’t want to disappoint any of them.” She sighs. “It’s fine, we’ll figure it out at some point. Neither of us are really in a rush. We’ve been together five years, it’ll happen when it happens.” She studies Harry for a moment. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Have anyone special?”

“Oh!” Harry’s cheeks redden. “Um, no…nothing serious, anyways.”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone here. You should go to the GA meetings, meet others doing what you’re doing.”

“I’m living with three other GA’s, we’re getting along pretty well so far. But I’ll definitely check out when those meetings are.”

“Good.” She smiles.

“May I ask how old you are? You seem so accomplished, I mean…look at all of the degrees and certificates you have.” Harry motions to the various frames on the walls.

“Some of those are just recognition certificates. I’m twenty-eight. I did a 4+1 program to get my master’s so I could zip right along into a PhD program. I was lucky enough that I was hired on full-time after getting it. The department really values me.”

“That’s awesome.” Harry smiles. “Anything else you’d like me to know about your classes?”

“Not at the moment. Would you be comfortable giving me your cell number? Anything I can do to have less emails, you know?”

“I don’t mind.” Harry smiles again and takes out his phone, handing it to her.

“Thanks, it’ll be much easier to tell you if something changes last minute this way.” She texts herself before handing him back his phone.

“Your fiancé won’t mind you texting me?” Harry asks playfully, warming up to her a bit more.

“No, why would he? We’re not one of those couples who reads each other’s texts. My phone is my property just as his phone is his property. We trust each other.” She rests her elbows on her desk, putting even more of her cleavage on display for him without realizing it. “Besides that, I’m not trying to start an affair with my GA who should be very careful about flirting with me so that he doesn’t end up on some very thin ice.”

“I…I…I wasn’t-“

“You were being cheeky with me.” She crosses her arms over her chest as a smug smile sets on her lips. “I like to tease, Mr. Styles, you can relax your shoulders now.”

“I think it’s going to take me some time to get used to your sense of humor.” Harry says with a relaxed sigh.

“Well, you’re stuck with me for an entire year, so you’ve got plenty of time to figure me out. Now, if you don’t have any other questions, you can go on and enjoy the rest of your day.” She stands back up. “I need to continue organizing my books, and the rest of this mess.” Harry nods and stands up.

“It was nice to meet you. You know you can just call me Harry, right?”

“Sure.” She smiles. “I prefer to be called Dr. Robertson in the classroom, when we’re not in there you can just call me Casey.”

“Okay.” Harry smiles.

“Oh, wait! Are you free the day before classes start? I was hoping to take you to lunch as a sort of good luck thing.”

“I can definitely do lunch the day before classes start.”

As Harry walks back to his apartment, he can’t help but think about how cool Casey is. She’s a bit frazzled, yes, but she seems like someone Harry will be able to easily work with. At least he wouldn’t have to kiss the ass of some stuffy old professor. Casey’s ass is one Harry wouldn’t mind kissing, but she had a fiancé to take care of that for her. He had to admit, Casey was insanely attractive, but he’d politely just admire her from afar and respect that she was very much a taken woman. Besides that, it would be incredibly inappropriate to even try to start something up with the professor he was GA’ing for. No, he’d keep things professional. He wasn’t even looking for someone to be with right now anyways. If he felt the need to hook up with someone, he could either head down to the bars or download Tinder.

“Alright, if we could settle down and get started!” Casey shouts over the buzz of students talking in her first section of composition. “My name is Dr. Robertson, and that is what I’d prefer to be called. My pronouns are she/her. I encourage you all to be vocal about how you’d like to be addressed just the same. This is Mr. Styles, you may call him Harry. He’s going to be grading all of your work this semester, so you can send any and all excuses his way.” Casey grins and sits down on top of the desk at the front of the room. “Now, I’d like us all to go around the room and say your name, where you’re from, and what TV show you binged over the summer. I know for me, I rewatched Boy Meets World for the millionth time, and it was still just as good.”

Harry was impressed. Most of the time students hated ice breakers, but this was a pretty engaging one. Once the class of twenty-five is through, Casey goes over their course page in Canvas and the syllabus.

“Now, this specific course of composition has a topic, so we’re going to be writing about television this semester. If you don’t think you can write about that, then you may want to find another section of composition to take. I will say, we’re going to have a lot of fun in this class. We’re going to watch some interesting shows, and you may find that you’re ‘to watch’ list will have grown exponentially by the end of the semester.”

Casey asks if anyone has any questions, and a few do which causes some lively class discussion for the remainder of the period. She lets them go about fifteen minutes early. Harry walks over to her as she unplugs her laptop from the monitor on the lectern.

“Seems like the majority of them are going to enjoy the content for this class.” Harry tells her, but all she does is hum her response as she looks down at her phone. She sighs heavily before putting her phone in her pocket. “Everything okay?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Just figuring out what Daniel and I are going to have for dinner, nothing serious.” She waves him off as she slings her bag over her shoulder. “How are your classes going so far?” She asks as they walk out of the room and head towards her office.

“Pretty good, I don’t think anything is going to be too difficult for me. I have to watch a lot of movies, but I was expecting that.” Harry shrugs.

Once they’re in her office, Casey sits down at her desk, and Harry makes himself comfortable on her couch. This is the routine they had started since she took him for lunch a few days ago. They worked in a comfortable silence together, occasionally taking breaks to chat. Casey was happy she got assigned a GA that knew the difference between work and play. Her cell phone ends up ringing about five different times. By the fifth time Harry heard the buzzing, he couldn’t help but speak up.

“If you need to take that I can step out.” Harry says.

“No, it’s fine.” Casey sighs. “It’s just Daniel being Daniel.”

“What do you mean?”

“His time is more valuable than mine.” She rolls her eyes. “He knows I’m working.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“It’s not.”

“Casey, he’s called you five times-“

“It’s not an emergency, now mind your business.” She snaps and stands up with her phone in her hand. “I’ll be back shortly.”

Casey didn’t share too much personal stuff with Harry about her fiancé. When they had lunch together, she told Harry his name is Daniel, and she explained the type of law he practiced, but not much more than that. She didn’t get into how they met, or how he proposed. She didn’t even seem to be excited while talking about him like she did when she and Harry first met. Casey returns about ten minutes later, and sits back down in her chair.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped.” Harry says softly.

“You didn’t.” She sighs. “I snapped at you for no good reason, I apologize.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Mhm.” She says without looking at him, and going into her email on her computer.

Harry furrows his brows as he looks at her, but gets back to what he was doing. If she didn’t want to talk about it then he wasn’t going to push her. Harry notices her resting her chin on her fist as she looks at the picture of her and Daniel that she had on her desk. She sighs heavily and shakes her head, returning to her emails.

“I have my lecture in a bit, so I’m gonna head out.” Harry says, putting his backpack on.

“Alright, have a good class.” She gives him a soft smile. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” He smiles back. “See you tomorrow.”

Harry’s lecture was long and boring. It was a class all about black and white films, and the beginning of cinema up through the 1950’s. It would be a class full of dense reading materials and learning about theorists that Harry had only briefly learned about previously in undergrad. Normally this would be a class Harry would be really interested in, but the professor had to be at least 70, and he was quite monotone.

When he gets home to his apartment, he grabs a Bud Light out of the fridge, twists the cap off the top, then settles onto the couch. His roommates were all still in class and would be meeting up for pizza in a bit, so Harry had about an hour to himself before he was to go downtown to meet up for dinner. He takes his phone out and scrolls through his various notifications. Halfway through his beer he decides to text Casey.

Harry: any thoughts on Dr. Jensen?

Casey: oh god don’t tell me he’s teaching your lecture course…

Harry: yeah…so is he going to stay boring all semester?

Casey: that dinosaur should have retired years ago, I’m so sorry you have to have a class with him. Is it the early cinema through the 1950’s class?

Harry: that’s the one! The content is interesting enough, but I was on the verge of falling asleep the whole time, idk how I’m gonna survive an entire semester with the guy. Any tips on how to survive his course?

Casey: def make sure you keep up with the homework. He’s one of those jerks that’s been using the same syllabus for the last 20 yrs, so he doesn’t update his exams. I’d also recommend getting a recorder for his lectures, keeping up with notes is basically impossible during class, but if you can go back and listen he actually makes a lot of good points

Harry: you’re a lifesaver, thank you!! 😊

Casey: any time! I actually like a lot of the movies he has on his syllabus, so if you ever want a movie buddy just let me know!

Casey: I’ve got that couch in my office literally so I can comfortably watch movies

A sigh leaves Harry’s mouth when he sees that she rushed to make it known watching movies would only be an on-campus thing. Would it be so weird if she came to his apartment for a movie night?

Harry: that sounds great, I actually have to watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by the end of the week. I’m sure you’ve seen it a million times though…

Casey: I have, but it’s one of my favorites so I won’t mind watching it again

Harry: really??

Casey: yeah! I love German Gothic films, I took a class solely on them in grad school, I can’t get enough. The makeup, the sharp edges, the harsh shadows, it was all just so interesting

He sees the time on his phone and realizes he needs to head downtown to meet up with his roommates. Harry wasn’t one for using his phone while eating with friends, so much to his dismay he has to end the conversation.

Harry: learn something new about you every day! I have to get going, meeting up for pizza with friends. Did you figure out what you and Daniel are having for dinner?

Casey: pasta…have fun with your friends!

Harry: a classic choice, I love pasta

He almost wished he hadn’t sent that last text. She didn’t respond to it. Harry groans at himself, and picks himself up to head outside. He couldn’t wait to stuff his face with some greasy pizza, drink some more beer, and just unwind with his new friends. It was nice being back in school and feeling like your responsibilities could be put on the back burner for a bit. Schoolwork was a less anxiety inducing thing to focus on, as opposed to what the fuck Harry was going to do with his life. Casey would be a great mentor for him. She was essentially doing what he thinks he’d like to be doing. He had an entire year to pick her brain, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. With any luck he’d be her GA again next year, but he didn’t want to get too far ahead of himself.

Casey and Harry were getting along famously. It was nearly October, and they were already in perfect sync. She was beyond grateful for him and his speedy grading. He was a fast reader, and she was not, so having him grade all of those papers and forum posts for her composition courses freed her up to focus on the work in her other classes. Harry tried his best not to bring up Daniel. Any time he did, Casey seemed to shut down. He’d only ask because he wanted to make sure Daniel wasn’t doing anything abusive to Casey. She never came in with a scratch on her, but Daniel could easily be doing something mental. Daniel never showed up to Casey’s office. If Harry were engaged to Casey, he’d want to visit her all he could, but maybe Casey didn’t like being visited since she always had something to do.

“Hey, Casey, what’s this faculty Halloween party about?” Harry asks her one Thursday afternoon. “I got an e-vite for it.”

“Oh! I forgot they put you on the faculty email list. You should go, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a great way for all of us to get together outside of the monthly faculty meetings. Everyone dresses up, it’s at one of the bars downtown. We get two drink tickets, and the rest you buy yourself.”

“Do other GA’s go?”

“Sometimes.” Casey nods. “It would be a good way for you to meet some of the other GA’s, and other faculty members. You can never have too many of us in your corner.”

“That’s true. What do you think I should dress up as? Like, how all out do people go?”

“Definitely keep it classy, appropriate, but don’t be afraid to have fun. Daniel and I usually do a couple’s costume. We have so much fun going to the store every year and figuring out what we want to do. It works out great cause his law firm has a costume party every year too.” She smiles. “We’re headed to the fabric store this weekend actually to start thinking of ideas.”

“Oh, that’s good. Um, what have you gone as in the past?”

“I’ll show you!” Casey grabs her phone, and wheels herself closer to Harry so he can see. “Last year we went as Bob and Linda from Bob’s Burgers, the year before that we went as vampires, and the year before that we went as Cosmo and Wanda from The Fairly Oddparents.”

“Aw, you guys looks so happy.”

“Yeah.” Casey swallows and locks her phone, wheeling back over to her desk. “Can’t wait to see what we come up with this year.” She mutters as she gets back to her work.

“I’ll have to really think about it. I haven’t dressed up for Halloween in forever.”

“Your friends didn’t have parties?”

“They did, but I was usually working. The bar I worked at had costume contests and stuff, so we were always busy. I’d get too hot from running around to dress up as anything.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Hmm…” She taps her chin as she thinks. “You could go as, like, a baseball player or something.”

“You’re just saying that because you want to see me in a pair of those tight pants.” Harry smirks.

“I see you in tight pants every day, it wouldn’t be anything new.” She says smugly before turning away from him.

“I do not wear tight pants every day.” Harry scoffs. “They may be tight in certain places, but it’s not like I’m walking around in skinny jeans.”

“True.” She side eyes him. “Maybe you could go as a Jonas Brother, all of them wear tight pants, or they used to.”

“I don’t think anyone at that party would get the reference.” Harry rolls his eyes.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t help you think of anything.” She shrugs.

Harry chuckles softly as he gets back to grading papers. He loved when Casey would tease him. He had grown a lot more comfortable with her sense of humor, and they would often end up in hysterics from their banter.

“Casey.” A tall man with salt and pepper hair wearing an expensive looking suit stands in the doorway. He was holding a small bouquet of flowers, and his eyes looked tired. “Baby, can I take you to lunch?”

“Daniel, I’m working.” Casey stands up. “Harry, this is my fiancé, Daniel. Daniel, this is my GA, Harry.”

“Hi, I’ve heard a lot about you.” Daniel says to Harry, then turns his attention back to Casey. “Please, you didn’t pack a lunch this morning. Let me take you out.”

Casey sighs, and ushers Daniel out into the hallway.

“You can’t just show up like this.” She says quietly.

“I’m really trying here, Honey.”

“I only have an hour, so we need to go somewhere quick.”

“That’s fine, uh, I got these for you. Know how much you like tulips.”

“These aren’t even season.” She smiles as she takes the flowers from him. “Thank you, Sweetheart, let me just go grab my jacket.” Casey goes back into her office and grabs her things. “Harry, I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Okay, I’ll probably be in class by the time you get back.”

“Alright.” She nods, and zips up her jacket.

“Do you want me to put those in some water for you?” He asks, nodding towards the flowers.

“Huh? Oh, no, that’s alright. They won’t last more than a few days as it is. It’s not worth it.”

Harry had ended up putting together a Clark Kent costume by wearing a light-wash pair of jeans, some converse, a Superman tee shirt with a jacket over it half zipped, and his glasses. He styled his hair to give the front an extra curl. The faculty would definitely be able to see the effort, but it also didn’t look like Harry was trying too hard. He heads downtown to the bar with his roommates, as they were all invited too. They all decided to be super heroes in disguise, so they made sure to take a ton of pictures before going to the party. Harry’s jaw nearly hits the floor when he spots Casey wearing a Morticia Addams costume. Even though Casey wasn’t showing much skin, her off the shoulder dress was leaving little to the imagination.

“Excuse me.” Harry says to his friends before making his way over to Casey. “Hi.”

“Harry!” She beams. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Me too, uh, what do you think of my costume?”

“I love it! Very cute and creative.” She smiles. “No one ever really thinks about dressing as the secret identity.”

“Casey, don’t you look lovely!” Dr. Lind says to her. “Where’s your Gomez?”

“Oh, uh, Daniel’s busy working a case. He couldn’t get away and I told him not to worry about it.” Casey explains.

“Aw, that’s too bad. It’s been ages since we’ve seen him. Have you two picked a date yet?”

“No, not yet. We both have had a lot going on, and we can’t seem to agree on the best time to do it. I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon.”

“You two should just elope, get it done at a courthouse and then have a big party for your families. I mean, the point of being engaged is not to stay engaged.”

“It’s only been a little over a year.” Casey mutters.

“I know, Dear, but you-“

“You know what’s great about being in a monogamous relationship? What happens between Daniel and I is between Daniel and I, none of this really concerns you, Nancy. I appreciate your input, but it’s not needed, excuse me.” Casey has to bite back tears as she walks away.

“My goodness, I didn’t mean to upset her.” Dr. Lind says to Harry.

“I’ll go see if she’s alright.” Harry finds Casey getting a new drink from the bar. He pulls her to the side to have a private word. “Dr. Lind always oversteps, she had no right to speak about what you should be doing.”

“I know that.” Casey says, looking away.

“Did Daniel really have to work late tonight?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“Harry, I don’t want to talk about it.” She says before sipping on her drink. “I just want to have a good time tonight and not think about it, alright?”

“I can respect that, but I don’t think drinking your problems away is a great idea.”

“Harry, no offense, but I don’t need your opinion on this.” She brushes by him and goes to speak with some of her other friends.

A few hours pass, and it was starting to get a little stuffy in the bar, so Harry heads out for some fresh air. He sees Casey outside with a cigarette between her fingers. As he gets closer, he realizes it’s not a cigarette.

“Casey, are you smoking weed?” Harry asks her.

“It’s medicinal.” She mutters, blowing smoke in the opposite direction as to not hit him in the face with it. “It’s for my anxiety.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to take an edible?”

“Not when I need it to work right away.”

“Did you drive yourself here tonight?”

“I did, but I can just take an uber home.” She shrugs. “I came out for some air.”

“So did I.” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not trying to pry into your life, but things won’t get better if you keep shit bottled up.”

“I just prefer to keep my private life private.”

“Believe me, I get that, but…god, I wish you’d just talk to me, I’m your friend.”

“Daniel and I had an argument earlier and I told him not to come with me because I didn’t want to pretend like everything was fine. I couldn’t stand in that bar around my friends and colleagues pretending like everything’s fine with him when it’s not. We’re far from fine, and we have been for a while.”

“Did something happen?”

“The morning before the day I first took you out to lunch he told me he was up for a promotion at the firm…partner.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It would have been if it didn’t involve us having to move to New York. He took the bar exam out there without telling me, and he passed. They want him out there to work on larger cases, as a defense attorney. I wouldn’t have been opposed to moving, but he just assumed that I would. He said I could teach anywhere with no regard with how I’d feel about leaving this institution, our friends, and family behind. And then he told me it wouldn’t even matter because he’d be making enough money for me to never have to work another day in my life and that I could just stay home taking care of our future children.”

“That’s a bit old fashioned.”

“It is, which was shocking to me because he’s never acted that way towards me. He’s always been so modern, so progressive. I think he was given advice from the wrong people. Anyways, he took the job in New York because he basically had to, he would have been stupid not to take it, so we’ve only been seeing each other on weekends. And when we do see each other, we just end up fighting…we don’t even sleep in the same room.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what we’re doing anymore.” Her voice cracks, but she swallows her tears down. She spent too long on her makeup to ruin it from crying. “We’ve grown apart, it’s as simple as that, but neither of us have the courage to end it. I love him so much, but lately…lately I’ve been feeling like love just isn’t enough.” She looks up at Harry who had been nice enough to stand out in the cold with her to listen to all of her woes.

“I’m so sorry.” It’s all he can think to say. “You should be home with him…trying to work it out.”

“I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough today. I told him to just go back to New York. He’s got a whole new life out there. I’ve been to his apartment a few times, and I didn’t feel like I fit in at all. I don’t even know why he still wants me, he could easily find someone new out there.”

“How could he not want you?” Harry steps a little closer to her. “You’re smart, funny, and…you’re a knockout. If I were him and I saw you about to leave the house looking like this, well…I wouldn’t have let you leave the house.”

“Why, so you could tell me to change into something less form fitting?” She scoffs as she crosses her arms over her chest. Her blunt all but forgotten.

“I would have asked you to take the dress off, that’s for certain. As far getting something back on…” Harry takes another step closer to Casey, making her cheeks feel warm.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not Daniel.”

“I didn’t have much to drink tonight. Let me drive you home, and I’ll take the uber back to my apartment. That way you don’t have to worry about coming back for your car tomorrow.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not, I’m making a suggestion.”

“Okay, yeah, if you don’t mind. I only live, like, fifteen minutes from here. We, uh, rent a townhome.”

Casey hands Harry her keys, and they make their way around the building to the parking lot. The drive is quiet. Casey could feel her eyes starting to droop. Harry had the heat cranked since it had gotten chilly. He watches the map on the navigation screen to make sure he makes the right turns to her house. He pulls into her driveway, and orders his uber.

“Thank you for driving.” Casey says.

“Any time.” Harry smiles and gets out of the car. He jogs around to the other side to open her door, and walks her up her front steps. “You gonna be okay?” He rubs his hands up and down her arms to keep her warm.

“Yeah.” She smiles softly up at him. “Harry, I-“ The front door opens with Daniel standing there.

“Casey, thank god, Baby, I’m so sorry.” He wraps his arms around her, kissing her without acknowledging Harry. “No argument is worth you leaving angry like that for.” He kisses her again.

“Daniel.” She pushes him off of her. “Harry’s here, he drove me home.”

“Oh! Sorry about that.” Daniel says. “Thanks for driving her, man.”

“No problem.” Harry’s uber pulls up in front of the house. “That’s my ride, uh, have a nice night.”

Harry’s gaze lingers on Casey for a moment before making his way to the car. Daniel leads Casey inside the house.

“Did you have a good time?” Daniel asks her as they both walk into the kitchen.

“I guess.” She shrugs. “Would have been more fun if my Gomez had been there with me.” She pouts at him.

“You told me you didn’t want me there.”

“I also told you to go back to New York, so clearly your listening skills are selective.”

“I was so mad at you that I actually almost left, but I couldn’t make it out of the driveway.” He comes over to her, caressing her cheek. “Casey, I want to figure all of this out with you. I don’t want to fight anymore, and I’m sick of sleeping alone.”

“I feel the same way. Let me take all of this off and put on some pj’s, and then we can talk.”

“Okay.” He smiles. “Want me to make you some tea?”

“That’d be great, thank you.”

Casey: I’m not able to come in today, I’m not feeling great…do you think you could handle my classes today? You can have comp peer edit their papers, and my other classes can just watch a movie

Harry: sure! Is there anything else you need?

Casey: just some rest, thanks for understanding

Harry had wondered for the rest of the weekend how things went between Casey and Daniel. Maybe he hung around and they were going to spend Monday together. All in all, he hoped Casey was okay. Her Monday classes were sad not to see their beloved Dr. Robertson, but many of the girls in class had no problem with Harry taking over for the day.

As a lark, Harry picked up some pepto bismol and other things that might make someone sick feel better. He pulls up to Casey’s house, and sighs with relief when he doesn’t see Daniel’s car. He rings the doorbell, and waits for Casey to open door.

“H-Harry?” She says as she opens the door. She had on an oversized, quarter-zip fleece and a pair of joggers. Her hair was in a loose, low ponytail with some strands left out in front. Her eyes were red and puffy, as was her nose.

“Hey, I…I brought you some pepto and some other stuff that might make you feel better. I didn’t know if you caught a cold or…are you okay?”

“Oh, Harry!” She wails, and throws her body into his, crying into his chest. Harry wraps his arms around her and moves them both further into the house, closing the door. “I’m not sick.” She sniffles as she looks up at him. “I’m…heartbroken.”

“What happened?”

“Daniel and I broke up.” Her voice cracks, and she shoves her face back into his chest. He holds her close and rubs her back. “We stayed up all night on Saturday talking.” She hiccups, stepping back from him and leading him into her living room. “We watched the sun come up in tears.” They both sit down on her sofa. There was a somewhat tattered blanket that she snatches, hugging it to her chest. “We just couldn’t come to a compromise that worked well enough for the both of us.” She pauses for a moment, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “We didn’t yell or argue, we just talked everything out. He agreed that we grew apart and that we still loved each other very much. He was feeling defeated because he felt like he was the only one trying. I knew I stopped trying because I just didn’t have the strength anymore. He’s coming back next weekend to pack up the rest of his things. After we got some sleep on Sunday we went out to get him some boxes, and he packed as much as he could into his car. Five years over and done with just like that.”

“Casey, I’m so sorry.”

“I just needed today to, like, rest and regroup, but I just spent it crying…mourning the loss of my relationship.”

“That sounds like a pretty healthy way to deal with it.”

“Every time I tried to sleep, I just cried. I haven’t eaten all day, I’ve just been in here…wallowing.” She laughs coldly at herself.

“Let me make you something to eat. Do you have food in the kitchen?”

“Harry, you don’t have to. I know you have homework to do.” She frowns.

“My bag’s in the car. I can make you some dinner, and I can work on my assignments. I can even put on one of the movies I need to watch.”

“You really don’t have to babysit me. I’m a grown woman, I can take care of myself.”

“Casey, I want to help. Why don’t you go take a shower or something? I’m sure I’ll be able to find my way around your kitchen. I can just whip up some pasta.”

“You’re very kind, thank you.” She sniffles. “A shower sounds nice, I’ll go do that.”

By the time Casey gets downstairs, all cozy in a fresh fleece and pair of sweatpants, Harry had finished making some ziti mixed with some peas. He seasoned it with some parmesan cheese, pepper, and adobo.

“Hey.” He smiles when he sees her.

“Smells good in here.” She smiles back, hopping up onto one of the stools at her kitchen island. Harry puts a bowl of food in front of her before sitting down next to her. “Thank you.”

“Stop thanking me, would you?”

“I can’t help it.” Her bottom lip quivers as she takes a bite of food. “This is just so nice of you.” She sniffles.

“Casey, come on.” Harry chuckles and cradles her cheeks to thumb her tears away. “Can’t have you crying into your dinner.” He pouts cutely at her making her giggle before letting her go.

Harry eats while getting some work done, typing away at his computer. Casey eats her dinner slowly, not wanting to overwhelm her empty stomach. She also got her period earlier in the day, so she knew her tears had to have been in overdrive because of that. She finishes her food with a sigh and sets her fork down.

“All done?” Harry asks softly.

“Mhm, I can clean up.”

“No, let me-“

“Harry, I’m not helpless, please.” She hops off her stool and takes both of their bowls and put them in the dishwasher. “Did you figure out which movie you need to watch for class?”

“I have a choice between Some Like it Hot and The Apartment.”

“God, I can’t stand The Apartment.” Casey groans. “Let’s watch Some Like it Hot, it’s way more entertaining. I actually have it on DVD.”

“Oh, perfect.” Harry follows Casey into her living room, and he sits down as she sets the movie up. “I’ve never seen this one before.”

“Really? You’ll love it, it’s a classic. Marilyn Monroe is in it, and she’s just wonderful.” Casey sits down and hits play on the remote. “Can I get you anything? Water?”

“I’m all set, thank you.” Harry smiles, sitting back into the couch, making himself more comfortable. “You feeling a little better now that you’ve eaten?”

“Yeah, I-“ Casey’s phone starts ringing, and she sees that it’s Daniel. “I’m sorry, I need to take this.” Casey gets up quickly, and makes her way upstairs. “Hi…”

“Hi.”

“You don’t sound great.” Casey says softly.

“Been crying all day.”

“Me too.” She sighs.

“Are we sure we’re doing the right thing? If it hurts this much, shouldn’t we try to find a way to make this work?”

“Daniel, we went round in circles all weekend. You’re staying in New York, and I’m staying here. I don’t want you sacrificing your career for me. We’re not the same people we were five years ago…we’re both different now. I…I don’t want to wait for things to get started anymore.”

“So, you’d rather start over with someone new than just wait a little longer to get married to someone you know and love?”

“I want to marry someone who doesn’t lie to me about a promotion! You didn’t even talk to me before you accepted. It was like I didn’t even matter in your life, Daniel, don’t you understand that?”

“I know it was wrong of me to do that, I just thought you’d be on board…”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

“Apparently so.” There’s a beat of silence between them. “I’ll be coming back late on Friday. I should be able to pack everything else up during the weekend.”

“Okay, do you want me to stay with Lola? Like, do you not want me here?”

“I’m not going to kick you out of your own home, Casey. Besides, I’ll need you there so we can properly divide things up.”

“Right, yeah…”

“And we didn’t exactly get to have a, uh, proper goodbye.”

“Daniel.” Casey giggles. “I don’t think doing it one last time would be a good idea.”

“I’m not saying we need to plan it out, but if it happens…”

“We’ll see. I really am sorry we couldn’t compromise on things.”

“Me too. Well, I’ll let you go now. Sleep well.”

“You too.” Casey sighs as she hangs up, and makes her way downstairs. “Hey, Harry, if it’s all the same, I think I’m gonna just go to bed, but you can borrow the DVD if you want.”

“Oh! Okay.” Harry pauses the movie and stands up. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m just hormonal and tired. I’m ready to just crawl into bed and get cozy. I want to have a fresh start tomorrow.”

“Right, makes sense.” Harry gathers his things, and Casey walks him to the door.

“I can’t thank you enough for coming by.”

“All I did was make a little dinner.” Harry shrugs.

“It was more than that and you know it.” She pokes his chest playfully. “You’re a great friend.” She opens her arms up for him, and he gladly accepts her hug. He holds her close to him, maybe for a beat too long, but he likes the way she feels pressed up against him. Harry was also known for not being the first person to end a hug. Casey’s arms start to loosen around him, and he looks down at her. Her eyes widen when she sees Harry start to lean in. “Woah, what are you doing?” She steps back from him.

“N-nothing.” His face flushes.

“Were you just going to try to kiss me?”

“What, no! Of course not.” He swallows.

“Yes you were!” She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath before looking at him. “Hi, I just broke up with my fiancé, who I’ve been with for over five years, what part of that made you think it was a good time to pull a move on me? Was all of this because you just wanted to try and get a piece?”

“Casey, that’s not what’s happening. I genuinely came to check on you. I…I just misread a signal, that’s all.”

“What signal? I literally just said you were a good friend and hugged you!” She puts her hands on her hips and frowns at him. “I’m really disappointed in you, Harry. You never struck me as the kind of guy to be nice to a girl just to try to-“

“I’m not one of those guys.” He shakes his head. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or disrespect you, I just thought…”

“Harry, you’re my GA.”

“I know.”

“It would be highly inappropriate for us to get involved. I mean, I know I’m only three years older than you, but at the end of the day I have a position of power over you. You’re a bright man, Harry, don’t be stupid and risk messing up your future because you have a crush.”

Harry looks down at his shoes, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“I understand what you’re saying.” He looks up at her. “But you haven’t said that you don’t like me back.” He smirks, making her mouth fall open. She was speechless. “Sleep tight, Casey.” Harry turns and opens the door, letting himself out. Casey stands in her doorway.

“You’re on thin ice, Styles!” She calls after him.

“I’ll make sure to step with caution, Dr. Robertson!” He shouts back before getting into his car.

Casey shuts her door, and sighs, leaning against it for a moment before bringing herself up to bed. She goes through her nightly routine, and gets herself settled into her sheets. She knew there was an underlying reason as to why she didn’t want to try harder with Daniel. The more she got to know Harry, the more she’d dread coming home to her now ex-fiancé. She used to love coming home to Daniel and recounting their days, but she realized she just didn’t care about his cases anymore. She wanted to have high level talks about film and media. Daniel would always listen, but he never really understood why Casey was so passionate about her work. To him, it all just seemed like a hobby rather than a career. Harry, on the other hand, had the same passions as her. He understood how stimulating talk about film and media could be. She wasn’t having sexual feelings towards Harry, but she couldn’t wrap her head around the emotional attachment that begun. She figured maybe she couldn’t love Daniel that much if she’d rather spend extra hours in her office with Harry instead of trying to get home to Daniel before heading back to New York. It pained her, but that was the truth. Tonight confirmed that Harry was definitely into Casey. Now all Casey had to do was figure out how she felt about Harry, but she needed to get over Daniel first.

“You’re here early.” Casey says to Harry the next morning.

“I wanted to talk to you about last night. I feel really bad about how I acted. I thought that maybe we were having a moment. I apologize for misreading things. Kept me up all night.”

“Have a seat.” She motions to her couch and he sits down. She turns in her seat to face him. “Don’t worry about last night. I was in a vulnerable state, and I was more affectionate than I should have been. Nothing really happened between us, so it’s all good. It’s going to take me some time to get over Daniel. Five years is a long time to be committed to one person. I’m seeing him again this weekend, and who knows what could happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“We could easily get back together, and then what? The last thing I want to do is hurt you. Besides that, you’re my GA, it would be wrong. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. It’s not like…I mean…it’s nothing, okay? Think I’m just into you cause we have so much in common. And I really look up to you. You’re so accomplished, you know?”

“A smart woman doesn’t intimidate you?”

“Not at all.” He shakes his head. “I think smart women are incredibly”, Harry gets up from his seat and sits on the edge of Casey’s desk, “incredibly sexy.”

“You’re not really sorry for trying to kiss me last night, are you?” She smirks up at him.

“I’m sorry for upsetting you and for overstepping a boundary.” A grins starts to pull on his lips. “But I’m not sorry that it’s lead to you admitting that you like me.”

“I never said I liked you.”

“You never said you didn’t.”

“Harry.” Casey sighs.

“Listen”, Harry gets off her desk and sits back down on the couch, taking out his laptop. “take as much time as you need to get over Daniel. I’ll be right here when you’re ready for me.” He peers up at her from his laptop, smiling from ear to ear.

“You’re insufferable.” She shakes her head, getting back to her own work.

“And yet, here we are.”

“Harry, it’s 8:30 in the morning, we don’t have class until 10. Do me a favor and stay quiet until then, yeah?”

He makes a motion as to zip his lips, making Casey chuckle and roll her eyes. Later that day, when Harry had to leave for his own lecture, Casey snuck off to go see her friend, Lola, who works in the financial aid office.

“You busy?” Casey asks her friend as she sits down.

“I’m always free for you, Honey.” Lola smiles warmly. “What’s up?”

“Um…Daniel and I decided to officially end things over the weekend.” Casey says quietly. Lola had a cubicle to herself, but there were always wandering ears.

“Oh my god! I knew you guys were on the rocks, but holy shit.”

“He didn’t want to give up New York, and I didn’t want to give up here. It sucks, I’m totally heartbroken.” Casey frowns, trying not to cry again.

“Why didn’t you call me? I would have come over or something.”

“Well, I sort of just wanted to be alone…um, but someone came by to take care of me.”

“Oh, who?”

“H-Harry.”

“Your GA?!” Lola whisper-screams, and Casey nods. “Holy fuck, did anything happen?”

“No.” Casey shakes her head. “He just made me dinner…but he tried to kiss me before he left. I called him out on it, but…I don’t know, like, I…fuck.” Casey pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. “I don’t really know how to articulate this.”

“You find your GA, who happens to only be three years younger than you, attractive.” Lola says for Casey.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. But I don’t want to get involved with anyone else right now. I still love Daniel, like, my heart is still with him.”

“But you also think you like Harry.”

“Well, what’s not to like about him? He makes me laugh, I like talking to him, he’s very sweet…and…fuck, I can’t even think like this. This is so unethical of me. If this were a male professor with a female GA, I’d be totally against it.”

“Yes, but that’s not the situation. You’re twenty-eight, he’s twenty-five, it’d be weird if you didn’t fall for each other.”

“I feel like it’s like when you fall for your therapist, you know? Like, what if he just likes me because he looks up to me? I shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought of this, right? It’s got to be against the rules.”

“Are you his professor?”

“Of course not, you know I don’t teach graduate level courses.”

“So, he in no way is going to be graded by you?”

“No.”

“And he could have easily been assigned to any other professor in the department. There was no special request on your part. And again, he’s twenty-five-years-old, it’s not like he’s some naïve twenty-one-year-old kid who just finished undergrad, you know?”

“That’s true.” Casey chews on her bottom lip. “I don’t know, think I need to get over my break up before I do anything.”

“I think that’s a good idea. You were together for over five years, that’s not something you’ll get over in a day, Babe. What do you say you and I grab drinks this weekend?”

“I can’t, Daniel’s coming back to pack up the rest of his things and he wants me there.”

“Alright, how about on Thursday? We can go for happy hour downtown after I get out.”

“Yeah, okay.” Casey nods. “Think I could definitely use some girl time, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Don’t overthink this Harry thing either. It’s not a problem yet, so don’t turn it into one.”

“You’re right, it’s just been a little flirting, it’s not like anything’s actually happened between us. If he really likes me, he’ll be patient.”

“And don’t forget, you’re worth the wait.”

#harry styles #tell me I'm the only one #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles smut #harry styles x oc #harry styles series #harry styles au #GA!Harry #GArry

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pollylynn · 3 years

Text

Title: Girlfriend, Interrupted WC: 900 Episode: Anatomy of a Murder (3 x 05)

Romance is in the air. He’s not at all sure he likes it.

He doesn’t have to like it, apparently, to be caught up in it. And he seems to be caught up in it. He’s boyfriend obsessed, for one thing, and he definitely doesn’t like that. He is, though the waffle iron is hardly polished and put up, confronted anew with the reality of his daughter’s boyfriend—his daughter’s apparently pretty serious did you know they have a song? boyfriend, who merits an entire day’s worth of girl talk, and he’s not invited. He wants very much to be invited, because he should know, shouldn’t he? He wants to know and he doesn’t. He is—or would like to be—very over that air-borne romance.

But like any good contagion, it follows him. He’s caught up in talk of Beckett’s boyfriend. Her man friend, who has a motorcycle, just like she does, and prefers to date outside of his very fancy profession. He’s obsessed with the idea that she has had—that maybe she is regularly having entire days’ worth of girl talk with Lanie, or with Madison, or hell, maybe with Ryan for all he knows.

And yet there’s still enough to say about Doctor Motorcycle Man that it’s spilling right over into their work. The lack of professionalism is shocking, as far as he’s concerned, because isn’t finding out who made people dead at least as important as saving their stupid lives first thing in the morning? Shouldn’t they be focusing?

There doesn’t seem to be much hope of focus. Not when romance is in the air. Nurse McClintock senses it. Nurse McClintock has his flirt ray set on stun, and he actually manages to fluster the unflusterable Detective Beckett, possibly because she’s boyfriend obsessed and it makes her vulnerable to every passing Lothario in scrubs, and—wow—he’d actually rather contemplate his daughter’s boyfriend’s existence than this.

He heads home to do just that. That’s the game plan, anyway, but it blows up in his face. He fails, big time, as a boyfriend, or as . . . whatever he is to Gina. It’s an explosion that enlightens, an explosion that obscures. It’s possible that he’s boyfriend obsessed and uncharacteristically annoyed by the romance in the air because he doesn’t know what he is in this scenario, and he doesn’t know what he wants to be, other than not the guy who finds out from her that his daughter has a song with her boyfriend and not the guy whose Taylor Swift tickets come in a distant second to front row, center, plus backstage passes.

It takes him a while—it takes him too long—to clue into all that not-exactly-on-the-down-low baggage. It takes another day of The Prime of Miss Detective Beckett before he even has an inkling, and it’s rough going. He stupidly brings up the truth universally acknowledged that the ladies like the bad boys, and he wonders if he’s going to have to further add to Dr. Motorcycle Man’s many appellations. While he’s nursing that self-inflicted wound, Cesar Calderon is smoldering at her hard enough to put Naughty Nurse McClintock to shame, and he wonders if he missed the damned sign-up sheet for Come On To Detective Beckett week.

It takes her being unexpectedly sweet—in her trademark blunt way, of course—for him to check the baggage tags. She nods a maybe so at his outrage that Gina didn’t check with him, but she won’t let him get away with the rant he’s building up to. She stops him in his tracks and makes him wonder why a tremendously thoughtful gesture reads to him like an incursion, why his daughter having a woman to confide in reads to him like a a full frontal assault. It takes her to kick his ass and make him take a look at himself.

He is with Gina. Again. He is a boyfriend—or whatever they’re calling it—and he should act accordingly. So he does his best with a silly grandiose gesture, with an apology and a confession to the fact that he is not used to their being serious romance in the air when it comes to his daughter.

He has his head on straight, or as straight as it ever is, the next morning. She asks how his amends went, very first thing, sweet and blunt in that trademarked way of hers. He gives himself over to the fact that romance is in the air. He reads love letters with her, even though she’s somebody else’s girlfriend. He takes his lumps when she scoffs at him for bitching about style when it’s clear Greg and Amy have real substance.

He swallows hard when Hopelessly Devoted Nurse McClintock looks him dead in the eye and asks what he would do if the love of his life had been locked away. He talks her into a road trip, into playing cupid for two kids who’ve recently been profoundly stupid, all in the name of love.

He sees a softness in her through all their escapades. There’s a lightness that comes with giving in to her inner romantic. He sees clearly that she’s must be a great girlfriend. She’s someone else’s girlfriend. He’s someone else’s boyfriend, or whatever they’re calling it. And he’s not at all sure he likes it.

A/N: The black cloud swirling has no morphousness at all.

images via homeofthenutty

#Castle #Caskett #Castle: Season 3 #Castle: Anatomy of a Murder #Kate Beckett #Richard Castle #Alexis Castle #Gina Cowell #Gina Griffin #Josh Davidson #Lanie Parish #Kevin Ryan #Fic #Fanfic #Fanfiction #Fan Fiction #Writing #Tell Me More

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

Humans are Space Orcs, “Keeping Secrets.”

Wrote another for you all. Hope you have a good day :)

“But I’m HUNGRY.”

“We don’t have time for that.”

“I’m the commander, I’m your boss, and I say I’m hungry.”

Ramirez turned on his heel going toe to toe with the taller man, “I don’t give one shit if you’re hungry or not, something is wrong with you, so I am taking you back to Dr. Krill and Katie, so they can to a scan of your dumbass skull.”

Commander Vir bared his teeth in a feral snarl held back only by Sunny, who had two of her arms wrapped around his chest. He was being absolutely impossible to control. First it had been other people, largely women, but with Ramirez in the crossfire once, and Sunny taking the brunt towards the tail end. Then it had been the aggression, the heightened need to fight absolutely everyone for the smallest infraction, and then had come the hunger, which he hadn’t shut up about for over a mile now.

Ramirez would have gotten them a taxi, but everything here tended to fly, which made Adam assume that it was his since he was “the best pilot in the known galaxy, so it should be me that flies everything.”

Yeah right, like he was going to let commander jackass fly the plane.

But deep down he was worried. Whatever this guy was, it wasn’t Adam.

Adam was….. Well how about the exact opposite of everything this person was doing, he was shy, and polite, and friendly, and humorous. Even when he got angry or indignant, his actions were usually justified for some sort of reason.

But whatever that thing in the alley had been, it had definitely done something to him.

He glanced down at his implant, and pulled up the tracking device that Krill had managed to weld to the commander’s ribs and found that it did indeed say that the commander was right behind him.

Up ahead they were just stepping onto the docking bay platform where ship shuttles were constantly rolling in from the sky above. Noctopolis didn’t have a station big enough for entire ships to land, so they were going to have to take a shuttle back to the ship. It would be best not to take their shuttle as the other marines would need a way to get back when they finally finished with their carousing, so he finally hailed another shuttle, which pulled to a stop in front of them.

“This piece of junk.” The commander snarled, “I’ve seen better shuttles in junkyards. Look at it, the D-4 coupling. Only some kind of bitch drives a shuttle with a -”

Sunny clamped her hand over the commander’s mouth and Ramirez sighed as the shuttle ramp opened and allowed them to step inside.

“To the station?” the pilot asked turning around in its seat to look at them.

“Yes please.” Ramirez said scanning his implant under the reader for payment.

As soon as that was done, he helped Sunny to strap the Commander into place getting a fat lip for his troubles when the man snuck in an angry knee to the face. Ramirez contemplated ‘accidentally’ closing the five point harness on the man’s junk in retaliation, but assumed it wise not to piss the man off more than he already was.

Sunny still had her hand over the Commander’s mouth, as the roar of the engines started up nearly deafening the.

Sunny yelped in shock and drew her hand back from Adam.

“He bit me!”

He barred his teeth at her, complained for a couple more minutes, though, luckily it wasn’t loudly enough for the pilot to hear. Eventually his messed up brain moved on to a quieter activity, pressed against Sunny head resting on her am.

Ramirez wasn’t stupid.

Had he guessed that Adam had a thing for sunny. Totally, who didn’t, but he doubted that Adam wanted anyone to find out like this. Ramirez honestly didn’t care about what he did in his free time, but he was worried about what would happen to his friend when he came down from whatever freaky psychotic behavior this was.

So, what did he do?

He decided to piss him off some more.

The commander could more easily come back from anger than he could from the humiliating of letting everyone know he was in love with an alien.

“Adam, Fuck you.”

It wasn’t his most eloquent diatribe he had ever given, but it worked pretty well.

Adam turned to look at him face twisted into an expression of murderous rage. Sunny was forced to hold him back as the cursing began and the struggling. Ramirez stayed very calm. He just had to keep him pissed like this until they made it to the infirmary.

They made it off the shuttle without incident, and walked through most of the station. Aside form the man hungrily eyeballing a couple of passing people, and a couple of passing food carts, they made it to the ship.

People came to approach them but Ramirez vigorously shook his head waving them off and out of the line of fire. Commander Vir glared them down as if he intended to fight each and every last one of them.

Sunny practically carried him up the corridor and through the ship towards their final destination.

Along the hallway up to the medical bay they ran into Conn, who took one look at Commander Vir and floated backwards a bit. Whatever was inside the man’s head, the starborn wasn’t to keen to be apart of.

Ramirez ignored that little fact and shouldered the next door open with gusto practically bursting into the medical bay with sunny close behind.

Dr. katie and Krill looked up from their work frowning in confusion as Sunny struggled to make the Commander do what she wanted.

Krill floated up.

“Is everything alright?”

Ramirez shook his head, “Something happened to the Commander. I think he was attacked?”

Both Dr. Krill and doctor Katie stepped forward in concern as Sunny forced him to sit down.

Krill moved forward, and so did doctor katie until eventually the man’s eyes fell on her. They all watched as his head tilted slowly moving up to her face after passing over her body. The look on his face was so uncharacteristic of him that Dr. katie and Krill took a step back.

He licked his lips.

Dr. Katie’s eyes narrowed, and she walked over grabbing him aggressively by the face and turning his head this way and that.

He mewled in pain.

“You are definitely right, something is completely wrong with him. Sunny pinned his hands down as he tried to fight Katie off.

“He got all weird like, started going after everyone, and then he tried to fight the, and then he got all hungry. And he's been aggressive and pissy ever since. I have never seen anyone behave like this ever, and I joined the army.”

“Yes the behavior is completely out of character. What did you say happened before he started acting like this.”

“I think someone may have used a device on him. It was dark, and I didn’t get a good look of the shadow, but I saw some metal, like there was a contraption on his head. Sunny continued to hold the commander down as doctor Katie looked over his head. She completely ignored whatever he was saying, though it did happen to be rather alarming coming from Adam.

“Here, on the scalp, what do you make of it Krill.”

Krill moved forward to take a look leaning in closely for an examination, “Hmmm, yes. Puncture wounds on the temples and under the eyes, very minuscule. Almost microscopic in fact.

Adam bit at Katie’s hand and she pulled back.

The look on her face was one of complete no nonsense as she stepped away grabbed something and then came back.

Adam looks almost shocked when she stabbed him in the back with the syringe.

“What did you give him.” Krill wondered

The concoction was self-evident a moment later as the man lost all muscle tone. Sunny grabbed him and lay him back.

“Combined sedative and paralytic. That should keep him still she said.” Behind her glasses her warm eyes had changed to one of worry. She wasn’t mad at the commander knowing that something had been done to hi to make him behave in such a barbaric manner.

“Call in Dr. Adric will you. He might be able to help us explain at least some of this behavior.”

It wasn’t long before the man slipped into the room honey tones of his dark skin washed out by sharp overhead light. He walked forward and stopped with the other two doctors.

“Something is wrong with the commander.”

“Increased libido, hyper aggression, and hunger to the point of not being able to control himself. We had to sedate him.”

“Strange, sounds like you just gave me the textbook definition of the Id.”

“The what now?”

Dr Adric shrugged, “Oh nothing it was simply a theory proposed by a psychologist more than two thousand years ago. His methods have since been questioned and greatly disproven, but Freud did coin the idea of the Id, or the subconscious driving for of the human mind that encompasses all our base desires, food, sex, aggression, and so on.” he glanced down at the commander, “In this case, i might suggest something in causation with the function of the brain stem (including all base drives) and an inhibition of the frontal lobe and limbic system.”

“Why those in particular?” Krill wondered

“The frontal lobe, as you know is in charge of executive decision. Whatever function has kept these drives and habits suppressed, is not working. With the limbic system down, he has no way of controlling his emotions which might explain the aggression, though I have never seen anything manifest in this way.”

“So you have seen it?”

“Alzheimer patients can experience similar behavior towards the end stages of the disease as their executive function and limbic systems break down, but he doesn't appear to be having any related memory involvement. I would suggest an x-ray fMRI and CT scan to begin.”

“Why the x-ray?” wondered Ramirez pretty sure that that could show you the skull and not the brain.

“Looking for metal of course.”

It was probably a good idea as the first x-ray image lit up like a lightbulb. Gathered around the screen, Sunny and Ramirez looking over their heads they saw the skull was packed full of shiny white dots. The skull was intact, and the dots were on the outside of his brain, but they were small, very small.

“Think you can get those out, Dr?” Katie asked turning to look at Krill.

“Yes, they are very small, a large magnet should do the trick.”

Dr Adric made a joke about putting him in an MRI to do the work quicker, and received a look form Krill while Katie laughed.

By the end of the hour all oft hem were staring at a minute grouping of microscopic electrodes that had been pulled from the man’s head.

“That would explain it.” Dr Adric muttered

“Explain what?”

“Generating a magnetic current through areas of the brain can disrupt its function. We’ve known that for thousands of years. Continuous stimulation of the occipital lobe, for example, can make someone go blind. So whoever did this intentionally shut off his executive functions, or stimulated his base drives. I believe what we just saw is the hardwired, natural human instincts.

“How very comforting”, Krill said, obviously not very comforted

“Well, lets wake him up and see if the problem resolved.

Nervously, the group gathered around the man who had been mostly sedated for the entire procedure. He wasn’t fully asleep, but he was only half conscious. The reversal agent woke him up pretty quickly, and he lifted his head sort of groggily.

He blinked owlishly at them, his face neutral.

They waited worried.

“What…. Happened?” He groaned hand to his head

His single eye slowly focused in on Dr Katie, and then he blanched absolutely white. Eyes widening he put a hand over his mouth.

“Yep, that’s him.”

“Commander, are you ok? What do you remember.”

He grabbed Katie by the arm stammering, “Katie I… I’m so sorry I-I dont know what came over me. I’ve never done anything like that in my life I swear to god.” he looked near close to panic, “You know I would never intentionally ever do anything like that to you ever, and I am so sorry. I have no idea why that even happened.”

She grabbed his hand, “Adam, it’s alright. I know you wouldn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

He turned his head, and as he saw sunny and Ramirez his face went from bleach white to pale pink, to bright red.

Ramirez grinned and threw in a wink just for fun.

He thought the man was going to stroke out and die. He dropped his head into his hands. Even his hands were red.

“Do you remember what happened, commander?” Dr krill asked

“I…. I don’t now I was waiting for Ramirez and sunny but then…. I saw something in the alley. Next thing I knew everything was dark, and I was being thrown around. It pinned me to the ground and did something…. That’s when ramirez and sunny came out. After that I remember….. I remember feeling, so angry and, and hungry and….” He went quiet as his neck blushed and even deeper shade of red, “I’m so sorry”, he moaned.

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything else, Commander.’

“Well I mean…. I’m not sure, but maybe...I thought it might have said, the Kree, but I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“The Kree. Didn’t the GA make contact with a race that called themselves the Kree.”

Te commander lifted his head, “Yes, though it was only by long distance communication, otherwise no one knows anything about them.”

“Well, rest, Commander, and we will figure this all out later.”

He nodded dejectedly as the doctors stepped from the room all the while discussing what the device could have been.

Ramirez followed after them having taken a step out the door when.

“Sunny, I am so sorry. What happened, I didn’t meant to do any of it.”

He paused beside the doorway knowing he should move on, but being unable to do so.

“None of it?”

There was silence.

“I…..”

“So I shouldn’t expect anything like that ever…. Even in an appropriate context?”

Stammering

He really should go

“It’s fine, Adam, but that is something I just needed to know.”

“But I didn’t say that, Sunny I…. I just.”

“You just…. What?”

“Eventually yes of course…. And I want to…. But I….”

Ramirez shook himself and pulled away. He shouldn’t be listening in. It was wrong despite how much he wanted to shove it in maverick’s face and claim his two hundred bucks.

He wasn’t going to rat out his friend to everyone.

He knew what being a friend meant, and often that included keeping secrets.

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thegoodgayshit · 3 years

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Luz’s mother really doesn’t want to send Luz to camp. She knows once she leaves, there is no going back. But Luz has a knack for getting into trouble, and one day she stumbles into the same type of people her mother would have preferred she avoided. After helping Luz dissolve her high school bully into dust, Eda and Lilith know right away that this kid is just like them - a child of the gods. So Luz hops on a Pegasus and heads to Camp Half-blood, where she embarks on a dangerous quest that makes her both friends and enemies... and she might even save Olympus along the way.

Chapter Twelve: I Learn the Hard Way I Love to Talk

Kansas City was Luz’s kind of weather. It was sunny and hot right as the sun began to rise, and Luz felt her muscle warm with the sun. The three of them got off the bus and headed to a café to grab some breakfast so Luz could catch them up on her dreams somewhere a little more private.

They went into a Starbucks and each ordered, taking turns using the bathroom to freshen up. They decided to grab a couple of wraps and snacks for the road since they didn’t know when they’d have time again. The barista insisted they get the staff discount, (Luz swears that were all just the flower crowns and not her bargaining for a lower price) and they packed some of the food away in their backpacks and took a seat at one of the window tables. Luz picked at her ham and cheese sandwich as she recalled her dream, the memory of them making her lose her appetite.

Gus had taken a big bite out of a blueberry muffin as she recalled the mountain dream, and he got so excited he choked and needed to swallow down some hot chocolate.

“That must have been Hestia you saw in the cage. So we know that she’s still in Colorado.”

Luz nodded in agreement. That did make sense. The girl had seen Luz staring right at her, and spoken directly to her. If that didn’t fit the description of a goddess she didn’t know what did. She moved on to the dream about Amity, but this one she said a lot slower, doing her best to keep her temper. Amity might have been mean to Luz when they met, and she didn’t like hearing that she had bullied Willow, but nobody deserved to be treated the way Luz saw her being treated. They had to get her out of there. When Luz finished, Willow and Gus seemed to share the sentiment.

“That’s terrible!” Gus exclaimed, being careful to not choke this time.

“She’s been alone for over a week now,” Willow added with a frown. “I don’t know how much longer that she’s going to hold out.”

“Well, I know where she is. I saw the address in the dream. 1200, West 55th street.” Luz said, shoveling the rest of her sandwich in her mouth, her body filling with newfound determination. “Let’s go get her.”

“It’s definitely a trap,” Gus warned, but he was also packing away his food garbage, so Luz knew he was also ready to go. “We need to be careful.”

“Whatever it is, we can handle it,” Luz said confidently. “The first guy even said that he would be dealing with us on his own. It’s three on one! How could we lose?”

“It’s bad luck to talk like that, Luz,” Willow whispered lowly. She was rubbing her arms nervously. “You’ll jinx us.”

The three of them threw out their trash and headed out into the city. They called for a cab and squeezed into the backseat, asking the driving to take them to the address. It was the weekend, so there wasn’t too much traffic, and before they knew it they had pulled up to a huge white manor. They paid the driver and got out, exchanged awed glances at the mansion before them.

Luz had seen it in her dream, but in person, it was a lot grander. It was an old colonial-style mansion with a few modern twists, with big windows and a triple glass garage. It was sitting on at least two acres of land. The stone plaque she had seen in her dream was there, and it was gated by a huge fence. Outside the gate, there was the huge sculpture of a lyre, a tell-tale sign from Theseus that they were in the right place.

“So, what exactly is the plan?” Luz asked, feeling a lot meeker than she was before.

“We could try being stealthy, getting in, taking Amity, getting out,” Gus offered. “I don’t know how effective a full-frontal approach would be.”

“What about the fence?” She said, gesturing to it.

Willow hummed, before taking a couple of steps back and running. She leaped at the fence, climbing it with ease and leaping to the other side, landing in a roll. She turned to the two of them and smiled. “Just like the rock wall at camp!”

“Woah!” Luz said, her mouth dropping. She forgot how agile Willow could be when she wanted to. Sharing a look with Gus, the two of them followed her, albeit not as gracefully as Willow. When they hit the ground, they began to quietly head through the garden to the main entrance. Crouching behind the entrance, they looked at one another with a raised brow.

“Now what?” Luz said, but before Gus could open his mouth, the hair on the back of Luz’s neck rose, and the sound of the most beautiful instrument Luz had ever heard echoed throughout the air. The doors to the manor swung open, and without even realizing she was doing it, Luz stood. It was enchanting, and Luz needed to get closer.

Willow snapped, and Luz’s head cleared immediately. She shook it out, and looked around in panic. She had walked all the way up to the entrance of the door, and so had Gus before she even knew what had happened. Gus looked embarrassed, rubbing the back of his head.

“What happened?”

“Musical enchantments,” Willow said with a frown. “I remember the Apollo campers experimenting with those my first summer at camp. It’s not too dissimilar to plant magic, it also comes from the heart. We’ll have to be careful.”

“How do you ignore something like that?” Luz asked, her heart hammering in her chest from the effect of the music.

“Try and keep your mind grounded,” Willow offered. “I’ve had some practice, so you’ll be at a disadvantage, but if you try and focus on your surroundings we’ll be okay.”

Now that they were staring into the foyer of the manor, Luz was getting a lot more nervous. The whole house seemed to glare at her eerily.

“It’s creepy,” Gus said, and Luz nodded. They all drew their weapons, and Aletheia shifted into a knife. Gus clicked the button on his watch and drew his shield.

“Let’s stay together,” Luz said, doing her best to muster up that power of Hermes. Her friends would need it. “We’re strong together, and we can take whatever is thrown at us.”

Willow and Gus perked up a little, and together they headed into the house. It was much bigger on the inside than they had anticipated, and Luz bit her lip trying to remember where the room Amity was being kept in was.

“It was facing the window, towards the street…” she mumbled, turning right into another foyer. "It must be down here."

Sure enough, they soon entered the room, and Luz was shocked at how familiar it looked. Her dream had gotten everything right. But when Luz picked up speed to get to where Amity had been chained the night before, she turned the corner and came upon nothing.

She wasn’t there.

Luz faltered, her eyes widening in panic, and she heard Willow and Gus inhale sharply. But before they could turn and start looking around the house, the music started again, and Luz felt her muscles getting tighter. They were so heavy like she had been working out for a week straight and she couldn’t stand anymore. She dropped to her knees, unable to stop it. Next to her, Gus dropped his shield.

“Looking for someone?”

Luz did her best to turn her body to the sound of the voice. Standing in the archway of the room from the entrance they had come through was the man from Luz’s dreams, now dressed in a white cotton shirt and cuffed blue jeans. His black hair was gelled back, and he had olive skin and dark eyes that were glinting at them humorously. On his belt was Amity’s sword, and Luz’s eyes hardened at the sight. He had a golden lyre in one hand, that seemed to be playing the music on its own, and in the other, there was a set of chains wrapped around his hand. When she looked down at what the chain was connecting too, Luz’s eyes widened.

At his feet Amity was kneeling, looking just as battered as she had in the dream, her hands chained together in her lap. But now, at least, she was awake. Her gold eyes were misty like she hadn’t slept well in a long time, but they blinked in familiarity when they landed on Luz and her friends. Luz immediately perked up, swallowing hard to try and pull herself to her knees. All she managed was to stand on one knee.

Luz tried to shout, her face contorted in anger, but when she opened her mouth, no words came out. Gus was trying next to her as well, and it had the same effect. They were quieted.

“I have heard of your abilities, daughter of Hermes.” The man said, shooting her a cold smile. “My lyre will have stopped your voice for now. Try all you want, but it is fruitless.”

Next to her, Willow was still standing, seemingly unaffected by the music. The man lifted a brow to her.

“I have not seen a demigod resist my music in a long time. Are you a sister of mine?”

“No, my mother is Demeter,” Willow said, but from the look on her face, she didn’t really want to say anything. The man furrowed his brow further, speechless. Willow took the opportunity to step forward, clutching her sword. She did her best at a smile, adjusting the crown on her forehead.

“Please sir, don’t hurt me or my friends. We just want to leave as soon as possible and be out of your way.”

Orpheus faltered for just a moment before the smile returned to his face.

“Ah, the crown of Antheia. No wonder you are resisting so well to my magic. You have a little of yours on you as well, don’t you?”

Willow tightened her grip on her kopis, clearly disappointed that didn’t work.

“Let my friend go. Theseus sent us to take her home.”

“Theseus?” The man said with a laugh. “Has the plan changed yet again? I am not interested in playing 'quest' like I did in my last life. It drove me mad, chasing around prophecies left and right. No, I was given my orders. You won’t be taking her today.”

Willow glanced at Luz and Gus worriedly, and Luz figured out what was happening. Willow was buying them time. Luz inhaled the best she could, trying to follow Willow’s advice to ground herself. She pushed the music to the back of her mind, trying to focus on the quest at hand. Amity was still blinking at them like she couldn’t believe they were there. Luz pooled her strength. They had to get her out of this house.

“What do you mean, playing quest?” Willow said, feigning curiosity. She was taking a gamble on the man enjoying talking about himself, which seemed to work because he smirked.

“Back in Greece, I was a great musician. I traveled with Jason and his Argonauts on a series of quests far more interesting than the one you are currently on. I was a great asset to their team, I curbed the Sirens with a single song on my lyre. We brought glory to all demigods!”

The story seemed familiar to Luz, but she was too focused on gathering her strength. Willow thankfully put the pieces together for her.

“You’re Orpheus, the son of Apollo.”

Orpheus crinkled his nose. “Must you refer to me as his son?”

“But he gave you that lyre,” Willow said, confused. “Why would you not be proud to be his son?”

“I am not proud to be any sort of thing to these gods,” Orpheus retorted with a low growl. “The gods are the reason I lost Euridice. They played me like a fiddle, and I was the one to pay the price for it! I dedicated my music to my father and he stood by and watched while I suffered! When I died, I swore to the judges that I would never praise the gods. I was a heretic and a fool for trusting them to begin with. ”

The more his voice raised, the harder it was for Luz to keep her focus and not submit to the music. It seemed to get louder every time Orpheus raised his voice. Next to her, Gus’s face was turning purple as he tried to ground himself. Willow shuffled, realizing she was running out of time. If they just had a couple of seconds… but they still needed a plan, and they definitely couldn’t talk now.

Luz looked at the lyre, angry that a dumb set of strings had bested her. But as she looked at them moving back and forth, a thought overcame her. She glanced down at Aletheia, still in its knife form, and clenched it.

It would be a Hail Mary for sure. She wouldn’t have time to aim she would just have to throw. There was the risk she could hit Amity, and if she hit Orpheus it probably wouldn’t do much but buy them a couple of seconds.

“You let Euridice go because you looked back in the underworld,” Willow insisted, and Orpheus’ face purpled with rage. “Hades and Persephone told you the rules.”

“They tricked me!” He yelled, and Luz and Gus buckled at the new volume the music was making. Willow even winced, clutching her temple. At Orpheus’ feet, Amity groaned, and Luz felt her heartbeat quicken. They were running out of time.

She needed a miracle. Closing her eyes, Luz ducked her head and prayed.

Dad, I don’t know if you’re listening, but if you are, please. I need your help to throw my knife straight. Help me save my friends.

She didn’t know if it was the newfound strength from taking a moment to collect herself and resist the music, or if it was her dad’s blessing, or even if it was just unmeasured and unearned hubris, but when Luz opened her eyes she was ready.

She looked up at Willow, who was looking at her expectantly. Luz still couldn’t speak, but she did have her hands. She looked at Willow desperately and held up five fingers at her side. A countdown.

Somehow, Willow understood. Her eyes widened, and she turned back to Orpheus as Luz put down the third finger.

“They didn’t trick you! You made the mistake, you knew what would happen if you looked!” Willow exclaimed, doing her best to get a rise out of him.

Orpheus roared, clenching his fists and turning his gaze directly onto Willow. “I will make my music silence you!”

Willow stumbled as the effect shifted between them, dropping to her knees, and Luz felt the restrains of the music break from her. She scrambled to her feet, rearing back with Aletheia and throwing with all her might. Somehow, it sailed directly into the lyre, cutting the middle two strings in half and silencing the music for good. Luz felt her muscles relax as all the strength came flooding back into her body, and she turned to Gus and opened her mouth, finally able to speak.

“Go!”

There was instant chaos. Gus scrambled to his feet and charged, knocking Orpheus flat with his shield and the demigod yelped in surprise as he stumbled, skidding across the tile. Gus stabbed through Amity’s chains with his spear, breaking them. Willow raced over and used her kopis to cut the chains around her hands, and Amity finally was free.

Luz took off sprinting towards Aletheia, which was lying on the floor across the room. As she scrambled to pick it up, she squealed in surprise and dove left, barely escaping being cleaved in two by a xiphos.

Orpheus glared furiously down at Luz, gripping Amity’s sword tightly in his hand.

“You broke my lyre, you feeble excuse for a half-blood! You will pay for this!”

Luz’s eyes widened as he swung, and Luz had no choice but to dive again. She wasn’t nearly skilled enough with the knife to deflect a sword like this one, definitely not without getting her hand cut off. She didn’t think any amount of nectar could grow a new one back.

The sword swung and missed as Luz rolled, and she back kicked as hard as she could towards his hands. Luz felt something connect as he screamed in pain, and she grinned with glee at the realization she must have hit his wrists. She heard the clattering of something on the floor, and scrambled to her feet, only to immediately hit the floor again as she got kicked in the ribs hard. The wind was knocked from Luz’s lungs, and she cried out in pain as he stepped hard on her back, pinning her to the ground.

“Belos was right about you demigod’s,” he hissed, pushing harder to press Luz’s face into the tile. “You’re all just as foolish as we were.”

“Luz!”

Orpheus cried out again as Gus rammed into him with his shield, knocking him flat. Luz coughed as Willow helped her to her feet, and when her vision cleared, she smiled when she realized that Amity was standing, even if it was a little shaky, leaning on Willow for support. Gus backed Orpheus into a corner with his spear, holding it up menacingly at him.

“Stay back!”

“Oh, how menacing. Aren’t you just the scariest little boy?” Orpheus said sarcastically. He lifted his nose to Gus, mocking him. “Stay back!”

Gus flushed red with embarrassment. Luz couldn’t believe what he’d just done, and she growled under her breath, unable to contain herself.

“How can you seriously call us names? You’re acting like a little kid!” Luz stepped forward, glaring right down at him. Now that he was weaponless, alone, and overpowered, Luz could see right through him. He was just like Theseus. Bitter, lonely, and entitled because he thought he deserved better.

“You say that it’s the god's fault you got what you got, but that’s not true,” Luz said, and she saw Orpheus blink like he couldn’t believe how Luz was speaking to him. “You got what you got because you made mistakes that you blamed on everybody but yourself. And now you’re doing it again.”

There was so much she wanted to say to Orpheus, but she knew it was a waste of her breath. He had made his choices long ago, but Luz refused to let him embarrass and upset her friends because he couldn’t take accountability for his actions.

“I haven’t done this demigod thing for long, but I know that by putting your faith in Belos, and trying to destroy the gods, you are making a mistake that you’ll regret. We are not going to make the same mistake.”

Orpheus’ lips pulled into a sneer. “Tough words from you, half-blood. Why don’t you go find Belos yourself and fulfill the prophecy.”

Next to Willow, Amity inhaled sharply, and Luz looked over, her eyes widening. She looked terrified. Swallowing, Luz steadied her breath, turning back to Orpheus with a steeled expression.

“No. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to leave you alive, and leave this place. Then you’re going to tell Belos that we’re coming for him, and we’re going to free Hestia and save Olympus. That’s a promise.”

Orpheus quieted, pondering this for a moment. He looked directly into Luz’s eyes and then scoffed.

“I was right, you are foolish.”

Luz didn’t respond to that, she just touched her knife and Aletheia flipped back to a ring. She put it on her finger and walked over to pick up Amity’s sword. Heading back over to Amity, who had been watching the whole conversation in silence, Luz extended it out to her by the hilt.

“Here, you can have this back.”

Amity blinked at it like she wasn’t sure what it was. She looked up at Luz, frowning. Luz just smiled, wiggling it so she got the hint to take it. Eventually, she smiled softly back at Luz and strapped the sword to her belt. Already she was looking a little better, though she clearly needed some serious rest.

“Come on guys,” Luz said, passing one more look back at Orpheus who was glaring at Luz like he was imagining her head on a stick. She completely turned her back on him, heading back the way they came. “We’re done here.”

The four of them headed slowly out of the mansion, and towards the gate. With a swing of her kopis, Willow cut the lock on the gate, and they pushed it open, heading out into the street.

They started to walk, but their progress was slow. Amity was limping on her leg, and she couldn’t move very fast, and Gus and Willow were walking in front and behind keeping an eye out for either Orpheus following them or sending help.

They walked a significant distance from the manor in silence, none of them sure where they were really going before Amity couldn’t go any farther. She exhaled heavily and almost collapsed, and Luz caught her in her arms.

“Amity!” She cried out.

“I’m okay,” she breathed after a few moments. “I think I hurt my leg.”

“We shouldn’t have let you walk this far,” Luz mumbled, feeling guilty. Amity had been hurt for over a week now. She needed medical attention.

“There’s a little shaded area we can rest just ahead,” Willow said quietly. Luz realized she hadn’t said a word to Amity since they left the manor. She wondered if now that she was safe, all their skeletons in the closet were starting to resurface. Even Gus, who was usually quite friendly, had seemed to pick up the awkwardness too and was also unusually quiet.

“I can keep going,” Amity said, gritting her teeth and trying to push herself off of Luz to keep going. Luz shook her head, tightening her hold around Amity.

“No, you’re hurt. I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

Amity pinked, opening her mouth to protest. “Luz, you don’t need to-”

“And, scoop!” Luz held Amity up in her arms and continued to walk. She wasn’t going to let her hurt herself further because she was trying to act all tough around her friends. Luz knew Amity had a lot of layers, but she could sacrifice some of them for her personal safety.

Amity must have realized this too because she didn’t protest for much longer. Luz could tell after a couple more minutes of walking that Amity was a lot more exhausted than she’d let on. Even though they were the same size, she was practically weightless. She probably hadn’t been given much in terms of eating since she’d been captured. Despite the sunny weather, her body was shaking too. She didn’t think it was from the cold, and with a jolt of understanding, Luz realized it must have been from fear. Luz frowned at this, turning her head to whisper quietly to her so Willow and Gus wouldn’t hear.

“I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through in the last couple of weeks,” she said, and Amity tensed, turning her head away like she didn’t want to talk about it. Luz hesitated, not wanting to push her, so instead she tried a gentler approach.

“We’re going to figure this out together, ok? You’ll be able to rest, and then we can talk when you’re feeling up for it.”

Amity swallowed, and Luz looked down at her face. She seemed to be grappling with something, her eyes giving away how stressed out she really was. Luz felt guilt swirl in her stomach. She hadn’t meant to upset her more than she already was. Just as she was going to open her mouth to apologize, her eyebrows widened in surprise when she felt Amity rest her head onto Luz’s shoulder.

“Okay,” she said simply.

Luz felt a smile she couldn’t control pull at her lips. Maybe they were on the right path as friends after all.

Amity mumbled something else into her shoulder and Luz frowned leaning down.

“What was that?”

Amity pinked again, looking up to meet Luz’s eyes. Her gold eyes flashed in embarrassment.

“I said thank you. For saving me.”

Luz grinned, tilting her head and smiling so hard her eyes squinted.

“That’s what friends do!”

#the owl house #lumity #luz x amity #Percy Jackson AU #shelby speaks

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365days365movies · 3 years

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January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

youtube

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/23/2020: I WATCHED THE LAST DRIVE-IN WITH JOE BOB BRIGGS AND ALL YOU GET ARE THESE CRAPPY REVIEWS - pt 2: HACK-OLANTERN

This was a tough one. On paper, it's extremely promising: An Indian production team who had never heard of Halloween decided to make a holiday-themed American horror movie loaded up with all the lucrative sex and violence they could buy, dreaming of a success that could never possibly arrive. While I have some moral qualms with the term "outsider art", I always welcome the work of filmmakers whose disconnection from mainstream production requires them to work from the ground up, inventing whatever they need to express themselves as they go along. The results can be weird, funny, and in any case, necessarily original. When things don't work out for the best, it might be because the filmmaker is thinking less about his own desires and more about manipulating the audience, usually with money in mind. Even though the satanic slash movie HACK-O-LANTERN maintains a certain amount of helpless bizarreness, it's also...just kind of hard to get through. Let's see if I can figure out why.

The plot, such as it is, is focused, inasmuch as it is focused on anything, on a devil-worshipping pervert whose son-slash-grandson Tommy (Gregory Scott Cummins aka Mac's Dad on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia) is coming of age on Halloween night. "Tonight you will know what power is!" cackles the old creep (played by Hy Pyke, best-if-at-all known as Taffey Lewis in BLADERUNNER) as he and Tommy do their secret satanic handshake, revealing that they don't know the difference between devil horns and the ASL sign for "I love you". Tommy spends most of his time pumping iron in his mom's basement and trancing out to the tunes of hair metal band DC LaCroix; this is the movie's most memorable sequence, a hallucinatory music video in which a budget version of Kali shoots laser beams out of her eyes that turn drums into shrunken heads and guitars into pitchforks.

Meanwhile, Tommy's goody two-shoes brother Deputy Roger (Jeff Brown) and nice girl sister Vera (Carla Baron) are gearing up for their tiny town's Halloween party. Everyone is excited for the holiday, which they celebrate with an unlikely combo of burlesque-flavored full-frontal stripping, bellydancing, bands, and stand-up comedy. Rog even gets laid in the cemetery by Vera's slutty friend Beth (Particia Christie), who utters the suspiciously unflattering post-coital comment, "You enjoyed it. I could tell." Unfortunately, everybody's good time is tainted by a murder spree perpetrated by a crazed killer in a cape and devil mask who takes down the likes of Jeanna Fine, the most prominent but not the only porn veteran in this picture. Is the murderer Tommy, coming into his satanic power? Or is it Tommy's mom (Katina Garner), who is pissed off that her adult kids are living their own lives? Or is it... look, it doesn't matter who it is. The ending isn't going to make any sense anyway.

This movie is a lot more fun to describe than it is to watch. Somehow, all of this wanton zaniness doesn't accrue much charisma, and it's hard to feel excited by how little you can understand of what the hell's supposed to be going on. Possibly the best part of my own viewing experience was just the trivia download I got from this installment of The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs. Briggs' typically entertaining commentary included the claim by one of the filmmakers that he made his first fortune selling 50,000 tee shirts that said I LOVE MY AUNT on them, or the frightening fact that production was delayed when director Jag Mundhra fell into the open grave they used for a murder scene, and had to be hospitalized for months. I wish I had written more of these factoids down, but I was having a hard enough time just keeping track of what was happening in the movie itself. Oh well. It ought to become available on Shudder soon. Consume it with my personal caveat that HACK-O-LANTERN is better enjoyed as an anthropological oddity, than as a real movie.

#blogtober #2020 #hack-o-lantern #halloween #horror #satanic #devil worship #possession #slasher #jag mundhra #jeanna fine #hy pyke #gregory scott cummins #jeff brown #carla baron #katina garner

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dfcfanfics · 4 years

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Righteous Indignation Miraculous Prompt, Pt. 2

...Said The Spider To The Fly

Standing in the entranceway to his own house, Chat Noir did his very best to look natural and not at all nervous. Standing next to him, Ladybug gave him a small smile, but he could see that she was also feeling a bit edgy.

“You okay, my Lady?” he whispered to her.

“I think so. I’m just... not sure if we should be doing this alone. Whatever this is,” Ladybug whispered back. “Some kind of... business proposition?”

“I’m not sure, either,” Chat agreed. “It surprised me a lot when we saw his advertisement, asking us to meet with him.”

“What do you think he could want?” asked Ladybug.

“Well... I do know that Agreste Enterprises does handle fragrances... maybe they’d want to develop a Chat Noir counterpart to--”

“You mention that other fragrance, you lose a finger,” snapped Ladybug.

“One with an infinitely less offensive advertising campaign,” replied Chat, hastily. “But there are so many possible things that--”

Nathalie approached the two of them, interrupting their conversation. “So sorry to keep the two of you waiting,” she stated. “Mr. Agreste will see you now.”

~----~

“Ah! Greetings, Ladybug, Chat Noir. It is a pleasure to meet Paris’s finest once again,” bubbled Gabriel, clearly in an upbeat mood.

As he rose to meet them and shake hands, Ladybug replied, “Likewise, Sir,” in a small voice. Chat returned the handshake with a curious look on his face, but covered it well.

What is up with HIM today? he wondered.

“Obviously,” Gabriel began as he retook his seat, “the two of you saw my advertisement.”

“It was pretty hard to miss. A half-page in both Le Figaro and Le Monde, asking us to contact you?” noted Ladybug. “That must have cost a small fortune.”

“Not so much as you might think. I know people at each publication, and, after all... you two do not have telephone numbers or email addresses one could look up,” shrugged Gabriel. “I did not know if the two of you read either newspaper, but I felt sure that someone each of you knew would see it if you did not.”

“It worked as you planned it,” Chat smiled. “Maybe we should set up some sort of how-to-contact system... but that’s for another time. What can we help you with?”

“I will not waste your valuable time,” Gabriel stated, shifting into business mode. “I owe each of you a large debt of gratitude; several, actually. The two of you were responsible from freeing me from one of those foul Akumas, and Ladybug, you in particular saved the very life of someone very dear to me.”

“And to mmm... um... it was my pleasure,” Ladybug stammered. “All in a day’s work.”

“Nevertheless,” continued Gabriel, “I have been watching out for an opportunity to return the favor and do the two of you some great good. And I believe that I have found one.” He sat back in his chair. “I witnessed the media circus surrounding that tawdry little fragrance advertisement, freeloading off of your good name and reputation.”

Ladybug’s head sank in frustration. “Yes,” she hissed. “I have nothing but love for this city and the people in it... but in their case, I will make an exception.”

“That advertisement was completely wrong,” Chat agreed. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, fantasy material for my next three years, wrong, wrong and wrong, he thought.

“I am intimately familiar with the business world, as you might imagine,” Gabriel mused. “No stranger to battles over copyright and trademark, legalities of parody and homage and fair use, struggling to protect ideas and imagery which I hold dear. And in pondering this, two points occurred to me. One is that nothing is preventing other companies from piggybacking off of this, creating entire product lines of bastardized merchandise with your names and faces all over them.”

He turned towards Chat Noir. “I do not know if yours would be as... inappropriately sexualized as your partner’s, young man, but would you be comfortable with Chat Noir’s Clumping Kitty Litter hitting grocery shelves?” Gabriel smiled. “I can see it now. Chat Noir Says ‘It’s So Easy On My Paws!’ on the label.”

“Uggggh,” groaned Chat. Ladybug suppressed a giggle, feeling sympathetic.

“And the other point is that, not to be rude in any way... but the two of you are children,” noted Gabriel. “I struggle with these sorts of legal difficulties weekly, and even I need to retain staff to make proper sense of it. Am I correct that the two of you are without such representation?”

“I... I have a lawyer working with me on the fragrance case,” Ladybug replied. “Not so much on the overall problem that you mentioned.”

“Well, while tearing the roof off of a building may be an adequate form of stress relief...” Gabriel continued.

“No one has proven that,” snapped Ladybug, a little more quickly than she’d intended.

“Of course not,” grinned Gabriel. “Though no jury would possibly convict. If I had powers such as yours and someone wronged me so thoroughly... no corner of the Earth would be far enough for them to run.”

“All right... we have identified the problem. What are you proposing?” asked Chat.

“In a nutshell... officially sanctioned merchandise would go a long way towards protecting the marketplace from knockoffs and similar trash. I am proposing a business partnership between the two of you and Agreste Enterprises; one that would provide both legal protection for your names and images and control over what goes out into the world featuring them.”

~----~

“Please... continue,” said Ladybug, looking unsure. “I do hope you know, Mr. Agreste, that the last thing that Chat and I want to do with our powers is to make money off of them.”

“Very much understood!” Gabriel backpedaled. “I would not have dreamed otherwise. I would gladly direct a significant percentage of all revenues to the charities of your choice, rather than to either of you directly. Not that I would know to whom to write a check... or what accounts you could deposit them into.”

“What kinds of products are you thinking about?” asked Chat, his curiosity piqued.

“I would start slowly at first, were I your business advisor in this,” Gabriel rattled off. “An officially authorized set of fragrances would be an excellent start, to crowd that impostor off the market. I am envisioning clothing lines, an area in which Agreste is an industry leader; casual logoed wear for children, let us say, or even infants. ‘Baby-Bugs and Kittenwear’ branding comes to mind for the latter.”

“Go on...” Ladybug ventured.

“Beyond that, we would have to see what the public’s response would be. My staff is highly trained at identifying what customers are hungry for,” Gabriel replied. “Also, you would have our legal staff at your disposal for related issues.”

“About that,” Chat jumped in. “All of that sounds well and good... but it also sounds as if we’re signing over the legal rights to our own public personas. What control would we retain over how those are maintained, or the quality of the products, for instance?”

Gabriel stared back at him, mildly impressed. “You speak as if you have some experience with such matters, young man,” he said.

“Without disclosing things that I cannot say out loud... I’m not entirely a stranger to that kind of thing,” allowed Chat.

“Fair enough,” smiled Gabriel. “The two of you are minors, obviously. And since I doubt that either of you would feel comfortable bringing your parents into negotiations...”

“My father doesn’t know that I do... this,” Chat blurted out. Ladybug shot him a look, but it was already spoken.

“I assumed as much,” Gabriel answered. Ha! he gloated, internally. Valuable information for me to tuck away. Whomever his father may be, that is some poor sap that we may find a way to exploit...

“Leaving our families out of this...” Ladybug said, evenly.

“Agreed. It would take some finesse to find lawyers and notaries who could hammer out the details accordingly, so... it may be possible to put it on paper, or portions of it may be more of a handshake deal between us,” ventured Gabriel. “Agreste Enterprises would maintain some legal control over the Ladybug and Chat Noir trademarks until you reach maturity, at which point you would be more capable of renegotiating on your own behalf.”

“I cannot hand you full peace of mind on a silver platter,” Gabriel allowed. “As with all business negotiations... there would be some element of trust on both sides. I would imagine, for instance, that the prospect of the heroes of Paris openly denouncing Agreste’s products would be sufficient impetus for us to maintain our end of any deal.”

~----~

Ladybug turned to Chat Noir. “I’m... not sure what to think about this. How about you?”

Chat scratched his head. “I’m not sure, either. On the one hand, it sounds like a positive way to keep things like that sex-bomb ad from happening again, and get more responsible merchandise into our fans’ hands, but...” He turned to Gabriel and asked, “Can we have some time to think this over?”

“Absolutely, my boy. Take all the time you need,” Gabriel assured him. “Though do note that I cannot control who might flood the marketplace with more tawdriness while you’re considering my offer.”

“All right. Thank you, Mr. Agreste. We will give this full consideration, and I will speak with... whomever I can about it. We will be in touch,” smiled Ladybug.

“Likewise. Thank you for reaching out to us like this,” agreed Chat.

“Absolutely my pleasure,” Gabriel beamed. “I do hope that we can reach an agreement.”

As he watched the two of them leave his office, Gabriel sat back in his chair... and grinned a particularly sinister grin.

Yes... go out and speak with your parents, or some dime-store lawyer, he smiled to himself. Weigh the pros and cons. And then, when the next sleazy product hits the airwaves, you two will come running back... and willingly hand over to me control of your financial futures.

As Sun Tzu might have said... when frontal assaults fail, sometimes an oblique angle of attack is best.

And this one... you will not see coming.

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #fanfic #prompt #baby-bugs and kittenwear #the devil is most dangerous with a contract in hand #chat says 'nothing clumps better!'

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mad-madam-m · 5 years

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Do you have any cute or funny Sheith or AziCrow fic recs?

AS A MATTER OF FACT.

This is mostly gonna be Aziraphale/Crowley because, to the surprise of absolutely nobody who has so much as glanced at my blog in the past 3 months, that’s my current hyperfixation, but I’ve got a couple of cute Sheith fics on here as well.

Good Omens

By Any Other Name by PenroseSun (G) - In which Crowley expands his range of pet names, and Aziraphale has an existential crisis.

(Pet names are so cute, y’all, I’m soft for this trope.)

My Heart Your Home, Your Shape My World by ineffablefool (T) - Aziraphale held his wine glass up to the moon, watching the dark liquid slosh gently. Neither of them had had enough to be drunk. Still, there was a feeling in his chest, a warmth and looseness, which he supposed was really only intoxication of a different sort.

“Top-off?” Crowley murmured the offer into Aziraphale’s chest. Their current seating arrangement was small enough that one plump angel and one gangle-limbed demon could really only use it by sitting very close. This was a conundrum neither party seemed to mind, easily enough solved by the demon curling himself around the angel, face resting against the angel’s shoulder, arm thrown loosely around the angel’s belly.

(Crowley and Aziraphale love each other very much, and also Aziraphale’s round body is lovely. That’s the plot.)

(Yeah I got nothing else to add, it’s just them being stupid in love and soft with each other and it’s tooth-rottingly sweet.)

Kissing, Accidentally. by skybound2 (G) - Crowley doesn’t mean to kiss him, really. It just sort of…happens. An…automatic response, if you will. An unintended automatic response. Unexpected, even.

It’s not planned, that’s what he’s trying to say.

~~~Or the one where Crowley gives in and kisses Aziraphale while he has him pinned against a wall.

(I am always here for wall fics where they actually kiss, and this one is lovely.)

The Ludicrous and Many Disasters of Mister A. Z. Fell, Houseplant by SoulJelly (T) - Aziraphale tries to change his corporation and ends up as a houseplant. Crowley whisks him away to be potted, cared for, and screamed at properly at his flat. Aziraphale makes some unexpected new friends.

(Y’ALL Aziraphale accidentally turns himself into a houseplant and it’s just about as ridiculous as you would expect. I love this shit.)

get religion quick (cause you’re looking divine) by brinnanza (G) - So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing.

It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop.

(This is book ‘verse and it’s sweet and hilarious and absolutely 100% worth reading twenty times.)

A Sky Full of Stars by Kedreeva (G) - Aziraphale takes Crowley as close to Heaven as they can get, these days.

(This is SWEET and SOFT and it makes my heart do the squeezy thing.)

Divine Intervention (aka God Ships It) by TheLadyZephyr (G) - There’s a battle strategy devised by humans many millennia ago that’s designed to overcome an adversary who is particularly well entrenched. Some walls are too tall and thick for a frontal assault, and must instead be bested through sheer dogged stubbornness.

Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t know it, but they were about to be put under siege.

Fed up with an angel and a demon who are still avoiding any talk of Feelings, God starts to interfere. When it comes to the ineffable plan, sometimes things need a bit of a push.

(Words cannot adequately express how much I love this fic. It’s 10k of sweetness and pining and Aziraphale and Crowley being the dumbasses that I love.)

For the Angel Who Has Everything by trieduntrue (E) - Crowley likes giving Aziraphale things. Whatever he wants, actually.

Which, happily, includes Crowley himself, as it turns out.

(This has the tags “Tops Who Cry: The Anthony J. Crowley Story” and “Pillow Principality” and let me tell you, that is the fastest way to get me to click on a fic because that is my fucking JAM. And this one is amazing.)

Sheith

Baby Mine by paintedrecs (T) - A few deca-phoebs after they've defeated Haggar, disbanded Voltron, and finally begun to settle into a hard-won peace, Kosmo starts stealing babies.

That's the first problem.

The second is that Shiro doesn't want to give them back.

(I love accidental baby acquisition and I love how sweet Keith and Shiro are together and I just love their relationship in this fic so much.)

Blown Away by paintedrecs (T) - Shiro takes a quick breath, a little too ragged for this early in the day, and tries not to think about how it feels to have Keith looking down at him as he puts his lips back to the long metal pipe and blows in time with Keith’s clipped, frowningly intense instructions.

“Blow. Stop,” Keith says, his eyes fixed now on the glass turning between his hands, leaving Shiro free to watch him—the steam billowing from the thick sheaves of wet newspaper shielding his palms, the concentration furrowing his forehead, the sweat trickling down the side of his throat, seemingly unnoticed.

Shiro can't help but notice everything about Keith, these days.

(Who the fuck knew I needed a glass blowing AU in my life but here we are. Read it and make sure your life is equally enriched.)

#Anonymous #M answers #fic recs #Good Omens #Aziraphale x Crowley #ineffable husbands #Voltron: Legendary Defender #Sheith #Shiro x Keith

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teaveetamer · 4 years

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My Issues With TFioS (and Other Elements of John Green)

Alright I’m just going to preface this with two things.

It’s been about six years since I’ve read the entire thing through, so my points are probably not going to be as detailed or precise as they were when I first read it.

If you enjoyed the book, identify with the fanbase, or like John Green in any capacity... Great! You might want to skip this one. This is definitely not the post for you. I’m going to put all of my more controversial thoughts under the cut so if you don’t want to see them you can just move on.

I brought up the book in that other post because I felt it had relevance to the discussion of “authors using characters as a mouthpiece”, but that’s only a small part of my issue with the book itself. I suppose I could have used a fanfiction example, since there’s more than enough fodder there, but I brought up The Fault in our Stars specifically because I feel comfortable criticizing a book in a way that I don’t feel comfortable criticizing fan works. John Green is a public figure that produced a paid product, made money, and does this professionally, while most fanfic authors are amateurs that provide free entertainment and just do it for fun.

Now with that said, we move on to the meat of the post.

Some Background

Perhaps this is not a little known fact, but I absolutely adore love stories. I don’t have incredibly high standards for them by any means, and in fact I actively enjoy them even when they aren’t the deepest, most thought provoking pieces. Someone got me a copy of Red, White, and Royal Blue for my birthday this year and I read the entire thing cover to cover in a day (and I seriously recommend if you’re looking for a pretty easy read with a lot of gay).

The only thing I love more than love stories? Tragic love stories, of course. If anyone has followed my fanfiction or main blog for any amount of time then you know that I love a little bit of tragedy. Usually with a happy ending, but not always. So when one of my friends shoved (and I mean literally shoved) The Fault in Our Stars into my hands and billed it as a “tragic but heartwarming love story” I thought it would be perfect for me.

I was sixteen at the time, the target age demographic, and I was always looking for books with smart, well written teen characters. At this point in my life I’d never heard of John Green or his fanbase before. I tell you this because I disliked the book as I read it, but I think John Green and his fanbase are a major factor in why I disliked it so much I’m willing to sit down and write a blog post about it six years later. Granted, that’s not all on the book, but it is a factor.

Needless to say, I was not all that impressed by it. At some points I was downright infuriated, really.

My Issues With the Book

In summary, it feels very meh and overly pretentious. After about two chapters I just wanted to put it down, and the only reason I pushed through is because my friend insisted that it got better. She said it was funny, relatable, and intelligent, but I found it to be none of these things.

The impression I got was that the author, whoever he was, fancied himself terribly clever and he wanted everyone to know it. You know the type, the kinds of people that go around and assure everyone of how smart they are? It feels like it was made for haughty teens to brag about how intelligent they were because they read a “deep” book. The book itself, despite being a surface level of “witty”, didn’t really have anything to say. In the end it reads like a thirty-something year old man bragging about how smart he is and waxing philosophical about the nature of life (and... Breakfast food..?) and using a fictional teenage girl to do it.

That’s why I brought up the “mouthpiece” thing. I didn’t want to read a book about a thirty-something dressing up his thoughts as a teenage girl. I wanted to read a book about a teenage girl.

Speaking of Hazel Grace… I don’t know if this is a common experience, but can anyone else tell when a man writes a female character? I find that I usually can. Men have a particular voice when they write, and especially when they write women. Every single page hammered me over the head with the fact that this was a man who was trying (and, in my opinion, failing miserably) to write a relatable teenage girl. And, in my opinion, he parroted a lot of very upsetting, dangerous mentalities for young women.

There were quite a few “I’m not like other girls, and not just because of the cancer!” moments (a mentality that I find wholly problematic coming from other women, let alone a man writing for a woman) that just had me rolling my eyes straight out of their sockets. She doesn’t care about shoes, see! She reads books! Isn’t that awesome and unique? Because, apparently, women are not allowed to do both.

These problematic mentalities extend into the book’s romance plot, too. Augustus is, frankly, one of the creepiest motherfuckers I’ve ever had the displeasure to read about. Not only is his aggressive creepiness portrayed as romantic, but Hazel reacts exactly how men wish women would react to their advances. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the book in front of me so you won’t get much in the way of direct quotes, but some examples include:

He stares at her, completely unblinking, for the duration of their cancer kids support group meeting… before they’ve even so much as spoken a word to each other. Which also features this gem of a quote: "A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well." which just perpetuates the disgusting misconception that women are okay with being creeped on as long as a guy is attractive. Spoiler alert: We fucking aren’t.

He repeatedly refers to Hazel as “Hazel Grace”, despite her introducing herself as “Hazel” and asking him to just call her “Hazel”. And not only does he ask for her full name, he demands she give it to him. This rings all kinds of alarm bells for me, because you know who else does that kind of shit? Christian Grey. And it’s manipulative, disrespectful, and downright rude. It is essentially saying “I hear your desires, but I would prefer to address you how I want to address you, not how you would like to be addressed, because my ego is more important than your comfort”.

Hazel is perfectly fine with getting into a complete stranger’s car and spending time at his house mere minutes after meeting with him and after all of the questionable shit he just pulled.

Continuing this book’s litany of problems with women, let’s talk about Isaac’s (ex)girlfriend. The book treats their breakup as this massive betrayal, then even goes on to justify vandalizing her property because of it.

I’m sorry, but no.

You, as an autonomous human being, have the right to end a relationship with someone else whenever, wherever, and for whatever reasons you designate, regardless of previously expressed emotions or promises. How and when she did it was not the most ideal, but she’s an emotionally immature teenager, and there’s never going to be a good time to do something like this. What was she supposed to do, keep pity dating him because she felt sorry for him? Wait until someone invented technology to cure blindness? Assuming she did actually break up with him because of his disability… Are her reasons shitty? Sure. But she’s allowed to have them.

And you know what? He’s allowed to be mad about it. His anger might be completely understandable, if not totally justified. But you know what else? That does not give him the right to take revenge on her by vandalizing her property.

I would have no problem with this scene if it were honest about what it was: a bunch of teenagers with under-developed frontal lobes that are angry and feeling vindictive. But it’s not that. It’s depicted as not only completely justified, but heroic. I’m sorry, no. You are never heroic for harassing another human being.

And Augustus’s dumb little speech to her mom is such garbage. You really expect me to believe that a grown woman was so pwned by some jerk teenager’s super witty justification for destroying her property that she just went inside and, idk, watched TV? Didn’t call the police to report the crime that he and his friends were actively committing against her? Bullshit.

Speaking of bullshit, that scene is pretty egregious, but that doesn’t even begin to cover my issues with this book’s pretentious dialogue. If you told me that they ran every word in this book through Thesaurus.com then I would believe you without hesitation. The one hook, the draw, the thing that kept me reading was supposed to be the relatable characters, but they just aren’t relatable. They’re not realistic in the slightest. Seriously, go read any line of this book out loud and tell me how ridiculous you feel. I kept expecting Augustus to pull off his skinsuit and reveal that he was secretly a robot trying to imitate human speech the entire time.

I’m not sure how far I can go into this point without giving you direct quotes, but half the stuff that comes out of these characters mouths is pseudo-intellectual nonsense. “Put the killing thing between your teeth so it can’t kill you”?

It’s not a metaphor.

Putting an unlit cigarette in your mouth is still stupid. I guess it won’t give you lung cancer, but really? It’s still not a great idea.

Augustus has to go buy these cigarettes, which means he’s actively going out and giving money to an industry that has been funding pseudoscience and suppressing health initiatives that would prevent people from suffering what he did (i.e. fucking cancer).

Here’s a clue: Tobacco companies don’t actually care about what you do with the cigarettes. Their transaction stops as soon as you put the money in their hands. I could purchase a hundred packs and throw them in the garbage, and the only thing they know is that they got about $600 from me. Way to “stick it to the man”, asshole. You’re not clever.

With the exception of the Isaac’s-girlfriend thing, all of that is in chapters 1-4, by the way. This book turned me off so thoroughly that early.

So by the time the Amsterdam trip rolled around I was already not enjoying this book, but then this thing happened and it was just the final nail in the coffin for me. You probably know what I’m talking about already, but if you don’t… The Anne Frank Museum kiss.

I honestly cannot even articulate how incredibly tasteless and disrespectful I find the entire thing, and not only does that happen, but it’s followed by an r/ThatHappened “and then everybody stood up and clapped!” Seriously?

There are smarter, more well-versed people than me that have covered this topic, so I’ll leave the analysis for why that’s all kinds of wrong to them.

Those are really my big gripes, though there’s a few smaller ones (like Augustus throwing a pre-funeral like are you a psychopath? Why would you put the people you love through that???) that I’m not going to touch on because they weren’t all that instrumental in putting me off. Instead I’ll move on to the external factors.

The Fanbase

So I finished the book, a little miffed at having just wasted my time, and immediately told my friend that I didn’t like it much, and that I would be returning her copy the next day. Feeling pretty meh-to-slightly-negative about it, but whatever, it happens.

I was essentially met with “wow I can’t believe you didn’t get it.” and “Oh well maybe you’ll finally understand how deep it is when you’re older” from my friend. Which is really just one step away from the wow can’t you read?! BS that I’ve been seeing more and more frequently these days. So immediately I was pissed. All that aside, I was sixteen, the target age demographic? If I didn’t ‘get it’ then John Green was doing a pretty piss poor job of conveying what it is.

So I went online seeking something. Either validation that I wasn’t wrong and that I didn’t miss the point, the book just wasn’t great, or an explanation of what this it was that I’d missed. And let me tell you... Spotting a negative opinion of this book was like looking for a unicorn. There were a few, and many of them were met with the same kind of thing I had experienced. Vitriol, insistence that they were stupid or that they didn’t get it (again, with no explanation of what it was), and, apparently, a lot of harassment and threats.

I discovered that John Green’s target audience had a tendency to be… A bit obsessive. Lots of young, impressionable teenagers that were willing to jump on an opposing opinion with zealous outrage. If I had any interest in pursuing any of John Green’s other works or John Green as an internet personality any further, then it died in that moment. Absolutely nothing turns me off like a rabid, spiteful fanbase.

Now by this point I was already in the rabbit hole, and I began encountering a lot of criticisms of John Green and the things he’s said and done in the past. I did not like what I found.

John Green Himself

To be extremely blunt, the guy put such a bad taste in my mouth that it retroactively soured my opinion of The Fault in Our Stars even more. Since this is a post about my opinions on the book, I’m only going to be discussing things that affected my view at the time I read it. These are all things that happened six years ago, and I have no idea what this man has been up to or what he’s said about any of these topics since.

Let’s just get this out of the way… John Green writes the same book over and over. There’s always a quirky, nerdy white boy that is invariably cisgendered, and almost always straight. He is always an outcast with only a few friends, though apparently never directly bullied. He always meets an edgy girl that he falls in love with the idea of. Usually there is a road trip somewhere in there too.

The Fault in our Stars admittedly doesn’t follow the exact same framework, but it’s close enough in a lot of ways. Instead of the Quirky, Too-Smart-For-His-Own-Good cisboi being the PoV character, it’s the love interest (Hazel also fits this description, albeit a female version). Hazel and Augustus are both still outcasts. Hazel is attracted to Augustus because he’s Deep and Edgy and A Little Larger Than Life. The road trip is a flight to Amsterdam.

Looking at the man... Yeah the entire premise starts to come off as some weird self-insert fanfiction. I can feel the “I was a quirky, bullied teen and I wish this is how my high school life had been!” energy coming through absolutely every pore and every molecule of ink. Every character reads like John Green. John Green has written book after book and the main character always appears to be John Green in a slightly different teenage skinsuit.

And that’s fine, I guess. A little lazy, but I guess it’s working for him since he’s making hella bank? It’s certainly not enough to put me off the guy, just not something I’m interested in reading, and not something I find compelling.

What put me off for good were some of his comments. Dude skeeves me the fuck out. I’ll just go over some of the highlights I found at the time, and why they upset me so much when I heard them.

“Nerd girls are the world's most underutilized romantic resource.”

As a nerdy girl that has been stalked and harassed by men because I’m “good girlfriend material” (aka I like video games and traditionally masculine stuff and I’m pretty! I must be a unicorn!), this statement is disgusting.

I don’t care if it was a joke. I don’t care if he wasn’t being serious. This is the kind of shit that men think is a compliment because they think it makes “quirky” girls feel “unique” and “special”, but that “complement” is also an insult. You know why? Because it makes female interests all about how men perceive their sexual or romantic viability.

John Green’s penchant for writing “special” and “unique” girls (while simultaneously shaming “typical” girls, but I’ll get to that in the next point) and depicting them as the ideal woman just reaffirms my feelings about this quote. I think, on some level, John Green has no idea why this is such a bad take. And that’s not even getting into the fact that he called human beings resources. Women are not objects that exist to be a plot device or for your gratification. Fuck right off with that shit.

“She was incredibly hot, in that popular-girl-with-bleached-teeth-and-anorexia kind of way, which was Colin’s least favourite way of being hot”

This is just one quote of many that shames people with eating disorders and weight problems (on both ends of the spectrum, “too fat” and “too skinny”. Another fun one being: “there’s the weird culturally-constructed definition of hot, which means ‘that individual is malnourished, and has probably had plastic bags inserted into her breasts.’")

Know what this line is? It’s called “negging”, and it’s a popular tactic of incels because it works. You make someone seek your approval by intentionally giving them backhanded compliments to undermine their self esteem. The idea is that the more you insult them, the harder they’ll work to try and impress you. It doesn’t work on everyone, but you know who it does tend to work on? Insecure younger people (usually girls). You know who John Green’s target audience is? Insecure teenage girls.

As for the actual substance of the quote… I hate it. He’s shaming a woman for the choices she makes over her appearance. Which are, fun fact, none of his damn business. Also the idea that “skinny” and “anorexic” somehow need to go hand in hand is just wrong, insulting women for a mental health disorder they have no control over is offensive, and using a serious mental health disorder (did you know that anorexia is the most deadly mental health condition?) as an insult is disgusting.

Coming back to my earlier point about shaming “normal” girls, this quote is just the tip of the iceberg. He repeatedly shames women in his books for looking or behaving “typically”, while quirky girls are lauded as the ideal. Quirky girls are “weird and interesting” and normal girls are “boring”. If this was intended as a compliment, it’s a shitty one. If you have to shame one group to make another feel better, it is not a compliment. You are lowering all women when you pull that shit. You teach them that in order to feel good about themselves another group has to be made to feel worse.

And hey, maybe the pretty girl likes her teeth bleached because it makes her feel confident? Why can’t bleached teeth girl and anime t-shirt girl both be beautiful and unique and confident in their own right? Why is it “powerful” for anime t-shirt girl to wear her nerdy clothes, but scorn-worthy for bleached teeth girl to like bleaching her teeth?

What John Green is doing is simply replacing one ideal (skinny pretty girl) with another (quirky cute girl), and then he pretends like his version is somehow “woke” because it’s not based on physical appearance (though all of the women in his books are also physically attractive. Hmmm. Guess “nerd girls” are only “viable resources” when they aren’t hard to look at?).

And trust me, I’ve been down this path. I’ve been taken in by guys who try to make me feel ~special~ by putting down other women, and it leads to absolutely nothing good. It doesn’t make you feel better. It just makes you feel angry and resentful, and that’s not a place you want to be in. In fact, this was a mentality I had recently escaped from around the time I picked up this book. Seeing someone with as much influence as John Green parroting this specific brand of toxic shit to exactly the audience that would be most likely to feed into it? I was never going to be able to like the guy, sorry.

I know some people are able to “separate the art from the artist”, and I might have been willing to do that had the book actually been good… but it wasn’t. So in the end the book just looked worse for all of the author’s shortcomings.

So yeah, in summary: The book was mediocre at best, the author pushed all of my angry feminist buttons, and elements of the fanbase were annoying, condescending, and spiteful. I didn’t like the book in the first place due to the myriad of problems plaguing it, but everything else just made it look so much worse in hindsight.

Anyways, this probably got kind of ranty, but it was cathartic and I did make this blog to vent about dumb stuff. I think this qualifies.

#Personal stuff #TFioS Opinion Piece #Sorry it took so long #I had a lot to say #A little ranty

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tornbetween2loves · 5 years

Text

Arcana Unbound-Plane Rides

Four thousand years ago gods and magic shaped and ruled and were plentiful in the world. Man and all the creatures were shaped and marked by it. Then things began to change. Gradually those things of magic diminished and the things of science took precedence until magic became a myth tucked away safely in children’s fairy tales and skilled entertainer’s parlor tricks.

It’s been a thousand years of progress unmarked by true magic.

Things are about to change.

This is a collaborative project between @tornbetween2loves and @innerpostmentality parts of this particular post were also written by our good friend @kennaxval

Word Count: 2800+

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixelberry except for our OCs. They are our precious babies and were created with all of our love and affection.

Warnings: This series may contain erotica and adult themes and should not be read by anyone under the age of 18.

Autumn Lee, heiress of Valtoria, felt her heart race as the plane landed. 'It had been two, no, three years,' she thought to herself, 'and I'm still nervous as hell to see her.' She had spent the last couple of hours scrolling through her phone and reminiscing about Cordonia. She looked through her reflection in the plane window down at the vast Atlantic below. She mused about the complex emotions that raged through her when her mom Hana had called her to let her know about the Royal Social Season. After the fallout from his own Social Season she would have thought that King Liam would never endorse such a cattle show for his own children.

When she left to attend Julliard she knew she was running away from her feelings for Sarissa that she wasn’t prepared to explore. Not that she regretted a moment of it. Living in Manhattan and experiencing her Mama Riley’s world had broadened her horizons and brought her closer with her New York mom. Not that she’d waited tables, her jobs included playing in the atrium at the InterContential Barclay, one of the litter of five star hotels that were scattered across the premium real estate of Manhattan. She filled in as an on call pianist for various Broadway or off Broadway productions.

Her life was good; and her life was busy and it wasn’t until the phone call that she’d ever really slowed down enough to think about Cordonia. As much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she missed being there. Maybe it was how hilarious everyone’s obsession with protocol seemed to her. Or maybe it was Leonides, her brother from another mother. Prince and prodigy, his musical ability among the best. His infectious joy as he would play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star as counterpoint to her Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. Anytime they got together, they wrought joyous havoc through the palace. He would be sixteen, a young man now. She hoped he would still have that joie de vivre. She did miss him. But that wasn’t what got her on the plane to attend the Royal Social Season.

Autumn closed her eyes and thought back to that day 3 years ago when she finally tasted Sarissa’s lips and felt her body pressed close to hers. She remembered every detail as if it just happened yesterday. The way the water beaded on Sarissa’s perfect skin as she came up out of the water. The look of her perfect body in that metallic green bathing suit. How perfect her lips were as they kissed and how sliding her hand into the side of her bathing suit was like touching heaven. Autumn could still taste her lips, feel her fingers between Sarissa’s folds, everything. She opened her eyes, her body tingled just from the thoughts. She rubbed her eyes and tried to think of something else. But it was pointless.

She sighed deeply as she surrendered to the truth. Sarissa. It had always been her. Autumn had never had the courage to tell Sarissa how she felt to put it into words, and that's why she had to go back. She had always sworn to herself to speak her mind and not live with any regrets. It was time, one way or another, she would tell Sarissa how she felt.

* * *

Mona yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Flying was so boring. Especially on the royal private jet. There was no one to flirt with, no one to drink with. She looked across to the other side of the plane where her sister sat and flipped through a magazine. She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved next to her sister. “Hey Pam. Whatcha reading?”

"Sports Xtreme... Looking at all the things I'm going to be missing while we are doing whatever the hell we are doing." She frowned. "I can't believe they are still killing trees to put magazines on planes."

Mona shot her sister a sideways glance. “I’m sure you’ll find something extreme to enjoy while we’re in Cordonia. Maybe even find someone to enjoy it with.” She nudged her sister with her elbow as she raised an eyebrow at her

Pam lifted a brow at her sister. "Who would you suggest? I get the feeling you've been studying the prospects."

She smiled slyly. “Well, I hear that some of the Walker boys will be participating in the season. Perhaps one of them?” She looked at her sister pointedly. “Just keep your hands off of Xiphos Lykel. I’m calling dibs on Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor.”

Pam laughed and shook her head. "You like pouring fuel on a fire trying to put it out. That one is nothing but a handful of heartbreak Mona." She locked eyes with her sister. "Seriously you are going to pair me up with a bunch of Irish farm boys?"

“Hot Irish farm boys, Pam. Hot. Come on, nobody’s saying you have to marry one of them. Loosen up and have some fun!” She raised an eyebrow at her sister. “And I can handle Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor. He and I are cut from the same cloth I think.”

"You sure you don't want some of the 'Hot Irish farm boy' action? There are 4 of them if I recall correctly. Jeez, five kids... Didn't they know what causes that? I can't even imagine. One sister is great. Poor little girl... 4 brothers. Can you imagine?"

Mona shrugged with a mischievous smile. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll get a little action from the hot Irish boys too.” She giggled. “Poor girl is right. No guy in his right mind is gonna try and get close to that. Imagine facing the wrath of 4 older brothers, plus Drake? No thank you. She might as well become a nun.” The girls both broke into a fit of giggles.

Pam shook her head. "I wish I knew if any of them jump out of anything higher than their bed." She laughed.

Mona sighed. “Is that all you care about is if they’ll jump out of a plane with you? Come on Pam, you have to stop rejecting guys simply because they’re not daring enough for you. You are daring to the extreme. You can’t expect everyone you meet to be like that.” She raised an eyebrow as she patted her sister’s arm. “Most of us like to keep both feet planted firmly on the ground.”

Pam looked at her a long moment. "Have you ever thought about what you really want Mona? Seriously? How do you see yourself in 5 years? And do you really think some man is going to get you there?

Mona shrugged. “Yes. I see myself as the new Duchess of Lythikos. The only woman able to tame Cordonia’s most eligible bachelor. That’s exactly what I see in 5 years.”

Pam sighed knowing it was pointless to try to dissuade Mona. Once she got a cliff set in her sights she was hell bent to dash over it.

She closed her magazine. "Okay. So what's your game plan? Or do you expect a man who's been sampling the smorgasbord of Europe from one end to the other to be converted instantly by your admittedly stunning beauty and stellar wit?" She smiled and lifted her brow.

Mona giggled and punched her sister playfully in the arm. “Usually my stunning beauty and stellar wit is enough, dear sister.” She sighed. “But I fear you’re right. I may need a strategy.” She tapped her fingers on the armrest of her seat as she contemplated the situation. “Do you have any suggestions?”

"Suggestions?... Let me see. I could toss any other woman who looks at him over a cliff or out of a plane I guess... Hmm.

You know generally it helps if you know something about them. Something real. Not, he looks delish on a magazine cover. Do you actually know anything about what he does and doesn't like? What is fabricated to make good press? Do you care?"

Mona shrugged. “How the hell would I know anything besides what is printed in the press? I think we’ve met briefly in the past, but we haven’t really talked.” She broke into a big smile. “I know. Let’s google him!” She pulled out her phone and pulled up google then typed in his full name and pressed search.

Pam got up and walked over to the bar torn between drinking herself into oblivion and just tossing herself out of the plane.

She heard Mona squeal "Oh my God.. Oh my God... come look!"

She closed her eyes a moment before she grabbed the bottle of Glenfiddich and headed back to her seat. Where Mona shoved her phone with a full-frontal nude picture of Xiphos Lykel walking out of the surf on some godforsaken beach in her face.

She lifted a brow. And looked at her very excited sister. "Well now we know he's not circumcised. And DO NOT make that your wall paper!" She shook her head. "I can't believe you just shoved his dangly bits in my face. Seriously?"

Mona laughed uncontrollably. “Well now there’s nothing left to my imagination.” She grabbed the bottle of scotch from her sister and took a big swig, then handed it back. “I wonder if he knows this picture is out there.”

"Mona, it's Europe. They have more miles of nude beaches than some countries have coastline. Honestly it would be more surprising if there wasn't a nude picture of the man. He may have short comings but none of them are displayed in that picture. I'll give him that." Pam took a swig of the scotch.

"Mona why don't we just blow this all off. Land. Rent a car. Drive over to Rome, or Paris. Have a vacation without all the Social Season crap?"

Mona half-listened to her sister as she concentrated on zooming the photo of Xiphos. She held the phone up to Pam again. “And miss my chance at this??? No way sis, sorry.” She licked her lips and raised an eyebrow at her sister. “Can you really blame me?”

Pam shook her head. "I just don't want you hurt." She sat down and sipped some more scotch then took her phone out and googled 'duchy of Lythikos'. Information appeared about the area including scenes of its mountains and breathtaking vistas. Then information about the Duke and Duchess and their family.

"I'm not finding anything here about where he went to school. Must have been private. Or Bastien cleared the decks of personal information." She grinned. "Dad gave him a LOT of expertise in cleaning up messes." She got a thoughtful look. "Maybe that could help... If you can get his dad to like you?"

Mona shrugged. “Possibly. I’ve never had to go that route before, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.” She took another swig of scotch. “I still think he and I will hit it off from the start. We’ll party together. We’ll have fun. We’ll just click. I know it.”

"So who else is likely to be there?" Pam Googled 'Cordonian Royal Court' Her screen filled up with lists of Kings and Queens and their courts for the last five hundred years. She laughed and narrowed the search. "I wonder who else is going to be there? Ramsford, Domvilliar, Valtoria, Krona?"

“I would imagine all the duchies would be represented. Don’t forget Lythikos.” Mona flashed a big smile at her sister.

Pam shook her head, "No chance of that."

"So have you got outfits planned for the masquerade ball? Are we going for stunning confusion, or stunning but individual?"

Pam looked over at her sister when she didn't answer and took her phone now completely filled with Xiphos’ schlong out of her hand. "Earth to Mona. Stop that! Seriously you are going to give me a problem staring at his crotch when I meet him." She reduced the size of the picture while her sister grabbed for it.

Mona pouted. “You never let me have any fun. Although I must admit now there is very little left to the imagination. I was thinking maybe we should do stunning confusion. What’s the point in being identical twins if we can’t use it to our advantage?”

Pam grinned and lifted her brow. "I'm the most fun person you know. Admit it. The only way I could be more fun would be if I happened to have an 8 inch cock. But that would definitely interfere with all the fun we get to have being identical twins." She laughed. "Do I get to see the gowns before so I know how much of my tits and ass I'm going to be strutting for the court?"

Mona grinned and shot her sister a mischievous look. Would you like to see them now? They’re hanging in the bedroom. I could sneak in there and grab them

"oooh yes! I love your designs you know." Pam lifted her brow. "Just make sure you listen at the door first and don't go in if you hear anything. You know they may be old but they sometimes still..." She waggled her brow.

Mona grimaced at her sister. “Ewww Pam why would you say that? I may be traumatized.” She got up and pressed her ear to the door of the bedroom. Pam followed close behind. She giggled and whispered low, “all I hear is dad’s snoring. I think it’s safe.” She slowly turned the handle and came back a few moments later with a garment bag. They returned to their seats and Mona unzipped the bag to reveal several gowns. She picked two and hung them next to each other. “Okay so there are two ways we can do the masquerade ball. Because obviously I didn’t have time to make us gowns for every event, I tried some new things.”

“Both of these are just basic black A-line gowns with a ruffled skirt. But we can switch out the bodice or the skirt and suddenly it’s a different gown.” She demonstrated by removing a length of the hem so the dress would now fall at mid-calf length. “I was thinking we could be phoenixes for the masquerade ball.” She pulled out two red sequined bodices, one strapless and one with one long sleeve. “This way we’re the same, but different.” She pulled out the different materials for the skirts. “One of us could do short, the other long. One ruffled, one not. One all black, one a mixture of red and black. And the masks are identical.” She pulled out two identical masks, black sequined around the eye holes and red and black feathers creating a plume that would cover the forehead. Mona raised an eyebrow at Pam. “So you’re completely in control of how much tits and ass you’re showing.”

"You're brilliant! I love these. Mona why don't you do this full time? I'd love to see you having shows. This is art and it's gorgeous!"

Mona shrugged. “Maybe someday. Right now I just don’t have the time. I’m too busy.”

Pam lifted her brow and moved her thumb and forefinger open and closed like she was expanding the picture on an imaginary phone. "Too busy? What exactly are you too busy doing?"

Mona broke into a fit of giggles. “Research. It’s research. Nothing wrong with being prepared.” She sighed as she began to pack the gowns away. “I do enjoy making clothes. A lot. Maybe I should try and make something of it. If I only knew where to begin.”

Pam smiled at her sister, "Well I think I'd try to talk with some designer that you admired who has done it?" She shook her head, "Didn't they have some classes on business modeling for this when you were in school? Let me guess.... you slept though it a lot."

Mona shrugged. “I guess they did but hell if I can remember.” She sat up straight and her face lit up. “Isn’t one of the duchesses of Valtoria a big designer? Do you think she might be at season?” Pam nodded and smiled. She picked up her phone and typed “Valtoria” into the search bar and after a moment came across a photo of Hana Lee. She held it out to Mona. “This is her. Are you familiar with her work?” Mona raised an eyebrow as she scrolled through the phone. “Actually, yes. She does great work. Now I have a second reason for wanting to attend season.”

A soft bong sounded over the plane’s speaker and the pilot announced that they were on their final approach and would be landing in the next fifteen minutes.

Moments later their mom and dad came out of the bedroom in the back and took the seats that faced their daughters and buckled in for the landing. Leo took Katie’s hand and smiled at Pam and Mona, “So have you girls been busy making plans for the Season?”

The twins looked at each other and burst into giggles.

Tags: @darley1101 @gardeningourmet @speedyoperarascalparty @hopefulmoonobject @bobasheebaby @carabeth @riseandshinelittleblossom @stopforamoment @furiousherringoperatortoad @indiacater @sirbeepsalot @alesana45 @museofbooks @eileendannie @furryperfectionlover @sawyeroakleyscowboyhat @strangerofbraidwood @teamtomsato @begging-for-kamilah @kennaxval @ao719 @blackcatkita

#arcana unbound #collaboration #trr au #plane rides

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madscientistjournal · 4 years

Text

Fiction: Disinhibited

An excerpt from the journals of Combat Search & Rescue Consultant Lana McGee, as provided by Myna Chang Art by Luke Spooner

Don’t call me a mercenary. Those guys are pricks. Kidnappers and murderers, the lot of them. I’m not like that. Sure, I get paid for my work, and yeah, I love a good explosion. Who doesn’t? But my job is to save people. Pull them out of bad situations. Bring them home safe.

I’m not an asshole.

“I didn’t think you were, Ma’am.”

Oh shit, did I say all that out loud?

“Yes, Ma’am, you did.”

Wow, this pilot doesn’t look old enough to shave, let alone fly a chopper.

“I shave, Ma’am.”

“You heard that, too?”

“Yes, Ma’am. My CO warned me this might happen.”

“Name’s Lana, not Ma’am. So, they told you about my disability?” Their word, not mine.

“They said you got a piece of shrapnel in your head. War souvenir. Said you blurt out whatever crosses your mind.”

“Yep,” I nod. “Frontal Lobe Disinhibition. Basically, if I think it, I say it. That’s why I’m freelancing now.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Not a merc. Got it.”

Pilot’s quick. And he does shave. Sexy stubble. Yum. Like to run my tongue up that jawline and–

“Due respect, Ma’am, I’m authorized to tell you to shut up.”

I bite my rogue tongue hard enough to draw blood. Damn it, Lana. Stop scaring the cute flyboy.

He flicks his eyes toward me and grins. “Truth is, Ma’am, I don’t scare easy.”

Oh. Well, then. I smile and shift in the seat. “Just to be clear … You wouldn’t mind–”

“Approaching the drop zone, Ma’am.”

I chuckle. His smile turns to a blush. Tease. “Fine, kick me out of your helicopter. Come on, Diamond, we’ve got people to rescue.”

My German Shepherd sits while I attach a jump harness to her K-9 armor. Takes about three seconds. We’ve done hundreds of these short jumps, and it never gets old. She woofs, ready to go.

“Godspeed.”

“You talking to me or the dog?”

“Both of you, Ma’am.”

He maneuvers the chopper over the moonlit compound and flashes a cheeky grin at me again. I try to keep my mouth shut, but as usual, the words tumble out.

“I’m probably gonna lick your stubbly jaw when this mission’s over, Pilot. Diamond might, too.”

“Countin’ on it, Ma’am.”

I laugh and step into the air.

The research facility sits on a swath of blacktop, devoid of plant life, a big wart on a bald head. The gate hangs open. I toss a handful of debris at the razor-wire fence, but it doesn’t spark. Looks like the power’s out. Not a good sign.

I was hoping this job would be a quickie: rescue the dashing scientist, secure his peculiar research, get home in time for dinner. Guess I should’ve known better. Anything involving Chase Mathews isn’t going to be easy.

“At least the compound hasn’t been bombed yet, huh girl?”

Diamond doesn’t respond. She’s good like that.

A Jeep sits abandoned near the fence. Wet-looking handprints smear the windshield, and a case of medical supplies has toppled onto the asphalt.

We skirt it, watching for movement, hoping for some sign of life as we approach the entrance. Nothing stirs. I tighten my grip on the MTAR submachine gun strapped across my chest, and we enter the facility.

Lobby’s dark, except for orange warning lights at the guard’s terminal. My NVGs flare in time with the flashes, so I pull them off. Diamond’s night vision is more reliable than the goggles, anyway. She’s the most capable combat partner I’ve worked with; I trust her with my life.

She nudges me. I nod, and she ghosts away, into the darkness. Nothing will get past her. A low growl, five yards to the right, alerts me to an enemy combatant. I bring my MTAR to bear, just in time. Two quick bursts, and the bad guy goes down.

I love this fucking gun. Compact and efficient, with a little kick. Kind of like me.

Diamond circles the lobby, vigilant, then returns to my side. I prod the body splayed in front of me. Scrawny dude, white lab coat. Blisters all over his face.

Or are those pustules? Jesus, that’s nasty looking. Diamond keens and backs away. I follow her lead. A blister-thing quavers and ruptures, spurting out thick goo. Hard to tell in the darkness, but I think it’s green.

I’ll never eat lime Jell-O again. Diamond rubs her head on my thigh; she won’t either.

“Come on, girl. Our dashing scientist isn’t going to rescue himself.”

She snorts her disapproval. Diamond had never liked Chase. She’d peed on his shoes every chance she got. My dog’s smart. I should have listened.

We creep down the hallway behind the guard station. Emergency lights flicker, strobing the corridor in snapshots of weirdness.

Flash. Body on the floor.

Flash. Smear of blood.

Flash. Heap of clothing, soaked with green sludge.

I wish the freakin’ light would either stay on or go dark. Vertigo pulses with every disco blink.

Diamond lets out a cautionary rumble, and I pull up my gun, ready to fire. A woman covered in angry boils slumps on the floor, back against the wall. She reaches out blindly, hands grasping air.

My first-aid kit’s in my pack, but I’m not ready to take my finger off the trigger guard; Diamond’s hackles are still up. The woman’s mouth opens and tainted saliva gushes out. Looks like pond scum.

I don’t think my emergency band-aids will do you much good, lady.

She jerks toward my voice, moaning. Spit froths on her lips. Several of her boils burst, popping like firecrackers, loud enough I can hear them over my thundering heartbeat. Syrupy goop, smelling of burnt licorice, oozes from the sores. Her body cants sideways and her shoulder hits the floor.

Nothing I can do will help her now. Maybe we’ll find a miracle cure in the lab. Diamond and I hug the far side of the hallway, avoiding her still-seeking arms. The thick fluids pooling around her body seem to throb in time with the emergency lights, and the cloying odor intensifies as we pass.

I’m not sure what we’ve gotten ourselves into, but I sure hope this bug isn’t airborne. Our combat armor should protect us from physical contaminants, but it doesn’t do anything to block out the stink.

We come to a junction. I remember the blueprints and hang a left. The bulb in this hallway’s dim, but at least it’s not blinking. Unfortunately, the path is blocked by a mass of writhing bodies.

All naked–explains the abandoned clothes back there–dotted with throbbing cysts. Many have already ruptured, leaving curdled trails of emerald slime. I stare, fascinated. The people are fusing together; everywhere the goo touches, their skin melds. Limbs, feet, heads, all merging into one giant blob.

Diamond paws the floor. One of the faces snaps up, focusing its attention on her. We back away. A distorted jaw juts out, leering. It trembles, and a body begins to emerge from the fused clump of flesh, first a shoulder, then a torso. Straining to reach us, it makes a squelching slurp and tears free–an arm, two legs.

The legs don’t match.

My stomach turns. The newly assembled monster stumbles and lurches at Diamond.

I shoot it in the head. It stops, but doesn’t fall, so I pop it again, center mass, where a heart and lungs should be. It totters for a split second before collapsing.

Diamond whines; the rest of the entangled mound of creatures squirms toward us. Maybe the gunfire got its–their?–attention. They stretch and heave, inching closer. Unnatural liquids gurgle and flesh splits as they rip themselves apart, rubbery appendages groping relentlessly in Diamond’s direction.

I flip the toggle on my MTAR to full auto and spray the clusterfuck. No way in hell those abominations are gonna get sticky with my pup. I let up on the trigger and watch for movement, then give them another blast, just to be sure.

I guess a full magazine was enough to do the job, which is good because, damn, that’s a scary pile of monsters. But now the hallway’s coated in weird-colored gore. Not gonna risk going through that mess. Doesn’t matter, though. According to the map, all hallways lead to the inner lab, where the research stuff should be stored.

And Chase. Can’t forget him, the handsome, charming scientist. My ex.

Don’t call me a mercenary. Those guys are pricks.

The electronic lock is toast and the lab door won’t open. Something’s wedged it shut. I kick it, hard, but that only hurts my foot.

“Chase? Are you in there?” Hope he’s not glued to the mishmash back in the hallway.

Diamond watches my back while I pound on the reinforced steel.

“Lana? Is that you?”

“Yeah, and I wanna see if you still turn me on.” Damn it.

“Are you infected?”

“I can still talk, can’t I?” Of course I can. It’s my biggest problem.

The door cracks open. He squints at me.

“Why’d they send you?”

“No one else’d take the job.” True story.

Diamond and I squeeze through the door and shove it closed again.

“Did you bring a platoon of Marines to save me?” Chase demands.

I spread my arms. “Just us.”

He groans.

Not as charming as I remember.

“If you’re all they sent,” he says, “they’re going to nuke the whole island, aren’t they?”

“Probably. I figure we’ve got another hour before the bombing starts.”

“No, no, no, it’s too valuable,” he mutters, already ignoring me.

Feels like old times.

His motions are jerky. He grabs a backpack and shoves miniature computer drives and scraps of paper into it.

Definitely not a turn-on anymore. Looks like hell, all bug-eyed and twitchy. Kinda soft around the edges.

He stops and glares at me.

Stinks, too.

“Still the motor-mouthed bitch.”

Oops. “I didn’t mean–”

“Yeah, you did. You’ve always been an asshole. The piece of shrapnel just makes it more obvious.”

That hurts. Gotta admit it. A muffled thud from the hallway preempts my snarky response. Diamond snarls, low and intense. The warning tone sends goosebumps up my spine.

“Chase, what happened to those people?”

He shrugs. “Sample got out. Spread a lot faster than I expected.”

“Sample? The research I’m supposed to retrieve?”

“Thought you were here to rescue me.”

“Yeah, but boss-man said you’re low priority. ‘Get the research,’ he said. ‘Grab the scientist, too, if you can.’ That’s what he said.”

“God, I hate the military,” Chase spits.

I have to agree, at least a little. CO didn’t mention the rest of the research staff. Guess the woman in the hall is zero-priority in his book. I call bullshit on that–I’ll save whoever I can.

“Is there a cure, or an antidote?”

“Why?” he asks, backing away from me. “Did you get any of the transfer medium on you?”

“You mean the green goo? No. But maybe some of the others are still alive.”

He goes back to rifling through the science junk on his desk. “I only make the contagions. Cures are someone else’s department.”

Seriously? “So you’re a full-on mad scientist now?”

“I prefer bioweapon engineer.”

I stare at him. Has he always been this cold-hearted?

Diamond barks, two short yips. That’s a yes.

Chase rolls his eyes and I realize I’ve spoken out loud again. He glares at Diamond.

“Bitch.”

“You talking to me or the dog?”

“What do you think?” He shoulders past me, opening a biohazard safe. Polished steel containers crowd the shelf. They look like those expensive vacuum insulated tumbler thingies. He yanks one out.

“You keep your weaponized slime in a fancy coffee cup?”

He sneers and shoves the container into the backpack. “I can’t believe they sent a brain damaged mercenary to rescue me.”

That’s ‘value-priced consultant’ to you, jerkface. Diamond snarls, exposing her fangs.

“Can you both shut up?” His hands shake.

Wait. Faster than he expected? How did the sample get out?

“A test,” he answers. “Proof of concept for the buyer.”

“You infected those people on purpose? So you can sell that stuff?”

He laughs. “You weren’t very smart, even before the shrapnel.” He zips his pack and turns.

Something’s wrong with his face.

Diamond’s growl modulates into a high-pitched howl–her extreme danger signal. Almost too late, I realize why: Chase is infected. I didn’t see it before. Hard to miss now.

I raise my MTAR. A smudge of emerald gel shimmers on the edge of the safe behind him. “Don’t move.”

He gapes at me, incredulous. “Put the gun down, Lana.”

I shake my head. “You must’ve gotten sloppy with your death jelly.”

“How dare you?” He frowns and scratches at a freshly blossoming pustule on his right cheek. His fingers drip green. “No!”

Diamond moves into a defensive position, guarding me. Chase stares dumbly at his stained hand. He raises frightened eyes to mine.

“Lana, help me.”

My gun barrel wavers. Diamond barks, short and sharp, warning him to stay back, reminding me to follow protocol. Chase reaches out to me.

“Please–” His voice devolves into a mewl. Sanity, whatever’s left of it, drains from his eyes. His face morphs, cheeks melting in a slurry of jade-colored paste. Pus drips from his scalp. He screams and launches himself at me, and for the first time in my professional career, I freeze.

But Diamond doesn’t.

She meets him mid-air, bashing into him with her shoulder. She ricochets off his body, crashing to the floor a few feet from where he lands. Teeth bared, she’s up in an instant, but he’s already charging toward her, crablike, faster than I’ve ever seen him move.

Diamond! Don’t bite him!

I don’t know if I’ve screamed or if she’s read my mind, but she keeps her mouth off him. We slide into a familiar rhythm of charge and retreat, strike and evade. She dodges, giving me a clear shot. I squeeze the trigger. Chase’s head explodes.

Clabbered wet tissue splatters across his desk. Ears ringing, I inch closer and nudge the slack body, but it doesn’t move. His entire head is gone. I doubt anything could survive that, but I give him a double tap, two to the chest, to be safe. Then I drop the gun and rush to Diamond.

You stupid dog. Did the goo splash you? I run my hands over her armor, up and down her legs, check her mouth and her teeth. After examining her doggie armpits for the second time, my panic dissipates. She’s okay; the K-9 gear did its job. She nuzzles my face, and I realize she’s cleaning up my tears. I wrap my arms around her, trembling. Good girl.

I call for evac and wait for the thump of chopper blades to split the air.

On a normal mission, I’d feel rotten about failing to bring my target home alive. This time, not so much. I drag a clean duffel behind me. It’s filled with Chase’s notes and computer drives, but not the bio sample. I left that crap behind for the bombs to take care of.

The chopper circles. I flash my light, three quick blinks, and it lands.

“Look, Diamond, it’s the yummy pilot.”

She woofs and thumps her tail.

“Oh, you approve of this one?”

She barks twice; that’s a yes.

“Okay then, let’s go give him a lick.”

Combat Search & Rescue Consultant Lana McGee specializes in the retrieval of personnel and property from high-risk environments. McGee is assisted by a Hero-Class German Shepherd named Diamond. McGee has recently raised her consultation fees, and now charges a premium for any “mad scientist bullshit.”

Myna Chang writes flash and short stories. Her work has been featured in Daily Science Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Defenestration, and Dead Housekeeping, among others. Find her @MynaChang or read more at mynachang.com.

Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his web site at www.carrionhouse.com.

Fiction: Disinhibited was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Genetic Engineering #Lana McGee #Luke Spooner #Myna Chang #Virology

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