what if i told you... there was never any upper city "content" in the first place...

just finished my first run of bg3. spoilers for basically everything, although i don't actually go into too much detail abt the actual climax, more the ending cutscenes and companion quests.

i love jergal so much. that just needs to stand on its own. he's such a sassy skeleton git who hides the fact he still cares for humanity under it all - his scene with arabella was one of my favourite moments of the entire game.

(on that note, anyone else assuming his whole "follow the weave" thing to her is him basically protecting her? finding her in act 3 surrounded by four dead adults while she has a nary a scratch certainly makes me think she's got some secret godly supervision going on).

anyway - the ending.

i think that if i hadn't been warned that there aren't any epilogue slides, i would've been disappointed. so i'm glad i knew that, even it still felt a bit abrupt because of it. but hey! given larian's history with expanded/definitive editions, i'm guessing we'll either get it in a patch several months from now or in bg3's expanded edition.

personally, i think the section from when you enter the morphic pool to when you kill the netherbrain feels very rough and abrupt. very rough. but the rest of the game is just so stupidly perfect as far as i'm concerned, with like one exception for the cut content for karlach. which is blatantly obvious even without looking at datamining, because why else would we get a ton of different types of infernal metal in act 3?

and god i would've loved to see the upper city (as advertised, larian!) and the ducal palace before it all went to shit. cazador's palace was clearly meant to be there, and i was really looking forward to my urchin tav (malias) actually walking around the upper city and having opinions.

(on that note, i loved that bust gortash has in his office [which was presumably meant to be in the ducal office but anyway!] where the founder of the counting house was an ex-urchin who didn't give a shit abt the patriars because they never cared for him before he became important. malias absolutely would've found that an inspiration for any upper city shenanigans)

but those ending cutscenes on the pier? pretty great, even if i was internally screeching the whole time gale was talking because hey astarion is right there in the sunlight and he doesn't have a tadpole. but thank god gale was just like "yeah, you're right, leaving it there is probably a good idea".

and his line abt some things being more important than power! i adore that line. it's essentially the point of everyone's quests, that power imprisons you and the most important thing in life is the freedom to choose. and of course gale is the one to verbalise that, and to openly say how fond he is of everyone!

then gale made his slightly dickish comment about astarion fleeing, lol. boys, please.

honestly that felt hilariously fitting to my playthrough where i accidentally fell into romancing gale while intentionally romancing astarion, and broke it off with gale (despite never actually being with him). yes buddy, i know you're still a bit salty about that. please wait until malias isn't distraught over their boyfriend literally burning up and running off in front of them.

(to detour for a moment - again, thank you larian for letting me play a nonbinary characters. honestly, that alone makes it a game in its own sphere of perfection, especially since vtmb 2 originally promised that then cut it then maybe it's back in with the new studio??? genuinely perked up with happiness whenever someone used the right pronouns or referred to malias in a clearly gender neutral way.)

even if astarion fleeing and his lines about it were genuinely agonising. at least the romanced cutscene with him started immediately afterwards - i was kinda debating between the "heroes" and "sunlight" options, but honestly? as absurdly good-aligned as malias is, i absolutely think they'd value helping astarion to have the freedom to walk in the sun over being heroes. pretty sure this whole adventure has shown they're pretty good at that multi-tasking element lol. and i love that astarion is so happy about going on another adventure.

like not to go tmi, but astarion's character and plot was... painfully relatable, especially when he just started sobbing after killing cazador, and it's just so good that you can give him a happy future. not an ending, of course, because i don't doubt he and malias will get into a fuckton of mischief, but like he says - he's free! it's just such a perfect moment. my favourite companion and companion quest by an absolute country mile.

i'm also just internally assuming that malias sprinted off after astarion as soon as karlach's near death brush was finished - i am so glad i went the "have my cake and eat it" route of breaking wyll's pact and saving his dad regardless. it lets wyll and malias/tav persuade karlach to return, swearing that she'll be safe from zariel, and personally malias would absolutely be looking for a way to help karlach return safely while off finding a way for astarion to walk in the sunlight.

(also i'm a bit curious abt what others think - there's a little bit of ambiguity abt whether it's just going for the sunlight, or straight up curing his vampiric nature. after all, as his grave inscription happily points out, he was turned 194 years ago and the true resurrection time limit is 200 years. since gale wants to stick around, he can call in a favour with elminster to figure out a way to do that.)

and to backtrack for a second, i am happy that malias persuaded lae'zel to make her own path instead of following orpheus' orders! was it selfish? probably, yeah, which was a bit surprising from how otherwise strongly good-aligned malias is but between that and the mindflayer choice after freeing orpheus (i asked orpheus to do that), i just... think malias doesn't want to lose that.

to explain smth for a sec, i'm going back and forth on whether to keep malias' backstory as is (urchin/orphan who grew up in the lower city) or to make them my dark urge character. from what i've heard of the dark urge, it really ties into my favourite character dynamics and themes (and seems a bit reminiscent of kotor lol), so it's a little bit of debate.

but either way, i think malias would override any moral concerns of goodness for "fuck that, this is my family and i am not losing them". regardless of which backstory i end up picking, that's definitely staying the same. but malias as a former orphan and street kid sure as fuck isn't giving up on their new and beloved family. so yeah, i think the moral concerns of "ok you were just told to go save the githyanki as a whole" would be pushed to the side of "you've always been following orders your entire life, i want you to be free".

and if lae'zel chooses to go help the gith regardless? that's great. but malias would want it to be her choice, not orders she feels obligated to follow.

i also love that you get to say "yes, let's go to the pub to celebrate!". even if we don't see it on-screen, i just love it. those fuckers (astarion included once someone managed to throw something thick enough over him so he didn't burn en route) absolutely partied until they crashed and they fucking deserved it. i love my found family shit so much. and i'm guessing that probably ties into the cut epilogue stuff, even if that was meant to be six months later.

but yeah. i just fucking love it all. now time to do my dark urge run, which i heavily suspect will also be an astarion romance again just bc i'm curious how those differences pan out.

Becky's debut novel (Sugar Sugar fic)

A/N: So, @thelastsock gave me such a great idea: a snippet of Becky's book. So I have a snippet here, including a front cover, back cover and a little dedication page (because I am extra like that 😂😂, what else do you expect from me). Hope you like it xoxo

Chapter 1

YOU ARE NOT WELCOME.

Those are the exact words that greet me when I walk up our porch to our front door. Let’s just say that my mom has a special way of welcoming her quests. I step over the slightly offensive doormat to get inside. Not a lot of people would expect this kind of welcome from the mayor, but then again: no one expected her to win the elections in our town Starfall Fields in the first way.

Not to be mean, but even I never believed in my mom and not for a second did I think she had any chance of winning. Mom has been quite the controversy the second she moved into town. How on earth would she be able to be the mayor?

Weirdly enough, she hasn’t made a complete fool out of herself in these two months she has been mayor. Actually, she’s been doing quite well. It’s just that her housekeeping skills have been lower than low.

I open the refrigerator and scrunch up my nose when I notice there is barely anything edible in here. Great.

I grab my phone and send my mom a text.

Josie: You need to do groceries

Mom: Do it yourself, you lazy bitch

Mom: Still love you though 😘

I chuckle as I read her text. She’s quite something, my mom, and if we don’t call each other bitch at least once a day, there’s something up and we should worry.

People might find it odd that we call one another bitch, but it’s just our way of showing our affection towards the other.

Somehow I find some left over yogurt that isn’t expired already. I peel a banana (to only throw half of it away, because it’s brown and squishy, therefore absolutely repulsive) and cut it into slices. I drizzle some maple syrup on top of it and want to add some raisins, but when I open the jar, I find out there is only one raisin left in it.

‘Mom,’ I whine, though she can’t hear me. ‘Really?’ This is just absolutely fantastic. After a long day at school, a girl can barely enjoy a nice little afternoon snack. I grab my bowl and walk over to the dining table. My butt barely touched the soft seating of the chair, when my best friend Andy FaceTimes me. I place the phone against the fruit bowl before I press answer. ‘What do you want?’ I ask him. ‘You literally saw me half an hour ago.’

He smiles, two dimples appearing in his full cheeks. ‘You know I can’t get enough of you, sugar.’

Andy and I have been best friends since I can remember, but that is mostly because we’ve been in the same class the moment we both stepped foot into kindergarten and we’re neighbors. We’re literally the two houses in a radius of around half a mile (yes, we took the time to measure it) and he isn’t the worst guy to hang around with.

Okay, he is the only one that doesn’t make me that angry, I have to fight the urge to claw his eyes out. I’m not gonna beat around the bush: I love hanging out with him.

While we see each other the moment we step out of our houses to go to school, share every class of the day with one another and we walk from school back to our houses, it’s hard to function without the other one. Therefore, we usually FaceTime the second we can after separating.

We’re quite the symbiotic pair.

‘Spit it out, Andy. What do you want?’ I ask.

‘I was wondering what your plans are,’ Andy says. ‘Mainly for tonight.’

I can’t help but chuckle. ‘There was a plan of me hanging on the couch, watching a movie with my best friend while we eat junk food, but your voice is telling me that you have something else in mind for the two of us.’

He nods. ‘I was thinking about you and I doing some FindUrPricing tonight.’

‘FindUrPricing is not a word, you idiot.’

‘I don’t care, miss Doyle,’ he retorts with a sassy undertone. He shakes his head, gestures I have to wait (like I’m going anywhere) and comes back into frame, this time with a tablet in his hands. ‘I have like five of these things, so what do you say? Want to bury them tonight, while we try to find something cool for it in return?’

Andy has this obsession with solving puzzles in newspapers like the old soul he is and since he is quite good and really fast, he has won multiple prizes, including multiple tablets.

‘Only if I find a diamond ring,’ I answer with my mouth full of yogurt.

‘Yeah, that’s attractive. You’ll find yourself a boyfriend in no time with those manners.’

I show him the finger. ‘I don’t need etiquette lessons from you,’ I say.

Andy sticks out his tongue. ‘Are you coming with me tonight?’ he asks me. ‘You know I need you.’

I chuckle. Andy is a disaster when it comes to being in the dark, but since FindUrPrice is just more fun at night, I have become his personal guard. ‘Okay, okay, but only if I can sleep at your place tonight. I have no idea what time my mom will be back from work.’

Andy’s parents are going to the opera’s tonight and afterwards, they’re staying in a hotel near the big city. Normally, they aren’t the type of people to go to the opera’s, but when their son wins tickets, including a stay in one of the most luxurious hotels in the area, who are they to say no?

Since I have no idea what time my mom manages to pull herself from city hall (to say she is a workaholic is an understatement), I’d rather sleep at Andy’s, then telling her we’ve been wandering on the street late at night.

Especially on a school night.

Sure, my mom knows about FindUrPrice, but she forbade me to ever do it late at night, because “you never know what can happen”. I personally think it’s not that big of a deal, since Starfall Fields is boring as hell and absolutely harmless, but my mother wouldn’t be my mother if she didn’t envision my death.

FindUrPrice is an app for the younger folks in our city and the few around. The organization hid a few gifts and presents and whenever you follow the leads and find something, you have to place something nice in return. It’s cute and me and Andy do it from time to time.

‘You’re coming over now?’ Andy asks.

‘To help you do your laundry?’ I ask, nodding towards the screen, mainly towards the enormous pile of clothes on his bed. ‘Didn’t think so. See you in a few hours, Andy.’

‘Please,’ he begs, right at the same time as I hear his mom in the background yelling for him. ‘Yes, wait a minute!’ he yells. ‘Can I live with you? I feel like your mother never pushes you to do chores around the house.’

‘That’s because I do them voluntarily. If mom doesn’t do laundry, no one does it. If mom doesn’t clean the toilet, no one does it. Believe me, with a mom who all of the sudden turns a bit blind when it comes house chores, there is more to do here than there is at your place. Don’t you dare whine about it, Andrew Carter.’

We hang up and I grab a magazine from the table, reading through some of the articles. How to painlessly bikini wax yourself, how to get rid of strawberry legs, how to get yourself a man in a week.

Geez, mom, why do you read this?

No wait, better question: mom, why haven’t you gotten yourself a man in a week? This issue is three months old.

My phone rings again and without looking I answer, since I know exactly who is calling me. ‘Andy, I’m not helping you with your laundry,’ I say. ‘Shirts, sweaters and other items for your upper body go on a hanger and the rest with clothespins on a drying rack. How many times do I have to tell you that?’

‘Thank you for this wise, yet unnecessary lesson in laundry,’ mom says and I can hear her smile in her voice. ‘But laundry is your chore, so I pretend I didn’t hear it.’

‘What do you want?’ I ask my mom.

‘Wanted to know your plans for tonight.’

‘I was planning on hanging out with Andy,’ I say. Go outside, do some FindUrPricing. ‘Watch a movie. Probably sleep at his place. He is home alone, you know how he gets.’

Mom snorts. ‘Oh, do I know. How old was he when he rang our doorbell, nearly crying because he was afraid of the dark?’

‘The last time was a few months ago,’ I chuckle. ‘Why do you want to know my plans for tonight?’

‘You know,’ mom starts and I do know. ‘There is still a lot to do here at city hall.’

‘Right,’ I say, ‘and you wanted to know whether or not I mind. Mom, I’m your daughter, I truly don’t care.’

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ she says, mostly because she is trying to feel less guilty.

And I wouldn’t be her daughter if I wasn’t going to totally exploit her sweet offer. ‘So, you’re making breakfast for me and Andy tomorrow?’

She sighs. ‘Goodness gracious, really? I’m going to pull an all nighter.’

‘You wanted to be mayor and you’re also a mother. Deal with it.’

Mom scoffs. ‘And here I was thinking I was gonna get some sympathy from my daughter.’

‘Ew never,’ I say.

‘Well, I might just make breakfast for you, only if you eat it here. I might be your chef, but I’m not a waiter and I’m certainly not gonna walk it to the Carters.’

I scoff. ‘Okay, I think I can live with that.’

‘Alright, enjoy your night, Josie and don’t make it too late okay? Ten o’clock lights out, okay?’

No. ‘Of course. Bye mom.’

I look at the picture on the dining table. Despite not being blood related, my mom and I are really close. According to Andy’s mom, it never seemed like my mom would settle down. She moved to this boring place a few years prior to finding me on her doorstep. She was thirty and didn’t have a husband (nor had any intention of settling down with anyone—she turned down a lot of men who asked her out in Starfall Fields). Even back then, she was already a workaholic and worked over time as the mayor’s assistant.

One day, when she was getting herself ready for work, she heard soft cries from her front porch and when she checked it out, there was yours truly.

I was around a year old and in the cradle, there was a note saying that whoever found me, to take good care of me. My DNA wasn’t available in any database, just like there were no matches at all.

I have no idea who I am, who my biological family is and where I’m from.

Mom adopted me, because I only felt safe with her and since that moment, we were a duo.

A year and a half ago she became the mayor and since then she is everywhere in Starfall Fields, except home. I barely see her, but she does a lot for this town and I don’t think I have the right to whine about it, especially because it means many many sleepovers with Andy and many nights wandering around the woods to play FindUrPrice.

Sure, I miss her from time to time, because she’s still my mom. From someone who was home a lot, would wait for me on the porch no matter the weather when I came back from school and had chocolate pie ready for me and Andy, she changed to a real career woman who is everywhere in town.

But that’s okay, she’s happy and when she is, I am too. I should be, especially after everything she has done for me.

apropos of nothing, some offhand ideas for how to make fo3′s world more believable, because honestly what the fuck even were half those settlements.

Megaton:

We’re given some context on why Megaton in particular exists--the crater made for convenient wind shelter, it was near an airport and a lot of the scrap that built the town is made from aircraft bits, a cult developed around the bomb for some reason. so:

buildings made more obviously from aircraft scrap. Most of the shacks look pretty bog-standard, probably a result of needing to reuse assets as much as possible, but aircraft aluminum is corrosion-resistant and relatively easy to form. Shine up the shacks, is what I’m saying, and have some more obviously plane-sourced clutter; rounded airplane windows, using commercial plane seats as furniture, stuff like that. While we’re at it, let’s empty out Springvale. It makes zero sense for the founders of Megaton to have never picked Springvale clean for building materials. Boards, concrete, and especially nails would be quite useful in building shelter.

Dismantle the bomb and operate a reactor from the fissile material. Honestly, I see no reason this should conflict with the Church of Atom’s beliefs; given their worship of nuclear fission, they should be all on board with building a reactor. Plus, it answers the question “why is this town still here”/“how does this place sustain itself” better than “caravan trading center”.

Rivet City:

We’re given less context for why the USS Enterprise is an inhabited settlement, especially since a permanently-docked aircraft carrier that is apparently actually being used as a floating airbase at the time of the Great War should have been a pretty obvious strategic target, but I can def think of a few things that might make it more believable as a still-inhabited city 200 years later.

Fishing and aquaculture. Seriously, it’s literally in the Jefferson Memorial tidal pool, and the broken bow is full of Mirelurks. Fishing, Lurk hunting, fish farming, maybe even Tenochtitlan-style floating gardens should be a huge industry. Rivet City should, by all rights, be the food production center of this Wasteland.

More guns. Seriously, it’s an apparently recommissioned aircraft carrier with a shitload of (what would have been at the time of the war) functional planes on the deck; the .50s should’ve been ripped out of the now-useless jet fighters and mounted into emplacement defenses. Rivet City has the potential to be very well-defended and safe, and likely a center for arms manufacturing given the abundance of steel and existing weapons to copy.

More life in the superstructure. There’s a little going on there in the base game, but not really much; you’ll probably only visit once or twice. This should be the governmental and security center of the settlement, given its high placement, central location, and commanding view, and should be seen a lot more by the player during quests.

More going on on deck. People don’t like spending all their time in confined spaces with no fresh air or natural light, generally; even if the apartment spaces are all below deck, there should be some recreational areas on the flight deck.

Tenpenny Tower:

Honestly idk that there’s anything that can be done. How the hell property rights are enforced well enough, in this post-nuclear hellscape, that the owners of wealth can fuck off to a gated community and their employees don’t just immediately seize the source of that wealth, is beyond me. Tenpenny Tower should not exist, at least not as a standalone settlement; it should be the center of a huge industrial center or something like that, as the clear rich-people neighborhood of a larger settlement.

I hate to say it, but Fallout 4 actually got its gated community right, almost; the Upper Stands wouldn’t have made sense if they existed outside of the larger Diamond City. (That said, it still doesn’t make sense, given that the Upper Stands residents don’t seem to actually own or employ any of the lower city, but it’s closer to making sense than Tenpenny Tower.)

The Citadel:

Actually, kind of makes sense. While the Brotherhood of Steel in FO3 themselves could do with some fleshing out, the Citadel is one of the only places in the Capital Wasteland that makes perfect sense. Of course they’re not farming or have large-scale industry or trading, it’s a military base. The only things to change here would be with the BOS’s interactions with the rest of the Wasteland; who’s supplying them, and why? Having them take on the role of protectors of the Wasteland can be a viable idea, we just need to see them interacting with Rivet City and Megaton to establish that, and give them an enemy to fight that isn’t just raiders with an orc skin Super Mutants.

And lmao that’s basically all the major settlements in this game because Bethesda is lazy as fuck

;   ---   SHATTERED HILT   /   01

summary: ru’kali survives order 66. cal kestis does, too. while cal spends his days on bracca, stripping starships for parts, ru spends her days earning her protection from the empire in the fighting pits on ordo eris; both do what it takes to survive. but, when a wayward quest and a plethora of owed debts lead cal kestis straight back to his fellow padawan -- a once shy girl turned raging fire -- the pit fighter is left with a choice: leave, or spend the rest of her life a pawn in a game much bigger than her. pairing: cal kestis / original female character, ru’kali lof word count: 2k a/n: i cannot remember the last time i wrote something that wasn’t a reader-insert, and i’m not sure how this will do -- feedback is genuinely appreciated on this, since i know i’m mostly a reader writer! everyone loved ru from her intro to my clone trooper squad, which you can read here! 

Ru’kali Lof startles awake to the sound of three loud, rough bangs on the door to her quarters. 

She wonders bitterly, as she blinks up at the ceiling, if she can just ignore the sound. With any luck, they’ll leave her alone and Ru can go back to bed --

Then, the knocks come again. Louder and faster. 

“Rise ‘n’ shine, sweetheart!”

Ru snarls.

Beneath the durasteel door, she can see the long shadow of someone shifting back and forth in their boots -- immediately, the Mirialan, as she stands and throws herself to the door, knows it’s Atticus. The sheer bombastic chaos that follows the bounty hunter swims through the force to greet her before she even opens the door.

When she does, he’s got an arm on the doorframe and he’s leering. 

Atticus Rex isn’t much to look at, nor is he kind nor smart, but he’s muscle -- his head is shaved in a tight buzz, littered with scars, and his muzzled grin is picked clean with a toothpick that hangs from his lips. 

He smells like day-old ale and sweat.

“Where y’ been, Ru?”

It leaks out of him like a jab. She has to restrain the snarl that threatens to leap across her face. Her attitude is sharp and wants to go straight for the Haxion Brood Lieutenant’s throat. 

“Asleep,” she bites, crossing her arms and cocking a hip as she goes to hit the switch and shut the door, “Do you mind?”

Atticus snorts, hand planted on the frame and forcing the door to stay open. 

Ru leans back, peering into her room, to eye the chronometer hanging on the wall. The digits read 1038 -- it’s late, and she’d finally fallen asleep after she’d managed to quiet down the usual roaring river in her mind. Not an easy task. 

"Get dressed,” the Bounty Hunter chirps, “S’ fight night, sunshine.”

--

Fight nights were common.

But, fight nights were Ru fought? Those were rare -- and though she’s sure Sorc Tormo would put her in the ring every night if he could, she’s also aware that to the Umbaran crime-lord she’s an asset. A big asset. A big, money-making asset that draws a big crowd and big bets.

Huge bets.

(The exact kind of bets that got Greez Dritus into this mess in the first place, and by proxy his new-found friend.)

Ordo Eris, on fight nights, becomes more like a city than the cold, lonely, terrible astroid colony it really is. The space station fills with scoundrels and thugs from all across the galaxy who traverse the rocky space around the arena’s hub to get a spot around the ring -- Ru eyes the growing crowd, nearly every attendee with credits in hand, as the lift carries her upwards to the top level of the arena’s loge.

Beside her Atticus flicks the smoldering bud of his deathstick down the shaft.

Speaking of Sorc Tormo, the sleaze ball greets Ru’kali with wide open arms and a devious grin. 

“Ah! My prized warrior princess!”

Ru cross her arms and swaggers forward -- the small rope of lucky beads tied to her sash tinkers as she does, knocking against the chromium smelted hilt of one of her two sabers. One is hers from when she was a Padawan. The other is a recent build and it’s temperamental. Using a stolen, mined kyber crystal is to blame, no doubt.

Master Yoda was right -- the crystals are supposed to pick the Jedi. 

Atticus meanders along behind you. Skulking as per usual.

Ru looks out past the arena to the screens bolted up along the pit. Pale blue eyes narrow tightly, the deep scar over her right eye warping slightly as she does. The broadcast is in the lower levels. Some idiot running around on the walls. Plugging wires in. 

A show, for sure.

Ru raise a brow.

“What’s all this about?” she asks, turning to eye Sorc Tormo.

The Umbaran man is eccentric, to say the least. His facial hair runs right down his chin in one fine line, green in color. That same green, punchy and vomit-reminiscent, echoes in his Canto Bight-esque outfit. Large, pompous sleeves and pants that are three sizes too tight. All green. 

He looks like seventy kliks of bad road, honestly. 

Hell, everyone on Ordo Eris does. 

Ru’kali is no exception -- she’s rougher than she was when she first arrived here. Littered in scars and bitter. The years of pit fighting have settled in her stance and though she’s athletic, she’s a rogue brawler with enough crackling, dangerous rage to power an entire Star Destroyer.

Fighting takes the edge off. Makes her feel less afraid. 

“Well,” the lone, pale fingers of the Umbaran curl around Ru’kali’s pale pink shoulders, nails drumming against the diamond shaped markings there, “I am glad you asked, my dear. We have a special contender for you --”

“Cut to the chase, Tormo.”

The egg shaped head of the Umbaran rolls as he steps away, waving off Ru’s evident irritation; the crime-lord gestures to the screen. “He’s friends with someone who owes me a lotta money. He was carrying this around --”

His fingers snap twice.

“Atticus --”

Ru’kali was not expecting Atticus Rex to procure, from the back of his belt, a lightsaber.

And she certainly wasn’t expecting him to hand it to Tormo and for the Umbaran to ignite it, presenting a glimmering yellow blade. 

The Mirialan’s face falls -- anger bubbles up there, warping the navy tattooed features of her face as she steps forward and yanks the hilt from the hands of the crime-lord.

Her lips twitches.

“What?” she sneers vengefully, “Did he pull this from a corpse, then?”

She has seen another Jedi’s saber three times now in this station. Once on the belt of a traveler who’d laughed in her face and waved the blue thing around, proudly proclaiming they’d bought it off clone trooper for drinking money. The second time, on a bounty hunter -- he’d murdered a Jedi Knight for Imperial credits, kept the blade though. The third, was now. 

Ru could only assume the weapon to be another stolen relic, a ground-in-the-dirt memory of her life before Ordo Eris. This contender probably had no idea how to use it, let alone the life this saber had before now.

A laxidasical wave. “Maybe. Don’t care. But! My sweet, sweet, Jedi -- I want you to kill him. Seeing two saber swordsmen dueling... Goodness, me oh my, that will certainly bring in the money, won’t it, Atticus?”

“Sure will.”

And it does.

--

Cal Kestis is having a pretty shit day.

Not that he’d ever say so -- no, because, sure, it might be terrible and he might be navigating some wild underground dungeon maze, but Cal has BD-1 back on his shoulder and that’s all that matters. 

He’s got a mission, he’s got BD-1, and despite being a little sore, he’s good. All good. Everything’s good. Totally good. 

As he rides the lift to the upper levels of this... place... Cal wonders if he’s gonna eat that sentiment.

The first thing he hears is the chants -- raucous roars of a large crowd. Before him lays a large square space, illuminated by stark spotlights and swarmed with drone droids, each with blinking red lights on their helms to show their recording status. 

It becomes abundantly clear to Cal that he’s suddenly in the spotlight. And, that the itching feeling that he was being watched was correct. 

The redheaded Jedi steps out from under the bay, suddenly exposed to the bright light of the arena. 

Around him on the upper decks are hundreds of people, all clamoring to get a view of him -- the large screens on the sides of the loge show him squinting, raising a hand and grimacing into the light. 

BD-1 gives a worried boowoop. 

“I got a bad feeling about this too, lil’ buddy.”

Suddenly, a holo-projection fizzles in before Cal -- large and tall and to the excitement of the crowd. The man’s appearance is met with a rise in cheers, rolling off the voices of the spectators with thirst for action. 

Sorc Tormo laughs.

“Ah, finally he arrives!” 

The projection waves wildly, spinning about, and Cal watches carefully as this eccentric ego-maniac waves his hand with a grandiose flourishes as he speaks. 

“We had action on how long it would take for you to get here!”

Yeah, well, BD-1 was kinda his priority.

Irritation bites at Cal’s features. The Jedi scowls. His stance is tense.

“And who are you?” Cal calls out, voice rising over the roar of the crowd.

“Ha ha ha! Who am I? I’m Sorc Tormo, baby! I’m the boss of this operation!”

The crowd goes wild at that, whoops and hollers serenading the arena to the tune of the crimelord’s name. A television drone swoops close to Cal’s head and the Jedi side-steps it with a disgusted look on his face. 

“Right,” Cal snarks, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Maybe not you, but to your friend Greezy Four-arms it does! You’ve got him to thank for gettin’ you into this pickle!”

Of course. 

Cere had made a comment off-hand about the pilot’s penchant for gambling -- not that Cal was any stranger to the concept. Back on Bracca, Prauf had muscled Cal into tagging along to a few card games here and there. And though the redhead never partook in wagering his entire week’s pay on precious metals, Prauf had once or twice. On those nights that Prauf lost -- because he always lost -- there was nothing that could lift the Abednedo’s mood. 

Not even a signature Cal Kestis smile 'n’ pat on the back. 

Cal could use one of those right about now. 

“Yeah, well, once I’m finished with you, I will thank Greez,” it comes out just as cocky as it feels -- and maybe Cal shouldn’t had tried the attitude. 

Either way, when this Sorc Tormo guy laughs and waves his hand, proclaiming, “No, no, my friend, you won’t be fighting me...”

Suddenly, the air becomes electric.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the crime-lord turns on a heel, gesturing to the crowd with the all the practiced cool of an entertainer, “Our lovely little guest will be going head to head with our favorite...”

There’s a crescendo of excitement. Cal notices an uptick on the counter on the broadcast screens -- he realize, quickly, that they’re bets and currently, someone named Fropolo’f is betting the most money against him. Real confidence booster that is. 

“Someone get baby his toy! He’s gonna need it!”

His lightsaber is launched from the loge, and the Jedi catches it quickly, igniting it on instinct as his skin crawls in anticipation. The redhead looks around, eyes cast on the crowds of smugglers and thugs lining the balcony.

The wide angle shot of fear on his face is painted across the rumbling arena’s screens.

Before Cal can bite in a retort, the echo of boots on durasteel begins -- coordinated and rhythmic. Boom... boom... boom... boom, boom, boom.

“You know her well -- a pure whirlwind of rage! She’s pink, she’s tatted, she’s daaaaaaaangerous!” 

Boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom.

BD makes a nervous boo-weeeeeeeep as the pace picks up. Cal swallows, gloved fist tightening nervously around the hilt of his glowing, golden blade. Green eyes dart around the square expanse of the arena, trying to get a gauge on where this opponent might appear from --

“Give it up for our girl...”

Boomboomboom, boomboomboom. 

“RUUUUUUUU’KALLLLI!”

The roar is deafening. 

Suddenly, the paneling in the floor separates, and from it emerges --

“...Ru?”

Ru’kali Lof is suddenly staring face-to-face with a ghost.

Her stance, wide-set with double blades humming in a hot white, seems to crack when she finally sees the face of her opponent.

She’s a handful of meters away but she’d know that flash of red hair anywhere.

Cal Kestis.

Cal fucking Kestis.

Oh, this is bad. 

This is really bad. 

Consolidated Snippets

Snippet 1 from “The Dark Lady’s Ransom” - the fantasy au i wrote a bit of and outlined, but never finished.

There was a body in the creek.

It was an unexpected sight, for Mumen hadn’t seen any signs of battle over the past few days of travel - in fact, he had not seen another person since leaving the small village yesterday - but it was starkly, undeniably there. The poor man must have washed downstream. For a moment, Mumen hesitated. He already had a quest. There were children missing from various towns surrounding the forest at the base of the Southern Ridge. There was no guarantee that this man had any ties to it, and time was of the essence. His trusty pony nickered, hooves stamping nervously.

“Easy, Justice,” he murmured, eyeing the slumped form in the water. He dismounted with a sigh. He was no cleric, but he knew a little - enough to perform last rites and offer prayers to the Raven Queen to take this poor stranger’s soul peacefully into the afterlife. He carefully waded into the creek, his heavy armor making him graceless on the slick, icy stones. Winter was only beginning, and Mumen suspected it would be making its presence known in full force shortly.

The man’s skin was pale in death, his expression peaceful despite the bruising on his face. It was a rather handsome face, Mumen couldn’t help but notice, the horns doing nothing to detract from it. The man’s cheeks were still flush with the faintest pink of life, lips parted as if he was only sleeping.

And then a puff of air escaped from those thin lips, and the situation suddenly became much more complicated.

Snippet 2! A fic I wrote for a sick friend, but never posted online.

Professor Venomous was not a particularly skilled chef.

He did not, as a general rule, cook. But for every rule, exceptions had to be made.

Also, it was only toast, so he supposed it didn’t really count.

The ping! of the toast popping out was enough to make his own head twinge, and he hadn’t drunk nearly as much as Boxman had. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, as had setting fire to the tablecloth at Cosma’s little get together. It had spiced things up, at least – she hadn’t realized it was a grease fire until after Big Bull Demon tried to put it out with water.

It had been hilarious.

Now, hungover from expensive wine, subpar sangria, and Vormulax’s “moon-shine"… Well, it was still funny, but laughing hurt too much.

Snippet 3!

Got another like, so I’m going to post a snippet I wrote for me and @unfortunatelycake‘s superhero au.

“Life in the city is rough,” the speaker said, for probably the fifth time. “But unlike our forefathers, our struggles are not against poverty, communism, drugs-” Speak for yourself, Mumen thought- “but against the so-called supervillains who plague our society.”

“For the past twenty years, since the great Power Up that blessed so many of us with special abilities, supervillains have taken advantage of these god given gifts and used them for evil! And yet, a beacon of hope shines through the darkness - the League of Heroes! Able to survey the city from atop their floating fortress and strike out against evil!”

Mumen grit his teeth. Only the upper echelons of the LoH operated from the fortress, but of course those that did were the most marketable. Esper Girl was one of the most famous; she was the one who kept the fortress afloat (and had tried for the past six years to get her moniker changed to Esper Woman to no avail). Dead Man Walking also had a cult following, though usually among edgy teenage boys. He was actually rather nice to talk to, and out of all the top heroes spent the most time on the ground, and actually made an effort to meet with the lower tiered ones. Sweet Mask was the most popular amongst women (and certain sections of the male populace) but he always came across as cold to Mumen. He didn’t associate with the unpowered at all, and barely gave minor supers like Mumen the time of day.

First Date (Charlie Weasley x Female MC)

A/N: Okay, so don't hate me for taking a quick break from the Romania 1999 series (I'm still going to try to post part 4 soon), but in light of the latest dating side quest, I just had to write this fic. I did change things up a little because I didn't like some of Jam City's dialogue and rearranging scene order helped my plot, but I hope you guys like it!

Warnings: Minor angst because teenagers are stupid.

Word Count: ~5000

"Wait up, (L/N). What's your rush?"

Charlie’s gaze darted past Tulip as he overheard (Y/N)'s name. The redhead hadn’t seen the Curse-Breaker all morning, so he felt a twinge of excitement when he caught sight of her, but his smile wavered as he noticed Merula blocking her exit with a sneer.

"I just didn't want to interrupt the laugh you were having with your… friends?" (Y/N) answered, indifference threaded in her tone.

"Friends?" Merula looked offended. "Of course not. They're just other witches and wizards I have something in common with."

"Let me guess, they're all 'the most powerful witches and wizards at Hogwarts', too?"

Despite only being able to see the back of her, Charlie could easily imagine the look of annoyed exasperation on (Y/N)'s face. He knew her facial expressions better than anyone's.

Merula’s eyes darkened at (Y/N)'s mocking tone. "No, they just enjoy a spectacle- like the one I was just telling them about in Potions class earlier." An amused glint sparked in her eyes and she started laughing. "The look on your face when Snape read your note… 'Is there any chance you like me as more than just a friend?' Seriously? What came next, circling yes or no? Or did you draw them a box to check?"

Charlie stilled and his eyebrows ratcheted up, disappearing beneath his bangs. Did he just hear that right? He vaguely remembered hearing scattered whispers about (Y/N) earlier but didn't think much of it. Students talked about her all the time because of her brother and the Cursed Vaults. But... did she really write that?

“Come on, Charlie, I need your opinion,” Tulip groaned, snapping Charlie back to their conversation. She had been in the middle of asking him if Hiccough Sweets or Whizzing Worms were better to use on Filch.

"Sorry, but do you know what they're talking about?" Charlie asked in a whisper.

The prankster cocked her head past the fountain's columns to see what Charlie was looking at and gasped. "Didn't you hear? Snape caught (Y/N) writing a note to her crush during Potions and read it aloud in class."

Disappointment hit Charlie like a Bludger to the chest. No matter how hard he tried, Charlie couldn't seem to get over his crush on his best friend. He hated admitting it, but a small part of him always wondered if they would ever be more than friends- perhaps that's why he was delusional enough to hope for a fleeting minute that that note could have been meant for him. But he wasn't in her Potions class and he definitely didn't receive a note or even talk to (Y/N) today for that matter. "Oh." He tried his best to not let the unfamiliar feeling show on his face. “No, I didn’t. Is she okay? That's low even for Snape."

Tulip shrugged. "I'd say she's handling it pretty well. I mean she's embarrassed of course, but she seemed a little better after we talked to her in the library."

We? How many people had (Y/N) talked to? A heavy weight settled in Charlie’s stomach, and he felt guilty for not being there for her. How did he not know this happened? And why hadn't (Y/N) come to talk to him about it? They told each other everything.

"And before you ask, no- she wouldn't tell us who the note was for," Tulip added before a strike of enlightenment flashed through her eyes. "Wait a minute- you're her best friend! Do you know who her crush is?"

Charlie frowned and shook his head. "No, she never told me about having a crush." His eyes flicked back to where (Y/N) had been standing, and he was even more disappointed to find she was no longer there. "I'm gonna go talk to her."

Charlie looked high and low for (Y/N) for the next half hour but couldn’t track her down anywhere. Resigned, he decided to go to the only person he felt like he could confide in.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked his pink haired friend in the Great Hall. 

Tonks glanced up from her lunch plate and smiled at him. “Of course not, Weasley. What’s up?”

“Not much…” He took a seat across from her at the Hufflepuff table and grabbed an apple from the tray but merely fiddle with it. He was far from hungry. “Have you and Tulip decided on Hiccough Sweets versus Whizzing Worms yet?”

“Whizzing Worms,” she answered after swallowing a mouthful of food. She set down her fork and rested her chin in her hand, quirking an eyebrow at him. “Now, why don’t we talk about why you're really here?”

A mixture of anxiety and embarrassment bubbled inside Charlie's stomach. Despite having told Tonks about his crush months ago, he still hated it whenever she brought it up.

“Oh, come on. Tulip told me what happened in the Courtyard.”

Charlie sighed, twisting the apple’s stem back and forth between his fingertips. “Why didn’t she tell me about it? It seems like I’m the only one she didn’t come to and I thought we were best friends.” 

Tonks frowned. “Have you asked her about it?”

“I’m trying, but I can’t find her anywhere.”

“I think she went to Hogsmeade with Bill," Tonks answered, rubbing her chin.

A newfound sense of panic washed over Charlie and his insides twisted. “Bill? Is he… I mean he's not...” He could barely manage to stomach the idea let alone say the suggestion out loud. Thankfully, though, Tonks seemed to understand.

“Oh no, I think he’s giving her advice. They were just leaving the Great Hall when I got here."

Charlie let out a breath. "Oh."

Tonks grinned. "You know, despite being a redhead, green is not a good color on you."

"Shut up," Charlie muttered.

"Just out of curiosity, have you considered telling (Y/N) how you feel?"

Just the thought of it was enough to make hives break out on Charlie's skin. He didn't know how to date anyone let alone his best friend. He'd mess it up for sure. "Of course not."

Tonks hummed before standing up and turning toward the entryway. "Well, if you don't want to tell her, I guess all we can do is track them down and see what's going on."

-

"That's actually an interesting idea, Bill…"

Charlie froze as he reached the top step to the upper level of the Three Broomsticks. (Y/N) was right there in front of him, sitting across from Bill. His stomach contracted as he realized they were probably talking about her crush. What had Bill told her? And why did he care so much?

Spotting the look of panic in his eyes, Tonks took the liberty of giving Charlie a little push toward Bill and (Y/N)'s table. "Come on, loverboy," she whispered, patting him on the shoulder. "Too late to turn back now."

Wanting to make it clear that they hadn't been eavesdropping the whole time, Charlie decided to break the ice the best way he knew how- by picking on Bill. "My brother has an interesting idea?" he said, approaching their table. "That's gotta be a first. Do tell."

Color stained (Y/N)'s cheeks as she turned to look at them, and she laughed- a sound that automatically eased the knot in Charlie's chest. "Just when we needed a laugh."

Bill raised an eyebrow at Charlie, an unbearably smug smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. "What luck that you picked today to develop your sense of humour, Charlie."

As (Y/N) turned back to Bill with curious eyes, Charlie shot him a death glare. He had never told his brother about his crush, but Bill figured it out anyway and teased Charlie about it every chance he got. Why did older siblings seem to know everything? "What? I'm funny sometimes."

"If you really want a laugh, you should see Bilton's new inventory at Zonko's," Tonks chimed in. "We've just come from there."

Charlie glanced at Tonks, unsure why she said that since they definitely had not just come from there. He would have to ask her later. Right now, Charlie was dying to know what advice Bill gave (Y/N).

"So, what idea of Bill's was so interesting?" Charlie asked. He hoped he sounded casual. He had a feeling he sounded pathetic.

(Y/N) stared down at her empty Butterbeer glass, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. "I'm, uh, thinking of asking my crush out on a date. Bill thought it might go more smoothly if I plan the date first."

Charlie hesitated. Did that mean (Y/N) never gave the note to her crush?

"Exactly!" Bill said with a smile. "Plan for success."

"Yeah, we heard about Snape's dramatic reading in Potions class…" Tonks said, rubbing the back of her neck, but Charlie could barely hear her over the pounding in his ears.

"So the note never made it to your crush, then?" he blurted like an idiot. Luckily, (Y/N) didn't seem to notice.

"Uh, no..." Her eyes stayed trained on the table, and Charlie hated himself for the glimmer of hope that flickered inside his chest. "Which means I would have time to plan before I do the actual asking." She glanced out the window across the room. "Hogsmeade would be a good place for a date, right?" 

Charlie hated himself even more for the spark that surged through him when (Y/N)'s eyes met his. She's asking all of us, not just you, you nimwit.

To his relief, Tonks spoke up so he didn't have to. 

"All of Hogsmeade? No, you'll have to narrow it down." She turned to Charlie with a grin. "Looks like we showed up just in time."

"What do you mean?" (Y/N) asked, and Bill laughed. He and Tonks appeared to be having some horrible, non-verbal conversation.

"I think Charlie and Tonks just volunteered to help you pick your date spot," Bill explained, crossing his arms over his chest and looking way too self-satisfied for Charlie's liking.

Charlie felt the color drain from his face. Were they insane? This was the absolute last thing he wanted to do.

"What?" (Y/N) said, looking as alarmed and apprehensive as Charlie felt.

He forced a smile, not wanting to make (Y/N) feel even more uncomfortable, and Tonks beamed. 

"Let's get started!"

-

"We'll find you the perfect spot for your first date," Tonks said as she led the way into Zonko's joke shop.

"Potential first date," (Y/N) corrected. "I haven't even asked my crush yet."

"Minor detail," Charlie muttered, hoping she would stop using that word. He wanted to kill Bill and Tonks right now.

(Y/N) looked around the shop. "Do you think Zonko's would be the best place for a first date?"

Charlie looked to Tonks and a lump lodged in his throat when she merely raised her eyebrows at him. He swallowed hard. "We'd rather know if you think Zonko's would be the best place for a first date…"

He felt silly asking. Having been friends with her for nearly two years now, Charlie knew (Y/N) wasn't into pranks as some of their other classmates were. She apologized profusely after pranking him with Frog Spawn Soap and was miserable the entire time she had to impress Peeves for the Cursed Vaults portrait. He was almost certain she'd say no ...unless she was crushing on Tonks, Tulip or Jae.

(Y/N) thought for a minute and Charlie wished more than ever he knew Legilimency. "No, I don't exactly see Zonko's as a fun date spot." 

"I would have to agree with you," Tonks said with a gleam in her eye as she glanced to Charlie.

What was Tonks playing at? So what if he didn't like Zonko's either? Did Tonks really think they could convince (Y/N) to ask him out instead? Talk about pathetic.

Feeling his head start to hurt, Charlie tried to relax a little, at the very least relieved he still knew his best friend like the back of his hand. "Yeah, all it would take is one mishandled Dungbomb to make your date a literal stinker."

"I can hear you Mr. Weasley," Bilton said from behind the counter. "And we haven't had an in-shop Dungbomb incident since… Last Tuesday, I think!"

Tonks sighed. "I already apologised, Bilton. And the Dungbombs fell out of their boxes, I did not bump into them!"

(Y/N)'s forehead creased. "Wait- if neither of you think Zonko's is a good date spot, then why did you bring me here?"

"To brighten your mood and settle your nerves!" Tonks boasted, her excitement evident.

(Y/N) rubbed her chin. "Settle my nerves at Zonko's? Interesting…"

Charlie could tell (Y/N) wasn't remotely excited about the idea, and the second reminder of how well he could read her was like a kick in the gut. "I don't find Zonko's calming, but what do I know. You two are the mischief masterminds." It came out colder than he meant, but he was getting annoyed. 

"And (Y/N) has the Peeves hat to prove it!" Tonks added quickly, undoubtedly sensing his frustration. "You're overthinking this outing with your crush. Browsing Zonko's will help clear your mind."

(Y/N) still looked skeptical. "Why are you two so invested in helping me plan for a potential date, anyway?"

Charlie's palm curled into a fist at his side. Great. Not only were he and Tonks going to help (Y/N) plan some extravagant date with someone else, but Tonks was totally going to blow his secret.

"You're asking a lot of questions," Tonks pretended to scold, pushing (Y/N) towards the wall ahead. "Shop first, chat later!"

Charlie pretended to show interest in a jar on the table while (Y/N) and Tonks looked at the main display. When (Y/N) asked Bilson about an item on the top shelf, the pink haired backstabber scooted next to him.

"What the hell are we doing?" Charlie whispered.

"Shopping?" Tonks offered with a hopeful smile until Charlie's eyes narrowed. "Okay, you said you didn't want to tell her, so I thought this was the next best thing."

"Planning her a perfect date with someone else? Yeah, real fun."

"No, I meant being involved. You said it yourself that you were upset she didn't tell you. Plus, it still could be you. We don't know who her crush is yet and hey, if it is you, you'll get to find out what she likes."

"I already know what she likes, and it's not this place."

Tonks smiled. "Just another thing you two have in common. Doesn't hurt to remind her. Now shush and pretend you're enjoying yourself. No one likes a sourpuss."

-

"Okay, we shopped," (Y/N) said, as Bilson handed Tonks a gift bag. "Now tell me why you both want to help me plan my date so badly."

"What I'm hearing is the plan to clear your mind with joke items has backfired," Charlie said, shooting Tonks a look somewhere between annoyance and I told you so.

"But I've picked up my Whizzing Worms for Filch, so it's not a total loss," Tonks said, proudly gesturing to the plastic bag in her hands.

"Out with it," (Y/N) interrupted. "Why do you want to plan this date?" She crossed her arms, and Charlie noticed her attention was trained on Tonks. "Because if this is some ploy to get me to tell you who my crush is-"

"We don't care who your crush is," Charlie snapped. He didn't mean it. In fact, he cared far too much about who her crush was and it was killing him. He didn't want to be there and he certainly didn't want to find out who was lucky enough to be fancied by (Y/N). But the look on (Y/N)'s face made him regret the words instantly. 

"Oh," she said quietly. "Why not? All of our other friends seem to want to know."

Charlie swallowed. "We just care about you and know dealing with the gossip has put you in a rough spot."

Tonks nodded. "Yeah, if helping you make date plans makes life any easier for you, we're in. And I figured I might be able to help- you know, since I was the one to ask Tulip out."

"Okay..." (Y/N) bit her lip, and Charlie could tell she wasn't one hundred percent convinced, but Tonks seemed ready to persevere anyway. 

This was going to be a disaster.

-

Charlie tried to not let his feelings get the best of him. The usually resilient Gryffindor found that rather hard, however, as they visited places for (Y/N)'s potential first date. His stupid subconscious thought that maybe if (Y/N) couldn't find the perfect place, she wouldn't go on the date at all. Tonks was right, green was not a good color on him. He was pretty sure he had never complained so much in his life.

The Three Broomsticks was far too crowded and loud. They could hardly get a Butterbeer. Would her date really like waiting two hours just for a drink? And there were way too many antlers on the wall. He even had the nerve to suggest the Hog's Head Inn as an option, but Tonks hurriedly cut him off with a laugh and said he was joking. 

For a brief, delusional minute as they walked around Hogsmeade, Charlie thought his plan might actually work. But as the trio stepped inside Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop, he knew he was doomed. 

It was perfect. Quiet and cozy. Different, but not too far out there. He would love to take (Y/N) to a place like this, and he could tell by the look in her eyes she would love to go there.

"We're not even sure if it's open, Tonks," Charlie tried, but Tonks didn't seem phased.

"It wasn't locked, was it?"

"What is this place?" (Y/N) asked, eyeing the round tables and stack of tea mugs in front of them.

Tonks beamed. "A first date spot if I ever saw one."

"You know… I agree. This actually might work," (Y/N) said before turning to Charlie. "What do you think?"

Charlie's heart pounded so loud he was worried (Y/N) would be able to hear it. "It's better than The Three Broomsticks, at least," he offered, looking around the room so he could stop staring at (Y/N)'s beautiful eyes.

"Or the Hog's Head Inn," Tonks said with a pointed look at Charlie. He ignored her.

The best complaints he could come up with were "cramped" and "pink", but (Y/N) clearly didn't consider those dealbreakers.

"I can't believe we've never noticed this spot before," she said, turning to admire every inch of the frilly tea shop.

The lump returned to Charlie's throat, and it was becoming too much to handle. He felt like a lovesick puppy.

The next half hour was a blur as (Y/N) talked to Madam Puddifoot and they made their way back to Hogwarts.

"Well, do you feel more prepared now?" Tonks asked as they walked down the corridor. 

"I guess," (Y/N) said, but her tone left Charlie unconvinced. "Now I just have to face the hard part."

Tonks patted her shoulder. "You can do it, just let me know how it goes. I'll catch you guys later!" 

Charlie's anxiety grew as Tonks skipped down the stairs to her common room. Both he and (Y/N) were heading up.

"Thanks for all your help today," (Y/N) said once they reached the landing.

"What are friends for," Charlie answered quietly, the word leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. 

(Y/N) frowned. "Is everything okay?"

He rubbed his face and forced a yawn. "Yeah, I'm just tired and have Quidditch practice tomorrow. Good luck on your... date." He turned to head to the Gryffindor common room, but (Y/N) caught his arm.

"Hey, Charlie?"

His pulse quickened as her fingers brushed his wrist. "Yeah?"

"Have you ever had a crush on anyone?" 

Charlie felt as if he was falling through the disappearing step on the Grand Staircase. (Y/N)'s context was clear. He could tell by the tremble in her voice and the worried look in her eyes that she was wondering if he understood what she was feeling. Boy did he ever. But now he would either have to lie to his best friend or potentially ruin their friendship forever. Why couldn't she have asked Tonks this question? She had obviously had a crush before since she was dating Tulip.

He racked his brain for a response and as (Y/N) peered up at him with her wide, curious eyes, he realized he could never give up their friendship. Even if it meant setting aside his own feelings.

"Dragons are all I care about," he said with as convincing of a shrug as he could muster. "Who has time for dating when there are so many different breeds to study?" 

"Oh." (Y/N)'s hand dropped back to her side. "Okay. I just- I, uh, thought I might be able to return the favor sometime. Nevermind." 

Her words cut Charlie like a knife. The closest he'd ever get to going out with her is a double date with her crush and some random student Charlie could convince (Y/N) he fancied. It was the worst feeling in the world. His whole body ached, so much so that he barely registered (Y/N)'s quick goodbye as she left for her common room.

-

Charlie spent most of the following day trying to avoid (Y/N)- it seemed that swallowing your feelings could be as detrimental to friendship as admitting them. It was fairly easy at first since he knew her schedule so well, but the problem was she knew his too. So as Quidditch practice came to an end and he saw (Y/N) waiting for him, Charlie knew he was in trouble. 

"Hey," he mumbled as he exited the changing room. He gripped his Clean Sweep Broomstick tighter for support.

"Hey." She didn't make eye contact, but merely fell into step beside him.

He eyed her makeup-less face and (house) robes. "Everything okay?" Charlie asked. "Thought you'd be getting ready for your big date."

(Y/N) frowned, rubbing her forearm as they continued toward the castle. "No, I don't think that's going to happen after all."

Charlie went rigid and nearly dropped his broom. "Why not?" he asked as calmly as he could.

(Y/N) looked away, and if Charlie wasn't mistaken, her eyes looked red and watery. "He, uh, wasn't interested." 

An onslaught of different emotions hit Charlie all at once. He was somehow simultaneously furious and relieved. He wanted to hurt whoever hurt her. Really, really hurt them. He wanted to hug (Y/N) until she felt better, but he also wanted to yell at her for not liking him instead. This must be what people meant when they talked about teenage hormones. It was utterly miserable.

When Charlie didn't say anything, she added, "Sorry for wasting your time yesterday."

A spark of anger flared through him and Charlie's brows knitted together. Spending time with her was never a waste- at least not to him anyway. "Really, that's what you think I care about?"

"I just feel bad making you guys do all that work for nothing."

Charlie shrugged, trying not to care or at least make it seem like he didn't. "It's not your fault. The guy's an idiot. I'm sure the next one will be all over you." The words came out before he could stop them, bitter and tense.

She grabbed the sleeve of his jumper, forcing him to stop and look at her. "What has gotten into you? I'm sorry if I'm annoying you, I just thought I could talk to you about this-"

He tugged his arm free, unable to contain the emotions boiling inside him anymore. "Really? Because you sure didn't seem to want to yesterday."

His heart broke as the first sign of fresh tears shone in her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

He let out a frustrated breath. "Why didn't you tell me about the Potions incident yesterday? Why did I have to find out from Merula of all people?"

"I- I was embarrassed," (Y/N) began, clearly flustered.

"Apparently not embarrassed enough to talk to nearly everyone about it before me. I thought we were best friends. I thought we told each other everything." Charlie shook his head and started walking again but (Y/N) ran to keep up.

"Charlie wait-"

"No," he snapped, rounding on her. "Sorry that I don't want to be your shoulder to cry on right now. It's one thing for you to not feel the same way I do, it's another to completely disregard our friendship the second you get a crush."

(Y/N) blinked at him, her eyes going wider than Charlie had ever seen, and it dawned on him what he had just said.

And before a response could leave (Y/N)'s lips, Charlie made a break for the castle.

-

Charlie spent the following day in the comfort of his dormitory, safely tucked away from nearly everyone. He knew he was being immature and began wondering how he had ever been placed in Gryffindor when he couldn't even get the courage to face (Y/N)- not yet anyway. 

He didn't attempt to leave the Gryffindor common room until it was nearly curfew. Thankfully the halls were quiet, letting him sneak away to the Courtyard relatively unnoticed. He perched on the fountain ledge again, admiring the starlit sky and wondering how so much could have gone wrong in one day. He was able to relax there for a little while, enjoying the fresh air, until a familiar voice brought him back to reality.

"Can't sleep?"

Charlie held in a breath for a moment before shaking his head. "No." He turned to look at (Y/N), and despite everything, his heart still leapt.

She approached him slowly, the way a cat would a mouse- fearful her next step might make him flee again. Taking a seat at the other end of the fountain, she muttered, "Me neither."

He looked down at his hands, suddenly hating himself for the way he acted yesterday. He couldn't believe he had yelled at her like that. She didn't deserve that. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. 

When his gaze returned to (Y/N), he was surprised to see her smiling at him. She inched closer before extending a folded piece of parchment to him. "Don't be."

He eyed it skeptically. "What's that?"

She extended it further. "Just read it."

Sighing, Charlie took the parchment, unfolding it carefully and smoothing it out. As he registered the words in front of him, he grimaced. It was her note from Potions class. "Why are you showing me this?" he asked quietly.

"I'm not showing it to you," (Y/N) explained, scooting closer. "I'm giving it to you."

Charlie's eyes darted up to meet hers. "What? Why?"

"Because I wrote it for you."

Charlie's attention shifted between the parchment and (Y/N). Is there any chance you like me as more than just a friend? Charlie's heart pounded painfully against his ribcage as he considered the possibility. "But- but I thought you said your crush wasn't interested?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "And I thought all you cared about was dragons."

He looked at her incredulously as her words from the previous night echoed inside his brain. Have you ever had a crush on anyone? "Wait- you mean... last night on the steps, you were going to..." he trailed off, not able to form the words correctly, and she nodded. 

“That’s why I didn’t come to you about it. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I wasn’t sure if I should tell you either.”

Feeling like his heart was about to explode, Charlie dropped his head into his hand. How stupid could he be? Why did he have to be so oblivious? "Bloody hell, I'm such an idiot." 

His words were muffled by his palm, and he stayed like that until a soft, gentle hand rested on his forearm. Goosebumps shot down Charlie's arm as (Y/N) pulled his hand away, encouraging him to look at her.

"Apparently we're both idiots," she said, a sweet smile lighting up her face. "Maybe that's why we're best friends."

His breath caught in his throat as he stared down at her. She was so close to him and still holding onto his arm. "Do you really fancy me?"

Instead of answering, (Y/N) slid a hand behind Charlie’s neck and brought his face down to hers, kissing him gently on the mouth. 

It was as if someone set off a dozen Filibuster Fireworks inside Charlie’s chest. He rested his forehead against hers as they pulled apart, and they both were beaming as their eyelids fluttered open. As Charlie regained his ability to think, he remembered something. 

“Does that mean I can take you to Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop next weekend?”

(Y/N) grinned and laced their fingers together. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

SUMMER IS OFFICIALLY HERE. The city offers many things to pass the time, but when it throws an event, it certainly knows how to throw an event. The sun is just going down and in the distance, fog surrounds CRESCENT EDGE, but the faint glow of lights and the never-ending beat of a bass line tells the story, even if you can’t see it. THE PARK HAS OPENED. The sounds of screams fill the air, but some would question rather they’re a scream of pleasure or one of pain. Whoever has stepped foot into the amusement park seems to be having fun  -- right?

If there’s one thing you should know about CORPUS, however, is that everything is not what it seems. The amusement park looks amazing, sure. The rides are looking top-notch, the games are fun, and the food is great, but the RULERS of the city aren’t willing to let the slaves have a night of fun without stipulations attached. Those who dare to step foot into this place will not come out the same. If it wasn’t for the fact it’s the end of JUNE, you’d probably think you had stepped right into some sort of bizarre Halloween city.

Just when you think you can return to reminiscing about when you were free and try to ignore the fun happening across the way, THE STATIC FROM THE SPEAKER INSIDE INFERNUM takes the slaves by surprise as an announcement is made by the warden.

SLAVES,

Consider this your only break. At EIGHT, you will be escorted to CRESCENT EDGE for a night full of entertainment. Whether or not that entertainment is for you or us has yet to be determined. Attendance is mandatory.

As time passes, the fog coming from the amusement park looks as if it’s been magicked to be there, carefully shielding what is happening to outside viewers. The music also seems to be... off, juxtaposed. The clock clicks SEVEN. One hour to go.

The cells all unlock at the same time when the clock strikes EIGHT. Those dumb enough to make a break for it are easily gathered up by the guards. Those who are being ushered willing outside INFERNUM are already getting an upper hand for the upcoming task as a coin appears in their hand, leaving a small burn mark in the process. As the slaves enter the amusement park, a handwritten note appears in their hands.

DID YOU THINK IT WOULD BE THAT EASY? Nothing in this city is ever that easy. No entertainment is cheap. On the opposite side of this paper is a list of TASKS to be completed during your night of “entertainment.” Each task rewards you with a coin. Those of you who were willing to come here have been given a head start. Those of you lacking a brain -- well -- good luck. Don’t worry about keeping track of them yourselves. When you are finished with the task, they will mark off automatically. Failure to complete at least two tasks marked on the paper will lead to repercussions. Those of you who manage to complete SIX will be given something special and yes, you will enjoy it. We promise. You are free to leave the area for your task, but don’t think we aren’t watching your every move. No use in trying to leave the city, however. Unless you wish to explode in the process.

                        THE KING, ALPHA, AND HIGH PRIESTESS.

With confusion etched across the features of the slaves, a second handwritten note appears in the hands of the masters and mistresses that have made an appearance.

What a time to be alive! Everybody’s having fun, but some people seem to be getting a little manic. Consider this your opportunity to be of service to the city that has been catering to all of your needs. There are certain matters that need to be seen through to conclusion and those who choose to tackle these quests accordingly will get the best shot at showcasing their abilities. Make no mistake though, the rulers have their eyes on both you as well as the slaves; do you truly have what it takes to hold an advantage over the latter.. or are you simply privileged? Failure to provide resolution will not result in any consequences, but for those that are successful great rewards will be provided.

SLAVES.

ride the rollercoaster without the safety belt.

steal the ring off the king’s finger. *

in the haunted house, cut your palm and leave your bloody handprint on the wall. this may or may not lead to issues in the future.

pick your poison at the beer tent. is it beer or actual poison?

gain a fingernail from a human.

shove your hand into the “mystery jars.” could include: broken glass, venomous snakes, blood, wolfsbane, sulfuric acid, or water.

steal the crystal of Diaquoise from around the neck of an important person. trust us, you’ll know it when you see it.  *

gain a vial of vampire blood.

juggle searing hot fireballs. yes, you’ll be burned. but it’ll be worth it.

gain a werewolf fang.

pick between: steak, burger, hot dog, funnel cake, or a candy apple. does it have razor blades, an extra coin, or it is completely normal inside?

gain a lock of the alpha’s hair. *

do the electric slide while touching the electrical fence.

sneak into the king's office and find the emerald key brooch he keeps hidden.  *

steal the pink potion glass bottle from Spells & Potions.

jump from the top of rushing point. we may have implemented a spell that will keep you from splattering. roulette is a game. are you brave enough?

reach the witching tree and break off a branch.  *

break into the warden’s office and shuffle around slave files.

steal a witch's grimoire and try to cast a spell. what could possibly go wrong?

steal a body from the morgue and leave it on the porch of either the alpha/beta, king, or high priestess.  *

MASTERS & MISTRESSES.

Figure out who hasn’t kept the safety belt on during the roller coaster rides

Figure out who stole the king’s ring

There’s a bloody handprint on one of the walls in the haunted house. Find out whose it is.

There was something special about an order at the beer tent. Find out what the order was as well as the customer.

Manicures are such a pain – quite literally this time. A human is missing one fingernail, do you have what it takes to find out how that happened and who’s to be held accountable?

The mystery jars no longer hold that much mystery – has anyone been injured? It’s your job to get to the bottom of that.

Raenella’s crystal is missing. If you can bring it back to her, great rewards will be awaiting you.

Someone’s running around with vampire blood on them. Consider it your duty to ensure it isn’t in the wrong hands.

Things are getting hot and steamy – and some people are getting burned because of it. Can you heal them?

The fang of a werewolf can be a quite dangerous little thing – bring the fang and the person who took it to the Alpha.

Did someone bite off more than they could chew? Find out who’s been particularly famished today.

The alpha needs a new haircut, seems like someone drove some scissors through those luscious locks. Will you be able to point out the culprit?

One of the slaves has gotten themselves in a bit of an electrifying situation. Find out if they are alright.

Seth’s office has been broken into and a very precious item has gone missing. Find out who was reckless enough to steal from the King.

Spells & Potions has been robbed. It’s your duty to bring them justice by finding the thief.

One of the slaves have taken an extensive fall. Go check on them.

The witching tree is weeping, someone has ripped off a branch. The witches are scorned and won’t rest until they know who is responsible. Aid them in their quest.

Chaos in the warden’s office. Could you be the one to find out who shuffled the files?

A spell has been cast but not everything is as it seems. Was it cast by a coven member, a civilian or a slave? This is your mission to see through to conclusion.

There is one missing body at the morgue and it’s been dropped off on the porch of one ruler. Find out who dropped it there.

* REQUIRES PERMISSION FROM SAID PLAYER. COULD LEAD TO SEVERE INJURY.

WELCOME TO OUR FIRST, OFFICIAL EVENT.

We hope you enjoy the idea of this as much as we did creating it! We just wanted to make a little note and make some minor guidelines to help out with the overall event.

No one will actually die from this event. Hurt, yes, but death will not be an option. If your character is injured, they will be healed.

Task 6 and 11 are going to be randomized in the Discord server. If you plan on tackling this, just go to the bot channel and type in t!choose option | option | option. Whatever the bot chooses will be what you end up writing about in your thread.

Tasks with asterisks need to be run by the player involved.

Certain options, like stealing things from the alpha, etc, will be first come first serve when it involves the players. If you wish to participate in that task, please message the main so we can strike it out and add which character will be doing it. We don’t want to have 5 people trying to take the same thing.

We will pick two slaves that complete the most tasks for the rewards. Please be realistic when it comes to what your character is doing.

Those of you who play MASTERS and MISTRESSES will also be given a reward if you do any of your tasks. This could range from free rentals, free businesses, spa days, etc.

When the event is finished, simply shoot us a message with how many tasks they completed and the number for said task.

If you have ANY questions, please bring them to us. We will help as best as we can.

Slaves are free to roam the city for this event unattended. However, as the note said. They are watching. So don’t do anything stupid.

THE EVENT WILL RUN FOR THREE DAYS. It will end TUESDAY at MIDNIGHT.

✦ ▓ AND WHO GOES THERE? oh, it’s just [ ROSALINE PEAKE ]. some say [ HER ] resemblance to [ HOLLIDAY GRAINGER  ] is almost uncanny, but the [ TWENTY-NINE ] year old has been in the capital for [ TWENTY-NINE YEARS ]. many suspect that they are the notorious [ SURGEON ] of the [ BARATHEON ] family: perhaps that has made them [ BITTER ] && [ SUSPICIOUS ] of late, when they used to be so [ RESILIENT ] && [ TENDER ]. during the daylight hours, [ ROSALINE ] can be found working as a [ ER & TRAUMA NURSE ], but when night falls over king’s landing, they are best remembered listening to [ BLACK HOLE SUN BY SOUNDGARDEN ]. may the gods be with them in these dark streets.

A B O U T ;

Long ago the Peake name carried weight, they were the family that people answered to before the Tyrells came rolling in.  Any crime in the Upper West Side was done by the Peakes or in their name, and nothing happened without their say so.  It was practically a century ago, but her family still talks of it as if it were yesterday, as if any of them had a part in the so called glory days of the Peake name.  They didn’t and they refused to let it go.  

Many relatives had tried ‘taking it to the man’, attempting ill planned coups (could it even be called that if it had no chance of succeeding?) against the Citadel since they took over some 50 years ago, where the only the only thing overthrown were their bodies over the bridge and into the river.  For every failed attempt or drunken rant in a pub about the Peake name being restored, the Peakes fell further and further from grace.  By the time Rosaline was born, the Peake name was a joke, they were dirt poor, and on the Tyrell shit list (not a place one wants to be).  

Titus and Margot (née Lannister, a far flung cousin of the noteworthy ones) Peake were not in a happy marriage.  They had gotten married when she had gotten knocked up with their first child, Roland, and never bothered to divorce, no matter how unhappy either were.  By the time Rosaline came into the picture, their house was one of hostility, broken promises, and fragility.  All the emotional labor Titus had put on his wife, she put on Rosaline as soon as she was old enough to carry it.  Many have told Rosaline she was a natural born caretaker, but sometimes she wonders whether it was nature or nurture.  

Despite her family no longer being a ‘crime family’ they were still a family drowning in crime.  None of them seemed to be able to hold a job that wasn’t in somehow illegal, and preferred fast, get-rich-quick schemes and easy money from a night’s work (after all, it only takes, what, an hour to knock over a liquor store?).  Much of her youth was spent patching up her brother, her father, cousins and uncles.  Her 16th birthday was spent minting her brand new junior’s driving license by driving her bleeding father to a hospital, with a wound she couldn’t take care of herself, and left the back seat a grisly mess.

But Rosaline’s father, Titus, was different than most Peake’s.  While he desired to return the Peake name to one of status and greatness, he was no fool, and knew trying to usurp the Tyrells was a stupid idea if there ever was one.  He strongly believed in the saying of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’.  Very much the patriarch of their family of misfits, extended or otherwise, he instructed that the family’s new goal was to find greatness within the Citadel syndicate itself, to gain entry into it’s ranks and become important members.  But with many of their names on the Tyrell shit list, this was no easy task, so many of the Peake family members found themselves pulling increasingly difficult and noticeable jobs (crimes) in hopes of gaining the attention of the Tyrells, in hopes that some of them would be allowed to join their ranks as initiates.

And despite being surrounded by crimes and the fast money way of life, Rosaline never felt the pull and refused to be involved in anything more than stitching people back up.  They had tried to convince her (’we just need you to drive, that’s it’), they had tried tricking her (which promptly got their asses left with bag in hand standing outside of the gas station), but she refused to budge.  Cruel words and rude jokes were made at her expense (‘what, do you think you’re actually gonna go to school?  who’s going to take you?’).  Despite being a hard worker who, if she put her mind to something, generally succeeded at it, she was constantly told she wouldn’t amount to much.

So, it came as a surprise to her family when she was accepted into King’s Way.  It was unsurprising that she chose to attend their nursing program, though.  She was put on a fast tracked course, and found herself graduating in three years rather than four.  The entire time, her new found knowledge was put to work, patching up family members more and more often as they continued their quest in gaining the attention and possible favor of the Tyrells and the Citadel.  

Eventually, and inevitably, they did go too far.  Her brother, cousin and uncle made the mistake of going after a shipment of guns.  And made the mistake of not finding out who those guns belonged to.  They were Stag guns.  The trio were lucky enough to get pulled over by police amidst their getaway, and were brought into custody.  Because if they hadn’t, they most definitely would’ve ended up losing their lives.  Ours is the fury, after all.  And while getting arrested saved their lives, it also in a way, cost Rosaline hers.

With the guns and perpatrators in law enforcement custody, the Stags had no way of retrieving stolen merchandise, and had to find another way to recoup costs.  They also somehow had to make an example, and that is how they ended up on Rosaline’s door step.  To make a long story short, having already been working at North Wall as an ER and Trauma nurse for some years, Rosaline had run ins with members of many different syndicates, including the Stags, and had treated all of them with skill and care.  So when the connection was made between the perpetrators of the heist and herself, Rosaline wasn’t so much recruited as forced to be a Baratheon surgeon.

She has been such for 2 years, they keep telling her that she’s close to paying off her family’s debts to the Stags, but she was never given any definite details of how long she’d have to work it off.   And to be frank, she has no idea how much longer she can keep it up.  No one outside of her immediate family knows of her new affiliation with the Stags, and she’s scared for anyone to find out, unsure of what that would mean for her or her family’s safety.  Both the Stags and the Citadel have far reach, and she’s growing more and more paranoid by the day.  Her life in the past years has completely fallen apart due to holding this secret.  Rare nights off from the hospital are spent traveling to dark parts of the city to patch Stag men up, family and neighborhood gatherings are avoided due to the fear of running into Citadel men and associates (as her father had gotten his wish and despite son, brother and nephew in prison for a crime committed in pursuit of his goal, he did accomplish gaining the attention of the Citadel, and some family members had been taken in as associates).  Her engagement had been ruined as she couldn’t explain where she was rushing off to in the middle of the night (he had accused her of cheating, and too scared to tell him the truth, she lied and said he was right).  Leaving her completely and utterly isolated from loved ones and friends, with her only interactions coming from co-workers and Stags that she interacts with.  

While she has not lost her gentle touch, her sunny disposition has begun to wane as clouds of paranoia and bitterness over her situation have rolled in.  Surrounded by powerful people who treat her life as no more than a pawn to be played, Rosaline is starting to realize she needs to take control of her own life, to turn her backbone into one of iron, and to replace her soft curves with sharp edges.

W A N T E D   C O N N E C T I O N S  ;

THE STAGS ; Members or associates of the Stag syndicate that she has gotten to known over the past two years.  Perhaps they like each other, or perhaps they don’t.  They could have also been one of the people who had a hand in forcing her to become a Stag surgeon.  This is a super open connection that we can either just use as a superficial way of the two knowing each other or could plot out something deeper.

THE CITADEL ; Growing up in Tyrell/Citadel territory, and now with some of her family members either associates or initiates into the syndicate, I picture Rosaline having lots of connections to current members/associates or those adjacent to the syndicate.  Childhood and high school friends, ex boyfriends, etc.  As of right now, no one but family knows she’s working for the Stags, so these two would have probably drifted apart in the two years since she has started, if they had been close at the time.  Once again we can either play this as superficial way of knowing each other, or could develop it into something deeper (they’re suspicious of her allegiances, or she tries to use them in some way to hide her current situation, etc).  

EX-FIANCE ; Within the past two years, Rosaline’s engagement ended.  He was rightfully paranoid when she would sneak out in the middle of the night or wouldn’t return phone calls for hours on end when he knew she was off shift, and when questioned had no real explanation or ones that didn’t make sense.  Finally he got the guts to accuse and ask her if she was cheating.  Knowing that him knowing the truth would only put him in danger, Rosaline took the out and told him she was.  She’d rather see them both in pain than dead.  (could be a neutral party or really anyone from any syndicate, as prior to being forced to work for the Stags, she didn’t care much about ‘party lines’ so to speak)

CO-WORKERS ;  Anyone who would work within the hospital or as a first responder that she could interact with on a fairly regular basis.  At this point, Rosaline pretty much only interacts with patients, co-workers and members of the Stags, far too paranoid to have a life of her own at this point.  While she is a very friendly and bubbly personality, she’s starting to master the art of knowing much about people, but people not knowing much about her.  The only exceptions would probably be people she’s known for more than two years, before her working for the Stags.  And while she’s infinitely more comfortable with them, she does clam up when talking about her life currently.

BEST FRIEND ; We can decide if the best friend knows or not, but if the latter it was probably one of those situations where they said ‘i get you can’t tell me, but i’m gonna be here for you anyways’.  I’m completely open to plotting pretty much any and everything about these two out: how long they’ve known each other, just how tight they are, etc.  Could also fill the connection below!

ROOMMATE ;  Could also fill the connection above.  But pretty much, what’s on the tin.  We can plot out if they’re close or not, or whatever.  They probably notice her coming and goings at odd hours (unless they also keep odd hours 👀), and either mind their own business or after getting BS answers enough times have stopped asking.  Could also be really interesting to do someone in a syndicate opposed to the Stags or in the Citadel, but neither of them knowing of each other’s affiliations!

AU Thursday: Alice Vs The Questionnaire I Just Made

Because it would be remiss for me to send it out into the world and not answer it myself, right? ;p

1. How many of the sidequests did your characters do? Did they manage to complete all of them?

Alice completed most of the sidequests, mostly because I find them interesting, they're good to advance the plot of my story, and -- in-game -- they're good sources of XP. The only ones I skipped/failed were (Edit: naturally I forgot a few on my first posting; what can I say, there’s a lot of side quests!):

Drug Trip -- The Unofficial Patch Plus only quest where you can get some XP and +1 Finance by stealing some drugs for Trip from the clinic. In-game, I completely forgot this was an option and never did it. In-story, Alice is trying to get drugs by more legitimate means for Mercurio rather than steal morphine, so I don’t think she’d be keen to get the recreational stuff for Trip.

Daydream Believer -- Only marked as an official “quest” by Unofficial Patch Plus, this is where you can sell Copper “unicorn blood,” fang-blunting gum, and a stake to kill the head vampire if you’re feeling maliciously playful. Alice was not -- in fact, she likes the Thin-Bloods and wants to help them. And that includes sympathizing with Copper about his desire to become human again, while also warning him off doing anything stupid.

Replanting A Lily -- The quest where you send Vandal someone to replace Lily in his blood-draining chair once you’ve freed her as part of Thinned Blood. In-game, I simply Demented him into some hysterical laughter to forget the whole thing (in case I needed him for emergency rations). In-story, Alice slammed him up against the wall and informed him the only reason she wasn’t about to kill him was because she needed to stay in the Voerman sisters’ good books. Vandal being Vandal, he immediately found this the sexiest thing that had ever happened to him and tried to give her free blood (like might happen with the Intimidation option), which she told him to stick where the sun don’t shine. Yeaaaaah, Alice doesn’t like Vandal.

Occultish Personality -- The quest where you get occult items for Pisha, and she gives you powerful items in return. Rather than work with Pisha, I had Alice kill her after taking care of the Simon business. This was purely a character choice, as I didn't see Alice ever working with her (she disapproves too strongly of what Pisha does to sate her Hunger -- she understands that the woman is under a pretty nasty curse, but the entire camera crew?!).

Venucide -- Okay, this is an interesting one -- this is the alternate side quest you get if you take Boris up on his offer to kill Venus during And Her Name Was Venus. I didn’t do this in-game -- I’m not doing low Humanity with Alice, and besides you earn a lot more with Venus alive and giving you club profits -- but I mention it because Alice pretends to take the offer, goes back to Venus, and works with her to fake her death before going back to Boris to get the reward, then kill him. Venus is quite tickled by the whole thing. XD

Dirty Dishes -- The quest where you help one of the three Giovanni relatives at the party to gain an advantage over the other two. I attempted this one, with the intent of having maybe Victor or Victoria do something with the info in the story (as they're the ones actually doing the social stuff -- Alice snuck in Obfuscated with them), but as it turned out, I didn't have the Persuasion necessary to get the dark secrets out of all three. I only managed to get Adam Dunsirn to admit he’s broke -- ratted him out to Mira for an experience point. Ah well. . . In-story, Victor will probably learn Adam’s secret while socializing, but not actually tell anybody.

Model Citizen/Cover Girl -- Imalia's quests -- either planting webcams to spy on her rival Tawni, or (if you piss her off/want extra XP after the previous quest), getting her a copy of a magazine with her on the cover back before Nosferatuing. Imalia is one of those characters who reacts very poorly to meeting a Malkavian, and is generally pretty conceited, so I didn't have Alice stick around to actually get the quests. By this point in the story, she's not doing favors for people who treat her like ass unless she has to.

Poster Session -- The quest where you trade various objects you can collect around the world to Gary for posters of the ladies in the game. Okay, in all actuality, I am doing this one in my game, if only because I'm collecting the objects he's asking for anyway while doing other quests and I might as well, but Alice in-story wouldn't be interested, and I'm not sure Gary would make the offer anyway, given their relationship.

2. How long do you think their stay in L.A. lasted, from Embrace to ending?

I'm working on figuring this out right now in my current playthrough! Part of the reason I fired up Bloodlines again was to actually work out a timeline for "Londerland Bloodlines," as the one given on the wiki feels absurdly short (and cuts out all the side quests). The way I've currently got it, it looks like Alice's Adventures In Los Angeles will stretch from October 21st, 2004, to the middle of November that same year (maybe about the 15th or so?), though I think I'm going to be adding in extra time in the story to help develop relationships and build in some extra breathing room for the characters. So, at a rough estimate, about two months.

3. Which ending did they go for? And if they're the rare Kindred who sided with Ming or LaCroix, did they somehow manage to escape their canonical fates (blown up/sunk to the bottom of the ocean)?

Alice is Independent all the way -- by the end of the game, she neither likes nor trusts practically anyone in the Kindred/ghoul community of L.A. (with four key exceptions, and one of those -- Beckett -- has already skedaddled by the end game) and just wants out. Hell, she would have left earlier if she'd gotten the chance -- she would have happily left L.A. the moment LaCroix sent her up against the Sabbat alone if said Sabbat hadn't kidnapped Lizzie and Victoria, and she would have just left straight after rescuing them and killing Andrei if she hadn't had a guilt attack about helping to get a Blood Hunt called on Nines and deciding she had to tell him about what Ming-Xiao told her. And the Cabbie is the one who talks her into taking down LaCroix and Ming-Xiao when she escapes the Blood Hunt, telling her that the only way to truly feel free is to make sure neither of them can come after her again. She is only too happy to leave the city when everything and everyone is done and dusted.

(Also, semi-related I had what I feel is a pretty awesome idea regarding why she gives LaCroix the key -- a post in the vtmb tag mentioned that anyone who had Auspex might be able to scan the sarcophagus and see there's no uber-vampire inside. The way Alice uses Auspex in her story, it functions partially as a real-life "Shrink Sense,” to fit with her madness. Maybe, at the end of the game, Alice finally uses Auspex on the sarcophagus to see what she can glean, and sees that a) there's no vampire and b) the Insane Children have drawn jack-in-the-boxes all over it, along with arrows to leave. Figuring LaCroix can suffer the disappointment of it being empty, she drops the key and heads off, not QUITE realizing WHY the kids told her to leave -- that is, until her Wonderland friends start BOOKING IT out the door when she gets down to the lobby, and she realizes those jack-in-the-boxes look like her own Jackbombs. . .)

4. How do they feel about the major power players in L.A. (LaCroix, Strauss, Smiling Jack, Nines, Isaac, Ming-Xiao, Gary)? Did their opinions of them change at any point thanks to a quest or just more time spent with them?

LaCroix: Hates him from the moment he Dominates her into leaving the Nocturne Theater instead of bothering to answer any of her questions. She's willing to keep her head down when she's around him (for fear of more Domination) up until Grout's mansion -- then she starts demanding she be paid like a proper employee, at least, and getting a lot snarkier in his presence. When the Blood Hunt on Nines was called (which involved him Dominating her AGAIN so she wouldn't warn Nines beforehand), she was about ready to gut him, and sincerely hoped there was something in that damn Sarcophagus so it would eat him. She doesn't particularly mind he got blown up in the end -- she was much more concerned for anyone else who was in the upper levels of the tower.

Strauss: She found him a little condescending, but helpful, when she first arrived in Downtown and sought him out. (Didn't think much of his poetry skills, though.) He gave her some good information on vampires around the city and the Camarilla in general, and she can't deny he paid well for helping take care of the plaguebearer situation. Her opinion of him plummets the moment she learns about his role in creating the Gargoyle, though. The idea that he kept that living, thinking being as his slave. . .not to mention, his low opinion of ghouls doesn't do much to endear him to her either.

Smiling Jack: Like Strauss, she spends most of the game thinking he's not exactly the best company, but he was helpful and gave her a hand in a very tough spot in her life. And he seems to be the most chill of the older vampires she's come across.

And then the sarcophagus explodes, Alice manages to put together the clues on who's behind it, realize he slaughtered all those people on the Elizabeth Dane and is indirectly responsible for a lot of the shit she's gone through. . .and basically exiles herself from Los Angeles forever by staking him and leaving him for the sunrise on her way out. (She is as shocked as anyone that she managed to pull it off -- she thought it would be a much worse fight!)

Nines: Alice is grateful to him for helping to save her life at her initial trial, and she likes his philosophy just fine. Unfortunately, their relationship was wrecked fairly early on by two factors:

1) Alice making a joke about the Last Round, which Nines took poorly -- Alice attempted to apologize, but Nines refused to hear it

2) Alice not liking Skelter and Damsel, both of whom immediately gave her shit for being LaCroix's "lapdog" and a Malkavian

So yeah, there was definitely some tension there. And the whole Blood Hunt mess happened, and frankly Alice is shocked Nines was willing to talk to her when she went looking for him on her way out of L.A. post-Sabbat. She sometimes wishes they'd had a chance to make up, but given that she doesn't think much of the Anarchs in general anymore. . .she's not losing sleep over their cool relationship.

Isaac: He's one of the main reasons she doesn't think much of the Anarchs in general. She thought it was pretty smart of him to have someone to direct vampires new to Hollywood to him to say hello -- up until he mentioned "tribute." That and his generally imperious attitude toward her at first means she considers him just another Prince under a different title. Learning what happened between him and Ash didn't help either -- she can understand not wanting to let someone you care about just die, more than she would admit, but he doesn't seem to have handled things well post-Embrace, given he didn't do jack shit about the hunters menacing him. (Hoping the threat would drive Ash back into his arms, perhaps?) Add in that he didn't even pay her for taking care of the Gargoyle (never mind Alice didn't actually kill it -- she still convinced it to leave), and -- yeah. She considers him everything wrong with the Anarch movement.

Ming-Xiao: Alice considered her fairly stuck-up when they first met, but really no worse than any of the regular Kindred she'd met -- and it was interesting to quiz her on how Kue-jin are different. Of course, learning that the Mandarin was on her payroll and she's actively trying to kill her lowered her opinion of her a bit. She actively avoids Ming-Xiao after the Fu Syndicate stuff, and nearly just puts her new enchanted katana straight through her when she shows up post-Sabbat. She certainly doesn't shed a tear when she has to destroy her at the end of game.

Gary: Alice thinks he's a bit of an overdramatic jerk, but she kind of enjoys matching wits with him. And at least he's more honest about being a jerk than most vampires, and keeps up his end of the bargain when she frees Barnabus, no problem. Whatever relationship they have is built upon snarking at each other, basically. :p

5. How did they handle the situation with Heather (or, if you're like me, whoever you replaced Heather with in their personal story)?

Obviously, in my world, Victor got hit by the car and got the ghouling treatment. Alice saw him lying all alone in that room and -- couldn't let him just die like that. She's utterly horrified to learn that she created an addict by doing so, and actively has Betram and Knox seek Victor out (using the Cathayan's laptop as payment) and send him her way so she can keep an eye on him and hide any Masquerade violations he may commit. Her original intent was to hold onto him until he stopped being a ghoul, then quietly set him loose, away from prying Kindred eyes. . .

. . .And then she fell in love.

Cue quite a lot of angsting over the fact that she doesn't want to lose him, but she feels so guilty about the Blood Bond and she doesn't know if Victor's feelings are actually real -- which only gets worse when Victoria and Emily join the group, as then she's like "I should let Victor be with one of them -- oh crap I like them too, what the hell Alice, years of not falling in love and now it's two mortals and a zombie." It took Mercurio explaining that his Blood Bond does not actually force him to like LaCroix, just be loyal to him, to convince her that keeping Victor -- and turning Victoria into her ghoul -- might not be as bad as she feared.

And then Victor had his prophetic dream about the Sabbat. He and Emily successfully fled the city (the "letting Heather go" branch of her mini-storyline), but Lizzie and Victoria got captured by the Sabbat and used as bait for a trap for Alice (the "Heather gets captured and killed" branch). Unlike in canon, though, Alice is able to successfully save them (with the help of Bonejangles, VV, and Bertram), and ghouls Victoria to help her heal before sending them away. They all reunite once she's done with the endgame. :)

6. More generally, how closely does their storyline stick to how you have to do things canonically? For example, in quests, did they find third options that weren't offered by the game? Are their stories affected by mods you use while playing the game?

I play with the Unofficial Plus Patch, so there's going to be some stuff from that included in my story, just because that's what I'm used to -- for example, Alice is doing the restored library quest featuring the Lasombra in her storyline. As for the main storyline itself, I'd say that, even with the character replacements and suchlike, it stays pretty much true to the game until about the time Alice hits Hollywood -- namely because I've replaced one-shot character Sam with Victoria, who has a much larger role in "Londerland Bloodlines." After that, it starts to veer off a bit more, in particular during "Italian Dinner," where Emily, Lizzie, and Bonejangles join the party --

But the most major break with canon is in the endgame. Namely, Alice decides to skip fighting her way up Venture Tower and instead climbs up the outside with the help of some climbing equipment she sources from Mercurio. :p Lacroix is more than a little surprised. XD (Though she still has to fight the bat-form of the Sheriff -- can't escape the whole boss fight, Alice!)

7. Do they have an alternate storyline/history of what might have happened had they been Embraced but not ended up the protagonist Fledgling?

I covered that a couple of weeks ago! You can read the "Mistakenly Thinned Blood" AU of the AU in detail here, but the short version is "Alice is Embraced more secretly by her sire Fish, manages to kill him post-Embrace, goes to Santa Monica, and ends up hanging out with the Thin-Bloods because everyone thinks she's one of them. Still saves Victor, meets Victoria, and rescues Lizzie, Emily, and Sam from the Giovannis, though -- and then gets out of town before the freaking-out populace who just learned what she actually is can catch up with her."

8. Is the Cabbie a) Caine, b) another Kindred who believes himself to be Caine for whatever reason, c) another Kindred playing the long con by pretending to be Caine, d) something else entirely?

He's Caine -- I like the headcanon, and the idea of him posing as a random taxi driver in L.A., looking upon all this chaos and wondering "why. why." amuses me. XD

9. How do you handle/explain away obvious "this only works in a video game" mechanics in their storyline (e.g., the inventory system that allows them to carry like seven guns and five melee weapons at once)?

With me, Alice is going to be carrying a lot fewer weapons at once -- she'll generally pick a few favorites to take with her on missions (she always has a knife on her, at least), and uses Obfuscate to truck them around invisibly when she's in crowded areas. She probably also gets a bag or backpack to carry useful things. She also goes through a lot more clothes until she gets some decent leather jackets and such -- her starting outfit is basically wrecked by the tutorial mission, leading to LaCroix's agents having to buy her a new dress before she can pick up her things and go to her new haven in Santa Monica. (I have decided to make it Symbolic by having her wear the modern equivalent of her London outfit from A:MR when she gets Embraced, and the outfit being destroyed representing her change from human to vampire.)

10. How do you explain why the Fledgling is so ridiculously overpowered when compared to most other vampires their age (beyond the fact that they're likely 8th generation, going by their blood pool)?

My personal explanation, which might come up in the final conversation Alice has with Caine in the cab, is that some people in this universe are born with great supernatural potential, for whatever reason, and Alice is one of them. There's just something about her that lends itself well to being a supernatural creature -- and a powerful one at that. If she'd been from a werewolf line, she would have been an amazing werewolf; if she had awakened as a mage, she would have been a super-talented mage. As she was Embraced, she gets to be a terrifyingly strong vampire. Alice personally considers this a pretty shitty "chosen one" status, but she can't deny she liked getting really good at Obfuscate really fast!

Carmen Meets Muriel

over my vacation, when i wasn’t on the internet because the place i was at had very sketchy free internet that probably would have given my laptop an std, i wrote a li’l oneshot fic. it was one my ideas for a carmen comic but it would have taken too much effort to draw soooo it’s written now. idk what tumblr’s post limit is but i doubt i’ll go over it (seriously it’s less than 2k) so i’m gonna paste it under the cut and we’ll see what happens.

word count: 1899

description: muriel has to talk to carmen (character concept here) and he’s not very happy about it

The sun had disappeared under the horizon and darkness was washing the last orange stains from the sky when Muriel, cursing himself for even being there, approached the shop. He had one final errand left in the day, and it was crucial: he had run out of angelica. The herb, a thick stalk with umbels of little white flowers, was sometimes used for medicines and sometimes used in spells for protection. In Muriel’s case, it was a necessary component in the wards he had placed around the forest, which were in need of replacing. As angelica favored a colder climate than sunny Vesuvia, he had to rely on the magic shop’s supply. Asra was always more than happy to lend him a hand free of charge, but the magician was currently unconscious in a magic circle on Muriel’s floor while his spirit roamed the realm of the Arcana. Which meant that, if Muriel was going to an Asra-less shop, he would have to deal with…

…his apprentice.

Muriel winced as he heard a muffled, off-key sea shanty coming from the upper floor. To his knowledge, Carmen had never set foot on a boat. However, as she kept sneaking off to the south end of town ever since her incident, it made sense that she had picked up a thing or two from the local color; the “local color” being every seedy bar in the city. He knocked on the door and almost hoped she didn’t hear him. The singing stopped.

“Closed!” she half-shouted, her voice coming from the back of the shop this time. She must have moved closer to the stairs to allow the sound to carry.

It would have been so much easier for both of them if he could just leave – if he could go back home and let her think he was just another customer who hadn’t noticed the porch light was out. But he didn’t have the option. He imagined the wards he had placed breaking, Lucio’s ghost being allowed full strength, and Asra, unguarded, out cold in a hut in the middle of nowhere, and knocked on the door a second time.

“Ohhhhmygodddddddddddddddddd whyyyy.”

A string of irritated muttering started up and ended just as quickly as it was replaced by the sound of someone falling down a flight of stairs.

Muriel froze, concerned and unsure of what to do about that, but soon enough the door opened and Carmen, slightly frazzled, looked out into the space she typically expected a person’s face to be. That space was located squarely in the middle of his chest.

She slowly corrected her gaze to meet his, almost having to crane her neck to do so. “Well, damn,” she said. Muriel had seen her mouth those words during other chance meetings of theirs, but this was the first time she said them aloud. He didn’t like this. His face was getting hot. He had to explain himself, finish his errand, and leave as soon as possible.

“I’m–”

“Muriel, right?”

What.

Carmen opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Come on in. I’ll uh, make tea? Or something?”

What. Why. How. What was going on. Muriel entered the shop and watched as she sifted through the jars of herbs on the shelves in search of tea. He noticed as he looked away that the front of the shop was the only area that hadn’t gone to complete disarray. Everything from the base of the stairs to the back was covered in a mishmash of belongings. Trinkets and clothing were heaped into piles with no immediately apparent category, flanked by an unsettling amount of empty alcohol bottles.

“Sorry about the mess.” Carmen resurfaced from the shop’s stock with a short, squat jar full of the blooming tea that Asra made. “I was. Well. Y’know. Looking. Through stuff.” She began her quest to the stairs, carefully stepping around the stacks with amazing precision for someone who was having balance issues. “This is what happens when I’m left unsupervised. Be right back.”

As Carmen went to the upstairs kitchen and started a new batch of worrying clanking sounds that aren’t typically associated with the tea making process, Muriel wandered over to the jars and picked out the angelica. He counted out the necessary number of stalks, placed them in one of the pouches tied to his belts, and returned the jar to the shelf. He strongly considered leaving the shop then and there, but there was a question gnawing at his guts and it couldn’t be ignored, no matter how much he wanted to ignore it. While he waited for Carmen’s return, he busied himself with reorganizing the jars that she had disturbed.

Fifteen minutes later she came back down the stairs with a large soup mug filled with green tea and a larger bottle that, judging by the scent, contained brandy. As she gave to mug to Muriel, he noticed that she must have spent the extra time and effort looking for a cup that fit his hands. The emotional impact of her thoughtfulness was interrupted when she ripped the cork out of the brandy with her teeth, spat it into a corner, and took a deep swig.

Once she came up for air, he decided to confront what had been bothering him. “How do you know about me?”

She lowered the bottle and stared at him in mild confusion. “Was I… not supposed to?”

Muriel didn’t know what to say to that, but apparently the look on his face spoke for him.

“Oh. Oh, whoops. Sorry about that. I, uh…”

He continued to stay silent so that she could elaborate.

Carmen set the brandy on the shop counter and turned towards the piles. “The old me kept some notes on you,” she started. She reached out to one of the piles and a notebook shot into her hand. “Because of the whole Forget-Me thing. She made sure to jot something down every time you met before the spell kicked in.”

She offered the notebook to him, and he set down his yet-untouched tea to flip through it. It was a small, flimsy thing, and he had some difficulty picking the pages apart. Sure enough, there were several notes on his appearance and habits, the entries of which were no more than a few words long, and they were dated some years ago. Back when her hair was short, and her smile was wide, and wildflowers grew in her footsteps. When Carmen continued talking, he remembered the dull-eyed stranger she had become and snapped back to reality.

“So yeah, with hints like ‘about seven feet tall’ and ‘GREEN EYES’ written in capitals, it wasn’t too hard to recognize you,” she said. She studied him intently. “You know, I didn’t know what she meant by using capital letters, but I get it now. Your eyes are really green, like–” Stopping herself, Carmen winced and looked away, blinking hard as if she were trying to wake up from a dream. “Sorry. I’m losing my mental filter. What were you here for again? Asra’s out of town if you were looking for him.”

“I know,” Muriel said. He dug through his belongings until he found a pouch full of myrrh and tossed it to her.

“Oh! Um… thanks?” Carmen opened and closed the bag. “What is this for?”

“To ward off the spell.”

She looked even more confused than before. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to know about you?”

“You already do, and I don’t want to have this conversation again.” He turned to leave. At this point, he had far exceeded his limit on social activity. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Huh? But you didn’t even have any– aaaaand he’s gone.” Carmen’s words faded as he shut the door behind him.

 It was well into the night when Muriel returned home. The journey was long enough already, but the added detour he took to replace all the wards by the roadsides added a considerable amount of time. He would have to rest a little before replacing the rest of them. The hut was a welcome sight after the day’s adventure. Though cramped, it was a safe haven from the rest of the world; a place so deep in the woods that it was rarely stumbled upon by strangers. He examined his house’s ward – a bundle of sticks hanging from one of the great tree roots that engulfed the structure – and decided that it was strong enough to leave as it was. Then he opened the door.

Everything was exactly as he had left it. The runes in the magic circle on the floor were thankfully undisturbed, and Asra was still sleeping at its center under a thick blanket, which Muriel had given him when he had to extinguish the hearth on his way out. In the corner, Inanna stirred from her makeshift bed and trotted over to him.

“I’m home,” he said redundantly.

The wolf acknowledged this by placing her head firmly under his hand for scratches. Muriel gave her a standard head-pat and asked her to wait while he restarted the fire in the hearth. When he returned, he pulled up a chair and complied with her request. With his free hand, he began removing pouches from his belts and putting them on the table with the intention of reequipping the ones he’d need before he next left the hut. His task was stopped when he took a pouch he couldn’t recall the contents of and Inanna abruptly leaned out of his grasp to smell it.

Curious, Muriel opened the pouch and pulled out the little notebook that Carmen had handed him earlier that day. He must have absent-mindedly pocketed it. He had no idea when, how, or even if he’d be able to return it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to. It was bad to take someone else’s property, but now that Carmen had some myrrh, she wouldn’t need to read about him to know who he was. He idly opened it to a page somewhere in the middle.

“Doesn’t like to talk. – May 11”

“Shame, he has a nice voice. – May 27”

“Wears a big tattered cloak with a hood. – June 9”

“Likes snow. – July 30”

“WHY DID NONE OF YOU WARN ME HE’S SO HANDSOME – November 3”

Face burning, he closed the book. Inanna, sensing that he was done with it, moved closer and gently took the notebook in her teeth. He released his grip and she retreated to her bed with it.

“You miss her, huh?”

Inanna nibbled on the notebook a little before putting her head down and sighing gruffly.

Muriel looked at Asra and watched his chest rise and fall to confirm that he was still breathing normally. The magician and he had been closer than siblings ever since they were young, and Muriel could feel the emotional weight of the past three years on his shoulders. Even though Asra raised her from the dead, Carmen – their Carmen – would never come back. It had been a bittersweet victory, embittered even further when they realized how truly unhappy she was without her memory. Tonight was not the first time that Muriel had found her seeking refuge from the bottom of a bottle, and it wouldn’t be the last.

When Inanna turned her attention back to the notebook, so did Muriel.

“Yeah… we miss her too.”

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Introducing The Latest Style Trend Inspired By Your Dad

https://fashion-trendin.com/introducing-the-latest-style-trend-inspired-by-your-dad/

Introducing The Latest Style Trend Inspired By Your Dad

There’s seemingly no sartorial stone high-end designers will leave unturned in their endless quest to appropriate anything they can get their hands on. Case in point: ‘dadcore’ – a recent fashion phenomenon that transformed your old man from a perpetually tired, beige-wearing bloke into a straight-up style icon.

As a result, several fatherly wardrobe fixtures have achieved previously incomprehensible levels of cool. Think stonewash jeans, chunky trainers that look like they were designed by an orthopaedic doctor, and of course, the sort of shapeless curved-peak hats favoured by beer-bellied patriarchs on grilling duty. AKA, dad caps.

This trending topper became one of 2016’s hottest streetwear-meets-high-fashion piece and has remained so ever since. That’s a pretty good run as far as supposedly fleeting fads go. So if you’d previously been apprehensive about forking out for one, now seems like a safe time to cop.

What Is A Dad Cap?

The term dad cap has only been around for a handful of years, but the garment it describes has existed for much longer. Essentially, it’s a boneless baseball cap. A brimmed bonce cover lacking any modicum of skeletal integrity. Aside from that of the peak, of course, which must always be curved to perfection.

If traditional sporting headgear with stiff, structured panels has a habit of making your head look odd, or you find yourself saying, “baseball caps just don’t suit me,” on a regular basis, then a simple, low-profile dad cap is likely the lid you’ve been longing for.

It’s simple, more versatile than a snapback or trucker, and above all else, is relatively straightforward to style.

Three Key Ways To Wear A Dap Cap

There’s a school of thought that says a baseball cap can only ever be pulled off with sportswear or, at a push, casual clothing. However, in a world of smart joggers and tailored swim shorts, it’s an idea that’s more than a little dated.

The truth is, there are a number of ways to wear a cap. Just ask Joshua Meredith, a stylist who honed his skills working for Notion Magazine and coordinating shoots with some of music and fashion’s biggest stars.

Smart

When searching for the perfect accessory to accompany your lounge suit, a baseball cap probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. However, worn with a bit of consideration, it can be done.

On your bottom half, length is key for deciding where on the spectrum of formality your look will land. “For a smart look with a dad cap, I’d go for a cropped tailored trouser,” says Meredith, who then suggests adding either a roll neck or shirt, a smart jacket and a pair of brogues to top things off.

For a more modern finish, swap the brogues out for a pair of white sneakers and the roll neck or shirt for a T-shirt tucked into the waistband.

Casual

Wearing a dad cap as part of a casual outfit is about as simple as it gets. As a laid-back lid designed to be thrown on with everyday clothes, simplicity is the key to nailing the look.

“Pair with tapered jeans, a T-shirt, cardigan and a fresh pair of trainers,” suggests Meredith for a layered outfit that’s ideal for switching between seasons.

Or, when the mercury begins it’s consistent and steady decline, swap out the cardigan for a cool jacket, or use both to add ballast to a long-sleeve T-shirt.

Sporty

Though they can be easily dressed up, a dad cap will always have a place as part of a sporty look. “Keeping it simple with a two-piece tracksuit is a solid option,” says Meredith.

You’ll also want to give your footwear some consideration. A pair of chunky sneakers would work well here, but for an easy entry opt for a white, minimalist option.

If the full tracksuit feels a bit much, stick the bottom half on the bench in favour of a pair of side-stripe trousers for a look that’s smart and sporty in equal measures.

The Best Dad Caps To Buy

Folk

Folk cut its teeth in Glasgow and London, two of the UK’s hippest cities. In the years since it was founded in 2001, the British brand has become a master of stripped-back, contemporary wardrobe staples.

Considering that’s exactly what a dad cap is, it’s to be expected that the label’s brimmed offerings are some of the most subtly stylish to be found. Expect interesting textures, trademark attention to detail and branding so subtle it’s almost nonexistent.

Buy Now: £45.00

Norse Projects

A clothing brand specialising in pared-back wardrobe essentials? From Scandinavia? Surely not. Scandi minimalism is one of contemporary menswear’s biggest clichés. However, Norse Projects is one such label it’s seemingly impossible to become bored of.

With just the right amount of branding, a carefully engineered fit and a reassuring weight in hand, its signature dad cap ticks all the boxes in as simple a manner as possible.

Buy Now: £55.00

ASOS

If there’s a hot new item, chances are gargantuan online retailer ASOS will have a wallet-friendly version of it. The site’s sprawling collection of hats for summer and winter includes a dizzying array of dad caps featuring interesting textures, seasonal colours and added touches like embroidered motifs.

So, if sharpening your elbows to battle your way down the high street with endless shopping bags in tow isn’t your idea of a weekend well spent, this is definitely the place to go.

Buy Now: £10.00

Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger was a staple brand of the 1990s, famed for loud logos and in-your-face branding. Meanwhile, the dad cap is the minimalist’s headwear of choice. On paper, the two shouldn’t work together. In practice, however, it’s a very different story.

Rendered in cotton twill across a variety of colours, Tommy’s caps boast a more recent, scaled-down flag motif. The perfect option for those who want to rock a bit of noughties swagger without looking like Ali G.

Buy Now: £25.00

Carhartt WIP

If it hadn’t have been for the crossover between high-fashion and streetwear, the dad cap may have never enjoyed a resurgence. And when it comes to the latter, Carhartt WIP is one of the most important brands around.

The sub-label takes all the things that are great about Carhartt’s workwear and repurposes it for a younger, more urban crowd. That means more fashion-friendly dad caps and less ill-advised trucker hats.

Buy Now: £30.00

The North Face

Though it’s unlikely you plan on wearing a dad cap to tackle the north ridge of K2, if by some chance you did find yourself up there, you’d be happy it was made by the outdoor experts at The North Face.

The California brand has long acted as a bridge between the world of streetwear and the great outdoors. And that makes it a solid choice when it comes to picking a new hat that can stand up to the elements while camping out in the Supreme queue.

Buy Now: £20.00

Balenciaga

At almost a century old, Balenciaga is one of the most esteemed names in high-fashion. In recent years, the Parisian label has dominated men’s street style galleries with its chunky trainers and logo-laden T-shirts cementing itself as one of the hottest trailblazers in the world.

Baseball caps are another key item. In fact, creative director Demna Gvasalia can often be seen sporting a dad cap himself. Featuring reappropriated logos and utterly ridiculous price points, Balenciaga’s caps are only for the most die-hard of fashion disciples.

Buy Now: £265.00

Patagonia

The world is becoming increasingly ‘woke’. A big part of which is paying attention to the harm our modern lives are causing to the planet and taking steps to reduce it. It’s something that Californian outdoor brand Patagonia has based its entire business model on.

Expect solid quality, simple styling and through the brand’s Worn Wear program, you can even trade in your old items to receive credit on new stuff. All of which means you can sport one of its tastefully branded dad caps and feel good while doing it.

Buy Now: £29.00

Stussy

Streetwear is arguably the new haute couture. However, it wouldn’t be where it is now if it hadn’t been for an enterprising Californian surfer called Shawn Stussy, whose eponymous brand almost single-handedly sparked the movement that has infiltrated the upper echelons of fashion.

Being a streetwear firm, caps are a key part of Stussy’s output, whether that be 5-panels, snapbacks or in this case, dad caps. Script branding comes as standard, as does lots of people asking you where you got your hat from.

Buy Now: £65.00

It is now June 30th.  I wake up at my normal time, even though I’ve changed time zones.  My internal clock and I really need to have a talk, because I should be able to sleep a bit longer when on vacation. So I finishing packing, check out of the hotel and since my bus pass has expired I call for a taxi to take me to the train station.  It’s 80 degrees at 7 AM EST, I almost feel like I’ve never left home.  I know I’m not responsible for the heat wave that crossed the US and Canada but it sure felt like the Texas heat followed me where ever I went on this trip.

I get to the train station, and look around and notice that this place could have been a good spot for lunch, because there are lots of restaurants with a variety of menu choices.  Now I showed this picture on the Montreal update, so look back at the bottom of that post if you want to look at them.

It’s now time to board the train, and very much like an airplane those that require assistance get to go first, than sleeper cars and finally us joes in economy.  I will have to make sure I have up for my next Canadian rail experience and book one of those sleeper cars, because you get access to a special observation car which serves free coffee or tea, and your meals are included.  Just to give you an idea in price.. economy ticket about $90 sleeper car ticket $450.  After the fact, I really should have just coughed up the extra money and booked a sleeper car for the Halifax to Montreal when I ended my trip, because that so one long train ride and the first time I every had my ankles swell up.

I’ve written enough for the moment enjoy some pictures from the 4 hour train ride to Quebec City:

Leaving Montreal

Mountain seen from the train

Corn Fields

  And we have now arrived at Gare du Palais in Quebec City.

It is here where I made a bad decision based on missing information from Google maps (had I used terrain view or satellite view I would have called for a taxi)  Here were the 3 options Google gave me and the one I chose is in blue:

So you might be thinking what mistake? A 20 minute, 1.2 km walk in the middle of a Canadian day (remember the heat wave it was in the mid 80s I did get the exact temperature, but that still isn’t the mistake) that should be pleasant. Here is a critical view from Google maps in 3D:

The Stairs

Yes, those are stairs.  What Google failed to mention was the 1.2 km hike was going to be 90% up a steep hill.  The start was the stairs and then just very steep roads.  I am happy to say it only took me 26 minutes to walk the path, but lesson was learned, a taxi is your friend when you first arrive in a city.

Luckily, when I arrived at my hotel, they were able to let me in early so I could rest a before going on the next adventure.

View from my hotel window

After a short rest I set off to find the special visitor bus pass that most cities have.  It took a bit to locate the place to buy the ticket, but once found I headed to the area know as Old Quebec.  I later learned there is an Upper and Lower Old Quebec.  All of my first day I spent in Upper Old Quebec City.

All of this walking around and site seeing made me hungry, also the fact I had not had breakfast, so around 2 PM I found Le Casse-Crepe Breton.

  This place makes crepes, not only the ones for breakfast, but lunch style ones.  I had basically a Philly Cheese Steak but in side a crepe.  I was delicious.  I also sat at the bar, because this is a very, very small restaurant and even at 2 PM was very busy.  This allowed me to watch the young woman that was making the crepes.  She had 4 round griddles, 2 she used for cooking the crepes and the other 2 for keeping them warm while she finished the orders.  That young lady didn’t stop making crepes from the time I sat down to the time I left.  In fact everyone in that place were always on the go.

Here is a link to a YouTube video I uploaded of the chef Making Crepes

Here are some random pictures of buildings that I thought looked interesting.

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After all the wondering, my sweet tooth needed to be feed so I found this nice gelato place and ordered 2 scoops.

And its now 4:30 PM and I’m back in my hotel for few hours rest before I once again head down to Old Quebec for my 8 PM dinner reservations at Aux Anciens Canadiens.

I take the bus #11 down to Old Quebec an hour or so before my reservation for dinner and walk around some more and got surprised by this car driving around the main road.

the St. Lawrence River

It is now time for dinner.

One side of the menu is French the other side is in English.  This restaurant specializes in game meats,  so caribou, deer, duck and bison.  I started with the tomato soup, then had Wild Caribou, bison and deer rillettes, confit of carrots.  I had now clue what rillettes was until it arrived.  The simplest way to describe rillettes is to just call it a pate.  It is basically shredded meat in a paste form that you can spread on to toast.  While looking lease than appetizing, I spread it on the toast and found it to be less revolting than I thought.  I didn’t taste bad, nor did it feel strange in my mouth, but I will probably never order it again. However, the confit of carrots, I most definitely would like to find again. I’ve looked up the recipe on Google and can’t believe how simple it is to make.  I’m not sure if what I ate was sweetened by something or if it was just the natural sweetness of the carrots, but I could have had another serving. For the main dish I went with Grandma’s treat, which was a meat pie, meatballs, and fried salt pork.  The salt pork I could have skipped, because I’ve had better.  It was the meat pie that was to write home about.  The crust was most definitely made with lard, not vegetable shortening and the meat was seasoned very well.  And the meatballs you say, well those were just meat balls.  I think they were from bison meat but nothing spectacular. Dessert was creme brulee which I didn’t really have room in my stomach, but it was good so I dealt with the discomfort.

View inside

tomato soup

I then walked around a bit more to let dinner settle and to enjoy the cool of the evening.  By 9:30 PM I was back in my hotel and ready to think about getting some sleep for the next day’s adventure.

It is now July 1st and since I will be leaving today to head to Halifax at 9 PM, I have to get all my bags packed and ready to go in the morning.  My tour of Quebec is 6 hours and will get me back past the check out time.  The Delta Hotel was nice enough to hold my bags after I checked out at 8 AM.

I was then on a quest to find breakfast, and unlike Montreal, I didn’t want to eat in the hotel.  I head to bus #11 stops, which is across the street from the hotel and with my backpack ready I head to Old Quebec and hope there are some places opening for breakfast.  Old Quebec is pure tourism, I don’t think there is any business down in this area that isn’t connected with entertain tourists.  It is a Sunday.

Le Petit Chateau is my stop for breakfast

again it will be crepes.

These crepes had egg and cheese inside with 2 slices of ham on top.  I covered it all in maple syrup and enjoyed every bite.

The tour guide for my tour was an Englishman from the UK. I don’t remember his story of how he came to Canada, but I’m pretty sure it was his Canadian wife that had him stay.  He was all excite about the upcoming English soccer game and was hoping for an English / French World Cup.  Remember this is July 1st, so he still had well placed hope.

The first stop of the tour was just 2 loops around the road right outside the tourist office where the tour began.  At that spot was a fort that over looked the St. Lawrence River.  Now there is a big hotel, art gallery and a Starbucks.  What I failed to find out in time, was an underground museum of the archaeology of that fort.

I knew there were glass floor/windows on the deck around the hotel. I just didn’t know you could take a tour and walk under the decking.  That will have to be for next time.

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Buildings and statues seen around this circular road.

The tour than proceeded down to Lower Old Quebec, where there were even more tour shops.

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I really liked all the signs hanging out front with the shops names on them.

The tour than returned to Upper Quebec around some public spaces that were being converted to music stages for the up coming music festival on July 5th.  You pay like $100 for a ticket and you can get into any of the venues, but its first come so if you want a good spot, you have to go early and wait.   The bands playing this year, The Weeknd, Neil Young, Shawn Mendes, Foo Fighters, The Chainsmokers, Beck, Lorde, Dave Matthews Band, just to name a few.  It all ended on July 15th.

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In the above pictures, you will see one of the old city gates, a canon emplacement, some flowers from Jardin Jeanne d’ Arc, and Eglise Saint-Dominique church.  There were more things but it is hard to take pictures of a moving bus in traffic. We did have to take a detour through an area of apartment buildings rather than driving along the park, Plaines d’ Abraham.

The bus tour next headed out of Quebec City to and island in the middle of St. Lawrence River, Ile-d’Orleans.  This island is know for its organic farming and is one of the main food suppliers for the city of Quebec and has been for generations.  We drive to Sanite-Petronille, on the south-west tip of the island, closest to Quebec City to visit a locally famous chocolaterie.

The line for ice cream was too long, and while the weather wasn’t extremely hot, I didn’t want to spend money on expensive, high quality chocolate that could melt before I got on the train later in the evening.  I decide to get some picture of Quebec City, the bridge we crossed and the waterfall we were going to visit next.

Quebec City

Montmorency Falls and Pont de I’lie bridge

I took a panoramic picture with my phone, but it doesn’t look good unless viewed on a phone.  Maybe that is an upgrade to wordpress like adding video. *shrug*

On to the waterfall…

To get to the top of the waterfall you can use a cable car or walk.

I think you can see which method I chose.

At the top, if you go via the cable car you find the Montmorency House with some pretty gardens and a cafe inside.

And I’ve kept you waiting long enough…

There is a suspension bridge over the falls that lets you look down on them or get another great view of the St. Lawrence River.

Along the path back to the cable car station, you can see how nature likes to take over anything destroyed or modified by man.

After view this wonder of nature and creation, it was time to go to church.  Specifically the Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre.  I’m going to take you on a wikipedia history lesson… The first sanctuary was built in 1658, by Bretons who said their prayers to Saint Anne saved them on a sea voyage.  After a flood, and relocation another stone church was built and last 2 centuries before it was demolished in 1876 and a new more grand church was built.  That church burned down in 1922.  What I saw was the 3rd church which began construction in 1923 and didn’t finish until 1962.

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I almost forgot to include the stop before the church.  It was to Albert Gilles Boutique and Museum.  I didn’t have a clue who this guy was until one of his daughters, who is both a tour guide at the museum and artist herself.  This shop house all of the copper and silver embossed work of the Gilles family. The main doors to the cathedral you just saw above were crafted by Albert Gilles.  There was a “no cameras’ allowed rule in the museum not really sure why, but they did allow pictures in Albert’s “hobby” room.  I’m calling it that because Mr. Gilles created 15 different copper plaques depicting various stages in the life of Christ.

It was now time to return to the Quebec Tourist Information Building and end the tour around 5:30 PM.  I still had a few hours before I needed to reclaim my luggage and board the train to Halifax. So I went in search of something to eat.  I debated the Irish pub I had seen yesterday, but it was very crowded and had a short line, I thought about the red roofed restaurant next to the tourist building but decided against it after I read the menu options.  I was looking for something simple.  Portofino, an italian restaurant near the irish pub was my final choice.  The smells of its stone pizza oven drew me.  I didn’t have pizza though, I went for the spaghetti and meat balls.

It was then back to the hotel, get my bag, take a taxi to Gare du Palais, and then a bus to the train station in Sainte-Foy about 8 miles away.

The train was suppose to arrive at 9:30 PM, but we didn’t leave until 11:09PM.   So began the next train ride of my trip in Canada. Next stop is Halifax at 7:06 PM on July 2nd.

Quebec City – 2018 It is now June 30th.  I wake up at my normal time, even though I've changed time zones. 

A NEW WORLD 

- Never known before.
 > Geography plays a huge role because location depics whether crops can be grown there
 > USA has 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska
 > The main city: Washington D.C. 
> Puerto Rico citizens are also citizens of the USA but they are not represented in the government
 > Rocky Mountains —> create west border, the highest area in the US ,,Grand Canyon’' 
> Columbus prom Spain made first settlements in America
 — this goal was to gain money, so he nod to send a message back home
 — he lied in order to get more money
 — he sent slaves because he didn't have gold, many died.

 SUMMARY: 
- the primary aim was to exploit of natural sources rather than create colonies 
- fish were exchanged for valuable Asian goods 
- fur trade with Indians 
- The English hoped to reproduce Spanish success
 - Queen Elizabeth 1. authorized Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize North America - In 1587 Raleigh sent 117 colonists to the territory named Virginia to establish a colony
 - The Settlement on Roanoke Island vanished - reason was that they weren't capable to make food and to be friends with local natives 
- Jamestown was the first permanent settlement in 1607.
 - The winter of 1610 spurred wars with Indians
 —> IMPACT: - by the end of 16th century not many natives resisted in North America
         - Indians, Africans and Europeans - all lived in a whole new world.
- In 1890 American Frontier was closed.

THE PULPIT
 Religious or spiritual? 
- Religious - relating to or believing in a religion
 - Spiritual - relating to or affecting the human
 - Americans were mostly spiritual
 - 2003 - 90% claimed to believe in God, 84% in life after death
 - More than 3 quarters of all Americans say they are christians 
The quest for religious liberty
 - The Puritans founded new England so they could worship freely 
John Winthrop
 - The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company 
- Organized the initial segment of the great puritan migration 
- In 1630, more than 100 English moved to Boston, Massachusetts 
- By 1643 much more followed
 - In 1630, J.W. preached a sermon ,,Model of Christian Charity’’, laying out expectations of the community. ‘'We shall be as the city upon a hill. Everyone shall look upon on us.''

The doctrine of the covenant 

- Puritans believed God had made a covenant - an agreement or contract - with them when they were chosen for the special mission to America 
- formal documents setting forth the principles on which their institutions would be based 
- Puritans controlled the governments of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and the early northern colonies
 - All New Englanders were required to attend religious services and ceremonies
- The state was obliged to support and protect their church 
First Great Awakening 

- The first great awakening swept over various colonies in 1730s. 
- Orthodox Coluinists sought to combat Enlightenment rationalism, which denied innate human depravity. 
- Two main reasons: 
— the economic and political uncertainty during King George’s War mode colonists receptive to evangelists 
— many backcountry residents had no prior religious affiliation 
- By the mid 18th century New England Puritanism had grown dry and formal
 - The New Light evangelicals emerged
 - the rapid rise in the number of distinct denominations eventually led to an American willingness to tolerate religious diversity
 - American denominationalism - the conviction that a competition of churches was even good

 Second Great Awakening

 - 1790 - 1840s - era of rapid economic and social changes, people grew anxious about their personal status in a rapidly changing world, many Americans turned to evangelical religion 
- The US had a special mission in Gods design and a special role in eliminating evil
 - The Great awakenings and the revolution had destroyed established churches (USA did not face the resistance of oppressive state-sponsored religion, unlike Europeans) 
- In the communities that took shape as Americans moved west, people proved their character by joining a denomination and living respectably. Salvation became a civic duty 
- Revivalists called an individuals to stop drinking, swearing, combat social evils, most prominently slavery

JOHN WINTHROP 
- The limits of popular liberty 
- Importance of special preregatives for elected magistrates 
- We are not equal in society, we have to unite > poor ones are also important
 - God created rules, which people need to follow in order to create communicate and function as whole 
- If you have more, you should give it to those who don't

JONATHAN EDWARDS 
- presents angry god bc of sinners, we are all born w sins 
- people turn away from their religion, Edwards is trying to bring people back to puritanism 
- relationship is based on fear and obedience

I HAVE A DREAM 
- all gods children all equal, he loves everyone equally
 - ultimate love instead of power 
- lead people when they sin instead of punishment 
- improvement of society, reform it and eliminate all the evil of it

W5 = THE REPUBLIC 
- Was American Revolution truly revolutionary? 
- Throughout the more than two hundred years since the ,,Revolution'', groups of widely varying political views have claimed to represent its true meaning 
- Acts in the spirit of the Revolution (protests against discriminatory policies against women and minorities invoke the ,,created equal'' language of the Declaration of Independence)
 - Left-wing organizations rail against concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a few, citing the Revolution’s egalitarian thrust. 

- The message of the Revolution can be invoked to support extralegal demonstrations of any description (invasions of military bases by antiwar protesters to demonstrations outside abortion clinics)
 - In a republic, change should come peacefully, via the ballot box and not in the streets. 


THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
 - Relations between Britain and America grew increasingly strained. (Britain faced tremendous debts and the cost of maintaining troops in North America - Parliament turned to Americans to help with the burden)
 - A cycle of repressive British measures began, followed by American protests, followed by punishment
 - In 1775 the war was on - Americans fighting for their rights as British citizens, after 1776, for independence. 
- General George Washington united the colonies in a common cause and became the leading figure in the Revolution 


- In 1777 France joined America as its ally.
 - In 1781, after a massive loss at Yorktown, Britain began peace negotiations with the U.S. 
- Congress in 1781 had approved a document called the Articles of Confederation, which kept central authority very weak.
 - From 1781 to 1787, the job of the US was to make war and peace, coin money, create a postal service, and manage Indian affairs. But it was unable to collect taxes (the sovereignty of the new United States was questioned by other nations). 
- The Government had little authority, Instability and economic depression finally led to mutiny in Massachusetts - Shay’s Rebellion - The Rebellion spurred Congress to act - the result was a document considered one of the most important in the history of the world, the US Constitution. (Virginian James Madison became the visionary leader of this gathering) 
- The U.S. Constitution spelled out the form of the federal government and gave it power to tax and move the country forward.


 REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS 
- Small states wanted an equal voice, while those from large states thought population size - and hence tax payments - should grant them more seats.
 - Bicameral legislature - House of Representatives and the Senate
 - House of Representatives - lower house representing states in proportion to population (435) 
- The Senate - upper house of two members from each state (100) 

THE BILL OF RIGHTS
 - By 1791, under Madison’s sponsorship, the Constitution was augmented with ten amendments, the Bill of Rights. 
- The bill guarantees a number of personal freedoms, limits the governments power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserves some powers to the states and public. 
- Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, and free assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, security in personal effects, and freedom from warrants issued without probable cause, indictment by a grand jury for any capital or ''infamous crime’’, guarantee of a speedy, public trial with an impartial jury, and prohibition of double jeopardy.

 TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
 - Many Americans favored a freer, less centralized government - Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Democratic-Republicans. 
- On the other side were nationalists who believed the country needed more unity - Alexander Hamilton. The Federalists - spoke in favor of Britain, industry, and a strong central government.
 - The advocates of a strong central government - Federalists - were checked in the legislatures by those favoring a more democratic government - Democratic-Republicans. 
- At times in outright conflict, they balanced the early ship of state, keeping it from listing too far to one side 

LEGACY 
- The legacy of the revolution remains contested early in the 21st century, both for the nation thus created and for today’s American people 
- Republicanism - the idea that governments should be based wholly on the consent of the people 
- After 1776, American literature, theatre, art, architecture, and education all pursued explicitly moral - Republican - goals (Women’s education was considered particularly important, for the mothers of the republic’s children were primarily responsible for ensuring the nation’s future.)

 REPUBLICANISM 
- Political thought - society would be governed by members of a natural aristocracy - men whose talent had elevated them from what might have been humble beginnings to the position of power and privilege (self-made man). A truly virtuous man had to forge personal profit and work solely for the best interests of the nation.
 - Unless a republic’s citizens were willing to sacrifice their own private interests for the good of the whole, the govt. would collapse. 

- Economic theory - When republican men sought to improve their own economic and social circumstances, the entire nation would benefit. Republican virtue would be achieved through the pursuit of private interests, rather than through subordination to communal ideals. 
- Intellectual theory - Egalitarian society - A call for widening men’s participation in the political process. Govt. should respond directly to the needs of ordinary folk, rejecting any notion that the ''lesser sort'' should automatically defer to their ''betters'' - Democrats in modern sense 

REPUBLICAN IDEALS 
- ‘’Virtue, virtue alone… is the basis of a republic’' - virtuous country would be composed of hard-working citizens who would dress simply and live plainly, elect wise leaders to public office, and forgo the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods.
 - Contrast to corrupted Britain or Europe - Industrious virtue of America.
 - Frugality, self-sacrifice, prevention of self-interest from becoming vice, justification for property-less free men in the ranks of voters etc.
 W5 SEMINÁR 
The United States has a representative democracy
 - Constitution, Bill of rights: - Set of rules describing how the United States must be governed, includes the rights of the people.
 - Bill of rights: First 10 Amendments to the Constitution: These include right to free speech, bear arms, a fair trial, etc. 

FEDERAL VS UNITARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
 Federal = Power is divided between national and local states. Each state has its own limited independence. Local states remain part of one overall country. They do not have national sovereignty and have no power under international law. United States has a federal system of govt. Cell phone, death penalty, roads, military.
 Unitary = The state is governed as a single unit. There is only a centralize government. 

Three branches of Government
 Executive = name of office / President 
number of years elected for / 4-8 yrs.
 Responsibility / Carry out and suggest laws

 Legislative = Congress / House of Representatives (2 yrs), Senate (6 yrs) / Make laws
 Judicial = Supreme Court / Life / Interpret the Constitution and renew laws 

3 branches of government
 - checks and balances: one branch of govt can't hold total power and can be overridden by another. All 3 are needed.
 
W6 = THE WORKPLACE (SLAVE TRADE, INDUSTRY CAPITALISM)
 SLAVE TRADE 
- Slavery had been practiced in Europe and Islamic lands for centuries. 
- European Christians believed enslaving heathen people was justifiable in religious terms (holding heathens in bondage would lead to their conversion)
 - Tens of thousands of black African bonds people imported into North Africa and the Middle East (belief that heathen taken prisoner in wartime could be enslaved)
 - From the 1440s, Portugal imported large numbers of slaves into the Iberian Peninsula, by 1550, enslaved Africans composed about one-tenth of the population in Lisbon and Seville. 
- In 1555, residents of London and Bristol became accustomed to seeing black slaves on the streets 


- Iberians exported African slavery to their American possessions, New Spain and Brazil - African bonds people became mainstays of the Caribbean and Brazilian economies. 

- European planters on all the sugar islands began purchasing slaves - often from the Iberians - soon after they settled in the Caribbean.
 - The first enslaved Africans in the Americas were imported from Angola Portugal's major early trading partner, and the Portuguese word Negro came into use as a common descriptor


 - Slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, and widely practiced by their contemporaries
 - Few questioned the decision to hold Africans and their descendants - or captive Indians from New England or Carolina - in perpetual bondage
 - In 1670 in Virginia, the law that first tried to define which people were enslaveable notably failed to employ the racial terminology that would later become commonplace.
 - ‘'all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives.''
 - Anglo-American settlers had not yet fully developed the meaning of race and slave and that they did so over time through their experience with the institution of slavery itself 
- Freedom was a new and revolutionary idea 
- Unfreedom was the common condition of the common people in most of the world - slavery was hardly anomalious.


 - Trans-Atlantic trade — the possession of slaves was one of the main means of display of wealth — economic elites — merchants. 
- North American coast rested on tobacco and tobacco cultivation depended upon a large labor supply
 - Ex: New Englands complex relationship to the trading system - tail trees to serve as masts for sailing vessels —> New Englanders needed manufactures for which money they had to earn elsewhere, especially in the Caribbean islands lacked the items that New England could produce in abundance: cheap food (corn and salt fish) to feed the slave population and wood for barrels to hold sugar and molasses 
- The sale of foodstuffs and wood products to Caribbean sugar planters provided New England farmers and merchants with a major source of income 
- By the late 1640s, decades before the Chesapeake economy became dependent on production by slaves, New England had already rested on consumption by slaves and their owners. (Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey)


 - Americas first ''slave society'' (an economy wholly dependent on enslavement, as opposed to a ''society with slaves''), was Barbados
 - The Barbados slave code of 1661 served as the model for later codes in Jamaica, Virginia, and South Carolina. (A large proportion of the first Africans imported into North America came via Barbados)
 - The vast majority of enslaved Africans that first arrived in the colonies were men (First difficulties — language — few spoke the same language, were from the same region, meager diet, scarcity of women — no possibility to create families)
 - Slaves usually cost about two and a half times as much as indentured servants, but they could repay the greater investment with a lifetime of service 


- By 1690, the colonies of Virginia and Maryland contained more slaves than English indentured servants
 - By 1710, people of African descent composed one fifth of the regions population. A decade later American-born slaves already outnumbered their African-born counterparts in the Chesapeake. 
- After 1700, South Carolinians started to import slaves directly from Africa and by 1750 the bonds-people composed a majority of its residents 
- The importation of Africans coincided with the successful introduction of rice in South Carolina (Productive rice-growing techniques were widely adopted and combined with European technologies)
 - Another crop that was desired was indigo — these plantations flourished because the crop was so valuable that Parliament offered a lot of money on every pound. 


- In the 1790 the economy of the South was entirely dependent upon tobacco, rice and cotton, unlike the North - the dynamic part of the economy was wheat - mixed labour system and could be grown without slaves. 
- Before the Civil War the South had become a cotton empire entirely dependent upon slaves — cotton brought stability to the Southern economy 
- For more than 250 years, the colonies and then the US was partially a slave society and its economy highly dependent upon their slaves 
- In the 19th century the plantations were directly tied to the worlds most advanced economy — the English textile industry 
- The wealth generated by cotton (manufacture) shaped the global economy in the 19th century. Cotton was the most important cause of the expansion of the 19th cent American economy.


 - It was extremely difficult to disentangle slavery from the national good — from the economic and political strength of the country both at home and in the world
 - Slavery played a central role in the growth of American capitalism
- Profits from the slave trade provided the capital crucial for politics and economy 




INDUSTRY
 - While the South expanded as a slave society, the North embraced economic progress and diverged from the international norm
 - It transformed from a society with markets to a market society
 - The War of 1812 largely halted trade with Europe and so the North invested in domestic factories (transformation of agriculture itself - farming became commercialized)
 - Northern state and local govts and private investors spent substantially more on internal improvements than did southerners (Southern states with small free populations collected fewer taxes, leaving them with less to spend)
 - By mid-19th century the US became increasingly industrialized. The spread of railroads and the rise of new inventions made possible the growth and efficiency of industry


 - Government policy of Isissez-faire - non-interference 
- Corporations that produced goods and services at prices low enough to drive out the competition — ‘'robber barons’' cornered the industrial markets (Rockefeller (oil trust), Carnegie (steal business) etc.)
 - A small group of people grew wealthy, an increasing number were being left out of the American dream
 - Labor movements were created, unions and organizations to protect workers (By the 1880s the first national labor org. Was established — the American Federation of Labor. By 1900 workers had achieved rights of organizing, striking, and collective bargaining and improved their working conditions and wages.) 
- Industrial capitalism had created technology, unprecedented productivity, and land of consumer goods BUT it had also brought harmful overproduction, domineering monopolies, labor strife, and the destruction of natural sources 


- Increasing number of political and business leaders began to look outward and to advocate a more activist approach to world affairs
 - The United States was an exceptional nation, so different from and superior to others because of its Anglo-Saxon heritage and its God-favored and prosperous history
 - Nationalism, Capitalism, Social Darwinism and a patemalistic attitude toward foreigners 


W6 SEMINÁR
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
- SELF-MADE MAN, self-improvement, 
- justice, silence, industry, population, temperance > they tell us principles of morally perfect person, its important for him
 - he wanted to create a model of behavior which people should adapt to create perfect society, related to business
 - makes connection with politics /important at that time/
 - most important message of the text: to try to become the best we can 
- everyone can success and achieve the 'American dream'

 MAX WEBER
 - he discusses capitalism 
- he presents this ideal businessman as a man who has all of these virtues 
- spirit of modern capitalism is just about money according to Weber

Expert: The New York Times Business Page recently featured a front page article about the annual conference In Jackson Hole, Wyoming hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. It contained this interesting opening: In the decade since the financial crisis economic policymakers, professors and protestors have gathered here every August to argue about the best ways to return to faster economic growth. This year, they gave up…instead focused mostly on making sure things don’t get any worse. Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen spoke about the risk of further deregulation while Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, spoke against protectionism. The tepid tone of the conference, of course, was the opposite of President Trump’s boisterousness tweets about the current economic reality, most prominently on July 2nd when Trump tweeted ‘Stock Market at all-time high, unemployment at lowest level in years (wages will start going up) and our base has never been stronger!’ Not to be undone, July 31st saw Trump tweet ‘Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages rising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos’. For certain Trump isn’t the first president to hang his hat on the Dow Jones. Barack Obama for one certainly wasn’t above it. However, as Michelle Styczynski recently explained in Jacobin, a rising stock market has little to no effect on the wages of the hourly workers who make up almost 60 percent of the workforce. Before 1980, real wages grew at an average of two and a half cents ($0.0025) per month while the S&P grew on average 0.53 points per month. After 1980 wages grow by an average rate of 0.7 cents ($0.007) per month – a 71 percent drop. Meanwhile the S&P has risen to an average growth rate of 4 points per month for an increase of 660 percent. In other words it’s been a long time since stock market growth correlated to higher wages for the working class. As for the rest of the ‘base’ as Trump refers to it is plagued by the same longstanding trends Trump incoherently campaigned on. The top 1 percent continues to swallow up the lion’s share of growth. From 2009-2012 the one percent captured over 90 percent of economic gains. That number has declined since but from 2013-2015 the one percent still grabbed about half of growth. Productivity has stalled. The economy has yet to even recover the output it was on pace to produce prior to the Great Recession. In 1967 95 percent of ‘prime age’ men (ages 25-54) worked. Today more than 15 percent aren’t working with some localities having fewer than 70 percent of men without a college education unemployed or out of the workforce entirely. The percentage of underemployed Americans is now at 8.6 percent. Paradoxically 7.6 million people currently work more than one job, the highest in two decades. A study by economists Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger showed that nearly 95 percent of jobs created during the Obama Era were temporary, part-time, or contractual (i.e. of the mythical ‘gig’ variety). As has been the case since the mid-1970s Americans continue to make up for stagnant wages by using credit to finance the middle-class life. Just prior to the last recession household debt in the U.S. hit $12.68 trillion. It now stands at $12.7. Given the economy is larger now than it was a decade ago today’s total household debt is equivalent to 67 percent of the economy as opposed to the 85 percent back at the 2008 peak. The nature of the debt has shifted. Americans owe less on their homes and credit cards and more on student and car loans, the latter being a bare necessity in most places in the country, while the former is the declared ticket to prosperity. While this debt may be more sustainable in the short-term it probably has led to a drag on demand. Personal-spending growth has averaged only 2.4 percent since the recession ended, less than previous expansions. Much ink has been spilled in recent times lamenting Americans’ new lack of mobility. According to the Census Bureau about 10 percent of Americans moved in the past year, down from the 1950s through the early 1980s when more than 20 percent of the population moved.  Tyler Cowen laments in his book The Complacent Class: The Self Defeating Quest for the American Dream that the interstate migration rate has fallen 51 percent below the average rate from 1948-1971. Kevin Williamson of National Review surely took the prize for this last year, writing about the plight of the white working class: There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible…The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. Trump himself got into the act recently telling the Wall Street Journal “people are going to have to start moving.” Leaving aside questions about family and community, not to mention issues of vastly uneven development, this despair about mobility and labor flexibility seems to run into another longstanding issue. For well over half a century it’s been government policy to favor homeownership over renters, suburban sprawl over cities. Since the 1940s 90 percent of new housing has been in low density areas. If the impetus for this was the severe housing shortage in the aftermath of World War II, the adjoining motivation was the incubating and reinforcement of a conservative status quo. A 1946 Fortune survey, citied by Rosalyn Baxandell and Elizabeth Ewan in In Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, revealed: The U.S. people are strikingly in favor of positive government action to end the severe housing shortage. A majority of those with opinions want the government to embark on a large scale building program, and that more people, particularly the young, veterans, the poor, and those living in large cities, and especially North Atlantic States; i.e. most people preferred renting an apartment to owning a house. Unfortunately such a solution wouldn’t have made big money for the master builders and the bank and loan associations. The automobile industry and highway lobby had same understanding. While the suburbanization of the country largely solved the housing shortage and fulfilled the mythology of ‘homeownership’ (actually mortgage holding) and picket fences, in the long run it has contributed to a less fluid workforce as many are now tied to their mortgages or property. It’s also a fact that the cities where the movers are supposed to head have astronomical housing costs and growing homeless populations. Along with the new lack of mobility, the other despair of working class critics is the state of the family. Obviously the decline of the nuclear family has been red meat for conservatives for decades. However, now the consensus is broader. Political rhetoric may require musings about “the family”, but the true subject of derision is the working class family, most especially the great increase in out of wedlock births. For those with college degrees the years since 1980 haven’t seen such an increase (the divorce rate overall has declined from its 1980 peak with a steeper decline for the college educated. Currently it’s at its lowest level in 40 years). For the other two-thirds of the population the increase has been substantial. According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015 was the eighth straight year 40 percent of births in the U.S. were to unmarried mothers, the great majority of these births to working class children. While acknowledging the causes of this are complex, critics put much of their emphasis on culture. Amy Wax, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, recently found herself at the center of a storm for an op-ed she coauthored for Philly.com titled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture”. Thirty three of her colleagues at the University signed a letter condemning Wax’s claims. Wax writes of a late 1960s cultural flip that “encouraged an antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal- sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll- that was unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society”. The op-ed goes on to say: All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all…But restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture- the academics, media, and Hollywood- to relinquish multicultural grievance polemics and the preening pretense of defending the downtrodden. Instead of bashing the bourgeois culture, they should return to the 1950s posture of celebrating it. Absent that sentiment is any economic analysis of the beloved 1950s, which for all the racism and McCarthyism, was a time of economic growth, rising wages, and strong unions- perhaps what many of those working class voters who fell for the charms of ‘Make America Great Again’ had in mind since these things have been gone for decades. Writing in the New York Times back in 2014, Isabel Sawhill, of the Brookings Institute and author of Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage, acknowledged the need for educational and job opportunities, and correctly pointed to the need for greater access to quality birth control, but says: But government alone can’t solve this problem. Younger people must begin to take greater responsibility for their choices…Well-functioning democracies are built on the premise that government has an obligation to promote the general welfare. But so do citizens. More support for those drifting is in order, but less drifting is also essential. The emphasis on culture leaves one with an obvious question:  if destructive cultural influences, such as Hollywood and academics, are persuasive then why is much of their seductive power only taking hold over certain segments of the population whom it just so happens have been the same segments that have dealt with deindustrialization, stagnant wages, drug abuse epidemics and, in the case of the black working class, taking the brunt of draconian anti-drug laws and crime bills? More than half of all black children born to less educated parents in 1990 experienced parental imprisonment. It calls to mind what Oscar Wilde placed into the mouth of Algeron in The Importance of Being Earnest: “Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them.” One of the sharper points Andrew Cherlin makes in his Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class Family in America is that the much romanticized period from the late 1940s through the 1960s, the period where still much of our cultural and economic expectations derive from, is a historical anomaly. And as Cherlin points out, the fall in marriages has been seen before: The marriage gap we see in the New Gilded Age today is similar to the gap during the Old Gilded Age of the late 1800s.  Sharp inequalities in income and in marriage characterize both eras. …In both eras, men in professional, managerial, or  technical positions were most likely to marry, and the probability of marriage dropped substantially toward the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. The Great Depression saw the same trends. Birth rates fell sharply in the 1930s. According to a 1940 survey (cited Robert D. Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis), 1.5 million married women were deserted by their husbands and as result more than 200,000 vagrant children were said to be wandering the country. Cultural mores were certainly different 125 years ago but as both the original Gilded Age and the present day show, the saviors of the traditional family, as well as single parents, aren’t pious harangues about moral decline or odes to personal determination but good paying jobs. Good paying jobs are what American capitalism has been unable to provide since the 1970s. For all Trump’s bluster, it’s always been obvious that a working-class populism wasn’t in the works. The Democrats are too weak and in the thrall of big money ‘centrism’ that emphasizes cultural issues above all else, as if things like gun violence and immigration are independent of economics. The beauty of culture for those who wield power is that when an issue becomes ‘cultural’ it also becomes unsolvable The endlessly analyzed “rural-urban” divide becomes a matter of who goes to church, owns guns, or drinks craft beers and not on the overall economic stagnation that affects so many rural and urban areas alike. Without a serious movement against unchained capital one can expect that divide to grow even larger and the underlying economic trends to continue to stir bitterness and conflict. http://clubof.info/