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rureikia · 4 years

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Chapter 4

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The start of high school was a very crucial milestone for me. Because not only did I have a crush on Kita, but I also got accepted to go to the same school like him too.

Inarizaki High.

When I saw the magical letter of confirmation, my heart blossomed by a large magnitude.

I was so agitated with the thought of having three more years with Kita Shinsuke I thought I was beginning to see stars... I mean, for a young girl whose heart was fully set in stone for a celestial being like him, how could you not be awfully excited? It meant three more years of opportunities that I'd definitely not let go to waste, three more years of seeing his face! All the scenarios occurring in my head, in hopes that one day, these would come true...

I specifically remember on the day the letter arrived on how I was sprinting around the house to show mom and dad.

At the time, my parents didn't know why I was that happy over getting accepted since I used to be pretty distasteful about studying. But they quickly shifted it aside and congratulated me nevertheless.

It was like the scream painting. I can still draw out their faces in my head. Mom and dad were startled as they never expected me to have gotten into one of the top high schools in the prefecture — they ended up jumping along with me regardless of their previous doubts!

So on the first day of school, I marched out of my house in my new uniform, and a satisfied grin widely spread across my face.

The basic philosophy was to try and pass all exams, but the true aim for me was to find Kita Shinsuke, then ultimately confess to him. Next, he'd accept my confession and we would date, he then proposes, we get married, start a family ehehehe... Ah, I mustn't carry on or else I'll get too thoughtful...

But I was really excited (excitement lasted one-week maximum). I wanted to get to school pronto and see all the new people that would be circling me all through the next years. And so my determination was at its top game by then.

Whilst dusting my skirt and straightening it out, I closed my front door, but kept hold of my door handle to wait.

After a minute or two, from the opposite side of my street, I also heard someone else's door open.

I let go of my door handle, appearing as if I just came out of my house too.

In an instant, I knew who it was, hence why I gasped apprehensively to myself and thrashed around to look, "Ah, Kita!! Good morning!"

He sees me, adjusts his bag strap, and walks away without considering my call.

"Kita!" I called out again, assuming he didn't hear me the first time, "Wait for me!"

I was nearly about to run and go get him because he was already walking from a significant reach away. But just then, my mother abruptly forced the front door open with an annoyed scowl face before I had even managed to escape.

"(Y/N)! Why are you yelling so much in the morning? You sound like a stupid person, the neighbors will complain because of your loud mouth!" Her hands were on her hips, and she spoke to me in much vex.

I flashed a swift glimpse at Kita.

Okay. He wasn't waiting for me.

Mom was still in the middle of scolding me, and I got impatient as she was suddenly like an obstacle I needed to overcome for me to catch up with fast-feet Kita Shinsuke.

"Yeah, yeah I'm in a hurry. Mom, let's talk later okay?" I replied in slight rashness.

"Excuse me? Why are you acting like that? If you are in such a hurry why are you still here? I don't understand!!" Mom grabbed my hand, throwing down 600 yen for lunch then shoved me away, "You forgot this too. Gosh... Who is this hopeless girl? I don't know her. Just leave now!"

Why must this old lady insult me so incredibly fast?

I halted to stare at the money in my palm and solemnly glanced back at her, "Wait, mom... This might not be enough for lunch..." I whined.

"Yes it is. Lunch is cheap there." She smacks my shoulder and I made another whine a tad louder at the impact, "Tsk, (Y/N) don't complain anymore. Just be grateful, have a good day, and go."

My shoulders grieved a bit but I went along with it, "OK thanks...Bye-bye..."

As soon as she closed the door on me, I left.

I tried my best to catch up with Kita who was walking by himself in the distance. And after seeing him in the same uniform as me, once again, I was unbearably excited to go approach him.

This was a period of time where I'd constantly be a hindrance to Kita. However, I didn't really take this into account until much much later.

Since I took interest in him during second-year middle school, that interest only developed from thereon. By the time it was third-year middle school, I full-blown liked him. And then at first-year high-school, it developed into something called puppy love.

Kita, he was rather laid-back about it. He didn't tell me to go away nor to stop talking to him — rather he would just let me do whatever whilst throwing cold logic at me whenever he feels the need to.

Well, I say that he's rather laid-back but in actuality, he'd try and evade me at times by ignoring the things I'd do. I was still childish and quite gullible, so I simply assumed he was bluffing to push me away and to hide his genuine feelings.

With that in mind, I remembered how back then I was wholly convinced that I could win him over in a jiffy. And this was entirely due to my mind being intoxicated from those all dramas, shoujo mangas, and anime's I watched in the past. Subsequently, I thought I owned a special power like no other, which was the power of love and commitment.

15-year-old me seriously believed that she would be able to do anything with the power of love deeply engraved in her soul. I basically believed I was the next generation's Sailor Moon...

For me to express my loyalty towards Kita, I revised everything needed for that entrance exam with extra diligence. And that was more than enough proof to show that the power of love really does work miracles. After all, because of my power, I was wearing the school's crest embedded on my blazer, the same one as whom I strived for.

"Kita good morning, hhh." I greeted breathily, speed-walking next to him.

He nods a response, "Morning."

I straightened my posture and smiled awkwardly at him by accident. Then I tried to strike up a conversation which was probably also accidentally awkward, "Kita don't you think this is such a coincidence? We will be going to the same school again this year. It's uh — it's a perfect match isn't it?"

He carries on walking forwards, without looking at me. "The entry requirements for Inarizaki must have lowered this year if that's the case."

I didn't know at the time, but this guy was totally degrading me here.

"Oh yes, that has happened. By a couple of points, it has lowered actually." I addressed with formality in my speech like some intellectual, "That means the God of fortune must be by my side, don't you think?"

Kita didn't reply and we walked in silence for a couple more seconds.

.......

"Uh......... Kita!" I called out.

The suddenness finally resulted in him shifting his head a little to peer at me.

"Kita, wait for a second."

Kita listened for once, stopping in his tracks, glancing back at me.

When we were teenagers, he would experience my resilient pestering daily. This was additionally a section of life where relationships and emotions are new to everyone, especially for kids that were around that age — high-schoolers.

I can distinctly pick out the uncountable amounts of times where I'd loiter outside my house early in the morning just before he comes out. And when I hear his door open from across the street I would act as if I just came out too — "Kita, you just got ready now? Oh, what a coincidence, so have I."

There's also the case that would happen in school. I'd pack up all my belongings and shove it in my bag before the teacher dismissed the class. This was so I could have enough time to leave and walk home with Kita, "Another coincidence! I'm going to leave school too!"

"..." Eventually, I took a deep breath and gripped onto my bag straps that were wrapped around my shoulders tightly, building up the fury in my chest. Then studying around carefully I made sure no one was present before I took a few side-steps closer to him.

I don't know why I was such a shameless little girl back then. I have to admit that it's not very good to reminisce about my past, it hurts my dignity a lot.

But with the expression as if I was going to complete a huge quest, I confessed to him.

"I like you," I said.

Kita stared at me blankly for a second, then furrowed his eyebrows and told me, "I don't."

"..."

With that, my life advice is: do not read too much manga.

After the rejection, he blatantly left it at that and continued walking to school as if he forgot about it. I, on the other hand, felt extremely embarrassed and tried to think of what to do. My rational decision was to run off towards a different path like a coward.

Just as I was about to bolt, I nervously called out to Kita for the last time that morning, "I-I guess I'll see you later okay Kita?!"

He didn't acknowledge it since he didn't look back, but neither did I. And so we both departed ways.

Obviously, me being older now, I understand how I was unmistakably not as discreet as I presumed to be. I have been told by many friends that even an elephant wearing a shocking pink dress can do a better job at being discreet than me.

So I know now. Teenage Kita already could tell that I liked him for a very long time even before that terrible confession of mine. But oddly, he chose to not bother spilling to others regarding it, I still don't know to this day why.

As a child I was impatient, that's why I chose to confess on the actual first day of high-school. And that impatience lingered on for a while. I'm sure that this flaw caused me to be a nuisance to Kita Shinsuke; so he probably disliked that part, which is another thing I didn't think about until much later.

Later on, when I arrived at school, I experienced the worst sort of depressiveness where I felt my whole environment turn into a darkening abyss.

Outside the 1st year hallways, I examined the posters where it would tell us what class we would be assigned in.

KITA SHINSUKE: CLASS 7

Okay, that's very good!

(L/N) (Y/N): CLASS 2

That... I hate...

And so I dragged myself to Class 2 where a certain someone saw my dismal brooding.

"(L/N) why do you look like that? You look so miserable on your first day already?!" An enthusiastic voice called me out.

I gloomily averted my gaze up. It was my old friend, Taro.

Taro also went to the same middle school as me. And we became friends over the liking towards graphic novels — it was actually because of that interest of his, he wasn't very popular with the girls haha.

"...I'm not sad. I'm devastated." I sighed out in a daze.

He was eating bread, and talked with food still in his mouth, "Why?"

"Because I was put in a different class to what I think I really deserve. Don't you think the class rank system is a bit unfair?"

Taro snorted contemptuously and shook his head at my idea, "No not at all, you just want to be in the same class as Kita."

"Not so," I argued.

"Is so." He argued back with his head held higher, "(L/N), I don't know why you think this is unfair, you very much deserve it."

I glared at him in disapproval.

Then he proceeds, using the bread in his hand to gesture at me, "Whilst Kita has an IQ of at least 200, yours is way below in the negatives. So you're incredibly lucky that you weren't put in your true class. Class zero."

"Huh...? Class zero doesn't exist... What are you even saying?"

"You get to be in the same class as this intelligent guy instead!" Taro uses a spare hand to pat his chest, "Isn't that great (L/N)?!"

My face rapidly scrunched up in displeasure at those words and actions, "Uwah... Calling yourself intelligent. If you think that I have an IQ below the negatives, you will be the same as me since we're in the same class. Who do you think you are?"

"I am someone that at least has enough common sense to find someone not way out of my league, that's who I think I am."

I briefly grinned at him in annoyance and retaliated with a reply, "Go back to sit on your seat, leave me alone now."

He stifled a quiet laugh and did what I said with an effortless shrug.

I wasn't expecting to be put in class 2 to be honest. I would never expect myself in class 7 either. But I just wanted to be in the same class as Kita in hopes that we'd be deskmates for the following three years.

But as shown, that never happened.

Instead, I had to rely on my individual skills to be around him as much as I could.

I went straight to bed after last night and woke up with the worst possible headache that one could imagine. The headache was so bad in fact that I was concerned whether I had a type of brain disease and wasn't going to survive.

And the throbbing pain only attacked me once I groggily opened my eyes to see the sunshine which wasn't a good idea since I felt dizzy. So I had to cover my face with my duvets to stop any more light from stinging me.

I'm currently in pain right now, but I was quite okay when I was asleep and felt nothing. In fact, I underwent a type of sleep that was so deep, it confused my dreams towards real-life circumstances, making me rather delirious.

I opened my eyes again, reluctantly tossing around to squint at the ceiling fan, and tried hard to recall what happened yesterday.

From what I can accurately remember... I went to a goukon with Sumiko, I met some new people, I ate at least twenty dishes, I drank, I saw a handsome worker, I saw Kita with that handsome worker, I got frightened and quickly hid outside, but suddenly he was outside too(?!?!) so I was forced to talk with him for a minute before I went back inside, I drank some more and incidentally got drunk, I then remembered that he took me home because of how drunk I was......... And then, we kissed.

Oh yes, we k-i-s-s-e-d. Me and my ex-boyfriend.

And I was thinking about the kiss so much apparently I was given a dream about it too.

It was a dream akin to where I was with Kita. An altered memory of that same kiss replaying over and over again for what felt like hours on end. In that dream, we may have used a bit too much mouth work and tongue which isn't very good... Makes me feel quite abashed... Then I woke up with my cheek muscles feeling sore which additionally, isn't very good.

I rubbed my eyes sluggishly when lifting my torso from my bed to regain proper consciousness. I noticed was still wearing my work attire from yesterday, except I looked tenfold scruffier.

Did I fight someone while I was in the zone? Honestly, I'm so tired I didn't care about the context. So I'll just go back to sleep...

...Well, that's what I wanted until I heard a voice sing to me inside my head.

"If you remember... Call me."

"you remember... Call me."

"remember... Call me."

"Call me."

(GASP)

As expected from an unintentional flirt like Kita, his words woke me up.

I frantically attempted to roll out of bed but ended up falling flat on my back with a loud, painful thump. At the impact, I groaned, staggering to my feet and grabbing my phone that was on the top of my neatly folded work blazer by my chair.

Once I accomplished to scamper around like a bug, I turned it on to scroll to Kita's contact information and stared intensely at his name.

Me: "..."

No, I couldn't do it. I clicked on my friend Taro's contact information instead to procrastinate. And to my surprise, he picked up abnormally fast.

......

"Hello, good morning~!" Taro said in English appearing a bit too happy for my liking.

"Hey, it's me..." my hoarse morning voice croaked with a tired sigh at the end.

"Oh... Jesus Christ. That doesn't sound too good... What is it (L/N)? You sound a little dead." He said, "Did something happen last night?"

I nodded my head vigorously as if he could see me, but regretted when it made me feel woozy. "Yeah kinda... — wait, how did you know that something was going on last night?"

"Instagram aha. Well, Sumiko mainly."

"Eh...? Sumiko? Something must've happened with you two then." I scoffed, "Okay, tell me yours first. Go on."

"Alright, I'll be brief 'cuz I want to hear your story. But to summarise, Sumiko-chan broke up with me and she wanted to prove that she can find someone very quickly." He begins to explain, "I then checked Instagram last night to see some of the posts from the goukon you two were at."

Ah, their romance is a little confusing I should mention. This is probably the fourth time they "broke-up" this month.

To others, this might seem a bit neglective and unhealthy, but I know the most that these two care for each other strongly. Last night, I noticed that she didn't even bother flirting with any of the men. Instead, she talked with the women throughout the majority of the event.

I switched my phone from one ear to another, "So I've heard from herself that the two of you have broken up again. What's it this time? Did she get angry over something silly?" I asked, "Is that why she accepted the goukon invitation?"

"Pfft, obviously. Of course Sumiko got angry over something silly." He laughs, "But... She didn't run off like that to seriously break off with me. You know how she is. Sumiko just tried to prove me wrong in something because of how prideful she can be. Sometimes, she even has the same competitive energy as you."

I breathed out a chuckle, feeling a little more calmed down, "Impossible. I'm nothing like her when it comes to that sort of stuff. I'm not as confident."

"No way. I think you guys are definitely similar in that aspect. I've been with the two of you since high-school, I think I know the best." He affirms, and I shake my head at his claiming words, "Anyways, back to you. What's up (L/N)? Why'd you call?"

He reminded me why I wanted to call. And all of a sudden, I became remarkably hesitant. I was so hesitant actually I almost bit my tongue when opening my mouth to speak.

"Uh — Taro... You remember Kita, r-right?"

"Mhm, of course, yeah. Your ex-boyfriend, Mr. Perfect."

"Well... Me and Kita met last night..."

"Eh?! —" His tone jumps by four octaves in surprise, then deepens, "— Uh, Okay...?"

"And I wasn't really expecting him to be there..." I trailed.

Taro paused and inhaled sharply before filling words between our silent space, "(L/N), you're kind of scaring me now..."

Don't worry, I'm scaring myself too.

I swallowed the nervous saliva that built up as I struggled to speak, "And kinda...We maybe uh — kissed."

......

"WHAT?!" He loudly exclaimed. His side of the audio turned distorted and my eardrums burst.

"A-Ah yeah hahahaha..."

"LAST NIGHT?! Are you sure?! How come I didn't see him in any of the goukon posts though? Did Sumiko invite him purposely just to mess with you?! That's pure evil!! I'll scold her for you when she gets home... Wait unless... Are you guys back together then?! After three years, I thought you two would never be together ever again! But what the heck (L/N), you and Kita really kissed? What the actual fu-"

I can't do this anymore.

I hung up. His voice is quite annoying to listen to with a hangover like this. I'll let Taro try to figure out everything himself.

I scrolled through my contacts once more and attempted to call Sumiko but was immediately left on voicemail to my disappointment. So now, the only remaining person I wanted to call left was... Kita Shinsuke...

For some reason, when my finger hovered over his name it felt like I was being punished with the death penalty. And to make matters more nerve-wracking, once I clicked on his contact information, my hand was shaking whilst I raised my phone to my ear.

It took another couple of seconds, but his phone started ringing. Hearing the ring made me so scared to the point I shuddered and started pacing around my room.

......

Kita picked up and spoke first, "Hello?"

"Ah." I jolted.

Oh god, why did I make this phone call? I should have practiced what to say at the very least.

His voice stayed nonchalant, "(Y/N), what is it?"

Okay, I think I got something.

I stopped and took a whole two seconds to build up the confidence needed for the next thing I'm about to say.

Then, after a big breath, I began my rambling; "Okay Kita, listen here. I am very unhappy with you right now. You kissed me last night while I was drunk and you did it without my permission, it's not good to do that to someone in that state! Kita why? What on earth were you thinking?! Your actions were very wrong, and you need to think thoroughly about what you did, and you shouldn't do that to me again. In fact, you shouldn't do that to anyone!! Consent is very important to people, and if I was drunk you should haven't taken advantage! You're rather lucky that I am a nice person and that—"

He cuts me off, "(Y/N). Don't yell. I can hear you even if you speak normally."

I shut my mouth at his scold straight away and quietened by a significant volume, "Oh... Was I being too loud? Sorry about that... But still, you shouldn't interrupt so suddenly, I am trying to tell you something important..."

"You shouldn't be loud nonetheless, you'll feel light-headed if you have a hangover."

I was going to ramble again, but I had to stop myself when I sensed something peculiar in my environment.

Something wasn't right.

For a brief moment, I pressed my phone to my chest and silently glanced around as if trying to wait for an event to occur. When I became even more suspicious, I put my phone back to my ear, "Hold on, say something."

Kita, "Like what?"

I could hear two voices. Both unquestionably belonging to my ex-boyfriend. And to make matters worse, I also smelled something bad coming from outside my room. Hence why I hastily sped out of my room like a professional athlete.

The reason I could hear two different Kitas was because I saw him in my kitchen from the open living room. I panicked and ran straight there.

So it seemed that he really was in my apartment, therefore I wasn't experiencing complete hysteria. And he was also cooking something too (not a good sign), the phone still to his ear.

The only thing was, it smelled like pretty bad burning.

Fumes were coming out of my kitchen and I couldn't believe the fire alarm hadn't buzzed off violently by now.

I hurriedly ran inside my kitchen, my first animalistic instinct was to turn the stove off. My second animalistic instinct was to hold back this huge urge to do something to Kita. I really wanted to throw an object at him, maybe my cushion or my lamp because of what I had just witnessed.

For a man that is known to be good at everything, he doesn't seem to know a single damn thing about the kitchen, does he?

"Kita Shinsuke! What do you think you're doing?!" I exclaimed, taking the wok he grasped by the handle. I swear if I woke up any later my apartment would have fallen into a crisp.

He turned to look at me with the most innocent expression on his face, "You're up earlier than usual." He said, ignoring what he just did, "You used to sleep until 11 on weekends."

In return, I ignored his statement and stared at my precious wok, seeing charred eggs that were now an indescribable dark matter.

I was using my index finger and thumb to carefully take it off, but it was stubbornly stuck to the material... It wasn't glamorous at all.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, this guy forgot to put oil and burned everything... Ahhhhhhhhhhh I'm going to have a mental breakdown now... My wok!!! He ruined this one-of-a-kind wok I ordered from Beijing!!

I crouched down and placed my wok on the kitchen's tiled floor. Then very aggressively, I was scratching the top of my head, showing my painful distress, "Kita, why did you try and make eggs without oil? I have taught you in the past that you must put oil when making stuff like this, did I not? And I don't understand why you're in my apartment either!"

"I couldn't find your oil, so I used water." He said with a perfectly straight face.

"..."

I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it since I had nothing to say. And at this moment I felt utterly incompetent. Hence why I was sitting down on my kitchen floor, wanting to collapse and go to sleep right on this spot.

I have come to understand that I cannot understand Kita Shinsuke.

He then continued, "Last night you told me that you didn't want me to leave. That's why I'm here."

I looked up at him with a frown, "No. You're lying."

"I'm not."

"How come I don't remember that and remember everything else?"

"Maybe you were drunk." Kita shrugs and cracks a teasingly small smile, "What do you remember then?"

That question was atrocious because I knew what he was hinting at. So I had to hold my voice down even though really wanted to wail aloud, "How... drunk was I?"

"Hm. Do you really not remember anything?" he asks, crouching down to pick up the messed up wok and rose back up.

I remembered the kiss, after that everything truly was a blur, I couldn't seem to recall anything. No matter how hard I try to think back, nothing comes into my mind. Therefore I needed to check myself again.

What happened? Is there anything different about me?

I'm still wearing my work attire, however, the blazer I had on last night was not on me anymore, it's neatly folded on my chair, which Kita must have done. I'm not wearing my stockings either and my blouse was untucked too...

Oh.

That's when electricity struck me.

I stood up with great suspense, wrapping my arms around my torso protectively, "You... —You didn't do anything to me, did you? I remember this kiss, but you haven't done anything after, right...?"

Kita's brows pinch in irritation and he pushes my forehead back with his index finger where I made a sound of struggle at the action.

"(Y/N) are you dim? What is going inside that small brain of yours?"

"A-Ah! I'm just asking out of worry..." I said slouching back, finally relaxing a bit, "You don't have to speak to me like that..."

Kita puts the wok in my sink whilst I slumped, gave up, and decided to go to put some water in my kettle to make tea. When doing so, I asked him another question.

"Were you here all night then?"

"Yeah." He replied.

Why?

"You should have woken me up," I chided, "I had a spare futon you could have used."

He shook his head modestly, "Your couch is comfortable too, so I was okay."

"I see."

"But what about you, did you sleep fine?"

I took a mug out of my cupboard and exhaled a little, "I slept fine as well. My head kinda hurts, but there's medicine in the bathroom, so I'll leave to go take that and wash myself up soon."

"That's good."

There was a lot to process already, but I decided to push that away for now.

One of my main concerns however was what he said to me some moments ago.

Kita claims that I told him I didn't want him to leave, which is the reason why he stayed. And I began to question what I might have said to him exactly for him to do actually listen to that supposed request.

He was washing the wok he ruined as I was now heavily debating what to do by eyeing him every couple of seconds or so.

I felt quite conflicted. I hated to think about how Kita was utterly handsome during those stealthy glances I did.

His hair was messed up, his eyes were more doe than usual. He wasn't wearing his jacket or sweater from last night but was presently wearing his T-shirt and jeans... And we were both standing here. In my kitchen. Where I sensed no discomfort coming from his body language as mine was astonishingly rigid.

Still, despite my negative demeanor, I couldn't help but contemplate while making a cup of tea. This is where the inner-conflict comes into play.

I didn't know whether to hug him from behind like what you'd see in the movies. Or maybe secretly stand up on my tiptoes and deliver him a kiss on the cheek, or carry on watching his concentrated side profile while crying really big, salty tears.

In the end, I just called out his name, "Kita. Your tea is here."

He didn't answer verbally, but nods.

I tapped Kita's shoulder this time, "It'll get cold, drink fast."

To that, he takes a short glimpse at me then goes back to washing my traditional Chinese wok, "I'll clean this up first. It won't take long."

Hmm, perhaps he feels bad for the mess he made and is trying to make up for it.

"Okay," I said, "If it gets cold, you can just reheat. I'm going to wash up now."

He nods again in reassurance, and I give him one last glance before getting out of the kitchen to grab stuff for the bathroom.

[Previous] [Contents] [Soon...]

#kita shinsuke x reader #kita shinsuke x y/n #kita shinsuke x you #fanfiction update #kita shinsuke #kita shinsuke imagine #haikyuu

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mr-kamiyama · 4 years

Text

A Word for Zoomers Who're Told They're "Making Up" Genders and Orientations.

I'm an Xer.

Well, actually I'm in that b.1977-85 throe where no two people can agree what I am. I'm Post Dankai Junior in the old country, but I was too old to be a kid for Pokémon, Harry Potter, I caught Digimon 02 during its premiere US run a rare Saturday the firm I worked at, that normally had Saturday hours, was closed. I met Windows Millennium Edition because a housemate, as back then, I'd realised I wanted to live with company, wanted to upgrade our computer to the newest version of Windows (and I promptly made AMVs using GIFs and lost them to the sands of time all before YouTube even existed) So that gives you an idea of my age.

I came out for the first time in high school. I came out as bi.

In Japan, transness, like here had different words we no longer use, but unlike here, wasn't a secret.

If I'd stayed in Japan just one more year, in '95 politician Kamikawa Aya began advocating on NHK for trans rights.

Maybe I'd've learned that transition *to* male and actual medical treatment like HRT to make that possible existed a whole lot sooner.

But I didn't. And so, I didn't realise it was actually something I could *do* and I wasn't doomed to be stuck until about 2010.

I claimed "bi" in the '90s, and mistook "you're a really cool person and really nice to me when few people are and so I really like you in a platonic sense" +aesthetic attraction for crushes of a romantic and sexual nature.

The SAM model was developed by bi people in the '70s, but where and when I was, there weren't exactly highly visible LGBT centres where I could learn this. So I thought any orientation had to be "x-sexual"

And I only knew about straight, gay/lesbian, and bi.

Which, the term "laaaaaaaabelllls" was coined by biphobic people my age. See, we weren't like people today, who literally can't live because of unfettered crony capitalism. You could get a nice studio on the nice side of town for eight days' work at minimum wage (of course, being POC, you had to find the right realtor), which back then was under four dollars an hour. You could get a 2br/1.5ba rowhouse for about two weeks' worth, which is half a month, but these days, that much work will get you a barely-studio in shoot-you-in-the-face-in-broad-daylight territory.

But we were still plenty suspicious of marketing. So queerphobic Xers went "don't make me acknowledge your filthy non-mono sexuality! What if I told you naming what you are is dehumanising, like labelling a jar of mayo, and you're the product!"

Which is no different that queerphobic Millennials claiming "Queer is a slur uwu call it gay because cisgay and cishet are the only valid IDs uwu Gay has never ever been used as a pejorative uwu"

Which is also bunk because back in the '90s, if one young man did ANYTHING another didn't like, the other one could call it and him "gaaayyy" and that would be a homophobic attack via toxic masculinity on the first young man. Heck, I don't listen to much grunge, though I did at the time, but it's used this way in some Nirvana song. I just can't remember which one.

Anyway, so I claimed bi and spent the next 23 or so years fighting for it even against physical violence to make me claim something in the false straight/gay binary

All along, I thought "the mushy stuff squicks me because I'm a guy (insert ways I justified things before I realised that yes, I actually am male for prior to 2010)" which, yeah, I'm still sorting through the myriad manifestations of toxic masculinity and learning to spot them. What that actually is is romance repulsion.

I'm actually aroace.

To go further, I actually have very strong platonic affection feelings, and "idemromantic" is not necessarily my actual identity, but that, and at least some idea, if even wrong, that the other party was interested, was how I sorted whether I should approach the other person as "friend" or "potential partner" subconsciously.

Plus to further complicate things, I'm sex-favourable ace/cupiosexual, which meant that just hearing limited definitions of things like sex repulsion in aces didn't clue me in. It wasn't until discussing what sexual attraction was with a newly-realised gay first wave Xer last year that I realised I had no idea what that was and had never felt it, and was therefore asexual. Which after the discussion with that guy, I dove into readings by you all on Tumbler first.

And I only realised I'm aromantic last month, though I've been questioning for actually a year this month.

Now, I'd say my aesthetic attraction is definitely bi, and yes, I accept the redefinition made with the info we have now of two or more genders including your own" which *I read* as "but not necessarily all genders, and perceived gender is a factor" whereas pan seems to me like "perceived gender is not a factor in attraction" ??

Now, I still actually don't have an idea about my potential aesthetic feelings towards people who present NB. The men and women I feel it towards tend to have this or that decidedly masculine or feminine traits, and I may never, because people my age are less likely to come out.

Whether orientation or gender, people my age are products of a very binary 20th century. We were really all sorts of shape pegs, but many of us were and still are dodecahedrons and whatnot with choices of only square, circle, and mayyybe triangle holes.

Naturally, the dodecahedrons and the hexagons all tried to jam themselves in circle and square holes, whichever ones it looked like we could maybe wedge into.

This means plenty of us are going around thinking things like "I guess I don't like sex because I'm a woman" or "I guess I don't like the mushy stuff because I'm a man" or "I don't feel female so I guess I'm a man because I'm AMAB and that's all I got" etc.

Those most likely to come out are those with very strong NB/aro/ace feelings WHO BECOME INFORMED. And some may still not, or those with feelings they can't sort, because they've lived so long the previous way, they may at least feel they have too much to lose.

There's also people like me that need a lot of info to realise they were misreading their own feelings due to decades of amatonormative/heteronormative/binarist/toxic masculine brainwashing.

(I still don't like the term "toxic masculine" because I really want a term where we have more room to redefine "masculine" as decidedly masculine but wholly without the toxic stuff that's so married to "manliness," room to reject that stuff and revision manliness, but whatever)

THE REASON OLDER GENERATIONS DON'T HAVE THIS STUFF IS NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE INVENTING IT. IT IS BECAUSE OUR TIME DIDN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

Yes, I think it's funny imaging how lost you'd be trying to use an 8-track player, or a library card catalogue actually made of index cards.

And had I not miscarried in December 2003 and had a sixteen year old, I'd have had them set up the internet TV device I got instead of three hours barely restraining myself from breaking it into pieces just like I was the only one who was able to figure out how to set the VCR clock and VCR+ timers when we got one when I was young. Which my difficulty with this stuff is more like a Boomer than an Xer. Most of my peers are pretty savvy. Sometimes my friends can tele-help me.

And I think new music,which I define as post-Y2K, stinks.

So I'm not hip and new. Plenty about me is just like your parents.

But no, you aren't making this up. And you're informing a lot of us. You're waking us up to how truly diverse humanity is. You're waking some of us up to who we really are.

And as for those of you who have crummy and even Karen parents, two things:

A. The Latino kids took me and the other Asian in in high school. There aren't many Asians in FL. (The "Another Chinese Family" bit on Fresh Off The Boat is so real) There are definitely some crummy Xers out there, and that's been true all along. There was even a right-wing youth org called "young republicans." There were Regean-loving racist queerphobes all along. They made my life miserable in high school, too.

B. There are also others like me that believe in you. That actually need you. You're bringing *back* a diversity that was smothered by colonial Europe. Historical precedent is actually on your side.

Thank you. I mean it. You're doing good, you're legit, and there are a lot of us who believe in you, too.

#nonbinary #gen z #aromanticism #asexuality #queer #gen x #xennial #the name for people in that weird throe the Boomer/X debated throe is Gen Jones they both have names #intergenerational stuff #diversity #long post #i said a word but more like a thesis www

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winterromanov · 5 years

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we will grow taller together - bucky x reader

PART ONE - THE GENTLE HUM OF EXISTENTIAL DREAD

parts: zero

Pairing: bucky barnes x reader

Extract: “No. No, what I’m saying is, he needs—they both need—someone. He needs someone to help look after Clover while they both get their lives back on track.” Steve pauses, looking you straight in the eyes. “Someone like you.”

Genre: romance, nanny x single father!AU

Taglist: @blindedbyyourgrace17 @verygraphicink @igotkatiepowers @welcome-to-my-studylife (taglist still open, reply/message to be tagged)

PART ONE

“Next please!”

The queue shuffles along until your face-to-face with yet another tired-looking college student, purple eye-bags visible underneath a pair of circular rimmed glasses. It’s fall dead week and if most of your customers are anything to go by, it certainly lives up to its name. Every single one of the tables spread out on the main floor of Vormir Coffee has been crammed with sleep-deprived teenagers and textbooks, meaning you and your colleagues have been swept off your feet with orders for caffeine products refills. You expect the rush to continue over the next few days as revision turns into actual mid-terms—as is tradition, you’ll be offering free chocolate muffins throughout the week by the door, because nothing heals the pain of a shitty Econ paper like chocolate muffins do.

Yet…as you look in the near-dead, distant eyes of your latest customer, you feel a pang of jealousy deep within your chest. While you’re pouring coffee into refillable mugs and forcing your best service smile (which is a difficult feat nine hours in to a ten hour shift) they’re reading and learning and absorbing.

You miss learning. God, you miss learning, even the terrible impossible chaos of one exam after another and deadlines piling up around you like sandbags. But being, y’know, poor, means there’s not much you can do about your grad school dreams, even if you do spend your free hours searching the internet for outlandish scholarships and funding schemes.

So. For now, it’s coffee. Potentially forever if you want to continue to eat and have electricity, which is just about all you can afford right now. And the occasional lipstick if you’re feeling particularly extravagant.

“What can I get you?” you ask the student, whose scruffy brown hair doesn’t look like it’s been washed in a few days. Oh well. Desperate times require desperate measures. At least you’re not his roommate. He grunts for an inevitable espresso and fishes round his wallet for some spare dollars while you get to work. Moments later you offer him the finished product and he drops the exact change into your hand, skulking away to a table without another word. Well, you’ll forgive a lack of manners during one of the most surreal weeks in the academic year.

“Hey, (Y/N).”

On the announcement of your name your glance flicks back to the remainders of the gradually quietening queue, and your face subconsciously breaks out into a grin when you finally see a customer that doesn’t look like a vacant zombie.

Steve Rogers grins back at you. He’s wearing a beanie over his blonde hair and a warm winter jacket—the temperature was freezing when you practically slid from the subway to work this morning and as the day slowly eclipses into evening, the temperature is falling back down with it. His cheeks are flushed from coming into the warm.

“Hey Steve!” you greet him cheerfully, because seeing an old friend is the perfect way to end a tiring shift. “How are you? How’s Natasha?”

Steve dips his head bashfully, like he always does when he’s asked about himself or his girlfriend. “We’re both great, thanks. What about you? It’s been a while.”

You gesture around you as an answer. Taking all the shifts you possibly can means you probably spend more time in Vormir than your own apartment. From what you can recall Steve has been back in the States for a few weeks after his most recent tour of Afghanistan; him or Natasha keep dropping you invites here and there, but you’ve been working or too dog-tired to accept them. It kind of makes you sad, as you watch your social circle shrink, but being an adult is the worst and staying alive is reasonably important to you.

“That bad, huh?” Steve asks sympathetically. You nod back, dramatically rolling your eyes.

“That bad. Always that bad, Rogers. I’m a slave to consumerism, but don’t let my boss know that.”

Steve laughs, leaning onto the counter. “I actually… (Y/N), when do you finish up here? Do you want get a drink? I’ve just got something I wanted to run by you.”

You narrow your eyes with curiosity. The clock that ticks mercilessly above the door reads six forty-two, so you’ve got less than twenty minutes left of your shift, and the look on Steve’s face is too intriguing to turn down just so you can rush home, open a bottle of cheap white wine and watch Stranger Things on Netflix. Even if you are up to the season three finale.

“I clock off at seven,” you reveal, but you nudge your head in the direction of the remaining customers who are starting to get annoyed at the hold-up. “Grab a seat. I actually have to do my job for a while longer and I’d rather not get fired because you’re distracting me.”

Steve holds his hands up in mock surrender and slowly backs away from the counter, allowing your next customer to slide into his position. You watch as he drops into a two-seater by the window, scrolling through his iPhone, a muted grin tugging at his lips.

Steve’s favourite bar is a short walk across town, the kind that is warm and dark and a little bit retro. You’ve been to Endgame before with him and Natasha, and you’d all split quarters so you could play ABBA songs on the Jukebox by the entrance. Right now it’s playing Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, so it seems today’s patrons have taste.

You grab one of the more private booths through the back while he gets the drinks. You’ve not seen your phone since your lunch break so you take the spare seconds to scroll through your social media—less than an hour ago Natasha’s posted a photo to Instagram, both her and Steve making stupid faces in the living room of the apartment they share. It’s captioned who do I have to kill to make sure you’re not deployed again?

Your heart melts a little. Steve and Nat. Nat and Steve. Two people who have been together for longer than you’ve known them, and they just work so fucking well, two halves of the same coin and all that. Your thumb hovers over the like button for a moment before clicking it, because you’ve never had someone in your life like that. You’ve not found the other half of your coin.

Most days you’re too exhausted to really think about it. But sometimes…something will click in the back of your brain and it dawns on you like an avalanche that this might be your life forever. You’ll be serving coffee forever. You’ll be on your own forever.

Fortunately Steve slides into the seat opposite before you can go into a full-on existential crisis, but you sure as hell know that’s what will inevitably cross your mind when you’re stuck staring at the cracked ceiling of your apartment in bed tonight.

Steve’s smile is concerned as he pushes a desperado in your direction. “You look troubled.”

“When am I not?” you say with a shrug, taking a sip of your drink. The alcohol burns in your empty stomach. You haven’t eaten since lunch—maybe liquor isn’t the best idea, after all. “Anyway. As much as I love seeing you, Rogers, this isn’t just a friendly drop-by is it?”

Steve is drinking some generic American beer. He wipes his lip before speaking. “Yeah. Like I said. There was something I thought I’d run by you.”

“Ominous.” You wiggle your eyebrows. “Are you going to spend the next half an hour or so pushing a pyramid scheme you swear isn’t a pyramid scheme? Because I really didn’t think that was your style.”

“No. Not a pyramid scheme.” He shakes his head in mild disbelief, probably wondering why he’s still friends with you. “It’s more…do you remember my friend? James?” When you look back blankly, he elaborates. “Bucky. Guy I used to go to school with. Dark hair. Lost his arm in Afghan about a decade ago…”

“Oh! Oh. Bucky Barnes. James Barnes.” You feel kind of bad that the arm was what made it click, but you do remember a quiet, well-mannered guy standing in the background of a few of Steve and/or Nat’s social events over the last few years. You’ve never been formally introduced but Steve talks about him every so often, just casual mentions in conversation, nothing detailed. They’d grown up together, trained together, but their career paths parted after Bucky’s car nicked an IED on the outskirts of Kabul. Truly horrifying. “Yeah. Sure. I remember him. What about him?”

Steve grimaces. “Well, it’s a bit…complex, to explain, so I’ll just go straight into it. About seven years ago he met a girl, she got pregnant, they had a daughter.”

“Oh! I never knew he had any kids.”

“Yeah. Clover. She’s six now. Way too smart for her age, really mischievous—doing crazy things like sending vegetables in the post to the grandparents she doesn’t like and reading fucking Frankenstein. Big Mary Shelley fan, to Buck’s sheer delight. Awesome kid.”

You smirk, not sure what any of this has to do with you, but little Clover sounds exactly how you were at her age. “She does sound pretty awesome.”

“But Connie, her mom…she passed away just over a year ago in a really awful car wreck.” Steve’s face falls into a look of heartbreak, empathetic as always. “Her and Bucky haven’t been together for years but they shared custody of Clove, Connie having her a lot of the time.”

You feel something shift in your chest, like shards of glass are pressing in between your ribs. Real loss stories have always been pretty hard for you to digest, regardless of who they belong to. You think about death a lot in, like, an abstract and unreachable kind of way. You think it gives you size, an awareness of your place in the world, the universe. But that’s your own death. You’re kind of comfortable with that one day you will cease to exist. It’s just the people that you care about you fear for. And everybody cares about somebody.

“God, that’s awful, Steve,” you murmur, eyes softening. “Is he looking after her on his own now?”

Steve nods, biting his lip. “Yeah. And he’s not doing too great, (Y/N). It’s not my place to go into details about what goes on in his head, but nobody gets over the trauma he went through and goes back to before. And the loss of Connie and suddenly becoming Clover’s only parent, and her trauma, as well as trying to hold down a full-time job…like Jesus, I’m surprised he can even get up in the morning. Sometimes he doesn’t.”

You ache for Steve’s oldest friend as is only natural, but you’re still at a loss as to where this involves you. You rest your chin in your hands, looking at Steve intently. “It sounds like he’s going through a tough time. I’m really sorry. But is this…any of my business? Because you can always confide in me about things that are on your mind, but this sounds really personal.”

“No. No, what I’m saying is, he needs—they both need—someone. He needs someone to help look after Clover while they both get their lives back on track.” Steve pauses, looking you straight in the eyes. “Someone like you.”

The laugh that erupts from your chest is involuntary, but Steve’s expression is still completely serious. Is he really suggesting what you think he’s suggesting? “What? You’re asking me to be a nanny?”

“I suppose you could call it that.” When you stare at him with disbelief, he rolls his shoulders. “(Y/N). Why is this such an eccentric idea? You hate your job. Buck has a spare room at his place which, no offense, is way nicer than your apartment. You’re great with kids, you’re funny, you’re smart…and you’ve already said you think Clover sounds like an awesome kid. You two would get on great.”

“That’s all irrelevant considering a, I’m not a nanny and have no experience looking after a child in that close and intense an environment. And b, Steve, this is an eccentric idea. Other than the scraps you’ve given me I know absolutely nothing about James, and what the hell does he know about me?” When Steve’s face looks a little guilty, you roll your eyes. “Oh my god. Steve. James hasn’t even said he wants a nanny has he? He doesn’t even know you’re asking me this.”

“This would be so good for him,” Steve half-pleads, puppy dog eyes engaged, “He’s fussy about strangers and Clover, but he knows you through me. He’ll trust my judgement.”

“Steve. You can’t just go making decisions like that! This is insane.”

(Steve has a habit of thinking he knows what’s best, for himself or other people, and rampaging down that path in the pursuit of a happy ending. Sometimes people don’t need his version of a happy ending.)

Steve eventually relents, relaxing back in his seat. He’s forgotten you’re not usually one for blindly going along with one of his Heroic Schemes, preferring a more idealistic approach. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll discuss it with him first. But I think you should come along when I do that.”

“Steve.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything, but I think you should meet them both properly. You could be a good friend to him either way. It wouldn’t hurt, (Y/N). Maybe it would be good for you too.”

God, you’re way too done for this shit, your legs aching from a day of being constantly on your feet and dead inside from getting up at six this morning. Steve is not the kind of guy to give up on something he’s clearly passionate about in his quest for the greater good, and this point it is just easier to agree to his requests. Even though his idea is way too bizarre for anyone normal to actually accept.

Being a live-in nanny for a guy you barely know and his daughter, both of whom have just lost someone extremely significant in their lives? And him being totally unaware that his best friend is proposing a job he has no authority to give? Yeah, fuck that.

Steve is right about one thing, though. You do really, really hate your horrible job.

When you reluctantly nod, and Steve grins, you jab a finger in his direction. “Like you said. It means nothing. This is weird as hell, but you’re super annoying when you don’t get your own way, and I’m totally allowing you to receive all the backlash when it backfires.”

“I think I can deal with that.” He gestures at your empty bottle. “Want another drink?”

The alcohol has made your body a little lighter, but your stomach growls loudly in argument. Instead, you clamp your hands on the table. “No, but you can buy me a pizza. It’s the least you can do for me, weirdo.”

Steve raises an eyebrow, used to your directness. “Pizza it is, then.”

Okay, so maybe Steve Rogers is the most annoying person in the world, and maybe his aggressive selflessness in the hope of doing right for his friends will eventually be his downfall, but he’s usually a pretty nice guy. You sometimes forget that you’re lucky to have him.

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the-desolated-quill · 4 years

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Sonic Vs Harley: Send In The Hedgehogs - Quill’s Scribbles

Unless you’ve been meditating in the desert for the past couple of weeks, you’ll know that there’s a bloody epidemic going on in the world right now. The coronavirus outbreak has dramatically changed our very way of life for the foreseeable future, and us plebs have been having to get used to all these alien concepts such as social distancing, self isolation, vaccines being good and Gal Gadot murdering John Lennon with a tuneless rendition of ‘Imagine.’ These are scary and uncertain times we live in, and this goes double for the movie industry as productions are halted and/or delayed, and cinemas around the globe are shutting shop. This means that streaming services, initially dismissed by pompous filmmakers like Steven Spielberg as being lesser than cinema, has now become Hollywood’s saving grace. Oh the irony!

But I’m not here to talk about that. Today I’m here to talk about how a blue CGI hedgehog seems to be more profitable than Margot Robbie.

Jokes aside, this is actually a fascinating topic of discussion in my opinion. Both Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey (I categorically refuse to type the whole title because I’ve got better shit to be doing other than trying to remember how the fuck you spell ‘fantabulous’) were released within a week of each other just as the coronavirus outbreak was gathering steam, and yet the box office earnings of both films are poles apart. Sonic has now become the highest grossing video game movie of all time and is, at the time I’m typing this, the second highest grossing film of the year, beating even Disney Pixar’s new film Onward if you can believe it, whereas Birds Of Prey... well... it’s not exactly flopped as such. The film’s low budget protected it from that, but it’s hardly what you’d call a success, making just shy of the $200 million it would need to break even. How did this happen? Especially when you consider that public opinion of both films a year ago would have you believe that the opposite would have happened. Everyone was massively excited for Birds Of Prey, especially after the string of successes DC have had with Aquaman, Shazam and most recently Joker, whereas Sonic...

...yeah, lets not talk about that.

Now before we start, let me just make absolutely clear that this is just my opinion. Mu subjective opinion. Normally I’d expect my readers to be smart enough to know this, but I’m talking about a DC movie here and I know from personal experience how ‘passionate’ a certain tin foil hat wearing portion of that fanbase can be sometimes. You may recall back in 2016 I received rape and death threats when I had the gall to say that I didn’t enjoy watching Suicide Squad. You know? That beloved classic that nobody fucking remembers or talks about anymore? Also there was that time when Harley Quinn fans started spreading fake rumours that the Sonic movie was homophobic in the hopes of salvaging Birds Of Prey’s box office earnings. And yes, I know it’s not all DCEU fans that are like this, etc. etc., but considering that it only ever seems to be DC fans that pull shit like this, you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly in a very generous mood right now. Basically, if you’ve seen Birds Of Prey and liked it, that’s great. More power to you. I’m not even suggesting that Birds Of Prey is a bad movie. I’m just exploring the reasons why I think the film may have underperformed and why, possibly, Sonic The Hedgehog overtook them despite outside circumstances. This is not fact. This is just my opinion. It’s my opinion. An opinion. A subjective opinion. It’s my opinion. Okay? Okay.

Also I should point out that out of the two films, I’ve only seen Sonic, not Birds Of Prey. Believe it or not, this will be relevant later on. Again, this is not about the quality of either film. This is merely my subjective observations regarding their respective marketing and box office performance.

So why, according to the fans and the media, did Birds Of Prey underperform at the box office? There are three popular reasons for this. The first is obviously the coronavirus. Less people willing to leave the house and buy a ticket, therefore less box office earnings. Makes sense, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Lets not forget, Sonic The Hedgehog came out a week after Birds Of Prey and practically steamrolled over the competition despite coronavirus fears. So I’m not entirely convinced of this. The second reason is that Birds Of Prey only has niche appeal because it’s based on a lesser known comic book property. Again, makes sense, but so was Guardians Of The Galaxy and Deadpool, and they were both hugely successful. Obviously I’m not saying Birds Of Prey needed to be as big as those movies. Even if it just made the same amount of money as Shazam did, it would have been successful, but it didn’t. The third reason is good old fashioned sexism, and yes, I agree that may have been a contributing factor, but I think it’s naive to place all the blame on the anti-SJWs who feel threatened by a gang of women kicking butt. Look at the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters for example. That film received a tirade of misogynistic comments from butthurt fanboys, but it still made roughly the same amount of money at the box office as the original Ghostbusters did. The reason it flopped wasn’t because of the fanboys, but because of Sony spending a stupid amount of money on the thing in the hopes of jumpstarting a shared universe. If Ghostbusters 2016 had the same budget as Birds Of Prey, Sony would be laughing their way to the bank right now.

No I think there’s a little bit more going on here. Lets bring Sonic into the discussion and explore it, shall we?

The most blatantly obvious reason for Sonic’s success and Birds Of Prey’s relative failure is the age rating. Sonic is a PG, family friendly film with a cuddly animal as its main character. The film even stars Jim Carrey being his usual goofy self. Kids love this shit and parents will no doubt be prepared to risk a zombie apocalypse to let their kids see it. Birds Of Prey, on the other hand, is a hard R. Strong bloody violence, sexual references, everyone says ‘fuck’ a lot. No kids allowed. Of course that hasn’t stopped films like Deadpool or Joker being such giant hits, but they didn’t have to contend with a global pandemic. Plus, according to what I’ve heard from certain critics, apparently Birds Of Prey’s R rating doesn’t seem wholly justified. That if you were to cut back on the swearing and the gore, it would make no difference to the film. Now you see this is something I’ve been afraid would happen ever since Deadpool’s surprise success back in 2016. That studios and filmmakers would take the wrong lessons from it and make their films R rated just for the sake of making them R rated. We see this with movie studios all the time. One studio finds success and suddenly everyone tries to copy it without considering why it was successful in the first place. The reason Deadpool as well as other R rated films like Logan and Joker worked is because the films justified their R ratings. You couldn’t have told the same story without that R rating. An R rated Harley Quinn doesn’t seem necessary, especially when you consider that there have been Harley Quinn adaptations before that did just as well without being strictly for adults. Hell, the original Harley Quinn story from the Batman animated series was PG rated. So the inclusion of a R rating feels less like a genuine artistic choice and more like trend chasing. And now that Joker has become the most profitable comic book movie ever made, I fear this is only going to get worse in the future.

Another factor that needs to be considered is audiences’ trust and expectation. Sonic The Hedgehog’s journey to the big screen has in some ways become the classic redemption story. After the initial reveal of Sonic the Manhog, fans were understandably pissed off that a beloved video game icon was given such a grotesque re-imagining for the sake of ‘realism’ (snort). As a result of the backlash, the director Jeff Fowler announced they would revise the design and the film was postponed for three months in order to fix it. The result was a Sonic design much closer to the games and this generated a lot of goodwill from the fans. Subsequent trailers were much better received and there was a lot more positive buzz around the movie. Birds Of Prey on the other hand demonstrated the inverse of this. Everyone was hugely excited, but as we got closer and closer to the date of release, audience anticipation began to wane. The trailers received little fanfare. In fact a lot of people were largely unimpressed by it. Why?

Well first we should address the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is Sonic has a bigger and much more passionate fanbase than Harley does. That’s not to say Harley isn’t a popular character. She is. But I think Warner Bros and DC seriously overestimated how much people wanted to see Harley Quinn get her own movie. She may have been the best thing about Suicide Squad, but considering what a total trainwreck Suicide Squad was, that’s hardly saying much, is it? I mean the villain Sandman was the best thing about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. That doesn’t mean I want a whole movie based on him. It just means out of all the things I hated about Spider-Man 3, Sandman was the thing I hated least.

And that’s another thing. The fact that Birds Of Prey didn’t try to distance themselves from Suicide Squad I don’t think did them any favours. While Suicide Squad was a commercial success at the time, people haven’t exactly been kind to the film in subsequent years. I mean feel free to read my review of Suicide Squad for an exhaustive list of reasons why the film was less than enjoyable to sit through. One dimensional characters, poor editing, ugly colour palette, casual sexism, David Ayer trying desperately to look cool and edgy, I could go on. So when the first trailers for Birds Of Prey came out and we saw the neon colour scheme and Hot Topic wardrobes make a comeback, I can’t have been the only one who was slightly put off.

Which leads me to the biggest issue of all and that’s the stonking unoriginality of the whole thing. For all their boasting about how feminist and progressive they are, what is it about Birds Of Prey that makes it stand out from other comic book films? Granted Sonic wasn’t wholly original either, but at least they had the novelty of a blue CGI hedgehog to piggyback off of. Birds Of Prey really doesn’t have anything if you think about it. Here’s the impression I got from the trailers. It has the same aesthetics as Suicide Squad, so already I’m getting PTS style flashbacks, and its story doesn’t seem all that intriguing or unique. Think about it. A violent anti-hero has to protect a delinquent child from some sadistic big baddie. How many times have we seen that done in these films? Terminator 2, Deadpool 2, Logan, even Ghost Rider has told this story before. The fact that the characters in question happen to be women doesn’t change a damn thing. They even have Harley Quinn breaking the fourth wall. Like... guys, come on! Surely we can do something more original than this! It feels like the only thing Birds Of Prey has going for it is that its main protagonists are all women. But after the likes of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, that’s no longer a real selling point anymore. You need something else to entice people. Something that Birds Of Prey sorely lacks.

Now I’m sure any Birds Of Prey fans reading this must be getting pissed off at me, so I’d just like to remind everyone yet again that I’m not necessarily saying Birds Of Prey is a bad film. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen it. And that’s kind of my point. A week or so ago, my friend and I knew this was probably going to be our last opportunity to go to the cinema for quite some time, so we knew we had to make our choice of film count. We had a choice between Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey, and we ended up going to see Sonic. We don’t regret it. We had a good time watching Sonic. It was a fun movie, well made and surprisingly moving at points. (interesting to note, Sonic also has the main protagonist protecting a child plot, but unlike the films I mentioned, Sonic’s story is told from the perspective of the kid. It’s a little thing, but it’s enough to make the whole thing feel fresh and unique because it’s something not even the games tend to acknowledge. Sonic is a kid and the film plays around with that, which adds to its overall charm). Maybe Birds Of Prey is a better movie than Sonic. I don’t know. But that’s not what this is about. When picking which film we would watch, it was the factors I mentioned before that we considered and I suspect what many other people took into consideration too. Basically we looked at these two films and thought to ourselves which one would we be prepared to go outside and risk our health for in order to see it in a cinema. In the end, Sonic won because, out of the two films, it looked more exciting and more unique than Birds Of Prey, and ultimately we trusted that this film could deliver what it promised. Is that fair? Probably not, but sadly that’s often how these things play out.

Birds Of Prey may have had a good critical reception, but it ultimately shot itself in the foot thanks to some of its creative and marketing decisions. And if studios take anything away from all this, it should be that relying solely on the gender of the main characters as a means to sell something just doesn’t cut it anymore.

#sonic the hedgehog #birds of prey #birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn)#quill's scribbles

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 4 years

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Fic author ask meme

haha so @veliseraptor tagged me literally months ago, as in so long ago I have no idea when it actually was, and I didn’t get all my answers typed up until...now. actually a lot of them were typed up a few months ago and then I finally finished this yesterday on the plane home. no, I don’t know why either

Author Name: 100indecisions on AO3

Fandoms You Write For: it's pretty much all Loki at the moment and has been for the last several years. I've written for other fandoms in the past and I have others on my WIP list, but yeah, it's like 95% Loki.

Where You Post: everything is on AO3, and I do mean "everything" because I get obsessive about that sort of thing. I do still have an FFN account under ladymoriel and most of my fics are reposted there, although none of my most recent fics are because I haven't gotten around to digging up cover images for them. also FFN sucks but I crave attention/validation and there are still some people who only use FFN, so I'll get around to it at some point.

Most Popular One-Shot: for some reason “the state of my head” has 1,157 kudos on AO3, so I guess it would be that one.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: technically “the adventures of tiny Loki and Thor (and friends),” because it’s a multi-chapter fic (boy is it ever) and it has 1,020 kudos, but if we’re talking actual planned fic it would be “the kindness of strangers” at 623.

Favorite Story You Wrote: man, I don’t know. I’m partial to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart” because I like my headcanon and I think I structured it well, and “all this that is more than a wish is a memory” gets points for being the longest thing I’ve actually finished. but honestly I don’t know that I have a single favorite.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: haha well I'm sure there's been more than one, but if we're talking about the fic I was most nervous to post, I think that honor would go to my Grandthorki fic "I will kiss you till your breath is found," which is the most explicit AND most fucked-up fic I've written so far. I was nervous about...so many things with that one.

How Do You Pick Your Titles: probably 99% of them are song lyrics. sometimes I'll start with a specific song that's relevant to the fic itself in some way, but I also have a whole list of song lyrics that sound like good titles to me whether the rest of the song has anything to do with the subject of the fic. often I'll come up with a good lyric early in the process, just like "oh yeah I've had this hanging around in my list for ages and it works here"; otherwise, once I've finished or nearly finished a fic (or much earlier, actually, if I'm obsessing over an aspect of writing it that is...not actually writing, which happens a lot), if I still don't have a title I read through my whole list and make a much shorter list of titles that seem to fit this fic. if nothing from there seems just right, I’ll go hunting through my iTunes library and then Google for semi-relevant song lyrics. on occasion, though, the title comes first or otherwise shapes the direction of the fic, like with "I will kiss you till your breath is found"--I had a vague idea of what I might want to do, but it was very vague and I hadn't committed to it, and then I just happened to listen to some Sufjan Stevens and went "heyyyyy I know exactly what to do and it's terrible and I'm gonna do it, I have a title now, I have to do it"

Do You Outline: it depends on the fic. for long ones, at a minimum I'll write a bulleted list of plot points I need to hit, which often ends up being basically two or three pages of a zero draft that I then struggle to turn into actual prose...and then I often re-do the outline at least once or twice as I go along so I can compress it into something more useful that fits on one page and I can cross stuff out as I go. (if a list can’t fit on one page/view, there’s basically no way I can hold all of it in my head at once.) I often end up with shorter lists of scenes I still need to write and specific things to hit during revisions, too. for short fics it's not really necessary, although I often do still write up something similar if I've let it drag out over way too much time and I can't keep straight what I wanted to do with it. (don't be me.)

How Many of Your Stories are complete: welllll, as a rule I don't post WIPs because I know myself well enough to know that that way lies several different kinds of madness, so in general, my only completed fics are what's up on AO3, and everything there is complete. in practice that's not 100% true because I'm very bad at deadlines and I have a few different fics where I couldn't finish in time and I either posted the first chunk of the fic that still functioned as a self-contained story even if it wasn't the full story I'd planned to write, with the intention of properly finishing it later, or I did the same thing but worse because the part I posted was...not really a complete story. in my defense I've only done the latter a couple times, and in the case of "going down to nowhere" I really thought I'd be posting the rest soon because it was all written, it was just extremely rough, and for various reasons I still haven't gotten around to revising and posting the remaining 80% of the fic. (as far as the opposite issue goes, I have 0 finished fics that I haven't posted anywhere, because I'm too obsessive about being complete to do anything else. I think I do have one old, extremely short, very bad Lost fic on FFN that I never reposted to AO3 because I decided it sucked...and if we're being completely technical about it, I have some stories I wrote as a little kid that are technically fanfic because they featured licensed characters, but nobody wants to see those. all the other old stuff I haven't posted, including at least two Neopets fics, never got finished and that's the only reason I never posted them anywhere.)

In-Progress: uhhhh. well, this made me realize my posted WIP list is out of date, not because I've finished anything on it but because I have MULTIPLE short fics that were supposed to be QUICK so I figured I didn't need to bother putting them on the list and then they weren't quick because I am so fucking bad at 1) sitting down and actually writing and 2) finishing anything. But yeah, basically what’s on there.

Coming Soon: fuck, I don’t know. Half the fics on my WIPs list are ones I thought I could crank out in one or two sittings, AND YET. But I’d like to finish the rest of my Whumptober fic soon, because that one really should be pretty easy...and I’d also like to finish the short little Endgame fix-it I thought of on my way out of the theater, where 2012!Loki hops universes and revives IW!Loki...and then there’s the even older IW/Endgame fix-it that’s basically just “everything is fine because I say so, let’s have a little recovery”, especially because I’m like 90% sure that one’s almost done but probably some of it needs typing up and then it all needs stitching together...oh, and finally getting around to finishing typing one of two notebooks reminded me that the other theoretically short fix-it where the Guardians pick up both Thor and Loki is also nearly done, I just need to finish typing it. so...one of those, probably.

Do You Accept Prompts: in theory, although I...don't think I get prompts often enough to know one way or another? plus my brain is The Worst, so my general reaction to actually getting a prompt is basically "that's interesting but I have never had an idea in my life, ever, and apparently I'm not starting now", with an added element of social anxiety or something because it's Somebody Else's Idea and that puts a mental block on my ability to develop it as my own idea. so...anyone's welcome to send me prompts, with the understanding that I might well never do anything with it and if I do, it might take literal years.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I also don’t know. I mean, in recently typing up some older stuff (like the one where the Grandmaster decides publicly executing Loki sounds like a fun idea, from which I posted a couple excerpts recently) I got excited about those again, which is a good reminder of why I want to stay on top of my typing, but I don’t know if I’m more excited for one specific fic than others.

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: I have no idea who might have answered this months ago so I’ll just say that if you read this post and you want to answer these questions, please consider yourself tagged. yes, that means you.

#fanfic #writing #ask memes

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faveficarchive · 5 years

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The Stars Fell Down

By Vivian Darkbloom

Pairing: Mel/Janice

Rating: Mature

Synopsis: Mel translates another scroll for Janice’s birthday, and from what she can tell from the scroll, Xena and Gabrielle have a tavern adventure that’s way more interesting than any they’d had up to that point.

June, 1953

She stood on the field of battle. Her clenched jaw presented its smooth, powerful and determined lines to any who dared to look. As Alexander had conquered, as Genghis Khan had ruled, as Xena had destroyed...so she would as well. She surveyed her troops. They were not the finest, it was true, but they were stout of heart and devoted to her. It was all she needed.

Janice Covington’s little fantasia was interrupted by a stocky middle aged man who flung a baseball glove at her feet. "You said I could play first base!" he shouted at her.

Janice blinked and adjusted the navy blue baseball cap on her head. So much for devotion, she thought. She sighed. "Joe," she began patiently, "I told you what would happen if you didn’t show up for practice on Tuesday. I told you I was gonna put Riley in."

"Aw, come on, Janice," he wheedled. "I only missed one practice!"

"Once is more than enough!" she barked. "What do you think this is, some sort of game?"

They stared at each other as reality made a surprise guest appearance in Janice’s mind.

"Uh, yeah," Joe replied sarcastically, "I guess I did think it was a game. It’s called baseball, ‘member?"

She drew a deep breath. Okay, okay, this isn’t exactly the World Series...it’s just a bunch of out-of-shape guys running around playing baseball for laughs. "All right, Joe. How ‘bout this: If all goes well I’ll pull Riley after the fifth, and you can finish out the game."

His jaw worked. "All right," he grunted. He picked his glove off the ground and headed into the dugout. As it turned out, all did not go well, and Janice found the amateur team she coached—the Charlotte Warriors—losing 7-1 in a game that lasted less than two hours. The triumphant Asheville Asteroids (derisively called the "Asheville Assholes" by their opponents) had sauntered off the field. At least, she thought, watching her "boys" skulk out of the dugout, I didn’t get ejected this time.

The high school team arrived for practice after the grownups had left; Janice, waiting for her ride, loitered in the bleachers and watched the kids play. She had sat down and lit a Chesterton, enjoying the drift of the smoke through the summer air, when a hand suddenly reached out from above her and snatched the cigarette out of her mouth. In spite of herself, Janice grinned. "Hi, honey," she said, without looking up.

"Think you can do this behind my back, hmm?" drawled Melinda Pappas. Mel, dressed immaculately in a navy blue suit, a leather briefcase hanging from her shoulder, held the offending cigarette in front of Janice’s face. "I thought you were giving this up," the tall Southerner accused gently.

"I still need it in times of stress," Janice defended herself. Mel raised an eyebrow. "We lost again!" she spat. "Farley struck out four times—"

"Oh good!" Mel said encouragingly. Janice glared at her. "I thought strikes were good," Mel added.

"Only if you’re pitching..."

"And he was...?"

"Hitting."

"Ah!" Mel exclaimed, as if she had solved Fermat’s theorem.

Janice watched sadly as Mel crushed the defenseless cigarette underneath her heel. Melinda Pappas, Carolinian Princess, Destroyer of Tobacco. She sighed. "Well, enough about the goddamn game. How was your lecture?"

"It went well. I didn’t stammer once this time," Mel said, with a hint of quiet pride. She detested speaking in public, but a colleague at the university had bamboozled her into giving a series of lectures on the scrolls. The only reason she had consented was to generate advance publicity for the revised edition of Janice’s book on Xena, which was due out in the fall. Mercifully, Mel thought, this had been the last lecture.

Janice grinned. "Great. I knew you could."

Her companion smiled wistfully. "You’re the only one," she said; the phrase was imbued with many meanings.

"The feeling is quite mutual," Janice responded softly.

Mel smiled "Shall we?" She nodded toward the Packard, which sat not far away.

"Yeah, I want to get you home...."

"Mmmm?" A hopeful glint emerged in Mel’s eyes.

"...so you can work on my birthday gift." Their expedition to Syria last year had yielded a surprise: another scroll, written in the ancient bard’s indelible hand. Previously Janice had concluded that all of the scrolls had been unearthed—the ones they had all followed a precise chronological order, and nothing appeared to be missing. So the new scroll was a happy find. In between teaching, traveling, and lecturing, neither one of them found the time to work on it. But a few days ago Mel had started a translation, and promised her eager partner that she would have the entire scroll in modern English by the occasion of Janice’s birthday on the summer solstice.

As they walked to the car, a ball sailed by their heads and narrowly missed hitting the windshield of the old Packard. They turned to look back at the field.

The catcher, standing behind the plate, waved his glove apologetically. "Sorry, Miss Pappas!" he called. "Hey, Miss Covington—could you throw it back?"

Mel narrowed her crystal blue eyes. It irked her that this silly boy automatically assumed she could not even throw a baseball, and that she needed Janice to do it. Granted, she needed Janice in a variety of ways, even some of them outside the realm of the bedroom, but really, she thought, this is too much. Before Janice could do so, Mel picked up the ball herself and, with surprising ease and graceful motion, threw it with such precision that it sailed in a straight line like a bullet and landed with a hard thud in the kid’s mitt. It even staggered the husky boy a little bit. He immediately pulled off his glove and, wincing, waved his hand around.

"Son of a goddamn bitch," Janice whispered. Somebody call Leo Durocher! She turned her glittering green eyes to Mel.

Mel opened the driver’s door. "Are you coming?" she demanded. She noticed that several of the boys, in addition to her lover, were staring at her in shock, and—quite frankly—it was beginning to annoy her.

Janice eyed her suspiciously, a mischievous grin tugging at her mouth. "You’re not going all Xena on me again, are you?"

"Janice Covington, don’t you even start with me..." Mel climbed in and slammed the door shut.

Janice opened the car door. If I can only get her to pitch one game...who knows? She might learn to like it.

*****

The Scroll:

Many believe that I took Xena, the Warrior Princess, as my consort in an Amazon ceremony that affirmed my title and rights as Queen. As time passed—it’s been five years since that ceremony—I saw no reason to disabuse anyone of this notion. But a slip of my tongue recently has let a few people in on the "secret"—that I’d had the famed warrior before the ceremony. It’s not a malicious secret, by any stretch of the imagination, although I wonder whose reputation it would affect more—mine (the farm girl, the sexual innocent) or Xena’s (the rapacious, lustful conqueror of both sexes).

At the time of this writing my companion is on a diplomatic mission; I know such duties bore her to tears, but such are the expectations people have of her now—she is no longer feared, but revered, and in demand more than ever. I too had similar responsibilities awaiting me in Amazon territory. So reluctantly we parted for a few days.

This morning after breakfast, I walked with Ephiny across the Amazon compound, where we witnessed two young women engaged in a furious argument. I was ready to intervene but Ephiny grabbed my arm. "Leave it," she said. "It’s a lovers’ quarrel."

At this point they were shoving each other.

"It seems a little too...virulent for that, Eph," I responded.

"Trust me," Ephiny said, and we walked on. "Come on, I remember when you and Xena got together—even before then, you guys argued all the time, it seems. Now that you’ve been together a few years, you’ve mellowed out a bit." She paused thoughtfully. "Must’ve been all that sexual tension, waiting to explode."

"I don’t think you can attribute it all to sexual tension," I said. "It’s not like we hadn’t slept together before then—" My mouth hung open as I realized what I said. If Xena had been there, it would’ve been the perfect moment for her to growl out my name in that disapproving yet still sexy fashion.

Ephiny stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened. Without a word she seized my arm yet again and dragged me across the compound to her hut, as if she intended to ravish me. I noticed that no one seemed to care that their Queen was being dragged around like a sack of potatoes, and screaming in protest ("Who’s in charge here?") as well. It made me wonder what everyone thinks of my relationship with Ephiny...that perhaps the Regent will play while the Warrior Princess is away? (After all this time, I know how smutty the Amazons can think. We arrived outside the hut, and from the window I saw Eponin and Solari inside. Solari, languishing in a chair, was munching an apple and coaching Eponin as she performed some odd little song: "I’m a little kettle, short and stout—" Eponin sang tunelessly.

"Emphasize the stout, Pony," Solari said through a mouthful of food. "Do arms akimbo!"

Pony did so. Then we barged through the door. Pony snapped to attention and Sol sat up, apple lodged in her mouth like a cooked pig.

"Don’t you two ever do any work?" I asked, irritated at their presence.

"Calm down, Gabrielle. I was supposed to meet with Pony and Sol to discuss security protocols. "

"You were meeting without me?" I accused; the mere thought of being left out of the loop sends me into a paranoid fit.

"Oh for Artemis’s sake, Gabrielle, it was just a pre-meeting."

"A what?"

"A meeting to prepare me for my meeting with you tomorrow."

Whoever thought these things would be so complicated?

"Now dish!" she cried.

I looked for a plate. Spotting one on a table, I handed it to her.

She slapped my arm. "No, you silly goose, tell me about your first time!"

"What’s going on?" asked Solari. "What first time?" She exchanged a look with Eponin, then the two of them cooed, "ooooooh" simultaneously, knowingly. "But we know your first time was with...your husband," Eponin said delicately.

"Yes, that’s right," I said.

"I’m not talking about that," Ephiny said in exasperation, "I mean the first time with Xena!"

"It was the ceremony," Solari said. Then she looked at me. "Right?"

"Well...no." Having the three of them stare at me reminded me of the gossipy old crones that were my mother’s closest friends; I recalled how they would crowd around the kitchen table and whisper their secrets to one another. I was always envious; I wanted to know their tales, spill their secrets. It was probably the beginning of my desire to be a bard. And now—in front of my sisters—I would tell them my secret tale, which I will set down here for posterity.

*****

It happened not long after Callisto and Velaska were entombed in lava. We were both tired from the events of those chaotic days and weeks, but Xena wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the place where it happened. It was, we both knew, more for peace of mind than anything else. We were heading north out of the Amazon territory when once again we met up with Autolycus, who did not look pleased to see us initially. I myself was embarrassed, when I recalled the strange kiss I shared with him—when I thought I was kissing my best friend. I blushed, but he didn’t notice—as always, he quickly threw aside any discomfort for the chance to charm Xena. He kissed her hand, his dark eyes feasting adoringly upon the beauty of her barely tolerant face. "Trying to get under the leathers of the Warrior Princess is my most favorite idle pastime," he told me once. "Idle, because I know I have less of a chance than a three-legged billy goat." I was beginning to wonder who would ever have a chance with Xena.

"Where are you headed?" Xena asked him.

"Bucephalia!" he said with a flourish.

"Isn’t that where they have that weird festival—the Festival of the Cow’s Head?" I asked.

"Yup, that’s where I’m headed," he said. "three days of drinking, debauchery and worshipping cows. Have you ever heard of anything so crazy?"

I had to admit that I hadn’t. Although now, nothing surprises me.

"Taking a vacation?" Xena asked, skeptically. She leaned against a tree with her arms crossed.

"Even thieves need a vacation, Xena."

Xena smirked. She wasn’t buying it; she knew a festival was a perfect place for Autolycus to run amok and pick the pocket of every drunkard in sight. "Then you won’t mind if we escorted you there. I could use a little vacation myself."

"Aw come on," Autolycus moaned. "You had plenty of time to rest when you were dead!"

"That wasn’t a vacation," I snapped at him. Xena winced in sympathy; I had not told her so much concerning the depths of my anguish when I thought I had lost her for good—it was all too fresh in my mind. But I think she suspected; I also believed (sometimes foolishly, I thought) that she had missed me just as much.

"Look, Autolycus," Xena said, patting him on the shoulder, "after all you’ve done for me, I can’t let you go to Bucephalia by yourself. It might be dangerous...."

"The cows might break loose and stampede," I suggested stupidly. They both looked at me as if I were mad.

"Besides," Xena continued, "it wouldn’t be any fun by yourself, would it?" She flashed a disingenuous—and dangerous—smile at him. One that told him if he dared protest she would knock him into the next day.

His shoulders slumped with defeat. "I hate you," he muttered.

"You may hate me, but you’ll love your vacation," she retorted.

And so we were off.

Later, after lunch, Xena announced that we would be in Bucephalia by sundown. As we walked along the road, with Autolycus trailing behind us, I said, "Are you sure you want to go this festival, Xena? I know you hate crowds, and noise...and drunken idiots."

She looked a little wistful. "I...actually think I wouldn’t mind seeing people, Gabrielle. It would be nice, just to be around people having a good time. It might be...fun."

"Fun?" I echoed. "Did you say fun?"

"What was that?" Autolycus called.

"Xena wants to have fun!" I could not resist this opportunity to tease my friend. Meanwhile we had ground to a halt, and Autolycus and I circled Xena curiously, as if examining a prize sow at a market, as if our inspection—and none too subtle admiration of her body—would tell us why the mighty warrior wanted to have fun. This didn’t last long. Soon she had both of us by the ears and told us that if we didn’t behave nobody would be having any fun at all. Nonetheless I giggled intermittently the rest of the way to the city. Her sly smile and beautiful eyes told me that she did not mind at all.

*****

We arrived at Bucephalia. Torches were lit in the crowded town square; musicians performed while people danced. It was all very pleasant and cheerful; strangely ordered, somehow.

"Aw geez, look at this!" Autolycus cried, surveying the square.

"What?" I asked.

"They’re all sober!"

"Probably all the drunkards are at the tavern," Xena remarked cynically.

We navigated around the square to the tavern on the other side; it was large, no doubt built that way because of the number of travelers who attended the festival every year. I went in to see about rooms, while Xena and Autolycus waited outside.

The innkeeper was a huge, strapping man called Primus—even bigger and taller than Hercules. He was so named, he told me, because he was the first child of a large family; he had nine other brothers. Luckily he had two rooms available. I told him I was a bard and willing to perform tonight, as part of the payment for the rooms.

"It’s a tough crowd, girl," he said. I hate being called girl. "Know lots of bloody stories?"

"A fair amount," I replied. "I am, after all, Official Bard of the Warrior Princess." Actually there is no "official bard"—but it does sound good and Primus was duly impressed.

"Okay," he said, "but keep it bloody."

Primus was right about the crowd. After dinner, the inn started filling up with men, and nothing but: warriors and soldiers, all clanking around with their armor, all growling and shouting in loud, crass voices.

We had all finished eating when one of these soldiers emerged from the gaming room on the ground floor, announcing a drinking contest. As he swayed drunkenly through the crowd, he boasted he would be able to drink anyone under the table.

I looked at Xena, knowing how she is utterly powerless to resist a challenge, especially one from an idiot. Her eyes sparkled as she stood up. I grasped her arm. "Where do you think you’re going?" I demanded.

"I’m gonna take this loser up on his challenge, that’s all."

"Xena—" I was apprehensive; after all we’d gone through recently, I did not want to let her out of my sight.

"Come on, Gabrielle. The guy is already smashed out of his gourd. It’ll probably take only two or three ales to put him under. I’ll be back before you know it." She bent down and whispered in my ear. "Try to keep an eye on Autolycus, okay?" The sensation of her breath pulsing against my ear sent a shudder of desire down my back.

"I can’t. I’ll be performing," I whispered back.

"Stop whispering, you two!" Autolycus shouted. "I hear ya. I promise, I won’t move while Gabrielle is doing the bard thing." He sighed and folded his arms, resigned to his fate. Xena smirked and left. I went up to the podium, and began.

Or so I thought.

I had started with a story of the Trojan war, which went well, then decided to follow up that one with my favorite subject.

"I sing a song of Xena, Warrior Princess—"

"Trollope!" someone shouted.

"—the mighty warrior—" I pressed on.

"Oh come on, warrior my ass!" I scowled at the burly heckler.

"She does have a nice ass, they say," another man rumbled.

"Yeah, ‘bout all she would be good for—" the first heckler continued.

"Hey, watch your mouth!" I yelled. "She’s my best friend!" Out of the corner of my eye I could see Autolycus shaking his head.

"Ho, little girl," he drawled—dammit to Hades, I hate the "little girl" stuff—"I’m just complementing the wench. She belongs on her back, not on a battlefield."

"She’s got great tits, I hear," said the second heckler. "That true, girl?" he called to me.

Obviously they had not noticed the Warrior Princess in their midst earlier. "What?" I shouted in disbelief.

"Answer him. Is it true?" the first heckler got in on the act.

"I don’t see why—"

"Ha, you ashamed of your friend? She must be uglier than Medusa by now, with scars and bumps and—"

"She is not ugly!" I declared. "She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She is tall and raven-haired, with flawless bronzed skin, and eyes bluer than the Aegean—"

"All fine and good, but you’ve not answered the man’s question."

"What question?" I saw Autolycus bury his head in his hands.

"Her tits!" prompted the first heckler.

I was pushed beyond my limits. The objects of the discussion loomed in my mind, tantalizing in their sheer perfection. I felt my lips tremble, then I exploded. "ALL RIGHT," I screamed, "SHE’S GOT GREAT TITS!"

Silence reigned. For a moment, anyway.

"Feh," snorted the heckler. "Like you would be a good judge of ‘em, little girl."

I lost it. "Why you—"

I had launched myself toward this towering, grubby idiot but did not get very far; Autolycus had inserted himself between my tormentor and I. But the King of Thieves could not restrain my flailing arms, and I managed to hoist a tankard off someone’s table and throw its contents into the man’s face. Then I bonked him on the head with it. He sank to the floor. His comrade threw a punch at Autolycus, who ducked, and hit the barmaid, who punched him back. Within a matter of seconds I had triggered a huge barroom brawl. I looked around for Xena, thinking the fight would surely get her attention, but no Warrior Princess emerged from beyond the door of the gaming room. "Let’s get outta here," Autolycus hissed, and he propelled me up the stairs as rapidly as possible.

We fell into Autolycus’s room, which was closer. He lit a candle, which almost extinguished as he blew out a breath of utter exasperation. "Keep an eye on me, she said—well, it shoulda been the other way around, don’t you think!"

"I’m sorry," I mumbled. "I don’t mean to ruin your vacation—"

"Great Hermes in the sky, Gabrielle, it’s not a vacation. I’m trying to work here!" He sighed again. "Look, I’m sorry too. It’s not your fault, that guy was out of line. Why, I was getting ready to pop him one myself—"

"Really?"

"Er, actually no. But I was thinking about it." He lit another candle. We sat in the room for a long time, it seemed. The noise from downstairs was dying out. "It might be safe for you to get to your room now." Gingerly he opened the door and peeked out. "Yeah, the hallway’s clear. Go to your room and don’t let anyone in, except Xena."

I sighed. "But I should go look for Xena. She might get—"

"Hurt?" He laughed. "I don’t think so."

"But—"

"Gabrielle!" he barked. "Go to your room!" Just like Father.

I picked up my candle and left. Scuttling down the hallway, I noticed that the noise level downstairs had changed—it sounded like the brawl had turned into some massive party, of which I was grateful. I was tempted to go down, but thought my presence might again start some ridiculous conflict. Possibly Xena had shown up, assuring her scruffy admirers that she did indeed have good tits. I opened the door to our room and the candle illuminated a large, familiar figure sprawled out upon the bed. A figure that was singing: "Ninety-nine bottles of ale on the wall—" I thought for a moment Meg was at the festival, had infiltrated our room, and stolen Xena’s spare set of leathers.

"Xena?" I asked. She did not stir, but groaned a little. I put the candle down on the table next to the bed. Her face was flushed and she looked distraught.

"What wrong?" I said, alarmed. I leaned over her and placed a hand on her forehead. Then she expelled a mighty sigh, and the power of her breath was such that—had I held the candle to her mouth, she could’ve torched the entire inn.

"I lost," she moaned. "That fucker—by the gods, he can hold his ale."

"I told you so!" I chastised, like a wife.

"Don’t bug me," she muttered, like a husband. She closed her eyes. "Ninety-eight bottles of ale on the wall—"

"Don’t fall asleep. You have to take your armor off."

"You made me lose...something."

"You lost count, Xena."

"What?"

"Never mind." I crawled over her. I thought perhaps if I released the clasps she could easily wiggle out of the breastplate. As I knelt between her legs and reached down for a hinge...

...I experienced an excruciating sensation, a pain unlike none I’d ever felt before It was as if all air was being squeezed out of my body. Xena had me in a fierce scissors hold: her powerful legs were wrapped around my waist. Was she exacting some murderous revenge, I wondered—for the pan flute, for my flirting with her ex-fiancé, for my incessant talking? Despite the pain, it was delicious to be so pressed against her. O happy death!

I tried to speak. But I could only squeak.

She giggled. "I’ve cut off the flow of blood to your crotch."

"Xena, by the gods, you’re killing me," I managed to gasp.

"Ha! That’s what they all say!" she rumbled derisively. "Ah...ninety-nine bottles of ale...no wait...ninety...four?" Her death grip around my waist slackened a bit, and once again I could breathe. Her eyes met mine. Then she latched onto something else randomly floating around in that ale-addled brain. "Who’s my little centurion?" she cooed in a babyish voice.

"What?" I muttered. I knew of Xena’s relationship with Caesar by this time; still, she had been less than forthcoming of the details. Was this some odd sexual game they had played?

"C’mon," she burbled drunkenly. "Tell me." Her finger playfully tapped my nose and then she cupped my chin. I reveled in her touch. My body shook with the effort to restrain itself.

"Xena, I am not—" The thighs tightened again. "Okay, okay, I’m your little centurion!"

"Thaaaat’s better," she murmured. Her hand, entangled in strands of my hair, traveled across my face until she touched my lips. "An’ I’m your...glaaaadiator. Your. Very. Glad. Gladiator." Her hand dropped. She closed her eyes.

I had never felt more confused. Long ago, my feelings had started out as hero worship mingled with lust; I knew that. But in time they had metamorphosed into something stronger. I was in love. I knew because nothing else I’d ever experienced compared to this remarkable feeling. And here I was, close to consummating a love I had only dreamed of before. But I could not take advantage of my best friend in her drunken, incoherent state. No matter how willing she seemed to be. There was trust in those blue eyes, now closed, that I loved so much. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I shouldn’t.

But...

While my mind and my heart waged a battle, my young, impatient body followed its own dictates. Gently my hips thrust into her. She moaned. Stop, I thought. I closed my eyes, furiously wishing that I would stop before it was too late. Stop now, she won’t remember in the morning. I could feel sweat increasing on my brow and as I opened my eyes a drop splashed against her chest. I opened my mouth, hoping that if I said the word aloud, I would indeed stop and the spell of her body under mine would be broken. Instead, her hands groped blindly for my face and her fingers slid into my mouth. And I was lost.

I suppose she could add making love while dead drunk to her formidable list of skills. It wasn’t pure poetry in motion, though—I fumbled with her armor, I butted her head with my elbow (and who was drunk here, I thought later....I was....drunk with desire.), she nearly fell out of bed—everything was heated and rushed. The frenetic pace was my doing—I felt as if I would never get the chance again. I was blessedly wrong, as I would later find out.

But that night, I did not know. Afterwards she slept in my arms, and I committed to memory the feel of her skin and the stars that stippled the sky—I could see them from the window. The sky could collapse, and it wouldn’t mean a damn thing to me. In fact, it already felt as if the stars had fallen down and wrapped around me, blessed me in some sort of way. Under the blanket of sleep I knew not what raced through her mind, but I had this—the curve of her cheek, the slight twitching of her fingers, her hair flowing into mine—these little details, these little threads of a larger story. The story of my love. Her steady breathing, her scent surrounding me. She surrounded me.

I did not sleep until dawn touched the sky.

And I had not been asleep for long when I heard voices outside the room; in my weary state I could identify one of them as Autolycus. The voices grew closer; it sounded as if an argument ensued. "Wait!" I could hear Autolycus say—then the door of the room swung open. Primus, the innkeeper, filled the doorway. He looked enraged. Autolycus was behind him, both hands still clutching the bigger man’s arm; obviously he had been trying to prevent Primus from intruding upon us.

I knew, of course, what they saw: a naked, startled-looking bard draped across an equally naked, still slumbering warrior. Thankfully, a blanket was strategically draped over our nether regions.

Autolycus dropped his grip on the innkeeper and clamped a hand over his eyes. "I saw nothing, nothing!" he declared, and ran out. Primus stood there for a second longer, and I witnessed his expression move from anger, to shock, to embarrassment.

"I’m terribly sorry, girl," he said in low voice. "I didn’t mean to—"

My nod cut him off; in return he nodded gratefully, glad he didn’t have to say anything further. He left. And still, Xena slept. I couldn’t believe that she had slept through the whole thing. I panicked. Was she...dead? Had my furious, consuming passion killed the Warrior Princess? I envisioned a trial, where tired old men would force me to disclose every intimate detail leading up to Xena’s demise. Did it ever occur to you, Gabrielle of Potidaea, that your single-minded focus on having as many orgasms as possible would result in the tragic death of a great heroine? Aye, let this be a lesson to our youth on the dangers of unnatural sex practices...I hereby condemn you to a life of celibacy.

I touched her forehead. Still warm. I took her pulse. Still beating.

Gently, reluctantly, I disentangled myself from her body. I threw on a shift and ran to Autolycus’s room. The thief was sipping tea and awaiting his morning bath water when I burst in.

Immediately he was on the defensive. "I saw nothing!" he cried. "I swear."

"Oh, stop it," I snapped. "I know what you saw." I plopped down in a chair. "What in Hades was that innkeeper doing?"

"Need I remind you, dear heart, you started a fight last night. Remember the guy who razzed you?"

"How could I forget?"

"His name is Decimus." Autolycus’s eyebrow wiggled. "The tenth brother," he added mysteriously. Then it clicked: he was Primus’s brother. "So naturally Primus was a bit miffed. You started a brawl that trashed his inn and cold-cocked his brother to boot. So he was barging in this morning to demand that you pay for the damages."

I moaned. Xena and I barely had a dinar between us.

"Don’t worry about it," the King of Thieves replied, waving his hand. "After what he saw this morning, he knows you’re Xena’s...love puppy, and he doesn’t dare get on her bad side, so he said to forget about it."

I sighed with some relief. "That’s the least of my problems," I said. "I did a terrible thing last night," I whispered.

Idly he stroked the tiny patch of beard residing under his lower lip. "I dunno, Gabrielle, from my perspective it didn’t look like you did anything terrible last night—or terribly, for that matter...I mean, she was sleeping like a baby, you tiger!" He winked at me.

"You don’t understand!" I cried. I told him the whole story.

By the end he was staring at me with admiration. "Well done!" he said, slapping me on the back. "Tea?"

"You just don’t get it, do you?" I said. "I violated my best friend. Betrayed her trust. Possibly, irreparably damaged our relationship."

He rolled his eyes. "I don’t think so," he said sarcastically. "Look, Gabrielle, you’re a human being like the rest of us. You gave in to your desires. So what? You know she feels the same thing."

"What?"

Again, another eye roll. "She was in my body, remember? I know what she feels about you."

She feels it too! I was giddy, elated. "Wow," I said.

"Wow what?" he asked, pouring me tea.

"I didn’t know she felt it too."

He looked at me, surprised. "Really?"

I nodded. "You say she feels the same way, but why didn’t she ever...and what if she can’t trust me..." The elation I felt a scant moment ago had dissipated. Doubt filled me. What if she hates me for taking advantage of her? I buried my face in my hands. I felt Autolycus’s hands on my shoulders.

"Gabrielle," he said gently, "all I know is that Xena cares about you a lot. Look, I don’t know what will happen...but just remember. She feels the same way." He paused. "I don’t think she could ever hate you."

His words calmed me for the time being. A knock on the door indicated that his water had arrived. Kindly he offered to let me use his bath, while he would go downstairs and get us breakfast. I agreed. I returned to our room, saw that Xena still slept, retrieved my clothes, then went back to the bath.

While bathing I decided to play the whole thing by ear, and see what happened when Xena awoke. After breakfasting with Autolycus, I returned to the room where I found Xena, sitting up in bed, cradling her dark head.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" I piped up, happy to throw her own morning greeting back in her face. Payback is a bitch.

"Quiet!" she growled. "By the gods...I’m never doing that again," she added in a moan, rubbing her temple.

I sat beside her on the bed; she was wrapped in the blanket. I could smell her musky scent. Excitement added to my nervousness. "Are you hungry?" I asked.

"No, not now. Gabrielle, could you get me my herb pouch...I need some tea..."

I pulled the pouch out of a saddlebag. "Why don’t you just show me which ones to use, and I’ll have them make it for you downstairs," I replied.

Carefully she measured out the correct ingredients, and placed them in a separate pouch. "Please hurry," she groaned.

"I will..." I stood up. "Uh, Xena?"

"What?"

I decided to abandon my wait-and-see plan and risk it all. "Do you...remember anything about last night?"

"Oh, Gabrielle..." she moaned again. I braced myself for the worst. She feels awful, betrayed, it was a big mistake..."I don’t remember a damned thing. Just drinking and drinking, trying to beat that guy...I don’t even know how I got back here. I’m just glad I did..." Bleary-eyed, she looked at me. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Uh, yeah." I was clutching the bedpost for dear life. She didn’t remember. My mind raced. Now what? Tell her?

"I’m sorry I hogged up the bed...where did you sleep?"

"Uh, bedroll. On the floor. I packed it up earlier."

"Damn. Sorry. I know you prefer the bed. You could’ve kicked me out, you know."

Kick the Warrior Princess out of bed? Highly unlikely. "It’s okay."

"No, it’s not. You look tired. Like you didn’t get much sleep." A look of horror crossed her face. "Gods, Gabrielle—"

"What?" I rasped, my heart in my mouth. She remembers!

"Was I...here with someone last night?" she whispered, mortified, looking down the blanket at her muscular, nude form.

"N-no, Xena. You were alone. After I was done performing, I came up here, and you were here, on the bed."

She frowned, puzzled. "I was alone...when you got back to the room?"

"Yes, Xena, you were alone. And very drunk, needless to say. I helped you off with your clothes, and uh, you insisted on not wearing anything to bed." I did not mention that I too was also rather insistent on nudity.

"Oh." Her look of anxiety passed, although she still seemed faintly troubled by not remembering anything.

"Well I...better get this tea for you," I replied, trying to sound cheerful, although a pain in my head indicated to me that I might cry at any moment.

"Thanks, Gabrielle."

"Sure," I said.

I walked out of the room and burst into tears.

*****

Solari’s apple core sat on the table. "Wow," she breathed, "so she didn’t remember at all?"

"Nope," I said sadly.

"Did you ever tell her what really happened?" Ephiny asked.

"No," I replied.

"Even after all these years?" Eponin gasped.

"No," I said again. But someday, I thought, maybe someday...

"See, this is what happens when you’ve been together for so long with someone as laconic as our pal Xena...monosyllabic answers!" Ephiny bitched.

"You make it sound like Xena and I have been together for eons," I complained. "Like we’re some boring old married couple." Even though it has been five years, it still seems like yesterday.

"Well, it just seems like eons, Gabrielle," Solari teased.

"Perhaps," I replied, "you all wouldn’t be so absorbed in dissecting my relationship if you all had relationships of your own."

Three blank faces stared back at me. Then a sudden eruption of activity.

"Gotta get to the practice yards. Training session, y’know," Eponin blurted, jumping out of her seat and flying toward the door.

"I’ll walk with you," Ephiny said, jumping up. "I uh, gotta go talk to some of the scouts on the north ridge..." Together they ran out.

Solari and I stared at each other. "I hafta go pee," she mumbled. Then she too ran out the door.

*****

Today my beloved returned from her diplomatic mission. The scouts had announced her arrival before she came riding through the village, so I was awaiting her in front of the stable. After she dismounted with ease, I had jumped in her arms, flung my legs around her waist, and affixed my lips to her own.

"If everyone were this glad to see me..." she gasped when I came up for air.

"You would be very popular indeed," I replied. "And you’d also be in a lot of trouble with me." I tried to look menacing but, as usual, failed.

She smiled. "Even so, there would only be you for me," she replied smoothly. Perhaps Ephiny was right, and we were influencing each other. A lot.

With my feet back on the ground, I walked with her back to our hut. "You made good time coming back," I commented.

"Well, I found a shortcut. The road around the valley is less traveled, so it’s actually faster."

"But aren’t there a lot of little villages around there?" I asked. In fact, that was where Bucephalia was.

"Yeah. But as I said, the traffic was minimal...even though that’s where Bucephalia is."

As if she read my mind. "Bucephalia?" I echoed innocently.

"Yeah, you know. That crazy cow town. Where you seduced me."

I stopped walking. I can only imagine the look on my face, for she laughed the whole way back to the hut. Once we were indoors I tackled her playfully and held her down on the bed. Rather, she allowed me to do all this. "Damn you—you knew all these years? And you never told me? Do you know how guilty I felt? For the longest time, I thought I had taken advantage of you in the most horrible way."

She laughed even harder. "Come on, Gabrielle. I awoke the next morning with a killer hangover, reeking of sex. And there you were, acting guilty, nervous, and skittish, with a hickey on your neck." She paused, and smirked mischievously. "Actually, Autolycus was acting pretty funny too...for a while I wasn’t sure which one of you I’d slept with. But I know I would’ve remembered a mustache, and you did have that hickey—"

"Well," I said spitefully, "maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was Autolycus."

"Hmm," she mused, running a hand through my hair. "That’s too bad..." She smiled at me. "I had always preferred to think it was you."

Later that evening I held her, once again, sleeping in my arms. It’s rare that she allows herself this; she usually wraps me up against her, protectively. It reminded me, of course, of that night. I think the sneaky warrior remembers more than she tells.

In between that night and a night five years ago when we declared our love, there was many an evening on the road, sleeping under the stars, where I was solitary, yet not alone. I would lay in my bedroll, my arms behind my head, the tiny lights of the world above me. I connected the lights into pictures, and those into words, and those into stories. I told them to my beloved. Sometimes I would tell them to myself, again and again. Just like this story. I would always be telling this story.

The End

#xena #xena warrior princess #xena/gabrielle #xena/gabrielle fanfiction #mel/janice #mel/janice fanfiction #author: vivian darkbloom #mature #fanfiction #femslash

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pixelatedfarmhouse · 6 years

Text

WIP Stardew AU

So, I’m in the middle of transferring all my word docs to google drive, as I lost access to MS Word after reinstalling my OS to fix a network issue. My regular Sambastian series is all good and safe (and my last chapter of STTA is done!), but I’ve also been moving my revisions/bonus scraps/other side projects, and I found this AU I’d been working on that I thought I could share a snippet of here.

My main jam when I’m not writing gay Stardew boys is writing paranormal creatures trying to live mundane, human lives, and after watching What We Do in the Shadows (an excellent film), I was inspired to write this au fic of Abby, Seb, and Sam trying to room together as different supernaturals. Obviously, it’s also a Sam/Sebastian love story.

I’m not currently planning on finishing/publishing this to ao3/ffn, but if it’s something anyone would actually be interested in reading more of, please let me know. I’d honestly be more likely to make an effort to finish it if I knew there was some actual interest in it.

I think that’s enough rambling, so please enjoy the one rough, but completed chapter I have under the cut!

The sound of a bottle hitting tiled floor wakes Sebastian up. He’s dressed and out of bed in seconds, sneaking towards the kitchen in the pitch black darkness of his tiny apartment. Turning on a light will give away that he’s home and besides, it’s not like he needs it – he has excellent night vision.

There’s definitely someone sitting in his kitchen, and Sebastian arms himself with the first object in reach – a frying pan.

“Hey, Seb,” the figure greets him, before he can creep any closer.

The kitchen is illuminated by a sudden burst of blue light, and Sebastian hisses, shielding his face with the frying pan.

“Nice weapon,” the voice continues. “What does a vampire need a frying pan for, anyways?”

He lowers the pan, and the blue glow lighting up his kitchen has dimmed considerably. Sebastian blinks, letting his eyes adjust, then frowns as he realizes who the purple-haired figure sitting at his kitchen table is.

“Get out.”

The woman pouts at him. “Don’t you remember me, Sebby?”

He does remember her, actually. They’d been… friends? Almost sixty years ago. Not particularly close friends – they’d mostly just had class together, but Abigail was pretty much the only kid who seemed to tolerate him. The last time he’d seen her (well, up until recently) she’d been twenty, and in town to visit her family on spring break. Fifty years passed, and then, four months ago, he’d run into her again, looking like she hadn’t aged a day since. Literally.

The purple hair was new, though.

“I know you do,” Abigail continues, because he’s yet to answer her. “You looked away as soon as we made eye contact. Obviously you were trying to avoid me – which is pretty hurtful, by the way, because I was super stoked to run into you again.”

“Really?” Sebastian asks. “Because most people tend to start running in the other direction once they figure out what I am.”

Abigail rolls her eyes. “Please, don’t go all Twilight on me; I think I might actually throw up.”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot people love vampires. That’s why my family hasn’t spoken to me in years, right? Because they’re so proud of me.”

“Boohoo,” Abigail says, looking entirely unsympathetic, “mine are all dead.” She shrugs. “The life of being immortal, right?”

Sebastian sighs, and joins her at the kitchen table. “So are you going to tell me how the hell you achieved immortality? Obviously you’re not a vampire, since you entered without permission.”

“Well, at least you’re observant enough to pick up on that.” Abigail smirks at him. “Seriously? You’re not even going to question why your kitchen is glowing blue? You’re not at all concerned about that? I mean, I guess when you’re a seventy year old vampire you’ve seen some shit, but still…”

He frowns, first studying the glowing balls of blue light that are illuminating his kitchen, then the runes running up Abigail’s bare arms. “You’re a witch?” he guesses.

Abigail nods enthusiastically. “I took a few college courses on witchcraft… which led to me dropping out of college to start practicing witchcraft. I’m self-taught,” she boasts, smiling at him. There’s a pause, and then she continues, “This is nice, isn’t it? Catching up together? What about you, Sebby, what’s it like being a vampire?”

“How’d you even figure out I was a vampire?” Sebastian asks, ignoring her question. “There’s no way you could have guessed that from the five seconds of eye contact we made.”

“I might have done a little sleuthing,” Abigail admits.

“You mean stalking. You’ve been stalking me,” he clarifies. “What the fuck, Abby?”

She furrows her brow. “Look, it wasn’t hard to figure out something was up. I recognized you, you recognized me, and neither of us look like the seventy year olds we’re supposed to be. So, I did a little research. Followed you around for a while, to make sure I was right. Realized that you’re probably as lonely as I am, and I thought hey, maybe I should reach out.” She leans back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. “You’re a pretty hard guy to get a hold of, so things got a little illegal there. I’m not here to cause trouble, okay? I just wanted to talk.”

“Yeah, you must be pretty lonely if you went through all that trouble just to talk,” Sebastian agrees, the corners of his mouth turning up into a tiny smirk.

“Shut up, idiot; I’m bored of being by myself for all eternity,” Abigail says, absently kicking at one of the table legs. “Let’s be friends again – we could room together! I’ve got this nice little cottage outside of town, very remote.”

“No thanks.”

Abigail raises an eyebrow. “Really? Because your apartment is a shithole.”

“Wow, that definitely changes my mind, thanks. Is this how you talked to all your friends? I’m not surprised I’m your only one.”

“Fuck off,” she says, grinning at him. “You don’t even try. I’m pretty sure being an asshole is your full time job… do you have a job, by the way? If you’re moving in to my place you bet your ass I’m gonna charge you rent.”

“I program,” he replies. “Gotta keep up with the times, you know?”

“Right, I can see that,” Abigail agrees. “Is that why you’re dressed like you just bought out a Hot Topic, or is it because you can’t see your reflection?”

“Have you seen what you’re wearing?” Sebastian fires back. “What’s your excuse?”

Abigail gives him a glare, and then looks down at her dress – lacy black, with a purple corset. “What? I look cute as fuck in this. Unlike you. Your eye makeup is smudged, by the way.”

“I just woke up,” he argues, “because somebody broke into my house.”

“You sleep fully clothed?”

“No, I just didn’t think fighting an intruder butt-fucking-naked was a good plan.”

Abigail shrugs. “I don’t know, I feel like that would give you the element of surprise. Who’d expect to stumble in on an angry, naked vampire? It’d probably confuse them long enough for you to go in for the kill.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind the next time you show up.”

“Well, it’s actually the last time I’ll be showing up, because you’re moving in with me,” Abigail replies. “I was serious about that offer; this place is a dump, and I’m lonely as fuck. Dealing with your grumpy ass for the rest of eternity is better than having no one at all.”

Sebastian hesitates. “I’m not interested in a... romantic thing. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Sebby,” Abigail says, looking amused, “I followed you around for four months… I’ve noticed that you prefer men. Also? You’re not my type. Gross.”

He relaxes, relieved to hear that she’s not interested in anything more than friendship. “So, theoretically, if I were to move in, how would that work?” Sebastian asks, pulling at the drawstrings on his hoodie. “I’d need to be close enough to civilization that I could still feed.”

“I’m out in cottage country, sort of? You know the Stardew Valley area? It’s not as big as the city, but it’s a popular vacation area. Lots of tourists in the summer, and a reasonable amount in the winter. I don’t know how much blood you need to feed, exactly, but I imagine it’d be easier to drain a few people with the help of magic.”

“So you’re cool with maiming and the occasional killing?” Sebastian raises an eyebrow.

“Hey, what are friends for?” Abigail grins. “Good friends will lie about a body, but best friends will help you exsanguinate and bury it, right?” She leans forward, propping her arms on the table. “Anyways, I’ll let you have the basement. It’s pretty big, actually; lots of room for you to sulk around and do your dark bidding. No windows, either, so you don’t have to be cooped up in your coffin all day.”

Sebastian scowls. “I don’t sleep in a fucking coffin.”

“We’ll find you one anyways,” Abigail promises. “It’ll fit in nicely with your aesthetic.”

Sebastian sighs, glancing over at the time on the stove. It’s seven in the evening – has Abigail eaten yet? Should he offer her something? He feels like he should, even if she did break and enter. “Do you want something to eat? I think it’s pretty clear you’re not going to leave me alone for the rest of the night... or the rest of eternity.”

“Oh, do you have food here?” Abigail perks up. “I thought about poking through your fridge while I was waiting, but I didn’t want to disappoint myself if it was full of blood jars, or whatever you keep.”

“Well yes, I generally like to feed my food before they feed me… and I keep it in bottles, thanks, that’s way classier.”

“Really? Because that’s frat boy aesthetic. I keep my blood samples in jam jars.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What do you need blood samples for? You entertain a lot of vampires or something?” Sebastian smirks. “Or do you like to draw little blood circles around your luigi board while you chant?”

“It’s called an ouija board. And there’s no chanting involved, dumbass.”

“Right,” Sebastian says, as he stands up to rummage through his fridge. “Your quiche board. Got it.”

“Idiot,” Abigail mutters, though it sounds oddly affectionate. “Hey, wash that frying pan before you use it – I don’t know where it’s been, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what you do with that.”

#stardew valley #stardew valley fanfic #stardew valley sebastian #stardew valley abigail #stardew valley sam

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you-and-i-for-forever · 7 years

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10 Things I Hate About You AU Chapter 4 (Part A)

Fandom: Be More Chill, Dear Evan Hansen

Ships: Boyf riends, treebros, richjake, Zolana, Pinkberry

Word count: 3.7k

Feel free the read this on my ao3 instead!

Read chapter 1 here, 2 here, 3 here if you’ve missed them!

“Are you lost?” Jake asked eyebrow raised.

Jared looked like a fucking idiot. He had tried his best to seem cool and confident as he swaggered across the lunchroom, towards the large group of popular assholes.

Fuck! Why were they all so tall and good looking? Jared had made his way past a few of them to sit down in a chair next to Jake. Jake had slowly looked up from his phone, with a face that asked what the actual fuck?

“No, actually, I just came by to chat,” Jared said, smearing a smirk onto his face.

“Uuuuh…we don't chat,” Jake deadpanned, wiggling his hand at him in a dismissive manner. A few of Jake’s friends snickered.

Jared forced his mouth into a smile, trying to seem nice, but really wanting to knock Jake’s phone out of his hand and walk away. God, what a complete douchebag.

He was doing this for Michael and he was not going to screw this up. “Well, actually, I thought that I'd run an idea by you. Just to see if you're interested.” Jared was gonna try and schmooze the hell out of this guy.

Jake blinked at him a few times before giving a disinterested “I’m not, thanks,” and turned back to his phone.

Jared held out his hands in front of him, almost like he was trying to calm a wild animal rather than trying to keep this idiots attention. “Well, hear me out. Now...you want to date Jeremy Heere, right?”

“Who?” Jake asked

Was he fucking serious?

“The uh…the new kid.”

“Oh yeah,” Jake said, having the decency to almost look just the slightest bit embarrassed.

“Okay, but he can't go out with you because his parents have a rule that he can’t date until his older stepbrother, Evan, dates, but no one will go out with him because he’s sad and weird, right?” Jared said, feeling like he was talking to a brick wall.

Jake rested his head on his hand, looking entirely done with what Jared had to say. “Does this conversation have a purpose?”

Jared didn't think he could roll his eyes hard enough.

“What I think you need to do is hire someone who'll go out with Evan. Someone who’s just as lame and invisible as he is so he doesn’t feel that way anymore and you can go out with Jeremy.” Jared said

“Why not just date the loser yourself then?” A guy from across the table snorted.

Jared smiled and flipped him off.

“Look I already figured out the perfect person,” Jared explained, pointing towards the windows on the adjacent wall. Connor was currently sitting alone on the far side of the courtyard, smoking weed. Jake squinted at him before his eyes became huge.

“That guy?” Jake asked, alarmed, “I heard he ate a live duck once.”

Jared nodded, he had heard that too. “Everything but the beak and feet. He’s a loser, Evan’s a loser; clearly, he’s a solid investment.”

Jake continued to stare at Connor, eyebrows furrowed. Jared could almost feel the wheels in this Neanderthals head start to turn.

“What's in it for you?” Jake finally asked, turning back towards Jared.

“Hey. I’m walkin’ down the hall and say hello to you. You say hello to me,” Jared smiled, quick on his feet to come up with a reason. It was probably pathetic, but he really wouldn’t mind if Jake actually did that.

“Yeah yeah. I get it. You’re cool by association.” Jake paused for a moment, before shrugging. “I’ll think about it.”

“Nice,” Jared said usual smirk returning to his mouth, relieved his plan seemed like it was working.

“We’re done now,” Jake said, raising an eyebrow.

Jared had overstayed his welcome at the table of beautiful, untouchable gods. Now to return to the world of the mortals.

“Yeah.” Jared nodded and got up and crossed the cafeteria back over to where he had left a very upset looking Michael.

“What are you doing getting him involved?” Michael asked, standing up to meet him, clearly upset. To be fair, Jared had just sort of just gotten up from the table randomly and walked over to Jake with no explanation of Michael. Thankfully Jeremy wasn't around today to see Michael's head almost explode.

“Relax. We let him pretend he’s calling the shots. While he’s setting things up, you have time with Jeremy,” Jared said sitting down at the table and grabbed for Michael’s Flaming Hot Cheetos. He began to chow down. Michael sank down next to him and opened and shut his mouth a few times.

“That is a good idea,” Michael replied, with the same tone and express as before.

Jared laughed and patted his back, “Yeah, I know.”

God Connor hated all of this. He had been able to force himself to get to every day of school so far but it was all a fucking horrible. All the whispers and the glances and the laughing. Someone had stuffed garbage into his bag when he wasn’t looking and had slipped a note into his locker telling him to kill himself.

He had tried to convince his mom to let him do online classes or homeschool but she had said that he needed to be around people his age, interact with others, try and make friends. She had no clue what this school was like though, how no one was ever going to want to be his friend, let alone talk to him.

He sat in the courtyard, blunt hanging off his lip, flipping through a history textbook. So fucking boring, but Connor really, really, needed his parents off his back so he was willing to do some homework to get that to happen.

Connor rubbed at his eyes, every part of his feeling tired and rundown but suddenly felt a presence and eyes on him. He jolted his head to look up.

It was some guy Connor didn’t know, he felt caught off guard.

What the fuck did this guy want? Connor tried to keep his anger from flaring up, but it was just his gut reaction.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” The guy asked him with a smile that was half nervous-half charismatic. Weird, Connor usually only got the full nervous smiles.

Connor glared at him then looked away, trying to ignore him. He really hoped he wasn’t going to get food thrown at him or something shitty like that.

“I had some great duck last night...” He said.

“Do I know you?” Connor finally spoke, looking back at him. God, he was annoying.

“I’m Jake Dillinger,” He said like Connor was supposed to know who he was.

“Cool, bye,” Connor said, standing up and starting to pack his stuff up. Better get out of here before this idiot made Connor do something that would wind him up in the principal’s office, or worse, that freaky guidance counselor’s office.

“Hey, wait! Uh, you see that guy?” Jake said, pointing out a familiar looking guy, making his way through across the crowded courtyard. It was the kid from the bathroom a while ago. From what he could see, he still had the cast wrapped around his arm.

“Yeah,” Connor replied, just the slightest bit curious.

“That’s Evan Hansen. I want you to go out with him.” Jake said

Connor’s expression twisted and he felt like ripping this asshole's face off. Connor shoved him hard instead, hoping he would fall to the ground. Jake barely lost his balance from the action, pissing Connor off more.

“Look. I can’t take out his brother until Evan starts dating. Apparently, his parents got this rule where they-” Jared said

Connor interrupted, “Touching story. Not my problem,” He pulled the strap of his bag over his head and started walking away, flipping Jake off.

“Would you be willing to make it your problem if I provide generous compensation?” Jake called, a certain tone in his voice.

Connor paused, mid getaway.

“You’re going to pay me to take out some guy?” Connor asked over his shoulder, not wanting to turn around and look the creep in the eye.

“Mmm hmm,” Jake said.

Connor’s eyes locked onto the Evan kid, still walking around. He looked awkward and sad and desperate and nervous.

“How much?” Connor asked

“20 bucks.” Jake offered

He watched as Evan bumped into someone, his face turned bright red and he seemed to stammer through a few sentences at the person he bumped into before he ran off.

“Fine. 30.” Jake said, quickly revising.

“75 bucks.” Connor threw back, finally turning back towards Jake. His parents cut off his funds a while ago and he was in desperate shape for pot money.

“This isn’t a negotiation. Take it or leave it, freak.” Jake said, looking Connor up and down.

“50 bucks and we’ve got a deal,” Connor snapped back, crossing his arms, scowling.

Jake shrugged and reached into his wallet, pulling out a 50 dollar bill. He handed Connor the money.

Stupid rich fuck

Connor allowed himself for a second to forget that his family was probably wealthier than this guy’s.

“I’ll be back for an update,” Jake said then turned and walked away.

Connor stared down at the easiest 50 bucks he ever made. He pocketed the money and rolled his eyes. If that moron seriously thought that he was actually going to do this, he truly was a moron. Connor snorted, he was just going to blow this whole thing off and that Jake guy could just kiss his ass.

Connor stuffed the money into his pocket then started to walk off. His eyes glanced over to where the girl Evan had bumped into stood, noisily gossiping about “the weirdo that just ran into her.” He frowned.

…Connor was going to need more money for weed pretty soon. 50 bucks really wasn’t going to last him long…plus he was going to need gas money to get to his dealer's house…

Fuck.

Evan kept chanting in his head that the day was almost done and he could leave school soon. Things had gone…alright, today. Nothing too horrible. He was happy to not have to lie to Dr. Sherman about it at therapy tomorrow.

Evan put his Spanish and calculus textbooks into his locker. He stuffed his binder and a few notebooks into his backpack then shut the door, pushing hard to make sure it closed all the way. He turned around and saw someone right behind him. Evan jolted back in surprise, hitting the lockers. Evan felt his face heat up in embarrassment. His eyes slowly slid up from the black combat boots all the way up to Connor Murphy’s face.

Connor gave an awkward, thin-lipped smile, “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, n-no that's okay- it’s-it's okay,” Evan said, try to calm down his racing heartbeat.

Connor didn't move or say or do anything. They stood there for a second before Evan got uncomfortable and reached over to pick at his cast.

“Hey, you still got my name,” Connor said, pointing towards Evan’s arm. Evan glanced down then back up at Connor for half a second. His hand started to trace the lines of Connor’s name scrawled on his cast.

“Uh, yeah. I don’t- I don't get the, uh, cast off for a few more weeks or maybe even another month, the doctors haven't told me yet when it's gonna be yet but I'm sure I'll find out soon, hopefully pretty soon, and its sharpie so uh yeah...can't really take it off.” Evan said a mile a minute.

He couldn’t tell if Connor’s expression was annoyance, amusement, or both, “I was just kidding.” He offered.

“Oh huh…yeah, ye-yeah I knew that,” Evan said, hands pulling at the hem of his shirt, trying to laugh it off. He looked down at the ground, feeling stupid.

He chanced a glance back up at Connor. Why was he still standing there? This was so uncomfortable, he didn’t know what to say or do or think. He rubbed at his face.

“So, um, do you want to hang out sometime?” Connor asked, eyes glancing around the hallway.

Evan stiffened up and slowly tilted his head to eye at Connor.

He let out a small, uncomfortable laugh, in a very Evan fashion, “Um uh um, n-no thanks. It’s because um- it’s not because of any reason or anything. I’m-I’m-I’m just really busy right now and I need to um help my mom after school and do homework so I can't do that.” Evan lied a mile a minute, worrying his shirt again, avoiding eye contact.

There was another awkward pause. “Okay, well see you around,” Connor said with a shrug and a wave.

Evan watched him leave, staring him down in confusion. That was bizarre, to say the least. Evan had spent most of the school years trying to avoid Connor, and now in less than a month had interacted with him twice.

Connor was definitely different that sophomore year. Evan just couldn’t put his finger on why.

“We’re screwed,” Michael said, exasperated.

He and Jared had been trailing Connor the whole day, seeing when he was going to make his move on Evan. The interaction between Evan and Connor had gone about as well as expected. Why the hell did Michael think this was going to work? Everyone was terrified of angry Connor Murphy and all the vicious rumors, whether truthful or lies, that trailed after him.

“Hey, no, hey. I don’t want to hear that defeatist attitude.” Jared turned to him, putting his hands on his shoulders and shaking him “I want to hear you upbeat.”

“We’re screwed!” Michael said with mock enthusiasm.

“There you go!" Jared said, stooping to his level of sarcasm. "Just give him time. Evan just has to realize that Connor isn’t going to give up and he’ll eventually just go out with him to make him stop asking since it makes him uncomfortable or something like that.” Michael felt like Jared was trying to explain this to him like he was a small child that had no clue what was happening.

“I hope you’re right, man.” Michael sighed and quickly made their way to their separate classes when the bell rang.

Jeremy was walking down a hallway in the school, finally feeling like he was getting a handle on his schedule and the school layout. He was glancing down at his phone, shooting Michael a quick message about hanging out this weekend and happened to glance up as he rounded a corner.

There was Jake. Handsome as hell Jake. No one should be allowed to be that absolutely perfect looking and- Jake was looking at him. Jake was looking at him! Jeremy’s heart immediately leapt to his throat. Jake gave him a charming smile and sauntered across the hallway to him. Jeremy thought his legs might give out from under him.

“Hi,” Jake said, stopping right in front of him.

“Hey,” Jeremy said, feeling giddy as hell, but trying to be cool.

“Jeremy, right?” He asked.

“Uh yeah.” Jeremy nearly chocked out. Jake knew his name!

“You’re the new kid, right?” Jake asked, taking a step closer so Jeremy had to tilt his head up to continue to look at his gorgeous face.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, brain not being able to come up with a more interesting response.

“Wow, that must kind of suck. I’m Jake by the way.” Jake flashed him another dashing smile.

Jeremy said, looking down at his shoes, “I…know.”

“Cool…Can I say something stupid? I heard that my friend Rich said something to you in the hallway to you the other day and I just wanted to say I’m sorry about that.”

Oh, my god, he was literally so nice, who just did that? Apologize for a friend? Just so attractive and nice? “That’s…not stupid at all.” Jeremy said with what he hoped was a coy smile.

Jake leaned against the wall and bit his lip. Jeremy wanted to scream.

“Cool. Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime. Like to the mall or out to eat? I figured we could get to know each other. Alone. I could take you to my friend Rich and I’s favorite spot in the universe, Sbarro!” Jake laughed with a wink.

No one had ever asked Jeremy out before, certainly not someone like Jake Dillinger. He was about to start nodding rapidly but then his dad's rule came rushing back to him. Jeremy wanted to scream when he remembered.

“I, um, actually can’t.” Jeremy said, feeling like an idiot, “My older brother-”

“I know about your whole dating problem and have a guy working on it as we speak.” Jake raised his eyebrow and flashed a beautiful grin.

“Oh.” Jeremy was shocked. Jake must honestly, truly want to go out with him if he was willing to find someone to date Evan.

Jake reached out and ran a hand down Jeremy’s shoulder to his hand, holding it after. Jeremy's shuttered and goosebumps popped up all over his skin.

Jake looked down at their conjoined hands then back up at Jeremy through his lashes, “So how about it?”

“Sure, okay.” Jeremy managed to get out.

“Alright,” Jake said and handed Jeremy a slip of paper with his phone number on it. He winked and continued his stroll down the hallway.

Jeremy shuttered out a breath, feeling like he might explode, and watched Jake go.

Evan was curled up in his bed, just finished with all his homework for the night, scrolling through his phone. This was simultaneously the best and worst part of the whole day. School was over and Evan had the rest of the day to do whatever he wanted…the only problem was there was nothing for him to do.

He usually just went in an endless cycle of refreshing Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for hours.

Jared was usually the person who posted the most on all on social media. Game stats and scores, complaining about teachers and dragging classmates, stuff like that. Zoe posted pictures of her and Alana or videos of her jazz band playing. Alana liked to have friendly debates on threads and write all about her extracurriculars and studying. Chloe and Brooke put up selfies, vague-posted about everyone at the school, and reposted makeup tutorials, he wasn’t quite sure why he followed them, or the other popular people at his school. Probably just to fill time and space on his accounts.

He finished rewatching all the Snapchat stories, feeling a little bored.

It was kind of a weird feeling. Evan really wanted to be a part of what was going on, at all the parties he saw and all the events people posted about and hanging out with all the people he was friends with online. But at the same time, he didn’t feel like it would work out that well. He’d be too anxious to have a good time and everyone would think he was weird and it just wouldn’t end well.

He just liked to pretend that maybe it could.

For once.

Go well.

Evan got up out of bed and left his room to use the bathroom. He stared down at his phone as he went. He finally looked up once he reached one of the porcelain sinks.

He brushed his teeth and contemplated a shower. He’d have to wrap his arm up and tape it and that really didn’t sound that fun right now, so maybe just a shower tomorrow. Evan turned away from the sink and jumped in surprise. Jeremy was standing in the doorway.

“He-Hey Jeremy,” Evan said, trying to play off the fact that he had been scared.

“Hey,” Jeremy said with a nod.

Evan grabbed a washcloth from the counter and ran it under warm water. Jeremy moved up to the other sink, applying acne cream to his face.

They stood there in a silence. It probably wasn’t that awkward but Evan couldn’t feel a silence any other way.

“How was-” Evan started but stopped to wipe his face with the damp washcloth. “How was school?” He eventually got out.

“Classes were fine. Jake Dillinger talked to me today.” Jeremy said, trying to sound calm and casual but coming across as anything but.

“Cool. That’s-That’s nice.” Evan said, then rubbed the cloth in circles on his mouth so he didn’t have to say anything else.

More silence.

Jeremy finished up his routine with brushing his teeth and flossing before he turned to leave. He stopped and eyed Evan up and down.

“Have you ever tried something that wasn’t khakis and polos, Evan?”

Evan’s face was already bright red from scrubbing it for so long, Jeremy probably couldn’t see his embarrassment.

“Not…not really. I like…blue polos.”

“People at school would probably think you’re cooler if you did,” Jeremy said like it was a fact.

This was…bizarre. Why did Jeremy care if people thought he was cool? Was he really so embarrassing to be tethered to as a stepbrother that Jeremy wanted him to wear different clothes?

“I-I-I don’t- I don’t care what those people-people think,” Evan said, voice breaking a little.

Jeremy scrunched his eyebrows together, “Well maybe you should.” Jeremy walked out of the bathroom. Evan stood there, taken back by how random this was. Maybe someone had said something to Jeremy at school. Maybe Jake had said something to him. Maybe he was getting bullied by other people because of Evan. He suddenly felt really guilty. He hadn’t meant for that to happen.

Evan threw his washcloth in the laundry hamper and hung his head as he made his way back to his bedroom. He laid back down on his bed and pulled up Twitter again. He didn’t scroll. Who could be bullying Jeremy? There weren’t a ton of actual bullies at school, just people who were gossiping jerks. Evan stared at his phone screen until it timed out and the screen went dark. He told himself to just try and focus on something else.

School?

No…that’s where the jerks were.

Summer?

Not the best memories from that time.

Zoe Murphy?

Probably best to stay away from that for a while…

…Connor Murphy?

Wait! No! Wondering mind was a bad idea. Evan rolled over and pulled the blankets over his head.

Today at school, when Connor had asked him to hang out. That had to have been some kind of joke. Maybe Connor was trying to mess with him and get everyone to see that he was just a bigger loser than everyone already thought. Evan’s stomach filled with dread. That was probably it.

There’s no way Connor would – that anyone would – want to hang out with him.

#be more chill #dear evan hansen #boyf riends #tree bros #richjake #pinkberry #zolana #galaxy gals #deh #bmc #AU fanfiction #fanfic

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annieoftheshitposts · 7 years

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this post used to be a link to the old canons page but i’m turning it into a text dump of the revised one for people on mobile [or who have bad wifi/computers that the fancy schmancy script on the canons page wouldn’t play well with.] theres a lot sorry not sorry. here we go.

Canon Info

Much more is said about Annie in external sources than the game itself, here's copypastes of all I know of and go by.

From the 3rd DLC Character Voting page:

As popular figures in nationwide folktales, a children’s television adaptation of Annie and Sagan’s adventures was inevitable. The show’s success lies in its pair of live action hosts, who are as convincing as their cartoon counterparts. Though what the public learns about the real Annie might surprise them. Annie is a seasoned fighter who has been around for a long time, acquiring many skills and powers along the way. Her sword is forged from a meteorite and can channel the power of the stars in its sweeping cleaves. Her right eye bonds her to her Remote Parasite and partner, Sagan, who grants her powers of a galactic motif. While some of her abilities carry more of a sparkly magical girl motif, Annie tries to execute them with the same sternness.

From "The canon info thread" on Skullheart Encore forums:

-Annie is several-century-old. Her immortality was gained when her parents wished on the Skull Heart so that Annie would never have to experience the hardship of adulthood, thereby making her forever a child. -She has had many different weapons and abilities throughout her life. - Sagan, her remote parasite. keeps her right eye in his mouth. - She’s physically not able to swear due to her condition - She is familiar with Double due to her experience fighting Skullgirls - Annie has encountered a lot of Skullgirls and has killed a lot, but not the same a lot. She’s seen the cycle multiple times and seen how they become stronger each time and is looking for the underlying source now. - The Annie of the Stars show is very similar to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with live action segments with cartoons and PSAs and commercials in between. - Sagan can talk. Somehow. - Annie hides her immortality by getting a new hairstyle every few years. The show tells the audience that they have simply changed the actress. Eliza also pulls a similar trick

and finally some other misc. scraps that weren't covered above:

-annie has some kind of "super" or "powered up" form, in which she seems to fuse with sagan. it can be seen on her

move concept sheet, in the end of robo-fortune's story mode, and as a very tiny feature on one of robo-fortune's merch posters, but to my knowlege it's never really been talked about.

-she's been depicted with an "incognito outfit", presumably for going out in public and not being recognized by fans.

-sagan is named after renowned astrophysicist carl sagan. this isnt really relevant to anything but it's not on the wiki so i figured i'd share :b

-and this random pic of annie in the past with a different look, plus gun and minus eyepatch, apparently official art from the "digital art compendium". i haven't seen the source for this one myself though, and count this one more as speculative canon since that ingame image up there with her eye uncovered doesn't show a scar or any kind of damage from this.

-another canon fact about annie is she is strong and brave and i love her.

Headcanon (Annie)

this is pretty disorganized bc i come up with and revise random shit on a fairly regular basis, but the very least it should be all here and up-to-date. [though on this text post version i may forget to keep it updated oops.

she can still only normally see from the one eye in her head [and likewise probably has terrible depth perception lmao], but she can “project” her vision into the one sagan has if need be, during which time both he and her main eye are blind.

even though sagan’s vision is his own and she doesn’t actively “see” through that eye most of the time, the stuff he sees still becomes part of her memory and she can recall it if need be, though it’s far less tangible and kind of a surreal experience trying to do so.

the space where her other eye was is now just...space. like empty starry void stuff. yes, TECHNICALLY, you could put stuff in it but why would you. sagan can feel when something interacts with it and it’s really just weird and uncomfortable for both of them.as sagan is the source of their powers, the strength of her abilities is slightly dependent on her distance from him. something like long sustained flight is really only capable if they’re touching, but she still has ample firepower and ability to zip around for a pretty good range otherwise.

Not interested in anime

absolutely hates being called her full name; hasn't gone by anything other than "Annie" for longer than anyone that should be alive today should know.

part of her curse of eternal youth is remembering everything up until the point it kicked in and she stopped aging [i.e. when she was Actually a kid] exactly as well as if she hadn’t aged.

from that point however, a lot of it is hazy as shit aside from more recent times [as you’d expect from someone who’s been around hundreds of years]. this one's gonna be angsty as shit when i address it and you can thank @sandstriker for that. fucker.

also hates being restrained. by the concept sheet and beo's story, her fighting style is very kinetic and relies heavily on mobility; take that away and you get one very uncomfortable and very angry starchild. [this one's 'cause of y'all with the handcuffs asks. this is part of why she's so agitated rn.]

what's in the pouch? whatever is alternatively convenient. is it snacks? is it a quick incognito disguise? is it her whole entire sword? who knows. i think it might be infinite hammerspace in there.

i haven't put much though into this side of her story yet, but i've decided part of the mythos of the "annie of the stars" character as a figure of legend is that she literally lives, among the stars.

if there's enough folktales about her to base an entire show off of, i'm willing to bet she used to be less elusive when she was just about fighting skullgirls before dedicating herself to the whole "looking for the underlying source" thing.

Headcanon (Sagan)

tl;dr: as far as things go here, he's essentially a cat and/or younger sibling.

Sagan's canon information and characterization is basically nonexistant, so i got to do pretty much whatever i wanted with him lmao.

simply put, he's a little gremlin of a partner, but he is genuinely good-natured and a happy-go-luckly little dude. mischevious, loves to get up to Shenanigans, go off and hide/disappear to fuck knows where for several hours, climb and sit on tall things[or failing that, annie's head], etc. @sawkinator has described him, regrettably accurately, as "the Token Disney Animal Sidekick". he has a lot of mannerisms like an animal, but is still very much a being of at least average human intelligence. he's also surprisingly indestructible. far from invincible of course, but in canon he's been shown to be quite stretchy and...possibly have minor shapeshifting capabilities?? he's pretty much immune to being squashed and feels very little [if any] pain from most things. really, as far as i can tell he's pretty much a weird sentient plushie. like, if it's not going to damage a plushie, it's not going to hurt him; examples being: getting knocked back really hard or falling a long way? not a problem. fire? problem.

Sagan tends to be somewhat nonverbal and generally only uses a few words or short phrase at a time when he does speak, which sounds something like the voice clip below. that being how it is, he can be kind of inscrutable and more than a bit jarring to most people--though at this point annie's been with him more than long enough to be completely desensitized to it and doesnt quite get why anyone would be perturbed. fortunately, with that familiarity also comes understanding, and she can easily "translate" and articulate more from his expressions. this understanding is a two-way street, and on its other side is sagan's sensitivity to her moods. annie's not particularly...communicative of her emotions, but sagan can always tell when she's having an off day or something's bothering her, and is far better than anyone at helping her feel better. all things said and quirky antics aside, he and annie are exceptionally close and fiercely protective of eachother the moment it comes to it. they don't make a big deal of showing it outwardly, but they know they've always got eachother's backs.

he's taken quite a liking to beowulf as well, and beo defintiely shamelessly enables sagan's shenanigans.

as i see it, annie may be the passion and power of their operation, but sagan is the heart and soul. beowulf is like....comic releif and emotional support. not entirely necessary, but certainly welcomed to have around. yeah. listen im a big sap i just want them all to be good friends ok. i love them.

also sagan does like and watch a lot of anime.

Blog Canon

miscellaneous happenings that either have continued relevance/significance, or y'all just won't let die. there's not a overarching plot to this thing at all, but geez we’ve kinda gathered some history here huh?

taught sagan to say fuck [and other swears, in her stead]. he used to have to do it on command but he's gotten really good at filling in for her.has a

stoat fursona that beo helped her make. she thinks it's neat/cute but has no real attachment to it.

attempted to sue the crystal gems for ripping off her entire shtick [it didn't go well]

beowulf also taught her how to dab.

@sparkeletran is a nuisance and must be stopped

the 70$ pile of high school musical merch. sagan and beo both wear the t-shirts sometimes. she hates it. don't let her attitude fool you though this is actually the best and most important ongoing joke in this whole damn thing.

the first handcuffs stint. they’re gone now but they had a good ~30-post run, and she did take to learning lockpicking because of it.

this.

hey. guess fucking what lads. handcuffs ROUND TWO 'cause y'all just don't fuckin' quit. the first mini story arc sorta thing, in which she visits the cirque des cartes and has an aggravting encounter with taliesin. [currently ongoing][hopefully soon ending]

[[redacted for ""spoilers""]] due to said encounter with taliesin

sparkeletran is a nuisance,

"the official annie of the stars instagram is just cat memes but with sagan" it's canon but i haven't decided whether it's something she would have had already or a recent thing. [either way, hasn't been touched on yet due to the arc taking so long]

badart annie is sorta like her own thing at this point but nothing that happens with her is canon; she p much just shows up for exceptionally dumb posts. we did give her noclip though which is terrifying. on that note i may as well include the things that are Not canon but y'all won't let me forget

beo's animated belt thing. look. it doesnt talk.

spray-on boots.

the lawnmower weapon

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh homestuck

#not annieposting

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laryna6 · 7 years

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So I have now written about 8K of HP fic that is basically worldbuilding. I have no idea what to do re. turning this into a fic. I’m like ‘I don’t want to revise and watch a movie to figure out the character voice!’ So have a dump of the draft.

It’s not the Harry grows up and deals with how the treated the Dursleys ‘verse, but an alternate present where the whole Albus/Gellert thing where Gellert didn’t love him but still threw a duel that lost him a war and went to prison for the rest of his life instead of killing Albus with the Elder Wand resolved more sensibly because people were more realistic about the results of a sudden wizard reveal and were like ‘yeah there would need to be PR and our society would need to suck less so the muggles don’t think we suck what do you mean the purebloods want to criminalize homosexuality to get those pureblood wizards breeding and increase our numbers?’ and so you had the Wizarding Sixties instead of a World War-equivalent.

Of course Harry believed in magic. Everyone in England believed in magic.

Of course they did: Merlin was one of the founding heroes of the high kingdom that made England England, the protector of King Arthur. England was protected by magic to this day, like during the Blitz, how bombs kept falling on places that had already been bombed and people somehow survived without a scratch.

Everyone knew that people in hospitals got better around Halloween, to the point the NHS let cancer patients from the rest of the EU come around then, since there usually weren’t that many people that sick in England. It got them a lot of money.

The pagans might believe that it was the spirits of ancestors coming to check up on their descendants during the harvest festival instead of witches on broomsticks, but everyone agreed that either way, it was magic.

There was an old lady across the street, Ms. Figg, with tons of cats, which meant she might be a witch and so everyone was very respectful to her.

Aunt Petunia had lovely witch-themed jewelry that she wore to remember Harry’s mum. She told him and Dudley about his mum in a hushed voice by candlelight, how she was a witch and brewed potions that cured people and had even married a wizard like Merlin. How Harry might grow up to be a wizard and then the Evans would have two witches in the family, and since Dudley’s aunt was a witch he should be proud and needed to get married and give Petunia grandchildren because whether or not he was a wizard, there was magic in his blood and he might be the proud father of another witch.

At this point, they were all pretty sure that Harry was a wizard. Either that or his parents’ spirits were watching out for him, which would be just as good.

The trouble was that wizards were all wise and noble, so Aunt Petunia didn’t let him get away with anything and he had to study more than Dudley, and herbs and stars and stuff too, because there was a wizard school and his Mum had to learn a lot about wizard stuff in a hurry because she hadn’t had the right education growing up and his Aunt didn’t want him to struggle and get looked down on.

Dudley had extra lessons and stuff too, because that was only fair, but he got to learn martial arts and compete in junior league tournaments already. Being a wizard who didn’t know how to do magic yet didn’t get you trophies the way being a little knight did. Harry felt that was hardly fair.

Then the day came that Aunt Petunia had marked on the calendar, and there was a real live owl that let him feed it the fillet mignon Uncle Vernon had bought special. They gave his reply to the owl, and the next day there was another letter asking when they wanted to have a real life witch or wizard come over to tell them things. Aunt Petunia whispered to them that she could tell Harry what he needed to know and take him to get his school things because of his Mum, but did he mind letting Dudley meet a real live witch?

Of course not! This meant Harry got to see one sooner too.

The witch was a wizard, a handsome silver-haired man with a knightly bearing that made Harry and Dudley look at each other thinking, ‘He’s just like Merlin in the story books!’

He knew Aunt Petunia, which instantly made Harry’s aunt ten times cooler, and apologized to her about coming instead of a professor, but they had so many young witches and wizards this year that the professors were swamped visiting people who didn’t have relatives who knew about magic and Albus hadn’t wanted to keep Lily’s family waiting.

He also had the paperwork for Harry to attend wizard summer school so he got to explore the wizard school before actual classes started and learn about how a proper wizard acted. It sounded so much less boring than the class Petunia made them go to to learn the waltz and foxtrot and act like Proper Young Gentlemen with the word wizard attached! Also he got to go there through the fireplace!

And they got to go to the wizard shopping district.

Every town had herb shops and a place where people could buy old-fashioned brooms and cauldrons and books on old-fashioned English cooking, before the Empire when everything became tasteless roast beef that let the French make fun of them. Every ice cream parlor had flavors like Dragon’s Blood and Halloween Pumpkin and Witch’s Brew. Tons of kids had wands for playing magic, and Harry had tried to cast tons of spells he made up with his, hoping something would work.

This place had a wand shop with wands that had sparks come out! And a flying broom store with a broom that had a chain on it for kids to try if they hadn’t gotten to fly on a broom before.

They’d gone to the bank with real goblins first, though, so Uncle Vernon could exchange some money and Aunt Petunia could get the money for Harry’s things out of his trust vault. Then the man they were with apologized, saying he needed to get something and they could wait here or they could ride with him through the caverns and it was wicked.

Getting fitted for wizard robes might have been boring, but they were wizard robes and there was a real wizard in there who guessed that Harry must not have grown up a wizard because Draco knew everyone (and that was the coolest name every) and without Harry getting a word in edgewise said that he was attending the summer school to help set a good example and Harry should come to him if he needed help with proper behavior because it was his family duty to look after the common people. Like a wizard knight, even if he was a bit snooty!

“Ah, Arthur!”

“You asked me to meet you, my lord?”

“No need to be so formal, I’m not wearing that infernal judge’s wig at the moment. Vernon, this is Arthur Weasley. He’s the head of the Non-Magical Artifacts office, and he has a keen interest in non-magical technologies and manufacturing techniques that made him a good pick for the job of studying how to apply magic to them responsibly and keep things like teapots some witch enchanted to pour tea for her old Mum from ending up in the general population and giving someone a heart attack. Arthur, this is Vernon Dursley.”

“I remember you from the wedding!” Arthur said, smiling brightly. “You married Lily’s sister, yes?”

“Yes,” Uncle Vernon said, holding out a hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you then.”

He chuckled. “Don’t worry, I didn’t have eyes for anyone but Molly at my wedding either.”

“Vernon is the head of a drill manufacturing plant.”

“The making of tools used to make tools!” Arthur grinned, practically sparkling. “I’d love to hear about your work.” His face fell. “I wanted to stay in contact with you and Petunia afterwards, but…”

Vernon waved away the apology. “Better safe than sorry dealing with those continental wizards… no offense,” he told the old man quickly.

“No offense taken. Why do you think so many of us came to England?” he rolled his eyes.

“Should I assume that you’re here because of…”

Vernon nodded, but the old man held a finger to his lips and Arthur nodded quickly, looking a little embarrassed. “It is a relief, but I won’t say anything more.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Vernon said, clapping him on the back. “It’s not often someone says they want to hear me talk about my work. Far too many people take drills for granted.”

“No!” Arthur looked shocked.

When they went into the bookshop Vernon and Arthur remained outside with the old wizard to keep chatting about work. Harry caught Dudley rolling his eyes a moment before Petunia said, “Why don’t you two look around for something interesting while I get Harry’s school things. Just remember, Dudley, your book has to be something that it’s alright for you to show our friends.”

“Yes Mom,” he said quickly, before darting a glance at Harry and the two of them dashed for the fiction section, passing a bushy-haired girl their age staring in delight as books flew around her.

“And I’ll take this,” the old wizard said once the clerk was done ringing up Petunia’s purchases. “Here you go, boys,” he said, handling The Tales of Beedle the Bard to Dudley. “Now I believe there’s a knight in at least one of these stories.”

Dudley opened the book and started flipping through it as they walked out of the store, Harry leaning to look over his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you just recommend it to me?” his aunt asked.

“Albus wanted me to pick up something as interest on all those late birthday presents, and he loves that book.”

Most of the adult wizards at the school dressed in black robes, same as the uniform cloak. Except for Hagrid, who wore tough clothes to deal with the invisible animals or everything.

The headmaster wore a cloak all colors of the rainbow and there was a smiley-face and a peace sign button pinned to his hat, so the first time Harry saw him he knew he was a hippie.

There were a lot of them in England, what with Stonehenge and the magical tradition and everything. His parents didn’t quite approve of them, but they made Uncle Vernon’s headache tea and the one kind of yogurt Aunt Petunia liked. Harry quite liked the commune in the town commons because they encouraged them to play with the animals and he’d ridden a horse once (only once: they were big and lots of other kids wanted to have a go).

“I’d love to tell you ‘welcome to Hogwarts!’ But I can’t say that quite yet, you see. You’ll be here on the first day of school: right now we’re smuggling you in so you can get a sneak peak.” He held a finger to his mouth, as though he was telling them to keep a secret. “This first week, you’ll be assigned to groups with professors showing you around and filling you in on whatever they think is good for you to know before you come to class. After that, in the mornings you’ll have lessons and after lunch you’ll be able to pick who to go with. Ms. Price will escort a group to the library every day; Hagrid will be taking you to explore more of the grounds; Argus will be teaching you how to navigate the school; and Professors Sprout and Snape will be available to take you to the greenhouses and potions lab to work with you to make sure you know how to stay safe around magical plants and potions. I highly encourage everyone to go with each of those groups at least once. It’s very easy to get turned around when the moving stairs turn around, you see.”

Harry didn’t want to be late for class when it was magic class.

“Professor Lupin, Madam Hooch and the other professors will also be taking groups some days: they’ll let you know their schedules. We may also have some mysterious guests!”

“Alright everyone, time to put on your blindfolds,” said Hagrid. “They’re all on? Here we go.” He rang a gong, the sound reverberating in the huge stone chamber. A door grated open, and Harry heard something moving closer. “Now, this ‘ere is Slytherin’s basilisk, the protector of Hogwarts.”

“Even more tiny wizards than last year,” the snake hissed, sounding pleased. “My hatchlings must be having large, healthy clutches.”

“Who wants to feed her?” Hagrid asked, sounding excited.

Harry thrust his hand up in the air before realizing that Hagrid couldn’t see him. “Me, sir!”

“Ah, Harry!” Hagrid said cheerfully. “Reminded me of your dad, you did. Come over towards me, and I’ll hand you a hunk of venison.” Harry did, and Hagrid turned him around afterwards and pushed at his back. “Walk a bit closer to her, and hold it up in the air. This’ll give her a chance to smell you too, so she knows you’re one o’ hers.”

Harry did, and stopped when he felt cool air on his face.

“A Potter,” the snake said thoughtfully.

“Yes, my name’s Harry Potter,” he told her.

“You can speak a civilized tongue, child?”

“I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t know what you mean.”

She hissed softly, thoughtfully. “I smell a bit of Salazar’s magic on you, but not his blood. Curious.” The venison was lifted from his hands, and he heard her gulping it down. “Come visit me again, hatchling.”

“You can understand her when she talks?” Hagrid asked.

“Yes? She wants me to visit her again. I understood a python at the zoo once too. Is that weird?” Harry asked him, as some of the kids behind him began to whisper.

“It’s a rare gift, that is. One of the founders of Hogwarts had it, it’s how he was able to tell a basilisk to protect the school. Raised her himself, ol’ Salazar did. Didn’t care a bit about how dangerous she was,” Hagrid said proudly. “But you’ll hear more about the founders in History. Right, now back up Harry, time for someone else to get the chance to introduce themselves.”

Harry wasn’t the first, second or even the third student called up by the Deputy Headmistress during lunch. According to Ron, she was telling everyone about Career options they might not have thought of, so they had some idea of the variety of things and how to figure out what they might want to study a few years later when they could choose electives.

So he followed her out of the great hall, and down the staircase that appeared after she said, “Sweet Tarts” to a stone gargoyle.

“Harry!” the handsome old wizard said cheerfully, waving by a chair next to the Headmaster’s desk, where Albus sat twinkling at them.

“Now,” Albus said once the door shut behind Minerva, “You’ve probably heard a bit about what happened when you were a baby.” He gave Harry a regretful look. “Gellert thought it might be best for us to sit down and have a talk with you about it, so you weren’t relying on hearsay.”

“Hermione read me the stuff in the history books, although Draco said a lot of that’s rubbish,” but even though Harry had heard about it from them, he still moved forward trying to hide how eager was to sit at the chair in front of the Headmaster. He wanted to hear more about his parents.

“Well…” Albus started.

“Yes,” Gellert interrupted. “The textbook-makers want to sell to the American wizards, who don’t allow enchanted printing presses because they’re no-maj technology, but also refuse to teach children history that urges contact with non-wizards. The real historians are gathering interviews and documents but don’t want to write about the war until enough time has passed to be able to analyze its effect on society, and the people who have written firsthand accounts don’t want to publish them until they can give those who fought beside them credit by name without inviting their assassination. So even a witch as bright as Hermione who doesn’t have family who fought in the war she can ask as Draco does is stuck with English Wizarding History books that give it a brief half-chapter summary at best.”

“That rather sums it up,” Minerva agreed, looking disapproving at the state of things for a moment. “Gentlemen, if I may?”

“Of course, Minerva.” Albus nodded his head. “It’s yours to dispose of.”

“Mr. Potter, stand up.”

Harry Potter stood up straight quickly. “Yes, Professor.”

She took out a piece of fabric and swirled it around his shoulders. “Wicked,” Harry breathed when he realized he could see through it.

“Mr. Potter, what I have just given you is an invisibility cloak. The invisibility cloak. It was given to me by your father so that in the event of his death it would find its way to me and could be used to rescue you, if it came to that. Now it is yours. It has been passed down in your family from the time when the Potters were the Peverells.”

“The Peverells?” Harry asked, pulling the cloak off his head so that she could see him looking at her.

“Like in the book I brought you,” Gellert agreed. “It was a project of mine and Albus’ when we first met, to track down the Deathly Hallows.” He held up his wand, and the headmaster held up his hand. On the same finger as Aunt Petunia’s engagement ring was a ring with a large black stone. “Unfortunately, we made enough noise while looking for them that others began to take their existence more seriously.”

“The magic within them is unique and very tied to karma,” Albus went on. “Killing and injuring others builds up negative karma, until fate is so tilted against the bearer of the Elder Wand that no matter how hard he tried to hold on to it, it will be taken from him and he will die by the sword he wielded. Commanding the souls of the dead to appear without thinking of their welfare is disrespectful at best, often cruel. The third brother could have used the cloak for foul purposes, but instead he only used it to prolong his life, and in the end sacrificed it and his life for the sake of his child.”

“In other words, boy, use that cloak to harm someone instead of protect them and,” Gellert mimed slitting his throat. “But, your father gave it to Minerva hoping that would save your life, and it may very well have. I myself would probably be dead by now if this thing and Albus hadn’t force me to consider my actions very carefully.”

“What do you mean about my father?” Harry asked.

“The cloak is the least dark of the three Hallows by far, and that may be because generations of Potters have given up its power for the sake of their children,” Minerva told him. “It was too reckless to give something like this to an infant, when you would die if no one could find you to feed you or take care of you, so your mother helped him create a ritual to give the cloak to me as your proxy, until you were old enough to begin to exert some control over your magic.”

“How would that save my life?”

Minerva looked at the two men. “I’m afraid that groundless theorizing isn’t my field.”

Albus smiled. “Minerva’s wonderfully practical,” he agreed. “Gellert and I each have a theory: it could be either, but most likely both factors were at work.”

“The Dark Lord of Running Away from Death tried to cast a magic that works by seeking the soul and binding it to death on the child of a family whose magic has been entwined for generations with a magical artifact that conceals them from death itself. When he cast Avada Kedavra on you, the spell might have worked perfectly well, but death simply wasn’t able to take you. That’s an oversimplification,” Gellert said, flicking his fingers. “I can lead you through the logic once you’ve taken some arithmancy and Ancient Runes. The correspondences give you a very solid advantage over his magic.”

“Another possibility is that by giving up the cloak, and by laying down her life to protect you, both of your parents gave up their lives so that you could live and be safe, Harry,” Albus told him gently. “Love is one of few powers stronger than death, and the mystical correspondence to the passing of the cloak could have channeled that power in a way that let them save you.”

“You’re saying it like… why would he kill them to get to me?” He was just a baby, when his mother was a brilliant witch and his father a brave wizard.

“There was a prophecy that could have applied to any number of children, but only two of them were born to one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families. He likely chose you as his nemesis because you were a half-blood: your mother was born among non-wizards.”

“Lord Coward is also a halfblood,” Gellert said, rolling his eyes. “And that muggle who took over Germany had neither blond hair nor blue eyes. It says something about how brain-dead racial supremacists are, that they fail to realize they’re proposing pogroms that would put their own heads on the chopping block.”

Albus paused. “I’m not sure if I should let that insult slide because you’re insulting him, or scold you for using a slur in a way that implies that everyone who isn’t a wizard is like him.”

Gellert winced. “Sorry, dear.”

“We’ve been having this conversation for decades. You are a role model, you know. Don’t encourage people to act the ways you find so idiotic and then complain about how those attitudes would have been stamped out already if other wizards weren’t such fools.”

“Yes, that is the problem with being geniuses like us. The mind is the ultimate weapon, and the sharper it is the more damage you do if you cut yourself,” Gellert said, tapping his fingers together thoughtfully.

“In any case, Mr. Potter,” Minerva said, a slight crease between her eyebrows indicating her annoyance. “You survived the Killing Curse that has been certain death since the time of the Ancient Greeks, and the backlash somehow took down a wizard with a level of power only seen a handful of times in a century; the charisma to convince some deluded old fools that he could get their heirs to come back into line; the intelligence to puzzle out the darkest of magics and the complete lack of not just principle but sense required to split his soul into fragments.”

“Voldemort is not dead, I’m afraid,” Albus said, and it was the first time Harry had heard anyone just come out and say his name. “He fled to the continent, to one of the many conservative wizards there. Almost three quarters of a century ago now, Gellert and I led progressive movements in Britain and Eastern Europe. The young wizards and witches who joined us in working towards ending the abuse of people who couldn’t defend themselves against magic and eventually having open and honest relations with our neighbors have grandchildren now, but wizarding folk can live a very long time.”

“And some children saw advantage in currying the favor of their parents by being outspoken about their desire to pick on people not their own size, or wanted to keep buying into an ideology that told them that they were born superior, even though that meant they never had truly had the chance to become great on their own merit, if it was simply what was expected of them.”

“England has advanced so far that I’ve had the pleasure of my students pointing out that sometimes I myself fail to do a good enough job of defying the way I was brought up,” Albus said, sparkling. “But we managed to escape some of the Continent’s social problems thanks to Helga Hufflepuff. Classism in Wizarding Britain is far less entrenched, partially because the pureblood mania caused even the most ‘common’ families to be desirable marriage partners. Treating wizards as worth less than other wizards makes it harder to get people to stop treating non-wizards as worth less than wizards. Those poor people who grow up thinking they’re near the bottom of the social ladder can feel like they’re losing power if the rung below them is no longer below them, instead of seeing it as destroying the system that keeps them down as well.”

“Wonderful woman, Helga Hufflepuff,” Gellert said, smirking. “Clever, evil, effective woman. If she was alive I might leave you for her, Albus.”

The headmaster propped his chin on his hand, looking thoughtful but with one side of his mouth turned up in a smile. “Yes, that would be understandable,” he agreed.

“Gentlemen, the boy is eleven.” Minerva folded her arms.

“No flirting in front of the children, Minerva?” Albus raised an eyebrow in slight surprise.

“When have I ever said that?” She demanded. “Keep flirting in front of the children, how are they supposed to learn how to make a marriage work for a century or more without examples? Stop turning this into another discussion about your social movement, Gellert, and let Albus simplify it for Harry.”

“Lord Voldemort still exists, although he is no longer alive and much reduced in power. Your mother’s family’s love for you kept you safe and hidden when you were younger, Harry, but you are now at the age where your magic is shifting over from devoting all its power to protecting you to giving you conscious command over it and no longer acting on its own. That will make you increasingly vulnerable until you learn how to protect yourself. Because it was built to shepard children through those years, Hogwarts is the safest place in all of Britain, and Gellert will also be staying here as much as possible and commuting to handle both his duties and some of mine that aren’t related to Hogwarts so you have one more protector.”

“Oh?” Gellert asked, when Harry frowned, puzzled.

“Hagrid said that too, that Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain. Wouldn’t it be the bank?” Not that Harry wanted to be locked up in a bank vault.

Gellert and Professor McGonagall chuckled. “You’re a sharp little one, wondering what’s so safe about this place and its death forest, greenhouses and pens full of things that will kill you and Rowena Ravenclaw’s attack staircases.” Gellert smirked.

“Accidental magic is also known as subconscious magic, while spellcasting is conscious magic,” Professor McGonagall explained. “Having magical threats nearby keeps subconscious magic from slacking off, so it will keep protecting you as long as possible. In addition to that, when a young witch first encounters a danger, it’s normal for her to freeze or panic. When she encounters the same danger a second time, however, she’ll know it’s possible for her to handle the matter, so she won’t have to wrestle her emotions into submission before she can deal with the problem. Experiencing dangers for the first time while still protected by strong subconscious magic allows children to learn to handle them with confidence. Your parents were Gryffindors, Mr. Potter. By the time they graduated, they had the composure of veterans, able to fight without a second’s warning or hesitation even in the face of a Dark Lord.”

“Right now you could jump off a cliff and while your subconscious might allow you to get banged up a bit to teach you not to do that again, you would not suffer any permanent damage,” Gellert said, shrugging. “The Coward Lord used Avada Kedavra on you because it takes magic that strong to kill a baby wizard.”

“Young wizards are very like dragons,” Albus agreed. “Dragons are very resistant to spells even though they can’t cast any of their own, because all their magic goes into keeping them safe from their own magical fire and allowing them to fly. It takes so much magic to overcome that resistance that even the strongest spells are weak enough they’re nothing but nuisances by the time they penetrate a dragon’s skin. It takes very powerful magic to permanently harm a wizarding child even as old as thirteen. During the school year, Hogwarts is the safest place in Britain because in addition to the wards and the Founder’s other precautions, in addition to the professors, myself and Gellert, there are also five hundred wizarding children thirteen and younger under this roof, their powers constantly working to make this place safe for them.”

“That protection goes away during the age of fourteen for most purposes, but it’s not until fifteen that a witch can hurt herself with her own magic, or her magic can be turned against her.”

“There is a condition where a young wizard’s magic can turn against them,” Gellert added. “It will lash out at things around them, but it can’t actually hurt them until they turn ten or eleven and the first loose fragments of their magic are no longer incapable of harming them. Not that this applies to anyone in Britain,” he added when Minerva glared at him for going off-topic.

“As soon as the school year starts, you’ll be taking Defense with Professor Lupin. Who, it just so happens, knew your father.” Albus smiled. “By the time you reach fourteen, even outside Hogwarts and your step-parents’ home, you should be able to protect yourself until an adult can reach you. According to the prophecy, just by existing you severely weaken Voldemort, so hopefully the aurors will be able to deal with him well before you graduate.”

“What if I don’t want someone else to deal with him?” Harry wanted to know.

Gellert and Minerva looked at each other. “Gryffindor,” Gellert said, smirking. Minerva just loosened her reserve enough to allow a flicker of a smirk.

“I mean, there is a prophecy, right?” Harry added sheepishly. “If I’m supposed to defeat him, then wouldn’t people just get killed if they try to fight him instead of me?”

“Look where paying too much attention to prophecies got Lord Vol de Morte,” Gellert pointed out. “Not that I know where he is right now, or I’d be there instead of here…”

“I promise that I’ll discuss the prophecy with you after your fifth year,” the headmaster told him. “If matters haven’t been resolved by that point, that’s when we will no longer be able to guarantee your protection, and if you take divination you’ll be able to interpret the prophecy yourself. Gellert is right that reacting without thinking right after hearing a prophecy tends to lead to the worst interpretation coming true. Try to avert a prophecy and you’re opposed by very powerful magic. If you accept fate and work to fulfill the prophecy in the way that best suits you, then it’s possible to harness that magic.”

“He will not get away with what he did to your parents, Harry,” Minerva said coldly. “We can promise you that, even if I’m afraid that if you want him to die by your hand, you’ll have to get in line.”

On Wednesday of the next week, the children were divided into two. Harry was in the same group as Hermione, but Ron and Neville were in the other group.

They were led to a classroom with “History of Magic” on one blackboard and “Muggle Studies” on the other.

After they sat, Gellert followed them in.

“Hello, children,” he told them. “I’m sure you’ve figured out that we divided you into the children raised only in the wizarding world, and those of you have either split your lives between the two worlds, were raised entirely unaware of magic or fall somewhere between the two. My name is Professor Emeritus Gellert Grindelwald.” He paused to write it, half on each blackboard, “And because I’m the headmaster’s husband I have this opportunity to expose you to what many conservative wizards consider propaganda.” He smirked at them as though he was playing a trick on people who deserved it and he was giving them a chance to be in on it.

“As muggle technology increases, wizards throughout the world have been separating themselves and their lives more and more from those without magic. This can be seen in how history at Hogwarts was divided into History of Magic, a required course, and Muggle Studies, an elective.” He underlined that title. “The history of 99.9 percent of the human race and it was an elective, despite the fact that wizarding history makes very little sense and is very boring outside of the broader picture of what was happening worldwide. When historians began to look at the two together, it was amazing how many of the great questions of Wizarding history suddenly had obvious answers.

“Separation breeds fear. It breeds ignorance, and we fear what we do not understand. When we are afraid, it becomes natural either hide ourselves away, or try to convince ourselves that the other is weak and easily subdued… which is then ‘proven’ in ways that anger the other party. It is not possible for wizards to hide forever. This last century has seen unprecedented innovation in all aspects of magic, thanks to geniuses like myself and Albus and the hard work of people like Dr. Newt Scamander and Hogwarts’ own Professor Sprout. It’ll be confirming my hard-earned reputation for arrogance when I say that people like these,” he pointed at the names he’d written down, “are one in a thousand.” He looked across the room. “How many ‘one in a thousand’ innovators are there in six billion people? The rate of progress among muggles has always outstripped the development of the magical world by far. They simply have more people than we do, and now that they’re educating more women and not leaving potential geniuses untaught because they were born into the wrong race and class, they’re going to be able to take more and more advantage of the wealth of talent they possess.

“Eventually,” he said, beginning to pace across the room, “Muggle technology will progress to a point where they will be able to find us and do much of what we wizards can do. Many wizards see this as the end of our world. It is not. It is the only way our world can survive. If a muggle can levitate a book with a device,” the teacher said, lifting Hermione’s copy of Hogwarts, A History with a wave of his hand, “then why should they care that some people are born able to do it? Rather, they will care, but not because they find witches and wizards terrifying. Because magic is fascinating, and the desire to discover is the best part of human nature. At that point, we will have access to the muggle talent pool, and be able to explore frontiers of magic yet undreamed of. I truly hope I live to see that day.”

He looked out at them. “Previous generations in this very country hated and feared magic. Is there anyone in this room who didn’t wish at some point in their life that they could grow up to be a wizard or witch?”

No hands were raised.

“You children are a vitally important part of the future of magic. Someday, you and your families will be the bridge that connects the two worlds. That helps give non-magic hospitals regular access to magical medicine and healers access to muggle science and research techniques to improve treatments. But I’d rather tell you now so that it doesn’t come as a surprise later: some adults are not very bright.”

Muffled laughter from somewhere in the room.

“A great many wizards are terrified of muggles finding out we exist, despite the fact that muggles do know we exist. The Ministry of Magic is in contact with the British Government, and is… in an odd legal situation, something like a Commonwealth nation, because your wizarding nation’s charter was drawn up by Arthur and Merlin and a great many later parts of the common law and Magna Carta don’t apply to you. To the kind of people who are terrified of muggles and yet at the same time convinced that they can play tricks on Muggles without consequence, the very existence of people like you is a danger to the wizarding world. Even Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders, thought Hogwarts taking on muggle-born students was hazardous – although please, don’t let that prejudice you against Slytherin House. You’ll be covering this early in History, but Slytherin felt that way at the time for historical reasons that don’t apply to the modern world.

“Wizarding Britain has been on the forefront of setting up the groundwork for open contact between our two worlds for decades. Around the time you were born, we fought a war to save our future. Your future.

“You’ll hear the time between the two World Wars referred to as the Wizarding Sixties. The first World War made a lot of wizards start to realize that muggles could be a threat to us, and the resulting reactionary nonsense was ‘a total drag.’ We young people had our liberties vastly restricted, and it was hardest on people who didn’t want to marry and start producing children at absurdly young ages – before that time traditional wizards did not have children before the age of forty, when they were certain their powers were firmly under control. The fad of couples having children in their twenties left a great many pureblood women unable to ever have a second child.

“All this interest in bloodlines led to the discovery of the Gaunt family, descendents of Salazar Slytherin, who was claimed by the pureblood supremacists as an ideological forebear despite the number of half-bloods and muggleborns who have been sorted into Slythering over the centuries.” He rolled his eyes. “Because of their rampant inbreeding, the father and son were practically squibs, and the daughter had been kept from attending Hogwarts – her father lied and told her that she was a squib to keep her from questioning this – and… Albus will make me sleep on the couch if I go into too much detail on Merope’s childhood. Being swept off her feet, taken to London, given decent clothing and promised remedial instruction in magic should have been the happiest day of her life… except that she had fallen in love with a local muggle, Tom Riddle, who already had a girlfriend and she did not wish to marry.

“Her protector seemed to accept this, and she was allowed to mingle with Wizarding Society until hopefully she got over her broken heart and found someone… And then it seemed as though she did.

“None of us realized that she was being given love potion.

“When the child was almost born, the father became so convinced that his bride had to love him, in all his pureblood glory, that he finally gave in to the family healer’s frantic begging and took her off the love potion. She seemed willing to stay, and it seemed as though he would have his perfect heir…

“But poor Merope grew up in an abusive home. She knew how to hide her true feelings from her captor, and she now knew that there was a world outside the door and friends who would help her. She’d been taught a number of useful charms by fellow witches in case her father and brother ever were let ouf of Azkaban and came after her. She was able to escape.

“Unfortunately, the stress of her escape and exhaustion of her crippled magic triggered premature labor, and in her pain and exhaustion she somehow ended up taken to a Muggle orphanage to give birth, where she perished, but not before naming the child after the man she’d wanted for his father.

“Tom Riddle was found eleven years later, when his Hogwarts letter came. Growing up a poor orphan, he responded to the overtures of his father and returned to the bosom of that family.

“Then after graduating Hogwarts he killed them all. Which, understandable.” Grindlewald shrugged. “However, it wasn’t out of a son’s love for his mother. His conception under love potion left him incapable of love. This is not the same thing as someone who will never fall in love – I myself am aromantic and that hasn’t kept me from having a close relationship with someone I hold very dear. My heart has never fluttered. I have never dreamed of kissing anyone in the moonlight. But I could be emperor of the world, and I would throw the crown in a midden to keep my husband safe. Love is one of the fundamental forces of magic. I don’t really have the sense for it, that’s more my husband’s field – blasted hippie,” he said affectionately, “But Albus sees the good in everyone and when he went to speak with the boy to tell him he was a Hogwarts student his skin was crawling the entire time. At the time, I thought it was hilarious – I wrote him back asking if this meant that he understood now that he shouldn’t be so sympathetic to everyone and would stop telling me to have mercy on people who didn’t deserve it – but I was in Europe and didn’t meet the boy until he was a man and we were on opposite sides of a battlefield.

“Lord Voldemort, ‘the flight from death,’ and his supporters will tell you that he fights to restore ‘pureblooded’ wizardkind to their ‘rightful place of supremacy.’ He lies,” Grindelwand stated firmly, sweeping his gaze across the room.

“If he fights a muggle-born like you and a pureblood like me, he’ll be trying to kill me, not you. Pureblood witches and wizards among his forces die or go mad in ways that utterly disgraces them and the family name. He’s wiped out more pureblood families than the muggles ever have. If it weren’t for wizards and witches like you, Wizarding Britain would have a tenth the numbers it did when Albus was born, if that. The current lords Black and Malfoy call muggle-born women Mother and give them the same honor as their blood mothers because dwindling numbers made their parents attempt pregnancy at so young an age that they became incapable of carrying children to term, and if they hadn’t been able to find skilled witches willing to be surrogate mothers and adopted them into the family so their magics became compatible with the childrens’ magics – which was only possible because those witches were not tied to any family magics of their own – the titles would have gone to collateral branches so distant they don’t even bear the names Black or Malfoy.

“If it weren’t for children like you, the wizards of Britain would be near extinction.” Once again he swept the room, meeting all of their eyes. “Remember this. Do not allow anyone to look down on you, or tell you that you do not belong here. You do not need us. You have places in the muggle world. We need you. Magic itself needs you.”

“Wizarding Britain thrives despite Voldemort while Africa, the birthplace of humanity and human magic, stagnates, Wizarding America curls up in a terrified ball and Europe treads water because of you. Each and every one of you is a savior of the Wizarding World.”

Savior of the Wizarding World. Harry had heard himself called that, but somehow it made him sit a little straighter seeing the man meet everyone else’s eyes. Like Harry sat among a whole hall full of heroes.

Like he was never alone and never ever could be.

“Dumbledore and Grindelwald addressed Slytherin’s concern about muggle-born instead of ignoring it like Griffindor did,” Draco was saying when they got back to the common room, from where he sat perched on one of the tables like a king on a throne. “These days, muggles treat wizards with the proper respect and you don’t have to call the obliviators over every little thing. My sisters can invite girls from the muggle town as well as the estate for their tea parties and I don’t have to play with them.”

“Yeah, shut it,” a black boy who also looked like an Italian said lazily. “You know how many husbands my mother has had, and I’m an only child. They keep exhausting themselves trying to have proper pureblood children like they’ll do as they’re told when the first batch of kids didn’t,” he rolled his eyes, “when they could just find a muggleborn surrogate instead of divorcing their wives and losing half the family estate in the process.”

Draco nodded, rolling his eyes. “Blaise is right. Mother said Madam Zabini is doing a public service, fleecing those continentals. Not that she’s cheating anyone,” he said quickly when Blaise raised an eyebrow. “It’s not your mother’s fault they’re fools and their wives should get to enjoy being out in society instead of shackled to someone who thinks they’re replaceable like that. My grandfathers didn’t divorce their wives: they had standards. And what would it matter if they actually did marry a muggle-born? The Malfoy family line goes back centuries. I could marry a hundred muggles, and it wouldn’t make my children any less noble. Keep implying that it’s possible to make Malfoy blood impure, and I’ll be telling my father.”

“And along this hall is the White Lady’s room,” Argus told them. “Walk up and down the corridor three times thinking that you want to see her – I’ll only demonstrate for you once!” He did so, and then a door appeared.

He used the bumblebee doorknocker and a voice called, “Come in!”

Argus opened the door and waved the children in.

Harry blinked, and blinked again. “Feels weird,” Ron said, rubbing his upper arms.

“I’m afraid that’s on my account,” said a white-haired woman sitting by the fire, on a couch next to a ghost. She smiled at them apologetically. “My magic’s a little messed up, so the room creates magical flows that untangle it for me.” She smiled at them, exactly like a grandmother. “Why don’t you children come and sit down? I always love to have visitors.”

Draco stood in front of her and bowed. “Ariana Dumbledore? My name’s Draco Malfoy.”

“Look at you!” She looked delighted, and Harry could see the resemblance to Albus in the sparkles. “You’re the spitting image of your father. And… hmm.” She laughed brightly. “You’re certainly a Black, but for some reason you remind me of Nymphadora instead of Narcissa…”

Draco brightened.

“They’re going to keep mistaking you for a half-veela when you grow up, aren’t they you handsome young man?”

“I’m too old to be a metamorphmagus,” he said, but “Do you think…”

“I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to became an animagus, if the shape-shifting power is that close to the surface. Isn’t Nymphadora a delight?”

“I know! My Mother thought the power had gone out of the family, and then it shows up in a half-blood? Father thinks that the Blacks are like the Malfoys, with so many alliance marriages that we have a half-dozen family magics and some of them suppress each other.” Then he blushed. “Sorry, Lady Ariana.”

“No, no! It’s wonderful to hear a young man being so enthusiastic about my little theories on the preservation and health of inborn magics! I was so embarrassed when that reprobate Gellert went and had my thesis published without even telling me, but it’s so worth it to see a talent like Nymphadora’s come back into the world.”

“Harry’s a parseltongue!”

Ariana held her hand over her mouth and gasped with delight. “No!” Draco simply had to be teasing her.

“Harry, come over here! Oh, forgive me Lady Ariana. These are Crabbe and Goyle, my liegemen, Hermione – she’s a genius – and the sixth Weasley.” AKA ‘you poor bastard, I have three younger sisters, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have six of them, and most of them older. At least you can get away from younger ones.’

The way those two talked about their huge families made more sense to Harry now after hearing about Voldemort and what happened to the purebloods. Half ‘it’s such a pain and imposition’ and half bragging about how their families were huge and would totally kick your ass. Although maybe Harry kind of got that, when he’d never worried about bullies because Dudley could kick everyone’s ass.

-“Lemon drop?” After Harry nodded and took one, Albus chuckled. “Yes, Gellert has that effect on people. When we were teenagers he was thinking of leading an army. I thought he was so impressive at that age… then he moved into my house so we could work on research together and I could still look after Ariana and he would never pick his clothes up off the floor or do the dishes.” He smiled nostalgically. “I finally understood why Aberforth – my brother – wanted to strangle him so much. I got over my starry-eyed infatuation and realized that Gellert – while I love him dearly – is a bit of a jerk. I found myself wondering ‘do I treat people like that?’ and honestly I did, I was overly impressed with my intelligence when I was younger, and was so horrified I started making an effort to be a better person. There’s a movie one of my students gave me with a giant magical rabbit that contains the line ‘I have tried being bright, and I have tried being pleasant.’ I do find that being kind is a genius all its own.”

But because England had a lot of power, PR changes there could get distributed throughout the world… Around three-quarters of a century later, England’s Ministry has been only technically not violating the International Statute of Secrecy for so long that the other countries think that England is the place it’s least likely for a breach to occur, because the native people think magic is something that happens all the time, so no reason to put it in the papers, and the other muggle countries think England just has a thing for magic and folklore and keeps making up urban legends.

Gellert was able to sell his ideas to a lot of the younger generation in Germany but was resisted by the traditionalists. He proposed using England as a test case, so a lot of continental wizards decamped to England until the older ones were out of the way and got a taste of doing the healings and being considered heroes by a local mythos more focused on Merlin than Baba Yaga.

He was at Durmstang for a bit, but while he considers children less stubborn and immature than adults (less set in their ways, easier to nudge to be logical/think his way), he got lonely for intelligent conversation.

He’s active in political and social circles and has some of Albus’ canon political posts, or serves as Albus’ deputy in posts where the actual title has to go to a British wizard. He’s allowed to sub for Albus even where that’s irregular because of course being Hogwarts Headmaster takes priority. While he’s trying to stick close to Hogwarts, the European social movement is in the hands of Hufflepuffs and adopted Hufflepuffs. Helga is an icon among European lower-class wizards and reformists. So I supposed Gellert does have an army in the AU, it’s just Hufflepuffs. Which is more terrifying.

It was their experiences with the Elder Wand that made them go ‘yeah how about no’ to completing the set, because the magic is very clearly malicious and Gellert thinks that traps should be sprung by someone who is not him but on the other hand he doesn’t want someone not him or Albus getting the power if they survive, while Albus has the job of vetoing things involving innocent people.

#all of the fanfic #harry cannoneer

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yaldev · 4 years

Text

300 stories! In this thread: celebration, circumstantial updates, project statistics and story plans going forward!

CELEBRATION:

yay me, i hit the arbitrary multiple of one hundred which is itself only relevant due to our base-10 number system, WHOOP DE DOO

Alright, celebration over. No need to rest on my laurels.

On a non-shitpost note, it often feels hard for me to take pride in my own accomplishments when I hold myself to the standards of the people I admire, who had typically accomplished more literary by my age than I have. Then again, they live in different circumstances than I do.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL UPDATES:

I'm not particularly proud of rate of progress in this place, but I also have to give myself some credit. A shitty breakup some months back with someone who involved herself pretty crucially in this project made Yaldev feel poisoned for a considerable length of time after, and I had to work through my inner storm until the creative muse would return. University's been eating a lot of my time and energy, delaying both that endeavour and Yaldev itself after it was finished. None of this made better by my shitty time-management skills and tendency to spend entire free evenings doing shit I don't even really enjoy. But of course that can't stop me. The kind of person I want to be wouldn't let any of this stop them.

Speaking of university, I've been heavily informed by a literature class I've been taking on science fiction. It's lead to me treating that aspect as something different from a mere aesthetic, fantasy with a coat of fancy paint, but something separate and defined by its own qualities. It's also forced me to do more reading of the genre and come to an understanding of some of its strengths (worldbuilding, creativity through restrictions, aesthetic potential, power in commenting on the present using the future as a device) and weaknesses (worldbuilding, restrictions on creativity, relatability, failing to make the damn characters/plot/prose interesting). In other words, if you notice me treating more scientific aspects of Yaldev differently in future writing, it's probably a result of what I've been learning here.

Above all, the single most important lesson: "bro fantasy writers are just too stupid to write SF bro,, they have arts degrees instead of STEM degrees like SF writers so they're really just intellectual inferiors, you have to have a very high IQ to understand r-"

I'm also not putting too much pressure on myself to go faster specifically because I'm still learning. When I sit down to write a post more historical in nature, it helps if I've done so after learning some more history. Same goes for economics, mythology, science, anything really. I'm still young and I have no doubt that I'll be looking back at much of what I've written and utterly cringe at my ignorance in several fields. To my future self who inevitably does so: I was self-aware of my lack of expertise, I did what I could with the knowledge I had, I frequently broke away from using this knowledge to create total realism in favour of pursuing my creative vision at the time, and I had to write a lot of bad stuff before I was ready to make anything good. So shut up you endlessly self-critical bastard.

COVID outbreak has prompted the cancellation of all classes for the rest of this term. I'll still be having to work on final papers and such, but Yaldev productivity will probably jump up a bit more.

I will be throwing some Yaldev ads out there soon, most likely candidates being Reddit and/or Facebook. If you've arrived here from one of said ads, welcome! Sorry for interrupting you, I was just really excited to show you my stories!

STATISTICS:

This is the fun part, lads! Get ready for some stats and some commentary!

Total Stories: 300

As should be obvious, all numbers are only for the point at which I'm writing this post.

Project Age: 1124 Days

Damn, oldie.

How Long You Have to Wait, on Average, For the Next Post: Approximately 3.75 Days

Yeah, it's nowhere near Beeple's output. Sorry to say that my muse isn't always in this place. I do write something creative every day but it's usually not something that works as canon in here. On that note, I do highly recommend that whatever your creative hobby is, do something every day to practice it, even if it's not much or not for long. You have to keep that part of your brain constantly active to maintain your present skill and remain in a state where you can improve with time.

This number would be lower if not for some of my longer hiatuses. I hope to eventually bring that down to 3.5, for an average of two posts per week across the project's history.

Readers Across All Platforms: 412 (58 on Facebook, 129 on Instagram, 119 on Reddit, 106 on Tumblr)

Howdy y'all! Thanks for being here and reading my steadily-improving crap. I really struggle with talking about my creative projects in real life, including Yaldev, primarily out of a self-trained instinct to shut myself up about it on the understanding that nobody cares - especially not other creative types, since we're all too invested in our own creation to pay much heed to others. I've been trying to overcome that, and you're helping me just by being here to read. That tells me there's potential in this and that it's something that at least some people genuinely want to see. Artists shouldn't attach their sense of self to their creations, but I can't help but feel validated through that.

At the same time, I do often fear that mine is the sort of content that just gets a like tossed at it for the pretty visuals on the way down the endless content scroll, without having made a real impression on anyone or created a lasting memorry. I'll probably always have that worry, which comes as much from a disdain for general Internet culture as anything else. (I say that as someone quite embedded in and familiar with it; at some point you just get tired of it all.)

Stories Per Reader: Approximately 0.73

Makes it sound like a pretty good growth rate, if on average I'm getting one (and sometimes more) new follower per story. I guess "good growth rate" is somewhat subjective and depends on your goal, but for me, having a tangible unit of increase for each at all feels good.

For word counts, all of them include post titles.

Shortest Story: Caged Light (26)

Unsurprisingly, the shortest posts in general are the ones that are excerpts of stylistic machine language. The runner-up is Titanium Hearts, at 32.

Longest Story: Steelflakes (2024)

That's right, the longest Yaldev story is this piece I revised over and over, and which basically nobody read! :^)

The runner-up is Meeting with the Oracle, at 2014.

Total Word Count: 68,689

That's within the realm of a standard novel, but fantasy novels tend to be about 100k words. We just might get there, lads!

Average Story Length: Approximately 229 words

Yep, makes sense. Over time I've come to realize that shorter is (generally) best given the attention span of most social media users. I think 200-250 words is solid, but of course there'll be deviations from that.

STORY PLANS GOING FORWARD:

It somewhat stresses me out how many "unfinished plots" there are. I'm mostly concerned about the fate of Dread Fighter Tarle, Decadin's death, the campaign of Commander Bruzek, Aran's life situation, the fall of the capital city, and most of all the journeys of Inzohm and the Lone Traveller. The last two are especially concerning because they're the only ones where I feel somewhat lost on where to go with it, and since it's literally the chronological end there's a lot of pressure to make it good and let it end with a good impression. That said, I'm not going to force early development for any of these. Sometimes it's a matter of having to wait for good art to come up. This may have to be awhile, since it took awhile for Beeple to start including humans in his art.

It's theoretically possible that some things still aren't tied up by the project's end, in which case I'll do something short and likely artless just to give them a resolution.

When I get to Beeple's later art I plan to be putting more focus on individual cities across Yaldev with it, shining a stronger light on Ascendant culture, and its regional variants based on the remnants of cultures it overran. I'd also like to do more pre-civilization loredumps, about the chaotic landscapes and natural phenomena of early Yaldev in the days before humans tilled the land and dammed the Aether.

Regarding visual consistency: expect variance. Some things in different pieces of art look close enough to each other to be the same object in the narrative, but still have some differences in colour or details that make them non-identical. As the biggest example, most giant disks will be interpreted as the Aether Suppressor even though not all of them will be made of purple crystal with segmenting black lines like the first post depicting it did.

Thanks for being here. What I always wanted as a kid was for other people to be as excited about my worldbuilding as I was, and while I doubt I've hit that extent, I hope my work's had some impact on you.

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thoughtfulcupcakesublime · 4 years

Link

Virginia legislators are continuing their work in Richmond.

Prince William County residents heard about what’s occurring in the General Assembly at a Dale City Post Crossover Legislative Town Hall.

State Senator Jeremy McPike and State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman held the meeting at Beville Middle School in Dale City on February 15.

Education and transportation were a couple of the topics they covered.

This is a video of the town hall:

Below, is the transcription of the meeting, which is normally done with 80 percent accuracy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to translate all of what Guzman said.

McPike: I will, we’ll go ahead and get started. Appreciate your motivations for additional folks who joined us today. Uh, I’m Jeremy [inaudible]. Uh, [inaudible] Woodbridge [inaudible] stretches on Prince William Parkway from 95 homes of many villains spreads to launch them two 34 in your dad’s freaks in the forest high school.

Speaker 2: Got run.

Speaker 3: Great County limits. Okay.

McPike: Um, and then first off, happy belated birthday to delegate. [inaudible]

Guzman: yeah. Now I going get to listen to this mine. How can we turn 47?

Speaker 3: You’re so young. I just don’t got the menu

Guzman: strictly brilliantly has parts of [inaudible] County and [inaudible] County raise me. I’m telling you I have, I won’t say most of them city and then I’ll go with you were sent off to go sit strict as well. And then I have pulled off as well. I spoke with them and then from there I go to, okay, fine. Where have [inaudible] [inaudible] um, [inaudible] area I think cause I shared that if you’re going to get how I and I, you [inaudible] Nope. [inaudible] I have the street area and we need deal [inaudible] we need you to just freak. I go into football, not going to have Monclair I should not ever go.

McPike: Thanks for joining. Uh, this is sort of, if it’s okay, we’ll probably do some intro of what we’ve been working on, a little bit about the budget and sort of what’s going on in Richmond and then open it up to your questions. There’s lots of things going on and so we might in our remarks and uncover something that you’re interested in. So, and encourage folks to ask questions if you’ve seen something to bring that up. Um, gravels if that’s okay. If someone disagrees with the statement or the position of someone, this is a lie, you know, this is an opportunity for folks to voice this concerns and not necessarily have a debate the debate, but also just to respectful, right? So if you disagree with someone, I’d encourage folks to not comment on it or BU or one way or the other. That makes sense. Um, cause it is a nonpartisan town hall. [inaudible] allowed to ask questions, have them disagree with the position. It’s fine to disagree. Um, I think it’s important to have a context that we can agree and disagree, but we should do so respectfully. Does that make sense? Everybody? Okay. We also have two other like this here. Say hi and introduce yourself.

Guzman: The one water conservation district. This is Stephen’s full boyfriend, Vanessa city full from the other one is [inaudible].

McPike: So a couple of things. This is our budget year, so this is our long session. So we’re in our 60 day. In fact, some Morrow, um, they’ll be publishing the budget and the budget amendments. So the cover introduces a budget [inaudible] starts as a matter of process. That all comes out tomorrow evening. And so we’ve been working on, I know [inaudible] has a minus in the house Senate and so there are lots of them pressures as you can imagine to work what’s in the budget and what’s not in the budget. And so we’ll see that board out this weekend and so we’ll be breeding for that as well. That’s lots of moving parts to it. But I think from an overall perspective, the company is really encouraging us specifically for early education and pre-K education that owns the 100 million option investment between standard of quality of rent, re benchmarking, uh, additional dollars in funding in early childhood education.

McPike: Um, you know, the principal County we’ve been trying to catch up in terms of, um, probably chocolate slots, not quite there to the, it’s um, stepping up and also offering some incentive, uh, opportunities for additional preschool. Um, as we knew, as you know, the data shows us that earlier kids learn to read, they can learn the rest of the subject and they could build the comfort, um, very early in life and their skill set and reading the data says that we’d be much better off versus remedial training later on. And so this is really the first budget that we’ve seen, this sort of significant significant investment, um, in our education system, which is great on the back end of it. You see also the availability for college, uh, community college, which I think is just great for those kids who do qualify for Pell grants.

McPike: There’s free community college that goes as much as well. Um, we’re going to be serious about getting every kid the skills that they need. Um, we know that we’ve have very bright kids in our community that sometimes feel like they can’t go to the next step, usually their financial words or other words. And so the more we can open up those opportunities, I think the better we do leveraging on our talent. Some of them right here in developmental school and um, you know, we want make sure that the kids have that, whether it’s a skill trade or computer science, there’s targeted degrees that the governor has put in this budget and I think that helps to win both our workforce development needs as well as ensuring that those kids, so those are important highlights, transportation, there’s some bills and transportation that’s going through that are really important.

McPike: They will all pro sports increase in the back pass. That will help define some of my hands patients. We are billions behind our projected funding level. As you know, the 2013 legislation made a small net and that those, the person that changed since 1986 in terms of transportation funding, there were certain things that we also proposed for Metro two years ago that took some of the road money away. They were restoring some beds and transmit transit occupancy tax code in this region. That’s really important for prison County. Um, the improvements and investments in fury might seem to report with the long bridge. It’s the bridge that all the rail lines pop as they cross into DC. So all the very trips right now are, we’re going to roughly 22 trips a day by making this investment in the long bridge and we’ll be willing to do also weekend trips, reverse trips and increase the number of trips.

McPike: I’m afraid your spread line part of that is going to be funded from the ISIS. I’m told [inaudible] dollars for buying funding, but this is up 1.41 point $5 billion multi year project to get there. And other than for the commuter rail, that’s just a huge difference. Right now we can’t do anything to a one inch with Patsy on the be revise. And so the more and more books we can get, you utilize it with the more frequent and reliable service, the more people wouldn’t get um, [inaudible] back jamming roads and open up as a communal house. So I’ll take a couple of pauses and then trade back and forth because there’s a number of different, we move into cards. I think those are two pretty significant ones.

Guzman: So just be back on the outreach out medication. One part that is gonna be different than years prior. You probably know [inaudible] town was not taking advantage of all the money that was available for patients before or leaping back. So right now you don’t need to knew that insulation Ricky never gets, well initially if there was any four, four year olds, it’s going to be expanded with [inaudible]. So that is great. You know, if they’re going to be able to release. And then also what is going to happen is that the, I will not allow finally childcare providers in that community, both little race amplification process. So they do get access. That’s my name. Or by your server.

Guzman: There’s one cop yet these time are not the same. Like the money’s going to sleep there, you’re gonna use it and it’s gonna just be waiting for the difference. Now he’s studying, we don’t use the body breathing accounting. The money’s gonna go away wasted. So I think that’s any people we have to work together to try to work with local government and to work with providers in the area who makes sure that we’re going to take advantage of those support monies. I mean, we are needing the numbers. I mean [inaudible] when we are thinking the amount of children and we are seven things in that County, and then we talk with [inaudible] route up between your car to qualified, you know what the median household income of about a hundred thousand $120,000 per household. So that make us individual who, any size of freebies when he has Google with free childcare or anything like that, other the BPI, advising, raising the minimum wage, all of those forward.

Guzman: The guidelines he’s called that I want to go up. Who’s going to be opening over tuning these? Can you find [inaudible] [inaudible] I know that important investments schools as well. I would say that we are security. The funding for reviews like age and older for school money that was taken away at the end of the first one I got to go. I also, I mean DCS at least Dale city if someone you’re wasting money. The area where we have, I know each not watching other students so I work job is jabs can not meet anybody or we need more resources. Right now that classes or English language learners is 24,000 students. So we are volume. We thrive. The reviews that those 17 she’s here but then we couldn’t find the money. You know as we have been abusive to how I learned it the same way like you didn’t use Morgan.

Guzman: There is money available above our house who any book Conrad’s millions dollars. So I’m hopeful that we can go back and change these videos that we allow model for communities. That goal was [inaudible] sorry that it’s 17 7:00 PM hitches, 4,000 students. So we’re trying to put 20 features to a thousand students. So I it’s just that that’s the reality, right? That the word, anything, you know, anytime you in schools we are feeling as set up the [inaudible] was saying is that we’re paying for tap because public education was not a priority or maybe 2018 where we’re working with the same by different public education from 2008 and however from NEP has gone. How many people if we just look around them, I mean how many [inaudible] who have come having that committee and we’re working with the same plan. So feels like a school counselor, psychologists, social workers where he would be hard, especially a patient.

Guzman: And especially with the vacation we are working with jailer, they are doing a whole or the shape of the whole system, uh, adjusted Luca. What can we do for, especially with vocational classes, that it has not been patched in 2009 and that’s time we discuss, especially with location in Virginia, who now 2009 and we all know that back then men have help. What statement? You know their work and they’re still many children. I’m fired. Cause every advancing that their children have a condition and they need more resources. So we are glad to be straight. [inaudible] our very own sacred values application incarnate [inaudible] school has taken the, you know, these very, it’s built, it’s built, it’s working really, really hard. We’ve tried to provide more resources to special education classrooms as far as [inaudible] we are going to finally have hoping, hoping that, you know, every facet. [inaudible]

Guzman: I haven’t decided for Metro. And finally, and this is just a study and I don’t want you to think that this will happen in a couple of years. No, it said home circle. It’s going to take at least 15 years. Look in years, if not 20 years, who bring a Metro to call you back. We’re going to have more VA services. Uh, we need to work with the IPC. The last time that I met with, I told them that what I heard at the doors, because we do have other commuters and we don’t have places, Bart, even one of the things that mesh of the yabbies this stuff and there’s no places to my parking. They’re not really, there is no old who built a new computer lab. So we are talking about trying to have shadows to allow people to frog from where they leave their knots.

Guzman: I was also brought me to see, we kind of have finally I, they’ll city on the right service that could allow people to drive bill with Del city. There’s a population that we talk to right now within the city is very powerful. We talk in Minneapolis right now, so we want him to have allowed people that are working locally to stay out of their cars and fight to take public transportation to go for work. You know, I, I know that PRPC director that we, you wanna think about Nashville that we are, we need to think outside the box about maybe making it more accessible for people. So if I’m asking my husband who dropped me off at WSP Istation, so I don’t think of training. I don’t think of anything because my husband is taking off from work with take me. So I, we had to call my boss. I’m trying to find ways to make people who love you here. Your station. We’d love other resources. No, I feel you miss it. A nerve money. Um, B and C who give [inaudible] we talking about [inaudible] in Washington D C now need to take care of them. I worry about my needs. You never caught,

McPike: um, couple of things that, um, the legislation back in specific with working on [inaudible] did the same rule. Open up the question [inaudible] covered this morning. And how long have you [inaudible] um, this year I work on many of, you know, the last couple years I’ve been working on natural gas pipeline safety via song house has exploded in my history. And what Ruby, um, this year also removing is currently an exemption and Virginia state law that allows the natural gas companies to not use a professional engineer when they, Sam can charge him. Um, after the Massachusetts explosion in fires that occurs in, is 22 States that have that exclusion cause action to remove it. Is that the trend of the bill this year to remove that legislation to ensure that any of this infrastructures reviewed and signed by a professional figure? Um, and there’s lately I’ve been to [inaudible] actually since the last year, has the son get killed with house, which is requiring a lab water testing and how the daycare facilities, um, there is led facilities.

McPike: The federal laws cover essentially the water distribution systems, but not addition to facility. And so the solder joints, um, in different pipes still contain a certain parts of led. And so it does require that same standard not being anybody wants led water going into the baby formula or anything else or just basic rain water and talk to her. That’s a vague neurological. Um, and also getting the school’s resources, um, in coordination with the Virginia department of health use of existing level or standard like carrying this past two years ago for schools. Uh, make sure we understand that holistic view of the problem around the state and the, to identify resources to that. So I have a budget numbers on that as well. That helps that often start to aggregate some of the data so we can get schools, they do have a federal grant they were, were, were awarded last year or something like $33,000.

McPike: Obviously that’s a drop in the bucket so to speak. So we would get a lot of work. I’m just going to do on that. One of the other big goals I worked on this year and incurred for the governor’s offices, worker ms classification. Um, this primarily impacts, uh, the construction trades. There are other industries that do as well that do not follow the IRS guidelines in terms of who should be at a 10 99 worker and who should be an employee. And what occurs is, especially when construction jobs is, there are lots of companies who essentially tend to at nine a bunch of employees so they’re not paying the same taxes. So those betters, that undercut those who are doing business the right way and Virginia has been very lax about that appointment. And so this grades have a new enforcement mechanism within the department of taxation as well as coordinating with the department of labor and other agencies and create some, some penalties for those who are bad actors.

McPike: Right now companies getting open up and close really with little penalty associated with it. And that’s unfortunate because it does hurt. Like I said, the good actors that come here are doing the right thing. So this modeling gets a little bit more teeth than enforcement. My name is indoor wall. Um, so those are, those are a couple of, there’s a dozen other things I’m going to give you. Seed reform, um, cutting the number of permit types of half just updating um, alcohol licenses based on new businesses, business standards after provision. And we really didn’t anticipate like wait months with you, like selling you a case of beer. But there’s also serving that, you know, there’s all sorts of business models in addition to the new distilleries and how they want to innovate. And so it’s really consolidating, I don’t know about a hundred pages of code section and reducing, cutting essentially the, what we call it, Christmas tree effect.

McPike: When you sort of add on thing permit types, you can just consolidate a certain license authorities to make it a lot easier for people to apply for licenses. Um, additionally, this year was uh, a bill going through the expanse on my bill from last year that allows for open carry of alcohol. If you’ve been to mass this first Fridays, you notice that you can have a restaurants can sell a beer and if you have a closed down special event area. And so I’m gonna ask, this is taking advantage of this year where they closed down the streets on first Fridays. And so the restaurant jurors can sort of amino, you can also have a beer, you can got to carry the street which were closed down and then it is demarcated area. Listen to a live band. And I know the masters restaurant droves, they see it at all.

McPike: They’re like all times sales high by like eight 30 I think the second night. Some of them were telling me. So that’s that. And yeah, so yeah, I’ve checked with the chief of police there and others. In terms of enforcement issues, he said there’s been not. Um, so there’s been a really great in that positive, but now it’s sort of catching on. So lots of other parts of the same line. So there’s a bill this year that would increase it to 16 as well as allow, if you have a multi-day permit, would only count as one. So some localities have like a festival or something that would come as one of those permits. So encouraging people in historic downtowns, no 16 permits a year. So it’s a limited duration permanent. Right now the current code is 12. So this was not the two 16 but also the count for if you had a sort of a weekend long festival on Friday, that Sunday that when he hound for for three to those that sort of account for one sort of a total there.

Guzman: Okay. So let’s talk about public notes. Will it just be like what you’re talking about? So I would discard we um, consenting and be able to send up that wheel is fighting people A’s and PFS. It’s a [inaudible]. How many of have many peoples are very familiar with environment here? I can tell us that our phone actually use water across the catheter. So we are conducting a study with the department of health and they will absorb across cost tests. I believe Edify waterparks or pizza, tough people in gays. I knew the times at the house. [inaudible] at the center we have now a [inaudible]. So I even told him one time, I don’t think we’ll be surprised. [inaudible] last year that was killed his body. Nine votes about, see that over next one separately in the presence of ATC, beat up the smoking. And the reason with my nurse on their age, you find that in fact, so you will not [inaudible].

Guzman: I think these use just a public health issue. It’s one of the main costs. [inaudible] I gave him through smoking as they grow out, but I was exposed in clothes so long into small, I mean it’s just the right thing to do to my plans. I’m not developed. So in that field I was able to get somebody back and some support from outside. They have out that as far as um, changing facilities with the department of student health services, I have her request from one of my constituents who is a single father that he used it in a couple of the saved and buildings and he couldn’t find that changing table.

Guzman: So finally we were able to partner with the department on getting our services. So we will use one facet of birth, gender, we tend to fables. So yes, because they are there. So many women nowadays there are, you know, being back at the hospitals on fire that’s taking the fathers, I think it’s their responsibility to think he felt that children as well. So I’m excited about that view game with your [inaudible] that focus on integrating past comedian defense hoping that he will go well in the Senate. As far as I wanted to talk about environment a little bit. I was fine with a great deal and I carry a couple of legislations for them. I wasn’t accessible, you know to pass [inaudible] or the other development that is asking about these kind of things with more than a hundred thousand citizens. I’ve seen this with more than 300,000 citizens [inaudible] affordable policy and doing public transportation as a comprehensive plans anytime they are developing a 5% or 15 year [inaudible] plan and I passed the center on the way to go to the governor says so I’m excited about that. I’m talking about separating your deal as well. I can’t really kind of house or solution that passed the house is going to say that I have not heard yet where Regina will become versus baby in the country. We’ll be clear that they’re declining with emergency and waiting to absolutely

Speaker 4: [inaudible].

Guzman: I don’t see a problem with that. That’s the company. Coffee’s just being loud and clear. The cavitation is right up and we need to start acting. Now. I have seen South of my union fear brothers and sisters, so I the African [inaudible] that would allow public employees who [inaudible] and he passed the house. It’s on its way to the Senate. I was not be fired Friday evening that he will be heard on Monday. [inaudible] okay. How’s this [inaudible] so I just wasn’t able to speak a week. We’ve been neither of the, not yet. We actually had a casual conversation on Friday and was set up on the bar. That means that they might need, might be this scheduled for Monday, so I’m hoping that I can testify. So I log in for it. It said Arthur’s before he gets hurt at ease the Senate with our members upon our Sunday.

Guzman: We’ll see if I’m successful. If not, you know, we have a very, okay, tell me about the house going through the center and I just don’t want to do that. But if I have to, I may wear in salary. Not only Google, I mean I know probably complete you who buy them connected these days, like also partnering with the Omaha world. We’ve that Bernie Genito where he said that if we are going to do these, then maybe you have to structure [inaudible] and disrupt and put it in place is the aid [inaudible] and for these relations for that [inaudible] members will be assigned by the opener and we have located money to also hire some hearing officers. So any time they’re high school be an issue in between an employee and an employee or in the public sector at third, I probably didn’t know you were nation’s local CIT officer would lead that mediator in between that lawyer and that employee or we both.

Guzman: I think that’s something that would benefit everybody. Nobody wants to look a car as a don’t need a public employee. We just wanted to be able to be listened. I think for me, my idea is that someone’s reputation will say, Oh, that means that we’re going out. How much is it going to cost? Is it gone in Greece over the taxes? Well, I will tell you right now, and have you seen accurately because your governing bodies will continue to, uh, in the power of appropriations that we do by having a voice at the table, we, you were going to have to listen to us and we will make our case for, say for example, the 1% salary increase is not necessary. Firefighters with blonde hair, you know, the government is, they could ever pay for better, you know, and with the better resources to do their job for the Sophie says the same way, you know, we’ve been talking about buying new equipment, then they will have to stop to the police officers to come there by ease and coordinated with them what they need to do their job better.

Guzman: Teachers, you know, when we’re talking about how we’re gonna, uh, we’re gonna include the 1% salary, 12 features. I want to make their case as how they are used to their person online. My before in the classroom. How it’s important to have this or this motor classes. How are they unfolding? Many animals have their first amount of time for this schools. As these things need to be heard. The school board members need to listen from the pictures. What is going on as far as giving out justice reform. I finally sent the field center last week as increase the age of minors trial as adults. He came from the house. The genetics will support, I will say [inaudible] adjustments. Even those who weren’t before, like delegate Ron Vale was not from Virginia. I’m the main girl for people, not definitely three, four people to come up. You and I took a picture with because [inaudible] years in a row, he finally agree with [inaudible] and I was able to partner with administration as well because it was a priority for Bella.

Guzman: I know, I’m trying to look at faces. Some of you have some requests. It’s function, you know, very important for many individuals. I introduced legislation. Uh, but I think that some of the members who are not ready yet, so those are happy and sent to the crime commission. So the practical nations wanna send recommendations for next year. So we can see why is going to be allowed to eat lunch, right? Not, I mean the reality is there we all having young who will make mistakes, I mean that wrote us well, but then realities that you have to be carrying that with the rest of your life and that prevents you from having an employment for working with children even, I mean, right in a class and the school system, if you have a felony on your, uh, on your criminal record. So we have to change, you know, kind of like justice reform will happen up here. That’s also for many years what are trying, people are screaming out in the streets. I’m talking about individuals of all of my and identities float. And you find made a mistake when I was 18 or 19 years old and now I have proven that I’m not going to see this and that I have medication that I fear from my mistakes. These is that country of second chances. So Regina has to be that either, you know, on, uh, provide an expungement services.

McPike: Yeah, a tremendous amount going on this week was crossover Wednesday, Tuesday night inside where we got one out. It was about one o’clock in the morning, take her for converted that morning. So now we finish up our business, the house they do other than getting on the second run. So there’s a little bit more than the day before the crossover, but we moved out of there. We don’t typically move the pending question, which means that the vote has to be taken on the Senate and the house are the rules of procedure. We let everybody in the bait, if they have a voice, they’re going to make sure that those thoughts are, are shared. Unless it gets extraordinarily long for one speaker, then we might push things along a little bit. But this week was an extraordinarily long week. Many things on the, not only in the criminal justice reform, decriminalization of marijuana, um, the significant tweaks to criminal justice system are fairly significant.

McPike: There are things in 20 years that have sort of stack the deck of one side and we’ve really started to tackle some of the structural injustice in how we treat the cases. Both then, you know, sentencing different tiers as all sorts of nuance and Recode right now that we are starting to be ended to fix. Was your really, really important? Uh, there’s also been, um, I think some, obviously some big hot topics in terms of on gun safety legislation. Um, what passed the Senate was a one gun a month, a universal background checks with certain provisions excluded in terms of the family. Um, it has to be a sale. So there’s this certain transfer provision. So for instance, if I’m out hunting on a tree stand, you don’t create a, you know, unintended felony cause I leave my gun to go and clean the deer or whatever and I left my gun with my buddy.

McPike: I don’t want to, you know, we try to avoid creating sort of unintended consequences through that in terms of what transfer means. And so we did take out some of the original provisions to the spur that we didn’t have folks that were caught in sort of innocent situations versus, um, some of the gun show loophole and other sort of proxy sales that are going on. Um, so we, we certainly sort of tackle that as a, as an approach. So we also did the one got along with just returning to the legislation. We had, I don’t know, 15, 16 years ago that was within the law. Um, additionally, there were some provisions that passed the Senate that allow for, um, vocal control for local permits. Um, Lavella valleys would have to post if you have a special permit that they, they don’t want to have guns present at.

McPike: And they had posted that sign at that public hearing. Notice all sorts of other provisions to make sure that, again, it’s not an unintended consequence. You can’t just walk into a place and not have any notice that you’re not supposed to care. And so there’s sort of the savings that are put in place. Um, certainly the other hot topics goals in relation to um, number of flips or add ons to pass the Senate that certainly ban bump stocks are trigger acted activated devices. Um, the bills dealing with um, round counts or well let’s say that sort of assault rifles or assault weapons has not passed the Senate, um, based on different definitions of round town and other issues that start to really get into some pretty nuance stuff. I know there’s been a lot of hot topic, social media and other stuff, so I wanted to cover that.

McPike: The other more recent one is on driver’s licenses for uh, new Americans or undocumented Americans and other systems here are not yet citizens working their way there. And you know, I’ve seen a lot of social media sort of being on this of the last week or so. I was really picked up on, you know, why we’re doing this, why it’s needed. If you look at it and break it down to the basic facts and figures and folks who been here, manifests 2030 years is folks have licenses in Maryland for other places. Right now it’s other car is also registered in Maryland that go through the Virginia safety inspection nor do is there an understanding of Virginia rules of the road and the walls. So there are provisions to provide a license framework that requires passing of the test driver test, having insurance, you know all the other things that go with it in terms of savings.

McPike: So there’s some, I think some pretty strong public safety initiatives. In addition, the tax, they should obviously our tax and other things that go with it, registration fees that go with it to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the rules of road. And so that’s something that I know I’ve seen people asking or emailing about what are we doing, you know, you know, people are going to put the comments of the people are getting something for free. It’s not free. They get to play that same exact rules and everybody else, no special conditions. And so I just want to make sure that it’s very clear despite what you might see on social media. Very strange. And the other question I heard was, well what happened with New York? You know the feds are now timing now on the preferred travel program or field where the exact name is, but essentially the frequent flyer, perfect TSA preferred entry program.

McPike: The reason why they did that in New York cause they had locked down the day to day decision. The Virginia law that we have that’s going through has provisions that they can request involved before I personally can still request in the DMV database a specific individual. This is not part one. And so that takes care of the federal concern that had come up and that’s why New York is having problems. We don’t have that same problem. We have avoided that issue by specifically writing and provisions in the code go for that issue. So I just want to address those couple of things of, you know, what people are calling or writing about and sort of address addressed it as I think are some really important positive as many other important positive social in addition to the publicity and taxation around that issue. And this has been been improved for many, many years.

McPike: Um, unfortunately. Um, but I think with now with real idea in place as well, it takes care of the plate issue in terms of the reason essentially returns the law to where we were 2004 post nine 11 in Virginia. That’s what the law does and because we have separate relining and you are going to require a real idea, the board, the domestic plate as it is, you still going have that requirement. So that doesn’t change any of the frameworks that we have, the federal requirement as well as Virginia framework. Um, so I think there’s a lot of positives around that. So I want to cover, make sure we covered through those more hot topics that have been swirling around Richmond. I are you seeing things on social media that makes sense. Stonewall

Guzman: the week. It’s just like the vinegar there was talking about these. What’s up great. Did show up for a mold from breaking before 2003 I didn’t do none of that. Were just bringing it back a low that was in Virginia and was taken way we false out because it was taking after what happened on nine 11 and we all know now and none of [inaudible] I mean where [inaudible] so we are trying to bring in an hour just having stayed [inaudible] we’ll play, we’ll pay property taxes where maybe, but that money is instead of going to Mary instead of going to Washington DC, I haven’t only bad because there’s a lot of people that they send, I just want this and even though they averaging at residents, they go on charge [inaudible] paint documents via the need you both to get a license. He married in Washington D C at that spot.

Guzman: I need to stop all of that Senate, send a book support on that [inaudible] at one of the things that we’re doing to be here. Well, he’s trying to fight for that adamant [inaudible] Oh, um, perfections in general. I have employment in housing, I guess discrimination with myself. I had an easy job. And what do you think that way in school I stayed in agency and they went through the very, you know Jessica, Wendy [inaudible] who they are and that is one of what daddy did for that reason. I’ve presented legislation on his own into the center that will require state employees pay the LGBTQ [inaudible].

Guzman: That means I’m going to ask him, you know, I’m just one of them to know what it these life and they need to understand that community so they can help them to get there. That’s been years take them, be who they want and they put up, they want to quit just a day. I only just use the word services and will be confident and we do it in, I mean we both work at these already implemented in so many capacities. These is far off. You are to an orientation or what can we respect each other? What would work for them?

McPike: Get her back on the driver’s license privilege. One question I saw online or on email is an indication that this would somehow allow people to vote or not. Citizens does not do that. Just cleared the snake. He’s nations that cross in fact separate regions. How it, what does that send to the blood collection to make sure those distinguishing factors of a citizen citizen? I, there’s lots of ways that very clear if

Guzman: you vote, then you are not a citizen or to go at all. Even you have a green card [inaudible] that it’s a felony and you can taste it or patient or vomiting. [inaudible] [inaudible] would there

McPike: be an indication on the license non-resident that you went up and looked what provision?

Guzman: If there are no veal, somebody [inaudible] his driver’s license and the other one is agree with each guards. But the good thing is that we all come over the real IDs and if you aren’t a citizen, you’ll get a star of Lena [inaudible] but you don’t get the star. That means that you are not a citizen, but that doesn’t mean you are undocumented. Amen. You know, it puts me that you are great.

McPike: I just decided I didn’t want to go through the hassle cause I just [inaudible] but what does all the election laws that are also changing the requirement for it? You still would be recording them too long to show a need, but if you don’t have ID you still have to vote. You have to sign and that’s under the penalty and I felony. That’s when this gets in. So both on the voter registration forms and other things. So that’s right there felony and also, and the election, if you comment and then try to vote, you’re putting a signature, you’re, you’re signing yourself from a felony and you’re not registered. So there are a number of different checks in both databases across the board that you would be envy to the board of elections database. So those a number of different ways going from protection to that and the,

Guzman: yeah, I’m just going back to my deals. I think there’s one thing that I, as a door, what I was knocking is about drug prices. Everywhere I go, people what? Frustrated [inaudible] insurance, how much they have to stop [inaudible] I mean, schooling, if you still have, I’m sending them deal [inaudible] [inaudible] payment system. Is that the and innovative solutions to address that cause the persecution threats, Regina, at that point of sale, these [inaudible] uh, you know, we’ve had different version of some hockey change to how the Friday’s I dated, um, that come provided to us all being a road. We’re going to have all of the stakeholders that are part of that process. How can we come up with a solution and that solution is to be filed by December. So generally comforting the nature station. Do we just work on [inaudible] out?

McPike: There’s been some limited measures going through the Seinfeld pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs you’ve might’ve seen on the news. There’s all sorts of discounts that the drug manufacturers offer those discounts and Venice rebates don’t get passed on to the end user. And so there’s a lot of, you know, your pay plan pays for a certain point and then they’re also capturing the rebate on the other side. And so, and then the direct price is higher with the passive PBMs. And so there’s all sorts of sort of moving parts and shenanigans that are going on that they’re, they’re sort of doing one of these is, does that mean that he’s got tons of years are in the or development that occurred with this drug? All that. Listen, 50 years ago it’s all done because there’s no need to pay 600 times what somebody tries. It should be.

McPike: It’s really frustrating to get in a room and healthcare space and everybody does what he’s like, wait a second, we’re paying like 20 bucks for this, like 10 years ago, you know, it’s 150 now. I’m pretty sure I’m not making him breathe free a hundred times in my day. This is crazy. And so they keep, it’s a complex issue. It’s one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Um, but I think our, our ability to have patients visits with the medical way before we’re just about an hour and a number of different things we’ve got also figure out, hopefully it ties in with the button too because we also have to help the fund, the board elections with some initial whether it’s going to be clearly sort of no excuse absentee, you are early voting provisions. I think it will come out of both the house and the Senate and I think that’s extremely important for this year because we have so many books like you knew, you know what an hour plus at all. Any one day you could have doctors come up or emergency, you know let’s have more participation, not less. I think there’s a general consensus in both jammers that some or all or combination provisions will be valid for one thing that will go in effect for breaking into the next school and teachers will not happen anymore.

McPike: The primary outburst of social media on that, Tim was like, give me a break, Nico, come on. So essentially not then the one thing we’ve done is fuck the state holiday to electric kissy football. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. I didn’t mention that. [inaudible] get some work and she had gotten cancer presumption and finally we’ve got it out of the house and the Senate. So that’s been appeared that bill every single year for of six years. So this has cancers that are directly linked to the toxins that they interface. There’s been fires and that’s been just a long time. Now I removed provisions that gotten whatever our firefighters who passed away caught up in legal battles for about a year before he died. We were in that section of the code. Um, and then we have a PTSD Eatonville that is passed out under the Senate and it’s over the house and he did not have a people to action so far on the house [inaudible] and then flipped back any provision.

McPike: And this creates the first defense [inaudible] to provide relief, first presumption relation, PTSD and our first responders. Um, there’s just so many folks that deal with, but a single incident or cumulative incidents over the couriers. You just lost open officer two weekends ago. Um, unfortunately this, the story plays out across the Commonwealth. Um, all of the points for different reasons and we are not tackling the issue more proactively and we need to create a framework that says if you’re struggling, you got some framework coverage. And folks I know and worked with, they want to get back on the job too, but they’re hurting. And right now that was the mantra for so many years in these lines of service has been sort of [inaudible], you know, and um, unfortunately the costs really get worn by the families that are involved. I was over time and it’s time we started to flip that. So this is the first year we were really struggling with the progress that flipping this discussion. Um, yes it will, it’ll have some financial hit the localities because there’s some premium issues, but hopefully those that start to think about it and do more proactive things and the more frequent check ins of sitting down. So incident reviews, other things to check out mental health status over not just single incident, but the cumulative total.

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yespoetry · 5 years

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An Interview with the Authors of 'DICTIONNAIRE INFERNAL' (And Download It For Free Here)

DICTIONNAIRE INFERNAL is a co-authored with Chris McCreary and Mark Lamoureux and was originally published by Empty Set Press on Halloween 2017. With the close of Empty Set earlier this, we have partnered up with ESP and are offering the chapbook as a free ebook. You can read a poem from the chapbook here, an interview with the authors below, and download the collection here and below.

Did you write this collection to any kind of music?

Mark: This is a hard question to answer, because I listen to music more or less constantly and I listen pretty widely (Bill Corbett once told me I have "big ears"). Looking at the poems in Dictionnaire Infernal I see references to Skinny Puppy, Big Black and the theme song for The Karate Kid Part II by Peter Cetera, but that was probably Chris. I'm sure I was listening to a lot of other stuff, too, but it's impossible to say what.

Chris: In general, I write while listening to instrumental music. The band Earth is probably my favorite for this. That said, this chapbook does have a sestina, “Abraxas,” that is in part a riff on lyrics from the band Baroness, who we both admire. (After the chapbook was published, I sent a message to the band’s singer asking if he would want a copy, but I never heard anything back from him. This might be for the best - it would be mortifying if he read the poem and didn’t like it.)

Describe your favorite meal.

Mark: There's the socially responsible answer to this question and the honest one.

The socially responsible one is good moules frites and a bottle of burgundy. Red wine with seafood because I’m a madman who lives on the edge.

The honest answer is a cheeseburger that they serve at a dairy restaurant where I grew up called Shady Glen where they fry a specific type of American cheese on the fry table so that it gets sort of brown and curled and bubbly, paired with a vanilla milkshake. Said restaurant was more or less the inspiration for my chapbook 29 Cheeseburgers. It’s definitely Americana kitsch where the servers all wear these anachronistic uniforms and these little paper hats.

Chris: Jenn McCreary makes great vegetarian chili. If I could cap off that meal with coffee and a salted chocolate chip cookie or three, all would be right in the world for a moment.

Choose three books that you've always identified with?

Chris: I’ve always felt an affinity for Tolkien’s hobbits, who mostly want to avoid trouble and stay at home with a book and a good snack. Maybe The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings count as two of the three books? I think The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was probably formative for me as well, particularly in terms of its fatalistic dark humor.

Mark: I’ve definitely always identified with Satan in Paradise Lost--he is actually an ethical person who has no choice but to fractiously rebel against his creator because that’s how he was made. He feels bad about leading the fallen angels into a conflict they are destined to lose, but he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Like Chris, I was weaned on fantasy and science fiction books--the first book I ever took out of the school library of my own accord was Ursula le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea because I liked the cover. I felt an affinity to the main character, the wizard Ged, who winds up in a conflict with his own shadow, which he liberated in a ritual he was not supposed to be doing. The shadow winds up killing his beloved pet otak, which spoke to me at the time because my parents had just gotten divorced and my mother bought me a jet-black rabbit at the state fair that I named Obsidian that was eaten by a coyote about a week later.

Before I read “serious” books, the first books I read were comic books and I was obsessed with the X-Men, particularly the character Nightcrawler, who was the most freakish of the already freakish team. There is a graphic novel called God Loves, Man Kills in which a televangelist tries to exorcise Nightcrawler, which I found particularly moving. I have a drawing of Nightcrawler’s signature “BAMF” onomatopoeia that appears when he teleports done by his late creator David Cockrum for me at a comic book convention when I was 12 or so that is one of my prized possessions.

Choose one painting that describes who you are. What is it?

“The Sphinx & The Milky Way” by Charles Burchfield (Mark)

“Torches Mauve” by Franz Kline (Chris)

What’s a gif or meme that you relate to?

Mark: I see this as akin to Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog but with more screaming.

via GIPHY

Chris: This meme is a pretty solid representation of chronic anxiety.

What do you imagine the apocalypse is like? How would you want to die?

Chris: In middle school, I thought a lot about nuclear war and assumed that we’d all die in a fireball at any moment. (There was a period of several months where I didn’t want to be in a room without a radio or TV playing because I wanted to be able to hear the warning broadcasts as soon as they started.) Now I imagine the apocalypse as slow moving, a game of inches where basic resources like clean water are hoarded by the wealthy. As for how I’d want to die… I hope I’m at peace with friends and loved ones, no matter the circumstances.

Mark: Under the Baron Trump administration, faculty at Trump National Stable Geniuses University College must, in addition to their yearly self-evaluations, submit paperwork detailing how they are employing The Art of the Deal Parts 47-72 in their curriculum to Make America Great Again Again Again in order to justify their annual rations of Trump Sausage and potable water. I will forget about the deadline and be summarily executed the last semester before I retire at age 108.

If you could only watch three films for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Chris: The Empire Strikes Back, The Fellowship of The Ring, and Heathers.

Mark: Labyrinth, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (It was really difficult to just pick three).

Where do you find inspiration lately?

Chris: The second season of the show Fleabag is one of the best things that I’ve seen in ages.

Mark: I have been writing poems to Bill Evans compositions lately, as well as finishing up a project where I “write” poems to episodes of the old Leonard Nimoy paranormal TV docuseries In Search Of. I have done almost all of the hundreds of episodes, so I will need to find something else pretty soon.

Where did you write most of your book?

Chris: The poems in Dictionnaire Infernal are part of five years’ worth of poems that Mark and I have written together. Each April (aka National Poetry Month), we’ve written a poem a day and posted it to a blog. At the point when we were writing this particular series, one of us would choose a picture of a demon and riff on it, then the other person would finish the poem from there. I would often write my half of the poem first thing in the morning before homeroom at the high school where I teach or maybe later in the day while proctoring a study hall.

Mark: Likewise, definitely written either at home or at my office at Housatonic Community College.

What was something surprised you recently?

Chris: This summer, we went to the shore for the first time in a few years. Our kids, who are now 16 years old (they’re fraternal twins), just got up and… went to the beach with a friend, aka without us. It was a jolt to realize that, Oh, right, they’re at an age where we don’t have to watch them in the water the whole time and scold them if they swim out too far. Although of course we ended up doing some of that, too. If I turned this anecdote into a piece of creative nonfiction, I’d begin to work some sort of metaphor here.

Mark: At the risk of sounding cliché, as Chris mentions, parenting is pretty much a continuous stream of surprises. To be honest, I was pretty ambivalent about becoming a parent, but ultimately I find it to be the best thing in the world. Even at 2, my daughter is my best friend and we continue to discover surprising things about the world. I find it really easy to adopt the perspective of a small child and to see the world in that way, which is a nice panacea to the way I usually see the world.

What do you carry with you at all times?

Mark: Major depression and my iPod. Yeah, I still have an iPod.

Chris: Journal, iPhone, a 20-sided die, and an asthma inhaler.

Tell us a bit about your writing process. What works and what doesn't? What doesn't, but you keep trying it anyway?

Chris: Left to my own devices, I’m a fairly slow, fussy writer who builds from scraps and takes a long time to shape those fragments into whole poems. I’ve tried to push myself to approach the process differently, often through the use of source texts, but the idea of a larger “project” tends to fall flat each time, and I end up writing more lyric poems with Duran Duran references in them. Collaborating with Mark over the years has freed me from my own obsessiveness - with those poems, I work quickly and don’t look back. Sometimes, though, there is still some Duran Duran.

Mark: I guess I am an ideal counterpoint to Chris because I tend to work quickly and improvisationally. I identify with Jack Spicer’s adage that writing is dictation--it’s like capturing a mere segment of a steady flow of words. Most of the “writing” occurs in revision and making things more (or less, depending) lucid and readable to other people, although I don’t necessarily concern myself with this too much. It helps to have something to focus on, so I do a lot of what might be called ekphrastic writing, though the pieces themselves are rarely that ekphrastic. Oftentimes I wind up with pieces titled for the source of the inspiration or improvisation that have little or nothing to do with the source content. I liken this to the jazz tradition of improvising upon standards.

When I try to write something specifically “about” something starting from scratch, it usually fails pretty miserably. Lately, though, I have been able to write more narrative things stemming from my quotidian life, which is definitely something I’ve had trouble doing in the past.

What are some of your daily rituals or routines?

Chris: I’m trying to get better at establishing healthy routines. I want to meditate more regularly, for instance, but I have a tough time really establishing it as a daily practice. A lot of my established ritual is based around preparation and consumption of coffee, ideally La Colombe’s Corsica blend with Silk soy milk and raw sugar.

Mark: Routines are literally impossible for me - despite even my conscious intentions I will subconsciously sabotage anything that smacks of routine to my unconscious brain, which is troublesome when one is caring for a routine-oriented toddler. I do my best to adhere to her strictly ritualized schedule nevertheless. The only part of my day that is really sacrosanct is reading non-work related stuff, sometimes for even just five minutes due to exhaustion, before I go to sleep.

What was the hardest part about writing this book?

Chris: The most difficult aspect for me was the self-imposed deadline of finishing a poem every day, but it was also liberating. Mark and I have now completed five Aprils worth of poems - 150 of them! - without missing a day.

Mark: With these and some of the other ekphrastic projects Chris and I have done for NaPoWriMo, it is challenging to write something that isn’t merely a description or a riff on the song or image that we are writing to or about.

Define happiness for you.

Chris: Taking an unnecessarily long nap with my cat Frida.

Mark: Hanging out at the beach with my daughter.

Chris McCreary is the author of four books: [neüro / mäntic], undone : a fakebook, Dismembers, and The Effacements. His review of Arrive On Wave, the Collected Poems of Gil Ott, is forthcoming in Tripwire. Mark Lamoureux is is the author of four full-length collections of poems, It’ll Never Be Over for Me, 29 Cheeseburgers + 39 Years, Spectre) and Astrometry Organon. A fifth book, Horologion, is forthcoming from Poet Republik, Ltd. in 2019. Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente

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