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cowboyjen68 · 2 years

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Hi Jen! I'm a young lesbian and every time my family comes together for lunch they say very upsetting things about lgbt people and it makes me feel a little bad (I don't wanna come out to them anytime soon because of that). But today they were talking about some other relatives that couldn't come to our meal and I found out one of my distant cousins is dating another girl, and it made me feel a little better. As an older lesbian, have you ever had a similar experience? Cheers from Brazil!

This is so common. Fairly average and otherwise decent people who show their true colors when they think no one of consequence is listening. Herd mentality kicks in. They all think the group agrees so they back each other up and no one would dare speak up and correct them and suddenly be the odd one out.

I have experienced this. My mom and dad were pretty sure I was "different" but they still said things probably not even realizing it was affecting me. Dad would say "queer as a 3 dollar bill" or "his kind" (meaning gay). He likely thought nothing of it. My older brother (23 years older) would say things like "gay is not natural in humans" (He was a BIOLOGIST!) but for a pot smoking hippy had a conservative bent.

Before I was out I once got into it with him because "i had gay friends". Which was true but the argument actually helped me to realize I can't fix willful ignorance or misguided disbelief systems. He inability to see "me" and other gay people as natural and normal was not my problem so why waste energy.

My other brother is "born again" and stayed pretty low key while mom and dad were alive. He is 17 years older than me so this is a big brother I really looked up to. But he would say "love the sinner, hate the sin" and other bull shittery that translated to "I am uncomfortable that you have sex with other women". After mom and dad passed he was emboldened to consistently remind me I was "going to hell" and I needed to "not act on my attraction". BUT without mom to temper us I was able to tell him exactly my thoughts where were (and are) "keep your opinions and shit to yourself.. no one, especially me, want to hear it".

I know when you are younger and sort of “stuck” because you rely on your family for support, financial and emotional, you can’t say much. And I suggest you don’t. If there is any chance of your safety or wellness being compromised just stay in the closet until you are independent. It is NOT your job to change their minds or put yourself at risk in hopes of changing them.

Likely, if confronted, they will stop with the shitty talk but the fact is, you know it is there. When people don’t know they are being watched they let their worse side show.

Your cousin being a lesbian (or bi) is a small but important reminder. You are not alone and there were other gay and lesbian people in your family before you and there will be after. Some day you will be that out cousin for the youngers to see and know they are not alone either. But no rush to get there. Be safe. Perhaps reach out to that cousin.

I know it took time and experience (and finding lesbians and gay friends) to help be gain the self confidence about my sexuality so that I no longer cared what my brothers (my sister has always been great) thought or said. Their opinions were inconsequential to me once I embraced who I was and realized they were humans and not the big heroes I once looked up to.

Being family does not mean they are exempt from being people you don’t like.

I am sorry you have to put up with it. There will come a time when you won’t have to and will not. Then it is up to them to make the change to keep you in their life. Your time and energy need not be wasted trying to fix them.

#family #coming out #lesbian #gay

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karaboutmyart · 2 years

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hi! day 2 back from my tumblr dot com hiatus and I watched ice age for the first time in ten years.

if you don't know what ice age is, it is about a mammoth, a sloth, and a saber tooth tiger going the opposite direction of migration (so like north, where it is cold and ice) to return their beloved baby to his "herd" (his tribe). obviously all taking place during the ice age.

overall, the movie was... ok, I guess. the animation? absolutely horrendous. but pretty ahead of it's time. the story? WHY DO I LIKE IT THIS MUCH.

(the jokes were RLLY cheesy tho)

ok onto the post. I am not sorry

here is all of the homoromantic undertones that I gathered in the 2002 animated movie 'ice age'

• ok, so in the beginning there is literally 2 male rhinos who share a salad together and one saves the dandelion for the other. they r practically background characters but CLEARLY husbands

• sid: "you have beautiful eyes :)"

manfred: "get off of me >:("

• sid calling manfred 'manny' affectionately

• they find the baby and immediately have this sort of. yknow. married couple energy

• diego makes this known by saying, and I LITERALLY quote, "'Us'? You two are a bit of an odd couple." and then when manfred says that 'there is no us' he says, "I see. can't have one of your own, so you want to adopt." (diego says gay rights)

• (immediately after diego says this, manfred and sid go on to argue like a married couple.)

• now they r all together!! baby starts crying. sid has to be responsible to shut it up like the male-wife he is.

• they ALL take turns trying to cheer the baby up

• (LITERALLY ACTING LIKE NEWLY WEDS WITH A NEWBORN, I KID YOU NOT)

• "his nose is dry, that means something's wrong." "he's wearing one of those baby thingjes" "so?" "if he poops, where does it go?" ".......humans are disgusting." "I bet he's hungry. how about some milk?" "I'd love some" "NOT YOU. the baby."

• they all, as a team, fight a whole troop of dodos to get food for their baby

• sid: "how about a good-night kiss, for your big buddy sid?"

manfred: "he (the baby)'s asleep."

sid: "I was talking to you."

manfred:

• sid shows off their beloved baby to some lady sloths

• manfred does not like this.

• diego practically saves sid's life by pretending that he killed him (and has this look of nervousness/concern when it almost doesn't work)

• CUE THE ENTIRE MONTAGE OF THE FAMILY TRAVELLING

• yknow that thing in movies where the wife is like "we're lost ask the guy for directions" and the husband denies it? this literally happens between manfred and sid.

• they play charades with a squirrel. diego flicks him into the sun to Burn.

• cue the iconic slide scene that lasts for like idk two or three minutes straight. diego breaks character and gets pumped up. manfred and sid stare at him like "dude we almost lost our kid r u nuts"

• manfred has this. revelation after realizing that he has been missing a family in his life and comes to terms with the fact that, oh my god, I need to get this baby back home.

• he immediately becomes SUCH a dad after that

• Manfred saves Diego's life and diego is like. oh my god. I love these guys. and this whole time he has been leading them into a trap to kill them

• manfred almost dies. diego RLLY feels shitty after that

• sid creates fire. "from now on, you can refer to me as Sid, Lord of the Flame. from now on I will call you Diego,"

diego: "lord of touch me and you're dead."

diego: ".....NAH I'm just kidding you little knucklehead <3"

• manfred calls diego and sid lovebirds.

• baby takes his first steps, and they all share this tender, loving look between one another :))

• "look at that, our little guy is growing up."

• once manfred goes to sleep, sid and diego gush over him. "I've never had a friend who would risk his life for me." "yeah, manny's a good guy :)"

• then comes the part where diego leads them into the trap and he feels awful and nervous about it.

• manfred gets angry. >:(( but diego feels rlly bad and wants to save them :((

• the other saber tooths come. sid tricks them into thinking he is holding the baby. and when they find out he isn't, he runs away.

• he goes to where the baby actually is. gentle little sid moment..

• manfred gets cornered by diego and the leader of the tigers. diego turns on his leader to save his husband.

• diego risks his life like how manfred risked his. almost dies. he tells sid and manfred to leave him and get the baby to his family :((

• "we were some team, huh?"

• diego to the baby: "you gotta be strong. you have to take care of manfred and sid. especially sid."

• manfred and sid take the baby home. tender moment. sid and manfred are both sad to see him go :((

• "don't forget about us, ok? we won't forget about you."

• SURPRISE diego ends up living!! sid runs to him, relieved.

• "you're ok!"

"nine lives, baby"

"you're ok. I could kiss ya!"

• (if I remember correctly, sid does kiss diego's head multiple times)

• manfred asks diego if he needs to hitch a ride. ends up giving sid a ride instead.

• ends the movie with something about sid saying that it will be the best migration ever and then something about global warming idk!

#ok ive had dreams about this movie for almost a week straight #so i gave in and watched it so my brain would stop.#it is just as i remembered it. gay and cheesy and sometimes stupid. but omg #damn i could write an essay on the character development in this movie tbh LMAOWBWHD #hope u enjoy my post 2day i am horribly sorry it had to be this #the first ice age movie is the only movie #rambling #idk if i will tag this anything i am just putting my thoughts here ok LOL

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sunmoontruth-stiles · 3 years

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Ok this is gonna be long. I’ve literally been slowly working on this for… too long. I’m just in a mood to have a long discussion about ships. I’ll be looking at canon and not, so bare with me. I don’t ship all of these personally. I’m mostly just picking the most popular ones. I chose to leave out a few that I just don’t want to talk about. I tried to keep this loosely chronological, but that quickly went to hell. None of this is meant to be hate towards anyone’s ship, just my personal opinions on each of them.

Canon:

Scott x Allison: True Classic

Scallison is so sweet as it is truly the epitome of young love. Romeo and Juliet, except Romeo is even more of an idiot and Juliet is a badass who dies for a cause. They’re moral and ethical codes are both highly valued by themselves, even if they don’t align with others very often. They loved with everything they had. They were beautiful. We’re they soulmates in the end, or just the first love who will always hold a special place in your heart? Who knows, but I’ll always love these immature kids who thought their love could change everything.

Stiles x Lydia: The Long Awaited

Stydia is as slow burn as you can get. Unfortunately their actual getting together was slightly rushed in my opinion. They didn’t have time to find their own as a couple because Stiles just wasn’t in the show enough at that point. I know the reasons behind it, but it did leave this couple at an awkward stage of official-but-not-shown. The idea that Stiles loved her as a kid, immature and infatuated, and he saw her for who she really was, will always be cute. Then they grew, changed, became friends, and found other people. Them finding each other later on, having real love that’s developed slowly, is a wonderful arc. Though, a part of me will always believe they should have pursued other story lines in the wake of Stiles’ absence from the plot. They’re finally together! …but we don’t get to see it.

Jackson x Lydia: The Image

Oh Jackson and Lydia. Honestly, I love them. Their connection at a time in their lives when they couldn’t open up to anyone else, just hits me right in the feels. I mean, god that HUG. You know the one. Always brings me to tears. I’m so sad their relationship was almost entirely depicted during Jackson’s kanima time when he couldn’t think nor truly act for himself. Those small moments of scared vulnerability when he wanted to protect her from himself… I’ll miss these two. They deserved to find other people and remain life-long friends. I loved their moment in the last episode. I wish they’d gotten to see each other grow. Also they had such bixbi solidarity vibes, and I’ll die on that hill.

Scott x Lydia: Leaders

Ok, I’m gonna be honest here. I ship it. The power couple they would have been?? Also them coming together after they lost Allison would have actually made sense. A part of me kinda wishes the writers had moved on from Stydia as a romantic relationship and leaned into them growing as friends and Stiles moving on from his childhood crush. Scott and Lydia actually would have had good chemistry. They were both very headstrong heroic types, but Lydia would have balanced Scott out well intellectually. They had the history, and I think it could had worked if they wrote it right. Plus, Scott and Lydia would have been a better endgame that Scalia.

Scott x Kira: New Beginnings

These two were adorable. Kira was a badass, don’t get me wrong, but she let herself be soft in a way Allison was always afraid to. This couple was truly Baby. Absolute dorks. I can definitely see the lasting quality between the two of them. They saw things very similarly, and had a ton in common. I do think Kira deserves more characterization outside of their relationship, like more of her friendship with Malia. Overall, her departure from the show will always be sad to me. It was bad writing. Scott was over her far too quickly.

Aiden x Lydia: Pretty People Herd

I honestly didn’t see much between these two other than mutual attraction. The best thing to come out of this relationship was Lydia’s line, “You’re not just a bad boy, Aiden. You’re a bad guy. And I don’t want to be with the bad guys.” Good character development moment.

Ethan x Danny: Step to Redemption

Danny really was the thing that made Ethan look outside of the pack for what he really wanted out of life. They had a few cute scenes. Gotta love Danny’s final remarks, “Dude, it’s Beacon Hills.”

Allison x Isaac: Unexpected Rebound

Ok, I like these two. Isaac could match Allison’s snark in a way Scott couldn’t. They both fought the progression of the relationship slightly. They didn’t expect to fall for each other. They were less willing to let someone in close. I’d love to have seen more… but unfortunately their time was limited. On a side note, sometimes their relationship did feel like ‘we both are in love with the same guy, let’s cope with each other’, but I find that completely valid. I’ll talk about Scallisaac later though.

Stiles x Malia: Anchors

Ok but, them <3 I love what they did for each other. Stiles was able to help Malia connect to her humanity and other people. He never tried to isolate her in their relationship and encouraged her growth. Malia offered Stiles the emotional support he never asked for. She defended him, fought for him, and loved him fiercely. Stiles needed that so much after season 3. I think they were a love that wasn’t meant to last, but the impact of it was forever. I wish we’d gotten to see a real end for them where they agreed that they needed to grow as individuals but would always still care.

Liam x Hayden: Three’s a Pattern

These two’s characterization stopped whenever they had storylines together. Their relationship was built on Scallison references. Hayden’s character could have been interesting, but they never really gave her a moment to shine. Liam has the worst plots when they revolved around her. Cute couple, poor writing.

Derek x Braeden: Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girl Boss

Derek deserves to be happy so much. Kate and Jennifer were just... jeez. Him and Braeden were cute and deserved more screen time. I think her intensity allowed for Derek to let go of control a bit more comfortably. Let Derek Be Soft. Anyway, love them.

Corey x Mason: Gotta Have That Rep TM

These two could have been cute if they were shown for more than two seconds at a time. I highkey forget Corey even existed all the time. Kinda just felt like a relationship to fill TW’s gay quota.

Jackson x Ethan: The Callback

Honestly? Loved them. Loved the chemistry. Loved the dynamic. Best twist. I know it was probably written in like that because Colton came out during his time away from the show, but it absolutely fit his character. Jethan is top tier.

Melissa x Chris: BAMF Parent Duo

Ok, so like, Melissa deserved this plot. She deserved someone to care about her. However... what the hell? Chris? In canon, his wife died like 2-ish years prior? His daughter died 1 year prior?? Is Chris really in a position to pursue a new relationship?? Also, like, Scott and Allison dated and loved each other up to her death. Kinda weird to have their parents hook up. I don’t hate it, but I don’t ship it…?

Scott x Malia: Lead up? What’s lead up?

These two came out of nowhere I stg. Like, 6B really tried to tell us this was something that had been slowly developing in the background? Also, I understand that they are their own people, adults, and completely in charge of their own romantic pursuits: but did Scott seriously never call Stiles? Like, Malia wasn’t just his first girlfriend. She was his first. Like, dude that’s your best friend?? Not even a head’s up? No, ‘hey would this bother you?’ Oof. Plus Malia was way too chaotic for Scott. She existed in gray morality that always prioritized her immediate circle, and Scott was a very black/white type of heroism. I just didn’t feel like they fit.

Non-Canon:

Scott x Stiles: Childhood Best Friends

Ya, sorry, I don’t ship Sciles at all. I get it. Like, I totally understand the ship, and I mean no judgment at all. I just see them as friends. I really value good male friendships in media because I feel like we don’t get enough, and I always liked these two.

Stiles x Derek: Enemies to Lovers. 100k. Angst. Hurt/Comfort.

God these two really are what fanfiction was made for. I could write a much longer discussion about Sterek, and I probably will eventually. I’ll try to keep this brief. These two weren’t always on the same side, but their approach was the same. They were very similar at their core. Plus, wow the chemistry. This should have been canon. Jeff’s a coward.

Allison x Lydia: Powerful.

This ship is so great. They really had a great dynamic, and a romantic plot would have easily fit the established narrative. Lydia’s confidence in herself and Allison’s confidence in her own abilities crossing over to each other because that’s what the other lacked? Iconic.

Danny x Jackson: He Gets Him

Danny really saw Jackson for everything he was and still cared. I wished we’d gotten to see more of them. I want more background with Jackson’s eventual coming out and his friendship with Danny. Like, they ended up dating the same guy. What did Ethan have to say about that??

Stiles x Jackson: Bastards

Ok these two had a super fun dynamic. The asshole-energy between them was, great. The snark was always so entertaining.

Melissa x Noah: Family

How were these two not endgame? Their sons were practically brothers already. They had amazing chemistry. The flirting? Not to mention, their timeline would have made way more sense. Missed opportunity.

Chris x Peter: The Opposite of Love is Indifference, Not Hate

Ok so like, this was definitely one of those ships that I had absolutely no knowledge of before I was pretty into the fandom. Like, this was not something I would have guessed just after watching the show. That being said; my god the chaos alone…

Scott x Isaac: The Disaster Duo

Okay ya I love these two. Two dumb asses who act like idiot puppies. Such a fun dynamic. Plus?? Chemistry??? Hellooo

Scott x Allison x Isaac: Three Heads Are Better Than One

This ship is definitely one of my personal favorites. I very rarely poly-ship. I just feel like most of them are just love triangles with an ‘easy solution’, when two of them have no real connection. That is so not the case here. I feel like all of them have such great chemistry with each other. They also have a great dynamic as a group. Season 3A was really just Scallisaac rights.

Stiles x Isaac: I Hate You, jk…Not Really

Ok I loved their banter, but I really just don’t see this ship. Idk, I don’t personally ship it. Would have loved to see their friendship develop more tho.

Erica x Allison: Duo that would stab you with a stiletto

I don’t ship it, but I do wish we’d seen them become friends. I feel like they had a very artificial ‘girls fighting over a boy’ dynamic? They could have been such a badass duo.

Stiles x Erica: Batman x Catwoman

Ok I’m not sure exactly how to express my feelings for these two so bare with me. OMG I love their dynamic so much, and they are sooo cute. Their energy? Amazing. Chemistry? Great. History? It’s there and has so much potential. 10/10. Love them. But, no, I don’t ship it lol. Just really love their friendship, but with the underlying history of crushes.

Boyd x Erica: Was This Not Canon?

How can anyone not love Berica? Ugh they are adorable. These two deserved so much better.

Boyd x Cora: Survivors

Honestly I don’t really see it? Like they definitely had a connection, but it never felt romantic. I really feel like they just had to lean on each other and bond to make it through captivity, and it just lasted.

Boyd x Erica x Cora: The Pack

I literally learned this was a ship a couple days ago. Similar feelings towards this as Bora, but with the added hesitancy of we never actually saw Erica and Cora interact.

Cora x Stiles: Slow Build Up

These two were clearing being lined up to be a thing before Cora ended up leaving. I can’t say I’m disappointed they never happened. Kinda felt like they just wanted to straight-code Sterek.

Cora x Lydia: Mean Lesbians

Not much interaction to actually go off of, but yes I 100% support. They have very different approaches to problems, which is fun. Very ‘opposites attract’.

Malia x Kira: “Maybe you could date the coyote?”

Another one of my favorites!! They really complimented each other. Also, how full circle would they have been? They were introduced in back-to-back episodes. Malia stalking her as a coyote? The line from Kira’s dad about dating it? It would have been so funny if that ended up happening.

Malia x Lydia: Beauty and the Beast, but make it wlw

These two were fun. I liked their friendship, but I don’t really ship it. Though, rip Stiles that would have been hilarious.

Parrish x Lydia: The Cop and The Minor

Must I say more? Like, Parrish’s character, so sweet and big rule follower, did not make sense for what went down with Lydia. I love Parrish, but the dynamic just felt off. It didn’t feel consistent with the rest of his characterization.

Parrish x Stiles: The Cop and The Minor, but gay?

Ok, same reasoning as above, but also they had absolutely no connection romantically.

Scott x Theo / Stiles x Theo: Sometimes The Villain is Hot

Ok I’ve put these together because I have the same opinion for both. I don’t ship it. Neither had any rebuilding of trust, and Theo really hurt both of them. I just don’t really think they work.

Mason x Liam: Sciles Puppy Pack Edition

Similar to my feeling about Sciles, I just don’t ship these two. They had a good friendship, from the little we saw of it.

Theo x Liam: Anchors 2: Electric Boogaloo

Another personal favorite! I really don’t even understand why this didn’t go canon?? The elevator scene was just, so intense. They helped each other grow in 6B, and I really loved their dynamic. They should have hooked up.

Honorable Mention?:

Parrish x Laura: What’s canon?

I’ve seen this in fanfic a lot, and I actually really like it lol. I thought I’d add it in here because I do love the creativity of fandoms.

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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Abridged: 1976

The X-Men, those fiery mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 97 - 102) - by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum

If I ever participate in Drag Race, this will be my entrance look. (“Hear me, bitches! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am fierce! I am fashion incarnate! Now and forever, the winner of season 27!” *mugs at camera* ) (X-Men 101)

It really amazes me how quickly Claremont shifts things into high gear. One year in and he absolutely does not calm down, giving us both the Shi’ar, more Sentinels and the (motherfucking) Phoenix. SO LET'S GOOOO

You’d think that, as a telepath, Charles would be used to dreaming absolutely twisted shit, surfing everybody else´s freaky dream waves, but apparently, vividly dreaming of space is so exhausting that he needs a vacation.

To be fair, I’d be exhausted too if I dreamt of schizo space bugs on detailed splash pages. Get into it, Mr. Cockrum. (X-Men 97)

Meanwhile, Alex and Lorna have absconded to the sizzling Rio Diablo to work on their doctorates. It’s unclear what they’re studying (archaeology?) and where this Rio Diablo is (Panama, Chili, Ecuador?), but considering that Rio means River, I’m unsure whether drawing a dry dry desert is the appropriate setting. But hey, this was the pre-Google era and you’re not here for topographical nitpicking, so.

Lorna is shot by an unknown assailant and continues the long, long history of Polaris being mentally overtaken by other entities. Together with the equally not-himself Havoc, they travel back to NYC and attack the plane Xavier is boarding. The X-Men battle them, until it is revealed that these former not-quite-X-Men are in league with… Eric the Red?

Scott is all: But I was Eric the Red! Also, Eric the Red does not exist!

Xavier escapes, apparently not giving a fuck that all kinds of X-Men are demolishing the JFK airport, but the still-evil Havok and Polaris also get away. The X-Men are shook!

Some time later, The X-Men celebrate X-Mas at Rockefeller Square, where Claremont skips some steps in favour of narrative expediency. Moira and Sean are apparently in a relationship, Jean and Storm are the best of friends. It’s some pretty rough telling, not showing, but we’ll allow it, but only because the Storm/Jean-friendship is one of my favourite things.

What, you think only the movies indulged in Lee/Kirby-cameos? (X-Men 98)

Anyway, Jean and Scott are attacked by the Sentinels, who continue their trend of being way too sneaky for supersized racist robots! Xavier is kidnapped on his boat trip with super-duper scientist Peter Corbeau (seriously, he has two Nobel Prizes), while they steal away Jean, Sean and Logan in NYC. When they come to, there’s some gloating from Stephen Lang.

Jean Grey being a literal pin-up while delivering nazi-burns is such a big middle finger to everything she was in the sixties and I am here for it. (X-Men 98)

When the three kidnapped X-Men make a break for it and escape the Sentinel’s clutches, they burst through a wall, only to be greeted by the cold vacuum of space! They’re not on Earth at all: they’re on a formerly SHIELD space station! GASP! (literally)

In secret, Peter Corbeau, inventor of sliced bread, helps the X-Men back on Earth board a space shuttle, where Colossus remembers his brother Mikhail (objectively the worst Rasputin), a kosmonaut who died at the launch of another spacecraft. It’s another Future Plotline Seed©.

The X-Men dodge solar storms which sounds like a made-up contrivance but aren’t, while the Sentinels try to destroy the shuttle. In what the kids these days call a pro-gamer move, the X-Men instead ram the space station and go through to these apparently sub-par Sentinels like Magma through butter. Kurt’s showmanship and Colossus’ loyalty are highlighted, while Cyclops becomes more robotic and repressed the more Jean is in danger.

Colossus’ secondary mutation is apparently BEING THE BIGGEST DORK. (X-Men 99)

Scott almost kills Stephen Lang, but then Stephen throws his ace in the hole at them: THE OLD X-MEN? This reveal throws us right in the hallmark one hundredth issue!

And, look. Stephen, this is just a terrible plan. Instead of using most of your budget on making more impressive Sentinels, you blow half of it on making janky X-Men clones to… what? Confuse the real X-Men?

It works for a hot minute, but Kurt and Ororo quickly figure out something is wrong. This Beast, for example, isn’t hairy and this Jean doesn’t remember being in Storm’s confidence. Wolverine is the first to snap: acting on instinct, he kills ‘Jean’, proving she’s an android.

Stephen Lang, foiled by the X-Men’s logical thinking skills (which, to be fair, are notoriously unreliable), spews some hatred and accidentally blows himself up. Nothing of value is lost.

Too bad the X-Men can’t return to Earth: their space shuttle is too damaged. I actually love this: going to space is kind of a big deal for most people and the fact that the X-Men have trouble because they’re stranded in space lends them a kind of vulnerability that has been lost over the recent years. Jean steps up to the plate, herds the other X-Men into the protected life cell and assumes the pilot seat of the shuttle. This is after zapping Cyclops into unconsciousness and telling the other X-Men to kindly fuck off when they try to stop her.

As the X-Men descend onto the Earth, Jean’s telekinesis isn’t enough to protect her as she’s engulfed by solar flares. OR IS SHE?

Nothing funny. All of these panels are just beautiful. Forget those robot copy X-Men, this is why this issue is worthy of being the hundredth one. (X-Men 100)

The space shuttle crashes, rolls over JFK airport before dunking in the water. The X-Men emerge, safe, sound and very lucky and then, defying all odds, Jean emerges as the Phoenix. Fire, life incarnate, etc.

After a brief but melodramatic burst of energy, Jean collapses into unconsciousness and is hospitalized. Wolverine intends to bring her flowers (aw!), before throwing them out when he realizes the gal’s taken, establishing the X-Men’s most famous love triangle. (You can fuck right off with your Scott/Jean/Warren-bullshit.)

I’m not sure what my favorite thing is here: the absolutely bonkers everybody’s-elated-panel (special mention to Kurt’s boots and his bounce) or the subtle character beat where Kurt goes all heart-of-the-team and checks on Scott, who turns out to be not so stoic. (X-Men 101)

Charles orders all the X-Men (except Scott) to go on vacation, so he can take care of Jean. Like, Charles, you’d think they could just go hang out at the X-Mansion. Instead, they go to Ireland because Sean has conveniently inherited the ancestral Cassidy Keep.

All the X-Men dress up fancy for a welcoming feast, and it seems Kurt and Ororo are flirting? But sometimes, it also seems like Ororo and Piotr are flirting? Listen, I’m not judging: I love these polycule vibes from the early X-Men. Especially because neither Kurt nor Ororo have had particularly satisfying romantic plotlines for the past 20 years.

I’m not here to insinuate nothing, but last time I said “I enjoy being with both of you”, it ended up in a spitroast. (X-Men 101)

The soiree is interrupted by… THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH, and Black Tom, Sean Cassidy’s evil cousin. They are hired by an unknown someone to kill the X-Men! Since nobody subtle is involved, they quickly wreck the castle and everybody tumbles into the dungeons. (Local news paper reports: gay power couple harasses ill-dressed American tourists.)

This story is mostly a vehicle to tells Ororo’s backstory: Storm, one of the few who could conceivably put up a fight to Cain Marko, feels caged by the cold rocks of Cassidy Keep and is incapacitated by her claustrophobia.

Back in the USA, Charles, who’s heard Storm’s mental anguish, is furious with Scott because he doesn’t hop in a plane to save the other X-Men, even though Scott correctly points out that he’ll never get there in time if he leaves now. Meanwhile, Jean awakens, convinced she somehow brought herself back to life. Yeah, you go girl.

While the rest of the X-Men fight the evil duo in Ireland, Claremont tells Storm’s backstory in a few gorgeous spreads.

“I could write a novel about Storm’s backstory.” “You get two pages.” “Deal.” (X-Men 102)

Another classic comics trope appears here, where family members are immune to one another’s powers. I have no idea how Black Tom is immune to Banshee’s sonic scream - he has ears.

Does Black Tom just have a voice in his ears going NEENER NEENER NEENER when Sean screams? (X-Men 102)

When Storm finally pulls herself back together, it’s too late: the Juggernaut has pummeled the other X-Men into a paste and she also falls to his onslaught. IS THIS THE END OF THE X-MEN?!

Other things introduced this year:

Kurt’s image inducer, which he abuses to look like Errol Flynn. (I would abuse it to look like an amalgam of Milo Ventimiglia (ca. Gilmore Girls) and Timothée Chardonnay. OR like Emmy Raver-Lampman.)

The fastball special!

All kinds of name confusion: Lorna is Polaris, Havok is sometimes Havoc and Piotr becomes Peter.

Best new character: Phoenix. Hit me with that iconic shit.

What to read: The Stephen Lang arc is not fully necessary, just read issue 100 and 101. Don’t skip issue 102 if you want to know all about Storm’s past.

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residentlesbrarian · 3 years

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The Fourth Book I Read In the Dark: Of Expectations and Other Relatabilities

Of Gryphons and Other Monsters by Shannon McGee

Hey, guys, sooooo...this is aaaawwwkward. I wrote 95% of this review when I wrote the other Books I Read in the Dark series for the blog, but the ADHD hit me and COVID was still you know...a thing! So I am gonna post this review, finished of course, OH, but also pay extra close attention to the conclusion alright! Hmm...this is a bit like a time capsule...here are my concentrated thoughts from 6 months ago while I was slightly delirious on books and darkness. So go forth and uh yeah this one is...you can just feel the feral “I haven’t had access to proper internet so I’ve been curled in the corner like Gollum with my books” energy coming off it so...enjoy?

Okay, so yeah, I really didn’t have a reason to end my last review that way I just wanted to, so sue me for injecting a little excitement into a series of posts about me literally sitting in my house reading nonstop for 2 ½ days, my reviews my rules. Back to manufacturing my own excitement shall we!

It’s Day 2! I’ve just finished my last library book, whatever will I do! I could always reread The Neverending Story for the 1,273rd time, but I have a need. A need for GAY! I rack my brain, there has to be a solution. My town is without power, my local library won’t be open, but then it hits me. It’s so simple! It’s meant to be really! Like the universe knew this was coming and it made sure I was prepared! Like a prepper stockpiling mental SPAM for my stimulus needing ADHD riddled brain! I have an entire shelf of books that I haven’t read yet! Way back in Clexacon 2019 my best friend (Lookin at you @justalifelongphase) gave me way too much money from missed birthdays and Christmases all at once before the con started because the world has deemed it impossible for us to live geographically close to one another. Anyway, I went a little book-buying-crazy and have not had the time or opportunity to read any of them since then. Their time has finally come!

I figured after going full whimsy with The Lost Coast and sci-fi superhero with Dreadnought and Sovereign why not take a dip into more traditional fantasy, also this one was first in line on the shelf, yay for not having to actually make a decision! No more dawdling, let's get right into the review!

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb: Taryn always loves and hates gryphon season. She finds the lesser gryphons more cute than anything but the ever present fear that a greater gryphon might be just out of sight is terrifying, and this gryphon season proves to be the one that will change her and her families lives forever! Just let a girl herd her sheep in peace!

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review:

I genuinely enjoyed this book. It took me a bit longer to get through it than the others, but I think that was a combination of three things: A. I was starting to feel the fatigue of reading so much in such a short amount of time. B. Our local Wal Mart had power restored on Day 3 and our entire household went on a trip to buy non-perishable food stuffs and I was like a solitary confinement prisoner being let out into the yard for the first time in months when my phone picked up a wifi signal and it was a bit hard to get back into the swing of reading after talking to other humans, even virtually, that weren’t imaginary or in my head. C. Our power was finally restored on the afternoon of Day 3 so yet again I was inundated with the draw of technology and all of my friend-os I hadn’t talked to, but the book had drawn me in enough I did the most unmillienial thing and left my phone in a different room to charge while I finished this book before going back to the land of technology and interwebs. That should tell you something.

McGee was able to write this story in a way that pulls you in so you care about what happens to these characters and this little mountain town. You learn just enough about the world to understand where they fit within the overall weave of it, but you aren’t given a Tolkein-esc dissertation on the world lore. I felt the worries and the fears. I was concerned when the routines had to change. I mean she made me care about the freaking sheep! Sheep, people! One of the reasons I think this works so well is we are so firmly rooted in the head of our protagonist, Taryn. Imma use that lovely bridge I just built to skip right on over the plot section of the review to get to the characters first, don’t worry we’ll circle back round to the plot. I always do, but I just wanna talk about my newest set of brain babies.

Taryn is a character that, if the title of this post is anything to go by, I found very very relatable. Now I know relatability can be pretty subjective, some people can latch onto something with the all consuming, “It me!” While others just stare on dead eyed not understanding the appeal. I feel like Taryn could be that kind of protagonist. You are either going to really relate to her or you won’t understand where she is coming from at all. I obviously fall in the former category. I was the quintessential middle child, still am really, though my relationship with my parents has shifted now that I’m an adult. More mutual respect and friendship than parent to child. I always did my best to pick up the slack, if ever there was any, and just tried my best to be as little of a burden as possible to my parents. I see so much of that aspect of myself in Taryn and how she sees her place at the farm and even in the town, she has her place and her role, but those expectations are heavy. One of those expectations being that she will inevitably get married and help take over the farm from her parents and have kids to continue the line. The fact she finds the lesser gryphons that flock near the farm far cuter than any of the local boys that she will eventually have to choose from to fulfill that inevitable expectation is just...sad at best and down right tragic at worst. And her family doesn’t help matters either. They won’t let her forget that she will have to settle down with one of these local boys, a boy who would make a good husband and take good care of her and the farm. She knows that, logically, but she also wants to be in love, like her parents, and she just doesn’t feel like that for any of the boys in town. She doesn’t know how to make those two things line up. It’s a struggle between her head, the obligation of what she has to do, and her heart, what she really wants for her future, to be happy in doing what she has to do. Wow, I went off a little bit there, but this was my long winded way of saying I have never read a protagonist that really captured the utter confusion of being raised in a heteronormative environment without it being drenched in internalized homophobia and fear. Protagonists like this seem to always know something is off but just don’t have the words for it so they just hide it because they know it’s “different” and out of the norm, but Taryn is just livin’ her sheep herding life and ain’t got no time for these boy crazy fools. She knows her mom wants her to find a good boy to court her so she can marry someday but she’s still young. She’ll think about that tomorrow, and she just repeats that ad infinitum. The thought that maybe she doesn’t fancy any of the boys because well...girls...never even occurred to her. It's not how things are done in this small mountain town, not because of homophobia reasons, but just stubborn tradition reasons. We are even told there is a gay couple living in town who are staples in the overall dynamics in town, instrumental even, but the idea of having a lineage, being able to pass your land down is so ingrained no wonder poor Taryn was so in the dark about her own probable gayness till it slapped her in the face. As someone who was raised in a medium sized Oklahoma town...girl I feel you. I was 22 and in the middle of Appalacia, way up in the mountains for college when my gay awakening popped up and said “Hello!” Everything that never quite made sense in my life came into perfect clarity. Not quite what happened with Taryn, but the arrival of Aella surely helped, as pretty girls are want to do. Oh look a segue, good, cause I could talk about Taryn for literal hours and I’ve already gabbed about her too much for this review.

Aella, you smooth motherfucker. Like I wish I could possess a quarter of the smoothness that you do. Like I’m lucky to string sentences together around a pretty girl, but here you are just strutting about being the smoothest of smooth. Honestly, I just...I can’t with you Aella. On a serious note though Aella is a character that served as showing Taryn a glimpse at the world beyond her small mountain town, as much as she had no desire to leave, unlike her brother. Nope, sit down, we’ll get to you, Michael! Oh, we’ll get to you. She’s traveled and has stories from all over and she is fairly open about the fact that she only likes girls, but she doesn’t have land, responsibilities, and a family line to continue. She just gets to live her life the way she choses. And y’all know I am a sap for the hard dark characters that are totally softies underneath that rough exterior. I think Aella was a great foil to Taryn and great at showing her what she could have if she was willing to leave, to stretch what she was allowed to wish for, but of course the biggest issue with her wishing for anything was...Michael.

Michael was such an interesting character. I loved him. I hated him. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to punch him. Again as with the town and the people of the town I was so deep seated in Taryn’s head and feelings that her conflicted feelings about Michael and how he was acting became my feelings on the matter. Not enough to not separate a tad and see what was coming or at least try to predict it as I always do when reading, but emotionally I was right with Taryn the whole way. The one thing that really pushed Michael from just a character I was conflicted about to one I really wanna give a swift kick in the nads to, is that he knew. He knew all about Taryn’s absolute lack of romantic inclinations toward any of the boys in town and her doubts that she would ever find someone to love and marry to take over the farm. He was the only person she confided these fears in and he still selfishly followed his own pursuits with little regard to her or her worries. You sir, are a terrible brother and overall a shit human, so sit your ass down and shut your mouth.

The plot for this book was so embroiled with the characters and their journeys that I can’t talk on it much but the twists at the end and the final climax was very satisfying for me and left me excited to dig into the next book. Also something of note that I didn’t talk about in the character section cause I felt it was dragging on a touch, I really only talked in depth on our three biggest players but there is a very colorful cast of side characters ranging from Taryn’s nervous pony to the boy-who-cried-gryphon neighbor no one can stand to the troupe of hunters led by Aella’s mother to Taryn’s best friend Nia, all of whom play important parts in building that sense of caring about the people of this town and the town itself, which in turn made me deeply care about the outcome of the plot at the heart of the story. And the sheep! The god damn sheep!

One thing I do want to say before my final thoughts is that whoever designed the cover of this book in a genius because as I dug into the story I found myself constantly closing it to spout off about theories of what I thought was happening on the cover and what it all meant, I was kind of reader fatigue delirious for most of those theories but some of them I was right! I might have reenacted the Captain Holt “Vindication” gif IRL just because it felt too good not to. I just love when a “cool” cover turns out to be so much more than that once you’re “in the know”. So yeah, now y’all know to pay attention for that.

My final thoughts on this book are pretty positive. I can tell the author is building us toward so much more, hence the name of the series, Taryn’s Journey, and it feels like it. This is only the beginning and I honestly can’t wait to take the next steps with her.

Queer Wrap-up:

Hey it’s me from the future...present...whatever...so, this is when I stopped writing the review six months ago and there is a reason for that. I, kind of, agonized over what to rate this book on the scale. Multiple times having to call my brother and go back and forth just to then repeat the same arguments with myself as soon as I got off the phone. Now why was this such a hard terrible no good awful back and forth well...SPOILER WARNING...seriously anything past this point will be spoiling some character beats for the majority of the book...okay? We understand one another. DANGER ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE...or you know scroll on.

So, Taryn is never confirmed to be queer in the text of this book. Now you would have to be wearing the tightest hetero goggles in known history not to see the heavy HEAVY subtext saying THIS BITCH GAY! It’s basically a full grown elephant painted sparkly rainbow trying to hide behind a dead shrub aka not hiding at all. I so desperately wanted to give this book four of those darling unicorns but in this rare case I just don’t think I can justify it. We have a protagonist that is still figuring herself out, which is amazing that we get to see that and go on the journey with her. Some of the things Taryn does and thinks are queer coded as hell, especially if it involves Aella who is explicitly gay on the page, but Taryn herself never express whether she herself is queer. Which, fair, other really important and traumatizing things were going on and I love that about her as a character, she didn’t meet Aella and suddenly that was all she could think about. Aella, of course, is representation who I’m counting because even though she shows obvious interest (you smooth motherfucker) in Taryn she is so much more than just a love interest and her character isn’t just boiled down to her sexuality. Now in this wrap up I’m also including the doctor and his husband in the town. They are very minor characters but they give us interesting insights into the town and the people. They are accepted and treated well in town even if some do almost, pity isn’t the right word, but they seem sad that they won’t be able to have any kind of legacy or lineage. As I said in the review it’s not homophobia it’s being stuck in your ways and it’s an interesting take.

Links:

Shannon McGee Website

The Storygraph

Okay so this one is a bit of a mess. Pieces of it were written 6 months apart and most of it was written while I was kind of delirious but hey at least I can say it’s honest. I still stand by everything my past self wrote and I still really enjoy thinking and talking about this book and am excited for whenever I get around to reading the sequel to continue on Tayrn’s journey with her. This is a book I probably would never have known even existed without ClexaCon and trolling through artist alley for literally every table that had books on them. I guess, moral of the day is maybe you won’t just find great books on library shelves but on unassuming convention tables too and it never hurts to look. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

Oh bet you thought this post was over. I did the sign off and everything but oh no no! I have some info and such to impart. I am WELL AWARE these reviews have been fairly inconsistent to down right sporadic. Well, this is just a little info dump letting you guys know I am gonna be putting up one more review after this one that I wrote ages ago and I mean AGES (think years, as in multiple) and just never got around to posting and then the old blog is probably gonna be going through a PLANNED dormancy while some pretty big stuff is coming down the pike. You may notice visual changes and other stuff before anything else is announced but just keep an eye out. To quote the Fates from Hercules, “It’s gonna be big!”

Okay now for the actual sign off, I got shit to do! No one look behind the curtain, it’s a surprise!

#Of Gryphons and Other Monsters #Shannon McGee #resident lesbrarian #3 unicorns #questioning girl #lesbian #heavy wlw romantic subtext #ya novel #ya fantasy #go to your local library #but wear a mask #and wash your hands #and stay 6 feet apart #be safe out there guys gals and nonbinary pals

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cryptidshuffle · 3 years

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the less we say about it the better - chp 1

ao3

Rating: Teen Fandom: Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware Relationships: Tommy Coolatta & Gordon Freeman, Tommy Coolatta/Gordon Freeman (pre relationship) Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Temporary Character Death(its benrey dont worry hes ok), meta about deaths and respawns, arguing about the rules of uno, gay pining, Mutual Pining, fellas is it gay to comfort ur friend who u love and are both boys?, also fair warning it'll eventually be a poly ship with benrey, Autistic Character, Autistic Tommy, ADHD Gordon, everyone is gay and trans, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Summary: “after everything we’ve been through we deserve a few mental break downs.” they are trying to recover after black mesa, but recovery is hard. especially when one of you is still dead

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

They had been out of Black Mesa for a few weeks now. It was difficult trying to acclimate to life after the incident, but they were all making it work.

The science team had gotten together for some sort of game night, something cathartic about being around others who share the same trauma. Anyways, snacks and Uno was just as chaotic as one would imagine with this group of chucklefucks, with competitive tensions high on the last round of the night.

“You can’t stack the draw 4 cards, Gordon,” Bubby argued, smacking Gordon’s hand just as he placed the card.

“Says who?”

“It’s literally against the fucking rules of the game,” Bubby said back.

Tommy agreed with, “It is in the official rules, Mr. Freeman, they- Mattel confirmed it on Twitter.”

“But that’s dumb!” Gordon argued back, “I’ve always played where you can stack those, why change that now?"

Bubby retorted, “Well maybe you’ve always been playing wrong, huh? Ever thought about that, smartass?”

Dr. Coomer chimed in with, “Well on the official page for Uno (card game) on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, it states that

The following official house rules are suggested in the Uno rulebook, to alter the game:

Progressive Uno: If a draw card is played, and the following player has the same card, they can play that card and "stack" the penalty, which adds to the current penalty and passes it to the following player.[4](Although a +4 cannot be stacked on a +2, or vice versa.)[6] This house rule is so commonly used that there was widespread Twitter surprise in 2019 when Mattel stated that stacking was not part of the standard rules of Uno.[6]”

“Well, there you have it,” Gordon exclaims, interrupting Coomer’s Wikipedia infodump, “Just because it’s a house rule doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate way of playing."

“What if I don’t want to play with that rule, that’s fuckin stupid,” Bubby grumbles.

“Jesus ok, I'll play a different card, happy?” Gordon says dejectedly, taking back his controversial draw 4 card for a more innocuous one. “It’s your turn anyways.”

Bubby throws down his last card onto the pile. “I win fuckers!!!! Ahahahahaha!"

“You wouldn’t have won if you let me stack the fucking cards,” Gordon said as he threw his losing card pile onto the coffee table.

“Don’t fret Gordon! Bubby is just extremely good at card games,” Dr. Coomer replied.

“You're forgetting I’m a goddamn genius, that extends to my sick-ass Uno skills,” Bubby bragged.

Gordon chuckled, watching the two older scientists get up to leave, and watching Tommy remain, quietly cleaning up the uno deck into neat piles to place in its box.

“Well gentlemen, it’s been fun, though I think it’s time Bubby and I better get going!” Dr. Coomer said.

“No problem, don’t want you two to be late for your old man early-bird breakfast at Golden Corral tomorrow!” Gordon teased.

“Shut the fuck- I’ll kick your ass,” said Bubby.

“Hello Gord- Actually our old man breakfast is not until Saturday! It’s the one day a week I let loose and unhinge my jaws at the buffet like a Burmese Python!” said Dr. Coomer as Bubby grabs his coat and keys.

“That sounds absolutely horrifying,” Gordon laughs.

“It really is,” says Bubby. “Well, see you later asshole,” Bubby says, herding himself and Coomer out the front door.

“See you guys later,” Gordon says.

“Goodbye, Gordon! Goodbye, Tommy,” Coomer also says, before they leave Gordon’s apartment.

Tommy had yet to get up to leave, he stayed sitting in his seat staring into space, and fiddling with the Uno card deck.

“Hey Tommy, you alright man?” he asked gently. At the mention of his name, he was shaken a bit out of his stupor.

“Y-yeah I'm fine Mr. Freeman, why do you ask?”

“I mean you were kinda just staring into space for a bit, and you didn’t say anything when Bubby and Coomer left.”

“Oh shit. Sorry about that, I’ll get out of your hair,” Tommy said, starting to move to leave.

Gordon placed a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “Hey, if something’s bothering you, just know I’m here if you wanna talk about it,” Gordon comforted.

Tommy blushed slightly at the contact and nodded.

“Thank you. I-uh… I’ve just been thinking about things that happened back in Black Mesa and, you know,” he pauses to think for a bit, and sighs, “honestly I’ve been thinking a lot about Benrey.”

Just at the mention of him, Gordon felt his stomach drop with the weight of too many emotions.

“Yeah...I uh… I understand,” he responds with a sad sigh, “anything in particular you’re thinking about him?”

“I don’t know just kind of- Earlier I started thinking about how much he would enjoy game night. And then I started to miss him and realize that- that he’s not here. I feel guilty about killing him and upset at what he did. He was still my friend and I just- I want to know why he did what he did. I just want to understand,” Tommy said.

Gordon looked away as he thought about his own emotions regarding Benrey. He was undeniably angry with him, for getting him ambushed by the bootboys, for getting his arm cut off, frustrated with the constant taunting. Yet… he also felt guilty for some reason and he couldn’t quite place why. Gordon really didn’t want to feel guilty.

“Yeah…” Gordon sighed, “I'll be honest I do feel guilty about it too. I don’t know why because I feel like it should be justified since he did try to kill us. But there were times when him pestering me about my arm felt like… like sincere questioning? I still… I don’t know.”

“Yeah… I think-” Tommy cut himself off, staring at a fixed point in his vision, trying to decide whether or not to bring this up.

“I don’t think Benrey understood how human mortality worked.”

Well, that wasn’t what Gordon expected. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he was from Xen, Mr. Freeman, he wasn’t human. It was different for him. You remember he did die several times, but he came back eventually. He had to wait for his form to regenerate.”

“Wait-” this time Gordon cut Tommy off, “Oh shit, that wasn’t a joke? For some reason I just assumed his talking about respawns and shit was part of his Epic Gamer bit?”

“I mean it was a little but I think… there’s probably a reason Benrey attached himself to video games so much, yeah? He can see himself in the structure. Like, uh- something he can relate to.” Tommy says. “It doesn’t excuse what- what he did, but I feel like knowing why things happened makes- makes them more understandable.”

Gordon leaned back on the couch blown away by the revelation. In hindsight it wasn’t that surprising but it took him a few seconds to come to terms with the reality.

“Yeah, when you put it that way, I guess it does make a lot of sense. Wait though, I swear to god all of you have died at least once, but you guys aren’t from Xen?” Gordon said, now confused about the seeming metanarrative of the mortality of his friends.

“Yeah, but those were weird Black Mesa things, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said, not elaborating any more than that.

Gordon waited a beat for Tommy to explain more but he said all he needed to.

“I will ask you more about that later, but I do not have the energy to unpack all that right now,” Gordon said with a gentle laugh.

“Wait, getting back on topic real quick, why couldn’t Benrey just... respawn now? Did we really get him that good?”

Tommy looked incredibly sad when Gordon said this, and he regretted it immediately. ‘Damn it Gordon, Tommy’s clearly upset about Benrey, you don’t gotta be an insensitive dick.’

“Well Mr. Freeman, that’s kinda why I’ve been thinking about him,” Tommy said, “I’m not sure. It shouldn’t have taken him this long to respawn. Depending on the amount of damage it takes longer but… It’s been a while and what if- What if he is back but he is mad at all of us and that’s why we haven’t seen him? Or what if it is taking a really long time because we hurt him a whole lot. Or what if we…”

Tommy got quiet for a few seconds, the silence in the room was deafening. For an instance Gordon felt as if making a sound would shatter the air like glass.

Tommy finally said with a whisper, voice thick with choking back tears, “What if we killed him for good? And I don’t- I never see him again?”

It honestly broke Gordon’s heart how distraught Tommy was. Pushing his own complicated Benrey feelings aside, he was gonna focus on Tommy here and now.

“…Tommy, is it ok if I hug you, man?” Gordon couldn’t think of the best way to comfort the other man with words, but physical comfort he could do.

Tommy looked a little surprised at this ask but nodded. Gordon leaned in to hug the other scientist and Tommy collapsed in his embrace, completely breaking down.

Gordon just sat there and held him as Tommy sobbed into his shoulder, trying to comfort the crying man by rubbing circles into his back.

Gordon’s brain processed the things Tommy had said. Was Benrey really gone? Why did he feel guilty about the idea of having killed Benrey, he was fine with the concept during the final boss fight on Xen but now… the thought made him feel… sad? Regretful? Even his seemingly rational justifications didn’t seem as clear at the moment, only thinking of his fonder memories with Benrey.

‘Fuck this,’ he thought as he felt his own tears well up, ‘this isn’t about me, I need to focus on being there for Tommy,’ pushing his own feelings to the back of his mind to be dealt with later.

Tommy eventually calmed down enough where his sobs turned into sniffles, and he started to pull away from the hug.

“S – sorry for having a – a breakdown on your- on your couch Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said, the post-crying mental fog making his stuttering more noticeable. Tommy didn’t really have the effort in him to care.

“Don’t worry about it, man, after everything we’ve been through we deserve a few mental breakdowns,” Gordon joked trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh, that was nothing, Mr. Freeman, in terms of mental breakdowns that was as mild as a first-grade pizza party in the eye of a hurricane,” Tommy compared in a way that made little sense to Gordon, yet ridiculous enough to cause the man to burst out laughing.

“Alright I’ll take your word for it,” Gordon said, still laughing.

“I’m serious Mr. Freeman, once you have a meltdown so intense that you accidentally teleport yourself to an inter-dimensional void, the rest is a cake walk at the school fair,” Tommy said.

“Waitwaitwait- teleport?” he leaned back to look at him in surprise, “Since when could you fuckin teleport!” Gordon asked caught off guard.

“You know, learned some things from my Dad,” Tommy said, again failing to further explain himself.

“…Well alright. Yeah that tracks.”

Gordon was quiet for a moment before responding with, “You know, Tommy, I want you to know I’m here for you if you need anyone to talk to. You were there for me when I was at my lowest in Black Mesa, and I wanna be that friend to you if you need it,” he said giving the other scientists hand a comforting squeeze.

Tommy smiled, “Thank you, that means a lot Mr. Freeman.”

“You know you can call me Gordon, you don’t have to be so formal all the time Dr. Coolatta,” he teased.

Tommy blushed, ‘dammit why did he have to be so cute?’

“Wow Mr. Fr – Gordon are you really gonna make fun of my doctorate that I worked very hard for,” Tommy teased back, still a bit sniffly from crying.

“Dude, I cannot imagine you in college for some reason, what was your doctorate even in” asked Gordon, semi-jokingly, but still a bit serious.

Tommy laughed a bit, wiping the remaining tears away with the back of his hand. “Bio-chemical engineering. Creating Sunkist was for my thesis project.” Normally Tommy would be more then willing to infodump about the topic but he found his energy to be draining fast.

“What the fuck, that’s cooler than mine was. Us nerds in the Theoretical Physics department didn’t do any crazy shit like that,” Gordon said.

“Bold of you to assume I was a nerd, G-Gordon. I was the craziest guy in the frat house,” Tommy said.

Gordon’s memory vaguely recalls Tommy’s insistence that he “do something crazy” when drinking Darnold’s Potion of Grow Gun Arm.

“You know what, yeah, surprisingly I can see that image vividly in my head,” Gordon said. “Real talk though…” he said changing the subject and putting his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, “Are you- uh, ok? Like feeling better?”

Tommy was quiet for a second, eyes flickering down to look at his fidgeting hands in his lap, before replying with, “I’m ok. N-not great, I don’t think, but I will be.”

Gordon nodded. “Tommy, if there’s one nugget of wisdom that I have to share, it’s that healing takes time, things usually turn out to be ok in the end. No matter what’s going on with Benrey…it'll be alright, I’m sure.” Gordon patted his shoulder for emphasis, “not the best advice out there but it’s the best I can come up with straight off the dome. And I don’t wanna seem like I didn’t try to help you out."

Tommy laughed gently, “Thank you Mr. Fr- uh, thank you Gordon. You did help. Even if- if your advice was a bit cheesy.”

“Whatever man, you can’t blame me for trying,” Gordon laughed, playfully shoving Tommy where his hand had previously rested on the other man’s shoulder. Tommy laughed in return. He only noticed the warmth of Gordon’s touch once it was gone.

Tommy absentmindedly noticed the time on the wall clock in Gordon’s apartment. Jesus, 11:30? When did it get so late? The older scientist really hoped he wasn’t overstaying his welcome; While he would love to just stay here and joke around, he had already bothered Mr. Freeman enough and was already exhausted.

“I- I’m probably gonna head back home now, I didn’t realize how late it was,” Tommy said, standing up from his spot next to Gordon.

Gordon nodded. He had the passing thought of offering for Tommy to stay but… maybe that was a step too far. ‘Tommy probably wants his space,’ Gordon rationalized to himself.

He nodded, “Alright, don’t let me keep you,” he said, getting up as well to help Tommy gather his belongings. Which, to be honest Tommy didn’t bring much but some snacks for the group, but Gordon just needed an excuse to do anything.

Gordon walked Tommy to the front door of his apartment, like the good host he was, opening the door for him.

“Thanks for coming over Tommy,” he said.

Tommy nodded. “Thank- thank you again for letting me talk about Benrey, I know it was kinda rough there at the end, but if you ever need to talk about anything… I'm here for you as well.”

Gordon smiled, “Thank you Tommy, I'll keep that in mind.”

Tommy smiled in return, “Have a good night G-Gordon,” he said turning to head to his car.

“Goodnight Tommy.” Gordon turns to head back inside, but before he does, he can’t resist one more jab.

“Thought you could teleport?” he calls out teasingly.

Tommy flips him off, which causes Gordon to laugh harder. “Gives me a headache,” Tommy called back, trying and failing keep a straight face.

Gordon laughs as he waves a final goodbye, turning back inside and closing the door after Tommy waves as well. His thoughts race as he gets ready for bed, trying to ignore his fluttering heartbeat as he lays down for the night.

Tommy shuffles his thoughts in his head as he drives home. The emotional rollercoaster of his already draining social interaction meter from the science team, his Benrey guilt, and his small crush on Gordon was just too much for one day. His hands clench and unclench the steering wheel, looking forward to collapsing in bed for the night, hoping his dad won’t notice he'd been crying.

Somewhere, in an interdimensional void far away from this reality, someone begins to shift awake.

#fanfic #hlvrai #half life vr but the ai is self aware #freelatta

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titanias-stolen-shoes · 4 years

Text

two bad fics in one day? it’s more likely than you think

summary: kristen talks to her parents and she still can’t stand them

read on ao3!

“Uh…” Kristen stood at her front door, not knowing whether she should close the door on her parents. Her immediate instinct was yes. Obviously, she didn’t care about what they had to say. On the other hand, her brothers were with them and by Cassandra she missed them.

Bucky tackled her legs and soon Bricker and Cork were on her before she could process what was happening. “Hey, hey!” She laughed as they clung to her legs and she stumbled backwards into Mordred Manor. Luckily for her there was no one else there. Sandra Lynn and Jawbone were at work, Adaine and Fig were at school, Ragh, Lydia, and Tracker were at Lydia’s doctor’s appointment, Aelwen was doing community service, and Ayda had gone back to Compass Points for a few hours. Kristen was, for the first time, home alone. She had been temporarily suspended for having “relations” in the girls’ locker room and getting caught. If she was being honest, it was kind of funny to see the teacher go so red in the face.

Sandra Lynn and Jawbone had been very disappointed which had taken all the fun away from being caught. Still, she’d been making the most of the day by communing with Cassandra who was still getting the hang of being a deity. They were great, always open to new ideas, happy to learn along with Kristen, and best of all, okay with not knowing and celebrating that they had something new to learn together. It had been a pretty good day. Until the knock at the door.

Now here she was, awkwardly sitting in the kitchen with her parents as they attempted to hide their disdain and her brothers zoomed around the house. If she was nice enough, maybe she could see her brothers more.

“What brings you here?” she said slowly. She cleared her throat, trying to be less awkward. “It’s been a while, yeah?”

Her mom looked at her, eyes filled with worry the way they used to be when she was sent off on her own. “It has, dear. We just… we just wanted to say we’re sorry.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, what?” Kristen was glad she was sitting, because she could hardly remember the last time her parents apologized for… well, anything meaningful. “What, uh, prompted this?”

“Well,” her dad, Mac, shifted in his chair, tearing his eyes away from the fridge. A quick glance let her now it was a picture of everyone who lived there, taken not long after spring break. That explained the constipated look. “We’ve been going to church and praying for you and praying for guidance and, well, we can’t really fault you for this.”

“You… can’t?”

“No, honey.” Donna reached across the table, placing her hand on Kristen’s. It was a comforting gesture that reminded her of the way her life used to be. It was less comforting after that thought. “We’ve all gone through phases. Why, I went through a phase where I wouldn’t stop cutting my hair, didn’t I, Mac?”

“Oh, yes,” Mac sat up straight, nodding sagely. “It was quite a scandal, Kristen. Women having hair that short… Oh, everyone at the church talked about it nonstop.”

Donna smiled. “It did catch your father’s attention. We— Bucky! Don’t climb on their couch like that, you’ll tear it up.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“What we really mean to say, is we forgive you, sweetie. We know you don’t mean to make us scared and worried. It’s so easy to believe phases are forever and we can’t blame you for being so young.”

Kristen sat, looking at her parents, not in disbelief, but disappointment. She wasn’t at all surprised that they were saying stuff like this. They had, after all, given her literally nothing in terms of decent parents for her whole life. She wanted to get mad—to yell and scream and tell them off—but she just didn’t have the energy to. She’d spent a year being angry, and while she was still angry, she realized there were better things to do with her energy. Like channeling it into Cassandra. Or learning how to cook things other than corn. Or having sex with Tracker.

She sighed, pulling her hand away and standing up. Bucky, Bricker, and Cork all rushed over to her and she smiled. He brothers would always be the only part that she missed about being in that house. “I don’t know how to make you believe that this isn’t a phase, so I won’t try. I will say that I’m not sorry. I’m definitely not sorry about being super gay and happy about it.”

They gasped, drawing themselves up as if they were going to say something, but she beat them to it. “The only thing I’m sorry about is that I don’t get to see my brothers.” She knelt and hugged them tight. “Is it so hard to believe I’m happier now?”

Mac was already shaking his head. “No. There’s no way you’re happy. You can’t be unless you’re following Helio—you’re his chosen one.”

Donna was nodding as she said, “That’s right dear. You belong at home with us. Not here with all of these… non-human individuals.” By the sneer on her face it was clear she meant something entirely different.

“Amazing. You aren’t hearing anything I say.” Kristen stood, herding her brothers toward the door. They were nervously bumping into her legs as they sensed the tension between Kristen and their parents.

They frantically followed, trying to convince Kristen of their love. Or at least, what they believed it to be. “We are honey. We just know that that’s what you think. We know the truth. You just need to be guided back to the light and—”

She opened the door and stopped short saying, “I punched Helio in the face.”

“What?”

“Yup. He sucks and so does his dad.” Their faces went pale and that was all the incentive she needed to continue. “I have sex with my werewolf girlfriend daily and I love her so much more than I can say. My father figure is a werewolf because my own dad is terrible and my mother figure is an elf because I respect her more than my own mom. I helped bright back a goddess of mystery and darkness and became their first follower.” She pushed them out the door, gently shooing her brothers after them. “I saved the world twice, died twice, and came back a saint the second time. There is literally nothing you can say to me right now.”

“We—”

“Nope!” She closed the door in their faces and went straight to her room, ignoring their knocking and shouts through the door.

---

“Your parents were here?” Tracker was laid next to her, playing gently with her hair. “Are you okay?”

Kristen shrugged. “I think so. It was weird, but ultimately disappointing.”

“That’s how it usually is.” Tracker’s hand stopped and the sleepiness that was claiming Kristen lessened. “Seriously, babe. Are you okay?”

“I… I really think I’m alright. I was more tired than anything else. Yes, I’m angry, but it’s not worth the effort. They’re not worth the effort.”

She chuckled and cuddled closer, running her finders through Kristen’s hair again. “I’m proud of you.”

“I’m proud of me, too,” Kristen mumbled, sinking a little further into sleep as Tracker started to talk about her day. She felt warm and content as she laid in bed with her girlfriend, drifting off knowing that she was happier now than she had ever been before.

#kristen applebees #fantasy high #fantasy high live #not tagging anyone this time #bc i gotta stop bothering y'all fr #i wrote something!

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anonsally · 4 years

Text

Days 49-52 of COVID-19 shelter-in-place

I got a little behind. Some good things happened this week, including an absolutely delightful surprise on Day 50′s after-work walk!

Perhaps because I’ve stuck my head in the sand, I’ve been in better moods this week, with a few delightful and positive things bolstering my spirits despite a few personal things to be anxious about. We need to have some work done on the foundation of the house, plus I have one diagnostic procedure scheduled for early June and another I am trying to schedule. We are most likely going to rule out the scary stuff, but of course, we don’t know that for sure yet.

Day 49: was Monday. Our group meeting felt constructive and positive--we were invited to apply for a grant; a journal asked us to “revise and resubmit” an article (I’m not the main author on that one, and indeed I think I’m not a co-author on it at all, but it’s good news for our group); and we had an idea for a paper about my analyses that doesn’t require me to have exciting results. I had a coffee break with @llamapunk, too. I did some ballet barre exercises, as sitting at my desk is bad for my hip. Then I took a short after-work walk. I also paid two bills and cooked dinner! So I felt like a real Adult. I then had a video call with my dad to work on word puzzles together. But I did stay up much later than I had intended to, which was less Adulty. I didn’t sleep very well and had anxiety dreams about travel uncertainty, social distancing, etc.

Day 50: I got up early* to take online dance class in the living room. It was good, though less of a cardiovascular workout than the Sunday class. One of the people in class had to leave early but he left a note in the chat saying that he looked forward to coming back next week to “fail with gusto”! On the Adulting front, I did a bit of bathroom cleaning and emailed the gardeners to ask if they will come this month, since the new shelter-in-place order allows landscaping work if the gardeners can maintain physical distance. [They replied that yes, they will come this month, which is good because I am not doing a good job of keeping the weeds and fallen leaves under control.] After work, I took a walk for about an hour and brought my binoculars, which enabled me to identify some cedar waxwings that flew into a tree near me. Yay! Such beautiful, elegant birds. And then, up near the end of my road, where it’s a bit secluded with houses on one side of the street, and a hillside leading up to the freeway on the other side, I saw a startling but delightful sight. The freeway side has a lot of trees and weeds and undergrowth, and I was confused by the new electric fence there--until I spotted some unexpected goats! There were at least 100 goats hard at work doing wildfire prevention vegetation control! It was fabulous and completely made my day. I’ll post photos sometime soon.

Unfortunately, though, I failed to make the healthy choice to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

* When I say I got up “early”, I mean I got up at 8am.

Day 51: Yesterday I got up early* again, even though I felt pretty wrecked. But this meant I got to take ballet, which was good for my legs.

Then I had time to change clothes and prepare my lunch, which I ate while attending a webinar on ergonomics for working at home. A lot of it was about stuff I was already doing, but I got some ideas for ways I can try to improve my desk setup.

Interestingly, she also mentioned that one good thing to do in these times of sheltering in place is to create a “commute” to sort of set boundaries for the workday. She said that her family takes a walk around the block in the morning, and when they arrive back home, their son is “at school” and the parents “get to work”. Then they do something else like that at the end of the day. I realised that while I hadn’t conceptualised it as replacing my commute, I am taking a walk after work almost every day--often an hour or more--and this is giving some structure to my day, even though I’m not doing anything like that in the morning.

I went grocery shopping for my parents, and had a nice chat with them both when I dropped off the groceries. It was great to see them. Of course I stayed pretty far away from them the whole time.

When I got home, I tried to work, though I wasn’t very effective. Eventually I gave up, sat with Poppet outside for a bit, and then took a short walk. When I got back I ordered takeout from a restaurant nearby (very close, actually--less than a minute’s walk), because it was too hot to cook. The food was delicious. But I stayed up late again.

Day 52: Today I got to sleep in, so I felt much better rested. Not much else of note happened, but Wife’s new laptop arrived. It is... really something. The outside of the computer is black with red accents and a burgundy coat of arms with a dragon. The keyboard has rainbow shimmer lights underneath! I did not know that computers could be this gay.

My after-work walk was an hour and 20 minutes, and I saw several Steller’s jays! They seem to be everywhere all of a sudden.

Overall, I think that I am finding ways to manage my anxiety--largely by not consuming news; taking dance class online; and either spending about an hour outside (most days) being present in the moment--birdwatching, looking at flowers, exploring the neighborhood, or (once every week or two) taking a 2-hour hike with Wife in a more naturey park. However, a lot of life during a pandemic is just... tedious. Much more time is spent obtaining groceries, preparing food, and cleaning up than usual for me. Being at home so much also makes me aware of how many things I’d like to change--there are areas I’d love to clean up or at least declutter, but I don’t have the energy or motivation to actually do it.

But, hey, I can’t be too upset about that; I stumbled upon a herd of goats this week! :)

#personal #dance #birdwatching #I love cats #food #even though there is no picture of food here #tagging food posts because ramadan #grown-up

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hipsofsteel · 5 years

Note

bro you gotta tell me more about chris

Gladly! The dad man is important to me. And so, we meet…

Christopher “Chris” Lewis Joseph, personification of Eastern Oregon/Nyo!Oregon

Credit to crikadelic, who will not be tagged in this post for reasons.

Physical Description

At 5′10, with dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a slightly olive skin tone, Chris is a very good looking man. He’s got well trimmed facial hair that can be a bit scruffy and thin, but he maintains it well. He’s well muscled from his work as a cattle rancher, and general farmwork. He is half Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) and half English, born in the area of present day Joseph, Oregon in 1806, and celebrates his birthday on February 14th.

Chris’s face claim is model Julian Schratter. He has no voice claims at the moment.

Personality

Christopher and Beverly were cut from the same cloth in some respects. Controlling either of them is nearly impossible. He’s a force of nature when he wants to be, stubborn and insistent and nearly impossible to be forced to do something he refuses to do. He’s as free-spirited and wild as he wants to be.

At the same time, he shows a remarkable degree of caution and thoughtful behavior that his twin sister tends to lack. If not caught in an urgent situation or in his own whirlwind of passions, he approaches things with well-thought out responses and is a calm and collected and highly intelligent man. He’s a great person to go to for advice.

He’s also very attached to those he forms close relationships with, either as family or friends. He’ll always have his twin sister’s back, and anyone who finds themselves in the position of being “adopted” as his child has just gained an ally and parental figure who will love them and defend them endlessly. Although, dispute it as he does, he does have a favorite child (Adam).

Sexuality and Gender

Behold, the one and only heterosexual cisgender OC I’ve made for my States. Chris is an incredible ally however, who openly supports all his friends and family.

Also, his type of women is as follows, so I promise you can trust him.

And he means it.

Religion

Chris has a personally styled fusion between Christianity and the indigenous religions he was raised around on the Columbian Plateau. He is not really big on explaining his faith as it’s a deeply personal and conflicting matter even for himself, so I don’t have much more to say than that for him. However, one of his two most irreplaceable objects he owns is a copy of Henry Harmon Spalding’s translation of the Book of Matthew into Nez Perce. Take from that what you will.

Employment

Chris has previously made his living as a farmer and for a brief while as a blacksmith, but nowadays, he owns a cattle range and is a full-time rancher, with a large range area in Central/Eastern Oregon. He also raises horses on the side, both as a secondary income and to continue traditions of horse breeding he was raised in with the Nez Perce.

Pets

I’ll try to keep this brief, but Chris has seven animals he considers close pets/his long lifespan has affected theirs, so I’ll divide it into sections.

Dogs

Zip and Lucky

Zip is Chris’s working dog, a purebred blue heeler who knows how to move a cow herd as well as he knows that when Chris puts on dark and clean pants, he’s leaving the house for meetings (sadness) and when he puts on less nice “farm” pants, they’re working stock that day (happiness!)

Lucky is based on Rincon, the dog owned by Chris’s faceclaim. Lucky is a beloved pet mutt and gets to come with Chris and Zip to work cattle, although his main job is to sit and stay since he has zero Cow Sense.

Horses

Jackrabbit, Strawberry, Juniper, and Celilo

Is Chris a dog or cat person? Neither, he’s a horse person (followed by dogs).

Jackrabbit is Chris’s horse he’s had the longest, serving as Chris’s warhorse during his youth. He’s one of the fastest horses any of the western states own, and he’s very selective about who’s allowed to ride him (Christopher, Beverly, Adam, and Helen are the only people who can). He’s a wild tempered buckskin Nez Perce Horse stallion.

Strawberry is a red roan Appaloosa that Chris has had nearly as long as he’s had Jackrabbit. She’s a gentle mare and very good with people.

Juniper is a Kiger Mustang mare, slightly more testy than Strawberry, and more prone to being spooked, but she’s a good horse.

Celilo is a palomino American Quarter Horse gelding, bought to be a reliable pack-horse for Chris. He’s as gentle as Strawberry and loves people.

Jackrabbits

Little Lady or “Lady”

Once upon a time, Chris and Juniper accidentally spooked a mother jackrabbit into the claws of a hawk, and then nearly immediately found her babies. Chris raised the three kits and released them into the wild shortly afterwards, but Lady stuck around his house. She appears pretty reliably every year, and seems to have been affected by his long lifespan, so he gave her a name and treats her a bit more like a pet than anything else.

He loves to joke that Jackrabbit met an actual jackrabbit, and everyone around him glares at him.

Relationships with other States

Family first

Western Oregon/Oregon

Credit to crikadelic again.

Sometimes, your twin sister is a lumberjack lesbian (quite literally on both counts) with arms made of steel and one hell of a right hook. Also she’s way more liberal than you, and politically you get dragged along with whatever she wants.

Ironically, once upon a time, Beverly wasn’t the main personification of the Oregon Territory. It wasn’t until American settlement picked up that the power of the state swung to her. Before then, Christopher held most of the power, but this was also when the Oregon Territory including all of Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana and Wyoming, and since Chris was entirely east of the Cascades, well, it made sense that he held the upper hand. Only later as the size of the land they represented shrank did power trade hands.

As independent as Beverly is, and as willing to tell her twin to fuck off, they have a very close relationship. They tell each other off, and sparks fly between them quite often, with Beverly usually being the one to storm off while Chris remains a wall of a human being. But they’ll quietly make up out of sight later, and then be right back to joking around and teasing each other.

And when it comes to advice, Beverly has no closer confidant than her twin, and often shows him the vulnerability that no one else sees. They trust each other implicitly, knowing that despite their differences, they won’t lead the other astray. No one could ask for a better twin sister.

Eastern Washington/Nyo!Washington

Credit to ME!

First off, he’s the one on the right, the one on the left is Idaho (we’ll get to him in a bit).

Adam Landes-Bush is the original cause of a radiation of dad energy that seeps from Christopher at pretty much every moment of every day. After retrieving Adam from the Whitman Mission shortly after the Whitman Massacre, Chris basically said “My weird looking white kid now” and ran with it.

He and Adam had to learn to live together fast with help from Helen, as Adam is mute, and Helen taught them both Plains Sign Talk. But Chris adored Adam and taught him how to shoot, hunt, ride, and accepted his limitations when he hit them. He did his best to give Adam a good life, even when it meant sending him away from impending war to live with Martha, who he barely knew then.

They remain close, sharing more culturally with each other and Idaho than they sometimes do with the western halves of their states. Chris was the first person Adam came out to, and the fact that Chris instantly accepted allowed him to embrace his identity as a gay man in a time that it was socially, at best, simply not talked about. Chris would and has killed to protect this boy, and would gladly do so again.

Western Washington/Washington

Credit to crikadelic

Martha, Adam’s younger sister, views Christopher as a father figure, and so, in turn, he’s a little nicer to her than he is to Beverly sometimes.

Christopher and Martha met at a crossroads in both their lives. Christopher had been involved in the Nez Perce War and come home feeling lost and alone. Beverly had taken off around the same time to run wild in the Southwest, leaving a still very young Martha to fend for herself and Clark, and now Adam. Martha was struggling to handle the load, and Christopher needed to find his place in this unfamiliar world, and fast.

They were able to cooperate quickly, Chris taking on the workload of the farm and helping with Clark, allowing Martha and Adam to start growing and learning the responsibilities they needed to run a state. And in exchange, Martha taught Chris how to read and write English, and helped him improve his skills in speaking the language.

To this day, they haven’t forgotten this point in their lives, and tend to critique each other much more carefully than they critique the other halves of their states.

End of Family, onto other states

Idaho

Credit to crikadelic

Ah, Clark Ashley, who exists in the most interesting little place in Chris’s mind. He’s friends with this guy, almost a father figure, hell, helped raise the little twerp. At the same time, he’s made Adam cry before, so he could also wring his neck.

Clark and Chris have a very good and amiable relationship in general, and enjoy the other’s company. Clark admires Chris a lot, and Chris views him like a much younger version of Beverly, carrying many of her same qualities of extreme stubbornness and rampant emotions, as much as Clark will say he’s nothing like her.

However, the root of Chris’s constant problems with Clark relies mainly on one fact. Clark’s internalized homophobia at himself that affects his and Adam’s relationship, which has swayed from deeply involved romance to barely tolerating being in the same room. When Clark and Adam get into spats with their push me, pull you, almost a relationship, Chris gets caught in the middle, and always takes Adam’s side in the fight. He’s tried to even discourage them from pursuing each other at times to end the constant back and forth, but it’s never worked.

However, as Clark’s started to accept himself in the 21st century, Chris has been the one person who’s been able to reassure him that , yes, for some crazy reason, Adam still likes you, and Chris thinks that this time, for real, Clark is unlearning the toxic culture he absorbed. So, he wishes that crazy kid lots of luck.

Southern California/California

Credit to crikadelic

To say Roberto and Christopher are antagonistic would be the nicest way of putting it. Despite pretty much being of equal levels of importance to Beverly in her family, they cannot tolerate each other.

Roberto blamed Christopher for some of the worst of Beverly’s behaviors in the 1870s and 1880s, and Christopher blamed Roberto for stifling Beverly so much that she hadn’t been able to emotionally mature. Both arguments had some validity, and yet, a divide in opinions had begun.

Nowadays, Chris and Roberto are mainly antagonistic on pure principle. Chris represents a part of Oregon that is noticeably more red, and Roberto represents 55 blue electoral college votes. Chris has been considerably affected by Californication (large real estate development projects generally seen as similar to those in California), and Roberto sees him as very set in the past and unable to move forward.

Let’s just say Beverly has to work out the holiday seating arrangements very carefully.

Montana

Credit to crikadelic

Helen Rankin has been a friend since Chris met her when the Nez Perce went to trade with the Crow. She taught him sign, became an unofficial mother figure to Adam, and, much later on, officially involved with Christopher himself (they dated from 1898 to 1927).

They’re close friends and allies still. Helen’s as strong as a mountain in more ways than one, and one of the few people who can sway Chris when he’s a storm of emotions. She can be just as stubborn as him, and yet he admires her just as she is, and she feels the same about him. She’s saved his ass so many times, and he’s saved hers a few himself. If they needed the other there, they’d be there in a heartbeat.

They also additionally have an “unofficial” daughter to accompany their unofficial son in Adam. I’ve been developing a Missoula, Montana OC (Mariah Welch), and she’s been heavily influenced by Chris over the years, and is about as damn close to him as Adam.

A quick note

Before I move on to my next section, I have been tinkering with my canon in the last several months, after a friend who had allowed me to entwine my Statetalia canon very heavily with theirs ghosted me, and this has affected this character significantly.

Christopher had been involved with their Nyo!Texas in the modern day, with Helen as his best friend. However, no longer comfortable with using this person’s OCs, I have yet to decide if Chris and Helen have, in the last few years, rekindled their relationship, or if my own Texas OC, who is a woman and in the earliest stages of development, is in a romantic relationship with him. This is going to take a long while to decide for personal reasons, and I’m okay with that.

Other States-Brief Thoughts

Northern California/Nyo!California- Inexplicably, he likes Alejandra way more than Roberto. Probably because of their little side project for the independent state of Jefferson.

Kansas- Nowhere near as antagonistic as Beverly and Evelyn’s relationship. He will agree with Evelyn to a certain point, but then he has to start defending his sister. Anyhow, she’s cute.

Nebraska- Logan’s a decent guy to have a drink with, definitely would have been a good guy for Adam if Adam hadn’t been so focused on Clark. IF he and Helen don’t end up getting back together in canon, he’s lowkey pushing for Helen and Logan to get together.

New York- Literally irrelevant to him, why are you asking for an opinion on that jackass?

Texas- Absolutely one amazing, ass-kicking woman, with the gift of aim from the gods, a smoking hot body, and God, she could step on him frankly. (I reiterate, my Texas OC is in development and this is subject to change).

RANDOM FACTS

-Sniper man! Christopher has served as a sniper for several wars. The Nez Perce were noted marksmen during the Nez Perce War, and one of the US’s most noted snipers was from Eastern Oregon.

-Additionally, Christopher has always served in the US Marine Corps when he’s been fighting for the US.

-He originally was given the same last name as Beverly, Joseph-Astor. He dropped Astor following the Nez Perce War as an act of protest.

-Chris has two “paired” names from when I created his character. Beverly’s middle name is Columbia, so Christopher and Columbia, after Christopher Columbus (something neither of them is very thrilled about nowadays), and his middle name of Lewis pairs with Idaho’s first name, Clark, in honor of that famous expedition.

-Has a knife that was from Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery as a trading item. It’s his second most irreplaceable object.

-Speaks Nez Perce (Niimi'ipuutímt), Chinook Jargon, Crow, Plains Sign Talk, ASL, Russian, German, Spanish, Basque, and English.

-Has the most currently established tattoos out of any of my OCs.

#casuallyeatingrocks #oc chris #aph oregon #hws oregon #nyo oregon #ask hipsofsteel #long post

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agentexmachina · 6 years

Text

Ace-friendly Stucky Fic Recs

This is just a compilation of my favorite asexual-inclusive and sex-free Stucky fics.

A Life in the Middle by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) (T | 9,259); Asexual Steve Rogers, Aromantic Bucky Barnes; Warning: brief masturbation

Shield Industries wanted a mural to brighten the foyer of their building. When Steve took the job he was expecting a paycheque and some name recognition, not a crush he knew was deepening into something more.

Bucky was a little annoyed to get stuck riding herd on the artist Shield hired. He was building security 2IC; he didn't have time to stand around and watch someone paint, but it was the CEO's pet project, so watch he would. He wasn't expecting to wind up taking a lot of cold showers. He wasn't expecting to make a friend, maybe the best friend he'd ever had.

Neither of them expected to get attached. Neither of them expected to want the other. Problem is their wants don't align: Steve's asexual, Bucky's aromantic, and nothing's ever going to change that. But love doesn't have to mean sex, romance is only one kind of love, and if two people of good heart want it badly enough maybe they can make a life in the middle.

Scéal by HunterPeverell (G | 3,768); Asexual Steve Roger, Asexual Bucky Barnes

The thing was—The thing was, neither of them were broken. Apart, they were whole. Together they were whole, too. They could be who they were together and knew the other would love them regardless. They could feel complete in a world that told them they were broken and whisper to one another in the safety of the dark, saying, “I love you,” and know it to be true.

Rogers & Barnes: Partners by triedunture (T | 10,510); Asexual Steve Rogers

Steve and Bucky have to pose as a couple for a mission. Nat insists it really is the only option. She's checked.

The complication: unbeknownst to even Natasha, Steve and Bucky's friendship has been rocky ever since Bucky confessed his tender feelings and Steve left him out in the cold. Can asexual, completely-in-love-with-his-angry-best-friend Steve complete the mission and win Bucky's heart?

(The answer is yes. Yay!)

Under Ice by fmo (G | 4,209); Asexual Relationship

'Steve goes to find Fury, who also says no before Steve can get a word out. “It’s not gonna work, Cap,” Fury says. “I know you like rescuing people, but he’s a Soviet assassin with a worm in his brain and he’s in the safest place he can be.”

“I just want to talk to him,” Steve says. “Clint says he might even be close to my age. I think it would be healthy for me to talk to someone who shared an experience like mine,” he adds, deploying his best 2014 talk with almost total sincerity.

Fury narrows his eye at Steve. “Really,” he says.'

Or: despite everyone's best efforts, the thing that seems to cheer up Sad Cap the most is talking to the amnesiac assassin in the cell downstairs. And, even stranger, seems like Cap's actually managing to charm the Winter Soldier into chatting with him like a normal person.

[Not canon with the Winter Soldier film.]

Fuzz Therapy by machine_dove, Sproings (T | 9,573); Asexual Steve Rogers

It took a lot to get Bucky out of his apartment these days. The kittens were a decent enticement, but the smartass volunteer he met at the shelter was an even better incentive.

Item One by cheesethesecond (G | 2,525); Asexual Bucky Barnes

Bucky was never actually Steve's boyfriend. No one bothers to explain this to Bucky. Bucky acts accordingly.

Head Over Heels by Akru899 (T | 30,819); Asexual Steve Rogers

It's the last day of Summer '88, and the last thing James Buchanan Barnes expected to see was the scrawny kid from school at an AIDS protest. When he sees the kid get punched out, however; well, that's a call to action.

A mostly sugary-sweet 80's AU, complete with track athlete Bucky, shy, skinny artist Steve, Supportive Friend Natasha, and best-mother-in-the-world Sarah Rogers.

Balance by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) (T | 62,058); Demiromantic Asexual Bucky Barnes

Bucky had heard of Hydra. Everyone had heard of Hydra: they were the unicorn hunters down near the border. The last thing Bucky wanted to do was get mixed up with hunters, but he was out of options. Hydra hunted unicorns, hunters needed virgins, and that was about the only thing Bucky had left to sell. If that’s what it took to get his mom and sister out of their dying town he'd do it.

Indentured to Hydra, deep in the wilds of the hunting preserve, far from the life he’d known and responsible for luring unicorns to their deaths, Bucky had never been more alone.

Until he met the Warden.

Wardens enforced the hunting laws, had done ever since the country had nearly torn itself apart over the discovery that unicorns--beloved creatures, conduits to the gods above--could be turned into powerful magical devices. Under Steve’s eagle eye Hydra didn’t get away with anything and he was a constant presence, watching over the hunts. But Steve didn’t treat Bucky like a hunter. Steve genuinely seemed to care about him. Steve was always there when Bucky needed him and suddenly Bucky wasn’t so alone.

Special Snowflakes by Carmilla DeWinter (miladys_revenge) (T | 7,345); Asexual Steve Rogers, Aromantic Bucky Barnes

Once upon a time, when people assumed he and Bucky were a couple, it ended in black eyes and broken noses. Times have changed, gay people now get their own flags, parades and even marriage. But the assumption still doesn't, for the life of him, make sense.

Sam just shrugs. “Don't look at me like that, man. I was kinda certain you two would announce your engagement as soon as you'd gotten over your hang-ups.”

But - “We like women.”

Sorta.

Lightning by nightmaresinwintah (T | 19,607); Aromantic Asexual Steve Rogers, Aromantic Asexual Bucky Barnes

Bucky stares at him, incredulous. He doesn’t speak. He knows - he knows. He knows what that means.

“What does that mean? The Latin words,” Bucky asks quietly, barely noticing his voice trembling. His very energy is vibrating - his flesh hand is shaking from where he’s gripping the phone a little too hard. There’s something fizzing in the air between them - he feels like he knows the answer to his own question already.

Steve hesitates. “Particeps anima. Soul sharer,” he mutters, casting his eyes to the floor, unable to meet Bucky’s gaze.

Or; Steve’s a witch, Bucky’s not, and they share a soul.

Not for a Lack of Sweetness by Caledfwlch (orphan_account) (G | 1,387); Asexual Bucky Barnes, Aromantic Asexual Natasha Romanov

Bucky and Natasha have a chat.

Verdant by Zethsaire (M | 1,643); Asexual Steve Rogers, Asexual Bucky Barnes

Most of the other Avengers had difficulty understanding it; both why Bucky would seek comfort that way from Steve when he didn't allow anyone else within five feet of him, and also why Steve let the man who'd nearly killed him sit in his lap like a puppy.

(Asexual gardener Bucky)

Under the Skin by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) (T | 18,445); Asexual Steve Rogers, Asexual Bucky Barnes

"Brooklyn, like I said," he replied, taking Steve's hand and shaking it, then he paused, tilted his head, and said, "Actually, since you're staff? It's Bucky."

"Bucky," Steve repeated, feeling oddly touched.

"Always Brooklyn in front of the clients, though," he added seriously.

"No, of course," Steve promised. "Good to meet you."

"You too," he said, glancing down to where Steve was still holding his hand.

Steve let go with a sheepish smile. "Sorry."

Working in a brothel wasn't somewhere Steve ever expected to find himself, but then he'd never expected to quit his shitty corporate hell-job to apprentice as a tattoo artist. Great as it was, his apprenticeship didn't come with a pay cheque, so eating and keeping a roof over his head meant finding a job that paid actual money. Which was how he'd ended up as the night receptionist in a brothel, accidentally holding Bucky's hand, with no idea Bucky was going to turn out to be something else he'd never expected.

Aces and Kings by riviere (T | 10,062); Asexual Steve Rogers

After SHIELD falls and Steve finds Bucky, he hangs up his uniform and takes a long-needed break from Captain America so he can just be Steve Rogers. Meanwhile, Tony convinces Bucky to get a therapy dog in order to help him adjust to his newfound Regular Citizen Life™. As the weeks go by, both Steve and Bucky struggle to deal with their own problems while trying to piece their glass relationship back together without stepping on the shards.

#stucky #fic rec #fic recs #ace friendly #asexual inclusive #sex free #asexuality #aromantism #asexual steve rogers #asexual bucky barnes #steve rogers #bucky barnes #marvel #mcu

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dirtyretrowrites · 6 years

Text

Meet Me On Saturn

Fandom: Mamamoo Pairing: Hwabyul (Hwasa/Moonbyul) Rating: T, possibly M? Word Count: 1723 Tags: Space babes AU, fluff, first dates, implied sexual themes Summary: Hyejin is from Neptune. Byulyi is from Saturn. Intergalactic dating is hard for two space lesbians. A/N: I don’t know how this happened? I kind of fell in love with the AU?

Intergalactic dating was so extra. As if it wasn’t already challenging enough to be a lesbian trying to date… Try factoring a distance of lightyears traveling from Mercury to Neptune, because that was Hyejin’s last relationship with a pretty little Mercurian girl with pin-straight black hair and a face as round and white as the planet she hailed from.

Recently, Hyejin had been chatting with a silver-haired girl from Saturn who occupied her time surfing the icy rings on her longboard. She was a sporty girl with feminine touches, blood red nail polish to match her slip-on black and crimson checkerboard Vans. Her name was Byulyi, but she went by Moonbyul, Moon for short. Her profile pic featured an awkward angle selfie of her skating out in the asteroid belt with her hair tied up in a ponytail and squashed under her oxygen helmet.

Home dwellings were different on Neptune than on Saturn. Because Saturn was a gaseous planet, human life was sustained through cylindrical space colonies that hovered in the planet’s orbit and was grounded by the planet’s gravity. The exterior of the colonies were lined with reflective solar panels that provide energy for nourishment of organism life. Sunlight was directly filtered into agricultural plants to satisfy photosynthesis needs. Inside, the colonies were divided by specialized sectors; only a few were actually human cities, all of which were affectionately named after Saturn’s numerous moons. Byulyi lived on Phoebe, a quirky microcolony encompassed by shimmery lesser rings and cosmic ice dust.

On Neptune, where Hyejin was from, people lived in pyramid-shaped pods with steel legs that sprouted from the base and punctured the dense soil. As a bachelorette, she lived alone in a tiny pod in the heart of the capital city near the location of the Great Dark Spot storm. The blue atmosphere of the chilly planet casted an opalescent aura on the outside of her pod, but charming green succulent plants broke up the steadfast blue. From the outside, the pod looked cramped, but inside it was spacious and cozy. Inside, she lay on her humble-sized bed on her stomach, fuzzy sock-covered feet kicked up in the air as she scrolled through her messages with Moonbyul.

[Moon]: Wanna get ramen with me on Pandora on Friday? [Hwasa]: sure! :) what place? [Moon]: Voyager 1 in the city~

So on Friday, Hyejin found herself strolling through Saturn’s unique space colonies in search of Pandora. Luckily, it seemed to be a popular microcolony that welcomed many tourists like herself (not all planets were as hospitable to tourists). Tourists were easily identified by donning their home planet space suits, most of which had the respective planet emblazoned above the left breast. After her travel shuttle anchored to the intermediate basin, travelers were herded out through a thin tube that lead to the central city. There, they could shed their cumbersome space suits and gussy up their usual attire.

22nd century chic—metallic silver crop tops that wove together in intricate patterns across the collarbones, a slim-fitting high-waisted skirt in electric blue (a trademark of Neptune that she proudly showcased), and glossy knee-high boots. Her sapphire blue hair was twisted up into two top knots, her bangs wispy as they framed her done-up face. Deep plum lipstick with lilac glitter eyeshadow and a fierce highlight on her prominent cheekbones. Look, intergalactic dating might’ve been extra, but so was she; she was out here living her fantasy.

Byulyi wasn’t personally inclined towards the lipstick lesbian vibe. Instead, her image was that of a classy tomboy. She liked skinny-fitted, black slacks that accented her slender legs and a white tailored button-up shirt that frilled at the wrists. Her blazer was maroon and made of fine tweed; an enamel pin of a very golden Saturn shined from its spot on her blazer collar. She wore stylish closed-toe shoes with hard undersoles that clacked on the cement as she walked the busy Pandora sidewalks. Hands buried in her pants pockets, she weaved through globs of people as she sought out Voyager 1’s signature neon sign.

Moonbyul heart soared to her throat when she spotted a beautiful girl in silver and blue leaning against the stucco exterior of the ramen shop. God, was that Hyejin? Her heart thumped wildly and her breathing picked up. Wow, she had never seen someone so incredibly beautiful. She collected her courage and compelled her feet to move. When she approached the girl, the girl looked her direction and smiled. Oh, there was that rapid thumping in her throat again.

“Uh… Hyejin?” Byulyi greeted, though it sounded like a question. This girl was too pretty to be the girl Byulyi was here to dine with, right? Someone so pretty wouldn’t be caught dead with a rough-and-tumble lezbo like her, right?

Hyejin’s smile widened. “Yes, hi~ Byulyi? Er, Moonbyul, I mean.”

Moonbyul nodded dumbly. The way Hyejin said her name released all the ansty butterflies in her stomach; the flutter of their wings tickled her insides and stole her breath. “Call me whatever you want,” she finally said, cursing herself for saying something so unwitty.

“I like Byul.” Hyejin stood up and debated whether it was okay to formally greet her date with a hug, as was customary in Neptunian culture. “Your profile picture was cute, but it doesn’t do you justice. You’re very pretty.”

Byulyi nervously tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and looked down bashfully. “Thank you,” she politely replied. Clearing her throat, she added, “So this is it! Voyager 1… named after the probe that discovered the moon Pandora in earth’s 1977. Though I’m sure you didn’t need to know any of that information…”

“I like trivia facts! Did you know Neptune has five rings? Voyager 2 discovered them~” Hyejin showed off her trivia knowledge as well. This information was part and parcel of an elementary school education on each planet, but Neptune’s and Saturn’s spacecraft history intersect; it was something they could uniquely bond over.

As if Hyejin couldn’t get any more perfect… Gorgeous and intelligent. Moonbyul was utterly smitten.

They were seated by partition wall in the middle-center of the restaurant where scaled models of early Voyager 1 spacecraft designs dangled from the ceiling by clear monofilament. Honestly, it was kind of tacky but also really, really endearing. The table was marbled with browns and yellows to mimic the natural gaseous texture of Saturn’s innermost climate. Their server was a short girl with a hot pink, ungelled mohawk; she had the Ursa Major constellation tattooed on her chest, which was confidently displayed above her low-cut uniform… not that Hyejin was gawking…

Luckily, Byul didn’t seem the jealous type. In fact, she herself was admiring the waitress’s inked decolletage. When the server took their orders, they chatted comfortably. Their conversations titled like Hyejin’s jazzy laugh and Byulyi’s fluid body language. They bonded over their planets, over being gay, over hobbies and interests. When the ramen came in wide-mouthed bowls, Hyejin taught Moonbyul how to sop up the yummy broth with leaflets of nori. Byulyi adored the cute wrinkle on Hyejin’s nose when she giggled.

At some point, they shared a large carafe of hot pomegranate sake. The potency was delayed, but it hit Byul like a meteor shower. She found herself asking those scandalous questions not meant for a first date—when did you find out you were gay? what was your first girl crush like? how was your first kiss? was it slow or fast? do you like it slow or fast? Apparently, this type of conversation never trespassed Hyejin’s zone of comfort; in fact, the Neptunian girl was quite the open book. The pinkish blush on Byulyi’s face wasn’t just from the alcohol.

Moonbyul was a modest lover, vanilla in her sex life. Hyejin was different. People from Neptune were much freer in their sexuality, an experience Byul never grew up with. But as Hyejin told wild stories of her youth, all her untamed adventures, Moonbyul’s imagination perverted her date. Hyejin was excellent at reading people, but Byul was overt. With a smirk on her plum-colored lips, Hyejin footed the bill (with much protest from her Saturnian date) and lead Byul out of the restaurant by hand.

Love hotels on Saturn were exotic to Hyejin, so Byulyi had to carry out transactions in a native Saturnian dialect Hyejin found irresistible. The door to their private room swung open when Hyejin captured Byul’s lips with her own. The top few buttons of her collar had been popped open on the elevator ascent to the eighth floor, the white material smudged with Hyejin’s dark lipstick. Back against the wallpapered wall, Byulyi’s chest moved with her breath, slow and deep, as Hyejin carefully undid each button to expose the girl’s heather grey bralette.

“Oh my God…” Hyejin groaned. Her palm cupped Byul’s breast over her bralette and pressed kisses along her collarbone and down her cleavage line.

Moonbyul pulled Hyejin’s face up by hooking her finger under the girl’s chin, leading her lips to her own. They embraced, warm bodies sharing contact, heartbeats synchronize as their tongues danced. Byul rotated their position, twirling Hyejin around and slowly walking her back until the Neptunian girl’s legs touched the edge of the hotel bed. Hyejin sat down and laid back on the plush comforter of the bed, and Byulyi sexily crawled over her curvaceous form, tasting each inch of exposed skin on her journey to those luscious lips.

The love hotel came equipped with coffee and tea, so Hyejin was awakened by the distinct aroma of hot coffee and the gurgle of the coffeemaker. Oi, she slept in her top knots, though they loosened from last night’s excursions. She blinked the sleepiness from her eyes, then sat up when Byul brought her a hot cup of coffee in bed. She accepted the beverage graciously.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure how you take your coffee…” Byulyi started, but Hyejin interjected with a chaste kiss to her coffee-stained lips. She couldn’t stop the stupid smile on her face from the sudden affection.

“Seems like something you should learn, doesn’t it?” Hyejin teased before taking a sip of coffee. “Mmm~ I take my coffee black. This is perfect.”

Swallowing her shyness, Moonyul gathered the gall to say, “No, you are.”

Hyejin giggled. “So, next date on Neptune?”

31 notes · View notes

minusram · 7 years

Text

4/? bonny and blithe, good and gay

actually yelly anon reminded me that i forgot to crosspost the penultimate chap of bbgg. not sure i actually have any tumblr-only readers, but hey; better safe etc etc

[ch 1 / ch 2 / ch 3] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]

They emerge into a carpeted receiving room thronged with what must be at least half a hundred psychics—even if a significant percentage of them weren’t palpably genuine practitioners Ritsu would recognize their trade from the terrible way they all dress.

‘Significant’, of course, is relative, but considering the concentration of spiritually gifted individuals in the general population, meeting even one other esper is noteworthy.

Ritsu and his employer remain mostly unnoticed by the mass of people clustered away from the door, but a few turn to peer at them suspiciously, to size up potential competition. Reigen's taken aback for less than a second—and Ritsu only knows because of the particular way he rolls his shoulder—then he gets started, working the room with his usual oily flair and carving a space for himself where he doesn’t belong with just fast talk and the force of his repugnant but bafflingly effective personality.

He wades into the crowd, a cloud of jovial introductions left in his wake, handing out business cards and subtly enforcing his social superiority in a way that is confident, but not overly so; avoiding alienation by the sprinkling of a few specks of modesty amongst the uptalk. Ritsu trails silently behind.

Reigen cuts a swathe through the room, speaking the way he does to clients and moving with purpose in the face of his skeptical marks. It’s difficult for Ritsu to tell which of them have powers; a staticky aura hangs in the air, but his impression of the energy’s source remains indistinct. He’s unused to sensing others of his kind—every psychic he’s ever met has found him first.

Reactions to the rapid-fire establishment of their standing vary from baffled to condescending. Psychics are either good with people, intimidatingly bizarre, or just extremely lucky, but even in all the strangeness of this past year Ritsu has never met anyone quite like the man he follows now. His employer, energetic, manic with possibility, reaches a new target, and begins again. Ritsu can feel his mood souring, the longer they’re here with nothing happening. He didn’t come to network, he came to help people. And, yes, to serve himself; in hope of personal gain.

Judging by how many people are here, the lure of money or fame had a similar effect on his fellow exorcists.

He’s spared half an ear for Reigen’s spiel, the prattling stream of words a ceaseless rhythm that's grown familiar over time, but tunes right back in, affronted, when he hears the direction it’s taking.

“Oh, yes, I’m Reigen Arataka, and this is my assis—”

“I’m not—”

“My assistant, Kageyama Ritsu. Bright kid, but a little uppity, if you know what I mean. Won’t you excuse us for a moment, please?”

Reigen ushers him away and they reach the edge of the crowd. His employer bends for a harshly whispered exchange, unaware or uncaring of the fact that whispers in public tend to draw more attention than they deflect.

“Hey, Ritsu, pipe down, alright? I liked the silent act, that was good. Keep it up, and follow my lead unless for some incomprehensible teenage reason you are actively trying to blow this. If you ruin our reputation, then where are you gonna find your little exercises, huh?”

“You mean your reputation. I have nothing at stake here, I just work with you.”

“You work for me, kid, and if you don’t want to be cut off, you’ll stop trying to screw up my moves.”

“Your moves, Reigen-san, are the pathetic graspings of a man past his prime and lost in a world on which he has no bearing, a con artist who can only survive by leeching off society and the gullibility of desperate fools.”

His employer’s lips part, then twitch up into a smirk.

“Tell me how you really feel,” Reigen says, raising arch eyebrows at him, “And, by the way— I’m twenty-seven!” he hisses, before turning to greet another psychic who’s just walked up.

Ritsu fades back subtly, uninterested in ingratiating himself to strangers or to Reigen Arataka, and disappears to lean against the wall. No one notices him there, so it leaves him free to watch.

The people move, swirling together and apart in patterns Ritsu’s sure would be easier to track from above, but he does his best—his habitual level of effort; customarily more than adequate for his purposes. He compares what he sees to the display the day before, and finds substantial differences. The cultists were constrained, stuck together in a static train despite their wild laughing. Their grouping was starkly different from the one he observes now. Unnatural, even, though he has yet to devote the matter much thought.

The psychics here are stiff but organic, clustered in clannish clumps that remain cohesive with and within the greater group. Ritsu can’t deny that there seems to be a hub, some sort of slimy nucleus around where the century’s self-proclaimed shining star is making his way through the crowd, interrupting the previous order like sediment irritating a mollusc. Noise rises in the room, low conversations springing up like weeds in his employer’s wake.

A few more people show up, on the verge of being late as the start time on the invitation grows nigh, and receive the same scrutiny that greeted his own delegation of two. The crowd murmurs, louder now, energized by impatience and anticipation, his employer’s voice and bright hair lost in the thrum.

He catches sight of the eccentric uniform—black with pale wooden beads—of the Psychic Moon System, which may or may not be the organization’s real name, but he can’t tell from his limited glimpse whether there are any bandages on the person’s face. Guilt twinges regardless, and it occurs to him that he has no idea how long a Glasgow smile takes to heal. What happened to Shouda Katsukaru is tragic, and no little part of the blame falls at Ritsu’s feet; both because his association with Reigen was what got the man involved with such a dangerous spirit in the first place, and because Ritsu was unable to subdue it when the time came for him to step up.

They were all lucky that the thing was so indivisibly linked with the myth it was based on. Ambiguous answers and tossing anything they could find in their pockets confused it long enough for all three of them to get away—but not unscathed. Another one of his failures; something he can use now, and does, when he needs a little extra boost from his powers.

He wonders if every psychic’s abilities fuction this way. If this negative existence, life spent relying on a capacity powered by murk and suffering, is how it’s meant to work.

A clock strikes the hour from somewhere out of sight, across the room and the mass of people that despite their numbers don’t come close to filling it. Ritsu steps away from the wall to find Reigen, in order to present an arguably united front in the face of their competitors and the expectation that suffuses the room.

The leather doors open, swung by suited security personnel, and a man enters, clad in a pinstripe suit.

Ritsu finds Reigen, finally, or is found, and they stand together in the midst of the crowd as their client, mustached and desperate, steps forward to introduce himself.

Asagiri Masashi has, apparently, put stringent effort towards only inviting bonafide psychics to this event. Ritsu and Reigen trade a silent, speaking look while they can still see each other, before the room darkens and they turn their attention back to the presentation.

Through a slideshow, Ritsu learns about their client’s spoiled daughter; a year older than him but miles further from mature, the product of wealth and an upbringing unfettered by empathic concerns. The kind of girl his mother would call a minx and his father would call a hellraiser.

“Something is inside her,” Asagiri intones ponderously, lit by spilled light from the image of his locked up daughter, ten feet tall. Minori is tied to a bed, ropes snug on her wrists and snaking under the blankets, watched by spirit tags and a sleuth of toy bears; a disturbing picture.

Ritsu reserves judgement on the possibility of possession; he’s experienced enough of the evils of his peers to wait on a verdict until he sees for himself, and can decide on his own what’s been happening. Familiar too are the evils of adults—intimately, a hole in his family only half-healed—whether parent or child is in the wrong here, it’s inarguable that something must be done.

The crowd shifts uneasily, an atmosphere of apprehension gathering at the revelation of their task, but Ritsu is ready to understand, to learn if it’s delusion or premonitive intuition that’s thrown Asagiri Minori to the dark.

Asagiri opens a panel in the wall, a hidden spiral staircase, and leads them down to find out.

The stairwell is narrow, and it takes minutes for every one of them to make it down the story and a half to the small anteroom at basement level. Ritsu ends up next to Reigen somewhere in the middle of the relocation, which means queuing at the top of the stairs and loitering at the bottom until Asagiri shuffles to the front of the herd to open the plain wooden door that is the room’s only other feature, leading the ragged lump of them behind him when he’s the first one through.

It’s an observation room, made of depressing concrete, dominated by the enormous pane of one-way glass that practically composes one wall. Their side, filling in tighter all the time as people jostle to get a view of the occupant, is dimmed; the inside, lit up bright enough that the mirror must be opaque to the girl staring blankly across her coverlet, is fishbowl-like, leaving Ritsu with the uncomfortably voyeuristic impression of being at a zoo.

Reigen, behind him, speaks right into his ear and Ritsu twitches away from the feel of warm breath against the side of his face.

He turns to talk over his shoulder, meeting Reigen’s eyes level with his own since the man is partially bent over to invade his personal space.

“What?” Ritsu hisses, irate.

Reigen flicks his eyes reprovingly from side to side, hands in his pockets, indicating the people that surround them and how little he wants every one of them to be party to this conversation. Ritsu turns back around and mutters out the side of his mouth.

“What? And don’t breathe on my neck this time.”

“I was just asking, what do you think?”

Ritsu concentrates, and senses... nothing. Just a person, kept and unkempt; a girl his age stifled by her father and pinned behind glass for people to peer at, offered up to a parade of probing eyes that seek to find her flaws.

Minori’s head rolls on her neck until she’s looking at the mirror, giving the illusion of eye contact. She looks weary; deep bags dug in under her eyes, blonde hair lank on her forehead.

“Nothing,” Ritsu says quietly, “I don’t sense a thing.”

He stares, rude but comfortable with his lack of etiquette since he knows he won’t be caught, tracing her searchingly with his eyes for signs of possession while Asagiri answers questions, going into a narrative explanation of the smeared blood on his daughter’s whitewashed ceiling.

Ritsu looks and pretends she’s looking back at him, like this whole farce isn’t a gross violation of her privacy. Her head tilts a little as she looks at herself in the mirror, a wry smile fleetingly upon her face, and Ritsu wonders what she sees in her reflection, how differently she thinks of herself compared to his picture of her, built only on what he can presume to discern from the outside.

The psychics grow loud around him, each asserting their experience and suitability; Reigen rises to the top of the pack with glib presumption and loud aplomb, claiming the case in their name about as sophisticatedly as a dog marking territory.

The room devolves, adults barking at each other like animals as they yell and argue, except animals aren’t driven by avarice and pride. Ritsu considers whether the glass is soundproof; concludes it must be since Minori has no reaction to the disagreements being bellowed just beyond her walls.

It resolves in a rock-paper-scissors tournament, a juvenile solution; fitting considering the behaviour of people that are ostensibly—according to society, though he has massive trouble believing it right now—his betters. His employer employs mind games and Ritsu uses strategy. Either age or experience declares Reigen the winner, leaving him triumphant in first place while Ritsu languishes in seventeenth.

Reigen gloats his way through the door, drawing the ire of everyone in the room as he disappears down the hallway that curves around to open on the far wall of Minori’s upsettingly ursine bedroom. He enters as all of them watch, closing the door gently behind him, and goes into one of his usual routines.

Ritsu recognizes his manner, courteous and comforting, as the way he deals with the more delicate clients, fragile people with ghostly problems that seek remedy at the agency. For the first time, Ritsu wonders how many of them he never sees; how many clients’ issues are solved with just kind hands and words, and the attention of someone willing to simply listen. He feels the violation all over again, watching the work, like an intruder to the private rapport Reigen is building with Minori.

The observation room is silent, ogling with bated breath as Reigen massages and chats, drawing a chilling, sordid account of her time here out of Minori’s waifish throat. The psychics turn again, inconstant as a weathervane, to stare mistrustfully at their client when she pleads to be let go.

Reigen emerges, subdued, and Ritsu tries to get a hint of what he’s thinking. Reigen notices him and subtly waves a hand, wait, with an enigmatic cant to his head. Ritsu waits, for now, with silent and watchful eyes, as their client is berated by the mass of people he’s hired for what is seeming increasingly likely to be no reason at all.

It’s looking like a consensus, the room united against a common enemy and piling on Asagiri with the easy conviction of a mob. Majority rule, maybe, but it’s one against many until his employer steps out to speak in their client’s defense.

Ritsu, attuned to Reigen’s theatrics, is not surprised the man chose the most dramatic moment possible to proclaim their client’s innocence.

Well, almost. Reigen’s moment is blown out of the water when a psychic—someone who slipped away into the room while Ritsu’s attention was elsewhere—is blown like an explosive cannonball through the glass, instantly transforming the wall into an expanding burst of shrapnel.

A piece of whizzing glass cracks to splinters on Ritsu’s barrier; his employer is gashed across the face, a shallow cut that in defiance of its depth weeps heavy blood in a curtain down Reigen’s cheek.

Ritsu glares, first at the minefield of glass shattered across the room, then at the psychic who was so destructive an instrument in spreading it, before he’s drawn inevitably to look at the source of the power that caused the victim’s unfortunately violent exit.

Minori laughs at them, lively and spiteful at the chaos she has wrought. Ritsu berates himself for feeling betrayed.

She challenges them with chuckles and mocking words, reveling in the panic that’s starting to poison the room, and Asagiri, reactive, shouts at them to save her. If anyone were to consult Ritsu, he would say that she’s not the one who’ll need saving, an opinion borne out by the maniacal cackling that throws back her body’s puppeted head.

A psychic with long straight hair and a ruched shirt—third in line of fifty-eight—steps forward to try his hand; his incomprehensible but intensely delivered chants prove extraordinarily ineffective. The next is also unsuccessful, and they all blur together into a useless chain until it’s almost Ritsu’s turn, attempt seventeen.

Reigen guides him off to one side for yet another private tête-a-tête and hovers a hand above his shoulder, a pseudo-touch that’s just on the edge of what he’ll tolerate.

“Are you okay with this?” Reigen asks, “You don’t have to do it, we can leave it to someone else.”

The condescension burns, and Ritsu knows they’re both remembering his failure at that apartment building, and in the face of the Kuchisake-onna. He thinks the second man, the ballistic psychic, was also a member of the same group—another tally, two of them now he hasn’t managed to save.

“I’m fine,” he snaps out, crisp, and turns away to end the subject.

“If you’re sure,” Reigen says dubiously, just to twist the knife.

“Positive,” he says, quellingly frosty.

“Okay, pricklepuss, just checking.”

“Well, don’t. I know what I’m doing.”

“Right,” a brief pause, and then:

“If you say so,” Reigen says with a mocking grin.

“You know what—”

“Fine, fine, sorry. I get it. You’ve got this,” Reigen flashes him a confident smile, another expression Ritsu recognizes from work. “Knock ‘em dead, Ritsu, let’s show them how it’s done.”

Ritsu shrugs off the hand that bracingly pats his shoulder as they rejoin the group.

There’s no ‘let’s’ about it when his employer stays behind, one of many watching Ritsu step gingerly through the broken glass. Ritsu makes it through without cutting himself and looks up again to find himself closer than he expected to end up; in arm's reach of the comforter, practically the foot of the bed.

“Asagiri-san,” he says, wary and lacking anything else to call it, whatever’s wearing the body in front of him like a human marionette.

“Ritsu-kun,” she—it—replies.

And smiles.

for added verisimilitude, wait three months before reading the next chapter on ao3! although life willing it won’t take that long for the next chapter

#dmtasd #ritsu #mp100 #fic #mogami arc #for the moment anyway #arataka #bonny and blithe good and gay #the good stuff

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minusram · 7 years

Text

3/? bonny and blithe, good and gay

[ch 1 / ch 2] [do make tomorrow a sunny day series here]

Ritsu does not talk to Nii-san every evening. Some nights he is tired, some nights he is busy, and some nights he can’t bear to imagine what his brother might think of him, if only he were here. Shigeo is a ghost hanging over him, an intangible but metaphorical phantom that remains so despite Ritsu’s newfound supernatural abilities.

Ritsu wondered, when they first manifested, if maybe someone had been watching over him after all, but a thorough check of the house, and even of the room that’s been slowly filled with the debris of a life lived looking forward—once it was done being a shrine to the past—revealed nothing. No ghosts, not even a wisp. Not a trace of emotion; no time capsule messages preserved for him to find.

Ritsu isn’t disappointed. Even if there was something lingering in the halls it would be the remains of a child, not someone older than him, not someone he could rely on. He’s lived his whole life, practically, without a brother—over three quarters, almost four fifths; gaining a facsimile of companionship at this late date would hardly be a fulfilling prize for his psychic achievement.

The setback with the wall was an outlier; despite the impression it left on him as he failed to do the same in reverse, Ritsu really has been making progress in his esper training, a fact that makes his inadequacy today sting all the more. An increase in cases recently, spurred by the growing popularity of his employer’s website, has meant a proportional increase in cases worth his time, higher level spirits that it actually means something to deal with.

Things that only he can do.

---

Days pass, then a week, then more, and it’s all entirely routine except for the scrapes he sometimes gets into with Reigen. Those are strange, different, scary; sometimes even dangerous, but maybe it’s karma presenting him with trials, with tasks he can undertake to mitigate his damage on the world. He makes it away unscathed each time, so the universe can’t be too mad at him. But then again, Reigen does too.

Ritsu keeps going to school, doing homework, going to work, talking to Nii-san, spending time with his parents, and it’s awhile before he sees Suzuki again.

This morning, he left early, and lied to his parents about why he needed to be here at Salt Middle before everyone else. Maybe he didn’t have to—they know he’s capable, they trust him, and it’s not like they micromanage his schedule—but he needed to vent the pressure a little and a harmless lie is better than the alternatives. He has power here, at school if not at home, to do terrible things.

But he’s an inquisitor, not a tyrant.

He watches Mezato, who appears to have made herself into something of a cult leader, from where he sits with his legs dangling off the wide lip of the roof. He’s on the wrong side of the fence, but it seems people never look up, so he doesn’t spare a thought to being spotted as he observes the trail of people she drags behind her while she chortles. They’re all laughing boisterously, at varying levels of volume.

First comes the Official Church of (LOL) First Salt Mid Branch, though according to the Student Council they aren’t officially anything except a nuisance. Kurata leads her little gang with a piercing laugh, her hands clutching her sides as she projects her voice to the edges of the schoolyard. Her three minions follow her in a ragged clump, hanging off each other and stumbling in a paroxysm of giggles.

Caught up behind them, not quite integrated into their herd, is Suzuki. He’s curled in on himself as he walks, bent over the bars of his arms against his stomach, shuffling forward with his hair shadowing his eyes. It’s creepy looking, the way he laughs; an impression unhelped by the sick leering smirk on his face, just visible when his shudders grow particularly acute.

And behind him, in a long snaking line, are the followers, people Ritsu has picked over and found to be non-critical, with very little influence in the running of the cult. Suzuki would be one of them if Ritsu didn’t know what he is. He escapes anonymity simply because Ritsu is unable to ignore him, though from what Ritsu’s heard he thus far hasn’t done anything particularly enthralling besides follow Mezato around and exist while being foreignly interesting.

Of greater note is that there’s a student council member there, blending in and chuckling, wiping tears from his eyes. Ritsu marks him, a bright red post-it flag on the file in his mind; he’ll bring it up with Kamuro this afternoon at the meeting. The only question is whether to do it in front of everyone or in private. Both have their appeal.

By some signal invisible to him, the prayer period is concluded; the ragged procession breaking up and reforming in new patterns as students fall into their ordinary social configurations again. Friends find friends and walk into school together. They seem refreshed. Ritsu felt something, watching them, some tug urging him to join in, but it was an impulse easily resisted, and now it’s gone. Strange.

And worth further consideration, but not now. The bell’s about to ring and he needs to get to class. As he boosts himself up over the fence he keeps a wary eye on Suzuki, still off step, like a satellite just out of orbit as he follows the other cultists inside.

---

That afternoon, when he’s walking to student council, he sees them again. Suzuki is being helplessly carried along under Kurata’s arm; she chatters non-stop while Mezato waves at them from the door of the news room. The other three—Inugawa, Saruta, and Kijibayashi—range ahead of them, taking up more space in the hallway then they should as the group makes its way to the entrance of the school.

Ritsu doesn't engage, though he's spotted at least five rules they're breaking. Even inquisitors take breaks sometimes, and he's still mulling over what he saw this morning. He’s not ready. The boys get quieter as he passes, except for Suzuki who was already silent, then the noise cautiously picks back up again when they think he’s out of range.

Ritsu dismisses them, for now, so he can turn his thoughts to the meeting, where he will undoubtedly be called upon to speak as Kamuro’s second hand in the Cleanup operation. Ritsu has better ears than a lot of people think; he’s heard the other members refer to him as the president’s attack dog. It’s not inaccurate—he knows what he’s become, what his powers have allowed him to be.

But it’s too late now to go back, and he wouldn’t deserve to even if he could; he’s been changed by this, enduringly, turned by dirty work to something darker than he was.

The meeting is as it ever is—Ritsu decides against the instigation of a fellow member’s lynching in a public forum—and then it’s over. He can’t remember what he said, or why, or who about, but surely it was satisfactory; an eloquent offering with salient points supporting whatever Kamuro was going to do anyway.

And of course, whatever Kamuro is going to do is whatever Ritsu told him to do the last time they met like this, privately, after even Tokugawa’s gone home. They’re two peas in a rotting pod, Kamuro and him, and the power slides between them like jello on a see-saw; constantly in flux and just as absurd, leaving sticky tracks of culpability all over both of their hands.

Kamuro seems shadowed, wraithed by negative energy as they discuss how to deal with their cuckoo, the cultist in their midst. Deep, dark shadows sag under his eyes and his hair is wavy and unwashed, heavy with grease. They’re nothing like mirrors of each other, but Ritsu feels a grimy kinship with him like a mushroom growing in the dark.

As they walk out, Kamuro slips on a piece of paper left on the floor in the hallway. It’s easily avoidable, but caught by surprise Kamuro’s foot skids out from under him and he slams into the door.

Ritsu sees his face and knows the shape of the next hill he’ll die on. Kamuro is smart, cunning and devious about it, but petty, sadistic, obsessed with power. He’s distracted from the bigger picture, which is why he values Ritsu, still, even after Ritsu’s learned so much about him.

The student body resents their duly elected president, begrudges the power they gave him, but Kamuro’s terrible reputation has its uses; it’s why Ritsu values him. If everyone’s looking at the person who revels in the spotlight, they might not notice the inky figure hidden by the curtain, watching them from just off-stage.

---

“This time, we got a big one,” Reigen says, brandishing an envelope with a broken wax seal. There’s a curse on his shoulder he doesn’t seem to have noticed; its tendrils drift when he moves, waving like it’s underwater, an anemone made of glowing energy rooted in the grey weave of his suit.

“Bigger than an urban legend, Reigen-san?” Ritsu replies, leaning against the wall as he watches it writhe.

“It’ll certainly pay better,” Reigen says, greed twisting his face before it shifts into a bright smile, emphasized by his hand’s flourish, “Maybe this time we can avoid getting anyone mutilated!”

Not so long ago, his employer proposed a little busting spree. Their attempt to exorcise the Kuchisake-onna went poorly, and culminated in the injury of a professional competitor who’d unwisely attempted to assist. After they helped Shiira Taichoumaru, or whatever his name was, to the hospital—bleeding heavily from the slashes in his face—, Reigen capitalized upon the man’s injury to update his business’ website, to lure in weak minds all the more efficiently.

A side effect has been the uptick in genuinely psychic cases, exorcisms that actually count as exercise; the shame he feels at profiting off another’s misfortune helps him take care of the escalating assignments without too much collateral damage, either to their surroundings or themselves. He’s both intrigued and wary to see what might qualify as a ‘big one’ after all the things he’s seen these past few weeks.

“So what is it?” Ritsu says.

“Some private mansion, I don’t know. Up on the mountain somewhere. It’s a famous businessman, the president of a real big company, but I don’t know if I should say who… can you keep a secret?”

“No, I don’t keep secrets.”

“Liar.”

Ritsu’s hand twitches; point Reigen.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says. Reigen shrugs easily, conceding to the dig.

“Whatever, you’ll find out soon enough. That’s about all I know anyway, we’ll just have to get over there and see what’s up. So come on, Ritsu, we need to catch the train.”

As Reigen passes him, Ritsu reaches out; the curse crumbles at his touch.

For a moment, psychic silt coats his fingertips, sticking in his fingerprints. He has time to brush his thumb over it, considering, before that too fizzes away.

“Coming, Reigen-san,” he says, dipping to pick up his bag, and texting his parents that work might run late, “But don’t call me that.”

---

After they’ve rattled their way out of town, transferring from the train to a bus and then a hike up a long flight of worn stone stairs, and they’ve spent long minutes surrounded by trees and green smells—a myriad of natural splendours that Ritsu is not equipped to appreciate—they come upon the mansion, which emerges slowly as they crest the mossy staircase.

Ritsu set a brisk pace on their way up, eager to reach their destination and anticipating an equally long trip home after they’ve finished, but he hasn’t overexerted himself. Reigen, however, is sweating more than the weather warrants, and he pauses to take in the view of the massive building, hands on his hips as he gives every appearance of relishing the mildly-less-smoggy mountain air.

“Totally… worth it…” Ritsu’s employer says, endeavouring to seem overcome by the beauty of their environment—somewhat marred by the ostentatious eyesore of a house—and not his own physical limitations.

“Reigen-san, you should really keep in shape. It’s important to take care of your body as you age.”

“I’m twenty-seven, you brat!” Reigen cries, clenching his teeth and a fist in front of him in outrage, “That’s not old!”

He contains himself with a condescending puff; his hand transfers to his chin as he looks up, pensive. “But hey, I can’t expect a little kid to understand,” he says with a knowing nod. “Besides, taking a taxi would eat into our profit margin.”

“We could have taken a taxi?”

“Profit, Ritsu, think of the profit.”

The mansion is enormous, guarded by imposing walls bristling with barbed wire, reinforced chainlink gates, and serious people in suits and sunglasses who bark at them for identification.

Ritsu has a moment of doubt at the set-up, hoping Reigen actually has been invited and isn’t just gate-crashing like Ritsu knows he’s wont to do. But it all goes smoothly, everything in order, and one of the security guards leads them up the short drive to the house and through the double set of tufted leather doors.

They go in, past the vaulted entryway flanked by two double-story staircases, down a hallway floored with flawlessly polished stone that bounces the sound of their steps back up at them, past a room adjoining the back of the house, decorated in the traditional style, to arrive in front of an identical set of doors to the first, padded with creamy off-white leather; so clean they might never have been touched.

Their guide gestures to the brass handles, set into wood the warm, deep colour of chestnuts, and leaves them there.

Reigen whistles, impressed, when they’re alone.

“Nice fucking house, eh Ritsu?”

And with that, he opens the doors.

WELP. here it comes

#mp100 #dmtasd #bonny and blithe good and gay #fic #ritsu #arataka #bbgg #the good stuff

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titanias-stolen-shoes · 4 years

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Crossing Paths: Part 12

Summary Here || Read on AO3

The tarot shop the girls told her to go was near the Golden Gardens, but further west on the outskirts. Garthy had no control here and even though they were respected, it was much worse to be caught unawares.

They were all in/on the van in an alleyway close to the shop. Tracker and Kristen were on the top presumably to keep watch, but they were more concerned with each other. Ayda knocked on the hood, grabbing their attention. Tracker lit up and jumped off the roof, holding her arms out for Kristen. In her time hanging out with them, Ayda learned that while Kristen was a dancer, she wasn’t very dexterous.

The door slid open and Adaine poked her head out, smiling at Ayda and making way for Fig who jumped out after her.

“I’m not going to lie, I already feel better having you here,” Adaine said.

“Do I look intimidating?”

“Well, yes,” she shrugged. “You’re nearly Gorgug’s height with all the muscle. Only someone who knows you wouldn’t be nervous.”

“Now with Tracker and Ayda with us we’re gonna be just fine,” Kristen said, grinning. “Now we can go into the shady tarot shop.”

The shop was across the street, barely noticeable between an adult video store and adult clothing store. The windows were blacked out the only way to see was through the glass of the door, but the lighting inside made it difficult. Ayda somehow doubted they would be put off by all of that—they were all quite tough from the stories they’d told her. No, it wasn’t that. It was the people that stalked around the place and energy that was coming from it was almost palpable. There was a reason Garthy steered clear of the west side and now she knew why.

They crossed the street, trying not to herd together like scared animals. Fig was the best at looking like she didn’t care. Tracker and Kristen were arm in arm so they didn’t look off. Adaine, on the other hand, looked anxious and stuck close Ayda’s side.

A bell rang softly as they opened the door, filing in. The hairs on Ayda’s neck started to stand on end and she felt hot—like heat was surging through her though she didn’t know why. Though she’d never been to a tarot shop, it almost exactly like she’d imagined. Crystals and candles and plants littered around the tables and shelves. One wall was dedicated entirely to books on the craft and another on different decks of cards. It looked normal, but it felt wrong. Like something was just one degree out of place.

At the back of the store was a table with a young woman sitting behind it, her golden cardigan draped loosely over her shoulders as she stared at her phone. Her eyes flickered up for a moment, taking in the five of them and going back to what she was doing, calling out: “Feel free to look around as long as you’d like. My name is Penelope if you need anything or want a reading.”

Kristen, Tracker, and Fig broke off toward the books while Adaine and Ayda went toward the wall of cards. Amazingly, all of them were different: different sizes, different designs, different themes.

“I forgot to ask: what were Kristen and Trackers cards?”

“The High Priestess and The Moon. The Priestess kind of makes sense since Kristen used to be a prominent figure in her church.”

“Used to be?”

“Yeah her parents basically raised her to be the next one in charge, but they’re all wildly homophobic so she dropped them a few years ago when she realized. That realization also coincided with her realizing she was gay so, win-win I guess.”

“I see. Kristen is stronger than most.”

“Well,” Adaine shrugged, turning over a bright colored deck of cards and putting them back. “Having unfortunate parents is kind of a theme between us. Tracker got kicked out when she was thirteen for coming out. My parents were emotionally abusive my entire life and Fig has had identity issues since she found out the dad she grew up with wasn’t her biological dad freshman year. And Gilear didn’t really make it better by all but disowning when he found out. He’s better now, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt her.”

Behind them Fig let out a loud laugh, snickering at something Kristen said. Looking at the three of them, you’d never know. Never known that their lives held a deep level of sadness that they each had to overcome. Fig was so confident in herself, so charming and charismatic—Ayda would have never guessed she had such insecurities.

Before she could respond, that feeling of wrongness hit again and she turned. Penelope was standing behind her, a smile plastered on her face. “Do you need any help?”

“We’re fine, thank you,” Adaine said, going back to the cards. Though her tone was easy she was standing still, hand resting on her necklace and jaw clenched.

“Are you sure? You’ve been standing here for a while.”

“Actually,” Ayda said, saving Adaine from having to talk anymore. “I would like to have my cards read.”

The smile dipped a little, the change almost too small to notice. Almost.

“Come right this way and I’ll read your cards for you.”

They went to the table, Adaine following on her right and Fig suddenly materializing on her left. Penelope sat down in front of them, shuffling a deck of cards. “Do you have any specific questions you’d like answered?”

“No.”

“Just a general reading then.” She stopped shuffling and set the deck in the middle of the table. “Knock three times and take the first three cards and lay them out in the order you drew them.”

“Why don’t you just do it?” Fig asked. Though Ayda couldn’t see her, by the tone of Fig’s voice she knew Fig was being patronizing. “What’s the point in doing it this way?”

Penelope smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Well, it helps knock away any energy from my shuffle so it’s true to her and not tuned to me. Knock three times, please.”

Ayda knocked three times then drew the three cards, laying them out. Penelope flipped the first one over. “Judgement. You’ve been holding onto something. And it hurts a lot—almost too much to say. But you’re learning to move past it and you can trust that the person you are becoming is one you’ll be proud of.”

From the shelves, Kristen and Tracker walked over, huddling around Ayda. Penelope flipped over the middle card. “Two of Coins, reversed. You’re passive when you shouldn’t be. Holding a neutral stance will not help and may only be detrimental. If your help is actively needed, then give it.” She flipped over the last card. “Death. Change is coming in a way you won’t be expecting. Something big will happen to you—good, bad, or neutral—and you will be changed for it.” She looked up at Ayda, eyebrow raised and asked, “Anything else?”

Ayda wasn’t sure what to say. Before she read her letter, she wouldn’t have cared much either way. She didn’t really believe in it, though she assumed there was some manner of truth to it. But now that she knew just how much of magic was real, the reading made her nervous. Her life had already changed so much in just a week and half how could it change even more?

“No,” Ayda said, standing. “Nothing else.”

Penelope smiled again and this time something did reach her eyes as they landed on Fig. “Would anyone else like their cards read?”

“No,” Fig said. “I think we’re good.”

“Yeah, we just wanna buy these two books.” Kristen held up two books, one covered in stars and constellations and the other was pitch black with a crescent moon on the front. Neither of them had titles or author names on them.

“Are you sure those are the ones?” Adaine asked.

“Yeah,” Tracker said. “We just kind of… know. These are the ones we want.”

“I can check you out right over here then,” Penelope waved them over to the counter while the rest huddled near the table.

“There’s something about her I don’t like,” Fig muttered quietly. “There’s just something about her that feels off.”

“I agree,” Adaine said. “It’s the shop too. It’s not a bad place, but I don’t feel safe here.”

“I don’t read people well, but there’s something about the way she smiles that’s off putting,” Ayda said. “And—” She paused, cocking her head to the side. “It smells like nothing in here.” While she knew that wasn’t the entire reason why, that was a big piece of the puzzle. Despite all the candles and plants and incense, there was no scent except for the faint smell of cigarettes that came in with them.

As soon as Kristen and Tracker were done with their purchase, they left, careful not to seem too eager. At the van they said their names (Kristen Applebees and Tracker O’Shaughnessey) and their books flew to each other with such force it was like an explosion as light filled the van. It lit up with stars and moonlight as a small galaxy folded in on itself until in a burst of light and a single ticket lay on the ground.

Kristen moved first, picking it up then snorting, holding it out for the rest of them to see. A one-person ticket to an art museum in Elmville with a name written in neat script: Adaine Abernant.

#crossing paths #fantasy high #fantasy high live

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