#my god grim design its so stupid
Text
I love character design, any good story starts with a good character
So I was looking trough lightlark characters Design and by god they made me angry so let's go talk shit about this book again
This is by the way no criticisms of artstyle or the artist but the authors inputs that made those characters such piles of shit
Starting with these crimes against design
This is the same woman,like a different filter in the same woman without context they look either as the same person or close twins and I know the reason why they are so similar but I will talk about it later, the dress the hair the bitchy stand it's the same.
Now the boys
I really like goldie design because it fits the rulers aesthetic but he also looks like Jeoffrey Baratheon put him in red and I would want to punch his face, Now Grease, I mean goth I mean Grim holy edgylord grim design it's borderline stupid, and I blame Sarah j Maas for this it's long haired rhysand the thing I hate the most it's the shattered crown is that like a single piece of metal with shattered parts poking up from his hair or like multiple hair clips that can eventually fall o floating pieces he has to use magic to keep up?
Azul my darling poor sad gay widow you deserved so much better, I'm still trying to understand what is going on with his clothes but at least the crown looks good I would've given him like an extra earring or more gemstones or really lean on a more art nouveau aesthetic his worse crime is look better than boring pale Caucasian and boring tan Caucasian but of course not being a love interest and only exist so the author can kill two representation bird with one boring rock
And lastly
Her
She is wearing bbl fashion, fantasy bbl fashion she looks like a Kardashian the thorns thing is so ridiculously stupid why you have thorns in your clothes you late time emo bastard but the stupidest part is how the author clearly made the shiny gray twins so boring and identical to make this girl stand out as a living embodiment of not like the other girls very literally and still he has the most boring design of them all I'm surprised no one figured out earlier that she was a powerless fuck when they meet this living breathing default setting
#books#lol#anti lightlark#lightlark#alex aster#anti booktok#Isla crown#my god grim design its so stupid#but by the way i am ironically team oro#because i know the author will fuck him over next book#also this is sarah j Maas fault so#anti sjm#anti rhysand
265 notes
·
View notes
Note
Heyhey! I think the cryo archon chlde one. Sorry for not being specific. Thank you
It's okay anon! No problem! This one has no smut and more murder couple and politics. I had fun writing this, thinking about how could you get kidnapped under lock and key and realized that it could only happen if it was allowed to so ta-da!
CW: descriptions of cruelty and gore.
The curse words, in order, are: bitch and whore
--
In a Quiet Lagoon, Devils Dwell
Summary: It was easy to forget that there was more to the Cryo Archon's face than a besotted husband and loving father. It was easier to forget that the beloved Tsaritsa was a dutiful Harbinger.
For all of Tartaglia’s meticulousness, he was not infallible as his worshippers made him to be. You knew that there were times he could be blindsided by things he didn’t take into consideration. As his wife, you took it upon yourself to ensure to cover for his blind spots, both in the battlefield and in running Snezhnaya. It required meticulous planning from both him and yourself, to ensure that the work would not interfere with your family’s life.
Tartaglia and his harbingers dealt with Snezhnaya’s foreign relations and problems. You dealt with the domestic problems; spies and dissidents that partnered with the Abyss Order, the occasional gods that wanted to dethrone Tartaglia, and on very rare occasions, traitors.
You cocked your head as you observed the room you were held in. Fine furnishings and lavish interior designs that were popular among the upper middle nobility of Snezhnaya. You were glad that your beloved son was with Tartaglia since it meant that you’d be able to get information out of this.
‘Well, at least before this reaches his ears’ You thought as you dreaded the bloodbath that would await you once this was over.
You stood up from the bed, gauging your current strength and frowning at the visible after effects of the drug.
“How troublesome”
You couldn’t locate your vision at your person, you applauded your captors for being thorough in that regard but pitied them for their worthless effort. You wobbled as you slowly walked around the room, inspecting the decors and checking out the windows. The door was locked with magic, you could tell with a cursory glance that the magic was intricate and would result into a backlash if opened with brute force.
‘Smart’ you praised them.
You moved to the windows and found the same magic. You sighed at the minor inconvenience this put you through. You could only forlornly stare at the white expanse of snow that was outside your window. The scenery was familiar to your eyes but its name eluded you.
‘And I wanted to welcome him when he returned.’
You sighed once more. Hoping that your captors would show themselves soon, you wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity to do some spring cleaning after all.
--
The moment Tartaglia returned to Zapolyarny Palace, the entire capital of Snezhnaya had drowned in his frosty wrath. He barely restrained himself from plunging the entire nation into frost, the thought of his darling son fearing him had kept him mostly sane. Pulcinella had taken his son away from the crime scene, a wise choice for the Harbinger if he wanted to keep on breathing.
Tartaglia could tell that the guards and maids stationed in your wing were all shaking. He spared no thought for them, postponing their inevitable demise for the kidnapping of his beloved wife.
“Your majesty” Dottore called from behind him.
Tartaglia kept on investigating the crime scene, scouring every detail so as to not miss any possible leads.
“The maids and guards have been questioned” Dottore reported, steeling himself to the cold hard stare of his Archon. Being subjected to it was suffocating, and he wondered how you could maintain eye contact with the Tsar when he was like this.
“I trust that you’ve brought me good news?”
The calmer Tartaglia was, the more pressure Dottore felt. His archon was fickle at best and volatile at worst. Most myths that surrounded him were almost never far from the truth and Dottore had no want nor need to be used as an example.
“Almost” He answered, “While we’ve yet to determine who is behind this attack we’ve narrowed down the list from the means used and there is ample reason to believe that the Tsaritsa has not been harmed.”
The silence was deafening. Dottore couldn’t wait to get out of Tartaglia’s warpath, seclude himself in his lab and experiment on the fools who had let this happen.
“Throw everyone stationed in this wing in the dungeons. Zapolyarny Palace will be in lock down” Tartaglia ordered as he moved out of your marital room and headed towards his former wing.
Dottore hastened to follow from behind, awaiting further orders now that the Tsar had made his move.
“Bring back everyone who entered and left the Palace. Those foolish nobles must have forgotten their place.”
For all of Tartaglia’s genial smiles and affable personality, it shouldn’t be forgotten that he was a man born to fight. One of the three archons from the original seven. A god who could stand toe to toe in the battlefield with Morax.
“As you command!” Dottore replied, face grim and yet he could not hide the excitement in his eyes. He had heard rumors, stories about the days when the entirety of the Snezhnayan ancient noble houses were almost culled in a blood bath.
There was no clear reason on why it had happened and no one dared to ask. But the one detail that remains in every iteration of the story was that the blood from those nobles were the reason for the odd patterns on the low parts of the wall of old establishments within the capital. Patterns that oddly resembled blood stains when seen from a certain angle.
--
You hummed as you saw the snow storm picking up from outside, a visible sign that Tartaglia had already learned your disappearance. You remained at your position by the window, back turned to the door as you listened to the rushing footsteps that were getting closer.
‘I do hope they can amuse me’ You thought just as the doors banged open behind you.
“How did you contact the Tsar?!”
‘Oh~ so it was them?’ You thought with mild amusement, you didn’t bother turning around to greet them.
“Is that the proper tone to use when speaking to your Tsaritsa?” You mocked them, eyes watching their angry face from the window’s reflection.
Behind you was the Count Potemkin, current head of the ancient noble House of Potemkin. Standing beside him was one of your former fiancé candidates, the heir apparent, Matvei.
“Answer me, you disgusting Сука!” Potemkin cursed making his way towards you.
You slowly turned around, a smile on your face just as he reached out to grab you. Before he could even breach your personal space his hand was pierced by ice protruding from the ground. He screamed in agony, clutching his arms as he squealed like a pig.
“Gosh, would you lower your voice? It’s unbecoming for such an ancient bloodline to act like an animal” You chastised as you took a step back and observed the damage.
“Ah, what a shame, I didn’t break your wrist at all” You commented as if you had not precisely calculated to pierce his hand through the most excruciating way.
“You Блять! Let my father go!” Matvei cursed as he struggled on his restraint “You’re no match for our family’s knights!”
You blinked at his words, tilting your head to the side, as if considering his words. He smirked on seeing your action, “That’s right! Even if you’re a harbinger you’re still just one person!”
“Would you stop squealing like a pig? It’s been minutes now, you should have gotten used to the pain!” You turned around to shut Count Potemkin’s mouth. Ice formed on his mouth, starting from the tongue and making its way outwards.
“Ah~ That’s better!” You ignored the pale looks from the father and son, “If you behave, I might just let you keep your mouth but if your son keeps on pissing me off…”
You trailed off, maintaining eye contact with the Count. Your eyes were filled with malice and sadism, “My hand will slip and blow your brains out~”
You smiled, sweet and disgustingly vile as you made your way to the couch and sat in it. The snow storm outside had turned stronger, hail fell through the skies, mixing with the rapidly falling snow. Just from that alone, you could tell that your time to wring out information from them was running out.
“What reason did you have to attempt something as stupid as this?” You asked as you formed ice shards that floated on top your fingertips.
Matvei remained silent.
“Not talking anymore?” Every move of your body was designed to mock them, a display of power that showed how easy it was for you to trample upon them, “I just remembered, the Count was raising his precious daughter outside wasn’t he? A pretty blonde child with green eyes…”
Matvei flinched and stared at you in horror, dread pooling in the pits of his stomach as you spoke,
“Inessa Yakova Potemkin” You laughed softly, “No wonder the Countess died of anger, her dear stupid husband had acknowledge his bastard child, sent her to the palace to be a handmaiden.”
“Imagine what kind of face the Tsar would make if he knew how the Potemkin family insulted me by sending an illegitimate child as a handmaiden” Your ice changed its shape into a dagger, “Even if House Potemkin is an ancient bloodline, it doesn’t erase that your house is lower than my duchal household.”
Matvei screamed in pain as your dagger cleanly sliced off his left ear. You smiled at them coldly, “Start speaking, you should know by now that any resistance would only lead to a painful death...I can’t guarantee your darling sister would be spared from it either.”
In another life, you wouldn’t threaten another’s family. You would have shown mercy but this wasn’t that life. You were the Tsar’s wife, a Harbinger, and most of all the child of Snezhnaya’s strongest ducal house. A slight against you was a slight against everything you stood for.
“Time’s running” You reminded Matvei.
“We couldn’t let you threaten the Tsar’s power! You’re Lord Pulcinella’s niece, a child of House Yusupov. We needed to remove you from the seat of power, at first we planned to get rid of your child but all of our attempts were foiled.”
Another dagger found its way to his thigh. He screamed in pain, wet stain growing on his crotch and you clicked your tongue in disdain.
“Please that’s all we know!”
This time blood spurted out from his father’s left shoulder, some of it landing on you, some on the table in front of you. You didn’t flinch, merely wiping the blood that landed on your face with your gloved hand.
“Father!”
“Let’s do this again, shall we?” You smiled.
“I-I really don’t-”
Spikes of ice burst out from his right thigh.
“Duke Izmaylov! It was him who planned all of this! Duchess Tolstoy funded the operations! Please spare me!”
“How disappointing” You sighed as you made his father’s eyes burst.
You sneered in disgust as Matvei vomited on the marble tiles in front of him. You looked up as you heard heavy footsteps and the sounds of scream echoing beyond the open doors. Moments later, Tartaglia was visibly walking towards you from the other end of the hallway.
“Ah. Time’s up.”
You stood up from the couch and made your way towards your husband, the Tsar, Tartaglia. His cold eyes melted and looked upon you with relief, his hands patted your body, looking for non-existent injuries. You let him do as he pleased, both of you ignoring the dying count and the vomiting Matvei.
“I came as fast as I could” Tartaglia burrowed his face on your neck, ignoring the discomfort from the height difference between the two of you “I thought I’ve lost you.”
You felt your heart ache at his tone, your arms automatically hugging him in comfort, laying a soft kiss to his cheek as you spoke, “I’ll make sure that will never happen.”
You signaled the Fatui waiting behind him to start rounding up the two.
“We’ll have to clean up Two ducal households and five Countdoms” You reported as you gently and comfortably let Ajax’ hand settle on your waist as he led you out of the mansion.
“I’ll handle that. You should take a rest with Teucer, our son was worried today.” Ajax replied as softly as he could but the tenseness had yet to fade away.
You leaned further into his embrace, “Mhm. By the way, the insider was Inessa, you should get rid of all the staff that had a relationship with her. It wouldn’t do if one of her lovers got the idea to avenge her.”
“As you wish.”
--
Three months later the public bore witness to a new cruelty of the Cryo Archon. At Krasnaya Square, a stage was set up, in it were the shackled and chained members of several noble households. Some from the ancient noble houses, and the others from the new nobles.
Tartaglia had intentionally spread the news of your capture and subsequent rescue. He wanted to make a show of power, one you approved of, if only to ensure that his plans for world domination and eventual downfall of Celestia would run smoothly.
Teucer, your 5 yr old son, sat on your lap watching the proceedings from the balcony area. The two of you were surrounded by Fatui guards, new ones. The entire area was secured and security was tight, there was no way a rescue for the condemned would occur.
Tartaglia had made sure of that.
“Close your eyes, dearest” You whispered to your son’s ears.
From below, all of the traitors had blood bursting out of their heads, spikes protruding from the inside of their brains as Pulcinella finished declaring their crimes and their sentence. You hummed a soft tune as Teucer asked, “Mamochka, can I open my eyes now?”
“Not yet dearest, not until Papa comes back.”
You gazed down at the crowd, watching as they rejoiced at the culling before your eyes were drawn at the corner. You smiled at the familiar blonde hair of Inessa, your eyes merciless as she stared at you with hatred.
'Ah, how she must have looked like once she realize all of it was a sham~'
You waved at the crowd from the balcony, pleased that the nobles would now learn to step back in line. You felt your husband’s stare and gave him a loving look.
“Mamochka?”
You sighed in fond exasperation, you figured that he could look now that the bodies were being carted away, “You can open them now, give Papa and the rest a good wave okay?”
Teucer did as you said, more cheers erupting from the crowd upon seeing their beloved Tsarevich waving at them. From his position below, Ajax smiled warmly at the sight of his family being safe and sound. The sun shined brightly in Snezhnaya’s eternal winter.
An auspicious sign from their Cryo Archon.
#childe x reader#genshin impact x reader#yandere childe x reader#genshin impact childe x reader#tartaglia x reader
256 notes
·
View notes
Note
What's the core appeal of orv? I know the premise but why does it make you so hyped up?
OH BOY OH BOY....... i will try to be as concise as possible here but i could write without exaggeration thousands of words about why orv is good. But I guess here's the big stuff.
- Its funny, for starters. it is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. in orv, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen.
- it executes it’s thematic arcs with pinpoint precision the likes of which i’ve hardly ever seen anything else manage to do. regardless of whether or not the themes themselves are the sort of themes you go bonkers for in media, it’s always just delightful to see something perfectly stick it’s landing in terms of the big concepts its trying to grapple with, and orv does
- it’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. it’s explicitly stated in orv canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout, where the writer is trying to excuse their own bad worldbuilding, but it isn’t. The world building is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of, once again, furthering orv’s thematic arcs. the rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring.
- it deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in orv’s extremely large cast of characters who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. the central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm.
- the characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting ive ever seen. orv is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. the characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure.
- following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!
- the pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.
- it is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. i’m a big fan of cartoons made for children cartoons made for children are my favorite things to watch because i like media that is uplifting and encouraging. but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult. orv is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but this is never tragedy for tragedy’s sake. it’s a very compassionate piece of media over all, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult someday, i think it’ll hit for you.
- if you are a person who has ever gotten deeply involved in media to ignore bad things happening in the real world, which i know you are because you are reading my tumblr blog, then there is going to be a lot about orv which resonates for you. a lot of metanarrative has attempted to comment on the voyeuristic nature of media obsession and storytelling, but a lot of it does so in a bizarre way that almost seems to shame the audience for having the audacity to... enjoy the product the creators have produced for them. orv is what i can only describe as a love-letter to its own audience, and it’s really a manifesto about how engagement with media can foster genuine human intimacy, even if initially it’s something you’re using as a crutch to replace that intimacy. the closest thing to orv’s metanarrative i can think of would be undertale. if undertale made you Feel some Things, orv is gonna make you Feel some Things as well.
- it is extremely cathartic and meaningful. i am not exaggerating at all when i say that reading it gave me the closest thing i have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. it helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life is a really really good one
- its really funny i promise
- its cringe in a way that’s hype
- please read orv please not even for me do it for yourself i want you to experience what i experienced for YOUR sake not mine
259 notes
·
View notes
Note
So there was a post, about how Wei WuXian could possibly get bagpipes, and it got me thinking, what if he got me thinking, what if instead of finding, he summoned something accidentally? Like, say, big, black, very friendly and affectionate church grim?
part 2 of Good Neighbors
-
Wei Wuxian was a little resentful about the fact that the first one of Them that he met was a grim.
It was probably the only reason he was still alive, of course – not only was it innately good luck to meet one (apparently), but his uninvited guests had also found it funny that he’d run away screaming from a grim of all things. But he was still resentful: a supernaturally powerful, supernaturally large dog, and it was supposed to be good luck?
Who in the world thought of something as stupid as that?
Though, maybe that answered the question. His uninvited guests, as he called them for lack of anything better to use, were very much not a part of the world as he knew it.
He’d fallen into their clutches in the Burial Mounds, spent three years and a day with them in their world while only three months and a day passed in his, and he’d learned – many things.
Some things he didn’t especially want to learn.
The rest he’d put together himself, developing demonic cultivation for nearly the entire stretch of those three years, and he hated that he had to be thankful to them for giving him the time he needed to build the power he needed to do what he did – to defeat the Wen sect, to avenge his loved ones, to pretend, for a short while, to be normal.
He hated that he’d had to come crawling back to them in the end.
He hated living here in Yiling, in the Burial Mounds, where he had no choice but to cater to the bizarre and ever-changing whims of his stupid guests all the time.
“Wei-gongzi!” Wen Ning exclaimed, and he turned to look, surprised by the unusual vehemence. “Wei-gongzi, we have a guest –”
“Oh, there’s no need for formality!” a familiar voice laughed, silly and frivolous as it had always been, and Wei Wuxian had to rub his eyes and stare – but no, that really was Nie Huaisang. “Wei-xiong doesn’t have to put on airs; I’m an old friend, not a guest.”
“Nie-xiong,” Wei Wuxian said, trying to be polite. “What are you doing here?”
And how did you get here, he wondered: none of his perimeter alarms had tripped, and Nie Huaisang had come apparently alone, without his saber, and so he couldn’t have flown.
He might almost have wondered –
But no. Nie Huaisang might be lazy, might be a good-for-nothing, might be spoiled rotten, but he was still human.
His uninvited guests weren’t.
“I came to visit you, of course!” Nie Huaisang said, his voice a gentle trill. “I brought house-warming gifts – medicines, and plenty of meat. Wen-xiong’s older sister already snatched the boxes away.”
Wen Ning looked rather stunned at the causally familiar form of address.
“I love what you’d done with the place,” Nie Huaisang added before Wei Wuxian could figure out what to say, and Wei Wuxian instantly tensed.
There was no reason to – Jiang Cheng had visited, and he’d only seen the glamour: a small settlement, more sticks than people, poor and dirty. There was no way for an outsider to see the strange structures his guests had built, or that he’d built based on their designs – angular and empty and utterly uninhabitable. He’d explained it to the Wen sect remnants, a little desperately, as being shrines to minor gods, which had worked fine right up until the first of the guests started visiting.
“It’s humble, but it’s ours,” he forced himself to say. “Any thoughts you have on décor would be most welcome.”
Nie Huaisang laughed at him, the sound infectious enough that Wei Wuxian found himself smiling along, or at least he was smiling along right up until Nie Huaisang said, “I don’t know, a giant starfish made out of moon-bright silver doesn’t really scream ‘humble’ to me.”
The smile was gone.
“You know moon-bright silver,” Wei Wuxian said, and his spine was suddenly stiff. “Nie Huaisang…you’re – you’re one of –”
“It’s a matter that’s generally considered up for debate,” Nie Huaisang said, and had his eyes behind that ever-present fan of his always been so bright? “Me and my brother, that is; everyone’s sure at least one of us is. But that’s just a family joke.”
“A family joke,” Wei Wuxian echoed. He felt a bit faint.
“Oh yes,” Nie Huaisang said. “The Burial Mounds are a relic of a war the Nie clan participated in, many years ago, and we were the ones who brought the Neighbors. I think someone thought must have thought that they’d like it, it being a giant Hill and all that.”
“You know - you call them Neighbors?”
“Aren’t they? I’ve been visiting with them for years; we trade saber work for cleaning.”
It was just stupid enough that Wei Wuxian thought it might even be true, and he had wondered at how efficiently his room in Qinghe had been cleaned the one time he’d stayed there.
And, well, everyone had always said that the Nie sect was a bit – odd.
Unorthodox.
Not as unorthodox as him, of course, but still...
“Do you know how to make them go away?” he asked, without much hope.
“Why would you want them to?” Nie Huaisang asked in return, looking sincerely puzzled by the question - as if the uninvited guests were anything more than a pest and a plague and an endless burden. “Anyway, I came to see if you’d like to join me in some dancing.”
Wei Wuxian shuddered. He remembered the endless dances that didn’t stop even when your feet bled and you begged for mercy, the beautiful food that couldn’t be eaten and the disgusting stuff that could be, the laughter and the mockery, the beauty and the horror, all mixed together until he didn’t know which was which.
“Don’t worry,” Nie Huaisang said, patting him on the arm. “I’ll make sure it’s a nice one.”
And – it was, strangely enough.
The uninvited guests that Wei Wuxian had toiled so long and so hard to assuage seemed quite fond of Nie Huaisang, plucking at his clothing and hair and skin as if he were a guqin, and he liked them back, laughing with them. He stage-whispered in Wei Wuxian’s ear that they were all mad for his brother, and that kicked off a conversation among them that proved that they really were.
Even the dancing itself was not so bad.
(They were allowed to stop, for one thing.)
“What did you meet when you first arrived?” Nie Huaisang asked lazily when they were taking a break, lying down on the blankets that were laid out along the not-lawn underneath the not-sky. “It can be important, sometimes.”
“A grim,” Wei Wuxian admitted, and Nie Huaisang laughed high and clear. “What does that mean?”
“Just think of it as good luck.”
“I’ve heard that,” he said, irritated. “But why is it good luck? What does it mean?”
Nie Huaisang laughed again. “A grim is a protector,” he said. “It summons stormy weather and smells of death, making it seem vile, but it defies the profane and bars entry against evil, preserving the safety of those within its domain. Fond of moonlight and wine. It means that you were born to save lives.”
That – didn’t sound that bad.
Even if it was a dog.
“Why is it funny, then?”
Nie Huaisang’s teeth are white in the dark. “Nothing ever specified what lives.”
193 notes
·
View notes
Text
Continuation of Human Relations (Oh My God, They Were Roommates)
This is a 16k story that’s a bit too short for AO3 but a bit too long for Tumblr that acts as a continuation of my Archivist!Sasha and Immortal!Jon fic Human Relations. I recommend that you read that before this. This story takes place between S2 and S3, and is about Sasha and Georgie’s roommate adventures. I’m uncertain if I’ll continue this and post it on AO3, post it on AO3 as it is, or what, but for the time being I’ll at least post it here.
Serious content warnings for discussion of abusive friendships, gaslighting, discussion of 19th century racism, implied transphobia, and discussion of police brutality. Nothing more serious than what we saw in Human Relations, but it does have a much more explicit investigation of Jon and Elias’ relationship. Rest under the cut. Happy Birthday, @magickko.
EDIT: HAHA READMORE DIDN’T WORK, YIKES.
Sasha dreams, every night.
Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time.
A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap.
A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.
When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again.
Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.
Sasha dreams, every night.
Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time.
A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap.
A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.
When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again.
Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom.
Georgie Barker wasn’t a mystery, and she’d be the first to tell you.
Of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you need, honey! I always love having Jonah owe me a favor. Don’t worry about the cops and the law, nobody will ever find you here. Seriously, the entire department’s in my pocket. It’s no hassle having you here, it’s a big flat! It’s been years since I’ve had a roommate, this’ll be fun!
The one thing she hadn’t understood was Sasha begging her not to let Jon in to see her. He knows exactly where you are, Georgie pointed out. He knows you’re not actually a murderer, Georgie said. He might be able to help explain some of what’s going on, Georgie hinted. Jon would respect my wishes, but if Jonah really wants him to talk to you, he’ll definitely do it...
“Please,” Sasha had croaked, the uncomfortable morning after she had stumbled into Georgie’s flat. The Admiral wove around her legs, purring up a storm, and Georgie was munching on avocado toast and sipping pomegranate juice. “I just - I just need some space.”
“Why?” Georgie asked obliviously. That was something that Sasha was rapidly learning about Georgie - she didn’t hold back with impolite questions, or her opinion. She seemed to be regarding Sasha’s life as her own personal Youtuber Drama, which Sasha really didn’t know how she felt about. Her life wasn’t a spectacle, but she guessed even the warfare and tragedy of ants were of obscure and strange interest to humanity. “He’s feeling, like, totally bad about framing you for murder. I can tell he super wants to apologize to you about everything.”
Martin’s words echoed through her mind, from what felt like a decade ago: Jon had ruined Martin’s life, but to him it was as simple as a momentary inconvenience. “I don’t want his apology,” Sasha croaked. “I want not to be on the run from the police. I want to go back to my flat. Unless he’s going to make me human again I don’t want any stupid apologies. They’re useless.”
“Hm. Well, you’re free to stay here as long as you need to, of course.” Georgie sipped at her tea. They were sitting around the breakfast table, Sasha desolately shoving eggs into her mouth as Georgie drank her tea that Sasha was reasonably sure was spiked with brandy. Rich people were literally never sober. “It’ll be so much fun, like a sleepover. We can do each other’s nails and talk about boys!”
“My boyfriend thought I was a monster for the past month and now thinks I’m a murderer,” Sasha said flatly.
“Oh, I see.” Georgie tapped her lips thoughtfully. “We have to get you laid, huh?”
“I am literally on the run from the cops.”
“That’s very sexy to some people,” Georgie assured her.
After that, Georgie waved goodbye and swanned out of the house, either going to her studio to work on her podcast or doing some work for her real estate empire or writing a best-selling book or schmoozing with celebrities or attending parties at exclusive nightclubs or working part-time as a bartender just for gossip or devouring souls. Just from Sasha’s one day at Georgie’s flat, she knew that she did all of these things and then some. It was a stunning contrast to Jon’s laziness, or Elias (Jonah’s) single-mindedness.
Maybe you lost the energy to be so productive after your two hundredth year. Sasha didn’t fucking know. Hopefully she would never know. Or maybe Jon just appeared to be lazy, and every moment that he was complaining about being bored he was secretly manipulating world leaders. Maybe Jonah’s dedication to spreadsheets and dress code was a front, and he was secretly pulling the puppet strings of her entire life…
In the empty spaces of Georgie’s spacious flat, it was easy to be paranoid. Sasha lay on her luxurious couch, hands folded across her chest like a corpse, trying not to think of anything, thinking of everything. Thinking of Tim: of his smile, of his scowl, of his cold looks given to someone he had thought was a stranger. Thinking of Martin: his warm smile, his sharp looks.
She struggled to think of other friends, other family members who gave her comfort, but drew up a blank. Her parent’s faces were blurred after ten years of no contact, not so much forgotten as repressed, and her baby siblings were likely unrecognizable to her now. Almost as unrecognizable as she was to them, probably. Tim, her boyfriend who hated her, and Martin, her subordinate who she had almost never had a conversation with that wasn’t about work or Jon...that was it. All the friends she had in the world. She was sleeping in the guest room of a podcast host/Grim Reaper whom she had met once, and that was all she had.
Loneliness was Sasha’s constant companion. In a crowd, in her family, in the world - no matter how many people she had been surrounded by, she had always been alone. She had never had anybody in the world to rely on besides herself, and for the first time in a long time she was achingly aware of it. Nobody who loved her was going to help her. She was alone now.
After an hour of lying on the couch and crying, Sasha desolately watched Netflix cooking shows on Georgie’s gigantic flat-screen TV, trying very hard to think of absolutely nothing at all. She only moved to pet Georgie’s silky long-haired cat whose name she had already forgotten, and even he left quickly once she lost the energy to give him attention.
That was how Georgie found Sasha when she came home: lying on the couch, still dressed in borrowed silk pyjamas, watching idiots on television fuck up cakes. Georgie’s arms were laden with shopping bags, with names of exclusive London boutiques sprawled along the side, her deep black pits of eyes hidden by designer sunglasses. She burst through the door happily, her cat running up to her and winding through her laps as he purred, and easily kicked off her red pumps. She stopped in the doorway of the living room, looking strangely excited.
“Sorry I’m back to late! Utterly bogged up at work, there was a plane crash and I was processing corpses for hours. I had to do some serious retail therapy just to deal with the tedium - darling, have you moved?”
Sasha grunted.
“You look like Mikey Crew threw you off the Shard,” Georgie said sympathetically. “Utterly disastrous. Don’t worry, Aunt Georgie’s here to make you feel better.” She lifted her bag triumphantly. “I bought you new outfits!”
Sasha eyed her warily.
“You get no say in this,” Georgie said kindly. “Chop chop, we’re doing face masks too.”
That’s how, somehow, Sasha found herself playing an unwilling dress-up doll for the Grim Reaper. Georgie had taken Sasha’s casual mention that she had no clothing besides her work pantsuit to heart, and had hit up her favorite boutiques for ‘cute outfits that accentuated her figure and made her eyes pop!’. Or something. Sasha wasn’t much one for fashion.
As it turned out, Georgie Barker had a walk-in closet. Because of course she did.
The looks ranged from Sasha’s usual, as Georgie put it, ‘sexy librarian’ look, to ballgowns, to tennis outfits, to moddish, to vintage, to wintery. It was February, the seasons lingering in British chill, and according to Georgie the perfect solution to this was a mink coat that was probably worth a month’s rent on her flat.
Strangely, all of the outfits fit perfectly - and Sasha knew that her measurements were difficult to find. Georgie took it in stride, clapping enthusiastically each time and suggesting accessories and how to mix and match the outfits.
She would have thought that she was too dead inside to actually enjoy it, but so far as distractions went it actually worked pretty well. Georgie chatted about everything but their actual problems, and Sasha had absolutely no input or choice in what Georgie decided to dress her in, and by the time they had transitioned from nail painting to watching Legally Blonde and eating ice cream from the carton Sasha was actually feeling a little relaxed.
“The musical’s better,” Georgie informed Sasha imperiously as Sasha dug around in her carton for chunks of cookie dough. Georgie was clutching a glass of wine in one hand, while Sasha was contenting herself with ice cream. Best not to drink when she was this sad. “Reese is such a doll, though. Allergic to shellfish, poor dear, but I told her not to let Leo pick the restaurant.”
“What I’m wondering,” Sasha said carefully, teeth cracking into the frozen chunk of cookie dough, “is that half the time when I see you, you’re dressed like a 2008 goth in jeans and t-shirts.”
“Oh, honey,” Georgie said pityingly, patting her hand. “I used to spend two hours getting dressed each morning. I’m never doing that to myself again. You, however, clearly have never had nice clothing in your life. It’s written all over your face. People’ll walk all over you if you always look like you’re straight from a charity shop. We gotta buy you some self-confidence.”
“Thanks. I think.” On screen, Elle flourished and achieved her dreams. Sasha tried not to feel jealous. “It’s not really as if I had a lot of girly sleepovers as a kid…”
“Word,” Georgie said sympathetically. She patted Sasha’s hand again. “Jon was the same way, you know. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to renovate that boy’s wardrobe. He has no idea how to dress to impress.”
“Do we have to talk about Jon right now,” Sasha groused. “He’s the last person I want to think about.”
“He means well,” Georgie soothed, as Elle Woods proudly proclaimed on television how she, yes, she, was a strong independent woman - who didn’t need a man! “It’s not his fault he’s stupid. He’s just so helpless on his own, you know, he needs girls like you and me to make sure he’s not wasting a decade fixating on obscure Bolivian religious practices or whatever.”
“Helpless? He’s a two hundred year old man.” Sasha spitefully grabbed the bottle of wine from the coffee table, pouring it into a spare glass and drinking it quickly. It probably cost thousands of pounds, but it just tasted like wine to her. “It’s not my job to make sure his little feelings aren’t hurt.”
“Of course not,” Georgie said, but Sasha had the sense she was being calmed instead of listened to. “But Jon’s...you know.”
“I don’t, actually.”
Georgie made an interpretive hand gesture. Sasha stared at her blankly.
“...I still don’t.”
Georgie sighed. “He’s delicate. Jonah babies him, honestly.” She patted Sasha’s hand for the third time, making her skin crawl. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him see you until you’re ready to forgive him. Every woman has the right to some time to herself after a guy fucks her over. You two’ll patch things up, right as rain.”
There was nothing Sasha wanted to say to that, nothing she wanted to think about, and she kept drinking her wine and watching the movie, out of lack of any other options.
That night, she drunkenly tipped into bed, so blasted that she slid immediately into sleep and did not dream. It was the first relief she’d had in what felt like a very long time.
It wasn’t Sasha’s job to fix Jonathan Sims.
It really, really wasn’t. It wasn’t her job to make him feel better, or forgive him, or save him from himself. If Martin wanted to waste his time and energy doing that, then god fucking speed, but Sasha had other priorities. She had been profoundly fucked over and had her trust abused by three different men lately, and she wasn’t going to be the one to patch things up.
Two of them she had no desire to patch things up with at all. Two of them she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw again. The last one...Sasha didn’t know what she felt. But that was nothing new.
That being said, as Sasha chewed her way through hangover medication and an acai bowl the next morning, Georgie’s inane chattering about tricking some celebrity or another into taking her to Hungary for authentic Hungarian food didn’t register nearly as loudly in Sasha’s mind as her words about Jonah and Jon.
Jonah babies Jon. That was what she had said. It...it was accurate, right? It had to be. Georgie had known Jonah and Jon for a hundred years, and Sasha had barely heard one authentic conversation between them. She’d known them for a year, and known Jonah’s true nature for maybe a few days. There was no way Sasha understood their relationship better than Georgie did. It just didn’t make sense.
Finally, she put her spoon down, cutting Georgie off in the middle of her ramble about the majesty of Hungarian food made by genuine Hungarian grandma hands. “What did you mean, ‘Jonah babies Jon’?”
Georgie blinked at her, clearly barely remembering the conversation, before recognition dawned. Then she shrugged, sipping her protein smoothie. Which may or may not be spiked. It seemed as if her solution to hangovers was to just not stop being drunk. “Oh, you know how those two are. Jon swans around the world doing whatever he wants, Jonah holds the fort down at home. That’s why Jon’s fun, you know.” She sighed nostalgically. “Romantic cruises to the Bahamas for two months, we tear up the Bahaman government and start a minor military coup, then we take a tour of the beaches. You haven’t lived until you’ve dug your toes into Bahaman sand.”
That was something Georgie said frequently: you haven’t lived until you’ve done X, Y, or Z. It seemed as if Georgie was very intent on living, and very intent on defining it in discretionary ways. To Sasha, living was simply the act of not being dead, but Georgie was almost fanatical about experiencing life.
“If he’s so much fun, then why did you break up?” Sasha asked, before she realized what she said. “I mean, it’s really none of my business, feel free not to answer that -”
But Georgie just laughed lightly. “That’s just how Jon and I work. We spend a few weeks together in bliss, and then we go our separate ways for six months or a year or whatever. Work’s always taking us different places, and seeing each other all day would make us hate each other. Some people work best when they’re not in each other’s pocket.” She took a long drag of the smoothie before speaking again. “Besides, he’ll always be second in my life to having fun. And I’ll always be second in his life to Jonah. It’s just how we work. It works for us!”
It seemed to. Last Sasha checked, Georgie and Jon seemed to be very amicable despite being exes. Lackadaisical, on-and-off, passionate yet going years without seeing each other - it was a relationship uniquely in the providence of workaholic immortals.
It wasn’t until Georgie had already waved goodbye, making Sasha promise not to spend all day on the couch again, that she realized that Georgie hadn’t quite answered her question.
An image flashed through Sasha’s mind - Jon’s face, as he dared to disagree with Jonah, and was utterly ground into the dust for it.
There was something more to this. Something that wasn’t obvious on the surface, something that was so well hidden maybe nobody even knew it was going on. Or maybe it was deeper than that, more insidious: maybe whatever was going on was so well-known and pervasive that it simply wasn’t spoken about. Not polite, not the kind of thing you say about your friends, not normal. Not in polite company. Not vocalized. Utterly taken for granted.
Sasha walked into the guest room, pulling out her phone from her bag and staring at its blank screen. Holding her breath, she hesitantly turned it on, staring at it blankly as it slowly booted up.
She shouldn’t be turning it on. She was perfectly aware of how, given a warrant, the police could track cell phone location, texts sent and received, everything. She could do it herself. The crushing weight of surveillance, the fear of being found and seen and rooted out, settled over her shoulders like an old, familiar friend. A comforting blanket to wrap herself up in at night: where, even if the fear was terrible and awful, at least it was familiar.
You could get used to anything, Sasha thought. Any behavior, any fears, any horrors or tragedies - anything could become normal, given enough time. A year. A hundred years. After two hundred years, maybe you wouldn’t even recognize it as happening at all.
Like a flood, the text messages poured in. Notifications chimed in a cacophony, as text after text after text popped up on her phone. Missed calls. Emails popped up, notifications from the doorbell camera, reminders from her fucking Duolingo...
Dizzily, Sasha scrolled through the texts. Lots from Tim, as expected, and a few from Martin, as expected. Some texts from her mother, which - which wasn’t expected. At all. Sasha hadn’t even known that she knew her number.
Sasha’s brain stuttered over the Spanish, having been years since she spoke it. Her brain also stuttered over the gratuitous misgendering, which was also blissfully novel yet just as uncomfortable and upsetting as ever. Translated, it was a slightly accusatory question about why the police had been calling them about her whereabouts. What had she done? Had she gotten in trouble?
No matter what you did, the text read, God will forgive you. Just call them back.
Sasha stared at the texts, brain buzzing. She felt sick. Forgive her? They’d forgive her? They thought she’d done it? They thought she was capable of -
Horribly, awfully, tears pricked at her eyes. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe you never really grew accustomed to pain, even if it was felt a thousand times. Maybe some pain you never acclimated to, never scarred over or calloused. Maybe sometimes the more you were hurt, the worse it hurt. The pain her parents gave her - how they cut off contact, the misgendering, the coldness - hurt just as badly at thirty six as it had at twenty six, at twenty, at fifteen, at nine. It had always hurt.
So stupid. Sasha deleted the text messages. She didn’t have time for this. She wasn’t a child. She was thirty six goddamn years old, that was way too old to still care about your parents. To still need them.
She clicked on Martin’s texts next. The first one had a timestamp before the murder, the rest afterwards.
Martin: where are you?? I found Tim (he tried to kill me w/an axe but we’re ok now) and were trying to get out of here. I explained everything to him. We’ll meet you in the archives.
Martin: Police are looking for you. I know you didn’t do it so call me back. Tim’s worried. Jon doesn’t seem that worried...
Martin: Shouldn’t text you anymore. Please be safe & careful.
Jesus. Jesus, she had been terrible to Martin. She was a rotten friend. Sasha hiccuped, rubbing at her eyes. She needed to get him a gift basket. Five. He was a freak, but he was her freak. Maybe.
Finally, almost holding her breath, she pressed on Tim’s messages. There were a lot of them - more than was safe, Sasha distantly registered. The first five were from the same time Martin had sent the second text. She guessed it was right after the police finished talking to them. He had called her slightly before - likely when they found the body - but there were also two texts from two am last night.
Tim: pick up your phone
Tim: pick up your phone are you okay im so sorry
Tim: baby please please pick up
Tim: we need to talk & im sorry & i hope ur safe
Tim: dont text me back
Then two texts from two am:
Tim: to warn you im drunk but im sorry (AND DRUNK) but in my defense im a shitty boyfriend. If you want to break up its fine but id like to make it work but i get if you cant because cops i guess. Bitch tonner wont stop bothering me make her stoppp
Tim: I love you and I wish that was enough.
Sasha rubbed at her eyes, exhausted. She wished it was enough too. She knew it wasn’t. Strongly, like burning, Sasha wished so desperately that she had never met Jonathan Sims. Maybe, in that world, things were okay. She and Tim were happy.
She scrolled through the rest of the notifications. Strangely, she even had two texts from Melanie.
Melanie: Hey, I heard what’s going on. I know you couldn’t have done it. A LOT of cops are bothering me - Hussein and Tonner have called like five times. I think you know them? For legal purposes I’ll say that you should turn yourself in or whatever.
Melanie: oh and Martin said to tell you that Mr. Bouchard’s been asking me a lot of questions about what im doing and my job situation - dunno y tho
That….probably wasn’t good.
No texts from Jon. She wouldn’t know what to do if he had. She doubted he knew her number, or how to work a phone. The last thing she could deal with emotionally right now was an apology. She didn’t know what to do about Tonner or Hussein or Melanie. Those were all problems she couldn’t fix right now.
Really, there was only one problem she could fix right now. She walked over to the door to the balcony, carefully stepping out onto the 20th story balcony. She carefully ejected her SIM card, snapped it in half, looked underneath her to make sure there were no passerby in the exclusive London neighborhood, and forced her fingers to release from the phone so she could watch it fall twenty stories onto the concrete.
She imagined a smash, a crack, but it didn’t make any sound at all. Sasha forced herself to step back inside, leaving the past behind her.
There was a lot Sasha had to force herself to do that day. Georgie owned a few laptops, but she hadn’t given Sasha permission to use any of them yet, and she didn’t want to intrude. Despite Sasha’s own...reservations about her personality, she really was being incredibly kind by letting her stay and trying to cheer her up. She did, however, have a great deal of antique books, and Sasha eagerly cracked open the first edition copies of fiction novels from the 19th century. Was that a first edition Pride & Prejudice? Oh, score!
She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat. Food tasted like ash in her mouth, but that always happened whenever she was upset. She forced herself to take a shower, impossibly intimidated by Georgie’s small army of hair care and hygiene products, and even cautiously let herself take a bubble bath with a bath bomb. It was...weirdly luxurious, but maybe not surprisingly. Georgie’s bathroom was like the Queen’s, and you could practically swim in the bathtub. It was intimidating and weird and uncomfortable, but Sasha forced herself to appreciate it. How many people got to take a shower in a stall with five different showerheads?
Halfway through the day the housekeeper came in, terrifying Sasha deeply, and she retreated to her guest bedroom to let the woman work. She inspected her newly painted toenails glumly, halfway through Pride & Prejudice, forcing herself not to think about how Jon could have been a background character in the novel. Wasn’t he in his twenties in this time period? Wasn’t that when he and Jonah Magnus had -
Sasha drank more wine, and put on another cooking program. She hadn’t watched telly all day, so technically she could tell Georgie that. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything productive to do. No work, which sucked when she was a workaholic. No computer to waste time on. No friends she could talk to without the police investigating her. She couldn’t go outside, again due to the aforementioned cop situation. Her life was her work, and her bosses had just framed her for murder.
Somewhat buzzed, Sasha stole several pieces of intricate stationary and wrote down everything Leitner had told her before he was murdered. It wasn’t nearly as much as she wanted, yet far more than she knew what to do with. Halfway through her notes deteriorated into a bizarre sort of mind map, lists of cases connected together and obscure monsters and figures pointing to each other. Salasea and his endless array of dangerous trinkets, mysterious yet lonely ship captains, Michael and his gently twisting deceit, Gerry Keay and his bizarre heroism, Leitner and his ruinous imprints, Agnes and her desolate fate, and the oft-mentioned yet barely understood man, whose name was whispered by shadowy figures entrenched in the supernatural world, Jonathan Sims…
Did he know? How often his shadow stained her statements? Did he care? Did he know how thoroughly he had ruined her life?
She scoured her memory for hints, writing down everything she could remember of his cameos in random statements. Of Leitner’s testimony, the immortal figure who so easily attained what Leitner and Mary Keay had spent their entire lives grasping for. Was there a hint to his true nature, his true allegiance?
In the corners of the cute stationary, Sasha doodled a small eye. She stared at it, and couldn’t help but fight the notion that it was staring back.
She scratched it out, feeling paranoid, not feeling paranoid enough.
A few hours later, Georgie came home, and Sasha fought the pathetically hopeful trepidation. When she heard the front door rattle she left her room, intending on welcoming Georgie back and proving that she hadn’t been watching telly all day, but she stopped short in the hallway when she heard the loud sound of voices. Specifically, the loud sound of Georgie’s still slightly unfamiliar voice, and the quieter tones of a voice that was far too familiar to her.
“ - if you’ll just let me talk to her, she’ll understand.”
“And she said that she’s not seeing you,” Georgie said firmly. Sasha held her breath, pressing herself up against the hallway wall. Next to her was a doorway that led to the living room, that led to a foyer. If she craned her head she could just barely see Georgie standing in the foyer, arguing with a figure holding a leather briefcase that made Sasha’s heart leap into her throat. “You really did screw her over, you know.”
“I know,” Jonathan Sims whined. “I want to apologize. It’s not my fault. Jonah got pushy again, you know how he is.”
“Ugh, tell me about it.” Georgie scoffed. “Did something happen between you two? Sasha was asking all sorts of weird questions.”
“Just Jonah being his usual insufferable self,” Jon said, so carelessly and casually that if Sasha hadn’t known better she would have believed him. “It probably alarmed her, seeing how that man really is. I’m sure she’s feeling very overwhelmed right now.”
“She really is, the poor dear,” Georgie said sympathetically. Sasha’s hands clenched into fists. “But you aren’t getting past this foyer, honey. I’m sure she’ll want to be friends again once Jonah gets the cops off her case.”
“Martin’s giving me a hard time,” Jon sulked. “Says this is all my fault that the dreadful little wolf girl is sniffing around. It’s not my fault. If my Archivist just let me explain, she’d see that it’s not my fault.”
“That Blackwood boy’s always giving you a hard time,” Georgie sniffed. “I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him. He’s overly moralistic and doesn’t know how to have fun. You spend too much time with him.”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Georgina Barker,” Jon teased. He stepped forward a little closer, and although Sasah couldn’t see his face she had the feeling he was smiling. “It’s a bad look on you.”
“Idiot,” Georgie said fondly, “everything’s a good look on me.” She stretched up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Ditch him and come party with me, darling, I’ll show you a wonderful time. Maybe after all of this nonsense blows over.”
“Judging from what I can make out of Jonah’s monologuing, we ought to get our parties in while we still can,” Jon said glumly. He opened his briefcase, passing a manila folder to Georgie. “Give her these. She’ll be getting hungry. Tell her that the top one is from work, and the second is from me.” He hesitated for a second. “You really think she’ll forgive me?”
“If it’s not your fault, then why do you need to be forgiven?”
Jon was silent for a long minute. Finally, he said, “I’ll talk to you later, Georgie. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Georgie said easily, casually, as if she had said it a thousand times, a million times. “Take care of yourself.”
She stood in the foyer after he left, arms folded, one delicately manicured finger tapping against her arm. She eventually turned around, poking her head into the living room.
“You can come out, darling, I don’t bite.”
Sasha guiltily stepped into the living room, crossing her arms defensively. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
But Georgie just rolled her eyes. “Please. My best friends are Jonathan Sims and Jonah Magnus.” She looked thoughtful for a second. “Well. My oldest friends. Anyway, if you’re in the same house as one of those Beholding types you aren’t getting a private conversation. I’m super used to it.” She held out the manila folder, and Sasha cautiously stepped forward and took it from her.
“Beholding types?”
“Oh, you know, you and your lot,” Georgie said dismissively. “Can’t do anything about that annoying little megalomania the Eye gives you. Have fun with lunch, I have to freshen up. It takes ages to get the scent of Jon’s musty old books off me.”
But Sasha was already tuning her out, because in the manilla envelope there were two Statements. They thrummed under her fingers, charged with energy and power and fear, and Sasha could feel herself gripping them. The first one was a classic Magnus Institute Statement, just like she would have read at work, but the second was what looked like a photocopy of a piece of paper. Judging from the ornate script, it was old, and when Sasha’s eyes wandered to the date her eyes widened. July 21st, 1823.
She looked up, already frantically searching for a tape recorder, and immediately saw one sitting on the coffee table. She didn’t think twice about it, already sitting on the plush white couch and setting the papers out. Which one first - oh man, they were both so exciting - her fingers drifted to the one Jon gave her, and she picked it up. That one, then.
Sasha James pressed play on the tape deck, feeling a familiar thrill go through her at the gentle whirring. She cleared her throat.
“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a letter sent by Barnabas Bennet to Jonah Magnus. Statement begins.”
And, as Sasha’s blood ran cold, she began to read.
My dearest Jonah,
I hope you are well. It was an absolute pleasure to vacation at your estate this summer. I’ve never had such interesting conversations with a like-minded individual, and since returning to my own estate I have been sorely missing your company. You have introduced a great deal of brightness and acute interest to my life, and without you the luminescence of Heaven does not thrill me. How I wish you were around to thrill me again!
Do not concern yourself - I have maintained my studies. The library you loaned me is of great interest, and I have been spending many a quiet night bent over one of your occult tomes. I have never felt so enlightened. A world is opening up before us, Jonah, one of richness and wonder, and for the first time in many years I find myself excited to rise each morning. I thank our Heavenly Father each day that I was so fortunate as to cross your path. You must remind me to discuss with you the report by Smirke in detail - fascinating! Theoretical, of course, all theoretical - but the concept of classifying the devils that so bewitch man into fourteen unique taxonomies fascinates me. We must discuss it.
Jonah, I trust that this letter reaches you in private, and that you shall not betray my confidence by discussing it with anyone. I have a private grievance I wish to address with you. It is regarding your boy, the one kept so close in your confidence and trust.
I would never hasten to question any of your decisions, for I trust they are made with great deliberation and forethought. But I must question why you keep that boy so close to you. His air is strange and fey. While summering at your estate, I would frequently see him awake at late hours, pouring over some tome or report or another (I would swear that he reads better than I!). I know he’s somewhat of a project of yours, bringing him into Christianity and your charity, which will surely be rewarded etc etc, but I cannot shake my strange trepidation.
If I were to be quite honest, my fear of him.
He always asks questions. Disturbing and distressing questions. And when I deign to answer them, he acts as if he truly understands. Moreover, that he understands more than me - that he possesses some secret knowledge that only he has obtained. I catch him listening at doorways and around corners frequently, and no matter how many times I box him about the ears for it he will not cease. You encourage it, allowing this behavior. Even after I reported to you the pagan rituals which I am confident he is performing, you brush me off. You two are strangely close. I’m simply concerned for you, Jonah. Please heed my advice: that boy is trouble. I fear that he will bring you into trouble also. Do not allow this paganism to steer you away from the light of our heavenly Father. I understand that the occult is of great interest to all of us, discovering the secrets of the world and its many mysteries, but it is only an academic interest. I would never go so far as to partake of these devilish rituals myself, and you ought to dissuade yourself of such a notion also. Do not allow that John to lead you astray.
I wish you most well. I am encountering some trouble of my own - debts and such - but do not concern yourself with them. The situation is well-handled. I hope to write to you again soon.
Yours, faithfully,
Barnabas
...supplemental.
Jon. Why did you show me this?
Is this your definition of vulnerability? Of honesty? What, are you trying to justify your decisions to me? I get it, it’s disgusting. These people were disgusting to you. I can’t know how you feel, but I think I - my parents -
What I mean is, I can’t understand. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been. I understand how Jonah was the only one to… ‘get’ you or whatever. How he was the only person to see how brilliant you are, how much you have to give.
But, Jon - I don’t think Jonah thought any better of you than Barnabas did. He was just better at hiding it. I don’t know, I didn’t know him and I still don’t know him - but you get that the way he talked to you back then wasn’t right, right? You get that it was fucked up, right?
I don’t know. I don’t think you get that. I don’t think anybody does. Georgie’s too close to it, too used to you and Jonah’s ‘quirks’ or whatever. I...don’t know anything Martin thinks, but I feel as if you’d be pretty invested in keeping this from him. But I’m close enough to you to see it, and I’m far enough away from this that I understand. Something’s really fucked up about this situation. I’m worried I’m the only person who sees it. I hate being that person, the person who Sees it all, who knows it all, but is powerless to do anything about it. You understand, right? You understand how much this is hurting me?
I’m not sure you do. If you’re showing me this, trying to show me how hard you had it, how misunderstood you were, just so I forgive you...I don’t. And it’s manipulative, so cut it out. I’m not sure if you’re consciously doing that, I really don’t think you’re emotionally intelligent enough.
But you aren’t dumb, Jon. I know it’s a defence mechanism or whatever to pretend that you are, to act childish, but you aren’t.
Ugh, listen to me. I sound like Martin. Disgusting. I don’t give a shit about this, I’m not your therapist. But you keep on making your problems my problems, and I’m not tolerating that. We’ll talk when I’m not fucking wanted for murder for something you were complicit in.
Get your act together. I don’t forgive you. Statement fucking ends.
As if Sasha’s life wasn’t hard enough, Georgie wanted to go dancing.
“I am literally wanted by the police.”
“The nightclub’s so dark, nobody’ll even see your face,” Georgie promised.
“Shouldn’t I be spending my time working on my conspiracy theory board?”
“Honey, no offence, that thing is so tacky.”
“I hate clubbing.”
“You’ll like the way I do it!”
“I really don’t want to -”
“Tough nuts.”
So, of course, that’s how Sasha ended up shoved into a tight dress, heels, and makeup, pushed into a taxi, and quickly deposited in front of a warehouse looking building. There was a long line out the door, of women with straightened hair dressed somehow identically, yet way worse, than Sasha, all looking very cold. Georgie looped her arm through Sasha’s, white teeth flashing as she grinned widely, and escorted them both straight through the doors and past security.
She, it seemed, was a known quantity. Sasha, who had spent the last year working in a mill to feed evil psychic vampires and the ten years before that locked in academia, which was basically the same thing, was not a known quantity to any nightclub. She had not been clubbing since uni, which was approximately five lifetimes ago.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Sasha said into Georgie’s ear as they transitioned from the furiously cold February air into the swelteringly hot club. It was dim and smoky, the noise overwhelmingly grating at her ears. After so long in a quiet office, in a silent flat, she could barely handle it.
Georgie said something to her.
“What?” Sasha yelled. “Georgie, I don’t want to be here!”
Georgie frowned at her, and unlinked their arms so she could reach up on her tiptoes and clasp Sasha on the shoulders. “You have been accused of murder! You just split with your boyfriend because of clown trauma! You haven’t had fun in years! You deserve this, queen!”
You know...maybe she did.
Georgie pressed a drink into her hands, mysteriously procured from somewhere, and without thinking too hard about it Sasha downed it in one gulp. Georgie whooped, clapping her on the back, and directed her towards the bar. She flashed her platinum credit card at the bartender, and suddenly Sasha was MVP of the night.
You know, Sasha thought dizzily as she was given a toxic blue drink and pushed onto the dance floor, maybe she did deserve this. Didn’t she deserve to have fun? After the way things ended with Tim, couldn’t she just act like a normal girl and go clubbing with her friends to dance away the pain? She was almost forty, way too old for this, but maybe she could forget for a little bit. She had never had the opportunity as a teenager, not even as a young adult. Couldn’t she do this, before she died?
Maybe women closer to forty than thirty dealt with this with - with book clubs, with sisterhood, whatever. Maybe women closer to forty than thirty were married, had kids of their own. But Sasha was just Sasha, stuck in a literal dead-end job, going nowhere good, and this was all she would ever have.
Maybe Georgie was right. Why not live, before she died? Everybody on earth died - everybody, that is, except for a small group of people who were willing to sell their soul for the privilege. At least maybe this way she could have whatever joy she could fit into her life before all opportunity was lost, and she was lost.
A man sidled up to her, asking for a dance, and she evaded him. But then there was another one, and another one, and Sasha found herself fleeing back to the bar and ordering another drink. Too soon. Way too soon. She found herself digging in her borrowed purse, searching for her phone, wanting to call Tim or talk to him or ask him if they really were broken up so she could have rebound sex with random dudes in bars, but the purse was empty of both a phone and a wallet. That’s right - she had destroyed it. Because the cops were after her.
Next to her, out of the corner of her eye, a man sat down at a barstool. He said something to the bartender and leaned towards her, mouth spilling something obscured by the crush and heat and sound of the club. He seemed to be asking if he could buy her a drink. Sasha shook her head dizzily, confused and lost. Then he leaned in closer, and Sasha could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“Are you sure? I’d like to dance with you!”
Sasha shook her head no again, frantically.
“Aw, come on -”
Then, as if by magic, Georgie was at her elbow. Unintimidating, not more than one hundred and seventy centimeters, with teased hair and sharp black lipstick and eyeliner, she raised an eyebrow at the guy. But there must have been something in her eyes, or a lack of something, because the guy rapidly slipped off the barstool and melted into the crowd, leaving the drink the bartender slid onto the counter behind.
As if she had planned it, Georgie easily stole the drink and knocked it back. She tugged Sasha down, yelling into her ear. “Come with me, darling, let’s check out where the real party is.”
Without taking no for an answer, Georgie grabbed Sasha’s hand and tugged her through the outskirts of the crowd, ducking and weaving between small clusters of people and women dancing the night away. Sasha’s vision swam, details and faces lost in the endless ripple of flashing lights and sound, until all she felt was Georgie’s cool hand in hers, and it wasn’t until they emerged from the choppy sea of people into a small hallway off the main room that she felt like she could breathe. Sasha’s head swam with movement and smoke, and she was barely cognizant that they were in a hallway for a bathroom or something.
But Georgie walked confidently past the bathrooms, into what appeared to be a storage closet. She confidently opened it, halting at the door frame to glance backwards at Sasha. A smile quirked at her bow lips.
“You coming?”
Sasha, slightly intoxicated though she was, couldn’t fight the skepticism. “This is where the real party is? A supply closet?”
“Oh, my dear Archivist,” Georgie said, smirking slightly. “The world is full of far more delights than you could understand. Follow me, and stay close.”
Then Georgie stepped forward, disappearing into the closet, and as little as Sasha wanted to step inside more dubiously supernatural hallways she wanted to be left alone in this club even less, and she ducked after Georgie into the unknown.
The unknown, as it turned out, was another club.
Or, more accurately, a pub. It was a nice pub too, all smoky yellow lights and burnished wood booths. The booths were upholstered in soft and cushy looking brown leather, and the sound where nowhere above a quiet murmur. It didn’t seem to be abandoned, the shadows at some booths deeper than others, but for the life of her Sasha couldn’t puzzle out the faces or figures of anybody at these shadowy corners. There was a single bartender, wiping a grimy glass over and over. He nodded at Georgie when he walked in, and Sasha was forced to wonder how many dubiously physical supernatural bars and hang-outs existed in random back rooms of mundane stores. Were these things just everywhere? Or were there only a few, and so long as you had the right key any door could be an entrance? It was just Sasha’s intuition, but she felt as if it was the latter.
What would, could Georgie open up for her? What power, what majesty? What world of power and control could Jon give her, that Jon was trying to hard to give her that she kept refusing? Nobody was telling her the cost. Nobody was letting her make a decision. She was being swept up in the wake of giants, and Sasha was just trying to keep her head above water.
Georgie was still walking confidently down the aisles, and Sasha stumbled trying to keep up. Finally, she came to a stop in a back corner, utterly secluded with a booth that stretched the entire corner, large enough for seven or more people. Georgie turned to Sasha, smiling broadly, and Sasha tried not to feel intimidated.
“Honey, these are my friends. Girls, this is my new roommate, Sasha James!”
With a flourish, she made a little tah-dah motion, and the smoky yellow lamp above the table flickered on.
The table was crowded with women, or women appearing people. Absolutely none of them were familiar. No - in the corner, there was one person who was familiar. Michael, blonde hair hurting her eyes in curly ringlets, hands in his coat pockets. He smiled crookedly at her, jarring her adrift.
“Uh,” Sasha said, confused. Who were these people? “Hello?”
A short East Asian woman in a white tank top and black jeans scowled from where she was slouching in her seat. “One of those Beholding patsies? Please, Georgie, they’re so insufferable.”
“I like this one,” Georgie said cheerfully. She slid into an empty seat, and Sasha cautiously sat next to her. “Play nice, everyone.”
“You’re such a grouch, Jude,” a woman said, leaning forward and looking interestedly at Sasha. Her eyes were dark and big, her head cocked, giving her an almost insectoid air. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person finally, Archivist. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re really making waves in our little community.”
“Patsy Archivist,” a tall and burly white woman with cascading brown hair said shortly, taking long gulps of a pint. “What’s impressive about that?”
“I’m impressed with anyone who puts up with Sims and Magnus long enough,” the insectish woman said. “No offence, Georgie.”
“Oh, they’re insufferable,” Georgie said cheerfully. “Have you heard how those two like to socialize? They go to galas. With those awful little Fairchilds and Lukases and whatever. It’s just tragic.”
“Word,” the insect woman said, raising her glass. The rim seemed to be coated in cobwebs, making Sasha feel vaguely ill. “Much rather have a pint at a nice little pub with friends. But we haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? My name’s Annabelle Cane. I’m sure you’ve heard of me in all those little stories you like.”
Anabelle Cane. Sasha swallowed. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”
“A proxy Archivist she may be,” Michael said serenely, “but perhaps our most successful yet. She’s already coming along so much further than Gertrude ever did.” He winked bizarrely at Sasha. “Michael, but you already know that. They and them, if you please.”
Oh. Sasha blinked at them. “Thanks for...saving my life back there. And Tim’s and Martin’s.”
“My pleasure,” Michael said affably. “You’re the most fun I’ve had in awhile. Always nice to have the Eye owe me a favor.”
“They’re just mad they didn’t get to kill Gertrude,” the brunette said evenly. “Julia Montauk. You should know me too, I think. Is it true you killed someone?”
“I definitely didn’t,” Sasha said heatedly. “It was a set-up.”
“Relax, we’re all killers here,” the woman in a tank top said. She scowled at Sasha. “Jude Perry. What the fuck do those old money ponces think they’re doing, installing another patsy Archivist this late in the game? I would have thought that they learned their lesson after that bitch Gertrude.”
“Archivists are quite slow learners,” a woman piped up. She sat in the corner, strangely oddly. Her skin was shiny and strange in the dim light, almost plasticish, and her dark eyes hadn’t moved from Sasha’s face since she walked in. “Nikola. A pleasure, Archivist.”
“Are you guys all…” Sasha trailed off uncomfortably. “You know?”
“Serial killers?” Julia Mauntauk asked flatly.
“Inhuman monstrosities of plastic and flesh?” Nikola inquired.
“Daughters of fear entities that control our every action?” Annabelle said.
“Embodiments of unknown concepts made sentient, forced into a shape that cannot suit them, locked in flesh and fractal prisons, always screaming in endless turmoil, unable to understand the horrors of the concepts of ourselves, always searching for the sweet release of death that can never quite be obtained, because that which does not live can never die?” Michael said serenely.
“Assholes?” Jude Perry said flatly.
“The sexiest Avatars around?” Georgie asked.
How did Sasha’s life devolve to this point.
“...yeah,” Sasha said. “Hey, where can I get more drinks?”
Unsurprisingly enough, the drinks came very fast. Service was excellent when you hung out with eldritch women, Sasha supposed.
The conversion flew thick and fast after that. In Sasha’s experience, joining a new group of established friends meant being ignored for favor of pre-existing dynamics. It was always uncomfortable, and no small part of why she just didn’t join new groups. Tim had never had that problem - he had a loud and persistent personality, the kind that made you pay attention to him. He dominated any room he entered, by force if necessary. It always seemed exhausting to Sasha, but Tim didn’t really seem to have anymore real friends than she did lately. His personality was like an ocean, overwhelming and everywhere, but when his mood turned sour it was just as intense. Gulfs of pleasure, intense pain - it seemed exhausting, to feel so deeply. God knows Sasha didn’t.
But today, in this group, she seemed to be novel. Maybe new fear avatars were a rare enough thing, or at least ones with Georgie’s seal of approval. They aimed a barrage of questions at her, and Sasha did her best to keep up with each one.
How did Sasha know Georgie? Mostly through a mutual enemy. Oh, fuckin’ Sims, right - you guys friends? No, I hate him. You guys fucking? Ew. Right, right, Sims is a giant prude - actually I heard that he doesn’t really - no, Jon decided a while back he doesn’t do that, and we all respect his decision - ew, though, nobody wants to imagine that. So why are you two friends? We’re roommates, mostly, I’m kinda on the run from the cops. Who’d you kill? Nobody. Who’d that old fucker Bouchard kill? Jurgen Leitner, mostly.
“Cheers to that!” Julia said abruptly, raising her glass. “Hate that fucker.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Annabelle said, downing her own drink and what seemed like an improbable quantity of spiders. She leaned over the table to where Sasha had hastily been stuffed in, beetle-black eyes gleaming. “But really. What are you doing here?”
“As I said,” Sasha said uncomfortably, “I got framed for murder -”
But Annabelle just waved her hand. “No, no, we know that. I’m asking what are you doing here? With people like us, in a place like us? You’re just a sexy librarian. Your highest goal in life was owning your own cottage house one day. How’d you get wrapped up in the tangled web of our world?”
Sasha’s mouth ran dry, her head spinning in a way that didn’t really seem to have anything to do with the alcohol. How had she ended up like this? Who was to blame?”
“Jonathan Sims,” Sasha said dizzily. “He -”
“Didn’t know you Beholding types were in the process of lying to yourselves,” Annabelle said, casually yet brutally. “No, really.”
Sasha opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she said, “I guess I just asked all the wrong questions.”
It was a pretty way of dressing up the real answer: that Sasha didn’t know.
Maybe her thoughts were obvious, because Georgie cooed sympathetically and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Cheer up, honey, it’s not so bad. Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it’s just your own rotten luck.”
“Speak for yourself,” Jude called, lifting her glass. “I love my fucking life. It’s hookers, coke, and blow from here to Scotland. The life of a woman with power’s a thousand times better than the life of a woman without, James.”
“What is with you people and hedonism,” Sasha muttered.
“Why not?” Nikola asked, tilting her head strangely. “Life’s so short when it’s this long. It’s just bread and circuses, Archivist. We all need...entertainment.”
“Humans are always trying to make sense of it all,” Michael said arily. They were digging their fingers into the table, scoring long grooves in it. “When you know there’s no meaning, no purpose, then everything else just...falls away.”
Sasha didn’t know if she believed that, but she bit her tongue. Instead, she said, “What about those Avatars like Magnus or Raynor? They seem really...driven.”
Georgie giggled, light and airy, and leaned in. “That’s because they don’t know.”
She shouldn’t even ask. She shouldn’t - “Know what?”
Georgie smiled, sharp and wicked. “That there’s no point.”
And that was all she would say on that for the night: conversation after that devolved into parties, restaurants, drugs, and conquests. Maybe the women were right, in their own clearly demented way: that without death there was no meaning, when when there was no meaning only pleasure held any significance. If there was no afterlife, no reward or punishment - which Sasha didn’t believe, but they seemed to - then there was no reason not to do what you wanted. To have fun. To take revenge.
If all Georgie wanted was to have fun, and if all Jon wanted was revenge, then what did Jonah Magnus want? Sasha didn’t know. She had the feeling that if she didn’t figure it out, she wasn’t going to live much longer.
Why had Jonah Magnus done this to her? What was the point of framing her for murder? She couldn’t do her job like this. What’s the point?
Half-drunk, head spinning, she found herself vocalizing this. Somehow, Annabelle Cane had ended up sitting next to her, letting spiders run along her slightly too long and too jointed fingers. Annabelle Cane just smiled at her, jaw slightly slacking open to expose teeth.
“Maybe it’s just to fuck with you,” Annabelle posited. “Why not? Do you think he has another reason?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha groaned. “I don’t know anything. Everything’s confusing and terrible. I could never understand those psychopaths.”
“You won’t make it very far in this line of work if you never ask why,” Annabelle scolded. She paused a second, spider running thoughtfully across her eyeball. “But too many questions damns you just as effectively, I suppose. Hm. Jonah’s quite good, isn’t he.”
“Why me,” Sasha groaned. “Everyone’s trying to keep shit from me, it fuckin’ - it fuckin’ sucks, man. It sucks. Nobody would tell me what’s going on, but I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on. Not even Jonah, or Jon, or - or anyone. Nobody but me.”
Annabelle blinked at her, somewhat curiously, before leaning in. Her perfume lingered in the air, a heavy rosy scent. “Do you know something that Jonah doesn’t?”
“Yeah,” Sasha slurred, world fading in and out. “Jonah doesn’t know that Jon -”
Then the world faded into black, and Sasha fell asleep.
If she had felt too old for this at the nightclub, she definitely felt too old for this hangover. Sasha spent twenty minutes crouched over a toilet bowl, reluctantly shoved the Eggs Benedict in her mouth that Georgie insisted was a hangover cure, somehow, and refused the Bloody Mary that Georgie also insisted was a hangover cure that her Mum used to feed her. The thought of Georgie’s Mum filled Sasha with a deep fear, incapable of imagining somebody who was both likely born in the 1800s and who had raised a hellion like Georgie.
When Sasha mumbled this to Georgie, she didn’t look offended. She just smiled, strangely fond. “Oh, none of this is my Mum’s fault. She was a darling, her and my Da. My childhood was positively idyllic. All things considered, you know.”
Yes, Sasha thought, struggling to imagine 1910s London in her mind, idyllic. She took another look at Georgie, squinting slightly as her head throbbed. She definitely seemed younger physically than Jon, but Jon had a particular way of carrying age about him that had nothing to do with his appearance. “When did you stop aging?”
“I forget, honestly,” Georgie said airly, sipping her own bloody mary. For some reason, Sasha didn’t believe her. “It always takes a while to notice, you know. I suppose, logically, it would be about when I died the first time.”
That, more than anything, alarmed Sasha. “I thought you couldn’t die.”
“Not permanently,” Georgie said, as if this was somehow obvious. “Eat your eggs, they’ll get cold.” Sasha frantically shoved eggs in her mouth, desperate for the story. But Georgie just sighed and propped her chin on her hand, eyes distant. “You know how it is. Small town girl, grew up in North Birmingham, Alabama - back when it was just a tiny little thing, you know. I wanted to be a star. I always did. Scared of dyin’ in the dirt. If I was gonna die young, I wanted to do it where everybody knew my name. So long as they remember you, it’s no kind of death at all, really.” She sighed, lost in memory. “I could sing so good...so I went to Harlem, ‘cause all my friends and I always had dreams of going to Harlem and making it big singing in the jazz clubs. They didn’t get so far, staying at home with their babies, but I did. Wasn’t really made for babies and such, I think.” Something strange emerged in her words, the last vestiges of a Southern accent. “I was pretty, and I could sing, and I took to the spotlight like a duck to water. It was tough, but man - if it ain’t tough, it ain’t worth it. I worked so hard. Like I was working myself to death, almost.”
She trailed off, birds softly trilling outside, and Sasha was silent.
Quietly, Georgie began speaking again. “Got into some trouble. You know how it is. I spent dozens of years wondering if it was my fault, if there was something I coulda done differently, zig instead of zag...but now, I don’t think so. Just my own rotten luck, you know. Put my trust in the wrong people. Had the wrong sentence whispered into my ear.” She shrugged listlessly. “Couldn’t handle the truth. Just another girl who couldn’t handle the limelight, that was what they said. But I was set up to fail. All those jazz clubs were ganger run, you couldn’t avoid it. Every girl in that golden age fell prey to those men, same as I did. I just wanted to feel again. Tried everything once, just to feel something.” She sighed, taking another drink. “Got shot. Got back up. I remember it, clear as day. Must have been 1923. I scrubbed the blood out of my show dress and went back on stage that night, cuz you can’t get a rep as a flake. They said, that day...that day was my best performance.”
She trailed off, Sasha finally alert. She wanted more details, almost desperately, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to risk putting the whammy on her host, even if she wasn’t sure that she could. If Georgie was being purposefully vague...well, Sasha wasn’t entitled to her pain.
Instead, she said, “I bet you were good.”
Georgie smiled at her wanly, eyes far away. “I was the best.”
They sat in silence for a little while, eating their food, Sasha’s head ringing and mind buzzing. What about this picture was she not understanding? What was so important that she was missing?
Finally, Sasha carefully floated, “I bet you must have met Jon soon after.”
Georgie looked up from her bloody mary, surprised. “Oh, yes. Just a few months after. He must have caught the word on the wind, you know, of that singing girl who got back up after getting shot in the lungs.” She sighed, propping her chin on her hand again. “Saw him in the front row of my club. He was so handsome, and so finely dressed. But there had been something strange in his eyes, you know? Like little marbles, reflecting the lamps. He caught up to me afterwards, and I figured he was just another fan to squeeze dry, but he told me in his funny little accent I’d never heard before that he could help me.” She swallowed, looking away. “That he could help me understand what was happening to me. Why I was having those strange dreams, seeing those strange tendrils. I guess he was right. After I met him, I understood it all. Things moved fast after that.” She smiled weakly at Sasha. “I suppose you know the rest.”
She really didn’t, but Sasha understood the dismissal for what it was. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me all of that.”
“It’s no secret,” Georgie said dismissively. She smiled cunningly. “A hundred years later almost exactly, and what I did to those gangsters was still my finest work. They say that if you pass by an old building on St. Nicholas Avenue, you can still hear the screams. Anyway, I have a meeting with my land development company in an hour, must run, ta!”
On that distressing note Georgie swanned out the door, and Sasha was left alone with nothing but a stack of conspiracy theories, an opulent flat, and bad memories.
Time seemed to move quickly, yet sluggishly, after that. After another day of writing down literally every Statement she could remember off the top of her head and trying to fit them into the weird and seemingly kind of arbitrary categories that Leitner had given her, she had hit a roadblock. She couldn’t remember any more Statements, she didn’t have access to them, and the ones she did remember she either already sorted or couldn’t dredge up enough memory of them to sort them in a satisfactory way. Either that, or the Statement itself was just incomprehensible - Sasha still didn’t know what the fuck was going on with Tessa’s problem. She tended to have a better memory of the ones that seemingly mentioned the Avatars in the background, just because it had been so startling to actually meet them - and a few even mentioned Jon, usually in context of Salasea or any Eye Statement.
When Georgie came home that night, they watched another movie and they both studiously avoided mentioning anything supernatural. Best not to take work home with you, even if Sasha had never quite been good at that.
The next day Sasha did what she should have done in the first place, and hacked into the Magnus Institute server.
It was seriously, comically easy. Sasha had installed a backdoor connection to the desktop of her work computer from her laptop ages ago, and all she had to do was borrow one of Georgie’s laptops and redownload the program. With an easy virtual desktop she was already in. It was somehow satisfying to see all of her work programs pop up on the borrowed laptop, and it was almost a relief to access the Archive drive that connected all of their computers. More importantly, where they all put their research follow-ups and the spreadsheet that documented the debunked, uncertain, and verified statements. It had gotten to the point where if the statement refused to record on the computer they automatically put it on verified, but what Sasha really wanted from that spreadsheet was the one sentence description they had all put for each Statement.
From there, it was much easier. Sasha, sick of the disorganized conspiracy theorist aesthetic, made her own spreadsheet and began categorizing the verified Statements that way. Much more reliable than working from memory.
If only she could actually access the Statements...Sasha’s life would be so much easier if everything could be digitized. The debunked ones were typed up, filed, and recorded, but the verified ones only existed on paper. Couldn’t be typed up, couldn’t be recorded. It was so stupid.
Sasha checked the clock. Eleven am on a Wednesday. They were definitely all still working. Maybe…
It was an invasion of privacy. Did she actually care about that? No. Was she worried about apparently being locked into an employment contract with an...entity of some sort that preyed on invasions of privacy? No, although she felt like she should. Was she concerned that Jon and Jonah were trying to turn into her a conduit of this entity’s power into the world, probably gradually turning her, if not evil, at least into a giant dick? Somewhat.
Words echoed through her mind, and Sasha’s fingers halted over the keyboard. Her powers manifesting differently than Jon’s...her unique skill with hacking…
Well, that was just kind of offensive. Sasha had worked hard for her skills. They weren’t given to her by Jon’s weird god. Also - seriously, a god? It was just a malevolent eldritch entity living in a separate dimension that encroached tendrils into Sasha’s life. There was nothing divine about it. That was just offensive. Sasha was a good feminist, transgender Catholic on the run from the law and didn’t worship false idols.
It was only then that Sasha noticed a folder on the drive that she hadn’t created. It was labelled ‘For the Archivist’. Despite herself, she clicked on it.
It held a few pdfs. Sasha clicked on one curiously, and saw that they were photocopies of statements. No - of Statements. She was already recognizing this one as one of those spider ones. She quickly printed them all out, conscientious of how easily supernatural files corrupted, and quickly exited the drive and the virtual desktop.
It wasn’t until Sasha was already in the kitchen and pulling down a bottle of Jack that she realized what she was doing. She sighed, replaced it, and fetched herself some sparkling water instead. She drank it slowly as she returned to her laptop and logged remotely into the police database, which she already had a backdoor into.
It occurred to Sasha, perhaps belatedly, that if the police found her laptop and the incredible variety of highly illegal programs meant explicitly for accessing secure servers she was probably triple going to jail. This time, for something she had actually did.
All of the hacking had never felt illegal. It had just felt...well, fun and necessary. It had never been about whether or not she should, it had been about if she could.
Was that how it had started for Jon? Collecting household secrets because he had to, so secure the money and influence he desperately needed, because he could, because it was fun?
Whatever. Sasha shook herself. She could have her moral crisis after she was no longer on the run from the cops for murder. This wasn’t the time to be squeamish about something that wasn’t hurting anybody. She knew, as Jon probably did, that just because something was illegal didn’t make it wrong.
It was easy to log onto the police database and check out her own open case. She frequently checked out open homicide cases for fun, but it somehow hit a little different when it was her they were talking about. Incident, Senior Citizen, Offence: First Degree Murder, Location of Arrest: N/A, yeah, yeah, yeah…
One victim, a John Doe. Foul play was suspected...yes that’d be the gunshot wound. No witnesses. Reporting officer’s narrative...Elias Bouchard and Jonathan Sims the Fifth had walked into Head Archivist Sasha James’ office to discuss work with her when they found the body. Both were shocked and called the police...gun found at the scene had her fingerprints and the ballistics matched...suspect still at large. Friends and family had been contacted, everyone denied knowledge of where she was. Suspect had a noted history of mental illness...great…
The officers dispatched had been Alice Tonner and Basira Hussein. Sasha found that strange: Basira had history with one of the witnesses and the suspect, wouldn’t it be unprofessional to send her out?
There couldn’t be that many sectioned officers, Sasha reasoned. Even if the incident hadn’t officially been sectioned, because the police report still existed, as a general rule if something happened at the Magnus Institute it was sectioned until proven otherwise. Even if the murder itself was seemingly mundane.
Out of curiosity, she searched up Detective Tonner’s records. Been on the force for a long time, worked her way up the ranks. Very, very few cases and incident reports for a detective who had been on the force as long as she had. Sectioned, obviously, but even Basira had more official cases than she did. When Sasha clicked on the incident reports, they were extremely spotty and strange. Obvious details were omitted or censored.
Something cold began to creep down Sasha’s spine. She found the arrest records of the latest four people with official records of Detective Tonner arresting them.
Almost all of them had entered custody with bruises, cuts, and in one case a broken limb. They all had records down as ‘resisting arrest’. Sasha felt sick.
There was one case that stopped strangely short. A clear perp, a rapist but one with little evidence, who Tonner had quickly caught. That was where the case ended: the report that Tonner had found his hiding spot, but no arrest, no trial, no prison sentence. When Sasha investigated the perp, she found that he had unceremoniously vanished shortly after Tonner had reported that she had found his hiding spot. A month later, a death certificate had been filed.
Sasha stared at the death certificate, nauseated. This was who she was dealing with. A vigilante, some batshit pig who had obviously decided that the law was best taken into her own hands. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but...if anybody looked at Sasha’s case on paper, they’d say the same thing.
And that was just the cases on record. It was the only obvious instance Sasha could see of Tonner having offed someone just because she felt like it, but cops were good at covering shit like that up. How many other arrest records had fallen in the cracks? How many other dead perps that nobody gave a shit about? How many sectioned cases?
God, Sasha was fucked.
She begged off hanging out with Georgie that night, instead staying in bed with the covers pulled tight over her head as if that could ever protect her. Why was Jonah doing this to her? What did he have to gain? If he wanted her to die a mysterious death in the bottom of a ditch, why wasn’t he man enough to do it himself?
Tonner was going to murder her, Sasha thought hysterically, and she was going to pat herself on the back for keeping another monster off the streets.
And Jon knew. The fucking hypocrite. He wasn’t going to help her. Nobody was. But, god, she was so alone…
The next morning, as if she knew, Georgie slipped Sasha a burner phone over the breakfast table as they both robotically ate quiches.
“It should be untraceable, but just know that anybody you call you’re putting at serious risk,” Georgie warned, before her expression softened. “This’ll all be over soon, honey. I promise.”
“Did Jonah tell you that?” Sasha asked bitterly.
“Nah. I just know those two.” Georgie delicately ate a forkful of quiche. “They get bored of terrorizing humans pretty quickly. Now, Michael’s a different story. They’ll terrorize someone for decades. I’ve seen them do it!”
“Great,” Sasha said.
It seemed to be at this point that Georgie realized she was actually making Sasha feel much worse, because a slightly panicked expression crossed her face and she quickly reached out to pat Sasha on the hand. “But I’m sure they won’t do that to you,” Georgie said quickly. “They love you! Jon especially. Jonah’s just on another of his little power trips right now, he’ll get over it. And Jon, like, feels really bad about this whole thing. He’s been super annoying about it, actually -”
“See,” Sasha said, standing up to clear away her dishes, “I would rather handle an enemy who obviously wants to kill me than a friend whose good side I always have to be careful to stay on, who I can’t afford to ever make mad. I guess that’s the only difference left between me and you people.”
She angrily put her dishes in the sink, where the housekeeper would do them, and stalked to what was rapidly becoming her room, slamming the door.
Flopping down on the bed, she stared at the burner phone. Tim wouldn’t be at work yet. They could talk. They could -
Do what? Get back together? Split up? Could he explain, beg for her forgiveness? Did she have to apologize too? Sasha didn’t understand.
That was rare for her. She understood a lot of things, or at least she thought she did. Maybe she had been lying to herself, about everything: that her and Tim were a good idea, that Martin was sketchy, that Jon was evil, that Jon was kind, that Georgie just wanted to help her, that there was nothing that Jonah Magnus would do to her, that she was safe and human and a good person.
God, her capacity for self-delusion was ridiculous. But maybe people needed a little bit of self-delusion to survive. Nobody could live in complete honesty, in full sight of their flaws and shortcomings. You could burn away, living like that.
No. No time or space for fear. Sasha wasn’t afraid of anything. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would be true. She desperately punched in a number that she didn’t remember memorizing, holding the phone desperately to her ear, her one connection to humanity.
It rung, and rung, and one, and Sasha’s heart thumped in her chest.
Finally, the ringing stopped, and a slightly sleepy voice punctuated the dead air. “Hello?”
“Tim, it’s me,” Sasha burst out, everything she wanted to say to him rushing through her throat and choking her, and she burst into tears.
Distantly, through the sound of her crying, she could hear Tim on the other side losing his shit, and eventually wrangling himself to calmness.
It was almost funny, how they could work each other up like that. Eventually, by the time Sasha had managed to wrangle her own crying, Tim had calmed himself down enough that he was able to clumsily try to cheer her up.
“We’re all fine. Everyone’s perfectly safe. Martin’s gotten, uh, even more annoying since you left, and we’ve technically hired Melanie, which is - not good but it’s funny? Are you still crying? Please don’t still be crying.”
“I’m fine,” Sasha hiccuped. She rubbed at her red eyes. God, she’d missed him. “Tim, what happened?”
The line was silent for a while. Finally, he said, “Is this line secure?”
“Uh - probably? I mean -” Sasha quickly checked herself. She didn’t want to mention Georgie. The less he knew the better. “ - it’s a burner, if that’s what you’re asking, and I’m not the one who bought it.”
“Where are you living?” Tim asked harshly. “Are you homeless? You have to come stay with me, I can -”
“You mean the first place Tonner will look?” Sasha shot back. “No. I’m safe, I’m dry, things are fine. That’s all you need to know.” She softened her voice. “I promise, if it was safe I’d tell you more. I want to see you again. Tim, I - I’m really sorry.”
Tim laughed hoarsely, without humor. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that? I’m the one who thought you were a monster.”
“...yeah, that one’s on you.” Sasha sighed miserably, lying down on her bed, wishing Tim was next to her. “I am, though. A monster, I mean. Tim, I - I’m definitely not entirely human anymore.”
“God, Sash, that’s the least of our problems right now,” Tim said, laughing slightly again. “Can you just tell me what happened? I know you didn’t fucking do it. That dick Bouchard keeps playing dumb and his shitlead lackey keeps on avoiding the Archives. I bet Sims killed that old man, right? He totally did. Martin keeps on saying that his precious Jon wouldn’t let you take the fall for something he did, but I’m not so sure.”
“I...it’s more complicated than that.”
Sasha explained in short order. For once, Tim was totally silent the entire time, letting Sasha dispassionately recite the entire sad story. She finished it at Michael helping her escape, not detailing where she had been dropped off.
Finally, after a long silence, Tim said, “So this is my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Sasha said harshly. “You were manipulated, same as I was.”
“I’m the idiot who -”
“Yes, you were being an idiot. You should have talked to me, talked to anyone. You should have done anything other than your homicidal partner in crime. You definitely shouldn’t have been buying a fucking black market gun when I know for a fact you have no idea how to shoot. But you tried playing hero and you played straight into Magnus’ hands. You fucked up. Okay? Now let’s try to do better.”
More silence, until Tim sighed. “Can’t believe the Douche’s Jonah Magnus. Explains why Sims is always playing lackey for him. Can’t wait to spill to Martin how his boyfriend framed his boss for murder.”
Sasha chewed her lip, uncertain. She hadn’t shared the details of Jonah and Jon’s conversation too closely - it had seemed private. “See, I’m not sure this is...entirely Jon’s fault.”
Tim groaned. “Not you too! Why is everyone but me and Melanie a fucking Sims apologist?”
“Jon and Jonah are...they’re weird, okay?” Sasha moved to chewing her hair, uncertain of how to describe it. If it should even be described. It seemed so private, so unsuitable to name...but maybe everybody thinking that was how these things stayed perpetuated for so long. “I think Jonah’s kind of, you know, abusive?”
The line went silent again.
“Wow,” Tim said finally, “Martin’s going to be so disappointed his boyfriend’s taken.”
“They’re just friends! I think. I’m like, ninety percent sure. But you didn’t hear them, Tim. They’re really...it’s messed up. Trust me.”
“Jesus, Sash, why are you defending someone who fucked all of us over like this? Sims is a big boy, he’s responsible for his own shitty decisions and the shitty company he keeps.” Tim snorted. “I’ve heard them talk, anyway. If anything, Magnus is the one always giving into Sims and his little tantrums. Jesus, I just want to throttle the both of them.”
“Maybe you need to get over your anger issues and focus on actually solving the problem for once,” Sasha snapped. “Nobody has time for your revenge fantasy, Tim! We need to fix all of this.”
“Which one is it, Sash?” Tim asked coldly. “Was I manipulated, or was it my anger issues and hero complex? Are you going to decide if this is my fault or not?”
Sasha’s heart stuttered in her chest. She didn’t know how to explain to him what she knew - that it was everything, that it was all of the above, that he was manipulated through his anger issues and hero complex, that Tim had been pushed in a direction but he had taken the steps all by himself. But she couldn’t blame him entirely, because Sasha had been manipulated the same way, and so had Jon and Martin and Georgie, and if she started thinking like that then she would have to start hating the whole damn world.
“Tim, are we going to stay together?” Sasha whispered, broken-hearted. “Can we even still be together? I love you. I want you here with me. But there’s so much ugliness that’s growing between us. I don’t know if this can be fixed.”
A long silence again. Sasha wanted to be there with him, to read his face, to see what he was thinking. She had always understood him so well, or at least she thought that he did.
“I love you too,” Tim said finally. “I want to fix this too. I - I don’t know, Sasha. I love you. The thought of you alone, in danger, and not even knowing where you are, is fucking me up. It’s like Danny all over again, Sasha, I can’t handle this. Can we have this conversation again when I know you’re safe?”
“Okay,” Sasha said, and she knew that this was probably the best both of them could do right now. “Are we staying together?”
“...I don’t know.”
“...are we breaking up?”
“...still don’t know.”
“Okay,” Sasha repeated again, and sighed. “I won’t call you from this phone twice. I’m doing the best I can here. I’m safe, I think. Things will be okay, Tim.”
“Sash,” Tim said, “I don’t remember the last time things were okay.”
And neither did she, and they both knew it, and she hung up on him without saying anything further. She lay on the bed, listening faintly to the sound of the housekeeper vacuuming, staring up at the fan as it beat in a steady rhythm on the ceiling.
Was Tim right? Was she reading too much into Jon and Jonah? It wasn’t her job to fix Jon, to puzzle out his weird psychology. Maybe he was just an asshole without a spine,and there wasn’t anything more to that.
No. Sasha didn’t believe that. This was a puzzle that she hadn’t solved yet, and she had the feeling that at the heart of this puzzle was the key to finally keeping herself and Tim safe. She couldn’t abide a mystery, couldn’t trick herself into thinking that the truth wasn’t important. The truth was all Sasha had. She couldn’t close her eyes to it, that awful and ugly reality.
Tim...he had been such a bad idea. But he had always been her favorite one: the way he could always cheer her up, his bright and bold smile, his courage and heart and sensitivity and vulnerability. He had loved her, truly and wholly, for who she was. He knew the ugly corners of her and loved them as much as he loved her best attributes.
Was that still true? Was Sasha turning into a person that Tim just couldn’t love? Was Tim turning into someone that Sasha couldn’t love?
People changed. Sometimes they changed apart. And for some strange reason, Sasha just couldn’t bear the thought of that.
Lying on the bed of a grim reaper, crying like a broken-hearted teenager, Sasha didn’t notice that the housekeeper’s vacuum had stopped running. She didn’t notice the knock on the door, or the creak of the door opening, or the gentle rise and fall of voices. She only heard it when there was a soft knock at her own door, and she was forced to roll off the bed to open her bedroom door.
Standing in front of her, looking nervous, was the housekeeper. Standing behind her was Jonathan Sims.
He looked pretty bad, Sasha noted clinically. Eye bags, even more pronounced than usual, stood starkly under his eyes, and his hair wasn’t as cropped short and styled as it usually was. It had grown out a little, making Jon look more like a tired modern guy walking the streets of London than a centuries old immortal psychic vampire. He was still dressed in a suit, as he always was, but the suit jacket was off and his dress shirt was rolled up to the elbow.
He stared at Sasha, probably registering every minute change in her appearance as she did his, before glancing down at the housekeeper. “You’re excused for the day. Thank you for your time.”
He passed her something - probably neatly folded bills - and nodded at her as she shakily nodded back and escaped the flat as quickly as possible. Jon stepped backwards in the hallway, gesturing for her to come out, and walked back into the living room. Because Sasha was just slightly too prideful to barricade herself in the bedroom, and partly because she wasn’t sure that Jon wouldn’t break into a woman’s bedroom, she stepped out into the grandiose yet cluttered living room with him. He stood in the center, hands in his pockets, looking over the flat with a clinical eye.
“Georgie’s sense of interior decoration is as immaculate as ever,” Jon noted clinically. “She used to spend months getting every house we ever lived in just right. Said it was her job as lady of the household. She had never been a lady of any household, of course, not in the way that Jonah and I had once known - but her fun’s important to her, and it doesn’t hurt anybody important.” He sniffed slightly. “You coming to stay here was for the best after all. She’s been lonely, I think.”
“I’m staying here because I’m homeless,” Sasha said flatly. For the first time, she noticed a small manila envelope under his arm, tucked slightly into his back pocket. “Because of you.”
“I’ve kept your flat for you,” Jon said eagerly, stepping forward, and letting his cold mask fall. In him now was something eager, something almost pleading. Sasha forced herself not to step away. “All of your possessions are intact, and I can get your bank accounts unfrozen easily enough. Once all of this blows over, your life can be right back to normal.”
“Wow,” Sasha drawled, crossing her arms, “how kind. Were you so busy being this nice to me that you forgot that Georgie barred you from this flat because I don’t want to fucking look at you?”
“She’ll get over it,” Jon said dismissively. “She’s been wanting us to make up, anyhow.” He stepped closer again, fluorescent green eyes fixed on her large and warm brown ones, and Sasha fought the tingle crawling up her spine. “Sasha, I really am sorry. Jonah was out of line in what he did. But - but you know, he really does know best. Even if it doesn’t seem so. What we’re doing now, it’s for the best for your development. I promise this will all blow over soon, and things will be better. For all of us.”
“For a subject of a truth god,” Sasha said, voice dripping sarcasm, “you have a unique ability to lie to yourself.”
Jon puffed up, scowling down at her. “That’s ridiculous. I -”
“Does Jonah Magnus respect you?” Sasha pressed.
Jon...hesitated, and they both saw it. Jon frantically tried to cover, quickly saying, “Of course he does. I’m his partner, and we’ve been partners for two hundred years. There’s nobody on earth he respects more than me. There’s nobody he respects but me.”
“Then why does he talk to you like you’re an idiot?”
“He talks to everyone like that.”
“Because he doesn’t respect anyone but you. You just said that. But if he respects you, then wouldn’t he talk to you differently?”
There it is - Jon’s shoulders hunched slightly, unconsciously on the defensive. “Does he give you equal input on decisions?”
“I always give my -”
“Does he listen to them?”
Jon was silent. Finally, slowly, he said, “Jonah was right. He said you’d get like this.”
Fuck. Sasha’s heart sank, even as her jaw dropped in incredulity. She had lost him. “You must be kidding.”
“He said you’d get jealous.” Jon crossed his arms, turning slightly away from her, but what he clearly meant to be a closed-off stance just seemed defensive. “He said that you’d get upset that I’m more loyal to him than to you. What we’re doing now is for your own good, Miss James. You’ll see one day that this - this unpleasantness is helping you grow.”
Unpleasantness? Unpleasantness?! Putting her life at risk was an inconvenience? “I’ll see, huh?” Sasha said bitterly. “Just like you saw? Just like how you changed your mind from this being cruel and traumatic to it being a momentary unpleasantness?” She barked a short laugh, not very humorous at all. “I was there. He called you stupid, he said that you couldn’t trust anybody but him, and he called you an idiot. Are those the words of someone who respects you? Of someone who even likes you?”
Jon stiffened, mouth tightening, and he broke eye contact and looked away. “Don’t concern yourself with the private business between Jonah and I.”
“When you’re having the conversation over a cooling corpse that you framed me for then you’re making it my business, you absolute shitheel!” Sasha yelled, finally losing her temper. “Your bullshit is ruining my life! Your complete inability to stand up to that sack of shit is ruining my life!”
“Shut up!” Jon yelled, seemingly having taken her losing her temper as permission to lose his. Distantly, Sasha was aware of his stupid this must have looked: two fully grown adults, yelling in a living room like children. “You’re a spoiled child who doesn’t know anything! All I’ve ever done is try to help you, and you spit in my face! You’re no better than Martin!”
Abruptly, strangely, Jon stopped short. He seemed almost embarrassed, almost in pain.
And just like that, Sasha knew. “He’s not letting you see Martin, is he.”
For just a split second, Jon’s expression crumpled, but he forced it back into his haughty mask. “I decided that it was best I didn’t waste my time with manipulative traitors.”
“Was that your idea?” Sasha asked flatly, abruptly extremely tired. “Or was it Jonah’s?”
Jon was silent. They both knew the answer.
“If you walked up to Jonah now and told him that you wanted to start dating Martin, do you think that you’d leave that conversation still wanting to do it? Or would you somehow decide, all by yourself, that you’ll end up doing what Jonah wants anyway?”
Jon didn’t say anything.
A strange mix of emotions swirled in Sasha’s stomach. Anger and disgust mixed with pity and sadness. What had Jon been like, before he met Jonah Magnus? Had he been a good person?
But maybe that wasn’t so important. Maybe the question that had to be asked was - what kind of person would Jonathan Sims be without Jonah Magnus in his life?
All at once, the fight seemed to go out of Jon. His shoulders sagged, and he abruptly deflated. He looked down at the ground, ashamed and aware of it. He had always been aware of it. He had just been lying to himself. Maybe it was impossible to live without it.
“I don’t know what to do without him,” Jon said quietly. “I’ve never - I need him.”
“You don’t,” Sasha said, abruptly exhausted. “You want to help me, Jon? You want to protect me and Martin? You can’t do that while staying friends with Jonah Magnus. You have to choose. So long as you stay close to him, you are going to stay within his complete control. That’s what he does. He controls everybody and everything. And you’re letting him. You’re justifying it. You’re doing his work for him. Everybody around him is - even Georgie. There are two people in your life who are trying to get you away from him, and he’s trying to convince you to cut them out of your life. You think that’s a coincidence?”
Jon opened his mouth, then closed it. Weakly, he said, “You’re wrong.”
“I need your help, Jon,” Sasha whispered, and to her shame found her voice cracking. “I need someone on my side. I can do it alone, but - but I’m scared. And I don’t want to. I need help. I’m scared.”
But she knew, even as she said it, that Jon was scared too. He couldn’t reach out a hand to her - not now, not here. Jon had carried around his fear for hundreds of years, pushing it down and pretending it wasn’t there, and it informed everything he’d ever done. Scrambling for power, exerting that power, desperately dominating even as he was dominated - it stemmed from that fear, all of it. And Jonah Magnus kept those flames fanned, because a Jon who was afraid was a Jon who could be controlled.
A Sasha who was afraid, who was isolated, who was trapped, was one who could be controlled.
The realization was dizzying. Somehow, the thought that kept running through her mind was - who’d do that? Who was such a terrible person that they’d go through all that trouble, all of that plotting, just to make someone suffer? Not because they disliked them, not in revenge, not because of any human emotion - but just because it was convenient? Useful?
Because you could?
So this was what power did to a person, Sasha realized. So this was what power and immortality and money and supernatural gifts did to you. It made you someone who Sasha could never hope to understand, whose depths of depravity she could never truly rationalize. To Sasha, who prided herself on knowing people and being able to understand them and their motives - it was almost a relief, almost a blessing, that she couldn’t possibly understand the motives of Jonah Magnus at all.
Jon stared at her, fluorescent green eyes wide, and for just a minute she could see the fear that she knew was there written all over his face. For just a minute, Sasha and Jon were scared together, both trapped in tumultuous waters that they couldn’t control. For the first time Sasha empathized with Jon.
Jonah Magnus was somebody that Sasha could never understand. But Jon was, and for the first time Sasha knew what Martin meant when he said that he felt as if Jon had been a good person, a long time ago.
You can’t understand someone and hate them. Not really. You could be angry, upset, betrayed...but if you really understood someone, backwards and forwards, true hate was difficult to find.
“I have to go,” Jon said, almost dizzily. He shoved the manila folder at her, both of them having forgotten that it was even there in the first place. He glanced at it, frightened and guilty. “Be - be careful when meeting Jude Perry. Don’t take her at her word. I have to go.”
He fled, as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at his heels, and Sasha was left standing in an opulent hallway, clutching a manila folder as if it was a time bomb, completely certain that it was meant to hurt her and cause her pain and damage her, completely certain that she was going to read it anyway.
Like Jon - what choice did she have?
But as she stumbled back to her room, as she sat down on the comfortable chair and thumbed on the tape recorder that sat at the desk, the words of Jonathan Sims ran through her mind. His warning. A clumsy attempt at protection. At the very least, a signifier of desire.
Sasha knew, as she sometimes knew things, that Jon had started out somebody who deeply desired to protect others like him. To take revenge, to grab power, yes, but also to spread that precious knowledge and resources around. He had never stopped thinking of himself as one of those vulnerable people, people who society had stepped on and ground into the dirt. Deep down he had just wanted things to be fair, wanted some justice in the world. Jon, at one point, had only wanted to help.
Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all.
“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist…”
#my writing#YES I KNOW THIS IS TOO LONG FOR A TUMBLR POST BUT CONSIDER: ITS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR AO3 AND MY STANDARDS ARE INSANE#jonathan sims#georgie barker#sasha james#archivist!sasha#human relations#tma#the magnus archives#tma fanfic#jonmartin#jason's tims age
118 notes
·
View notes
Text
Deal with the Devil
(Marillion AU)
This is a part shortly after “The collector”. Since this is more of a loose AU than a coherent fic, I’ve decided that I don’t need to write in chronological order.
- - -
“Good. It seems like you decided to follow my invitation.”
She whirled around, cane at the ready and her free hand raised to summon a butterfly if necessary. Thanks to Nooroo’s affinity to moths, her eyes could see even in the darkest night and she recognized the figure approaching her immediately.
“Gabriel Agreste?”
This is it, Marillion thought, I’ve officially gone mad.
Not only did she follow a mysterious invitation to this godforsaken place in the middle of the night, now she was already hallucinating. Everybody knew that Gabriel Agreste never left his home. Why would he abandon his fortress of solitude for Paris' Number One Enemy?
“I apologize for the secrecy.”, he answered unperturbed. “Surely you understand how unfortunate it would be to be seen in public. People of our... standing would certainly attract too much attention.”
That was when it really hit her. She wasn’t hallucinating. She was here. With Gabriel Agreste. Her greatest idol. Father of her crush. And she didn’t even have her portfolio with her.
“Monsieur Agreste!”, she repeated, all but squealed. “What- I didn’t expect- Why are you-“
He raised a hand and her mouth snapped shut. God, she hadn’t even been here for a minute and was already embarrassing herself.
“You must have many questions, Mademoiselle Marillion – as do I. If you don’t mind, I would prefer to continue this conversation somewhere... safer.”
He turned around and glanced back at her.
“We wouldn’t want your spotted little friend to cause us any trouble, now, would we?”
She hurried to nod and stumbled after him, through what looked like a secret door in the garden wall of the Agreste Mansion. Under normal circumstances she would have paid that detail a little more attention – who the hell had a secret door in their backyard?! – but these weren’t normal circumstances. She was being invited into the home of her idols. By Gabriel. Freaking. Agreste.
Who cared about some weird gimmicks?
“Monsieur,” she finally managed to regain her voice. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand- not that I’m not honored by your invitation, I really am! But... well, most people agree that I am a threat. Why would you want to meet me?”
The fashion designer didn’t slow his steps and she almost had to run to keep up.
“Most people,” he rebuked distantly, “don’t pay as much attention as I do. And I did not come this far by caving to what 'most people' think.”
She mentally kicked herself.
“O-of course, Monsieur. I’d didn’t mean to imply- Wait.”
She froze and Agreste reluctantly came to a stop as well.
“Does that mean you... you believe me?”
If it weren’t so dark, her eyes would be shining with hope.
“You believe that I’m one of the good guys?”
“No.”, he said coldly, crushing her hopes and dreams in an instant. But before she could excuse herself to wallow in self pity – or cry – his expression softened and he placed his palm on the wall in front of him. A line of green light ran over his hand print and a mechanism beeped in confirmation, then the wall slid open to reveal another secret door.
“I believe that you are the hero.”, he finished and stepped aside. “After you.”
Awestruck she followed his command and entered the lair. Because that’s what it was: a lair. The most glorious lair she’d ever seen.
A huge, circular window allowed the moonlight to flood the room, it’s butterfly-shaped inlay casting shadows on the floor. Which was almost invisible from the amount of white butterflies resting on the ground, slowly fluttering their wings as they reacted to her presence.
“This place used to be an observatory.”, Agreste explained as he followed after her. “My late wife's favorite hideout. We are directly at the center of the twenty-first Arrondissement; which means your akumas can easily reach every corner of the area. The security measures are state-of-the-art and will deter any intruder, whether they are merely civilian or another miraculous wielder.”
She couldn’t listen properly, too busy gaping at the room. Agreste talked on, undeterred by her lack of manners.
“The window will be covered by a rocket-proof shutter most of the time, as not to alert anyone of its... rather obvious design. But I couldn’t resist to add it either way. Just in case that one day, after you have defeated Ladybird, you won’t have to hide your symbol anymore.”
This was all... too much. She couldn’t possibly keep up with everything.
“I-I'm sorry,” she stammered out, “Monsieur Agreste, what is this supposed to mean?”
He smiled at her. The cold, stoic Gabriel Agreste, who rarely even showed affection to his own son, smiled at her. With a fatherly touch of her shoulder, he turned her towards the window.
“It means,” he said softly, “that all this is yours – built just for you, to let you reach your full potential. If you chose to accept my help, that is.”
Impossible. Utterly and completely impossible. Marinette Dupain-Cheng could never ever possibly be this lucky.
Thank you, she wanted to say, thank you a thousand times. I am honored.
“Why?”, was what came out of her mouth instead. Quite rudely, for such a miraculously generous offer.
Agreste stepped around her and in front of the window.
“Because you have inspired me, Mademoiselle. There are far too little people who would risk the animosity of an entire city, even for the most noble cause. You and me, we are the same in that.”
She had to suppress a squeal. Gabriel Agreste really thought so highly of her?!
“We would do everything, risk everything to do the right thing. To help the people we love.”
He looked into the distance, his expression hardening.
“But there will always be others who cannot understand this. Like Ladybird and Chat Noir, who never look beyond their own, selfish desires.”
A grim, gleeful relief flooded her. He got it. He wasn’t blinded by Ladybird's fame, he could see through it. Finally, finally, someone truly saw things her way.
“They just don’t listen!”, she raged, feeling like a weight had fallen off her chest. “They act like- like I'm some kind of terrorist! I am helping people! They only ever get in my way, but they get to call themselves heroes? If it weren’t for me, they would have torn Paris to pieces in their arrogance! They're so incompetent it physically pains me.”
“No one knows that better than me.”, Agreste agreed with a nod. “And I do not presume to understand just how tiresome that must be for you. But maybe you should consider that there is more to them than incompetence.”
She visibly deflated.
“More...?”
His face was grim when he turned to her.
“Ladybird and Chat Noir,” he said seriously, “are dangerous.”
Huh?
“Think about it.”, he implored, eyes blazing with an eager determination. “They wield the most powerful artifacts in human history. They have the support of a guardian, maybe even his entire order. And once he begins training them, they will have nearly unlimited backup.”
He put his hands on her shoulder, almost apologetically. As if placing a heavy burden on them.
“You have seen how they wield their powers yourself. Who knows what will happen once they have even more? Nobody knows their true goals, after all. You aren’t hurting anybody, so what are they really trying to accomplish?”
He shook his head.
“Right now, the only thing standing between Paris and the mayhem they will cause... is you.”
Marillion almost thought he was being overly dramatic, but then thought of everything else he had said. Agreste knew so much already, had gotten so much right no one had even bothered to think about before. If he was this confident, then by all means, he had to be right.
“Monsieur, I am... I am incredibly happy that you believe in me.”, she finally managed to get her feelings out. “And all this is just- it’s incredible. Thank you.”
It had been her and Nooroo, all this time, and while they made a great team, they were both... helpless from time to time. Not sure of their decisions, their abilities. And while she would never risk Nooroo's safety, she... she just really wanted an adult to talk to. Someone who could tell her what to do, with all this mess. She was just fourteen, for gods sake!
How often had she agonized about not being able to talk to her parents? How often had she been forced to lie to them, the people she trusted most? The people who always had her back, who only ever wanted to support her?
She swallowed.
How often had she had endure their fear? Of Marillion, of her? The people she loved the most were scared of her Alter Ego, didn’t understand her, couldn’t help her.
But now Gabriel Agreste – her idol, her role model! – offered her his unconditional trust and support. Told her she inspired him!
“I'm just- I don’t have anybody.”, she tried to put her feelings into words. “Ladybird and Chat Noir have each other, and their guardian, and the hearts of every Parisian. And I try so hard to get things right, be there for everybody, but I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time. To know that you think me to... to be all these great things, that you built all this” – she gestured around the room – “for me... it means so much to me.”
He smiled.
“You won't have to carry this burden on your own anymore. My means and knowledge are at your disposal, and you will find that I am a very reliable ally. I will help you figure out how to defeat them – and how to contain their miraculous, afterwards.”
Marillion blinked. She'd never... thought that far ahead.
“To contain their miraculous'?”
“Of course. We don’t want them to fall into the wrong hands, do we?”
Hastily, she nodded. Of course not! She felt stupid for not even having thought of what came afterwards.
“Or to let the guardian reclaim them.”, she added, mostly because she didn’t want Agreste to think she was an idiot. “He'd only reseal their Kwamis and try again, with a new enemy.”
A secretive smile crept on Monsieur Agreste's face – who would have thought he could smile that often?
“Naturally. But you should know that I am prepared for any eventuality.”
He reached for his tablet and showed her the display. It showed...
“Miraculous'!”, she gasped. Pages and pages full of Miraculous', and their respective heroes. There were words written next to them, a script that was more code than language.
“What is this?”
“A book. An encyclopedia of Heroes, containing all their strengths and weaknesses. Not to forget the guides to create potions and spells. The knowledge it provides can give you a variety of new abilities, or significantly weaken your opponents.”
He shut off the device and turned away.
“It used to be mine. But somehow, Ladybird and Chat Noir managed to steal it from me. There is no doubt that they are preparing something nefarious to use against you.”
The knowledge that something like this book existed, and was currently in the hands of her enemies, settled in her guts like a stone.
“Don’t be afraid.”, Agreste assured her quickly. “By the time they are successful, we will have found a way to counter them. With me at your side, you have nothing to fear.”
She looked up at him. In awe of his confidence, she allowed herself to voice the question that had nagged at her since the moment he had begun sharing his knowledge.
“How... do you know all this? About the book, the miraculous.”
He hadn’t even blinked when she had mentioned Kwamis. Obviously, he knew even more than he let on.
“Are you... are you a guardian?”
He looked back at her over his shoulder.
“Of course not,” he scoffed and she shrunk in on herself. “Or I would have found the miraculous ages ago!”
He noticed her embarrassment and immediately softened his features.
“I am merely someone with great interest in all magical knowledge. A scholar, so to speak.”
With a grim smile, he offered her his hand.
“And there is much I could learn from you. Almost as much as I could teach you. Are you ready to grow into the most powerful heroine there is, Marillion?”
She didn’t have to think about it. Ladybird won’t know what hit her.
“It will be my honor.”
That night, Marillion gained a secret base and a secretive ally.
And Gabriel Agreste, at last, regained control over the butterfly.
#miramu writes#marillion au#butterfly!marinette#ladybug!alya#marinette dupain cheng#gabriel agreste#hawkmoth#ml marinette#ml gabriel
330 notes
·
View notes
Text
Contraband (3.1k words)
Tamara 3/23/2021 - @_ourladytamara
cw’s: CNC, vomit, throatfucking, betrayal, systemic/state violence, demons, gross alien horsecock, guns (but no live rounds)
With trembling motions you shuffle to the front of your apartment and lean against the door, draped in the moonlight seeping in from the single, prison-like window behind you. You’d woken up mere minutes ago to the unmistakably stomach-churning clack of Demonic heels marching up your domicile block’s central stairway, and already the fear’s driven you to sweat. Blocks like these were explicitly human-only, servicing the slaves in the surrounding ammunition plants; Demonic hooves never graced the overcrowded slum without very compelling reasons.
Unfortunately for you, they clearly had one. Their steps were audibly burdened, heavier than the freakish things usually sounded as they marched over the shoddy linoleum flooring. A glance back at the clock read 2:30 AM – you had work in three and a half hours. Nausea struck like a knife. It cut deep and quick into your stomach as you pulled back from the doorway – just in time to jump against the body of your roommate, Ninety-Seven.
That wasn’t actually her name, of course, just like yours wasn’t actually Twenty-Two; it was easier to say than your full designations of 117-654-882-28-97 and 009-655-119-18-22, respectively. Unlike you, though, Ninety-Seven refused to tell you her actual, human name, adamant on her designation. She always weirded you out, obviously still doing so after waking up in the dead of night. Still, she told you she’d been here for years longer, and you chalked her high strangeness to the insurmountable trauma certainly weighing on her young mind.
“Why are you awake, Twenty-Two? It’s just some commotion, isn’t it?” she asked, only the slightest twinge of sleep in her words.
“Ninety, are you fuckin’ for real? Listen.” you hiss, gesturing for her to approach. For a moment she seems to hesitate, fixated on your hand. She shakes her head and comes closer, pressing her ear to the door as you’d been seconds earlier while you hold her shoulder. She cocks her eyes, turning to a scowl; you can hear the Demonic footsteps even standing, now.
“I… okay? What’s the problem?” she replies, almost… befuddled by something. You don’t understand.
“Do you not hear the literal Demons goose-stepping up our stairwell? Why the fuck would they be coming in here so -”
Before you can even finish speaking the alarms begin to blare. You’d lived here a year without even hearing them, and the instant they begin your mind starts to panic. It’s nothing like a human warning signal – it’s essentially a mechanical caterwaul, like the dying yell of someone caught in a machine and ground into paste. Every second it throbs against your skull.
“- early.”
Ninety-Seven looks up at you and widens her eyes, as if elated. The noise blocks your ability to yell at her, every word from your lips now totally drowned beneath the din. You gesticulate, pleading physically where your verbal ones had fallen short.
Without another word she opens her mouth and speaks in tune to the Demonic voice now echoing off every surface.
“BADH AN MARAB QA-ALADAV. YA DAEKAVA MA KADAR FA MAKH.
You cover your ears in pain and lean back against the wall, totally overwhelmed by the panic, noise, and exhaustion. Without thinking you dart away from the door, rushing to the pile of loose blankets and pillows allotted as “furniture” by your Demonic overlords. Ninety-Seven cocks her head and tracks you as you move, still repeating the announcement by heart as it begins to loop in English.
“A CONTRABAND SEARCH IS UNDERWAY.” it, and by extension Ninety-Seven, booms. “COOPERATION WITH ONSITE JUDGES WILL BE REWARDED.”
For a minute longer the Hellish alarm wails before its steel throat closes up – only to reveal just how loud the Demonic footfalls outside have truly grown. Each sounds only a single room away.
You shoot a look at Ninety-Seven, a mix of anger and ringing pain.
“You’ve been through this before?” you ask, darting from the pile of pillows you’d buried your head in for safety towards the girl.
“Of course – they used to be a lot more regular.” she replies, rubbing her legs together. “It was a lot more exciting back then, I think.”
Now beside her, you grab her by the shoulder as to speak more quietly. Knocking – on the door beside yours! It snaps you out of the conversation and draws your eyes inextricably to your own apartment’s flimsy defenses. Ninety-Seven stood between it and you, now glaring at you.
“Twenty-Two, I feel like you’re being overly hesitant.”
“ADDAKH!” comes the scream of a Demon in the hallway. “MAR VAL YGDASH.”
Seconds later, a kick, a thud – screaming and heavy footfalls. A gunshot – the screams grow louder, turning to a howl that chills you to the bone.
“O-Overly hesitant? Hello?” you nearly scream-whisper, attention divided. Something wasn’t adding up. “I’m being overly hesitant because,” you lean in, “there are fucking armed Demons outside our door? N-Ninety, are you fully awake?”
“I’m much more than fully awake, Twenty-Two – I just think this level of recalcitrance towards our Owners is undue.”
Every hair on your neck stood on end. Few things bothered you worse than hearing another human say that word, call them that name – and now it was coming from the only one you thought you’d be able to trust in the nightmare you now knew as life. Nausea reared its ugly head through the swamp of anxiety now living inside you. Next door, the Judges finished their grim duty; their hooves clacked along the red linoleum in the hallway once again.
“W-We have to… o-oh, my God, we have to do SOMETHING, I -” you mumble. This really sets her off.
“No. I’ve heard enough – you’re just like the other ones, aren’t you?” she mutters in reply, pulling away from you and shaking her head. “Just like the ones on level 29, right?”
You blink. You… you knew a couple on level 29. They were odd, definitely unlike you – clearly victims of Hell’s penchant for population shuffling, from Iran or something, you were never sure – but one of the only other friendly faces in the basalt-and-tallow sarcophagus you were forced to call home. During your fifteen minutes of allowed recreation you’d visited them a few days ago.
Something sinks like a rock in your stomach.
“N-Ninety-sev-”
“Is religious literature permitted material, Twenty-Two? Is it?”she barks, far louder than you would’ve dreamed of being knowing who was standing just outside your thin walls. This draws the attention of the Judges, clearly; the footsteps quiet as they whisper among themselves for some time.
They’d shown you their copy of the Quran, hastily handwritten into a falling-apart notepad – their one belonging save what Hell gave them.
A knock on your door. You can’t move, you can’t think – tears well up in your eyes.
“ADDA-” begins the Demon, but her shout is interrupted as Ninety-Seven opens the door.
“Oh, good! You came quickly – I’m glad the report made it in time.”
In your door stood a hulking Demon. She was clad entirely in some kind of black metal and blacker robes, flesh almost entirely concealed. A dim red glow emanated from the lenses of her metallic facemask; you could see muscles rippling beneath the thinner parts of her robe, flexing with each subtle motion.
“Huh?” she replies, regarding the girl for a moment like one would regard a particularly-stupid dog.
A gauntlet-clad hand shoves her out of the way, long finger on the trigger of her shotgun and totally ignoring the girl as she began to undress. You panic, yelping in fear and leaping away from the Demon as she steps closer. An instant later, a gunshot rings out – are you dead? Is it over?
No, that would be far too easy, sadly, and you buckle over in pain as the rock salt pellets slam into your back. It digs into your flesh and forces you to the floor like a hogtied animal. Fuck, you thought the salt shotgun thing was a myth. In a few seconds the pain of impact begins to subside and the burning begins. Every inch of your back is on fire; you grit your teeth and crawl into a fetal position, desperate to undo your jumpsuit yet horrifyingly aware of what undressing in a room filling with Demons would entail.
“Ooooohhhhh, that was you?” replied a third, smaller being, speaking Demonic as she entered behind a second. Your state-mandated grasp on the tongue was definitely weak, but you could still listen in. “My Cliquemate in block administration told me about some overly-enthused human babbling about contraband in-between mouthfuls of cock.”
“Found it.” said the second Demon, her voice a booming, cavernous depth. They laughed together before a hand from the first, their leader, silenced all of them.
“Stop talking to the fucking animals and search – save your breath for the next hundred and ten levels.”
You lived on the fifth.
A steel-clad fist to your stomach knocks the wind out of you and intensifies every ache and burn inside your overwhelmed body. The leading Demon looms high above you, a red-glinted flashlight shining from her shoulder through your tiny shared bedroom, toilet, and closet. Jumpsuits, ration tins, tissues, lubricant – but no contraband. Other than those sun-bleached and coffee-stained pages 24 floors above you, you hadn’t seen an unapproved object in what felt like years.
It didn’t stop them, though. By now Ninety-Seven was already completely nude, a visible line of slick running down her thighs as the two Demons behind the leader began rubbing her with their metallic hands. They prodded at her nipples, slid down her thighs and abdomen toned with years of hard labor; you felt yourself rising to vomit before the leading Judge struck you down again.
“Luckily,” she hissed with a click of her flashlight, “you got stuffed up in here with a delightful little housepet who kept you nice and clean, animal. You ought to thank it for that when we’re through with you.”
“N-Ninety-Seven, what the FUCK?!” you scream, ignoring her words against your own judgment. She doesn’t reply, now taking the third Demon’s fingers into her mouth as she kneels before them on the floor. The Judge grips your jaw in her fingers and pulls your gaze back towards her glowing eyes.
“Clearly she didn’t keep your mind as clean as your living space. What a shame – usually putting you two in a cell kills off resistant personality traits faster than this.”
She brushes a gauntlet against what you now realize is her cock, bulging up against the black fabric of her robe. “Look at this. If it weren’t for your little helper you might’ve been to rebellious to get to taste it. That’d be a shame, wouldn’t it?”
You crawl away in terror, but every tug of your jumpsuit makes the pain in your shoulders and back all the worse. By the time you manage to get an inch away, she grips you by the legs and pulls you back across the linoleum, leaving you between her powerful hooves. From here you can practically feel the heat coming off of her; it radiates like a pot of boiling water even through her armor and padding, most powerfully coming from her crotch.
All this time living in Hell and you’d – rather luckily – had until this point to really look at a Demon up close, let alone prepare yourself for what you inevitably knew came next. Obviously you would’ve preferred to keep it that way; the horror stories you’d listened to for the past years did little to compare to the reality of one standing right above you.
The Judge grips her Hellish leather belt and unhooks it from her waist, dropping the black robe – which you now see is a two-piece loincloth and hood - around her waist to the ground, landing around your neck like a scarf. Her cock pops out unrestricted with a heavy flop. It’s easily the length of your forearm and definitely thicker, with a dripping, flared head. The entire thing reeks of blood, salt, and some savory alien stench your nostrils struggles to even make sense of. Thick strands of gooey pre drip from her slit, one of them snapping off and landing on your forehead.
“I suppose you’ll need a reward for good behavior, won’t you?” she coos, slinging the shotgun over her shoulder and taking her length in hand. “It’s not often we find an entire domicile level without a single piece of contraband!”
“N-”
She squats onto your face before you can muster a syllable. Her weight is crushing almost immediately, forcing the wind from your lungs as she leans her ass back onto you. The heat is overwhelming; buried between her cheeks you have little option but to struggle with every muscle for breath, her taut asshole pressing into your face closer with every motion. You press your entire face into it without so much as noticing, and before you realize what’s happening, you’re halfway eating her out in confusion.
You can make out a pleased chuckle from above you. The Judge’s ass begins moving rhythmically, her hips grinding into your nose. Flailing, you desperately grab at her cheeks for even the slightest leverage – but you find none, your actions coming off as little more than playful pinching; the Judge pops her hips back triumphantly before rising from your face.
“Ugh. I fuckin’ hate it when they’re too enthusiastic – not like those dipshits.”
Your vision is spinning. In a stupor you manage to slink an eye back far enough to see Ninety-Seven on her knees. With both hands she’s enthusiastically stroking the second, largest Demon off between her tits, the third balls-deep down her throat and forcing her neck to distend in a way you were pretty sure human necks weren’t meant to. Her eyes are wide-open, a deeper satisfaction in them than you’d ever seen on the girl.
By the time you return your gaze upwards the Judge is stroking her cock mere inches from your face. The tip dominates your vision, like the barrel of a loaded gun; you tremble beneath it and mutter to yourself.
“Empress, no wonder you two were so compliant. Whores – like usual.” she hisses, briefly touching the head to your cheek. A thick strand of nigh-opaque pre stretched between your face and her tip as she pulled it away. “You’re far warmer than they usually are, though, pig – keep that up, the fear makes you tighter.”
She grabs your head and spreads your lips. A scream is stifled in your throat as her enormous prick is forced down your gullet, stretching your mouth wide open. In processing, so many years ago, they outfitted you with an adjustable ring-gag to test your gag reflex – that was nothing compared to the sheer girth being forced into you now. It splits you open, fucking your mouth like a pussy; by the time she starts to pull out again you can feel the pulsating heat from her grapefruit-sized balls against your cheeks.
Your stomach growls at the intrusion. Even if you wanted to vomit, there wasn’t much place for it to even go; teary-eyed, mouth filling with water, your gag reflex continues to alert your body to the obvious intrusion even as you lay helpless to it. The Judge grips your head in both hands and adjusts her squat before thrusting forward again. She’s using you like a hole, fucking your tear-and-spit-soaked face like one of their relief stations. Just as you feel you’ve had enough, she forces herself deeper and deeper still. You can practically feel it in your stomach, now, your guts being rearranged from the opposite side. Leathery ball-skin brushes against your chin, slick with sweat and liquids you couldn’t even begin to know the origin of.
A trembling hand once again attempts to brush against her ass in defiance. It’s hard to even get a grip on her, now, hips thrusting forward with reckless abandon as she abuses your mouth. Every thought in your head is systematically fucked out of you; your head drops limp in the Judge’s hands, now relying solely on her to keep you upright. Another glimpse at Ninety-Seven; she’s covered in cum from head to toe, what seemed like gallons of it slowly seeping from her mouth and nostrils as she lay on the floor. The two other Demons stand above her, holding their cocks as they bask in the afterglow.
“Hnnf, fuck, s-stay loose like that for – there we go.”
You’re conscious for just long enough to feel the first jet of cum impact the back of your throat – and feel your vision swim as you run out of air. Everything fades to black. Anxiety, strain, and exhaustion had finally done you in – maybe this was the afterlife, after the Grim Reaper juked you out with the salt shotgun earlier?
You were never that lucky, of course. Points of light trickled into your vision like snowflakes. Your floor, your walls, your grim little existence – it was all still here and you were still on the ground. The Demons are dressed and armed, again; they slink out of the room, chatting quietly, as they return to the stairwell, refusing a further word.
Cum seeps from your mouth and nose. It feels like your entire head is full of the stuff; you learn your stomach is just as packed, brushing a hand against your now-distended and semen-filled abdomen. The motion forces some of it up; you roll to your side and heave, vomiting at long last only to bring up more cum and very little else. It soaks into your jumpsuit and sticks to the skin beneath like glue, your entire upper chest and shoulders coated in it. From the amount on your face, the Judge must’ve cum all over you. You wipe it away from your eyes and onto the legs of your jumpsuit.
Ninety-Seven lays in a heap in front of the wide-open door. She, too, is absolutely plastered in the stuff; it clings to her hair, chest, tits, and face, among others where she’d clearly intentionally smeared it. Her body rises slowly with every tired breath, a deep satisfaction on her cumstained lips. You couldn’t have been out for more than a minute or two, but in that time the snitch had clearly tuckered herself out.
Every bone in your body aches. It goes far deeper, into your very soul itself, a frigid burning that seems to annihilate everything it touches. You’d made it so long, dealt with so much, cried and screamed and panicked so often – all to avoid the fate your one remaining friend gleefully brought upon you. It’s more than violation, more than betrayal; you feel like a match snuffed out in a glass of water, just like Ninety-Seven. Hell had broken you, after it had spent so long trying and failing. A glance at the clock: three AM.
You have work in three hours. You drop your head against the cum-soaked floor and cry.
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
Nick and I have just started season 14 of SPN. We made a friend pact to finish the stupid thing and MY GOD has it been just. Just like the worst TV I've ever seen.
You are SO STRONG for this
(the following includes Thoughts on Supernatural that are of a strongly critical nature, from someone who watched eight seasons of it)
I watched the pilot as a teenager in my dorm room. I kept getting back into the show every few years after I'd see or hear something interesting. That, I think, was a huge appeal of the show (for people who never shipped destiel)
After Season 8's ending crushed my hopes that they'd start to make better choices, I was done.
Supernatural is one of those properties where there are interesting worldbuilding ideas that create a lot of obvious potential. But unfortunately, there are about twice as many terrible worldbuilding ideas ranging from "hmm, not how I'd do that" to things that seem deliberately offensive by design.
So those good ideas and interesting concepts are there to draw you in. Unfortunately, there is also the rest of the show.
Another major pitfall is that the show does not hesitate to make its characters worse. All of them. The character arcs are all a spiral and they are circling a drain. The ones who don't get this treatment are either forgotten or killed off.
I think that part of this problem was just the show's deliberately grim tone. Another part may have been a lack of . . . moral clarity? John Winchester is a terrible person in ways that I could discuss across multiple essays. Even if the show knows that on some level, the worldbuilding says that not only did Hell think that he was a "righteous man" for prophecy reasons, but he went to literal actual Heaven later? And now of course Jensen is doing this prequel clownery.
I have so many Strong Worldbuilding Opinions that differ from Supernatural's but that's neither here nor there. Suffice it to say that it goes beyond "oh I'd do Ghost Rules a little differently" because everybody has their own ideas about what constitutes a vampire, etc, and that's normal in ways that Supernatural is not.
Before I stopped watching, I found Sam and Dean both so detestable (Dean first, Sam later) that I was watching for other characters whom I like. Unfortunately, the nature of the show is that these compelling side characters die. Villains, friends, allies, wild cards . . . they die. Who enjoys that?
Another problem is, and I don't know the trope name, but the sort of "DBZ Escalation" pattern where all of their future enemies are much scarier than their previous ones. Some VERY GOOD shows have done this (Stargate SG-1, though they made a more lateral move with Stargate Atlantis which I appreciated), but Supernatural is not good or enjoyable enough to get away with it.
Like I said, it has so many compelling elements. It strung me along for eight long seasons, with me quitting and then coming back for more again and again until I finally realized that the show was never, ever going to make better choices or become what I wanted it to be.
Despite the worldbuilding issues, I think that a spinoff could be genuinely compelling. But it needs to be better in so many ways, and should include -- and this is important -- zero Winchesters. However, I suspect that this would alienate the people who stuck with the show for seven years after I quit.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Follow the Beacon
Raven—Separate Ways
[Link to Masterpost]
[TW underage drinking, theft mention]
"I can't stay. They could walk in any minute, and everyone thinks I can only jump to Qrow."
"Hmmph." Vanta turned over the page, looking at his record now. "You're standing out too much on the battlefield. Look at what they said."
"They know we come from the wilds, and they believe we were trained by a veteran Huntsman," Raven said. Breathe in, breathe out. Stay calm, stay relaxed. Getting tense will only make her suspicious. "It's balanced out by the useless things like history that the others studied in their schools."
Vanta hummed again, and tossed the papers into the fire. "I'm glad you've thought this through. At this stage, you're unlikely to be caught. Sneaking in was always going to be the riskiest part. The Vytal Festival may pose a problem, do you have a plan?"
"Our team won't be able to compete if one of us is injured, but obviously we'd prefer something else. The Tournament isn't until next year. We have some time."
"Very well, then. What do you have to report?"
"We haven't been taught anything new in days. The teachers are reviewing for exams."
"And your brother's weapon?" she asked dangerously.
She hadn't really meant to tell Vanta about the new sword's convoluted design—she'd just been frustrated, and let it slip while relaying what they'd learned about maintaining Huntresses' weapons, that he'd never be able to keep it working without regular access to an Academy forge.
But while Raven had been annoyed, Vanta had been furious.
An image of Qrow popped into her head, standing with his sword drawn in a back alley in Vale. The way he'd stared her down, ready to fight. Really fight—to die or to kill, with the same grim resignation he'd worn on every raid.
It's completely ridiculous, she swallowed the truth. "I made him see sense. He's simplified things."
"Good. As if his Semblance weren't bad enough on its own, he insists on setting himself up for failure," Vanta muttered. "All right, get back to your school. I want to speak to Qrow."
Raven's heart pounded. Breathe in, breathe out. "The others could be back soon, and the huntress woke up last time I tried to visit. I managed to convince her I was returning and not going, but it's too dangerous to keep coming. Especially while the teachers aren't giving us anything useful."
"Brat," Vanta snarled, and Raven wasn't entirely sure if she was referring to Summer or her. "Fine. If you can't report in person at least drop a note through once in a while so we know you haven't been discovered."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"And keep an eye on your brother. He's always admired the Huntsmen and he might just be stupid enough to let something slip for the chance to impress one."
Internally, she cursed. Why couldn't Qrow and Vanta settle things themselves? Why did she always have to get caught in the middle? Even when they didn't need her portals to speak to each other. "Yes, ma'am."
She would have to handle his delusions of heroism on her own.
Qrow sat bolt upright as she stepped back into the dorm and her portal snapped shut behind her as quickly as it had opened. Still no sign of their teammates, thankfully.
"Well?" he demanded.
"She bought it," Raven growled, dropping onto her own bed. "Gimme a drink."
He leaned back, reaching behind his bed for their stash. All the dorms' mattresses sat on strange wooden boxes covered in cloth—whatever they were, they were hollow, and the perfect place to hide things. They hadn't even had to cut the hole. Generations of students had probably been using it for the exact same purpose.
Raven took the bottle gratefully and uncapped it, pouring a shot's worth down her throat. At least she finally had something to relieve the tension.
"She didn't want to talk to me?" he asked, taking the bottle back.
"She did. I told her our teammates would be back soon and she let it go."
Qrow took a much longer drink than she had before returning it. "What are you going to do with the time off?"
She rolled her eyes. "I imagine the city-dwellers would take offence if I spent it hunting. You'll be in the forge the entire time, working on that ridiculous machine, won't you?"
Qrow leaned back, tossing his pillow behind him. "It's gonna be cool as hell."
"Impractical as hell," she corrected, passing the bottle.
The door flew open, and both of them jumped. The whiskey slipped through their hands—Raven tugged on a thread of aura, and the bottle reappeared near the ceiling before landing in Qrow's waiting hands. One drop of spilled whiskey hit the floor.
"Hey, you started celebrating without us?" Tai demanded, leading Summer and Dan into the room.
"Pull up a mug," he said, raising the bottle before handing it back to Raven. "And don't mention it." She scowled, but didn't say anything—there were three more bottles still hidden and it was hardly difficult to get more.
"Booze? Excellent!" Dan said with an oily smile. "Who's selling right now?"
"We smuggled it from home," she lied, pouring him a shot, and he pouted into the cup.
"Aw, come on, that's it?"
Raven turned away, pouring for their teammates as well. "...As funny as it would be to watch you try to drink a mug of this, yes. That's it." Did the moron think it was wine?
Summer's eyes widened. "Wait. Did you just make a joke?"
Sure enough, as soon as the mug tipped back, he doubled over coughing and sprayed half of it on the floor.
Qrow smiled a little at the back of Dan's head. "Yeah, I don't like this brand much either."
"Wow." He cleared his throat. I don't suppose you could smuggle another one over to sell to a friend…?"
"We're staying here for the break," Raven said dismissively, taking another gulp. "So, no."
Tai elbowed him with a grin. "It was worth a shot, though, right?"
Gods, that one was awful. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her palm and covering her mouth with her fingers—but, unfortunately, the Huntress was always watching.
"Raven smiled!" she shouted, beaming.
Tai snapped his fingers with a sarcastic frown. "Darn. I was trying to make her laugh."
"Good luck with that," Qrow said, taking a shot, and Raven glared at him. "See? Back to normal."
"I'll have to keep trying, then."
"Bet I can get her to laugh first," Summer said.
"You're on."
The most fearsome warriors on Remnant, playing games like children. "Oh, enough." The last thing she needed was the two of them prodding. "What are we drinking to?"
"To Qrow, seventh in the year!" Summer cheered, lifting up her mug. Behind her Dan's scowl deepened. "It's really amazing."
"Yeah, top ten! Who knew?" Tai chuckled, still laughing at his boyfriend's exasperated expression. "Maybe we should be sparring with you more often."
"I mean, you guys helped me a lot with history," he mumbled. "Got any plans over break?"
"Dad'll probably pester us for a bunch of stories," Tai said dismissively. "It'll be good to see Zaff again, though."
"Yeah, he called this morning from Haven, he's flying home!" Summer said. "We should all meet in Vale when you're finished at the forge!"
"Had to work over break?" Dan simpered. "Or couldn't afford the tickets home?"
Tai glared at him. "Dude."
"Tai, he's wearing your old pajamas."
"Don't be an ass!"
"It was the only time Professor Carmine could work on my weapon with me," Qrow muttered, taking another gulp of whiskey. "We've been working on something a little more custom."
"Don't tell him, let it be a surprise!" Summer shouted, a little on the loud side—the alcohol was finally starting to kick in. "The plans are so cool. Have you thought about any names for it yet?"
"…I kind of want to hold it first," he admitted. "But I'm definitely not calling it 'Beak'."
"Beak?!"
"It's what Professor Carmine named the file."
"It looks like a beak," Raven said.
"I already know you hate it." He set the empty mug on the bookshelf and flopped back on the mattress. "This weekend is going to take forever."
[Unrelated note... Raven is *very* good at Portal games]
Next Chapter: Taiyang—Breaking the Ice
#rwby#rwby fanfiction#raven branwen#qrow branwen#summer rose#taiyang xiao long#strq#team strq#dan effuiller#carmine eitri#follow the beacon
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
Final Thoughts - Netflix Exclusives 2018
Oh my god you guys, I’m finally done. I’m free from the prison of 2018, just in time to actually finish my premieres for spring of 2019. But first, let’s talk!
2018 was the year that Netflix really went all-in on producing its own anime and picking up some big names, so we saw Devilman Crybaby made specifically for the service and high-profile shows like Dragon Pilot and Hi-Score Girl basically hijacked by the streaming service and delayed for months in the U.S. so that the biggest name in the game could release everything in bingeable packages. Unfortunately, bringing in an auteur like Masaaki Yuasa for Crybaby and throwing all the damn money at him worked so well that, long before any of these shows would even premiere, they decided to seemingly take any anime pitch under the sun, and wound up financing disasters like Hero Mask and B: The Beginning. Really, these shows kind of run the full gamut from garbage to god-tier, with an unfortunate tipping of the scale in the wrong direction. I haven’t gotten to see Ingress yet at the time of publication though, so we’ll have to see whether 2019 will start in a good direction.
ANYWAY.
DROPPED
WORST OF NETFLIX: Back Street Girls -GOKUDOLS-
I still don’t get how anyone thought this was worth promoting. The entire concept is offensive, and yet it was directed by a master and veteran of the medium (who is also a woman), leading me to just throw my hands in the air and resign myself to never having a satisfactory answer for why Netflix would pick this up to begin with. Dropped after 1 episode.
Hero Mask
One of the most incompetently written first episodes I’ve ever seen gave me absolutely no hope that Hero Mask was going to actualize into anything watchable or even average-looking. It was boring and unintelligible. Dropped after 1 episode.
Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore
What the fuck was Akiyuki Shinbo even doing on Fate? Did he do this at the expense of season 3 of March comes in like a lion or something? Probably not, but geez... This seems much more like someone attempting to copy his style than the genuine article, but nope, there’s his director credit. In the end, I suppose that Fate/EXTRA, despite being a very interesting game, was not ever going to be adapted well - the protagonist is almost literally a blank slate for a self-insert of the player, and their servant is also not set in stone - but I kind of would have rather had nothing than this. Dropped after 2 episodes.
SWORDGAI The Animation
Oh hey, yet another “the Animation”, it definitely doesn’t sound pretentious yet. I don’t have much to say on SWORDGAI, or at least not any more than anyone else - it’s stupid, very earnestly stupid, and doesn’t seem aware enough of that fact to be entertaining for more than a hate watch - and my hate plate is full already. Dropped after 1 episode.
Last Hope
I remember almost nothing about Last Hope other than that it was both pretentious and nonsensical, which kind of illustrates why Yoshiyuki Tomino is wise enough to stay out of anything that isn’t his beautiful Gundam baby, and it’s a shame that Kawamori (father of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross) doesn’t stick with what he knows, which is mech design. (No, seriously, he’s got a ton of credits on MAL and they’re almost all for that.) Dropped after 1 episode.
BAKI
Oh, BAKI, it’s okay, you’re a remnant from a different time. That time was right around when Mars of Destruction seemed like a good idea. It’s not that bad so I shouldn’t really mention them in the same sentence, but the hyper-violent imagery of this show is on the level of the Berserk manga. It’s unfortunate that I had to leave it after one episode because Netflix picked up a sequel that relies heavily on your pre-existing investment (just like with the Dragons TV show, for the record). Dropped after 1 episode.
A.I.C.O. Incarnation
I stuck with this one longer than any other that I didn’t drop, but in hindsight I shouldn’t have wasted my time. It’s one of the worst-looking Bones productions I’ve ever seen and the plot is a dumb ripoff of a much better science fiction series. Dropped after six episodes.
B: The Beginning
Probably the biggest waste of money on this list, B has such lavish animation that you can almost forget that you have absolutely no clue what’s happening or what the context of the story even is. It tries really hard to be both Psycho-Pass and Death Note at the same time to the point of cutting between them multiple times per scene, and it just ends up a badly jumbled mess, albeit one with really pretty colors. Dropped after 3 episodes.
Kakegurui
I still don’t have much to say here because the topic has been so thoroughly covered by The Anime Pope, so I’ll resummarize here - this is a show about gambling where the stakes seem utterly meaningless, even though it tries to impress us by showering money on the characters.
Children of the Whales
It’s so pretty, but it’s so boring. Children of the Whales succeeds in looking beautiful, but fails as a story that wants to be grim and apocalyptic but comes across as a soft-hearted small-village story that gets surprisingly violent four episodes in. This should have been the tone from the beginning, and the entire thing needed a good kick in the pants. Dropped after five episodes.
FINISHED
Sirius the Jaeger (6/10)
One that I waited a long time for after seeing the PV at Anime Central last year, and wound up pretty disappointed by in general. It looks nice (...at first), given that P.A. Works at least knows how to make a show visually appealing on a consistent basis, but the plot jumps so far into cliched stupidity by the end that, even though it had a few twists I wasn’t expecting, they couldn’t save it from being something I won’t recommend to anyone with as much anime experience as myself.
Lost Song (7/10)
(Author’s note: Yeah, apparently nobody on all of Tumblr has made a GIF of this one...)
Lost Song was a pleasant surprise that I wasn’t expecting to be invested enough to finish. One of the best of LIDENFILMS’ output, it manages to weave together a decent fantasy Symphogear AU fanfic, with interesting third-act twists peppering the last few episodes that made it memorable despite looking pretty generic. There’s a sequel due this year, too!
Hi Score Girl (7/10)
A very visually distinctive show with a neat concept that didn’t dive far enough into the heavy subjects it brings up, Hi Score Girl sits in a place where I like the presentation of it a lot more than I like the story. Don’t get me wrong, the romance is certainly cute, and I won’t begrudge a love triangle if it’s meant to be the primary conflict of a show, but the fact that it spent most of its last episode setting up for later robbed it of the chance to give us a satisfying place to leave off until the next part of this adaptation. Luckily, it got a second season, hopefully to finish the adaptation later this year.
Forest of Piano (7/10)
A good first try by a fledgling studio, but not one that lives up to what it really wants to be due to some very bad habits. I still distinctly remember the constant character shilling, and it feels like the story could have happened a little faster if not for the breaks every few minutes to heap praise upon the protagonist. Also, the mo-cap piano playing still looks weird. I’ll probably watch the sequel though, to see if it gets concluded well.
Dragon Pilot: Hisone to Masotan (8/10)
I literally just did my write-up for this one, so I don’t have much new to say here, but I’m pleased that Dragon Pilot turned out as well as it did despite not being what I quite expected from it.
Aggretsuko (8/10)
A fantastic and rather unorthodox look at what it’s actually like to be an adult in the Japanese workforce, Aggretsuko was an early darling of the year, and the only things that could have made it better were a more interesting visual presentation and a less squirrelly ending. Shame that the Christmas Special was...not good.
Devilman Crybaby (9/10)
It was so, so good...right up until the end. Yeah, that’s the only thing holding this back from a perfect score - I really, really hate the ending, and it needed to be changed. I know that, for most people, the best show of the year was either this one, or the most conspicuous work that hasn’t yet appeared on this list, though, so…
BEST NETFLIX SHOW OF THE YEAR: Violet Evergarden (10/10)
Oh God, what beautiful cry-porn. I hope that Kyoto Animation was paid well for their best show in years, and I’m kind of shocked that the two shows that made me sob the most this year both came out in the same season (thanks, A Place Further Than the Universe). I won’t spoil more than I did in my original review, but Netflix should be pushing this to literally everyone who would be even casually interested in watching it.
And that’s it! Last but not least, the last list won’t be a roundup of the whole year (since, you know, I’ve already done that in big chunks), but a list of the Class of 2018 Superlatives. Look forward to it!
#arcaneanime#netflix 2018#violet evergarden#devilman crybaby#aggretsuko#lost song#sirius the jaeger#dragon pilot#hi score girl#forest of piano
562 notes
·
View notes
Text
terminus I
One last hoop to jump through.
One last box to tick before the nine would help them finish it.
The series of riddles were allegedly to attune each of the nine to the maze which Shegora planned to trap Dead Sun with the Sleeper inside. Yet, she could not help but feel this was the last bit of training and preparation that their supposed guardians could come up with before sending them into the fire.
“There are five rational, but greedy sailahs who find a treashah any good man would kill ovah,” Saakes said laying down an Ace, a King, a Queen, a Jack, and a 10, he names each card he has laid down. “Each card represents the man’s rank aboard a ship. Tha’ ace and Tha’ King get ovah half, with the Jack getting barely more than tha’ 10. Each man wan’s to survival, each man wan’s the biggest share he can, none of tha’ men trust one anotha’ and each is willin’ to do wha’ they must for a biggah share.” Saakes gestured at the cards, “You have t’ree questions, before you mus’ propose what the sailahs should do to divide tha’ treshah.”
She was alone with him. He didn’t ask about what he was owed. The Lord of Deals barely looked at her like he knew her. Saakes was the second to last test, and for Eilithe the only of the nine that presented danger and challenge. Her lips parted and she asked her first question.
“Why didn’t you take my son on the night he was born?”
Between wars and her own stupidity, Eilithe was accustomed-- comfortable, with preparing for final goodbyes. She spent what time she knew she had with her children, with Kurel, her her own thoughts. With her questions and Saakes answers.
The loa laughed, “Always been too clevah, E’leet. I did no’ take ya boy, because weren’t evah mah plan to. He was meant to be insurance against wha’ comes next.”
“Eilithe?” An’Set’s voice did not stir her from her thoughts, not at first. “Ei’lithene.” He shook her arm and she finally grunted.
“What.”
“I asked you why you aren’t staying back-- with Malik. With all your children.” An’Set repeated, ashing his cigarette into the tray. He had a grim look about him, a restless one. Eilithe barely took her eyes off the ocean, framed by the rolling white curtains of the cabana. “Do you want me to lie to make your feel better, dura? Or should I--” Eilithe was cut, mid-thought by An’Set’s gravelly voice. “Be honest for once in your life?”
She snorted dryly and nodded. “The short version? My arrogance wouldn’t allow me to stay my blade. Not even for my children. I need to finish it. I need to see it die. The longer version? Kurel won’t stay back with me and his chances to die down there grow without me there. And to confirm your worst thoughts, my dear brother, if my husband dies it is almost inevitable that my soul will go with him.”
An’Set turned up his beer and turned his cool grey gaze out to the ocean. He pressed his lips together, the relaxed them-- tried several times to find words. Eventually, he reached over and put his hand over hers, gripping gently. “Ya’til-anath, little sister,” he offered quietly, before he let her go. If you must die, then die well.
Saakes motioned to her with a smoky hand, “Your next question, Kaz’aka.” He smirked like he was amused or impressed by her. Eilithe was quiet, far too long before she asked it. “Will he and I die inside of the trap we have set for the Sleeper?”
It was tradition that Eilithe and Kurel shared the last night before a battle alone together. Alone with their thoughts and each other. So on the balcony, with their children at her mother’s-- she sat in silence beside him.
"Why do I ge' the feelin' of a pendin' bad idea?"
"I think I'm all out of ideas, bad or otherwise." She answered, certain of herself. But she had at least one more plan. Eilithe exhaled and shut her eyes, "If one of us dies down there--I don't think I need to explain the likelihood the other will go with them. And I don't want to think about not coming back. Just like I don't want to think about what could have happened to Malik. But." She swallowed, "I need you to hear from me, that I understand why you did what you did. And I need to know that if we don't come back, you're with me on what happens to our son. Your heir."
A laugh rumbled out of Saakes’ chest at the very boldness of her question. “E’leet, you know bettah dan’ mos’ dat dah futur ain’ a straight line. S’a series of rollin’ dice an’ turnin’ cards.” She sneered at him, “Answer my question. None can decipher those dice and cards like you.” He grinned and dipped his head to the side, “I have seen you die, seen Kurel An’Diel die-- more dan’ once. Choice has always been dah down fall o’ your kin’. So when yah ask me, it’s ‘cause you seen it too. You know not all of you’s comin’ back, all tha’s lef’ now is for you to decide whic’ parts to leave an’ which to take.”
"He is more than my heir." He led with. Pausing to swallow thickly. "He has to go with Zelphryin. As woul' Karkah."
Kurel’s words might’ve started a fight five years ago--she could tell by the way his muscles tensed he was preparing for it. “I know,” she admitted, after a stretching silence. And after the one final plan they agreed. They accepted.
“Las’ question, E’leet. Make it a good one.” Saakes leaned back, to take in the salt and sourness of her expression. Eilithe shut her eyes to clear her mind of her immediate and impending fate. “What is coming next-- what were you preparing for?”
Zelphryin was a special breed of animal--no, a serpent. An instinct to preserve itself and its lineage, a response almost biological. Yet unable to resist nibbling on its own tail. Eilithe did not trust her brother-in-law with anything more than being untrustworthy. Being untrustworthy and ensuring the An’Diel name lived on.
“Pack your things,” Eilithe said in Tanari, standing in Zelphryin’s living room. “Take only what you believe you will need for a week’s journey. You will leave the harbor tonight and stay in Stormwind. You will wait no more than two days for different instruction before you depart by sea. You will dock in Gadgetzan and you will wait to be met. Do not attempt to leave with Kurel or my children. Do not tell anyone you are leaving. And do not leave Gadgetzan until you have had your visitor. I urge you to trust not only me, but your brother as well. Goodbye, Zelphryin. Take care of them if it comes to that.”
“Oh-aheheh,” Saakes cackled, shaking his head. “Dere’s dat fiyah tempah.” He hummed, “Here I was, t’inkin’ we’d nevah get to tha’.” From the air he produced a sling, unmarked card--no name just a wheel and offered it to her face up. “Touch tha’ card-- an’ see fah yaself.” Eilithe looked from him to his token, then back again. It was with cautious fingers that she brushed the card. The flashes came instantaneously.
Father of Sleeper.
Son of Time.
She saw the gates of the Dreameater opening wide, letting out the primeval shadows. She saw a beast, all-consuming leashed by God. She saw the end, as promised. As designed.
By the time she could let go of the card, she felt she’d been staring into the beyond for no less than fifty year. Her nose bled and her heart pounded in her ears. Saakes smirked-- humorless and pessimistic. “Dah future ain’ a straight line, E’leet An’Diel, Kaz’aka.Tis a series o’ choices, turnin’ card an’ rollin’ dice. Dat Sleepah ain’ tha’ end--he only dah beginnin’.”
@kurel-andiel @deadsunharbor @theshalthera
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
Why Women Aren’t Funny
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
JANUARY 1, 2007
Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: “He’s really quite cute, and he’s kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he’s so funny . . . “ (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, “Funny? He wouldn’t know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.”) However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own . . . [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] . . . and, man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.”
Now, why is this? Why is it the case?, I mean. Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny? Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about.
All right—try it the other way (as the bishop said to the barmaid). Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.
Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift. Indeed, we now have all the joy of a scientific study, which illuminates the difference. At the Stanford University School of Medicine (a place, as it happens, where I once underwent an absolutely hilarious procedure with a sigmoidoscope), the grim-faced researchers showed 10 men and 10 women a sample of 70 black-and-white cartoons and got them to rate the gags on a “funniness scale.” To annex for a moment the fall-about language of the report as it was summarized in Biotech Week:
The researchers found that men and women share much of the same humor-response system; both use to a similar degree the part of the brain responsible for semantic knowledge and juxtaposition and the part involved in language processing. But they also found that some brain regions were activated more in women. These included the left prefrontal cortex, suggesting a greater emphasis on language and executive processing in women, and the nucleus accumbens . . . which is part of the mesolimbic reward center.
This has all the charm and address of the learned Professor Scully’s attempt to define a smile, as cited by Richard Usborne in his treatise on P. G. Wodehouse: “the drawing back and slight lifting of the corners of the mouth, which partially uncover the teeth; the curving of the naso-labial furrows . . . “ But have no fear—it gets worse:
“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said the report’s author, Dr. Allan Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” The report also found that “women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.”
Slower to get it, more pleased when they do, and swift to locate the unfunny—for this we need the Stanford University School of Medicine? And remember, this is women when confronted with humor. Is it any wonder that they are backward in generating it?
This is not to say that women are humorless, or cannot make great wits and comedians. And if they did not operate on the humor wavelength, there would be scant point in half killing oneself in the attempt to make them writhe and scream (uproariously). Wit, after all, is the unfailing symptom of intelligence. Men will laugh at almost anything, often precisely because it is—or they are—extremely stupid. Women aren’t like that. And the wits and comics among them are formidable beyond compare: Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, Fran Lebowitz, Ellen DeGeneres. (Though ask yourself, was Dorothy Parker ever really funny?) Greatly daring—or so I thought—I resolved to call up Ms. Lebowitz and Ms. Ephron to try out my theories. Fran responded: “The cultural values are male; for a woman to say a man is funny is the equivalent of a man saying that a woman is pretty. Also, humor is largely aggressive and pre-emptive, and what’s more male than that?” Ms. Ephron did not disagree. She did, however, in what I thought was a slightly feline way, accuse me of plagiarizing a rant by Jerry Lewis that said much the same thing. (I have only once seen Lewis in action, in The King of Comedy, where it was really Sandra Bernhard who was funny.)
In any case, my argument doesn’t say that there are no decent women comedians. There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three. When Roseanne stands up and tells biker jokes and invites people who don’t dig her shtick to suck her dick—know what I am saying? And the Sapphic faction may have its own reasons for wanting what I want—the sweet surrender of female laughter. While Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition.
Substitute the term “self-defecation” (which I actually heard being used inadvertently once) and almost all men will laugh right away, if only to pass the time. Probe a little deeper, though, and you will see what Nietzsche meant when he described a witticism as an epitaph on the death of a feeling. Male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone’s expense, and understands that life is quite possibly a joke to begin with—and often a joke in extremely poor taste. Humor is part of the armor-plate with which to resist what is already farcical enough. (Perhaps not by coincidence, battered as they are by motherfucking nature, men tend to refer to life itself as a bitch.) Whereas women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is. Jokes about calamitous visits to the doctor or the shrink or the bathroom, or the venting of sexual frustration on furry domestic animals, are a male province. It must have been a man who originated the phrase “funny like a heart attack.” In all the millions of cartoons that feature a patient listening glum-faced to a physician (“There’s no cure. There isn’t even a race for a cure”), do you remember even one where the patient is a woman? I thought as much.
Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals. And there is a huge, brimming reservoir of male unease, which it would be too easy for women to exploit. (Men can tell jokes about what happened to John Wayne Bobbitt, but they don’t want women doing so.) Men have prostate glands, hysterically enough, and these have a tendency to give out, along with their hearts and, it has to be said, their dicks. This is funny only in male company. For some reason, women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be so riotously amusing, which is why we admire Lucille Ball and Helen Fielding, who do see the funny side of it. But this is so rare as to be like Dr. Johnson’s comparison of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: the surprise is that it is done at all.
The plain fact is that the physical structure of the human being is a joke in itself: a flat, crude, unanswerable disproof of any nonsense about “intelligent design.” The reproductive and eliminating functions (the closeness of which is the origin of all obscenity) were obviously wired together in hell by some subcommittee that was giggling cruelly as it went about its work. (“Think they’d wear this? Well, they’re gonna have to.”) The resulting confusion is the source of perhaps 50 percent of all humor. Filth. That’s what the customers want, as we occasional stand-up performers all know. Filth, and plenty of it. Filth in lavish, heaping quantities. And there’s another principle that helps exclude the fair sex. “Men obviously like gross stuff,” says Fran Lebowitz. “Why? Because it’s childish.” Keep your eye on that last word. Women’s appetite for talk about that fine product known as Depend is limited. So is their relish for gags about premature ejaculation. (“Premature for whom?” as a friend of mine indignantly demands to know.) But “child” is the key word. For women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing. Apart from giving them a very different attitude to filth and embarrassment, it also imbues them with the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle. This womanly seriousness was well caught by Rudyard Kipling in his poem “The Female of the Species.” After cleverly noticing that with the male “mirth obscene diverts his anger”—which is true of most work on that great masculine equivalent to childbirth, which is warfare—Kipling insists:
But the Woman that God gave him,
every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue,
armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue,
lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be
deadlier than the male.
The word “issue” there, which we so pathetically misuse, is restored to its proper meaning of childbirth. As Kipling continues:
She who faces Death by torture for
each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must
not swerve for fact or jest.
Men are overawed, not to say terrified, by the ability of women to produce babies. (Asked by a lady intellectual to summarize the differences between the sexes, another bishop responded, “Madam, I cannot conceive.”) It gives women an unchallengeable authority. And one of the earliest origins of humor that we know about is its role in the mockery of authority. Irony itself has been called “the glory of slaves.” So you could argue that when men get together to be funny and do not expect women to be there, or in on the joke, they are really playing truant and implicitly conceding who is really the boss.
The ancient annual festivities of Saturnalia, where the slaves would play master, were a temporary release from bossdom. A whole tranche of subversive male humor likewise depends on the notion that women are not really the boss, but are mere objects and victims. Kipling saw through this:
So it comes that Man, the coward,
when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council,
dare not leave a place for her.
In other words, for women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter. Whereas with a man you may freely say of him that he is lousy in the sack, or a bad driver, or an inefficient worker, and still wound him less deeply than you would if you accused him of being deficient in the humor department.
If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise. H. L. Mencken described as “the greatest single discovery ever made by man” the realization “that babies have human fathers, and are not put into their mother’s bodies by the gods.” You may well wonder what people were thinking before that realization hit, but we do know of a society in Melanesia where the connection was not made until quite recently. I suppose that the reasoning went: everybody does that thing the entire time, there being little else to do, but not every woman becomes pregnant. Anyway, after a certain stage women came to the conclusion that men were actually necessary, and the old form of matriarchy came to a close. (Mencken speculates that this is why the first kings ascended the throne clutching their batons or scepters as if holding on for grim death.) People in this precarious position do not enjoy being laughed at, and it would not have taken women long to work out that female humor would be the most upsetting of all.
Childbearing and rearing are the double root of all this, as Kipling guessed. As every father knows, the placenta is made up of brain cells, which migrate southward during pregnancy and take the sense of humor along with them. And when the bundle is finally delivered, the funny side is not always immediately back in view. Is there anything so utterly lacking in humor as a mother discussing her new child? She is unboreable on the subject. Even the mothers of other fledglings have to drive their fingernails into their palms and wiggle their toes, just to prevent themselves from fainting dead away at the sheer tedium of it. And as the little ones burgeon and thrive, do you find that their mothers enjoy jests at their expense? I thought not.
Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous. (And there just aren’t that many episiotomy jokes, even in the male repertoire.) I am certain that this is also partly why, in all cultures, it is females who are the rank-and-file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor. One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer. And because fear is the mother of superstition, and because they are partly ruled in any case by the moon and the tides, women also fall more heavily for dreams, for supposedly significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, for romantic love, crystals and stones, lockets and relics, and other things that men know are fit mainly for mockery and limericks. Good grief! Is there anything less funny than hearing a woman relate a dream she’s just had? (“And then Quentin was there somehow. And so were you, in a strange sort of way. And it was all so peaceful.” Peaceful?)
For men, it is a tragedy that the two things they prize the most—women and humor—should be so antithetical. But without tragedy there could be no comedy. My beloved said to me, when I told her I was going to have to address this melancholy topic, that I should cheer up because “women get funnier as they get older.” Observation suggests to me that this might indeed be true, but, excuse me, isn’t that rather a long time to have to wait?
From Vanity Fair
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Re: Ratings etc;
I saw questions crop up in regards to some TV Grim Reaper stuff.
A while back people may remember me posting about CBS and WB breaking their former legendary agreement with Netflix (x) -- and I don’t think the ramifications of that really set in on viewing eyes.
It isn’t coincidence that as quickly as has happened, Charmed has been moved to the Friday Death Slot. Previously, CBS-WB’s partner agreement with Netflix was a prime operation of Pedowitz’s CW. For reasons that ultimately boil down to merchandising tantrums by CBS, the two broke their partner agreement. This means that no longer do CBS properties (Charmed, Dynasty) that are god awful and failing have a default signed promise to get their properties onto Netflix, but they have to actually negotiate and shop products independently. This agreement used to have CBS, essentially as a parent company, slog a whole bunch of shitty products onto the CW to make use of the CW agreement, which put a smokescreen that let CBS properties run considerably lower in ratings before cancellation (SEE: CHARMED, AGAIN, or yes, Dynasty, notice BOTH OF THESE ARE MOVED TO FRIDAY NOW).
This also had direct impact on things like available TV dev space for Wayward (Eg: Moonves was a CBS exec and honestly the origin of the statement about not giving a shit that Dynasty ran shit poor ratings because CBS got to run with 100% of the digital profit promised to them).
(If Moonves sounds familiar, you may remember my original “reasons behind Wayward being cut last second” commentary which was, ironically, confirmed by Kim & Bri at a M&G a few weeks later by chance. When they mentioned Moonves a bunch of people probably had no idea what that meant; yes, the same Moonves that MeToo trended and is now no longer with CBS -- just to put icing on the shitcake. Like Deadass if he had MeToo trended half a year earlier we might be in a slightly less shitty AU where Wayward was airing.)
In regards to Grim’s token bitter and dismissive attitude that’s a bit of an online character, I think the biggest point to remember is that Grim outright slated SPN for “obvious renewal” last year (x) and even openly mocked the idea that ratings for it ever stumbled, and is instead reacting purely to the unpredicted final season announcement based on rule of thumb, rather than awareness of exceptions. TV Grim Reaper does not follow the production teams, or even the shows they talk about, and instead observe ratings patterns. Live ratings patterns indicated perpetual renewal, but since then Grim has struggled to identify why a show still powering onward would cancel.
Generally, if a TV show is popular the network will find some way to rotate cast etc (OUAT), but there are landmark shows where that simply doesn’t *work*. The precedent for this was set by Seinfeld which, while still being a TV leader back in its day cancelled, they knew better than to try to replace Kramer, George, Elaine, and--well, Seinfeld on Seinfeld when they decided to hang up their hats after a bajillion years.
The presumption that it must have been *failing quietly, digitally* is a fair one from the outside but not with observation of the last several years of production, most notably back end since early-mid S13 (about a month or two pre-Paley, or around when I stopped openly speccing the ending and stopped talking about demos/ratings, to date this if Paley seems intangible in historyscape). The only substantiative grounds for this is something that plagues literally the entire network, that being that the CW’s general marketing has been struggling for ad space value for years, but that affects shows A-Z in the end and the show remained a growing digital leader. This says nothing for it being one of CW/WB’s digital leaders in the likes of Game of Thrones and Walking Dead category, which mostly their DC properties (The Flash, etc) get the honor of but there’s SPN chugging along as a worldwide digital leader. (16-19, improving the last few years, I haven’t found S14′s numbers because I haven’t cared about tracking this for *reasons* since S13, but 11-13 in the very least)
The simple fact is: Everybody’s tired, the CW continues to be stupid (although at this point it’s more CBS’ fault but they catch the surface level impact of the Dumbz) and it was time to wrap.
I somehow doubt Netflix will decline to take on SPN again, considering its streaming power, but that says nothing about all the other shows CBS/WB want to make Netflix choke down without any merch rights. Or if these WB streaming platforms they’ve been trying to get off the ground will end up taking SPN unto itself and leave Netflix actually having to pursue it.
Though at the snails’ pace WB is figuring this out, failing DC platform included, it’s probably safe with Netflix for a few years until it stops being actively profitable enough to care. By the time WB gets a damn viable proprietary app together Netflix might not give a shit lmao
CW is designed to be a digital leader, WB is not and CBS knows how to market to baby boomers and that’s about it, so for now CW is trying to keep its center, which is probably why there’s been so much virtue signal marketing (done very badly) since the announcement.
The digital curve is the future of television and *why* live ratings are at rock bottom across the board. To understand the worth of digital weight in modern television please click this (x) but best summed up with “According to eMarketer, 55.1 million people will no longer watch traditional pay TV by 2022“
Of the 119.9m homes and 305.4m people in Nielsen’s estimated TV universe as of 2019, we’re talking losing 1/6th of classic TV viewers in the next year and in the same stretch, almost half of homes. And I hate to put it like this, these data points rarely take into account that some of the demo is old people dying, which ultimately accelerates the growth path and why every year some shit like this is “exceeding expectations.”
What was once CW’s strength has been cut out from under it which is why CW is trying SO HARD to define themselves right now instead of standard fare marketing that the last however-long was. You wanna know why the last like year or two are all dArE tO dEfYYYY rainbow flag of all of our straight leaaaaaaaaads it’s because CW is desperately trying to chisel out a network image now that their entire bankrolling system is fucked.
If SPN’s long-planned end point has to do with anything advert/money/marketing-wise, it’s that it’s going to be harder to bankroll under new methods than, say, DC properties, Because DC, for the level of operative costs; it’s less about SPN’s success and more about the network’s shortcomings and pitfalls all under a shiny new marketing mask. The fact that it’s season 15 and everybody’s #tired is a pretty major culprit too though. The incentive to keep finding ways to *make it work* just diminishes and you want it to finish strong.
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
TFA Liveblog - 1x06 Blast From The Past
Jurassic park episode?????
Bulkhead is best boy. I do not take constructive criticism
Cybertronians have been around for 10 BILLION years! Damn!!
Bulkhead? honey, please don't pet the wildlife you don't know where they've been
XL4 processors would be equivalent to what??? Its 2050-something so does that mean that were talking theoretical future tech??? Or like just a fast 64-bit processor with a lot of power behind it? I have to k n o w
Megatron's Creepy GLaDOS shit. Thanks I hate it
ISAAC DIDNT KNOW HE WAS ALIVE
That makes things morally better as far as experimentation goes but like seriously. You're a bioengineer Isaac. You have to have taken medical ethics.
"The Autobots are your friends right??" DEAR GOD this man is both dummy AND thicc. Unbelievable.
Megs is a terrible liar and I love it
Bulkhead learning tai chi is honestly fucking beautiful
OOF
You ever just casually crush on your friends??? No, not figuratively-
Isaac Sumdac rubs me the wrong way more every time he talks ughhhh
Your new invention??????? YoU HAVENT INVENTED ANYTHING HERE BUDDY. YOU STOLE THAT MANS BODY!!!!
Bulkhead and Prowl on an Island Adventure!!!! Wheres Jeff Probst. When is the immunity challenge.
I'm assuming Isaac built these things. Or at least looked at the schematics before he sent them out? How did he not notice they they could be remotely overridden???
Great job Prowl you broke Bulkhead.
Fast-Son and Doctor Dad have a special attack I'm m e l t I n g
Oh hey the key is back!
Um. That looks like a lot. Child. Child please.
The key has senses now?????
You don't know?? What went wrong??? What went wrong is your Big Dumb!!!!!!!!
"They're just machines" oh wow do I really dislike him.
Grim.... l o c k e d
Sari. Made the Dinobots. WHAT
Aww yea Grim, back at it again with the Instant Leader Role
Cars eat dinosaurs! asdfhjkl
"Theres only one thing worse than a car-" "A robot!" "No-"
Someone take Captain Fandoms bullhorn away please
WHO GAVE. THE DETROIT FUCKING POLICE DEPARMENT... BAZOOKA MONEY?????
"He said good thinking!" Aww bb
Isaac is. So stupid. I'm mad that hes this stupid. As an engineer, its infuriating that this man doesnt have a single braincell or a moral compass.
Megatron's head is twice the size of his entire foolish little body
OKAY. SO YOU LOOKED AT THE DESIGN BEFORE YOU BUILT IT. AND IT STILL DIDN'T LOOK SUSPICIOUS TO YOU.
God you make me so mad isaac. What kind of innocent being puts weapons into (supposedly) animatronics (supposedly) for KIDS????
Hey! Bulk snapped put of it!! Good for him!!!
Um guys fire and tar dont mix????
FOOLS
Why isnt it on fire????? Tar is flammable!!!!!
Aww theyre sinking!!! That's actually a really sad image.......
"You call breathing fire a GLITCH?" YES. THANK YOU. MY HUSBAND HAS FOUND THE BRAINCELL
"I should be more careful when I reverse engineer alien technology" uh yeah bud! You should!!!!
MELT THEM DOWN????? WHAT?!
BITCH YOU K N O W THEY AREN'T MINDLESS DROIDS. EVEN IF MEGS HADN'T TOLD YOU THEYRE ALIVE. YOU'RE A BIOENGINEER WHAT THE F U C K
Thank you Prowl!!!!! Tell him please!!!
OP you have BETRAYED ME. HOW ARE YOU TEAM MURDER HERE
They're gone????
YAY THEYRE OKAY
Look at my boys!! Look at them getting along and saving livss!!!!! Look at my other boys!!!! Chilling in a fucking neat crater!!!!! Good job!!!
How is Prowl going to explain losing his badge?
Nature Good!!!!!!!!!!!!
THEY HAVE ROOT MODES. YESS
#maccadam#transformers#tfa#tranformers animated#del's tfa liveblog#hoo boy lotta caps#im sorry#i had a lot of feelings
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
JTRM — THE “R” STANDS FOR RECOVERING!
PREVIOUSLY.
i like to call this chapter ‘AH, devi’s crazy TOO.’
[additional end-of-chapter drabble here: X ]
Devi watched Johnny brood sourly in the reflection of her rearview mirror, and couldn’t help but smile in amusement. There had been an argument between him and Tenna about who would be sitting in the passenger seat for this particular car ride – an argument that Johnny had bitterly lost.
“Who the fuck cares if you ‘called shotgun’…” She managed to hear him grumble under the thunderously loud music, and she snickered to herself.
Maybe she would pacify him with kindness later, if all went as planned tonight, but for now, Devi needed him to be in as pissy of a mood as possible without him being completely insufferable. She didn’t know the innerworkings of his fucked-up head too well, but she imagined that like anyone other person, he was more likely to get in a fight with someone if he was already in a bad mood.
The yellowed sign of the Camera slid across the windshield of the car as they drove past its front and turned into the small, poorly lit parking lot behind it. Devi had barely turned the engine off when Johnny undid his seatbelt, eager to leave his abhorred spot in the backseat. He got out and took in the familiar scenery of the theater’s dumpy, dark parking lot with a fond smile.
“Hm, I haven’t been here in quite a while.” He commented while Devi stepped out of the driver’s side beside him. She looked to him, then surveyed the area herself.
“Yeah, me either.” She replied, deciding not to mention that it was because of him that she had avoided this place for so long, then took up the leash that dangled loosely from his neck. Johnny’s eyes flickered down a moment at the movement, only to snort in remembrance of his new attachment.
Tenna looped around the trunk to meet them as they began their walk to the building.
“They still haven’t fixed that light by the dumpster?” She complained. “That’s been out for like, a year! Who knows what vile city dwellers could be lurking in the dark, ready to shiv me and steal my monies.”
Devi snorted a laugh.
“Eh. I’ve got the most dangerous thing in this parking lot roped to me, so I’m not too worried.”
Johnny smiled devilishly at that, and Tenna squinted apprehensively in his direction. Devi wasn’t wrong, she guessed, but was that really a good thing? She desperately hoped that whatever Devi was planning didn’t get either of them stabbed in the process.
The trio walked into the dull lighting of the entrance, and Johnny felt his asshat senses heightening by the second. He listened to the small crowd’s murmuring, pessimistically certain that someone would make a comment about either his attire, like usual, or the fact that he was currently adorned with pet equipment. A few people gave them weird stares, but his keenly tuned ears failed to hear if they said anything. Devi tugged him in the direction of the ticket booth, interrupting his paranoid scanning for the time being.
They settled on an old horror film, much to Tenna’s dismay, given the current company. Johnny felt some contentment in leading Devi to his old favored spot in their designated theater – he had a preferred spot in each of the Camera’s handful of theaters, back when he frequented the movies more often. He was also pleased when Devi readily sat beside him instead of putting Tenna between them, though it was most likely because having that damned leash drape over Tenna’s lap while she held it from the other side was impractical. He wanted to believe that she would have sat next to him anyway, even if the situation was different.
Devi only half-minded the movie, instead keeping her focus on Johnny’s behavior, which was more suspensefully entertaining than the cheesy, predictable stalking scenes of a film that she’d seen plenty of times as it was. She watched as covertly as she could at every twitch and look he gave to the people that laughed at inappropriate times, or talked through the ‘boring’ parts, and she felt some God-awful mixture of pride and disappointment that he did little else. Maybe his self-control had improved more than she thought it had.
The closest he got to losing it was when a couple of girls’ talking started getting progressively louder, as if they were unaware that their difficulty in hearing each other was because of the movie that they had paid to see. Devi could see Johnny tense, and could vaguely feel through their conjoined seat the movement of the muscles and tendons in his arm flexing and stretching as he ground his knuckles into a fist over and over. Before he could even yell at them, Tenna lobbed her still half-full box of candy over their row and hit one of the girls in the head with it, sending the shadows of little chocolates across the screen for a second, paired with her target’s aghast gag.
Johnny was surprised at the direct action, then built up a grim laugh into a quick cackle, joined by Tenna, who squealed out her usual high-pitched hyena laugh. Devi sunk back against her seat in defeat, already sensing by the hushed chatter a few seats ahead that the woman her friend had just beaned with a box of Raisinets was too weak-willed to confront their ‘larger’ group about it.
She tried to brush it off. Johnny was fantastic as drawing trouble to himself, and there would surely be another decent opportunity as the evening progressed; people were just too rude and shitty to not give him the desire for violence.
When the movie finished and they began their walk out to the street, Tenna insisted that she knew of an amazing little train of food trucks that parked nearby that they just had to try. It was almost six blocks away, and with the streets mostly dead, Devi would have insisted on any normal night that they drive there – of course, tonight was a little special, so she insisted that they walk.
“Yeah, I could use the exercise. Been cooped up in the apartment with Nny for one day too many.” Devi spoke nonchalantly about her choice, guiding Johnny smoothly away from the direction of the parking lot and toward where these alleged food trucks should be. She hoped along the way that Johnny would try and run from her side, at anything, even to chase a cat or something equally harmless.
Tenna nodded as though that made sense, but still had the gut instinct that Devi was up to something that she wouldn’t admit to. She kept her suspicions to herself while they trekked down the sidewalk, and instead continued talking up their eatery for the night.
Two streets passed, and Devi almost wanted to pout that Johnny had done nothing but walk dutifully by her side. He observed his surroundings with waning interest, unaware of Devi’s scrutiny. The darkened buildings of the already-closed shopping district blended together into one amorphous, black shape in his eyes, with his mind unable to find the square, uniform city architecture interesting for long. He was much happier looking at the starry sky, though it was difficult for many of the stars to appear brightly enough to be seen from a view inside the city. Stupid concrete monster wasn’t good for anything.
Partially coherent jabbering from Tenna failed to distract Devi from her disappointment in what was, so far, the most normal outing that she had had with Johnny since their reunion. She wished it wasn’t disappointing, but the entire purpose of this trip was to ensure that her leash idea would hold up in the face of Johnny’s unpredictable nature. She couldn’t afford to have a false sense of security when walking the streets with him!
The universe had thrown her so many asinine screwballs at this point that she wouldn’t be surprised if Johnny magically slipped his collar despite his big, dumb pumpkin head, or somehow had the unreasonable strength to break the clasp and attack something.
Why did he have to pick tonight to be on his very best behavior?
They reached the gated lot full of assorted food trucks without incident, and Devi’s lips vibrated with an annoyed exhale that sounded more like a disgruntled horse. Tenna assumed it was because of the gross, greasy looking people and food that awaited them, and gave her shoulder a friendly jostle.
“C’mon Devi! Truck food is amazing, you remember the hamburger sushi don’t you?” She asked with a giggly smile. Johnny made a face at the mention of ‘hamburger sushi’.
“Oh, I remember.” Devi eyerolled. It was actually pretty good, if she was being honest, but as of now she was bored with this completely fruitless adventure.
Johnny watched Devi curiously while they followed Tenna around the lot to different van windows, and his lower lip tented up in thought. She seemed unhappier suddenly, and he wondered why. Like Tenna, he speculated that it was because of their current environment, which he would emphatically agree was horrible. The mixing of smells from the numerous different types of frying dishes certainly did nothing for his already small appetite, and the people bumming around eating were all loud and irksome. And smelly.
“Devi, must we eat here?” Johnny whispered to her. Devi turned her head toward him.
“You don’t have to get anything if you’re not hungry.” She told him. “There’s food at home.”
Johnny pouted more.
“That’s not completely what I meant…” He mumbled, looking around. “The people here are wretched. Can’t we go somewhere more… completely absent of life?”
Devi looked at him for a moment before caving into quiet chuckles. Johnny felt his heart swell at the sound of her laugh. He steadied his composure as she moved to speak again, but her response was lost as Tenna called them over to the farthest corner of the lot.
“I FOUND THE HAMBURGER SUSHI TRUCK!” She yelled victoriously. Johnny’s mouth wormed miserably as Devi lead him to his doom of the fast-food version of fusion cuisine.
As they came to a stop beside Tenna, Devi noticed two men leaning up against the side of one of the buildings that walled off the lot, and raised her eyebrows in interest. They were smoking and drinking, and overall looked like the kind of late-night assholes that would loudly criticize others for a laugh. She wasn’t getting her hopes up, but kept their presence in mind as they waited for their food, just in case they were more trouble than she was asking for tonight.
Tenna had ordered them two ‘cheeseburger’ rolls to share, and the concept of splitting two items between three people only vexed Johnny further. Now he would have to make certain – if he even bothered to EAT this disgusting-sounding thing – that whatever he was grabbing hadn’t already been handled by someone else. It was repulsive enough knowing whatever sweaty creature lurked in the van’s ‘kitchen’ was going to create this abomination with, likely, their bare hands.
He shivered in disgust.
The truck was either very popular, or the cook was very slow, because it was taking forever for their order to come out. As time drug on, Johnny began idly picking at his collar while Devi talked to Tenna. He was indifferent to their conversation topic, and his eyes listed over the rooftops of the surrounding structures, again looking for anything to occupy his thoughts while he was unable to have Devi’s undivided attention.
A particularly rude-sounding set of laughs resounded behind him, and his senses were suddenly sharp again. Anyone else wouldn’t have thought twice about it, probably wouldn’t have even heard it amongst the chatter of everyone else nearby, but Johnny was accustomed to being an object of ridicule, and knew the common vocalizations of assholes and bastards.
“Hey!” One of them said. He stopped to laugh again before continuing. “HEY! Dog-guy! Did she get you neutered too??”
Johnny and Devi both straightened at the comment, immediately aware that they were the subject of discussion. Johnny trembled a second as he attempted to swallow his insult, but failed, and turned to face the men that were trying to humiliate them. Devi only turned enough to side-glance at the interaction with a small, apprehensive smile.
“DOES MY SITUATION CONCERN YOU THAT MUCH?” Johnny yelled back at them. He steamed when the pair only ‘OOOH’d back at him in response before breaking into hysterics.
Devi watched as Johnny’s body began to shake more, and held her breath behind her inconspicuous expression as he took a step forward. Tenna eyed her in concern, uncertain why she wasn’t intervening into an exchange that would surely only escalate without her involvement.
“Hey girl, he’s had all his shots right? He looks rabid!” The other called toward Devi, and Johnny took even more offense that they would address her directly with their brainless, monkey-drool humor.
“SHUT YOUR MOUTHS.” He ordered, standing wide-legged and pointing aggressively in their direction. “DON’T SPEAK TO HER, you filthy, bleating, devolutions of humanity! I don’t come outside to be a spectacle for swine like YOU.”
His eye twitched when their response was something about him coming outside to have ‘walkies’, followed by further spittle-inducing laughter. Oh, how he hated people so very much. Just watching how unguarded they were as they hooted and gestured at him made his fingers twinge with the desire for physical mutilations. It would be so hard to laugh without tongues! Or faces! OR A HEARTBEAT!
The grit on the asphalt scuffed with the friction of his boot as he lunged toward his intended victims, and Devi barely had a chance to register he’d moved at all before her arm was outstretched, a continuation of his now taut leash. Within the second, her arm was extended as far as it would go, as was the leash, and Johnny gagged from the speed at which his collar hinged around his neck. His body propelled forward further, twisting him around, and he hit the ground face first with an unceremonious BLAP!
Everyone stared at his limp figure on the floor for a few seconds, and then the men spasmed with a new, uncontrollable fit of laughter. Devi’s eyes were wide as she watched Johnny raise up onto his elbows, and she felt a long-missing energy crackle to life in her stomach.
She bowled over and laughed; laughed with deep, desperately needed triumph beating in her blood.
“IT WORKED!” She yelled at Tenna as she rose. “DID YOU SEE? It worked!!”
Tenna offered her a confused, open-mouth smile, but her eyes only showed her worry and discomfort at Devi’s abnormal change in demeanor. Devi bent back and held her forehead, still laughing.
“Oh my GOD. That was so perfect!” She chuffed. “I… I can’t believe it! Heehee!”
Tenna set a hand on her shoulder.
“I think… all the joy you’ve repressed for like, an entire year, is coming out right now. All at once. About this weird fucking leash thing.” She dropped her hand and pointed to Devi’s wide smile. Devi’s only continued her snickering.
“It worked, it worked, it worked! HAH-HAH-HAH!”
Johnny’s ego couldn’t have been more bruised if he ran it over with his own car in a freak accident. He pushed himself up, using his knee to get back into a standing position. The bastards behind him were still laughing, and Devi was cutting up with Tenna about it too, which stung a lot more than the taunting of some nameless strangers. He tried to breathe between his clenched teeth to calm himself down, but he was so embarrassed and angry – Devi probably just let him make an ass out of himself to teach him a lesson. Why did she always have to make a fool out of him to get her point across? Talking and being gentle was an option too, if she didn’t know!
He couldn’t stop himself from glowering when she turned to face him.
“NNY!” She smiled at him, and Johnny frowned unhappily, believing her smile was part of her mockery. He could guess that Devi was going to reprimand him, again, for trying to attack some ‘innocent’ people – he was getting sick of this. Those morons were not innocent; they instigated this! She saw it!
“What?” He snapped bitterly. Devi only laughed and tugged him closer by his leash.
“That was PERFECT, I’m so happy!” She cheered. “You did just what I wanted you to do!”
The tension in Johnny’s face vanished immediately.
“I…” A weak smile crept over his lips. “I-I did??”
“YES! This night wasn’t a total waste after all!”
Johnny’s previous perception of her smile as cruel and jeering dissipated, and instead he felt himself amazed by the wide grin she wore. He hadn’t seen that particular smile on her in quite a long time, and the inside of his chest was suddenly light and airy. He had absolutely no idea what part of his actions exactly she was talking about, but he had made her so very happy, and that’s all that mattered to him for the moment. Johnny clasped his hands in front of him, admiring her continued giggling until Tenna approached them.
“Um… our food is done.” Tenna spoke while she chewed, still judging the bizarre scene uncertainly.
“Oh, good—” Devi took one of the take-out plates from her, but got distracted when she realized that the two peons she’d used to test Johnny’s apparatus were still guffawing in their direction. Her attention moved back to them, and Johnny followed her stare, scowling in their direction to show his support of her disapproving look. Devi passed him their food casually, and then slipped the handle of his leash off of her wrist.
“Here, hold this a second.” She said with a smile as she dropped it into Tenna’s open palm. Tenna almost gagged on her food when she realized what she had just gripped onto.
Johnny was surprised too – it was unlike Devi to give away control so casually. His wide eyes flicked away from Tenna’s hand and back to Devi, who was walking toward the men standing by the wall. He felt a twinge of worry; not because he thought Devi couldn’t handle these idiots, but rather that said idiots might touch her in some way.
If either of them pushed her or something, he would gut them both with the chopsticks that were so carefully perched on the raised edges of this disposable plate. No way would Tenna’s weak grasp be able to hold him back, he was confident in that.
Devi looked between the men in front of her as she walked, debating from her experience with shitty guys and their unspoken douchebag tier rankings, which of the two was more leader than follower. She thought that the one that first called out to Johnny, the taller one, was likely that man.
“Huh?” The same man said as he saw Devi encroaching on the invisible border of their hangout territory. “Oh, what’s the matter girlie? Did we upset your pet over there?”
He sneered a rude grin at her, and Devi smiled back, certain that she had chosen correctly.
With her last step, she drew her arm back, then hurled it forward as though her knotted fist was a shotput. Her knuckles cracked against the bottom of his jaw at such a speed that it threw him back with a light topspin. His turning body slammed his head into the brick wall behind him, and he bounced off of that like a sad rubber ball, landing at the wedge where the building and ground met in a heap.
Johnny and Tenna opened their mouths in silent gasps, unable to do anything else.
Devi held her fist in front of her a moment, appreciating the dull ache in her digits with a satisfied smirk, then dropped her expression to shoot the remaining man a warning look. He looked terrified, like a sheep separated from the flock, and Devi was content with that. She turned around and regathered her ‘things’ from Johnny and Tenna.
“C’mon, Nny.” Her mouth perked up again. “Let’s go.”
--
BACK HOME:
Johnny jammed himself further into the nesting spot he had made for himself on Devi’s couch, shuffling his legs to get more comfortable. His head lolled over to watch Devi, as it had many times since the movie started. It was supposed to be thought-provoking, said one of Devi’s film magazines, but by all accounts was dull and droned on aimlessly about the futility of society. It was a totally unbelievable portrayal of a mental downward spiral– and he would know. Where was the frenzied tears? The passion?
But, to be fair, even the most interesting, well-written plot in the history of cinema couldn’t keep his attention right now, with Devi sitting beside him lazily and scorning the images on her TV. His heart fluttered remembering her gleefulness just an hour ago, and how she decked that guy that had been laughing at him. Now that was passion.
A relaxed smile spread across his face, and he sighed contently. It had been such an exhausting night; from venturing into public, to enduring Tenna’s loud nature, to arguing with shitheads, to falling and hitting his head on the floor, to eating hamburger sushi – which was much better than he had imagined, actually – he was exhausted. It didn’t help that this movie was unengaging and badly-written. It would be a better use of his eyeballs to look at the dark inside of his eyelids.
Devi turned to make a sarcastic comment about the film, but lost her air when she saw Johnny asleep with his head tilted back over the couch cushion. She stifled a laugh.
“Wow. This movie must really be a boring piecashit to put you to sleep, Nny.” She said to him.
She pulled a wadded blanket out from her corner of the couch and threw it over him, then settled in to continue watching the rest of this abhorred picture. Maybe the ending would blow her fucking mind, or something.
Half an hour later, Devi’s cheek was stretched against the back of her hand, her head drooping despite her arm’s best efforts to keep it upright. She blamed her outburst of absolute joy tonight for taking so much out of her, and her weary brain decided it would be fine to fall asleep right here, beside Johnny, the man she normally locked her bedroom door to ensure didn’t come in and kill her while she slept. She didn’t even have enough cognitive function to argue how fucking stupid that was.
Devi’s eyelashes flittered closed for a few seconds, but just as she was drifting off to sleep, Johnny screamed at the top of his lungs and jolted her wide awake. Her hands clamped over the arm and top of the couch, and she scrambled back against the corner to stare at him. Johnny’s irises ricocheted around the whites of his eyes madly, before settling on Devi with the look of a frightened animal.
“…YOU GOOD?” Devi asked with concern and restrained fear in her voice.
Johnny looked cautiously around the room, then back to Devi, who was not bleeding or stabbed, as he had dreamed she was. He stared at her torso until he was absolutely positive that the injuries that he’d just seen seconds before were, in fact, figments of his imagination, and then relaxed shakingly against the couch cushion.
“Y… yes.” He choked out, then cleared his throat. “Yes. Just a… bad dream.”
He pulled the blanket on his lap up and around his shoulders, bundling it over his head and huddling up into a paranoid ball on the couch. Devi blinked tiredly, then rubbed her eyes as she mentally chastised herself for bothering to be startled by more of Johnny’s nonsense.
“Okay.” She sighed and stood. “I’m going to bed. That movie sucked, in case you were wondering.”
Johnny smiled fondly at her pessimism.
“Alright. Goodnight, Devi.”
“Night, Nny. Try and… get some rest.” She raised an eyebrow in reference to his previous panic, and left to her room.
Johnny watched her door close, then snatched up the remote and changed the output to cable. He focused on the TV as if his life depended on it, stubbornly refusing to even consider the notion of sleep again. ‘Get some rest’—yeah right! The night terrors were only getting more gruesome and realistic each time he slept, and he was not at all interested in seeing exactly how bad the dreams could get. He decided the best way to avoid that was to not sleep at all again, for as long as he could manage.
--
NEXT.
85 notes
·
View notes
Text
“Time gone by”; (2)-Chenle
You stared at the message on the screen,
It was as if all the air had been knocked out of your lungs, but you should have expected this.
As much as you wanted to remain positive, he hit a sore spot.
Since the time he left without telling you, you questioned if he ever actually liked you- if he cared. Memories, happy memories, tainted your mind as you so desperately tried to forget him, tried to forget how much it hurt for him to leave- to ignore you, to forget you.
When he left, you asked everyone, everyone, where he had gone. Nobody knew, or they just didnt tell you. You were heartbroken, completely.
As you walked back home in the cold weather, you couldnt stop the negative thoughts from clogging your mind,
He had confirmed everything.
You spent the rest of your night crying into your pillow, ignoring calls and texts from friends. Yeah, you felt bad for ignoring it. But you couldnt bring yourself to talk.
The one person you couldnt escape, however, was your housemate. In the time you hadnt had chenle in your life, your family situation went downhill, parents splitting and then neither being deemed fit to house you, so you moved out. It was a nice place beside school, but you had to live with someone, and that person was none other than Mark Lee, one of the guys who used to be a part of the dreamie squad, but was now working full time as a dance instructor, he also helped you with yiur dancing at home.
When mark saw you walk slowly from your room in the morning, tears staining your face, he knew something horrible, something hurtful must have happened. He never knew about chenle, about how you used to be friends, you never told him, knowing that he was a dreamie once too.
But when Mark stopped you, a concerned look on his face, you couldnt help but break down again, spending the day with him, talking about everything, about how you felt and what happened. You ended up exhausting yourself, tears drenched both yours and Marks clothes, as you fell asleep beside him in his room, your eyes red and puffy, face pale. Mark had never seen you so fragile in his time living with you.
You were always there for him, always cooking for him, making him laugh, staying up until he got back from work, even doing his laundry.
“Its because im greatful for getting you as a housemate-!” Youd always chirp, youd smile, god youd always smile, always encouraging mark to sleep, to eat , to do his best. You were the younger sister he never had, and he was like family to you too.
It hurt him to see you like this, and he was determined to do something, he couldnt just let it happen. You were broken the day he met you, and now even moreso. It killed him.
His arms easily slid under you, picking you up and carrying you down the hall and to the right, into your room, minimal design, you barely kept anything from your family home. The only things you kept were the photos. Photos of when you were younger. Mark wasn’t supposed to know that, though. As they were hidden under your bed in a shoebox. It wasnt as if he snooped or anything; it was because you hid his snacks after you found him eating a bag of chips and calling it dinner.
“You cant eat just that for dinner! Youll feel sick, mark!” You were feisty for your height, that was for sure, you had mark with his metaphorical tail between his legs in an instant as you glared, mark thought about comparing you to a chihuahua, but decided against it, knowing the outcome would be grim. He watched you take the treat and run to your room, hiding it somewhere. He could only pout, as you walked back out, looking triumphant at your actions, smiling brightly as you walked to the kitchen, letting mark follow you with a whine of “then what am I gonna eat?!” as you did so. It wasnt until he was in there, did he get hit with an absolutely mouthwatering scent, it smelt delicious. You only grinned wider at his reaction, pulling out a perfect pasta-bake from the oven, and setting it on the bench, steam rising off of the surface as he started drooling. “This ofcourse!”
He smiled fondly at the memory, his heart aching at your pain even more because of how kuch of a genuine person you are, after this Mark said goodnight, tucking you in and making sure youre okay, before turning the light off, and picking up his phone.
It was late, god it was so late. Why did Mark have to call him out at this time? The skatepark was empty, no doubt because it was 2:30am, in winter. “Mark!” Chenle couldnt help but smile, even though it was cold and early, he was happy to see his older friend nonetheless. When mark didnt reply, he assumed it was because of distance, so he ran over to him quickly.
“Y/n Y/l/n.” Was all Mark said. Chenle had to hide his surprise, acting confused instead. “Have you ever heard that name?” Mark raised an eyebrow.
Chenle visibly gulped, guild rising in the pit of his stomach, but he wouldnt let it up, anger overwhelming that feeling as he remembered why he did what he did. You forgot him. You never liked him, you only pitied him from being bullied.
“No, never” he said, making Mark immediately scoff. “Come off if, chenle, youre not fooling me.”
“Im serious! Why would I lie about that?” The boy said incredulously, trying his best to sound honest.
“I guess she was talking about a different Chenle, then.” Was what mark said simply, shrugging.
“When she was crying to me for hours, explaining the past couple years and how she hid it from me because im your friend.” Marks voice was getting rougher, “it must have been a different chenle that taught her to dance, that made her feel okay, that was her friend”
He was breathing heavily now, annoyance and disappointment built up.
“You know what, it was a different chenle. Because she cried over that chenle for years, couldnt forget the one that left without telling her, the one that she kept photos of, the one that she picked herself apart over- she changed for that chenle.”
“You, cant be him. Because you dont even know her name.” Mark was crying, he only ever cried when he was extremely hurt or angry, chenle had never seen him this worked up.
“Why do you even care anyway?” Chenle spoke up, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh right, that chenle would have been her friend too, would have looked after her when her family broke down, when she got moved out of home, got sick.” He breathed in slowly. “That chenle, that was her friend, would have cared, and you, you dont. Clearly”
“Shut up.” Chenle said softly, looking down at the ground.
“Oh? Me? Shut up? Is it finally getting through to you? Huh? You finally see what happened? How much you hurt someone that cared about you more than themseleves?”
“Shut up! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!” Chenle finally snapped, the tears coming out of his eyes as he visibly shook.
“Youre only the chenle that stood her up, years after. Broke her more, when she thought you may talk to her, that you were sorry or that you cared. But you werent”
“I SAID SHUT UP!”
Mark was semi shocked at the loudness of the kids voice, and decided he got his point accross.
“How do know her?” Chenle asked through gritted teeth. He was probably dating her, ofcourse, she moved on with the help of mark. “She is like a younger sister to me, chenle. She looked after me every day when i wanted to become a teacher, when i dropped out, she helped me, she cooked, she even cleaned for me after school. She was the one that moved into my house those years ago, the broken girl who i didnt know how to approach, it all makes sense now though, because you were the one that broke her!”
Chenle was silent, his eyes were wide as it all sunk in, how could this have turned out this way?
“So why did you stick her up chenle? Still not enough? After breaking her you had to make it worse?” Mark was dismissive now, ready to go home, otherwise he might punch the kid.
“Its not like that-“
“Then what is it?”
“I was asked to I-“
“Forget it. If you did it because you were asked to, you dont deserve to talk to her anymore, you dont deserve a chance to apologise, you dont deserve her smile, or her caring nature, you dont deserve any of the tears she shed for you, and there are alot of them. So you just go ahead and continue your perfect highschool, in the dreamies.” Mark turned to leave, completely over it.
“She pitied me! She never really cared, how am i supposed to beleive she cried over me?” Chenle called out.
“How? Look at my jumper, look at my goddamn jumper! This is from today! “ mark yelled, pointing at the wet spots on the material.”And for your information, she loved you, you absolute idiot! She had a crush on you, and cared about you, but no! In your world, she pitied you, wake up! She cared about you so much, did you ever even care about her?”
“Ofcourse i did, i cared about her so much! But when they came up to me and said she never did, that i was stupid to believe it- i “
“You beleived them. You believed the people who didnt care about you, over the one damn person that did!”
Chenle hung his head as he realised the situation.
“I have to talk to her-“ he whispered, tears falling slowly.
“No. You dont get to. Youve dont enough, chenle.”
And that was it, chenle was left to cry on the halfpipe as mark walked away, the gravity of the situation hitting him like a tonne of bricks.
“I- i have to talk to her- i “ he hiccups through his tears, wiping his face roughly. “But when- i -“
His eyes widened, the puffy red moving in realisation.
“The dance recital.”
#chenle#chenle fluff#chenle angst#nct#nct writing#nct angst#mark angst#nct chenle#kpop angst#angst#writing#kpop writing#kpop scenarios#nct scenarios#fanfic#nct fanfic#nct zhong chenle
97 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
pedrammoghaddam
Paartherapie Hamburg intnesiv
polinakazakevich
Polina Kazakevich
omgcaptaindnrch-blog
Unbetitelt
realidadehungara-blog
Realidade Húngara
witcheringg
I always find my way to you