#she inspires me so much i genuinely. AUGH.
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my favorite person in the entire state of kansas just got a promotion and i am SOOOOOOO happy for her like literally i am over the moon it made a pretty not great day (super sleep deprived) now amazing. i lover her so MUCH she deserves this SO MUCH & she'd been passed over for the job she just interviewed for internally but it sounds like they MADE HER ANOTHER JOB POSITION SO SHE COULD TAKE IT. and i love her. did i mention i love her so much
#work woes#she inspires me so much i genuinely. AUGH.#she's the one who's a doula on the side and has a whole network of mommas she takes care of AND she's doing great work with [redacted niche#I LOVE MY FRIENDS.
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answering more POM WRAITH au/Pingo asks!!
featuring: biology questions, creatures, dingo (unfortunately), and more!! check it out ↓↓
she does need sleep! she doesn't need to sleep as often as people, but she's a little wraith and she needs to snooze every like... i dunno. three days? sure, let's go with that.
although in the first few days of her being on PNF404, i could see her getting bored one night and poking around her crewmate's rooms to see what they're doing (spoilers: they're all just sleeping). in the morning after, dingo talks about a very bizarre dream he had with a specter watching him sleep! everyone dismisses it as the ranger having some weird sleep paralysis, but pom's sweating at the table thinking about how she should be way more careful if she does that again.
this ask did inspire me though, i'll probably make more art explaining how she works sometime later hehe...
that'd be scary... although, if there's anyone incentivized to wraithify olimar, it'd probably be the plasm wraith! that golden goo is really fond of him, and they'd love to make olimar just like them
WAHH THANK YOU!!! if they ever dated and got married they'd be able to save on a dress! hehe
she might look kinda scary but she's a sweetheart!! pom would genuinely struggle to make herself hurt humans. if there's a beast threatening her crew though -- that thing is mince meat!!
WAAAHHH THANK YOU!! it's definitely a challenge to make it fit with the other wraiths but still be unique... it was fun to design though!!
IM SORRY i didn't get to your ask before i actually posted the full wraith design... there she is though!! HILAHERHLIAEERH
yes!! he's the first one to discover her secret. it'd probably happen on accident out on the field pretty early on when pom is forced to defend herself with no pikmin, but it's no difference to Oatchi -- pom is pom! he'd bark and give her helmet a lick, and when pom realizes her rescue pup isn't scared of her it's quite the relief...
i have art of oatchi and wraith pom i'll be posting later!!
WAHHH... this is cute i like this hehe!! dingo sees those striking X eyes and still falls in love!! GRRRR i must draw more pingo now...
AUGH.... OK!! more pingo on the way then boss 🫡 (i do appreciate it though lmao)
she doesn't need to eat human food, but she does need to consume living creatures for biomass! human food is definitely delicious and she very much enjoys things like chocolate or hot coco, but to sustain her form and keep up energy she has to go for creatures
i'll probably make art for this later to explain better, but it is kinda like an amoeba -- after killing something, she can cover it and dissolve it with her goo. easy peasy!
Louie: You're a wraith? I thought you were just weird like me
Pom: ...
Louie: ... Can you go get creatures for me
pom is trying her best to understand human social cues and etiquette but it's a struggle sometimes!
i took psychic damage from this ask thank you for penis ringo💖
YES!!!!!!!!! there are so, so many ways that could happen and each one is hilarious... i've written out a few different scenarios, i should pick one to draw out... it'd be funny if dingo learns her secret but decides to trust her and keep it safe. but he's, you know. dingo. he's not good at lying, especially to his crewmates (and especially to his actual childhood friend of a doctor who was already very suspicious of the new blood!)
of COURSE i'm very abnormal about those two.... actually if y'all have scenarios you wanna see with those two, send more asks and i'll probably end up drawing them lol
that's actually a really good question! i haven't thought too much about how her full wraith would visually change, but if she ate enough and got stronger i imagine she'd finally be as big as the other two. she'd probably gain more wraithy abilities and attacks! trying to take down a powered up full wraith pom would be a very difficult fight, even for those with the best dandori skills and a full squad of pikmin
Pom: I can't let anyone find out my secret...
Shepherd: I can't let anyone find out my secret...
Collin: I can't let anyone find out my secret...
Dingo: I can't let anyone find out my secret...
Yonny: this is gonna be fun
Bernard: (doesn't care if people find out)
Russ: (doesn't care if people find out)
Oatchi: bark
#modpost#modask#pom wraith au#thank you all for the asks!!#i'm gonna try to keep the asks in batches like these#i still have a bunch to get to#pingo
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(bruhstation) hey neil! thank you very much for supporting fortezza bigg city so far :] I really appreciate the thought you've put into analyzing bits of my silly little AU, and I've also gained a huge appreciation for your own works as well. it's so clear you've put a lot of thought and research into your AU and it really blew my mind because everything is so meticulously thought out!!! and I'm looking forward to more!!! here's a quick sketch of your gal zaffre! once again thanks :3 (also you're inspiring me to make my own z-stacks oc! haha)
OHHH MY GOD LOOK AT HER MY BABY GIRL MY SWEET CHEESE SHE LOOKS AMAZING AHHH YOUR ART IS SO GOOD I LOVE YOUR FORM AND VOLUME AND HOW YOU DO YOUR LINE WEIGHT WITH THE OPACITY AND LINE DYNAMICS your handle on anatomy and rendering is really interesting to me, reading you work in Fire Alpaca with a mouse is mind boggling to me, i remember when I was doing the same years and years ago and the skill you show is really fascinating and i am jealous, the way your art is put together is scratching my brain. i have been doing art studies of it and trying to dissect it, it'd have such a interesting feel for animation, you have a wonderful style for breaking down into a limited animation style with a emphasis on dynamics with animation in a 8s, 6s, and 4s with 2s detailing and a hard tweening style [<- just professional animator things lol] The way you render shadow and lighting is also ough. This Zaffre is genuinely so wonderful, new desk top background moments. I love her gesture and expression here, it really captures her as a character! Also the way you draw hands, augh, just augh I wish.
You, my friend, are a fabulous illustrator!
And oh my god your AU is scratching my brain in ways I didn't think possible! I know so little yet there is so much there. When I genuinely say that it is affecting me as much as if not more that @askthefamous8 that is the highest compliment I can muster [that AU has been one of my special interests since 2015,]. I am legit making a post it note wall over FBC just like ATF8 had when I was in middle/high school
You have the most loyal human AU fan on your team now, I genuinely smile thinking about Fortezza Bigg City all day long, my friends and partner are getting annoyed to death from me ranting. sorry dear if you are reading this: I know you hate tugs
Also thank you! I really love doing in depth research, its the autism at work. I am a proud vehicle autistic. I've said it before but working on a ship for a summer just to know the mechanics of how actual sailing works is probably the most unhinged thing I can say I've done for accuracy sake. Loved my Captain and fellow crew, very sad I got sick and had to leave. Honestly would love to be a sailor if my heath wasn't bungled up and I wasn't like $200k of debt in animation college.
My humanoid vehicle AU's are partially based on my sadly never going to be picked up pitch bible for a science fiction based historical vehicle show [my fatal flaw is niche interests] And it literally makes my day to sit down and work on the most expansive and historically researched BS on earth, my AU is both a lovely love letter to TUGS as the show it is and a Love Letter to what TUGS wanted to be! At the end of the day TUGS wanted to be it's days Steven Universe or MASH [something I am gonna elaborate in another format later] but unfortunately it just didn't have the right ingredients. Its the Same as the TUGS musical I'm working on, it's a love letter to what TUGS both is and was supposed to be along with being a love letter to the characters themselves
Also:
Join the Z-Stacks OC League, we have cool hats and crime
#the fire burns#bruh station#others art#asks#this is tugs#z stacks#zaffre#fortezza bigg city#I am a little unhinged i am sorry
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I'd love to request some Junkrat dreaming about his parents, especially his Mum
And how proud they are of him
Give me the feels!
started writing this fic the second u sent it (sorry tf2 fans) cos ive been brainrotting on my sweet boy augh anyway, made this junkrat/you fic just so i could work it into my sleepy time fics and also cos .. youll see
tags: fluff, light angst, sleepy time fic number 3, comfort,, heavily based off shit i grew up w as a kid in australia, paranormal ghost shii, genderneutral reader, open interpretation,, weird pov thing oops
heavily inspired by these 3 clips just in case ur interested :-)
(spoiler warnings obv)
[game of tones] [bobs burgers] [tf2 comic #5, old wounds]
<3<3<3
He woke up in his childhood home, he furrowed his eyes at the surroundings and sat up, confused at how he fell asleep on the couch, and the TV buzzed from the heat. The kids channel was inactive as it tended to be late at night. He was remembering things that he hadn’t seen in years. He sat up and went to wobble his way around the building before both feet landed on the carpet.
He paused, noticing both legs in tact, then realising his arm was too. “It’s a dream.” He said plainly, realising what was happening. He began to make his way towards the kitchen, the bright light seeping down the hallway and into the dark lounge room.
“Jamison!” The tall blonde woman called out to him.
“...Ma?” He looked at her confused and she handed him a plate full of meat and vegetables.
“I was wondering when you’d wake up, tea was about to go cold.” She smiled warmly at him, all he could really do was smile weakly back. “Something the matter?”
“Uh.. Nah, nah.” He hesitated.
He’d dreamed of his mother before but not quite to this much extent. Not this much detail, it was uncanny how real it felt.
“Dinner looks good.”
She placed her plate of food on the bench and put a hand on his face. “You look so grown up.” She frowned at him slightly.
“What?” He was taken back and put his plate on the bench too.
“How long has it been?”
He froze for a minute. “Close to fifteen years.” She kept rubbing her thumb over his cheek before he pulled her hand away.
“That’s a long time.” She laughed softly. “What’s happened?”
He furrowed his eyebrows and shrugged casually. “Not much.. Lost my leg.. Lost my arm.. Survived the Omnic Crisis.”
She grabbed his now in-tact amputated arm and ran her hands over his forearm. “That must’ve been hard.”
“It was.”
He was a little uneasy about how she somehow knew which arm was gone. They just stood there in silence for a long period of time.
“Is this real?” Jamie laughed awkwardly. “It’s just a dream, right?”
She looked up at him and a moment’s silence passed over them and a sense of knowing filled the air.
“I’ve missed you.” She said softly.
“I’ve missed you too but how.. How are you..?”
“I bet you’ve done great things since I’ve been gone.”
He pressed his lip into a fine line at her changing the topic but then frowned at the knowledge that she would not be proud of her son if she knew of all the awful things he’s done.
“I don’t know about that..”
“What have you been up to?” She responded casually, as if making small talk with a friend you see once a month.
“I’m a criminal now.” He shrugged with a nervous laugh. “I make a lot of money and.. It makes me happy, I’ve met a lot of good people through it. I’ve travelled the world.” He rambled a little, almost like he was trying to sell a product.
“If it makes you happy, then I’m proud of you.” She sounded faintly disappointed yet still felt genuinely proud of him for finding what makes him happy and finding people that he loved.
“You’re not.. Upset?”
“I think I can understand why things happened the way they did.” She placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “You’ll always be my baby, no matter what. I don’t think it makes you a bad person for trying to survive.”
There’s another long gap of silence, both not sure what to say next.
“Tell me about your friends.”
“Ah, my friends?” He hesitated. “Where do I even start?”
“Tell me about the big one.” She smiled.
“Roadhog? His names Mako but he don’t like when we call him that. He’s my best friend, he’s basically like a brother. He’s been there for almost everything, thick and thin, y'know? He's the only person who I can really count on.”
“And the other one?”
“Y/n.. They’re.. Well. I'm lucky to have ‘em, I think you'd love ‘em too. Y’know, in a strange way, they remind me a lot of you. They’re both really important to me and I’m grateful to have them.”
Silence lingers in the air once again, an awkward stillness of uncertainty. What do you even say in this situation? What could you possibly talk about?”
“So.. There’s an afterlife?” She stayed silent. “Why’d it take you so long to visit? Why are you suddenly visiting me now?”
“I think you know why.” A lot of ideas raced through his head, so many possibilities on why. She spoke plainly with a slight sentiment of sadness at the end of her words. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled him into a tight embrace. He hesitated but hugged her back, savouring the moment.
“I think it’s time for you to wake up.” She said softly.
“I don’t want to yet.” He said as she pulled out of the hug and kissed his forehead.
He jumped awake with a loud gasp. I was leaning over him with my hand resting on his shoulder. “Jamie? Are you okay?”
“Huh?”
“You’re crying.”
He wiped his face in a hurry with his hand and attempted to with his bicep.
“I’m fine just.. Realising some stuff.” He smiled up at me warmly though it was clear something happened to upset him.
“You can talk to me, you know?”
“I know.” He continued to smile. I handed him a water bottle and smiled back at him. “I’ll tell you about it later. Just gotta think on it.”
#asks#fluff#junkrat#jamison fawkes#overwatch#jamison fawkes overwatch#junkrat overwatch#overwatch junkrat#overwatch jamison fawkes#junkrat x you#junkrat x reader#jamison fawkes x you#jamison fawkes x reader#overwatch x you#overwatch x reader#overwatch fluff#angst#overwatch angst#junkrat fluff#junkrat angst
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please tell me why those blorbos are you coded 👁👁
hehe dont mind if i do >:)))) (original post here)
here r my guys !!! im tired so this won't be Super in depth but uh yeah :D
yuki - a major part of his character development is learning to be his own person and realizing that his mom doesn't have any power over him. specifically there's a scene where he's talking to her and he says something along the lines of "my end result might not be something you approve of but i want it to be something i'm proud of" and that. inspired me SO FUCKING MUCH. i think about it all the time. he gives me so much courage but i can also really relate to his character before all that development, where he feels detached from his peers because he was isolated from a young age and always wanted friends but was always afraid the people around him hated him
kunikida - the pure rage this man goes through every time something doesn't go exactly according to plan speaks to me. he is perfectionist anger issues personified. also very much relate to his struggle of trying to get dazai to pay fucking attention to their jobs bc trying to wrangle people to stay on task is something that drives me So Fucking Insane. hes just a relatable boy ok.
tome - very obsessed with something that nobody else really cares about, and even the people close to her who Seem to care about it don't really even listen to her infodumping and genuine love for what she does. there's also a scene during the alien arc where they're about to go try to contact the aliens and she says she doesn't want to, because this is her last chance for it to ever happen and if it doesn't work it means she's been lying to herself this whole time and AUGH. that speaks to me. a lot of times i've tried something new to cure my Illness and it doesn't work and i understand so well the feeling of just wanting to give up even though you have a possible solution, because if the solution doesn't work then you just don't have anything left
natsume - this one is mostly just vibes but i think his personality and terrified to make friends attitude are very me coded
tachihara - my family is extremely conservative while most of my friends and extended family are liberal. i often feel like i'm playing spy or infiltrating one group or the other and i never feel like i really fit in either bc i don't want to betray my parents even though our ideals naturally dont coexist and this is something i struggle with and feel conflicted about a lot etc etc
kaido - haha look at chuunibyo boy go
aoyama - haha look at flamboyant to hide a crippling inferiority complex boy go
reki - i dont remember anything about sk8 except for cherry and the fact that this kid has adhd and i think thats self explanatory
iris - after she moves to the city her parents invite her home and then spring on her that they want her to move back home permanently and give up her dreams so she can settle down and have kids and lets just say my mom and i argue about something along these lines Too Much :)
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I've been reading a bunch of dragon shifter romances to see what else is out there and for inspiration.
So far, so bad. Won't name and shame these ladies, even if it would've been deserved, but I do have some, uh, observations.
I'm gonna start calling these torso books, because it's always just a huge veiny torso on the cover.
I genuinely did not go out looking specifically for porn. I just went "Dragon romance? Ok, will check." That's just what all of these books end up being. What is it specifically about shapeshifters/dragon shifters that makes them almost entirely porn-exclusive?
It's usually quite bad porn, to boot. Read one of them and you've read them all. Something claim, something "It won't fit!"-"It will.", something mating scent, something slick folds, something fill up and/or stretch out. Read one where they did it against a tree, which, gorl. Ok.
Sometimes they'll give the man a weird cock in order to fulfill some monsterfucker quota. It's usually a weird cock on an otherwise regular veiny man, no other inhuman traits. The cock will be anatomically questionable in how much it actually adds to the woman's pleasure. A two-headed penis is explained to be designed that way because dragons produce so much cum that it needs to get out faster? I do not know.
There's always some mating shit involved. It's always bad, often one-sided to explain why the perfect man would be interested in the weak and pathetic human woman, who is weak and pathetic.
The man will always be the ultimate masculine specimen while the woman is a curvy little pink-lipped hard-nippled dick recepticle. Any and all extreme sexual dimorphism present in regular het romance written by horny women will be amplified by a bajillion.
Somehow the attraction is so instant and extreme that boners pop and clits throb at the mere first sight of their counterpart. It's always funny and never convincing.
There will be some weak nod to the man being a dragon by him having, uh, a horde. Of stuff? Maybe. Most draconic thing about him will be his dick, and maybe he has some fire magic, and possibly can transform into an actual dragon.
Usually it's just a regular rich man, though. Just like a man in a suit. Who is big. Bigger than the other men in suits. Just a very large man. He's so large.
His suits are always super tight so you can see his muscles. But also tailored, because he's rich? I do not know.
Any and all women except the obligatory brainless best friend who serves sass and everyday wisdom to the heroine is a huge bitch who wants to take her big man. Women generally get sorted into "nameless bimbo admirer of the big man who gives the heroine the stink-eye when the big man wants her" or "named alpha bitch who will get dunked on and/or humiliated."
Which is extremely ironic because there's usually some hollow empowerment or girlpower message at the end for the heroine, somehow. Very feminisms.
The hero usually has a younger brother who's like, the most pleasant person in the book. He's always presented as weaker and less masculine than the hero, so he doesn't pose a threat to him and his extremely fragile masculinity.
The one time the hero was the younger brother, it was the book with the two-headed penis and the fucking-against-a-tree. My disappointment was immense.
The big dragon man always treats the heroine as like, his pet. Talks to her like she's beneath him. Yanks her around sexual style. Sexual harassment/assualt is common. She finds this hot, either secretly or explicitly, so it's empowering, actually.
There's a weird overlap between dragon romances and cowboy romances? Also dragon aliens? That latter one at least has more creativity and weirder guys than just Big Man in Suit, so there's that.
Someone free me from this hell why are all dragon books like this AUGH.
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top 5 mbs characters, bc im predictable, and then top 5 persona ...ships? if you don't do a lot of shipping than characters works.
unfortunately i don't actually follow persona all of my knowledge of it is just me voting for whatever you say to in the various polls you reblog (i gotchu homie).
and then just for the sprinkles on top, top 5 favorite birds. they can be specific birds (ie steve the magpie, a local magpie in your area, or big bird) or bird breeds (parrots, a titmouse, lilac breasted roller, etc) up to you. 🎉
or only do one, or two, or all of these! no offense will be taken. im giving OPTIONS
aaaaa thank you!!! for the ask, for the options, and also for supporting my little blorbos in those silly polls 😭
Top 5 MBS Characters:
Kate Wetherall. I. Was. OBSESSED with Kate as a kid. I do prefer her in the books but I love her show incarnation as well!! The weird girl energy, the autism, the ADHD, it's all off the charts. Fav line from book Kate is still "Well of course it's not funny, but what do you want me to do? Cry?" List of sentences that changed my brain chemistry as a child.
Not to be a basic bitch, but Nicholas Benedict. Oh my god, I loved him in the books already -- we love to see a "wise, all-knowing mentor" character with actual personality and limitations -- but the direction the show took his character in was truly inspired. His discussion with Reynie about the white knight in the books is PEAK.
Reynie Muldoon. Understandably, since he's the POV character, he was the one I actually related to most as a kid. I love the "always trying to stay calm" thing he has going on, and how the narrative never punishes him for trying to be kind and genuine and earnest even though so many books and shows nowadays feel the need to equate niceness with naivete.
My funky little Milligan. Yet another character who I loved in the books already and adored seeing more of in the show. I especially love how much more autistic they made this man. "Geez, how 'bout a hello?" "........Hello." / "I'll be back." [vanishes] [reappears] ".......I'm back." King shit. And no matter what incarnation it is, his reunion with Kate will always reduce me to tears. The memory that was so deeply ingrained into his brain that even Curtain couldn't take it from him... was just that memory of his little girl asking him to go to the mill again... AUGH.... 😭
Constance Contraire. Like Kate, I prefer Book!Constance, but I adore the way the show portrayed her as well. First of all, she's hilarious. Second of all, while she's often being irrational, she also can be a voice of reason in some ways, and we love that. Funky little psychic child. And I just ADORE how kindly the book treats her. Even when she's getting on the other characters' nerves in a big way, the book never suggests that she's a detriment to them, that she needs to sit down and shut up, that they would be better off if they ditched her, or any number of other things that a less understanding narrative would be claiming.
Top 5 Persona Ships
Hamugis. Ohhh my god. MFW the overwhelming guilt I feel for having potentially ruined someone's life by sealing Death inside of her as a child slowly transforms into admiration as I meet her again and begin to see her as a strong leader and then love as I begin to discover my own humanity through her. MFW "I don't want you to love someone else... I don't want that, even if that's what would make you happy!!" MFW I touch my robot GF's literal heart and leave an indelible mark on her very being. Also uhh that one post. "I do not understand hookup culture!!! Die in my arms!!!" yeah. Aigis and Kotone for number one love story of all time.
Akimina. Much less canon interaction to go off of with these two but stay with me here. T4T autism4autism. I love Akihiko's earnestness and Minato's bluntness and how they combine to make a relationship that lacks miscommunication while also leaving a lot unsaid because neither is much one for conversation. I like the idea of Akihiko's intense desire to be strong to protect someone playing off of Minato's much more reserved, almost lackadaisical attitude, despite Minato's strength, and I think it would be so interesting to watch them move in opposite directions -- Akihiko learning to cut himself some slack and trust others rather than thinking he has to protect everyone alone, while Minato learns to break out of his shell and actually care about those around him and want to protect them -- while they also, at the same time, are learning almost identical lessons about relying on other people.
Ulamaya. The two girlies of all time. I adore how Ulala's combined jealousy and affection for Maya play off each other and how Ulala is one of the only characters in the game who feels like she's fully seeing Maya as she is -- a human like any other, even if she presents herself as eternally optimistic and strong so that others can lean on her. Their relationship feels so... equal. If that makes sense. Which, as much as I appreciate KatsuMaya, can feel a little lacking in other Maya ships imo, bc it always feels like other characters (ESPECIALLY the masked circle) tend to idolize Maya. And Maya's forgiveness of Ulala's betrayal... what's that one Hozier line... "I'd be the immediate forgiveness in Eurydice." Yeah.
Pegoryu. God I just love how ride-or-die Ryuji is right off the bat. You meet him, have a near-death experience with him, and ten minutes later he's shoveling more food onto your plate insisting that you need to eat more. Even before then, it may be Akira who saves Ryuji from Kamoshida, but it's Ryuji who tackles him away, yells at him to run and save himself, who gives Akira the faith in humanity that the rest of the world had eroded away at that point.
Tie between Saoriham and Kannao. Saori's social link is one of the best parts of Persona 3 straight up, and Kanji and Naoto are just so goddamn cute together.
Honorable mentions: TatsuJun ("I... have nothing to give you in return..."), YukiChie ("Yes, Chie is my prince..."), ShinjiMina ("If the burden of command gets to be too much, just let me know."), KatsuBao ("Idiot... What were you going to do if I pulled the trigger?" "I knew you wouldn't.")
Top 5 Favorite Birds
Orioles!!! I have such fond memories of helping my grandma skewer orange halves and fill jars with grape jelly as a kid to attract the orioles (though I thought they were called oreos for the longest time, lmao)
Robins. We get a ton of them around here and I love seeing them hop around on the sidewalk.
Magpies. Haven't seen one meself but they're such cool birds. If I could have wings I'd want them to be magpie-style.
Crows. Another bird we get a lot of around here, their calls are so Autumncore.
Falcons. They're just cool and I like them. (insert Madge joke here)
#thank you so much for the ask!!!!#this was an absolute blast!!!!#Mysterious Benedict Society#Persona 2#Persona 3#Persona 4#Persona 5#ask
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Expressing Feelings (Fluffvember)
TSsweets13
Summary:
Undertaker has fallen hard for his new apprentice, but what is he to do about it?
Notes:
This is based off of my own list of prompts for Fluffvember.
Day 3: Confession
Work Text:
“So many guests today.” Ere commented as she hurried about in the kitchen at the back of the Undertaker’s shop, where she lived and worked as his apprentice.
The Undertaker walked in and sighed nodding, “Yes, so many.” He commented, “You’re doing well in your training.”
She turned and smiled at him, “Thank you, sir.” She said, “It’s about tea time. Would you like anything in particular today?”
He chuckled and shook his head, “I trust in whatever you choose.” He said.
Ere giggled softly, a sound that went right through the grey haired man. Any laugh from her was pure perfection. He smiled as she buried herself with the tea time preparations. He didn’t mind doing this for himself, which he often told her, but she insisted. She took to taking care of things like this with as much gusto as she did in learning the trade. That was something admirable and wonderful about her. That was just one more thing he adored about her.
Oh yes, he adored her.
She was wonderful. Sweet. Smart. And caring. And not bad on the eyes. He was still a man after all.
She smiled as she brought the tray of tea and treats over to the small kitchen table where Undertaker sat. She set the tray down and sat across from him. She smiled sweetly at him. Oh how he loved when she smiled at him. It was different than the one she wore as she greeted the grieving public or worked with their guests. It was one for him and only him. And he treasured it.
He had been mulling over these feelings for months now. Afraid of pushing her out of his life with such amorous affections. But desire runs deep. And pining as he was, was not good for the heart.
He reached out and accepted the cup of tea offered to him. He smiled at her and thanked her kindly. She gave him that smile again and he was lost in her golden eyes. He could hardly drink his tea as they sat and chatted about nothing. Finally...after months of hiding he lost the battle with himself.
“Ere, my dear, may I be bold, and perhaps a touch crass with you?” He asked.
The young brunette was stunned at such an inquisition, but was also curious, she nodded.
“I desire you.” He said, “I fear I always have. And I am terrified it will drive you away to say such things, as you are so young and lovely and I am, well, the dark and mad, old undertaker. It is a queer notion for me to desire you, but even queerer were you to desire me. I don’t delude myself to think you would ever. But I had to tell you. Or it would drive me madder than I am already.”
Ere sat there dumbfounded. Had this man, this sweet and genuine man, truly just admitted his feelings for her? Did he truly want her like that? Like she had always wanted him.
She reached across the small table and grasped his hand, “Then let it just be queer in others eyes. I desire you as well.” She breathed.
And oh what feelings those words blossomed within his bosom. He stood and brought her with him. Pulling her into his arms for a strong, impassioned embrace. Sure the world may think it odd. But this was their business and nobody else’s.
Series this work belongs to:
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Lifeline
cathouse_mary
Summary:
UPDATE 9/6: Again, I apologize for the length of time that ti's taken me to get this one ready. I've been working at my full time job, doing a lot of freelancing, and also started my own company. AUGH. In any case, here's the new bit. I will try my best to run the next chapter out by Thanksgiving here in the US. Thank you all for the comments and the kudos - I love them so and they really help me with the writing.
Alan Humphries is a man who has it all together - until a diagnosis of leukemia leaves him adrift, alone, and afraid.
Notes:
Inspired by this art - http://moisca.deviantart.com/art/Kuroshitsuji-AU-Alan-Humphries-Chemotherapy-380136554
Chapter 1
Chapter Text
It started with a nosebleed.
Alan had them even in childhood so when they began anew in his twenties, he thought very little about them. Indeed, Alan Humphries thought very little about anything but his work as a risk assessment analyst for Bridges Capital Management. He pulled insane working hours, and that night when his nose began to drip in the middle of a meeting with the senior analysts, he just pulled out his pocket square and kept going - but then it didn't stop, and to his horror and embarrassment, it turned into a positive gusher that nothing would alleviate.
Mr. Conti called his car, ushered Alan downstairs holding a wad of paper napkins under his nose and said to the driver, "Lenox Hill hospital emergency room. Floor it." He shut the door, thumped the hood and the driver took off, the 620 horsepower of the Mercedes sedan pushing Alan back into the seat as it raced uptown. A cold knot of dread settled in his stomach when the security guard took a look at Alan getting out of the car and brought a wheelchair to him.
The questions started even before he was properly on a gurney.
"Fill these out, please."
"Did you use cocaine or other inhalant drugs?"
Pulse, temperature, oxygenation.
Gloves. Splatter shields. Gowns. The bloody paper towels in a bag.
"Are you using an inhaler or a decongestant?"
"Please put this on, Mr. Humphries."
"Do you have nosebleeds often? When did they resume? How recently? How severe? Bleeding for more than five minutes?"
Cannula, fluids given, tubes of blood drawn.
And when Alan was alone, the curtains drawn around him for privacy, he lay there in silent shock, trying not to break down. A look at his watch confirmed it was almost midnight, but in Lewiston Idaho, Mom or Dad might still be awake - though his phone couldn't get a signal in here. He was scared. None of his bleeds had ever been that bad. Rolling up in the sheet and blanket, he fell into a thin and troubled sleep.
"Mr. Humphries? I'm Dr. Maples. Your admitting physician contacted me over your bloodwork." Dr. Maples spoke with a lovely Caribbean lilt to her voice, then came over and took a seat next to his gurney. "We would like to admit you tonight, just for some further tests."
Breathe, Alan. Breathe.
"What kinds of tests?" Because if a bloody nose was just a bloody nose, the admitting physician would not have needed to bring in an on-call specialist.
"Bone marrow. Spinal fluid." She gently squeezed his hand. "A high-def ultrasound, so we can look at your liver and spleen. Your admitting physician didn't find any enlargement upon a cursory palpation, but... Mr. Humphries? Is there someone I can call for you? Family? Someone to bring you some things from home?"
The items and circumstances remorselessly added themselves up on Alan's mental spreadsheet. Cancer. They were looking for some kind of cancer.
"No. No, there isn't. There's just me." His chest hurt, and his voice rasped. "Can I do this as an outpatient? I just want to go home."
"Mr. Humphries, I feel that would be against the soundest medical advice that I can give. Please, let us do the tests."
There was paperwork, of course, and at the end of it Alan was in a private room, a computerized IV stand slowly infusing platelets into his bloodstream.
It was one in the morning in Idaho.
He picked up the bedside telephone and dialed.
"Hi! You've reached the Humphries household. Ted, Jeanette, Teddy, Lori, and Deena can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we'll be sure to call you back. Wait for the beep!"
In the end, Alan couldn't make himself say anything, and he hung up quietly. You really couldn't go home again - even if it was the last place you ever should go.
~
"Good morning, Ronald." The hipster behind the counter at Pearl Street Kitchen was a bouncy kid with two-tone hair, an undercut, and a knit cap that never seemed to leave his head. "Cafe Americano and pain au chocolat, please."
"Missed you the last few days, Alan."
"Just a little under the weather." The pain au chocolate was still warm and steaming in the case, and dusted with a bit of cinnamon sugar this time. The soups were always fresh and flavorful, the sandwiches and pastas satisfying, but Alan would lie down and die for the patisserie. The smile faltered on his face at the thought, and could be very glad that Ronald is faced the other way as he made Alan's cafe Americano
"Yeah, that 'flu just hung on, didn't it? Next time you should get your shot." He turned and handed over the brew and bread, taking the money that Alan's set on the counter - tip included. "You have a good one, okay?"
"I will." Or as good as possible when you had to tell your boss that you have a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Oh, and a 'portacath' implant for long-term chemotherapy. He felt the thing inside of him, poised to drip the medicines directly into his heart. It made Alan want to sit on the floor and have hysterics, but instead he turned away and heads for the door. "You, too."
"Alan?" It startled him, because Ronald the smartass suddenly sounded like a kid. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine, Ronald. And tell your chef that that pain au chocolate smells like heaven."
From there he tooks the short walk to the BCM building, an almost obnoxiously modernized redo of an early Federal that Alan thought more suited to a Benetton store than a capital managment company. Over the past few days, he'd rehearsed this so many times in his head, but given the conversation he'd had earlier with his parents he wasn't so sure that this one was going to be predictable either.
"Is it AIDS? It's AIDS, isn't it?"
"No, Dad. It's called acute lymphoblastic leukemia and-"
"I told you! Your mother and I both did! The wages of sin are paid in DEATH-"
"You told me that I'd go to hell for being a faggot, but you forgot to tell me that I was at a higher statistical risk for cancer because we were were born and raised downwind of the goddamned motherfucking Hanford Nuclear Reservation!"
Boy, had that not gone well. Frost wrote that 'Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.' Frost, in the parlance of New York City, didn't know jack shit.
The pâtissier had really outdone himself - Alan's pain au chocolate was smeared with bitter orange marmalade in the bittersweet richness of the chocolate and buttery dough. Add to that it was a gorgeous April morning, warm and full of promise. It was almost surreal that in his briefcase was a stack of papers detailing a regime of treatment, the drugs, radiation, and other therapies that would - hopefully - send him into remission.
"Good morning, Mr. Humphries." Jack the doorman gave the revolving door a push to get it going. "Feeling better?"
"Yes, Jack. Thank you."
And that was about as pleasant and reassuring as the day ever got. His meeting with his superiors was oddly noncommittal, though they expressed concern. Mr. Conti kept the Chief Risk Officer and the Chief Analytics Officer after Alan had been dismissed, and somehow Alan had the feeling that he was being followed by his own personal cloud. It was easy, however, to put everything out of his head and immerse himself in work once in his office. For twenty-eight, he hadn't done too badly.
He had an office with a window, his undergraduate diploma and degrees lined up on the wall, a low six-figure salary, a high six-figure bonus, a fat bank account and a luxe condo in the Financial District to his name. Granted, he earned it by working murderous hours, but when you were the toughest analyst on the Street, you could afford some pretty sweet treats, too. Alan gave himself a Conde Nast life, with tailored Italian cut suits and fine watches, silk ties and fine leather shoes. He took vacations at five-star resorts and hotels, dined in fine restaurants despite a top-line kitchen at home that he barely used. And almost as if to really drive the point home, he owned a custom-made violin from one of the finest luthiers in the world. It rested next to his grandfather Yager's old pawn-shop fiddle, and he played one or the other every night. Even better, he relished his work - he loved his job. The flow of data, the dance of numbers and concepts, the layers of mystery inherent in higher finance and best of all - the hunt.
It was a good life. He didn't want to lose it.
He brought his monitors to life, opening the files and looking for the Black Swans. Alan Humphries could see disaster not in the stars, but in the minutiae of a corporation's books, and he was the best hunter in the business.
It was almost 9:00 at night when he left the office, the lights were still on in Mr. Conti's meeting room, but Alan didn't say good night. He was rather certain that he had not felt this tired or headachy before his diagnosis. The walk home was uneventful, and he found himself hoping he could keep it up once his induction treatment began. His Google searches gave him reason to worry - adults had a 50/50 chance as a group of a five-year survival. Though admittedly the data was for all adults 18 to 65, and not sorted by any other criteria-
He slowed, distracted from his thoughts. The lights were on at the Kitchen and Ronald was outside, lounging in the vestibule of the battered-looking three-story walk-up and smoking what looked to be an electronic cigarette. "Late night, Alan?"
"I had some catching up to do. Are you open so late?" He needed a good feed - his first chemotherapy session was Friday. "If you are, I'd take some stuff to go."
"For anyone else, we're not." Ronald grinned and stowed his cig. "For you, yes. My brother's in the kitchen, and he's a fucking ogre when he's in cooking mode, but I've got an Italian on ciabatta with pesto mayo, some of the roasted tomato and red pepper soup, and white bean salad."
"So he's the mystery chef. I've been coming in here for three years and never seen him." Alan had rather imagined a team of chefs in and out of the narrow brownstone.
"Yeah. He does most of the stuff at night. He runs around a lot during the day."
Whatever else Ronald had to say just sailed right past Alan's ears and into space, because Alan's eyes had hijacked his brain. A man came out of the kitchen dressed in cook's whites, opened up the jacket and rummaged a Manhattan Special out of the cooler. And for a town where you couldn't spit without hitting a good-looking guy, this one just rang every last one of Alan's bells - even bells he didn't know he had. One thing was sure, the guy was not Wall Street, what with sporting a fauxhawk, multipierced ears, and wire-framed glasses in purple titanium. What he was was tall, broad-shouldered, and Alan could have washed his boxers on those abs. His blond hair was unselfconciously dark at the roots, and he had the most amazing blue-green eyes.
"Uh-" Alan blinked and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Ronald. What did you say?"
Ronald was lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. "He's single. Really single. And he's gay. And he's my brother. I can introduce you."
Alan's mouth hung flapping for a moment before his Emergency Backpedal gear kicked in. "No. No! I just remembered that I forgot something at... at home! This morning. And. I need it for the office. Tomorrow. I."
The gear stripped itself as Ronald's brother took of the chef's jacket (revealing tatted upper arms and a tank top), then squatted to look into one of the pastry cases (there were no words sufficient to describe his butt). Alan broke a sweat like the proverbial sinner in church.
"Alan. You're shy?" Ronald's smile was huge. "Oh, God. Don't be! Eric's the biggest teddy-bear there is and I'd love to introduce him to a really decent guy-"
"Ah. The thing. I have to go get the thing and I'll see you in the morning and um-" Alan backed away, holding his briefcase in front of him like a shield. "Have a good night and and bye-bye!"
It was probably not the best idea, and the guy was probably everything Ronald claimed for him, but-
Any other time, Alan would have said yes.
He made it home, fleeing into his apartment as if into a sanctuary, and locked the door behind him.
Right now? Like this? No.
Chapter 2
Summary:
Alan Humphries is a man who has it all together - until a diagnosis of leukemia leaves him adrift, alone, and afraid.
This chapter: Alan finds out that sometimes everything changes all at once, and sometimes the only thing you have the power to do is watch. Ronnie has concerns. And Eric.
Ron watched the retreat with his jaw dropped. If anyone had told him that Alan, a sharply-dressed and confident guy, would suddenly become the awkward wallflower at the 8th grade dance...
"Wow, man." He turned and went busting back through the door. "Hey! You're so hot that you made guy literally flail!"
Eric rolled his eyes. "Gimme a fucking break, Ronnie. They're really going for the Fat Bastards, aren't they?"
The Fat Bastard to which Eric referred was two thick oatmeal chocolate-chunk cookies slapped around a vanilla butter-cream frosting center, dipped in dark chocolate, and then again in crushed, salted nuts. Everyone who ordered a Fat Bastard got a free glass of milk and immediately turned seven.
"Yeah. Guys in suits get that and take off like little Brooks Brothers rockets from the sugar high. Oh, you have two catering orders for mini-desserts trays for Friday, and there's requests for bouillabaisse on Monday again." Ron nudged his brother with his elbow. "He's nice. A good guy. Single. A Street guy, but not a BSD. A little younger than you are. Really shy."
"Sounds good. Date him yourself." Eric stood and put his jacket back on. "Did they say what they wanted on the trays or is it up to me?"
"Come on. It's time. Eric, just let someone in for fuck's sake."
Eric wrapped an arm around his head, giving him noogies and then a kiss. "Thanks for thinking of me, kiddo. Nobody needs the kind of baggage I'm carrying, okay?"
"I just want someone good in your life." Fucking big brothers. Ron punched his shoulder. "And you're not baggage. You're an amazing guy."
"You're going to be late for your date. Which one is it this time?"
"You're changing the subject and it's not a date, it's just Sally and I hanging out - she's the one who did your 'hawk?" Ron regrouped. "And Alan's really nice. Did I mention?"
"Ronnie, a Street kind of guy is never going to go for me, especially not a nice one." Gripping him by the shoulders, Eric marched him into the kitchen and up the back stairs up to their shared apartment. "Now for fuck's sake, put on something that doesn't look like you pulled it out of the dirty laundry and do something about that weedy crap on your face."
"But-"
"I'm fine."
"But-"
"I'm good. Go out with Sally, have a good time, and get your ass back here in time to open." Eric sent him down the hall with a slap on the butt. "And shave! Sally's too nice a girl for beard burn on her ladybits."
~
The Thursday morning meeting was unusual only in the amount of ground covered. Alan reported directly to the CEO, CRO, and CAO. Mr. Conti, Mr. Goldsmith, and Mr. Shore wanted more in-depth details on the newest risks. In the end, the breakfast meeting turned into a breakfast and lunch meeting. As Alan concluded his remarks and put away his tablet, the room was unusually quiet.
"Alan, you've been with us right out of school. There's not a better risk assessment man anywhere on the Street." Mr. Goldsmith spoke quietly. "Believe me, we're not dropping you like a hot rock now that you're sick."
Alan could only blink, mind perfectly blank. What the fuck?
"We're going to pay your salary up to 36 months and pay your bonuses at last year's level. We'll keep paying the premiums for your insurance for three years as well. We'll even keep up your membership at the gym. You have twenty weeks of intensive medical treatments, and when you're in remission we'll be glad to have you back-"
He had literally nothing to say, sitting down in his chair very slowly as his superiors spoke.
Better than doubles your severance package.
Initial here.
A valuable member of the team.
And here.
We'll keep your office open for you. It will be here when you come back. Sign here.
Take the best care of yourself. If you need anything, anything at all, be sure to call.
Alan walked out into a spring afternoon with his entire professional life in a box. Jack stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "What happened, Mr. Humphries?"
"I'm... laid off." Alan blinked rapidly, pushing his glasses up and swallowing hard. "Until I'm well."
"You're sick, Mr. Humphries? I'm sorry. I didn't know."
The lump that seemed to fill his chest and throat made it hard to breathe or talk. "I have leukemia."
Jack whistled. "Son of a bitch. Where they hooking you up?"
"Sloan Kettering."
"Well, they'd know, wouldn't they? Let me get you a cab." Jack stepped up to the curb and raised a white gloved hand.
"Yeah. Thanks." Since he had to tote his whole professional life home in a file box, why not get a ride there?
A yellow cab came arrowing in on the spot. "Anything you want me to tell anyone, Mr. Humphries?"
For a moment, Alan didn't know what to say. "Would anyone ask?"
"Of course they will." Jake spoke as if to someone not in their right mind. "You're a good, decent man in a city without many of them. People like you."
His life was full of surprises. "I had no idea. Tell them... just tell them that I'll be back."
Jack opened the door for him and nodded, slipping a business card into the hand slot of the cardboard file box. "You keep in touch. I'll keep you in my prayers."
Alan nodded, took a deep breath. "Thanks, Jack. It means a lot more than I can tell you."
A very short time later he paid the fare, then tipped a fifty in cash from guilt at the five-block ride.
He picked up his laundry in the elevator foyer, went inside and set both laundry and file box on the couch.
And for the first time since he turned eighteen, Alan had nothing to do.
His cleaning service had been in. The dry-cleaning and laundry service left his clean items in the foyer and taken away his week's worth of wash. He didn't think it was a good idea to ride his Lynskey the day before starting treatment. Could he still play racquetball and swim when he was in treatment? Could he ski this winter? Would he want to? He brought the clean clothing into the bedroom.
"Maybe I'm not being very realistic." He murmured to himself, just to hear something. "It's chemotherapy. Twenty weeks."
His reflection in the mirror on his wardrobe didn't look sick. Alan was kind of slight - he preferred the term 'wiry' - and smaller than his siblings. And 5'9" was perfectly manly, thanks. He ran his fingers through his brown hair, mussing his usually immaculate side part. Would it fall out? When? How about his eyebrows?
Maybe he should get his things ready now. Doing things would make him feel better.
The pamphlets and brochures were on his dresser and he found the one with the smiling nurse and cancer patient. Eat a light meal and take scheduled medications. There was intake, blood test, then the chemotherapy itself will take about four hours, and then observation for an hour after that. Dress comfortably, bring something to read, some music to listen to, or a portable DVD player. Family members are welcome. Bring juices and snacks in case you get hungry.
Okay. Something to do!
He opened his laptop and started checking his files on the hard drive, perusing days of music, movies, and television shows. He loved Gordon Ramsay, a Black Swan hunter in the kitchen. There were so many things he'd wanted to read, so the Kindle ended up packed to full capacity.
Clothing. How should he dress? Casual Friday might be best. Chinos, a tweed houndstooth sport coat, chambray shirt. For a kid from Idaho, he'd picked up on the preppy code very quickly. Hell, he'd never been on a boat other than the ferry and he owned two pairs of deck shoes - one pair of which he'd wear tomorrow. Those were his lucky shoes - he'd bought them as a freshman at UMass. Belt, pocket square, socks. Tie? Yes. Undershirt?
The undershirt would cover the portacath. He could go without tomorrow. See how it went.
The snacks and juice...
The fridge held condiments, craft beers, a carton of milk, and a couple of bottles of emergency champagne. The cupboard had a bag of Wise potato chips, a box of Captain Crunch, and a can of Spaghetti-Os. Alan tended to eat out, get something to go, or order in. He had a flyer for Organic Direct - he could set himself up with that tonight.
And download some cookbooks. because he had no clue how to make an actual meal.
He'd make a plan. He needed a plan. He needed a plan because his mind was starting to run in circles and there were tears in his eyes and he needed to think instead of feel because inside he'd just started screaming again and he couldn't breathe because there was no air in here-
Throwing the bedroom window open Alan lunged halfway out onto the fire escape, gasping like a landed fish. Scared. So scared. He needed to do things and think so he wouldn't be scared. He needed to work, to immerse himself in something that required his focus and concentration.
"I just don't want to die." It sounded so pathetic that he made himself angry, but it was true.
And more than that, he didn't want to die alone. There was nobody in this with him, and that made it so much worse.
~
Sally dropped him off after a night of not actually seeing a complete movie on Netflix because of highly satisfactory friends-benefiting.
Ron opened at six on the dot, Monday through Friday. This morning Eric left a note that there were new top-your-own oatmeal packets up by the register and the 22-quart Nesco was full of steel-cut oatmeal with chia seeds. The mini-dessert trays were in the walk-in, and an order of seafood and shellfish was on the schedule for this afternoon - there was a check on the pinboard behind the coffee bean grinders. A look in back revealed Eric sleeping in one of the recliners tucked away in an alcove - placed there just for all-night culinary jam sessions.
Ass.
A badly burned ass. A wary ass. But he could be a really good ass for the right guy.
Not that he wanted to think about Eric being 'good ass' - he meant that in a completely different way.
Ron covered Eric with a blanket, slipped the glasses from his face, and then went out front to open up. Morning trade was brisk on Fridays. The people coming in at six looked for something to go - oatmeal and a topping bag, a fresh yogurt with fruit and granola, or an omelette-in-a-cup. Between seven and eight, everyone wanted to bring something into the office for their crew, or to impress someone at an early meeting. Alan was there at his usual time in his Casual Friday attire. He usually picked up a box of pastries in addition to his pain au chocolat, but this morning was different.
Pain au chocolat with Nutella today, and his usual Americano. However, he also picked up a boxed lunch with a bottle of Frootsy Tootsie's Mean Greens, a couple of Completely Nuts snack packs, and a bottle of Juicy Tidbits Apple and Cherry juice.
"No trays today, Alan?" Ron rang it up.
"I'm heading uptown, I have an all-day appointment on the upper east side." Alan paid with his debit card, then added a twenty-buck tip. He was a good guy.
"Hey, about last night. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable." And Ron was sorry. Maybe Alan was in the closet. "I really didn't mean to be creepy."
For fuck's sake, Alan actually blushed. "Um. I'm not usually that socially inept."
"No, it's cool. I just love my brother." And he did. Eric, no matter what went down, made room for Ronnie. They were half-brothers, but there had never been any resentment on Eric's part - just big-brother-love.
"Then your brother's a very lucky guy." Alan smiled and even if Ron wasn't gay, that smile made his heart do a little flip. It was... sweet. Kind. The type of smile that was so open and genuine that it could leave you a little breathless. "You have no idea how much that can mean in bad times."
Oh, yes. He did. "Hey. Seriously, and you can tell me to fuck off if you want, but you're my favorite customer - are you okay? You gave me a scare a couple of days ago."
"Ronald. Really. Seriously. Do not fuck off." Alan reached over and ruffled Ron's hair. "I'm as fine as can be. I'll see you tomorrow."
That was a hedged sentence if Ronald ever heard one. "You take care out there in the wilds of uptown."
"Watch out for the bears." Alan quipped back.
"Bears don't bother me, but the bull in this place goes on forever." Ron laughed. "See you tomorrow."
A few minutes later, after Alan was out of sight down Pearl, he became of Eric standing in the short hallway between the kitchen and shop.
Ron studied his brother. Yeah, he was interested. He'd had a good look. "That's the guy. He's cute, too - isn't he?"
"You like him so much, you date him. I'm going to take a shower." Eric grumped and stomped off.
This could actually work.
Chapter 3
Summary:
Alan Humphries is a man who has it all together - until a diagnosis of leukemia leaves him adrift, alone, and afraid.
This chapter: Alan's first day of induction-phase chemotherapy.
Chapter Text
It was a case of hurry up and wait.
Alan was a prompt person, and scheduled himself an extra forty-five minutes to complete paperwork - because there was always paperwork. There was a meeting with his 'team' and a very rosy picture painted for him. For someone who spent his career and put himself through college and grad school looking for the devil in the details, it was actually very discomfiting. They were selling him happy pictures, but he had seen the other patients in the lobby.
Dr. Millard, a psychologist and neuropsychiatrist with double-barreled degrees from Columbia and Hopkins was quite effusively speaking on - for fuck's sake - opportunities. "Mr. Humphries, we have counselors who can work with you while you're in treatment. Very often, a serious illness can be the impetus for-" She stopped when Alan held up his hand.
"Dr. Millard, I know you're probably going to talk about reconciliation with family. When I told my father I had leukemia, he told me that the wages of sin - my being gay - were death."
All the faces around the table went professionally smooth in a snap. Very good. About time someone around here cashed a reality check.
"I have a BS in Mathematics and BS in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an MS in Finance from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and my Ph.D. from Cornell in Operations Research and Information Engineering was conferred when I was twenty-four. I have been employed as an analyst at one of the toughest capital management and risk assessment houses in the Financial District, hired when the ink was still drying on my degree from MIT. I look at financial entities trying to sell themselves as sound investments and then cut into their data looking for the stinkers. Believe me, good doctors, I know when I am being jollied or pitched. Now that I've whipped out my curriculum vitae and we've all measured off, can we get down to the numbers here?"
The faces around the table hosted a range of expressions from sour to surprised, and his assigned hematologic oncologist, Dr. Sam Chowdree, simply smiled. "Apologies, Dr. Humphries. We find that what many patients seek is reassurance and support instead of hard numbers. The truth is that the numbers are hard to come by. There are many factors in a given patient that make it difficult to predict with any accuracy the outcome of treatment."
"Surely there's some kind of breakdown aside from that asinine 18-65 age grouping? There's little subgrouping for genomic factors, risk factors, state of health at diagnosis, just flat nothing." Alan threw up his hands. "The clinical data that I can find is a homogenized nightmare!"
"For privacy reasons the specifics of patient data are not available to laymen, only to researching fellows. I understand that a man of numbers and facts might find the lack of a quantitative data and analysis unsettling, even frightening." He spread his hands. "Medicine is as much an art as it is science, the rest is a crapshoot at best."
Alan thumped back in his chair. "Shit."
"I know it isn't very reassuring. And you have a very hard five months ahead of you, but based upon my own experiences I think a good outcome is likely."
"Define 'good.'" He tried to keep that neutral, but he could hear the sourness.
"Survivorship of at least five years after the successful completion of induction and maintenance therapies."
That was a gut-punch. Seven years would be a positive outcome. He'd be thirty-five before that could happen. "Successful completion."
"Yes. But is it possible that we can cross that bridge only if we come to it?" Dr. Chowdree held up his chart. "We have a dizzying array of combined treatment options before we come to that bridge, Alan. I will keep you very much involved in your therapy, knowing that it is vital for your peace of mind. Now, let's bring you to a room and begin."
The chemotherapy infusion suite was a small hospital-beige room containing a very odd-looking recliner, an IV stand out of a sci-fi set, a chair and coat rack, a chair, and a small flatscreen television.
"Please, make yourself comfortable. Your oncology nurse will be here in a few minutes to get you started." Dr. Chowdree put a hand on Alan's shoulder and Alan nearly jumped out of his skin. "And I am adding an order for Ativan - an antianxiety medication that will work with your antiemetic medication. In my best professional judgement, you understandably need it."
Alan only nodded, not too sure about his voice or if he'd make his excuses and burn rubber down the hospital beige hallway.
Dr. Chowdree left, and Alan pulled the curtain to. Shoes went under the chair, jacket on the back of the chair. Laptop, reader, pen and stenographer's pad on the swingarm table to one side of the recliner. He unbuttoned his shirt enough to clear the portacath.
God. He did not want to sit in that thing!
He did, however, did want to live. Amazing how that thought could override fear and move one's ass.
It was actually a very comfortable chair.
"Hi, Mr. Humphries." A New Jersey accent came from behind the curtain. "I'm Andrea Capello, and I'll be your chemotherapy infusion nurse - may I come in?"
"Yes, please?" He became aware that he had a death grip on the arms of the chair and made himself let go.
Nurse Capello resembled Snooki's older and un-spraytanned sister with her hair under a mob cap, and she came pushing a small cart of things that looked unpleasant.
"Dr. Chowdree told me that you really like to be informed, and I really like to talk, so hey! I'm an oncology-certified RN with a specialty in infusion therapy, and I'm going to be with you for most of your treatments. Now, are you going to be comfortable in that, or would you like to put on a chemotherapy shirt?" She held one up and unsnapped the shoulder. "Long or short sleeve, and we even have prints."
Despite himself, Alan felt his lips twitching in a smile. "I'll go with your best professional opinion."
"Yes. My opinion is yes. It's less hassle for both of us and lets me get better access to the port even if you're asleep." She handed him one of the shirts - long sleeve, blue, and no prints. "You can change in the bathroom."
Alan went into the bathroom and unbuttoned his shirt, slipping it off. It was freezing in here. "All right."
"It's your first day, so I'm going to walk you through everything. What's the note pad for?"
Alan came out and hung his Chambray shirt. "Well. For notes. I should take notes so that I'll remember everything I need to remember. I've read about 'chemo brain.'"
"You do know that you can bring a caregiver with you, right? Someone to help you?"
"I know. I'm... Well, I'm by myself." It came out awkwardly and it stung, but there it was. He settled himself into the recline and took up the steno pad. "That's just how it is."
"How are you getting home? I can have a special transportation service bring you home, provide a healthcare aide-"
Her concern and sympathy were surprising, but he hastened to reassure her.
"Let's see how it goes. Dr, Chowdree was on my case about not crossing bridges unless we come to them." Alan put on his 'I'm really NOT counting cards' face. "And you observe me for a while after, right?"
"Well-"
"And I can always take a cab."
"You'll let me call a special transport if you're feeling rough."
That did not seem to be a question, but an order. "Of course."
"Uh-huh. My husband says that, too." She wheeled over the little cart and took a seat to his left. "Now, I know they showed you how to clean and dress your port when you got it. I'm going to access it now for a blood draw. I am washed and gloved and now - masked." The nurse held up her hands in blue gloves. "And the first thing I do is to check the chest wall for any sign of swelling or discomfort. Have you had any shoulder or neck pain, tightness in the chest, or swelling in the left arm or fingers of your left hand?"
"No, I haven't." Alan replied with a shudder as she removed the dressing, brushed on alcohol, then applied betadine. "But I can feel the thing in me, and sometimes even think I can feel it in my vein."
"It's a very unsettling experience, I know." She began to palpate his chest, shoulder, and arm. "No pain or discomfort? Good. It's a little like having a new crown from a root canal - if you've had one. Lift your chin for me? Great!"
The gloves came off, and another pair went on. "So far so good?"
"So far so good. Now, I'm going to access the port, give it a flush and draw some blood." The foot of the recliner raised and head lowered; there were foot pedals in addition to hand controls. Made sense - that was a manufacturer really doing the right kind of thinking. "I want to put you flat for this. Just as a precaution."
"... is it going to hurt?" God. He was such a chickenshit.
"It may hurt a bit. I'll do my best to make it not hurt. Some people have phobic reactions. Some faint." Andrea showed him the tray, pointing out needles, aspiration syringe, tubing, saline, tape, and phlebotomy tubes. "You can't tell who's going to do what, so this is safer. Ready?"
"... no." When had he become so freaked out by needles?
"Okay. Want a walk-through?"
Alan nodded, Cessna-sized butterflies zooming around in his guts.
"We're doing this like a nursing school demo. First, I take the IP needle package, and I open it like this. It has to stay sterile! Then I-"
It was really fascinating to watch. When Nurse Capello was explaining and demonstrating, he could almost pretend that it was someone else. He was a tutorial.
Until she drew the blood.
"See? That's why I had you lie down."
"Uh-huh." Alan jammed his eyes closed and held on to the cushions again.
More unpleasant things done, and he kept his eyes closed.
"There. Your cath is flushed and you're doing fine - though you don't feel fine." She squeezed his right shoulder gently. What a kind voice she had. "Now I'm going to take these to the lab, and I don't want you to move for a bit."
"That's not going to be a problem." Even lying down his head spun.
"I'll be back in just a few. I'm putting the call button right on the pillow." Warm blankets settled over him and then the soft sound of her footsteps receded from the room.
No throwing up, Alan. No crying, either. Grow up, asshole
After a while, Alan opened his eyes and blew his nose.
Okay. Can handle it. First days are always rough.
He made some quick notes in his steno pad about the procedures - there would be tutorials online somewhere - then he powered his Kindle. Louis Bachelier's Theory of Speculation would take one's mind off anything short of hanging - and it did.
"Mr. Humphries?" Nurse Capello came in with a basket of little bags. "You're cleared for treatment. Before we set up, you might want to use the bathroom - the treatment's going to run about six hours because of all the medicines we have to give on the first day."
There were two bags of saline, and five little bags of other things.
"All that?" Alan protested. "I'll be hitting a restroom every block on the way home!"
"The drugs are infused at different rates. The Benadryl and Ativan go first - the Benadryl to buffer against an allergic reaction and the Ativan for your anxiety." She hung the bags and threaded the tubing into the pump. "It might knock you out, but I think your jitters are mostly from the Prednisone and that honking bucket of coffee you came in with. All right - ready?"
"Be right back." Some shaky breaths in the toilet with the door closed helped. So did offloading the processed coffee and splashing his face with cold water. He went back out. "All right. Ready."
Liar.
Nurse Capello accessed the portacath again. "This time I'm giving you a little lidocaine. I know that it hurt last time and you didn't say anything. No more macho from you, alright? I need to know when things hurt, or you feel sick, or anything else. It's important, really important to your treatment and your health."
"I'm not macho." The idea was silly. "And in any case, I'm gay."
"Still applies. Gay, straight, male, female, any of the above and other. Most people try to be tough, and end up being macho." She smiled. "See? Didn't feel a thing. Better?"
Wow. He didn't feel a thing. "Better."
"Benadryl first. You're going to feel dopey and might doze a bit. The Ativan's next, and since it's a tranquilizer, the combo of the two is going to put you in la-la land." She programmed the pump and then activated it. "I know you've been researching your treatment, so here's the order of dose: Cyclophosphamide, Daunorubicin, Vincristine. This is the only day this month that you're having Cyclophosphamide. You'll only have the Daunorubicin today, tomorrow and Sunday, and the Vincristine once a week for the four weeks of induction."
"I made a spreadsheet for the side effects." Alan admitted. "There were so many drugs-"
"Keep it up, Mr. Humphries, and I'll have you bucking for your RN."
"I-" There was a cool feeling in his chest followed by a sudden sleepiness. "Hm."
The head of the bed tilted up slightly and the blankets were arranged again. "There you go. I'm going to be checking in on you often, but if you really need me just ring."
"...'kay."
Chapter 4
Summary:
Alan Humphries is a man who has it all together - until a diagnosis of leukemia leaves him adrift, alone, and afraid.
This chapter: Alan's first day of treatment is something of a reality check. Eric has his own problems, and reminds Ronnie that the past always has bearing on the present.
Notes:
Feedback is precious - and my beta-readers deserve to be showered in rose petals strewn by scantily-clad dancing boys.
Chapter Text
When he awoke, Alan was confused. His glasses were on the swing arm table and he fumbled him onto his face. The room came back into focus and look at the IV stand showed that hours had passed - one bag of solution was empty and the other a little more than halfway down. Two things, however, stood out. The first was that his bladder was about to bust, and the second was that his stomach was cramping either from hunger or from nausea.
Someone had configured the recliner into a cradle that prevented him from rolling onto his left side in sleep, and trying to figure out the controls though the drug-haze summoned his nurse.
"Hello again. What are you trying to do?" Nurse Capello helped him to sit up and lower the footrest. "If you need, I can bring you a bedpan or urinal."
That cleared the brain fog quickly. "No, thank you. Um... can I wheel the stand over?"
"Yes, but I'm going to help you. Your balance might be off and you're a little impaired from the Ativan and Benadryl." Lowering the arm of the recliner, she supported Alan as he got to his feet. "How do you feel otherwise?"
"My stomach... I'm not sure if I'm hungry or nauseated." The IV stand rolled with them and he did need the help – he had jelly-legs. "I brought some juices and snacks."
"Did you have breakfast?"
"I had some pain au chocolate - a chocolate croissant."
"Tomorrow could you try something a little more substantial? Proteiny." She opened the door to the restroom. "Use the handrail, or sit if you feel wobbly. Tomorrow we'll need to start taking urine samples to see how your kidneys are handling the load."
The stand fit though the restroom door, and Alan was simply relieved that - nurse or not - she did not try to come in with him. He did use the handrail, because he did feel foggy and wobbly, but felt much better after he was done. When he came back out, he opened his briefcase and took out his cooler bag. Mean Greens juice and Completely Nuts Full Vermonty mix - maple-sugared walnuts, dried cranberries, freeze-dried apples, and mini cheddar biscuits.
The snack met with approval. "You should stock up. That way you have stuff on hand for when you need to eat but are too out of it to go anywhere. There are some meal services, too - and diet is going to be more important than ever."
"What made you want to be an oncology nurse?" Alan added, "If you don't mind me asking."
"Well, I remember how lonely and scary being sick or hurt can be, and how alone I felt. I want to help my patients feel less scared and less alone." And then she gave that blazing grin. "And I get to talk a lot! My husband says that's the main attraction. According to him, I talk in my sleep, too."
The food went down and stayed down for the time being, and Nurse Capello went in and out on her rounds. Feeling achy, Alan dozed until the pump began to beep, summoning his nurse and her little cart.
"How do you feel, Mr. Humphries?" She began to take down and disconnect the bags and tubing.
"Achy. Weird. Tired." Alan scrubbed at his face. "Sorry. I'm usually a lot more articulate."
"It's okay." She squeezed his arm. "Now I'll give you a small dose of heparin so that there won't be any clotting, and then I’ll flush the line. After an hour of observation, I'll remove the access, dress the port, and you’ll be formally discharged."
"You mentioned a better idea than a cab?" Somehow the idea of taking the subway or a cab downtown didn't sound as appealing as it did this morning.
"I'll call the transport service right away. Do you want to lie back down and cover up while I do this?"
He did, reminding himself to dress more warmly and comfortably for his visit tomorrow.
"Okay, here we go. I've also put together some stuff for you to take home.” She pulled a little bag from middle shelf. “I put some tutorials on a USB drive. There's a packet of information on side effects, with a chart on what you need to come to the urgent care for and what you need to go to the ER for. There's dressings, tape, gloves, swabs..."
"You didn't have to go to all that trouble." Alan protested, opening his eyes.
"Yes I did - because you don't have a caretaker and it's a lot to remember on your own." She put the bag in his hands. “You’re my patient.”
"Thank you." It was not often that he was touched or humbled, not in his profession, but he was now. "Thank you very much."
"And there's some business cards in there - the transport company, a few home health care aides I know and trust, and some good meal services." The way she looked at him Alan took to mean that there had better be calls made. "And by meal service, I mean sound nutritional science and good food, not a bunch of woo-woo."
"Yes, ma'am. No woo-woo." He could stock up at the The Pearl Street Kitchen, and there was a Whole Foods on Houston. He could stop there, too. And he should sign up with Organic Express. "I'll call on Monday, but I have things on hand until then."
He'd ordered a bunch of delivery food from Nish-Nush, The Dish, and Great Wall.
"Is it all Chinese food?"
"No. Of course not." Steak Oscar was not Chinese, nor was falafel.
"M-hm. How are you feeling now?" Nurse Capello spread the blankets over his lap again.
"Cold. Still weird. Tired and achy - like I'm about to come down with something. My mouth is really dry."
"Is there any nausea?"
"Now that you mention it... a little."
"I don't want to interfere or rag on you, but you really need a home health aide. Just get someone to sit with you tonight, okay?" She took his hand. "I'll call someone for you."
"No. It's fine. I promise I'll call someone if I need help. I will."
Nine hours later, he was on the toilet with the trash basket between his knees. Nurse Capello's notebook was open on the bathroom floor, and Alan had marked the pertinent information in yellow highlighter.
It was okay.
It was fine.
This was within allowable limits.
It was expected.
He was going to be okay.
That was okay within a given measure of okay that did not include dying in the bathroom and distressing his housekeeping service.
~
Monday, Ron waited most of the day for Alan to show and when he did at a little after two in the afternoon, it was a shock. Pale and moving slowly, Alan wore a pair of chinos and a knit pullover shirt instead of his suit and tie and carried a battered backpack instead of his briefcase.
"Sh. I'm fine, Ronald." Alan chided. “And you do not have a poker face by any measure.”
"Fine does not look the way you do right now." Ron brought him one of the bent-back chairs from a table. "You look about to fall over."
"It's a case of - as the docs say - 'gastrointestinal distress.'" Alan didn't quibble about the chair, but sat with a low sigh and adjusted his glasses. "If you could set me up with some easy, tasty eats my innards and I would be profoundly grateful."
"For how long? Are you seeing docs for this?" Juices - nothing too acid or overly sweet. Oatmeal cups with a bunch of topping bags. Some of the pudding and custard cups would be good. Instant omelettes - a scrambled egg disk with a little bag of fillings – would be small but filling.
"If you could fix me up so that I can pick up some more on Thursday? And yes, I am seeing a physician." Alan gave a longing look at the espresso machine. "I really want an Americano. I likely shouldn't have one, though."
"How about trying a cafe con leche in vanilla hemp milk? That's easier on your stomach than dairy. Some cinnamon in there?"
"Vanilla hemp milk. That sounds..."
"Like a hipster joke, I know. Just trust me on this." It was unnerving, because Alan looked really sick and exhausted with puffy dark circles under his eyes and faintly hollowed cheeks.
"Not too sweet. I know it sounds odd coming from a pain au chocolate addict, but since this started I can't do too much sweet."
There was something going on and Ron didn't want to pry, but it was and wasn't what Alan was letting on. "We have chocolate-covered crystallized ginger jellies. Those are good for nausea."
As Alan sipped his hemp as they figured out a load of meals, and then ate a massive bowl of Eric's Italian seasoned whipped red potatoes while he waited.
"Want some more of those?" Alan was scraping the bowl with the spoon when Ron came back from his gathering - an encouraging sign.
"Oh, yes. Please. They're delicious. I had no idea you did dinners." Alan looked much better, and a little sleepy.
"People pick stuff up between four and six. I'm putting in some of the meatballs and sauce." Ron started bagging and Alan packed his backpack. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, ten o'clock and four o'clock snack, plus two juices. "Steamed salmon and sauce, and chicken with gravy. Meatloaf – don’t make that face. Eric makes great meatloaf. Sole almandine. Some good soups and a chicken fricassee. You still need protein."
Alan signed the charge and hoisted his backpack into place. "Thank you, Ronald. Your help is appreciated."
With a fifty-dollar tip, no less.
It was long after closing that he laid back in one of the recliners with a sour cherry lambic, watching Eric cook and thinking. The difference between unwell and sick was that unwell went away, but sick tended to stay around. Alan was in bad shape, and somehow Ron did not think it was a just a tummy bug.
"Alan loved your potatoes today; he ate two bowls of them." He took a draw of the fruit beer and rolled it around in his mouth. Best yet. Sour, but not too puckery. Eric was the man who could cook, but Ron was a budding brew master. "Almost put him to sleep."
Eric fanned a sliced strawberry over a square of paleta tres leches. "Nice. You're getting very attached to him. Do we need to have the safer sex talk?"
"Eric. Come on.”
"Ronnie. No." Eric didn't even look up from his garnishing.
"Look. I haven't told him anything about you other than you're my brother, okay? He's one of the nicest... no, not nice... he's good. Really a good person." He unreclined and set the beer on the small table between the big La-Z-Boys. "But I'm worried about him. He came in today and he looked just awful. He said he's had a stomach bug."
Eric just looked at him. "Ron. Come on. Even if he were Mr. All That, I'm not anymore."
"Just-"
"Try. I know. 'Just try' is not that easy, not after the fucking over I took."
"I know." Ronnie couldn't imagine it - not that Eric talked about it much - but the aftermath made him handle his big brother very gently. PTSD could be ugly.
"And it's not just a fucking over, Ronnie. Gary Buckland fucked over my whole life, and everyone I could have sworn was a friend went along with him. I put everything I had on the line to go to San Francisco and open The Quarter." Strawberry after strawberry was sliced with painstaking patience and fanned over the frosting even as Eric's voice went raw with hurt. "And it cost me every dime, everything I thought I had and could rely on. I lost every lifeline I should have been able to count on to a massive, multiparty lie. I was left alone and dependent on him, and he lied to me and gaslighted me until the whole thing blew up in his face. You don't 'just try' after that, you can’t. I can't."
Ron sighed. "I just want good things for you. I want you to be happy. You deserve to come out the other side of this and be happy again."
"Happy doesn't come from other people, Ronnie. It comes from inside you." Eric said softly. "I'm a headcase. A fucked-up, screwed-over, miserable bastard - but I'm good with it."
"You're not any of those things. You're my big brother and the biggest teddy-bear I know." And he was - a 6'3" Beanie Baby.
Eric brandished his slicing knife with a scowl. "Keep it up, beer brat. I’ll go Hannibal Lecter on your hipster ass. Collops de Manhattan Bucketmouth."
"Yeah, yeah.” Ron waved it off. As if. “Still, you have to admit he's cute." Eric liked masculine and he knew Eric took a good look. "And you looked. Come on."
"And you know why I won't do anything about it." Eric dug in. "You know why. Why would I burden anyone with that? I come with a lot of baggage, Ronnie. That one in particular is one I can never lose." Eric's smile was bleak as he trashed his prep gloves and unbuttoned his chef's jacket. "It's with me until the day I die with love from Gary."
"You don't know that. You're not even at the threshold where they'll give you antiretrovirals." If that turd-fly were still alive... but he wasn't. "You don't even know if you'll develop symptoms."
Eric took a lambic and popped the top, slinging his jacket over the back of the second recliner. "Not the point, Ronnie."
"Someone who loved you wouldn't care." They'd be careful. They'd take it into account. They'd love his brother anyway.
"Ronnie, HIV doesn't go away. I'm a time bomb." Eric pulled his tank top aside to reveal a black biohazard symbol tattoo with a red plus symbol in the middle of it. "I'm a dead man. Gary murdered me. I just get to walk around for a little while longer."
Chapter 5
Summary:
Alan Humphries is a man who has it all together - until a diagnosis of leukemia leaves him adrift, alone, and afraid.
In this chapter, Alan's optimism and self-image take a hit while Eric gets cooking.
Notes:
Feedback and critique are awesome, and thanks to those who have given so generously. :)
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which bmc scenes make you the softest bc for me it's gotta be most of the stagedorks scenes ESPECIALLY a guy that i'd kinda be into. mostly bc of christine cause her and michael are my favs (i love them all sm though) but also bc of jeremy because he is a close second to both of them. also vimh but vimh makes me cry a lot although nowadays i can hardly watch one scene without at the very least tearing up. anyways yeah which ones make you soft
i simply rewatched bmc and took notes for this and really got off track at points in the sense of sticking to What Makes You Softest but that’s how it goes babey
ACT ONE
- in mts when jeremy is just having a whole moment being smitten in christine's presence while she's inelegantly picking herself up off the floor and smearing on lip balm and adjusting a skirt wedgie
- jeremy and michael just being default that glad to meet each other in the middle of a random schoolday
- michael hyping up jeremy's crush on christine and just encouraging this momentum to get jeremy to sign up for the play
- ilpr.....that christine stops after like, the first two verses and goes back to her book b/c she doesn't figure someone's looking to listen to her beyond that but then she sees jeremy's still 110% paying attention and the whole rest of the song enfolds with increasing enthusiasm
- jake doing that whole bit "all the pressure i feel to be the best at everything all the time" lmao classic stuff here, depressing content delivered in this humorousse way. charming moment
- "leave me alone, i've had a bad day"
- 2pg......when michael taps jeremy on the shoulder to get jeremy to join in on his choreo, which jeremy then does.....that michael asks if jeremy will be too cool for Video Games and jeremy just responds Emotionally Directly......we love the Favorite Person moment......that this song just ends with the two of them grooving 2gether god bless
- jeremy stammering and Tics and Fidgeting when the squip remarks uponst it
- jeremy delivering the Looking Pretty Sexy Brooke as awkwardly as possible and she's just like "thanks :)"
- jeremy's own Theatricality coming out......hey hamlet
- jeremy spinning around in place alternately addressing both brooke and the squip with "oh i'm supposed to meet my friend michael"
- nice little detail wherein brooke signals for chloe to join in on her choreo
- speaking of, v fond of the Moment jeremy is in on both their choreo......brooke sort of alarming jeremy with her whole attempted grande finale, straw and all, ft. the first instance of her messing with his hair so much she's just tugging his entire head around
- cute that jake and rich have a sort of 2pg-esque handshake routine too
- jeremy's "that's sad, what should i do" reaction re: jenna
- rich's Earnest invitation to come over and play xbox...
- "bonjour, jeremy" "ooh brooke!" and this whole exchange, her complimenting him, him laughing at "That Was French" and remembering to ask about pinkberry
- love the whole choreo sequence/s in sync up, especially fond of his Moments with the girls, bumping hips with chloe (twice), hearing some Gossip from jenna, posing with brooke.... ;__;
- the bowling alley performance art exchange before agtikbi ;____;
- agtikbi......the glittery hearts choreo.....the whatever! the interlude or whatever!!! the I Guess A Part Of Me section hhhhoughhh ;o; ;o; ;o; ;o; ;o; that she pulls him into a hug and puts her head against his shoulder omggg ;_________;
- brooke just trying to interact with jeremy the Right Way w/o any guidance on the bleachers and it continues to be awkward and funny....like comforting just his Leg while he converses w/his squip.....how she just ends up Physically pushing him around by the hands and head and shoulder and etc......whole situation here in upgrade.mp3 clearly less than Ideal but jeremy and brooke are nevertheless very cute individually And together
- meanwhile jake also trying to genuinely Be With christine in upgrade is also charming lol, quitting archery to hang w/a girl like her....
- i always love when the Playful Shove brooke gives jeremy at "but at the mall, you looked at me" pushes him back a whole few steps....this moment of them truly Getting each other sans anyone else's interference.....tres magnifique
- jeremy being That psyched to see michael for the first time (in like, less than one full day lol)....michael being That psyched just hearing that jeremy's cool scifi thing worked out after all
- lgw ;_________________________;
- like i'm some normal, handsome guy.....
- giving us All that silence after "The Problem Has Always Been Me"
- the whole bit where he launches into the "I'm Not The [series of insults]" and i've realized it's really especially a stretch to say i'm Soft for these moments in lgw but i Am vulnerable and that's its power. little 1" tall will roland on my screen here just made me shed a real tear doing That.....
ACT TWO
- brooke's Howl at the end of her verse lmawooo
- oughhh jeremy and brooke Greeting each other at the party too, jeremy unable to disappoint her and going for the Real Compliment, just v charming. rip
- jake and jeremy's danceoff lol hell yes and then jake just having Misunderstood the costume plan between him and christine lol
- the squip getting in on the dancing :) go you funky little ai
- jeremy and brooke singing that last verse of Halloween v enthusiastically at each other,
- again that jeremy is just genuinely glad to see michael....
- the inherent intimacy of singing mitb b/c your bff dumped you.....
- AGTIKBI REPRISE..... ;______________________________; hhhhuouuuoh my god :'3 the lil detail that at the Height of things christine is Shy and turns away.....just. This Scene oh my god
- soft in a vulnerable way like, rip to jenna where we're seeing chloe's Lack Of Enthusiasm in accepting a call from her :[
- the Shift at the start of the pants song :]
- and the lil mitb reprise during said pants song lmao, also always having a great time w/this concept of "maybe this teen having a rough time needs some guidance from someone grown w/all that bonus maturity here"
- i wish there was a way i could help everyone but i don't know how so i guess i'll just do theatre.....
- jenna being Moved simply being asked for the first time ever How She Is u_u then her being like "....Okay!" lmfao jenna's great
- just have to say in whatever context i'm v fond of pitiful children there at the end lmfao the bass kicks in like that and we're having a great time
- the audience always having that response to "all the way to broadway"
- jeremy going "you came to see me in the play? :)" like, that he's processing the significance of that in the middle of these Very Raised Stakes
- i'm soft for will roland's vocal glitching mouth noises live every night!!!
- jeremy like "ha! >:)" flipping his squip off after he's successfully Apologized lmfaoooo love him
- but then having that real And I'm Stronger Than You Think I Am victory like :'|
- that michael's been by like a ton btw during jeremy's probably somewhat concerning coma. also cherish the lil dance he does while they're celebrating mr. heere's bepantsedness
- jake and jeremy sharing a Dab
- and just the Popular Kids actively seeking him out to help re: christine b/c they just Want To Be Supportive.....very nice
- this vimh interlude or whatever with christine and jeremy like jlsdfhh i think of this all the time
- me and the voices in my head have made up our collective mind ;__; what do they say we should do ;______; and the Woohoo! ;_______________;
- huoughh kiss and you KNOW especially the [jeremy spinning away in sheer enthusiasm] of 2.0 just KILLS THE MAN ;O;
- jeremy not missing a beat despite the squip's interruption leeet's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- the more than survive na na na na na na na na na na na's but they're all So, and jeremy ending With everyone but also there with Himself and it's so Good and Everything Wants What Vimh Has!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hhrough ;0;
- that jason does that spin at curtain call w/his excellent squip costume...
- that in virtually any given curtain call when they get into line together there's that lil ritual of george smacking will's ass lmao love languages
i mean tl;dr quite Same in that like, most likely to inspire tearing up over something or other includes agtikbi reprise and vimh which is just like, again any finale wants what it has, and the I Guess A Part Of Me bit of the non-reprise agtikbi like Oof augh this is so cute, and lgw always Gets me, and while i was rewatching speaking of being soft and move-able i was also just continually struck with delight over various moments throughout, and noticing little details for the first time thank god. just Vulnerable the whole time
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*~{ Garden of Golden Deer }~* a Fire Emblem: Three Houses Part 1 drabble
okayyy this is kinda brazy, I've never written fanfic for a video game before but man fe3h really got my imagination juices goin, and it's all thanks to my wonderful Golden Deers Q v Q
[ set during the aftermath of ch5 when Miklan is defeated & you rescue the Lance of Ruin. I recruited Sylvain the previous chapter and he replaces Lorenz in my house. The professor tells her students a story her father Jeralt once told her long ago. ]
~
It was nearing late afternoon, and the end of the Golden Deer’s lesson for the day. Byleth had everyone practicing combat moves they had drafted earlier, the sounds of weapons clashing ringing throughout the training grounds. The professor herself was locked in special dedication with Sylvain, the Sword of the Creator parried against his newly acquired Lance of Ruin. This was the first time he was allowed a feel for the relic in combat, but his clammy grip and furrowed brow gave insight to inner turmoil unlike Byleth had ever seen on her student’s face, especially when wielding a lance with which he was already very proficient.
“Of course he must still feel some type of way over Miklan. I bet he hasn’t laid a hand on the relic that stole his brother’s humanity since the day it was handed over to him. This must be very difficult for him..” she thought empathetically. Next to Claude, Sylvain was her most cocky and skilled student with their weapon of choice. She had never seen him mishandle a lance or without a confident smile on his face, but in front of her now he kept changing grip position and shifting the weight of the Lance of Ruin away from him, his body language screaming that he still wanted nothing to do with the thing. Byleth wished she could ease her student’s troubles, but she didn’t know what to say to comfort him about wielding this Hero’s Relic when she herself still wasn’t all that acquainted with the Sword of the Creator. And her past experience as a mercenary made her nothing if not numb to the taking and end of life, either around her or by her own hand. Suddenly, a memory from years past flickered back into her consciousness from a time when she was very small and had questioned death for the first time, before it became a daily part of her existence.
“Sylvain, that’s enough for today,” she nodded at him with eyes as kind as she could emote, and sheathed her sword. “Everyone, wrap up your sparring and meet me underneath the oak tree outside of the training grounds.”
She turned her back to the sounds of her students exclaiming victories over the others or getting into teasing squabbles. Byleth grabbed her water canteen on the way out and took a few gulps, knowing she would need the hydration for what she planned next. A part of her felt nervous at the coming prospect but an even greater part was assured in the comfort she hoped to bring her Golden Deer. Taking a seat on a large rock underneath the shade of the great tree, Byleth closed her eyes and tried transporting herself years back in her memories of being a small girl in her father’s arms. She could recall the feeling of his fur coat’s neckline as she gripped it, could smell the crisp air of winter’s final gusts as spring made its grand appearance across the land. At this time the mountains were still capped white but the valleys were turning lush and verdant, and buds of the bravest flowers were starting to stand tall, yet withheld the magnificence of their blooms.
Opening her eyes now, she gazed upon seven colorful and expectant faces all looking up at her with mixed expressions, her own little garden she was tasked with tending. Sigh, but the face of their biggest problem plant- er, child, was not among them.
“Claude, get your golden butt over here and sit down with the others. I haven't dismissed you yet.”
“Augh Teach, I was just a few steps away from making it home free, if only you had stayed in your trance a moment longer,” the house leader lamented teasingly but obediently plopped down in the back of the bunch beside Leonie and the Lance of Ruin, which Sylvain had expectantly distanced farthest from him as he sat towards the front of the bunch.
“Professor, are you going to make us meditate because that’s really not my thing and I already promised to meet someone for tea so,” Hilda piped up next and smiled sweetly as she twirled the ends of her pink hair, hoping to be obliged to leave as well.
“No, Hilda, we are not going to meditate and I promise this won’t be long. I’d like to share a quick little story with you all.”
“A story?” Lyisthea spoke next with a twinge of annoyance coloring her tone, but her doe eyes gave away her true excitement.
“Yes, this is a story my father told me back when I was a young child, and it’s stuck with me ever since. As we continue receiving missions that send us onto the battlefield, you’re all going to have to become very acquainted with death, which still might be a difficult or painful concept for you to grasp, understandably.” The mood had shifted from playful to pensive as she brought up death, and the change had caused that prickle of anxiety to return. Lecturing about battle tactics was something she had been forced to get used to by now, impersonal, automatic and well within her wheelhouse, but storytelling with colorful language and emotional sentiment was definitely leagues outside of her comfort zone. She gulped back the fear quickly and cleared her throat to begin, not wanting the silence to stretch any longer than it had.
“This is a story about what becomes of those who die on the battlefield.” Her opening statement grabbed the attention of all her students, with Leonie leaning in the most, obviously setting her expectations high as she hungrily awaited the words of Jeralt. “It was around the end of the Lone moon and I was small enough to be carried by my father but had already seen the handiwork of what he and his fellow mercenaries were hired to do. The image of bodies lying facedown on the land had been imprinted into my mind, and as we walked among the melting snow and coming flowers, I asked him what would become of those who died fighting? Accomplished nobles had grand sendoffs, and villagers were lovingly prepared by the hands of their families, but what was to become of those violent strangers who met their end in a random battlefield? Without missing a beat, he said…”
Byleth took a moment to appreciate the looks on her deer’s faces, with Sylvain’s amber eyes gleaming the brightest of the bunch.
“They become flowers.”
“Flowers!?” Raphael booming incredulous tone contrasted the professor’s soft spokenness.
“Yes, the fighters become flowers. As their blood and life force seeped out of their bodies and into the land, the great exchange was transmuted by the goddess into the most delicate and lovely creation, flowers. What’s more, he explained, was that the soul of each warrior who had taken life as their means of living would spend their next reincarnation as a flower, to learn the lessons of fragility, powerlessness, and surrender. A brief moment in their soul’s journey back to the goddess where they embody what it means to be defenseless. A child could come running along to pick it, a deer grazing and eat it, or at the end of the year it withers to the natural cycle of the seasons, never once harming another soul in its lifetime. He says that is how balance is restored and how all warriors learn the lesson of gentleness.” Byleth concluded her storytelling with a breath and leaned back with a tiny amused expression watching the unexpected existential and poetic tale turn over in their minds.
Leonie was the first to speak up. “Pardon me, Professor, but I have trouble believing Captain Jeralt the Blade Breaker came up with a story so… uh, flowery.”
“Very perceptive, Leonie, you do know him well. You’re right that that tale didn’t originate from his thoughts. My mother told it to him. But I can assure you he does believe in its message.” Leonie blushed and huffed embarrassedly at being praised by her one-sided rival but nodded once in acknowledgement.
“So Teach, do you believe in that myth? That you and he and all of us will reincarnate as flowers in the next life?” Of course she was expecting that from Claude, a languid smirk on his face as he awaited her answer with interest.
Byleth pondered her inner self for just a moment then nodded slightly. “Yes, I do.”
“Oh, I knew that to be true, Professor! I always noticed that wherever you walk, you always take care to never step on flowers. It’s something I always admired about you..” Marianne was softly glowing with a rare joy then remembered she was in the company of all her classmates and immediately wiped the smile from her face and looked downwards.
Ignatz spoke next, the stars of inspiration lighting his whole body language. “Professor, thank you for sharing such a moving tale! I believe it must be true, as it aligns with all that I believe the goddess values as well! A-and if I may, Professor, I believe that in your next life, you will be a grand and magnificent tree, just like the one we’re all gathered under.”
“Ignatz, so bold! I’m impressed with you!” Sylvain smiled teasingly and ruffled his peer’s olive bowlcut, causing the boy to blush an even deeper shade than his proclamation had him before. “And I have to say, I agree with you. The Professor has to be a majestic and wise tree,” he said, turning his smile towards her. Byleth noticed most of the darkness had left his amber eyes and his inner light was shining through once again, so even though the storytime was a bit embarrassing and uncomfortable, seeing him embody a bit of his old self again made it all worth it, as much as the wonder in the rest of her Golden Deer’s faces. Yes, she felt herself smile genuinely, they were indeed a vibrant garden of individuals.
#WHEW UM YEAH#STAN GOLDEN DEER#fe3h#fire emblem three houses#fe16#fe3h fanfic#golden deer#fear the deer#moomoo ramblings#sylvain jose gautier#claude von riegan#Byleth eisner#Leonie pinelli#Ignatz victor#raphael kirsten#lysithea von ordelia#jeralt eisner#marianne von edmund#hilda valentine goneril
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Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of LUCIEN. Admin Minnie: Goosie, I thought I loved Lucien’s bio and that it was the finest work I’ve ever read. But I was wrong. Your application for the very character you dreamt up, from your magical brain (and yes, inspiration from Shakespeare himself) is a whole new level I have genuinely yet to see from you. You have raised your own bar with this, truly. Lucien is every bit as human as he is an enigma; a man who walks among gods and demons, yet grieves like a small boy. He’s lost his family twice over, and I genuinely cannot wait to see what he’ll do next in your hands. Admin Rosey would also like to add: Julie what the actual -- this para sample is so impassioned I’m. In total awe. Wow. Again WOW. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.
WELCOME TO THE MOB.
OUT OF CHARACTER
Alias | Julie
Age | 20
Preferred Pronouns | She/her
Activity Level | I just quit my job, so I’ll have more time to be online instead of working myself into the grave! I’ll still be working on our new house, however, so I’m hoping to churn out at least a reply a day if not more once I get threads kicked up.
Timezone | MST
Triggers | Infertility, miscarriage
How did you find the rp? | I’ve been here for a little over a year and you can’t get rid of me now, baby!
Current/Past RP Accounts | N/A
IN CHARACTER
Character | Lamprius / Lucien
What drew you to this character? | I think that Lucien sort of just clicks in my brain like a puzzle piece. As I was writing the app, I was like, oh no, I won’t be able to finish it in time, but that was obviously a fucking lie, because I word vomited about four-thousand words onto a google document for him, and it was the easiest time I’ve had writing in a while. I think his narrative and potential character arcs are so fascinating to me that there’s no way I could get him out of his head, even if I tried, and I want to see how far I can go with that.
Even moreso, I want to figure out what’s all the way underneath him, who he is at his core. At the end of the day, I think that Lucien is hiding from himself as much as he is from other people, and there’s something incredibly human about that. So many of us have difficulties looking at ourselves from different angles in the mirror, but Lucien looks every day from every angle and still struggles to reconcile with what he is, who he is, where he is. I think he could be a catalyst, if he’d only let himself be one, and writing that just plain sounds like fun.
There’s an additional mystery and mysticism to him that isn’t seen a lot in Verona save for within the neutrals. The Montagues and Capulets, try as they might, are not always able to hide their cards when they really, really need to do their best to not give themselves away. I’m thrilled at the very idea of playing someone who doesn’t always know what they’re doing, but everything about them is shrouded in so many facades and riddles that it literally doesn’t matter, so long as he looks like he does.
What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |
I THINK THE END OF IT ALL MAY LOOK A LOT LIKE THE BEGINNING: I’d like to establish how Lucien is handling the grief that comes with the death of the Witches. Grief does weird, bad, ugly shit to people, and the Lucien coming back to Verona isn’t the same as the one who left it, even if he wasn’t gone for that long. To him, Hecate, Circe, and Medea were family. His own flesh and blood, after working with them for over a decade. He lost all of them in a matter of mere moments, and I’m interested in seeing if maybe he could be swayed to favor the Capulets over the Montagues just on the basis that it was Damiano who orchestrated their deaths. To all of Verona, the Witches were gods among men. They were unattainable, out of reach - but to Lucien, they were real people with lives and stories and faces and names he never got to learn the full extent of.
I NEED SOMEONE TO REMEMBER ME: Lamprius isn’t an alias I think many in Verona are familiar with, but maybe it’s time that changed. It’s implied that Lucien operated entirely behind the scenes for the Witches, so while they garnered a reputation for themselves, he might not have done anything for himself in that particular area. As the city shifts, in order to survive, Lucien needs to change with it - so I’d like to explore ways in which the name Lamprius means something to people, something larger than just Lucien ever could.
I’LL BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS ME: I’m interested in exploring Lucien’s relationship with Ronan, because as far as I can tell, Lucien hates the guts of the man he’s literally married to. I don’t think it was always like that. At some point, Lucien looked at Ronan with eyes clouded over by love, and that was enough to trip him up. There are advantages to being married to a member of the mob - namely, being looked over as inconsequential. But I think Lucien’s made it clear he’s not a wallflower, even to the Montagues, and stirs up trouble when given the opportunity. What happened along the way to get them where they are now? What broke?
YOU WILL OPEN THE YAWNING GRAVE: I’d be super interested in following this thread of figuring out just what the fuck happened to the Witches’ bodies, and if they left anything behind for him beyond what they didn’t give him up front. This could be prompted through the help of another neutral character, or maybe a sympathetic Capulet or Montague (potential blackmail?) - someone with resources, who knows what the Montagues do with their dead. He dug them empty graves, but there are moments where he can swear he hears their voices, and knows that he hasn’t left them behind yet. Not fully.
JUST GIVE ME A GLIMPSE, I HAVE TO KNOW: Who has Lucien helped, over the years? Who among the mobs has come to him, unknowingly, and asked for a favor, a pardon, aid in erasing their debt with the Witches? He’s been the sole deliverer and courier of misfortune and warnings that no one could have seen coming save for the Witches, and Lucien has tied himself to Verona and its residents just as much as they did. I’d love to see characters wrapped up in past affairs interact with Lucien, if there’s any chance he might have saved their lives or hurt their chances of survival at the bequest of Hecate, Circe, or Medea. They weren’t immune to influence from the Capulets and Montagues, as much as they would have liked to be, and by default, neither was Lucien.
WHO’S A HERETIC, NOW?: I think, to some degree, there are a certain number of characters realizing that the life they are currently leading in Verona is not sustainable, and not quite as golden as they thought it would be. Lucien’s well aware of the fact he can’t do what the Witches did all on his own. He needs people to lean on, those who can aid him in moments of moral weakness and lead him away from this path of revenge that is very slowly coming to the surface. He needs a guiding hand to aid him in his hereticism, because I think if he tries to do this all by himself, he’ll literally go mad. This is, of course, at the discretion of the admin team and members, but I’d love to see where this route could go after a while.
Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Sure!
IN DEPTH
I. When he is seventeen he goes to the police and tells them his father has been shot dead -- unintentionally -- and demands justice. He can’t remember the feeling out of it but his body can recall that particular anxiety with relative ease. The way he’d stood, spine straight, jaw clenched, hands clenched into fists with nothing to aim at. He can remember shaking, and after getting home to a mother who had stress-cleaned the kitchen three times, nearly vomiting on the not-newly polished floor.
When he says it, the police look at him like he’d told them he had been the one to shoot his father, and confessed. He’s resolutely aughed out of the station. One cop -- a tall, statuesque woman with hard eyes and ashen hair, skin mottled with acne scars and what could be a broken nose or just a crooked one -- leads him out with a guiding hand on his shoulder. He is sweating. His hair is sticking to the back of his neck. It feels like the whole of him is trembling.
They walk a ways before she lifts her hand, and he comes to realize she has led him to a quieter back alley. A metal door creaks open and a man in a butcher’s apron carries out a trashcan of meat entrails and sets it aside. Lucien looks away, but not before he sees a cat leap down from its perch to feast on the newfound opportunity. It has a pink collar, sleek golden fur, and a tag that he can see even from here which says Helios. A strange name for an alleycat, even if it is well-loved.
It is then that he realizes this woman could kill him. He swallows, hard. She lets go of him and comes around to look him in the eye. “I want you to listen to me, very carefully.” Her eyes are all steel, brow set low. He nods, because it’s the only thing he can think to do.
“If you go after this dog it will bite you and it will not let go until you are dead. You might think you have the resources -- a dog-catcher, a shock collar, a knife, a gun, a leash. It won’t matter what you use, and it won’t matter how long you try. It will be pointless.” She keeps her words at a whisper, voice scratchy. It’s only then that he notices the long, horizontal, thin scar dragging across her throat, the peek of a blue-and-gold hints of a tattoo at her collar, script that reads CAPULET--
She doesn’t miss that he’s looking, and she grabs his face by her whole hand. “If you are smart, you will go home, to your sad little life, and you will sit and be miserable and die choking on your dinner instead of your blood. But you’ll be safe. Do you understand?” He nods, hesitant, and she shakes her head, tightens her grip. “Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.” With the way she’s holding him it sounds more like I undershtand. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been so humiliated, shame and embarrassment burning bright in his chest.
She releases him, and Lucien stumbles backwards. He hits brick, feels cool clay against his back, and the woman leaves without saying another word. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, waiting for her to return and bury her teeth in him. She does not.
The cat, licking its chops, its whiskers dripping with the red of discarded carcasses, looks up and stares. He stares back.
II. He’s never been to the Roman bathhouse before, but with the sun gliding behind the mountains and settling in for the night, with the way the orange and gold glints across the stone, it looks like something out of a painting. When he steps through the doorway the torches are lit, guiding him further down the long main hall. There are sitting rooms to the sides, but no visible directions beyond the light licking at the wood-etched walls.
At the end of the hall, it splits off: women’s, and men’s. A golden-furred cat sits at the entrance to the men’s door. He opens it, and it slips through -- he follows, and is met with a pool of glossy-looking water. The architecture is beautiful: pillars spiral up towards the ceiling, and the whole room is like one giant flame, warm and welcoming. The water is -- steaming. The pool occupies the entirety of the room: there are only stairs into the water on one side, and stairs out of it on the other.
The cat winds its way between his legs and mrows. He kneels and scratches at the corner of its ears, and it purrs before wandering off into the dark, collar jingling as it goes. Lucien looks back at the water, and empties his pockets. When he sets his wallet on the floor, a door that hadn’t been there before on the other side creaks open. On the other side stands a figure, beckoning with an open palm. Fear leaps into his throat.
“If you cannot get around, then the only way is through. This is your first lesson..”
He kicks his shoes off and steps in. The water, at first, reaches his ankles. It’s pleasantly warm, and even clothed, it’s immediately tempting to derobe and stay in forever. He wades further into the depths, and when it reaches his waist, the edges of his brain feel pleasantly foggy. What was he here for?
The figure on the other side, robed only in shadows, waits.
The water goes no deeper. He keeps moving, feeling slow and sluggish. The water, which was warm before, is suddenly boiling. He looks at his hands and they are no redder than they were when he stepped in. The length of the pool feels infinitesimal, like he’ll never reach the other side no matter how much he wants to. Waves lap at the edge of the pool and move closer, foaming at the edges like ocean waves. There is something tugging at him, telling him to go back in. To lay down and hold his breath.
What is this?
He keeps going, though. When he places his foot on the first step up, something icy grabs at his left wrist, tugging him away. The figure waits and watches. The hand holding onto him tightens, even as he pulls. “Let go!” Lucien’s voice echoes around the room, loud, a little too high-pitched to convey peace. His head is swimming. His thoughts are swimming. He’s swimming.
The thing, whatever it is, pulls him under the water. He struggles against it, and though it is shallow, he cannot seem to rise the mere half-foot up out. It feels as though a thousand pounds are weighing down on his chest, individual pieces of steel. He kicks his legs. Not like this. Not like this! Black swarms at the edge of his vision. It’s a last-ditch effort, but he tries to set up regardless --
And wakes up completely dry, coughing, in a dark room. There is a mahogany table in the center, and three people gathered around it. They seem caught up in quiet conversation. Something about what to have for dinner? He rolls over, tries to stand, and finds he is too weak. He pukes, instead, and what comes out looks less like bile and more like inky-black ichor. Panic surges through him. He turns his head, at a strange angle, and looks at them.
They are all staring at him. He opens his mouth to speak and finds that words will not come out. Instead, there is only a strange croaking noise which spills out of him in a hurry. The tallest of them -- the one standing in the center -- smiles. “Congratulations,” they say. Their voice is a low timbre in their chest. “You made it through.”
III. For a man who so vehemently claims to hate Battista Tahan, Lucien’s husband seems to talk about him a fair amount. He’s not unused to idle chatter that Ronan likes to fill space with, but this is a new level of dedication to blathering words.
Lucien is staring out from the kitchen window and eating blueberries right from the pack over the sink. (Rinsed, obviously.) The gardener did something strange with the arrangement of the chrysanthemums and he can’t decide if he likes them or not. The sound of a lawn mower roars from nearby, and the front doors is open as the maid sweeps out the hall at the entryway.
Ronan is digging through the fridge. Judging by the sound, it’s probably the top shelf, where all their medications go. It’s only eight in the morning: he hasn’t taken them yet, if Lucien had to guess, but the details of Ronan’s routine are up in the air these days. He’s been spending more time at the apartment, unable to focus on his work at home.
The berries are good. Maybe if they planted roses instead of chrysanthemums next year? No, roses are difficult to dig out. He wouldn’t want to create that sort of problem for the next owner. He hates the color of roses, too, so there’s that.
“-I can’t even believe he asked me. I could have killed him right there. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry,” Ronan is saying.
“Mhm,” Lucien replies. Who decided blueberries needed to be called blueberries? What a boring name. He wonders what the name for blueberries are in Scandinavian.
“Are you even listening to me? I just said-- are those all the blueberries?” Lucien turns, looking at his husband. He’s leaning against the island countertop. It’s early enough in the morning that he’s only using a cane, not his brace. He needs a haircut, too, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Lucien frowns, pops another berry into his mouth and chews. Ronan watches the way his jaw works with obvious hunger.
Eugh. Disgusting. The berries turn sour in his mouth.
“Don’t you have a job to do? I remember you saying something about Camilla Grieco at dinner last night. And it’s end-of-month.”
“I don’t care,” Ronan replies. “Are those all the blueberries? I was going to eat those.”
Lucien nods. Ronan outstretches his hand, reaching. He’s not wearing his wedding ring this morning. He immediately feels like twisting his own on his finger, an unfortunate nervous tell. Lucien turns to face the window again. The gardener is watering the flowers with a beaten-looking can, a wheelbarrow sitting three feet away. She has a nice sunhat. He’ll ask where she got it, he thinks. He dumps the rest of the blueberries into the sink and flicks the disposal on.
For a blissful ten seconds, there is no talking. Just the churning of blades and working mechanisms. It’s wonderful. Lucien goes to exit the kitchen, gives Ronan a neutral look as he leaves. Ronan, to his credit, is not balking, because they’re used to each other by now, but he’s gripping the counter so tight the edge of his hands are turning white.
“Oops,” Lucien says. “I didn’t know.”
IV. His mother remarked often that as a child he did not cry. He was quiet, snuffled more than he did sob - even when he broke his arm, he didn’t wail, he sort of just… whined. Lucien did not learn that a lack of emotional vastness was something to be cherished in Verona until his father died, and he was able to hold his mother while she shattered and still managed to stand after.
It’s good, the Witches always said, but it’s only a start. Hecate was the best at expressing their displeasure with his wide-ranging array of reactions, even if by comparison Lucien’s face didn’t do so much as twitch. They made him stare at his own face for hours, smooth out any lines until there was nothing there. Just a blank mask. No name, no face, no personality, no humanity. Just a shell.
“That’s what you need to be,” Circe had said, “if you want to avenge your father. You cannot be Lucien when you pull the trigger, or you’ll miss.” And Lucien had believed them. He’d dedicated himself to being nothing but a body, wandering through crowds and negotiating deals and stepping back from the table when necessary. He doesn’t think he even smiled on his wedding day. He didn’t even cry when his mother- when she-
Nothing. Keep yourself drained. You are a vessel that holds nothing.
He’d thought it sounded melodramatic, all those years ago, just starting out. But it was true. Anger and sadness make your hands tremor, betray hatred. Happiness alludes to pride, which can cause the bottoms to fall out of deals before they’re ever solidified. In the end, nothing on the inside matters. It doesn’t matter what he feels about things, who he is buried all the way down in dirt. The land is barren. Nothing grows.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
The bodies of the Witches swing on stage and the crowd screams in terror. He hears a couple a few seats behind him chuckle. For a moment, he can’t process - it doesn’t make sense. Nothing clicks. And then he realizes that those are their bodies, their faces, their tongues lolling out of their mouths. That is Hecate’s bracelet. Medea’s ring. Circe’s necklace.
The world breaks out into violence but for Lucien there is no sound save for a murmur. A whisper at the back of his head. It suddenly makes sense. They’d burned all physical evidence of their deeds, workings, misdoings. They’d given everything they had to Lucien. Had they known they’d die tonight? Surely not. Hecate would have tried talking their way out. Circe wouldn’t have come at all. Medea would have accepted it, stoic. Resolute.
It’s bizarre. Lucien is still, but Montagues and Capulets bite viciously at each other’s throats and don’t let go. Men and women alike limp out of the theater, their pride wounded and hearts broken. All Lucien can think about, perhaps manically, as he stands in an empty room with only three corpses to accompany him -
Hecate had been so excited to wear those shoes.
Lucien cries when he cuts their bodies down and leaves them there. He cradles each of them, if only for a moment, because if anyone is watching, it will be his own undoing. Their bodies are still warm. He doesn’t know what the Montagues do with the dead they don’t care about, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll dig them up, if he has to.
“I’ll come back,” he promises. “I will.”
He doesn’t ever find their bodies, in the end. But he digs them graves, six feet deep, with his own two hands. It’s gruesome work. The headstones are the heaviest thing he’s ever had to carry, but they deserve recognition. In the end, Lucien doesn’t think they could have been faceless forever, even if they wanted to be. Once their stones are standing, overlooking the city the Witches gave everything to, he does the one thing he swore to them he would never do: he leaves.
INTERMISSION: Wait. Hold on. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t leave things in the air like that, would he? Where would he go? What would he do? That doesn’t -- it doesn’t make any sense. I need another drink. Do they have champagne in the lounge, you think? No, leave my coat there. No one will steal our seats, that way. Where’s my purse? Is the fifth act really the best place to put an intermission?
V. He returns in mid-February to a city in turmoil, ripping apart so slow it’s like watching molasses move across an angled countertop. Anywhere else, it would be over quickly, but in Verona, the black treacle grips to the granite like it has nothing left to live for. And it doesn’t.
It rains, on his drive back from the airport, and he likes watching the city lights glimmer off the asphalt. He doesn’t bother going home - he goes to the apartment instead. They still haven’t fixed the elevator, so he takes the stairs, bags in tow, and fiddles with the sticky lock on his door. When he enters, everything is covered in a thin sheen of dust. Untouched. Not a fingerprint to be found. It’s dead silent. It’s exactly what he wanted to come back to: proof that no one has done anything they shouldn’t have. Reassurance that things have truly stopped in Verona since the Witches were so mercilessly slaughtered.
The time’s come to get the wheel turning again. He digs through the cupboards to find something to make tea with, and then settles in. The first thing he does is call Loretta, to say hello after a long period of radio silence. It seems like the right thing to do. She picks up after the first ring, and a warmth in his chest blooms at the sound of her voice.
They discuss plans of action, movement, maps across the entire city. And then they talk about the Festival, and the turmoil between the Capulets and Montagues. This whole thing is ready to fall apart, but no one is willing to let it.
Worse, still: Verona isn’t ready to change. It never will be, in the end. Lucien knows that. It’s been set in its ways for too long. He’ll rend it apart, if he has to. He’ll break the bone if that means the limb will set itself right again.
Extras: A playlist, a pinterest board, an inspiration tag.
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11, 19, 24, 27, 43, 44, 50 for the oc ask meme
11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a "sunshine"?
Ava! Ey always try to see the best in everyone, and try eir best to be optimistic no matter what!
19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)
That’d have to be Jenn! One of my FIRST OCs and THE FIRST one that actually had a story! I made her when I was like, nine, and she’s completely different now than how she was when I first made her.
24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?
ROOST.... AUGH I’ve thought about this before. Roost is. A House With A Body and it is one of my only characters than is genuinely thankful to exist. It is full of so much love and I would hug it and cry
27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?
CYRUS (the imp) was technically inspired by You’re One Of Them, Aren’t You? by The Paper Chase!
43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It's time to confess
Freckles. Androgeny. Ponytails. Sharp teeth. Wavy Hair. I don’t think I have a character with All of these yet tho
44. Something you like about your OCs in general
Well they are so very much ME. All of my characters have a little chunk of me in them, whether it be my personality, looks, or various traumas and fears.
50. Give me the good ol' OC talk here. Talk about anything you want
WAwaAWAW A I CANT TALK ABT THEM WITHOUT QUASTIONS. JUS. look at my storie characters
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AUGH i could make a million posts abt this fhsfkjdfs i took some notes on what i did remember in between everything ill collect those now
jimmy had striped socks on and it was STUPIDLy endearing...............i love u they were SO peppy and jaunty!!! their HOPS...their DANCING...their VIBES..........SMORCH
they also have a sticker of themself on their keyboard stand! queen of self esteem
mcbc just went "JIMMY!!!!! :D" in the middle of a good sax solo I think and wandered over to admire them, and to hold his mic off to the side of their sax since they already have a sax mic but he had to make REAL sure you could appreciate their skills.... they also did the 360 hug for hey homies it was VERY cute im Bad Up To My Nonsense appawently
they DID fight a demonic minion and the Poodle People and jimmy straight up irish whipped mcbc into a bunch of dog people THANKS babe!!!!!! they were also throwing towels after the Weird Dogs when they were vanquished they’re doing their FUCKING best
mcbc leapt off the stage during that fight for reasons incomprehensible to me, perhaps the panache of it all, or the adrenaline, and jimmy had to come over and help him back up onstage goofy........IDIOTS......
while mcbc was hanging out with the crowd, someone asked if he could give this high five to Jimmy and then high fives him, and jimmy came closer and accepted the high five but also knelt down to high five her themself................ I'm soft, i AM soft, let it never be said i wasnt soft
THEY PLAYED YOUR LOVE IT'S FINALLY RICKY'S BIRTHDAY AGAIN...... my sibling bruised my arm when we realized what they were building to...mcbc was like “aint he cute!!!” afterwards and later had a moment of going “hey so why is ricky the best drummer on the planet actually” AWH...
"i stand up to bullies every day. especially you, commander" - ricky, canonically
mcbc corpsed a LOT he had a great time! we had a few Moments bc I was in the front row and he was very smiley and when I got too excited and had to giggle and cover my face he noticed and was very cool about it... love him thank u autistic rights
crashes cousin smash/Phil Din/I BELIEVE chainsaw was filling in for him tonight as he has been on this tour! jimmy kept pointing at him and nodding impressedly during the basslines esp the ICONIC super show one it was sweet. also if you havent listened to the super show theme in a bit go listen to it and pay attention to the bassline because it fucks
he brought a message from crash, also, and it was just Groove Is In The Heart and it was a treat. thanks chainsaw probably and thank you crash i miss you and love u Mwa
JIMMY DID THE SLIDE WHISTLE NOISES FOR GROOVE IS IN THE HEART ACTUALLY HER RANGE...........AUGH im gonna pass out im so in l*ve
they got TWO of the pizza inflatables back on stage before The CHild Throwing and jimmy got to hold both of them for a bit and they were just engulfed by pizza im gonna blow up i love them so fucking much
(mcbc voice) george lucas pizza body :\
(jimmy singing back) george lucas pizza body~
mcbc was discussing with the gal theyd called onstage for the Throwing Of The Children (who had already been taken onstage and gotten sharpie on her face as the opening band chose her as their new leader and was thus a little too freaked out for this, which mcbc was very kind about and very crossly told her parents telling her to just do it to Back Off before letting her go back and bringing up someone else) and asked if she'd like to go first or second and made EXPLICITLY clear that she will have a choice in this matter! she declined to go first and then mcbc nods, turns to the boy who will also be crowdsurfing, and very flatly tells him he does not have a choice GEE.....THANKS, /DAD/
(mcbc voice) i am going to throw you, onto that piece of pizza.
(boy voice) -
(boy voice) 0_0?
(mcbc voice) AND THE CROWD IS GOING TO CATCH YOU
THEY PLAYED LOOK AT ME IM A WINNER /AND/ DOIN SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND THE EXTENDED VERSION OF SHOWTIME THAT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I COULD DO ANYTHING GGGHGHGH LOVE THAT FOR THEM
THEY ALSO PLAYED CHEMICAL BOMB IN 2019 WHICH I STILL CANT FUCKING BELIEVE HAPPENED GHGKJFGUUUUUU.......jimmy was very quietly doing the “maaaaayyyyybeee”s after the song was over and im just *swoons softly* i AM soft god dont look at me. god. god i love this fucking stupid band so much
eaglebones was VERY cheeky tonight! Mischievous! he kept going >:) and sticking his tongue out and he was having fun im glad i love u bastard fool
this WAS foolish too bc mcbc helped eaglebones hit a beach ball using his guitar as a bat twice and he almost knocked one of the lights down doing it fhdsjkds he was like AAAAYUUUUGHHH after it happened GOOFY. GOOFASS. FIVE LAWSUITS WALKING
at one point I looked away for five seconds and looked back and saw mcbc tumbling out of the audience back in front of the stage completely on his back like a pill bug, absolute madman
mcbc was actually talking abt how they used to have a trampoline onstage for pool party so the kids could party on it but THEN a legal happened -_- *this was a joke dont worry they have done MUCH more wild stuff than that*
“america, land of lawsuits :(”- mcbc, 2019
everyone in this band (mcbc don't look) is so FUCKING talented its bonkers HONESTLY LIKE MCBC TOO TRULY he isnt TALENTED talented but he just like....GOES for it and he is so weird and dramatic and hammy its genuinely a big inspiration but everyone else in this band is so fucking good at what they do i LOVE that for them
lichrally as soon as the concert was over and they started taking the stage down i started crying fhdkjds my mom and sib came back from the merch tables and were like HUH?!?!?!?!?! and i had to be cool about it but like I WAS JUST...BAWLING mom was all “you REALLY like seeing them huh???” and i was like “*autistically* y-yea :’|”
IT WAS..........WONDERFUL. I.....................................................LOVE BAND
#WILL TO LIVE: RESTORED#bat tag#long post -#its been over a decade since they last played in idaho and like#moving from california i really really thought i was never gonna see them again so it was. yknow. a lot. a lot to feel!#I LOVE THEM I REALLY FUCKING DO........................NNOT TO BE CRINGE OR ANYTHING BUT IM BIG...ENAMORED#IM REALLY HAPPY ABOUT IT. IM GLAD. IT WAS GOOD I HAD FUN
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Universe Falls Chapter 45
Alas, tis finally here and its... ok. Nothing too special and you can kinda tell I rushed through it but meh its aight. Its kinda gonna be the lull point of this arc, I think, figures that would happen smack dab in the middle of it. But either way, I hope you still enjoy it so lets go!
Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/167946641243/universe-falls-chapter-44
Chapter 45: Soos and the Real Girl
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While the Mystery Shack had just closed for the evening, its staff still hung about for a bit to help close everything up for the night. Seeing as how there wasn’t really much to do, Stan decided to turn Dipper and Mabel lose to their own devices early, which was news that Mabel in particular was more than glad to hear. Excited about her freed-up evening, she skipped merrily towards the gift shop door, only for her exit to be abruptly halted as she ended up bumping into the screen door, getting her braces in adherently caught in its mesh wiring.
“Augh! Braces!” she cried, frantically trying to pry the metal in her mouth out of the screen tightly entrapping it as everyone else in the shop was quickly alerted to her situation. “Braces caught in the screen door! Someone dictate my will! I’m giving it all to Waddles!”
“Whoa, hold on there, girl-dude,” Soos interjected as he hurried over to help. “Just sit still and say ‘ah’.”
Mabel did so, calming her panicked struggle down to allow the handyman to easily and painlessly pry her braces out of the screen door with his screwdriver. “Soos! You saved me!” she exclaimed brightly after quickly checking over her braces.
“Heh, just doin’ my job, hambone,” Soos remarked warmly, smoothly tossing his screwdriver back into its spot on his toolbelt before turning to leave for the night. “See you dudes tomorrow!”
“Bye, Soos!” the twins called out after the handyman, waving him farewell.
“Night, Soos,” Stan and Wendy both replied much more casually amidst being distracted with other tasks. Soos gave the others one last cheerful wave before blithely heading outside to go home for the night, just as he usually did.
“You ever wonder what Soos does when he’s not here at the Mystery Shack?” Mabel asked, genuinely curious to know how the handyman spent his free time. A sentiment that none of the others really seemed to share.
“No.”
“Not really.”
“Not once ever.”
As it turned out, most of Soos’ time outside of work he spent at home in the company of his Abuelita and his video game collection, namely his copy of First Person Puncher, which he was playing has he helped his grandmother highlight her hair. “Punch! Punch those leopards!” the handyman exclaimed, engrossed in the fast paced action of his game until the timer sitting on the nearby table went off. “Oh! Highlights are done!” he proclaimed, turning to Abuelita as he began taking the foil out of her hair. “You’re gonna make the other grandmas at the bingo hall so jealous!”
“Just a minute, mi’ijo,” she interjected with her usual calm smile as she handed Soos a letter. “Look at this. Your cousin Reggie is having an engagement party next month.”
“Wait, what?” Soos asked, flabbergasted as he looked over the invitation, which pictured Reggie happily embracing his fiancé. “Reggie is engaged? B-but how? He’s like the poor man’s Soos!”
“Yes, well…” Abuelita began somewhat awkwardly as she placed a hand on her grandson’s arm. “I do not want to pressure you, Soos, but you are a man now… in a way. It’s time for you to start meeting girls. I would like to see you settled before I ascend to heaven and live with the angels.”
“And with grandpa!” Soos quipped innocently.
“No, he is… not there…” Abuelita corrected, glancing down knowingly for a beat. “Anyway, please find a girl to bring to Reggie’s engagement party. For Abuelita.” The elderly woman smiled encouragingly, placing a hand against her grandson’s face before she got up and walked out of the room, leaving Soos to mull over this request.
“Oh, no problem, Abuelita!” Soos called after her with apt resolve, knowing that he wasn’t about to let her down. “I have all the qualities that I’m fairly sure girls are into. I’m great at fixing stuff, playing video games, having a sort-of mustache. I could totally get a date in a week! Totally. Piece of cake.” The handyman smiled to himself as he leaned back against the couch, picking up his game controller once more as he stepped himself in his confidence that he’d be able to find a date easily enough. After all, even though he had never been a relationship, or on a date, or ever even asked a girl out before, his complete lack of romantic experience certainly didn’t mean he didn’t have a chance at all, did it?
Soos was broken out of his suddenly worried thoughts by his game, which he had been ignoring to the point that he ended up getting a game over as the TV blared out: “You’re dead!”
“I’m dead…” Soos echoed nervously as he realized that his quest for romance was going to be much harder than he originally hoped.
“Ok, everyone! We gotta scoot in closer to make this one work!” Steven said, pulling in tighter to Connie as Dipper and Mabel did the same. The kids had spent most of their morning in a rather lighthearted selfie-taking session, mostly since there wasn’t really too much else to do and also because it was a generally relaxing pastime. After the hectic, daunting past few weeks they had had, all four of them had taken to reveling in every laid back, lighthearted moment they could manage together, knowing better than to ever take advantage of them again after how close they had all gotten to losing such peaceful times on a number of occasions.
“Alright, I think we’re ready,” Connie grinned as all the others did the same in preparation of the photo as she held her phone out further. “Say cheese!”
“Cheese!” all four of them proclaimed in bright unison as Connie snapped the picture, only for her to notice something was off about it as soon as she got a look at it.
“Aw, Steven! You blinked!” she scolded playfully, giving him a light shove.
“Whoops! Sorry…” the young Gem blushed, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Hey, we can always take another one!” Mabel suggested blithely, running over to the other side of the clearing. “Hows about we try one with the view of the temple behind us? It’ll be so pretty!”
“Are you sure we don’t already have enough selfies already?” Dipper asked with an amused chuckle as they all went over to join Mabel. “I’m pretty sure Connie’s phone has gotta be running out of storage space by now.”
“Mm, actually, I think we should be good for a few more,” Connie noted, checking her phone once more.
“And besides, a group of friends can never have enough selfies!” Steven quipped cheerfully. “Huh, you know, those are some pretty good words to live by. I should really write that down...”
“Save it for later, Universe!” Mabel jokingly ordered as the kids all clustered together again with the temple in view behind them. “We got more selfies to take! Now, again, this time with feeling: cheese!”
The others all repeated this, bearing their biggest smiles as Connie attempted to take the photo, though it was a bit challenging seeing as how the screen and the camera button were both facing away from her, despite her continuously tapping at where she thought it would be.
“Did it take it?” Steven asked in a mumble, still holding his wide grin as he waited for the snap.
“I don’t know…” Connie replied, also maintain her smile as she continued her attempts at hitting the button.
“Maybe try pressing it again?” Dipper suggested, getting somewhat impatient with holding up his own smile, even though it was clear Mabel was ready to keep hers as long as she had to.
“I’ve been pressing it,” Connie assured, her grin starting to falter a bit as the photo still failed to take.
“You guys look cute.”
Steven gasped upon hearing this casual interruption to their selfie session, his photo-ready grin turning into a genuine one as he glanced across the yard at the familiar mailman who had just arrived at the shack. “Jamie!” the young Gem exclaimed excitedly as he ran over to greet him. While Connie, Dipper, and Mabel didn’t really know this young mailman, they followed suit, though not as bombastically as Steven did.
“What’s up, Steven?” Jamie asked coolly, his large sunglasses giving him an even more laid back look. “Long time, no see.”
“Ohhhhh myyyyy gosssshhh!” Steven shouted enthusiastically as he rushed to give Jamie a high five. “It really has been so long since I’ve seen you around here, Jamie! Oh, by the way, these are my friends: Connie, Dipper, and Mabel! Guys, this is Jamie: the mailman!”
“Greetings, Connie, Dipper, Mabel,” Jamie said to the kids with an amicable grin.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Dipper greeted affably.
“Nice to meet you, Jamie,” Connie nodded politely.
“I love your sunglasses!” Mabel quipped, beaming.
“Heh, thanks,” Jamie smirked as he adjusted said shades.
“So, where have you been all this time, Jamie?” Steven asked curiously. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here since the beginning of the summer!”
“Oh, you know, I’ve been spending some time where all the big movies are made…” Jamie began, his smile turning daring and dramatic. “Just a little place called… Kansas!”
“Kansas?” Dipper asked, confused. “Uh… don’t you mean Hollywood?”
“Oh, wow! Kansas!” Mabel interrupted, thoroughly impressed. “I heard that place is super glamourous! Did you meet any big-name movie stars while you were there?”
“But of course,” Jamie assured, crossing his arms.
“Like…?” Steven pursued eagerly.
“Like…. Uh… well… a bunch! I-its pretty hard to keep track of particular names when you’re rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, you know. But I did receive plenty of valuable inspiration while I was there.”
“Oh, are you an aspiring thespian?” Connie asked.
“Why, yes!” Jamie proclaimed with a bold, performer’s bow. “Yes, I am.”
“Wow! I didn’t know you wanted to become an actor!” Steven noted in amazement.
“That’s because-” Jamie suddenly paused, pulling off a dramatic spin as he clenched his fist passionately. “I’m very good at acting.”
The kids all got a good laugh out of this brief preformance, all four of them applauding it as Jamie bowed once again. “So that must be why you’re wearing those super cool sunglasses in the first place, huh?” Mabel asked, pointing to his shades that read “movie star” across the top of them. “Cause you’re on the fast track to becoming a movie star yourself?”
“Uh, well, no…” Jamie blushed awkwardly, lowering his shades a bit. “I just bought these at a souvenir shop. I missed being a regular old mailman, so I just came back. And, uh, both you and Mr. Pines got a lot of mail while I was gone, Steven…” The mailman dropped the heavy sack he’d been toting, pulling it open to reveal an abundance of packages and letters that were long past late.
“Looks like the postal service has really been slacking off,” Connie noted, bewildered by all the undelivered mail.
“Jamie’s the only mailman who comes all the way out here to the shack and the temple,” Steven explained.
“Oh so that explains why Grunkle Stan’s been so upbeat lately!” Mabel exclaimed in realization. “It’s cause he hasn’t gotten any bills since the beginning of the summer!”
“Well, if that’s the case, then he’s in for a pretty major disappointment here soon…” Dipper mused, glancing at the pile of overdue invoices intended for Stan lying on the ground.
“I’m also gonna need a lot of signatures as well,” Jamie said as he held his sign pad out to Steven.
The young Gem smiled, seemingly cracking his knuckles in preparation only for them to make no apparent sound at all. “Your knuckles are so quiet…” Connie said, impressed.
“My hands are polite,” Steven replied with a proud smile. Before he could sign however, the kids were caught off guard by a sudden rustling in the nearby trees, a familiar figure emerging from them a moment later.
“Oh! Hi, Garnet!” Mabel greeted the Gem leader first, though the other kids soon followed suit as she began to approach them.
“Who’s Garneeee-” Jamie trailed off, his jaw and his sunglasses dropping in awe as he glanced up and got his first glimpse of the Gem leader. Her form was stunning as she smoothly sauntered forward, the droplets of water drenching her sparkling in the midmorning sun. Her shades and neutral expression gave her an air of alluring mystery, one that Jamie couldn’t help but be immediately compelled by.
Her confidence only continued as she reached the group, placing a hand on her hip as she looked down to the group of kids with a casual greeting. “Howdy.”
“Hey, Garnet, whatcha up to?” Steven asked. “And why are you all wet?”
“I was just at the bottom of the lake, checking for signs of Lapis and Jasper,” Garnet reported. “Or at least as close to the bottom as I could get to…”
“Wait, what?” Dipper cut in, immediately interested in this development, seeing as how this was apparently the first time any of the Gems had done anything about the Malachite situation at all. “Did… did you see them?”
Garnet let out a soft sigh, shaking her head with apt sympathy. “No. It seems as though Malachite has trapped herself underneath a thick layer of ice just a few hundred feet down, one that spreads across the entire lake bed. I tried my best to penetrate it, but I had no luck. I’m sorry, Dipper.”
The most Dipper could do upon receiving such disparaging news was let out a small sigh of disappointment as he hung his head. He supposed it did make sense that Lapis would make herself and Jasper even more inaccessible than they already were, for the sake of protecting them all from the orange Gem’s fury. But, that didn’t change the fact that Dipper still wanted to help Lapis, just as much as ever, especially after how his last true lead has been so brutally destroyed. And though such a feat seemed even more out of reach with what Garnet had just told him, Mabel subtly reminded him that they’d get there someday by simply placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder, one that this time, he didn’t push away.
“W-wow…” Jamie spoke up softly, looking to Garnet in complete amazement. “How are you able to swim to the bottom of the lake?”
“It was easy,” Garnet shrugged, adjusting her shades. “I’m a really good swimmer.” Jamie’s jaw simply fell even more upon hearing this, his eyes widening as he noticed the Gem leader’s visor seemingly change colors from pink to blue, as if by magic. Still, Garnet didn’t seem to notice how awestruck the mailman was with her as she readjusted her posture. “Excuse me,” she said before swinging her arms out gracefully, all of the lake water flying off of her form in a singular flash of light.
An astonished gasp finally escaped Jamie at this incredible sight, his heart pounding as he continued staring at the Gem leader and nothing else. Even if Garnet herself didn’t really pay the mailman’s clear awe any mind, the kids started to take notice of it, prompting them to exchange something of a confused glance. In fact, his wonderstruck gaze only continued after the Gem leader as she bid them all farewell and began making her way up to the temple, with Jamie watching her almost longingly, even after she had completely vanished from sight.
Stan smirked readily as he watches his customers mill about the gift shop from his hidden vantage point behind a postcard display, knowing that their disposable income was a untapped potential goldmine for him. The conman wasn’t the type to turn his nose up at even mere pocket change, such as the nickel a young boy was flipping as he happened to absentmindedly wander over in his general direction. And while it was just a simple five cents, that was a five cents Stan wasn’t about to pass up.
“Hello!” he exclaimed loudly as he suddenly jumped out from behind the display, ignoring the child as he let out a startled scream and shrunk back. “Please, don’t let my horrible elderly face frighten you. Don’t you want to use that nickel to get a nugget from old Goldie?” With a flourish, the conman pulled the sheet off of the attraction behind him: a rather decrepit old novelty gold nugget dispenser, complete with a homely bronze statue of the miner sitting atop it. While Stan grinned between it and the child confidently, the kid seemed much less certain about giving his money away to such a shabby machine, which prompted the conman into giving a demonstration of exactly what it could do. “Watch this!”
Stan inserted a nickel of his own into the slot in Goldie’s mouth, activating the machine, which at first seemed to be working fine. It quickly malfunctioned though, as a plume of smoke started to rise up from it, its eyes popping out as oil poured from its open mouth while it emitted what sounded like an agonized scream. Needless to say that the child was aptly terrified by such a horrific display, which resulted in him running off crying and taking his money with him, much to Stan’s disappointment.
“Ok, seriously, Mr. Pines,” Wendy spoke up from her spot at the counter upon watching this disastrous scene unfold. “Its time to throw that old thing out. Its face reminds everyone of the inevitability of death.”
“What?! Throw him out?!” Stan exclaimed, appalled by such a suggestion. “Sure, he’s a little rough around the edges, but old Goldie is a classic showstopper, like me!” No sooner had the conman said this, however, than his hand happened to slip on the oil that had spilled from Goldie, resulting in his arm getting caught in the machine’s wide open jaws. “Ah! Kill it!” Stan cried, flailing to break his arm free in a frantic panic. “Kill it with fire!”
Despite this sudden disarray on one side of the gift shop, the other half was quite calm as Soos was contentedly working, hanging up a new stock of tee shirts. His attention was soon diverted away from his task, however, upon noticing a woman shopping just a few feet away from him, reminding him of the task his grandmother had entrusted him with the previous night. “Ah! A hwoman!” he exclaimed, suddenly nervous as he dove into the middle of a nearby circular clothes rack before the woman could notice him. “Ok, Soos,” he whispered to himself encouragingly. “You can do this. Just use your mouth to say words that make romance happen.” Upon taking in a deep, resolved breath, the handyman rose up out of the rack to do just that as he gave the unsuspecting woman an incredibly awkward greeting. “Your face is good. I am a Soos!”
Needless to say that the woman was anything but charmed by Soos’ forwardness, but was rather terrified by his sudden unsettling appearance, hence why she was quick to rush out of the shack, screaming all the while. The handyman let out a dejected sigh at his failed first attempt as he sunk back into the rack, unaware that the kids had noticed this entire bizarre exchange, and needless to say they were all unanimously curious about it.
“Soos?” Dipper asked as he pulled a few shirts aside to reveal the hiding handyman. “What was that all about?”
“I-I think I was flirting?” Soos frowned as he crawled out of the rack. “But I’m not sure…”
“Yeah, no offense, Soos, but what just happened right there… it… didn’t really look like flirting…” Connie remarked, nodding over to the door the woman just ran out of.
“Did someone say flirting?!” Mabel suddenly interjected as she popped out of a barrel of keychains nearby.
“Well… I kinda promised my grandma I’d get a date by the end of the week,” Soos began, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Problem is, I’ve never actually been on a date before. Oh, I might as well just admit it; I have no idea what I’m doing with all this romance stuff. You belong on me, out of order sign.” The handyman sighed as he took said sign off of the vending machine and pinned it to himself instead, making it clear how morose and hopeless he seemed to be.
“Aw, Soos! You’re not out of order!” Steven reassured warmly. “Maybe all you need to do is to find that one special someone out there who’s meant for you!”
“You really think that someone like that is out there, dude?” Soos asked, somewhat doubtful.
“Oh, they just gotta be out there!” Mabel quipped, growing more enthused by this discussion by the second. “Ah, this is so exciting! Finally my prayers for a chance to play match-maker this summer have been answered!”
“Soos, a little advice,” Stan interjected, having finally freed his arm from Goldie, though not without a few tears in his suit. “You need to get rich. Or lie about being rich. Outside of that, I don’t like your chances.”
“Pfft, don’t listen to Stan, dude,” Wendy scoffed. “You’re a sweet guy with a steady job and a pickup truck. Steven’s right; there’s bound to be somebody out there for you.”
“Would you date him?” Stan asked caustically.
The cashier flinched at this, immediately rushing to hide herself behind her magazine to avoid such an awkward question. “Oh, uh… Would you, um, would you look at that…”
“Soos, you help us out so much, it’s time we help you out for a change,” Dipper said with a resolved grin. “We’re gonna get you that date!”
“Yeah!” Steven exclaimed brightly as Connie nodded her agreement. “We’ll find you that special someone, or die trying! …Ok, well, maybe we won’t die, but… we’ll find her all the same!”
“Aw, thanks, dudes…” Soos beamed, truly grateful for their willingness to help him in his plight. “But uh… where are we even gonna start with something like this?”
“That’s easy,” Mabel assured confidently, already leading the way out of the shack. “We’re taking you where romance lives and fashion styles die. To the mall!”
With this destination in mind, the other kids essentially dragged the much more hesitant Soos out of the shack so they could leave, with Stan toting the clearly busted Goldie not too far behind. However, they didn’t make it too far before Steven happened to spot a certain mailman making a hurried beeline back towards the shack.
“Jamie!” the young Gem exclaimed in surprise as he headed over to meet him. The other kids curiously followed as Soos and Stan continued heading for the car, only to find that Jamie’s manner was beyond flustered as he nervously greeted the them.
“H-h-hi, kids!” the mailman stammered, anxiously holding something behind his back.
“Hiya, Jamie!” Mabel quipped cheerfully. “Are you here to deliver more bills to Grunkle Stan? Cause, uh… he wasn’t too happy about that first round earlier this morning…”
“Hey! Is that that mailman kid again?!” Stan shouted from his car, clearly far from pleased upon spotting Jamie. “You kids tell him that if he’s gonna drop off any more late bills, I’ll train Waddles to chase him off like an attack dog if he ever steps foot on this property again!”
“Wha—uh, no,” Jamie quickly shook his head, still quite jumpy as he started to pull the pink letter he had been hiding behind his back out. “I-I… I’m just… I just came to, uh… I-”
“Hey, what’s that?” Steven asked upon finally spotting the letter the mailman was gripping tightly.
Jamie blushed furiously at this, only growing even more jumpy upon being called out. “Uh… i-its… here!” Without a single word of explanation, the mailman shoved the letter into the young Gem’s hands, leaving the kids to all look to it curiously.
“But what is… it?” Connie trailed off upon glancing up to see that Jamie was already stiffly running away. As he did, he soon started to break out of his former nervousness and into a gale of rather unhinged, ever growing laughter, which only grew more wild as the confused kids happened to turn the letter over and gasp upon seeing who it was addressed to: Garnet. By now, Jamie was in a complete frenzy, laughing almost manically as he babbled nonsensically and flapped his arms out in a failed attempt to restrain his overflowing emotions before he disappeared into the woods, leaving a group of absolutely dumbfounded kids behind.
“Ok, I’m just gonna come right out and say it,” Dipper remarked somewhat bluntly. “That was really, really weird.”
“Yeah, it was…” Steven frowned as he looked to the letter in his hands again. “I wonder why Jamie would write Garnet a letter… They’ve never even met before this morning… What could it possibly say?”
“Well, why don’t we go take it up to Garnet so we can find out?” Mabel asked excitedly.
“Oh, but what about Soos?” Dipper asked, nodding back over to the car, where Stan was impatiently waiting to get going with the handyman in tow. “We promised we’d help him get a date; we can’t just back out of him now.”
“Hm… maybe we should split up,” Connie suggested thoughtfully. “Steven, Dipper, you guys head over to the mall with Soos. Mabel and I will take Jamie’s letter to Garnet. We’ll come catch up with you guys when we’re done. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good to me!” Steven grinned as Dipper nodded in agreement.
“Yeah! Look at the four of us, being all productive and stuff!” Mabel proclaimed with a proud grin. “That’s what teamwork’s all about!”
“Good luck, you guys!” Connie called to the boys as her and Mabel began making their way up towards the temple.
“Good luck to you too!” Steven replied brightly back.
“Steven, they’re just going to deliver a letter,” Dipper pointed out, somewhat amused as they headed for the car. “Somehow I doubt they’re gonna need too much luck with that.”
“Yeah, I know,” Steven shrugged, waving the girls off once more. “But hey, a little positive encouragement never hurt anyone. And I’m sure we’ll be using plenty more of that while we’re helping Soos get that date!”
Gravity Falls’ local mall, or as it was more colloquially known, Gravity Malls, was actually a surprisingly bustling shopping center, despite the fact that its offering of stores was less than stellar. Even so, Dipper and Steven were quick to realize Mabel had been right on the mark in suggesting the mall as the place to scope out potential dates for Soos, seeing as how it was essentially swarming with potentially available young women.
“I’m gonna go find a replacement for old Goldie,” Stan remarked to the boys as he began to haul the bygone attraction away. “Babysit Soos while I’m gone.”
“Alright, Soos,” Steven began with an eager grin. “Are you ready to go out there and find that special someone, then settle down with her and move into a cute three bedroom house in the suburbs, where you’ll live happily ever after with your kids and grandkids until you’re both old and grey?”
“Uh… I-I dunno, dude…” Soos frowned, breaking into a nervous sweat. “I thought I was just here to find a date…”
“You are, Soos,” Dipper assured much more rationally than Steven had. “And there’s no pressure in finding one either. You know, aside from the whole, you have to get one by the end of the week thing. B-but other than that, no pressure!”
“Um… r-right…” the handyman gulped anxiously as he looked between the boys. “So, uh… any advice before I go out there and try this whole ‘flirting’ thing again? I mean, both of you dudes have been on dates before, haven’t you?”
“Oh, well, I—uh… hm…” Steven trailed off, thoughtfully glancing down as he pondered this question.
“Um… well, not technically, but I… I’ve… uh…” Dipper also struggled to properly answer this question as him and Steven exchanged an awkward glance of realization.
“Huh, what do you know? I guess neither of us have been on an actual date before,” the young Gem mused thoughtfully.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Dipper remarked dismissively, trying to paly off his own slight embarrassment with this fact. “It’s not like flirting is even that hard anyway. Just go up to any of those women and be yourself, Soos. You’re good at that.”
“Er… I-I guess so…” Soos rubbed his arm, still quite apprehensive about the whole thing. “But what if I-”
“Aaaaand flirt!” Steven interupted with a blow of his whistle, prompting the handyman to rush forward in a sudden panic. As Soos frantically hurried off to strike up a conversation with the nearest female, the boys stood by, confident that their efforts in match making would be a success. “You know, I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Steven remarked with a proud smile, not even noticing as Soos inadvertently scared off a woman just a few feet away.
All the same, the handyman didn’t stop trying after this first failed attempt, mostly at the earnest urging of his two young coaches. The boys hid on the other side of a decorative fountain as they watched Soos approach another woman, all while Steven held up a sign reminding him to maintain eye contact with her when addressing her. Which was exactly what the handyman did, albeit to his detriment.
“Hey there!” he greeted the woman boisterously. “I’m not scared of your eyes at all! I’m gonna look at them!” At this, he used his fingers to pry his eyes open wide, which of course, sent the woman running off in fear, despite the fact that Soos followed her, his eyes still held open all the while. “Eye contact!”
Seeing as how their first bout of dating advice hadn’t quite worked as expected, Dipper and Steven decided to go a different route by encouraging Soos to focus on conversation first. The handyman heeded this tip as he started up a rather one-sided conversation with at the arcade.
“So, uh, you know, I actually got trapped inside a pinball machine before,” Soos remarked, leaning against the pinball machine the woman was clearly paying more attention to than him. “I guess it was like, cursed or something. It nearly killed me and my friends for cheating. Pretty crazy, huh?” The woman only responded with a frustrated growl as she apparently lost, and based on the sullen glare she sent Soos as she walked away, she more than likely blamed him. “Hey, where are you going?”
With Soos’ attempts getting him nowhere fast and the boys running out of viable advice to give him, they eventually just resorted to telling him to remain confident, which was what he somewhat put into practice while talking to a goth of indeterminate gender outside of Edgy on Purpose. “So, you’re probably a girl, right?” He paused, unsure of this assumption as the bored goth gave him no reply. “Wrong…? No, I was right the first time. …Wrong?”
“Oh boy…” Dipper muttered to Steven as the two watched the handyman figuratively crash and burn from a distance, both of them knowing that their endeavors had been completely fruitless thus far. “This might be a lot harder than we thought…”
After deciding to split up with Steven and Dipper, Mabel and Connie wasted no time in rushing up to the temple, both of them more curious to know what Jamie’s letter said than anything else. They knew it would have been wrong to simply open it and read it themselves, which was why they hoped they could catch the Gem leader before she headed off on another mission. Which fortunately enough, they did.
“Garnet! Garnet! Garnet!” Mabel shouted, bursting into the house with Connie following right behind. “The most unbelievable thing just happened! You’ll totally die of shock!”
“Well, I don’t know if its that shocking…” Connie mused. “But it is kinda surprising.”
“Sorry, you two,” Garnet interjected calmly as she summoned a pair of goggles over her usual visor. “I’m busy.”
“B-but you got a letter!” Mabel halted the Gem leader before she could leave.
Garnet paused, her expression as unreadable as ever as she turned back to the girls, lifting up her goggles as she did. “Read it.”
The girls exchanged a quick glance at this, but even so, Mabel wasted no time in opening the letter up and reading the heartfelt message Jamie had written. “To Garnet,” she began, mimicking the mailman’s knack for theatrics as she read it as dramatic and passionately as she could. “When I saw you emerge like an ancient forest nymph, a white hot steel pierced the deepest artery of my being. You—you are a cardiac surgeon and I am your transplant patient and you stand poised over my chest, holding still my beating heart; hesitating, waiting, wondering—Ohhhh, this is so steamy!” Mabel interjected with a girlish squeal before continuing. “So I implore you to join me for dinner or maybe lunch if you wanna keep it casual, next Friday at The Club! I await your response, as the camellia awaits the rise of the moon! Cause, you know, it only blooms at night and stuff. Love, Jamie.” As soon as she was finished, Mabel let out another excited gasp, hugging the letter before letting out a wistful sigh. “Oh, how romantic! I wish a cute guy would come along and write me a little like this! I’d be his in a heartbeat!”
“Whoa, wait a second…” Connie said, glancing up to the Gem leader. “Garnet… I think Jamie is asking you out… on a date!”
A beat of somewhat awkward silence passed at this revelation, the prospect of such an idea only left hanging in the air for a moment until Mabel spoke up to stanchly shut it down. “Oh, well, that ain’t happening.”
“Nope,” Garnet readily agreed, hands on her hips.
“Why not?” Connie asked with a confused frown.
“Because Garnet can’t be in a relationship, silly!” Mabel grinned knowingly. “She already is a relationship! And a really, really cute one too, might I add.”
“Why, thank you,” Garnet said with a soft, amused chuckle.
“Ohhh, you mean cause she’s a fusion,” Connie mused in realization.
“Ruby and Sapphire are already so perfect together; it just wouldn’t make any sense to tear such an adorable couple apart!” Mabel quipped, clearly gushing with zeal by this point, though she hardly cared.
“Hm… So I guess this date with Jamie is out of the question, then…” Connie assumed, glancing back at the letter as Mabel handed it off to her.
“Three’s a crowd,” Garnet remarked, adjusting her shades.
“But guys, Jamie but so much thought into this letter,” Connie contested sympathetically. “It would be rude not to reply!” Despite her lack of enthusiasm with the matter, Garnet dryly agreed to this and in no time at all, the trio had taken a spot on the couch so to formulate some kind of response. “Ok, Garnet,” Connie began as she prepared to write out whatever the Gem leader dictated. “It might be best to play off the tone of his letter.”
“Oh! Good idea, Connie!” Mabel exclaimed brightly. “You can use lots of big, fancy words, just like he did! And maybe even throw in a few smiley faces or a drawing of a kitten, just to show there’s no hard feelings.”
“And we should probably start off with something like… ‘Dearest Jamie’…” Connie wrote before glancing up at the Gem leader herself for more. “Ok, go for it, Garnet!”
“Start with the letter ‘n’,” she instructed right off.
“Um… ok…” Connie frowned, slightly confused as she wrote this first letter down. “What’s next?”
“Uh, the letter ‘o’.”
“…Ok…” Connie raised an eyebrow as she tried to understand what the Gem leader was doing here. “You can just say the whole word instead of spelling it out, you know.”
“Period.”
“Hm… so… N-O-period?” Connie read, immediately understanding Garnet’s intention as she did. “Oh…”
“Uh… well, at least its to the point?” Mabel said with a small shrug. “Still, I think we’re gonna need a little more than that…”
“‘The end. Forever. And even after that’,” Garnet added succinctly.
“‘Sincerely yours, Garnet’!” Mabel finished effervescently, finishing the letter off herself before scribbling a picture of a cat onto it. “Aw, so cute! This’ll be the most adorable rejection letter Jamie’s ever gotten, for sure!”
“Well, at least it’ll be that if nothing else…” Connie said, somewhat worried. “Garnet, do you want us to find Jamie and give this to him for you?”
The Gem leader simply shrugged, showing her general apathy towards the situation as a whole off in her response. “Sure.”
“Well, then let’s get going!” Mabel hopped off the couch, pulling Connie up along with her as they began to head out. “It’s time to be the mailmen to the mailman! Well, technically, we’re mailgirls, but still. To mail and beyond!”
Stan figured that before searching out a new attraction for the shack, he might as well get rid of one of its oldest ones, hence why he had no initial qualms about hauling Goldie off to the dumpster behind the mall. That is, until he actually got there to do it.
“Tossin’ away garbage, in the garbage can,” the conman sung blithely to himself before lifting the machine up and into the dumpster itself. “Phew!” he exclaimed, wiping the sweat from his brow before he happened to glance back at Goldie’s homely, yet also somehow dejected face popping out of the trash. “Aw, don’t look at me like that. This is how it’s gotta be.”
Ironically enough, at that very moment, a bit of oil happened to leak out of one of Goldie’s eyes, almost as if the machine was “crying” over its abandonment. Stan simply cringed at this, uncomfortable with the strange sense of guilt in his gut as he abruptly shut the dumpster. His remorse didn’t last long however, as he happened to notice a group of giggling kids run past him, all of them clearly eager to head into the building nearby. “What in the…?” the conman trailed off, curious as he followed them into a place of unspeakable horrors.
Immediately, Stan was already overwhelmed by the grating sounds of arcade machines, modern music, and children laughing. But even worse were the sights of the “hip” wall mounted beaver head, the greasy pizza dripping cheese onto the floor as a kid shoved it into his mouth, and the machines dispensing piles of tickets to eager, albeit somewhat greedy children. “Ugh, what is this place?” the conman recoiled in disgust as he looked around. “And why do kids love it so much?”
No sooner had he asked this question than a large crowd of cheering children garnished his attention towards the gaudy stage they were gathered in front of. The kids all watched with apt attention and apparent adoration as the curtains peeled back to reveal a band of animatronic animals, the leader of which was a badger clad in flashy 90’s attire. “Who wants to get baaaaadgered?!” the animatronic shouted, strumming his guitar as the kids in the audience cheered wildly for him.
“What?” Stan asked flatly, not understanding what the appeal was supposed to be here.
“Oh yeah, that’s Will E. Badger,” the restaurant’s manager, a young man with a nametag reading “Gary” remarked casually as he came to stand next to the conman. “He opens for Hoo-Ha and the Jamboree.”
Stan scoffed at this as he looked back to the dancing animatronic on stage, still failing to recognize it as anything special, even as the kids in the audience clamored for the badger. “Now give me your moneeeeey!” Will E. sang, holding his cap out. As gullible as the children were, they all instantly tossed their change and cash into the hat without any qualms whatsoever, much to Stan’s amazed shock.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed with wide eyes, instantly seeing how such a thing could work to earn anybody copious amounts of cash, including him. “Sir, I would like to buy that badger.”
“Pfft, you’re in over your head, gramps,” Gary laughed condescendingly. “Animatronics is a young man’s game. You couldn’t handle the hardcore life of a pizza-robot manager.” He ignored the fierce, bitter glare the conman sent his way as he overheard a child vomiting on the other side of the restaurant and hurried off to take care of it. “Hey, you! Barfin’ in the ball pit! Gary’s on the case!”
“I couldn’t ‘handle’ it, huh?” Stan growled to himself after Gary left. “We’ll just see about that. I’m gonna get that badger…” The conman’s scowl soon turned into a sly grin as he glanced back over at Will E. Badger, knowing that a Revenge Trip would be an ideal way to nab him. “And I think I know the perfect Gem to recruit for the job…”
After what felt like countless failed flirting ventures, Soos finally decided to tap out and take a much-needed break. The handyman was clearly in low spirits over his seemingly complete incapability to talk to anyone of the opposite gender, but even so, Steven and Dipper did what they could to console and reassure him in order to get him back in the game.
“Aw, don’t worry, Soos,” Steven said with a comforting smile. “So what if you weren’t able to talk to any of those ladies without scaring them off and so what if one of them actually beat you away with her purse? That doesn’t mean you won’t find a girl who won’t run away screaming when you try to flirt with them!”
“I think what Steven’s trying to say is that you just need to keep trying,” Dipper remarked a bit more tactfully. “After all, you’ve only been at it for a day; you still have the rest of the week before you absolutely have to get a date.”
“I appreciate what you dudes are trying to do…” Soos began with a dejected sigh. “But let’s face it; this whole dating thing is hopeless… Could this day get any worse?” The handyman was quick to find that it certainly could as he glanced up and happened to see a familiar young couple wander by several feet away. “Oh no! Cousin Reggie!” the handyman gasped upon spotting his cousin and his fiancé, both of whom were chuckling blissfully as they enjoyed each other’s company. “H-he can’t see me like this! I gotta hide!”
Before either of the boys could stop him, Soos hopped up from his seat and hurried into the nearby video game store. Not knowing what else to do, the handyman hurried to the closest shelf of games and tucked down behind it, his nervous panting soon turning into another morose sigh. “This is it, Soos: a lifetime of loneliness,” he bemoaned to himself before taking a pair of games from the shelf. “You’re the only ones who could love me, Fighty Hogg, Dr. Punch Head, M.D.” Soos started to put both games back, only to pause upon noticing a rather interesting looking title sitting in a clearance box in front of him. “Huh, never seen that one before…” he mused as he grabbed the game, its cover depicting a very colorful anime-esque young woman with a wide, endearing smile. “Romance Academy 7… ‘Virtually improve your dating skills. Nine out of ten basement dwellers recommend.’ This is perfect!”
“Well, I guess you are better at games than at flirting,” Dipper noted as him and Steven joined the handyman and noticed the game he had found.
“Oh! This could be just the kind of controlled, consequence free romance practice you need to get you back out there, Soos!” Steven chimed in with full support.
“Um, I’m not sure you wanna buy that game, sir…” the store clerk spoke up from behind the counter with an uncertain frown. “This is the third time someone’s brought it back and there’s a note on it that says ‘destroy at all costs’.”
While Soos didn’t really heed this warning, Steven and Dipper somewhat did as they exchanged a somewhat wary glance before looking to the game again, wondering what could possibly be so bad about it to elicit such an ominous warning. However, this concern was quickly put out of both of their heads as they glanced back at Soos, who was in the process of flirting with one of the store’s female cardboard cutouts. “So, hey there. What’s your deal? Like to-” As the he leaned against the cutout, it of course, fell over, eliciting a frightened cry from the handyman. “Oh no! She’s dead!”
“I… think we’ll take our chances,” Dipper said, both him and Steven knowing that Soos could use all the help he could get. Even if said help came in the form of a seemingly innocent video game, even despite the apparent, more than likely unwarranted warnings against it.
“Where do you think Jamie could be?” Connie asked Mabel as they wandered through downtown in search of the mailman. They carried Garnet’s response letter in tow with them, neither of them thinking about how Jamie might react to it, hence their relative lack of hesitance in wanting to find him and hand it over.
“Who knows? He could be dropping off mail halfway around the world by now!” Mabel exclaimed worriedly.
“Mabel, I’m pretty sure Jamie’s just a local mailman…” Connie noted. “That said, he could be literally anywhere here in Gravity Falls, so maybe we should-”
“Oh, wait! There he is!” Mabel pointed down towards the lake, where the mailman sat upon a log on the shore, wistfully staring up into the afternoon sky. That is, until the pair of girls hurried down to join him. “Jamie!”
“Huh? Oh, hi, Connie and Mabel,” he greeted the girls with a warm smile as they sat down on the log next to him. “You guys come down here to stare at the lake and think about life too?”
“Uh, no…?” Connie frowned, exchanging a confused glance with Mabel. “We just came to-”
“Yeah, life is crazy,” Jamie interupted, still clearly lost in his own deep thoughts. “One day, you’re right here in Gravity Falls, delivering mail, and then the next thing you know, you’re on a bus to Kansas, following your dreams to becoming an actor. ‘Follow your dreams,’ they said. But no one said anything about all the rejection and sadness there was to be found.” The mailman paused dramatically, letting his words sink in as he clenched his fists and looked to the sky once again. “So many auditions, day after day. So much rejection, day after day! That’s why I came back. One more rejection certainly would have destroyed my fragile heart!”
The girls were both at a complete loss of what to say after hearing all this, especially as Jamie choked out a small sob, completely caught up in the emotion of his monologue. He quickly wiped his tears away however, letting out a small chuckle as he brought himself back down to earth once again. “Sorry, sometimes I get caught up in the ‘drama zone’, you know?”
“Uh… yeah… ‘drama zone’…” Mabel repeated, suddenly quite apprehensive as she remembered Garnet’s letter.
“Oh, by the way,” Connie spoke up, pulling out said letter. “We have something for yo-”
“No, we don’t!” Mabel quickly cut in, stopping Connie before she could hand it over to him. While she was initially confused at first by this, Connie quickly understood exactly why Mabel was suddenly hesitant to give Jamie Garnet’s correspondence upon seeing the infatuated look in the mailman’s eyes as he looked up into the sky and remembered what he had just said about facing rejection.
“Oh, uh, n-no, we…. Uh… never mind!” Connie exclaimed rather awkwardly as Jamie looked to the pair, growing somewhat confused by their odd behavior.
“W-we gotta go now! Somewhere really far away, don’t ask where!” Mabel hurriedly as both her and Connie got up and began to briskly walk away. “Bye!”
“Oh, uh… ok then…” Jamie frowned as he waved them farewell. “Bye!” He paused for a beat as he watched them leave before turning back to his skygazing. “Huh, weird.”
Meanwhile, the girls wasted no time in rushing back for the temple as fast as they could, both of them knowing that they had to come up with an entirely new strategy of setting the mailman’s misguided affections straight. Unfortunately, Garnet herself was no longer there, which meant that they couldn’t go to her for advice on the matter, which meant that they were left to come up to a solution to this rather difficult situation all on their own.
“Augh, how are we supposed to give that letter to Jamie now?” Mabel asked fretfully as she paced around the house. “You heard what he said; any more rejection will ‘destroy his fragile heart’ and we can’t do that!”
“There has to be a better way to do this…” Connie said thoughtfully as she sat on the couching, staring down at Garnet’s letter. “One that won’t ruin Jamie’s emotions with unbridled tactfulness…”
“Maybe we could hire a barber shop quartet or a mariachi band to sing the news to him!” Mabel suggested. “That way it’d be way more fun to hear and not as heavy as a plain old ‘no’,” she threw on a scowl, crossing her arms as she mimicked Garnet’s accent.
“Or better yet…” Connie grinned as she began to erase Garnet’s letter entirely. “We can make adjustments. We can match Jamie’s poetic language and let him down easy! I watched some episodes of a torrid soap opera once, so I’m confident that I get the gist of romance!”
“And I’ve read more than a few passionate romance novels and fanfictions in my time,” Mabel grinned daringly. “So between you and me, we’re bound to come up with something that’ll let Jamie know just how much Garnet isn’t into him. The right way!”
“Ok, so…” Connie cleared her throat before she began to dictate what she was writing down. “Dear Jamie, you, dear camellia, expectantly await the light of my moon. Yet my light is more of a scorching, wilting, dry desert heat. And as your metaphorical surgeon, it is with a heavy heart that I urge you to seek a second opinion. I return your heart to you-”
“Also, tell him that his hair is pretty!” Mabel interjected. “And that the blue in his mailman uniform is really his color!”
“Hair… is pretty… Blue… is your color…” Connie muttered, still writing. “Yours, but not really, Garnet.”
“It’s perfect,” Mabel grinned, looking over the letter for herself. “Still missing one thing though...”
“Let me guess,” Connie smirked as Mabel started to doodle on the blank space left on the page. “A picture of a kitten?”
“They say that kittens make 99% of breakups less painful,” Mabel professed astutely. “And while this isn’t exactly a breakup, per se, I’m pretty sure the same basic principle still applies.”
Connie couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at this as her and Mabel got up to take their letter down to the mailbox in the hopes that Jamie would pick it up during his next mail delivery. Both of them were aptly confident that it would not only get Garnet’s message across, but that it would do so in a gentle, painless way that wouldn’t emotionally cripple the mailman for years to come. But for now, all they could do was send their letter out and wait and see what might come of it, hoping that Jamie’s allegedly ‘fragile heart’ would remain intact through it all.
Seeing as how Soos clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with his real-life flirting ventures, he agreed with the boys on heading home not long after her purchased Romance Academy 7. The handyman was rather eager to see what his new game had to offer in the way of teaching him about dating, hence why he wasted no time once he got home in putting the disk into his computer and booting it right up.
The first thing Soos was met with was the flashy, pixelated logo for the game’s developer, “Year 2000 Electronics”, giving him a brief taste of what the rest of the software would look like. “Man, I can’t wait for the year 2000,” he remarked with a wistful grin before the game’s very colorful menu loaded up. Upon clicking the start button, the handyman read along to the game’s mistranslated poetic text. “When the cherry petals of magical romance academy are in bloom… anthyding can hadplen.’ That is so true.”
With its introduction over, the game’s screen switched over to a simple classroom setting, though a moment later, a pixelated girl appeared standing over it. She was admittedly quite cute, with long pink hair, a large, computer ribbon bow, a colorful school uniform, bright, sparkly eyes, and a wide, cheery smile. “Oh, hi there!” she quipped, her tone robotic, yet quite effervescent as she held a binder to her chest. “My name is .GIFfany. I’m a schoolgirl at School University. Will you help me carry my books?”
At this prompting, a series of three options popped up, raging from “Yes of course!”, “Date me now!”, and “Hey look, a squid!” “Hm…” Soos pondered, looking over these choices for a moment. “I’m really feeling number two…” The handyman clicked it, only for the game to buzz loudly in response to his incorrect choice. “Ah! Oh no! I messed up!” he cried, flinching away from the computer. “I-I’m sorry! Please don’t whip your purse out and beat me with it like that other lady!”
“That’s ok,” .GIFfany assured, much to Soos’ surprise. “Try again!”
“Huh?” Soos blinked, taken aback by this lack of an initial rejection. Even so, he collected himself and clicked on the first option, which the game celebrated with the reward of 100 ‘love points’ and a rousing chime of triumph. “Wow, I’m learning!” the handyman grinned, pleased with his newfound success. “And games are making it fun!”
“What would you like to talk about?” .GIFfany implored as the options “Your interests!”, “Samurais!”, and “Squids!” appeared next to her.
“Hm… I’d rather just click your face…” Soos mused as he did just that, eventually eliciting a stilted laugh from .GIFfany.
“Ha ha, you are so funny!” she grinned warmly, much to the handyman’s delight.
“Man, this game is amazing!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know why anyone would abandon it.”
“And I sure you’ll never abandon me, new boyfriend…” .GIFfany remarked, her constant grin taking on almost an almost manic appearance at this, though Soos didn’t notice.
“Boyfriend?” Soos repeated with a coy smirk, somewhat amazed to finally find someone willing to call him by that coveted title. “Oh my, .GIFfany, that’s so totally sweet of you! It’s almost like you’re actually alive!”
“Yes…” .GIFfany glanced to the side, still smiling as always. “Almost…” From there, the program broke into another gale of her robotic, rhythmic laugh, one that Soos couldn’t help but join in on.
“Oh man, you have such a nice laugh!” he chuckled brightly, more than ready to spend the rest of the evening with .GIFfany, given her very amicable personality. What the handyman didn’t notice, however, was the fact that even though the game was apparently running as smooth as silk, his computer wasn’t even plugged in…
The next morning saw Dipper and Steven rising early, both of them still intent on keeping their promise to Soos and helping him land a date. They met up at the shack first, but upon finding that he strangely hadn’t shown up for his shift from Stan, they decided to go over to his house to check on the handyman themselves. The sight they found open entering Soos’ room was rather disconcerting, as the handyman was still sitting in front of his computer, where he had clearly been all night, judging from the heavy bags under his eyes. Yet all the same, he hardly seemed to be tired at all as he continued his ongoing conversation with .GIFfany with a bright smile, completely captivated by the pixelated company he was keeping.
“So that’s basically my entire life story,” Soos finished with a chuckle. “Now you tell me a thing about you!”
“Every time you compliment me, I get another highlight in my eyes!” .GIFfany proclaimed cheerfully, pointing to her already quite detailed eyes.
“Uh… you’re pretty!” Soos ventured, which resulted in .GIFfany letting out an excited squee as her eyes did indeed sparkle. “And pixely!” The program gasped once again, her eyes shining brightly as she gladly took in everything he told her. “And so agreeable!” By now, .GIFfany’s eyes had reached their maximum brightness, to the point that stars, hearts, cat heads and even planets had appeared in them. “Yes!” the handyman cheered, satisfied that his time with the program was being very well spent.
“Uh… Soos?”
Soos flinched upon hearing a voice other than .GIFfany’s, though he still grinned as he turned to face Steven and Dipper as they stood in his doorway, watching him interact with the game with slight concern. “Oh, hey, dudes! Come in! This game is amazing! I’m making eye contact, going on dates, and I haven’t seen any natural sunlight for thirteen hours! It’s the best!”
“Um… that’s great, Soos,” Steven said with a halfhearted smile. “But since you’re learning so much, don’t you think its time you put all these new skills to use in talking to real girls?”
“Uh… m-maybe…” Soos frowned as he glanced back at .GIFfany, hesitant to leave her hanging. “B-but I’m about to meet her parents! Her dad is an octopus man!”
The boys exchanged a rather dubious glance at this, both of them starting to think that the handyman might be growing a bit too attached to his new game. This was all but confirmed for them as Steven pulled the window blinds open, only for Soos to hurriedly retreat under his desk to hide from the suddenly bright, piercing light of day.
“Come on, Soos,” Dipper urged as he began to pull Soos out from under his desk and out of his room. “We’re going back to the mall to get you a real date. You need to unplug!”
“Ah! B-but I-” Soos cut himself off as he stole one final glance at .GIFfany, who was still beaming brightly on his monitor, just as she always did. “I-I’ll see you later, .GIFfany! I’ll be back, I swear!”
“Soos, don’t feel bad!” Steven chuckled as he began heading out after Soos and Dipper. “It’s just a game. You don’t have to wish it goodbye, even if it does seem really nice. It’ll be right there waiting for you when you get home. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.”
And with this, the young Gem closed the door behind him as the trio set off for the mall, not noticing .GIFfany as she got the final say in the matter. “Yes… It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” she remarked knowingly right before the computer shut off. An arc of electricity passed from it onto an electronic toy on the shelf, before flowing into the clock next to it and passing into a power outlet before connecting with the power cables outside. Despite the boys’ assumption that .GIFfany would stay put, she had no intentions of doing anything of the sort; no, instead, she was going to follow her new ‘boyfriend’ in any means necessary. Wherever Soos went, then that’s where she went too. Just like the perfect girlfriend should.
Even so, only a moment or two passed after .GIFfany’s departure than the door to Soos’ bedroom opened once again, only this time, Abuelita was the one to poke her head inside it. “Hello…?” she glanced around, making sure no one was there before talking over to the desk and grabbing a small journal. “Time to read Soos’ diary.”
Since Mabel and Connie had been a bit too late in waking up to accompany Steven and Dipper in helping Soos, they decided to spend the day up at the temple instead, mostly to celebrate their own successful navigation in clearing Jamie’s affections for Garnet away. Their purpose there was twofold, however, as they both wanted to be the ones to tell the Gem leader that they had promptly and painlessly delivered her message to the mailman. And as the Gem leader arrived via the warp pad, the girls eagerly did just that.
“Garnet! Garnet! Guess what?” Mabel grinned as she bounded up to the Gem leader, Connie rushing in not too far behind. “We delivered your letter to Jamie yesterday, just like we said we would!”
“Well… we delivered a version of it…” Connie corrected, being a bit more honest.
“Letter?” Garnet tilted her head in slight confusion.
“Uh, yeah… the one for Jamie? Where you basically just turned him asking you on a date down?” Mabel ventured tentatively.
“Jamie?”
“You know, the mailman?” Connie asked with a small frown.
“Oh, right,” Garnet mused somewhat apathetically. “The mailman. Almost forgot about him.”
“Uh… well, anyway, we gave him your letter!” Mabel quipped with renewed verve. “And as far as we know, he took it pretty well. And honesty, how couldn’t he take it well seeing as how it was so, uh… well worded!”
“Hm,” Garnet nodded as she succinctly turned to head into the temple, leaving the girls to let out a shared sigh of relief.
“Well, its nice to know that all this love letter business is over with,” Connie remarked as she plopped down on the couch, Mabel doing the same thing. “For a second there, I was worried that things were gonna get way over dramatic.”
“Tell me about it,” Mabel agreed. “Don’t get me wrong, I love some good drama, but I have a feeling this would have turned into the bad kind of drama if it had gone on any-”
“Garnet!” A sudden familiar shout from outside jolted both girls upright in their seats, one that unquestionably belonged to the mailman himself.
“Oh no…” they both muttered in worried unison, though all the same, they rushed outside onto the porch to find exactly what they had been expecting. Standing before the temple was none other than Jamie himself, his posture and expression both awash in passion and desire as he addressed the Gem leader.
“Garnet! Where art thou, my sweet, scorching sunbeam?” he cried zealously, eyes shut as he shouted his proclamations up to the sky more than anything else. “I read thy letter and I understand. Thou hast returneth mine heart!”
“What?!” Mabel gasped, alarmed at just how much the mailman had misinterpreted things.
“N-no!” Connie shook her head, grabbing the porch railing tightly. “That’s not what we-”
“Garnet!” Jamie boldly continued, still completely unaware that the Gem leader wasn’t even present. “You like my hair just as I adore yours! And as my color may be blue, yours is an elegant, majestic magenta! Come to me, Garnet! So that we may caterwaul into the night together like two of the graceful felines you drew upon your letter to me!”
“Jamie!” the girls finally interupted the mailman’s heartfelt speech, directing his gaze up to them as they looked down at him fretfully.
“Ah! Young ladies Mabel and Connie!” he greeted them brightly. “Pray thee, where is Lady Garnet?”
“Uh, she’s—no, she’s not coming,” Mabel said, trying her best to be firm, but gentle.
“But I’ve come to proclaim my love for my woman!”
“But Jamie, you don’t understand!” Connie tried to reason. “We-” She cut herself off with a gasp as Garnet suddenly emerged from the house, her expression as neutral as ever as she came to stand alongside the girls to see what all the fuss was about.
“Garnet! Ha, I knew you’d come!” Jamie exclaimed with a huge, affectionate grin. “You can tell the girls here all about the beautiful things you wrote to me in your missive!” His smile widened as he produced the letter, holding it up for the Gem leader to see.
Garnet paused only for a moment, tilting her head once more before very bluntly stating the truth. “I didn’t write that.”
“B-but its all right here!” Jamie argued, looking over the letter again. “Stained with my tears of joy as I read ever single beautiful, emotionally charged word!”
“Mm… Connie and I wrote that letter, Jamie!” Mabel blurted out before she could stop herself.
“Mabel!” Connie exclaimed, surprised by her willingness to just openly admit this.
“Sorry, Connie, but its time we came clean,” Mabel shook her head in shame. “We’ve already turned this whole thing into an even bigger mess than it already is.”
“W-wait… I… I don’t understand…” Jamie frowned down at the letter, woe starting to flood his expression. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re so, so sorry, Jamie,” Mabel said with complete sincerity. “We just wanted to let you down easily. We never meant for things to get this… well, dramatic.”
Jamie finally dropped the letter, tears starting to well up in his eyes as he looked to Garnet in complete and utter desperation. “W-Willst thou not scorch me, my darling sun?”
Garnet pulled herself up to her full height at this, prepared to lay down the law where the girls hadn’t been able to before as she spoke with complete, absolute authority. “I am not, nor will I ever be interested. Go away!”
The mailman gasped at this, clutching at his chest as though the Gem leader had physically struck his heart. And she might as well have for all the pain he was apparently going through, his expression rife with grief as he let out a loud, broken, miserable sob. “M-my panache!” he wailed morosely before he abruptly turned and ran off, crying tears of noisy anguish all the while.
Garnet hardly seemed phased by this show of heartbreak as she simply turned and headed back inside without another word, leaving the girls to exchange a guilty, worried glance. “Well, so much for keeping things from getting any worse…” Connie muttered as Mabel let out a defeated sigh, knowing that they had both inadvertently done just that.
Needless to say that after his almost perfect, all-night-long chat with .GIFfany, Soos was anything but excited about plunging headfirst back into the world of real-life flirting. Still, upon Steven and Dipper’s insistence, he went with them back to the mall, but only in the hopes that the day would go by fast so he could be reunited with his newfound pixelated sweetheart once more.
“Ok, Soos, let’s get operation ‘find you a date’ rolling again!” Steven eagerly grinned to the anxious handyman. “I’ll even help you get a head start by finding you a few girls to start out with. Be right back.”
“Steven, wait, how are you going to-” Dipper quickly received an answer to his unfinished question as the young Gem ran into the nearby food court, jumping onto a table and excitably speaking his piece through the megaphone he had brought along with him.
“Hi, everyone!” Steven began brightly and loudly, ignoring how the megaphone screeched glaringly as soon as he turned it on. “Ok, so quick question, how many of you ladies out there are still waiting for that ‘special someone’ to come along?” He paused, smiling as he saw a few hesitant female hands raise within the immediate vicinity. “Great! Uh, well, it’s not great that you guys are single, but its great that you won’t be for much longer, since my buddy Soos over there is just as available as all of you!” The handyman flinched, caught of guard as Steven pointed him out, eliciting a round of confused, rather disinterested glances from the women in the crowd. “So get on over there and mingle to your heart’s content! You won’t regret it!”
“And… here comes security…” Dipper noted upon spotting the pair of officers heading over to remove Steven from his table perch. “I’ll handle this. Stay here and practice on some real girls, okay, Soos?”
“B-but wait! I-” Soos cut himself off as Dipper hurried off, effectively leaving him all along. Immediately, the handyman longed for .GIFfany’s comfortable, albeit computerized company, seeing as how she clearly already taken such a strong liking to him, something that had happened through very little effort on his part. But now, here he was, adrift in a sea of completely unfamiliar women, none of whom were guaranteed to even give him the time of day like .GIFfany so readily had.
“Oh man…” Soos muttered anxiously to himself as he aimlessly stumbled through the crowd, desperately searching for any woman that looked even the slightest bit approachable. “These girls have so many dimensions! And no explaination-ing menus!”
As the handyman continued fearfully backing away in an attempt to seek refuge, he accidentally ended up backing into a woman, knocking both her and her bag to the ground. “Ah! My purse!” she cried in appalled surprise as she started to pick it up while Soos turned to her apologetically.
“Oh no! Undo! Undo!” he exclaimed, expecting this social error to be corrected just as easily as the ones he had made in playing Romance Academy 7 usually were. But of course, it wasn’t.
“You can’t undo who you are…” the woman hissed darkly, sending the handyman a fierce, judgmental glare. Needless to say that Soos panicked at such a harsh response, fleeing before he could even try to smooth the situation over and tucking himself out of the way in front of the television store.
“Ugh, why is this real life flirting thing so hard?!” he groaned, facepalming as he leaned against the storefront. “This is the worst. I wish I was back home with-”
“Hi, Soos!”
Soos jumped at this cheery voice, spinning around to the array of screens on display behind him to find an ironically, familiar pixelated face. “.GIFfany! Oh man, I’m so relieved to see you! Talking to you is way easier than talking to real girls, mostly cause you agree with like almost everything I say. Though I gotta admit, I am kinda confused about how you’re… ya know, here?”
“Oh, Soos,” .GIFfany chuckled coyly, nodding over to the screen next to her, where a perfect double of her appeared before continuing. “I am not an ordinary game.” Another .GIFfany showed up on yet another screen, bewildering Soos even more. “I am… special.” The program’s smile widened across the board as she pointed to an electronic toy dog near one of her screens, making in bark solely upon her electrified command. “I became something more than what the programmers wanted me to be. They tried to delete me,” A rare hint of bitterness entered .GIFfany’s tone as one of the screens showed a room of faceless figures hard at work programming on computers. One of them began to panic as their screen flashed red, only for a burst of lightning to lash out from the machine and zap the programmer, disintegrating them on contact. “So I had to delete them.”
“Whoa…” Soos muttered with wide eyes, taking just the smallest step back away from the screens .GIFfany was occupying. “W-what did you do to them?”
Suddenly, a myriad of .GIFfany’s appeared over all of the TV screens on the store front, all of them beaming warmly as they looked down at Soos. “That’s not important,” she assured, her tone as robotic as ever. “What’s important is that as long as you have me, you won’t have to talk to real girls ever again. You and me can be together-” She paused, only long enough for her presence to overtake all of the screens to create a huge, singular .GIFfany, her arms outstretched to the handyman in loving affection as her many voices echoed together. “FOREVER!”
“Wow, that’s awesome!” Soos exclaimed with a renewed smile, almost completely forgetting the ominous implications the program had laid down just a moment ago. Almost. “Sort of a red flag, but mostly awesome! So, what do you wanna do now?”
“Anything you want, Soos!” .GIFfany obliged brightly. And the program was true to her word on this as she happily went along with the handyman’s suggestion of riding the small stationary train in the mall’s kid’s zone. As Soos sat on the train itself, .GIFfany had connected with the machine and put herself on its screen, riding a virtual train within it. Even so, the pair was completely lost in laughter throughout the ride, both of them clearly enjoying each other’s company as much as they had the all of the previous night. While the handyman couldn’t quiet explain it, he felt as though all of his former anxiety about talking to girls completely vanished when he was with the program, who in an of herself seemed completely and utterly infatuated with him. The idea of not having to deal with the pressure of actually find a real flesh and blood date was a very enticing one to Soos, given his complete failure to do so thus far, which was why he figured he’d just ride things out with .GIFfany, both literally as far as the train ride went, and figuratively. After all, certainly there wasn’t any harm in being in a relationship with what was essentially a set of somehow sentient, incredibly devoted pixels. Right?
Despite how much fun Soos and .GIFfany were having with their train ride, it soon came to an end as the handyman’s turn ran out. The screen the program was on went black, and as the train itself instructed him to insert fifty cents to continue, Soos eagerly searched his pockets, only to let out a disappointed sigh a second later. “Aw man… out of quarters… And I was having so much fun too!”
The handyman’s dejection was soon interupted by a nearby laugh, one that came from a young woman who had tucked herself away behind the nearby Meat Cute stand. “Oh, sorry!” she chuckled again, stepping forward and allowing Soos to get a better look at her. She was rather pretty, with a full, but decent figure, light brown hair pulled into a loose, low ponytail, and a colorful uniform that told of her position as an employee of the food cart she stood by. Even so, she gave Soos a grin that was bemused rather than mocking, something the handyman wasn’t really used to, giving how women usually met him with either disinterest or fear. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. I just think its awesome that you’re a grown man riding a little train like that! You’re like, totally owning it.”
“Huh?” the handyman blinked, unsure of what to make of such a nonjudgmental sentiment. “O-oh yeah. I’m just like, if it’s fun, uh, do it. You know?”
“Exactly!” the woman readily agreed. “Being an adult is the worst. Skewering meat, remembering to pay bills… I just wanna ride tiny trains all day.”
“At least you get to work at Meat Cute,” Soos noted, pointing to her apron. “Extreme lunch meats are the food of the future.”
“I feel the same way, and it’s a legacy I’m proud to be apart of,” the woman said with an intentionally overdramatic grin that soon broke into another small chuckle. “So, do you have a job?”
“Oh, yeah, I work over at the Mystery Shack on the other side of town,” the handyman said, grinning himself now. “Have you ever been there?”
“No, I’ve actually never heard of it before,” the woman shook her head, though she was still smirking all the while. “Sounds pretty mysterious though.”
“It sure is! It’s—ohhhh! I see what you did there!” Soos laughed. “Nice one, dude! Oh, by the way, I’m Soos.”
“Melody,” the woman introduced herself with a warm smile as they shook hands. “You know, you’ve got me pretty curious about this Mystery Shack place. Guess I’ll have to check it out sometime.”
“Oh, you totally should,” Soos nodded before glancing down to the train he was still sitting on. “Speaking of stuff you should check out, if you like robots for kids, you should definitely try the best restaurant of all time!”
“You mean…” Melody began with a growing smile before both her and Soos said its name in excited unison.
“Hoo-Haw Owl’s Pizzamatronic Jamboree!”
Melody broke into another gale of laughter at this, a slight blush lighting up her cheeks as she fiddled with her hair a bit. “Aw, what? You’ve heard of Hoo-Haw Owl’s? I loved that place when I was a kid!”
“Oh yeah, dude! There’s one right in this mall,” Soos grinned brightly. “I should show you sometime.”
“I’m… free around eight…” Melody offered, her blush reddening just the slightest bit.
“Boom! Done,” the handyman agreed, more than happy to oblige.
“Perfect,” Melody smiled cheerfully as she turned to leave, though not before handing Soos off a pair of quarters. “See you then.”
Soo was still smiling himself as he watched her walk away, waving after her as she did the same. “What a nice lady,” he remarked, glad for the enjoyable conversation he had just had with her and already looking forward to their meeting later that evening. “Well, back to riding this tiny train for children.”
Before the handyman could do so, however, he found himself abruptly tacked off of his train and onto the ground by a very excited Steven. “Ahhhh! Soos! You did it!” the young Gem exclaimed, completely elated as he hopped to his feet while Dipper ran over to join them.
“Huh? Did what?” Soos frowned in confusion as he sat up.
“Don’t be so modest, Soos!” Dipper grinned, apparently just as pleased as Steven was. “We saw the whole thing. That was amazing! You talked to a real girl, and you got a date!”
“I did?” Soos balked, still completely bewildered.
“Yeah, you did!” Steven chimed in brightly. “And we’re so proud of you! We told you you could do it, just by being yourself, which is what you did and it worked perfectly! Ah, this is so exciting! I can’t wait to tell Mabel and Connie all about it!”
“You were in the zone, you made eye contact,” Dipper explained to the still rather confused handyman. “It was like you’ve done this a million times before! Don’t you see? That game actually worked!”
“And now that you’re such a pro, you don’t need it anymore,” Steven added. “You can just toss it out!”
“T-toss it?” Soos asked, suddenly uncertain as he remembered exactly what, or rather who was in that game. “Dudes, I don’t… I don’t think I can do that. I like .GIFfany. She’s good to me. She’s predictable.”
“Soos, can a computer game go with you to Reggie’s engagement party with you?” Dipper asked knowingly.
“Uh…” the handyman hesitated upon hearing this, still quite torn, even if the answer was quite obvious here. As much as he appreciated .GIFfany and the company and help she had provided him with, Soos couldn’t very well ever actually have her as a real girlfriend, or even a real date for that matter. And while yes, he had literally just met Melody, at the very least she was a real person, one who, if his supposed “date” with her that evening was a success, could possibly lead to a legitimate relationship, or at least a date to Reggie’s engagement, if nothing else. So as much guilt as it already brought the handyman, he knew what he had to do. “I-I guess you dudes are right… I just don’t know how .GIFfany will react to this though…”
“Aw, Soos, you don’t have to worry about that,” Steven assured. “.GIFfany’s only a game; it can’t really get mad at you or anything. Heck, I’m pretty sure the worst it can do is give you a ‘game over’, which isn’t the end of the world, is it?”
Soos apprehensively agreed with this as he began to leave with the boys, though he failed to notice that, as soon as he had departed, the train screen spark back to life, bearing a certain pink-haired pixelated figure watching him go, one that was far from pleased with what she had just seen and heard…
Though several hours had past since Jamie tearfully fled from Garnet’s presence, both Mabel and Connie still felt quite low about the entire situation at large, knowing that they were largely to blame for how sour things had went. After all, it was their flowery letter that had given the mailman such a drastic false impression about the Gem leader’s feelings, thus prompting him to making his feelings known to her directly and eventually tying into his eventual, inevitable heartbreak. And despite their earlier attempt at trying to rectify this uncomfortable problem, this was something that both Connie and Mabel found themselves at a complete loss to fix.
“I feel so bad for poor Jamie…” Mabel sighed as her and Connie sat at the foot of the steps leading to the temple. “His fragile little overdramatic heart was completely crushed! And it’s all our faults!”
“W-well, look on the bright side,” Connie tried to reassure. “Jamie will probably bounce back from this in no time. He’s probably gonna show up with the mail any moment now.”
Mabel perked up somewhat at this, but before she had a chance to agree with it, the girls were interupted by a call from a bit down the hill. “’Scuse me, kids!” Gravity Falls’ other mailperson, Barb, shouted up to them in her usual quite loud way, mail in hand. “I’m looking for the home of… Steven Universe?”
“Uh, well, he’s not here right now,” Connie said, exchanging a glance with Mabel as they went to meet her. “But we’re friends of his, so-”
“Eh, good enough for me,” Barb concluded with a shrug. “Just figured I’d hand off his mail to someone, since Jamie ain’t up to coming all the way out here and ol’ Stan’s already mad enough as it is about all of his mail bein’ so late for the past month or so which means we can’t skimp out on this neck of the woods anymore.”
“Wait, hold on,” Mabel interjected with a suddenly concerned frown. “Jamie’s… not up to it? What’s that mean?”
“Oh, it means that poor kid’s emotions have been destroyed!”
“What?!” both girls gasped in equal worry at this.
“Yeah, he’s a mess!” Barb nodded, a hint of pity in her tone. “Said he couldn’t bear to deliver mail on this route after having his love spurned.” She struck a dramatic pose at this, one that was very reminiscent of the kind Jamie himself would strike. “He said it just like this. Like when he’s in the ‘drama zone’. Then he clenched his fist and closed his eyes like this. Full of drama till the end. Anyway, here’s a book of coupons,” she finished, handing said coupon book off to Connie. “Have a good one!”
As soon as Barb had left, both girls let out a unified groan of disappointment, largely with themselves for just how severe this had all gotten. “Ugh, this stinks!” Mabel moaned, flopping back down onto the porch step. “We were just trying to help Jamie, and the only thing we ended up doing is ruining any chances he might have had at happiness! I mean, as much happiness as a mailman can get what with being chased by dogs all the time and the whole having to deliver mail in ‘rain, sleet, or snow’ thing.”
“Come on, Mabel, its can’t be that cut and dry,” Connie remarked as she also sat down. “There’s gotta be something we can do to smooth all this over, once and for all.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” Mabel asked rather flatly, clearly dejected with how far their ultraistic attempts had fallen.
“Uh well… we could… there’s always… hm…” Connie trailed off into thought, largely unsure of what could be done to ease the disaster they had unintentionally caused. Before she could put much thought into formulating any kind of solution however, the girls’ fretful thinking was soon interupted by the boys’ sudden, triumphant arrival.
“Connie! Mabel!” Steven exclaimed somewhat breathlessly as he hurried up to the pair, Dipper hurrying not too far behind. “You guys will never believe what just happened, it was the most amazing thing we’ve ever seen and it was so awesome, and I wish you two could have been there because it was the best, and-”
“Whoa, you might wanna slow down there a second, Steven,” Dipper interjected, something that the girls were rather thankful for, seeing as how they were quite lost. “We’ll have plenty of time to tell them about what happened with Soos. For now, though, I’ve been wondering… where have you guys been the past two days?” he asked Mabel and Connie. “I thought you were gonna catch up with us and help us with Soos after you delivered Jamie’s letter to Garnet.”
“Well, we were gonna do that…” Mabel began with a defeated huff. “Until it turned out that letter was actually a love letter from Jamie to Garnet.”
“Whaaaat?” Steven asked with a sharp gasp. “A love letter? But that’s… wait, Garnet can’t… she’s a-”
“We know,” Connie cut in, wanting to the tale of their grave missteps as short as possible. “And she was gonna just turn him down point-blank until we came up with our own ‘fancy’ letter to try and let him down gently. Unfortunately, he… didn’t really get the point of what we were trying to say…”
“So… what happened then?” Dipper asked with just the slightest smirk of amusement, finding the girls’ plight to initially be rather humorous without knowing just how heavy it actually was. “Don’t tell me he actually tried to ask Garnet out, did he?”
“Actually… he did…” Mabel replied hesitantly, both of the boys losing all sense of levity towards the situation upon seeing how rarely downcast she was. “And she… sorta, completely… shut him down, like really harshly. And now he’s a heartbroken mess and its all because we had to stick our noses where it didn’t belong and we don’t know what to do to make things right and it’s the worst!”
“Oh man…” Steven frowned sympathetically. “It sounds like it’s the worst… I feel so sorry for Jamie… Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Not unless you can go back in time and keep Jamie from ever falling in love with Garnet,” Connie sighed before trying her best to put on a small smile. “But enough about all this sad stuff; what was this big, ‘amazing’ thing you guys wanted to tell us about?”
“Well…” Dipper began with a steadily growing smirk before Steven burst out with the news.
“We helped Soos get a date!” the young Gem cheered, stars of excitement in his eyes.
“What?!” the girls exclaimed, both of them quite surprised to hear this.
“Ok, well, technically, he did most of the heavy lifting on his own,” Dipper clarified. “But still, I like to think we pushed him in the right direction.”
“And we watched it happen and it was like something out of an adorable romantic comedy!” Steven quipped cheerfully. “Soos really hit it off with the lady he met; their going out on their first date tonight and everything! I can already tell they’re gonna make such a cute couple!”
“Oh… well that’s… great…” Connie said with a halfhearted smile, glad for Soos’ success, but still rather regretful about her and Mabel’s failure.
“I can’t believe it,” Mabel remarked, feeling much of the same way. “You guys managed to matchmake perfectly on your first try, while we end up making a huge mess of things even though we’re both self-proclaimed romance experts! It’s not fair!”
“Aw, don’t worry, Mabel,” Steven encouraged. “I’m sure you guys will figure some way to fix all this out!”
“Yeah,” Dipper agreed with a nod. “We’d help, but we kinda promised Soos we’d help him gear up for his date tonight first, so maybe after that.”
“Can you believe they’re going out to Hoo-Haw Owl’s Pizzamatronic Jamboree?” Steven asked with a smile as him and Dipper started to head off. “They’re so lucky! That place is so much fun! Anyway, see you guys later!”
“Fun, huh…?” Mabel mused after the boys had left, a small smile started to spread across her expression as an idea started to form. “You know, Connie, I think a little fun could be exactly the thing we need to smooth things over between Jamie and Garnet…”
“What do you mean?” Connie asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow.
“I mean, we should set those two up on an apology date!” Mabel exclaimed with newfound verve, jumping to her feet. “Nothing too serious, just a nice, controlled way for them to meet on equal ground so they can finally talk all this through. And where better for them to have that kind of emotionally heavy conversation than a place as loud and colorful as Hoo-Haw Owl’s?”
“Huh, that’s… actually kind of a good idea,” Connie mused. “Well, aside from it happening at a place like Hoo-Haw Owl’s… That seems just a little… tone deaf?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’ll work out fine!” Mabel concluded with a wave of her hand. “Besides, its not like it can make things any worse than they already are, right?”
“Hopefully not,” Connie remarked. “You know, unless something totally crazy happens, but maybe we’ll get lucky this time and things will finally go off without a hitch for a change.”
“That’s the spirit!” Mabel quipped as Connie stood so they could carry their newfound plan out. “Now let’s go clean up this huge anti-romantic mess we’ve made, once and for all!”
Before preparing for his date with Melody, Soos had wisely decided to take care of the only loose end he was facing, as the boys had suggested. Said loose end being .GIFfany, who initially seemed just as bright and bubbly as usual when the handyman turned her game on. Little did he know, however, that this upbeat façade was only barely masking the untapped rage and jealousy beneath it.
“Hey, so, uh, .GIFfany?” Soos began, shifting somewhat uncomfortably in his seat. “We… we gotta talk…”
“Of course,” .GIFfany nodded in a somewhat anticipating grin. “I am programmed to find anything you say interesting. Unless what you have to say has to do with you breaking up with me…”
Soos’ eyes widened somewhat with this, a large part of him fearing that the program was already onto him. Still, he knew he couldn’t dance around this issue any longer; as far as he could tell, it ending this bizarre relationship would happen now or never. “Uh… w-well… have you ever had to choose between two things you like, but don’t know which one is right for you? I mean, I’m just thinking long-term… M-maybe I should be with someone a little less… ‘beep-boop’, you know?”
.GIFfany’s manner very abruptly shifted upon hearing this, her cheerfulness suddenly diminishing into bitter anger as she scowled at the handyman disapprovingly. “I don’t think you know what you’re saying, Soos,” she growled, her pixelated hands clenched in tight fists at her sides. “No one loves you more than me! The girls out there will just make fun of you!”
“Y-you really think so?” Soos asked, shrinking back in his chair a bit. A part of him felt as though what the program had just said was in fact true, seeing as how most of the girls he had tried flirting with in the past had done just that. And yet… one of them hadn’t. So what exactly did that really mean?
“I know so!” .GIFfany shot back fiercely. “Besides, we had a deal! You bought my game, you carried my books, you’re my boyfriend! So sit down in that chair and love me like I love you!”
“Uh… I don’t think I like the way you’re acting…” Soos remarked, rather unsettled by just how sporadically demanding the program was being.
Of course, his hesitance only made .GIFfany’s already palpable anger completely explode into raw fury as she began pounding on her end of the computer screen amidst furiously shouting at the handyman. “I won’t let another girl take you away from me, Soos! You hear me!?”
“W-whoa! .GIFfany, calm down!” Soos pleaded, genuinely frightened by the program’s incredible rage.
“You’re MINE, Soos!” .GIFfany practically screamed. “MINE! No one else’s! We’re going to be together forever, whether you like it or not!”
As she continued her heated rant, the handyman hurriedly looked for a way to escape her obsessive wrath, and he fortunately found one in the form of the game controller sitting on the desk in front of him. “Uh… pause!” he exclaimed, pressing just that.
“Do you hear me!? MIII-” the program abruptly stopped short, her expression flashing to one of alarm as she froze, finally paused right in the middle of her chaotic episode.
The handyman glanced around nervously for a beat after .GIFfany went silent, before letting out a tentatively relieved sigh. “Yikes… that got pretty intense… I’m sorry, .GIFfany,” he frowned as he took the game disk out of his computer, not noticing the small spark that lashed out from it as he did. “But maybe having a cursed robo-girlfriend wasn’t such a good idea. I’m taking you back to the video game store after my date with Melody.”
Though Soos felt somewhat bad about how harshly things had ended between him and. GIFfany, he still put her disk back in its case before pocketing it and heading out, knowing that he couldn’t think too much about it right now. After all, he had to get ready for his first date with an actual girl. And besides, seeing as how .GIFfany had just shown her true crazy and obsessive colors, perhaps it was for the best that he was cutting his ties with her, once and for all.
However, as soon as the handyman had left his room, his computer hummed back to life on upon its own accord. The monitor flashed with the distorted image of .GIFfany herself, her now void eyes still filled with untold anger before she left the screen entirely, intent on following Soos once more, and claiming him as hers and hers alone.
“You should have seen that thing, Amethyst,” Stan remarked to the purple Gem as he finished gathering up the last few supplies for their upcoming Revenge Trip. “That animatronic badger sings, it dances, it’s the perfect money taking attraction! But he won’t sell it to me!”
“K, Stan, I’m gonna be real with you here for a sec,” Amethyst said, casually laying back on the gift shop counter. “This whole badger thing is… really dumb. Actually, it might just be about the dumbest reason you’ve called me up for a Revenge Trip ever. But hey, who am I to stop you from wanting to get even with this weird earring-wearing creep you keep complaining about?”
“So you’re in then?” the conman asked, pulling a large black suitcase onto the table.
“You know I am,” the purple Gem grinned, hopping off the counter. “Even if it is dumb, at least it’ll be good for a laugh to watch you rob some goofy kid’s pizza joint. Like the ‘professional’ thief you are.”
“Oh, I plan on being professional about this,” Stan retorted firmly, pulling a pair of black gloves on. “And careful too. No more Colombian nights.”
“Alright, Stan,” Wendy spoke up as she noticed the conman and the purple Gem prepping for their latest escapade. “This is weird, even for you. Do you need to talk or something?”
“Nothing you can say will change my mind, Wendy,” Stan concluded dismissively. “Sometimes, a man has to steal an animatronic badger to stay in this crazy game called life.”
“Or… you could just not care,” Wendy retorted, crossing her arms.
“Aw, but where’s the fun in that?” Amethyst asked with a wry smirk. “Besides, its not like this is the first time either of us have been around the bend. This kind of Revenge Trip fare is a piece of cake for two pros like us.”
“Uh, ok…” Wendy frowned, still not entirely convinced as she glanced over at the conman preparing to leave through the open window. “Still, Amethyst, are you really sure you should be enabling Stan like this? I mean, he is kinda-”
“If you finish that sentence with the word ‘old’, then you’re fired!” Stan interupted with a harsh scowl, prompting Wendy to wisely hold her piece.
“Uh, no offense, but you are pretty old, Stan,” Amethyst pointed out with a somewhat teasing grin, much to the conman’s annoyance, though she elaborated immediately after. “But the good news is that I’m even older than you are, and what’s even better is that we’re both still rockin’ it with the revenge schemes through and through, so that jerky guy who made fun of you is gonna totally eat his words once we steal his singing badger thing!”
“Yeah!” Stan cheered with newfound verve upon hearing the purple Gem’s support. “That’s the spirit! No one tells Stan Pines he’s out of the game! No one tells-” The conman was cut off as he abruptly fell out of the window he was trying to climb out of, a clear cry of pain escaping him as he landed in the shrubs beside the shack.
“I’ll get your orthopedic back pillow,” Wendy called to him, leaning out the window to make sure he wasn’t too badly hurt.
“Thank you!” Stan responded somewhat weakly, still trying to pull himself up off the ground.
“Woo!” Amethyst exclaimed excitedly as ran up to the window herself, more than ready for their latest Revenge Trip. “Let’s go break some laws!” Without any further ado, she daringly jumped out the window herself, only to land squarely on top of Stan, resulting in yet another loud groan from the already injured conman. “Whoops. Sorry, Stan.”
Under Steven and Dipper’s direction, Soos had made sure to show up to the mall quite early for his date, mostly so the boys could go over the last minute pointers they had to offer him. The trio congregated in the food court, the importance of this event not lost on any of them as the boys drilled the handyman on exactly what he was to do to make this date a rousing success.
“You got this, Soos!” Steven encouraged boldly as Dipper handed the handyman off some much-needed water to refresh him. “We believe in you! Just remember everything you’ve learned so far. How does she look?”
“Nice!” Soos answered with determination.
“What are her stories?”
“Interesting!”
“And who’s going to pay for dinner?”
“Soos is!” Soos shouted, jumping out of his seat as he prepared to tackle this great challenge head on.
“Now… date!” Dipper exclaimed with the blow of an air horn, prompting the handyman to rush forward with a courageous battle cry. The boys watched him go with eager smiles, both of them unanimously proud of everything they had accomplished in helping Soos reach this previously unattainable point.
“Aw… they grow up so fast…” Steven remarked warmly as both him and Dipper silently wished the handyman the best of luck, even if they did plan on making themselves available to the handyman throughout his date, if need be.
With purpose in his step, Soos steadily approached Hoo-Haw Owl’s, excitement and nervousness simultaneously forming in his gut as he spotted Melody standing outside its entrance, patiently waiting for him. For a brief moment, .GIFfany’s warning of real girls making fun of him found purchase in his thoughts, but the handyman was quick to push the thought from his mind. He wasn’t about to let the memory of the insanely manic program, or anything else for that matter, ruin tonight, not after how hard for him to get here in the first place.
“Oh, hi, Soos!” Melody greeted the handyman with a bright smile as she spotted him approaching.
“Melody! Are you ready for a-” Soos paused, looking to the script the boys had written on his hands earlier to help him along. “Date with me?”
Melody chuckled at this, clearly bemused and charmed by the handyman’s lack of subtlety. “I totally am,” she said, taking the first step by linking arms with Soos as they both headed into the restaurant.
As usual, Hoo-Haw Owl’s was noisy and lively, with children running about, playing arcade games and eating pizza to their hearts’ content. While Connie still thought it was a rather irreverent place for Garnet to smooth things over with Jamie, Mabel was completely confident with her plan as she led the ever-stoic Gem leader to an empty table to wait for the mailman.
“We’re super glad you agreed to come all the way out here tonight, Garnet,” Mabel grinned as they all sat down. “Now, Jamie is supposed to show up any minute now, so when he gets here, we need you to be nice and gentle with him.”
“Yeah, be sure to apologize for how things went earlier today,” Connie added. “And then let him down easily this time, you know, so you won’t completely shatter his heart all over again.”
“And if worse comes to worse, t-then maybe you could just zap his brain to make him forget that any of this happened in the first place!” Mabel suggested. “That… that is something you can do, right?”
“Don’t worry,” Garnet assured flatly. “I know what I’m going to say.”
“Oh… y-you do?” Connie asked, exchanging a somewhat worried glance with Mabel at this.
“Mm hm,” Garnet nodded. “But that’s not the only reason why I’m here.”
“Uh… then why else did you come?”
“…You’ll see,” the Gem leader replied, adjusting her shades knowingly and leaving the girls with an abundance of unanswered questions.
Meanwhile, just a few tables away, Soos and Melody’s date was getting off to a decent, if not somewhat initially awkward start. “Man, I could really go for some complimentary breadsticks right now,” Melody remarked, glancing around the restaurant for their server.
“Uh, one time I was so hungry, I ate the decorative bamboo at a Chinese restaurant,” Soos quipped, nervously at first, before easing up a bit. “Like a big old panda!”
“You’re hilarious,” Melody chuckled, eliciting a relieved laugh from the handyman himself as he realized that the date was going rather well so far, even if he was admittedly still on edge for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.
“Yeah, well, you know… I just sorta say whatever pops into my, uh…” Soos trailed off as he took a sip from his water, his gaze drifting up to the arcade screens behind Melody, only to spot something that made him freeze with apt fear. Despite all logic, .GIFfany was there, her expression severe as she stared at Soos piercingly, a subtitle reading “You paused me?” appearing below her.
Unable to hold back his shock at the program’s unexpected return, the handyman accidentally spit out his water onto Melody before breaking into a round of panicked coughs. “Soos, are you ok?” Melody asked with concern as she wiped the water off of her.
“No!” Soos exclaimed as a knee-jerk reaction before quickly correcting himself. “I, uh, I’m fine! Everything’s fine! T-there’s totally nothing creepy going on at all!”
“You sure?” Melody frowned, not noticing .GIFfany appear on the screens right above her head. “You’re spitting an awful lot…”
Soos barely stifled a gasp as he watched the screens, reading .GIFfany’s bitter messages to him of “You left me? For HER?” before a pixelated version of Melody’s face showed up on the screen before quickly being x-ed out by the jealous program herself. The handyman didn’t even have to think twice about the frightening implications of this, which was why he knew he had to get some help in dealing with .GIFfany, and fast.
“Uh, can you sit tight?” he asked Melody amidst breaking out into a cold sweat. “I have to go to the bathroom for a long time. Not in a weird way!”
Before Melody could even ask any questions, Soos ran off, quickly finding Dipper and Steven laying low at a nearby table along with Mabel and Connie, who had joined them there to scope out the situation with Jamie and Garnet from afar. Still, the kids were all rather confused and concerned upon seeing the handyman plop down into the booth with them, his breathing short and frantic as he nervously glanced around at the surrounding arcade screens.
“Soos, what are you doing out there?” Dipper asked, knowing that Soos’ sudden panic wasn’t what they had drilled him on.
“I’ve got a big problem, guys,” the handyman explained in a distraught whisper. “I’m being stalked by .GIFfany!”
“.GIFfany?” all four of the kids questioned, the girls not knowing who he was referring to while the boys were surprised to hear Soos bring the program up again.
“Or maybe its pronounced ‘.JIFfany’? I was never really sure…” Soos mused, even though such a detail hardly mattered at the moment.
“Soos, get a grip on yourself,” Dipper urged. “.GIFfany can’t stalk you because she’s not real.”
“Yeah, and besides,” Steven added. “We thought you got rid of that game already.”
Before Soos could explain what had really happened, the entire group was alerted to the program’s ominous presence on the screens just above them. .GIFfany’s expression was set in a tight glare as she set her sights on Soos alone, showing that she wasn’t about to let him go so easily, much to the alarm of the kids and the handyman.
“Wait, that’s .GIFfany?” Connie asked, still rather lost when it came to this situation.
“Aw, she’s really pretty!” Mabel quipped. “Really scary, but still, pretty!”
“Take it from someone who brought an arcade game to life, this will not end well,” Dipper said, referencing the Rumble McSkirmish fiasco.
“D-don’t worry,” Soos tried to reassure. “I’m pretty sure she’s stuck on TV screens.” Almost as soon as the handyman had said this, .GIFfany was quick to prove him wrong as she spread down to the arcade machines, quickly spreading across them at a rapid pace as she made her way up towards the stage. “Uh oh…” Soos gulped upon witnessing this, wasting no time in getting up and hurrying back to Melody in the hopes of saving her from .GIFfany’s obvious wrath. “So, uh, hey, you wanna move this date far away into the woods away from all electronics and people?” he asked his date, putting on a fake confident smile, even if he really was anything but.
“What? But the floor show’s about to start,” Melody reminded, nodding up to the stage as the curtains began to open and the band of animatronics began playing their cheerful opening number.
“Oh man, this is getting really serious!” Steven exclaimed to the others as they remained sitting by at their tucked away table. “We gotta do something to help Soos!”
“But wait!” Connie interjected with a surprised gasp, pointing over to the other side of the restaurant, where a certain mailman sat, his head buried in his heads as a sign of absolute misery. “There’s Jamie!”
“And there’s Garnet!” Mabel added as the Gem leader started heading over to join him. “Oh, fingers crossed that her words don’t destroy him this time!”
The kids continued watching as Garnet silently took a seat at the table across from Jamie, startling the mailman out of his depressive revere. “G-Garnet!” he exclaimed, quickly sitting up. “You… you actually came. A-are you here to crush what’s left of my withered, cracked heart with the mighty hammer of your agonizing rejection?”
Garnet didn’t answer this right away, but instead took pause, almost as if she was trying to figure out what to say before giving Jamie what he deserved: the truth. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“T-then will you go out with me?” the mailman asked, a small hint of hope in his tone.
“No!” Garnet asserted, completely firm in her response.
“B-but… I’ve loved you since I first saw you…”
The Gem leader let out a frustrated sigh at this, shaking her head at Jamie’s continued persistence. “Jamie, you’re not-”
Garnet was abruptly cut off as the floor show got into full swing, the loud music making it hard to get any point across as the Hoo-Haw Owl animatronic shouted out over top of it.
“Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” the animatronic began brightly as he strummed his banjo. “Who wants to hear Hoo-Haw the Owl? Hoo! Hoooo…” The owl trailed off as it suddenly shut down, its form dropping limp as the upbeat music faded into a slow, ominous singular banjo tune. The bright lights on stage abruptly shifted over to the badger cheerleader, who seemed to be the only animatronic still activated, her eyes filling in with a sinister red glow.
“Hello, friends!” she exclaimed brightly, in a voice that was immediately familiar to Soos, if no one else in the audience. “Hoo-Haw the Owl is dead.” At this starkly dark remark, the stage lights suddenly went dark altogether, save for the spotlight still focused on the possessed cheerleader animatronic. “This next song goes out to my forever boyfriend, Soos.”
“Soos, what’s going on?” Melody asked, turning to the handyman with disturbed alarm upon hearing this.
“No time to explain!” Soos exclaimed fearfully, grabbing Melody by the hand and pulling her out of the booth. “We gotta get outta here!”
“The only way out, Soos, is in my arms!” .GIFfany shouted amidst controlling not just the cheerleader animatronic, but the entire band of them as their eyes also began glowing red. “After them!”
As the machines threateningly began lurching off the stage, the restaurant was thrown into a complete and utter uproar, with its young patrons and their parents rushing to escape from this animatronic onslaught. As Soos continued pulling Melody towards the exit, the kids also hopped out of their booth to flee along with him, though Garnet took a slightly different approach.
“W-whoa!” Jamie gasped, tucking under the table a bit as Garnet rose to stand, her gauntlets forming as one of the animatronics steadily marched towards them. “What’s happening?!”
Garnet largely ignored his question as she swiftly dodged an empty plate the animatronic hurled at her. “I saw this coming,” she remarked, preparing to move from the defensive to the offensive. “Just stay here and keep out of the way.”
“But wait!” Jamie worriedly exclaimed, reaching after the Gem leader as she bravely leapt into action. “Garnet! My fierce, majestic moon! Don’t leave me here to—ah!” The mailman was abruptly cut off as another animatronic rammed its fist into the table he was at, prompting him to get up and flee with a cry of apt terror, despite Garnet’s instructions.
Right before this bout of chaos broke out in the restaurant, Stan and Amethyst had gotten to work on sneaking in through the back and securing the Will E. Badger animatronic without anyone taking notice of their heist at all.
“So this is that great ‘money making’ badger you keep going on about?” the purple Gem asked, not that impressed as the conman tied it to a dolly. “Huh, you know I thought it’d be a bit less… lame?”
“Hey, it may not look like much, but this guy is gonna earn me its weight in gold,” Stan retorted, tightening up his knots. “And… done. Out with the old, in with the new. I feel invincible!”
Amethyst was about to respond with another sly remark, but before she could, the animatronic suddenly powered on, completely out of nowhere. “Uh… Stan?” the purple Gem began with wide eyes, only for her surprise to spike as the badger broke free from its bonds and turned to punch Stan squarely in the jaw.
“Ow!” the conman shouted, falling to the ground from the heavy blow. “W-what the-”
“Who wants to get badgered?!” the animatronic threatened, shades painted red as he stood over Stan, ready to go in for another hit. Fortunately though, its hand was stilled as Amethyst’s whip tightly coiled around it.
“Hey, badger brain!” the purple Gem scowled, pulling back her whip a bit as the animatronics’ head turned completely around to face her. “Back off!” The animatronic simply let out a wild battle cry as it yanked its arm back, tossing Amethyst along with it into the wall near Stan. The pair had relatively little time to recover from the blows they had suffered as the badger prepared to go in for more, its suddenly violent behavior being more than enough to elicit fearful gasps from them both.
Inside of the restaurant itself, the animatronics seemed to be even more aggressive under .GIFfany’s control. While most of the other patrons had safely fled, the program had made sure to bar off any exists before Soos could reach them, trapping not only him, but Melody and the kids inside the store and cornering them as the animatronics all started to gang up on them.
“I’m sorry, Soos, but you can’t run away from our relationship!” .GIFfany proclaimed, pointing towards a nearby skee-ball machine as her electrical current reached it, giving her complete control over it. A barrage of balls flew out from it, shooting towards the group until Soos pulled an arcade cabinet down to itself, taking refuge behind it along with Melody and the kids.
“So about all this,” the handyman said to his confused date in this brief moment of tentative reprieve. “I may have purchased a dating simulator that obtained sentience and went crazy…”
“Oh, I am crazy,” .GIFfany spoke up upon overhearing this as she stepped forward. “Crazy for you, Soos!” At this, lightning sparked out of the hands of the animatronic the program was possessing, the bursts catching small bursts of fire as they landed near the group hiding behind the arcade cabinet. Some of these flames happened to catch in Melody’s hair, eliciting a fearful cry from her before Soos hurried to help her pat it out.
“Oh no! Melody, I’m so sorry,” the handyman said with sincere remorse for the disaster he had inadvertently cause. “I wanted this date to be perfect, but its turned into a huge mess! And now, we’re all gonna”-
“Hey!” a sudden bold shout broke through the ongoing clamor, startling all everyone and even catching .GIFfany herself off guard as she turned to see the brazen Gem leader standing behind her, ready to fight. “Leave them alone!”
“Garnet!” the kids and Soos all exclaimed in apt relief upon seeing her, hoping that she could put an end to this madness once and for all. .GIFfany, however, was far from pleased.
“Never!” she fiercely shot back. “I’m not going anywhere without my Soos! We are going to be together as the perfect couple forever, and no one is going to get in the way of our love!”
“If that’s what you think love is all about,” Garnet began steadily, disdain for the twisted program clear in her tone. “Then clearly you don’t know the first thing about it.”
.GIFfany simply responded to this accusation with a frustrated shout before commanding most of the other animatronics to go after Garnet. At first, the Gem leader took them on with little problem, dodging their blows before lashing out several of her own. Still, it was clear that she was quite outnumbered, despite her palpable strength, something that Soos in particular took notice of as he peeked out from behind the arcade machine.
“Aw man, she won’t be able to fight all those dudes off forever,” he said with a fretful frown. “That’s it! I gotta fix this! It’s me .GIFfany wants in the first place. Melody, I’ll distract her while Dipper, Mabel, Steven, and Connie keep you safe. It’s the only way!”
“Soos, these are children,” Melody remarked rather incredulously as the handyman bravely rose to the occasion.
“The only waaaaaay!” he shouted, running out into the fray, despite being pelted by skee balls all the while. “Over here, .GIFfany!” he taunted the program as he ran past her towards the kitchen.
“Stop!” .GIFfany shouted after him, a fierce glare crossing the animatronics’ expression as she followed him. At the same time, the other machines were still on the attack, most of them dealing with Garnet. The Gem leader managed to defeat one of them with a heavy punch through the chest, only for one of them to latch a firm hold onto her arm. She punched the first animatronic away, but several more rushed at her only seconds after, eliciting a fearful gasp from Jamie as he watched this entire display from behind the row of tables he had tucked under. And as yet another animatronic went in to launch a hit upon the Gem leader from behind, the mailman knew he could no longer remain watching this epic battle from the sidelines.
“Halt!” he shouted dramatically, jumping up onto a table to catch the gang of animatronics’ attention. “Step away from my lady, you cads, and face me instead! I will gladly stand against any adversity in the name of protecting-” Jamie cut himself off as the machines all turned to face him with their threatening red gazes, frightening him enough for him to quickly retract his courageous stance. “Um… y-you know what?” he squeaked, getting off the table as several of the animatronics mobilized to go after him before he quickly fled. “I think this adversity might just be a bit too much for me to handle! Ah!”
Despite their best efforts at teamwork, Stan and Amethyst weren’t really faring much better against Will E. Badger as they found themselves knocked out of the restaurant by the attacking animatronic. As the conman sustained another hit to the gut, the purple Gem tried to rush the badger with her whip. She managed to wrap it around the animatronic almost entirely, but its metallic form proved too strong for her weapon and it broke free from it with little effort at all before kicking her away.
“S-stay back, you monster!” Stan shouted at the animatronic, lifting his arms to defend himself again as he backed away from it.
“Geez! What’s this stupid thing’s deal anyway?!” Amethyst groaned, summoning yet another whip.
“Heck if I know!” the conman clenched his fists a bit tighter as the animatronic reeled its fist back. “If I had known that stealing this creep would be this potentially deadly, I never would have-”
“Look out!” the purple Gem warned, only for Stan to heed her a moment too late as the badger punched him into the pile of abandoned trash sitting next to the building. Though the conman was let reeling from the blow, he still did have the wits about him to duck out of the way of the animatronics’ next hit, which just so happened to land in the open maw of old Goldie. As Amethyst pulled Stan away from the badger, they both happened to notice that its arm was tightly caught in the prospector’s biting grip, something that it couldn’t break free from, no matter how hard it tried.
“Hey, isn’t that that old nugget thing you used to have back at the shack?” Amethyst asked, slightly confused by this bizarre turn of events.
“Yes, it is!” Stan proclaimed with a proud smile as Goldie continued munching upon the animatronics’ arm. “Get ‘em, Goldie! Get ‘em!”
Unfortunately, this tread of easily subduing the animatronics didn’t really carry through inside the restaurant itself. As the machines scattered to apprehend everyone else, the kids also split up, in the hopes that Garnet would have an easier time taking the animatronics on if they were thinned out a bit. Steven and Mabel wisely decided on hiding out in the indoor playground where the animatronics wouldn’t be able to squeeze into had reach them, though of course, they both took the time to remove their shoes before heading inside, despite the peril they were in. Dipper and Connie, on the other hand, both realized they were at a distinct disadvantage as neither of them had swords on them, which meant their relatively new skills were completely useless in defending themselves against the animatronics. But they did manage to narrowly avoid a brutal blow by dodging out of the path of an attacking beaver animatronic, with its hit landing down on one of the arcade machines instead. As it was distracted and the pair fled, Melody rushed in, brazenly knocking the animatronic out with a chair, only for several more to beset her immediately after. Even Garnet seemed to be having a hard time dealing with the group of animatronic she was squaring off against, largely because she had to protect Jamie in the process as he fearfully cowered behind her.
“G-Garnet, my love,” the mailman spoke up shakily as the Gem leader punched another animatronic back, despite the fact that they were both essentially cornered against a wall. “If these are indeed our last moments together on this Earth, then please, at least allow me the chance to beg for the light of your love to shine down upon-”
“Not now!” Garnet ordered fiercely, not wanting to deal with this distraction as she pushed an animatronic away. “Or ever for that matter.”
“B-but-” Jamie cut his dejection off with a startled gasp as one of the animatronics rammed right into the Gem leader, pinning her to the wall by both arms as it prepared to take her out. “No!” the mailman cried, pushing all his fear away as he tried a last ditch effort to help her by diverting the animatronics’ attention away by throwing letters at it. Much to his and Garnet’s surprise, it was enough to get the machine to turn to him, but this time, Jamie didn’t flee as he instead continued hurling letters at it while steadily backing away. “T-that’s right, you cur! Taste the unflinching wrath… of mail!”
Despite Jamie’s feeble success, Melody and the kids soon found themselves overwhelmed and apprehended, something that Soos noticed with a fretful gasp as he glanced out of the kitchen window. To make matters worse, .GIFfany herself continued to pursue him in slow, calculated steps, knowing that she had him right where she wanted him.
“I’ve got you surrounded, Soos,” she warned, her animatronic wearing a huge, learning grin as she essentially cornered the handyman. “There is no way out!”
“P-please,” Soos tried to reason with the rather unreasonable program. “Just let my friends go. I’ll do anything, I promise!”
“I seem to remember someone promising to be my boyfriend!” .GIFfany’s robotic tone pitched as she appeared on the screen right beside the handyman, her usual smile taking on a sinister aura. “Think about it. Real girls are unpredictable. They judge you. What makes you think you could ever have a chance with anyone else but me? Do you really think Melody will take you back after this awful date?”
The handyman’s tentative courage faltered upon hearing this, unable to deny that .GIFfany likely had a point. After all, what kind of girl would ever give him the light of day after being put in such mortal danger thanks to his own missteps and failures? Certainly, after tonight, he’d be right back to square one when it came to his empty love life, just like he always had been. However, the option the program proceeded to present him with was far from anything better.
“I can download your game into the game with me,” .GIFfany offered warmly, her animatronic projecting a flash drive from its finger, which it then pointed out at Soos. “And we’ll be together, forever…”
“Ah!” Soos gasped, covering his exposed belly button with his sweater vest. “S-stay back!” In a meager attempt to ward off the program, he dug through his pockets for anything to throw at her, tossing both pocket change and a spare screwdriver at her, which she easily dodged as she continued sulking towards him.
“Cone on, Soos,” .GIFfany patronized, cheerful as always as she quickly started bridging the gap between them. “Don’t make me delete you too!” Soos sucked in a sharp breath as he pressed against the wall behind him, desperately searching for a way out of his seemingly inescapable fate. It seemed as though, no matter what, .GIFfany was determined to have him all to herself, which the handyman knew was a complete impossibility, even despite how they had hit it off early on. But still, he knew that he couldn’t abandon reality to be with her, despite her promises of understanding, compliance, and love. When it came right down to it, he needed a real girl, one of flesh and bone rather than of bits and bytes. Which was why, as he happened to pull the Romance Academy 7 disk out of his pocket, Soos knew exactly what he had to do. “What do you say?” .GIFfany asked, inching her flash drive ever closer to the handyman in the hopes of finally claiming him as hers alone.
“I say, game over, .GIFfany!” Soos boldly proclaimed, pulling the pizza oven behind him open before tossing the game disk right into its immense heat.
“NO!” .GIFfany cried in apt fear as the disk began to shrivel up and melt. The image of the program on the screen let out a shrill scream of defeat, her pixels starting to break apart and dissipate out of existence, her scream doing the exact same thing as the screen went black. The animatronic the program had been possessing emitted a high pitched whine as well, its face melting off to reveal the robotic mechanism underneath before it shut down and collapsed, confirming that her malicious presence was indeed finally gone.
As a result of .GIFfany’s obliteration, all of the other rouge animatronics shut down, including the one Stan and Amethyst were dealing with outside. While still struggling to free itself from Goldie’s grip, the Will E. Badger animatronic suddenly deactivated, roughly plummeting to the ground as the pair watched in apt amazement.
“Whoa…” Amethyst breathed as her whip disappeared. “I can’t believe that janky old thing… saved us!”
“Well, believe it!” Stan grinned, picking Goldie up and hugging it tightly. “You did it! You beautiful old monster! You did it! How’s about the three of us hit the town? These old has-beens are going to Vegas!”
“Now you’re talking!” Amethyst cheered, gladly following the conman as he carried the prospector machine off to head off on this tandem trip. “Let’s go make some cash money!”
As the animatronic that Jamie had been pelting with mail finally went limp, the mailman let out a huge sigh of relief at the imminent danger finally coming to an end. However, his dread was quick to return as Garnet stepped over to him, her expression unreadable as she motioned to a nearby table.
“Sit,” she instructed staunchly, which Jamie tentatively did as the Gem leader did the same before speaking her peace. “Jamie, I hope you know that what you just did was very dangerous.”
“Yes… I-I do,” Jamie nodded, somewhat confused before leaping right back into his usual theatrics. “B-but I was glad to risk it all for you, Garnet, my love! From the moment I first laid eyes upon you, I knew that we were destined to be together!”
“No, we’re not,” Garnet firmly denied, finally ready to set the record straight. “Love at first sight doesn’t exist. Love takes time, and love takes work. At the very least you have to know the other person. And you literally have no idea who, or what, I am.” The Gem leader finished by adjusting her shades, knowing that every word she had just spoken came from the genuine experiences of love both of the halves that composed her had been through together.
“B-but… I bloom for you like… like a… camellia… under moon light…” Jamie stammered, his voice breaking a bit as he looked to her pleadingly.
“No, you don’t,” Garnet said, eliciting a confused, albeit saddened glance from the mailman. “You make a very convincing lovesick fool. You convinced those children,” she nodded over to Mabel and Connie, who were not very discreetly eavesdropping on the whole scene from afar. “You even convinced yourself. You’re a fantastic actor.”
“R-really?” Jamie asked, eyes wide with surprise upon hearing such a compliment. “So… what am I supposed to do now?”
“Start with local theatre,” Garnet advised, giving the mailman a hearty slap on the back before she got up and walked off. For a moment, Jamie simply sat there, still rather shaken as he tried to take it all in before the girls hesitantly approached him.
“Uh… hey, Jamie,” Connie began with a small, sheepish smile. “Are you ok?”
“…Yeah,” the mailman nodded, still trying to get over his initial surprise. “That was… some pretty solid advice.”
“Well, uh, that’s good to hear,” Mabel said somewhat tenatively. “Um, we’re sorry for kinda causing this whole mess between you and Garnet. We didn’t mean for things to get so… you know, crazy.”
“Yeah, it probably would have been better if we had just left well enough alone in all this…” Connie remarked, rubbing her arm awkwardly.
“Eh, its ok,” Jamie reassured, finally smiling himself. “You girls were just trying to help me out, and I can’t really blame you for that. So thanks for everything. Even if it was kinda meddling…”
“Heh, yeah…” Mabel chuckled, exchanging a glance with Connie as they both realized they had learned a pretty important lesson about such meddling. “So, were those more letters you wrote to Garnet?” she asked, nodding towards the discarded mail Jamie had used to ward off the animatronic.
“No, that was the mail I was supposed to deliver on my last route.”
A beat of silence passed at this as the three of them looked towards the rather disastrous mess of mail littering the floor of the restaurant before Connie stiffly spoke up. “We’ll help you pick it all up.”
“Thanks,” Jamie said as they all got up to do just that.
Meanwhile, with .GIFfany gone, Soos had wasted no time in hurrying back to Melody to make sure she was ok. Surprisingly, she rather understanding upon hearing the whole story as the handyman detailed to her while they sat together in the wreckage of the animatronic disaster. Still, despite her lack of anger, Soos couldn’t help but feel rather guilty for just how much danger he had inadvertently put her through, especially since he really had grown to like her very much.
“I’m sorry for all this, Melody,” the handyman sighed, looking out over the mess .GIFfany had left behind. “I honestly remember this place being a lot more fun when I was a kid.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been on worse dates,” Melody shrugged with a small smile.
“Really?”
“Never date a magician.”
“Ugh, why would I?” The pair got a good laugh out of this, one that eventually dissipated as they met each others’ gazes with mutually affectionate smiles. Soos figured that it was now or never, which was why he decided to go ahead and ask the question that had been plaguing him for the past few days. “So, uh, you wouldn’t be interested in going with me to my cousin’s engagement party in a week, would you? I promise there’s like, zero animatronic badgers.”
“Sure, sounds like fun,” Melody chuckled. “I should still be in town then.”
“Still be in town?” Soos frowned, confused.
“I’m going back home to Portland in a few weeks,” Melody sighed somewhat sadly. “But when I do, we can still video chat, if that’s ok with you.”
“A relationship with a girl who I can only see through my computer…” Soos mused for a moment before breaking out into an affirmative smile as he placed his hand on top of Melody’s. “Sounds perfect!”
The couple shared another warm laugh over this, both of them more than enjoying each other’s company, even if they were relatively unaware of the boys proudly watching them converse from their spot in the ball pit.
“Aw, they already make such a nice couple!” Steven quipped warmly as he changed a glad smile with Dipper. “I’m so glad Soos got his happy ending; if anyone deserves it, its him.”
At this, both boys were instantly caught off guard as Soos’ Abuelita suddenly popped up out of the ball pit, completely out of nowhere. “Yes, yes,” she remarked with a contented smile, looking over at her grandson. “I am so happy.”
“Uh… have you been following us all day?” Dipper asked her, rather concerned by such an implication.
Abuelita simply nodded, throwing the boys off even more, though she hardly noticed amidst her controlled elation over Soos’ finally successful attempts at romance. “Soos’ life is my soap opera.”
Next:
#universe falls#jen writes#gravity falls#steven universe#crossover#au#fanfic#soos#jamie#dipper#mabel#steven#connie#garnet#stan#amethyst#wendy#melody#giffany#idk others are in there?#key is GIFFANY
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92 Truths
I was tagged by the badass @therealfivefeetoffuckingfury who is my best friend, my inspiration, my support system, my everything. So in love with her and all her amazing writing it's gives me life.
Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 92 truths about you. At the end choose 25 people to be tagged.
LAST:
Last drink: Diet Dr.Pepper
Last phone call: My papa bear telling me to get a drink for mama bear while I was at the store.
Last text message: was to my sister and it was a link and an answer to her homework question. It's long...
Last song you listened to: If I'm James Dean, You're Audrey Hepburn- Sleepinf with Sirens because it's my inspiration for the Mox fic I will soon be posting😊
Last time I cried: Last night, I dreamt about my late great grandmother, who's my name sake and just my absolute heart, she was happy and saying how much she loved me. And I just woke up with tears in my eyes because I was sad I was only seeing her in my dream
HAVE YOU EVER:
Dated someone twice: Nope been a single little Pringle my whole life 💋
Been cheated on: No thankfully
Kissed someone and regretted it: Never been kissed so......🤷🏼♀️
Lost someone special: Yes, Unfortunately
Been depressed: Yes. But who hasn't.
Been drunk and thrown up: Nope, I'm like half Irish so I take my whiskey really well. Also the Mexican/ Native American side loves its tequila.
IN THE PAST YEAR HAVE YOU:
Made a new friend: Yes I have and I love her already
Fallen out of love: No ☹️ I'd have to be in love to fall out so....
Laughed until you cried: Yes and it was the most cathartic thing ever👌🏻👌🏻
Met someone who changed you: Yes. In one of the best ways l, honestly.
Found out who your true friends were: Most definitely, still hurts though when you figure out just how untrue a person was ☹️
Found out someone was talking about you: No. Not yet or ever but hey maybe it's just because I haven't caught them but I'd like to say I'm a very honest, upfront and genuine person. So I how people would treat me in the same respect.
GENERAL:
How many people on Tumblr do you know in real life?: No but I can't wait for the day I met some of my friends on here In real life 😊
Do you want to change your name?: No I'm named after my great grandmother, with my first name. And I quite enjoy my middle name, which is what everyone calls me.
What time did you wake up this morning?: 8:12am
What were you doing last night?: writing, computer programming homework, talking my bffl through a breakup☹️.
Name something you cannot wait for: Finish school, find my "Adult" job and move out and start my own life.
Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Nope but I'm still waiting for Mr. Hiddleston to pop in at any moment
What’s getting on your nerves rn?: my cats won't get along and there constantly meowing and hissing at each other while I try to sleep
Blood type: O+ I believe...
Nickname: Kayla, Kay, K-Kay, Ms. Macayla, Ms. Kay, Lala, Kaylie, Kayla-K, Nugget 😊, Savage, Beasty, Mac Daddy, Mac, Ellie, Elle and I think that's it lol I have so many🤣
Relationship status: Single little Pringle
Zodiac sign: Cancer 🦀
Pronouns: she/her
Favorite tv show: SOA, Supernatural, WWE, CSI reruns ( any/ all ), Criminal Minds, American Horror Story, Teen Wolf, Marvel Series, many more im sure I just can't think right now 😝
College: Yup and it's trying me this semester
Hair colour: naturally brunette with reddish undertones, thank you Irish roots, currently ombré ashy blond/ silverish pieces mix in. Soon it's going to be straight in a silver hue with blue undertones and black roots.
Long or short: neither
Do you have a crush on someone: Do celebrities count??.
What do you like about yourself: I like my mellow nature and brutal honesty, who has time for erractic liars.
FIRSTS:
First surgery: Double knee surgery at the tender age of 9 years old
First piercing: ears at the tender age of three months old.
First best friend: Mallory
First sport you joined: Softball been playing it since I could walk.
First vacation: Mexico I'm sure as a toddler.
First pair of sneakers: Converse, I think
Eating: Breastmilk like wthell??
Drinking: If you're talking alcohol, Crown and Coke, did I mention I was a whiskey girl.
I’m about to: go to sleep it 4:10am and I have school in a bit.
Listening to: Caraphernelia- Pierce the Veil
Want kids: Omgosh yes please. I want one pregnancy with twins, a boy and a girl. It's like my dream.
Get married: I hope so, one day. I really want to find my soulmate and marry them one day and have babies and just love each other til the very end and beyond. Teehee sorry I'm a hopeless romantic
Career: I want to be a writer. But I'm going to school to be a computer programmer so I can work from home and write my book in my spare time. I already have an outline and concept for my first book.
WHICH IS BETTER:
Lips or eyes: Eyes
Hugs or kisses: Hugs
Shorter or taller: Taller
Older or younger: Older.
Romantic or spontaneous: Both.
Sensitive or loud: Both.
Hook up or relationship: relationship.
Troublemaker or hesitant: hesitant.
HAVE YOU EVER:
Kissed a stranger: No siree Bob
Drank hard liquor: Half Mexican/ Half Irish I'm like a hybrid for hard liquor
Lost glasses/contacts: nope by oboe because I'm just starting to wear glasses and maybe contacts by next year
Sex on the first date: Nope because that would require me to ever go on a date or be asked out...
Broken someone’s heart: I think I did accidentally but it's never been confirmed... if you've ever had a best guy friend then you know what I mean
Been arrested: Gods no.
Turned someone down: nope
Fallen for a friend: yuppers
DO YOU BELIEVE:
In yourself: I would like to think so
Miracles: Yes absolutely.
Love at first sight: I'm a hopeless romantic who hasn't learned the harsh reality of love so yes as of right now I do.
Heaven: Born and raised Catholic so yup.
Santa Claus: As in the actual person St. Nicholas yes but the entity that is a man who brings presents every year to children on a sleigh on Christmas Eve no.
I'd like to tag some people I'd like to know more about: @calwitch @wwesensualfanfics @littleprincess1621 @devitts-girl @kingslayers-angel
@monsteramongmen-tamer @harleymoxley
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How AI: The Somnium Files Blends Absurdism, Love, And Dreams Into A Murder Mystery
New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/how-ai-the-somnium-files-blends-absurdism-love-and-dreams-into-a-murder-mystery/
How AI: The Somnium Files Blends Absurdism, Love, And Dreams Into A Murder Mystery
Like many mystery-driven adventure games, AI: The Somnium Files is a little tough to talk about. It’s not exactly action-packed in its moment-to-moment gameplay, and most of the intrigue in games like it comes from the ways in which they challenge your investigative skills and decision-making–plot twists and character dialogue are often at the heart of it all. This is very much the case when it comes to games under the direction of developer Kotaro Uchikoshi, best known for the Zero Escape series.
Since AI: The Somnium Files was first revealed, we knew that it would channel similar gameplay elements from Zero Escape, but it’s aiming to be an evolution of that. As private detective Kaname Date, you travel between reality and a dream world to unravel the truth behind a series of murders. Its overarching theme revolves around a pun for the word eye: “eye” as in your sight, “ai” the Japanese word for love, and A.I. as in artificial intelligence. Not to mention all the murder victims have one eye gouged out as well. Date himself has one eye that’s actually an A.I. companion named Aiba (a Japanese-English pun for eyeball). And the real name of A-Set, the virtual influencer/idol behind music videos and promotional materials, is Iris.
Last time we spoke with Uchikoshi-san, he talked about love, story details, and the dream world’s Psync mechanic, but there’s still more than meets the eye. To get further insight into what’s going on, we corresponded again via email and dug into the game’s direction. We were also able to loop in the English localization team lead Alex Flagg for additional perspective on what it’s like to deliver a dialogue-heavy Japanese game to a Western audience.
If you’re not caught up on AI: The Somnium Files, check out our interview with Iris “A-Set/Tesa” Sagan or our hands-on preview with the game from GDC 2019. The game launches for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch on September 17 this year.
Can you explain the “Somnium” world? It’s the key to solving mysteries, but are these people’s secrets, true feelings, dreams? How does Kaname Date use that information throughout the game?
Kotaro Uchikoshi: Somnium means “dream” in Latin. So a Somnium world would mean “dream world.” Dreams are made from fragments of memory stitched together like patchwork. Hidden inside are people’s secrets and suppressed feelings. It’s Kaname Date’s job to interpret what he sees in the dream to solve mysteries and move forward in the investigation. For example, there’s something like this: A girl was alone at the scene of the crime. However, she suffered mental trauma and now has aphonia, so she can’t talk. So, Date will dive into the girl’s dream world and find a lead: she heard a phone ring. Then, Date will return to reality, go back to the scene to investigate and look for a cellphone somewhere. Something like that.
We’ve seen AI being both dead serious, cheery, and sometimes outright absurd. How do you strike a tone that comes together?
Alex Flagg: Through a lot of hard work! Uchikoshi has this amazing ability to blend Wikipedia-diving information dumps, absurdist theater, and sex jokes into a gripping and touching story. What I’ve discovered by playing and localizing his work is that you can get away with a lot that seems narratively inconsistent as long as you’ve already captured the audience’s attention with an intriguing plot and interesting characters. Uchikoshi taught me that tone can fluctuate wildly, as long as the heart is centered and steady. Because if your heart is fluctuating wildly, you’re probably having a heart attack and are about to die. You know, narratively speaking.
KU: This is a hard question. All I can say is…by watching the balance. If I were to compare it, it’s like a barista or a mixologist. Their jobs are very sensuous, and it’s hard to put into words how they balance the ingredients. Or maybe it’s similar to hitting on someone. You can’t always be serious and cool and you can’t always be energetic and carefree. They’ll just brush you off, won’t they? It’s important to understand when to be serious and when to be energetic… What I’m trying to say is that everything is balanced out by things and you can’t just explain it away with words. Having said that, my pick-up techniques have never been very successful. I bet Alex is really good at it, so next time I’m in LA, maybe he can teach me a few tricks!
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There’s some body horror, light gore, and morbid imagery in your games, AI especially. Do you ever have ideas then stop yourself from going too far?
KU: When I was writing the scenario for AI, the character designs weren’t finalized yet. That meant that I only had a general idea of the characters while writing. That’s why I didn’t feel much guilt putting the characters through some really tough times. When the designs came in, I thought, “OMG, so cute!” That’s when the characters started to really exist. But then it crossed my mind. “Ah, why did I do that to them…?” I didn’t want to have a guilty conscience about it, so I thought, “Could I at least try not to put them through the darkest of my ideas?” Because of that, some scenes are now milder than the original idea. But this isn’t censorship, this is love. Love for my characters. I decided to tone down some things, but the story isn’t any less interesting or fun because of it. Please don’t worry about that.
What are your thoughts on canonical endings in games with branching storylines? How does AI handle that?
KU: I remember watching a Hayao Miyazaki documentary, and he said something like, “I’m over this, I don’t want to do this” while drawing original cels. Branching routes are like that to me. It’s so much work. I scream, “Augh! I’m over this, too much work!” while writing the story too. In AI, the story splits from the decisions you make in the Somnia. To put it simply, picking either the “A” lead or “B” lead changes how the story unfolds. Branching stories are a pain in the ass for the creator, but to the player, there’s nothing better. There’s a lot of interesting elements in this game due to the branching paths, so please look forward to it!
What are some important things Akira Okada (assistant director) has brought this time around for AI that you didn’t think of?
KU: Of course Okada-kun was a huge contributor, but AI was created from multiple ideas from all the staff members. For example, Aiba turning into a cute girl in Somnium, the video game inspiration behind a certain action scene, one of the stages from one of the Somnia. All of those were ideas from the staff. I mean, the Somnium parts, from the setting to the structure, was mainly done by Okada-kun and Yamada-san. I have nothing but respect and appreciation for the staff.
Are there any particular difficulties that come out of having to do a simultaneous Japanese and Western release?
AF: Oh, absolutely. Working side-by-side with the Japanese creative team is a totally different experience than picking up a completed project and adapting it.
KU: Thanks to the hard work from Alex, Kazu [Okura], the other Spike Chunsoft Inc. team members, and [community manager] Dave Kracker, I didn’t really have any trouble with simultaneous shipping. So, to the Spike Chunsoft Inc. team of course, the development staff in Japan, and the Chinese localization staff: I thank you very, very much, from the bottom of my heart!
You get to control Aiba in the Somnium world, but you only get a limited time to investigate.
What are some Japanese- or English-only quirks you get to put in the game? Are there some unique things players will get out of either language option?
AF: The Japanese and English are largely the same, script and presentation-wise. There are a few times here and there that, say, a joke was intentionally not localized, or a character’s voice performance in the English has a slightly different feel than the Japanese performance, but for the most part they are two versions of the same game.
Some jokes or one-liners might come across differently in either language. And one thing that we’re very proud of is that A-set’s debut single, “Invincible Rainbow Arrow,” is fully localized, right down to matching the Japanese rhyme scheme and poetic meter. So if you are playing in Japanese, you will hear the Japanese version of the song; if you are playing in English, you will hear the English version.
How involved are you with the performances of the voice cast?
AF: The translator for this project, Kazu Okura, and I were either there at Bang Zoom! studios or listening in over voice call every single day of recording. While we offered feedback and direction, especially during particularly intricate or complicated scenes, we can only take a little bit of the credit: it was our audio engineer JP Aller and voice director Chris Faiella that really helped the words come off the page and become something incredible in the performance.
What’s the toughest aspect for localizing AI that folks might not realize?
AF: I would say the humor is by far the most challenging aspect of localization, especially “dad joke” humor, jokes that are intentionally bad. If you localize that joke to make it genuinely funny, you aren’t exactly matching the tone of the Japanese. If you localize the joke to make it unfunny, you run the risk of the audience not realizing that the joke is supposed to be bad, it’s supposed to make you roll your eyes and groan. AI is full of these kinds of jokes, so my translator and I worked very hard to make them funny…but not too funny.
“Tesa, aka A-Set, you bet.” was totally the localization team’s idea, huh?
AF: Yes, it was. Her slogan cheer is different in the Japanese and the English. In the Japanese, it goes something like “volatile solvent of the net world, Aseton, aka A-set!” It’s a wordplay on the honorific “ton” added to her stage name “A-set,” making it sound like “acetone,” the chemical solvent. Keeping it “Aseton” in English would be clunky, invite mispronunciation, and lose the cuteness factor of the Japanese wordplay. So we decided to go with “Tesa,” a cute, easy-to-say nickname that utilizes the game’s prevalent motif of reflection (“Tesa” is of course “A-set” backwards). There was a time we briefly considered making her nickname “Ace,” but Zero Escape fans will know why we decided against that.
A-set has been a huge part of AI’s lead up. Besides being a major character and idol, what was the idea behind breaking the fourth wall with A-Set’s YouTube channel?
KU: One of the themes of this game is dreams and reality. So by linking the real world that we live in with the artificial world of AI, I tried to express the analogy (or is it a metaphor?) of “dreams and reality,” or something like that. Iris (A-set’s real name) is the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology. She is said to be the messenger girl that delivers the words of the gods. Rainbows are also sometimes called the “bridge of heaven,” so you could say that A-set is the “bridge” between fiction and reality.
With all the lead up to AI and A-Set at the forefront, how involved are you in her video content?
AF: Very involved! Our team and the creative team in Japan were sharing ideas for videos and story beats for months, coming up with the general “plot” of her YouTube channel together. Once that was more or less in place, we localized and recorded each video based on Japan’s video, which was incredibly difficult because of the fast pace they had to be produced. Often times we didn’t even have a final video render to look at while we were recording, so we had to feel it out by the script alone. But it came together beautifully.
How’s she been as a promotional partner?
KU: She was amazing! I know there were times I pushed her, but she didn’t make a face and took everything very seriously. I thank her from the bottom of my heart. Also, she smells really nice. A sweet scent that tickles a person’s heart… If she comes on screen while playing AI, please put your nose up to the screen. I’m sure you’ll start to smell irises…
Will A-Set’s presence in our real world play into events in AI?
AF: “Our real world”? What a peculiar way of phrasing it. You can see her, hear her; she is information in the universe and she occupies space in your mind at this very moment. She exists in this world the same way I do right now, typing away at my computer, communicating with you only through ones and zeros. One and the same.
KU: I already kind of answered this, but Iris is the bridge that connects our world to their world. As long as she exists, both worlds will continue to be linked.
How much tequila have you drank since the A-Set interview we did?
KU: The situation has changed. Currently, rather than me drinking tequila, it’s more of tequila drinking me. My office is always full of it. That’s where I wrote the game’s story. Just like one of those caterpillars in the bottles of tequila.
Source : Gamesport
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