#Tabletop Weekly Archive
Text
Also going to finally make a pinned post for all my stuff:
BOGLEECH - my tumblr blog is named after this website I created around 2002 and still update. Thousands of pages worth of content focusing on creature design as well as real biology. My review of the original Legend of Zelda monsters might be the most straightforward example of my articles.
Links to some of the most popular content:
POKEMON REVIEW ARCHIVE: - I rate and review each and every single Pokemon, in Pokedex order, on its merits as a creature design. I also do so as someone whose favorite animals are all parasites.
DIGIMON REVIEW ARCHIVE - same, but more chaotic.
CREEPYPASTA COOKOFF ARCHIVE - for several years I hosted a yearly writing contest before it grew too big for me to keep up with. There are over a thousand user submitted horror, fantasy, sci fi and surrealist stories here emphasizing unconventional, original ideas you seldom see from the "creepypasta" community!
The original "MORTASHEEN" Monster Archive - since the early 2000's I've created and illustrated more than 800 creatures and counting for my own monster-catching world, now set for release as a tabletop RPG setting.
AWFUL HOSPITAL: SERIOUSLY THE WORST EVER (page one): an interactive comedy-horror-sci-fi webcomic I started in 2014 about a medical facility that could maybe be better.
Some of my other internet stuff:
PATREON - constant work makes my patreon updates inconsistent, but the content backlog goes back years with a huge amount of exclusive art and writing. I try to put up new exclusive stuff whenever I can.
ETSY - I design all sorts of original enamel pins like these, plus I sell zero-maintenance terrarium plants (just leave them in a jar!), original books and other things!
COLOR THE ABYSS (available on the above etsy!) - a 30 page educational deep sea coloring book! Includes a few famous favorites like giant isopods and hagfish, but mostly focuses on less popular, often much weirder animals.
UNBELIEVABLE BUGS - also regularly restocked in the etsy store, 30 of the strangest and most surprising arthropods most people have likely never heard of, illustrated by myself and @revretch, written for even the youngest kids to understand (but will likely teach you something new at any age)
My Itch.io and Ko-fi - both sell digital versions of my books, including some creepypasta collections and my first novel, "Return of the Living," about a world of entirely ghosts suddenly dealing with the appearance of ghost-hunting monsters.
TWITCH CHANNEL - I now try to stream something at least monthly, sometimes weekly when possible, from horror games to books and art.
YOUTUBE CHANNEL - archives my twitch streams and other little things.
INSTAGRAM - look at pictures of my huge weird collection of toys and Halloween collectibles
BLUESKY - I'm going to put mainly just updates to my stuff on here.
SEE ALSO:
HUMANS-B-GONE - a science fiction animated series by my partner @revretch, about a world of kaiju-size, technologically advanced insects and arachnids to whom vertebrates like us are just pesky little "gubs." Also has a tumblr account @humansbgone
423 notes
·
View notes
Text
Wow! A rare personal post? Couldn’t be.
Anyways me and some friends have a ~weekly tabletop game we run on twitch, but we’ve been uploading them to YouTube for archival purposes/the potential of more viewers. AND we have finally reached one of the sessions *I* ran called Say Uncle! So like, maybe check it out if you wanna?
youtube
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
The readers of the Indie RPG newsletter are building a city together!
So for those who don't know, the Indie RPG Newsletter is a weekly newsletter that tries to share the most interesting stuff happening in indie tabletop roleplaying games. Recently, there's been a lot of talk about daily writing exercises. The designer of Mothership proposed writing one room every day for 2023 so you ended up with this one massive megadungeon!
To me, daily writing exercises are cool but they're also A LOT. So I was thinking about a weekly writing challenge for myself. I love cities so I was thinking about writing a city. And then I was thinking about low-effort ways for many people to contribute to the same city. And, well, maybe Goncharov being in the air and all, I thought about what about using the newsletter to play a city-building game with my readers.
There are about 2700 readers of the newsletter so this could get messy. I needed some kind of framework so I decided to use i'm sorry did you say street magic by caro asercion. And Caro sweetly gave me permission to do that!
So we've finished with the setup phase, readers have submitted their adjectives to inspire the city (stratified, clockwork, canaled) and we have voted on a name - Immoria!.
So what is Immoria?
Imagine that when people say time is a river, they mean it literally. Imagine the river of time was routed into canals that spread through a great city. Imagine this city as tall, built upon layers and layers of different communities and neighbourhoods. Imagine these canals entered the city at the very top and then slipped and flowed all the way down through the city’s many layers until it escaped and found its way into the sea of chaos. The river of time brings odd gifts and sometimes even odder things wash up on the shores of chaos. Some say the city is a giant water clock. But people who live there just call it home.
In i'm sorry did you say street magic, you build out a city by adding neighbourhoods, landmarks and people. Landmarks are always within a neighbourhood and people are always within a landmark. Readers have already started adding neighbourhoods. We've got Brasspool, Tangent, The Eddies, and so on. I'm organizing all of them on this site here. It's going to be the public archive of sorts.
Last week, we started the first proper round of the game. Every round starts with a compass - which gives you a direction or theme for the round. So when you add landmarks or people, you try to stick to that theme.
People have submitted their compass suggestions and I'm going to announce one in the next issue. If you'd like to play and help build Immoria or just follow along, check out the newsletter!
ttrpg.substack.com/
83 notes
·
View notes
Text
New Year New Pinned Post
Hi! I'm Cad! It's most likely short for Cadmus (who was turned into a dragon) or Cadaeic (who ennumerates the digits of pi), but it could also be the Caddisfly (who weaves a cloak of trash), Cadmium (who paints in poisoned hues), or just Cad (the rogue and rascal).
I’m a semi-closeted transmasc Australian above the age of 25. I've been around on Tumblr for a while on and off with various blogs and sideblogs.
I'm a dilettante who dabbles in many fields like writing (AO3 account here), shitty drawing, programming, painting tiny miniatures, generative AI (I help run an ethical AI art group at @are-we-art-yet!), rambling and others.
I'm currently very into the Napoleonic Era and men in colourful uniforms and tight breeches holding muskets and sabres. You will see a lot of 26 Eight Year Olds Napoleon's marshals here, as well as fictional Englishmen on sailing ships.
Other interests include creative writing in general and theorycrafting on worldbuilding, literary analysis, tabletop roleplaying games and game design, bad computer science jokes, cats and more. I only really tag the things I’ve experienced or am interested in.
I will be yelling into the void about whatever I feel like, which includes creative writing projects like fanfic or original writing like SbS, an urban fantasy about a zoomer undergrad befriending a ghostly naval captain.
Like pretty much everyone on this website I’m a little shy and anxious, but feel free to say hi! And if we've chatted, feel free to ask for my Discord!
-
Sideblogs Of Note
@shippostinginabottle - aesthetic, inspiration and reference blog
@teuthisdreams - Generative AI sideblog, mostly AI art of melting rainbow sailing ships - all created under the code of ethics of the leftist AI art collective Art We Art Yet?
@mostshipshape - a highly experimental weekly Age of Sail roleplaying game that ran for six weeks from 13/06/2022 to 5/08/2022 with public participation for polls
@armagnac-army - joke ask/roleplay blog portraying a parodic exaggeration of Marshal Jean Lannes, loyal and loud best friend of Emperor Napoleon, with guest appearances from the surly Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult
@murillo-enthusiast - uh oh Soult got one too
-
Additional Links
List of Perchance Random Generators I’ve Made
List of Sci Fi Short Stories that Set My Brain on Fire
Archive Of Our Own Link
Simple Stable 2.0 Link (free and open source interface for ai image generation using google's servers that I maintain)
Previous Pinned Post
-
If I unfollow or unmutual you, it’s nothing personal! Feel free to unfollow or unmutual me as well if you’d like!
This post is also a disclaimer that I will post whatever I feel like on this blog, so you have been warned!
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hello! I'm trying to meet new people, and I'd want to start by encouraging my many followers to talk to me. My name is Sam, he/him pronouns, I'm 26 years old, and I expect to graduate college with a BA in game design in the spring.
I'm putting more interests and details below the "keep reading", and I'll be queueing this post for three times a day for two weeks to see who responds.
Send me a message if you think you like the same stuff, or just wanna chat 😁 Especially if we're mutuals!
Professional interests:
Game design
User research
User interface design
Game programming
Video games I play regularly:
Warframe (I'm caught up on quests, I don't know how to make a good build, but I can handle the beginning of steel path lol)
Final Fantasy XIV (world: Coeurl, data center: Crystal, currently playing through Shadowbringers, WHM 83, MNK 73, WAR 70)
Games by Paradox Development Studio
No Man's Sky
Halo Infinite and MCC
My favorite games:
Half-Life
Portal
Outer Wilds
Night in the Woods
Anything by FromSoftware lol
Mass Effect
Dragon Age
Neverwinter Nights
Baldur's Gate
The Elder Scrolls
Fallout
Kingdom Hearts
Final Fantasy
Scarlet Hollow
Barotrauma
Bioshock
Deus Ex
Dishonored
XCOM
Minecraft
TV shows I liked:
Star Trek (all of every show, only some movies though)
Over the Garden Wall
Steven Universe
Adventure Time
Dark
The Witcher
Black Sails
Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul
Misc. fandom and other interests:
Homestuck
Tabletop RPGs (I'm GMing a bi-weekly Dark Souls tabletop RPG game, and I'm a player in a game of Dungeon of the Mad Mage that doesn't meet that often.)
Welcome to Night Vale
The Magnus Archives
DNI
Republicans
Fascists
Racists
Homophobes
TERFs
Aphobes
Religious proselytizers
60 notes
·
View notes
Text
Struggling to stay organized because you have ADHD?
Well, I have a fantastic solution for you! There’s this bitchin site called Trello and I’m gonna tell you all about it
This is not sponsored, I just really like organization and Trello is awesome. And, as always, no readmore because this is targeted at ADHD people and y’all ain’t gonna click it
[ID: a picture of a website with many columns/lists. Behind the lists, there is a customized background. To the right is a sidebar showing that you can search Unsplash for backgrounds right from the site. Each column/list has a bunch of ‘cards’ on it. The cards each have a title and color coded label(s) /end ID)
Here’s a picture of my to-do board
There are some things blacked out, mostly just my avatar, name, and some original creative stuff I don’t feel like broadcasting.
So, Trello is broken up into different levels of organization. Let’s start with the most important level: boards.
Boards
A board is what’s pictured above. Think of it like a corkboard where you pin your notes. You can make as many of these as you want. You can title them, invite people to them, automate certain parts of them, and more.
On your board, you can make
Lists
Lists are those columns you can see on my board. You can title each list, click and drag them around to reorder them, set them to automatically label the things on them, and so on.
My lists on my to do board are titled with a time period for when I aim to do something. The time periods are large and vague, which makes them great for my ADHD. I can move things between them as I need, which is also great for my ever shifting brain thoughts.
But! What makes it great is that whatever I put in the left list, titled Next, I know is what I need to be focusing on at the moment. It makes it easier to ignore what’s to the right of it and let’s me relax knowing I won’t just forget everything I’m not prioritizing.
Lists are used for holding
Cards
(ID: A picture of a small window that opens after clicking on a card. It contains the title, the labels (with their names now visible), and a functioning checklist. There is also a place to type a description, a place to add comments, and a list of buttons on the side for managing the card and its place on the board /end ID)
Each card can be as simple as containing just a title (making it a simple entry on your list), or as complicated as housing photos, descriptions, checklists, labels, and comments. You just click the card and it opens the window shown above.
My card is for a tabletop I’m working on, nicknamed TAP. I have it labeled with all of the things pertaining to what it involves (world building, writing, in progress, spreadsheeting, and art/creative). These color coded labels make it easy to see what kind of cards I’m looking at when looking at the overall board and lists.
As I do things on the checklist, I can mark them off. You can even set it to hide completed items on the checklist.
When I’m done with an item on my to do list, I click and drag the card to the Done list (which is offscreen on the far right). If you don’t want a visible Done list, you can also just archive a card and it will disappear from the board.
You can also set due dates on cards, which will notify you when they’re almost due or when the due date arrives.
Customization
One of my favorite things about Trello is that you can customize the appearance of your boards! My ADHD brain can’t stand looking at the same thing constantly, so it’s great that I can change things up. Each board can have its own design too, so you can match the vibes of the board with the appearance.
You can pick from a bunch of solid colors for your board or you can use the connection Trello has with Unsplash to search and select free stock images provided by photographers.
Other Parts of Organization
Not only do you have boards, lists, and cards, you can also make Workspaces, which are basically categories to sort your boards into. If you use Trello for projects, and have a board for each project, you can sort your boards into a Projects workspace.
There is also a function called Butler, which you can use to automate boards. For example, you can set it to automatically create a card called “Pay Rent” at the start of each month.
On the right, in the same sidebar where you can see the background options, there’s also an activity feed, tracking every time a card is moved, commented on, added, archived, and so on.
Team Work
Not only is Trello great for keeping private boards, you can also invite people to them! That makes it incredible for household management, group projects, or even friend groups who feel like storing plans and personalized memes. You can literally use it for whatever you want and in whatever way you want!
ADHD Applications
So, now let’s get down into the specifics of how this is great for people with ADHD.
You can make as many boards, lists, and cards as you want.
This is a big one for me, because I really struggle with websites that limit how much you can do with one account and force you to make multiples and then juggle multiple logins and so on. Start a new project? Make a new board. Follow your heart. Be free. If you end up giving up on it, just delete it, or store it for later. You can Star the boards you actively use and just use the Star list to access the boards you need, so if you star all your active ones and then ignore the unstarred, failed projects, you can leave them to rot or abandon them until the mood strikes again.
You can organize in a way that works for you.
So many organization applications are made to work one way and that can be really difficult to navigate as someone with ADHD. So many people with ADHD have such specific needs in regards to how they organize that it can be really hard to find something that works. Half the time we end up just scrambling around from application to application, cursing them as we go because one has one thing we like, but it doesn’t have the thing this other one has that we like and nothing ever seems to just work.
Trello makes it possible to personalize how you organize and even change how you organize halfway through. I keep my to do list organized in 4 priority levels with the addition of a Pin list and a Done list. You could also:
Keep a list that works as a calendar, with a card for each entry, organized in order of date
Keep a list of reminders where automated weekly/monthly/yearly responsibilities pop up
Jot down reminders as you think of them
Keep lists of school assignments in the order they’re due
Use descriptions and photo uploads on cards to collect information or resources needed for said assignments
Keep lists of information that’s easy to forget or lose track of on paper like address history, work history, references, contact information, and so on (like I’ve done on my ‘Pin’ list)
Use boards for projects, to keep track of things like resources, due dates, meeting times, sending files between classmates or project partners, and so on
Use boards for planning events like weddings, parties, conferences, school dances, or whatever else you’re into
Collect resources, references, or recreational to-dos (like links to fanfiction you want to read)
Literally anything
You can separate everything onto different boards, making everything visible from the titles of cards, or combine it all into one, with lots of information available on a click
The sky’s the limit
You can automate repeat tasks.
ADHD comes with a lot of forgetfulness when it comes to regular tasks, such as weekly appointments, medication reminders, and a yearly charge for your Nintendo membership. You can put that stuff into your calendar, but that can also be tricky because then you have information spread across multiple platforms.
Just as easily, you can set Butler to make new cards with reminders on them.
There’s probably more but I have ADHD and I forgot
Just think of the possibilities!!
I used to get debilitatingly stressed out because I would have 10 things floating around in my head because I was simultaneously trying not to forget them and also stressing about them and I would make what I call “spaghetti lists” where I would list all the things I’m thinking of, just as a way to calm down and know that I won’t forget them, so that my brain could quiet down.
Since starting this board, I haven’t had to do that once because all of the things I’m afraid of forgetting are already listed, even if they’re on the list titled ‘ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ‘ because idk if they’re ever actually gonna happen.
It can be incredibly stressful to see all of your to do items in one place, but since starting this, I have been less stressed overall, because I now know I can find them all in that one place. Learning to manage and cope with the stress of knowing I have a lot to do is easier than forgetting things and then realizing I’m late on something or things just never happening because I never remember them when I’m in a place where I can work on them.
And when you have everything in one place to reference when you have some executive energy, you can suddenly just start doing things. I have them labeled by type so I can go, “I’m in the mood to draw,” and then check all the dark blue labels for creative projects. It makes everything so much easier.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful to some of you, it’s genuinely been life changing for me
#adhd#actually adhd#coping with adhd#adhd tips#tips#advice#organization#organizing#trello#projects#to do#ghostpost#adhdghost
218 notes
·
View notes
Text
Time for a new prompt from the Short Fiction Weekly Challenge, tumblr edition. Let it spark your imagination. Any character, any fandom, any original world. Reblogs welcome!
Post your story to your blog and send the link to Short Fiction Weekly Challenge! The link will appear in our feed and the site index, and your blog will be listed on the Participating Blogs page.
This week’s SFWC prompt:
Week of June 11, 2021
Level Up!: When has your character “leveled up:” reached a narrative milestone and gained a benefit? What did they gain and how did they get there? A skill? A social connection? A title and responsibilities? A title and wealth? In a game, tabletop or computer, these milestones are often somewhat arbitrary, as well as the benefit(s) gained. In a story, you need to build up to those moments and choose the results so they make sense to your readers. This week, conclude a character arc and begin another. Level up!
Feel free to continue submitting stories for any prompt. A masterpiece missed the deadline? Don’t let it gather electronic dust. Submit it anyway and Short Fiction Weekly Challenge will publish it.
This week’s prompt not for you? Look for something more to your taste in the Prompt Archive. Consider all the prompts active and waiting to inspire you.
This week’s featured previous prompts are:
Baggage: “What’s in there?” “Only what you take with you.” What kind of baggage does your character carry with them from early experiences? Good or bad. Are they mistrustful because someone took advantage of them? Insecure because of past criticism? Confident because they've overcome obstacles? Sure of their destiny- or afraid of their fate? The past shapes your character's present. Tell a story about how or why.
Lost!: Really, really lost. So far off course that they don’t know where the course is, let alone how to get back on it. The compass is gone or broken. The sun or stars are hidden behind the clouds. The radio dead or not receiving signal. How did your character get into this situation? Is is real--as in they are physically lost? Is it metaphorical--they’re in a completely unfamiliar situation with no idea how to get out of it. Most importantly: how are they getting home?
Got an idea for a prompt? Submit it here.
#short fiction weekly challenge#sfwc#fiction#fiction writing#writing challenge#writing exercises#writing prompts#fanfic#fanfiction#fic#anthem#anthem fanfiction#dragon age#dragon age fanfiction#mass effect#mass effect fanfiction#skyrim#skyrim fanfiction#swtor#swtor fanfiction#wildstar#wildstar fanfiction#WoW#World of Warcraft#world of warcraft fanfiction
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Tabletop Seduction
read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/38EqKPQ
by Steter Club ideas (aneria)
Dungeons & Dragons does make an appearance.
The Nogitsune was in Stiles' body when Scott bit him, turning Stiles into a werewolf. No one noticed.
No more pack.
Bad friend Scott. Scott leaves Beacon Hills
Peter doesn't know Stiles is a werewolf. Stiles is his mate and he wants him.
i just finished this one and hope to have it fully beta'd soon. will post weekly on Tuesdays.
Words: 2536, Chapters: 1/28, Language: English
Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: M/M
Characters: Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani, Russian Alexi, Chris Argent
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Melissa McCall/Sheriff Stilinski
read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/38EqKPQ
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Comic-Con @ Home Friday Schedule 7/24/2020
10:00am • The Mandalorian and His Many Gadgets
10:00am • Cosplay - the Spice of Life!!!
10:00am • Last Gasp: 50 Years of Publishing the Underground Part I The comics, moderated by Jon Cooke and mainly focused on the period 1970-1995
10:00am • Howard Cruse: The Godfather of Queer Comics
10:00am • Pixel Stories - Reimagining Video Game Narrative
10:00am • Lights, Camera, LGBTQI-dentity! Never Alone
10:00am • "Crazy" Talk: Mental Health, Pop Culture, and the Pandemic
10:00am • Reclaiming Indigenous History and Culture Through Comics
10:00am • HBO Max: The Cartoon Network Studios Collection
10:00am • DC@Home Day One
10:00am • The 2020 Black Panel
10:00am • Charlize Theron: Evolution of a Badass - An Action Hero Career Retrospective
11:00am • Decoding the Kirby/Lee Dynamic
11:00am • TragiComics
11:00am • Star Wars Audiobooks: Doctor Aphra
11:00am • Blade Runner Comic Panel
11:00am • Make Your Own Felted Friends!
11:00am • Vikings: Celebrating 6 Seasons of The Series
11:00am • Entertainment is Female: a Conversation with Hollywood Executives
11:00am • Marvel Comics: Next Big Thing
11:00am • Think Big!
11:00am • Raina and Robin in Conversation
11:00am • HBO Max and Cartoon Network Studios: Adventure Time: Distant Lands
11:00am • Hot Wheels: Designing Fans' Exclusives
12:00pm • TOKYOPOP: Manga for Everyone
12:00pm • History Goes Graphic
12:00pm • Lucasfilm Publishing: Stories From a Galaxy Far, Far Away
12:00pm • Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes with Undiscovered Country
12:00pm • The Undiscovered Art of Jack Kirby: Architect
12:00pm • Zombies and Coronavirus: Planning for the Next BIg Outbreak
12:00pm • HBO Max and Cartoon Network Studios: Infinity Train
12:00pm • AMC's Fear the Walking Dead
12:00pm • Collider: Quibi's Don't Look Deeper Panel
1:00pm • From Idea to Hired: Books, TV, Film, and Comics
1:00pm • IDW: Draw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!
1:00pm • Harryhausen100: Into the Ray Harryhausen Archive
1:00pm • Make Mine Marvel: Bringing Back Marvel Classics for Today's Readers
1:00pm • Water, Earth, Fire, Air: Continuing the Avatar Legacy
1:00pm • [adult swim] YOLO: Crystal Fantasy
1:00pm • LMGI - Hollywood Location Scouts
1:00pm • Mattel Creations: Designing Pop Culture
1:00pm • AMC's The Walking Dead
1:00pm • Spotlight on Darcie Little Badger
2:00pm • [adult swim] 12oz Mouse
2:00pm • GirlsDrawinGirls: Industry Professional Women Artists in Quarantine: Balancing work, art, homeschooling, and life
2:00pm • I Am Not Okay with This - From the Page to the Screen!
2:00pm • The Psychology of Star Trek vs. Star Wars
2:00pm • Your Secret Weapon: How Friendship Saves the Day
2:00pm • Real Weird Science Alive and At Home!
2:00pm • UnMasked: Rhapsody PR's Behind-the-Music panel
2:00pm • Entertainment Weekly: Brave Warriors
2:00pm • AMC's The Walking Dead: World Beyond
3:00pm • Zoom into Xadia: The Dragon Prince
3:00pm • Get It On the Table: Designing Your Tabletop Game
3:00pm • The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel
3:00pm • The Vortex opens AGAIN- Vortex 2.0 launches Storm King Comics
3:00pm • Observational Drawing by Controlling Angles
3:00pm • Reimagining Mandrake The Magician with Erica Schultz
3:00pm • Galaxy Grrls, or the Female and Non-Binary Authors who Bridge the new Frontier of Space Fiction
3:00pm • Hermes Press and Gothic Comics in America
3:00pm • Latin American Horror Cinema 2: Sometimes They Come Back
3:00pm • First Look at Hulu's Helstrom
3:00pm • HBO MAX: Adult Animation Panel
3:00pm • Peacock Original Series: The Capture
4:00pm • Fantasy & Sci-Fi Authors
4:00pm • How to Make a Comic From Start to Finish
4:00pm • Remote Real-Time: The Age of Virtual Production
4:00pm • The Nacelle Company: Pop-Culture Under Quarantine
4:00pm • Vampirella 50th Anniversary Finale
4:00pm • Sinless, Fearless, Ruthless - A look at science and social science in a YA sci-fi book
4:00pm • Comic-Con: Robert Kirkman at Home
4:00pm • Crossing Swords
4:00pm • Legendary Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane Talks Toys, Comics, and More!
4:00pm • Bob's Burgers
4:00pm • VIZ: A Haunting Conversation with Junji Ito
5:00pm • Unboxing Pandora: Season Two On The CW This Fall
5:00pm • Read Manga and Learn Classics Literature!
5:00pm • The Living Dead: Celebrating the Legacy of George Romero
5:00pm • No Strange Bedfellows: The Relationship Between Pro Wrestling and Comics
5:00pm • Archer @Home
5:00pm • A Zoom with Joss Whedon
5:00pm • IDW: The Mueller Report in 10-minutes
5:00pm • Deep Blue Sea 3: The Panel!
6:00pm • Travel Through Time with Comics
6:00pm • TV Guide Magazine Fan Favorites
6:00pm • Klingon Lifestyles the Home Alone Year
6:00pm • The Wonderful, Horrible World of E.C. Comics
6:00pm • The Famous Monsters Podcast
6:00pm • Hip-Hop And Comics: Cultures Combining
6:00pm • Building Your Own Themyscira: Connecting With Other Geeky Bosses
6:00pm • SYFY: TZGZ's Adult Animated Originals
7:00pm • 32nd Annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
#the mandalorian#howard cruse#hbo max#DC comics#charlize theron#jack kirby#stan lee#star wars#blade runner#vikings#Marvel Comics#Cartoon network#lucasfilms#amc#fear the walking dead#quibi#tmnt#avatar#avatar the last airbender#The Walking Dead#star trek#helstrom#hulu#vampirella#bob's burgers#archer#joss whedon#themyscira#comic con @ home#will eisner
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
WWC River’s companion.
This is the story that started it all, I don’t recall the exact date because I didn’t start the challenge until about a year later but this is the story that triggered it in my head. Truthfully I don’t even remember the prompt. (I have a bit of a better system for that now.)
For the first half or two third of this story my main character doesn’t have a name and that started as me just refusing to give another voice any foot holed in my head as I have way too many characters who just pop up and tell me a short story randomly anyway. But it finally got to a point where I have two female characters in one room and we needed one. And as those who were around me when I was writing this one can tell you in the beginning it was going to be shorter but halfway through the two main characters meeting each other I just knew they were soulmates and so it went on.
So, if you like detectives, sweet and snarky-ish bar keeps and a touch of the supernatural this is a fun little romp of a tale.
This story contains implied sex, so now you know.
Word count: 11,746
To read this story & all of 2019′s weekly challenge stories check out the Archive link Here Or keep reading below.
River's Companion
The cold grey walls, to dark to be clinical but pushing heavily into industrial were barren. The two-way glass shines in the fluorescent light washing out her reflection. Her soft peaches and cream skin and ashen brown mid back length hair tied back into a messy fishtail braid look almost white in the glass. Her hands are folded on her lap almost primly. The officers that had brought her in here had left her in the room alone in an attempt to make her sweat. She’s been through things similar to many times to be concerned by it. Though she does get a small amount of pleasure from watching their confusion as they observe how calm she is. To help pass the time she pops her shoulders and rolled her neck.
The door opens and a disheveled, unkempt man in what she assumes is his late thirties though it is clear that stress and lack of sleep have aged him onto looking like he was in his late forties, stomps in pushing the door closed behind him. “I’m Detective Rolif,” He says opening the manila envelope he had tucked under his arm. “And you have some explaining to do.” He locks eyes with her for the first time and she notes they are a soft gray green and hardened by the human tragedy he deals in daily.
“Oh?” She gives him a gentle eyebrow raise before attempting to continue but stops herself when he tosses a pile of photos onto the steal table. She glances down at the photos and immediately sees herself at the latest inauguration a dark smile on her face. She shifts her gaze to Detective Rolif to confer that he actually wants her to look through them. He gives a slight nod. She pushes the inauguration photo to the side and finds another one of herself in the protest line against the Vietnam War. The next image is at Pearl Harbor as she assisted in the treatment of wounded soldiers. The next had her at the trial of Baby Face Nelson, yet another showed her in the crowd at the opening of the Eiffel Tower in 1889. She lifts her eyes back to detective Rolif, a picture of pure confusion.
Detective Rolif leans across the table towards her. “Who are you?” his voice is low, almost threatening.
A dark smirk creeps onto her face as she watched the curiosity play in his grey green eyes. “That isn’t what you want to ask me.” she keeps her eyes locked on his. They could be pretty, if it weren’t for the dark bags under them and the frown lines around them.
“It isn’t?” He frowns.
“No, it isn’t.” The smirk grows on her face.
“What do I want to ask?”
“Mhmm?” She gives a small shrug.
“What are you?” He slams his hands down onto the table in frustration.
A smile brakes out across her face, confident and cocky. “Ah, there it is.” His eyes narrow. “What do you think I am?”
“Stop that.”
“I’m just curious.”
“What are you?” He leans farther over the table.
“Currently, I am watching a man try to intimidate me for reasons unknown and as such am mildly confused.” He shifted back slightly. “Has it occurred to you that I might be a model who does a lot of historically themed photo shoots?”
“These aren’t recreations.” He stands back up and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Oh, really? Maybe they are just really good ones.” She leans back in her chair.
“They are not recreations.” He narrows his eyes at her in bubbling frustration.
“Okay let's say they aren’t recreations. What does it matter?”
“What are you?”
“Why does it matter to you?”
Detective Rolif lets out a heavy sigh. “As far as I can tell you are at least two hundred years old, how is that possible?”
“Two hundred? Two hundred! The oldest photo you have here is from the opening of the Eiffel Tower which was march of 1889, so at most, by your logic I am one hundred and thirty.”
Detective Rolif smirks thinking he’s got her cornered. “The oldest photo in that pile is from the opening of the Eiffel Tower. I have older ones.”
“Older ones, oh no!” She puts her left hand to her cheek with a soft shrug. “They can’t be that much older. I mean do you even know when the camera was invented?”
The detective finally sits down across from her, a haughty smirk on his lips. “It doesn’t matter, I have paintings and sketches of you.” She places her elbow on the table top with a low hum. “They date back to the sixteen hundreds.”
“Do they?” She places her chin in her palm as she leaned forward. “I’m starting to think you’re obsessed with me. Do I need to get a restraining order?”
“What are you?”
“Why does it matter?”
“What are you?”
“Why does it matter?”
“You are going to tell me what you are, what makes it so you’re still alive.”
“Until you tell me why you want to know I’m not going to tell you a damned thing.”
“Do you want to be locked up?”
“Two-part answer.” she leaned back in her chair again. “First, what in the world would you arrest me for? Second, according to you I have all the time in the world, what’s a few years to me then?”
He watches her for several long heartbeats. “Were you made into this or have you always been one?”
“One what? I still don’t know what you think I am.”
“I don’t know, a, a vampire or something.” this time the frustration softens him and he slumps down in his chair.
“Is that what this is about? You think I’m a vampire and what, I’m going to go on a murder spree, possibly create a hive of my own?”
He glances down at the table, a small show of embarrassment. Her head tilts to the left ever so slightly as she wonders if she’s hit the nail a bit too hard on the head. “No, not exactly.”
Her face softens. oh dear, this has to do with someone in particular. she inhales deeply. “No, I am not a vampire.”
He lets out a soft sigh, it might be relief. “Can you make more like you?”
“Not the way I’m guessing you want me too. In answer to an earlier question, I was not made this way I simply am this way. If there are to be more, they will be born this way.”
“I see.” The dejection is palpable. “So, what are you?”
“I am an eternal, I pose no threat to you mortals. I am simply an observer.” He scrunches his face up and frowns. “I have a question for you Detective Rolif, why did you bring me in here?”
“I’m dying.”
“Are you now?”
“Testicular cancer.”
“That is a shame for a man so young. It’s a rather unpleasant way to go.”
“That's why I was hoping you could change me.”
“Ah yes, I’m afraid that isn’t possible, but I will offer you this. I have watched thousands of friends die and I will be here for you should you seek someone who understands loss.”
Detective Rolif gives her a soft quick smile, she reaches across the table motioning for him to hand her the pen in his breast pocket. He handed it over without question. Opening the folder again she writes her name and number. “Thanks.”
“Of course. Now is there another reason I’m here or did you pull me into your place of business for a personal reason.”
“Right,” He re-bundles the photos back into the folder. “About that, you witnessed a robbery last month.”
“Yes.”
“We have reason to believe that the robbers were part of the white dragons and that they are attempting to locate any and all witnesses.”
“I see, so what am I supposed to do with this information?”
“I,” He paused and glanced at her. “I don’t know, can you die?”
“AH- so you think they aim to kill me.”
“Yeah, can they?”
“Kill me? Yes, not that its ever stuck before though.”
“Oh.” Detective Rolif chuckles unnerved.
“So, what would you like me to do, if I suspect these Dragons are nearby?” She folds her hands back onto her lap.
“You should call us, well me.” He looks down at the tabletop tapping his pen against it.
“So, you’re the officer assigned to me.”
“Yes,”
“You do, of course, realize how creepy everything you've just done comes across.”
“I’m starting to. I can see about having someone else assigned as your contact.”
“No, it’s fine just as long as you’re aware.”
“I am.”
“Good,” She claps her hands to her knees. “Do you have a card or something.” Detective Rolif reaches into the inner breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out a silver card case. Opening it he hands her a card. “Thank you, now if there isn’t anything ells. I have appointments to keep.”
“You’re free to go.”
“Thanks for the warning, and do feel free to call me if you need to talk or if you just want a drink.” she stands and pockets the card.
“Thank you for coming in today.” Detective Rolif offers her his hand and they shake farewell.
“Of course.” She turns and walks from the room.
It was seven weeks later when her phone rang at eleven forty-six in the evening. Detective Rolif’s name flashed onto the screen, she sat up from where she had been lounging across her sofa, soft ethereal music drifting from the speakers on the far wall. She smirked to herself and swiped across the screen to answer. “Hello, Detective.”
“Uhg, Hel, hello.” he sounds surprised that she answered though it could be surprised that he called in the first place.
“Is there something I can do for you, Detective?”
“Umm, I, I'm sorry for calling so late.”
“It’s fine.”
“You said I could talk to you about my…” His voice fades out.
“Of course. Would you like to meet? I know of a quiet bar where we can have some privacy.”
“I don’t know about that. I”
“I, by no means, want to pressure you but most people find these conversations easier face to face.”
He sighs heavily then goes silent for several long heartbeats. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Text me the address.”
“Of course, I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Right, see you then.” He hung up, she sent the address and cleaned up her cup of tea before changing.
Ten minutes later she walked through the old brass doors of Styx. Stopping at the bar she tapped her knuckles on the counter. “Hey, Boss lady, what brings you back here? Or do you just hate having time to yourself?”
“Marcus, I have a guest coming shortly, a Detective Rolif. When he arrives get him whatever he likes and bring him to my booth.”
“Sure thing, you want your usual?”
“Yes, and some of those nibbles I like. If you would be so kind.” Marcus smiles his award-winning smile at her. She simply narrows her eyes and turns towards her booth. She’s seen to many young women fall for that smile in their time together.
“I’ll have them to you in two shakes of my sweet, sweet ass.”
“Don’t hurt yourself now.” She smiles walking away from him, towards the booth in the back-left corner. The bar is quiet, though that is to be expected of a Wednesday. Only the regulars are settled in their places, some reading, musing and listening to the soft violin music being piped in tonight. She settles into the soft leather of the high-backed booth and pulls off her hooded sweatshirt.
Five more minutes had barely passed when Marcus leads Detective Rolif over to the booth along with her whiskey sour. “Have a seat Detective.”
Detective Rolif slid into the booth, a bourbon on the rocks glass in his hand. “I’ll have those nibbles out to you in just a bit.” Marcus tosses over his shoulder, walking back to the bar.
“Thank you, Marcus.”
“You come here often?” Detective Rolif asked looking into his glass. She tilts her head to the right with a quick smile.
“You could say that, you didn’t look into me at all after we spoke did you.”
He shakes his head slightly, looking up at her. “Should I have?”
A warm smile eases onto her lips. “No need, I will gladly share my story. I own Styx.” She motions around them to the bar. “It’s a place of quiet reflection for me in the noise of the city.”
“It’s nice,” He glances around the dimly lit room. “Quiet, Comfortable.”
“Thank you, most nights we have live music. You should come by and see it.”
“That would be nice.” He sips his drink turning back to her.
Marcus slid a plate of mini quiches and meat pies onto the table between them and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
“Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about or did you just want to see how it goes?”
“I think, I just wanted to talk. To be honest I can’t believe I called you let alone came down here to meet with you.”
“I see.”
“I don’t mean to offend you. I know how bad that sounded. I just don’t know a better way to say it.” he drops his gaze to his drink again.
“I never did ask you; how did you find all those photos of me?”
He keeps his eyes on his drink and lets out a nervous chuckle. “Well actually, my niece is in art school and the last time she came to visit me she was showing me some of the photos her professor had been talking about in class. And I noticed your face kept popping up over and over again. I didn’t think too much of it, you know how some people look like historical figures.” She nodded but he isn’t paying attention. “But then maybe two or three days later I was at a crime scene and one of the uniforms was taking your statement and you looked so familiar. My instincts just kind of took over and the next thing I knew I had found you all over the world, all throughout time.” His face lights up as he laughs a genuine sound. For the first time she sees he is a handsome man, his face is creased by stress, worry and laughter. The salt and peppering of his auburn, short fluffy hair offsets the warm gray green eyes. “I sound like I’m obsessed with you; I promise I don’t mean you any harm.” He sobers from his laughter and locks eyes with her. “It’s just that you’re the only person I’ve told about my cancer.”
“Why haven’t you told your family?” She leaned on the table, concerned that he would talk to a stranger instead of his family. This question opened the floodgates. His concern of over worrying his sister and niece. How he feared losing his work before he was ready to should they find out he was sick. While the detective spilled out his concerns Marcus moved silently in and out refilling drinks and nibbles.
“Excuse me.” Marcus politely interrupted. “It’s time for me to head out, is there anything else you two need before I go?”
“Go? What time is it?” She asked glancing down at her watch, a quarter to five glared back at her. “Wow, okay, is everything closed down?”
“Yes ma'am, patrons have gone home, tables are bussed, kitchen is closed and cleaned, cash collected and locked up, everything is done except for your table.”
“Alright, thank you. I think we are good here. I can take care of anything else we’ll need. Get some rest, I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yes Ma'am, See you tonight.” Marcus turned toward the door, “Text me so I know you got home safe.”
“Thank you, Marcus!” she shouts after him, he waves as the door clicked shut behind him. She turned back to detective Rolif shaking her head. The detective was looking down at his own watch.
“I’m so sorry.”
“What?” She tilted her head confused.
“I didn’t mean to keep you out so late. I’m so sorry, I should head out and let you get home yourself.” Detective Rolif said standing.
“It’s fine, there is no need to rush off.”
“No, you’ve been so kind already, I couldn’t knowingly keep you up any longer.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Yes, Thanks for this. I feel a lot better.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” She stood and collected their glasses. “If you need to do it again, you are always welcome to call or stop by.”
“Thanks.”
She locked the door behind him and finished cleaning out their booth before heading home herself.
To her surprise, three nights later, Detective Rolif walked into Styx, ordered a drink and stood watching the string quartet. She watched him watching them for a few minutes before walking over. “Detective,”
He started and turned to face her. “Hi, where did”
“Won't you have a seat?” She begins leading him toward Her booth. “I’m afraid I'm still working on a few things, but I can join you shortly.”
“Oh, right, sure.” she left him at the booth and stop the young waitress, Kari, telling her to check in on the detective.
Marcus walked into her office, hung his coat. “I see your visitor is back. What have you gotten mixed up in?”
“Nothing you need to worry yourself about. Would you please finish this order for me before heading out to the bar, he’s been waiting almost a half hour already.”
Marcus shoots her the side eye. “Alright.” She ignored him heading out into the bar.
“Detective,” She slides into the booth across from the Detective. “What can I do for you?”
“You didn’t have to rush back, I’m just tired of being at my house.” She smiled her understanding and they settle into watch the quartet. Marcus slides a plate onto the table between them before heading behind the bar.
Detective Rolif was the last to leave again, this became something of a pattern though the times between his arrivals fluctuated slowly becoming shorter.
As time passed, she learned about his niece, his sister and the passing of his parents. She helped him find a lawyer to set up his will and some affordable life insurance. He began asking about her life, all that she has seen and done.
Marcus grew suspicious as the weeks turned to months and the months to years. before they realized it this pattern of theirs and been going on for two years. And yet now she found herself waiting for him, disappointed when he didn’t arrive and worrying over him whenever she heard of a, police involved shooting.
One afternoon she and Marcus where checking in an order when the radio announced that the white dragons had opened fire at Rolif’s precinct. Marcus watched her freeze in mid motion as the story washed over her. “Do you want to head down there?” Marcus asked taking the clipboard from her hand.
“No,” she straightened back up. “No, I would just be adding to the mess.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’ll, I’ll go or call him later. If I go now, they’ll just wonder.” Marcus watched her silently. “They have enough to worry about, they don’t need me getting in the way.”
“Alright,” Marcus gave her shoulders a quick rub. “We’ll call over later.”
“Thank you.” She shot him a quick smile; Marcus nodded.
“Let's get this bar open.”
The violinist arrived and started, bringing with her a rather large crowd, creating a constant stream of work in the bar leaving both she and Marcus constantly running back and forth.
Finally, a loll came and she went back to her office to complete some paperwork. Rolif walked through the brass doors, disheveled, exhausted and headed straight to the bar. “Marcus.”
Marcus turned at the sound of his name, his eyes going wide at the sight of Rolif. “Rolif, You’re here. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, can I get a bourbon on the rocks?”
“Sure, no problem.” Marcus turned to grab the bottle, handing over the glass. “She’s in the office.
“Right.” Rolif took a sip from the glass, turning for the office.
“Rolif,” He turned back to Marcus. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Thanks.” Rolif’s lip twitched in something of a smile, Marcus nodded returning to the other patrons.
She was sitting, going over the payroll when the office door opened. The clink of ice against glass made her look up. Instantly her chest tightened at the sight of him, she rose from her chair in a daze. “You’re here.” She moved toward him.
“Yeah, I hope that-” her arms wrapped around him, startling both of them.
“You’re here and you’re not hurt.” Her hands scratch into the back of his jacket as she fought to wrap her brain around the fact that Rolif was standing in front of her.
“I’m not hurt, it’s okay.” He moved slowly but his arms came up around her as well.
Her ear found his heartbeat and for a moment she is reassured, suddenly she can’t stop the words from rolling off her lips. “I heard what happened on the radio, I was so scared. I wanted to come down and make sure you were okay but I didn’t want to know if you weren’t.” without realizing what she was doing she stretched up him and brushed her lips against his.
Within an instant his tongue brushed over her lips easing into her mouth. The glass slid from his fingers while hers dug into his hairline, shattering on the floor as he pulled her tighter to him.
In all of her previous encounters she had never felt so hazy before, her skin tingles from his touch.
He led her through the room toward the sofa on the far wall. They sank down into the soft leather, his hand sliding up her side to squeeze her breast.
A wave of frightened screams came from the bar, breaking the spell they had fallen under. Their lips separate and that stared at each other until the screams came again. They moved in unison for the door, she entered the bar a step before him.
A man stood with a shotgun pointed at Marcus, while another stood watching the front door. She moved into action immediately, quickly and quietly working her way toward the bar. She picked up a half empty bottle of wine from one of the tables as she passed. “Hey!” she shouted throwing the bottle at the man with the shotgun. He turned just in time to get a bottle to the face while Marcus reached across the bar and disarmed him, turning the gun on the other man.
Rolif burst through the crowd his hand gun drawn, they moved toward the would-be robbers with a somewhat threatening ora. She put a foot over the downed man's genitals before nodding at Marcus, who then put the shotgun down behind the bar to call the police. Rolif cuffed the man by the door first and sat him at the bar. He then turned to her and the gunman. “I got him.” Rolif said reaching down to grab the man by his arm, “Get up.” she removed her foot and stepped back.
“She threw a bottle at me!” the man shouted.
“Yeah she did, but you tried to rob her.”
“Seems like a fair trade.” She snapped, Rolif smirked watching her move to sit at the bar and wait for the patrol car to arrive.
Once the car arrived it was a thrill for her to watch Rolif take full charge of the scene. In under two hours the would-be robbers were carted away, witness statements taken, paperwork was completed and the patrol car had pulled away. A few of the regulars came to check on her and Marcus, once the commotion had settled down. Rolif sat next to her at the bar while Marcus slid her a rum and coke. “You want anything?” Marcus asked him while signaling to the band to start back up.
“Na, I’m good.” Marcus nodded leaving them to talk. “You’re surprisingly prepared for things.” Rolif turned his full attention on her.
“This is hardly the first time I’ve had someone try to rob me.” She chuckles taking a sip.
“You’ve certainly been around long enough.”
“Oh, har har.”
He smiles and her chest tightens again. “So, I hate to … whatever this was and run but,” He glances down into her glass, just so he didn't have to look her in the eye anymore. “I don’t know how to end this and it super weird. So- I’m just gonna go.”
She couldn't help but snicker as he stood. “How about dinner in a couple of days?”
“Yeah, sounds good.” He reached for his wallet.
“Don’t worry about it,” he glanced up at her. “Did you even drink any of it before it smashed all over my floor?”
He shrugs. “Maybe a sip or two.”
“That hardly counts.”
“Thanks.” she waved it off while he pulls his coat straight. As he turned for the door, she grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “I’m glad your okay.”
“Thanks.” he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Me too.”
“Go get some rest, I’ll see you soon.”
He plants another kiss on her cheek. “See you soon.”
Four days later she was called out of the office just after opening to speak to some gentlemen who wanted a word. There were three of them, two with army short hair, probably in their early thirties. The other is in his late forties with long hair and a receding hairline along with a broken Italian nose. She plastered on a placating smile. “Gentleman, what can I do for you?”
“You the owner?” the oldest one asked clearly accustomed to speaking for the group.
“I am.”
“I understand you know a colleague of ours.”
“Do I?”
“I also understand he was here a few nights ago while you were being robbed.”
“It was an attempted robbery; they didn’t manage to get anything for their trouble. And I’m afraid there were a number of people here at the time so you’ll have to tell me your colleagues name.”
“Hmm,” He snorted condescendingly. “So, you’re telling me that Rolif has a shit day at work and then a shit night.”
He tried to imply something though she didn’t have the patience to entertain him. “I’m sure it wasn’t exactly what he had planned for the evening. It certainly wasn’t how I envisioned mine.”
“Where was he when it happened?”
“He was in the office with me.” She can feel the path of their eyes down her body as they give her a lecherous once over.
“What was he doing in there?”
“Talking, he’s a friend who came to see me after having, as you said, a shit day at work.”
“Your friend.” they scoff. “How long have you known him?”
“Right around two years.” she wove her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. Marcus looks over at the sound, taking it as the bad sign it is.
“Alright, how did you meet him?” The older man popped his neck to the left with a dark smirk, her eyes narrowed slightly.
“She was a witness,” Rolif answers from the door, a heavy scowl on his face. “Why are you here, Costa.” Rolif settles himself next to and slightly in front of her.
Costa instantly takes on a false friendly, innocent persona. “Just trying to figure out where you’ve been running off to the past few years. Guess now we know.” Costa shoots her a quick leer.
“Well, look at that you found me, maybe you have actually learned how to do some of your job. Now go away.”
“Now, now, don’t be like”
“Go away.” Rolif gently turned her away from Costa and the other men, walking her toward her booth. “I’m sorry about this, I should have known shit was going to get around the precinct after the other night.”
“Rolif,” Costa shouted after them. “Rolif, don’t you turn your back on me!”
“Leave.” Rolif turns back to Costa a dark fire blazing in his eyes. “Now, or I’ll have you escorted out in bracelets.” they stared each other down for several long tense moments before Costa and the other two turned and walked out the door.
She waited for the door to close before turning to Rolif, poking his shoulder. “What the hell is going on?”
“Costa’s an idiot.” Rolif explains rubbing his shoulder.
“That may be, but why are you concerned about the precinct knowing about you being here. Are you trying to hide the fact that you know me from them? Why is Costa looking for you with such a darkness in him? So, help you if you brought shit to my door!”
“No, No I didn’t, at least I don’t think I did.”
“Then explain.”
Rolif glanced around clearly hoping they weren’t so public despite there only being one other party in the place. “I just like having a place to myself.” She tightens her face but remains silent. “Look, I’m sorry Costa showed up and all, but I came over here today kinda hoping we could go get that dinner you talked about last time I was here and talk about a few things.” He looked up at her with sad puppy eyes.
She sighed and rolled her eyes through the room. “Fine,” crossing her arms she turns for the office. “Let me get my purse.” She marched past the bar, sure this conversation was going to be a long and weird one. She walked into her office.
“Rolif.” Marcus waved Rolif over. “I just want you to know that I saw that.”
“What?”
“The other night, I saw that.”
“What, are you talking about?”
“You behave yourself tonight.” Marcus wiggles his eyebrows a devious little smile on his lips.
“Marcus, you good if I head out early?”
“Sure am, I’ll call your cell if we need you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yep,” Marcus leaned on the bar closest to her. “Have fun on your date.”
“Don’t even start right now.” She and Rolif walk towards the door.
“Have fun you two!” Marcus called after them with a chuckle.
Rolif had them seated in a quite booth in the back of a mom and pop Italian restaurant. They sat in awkward silence well after ordering, neither sure how to start the conversation. “Okay so,” Rolif started. “I get how what I said may have made it sound like I was embarrassed or trying to hide you. But I swear that’s not what it is. Truth is I don’t like Costa, he’s loud and a dick.”
“I kinda picked up on that.”
Rolif smirked. “I have to deal with him all the time, his desk is right next to mine and it drives me nuts. So, I really did just like having a place that the others didn’t know about. I didn’t want you to have to deal with their Bullshit and everything. I’m sorry they showed up today.”
“Okay, that’s fine. It is. Though I just want to point out to you that they seem to have some particular issue with you.”
“Yeah.” He shifts in his chair. “So, the other day when we were moving into defend the precinct. I was in the back of the line and while heading in I was hit,” her gut tightened. “With this ridiculous pain, it toppled me right there. They didn’t notice, not that they would there was a hell of a lot going on but a few of the guys were shot two died on scene and three others are in the hospital. Costa thinks I froze and if I had been there, they wouldn’t be where they are now, and he is you know, pissed about it.”
“Do you know what it was?” She motioned at him.
“I ducked out early today to see the doc and guess what’s back.”
Her stomach dropped. “Oh no.”
“Yep, and with a vengeance this time.” Rolif lifted his eyes to hers. “He wants me to start heavy chemo in two weeks.” She reached across the table, taking his hand. For some reason this wasn’t something she had thought would happen again. “I know it’s a lot to ask you, you shouldn’t have to go through this with me again, but I don’t think I can do this alone.”
“You let me know when your appointments are and I will make sure I’m available. You can crash at my place afterwards as well. You know you don’t have to ask.”
“Are you sure?” There was a twinkle of something she couldn’t quite decipher in his eyes.
“Of course.” she squeezed his hand and he smiled at her.
The awkwardness faded and the dinner conversation turned much lighter. Before the night was done, he kissed her cheek once again and got in his car. As he drove off, she wondered how such a simple action sent such tingles shooting through her body.
When the first appointment came do she had the office prepped for him to crash in and the guest bedroom ready for when he thought he could manage the stairs. He held her hand through the entire treatment, chuckling as she told him stories to keep him occupied. He fell asleep on the sofa in the office for several hours’ afterword. The following day he swore he was well enough to return home and begrudgingly she agreed.
Two days later as she and Marcus were preparing for opening, she received a text from Rolif. “Come get me.” everything stopped and they headed for the car, while she called him and Marcus explained what still needed doing to the two waitresses.
“Where are you?”
“Precinct, hurry.” His voice was strained with pain.
Marcus dropped her in front of the precinct as he searched for parking. She darted through the building pushing past the main desk to the detective’s bullpen. Rolif was hunched over in his desk chair, vomiting violently into his trash can. Most of the other detectives stood watching him, weaving her way between them she placed a hand on Rolif’s shoulder. “What that hell are you?”
Rolif began to laugh, still vomiting. “Don’t make me laugh,” He spits into the can and wipes his mouth. “It hurts.”
“Who’s trying to make you laugh, you should be at home resting.” he turns enough to look at her and she can see just how much pain he’s in etched into his face as sweat pours down it. He began vomiting again and she reached out to stabilize him in his chair as is body rocks from the force of each heave.
“Your uncle is on his way.” Marcus stated waving between the still ogling detectives.
“What! Why?” She snapped whipping her head around to face him.
“Because I called him.”
“Again, Why?”
“Because you didn’t.”
She does a slow angry blink. “What is wrong with you, we don’t have time for him.” Her voice is strained as she tries to control her anger. Rolif began to slide from his chair as a new wave of heaves overtook him, she caught him under his arms and kicked the chair out of the way sinking to the floor behind him to support him herself as he rode the wave out. “Help me get him in the damn car.” she growled at Marcus.
Rolif leaned his head back against her shoulder, she wipes the sweat from his face with her sleeve.
“What is it I have to come see right, oh.” A tall thin man in an expensive suit and an intelligent sweeping haircut stops next to Marcus.
“Edgar, that’s Rolif.” Marcus motioned to Rolif without need before kneeling down to scoop Rolif up off the floor.
“Oh, my.” Edgar watched her balance the trash can on Rolif’s stomach.
Marcus turned to head for the door. “Talk to her.” he says to Edgar as he passed.
She picked up Rolif’s jacket from the back of his chair and began digging through the pockets. Deciding she needed to head over to his apartment and pick up some clothes for him. Once she had his keys and wallet in her hand, she started past Edgar but he reached out and grabbed her wrist keeping her next to him.
Edgar ripped the keys and wallet from her hand and pressed them in to his assistant’s, telling the assistant to do the same as she had planned to. He then dragged her out of the precinct toward his waiting car, ignoring her protest as they went. He pushed her into the car then shouts something to the driver. All through the ride he sent out texts offering only disappointed glares in her direction.
She folded Rolif’s jacket over her arms and huffily looked out the window. She knew she shouldn’t have been so surprised when they pulled into Lizzy’s driveway but that didn’t change the fact that she was. “Oh God, why are we here?” she meant to sound angry but it came out as a whine.
“You need to talk to her.” Edgar said leading her from the car into the house and down the hall. Edgar pushed her into a chair as they entered Lizzy’s home office,
“Rude.” she spat at him refolding her arms and hunching down in the chair.
Lizzy smiled up at them, clearly not surprised by the mid day interruption. “Now Edgar, River is never going to like you if you keep manhandling her like that.” There was a slight chuckle to her voice. Lizzy had her black hair braided over her left shoulder; she was sitting at an outrageously ornate desk writing out checks by hand.
“You need to talk to her. I assume you know about her latest boy toy.”
“Boy Toy! He’s hardly a boy and neither is he a toy, have some tact for god's sake, man.” River huffed but Edgar ignores her watching Lizzy nod that she had heard that River had one.
“I just saw them together, she glows.”
“Oh my.”
“I what?”
“You Glowed. As in were glowing.” His stare pierced through River.
“I did not!”
“You did.” He turned back to Lizzy. “Talk to her.” with that said Edgar marched from the room, leaving the two women looking at each other.
“Hey, Lizzy.” River shifted uncomfortably under the older woman's gaze.
“Glowing,” Lizzy raised an eyebrow with a smirk.
“I find that hard to believe.” River scoffed.
“Really? I don’t.” Lizzy put down her pen and closed the checkbook.
“Why?” River realized she was still hugging Rolif’s jacket and quickly put it down on her knees.
“You’re the only one of us who hasn’t found their companion and now, my dear, it appears you have.”
“My companion?” She swallowed a snort of laughter.
“Of course.”
River sank farther down into the chair, put off by the seriousness of Lizzy’s face. “My companion, how could that. That can’t be right.”
“Oh, come now. I know you haven’t been actively looking but you can’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“He can’t be my companion.” River glances down.
“Why not?”
“He’s dying.”
“Oh, dear girl, that doesn’t matter at all.”
“How can that not matter,” River straightened up in the chair. “It’s kind of a big deal.”
“It doesn't matter.” Lizzy stood and walked over to stand beside her. River looked around the room, suddenly sure that she was the butt of some joke. “Men are made, only women are born.” Lizzy said settling into the chair next to her. River stared at her a bit wide eyed. “I know it’s been a long time since one of us was born and the last one was the only one you saw. You probably thought nothing of the fact that it was a girl.” River nodded slowly. “But all of our children are female.”
“How, can that be, Edgar’s been around forever. And Marcus, he’s younger than me.”
Lizzy smiled. “As I said, men are made.”
“But what about all the things you drilled into me. We can’t heal, we can’t make others like us. Why say it if it isn’t true?”
“It is true, for the men that we make.” River shook her head trying to clear the confusion. “This world has always been more interested in the affairs of men then those of women. Several decades before you were born an ancient man of science, an alchemist, realized what we are and caught one of the men. He was a good man, never revealed that there were others. The alchemist experimented on him for months, killed him time and again. Thankfully we became aware of where he was being held and a few of the other men went to collect him. They took all of the alchemist’s notes and burned down his lab with the cruel man trapped inside. Much of the alchemist’s work is what you were told. Men can not heal or create more of us but we had already known that wasn’t true for us women. Now I will admit that we probably should have told you about this before you found your companion but we usually do when the younger ones start to show interest in finding a companion and you never did. You kind a snuck in here on us.” Lizzy gave her an apologetic smile.
“So, I could have fixed him when he first asked?”
“Yes, yes you could have, but”
“Why would you hide this?!” River shot forward in her chair, her fingers tightening in Rolif’s jacket.
“We don’t want just anyone joining the ranks. The main side effect of healing people is eternal life.”
River stares at her unable to process what she’s heard. How is this possible, how is she going to explain to Rolif that she could have stopped all his pain from the day he asked her. River runs her hands through her hair and lets out a frustrated groan.
“River, my dear, don’t worry about it so much. I’ll tell you what. We’re having our yearly get together in what,”
“Thirteen days.” River supplied automatically.
“Yes, so why don’t you bring him along. Let us have a look at him and if we think he’s a good fit, I’ll tell you all you need to know.” River looks up at her completely lost. “Don’t dwell on it too much, it will be over before you know it.” Lizzy said shuffling River toward the driveway and into one of her cars.
Rolif is asleep in the guest bedroom, River settled on the beds edge to watch him sleep. She brushed some wayward hair from his eyes, noting how his face had softened in his sleep.
River awoke to fingers sliding across her cheek. “Hey.” Rolif smiled at her softly.
“Hey,�� She mirrored the smile.
“So, your uncle is the deputy Mayor?”
“Yea-h”
“This never came up before because?”
“You never asked.”
Rolif wiggles closer to her on the bed. “Fair enough.” He brushed his lips against hers and she leaned into the kiss happily. His thumb rubbed soft circles over her cheek. “Where did you go?”
“He dragged me off to see my aunt.” River shrugged and pulled him in for another kiss before he could ask another question. That kiss leads to another and then another until it becomes a chain of slow lazy kisses.
Marcus shouted down the hall that River needed to get moving. Rolif smiled at her as he watched her huff and roll out of the bed.
For the next twelve nights River found herself curled up beside Rolif. Some mornings they would talk and others were warm and quiet. She told him of the coming gathering and asked him to join her. Rolif readily agreed and indeed seemed to look forward to it. He was doing much better these days, up and wondering most of the day light hours.
The day of the gathering Rolif was called down to the precinct to fill out some paperwork. River was glad for his absence as she was overwhelmed enough with the food prep. Marcus drove Rolif to the precinct on his way to pick up a last-minute order.
The others began to arrive just after four and the bar began to fill with noise and liveliness. Lizzy made a point of being one of the first to arrive and stood in the kitchen watching River, her eyes burning with curiosity. The feel of those dark eyes so fixated on her made River shiver. The reinvigorated noise from the front as another group arrived finally got Lizzy to leave River be with her work.
When five thirty rolled around River was balancing trays of finger foods on her arms as she walked out into the main bar. A heavy bell ring, rang out as she eased the trays onto the table. with an exaggerated sigh she, along with everyone else, turned toward the door. “Who the hell put that bell on my door?”
“I thought that was new.” Rolif chuckled softly, though in the sudden silence of the room it seemed like a small boom. “Hi.” He greeted the room, the unease he felt, apparent in his voice while they all simply stared at him.
River started towards him and was surprised herself when the group separated for her. their collective gazes shifting from River to Rolif in amazement. “Did everything go alright?”
“Fine,” Rolif let go of the door, letting it close behind him with another heavy ring. “Why are they looking at you like that?”
River glanced at the others, “Because my idiot uncle told them that I glow.” she rolled her eyes at Edgar with a glare before quickly turning back to Rolif. He had an oddly endearing, questioning smile on his face.
“You’re always glowing.”
“What?” River’s steps slowed.
“You’re always glowing, did you not mean to be?”
“No, why would I?”
“I don't know, I thought it was some make up thing. I’ve heard the ladies at the precinct going on about the glowing look. So, I just thought, why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t wear makeup, why would you say that?”
“I didn’t say you did, but what else am I supposed to think it is?”
“Oh my.” Lizzy chuckled from the bar.
“Why would you say that?” River can't tear her eyes from him as panic begins to bubble in her chest.
“Well it's true, you always look like your glowing.”
“I think you have found your companion, River, dear.” Lizzy laughs out right.
River snaps a glare at her the strange spell suddenly broken as the panic turns to rage. “If you’re going to be an ass, I have things to do.” She turns pushing her way back to the kitchen. The strange moment turned embarrassing as she ran from it.
River pressed her four head against the cold steel door of the refrigerator. The kitchen door from behind the bar swung open as Marcus walked over to her. “Lizzy is talking to him.”
“About what?” She whined, hating herself for it, as she turned desperate eyes to him.
“Mom.”
“Oh, hell.” She bangs her head against the refrigerator. “Oh! Hell!” She turns back to Marcus, who just shrugs. She rushed past him, skidding to a stop at the door and peering out the window. Part of her wanted to bust through the door and separate Lizzy and Rolif though she knew she would only make herself look like some crazy woman if she did. Marcus came to a stop beside her and nodded at the floor. “Thank you.” she whispers sinking to her knees. He nodded again and pushed the door open, letting her move out ahead of him.
“You can what?” Rolif’s voice has the same authoritative tone it did when they first met though it is definitely angrier.
“So that is all you’re after, how disappointing.” Lizzy sighed.
“Of course, it’s what I’m after, I’m dying! Why wouldn’t she tell me about this?”
“Well now, there are side effects, the main one being the whole eternal life thing, so you’ll forgive us if we don’t go advertising. Also, River didn’t know until I told her thirteen days ago.”
“Thirteen days!” Rolif’s grip tightened around his glass.
River squeezed her temples between her palms in an attempt to stop herself from jumping up and strangling Lizzy.
“Don’t hold it against her, she was never all that interested in finding a companion, so we never revealed the truth to her.” Lizzy paused adjusting herself in her chair. “Can’t say I blame her she only had her mother to guide her. Her dear mother was obsessed with finding a companion, the quest possessed her and led her into one bad relationship after another. When those failed to find her the company, she sought she decided to make her own. And so River was born but that too proved to be no consolation. Young River watched her mother’s self-destructive path, hearing nothing but stories of companions as if they were fairy tales. We did not gather then as we do now. Until finally River was old enough to be on her own and she abandoned her mother to her fruitless search.” Marcus slides a fresh glass of bourbon to Rolif while Lizzy continued. “River embraced her freedom and found herself in many key moments of history. Some two hundred years after their separation her mother had finally met her companion and had married. The man was a widower with a son, he and his son were terribly injured in a car accident, both dying. you see, River’s mother revealed the truth to her husband, offering to save him but he declined. Instead insisting that she save his son, she did as he asked. As soon as her husband was buried, she took her son and moved here, bought the bar and called for River.
River reluctantly arrived in time to hear her mother's story meet her new brother and inherit the bar before her mother passed away.”
“Wait, I thought you couldn’t die.” Rolif had calmed while engrossed in Lizzy’s tale.
“In order to save Marcus things had to be changed, so instead of sharing a life she had to give one. In essence she gave Marcus her eternity.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, so you see all River had ever really known of companions were fairy tales and death. I think she actually believes that she has to die in order to save someone. So please don’t hold her reluctance against her.”
“That is fucked up, Oh sorry.” Rolif immediately corrects himself.
“No, no, you’re fine.”
Marcus nudged River’s hip with his foot before waving her back into the kitchen. He propped the door to the kitchen open as he leaned in to grab something off a shelf. River slid across the floor and propped herself against the refrigerator, this was hardly going to any sort of plan. She brushed the dust from her legs and folded her arms over her knees. She had not felt this young and small in decades. The oven timer buzzed forcing her back to work, she pulled herself to standing and silenced the annoying sound before washing her hands.
“Lizzy, left him gazing into his drink and now,” Marcus struggled for a moment picking up a tray laden with plates beside River. “The others are bombarding him with questions.” River lifted the second tray on to Marcus’ other arm. “You really should go rescue him.”
“I would but I can’t.” River shrugs, continuing to plate the next course.
Marcus snorted turning back to the door. “Such a chicken.”
“Shut up Marcus!” River snapped, embarrassed.
“Nice one.” Marcus smirked letting the door swing shut behind him.
“Is that really the best you can do?” Lizzy asked from behind River. The plate River had just picked up clattered loudly against the counter top as it slipped from her startled fingers.
“Damn it, Lizzy!” River turned on her with a sharp glare.
“Have you thought about it?” she asked coming to stand beside River.
“Thought about what?” River turned back to plating food with a huff.
“What you would do if he was gone?”
“Yes, it’s all I can think about since our little chat.” River spit the words with a sad venom.
“And?”
“And, I don’t like it.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Why not! I’ll tell you why not.” her eyes flashed at Lizzy for a moment. “How am I going to convince him to forgive me when I can’t find a single reason to forgive myself. And what if once it’s done, he just disappears?”
“I don’t think that will happen and neither do you. And if it does, we’ll all just hunt him down and fix it.” Lizzy chuckles at the dark implication. “Besides You know what I think. I think you’re just concerned that you’re turning into your mother.” River glanced up at her in hopes that that can’t be true. “You and your mother are two very different people. You will never be the desperate woman she was.”
A small smile crept onto River’s face. “So, let’s say I did decide to do this.”
“Mm-hmm”
“How would I go about it?”
“It’s quite simple actually.” Lizzy smiled brightly, lifting herself onto the counter top.
River finally joined the others out in the bar only to find the majority had already finished their meal and were separated into smaller groups, talking softly. Marcus was leaning against the bar picking at a plate, talking with Rolif. River took the time to sit in her booth and watch the groups as she thought things through. Photos where being snapped and shared, laughter floated about the room. It was comfortable and peaceful; River rested her head against the back of the booth and let her eyes slide closed.
“Hey, River” Rolif gently rocked River awake. It took her a moment to realize where she was in the gloom of the now empty bar. “Hey there, why don’t you head up stairs. Marcus and I have everything just about done.”
River rubbed her right brow looking past him. “Done? Where is everyone?”
“They went home.” Rolif chuckled. “Go to bed.”
“Went home? What time is it?” She perked up as the realization that she had slept through the entire event hit her.
“Four fifteen now go to bed, your useless like this.” Marcus growled walking past them.
Rolif backed out of the booth letting her slide past him. “I can help at least a little. Thanks.” She nods to Rolif as she followed after Marcus berating him. “You should have woken me. You don’t have to do all this work yourself.”
Marcus stops wiping down the bar and stared her down, she simply stared right back at him, he let out a huff. “You needed the rest, you’ve been up the past two weeks getting him squared away,” he waved the towel at Rolif. “And prepping for this stupid party. You should have postponed the damn thing, but No!”
“Postpone it? Do you have any idea what size mess that would have been?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go to bed.”
“If you’re going to be a pouty baby about it, I will.”
“So, go.”
“Fine.” With a playful smirk River turned and headed for the stairs beside her office.
Fifteen minutes later she heard them coming up the stairs, another twenty and there was a soft rapt of knuckles on her door. “You told me to sleep.” River folded her arms over her chest as she lay in bed.
“Actually,” the door creaked open slowly. “Marcus told you to go to sleep, I told you to get up.” Rolif’s head popped into view a shit eating grin plastered on his face. She can’t help but smile back at him.
“So, you did. Well come on in and tell me what’s on your mind.” she waved him into the room.
“Why thank you.” he stepped into the room wearing the beat-up t-shirt and boxers he usually wore to bed. He made a point to shut the door behind him while she patted the mattress as an invitation. It was quickly accepted, he settled next to her on his back and turned his head so that he could see her without the intimacy of being full face to face with her. “So, I had a chat with your aunt Lizzy today.”
“Did you now, and what did she have to say?” River kept her voice light and playful but at the mention of Lizzy’s name she wanted to do nothing more than sink through the mattress.
“A Few interesting things.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“So, this is going to seem like a shift but,” River glanced at him from the corner of her eyes a small smirk playing on her lips. “I want to kiss you all the time.” She turned her head to look at him fully, her eyes wide and confused he just gave her a quick nervous smile. “Bare with me here,” he continued. “I do want to kiss you all the time, like all of the time. I have for quite a while now but I didn’t want to upset the relationship we already have going. But then the night the White Dragons hit the precinct, you kissed me, and I thought I was going to explode. But we got interrupted and then it was over and we never talked about it. I convinced myself it was just us caught up in the moment.” He shrugged. “Then the other morning I woke up and you were next to me and I couldn’t stop myself from running my fingers through your hair. When you woke up kissing you just felt so natural. God smiled on me when you kissed me back but then once again, we never talked about it, what it meant if anything. Though I did get to wake up beside you again.”
River bit the inside of her lower lip as she watches him, unsure what to say. He flashed her that nervous smile again before continuing. “You’re probably wondering what this has to do with me talking to your aunt. She told me that there might be away for you to fix me.” River turned away from him, her face pinched with frustration. “Now just hear me out. That’s not what I’m asking you for.”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes again, this time highly suspicious of him. “Then what are you asking for?”
“Mostly a kiss, like a real one where you know how I feel about you and where you feel the same, then maybe a date and when that one goes well, another one.”
A genuine smile slid across her lips. “So that first one is gonna go well is it?”
“Well, I mean, I have known you for a couple of years now. I think I can put together a pretty good date.”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Okay.” River rolled on to her side to face him. “What would we do?”
“First,” he rolled onto his side so that they paralleled each other. “I’d take you out for a nice dinner, not even in this part of town.”
“Oh, fancy, then what?” she laughed.
“You like movies, so we would head off to see a movie.” A playful glint sparked in his eyes. “Then we would walk through the park eating ice cream.”
“That sounds ridiculously corny.”
“And you love every second of it don’t you.”
Her smile broadened. “Maybe a little bit, I do.”
He chuckles a sound like honey, a small shiver ran down her spine. “So, you want to go on a date with me?”
Her smile softens into a gentler one as she shifts closer to him on the bed, she placed her hand on his cheek and stroked it gently with her thumb for a moment before pulling him into a deep lingering kiss.
His lips fallow after hers as they break apart for air. “I would love to go on a date with you.” He pulls her back for another kiss. “If we’re having ourselves a moment of honesty, can I share something with you?”
“Oh, I suppose so.” he rolls his soft puppy dog eyes with a mock dramatic sigh.
“I had already decided to help you.” His eyes snapped back onto her disbelief clear in them. “I know Lizzy told you a lot of embarrassing things about me but she and I also had a chat. So, this is how it has to play out. In small stages, this is for your benefit as well as mine.”
“It would be weird if I just showed up perfectly healthy one day.” He said as clarification.
“Exactly. So little by little, but here’s the main thing, once it’s done you can’t just disappear on me. If you do, we’ll find you, we’re all over the place and we do know how to kill each other. Not a threat just letting you know.” Rolif narrowed his eyes playfully. “This by no means, means you are trapped with me. Edgar and Lizzy have separate lives 90% of the time but you can’t just wander off.”
Rolif rested his forehead against hers. “Promise.”
“Good.” she smiled placing a quick kiss to his lips. They moved closer together arms wrapping around each other and settled in for sleep.
Despite her better judgement they spent the next day in bed. The warmth of his skin and the weight of his body was an intoxicant she had never before encountered. It set the glow of her skin higher than he had ever seen it before, to the point where she began to cast out actual light. The process of healing him began and it was more fun then she had thought it would be. their bodies were slick with sweat and utterly spent by the time the sun set.
Rolif’s health improved quickly and despite its lack of romance and spontaneity they made sure he got a dose of her after each round of chemo. Until another year had passed and he was declared back in remission as well as in near perfect health. He was looking better than he ever had in the time she had known him. the wrinkles around his eyes had eased, color returned to his cheeks, it made him look almost ten years younger. While they were nearly completed with the change, River also noted how much happier they both seemed as the year had passed them.
The gathering had quickly approached again and River was busy with preparations. The bar was noisy and warm, Marcus was behind the bar, Lizzy's distinctive laugh cut through the air. River felt Rolif arrive, a side effect of the change in him and the connection they now shared as almost companions. the hair on the back of her neck stood up as if a cool breeze had brushed past her. She turned and smiled at him as he came through the door, then quickly went back to work.
The sound level dropped in the room. “River,” Rolif said from behind her. She finished placing the last dish before turning to find him down on one knee, a hand in his jacket pocket.
“What are you doing down”
“Will you,” he pulled a small box from his jacket pocket. “marry me?”
She blinked at him several times as she tilted her head to the right while she processed the scene and question “Yeah, all right.” Rolif's brow twitched. “Yes, yes that would be good.”
Marcus burst out laughing from behind the bar. “You can't have expected a different answer.”
“I guess I shouldn't have.” Rolif agreed over his shoulder before turning back to River with a careful smile. “So that's definitely a yes then?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Good, now help me up.” River smirks as she offered her hand and hoisted him back to standing. “Thanks, though I was hoping for more of a gushy response.”
“I'm not all that gushy of a person.” River shrugged.
“Yeah, I guess.” Rolif opened the box revealing a modest amethyst and sapphire set in a white gold band. A warm smile spread across her lips. “Sorry it's not as grand as you deserve but you know what a detective's pay is like.” He apologized taking the ring from the box and slipping it on to her finger.
“It’s perfect.” She lifted his chin and kissed him to the outburst of cheers from the others.
Once the others had left, Marcus shoved Rolif and River out of the bar claiming their displays of affection were making him nauseous. River had found it difficult to keep her hands to herself after receiving the ring, often running her fingers through Rolif’s hair while they spoke with others or interlocking their fingers. So, when Marcus pushed them through the door neither put up too much resistance. The two fumbled up the stairs together, River’s fingers worked to undo what seemed like an unreasonable number of buttons on a man’s shirt. Every brush of his fingers on her skin brought an ever-building pleasure into her. They left a small train of Rolif’s clothing to River’s bedroom and shed the last of it before they fell onto the bed itself. It became one of the most passionate and intimate couplings, setting off a glow in her that filled the room.
Rolif and River married in the fall, Marcus moved into Rolif’s apartment and Rolif moved in with River.
River was introduced to Rolif’s sister, a lovely robust woman despite all that overwhelmed her, and his niece. The young woman's hands stood out most to River calloused and ink stained as they were. The young woman was a credit to her work and her mother. More of the detectives began to come by Styx.
The years passed and Rolif, River and Marcus didn’t age. Marcus and River began to worry, this was the first time they had been so known in a long time. They sat Rolif down and began to explain their concerns. Thankfully they found that Rolife himself had started to wonder about it as well.
Different locations were discussed until the three settled on a small island in the south of France. Marcus and River worked out an arrangement for the youngest of the eternals to come and start learning how to run the bar. Things were falling into place now they just needed to wait for the right opportunity to make their exit.
They didn’t have to wait long; the White Dragon’s came raiding the precinct again. Rolif saw it for the opportunity it was and saved a fellow officer by taking the bullet meant for her. As soon as River got word, she called Edgar and the wheels began to turn. She set herself into a state of shock and grief as best she could manage.
Rolif’s memorial was hard as she had to lie to those who cared for them. Rolif’s sister was by far the hardest the only grace River had was that Rolif had already set out to their new home and didn’t have to witness his sister in such a state of grief. His wish to let his sister know that everything was alright might have led him to reveal the truth, but instead River pushed down the need to comfort with the truth and kept the dear woman in the dark.
A month after the memorial River signed the bar over to her cousin and she and Marcus left to join Rolif in their new home. Settling into the new town and their new names they found Rolif who was now Rupert had already made great progress on the new business. A bakery that he had dubbed River Cakes. Marcus who was now known as Matthew would take position as head baker while Rupert would be manager. River would take a step back from the controls for this round let the boys have a go at being the boss. She would work the counter and run the home, it would be a nice change of pace until she got board and took the whole thing over.
“Helena… Helena?” Rupert’s voice drew closer. “Helena?” River snapped to attention as she remembered that was her new name and popped up from behind the counter.
“Yes?” she couldn't help the smile on her face as she sees him in the new shop uniform, a crisp white high square collared button-down shirt with deep blue apron and slacks, it’s adorable.
“There you are, I’m about to go on a supply run. Do you want to join me?”
“Why, Rupert, are you asking me on a date?”
“I am indeed.” The matching laughter glitters in their eyes.
“Why I would love too.”
“Oh my god, would you just go already. And make sure you get what’s actually on the list this time.”
“Such a grump.” Helena chuckled walking around the counter. “Don’t worry Matthew you’ll find someone to play with sooner or later.”
“GO, leave me to my work.” He shouted walking back into the kitchen.
“Alright, alright.” Rupert waves dismissively at Matthew’s back then offers his arm to Helena. “My Lady.” they linked their arms together and walked out onto the quiet street. They were the very picture of a silly Hollywood romantic cheese fest only better because for them, for now at least it was their life.
“You know, this place is starting to grow on me.” Helena said squeezing closer against his arm.
“It’s not too bad, is it?”
“Nope, but we have to get Mar-Matthew a date soon.”
“His pouting is starting to wear on me.” Rupert nodded.
“Yeah, I’m kinda surprised how inactive he’s been, not his usual.” Helena leaned her head against Rupert’s shoulder. “But hey, we never know what we’ll find at the market.”
Helena and Rupert laughed as they turned into the first stop of many.
The end.
1 note
·
View note
Link
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Beelzebub (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Ligur (Good Omens), Gabriel (Good Omens), Sandalphon (Good Omens), Original Characters
Additional Tags: is it a coffeeshop au if it's not an au?, the long suffering silence of your local barista, also don't forget to tip your baristas
Summary:
In which three well-meaning but underpaid Baristas are subject to the tensions of the (unknown to them) demons and angels that work in Broadgate Tower.
It's no worse than any of their other regular customers.
_____
This is for a weekly prompt fill over in @ladyoutlier‘s Ineffable Outlier’s discord!
It’s a super fun time over there, y’all should come check it out!
_____
Broadgate Tower was, at the outset, an altogether normal office building.
There were real estate offices, sales offices, legal offices, offices that did some sort of business that even the people working there weren’t sure about; any office you could think of.
Like most office buildings in the 21st century, there was a coffee shop in the lobby. Hard to handle the daily grind of the corporate sector without a boost of caffeine. Office workers of all kinds would flock to the little shop every day, in their smart three-piece suits and overly-expensive shoes, for their much-needed fix.
Yes, most of the workers in the Broadgate Tower were very well-paid corporate entities. Not so much the baristas in the coffeeshop.
When you work for the minimum wage, you get used to certain things. You get used to being treated like you’re not entirely human. You get used to hearing things that normal people with manners would never say to anyone they actually gave a toss about.
Demands to see the manager over the inability to make a drink that they don’t even carry the ingredients for (what exactly is supposed to be in a Pokemon Go Frappuccino? We still don’t know, really. This isn’t a bloody Starbucks.)
Flash bastard suck-ups who really want to be the CEOs of their company loudly complaining into their phones about the wait times (what, exactly, did they expect when tower staffing would only budget for three baristas during rush hour?).
Screaming over lattes being 5 degrees too cold, then about them being 5 degrees too hot after being remade (the machines are automatic, both drinks were the exact same).
The same individuals, after having their drink remade three times, saying things like “See, it’s not so hard, is it? You’re just making coffee after all!” while laughing shrilly, covering their mouths with their hands to show off their overly expensive French manicures.
“Whatever ‘hell’ actually is,” said one barista, after a particularly crazy morning rush, “It can’t possibly be worse than that.”
“Just wait, Rose, you’ll get used to it,” Kristy, the shift lead, added as she tried to unearth the condiment bar from the seemingly endless pile of sugar and sugar substitutes that had buried it, “It’s only your first day, and you’re doing great.”
“They really need to get us a fourth morning shift,” said Jisel, the last of the three, currently grinding coffee to replenish what the morning stampede had obliterated, “It’s bad enough to deal with the rush, worse when they show up.”
“When who shows up?” asked Rose, “I thought that was the bulk of it?”
“The ‘gangs’,” Kristy said sarcastically, “Bit of an odd bunch; seem to absolutely hate each other. Never can figure out what their offices do, but it always feels like a bomb is gonna go off when they come in the morning.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Rose’s eyes widened, “can it?”
“The tension is the worst,” Jisel groaned as she set up the coffee baskets to brew, “like they’re waiting for a war to come or something.”
“One group works on the top floor,” Kristy said as she scooped out more sugar into the dispensers, “Those are the ones that wear all beige and gray. The other work in the basement, wear all black and some of them stink. Upstairs is all fake smiles and downstairs is all depression, it’s quite odd.”
“And don’t get me started on their manners,” Jisel pressed the ‘brew’ button on the machines and turned her attention to the pastries, “One of them, some American asshole with purple contacts, always calling our food ‘gross matter’. Like, buddy, it’s not my fault this is what corporate sends us.”
“Oh! Or the baldie, always staring! Shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that leering, creeps me right out!” Kristy suppressed a shiver of fear at the thought of the bastard.
“Isn’t he the one with the grills in his teeth?” Jisel winced at the thought, “What does he think he’s a millennial or something? He’s not fooling anyone, he’s gotta be at least 45! Or even the short one, with the fly hat!”
“What, like, a cool hat?” asked Rose.
“No, like, a literal house fly but it’s a hat on their actual head,” Jisel said waving the pastry tongs about, “They wanted to fire me for wearing a necklace one day and this one gets to wear a hat that looks like a housefly?”
“Come on now, you know they don’t work for tower staffing,” Kristy had given up at this point and taken position at one of the tables to watch whatever shit was on the tele currently, “Whatever company it is must be pretty lenient.”
“Dunno how lenient you can be when the best place you could rent out is a basement. All the ones that wear black work in the basement.” Jisel poked at a stale scone with the tongs, “Seems ever so dreary.”
“’Cept for the one with the sunglasses, he’s always good for a joke.” This whole job was a joke. A sense of humor had always been something Kristy could appreciate, even if most of their customers couldn’t.
“Yeah, when he’s here. Usually just the rest of the lot though,” The scone continued to be regarded with disdain before being unceremoniously tossed in the garbage and replaced with a fresher one,
“What about the professor looking fellow from the upstairs group?”
“The fuddy-duddy?” Kristy asked, wrinkling her nose and flipping through the channels. Rose had taken to cleaning the same tabletops she’d already cleaned.
“That’s not very nice,” The tongs hand moved on to poking at one of the unfortunate looking breakfast sandwiches, “He always leaves good tips!”
“S’pose that’s true; day always seems to go better after he visits.”
“Still haven’t figured out how we seem to have marshmallows when he’s here,” Jisel said, “We don’t usually have them do we?”
“Probably best not to question it.” Kristy, out of everyone, had been there the longest and had seen the majority of the strangeness the ‘gangs’ (as the baristas all called them) could be. Sometimes things happened when they were around and if you thought too hard on it, you’d find yourself with an upset stomach or a migraine.
This was how it was with coffee shops. Part of the business. Marshmallows existed when the fuddy duddy was around, and that was that.
“Um, ‘scuse me,” Rose piped up from where she was cleaning the same table a third time, “Did it get colder in here?”
“Ah,” Kristy stood to take back her position behind the bar, tossing the remote on a table, “They’re here.”
It was only three of them today (a blessing, if you believed that sort of thing) but it would have to be the worst possible three. She knew their names, of course. You didn’t work in the same place this long and not learn customer names. Beelzebub, Hastur, and Ligur. Weird names, but a coffee is a coffee.
The first, hot chocolate with cinnamon - extra whipped cream.
The second, black coffee with two shots of espresso.
The third always changed his order with the season. Sometimes she could swear his eyes changed color, too. She thought to her old worn out glasses and thought how nice it must be to afford contacts, much less color ones.
“Finally! I might spare your deaths for another day,” the one known as Ligur said, “It appears you’ve all come to your senses and deigned to bring my preferred drink back. I’ll have the pumpkin spice.” He said this with a snarl, making it sound eviller and foreboding than any overly-sweet sugar-drenched latte should. Which was difficult, because around here “Pumpkin Spice” was a four-letter word. Jisel punched the order into the till with the complete indifference one can only gain by working in the customer service industry.
Rose looked like she might jump out of her skin from her position by the oven, and Kristy couldn’t really blame her. There was a certain aura that came with the basement workers; doom and gloom was the best way to describe it. The fact that the one seemed to have a reptilian hand sticking out from under his blonde hair didn’t help.
Best to ignore that.
Also best to ignore the beady eyes boring holes through her as she filled half of the large cup with whipped cream for the weird fly-hat person. Did they even blink?
“Cinnamon if you pleazzzz.” Beelzebub said with a buzz and obvious disdain, poking a straw into the lid that was clearly not for straws. Kristy turned her attention to the espresso shots running for the black coffee. She was sure that she very much did not see the person offer the straw to their hat and most certainly did not see the hat actually drink from it.
She had gotten very good at not seeing things.
The other two joined the first at the hand-off plane, both grumbling.
“I don’t see how you drink that blessed shit,” said the one called Hastur, “You know that Crowley got a commendation for it1.” He said the name ‘Crowley’ the same way one might say ‘toenail fungus’.
“It’s awful.” Said Ligur who, for today, seemed to have settled on a highlighter-yellow for his color contacts.
“Oh,” said the other, “Well that’s alright then.”
They often spoke like this. Backwards, in Kristy’s mind.
“Um,” Rose piped up from her position as Kristy added the swirl of whip cream to the pumpkin-only-in-name latte, “Now it feels warmer in here?”
“Nah, it’s cuz you’re by the oven,” Jisel said.
Kristy declined to comment; she already knew they were coming. She’d had lots of days seeing the tension flooding into the depressing group in front of her.
Sure enough, in walked the upstairs department. All four smiling so wide as if there was something just behind their teeth trying to claw its way out.
She knew all the names but one. The tall American never ordered, only complained. Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon were the other three.
They all got the same thing. Americanos. No room, no cream, no sugar.
The small person in the fly hat stared at the American. The American stared back at them.
“Ah, Beelzebub,” the man said, clasping his hands in front of him, stooping down slightly to address who they knew as Beelz, “What an absolute pleasure to run into you again.” He said ‘pleasure’ the same way one might say ‘mandatory monthly torture meetings’.
“Gabriel,” fly-hat replied, looking altogether taller than they had a few moments ago, “Not too bzzzy being self-righteouzzz elzzewhere?”
It always astounded the baristas how they could so easily talk down to another who had a good three feet of height on them. Impressive, to say the least.
The tension in the room was palpable. Like being stuck in pea soup. Like being on a knife edge. Like any moment something was going to snap, and they’d have to run to the phone and call in the police for the inevitable brawl that would definitely probably break out today.
But that was just a typical Friday afternoon at any other time of the day, so Kristy went on with making the Americanos.
The two individuals stared at each other for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. Jisel didn’t speak. Kristy didn’t speak. Rose, well, tried not to speak but definitely whimpered from her little corner of the back bar.
First days were always overwhelming.
And then, as it had transpired every other day, fly-hat broke the eye contact and began walking past the American, head held high. Defiant. Them and the other two would walk out the door, the upstairs people would leave shortly after, and the rest of the day would proceed along as it always does.
This time, fly-hat stopped.
“You are aware,” they said, pure anger palpable even to the baristas behind the bar, “It izz only five more dayz. We are The Fallen, and we will rizze from the ashezz.”
“Whatever helps you make it through the day, Beelzy,” the American said mockingly. Kristy saw fly-hat bristle at this nickname, “We all know the greater good will triumph in the end.”
And with that, the downstairs people left. The upstairs people were given their drinks. They smiled their fake smiles; they didn’t leave a tip2. The baristas stared after them, as they always do, still not sure what to make of it. Even after five years, Kristy’s never figured it out.
"What do you think they meant by that, Kristy?" Jisel asked, "Five days until what?"
"No idea, probably just some corporate garbage, like it always is."
The beeping of the coffee timer kicked them out of their stupor and back to business at hand. Nothing new really, world keeps spinning on as it always does.
______
1 – Crowley had been quite proud of his influence in the creation of the phenomenon known as the “Pumpkin Spice Latte”. An entire pumpkin based beverage without a bit of pumpkin in it, just the spices usually associated with it. It had been a big hit and he’d received a commendation from it on the sheer amount of vanity and addiction it had produced. This of course backfired on him when Aziraphale had proclaimed them to be “quite scrummy indeed”.
2 – Sandalphon, however, did entreat them to “Climb every mountain and ford every stream”, which did little more than confuse the baristas.
#good omens#my fic#beelzebub#gabriel#hastur#ligur#ask me about working at starbucks#ask me about how much I hate pumpkin spice latte season
50 notes
·
View notes
Note
Curious - I am an avid player/GM of a few tabletop games but I've never heard of Blades and all your art and discussion of it is incredibly interesting and seems really fucking cool. Is there anyway for people not involved in the game to like... watch? Or something? Just out of curiosity.
You’re in luck, because we keep a running archive of our RP logs! The way we play is a bit odd, in that all the RP happens over text, and while we DO have the typical weekly session (OOC stuff over voice, RP in text) we also do a ton of free RP on the side. And that’s where most of the plot happens, in fact.So if you’re wondering how it’s this story dense in that amount of time, that would be how. We never stop.Sadly the first few sessions were all over voice and weren’t recorded or anything, and some of the earlier logs are incomplete, but the majority of it is complete and we update it with new content every once in a while.You can check it out here! Should be in order by the date in the title.
43 notes
·
View notes
Link
by doingthemost
She knows she can flourish on her own. She's done it before. It's just weird, sailing freely on her own while she's still got an anchor dropped in familiar waters.
(Or something like that; she isn't fully sure how boats work, besides those couple of times on Leo's yacht in Bali, and the summer she escaped on a jet ski from Chile.)
Deep down, she still isn't sure how to cope with missing anyone.
Alexis Rose never thought she'd have a weekly Pathfinder tabletop RPG sesh with the platonic loves of her life, but she's loving that journey for her. When said loves of her life connive to bring her long-lost love of her life into said sesh, though? Mmm, she's totally chill. Completely, unbelievably chill.
Words: 2795, Chapters: 1/2, Language: English
Fandoms: Schitt's Creek
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: F/M, Gen
Characters: Alexis Rose, Theodore "Ted" Mullens, Stevie Budd, David Rose, Patrick Brewer, Twyla Sands
Relationships: Theodore "Ted" Mullens/Alexis Rose
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Tabletop RPG
0 notes
Text
Beating the Story: How to Map, Understand, and Elevate Any Narrative
Publisher: Gameplaywright
See How Stories Work
The most compelling stories move us emotionally. Up and down, between hope and fear, in ways we don’t always expect—but that you can harness as a writer, editor, and critic. This book shows you how to track, map, and understand the rhythm of a story. Whether you’re writing or rewriting, editing a manuscript or dismantling your favorite television episode, Beating the Story helps you understand how stories get hammered into shape.
Beating the Story combines Laws’ insightful and articulate analysis of story beats with all-new transition beats and icons to do for fiction and screenplays what his Hamlet’s Hit Points did for narrative games. Read it and see how to map, understand, and elevate any narrative.
Foreword by John Rogers.
This Beating the Story digital bundle contains five files: The first is a PDF file that appears as the printed book does. The three digital editions in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle (.mobi) format are digital-native files optimized for those apps and platforms. They're fully bookmarked and hyperlinked. Finally, a supplemental file contains large, landscape-oriented, tabloid-sized beats maps of the stories analyzed within.
For the purchase price of the PDF, you get all five files in a single archive.
Robin D. Laws is the author of eight novels plus the short story collection New Tales of the Yellow Sign, and has edited five original short fiction anthologies. He designed such tabletop roleplaying games as Hillfolk, Feng Shui, The Esoterrorists, and The Yellow King Roleplaying Game. Hear him discuss writing and story, among many other subjects, on the award-winning weekly podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.
Price: $7.95
Beating the Story: How to Map, Understand, and Elevate Any Narrative published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com
0 notes
Text
State of the Shewp
Haven’t done one of these for a while. But I’m up late and feeling ramble-y, so here we go! We’re gonna get weird. Maybe. Depending on what you consider weird.
Starting off easy with some reading recs.
Oathbringer, the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive dropped earlier this month. It’s the usual Sanderson experience, which means I loved every word of it. I won’t talk too much about it because we’re already nearly 3,000 pages into the series BEFORE this book and it adds another ~1400, so I can’t really do it justice in a few paragraphs. If you want to get into Brandon’s works (specifically, the books in the Cosmere setting) I would start with Warbreaker.
The other thing I wanted to mention regarding Cosmere stuff is that reading this has left me very hungry for a Cosmere-setting tabletop game. I played in a Mistborn game in college and I’d be all over something set on Roshar (or Scadrial, or Sel, or... anywhere really). Also really wanting to cosplay something Cosmere-related. Anastasia suggested Vin & Elend, which I think we could pull off. I’ll toss it into the ‘I will probably never do this because it would take effort’ pile, but you never know!
The sequel to WORM is out! It’s titled WARD. I haven’t started it yet because I am waiting for a larger backlog to be written (also Oathbringer devoured my reading time. As a friend told me, she THICC). I talked a bit about WORM in a previous post, so check that out if you want to know more.
I also discovered the genre of LitRPG recently. It’s an umbrella term for any fiction that features RPG-like elements - i.e. classes, levels, etc. It also frequently features isekai-like themes, like modern-world protagonists dropped into a fantasy setting. Unfortunately, these things also mean that it has an overly-large share of garbage tropes like stupidly overpowered protagonists and blatant wish-fulfillment, but not to a significant degree more than most other types of fiction or fanfiction. Three pieces of fiction in this genre that I enjoyed the most:
The Wandering Inn (summary from the website) - An inn is a place to rest, a place to talk and share stories, or a place to find adventures, a starting ground for quests and legends. In this world, at least. To Erin Solstice, an inn seems like a medieval relic from the past. But here she is, running from Goblins and trying to survive in a world full of monsters and magic. She’d be more excited about all of this if everything wasn’t trying to kill her. But an inn is what she found, and so that’s what she becomes. An innkeeper who serves drinks to heroes and monsters – Actually, mostly monsters. But it’s a living, right? This is the story of the Wandering Inn.
This story seems to have been written specifically to go against the grain of some of the negative tropes I mentioned before. A world full of classes and levels, and our protagonist ends up as an Innkeeper. The first couple chapters are a bit rough, but I think the author finds their stride pretty quickly after that and things pick up across book 1. Yes, book ONE. There are two full-length, complete books in this series and a third is well underway. Check it out!
Worth the Candle (summary from the website) - From the age of nine, Juniper Smith began filling notebooks with his worlds, at first places of fantastical imagination, but later with each as an expression of some theme or idea that momentarily grabbed his interest. Over the course of eight years, he shared these worlds with his friends through twice-weekly sessions of tabletop gaming. Now at the age of seventeen, he finds himself in Aerb, a world that appears to be an amalgam of those many notebooks, stuck trying to find the answers to why he's there and what this world is trying to say. The most terrifying answer might be that this world is an expression of the person he was back on Earth.
I have absolutely loved this so far. The story is frequently intermixed with flashbacks to the protagonists tabletop sessions (where he GM’d) and it talks a lot about what makes a good character and how to run a game. The only negative for me is that it’s incomplete and the author updates sporadically (but when they do update, they tend to post quite a bit). It is broken up into several ‘books’ that are mostly completed plot arcs, but unlike the Wandering Inn I think this is still very, VERY early on in its overall length (if I had to guess).
Finally, I’m a Spider, So What? is a translated web serial or light novel (I’m honestly not 100% sure which). It’s also slowly being converted into a manga, I think? Either way, the premise is that a class of students gets murder-blasted into another dimension by an evil demon lord. Most of the class ends up as humans with bright futures and mysterious powers, but one ends up as a spider in the depths of one of the most dangerous dungeons on the planet. Funny and very engaging, though the translation threw me for a loop sometimes. It’s also not fully translated and it seems like a bunch of different people are all translating it and are are different parts. A less serious suggestion than my previous two, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Moving on to slightly more personal stuff! Ooooooo weird ooooooo!
Still engaged to Anastasia! Current plan is to get married in Hell, Michigan in late 2018. They have cute little invitations that say “A marriage that starts in Hell can only go up!” (or something like that). It will be a very small event, I think - the ‘chapel’ there can hold maybe 15 people, counting us and the officiant, so that’s pretty much going to be only family. We’re planning to have a larger reception/party afterwards instead.
Getting close to finishing the second RPG I am GM’ing. It’s an original superhero setting run in the FATE system. I lost steam for a while pretty close to the end and started it back up recently, and it’s a relief to do honestly. I missed the characters, the story, the players. Overall I have really enjoyed my time GMing but I do find it much more stressful than playing. I think part of the reason I got a bit burnt out at first was because I was trying to run two games and play in at least two others. I think a good rule of thumb (for me at least) is that running one game takes about the same mental effort/time/etc. as playing in 2-3 others, but maybe it’s just because I’m still (relatively) inexperienced at it.
Still working at the same place (the lava factory). I asked for a raise recently and was very embarrassed to find out that I had actually gotten a pretty good one a few months ago and never noticed. In my defense, HR never told me either, but I still should have seen it on my bank statements... Also, starting in January I’ll get THREE WHOLE WEEKS of vacation. Not sure what to do with that much!
Still seeing a therapist. Not entirely sure it’s helping me, but I think being open about that is helpful not only to me personally but also just in general to help de-stigmatize therapy and mental health in general (something I’ve always kind of struggled with).
Got a vasectomy. I kind of want to be a bit more open about it - it would be a big deal if Anastasia and I were going to have a kid and we’d be totally ok with sharing that, so making a permanent decision to NOT have kids should be just as important, right? - but on the other hand it feels like it’s not their business and I feel like most people probably don’t want to hear about my balls. Not that I’m keeping it a secret or anything either. Also, after being told many, MANY times that “I’ll change my mind and want kids some day” I kind of want to be able to shoot them down. Fortunately that didn’t come up at all during Thanksgiving and I wouldn’t have actually been rude like that anyway, but the temptation is there...
Actually taking some decently strong painkillers right now (sorry if I’m a bit incoherent), since I started getting super sore this evening (and it’s only kind of Anastasia’s fault ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) . All the external sutures have healed, but the internal stuff still has a way to go. They cut, cauterize, tie-off and then stitch together the internal bits, so those will take longer to heal.
If you’re a guy interested in permanent birth control or a lady who’s just plain curious, I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you have!
Not much else going on. I move from thing to thing and binge - FFXIV for a while, then DOOM, then Overwatch, currently WoW, maybe XCOM next, with books and writing and tabletop gaming sprinkled in between.
That’s all the important stuff for now, I think. I’m honestly kind of boring.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
learning-and-cognition
Learning and Cognition
callosiity
morgan
90strent
sinem
fiza-bibi
pakiza bibi
tentenzen
Unbetitelt