#and her ghost has read every human parenting book ever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dogt-eeth · 4 months

Note

use this ask as an excuse to talk about maria robotnik :D!! love to see what you have to say :]

THIS HAS BEEN IN MY INBOX FOR SO LONG IM SO SORRY DHDJDN

Sorry this became kind of just a rant of me doing weird speculations UHM. Dhdndbdb

Maria is just sooo. Everything about her is so compelling to me! The way she's treated as secondary in her Own Story. Even when we're supposed to be thinking about her, Shadow or the ARK is always looming just slightly in the background. She exists in this vacuum of being one of the most important and recognizable human characters in fandom, yet we barely know anything about her! She's related to THE main antagonist and we've heard him talk about her maybe 4 or 5 times. She's a ghost and a martyr and a sacrifice and another name on a list of tragedies and Shadow's sister and Eggman's cousin and a sickly little girl and the catalyst for So MUCH Sonic lore. Everything we now about her, how she acts and why, what she was like, how she felt about her family and the ARK, is determined Mostly by fan interpretation (as far as I know. I mean, she was in Archie as a ghost or hologram or something, but I haven't read that far yet). Even still, the interpretation from fans seems to be always the same! That she was courageous, curious, reckless and active despite her illness. She sought out danger and excitement even if it meant she might accidentally hurt herself. Often times I see Shadow being written as the voice for reason, instead of her! They also agree that she inherited the Robotnik family trait of being intelligent and inventive (something that's actually actively supported by Sonic Channel artwork featuring her reading or excelling in classes). Fans like to think that she wasn't helpless, despite what her game writing would imply, and they kind of reject the notion that she was a perfect young girl who was quiet and polite and attentive which imo is the exact Opposite of what SEGA seemed to want for the character. I really really like this!! It's so fascinating to me how everyone seemingly agrees on these traits despite how little we know of her. What caused that? Coincidence? Did the way Sonic X rebooted Maria with the character Helen affect anything? Fans have given her so much more depth and I love to see it!!!

I want to know so MUCH about her. What was life like on the ARK, where are her parents, what's the Robotnik family tree look like, etc.? We know so Much about every other character, we kind of take it for granted I think. We know most of their favorite foods, songs, colors, flowers, bands, activities, weather patterns, where they live and who they live with, what they do for a living, what their daily routine is like. We even know some of their favorite Gaming Consoles!! But for Maria we get Nothing! Does she even like the color blue? How does she feel about the ARK? What's her favorite movie, song, food, animal? Does she like bugs or reptiles? Does she talk to the other scientists on the ARK? If so, what about? Does she like them? Do they like her? What was her relationship with Commander Towers, and why do we rarely see them mentioned together? When Shadow was created, did she start avoiding Towers, or were they never great friends? What books does she like to read? What's her favorite genre?

She's also just so tragic in a way that's so. Gets me ILL when I think about it for too long. She was Never going to reach the Earth. Did she know? Did she lay awake at night and think about it? She's so so optimistic and hopeful, I don't want to think she ever let herself give up on that dream tbh. And if GUN successfully shut down the ARK without killing her, would she have survived the trip back to the planet? She HAD to live on the ARK for a reason, and the government knew that. Was her death something they had already accepted as collateral before even stepping foot on the ARK? Did the soldier that shot her see her as a dead girl walking? Was the plan always to kill her as a way to make Gerald vulnerable and weak, and the soldier only thought about it enough to recognize it as himself taking the opportunity where he could? Did anyone else develop NIDS before or after those events? Did a proper cure ever develop? Did the citizens of the Earth ever do anything to honor or acknowledge the ARK tragedy? Did GUN ever formally apologize? Is there a monument or something out there?

And about her death! Did the Robotnik family ever find out she died? How long did they have to wait until they got confirmation? Did Maria ever get the dignity of a proper grave and funeral? How long did that take? Was she religious? If so, which religion? Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) is steeped in nods and references to Catholicism, was he Catholic? Was Maria? How did she feel about her religion? Would she have got along with Sonic and Co.? How would she feel about Eggman?

And she was like. Always going to be Shadow's Sister or The Sick Kid. How did that affect her? She's got the Secondary Character To Her Own Life and Doomed By The Narrative swag and it leaves me BEGGING for more information. We can learn a bit about her from Shadow, and assume some things about her based off the way he acts, but a story focused on her specifically would be so so interesting to me.

And about Shadow! Does he ever visit her grave? In Sonic X uncut, he makes a grave marker for Molly, someone who was a lot like Maria too. Did he do that for Maria as well? And if Shadow and Emerl were made "with her soul" or whatever, how much of them are traits of hers? If Gemerl was reprogrammed to be like Emerl, is he similar? I don't know how Maria acted, but I know Gemerl's personality well. Was Maria like that too? How far can you abstract from the original before there aren't any original traits left?

Anyways. Idk. She's so so cool to me. She can be projected on in basically any way becuz of how Little we actually have confirmed about her which is cool too!! Idk what SEGA's obsession with making little girl martyrs is, but I think all of them are cool. Thank God Helen didn't kick the bucket too, idk how many Maria clones my emotional state can handle. If Tikal is the original little girl martyr, would that make Maria a Tikal clone..... Much to think about!

#maria robotnik #sorry if this is Incomprehensible. uh. i kinda just started typing and then kept on typing. and i have ADHD. SOOOOO you can imagine how well #that goes. dhshfbbf

4 notes · View notes

viciousland · 1 year

Text

Dear Claudia, you will find love.

Earlier I did a post regarding Madeleine as a love interest for Claudia and I need to extend further on that, so fasten your seat belts because this is going to be a long and rocky journey (thank you so much @thefairylights and @burstingbone for indulging and feeding my ideas)

Let's start by talking about one of the the main tragedies in Claudia's existence: she is an outsider, a watcher, an addition. Never the number one, not in her human life and neither in her vampiric one.

She has never been the center of attention for the two people who are supposed to treat her as such. It is most clear with Lestat, who was forced to make her because of Louis and for his benefit, right or wrong didn’t matter; but Louis can’t be left behind, he selfishly wanted her, to make himself happy, to fix his marriage, to fix his guilt and his sorrow, and in my eyes, Louis’ biggest mistake with her is that he has constantly put her in second place. Never choosing her before Lestat.

Consequently, Claudia has been raised with two parents who are very much in love, even thought it is extremely toxic and she knows it, it is clear how much they adore each other. And that has cultivated in her, a need for a similar connection, just as intimate and all-consuming as the one Louis and Lestat have.

“Who am I supposed to love? You two have each other. Who’s my Lestat? Who’s my Louis?”

And that’s the main issue. She will NEVER EVER have that, because every potential partner will be a little boy or a pervert. And she is not wrong.

Until Madeleine changes everything!

In the book, she was a beautiful dollmaker who expressed her love with her art. Her love and grief, because she lost her baby and the way to cope with that pain was through her art. She made dolls that resembled her child and after she met Claudia, the dolls resembled her.

But I don’t think this is where the show is taking us. It is clear that Claudia can and is willing to take care of herself. If anything, Louis is the one who appears to have an inability to be alone (we’ve all discussed Lestat’s abandonment issues but I’ve barely read anything regarding Louis’... that’s a topic for another post). What Claudia needs and wishes, is a companion heart, a lover.

This is purely speculative, but in my mind, Claudia and Madeleine work so much better as a romance, and it leaves the doors open for an assortment of possibilities.

Will Claudia, who’s a copy of her maker, become what she swore to destroy? Will she repeat history and turn into another Lestat, just as he became his father? Will she fall in love with Madeleine because she is incredibly similar to Louis? After all, that’s exactly what Lestat did, Louis is an afterimage of Gabrielle.

Or will Claudia have the self-awareness, to realize the pattern, and be the one to break the generational trauma that has festered their existence? Will Madeleine cope and heal before turning? Will her grief (that I’m assuming will be connected with WWII) alleviate to make her a healthier vampire?

The tragic irony of it all is that, in the long term, we will probably never know. They are doomed. Claudia was doomed since the moment she was given the dark gift, perhaps even before. She was supposed to burn in that house back in New Orleans and she will burn in the end. Her actions to free herself and Louis will get her in the end.

No matter what, I need a taste of Claudia and Madeleine’s fleeting happiness. I would like to get a glimpse of what bliss and love would look like for them.

And also I’d like to look at the small moment in time where Louis and Claudia are able to put at ease their mutual rage and resentment. Because we already know this is what’s coming to them. Their trip through Europe will be ridden by grief and haunted not only by Lestat’s ghost, but by their own natures, traumas, regrets and struggles. What was that Louis said?

“But her absence would lay bare who we were without her... A simmering pot of resentments”

As it turns out, the same will happen without Lestat. The pot will boil to a point where their love will not be enough. Eventually, Louis (maybe manipulated by Armand) but most importantly urged by Claudia and Madeleine, will turn the latter.

I wish with all my heart that this is done, hesitantly but with love. After all, Sam Reid did say that it’s simply different when vampires turn others with love and consent. Madeleine and Claudia will be happy and in love. Louis will have his moment of peace, respect and restored love with Claudia. They will have their sweet farewell. Madeleine and Claudia will make plans. Louis will start to let Lestat go. He will fantasize plans of his own with Armand.

And this is when Claudia's diaries will stop.

And Louis will want to stay in that moment. He will dream of how their story stopped there. He will yearn for that because reality is too painful.

I want to believe Louis will get his reckoning. The man that has always bin a bit of a pyromaniac will get his fire gift and burn the Théâtre des Vampires to the ground. Then dissociation to the highest degree will come. We know he always knew Armand was the hand that condemned Claudia and Madeleine, but what would be the point to part ways with him too? After all, he loves him. And didn’t he do the exact same thing with Lestat? He always suspected that Lestat had something to do with Paul’s death but he stayed.

Because, Louis doesn’t believe he deserves anything good. Staying with Armand is as much of a punishment as it is an act of love.

And just like that... history repeats itself. And that’s the horror of this show. THAT’S the romantic gothic horror of it all. Destructive patterns until madness or death breaks them.

But I just want to imagine that in their last moments. Claudia and Madeleine whispered loving words to each other. Promised to find each other in the next life just as they did in this one. Reconciled with death and embraced it with as much love as they had for each other.

#iwtv #iwtv claudia #iwtv madeleine #amc iwtv #Interview with the Vampire #iwtv speculation #iwtv spoilers

50 notes · View notes

absylphe · 5 months

Note

hc + community

She has a few communities -- her community here (which is comprised both of people she sees regularly and people she only talks to through tumblr and streams), the people she interacts with in the capacity of fellow parents of schoolchildren, and her IRL sessionmates, most of whom live on a small (but slightly larger) island just nearby the island she lives on.

She gets most of her socialization fix online. The trolls who are around here are all fucked up, like her -- she has a few things she's still nervous about being "weird" about her, mostly the wrigglers -- but in general, she's not particularly fussed about being "wrong". She likes to be available to offer assistance to others, even just little ways of helping like sending over meals or taking a look at bruises makes her feel incredibly fulfilled. These are the people she mostly sees as being like herself; misfits, somewhat (affectionate).

She is currently trying to be friendly with a group of parents of her eldest daughter's friends, but it's been a rough go. It's easier with some of the parents of the younger kids, but there's such an experience and age gap between her and the other parents of 12-year old human kids, they can often be condescending or overly delicate. She attends book clubs twice a week trying to fit in, but since the occasion is mostly just an excuse for a bunch of 30-somethings to get together and drink alcohol and giggle about mediocre smut, she finds it difficult. She holds these people at arms length sort of subconsciously, so even though she's trying to put in the effort, it's fairly easy to tell that she isn't having a good time. They just assume she's had a really hard life because they can do math, and she's so young and Frifaj is so old. So they're also very awkward and don't address it and just let her keep coming to book club. They're basically in a social stalemate, but Kanaya has absolutely no idea because she can't read social cues. She hates The Elf King's Bride: Embrace of the Fae with a passion. It feels like they have been reading it for literal years.

With her actual friends that she fought with and would have died for, it's just... hard. They spent so long dead in the bubbles, basically stagnant and shouting into an echo that crystalized Who They Are to a point where they feel like almost archetypal versions of themselves, which is only sort of hammered in by meeting so many alts over the last decade. A very Karkat Karkat, a very Tavros Tavros, an extremely Vriska Vriska. She has spent so much of that time wallowing in despair, trying new hobbies, learning new things, meeting new people, and finally taking chances -- it's what led her to be able to resurrect her timeline's players, as well as ghosts beyond that, but being faced with her friends she finds herself unrecognizable as herself. Everyone else is normal and she is like a funhouse mirror version of herself, twisted beyond recognition.

She is always available to help them, and they know that, but they generally don't contact her because she moved away from the main hub so quickly after finishing her resurrection work and cavern setup. She keeps in close contact with her timeline's Aradia, who often babysits her kids on a moment's notice (mostly by taking them to dangerous historical periods for history field trips). She also keeps up with Dave somewhat, as he uses bullshit crypto schemes to keep everyone funded and essentially pays out allowances to them all -- though he'd gag at it, they're basically the two most responsible for keeping their comfortable lives in isolation fully functional.

Her timeline's Karkat and Rose reach out about once every 3 months saying they should get coffee, but nothing ever happens because Kanaya is so distant. Sollux is her go-to for tech support, and Equius helped her set up the elevator and soundproofing in her house (turns out void magic is SUPER useful for that).

She also keeps up with her session's Davesprite (who's just going by DS for now, while figuring out if he wants to change that or not). They managed to seal up the session together and finish the genesis frog together, and she's incredibly fond of him. He's been spending a lot of time with the consort population on the main island since getting a new body -- they are pretty fond of each other, but each one has that evil brain parasite of "you probably only leaned on me because you had no other choice, so now that we've accomplished all we've set out to do, I will leave gracefully and let you live your life." Jade sort of sidelined Kanaya in her excitement to set up an ectobiology project to clone him a human body that could pass through the world without a second look, and she sort of took that as a cue to get lost. Because of the brain parasite. (Mental illness. You know how it is.)

She's been reaching out to her timeline's Gamzee recently, after realizing how incompetent her sessionmates are at keeping up with people who disappear. (Eventually, this may lead to a realization that they're just shit at keeping up with her and don't just hate her because she's weird, but she's only been spending time with Gamzee for a few weeks now, so it's probably going to be slow going.)

#long post #ask meme things #sorry for delaaaay and length have fun

6 notes · View notes

greenpanda-basicfakewitch · 8 months

Text

Lore | Shadow People

“Have you ever been reading or watching TV when suddenly, in the periphery of your vision, you catch a glimpse of what appears to be a shadowy figure in the room with you?”

[Authors Note: This is my passage not copy/pasted from the internet and this has been my personal experience]

I have included this for personal reasons. I know most people claim Wicca is safe and sure, how can you deny other peoples experiences who have dealt with wicca, ouji, seances and summonings and had no problems w/e so I admit that true enough it is as safe as one makes it.

But my sister was given a book from the school library bus [It is what it sounds, it appears for year six kids every year, used to encourage them to go to the local library to return the book with their parents] She was giving a book and as a kid she can't recall the name of the book/title as an adult. And after using it she could not find the book or even looking through her library history could not take it back out to reverse the issues it caused.

She may have invoked or invited something in our old house back in 2006.

We always joked about having a ghost called George in the house but we have NEVER described him. It wasn’t until we left the house that all of us [including my dad who doesn’t believe in anything even HE makes it important to remind us to NEVER summon shit in the house again!] Spoke about him and all of us described him as a man in red coat, always running up the stairs.

But yeah we all had nightmares and I described him with a reddish brown coat and couldn't see his face and my family described him as the same.

He was in our parents room and when my mom called my dads name he said

“I see it.”

[Like yeah, what a way to NOT freak out my mom thanks dad.]

He always circled the landing and turned on lights, we always saw him at the corner of our eye. But we were pretty chill/ we were young and my parents ignored it.

So it wasn’t until we moved that I finally thought that the house I’m in now was HUANTED because there was nothing wrong with it. I tried to speak to it. I kept saying “Hello house, we’re going away on holiday, we’ll be back!” But the new house didn’t feel right when I said such things outloud.

I know no one will believe this, and I’m not asking you too. It’s something we had happen which is why my Sister and I, are a bit more wary of any types of summoning and stuff. When I dreamt of him his face was dark in shadow, but my sister she saw his face and he was in my room looking at her when she was in a neighbouring house and said it was decayed/full of bugs and it freaked her out.

Also when we moved out, the people who kept in contact with my dad had to move out and others were mentioning having issues with the house and that one of their kids got hurt.

[Then again they could’ve been pulling his leg, So I’m sceptical thinking my sis just recreated an amityville horror house in britain by mistake XD]

But I’m pretty sceptical since there would’ve been more stories/ news on it.

[Source]

Descriptions of shadowy, human-like figures have appeared in folklore and religious texts throughout history and across cultures. Some examples include the supernatural creatures known as “djinn” of ancient Islamic theology and the beings known as “Nalusa Chito” of the Native American Choctaw tribe’s mythology. The modernly-used term “shadow people” was coined by paranormal researcher and book author Heidi Hollis, who claims that shadow people have been around since the beginning of time and usually appear as dark human-shaped silhouettes in our peripheral vision.

“Shadow people are a bit of an enigma in the paranormal community,” professional witch and psychic Renée Watt tells Bustle. “They are often thought of as ghosts or a collection of negative energy — but as is true with most paranormal phenomena, there is no finite answer.” According to Watt, shadow people can appear in different forms and may even indicate that someone is under a psychic attack. Many paranormal experts also theorise that there may be a connection between shadow people and extra-terrestrial life — and that these beings could be other-worldly in origin or have a correlation with alleged alien abduction experiences.

It’s normal to feel fearful if you see something as inexplicable as a shadow person — but according to experts, it’s best to focus on staying grounded and not letting yourself be overwhelmed by the discomfort of what you’re experiencing. “If you encounter a shadow person, the worst thing you can do is give it your fear, as entities with negative intent thrive on their ability to make us feel unsafe or uncomfortable,” Watt says. “The best thing you can do is call in spiritual protection, pray, or simply stand your ground by firmly telling the shadow person to leave you alone.”

#LORE #Shadow #People #Shadow People #Shadow person #person #wicca #witch #witch community #Wiccan Myth #myth #pagan #witchcraft #witchblr #witchtok #wiccan #Baby Witch #baby

2 notes · View notes

readerbookclub · 2 years

Text

Foodie - September Book List

This month’s list is all about food! In all of these novels, food plays a central role in the story or character’s lives. As a foodie myself, I’m really excited about these books! I hope you like them too :)

As always, please vote for which of these books we should read. Link is at the bottom of this post.

And on to the books...

Cinnamon and Gunpowder, by Eli Brown

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider. But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

Quentins, by Maeve Binchy

Is it possible to tell the story of a generation and a city through the history of a restaurant? Ella Brady thinks so. She wants to film a documentary about Quentins that will capture the spirit of Dublin from the 1970s to the present day. And Quentins has a thousand stories to tell: tales of love, of betrayal, of revenge; of times when it looked ready for success and times when it seemed as if it must close in failure. But as Ella uncovers more of what has gone on at Quentins, she begins to wonder whether some secrets should be kept that way...

Sourdough, by Robin Sloan

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it. Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up. When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

The Kitchen Daughter, by Jael McHenry

After the unexpected death of her parents, painfully shy and sheltered 26-year-old Ginny Selvaggio seeks comfort in cooking from family recipes. But the rich, peppery scent of her Nonna’s soup draws an unexpected visitor into the kitchen: the ghost of Nonna herself, dead for twenty years, who appears with a cryptic warning (“do no let her…”) before vanishing like steam from a cooling dish. A haunted kitchen isn’t Ginny’s only challenge. Her domineering sister, Amanda, (aka “Demanda”) insists on selling their parents’ house, the only home Ginny has ever known. As she packs up her parents’ belongings, Ginny finds evidence of family secrets she isn’t sure how to unravel. She knows how to turn milk into cheese and cream into butter, but she doesn’t know why her mother hid a letter in the bedroom chimney, or the identity of the woman in her father’s photographs. The more she learns, the more she realizes the keys to these riddles lie with the dead, and there’s only one way to get answers: cook from dead people’s recipes, raise their ghosts, and ask them.

Five Quarters of the Orange, by Joanne Harris

When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous Mirabelle Dartigen - the woman they still hold responsible for a terrible tragedy that took place during the German occupation decades before. Although Framboise hopes for a new beginning she quickly discovers that past and present are inextricably intertwined. Nowhere is this truth more apparent than in the scrapbook of recipes she has inherited from her dead mother. With this book, Framboise re-creates her mother's dishes, which she serves in her small creperie. And yet as she studies the scrapbook - searching for clues to unlock the contradiction between her mother's sensuous love of food and often cruel demeanor - she begins to recognize a deeper meaning behind Mirabelle's cryptic scribbles. Within the journal's tattered pages lies the key to what actually transpired the summer Framboise was nine years old.

Please vote for our next read here.

#book list #booklr #food books #cinnamon and gunpowder #eli brown #quentins #Maeve Binchy #sourdough #robin sloan #the kitchen daughter #jael mchenry #five quarters of the orange #joanne harris #readerbookclub

18 notes · View notes

tgon · 2 years

Text

Ghosts of Fear Street, Parents from the 13th Dimension | Review

Title: Ghosts of Fear Street #27 – Parents from the 13th Dimension

Author: Katy Hall (as by R.L. Stine)

Cover Artist: Mark Garro

INTRODUCTION

Flipping a coin. Rolling a die. Drinking milk from the jug without doing a smell test. These are all games of chance. It was by pure chance that I decided to read this book, a simple whim, so this entry will be a quickie.

I was shocked by how Coraline-like this book was. I was even more shocked to realize this book predates Coraline by several years. Both books feature a young girl, unhappy with her current life, slipping into a seemingly perfect alternate world. Although (maybe the Pelosi lookalike on the cover tipped you off), Parents from the 13th Dimension takes a turn for the David Icke.

STORY REVIEW

Why does Sarah Watson think her life is horrible? Her brother is a geek. Her mother collects garbage. And (brace yourself for this last one) her father is a nurse. Sarah has daddy issues on par with Marge Simpson. She isn’t even charmed by his homemade clothing brand. Did I mention he’s a weaver?

Steve’s Weaves

Adorable. It goes to show that traditionally masculine hobbies (e.g. fishing, pumping iron, reading kid’s books, writing funny reviews online somewhat regularly) are totally optional.

Moping along Fear Street, Sarah finds a strange coin. One side has a queen, and the other side has a lizard. While you might assume it’s Australian, this tender comes from a different AU. When the coin is flipped and lands lizard-side-up, Sarah is whisked away to an alternate universe!

Weird at first, life in the 13th Dimension proves to be pretty cool. Sarah’s geeky brother is replaced by a confident new bro. Mr. and Mrs. Watson are replaced by conventional parents. The entire medical field is presumably replaced by something radical like skeet shooting. I’m spitballing here.

Sarah finally has everything she could ever want. She has a dog now. She even gets her own horse! Every girl’s dream! (We can add this book to the hallowed halls of Equine Media I’ve Needlessly Mentioned, seated alongside A Horse Called Wonder and Horse Sense and hopefully nothing else.) There is one peculiar detail about this world, though: Sarah is forbidden from entering one room in her home. According to Fake Dad, this room is under construction. Should Sarah accidentally step on a nail, it’d be very difficult to skeet shoot it out.

Feeling nostalgic, Sarah flips her coin and visits her original dimension. She learns that no time has passed, nobody missed her, and her father is still into weaving. Ultimately, she decides it’s okay to keep visiting the 13th Dimension. But even if weaving doesn’t exist in the alternate universe, an unmistakable sense of danger looms.

When she tries to investigate the locked room, Sarah is punished by Fake Dad, who takes her interdimensional coin away, trapping her in the 13th Dimension. Also, Fake Mom forces Sarah to eat huge amounts of food, alluding to an upcoming “feast.” Worst of all, no TV or skeet shooting for a week!

Sarah snaps. Using a paperclip, the girl picks her way into the mysterious room. She finds her coin, but she also finds 3 shriveled human-suits. Not to be confused with “suits for shriveled humans.” Although, the situation would be more fun if she stumbled into Jagger’s wardrobe. These empty suits would allow a creature to disguise itself as a person. (I swear, I’m not referencing Jagger.) About this time, Sarah realizes her sweet little parents are actually a couple of 8-foot-tall reptiles from the Protozoic Universe! This book turns into Fear and Loathing in the 13th Dimension when man-eating reptiles descend on Sarah.

If only Sarah hadn’t taken her real family for granted. If she hadn’t turned her nose up at her father’s interests, she could save herself now. Somehow. Maybe. I’m trying to connect this back to the moral. But no matter how I slice it, weaving seems like an objectively inferior form of self defense than skeet shooting. (Weaving around the monsters? Suddenly, that loom pun from earlier doesn't seem like such a stretch anymore, huh.)

The girl flips her magic coin at the last possible moment. She decides to take her new dog back to her original universe probably because the horse was too big to carry. She makes it home safe and sound, bringing “Sparky” along for the ride. In the end, she tries to rationalize what just happened, guessing that reptilians must enjoy playing with their food. She doesn’t even consider that scaring your food makes the meat go stringy.

Life goes back to normal, and Sarah learns a valuable lesson: spacetime is the scariest weave of all.

THE VERDICT

Not bad, but not much of anything. From the horror to the moral to the twist ending, it’s very mild.

You can tell Stine didn’t write this one. If he had, the dog would reveal a shocking lizard tongue right on the last page. And then Sarah’s whole family would turn into werwolves and eat the lizarddog or something I don’t know. Regardless, it could never achieve a scarier twist ending than Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.

BEST QUOTE

This book introduced me to the phrase “dishwater blonde.” I amusingly misread this descriptor as “dishwasher blonde.” What a bizarre insult, I thought to myself. Excluding that one eggcorn, I was enamored by this tubular 90s lingo:

All I knew was that this dream world was one hundred percent cool!

#fear street #fearstreet #90s #nostalgia #books #horror #review #Ghosts of Fear Street #PazReviews

6 notes · View notes

quoteablebooks · 4 months

Text

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy

Rating: 0 out of 5

Content Warning: Ableism, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Cursing, Bullying, Suicidal thoughts, Torture

Summary:

The first book in Alyson Noël's extraordinary new Immortals series. Enter an enchanting new world, where true love never dies...

After a horrible accident claims the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people's auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone's entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact to suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school—but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.

Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He's the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head—wielding a magic so intense, it's as though he can peer straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she's left with more questions than answers. And she has no idea just who he really is—or what he is. The only thing she knows to be true is that she's falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.

*Opinions*

TL;DR - The villain should have killed both main characters and put us all out of our misery

Hello friends and enemies, we are gathered here today to talk about a book that I did not enjoy and probably has the most annoying characters I have read to date. The plot was nonsense, the characters were annoying, and somehow a book that was just over 300 pages was about 300 pages too long. The fact that there are six books in this series is truly baffling to me as I don’t understand how anyone cared about these characters enough to get through this novel let alone five more. My completeist brain is truly thrilled that I cannot easily find the rest to read for free anywhere so I can drop this book in a free little library and never have to think about it again.

I do want to provide one positive before I get into everything else I didn’t like about this novel. I appreciated the portrayal of Sabine and how kind she is to Ever, who is consistently a horrible person to her and everyone else. Sabine lost her twin brother, dropped everything, and moved so that she could take care of her niece who is now her ward. Sabine is nothing but patient and kind to Ever, a teenager who is constantly not talking to her, being mean, or getting expelled from school. Sabine is the true hero of this book for not smacking Ever into next week on a couple of occasions. I too would be working all the time if I had to live with Ever constantly being cagy, lying, and straight up ignoring her. Ava is also kind to Ever when she has no reason to be, so the adult women in this novel, for the small amount are present, have the patience of saints.

Ever is one of the most annoying main characters that I have ever had the displeasure of being in the head of. She is so self-centered and not in an “I am a teenager who is going through some horrible and confusing things” but in an “I care about no one and nothing but myself and I never let anyone complete a thought because I don’t want to hear it, even though I am psychic and read minds.” She is a horrible friend, an extremely clingy and toxic girlfriend, and almost too dumb to live. Ever doesn’t figure out anything that is happening on her own, she doesn’t do a single thing herself throughout this novel except breaking into her boyfriend’s house because…she’s mad he left after spending almost two whole days with her. She says that she doesn’t want her ghost little sister to cross over, yet is absolutely horrible to her every time she is present, is a shitty friend, and is just an overall bad person. When people do try to explain things to Ever, she gets pissed off and tells them to go away or says horrible things, but then is confused why people aren’t talking or lying to her.

The sad thing is that this could have been a powerful story about grief and dealing with the loss of family, but Ever never thinks about her parents except how she can’t see them, and only thinks about what her sister lost when it is convenient for her. She states constantly that her psychic powers are because she is being punished for the accident, but once Daimen is on the scene, she barely thinks about the family she lost or the life she no longer has. Instead of making Ever a complex character who is managing huge life changes and loss, she seems like a self-absorbed narcissist who is only upset that her parents are dead because the accident changed her from the most popular cheerleader into a “freak”. It is all so shallow that I have no sympathy for her. Then her two-day descent into alcoholism? I can’t even get into that.

Daimen is the king of gaslighting and every time he did something that was supposed to be romantic I rolled my eyes so hard I almost strained something. Daimen, a six hundred-year-old man, is obsessed with a seventeen-year-old. Usually, these types of age gaps don’t bother me in high fantasy novels, but in an urban fantasy in which Daimen is constantly dropping hints that he is so much more knowledgeable and sophisticated than Ever, it just felt weird. Sometimes I heard the start of the SVU theme song. He is also constantly using his type of magic in front of her and then denying that he is, making her feel as if she is losing her mind. A mind that he can read at times and knows how distressed he is making her, yet instead of trying to find a way to explain he continues to play mind games. He apparently loves her so much that he has searched for her in multiple lifetimes, but he also somehow never figures out that it is Darina who continually kills her. Even though Darina shows up every time she dies they get back together. This is a man who supposedly discovered the truth about immortality and he can’t see the two plus two make four? However, I completely lost it when Ever was upset and crying and his response, get on top of her and start trying to sleep with her. I hate him.

Let’s also take a little detour and talk about the fact that Darina made a point of telling Ever that she died a virgin in every lifetime she has had since meeting Daimen. Now, I have no intention of reading on in this series unless someone pays me money, but I can predict that when Ever and Daimen actually do sleep together there is going to be a whole thing of being her one and only partner, her first and only love, she is happy she saved her soul for him, etc. and I would have to throw up before continuing.

Darina is the most cardboard-cut-out villain I might have ever read. She is the stunningly beautiful woman that Daimen is with that gives off creepy vibes. That is the only reason why Ever hates her to begin with. Then she gets close to Haven for the sole purpose of killing her to upset Ever and make her feel like she is alone so she’ll just die when Darina finally decides to attack her all because she is in love with Daimen for some reason. Darina, who proves at the end of the book that she could have killed Ever at any moment, but just decides to play games because…plot? Then, after 600 years, she is easily confused and killed without much of a fight. While I wanted her to succeed because I hated Daimen and Ever and wanted them to stop existing, she didn’t have enough of a personality to really care about her one way or another.

Ever’s “friends”, and I use the word loosely, are stereotypes and also kind of the worst people. Miles is the less offensive of the two, he is just obsessed with his boyfriends to the point that he ignores his friends, but he at least says something when both Ever and Haven are being the worst. Haven, however, fucking sucks. Everything had to be about her and she called ‘dibs’ on a man and gets pissed when he isn’t interested in her but her friend. Remember, these people are Juniors in high school, and they are calling dibs on a real-life person. The whole bit where she joins anonymous groups and lies about having addictions or other problems because she is ignored at home is just wrong on so many levels. Then, Haven goes missing for days after another woman is murdered, and Ever is so self-obsessed she doesn’t even care, but is so extremely happy when she reappears alive. This whole town should have just been crushed by a meteor.

A major part of the plot, in which there almost isn’t any mind you, is that Ever feels as if she needs to punish herself because she believes that it is her fault that her family got into a car accident that killed them. There is this whole thread about how she has to forgive herself for the accident and thinking that she caused it, with multiple other characters explicitly saying this to her. In the final scene of the novel Daimen states that love heals and she finally forgave herself so the scar on her forehead is gone. Except, Ever never forgave herself because she found out that Darina caused the accident for the sole purpose of killing Ever. It was all just so frustrating. Ever doesn’t figure out anything on her own, Darina tells her in her evil monologue. Yet we are supposed to get this whole takeaway about love and forgiveness after Ever turns Darina to dust by accident. When Daimen started explaining that Ever hit Darina in her weakest chakra and that’s why she died I would have put down the book if I wasn’t so close to the end. Please, give me a fucking break. There had not been a single mention of chakras before this scene, not one. Also, the only other plot point besides Ever hating herself was figuring out why Daimen was acting so weird, that’s it.

I could go on for another five pages of everything I hated about this, but it would just make me angry. I would give this zero stars if that was a possibility. Save yourself the time and money and read literally anything else.

#Evermore #The Immortals Series #Alyson Noel #0 out of 5 Star #book review #booklr

1 note · View note

revolyalution · 8 months

Text

Medical Interpreter

Being a language interpreter is like wearing an invisible cloth. My job is to facilitate a conversation between people who speak different languages regardless of where they are in the world, and it’s done well if they cannot notice I was ever even there.

I am a ghost in people’s most private and intimate moments - during their therapy appointments, court, custody battles..etc. I am in the room when parent meets their child for the first time; when someone’s child gets taken away by protective services; when someone learns they have terminal cancer or that they are completely cancer free; when family pulls life support on their loved one or just read a prayer together.

Most of the time they hear my voice in a speaker somewhere across the world. I don’t get to learn their names or see their smile or tears. I can’t see them or hear them so they don’t exist - they are no more than just a ghost. Ghosts are stories and little life episodes I get live with people.

Some of them haunt me at night, some inspire me, help make life decisions, heal. I love all of them even when I wish they’d go away.

They teach me to be grateful EVERY DAY. Because of them I’m able to live my life, experience the world, love, human connection, a cup of morning coffee and peaceful sky. EVERY DAY I live like it’s my last day on earth - even if I spend all day at home. It is a luxury not everyone has. I value it. I wouldn’t have been able to see it if not for ghosts.

One of my ghosts is a woman with her kid at the safe house - she shared her story with us without a single tear. Not until her son left the room. She taught me how to stay strong. And that I can get through everything.

I have lots of ghosts - a girl with schizophrenia, very troubled gentelman who struggles with addiction, boy with severe OCD - they teach me how to put up a fight when it seems impossible.

Doctors and nurses teach me how to give someone who is struggling a safe space. How to ease in to telling someone bad news.

My ghosts from homeless shelters and housing programs tech me to be grateful for roof over my head and there is nothing more important than home.

People living in war teach me to be grateful for a mundane day. The kind where you go to work, surf the web on your break, and go home; accomplishing - nothing.; getting exited by - nothing. Plain, simple, boring is really a privilege.

My ghost taught me a lot of life lessons that are far more valuable than anything I have ever learned on my own through their stories and little life episodes. For example, interpreting in a delivery room one day seeing a child cry for the first time, and seeing how you could love someone so unconditionally made me excited to be a mom one day.

I hope one day I will put all these stories in a book and call it "stories from ghosts"

1 note · View note

fantomcomics · 1 year

Text

What’s Out This Week? 11/30

We hope everyone had a safe & restful holiday!

Sunburn TP - Andi Watson & Simon Gane

Rachel is a teenager who lives a gray suburban life in gray suburban England. It's a world of brown sauce, warm beer, and scrambled eggs every Tuesday. With her summer already mapped out for her-a job working at the butcher and a caravan holiday in Clacton-it seems like this year will only bring more of the same. So when family friends invite her to spend the summer with them in Greece, she jumps at the chance to escape her life and finally be treated like an adult.

The Warners are everything her parents are not-glamorous, sophisticated, and carefree-and when Rachel meets Benjamin, a handsome young friend of the Warners, her summer seems to be taking a turn for the better. But there's no escaping the pains of growing up, and she'll soon learn that life on a small island where everyone knows each other's business may not be all it's cracked up to be.

In The Clear Moonlit Dusk GN Vol 1 - Mika Yamamori

Yoi Takiguchi's long legs, deep voice, and handsome face are the perfect recipe for an attractive guy-until people realize she is, in fact, a girl. Dubbed a "prince" by her peers since childhood, Yoi has all but given up on being seen as anything else. That is, until she bumps into Ichimura-sempai, the school's other prince (who's a he) and gets a taste of what it feels like to be seen for her true self. The story of the two high school princes starts here!

Plush #1 (of 6) - Doug Wagner, Daniel Hillyard & Rico Renzi

Serial-killing, cannibalistic furries! PLASTIC and VINYL creators DOUG WAGNER & DANIEL HILLYARD are back. This time, they've recruited colorist extraordinaire RICO RENZI for their disturbing "neon-horror" spin on fursuit psychopaths and bizarre love. In PLUSH, Devin Fulcher is coerced into attending his first furry convention. When he accidentally happens upon a group of furries devouring a human, the insanity begins. Do they just want Devin for dinner... or something much more wicked?

Koshchei In Hell #1 (of 4) - Mike Mignola & Ben Stenbeck

The world above may be over, and Hellboy gone with it, but Koshchei is still in Hell content with his wine and his books-until an old face arrives and brings Koshchei a critical task. An old and powerful foe is returning, and Koshchei must take up his sword and defend the city from destruction.

Magic: Nahiri The Lithomancer #1 - Seanan McGuire, Kath Lobo & Ariel Olivetti

Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and Alex Award-winning novelist Seanan McGuire (Ghost-Spider) returns to the world of Magic: The Gathering along with Kath Lobo to bring Nahiri the Lithomancer to comics! Nahiri-also known as The Harbinger-has protected her home plane of Zendikar for centuries, her ruthlessness and terrible deeds kept in check by a strong sense of justice. But her fate is far from decided, and a new challenge awaits that may change the way the entire Multiverse perceives her...

Penguina One Shot - Julie Devin

Sent in a dimensional portal ship and landing in the Antarctic as a baby, Penguina is found and raised by Samurai Penguin. Leaving to see the world once she's grown, she finds out she has the ability to mimic powers of any comic character if she reads the comic but only for 1 hour! To keep a low profile, she takes a secret identity working as in intern at a small comic company...until Penguina is needed!

Star Wars The High Republic Adventures #1 - Daniel Jose Older, Tony Bruno & Harvey Tolibao

For young Padawan Sav Malagan, joining the ranks of the noble Jedi Order has been all she's ever wanted. But a chance encounter with a crew of eccentric misfits makes her question everything she's taken for granted in her life. Trapped aboard the ship of infamous space pirate Maz Kanata, will Save ever be able to rejoin the Jedi? And if she spends much long with Maz and her crew, will she even want to?

I’m A Terminal Cancer Patient, But I’m Fine GN - Hilnama

After being diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, the creator documents her physical and emotional journey through treatment in this powerful memoir manga. At 38 years old, Hilnama, a manga artist, is diagnosed with colon cancer. Never one to lose hope or give in to despair, she begins cancer treatments despite the deadly diagnosis. But when going through such a grueling process, it can be difficult to keep a positive outlook. When faced with the struggles and trials of life, Hilnama turns to what she knows: writing and creating manga again, drawing herself as a rabbit in a world of humans and hospitals. This poignant and down-to-earth account of diagnosis, treatment, and living with terminal disease will be a reference for positivity and perseverance for years to come.

Whatcha snagging this week, Fantomites?

#WOTW #What's Out This Week?#comic #comics #comic book #comic books #manga #I’m A Terminal Cancer Patient But I’m Fine #Star Wars The High Republic Adventures #Penguina #Magic: Nahiri The Lithomancer #Koshchei In Hell #Plush #In The Clear Moonlit Dusk #Sunburn

0 notes

meg-moira · 2 years

Note

What's your favorite queer rep in fiction?

My favorite??? I have a hard time choosing a favorite book, let alone a favorite character from them. Best I can do is a list!

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

This one is a short, stunning read. The main characters is a cleric named Chih (who uses they/them pronouns!), and is investigating the carefully concealed story of an empress and her handmaiden. The book is self-described as a “feminist high fantasy” and it is exactly as fantastic as it sounds.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Have you ever wanted to read a story about two women who are time traveling spies on opposite sides of the time war?? If so, boy have I got the story for you. This whole story is a delightfully agonizing slow-burn enemies to lovers, all wrapped in some of the most gorgeous, surreal prose I’ve ever read.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

This one does fall into the genderless robot trope BUT there are also non-binary human characters and great queer and poc representation all around. Also, this whole series is just so good. Martha Wells has such a talent for writing characters that are so easy to love.

Hell’s Library Series by A.J. Hackwith

The main character, a kickass librarian in hell, is black, pansexual, and amazing in every single way. One of the other main characters is bisexual, and there are side characters (not all of them nonhuman) who are non-binary. Also, Hackwith says no thank you to love triangles, giving us a slow burn poly relationship instead.

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

When I say this graphic novel made me cry — I mean cry cry. It is about a young boy named Tiên whose parents are refugees from Vietnam. Tiên, who realizes he’s gay, struggles with how to come out to them. Throughout the story, the boy and his mother read fairytales to each other as a way of communicating, and the whole thing is exactly as heartwarming and wholesome as it sounds. I honestly wish I could read the whole thing for the first time again, it’s so so good!

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

Nimona is about a troubled shapeshifter who is taken in by the world’s most infamous villain. The two of them set out to prove that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and everyone else at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren’t as “good” as they seem, and the whole story is hilarious, queer, and heartwarming.

Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe

This one doesn’t contain a character, exactly. It’s an autobiographical comic about Maia Kobabe’s life and eir exploration and discovery of eir gender and sexuality. The comic is honest, laugh out loud funny, and incredibly affirming to anyone who might be exploring or questioning their gender.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

When Yadriel, a trans boy, attempts to prove himself a real brujo, he accidentally summons the ghost of a missing classmate. This one’s an enemies to friends to crushes, and it’s an absolute joy.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

This one has an asexual main character! I repeat, an asexual main character! ❤️ I went into this book having no idea about the queer rep, and it was the loveliest surprise. Every Heart a Doorway is about the children who are whisked away to other lands — but then, for whatever reason, cannot stay. These children are invited to a boarding school to help them readjust to the real world. Note: Trigger warning for an upsetting (and somewhat graphic) side character death very early in the story.

I know I’ve surely forgotten some equally amazing ones, but these are a start!

#queer books #queer characters #fiction #books #recommendations #book reccomendation #book recs #queer book recommendations #asks

211 notes · View notes

bubblegumbeech · 3 years

Text

The Librarian’s Trick

Day one Ectoberhaunt: Trick or Treat

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34213519

Wes was certain this Cassius guy was a ghost. He had to be. Humans didn’t live on the outskirts of town in large decrepit clock towers that Wes was pretty sure didn’t exist last week .

Humans didn’t have red eyes and white hair (unless they had a condition called Albinoism, Wes had looked it up. But Albinoism also meant they had no melanin anywhere and Cassius Dark was decidedly tan in an admittedly attractive but decidedly not Albino kind of way)

Humans didn’t have fangs when they smiled but normal teeth whenever Wes tried to point out that He had FANGS. They were right there!!!

Humans didn’t spend all their time either with Danny Fenton (who was Also very much a ghost!! Which should be in the list of proof but no one believes it so it’s seperate but still!) or mysteriously absent.

And humans didn’t seem to know everything all the time but talk like a bad astrology website.

So Wes was going to find a way to prove it.

His first try had him sneaking a “ghost translator” he didn’t remember the stupid name Fenton’s dad called it when he bought it with his allowance, into the library where Cassius Dark supposedly worked.

Supposedly, because while he could be found there, Wes had never actually seen him doing anything other than reading. And it was never a book Wes recognized, like, he wasn’t reading the Twilight series or anything. The last book Wes saw had been a large ancient looking tome written in a language Wes didn’t recognize. But Everytime he tried (subtly! He was super nonchalant about it!) to take a picture it ended up blurry!! And No Kyle, it wasn’t because he was bad at taking photos .

But that didn’t matter because Wes had a different plan now. He was going to use the Fentons’ new version of their “ghost translator” thing, and see what happened. It was supposed to be both a translator and a truth decoder at the same time. So no matter what a ghost said, the device should say what they actually mean. Or something.

With Danny, a bunch of innocuous stuff went off around him, but people always hand waved it as faulty tech. Wes wasn’t sure that was the case, in fact he was positive it wasn’t. But if he could get something useful to build up from, that would be a good start. And every good reporter needed a start.

He stepped up to the Library’s front desk, where Cassius was sitting reading what was clearly a spell tome if the different summoning pentagrams in the open page Wes could see were anything to go by.

“Welcome Young Weston,” Cassius said, the hint of a smile hidden behind his red eyes as he closed his book. Wes could swear they were glowing slightly. Geez did this guy get his ‘how to pretend to be human’ classes from Fenton ?

… that would certainly explain why no one ever believed Wes, since that was a long beaten dead horse in his closet.

He, very discreetly, had the device hooked up to one of his earphones, which he kept in one of his ears like any normal less than perfectly mannered teenager as he asked Cassius Dark his questions.

“Excuse me sir? Do you work here?” he started with, it was a more or less innocuous question and one he actually wanted the answer to.

Cassius Dark smiled. “I do.”

My Job is all that was, is, and shall be. That which I set as my goal is beyond mortal comprehension and those I call master shall fall to my machinations. But yes, I get paid for sitting at this desk and answering questions sometimes. I am a ghost, fear me.

Wes tried not to sweat too obviously. What the fuck?

“Can you tell me where the journalism section is?” Wes decided to make a tactical retreat, at least his voice didn’t crack.

“Straight back for eight shelves and then turn right. It’s next to the Non-fiction books.”

I know what you’re looking for, I know why you are here. I know the exact time of your death and what will happen next. Your efforts amuse me though. I am a ghost, fear me.

What Wes did next was not exactly fleeing. But it wasn’t not fleeing either.

He’d have to try something else.

The next thing he wanted to try was a bit riskier. If you thought about it a certain way. But it also wasn’t if you thought about it the way Wes did.

He was going to use a phase-proof net.

Genius, because unlike the translator machine thing, it would actually stop the ghost from attacking Wes if it got angered. Which it would, probably, since Wes was throwing a net at it.

The plan was really simple though, he’d gotten a very large net, paid extra for the little aim thing, practiced half a billion times of his brothers before they went to the parents and got him grounded for a week, and then memorized the path Cassius Dark took in the mornings to go to his “job” at the library.

Right now he was hiding in one of the leafier trees, right above the path that Cassius always used, waiting.

And waiting.

And… waiting.

Honestly he was about to go home and was fairly certain this guy was going to be like, super late to work, when he finally appeared.

Wes wasted no time aiming, making sure the trajectory was absolutely perfect, and firing the net off. He was just about to jump in celebration, watching the net as it curled slightly around its target, but before it could hit and wrap around him, Cassius was suddenly not there.

Or he was, but just a little bit to the left, so that the net sailed harmlessly past.

Wes cursed.

The third one was fool proof. It had to be.

Which was why Wes was staring at a large conspiracy board, covered in paparazzi-esque shots of the librarian and random notes he’d taken, all connected with a dizzying amount of red string.

“Kyle, seriously. I need to figure out what kind of ghost he is or he’s always going to have the upper hand!!”

Kyle just rolled his eyes and continued playing his video game, as if he didn’t care that Wes had set up his very important planning and plotting in the middle of the living room so long as it didn’t interfere with his own plans.

“It has to be pretty powerful, he was able to dodge my net before it even touched him. And the translator thing clearly said ‘my goal is beyond comprehension’ or something,” Wes mused, “and he also said his job was like, everything?”

Wes checked his notes, “yeah, ‘all that is was and shall be’. What could he mean by that?”

His very annoying and clearly not taking this as seriously as he should brother just chuckled. “I don’t know Wes, maybe he can see the future?”

That… no. That’s way too OP. Just the thought of it sent a shiver down Wes’ spine. There was no way a ghost could see the future right?

Right?

He had to test this theory.

But how do you even test something like that?

“Kyle, how would you test if someone could see the future?”

“Throw something at the back of their head and see if they dodge?” He answered way too quickly.

Wes thought about it for a moment. “No, what if they just have really good reflexes?”

“Oh huh, I guess that could be true. No idea then.” He shrugged and Wes had to fight the urge to throw something at the back of his head.

Whatever. He had to make plans.

He’d tried just throwing things. It was risky, and kind of terrifying, but Kyle was right it was the first that came to mind.

But Cassius never dodged. He was always just, not where Wes thought he was. Or Wes had really bad aim, which he didn’t!!! He was a basketball ace!! He had great aim! And great situational awareness!!

So why couldn’t he hit Cassius Dark?

Obviously it was because he could see the future. And the smug smile he always had when he knew Wes was looking reminded him an awful lot of a certain other Phantom.

Ask him about his family.

Easy enough. Especially without the Fenton’s weird translator because that might have been a bit terrifying. And also this time he had back up.

He dragged Kyle by his sleeve into the library.

“Mr. Cassius!”

Cassius looked up from his book, removing the delicate reading glasses balanced on his nose. “Can I help you Mr. Weston?”

“Yes!” He smiled broadly, taking out a small notebook that he had used to take notes on the suspicious and ghoulish things going on around town until it was mostly shreds of paper. “I’m writing an OP ED on the town library, and would like to know more about the librarian. Can you answer a few personal questions?”

Kyle snorted and Wes had to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up. He was here as back up, not to ruin his plan.

“So,” he began, “is Cassius a family name?”

“No.”

Wes nodded. And then frowned. Did ghosts have families? Supposedly they were alive once right? At least that was the general idea, Wes thought.

“So what can you tell us about your parents? Like, what’s your father’s name?”

Cassius raised an eyebrow, and had a soft smile filled with good humor. Wes felt it hit him like a threat. What was this ghost hiding?

Well, other than the fact that he’s a ghost.

“I can’t tell you much I’m afraid. My mother is long gone and I never had a father.”

Kyle grimaced and elbowed Wes himself before saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s no matter,” Cassius replied, still smiling, “I may yet see her again.”

Ah, so either she wasn’t dead or he’s convinced she became a ghost too. That made sense. It could be his unfinished business as they say among the paranormal hunters. At least, the not fight-y and crazy ones.

“So Dark was your mother’s name?” Wes asked, wondering if he could maybe find any records on her where he had failed to find them on Cassius himself.

The smile slid right off his face. Wes and Kyle both felt the subtle chill in the air as Cassius leaned back and looked off to the side, as if to glare at something that wasn’t there. “No, I’m afraid Dark is my ex-husband’s name.”

“Why keep it?” Kyle asked, completely ignoring the danger of the situation.

The smile came back, except this time instead of soft and barely there as if he were indulging a child, it was sharp and twisted. He chuckled at an inside joke no one else in the room would ever understand and then he said, “Well, it’s not like he has any use for it now.”

Wes paled. Had he killed his husband?!

After a hasty retreat from the library Wes treated Kyle to a milkshake and fries at the nasty burger just as he had promised. Payment for going along with his ‘weird ghost theories’.

But Wes couldn’t eat, he was too busy thinking. This one actually helped! He found information about the ghost’s previous life! He had a mother, but not a father, and had a husband.

With the current politics it was one of two options. Either he was from a previous culture that allowed men to marry each other, or he was a more recent ghost than Wes had been expecting. He had already taken out his laptop and was scrolling through obituaries with the surname Dark, trying to think if he knew any off the top of his head that might have been in town when they died.

Nothing particular came to mind.

Wes’ thinking was interrupted by a loud, obnoxious slurping noise from his brother. He shot him a glare, but Kyle didn’t react. Wasn’t even looking at him. Instead he was looking out the window and watching one of the daily ghost attacks with Phantom playing hero as always.

“You know, it’s kinda cool that they’re hiring actors to build the town’s lore like that,” he said, clearly ignoring the obvious evidence of ghosts right outside his window.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Wes groaned, rubbing at his eyes. He needed coffee or something, it was a shame the Nasty Burger only served sludge no sane person would drink.

Kyle finally looked away from the window, his eyes wide as if he was the one confused. “You know, how they got the librarian to say he was married to Pariah Dark? And then imply he’s the reason he’s a ghost?”

Wes felt like the seat underneath him had suddenly disappeared. “Where did you get That from?!”

“He said his ex-husband was named Dark! Pariah Dark’s Ghost Zone show is the first thing that comes to mind!” Kyle argued back. “Isn’t it?”

Holy shit this guy was married to the ghost king.

He thought back to the ominous answers he’d gotten that first day from the Fentons’ translator. Maybe he should leave this one alone.

Wes was at the library, studying quietly and absolutely avoiding the librarian. Not that he’d seen him today, but it didn’t hurt to keep his head down. With any luck the guy had a short memory and would forget Wes had been trying to find a way to out him to the town.

A portal ripped from the air in front of him, sending a static energy throughout the library and causing Wes’ hair to stand on end. It was a swirling purple, deeper and more… well more than most of the natural portals that Wes had seen appear around town.

He wanted to scream, but years of living in Amity Park had fully trained that out of him. Screaming was the number one way to get a ghost locked on you as their first target. Especially if you were there when the portal opened.

Before Wes could even think to duck under the table he was using a figure stepped out of the portal, poised and composed. He had a deep purple hood that seemed to swirl with the fabric of galaxies and a large ornate clock embedded into his chest. His skin was a rich blue and he had glowing red eyes.

Wes recognized him immediately.

“Oh, hello Mr. Weston, is there something I can help you with?” Cassius Dark asked.

#Danny Phantom #ectoberhaunt 2021 #clockwork dp #wes weston dp #background dark ages #Bee's writing #fanfiction

52 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Dead, broke

Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, Molly McGhee’s “America’s Dead Souls,” for The Paris Review stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

I’ve known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE from McSweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at Tor.

During the pandemic crisis, I’ve had two different connections to her: on the one hand, the consummate professionalism of her emails as we published my novel ATTACK SURFACE in the middle of the lockdown.

On the other hand, I knew her through her wrenching and deeply personal Twitter account of the personal tragedies she’s endured over the same period. Her Paris Review essay brings those tragedies into sharp focus and uses them to pin a huge and heretofore ill-defined feeling.

McGhee’s mother died during the crisis, but the death was the culmination of years of hardship: “[earning] less than $10,000 a year. Suffering from debilitating depression while caring for her aging parents…chronically unemployed, undermedicated, and overstressed.”

Her mother’s debts were on public display through searchable databases, and her life was haunted by both con artists and bill collectors who carpet-bombed her with calls, letters and emails.

She was too poor to fight back: her wages were garnished by the IRS “for back taxes calculated from a years-old misfiling they refused to correct.” McGhee sent her months of her salary, but it wasn’t enough.

She had no answer for her mother’s rhetorical questions, “Why are these people harassing me? What good does it do them?”

Because the answer is obvious and insufficient: “The people in power don’t care if we live or die, as long as they get paid.”

It only took two days after McGhee’s mother died for her creditors to begin harassing her for her mother’s debts. The state of Tennessee seized the house, but Wells Fargo expected her to make good on the mortgage.

The hospital where McGhee’s mother died wanted a quarter of a million dollars. McGhee, not even 26, was staring down the barrel of the weapon that had been trained on her mother, the inheritor of nothing but debt.

The debt-machine is efficient. Bill collectors found out about McGhee’s mother’s death before McGhee’s own family got word. And they’re remorseless, immune to McGhee’s “pleading, bargaining, reasoning, denying, uploading, scanning, begging, faxing, and crying.”

McGhee compares it to Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” a surreal tale of a grifter named Chichikov who buys dead serfs’ souls to sell for profit.

It’s only surreal if you’ve never been in the debt system’s crosshairs, “where one day of lost wages can compound into houselessness.”

We live in a system of winners and losers. The winners’ winnings come from debt, shielded from the system’s cruelty by “professionalism and bureaucracy” that insulate them — and their functionaries — from “feelings of culpability, not to mention empathy or curiosity.”

Poor people have less money, but the system is firmly focused poor people, because people with money can defend themselves. When McGhee went into debt to hire a lawyer, a single letter on official letterhead instantly reduced all that debt by 90% — more than $250k, poof.

It’s expensive to be poor. Take Community Health Systems, one of the largest hospital chains in America. It sues the shit out of poor people. When those people can afford lawyers, CHS loses, because it is chasing debts it is not entitled to collect.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS itself owes $7.6 billion. It turned its first profit in 2020, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies, and its executives pocketed millions in “performance bonuses” for a performance that consisted of getting bailed out by the public.

The Trump stimulus handed trillions to the richest people and biggest companies in America. Those companies “leveraged up” their handouts to raise trillions more and went on spending sprees, buying up struggling businesses.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

They loaded these companies up with debt, declared “divi recaps” (where you take out a loan on a company you bought on credit and put that money in your own pocket as a “special dividend”) and crashed the companies, destroying jobs and communities.

Plutes know there are three kinds of debt: workers’ debts (which must be repaid), owners’ debts (to be “restructured” away) and government debt (not debt at all, but still handy for terrifying normies with stories of “mortgaging our kids’ futures”).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

Forty years of this approach has turned the economy into a shambling zombie, dependent on the fiction that “consumer” debts — repackaged as bonds through financialization — will be repaid, somehow.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

As an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth has shifted from the workers’ side of the balance sheet to the owners’, the ability of workers to buy things to keep businesses afloat as vehicles for debt-leveraging has only declined.

Wage-theft and stagnation, unions in retreat, monopoly, monopsony, tax-preferencing for home-owners over renters, for capital gains over wages, spiraling housing, health and education costs, worker misclassification — wages are annihilated before they’re even deposited.

With no wages left over to fund consumption, there’s only debt, and as Michael Hudson says, “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.” CHS can comfortably carry billions in debts, but the sick people it sues for $201 have to choose between rent and medical debt.

Every loan-shark knows how this works. The chump with $500 who owes you $500 and owes the bank $500 needs an incentive to pay you ahead of the bank. To assert the primacy of your claims, you need an arm-breaker.

The digital world has given us all kinds of fantastic new arm-breakers: digital repo men who can brick your car or your phone. It’s automated the once rare practice of evictions, creating eviction mills that run with devastating efficiency.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Creating a debt-instrument — a bond grounded in the payments from other peoples’ debts — requires that you convince investors and bond-rating agencies that your arm-breaker will terrorize the debtors into paying you instead of child-support or grocery bills.

“The cruelty is the point” isn’t ideology, it’s pure description. The system — an artificial life-form constituted as immortal colony organism that uses us as gut flora — runs on competing claims to your debt, and victory consists of terrorizing you more than any rival.

The financiers who practice leveraged buyouts destroy real businesses, ruin lives and hollow out communities. They are feted as “job creators.” The workers who must borrow to close the gap they leave are “deadbeats.” Leveraged buyouts are back, baby.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

If you fret that forgiving student loans and making college free will “saddle our kids with debt,” then you’ve been suckered.

Look. Replacing a system that starts all but the richest children with unserviceable debt with one that doesn’t is liberation, not bondage.

Since Reagan, we’ve been hiking tuition, killing deductions for interest, and shielding student debt from bankruptcy.That’s how you can borrow $79k, pay $190k, still owe $236k, and have 25% taken from every paycheck AND Social Security until you die.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. Student debts do get forgiven, but only for those highly educated, (potentially) highly productive people who can prove that they have been so thoroughly destroyed by debt that they have no future.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#student-debt

And as McGhee reminds us, the tragedy isn’t merely that we educate people on the pretense of betting on America’s future, but really, the principle use that the system makes of the educated is as collateral for securitized loans.

If the arm-breakers who chased her mother wanted to understand that woman’s humanity, McGhee says they should start here:

“Her humor and her rage were unmatched. In the evenings, against the setting Tennessee sun, she liked to drink red can Cokes in the garden while snuffing cigarettes out against the yard’s ant colonies. She could reckon with anyone just by looking them in the eye. Men were terrified of her, rightfully so. She was sweet. In the last week of her life, when she couldn’t understand where she was or who she was talking to, she greeted everyone the same: ‘Hi, pal. Hope you’re doing okay. When can you come pick me up?’”

Take a second. Re-read that.

#pluralistic

77 notes · View notes

lexosaurus · 3 years

Text

Pink Astronaut

This is my secret santa gift for Anectoplasm on discord! Happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy!

Characters: Danny/Paulina Genre: Fluff Word Count: 4549 Summary: To Paulina's dismay, she and Danny Fenton must work together on their English final project.

Read on [ao3] [ffn]

---

It was Lancer’s fault, really.

He assigned the class a partner-project for their final presentation, but being the annoying teacher he was, he had decided it was imperative that the students were assigned to pairs of his choosing. Aka, no working with friends.

Paulina tried her best. Truly, she did. She batted her eyelashes and put on her most polite tone when she said, “Pretty please with extra whipped cream and a cherry on top, can I work with Star instead of Loser Fenton?”

But, to her utter dismay, Mr. Lancer was a brick wall. No amount of wit nor charm could change his rubric, and so Paulina relented in a very much not dramatic final sigh as she resigned herself to be Danny Fenton’s English partner for the coming weeks.

Fenton was...well, he was weird. His parents hunted ghosts, he always slept through class, he was clumsy, and Paulina knew that in middle school Fenton was just like all the other boys who saw her as nothing more than a pretty face.

And that annoyed her to her core. She was a human, damn it! She had her own wishes and dreams and goals in life. Although she wasn’t vocal about it, she wanted to be a journalist when she was older. The kind that made it to shows like 60 Minutes, reporting on amazing stories from all around the world. She wanted to travel, she wanted to meet people, and she wanted to be the best at it.

She was still a long way off from that now though. First, she needed to survive through this stupid English project with that weird nerd who had gone through a not-so-secret crush on her before.

Though, when she looked his way now, Fenton didn’t look all too thrilled to be partnered with her either.

She would have called it odd, but that had been their dynamic for a little over a year now. She guessed that Fenton finally got the hint and dropped his love struck puppy act. Maybe he and Sam had finally confessed their undying love to each other.

It was probably for the best.

Fenton made no move towards her, instead choosing to stare dully into his notebook.

Paulina rolled her eyes and slid from her chair. She strode over to his desk, throwing a hand on her waist and looking down at him with an expression she knew would yield no arguments. “Alright, my house or yours?”

“Huh?” Fenton said, recognizing a little too late that she was there.

“For the project? The one we were just assigned? Hello, Earth to Commander Fenton! My house or yours today?”

“Today?” Fenton blinked. “You wanna start today?”

Paulina narrowed her eyes. “Why, got something better to do?”

“Well—it’s just—”

“I’ll come over at four. I’ll be at cheer practice till then. If you want anything from Starbucks, just text me before then. I know Manson has my number, you can get it from her.”

She left him sitting dumbly in his chair. No one was getting in the way of her and that A, especially not some nerd who couldn’t even bother to care about school.

But, to Paulina’s surprise, Fenton actually opened the door for her when she showed up to his house that afternoon. Half of her expected him to blow her off, just ghost her and leave her to do all the work. And yet, he brought her into his kitchen, got out his notebook, and got right to work.

It was unnerving to see him so studious. She remembered Fenton as a nerd in middle school, but everyone knew about the absolute nose-dive his grades took once he got to high school. It wasn’t exactly a secret, what with him skipping class every other day.

The duo parted ways with a promise to meet up again over the weekend. Again, to Paulina’s pleasant surprise, he actually texted her to confirm their plans. And when Paulina stepped into the Starbucks that Saturday afternoon, Danny was already sitting at a table waiting for her, his notebook out and the project rubric between his fingers.

This much good luck was sure to run out, but Paulina just hoped that Fenton could last another few weeks before he inevitably dropped the ball.

Except, that never happened. Each time they set up plans to work on their presentation, Fenton would show up, he would focus on the work, and they’d part ways with plans to reconvene later. It was uncanny. It was so unlike everything Paulina had come to know of Fenton through these months.

And Paulina wondered if maybe, just maybe, this was who Fenton really was.

Under all those disciplinary actions, the dropped beakers, the tardies, the unfinished assignments and failed grades, if this was hidden underneath.

So then that begged the question: why didn’t he show this side of himself more? Why was he failing if he was clearly capable of doing the work?

And so Paulina sat there, just a week before they were set to give their presentation, scrutinizing Fenton’s features as he recited a passage from the book they were analyzing. She noted the bags under his eyes, the bruise on his cheek, the way his face seemed to tighten every time he coughed.

He had arrived a few minutes late that day, and she remembered how he entered the classroom, his gate just a little too stiff to be natural.

Someone had hurt Fenton, Paulina realized. Someone had beat him up.

For reasons she didn’t know, hot anger flashed over her. Someone beat up Danny, a kid who was clumsy and could be a bit slow on the uptake, but someone who Paulina had come to understand was a rather kind and gentle classmate.

Yet someone didn’t care.

So the next day, maybe she stormed up to Dash a little too aggressively to demand, “What the hell did you do to Fenton?”

There was Dash, right on queue with his cocky laugh and a, “That nerd had it coming to him!”

“Are you kidding me?” Paulina yelled. “A week before our English final presentation and you punch Fenton across the face? Are you stupid?”

Dash’s smile dropped instantly, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Paulina, I didn’t—”

“You know how much this class matters to me, Dash! You know I wanna move up to honors next year! I can’t do that if you’re giving my English partner a goddamn concussion while we’re preparing to present!”

“Paulina!” Dash grabbed her arm.

“No!” Paulina ripped her arm away. “Don’t touch me, and don’t fucking sabotage—”

“I didn’t beat Fenton up!” Dash shouted.

Paulina’s eyes narrowed.

Dash held his hands up in a surrender. “I swear I didn’t beat him up. Ask Kwan if you don’t believe me. Honestly, I haven’t touched him in months. The—the coach told me that if I did well in school this year, I’d probably get recruited to college. I didn’t want to risk Fenton messing that up. I swear!”

Paulina stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to crack. But Dash’s panicked face held.

“Whatever.” She whipped around. “Tell your stupid friends to keep their hands off my project partner.”

“Consider it done!”

Paulina stormed off, ignoring the wide stares from her peers and the whispers of, “Did she just defend Fenton?”

She tried to block them out. They weren’t important. Her grades were important, her future was important, but those idiots? No, they meant nothing to her.

That afternoon, Danny was early. He was sitting there in the empty classroom when Paulina walked in, his head down to his paper, and didn’t even look up when Paulina gave her cheerful, “Hello!”

Well...that was weird. Sure, a few weeks ago, Danny mostly ignored her cheerful greetings in favor of getting ahead on the project, but Paulina liked to think that a mutual respect, or—god forbid—a friendship had been forming between the duo.

“Oof, cold shoulder? So not your speed, Danny,” Paulina said, plopping down to her seat.

Danny tensed, “I...uh, sorry. I’m tired.”

“Sheesh, alright.” Paulina slid her notebook out. “So we were working on the symbolism slide of the powerpoint, right?”

“Yeah,” Danny passed his notebook over to her. “I started parsing through the book at lunch today and found some good passages. Take a look.”

Paulina went to study the paper, but something else caught her eye.

Something on his arm.

Something that looked like a burn.

“Danny?” Paulina stared wide-eyed at the space of molten skin between his sleeve and hand. “What the hell happened to your arm?”

“Oh, I—” Danny slipped his arm under the desk. “I, uh, sorry. You see—”

“Whoa!” Paulina only caught a glance of his face before he ducked down again, but that split-second was enough. “What the hell? What happened to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Paulina saw red. “Oh, that idiot! I’m gonna kill him!”

Danny looked up, the multicolored patchwork of skin on his face finally fully visible to Paulina. “Kill who?”

“Oh, look at you! That asshole!”

Fenton winced. “Am I...am I missing something here?”

“I’m gonna kill Dash!”

“...Dash?”

“I told him this morning to keep his hands off you! I made that asshole promise to me, and I told him to pass the message along to his stupid friends too!”

Something in Danny’s expression softened. “You told off Dash?”

“Well of course I did!” Paulina said hotily. “You’re my project partner! What kind of person would I be if I let you get hurt?”

“Oh well…” A smile quirked on Danny’s lips. “Thanks for that, but it wasn’t Dash.”

“Well then who was it? I’ll kill them.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“You’re right, death would be too generous. I’ll just destroy their reputation instead!”

A bemused look overtook Danny’s face. “Yeah, I have no doubt you would.”

“Tell me right now, Fenton. Tell me who did this and I’ll make them pay. You won’t have to worry about them ever again once I’m finished with them.”

“Oh, I…” The smile fell from Danny’s lips. “It wasn’t anyone. I just...fell.”

“You what?” Paulina’s voice rose in disbelief.

“Yeah, you know how clumsy I am.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. He laughed awkwardly, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I just—you know. I was walking in the hall, fell down some stairs, hit the stair rail at the bottom. Just typical weirdo Fenton stuff! Nothing you need to destroy anyone over.”

“Don’t play with me. You didn’t fall.”

“I did fall though! It was...yeah, you know how it is. I was walking and talking at the same time and just slipped and fell! Ah, stupid Fenton, am I right? Just always...falling.”

Paulina’s glare was hollow. “How dumb do you think I am, Danny?”

Danny froze, his rambling stuttering off into a tense silence. “What?”

“I said—” Paulina rose from her chair. “—just how dumb do you think I am?”

“Uh, sorry. I’m sorry. Look, I think we may have gotten on the wrong topic here.”

“No!” Paulina slammed her hand down on Fenton’s notebook. “This little tirade? This sham you’ve been pulling for the past two years? It’s bullshit, Danny, and you know it.”

“I don’t—I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do know! You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Paulina hissed. “We’ve been working together for weeks now, and you think you can just sit here and say you fell? To me?”

“Well, sue me, Paulina!” Danny snapped. “Why do you even care, anyways? We’re not exactly friends.”

“Because you’re my project partner! Your grade is my grade, idiot!”

“Gee, I’m glad you only care about people when it affects your grade.” Danny shoved his notebook into his bag. “What an amazing quality to have.”

Paulina stepped back as if she’d been slapped. “That’s not true!”

Danny ignored her reaction, instead choosing to angrily zip up his backpack. “In case you haven’t noticed, your boyfriend’s been beating me up since we were five. I’m not sure why you’ve decided to care now, but if you want something to be mad at, maybe try being mad at the years of shit I’ve taken from you and your friends.”

Paulina stood there seething as Danny pushed past her and stocked off into the hallway, slamming the classroom door shut behind him.

There was the Fenton she’d come to know in high school, this was the Fenton she remembered. The one who avoided questions, who put himself down to avoid suspicion, who left in the middle of class without saying anything, who no one could rely on.

But, perhaps more now than ever, Paulina could see just how much of a sham this whole act was.

Just how much he was using this face to protect himself.

But from what? From who?

Paulina tried not to dwell too much on the bruises, especially since they were gone the next day and didn’t reappear for the rest of the week. Of course, Dash swore up and down that he had nothing to do with Fenton’s appearance, and Paulina believed him. Dash could be a bit bullheaded, but he was still one of her closest friends.

For the remaining week they had to put their presentation together, Danny kept to himself, and so did Paulina. Whatever semblance of a friendship they’d built had disintegrated, and both parties seemed content to let it fall.

It made sense, logically speaking. Paulina was popular, Fenton wasn’t. Paulina was an extrovert, Fenton was an introvert. Paulina thrived in attention, Fenton shied away from it. They were like oil and water, a friendship just wasn’t possible.

The presentation day came, and the two spoke with confidence that could only have come from weeks of preparation. Paulina couldn’t help but glow under Mr. Lancer’s impressed nod. Their high marks from the project were enough to fulfill Paulina’s recommendation to the honors English course for the next fall.

And then the school year came to a close and finally, after months of hard work, they could finally relax.

But not before they celebrated first.

One of Dash’s good friends, Dale, had taken it upon himself to host the massive end of the school year party for the rising junior class at Casper High that year. His parents, being the weird sort of chill parents they were, offered up their lake house with the promise that there would be no drinking and driving.

The teens were ecstatic.

Everyone—everyone—went to the party. Jocks, nerds, band geeks, theatre kids, every clique was represented at the lake house. And why wouldn’t they come? It was the end of the school year celebration! A time to rejoice in having survived another round of homework, tests, quizzes, and essays.

It was also a time where Paulina was once again reminded that yes, the theatre kids could in fact go shot-to-shot with the football team.

Fenton was there with his little group, but Paulina paid them no mind. This wasn’t the time to be worried about him, nor was it the time to feel any sort of guilt at the way their budding friendship just collapsed. She had her friends, why add another?

And it was just preposterous to imply that she missed Fenton.

Because she didn’t.

And yet, when the night was drawing to a close, Paulina somehow managed to find herself down by the lake where a skinny, black haired teen was sitting alone.

She stood behind him, unsure if she wanted to initiate contact. He’d made it clear from their last argument that he still held years of resentment towards her and her friends, and Paulina knew from experience that all that resentment couldn’t go away in one alcohol-filled night.

She turned to walk away, but something stopped her. Before she could question what she was doing or why, she found herself sitting down on the damp grass next to him.

“What are you doing out here?” Paulina asked.

“Oh, uh, hey Paulina! Fancy seeing you here.” Danny gave her a small wave.

“You too.” Paulina stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning back on her hands. “Some party, right?”

“Yeah, Dale was really nice to host this.”

“He’s a great guy. His parents too.”

“I bet.” Danny said. “How are your friends holding up?”

“Well, let’s see. Star just spent a half hour trying to convince me that aliens exist, and Dale’s currently comforting Kwan who saw a video of a puppy rescue on the side of the road and started crying, so I’d say they’re holding up pretty well.”

Danny guffawed. “No way!”

“I swear!” Paulina laughed. “This isn’t even the first time something like this has happened either. I swear, every other time we drink, Kwan always ends up in a corner somewhere watching animal videos on his phone and crying at how precious the animals are and ‘please, Paulina, can’t we just adopt one?’ He’s gonna be the death of me one of these days.”

Danny giggled, his laugh light and airy. Paulina watched him, amazed that they were able to just start talking again as if their fight had never happened.

“So what about you?” she asked. “What happened to your clan?”

“Sam had to drive Tucker home. He got too overconfident in pong.”

She snorted. “Dash is the same. He’s always like, ‘one more round, I’m gonna crush it this time’ and then twenty minutes later I find him asleep in a bathtub or something.”

“Dash drunk sleeping in a bathtub? Oh, that’s a sight I’d like to see.”

“I can assure you that photos exist.”

“The perfect blackmail.” Fenton shot her a grin. “Remind me to get one of Tucker next time he does something stupid.”

“And what makes you think you won’t be right there on the floor with him?” Paulina sassed.

“Hah! You’re probably right!” His smile fell, and he looked at her questioningly. “Hey, will your boyfriend be okay with you out here with me?”

“Oh, Dash? He’s...actually not my boyfriend.”

“Wait, what?” Danny jolted upright. He spun around to face her. “But I thought—”

“Yeah, everyone does. But we’re not dating.”

“Then why don’t you say something? Squash all the rumors?”

Paulina averted her gaze back onto the lake. It was a gorgeous night. Stars speckled the sky in a spectacular display, illuminating the Milky Way behind them. Amity Park was too industrious to see the galaxy, and Paulina couldn’t help but marvel at its sight.

It was gorgeous. Vast. It seemed to never end. She remembered reading somewhere that the Milky Way could only be seen if there was no moon out.

Luck must have been on her side that night.

“Unless...you don’t want to.” Danny’s voice dawned a tone of realization. “But why?”

“I got tired of it all,” she admitted, her honesty surprising herself. “Guys only wanted to talk to me because they thought if they were nice enough, I would get in their pants or something. I got accused of friendzoning more people than not. Honestly, it was so annoying. I felt everyone saw me as some stupid object. So when the rumors started going around this year that Dash and I were dating, and a lot of guys in our grade started backing off, I just...didn’t fight it. I thought maybe finally everyone would see me as a person. Maybe people would take me seriously.” Her gaze dropped. “I don’t know if it worked, but at least now people don’t see me as some sort of prize so much anymore.”

Danny was silent for a moment, and Paulina immediately regretted her admission. Maybe it was the alcohol loosening her lips, but she doubted Fenton of all people cared. They weren’t even friends.

One side of her wanted to get up and leave, go back to her friends inside the house, but the other side of her was too embarrassed to move.

“That makes sense, honestly,” Danny finally responded.

A wave of relief washed over her.

“And I’m sorry that there was a time where I couldn’t see past your looks too. I was young, but that’s still not an excuse.” He shifted. “I’ve had some...things happen the past year, and they’ve really taught me a lot about judging a book by its cover.”

“What kinds of things?” Paulina said, hoping her voice didn’t betray too much curiosity.

There went that hand behind his neck again. He was nervous, Paulina noted.

“Oh! Uh...it’s a long story, but I just wanted to say that I understand. I get what it feels like to be judged based on surface-level stuff. I mean, Paulina, you’re really smart. I don’t know if I told you this, but I’m really glad we ended up partners on that English project. I would have been so screwed with anyone else.”

“Thanks, Danny,” she said, trying to fight the blush that she knew was tinting her cheeks. “I’m sorry for being nosy at the end there. I didn’t mean to corner you like that. It was really stupid of me to pry when you obviously didn’t feel like talking.”

“No!” he exclaimed “No, don’t apologize! I was just being sensitive. Honestly, I knew I looked like shit.” He sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Look, I didn’t fall obviously. I wasn’t trying to play you, I just panicked. But...I’m okay now, really.”

He looked at her, and Paulina noted how his blue eyes seemed to dance under the light of the stars. How he sat up straighter, his shoulders rolled back and head held high. How yes he was thin, but not scrawny like he was back in freshman year of high school. He seemed toned, lithe, almost like a gymnast.

Danny had definitely grown up in the past two years, but then again, so had she.

“I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m also glad I got to be your English partner too,” she said.

They sat by the lake watching the stars until the chill of the crisp spring air began to set in Paulina’s bones. She left Danny in favor of the warm house, but not without saying, “I’ll text you sometime.”

The summer came, and the ever so slightly intoxicated promise to hang out slipped Paulina’s mind. After all, she had months of sleep to catch up on.

Fortunately for her, Danny remembered.

It was a silly text, a meme about Shakespear. Paulina responded with the appropriate emojis, and tried to convince herself that the smile she wore was due to the funny image, and had nothing to do with the boy who sent it.

And a week later, he sent another one. This time, Paulina asked to grab a coffee with him. Catch up.

To her surprise, Danny agreed. They met up at the Starbucks and what Paulina thought would only be a quick catch-up session turned into a three hour long hangout.

Despite his awkward demeanor, Danny was rather talkative. Especially when the topic revolved around space. Apparently, he wanted to work for NASA someday. He said it came from a childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, but overtime his interests shifted into rocket design and engineering. It helped that—according to Danny—his dad had built the equivalent of an ecto-rocket in his basement.

Paulina confessed that she wanted to work for 60 Minutes someday as a journalist. She dreamed of traveling around the world, collecting stories and meeting people. She explained that as a kid, she used to have to travel around the world for her dad’s work before he finally settled in Amity Park. And although she’d been living in Amity for years now, a part of her still missed those days where she was constantly exposed to new countries, languages, and cultures.

Danny listened attentively, reacting at the appropriate times and pressing for questions whenever she would trail off. Even though he had a reputation of never paying attention to teachers, he seemed to genuinely enjoy listening to her.

Eventually they parted ways, but they promised to hang out again.

And again they did.

And again.

Again.

There were some topics that Danny seemed to skirt around, such as why he sometimes would show up bruised, or why he seemed to struggle to stay in class despite his dreams of working for a prestigious agency like NASA.

But Paulina was willing to ignore those demons because she liked Danny, and she didn’t want to say anything that would push him away. And, despite their differences, he seemed to like her back.

Summer drifted to fall, the leaves started to turn, and soon it was too cold to hangout outside.

Which was how they found themselves here, in Danny’s room, laying on Danny’s floor watching Youtube videos, their math homework long since abandoned beside them.

It was a nerdy video, one about bizarre planets that existed in space. One that Paulina would never have watched on her own, but Danny seemed positively riveted at.

His eyes were bright and attentive, and every so often he’d point to the screen and go, “Look!” as if Paulina wasn’t watching the same video.

It was...adorable.

His excitement rivaled a child on Christmas. And as interesting as the video was to watch, Danny was even more so.

The video ended, but Paulina hardly noticed. All she could see was the grin on Danny’s lips, the freckles dotting his cheeks, the way his hair sat on his head like a soft cloud.

“So? What did you think?” Danny asked.

“Cute,” Paulina responded. “You’re cute.”

Danny blinked, his mouth turning to a little “o” shape as red tinged his cheeks. He started to stutter, to try to brush Paulina off, but she held onto his shoulder and said, “Danny, I think you’re cute.”

“Oh,” he said, his eyes wide. “I think you’re cute too.”

Paulina closed the gap between them, closing her eyes. His lips felt soft against hers, and her heart fluttered in her chest. Her hands trailed up to his hair, and she curled her fingers through his soft hair.

He was gentle, as if he were afraid to hurt her, and his skin felt cool against her own. Secretly, Paulina had always loved that about Danny, the fact that his body temperature seemed to run lower than normal. And now she could cherish this all to herself.

Danny’s hand wrapped around her back, gently pressing her closer. His touch was electric, and Paulina could have melted right there. She pressed further against him, deepening the kiss.

They stayed in each other’s arms, enjoying the moment for just a few moments longer before Danny pulled back. He looked at her, his eyes sparkling, and said, “You’re beautiful.”

There were some things Paulina didn’t understand about Danny. There were some things he was still closed off about, things he didn’t want to speak about. And eventually, Paulina would bring those things up, she would get answers. Eventually, she would uncover all the secrets, all the layers to the enigma that made up Danny Fenton.

But right now?

Right now she was just going to enjoy the moment.

#danny phantom #pink astronaut #fluff #romance #phicc #my writing #paulina #secret santa

187 notes · View notes