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therovingrunner · 6 months

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A Sometimes Complete Rookies Guide to Multi Stage Trail Running Part 2

Nutrition before, during and after any race is very important, as it refuels the body’s energy stocks, helps with recovery, and it’s just plain nice having a cold beer afterwards with your feet up sharing the day's war stories with fellow runners.

Maybe the cold beer thing isn’t that important in the whole recovery process, but it’s still nice, and your mental wellness is just as important as your physical recovery!

As soon as an event extends beyond 90 minutes, nutrition and hydration becomes even more important. Every runner has individual needs, likes, dislikes and tolerance levels for different types of fluid, energy gels and food when they are running, so you should find out what works best for you before race day.

Before I knew anything about nutrition & hydration, I would literally run from aid station to aid station during an event, drink and chow everything available from potatoes to bars, gels and jelly babies, only to suffer the consequences at some later stage.

I had no idea how these gels, bars and other foods might affect me.

However, if you're not that lucky to have found your perfect combo, having a teammate with knowledge on using supplements such as bars, gels, recovery drinks and all things important for a good race, is a massive bonus. Just keep in mind to try all these products during training and not for the first time come race day.

On a multi-stage race, you eat and drink for the next day, so it's important to eat little bits regularly during the course of the day, post run too. If your partner is stronger than you, or has a bigger running pack, let them carry everything. It does wonders to replenish your energy levels.

So here are a few pieces of advice from the people who know what they are talking about.

Whilst on a single day event you just have to focus on getting through the day and can literally run yourself into the ground go home and recover on your merry time, multi-stage running is not a one-day game! So starting day one, fight that adrenalin rush after the starter’s gun, as you have to always have the rest of the race in mind as you also have to fuel up for the following days. If you don’t there is only one outcome, you won’t make it, or you will suffer enormously afterwards. This refers to nutrition pre-race, during the race, your recovery nutrition shortly after finishing each stage and your evening meal. You also need to eat tried and tested energy gels, drinks and food. The race is not the time to test new products.

Your body size and the activities you choose will determine how many calories you need to consume while running. Most experts recommend that athletes eat anywhere from 100 to 150 calories per hour to maintain proper glycolic and caloric balances. Elinor Fish and Michael Benge in their Beginners Guide to Trail Running say that regardless of what type of food or gel you use for fuel delivery, carbohydrates remain your best source of energy and can greatly influence the quality of your run. Foods like bananas and peanut butter sandwiches are all great options that can be easily packed into a hydration pack or carried on a training run. The ideal pre-run meal is eaten two or three hours before exercising, and consists of about 200 to 400 calories from mostly carbohydrates and smaller amounts of simple sugar, fibre and fat. Don’t forgo eating breakfast, or you risk running out of energy. Prior to heading out the door, or tent in this case, eat some soft foods that pass quickly through the digestive system like a banana, yogurt or an energy gel. If you've never done a Dryland Event before, don't you worry, their breakfast zone will cater to all your pre-run needs before the day’s start. Make sure you make use of this for your carbo-loading needs, while having a nice, sometimes slightly nervous conversation, with other runners.

A Dryland Traverse Breakfast! The most important meal of the day, or time to catch up on what's happening on the socials! Image by Shift Media

I'm not really much of an eater during a run, so using an endurance fuel (in my case Tailwind Nutrition), suits my hydration/nutritional needs.

Hydration plays a very important part in long distance and multi-stage running. As the Rhodes Dryland Traverse takes place in early November, you can expect warm to extremely hot conditions.

The only way to ensure that you will not become dehydrated is to stop it before it happens. When you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. That is why it is important to properly hydrate before any event.

Although water is great to be drinking if you are planning on sitting still all day, if you are active you should be hydrating with a carbohydrate solution, preferably one with anywhere between 6-8% carbohydrates. This will ensure that your body not only gets the hydration it craves but also that it maintains the right amount of electrolytes. During the trail run itself, focus on sipping at regular intervals from your water bottle or hydration pack.

If running with a hydration pack (and you have not acquired your own yet) your best bet is to loan one or two different hydration packs from friends to see what works best for you, before you spend a lot of Randelas on one that is uncomfortable, chafes you, doesn’t have the right components or is ill-fitting.

A hydration pack needs to be comfortable with padding on the shoulder and lower back. It must also be light-weight with easily accessible pockets for items such as cell phone, gels or snack bars, light-weight windbreaker/rain jacket and first-aid essentials.

I've been lucky enough to run a couple of different stage races over the years, and few, if any, aid stations comes close to what you'll experience at the Dryland Traverse. These aid stations will be a great place to restock, have a mid race beer (yes that is allowed), or even have a bite of ostrich steak straight off the grill , but it also lifts the spirits with friendly staff, supporters or loved ones cheering you on.

Ostrich steaks, straight from the grill to your mouth! Image by Shift Media

At some point, everyone veers off their initial hydration plan! Image by Shift Media

For more information, click here, Rhodes Dryland Traverse

Till next time, happy running and just Keep Moving forward!

#dryland event management #dryland traverse #trailrunning #hydration #nutrition #Tailwind Nutrition

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scripttorture · 3 years

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Hi! I realize that this probably isn't the sort of thing you usually get asked, but I am a beginner game master planning my first tabletop rpg campaign. And depending on how things play out, it may be that at some point or another, the players might want to try to get information from a character unwilling to give that information to them. Now, as I'm sure you're well aware, it's not exactly a rare thing for heroes in action movies and stuff to beat people up (or threaten to do so) to get them to reveal what information without the story framing it as torture or a bad thing at all, and since this is such a widespread trope in mainstream fiction, I'm worried my players might think to do the same in our game.

So, do you have any suggestions on how to steer them away from resorting to torture and direct them towards proper interrogation in the game, without having to make it an explicit house rule that torture won't get you anything useful? I could technically make that a house rule, but I'd really rather not since we're all pretty inexperienced and it's gonna be confusing enough navigating the official system written down in the rulebook, without keeping track of additional made-up rules that exist because I say so.

Session Zero. You need a session zero.

This is basically a pre-game session where everyone gets together and discusses what they want from the game, players and GM. You talk about expectations, the kind of game you want to play and the comfort levels of everyone around the (virtual) table. Players usually talk about the characters they want to play and it’s a good chance to decide if any of the player characters knew each other before the adventure. It can also be used to get a little bit of roleplay in to help the players get a feel for their characters and the GM to get a feel for the setting.

And these are generally useful things to have sorted before the first game. But you can also use the time to figure out if there were subjects or themes players wanted to avoid completely and if there were any subjects or themes they want warnings about.

Make notes about what your players say and do. I made the rooky error of not doing that my first time (you can always ask again and correct these mistakes.)

If you don’t want to make a hard rule about torture my advice is to bring it up during session zero and discuss it with the players up front.

You can say outright ‘I know torture doesn’t work in reality and I’m uncomfortable with tropes showing it positively in the game. I want to have fun in the game too.’

To be honest I think that kind of direct approach is better for everyone because speaking in euphemisms or trying to hint at something can be genuinely misunderstood. And then people get frustrated with each other.

In game it’s important to reward the behaviour you want to see. Give players XP for good roleplay and for interviewing and investigating things. Give them items.

I know it probably sounds obvious but rewarding players for roleplay instead of just combat encourages them to roleplay. Rewarding them for creative non-violent solutions encourages them to think outside the box. If they use their skills to avoid a fight give them the XP as if they won it. Apply the same process to investigations.

It’s also really important to give players multiple options and have a back up plan for if rolls go badly.

The first area my players got to was a spooky abandoned town and they were looking for the people. They rolled high and found a trail going into the forest. But if they’d rolled low the NPCs they arrived with would have directed them to the next town over and they’d have been told to investigate the forest, some rumours about something coming out of the forest and the general direction the missing people probably went.

Making sure you’ve got multiple ways players can get information should help. Because unless you’ve got a table of people who just want to kill stuff (no judgement on that but it doesn’t sound like the kind of game you want) players are looking at all the options.

Having NPCs around to point out options players didn’t consider can help too.

My players just completed a murder-mystery style investigation and they did an incredible job. They interviewed loads of NPCs, collated notes on who had seen what and went through the luggage of a suspect confiscating spell components before the show down.

Because the party didn’t have anyone with a high degree of magical knowledge (or knowledge of the culture they were in) I gave them a helpful NPC with that knowledge. And I used him to prompt them occasionally. For instance at one point they were interviewing a suspicious ‘wizard’ and the conversation was going in circles. They were rolling high so they knew the ‘wizard’ wasn’t lying but they also didn’t trust his answers.

I had the NPC ask if they could see the ‘wizard’s’ spell book. The players passed it around until it got to a player who could read the language it was written in. The player found it was full of poetry, no spells at all. Between that and casting spells to detect magic and the like they figured the ‘wizard’ wasn’t lying, he was just… deluded.

Remember that a maximum roll doesn’t mean success; it means the best possible outcome. That does not always have to be what the player wants. Rolling a 20 to persuade a guard the character just attacked to let them go and give them back their weapons probably shouldn’t work. Unless there’s something else going on. If the prison is being attacked by zombies may be things should go differently.

Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’ sometimes. Not everything players want is a good idea for the game. As GM you’re responsible for creating a good time for everyone. Which includes you. Refusing things that would cause you distress, or just more stress to figure out in-game, is perfectly valid.

Really talk to your players about the kind of game they’d enjoy and the kind of game you’d enjoy. Work out if those things are compatible.

Sometimes they won’t be. I have plenty of friends who I wouldn’t want GMing for me, because what they like in a game and what I do are very different. And that is OK.

Don’t feel pressured into including elements you’re uncomfortable with. The game is for everyone at the table. You can always say ‘I’m uncomfortable with where this is going, can we tone it down?’

Good friends, good players, will listen.

Edit: I would strongly recommend not limiting player alignment or race choices as a GM. Instead talk to your players about the kind of characters they want to make and how those characters would act. Decide amongst yourselves what fits the game you all want to play instead of assuming you know what a player’s character is like better then they do.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #rpg games #table top roleplay games #torture apologia #torture as interrogation #I DM now and it was a struggle not to gush about my players through all this

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emotions-ew · 3 years

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A Collection of Queer Country Artists and Songs for anyone who doesn’t feel like there’s country music they can relate to...

There is this idea that country music is like just Republican men singing about beer, and trucks and also Jesus, and that is kind of fair because loads of it is but there are some cool as hell queer/lgbtq+ country artists. Finding those and finding that representation in a genre of music I was literally raised on kind of changed my life in a tiny way and I wanted to share that.

(This is by no means a comprehensive list and also I’m basing the “Country” part of this sometimes on my subjective opinion/limited music knowledge so yuh please don’t hate me if I get some wrong)

Also link below for a Spotify playlist of my favourite gay/gayish country music, some mentioned in this post some not, (with a title that isn’t obviously gay for anyone who can’t openly listen to gay stuff on their public accounts for whatever reason) so feel free to skip the massive essay and just jump straight to that. And pretty please repost if I missed anyone/ any songs you love.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KB6PmUxnpkU7lih8Bysvw

Artists To Follow:

Chely Wright

- Right off the bat, Chely Wright is a legend and I’m in love with her. So, in the 90′s Chely Wright was kind of a huge deal. She started her career as a singer/songwriter and released her first album in ‘94, which was critically acclaimed although never reached the commercial success of her later works. By ‘97 she was really hitting her stride, dropping her breakout hit “Shut up and Drive” (a personal favourite of mine) followed two years later by the biggest hit of her career “Single White Female”. Throughout all that Chely Wright was, to the world, a good old fashioned, heterosexual southern gal. Privately it was a bit of a different story. She had public relationships with male country artists, all while pursuing a secret decade long relationship with a woman.

I hadn’t ever really heard a Chely Wright song until a few years ago so I never knew about her music or career pre-coming out but I do know that even though by the time she came out in 2010 she was by no means at the height of her fame Chely Wright is kind of one of the biggest names in country music to be out and proud (in my opinion) and I love her like an insane amount. I literally play her music in my car when I have passengers just so I can be like “fun fact this singer is actually gay-” and then subject them to a lengthy explanation of her entire career. She came out with an album and a memoir and the album is my favourite of her work because it’s so fucking raw and because I relate to most of it immensely. Anyways Chely Wright went fucking through it in her journey to being her authentic self and now she’s out and proud and married to a woman and they have a family together and I’m a fucking sucker for a happy ending and y’all should add her to every playlist you have. And on top of that her music is genuinely good. Coming out undoubtedly damaged her career but I think that

Brandi Carlile

- As far as I can tell Brandi Carlile has been out her whole career. I feel like this list is just going to be me saying “I’m in love with her” about a bunch of women old enough to be my mother but in my defence, I am honestly in love with her. She’s been making music since she was like, seventeen, and has had a bunch of massive hits, as a singer, songwriter, and producer. If you want to cry kind of happy tears listen to her performance of “Bring my Flowers Now” with Tanya Tucker. She’s won Grammy’s and CMT awards and she’s done it all as an out Queer woman. She’s also a founding member of The Highwomen, an all-female country music group who released their first album in 2019, comprised of Carlile, Marren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires. I really love this band because they’re four artists who are immensely successfully in their own right collabing, much like the Highwaymen, and their music is phenomenal while also being a fuck you to mainstream country music and their inability to properly represent women in country music spaces.

She’s been married to a woman (smoking hot and also brilliant) since 2012 and they have two kids together and if you want to cry (again) then you have to listen to her song “Mother” about her eldest daughter. A queer country artist absolutely worth adding to all your playlists.

Brooke Eden

- As I understand it Eden came out publicly in January of this year. She’s engaged to Hilary Hoover, who she’s been dating since 2015 apparently. I can’t even imagine the pressure that must be on a person and how stressful it would be to keep a relationship secret from the whole world for years and personally I think they’re a cute as hell couple and I wish them literally all the happiness in the world.

Brooke Eden has a few older songs that I think are really good, my favourite being “Act Like You Don’t”, and while her new stuff isn’t my usual country vibe I am a sucker for literally anything gay and it is legally my gay duty to stream any song that she releases to support my fellow queer. It’s quite different to anything Wright or Carlile sing but I actually kind of love that because it shows that country music of all different shapes and sizes and styles can be sung by queer artists.

Amythyst Kiah

- Okay so I am a very new listener to Amythyst Kiah, but her music is literally so beautiful it would be a straight up sin to not include her on this list. Her music is country-blues-roots esq (more roots than country, I think?) and her voice is so unique. She grew up in Chattanooga and has been playing music since childhood. She recently made her Opry debut which is fucking awesome. She also belongs to a band called Our Native Daughters, described as “A supergroup of Black women in traditional music”. Their debut album “Songs of Our Native Daughters” did numbers and I haven’t listened to the whole thing but my favourite so far are “Black Myself” and “I Knew I Could Fly” so y’all add that to your playlists along with “Wild Turkey” by Amythyst Kiah because holy hell her voice on that will blow your mind.

Steve Grand

- The first man to make this list, he should frankly be honoured. Grand has been an out and proud gay man making country music since like 2013, and I have so much respect for an artist who chose to simply never be in, choosing instead to simply write gay ass songs about being in love with men and letting the chips fall where they man. His music is always going to have a special place in my heart and, he’s cute so if you’re into men and music by men give him a google. add him to your playlists, his All-American Boy album is literally just a dozen songs that are perfect to yell-sing along to.

Katie Pruitt

- Not hugely knowledgeable on Katie Pruitt but her music makes me feel crazy intense emotions and is absolutely gay

Honorable Mention Artists I haven’t Really Listened to But Who I Know to be gay thanks to google and might be your thing so totally check them out:

Brandy Clark

Ty Herndon

Shelly Fairchild

Lavendar Country

Trixie Mattel

Cameron Hawthorn

Drop any other names of artists or songs you know of

Specific Songs That Make Me Fucking Cry or (in good and bad ways (but always in a gay way)) or basically are just gay as hell:

If She Ever Leaves Me; The Highwomen

- So, this album came out about a week before my first (and only) girlfriend broke up with me. The general gist of the song is a woman singing about how her loved isn’t ever going to leave her but if she does it sure as hell won’t be for a creepy man in a bar. A little ironic that I felt I related to it so intensely, considering she did in fact leave me. There’s this one lyric that goes “I’ve loved her in secret/I’ve lover here out loud/the sky hasn’t always been blue” and my girlfriend and I were crazy deep in the closet so I drew her a cute little picture of a grey cloud and on the back I wrote that lyric and I gave it to her and to me it was kind of a promise that one day I’d get a chance to love her out loud and even though I never actually did this song is forever going to make me cry because of the little bit of hope that lyric gave me and the way it’s inclusion on this overwhelmingly mainstream country album made me feel like acceptance was just that little bit closer.

All American Boy; Steve Grand

- Definitely one of the first gay country songs I ever heard, and Steve Grand didn’t once sacrifice a scrap of country for the gay. It’s beautiful, it’s a little sad, it’s hopeful. It’s forever going to hold a special place in my heart and the music videos is kind of one of my favourites ever. I found this song before I found myself and the way it made my heart warm should have been a stronger sign than I took it to be.

Like Me; Chely Wright

- When you love someone you kind of make it your mission to know them in a way that no one else can. This song by Chely Wright is sort of an ode to that, and how even once you lost someone, you’re still going to know every little thing about them. On top of that it sort of speaks to the idea that all these things Wright learned about this woman, she learned in secret and she knew her and loved her in secret and now that they’re gone from each other she’s left with all of this knowledge and all of these questions and no one to answer them. I love the way it’s so slow and the melody and her voice, the way it’s low and a little raspy, make this one of my favourite Chely Wright songs.

The Mother; Brandi Carlile

- Sorry but a song about being a mother by a queer woman is going to make me cry every time and actually I’m not that sorry. It’s quite a simple song, if any song written by Brandi Carlile can ever be described as ‘simple’, it’s an ode to her daughter. My favourite line is “you are not an accident/where no one thought it through” because it speaks to the fact that in order for queer women to have a kid together they have to want it so damn bad and also I just like the way her voice sounds on that line. This song is also the perfect thing to listen to if you ever for a second feel like being gay/queer is going to stand in the way of you having a family because it absolutely doesn’t have to and if that’s something you want, you can have it. Don’t let people try and convince you otherwise.

Loving Her; Katie Pruitt

- Unapologetic gay love. Opening a song with “If loving hers a sin, I don’t wanna go to heaven” is a fucking baller move and she went there. The lyrics are beautiful, and her voice is phenomenal. It could be a sad song, about confronting religious repression and grappling with what that means for your love, but instead its triumphant. Katie Pruitt doesn’t give a fuck if you have a problem because she’s going to write songs for her lover.

Jesus From Texas; Semler

- Not actually totally sure this is a country song, but it has the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘Texas’ in the title so I feel safe including it in this list. Honestly, I don’t really know why I relate so hard to this song. Like, I wasn’t really raised with religion, so I don’t know what it is about this funky little tune that makes me want to sob but there’s something about this tune that makes me want to do whatever the opposite of get up and dance is, but like, in a good way.

Lovin’ Again; Steve Grand

- Breakup song that ends kind of positively? So good to sing along to at high, high volumes. The idea that losing someone doesn’t have to mean losing yourself and just because you can’t love them doesn’t mean you’re not ever going to love again. But also kind of about how it’s hard to get over someone, I don’t know it’s just good.

Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears; Lavender Country

- Jesus christ if this isn’t the coolest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Sorry but a gay country group formed in 1972 who dropped possibly the first gay themed country album, and this was the title of one of the songs. God I am in love.

Songs that (to me) are a little fruity or that I just relate to in a gay way:

Picket Fences; Chely Wright

- Chely Wright is gay but this song came out long before she did and when she wrote it, it wasn’t supposed to be gay which is why it’s in this section and not the previous. The reason it’s included at all is because frankly ma’am, Mrs Wright, it’s a little fruity. And I feel a little bad for joking because honestly to me, the way I hear this song and knowing the context (that Wright was deeply closeted at the time she wrote and released it), it’s kind of just sad. The general gist of the song is Wright asking what’s so great about a traditional lifestyle anyways. It could be read as a woman genuinely questioning why we push that expectation that she’ll have two kids and a husband and a picket fence lifestyle, or even could be read as a woman who’s trying to deflect how much she does in fact want that, you have to listen and form your own opinion. But to me, it feels like a woman who’s desperately trying to justify why she doesn’t want that life not because she can’t have it, but she knows it will never be right for her. I don’t know it’s hard to explain I just feel like this song is a little bit gay even though I’m sure she didn’t intend that.

Sinning with You; Sam Hunt

- Sorry but this song is gay. Sorry but you can’t write the lines “I never felt like I was sinning with you/Always felt like I could talk to God in the morning” and “if it’s so wrong why did it feel so right” and “But I never felt shame, never felt sorry/Never felt guilty touching your body” and not to mention the opening line of “raised in the first pew/praises for yeshua/case of a small town repression”, and expect to not sit in my car sobbing as I realised that while I never felt like what we did was a sin she absolutely did, and wishing I could have told her that I was sorry for making her carry the weight of both our souls but also that it wasn’t a sin and nothing in the world could feel that good and be that bad and it isn’t right that she had to be so ashamed of something that was just so good. Sam Hunt actually said after he wrote the song that while it was reflection on his own relationship with faith he genuinely hopes that people in the lgbtq community can like find comfort or whatever in his words and like go off king, we stan an ally.

How do I Get There; Deana Carter

- This ones easy, it’s about falling in love with your best friend and suddenly realising you want more than just friendship with them. Sorry Deana, that’s gay. In my Deana Carter of like Year 10 I played this song on repeat and screamed along to the lyrics as though singing it hard enough would make her like me back.

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dostthouhavenochill · 3 years

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Performance

Rating: Gen

Fandom: Castlevania (Netflix)

Word Count: 2.6k

Characters: Alucard, Greta of Danesti, Sypha Belnades, minor OCs (mentioned)

Relationships: pre-Gretacard, Trephacard (mentioned)

Warnings: none

Summary: Alucard muses on how life has changed since the head woman of Danesti, now Belmont, and her people have settled about his home.

The clearing was relatively quiet that afternoon, with the odd settler or two roaming around, enjoying a moment’s rest after doing their part in the rebuilding effort for the day. The setting sun warmed Alucard’s skin as he sat against a large oak tree. Strong winds shook the branches above his head, sending bursts of orange and red drifting about him. He brushed errant leaves out of his basket and plucked out a dark spool to finish his mending.

Aaliya and Rahim, bless their hearts, were the most rambunctious out of all of Alucard's children. So it came as no surprise when a few hours ago, Rahim came to him with pieces of what used to be a stuffed horse, “His name is Sumac, Father!”, wailing his dark eyes out. Alucard promised to make time to mend him by the end of the day. The toy was a well-loved thing, with stains and misaligned stuffing, all evidence of a boy who took his friend everywhere he went. The horse’s reddish-brown fur was now a muddled sepia and its once cream mane and markings now gray. Alucard just about had his fill of bloody horses, but he could make an exception just this once.

He wasn’t resting alone though. After depositing lumber and stone for Solomon and his building team, Greta settled beside him. She only dozed off a short while ago, but not before giving a knowing chuckle at his project and a snark about how he was finally as used to people as people were used to him. Absolutely maniacal. He couldn’t find room to complain.

So much had changed in just these last four months. Alucard would be lying to himself if he said that it wasn’t jarring to go from months of solitude to human interaction and back again, a hellish cycle that always seemed to end with him alone. But with the settlement of the people of Danesti, now Belmont, that cycle had been broken. Funny, considering how he had been hesitant towards the idea.

Except hesitant wasn’t an accurate description. Initially, Alucard had to wrestle with his desires for both solitude and companionship. As much as he longed for the latter, Alucard wasn’t prepared for its magnitude. Saint Germain, for all his scheming, offered a reasonable solution to a suffering people. Only that reasonable solution left Alucard feeling bare and scrubbed raw, as if the entirety of the world made itself at home in his ribcage before even giving him the courtesy of undoing the frog of his cape first.

Those first nights after the battle was when the enormity of his hospitality truly began to set in. He lamented the loss of his solitude. Protection, knowledge, and safety-he would never hesitate to offer, but with so many rooms holding so many personal memories, he’d unintentionally left his soul bare to all. He remembers all but dashing ahead of Greta while showing her the food supply to hide his makeshift companions from her teasing, scrutinous gaze.

But...it was nice.

It had been so long since the halls were alive, filled with laughter and with people milling about the halls. It hardly ever seemed like he was alone now. His role as champion along with Greta’s say-so granted him a founding role in Belmont and as such was bombarded with questions daily; someone asking for aid, someone asking for instruction, someone...just asking how he’s faring that day.

From beside him, Greta, with her arms crossed, snored softly. Alucard let out an undignified chuckle. For someone who had such hasty and scathing observations about settling at Castlevania, she seems quite content.

Greta wasn’t wrong when she called the Castle cold. Alucard remembers plenty of nights alone, abandoned, shivering and craving nothing but someone, anyone, to ease his loneliness. His mother. His father. Belmont. Sypha. Anyone. But after Sumi and Taka’s betrayal, Alucard began to appreciate the aura Castlevania emanated. It’s dark, cavernous windows and ominous silhouette, looming and judging those who came across it, a warning sign to all. It stood imposingly with cautionary tales skewered at its lip. Greta was simply experiencing the emotions Castlevania intended to elicit from oncomers; the cold, fear, and danger.

Even so, after everything that’s happened, Alucard couldn’t help but feel a sense of welcome and warmth in those dark, cavernous windows.

The windows that led to the study where Adrian spent years on years learning a multitude of languages, preferring the ones with lots of “s’s” because of the way it slithered off his tongue.

The windows that led to the southwestern dining room, where an infantile Adrian nearly chomped off his mother’s finger whilst she tried to stop him from swallowing a frozen carrot he’d been teething on.

The windows that led to the science hall, where he, Sypha, and Trevor spent the last few blissful days of their union getting drunk and blasting off various spells into the ceiling to see what would happen.

Yes, there had been plenty of warmth in the Castle, even before it had been graced with the people of Danesti. Almost every room he can recall with a smile and a fond tale. He’d had to convince Greta, he thinks. He can already imagine it; the disbelief on her face when he tells her he learned to shapeshift into a dire pup in a conservatory, a room filled with foliage and beakers and sunlight and all sorts of breakable things. And he can imagine telling her that Lord Dracula himself had to call for aid from his wife when their son burst through a window and pranced about nude in the outdoor sun. He can imagine that curious wrinkle in her brows before she thinks of something, immediately says it, and rarely regrets it.

He can imagine telling her so much about his childhood. About Vlad and Lisa Țepeș. About growing up the only dhampir, to his knowledge. He can imagine telling her so much about his past and about, ahem, possibly their present; what’s changed since he met her and what’s stayed the same. The tangled but firm bundle of feelings she’s elicited from him. He’ll have to ask for her time one day, one day when she isn’t exhausted from doing the work of half a dozen persons in a few hours time and taking a well-earned break.

Alucard was broken from his musings when he saw Sypha striding up to him in the distance. In the midst of Sypha’s pregnancy, her passion and spitfire were amplified. As such, she had enough of all the side looks and loaded barbs between them all.

They had talked, Trevor and Sypha and Alucard. They talked about feelings, about abandonment and betrayal and neglect, about Trevor and Sypha’s child also calling Alucard father. About how it was almost too soon to make such a leap, feelings too raw. About sentiments that could have, perhaps should have, been properly expressed before fucking off across Europe. About regrets and pain, about trust and building it back up. It wasn’t ruined, but it was worse for wear. Nothing that some regular maintenance wouldn’t help.

Alucard almost stands to offer Sypha a hand, but she politely declines, saying that if she gets down, she won’t get back up as easily. Besides, she was only here for a quick thing. Then, she took note of the sleeping Greta, and lowered her voice, saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so still before.” Alucard was inclined to agree. With her coat draped over her lap, and her head lopped to the side, Greta looked at peace. The tasks of a head woman were never-ending, it seems.

“What brings you out here, then?” Alucard asked, once he was able to drag his gaze away from Greta’s sleeping form.

“Rahim was looking for you,” she cocked her head, giving him a puzzled look. “He said that you would help him find some sumac?.” Chuckling into his chest, Alucard ties off the thread on the poor thing's left haunch and passes it up to Sypha.

“I believe I stitched together all the bits of his Sumac as best I could.” Alucard wonders if Sypha even heard him over all her soft albeit consistent cooing.

“Alucaaaard. I never knew you were so good with a needle,” she spoke as she ran her fingers lovingly through its sullied mane. “With the state of Trevor’s socks, he could learn a thing or two from you.”

And then the most terrifying thing happened; Sypha got The Look. To the casual observer, looking at the duo of Belnades and Belmont, one would think that the former was the sensible one. And they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. However, what the casual observer typically fails to notice is that Sypha, for all her grace and intellect, was at least half as crazy and twice as impulsive as Belmont himself. Arguably, she was at her worst when she got mischievous, and the only tell for that was a distinct Look; one where her impossibly large eyes sparkled and her lips twitched like a kitten holding onto a canary for a little too long.

“You knoooooow,” she began, sounding like a child all too eager to tell an adult about some fact they recently learned, a fact that they had no business knowing. “It's never too early to start preparing things for the baby-books, clothes, toys and things. Perhaps little Trefor would appreciate something personal from his Alucard. Mayhaps if you had any miniature dolls of his parents lying about,” her bright eyes squinting in mischief, “Or something like that.”

Alucard would’ve liked the earth to swallow him whole or for a wayward night creature to snatch him away into the woods. He would’ve liked a multitude of things, but he was stopped by a soft snort coming from behind him. He turned to see Greta trying and failing to suppress a smirk.

With her eyes still closed, she gave up her storybook act and said, “I’m sure sunshine here could pull something off. Yours and Trevor’s resemblance is quite striking.” Sypha howls with laughter, calming herself only after Alucard throws her a glare, all the while blush painting his...well, everything. He sighs, turning back to Greta.

“I hadn’t known you were such a fan of my needlework.”

“Well, I hadn’t intended on saying anything.” Greta barely got her last word out before Alucard rounded back, still mortified.

“Quite unlike you. I ought to be worried.” Greta cracks open an eye at that, playfully raising an eyebrow at the dhampir.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said indignantly.

“I don’t know what gave you that impression,” Greta closed her eye again, crossing her arms behind her head, “ I was merely resting my eyes.”

“And your heart rate?” Alucard bent an arm against his leg, resting his chin in his palm and gazing at her through lidded lashes. “If I had poorer hearing, I would have almost certainly mistaken you for a sleeping person.”

Greta raised a single finger. “Almost. Key word: almost.”

Rolling his eyes under closed lids, Alucard said, “You would make an excellent performer, you know.”

“I am a woman of many skills.”

“Indeed. One day, I imagine you might even be able to successfully imitate a rock.”

Greta effortlessly lands a hit against Alucard’s thigh. There’s no real force behind it. It’s the same friendly banter they’ve always shared, the same heat that fills his chest, the same stir it causes in his gut, and the same burn to the spot she touched.

“Smartass.” As she draws her hand back, the smirk on her face never drops.

Alucard, chuckling and chest warming, cocks his head back to Sypha to ask if she needs anything else from him and is surprised to see an intensity in her widened eyes. Wide as they were when they first entered the Belmont hold, large and curious and flickering as she combed through every book she could find, devouring any new information at her grasp with a thrilling quickness. Before the embarrassment at being perceived settled in his bones, Greta spoke up, this time to Sypha, making her eyes softer than usual.

“How are you and the little one today, Sypha?”

“We’re well, thank you,” Sypha takes her hand and rubs it across her slowly increasing bump, giving the head woman a pleased grin. “I see you’re taking a well-earned break.”

“Nothing wrong with a little rest,” Greta shrugs, relaxing further back against the bark. Her brows get that curious wrinkle, however, and she says, “Especially for those of us with child who’ve been running about since dawn.”

Alucard takes solace in the fact that the air around Sypha tingles ever so slightly and he is, for once, not subject to embarrassment. If Greta sensed Sypha’s chagrin, as she almost certainly did, she didn’t make it known, aside perhaps from the cute crinkle around her eyes and nose.

But Sypha recovers much faster than Alucard ever has, giving Greta a self-satisfied smile. “I’ll have you know I wasn’t up and about until after the sun broke.” She then releases a long sigh. “But between Trevor, Khadijah and the other healers’ constant fretting, you’d think I was on my last legs instead of giving life.”

Mischief incarnate would do well to take note of Greta of Danesti, with a hand propped under chin, a single digit tapping her cheek, and a dangerous glint in her burnished eyes. “Foolish of them, then, to disregard the woman who battles night creatures regularly and moved an entire fucking castle as incapable of anything.”

“Foolish indeed!”

Alucard cast a sly gaze towards Greta, naughty of you to rile her up like this-Belmont is sure to get an earful later. Coy is never a word he would’ve ascribed to the head woman, but the curve of her lips and flutter of her lashes had him reconsidering.

Sypha says her goodbyes and goes to return the horse to its rightful owner. Stopping short, she looks back to Greta and says, “I don’t think you have much room to talk, however, Head Woman Greta of Danesti-now-Belmont-who-wakes-with-the-sun-and-slays-night-creatures-and-carries-lumber-and-.”

Greta ducks her head, sending the Speaker off with a wave, “Enough of that, Belnades.” She lowers her hand, her brows creasing as she says, “Thank you and be well.”

As Sypha departs, Greta settles back against the tree. With nothing to keep his hands busy, Alucard joins her in relaxing in the setting sun, hands folded in his lap. Being immortal, the dhampir never needed excessive amounts of sleep to function, per se. Perhaps he would just rest his eyes and enjoy the company.

Alucard sighs as the cool breeze passes through his hair and picks up fallen leaves, carrying them across the clearing. Then he sputters as one flies straight into his mouth. The dhampir gets no warning as Greta’s soft hands pull his hair aside, causing him to jump slightly. Her slender fingers pick out the foliage from his hair and shoulders before tossing them to the ground beneath them.

She can’t stop herself from letting out one last chuckle at Alucard’s expense. “Are you sure you don’t have anything better to do that loaf about with me, sunshine?” Her tawny eyes held still against his. Alucard arched his head back against the tree to appreciate her gaze.

“Nothing in particular springs to mind,” he doesn’t bother smothering the smirk growing on his face, “Besides, as I understand it, Khadijah has ordered you to loaf about after your mishap two nights ago.”

That earns him quite the eyeroll. “Khadijah, the worrywart, would order me to loaf about if I tripped over a stick.”

“Tripping over a mere stick?,” he lilted, “ I’d think he’d need to examine your head if that ever happened.”

Another thwack. Another burst of heat. Only this time, Alucard held fast, catching her hand before it could completely fall away. Greta startled at his reflexes, her head teasingly cocked aside as her eyes flicked from his to their joined hands. Before he lost his nerve, Alucard placed his other hand atop hers, giving it a soft squeeze and resting it in his lap. “I’m sure. I’d much rather be here than anywhere else.”

#come get y'all juice #fanfic #who did this #castlevania #gretacard #greta danesti #alucard #adrian tepes #sypha belnades #trephacard #castlevania fanfic

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panharmonium · 4 years

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(1/3) Heya! A while back you were discussing Morgana's character and Merlin's relationship with her WRT magic and mentioned "gaslighting." I know for myself when I refer to Merlin gaslighting her it's not in regards to him not outing himself, but that 1) Pre 2X03 he goes along with Gaius in pretending to not believe that her visions are true and giving her the sleeping draughts. And Post 2X03, after reassuring her that they're still friends, he just doesn't really talk to her again until 2X12.

Hi! So, I will preface this by saying that I normally don't have a chance to respond to asks in this much depth, but luckily I had some free time over the past couple of days, and there's nothing I like better than writing incessantly about Merlin, so I took the liberty of doing a deep dive. :)

My impression (because these asks don't actually include a particular question for me to answer) is that I'm being asked to expand/defend my own analysis from my original post with regard to the above points. And I'll be honest and say that I won't always do that for folks on demand, because I really am of the school of thought that I don't write meta to convince anybody of something or "prove" a point - I really am just talking to myself in my own room for fun, and it isn't important to me to make a case to anybody who would rather approach from a different angle. Like - if we’re on different pages, it’s chill; I don’t feel a need to discuss it or like...change someone’s mind. (In all seriousness, I really have just been writing these things for myself and a couple of friends. Prior to three days ago, when some kind of a bizarre surge happened, I had no followers who were here specifically for Merlin.)

But there are definitely some things referenced in these messages that I do have strong opinions about (though as I always say, that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to agree with me!) And since I have the free time and am actually interested in this topic, I figured I'd try to address these things one by one (though I can't promise to do so in order.)

I'll put everything under a cut, because this did get quite long.

disclaimer: as always, whenever I write meta: these are just my own thoughts, and I don’t expect anyone to share them. If we are on different pages, feel free to scroll past and keep having fun in whatever way is most enjoyable to you!

1) “after reassuring her that they're still friends, he just doesn't really talk to her again until 2X12″

So first, I have to pose a question.

Why does this say "[Merlin] just doesn't really talk to her again" after 2.03?

Specifically, that framing.

Merlin doesn't talk to her again.

Because what actually happens, from 2.03-2.10, in an objective, this-is-what-we-see-onscreen way, is this: Merlin defies Gaius and tells Morgana that he believes she has magic. He sends her to the Druids so they can help her, tries to distract the attacking knights so she can escape from Camelot with the Druids permanently, and, when that fails, he makes sure to come to Morgana's room and tell her that he supports her and her secret is safe with him.

Then, from 2.04 through 2.10, they don't have screen time together.

Not "Merlin just doesn't talk to her."

They don't have screen time together. You could say "Morgana just doesn't talk to him" and it would be just as true.

But somehow we immediately frame our discussion of this as Merlin not doing something. And that is what I am pushing back against.

Merlin takes massive risks to help Morgana in 2.03. He makes it very clear that he is there for her and he will never tell her secret, and Morgana, for her part, is shown to be very appreciative of that. It's clear that she trusts him and believes him. They part on a very positive note, at the end of 2.03.

Why, then, do we automatically frame the objective, unattributable-to-any-one-character fact that they don't interact onscreen after that as being somehow a failing on Merlin's part? Why do we frame the simple fact that "they have no scenes together" as something for which we can lay blame? (On Merlin, of course. Never on Morgana.)

It's not as if we see Morgana reaching out and failing to get a response. From 2.04-2.10, there are zero scenes of Morgana trying to approach Merlin and being rebuffed. There are no scenes of Morgana wishing for guidance and being turned away. And, with the exception of the Witchfinder episode (where Merlin already does literally everything in his power to expose this dangerous man and protect Morgana from his machinations) Morgana is not, in fact, shown to be getting "more and more freaked out and isolated."

I want to pause and address that, because I know we've all sort of...collectively decided to imagine that this is what happened (because as a fandom we've tried to just fill in with fanon what feels like a blank left by the writers), but onscreen, in terms of the source material: it is false to say that “in the background you kind of see Morgana get more and more freaked out and isolated as the season progresses.” It just doesn’t happen.

With the exception of "The Witchfinder," Morgana is never shown to be having any inner conflicts about her magic, not until 2.11. Episodes 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 - absolutely nothing. There is one scene in 2.08 where she mentions having trouble sleeping, but then that issue is immediately resolved for her when Morgause gives her the healing bracelet and cures her nightmares. There are no scenes of Morgana worrying about her magic. No scenes of her needing help. No scenes referencing her position as a person who is struggling with being a secret magic-user. No scenes referencing her magic at all, in fact. She is not shown to be getting more and more freaked out and isolated; rather she appears to have integrated back into her old life, comfortable now in the knowledge of who and what she is. It’s like what she told Merlin at the end of 2.03: "I know now who I really am. And it isn't something to be scared of. Maybe one day people will come to see magic as a force for good."

And we can of course debate whether that was really an appropriate writing decision, to have Morgana be fine, fine, fine, until suddenly we hit 2.11 and it's like, 'oh, suddenly not fine,' but we also can't evaluate or judge Merlin based on a fanon image of what we imagine was happening in Season 2. We can only evaluate him based on what actually happens onscreen (whether we feel like it was well-written or not), and what actually happens onscreen is that minus her fear in The Witchfinder, which Merlin already takes decisive actions to address, Morgana is not shown to be distressed or isolated or conflicted until we hit 2.11.

She appears, as far as Merlin and the audience can see, to be doing just fine.

I’ve got to be clear on this: "Merlin just doesn't really talk to her again" is a loaded sentence, when the phenomenon we're really trying to describe is "Merlin and Morgana have no scenes together." It inherently assigns responsibility, agency, and blame for any non-interaction to Merlin, when there is nothing in canon to support that framing.

If Morgana wants to talk to Merlin, she can come talk to him. She knows Merlin is on her side. She is shown to trust and appreciate Merlin without reservation at the end of 2.03. And even if she had been shown to be spiraling into a bad place in 2.04-2.10 (which, as discussed above, is not the case) she could have come to Merlin at any time. It is literally not Merlin's responsibility to pursue Morgana and press her to talk to him. He has done his due diligence. He makes sure she knows he is on her side, that he supports her, that he believes her, that he will never reveal her secret. And she is shown to believe him when he says that. If she needs him, she knows she can approach him. And if she chooses not to do that - then that is on her.

This is a tough pill for even the in-universe characters to swallow, but Merlin is not responsible for the well-being of every single person in Camelot. It is not his job to make sure that every single person in his orbit is 100% okay at all times. It is not his job to read his friends' minds, or anticipate every single one of their needs, or to offer himself to them constantly, repeatedly, every time he has a spare moment, especially when they seem (like Morgana from 2.04 to 2.10) to be doing well. Merlin has already been placed in a position where he is expected to devote almost all of his energy to serving someone else's interests. When we expect him to also worry about and monitor and manage the health and happiness of all the other people around him, we are perpetuating the same damaging narrative for which we criticize characters like Kilgharrah, Gaius, etc - that everything is on Merlin, and if he can’t manage to juggle it all, then the negative consequences that ensue are his fault.

A personal illustration of how this would play out in real life:

I live with my sister. I am a pretty stoic person. And when something is the matter, I sometimes don't tell her about it. I just pretend like everything is fine. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would listen to me and support me if I ever came to her with a problem, but sometimes I don't do that. And if that’s the choice I make, then that’s fine, but I have to take responsibility for it. It's not okay for me to get angry and BLAME her for not helping me, when I never gave her any indication that I needed help in the first place.

So - flipping the narrative, what if we reframed the original statement to an equally loaded but equally accurate “post 2.03, Morgana just doesn't talk to Merlin.” The two of them go through a harrowing experience together, where Merlin takes deadly risks to try to help Morgana escape Camelot and find her true self, where he offers his continuing support to her after it's over, and then she just never takes him up on that offer. She retreats back into her comfortable position as Uther's noble ward, and stops associating with Arthur's lowly servant. When Merlin helps save Gwen from the bandits in 2.04, Morgana never thanks him. When Merlin is framed for theft by Catrina and hunted down, she doesn't stand up for him or try to help him. When Gaius is arrested and tortured by the Witchfinder, she never stops by to see how Merlin is doing and check if he's okay. When she's approached by a total stranger who wants her to steal a "weapon" for him, she doesn’t talk to Merlin at all, but rather agrees to steals the Crystal of Neahtid without ANY understanding of what it actually does or what Alvarr's plans are for it, leaving Merlin completely in the dark about why she's suddenly sneaking around acting so strange and suspicious.

Think back to Season One. When Gwen is accused of sorcery and sentenced to death, Merlin confesses himself in order to save her. Despite enjoying none of the protections Morgana has as Uther’s ward, Merlin still confesses himself in order to protect a friend. But when Merlin is accused of sorcery in 2.07 (and when Gaius is then sentenced to be executed), Morgana does nothing comparable. She just lets them take the fall. Merlin allows himself (and Gaius) to be accused, even though he could easily have ratted Morgana out instead, and Morgana, despite knowing that Merlin is keeping silent to protect her at his own expense, never says a word to defend him, or approaches Merlin about it afterwards. She sees Merlin dragged out of the Council Chambers screaming after Gaius is sentenced to death, but she says nothing. She knows Gaius is going to be burnt at the stake, but she does nothing, not even making her usual appeal to Arthur.

Does that mean we should assume that she was being negligent? That she was abandoning Merlin when he needed her most?

For clarity - I'm not saying that the answer to that question is yes. I’m saying that I’ve never seen anybody assign intention/bad faith to Morgana when it comes to her non-interaction with Merlin from 2.04 to 2.10 (even though that particular read is actually far more justified by the text). There is no reason to assign intention to Merlin, either.

Ultimately, I just want us to be aware that saying “Merlin just doesn’t really talk to her again” inherently assigns agency and blame to an agentless fact. Morgana and Merlin not being on screen together from 2.04 to 2.10 =/= "Merlin just doesn't really talk to her." The phrase "Morgana just doesn't really talk to him" is an equally true statement, but one we don't hear nearly as often, because in the Merlin-verse, everything is Merlin's responsibility. And therefore, when there’s a problem, everything is Merlin's fault.

2) “pre 2X03 he goes along with Gaius in pretending to not believe that her visions are true giving her the sleeping draughts”

Okay, this is just my own opinion, but - I personally think it is unreasonable for us to expect Merlin to correct every single bad choice that the people around him make, and it's unfair to transfer the blame for other people's choices onto his shoulders.

If Gaius is making bad choices prior to 2.03, then they are Gaius's bad choices. Merlin, in 1.07, has just arrived in Camelot within the last couple of months. Gaius has lived in Camelot all his life, and has been dealing with Morgana for two decades and Uther for longer than that. Gaius is a trained physician. He is in a position of authority over Merlin, and he has far more experience with the royal family than Merlin does, and when he tells Merlin that the safest thing for Morgana right now is to help her sleep through the night without having potentially-prophetic nightmares, of course Merlin listens to him.

But five minutes into 2.03, immediately after Merlin learns that Morgana actually has magic (not just dream-visions, which this show states to be a separate gift) he is arguing with Gaius, saying that "you need to be honest with her." At the fifteen minute mark, he is in Morgana's chambers telling her how to find the Druids.

I cannot get on board with transferring blame that belongs to other people and dumping it all on Merlin's overburdened shoulders. He directly defies Gaius's orders so that he can help Morgana, as soon as it becomes apparent how serious her situation is. He leads Camelot's army on a chase through the woods in an attempt to help her run away, putting himself at extreme personal risk to do so. How would he explain that, if he were caught? If he were seen?

He does more to help her with her gift than anyone, and he puts himself at risk of discovery and execution to do it. The standards to which we hold him, and the number of responsibilities we expect him to assume, and the ways we hold him accountable for choices that other people in positions of power have made, even when he ultimately corrects their mistakes - are impossibly unreasonable, and they certainly aren't the same standards we use to evaluate Morgana’s actions.

3) “while I don't think Merlin owed outing himself to anyone IMO was a really nasty undercurrent in the writing of ‘crazy/hysterical woman with her volatile lady feelings can't be trusted’ even after he's known her for like a year compared to Lancelot, Gilli, Daegel etc. being a-okay.”

Comparing Morgana to Lancelot, Gilli, and Daegal as a way of saying that Merlin underrates Morgana's trustworthiness in favor of theirs doesn't make sense.

Merlin doesn't choose to out himself to Lancelot at all. It's an accident.

Merlin doesn't choose to out himself to Daegal, either. He's put in a situation where it's either "use magic" or "we both die."

Gilli has a little more wiggle room in terms of "was this an active decision on Merlin's part," but it's also not accurate to interpret this situation as arising out of Merlin's personal desires/level of trust in Gilli as a person. Merlin reveals himself because he feels like it is the only way to get through to someone who is going to get themselves killed looking for revenge. (And I've written previously about how I think Merlin's choices in this situation are in fact directly influenced by the decisions he didn't make with Morgana, and how making the opposite choice here in an attempt to "do the ‘right’ thing this time" doesn't actually change the ultimate outcome, but that's neither here nor there.)

None of these three instances are moments where Merlin looks at these characters and goes, “these people seem way more trustworthy than that crazy, volatile lady i know; i’m gonna reveal myself to them!" He is forced into all of these situations, against his will, and is outed either by accident or necessity.

Additionally - the above is really the more important counterpoint, but I do think it's worth mentioning that Morgana, as far as the closeness of her relationship with Merlin goes, also can't be meaningfully compared with the other three characters on this list because her position as a noble places her in a totally different category altogether.

Merlin legitimately likes Morgana in the early seasons, and he's thrilled to be her friend. But Merlin is also class-conscious - he has to be, given his position in society; and moreover he's spent the first twenty years of his life being best friends with a dude who is both hyperaware of and hypervocal about the inequalities of the current social system. Merlin is ALWAYS aware that Morgana is on a different level than he is, and he is perfectly justified in being slightly more reticent around people who aren't cut from his own cloth, in the same way he is justified in being slightly more careful around Arthur, who also leverages his power and privilege whenever "equality" becomes inconvenient for him.

Take the comparison between Lancelot and Morgana, for example. Merlin has known Lancelot for slightly less time than Morgana (Merlin meets Lancelot in 1.05), but he cleaves to Lancelot more quickly, and it is only natural that Merlin would do so. Merlin is a peasant farmer. He is literally as low on the social ladder as you can get without being one of the itinerant poor. Morgana is, in essence, a princess, and Merlin isn't wrong for feeling more comfortable around Lancelot than he is around her, because Morgana, for all that she is generous-minded with the servants, is SO far above the level of people Merlin is used to associating with, and she has SO much more influence than he does - it's a power differential that can't be erased, no matter how friendly Morgana is with him. And it’s a dynamic that isn't limited to Morgana, either - it exists between Merlin and Arthur, too.

This is an element of the show that I don't necessarily see discussed often when it comes to Morgana and Merlin (and Gwen, for that matter), and most of the time it seems to be ignored in favor of like...“Morgana doesn't see class! She's friends with Gwen and she's friends with Merlin!" And I'm not disputing that she considers herself to be friends with them at first, but I also am not going to pretend that she doesn't then weaponize her class against them as soon as the situation changes.

In S3, she leverages her privileged position to threaten Merlin with execution if he tries to reveal her misdeeds, because she knows that no one will believe a servant even if he tells the truth ("Just think how Uther would react if he learnt that a serving boy had tried to poison his beloved ward"). She is horrified at her vision of Gwen taking the throne in 3.10, saying "How can that be? She's a servant." She mockingly calls Gwen "My lady" when capturing her in 5.06, and, when offering Gwen a drink of water, says, "Is it too good for you now that you're queen?" She scathingly criticizes Helios’s capture of Merlin in 4.06, saying, "And you bring me how many men? Or should I say how many servants?" She tells Merlin, "You are Arthur's servant, nothing more" later in that same episode. She dispenses with all semblances of equality with Gwen in late Season 2 whenever Gwen's in the way, instead snapping at her, ordering her around, and booting her out of the room. And in "The Dark Tower," she drags Gwen behind her on a rope.

Morgana in the early seasons is committed to an "I'm not going to lord my social status over my lower-class friends!" attitude. But that doesn't mean her social status doesn’t exist, or that the power differential has vanished. And when the chips are down - when Morgana feels like she's getting less than she "deserves" but her former servants are getting more than they themselves do - she falls back on the power she has as a noble. The ways in which Morgana interacts with Merlin and Gwen, after Morgana's falling out with Camelot, don't manifest as just "you betrayed me and we're not friends anymore," they express themselves in ways that specifically target Merlin and Gwen's "lowly" status, in comparison to Morgana's lofty one.

4) “I also hate the Merlin and Gaius talk in 2X12 where they more or less write her off as using her powers for eviiiiil when she hadn't consciously used her powers for ANYTHING yet.”

I suppose this could be subject to personal interpretation, but I’m pretty sure Gaius and Merlin think Morgana was consciously aware that she was the source of the magic.

They don't know that she wasn't consciously involved. The audience doesn't even know that, frankly. What Morgana is actually aware of is left undefined by the show. (I personally always got the vibe that Morgana obviously knows it has something to do with the agreement she and Morgause made, but that she doesn't exactly understand the details of how it's working.) But that's still never actually stated.

Merlin, (after Kilgharrah tells him the magic is coming from Morgana), assumes she is aware of what's happening. And I personally think it’s impressive that even given this, he covers for her the entire episode. At first he doesn't even suspect she has anything to do with it at all, not even after what she did in the previous ep - he makes up that story about Gaius having given her a potion to cover for her, assuming her magic is what's keeping her awake. It's not until Kilgharrah tells him what's going on that he realizes the truth, and EVEN THEN, he continues to lie for her.

If she was afraid - if she was in over her head - if she regretted her actions and wanted to change her mind - she could have confessed to Merlin and asked him for help. Literally everyone in Camelot was incapacitated, and as far as Merlin knew, Morgana’s plan was to let them all die. It's not that I'm happy about Merlin's choice to poison her, and neither is Merlin - but I'm also not comfortable blaming him to the exclusion of Morgana or critiquing him for feeling like Morgana did something bad. She did do something bad! She made her own choices. Merlin didn't make them for her.

Erasing Morgana’s responsibility erases her agency. She makes decisions to get where she is in 2.12. She makes an agreement to help Morgause without doing her research and without getting the details about what would actually happen to the people around her, just like she made an agreement to help Alvarr retrieve the Crystal of Neahtid without finding out what it actually was or how Alvarr planned to use it. Merlin didn't make Morgana do any of those things.

Re: the Merlin+Gaius talk in 2.12 - I personally don't read that conversation with Gaius as Merlin "writing [Morgana] off."

Merlin doesn't think Morgana is irredeemably evil. He apologizes to Morgana when she returns in 3.01. Even when she displays shame and self-recrimination about her own actions, he doesn't say one word condemning her for anything she did in the last season. All he feels is sympathy for her suffering. He tells her, sincerely, "I am so sorry for everything you've been through." He holds absolutely no grudge for what she did in 2.12. None.

And even when he finds out she's betraying them again - he first approaches her as a friend. He begs her to stop. He tells her, "It doesn't have to be like this. We can find another way." He answers "no" when she asks him if he believes she deserves to be executed for who she is. Even as she's trying to kill them all.

And when she snaps, "Good!" in response to his statement that women and children are dying and the city will fall, he responds, "You don't mean that." That is not the response of someone who's already written her off as evil. He doesn't believe she wants all this violence. He is trying to reach her.

She doesn't ever reach back. And that is not Merlin's fault.

5) kilgharrah indiscriminately kills people

I don't think I can really address Kilgharrah in any meaningful way, because personally I don’t feel like dragons operate on or can be evaluated by human moral standards. Other folks can take a different tack with this, obviously; there's no canon information one way or another. That's just my own personal approach.

6) “[Kilgharrah] and Merlin are bros again by 3X02 but Morgause and Morgana and Kara killing knights and guards (who work for Uther/Arthur) are OMG murderers, have crossed a line, etc.”

Okay, look, let’s be honest here - this issue is a real philosophical question raised by the show, but Morgause and Morgana are not just killing knights and guards. Morgana, with Morgause at her right hand, literally orders her crossbowmen to murder a bunch of civilians in the street, as if shooting fish in a barrel. She tells her forces to “burn [the people’s] crops.” She raids Ealdor, a poor peasant village that isn’t even within Camelot’s borders, at the end of Season 4, and at the beginning of Season 5, Morgana’s Saxon army is attacking innocent peasant villages in Annis’s kingdom and capturing the villagers to be taken as slave labor to Ismere. Later in Season 5, Morgana kills other magic-users like Finna and Alator, who have been just as wronged by Arthur/Uther as she herself has been.

Kara - I've already written extensively about how she did nothing wrong and Arthur deserved to be deposed, so...same page there!

To wrap this up -

Nobody does everything right in this show. Everybody screws up somewhere. And the degree to which various people are both victims and villains is something we all have to decide for ourselves, and not all of our conclusions will be the same, which is perfectly fine.

But in the end, for me, the difference between Merlin and Morgana is that Merlin owns his choices. He believes he is the one to blame for what happens not just to him, but to the people around him. He literally says to Morgana, "I blame myself for what you've become." And while I don't necessarily think that's even true, he certainly does. Despite the fact that there are so many factors limiting him and forcing his hand and trapping him into certain courses of action, he never cites those factors as excuses, or seems to recognize their existence at all. He takes responsibility for himself, regardless of any extenuating circumstances. He looks back at his choices, and he feels remorse for some of them, and at the end of the day, when things go badly, he blames himself.

But when things go badly for Morgana, she only ever blames others. When something is wrong, it's because Merlin or Arthur or Gwen or whoever didn't help her (even though she never asked them for help in the first place.) We never see her acknowledge a mistake or regret a decision, even though she obviously makes her fair share of bad ones. She is never shown to be sorry for anything. The closest we get to remorse is her interaction with Mordred in 5.09 ("I hope one day you find the love and compassion which used to fill your heart"), and that brief moment of inner conflict never goes anywhere (which is so unfortunate, as a writing decision, but again, in a piece like this, I can only evaluate what actually happened onscreen, not what I wish had happened).

So, all this being said, I personally am very careful about assigning more blame to Merlin than what he already assigns to himself - especially when he doesn't deserve it (for example, see Part 1 of this piece). Merlin makes his share of mistakes, but we are generally much quicker to hold him accountable than we are Morgana, and we outline impossible expectations for him that we don't expect from any other character on this show. We hold him to a different standard, one which is, frankly, pretty much in line with how he's treated in the canon: that everything is his responsibility, and when things don't work out, everything is his fault. And I can’t get behind that mindset, because a) it isn’t fair to him, and b) I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny.

#sorry this got so long! i get going about merlin and like...time ceases to exist lol #apologies #putting most of this under a cut to spare your dashes #the once and future slowburn #meta #replies #sometimes you've got to do what is right

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mints-software · 3 years

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violetwolfraven · 4 years

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Prank War

@asexualbert requested redfinch and I think platonic ralbert too so here goes I guess.

((This takes place pre-canon. I know almost nothing about any of the character’s canon backstories, so I made up things to fill in blanks. I heard a thing saying Finch was Brooklyn in the original movie, so idk...))

Warnings: Q-slur, period-typical homophobia, a little bit of internalized homophobia I guess.

...

“Oh, Albie!”

Great. Albert was not in the mood to talk, currently, but this was just how it was, being Racetrack Higgens’ best friend.

“What is it, Racer?”

“Guess what I did?”

“Hmm... let me think. Did ya ask someone out?”

“Who do you thinks I am? Romeo?”

“Well, you flirts like him, so sure.”

“Funny. Everybody get a load of the comedian over here! He might as well get a new career slingin’ jokes!”

“Ey, I could if I wanted to.”

“Sure. You’s about as funny as Wiesel.”

“Seriously though,” Albert said, “What did you do?”

Usually, if Race joked this much, it was because he was deflecting around something while desperately hoping someone would figure out that he really did want to talk about it.

And, usually, this was Race’s way when he had a crush, or had done something moderately illegal. Not that Albert was judging. Pretty much all the Newsies had done something illegal at least once, even over in Manhattan. Hell, even Crutchie had hit a cop with his crutch, once, when he and Jack got in a tight spot.

Or... there was one more thing this could possibly be. Only... no.

“Please tell me ya didn’t.”

Race shrugged innocently, “I did.”

“It’s only been a few months since the last one!”

“And it’s been all quiet-like around here since! We all needs a good shake-up occasionally!”

Albert groaned. As much as he loved Race as his best friend, he absolutely hated when he started prank wars.

The first time, it was funny. The third time, it was still mildly amusing, but mostly annoying. By the seventh time, it was just plain annoying.

But, the younger Newsies loved it, and most of the older ones enjoyed the opportunity to harass each other without any risk of a soaking. If someone pranked you, you pranked them back, but nobody got hurt. That was how it worked, until the war had been dragging on a couple weeks and everybody got bored with it.

At least until Race decided to start a new war.

In the several years Albert had known him, this was going to be the eighteenth prank war Race had started.

“Well, who’d ya prank this time?”

Race grinned, “Spot Conlon.”

“What?!”

Albert yelled it so loud that pretty much everybody came running, wondering what was going on.

“What’s up, Albert?” Jack asked, “Heard yellin.’”

Albert glared at his best friend, “Racer here has started another prank war. And do ya want to tell the gang who you pranked to start it?”

Race shrugged, “Well, I just put a frog in his pillowcase, so it ain’t nothing serious.”

“Ain’t nothing serious?” Albert demanded, “You put a frog in Spot fuckin’ Conlon’s pillowcase!”

Immediately, everyone started yelling at Race, demanding to know how he could be so stupid, why he would do that, and a few asking how Spot had reacted.

Albert, of course, knew that since Race was friends with just about everybody from every borough, Spot couldn’t hurt him without other boroughs trying to hurt Brooklyn in retaliation. And besides, Race had even managed to get close with the King of Brooklyn, so it wasn’t like there was really any risk, but still.

Pranking Spot fucking Conlon was a stupid-ass move.

“Don’t worry!” Race said confidently, “He hadn’t found it yet when I left but I’s left him a note explainin’ the rules. This’ll be the first inter-borough prank war! It’ll be fun!”

The worst part was how some of the Newsies actually seemed to be agreeing that a prank war including the Brooklyn boys would be fun.

Everyone looked to Jack. It probably wasn’t too late for him to just go over to Brooklyn, apologize, and end the whole thing, but would he do that? It seemed like the smart thing.

Jack shrugged, “Long as nobody gets hurt, like always, should be fine. Might actually be fun.”

Race grinned. A few, Albert included, groaned.

This was going to be a long couple weeks.

...

“So, you don’t seem that thrilled with Racer for startin’ this.”

Albert happened to be in Jacobi’s that day, grabbing some water, when most of the Newsies weren’t. The only other one there was Finch.

To be honest, Albert didn’t actually know Finch that well. He knew he’d showed up a couple years ago and was sarcastic 90% of the time, (not that Albert blamed him for that. He was sarcastic a lot, too.) but he usually hung out with Henry or Sniper and Smalls, and Albert usually stuck with Race, and Romeo and Specs.

The prank war had started last night, and so far, no one, Brooklyn or otherwise, had made another move.

“I’m not,” Albert admitted, “Racer has a habit of bein’ stupid for no reason.”

“I don’t think Spot’ll hurt him.”

“Oh, he won’t.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“This is the second prank war this year and it was only funny the first few times.”

Finch laughed, “You tells it like it is, even about your own best friend, huh?”

“Well, we all know Race talks shit about me, so...”

Finch laughed again, and the twinge in Albert’s chest made him wonder why he was even here.

True, the Newsies were all pretty close. Close enough to at least vaguely know each other’s triggers and what kind of touches everyone was okay with, to count on each other in a fight, to openly know and keep the secret when two boys or two girls started going out... But they still had regular groups or pairs they stuck to. It was inevitable with a friend group that big.

So, why would Finch be straying from his? Was this a prank?

Seeming to sense his thoughts, Finch cleared his throat.

“So... I’s came here today wondering something. If you wanted to be allies.”

Albert was confused, “What?”

“Allies. We prank other people but don’t prank each other.”

“Don’t work like that. Everybody pranks everybody in a prank war.”

“I know,” Finch admitted, “But this time, it’s different, see? This time, we’s up against Brooklyn and Manhattan. And I used to be a Brooklyn boy, so I can tells ya we’s all gonna need friends in a war against them.”

“A prank war,” Albert corrected, “There’s rules for this. Nobody gets hurt.”

“You seriously think all them Brooklyn boys are gonna follow that?”

Albert hadn’t thought of that. He’d been thinking in terms of Spot Conlon, who wouldn’t hurt them because he was so close with Race. But some of his boys definitely would take a chance to soak someone for no reason and call it a prank.

“I know I can’t count on Henry for this,” Finch said, “I’s already asked, and he’s too stupid to see how dangerous this could get. And Sniper and Smalls only ally with each other. I’m askin’ you cause you seem like the smart kind who knows when not to go it alone.”

Aw, what the hell? Albert had never had an ally in a prank war. Maybe this would make it less annoying and more fun.

When Finch spat into his hand and held it out, Albert accepted the spit shake.

...

Unfortunately, Finch was right.

A week into the prank war, and Henry wasn’t hurt bad, when some Brooklyn boys gave him a black eye calling it a prank, but he could have been. Jack had decided not to tell Spot about it, instead giving the Manhattan boys permission to actually hurt people back instead of just the bare minimum defend themselves.

Knowing Spot had ears everywhere, they could only hope that knowing Manhattan was actually allowed to hurt in self defense would deter any Brooklyn boys looking for an easy target.

Of course, this meant that the ones like Jack, Sniper, Finch, Blink, etc, had to teach everyone else to fight at least a little, but it was working out alright so far.

“I don’t see why anyone would wanna soak someone for no reason,” Albert commented, when he and Finch were hanging out in an empty Lodging House. They’d gotten done earlier than anyone else that day.

“It ain’t that simple.”

“How ain’t it?”

Finch shrugged, “All the Brooklyn boys who’s rough is rough for a reason. Some of ‘em had bad folks. Some of ‘em, Spot found in a gang or somethin.’ Some spent time in the Refuge. Some grew up on the streets. All them rough ones grew up so’s they don’t know how to be anything else.”

“Blink’s folks were bad,” Albert pointed out, “Race was in the Refuge for a while. Crutchie grew up on the streets. They all turned out alright.”

“Yeah, cause Jack was there to help ‘em.”

Albert didn’t know how to respond to that.

Finch sighed, “Albert, you don’t get it. Here, everybody’s family. We talk stuff out. In Brooklyn, you got anger problems, Spot just tells ya where to aim it. Ya heal on your own or not at all. That’s just how it works.”

“Is that why you got out?” Albert asked.

He only vaguely remembered Finch coming to the Lodging House. One day, Jack had just introduced him, told the others Finch was one of theirs, now, and given him a bed. Nobody had questioned it, because when Jack didn’t immediately tell someone’s past, it usually meant it wasn’t one that should be asked about.

Finch shrugged, “I got tired of needin’ to be strong all the time. Spot protects who he can, but he’s got a lot more guys than Jack. Most of the time, you gotta protect yourself. Need to make sure the other guys don’t see you as weak. I guess Race noticed I wasn’t cut out for it. Told me I should come over to Manhattan.”

“What made you actually do it?”

Finch hesitated.

“Hey,” Albert said firmly, “Finch, you can tell me anything. Like you said, Manhattan is family.”

The other boy took a deep breath but still didn’t say anything.

“That bad, huh?”

Finch sighed, “I did it because Spot said I had to get out while I could. He said some rough boys got wind about me... about me bein’ queer. He told me to run to Manhattan.”

Albert nodded. He hadn’t expected that, to be honest, but it wasn’t like he could judge.

“Okay. That it?”

Finch seemed relieved, but Albert didn’t really know why. It was common knowledge that several pairs of the Manhattan boys were together, and most of the few girls had paired up with other girls.

“Yeah,” he said finally, “Ya know, Spot can’t be caught supportin’ queers. He’d be dead by the next dawn. Guess the guys who figured out ‘bout me weren’t sure enough to do anything. Still, Spot probably saved my life by tellin’ me they knew. I told my old Brooklyn pals it was cause I had a girl who got sick and died.”

Albert did remember that Finch had come during a cold winter. His Brooklyn friends would have bought it.

“Well, that ain’t gonna happen, here,” he said firmly, “If it was dangerous for queers here, Jack woulda had to kick himself out.”

“Shit, you serious?”

“Course. What did ya think Blink and Mush had goin’ on?”

Finch laughed, “Kinda assumed Jack didn’t know about it.”

“Cowboy is oblivious, but not that oblivious.”

Finch laughed again, and Albert tripped over his next breath.

Aw, hell. Why not?

“And uh...” Albert hesitated, “If Jack was in the business of kickin’ out queers to protect ‘em... he’d have to kick me out, too.”

Finch looked at him in surprise, “Albert—“

They both heard the Lodging House door close loudly, then someone cursed loudly. Definitely not Kloppman.

When he looked at him, Albert didn’t think he’d ever seen Finch so scared.

“I know that voice,” he said quietly, “We needs to hide.”

Albert didn’t question it, just pulling Finch into a broom closet at the end of the bunk bed rows.

Kloppman would be back soon. He’d only gone out on a brief errand. With homefield advantage, Albert and Finch should be able to stay hidden long enough to survive.

“Come on, Snitch, you gots to be quieter than that.”

“Ey, Muddy, I know that fuckin’ queer, Finch, is here. We just gots to find him.”

“What makes you think he’s alone?”

“If he ain’t, we’ll just get rid of whoever protects him, too.”

Their laughter made Albert want to punch something.

Finch was breathing quickly, shaking like a leaf. No one should be able to make him afraid like that.

“Hey,” Albert whispered, “Finch, calm down. It’s okay. They’s not gonna find us. They won’t hurt you.”

“This closet ain’t hidden enough.”

“I remember Muddy and Snitch,” Albert insisted, “They’re dumb as horse shit on the pavement. We just gots to stay quiet and wait for Kloppman to get back.”

It couldn’t be long now, but Finch was clearly too scared to think clearly.

There wasn’t much light in the closet, but Albert grabbed the sides of Finch’s face, digging his fingers into his hair to force the taller boy to look at him.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured, “They won’t find us. Finch, breathe.”

Finch took a deep breath, looking Albert in the eye.

“They won’t hurt you,” he said again.

That was when Finch kissed him, grabbing onto Albert’s wrists to keep him close.

Albert was... surprised, to say the least, but he certainly wasn’t complaining, doing his best to stay silent as he kissed him back.

They pulled apart when they heard Kloppman come in. There was yelling downstairs, and the door slammed. Clearly, the Brooklyn boys weren’t willing to risk tangling with an actual adult, even one that Albert didn’t think could actually fight.

“Hey, anybody here?” he called upstairs, “Anyone wanna explain why I just kicked out two Brooklyn boys?”

“Not that I really wants to, but we should probably get out of the closet,” Albert suggested.

Finch laughed, opening the door.

“It’s probably better ya don’t know, Kloppman!” Albert shouted down the stairs.

“Albert? That you?”

“Finch, too!” Finch shouted.

“Okay! And... be careful, boys! Be discreet!”

Albert stifled a laugh. He’d always suspected that Kloppman knew about the various same-sex pairs, but this was the first real evidence he’d seen.

“So, I takes it this ain’t a prank?” Finch asked.

Albert shook his head quickly, “Not on my end. If it was a prank on yours, you don’t really know what a prank is. I enjoyed that way too much for a prank.”

“Glad we agree.”

“So,” Albert said, sitting down on his bunk.

Finch grinned as he let Albert pull him down next to him, “So.”

“Are we still allies?”

“Hope we’s more than that.”

Albert laughed before leaning forward to kiss Finch again.

#newsies #the newsies #redfinch #albert dasilva #finch cortez #albert newsies #finch newsies #platonic ralbert #racetrack higgins #race newsies #kloppman #violet’s writing

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ultravioletsoul · 4 years

Note

Can you rank your fave CoD antagonists?

Hello there nonny, sorry for taking so long to reply and thank you for your ask ♥♥

Rank my favorite CoD antagonists? Sure, I can do that! There are several antagonists in the series, but I’ll only rank my top 3. Hope that is okay with you c:

3. Jonathan Irons

Original gif

Advanced Warfare may not be a series as popular as BO or MW, but I actually enjoyed the game and I also liked Irons. Honestly, I don’t think we’ve gotten that many antagonists that started out as our allies in CoD (at least I don’t remember any others atm), much any less an American antagonist, so that kinda made him stand out to me.

I’m not familiar with Kevin Spacey’s works, and I barely watched any trailers pre-release. So to see Irons go from someone who I believed genuinely wanted to make the world a better place, where every human being could live in peace and thrive, away from the pointless wars that governments waged, to someone who was willing to use any means necessary to achieve his goals, regardless of how many lives he had to sacrifice... well, that was something that hit me hard.

This man who gave my character a second chance, who treated me (Mitchell) as his son, who cleaned up after the colossal mess that others countries made, helped people from devastated war-zones rebuild their lives and gave them hope for the future, turned out to be someone I was forced to betray because of different viewpoints and philosophies. Despite everything, I think Irons had his heart in the right place, but his methods were ultimately terrible and in his messianic delusions he ended up doing more harm than good, so of course he had to be stopped.

And what I liked about him was that he didn’t start out as a bad man, he didn’t do all those things because of greed, and his characterization wasn’t that of a cartoonish villain. In a way I could find logic in his arguments, he made a few good points about the current state of the world and the inability (or indifference) of many politicians to solve the real problems of the people. But the root of it all lies in the loss of his son, his only child, to a government he no longer trusted nor had any faith in doing what was right. Despite having served in the military in his youth, Irons had grown disillusioned at the way the US handled domestic and international policy, and strongly disagreed with them— opposing the status quo in favor of change.

One could argue that serving in the military was entirely Will’s choice all along, and as a grown adult he knew what he was getting himself into. Still Irons couldn’t help but think that if that war had never happened, Will would still be alive. So that left him with a bitter taste, and it served as the catalyst behind his actions.

If nobody else would bother to do anything to actually solve the world’s problems, then he would be the savior to do it— whether they liked it or not. And he didn’t care what methods he had to use, how many had to die, or if he had to plunge the world into total chaos before he could ultimately end all wars and bring everlasting “peace” (perhaps one of the greatest ironies) as his dream seemed to be. Even at the cost of such a high price.

I don’t think Irons gets the credit he deserves.

2. Raúl Menéndez

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BO2 is one of my favorite games and Raúl is undoubtedly one of the most memorable antagonists in the series. Much like Irons, his actions were heavily motivated by the loss of a loved one but his life is also one sad story, so it’s no wonder he turned out the way he did. Not to justify him, but it’s not hard to understand what led him to do all those things.

From a very young age, his life was destroyed by the actions of Americans, from the horrors of the dictatorship in Nicaragua (in which the Contras were supported by the US); the crippling and disfigurement of his young sister Josefina, due to the greed of an American owner who burned down a warehouse in order to obtain 11,000$ through insurance fraud. After losing everything during an earthquake, and becoming homeless, Raúl and his father started over by selling drugs, successfully establishing a cartel that was so powerful in Nicaragua that they were equally feared and admired among the people.

But this status and power they had newly acquired concerned the US government, and it wasn't long before they sanctioned an assassination order on Raúl's father and sent the CIA in to kill him. Raúl observed it all, a teenager back then, and managed to escape thanks to his father's training. Though he could do nothing to stop it, nothing to save his father, this event marked him and further embittered him against the US and the West. And the last straw was the unfortunate death of Josefina, at the hands of Woods. He lost his sister, the only living relative he had, and his world fell apart. But if we think about it, Raúl was indirectly responsible for her death too, after the horrible torture he put Woods through in Angola. So the next time Woods saw Raúl he lost his mind and threw the grenade that tragically bounced into Josefina's bedroom and killed her.

So he spent all his life orchestrating a huge plan, a brilliant plan, that would shake the US from the very ground. And he was damn charismatic while executing it, earning the support and approval of billions of people all around the world— even from those who lived in US soil!— to begin a world revolution and end the dominance of capitalist nations that had subjugated other weaker countries, amassing huge riches through market economy and wars for resources, destroying lives and sinking many in poverty. And he also manipulates and pits two superpowers against each other... sending everyone to the brink of another world war, or a second cold war at best.

He wanted revenge on the US for playing with the lives of other people, for taking everything he loved away from him, by making them live in fear and destroying everything they had built. He wanted them to feel the same pain, to suffer the way he did. And he wouldn't rest until he achieved that because he had nothing to lose anymore.

Depending on the outcome, he can get revenge on Woods for Josefina, as well. And though we all like it when the "good" guys prevail and foil the plans of the villain, I think this particular ending had a much deeper and stronger emotional impact. The conversation they have at the end is something I didn't expect. Raúl has come to kill Woods but they're both in a place where the years have beaten them down with the weight of they’ve done and rather than an over the top scene, what we’re given is quite the opposite of that.

There’s no screaming, no heated argument between them, no dramatic lines. It’s just two old men who had to live with what they’ve done, and who have come to terms with the inevitability of that moment. Raúl slits Woods’s artery with Josefina’s pendant, and then he does something that surprised me: he closes Frank’s eyes, takes him off the wheelchair and lies his body on the bed. Something that is a huge contrast with what he did to Hudson many years ago... the savagery he used when killing him. For Raúl to behave that way with Woods, the man he considered to be his sister’s killer, it raises the question as to whether he still hated Woods after all these years, or maybe deep down he finally acknowledges that his actions (namely torturing Woods and killing his whole team) was the true motive that led to Josefina’s death.

The thing is, Raúl knows that he's to blame for what happened. It's also the reason why he burns himself alive in front of Josefina's grave. It’s because he has to pay for what he's done to her, too, and he chose to do it in probably the most horrible way possible but it didn’t matter to him. Nothing was more painful than living with the knowledge that his sister died because of what he did.

To him Josefina was the true innocent soul, who didn't deserve any of the suffering she went through.

1. Vladimir Makarov

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It’s no secret that Vladimir is my most favorite antagonist (and character) in all of Call of Duty.

Though his background and motives weren’t as well developed and explained as those of other antagonists in the series, his untold story (which you won’t find anywhere in the game, though you can deduce if you have a basic idea of the situation before and after the fall of the Soviet Union) perhaps says a lot more about him than one might expect.

There’s not a lot we know about his past other than the meager information that was provided in some loading cutscenes, but it’s reasonable to think that Vladimir wasn’t always the trashbag that we see in the games. He once was a young man with dreams of patriotism, who wanted the best for his country, who loved Russia with his soul, and who would do anything to protect her, because as a soldier that was what he was taught to do. As a soldier, that was his purpose in life and without that reason to drive him on, he had nothing left.

And however vague his backstory may seem to be, it gives you an idea that Vladimir in a way was a victim of a system that imparted a type of soft indoctrination on him, from a very young age (as many states do all around the world in some form or another, even those who hold democratic values), all the way to his education in the military academy and his brutal training in the special forces, that further cemented this undying love for Russia, maybe in a way that bordered brainwashing.

His true radicalization came after the fall of the Soviet Union with the loss of his homeland and the Soviet culture as he knew it, as well as Russia becoming weak and losing much of her power and influence across the world. Then came his deployment in Chechnya in 1994, where he lived the horrors of a war that most likely left him psychologically scarred after the experiences he had to go through. And when he returned home, he was kicked out of the armed forces under accusations of human rights violations during the First Chechen War. And they may be true, he probably did a lot of bad things there (under the illusion that he was serving his country for a higher cause), and sadly it’s something commonplace in many armed conflicts. I’m going to leave this short post here for some details on that.

When he returned from war, he didn’t receive any professional help or if he did, it didn’t work. He didn’t know how to cope, he ultimately was unable to adapt to a normal life, he became a misfit. He had lost his job, he had a stain in his career, and finding a decent way to get by was very difficult at the time when the country was in the middle of a political, social, and economic crisis.

He was in financial ruin, and it was hunger that pushed him to become a criminal (something that wasn’t uncommon for ex military men in 90s Russia). Not just that but also hatred for those in power as well as society as a whole, and what they represented: total decadence and the reason why Russia was falling apart with these “stupid” western conceptions about freedom that in his eyes did nothing but give leeway for debauchery and corruption, which he ultimately sought to “fix” by returning Russia to what it used to be (a god-fearing empire under the autocratic rule of a tsar that was likened to a father to all his subjects, and where religion was used as a resource to legitimize his power and as a moral regulator that maintained the social order).

He pretty much felt abandoned, betrayed by his government— a leadership that had done nothing but sink Russia deeper and deeper into ruin, destroying the values under which he was raised and turning people like him into cynical masses that had lost faith in everything and were adrift without any real purpose in life, no future to look forward to, completely disillusioned that the dreams they’d bought into, the promises they had been sold by the west, were nothing but lies.

He’s still a piece of garbage, we know that, but I also think that he’s gone through a lot of struggles and bad experiences in his youth that marked him and filled him with resentment. Everyone sees Vladimir as the puppet master of the storyline of MW, and we have to give him credit for that, but deep down he’s just a man who has been a slave to his own obsessions and ambitions, unable to free himself from the hatred that has poisoned his mind for years, which led him to commit so many atrocities and strip himself from any semblance of humanity— all for the sake of a higher cause, as he undoubtedly tried to justify his actions at the end of the day.

In conclusion, all three were marked by losses in one way or another, and saw themselves as men who had to take the hard path and do what had to be done. And it’s also curious that Call of Duty, while not a game with any deep meaning on the surface, almost seems like social commentary on how war ruins lives and how anyone can do horrible things if put through the wringer enough times. It’s like these stories are trying to say that bad circumstances can make bad men out of seemingly good people, who wouldn’t have done any of the evil they did if maybe things had been different.

And I think that’s what makes these characters so interesting.

#vladimir makarov #raul menendez #jonathan irons #call of duty #modern warfare #black ops #advanced warfare #i'm really sorry again #it took me a while to write this one!#but it's done at long last c:

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dragonshost · 4 years

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Lucy x Lisanna - levitate

“Whatcha doing there, Lisanna?” Lucy asked, plopping down onto the bench beside her. Whatever it was Lisanna was doing, it seemed to involve a lot of small objects - rocks, mostly, but a couple of empty wooden mugs, a dish rag, and a pen, as well as (the weirdest of the bunch) an egg.

Lisanna sighed, setting down a small stick on the table top. “Trying to learn a new magic.” Seeing Lucy’s continued curious gaze still trained on her, Lisanna further clarified, “Levitation. It seemed like it would be useful around the bar and kitchen. But it’s not going so well.”

Poking the thin stick Lisanna had set down earlier, Lucy hummed under her breath in thought. She rolled it back and forth under her finger. “Is this for focusing the magic?”

Her companion nodded. “I don’t have a proper wand, but Kinana said that pretty much anything shaped like this would work.” Her fellow barmaid was far too busy to coach her further on the topic though, so she was a bit stuck on how to proceed further with it.

“Well, she’s not wrong, but...”

“But what?” Lisanna prompted, perking up at Lucy’s knowledgeable-sounding words.

Lucy pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes and frowning at the stick.

“What is it, Lucy?”

Her eyes lifting from the makeshift wand, Lucy met Lisanna’s eyes. “Um... have you ever used holder-type magic before, Lisanna?”

The white haired woman shook her head. “Never. I’m an ability-type.”

Understanding dawned in Lucy’s eyes. “That’s what I thought. Well, good news is that I think I know where you’re going wrong with this.”

Lisanna reached out and clutched Lucy’s free hand, drawing it up to her chest. “You do?!” she asked enthusiastically. “Could you please tell me? I would be so grateful!”

A nervous laugh warbled up out of Lucy’s throat. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to keep it from you!” She gently extracted her hand from Lisanna’s grip, as it was her dominant one. Picking up the stick, she held it horizontally between their bodies. “All of lot of ability-type users start from the wrong type of thinking when trying to use a holder-type magic,” Lucy explained patiently. “They make the assumption that the object holds the magic, and that just reciting the words and making the proper motions will be enough to activate the magic.”

Chagrin swept through Lisanna in a hot wave. Lucy was right. Lisanna had assumed that. “What should I do instead, then?” she asked, glad that she had a holder-type mage willing to talk her through it. There weren’t that many in the guild in the first place, and she was sure that Lucy had better things to do with her time than guide her through a simple magic that even a non-mage could handle easily.

“Truth be told you’re not that far off in your understanding,” Lucy informed her. “Objects like wands usually do come pre-loaded with a spell, or multiple depending on the quality of the ensorcelled object... with the price increasing depending on the type and strength and number of spells. But it’s still up to the wielder to activate them. Here, watch this.” Lucy extended her arm out, the stick now held over the table. “Hold it out like this for me.” Then she passed the stick over to Lisanna.

Lisanna copied the movement, her arm extended to its fullest over the table. “Does my grip matter?”

Lucy shrugged. “For some wands, probably. But this is a normal stick so it doesn’t matter.” Then she reached forward and pressed the skin just above Lisanna’s breasts with two fingertips, her own skin making direct contact with Lisanna’s thanks to the low cut of Lisanna’s blouse. “Now close your eyes and see your magical core in your mind.”

Obeying, Lisanna found it all too easy to concentrate on it, the warmth of Lucy’s finger pads radiating warmth where they connected to her. “Okay...” she breathed out. A bright spark of light, as familiar to her as her own heartbeat, pulsed in her mind’s eye. “I’ve got it.”

“Now imagine the magic flowing from it...” Lucy trailed her fingers across Lisanna’s skin, eliciting a jolt of surprise from the barmaid at the light, tingling sensation. It was through sheer force of will that she kept her eyes closed through it.

Lucy must have leaned closed to Lisanna, for now it came closer to her ear. “Imagine it following this path to your shoulder...” Her breath came out in soft puffs of warm air on Lisanna’s cheek, sending shivers throughout her body. “...And out from your shoulder into your arm, all the way...” Lucy’s fingers trailed the same path she outlined with her voice, Lisanna’s magic swelling under her touch and crackling like electricity as it followed in the wake of her fingers. “...Past your elbow...” Finally Lucy’s fingers reached the palm of Lisanna’s hand though they did not stop there, continuing on to the stick now a little slick with Lisanna’s sweat. “...All the way to your hand and into the stick and into its tip.”

Her magic complied in Lisanna’s mind’s eye, unable to swerve from the path Lucy had carved into her skin with her gentle, delicate touch.

“Now open your eyes,” commanded Lucy.

Lisanna did so, her blue eyes meeting Lucy’s vibrant brown ones far too close to her face for comfort.

A smile curled on Lucy’s face. “Look at the stick now.”

Turning her head, Lisanna looked. A bright spark of light shone at the end of the stick Lisanna held, pulsing in time with her heartbeat (which was more rapid than she’d like to admit). Soon, a smile of her own had broken out on her lips at the sight.

“Good job,” Lucy praised her. “That would be enough to activate any stored spell in an object.” She paused, then tacked on, “Any object that isn’t cursed, anyway. Those can be activated by your ambient magical output, which is what makes them so dangerous. But for anything without such a delicate hair-trigger, this is the method you use.”

Lisanna nodded her understanding, and then looked back at Lucy. “What should I do next?”

Having not yet backed off - maybe she hadn’t noticed how close she was to Lisanna? - Lucy contemplated the question for a moment. “I’ve never tried a levitation spell before, but... try envisioning a hand coming out of the stick to pick up the... pen.”

“Okay.” The pen seemed light enough. Lisanna concentrated, trying to form the magic into the shape she wanted. It seemed to work at first, but the second she tried to lift the pen, it wobbled and collapsed, breaking apart and scattering, the light dying from the stick entirely. With a frown of concentration, Lisanna summoned up the magic to the makeshift wand once more and tried again to pick up the pen. And again, it broke apart, making the pen wobble on the tabletop but no more. “This... isn’t working,” Lisanna informed Lucy. “It doesn’t want to hold its shape.”

Tapping her lips with a fingertip, Lucy offered, “Maybe it’s because your magic is used to residing in your skin? And doesn’t hold together outside of it?”

Lisanna bit her bottom lip. “You mean it uses my body as a frame?”

“Mmn.” Lucy nodded. “Yeah. Like water. It needs a container to hold it in shape.” She paused for a moment, deep in thought. “Or... no. Maybe it’s more like a muscle? It could get stronger with more practice.”

A sigh released from Lisanna’s lips. “So basically I won’t be able to do this spell. At least not right now.”

Lucy’s face twisted up in thought. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” She tapped the end of the stick. “Try putting your magic into here again.”

Doing so, Lisanna looked to Lucy for further instruction.

“Now imagine that the point is super sticky,” Lucy told her, spreading her hands out and then pressing the fingertips of each hand together. “Like really, really sticky. Like... tree sap.”

Nodding, Lisanna envisioned it with all of her might. There was no visible change in the light at the end of the stick, but Lisanna could feel that something about it had changed all the same. “Now what?”

“Press it against the pen, and think of it sticking hard to it.” After Lisanna complied, Lucy reached out and gently took Lisanna’s elbow in her hand. “Now keep that image solid in your mind.” When Lisanna nodded that she had it, Lucy lifted Lisanna’s arm at the elbow.

To their mutual delight, when the makeshift wand lifted, the pen came with it, stuck fast to the tip.

Lowering Lisanna’s arm, Lucy instructed, “Now imagine it releasing the pen.” Lisanna did so, the pen uncoupling from the stick successfully. Lucy then guided Lisanna’s arm over to the wooden mug. “Let’s try something heavier.”

“Wouldn’t the egg be more appropriate, weight-wise?” Lisanna inquired.

Lucy shook her head. “Too messy if you drop it accidentally.”

That was a fairly good point.

Together, they repeated the process from before with the mug. Lisanna had to pour more magic into the stick to get it to properly adhere to the mug, however soon it was in the air just like the pen had been.

Just as Lisanna was about to exclaim happily, the stick violently exploded in her hand. She winced as splinters embedded themselves into her flesh and the mug dropped onto the tabletop, bouncing and rolling away, clattering onto the floor on the opposite side.

“Are you alright, Lisanna?!” Lucy asked, grabbing the clean dish rag Lisanna had been practicing upon earlier and pressing it against the woman’s hand. “I’m sorry!” she babbled, panic in her eyes. “I should have warned you that could happen when the magic exceeds a vessel’s capacity. I’m so sorry.”

To Lucy’s visible surprise, Lisanna threw her free arm around Lucy and drew her in close. “It’s alright!” she told her, pressing her face against the side of Lucy’s head. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident is all. And it doesn’t hurt that much.” Then she smiled slightly, even though she knew Lucy couldn’t see it from their current position. “It’s a good thing we didn’t go with the egg, though. That was a good call on your part.”

Lucy let out a short laugh, no longer stiff in Lisanna’s grip and instead leaning into the embrace. “Let’s get the splinters pulled out before we try again, though?”

Lisanna nodded, drawing back slightly. But before she pulled away completely, she placed a peck on Lucy’s cheek, the skin warming and reddening under her lips as she did. “Thank you, Lucy,” she told her, now pulling away enough to look the blonde in the eyes. “For the help. I mean it.”

Red faced, Lucy nodded shortly. “Y-you’re wel... welcome,” she said, swallowing heavily. “Any... any time. I’m glad I came over to see what you were doing.”

Lisanna, too, was very glad that she had.

Very, very much so.

#luli #lisanna strauss #lucy heartfilia #fairy tail #fanfiction #dragon did a request thing #that ended up so much longer than i thought it would #sassyhazelowl #dragon roars

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magicalgirldiary · 3 years

Text

workday in the life: hybrid teaching

first thing in the morning, I wake up and commence my morning routine. much of this is the same as it was pre-pandemic: I shower and do my makeup, make coffee (and put most of it into a thermos), eat breakfast, and try to give myself writing time before I think about the day at school ahead.

a few minutes after I wake up, my phone starts sending me push notifications to complete the daily health screening that allows me to come to campus. I’m asked to self-report symptoms and whether I have knowledge that I’ve been in close contact with anyone who had tested positive. when I complete the questionnaire, I get a message that clears me for the day. on my way out the door, I choose whichever mask best coordinates with my outfit and throw it into my purse.

when I arrive on campus, I put my mask on after parking the car. masks are required in all public spaces on campus, including outdoor spaces if you’re moving around. when I get to the front door of my building, I have to scan my ID to open the door. inside, I use the health app to scan a QR code to record where I am on campus.

in my office, I take my mask off, hanging it just beside my desk. mid-morning, building staff come by to empty trash cans and wipe door handles and light switches, and I slip on the mask whenever they knock on my door and briefly enter my space.

some of my colleagues who share a hallway with me come to campus, and I hear their doors open and close. now and then we’ll stop and have a conversation in each other’s doorways (by which I mean one person in or just outside the doorway, the other person seated at their desk), masks always on. our building used to be busy with tons of faculty offices and students dropping by for office hours, but we’ve all moved our office hours virtually and our floor doesn’t have classrooms on it, so the only student we see is the student worker if we happen to stop by the printer room. some faculty have permission to teach entirely remotely for health or family reasons. the building is uncannily quiet.

some days I bring lunch, keeping it in the refrigerator in our work room. all our hallways, rooms, and buildings have signs on the doors telling us which route we have to take to avoid people walking too close to each other, but as it happens I never see another soul in these rooms.

I still have to go across campus to check my mail. when I leave my office, I have to be sure I bring my keys, ID, and cell phone--all of which I need to get in and out of buildings. around the side of my building is one of our new outdoor classroom spaces--big plastic bench/desks that are spaced far apart but still close enough to the building to pick up wifi. once or twice I’ve seen a colleague holding office hours, their student sitting at the next table over.

the quads are sparsely populated if at all--all of campus feels like a ghost town. when I near the student center, I might see a handful of students eating lunch outside at picnic tables set up to accommodate social distancing. I enter the student center through the designated entrance beside the mail room, again scanning both my ID and a QR code on my phone. I enter through “enter” doors and exit through “exit” doors. if I have an errand on the upper levels of the student center, I walk all the way to one end of the building to use the “up” staircase; the other staircases are all designated as “down” only.

if I’m picking up lunch from the dining hall, I scan a QR code and check in with the staff, showing them the health pass on my phone that confirms I’m allowed to be on campus. the dining hall floor is covered in arrows and spacing markers to indicate proper social distancing. all plates, cups, and cutlery are disposable. to-go boxes are in high demand, so I’m unlikely to get one: I bring a plastic bag to hold my individually-packaged salads and dessert(s) so I can carry my open plate. all semester I haven’t seen more than a handful of students eating in the dining hall at once.

if I happen to meet another faculty member I know, we go upstairs to a huge, empty overflow dining room and sit in carefully-spaced chairs as we eat lunch together. otherwise, I take my lunch to my office and eat alone. on the days of our regular professional development lunches, I listen in to our Zoom call; but most of us don’t like eating on camera. except for the people presenting, even our own meetings are mostly full of little black “video off” squares. before the meetings begin, the hosts attempt small talk; but Zoom doesn’t allow for out-loud side-conversations. I usually pull up something else on my other screen as our Zoom call is going, even if I’m interested and paying attention. I think we all do, sometimes, even when we have our video on. my email is full of notifications from student health about this or that student who is out of class until x date. most of the students I receive emails about still log on to our class Zoom call.

after lunch, I teach. on the afternoons I teach one class, I have to leave my office at least 15 minutes before class begins even though I’m only going to the building next door. I print out any papers I need, load up my tote bag with all the components of my technology setup, retrieve a camera called a Meeting OWL from a locked closet (I borrow it from my colleague who teaches in the same room right after me), and then heft my full tote bag, the box the OWL comes in (almost as big as the tote bag), and my water bottle over to my second-floor classroom. I scan my ID to get into the building; like the building with my office, there’s only one “enter” door and “up” staircase. in the classroom we’re not allowed to move desks, but various pieces of the professors’ workstation get moved around a lot, so after I scan the QR code marking me present in my own classroom, I have to move a table, a podium, and a chair so that the HDMI cord reaches my laptop. I turn on the projector system and adjust the volume all the way up. I plug in my laptop to the power because it can’t run a full eighty-minute Zoom call without dying and to the ethernet because the wireless connection is randomly bad in that building some days. I plug in the OWL camera to the wall and to my computer. I open the Zoom call, make sure the projector is working, and start admitting students from the waiting room. I make sure Zoom is set to use the OWL as my camera and that sound goes through the classroom speakers. no more than three students trickle into the classroom; I ask them to show me their health passes because that’s part of our procedure. this was hard to keep track of in the first couple of weeks of the semester, but now I don’t even have to consult the sticky note of instructions I taped onto my laptop before the first day of class.

when class begins, I make sure the meeting is recording and that I can see the waiting room and the chat on the big screen. occasionally, this classroom has inexplicable audio issues and my Zoom students have to tell me the audio is “screeching.” usually if I mute and un-mute myself a few times in succession we fix the problem; but the internet connection is not so easily fixed. once this semester I had to abandon the classroom after 20 minutes and retreat back to my office to get a stable internet connection. the in-person students had to go back to their dorms and log on to their computers to finish class.

the class meeting is fine. the students are interested in the material and are frequently invited to speak from their personal experience, so discussion happens in spite of everything. but this is a class in which I made a special effort to learn “Zoom silence,” which is much longer than your usual classroom silence because you can only really see one or two people’s faces. sometimes I call on students and worry that they won’t answer, which is silly, because it’s their job to answer; but I still feel anxious about it. some students send me private messages in the Zoom call that they have to step away for a moment or that they’re going to the restroom--and although I don’t ask or require them to do that at all, it helps when I know that someone is definitely not going to answer right away.

assuming we make it through class with relatively few tech issues, I end class five minutes early so that I can pack up my things and give the next professor time to setup his various tech. this is also supposed to help with traffic in the hallways--to keep students from piling up in any one place--but not once this semester have I seen more than four or five students in an entire classroom building hallway at one time. students who don’t have a class immediately after mine will hang back to help clean, taking a paper towel and the class supply of disinfectant and wiping down their desks. I take care of the rest, spraying and wiping all the surfaces we’ve touched, even though it makes one of the tables I use particularly sticky. when I’ve unplugged and packed everything, I head back to my office.

on the afternoons I teach two classes, I’m in a different building with a different tech setup. my other classroom has a standing desk, which I prefer over having to teach sitting down. here, I plug in the computer to the wall, the ethernet, and the HDMI cable that goes to the projector. I unfold and plug in my folding document camera, a small clip-on webcam (although my laptop has a webcam) that I can swivel back and forth to try to capture more of the classroom, and a giant round directional microphone (not ideal, since students can’t hear me if I stand behind it--but it works better than my laptop or webcam microphones).

classes proceed in more or less the same way as the other classroom, though these classes involve more switching between cameras (which involves random, odd moves such as “advanced-share screen the doc cam instead of switching cameras because if you click ‘switch camera’ everything shows up backwards”). the doc cam is my whiteboard--even though I have a perfectly good and functional whiteboard--because we found out early on that cameras don’t pick up the whiteboard well.

the first day I taught my two classes back-to-back, I was scheduled to move to a classroom across the hall for the second class. I had to wait for a colleague to pack up her complex, multi-part tech setup and then redo my entire setup, which meant I started class frazzled and nearly ten minutes late. so I don’t move classrooms anymore. it turns out the class I was moving for is completely remote due to the professor’s health accommodations, so no one is trying to use the classroom after me.

in my second class, I often have only one student physically present in spite of expecting I’d have at least six or seven per class (and this was after I divided my class into two shifts who would have the opportunity to attend in-person every other day). since small group work is so important in this class, my lone in-person student often has to join the Zoom call just for breakout rooms; and I can’t drop in to that student’s breakout room once they’ve started. the college learned early on that if two people in the same room are on the same Zoom call with audio on, the audio begins to echo and then quickly mutates into something that sounds like someone has opened a terrifying, hellish wormhole. you can’t have more than one person in a Zoom call in the same room unless everyone is completely muted.

still, breakout rooms are often silent or chat-conversations only (comprised of things like can you hear me? and so-and-so your mic isn’t working and send me your emails for the Google doc). I know some of the students do the work and some don’t. I could have them turn things in individually to prove they’re thinking or working, but I don’t like the way that feels. I have no idea how to help them get out of the class what they normally would in the ways of conversation and community.

I try to make sure every student can see me listening to them when they speak, but I spend most of my time facing my computer. there are simply more students online, and I’m worried more about whether they can hear me than whether the student in-person can hear me from six feet away. sometimes in this classroom I accidentally end up literally turning my back on my in-person student(s), which I feel horrible about. but I have to be watching the chat for answers and also writing on a piece of paper under the document camera. I can’t step further away from the document camera, and I can’t move among the desks like I used to.

when each class is over, we wipe desks and surfaces as needed. I unplug everything and pack it back into my tote bag. sometimes it’s so still in the upstairs hallway that the automatic lights turn off. sometimes I’m so still in the classroom that the automatic lights go off on me, and students with their cameras on giggle to see me flailing an arm around to get the lights back on. the few people who attend in-person have long cleared the building by the time I’m ready to go, and I descend an empty “down only” staircase and walk back across an empty quad to the building where my office is.

when I return to my office and pack up for the day--when I don’t have a department meeting or an appointment with a colleague (all of which occur--where else?--on Zoom)--I make sure to take my laptop and charger cord home with me. I double-check that I’m not leaving behind any materials I would absolutely need to conduct the next few days of classes. every day, I pack up my office as if I won’t be back for two weeks, because I never know if I’m going to wake up the next morning with symptoms--or else if I’m going to be notified that having a student present in my classroom counts as having “close contact” with them, although our classrooms are measured out to make sure everyone sits six feet apart.

I wear my mask all the way to my car.

#mine #magicalgirldiary #academia #teaching #proflife #PhD life #faculty life

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eunahfmdarchive · 3 years

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dancing cartoon - partial lyrics credit, partial composition credit, partial production credit.

date: january 2021. word count: 1,275, not including lyrics. 1. this is so bad, 2. my knowledge of music production terms is extremely rudimentary, but 3. i’m trying, ok this is 4am ramblings from a girl whose musical education is limited to singing lessons, i know my vocal ranges and that’s about it and uh 4. i am going to bed. edit: 5. will i ever not ramble holy shit calm down girlie (i’m girlie)

CW: mentions of alcohol.

the idea for dancing cartoon is planted during that damn cruise that the companies sent everyone on. truthfully, eunah had a rather decent time, holed up with her books for company either in her room or in the onboard library, but she’d still find a reason to complain about it -- like the fact that she’d had cameras thrust in her face at every opportunity, and to a lesser extent, being forced by social obligation and pressures to show her face at one too many parties.

but, shockingly, she’d enjoyed herself, especially on new year’s eve. she relaxed for once. totally, fully relaxed. the idea of a party song wormed its way into her head the next morning, right next to the hangover induced headache.

the idea wanders out of her mind again, until she’s sitting in a production studio with a producer she’s become particularly close with over the last year, fiddling around with different beats as they run after that spark that means they’ve got something special -- and then, over the uptempo, lighthearted beat they’d just loaded up, it hits her. it begs the question, how to make a party song, but keep it in line with the rather vague guidelines dimensions gave them of ‘light’, ‘thoughtful’, and ‘nostalgic’? on one hand, eunah’s glad they trust her with her solo music, but as they’re filling out the tracklist options, she’s anxious to submit as much good, actually listenable work as possible, just in case they take back their trust. she still hasn’t gotten a song on a 7rophy release since blow your mind, after all.

with a starting point finally in hand, they turn to the melody. eunah goes back and forth for hours between the guitar she brought from home, and the keyboard provided with the room, singing nonsensically to pin down a tune, before she even thinks about the words.

“i want it to be danceable, if you know what i mean?”

a nod.

“but, in, like, a,” as an example, rather than describing the vibe with words, eunah bops her head back and forth, accompanied by a weak raising of her arms, “like that. something ... oh, mellow. mellow. that’s the word.”

the vibe they ultimately settle on -- because vibes are an important component of any eunah song, probably too important -- is the feeling of standing at the edge of a party, catching someone’s eye, and the way it almost feels like the world closes in. the party becomes its own place, out of time, out of space. the track that they slowly build, one layer after another, aims to replicate that sensation. it has a retro feeling without feeling old fashioned. at least, eunah hopes it doesn’t.

“would it be cheesy if maybe, later on, we added in some party noises in the back of the track? like, voices and things -- or it could be at the start. at least. uh, maybe. or not.” she’s second guessing herself but��they eventually come to the conclusion that, yeah, maybe it would be a little bit cheesy, but it would also contribute to the overall mood of the song.

dancing all the night i’m dancing like I’m crazy gonna forget about you today drink so much right? so sweet like soda pop, i can’t get drunk

lovesickness, the fleeting feelings for someone you see across a crowd that never looks back. eunah’s not usually one for one night stands or casual sex, but she’s felt this way before anyways, captivated by someone whose eyes look right through her. in eunah’s case, they usually can’t see her in the crowd. she’s too small, too unassumingly dressed. still, the party persists. drinks keep on flowing, and sometimes you don’t even feel them hit you, never realising just how drunk you are until later. but here, later doesn’t exist. the idea is to match the lyrics with the timelessness of the beat, and the placid multi generational appeal of the melodies starting to bounce off the walls around them. it’s somewhat twee, she thinks, and she almost feels like she’s writing down to herself, and underestimating the types of concepts she could potentially pull off.

but, she’d argue, party girl is a lot different to artsy girl or emo girl, and it’s a concept she doesn’t feel confident enough to pull off without her members standing next to her. puzzle from mezzanine was very out of her comfort zone as a soloist, for example. and so, they stick to simple, formulaic sequences of notes, but eunah likes them nonetheless.

baby woo i’m so dizzy woo i’m leaning on you feel so high feel so good it’s like dancing cartoon tonight

dancing all the night drink so much right? it’s getting hotter i’m getting crazier tonight is perfect because there’s no tomorrow

the song starts to build up, becoming less of a sit and sway track, and more like a song eunah thinks she’d dance with her friends too if she was to get particularly drunk, clasping each others’ hands and spinning around. it fits the mood perfectly. it’s exactly what she was trying to convey with her original, embarrassing little chair dance. though, it sort of implies that the narrator managed to get with the guy, especially with the lyrics about kissing and falling in love that her partner amends into the final chorus, and that typical third act key change they implement. eunah doesn’t think she does get the guy though -- to her it feels more accurately that they’ve written a song about a girl at a party who dances the night away, getting absolutely sloshed, in an attempt to forget about the man that keeps showing up in her peripheral vision, but won’t spare her a second glance. it’s getting hotter and she’s getting crazier because her inhibitions are down thanks to all that too sweet alcohol she didn’t realise she was drinking. she’s dizzy, but she’s having fun, and the world around her has turned into a dancing cartoon. eunah draws a little squiggle under that line. a title like that might point to her real intentions behind the meaning of the song, even if it does admittedly just sound like a fairly tame crush ode.

she repeats the line ‘tonight is perfect because there’s no tomorrow’ for the song’s final line, drawing a line under the enclosed singular world of the eternal party they’re throwing by way of the song. a lot of songs with this kind of sentiment, she thinks, have a lot more explicitly sexual connotations, and though there’s nothing wrong with that, eunah quite enjoys her personal, more dreamlike angle.

they layer up her vocals during the choruses and pre-choruses, but allow the high note that beckons in the bridge to speak for itself, before the voices and party sounds from the fade in intro come back in, in an attempt to suck the listener into the cartoonish party world that the song exists in. the instrumental by itself has that nostalgic vibe that dimensions said they were looking for, for sure. it’s a good song for relaxing, eunah thinks, when she listens back to the finished project. a good song for dancing too, like she intended, but somehow it turned out as less of a song to play at a party, and more so a song to listen to while imagining you’re at a party.

oh well. introverted as she is, that works too. it’s probably more fitting for her. after all, most of the time she spends at parties is against the wall. save for new year’s eve, eunah really doesn’t have much experience with dancing and drinking all night. all that’s left to do is submit it, and hope that the company don’t call her out. even if the song is a finished project, with a start and end, even if she likes it, eunah knows that its instrumentals and lyrics are derivative of countless other pop songs -- brimming with potential to get lost in the crowd.

#fmdverification #alcohol tw #1/5 verifs for 3unah!!#sleep time........ yeth

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lettersofsky · 5 years

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DistantPastZine - The Handmaid - Time is a River

Last piece I wrote for the @distantpastzine

Rating:Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning:No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom:Homestuck Character:The Handmaid (Homestuck) Language:English

Time is a winding river and your existence is bullshit. So you deal with it.

Time is a winding river.

It has many little offshoots and creeks that will eventually dry up and fade away into nothing, not even worth considering when the main body of the river continues to flow as it always does; ever onwards towards its predisposed destination.

You think that’s bullshit.

You let everyone around you know just how bullshit you think that is.

Which means you let the Cueball that is “raising” you know exactly what you think of his attitude and opinion towards time and the continuum of it all. He, of course, mocks you for your “childish” thoughts in comparison to his boundless knowledge but that doesn’t stop you from thinking that each and every time he stars spewing words about destiny and pre-decided upon paths that he’s just pulling a load of bullshit from the depths of his empty, white head.

You know time. You know it better than he does.

You know time. You have to know it to break it, shatter it, make it do what you want of it in ways no one else had ever thought possible. It’s what you do, it’s what you were created to do.

And that gall of him to think you’ll just lay down and fall into whatever set of decisions and paths he and his “Lord” want of you is beyond laughable, it’s disgusting.

So you ignore him. At basically every occasion.

And it annoys him to no end.

And they can’t kill you for it. Killing you would be a blessing, a relief, it’s what you want so they can’t threaten you with that when you misbehave and ignore orders and suggestions.

Which you do often by taking time into your own hands like you’re supposed to and instead of contributing to the main body of the river, you ignore the ever-flowing continuum for something infinitely more appealing and enjoyable to experience. Even if you can only experience it yourself from the side lines.

That’s enough for you.

Well it isn’t but there’s no point being upset or angry about it when you’re on your own. No, it’s best to direct those emotions to someone deserving of being on the receiving end of them instead of keeping them trapped inside your own head with no outlet to project them at.

Keeping anger to yourself is just stupid. Being angry on your own is just stupid.

You’re not stupid. You’re not doing that.

What you are doing, is watching one of the creeks you’d decided to intervene in.

You’ve set this one into motion and now you’re going to sit back and watch it play out.

The main body of the river did not have a very kind outcome for the trolls you’ve been observing on and off through its flow of time, which was both rude and awful so you were going to ignore it as long as you could. Which, considering that you could ignore the rules of time however you wished by breaking them in new ways and the fact that you had a limitless life span to figure out new and interesting ways to do so, was a very, very long time.

You had so much empty time to fill however you wanted to.

And what you wanted right now was to watch the lives of this band of outcasts and rebellion sowers go about their lives together now that Really Red Tiny One wasn’t going to be strung up and executed by some unhappy Religious Clown asshole.

Well, actually they’re being a bit boring right now what with their quadrant-blurring antics and the like, right now so you might just skip ahead into the future a bit to see if you can find a more interesting viewpoint and everything is on fire.

You promptly say ‘fuck that’ to that conclusion and tear yourself a way into a time somewhere between the disgustingly affectionate quadrant-blurring antics and the firey doom of something having gone wrong and find yourself somewhere much more interesting.

Your favourites have somehow gotten themselves to survive long enough to meet up with Winged Pretty Boy, and it looks like this time around he’s gotten himself a collar made out of clown teeth scars, which certainly is something you’ve never seen before. Probably because you tend to pass Winged Pretty Boy over for the more interesting figures that are Spider Pirate and… the other one… whatever he was, it’s unimportant. The point is that your favourites have met up with him and there looks to be an argument breaking out between then and Winged Pretty Boy and fuck yes. You have chosen a great place to pop back in on the timeline.

Sparky is shouting at Winged Pretty Boy, Winged Pretty Boy is shouting back, Really Red Tiny One is trying to calm them both down, Predator Big Cat is looking between the three of them like she’s as ready for a fight to break out as you are, though for different reasons of course, and Caregiver looks to be sporting the beginning of a headache.

You hope a fight does break out, that would be so much fun to watch.

It probably won’t because you’re sure that Sparky is more arguing with Winged Pretty Boy because Really Red Tiny One can’t quite look at the other mutant without his eyes stalling on the ring of hideous looking scars around his throat. Also you know for a fact that Sparky agrees somewhat with Winged Pretty Boy; shared experiences giving them similar mindsets and all but fuck.

You would really like to see a fight break out though. Just think of how dramatic that would be!

You’re starting to wish that you had something to munch on while you watch all this drama unfold before your eyes when your whole mood takes a urn for the worst as Cueball makes an appearance.

Asshole can’t even let you enjoy the unfolding drama the way you want to without coming in to check that you’re going to do what he wants, which is bullshit because neither you nor he would exist if you hadn’t done what he wanted at some point in your future so why can’t he just leave you be to experience the closest thing you have to an actual existence?

Fucking asshole Cueball. What does he want now?

“You can’t possibly be at this again, can you?”

Yes? So what if you are? It’s not as if any time you waste actually means anything does it? Not when you can just tear your way into whenever the hell you want to. Or does his limitless knowledge gloss over that little glaring detail?

“It’s foolish to see these timelines past where they diverge from the main timeline,” and he’s fucking ignoring you again. Even though you both know for a fact that he can hear every single, tiny thing you’ve ever thought to yourself. Asshole Cueball. “Even more so when you further them past the point where they should have collapsed in on themselves from their lacking relevance.”

Again… so what if you are? What’s he going to do about it? Is he going to kill you? Is he going to lock you in your room like a child refusing to do her chores before she goes out to play? Is he going to lock your powers away? Tell Big Bad Skull Man on you like a little snitch?

You’d like to see him try.

“I don’t need to do any of that. For you’ve already lost your interest in these pathetic lower life forms and whatever nonsense they get up to with their fleeting lives.”

… Fuck.

“The timeline is already starting to fall apart without your attention on it, isn’t it? It isn’t stable enough to support itself this far away from the main timeline.”

Fuck.

“Even if you wanted to put it back together and hold onto it longer, which we both know you don’t, you’ll just be acting as the voyeur once again. Always watching from the sideline, never able to interact in ways that would be anything that even ghosted as satisfactory, aren’t you?”

Maybe you like being the voyeur? Had he never thought of that? Fucking asshole Cueball coming in and ruining a whole timeline, a whole new scenario and situation with so many off-branching possibilities, for you.

“I believe we both know the answer there.”

… Fucker.

“I will see you after you sow the Seer’s death into the Clown’s primitive scripture, you have another assignment waiting for you afterwards.”

Of course you do, you have nothing but assignments, task after task after task with nothing in between and you’re alone again.

Fucking Cueball just leaving like that, fuck him.

And the timeline you were watching is gone too; collapsed in on itself before it got to the juicy part like they always do. Enough to catch your interest by never enough for you to really enjoy it like you want to.

This is also bullshit.

Your whole existence is bullshit.

…

You suppose you should get to work then, not like you have anything better to do then ensure the river of time flowed like it was supposed to.

#distantpastzine #The Handmaid #Handmaid #Homestuck #Fanfic

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blueboxesandtrafficcones · 4 years

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The French Connection - Chapter 6

A HardyxMiller AU

Ellie Miller is left to go on her honeymoon alone after a devastating secret about her fiance comes to light - halfway through the wedding ceremony. Sitting in St Pancras International in London waiting for her train, she runs into none other than her uni rival/best friend Alec Hardy, on the run from his own recent heartbreak.

They decide to make use of Ellie’s pre-paid trip, rekindling their friendship and escaping real life; yet, it turns out their years at uni are the hardest to outrun. Based on this prompt from @timepetalscollective

Chapters will be posted every Wednesday and Sunday. Beta’d by the wonderful @stupidsatsuma

Masterlist | AO3

---

“Ellie.”

The soft whisper of her name stirred her, making her whimper and hide her face in her pillow. It was soft, warm, and altogether heavenly; she didn’t want to get up.

“Ellie, we’re here.”

She grunted, swatting halfheartedly in the direction of the voice, wondering dimly why her pillow was speaking. This is the strangest dream I’ve ever had.

“Miller!”

Eyes snapping open she bolted upright, blinking rapidly as she tried to take in her surroundings. She was seated on an empty coach, against the window, alone but for Hardy who sat next to her – worryingly in the direction she’d just leaned away from. Was I asleep on him?

“Wha’?”

He stood, settling his hands on his hips as he waited for her. “We’re here,” he repeated. “Time to get off the bus.”

“Did I sleep the whole way?” She rose as well, turning her back for a moment to discreetly wipe at her mouth, grimacing at the crusted drool before sliding her purse over her shoulder. “Sorry.”

“S’all right.” Stepping back he let her lead the way off the bus, alighting onto a sandy carpark where dozens of other tour buses were parked, a steady stream of people walking past.

They fell into step, Hardy gently guiding her towards a vaguely-familiar looking woman wearing a fashionable scarf and holding a clipboard. She gave them a severe look as they joined the rest of the group, before beginning to speak.

“Bienvenue a Versailles. Originally a modest hunting lodge built by Louis Thirteen, he and his successors through Louis Sixteen built it up to what you see today, when the family lost it during the Revolution. What you see in front of you is le Cour d’Honneur, or the Royal Court. Then we will pass through the Gate of Honor, where we will meet our guide. Please, follow me.”

Eyes wide Ellie followed the group, breathless as she stared at the gates. The fence along them was gold, shining brilliantly in the morning sun. It would be imposing on its own, were it not for the gate itself, double the height and topped with beautiful scrollwork and, at the highest point, a crown.

“This is beautiful,” Ellie whispered to Hardy as they crossed in front towards the entrance. “I’m so happy I’m here.”

When she tore her eyes away to glance at him, he was smiling softly. “I’m glad. C’mon.”

“Oh, wow,” Ellie murmured, as they stepped out of the Palace into the gardens.

Hardy hid a smile by fussing with his sunglasses, situating them firmly on his nose to combat the bright sun. She’d been saying some variation of that for the last hour, all through the tour of the Palace. Even he had to admit that it was, maybe, somewhat impressive, despite his thoroughly-Scottish Presbyterian austerity. Of course, it’s no surprise they went bankrupt. “We’ve got an hour before we’re to be back at the bus – what d’you want to do?”

“Can we walk through the gardens?” She turned to him, smiling hopefully as if he might actually say no.

“If you like,” was all he said, waiting patiently while she pulled out her own sunnies and fussed with her camera. “Ready?”

They headed straight, and he let her choose the path, listening with one ear as she chattered on, recapping the tour as though he hadn’t been beside her the entire time, highlighting the parts she’d liked best.

“-oh, but that bedroom! Can you imagine? And who could possibly need all that staff! I mean, I wouldn’t turn down someone to do the cooking and cleaning, I’ll admit, and I suppose it’d be nice to have someone else do the laundry, but still! How do you live like that and take yourself seriously? Did they honestly believe that they had been chosen to be treated like gods, that they were so much better than anyone else? Not to mention-”

“Where are we going?” he cut her off, as they angled off past the third pond. “I mean, d’you have a direction in mind? Because if it’s a stroll to take in the gardens you’re after…” He gestured vaguely.

Ellie blinked at him before glancing around. “It’s nice,” she shrugged, “but actually, I was heading for le Petit Trianon. It was Marie Antoinette’s bolthole when court pressures got to be too much.”

He stopped dead to stare at her, before shaking his head and sighing. “It must’ve been very hard to be Queen of France.”

“Oh, don’t be an arse.��

“What?” he protested, as they continued down the tree-lined path towards the mansion appearing in the distance. “I’m just saying, not exactly like she had to work for a living!”

Ellie scoffed. “Clearly you were never a teenage girl, because if you had been, you would not be saying that. D’you know how vicious women can be?”

“You kidding me?”

“No, I’m not kidding! She was under tremendous pressure to be perfect. The other women at Court expected her to have the best of everything, the latest of everything, while the average citizen saw her as an unapologetic spender, wasting money on clothing and parties while they starved. She was a victim of the French court, and it cost her her life! It’s easy for men, the expectations of them are minimal at best, but women are expected to be happy and light, a perfect hostess… witty but not too smart, knowledgeable without knowing more than the man she’s talking to, loyal and obedient to someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her dignity or reputation! We’re supposed to just forgive any transgression, no matter how big, any humiliation or belittlement and just take it with a smile! It’s utter bullshit, it’s a ridiculous standard, and it’s not fair!”

Hardy stared at her, taken aback. Her chest heaved, eyes leaking tears, her expression heartbreakingly lost and small. This isn’t about Marie Antoinette, he realized, watching her lower lip tremble. “I’m sorry, Miller,” he said quietly, sighing. “You’re right, it’s not.”

“Don’t patronize me,” she warned, wiping angrily at her cheeks. “I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” he rolled his eyes, before checking his watch. “Now, we’ve got forty minutes, and it’ll take most of that to get back to the bus. Let’s go see her hideaway, then get back to the group – I don’t fancy being left behind.”

“My father used to have affairs,” Hardy said apropos of nothing, making Ellie’s gaze snap towards him.

They were seated on a riverboat, the last leg of the tour being a boat ride up the Seine, getting on at Sèvres and sailing up towards the disembarkation point near the Musée d'Orsay, which was only a few blocks from their hotel. They’d claimed spots at the very back of the boat, and given the light load of the group, were practically alone, most people congregating at the front.

Ellie had been lost in her thoughts, wondering about any deeper symbolism in her desire to look back at where they’d been rather than forward towards where they were going.

“What?”

“My father,” he repeated, staring determinedly out the back window, “constantly made a fool of my mum. She always tolerated it, looked the other way, and I’m sorry to say I always thought less of her for that. That she should’ve gotten out when she could, that she shouldn’t have let him put her- put us through that.”

She tilted her head, trying to wrap her head around her words even as she marveled at his openness; he’d never discussed his home life before. “I imagine she had no easy choices,” she said diplomatically.

“My point is,” Hardy sighed, glancing her way, “that I’ve seen what happens when a woman just takes what her husband gives her-” his face tightened, suggesting things Ellie didn’t want to unpack at that particular moment, “that it will destroy her. If your family’s upset in the moment, that’s one thing, but don’t let them carry on too long about if you should’ve handled it differently. You have to take care of you – your ex isn’t your responsibility. If they try to tell you to make it work with him once you get back, tell them to get fucked.”

“They’re the only family I’ve got,” Ellie scoffed wryly, shaking her head. “I mean, I won’t have anything to do with him, but not sure I can get them to stop talking about it.”

He shifted on the bench to face her, pushing up his sunglasses in a surprising display of vulnerability. “Ellie. If they’re more concerned about him than they are about you, they’re not worth your time and effort. Hell, I’ll be your family if you want, or whatever. Just… don’t let them carry on about it. The one time my mum tried to leave, tried to get me away from him, her family made us go back. I never forgave them for it.”

“I’m sorry,” she offered, looking down at her hands. “That’s an awful thing to have happened. Thank you for… trusting me with that, I suppose.”

“She was like you, far as I can remember, when I was little. Bright and cheerful, always looking at the silver lining. And over time, he and her family dulled the sparkle until nothing was left. You have to make you a priority, because you can’t trust anyone else will.”

“Thank you.”

Her mobile rang while they were relaxing before dinner, the screen lighting up in time to the jaunty tune it played, vibrating on the desk.

Ellie grimaced, staring down at it. “Unknown number. What d’you think?” She was seated at the desk, inches from the device, but made no move to reach for it.

Hardy shrugged, sitting up from where he’d been sprawled on the bed flipping channels on the telly. “Send it to voicemail? Could it be work?”

With a grimace she answered it, holding it to her ear. “This is Miller.” Almost instantly the blood drained from her face, hand shaking, and his gut knew who was on the other end of the line.

Springing off the bed he eased the mobile from her hand and put it to his own ear, barking, “What?”

“Who’s this?” a confused man’s voice came to him, and Hardy bared his teeth.

“Alec Hardy, I’m a friend of Ellie’s. Who’s this?”

“Joe Richards, her fiancé. Can I speak to Ellie, please?” He said tersely, rather rudely Hardy thought for someone charged with child pornography.

Hardy raised an eyebrow at Ellie, who shook her head violently. “No. In fact, she’d prefer to never hear from you again.” That got him a double thumbs up. “I strongly advise you never contact her- or her family- ever again.”

A pause on the line had him waiting with bated breath, and when the other man spoke, his words were entirely unexpected.

“Did you say Hardy? As in her uni boyfriend?”

Boyfriend? “Uh, yeah, that’s me.” Despite the situation, the corners of his mouth tugged upward, earning himself a confused glare from Ellie. “What’s it to you?”

“Now listen here, prick, Ellie is my fiancée, and as soon as I beat these charges-”

“If such a gross miscarriage of justice were to occur,” he cut Joe off, “you will leave- wherever it is Ellie lives, and you will run as far away as possible. Just know that no matter how far you do go, it will never be far enough, and you will always be watched to ensure you harm no one. Do you understand?”

After a moment, the line went dead, his face tightening as it occurred to him that he might have overstepped. Handing the mobile back to Ellie, it took all he had not to flinch when she pushed back from the desk and stood.

She stared at him, eyes searching his, and he held his breath, waiting for a verdict.

“Thank you,” was all she said, before closing the distance between them and throwing her arms around his waist, holding him tightly and resting her face against his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Slowly, scared she might bolt if he moved to fast, he returned the hug and held her close, resting his chin on the top of her head. “So am I.” It was nice, having her in his arms, and he felt a vise in his chest loosen.

I don’t want this trip to end.

#bbatcfic #broadfic #Broadchurch #HardyxMiller #Alec Hardy #Ellie Miller #AU #The French Connection #platonic honeymoon fic

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bitchronan · 5 years

Text

lime to the heart

Draco x Percy

College, non-magical AU

ao3

Crowds of obnoxious college-aged kids weren’t out of the ordinary on a Saturday evening at the store where Percy worked - they arrived en masse pre messy nights out to bulk buy vodka and own-brand mixers - but even still, the group that had just passed through the automatic sliding doors exuded the cocky self-confidence that could only be pulled off by the incredibly entitled.

The group was headed up by an arrogant blonde boy drawling loudly into a mobile phone as he pointed his friends towards the liquor aisle.

“I don’t care if there’s vodka there,” he was saying. “If you think I’m going to drink dollar store toilet cleaner, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Percy sighed as he began to unpack the next crate of tomatoes, thankful only that he wasn’t on checkout tonight.

“Can we do tequila shots with pink Himalayan sea salt?” A brunette girl in heels about as high as her skirt was short asked.

“Only if we’re criminally insane,” a dark-skinned boy replied rolling his eyes. “Honestly Daph, you’re as blonde as your sister sometimes.”

‘Daph’ stuck out her jewel-studded tongue at the tall boy and returned to perusing the shelves.

“Marcus says to get more solo cups - they’ve run out - and also to bring him some fags,” the cocky blonde boy announced, having hung up his phone and loaded two bottles of tequila into a shopping cart being pushed by a girl with a razor-sharp bob and a bored expression.

“Oh, Draco don’t talk about yourself like that,” Daphne quipped, causing the girl pushing the cart to laugh loudly and obnoxiously.

“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” Draco shot her a venomous look but the corners of his mouth twitched into a small smirk.

“I wasn’t sure,” Daphne replied. “It’s so similar to your bad mood.”

“Is anyone but me going to be useful?” Draco ignored the jab, “Or do I have to do everything myself.”

“Title of your sex tape,” bob girl smirked, blowing a large pink bubble with gum that popped loudly.

“I’m a saint to deal with you lot,” was all Draco replied before he swept ahead of the group towards the fruit and vegetable aisle.

Percy immediately put his head down and tried to look invisible - an impossible feat considering his carrot-top hair and green polo emblazoned with the words ‘ASK FOR ASSISTANCE’ across the shoulder blades, but an admirable attempt nonetheless.

The short-haired girl leaned forwards over the handle of the shopping cart, giving anyone looking an ample view of her chest covered only by what Percy suspected to be lingerie rather than a top.

“What, we need broccoli or something?” She asked, “Worried no one at the party will have enough vitamin C?”

“Scurvy is an admirable cause,” the tall dark boy replied. “And Draco is a philanthropist.”

“Scurvy or preventing it?” Daphne asked with a grin, plucking a peach from the stand Percy had finished stacking only ten minutes earlier and biting into it.

“God, Daph,” the other girl scoffed, popping her gum again.

“Want some?” Daphne asked, holding the peach out. Juice dripped down her wrist onto the shiny laminate floor.

The girl wrinkled her nose and Daphne turned, “Hey Blaise, want some of my peach?”

“Is that a metaphor?” Blaise replied, “Because if so it’ll have to be a hard pass.”

Daphne had just taken another bite of the peach when Draco rounded the fruit display.

“Excuse me?”

Percy didn’t look up from his tomatoes.

“Excuse me?” Draco repeated, louder this time.

Percy straightened slowly, plastering his customer service face on. “How can I help?”

“Do you have any limes that aren’t so… ugly?”

Percy couldn’t help but frown at this, “Ugly?” He repeated.

“Yeah, like more aesthetically pleasing limes,” Draco confirmed.

The unnamed girl snorted from behind Percy, Draco glared at her over his shoulder.

“Whatever limes are out are all we have,” Percy said, dumbfounded at this line of questioning.

“We could go to Trader Joe’s,” Daphne suggested through a mouthful of peach.

“They’re limes,” the dark-haired girl said. Percy stepped out of the middle of their conversation, wondering if he could return to unloading his tomatoes.

“We’re gonna be too drunk to see what they look like in an hour,” she said rolling her eyes.

Draco sniffed, “Maybe you, Pansy. I won’t be able to enjoy myself if I know our limes are so deformed.”

“You’ll be deformed in a minute,” she retorted. “Go grab some limes before I hurt you so badly you won’t be able to enjoy yourself ever again.”

Percy wished fervently he wasn’t experiencing this.

The four of them stood in silence as they waited for Draco to return with the limes. After what felt like an eternity he dropped several into the shopping cart, which now contained two bottles of tequila, several stacks of red solo cups, a tub of table salt, and several admittedly unattractive limes.

“Onwards,” Daphne declared licking peach juice off her wrist whilst waggling her eyebrows at Blaise.

Percy wondered if she was planning to pay for the peach or not.

Pansy threw Percy a penetrating look as the other three left toward the checkouts.

“What time do you finish working?” She asked her gaze moving from him to the crates of tomatoes.

“What?” He asked.

“What time do you finish?” She repeated, “We’re going to a party at Phi Delta Alpha, come along once you get off.”

“I don’t really… do parties,” Percy protested.

“Whatever, I don’t care. You should come anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said like it was obvious, “Draco likes you and I’m sick of listening to him talk about how depressing his life is, or whatever.”

“Sounds like you’re a great listener.”

“Thanks,” she said, unaffected. “You’ll come then.”

“When was the last time someone said ‘no’ to you?” Percy asked.

“They don’t. I don’t let them.”

“How democratic.”

She didn’t reply, just grinned wickedly and turned towards her friends who were arguing loudly by the door about cocktail umbrellas versus tiny plastic swords.

Percy wished he could claim he didn’t know where Phi Delta Alpha was but it was pretty much impossible to attend UW without at some point acquiring such knowledge. He could, however, honestly say he had never been there before. When he pulled up and squeezed his tiny, shitty car into one of the last spaces left on the street he almost pulled immediately out and left again.

Students spilt out of the front of the house onto the lawn, most holding red solo cups and some smoking and vaping. Percy knew this area was mostly student and Greek housing so parties tended to be thrown here regularly, he’d never come to one before.

Summoning all his courage he climbed out of the car and approached the frat house - he’d changed out of his green polo shirt back into the casual button down he’d been wearing earlier that day but still felt incorrectly dressed for the occasion.

He squeezed through the crowds of people into the house, some rap song Percy didn’t recognise was blaring from the speakers and a keg was shoved unceremoniously in one corner of the living room. Percy stepped over a discarded solo cup, trying not to let his discomfort show on his face and moved further into the room.

A girl shrieked and someone grabbed his arm halting his progress.

“You came!” Daphne screamed at him, more than loud enough to be heard over the music and chatter.

Her brown hair had been twisted into a careless bun on the top of her head, and her insanely high heels discarded in favour of a pair of high-top converse that were clearly several sizes too big for her and had been laced tightly to stop them from slipping right off her feet. She held a solo cup in the hand that wasn’t still wrapped around his wrist; it was full of what looked like Red Bull and sloshed dangerously.

“Want some?” She offered the cup to Percy.

“No, thanks,” he replied. “Did you pay for that peach?”

She screwed up her entire face with the effort of understanding him after he’d repeated the question enough times to make him feel ridiculous she grinned childishly. “What are you the peach police? Peachlice?” She laughed at her own joke then, seeing his frown replied, “Calm your tits, of course I paid for it. Draco’s in the kitchen with Pansy by the way.” She added, taking a swig of the drink.

“Right,” Percy replied. “Cool.”

Someone called Daphne’s name, and she turned away, already smiling widely at the newcomer. She tripped on her too large converse and made her way across the room laughing to herself, wiping red bull off her skirt.

Percy found his way to the kitchen, unsure of why he had come here at all. The song had changed to Barbie Girl and, upon entering the room, Percy found Pansy sitting on the kitchen island, her legs loosely looped around Draco’s waist and both of them singing along to the music. Unsure of whether to make himself known Percy stood stupidly in the doorway until someone walked into him, spilling half a beer down his shirt and causing the rest of the kitchen to turn towards the commotion.

“Watch where you’re fucking going!” The stranger who had poured their drink down Percy’s front swore.

“Crabbe,” Pansy said sharply.

Crabbe turned to look at her, opening his mouth to retort.

“Fuck off,” Draco supplied picking up a drink from beside Pansy and joining Crabbe and Percy by the door.

Crabbe scowled but did as he was told and Draco held the drink out to Percy.

“What is it?” Percy asked frowning.

“Lemonade. You can pour it yourself if you don’t believe me,” he added seeing the scepticism on Percy’s face.

“You were confident I’d come.”

“You came didn’t you?” Draco smirked pushing the drink into Percy’s hand, “Come on.”

Percy followed Draco into the kitchen proper and watched as Draco prepared himself a confusing concoction of drinks.

“I’m Draco by the way,” he said once he’d taken a sip of the purple drink.

“Yeah,” Percy replied slowly, pretty sure he was having an out-of-body experience. “Percy.”

“Right, your name tag said so.”

“Do you normally invite random guys to parties with you?” Percy asked feeling supremely uncomfortable.

“Pansy invited you,” Draco pointed out, taking another swig of the purple concoction.

“Right.” Percy put the untouched lemonade down, “I should go.”

“No, I’m sorry, I just meant - no I don’t normally invite random supermarket workers to parties. That’s more Pansy’s thing, but I’m glad she did.”

“Well, how has your night been so far?”

Draco laughed, “Better than yours I’d wager - you’ve probably made an enemy for life in Crabbe.”

“He walked into me!” Percy protested before catching Draco’s expression, “You’re joking.”

“Yeah,” he replied with a grin. “He has the memory of a possum.”

“How do you know possums don’t have really good memories?” Percy challenged.

“Do they?”

“I don’t know. You’re not as drunk as Pansy threatened,” he added when the conversation lapsed. “Did the ugly limes affect you that much?”

Draco grinned, “Didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of you more than I already had. Although, ugly limes do plague my mind.”

Destiny’s Child was now pounding through the speakers. Percy wondered if he’d been transported to an alternate universe where frat parties played nineties hits and rich kids were actually kind of charming.

Feeling bold he turned to Draco, “Wanna dance?”

Draco looked a little shocked but decidedly thrilled with the suggestion and downed the rest of his drink before overzealously dragging Percy to the makeshift dance floor.

As soon as Percy realised that even if he was sober everyone else was too drunk to care what a fool he was making of himself he found he actually rather enjoyed frat parties. He and Draco danced to the two Destiny’s Child songs that played back to back (Say My Name and Nasty Girl) then, when some techno song neither of them knew came on, Draco dragged Percy back to the kitchen and allowed him to mix him a drink. It turned out the colour of fertiliser but Draco drank it anyway and mostly managed to conceal his disgust.

Percy watched as Draco wiped the corner of his mouth, “That was… delicious,” he said, eyes watering.

Percy smiled wickedly, “I can make you another.”

Draco looked panic-stricken for a moment before he burst out laughing, “You’re a menace!”

Feeling emboldened Percy stepped forwards, closing the short distance between them and pressed his lips to Draco. The other boy responded instinctively, one hand grasping the back of Percy’s shirt at the small of his back and the other reaching up to cup his face. Draco opened his mouth and Percy tasted the remnants of the drink he had made on his tongue.

When they broke apart Draco was flushed and Percy’s shirt had come untucked from his jeans at the back.

Percy pulled a face, “Pansy was right, you must really like me if you drank that.”

Draco laughed, “And you must really like me if you’re willing to come to frat parties and get beer poured down you.”

“Guess we’re even,” Percy said smiling.

“Guess so,” Draco pulled him in for another kiss.

#hpfic #*fic #mine #hp #hp:fic #draco malfoy #percy weasley #draco x percy #thank u ! char for the title i did credit u on ao3 ❤️

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barpurplewrites · 6 years

Text

Honeyed Date

Sherlock/Molly

First date. Honey. Mead. Wee bit Drunk. Kisses.

Sherlock has done many experiments with honey, but for this one he needs Molly’s help.

-x-x-x-

Come to Baker Street after your shift – SH

I need your help with an experiment – SH

Please – SH

Molly wasn’t as surprised by the final text as she would have been a few months ago. Sherlock’s manners were still patchy, and totally absent during a case, but he was improving. It was the second text that had her puzzled. What experiment? As far as she knew he had taken no new body parts since she’d last cleared his flat a fortnight ago. She double checked the bodies currently in the morgue, but the only body with missing fingers was Mr Coltrane, and since he had lost those in an industrial accident quarter of a century before his death, she wouldn’t find those in the fridge at 221B. Of course, Sherlock and John had just finished a case involving fraud, so he could be experimenting with inks. Molly decided to grab extra gloves and a face shield along with the change of clothes from her locker, just in case Sherlock had found a way to improve anti-theft dye packs used by banks.

Molly arrived at Baker Street just as Mrs Hudson was leaving.

“Oh, hello Molly, dear,” – she glanced at Molly’s bag and clutched her chest in relief, - “No cooler I see, thank goodness. It’s been wonderful not having to worry about what’s lurking in the fridge, but I expect the salad drawer will be full of spleens and eyeballs by the end of next week.”

A taxi pulled up at the curb and a rather dapper gentleman got out and greeted Mrs Hudson with a smile and a small bow. She gave Molly’s arm a squeeze; “Oh, there’s my date, you have a good time, bye Molly!”

Mrs Hudson hurried away to greet her gentleman with a peck on the cheek. He helped her into the taxi and offered Molly a polite nod before climbing in himself. Molly watched the taxi pull away and muttered to herself; “Hello Molly. How are you? Oh, I’m very well thank you Mrs Hudson. And yourself?”

She shook her head and chuckled to herself, Mrs H was only ever that bubbly after a few herbal soothers, or if she was very excited about her new gentleman. Looks like Sherlock hadn’t revealed any unsavoury deductions about this one, yet. Molly headed into 221B and jogged up the stairs. She took her customary deep breath outside the door, which resulted in the traditional shout of; “Come on in Molly!”

“Hello Sherlock!”

Molly could hear him moving about in the kitchen, so she took a moment to look around, hoping to find a clue as to the experiment she was here to help with. The flat was its normal jumble of organized chaos, but an effort had been made to clear the coffee table. The only items on there at the moment were several wine bottles, each with a different coloured tape around their necks, filled with cloudy liquid that could be anything, and a closed notebook. Okay, not much to go on. Molly cocked her head and glanced under the sofa and was surprised to find empty space. Sherlock had actually tidied up; thinking about it she decided to be careful opening any cupboard doors, since his idea of tidying was the same as a pre-teen who just shoved everything out of sight and dealt with it when it erupted.

“Can you come and grab this tray, please?”

Molly dropped her bag and shucked off her coat before heading into the kitchen. This looked less like a chemistry lab than usual, in fact if it wasn’t for the microscope and rack of test tubes it could be mistaken for an ordinary kitchen. Sherlock greeted her with a warm smile and handed her a tray of tapas and picked up a second tray containing small wine glasses. He led them into the living room and nodded at her to place the tray on the table.

Molly cast an eye over the coffee table now loaded with food, wine glasses and bottles of what could be alcohol. She gave a little giggle; “Sherlock is this an experiment or a date?”

A week or so ago Sherlock had tentatively suggested that, if she was willing, they could begin dating with a view to pursuing a romantic entanglement. He’d been as nervous as a schoolboy when he’d asked if she’d still be interested in such a relationship with him and been very clear that his interest wasn’t for a case. He’d also taken pains to make explain that should she not want to alter their relationship, he would be in no way upset. (‘I am honoured to be in your friendzone Molly, and that will always be true.’) She’d told him he better ask her out on a date, and they could see how it went, which he probably would have done there and then if Greg hadn’t called with the news that another body had been found in the current case. She’d not minded, she’d waited long enough for Sherlock, so a few more days while they were up to their eyes in a case wasn’t going to put her off.

He ran his hand through his hair and said; “Erm, well this is part of an ongoing experiment, which is why I told you that, but it could also be considered as a date,” – he rolled his eyes, - “if your personal Venn diagram of science and romance differs from John’s.”

Molly smiled that he’d taken dating advice from his blogger; “John made a science romance Venn diagram?”

Sherlock used both hands to point to his crime wall, on opposite sides of the wall were two single pieces of paper with rough circles drawn in the middle.

“Science on the left, romance on the right, according to John this is the optimum overlap for the two,” – He twisted to face her, and from the corner of her eye she spotted flash of hesitation, - “Do you agree with John’s diagram?”

Molly hummed and bit her lip for a moment, “That is going to depend on exactly what is in those bottles.”

Sherlock’s face lit up as he pulled the cushions from the armchairs and encouraged Molly to sit down on the floor with him. He picked up one of the bottles; “This is my homebrewed mead.”

“You mead made, wait no, made mead?”

He slid the notebook across to her, flipping it open she found pages of Sherlock’s cramped scrawl detailing the process of mead brewing.

“Oh yes. You remember eight months ago the suspected murder case in Kent?”

“Was that the one that turned out to be an insurance scam?”

“Yes, tedious, but did allow me to meet an amazing beekeeper, Mr Brooks, a stunning wealth of knowledge about apiculture…”

Molly read his notes as Sherlock talked about the beekeeper who had clearly impressed him. He’d brewed six different meads, all using the same honey, but each with one variable, his scientific method was exacting as usual.

“The next stage is to test them for taste, to see which recipe is worth repeating, or improving on. That’s where I was hoping you would help, you have more experience with alcohol than I do and will insist that we stop before getting to the pissing in wardrobes stage.”

Molly cocked an eyebrow at him; “And I won’t let you go out on a case and end up in the drunk tank.”

He chuckled softly; “That is my hope, yes.”

She shifted on her cushion and thought for a moment. Sherlock had left the question of if this was a date or not up to her. This could be them enjoying a meal with a side of science as friends, or she could declare this as an official date, which would set the tone for any following dates. It was never going to be dinner and a movie with Sherlock. Molly looked at all the little diagrams of bees and hives that he’d doodled in the margins of his notebook. Bees were a passion for Sherlock and he was inviting her to share that passion with him. She got to her feet and dodged around the table to grab the science circle of John’s Venn diagram from the wall, she re-stuck over the romance circle so there was an overlap.

She turned back around to find Sherlock’s jaw hanging open. He quickly snapped his mouth closed and swallowed.

“So, we can call this our first date?”

She nodded and jumped a little as he bounced to his feet and rushed into the bathroom. Not quite the response she was expecting, but to be honest not much surprised her when it came to Sherlock. She sat down on the sofa with a sigh and waited. He returned a moment later with a bouquet of flowers.

“Now I understand that roses are considered traditional first date flowers, but I thought these would be more in keeping with the evening, and you like purple.”

He offered her the flowers. Molly let their fingers brush as she took them and saw a hint of a blush colour his cheeks.

“Lavender, forget-me-nots, and is this heather?”

“Yes, all bee friendly flowers.”

She inhaled the fragrance; “I love them thank you.”

Sherlock smiled, but appeared at a loss for what to do next, Molly nodded at the table; “Shall we get started on our buzz?”

He gave a groaning chuckle; “Right, I assume plenty of puns are on the cards for tonight?”

Molly gave him a wink; “I can behave, if you want.”

With another groan he dropped down on to the sofa next to her and reached for the first bottle.

“Okay, I didn’t know if you’d tried mead before,” – Molly shook her head, - “so I got this one as our control. Lindisfarne Mead, very popular, nice middle of the road flavour. Shall we?”

-x-x-x-

Two hours later Molly and Sherlock were sat on the floor, their backs against the sofa, their feet intertwined, having an intense discussion about all thing honey related. They had covered the history of the drink, and brewing techniques, but now the conversation had turned towards the silly.

“Sex holiday, well honeymoon, there’s a popular misconception…”

Molly snorted, “Isn’t it normally conception that’s associated with honeymoons?”

Sherlock flapped a hand at her with a smile, “Statistically speaking yes, but what I meant was there is a popular myth that the term honeymoon comes from a tradition that the newlyweds would drink a glass of mead each night for the first month of their marriage to ensure, sweetness and fertility I suppose.”

She shifted onto her knees and peered at the bottles on the coffee table, “Was red the one that tasted like paint stripper?”

“Yup, although I’m still not sure what you are basing that comparison on. It’s blue one we like.”

As Molly refilled their glasses Sherlock shifted around, rearranging the pillows they’d dragged into place to make the floor more comfortable. When she turned to hand him his glass, he’d settled himself with one leg sprawled out in front of him and the foot of the other planted on the floor, so his elbow was propped on his bent knee.

“Is, erm, is cuddling acceptable for a first date?”

Molly looked at the position he’d arranged himself into, there was a perfect space for her to sit between his legs and lean her back against his leg.

“Cuddling is fine for our first date, Sherlock.”

It took them a bit of wriggling to get comfortable, but once they were settled, Sherlock scrunched his nose and said; “Wasn’t there a moon made of honey in that American carton thing you watch?”

Molly had to think for a moment; “Wait, are you talking about Futurama?”

“Is that what is called? The one with the alcoholic robot and the purple haired cyclops?”

“You were stretched out on my sofa, in your mind palace when I was watching that. How do you remember that one episode?”

He gave a one shoulder shrug; “They were talking about bees, I pay attention for that,” – he caught a lock of her hair in his fingers, - “And it made you laugh, that’s very worthy of my attention as well.”

The air between them went thick. Molly licked her lips and watched Sherlock’s eyes follow the movement. She carefully put her glass down on the edge of the table.

“How do you feel about kissing on a first date, Sherlock?”

His tongue darted over his bottom lip; “Good, very good, with the whole idea.”

He leaned slightly towards her but hesitated until she moved her hand to his face and gently angled his head to bring them together. Closing the final gap between them was a mutual movement, as was the sigh that occurred when their lips met. Honey sweet and a bit messy, but absolutely perfect, until the door downstairs loudly opened, and Mrs Hudson’s voice echoed up the stairs as she wished her gentleman goodbye. Molly dropped her head on to Sherlock’s chest as he huffed about troublesome lady ladies. His hand stroked through her hair.

“It’s almost midnight, Mr Arkright got Hudders home before she turns into a pumpkin. We should do the same for you too.”

Molly traced a finger over the bare skin revealed by the open neck of his shirt; “I won’t turn in to a pumpkin. Toby has an automatic food and water dish, and I’m not at work tomorrow. I could stay.”

Sherlock made a small sound that could have been a whimper. He wriggled a little until Molly lifted her head and looked at him.

“I would very much like for you to stay, Molly. I can take the sofa, or we can share my bed, but you should know that after this much mead, erm, well, the spirit is oh so willing, but the flesh isn’t going to offer a good showing.”

She couldn’t help but smile, “I am in the same position, so how about you lend me a pair of pyjamas and we sleep, with maybe some cuddling?”

Sherlock gave her puppy dog eyes and a pout; “Maybe a bit more kissing too?”

Molly tapped a finger against his nose; “Why Mr Holmes, did you not deduce that a bit more kissing was a certainty?”

His hand cupped the back of her head and pulled her into his waiting lips, just before they met he whispered; “There is always something I miss, Doctor Hooper.”

Molly wound her fingers into his hair; “Good job you’ve got me to keep you right.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Molly.”

They didn’t make it to bed for another hour. Come the morning they were woken when Mrs Hudson wandering into the flat sounding far too cheerful s=for so early in the day.

“Hoo hoo! Oh, Sherlock what is all this mess? And don’t tell me you sent dear Molly home without her coat and bag last night.”

The mead had left Molly and Sherlock with syrupy thick heads, but they managed to share a smile as they heard Hudders sudden realisation.

“Oh! Oh, I see. Alright then dears, I’ll just leave you to it, let me know when you are decent, and I’ll make you breakfast.”

The door to the flat closed with a far too loud click and Sherlock muttered; “Just this once, I’m not your housekeeper.”

Molly batted his shoulder and snuggled into his side; “More sleep, teasing Mrs H later.”

He tugged the duvet snuggly around them; “Yes, honey.”

#sherlock fanfic #sherlolly #first date #fluff

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