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#do you guys remember when I learned I was being made redundant like three weeks ago
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Ok so I had the Biggest Brain idea
#do you guys remember when I learned I was being made redundant like three weeks ago#and i was so annoyed at the german translation sector’s price and quality dumping screwing over my small law firm’s translation department#that i thought about changing jobs and becoming a paralegal?#well i wrote a few applications for traineeships and jobs that allow you to take the paralegal exam as an extra qualification#and i even have a job interview at one local firm in slightly more than a week yay 🥳#and at some point while writing applications i suddenly realised that#wait i already know one law firm that takes on a paralegal trainee ever year; who I get along with and who know i’m a good worker#who told me they’d rather keep me working for them if they had a chance#so I thought ‘let’s see if they meant it’ and wrote a semi-application for the traineeship to our hr person#and now I actually have a semi-job interview with my (still) current employer for a paralegal traineeship next week#the hr person also told me she’d talk to the vocational college and jobseekers’ office if i can get any benefits#bc i already have experience in this sector#we do love to see it#gd i hope so much this or the local traineeship works out#i still love translation but i hate the route the language sector is going down atm#and frankly i have no interest in following it down this route of cheap quantity-over-quality automation-oriented translation processes#so i really look forward to learning new things about another sector i’m also interested in#and as a bonus since traineeships normally start in september i might then have basically the entire summer ‘off’ so to speak#and i could really really use a break#so not to get my hopes up too much but maybe 2021 is not gonna be a COMPLETE shitshow#please 2021 just give me this one (1) thing#fingers crossed
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narrators-journal · 3 years
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A small alteration
So! This part is the...second or third to last part, so we’re getting to the end bois. After this, I’ll likely die, or at least not post daily like I have been, so if you guys want more content after this, remember to send in an ask for me to answer! Request stuff, ask me questions, joke around with me, whatever yall want. It’ll hold this blog over until I finish this second fic and can start posting/editting it here!
cw: lightly goes into detail on torture, hisoka, that’s about it I think!
Previous part: here
First part: here
Thankfully, Hisoka didn't stop by after his phone call, but Illumi still took no chances when he went onto jobs. Along with Milluki using the spy cameras Illumi had placed earlier, the long haired assassin made sure at least three butlers were keeping an eye on you whenever he couldn't.
That precaution kept you far away from the blood hungry magician for a week, much to Illumi's relief. Hisoka was a pest, a thorn in Illumi's side through and through, so the last thing the assassin wanted was for him to meet his future wife. Especially now, when you were just too desperate for human contact, and he couldn't risk you getting attacked or manipulated by Hisoka and forcing the assassin to kill such a useful nen user. Or worse, risk you meeting him and growing to love the magician instead of him, so he was dead set on never letting you two meet.
So, instead of risking it, he made sure to keep you as secret as possible, at most giving vague answers to keep the violent hunter at bay when he found him on jobs or something and asked, but confirming or denying little to nothing. Aside from that, Illumi also let the man help him on missions a bit more, both because the assassin could hide things better than his butlers when questioned, and because, though annoying, the vibrantly colored man offered some sort of entertainment on otherwise painfully boring jobs like assassinating businessmen, ex-lovers, or runaway spouses. Though, Hisoka simply popped up sometimes too, either being in the right place at the right time to join on kills, or somehow seeking Illumi out, like a risky, aggravating jack-in-the-box. That habit had gotten him a trip to the Zoldyck basement and torture rooms recently, though it was also a reason Illumi humored the magician when he got bored and asked for help more.
        "Please make this simple and tell me where you put the money taken from Mr. Mori." Illumi told his target, a rather pretty young woman he'd been tasked to interrogate, torture, and kill by her ex-sugar daddy.         "Is she under-aged, is that why you won't tell me about her?" Hisoka asked, sitting on the table of menacing torture tools in a dungeon of the Zoldyck estate, having talked the assassin into letting him out to help in this little chat. Illumi was beginning to regret his decision to humor the magician though. The tall assassin glared at the other man for his interruption, only getting an innocent smile in return,         "No, she is not under-aged." He said curtly, and his companion snickered,         "Well, when can I meet her? I'm dying to know what type of woman a Zoldyck lusts after~"         "Never." Hisoka pouted at his flat refusal, but the assassin simply returned to questioning his captive, only turning back to the pink-haired man to grab some pliers from the table,  "Now, I will ask this once more, if I don't get an answer I'll tear out your finger nails until I do. Where is your ex's money?" he warned the woman, who was sobbing and pleading to be freed from the cold, dark room. When she didn't answer his question though, he kept true to his word, gripping one of her nails with the pliers and pulling until it came away from the nail bed. The monotone assassin continued pulling out his target's crimson-painted fingernails while she tried to lie and say she had no idea where his client's money was. No matter, when he ran out of fingernails, he could always move to toenails or teeth.
Hisoka held a metal bowl that Illumi put the dislocated fingernails in, adding a soft clattering noise to the soundtrack of the woman's sobs, screams, and the lazy buzz of the one lantern that hung from the stone wall until he stood up in the partially lit cell to get another tool from the table.          "mmm, she seems quite fun to torture~" Hisoka observed, getting a twisted grin across his face as he looked down at the restrained woman,          "She's unbearably loud," Illumi sighed, looking around on the table of tools until he found a rather simple salt shaker, ignoring when Hisoka leaned a bit too close,          "Y'know, I bet I could get your girlfriend to be just as loud~" he hummed, and something inside of Illumi seemed to snap for a moment. His aloof air instantly changed to palpable malice and he whirled around on the magician, punching him in the face hard enough to send him sprawling across the cold stone floor. The assassin didn't even give him a chance to react once he landed though, in a flash he was on top of him, holding him down by his throat while his knee pressed down on his ribs,           "if you so much as look at my wife, Hisoka, I will fucking kill you before your heart gives another beat." he snarled, tightening his grip on the man's neck until he was gasping and wheezing for air. The pink-haired man gave a nod, a  smirk tugging at his lips still, but the feral murderer didn't let him breath until that coy look finally left and he saw panic replace Hisoka's usual mischievous glint in his gold eyes. When Illumi did finally let him up, the magician was gulping down air and glaring at him instead of his usual knowing, coy glance,           "Jesus Christ Illumi, learn to take a joke. You know my humor can be perverted, there was no need to nearly kill me!" he snapped, the magician's flirty act falling away, but Illumi didn't respond, he simply checked on the woman he'd been tasked to torture. Sadly though, she was now dead from the amount of malevolence  in his nen,          "Great, because of your 'joke' my job just got harder." Illumi said, his voice back to being cold,          "That wasn't my fault, you were the one who didn't just use one of your needles on her to begin with." he pointed out testily, getting glared at by the man,         "The client wanted me to specifically torture her, my needles would have been redundant and not what the client asked for. Of course, I didn't know you were going to be this annoying, or else I would've gotten the information from her at the start." he hummed, and while his voice stayed flat and his face stayed rather aloof, Illumi was boiling with wrath on the inside. Being a pest was one thing, but now Hisoka had actually crossed an important line. So, Illumi simply found the woman's phone in her purse and than called in some butlers. He gave one the cellphone, sending it to Milluki to make use of himself and scour through, than he turned to Hisoka, who was standing in a dark corner across the small cell glaring at them, mostly Illumi.  "Now, I will say this nicely only once," the man said, though his words held no kindness, "please return to your cell with the butlers without a fight, or else I will be forced to call my family and drag you back." The two men stood there for a moment in a heavy silence that seemed to bring down the temperature of the already cold cell further. Illumi wasn't very expressive, he purposely added inflections and overt body language to himself when speaking to you, but Hisoka didn't get that sort of kindness, he simply got stared down by bottomless eyes and a deadpan assassin he knew very well was competent enough to stand up to him. So, he simply grinned a predatory grin at the long haired murderer,        "Fine, I'll go back to my cell peacefully," he relented, putting his hands up with a mischievous smirk. One of these days Morrow, I'm going to finally kill you. Illumi thought as at least three butlers escorted the magician back to where he'd been held, but he didn't say or show the annoyance as they passed.       "Oh, and Illumi, dear? Do tell (y/n) hello for me~" Illumi's aura became malevolent again at that, but the butlers and flamboyant pain in the ass were able to avoid dying from it thanks to their training. Instead, all it did was let slip just how fart Hisoka was under Illumi's skin, making the hunter laugh as he was herded away down the dark hallway, leaving the assassin to simmer in his temper before stalking out of the basement. His first stop once upstairs was Milluki's bedroom.        "How did Hisoka find out anything about (y/n)?" he asked, his voice's flat, monotonous tone coming off as more menacing when paired with how he slammed his brother's face into his trash-littered desk,        "I don't know! Why are you asking me?" the pudgy man hissed out, barring his teeth at his older sibling when he tightened his grip on his hair,       "You are the only person on this mountain aside from Mother who knows about (y/n), and unlike mother, you are the type to tell that bastard about her for a cookie." he pointed out, and Milluki couldn't argue, he did have pretty flippant loyalties when it came to secrets like this.        "Alright, fine, but I promise I didn't. I haven't been in the basement since Hisoka got here." he explained, and after a moment of harsh scrutiny, Illumi let him go and left his nasty, anime-littered room. The tall man then went to his wing of the home, thinking of what to do now. Hisoka knowing (y/n)'s name is bad. If he can figure it out, more people could. He mused, a wave of possessive anxiety washing away his rage for the time being. I can't leave her alone anymore. He finally decided as he reached his rooms and turned around to instead find his mother.
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luimagines · 3 years
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(Verisimilitude- OKAY thats just redundant let's shorten it to Veri Anon) Honestly I was just super impressed with the fact you even have a schedule up for this and stuff, you're an amazing writer haha! I love the way you make characters seem... Human? Like I said before they sound modern but that also brings up the benefit of easily humanising them, I've never seen someone do it so effectively haha (ESPECIALLY FOUR HOLY SCHMOLY IVE BECOME A HUGE FOUR SIMP HELP HELP) I am super sorry if that English comment upset you in any way though!! I personally really enjoy the language but I'm sorry if you've encountered any bad feelings related to it... If you'd like to speak on it that's okay!! You should be given a space to bring out the feels!! Remember to stay hydrated too !
I just made a bunch of prompts in one day and managed to get a week ahead at first and ... didn't stop for a while.
So I'm pretty ahead now!
And thank you! It's not always easy to make a character relatable, or someone you might meet in real life, but I've been trying my best.
And as for the English comment I was never upset with you, don't take it that.
Like I said there's a story there, so I'll put it under the cut for one else who wants to read it. Truthfully I hadn't thought about it in years so when I read your comment I was thrown back nearly a decade.
I was in a bit of funk for the next few hours.
SO
Story Time.
Ok so context..
I've been bilingual my whole life.
My father is American while my mom is Costa Rican.
She moved up here with him and things happened and she got stuck while my dad moved away back to Costa Rica. He's not in the picture nor is he important to the story.
For a little more context, I don't look my mom. I'm white. My brother and I take after our father, unfortunately.
But anyway, my mother side of the family only speaks Spanish.
So, when we finally get to see them for the first time in ten years. The first time I'm meeting them when I'll be able to remember them and the first time they're meeting my brother in person and vice versa. My brother does not speak Spanish but we've been working on it.
And while we were visiting, apparently some guy who my grandma and aunt loved to have around visited almost everyday.
But my mom doesn't know this guy and neither do we, but since we're just staying there for a while it's like, whatever right? It's their house and we don't have a lot of time here to begin with so we'll bare with it.
He was annoying.
But again, it's whatever right?
Now, one day, my aunt wants to give me highlights in my hair. She was a stylist before she retired and I was wiling because, why not?
They looked great by the way when we were done.
But I'm sitting by the kitchen table while my aunt gets to work and gets everything ready and in comes the guy.
He gets into a conversation with my mom.
Apparently he's traveled around the world or something like that (I don't remember what for or if he just could, he apparently knows like seven languages).
Anyway, I don't know exactly what he was thinking but he starts complaining about the US and Americans in general and who we're all this, that and the other thing. And I guess he went off because he knew we came from the States? Like oh this woman would know what I'm talking about and since we're both Costa Ricans she'll agree or something?
My mom did not agree.
He says he visited.
My mom tells him she's been living there for sixteen years at this point.
And the people here are not what he's describing.
She says she's sorry if he's had a bad experience in the short time he was there but he's still wrong. It's not everyone.
They got back and forth for a bit and my mom is trying to be as respectful as she can because again, she doesn't know him and this is her mother's house and her mother likes him. Gotta play it cool. We're not there to make enemies.
Now, I'm right there.
Like three or four feet away. Barely over a meter of distance away.
It's a small house.
And he's not being really quiet either.
I'm not exactly hidden away either. He even makes eye contact with me a few times, because I'm not trying to hide the fact that I'm listening in.
And I'm already hurt a bit, because I know I'm included in every "every American' generalization he's made.
This guy gets the memo that my mom isn't going to agree any time soon.
So he somewhat changes the topic.
And instead starts talking about the language instead of the people.
English is dull.
English is boring.
English is too simple.
Every word is one syllable.
English, because of this lack of complexity, is barbaric and stupid.
It's a stupid language.
Compared to Greek, French, German, Spanish- why the hell would you choose to speak English?
He's not talking to me though.
He's talking to my mom.
To my mom's credit, she defends what she can and doesn't back down from this guy.
She may not know him, but she's definitely not scared of him.
I bet she speaks better English than him anyway. But-
I'm right there.
I'm twelve years old.
It's not like I chose to be American or that I chose to speak English as my first language.
I'm listening to all of this.
Because I'm getting my hair done only a meter away. I can't move.
I don't remember everything that he said word for word, but I felt horrible.
I remember I had tears run down my face but I was quite and I didn't move so I don't think anyone really noticed.
My aunt is there too, doing my hair, but she also likes this guy and she's only ever visited the states and she doesn't speak English. She has no way to refute his claims.
And what could I say?
What's going to get this grown man to stop?
That day, I guess my mom scared him with how much she wasn't believing him and how much she questioned everything he was saying. Because it was more than just that but I was gone by then.
They talked for a long time.
Debated is a better word than talked I guess.
Whatever the case, he didn't visit everyday after that.
My mom and I felt better after that.
We move on and that's that.
I don't think he knew I could understand him
I suppose he took one look at me and thought I only spoke English- he wouldn't be the first person from there to make that assumption.
Which is fair. I'm white. I don't look my mom. I look like I'm not from there. I look American.
But I could and I did.
I suppose it was something I internalized.
Because English is simple.
It's supposed to be a spoken language.
It only gets complicated when you have to put in paper. Reading and writing it is hard and there are some words that I know I'm never going to spell right on the first try even if I lived for ten thousand years.
I never it considered it beautiful and even less from others who have it as a second or third or forth language. Only that it... just.... exists. And they more less have to learn it with how the system works. Whether it be racism or capitalism or any other isms that have put this on them.
Because why would they do so willingly?
I don't know if I would have considered it to be anything else if you never said anything.
So I wanted to thank you.
Thank you.
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overthelillies · 4 years
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fic recs for my friends
yeah okay so most/all of these are davekat im sorry!! arranged in no particular order also some of them are second person I Am Sorry.
Your Interpersonal, Intergalactic Relationship: A Beginner's Guide (8,400-something words)
A beginner's guide to playing hopscotch, overcoming internalized homophobia, and falling in love with your alien best friend.
friends to lovers! p cute
So It Goes (56,845 words)
They managed to win the game somehow. He's not really sure of the details, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. He's stuck in an unfamiliar body with a thirteen year old little brother who's terrified of him.
Somehow, he is sure this is his fault.
// i have not read this one. but strider angst and davekat yes please
Red Converse (26,648 words)
Due to a seizure, Karkat Vantas now has to learn how to live his life with two speech aphasia. He goes to therapy three times a week, suffers from awful headaches, and tries to avoid people as much as possible.
Due to a traumatic experience, Dave Strider refuses to use his words, preferring to relay his snarky comments and witty banter through sign language and typing on his phone.
They meet in a waiting room.
//THIS IS REALLY GOOD Altho they do have sex just skip it dw i promise it’s worth it
how...did you tell your friends (7,906 words)
Unfortunately, you don't fancy your brother's suggestion on how to break the news to John...
There's no other way out of it, you're going to have to just tell him.
//set after homestuck, dave tries to tell the most oblivious person in the world and also his best friend (john) that he and karkat are dating and it’s literally so good
Dave Strider’s Stupid Fucking Jawline (11,607 words)
Generic high school AU. Dave's jawline is really distracting and Karkat does NOT have a crush on him (shut up, Kanaya).
//high school au. lovely. good eating.
Gray and Red (16,084 words)
In which you only see color once you meet your soulmate, and the first color you see is the same as your soulmate's eyes.
//SOULMATE AU SOULMATE AU this is kinda very Angsty (Karkat do be pining doe) it’s p good
We’re All Friends & Family Here (And Frankly, We’re Sick Of Your Shit) (68,000 somethin words)
It's been about a year since the big Fast Forward, and sure, things on Earth C aren't perfect for everyone. But they're fine. Really. It's fine. Everything is super fuckin' swell, and that's that.
It's not like one night is going to change anything.
//post homestuck GOD THIS. IS SO GOOD okay so this fic is mainly dirkjake being fucking stupid with rosemary and davekat and also a lil roxy/calliope in the bg and it’s long but!!!! so very good
Red Ties (10,705 words)
Dave Strider's eyes never turned the color of his soulmates. With his rare eye-color, there's next to no chance they simply share an eye color.
One day he meets Karkat Vantas.
//another cute soulmate au! again. love the soulmate aus what can i say
i’m at the combination dunkin donuts & urgent care (3,920 words)
Karkat Vantas is convinced beyond a doubt that his neighbor is some variety of murderer, until they actually meet in person. Highlights include blood at the laundromat, Dave's weird obsession with candles, and a box of shitty swords.
//this is SO FUNNY short n sweet i promise
the calculation (2,481 words)
the fic in which Dave gets the flu for the first time since before the game and Karkat takes care of him.
//this fic is really funny and also sweet
Start At The Beginning (9,304)
//post-homestuck, Dave and karkat falling in love. the ending to thsi made me cry
I Love Cheap Thrills (4,773 words)
You’ve been trading memes with an international pop sensation, and your drunk ass had no idea.
Classic.
//this one is verrie funnie
Locked Up (9,272 words)
Dave had always been the one best prepared for the game. He was able to handle the shit it threw at them and push it down a lot better than everyone else could.
It might have fucked up everything else about him, but that didn't matter.
He was fine.
He was always fucking fine.
//angst. very nice
I’d Tap That (oh fuck i didn’t mean to tap that) (17,041 words)
Karkat finds his old school bully on Grindr. Dave doesn't know how to shut up.
// really funny!! sorry if these are getting redundant i don’t remember the details about some of these
Pale as Bone, Pale as Water (5,305 words)
//another davekat sickfic
Apple Juice, Chips, and Bandages (5,335 words)
Every time he comes in he gets the same three things. A bottle of apple juice, a bag of chips, and bandages.
//really cute!! they’re liddol and they’re friends it’s nice
The Land of Blood and Childhood Trauma (8,242 words)
When two dreambubbles collide, two anti-social assholes are forced to help each other through it.
//not quite as Angsty as it sounds! it’s good
ecdysis (6,077 words)
Karkat goes through his adult molt. Dave does his best to take it in stride.
//so i actually haven’t read this thought I did but Uh have it anyway it looks good
Self Sabotage and Other Symptoms of a Damaged Soul (10,698 words)
//basically dave grapples with his internalized homophobia, etc. very good
turntechGodhead is offline (36,999 words)
//I’ve already ranted to you guys enough about this you know what it’s abt it’s SO FREAKING GOOD
A Ten Step Plan For Wooing Karkat Vantas, Featuring A Multitude Of Illustrations By Your Esteemed Authors, As Well As Tips For The Aforementioned Wooing (11,261 words)
Kanaya, because she's a saint, makes you a list.
The list is entitled "A Ten Step Plan For Wooing Karkat Vantas" and features a multitude of illustrations in purple pen.
"So we're doing this," you say. Your mouth threatens to twitch into something dangerously smile-shaped.
"Yes," says Kanaya. "We are making this happen."
"Hell yes."
//dave n karkat! they go on a date. stuff happens. it’s really good
Catching Colds on a Rock in the Middle of Space (15,887)
Rose catches a bad cold and it slowly spreads to the rest of the meteor crew. None of them are particularly good at admitting they're sick, let alone looking after themselves, but at least they're decent at caring for each other.
//rosemary and davekat! VERY sweet
Dave’s Girl (2,527 words)
The thing is no one knew anything more about "Kitty" other than her delicious cooking (Dave obviously doesn't want to share – ever) but the guys are more or less already in love with her. Drew insists she's probably this blond bombshell with big, blue eyes, all curves with legs that go on forever and a great rack... Practically everyone in the team has their own opinion.
//this is so funny and also im a sucker for these kinds of tropes so it’s great
Songs Made on the Meteor (27,762 words)
Dave makes music and they fall in love.
//on my to-read list! it looks good
Looks Just Like The Sun (12,231 words)
“Holy shit,” you whisper. Dave joins you at the window.
There are no stars left in the sky. Nothing but blackness and a faint soap bubble sheen.
“Is that a dream bubble?” Dave says.
And then it swallows you.
//okay. does this have explicit sex? yes. does it have a very explicit image? yes. HOWEVER (hear me out here) I firmly believe that if you whizz pass those parts, this is a very good fic with great characterization and fun banter. send tweet
aight happy reading
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mittensmorgul · 5 years
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Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.
Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P
I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.
*clenches fist* STORYTELLING
I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.
(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:
SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.
but back to the point)
S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:
7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.
7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.
7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure
7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss
7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…
But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…
Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.
One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.
Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.
They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.
So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...
14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:
The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).
But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:
Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.
We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?
We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.
We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.
14.02, Gods and Monsters:
There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:
Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now
Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)
Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.
the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*
Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:
Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.
and
Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.
Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!
14.03, The Scar:
Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).
I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.
We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:
Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.
Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:
Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.
Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:
Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.
And it’s still not really an answer.
14.04, Mint Condition:
Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat
(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me
And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters
So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.
Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.
14.05, Nightmare Logic:
Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.
Information fills narrative gaps.
The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.
We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.
We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.
(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)
14.06, Optimism:
Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.
Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.
But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)
We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.
Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.
Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.
You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.
14.07, Unhuman Nature:
We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.
What a fucking delight >.>
Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?
Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?
Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.
I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.
Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?
Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.
14.08, Byzantium:
Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.
We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.
I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.
Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...
14.09, The Spear.
Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.
Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)
Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).
This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.
And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.
We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)
14.10, Nihilism.
Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.
The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.
Metaphors, anyone?
Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.
(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)
14.11, Damaged Goods.
Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”
Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.
This… is major.
Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.
Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…
14.12, Prophet and Loss:
So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.
Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…
CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.
But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:
DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.
Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh… 
14.13, Lebanon:
I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.
Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.
Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.
D:
At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)
But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.
In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:
John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.
HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)
It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.
And then after this… everything changes… again…
14.14, Ouroboros:
Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.
Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.
They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.
So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.
We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.
Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.
The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.
The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.
14.15, Peace of Mind:
Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P
Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:
Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.
Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!
14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:
Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:
SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.
Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:
Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.
So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.
14.17, Game Night:
The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17  (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.
This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…
Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:
Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.
And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...
14.18, Absence.
Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.
But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.
Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.
That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…
But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that
Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul
There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.
Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period. 
14.19, Jack in the Box.
Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.
At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?
14.20, Moriah:
The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.
We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.
And whoa.
It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P
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duhragonball · 5 years
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Dragon Ball Z 176
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The Cell Games start now.   Goku wanted to fight first, but Mr. Satan thinks he’s the protagonist, and he’s got the zany hair to prove it.
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Goku tries to warn Mr. Satan, but he won’t listen.   Jimmy Firecracker asks Larry to zoom in on Goku, calling him “that dimwit.”
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Smile, Goku, you’re on Dumbass Cam.  
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Meanwhile, at King’s Castle, King Furry is checking all of this out.   His attendants agree that this guy doesn’t know anything, but King Furry thinks he might resemble that boy who saved the world from Piccolo years ago.    Of course, Goku’s hair and eyes look different, and King Furry’s had that kid on the brain for a while now.  Furry was one of the few witnesses to Goku’s battle with King Piccolo, and while he never learned Goku’s name, he’s hoping that he would return to put Cell in his place.   
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Also, he notices Piccolo in Goku’s group, which strikes him as odd.    Well, that’s Piccolo Junior, to be specific, and he looks a little different, and the cape and hat are enough to throw King Furry off, but he knows something’s up.  
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I dig how most of the world knows nothing of the Z-Fighters, and they all admire Mr. Satan instead, but imagine being King Furry, and being vaguely aware of all this cool Dragon Ball Z stuff, but not having he full picture.  Like, you sort of know who Goku and Piccolo are, but you have no idea that they became best friends forever, and teamed up with a bunch of other super-cool dudes to yell a lot and punch monsters.    That’s kind of sad.
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So Krillin convinces Goku to just let Mr.  Satan go first, if only to get him out of the way, and Goku agrees, so it looks like we’re finally going to get underway when...
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This big pink helicopter thing shows up and these three characters jump out of it.   Say hellow to Piroshki, Caroni, and their manager Pizza.  
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Wait, is this a Yukio Ebisawa episode?    Yes it is! I thought Piroshki’s legs looked awfully triangular.    The hips don’t lie. 
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So here’s the deal.  These three weren’t in the manga at all.    I’m pretty sure Toei invented these characters because they wanted to devote a whole episode to the Cell/Satan fight, and it’s pretty short, even with all of the posturing.   Piroshki and Caroni are Mr. Satan’s apprentices, and Pizza calls them the second and third strongest fighters in the world.  They’re so caught up in the hype of the Satan/Cell showdown that they believe Cell isn’t worthy to fight their master, so they ask to take Cell down themselves.    Satan agrees, they lose of course, and then Satan steps into the ring to proceed with the events in the manga.   
The hitch is that Pizza, Piroshki, and Caroni never actually leave after they get beaten.   So they end up sticking around with Mr. Satan, Jimmy, and Larry, watching the Cell Games from a safe distance.    This is why it’s not a simple thing to say that you can just skip all the filler in Dragon Ball.    Yes, there’s entire episodes of filler, and there’s filler scenes that you can skip, but sometimes the filler is so interwoven into the anime that you can’t separate it from the canon material.    In this case, everything Mr. Satan says and does from here on, he’ll have Pizza and his two apprentices hanging around next to him.   
Dragon Ball Z Kai is often described as a re-edit of DBZ with all the filler cut out, and that’s mostly true.    I’m pretty sure Maron never appears in Kai, because you can cut all her scenes and lose nothing.    But they had to keep the stuff with Pizza and the others, because the alternative would be to edit out almost every scene with Mr. Satan, and we need those, because he’s important to the story.    
On the other hand, when Team Four Star did their abridged version of the Cell Games, they went ahead and had Cell destroy the apprentices helicopter before they could jump out.    It was hilarious, because I never expected that to happen.   I just figured they’d be forced to do something with those characters, since the only alternative would be to painstakingly edit them out of every Mr. Satan scene afterwards.   Turns out, that’s exactly what they did, all through DBZA Episodes 58-60.    I’m guessing that’s why it took so long for those episodes to get made.    Was it worth it?   I’m not sure, but I do like that there’s a sidekick-free cut of the Cell Games episodes, even if it’s just a parody version.  It’s just interesting to see.   
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Don’t get me wrong, these guys are cool.   I like how Piroshki is clearly modeled after wrestling legend Big Van Vader, and Caroni looks like every pretty-boy wrestler from Gorgeous George onward.    And Pizza’s pretty cute.   Also, it’s just cool that Mr. Satan has students, and they’re just as ridiculous over-the-top as he is.  
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The problem is that it reaaaaallllly kills the pacing of this story.  The whole gag here was originally that Mr. Satan would show up as a joke character, try to fight Cell, and get beaten easily.    Then Goku would get in the ring and we’d get down to business.   It’s a good gag.    Once.   But Toei wanted to fill time, and so we’re now getting the same joke repeated three times. 
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And Pizza provides color commentary alongside Jimmy Firecracker.   It’s just redundant.   Why do we need two people calling the action here?    It just slows things down.    Jimmy worked fine on his own in the manga.  
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I remember watching this episode and getting really impatient, because they had already established a ten day waiting period before the Cell Games.   So we had to spend Episodes 166-175 marking time.   And those episodes are good, don’t get me wrong, but when you’re watching it for the first time, you just really want to see Goku mix it up with Cell.   By this episode, the tension was unbearable.    Goku’s here, Cell’s here, the Cell Games are officially on, and then Mr. Satan insists on going first.    Okay, fine, let’s get him out of the way... no wait, two other guys have to go ahead of him.    And guess what, each of them have to do their own pre-fight shtick and cut their own promos and so on.   And then Pizza and Jimmy have to comment on their fighting styles and attributes.  And before you know it, the episode is over, and you have to wait for the next episode to see Goku fight Cell.  
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And when I was first watching these, Cartoon Network was airing DBZ like four times a week.   I can only imagine what it was like for some Japanese kid in 1993.    Those poor kids must have been going nuts.
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Nonetheless, these two are still fun to watch.   Cell beats Caroni by using his ki to shove him up into the air in mid-jump, causing him to land out of the ring.   Then Piroshki is up, and he removes his cool Vader helmet and CRUSHES IT IN HIS BARE HANDS!   Awesome!
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Then he EATS IT.     Ha ha ha, this is wild!   This is weird wild stuff we’re seeing right here.    Piroshki came to play.
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But he can’t beat Cell either.    Cell uses his ki like some sort of invisible force field, and when Piroshki charges him, he can’t even get close.    He finally gives up and rolls out of the ring.
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At ringside, Mr. Satan calmly explains how both of his students lost.    For all his skill, Caroni is prone to overdoing things, so he believes that Caron accidentally launched himself out of the ring when he put too much oomph into his leap.   As for Piroshki, Satan suspects that Cell may have covered his own body in green pepper juice, which Piroshki despises, and that’s why he couldn’t get near Cell.   
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So now it’s finally time for Mr. Satan to fight, right?    Not quite.    First he pulls out a capsule, which contains a bag, and inside the bag are roofing tiles.    Toei really milks this for as much time as they can get.    They really don’t want Goku fighting Cell in this episode.  
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So Satan breaks 14 of the fifteen tiles he brought, and his hand smarts, but he’s still pleased with himself because that’s an insane number of tiles, and he pulled it off.   
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So all that’s left is to beat the shit out of Cell.   Satan jumps the big cat and just lays into the guy.   I mean, he throws kicks and punches and all sort of offense on the dude.    I’m not expert on power levels, but I’m pretty sure a lesser opponent, such as Frieza, would be turned to jelly by this vicious onslaught.
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Then Satan goes for the coup-de-grace and Cell swats him away, sending him into a nearby hill.
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Amazingly, he’s still alive after that.   Mr. Satan’s built Ford Tough. 
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Krillin’s been all smug throughout this farce.    Look, I love you Krillin, but you smashed that remote.    None of this would even be happening right now if you could have focused for like two seconds.   
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The audience is stunned.    As far as they were concerned, Mr. Satan was the first, last, and only fighter who could win this thing for them, and he just got clobbered with one hit.   In particular, this extremely triangular woman in red looks very upset.    I think we see more of her later, so I’m gonna start calling her Triangle Woman.  
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Cell’s like, “Goku get your ass in here this instant.”  
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And Goku’s all “Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy, I get to punch him now!”
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Yes, surely this will be the decisive match of the Cell Games, and put an end to this nightmare once and for all.   Right?   Right?
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yvaquietdays · 6 years
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idealising the past and dreaming about the future
Last week, after I made the blog public, I received some pretty beautiful messages. Most of them were from folks who had been in the exact same position as me, whether living with depression or anxiety, or simply finding it tough battling through life’s disappointments. It was incredibly comforting knowing what I believed when I wrote that last post was so resonant; we’re all going through the same bullshit.
But a friend in particular, his name is Mat. He commented publicly on my post with some words that got me thinking. Imma share this here:
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If I was arrested for any crime at all it would be for idealising my past self. That and eating too many biscuits. Who I was, who I thought I was. I laughed more, I cared less, I subscribed to nobody else’s version of me. But then I got depressed and worried all the time, and I lost that part of myself. The happy-go-lucky, ball of energy, motivated, determined young woman, gone. As slow and as unnervingly noticeable as a fart. Much in the way that Mat reminisces over his “extroverted, confident ‘me’“, I reminisce heavily upon the teenage me, the one who had stars in her eyes and never wavered in her confidence of her abilities.
Except, when I really think about it, when I’m honest with myself, and I face my self in the mirror, I know that isn’t true.
All that I’ve lost, really, are my rose tinted glasses.
I grew up.
I was never motivated, I was never determined. I was lucky. I can’t reminisce about the person I was because I know more about myself now than I did before, and I think the hardest part of climbing out of the pit of your mental un-health is accepting that life goes forwards, not backwards. I can’t unlearn all the things I’ve learnt since I noticed three years ago that I wasn’t happy. The truth is, I was unhappy before that. I’ve been fighting off that frequency sadness for as long as I can remember.
So I can’t go back and rewind the clock, because all I have is now and I don’t want to be that sad girl anymore. I’ve been thinking a lot about cycles, the 7-year-life cycle in particular. Wait, though- Before you flick back to whatever you were doing before you decided to read my blog, bear with me. Aside from whatever spiritual or philosophical connotations the idea might have, let’s look at it logically for a second. The first seven years of our life we spend smelling and touching and feeling out the world around us. Any mental learning is done almost subconsciously, depending on how our world treated us. We’re well on our way to becoming a real, pubescent adult when the second cycle rolls around, by which point we’re discovering our sexuality, relationships, viewpoints and intellect. This is such a huge exploratory phase for some. Then the third arrives, and we’re beginning to find out what the world is like without our parents driving the train. We’re figuring out where we place in the grand scheme of things, and wondering how you might change, politically, environmentally, socially. And then come our twenties.
Jesus Fuck.
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WHAT HAPPENED?!
I think it is no coincidence that a lot of people suffer mental illness for the first time in this particular age bracket. I envy those who don’t. They tend to be some of the most driven, strongest people I know. But my friends used to call it “the mid-twenties fear.” Out of nowhere, we’re mentally and physically culpable for all our own decisions and mistakes, and all the ideas we had for life in those first three cycles have become somewhat buried under a pile of work deadlines, rent days and bills to pay. We don’t own your own home yet, we aren’t married, we have no kids. We aren’t in the perfect job yet, we haven’t even begun the successes that were supposed to come to us after we put in so much work at our GCSE’s, A-Levels, degrees!
We’re the guy cleaning our toilets now, we’re the ones buying the food. School didn’t prepare us (not in the UK at least) for how to deal with every day responsibilities; how to pay taxes, how to arrange loans, how to mentally cope with the resounding disappointment we feel at how our lives panned out in contrast to the grand ideals we had when we were in our third cycle.
Oof. I know. Heavy man.
(I have a big problem with how out-dated our education system is; instead of being career-driven, it is goal-driven. Degrees don’t work for everyone and they evidently do not provide for a stable economy. More apprenticeships, less pressure on exams (not everyone is good at those) and more practical applications, pls & thnx)
But here’s what I’ve realised. Life is a cycle. It’s not meant to go backwards, it’s supposed to continue on its round, picking up what we’ve learned and adapting itself as it goes. Why focus on what we haven’t got when we should focus on what we do have? And if something is ever spiralling, ever changing and evolving, how can we go back to the last cycle? Should we jam an iron rod in the spokes, forcing the wheel to brake suddenly and collapse under the pressure? Because that is what would happen. That is what happened to me.
I knew at the age of 18 my life wasn’t heading in the right direction, when I stared out of my university accommodation window at York Minster in the distance, listening to Stop This Train by John Meyer. The night was dark, and I sat curled on my redundant desk chair, wondering in a pale blue light of sadness, even then. Eventually I made the change, dropping out of further education and pursuing my joy, my music. But it did not alleviate the sadness. I continued on, all the while so scared of living life on my own, so scared of growing up. I lived in fear for years of never achieving my goals because I could not bear to be alone doing it. Isolation was my motivation and fear my hinderance.
I spent years dreaming and idealising this vision of the future where I was always winning, where I was singing and performing and recording and I was writing with everyone and everyone wanted to write with me, and everything was just going to work out (claps between words required). It was easier living in this fantasy life I wanted to build, but the escape was taking me further away from reality. Much like that incredible Pixar film, Inside Out, fear and sadness was in control of my actual life.
Things were going well for a while in that frame of mind, but then they didn’t.
When all those things I’d dreamt (I stress that I never visualised them, not in a positive way- I dreamed them- the difference is as vast as an ocean) didn’t happen, I kept harking on to that past self, wondering where it all went wrong, trying to get back that ambition, the endless streams of excitement, the riveting pangs of desire. It was all a lie I told myself. Because really, all I had in the pit of my stomach was dull and and grey; it was nothing, and I could feel myself hiding in that pit, far, far away from where I used to be. All of what I told myself was a lie, and I was starting to realise the truth of it.
I think that amidst all of it, life was telling me (whatever it was; nature, God, Buddha’s mates,) I ought not to hyper-admire my old self. Because in trying to become my past self, I was ignoring what I could become in the future. All of the little lies I told myself started to evolve on their own like that black icky shit from Prometheus (don’t watch it- it’s disappointing, just like your life), to the point that I forgot what I had done to protect myself; when all of those things I had lied with were stripped from me, I was naked and bare, and I had no idea of how I was going to move through the murk of it all. My self esteem was so low that the idea of performing made me anxious, writing made me cry, I sat in silence at the piano with a choke in my throat and my guitar lay in its case gathering dust.
But I was naked for a reason. I had to accept that I was relying heavily upon this idea of my self, not upon what I was. I was constantly seeking others’ approval, my only source of validation was what I thought others thought of me.
It has been empowering to know that the answer has been in me all along. I cannot blame others for how I view myself.
Life is a cycle. I am where I am supposed to be now. It’s not perfect, I’m still working on me and creating my life with my own hands, not someone else’s. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m trying.
But maybe this is my best self, because I’m so much more aware and emotionally awake. Maybe I’m the best I can be because I recognised my laziness and arrogance when I needed to, and in stripping these things away from my ego I am looking forward to being a better person, not the young complacent girl I was. And as a woman, cycles rule our lives. From the second cycle to the latter, our emotions and physiology is run by a monthly turn of events. Part of the reason I came off the pill was so that I could feel and trust this more purely. I was neglecting my basic instincts and self and I couldn’t have jacked up hormones hiding it away from me.
So everything comes and goes. The old girl goes and the new woman arrives. We have a chance to change every time. All aspects of life in this world run in a cycle. Water, fire, earth. It all moves and works in a cycle. Ice ages, the rising of dough into a beautiful donut, the melting of butter atop a mountain of cheese and jacket potato. Life and death. All the important stuff.
So I let the death of my old self instigate the birth of a better me. And one day I might shed this skin too and look forward to the next husk I inhabit.
What I’m learning is that nostalgia can be good, if you’re with your mates and remembering that time you threw up down the side of George Ezra’s tour van (true story).
But if we start becoming nostalgic about our selves, thinking of our current self in a negative way, dousing it in low light and bad reflective gear, and instead highlighting that past self with the glory light of hindsight, we can’t, and I believe, we won’t move forward.
We have to accept ourselves as we are now, and then build whatever we can upon the foundations that we create every second we’re alive. Because all we have are our own decisions, that ultimately we are in control of. How we respond, how we act, what we say; at the end of the day, that’s who we are. What you did today, that’s who you are, good or bad. No-one is perfect and life is a cycle. We always have tomorrow to try again.
We don’t have yesterday, so
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meganmazing · 7 years
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Fics I Read While On Vacation 2.0!
Last month I went on a trip to Italy, and you know what that means... I downloaded a ton of long fics to keep me sane on the long plane/train journeys, and now I’m sharing a few of my faves with you guys! Pro tip for travelers: DO THIS! When you do’t have reliable wifi, and don’t want to pay for the in-flight wifi, downloading a PDF (or ten) from AO3 is the way to go. Their easy system is one of my favorite features of the site, and has multiple downloading formats other than PDF, too. Plus, they include links back to the work in the PDF so you can go back and comment when you do have wifi! Which you should always do, because authors are a gift, and giving kudos and love in the form of comments in return is a wonderful thing.
This time it’s mainly stevetony, with a few phlint, a cherik series, and one reaper76 (r76) for good measure. And guys. The stony and phlint especially...oh my god. Even when Phil and Clint aren’t the mains, I’m screaming about them. For whatever reason, the Marvel stuff I read his time blew me away, to the point where I’m still thinking about some of the stories, despite it being nearly a month since I got back to the states. One fic genuinely changed me, and I never thought I’d say that without a hint of sarcasm, but here we are. 
Like always, click the bolded titles for the link, and please read the tags on each fic. Even though I tend to steer clear of the truly brutal stuff when I’m on vacation, what squicks you out may not register for me, etc. Remember to throw some love to the works you enjoy, and come scream about them with me anytime <3
Stevetony
Steve Rogers Is A Child by LagLemon  Words: 290k+  Rating: M
Tony gets into fights with Steve all the time and it's driving him insane. Sure, he's not the nicest guy in the world, but all he did was steal a little of the guy's sesame seed bagel - he didn't deserve to get yelled at for something stupid like that.
After drowning his sorrows in hot chocolate and complaining to Pepper about what happened, Tony gets a phone call from Natasha telling him to hurry back home. Something's happened - Steve has been attacked and he's not quite the same man he once was - he's been turned into a child.
With Steve out of commission, the team struggles with what to do and Tony finds himself filling roles he had never expected: babysitter and friend.
THIS is the fic I mentioned in a textpost pretty much immediately after I finished reading. I couldn’t wait for this rec list. My dear friends, this fic gave me a crisis of faith. That’s a tad dramatic, you say? This fic had me rooting for Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark. Winteriron. Yeah. Bucky has an unrequited crush on Tony, and he killed me with it.
Don’t get me wrong, the stevetony here is endgame, and it’s beautiful, but wow. Like. I’m not one to multipship people often - especially not with my top otps - and stony is an og pair of mine. Something about this Tony and this Bucky just...fit? I mean...I think I get it, now. I can see it. You guys win.
I’m still recing this as stevetony, but I had to mention it becasue I’m still in shock weeks after finishing this, and it’s stuck with me. Tony is a character near and dear to my heart, and the story is told from his POV in a way that felt a bit different from the norm to me, and I dig it. Don’t be put off by the child!Steve thing, it’s not forever and it is handled really well in the story. No child sexual/romantic/abuse situations occur. Personally, I would not rec that kind of story.
Falling Into You by sabrecmc     Words: 53k+   Rating: M
Tony and Steve end up as fuck buddies after the events of The Winter Soldier until Steve calls it off. When Loki's spell wipes all of Steve's memories since the last time Loki was in town, Tony decides it will be so much easier to just not tell Steve they had something of a relationship. Spoiler: It isn't.
Or, how Steve fell in love with Tony and forgot about it, and how Tony fell in love with Steve and realized it.
Sometimes, you read a fic that is infuriating, heartbreaking, and sweet all at once, in almost every paragraph (at least for the first three quarters of the story). Tony is at his oblivious, slightly self-destructive best here, and you just want to shake the man, sometimes. Not to worry, I also wanted to shake Steve. It’s equal opportunity obliviousness in this one. The story is told with flashbacks to Tony’s memories of their “fuck buddy” relationship as he remembers them while the present mind-wiped-Steve situation is happening. It was done in a way that felt familiar without feeling redundant, the way this trope sometimes does for me. The ending is so worth it, and melted my heart. 
A Higher Form of War by sabrecmc     Words: 292k+  Rating: M
Tony is a King with a surprising number of people out to kill him. Steve and the rest of the Avengers are fighting for Pierce's rebellion and end up with Tony as their prisoner. Oops.
Basically one of those bodice-ripping romance novels I don't read (ahem) but with far more gay.
Speaking of melting my heart, this fic obliterated it. When I say Slow Burn, I mean it. Oh my sweet lord, do I ever. But you NEED this one if Stevetony is your thing, trust me. It’s AU in the best ways, and uses so much from the first Iron Man movie, as well as the Captain America movies and general MCU. Steve and Tony are painfully true to their characters at times, which brings both the good pain and the bad pain, the way you know you love. Fluff and plenty of angst, along with gorgeous tension and resolutions, and can I just have more of this world? Please? Forever? What is the team up to now? How is everyone? We got two novels worth of story, and I still want more of this universe!
The phlint really is blink-and-you-miss-it, but I am a sucker for the little nods and they made me happy. Also, there are the beginnings of Bucky and Tony being good friends, and I am so here for that friendship right now. 
Deep in the Heart of Me by Finely Honed (jaqen_hgar)  Words: 257k+       Rating: E  
There were days when the realization that he was someone’s father made Steve's head hurt, but mostly he was grateful that he could trust his instincts, because apparently Peter was what had been missing from his life. Yes, he still had lingering, unresolved issues from his time in the Army, and sure, he had what Bucky annoyingly referred to as a criminally untapped ass, and no life outside of work and Peter, but Steve was okay with how his life had turned out because of trusting his instincts.
Unfortunately, those same instincts had straight up betrayed him by going absolutely haywire upon being exposed to Tony Stark.
Veteran single dad Steve runs a tattoo shop. For his 40th birthday, Pepper arranges for Tony to get that tattoo he always wanted, and he winds up with the mother of all crushes instead. Jumping out of airplanes is one thing, but falling in love is something else entirely. Steve struggles with the idea of actually letting someone into his life. Tony is left trying to keep his heart from being broken while Steve figures things out.
I have been holding off on this story for a long time. Something about Steve being the adoptive dad to Peter had me skeptical, and the heavy mental health aspects were not something I was eager to deal with when I first saw it.  
That being said, I am so glad I read this. Getting real for a sec, I signed up for a mental health counselling consultation after finishing this. I connected so thoroughly with Steve and his experiences, and of course with Tony, too. But Steve’s journey through this story is honestly on a completely different level of fiction for me. Its heartbreakingly real, and downright visceral at times in the descriptions of how Steve feels, as well as how Tony feels, being in love with a person struggling with mental illness. 
I cannot recommend it enough. 
Aside from that, the love story between Steve and Tony blew me away, and I fell so in love with their love, it killed me. The ending is beautiful, and Peter is such a wonderful part of it. The family dynamics surprised me with how much I loved them too, with all of Steve and Bucky’s dads, and Clint and Nat being a part of their squad in the military, it fit perfectly in the story. Also: Let Tony Be A Good Father Figure 2k18 is my new crusade.
(I even grew to like Clint/Bucky in this. Phil is kind of in the world? Not a part of the main crew, but he cameos, and that was nice. Maybe that’s how I rationalized it in the beginning: Clint doesn’t know Phil, it’s fine! I like Clint and Bucky individually so much that it worked for me.)
Holding Out For A Hero by Wordsplat  Words: 100k+  Rating: T (yeah, I know, cue the comical surprise that one of these is rated Teen and Up) 
When Tony was a prince and Steve was his manservant, they were young and reckless and hopelessly in love. But an attack on Tony's life convinces Steve that he can't protect Tony, so he leaves in the dead of night to train until he can. Ten years later, Steve returns to the kingdom a strong and able knight, but his king is both furious and broken-hearted. 
One of my favorite things is when I get to be unreservedly on Tony’s side when he fights with Steve. Steve’s reasoning is understandable for his character, sure, but BOY. Plus, Tony has the Avengers backing him up too, and I live for the team supporting Tony. In the MCU right now, the team is basically all for Cap, but the lack of multiple, meaningful, interpersonal connections from the team to Tony in those movies is a rant for another day. 
Again, this is another story where the supporting cast has my heart. I also adored the knights being made up of the Avengers, and Bruce’s role, which kicked ass and made me happy. But, this story focuses primarily on Steve/Tony, and their relationship just kills me with how sweet/painful it is in turns. The fluff to angst ratio is spot on.
AND: Tony is a good dad! (LTBAGFF 2k18) 
I love their love.
Go Ugly Early by just_another_tinker  Words: 161k+ (still updating)  Rating: E
He’s The Captain?
This was not good. This was so not good.
There were theories of course, of what The Captain would look like. Most followed the typical Hollywoodesque belief that he was some version of the Godfather, sitting in a dark room with a cigar, commanding his forces with a flick of his wrist. There were even some that even thought that The Captain was not one person, but a whole network of people with eyes and ears everywhere.
The blonde Adonis in front of him was definitely not what Tony was expecting.
Of course, in the end it didn’t matter.
There was a reason no one knew what The Captain looked like.
Because anyone who saw his face never lived to tell the tale.
This is not a finished story, and I am perpetually on the edge of my seat waiting for the next update. I’ve rec’ed cherik Mob/Mafia AUs before, but I’ve never read one with steve/tony and the avengers. I’ll admit, Steve as a mob boss? I was skeptical about how well I’d vibe with it. 
Now? Holy shit, friends, I’m living for it. The aspects of Steve’s character that the author explores are everything I didn’t know I needed. Likewise with Tony, but I’m emphasizing Steve becasue it’s so unlike the usual representation Steve gets in fandom.
Apparently the running theme of this rec list is stories where the team is amazing and important to the story, becasue it’s true here, too. They’re Steve’s crew, becasue naturally. I adore the dynamics between everyone, especially when Tony starts to interact with them on the regular. 
But guys. The phlint in this hit me in the feels so hard, I didn’t see it coming until I was ready to tear up. The writing is so good, I forgot a key aspect of Phil’s arc in the MCU for a split second and I was distraught. Clint has POV chapters (Phil also had one very recently, but I think Clint has more content overall), and so you get into their relationship and all the emotions Clint’s going through, and  and I won’t say more becasue you need to read this one, even if you’re just in it for the phlint.
I know I’m a massive sucker for Clint, and love him wherever he shows up, but this time I’m genuinely impressed. The tags have it as minor/background, but it punched me in the chest like it was the main pair.
Of course, the steve/tony is amazing and addictive, but I had to scream about Clint and Phil for a sec.
Phlint
 First Impressions by raiining   Words: 76k+  Rating: M
Mr. Clint Barton does not like Mr. Phil Coulson. The feeling is not as mutual as he had thought.
A Pride & Prejudice AU.
So, I will be the first to admit that I have a serious affinity for Austen retellings in fanfic. The only downside with is that I tend to be overly picky about them, to the point where I check out fast if something bugs me, even if literately no one else would be bothered, much less notice it in the first place. 
This AU fed my Austen-loving soul and gave me every Phlint thing I’ve ever wanted in an AU like this. Clint’s perspective here is spot-on, and his relationships with Nat and Tony were awesome to read. Not to mention that the author filled character roles perfectly? People were chosen that I wouldn’t have expected but as I was reading I was so on board at every turn, like, yes, of course, this is exactly it! They also twisted the classic P&P story and made it their own, making it fit and make sense for the characters above all, which I absolutely loved. Bookmarked for life. Probably will end up rec’ing this forever.
Phil just breaks my heart, and so does Clint, and I have way too much love for this fic, go read it right now!
And Eternity in an Hour by Selenay   Words: 60k+   Rating: E
He comes from a secret place, far below the city streets, hiding his face from strangers, safe from hate and harm. He brought me there to save my life...and now, wherever I go, he is with me, in spirit. For we have a bond stronger than friendship or love. And although we cannot be together, we will never, ever be apart.
When Phil Coulson is attacked and left for dead, he is rescued and cared for by an unusual man who looks like a beast. As Phil heals, he learns that Clint is part of a community hidden below the city, where people who don't fit into the world above can live in safety. In time, Phil has to return home, but he vows to change his life and find a happier, better future.
Phil and Clint believe their time together is over, but they are destined to meet again when their worlds begin to collide.
A Beauty and the Beast (TV, 1987) fusion fic.
I’ll be honest, this show was before my time, and while my mom loved it and I know the basics of the story through her, I’ve never actually seen it. That being said...hell yes. I was hesitant, because Clint is right next to Tony for Marvel characters that I hold really close to the chest, and making him a “monster” had me cautious in the beginning. Fuzz, claws, really? Yes. If you’re thinking like me, go for it anyway! This story won me over so quickly, I don’t think I even knew it was happening - suddenly I was hooked.   
It’s alternating POV, with a bit more of Phil, I think, since he’s the character we relate to more, being the outsider character to Down Below. Phil isn’t a secret agent in this, but he’s still a competent badass in that way Phil always is, and he was my favorite from the get-go! Their love story is so sweet, you’ll melt by the end. Also, there are explicit sexy times, and they are great. Plus, body image is dealt with wonderfully without feeling like a PSA.
It’s also not told in first person! I thought it was from that part of the summary, but it isn’t, and I was v happy about that.
The Clockwork Murders by Selenay  Words: 76k+  Rating: M
Phil Coulson has two lives: by day he's a quiet, respectable Edwardian gentleman and his biggest risk is on a hand of cards at his club; at night he's a masked vigilante, fighting to make London safer. Keeping those lives separate is difficult enough when his closest friend is the head of a special task force within the Metropolitan police. It becomes even more difficult when his latest case gets dangerously close to home, bodies start washing up on the banks of the Thames, and Detective Inspector Fury's team is tasked with capturing the vigilante.
Clint Barton, Coulson's new valet, is down on his luck and inexperienced at valeting but his skills from his former life may be exactly what Coulson needs. They just need to negotiate their way through Coulson's secret life and their growing attraction to each other. And save London from a terrifying new threat along the way.
Alright, this fic might just be my absolute favorite out of the whole bunch. Not to say the others are lesser in any way, but I LOVE this one! Edwardian Steampunk has never been my thing, but I guess I can’t say that anymore?!  
One of the best Phil POV’s I can remember, along with a romance that just consumed me. Phil is kinda like an Edwardian Batman with less gadgets and slightly lower social standing? I was so on board. Let Phil Be Batman. I’m starting that campaign right now. Clint is also a bit like Robin, if Robin was also Hawkeye. The slow build of their relationship is delicious, and so, so rewarding when it finally comes to a head (lol). When they finally got together, I actually fist pumped (just a very small, non-distracting one, because I was on a train at the time and didn’t want to look like a complete loon, but that’s how much I loved this story). Phil and Clint are vigilante detectives and Clint gets to be smart! What a novel concept! 
I’m also a massive sucker for AU’s where the Avengers find each other and form a team all on their own. The scenario here is AMAZING and everything I never knew I wanted in an AU team-up. When Nat first showed up, I almost squealed out loud. No shame. Steve and Bucky are off being cops with Fury, off-page, so they’re the only ones missing from the story, but Darcy is here!! Plus, she and Nat have a side thing towards the end, and I am HERE FOR IT. This fic just has me so excited, weeks after I finished it. I’m invested and it hurts. 
You know when I care about the plot of a phlint story, that the plot is genuinely compelling, because usually the phlint is all I care about. And the relationship is the foundation from the start, and always the underlying focus, so no worries for the people in it for the tension/sexytimes.
Cherik
An Ideal Grace by afrocurl and nekosmuse    Words: 86k+   Rating: M
Cherik is one of the few pairings where the No Powers AU’s are some of my favorites. This is one of those times! Both boys have some mental health issues, especially where Erik as concerned, but it handled fairly well. Erik’s mental health specifically is a major arching plot piece, and his therapy sessions are important to his daily life and aren’t just mentioned off-page.
It’s important to say that there is no underage or professor/student relationship between Charles and Erik. There is past professor/student trauma in Erik’s life, but that is always a clearly negative and traumatic aspect of his life, and something he is working towards healing from in the story.  
The only thing that had me a little iffy was the co-dependency between him and Raven, who is his adoptive sister in this, but it is called out, and they are moving forward in this story as well as the sequel. Having those two be siblings instead of her and Charles is a bit different, but I think it worked for the story, even if I still love Raven and Charles as siblings.
The sequel: Love’s Own Crown, I actually think I enjoyed more, since it was less about the identity mix-up and more about their relationship/therapy
Reaper76
The Other One Where Jack is the Gay Roommate by pfaerie  Words: 16k+ Rating: E
Straight guy worries he's being homophobic to gay roommate, realizes he's fallen in love with him. Turns out Gabriel Reyes is fine with Jack Morrison kissing guys if it's him Jack is kissing.
This is kind of a remix of the author’s previous fic of the same name (minus “Other” in the title), but with sexytimes and additional editing. This is the roommate trope at it’s finest. It’s Gabe’s perspective, and in a non-powered/modern day AU, which works 100% to the story’s advantage. Gabe cracks me up, and I liked Widow in this too. All the kudos for the humor and smut! I really love this author’s writing style, especially with the way they write r76′s dynamic.
It’s one of those fics I’d give to a friend who wanted to read r76, but hadn’t before. The angst is mostly “I’m not gay, bro! ...oh wait” kind, plus Gabe just being a pill, not any of the massively heavy and dark content you tend to see with this pair.
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Act 3, Chapter 5: Electric Boogaloo
“Hello, Sportacus!~” EB smiled and patted the new hero’s shoulder.
The pole vaulter zombie was still caught a bit off guard by the fact that he was now a hero. He smiled. “Uh, thanks. So you’re Electric Boogaloo, right?”
EB spun on his heel and struck a pose. “That be me~” He smiled.
“My name The Smash. Good to meet you, new hero.” Smash held out his large hand.
“Wow, I didn’t expect a luchador to have such a thick russian accent,” said Sportacus.
“Most do not.”
Sportacus stared at Smash’s huge palm, and then smiled and shook it.
“Good grip,” commented Smash.
Sportacus grinned.
“...For thin zombie like you.”
Sportacus burst out laughing. “I like you.”
“Smash like you too, Sportus.” Smash patted Sportacus’ head and noogied him with his thumb.
Sportacus chuckled. “So what DID happen to Rustbolt?”
Now the thing is, EB and Smash had come and greeted him as the last few zombies were leaving. So it was just the three of them, pretty much. “...You really wanna know?” Whispered EB.
“Yes I do, Floof.”
“Okay, we-- Did you just call me floof?”
Sportacus nodded. “Sorry, Electric Boogaloo…”
“I kinda like it.” EB smiled. “I’m kinda surprised nobody’s called me that before.”
“So, what happened to him, Floof?”
EB looked at the hero. Sure, he seemed nice… But he’s Rustbolt’s REPLACEMENT… But it’s not his fault… So, taking in a deep breath, and then holding it for a sec, EB sighed. “Rustbolt got some plant-related powers and now he’s living with the plant heroes.”
“How come nobody else told me?”
Smash and EB looked at each other. If they spilled the beans, Sportacus could take said beans to Brainstorm or Zomboss. Those beans are NOT cool beans. “It is because only us know,” Smash said softly.
Sportacus’ eyes widened. “Did you guys almost leave WITH him?”
EB shook his head. “No. We visited him.”
“Also we gave him plant powers,” Smash mumbled.
Sportacus gasped.
“Smash!” EB scolded. “For real!?”
“I trust him, he is nice.” Smash shrugged.
Sighing, EB nodded. “Yeah. He wanted powers so we shot him with the handheld hero-tron. The one that made YOU a hero. But he had coffee grounds in his hands and ZAP! Plant powers.”
“I thought it was tea,” Smash commented.
“Yeah. What’d I say, coffee? God I’m stupid. I’m just a bit stressed from the meeting. I don’t want any harm to come to my best friend…”
Sportacus hugged EB. “Cheer up, Floof. It’s really cool getting to talk to you guys and, well… Talking in general. It’s great being able to say something besides ‘brains’ all the time. But I don’t think I’m fit for all this…”
Smash poked the other two. “I have idea. Is good one. Want to hear?”
“What’s your idea?” Asked EB.
“We get Rustbolt… To train Sportacus. That way we dont end up having another Rustbolt replacement, and Zomboss will leave us alone.”
“Which gives us the perfect environment to figure out where to go from there,” said Sportacus.
Smash smiled. “Already he is like Rustbolt. Very smart.”
EB was about to say something when his phone rang. It was Zomboss.
“Electric Boogaloo! I require your services immediately,” said the big-brained boss.
“‘Sup, Dr. Zomboss?”
“You and Super Brainz are to look after Impfinity.”
“Got it.”
Zomboss hung up, and EB pocketed his phone. “Guys, I gotta go babysit Impfinity with--”
“The one and only!~” Super Brainz landed onto the stage where the others stood.
EB chuckled. He was always a bit fond of Super Brainz. Back in the days, them and Smash were the CREW. They went on ALL the missions. They were inseparable. “Gimme a sec, ok?” Super Brainz nodded and flew in the air, kinda hovering high above them.
“So what’s up?” Asked Sportacus.
“The main focus is finding out what else Zomboss has planned.” Sportacus and Smash nodded.
Suddenly, Super Brainz flew down. “Zomboss said to tell you that Sportacus is going to be living in Rustbolt’s house.”
EB, Smash and Sportacus nodded.
“Now let’s go!” Super brainz picked up EB and flew off. EB waved to Smash and Sportacus, and they waved back.
“I’m gonna miss Rustbolt,” said Super Brainz.
EB looked at him. “...Me too.”
“But hey, what’re you gonna do, right?” SB shrugged. “Oh, also. I got a bunch of disco albums for us to listen to.” Floof smiled. Him and Super Brainz, even if they hadn’t talked much anymore, always had each other in mind. “So we’re almost there.”
“Impfinity isn’t TOO crazy, right?” Asked EB.
“Nah, he’s just jumpy. He doesn’t clone himself TOO much, and when he does it’s usually to do something like stack on top of them to reach the cookie jar or something.”
EB chuckled. “That’s pretty IMPressive.”
Super Brainz let out a guffaw, clutching his stomach with both hands. Therefore dropping EB.
“Why am I always getting dropped in the air!?” Screamed EB. “It’s not even scary anymore, it’s just redundant!”
Super Brainz flew down and picked up the dancing hero. “There.”
“I’m just glad we’re not babysitting Z-Mech,” said EB.
“Why not?”
“He’s kind of a copycat,” EB started. “Like, he’s not that original. Half of his decks are either sports decks or dancing decks. Those are my thing. And Rustbolt’s thing.”
Super Brainz nodded. “Well, SPORTACUS’s thing now, I guess. Also you gotta remember, Dancing decks, he has Bonus Track Buckethead.”
EB frowned. “I want him in my arsenal.”
“Who knows? Maybe some magic disco dancer can conjure up one for you,” Super Brainz said sarcastically.
“Conjure. Now that’s a word you don’t hear everyday.”
Super Brainz smirked that pervy-looking smirk of his. “I learned that word yesterday.”
“Been waiting to use it, haven’t you.”
“You know me so well~” Super Brainz said in a heavily exxhagerated girly voice. The two started laughing. Just like they used to. “Hey, remember that Grass Knuckles mission?”
“Oh god, with the two trenches next to the pier? Don’t freaking remind me.”
Super Brainz laughed.
“That took us SO LONG.”
~FLASHBACK~
Super Brainz, EB and Smash are gathered around each other.
“He’s got too much bullseye bullshit,” growled Super Brainz.
Smash nodded. “We need locust swarm and rolling stone.”
EB looked at Smash. “Definately the locusts, but we also need to be able to damage nim directly.”
“You both are crazy!” Shouted SB. “We need to use deadly to get rid of those damn armored plants. We need strikethrough to hit him directly. We also nooe to bonus attack the shit out of him.”
“Or we can just flood him with glass cannons!” Yelled Floof.
“No! We need a weed spray!” Roared Smash.
The three kept on arguing. For a long time. Until finally Smash roared. EB and SB both shut up after that.
“We need Frenzy,” said Smash. “That way we can hit him. Super Brainz, you have no healing, so you are bad idea for this.”
“Wait, that’s it!” EB snapped his fingers. “Everyone make a list of what you LACK.”
Smash and Super Brainz were a bit confused, but nonetheless they did as EB said.
After a few minutes they read out their lists. EB started. “I don’t have bonus attacks, strikethrough, bouncing, deadly, armored or bullseye.”
“I don’t have direct damage, bullseye, bonus attack, deadly, bouncing or strikethrough,” said Smash.
Super Brainz went last. “I don’t have frenzy, armored, healing, destroying, decent buffs, debuffs, or direct damage.”
“What’s VERY important for this mission?” Asked EB.
“Healing, so that we can last longer,” said Smash.
“Deadly, because then his buffs go to waste.” Said Super Brainz.
“Frenzy,so deal with sting beans,” countered Smash.
Super Brainz narrowed his eyes. “Bonus attacks, to level the playing field.”
“Locusts to deal with big plants.”
“That’s what deadly’s for. Also Gravestones are immune to bonus attacks.”
“I can use weed spray,” said Smash.
SB laughed. “Bouncing undoes any buffs he gave them. Meaning WEED SPRAY is only good early game.”
“Guys!” Shouted EB. “Calm down. I think Super Brainz is the one we need.”
And Super Brainz, with the help of EB and Smash, made an imp-based strategy that absolutely obliterated Grass Knuckles. It took them a week altogether to beat that final fight.
~UNFLASHBACK~
“Well, here we are.” Super Brainz flew down into the carnival. There, standing by the circus tent, was Impfinity, snacking on brain cupcakes.
“Hi Soup Brain!~” Said Impfinity.
“Impfinity, I’m here with EB.”
Impfinity stared at EB’s afro. “Look at all that floof!” Shouted Impfinity. “SO MUCH FLOOF!”
Super Brainz snickered. “I’m like, 95% sure that he’s only got like five hairs on his head, they’re just like 40 feet long.”
“My hair is NOT 40 feet!”
“Sure as hell SMELLS like 40 feet.” SB pointed to his bootless foot. Impfinity just busted out lauhging.
EB pouted. “That’s not cool, bro.”
“Sorry,” said the superhero. “I got…. CARRIED AWAY.”
EB laughed so hard he started tearing up. “You crack me up~”
Super Brainz smirked. “So are we gonna watch the little rascal?”
“Yep. So, Impfinity, what do you wanna do?” EB crouched, tooking down at the small imp.
“I want to play chickenfight!” He shouted.
“But there’s only three of us.”
Impfinity, with the craziest smile on his face, pressed the button on his belly. “Not anymore!” 5 Impfinities stacked on each other’s shoulders, and were about twice as tall as EB, not including hair.
“Who’s bottom?” asked Super Brainz. “I’m stronger, but you’re taller.”
“Stronger? Don’t underestimate my back and shoulders, buddy.”
EB, now curious, flew up onto EB, and EB carried the buff hero with ease.
The Impfinities were laughing hysterically. “Yay!”
And then the fight was on. EB had no problem on the bottom, except for the fact that Super Brainz was full-on left and right hooking the clones. Every time he swung his fist, he put all his weight into that punch. Which made it hard for EB to balance. And every time that Super Brainz would punch a clone off, another would spawn in its place.
“This is fun!” The clones laughed and giggled. EB smiled as he and Super Brainz fought the impfinite clones.
“That was exhausting,” said Super Brainz between pants.
EB had the biggest grin on his face. “It was fun.” He watched Super Brainz take off, then started walking to his nightclub. Suddenly, his phone rang. It was Brainstorm. Picking it up, EB casually asked “Hello?” He hoped that Sportacus hadn’t spilled the beans to Brainstorm.
“Electric Boogaloo, it’s Professor Brainstorm. We haven’t hung out in a while, I was wondering if you wanted to do something later.”
Well that’s not suspicious at all. “Uh, sure. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, there’s this pink comet I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while and--”
“You’ve noticed that too?”
“Yes. It’s quite peculiar. I plan to observe it more tonight. I was wondering if you wanted to accompany me.”
EB sighed in relief. “Yeah, sure. Sounds fun.”
“Excellent. Meet me at Zombie U just after sundown.” Brainstorm hung up.
EB pocketed his phone and looked up. The sun was already done setting.
Brainstorm had basically said, in a really calm way,
GET OVER HERE. NOW.
EB gulped. This might be about stars.
Or it might be about something of much greater importance.
EB ran all the way to Zombie U. There on the roof stood the second smartest zombie of all time. “Hello, Boogaloo,” said Brainstorm without looking down at Boog.
The disco dancer bit his lip. “How’s it going, Brainstorm?”
“It’s going great,” said EB. He was lying of course, but Brainstorm didn’t seem to notice.
“Come join me,” he said.
EB climbed up to the roof and looked at the stars. There, sure enough, was that pink dot. “It’s not headed for us, is it?...”
Brainstorm shook his head. “Not at all. That would make it a meteor. It’s Comet Z, as I have started to call it.”
EB shrugged. “Comet Z sounds cool.”
Brainstorm looked into the telescope. “I wanted to ask you something.”
EB’s eyes widened. “Sup?”
“What are you up to?”
EB started panicking. “W-what do you mean? I’m not up to anything, Brainstorm.”
Brainstorm shrugged. “Wanted to know if you had plans later in the week.”
A weight was lifted from his aching shoulders.
“But now you’re acting nervous. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Well there’s alot of stuff I don’t tell you,” EB quickly responded. A little TOO quick.
Brainstorm turned and glanced at EB. “You seem on edge. Look, if you don’t wanna tell me something, don’t tell me it. We all hide things from each other.”
EB let out a sigh of relief. “So anyways, um.”
“Well are you free this week?”
EB nodded. But since Brainstorm was looking through the telescope, he said “Yep. I’m free, as far as I know.”
“Excellent. Can I count on your arrival to Zombie U tomorrow evening as well?”
“Sounds good. I’m also gonna be helping train Sportacus, by the way. But that’ll be in the daytime.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Brainstorm. “Good chat.”
“Wait was that all? I came over here so that you could ask me to come over AGAIN tomorrow?”
“I only realized the redundancy once you arrived,” replied the professor. “I hope to see you tomorrow, EB. You should get some sleep.”
EB, keeping eyes on the professor, climbed down the building and slowly backed away. Once he was far enough, he turned and bolted for his house.
Brainstorm, watching Comet Z, flinched slightly when his phone rang. He pressed a button, and a hologram of Zomboss appeared. “Hello, Dr. Zomboss.”
“Good evening, Brainstorm,” said Zomboss. “I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”
“What would that be, sir?”
“The laser. The one that Rustbolt blew up. I want you to remake it.”
Brainstorm looked up and furrowed his brow. His moustache twitched. “I can have it done in six days, sir.”
“Make it five.”
Brainstorm nodded, and the hologram fizzled out. He put down the small device and continued to observe the comet. “Oh, the kind of things that could be on that comet. It looks like it’s made primarily of solid rock, instead of a granular substance or ice. How peculiar. It seems to be about the size of a two-story house.That is, if I’m looking at it correctly. That glow is so intense, It took all my sun filters to be able to properly observe it. How odd.”
“Brainz!” Shouted a browncoat.
“What is it?” Asked the professor.
“Brainz.”
“Really?”
“Brainz.”
“Fine.” Brainstorm sighed and teleported down to the ground. He walked inside to see a mass of wires and two oval frames. “How is it not working?”
“Brainz.”
“I thought I put new couplings in.”
“Brainz.”
“After one test? Really?”
“Brainz.” He pointed to the oval on the left. “Brainz.”
“I said I would work on that. Also you’re forgetting that the cables are weighing it down. We can’t get accurate numbers yet.”
“Brainz?”
“Yes, we’re gonna put the transmitter on.”
“Brainz.”
“That all?”
He nodded.
“Good.” Brainstorm left the room and headed to his office. He rifled through a few papers and found the diagrams and blueprints for the zombification laser. “Two projects, two deadlines.”
EB was walking home when it started to thunder. Clouds rolled in, and lightning jumped from one cloud to the next. EB chuckled. Lightning struck down in front of EB, temporarily blinding him. He flinched, blinking the white lines out of his eyes. “I’m ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. THIS IS MY DOMAIN.” He jumped in the air, and pointed to the sky with both hands. Lightning came down and entered his fingers. When he landed, he jumped again and shot it back into the air. He watched the rain fall down and shocked it with his finger. It bounced from one droplet to the other, finally arcing down and going into the earth.
He walked home, zapping the rain and puddles as he went. He could never do this with Rustbolt. Rustbolt hated rain, even when his suit wasn’t on. Admittedly that was rare, but still.
When EB reached home, he walked in to see hoards of dancing zombies. He closed the door, walked to the center of the stage, and danced the night away.
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whoimightbe · 7 years
Text
Crushed.
I’d been dating Marcus Simmons since before either of us were actually allowed to date. We met in first grade when Mrs. Donner’s seating chart placed us next to each other since my last name is Simmons, too. Throughout elementary school we sat next to each other and because boys were eww until 7th grade I barely talked to him. Well, that’s not completely true. I regularly told him to shut up since he teased me relentlessly. As I learned later, teasing is an elementary school boy’s way of flirting. And apparently the more annoyed someone is about the teasing, the more they do it. Needless to say, he teased me a lot. 
When junior high came around we moved classes every hour and with the exception of Mr. Gill’s Advanced English class, we didn’t have alphabetical seating charts. I had three classes with Marcus every day but only sat next to him in English and when that class arrived at the end of our first day in the new school I found I was actually excited to see him. I’d missed the familiarity of him being next to me and weirdly, I’d missed his teasing.
“Hey, Monica,” he said as he slid into the seat next to me at the table. 
“Marcus, hi!” I knew immediately that I was too excited but if he noticed, he didn’t let on.
“How’s the first day been?”
“Good I guess...weird...you?”
“Same I guess...it’s nice to see a friendly face.”
I smiled and felt warm all over, which was a new feeling that I didn’t know if I liked. 
When the first dance of the year arrived a month or so later we’d been talking a lot more, walking together to our lockers after English and doing a lot more flirting than teasing. We met at the gym after being dropped off by our respective parents and danced most of the night together. That’s the night he kissed me for the first time, and while it wasn’t anything to write home about, just a quick peck on the lips, it’s a night I’ll never forget. 
We were boyfriend and girlfriend from then on and while there were ups and downs and times we both thought we should call it quits, we actually made it to our senior year. I hadn’t seen Marcus since early in the summer because we both had family vacations and various camps and programs, not to mention jobs, that kept us busy up until the first day of school. Sure, we’d talked on the phone and via text, but I hadn’t seen his face in over two months and I was giddy as I waited by my locker, which I assumed was next to his, as it had been since junior high.
The first bell rang to alert us that class was starting in five minutes, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn't seen him yet. I’d sent him several texts but he hadn’t responded so I figured he’d left his phone at home or in the car, something he’d been doing more and more of late. When the second bell rang I had to sprint through the halls to avoid being late to my first class of the last year of high school. 
We’d planned our schedules at the end of the prior year and I knew Marcus wasn’t going to be in my first period History class. I was disappointed that I hadn’t seen him yet but knew he was in second period Calculus with me so I tried to focus and count down the minutes until I saw him.
I said hi to other friends as I got seated, with two full minutes to spare, but noticed that several people were looking at me through their side eye and I couldn’t imagine what was going on. When my best friend Lisa walked in everyone looked at her then me and back at her. I waved at her and pointed to the seat next to me but she looked away and took a seat up front. “Okay, what the hell?” I said, a little too loud. A minute later a stranger walked in and thankfully everyone began staring at him as he walked to the only empty seat in the room, the one next to me.
“Okay, everyone,” Ms. Paul started as she walked in. “Do you like who you’re sitting by? Good. Because that’s your study and project partner for the year.” I’d been looking forward to doing my projects with Lisa but when I tried to get her attention to switch seats she turned away and I sunk down in the chair and tried not to cry.
“Sorry, did you want to sit with someone else?” The stranger’s voice was gentle and soothing as he whispered near my ear. I turned and looked into his eyes, his gorgeous blue eyes that sparkled as I stared. A few seconds passed before I shook my head and wiped a tear that escaped down my cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I lied. 
“I’m Nick.”
He smiled and put out his hand and I swear his eyes got even brighter as his dimples appeared. “Monica,” I breathed as I took his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, Monica.” 
My hand fit perfectly in his but I pulled it away quickly as it seemed like I was feeling far too much about a person I didn’t know and as far as I knew, I was still very much in a relationship with Marcus.
“Um, nice to meet you, too,” I rambled. 
“Okay, so I’m passing around the syllabus and by the end of the week I want to know the topic of your first project, which will be due in six weeks.” A collective groan rose throughout the room but it was shut down quickly by Ms. Paul when she told us to pull out our books then started lecturing. 
I felt another tear find its way out of the corner of my eye and just as I was wiping it away, Nick glanced over. I turned quickly but a few seconds later he pushed his notebook toward me and tapped it with his pen. I looked down and saw that he’d written Are you okay? then put Yes and No check boxes underneath. I couldn’t help but smile as I picked up my own pen and added another box underneath. I’m not sure but it’s sweet of you to ask. I drew a happy face then pushed the notebook back to him. He smiled then wrote something else.
I’m a pretty good listener...
We’re in class...
We could walk to our next class together...I’ve got calc, you?
I turned and tilted my head as I looked at him. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders, as if to ask me what my deal was.
Okay.
I pushed the notebook back then refocused on Ms. Paul and jotted down some brief notes before the end of class. It wasn’t easy, as all I was thinking about was what was going on with Lisa and why everyone had been looking at me with weird faces. I was also still trying to figure out why I hadn’t seen or heard from Marcus.
When class ended I tried to get to Lisa but she moved quickly and when I realized I couldn’t reach her I sat down and shook my head. Nick sat down across from me and that’s when I felt my phone vibrate. “Marcus,” I whispered as I pulled it from my pocket. I smiled when I saw his name.
Marcus: We need to talk.
Me: Where were you this morning? I thought we were meeting?
Marcus: Couldn’t. Meet you by the gym at lunch.
Me: I can talk now, before calc.
Marcus: Schedule changed. Lunch.
Me: What? Why? What’s going on?
Marcus: Lunch, okay?
Me: Okay.
“We should probably go.” I looked up and saw Nick standing next to me with my bag in his hand. I felt like I was in some sort of shock. I nodded as I stood then took my bag and slung it across my body. “At the risk of sounding redundant, are you okay?”
I blinked my eyes and shook my head as the tears fell.
“Good listener, remember?” He smiled as he pointed toward his chest and I smiled as more tears fell.
The next period’s students started coming in so I started walking and Nick followed quickly. I didn’t say anything because why was I going to bare my soul to a complete stranger. He didn’t push, which I appreciated, and it was actually nice to have someone to walk with since everyone was still staring at me and very few people were saying hi. Their eyes looked at me with sadness or something that I could only define as pity.
The next two periods moved slower than the calendar when Christmas is getting close and I was actually thankful that Nick was in both the Calculus and Chemistry classes with me. During Chem I told him that I had to meet someone for lunch then gave him my number so we could check in later about our History project. He shared his number as well and I thanked him for being so nice. We’d already figured out that with the exception of choir in the afternoon we had the same schedule. I had a free period where I worked in the office when he would be singing tenor with our award-winning choir.
As soon as Chemistry ended I bolted toward the gym so I could figure out what was going on with Marcus and maybe figure out what was up with Lisa at the same time. When I got to the gym they were huddled together looking a little bit too cozy for two people who weren’t dating. I watched for a few seconds before I cleared my throat and startled both of them. It was so cliche, my boyfriend and my best friend betraying me together. 
“We didn’t mean for it to happen,” Lisa explained. “But you know, we were in that program and...”
“And you just felt like you could betray me by hooking up with the only guy I’ve ever loved?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Marcus interjected.
“Says the cheater,” I snapped and crossed my arms in front of my body. 
“We didn’t mean to hurt you,” he continued.
“Oh well, since you didn’t mean to hurt me...” I took a few deep breaths as I glared at them then continued. “Neither of you speak to me ever again.”
“Monica,” Lisa pleaded, but I’d already turned around and started walking away.
“Let her go.” His whisper made me cringe and while I knew I shouldn’t have looked back I couldn’t help myself. He’d pulled her into his arms and was comforting her as she cried. 
“Unbelievable!” I cried. “You could at least wait ‘till I’m out of sight.” I wasn’t paying attention as I walked sideways and backward and ran right into the door jamb, which made my nose bleed and my head hurt like crazy. “Perfect,” I grumbled and didn’t wait for them to get to me even though I heard them both ask if I was okay. 
I ran to the nurse’s office and nearly knocked Nick over in the hall. “Hey, are you...?”
“If you ask me if I’m okay one more time...” I turned to him and his wide eyes told me just how bad I looked.
“Oh god, Monica, what happened?”
As I stared at him I started to feel woozy and a moment or two later I was falling toward him. When I came to in the nurse’s office, thanks to some old-fashioned smelling salts, Nick was sitting next to me and the nurse was calling my mom. 
“No, I’m not okay,” I said even though he hadn’t asked me again.
“I can see that. How can I help?”
“I just need to get home.”
He nodded but didn’t make any kind of move to leave. “Did you get any lunch?” I shook my head and he reached into his backpack and pulled out an apple. “An apple a day, right?” 
He smiled and I couldn’t help but do the same as I took the fruit from his hands. “Thanks.” I took a bite and honesty, it was the best apple I’d ever tasted in my life. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I’m a nice guy,” he grinned and I was going to continue the conversation but the nurse turned back toward us.
“Right, so your mum is on her way, love, and you can rest here until she arrives.” Nurse Lynn was more like a British nanny than a nurse, which is why I adored her. “Now, young man, are you staying or going?” Nick looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what more to do. 
“Staying? I think?”
“Right, so I’ll get you a pass into your class once Miss Simmons’ mum arrives. Now I have to go to a quick meeting with the vice principal; can I trust you two to behave?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nick answered and I nodded as I felt that same warm and fuzzy feeling come over me again. 
Once she was gone Nick looked at me and smiled. “No pressure, but like I said...” He put his hand on his chest. “Good listener.”
I sighed and nodded my head. “Fine.” He was clearly pleased with himself based on how his smile got bigger. “Apparently I’m a complete fool. My best friend - the girl from History this morning...” He nodded. “She's apparently been hooking up with my boyfriend all summer and I was the very last person in the entire school to know.”
“Well that’s not entirely true,” he said, his eyes filled with the same pity I’d seen in my friends earlier. “I mean I didn’t know.” 
“Very funny.”
“I’m just saying, if you’re going to throw out things like ‘entire school’ you just need to be clear.” He was funny and I needed to laugh more than he probably knew.
“Who are you and how did you happen to cross my path today?” 
“I am Nicholas Vance Young, Junior, son of Nicholas Vance Young, Senior and Marilyn Louise Atkinson Young. I have one older sister who lives in France and twin cousins who share my birthday. We moved here because of my dad taking over Western Bank, and being the new kid in senior year absolutely sucked until I saw you.” I felt the blush on my cheeks and wondered if he was some sort of angel. “And you are?”
“Monica Louise Simmons.” We both turned as my mother walked in, grinning as if she’d walked in on something. Nick stood up and walked toward her then introduced himself and shook her hand. 
“I better get back to class,” he said as he turned back toward me. “Can I call you later?”
“I’d like that.” He nodded and winked. “And thanks again.”
“My pleasure.”
He seemed like an angel, someone God purposely put in all my classes to save me from the pain of being cheated on by the boy I thought was my soulmate. I didn’t know what future was out there for me, for Nick, for me and Nick, but I knew it was a little brighter because he was in it.
© Carrie M. Medders
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pussiehands1 · 7 years
Text
Title: Return of the Mac pt.1  Word Count: 1,912  Warnings: short mention of an eating disorder, homophobia, bitterness. 
               It’s been three months since the gang had asked Country Mac to stay, three entire long months of trying to adapt to each other and their new found dynamic. Mac had left three days into the ordeal, feeling replaced and unwanted and after Aunt Mac had all but begged for the return of her precious son ( and the rejection of that offer ) Mac decides that it’s best that he just up leaves. The gang don’t bother to say goodbye, too invested in their new toy and the bag of devil’s cabbage the new one had in his bag. Mac considers setting the bar on fire before he leaves but there’s a very small window of time to get to the airport so his bitterness is delayed.
                  The gang’s life had improved as it always did when they found a new high, Country Mac had moved in with Dennis into Mac’s old room, Paddy’s actually saw some security when they weren’t all getting stoned and without Mac around considerably less questionable shit happened. It’d become evident fairly quickly that none of them were idea men but with a hazy filter it was easy enough to rehash old plans into new ones. With a new member present and their inability to remember anything that happened more than two days ago, new ideas seemed redundant. As long as they were doing something then who gave a shit?
                   Surprisingly, and yet unsurprisingly, Dennis is the first to notice a problem. He’s quick to remind the gang that, “no, this had absolutely nothing to do with their little thing that happened that nobody talks about but it has everything to do with mess”. Years of pampering and a very prominent clause in his roommate contract with Mac stated that he would not be inclined or allowed to lift a single finger when it came to cooking, cleaning or laundry. Mac had been fairly shit at the first one but the other two were acceptable enough for them to give that a miss. Dennis writes a ten page list on everything that hasn’t been done in the house to present to the gang, outlined and highlighted in order of importance and with a binder of weekly room inspections he finds his points to be valid. 
                Nobody cares enough to take it further and so it gets thrown out of arbitration before it’s even made it to the stand. Dennis was just bitter nobody would do his work anymore and that’s what they liked about the guy, he wouldn’t take anybody’s shit. Dennis realises that without the power of another vote this was moot and he storms of, Dee and Charlie laughing behind him. 
                The second person to notice was Frank. Mac had settled well into the dark aspect of his personality and while he wasn’t all too fond on having a Country Gay in their group, he accepts it for what it is. All the gays were interchangeable and this one had bags of weed that’d bring Mary Poppins down to earth. This guy though, he was on edge all the time. He didn’t like his race jokes, didn’t like his God jokes, didn’t like the way he’d shout. Frank almost loses his shit the first time he’s told to calm down, hopping down off the bar stool like he’s ready to hack the guys tree trunk legs right from his too small feet. Frank doesn’t like the other one but at least he was shit enough to be able to take a joke every now and again. Plus, having someone that’d be set off by the easiest of things was fun - it was funny. Frank’s argument is thrown out due to his homophobic tendencies, he’s not allowed an opinion about an openly gay man because it was bias and uncalled for. 
                  Dee comes in third. Her relationship with Mac had always been strained and littered with pointless arguments and random acts of violence, only occasionally did they see eye to eye. With a new guy on board she takes this as her one way ticket into the central gang, Country Mac was going to be different - he was comfortable with himself, he was open and honest and that would draw in sophisticated conversation that would be more on her level. The one thing she’d learned from this experience, however, had been that Country Mac could apparently sniff out not only gay guys but bi ones as well. Every guy she’d brought into he bar had been lured into those ridiculously rugged arms like a pig to slaughter. God it makes her angry. The fourth time he walks out with a thumbs up being thrown behind him, Dee nearly launches herself over the bar, falling carelessly onto the floor as she curses and throws thing. Dennis laughs on the stool next to her, an ‘I told you so’ loitering on his smug lips.
                  Charlie doesn’t think anything has changed all too much, shrugging mindlessly as the other members of the gang glare at him from their position at the bottom of the bar. Dee and Dennis barter back and forth with all the changes that’d happened in such a short period of time until Charlie starts staring into space, a small ‘huh’ falling off his lips as he thinks about it. Things had been weird without Mac around but since everybody seemed to be enjoying new Mac then he hadn’t had that much of a problem. He was in to get rid of him though, if everybody else was in.
                 Getting a hold of Mac was apparently way harder than they’d initially thought and until Dennis pickpockets Country Mac’s phone and grabs a hold of his mom’s number they have absolutely no luck. Thankfully the conversation isn’t as awkward as they’d thought, Dennis does his best to use his friendly voice, sure not to put too many insults in but placing enough for Mac not to realise something was drastically wrong. ‘He sounds good’ and ‘Yeah, he’s doing great’ is the only highlights of the conversation he reiterates to them when he hangs up and they stare back like lost children, unsure as to what that means. None of them had been good, ever, the fact that Mac was apparently excelling without their help had been terrifying. It’s not something they could stand for. 
                 With the gang’s lack of conversation outside the four of them, Country Mac continues to exist as he did before. He wakes up, gym for an hour, gym bag dropped by the front door, shower, a joint, power nap, down to the bar, clean the motorcycle, profound lecture to the rest of the gang, short twenty minute shift on the job, find a guy, go home, bang the guy and then sleep for a few hours. The only time his plan changes in on Sundays when he heads down to church. Dennis considers getting locks for the other guy’s bedroom, setting it on fire and leaving him to burn to death but as the days slip by he can’t seem to find the effort or energy to care. 
                  Those early morning pot smoking sessions had done wonders to elevate his mind and yet as he comes around a couple hours later surrounded in chip bags and empty thin mint packets none of it seemed worth it. This diet had been worse than the last one, a remarkable feat considering the last diet had been nothing, and everything started to get a little bit bigger around the edges - everyday. Country Mac finds him crying in his en suite and Dennis nearly jams the shower pole up his ass as the guy started talking about ‘expressing his feelings in a healthy way’. 
                                           Philadelphia. Thursday. 11 am.
              Dennis, Dee, Charlie, Frank and Country Mac sit around the bar avoiding conversation. Dennis moves every now and then and Charlie interjects with simple conversation to try and elevate the tension but other than that they just wait out the day. Again. It’s awkward but nobody wants to address the problem.
                ‘  Heyo ---  ’  Mac opens the bar door, both hands raised in the air as he makes his presence known. Five pairs of blinking eyes stare with no intention to move and while he’s not expecting the warmest of receptions, he is expecting something ‘  Did someone die?  ’  he asks.
                Dennis clambers first, shifting the weight of his body so that he can fall off the chair with ease. His hands reach out, brushing against the sun-kissed skin as if expecting him to just disappear. Mac eyes the others, worried that in his absence Dennis had to decided to break, but after the man lets out a hysterical bout of laughter he turns ‘  This one’s real  ’  
                  The rest of them raise their hands in celebration, moving around until they’ve crowded him. After spending the majority of his life waiting for anybody to appreciate him, Mac’s not too sure that he enjoys this level of it amongst his friends ( at least not these friends ) but the plan had been going accordingly so far and this just added in another layer of it. Dennis was looking at him like he was Jesus himself, Dee wasn’t trying to break a bottle over his head, Charlie was speaking in actual sentences and even Frank had been touching his arm. 
                 ‘  Don’t get too excited just yet guys I have a surprise  ’  Mac announces, the glee in his eyes matching the expectant look of the people looking back ‘  Now I know you guys were really glad when I brought back Country Mac  ’  their faces drop but Mac hears approval from the man in question standing behind Frank.
                  ‘  And I know you’ve been doing so well without me here because Country Mac hasn’t stopped talking about it for weeks now   ’  his smile is strained but passive enough for it to be taken lightly ‘  and when I was out there I did a lot of soul searching and I got way closer to God. And one day I was having a dream and God came to me and he said, Mac, you need to stop living with this lie you’ve been holding inside of you. You need to accept yourself if you want to live your life to the fullest. So one day, when I was milking cows and tending the barn this guy comes up to me and he says to me, City Mac, I’m the one you’ve been waiting for   ’  
                 Mac’s head tilts to the side and his body pivots to the door ‘  And that’s when I met the love of my life and I realised that I was gay  ’  
                The news is unexpected but welcomed, though Dennis looks queasy and Charlie does not like the sudden change that’s happening at all once. It’s exciting but he’s not sure what’s happened and it’s a mix like fuel and fire ‘ Come in  ’  Mac shouts.
                A man, five eleven with cropped brown curls walks through the door of the bar, a red and black flannel shirt tucked into jeans that are stuffed into brown cowboy boots. His hand moves around Mac’s waist as a bright, perfect grin looks back at a confused and perturbed gang.
                 ‘  I’d like you all to meet Country Dennis  ’  Mac smiles. The five grinning faces dropping almost instantly. 
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phobio2000 · 6 years
Text
A Little Career Tip
My church and its people are just becoming more endearing to me. This is the first time in my life that I feel accepted and that I belong to a group. When I was in junior high I tried to hang out with a group of Philippines, but I think you have to be a Philippino to be accepted. Then I hung out with a group of Vietnamese. Well, a friend said best, "They always say they care but they don't." The church I attended back then was tailored to well off intellectual immigrants. I think I've been a loner my whole life. This is the first time in my life where I am in a place that I don't feel like I'm an outsider, someone that they tolerate, a misfit, but I feel like I am welcomed and accepted and embraced just as I am. It feels wonderful. I've never experienced anything like it my whole life. And with that, while today's meetings have been about raising awareness for the Hillsong Channel, during the second service I started thinking: Shaq was not always that big center. His step dad taught him to do everything, but when he got to the professional level, he had to make a choice to go after the niche best suited for him and trust other aspects of the games to his teammates. James Worthy was a franchise level player who could lead his own team, if he wanted, but he choose to become Magic Johnson's first mate in order to do something even greater. Examples go on. Not that I think I'm all that great or anything, but my point is, I have been flying solo my whole life, working and swimming in environments that are either short staffed, short on resources, or is dysfunctional. I had to learn to do pretty much everything that I can possibly pick up. But here I am, in this fabulous place, so well run, so smart, so organized and focused. So where do I fit into the picture? What should I concentrate on while foregoing the rest in order to help my church do even greater things? I think James Worthy made the right choice. Because, while he was great, he was not a legend, and when you consider how other franchise players struggled, like Kevin Garnet or Carl Malone, it is far better to work closely besides a legend when you are not one yourself. I think this is the first time in my life that I think about this for myself, while I've always been keen about knowing how this works. Because, I really believe in my church and its people, enough to let go and shave off things in order to be of better assistance and closer fit. Now, I remember my first real career job, at a high tech start up. On the last day, the CEO brought to me a picture he took off the wall, one of those inspirational quotes. There is a flock of birds flying in formation, and it states how birds fly farther when they stick together. So…, I'm bending over backwards trying to help him close the company and he is complaining about my lack of teamwork? Lol :D. And, I remember that he made the decision to close the company right after the engineers finished developing a certain product, while all along he has been saying that he has no intention of closing. So…, you want to lecture me about teamwork and trust, sir?! While this is as appalling and it always will be, this kind of mentality is actually the norm, happens all the time. Jesus said, he that is forgiven much love much, and those who have been given much, more will be required of them. So my devotion is what's required of me as much as what my heart is compelled to do, for the rest of my life, really…. I think the same needs to be done for my professional life, too. I think the Lord has been leading me and narrowing things down, just have to get used to the changes and adjust accordingly. So the church service told three stories today. I could really identify myself with one of them, just because I've been through a lot of the same stuff myself. There is this guy, looks like in his 50's, that after his company got merged with another company, they decided to eliminate some managerial positions, which included his, and because he was old, it was hard for him to find a new job, so he lost his house and spent all of his money. Life suddenly changed from perfect and peachy to a dire struggle, and that is when he started tuning in to the Hillsong Channel and found hope and help that gradually pulled him out of the pit. When I heard that story, I thought, whenever there is a merger or corporate restructuring, it's practically a shark tank, especially for the management staff, and here is why. 1. Your boss is going to be pressured to lay off and save money. Because, it costs a big lump sum to purchase the company, and they need to recoup some of the money back. Or, the whole purpose of a merger is to eliminate redundant resources anyway. So your boss is going to be inclined to take on more responsibilities by eliminating some managerial positions. 2. Whenever there is a lot of movement and instability, it is an opportunity for people to seek after promotion. Hence, it is imperative that the country is nice and stable, and we were at the verge of losing stability and making room for a communist revolution type of chaos, but things are much better now, thank God. It's like a game of monopoly. When all the lands are taken and hotels are built, there's little movement and it's hard to make progress for yourself, but what if suddenly there's major instability and all of the land ownership got reset, then there is going to be a war of people trying to grab as much as they can. It's the same way with companies. When there is instability, there will be people who want to get promotions, and how do you do that? One way is to find people to attack and take over their responsibilities, saying things like someone else is doing a bad job and you can do better, or someone else's position can be conveniently eliminated, and that it is cheaper to give that responsibility to you, coupled with a promotion, than to keep that other person on staff. Usually in those situations the honest good people tend to be the easiest to and most prone to get picked on, because they are nice and won't retaliate and are not manipulative and vicious so it's safe and easy, like slaughtering a lamb. Thus, if you are going to be a manager: 1. Try to be a technical manager that is the best at producing, as well as managing. Say if you are a programmer/manager, make sure you can still program and program regularly, like a general leading an army into war, rather than a bureaucrat pushing paperworks. 2. Try to be a project manager rather than just a regular manager that merely makes sure that things are running smoothly, for the same reason as 1. 3. Try to be a leader with a great track record, so that it would be harder and more reluctant for the employer to let you go. Look for important and key responsibilities that impacts the bottom line more and has a learning curve. 4. Know what's going on and be proactive about getting involved so you won't be a sitting duck waiting to be slaughter. Try to have a habit of being a solution to problems so that your manager will look to you for help. Do that in every season, with or without the threat of layoff. 5. Learn to defend yourself, and if necessary, put up a fight, in a righteous and wise way, of course. If you do all these things, whether you survive the transition or not, you are in the best position, whether it be staying on board and be a leader in helping the company be successful during the transition, or move on to somewhere else and be able to talk about your achievements with your next potential employer. Most importantly, don't get too secure and too complacent, don't ever think that you are set and just started cruising and assume that tomorrow will be exactly like today until the day you decided to quit or retire. This is the biggest pitfall and one of the most common. Be like Caleb, who still fought hard at an old age, within his capacity. But like, I felt the presentation was a little weak, though well put together, with a lot of thoughts and efforts poured into it. In my professional life, I learned that in order to make an impact with your presentations, it is good to have a sense of deep penetration for the issue and topic. See, I was able to identify with this guy only because I have had similar experiences. Otherwise, it would just sort of gloss by me. We don't want to be overly dramatic or melodramatic, but we do need to be rightfully dramatic through a deep understanding, penetration, and presentation of the truth, as well as its surroundings and implications. When I walked out of the church I saw someone who was sitting behind me a few weeks ago. I went up and say hello, and I was glad to see that she kept coming and is going to Engage. She said she thought that this was a promotional effort and that's not why she comes to church, and she asked if this is normal. I said that for the past year, this is the only time, that it was during the Australian conference of last year that Pastor Brian decided to be unapologetically promoting the Hillsong Channel because of the huge opportunities of making an impact, as well as the extremely high cost of running a TV station (paying the bills and the employees, coming out with new and original programs rather than just broadcast sermons and worships). I also said that this station is being broadcasted in prisons, where people can't go to church, and I told her the thoughts I just wrote down above. She was satisfied, agreeing that this is important. I also told her that for the past year, every week we are very focused on encouraging and empowering people and lifting them up so they can succeed in life and honor God, and then she went off to Engage :). But the socializing aspect is still a huge challenge for me. It just seems like I've been a loner my whole life and my default action has been isolation. I've known no other way. Such a struggle, but gotta keep stretching and trying…. I'll get there….
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