#he';s just nice bone man. why has he been memed so much

[unhingedsanrio]

I feel as though looking back at certain feelings I held as a late teen or an early twenties girl may have been confused feelings, things I was certain about then, now viewing with adult eyes, seem different than how I perceived them as a twenty-something girl. I suppose I'm still a twenty-something girl, but my mind deciphers things differently now, paints a darker picture than my previous bubble- blue mind paintings of scenarios I've lived. To remember all of my previous efforts for love, for what I thought was love. What defines love? different types of love, lustrous love, unconditional love, parental love, how the emotional theme of my life since forever has always been conditional love. "I love you if you do this for me" has been the type of loved i've only ever known. I thought A was different, he'd love me anyways because I tried my very best despite juggling ever dish in the kitchen to show up for him as many times as he needed me, however he needed me. If he needed me emotionally I was there clapping or crying for him no matter how my own situation was, i'd clap even if my bones told me to cry. Ask me to get naked, pose, I'd do it just show me your smile, tell me you feel so much better. Now, after everything, now that my initial unconditional love that I held for him has dissipated, I look back on all the things that happened to me, wanted or not, how they didn't play a role in his life therefore he saw it fit not to participate, was this what i deserved? why? I thought I earned reciprocated unconditional love for constantly delivering it. I later learned that unconditional love is not earned, because love that is earned is not considered unconditional.

I shamefully love my job. In the era of gen z nurses "getting their checks" and the constant "nursing is a drag" memes that circulate within twenty-somethings social media, I love my job quietly. "ugh I know what you mean, I hate it here" my classic response to my novice nurse friends who complain when 12 hours simply couldn't pass by fast enough for them. They were long hours, I wont lie, but sometimes work was the only place I can find unconditional love in bits and pieces, fragments of other peoples lives that I longed for. "Enjoy your baby! I'll shut the door for you guys", I'd shut the door slowly, providing me a glimpse of the comfortable warm silence between two people in love, holding something they created, knowing the life long trials and tribulations ahead of them, yet for them, who cared? they were doing it together, its all that mattered. I'd sit at my computer on wheels - COW, we weren't allowed to call it that anymore since some adult patient thought the nurses were calling her a cow, WOW - its now called "workspace on wheels". Anyways, I sat against my wow, feeling the warmth and low hum of my old computer as I watched a new dad walk towards me eagerly, It was 3 in the morning. who has this much excitement at 3am? especially someone with a presumed normal circadian rhythm, knowing mine was fucked and my perception of 3am is not up for comparison. Its bed 11's dad, handing me five 3mL syringes, fluorescent orange caps screwed on tightly to the tip, hospital labels with date and time personalized to each syringe. "Hey nat! Look how much milk my wife was able to make! I thought you could refrigerate it for the boys, shes been working at it all day, can't believe how great she did, told her not to worry if she can't make any, things will settle out with time." He loved her when she made milk (something im sure he wanted for his sons), but would love her even if she couldn't. I wish I was kidding when I say in my twenty five years of life I have never seen a man speak so highly of a woman's natural work relating to her body. Every man I've ever been with, held conversations with, has always referred to a woman's body in a sexual light. "her legs are so sexy" "such nice tits" "huge ass, shes always in the gym". A husband holding pride to his wife body for producing milk for their child and holding pride to her even if it couldn't is an example of the unconditional love I long for in this lifetime, I am tired of being "sexy", I am tired of being "easy going", tired of always showing up but never getting it in return. Tired of being bubbly, fun, happy to appease you and the environment. I want to be loved when I am sad, when I can't shake what holds me down, loved in the morning when my sun is out and loved on the mornings that my sun never rises. Loved when I'm sick and cannot be your sun, your breath of fresh air, if I cannot be your comfort for lack of my own despite my efforts.

I want to be loved like bed 11's wife.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

Hi! I love everything that you write and heh I am a fan! 😄 tbh this is my first time requesting something on Tumblr! If you don't mind and if I am not being a bother...can you write about how the guys would react If MC suddenly starts making meme references? I don't know how I got the idea but I am REALLY curious. And love you! :D

Hiya! Tyvm for the kind words, and apologies that this took a while! I hope you have the chance to enjoy it regardless ❤️❤️❤️ Love you too, sweet pea! I promise to get to the next request you’ve sent ASAP~

Aight but this would be hilarious because the range of the reactions is just ungodly. I will be putting this under a cut after Napoleon so I don’t clog up everyone’s dash, but all the suitors are included below otherwise! 

Comte is the one that recognizes a few, but didn’t really stay in modern times long enough to be as well-versed as a Gen Z kid might. Regardless he finds the wittiness and absolute chaotic fuckery to be delightful, and will 100% support the harmless nonsense. It never fails to get a laugh out of him

Mozart that first day be like: “Buzz off MC I hate you” MC, because she likes swinging bats at wasps’ nests: “Well that’s not very cash money of you” Mozart: ?????????? Comte, giggling in the bg like the secret fae he is This one’s just because I’m petty, but after the events of Comte rt I just imagine them encountering Vlad again and MC’s just “I lived bitch.” while Comte is flipping him off behind her lkjahgkjhdsg

Comte @ Leo when he finds the latter under his desk: Had it not been for the laws of this land, I would have slaughtered you.  MC: wheezing from the hallway as she’s about to give him his letters

MC: So how was your day, honey? Comte: Good, good--briefly had to go beastmode upon the punk that pilfered my lint roller MC, biting her lip to keep from laughing: So does Leo still have his kneecaps? Comte: for now.

Comte, @ literally anyone upsetting the MC: I won’t hesitate, bitch

Comte: Be careful with my emotional baggage, it’s designer

MC: What if I was evil and ran towards you at very fast speeds Comte: My arms are strong, I would catch and hug you

Leo and Dazai are the ones that don’t have a single reference point but are filled with so much dumbass chaos energy that they just. Understand immediately???? Nobody knows how or why, but they just catch on so fast--adapt the language in a matter of weeks. Never underestimate the power of combined boredom, depression, and humor

I swear to god I just see MC taking them their Blanc/Rouge and being like “here you go sir, one enslaved moisture” and they just go fucking hog wild from day one. MC starts impersonating Theo when he leaves the room around Dazai, like fake deep voice “you all only hate me because you do not like me and I am mean to you. grow up.” Or like the MC meets a baby on her travels with Leo around town and she holds them and says v seriously and sagely “So you are Baby? I have heard tales of your exploits.” and Leo about loses his shit right there. They both think MC is the funniest person alive--they’ve never been more eager to throw a ring at someone in their entire life.

Also a bonus for my beloved Dazai:  MC, facing even the slightest inconvenience (like dropping her fork) in the most dramtic voice possible: Life is not daijoubu. Dazai: wheezing

MC, after watching Theo turn down a woman at the bar in the meanest way possible: bro quit letting the darkness consume you u r scaring the hoes Dazai, literally rolling around on the ground, half-drunk and dying:

MC, walking alongside Dazai and stopping to stare at her reflection in the River Seine. Dazai’s expecting some sad or twisted shit, since people often feel comfortable talking about those things around him, but instead she just: “Oh, it’s you. The source of all my problems.” And he about falls into the river from shock HAHAHA

At this point don’t be surprised if his next book is about an absolute madlad woman similar to MC

Napoleon finds it to be a delightful quirk more than anything? He doesn’t really understand it, but he finds it funny when they change their voice for effect or speak in exaggerated tones. If it’s just comprehensible enough for an outsider to understand--or Sebas gives him context--chances are it’ll send him into a laughing fit

For this one I just imagine MC singing that Ratatouille meme song obnoxiously bad while cooking, and Napoleon and Comte are just so wildly amused by it bc it makes zero sense and it’s only vaguely French at this point

MC @ Napoleon while they’re cooking brunch: Can I offer you a nice egg in these trying times?

MC, conflicted because she’s tired and wanted to sleep in but also got to see Napo’s cute sleeping face for a few hours: For my next stunt, I’ll wake up at 5AM on the day I can sleep in. Sebas: Early to bed and early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy, and wise MC: early to bed and early to rise makes me a massive bitch Napoleon: laughing in agreement

Isaac is the type to be bewildered and concerned at first (especially when he hears the more nihilistic ones hoOOOoooOO BOY) but eventually begins to understand it’s some bizarre attempt at humor (that hurts Zack baby). While some part of him laments that it reminds him of Dazai and he’s secretly jealous of how she and Dazai bond over it, he will sometimes join in the chaos when the mood strikes him and he’s feeling mischievous

Isaac: How are you feeling? MC: Oh, I’m not Isaac: seconds from dialing 911 Isaac: Are you okay? MC: Oh yeah dw I just suffer from that syndrome where your neutral expression makes you look like you’re an angry serial killer Isaac: say sike rn

Isaac, tutoring MC and correcting something:  MC, muttering while redoing it: The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math. Isaac: unable to help a laugh

One time MC was avoiding Isaac for fear of hurting his feelings and he just confronts her like: Isaac: back by unpopular demand, me! What’s wrong, MC pls MC was so hecking proud of him

Isaac, telling MC about a recent discovery he learned at uni from another professor: bones typically heal stronger after they’ve been broken--so long as they’re set properly, of course MC, looking him dead in the eyes: So what you’re saying is that I should break every bone in my body until I become superhumanly powerful? Isaac: please do not, no

Mozart and Jeanne are just. Totally lost. Why are you talking like that??? Why are you making “crab hands”???? They don’t understand. Maybe never will. They reach a point where they just kind of laugh and shake their heads, endeared by the oddity after they’re used to it and have determined it isn’t a threat/insult. 

MC: It’s a cold and it’s a brooooken, Waluigi. Waaaaluigiiiii...waaaahluigi..... Mozart: surprised, then starts snickering and playing along on the piano

Arthur, asking MC very personal questions out loud because he is an idiot sometimes: Soooo MC, are you a top or a bottom? MC: I’m a threat. (If he asks a second time, the response will be “Wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy.”) Jeanne, fighting a smile:

MC, about to punch an asshole: Your free trial of being alive has ended Jeanne, seconds from laughing for the first time in 100 years:

Also, because I genuinely can’t help myself. You know that knight meme like “Parry this you fucking casual.” I cannot stress enough that it is literally the personification of Jeanne’s entire character. I’m not even joking.

Arthur and Shakespeare are utterly fascinated by the rapid evolution of wordplay and the sheer hilarity. They will ask all about these so-called “memes” and ask for examples of them if MC can show them (either somehow accessing her phone or drawing them). MC draws Arthur the knife cat meme and he about a s c e n d s at the hilarity of it all, points and yells THEO IS HOLDING THE KNIFE. He is correct. They will be delighted and follow along eagerly, and--god forbid--will make their own based on late 19th century struggles.

Is this where Shakespeare got the idea for “What, you egg? stabs him” and “You are a saucy boy.”? I’m too scared to ask. Don’t even get me started on “The Fool jingled miserably across the floor.” That one is just too on the nose...

I can’t even imagine what would happen to Shakespeare if MC like translated vines and memes into Ye Olde English around him. Imagine she’s at one of those noble balls and hears rumors of these two guys living together and they’re so obviously gay and he says “And those gents w’re roommates.” And in the most false surprised tone ever MC just replies “oh mine own god, those gents w’re roommates.” Imagine having a wife that’s just as hilarious as you are and hits you with all the force of a bag of wet mice every time you speak in retaliation, he’s going into palpitations.

Every time Arthur does smth stupid MC just: “I Pretend I Do Not See It.”

Vincent is tickled pink by MC’s penchant for finding joy and/or amusement in nearly everything they do, and he smiles gently when he sees them muttering and laughing to themselves. He wants to be able to join them in what they love, but he has a harder time following along and understanding the darker humor sometimes. Mostly gets confused??? Please give him the easier ones to mimic and laugh when he tries--or just include him in your jokes MC. He’s babie your honor...

But he also. Will not. Stand any kind of self-deprecation or borderline verbal self-harm. He’s usually very easygoing and calm, but for whatever reason that stuff makes him go deathly quiet and upset.

MC, after something goes horribly wrong, hugging Vincent: Oh Vince, we really in it now Vincent: giggling a little despite his worries, relaxing

MC: Theo stop simping for Vincent that’s my job

MC, when Theo leaves the room and she gets Vincent all to herself: The evil is defeated.

MC: And this is where I would put my will to live...if I h a d one! Vincent: ;-; MC: oh shit, oh fuck, I was only kidding Vincent wait (MC was subsequently lectured and loved on for many hours)

Theo is conflicted because on the one hand, he loves to see you smiling and having fun. On the other, you’re clowning as hard as Dazai and Arthur and he can only handle so many monkeys in his circus. Most of the time he will roll his eyes and be the straight man of this comedy, but you might find him cracking a smile--or accidentally letting a chuckle slip past his lips now and again.

MC, after meeting Theo: I’m a nice person, but I’m about to start throwing rocks at people.

Theo, those first days: Oh? You’re approaching me? Instead of running away, you’re coming right to me? MC: I can’t beat the shit out of you without getting closer.

Theo: Every time I ask MC to explain “vibe check” to me she hits me with some kind of improvised weapon

MC, after the “incident” (you know the one): This year, I lost my dear lover Theo Theo, in the distance: QUIT TELLING EVERYONE I’M DEAD! MC: ;-; sometimes I can still hear his voice...

Sebastian is last because oh boy. OH BOYYYYY I LOVE HIM. Okay so the way I see this happening with Sebastian is just. So wild. Because at first he’s t r y i n g so hard to be the proper butler man. He does not meme. But then he starts to drift closer to what Niles from The Nanny was, where he’ll quip and joke in private or when the situation is just beyond the amount of absurdity he can handle without making a snarky comment. Everyone in the house can’t fathom how Sebas and MC got so close so fast, but there are points where they’re just “Are they even speaking English anymore???” It’s 11 times funnier than normal because Sebas almost never smiles or laughs when memeing, the deadpan quality of his playing along sends MC every time

Has ABSOLUTELY said “HEY. PANINI HEAD. ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME???” jokingly when MC made a mistake in the kitchen. They laugh about it for y e a r s

MC: I can’t date someone who keeps a lamb as a pet, that’s so weird Sebas, brushing Lotte in front of MC: MC: MC: Okay, I will make an exception because she looks very polite

MC and Sebas, fully aware of the fame some of the men will reach in modern times: We will watch your career with great interest.  (I s2g that’s like half of Sebas’ rt right there I’m crying)

Sebas rt with Lotte be like that 500 dollar Mareep meme: “sometimes a family can be just a boy, his gf, and their 500 dollar two foot tall Lotte”

#ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp meme #ikevamp headcanons #ikevamp hcs #ikevamp napoleon #ikevamp mozart #ikevamp leo #ikevamp leonardo #ikevamp arthur #ikevamp vincent #ikevamp isaac #ikevamp theo #ikevamp jean #ikevamp jeanne #ikevamp dazai #ikevamp shakespeare #ikevamp comte #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp sebastian #can you tell I had way too much fun with this aksjhfkhsj #i am a degenerate memer I saw this ask and straight up went It's My T i m e. #though i hope this was a fun response for you love! i did my very best <333 #tyty for the ask~ #rambles #not incorrect quotes #mild profanity

[felassan]

Thoughts on Dark Fortress #2

(This post is under a cut due to spoilers.)

So late with this one! some stuff irl was keeping me really busy and hyper-distracting me lately, but it’s finally over now so I’m back on my bioware bullshit. :D

Overall there were a lot of beautiful or awe-inspiring scenes in this issue, and a lot of great, meaningful / poignant character interactions and moments between characters. It’s pretty impressive actually how much was able to be packed in. I posted some of my favorite panels here. also omg! the action sequences! the big reveal! the ending!! woww

cool scene-setting, panned out shot of Neromenian and behind it, the Dark Fortress, to immediately pull you back into the world and ‘where we left off’. the combination of ruined dead trees, red lights, lightning and fire/smoke is very atmospheric and hints at what’s ahead

“From this... city, if we can call it that” is a sick burn and reminds you that the Qunari are technologically more advanced than most of the rest of Thedas, from their cannons to their aqueducts

more individually distinct Qunari soldiers, sth I again appreciate

! last issue there were big ‘You haven’t seen the last of Tractus!’ vibes, naturally, but I didn’t expect him to escape by stabbing and killing the Qunari using a chair-leg..!!

the last panel on the first page of Karasten is really good. the way it’s colored, the way it’s lit, the light and shadow, the fiery backdrop, cinders floating, the details of his expression.. 👌 it also makes me think to the possible future, to DA4 when mainland Thedas may be continuing to face the entirety of the Antaam

in Vaea’s acrobatics scene on the bridge, I know rationally that she’ll be fine but couldn’t help but worry for her. again I like how they don’t shy away from showcasing Vaea’s specific abilities. also the attention to detail - you’d think some rocks are just some rocks, but it highlights the risk she’s undertaking that if she falls it’s into rough seas which could dash her against the jagged rocks :’S. Vaea, gooooo!

Fenris’ “Enterprising girl” line has big “Clever girl” meme energy :D

my heart can’t take Fran and Autumn leaning over the edge after Vaea in worry ;; or Aaron looking back in concern over his shoulder ;; or Fran’s tender reassurance ;; or Autumn’s Worried expression ;; the care and bonds which have grown between this group of characters ;;

notice Aaron starts drinking when Vaea’s away from them and they’re beginning to grow worried about her safety. the poor man’s nerves and stress levels

Fran touching the vegetation while she’s considering if she could use her magic to open the entrance from the outside is a nice touch

did Marius leap in front of Fenris and Fran there when the entrance opened?? damn, he’s quick. and the three of them look all scary and formidable here ready for combat. notice how the curve of the door and the spikes that go into the ground, and the composition of this panel, make it look like they’re standing in front of an opened dragon’s maw? ‘teeth’, a rumbling ‘roar’.. some nice foreshadowing here.

the reunion panels are so cute. Autumn’s lil tum as she jumps and Fran and Fenris’ lil smiles of relief and at Autumn’s reaction to seeing Vaea, then a rare happy beam from Aaron.. feel.. the love ;__;

red lighting in the tunnel sets a dangerous, dramatic build-up mood

👀 more info on Fenris’ past, on the specifics of the process which gave him his markings. in the panel where he says that it took a long time, his shadow on the wall behind him reminds me of the shadow of his past that has dogged him for so long :(

Fenris and Marius height difference

discussion of the process shows the power difference between blue and red lyrium. blue lyrium took a long time, red lyrium is almost instant

Autumn is such an intrepid little explorer and alert scout, tail and ears up, head forward. good girl!

“I just... worry about you, my girl”  ‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ )‧º·˚  I’ll be so sad if these are death flags for Aaron and he doesn’t make it out of here. also note Fran in this panel, who recently had to kill her own father and is still dealing with that, watching the strongly paternal moment between Aaron and Vaea :(

love Vaea’s faith in Aaron and her sense of humor. also I don’t know why, maybe it’s because Vaea met Sebastian, but her “Maker, no!”, although in a completely different and light-hearted context, reminds me of Sebastian’s “Maker nooo!” at the end of DA2 hh

the reference again to Hawke, who Fenris saw haunted by what they tried to do - save their mother - and couldn’t :’(. also with the shadow in this panel, here’s another person struggling with the shadow of his past qq. this is later emphasized again in Aaron when he continues to talk about his past and in the panel is a chain and manacle. smart visual metaphors, a must in the comic medium with limited space

mushroom skull 💀🍄

“It isn’t about what I’ve done. It isn’t about my failures. Or my choices. It’s about their impact” - he’s misty-eyed here as he thinks back to Ostagar.. does this line btw seem almost meta to anyone else btw? :D it feels like a meta reference to the experience of DA players and PCs, who are always having to deal with the impacts of their choices

I wanna point out that I was right on reading issue #1, when I said “I’m positive that in panel 2 here, it’s the exact moment when he sees Cailan die” ;;

So Aaron is also a veteran of the Battle of Denerim

reference to the Hero of Ferelden - “Those were someone else’s battles”. I’m being captain obvious here but I can’t help but [heart pitter-patter] at any and all references to the HoF

I like the.. parallel? is that the word? Aaron’s stories were him trying to inspire people to make a change, or him trying to convince himself of that. and now here’s Vaea, inspiring Aaron with her words in these panels. the little guys can make a difference! in the world of Thedas, you don’t need to be a big bombastic hero or a Player Character to have an impact 

lmao Fenris right on cue. the moments of humor/light-heartedness are nice because they break up the tension and are sprinkled throughout without derailing build-up or taking away from dramatic story impact. yknow?

yeah Aaron!! leave it behind. leave it to rot with mr mushroom skull (and hey the mushroom skull was there for a reason). again tho if this is a death flag i 

Fenris straight down to business with the tactics

its cute how close Autumn has been sticking to Fran

Tessa checking in on Fran again, as she did in issue 1

Could Vaea’s “Well, shit” be an homage to Varric? :D they have met

I also wanna point out that I was right on reading issue #1, when I said “My guess is that the thing Tractus shows Marquette and Nenealeus is probably a chained up dragon or similar”

the poor dragon :’( big dragon the Qunari had in Trespasser vibes

the sword has a really cool design, kind of reminds me of something a samurai might be depicted wielding

👀 lore-drop! so ancient elven arcane warriors used lyrium-infused swords. this seems to confirm the sarcophagus is an ancient elven artifact, no? makes sense, wasn’t it said that the sarcophagus’ design was based on the architecture/outfit-design type elements of a specific faction, and that this was done intentionally? it looks kinda ancient elfy in make, right? also about the lyrium-infused swords of the arcane warriors, well well well.. remember that the Evanuris and the ancient elves mined the bodies of Titans for lyrium, for power and to use as a resource. here’s an example of that use

as I read through this portion I became increasingly concerned for my boy Shirallas.. we really are in it now aren’t we 😭

the Qunari are launching STRAIGHT-UP ROCKETS ohhhh

pretty ‘lightshow’ over the wall in the “Let’s hope the fortress is as secure as Danarius boasted” panel hh

protective older brother Fenris, impish younger sister Vaea. love that dynamic, we love to see it. sheepish and exasperated Fenris is so cute

the Bone Pit dragon fight with Hawke and co reference!

I wonder how long the dragon has been captive here, and how Danarius/Tractus was able to capture it

lore-wise what are the implications here? when Fenris’ ritual was being undertaken, the sword and the sarcophagus were bombarded with magic, fire spells. in this one they aim to have the dragon bombard it with fire-breathing. is it just fire that makes it work/powers it, or is there magic in dragonfire, in dragons? it reminds me of “Your heart beats with the old blood, as well. Where do you think it comes from? It sings of a time when dragons ruled the skies. A time before the Veil, before the mysteries were forgotten. Can you hear it?”

purple color for the dragon’s growling sounds/typeset is a great idea

lets.. goooo!!!!

Marquette is such a nerd. later on when he activates the sarcophagus he has mad scientist vibes

the dramatic reunion face-offs begin!! as the prophecy foretold!!!!1

true to form, Marius DOES have nothing to say ahahaha, even at this, his personal climax. maybe Marius dies in the next issue, but Tessa lives and gets to go back to Charter

these Venatori look almost Star Wars

Shirallas my boyy.. nooo... don’t do it 😭

ah ah ah! try casting magic with no ARMS

Francesca a beacon of blue light and goodness

the splash combat page is masterful. everyone playing a part, so much going on, everything happening at once. a thing that sticks out to me about it is Aaron’s outstretched hand and alarm as he watches Fran fall 

Autumn with her lil hackles raised

“The Venatori have returned” dun dun dunn

goodbye Shirallas 😭😭😭

the composition of the second to last page with triangle/diamond-shaped panels and the framing of dragon wings is awesome

the Dread Wolf rises, “the Tevinter Imperium will rise again”.. on-point on-point cohesion

there he is, the red wraith

Super Saiyan Shirallas

what a note to end an issue on

wow wow wow!!

and separate to the above, some speculation based on the cover of Issue 3: the piece of metal looks like a broken collar coming off Shirallas, like the one there was on the cover of Issue 2 coming off the dragon. also he’s all bulky now with draconic talons/claws (reminds me of in-world legends of Reavers who dug too deep of their own power after drinking dragon blood and whose bodies consequently began to manifest subtle reptilian traits actually). I’ll be interested to see what results of this allusion between Shirallas and the dragon!!

#dragon age #BioWare #dark fortress spoilers #dark fortress spoiler #spoilers #spoiler #dragon age: dark fortress spoilers #dragon age: dark fortress spoiler #video games #gore cw #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #feels #fenris #the Fenaissance #long post #longpost #alcohol cw

[dellinah]

LONG ASS RANT ABOUT THYLACINES

I'm still not coping well so i made some shitty memes about my constant hyperfixation

Well I have been fascinated with these animals since I was a literal 8 year old bc of a book my mom gave me about animals (they're all drawn as opposed to pictures too it's pretty cool i used to trace over them all the time)

They're cool marsupials that went extint in 1936

I am a dumbass with one braincell so for some reason it didn't sink in that when the text said 'disappeared 70 years ago' it meant DISAPEARED FOR REAL. I also was too dumb to realize it was under the 'extinct' chapter

Anyway. These animals are fascinating to me and I have been obsessed with everything related to them ever since. I love how close they look to dogs and wolves despite not being related bc evolution works that well, i love their cute little faces, I love how they managed to survive way longer than they were meant to (more on that bellow), how they move, their lower ankles that look like someone fucked up a dog drawing, everything about it

And I absolutely HATE what they have become a symbol of

I would like to think human activity alone isnt enough to actually drive animals to extinction. That, while it helps, it merely speeds up the pace of an inevitable fate. But that's not true. There have been countless animals that died out bc of humans, and that would have been just fine without us around - be it by hunting, destroying habitats, introducing new species or bringing disease

Thylacines were hunted with no mercy bc they were thought to kill farm animals. People offered money for each one that was shot. Animals that humans introduced to their habitat infected them with disease and made food less avaiable. And just a few decades later, they were gone, forever

And if that wasn't bad enough, the last one we have record of died bc of NEGLET. In a zoo, he was left out in the cold night and didn't make it. They probably threw the body away with no care, thinking they could just get another one to use as exibition, and then realized too late it was the last

ON TOP OF THAT, rules to protect them were set in place about 50 days before the last one died. 50 DAYS!! Talk about too little too late. Maybe if they had done it earlier, things would have been different, but no. They didn't care until they realized hey we havent seen one in forever, fuck

ON TOP OF ON TOP OF THAT, the picture that was used to get farmers to kill them of a thylacine with a chicken in its mouth was most likely faked using a mounted one. It was fucking propaganda?? To??? Kill animals?? Man, what the FUCK. Maybe kill the ones around your property (still wrong but fine) but why lie to people to make them go out of their way to kill animals in the wild??

Everything about thylacines' extintion just highlights the worst parts of the human nature. How careless we are to everything but ourselves. How if it doesn't make us money, we don't care. How we care too little too late. How we can destroy something so easily. And how we don't care about lying about something to get what we want, no matter how bad the consequences might be to someone else

I honestly think the fascination people have with finding these animals in recent years is due to guilt, at least some of it. Yes it's a cool animal, but most important of all it makes us feel bad. So finding a new one maybe would make it ok. We can still save it. We're not that bad.

But that ever happening is unlikely

Thylacines lived short lives (up to 6 years in the wild, 9 in zoos) so to have them survive would require large populations constantly breeding. So to think we wouldnt have found a bone, a dead body, or run over one in over 70 years (also everyone has a phone now, why cant there ever be GOOD pictures taken of these sightings?) just seems like the kind of thing that can't happen

Not only that, but before human intervention they already suffered from low genetic diversity due to its population getting smaller over centuries due to disease and few individuals. It's sad to think that they were always doomed to fail, but it's likely the path they were going towards

So it just makes it way less likely that they would have survived in the wild. They were already failing to reproduce and survive with the individuals they had - imagine after we kill 99% of them. Even if some did make it past the year we recorded, it probs died out shortly after

BUT they could still be alive today, or at least gotten a few more decades. Some people think they did. And maybe we could have helped them if they made it to today with the technology we have

But we'll never know

There's a bunch of footage (with some newly discovered one) of the last one, and while that is cool, it just makes me sad :( to see it pacing around its small cage, with nothing to do, no other one to keep it company (they were often depicted in pairs, idk if they were social animals but it seems like it), not knowing it would never again have another one like it. There's also footage of someone rattling its cage?? Probs to get it worked up to make it walk around or react or something. DONT DO THAT

It's just a sad footage overall, and becomes painful to watch once you know everything else. A sad pacing stressed animal, that would die alone in the cold and go down in history as the last one ever. All while being oblivious to everything we have done to its kind, bc it was just a scared animal

Some people think they survived into the 90's, a lot of people claim to have seen one since 1936 (with no proof) and february 2021 one expert said they had proof they saw one and that it was a baby. It has been debunked by another expert, i have yet to see the pics, but until we have DEFINITE proof, i'll keep on believing they're gone

But it's nice to hope every once in a while. Every sighting makes me a bit happy. This is a big world, with so much of it unexplored, and animals though extinct have showed up again or even been cloned recently. So who knows!

It has been pretty shitty to live through a major historical event that is bad. For a moment I hoped I'd witness one that was actually a positive one

And honestly, if they are still out there, maybe a small population that learned to hide very well, I hope they keep hidden. I'd love to see them, but maybe they're better on their own

We've seen what happens when they're not

#Thylacine #Tasmanian wolf #Tasmanian tiger #Animal #Extinction #Hunting #Personal #Vent #Long post #I miss animals I've never even seen #sorry for going off but the recent news pissed me off #again #who knows #but hope is scarce rn #just let me live through ONE nice thing

[cloveroctobers]

ROBERT “BOBBY” MCKENZIE —

IG info/bio : @/returnofdamckenzie | 426k followers | @/mclitgs2 is my forever boo🤟🏽😍 while @/cardib is my WIFE! She just doesn’t know it yet ❤️ support my work & be part of my family: @/bobbymckcares

24 (25) years young

Born in Dundee, raised in Glasgow, Scotland

Jamaican father named Badrick who is a African studies professor

Caucasian/Scottish mother named Catriona who used to be a au pair but now works as a receptionist in senior living — one eye is honey hazel and the other a dark brown

It was difficult growing up in a school that didn’t accept Bobby being biracial, it resulted in bullying to the point where he needed to switch schools (A lawsuit was also in place) The next school was slightly better but Bobby slowly learned to accept himself as it was not something he could control and not something he would want to in the first place. He was proud of where he came from and never thought he was better or less than anyone else, that wasn’t how he was raised

He’s an only child, his parents thought about adopting (and fostering) but with Bobby they had their hands full and he was just enough for them

His family is very family-oriented so he would never have to feel lonely since they gave him a lot of attention, slightly making him spoiled but he was also around his cousins & spending time with them as well

He’s extremely close to his younger cousin (only by a few months) Femi who he views as his sister. They’ve been through a lot together and are always there for each other so it only makes sense

Most likely an active kid always up to some sort of shenanigans whether it’s by himself or with his group of friends, “why would you do that Bobby?” “Don’t ask why but ask, why not!?”

Definitely suffered some broken bones, concussions, & sprain injuries but would never show signs of pain...guys got a high pain tolerance that’s for sure

Fan of films/series “stand by me” & “the goonies” & “scooby doo” since he feels they relate to his life??

Hospital caterer and loves making those feel better with food that he’s created. If he can’t put a smile on patients face with words then he feels like he can show them with food

Food is an art to him. He went to school for culinary & it’s very important for him to show how much it is to him. He picked up the craft from of course his family, who always used food for numerous of things: to bring people together is one of them

Perfected Jerk haggis, it is now he favorite dish next to desert & breakfast!

I’m struggling to figure out what sign he maybe? He’s very playful which may come off as childish at times, which makes me think of Leo? (Maybe Gemini?) Only because they usually hold onto their childhood as best as they can, very generous, & give their energy to you but I also don’t see him being a fire sign at all? So maybe very little Leo in his chart. I also feel like he might be a bit of an empath? He knows when situations around him don’t feel right, knows how to read the room, and always wants to help others by lighting things up.

Idk but I’m feeling he’s libra sun + Gemini moon + Leo rising? Who knows

Probably lived in a 2 bed flat with his old uni mate. It was small and a bit shit but it was their shit and they made the best of it

Now lives in a stone cottage or farmhouse with MC that was built in the 1900’s & is slightly haunted. He’s decided to call them Duncan??? But he believes they’re a good spirit, maybe even a friendly ghost!? since he got comfortable with the bizarre happenings in the new flat & it doesn’t seem like they want to hurt them

Lottie offered to bring her ouija board next time she visited—Bobby declined

House is mostly neutral based but three of the rooms in the flat are covered in ridiculous patterned walls or furniture much to MC’s distaste but, “what’s yours is mine” right? No. But Gary approves!

Has two dogs: a terrier & a collie since MC wasn’t down for getting a sheep

They do have chickens to raise their own eggs tho!

Definitely the kind of significant other that will ride on the cart when they’re out grocery shopping, will make you breakfast in bed, & will send you memes while he’s at home and you’re out or even when he’s at work and you’re at home, let’s you put his arm to sleep when you’re laying on it in bed (big ass head gang!), definitely chooses the candles from bath & body works that smell like food items (majority of them suck let’s be honest)

Probably smells like cucumber, melons, lemons, and eucalyptus

Has your wedding date in his IG bio & is proud

Annoys Gary & Lottie with his food pics, “oh, Not this shit again! 😡 looks brilliant, but enough!”

Has zoom/FaceTime movie nights with Marisol & MC who stopped feeling like she was third-wheeling months ago

Talks to hope & Noah (in the background) as much as he can. Feels like they’re his inspiration for love, even tho he’s the only one married out of the villa

He values marriage just like his parents do and often has Sunday dinners with them & MC ofc

Probably has relationship guide books and only reads them out of boredom but finds fascinating facts/advice if he pays attention & tries to apply it to his relationship with mc. If it works, it works! & If it doesn’t, you can’t say he didn’t try!

Works long hours but will still come home to cook for MC or brings leftovers from the events he’s catered (most are for the hospital but occasionally he’ll do other events)

Has a separate IG for his work

When WAP dropped, he almost lost his shit. Even tried to get MC to do the challenge with him, he’s pretty bad but MC eventually learned it just for him 😜

Is thrilled that Cardi made the best decision EVER on divorcing offset, “are you thinking of leaving me now?” “... I might.” “BOBBY!” “Haha, I love you!

Absolutely loves Christmas!!! It’s his favorite holiday and he loves giving back to everyone in his life. Usually he’s working overtime for the holidays & it makes him emotional due to the stories he hears & he puts a little extra love in his food

Goes all out for Christmas. Tries to buy/make everyone something. Even if he doesn’t really care for them...he’ll at least send them a x-mas card, if they keep it or burn it it’s entirely up to them—if he knew about it he’d probably be a little sad not gonna lie...he’s a soft king

Once bought Lottie black crocs with spooky pins , “are you joking Bobby?!” He knows she secretly loved them

Uses salt and peppermint in his dark hot cocoa...

Rather make deserts for Christmas than the food, he feels like it’s his duty

King of giving the thumbs up, especially when situations have gone to shit. He’ll still shoot them up with a smile or a grimace

Always inviting someone somewhere. “Bobby, hun. You’re 4-6 hrs away and it’s 1 am.” Hope groaned after listening to his bright idea, thinking something bad happened. “Ah, you could still make it if you tried, lassie.” “I’m gonna hang up now. Good night, bonkers man.”

Needs constant reminding when to get his locs touched up & moisturized

Either has a trampoline or a funhouse jumper in his backyard (maybe both) “we’ve got the space and this is better than a pool, or almost!”

Wants children, a whole footie team! There’s no specific time frame for him, when it happens, it happens

Used to cool & wet temps & loves vacationing in Greenland. Sure the hot weather he experienced in the villa was awesome & something different than what he’s used to but you can’t take the scot out of the man. So he typically sticks to places that are similar in temps, that way he doesn’t have to change his clothing choices much

Loves a good bath. Bubble baths are better than bath bombs to him, PERIOD!

Loves bubbles so much he put too much laundry detergent in the wash (does this on purpose now) and came back home to the dogs and room covered in it. Do you think he cleaned it up before MC came home? No. He decided to have a bubble party in the room with a Caribbean playlist playing in the background

MC definitely posted about it the first time & joined him for a bit, dreading the work that came with cleaning it all up. Now whenever Bobby needs a bubble party, he knows what to do. MC preferred him to have his little bubble party in the tub but 50% of the time he chooses not to listen & they leave him to pout & clean it himself

Likes to hold hands with fingers interlocked. When it’s cold and if you’re both wearing hoodies, he’ll slide his hand inside the arm of your hoodie to help keep you warm

Canon: His version of a snack is spaghetti hoops on toast & can eat that for the rest of his life & be content

If he didn’t end up marrying MC, probably finds his significant other working as a nurse at one of the hospitals he caters to or a volunteer at a old folks home

Never had a serious relationship, very few hookups, was either always placed in the friend zone or there was one person he wanted to be serious with but they rejected him and continued loving someone else who treated them like shit—so he kinda swore off of relationships and just flirted a bunch and kept his love life non-existent

Fav ice cream? Rocky road ice cream with one scoop of cotton candy & one scoop of cookie butter blue

Doesn’t believe in measuring when it comes to culinary. He uses his eyes as his measurement, could be a bad thing, could be a good thing, that’s up to you

If he’s up at night, he’s eating something sweet. A nice glass of single malt scotch whiskey + a splash of coconut milk (🤢) with a slice of angel food cake & he’s out like a light

Absolutely loves shopping for the kitchen, finds immense joy in doing so. If you lose him in a store, one of the places you’ll most likely find him is in the kitchen decor area

Owns a bagpipe & wants to get better at it, even tho he scared the living shit out of his dogs & chickens

Wears his shades quite a bit even tho the weather is hardly sunny and mainly windy & damp

Will hold the door for strangers even if they don’t say thank you

He’s open when it comes to music. Will listen to anything but feels like the music has to be a purpose for something...Everything he does in his day to day life has to feel like a soundtrack to him since in his mind he’s daydreaming about his life being made into a movie. Who isn’t?

He thinks wentworth Miller should play him in a film and that kid from blackish should play him when he was a wee lad, Marcus Scribner

Always keeps a positive attitude because he knows what it feels like to feel low and he doesn’t want anybody else in the world to feel like that so he wants to uplift and if he can try to be someone’s happiness he’ll gladly be that— which isn’t always the right move, he learned

Listens to: Rotimi, Shaggy, Sean Paul, Skip Marley, H.E.R., Jhene Aiko, Jorja Smith, UMI, The Kooks, The Killers, Cold War kids, Milky chance, Blood Orange, The 1975, Vampire Weekend, Bad Suns, BRYSON TILLER, Kilo Kish, & Ella Eyre (although he misses her old music)

Celeb crushes? Cardi B is his mfkin celeb wife okay?! Nobody else comes above her! He also thinks FKA twigs is pretty & super talented, sevdaliza!, Tia & Tamera, Iman, and brandy from the 90s makes him swoon

Anthem = jaden, “Boys and Girls”

#litg #litg s2 #litg2 #litg Bobby #litg au #litg headcanon #litg headcanons #litg gary #litg lottie #litg marisol #litg mc #litg hope #you asked and you shall receive

[partyinthemysterymachine]

B, D, L, G for fandom meme

bless....... tysm............

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

it was @acapelladitty‘s fault. i know it. what was it, ditty. what did you do to me. i can’t remember. i know it was her fault because she’s the culprit of like Everything Heinous that is Gotham rogues.

i just know it was Batman rogues. i know it in my bones. 

who else has receipts? cough ‘em up bc i have idiot brain syndrome

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t (again: be nice)

tips back head

James/Mary (just cuz i’ll write it here and there don’t mean i still don’t like it; i can put aside personal preferences for the sake of the written word and imaginations)

James/Maria (...... yeah no wait i don’t think i could ever really come around to that one, so i just kinda HUGE No Thanks 5ever)

Harry/Cybil :( sry y’all but bi/lesbian power friendship

Harry/Anyone Shattered Memories ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Harry/Lisa (which might due in part to her name...............)

Travis/Lisa (...... hhh)

sorry i know harry mason is a bisexual treat, but i-- i actually have other uhhhhhhhhh for his lovin women so hahaha yeah

Alessa/Claudia (T-poses as a show of threat and dominance) ([̷̢͇̙̜͉͎̗̤̯̤̼̤̩͙̹̤͔̗̣̲̹͇̙̥̞̣̞̗̻͚̎̌͋͊̕͜ͅR̸̢̢̨̢̨̢̡̡͙͈̘͎̯̝̩̩̬̺̘̺̩̘̩̫͉̱̺͎̯̩̞͕̄̈́̍̂̿̀̾͂̐͊̀͒̋̅͗͌̈́͊͛̓͝͝ͅĒ̶̡̢̢̢̡̨̡̹̖̤̗̝̞̱̟͇̯̘̰̯̻̲̳̣̞͙̙̪͌͑̊́́́̀́̀̌̇̐͗̒͛͊̈͌̔͜͜͠ͅD̶̛̦̞̫̖̱́̓͗̌̄̋͐̆̈́́̆͊̔̍̃́̚͠Ã̸̛̩͍̼͂̈̌̀͛͌̒́̾̌͛̀̓͗́̽̐̇̌̈̕͘͝͝͝C̷̢̨̡̧̦͕̪̻̼̪̱͍̩͚̹͈̙̟̲͚̬̗͇̮̖̹̞̐͐̂̔̽̑̈́̓͜͜ͅŢ̴̢̧̡̛̻͍͉͈̺̟͙̩̬̝͚̘͖͙̮͉̤͓̦̳͙̥̭̤̹̝̮̖̫̪͔̘͕̭̽̅͋̇͑̾̍̏̉̔̄́͒͒͒̍̅̏̈́͊̄͆̈́̕͘͝͝ͅĖ̸̛̛̪͗͛̈́̈́̄̊̄́́̿̌̂̎́̋͆͂̑̾͐̉͌̃͒̔̓̂́̚̚͠͝͠Ḑ̶̡̧̡̞̬̲̣̹̥̱̬̗̲̪̼̘̻͕͆̒̒́͗̂̌͂̈̚]̵̢̧̧̰̣͍̹̝̦̙̰̩̼̠͕̦̜̱̠̗͍̯̖̲̝͔͎̅̾̉̓̊̽͆̃͘͜͝͠)

Two-Face/Riddler (REALLY picky about this one)

Riddler/Penguin ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  can’t bring myself to it, man

Munkustrap/Demeter (sorry lads........... i’m so sorry....... i’ve tried for 84 years i swear........... pls don’t forget me....)

Mistoffelees(Quaxo)/Victoria (same dig)

Tugger/Bombalurina (ok let’s just say that like 90% of the longtime “fanon-agreed ships” i’m not here for, sorry my good dudes, but i do have opinions as to where they fit in elsewhere (and listen here you little shits--

what other fuckin fandoms do i sully

idk taking receipts as always

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves (chars you’re neutral on are fair game, as are chars you dislike)

uhh

Eddie Dombrowski is not a favorite and never has been on my radar of characters i dig - however, he’s a character i went ham on with psychological dissection and i would do it again, but more coherently and with more time to think about it instead of just barfing (hah) it out in one go

he’s a fascinating study and i have several other opinions on him and that includes him as a behavioral/psychological/intent/motive exercise boy HOWDY

uhh...

The Penguin is a character who also can be picked apart until the cows come home and has been an interesting one to see evolve (or devolve, whew) through the years. i can see why he’s a favorite amongst the rogues fans and he’s got a really neat backstory and motive, and totally respect how he’s been portrayed and how the fans have handled/talked about him

uhhh

Jondalar (Clan of the Cave Bear) sure does.. .... y’know! good for him

how’d i do

G - Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it

.. :) yeah i remember my first OTP, and my first time trying to write fanfiction without knowing what it really was because i must’ve been like in fourth grade or around there

maybe younger? who’s to say

so i was really into Wizard of Oz/Oz books and i slowly collected the series, badgering various book stores into ordering it (and mom), and man i was Super Deep, Dude. i fuckin was on a Wizard of Oz site and they had a dedication page to Jack Haley (Tin Man) and this gut-wrenching quote from Ray Bolger (Scarecrow):

"Jack, it's going to be very lonely on that Yellow Brick Road now."

(btw all this time i had it flipped; i thought it was Jack eulogizing Ray, but upon double check, welp)

but anyway :) that hurted :) still hurteds a lot :))))

fuckin Ouch

anyway the point is that i shipped Tin Man/Scarecrow and i even wrote a bit of fanfic about it (sorry dad’s computer that you had to read/come back to it) and since i had no friends and young i played pretend a lot and you’ll NEVER guess what i was playing pretend about--

and it WAS very dramatic thank you very much

.. i think i was (rping with myself lbr here) actually doing a storyline where They Were Discovered and !!!!!!!!!! The Bigotry!!!!!!!!! and they had to defend themselves!!!!! and their love!!!!!!!!!!!!! without even knowing what the fuck i was doing

chinhands

it was Tin Man/Scarecrow Wizard Of Oz

#poppycrowns #;__; tysm #ches writes #and here are my opinions!!!! they are many #accept my gifts!!!!! i hope you had mixed feelings about them

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. xix

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt xix: messy hearts

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~11.2k  

Rating: Explicit; they bang it out. 

Warnings: mentions/depictions of murder-suicides(though none very graphic, only mentioned in passing and after the fact, if that changes anything). Unreliable narrators abound. I think that's all, but if there's anything I missed please let me know.

Notes: I'm going to keep these notes brief just because the chapter is quite a hefty one! We finally get some plot movement, a look into how Elliot got her mantra to Keep Going Anyway mantra, and boy howdy if you thought things were bad before just fucking wait.

I have so many people to thank and I just don't know how to express my gratitude. @shallow-gravy, you are a pure angel and I just adore you so much. Thank you for being so wonderful and for cheering my girl on always, no matter what! @lilwritingraven ilysm!!! You are so sweet and I just don't think this chapter would have happened without you.

And of course, absolutely none of this fic would be possible without @starcrier's unending love and support. The amount of MEMES, the amount of screenshots and meltdowns and in general just fuckery she puts up with nonstop is remarkable and I honestly believe that without her support we wouldn't have gotten where we are today!!!

I anticipate there is, perhaps, one or two chapters left of Ancient Names. Thank you everyone who has supported, even by a single like or kudos or comment; this community is so incredible and I am so so so grateful for every friend I have made. <3

The U.S. Marshal arrives ahead of schedule.

That is to say, nobody is ready for him. Everyone seems a little nervous. He’s familiar with the area—“Familiar enough,” Whitehorse says, and Elliot thinks she can sense a bit of disdain in his voice; people don’t take well to outsiders traipsing around like they own the place, and Cameron Burke certainly carries himself with an amount of confidence that might come off as arrogant.

“Hey,” he says, when she passes him in the hallway, “you’re the rookie, huh?”

She’s already tired of being called rookie—Rook is fine, she supposes, because she likes the way it makes her sound like the chess-piece, the bull-dozer, straightforward and brutal—but she nods, clearing her throat and holding out her hand. “Elliot.”

Burke shakes her hand. There’s a bright, easy grin on his face. “Yeah, I read about you, Honeysett,” he tells her, and for a second her stomach drops; the shame rises up in her throat like a second wave of exhaustion, but he plunges on, “you fuckin’ killed it at the Academy. Flying colors, everyone tells me.”

Relief floods her system. “Tried, anyway,” she says, unaccustomed to compliments regarding her work and more accustomed to dodging questions about why Whitehorse had to think twice about letting her on. “It was—I like the work. Of training, I mean. School. I’ve always liked school.” Fuck, she’s rambling and she can tell—she’s rambling because she’s nervous he’s going to ask, but Burke watches her for a moment.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” he says after a brief pause. “This place could use some new blood. Kinda dusty, don’tcha think?”

Elliot nods. It’s hard not to smile when he’s flashing his teeth boyishly, when he sticks a toothpick in his mouth and winks at her before he sets off. It is kind of dusty, in Hope County, she thinks—and she likes it, this little stretch and slice of home, but it does need new blood. Once they clear the cultists out, it’ll be like new; and then her life will really begin.

She’ll really start over.

Joey doesn’t like him much. “Sounds like a prick,” she says that night over takeout, her legs draped across Elliot’s lap.

“I like him,” she says, fishing her chopsticks around in Joey’s takeout box for a spare bite of broccoli. “He was... Nice. To me.”

“Oh?” Joey cocks a brow at her. “You had a little chat with our friend the U.S. Marshal?”

“Just in the hallway,” Elliot replies quickly, “on my way out today, I passed him. He said he read my file.”

Joey isn’t staring at her, but she doesn’t need to be for Elliot to know that she’s listening. She’s digging around in her noodles for something when she makes a low, quiet noise of inquisition, as though to say, is that so?, because she knows what that usually entails.

“He just mentioned I got good marks,” she murmurs after a moment. “At the Academy.”

“Well, you did,” Joey says. Elliot huffs out a short little laugh and smiles.

“I know. Just nice to be recognized for my greatness.” She crinkles her nose. “Whitehorse just kind of looks at me like he’s worried I’ll fire off.”

“Oh, Elliot! So strong, so smart, so fast, so capable of shooting a man on foot or by vehicle!” Joey wails dramatically. “Your hand in marriage, I beg it of thee!”

Elliot rolls her eyes and shoves Joey’s legs off of her lap, stretching and coming to a stand. “Yeah, yeah, fuck you.”

“Not before marriage, though,” her friend intones somberly. “Joseph “The Father” Seed wouldn’t have any pre-marital fucking in his domain.”

“I don’t think he’s as stiff on that as everyone thinks he is.” Elliot walks into the kitchen and uncorks the bottle of wine, pouring herself a new glass. “Aren’t cults supposed to be weird about that kind of thing?”

She can hear Joey scoff in the living room. “You’re going to be with us tomorrow. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Oh, great idea! ‘Hi, The Father? Do you fuck, or nah?’ He won’t be expecting that at all.”

“Perfect. See how Burke feels about that pro-strategy.”

Elliot laughs and settles herself back on the couch, holding the glass of wine in both of her hands; the fragrance of it swims in her head pleasantly. Tomorrow they take the U.S. Marshal down to the compound and finally root the Seeds out of here. For good.

She says lightly, “Anyway, I want to get tomorrow done as fast as possible.” A little sigh escapes her.

“Things will finally get back to normal.”

Burke’s hands are around her throat and he slams her up against the wall with a vicious noise.

And then he sees her—really sees her—and he drops his hands from her neck to grip her shoulders instead as he says, “Fucking Christ—Rook, I’m so sorry, fuck, I thought—”

Elliot coughs. Her lungs strain with each movement; every bone in her body feels bruised, and something slimy crawls up and down her spine when she thinks about the way Joseph leaned in close to her in the helicopter and said, no one is coming to save you.

“Burke,” she manages out, her voice hoarse, “they took Joey—they f-fucking—”

“This shit is all fucked,” Burke says. “I had no idea. We had—”

Everything in her is vibrating with a strange kind of hunger. It’s like she’s itching for something, but she can’t quite figure out what it is—movement, maybe, or a purpose, a task. It had been one thing to crawl her way out of the helicopter and start running blindly, but now she’s stationary, and in a trailer, and Joey is gone and she almost can’t think straight.

“Rookie,” Burke says firmly, but not unkindly, “with me.”

Her lashes flutter and she realizes she’s been zoning out. “Y—Yeah, I’m—here—I’m—”

And then she’s gasping, heaving for a lungful of air. All of a sudden, the ability to take a breath is gone. Her body’s normal functions have flown out the window. Her vision fuzzes around the edges and she thinks, fuck fuck fuck, don’t fucking do this, please, fuck, not right now, get it together.

No one is coming to save you.

Burke grabs her hand and plants it right on the side of his neck. His pulse beats—fast, but steady, in the complete opposite of the stuttering arrhythmia of her own heart. He’s breathing hard, but his eyes are clear and his movements assured.

“With me?” This time it’s a question, and she’s taking breaths at the same time he is so she nods.

“Yeah,” she replies, “yeah.”

“Good.” He pulls away from her and gestures for her to follow as he heads further in. “Check the room.”

She does. It’s empty. Eden’s Gate scripture decorates the walls, photos of the Seed family staring at her unflinchingly from behind glass panes of photo frames.

“Clear,” she reports, when she remembers to, and finds Burke standing in what appears to be the main living room of the trailer. The lines of his face are hard, unforgiving, and she can feel the urgency radiating off of him as he scrambles to pull together a plan.

“We’re gonna put these fucking psychos behind bars, Rook,” he says, pointing at a picture frame sporting a portrait taken of the Seeds. Elliot can’t stand to look at them. To think that she’d met John in a bar and—even considered—

“Every single one of them,” the Marshal reiterates as he rips the photo frame off of the wall and drops it on the floor, crushing the glass beneath his boot on his way over to the window. “We’re gonna—”

There are voices outside. Dread crawls up her spine; she can feel it latching on, sinking its teeth into her, gripping.

Burke shoves an automatic rifle in her hands.

“Eyes,” he barks out, back to business as he creeps toward the door of the trailer. “There’s a truck out there. You ready to fuckin’ rumble?”

She grips the cold metal. She wants to say, I don’t know if this is a good idea, because the edges of her are bleeding and blending in with everything else, and she’s having a hard time thinking about anything other than the texture of the carpet under her booted feet, but it helps to have something to hold onto.

Burke turns to her, crouched by the door, and his hand drops on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, “we're gonna bolt for that truck and hope it starts. Cover me."

"There's hardly any ammo in this thing," Elliot tells him, a note of panic rising in her voice as more people can be heard gathering outside, shouting to check the trailer. "What happens when—"

"I told you, kid, I read up on you. I know you were that small-town, All-American girl hitting soft lobs in the batting cage once," Burke tells her. "You'll figure out a use for the gun if you run out. And Rook?”

Elliot waits, and grips the cold metal slowly going lukewarm under her hands, flicking the safety off. “Yeah?”

The Marshal gives her shoulder a squeeze. “The second you think you can’t anymore,” he says, “you dig and keep going anyway. No matter what. Give ‘em your teeth if you have to. Got it?”

She nods without thinking about it, because the words feel good—if you can’t, keep going anyway. Dig dig dig. It reminds her of a poem she had read once.

What do we do with grief? Lug it; lug it.

“Good.” Burke drops his hand from her shoulder and gets ready to push the door open. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

There’s not a lot of detail to recall of the next few moments. She’s aware of voices, and gunfire, and the rhythmic, steady movements that she falls into. Aim, fire, drop, reload, aim, fire, rinse and repeat, until the torturous drag of time has her hauling herself into the truck while bullets whizz and clink off of the metal. The second she’s sitting, and not moving, and not breathing, her muscles start screaming; pain blooms behind her eyes.

Burke sends the tires shrieking as he speeds down the highway. He says something, but it’s hard to hear over the rush of wind from the open window, over the shouts of voices and sounds of gunfire echoing in the still, dark night. Elliot falls into a rhythm again—lean, aim, fire, pull back, reload, and again and again—while the Marshal drives over barricades and nearly throws her out of the truck.

“Nice fuckin’ shot, kid!” he says over the noise, just as the sound of an airplane rattling above them makes him lean over the steering wheel as he drives. “Fucking—you’re telling me they have God damn air support? Fuck!”

“Burke,” Elliot says, because they’re rapidly approaching a bridge with a truck ahead of them and the airplane hasn’t let up, “Burke—the bridge—”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ see it,” he grits out, fingers gripping the wheel. “Hold on, Rook.”

He punches it. He’s going to try and get around the truck and across the bridge. But it’s not enough; the truck ahead of them swerves, stops him from being able to speed past and keeping them trapped.

Gunfire from the sky rains down on them. The bridge goes up in flames; the truck is plunged straight into the water; and for a second, Elliot thinks, oh, thank fucking God, I’m done.

But she’s not, unfortunately. As she holds her breath around the water she’d swallowed upon the impact, she struggles out through the open window of the truck and fights her way to the surface. Everything inside of her wants to quit—everything says, we could just close our eyes, we could just be done, and then she remembers.

The second you think you can’t go anymore, you dig and keep going anyway. No matter what.

Her hands find soil. She hauls herself out of the water, coughing, lungs straining for air. Her vision blurs black and fuzzes, fizzing and popping in and out of existence as she considers the logistics of letting herself die. Just for a second. She can die for a second, right?

“No! Get off me! I am a United States Federal Marshal!”

It’s Burke. She can see the glimmer of flashlights on a distant bank, closer to the bridge. The dull, wet impact of something against skin quiets him; as Elliot lays back against the bank with her eyes flickering shut, she feels fingers grip the front of her shirt and haul her upwards.

“My children...”

The voice drones out of speakers—the sound speckles in and out, crackling in her head, distant but sickening.

“S—” Her voice slurs as she tries to say something; she’s being carried, and she doesn’t know to where, or by who. “W—Wait—”

“We must give thanks to God. The day I have prophesied to you has arrived.”

Elliot tries to force her eyes open. She can’t. She can’t, and she’s going to let Burke down, because she can’t dig anymore. How is she supposed to dig if her nails are scraping the bottom of the barrel?

“Everything I’ve told you has come true... The authorities who tried to take me from you are now in the loving embrace of my Family... save for one.”

She’s going to be sick. She’s going to be sick, and she wants to die, and she thinks that fucking psycho is talking about her.

“But the Wayward Soul will be found. They will be punished...”

She can see stairs. Concrete stairs, as the man carrying her hauls her down, down down down. Vaguely, hazily, she thinks, belly of the beast, now? and she wonders if she will ever feel normal again. Her vision fuzzes black, but she’s not dead and she’s not asleep; it’s unfortunate.

“And in the end, they will see our glorious purpose.”

Metal clinks against metal. Cold from the concrete floor seeps through her soaked clothes. Elliot lifts her head lazily, feeling the tug and strain of handcuffs around her wrists, and when she opens her eyes she can see she’s—somewhere. Somewhere, and handcuffed to a bed, while an older man stands at the radio. Joseph’s voice rattled on through it.

“I am your Father. You are my Children. And together, we will march too—”

The man turns the radio off. The air hangs hazy around him with smoke; something burns in the ashtray, and she thinks, fuck, I’d kill for a goddamn cigarette right about now.

“You know what that shit means?” the man asks, turning to look at her. She blinks at him blearily, and when she doesn’t answer, he plants himself in a chair in front of her.

Joey, and maybe Pratt—Burke, Whitehorse? They’re all gone, or dead, or something somewhere, and now it feels less like this was her chance to really start over and more like a set of trials and tribulations to make her suffer.

Her gaze flickers to meet the man’s, and she shakes her head uncertainly. The words won’t come out, even if she thinks there’s even a chance she’d have the strength.

“It means the roads have all been closed.”

No one is coming to save you.

“It means the phone lines have been cut.”

What do we do with grief?

“It means there’s no signals getting in or out of this valley.”

Give ‘em your teeth if you have to.

Elliot feels her stomach churn violently, nauseated. She wishes this man would have left her to die—or sleep, or whatever it was her body had been trying to get her to do on that riverbank.

“But mostly,” he finishes, leaning in to look at her with a hard, flinty gaze, “it means we’re all fucked.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A loud knock at the door echoed in the dim, stinging heat of the bath. For a moment, she felt a jolt of instinctive fear pound through her body—where was she? Was she drowning again? Had she not made it out of the river, had she—

Burke, and Joseph, and Joey getting dragged away, and Dutch, and—

But then Elliot remembered: she was at her mother’s house, and she’d run herself a bath in the big clawfoot off from the master with a vodka soda, and John Seed was here, too, and her lungs burned because she’d been sitting under the water. The sharp, splintering pain in her chest was grief, the memory of Joey's laugh and smile freshly remembered.

Breaking the surface and steadying the breath that wanted to gasp out of her through her nose, Elliot pushed any stray bubbles from her face and eyes and waited again to see if the sound was real.

Another knock came. “El?” John called from outside the bathroom, and his voice hinged on something else—something strange and foreign, and it gave her a tiny little thrill through the pit of her stomach to know she was making him feel like that. She blinked a few times, straightening up in the bathtub as the now-lukewarm water splashed around her. It had been a long time since she’d fallen asleep like that, without sporting a metric fuckton of exhaustion for days. It was probably the alcohol.

“I’m here,” she replied, feeling hollowed out and trying not to let it show in her voice, “come in. What is it?”

The door clicked open. John glanced around curiously at the bathroom—her mother had never let her use this bathroom for anything, not even to get ready for a high school dance or her graduation, and she thought maybe that made the room all the more special—all of her mother’s glittering compacts and colored perfume bottles, carefully-maintained hanging plants, the big French windows and gauzy white curtains; they all spoke to a woman who had created for herself a safe space.

She only thought, I hate that she never let me enjoy this safe space, too.

“We should be going back soon,” he said lightly, crossing the marbled floor to drag the stool from the vanity up to the side of the tub. With one arm leaned up against the porcelain, he reached the other hand out and tilted her chin; like this, covered only by the rose-scented bubble bath foaming up around the hollow of her chest, she was sure that she looked gnarly—mottled with bruises the size of Kian’s fingerprints, all over her neck and shoulders and chest, dousing her in a faded red-wine color that made her skin prickle in faint pain when John traced the slope of her collarbone.

Kian was dead, but he was still there—lingering just below her skin, a bone-deep ache and grief that she would never be rid of because no matter how dead he was, Joey was much more dead.

“—you’re thinking about,” John murmured, his eyes flickering over her face, and she leaned back against the head of the tub.

“Come again?” Elliot reached out of the tub, snagging the half-drained glass of vodka soda and downing the rest of it with a grimace that only partially cleared out the fog of grief.

“I said,” he continued lightly, fingers smoothing over bruisy skin below her collarbone, “tell me what you’re thinking about.”

I’m thinking about Joey, and your fucking cultists dragging her out of the helicopter and taking her away from me. There was no venom in the passing voice as she closed her eyes, damp hair sticking to the nape of her neck and her mother’s bath oils filling up her senses; John was touching the spot he’d once threatened to mark her with her sin. Wrath.

I think it’ll fit nicely right here, don’t you? Maybe just over your heart.

It wasn’t enough to wear it on her skin, anymore. It didn’t feel like enough, anyway. It was inside of her; a poison that she couldn’t sweat out, embedded in the sinew of her tissue now.

“I can hear those little gears turning, hellcat.”

“What do we have to do?” Elliot asked after a moment, opening her eyes, as John’s fingers traced the shape of a letter beneath her collarbone. W... R... A...

“Do?”

T...

“For the baptism,” she clarified, as the blunt drag of his nail finished the final touch of an H. “What do we have to do?”

John watched her for a moment, gaze flickering over the quickly-fading red marks he’d left on her sternum. She knew that look on his face—he was hungry for it, this thing he had been trying to get from her all along. Even after it all, he still itched to carve it out of her.

And maybe she did, too; maybe it would feel like a penance, a purging, a catharsis, a—

That’s how, she thought after a moment. That’s how they get people.

“We’ll cleanse you...” His voice trailed off and his eyes flickered back up to hers. “And then reveal your sin.”

“Cut it out of me,” Elliot supplied, exhaling a little out of her mouth.

John’s mouth twisted around a smile when her eyes traced the exposed Sloth scar she had memorized the feel of. “Real courage.”

She wondered, briefly, if it would feel the same as when she had done it before. The scar would certainly look different—no fine gossamer wisps, ghosting across her abdomen and hips and the inside of her thighs. Those were ghosts. This one—this scar John wanted to give her—would be a neon sign flashing over her head.

Do you think they’ll understand, when they read the reports of what you did to that man? Of the trail of bodies you’ve left behind yourself?

Could she have a life after this? Would it matter if she and John even left? Regardless of where they went—if they did—they would be a pair, matching in scars and matching in sin and matching matching matching until they were the same, just as much blood on her hands as there was on his.

“Then,” he continued, dipping his hand into the fragrant water before drawing it up across her bruise-mottled shoulder, “you’ll be clean.”

I liked it, she thought through the haze of alcohol and perfumed air, killing Kian. I liked it.

His fingers came up to her jaw, and he leaned against the edge of the porcelain tub and kissed her; long and luxurious, not punishing or bruising but drawn-out enough to elicit in her a pleasant, dull ache. 

“Okay,” Elliot murmured, speaking the words into his mouth, into his kiss.

John paused, but did not pull away. She could taste the dredges of what swallows he’d gotten of her drink in his breath. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” She reached up and dragged him the tiny distance back in for another kiss. “I want to.” She thought, if it’s what will convince Joseph, if it’s what’ll make it so I can leave, if it means you’ll go with me, if it means I won't have to be alone, but none of those words came. It had never been her strong suit, talking about her feelings.

John exhaled, like the acquiescence—the relenting—was enough to drive him to nirvana. She could feel his smile against her mouth.

“El,” he rumbled against her mouth, fingers skimming along the slope of her jaw, “I’m gonna give you everything you want.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Slow down.”

They’d only been driving through Fall’s End for about five minutes—not that it took too long; you could probably drive five minutes in just about any direction and hit the edge of town—when the blonde barked out the order. It was a strange juxtaposition, to have her biting out words like that when the smell of roses wafted off of her like a perfume, filling the cab from the oils in the bath.

Elliot’s voice was sharp when she spoke; her eyes were fixed on something out past her window, evening having sunk heavy and dark over the town of Fall’s End. It was a ghost town, now, but the urgency in her voice had him hitting the brake more fervently than he intended, and the truck lurched to stop.

“What is it?” John asked, and when he did Boomer growling low and angry behind him. He eyed the Heeler before he realized even the dog was looking elsewhere.

The blonde didn’t answer. She leaned forward instead, as though straining to see in the dark. Over her head, he could see the front of the Spread Eagle where they had been only a few days ago; now it was decorated with blossoms, and at its base sat two darkly-clothed figures. This far away, John couldn’t see if they were asleep or awake.

And then he did see. He saw the arterial spray against the dark wood, flickering under neon lights that buzzed in the stillness of the night; he saw the bouquet clutched between their hands; he saw the open, glassy eyes and slack jaws, and the glint of metal sitting on the ground beside each body.

Above them, written in dark, oxidized red-brown: WRATH, DO YOU WANT TO BLOOM IN ME?

“Sorry fucks,” Elliot said, her voice flinty and steeled as she leaned back into her seat. In the cab of the truck, the perfume of the bath oils radiated off of her in gentle waves, the heady, floral scent almost dizzying this concentrated and close. 

John let the truck roll forward a little, scanning warily; he didn’t see any dark shapes moving behind windows, or in the distant treeline, which was what actually worried him—the presence of more, live enemies, not the suicide love-birds.

But if it bothered Elliot, if it made her feel any type of way to see these dead bodies cradling life in one last embrace, he couldn’t see it on her face. He pressed on the accelerator and glanced at her expression through the corner of his eyes; there was a steeliness there. Not empty, not as though she had stopped processing, but as though she had, and it didn’t mean anything to her.

Good, he thought. That’s how it needs to be.

The rest of the drive back was quiet. There were an unsettling amount of coupled-bodies on the drive home—propped against trees and patches of highway railings or the occasional clifface, hands interlocked as they cradled blossoms, some more intricately decorated than others. But the basis of it was always the same: a couple, slumped and glassy-eyed. Some had the words written around them, some did not. It didn’t seem to hold any pattern that he could tell.

Elliot closed her eyes and drifted in and out of sleep until they got back to the compound, the flickering fluorescents stirring her awake. As they were pulling in, Jacob was getting a truck ready to go; it was late into the evening now, almost midnight, and a sting of apprehension skittered up John’s spine at the sight of his eldest brother loading a rifle into a truck.

As soon as she had opened the door, letting Boomer out first and then following suit, Elliot looked at Jacob and said, “Where are you going?”

“Not your fuckin’ business,” Jacob replied serenely.

“Everything,” Elliot said flatly, “is my business.”

“It’s cute that you care.” Jacob flashed her a half-cocked smile. “But don’t worry, deputy, I’m a big boy.”

John slid out from the driver’s seat, watching the exchange with some apprehension. But it seemed to fizzle and die out right then and there, like Jacob and Elliot had come to some silent truce about the matter without his intervention; Elliot rolled her eyes and scoffed under her breath, heading for the bunkhouse without waiting for John.

Which was fine, because John lingered. He swung the truck keys around his finger and said, “So where are you going?”

Jacob glanced back at him over his shoulder. The redhead regarded John for a moment before he looked to make sure Elliot had closed the door behind her and said, “Couple of ours say they spotted Burke wandering around down by the Henbane.”

Oh, John thought, the words both giving him a jolt of excitement and a little of dread. Burke being missing was a problem, that was to be sure—but if they could find him? Get rid of him without ever bringing him back into contact with Elliot? The less time for conspirators to put silly ideas in her head about getting out and moving on from Hope County, the easier it was going to be to convince her of what a bad idea that was in the end.

“You’re going to go get him?” John prompted.

“Yep,” Jacob drawled, “dead or alive.”

“Preferably dead.”

The corners of Jacob’s mouth ticked upward, and he flashed his teeth. “That a request, little brother?”

Stifling his own smile, John replied lightly, “I just think it’ll solve a lot of problems if the Marshal becomes permanently lost. And if it makes my job a little easier in the process, then—”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jacob interrupted, waving his hand. I’ll see what I can do was about as good as an anything you want if it was coming from Jacob, John knew; so when he said that, and clapped John on the shoulder as he passed, it felt like an assurance more than a cautionary ‘maybe’.

John nodded, and then said, “We saw the Family.”

His eldest brother paused in his movements, and then hauled himself into the truck, looking at John expectantly.

“They’re killing themselves,” he elaborated. “At least the ones we saw. You’ll probably…”

John’s voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat and said, “It’ll be hard to miss them.”

Jacob gave one short, brief nod, slamming the door of the truck and starting it with a rattling rumble. “Sorry fucks,” he said, his words unintentionally mirroring Elliot’s words, and it was all John could do not to tell him he sounded exactly like her.

John headed for the chapel, moving with a new and reinvigorated purpose. For once—finally—things were beginning to fall into place. With Burke out of the picture, the last of the resistance having evacuated Hope County, and Elliot’s agreement to the baptism, he thought this could only indicate smooth sailing from here on out.

Well, mostly smooth. There was still the matter of their marriage, which Elliot didn’t know about—and it was a big deal, probably, for her to know that her last name was changed. As far as the law would be concerned, however, everything would check out and be perfectly binding, and when he told her she would understand that he had done it for them, that he had done it because they needed that extra measure of protection in the instance that—

Don’t, he thought to himself, pushing the door open. We are not considering the idea that the End isn’t coming.

“John,” Joseph greeted him, sounding surprised. It looked like he had just been walking towards the doors himself to leave. His brother's gaze flickered over him inquisitively. “It’s late.”

“Elliot wants to do the baptism,” he said, trying to quell his delight at the gentle lifting of Joseph’s brows at the news. “I’ll do it as soon as you want, Joseph.”

The man paused. He seemed to roll the announcement around in his head for a while, the white leather-bound bible tucked under his arm as his eyes flickered absently over the wooden flooring.

“She’s agreed to it,” John tried again. “To the—”

“Yes,” Joseph replied, “I understand.”

Another moment of silence stretched. John kept waiting for it—the happiness, the pride that Joseph should feel at him having accomplished this last great feat. Anything, John thought, I’d take anything, if you just gave me something to work with.

“Tomorrow,” he said finally, and reached out, planting a hand on John’s shoulder. He squeezed, and a bit of relief flooded John’s system. “You baptize our deputy tomorrow—”

My deputy.

“—and then we will prepare to retreat for the End,” he finished. “Yes?”

John nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Good.” Joseph regarded him for a moment, and then, at last, a little smile quirked the edges of his lips. “You’ve done well, John.”

He felt his shoulders sag a little in relief. “Thank you,” he said, “Joseph, I—”

“And I will forgive you the transgression of your lust,” Joseph continued mildly, “as you will make sure that Elliot joins us completely and wholly. Isn’t that right?”

The dread returned. Just a little; it was how Joseph operated the most effectively. Tiny, light dosings of dread, just to remind you who was in control, who it was that ran things around here. He cleared his throat.

“I’ve already,” John began, “confessed to those which—”

Joseph’s hand came to the back of his neck. “You have been fixated on our deputy since the moment she started taking things from us. You can re-commit an offense,” he said, his words echoing Jacob’s, and for a moment John felt a spike of anger—that they had been talking about him when he wasn’t around. “You’re not so wrathful as to go to such lengths to bring her to heel for that alone. And even if you were,” Joseph added, “it wouldn’t matter, as you had already given in to your sin.”

“She’s my wife,” John insisted, and his words were coming out angrier than he wanted; as always, Joseph could slide right under his skin like it was nothing, like it was second nature to him. 

“A fact she remains, as of yet, unaware of. Regardless, you lusted after her far before that, and acted on it before then, as well. I’ve let it go because of our unusual circumstances, but you understand,” his brother replied, his words a blunt-force-trauma slap to John’s exhausted brain. A moment of silence stretched between them as John worked the words around in his mouth—I actually don’t understand, nothing about that changed how I treated her in my care, I did everything you asked of me and I shouldn’t have to pay—but Joseph said, “At any rate, all will be forgiven once we are awaiting the End." And then, pointedly, "All of us.”

John swallowed. He opened his mouth to say something, any of the thoughts running around in his brain, but Joseph dropped his hand and brushed past him, humming lightly under his breath.

“Goodnight, John.”

He stood there for a little while longer after Joseph had left, turning the words around in his brain. Once again, he felt very far away from Joseph; but all this time, he had been working hard to do exactly what his brother had asked of him. Elliot might have already been converted to their cause if he’d been allowed to break her in the way he’d wanted to before. But it was Joseph who had insisted on a more merciful route, Joseph who had reiterated step by step that to do so by mercy was the way it needed to be done for the deputy.

And now, it was Joseph criticizing the steps he’d taken, in adverse conditions, to give him what he wanted.

John pushed the troubling thoughts out of his brain. Another place, another time, he might wallow on them a little more—perhaps a time when he could drink his way through them, come back to reconciliation about the fear that Joseph somehow managed to strike in him with ease, deal with it then.

When he finally walked himself to the bunkhouse, he found Elliot sitting with Faith outside the door, smoking a cigarette while they exchanged quiet words. Faith flashed a radiant smile at John as he approached, her eyes glimmering playfully.

“Ladies,” John greeted, trying to shake his last conversation with Joseph. “Nice evening for an outside chat?”

“Fucking cold,” Elliot replied, taking a drag of her cigarette and blowing the smoke out and away from Faith.

“I was just telling El how happy I am that she’s here,” Faith told him, coming to a stand. Her very casual and nonchalant use of the nickname El was enough to spike a little suspicion in John, but when she spoke, Elliot’s eyes flickered like she was trying not to smile, like the words meant something to her and she was trying to remain stoic.

Elliot said, not remarking on the nickname and tapping the ash from the end of her cigarette, “That’s two out of four siblings that like me. Think I can go for a full house?”

Three, John thought absently, but he didn’t say; the words would have shredded his mouth on the way out.

“Well,” his sister continued lightly, “I’m exhausted. Goodnight, you two.”

“Night,” John replied, keeping his voice idle as she left. He extended a hand down to Elliot, and she took it, hauling herself to her feet; he snagged the cigarette out of her hand and said, “Speaking of sleep, how about we don’t cram it on that twin bunk tonight?”

Elliot watched him smoke her cigarette down, her gaze flickering back up to his. “It’s cute how you think I’m just automatically going to let you sleep with me all the time.”

“It’s cute how you act like you don’t like it,” he replied, pitching his voice low, “especially when we aren’t sleeping in bed.”

She took her cigarette back, finishing it and dropping it to the ground to stamp it out with her shoe. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind not having you breathing down my neck all night.”

“Oh? You suppose?”

“I’m losing the motivation to continue this conversation,” Elliot cautioned in a murmur, even as he leaned in and kissed her, his hand instinctively coming up to the back of her neck to keep her there. She didn’t pull away, or even try to; instead, after he’d kissed her breathless, she continued, “Are you going to take me or what, Slick?”

He laughed, the sound billowing out of his mouth at her little country-drawl come peeking through.

You will baptize our deputy tomorrow.

His fingers curling into the semi-dry hair at the nape of her neck, and he kissed her again—harder, now, open-mouthed and hungry, until he could feel her fingers knotting into the front of his shirt.

“Tomorrow,” he said into the kiss, “tomorrow we’ll do it. A new cleansing, revealing your sin.”

“Fast,” she murmured.

“So Joseph has decreed.”

Elliot pulled back to look at him; he wanted to lean in, chase her mouth with another kiss, but she said, “Do you always do what your brother says? I thought pre-marital fucking was a big no.”

The words twisted hot and traitorous in his stomach. He wanted to say, technically, we’ve only done that once, but he knew better. After her little display back at her mother’s house, he knew better.

He swallowed back the venom and said, carefully articulating his words, “If we could refrain from ruining a perfectly good moment—”

“By talking,” Elliot deadpanned.

“By criticizing,” he clarified, “that would be wonderful.”

She regarded him amusedly, one brow arching upward loftily. She was clearly thinking about something, working it around in her brain in a place that he couldn’t reach—still, parts of her remained locked away from him, parts of her that he desperately wanted to get his hands on and hadn’t yet.

“Well,” she relented at last, “I’d hate to ruin a moment. Show me where this luxurious bed is, huh?”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Elliot could tell that her acquiescence unsettled John. She could tell that he had been expecting more of a fight out of her; she was so tired of fighting, though. She was so tired, and she was so worn out, and sometimes she could feel her brain switching off in the middle of something happening, like a greater cosmic power was consistently turning her Do Not Disturb sign on.

She’d feel better in the morning, maybe. It helped that she hadn’t looked at the photos littering her mother’s house for too long, and that she’d drank through most of her time there to keep the memories at bay. Elliot didn’t want to linger on thoughts of running barefoot through the house, shrieking with laughter as her mother called out for her to slow down; she didn’t want to think about how many times she and Joey had curled up on the same couch that John Seed had kissed her on, eating lemon bars and flipping through teen magazines while her mother drank and hummed in the kitchen.

There were good memories there. There were memories of a time when Elliot felt like the entire world was within her reach—she could go anywhere, be anything, become anyone she wanted back then.

Things had changed.

She had changed. And even though John’s promise wavered, even though it still lingered in her chest uncertainly like a beast of its own, she thought maybe he meant it. She had seen the tension between John and Joseph as of late. Something about their interactions was waning thin, worried and worn between them, and that meant that when John said he wanted those things with her—a home, a life—that maybe she could trust him.

Isn’t that a pretty thought? A wicked part of her intoned, vicious. The man who’s lied and lied and lied to you, being truthful for the first time.

But she was tired, and she was different, and being different took work and energy and she didn’t want to think about that. What else could she think, anyway? She could operate off of nothing else.

Admittedly, not trying to fit both of their bodies on a twin bed was doing wonders for her mood. John had led her to another small building within the compound; it was laid out much like the other bunkhouse had been, with a bathroom and a small table, but the bed was queen-sized and pushed up against the far wall, tucked into a corner. With Boomer having taken off with his nose to the ground—likely chasing a scent—Elliot had stripped out of her jeans and crawled into the bed with a laborious sigh that only partially revealed the relief she felt.

“I have never,” John said amusedly as she pulled the blankets up, “seen you more relaxed.”

“You did interfere with my life at an inopportune time. My bed is king-sized at home, you know; nothing like sleeping diagonally on a giant bed.”

He laughed; as he shed his own clothes—his belt, jeans, shirt—he watched her like he was trying to figure out why it was she had become so agreeable and so quickly, why she hadn’t picked another fight with him.

Blissfully, he didn’t ask. John crawled into the bed next to her, and already he was reaching to wind his arm around her waist; when he pulled her close to him, she felt that pleasant little coil of dopamine hit her brain, and she thought, what a time, that John’s hands on me make it feel like I’m not drifting away.

She thought to say it, for just a moment; she thought maybe she could give John that, because she’d been taking and taking and taking and she didn’t think she was giving him anything. 

The words didn’t come so easily to her, so instead of saying them, Elliot reached up and dragged him down to kiss him. I’m gonna give you everything you want, he’d said, and just remembering those words made her feel too-warm. She’d never, ever had anyone devoted to her—not like this, not in the way that John was, dragging his mouth reverently down her neck and sliding his hand along the back of her thigh.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” John said, murmuring the words into the skin of her neck. His mouth skimmed lower, dragging down her sternum; his hands pushed up the hem of her tank top and she felt the slick, hot flicker of his tongue against the part of her that she knew was scarred, ghosting and intent.

“Can’t,” she managed out, trying to steady her breathing, “when you’re—”

“You can.” He nudged her legs apart, glancing up at her inquisitively, the blankets dragging down with him. “Tell me.” He kissed the inside of her thigh, open-mouthed, and she felt her breath shallow a little.

“I’m thinking about—what you said, back at the house,” she managed out, as John’s breath fanned across her skin.

John’s eyes fixed on hers again. His fingers skimmed beneath the hem of her underwear; he was waiting for her to tell him to stop. When she didn’t, he tugged the fabric down, sliding it completely out of the way and discarding it somewhere on the floor.

The apprehension curled up, high and hot, in her throat. Still, forced herself to relax, to think about John’s hands gripping her hips and his eyes and his mouth and—

“When you said,” Elliot continued, “you’re going to give me everything I want, and that you wanted—”

He pressed his mouth to her; she felt the sound he made into the gesture, her vibrating straight through her and short-circuiting her brain. Instinctively, her fingers went to his hair and knotted. She didn’t know if she was trying to ground herself again or if she was trying to keep John there, but the intention didn’t matter—as soon as she pulled, even a little, she felt John’s tongue slide sly and wicked against her and she moaned without thinking about it, the sound as involuntary as breathing.

It felt too raw, too vulnerable, and she tried to think is this too much? Am I feeling too much right now?, but the pervasive thought in her brain was: yes yes yes, this is what we need, this is what we want. To be loved, to be touched, to be worshipped.

“Can't get enough of you.” John's voice was rich and dark against her skin. “So sweet for me, hellcat.”

“John, we—you don’t—” Elliot started breathlessly, but the words were strangled in her throat by a half-sighed whimper when John’s mouth returned to where he wanted her the most and he groaned, like he was starved for her, like he could barely stand the thought of not having his mouth on her right that instant.

“Fuck, I wanted this so bad,” he murmured huskily, reverent as he planted kisses along the slope of her hip. “Wanted those sounds you make, and the way you’re looking at me—knew you’d make the prettiest fucking noises when I got my mouth on you—”

Another desperate sound came out of her, just loud enough that John's response was to drag his teeth along the dip and curve of her hip bone. He sighed dreamily and leaned in to flatten his tongue against the neediest part of her; the gesture served only to make Elliot moan and squirm, and her hips instinctively arched upward to try and garner some friction—any friction—but John's hands held her down against the bed.

“Love when you’re desperate for me,” he rumbled against her, breathing the words against her skin and making her breath stutter out of her in an uneven exhale. He pressed his mouth back down, tongue flicking and dragging wet, hot pleasure against her, his gaze half-lidded and not once straying from Elliot’s. 

It was almost too much, the whole lot of it; John, saying filthy things against her while he ate her out, his eyes hungry and his mouth hungrier and the way that he dug his fingers into her hips and—

“F-Fucking—tease,” she managed out, but he shook his head, rumbling against her and drawing another spiral of heat straight into her stomach, sharp and unforgiving.

“Don’t you like it when I take my time with you? You certainly seem like you’re enjoying yourself.” He hooked his arms underneath her legs and tugged her down against him. She squirmed, her lashes fluttering when he let his breath fan across her. “Thinking about how I promised you whatever you wanted. Are you going to tell me, then? What you want?”

Elliot could tell that he loved saying that, I’ll give you whatever you want, because he knew what it did to her; that it thrilled her, this shred of power that he gave her, offered to her. John dragged his tongue against her, his gaze heated and nearly blown-black with want, and stayed exactly there between her legs.

“John,” Elliot moaned, “I—want you to fuck me—” And then, in an effort to feel a little like she was in control: “Please.”

The word had its desired effect; she could feel the tension radiating off of him, straining against his carefully-manicured veneer of being in charge. And then John groaned at her words, his own eyes fluttering shut for a moment, as though her words were enough to make him need a moment before he opened them again. He pulled back from her, sitting up so that he could press his fingers into her, and fuck if it didn’t make all the more delicious to have John watching her while he did.

He said, his voice hoarse with want, “El, you’re so fucking—God, you’re so fucking gorgeous like this—asking so nicely for me—”

“Fuck me,” Elliot insisted, her voice verging dangerously close to a wail as he changed the pace of his fingers very little. She thought if John kept looking at her like that, if he kept saying those things, she might finish just like this—and she didn’t want to. “Stop teasing me and f—fuck me like I know you want to—like we both want—”

It was enough. Or maybe it was the thing John had been waiting to hear from her, because it prompted him to shed what little clothing remained between them and sidle back between her legs. Reaching down to cradle her face with his hand as he kissed her, she could taste herself on his mouth; she could feel the heady, intoxicating drag of him against her and God he was taking his fucking time. 

“Want this to last,” he moaned, burying his face into her neck, “fuck, so good for me, baby, so wet already and I just can’t fucking… Can’t fucking get my fill of you.”

Elliot keened her agreement breathlessly. Yes, she wanted to say, yes, I’m so good for you, now please hurry up and fuck me, the thought driving a wedge of heat straight down her spine. As soon as John slid inside of her, he was panting into her skin, biting out swears as he tried to keep himself from snapping into her.

“J-John,” she whimpered. Her brain felt muggy, hazy with want; like she wasn’t going to be able to think about anything else except for him, and that was exactly what she wanted. Not to think. “So—feels so good—”

“Yeah,” he gritted out, moving slowly, too slowly, “fuck yeah, this is what you needed, huh? Needed me to fuck you like this—nice and slow, make you feel me every—single—time—I—”

It felt good to give him this. She hadn’t lied, when she’d said that before—that she liked giving him what he wanted, that it made her feel in-control and desired and loved and maybe that was the worst part of it all, that her brain might have been making those things up as a way to justify this. But it didn’t matter in that moment; all she could think about was the feeling of him rocking into her, hips slotted perfectly against hers and his mouth on her neck and the faded scent of his cologne mixing with the floral scent of her own remaining perfume.

Elliot sighed, “Yes, John,” in agreement, and pulled him up for a kiss; his movements hitched just a little, the delicious drag of the uneven pacing almost sending her right over the edge. So close so close, her body said, so she knotted her fingers into his hair tight and said it again; “Yes, yes, yes,” against his mouth, moaning it, until John was grinding out swear between his teeth.

“Not yet,” the brunette moaned, almost frantic with desire. “I want you to come, I want to feel you get fucking wet for me, baby—”

She knew that she could make him beg, that she could make him come undone if she really wanted to. But for this moment, Elliot thought she liked this; she liked letting him take control, liked squirming and shifting underneath him until each cant of his hips against hers had sparks of pleasure flickering behind her eyes.

John’s mouth went to her neck. His teeth dragged, and then he bit down harder than he had before; the pain bloomed wet and hot, and she moaned, her lashes fluttering as it sent her sprinting sprinting sprinting right over that edge.

“Yes,” he ground out, “yes, fuck yes, so fucking good for me, El, s-so—good.”

Elliot kissed him hard when he came, his fingers reigniting old bruises on her hips and her own high still cruising, careening prettily down; the surrender was almost better, the act of giving in and giving John what he wanted nearly as intoxicating as the idea that he was hers.

Mine, she thought dreamily as he dragged his tongue over the bite mark on her neck, the word one that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to her but which hadn’t occurred to her in this context before. For that suspended moment in time, nothing else could matter to her; there was no space in her brain to worry about anything except the weight of his body against hers and the wicked, delicious aftershocks radiating throughout her body.

All she could think about was how nice it felt to not be so alone.

It feels good for him to be mine.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When he awoke the next morning, there were three soft knocks at the door. John blinked, forcing himself to work through the tired haze of his mind, sitting up and reluctantly leaving the warmth of the bed and—

And of Elliot, curled up against him, stirring from her sleep.

“John?” It was Faith, mild-tempered and shy; like she knew exactly what she was going to find if she opened the door and she was trying not to let him know. It wasn’t that it bothered her; it was that Faith was exceptionally good at keeping herself in-check, so any time her tone deviated from serene was a red flag.

“I’m awake,” he called back, and even he could hear how hoarse his voice was coming out of him, rough with sleep.

There was a pause, and then Faith said sweetly, “Joseph says we need to begin soon.”

The blonde beside him rolled onto her other side, hauling the blankets up to her chin. “Fuck off.”

“We’ll be ready in thirty,” John called back.

“He said that he wants me to get Elliot ready,” she continued, and there it was; that sly little curl in her voice, the one that reminded him exactly of why it was Joseph kept her around. 

John passed a hand over his face tiredly, rubbing his eyes for a moment before he cleared his throat and climbed out of bed. “Sure, alright, Faith, just—give me a minute—”

“Take your time.”

The implication hung there—that she would politely wait until he was done getting dressed, but that she wouldn’t be leaving to wait, so that anything he wanted to say to Elliot was going to have to be saved for later. Haphazardly pulling some clean clothes out of the dresser and onto his body, he glanced back over his shoulder to see Elliot sitting up in bed; she cradled the blanket against her chest and blinked tiredly at him.

“It’s time,” John said. “For the—”

“Yeah, I heard.” Elliot carded her fingers through her hair and slid out from under the blankets. Like this—in various arrays of undress—John could see the purpled bruising along her sternum and neck and shoulder, a few of them on her legs, beginning to fade into a wine color and even lighter still around the edges.

I’ll have to be careful when I’m writing her sin, he thought absently as he buttoned his shirt. As Elliot muddled her way through pulling on last night’s clothes, he closed the distance between them and reached for her; she let him, though maybe only because she was still half-asleep, with the daylight still fresh and new and the outside mostly still dark.

John cradled her face and leaned down to kiss her. “You and me,” he said against her mouth, “right, hellcat?”

It’s not a lie, he reasoned when she kissed him back. It’s not a lie to say that.

“You and me,” Elliot agreed. Her voice sounded thick, like he’d said the exact thing she wanted to hear and it had caught her off guard, and he felt a little thrill of victory in his chest.

Once she was mostly-dressed, he made his way to the door and nudged it open. True to her word, Faith had waited patiently; a swath of dark fabric was draped over her arm, silken, and as she stepped past John she said, “Okay, John, girls only now.”

Obediently, he stepped out of the building, turning and looking at Elliot over his shoulder. The eye contact only lasted for a minute before Faith beamed at him and shut the door. Inside, he could hear Faith saying something to Elliot; making out the words, however, was near impossible.

“Right,” he said under his breath. “This is fine. Everything’s fine.”

It was the first time he’d said it to himself, in a long time, and it felt true.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“It’s so fucking cold,” Elliot said, shivering. The silk slip of a dress that Faith had told her she needed to wear for the “baptism” barely did anything against the early-morning chill. Dawn had nearly crept all the way over the distant mountains, and as they picked their way down to the water, she wished they’d just let her wear the clothes that she had brought. Naturally, Eden’s Gate—and Joseph, by proxy—were completely incapable of doing anything reasonably.

“I know,” Faith replied sympathetically, their fingers intertwined as they picked their way down the path. “But at least it’s only for a little while. In and out of the water, and then you can change again.” And then, as though it were meant to comfort her, she added, “Blue’s your color.”

Elliot grimaced. Blue was John’s color. “Yeah,” she agreed dryly, “it matches well with my bruises, don’t you think?”

The woman laughed, giving her hand a little squeeze, and for a brief second in time Elliot felt a twinge of regret. There wasn’t too much time to think about it; by the time she was opening her mouth to apologize—an action which Faith seemed to elicit in her quite easily, when overall apologizing was not something that came so naturally to her—they had broken the treeline and all thoughts went sweeping out of her brain.

Joseph stood at the edge of the shore, but she barely thought of him; she barely thought of anything except for John, standing nearly waist-deep in the water, the Book of Joseph held open in one hand and his eyes fixed on her. It sent a little flurry of aches through her, reminding her that once, what felt like a thousand years ago, she had wanted to kill him. Spit in his face. Leave her mark on him and throw his entire fucking family behind bars.

But maybe Joseph had been right, when he asked if she really thought she was going to be accepted by the people she had done all of this to protect.

John's gaze swept over her as they came near; a grin split his face, and with his empty hand he reached for her. She was vaguely aware of Joseph saying something, light and tranquil, but the words didn't register in her brain. She was only barely aware of Faith letting go of her. With that same hand, she took John’s outstretched one, and he tugged lightly, guiding her into the chilly Autumnal waters; where it barely reached John’s waist, the water just crested above her belly button, and she felt the goosebumps spreading.

John cleared his throat. His eyes swept over the page in the book, before he closed it and held it out for Joseph. When the man took it, standing just at the edge of the water, he turned back to Elliot and murmured, low and barely above the sound of the water lapping around them, “You and me?”

Her stomach twisted and lurched uncomfortably, but she nodded. She’d had barely an opportunity to reconcile this moment with herself. She thought, maybe, if she made it a rebirth for herself—if she let Joseph think that it was for him, but in her mind and in the marrow of her bones it was for her, that would be what mattered. But it was hard to think that way when John started reciting the words from the book, words that sparked in her memories of the last time this had been happening.

Hands, gripping her shirt, plunging her under the water over and over and over again. The “scripture” bleeding into her head, into her heart, muffled occasionally by the water. John’s voice, slick with venom, when he said, “This one’s not clean.”

When John finished speaking, he reached up; still stuck in the waking nightmare-memory, Elliot’s hand reached up to grip his arm where the sleeve had been rolled up. 

John, plunging her under the water. Holding her. Dark dark dark, and her voice rolling the word weak around as she fought for air and struggled to break the surface—

But now, his hands cradled against the pillar of her neck; now, he looked at her reverently, like she was something to be worshipped.

“Here,” the brunette said, his voice low and soft, and somewhere in the back of her mind his words overlapped with a memory that at once felt both too sharp and too foggy to recall; “with me.”

“Okay,” she whispered. He smoothed his hand along her back, between her shoulder blades, and then pulled her under.

It took every ounce of her self-control not to fight it. Every fucking ounce of it, and she still caught herself tensing like she was ready to. John kept her there, one hand between her shoulders and one hand on her sternum, the light pressure digging a little into the remaining bruises.

And he kept her there. And kept her there. And—

Above the water, somewhere out there, she heard the sound of John saying something; more voices echoed back, more than just Joseph and Faith. He pulled her up out of the water abruptly; the sudden movement had her gasping for air, her nails digging into his forearm, and she thought, he was going to let me, he was going to let me fucking drown, I—

“I’ve got you,” John said, steadying her; certainly he could feel the rapid pulse of her heart. There was something strange about his tone—it was hard, tense and tight, and she saw it in his face, too.

Shivering ferociously, Elliot kept her hand gripping his arm. She started, “John, why did you—”

“Rookie?”

The familiar voice had her head jerking back to the shoreline. There were more people there, now. There was Joseph with Faith beside him, and just at the edge of the water and staring at her, was Cameron Burke.

Behind him, Jacob flashed his teeth in a wolfish grin.

“See?” Jacob said, slapping his hand onto Burke's back like an old friend playing too rough. “Told you she was just fine.”

The Marshal’s hands and feet were unbound, but he swayed on his feet, and Elliot saw that his pupils were blown wide and dark—he reeked of a sickly-sweet floral scent that felt familiar, tingled somewhere in the back of her mind—

She couldn’t think. She couldn’t think about any of that; her brain felt like its competency had been completely reduced, that the strain of focusing on more than one thing at a time had become too much. And here, now, Burke was staring at her, and when he said it again—when he said, “Rook, is that you?”—his voice broke, hoarse and wretched.

“B—” Elliot’s throat closed tight. The air had been sucked out of her lungs; she felt the ache in her chest bloom fresh and hot and new, and it was grief—grief and shame, reopening old wounds that she had hoped would be long-since healed over.

With me? Burke’s pulse, steadfast and firm, under her fingertips. 

The man’s expression crumpled. She let go of John’s arm and went to wade through the water; his hand caught her elbow and held her fast.

When she looked back at him, his expression was unreadable. He said, “El,” but that was all he said, and she heard the strain of something close to desperation in his voice. Don’t, it said, without saying it at all. Don’t do this.

With her teeth chattering and a violent spike of anger racing through her, Elliot jerked her arm out of his grip and stumbled her way up onto the bank; Burke reached for her almost immediately, catching her arms and pulling her up out of the frigid water and to him. His body felt feverishly hot, even though the cotton of his shirt, his vest long-since discarded.

You dig and keep going anyway. No matter what.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he managed out as he gripped her, and she felt his eyes sweeping over the exposed bruising, like war paint on her skin.

“Burke,” Elliot said, her voice breaking, and oh, she thought, oh, there it is; the release, the catharsis, because she was crying at the overwhelming sense of shame and relief in equal amounts at the sight of the man who had walked her through her first real firefight; big, gasping, grieving sobs, hiccuping in her chest violently because she kept thinking about Burke—she kept thinking about him grabbing her hand and saying, we’re getting out of here, and how he was here now. Now that she was—

This.

“God, what the fuck did they do to you?” Burke asked, his voice barely breaking the sound-barrier of a whisper. He pulled her forward, closer, protectively. “I’m so—I’m so fuckin’ sorry, I—”

“Found him wandering out by the old prison,” Jacob explained, presumably to the others and not to her, “having a nice little trip. Weren’t you, Burke?”

The shame washed up in her again, a nauseating cocktail that reminded her of all the things she had done. All of the awful things she had done, while Burke was out there, alone, wandering and confused and tripping on Bliss overloads and now he was here. Now he was here, and she kept thinking, what have I done?

“Hey,” Burke said against the top of her hair as she clutched at him, “I got you, Rook, I’m sorry, I’m here.”

I'm sorry, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm ruined now.

“Well,” Joseph said, his voice tightly-controlled and forcibly serene, “I suppose we should give the deputy and her Marshal a moment to catch up, shouldn’t we?”

#far cry 5 fic #fc5 fic #john seed x deputy #john seed x original female character #ch: elliot honeysett #fic: ancient names #people can pry burke from my cold dead hands #we stan one (1) man who actually treats elliot like a capable person #also i wish i could say sorry about the smut but u know what? #im not #i'm only sorry this shit is so long and nearly incomprehensible #anyway not to get sappy in the tags but!!!!!! #THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU everyone who reads #i literally get emotional thinking about how i never thought i was going to fit in to this fandom #anyway that's all go back to regularly scheduled tumblr feed

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #221: ... New Blood!

July, 1982

A semi-famous somewhat imitated cover!

Can you guess ahead of time which two will be joining the Avengers?

No cheating.

Actually, what’s funny is that I can imagine a Young Bendis looking at this cover, seeing Luke Cage, Spider-Man, and Wolverine all in a row like that and whispering to himself ‘one day... one day...’

Spider-Woman is even on this! This is almost the roster meme that Bendis would have selected his team out of.

Just as soon as he cleared the way by killing off Ant-Man and Hawkeye.

Anyway, I like the cute touch that there’s just a completely blank square for Sue Storm. And is she really still going by Invisible Girl at this point?

-google- Ah, Invisible Woman is still a few years off.

And at risk of spoiling, I like the cover pretending that Rom (Space Knight) could feasibly join the Avengers. Although that would have made a hilarious mess when the rights lapsed. A whole swathe of Avengers comics unavailable.

So, where are we at?

Last times on Avengers: Captain America decided that the Avengers had become too unwieldy. They’d settled into a filler rut and Cap wanted them to be lean and mean.

So the old order changeith’d! And Moondragon meddled, causing half of the old team to quit. But Cap got his lean team of himself, Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, Yellowjacket, and Tigra.

And then Yellowjacket Hank Pym had an ‘attempted murder out of insecurity’ breakdown and tried to murder his friends and was a very bad husband to Wasp as well.

So Yellowjacket was out and Wasp took some personal time.

It was just Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Tigra. And then Tigra quit.

Wasp rejoined but the trim team of six had become anemic at four and after some space mishaps, its finally time to try to do something about that.

As Iron Man declares in title-of-the-issue font they need some ... NEW BLOOD!

And Wasp declares ‘yes we all know that already we’ve just been putting it off.’

(And they finally got the big meeting table back from the cleaners or wherever its been. Thank goodness)

But the question that Chairperson Wasp poses the team is should they re-induct some ex-members or go looking for some truly new blood?

Thor is brooding on the recent events, where Moondragon manipulated the Avengers previous roster shakeup and later when Moondragon took over a planet and got Thor to fight his friends.

So Thor’s point, by way of dwelling, is that they should be careful with who they choose.

Thor: “Thus can no action, no thought made by any of us in the last weeks be truly, absolutely claimed as our own. Not even... mine.”

There we go. There’s that good Moondragon induced paranoia I was hoping for.

And character wise, I do like that there’s fallout from the Ba-Bani misadventure. Whether being forced to fight his friends or being made to fall in love with Moondragon or being convinced to side with her plan to bring mandatory peace to the universe. Thor has been affected by what happened.

Cap suggests that they clear the slate and just judge potential members on their current qualifications.

So what qualifications should potential Avengers have?

Captain America: “Compatibility. Someone who can work in a team.”

Iron Man: “And technical expertise. Perhaps someone good with weaponry.”

Thor: “We’ve enough strength, methinks. But courage is important. Aye, and a noble heart.”

Wasp: “Well, I know exactly what this group needs. More girls!”

Good suggestions. All good suggestions. But very good suggestion from Wasp.

I know that two women on one team is the low bar that Avengers tends to reach but you know what’s worse? One women on one team. And you know what’s better? Three.

Think about it.

The meeting gets cut short because Jan has to go do Jan things like show off fashion at the Tavern on the Green but she tells the others to figure out who they’d like as new Avengers and then they’ll all decide at their meeting next week.

As the Avengers all head off, Captain America mentions to Iron Man that hey remember how Hawkeye used to be an Avenger all the time? Weren’t those good times? He worked well on the team, was real into being an Avenger.

Iron Man agrees that sure is a Thought but flies off thinking more about Jan’s suggestion to have more women on the team, albeit probably for less than pure reasons.

Thor meanwhile doesn’t have anywhere to be so sits down in the sitting room and reads a Time magazine.

Jarvis brings Thor some mead and Thor asks who Jarvis would enlist for the Avengers if Jarvis was given the choice.

Jarvis is surprised to be asked but does his best to speak off the cuff.

Jarvis: “Why, I - I really hadn’t given it much thought! But since you ask, I feel that some of the best Avengers have started as the most unlikely candidates. For example, those with strongly individual, independent natures seem to have worked out surprisingly well.”

You’re a good guy, Jarvis.

And you’ve got a good point. Since the Avengers were pretty much everyone who wasn’t on a team jammed onto a team together, the Avengers kind of have as foundation strongly individual independent superheroes managing to do a teamwork anyway.

And Thor just so happens to be reading the Time magazine that has a picture of Spider-Man on the front (along with “Friend or Menace?”) and thinks huh individual and independent??

Oh boy!

Spider-Man going to be offered a spot on the Avengers? Is it 2005 already?

Goofs aside, this is an interesting callback maybe.

All the way back in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3 (November, 1966) which I didn’t cover but probably should have if this was a more comprehensive Avengers blog but then I may have died under the enormity of the task.

Uh, that sentence got away from me.

Anyway, in that Spider-Man Annual, the Avengers debate whether to recruit Spider-Man for their team. Thor is the one there to find Spider-Man and bring him to the mansion. The Avengers decide to test him and (after Spider-Man tries to beat up the entire team because that’s what Spider-Man thinks proving himself is) they send him to bring the Hulk back with him.

He finds the Hulk and fights the Hulk but Hulk turns back to Bruce Banner and Spider-Man feels bad for Bruce and doesn’t want to turn him over to the Avengers (not knowing that they want to help Hulk). So he comes back and says welp couldn’t find him guess I’m not Avengers material byyyyyye.

The other Avengers go huh I guess he wasn’t Avengers material but Thor seemed to suspect what had really happened.

So my rambling point is that its appropriate that Thor again thinks to recruit Spider-Man for the Avengers because of that previous story.

Later in the day, Iron Man calls Captain America.

Although as Cap points out they know each other’s civilian name now so why be formal?

Iron Man: “Captain America? This is Iron Man.”

Captain America: “Hey, Tony, let’s make it ‘Steve,’ okay? I’m off duty.”

So Tony “Iron Man” Stark has managed to stop thinking about more woman on the Avengers and has actually started to think about having Hawkeye back on the Avengers and has to admit, it sounds good to him!

So Captain Steve says they should go together tomorrow and see what Hawkeye thinks.

This is a nice sequence.

Its nice to see how the two learning each other’s identity plays out like this. Tony trying to stick to how they’ve known each other and Steve making a not subtle overture for them to become more familiar.

This is probably good shipping fodder, I realize!

But it is also good friendshipping fodder. It can be both.

Elsewhere and meanwhile, at the Van Dyne residence, Janet puts her own recruitment drive into... drive?

She’s invited every super-heroine in the country she can think of to brunch but she has no idea how to get a hold of She-Hulk.

Not even her state of the art computer system can find her! Granted, the state of the art computer system is for analyzing fashion forecasts and not news reports about She-Hulk sightings.

So Jan decides that if you want a She-Hulk you’ve got to spend a little green.

She has her assistant take out a bunch of full-page ads in all of the major west coast newspapers. And heck, buy a bunch of commercial time too!

Jan is going to do some I Want You (to Join the Avengers) ads!

She is ludicrously wealthy.

I went and checked and her original inheritance was ‘only’ three million dollars but the way that she throws around money I’m pretty sure she has managed to get some lucrative investments. That or she’s just super good at being a fashionista.

Granted, blowing a bunch of money for a chance to have brunch with She-Hulk is a pretty good reason to blow a bunch of money.

Later, as twilight comes, Thor is flying around Central Park because he has no idea how to find Spider-Man but hears that he’s often around “the meadow-lands called Central Park” and happens upon three goofuses who just robbed a pawnshop.

These goofuses are such goofuses that one of them is wearing groucho glasses as a disguise. Another one is wearing a clown mask.

Which, like a moth to fire, aggros Spider-Man just to mock the guy.

I’m pretty sure rather than flying around aimlessly, the best way to find Spider-Man is to create the perfect quip opportunity.

A clown: “I’m gonna kiss every dime o’ my share -- just as soon as we get to the hideout so’s I can take off this stupid mask!”

Spider-Man, suddenly: “Aw, c’mon, Bunky, leave it on! I’ve always wanted to bust a bozo who looks like a bozo!”

Groucho: “S-s-spider-Man!”

S-s-spider-Man: “But enough of this clowning! Wanna give up?”

Dangit, Peter. Good wordplay.

But before can catch these thieves just like flies, down came the rain and washed the spider out.

A sudden, inexplicable (cough cough Thor) localized storm tosses around the thieves until they surrender.

After the police lead away the goofus thieves, Spider-Man comes dripping wet and with a bone to pick.

Spider-Man: “Do you have any idea what it’s like running around in wet tights?”

Thor is like sorry bro but I’ve come to talk so Spider-Man agrees but they’ll need to go off somewhere private because the press is honing in on him to ask him bonkers questions about whether he came in a flying saucer.

I think they’re thinking of a certain emissary of hell.

That darn press!

Spider-Man and Thor relocate to a high rooftop for their talk.

Spider-Man: “Now, Goldilocks, what’s your beef?”

Thor: “Thy protective demeanor is unneeded, my friend. I have no ‘beef’ -- only a proposal. The Avengers are seeking new members, and I wouldst offer thee such position.”

Spider-Man: “You... Thor... want me as an Avenger?

Spider-Man is still not sure if it would work out (reflecting on Spider-Man Annual #3) but he’s also really flattered by the offer. And presumably how the offer wasn’t accompanied by “BUT FIRST YOU MUST PASS OUR TEST!”

So he can’t just accept the offer off-hand but he’s definitely going to think about it.

Even if you don’t join the team, even just being considered is an honor.

The twilight turns into night turns into day, and Cap and Iron Man show up in Hawkeye’s place of business to bug him.

Don’t know if you remember but Hawkeye has a cushy job as head of security for Cross Technological Enterprises. And he actually does take the job seriously which is why he’s a little concerned, at least for his professional pride, that Cap and Iron Man got past his guards.

Cap: “Avengers priority -- never leave home without it. In fact, we’ve come to offer it to you.”

Smooth. Smooth, Cap.

Although I do like that they can just march up to the guards of this company and go ‘hey let us in we’re avengers’ and its not even a ‘ok i’ll clear it with head of security hawkeye’ its ‘yeah sure go right in and do you want any paperclips?’

Anyway, Hawkeye has his pride so he tells Cap not to expect him to come crawling back after the Avengers booted him out (actually Gyrich because Gyrich wanted the Avengers to have some ding dang diversity. Its weirdly the least assholeish thing he’s ever done although he approached it very much in an asshole way).

Point being, they kicked Hawkeye out and he has a new super cool job now.

Iron Man takes this show of wounded pride in wounded stride, just asking that Hawkeye consider it and let them know when he makes a decision.

But Hawkeye doubts he’ll decide to come back to the Avengers because he’s got a good thing in this steady, respectable paying job which comes with job security and respect!

And then, suddenly struck by the realization that he, Hawkeye, is turning down a drama implosion like the Avengers to do the adult thing?? Hawkeye doesn’t like what he’s become.

And he stares in horror at the trappings of power and respectability. The sex and the drugs.

Or a Playboy magazine and a personalized coffee cup, at least.

And he decides to give Iron Man his answer right then and there.

Which, of course, involves shooting arrows. This is Hawkeye we’re talking about.

What’s amazing is that we’ll learn later this issue that he’s going to keep his security job and do Avengers on top of that (and in fairness most of the Avengers don’t have Avengers as their only thing). But he just shot an arrow through a glass door in his place of employment.

But you don’t hire Hawkeye if you don’t expect that kind of thing so I can see why it wouldn’t impact his job.

So that’s Hawkeye as a YES and Spider-Man as a ‘I’ll get back to you.’ And as the weekend arrives, it’s time for Janet van Dyne’s superheroine brunch.

And on the hill above the van Dyne house, its our old pal Fabian Stankowicz.

Remember? The Mechano-Marauder? Built a robot suit to beat up the Avengers, none of them took him that seriously? Iron Man beat him up solo without trying very hard and then got angry about Hank Pym?

Anyway, he’s back, somehow, and he’s salty about the less than dignified experience he had in issue 217. But this time, he has a new plan!

Fabian Stankowicz: “They laughed at me! Mocked me! But I’ll show the Avengers that the Mechano-Marauder is not to be toyed with! I’ll attack their weakest member when the others aren’t around! She’ll be helpless! *Heh-heh-heh*”

Well. Good luck with that, my dude.

Sue Storm-Richards, the Invisible Girl, arrives and Jan introduces her to the other prospective Avengers: Dazzler, Spider-Woman, and Black Widow.

All good candidates, really.

Especially Dazzler.

Well, Beast left and Tigra left so somebody needs to be the new funny person.

Apparently, Spider-Woman doesn’t like puns because she immediately starts getting catty with Dazzler.

Spider-Woman: “Nice going, Blaire! You’re showing all the polish and poise of a real pro!”

Dazzler: “Oh? And I suppose crawling on walls like some yucky insect is ‘professional’?”

Spider-Woman: “I sting, too”

I guess, they have some history in Dazzler’s own book that didn’t go over well. Black Widow has to lean over and tell them to cut the shit out for Jan’s sake.

But then the last invited guest shows up.

ITS A SHE-HULK!

She saw the ads and she’s come for the free food!

Relatable.

Outside, Jan’s chauffeur Mr. Carrothers sits on the limo taking a smoke break and reflecting how good he has it working for the Wasp. Good pay, casual hours. The most he can complain about is that it gets a little boring sometimes.

That’s probably tempting fate because the All-New All-Different Mechano-Marauder stomps up to the house. Remember how Fabian threw the limo last time? Mr. Carrothers remembers.

He panics and runs into the house and tries to warn the assembled heroes.

And yet.

They didn’t really leap to action, huh? I mean, I get it. Brunch.

Even after the robot fist has punched through Wasp’s frankly ludicrous window and kidnapped Dazzler, Wasp is more annoyed than anything.

Wasp: “Fabian Stankowicz, you get that thing out of my living room!”

And then has to explain to her guests that Fabian is some chump that Iron Man beat up and that he wants to make a name for himself by defeating the Avengers. And Sue is like ah yes I understand completely.

But chump or not, Black Widow decides that they should rescue Dazzler.

Dazzler: “I don’t think I need saving, folks! This guy’s just holding, not squeezing!”

And so much for the brunch bunch taking this any amount of serious.

Sue just puts up a quick invisible dome to keep Fabian from getting to the rest of them which the Mechano-Marauder instantly bonks into and bangs on impotently demanding that they let him in.

Careful, Fabian.

You’re memeing yourself.

Dazzler saves herself when she gets tired of being carried around. She does her Dazzler thing with the bright pulse of light, blinding Fabian.

He drops Dazzler but she’s caught by She-Hulk.

The blinded Mechano-Marauder drives around blindly, thinking “These women aren’t even Avengers! They can’t beat me!”

Alas, Dazzler decides the same decision she decided in #211, that she’s a singer, not a fighter.

And Sue also decides to head off, saying that she’s too busy with the Fantastic Four anyway.

Shame.

But can we talk about the sheer audacity that Jan had of trying to poach Sue from the Fantastic Four to the Avengers? The nerve! The verve!

So that’s two of her candidates declining but that still leaves Spider-Woman, Black Widow, and She-Hulk.

And unfortunately for Mechano-Marauder, the first two are the two that have decided to kick his ass a little for entertainment reasons.

Spider-Woman’s venom blast damages one of the giant robot fists and Black Widow swings around Hoth-style and trips the Mechano-Marauder into the ornamental pond.

Alas, after literally dunking a giant robot into a pond, both Spider-Woman and Black Widow turn down the offer to join the Avengers.

Black Widow has private business that are keeping her busy. And Spider-Woman doesn’t even offer an excuse.

In fairness, she has her own solo book over in California and that’s a heck of a commute. I’m actually impressed that she came all this way for brunch.

Fabian is fed up with being treated as an after-thought in his own fight scene and bursts out of the pond, yelling how he’s going to destroy them all!

All.... uh, two that’s left at this point. Yup, he sure is going to destroy all two of them.

She-Hulk has been fairly low-key this whole story, especially for She-Hulk. I’m pretty sure she came to the brunch just for the food and she hasn’t reacted much to Fabian, even when the others were. She caught Dazzler but she hasn’t had much to say since arriving. She’s mostly been standing with her hands on her hips, watching things play out.

But I guess she’s gotten tired of Fabian. Or maybe it falls to her as the last guest.

She tells him to shut up and breaks his robot suit with one punch.

Fabian has one last trick up his Mechano-Marauder sleeve but its a dumb one.

His ejector seat is actually a backup robot suit. Annnd, its so heavy that it sinks into the ground. Trapping him.

Good job, Fabian.

She-Hulk goes to give him one more punch but Wasp stops her. Because she wants a shot at him.

And wow! What a shot!

At full not small size she crosses the streams to focus her bio-power stings into one concentrated beam and blows a hole in Fabian’s escape suit.

I’ve talked before about how Wasp’s pew pew stings have seemingly gotten souped up under Shooter and I think this is another good example. I mean, she’s not blowing up a house but combining the blasts to do precision boring is another cool application we haven’t seen before.

Anyway, now Wasp goes teeny and flies into the hole she made and up into the helmet to blast Fabian in the face. So hard his helmet flies off.

Wasp: “That’ll teach ‘im for ruining my party!”

And that’s that for brunch.

Days later, Jarvis calls the State Department to request official clearance for two new members.

And we see part of the process of that. Interesting if you’re interested in the logistics of an officially recognized superhero team.

I guess what’s interesting is that Henry Peter Gyrich is still part of the process.

You’d think he’d have been replaced or something after the Avengers very publicly embarrassed him and got emancipated from him. I guess he keeps doing the necessary liaison stuff without ever talking to them.

The requests for the two new members cross Gyrich’s desk and he takes it to the White House where the request gets signed by Ronald Reagan.

(The two new members are Hawkeye and She-Hulk by the by. We see it on the paperwork. Guess Spider-Man is still thinking it over.)

Anyway, I guess its interesting that new Avengers are a matter that goes all the way up to the president.

God, I’m glad that for the modern team, Cap told the US government to fuck off because I don’t want to even think about that still being a thing.

The next day after the paperwork is signed, Hawkeye is on his way to Avengers Mansion in a cab. He’s reading a Time magazine about the change in the Avengers’ roster and reflecting that it’ll be hard to hold down two jobs but worth it because he’s missed the adventure.

Check out the Time magazine though.

The cover of this comic book issue is in-universe the cover of Time magazine! That’s neat.

But Hawkeye’s cab is suddenly cut off by a pink Cadillac.

And Hawkeye being Hawkeye doesn’t just grumble and go about his day. He commits assault. Because this is Hawkeye.

The guy that Cap and Iron Man wanted back for being a good team-player.

So he gets out of the cab and shoots the pink Cadillac with an EMP arrow that fries the car’s electrical system.

Really abusing that Avengers Priority Status already, huh, Hawkeye?

The one mistake he made is that the pink Cadillac belongs to She-Hulk. She in fact earned it by doing a car commercial for Wacky Willie’s Wheels-And-Deals so you might imagine she’s fond of it.

So she picks up the cab with Hawkeye in it and leans it against a lightpole.

And then she picks up the Cadillac on her shoulder and walks off with it.

She-Hulk knows how to make a lasting impression, I’ll say that.

But soon after he gets down from the taxi and stops in at an ER to make sure he’s not concussed, Hawkeye arrives at Avengers Mansion to rejoin the team.

Hawkeye: “Okay, folks, life can go on -- Hawkeye’s here!”

Iron Man: “And it’s about time! We were starting to get worried. What happened?”

Hawkeye: “Oh, nothin’ much -- not ‘til some freaky Amazon tried to play dominoes with my taxi!”

She-Hulk, lurking silhouetted by the window: “‘Amazon’, eh? I don’t suppose it could have been -- a green Amazon?”

That is a powerful energy you have there, She-Hulk. Powerful energy and a power move in a power suit.

And that’s how Hawkeye’s day was ruined. Also how the two new additions to the team start with bad blood.

Conflict! We gotta have it!

Wasp: “Hawkeye, She-Hulk. I’d like to officially welcome you both. From now on -- you’re one of us. We’re one of you. And we’re all -- THE AVENGERS!”

Jan’s trying a new thing where she kisses every new member. And they both have to bend down a little for her.

Also, another new Wasp costume! Wasp gonna Wasp!

This is another good, light-hearted decompression issue. The Moondragon two-parter had some yuks but also mind-control sex and Drax’s brain melting. So this time Wasp throws a brunch and Cap and Iron Man help Hawkeye escape the drudgery of an adult job.

There’s a lot of what could have been with Wasp’s guest list. What if she could convince Sue Storm to take a break from the Fantastic Four to try being on the Avengers.

She’ll join later, in the Worst Roster but she’ll join with Reed. I’m thinking more of a thing where Sue gets some time away from the family. I don’t think it could last long and it would need the Avengers and FF writer to be on the same page but I think it could be interesting - Sue getting to be on a team where she doesn’t have to be the adult in the room and doesn’t have to work alongside the family.

It’s a similar reason to why I’d like to see adult Cyclops join the Avengers. He’s so tied in with X-stuff and being the leader of X-stuff that I want to take him out of that context and see a new side of him.

Spider-Woman and Black Widow also could have been interesting. They’ll both become Avengers later. I don’t know that Dazzler ever did and she presents interesting opportunities.

The Avengers have had Wonder Man who was also trying to break into acting while being an Avenger. So Dazzler trying to pursue her singing career might just be a retread of that but what if she were more successful and was a celebrity on the team.

The Avengers kind of are celebrities but I think it’d be a different feel if they had a famous (disco) singer on the team.

Interesting stuff (for me) to think about, anyway.

Something else to talk about is the creative credits. Jim Shooter is credited for plotting but Dave Michelinie as writer. And looking ahead, Shooter is not going to be the solo writer again in the near future.

I think we’re getting to the point where Shooter’s going to be too busy with EIC duties to keep up writing the Avengers. He’s going to get plotting credits for a few more issues, probably loose threads he’s handing to other writers.

So the second Shooter run is going to end soon. Shame. Very much a shame. It wasn’t a very long run but he put a lot of energy and humor into the book.

Next time: Egghead’s back and he’s bringing a new Masters of Evil. Wow, it’s been a while since we’ve had them and they’re supposed to be the Avengers’ evil opposite team.

And Egghead is the not very impressive criminal mastermind who couldn’t beat Hank Pym so instead framed him for crime. Hopefully the new Masters rise above that level of menace.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because I’m bringing you the She-Hulk content you crave. I assume. I took a poll and one out of one person said ‘this is the She-Hulk content I crave’ and I extrapolated from that. Also you should like and reblog because She-Hulk would want you to.

#Avengers #Mechano Marauder #Iron Man #Captain America #Thor #the Wasp #Spider Man #Hawkeye #Invisible Girl #Dazzler #Spider Woman #she hulk #Black Widow #essential avengers #ten issues since the last one that had a bunch of guest stars #its a bunch of guest stars and a roster change! #essential marvel liveblogging

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.78

Werewolves sucked. Werewolves sucked and Lance had had just about enough of them at their first meeting... He felt personally attacked for being mocked as bat. He’d tried turning back. Willed it so hard he’d nearly peed on Keith trying. All he got was a headache and Keith asking if he needed to go potty. He wasn’t even that upset anymore. Not when Keith came to find him, though he had been in a fair bit of pain before Blue had decided he was her new favourite toy. As his cat, she really should have known it was him, or maybe her claws were revenge for all the times he’d been late with her wet food. That was likely. She’d scream at him for hours if he dared be late.

Three days as a bat, meant three days of briefings perched up on Keith’s shoulder. He didn’t like this James werewolf. His ego so big that he barely fitting in his boots, and he smelt like he’d just been dragged out of swamp. Matt didn’t like the new werewolves either. His ego was still harder to manage, being turned for only a few months, he needed practice at things like reining in his scent and not letting poxy werewolf hierarchy get to him. It didn’t help matter that James practically pranced around in his Blade of Marmora uniform like it was a gift from god that somehow elevated his worth above mangy mutt. James seemed to have made it his mission to continually make snide remarks Keith’s way, leaving Lance furious. Maybe that’s why he’d taken so damn long to change back.

Not at impressed with his inability to regain human form, he’d turned to Coran. Coran seemed to think he was stressing himself too much, worrying about things beyond his control. Yeah. Of course he was. Keith and Krolia hadn’t talked outside of forced briefings where the Blades made it very clear they didn’t want help from VOLTRON. Pidge wasn’t making things easy either. She now insisted she wanted to work at VOLTRON... Lance was against it. She and Hunk were only human, and even if she just wanted to work in the tech labs side of things, Lance worried himself over her safety. She was also more adamant than ever over catching proof of ghostly existence on camera, convinced having her own private vampire would help things. The amount of memes she’d sent trying to bribe him were ridiculous.

Having friends that knew his secret wasn’t all bad. Sure, Hunk and Pidge were still scared of him and sometimes he wondered why they’d still talk to him... then Pidge went and upset Keith over something he probably should have expected. His birthday. His actual birthday. The day on which he was pushed screaming into the world. Now. Lance kind of knew it was coming. He couldn’t forget it if he tried. July 28th came rolling around every year. But what he didn’t bother keeping up with was the countdown. Birthdays were depressing. A reminder that he should look older than he was. Two weeks out and he didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. Birthdays were days he spent with his Mami. He might do something with Pidge and Hunk, but he never put the same effort in of his birthday as he did for everyone else.

The problem was Keith. His little anger loaf was stressed. When Lance said he didn’t want to do anything for his birthday, his boyfriend had asked if maybe he wanted to go on a date. Pointing out that they didn’t know what was going on with the Blades and their stubborn refusal of help, Keith seemed to take it personally. He wanted to help celebrate Lance’s birthday. Lance overthinking things on his default setting. Dinner would be nice. A quite dinner with Keith... Maybe they could get a hotel room and block out the craziness of the world around them. Lance couldn’t commit to it because Keith couldn’t commit to it. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, only for something to happen. Keith promising to make it happen would only stress his boyfriend if he couldn’t.

That’s how he ended up at the nursing home with his Mami. Mami wasn’t feeling up to going out, Lance feeling as if she didn’t have much time left and determined to have as much time with her as he could get. Snuggled up against his Mami, he wished time would stop. He’d promised Pidge and Hunk that he’d move back home soon. Only soon didn’t have a set date and with James around, Lance didn’t want to abandon Keith. Keith was good at his job. He knew what to do as proved by the 8 weeks of work he’d gotten in before the murders were taken from him thanks to it being a Blade member. They hadn’t talked about Antok, Lance feeling he’d missed that window of opportunity. Now Krolia was in town, he felt like he needed to stay, despite missing his house. Keith was having a tough time, so it was only natural he’d stay, but if he went home, it’d give Keith somewhere else to go that wasn’t just hiding out in the staff quarters at work.

“Mami, what do you think I should do?”

He’d had word vomit. Telling Mami about Krolia again, and that Keith seemed to be having a tough time

“I think you should head home, mijo”

Yeah. He thought that too... but Keith

“I want to support him”

“I know. Keith is a fine young man. I couldn’t have asked for more than you finding someone who understands you. You have no idea how much it has soothed this old bird to know you have someone there to love you”

He didn’t talk to Mami about his birthday. Mami always loved his birthdays, but they really did get repetitive. He was 18 for the last 26 years. As long as Keith had been alive...

“I want him to know I’m there for him”

“And you will be. Garrison isn’t that far away. Though I’m beginning to forget what your house looks like”

A subtle dig that she hadn’t been back to the house in ages... months...

“It’s big and it’s crowded now. I feel like leaving is like telling him I’m not going to be there”

“That’s not it at all. Keith wanted you to be safe. Only he and Krolia can resolve their issues. That’s on them, no matter how much you want to help. You’ve always had a big heart. That’s why I worried so much for you. You’re not leaving him forever. You’re only saying goodbye until next time. He’s a grown man. As hard as it is, you can’t coddle him. All you can do is love and support him. And you have your own life to think about. What do you want to do? Do you want to practice law, or do you want to be part of that hunter world”

Now, that was unexpected. Lance didn’t feel cut out for a hunter’s life, but he had been focusing more on Keith than on work. He didn’t quite know how to find that “work life” balance. Being set in his ways had left change a hard thing to negotiate. Plus, he kind of spent way too much time thinking about Keith

“Mami. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a hunter”

“I don’t mean going out and hunting. I mean supporting Keith. Maybe what you’re looking for is a way to help Keith with his work? That’s what it sounds like to me. That at this moment in time, you’re struggling to make the right choice as you don’t know enough. I was always so relieved you didn’t wish to be a hunter. That you found something you wanted to do and pursued it as hard as you could. It’s okay to find something new you want to try. You’ve always lived so carefully. It’s okay to live for yourself more”

“How did you and papi do it? Manage things and still take care of us”

His Mami laughed, kissing his hair. He’d never grow out of cuddles with his Mami

“That took team work. Growing together to unite against you bunch of ferals. A lot of long nights. Many trips to emergency. And quite a number of arguments. Everything we did, we did for all of you. You and Keith, you’re still learning and growing. These things come in time”

Lance sighed. He could spend 40 years making up his mind and not age a day as he did... but he’d loved being a lawyer... He wanted to be a lawyer. He wanted to help people and make a difference. Keith didn’t have 40 years. He might not even have 4 in the line of work he did...

“I have all the time in the world. Keith doesn’t”

“No. But you’ll have years together. I feel it in my bones”

“You don’t know that. Being a hunter is dangerous”

“Just like being a vampire. Or being a normal human being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What you do next is firmly in your hands. No matter what you decide, I’ll always be proud of my little Lance”

“I don’t know what to do and that’s the problem. I want to be with him. I want to be there when he has a bad day, but I miss my house and if I go home I feel like all I’m going to do is spend my days missing Keith”

Lance knew he was pathetically hopelessly in love with Keith. He wouldn’t be so worried about Keith if he wasn’t... which was a lie. He’d worry just as much if they were only friends. Keith had so much going on.

Gently his Mami smoothed his hair. She really was his biggest supporter, even when he was being a “negative Nancy”

“That’s because you two are in your honeymoon phase. Right now you want to be with each other. Everything else falls aside. Your grandmother gave me quite the hiding for skipping out on chores to be with Jorge. I would have spent every second I could have with him, but gradually we grew and it was okay not to see him every single day before we wed. Our boy Keith has a good head on his shoulders”

“I know... I know. Ugh. Emotions are so complicated”

“They are. But remember, you have him, but you also have your own life and your own ties to Garrison. You have friends who know your secret and still remain by your side. Don’t neglect the ones you love”

Lance nuzzled into his mother. He’d spent too much time away from her of late

“Is that your way of saying I should just move in here and annoy you all the time?”

His Mami chuckled. Give it 10 years and he’d qualify for a 55’s and over lifestyle village

“Not at all. You move in here and I’m cutting you out my will. This old duck is happy here. I don’t need all my friends fawning over my hot grandson. I get that enough”

“Mami! I’m not even hot...”

“You’re my son and you’re beautiful. Now. Go face your problems head on. My shows will be on soon and I don’t need you ruining them with your crying”

His Mami was ruthless and he loved it

“Fine. But if I die, I’m coming back as a ghost and every time you try to watch your shows I’m going to steal all your tissues”

His Mami smacked him lightly

“You’re a horrible son. Now get out of here, and don’t come back without Keith”

“Mami... you’re supposed to love me”

“I do when you’re not interrupting my before show schedule. I’ve got just enough time to find my chocolates...”

“You’re not supposed to have chocolates on hand!”

Mami wasn’t supposed to have chocolates because Lance worried for her blood sugars when she ate too many. Zero restraint. She’d eat a whole family box if left unchecked

“Pish. They were a gift from Coran. Now shoo!”

Frowning at the world for being evicted in favour of soap operas. Lance nearly doubled back when he saw Keith leaning against his car. He didn’t want to get into another argument. Not today. He was already smarting from his harsh eviction by his mother. Normally they watched these things together. He wouldn’t have minded watching her shows with her... They could have both binged on chocolates with her elbowing him in the ribs if he started crying... not that Mami should be binging on chocolate. He would have had to save his mother from herself and do his job as good son by eating her chocolates... Okay. He could see why he’d been evicted. Comforting eating was his weak spot. And he’d had Mami cuddling him in bed for like two hours... so maybe she did deserve some kid free time...

“Hey...”

He’d been seen. Keith’s voice reaching his ears despite the low tone and the fact he was still on the garden path where Keith was a good 10 metres away by his bronco. It’s not like he would have really left Keith there, but fighting was only going to make both of them depressed. He should be happy Keith was out and about, but honestly he was confused as why his boyfriend was there... Fuck... Lance felt himself starting to jog. Keith opening his arms as he approached. Keith wasn’t mad. That was good. That meant they weren’t going to have a silly little fight again. Reaching his boyfriend, Lance let himself stumble into Keith’s hold, breathing in his lover’s scent

“I’m sorry we fought”

“No. I’m sorry I pushed”

“I don’t get it but I’m not very good at this boyfriend thing. I had Shiro drop me off”

“How’d you know where I was?”

“Allura told me. She gave us a call to let us know not to come back for now”

That was a pretty big tick for the move back home side. This whole being careful with scents so he didn’t go into heat was taxing. Lance constantly waiting for someone’s inflated ego to set him off... so kind of a double tick

“Loturd or Sendick?”

“She didn’t say. Only that we might want to stay away for a bit”

“Oh. Okay... Mami just threw me out”

“I was wondering if I should come in... but thought... I kind of thought you’d still be mad at me”

Fuck. Feelings were so fucking complicated. He wasn’t mad. He was... struggling a lot and trying to do what he thought best for Keith because he didn’t want to see Keith upset like when they’d missed their dinner reservation.

“I’m not mad. I talked with Mami and stuff... and I guess... my birthday... I know you want to do something for it... but it’s hard for me. I’ve looked 18 for so long that it’s kind of a reminder I won’t grow old. I get too sensitive about it. More than...”

Lance swallowed hard... saying their names always made him feel sick

“More than I do about Nyma and Rolo turning me. I shouldn’t have acted like that. I shouldn’t have shot you down without an explanation. We haven’t been communicating well since James and the douche squad rolled into town and I’ve been avoiding talking to you about things properly because I know how much you’re stressing. I’m really sick of us snapping at each other”

Keith nuzzled into cheek. His boyfriend was being brave showing up in the first place. Now he was being brave putting up with a topic that made Lance as broody and uncooperative as a satchel of yeast at the wrong temperature. Mumbling, Keith was being unintentionally cute

“Me too. I was... excited. Like... I don’t love my birthday. So I think I was pushing that on to wanting you to have the best birthday the way you wanted. Half the time my birthday was forgotten and I wished someone would notice. Shiro always tried to make a cake. They were awful but he tried. He didn’t let Adam help him and if we weren’t home he’d get me a cupcake”

If they’d managed to find those words a few days ago, then they wouldn’t have kept snapping over the dreaded “B” word

“See... God. We care about each other too much. We’re stepping on each other’s toes trying our best to be good boyfriend’s. I don’t want a night where things happen and we miss our reservation. I don’t want you to be sad or angry. Plus, we don’t know what’s going on with Lotor, or Honerva, or the Blades. You can tell me I’m overthinking but we both are”

Keith kissed his cheek again

“You’re right. We’re idiots. I didn’t get why you wouldn’t want to go on a date with me. I thought maybe it was because I fucked up last time and then I felt all stupid inside. Shiro’s not home, you’ll never believe it but Curtis asked him on a date. I’ve got to pick them up later... so maybe we could go back to the apartment? Kosmo misses you and Curtis convinced Shiro to buy a heap of dodgy horror movies”

He knew it. He knew Keith was thinking about that

“You didn’t fuck up our last date. It was perfect... maybe not the shooting part when I wasn’t expecting that and neither was the poor target who got his bits shot. But it was good because I was with you”

“I wanted everything to be perfect... I felt like... like it had to be. I want you to like me”

“You really are an idiot. I do like you. I mean, I could go back to putting you outside and not letting you back in the house... would that make you feel better?”

“Not really”

Maybe it no longer felt as great as he remembered it to be at the time. He’d been so frustrated with Keith not listening. They both did dumb things when they didn’t listen to each other

“I’ll just save that for the next time we fight. Let’s go back to the apartment... as long as Shiro’s okay with it”

Keith snorted. Lance didn’t find it snort worthy. He was trying to respect Shiro and not risk triggering bad memories of Adam for him

“Shiro is totally getting laid tonight. Tomorrow he’s going to be limping around all smiley”

That he didn’t want to think about

“They might not...”

“Curtis totally will”

If they were going to go there... then... ugh. Maybe Shiro could stand to get laid. He was as stressed as Keith at the moment. Lance had the feeling Shiro’d not been sleeping well

“Wanna bet on it?”

“Ten bucks says he gets laid”

“And twenty says making out before Shiro gets picked up”

Because Curtis was secretly a romantic like him. Curtis would do the rose petals on the bed and insist on showering. The foot smell part of his curse was no joke. Lance knew. He’d clipped Curtis’s toe nails for him... giving him a pedicure in an attempt to help figure out some kind of way to hide the smell of dead cheese

“You’re so on. Want me to drive?”

Keith would get directionally misplaced. Having him drive would be easier... though Keith hadn’t exactly confirmed he was allowed over... fuck it... He had nowhere else to go. There were worse things to do other than avoiding making life decisions because Keith totally needed him

“Nah. I’ve got it. Just don’t forget to put your seatbelt on”

“Yes, Dad...”

“Ugh. Don’t call me that. I look 18 and there’s 18 years between us. I feel like a creep”

“You are a creep, but you’re my creep so it’s okay”

Keith would never know Lance’s soul tried to escape on the spot. His boyfriend didn’t have to so readily agree. He better be getting some good cuddles out of this because his ego had taken a critical blow and nothing but cuddling would soothe the damage.

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ Patreon Commentary Catchup 2020-03-29

I know I’ve been sitting on half-a-dozen asks, but I’m gonna sit on those a little longer because after I’m done catching up on ALL the commentary I’ve missed I’ll probably be a little exhausted.

First the commentary on Chapter 5: YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D.  I skimmed this before, just so I could leave a comment about what I’d been told about the suicide feeling / Jaspers funeral when she was “eight” being way too late on the timeline.  They still haven’t made any corrections to that HS^2 page.  Hm.  Are they just feeling the general vibe and tags to help the fandom guide things?  I’m wondering if anyone came to any of them specifically with that, since Patreon commentary doesn’t seem to cut it.  (Which I might be grateful for, from another point of view, because why would they favor paid methods.)

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 5, "YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D"

Starting commentary on why they played with the medium by opting for a Longpage with that update.  Unsurprising and understandable~

Ooh, they included the commission/sketch instructions for the image they asked from Xam.

I don't know what we did to deserve Xamag.

Yeah few people dispute Xamag’s awesomeness.~

Much of this conversation was written before they launched HS^2′s first chapter, huh?

With the "primary" version of its original protagonist dead in a wallet,

Did... did Terezi or someone else put John’s body in his wallet after he died?  I forget.  *checks back*

(Meat 35) That’s definitely a fair question. But I have one that’s much more important for her to answer. Terezi, are you seriously just going to leave the body here? “TEREZI: HUH?” Of course not. Terezi’s a practical girl, after all. She digs the wallet out of her blood-stained pants, and captchas the corpse. She holds it close to her heart, like a secret. Like John’s stupid last words: a confession whispered for her and no one else.And then she starts walking home.

(Meat 36) Terezi’s jaw tightens. She’s not ready to hear any words that remind her of those few hours with John. Her hand goes to her pocket, where she’s keeping the wallet. She traces the contours of it with her thumb and forces a smile.

[...] Here we both are. It’s a beautiful day. You’ve got your dead boyfriend in your wallet. And we’ve already managed to strike such a nice metatextual rapport. So hear me out. [...]  I ease the throttle back a bit, just enough so that I’m not whispering directly into her ear when she slips the wallet out of her pocket. She clutches it so hard in her palm that she’s digging dents into the leather, and bites her lip.

God damnit, that was an important fucking thing for me to forget.  I hope she preserved his corpse in a better way than just “wallet”.  And why the FUCK did Dirk think it was so important to bring him???? That’s not good, is it.

Back to the commentary, going to how the Dirk crew’s conversations especially cover the meta question of why continue the story at all...

This is actually a similar question to one explored by a series that shares a lot of Homestuck's creative DNA, Steven Universe.

Oh god damnit, what timing, huh?  And then they go on about what constitutes a happy ending and what’s supposed to happen after, how work might not be done, et cetera.  Hopefully these authors take a page from how SU:F finished, because Steven Universe managed to pull it back to uplifting pretty well.

These are two dangerous women, confined together long enough to learn all of each others' weaknesses, and sharp-edged enough to exploit them.

True enough.

Dirk, unfortunately, cucks the audience from seeing the scene's "true resolution." What an asshole. I've never been madder at this guy than I am right now. I bet he didn't even provide a warranty.

Pff.

On to the next commentary:

Sketches and Commentary: Catnapped, Part Three

Catnapped is some of the most fun I’ve had while writing, because Jasprose is just so goddamn fun. Cats don’t plan, they live in the moment. She’s always existing in that moment of pushing a glass off the table.

We can all agree with that I think.

Plenty they talk about here, but I’ll just quote part of anything about characterization... 

First, I actually really appreciate getting a lot at Jane's genuine sympathy for Dirk here. There was quite a bit of mutual fondness and care between the two of them – but, at the same time, they enabled each others' worst tendencies.

Hm!

Swifer remains the closest thing to a "straight man" this story has. (Not in the sexuality way. In the comedy way.)

Yep.

There was no universe where we left this story without Jasprose saying "owo what's this". You know it, I know it.

Jesus Christ, I didn’t catch that.

God, Problem Sleuth just has the worst commuting luck. He should put some of his rug money into a permanent locksmith. Checking back in with these scenes is always a delight. It probably took PS like two hundred off-screen panels to get to this point. Miserable.

Wait, that’s right, Catnapped 28 is shown before DDD 12, but AFTER Dad is shown marching up handcuffed in Catnapped 26.  And yet in DDD 12, Dad and DD come fetch PS from out of his office, when the handcuffed thing hasn’t happened yet in DDD.  You can’t DO that, authors!  It only makes RELEASE ORDER sense, not any sort of OTHER sense?  What about when people come to catch up or read this later!  Come on, that’s sloppy.  Unless they’re going to leave PS behind to stay trapped in his office MORE, which I wouldn’t put past them.  (But, wouldn’t make sense since the bullethole from C28 is already there in DDD12.)  Andrew knew more of how to be responsible telling an out-of-time-sync story, believe it or not.

Commentary ends with a few sketches, like Jasprose doing a The Mask impression, appropriately.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 6, "A Conversation Regarding Relevance"

Oh, it’s Jade time.

On alt!Callie’s starting Space rant:

I wanted to impress on everyone just how vast it is, and also to remind the audience that alt!callie has them at the same mercy that Dirk does. She can force us to listen to her pontificate endlessly if she so chooses. She’s slightly less insufferable than Dirk, if only perhaps because her text isn’t orange. 

Yep, mostly.

So here she is. Jade. We find out that not only is she conscious inside her own head, she is also incredibly chatty. And not too thrilled with her current situation. I know most of the audience isn’t either, considering the fact that Jade having no agency has basically become a meme at this point. 

NEVER. AGAIN. PLZ.

As Callie told us in the beginning of the chapter, it isn’t natural for people to behave like narrative devices. Even within her own thematic framework, Callie has a habit of defaulting to behaving like a person after all. 

Even alt!Callie still became a story nerd, not just original Callie -- she just became a different, more insufferable type of story nerd.

Plenty more discussion I don’t need to touch on...  keep in mind I’m omitting large parts of this in most cases, again, to respect the paywall.

A remark on Dave and Karkat being two emotionally-constipated early-twenties Bernie Bros, which... I mean.  Fair.

She definitely does love them, and she wanted to be with them, but also...Jade has a lot of other prospects. She’s actually the one character who seems to be enjoying her time on Earth c. Hitting up interspecies raves and getting around. We just haven’t seen any of that because none of those other people she boned are main characters. 

Maybe that’s why alt!Callie was so blind and dismissive of it?  Offscreen experience being less in the Light, therefore less relevant to her, even though that’s the exact attitude she’s ostensibly at war with?

Anyway Jade’s consciousness is huge.

Yep.

It’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of serious meta talk about classpects. Mostly because there’s really no use for classpects outside of the game, unless, for instance, you go around referring to everyone as the Prince or the Witch because you are a dramatic alien in a hood. It does make sense that a Witch’s powers would be more useful than a Sylph’s to a Muse. 

Aaaand that’s all the classpect mention we’re gonna get isn’t it? ;P

(Yes I know, the author told us to dial it back.  They ARE going ahead and prepping to answer some outstanding questions, though.)

Honestly, the Jade Situation is a tough one. To be sure, she has been sacrificed to the plot again and again, something that probably began as a coincidence and then later grew into a theme. Space players are destined to be huge, cosmic forces in the universe. Big movers. [...] But usually when we hear the story of big, god-like beings, we don’t think about the personalities behind them. What was it like for god to create the universe? Was he lonely? Did he regret it? Did he wish he could live in it instead? 

And Jade WAS too powerful not to sideline, by a certain point in the plot.  And before that, maybe trapped in a bit of a character arc where she had to get over some notions to step into the action.

I actually think Jade could have been okay with this. With being A Force For The Narrative. [...] But then Callie makes it personal.

Agreed.  If alt!Callie hadn’t been so shitty about it in general, they could have worked things out more meaningfully; but the immense resolve and effort it took to dominate Caliborn in her origin timeline has tainted her perception ALMOST as bad as Dirk’s.  Much of HS^2 is probably going to involve her gradually learning how to get over that in the background, the balance she needs to take ala the Ultimate Riddle’s lesson.

(Tangentially... it was said that it would have been nearly impossible to make alt!Callie dominate, even across ALL timelines.  What if alt!Callie had her timeline’s origin explained in HS^2 by a Third Scratch at this late date with the likes of Davebot running around to do it???  That would probably make me fucking mad.)

Back to the commentary.

Admittedly these last few chapters have definitely been “girls beating the crap out of each other” heavy, and I hope that’s okay.

PFFFFF

Callie and Jade aren’t really sure who makes a decision on what is considered “just” or “heroic”. Plot twist, it’s us. We do. But also the alpha timeline does.

Hmm.

More gorgeous Xam art. Initially we were going to make it more ambiguous whether or not she actually ate the peanut butter, but we decided to have it be a decisive moment of triumph.

Really?  Well, you could have made it visually clearer that the candy dropped.  A lot of people visually missed that.  This is a consequence of the back-and-forth artist-isnt-the-author art-commissioning going on, in part... Andrew was MUCH better at conveying what he wanted to convey BETWEEN panels than this crew, like comic book panels and their composition together; you can see that when comparing Homestuck proper’s sprite animation to that of fan adventures that used sprites, for instance.  These guys are at something of a disadvantage due to their disconnect.

Commentary on the Commentary

This commentary uses "she/her" to talk about the alternate Calliope possessing Jade, while the "other" Callie (remember them?) uses they/them. This other Calliope, presumably, has a much different relationship with her gender – and her brother – than the Callie we saw discussing the subject with Roxy and John. One of my favorite things about this update (I can say that, because I'm a second person who didn't write it) was that subtle hint about how different her Caliborn must have been to allow her to predominate in the first place. I'd be really interested in fan works exploring more about her (and his) past.

Hhhhmmmmmmm.

Not sure what else to say to that, but it does make me hmmm.

Sketches and Commentary: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Probably not much plot-relevant here...

Oh pff.

They had full drawings of them going in for the kiss on standby.  They couldn’t resist making them.

Real talk, I have been looking forward to writing this story the most out of any other part of HS^2. Finally I get to combine my passions. Cheesy noir bullshit and old men making eyes at each other. 

Pfffffff.  Yes.

...the next three or four pages of this writing go on to describe how sexy this is and these characters and setting are.  I can’t fault a word of any of it.

The dream team is assembled. Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

Wow, I caught up on all this commentary quick.  See you next time.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots #Homestuck Commentary #spoiler #spoilers

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Aniplex Fugou Keiji Livestream | Fugou Keiji 2 | Kitsutsuki 2 - 4 | Arte 3 - 12 (FINAL) | Fruits Basket 27 - 32

During the Millionaire Detective: Unmissable livestream (part of FunimationCon and Aniplex Online Fest), I watched and took notes, so you might find these handy upon retrospect. To be honest, this is how I do the posts for magicalgirlsandcerulean’s livestreams as well, but there hasn’t been one of those in a while...

Otherwise, these are all normal notes.

Aniplex Fugou Keiji Livestream

Look out for the dancer from the OP

Onuki was the model for the dancing for the anime – he was told to do it out of the blue

Episode 11 might have one of these^ be relevant

Daisuke’s cup ramen has shark fin in it and he made the packaging from scratch – that’s why it’s so expensive!

The director Tomohiko Ito omits important information, allowing people to decide for themselves what happened. (Miyano) – This might be why the series is stylish. (MC)

Attractiveness of character design is important! (for adapting Fugou Keiji to modern day)

I’ve never watched a livestream where the stars were so conscious of their English and Chinese audiences! This was interesting, especially because Onuki is not normally known as a VA!

“We still have a little bit of recording to do.”

Fugou Keiji 2

I keep misunderstanding my own instructions…this starts again in July after ep 2.

Todai = Tokyo Daigaku (Uni).

I believe this is the 2nd time I’ve seen a rich person like commoner’s instant noodles, although I forget where I saw the 1stinstance.

Kambe switched to the back seat now, huh?

Ah! Now I remember! The first time was seeing spoilers for this episode on Twitter! (LOL)

I see Suzue has a sensible naming scheme for her data.

Hmm…judging by the Google hits, the name visible in the background (Betbeto bin Abura) is the Arabic prince from last time.

SYN-ACK. I see these guys did their work – that’s the final stage of the 3 stage handshake required for things like internet sockets (used to send “packets” of data).

Way to crash a party, Kambe siblings…(LOL)

I really wanna see someone draw Kato slapping (Daisuke) Kambe in the face with a wad of cash…or a “shut up and take my money” meme with Kambe in it.

I like how “special cup ramen” is on the purchases list and it costs 100000 yen. I also like how the reporter Mita was bought out for 5000000 yen (bigger than all the other individual costs except for buying out the Tower)…that’s how he showed up.

Kitsutsuki 2

I gotta finish this show and then pause it…3 shows in my normal lineup are safe.

Did Kindaichi take the bones of the fish out for Ishikawa…? Like a child would have had done for them?

Why is Ishikawa being referred to as “Hajime”…?

Draw this prostitute like one of your French girls…(LOL?)

Ishikawa clearly dropped those coins into that book earlier.

Way to diss the potential asexuality/celibacy in the house. I mean, it’s the 1800s – early 1900s, so there was less LGBTIQ+ stuff then and certainly the further back you go, the more sexual prowess becomes a sign of masculinity, but still, if the guy doesn’t want to go through with it, don’t force him.

Notice how the borders were pink for Ishikawa’s version and blue for Kindaichi’s.

Notably, Otaki didn’t seem to have that hairpin…but maybe that’s because we saw things from Ishikawa’s perspective.

Ooh…who are these bois? Also, crab.

Kitsutsuki 3

…cat? Now there’s a new perspective. That’s like saying the butler did it.

Yay! Hagiwara is Ume!

Notice Hagiwara’s version has a purple frame, while Yoshii (?) has yellow and another person has dark blue.

I think “consumption” was tuberculosis, once upon a time.

I love how the crowd is fed up with Ishikawa’s bulls***.

Ooh, chuuni Akutagawa…

In a Grove is the Rashomon story.

Tarou Hirai = Rampo Edogawa.

You stalker, future Rampo!

I kinda suspected Otaki when I thought through the possibilities…Ishikawa, Kindaichi, an outsider, Otaki (and as of this ep, Rampo too).

Gaiheikan? Is that Ishikawa and co.’s lodging?

Did they have pencils back in that day?

Kitsutsuki 4

Humouresques.

Kabayaki.

I think it was in Detective Conan that I learnt (one of) the only way(s) a man can get his nails done is by his wife doing it for him, possibly as a prank or to indicate he’s “taken”. Note this was early Detective Conan, so it’s very much a 90s attitude…considering the widespread acceptance of drag queens and the LGBTIQ+ movement these days.

Kozukata.

Lace flower.

Maichou seems to be a hybrid of Asahi Shinbun and Mainichi Shinbun.

[Monkfish/dictionary/going home] - Is this how Ishikawa shows consideration…?

The purple letterrboxing is back but this time with Ishikawa…meaning that’s just an aesthetic thing for all flashbacks after all.

Just from vaguely hearing it (I’ve got the volume on low), the words are nodo tsuki/nodo zuki. “Throat moon/throat wound” works just as well, if not better.

Balsam flower.

Update: Since enough anime fulfilled the special COVID-19 criteria, Kitsutsuki was put on hold after this.

Fruits Basket 2 2 (27)

I’ve read Another, remember?…so I kind of know what happens.

Uo’s got purple nails…that’s surprisingly cute of her.

Aw, Kureno! Another Ume role!

Why is “shisho” (master) not translated…? A weird Tokyopop-era translation quirk?

Aw, Shisho cut his hair…? Bummer.

Who was that? Shigure…?(!) Update: We find out his name later in this ep.

“If you continue to change, I’ll continue to protect you.” – Another quote for the archive.

Great…I feel personally called out by this ep.

Fruits Basket 2 3 (28)

It seems all male designers wear their designs if they have no one else to wear them…at least, that’s what I’ve gathered from Hajime (Runway de Waratte) and Ayame.

I remember Ayame stood in for Yuki’s parents in the manga at one point. This must be it.

(Spoilers for later!) I also remember Mine and Ayame get married at the end…This is the prelude to that.

Dang, Ayame, you moment-ruiner!

Fruits Basket 2 4 (29)

Did anyone in the doorway hear about Hatsuharu turning into an ox?

To quote Sailor Mercury, “Douse yourself in water and repent!”

Ooh, window splitting Yuki and Haru. Nice cinematography going on here.

I bet all people think they only think about themselves, in one way or another.

Arashiyama tofu.

Yatsuhashi are great. They’re these sweet triangle things like samosas that come in various flavours. Mitarashi dango are sticky brown skewered balls of glutinous rice…which I’ve never had, but I’ve seen them in enough anime to know what they are.

I only just realised this, but Yuki’s hairstyle isn’t even on both sides, like Atsushi from BSD’s.

Huh…you can see a copy of Mogeta and Ari (as it turns out, “Ari” is the name of a character and not “ant” at all in this case) on Haru’s bed. There’s also an article in one of the magazines discussing how denim is the popular thing now and which types are in right now.

Fruits Basket 2 5 (30)

I realised Yuki isn’t calling Tohru by her first name – he’s going against Haru’s advice.

Hmm? Why should anyone ask a rabbit to hold their horses…? (LOL)

CGI cars…*sigh*

Tororo is grated yam, IIRC.

I learnt recently that nanban means “savage” or “uncivilised”…for a potato and chicken dish, the name and the contents don’t really match…Update: Nanban means “savage” (noun) or “barbarian”. Close enough.

17-26…age gap 9 years…yikes…

The words “(a happy, yet) caged bird” come to mind when Kureno describes himself. Also, Kureno is an Ume role! Yippee!

Ahh…young love…even if it has a bit of an awkward edge to it. Mind the (age) gap!

Me being the Ume stan, of course I want to hear those sweet nothings in his voice, even if it has to be via a proxy like Uotani…I wouldn’t be an Ume stan if I didn’t.

…Ah, I see. Uotani reminds me of Minare from Wave and vice versa.

Oh, I just remembered Akito is 20 or thereabouts. Kureno/Akito is only a bit more legal than Uotani and Kureno.

Arte 3

Notice Leo never once uses Arte’s name in the lady’s presence. Her name does have some infamy to it, after all.

“She’s got some guts.” – You say that at a live dissection…LOL.

Is this love~? What’s the age gap between Leo and Arte, anyway? Update: We know for sure Arte is older than 13…that’s it.

Make the things you want prominent with perspective and such. I thought that much was obvious, but for someone straightforward like Arte, I guess it ain’t so. (Maybe it’s because I’m self-taught to some degree when it comes to art.)

*sketching by candlelight* - You’re gonna ruin your eyes, Arte!

Arte, ma girl! You’re getting’ a raise! Good job!

Arte 4

Anime makes this courtesan stuff sound like a host club…(?)

I thought Leo was saying “Aria” for a second instead of Arte, LOL. I’m getting too used to that being my alias…

Arte 5

The speech bubble said “so annoying I could die”.

Arte 6

The video’s gone all pixelated…at least, the subs have…

I bet she’s going to fall over…Update: Nup, she didn’t.

Arte 7

I thought Yuri was a Russian name…or a Japanese one.

This is basically Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine all over again! (LOL)

I thought Yuri would be pushy…like, “Here’s an offer you can’t refuse.” That kind of thing. Likewise, I didn’t think Arte would refuse.

Leo? *dun-dun-DUN!*

Siena is apparently in Tuscany. Also, I did see the Silent Manga Audition page had a chapter on a pregnant woman, so this is ch. 17 or thereabouts.

Is Ruthanna not getting the money because she’s pregnant…?

Epidemic? The Black Death?...Speaking of which, Arte is very much of that ganbaru spirit. By being progressive for her time, she becomes ordinary in our time.

Ohhhhhhh! It’s a reverse harem in progress here!...This would be a good otome game, come to think of it. It’s framed the same way.

Leo can be surprisingly childish at times, don’t you think?

Arte 8

…Really? She fell overboard? *raises eyebrow*

Ooh, china (with and without capitalisation).

Is this another sarcastic child…? Oh, bother. Still, I can see why Hamefura crossed over with Arte now…Katarina vs. Catarina!

Arte 9

Bigoli is a type of pasta, as can be guessed from context.

The kanji for the episode title literally translate to “bad child”! Like the Tones and I song, LOL!

Mikata (ally).

Arte 10

This episode is giving off a Katarina x Gimo ship vibe…but with how young they are, I’m not sure I should ship it. They’re 6, aren’t they…?

Oh, you can see Katarina and Sofia’s hug in one of the ED frames.

Arte 11

Arte’s let her hair grow out…

An Italian man…bowed. In Renaissance Italy. Now I understand what all the ANN complaints are for.

What’s up with that kid’s face…? *grumbles*

Leo’s just being Leo, I see.

That’s right, Angelo and Leo never met.

Instead of a father or a brother overly cherishing his daughter, it’s the uncle…I never thought I’d see the day I saw something like that.

Arte 12 (FINAL)

Is this like Orientalism, but with gender…? (What would you call that?)

Lemme guess…Leo is working on the church mural and so he’s away?

Was that Leo, in the middle of the mural somewhere…?

Another Japanese bow in this anime, which is set in Italy.

But where is Arte herself in that mural?

Fine = end.

Fruits Basket 31

The word Momiji is using is “hisso” or something like that. Hissho is secretary, so the translator made it “secret getaway” to make it work.

That hat! *laser stare*

*one of the textbooks has “high school chemistry” on it* Tohru can do chemistry?! I suck at chemistry!

The episode title is translated as “Are you really this stupid?” It seems the real line for that was “Are you an idiot?”

Something about high school girls appeared in my head when Haru mentioned Shigure wanting to see Tohru in her tight swimsuit…*mumbles grumpily about pervs*

Kyo’s not wet, even though he got in the water! Amazing!

I think it’s sad that Tohru responds to “stupid girl” like it’s her own name.

“…that makes you suspect me?” seems better.

The Akito and Shigure age gap is somewhere between 6 and 8 years, IIRC.

Fruits Basket 32

Tohru switched from okaasan (mother) to okattekita (a formal past tense verb meaning either “bought”, “lent” or “won” based on the characters…which I don’t have a reference for). I assume because it was so off the mark, the subbers chose a similarly off the mark word.

“When I was a kid, I thought watermelons would sprout in my stomach if I ate the seeds.”

We only know about Kyo’s dad so far…hmm…what about the mother? Update: (TW: suicide) I think it was at this point we already knew that Kyo’s mother didn’t love him and committed suicide, but it’s not certain until later.

Why do doctors always use scalpels and syringes as weapons…? I mean, even Jakurai’s symbol in ARB is a syringe!

I’ve been wondering…how big is the Sohma family? Is it diluted enough that Haru and Rin can love each other without genetic problems for their child/ren? (From Another, I would say the answer is “yes”, but shoujo normally doesn’t care about this sort of thing, which is why I ask in the first place.)

Shigure seems like the type to say, “U mad, bro?”

The mansion looks like the one in Haruhi Suzumiya, if I remember the appearance of that one correctly.

#simulcast commentary #fugou keiji: balance:unlimited #Millionaire Detective: Balance: Unlimited #Fruits Basket #arte #Kitsutsuki Tantei Dokoro #Woodpecker Detective's Office #Chesarka watches Arte #Chesarka watches Fugou Keiji #Chesarka watches Furuba

[beckaleash]

     you on lifetime/netflix sentence meme.      episode 1 - 3.

well, hello there. who are you?

you like a little attention.

that's sad -- people buying books because of what's popular, not because they want to be moved or changed in some way.

at the end of the day, people really are disappointing, aren't they?

are you not wearing a bra? and you want me to notice...

if this was a movie, i'd grab you and we'd go at it right in the stacks.

my parents were assholes with the whole naming thing.

i was in love once. s/he broke my heart. s/he really did a number on me.

you are burning through that book, aren't you?

all for one and one for all.

love is tricky. a guy/girl needs to protect him/herself.

you want to be seen. heard. known. of course, i obliged.

candidly, it's the least appealing thing about you.

your online life isn't real. it's a collage.

jesus, it's like you've never seen a horror movie. or the news.

you want people to watch, don't you?

why don't we spend the day together tomorrow, just you and me?

can we get real for a second? you have questionable taste in friends.

he didn't even get her something that nice, and she finally let him do anal.

open my gift next and tell me how much you hate me then.

you always do this. you make a big gesture that you can't afford because -- i'm sorry -- you're too nice.

why don't you let me loan you some cash, okay?

you know i'd do anything for you. don't forget that.

uh, who the fuck is this?!

that's your apology? "i didn't cum"?

she said she had good coke and i've been seriously stressed.

i don't have time to keep hooking up or whatever it is you're even capable of.

i don't wanna be just some guy/girl that you sleep with.

not to sound judgy, but this guy/girl is everything wrong with america.

you fall for the wrong wo/men. you let them in. you let them hurt you.

if he came anywhere close to making you cum, you'd have made a broadway show out of it. but you didn't. 'cause he didn't.

looks good on you, by the way. the extra weight.

vegan cheese tastes like asshole.

something's in the air tonight, 'cause everyone but me is getting action.

if the zombies come, this is where i'm hiding.

the most valuable things in life are usually the most helpless. so they need people like us to protect them.

this whole nice-guy act... this might work on other people, but i can see what you are.

so stay away from them, because if you don't, i'm gonna grab a steak knife and i'm gonna cut those freak eyes out.

there are scary people in the world. that's why it's important to be safe.

i can still smell you on my fingers.

i've seen enough romantic comedies to know guys/girls like me are always getting in jams like this.

whatever it is, there's nothing we can't fix.

all my life lately has been about surviving.

some guys are assholes, and you just have to realise that.

you were the one who told me to keep reminding you s/he's a bastard.

why are you so sad?

what if some sicko had followed you down here?

you're too drunk to be alone.

i'm not always like this.

i don't wanna sound like a stalker, but i think i know you.

i have a pretty bland face.

all books add up to one essential truth which is, if your IQ is above a certain number, life is pretty much unbearable. and the number is not even that high.

i do think i'd be happier if i was stupider.

thank you for sobering me up. and for saving my life.

i told you, people are basically good.

what you really need is someone to save you.

the first step to fixing something is to know that no matter how destroyed it seems, it can always be saved.

i'm not always right. i'm human. i make mistakes. you'll see.

we all have baggage. but i feel like i'm dealing with it the right way.

i kind of thought i took care of that for you.

i just knew s/he was the worst kind of poison. the kind you know is bad but can't stop taking.

i don't know who you are, i don't know why i'm here.

whoever you are, you're not a killer.

sometimes you do things on instinct because you have to, and then you scramble. you know?

i totally didn't google you, but if i did, i might discover you aren't on social media.

i'm an old fashioned guy/girl. i like real life.

i know it's not cool to say and it's not big and flashy, but i love ___, and i want my life to be about what i actually love.

you somehow think this guy/girl is all you deserve.

s/he's branded the living shit out of her/himself across the internet.

a lot of people find a direct wo/man irresistible.

don't touch me. it's not sexy, it's repulsive.

something has to be done about someone like him/her.

i'm starting to think i'm some kind of magnet for, like, dudes/girls with serious issues.

hey, do you wanna come to a party with me tomorrow?

just take the cheque and stop stressing.

if you want to kill me, what the fuck are you waiting for?

why would i want to kill him? who wants to kill people?

you've probably read more of these books than i have.

i don't think i have a lot in common with your other friends.

it just feels like i'm getting sucked in and i could just be me, yet that somehow never feels quite good enough.

sometimes, to survive you have to show some teeth.

grown-ups are assholes.

some people used to yell at me, too, you know. and i don't want to be like them.

you are not responsible for my feelings, i am. but for the record, i feel like congealed, day-old egg rolls right about now.

you left me here to die!

it's a whole 'call you daddy, spank me' thing.

they were too scared to come forward, but we realised it's harder to dismiss seven women with the same story.

blackmail is not something you live down.

should i have tried to kiss you sooner?

i'd go as far as to say you create the problem when you assume this stuff.

you're worth waiting for.

how exactly does one get rid of a body? i can't just google this kind of thing without creating a pretty damning evidence trail.

fun fact: spatchcocking a chicken and dismembering a human involve the same six essential steps.

these are officially the darkest days in the history of the world.

i wonder if s/he's a virgin.

s/he sounds like a pretentious bitch if you ask me.

why do men think disembodied members equal foreplay? you know, they're not aesthetically pleasing.

more power to them, but your friends kinda treat sex like it means nothing.

i hooked up with some guy last night.

if you wanna bone him/her out of your system, more power to you. i just wanna make sure you're respecting yourself.

if i wanna win your heart, i'm gonna have to show you that i'm not a 'maybe'. i'm the one.

do you think i'm unremarkable?

unremarkable people don't worry about being unremarkable.

you want down and dirty, you got it.

i'll deal with it when i get back.

you thought that i wanted to get arrested while you're going all bush diver on me in public?!

you don't wanna be spanked. you wanna feel safe. loved.

i'm having a really bad flare-up.

i think i need you to take me to the emergency room.

there's like a sort of putrid aroma that keeps wafting in the backseat.

i was hoping i could make the world a better place.

s/he's a sicko. i feel it in my gut.

people believe whatever supports their world view.

you need someone to take care of you.

i don't mean to be harsh, but you know you're sending some mixed messages, right?

that's one hell of a bonfire.

if that's the case, i should warn you, i have this facial thing where i can't hide what i'm thinking.

i don't know who i am. how am i supposed to know what i want?

if i didn't know better, i'd think you were hiding something.

i've never seen your place, and you never talk about any of your friends. i mean, who are you?

that's it. i am officially out of the tinder business.

there's something wrong with you. i see it in your eyes.

#rp sentence meme #rp meme #sentence meme #rp sentence starters #rp sentence prompts #MEME.

[thebestoftimes]

50 QUESTION BOOK TAG FOR WORLD BOOK DAY

By me, Jess. I made this for world book day but then got depressed and didn’t post it on time lmao but here ya go kids be warned though it’s a long one. Also the numbers thing got fucked up and I couldn’t fix it.  I got a lot of these questions from other tags I’ve seen and google so if something sounds familiar... that’s why.

Who or what sparked your love of literature?

Aw my parents fueled my book habit when I was a kid and took me to the bookstore all the time and since then all my teachers have always encouraged me and made me love books even more than I thought possible.

Do you have an ‘odd’ book habit? (page sniffing/never leaving the house with a book)

It’s true that I never go anywhere without a book. I got one in my backpack or purse or reading on my phone but it’s always there.

Do you have a book that you think has changed your life? How?

A lot of books and series have made significant impacts on my life (like I can’t picture elementary school without Percy Jackson being in my life) but like as a person I can’t think of any one book that has changed who I am. It’s been a team effort.

Which book have you reread most frequently?

I think I reread Hush Hush every year lmao idk why

You can meet any author and ask one question. What author would you chose and what question would you ask?

I’d want to meet Shakespeare and ask him if all his characters really were just that gay or if we’re all reading too much into it.

Best book published this year so far?

It’s only March but The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

Imagine you’ve started a book and don’t like it. Do you see the experience through to the bitter end, or are you able to talk away from it mid story?

I used to always finish what I started but now that I’m in college and have a mountain of a TBR I’ll just stop.

What book is top of your wish list/TBR pile?

Uhh A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos  is on top rn

Favourite place to read?

My bed. Boring but a classic.

If you buy books, do you lend them out? Ever had a bad experience?

Of course. No all my friends respect my stuff and return them promptly.

What fictional character do you ship yourself with?

So many but I think Gansey and I from The Raven Cycle would make the best couple.

Weirdest thing you’ve used as a bookmark

I use whatever near me so I might have done something weirder but lately I’ve been using tissues because I have a tissue box by my bed and never real bookmarks. But I’ve used graded homework, a toy car, a crayon, earbuds, etc.

Favorite quality/qualities in a protagonist and antagonist

Wow this is s hard okay for protag I am a sucker for like stubborn, smartass with a martyr complex. Sad but true. Antags I love a good morally grey character or anti-villain. Tragic backstory but smart as hell. The worst (the best). Characters like the Darkling from The Grisha Trilogy, and Warner from the first Shatter Me book (I know he’s a good guy NOW but back then we all thought he was a sadistic and sexy villain).

Favorite genre and favorite book from that genre.

YA Urban Fantasy babyyy and that’d be City of Bones by Cassandra Clare or Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare:)

  Best/worst movie adaptation in your eyes

Best: Harry Potter and The Hunger Games | Worst: Percy Jackson

Do you prefer reading your own books, or library books?

My own.

How do you choose your next book to read?

Literally whatever I’m feeling like at the moment.

Your favorite word.

I love many words but I have a soft spot for “lively” and “lilt”.

Book that got you hooked on reading/how you got hooked.

I’ve always been obsessed with reading but The Peter and the Starcatchers Series was like my shift from nicotine to heroine.

Opinion on dog-earing, margin writing, ect.

I only write in the margins of books I have to read for class/textbooks. And that’s for studying and active reading purposes. For any other situation: no.

Top 5 immediate to read in no order

A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Wicker King by K. Ancrum

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E Schwab

Most underrated book you’ve read

Definitely The Foxhole Court/ All for the Game series. Fairly small fanbase for some of THE most amazing books I’ve ever read. And the memes will have you in stitches.

What is the first book that catches your eye when you look at your bookshelf?

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell because of the exceedingly bright cover/spine haha

How do you arrange your books on your shelves?

LOL I do not have a system at all. I keep series and authors together and that’s it. Everything is placed where there is room.

You have the power to change a book’s ending. Which ending would you change and what would you make happen instead?

I’d change the end to Allegiant and SPOILERS SPOILERS not make Tris fucking die over her shitty ass brother. I know why she did it but like Veronica girl wyd with that. And I’d want the entirety of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins to be rewritten into a book that just focused on the domestic life of Finnick and Annie and no one dies.

Favourite book cover?

This is SO HARD. Either The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin or Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

Which book from your childhood has had the most impact on you?

My entire personality was shaped by the Maxmimum Ride series by James Patterson. For better and worse.

When reading, what do you value most: writing style, characters, plot, world building, pacing, etc?

Characters. I think all of those things are essential and as I read more and more, the pickier I get, but I find myself leaning towards being a fan of a book when I become obsessed with the characters. Like hey!! New friends!!! For my brain!!!

Do you prefer buying books or borrowing them from a library/friend?

Buying them even though I shouldn’t. It’s a real problem.

What books/sequels that are being published this year are you most excited for?

SO MANY OH MY GOD

Okay some of these already came out because it’s March right now but I’ll include them anyways.

SEQUELS/ SPIN-OFFS AND SHIT

The Wicked King by Holly Black; King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo; Dream by Natalia Jaster; Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare; The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare; Capturing the Devil by Kerri Maniscalco, Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater; Defy Me by Tahereh Mafi; The Shaw Confessions #3 by Michelle Hodkin

FIRST BOOKS

The Binding by Bridget Collins; Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan; The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi; A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer; Romanov by Nadine Brandes; The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen; The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh

Which fictional character would you want as a sidekick?

Percy Jackson because he’s my firstborn son and one of my favourite characters of all time. He is talented, smart, hilarious, an amazing friend, and the sweetest of boys (when he isn’t the sassiest of boys).

How many books have you read so far this year?

Only 15 I am so behind :(

What’s been your favourite read so far this year?

Oh man. Gotta be Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo :)

You’re stuck on an island with a suitcase big enough to hold five books. What books are they?

I probably shouldn’t cheat and say How to Build a Boat huh

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The King’s Men by Nora Sakovic

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

If you had to go out to dinner with any character who would it be and why? What would you talk about?

Will Herondale and we’d talk about books

Is there a book you have such a hatred for that you would throw it off of the highest tower knowing that the last copy of it will be destroyed so that not another living soul can read it or would you rather keep it and give it to someone else who might actually enjoy it?

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne or After by Anna Todd

Do you believe books make nice decoration?

I mean. I think they should be read before used as decor but I love showing off my books so I guess both. But I don’t believe in buying books for the purpose of decoration instead of reference or reading lol

Do you listen to music when you read? Or do you need complete silence? 

I need silence or low amount of white noise. I used to read and listen to Taylor Swift when I was a kid but I can’t do it anymore.

Do you have a favorite book? If not are you in the group that believes there are too many great books out there to just choose one?

I tell people it’s City of Bones by Cassandra Clare but in all honesty no I don’t have a favourite.

Do you sleep with books under your pillow.

Nope

Do you go to the library or do you have a book buying addiction or are you one of those lucky people who is able to do both?

I do both. Mostly bookstore though.

Own any book inspired clothing?

Yes. Several items :)

Have you ever read a book in another language?

I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Tristan and Isolde, and Beauty and the Beast in French. And parts of Les Mis.

Strangest book you’ve ever read?

John Dies at the End by David Wong. Still not sure exactly what was going on. 

Favourite type of non-fiction?

Memoirs babey

Favourite non-fiction?

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Favourite subject to read about?

History

Favourite book you’ve read in school?

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Favourite work of Shakespeare?

Hamlet

Character you’d love as a mom or dad or guardian?

Hmm Sally Jackson, The Women of 300 Fox Way, or Tessa and Will (they totally count because The Last Hours Series)

I tag literally whoever wants to do this and @fangirl-daydreamer97 @acleeds12 @iviisastrawberry @221bdoom @bicycles-bees-bisexuals @betterthanapit @dippindots126 @vlctorvale

[the-ghost-writers]

Monster BF headcanons

Cause why not? But really it’s because some peeps on discord ( @punkpoppunkpop @aurumdragonfly and a few others) wanted to know what kinda boyfriend their favorite monsters would be, and I was happy to oblige.

Orc 

You met him by walking past while he was training and you stopped to watch.

With an audience, he felt the need to really show off and go hard to show just how strong he is.

He sauntered up to you expecting you to be smitten. 

You were, but you caught him off guard with your praise from calling him cute.

 He got flustered, which made him stutter, which made him even more flustered. 

At least once a day you remind him of how much of a dork he was when yall first met. 

He hushes you by wrapping you up in a bear hug where he squeezes just tight enough to keep you from speaking. 

He really likes carrying you around.

Play with his beard and he'll melt. 

Loads more under the cut. (Shoot an ask if you want a headcanon of a species that isn’t listed)

Wyvern 

You originally met because he was hunting you but then he got so caught up in talking with you that he forgot he was hungry.

Regularly takes you on flying trips because he likes flying and likes spending time with you, so doing both is amazing to him.

Has no arms so he uses his neck to wrap around and "hug" you.

Tends to perch (like a bird) on anything and everything.

Gets overexcited and tackles you to the ground if you've been apart.

Immediately apologizes.

Loves to smother you with kisses at a rapid-fire pace.

Curls around and tucks you under his wing when it's time for bed.

Cuthulu 

You just wanted to swim in the ocean when you happen to cut yourself and managed to bleed in just the wrong or right spot to summon him. 

Horrifying cause he's over 20 stories tall and doesn't like shrinking down. 

Still shrinks down so he can be held by you when he's feeling touched starved.

Has trouble speaking any human language so he uses his hands for communication.

Sometimes forgets that you need air to breathe and his kisses leave you light headed.

Most people go mad if they look into his eyes, so do you but you fall mad in love.

Knows people are afraid of him, but he wants to be with you so he sneaks around to steal you away for a trip to the ocean floor (don't worry, he has a way to let you breathe.) 

His Earth home is a massive cave littered with glittering crystals. 

Kobold 

He’s absolutely teeny, not to mention tiny, but he acts like he's the biggest man around. 

Shout everything without realizing it. 

He's just really energetic. 

Feels the need to defend your "honor" from everything. 

Sometimes he'll try to fight someone for just looking at you. 

You have to stop him cause he really isn't a fighter. 

Despite his mishaps, he loves you more than anything. 

When you asked why he “protects” you so much, he said kobolds always protect their treasure. 

Seriously, he's like waist high. 

Really good at fixing things tho, not a single door in your house squeaks and he fixed you A/C in under an hour.

Robot 

Large and in charge. 

Literally, he's 8 feet and built with the purpose of being a security guard. 

After his day job is over, he goes and spends the rest of his time with you. 

Doesn't need sleep, just to recharge, so if he's plugged in then he can stay up with you all night. 

Or really until you fall asleep

To sleep in bed with you, you two installed a special charging station in your bedroom that use cords to charge him and allow him to lay in bed with you. 

The cords are on his back so he's always the big spoon.

A very, very big spoon. 

Constantly upgrading his body to be more comfortable for you. 

His latest upgrade was heating plates for when you're cuddling together. 

Sometimes speaks in robot which is apparently a thing they don’t like doing in front of humans and it’s a whole lotta beeps and whirrs before he remembers who he's talking to and tries again.

Minotaur 

The biggest grump you know. 

Although he's notably less grumpy with you than he is with others.

A scowl is always on his face but sometimes he forces it to keep up his image.

"What do you mean I need new clothes? My loincloth only has three tears in it." 

Excellent sense of direction. 

Really likes tight spaces.

Won't admit that he likes it when you're sitting on his shoulders. 

Run your fingers through his leg fur and it'll bristle. 

Hates the cold and will shamelessly use you as a personal heater. 

Mummy 

Actually woke up in a museum, you were the only one around at a time.

At an utter loss of why he's not in the afterlife.

He followed you home thinking it was a path to the beyond.

Was not happy when he learned it wasn't.

Not all too concerned because he thinks he'll get there eventually.

Calmed down but didn't leave your home because he had nowhere else to go.

Still thinks he's in Egypt and that only a few years have passed since his death. 

Won’t tell you who he was in life because he knows that it bugs you that you don’t know who he was.

Doesn't like seeing what's under his wraps but will show you if asked. 

After a while, he learns he has a bit of magic and can levitate things. 

Levitates you towards him and wraps you up (He doesn't get the joke) in his arms so he has something to hold. 

Doesn't actually realize he's falling for you until months later when you're already practically a couple. 

Thinks technology is magic even a year has passed since he woke up and you’ve explained what a smartphone is seven times now. 

Kaiju 

Walks around on four legs and is as big as a 15 story building. 

Regularly gets in fights with other kaiju, wins every other one.

Will come home (to your home, his is the ocean) victorious and start gloating about how amazing he is until you join in.

It’s because he adores your praise. 

If he lost, he'll be whimpering for you to take care of him (can't do much other than kiss it better but he has regeneration.) 

You're starting to wonder if he gets in so many fights so you'll give him attention. 

Speaks broken English and his voice is gravely. 

Lays on top of you if you try to leave when he doesn't want you to. 

Doesn't care that your work won't take "a giant kaiju sat on me" as an excuse for being late. 

Eastern Dragon 

"Respect your elders" any time you disagree with him in the slightest. 

Always floating around, hasn't touched the ground or been still in 50 years. 

Stubby arms.

He's sensitive about it. 

Twirls his mustache and cackles like a villain when he's being a little shit. 

"I'm the most humble person I know." 

Sometimes he'll take you up in the air and hold you in his coils to get you alone. 

Changes size a lot, sometimes he's the size of a train and sometimes he's the size of a shoelace. 

Gives dumb people sass but has yet to sass you. 

Werewolf 

Sometimes you wonder if he's a werewolf or a weregolden retriever. 

Always eating but never gains weight. (A nice combination of a good metabolism and a daily shape-shifting transformation that burns through thousands of calories.)

Snerks when someone starts talking about an “Alpha” werewolf.

Sheds like a bitch. (He DOES get the joke) 

His kisses are just lots of face licks.

Will start gnawing on your leg/arm if you ignore him too much. 

If you're not physically touching him to some extent he gets upset.

Super fluffy and surprisingly muscular.

Prefers his meats raw. 

Doesn't like fish. 

At all. 

An utter slut for head scritches.

Skeleton 

A total jokester.

Feels weird being naked. 

Will be naked for a prank tho. 

Skeletor is his idol.

Part-time job at the high school science lab. 

Knows every vine and meme there is.

2spooky4u 

Uses his bones to play songs. 

Don't call him sans. 

Don't ask him for a hand either, he'll toss his detached hand to you. 

"I've got a boner" 

"Rattles me bones!" 

Dressed up as Jack Skellington for Halloween. 

Deathclaw 

Originally tried to kill you but you were so pitiful cute that he stopped.

Once he deemed that you’re not a threat, he started ignoring you. 

Because your home is so close to his, his started seeing you as a part of his territory.

Eventually stopped being agitated by you and grew comfortable enough to not be on guard around you.

Rescued you from a bandit raid once but wouldn’t let you go home after, took you to his home.

It’s your new home, he’s your new roommate. 

Always wants you in his sight, he’ll follow you if you leave and corral you back to his cave if you wander too far off. 

Intelligent but doesn’t speak a lick of English, although has come to learn and react to a few key phrases “Hi, Love you, Fuck.”

That last one has led to a few problems when you shouted it in pain and he misinterpreted it. 

If he spends enough time outside in the day, he’ll glow in the dark in his cave. 

It used to make you sick but you grew used to it you might have radiation poisoning. 

He doesn’t care for his glowing body parts until he noticed your interest in him grows when he glows. 

Allows you to freely explore him. 

“Laughs” when you touch his teeth (he doesn’t understand why you’re fascinated by them but they’re so big that you just have to touch.) 

Wyvern 2.0 

So liked that he got an encore

When he’s excited, he wags his tail but that makes him lose balance, so sometimes he’ll fall over when he first sees you. 

The lack of arms means he uses his head to nudge everything, and his tongue when it’s something delicate to handle. 

Definitely a morning person. 

He always wakes up before the sun rises, but he won’t try to leave the bed/nest until you’re up as well.

While you sleep, and especially while he’s waiting for you to wake up, he combs his wing tips along your soft spots because he likes the face you make when you’re comfortable. 

Can not be faulted being too big, you’re just too small. 

Really likes emeralds for some reason, he’s not sure why. 

When you lie next to him, you can hear his heartbeat and how it beats faster from you being near.

Trent 

A self-appointed guardian of the forest. 

Said forest is in your backyard. 

Notices you taking care of plants and thinks of you as a friend. 

Shocked when he reveals himself and you get excited. 

He expected you to be scared, not bouncing with excitement. 

Indulges you in your request to know more about him and shows all he can do, from manipulating plants to lifting boulders. 

Turns smug when you’re in awe of his body but is humbled from how soft you are and how much he likes touching you. 

Compares you to that of a flower and himself as a tree.

After that day, he starts inviting you to tea using the herbs he grows and shows off his pretty flowers. 

Gives you a flower crown that’s enchanted to never wilt. 

Fascinated by the glass objects in your house. 

Feels guilty for tracking dirt into your house.

Gryphon 

You’ve actually known him since he was a child because you two grew up together. 

Separate homes tho, his family lived in a forest beside your family’s home.

You both know the ins and outs of each other what with you two being best friends.

Puberty treated him very well and he grew to be very strong. 

In time, the aftermath of your wrestling sessions (if you win it’s only because he LET you win) went from the two of you finding food to laying together and watching the sky. 

He can’t speak aside from squawking, so you have to carry the conversations along. 

You can typically ride on his back to get to places. 

He bumps his beak against your head in his way of giving kisses. 

Belly rubs slay him. 

Taurus Demon 

Very open about his sexuality. 

Also one of the bigger demons around so he doesn’t worry about much. 

Spends his time waiting for the chosen undead laying around with you. 

Likes it when you’re laying on top or against him cause it lets him play with you.

Happy rumbles when he sees you.

“Look at my boyfriend! He’s so fucking small!” 

Really wants to train you to fight.

Lays in a bed of fire with you on top of him, his body protecting you from the heat.

Really blushy if he ever forgets his loincloth. 

Doesn’t realize that shouting at people to not look will only draw their attention.

Capra demon 

Tall but feels short for a demon. 

Actually a really good dancer (he pretends he’s using his swords.) 

Dog person. 

Likes to get into “friendly” competitions with you.

He’ll try to let you win but he’s too competitive. 

Wants to explore the world with you.

Thinks magic is really cool. 

Fuck shields tho. 

Really likes being the little spoon. 

Mothman 

You two met underneath a flickering street lamp.

Neither of you actually noticed each other until he bumped into you. 

You screamed, he fluttered his wings. 

When you both calmed down, he gave you a curious look cause he expected you to run. 

He’s really tall and you have crane your neck to see his face, but all you see are two red eyes. 

He wanders off and something in the back of your head tells you to follow. 

He brings you to a small opening in a forest where fireflies float about. 

He plops down and you sit beside him. 

He opens up fast and wraps an arm/wing around you as you both watch the show the bugs put on for you. 

You do this every week without ever saying a word. 

Last time you two met, he planted a kiss on your forehead and you two fell asleep on the ground, laying together. 

He soft.

#the reader is any gender #or no gender #whatever floats your boat

[justalittlebitlovely]

3,4,11,20,27,30,38,42,44,50,52,57,65,66 👀,72,77,78,80,83,86,90,94,95,96,99,100,102,118,119,120,123,124,135,138,140,143,147,161,165,166,167,169,174,182,183,186,193,194,200

tino why did you pick s o MANY

3. Do you have any allergies? 

yeah technically I’m allergic to like, pollen, but it doesn’t affect me soooo

4. What is the longest your hair has ever been? 

probably…. as long as it is now???

11. What foreign country would you most like to visit and why? 

tbh I want to go RIGHT BACK to the parts of France that I went my freshman year….. Bring Me Back to Nice!!! Bring Me Back to Avignon!!!! why?? because I miss it THAT’S WHY

20. What is your go-to Starbucks drink? 

white chocolate mocha! slurp

27. Favorite song to sing in the shower? 

any of mine, and it depends on the day

30. Any styles of music you do not like? 

country music, especially pop country….Get That Outta Here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

38. What is the heaviest you have ever weighed? 

hhhhhhhhhhh 130, which is how much I weighed when I got home this summer

42. Favorite non-chocolate candy? 

Every Candy. chomp

44. If you could have one superpower, which one would you most like to have?

oof it’s hard for me to pick between flight & invisibility

50. Do you drink soda? If so, which one is your favorite? 

not much b/c I don’t tolerate it well lmao *looks at the coke I just downed* yeah. usually root beer is my favorite

52. Spring or autumn?

can I choose both? both. they’re my favorite seasons.

57. Last musical artist you saw live?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh well as a music major I go to like Every Music Performance on campus so it was probably someone doing jazz??? but other than campus things it was probably…oh jeez, back when I saw P!ATD two years ago….take me back to that night goddamn

65. Have you ever been in the audience for the taping of a TV show?

no lmao

66. How long was your longest relationship? Are you still with that person?

TINO YOU’RE JUST ASKING THIS BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT’S YOU (11 months and yes)

72. Real or fake Christmas trees?

REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love pine trees

77. Have you ever broken any bones?

nope!!! *knocks on wood*

78. Have you ever gotten any stitches?

I don’t think so?? other than like….when I got my wisdom teeth out

80. What is the oldest piece of clothing you still wear and how old is it?

DAMNED if I know lmao most of my clothes are new since I’ve been revamping my wardrobe

83. From 1-10, how competitive are you?

ooooh that depends on the situation. if I’m good at something I’ll be hella competitive

86. Phrase you say the most?

it honestly changes so much. whatever Relatable Meme I’ve latched onto at the moment probably

90. Have you ever been a Boy/Girl Scout?

I was a girl scout actually hhhhhh when I was a kid

94. Worst habit?

always assuming the worst!!! assuming people will leave me!!! procrastination!!!   

95. Deepest fear?

again with the “assuming people will leave me!!!!” abandonment, isolation

96. Do you believe in ghosts?

at least a little bit!! I like spooky stuff……from a distance

99. Favorite costume you wore for Halloween? How old were you?

oh uhhhhhhhh my old friends and I dressed up as the teenage mutant ninja turtles during uhhh I think our sophomore or junior year of high school? I was Donatello :)

100. Favorite store to shop at?

I don’t KNOW I like clothes shopping

102. Favorite Pokémon?

VULPIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

118. Favorite fandom?

lmaooooooo hell if I know!!!! this question is weird bc I don’t know if it’s referring to the content itself or like…. the actual fandom. 

119. Oldest memory?

once my twin brother and I drew all over each other with markers and hid from our parents >:)

120. Have you ever snorted when you laughed?

probably???

123. Random boy’s name.

Remus (I’ve got Lupin on the brain)

124. Random girls’ name. 

Sasha (it’s bc of your dog, tino)

135. Describe your sense of humor.

I don’t even know how dhsoifhsfs memes and stupid shit and puns & stuff that really shouldn’t be funny but is??

138. Name a moment in your life when you were pleasantly surprised.

oh!!! my senior year of high school I had a really nice solo in our show choir show (it was a duet technically but I had a little solo part at the beginning of it) and at one of the competitions I was rewarded best female soloist out of everyone :’’’’) I was so shocked & happy

140. Have you ever left a movie theater before the movie was done?

I don’t think so???

143. Have you ever gotten a song you dislike stuck in your head?

who hasn’t hdosfhsofs

147. Where on your body are you the most ticklish?

I don’t know :’)

161. Do you like horror movies?

ehhhhh I don’t think I’ve really seen any actually scary ones. like…. I’ve seen two but they weren’t scary?? I don’t think I’d mind horror movies as long as they’re not ones that focus on jumpscares b/c eeeeeeeeee jumpscares & anxiety do not mix

165. Name one item from your bucket list.

I want…. to sing to a stadium of people & have them all singing along to a song I wrote :’) the dream

166. From 1-10, how much do you like children?

….eh….. 3 or 4, maybe

167. Have you ever thought about your wedding?

honestly I’m probably one of the only people on the planet who hasn’t, ever??? which is super weird b/c I’m such a hopeless romantic??? idk man

169. Favorite flower? 

I love daisies!!! but I love any flower tbh

174. What was your favorite toy to play with when you were a child?

I had two beanie babies, cat & lamb, and they were my first two imaginary friends too :’)

182. Do you like karaoke?

I’ve only done it like…..twice, and it was alone so it was kinda sad lol

183. Have you ever written a love letter?

honestly? probably lmaoooo

186. Any guilty pleasures?

does reading fic at 3am count

193. Were you voted a “best” or “most likely to” in high school?

I was actually!!! Me and one of my old friends (who was also the guy I had the show choir duet with, hah) were both voted “most likely to become famous”!!! guess I was known for my voice after all :’) (he’s an amazing artist. seriously. what the FUCK)

194. Have you ever gotten detention? 

nah I’m an angel :)

200. How long have you been on tumblr?

hhhh I joined the day before my junior prom, so…. about 3 years? (I also went to prom that year with the same old friend that I had that duet with, hah. I still have the poster he made me :’) anh, if you’re out there,,,,)

god dammit tino. god fuckin dammit. are you happy???

#this took almost an hour shfisdhfsofs #ask #anon #except I know it was tino

[thesinglesjukebox]

CHANCE THE RAPPER - I MIGHT NEED SECURITY

[4.64]

And we might need a better song.

Will Rivitz: Even two full years after its release, I still struggle with just how monumental a step back Coloring Book was for Chance The Rapper's artistic evolution. How could the man who characterized the convolutions and uncertainties of young adulthood so adroitly and poetically set all of those poignant observations aside in favor of an uncritical appreciation of the glories of fatherhood and a shallow nostalgia for how things used to be? I guess what got me was the album's unprecedented change of attitude: I would never in a million years have guessed that Acid Rap's nuanced self-criticism could have morphed into a Disneyfied version of itself not even three years later. In that regard, at least "I Might Need Security" does indeed have a precedent: this is the narcissistic and toxically insecure Chance we've all gotten to know since 2016. "I ain't no activist, I'm the protagonist" is consistent with the Chance who, when a poem he wrote for NPR's Tiny Desk last year was interrupted by the sound of an elevator, started again from the beginning, because the idea of continuing where he left off would have been inconceivable. "I donate to the schools next, they call me a deadbeat daddy" is consistent with the Chance who slid into a Twitter rando's DMs to tell them to "get off [his] dick" because the user had the nerve to say Chance's proposal to his baby mama may have come a few years too late to generate goodwill. "I'll make you fix your words like a typo suggestion / Pat me on the back too hard and Pat'll ask for your job" is consistent with the Chance who made MTV remove a review critical of Coloring Book because it wasn't well-suited to his tastes. (The review, which sums up my thoughts on the album better than most anything else I've seen, was reposted by the author on his Medium page.) At least he's being honest here. [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Interesting thing about Chance the Rapper's debut mixtape 10 Day: It wasn't good, it was fine. Besides songs like "Juke Juke" in which you could sort of see his more manic tendencies emerging, a lot of Chance's earliest material was mealy mouthed rappity rap that was adequate but ultimately boring. It's why Acid Rap, where he did find his voice, was so much more rightfully received and recognized. While Chance's excesses and tics have now become downright aggravating, it made sense that he went in that direction because as a straight rapper there's just nothing compelling to his plain lyrics and delivery. Apparently, you might need proof as well, and lucky for us Chance decided to provide such. [2]

Ryo Miyauchi: The Jamie Foxx sample is the only redeemable thing here with Chance throwing random fake-deep rhymes to a piano-led beat that vaguely channels The College Dropout in feel. It's a life update as a stopgap release between his album presumably in the works, and yet another reminder that Chance has been a hero to Chicago since Coloring Book. It's an exhausting point he keeps on reiterating. Will he lighten his sense of self-importance if we erect that statue he so craves to be built? [5]

Julian Axelrod: Chance's nice guy phase was never going to last. You can't be that rich and that famous for that long without a few compromises and some dirty laundry, and the distinctly Obama-era rap star has had a decidedly post-2016 descent. The Noname collabs gave way to DJ Khaled features; the label aversion morphed into Apple Music kowtowing; the social media savvy proved ineffectual in the face of fan criticism. So "I Might Need Security" presents a new Chance: bitter, prickly, his grin warped into an wary smirk. Luckily, this Chance is still a hell of a rapper, and even in the midst of a 45 degree heel turn he's bubbly enough to spit over a cheeky Jamie Foxx sample that makes no bones about his beef. I might actually like Chance 2.0 better than the original; he looks good with his back against the ropes and some dirt under his nails. But I'm predisposed to like any song that big ups Verne Troyer and clowns Rahm Emanuel, so take my opinion with a grain of celery salt. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A mixed bag, just like everything Chance has done since mid-2016. Points in its favor: Chance announcing that he bought a news site in the second verse of a loosie, "I'm only 25 but I'm Motown 25," calling for Rahm to resign. Points against: all the woe is me, heavy is the crown shit, the Verne Troyer pun, half of his punchlines in general. And yet "I Might Need Security" still works, in spite of itself-- maybe it's just the Jamie Foxx sample, but Chance is channeling mid-2000s Kanye here at his most maddeningly likeable. [6]

Vikram Joseph: An airing of grievances and a settling of scores (some of them on a widescreen, political scale, and some which need Infinite Jest-level footnoting to comprehend), juxtaposed with Chance's laconic flow and a hazy, sun-bleached beat which almost drifts into "Drinking in L.A." at one point. The dreamy "fuck you" hook serves as microcosm for the song - there's anger here, but it's so palatable. [8]

Ian Mathers: Some of the content here is good, even possibly important. But I don't remember Chance sounding this outright halting in places before, and that sample really sounded like such a good idea they're just going to let it have the last 45 seconds of the track, huh? [3]

Alfred Soto: He's twenty-five ("Motown twenty-five"), expects to see a statue in his honor, and samples a Jamie Foxx routine's "fuck you." Relative to his modest talents, his ego annoys the hell out of me but not as much as his irregularly deployed sing-song: he can't decide whether to cram too many syllables per line or speak-sing the leaden moments. His good intentions scare me most. [4]

Stephen Eisermann: The problem with Chance is his commitment to telling us he's a good guy - the protagonist, even - without doing any of the work. He continues doing the same here, and even though he makes some good points while calling out some bad players (with shaky wordplay, at best), his lack of self-awareness is nearly as hard to swallow as his pride. [4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The cover of this single is a rendering of the Arthur's fist meme and the song is held together by a chipmunk'd Jamie Foxx sample. These things make "I Might Need Security" a smart PR move of a song: there's a clear link made between his happy-go-lucky personality and what's present here. He sounds more self-conscious than ever, well-worn to the point of actual aggression. When he finally takes the sample's lead and declares "fuck you," it's clear that he doesn't want it to read as anything other than acerbic. While this may sculpt a more complete image of who Chance is, it unfortunately sounds more labored over and tedious than the majority of his catalogue. Hearing Chance's straightforward talk-rapping recalls his poetry slam past--especially since it's coupled with a beat as static as this--and it doesn't particularly play to his strengths. As listeners, we're asked to primarily revel in the lyrics. When I do, it sounds like a whole lot of boring whining. Which begs the question, why would I want to listen to this? [2]

Nortey Dowuona: Smooth, chipmunk curse coos echo in the back as they hit the slack, soft drums, as purring, bulging bass then drizzling. Deep piano is lathered over as Chance snarls thin threats that bulge out of the cotton candy wool of the production. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Chance the Rapper #music #new music #rap #hip-hop #music writing #music reviews