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kristallioness · 4 years

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The candy thief

Summary: Kya goes to search for some healing candy.

Word count: 3,218

Author's note: Honestly, I came up with this idea BEFORE I fell ill this past Thursday. *angry muttering* Long story short, my dad caught a nasty cold about 2 weeks ago and apparently, now I finally have it, too (so does my mom, which makes sense since we're all cooped up together at home, as most people are nowadays). Luckily it started off with only a mildly sore throat this time (that's pretty rare in my case) and the rest of the symptoms were barely noticeable, so I'm fine with that (and as of this Tuesday, I already feel quite normal again, which is good since I gotta be healthy if I wanna get my flu shot next Friday). At least I had a personal point of reference while writing the story (not that I intended to have one *lol*)... Anyways, I remember when I was a little girl, then sometimes I didn't dare to admit that my throat was sore, or I really hoped that it'd go away if I waited long enough. Instead, I chose to suffer for at least half a day (before the pain became unbearable or I realized that it isn't going anywhere), cause I was afraid that my mom would start lecturing me that I wasn't careful enough when I caught that cold in the first place (she did anyway, but just a little bit, and after that she of course did everything to help me feel better). So, I kind of took that idea and self-inserted my silly child version into Kya's character, to show how she'd try to keep it secret for as long as she could by sneaking past her mommy to find some medicine on her own. Which, knowing Katara, is practically a "mission impossible".

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Telling mommy was the last thing on Kya's mind. The 3-year-old reluctantly swallowed another mouthful of warm jook, lifting up the next bite with her spoon as she still had the other half of the plate to finish.

"What's the matter, sweetie? Aren't you hungry?"

Kya shook her head and quickly took a bite to not arouse suspicion. Katara eyed her for a second longer, then shrugged her shoulders and continued drying the rest of the dishes.

The poor little waterbender had no idea how much longer she could possibly tolerate this pain. Ever since she woke up, her throat had been killing her. Last night, it started off as a weird scratchy feeling on one side, which didn't really seem that bad when her mother tucked her in bed. But by the time morning arrived, it had spread all across the back of her throat.

"You seem kind of quiet this morning. Is everything okay?" Katara wondered, running the towel over the ladle she'd used to cook breakfast for herself and her baby girl.

"Mhmm," Kya hummed and nodded with her mouth full. She wished that she could enjoy this delicious food more without having to think and prepare herself for the burning sensation each time she swallowed it. Jook was one of her favourite dishes, but it certainly didn't taste as pleasant as usual right now. She'd had enough of this torture.

Kya grabbed her half empty plate from the kitchen table and hopped off the high chair to walk over to her mother and hand the dirty dishes to her. Katara smiled and squatted down as she saw her baby girl approach her, taking the plate off her hands.

"Can I go play?" she asked innocently.

"Yes, sweetie. You can go ahead and play in your room now."

After receiving a tender kiss on her forehead, Kya hurried out of the kitchen. But instead of scampering back to her bedroom, she tried to be stealthy and reach the infirmary without her mother, or anyone else seeing.

Kya knew very well what would happen if she told mommy the truth: first, mommy would become angry and she'd get berated for not taking care of herself better. Then, she'd get dragged to the healing hut inside their temple and her mommy would poke her with these scary instruments to find out what's wrong. And finally, she'd have to drink some sort of bitter tea or take some other kind of nasty medicine for a couple of days before she started to feel better.

Coming clean was surely out of the question. There had to be another way she could both hide, yet relieve her suffering. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Kya managed to sneak into the infirmary room unnoticed. She gave the hallway one last glance to be certain she wasn't followed, after which she made her way to the cupboards at the back of the room.

The healing hut, as her mother liked to call it, was a spacious room no bigger than the dining hall used by the residents of their little island. She passed several empty beds, which were covered with indigo blankets that had pretty flower patterns on them, and white pillows for resting your weary head on. These beds were meant for mommy's patients - be it a member of their own family, one of the air acolytes, or sick strangers who desperately needed mommy's help from time to time. Kya never liked having to sit on or rest in any of them.

As she reached the other end of the room, she paused for a minute to think. There were two cupboards on the floor and three cabinets hanging up on the wall. They all looked the same with their delicate wooden carvings, but they contained various items that mommy usually used to help sick people feel better. Now came the hard part: where to find the right medicine?

Kya knew what she was looking for. The last couple of times she'd suffered from a sore throat, Katara had given her some special lemon-flavoured candies to suck on, which helped soothe the pain until it disappeared a day or two later. If she could get her hands on them, she might be able to make it through without having to tell her mother.

The little waterbender opened the squeaky doors of the first cupboard and had a peek inside. She didn't have any luck on her first try. The shelves were full of materials for wrapping up sprains or bandaging wounds, along with a couple of clean towels and a few tins that contained stinky salves.

It was the same with the other cupboard right next to it. Nothing resembled those candies Kya remembered eating the last time she was sick. She had no other choice but to get a closer look at the cabinets high up on the wall. The problem was how was she ever going to reach them?

For a little girl like her, it was supposed to be impossible. Katara had stored all the vitamins, pills and pointy medical instruments up there, so her kids wouldn't get their hands on them and harm themselves by accident.

Kya climbed up on the nearest bed to have a better view of what's in there. But she was still too far away to open the cabinet doors on her own. Was there anything she could use as an extension of her arms? Maybe she could make a lasso out of the towels or an elastic bandage and toss it around the handle?

Instead, she noticed the two big pots filled with bending water in the corners of the room. Mommy would normally use that water for healing purposes, but it gave her an idea.

The little waterbender knitted her brows, summoning an uneven stream of water from one of them. She couldn't control the element exactly the way she wanted it to behave, but if she could just get it around the door handle..

And then there was a loud bang. The 3-year-old startled and lost complete control over the water, which splashed down on the cupboard below, leaving a small puddle in front of it on the floor.

She'd nearly managed to pull the cabinet door wide open when she lost her waterbending grip and gravity did its job, thus causing it to fall back shut. Her mother's tactic justified itself. It was a miracle if she didn't hear the noise.

Kya climbed back down from the bed to go clean up the mess. Using her clumsy waterbending, she attempted to place the water back into the pot. The blobs she carried between her hands dripped from beneath, leaving a trail of wet spots on the floor.

"What are you doing there?"

The next blob fell down on her booties and soaked them. She'd left one important variable out of the equation - her daddy returning from his morning meditation outside in the pavilion. She stood completely still, having been caught red-handed. Or wet-handed was more like it.

"Nothing," she uttered, guilt written over her face. Aang stepped inside the infirmary, surprised to see his baby girl in there in the first place. She avoided this place like fire.

"It sure doesn't look like nothing. What happened? Why's there water on the furniture?"

Kya hung her head in shame as her daddy squatted down in front of her, laying a supportive hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay, I'm not mad. I just wanna know what happened. Were you practicing your waterbending?"

She shook her head in response.

"No? Then what were you doing in here?"

Kya stared up at the row of cabinets hanging from the wall, taunting her for her small height and inability to fend for herself. She pointed her finger at the one she'd tried to open earlier.

"I wanted healing candy," she said, sparking a bit of confusion in her father. She didn't know any fancier words that'd describe the medicinal sweets she was after.

"You wanted what?"

"Healing candy," she repeated one more time, watching how daddy waterbended her shoes dry so her feet wouldn't get cold. Not that it mattered anymore since she already had a cold.

"Don't tell mommy," the 3-year-old pleaded. Now Aang felt even more confused.

"Why not? I'll help you clean up here and tell mommy it was an accident. It's no big deal."

To demonstrate, he waterbended the top of the cupboard dry with one simple flick of his wrist. He moved on to cleaning up the wet tracks on the floor.

"Mommy's gonna be angry."

Her reasoning made the airbender chuckle since there'd barely be a trace of the mishap left by the time he finished.

"What? Why would mommy be angry at you?"

"Cause my throat hurts."

Aang had to pause for a second as everything began to fall into place. He dropped the dirty water into the sink and turned to face his daughter.

"Oh, you poor thing.." he murmured, running his fingers through her hair to console her.

"Now I get it. You wanted some of those special candies that mommy has that can soothe your sore throat, right? But you couldn't reach the cabinet, so you tried to open it with your waterbending."

"Mhmm," the little waterbender agreed with a nod. Aang pondered for a minute before he proposed a plan that wouldn't frighten her any more than she already was for going behind their backs and lying about her condition.

"Tell you what, I promise I won't tell mommy about your sore throat. But I need to go ask her where she keeps those special candies so I can give you some. Okay?"

Kya wasn't too happy about that last part, cause then her mommy would figure it out. But it was the only way she could get her hands on the right medicine if daddy didn't know where to look for it either.

"Is there anything else I can get you? Your mini Appa, perhaps?"

"No. I want candy," she said, determined to get rid of the constant burning sensation. She didn't care whether mommy would be mad at her or not anymore. She just wanted the pain to go away.

"Alright. Be a good girl and wait right here. I'll be back in a minute."

Aang patted her head before standing up and leaving the room to go search for Katara.

In the meantime, Kya perched on the edge of the bed opposite to the cupboards to give her feet a rest. She swung them back and forth, patiently waiting for her daddy to return. Mentally, she was preparing herself for the lecture her mother was bound to give her on being more careful when it concerned her health.

She pricked up her ears, but couldn't hear her parents talking in any of the rooms nearby. Her curiosity got the better of her after a minute or two had already passed, so she went to peek into the empty hallway. Once she saw her mommy stepping out of the kitchen, she quickly hurried back to the bed where she was told to stay.

"I'll show you where it is, so the next time you need it, you'll know where to look," Kya heard her mother speak. It wasn't long until she entered the healing hut, followed shortly by her daddy.

But to her surprise, mommy looked happy rather than angry. She headed straight for the middle cabinet and opened the door on the left side. Katara didn't even seem to notice that she was sitting there on the bed behind them.

"It's right here on the lower shelf, next to the bottle of vitamins."

She picked up the correct box of lozenges and put it on the cupboard for her husband to see.

"Alright, I'll definitely remember it now. Thanks!"

He gifted her with a tiny peck on the cheek. The little waterbender already felt that she was off the hook. While her parents were distracted by their show of affection, she'd hopped off the bed and squeezed herself between their bodies to reach for the medicine on the counter. But it was too far away, and then her mother came down to her level to talk.

"Kya, do you wanna tell me what's going on? Why's daddy looking for these healing candies?"

All of a sudden, she felt cornered again. Maybe mommy wasn't as clueless as she'd hoped. Kya stared up into her daddy's grey eyes in search of answers, unsure about what she should do. Luckily, Aang helped her out.

"Do you want me to tell mommy?"

Her mouth fell a bit agape. It wasn't until then that she realized that daddy had kept his promise. He hadn't mentioned a word to mommy about her being the reason why he wanted to know the location of the candies.

Ultimately, Kya decided it'd be better if he took the blame. She nodded. And that was all Aang needed to hear, or see.

"She has a sore throat," he confessed, squatting down to her and Katara's level, pulling their baby girl into his protective embrace by resting an arm around her shoulders.

Kya looked away, expecting her mother to raise her voice at her. Instead, she felt her mother's warm hand cupping her cheek and gently lifting her chin up so she could look her in the eye. She was frowning.

"Oh, sweetie.. Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

When she remained silent, Aang chimed in.

"She was scared that you'll get angry at her for falling ill."

"Is this true, baby?"

The little waterbender fiddled with her fingers for a bit, then gazed into her mother's blue eyes and nodded shyly. Katara released a heavy sigh, as if she'd been holding her breath the entire time.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I never mean to get mad at you. It's just that.. I'm worried about you when you don't feel well. And when I'm worried, sometimes I might overreact a bit."

"A bit?" Aang laughed, but shushed up when Katara glared at him. She continued brushing her fingers through their daughter's hair to soothe her.

"The point is.. Next time you feel sick, you don't have to be afraid to tell me, okay? We all get sick every now and again. The important thing is to start the right treatment as soon as possible, because then you'll feel better a lot quicker. Do you understand that?"

Kya didn't comprehend everything what her mother said, but she did understand that her mommy felt sorry, and that it's okay to approach her the next time she felt under the weather.

"Come here."

Katara spread her arms and invited her baby in for a hug.

"Now, will you be a brave little waterbender and let mommy have a look at your throat?" she whispered into Kya's ear, to which she broke free from the hug and ran back between her daddy's legs, hiding her head under his shawl. Aang started laughing again.

"Looks like she's still scared."

Even Katara found the situation to be funny. She giggled as she stood up and opened the other side of the cabinet where she'd gotten the lozenges.

"Kya, I'm not going to hurt you," she reassured the little waterbender, who turned around to peep at what she was doing from under her red hood. Her mother placed a glass tube on the counter, next to the box of candies she wanted.

"I only wanna look into your mouth to see if your throat is red," Katara claimed as she knelt back down and shifted closer to her. Aang urged Kya to come out of hiding and take a step closer to her mommy so she could examine her.

"Can you open wide and show me your tongue, like this?"

Katara demonstrated for her by sticking out her own tongue, hoping that Kya would mimic her. Once she did, she pressed her tongue down with a wooden stick to see the back of her throat. It did seem a tad red, but there was nothing that would indicate a serious infection.

"Good girl," Katara praised.

"Say 'Aahh'!"

"Aahh!" Kya repeated obediently, allowing her mother to pull the stick out of her mouth. Next, she threw it away in the trash bin and gently pressed her fingertips below her jaw on either side of her neck.

"Don't worry, I'm just gonna feel your neck for a bit to see if it's swollen," Katara explained while palpating the lymph nodes in that area. She tickled her chin in the end, earning a short giggle from her baby girl. It was high time she rewarded her for her good behaviour.

"Alright, I think you've been through enough."

She reached for the box of lozenges, pulled it open and pushed one out from the blister pack.

"Here you go, sweetie. Suck on this and your throat will feel a little better for a while."

Kya took the yellow piece of candy from her mother's palm and shoved it in her mouth. After she'd swallowed a couple of times, the dissolving medicine slowly began to do its job.

"Thank you, mommy!"

The elder waterbender grinned and gifted her with another tender kiss on her temple.

"You're welcome, baby. Do you mind if I take your temperature while you suck on your healing candy? I wanna be sure you don't have a fever."

Since the little waterbender showed no signs of protest, her parents escorted her to the nearest bed. Aang sat down next to her for moral support, watching how she happily sucked on the lozenge while his wife tried to measure her temperature.

Katara grabbed the thermometer and squatted down in front of Kya. Using her motherly, but caring tone, she explained in rather great detail why she's tucking it under her arm. It was a sight that made the airbender's heart flutter with joy - a healer doing what she does best.

"Aang, could you apply some pressure here to make sure it's in contact with her skin and doesn't slip anywhere?"

"Sure."

He held his hand against Kya's upper arm to keep the thermometer in place for a few minutes. She no longer seemed to mind them prodding her in any way. She had what she'd wanted: sweet relief, literally.

Katara stroked their daughter's rosy cheek with the back of her hand to pass the time. She wore a loving smile, but her brows were furrowed in concern. She was thinking of a way to remind her baby girl why it was essential for her to know when she's sick.

"Sweetie.. I wanna help you feel better, but I can only do that if you tell me what's wrong. Will you promise me that from now on, when you don't feel well, you'll let mommy know right away?"

"Okay, mommy."

Katara let out a content hum at that. She scooted closer and pressed one last kiss on the little waterbender's forehead.

"Good girl. And in turn, I promise I'll try not to overreact so much."

She pulled the thermometer out from under her tunic and had a look at the silver line of mercury inside the glass. Her smile grew wider, she had no fever.

#Kataangtag #Kataang #Aang and Kya II #Katara and Kya II #Aang #Katara #Kya II #ATLA and TLOK #my fanfiction #mine #shards of Kristal

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katedrakeohd · 4 years

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Cordonia 1885

[Masterlist]

Previously on Cordonia 1885 - After being rescued from the bloody prison of his hotel room, Drake has been taken to the safe haven of Mary's family home.

But how safe is he really?

Cast of Cordonian characters: Drake Walker, Bastien Lykel and Bloody Mary (OC)

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Series Notes / Warnings :

Major character death, blood, vampirism, graphic descriptions of corpses, angst, swearing, content of a sexual nature, animal death. -

(sorry folks this isn't a romantic comedy)

Word count: 2080

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- Chapter Four -

The stair treads creak under their feet as they go up. The smell of decay is thicker up here, and it makes Drake's eyes water. He was starting to suspect that there was a dead body, or bodies in the house. At the top of the stairs there are four doors, all ajar except for one.

Drake covers his mouth and nose with his bent elbow, muffling his voice.

“M – Mary? Seriously don't you smell that? Is there something or someone dead in this house? You said that your father died, but what happened to your mother?”

Mary doesn't answer at first and just leads Drake to a bedroom at the end of the hall, “Mother and I exchanged letters monthly while I was working for the Beaumonts, but two months ago her letters stopped. She had mentioned an illness, and doctor visits.”

“Were you able to come see her before she..passed?”

“Just once, and she had become so sick that she had taken to her bed to await her end.”

“Is she still here?”

“N..no,” she lied.

Before Drake can respond, Mary grabs him by the elbow and pulls him into her father's room.

The bedroom contains a large wooden bed, wash stand with basin and mirror, and a dresser. In the corner a coat rack is wearing a wool overcoat similar to Drake's. A pair of men's leather shoes sit on the floor at the base of the rack. A bar of shaving soap and a straight razor sit next to the wash basin. Mary lights the candles on the dresser, near the wash stand, as well as one on the windowsill.

Drake sits on the end of the bed and watches her prepare the room. She opens dresser drawers and shows him the contents, “Father was a tall man, but not too tall, and wasn't an overeater. His clothes should fit you.”

Drake looks around the room again, appreciating how neatly it's been kept. Mary takes off Drake's wool coat and hangs it on the rack next to her Father's. When she walks back over to stand in front of him, he notices the smeared dark stains on her undergarments for the first time. But none of the bloody areas were fresh, or spreading, so her clothes weren't hiding any wounds.

He looks down at the blood on his own hands, and clothing. “The blood all over the hotel mattress wasn't yours was it?”

Mary shakes her head slowly and steps over closer to unbutton his shirt. “Definitely not mine.”

Her fingers feel cool against his skin as she slides the shirt down off of his shoulders, letting it fall down his arms and pool around his waist.

“But..but I didn't find any cuts on me either.” He says nervously, as she unbuttons his trousers.

Mary puts her hand on his neck and brushes her thumb across the itchy welt below his ear, making him shiver and his skin pimple with goosebumps.

She leans in and kisses his mouth, continuing to rub gently at the spot on his neck. When he leans forward to kiss her back, she pulls back and then shifts her mouth to his ear, whispering, “I didn't cut you Drake. I bit you.”

Drake recoils at her cool breath on his skin, scrambling backward on the bed, his arms tangling in the sleeves of his shirt as it gets trapped beneath him.

“Y- you bit me? Hard enough to make me bleed!?”

Mary unties the ribbons at the bodice of her undershirt and then slides down the waistband of her underpants, letting her clothes drop to the floor. Drake watches her climb naked onto the bed after him, her eyes looking darker than they did before. But it's not passion he sees, but a hunger of a different kind. The mark on his neck starts to tingle and the itching in his groin flares to life when he sees her lick her lips.

Mary straddles his lap, and traps his forearms by his sides. Drake is shocked at how incredibly strong she is for someone so slightly built. He looks up at her with panic in his eyes as her lips spread into a sharp toothed smile. He sucks in a breath and his mouth drops open.

“Sssh, screaming won't help you one bit. There's nobody to hear you.”

“But..but..Bas..Bastien?” he stammers, twisting his shoulders up off the bed and trying to break free. “What in the hell are you?”

Mary releases his arms and strokes her fingers down the sides of his neck and along the contours of his shoulders and chest, smiling at the way he tries to swallow down his mixture of fear and desire. His eyes travel down her naked body, and he tries to wet his lips though his mouth has gone dry.

Mary tips her head back and laughs, “We're vampires, Drake.”

“You struggled too much the first time I bit your neck and it made me waste so much of your blood. And when I bit you here,” Mary rocks her hips against his groin, causing Drake to gasp at his body’s response. “You liked it so much you wouldn't stay still so I could finish what I started. You have a remarkable tolerance for alcohol, and I was expecting you to be more drunk while I fed from you.”

Drake is speechless as he struggled to understand what he was being told. His attempts to buck her off are halted by the viselike clamp of her thighs. She shakes her head and clucks her tongue to scold him.

“Struggling is just going to bruise your beautiful skin and exhaust you, and I want you to be awake for this.”

“Awake..for w-what?” he protests, as she leans forward and covers his body with hers.

“We want to make you one of us.” she purrs seductively, as she nuzzles his ear.

Laying chest to chest, Mary can feel his heart thumping against his ribs.

“Try to relax, Drake. Pretend we're just lovers cuddling after sex,” she whispers, turning his head to the side to expose his neck.

“I..I can't move. And this hardly feels like cuddling.” Drake whimpers as he feels her tongue touch his skin.

Close your eyes, and try to calm down. The faster your heart beats, the quicker you'll bleed out. I just want another taste of you. You're so damn delicious.

Drake blinks rapidly in surprise when he hears her soothing voice in his head. “How..how do you do that?” he whispers.

It's one of my gifts, now sssh. Just listen to the sound of my voice and relax a little. The hammering of your heart is deafening. Just breathe, and you might even enjoy this.

“Enjoy..wh- ,” but his words are cut off when he feels the pinch of her fangs and the suction of her lips against his skin.

Mmm, so delicious. Just breathe and relax. I want you docile, not dead.

Drake feels an overwhelming dizziness and fatigue numb his senses and limbs. It was like being heavily intoxicated and mildly aroused at the same time. When he tries to open his eyes he can't.

A sensuous moan resonates out of Mary's throat and Drake is transported back to a few hours ago and their romp in the hotel room. As he slips into unconsciousness he recalls mental flashes of soft perfumed skin and impossibly red lips being pressed against him. His heart skips and falters in its rhythm and his last thought is Mary..please stop.

“Mary, stop!” Bastien's voice booms out as his tall figure fills the doorway.

Sitting back, Mary wipes at the trickle of blood running down her chin and glares in Bastien's direction for the interruption. When Bastien takes a menacing lunge forward, meaning to grab for her, Mary leaps from Drake's unconscious body and scrambles over to the other side of the bed.

She makes no move to cover herself as she rushes around the corner and tries to push Bastien back out of the room.

He easily sidestepped her attack and spun around to catch her by the wrist before she can regain her balance and strike again.

“Stop it, you fool!” he warns, “I'm stronger than you and can snap you like a twig.”

Mary snarls at him, and tries to claw at his eyes, but he grabs her arm and forces her down onto the floor on her knees. He tightens his grip on her and crisscrosses her wrists up under her throat to subdue her. “I said stop!”

Mary looks up at him with anger and contempt in her eyes, but stops struggling.

“I want him for myself! Show me how to make him mine.” she wails.

Bastien shakes his head, “No, I told you to get him cleaned up and dressed, not to finish him off.”

Mary sags down onto the floor in defeat and Bastien lets her go. She turns away from his disapproving, piercing gaze and looks over to Drake's prone body on the bed.

Bastien grabs the sleep shirt hanging on the back of the bedroom door and tosses it at her. “Cover yourself for Christ's sake! He's still a mortal man and your nakedness is too much of a distraction. You were a decent chamber maid once, now do what I ask. Go prepare him a bath. I'll pick him out some clothes and then revive him, if it's not too late.”

Mary sighs, getting up from the floor and pulling the oversized sleepwear over her head. It was hardly as elegant as her own frilly undergarments, but at least she wouldn't be performing her chore naked.

“Are you forgetting that I was fired because of my poor housemaid skills?”

“No, you were fired because you were a mistress who couldn't keep her mouth shut.” Bastien snaps back, as he pours water from the pitcher into the wash basin. “Now, go. Before I get more angry.”

She turns to give Bastien a dirty look before she leaves, but his attention is already taken by rummaging through her father's dresser for clothing.

Bastien pulls a simple button down cotton shirt, underpants and a pair of wool trousers, along with a set of braces to hold them up. The clothes were in decent condition despite being of lower quality. He had to remind himself that this was the home of a commoner and not to expect a Noble’s finery. He lays out the clothes on the top of the dresser and then sighs with dismay at the horrible state of Drake's shaggy beard and hair. Both were matted with blood and in desperate need of a trim.

Thankfully there's a razor and soap handy because the poor bastard needs a shave.

Grasping Drake's ankles he drags him down to the end of the bed and removes his trousers.

My goodness, he's hairy everywhere it seems.

Balling up his smelly and worn out trousers into a ball he tosses them to the corner. Cocking his head to the side he smirks with disapproval at the bites Mary had made on the inside of his thigh.

Amateur. If her fangs had torn a bigger hole he would have bled out his whole supply in seconds. No wonder the hotel bed was in such a foul mess when we found him.

She had stupidly left fang Mark’s on his penis too. Poor guy must have been in a state of itchy, firey agony.

With a sigh, Bastien tucks his fingers in the junction of Drake's thigh and groin to test for a pulse. He's pleased to detect a faint throb of life under the skin amid the bloody mess of his pubic hair. Oh good, she didn't totally kill him…yet.

Pulling him upright, he relieves Drake of his shirt, and then repositions him on the bed so that he can give him a shave.

When Mary returns to tell Bastien that the bath was ready, she's pleased to see Drake with a clean face and a handsome moustache on his lip. His hair has also been dampened and combed into place.

“He's starting to look better,” she grins as she appreciates his nakedness. “Do we have to put clothes back on him?”

Bastien sighs, “Yes, Mary. Is the bath ready and the fire stoked?”

Mary nods.

“Good. Now while I carry him downstairs I want you to bring along his clothes.”

tagging:

@texaskitten30 @janezillow @hopefulmoonobject @dcbbw @pedudley @ravenpuff02 @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @indiacater @kingliam2019 @walkerswhiskeygirl @bobasheebaby @emceesynonymroll @kimmiedoo5 @sirbeepsalot @xxrainbow-princessxx @losingbraincellseveryday

#drake walker #long post #cordonia 1885 #blood #vampires

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dontletthishappentoyou · 3 years

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Shows Bonding - I had mild concerns in the first season that were absolutely addressed in the second. Overall, this was what I was looking for. I realized that I’ve been mostly doing cartoons for the past couple years, and it was nice to have some live action stuff that pulled off what it was going for with its characters as well as this one.

Community - Going into this one not knowing if it’ll have the things I like or the things I dislike about Dan Harmon. Turns out it has both, but right now I’m mostly enjoying it for the same kinds of reasons people enjoy Friends or all those other shows that let lonely people vicariously feel that they have friends, or a community. Ratched - What the heck was this? Somebody read and watched One Flew Over the Kuckoos Nest and thought “Nurse Ratched needs a spin-off seiries.” And then they actually clearly put a ton of effort into it? It kinda worked. I kind of wish I had known what to expect a little bit. Basically, what you should expect is kind of out there historical fiction that addresses things like coming to terms with your sexuality in the age of inhumane conversion therapy, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and also petty drama with the coersion and manipulation you might expect from a spy movie and a sitcom at the same time. It works if you’re ready for that. Russian Doll - Bingeable. I wouldn’t watch a second season, but enjoyed it for what it was. I’ve been super into digging into characters lately, and this hit that spot. I found it by just searching for ‘sadcoms’ and this was exactly what I’d hope for. After Life - Ricky Gervais. Very very Ricky Gervais. To the extent that the whole time I was kind of cringing hoping, but not confident, that some of his character’s flaws would be addressed by the end of the series. Most of them were, which I guess is fine. It kind of felt like watching someone figure out how to do something you consider simple. The character arc was a mediocre version of some stuff addressed in Bojack. If you really need more Bojack and can’t find anything good, go for it with this, but meh. She-Ra - Here’s the winner for things I’ve watched this past year. The plot does get convoluted, but I might do an actual video essay about its portrayal of a psudo-leftist utopia, although the political issues it addresses are very limited, since it obviously doesn’t really get into economics or anything like that. But heteronormativiy is out the window, body types are what they are and are portrayed as unquestionably lovable, acceptance is the default, while still refusing to tolerate intolerance and imperialism. It’s interesting to pair it with a series like Ratchet that addresses homophobia directly, but I don’t think it’s failure to recognize the challenges that these people have in the real world is a downside at all. It just exists to show what things would be like without any of that. The antagonist team is generally portrayed as imperialist, stuff you’d safely call evil, while still humanizing its individual members, often delving deep into the manipulation that led them to become a part of the Horde. Which of course gets back to character. Zuko tier stuff here. Not just with the obvious one. At first I kind of disliked the main characters arc, but watched a bunch of videos about it and actually kind of figured out that some of it is largely related to my own personal failures as a person in some of my ineffective attempts to avoid negative attributes. Anyway, there’s nothing I’ve watched that I’d recommend more highly than this in a long time. Movies The Irishman - I didn’t finish this one. It had a pretentious feeling to it that made me feel like I should take the intellectual respnosibility for enjoying it myself or else risk admitting a failure of sophistocation. But it is way to telly over showy and I felt comfortable just not participating in that after the first hour went by without anything I’d clearly identify as the inciting incident. Marriage Story - Watched this with Ivy on Valentines day. Wouldn’t recommend it in that context, but once again, dug into character. Made me freak out about custody, but I’m assuming it won’t have that effect on most people. People said the acting was good, and I completely see what they mean. If I hadn’t been occasionally paying attention and having that in mind, I’m not sure I would have noticed, but that did make it extremely engaging. Room - I really enjoyed the structure of this one. It felt like halfway through it could have been the end and we would have successfully surpassed a hero’s journey or whatever, but that would have ignored the emotional consequences of the kind of issues that the story addressed, so it kept going, introduced a whole new set of characters an hour in, and I don’t think there would have been any other way it would have worked for me. Definitely something I’d recommend. Music Red Velvet - I’ve been listening to this alongside BTS and Black Pink in my dive into K-Pop. With prog and indie, you get CDs, download stuff, listen one way or another, you get your friends to listen to it, then you go to concerts to get closer to the music, witness the viruosity in the case of prog, or connect more humanly with indie. With ska and electronica, you have friends who vaguely like the genre, you go to concerts because they’ll be crazy and fun. But I’ve been kind of exploring how different musics interact with culture over the last few years. Classical, traditional Celtic, folk, and now K-Pop. Y’all have seen the culture around K-Pop. People get deep into it in a different way. I can recognize Petrucci’s solo style, with the rapid picking in the middle register fast stuff, I know Mike Portnoy used a double pedal on a single bass drum in LTE but not DT, I’ve heard people talk about the different distortion pedals Steven Wilson uses, but when people get into Kpop, they know what year RM had different hair colors, what kind of family he comes from, they might have memorized a couple interviews with him, and it’s just taken a bit farther than boy band fandom was taken even in the 90s. I definitely used to see all that as extremely shallow, believing that music should be about the music, but I don’t feel so fundamentalist with my approach to how music ‘should’ interact with culture these days, so I’m seeing if I can get into it. Of course I’m failing a little bit. I mention Red Velvet specifically here because that’s the band who’s music I’ve gotten into most. I just listen to it in the background. I don’t know the names. I’ve been trying with BTS a little bit, but it’s tough when I don’t emotionally connect with the band. I’m trying to see if Red Velvet’s breaking of that barrier with their mildly complex harmony, occasional counterpoint, and diverse instrumentation and style can kind of be a gateway into that culture and I can stop listen to BTS thinking “they have seven dudes, why don’t they utilize their potential for awesome vocal harmonies?" and start listening to it on its own merits. 100 gecs - Nice. It has a playful tone to it. I can imagine doing similar things if instead of having Garage Band, I had been given and taught to use some more intricate production software. Often it sounds like they do the kinds of things people do when they discover new instruments and want to try it out and push it to its limits with no hesitation that people trained might have with more critical ears, but then it’s refined a bit and comes across as authentic and energetic with just a bit of the punk spirit to it, but adjusted to the modern zeitgeist. Other than that, music consumption hasn’t been as prominent in my life as it has and I’d like to get more of that going. I’ve been introducing kids to a variety of things, but that kind of gets me listening to stuff all over the place that I’m already very familiar with and have set associations with.

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cutiecrates · 4 years

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Cutie Reviews: TokyoTreat Oct 19

I think I’m doing pretty good progress wise, please be patient with me as I continue to try to review old boxes~

“October is here, bringing with it those spooky Halloween vibes! Halloween has been growing in popularity in recent years, and since Japan loves their seasonal snacks we had plenty of new, interesting items to choose from! In the spirit of being spooky but kinda cute, we’ve created a Poke-Monster Night for you to enjoy! No sharing these tricky snacks though!“

For this months contest, the winner could receive figures of Naruto and Sasuke from Naruto, while runner-ups won a cute pokeball candy and stamp. Lucky Treat consisted of Full Metal Alchemist, Dragon Quest, AND three devil fruits from One Piece, the Gomu Gomu (Gum), Mera Mera (Flame), and Ope Ope (Operation. Also, they accidentally mislabeled as the “dark dark fruit”). I was very excited that they included the 3 belonging to 3 of my favorite characters~

Pokemon Ramune & Strange Syrup DIY

(Please see top pic for images)

For this month, we get a basic, straight-laced ramune drink. Thank goodness :P as much as I like to try new flavors, sometimes I forget the original is probably the best... especially in comparison to those yucky flavors that I’m still traumatized by <_< and this month we even get a really cute pokemon label.

Ramune is basically that “soda“ flavor you’ll see in Japanese candy. It has a sweet, sort of lemon-ish taste but its not sour. It’s a little like sprite, but in my opinion it tastes way better. It’s especially yummy whenever it’s warm out or if you worked up a thirst. It’s also really fun to open because of the marble inside!

If you have ever wanted to try out Ramune, I would suggest checking on Amazon (they have a variety of fruit flavors too), or maybe the Japan Haul website (the website made through Tokyo Treat and its various brands).

- - - - -

The DIY I just included a bonus pic of because I’ve done it several times. It’s a super-sticky, thick syrup like candy that only requires you to mix the 3 flavors, which are strawberry, soda, and lemon. Together they make grape... which looks like this:

Because this candy was a little old, I think it was a bit off. The lemon and soda flavors were fine, but I noticed that not only was strawberry orange instead of pink, which might explain this... greenish-honey color. It’s usually a little purple if I recall.

Also, it didn’t really taste like grape this time, and it wasn’t as good in my opinion- but I guarantee if you open it as soon as you get it, it tastes much better. If you don’t like sticky/gooey textures you might wanna skip this one though.

Halloween Milk Senbei & Bloody Cola Marshmallow

Since I subscribed like 3 years ago, I’ve only seen senbei in a box once; I was very excited to see it again! It’s stuff like this I wish they would include more of, because I want to try the unique foreign flavors you know?

Anyway, the milk senbei is a plain, very thin melt-in-your mouth cracker-like snack that pretty much tastes like ice cream cone, but a teensy bit sweeter. This one comes with a cola flavored sauce to put on top of it. Each 1 (or one pack, not sure) is around 25-27 calories.

♥ ♥ ♥

I really like the taste of ice cream cones, I don’t know why, I just always have. Meanwhile, the jelly/sauce is purple, but it indeed tastes like cola ♥ it’s very yummy. However... together, they get a strange taste and that I’m not very fond of. I can’t even describe it, but its weird. But eating it in small doses is tolerable.

- - - - -

Speaking of cola, we also got a really cute marshmallow filled with a cola jelly! It’s like they combined two of my favorite things~

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very soft and yummy, the jelly inside tastes about the same as the sauce from the prior item, but it tastes so much better with the marshmallow.

Apple Pie Kit Kat & Brown Sugar Sweets

Instead of orange kit kats this year, we get to see fun purple one :D these kit kats are inspired by an apple pie. As you can see they also come in a large pack to share with others or to eat yourself. Each pack is 65 calories.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I love the coloring of these, first of all. It’s such a pretty purple, and its fun too. The apple flavor is very prominent, and it has a very small hint of spice, while the wafer brings to mind a sugary crust. It’s sweet, but mildly.

- - - - - -

These are popular for their melty and soft texture, with a very thin, crisp layer of rich brown sugar coating. Each one of these is 17 calories.

♥ ♥ ♥

These are kinda basic, but it’s a yummy sweet that isn’t overly sugary. I think it goes good with the apple pie kit kat, and maybe some milk.

Disappearing Taste?! Mixed Gummies, ZomB Grape Gum, & Blue Green Soda Gum

We got 3 gums this month! Our first is very familiar, because we’ve had this gum before. The only difference is this is its washed out, slightly different cousin. Basically, you’re given a set of flavors of gum, in this case yogurt, strawberry, orange, and white grape/muscat. You can eat them as is, or mix the flavors to make new ones, like a fruit drink, melon soda, or different fruits.

What makes this one special however, is that there is a special gumball that supposedly makes the flavor disappear? I mean, isn’t that what gum does normally?

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

This gum is really nice, you get a lot of them per-resealable pouch, and the flavors are always pretty good. Plus I like how the gum is smooth and soft in texture. I didn’t really notice any difference with this one from the last pack I had other than flavors.

- - - - -

Next up, we have the ZomB Gum; a popular Halloween item that we have seen before; I think about 2 or so years back, when we got the red cola vampire version. What makes this gum really fun is that it colors your tongue as you chew it, and it has a delicious grape flavor.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

This gum has the same texture as the other gum, so I really like it. The color effect isn’t nearly as strong as the package shows, but it’s a cute little gimmick, and it tastes great. The flavor lasts about 5 minutes.

- - - -

Our last gum is another brand I’ve had before. I have had both this flavor, and their cola version. It’s pretty much the same concept as the ZomB gum (they’re made by the same brand), but its in two sticks and you get a soda flavor, and a melon flavor.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I’d pretty much say the same things as I did about the previous two gums. All three were delicious and I would recommend any of them.

Poteco Pumpkin Gratin & Pringles

Here we have two salty, savory snacks for the box. But of course, the Poteco are not new to us, in fact I think last Halloween we got the exact same pack; minus slightly different packaging. Poteco is good and all, but I got so tired of seeing it that I tend to... shy away from it now. This flavor wasn’t really that different from the original/normal Poteco either.

- - - - -

I was a lot more excited for this item, a unique pack of Japanese Pringles :D Looking at the package, this is a type of ramen or noodle bowl flavor. It’s a mystery item in the booklet so I’m not really sure, but for this small can it is 267 calories!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Honestly, these are so yummy that I don’t even care how many calories there are. The flavor is very strong, it tastes exactly like this cup ramen I like to buy. Trying to describe the flavor, I would say it’s sort of like beef or soy sauce broth, with a hint of a corn taste?

Pokemon Halloween Chocolate & Pikachu Gummies

These are both snacks we’ve had before, so I’ll try to just gist this one.

These crispy snacks are shape like pikachu heads and come in fun, colorful packaging featuring a variety of Pokemon, while the back usually has a fun puzzle or image. Each bag is 83 calories and they are by the brand Tohato.

These are really yummy x3 they have a slightly bitter chocolate taste and remind me a lot of the coco crispy cereals.

- - - - - -

The other snack is also pikachu-shaped, but besides its head, there are also the occasional tail you might find ;3 These are by Lotte, and each pack is 90 calories. The flavor is grape and they taste really good too.

The only real thing to bother me about these is that they didn’t cut the gummy around Pikachu’s ears. It’s a minor thing but it bothers me a little.

Halloween Corn Potage Umaibo

Okay, so... because I talk about this a lot, I’m not actually planning on saying anything about it this time :P long story short, corn potage Umaibo is the best.

Squid Legs & Halloween Pizza Corn Snack

Don’t let the name fool you, these are not real squid legs- they just have a fishy taste. I’ve had these before too, and I have fairly complex feelings about them. On one hand they don’t taste terrible, but I don’t like seafood and the flavor is still unappealing to me. I like their crunchy texture though.

- - - - -

Next up is this corn puff snack featuring a delicious pizza flavor! They taste exactly like the pizza-flavored combos, if you never had those before I would recommend them too~

Pokemon Cola Chewing Candy

This is our final item... and now that I look at it, it kinda looks like a wafer cookie doesn’t it?

Anyway, these are sticks of chewing candy that come in various series and flavors. Before we had some grape Thomas the Tank Engine ones, and this time we get some cola Pokemon. Each wrapper usually includes a unique design, craft, or puzzle of some sort.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ I don’t know if these are hard because they had to sit around for a while, or because that is just how they are. I don’t remember the Thomas ones being so hard, but they weren’t as thick as these. But if you suck on them for a few minutes they soften up, or you can crunch them to softness. The flavor is very yummy, I think it might be my favorite cola flavored item in the box.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4.5 out of 5. Everything is very yummy, even though a fair amount of it was repetitive. I really liked it. Theme - 4 out of 5. Well, given the packaging and theme, I could say yeah they did pretty good. We had a decent amount of Pokemon items, but they could have done a little more too I think. Total Rank: 9 out of 10. I really liked this box, I just wish maybe we would have had a couple more unique items.

♥ Cutie’s Scale of Yummy ♥

(I’m sorry, but by this point I’m not really feeling well. I want to finish the review so that I can go lay down DX)

#tokyotreat #cutie reviews #pokemon snacks #umaibo

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 5 years

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"😓A misunderstood character is ostracized, perhaps even threatened, for their peculiar habits, interests, or studies" - this is gonna be v specific but like.... Drabble where vetinari and downey giggle about people gossiping about vetinari being a vampire? Perhaps? Pls?

Thank you so much for the ask! i’m not sure if this is quite what you were hoping for, but I hope you enjoy.

Midnight and Downey hears clicking so he’s half-awake, then fully awake and thinking there’s someone in the room with him. He can’t see them but knows a presence when it is felt, only: he can’t move. The clicking increases, an insect-noise, as something prowls near his head and he does not wish to look over but does, because he can’t help it, and there sits a monstrous creature poised with stinger above his face and the weight on his chest holding him down reminds him of that one poor man accused of witchcraft, or was it being vampire?, all those hundreds of years ago who was pressed to death in the main square. The rocks they put on his chest were later used to build the base of the Brass Bridge. When you walk over them you walk over his ghost.

And now Downey is awake. Awake and sitting upright, which means he can move, but he’s still seeing the insect so there remains whispers of the dream. It is a dream, he reminds himself, because he has had such before and, more importantly, he knows all the insects on the Disc and the one he imagined next to him is not one of them. If he is going to go and discover a new species it won’t be whilst half-asleep in the middle of the city.

He rubs eyes, looks to pillow beside him and finds it empty.

Sinking back into bed he pulls the eiderdown up around his head and burrows in an attempt to reclaim even a shred of disturbed sleep.

But it’s gone. His mind is already going fast-fast-fast there are so many things he must do as Term moves into exam season and holiday festivities must be planned and budgeted for and rooms prepped for new students joining them for Winter term after Hogswatch. Then there’s City Council matters and Guild matters and three jobs lined up, hasn’t he already decided he’s too busy, tired and old for this?, and then there’s the never ending social calendar. Which he enjoys. But, it can be a bit much.

Bedroom silence is as maddening as his racing mind. He’s staring at the thin pool of moonlight on the floor. It’s autumn, so skies are a perpetual grey with only a weak sun to splash watery gold and pink across horizon at morning and evening. The grey continues into the night obscuring stars. So everything is a shadow of its summertime self.

He is restless. His nerves are up. He has spooked himself and remains half-convinced there’s someone in the room with him. The presence, he repeats to himself, was the dream and the dream was made of stress.

He rolls around for a bit. Then, out of a sense of paranoia, he retrieves a blade from between mattress and headboard, and prowls about his room but finds nothing and neither do Alsace nor Harold. He ought to be content if not pleased.

Fear is an anathema to him. One of the first rules of performing assassin is knowing that you are the most dangerous thing that walks the streets. And if you don’t know it in yourself, for certain, then at least exude it to others. Smoke and mirrors &tc.

One autumn, as a boy of seven, he developed a deep fear of vampires. They can turn into mist, slide into bedrooms through keyholes and hide under the bed or in the closet. They drink your blood and make you one of them whether you wish it or not.

The fear left him as he grew up. At first, because he learned how to kill them. Then, later, he met a few, became friends or an approximation of friends, with a few. Olivia Hunter, one example, said, it’s being damned for a sin you’ve no part in. People look and say ‘We know your kind’ when they know nothing of anything. What is my kind? Genuan? Black? Woman? Secretary? Vampire? Omnian?

And that’s a sentiment he understands, was raised to understand, for his grandmother would talk about the bad old days in Brindisi when she was a girl and they had to leave, which happens sometimes, because people decide they know your kind and whatever it is, it’s unwanted.

He dresses. Alsace and Harold become very excited at this sudden change in events. As always, he takes a circuitous route through the city to the palace. He weaves through alleys, up and down stairs and closes, trots this way and that across streets. For a time, he loiters on the Brass Bridge and peers at different stones. The foundation stone’s date has worn away with time so when you trace fingers over it there is only the merest indentation. Was this the stone that finally killed that man all those years ago? He’s never seen a witch stoning and has no desire to. There are some violences and brutalities that go too far.

The palace is shades of moth-wing grey. Downey slips in between shadows and up to the patrician’s bedroom where, as expected, Vetinari is up. The man is seated at his desk half-dressed with robe wrapped around him and a blanket over shoulders.

‘Have you considered a brazier?’ Downey asks upon entrance. Vetinari flicks a look at him. ‘It would help with your consistent lack of heating.’

‘I am quite content, Downey. If the temperature was comfortable people might wish to stay.’

Downey feigns offence. He drapes himself across the bed and stares up at canopy. Alsace and Harold make themselves at home by the meager fire next to Mr. Fusspot who remains unphased by the sudden presence of dogs easily three times his size. He snores on in peaceful slumber.

‘May I be of assistance?’ Vetinari’s voice drifts over coupled with the ruffle of paper.

‘Oh no, you’re fine.’

‘Is there a reason you’re here?’

‘Must there always be a motive for my coming? I had a desire to be mildly chilled and to stare up at your canopy.’

Vetinari makes a noise, a scoff or snort. Downey smiles at the fabric above him.

‘We didn’t have plans,’ Vetinari says, quietly, to himself and his desk. Downey does not respond. Vetinari’s penchant for exact order crops up time to time. They are both men with strong affinity for order, but applied in very different areas of their lives.

Downey orders butterflies and beetles and natural and manmade poisons. He also orders accounts, aligns the debit-credit column of the guild, his wardrobe, his drinks cabinet. He does not order his personal life. He doesn’t need to, Vetinari orders it for him.

‘You know,’ Downey drawls as a thought occurs. ‘Your desire to have cold rooms and no creature comforts is probably why people think you’re a vampire.’

A cough from the direction of the window.

Downey props himself up and looks over. ‘Tolerant of extreme temperatures? Lack of expected, human reactions to circumstances? Patience of a rock? Never seen sleeping?’

‘You have seen me sleep.’ A lofty, disinterested expression, ‘and you can attest to my ability to react appropriately in certain, ah, circumstances.’

It’s a lascivious grin on Downey’s face. Vetinari tells him that he is being lewd. Downey replies that he is not being lewd at all. Vetinari says, ‘very well, your face is making lewd insinuations.’ Downey begs his pardon with great animation, delighting in the other man’s long suffering sigh. He delights in most things Vetinari does, including his more obsessive ticks. It’s a pleasure to know there’s someone who won’t judge you for talking to your plants and will understand the extreme stress of holding one’s tongue when someone is wrong about biology in public. Which happens with great regularity.

A huff, Vetinari decants from his desk to the bed where Downey, who has pried boots off and deposited cloak, scarf, hat, gloves, frock, and so on, on the floor, happily scoots beneath covers.

‘And you have very cold hands,’ Downey continues.

Vetinari snorts, ‘the people of this great city really have nothing better to do than speculate upon my supposed inhumanity?’

‘I think it’s an improvement over their wildly inaccurate speculations about your manhood.’

Vetinari’s face is a portrait. Downey kisses it.

He continues, ‘I would correct them, of course. But that would cause more grief than it’s worth. Now, you as a vampire on the other hand, I can see their reasoning.’

‘I’ve eaten food in public. I drink…wine.’

Downey snorts, ‘Mr. Warrender at the Cloak and Dagger believes it all to be an elaborate ruse.’

‘I see,’

‘He was going on about this the other night,’ Downey begins plucking at Vetinari’s robe which he considers an affront as it is another layer of clothing to take off. ‘I think he managed to make a few converts to his cause. He says that he’s never seen you handle coin before therefore you’re avoiding silver. You don’t attend religious ceremonies because of holy ground. Your robe is annoying me deeply. And you rarely go out, uncovered, in daylight due to discomfort in the sun.’

‘I’m not sure Mr. Warrender would have any opinion on my robe. Downey, I’m quite busy tonight.’

‘Yes, I’m here now. Your metaphorical dance card is full for the remainder of the evening.’

Vetinari stares. Downey stares back. Vetinari opens his mouth to reply, apparently reconsiders it, and sighs. Downey kisses him again as it seems the right course of action.

Downey rolls Vetinari over to his back, snaking a hand beneath robe, down, pulling up nightshift beneath. Vetinari liftst hips to allow the clothes to be hitched up, ‘why are you here, Downey?’

Downey raises an eyebrow. Looks down at their bodies then back up.

‘That’s not why you’re here. This is a symptom, not the cause.’

‘I dislike that. Being associated with disease isn’t something I enjoy, but I’ll save my annoyance for tomorrow. I was awake and restless.’

‘Right.’ A beat. ‘My apologies.’

‘Thank you,’ Downey hums. He cannot think how to explain: I had a dream and spooked myself. So he chooses not to. He continues with vague answers and determined exploration of Vetinari’s body, a boney, you’re-a-bit-of-a-shut-in sort of experience. Being opposites in most regards, Vetinari has nothing spare, all strung together with skin and only the amount of muscle needed to operate a body compared to Downey’s more, as he puts it to himself, comfortable, frame.

As teenagers, therefore posturing with great energy and determination, Vetinari once said: I’m an aesthete. Downey hadn’t been entirely sure what an aesthete was so made some general scag-dog-botherer related insult and went off to ask Ludo what it meant. Ludo explained asceticism with a wry expression. Downey then spent the remainder of the day mocking Vetinari for being a nerdy prat.

Downey thinks that to be fair to sixteen-year-old Vetinari the young man hadn’t been wrong. He was, and is, very much an aesthete. But, Downey adds on, he was also a nerdy prat.

Not that he, himself, was a joy and pleasure to be around at that age. Eleven to five-and-twenty, he thinks, those are terrible years where no one is at their best.

Vetinari scoops an arm around Downey’s neck and leans up, pressing their mouths together. ‘Would you still be here if I was a vampire?’

‘Yes. Though, there’d be very strict boundaries.’

‘Naturally.’

‘’I’ve no desire for immortality. The one thing I wonder is,’ Downey settles on his side. ‘Would you still be you if you were one? It’s a rude question so I haven’t asked anyone I know.’

Vetinari shrugs. How does never dying change a person? How does not tasting, not needing sleep, not bodily changing, shape an individual? Would that change be any different from the normal changes all people go through as life forms them forever into something new?

Neither choose to answer the questions. Downey figures they were rhetorical more than anything. But even if they weren’t, he has no answer. He likes his humanity. He’s content with being merely mortal. There is a thrill to life that he thinks wouldn’t be there if you knew you weren’t going to die. Pleasures would lose their meaning. He likes luscious fox fur, richly patterned cambric, heavy brocades because he knows they are his but for a limited time. When he dies they’ll be of no use save to cover the body until it’s cremated. But doesn’t that limitation of enjoyment make it all the sweeter? There will be a finite end to champagne and oysters and music and dancing and gold and silver.

But as a vampire, at least with regards to the clothing and objects, you would have it forever. One fades, buy another.

Perhaps they find meaning in other things less worldly than clothes and beautiful things.

What a terrible concept.

‘You had a mistress who was one, didn’t you?’ Downey asks.

‘Mistress,’ Vetinari’s bemused by the word. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘What was her view?’

‘On how she was before? She didn’t speak of it much, but I think she takes the long view of things. So time is both fast and slow. She said that because relations with humans are so fleeting she found them more precious.’

Downey pulls a face. See, finding meaning in less worldly things. Vetinari flashes a smile, returns to his usual impassive self.

‘I don’t think it’s life that would suit you, Downey.’

‘I’d have to become philosophical, which is a horror. I would be required to place value in things other than material wealth. Absolutely terrible.’

Vetinari props himself up on an elbow and takes to considering Downey’s face with great intent. Downey looks away. He frets that Vetinari is going to say something about him being more than what he intends himself to be. Which Vetinari tends to do because he enjoys telling Downey home-truths.

Life delivers. Vetinari says, ‘I think you hold things beyond material wealth as important. A limited amount,’ he amends. ‘Perhaps a very limited amount. But nonetheless, they exist.’

This is too much, Downey can feel a flush crawling up his chest and neck so leans up, gives a messy kiss, then rolls over in search of his clothes. He says he should go back to the Guild. It’s late, he has much to do in the morning. Vetinari sits up and watches him dress. Downey swans about, makes it a bit of a theatrical moment, then the final flourish, he places his hat on.

‘I will see you tomorrow,’ Downey says.

‘You will. Or today, as the case may be. We are well into the small hours.’

At the door Downey pauses. Behind him is the sound of Vetinari dressing. The shift of linens, bare feet on soft, wooden floors.

‘I don’t think it would be a life that suits you either,’ Downey says to the doorframe. His palm rests flat against it, a profile to Vetinari’s line of sight.

‘Immortality, or vampirism in particular?’

‘Both.’ Or maybe, Downey doesn’t think, he wishes to believe that for his own sake. He doesn’t like to think of Vetinari going on, existing as some lonesome, grey rock in the midst of human life for any longer than he already has.

‘Possibly. Quite possibly you’re very right.’

Downey sucks in a breath through teeth then, because he enjoys hurdling head first off cliffs from time to time, ‘I’m glad things are working out, you know. Between us. Despite the fact that you’re a nerdy prat, Dog-botherer.’

He’s gone before Vetinari can reply though he imagines he heard a soft exhale of a laugh. One of those dry ones Vetinari gives when amused but feeling many things at the same time. It’s a ghost of a sound and follows Downey through streets homeward. He wishes to remember it forever.

#lord downey #vetinari #writing #ask #reply #gothic prompt

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pixelgrotto · 5 years

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The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, interlude three

I just finished watching all of the Resident Evil movies I could get my hands on. When I told people I was doing this as the last part of my great year-long playthrough, they all let out groans and said something along the lines of, “Ugh, don’t you wanna end on a good note?” Undaunted by these words and fueled by my ability to tolerate crappy cinema, I moved forward, courageously making it through nine of these suckers...which, to be fair, ranged from surprisingly enjoyable to just as terrible as everyone warned me about.

Before I begin, it’s important to note that we’re dealing with two separate film series here. There’s director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil Hollywood films, which are the ones that most people know about. Then there are three Japanese-made CG movies that are canon and co-exist alongside the stories of the games. The Anderson movies are...mostly ass. The Japanese ones are okay.

Let us start with the ass first.

Resident Evil - The first RE film came out in 2002, which means that what little CG it has is laughably dated and it’s refreshingly small-scale when compared to its sequels. The movie’s a fan fiction remix of some themes from Resident Evil 1, except with none of the characters from the games present. Instead, we have Paul W.S. Anderson’s wife Milla Jovovich taking center stage as Alice, the former head of Umbrella security in a secret base called the Hive that goes to hell when some dude tries to steal viruses. The entirety of the action takes place in the Hive, and we get a surprisingly tiny number of monsters, with just your garden variety zombies, a few Cerberus and a single Licker showing up. Even though she does run up a wall and kick a Cerberus in the face, Alice is at her most realistic here (she turns into a dual wielding mutant with the ability to make the camera go into slow-motion whenever she wants in all the other films), there’s a nifty laser grid scene that all the sequels keep referencing when they want you to feel nostalgic, and the Hive’s sentient AI, the Red Queen, is compelling enough that Capcom eventually stuck her in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Aside from this movie being full of British actors who do REALLY awful American accents, sounding like they all have mouths full of sausages, Paul W.S. Anderson’s first take on Resident Evil is probably the most watchable one he made.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Okay, this one is watchable too, but in more of a popcorn-munching “lol, this shit is dumb” way. It steals the general plot of Resident Evils 2 and 3, with Raccoon City getting infected, but ups the cheese by a hundred. Alice is now a thirteen-year-old boy’s version of a BADAZZ woman, with lots of guns and a bare midriff, and she teams up with Jill Valentine, who resembles her game self in looks but not exactly in personality. Together, they’ve gotta escape Raccoon City along with Carlos Oliveira, who is possibly the only character from the games who is done a great service in these Anderson movies, which make him much more likable even if they couldn’t find an actual Hispanic actor to portray him and had to settle for an Israeli instead. Oh, and Nemesis shows up, because one of the dudes from the first movie who accompanied Alice into the Hive gets experimented on and turned into what honestly looks like someone’s Halloween costume. The writers commit a cardinal sin at the end of the flick by humanizing him, having him suddenly remember his TRUE SELF and help the good guys, but aside from that screw-up I admit that I had a goofy grin on my face throughout several parts of this movie. After Nemesis blows up the Raccoon City station and murmurs his one line of dialogue- “STARRRRRSSSS” - I even kinda felt like clapping. So yeah, Apocalpyse is idiotic fun.

Resident Evil: Extinction - Here’s where the movies stop being mildly entertaining and become varying degrees of either “meh” or just plain bad. Extinction’s biggest problem is that it makes the weird decision of having the entire PLANET be wiped nearly completely clean by Umbrella’s virus, giving the franchise the most generic setting imaginable for a zombie flick - a post-apocalyptic world. And even though this film features Claire Redfield and actually has Alice fight a Tyrant that looks the part, I feel that by turning the environment into Mad Max the filmmakers missed the entire point of the franchise. Resident Evil isn’t really about a “what if” scenario with mankind dying and zombies taking over the world. Instead, it’s about how humanity manages to cope in a time where zombies are used by corporations for terrorism purposes - hence the franchise’s “bio-organic weapon” catch-phrase for its creatures. It’s about how brave people live on in an era that just happens to feature biopunk monsters as a deadly fact of life. It’s about the evil that resides within a world that is pretty shitty, but hasn’t completely gone to shit. By turning the whole planet into the same ol’ zombie playground that we see in most popular fiction starring these workman-like horror tropes, Extinction - which probably thought it was upping the stakes - instead just feels sorta dull, and anyone who views the film today is probably going to see it as a weaker version of The Walking Dead. Oh, and it ends with Alice discovering clones of herself, which will only serve to screw with the loose continuity of these movies as they go on.

Resident Evil: Afterlife - This one starts with Alice’s clones raiding the Umbrella facility in Tokyo, and the whole sequence - which feels like it should be the finale - is reduced to a few minutes of special effects in the beginning. (This is foreshadowing for the next two films, which both end with hints of giant, climatic battles that mostly happen off-screen, if at all.) The first thing that I noticed when watching this was how slow-mo kicked in every five minutes and how the camera seemed to linger on bullets, and I eventually remembered that this film was released during Hollywood’s obsession with 3D during the early 2010s. This explains Afterlife’s IN-YOUR-FACE-IN-THREE-DIMENSIONS action scenes, which are initially pretty in a music video sort of way but become overdone and tiresome as the movie goes on, kinda like a Zack Snyder film. (I place Paul W.S. Anderson in the same “style over substance” category of director as both Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, by the way.) Anyway, Afterlife deals with Alice teaming up with more survivors to try to find a secret ship haven free of zombies. Along the way she runs into Chris Redfield, who looks more like a janitor than the jacked BSAA agent that he is in the games, and Chris and Claire Redfield have a quick sibling reunion and fight Wesker in a scene with choreography shamelessly stolen from Resident Evil 5. It’s pandering fan service and sort of diverting, but ultimately none of it matters. Chris disappears after this movie and is never seen again, and Afterlife is more interesting as a specimen of 2010 3D excess than it is as an actual narrative.

Resident Evil: Retribution - Retribution amps the pandering fan service that Afterlife dabbled in to new levels. Ada Wong is here, played by Li Bingbing but dubbed by her original voice actress, Sally Cahill, probably because Li’s English isn’t that great. Leon Kennedy and Barry frickin’ Burton show up, both looking pretty much like their in-game counterparts. Even Michelle Rodriguez and a few other faces from Paul W.S. Anderson’s first Resident Evil flick make an appearance, thanks to the fact that this movie has clones up the wazoo and uses them to handwave away any series inconsistencies you could think of. So you’re got fan service for the people who like the games and fan service for the folks who liked the first movie, and on top of it all the film has the extreme 3D that its predecessor possessed and a buttload of battles because it all takes place in a giant Umbrella simulation facility full of stuff that can easily be wrecked. By now the plot to these things has gotten more scrambled than my eggs in the morning, but I will say that thanks to its inclusion of classic characters, Retribution is more or less tolerable. There’s even a bit of characterization this time around, thanks to a little hearing-impaired clone girl who Alice takes under her wing and begins to care for, and the movie ends on an okay cliffhanger in a Washington DC under siege, promising epic things to come in the next movie. Unfortunately... Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - I really did not enjoy The Final Chapter for a myriad of reasons. First of all, the Washington battle promised at the end of Retribution never happens. Instead, we fast forward to several months later, when Alice is (big surprise) the only survivor, and EVERYONE she was with in the last flick - Ada, Leon, the little deaf girl - is gone and never mentioned ever again. Wesker, who Alice was working with in Retribution, is back to being a bad guy for poorly explained reasons. Another bad scientist dude that Alice killed in Extinction also returns for even worse reasons, because supposedly Alice only offed his clone three movies ago. But wait, this “real” bad scientist dude is also revealed to be a clone as the TRUE bad scientist dude shows up in the movie’s last act! AND THE ULTIMATE TWIST (look away now if you actually care about spoilers) is that Alice is HERSELF a clone of the original daughter of the Umbrella corporation’s founder who died of a degenerative disease and served as the basis for the Red Queen AI. The idiotic thing is that this daughter was said to be the progeny of Dr. Charles Ashford in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but this movie retcons her to be the spawn of Dr. James Marcus. The Final Chapter, in fact, screws with continuity to a degree I have rarely seen before in a long-running film franchise. Yeah, the framework tying this series together got weird as soon as clones were introduced, but previously it seemed that Paul W.S. Anderson at least cared about his own messy fan fiction. Here? It’s like he forgot what he’d spent the last 15 years building up to and ended on one sloppy fart. If this weren’t bad enough, The Final Chapter is edited in that god awful “shaky cam, lots of fast cuts” way that I hate. In fact, I counted something like twenty cuts in a scene of a few seconds when Alice is attacked by a creature, which means that this film won’t just baffle you with its disregard for continuity - it’ll give you a headache too.

Resident Evil: Degeneration - After watching an array of live-action flicks that took random Resident Evil threads and mashed them together with the elegance of a splattered turd, it did feel good to switch things up and move to the CG movies that were actually put out by Capcom. This 2008 offering takes place in between Resident Evils 4 and 5, stars Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, and deals with a virus breakout in an airport and some of the pharmaceutical company backstabbing that occurred in the aftermath of Umbrella’s destruction. It’s all stuff that feels like it could have come from a lesser gaiden game - perhaps in the same vein as the first Revelations title - and it kinda gives off that “so-so anime movie” vibe, especially because the dubbing always sounds a tad off. Nevertheless, Degeneration’s still a breath of fresh air compared to the Anderson series, and there’s a nice gag where Claire’s searching for a weapon in the airport, someone hands her a physical umbrella, and she looks at it and is like, “Hm, didn’t see this coming.” (Lollerskates.) The main issue I have with Degeneration is how “plasticky” everyone looks - it’s hard to realize how far computer animation has advanced in the last decade until you look at Degeneration’s stiff visuals and compare them to the other CG films. Also, Leon’s characterization is terrible. He’s meant to be a super serious badass, I guess, but he mostly just looks like someone rammed a Samurai Edge up his sphincter. I prefer my Leon Kennedy to be the “Don’t worry Ashley, I’m comin’ for ya!” version from Resident Evil 4, or at least a dude with a little sass to him. The guy in Degeneration is about as interesting as a board. Resident Evil: Damnation - Damnation is a noticeable step above Degeneration, both in computer animation, which really got better from 2008 to 2012, and in all-around presentation. The dubbing’s still somewhat wonky with that same anime movie vibe, but the characterization is on point, and Leon, who’s taking center stage once more, is just like his RE6 self. Speaking of RE6, this movie channels that game’s themes of international terrorism with a plot that involves rebels in a made-up Eastern European country using Lickers and Las Plagas in an effort to fight for their freedom, only to learn that lo and behold, the nefarious female president who’s seized control of their nation has her own B.O.W.s - in the form of Tyrants - at her disposal. Leon’s caught in the middle of this mess and ends up befriending some of the rebels, and Ada Wong’s also infiltrated the country to manipulate the president. Ada and Leon’s interactions are as insubstantial as they’ve been in pretty much every game that isn’t the recent RE2make, but we do get a cool fight between Ada and the president, who for some reason knows substantial knife fu. There’s an even better battle between Tyrants and Lickers in a city hall square, and Leon gets throw against pillars, regularly takes hits that would kill a normal person and pilots a tank alongside one of the rebels who looks a lot like Chris Redfield but isn’t Chris Redfield. This dude serves as the film’s sympathetic character - a guy torn from his peaceful existence thanks to political wrangling and is tricked into using B.O.W.s to try to achieve a brighter future. It ends with the fella severely injured but learning how to live and move forward in a world infected with nefarious bioweapons, which is the very theme that the Anderson flicks ditched around movie number three. So good work for side-stepping previous failures and recognizing what Resident Evil is all about, Damnation.

Resident Evil: Vendetta - If Degeneration’s a so-so anime movie, and Damnation a good anime movie, then Vendetta is just a good movie in general, with no “anime” distinction needed. The dubbing’s finally pretty decent, for one, and the story takes place in between RE6 and RE7, teaming Leon and Chris Redfield up with - HOLY CRAP - Rebecca Chambers, who’s been AWOL since Resident Evil Zero. They’ve gotta stop an arms dealer from bio-nuking New York and doing nasty things to Rebecca, who resembles his dead wife, and along the way Leon pilots a motorcycle on the freeway with his feet while shooting at Cerebrus with his hands. Nearly all of the movie’s considerable action segments are punctuated with rapid fire John Wick-style gunplay, and it works. It’s like the folks who made this film realized that the coolest part of Resident Evil 6 was the point where Leon and Chris point their guns at each other for a few seconds before deciding that they need to put their differences aside and cooperate, and even though you could conceivably fault Vendetta for leaning heavily towards the “action” side of Resident Evil rather than the “horror” side, it’s a well-paced film that finally gives us a substantial interaction between two series mainstays beyond the one minute they shared with each other in RE6. Also, people are still posting GIFs from Vendetta’s action sequences all across Tumblr and forums whenever arguments break out over whether Chris or Leon is TEH COoLER Resident Evil protagonist, so Capcom obviously did something right. If we get another computer animated film, I imagine it’ll lean more heavily towards horror since that’s where the series has gone recently...but hopefully the path of improvement that we’ve seen from Degeneration to Damnation to Vendetta won’t be broken.

And with that, whew, I’m done with RE movies, at least until the rumored Hollywood reboot that’s supposedly drawing inspiration from Resident Evil 7 comes out. (It can’t be worse than The Final Chapter, I suppose.) I can’t say that my friends were wrong when they warned me that half of these would be shite, but I also can’t say that I ended on a bad note, because Vendetta was pretty good.

After all this, my grand playthrough and consumption of all Resident Evil media is about to finish Next post I make will be a last look at the franchise as a whole...and what a year’s worth of zombie headshots taught me. All screencaps taken by me.

#pixel grotto #video games #now playing #resident evil #biohazard

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elenajohansenreads · 5 years

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Books I Read in 2019

#102 - All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders

Mount TBR (66/100)

The Reading Frenzy’s “Bookish Treasure Hunt” Challenge -- A bird in the title or on the cover

Rating: 1/5 stars

All book reviews come with personal bias attached--as much as many reviewers (myself often included) like to think we are working from some hypothetically universal standard of "good" writing, we can't always agree on what those standards are and how to apply them fairly across all books. I say this now, because I'm about to write a negative review for this book, but for once, I recognize that my intense dislike is coming from a deeply personal place, and that my experience with it isn't necessarily a good sign post for whether or not this book is worth reading. I often write bad reviews for books because of things that I don't think other people want to be reading--unchallenged racism, sexism, homophobia, or pedophilia being the big ones, and I stand by those. I will continue to do my part warning people away from books that promote harmful ideologies, whenever I can. That isn't the case here. I can't stand this book because it reminds me too much of how I wrote when I was a teenager, and of all of the people who read my work then and told me how terrible it was. Yeah, it's personal. So, I didn't finish. I read the first hundred pages, and I gave up. I couldn't stand the constant misery, and I mean that quite seriously. Laurence and Patricia don't have much more personality than "I'm so weird and nonconformist that everyone bullies me." Laurence is science-flavored on top of that, Patricia witch-flavored. But they're such thin characters, and they simply can't support a story solely about the two of them without more development. To pile on extra misery, all of the members of both families are also horrible people who also mistreat them in some way. In that sort of environment I'd expect the two of them to become close friends, to be the only spot of good in each other's awful lives--but despite the overall narrative the blurb is trying to sell me, I'm not at all convinced these two are friends at all--they tolerate each other at best, and at worst they spend weeks not speaking to each other--and this setup does not have me confident that they're going to eventually fall in love. I'd be laughing at the reviews that call this book "romantic" if I weren't so disappointed, because I adore real romance, and I don't feel like I'm going to get that here. Let's go back to that science vs. witchcraft characterization. Because at a hundred pages in, I had only just gotten what looked like a plot, rather than chapter upon chapter of "look at how miserable and bullied these two kids are, don't you feel for them?" Theodolphus Rose, master assassin posing as a school counselor, tells Patricia that Laurence is an enemy of nature and must be killed. That's the conflict, and in other circumstances I might be interested--pitting kids against each other isn't new at all, but done well, it can certainly be compelling. Pitting potential romantic partners against each other can be awesome, whatever age group. So I'm not opposed to this basic plot. I am opposed to it taking almost one hundred pages to show up, and I'm opposed to the flimsy world-building that has done nothing to define the relative power of science and witchcraft. At first (in the very first chapter when I still thought I might like this book, it looked like my kind of weird,) I was enchanted by Patricia's magic and her talking to birds and going to the forest to see the Parliament. But there's no rules to anything related to magic, and without any sort of standards or explanations, there's really no upper limit on what magic can do in a story, whereas the real world has definite limits on science. Without the author setting up a system deliberately to make science and magic balanced, I find myself assuming magic can be more powerful (if Patricia ever gets access to it again, if not, this will be a dull story I didn't finish) so magic will obviously win. And that's just not interesting, if there's an obvious winner before the battle is even fought. Now, there are ways to subvert that expectation, and there are ways to move forward from the point where I stopped reading that might result in a better book than I expect it to be. But that low bar I have set in my mind is a result of that slapdash, flimsy world-building that amounts to "this is basically contemporary fiction but I want to put whatever I want into it and call it sci-fi and magical realism at the same time." I don't have a problem with genre-mixing. I'd be a giant hypocrite if I did. But a work doesn't get a free pass on mixing genres sloppily because it's quirky. It's the "quirky" thing that really gets me. I love absurdist humor, and there are elements of it here. Theodolphus' introduction at the mall almost had me laughing, it was so over the top and ridiculous, in just the way I like. I can't take it seriously in context, because it's so off-tone from everything else I read surrounding it, but in isolation it was hilarious and I loved it. For a brief moment, I felt like the author was channeling Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, and I was on board. But if the whole book is meant to be absurdist, it doesn't go far enough, and absurdity for its own sake is exactly what my teenage writing (yeah, we're back to the personal part) was mocked by my peers for. And occasionally my teachers as well. I was a weird kid. I have no problem admitting that, though I was never bullied anything like Laurence and Patricia are shown to be. I had friends--it's not impossible to be weird and also have friends. I was also often an unhappy kid--teenagerhood was not particularly a good time for me--and writing was a thing I did to cope. I wrote escapist fantasy. I wrote about magic. I wrote about absurdity. I wrote about depression and misery. I wrote things in high school that were very like this story, both in tone and overall quality. The nearly universal response to these stories, when I was brave enough to let my friends read them or turn them in for writing assignments, was basically derision and ridicule. "It's too weird." "I don't get it." "What's the point?" "I don't like how strange it is." "It doesn't make sense." No matter how many times I tried to defend some of the most "weird" pieces by explaining that the absurdity of it was the whole point, the overall reaction was "stop being so childish and write things that make sense." I do, now. I've found ways to channel my love of the absurd in more palatable directions. I've studied my craft and "grown up," so to speak. I take great pains to make my worlds, no matter how "strange" they are, internally consistent and understandable. So here's the incredibly, undeniably personal part that you absolutely shouldn't apply to yourself and whether or not you want to read this book: I am (mildly) professionally envious and angry that this book is so praised when it reads exactly like the stuff I churning out by the notebook-full at fifteen that everyone hated. It stings. I cringed constantly with second-hand embarrassment while I was reading this, as if all of my flaws had come back to haunt me. Thin world-building because I wanted it the way I wanted it and I didn't do the work making it cohesive. Awkward and stilted dialogue. An "me against them" mentality in my main characters. No plot to speak of for ages because I was more interested in making my world weird than having a story take place in it. Objectively speaking--as objectively as possible for me, at this point--I don't think this is a good book, but obviously its weirdness resonates with a lot of people, and you might enjoy it. If you think it sounds good, then maybe for you, it will be. Speaking with extreme and noted bias, this book is bad, and I can't stand it, and I will never finish it and wish I hadn't spent the few hours I already did attempting to read it. I want that time back. **After I spent a solid hour writing, rewriting, and editing this review, I wondered if I should even post it in full. After all, it is highly biased and not particularly applicable to other people in many places. I thought about it a lot. I considered where I could cut the stuff that shouldn't matter to anyone else, the stuff that revealed too much of me, the things that might do more harm than good. But I've always written honest reactions to books, because I think reviews are only useful and helpful when they're honest. So I'm posting the whole thing, because I worked hard putting my thoughts and feelings in order and being up front about my biases. Whether or not this is a helpful, useful review is only part of the point. It was cathartic to write, and if another writer sees this and feels understood, then it's worth it.

#booklr #writeblr #book review #all the birds in the sky #my reading challenges #mount tbr 2019 #the reading frenzy

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purkinje-effect · 5 years

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The Anatomy of Melancholy, 22

Table of Contents Go to first. Go to previous. Go to next.

Surveillance, drug culture tw’s. Let’s have some character development. I was originally going to cram 22-24 into one chapter, but 21 was long enough as it was uh.

Upon returning to the pharmacy, Melancholy went right to the office garden to collect a sizable quantity of hubflower blossoms, then flew straight into the process of extracting a large batch of hubeine. He smashed the flowers and threw them into a glass vessel, and agitated it all with water. The wait time between iterations of adding more water were what killed him. He hated being left alone inside his own head, in that very moment more than anything.

Angel’s going to find out. It’s going to report my treason to the DIA. And it’s going to get remotely switched to hostile and slice me to bits.

But did it count as treason, anymore, to do what he was doing? He shook the thought from his Russian brain. They weren’t in wartime now. And the police had begun utilizing Psycho leading up to the apocalypse. Why was he even doing this for Jared? Some nebulous threat of violence against him? What was keeping him tethered here amid this near-total anarchofascism? He’d told Jared to his face that security dominated his motivation, but he stopped receiving any sense of security the moment the arrangement shifted focus to Psycho. But all this was his own negotiation of the statutes surrounding the protected status of manufacturing this chem. Maybe, maybe he could ply Angel with the dishonest truth that he was working with hubeine, not morphine, or cyclomorphine. He couldn’t make peace with the thought of lying to Angel, and fell apart over rehearsing all manner of half-truth and inaccurate definitions in lieu of faith.

At the smell of burning latex, his finger withdrew from his platysmal scar, and he gasped to find he hadn’t added water to the hub like he would have sworn he had. He squinted with an exhausted groan, seeing how the plant matter had scorched to the glass. With tongs and a grimace, he pulled it off the hot plate and set it in the sink.

The glasses came off, and his face went to his hands. What was wrong with him? He could expect this kind of behavior from a shell-shocked veteran, but he hadn’t survived unthinkable use of weaponized brutality and violence face to face, hadn’t survived artillery, hadn’t-- had survived being frozen, he supposed. This couldn’t be post-traumatic stress. It couldn’t be. He hadn’t been through enough to justify such a diagnosis.

What a pathetic crisis of identity, to be unable to even keep my reality straight. Waking up, it’s two hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse, and the first rational life I find is a band of lawless chem-driven hooligans. Just how much of this is real? Doesn’t seem like any of it could be.

He dismissed the prickling crawling up his left arm and eyed the health page of his Pip-Boy on the other arm, flipping to the section indicating all the pharmacological deficits he had inured. Mentats, alcohol, Jet, Calmex, and an opioid return that had to be the Melancholia. And that was just what the diagnostics knew of. Liver and kidney function strained. Respiration mildly suppressed. Motor skills significantly compromised. Vision, alertness, and verbal capacity all dulled. He wondered whether these hallucinations, or episodes, or whatever they were had factored into the device’s metrics of his constitution. He knew he was a mess. But up until now, he’d done his best to simply ignore it.

The episodes had nothing to do with Jet. He knew they preceded any of his Jet use. But if he couldn’t blame it on the Jet, what could he blame it on? Had the Melancholia expired? Of all the food sources he’d trusted, it had been his meal replacement cocktail. Up until now, he’d blamed his poor alimentary constitution on the other questionably preserved foodstuffs on which he’d subsisted, but now even his Melancholia was suspect. --No, it had been the one thing his stomach could tolerate day to day. His eyes widened with stunned optimism. With a fresh source of opioids, he could continue making it fresh. It had gotten him through his tenure at Deenwood, and it could sustain him long-term. Perhaps he’d get lucky, and the Gregory’s salt--no, Melancholy’s salt--would prove more effective and compatible, with fewer drawbacks.

At the next chance, he’d have to rule out the supplementary beverage for his episodes. Surely, the problem wasn’t inside him. The fact of pharmacology was, as he knew it, that there was no deficit of physiology or character which chems couldn’t fix. Better living through chems. He couldn’t blame a chem for having unintended or entirely undesirable effects on a man, two centuries past its prime. Nothing lasted forever... not even him.

He was past his prime. And it was past his bedtime. He drank one of his remaining seven Melancholia in lieu of dinner and let himself turn in for the night, and slept on Eleanor’s couch.

The buzzing of the intercom awoke ‘Choly, and he aped over the desk to depress the button.

“I, yes. Yes, what is it.” He felt for his glasses and put them on.

“Your soap has arrived, you scrawny little weirdo.”

He knew from voice alone to expect Barb’s face at the front door.

“I’ll be right down. I’m not decent.”

“Who is these days?”

He rolled his eyes instead of answering. He donned his braces and wheeled himself downstairs, waving for Angel to follow him.

With the front door cracked, he poked the muzzle of his rifle out, only for the buzzcut raider to shove the door open all the way. Both his feet planted to either side of the door, and the muzzle went right to her chest. He swallowed and stared up at her with determination.

“--Y, ou can leave it right here,” he appreciated, not moving as he tossed a glance to the shopping cart filled to the brim with boxes of Abraxo. “Angel can help me bring it inside.”

“I’ve been in your place, Melancholy. What gives, I’m not welcome?” Smacking at gum under the bandanna concealing the lower half of her face, she tried to look inside around to either side of Angel, who had come up very close behind its owner. “I still can’t believe you live all alone in there. That building is huge. Super creepy. Goddamn.”

“Jared wouldn’t like it if you distracted me from my work. And believe me, you’re already fast encroaching on distracting me.”

“Whatever. Enjoy your stupid soap.”

“It’s smart soap, actually.” He shoved back from the door with his syringer still aimed at Barb, letting Angel swoop in to pull the shopping cart in off the stoop. “Good day, Barb.”

“Good day!” Angel seconded cheerfully.

“Creep,” she jeered as the Handy shut the door.

On their way upstairs, ‘Choly and Angel did not fit in the elevator with their prize.

“I’m not alone in the pharmacy,” ‘Choly quipped. “Who’re you, chopped liver?”

“I’ll take the stairs, Sir, and meet you at the third story. It’s no matter.”

Upon arriving at the third floor, ‘Choly kept the pocket doors open with the butt of his rifle until Angel could come up and retrieve the cart.

“People just don’t understand how wonderfully programmed General Atomics robotics are. You’re not some... thing.”

“Ah, well. I’ve come to pay it no mind. Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter!”

‘Choly smiled, taking a few boxes of soap into his lap and leaving the cart in the lobby for the time. He started his day off working from the rote recipe for cooking his own Mentats. Measuring out the laundry powder, he dropped the glass beaker and it shattered, punctuating the revelations of his condition from the night before. He sat there for some time just staring at all the soap he’d wasted, only to have Angel come through with a broom and dustpan without missing a beat.

“Sir, you really must start off the day with a square meal and a fresh pot of coffee. You’re not quite of full faculties. Remember that you’re not a morning person. Be patient with yourself!”

“You’re right. You’re very often right.” Slowly his slack face picked up into another smile. “Since when did you have therapist algorithms?”

“Since you needed me to have them, I suppose. I’m programmed to exhibit an interest in my owner’s well-being. Of course I care. So! Tell me, you’ll have some nice fresh fruit with your sweet roll? I can fry you up some Cram, too, so I can get some protein in you as well.”

“I’m most interested in the promise of coffee.”

“I wouldn’t know you at all if I didn’t know that much. Ha Ha! Let’s get you all well and awake.”

All this time, I’ve thought Angel needed to be reprogrammed, to have algorithms updated and added. But I’m the one who needs a shift in priorities and perspective. ...Maybe it wasn’t not wholly wrong for it to have adopted a violent streak in my absence after all.

After breakfast and a face-washing, the chemist felt much more himself. He rolled his hair back fresh, and sat down once again to craft Mentats. This time, he started with the brain fungus, reduced to a paste in an alkali broth, and spread a solid layer of laundry soap atop them. He’d gotten ahead of himself before, measuring the dry before he’d even macerated the wet. Rather than apply heat, he applied ventilation, to facilitate the desiccation of the fungal tissues as the Abraxo soaked up the mushroom’s milk. He presumed such a large shipment of soap had been nicked from a nearby laundromat. Once the moisture had been all but completely driven off, he pulverized the pan of material and emptied the mixture into the lab’s modest pill mold press machine.

‘Choly picked one up from the collection bin to the side, and admired the MT impression he’d selected as customary of the pill imprint code for Mentats--an entendre of its namesake and the company which held its branding. If only the layman had ever known the wonder-pill only comprised two very unconventional ingredients. He stuck it in his mouth and let the waxy tablet dissolve with a smile.

He’d forgotten just how starkly saponified they really were. The bicentenarian holdovers on which he’d subsisted up until then were so brittle and chalky by comparison. Nearly effervescent, the effect took immediately, and at last he felt genuinely alert.

Tinning up the fruits of his efforts, he whistled as he spent the afternoon restocking his shelves with Mentats, and wondering what kind of pill press imprints the Wasteland might ever seek of him as a mark of authenticity, not at all unlike the wax seal of ministry. The choicest iconography he could imagine for something of his own design, the mark of the poppy could provide his craft the designation of some arcane letters of last resort: to take his medicine was to hold a potentially fail-deadly conversation, a mutually assured destruction of the ego. Who wanted to be himself when he could become... nothing at all?

If his operations succeeded as fully as he developed the optimism that they would succeed, he would have to discuss with Jared the means to patent confections such as the Berry Mentat, and label them as irrefutably having been crafted by his hand. Any self-deserving artisan had a signature, didn’t he?

But in the mean time... 'Choly currently stared down the endeavor of synthesizing from hubeine a cyclical alkaloid analogous to cyclomorphine. After pacing for a spell, he disengaged progress in favor of some rest time, and he retired to the break room downstairs for dinner.

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#fallout fanfic #fo4 fanfic #fallout 4 fanfic #fallout 4 #sole survivor #mentats #the anatomy of melancholy #melancholy

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self-indulgent-sparrow · 6 years

Text

The Party

This is a monster and it just keeps happening. I thought this would clock at maybe 6k??? No. It's 10.7k words. I'm kind of scared. It's 45 pages. Someone hold me.

UM ANYWAY this was an incredibly interesting experiment in writing voices of different characters―I've never really written Simon or Mab or even Dib that much before this. I HOPE I've captured them well, I constantly went through the documents to try to accurately portray them.

It's hard to say what the point of this thing is, outside of “Don't judge a book by its very nice cover” and “respect ppl's decisions and boundaries”. This entire thing was literally just me trying to get Dib and Queenie to have a Chat. Oof.

I apologize in advance to literally everyone for a specific part of this story. You'll know which part, because your soul will leave your body while you experience it.

Enjoy.

you're like a party

somebody threw me, you taste like birthday, you look like new years. you're like a big parade through town: you leave such a mess, but you're so fun!

--the party, regina spektor

"You want to throw a party for Fourth of July? Since when were you so damn patriotic?"

"It's not for Fourth of July in particular," May says, sorting through her recipe box with a small focused frown. "I just kind of figured--there's gonna be fireworks anyway, but I'd like a distraction from the holiday, so why not just make it about having good company in general?"

"That makes absolutely no sense," Kass replies, flicking through the discarded recipe cards. What the hell is yubruk? "Anyone you invite will just think it's a holiday party."

"I really doubt Mab's going to care about a human holiday, and I know Dib's looking forward to not thinking about the current political situation. It's gonna be fine--is my guacamole recipe on the back of one of those cards? I can't find it."

Kass flips some of the cards over, and flicks the card in question towards May's outreached hands across the table.

"Thank you." She glances it over, and then sets it aside to glance at Kass, who is sipping his coffee. "I swear it won't be so bad. It's not gonna be a lot of people, and I'll make the biggest batch of lemonade you've ever seen. You like lemonade, right?"

"Hard lemonade, maybe," he replies shortly.

"Why is everything alcoholic with you."

"I'm an alcoholic."

The girl snorts, slapping her fingers over her mouth to choke down the laugh. Kass continues to drink his coffee, only barely smirking back at her.

"God, you're just the worst," she finally says after the fit of giggles has died.

"I am not the one trying to host a party for a bunch of monsters to pointedly not celebrate the holiday on that day, you little weirdo." He adds, as May sticks her tongue out at him, "Just do me a favor and leave me out of it, alright? This is your inane little get-together, not mine."

"I won't make you do anything, promise. All you have to do is tolerate people being in the house for a few hours. That's it, I swear." The way May smiles, Kass almost believes her, especially when she continues, "As consolation for making you deal with my shenanigans, I will give you the first slice of my strawberry chocolate cake."

Kass frowns around the rim of his mug in speculation, and then mutters moodily, "...it better be a big slice."

As the day of the not-party draw nearer, things at 3, Tesla Drive get a little hectic as she cleans and prepares in between her shifts. On Tuesday, July third, May brings home a watermelon as wide as his ribcage, and uses up half of the counter space to slice it into small, sweet triangles. A couple go missing when she walks away for a moment to put her hair up, and if she notices she says nothing, because it's still enough watermelon to feed a small country. Kass watches her wrap the watermelon slices and slide them into the fridge underneath the vegetable tray.

She bakes the cake layers, and whips the cream, and sets them both in the fridge overnight, with the air of someone who's done this countless times before. Kass watches her work from the kitchen door frame then, and the morning after, where at 10 am she's already been up for two hours. Two hours, and she's already peeled and chopped potatoes and sliced strawberries.

She's at the counter, pouring lemon juice into a bowl, when Kass serves himself cereal. "Good morning," May says, distracted, moving to the sink when he nudges her aside to reach for the coffee. "Sorry I didn't make breakfast."

"Didn't expect you to," he replies, pouring the warm contents into his mug.

(The mug, part of a set, has a king chess piece on it. She'd bought it as a joke, and uses the queen mug personally.)

He eats at the table, which is still blessedly clear save for the bowl of sliced strawberries, while May finishes the guacamole and quickly cleans her knives. She's pulling the cooled cake out of the fridge when he asks, suddenly rather concerned, "This isn't a formal attire party, right? You aren't going to demand I wear a button up or anything bizarre?"

"In this weather? Course not. A clean shirt and a pair of pants would be nice," the girl says, matter-of-factly, pulling out the tub of frosting and popping off the lid. "Beyond that I leave it up to you. Could you pass me the strawberries?"

Upon being offered the bowl, May squints at it suspiciously.

"This bowl is lighter than it was when I put it on the table."

"No it's not," he says, convincingly.

There's a small groan, and then a sigh. She frosts one layer of the cake with a wide spatula, while Kass watches, leaning on the fridge quite helpfully.

"Hey asshole, get the strawberries out, I gotta cut more. Anyway," May continues, beginning to place slices onto the frosted center, "If you end up deciding you're sick of the company, by all means you're free to hide in your room. I won't pester you. I can't say the same for other people, though."

"I'll cross that bridge when I get to i-ow." Kass pulls his fingers back from the strawberry bowl. May waves the frosting spatula at him threateningly.

"You have had enough, sir. Let me finish."

He sticks his stung finger in his mouth, and grins around it at her like a leer. May begins to giggle.

"You are such a child, sometimes."

As noon approaches, they both shower, and she's still there when the doorbell rings, so Kass, against his better judgment, answers the door. "You knock, now?" he says with faux surprise, when Simon and Gunter cross the threshold.

"Hey, man, give me some credit, my hands are full," Simon jokes back, gesturing to the tray of popsicles in his hands. Gunter is holding a pie--apple, by the looks of it. "Is there space in your freezer for these? Don't want them to melt."

They follow him into the kitchen, and Kass takes the tray to slide it into the small freezer above the fridge. The popsicles look to be made of different kinds of fruit. He nearly claims one now, until he glances down and the penguin is staring at him, so instead, he closes the freezer door with a little huff. Fine. Later, then.

The fridge is running out of space, so the pie is left on the table. The lemonade sits in a tall pitcher, condensation forming at its sides, on the counter. Kass grabs one of May's nicer glasses that she's brought down for the occasion, pouring the cool drink and offering it silently to Gunter. The penguin looks surprised, but accepts it. It looks between him and Simon, and then states, a touch awkwardly, "I'm going to go set up the snacks in the living room."

Kass watches Simon somewhat warily, looking over the cleaned shirt and blue, star patterned bow tie. Simon deftly ignores him, pulling food out of the fridge to set onto the kitchen table. "Dang, that's the cake May made? It looks rad!"

Since the break-in visit Kass had been told about, Simon has been over several times. While Kass had initially regarded him with little more than suspicion and disdain, Simon had been unusually (to him at least) respectful of his personal space, physically and verbally. He'd seemed more interested in helping May cook, or bringing a movie to watch together.

They had had a conversation about O'Malley while playing Mario Kart on May's Wii, mildly terse while he had avoided red shells and banana peels. It had been somewhat brief--an admittance to the act, an open distaste for the damn dog, and Kass's attempt to generally wave the whole situation aside. It wasn't a perfect patch job, but it was better than nothing, he supposed, and Simon had been less pushy.

He'd been tolerable, while being himself, but it never quite took the edge off. It is, after all, Simon, do-good-be-good Simon. It's why Kass is immediately skeptical and squinting when Simon asks, "How've you been lately? You seem better."

His mouth is a thin line, but Simon's not looking as he reaches into the pantry and grabs the chip bag to dump into a bowl.

"Peachy. You wouldn't believe what not having an anxious brat following you around does for your nerves. Dib's not here too, which helps."

"Pfffbt." The boy (hardly a boy anymore, but he'll never be much else in Kass's eyes) pulls the plastic wrap off the guacamole, studying it curiously. When he looks up at Kass, his smile is undaunted by the jab. "Following you around in a different house would be way too much work, even for me. And anyway, May told me space would do you some good, so I've been nice."

He makes a harsh little "tch" noise with his tongue. "Of course, when the bird tells you, you listen. Nevermind I stated repeatedly for you to keep your shenanigans to yourself for months, then."

"You, sir, are a liar and a fiend, so I ignore what you say constantly. Half the time you're projecting anyway," Simon says, with a snicker, "and the other half, you're making really dated references that show how darn old you are."

"I am not old.”

"Okay, mister Mid Life Crisis. You're not old."

Kass mumbles something under his breath, nursing a second glass of lemonade. Simon blinks in his direction.

"I missed that. Say it again?"

With a little grimace, he repeats himself. "I said, we're still not friends. Don't expect me to come over and play. "

Simon rolls his eyes. "Whatever makes you feel good, dude. You're doing fine over here anyway, you've chilled out a lot."

"Yes, well, when I'm not constantly told to change my core person to fit a standard, I tend to thrive."

Simon sets the paper plates in his hand down, and looks at Kass. His expression is a hard one to fathom--the flesh of his cheek is pulled up, like a half grimace. With a little chuff, he pushes his glasses up his nose.

"You know what, you're right. I was pushing you really hard."

Wait, what?

This isn't a subject they've touched on for a while. Kass, more than anything, had meant it as a general rib, but the jab seems to have been more effective than he'd assumed. His surprise is evident, because Simon continues.

"I mean, I don't feel like I'm wrong, because I know you can be better than you let on--but!" He holds up a finger at Kass's little scowl. "I was pushing way too hard, at way too soon a time."

He sits in a chair at the table, gesturing, looking a touch sheepish. "I should have recognized way sooner that you were spiraling into a bad state. I won't get too weepy--I've apologized plenty of times about it and I know you're sick of it. My point, here, is, I never really looked at the situation from your point of view."

Kass watches warily, as Simon dips a chip into the guacamole, and sticks it into his mouth. He makes a pleasantly surprised sound, and swallows, then gestures again, a little shrug.

"I tried to get it, but it didn't really sink in until the whole, uh. The thing with Pickman. I didn't register how deep a level the Foundation stuff was ingrained into you. That's on me, and I'm sorry."

For a long minute, there is quiet. It's awkward, and uncertain.

Kass says, a little caught off guard, "We're starting this party off on a very low note, you know."

Simon snickers again.

"My bad. But I'm really glad you're starting to feel better. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know." He points at Kass sharply, squinting. "Illegal activity is out, though."

Kass finds himself very nearly smiling. "We'll see," he says.

"See wh--Simon, you blessed boy! You're early!" May's enthusiasm fills and controls a whole room, and she dives into Simon's arms when he stands. "You didn't have to come help!"

"Well," he says, seeming pleased, "I figured it'd take a load off your mind. Gunter and I brought some extra desserts."

When May pulls away, she examines the pie brightly. "Look, Kass, a cutie pie! And also, an apple pie."

"....May."

She can't help how her chest shakes from laughter. "That's it, I'm sorry. That's the only joke I'll make."

"It was so bad," Simon says, affronted.

"I'm sorry," she says again, though she doesn't seem very sorry. "I'm just so happy--You're here, and you look nice and I suddenly feel much, much less stupid about this whole thing."

It catches Kass a little off guard to hear that, because she hasn't seemed self conscious as she planned the party--a touch rushed, maybe.

Had he failed to notice, or had she just hidden it that well?

Simon grins at May as she touches his bow tie, the pair of them thick as thieves. "You look adorable and I hope you know it."

Though Kass will never admit it, Simon is right. May has chosen to leave her glasses off today, and her hair, still damp from her shower, is pulled back into tight pigtails. A blue ribbon peeks out behind the springing curls, loose by her neck, and her shirt has a feather pattern around the collar.

She's embraced the summer mood, it seems. Her face lights up from the compliment.

"Actually," she asks sheepishly, "could you give me a hand? I'm not very pleased with the ribbons and you could probably get a better angle than I could."

"Sure!"

Simon ushers May out the hall, to the bathroom. Kass slips past them into the living room. The penguin and a green little clone are setting the coffee table with food, neither of them looking up while he maneuvers to set up the Wii.

"Awfully considerate of you," it says from somewhere behind him. Kass checks the batteries of each spare remote, and then flicks through the disks, picking multiplayer games and setting them beside the console.

"If I have to tolerate this ridiculous backwards event, I might as well find ways to enjoy myself," he replies.

"Right," Gunter says. "Of course. That's all."

"That's all, Ducky."

The doorbell is well timed, and Kass stays put as it's opened by the bird. He half turns, watching Dib, already bright red from the heat, strip his trench coat off to hang on the door's coat peg.

"One hundred and three degrees," the boy mumbles. "One hundred and three stupid degrees. And everybody's barbecuing."

(His shirt is bright blue, and has a spiraling wind pattern. This is very ironic.)

"Need cold. Need fluids."

Dib makes his way into the kitchen, reappearing moment later with a cold glass pressed to his forehead. He drops heavily onto the couch, and finally seems to notice Kass, raising a hand in a half greeting. Kass raises his eyebrows, and then looks over the couch, and grins.

"Psst. Constant Vigilance."

"Nn," Dib says wearily. "What."

"Look."

Suspiciously, Dib looks behind the couch to the base of the stairs where Simon and May reappear to enter the kitchen. He gasps at the sight of the tiny springs at the base of her neck.

"Oh my goooooosh."

"I told you," Kass says, a touch smug.

"That's--That's so cute," Dib hisses back, grinning wide around the lip he is biting into. "That is so good."

"What are you two jerks snickering about," May asks as she sets the vegetable tray onto the coffee table.

"N-Nothing--" Dib says, at the exact moment Gunter says, "Kass pointed out your pigtails."

May peeps (god, it's brilliant when she does that), and then yells. "What is with you people and my hair!!"

Kass snickers and ducks the pillow chucked in his direction, tossing it back in Dib's direction.

When Simon and Gunter drop onto the couch, Kass tosses them each a controller and drops into his recliner, only half listening to the party, his hands behind his head.

Simon, to some degree, is right. He is more relaxed. This is his space, currently being invaded upon with his own permission. That's what he tells himself, at least, slitting one eye open to watch Simon hand Dib his ass in Super Smash Bros.

Four rounds later, Dib has won all of a single match, staunchly holding to playing Samus while Simon flicks through Pacman, Lil Mac, and Ness. Gunter has decided he has a very high interest in May's guacamole, and has helped himself to a good portion of the stuff, ignoring the cold cut sandwiches and veggie tray.

May's still not appeared to join them. When Kass stands and peeks into the kitchen, he finds her at the stove. The faerie queen is sitting on the edge of the counter by the window, the sunlight painting patterns on her wings. It's with a little grimace that Kass maneuvers around her to pour himself a glass of the lemonade, ignoring their conversation.

He catches sight of the stove--wait. May's making french fries. Unashamed, Kass sidles to her side and steals a couple finished ones on the plate.

"Stop stealing food," she mumbles with a little smile.

"Stop having friends that are all in my nightmares," he retorts, blowing on the fry and sticking it in his mouth. Ah, unsalted. Probably a batch for the faerie then.

"Sorry?"

It is, at this very moment, that the back door to the kitchen bangs open. All three inhabitants jump nearly a foot, and only two relax as the cause makes itself known.

"Sup?" The nightmare queen proclaims, posing dramatically in the door frame. "Y'all can relax now, I'm here. The party can finally start."

Kass attempts very hard to make himself invisible, and does not succeed, though the new guest ignores him to throw her arm around May's shoulders. He's not a fan in the slightest of the queen that visits from time to time―she looks like Sydney, but isn't Sydney, and she has a tendency to drip onto the sofa and make creepy faces at him without thinking about it. Certainly she's not threatened him, but he's seen her head come off at least once, and he's not interested in being within three feet of that.

"You are dressed all in black, how are you not dead from the heat," he hears May murmur with a smile in her voice.

"It's the aesthetic, man. Suffer for the look."

"I love you, dumbass."

He maneuvers away from all three queens--that's way too much power in one room for his comfort--at the same moment that Mab proclaims, "May, dear, you've hardly left the kitchen this entire time. This is your event, you should relax!"

"I'm almost done, alright? This is the last batch of fries, and then I gotta salt some of them and we'll be good to relax."

"You've made plenty, you've got to go join your own party! Nobody's going to starve, you've made sure of that," the queen coaxes. Kass watches, as he retreats with his glass, Mab and the other one--Queen Nothing? a stupid name, he can think of something better--usher the bird away from the stove. She resists only a little, snapping the stove dial off.

Kass stays on the peripherals of the scene when they finally drop her onto the edge of the couch. Slime princess drops onto the arm of the couch beside Simon, smiling in what she must imagine is a relaxed manner but really comes off with far too many teeth.

"This guacamole is fantastic, May, could I possibly bother you for the recipe?" Gunter asks, and true enough, the bowl is much emptier than it had been when Kass had left.

"I'll make a copy for you," she replies, hugging a pillow. "Pass me some snap peas?"

For a few long minutes, the party is absolutely wonderful, and loud, without him. He thinks, maybe, he'd like to creep off soon, but he doesn't, just standing at the base of the stairs watching the madness unfold.

What a strange bunch of characters. Of course they all found each other. Of course they all get along. Who else would have them?

Simon and Dib eventually hand the controllers to May and the ink hazard, who are both godawful at Mario Kart. It certainly doesn't stop them from trying, though eventually he does lose his patience at how badly his roommate is failing and snatch her roommate to shoot her to third place. She had fought him for it for just a moment before yielding, and he's suddenly back in the fray of this stupid event.

He soon finds out every queen is bad at Mario Kart, and really, that almost takes all the fun out of winning. Almost--not quite.

On the couch where he rests his elbows, Dib and Simon are having a conversation about the new Marvel movie, and the villain's absolute inane scheme.

"I mean, it's at least a better motivation, than say, universal conquest," Dib claims, "But dude! You're wearing a matter manipulator, and you're arguing there aren't enough resources? Make more!"

"Nobody's arguing his concept isn't super donked up," Simon counters, "but I'm not really sure he knows any better. Plus, can the gauntlet really make more matter?"

"Well by that argument, he could have turned a bunch of useless waste into more resources," is the very irritable retort.

"What the hell is even happening in these movies anymore," May adds, scoffing. "I never bothered watching Civil War and now there's an evil grape."

"You never watched Civil War? But that one's actually pretty good!"

"Dude. Age of Ultron suuuuuuucked. I got jaded. All I know is everybody's in Civil War and duking it out because Tony's doing some more shit no one agrees with because no one will get that man therapy."

An apt description, Kass thinks. Apparently, not enough one for Dib and Simon, who begin to explain.

"Well, it's more about this bill--"

"And there's a terrorist attack--"

"And it seems like Bucky did it but--"

"Jesus Christ," May says when they are finally done, her head in her hands. "That was almost as bad as What's Up Tiger Lilly."

Kass squints at his roommate at the same moment someone, he's not sure who, asks, "What's What's Up Tiger Lilly?"

"No," she says, muffled into her fingers. "I'm not telling you the What's Up Tiger Lilly story. You don't want that."

They all exchange looks, and then look expectantly back to her.

"Well, now you have to tell us. You can't tease us like this," Simon states.

"Pleeeeeease," adds the Void Girl, grinning wide and batting her eye at May in what she thinks is a pleading expression.

May's eyes narrow. She shakes her head once.

"I warned you."

She takes a large drink of her lemonade as everyone waits, the video game and snacks forgotten. He finds himself only vaguely intrigued, but more than anything he realizes, watching her eyes glittering, that she is basking in the attention.

Holy shit.

May's a storyteller.

"Now," she begins, "You have to understand this is not my story--I got this story from Ethan, who was my coworker at one of my old part time jobs. We worked at Jimmy John's. Now for those who haven't been to Jimmy John's, it's like Subway, but more mediocre. Subway, you have countless options to choose from, right? Jimmy John's, you have far fewer options, but you're gonna get your sandwich in about thirty seconds, so that's great I guess."

May puts her hands in the air in a shrug. "I'm sure this is a talent I'll eventually find useful in life, but so far I've come up dry. Thanks a bunch, Jimmy John."

"Anyway," she continues, "I got this story from Ethan, but this story didn't happen to Ethan. This story happened to his old friend Jake, while the both of them were in high school. Now, because basically none of you went to high school," (here, May squints around the room with a little crooked smirk), "high school is basically this place you go to spend four years learning nothing substantial and existing as a ball of anxiety pretty much the entire time. For, you know, eight hours almost every day."

She grins.

"So not at all a waste of time, right?"

Dib snorts. The queens nod sagely, though really, only one of them really knows what May's going on about.

"So Ethan and Jake went to high school together, and they were in movie club. Now, again, since almost none of you went to high school--clubs are a place in high school where you decide, 'I've only been here eight hours, that's not enough! I wanna be on my school campus some more.' Then you find some friends who like the same things as you do and also wanna be on campus for even longer."

May looks up at Kass with a bit of a wicked smile, one he's learned to be mildly concerned about. Very quickly, he learns the cause.

"Now, friends," (she turns and stares directly at the queen on the other end of the couch, who sheepishly shrinks into her shoulders), "are people who like your company. Usually, they will actively try to spend time with you! You may never be sure why, even though they claim it's because they think you're fun to be around. Or something."

Little monster. Kass flicks her ear, and she giggles, pushing his hand away. "Stop that, I'm telling a story."

"Anyway," May says again, forcefully, "You and your friends all find a thing you like to do, like, say for example, sports."

As if anyone in this room likes sports. Kass hides his smirk in his folded arms on the backboard of the couch.

"Sports," the bird adds helpfully, "are basically a stupid form of physical activity that require movement and sweat and usually sitting out in the sun! Crazy concept, right! The AC exists for a reason."

"May," Simon says, his hands folded in front of his face as though he is concentrating very hard. "Please."

She continues, undeterred. "There's usually grass and some kind of ball and I hope most of you know what a ball is, because I'm not going to explain that."

"May," Simon says, a little more forcefully.

"Please," Dib adds, a hint of desperation in his voice.

They're figuring out the scheme, slowly.

"Okay, we're getting off topic. So, Ethan and Jake are in a club, and they are in movie club. Movie club was this thing where Ethan and Jake and their friends would get together to watch a movie, and then discuss what happened in the movie, and subjects like the movie's themes. Now," May holds up a finger in an explanatory matter, "Themes are like, the meaning of the story, or what the story is trying to get across with its moral, and morals for those of you that don't have them," (she's grinning at Kass again), "are complex ideas about right and wrong."

She smooths her shirt down, and takes another sip of her lemonade. "They're usually widely debated by people who don't have any, and yet decide they're doing things like taking away people's rights out of 'moral obligation'. But I'm getting off topic."

This is the worst story ever. Holy shit. Already an air of distress is descending upon the guests.

"The theme of this story would probably be about the folly of man and the error of judging a book by its cover, or what have you," the bird says, nonchalantly. "Now, a book is like a movie, but instead of being told visually, the contents are shared through words, written on pages bound together, and usually reading is involved."

"MAY," Dib hisses, pained.

"No, no, this is important to the story, see, because because Ethan and Jake were in movie club, and it was Jake's turn to get a movie for the club. So he goes to the library. A library is a place that contains information in many books. But it also contains other forms of media like newspapers, which are real stories versus fictional ones. This is a real story by the way. No newspaper will publish it. I've tried."

Kass has to physically bury his head into the hard bend of the couch to keep from laughing. She's good at this, she's good at keeping this train wreck entertaining. She's a terrible little monster.

"Besides books and newspapers, you can also borrow things such as DVDs, and at this point a DVD is a somewhat dated sort of disk that--Dib no come back!!" May suddenly says as Dib stands, his hands in the air as though he can't take anymore. "This story has a great pay off come on man--thank you, as I was saying."

Dib crosses his arms. Kass reaches over the pokes him in the head. "You did ask for this."

"Don't touch me."

"Young man. Am I going to finish my story, or are you just going to keep interrupting me."

"I'm good. Keep going."

"Good boy," says the pleased bird. "Where was I. Hm, I can't quite remember--should I start over?"

"May!"

"Right, yes, a DVD is a dated sort of way to watch movies. So, Jake went to the library to borrow a movie, and he decided he was going to borrow the movie What's Up Tiger Lilly."

The room visibly relaxes with relief. Finally, they all seem to think. We're finally getting to the story.

Kass knows better. Kass hides his grin, watching the reactions carefully.

"Now, What's Up Tiger Lilly is a Woody Allen movie. It's some kind of kung fu movie he basically dubbed over with a completely different story," May explains, and then adds, her voice quirking up in pitch, "which I guess makes it very artistic?"

Mab nods, though she does look a touch confused, and the penguin says from the other side of the coffee table, "That is.... an apt explanation. Really, the only explanation needed so far."

"This is my story and I'll tell it how I like, thank you Gunter." Her tone is a touch affronted, though always, always laced with sarcasm.

"Apologies. Continue."

"So, Jake went back to movie club with What's Up Tiger Lilly, and he and his friends watched it. They enjoyed it!"

That wicked smile is back.

"Enjoyment is an emotion you feel, likely the very one you feel now as you listen to this wonderful story I'm telling you. I know you're enjoying it because you're my friends, and you like my company, and you like my stories."

"May," the ink girl says at the end of the couch. "Please. You care about me, right. Please stop this madness."

"So they watched this movie," May continues, undeterred, "and they experienced enjoyment, and they discussed it.

And time passed.

Now, seeing as not all of us conform to time's rules, time--"

Dib makes a strangled sort of noise, like a scream that got locked behind his tongue. Kass presses his forehead to his fist on the backboard. He cannot look.

"Time is a somewhat linear linear mostly wonked up passage of growth, usually noted in minutes, hours, and days. It's very convoluted and made up by humans because they apparently need more ways to stress themselves out, like being late to things. for example, you're probably thinking to yourself, the time you spend listening to me tell this story couldn't be spent in a better way at all, and it's going by so fast! I'm halfway through the story!!"

"May," Kass says, very evenly. "You are going to get thrown across the room."

"Explain throwing to me really quick?"

The flat stare he gives her is answer enough. The monster on the couch grins widely.

"Anyway. Time passed, and then, one year later--" (May holds up a finger) "--Jake went back to the library. A year is three hundred sixty-five days. This was probably a little more than that, but not by much. He went to the library, and he picked out some books to check out. I'm not sure what he checked out, maybe he decided it was time to reread Harry Potter but could only find a copy of book five, which is confirmed to be the most depressing, unenjoyable novel of the series."

Kass watches Simon's expression very carefully, noting the tight-eyed squint. Simon does not rise to the bait.

"Maybe he was doing a book report, because at this point people still went to libraries to get information out of books, a method so dated and untrustworthy nowadays that those poor libraries should really do something with all those dated encyclopedias."

Now Simon does open his mouth, visibly irritated. May is grinning right at the boy, obviously goading. He barely gets a word out.

"Do not--"

"An encyclopedia!" she interrupts loudly, "Is a book with information on every possible subject known to man!"

"May--"

"They usually come in collections! But none of that matters. What matters is Jake went and grabbed some books he decided to check out."

Simon gives up, shaking his head impatiently at the couch cushions.

"He brought his books to the counter, and he said hello to the librarian. The librarian was a woman--Ah, wait, I should clarify--"

The room bursts into an uproar along the lines of "we know what a woman is--"

"A LIBRARIAN is a person who works in a library."

Kass can't hold it back anymore--he's wheezing into the back of the sofa pathetically. Fuck, she's horrible. Dib is visibly getting irritated, and Mab looks to be getting there. The noise only dies when May says, "Can I finish my story, or will I need to start over?”

Reluctantly, the party goes quiet again. May nods.

"Thank you. As I was saying. The librarian was a woman, and Jake went up to the checkout desk. Jake said 'hello!' The librarian said 'hi!' Jake said, 'I would like the check out these books!'

The librarian said, 'okay, let me see your library card'. And she scanned it, and she looked at the computer. And she went, 'hmm.'"

May puts her hand on her chin in mock contemplation for a moment, acting it out. Everyone seems to be holding their breath, afraid to interrupt when actual progress is happening.

"'What is it?' Jake said.

'It says here that you checked out What's Up Tiger Lilly, and never returned it,' the librarian said.

'Oh,' said Jake.

'Yes, it says here you have a fine of eleven dollars and twenty cents. You can't check out any more library books until you pay the fine.'

And Jake said, 'oh,' again.

The librarian said, 'Do you want to pay the fine?'"

May steeples her fingers. She smiles sweetly.

"And Jake said, no."

There is a pause. Several long beats pass.

May says nothing more. She continues to smile.

"Are you," Dib finally says. "Are you actually--That's IT?"

She looks like the cat that got both the cream and the canary. Kass begins to snigger into the sofa again.

"This is so stupid! That was the stupidest--Why did you--aaaagh."

Simon's face is distorted, a mix between amused and horrified at himself. "The punchline," he says slowly, "is that he wouldn't pay a library fine?"

"Yes."

"....This is a bad story."

"Aw."

The queens both look a level of distressed, though in different ways. While the eldritch horror seems, for lack of a better phrase, split down the middle between laughing and committing a murder, Mab is staring at May, her eyebrows creased. Kass realizes, exactly, what's about to happen, at the exact moment Mab says, "I don't understand."

"Oh no!" May says, holding back a cackle. "Mab didn't get it guys, I gotta do it over again and explain it better this tim--"

"NO!"

The chorus rings throughout the room sharply. Kass can feel May's wide smile from behind his hand, firmly clasped over her mouth. She's visibly shaking with giggles--he's not doing too much better.

She wasted a good half hour of their time, like this, he realizes when he glances at the clock. She had managed to get them to sit and listen to her say nothing of consequence for a full half hour. The nerve of her is something to be applauded.

At her gentle tap against the back of his hand, Kass removes his fingers. The bird looks smug, smiling at her guests who are coming down from their rages. Dib has picked the game controller back up, very determined to not look at his host.

“That was mean,” Gunter says, looking rather amused in retrospect. “That was absolutely terrible.”

“What, you people think I'm nice?” comes the reply, followed with a shrug. “Honestly, it's like you don't even know me!”

“You're wicked,” Mab says, finally smiling. “You'd give the fae a run for their money.”

May seems far too pleased with herself at that. She sits back against the couch, sipping her lemonade pleasantly.

“I once heard an hour long rendition of that story. I'm still improving at it, to be honest! But now,” she adds, grinning dangerously, “You can share it with your friends!”

When cake is served, May is good on her word. She gives Kass a large slice, refills his lemonade glass, and waves him away as he escapes back up the stairs to his bedroom. It's a cool, dark space, and he lights a quick smoke, something he'd avoided doing down with the guests.

While it is not a bad party, by any means, he has had his fill, he thinks. For now, he wants some time to himself.

With time, he hears the party become quieter. The afternoon slips into early evening, the shadows only barely longer. He wakes from a nap to a quiet house, a murmur of sound the only hint that it is not entirely empty.

He stands and stretches, feeling the vertebrae of his back click softly. It's almost seven when he gathers his dishes and exits his room. What are the chances there's still cake, or a slice of pie?

Kass is at the foot of the stairs when he stops.

He hears―rather, he overhears―in the kitchen―

“―we please drop this? Just today? I―today was a good day, dude, can't we just bask in it without talking about this again?”

“I'm sorry, May, I'm just―I gotta make sure! You know I can't just let it go―this is Kass we're talking about.”

It doesn't take a genius to know that's Dib. May, on her part, sounds agitated, moving around the kitchen, running the sink. Kass can picture it, can picture the little impatient steps and how things knock about when she accidentally swats them while reaching for things. That just makes her angrier.

“Why? Why is it such a big deal to you? I thought you didn't care anymore, you were fine when the man went missing. It was like you didn't even notice.”

“It's―It's not that I didn't care, I just―I didn't want to waste energy on trying to find a guy that doesn't want to be found. I do care! I'm going to care, and I'm going to worry and be suspicious!”

“Why can't you let it go?”

“Because!” Dib seems to snap harshly, before he stops, as though catching himself. When he speaks again, it's in a lower volume, and more controlled.

“This is Kass. This is the guy who lied to me for months, and was a huge jerk to me and my friends for years, and that was before he got stuck in my garage. You know how many times he's thrown me under the bus―you have to understand. I'm going to be a bit hyper-vigilant! I'm going to worry!”

This isn't the first conversation Kass has overheard about himself. He's spent long enough in 1, Tesla Drive, and in Site 17, and many other places, to hear numerous insults about his person. It, for the most part, doesn't bother him, so much as it annoys him that people have really nothing better to talk about.

What Kass is surprised to find unpleasant is the idea of May talking about him. Of course she does, he know logically she'd talk about him while he's not around, but there's something so possibly two-faced about it.

He hears her small huff.

“I get that―and it's fine to be nervous, okay? It's fine to not trust him, that's not what I'm saying. But that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is questioning my choices. My judgment. You still have this idea that I need protecting, but I don't. I'm not telling you to get over it and be his friend, I'm not an idiot. But, Christ, Dib, I expect you to trust my decisions.”

"But I'm worried about you. I know you said you could handle him but he's just a lot to deal with. Plus," Dib says with a little sniff. "You shouldn't have to deal with someone like that on a daily basis. You don't deserve that."

"Okay,” she says after a beat, her tone sharp and irritated, “First off. I'm not handling him. Kass is not some kind of wild animal I'm trying to tame. Secondly, I'm much more capable than you give me credit for. I'm in charge of an entire species, most of which don't like me. I work retail. You think I can't deal with a little bit of criticism and insults? You think I can't deal with a bad attitude from time to time?"

There's a moment of quiet, filled with nothing but the clatter of dishes and the running water.

"....I didn't know that. They don't like you?"

"Not the point, here, hon. My point is, look. This isn't something you need to worry about. You don't need to worry about me, and you don't need to trust him. You need to trust me. You need to trust that I can take care of myself, and that I can manage living with him. And I'm getting really sick of having to defend my friendship, dude. We're adults, we should be past this."

Oh, she shouldn't have said that. She shouldn't have, that opens such a gaping wound, that--

"Wait, Kass is your friend?"

"Oh, here we go." The dishes clatter loudly.

"Kass doesn't have friends, May."

"Don't start with me, Dib.”

"No, seriously! Simon tried for months to convince the guy! You know what it resulted in? It resulted in sharpie on his forehead and honey stuck in places there shouldn't be honey! Kass doesn't have friends, he refuses to even fake it, and maybe Frank's an exception, but I don't think Frank's picky--"

"Ow! Fuck!"

Kass stiffens at the little swear. Dib stops talking―the water stops running.

"What happened?"

"Cake knife got me. No―don't go anywhere, I'm fine."

“You want me to go grab a band-aid?”

"No, no. It's healing up already, see?"

"Nn. You're sure?"

"I'm good, hon. Just tired. Can we―can we please drop this subject?"

"Nnn,” Dib says, clearly not ready to drop this subject, “can I just say one more thing?"

May doesn't respond, so Dib continues, undeterred.

“I just think, of all of us, you're the one that needs to be the most worried about Kass causing issues. Simon and I know what he's like, and the kind of under the table stuff he's pulled. You―you haven't been around him as long as we have, and you always see the best in people. But―he needs a closer eye on him. If something happens--if he gets picked up by the Foundation, he's going to sell us all out if he thinks it even has a chance of saving his skin.”

“I―“

“Please let me finish. He'll sell us out and that includes you. I know we can handle it, we can figure something out, we always do, but if something goes wrong―May, when I told them about what ZiM's PAK could do they completely disabled it, with no way for him to get out. They'll keep you under the tightest lock and key. They'll shove you into the tiniest cell and poke and prod at you until they know every little thing you can do and then they'll leave you there.”

Dib's voice, his cadence, is painfully sincere. Maybe a touch raw. Maybe he's faking the depth of his worry, playing it up to make her listen―he's done it in the past. Still, he speaks with more familiarity than he seems to want to.

“You need to be careful about what you say to him and what you tell him. I don't want you to get hurt.”

There's a silence. It's heavy and stifling, and then May says in a low, dark voice, “I don't―you know what? I can't deal with this right now. I have to go clear the living room―I'll be back in a minute.”

Oh, shit.

Before Kass can slink away from the wall beside the door frame, she stomps out through it and nearly barrels right into him. They stare at each other a moment, exchanging no words.

She looks... angry. He thought he'd seen her angry before, but he's never seen this; her eyes are slits, her shoulders tense and up to her ears. The air around her seems boiling hot with barely-contained rage, the curls of her pigtails loose and framing her face unevenly.

May looks him in the eye, and then grits her teeth, looking away and moving around him without so much as a word. Kass watches her storm into the living room, gathering paper plates and used napkins. Her motions are jarring, forced and rushed.

This is held-back anger―not the snappish tones she's shot his way when he's opened his mouth too much, not the tense way her fingers push her hair back from her face when she's got four and a half things all happening at once. She cleans when she's angry. She channels it everywhere but where it should go.

And that's―

That's such bullshit, Kass finds. It's not the particular speech Dib's given May that gets under his skin, but the pretentiousness of it all. He's done that thing he and Simon and Mab always seem to do. They stick their noses into other people's business. They insert their own opinion into a subject that has nothing to do with them.

They've done it with Kass for years now. He understands why, to some extent. He hates it, but he thought he understood why―he had thought the distrust was always behind it. He'd figured it was the way Dib needed to make sure he didn't throw them all under the bus again.

But, apparently, it's just the kind of shitty, awful, bratty child that Dib is; so much so that he does this sort of thing to his supposed friends too. He can't seem to help himself―he's too full of himself and too stuck on his high horse. The stupid kid still thinks he's the smartest person in the room. He's sixteen and he thinks he knows better than full-blown adults.

Kass wipes away the snarl that's been growing on his face, and forces his eyes away from the girl's turned back. He slips into the kitchen, where Dib is standing awkwardly in front of the sink, fidgeting with a towel he'd been drying dishes with.

Dib looks, more than anything, startled, and for once, uncertain. His eyes had locked onto the door frame, as though waiting for May to return, but upon seeing Kass, his expression slides directly back into distrust and disinterest, eyes lidded and squinty.

“Hi.”

“How's it going, Lightning Bolt,” Kass says, flatly, without interest.

“It's.... going.”

“Where's the barefoot wonder?” he asks hollowly, checking the fridge's leftovers. No good―he's lost his interest in anything sweet, from the bitter taste in his mouth. “Already gone home to candy land?”

He can feel Dib's eyes on his neck as he turns his back. He has not missed this feeling in the slightest.

“Simon went to grab some snacks from Uuu. He and I are going to take the Voot to watch the fireworks from bird's eye view.”

“Interesting,” he responds, moving to the sink. It's not interesting, really. “So it's just you then?”

He's in Dib's bubble, and it's obvious the teen is tense, but all Kass does is rinse his plate and glass. He leaves them in the sink, eyes on his own hands.

He grabs a clean glass from the dry pile. “You're leaving ET on its own tonight of all nights? You find that wise?”

“ZiM is fine,” Dib says, a touch sharply. “He's used to loud explosions.”

“Of course. War species.”

There's a heavy pause. Kass fills the glass with ice cubes. Clink. Clink.

“How, um,” he hears Dib start, haltingly, “How are you doing?”

"I'm fine,” Kass says, his voice upturning into sweet saccharine sarcasm. “I'm just dandy, not being in your presence 24/7 does wonders for my complexion."

A glance up confirms the expected scowl, which he feels no need to respond to. His own expression, carefully controlled, is neutral.

No matter Dib's feelings towards him, be they disinterest, disgust, or suspicion―that distinct mutual feeling of dislike that had manifested early between them is not going anywhere any time soon.

Kass smiles, suddenly, a wide and rather cold smile. He smiles like a wolf looking at a little girl in a bright red hood would smile.

“But here's a fun fact for you to ruminate on, dear old Dib. Let's say, for sake of argument, I wasn't doing as spectacular as I am doing. It, fascinatingly enough, would be entirely none of your business. Isn't that interesting?"

His smile remains, though he looks away from the boy hovering near him to pour a fresh serving of lemonade into the glass.

“I--”

"Here are the facts,” Kass says, holding a finger up, “I'm not your responsibility anymore, Dibromoethane. Your opinion on my status is moot and unnecessary. Lemonade?"

Dib's eyes flick between Kass and the glass in his hand. His expression is twisted when he says, hesitant, “Uh. Sure?”

"Tough tits,” the man replies, walking away, “Serve yourself. Keep your nose out of my roommate's hair about my status."

When Kass returns to the living room, May is pacing along the length of the couch. Her hands are full of used napkins, which she nearly seems to be wringing, crumbling them into tight balls. She barely looks up at him when he approaches, but her pacing stops when he enters her personal space.

“It's hot enough out without you working up your feathers, birdy. Drink.”

He offers the lemonade, but the bird shakes her head. “No, no, I have to finish cleaning. It's gotta get done.”

Kass tsks lightly. “It'll still be there when you've calmed down,” he starts, his mouth on the next syllable before it gets stuck in his throat at expression of absolute rage that paints May's face.

“That's the problem! It needs to get done or it'll just stay a mess, regardless of whether or not I'm angry! Jesus Christ, am I actually saying words out loud? I'm actually audibly speaking, right? I'm not just making random noises with my mouth like some handicapped old person?”

Holy shit―she's seriously upset. May's eyes are lit up, molten gold. Kass takes a step back; she notices, and deflates nearly immediately. She presses her hands to her face to stifle a noise that sounds suspiciously like a scream.

“You―he―mmmmgh how many times, how many fucking times do I have to say something for people to hear me? Fuck me, why the fuck don't people listen when I talk?”

Her hands have buried into her pulled back hair, the pigtails coming loose and the dirty napkins still balled up in her fist. Carefully, as though defusing a bomb or trying not to startle a lion, Kass sets the glass down onto the coffee table and extracts her fingers from her hair. He uncurls them, one by one.

“You're letting this get to you far more than you need to, you need to take a breath.”

“Fuck you, don't tell me what to do. I'm an angry bitch and you shouldn't touch me.”

“Look, princess, don't get snappy at me, I was well-behaved today,” Kass says sharply, unfurling the fist with the napkins and taking them from her. “Rudeness is unbecoming of royalty.”

“Fuck,” she says again, and deflates once more. “I'm sorry, Christ, you shouldn't―you don't need to deal with this shit, but I'm just so sick to death of it.”

She stares at her hand, curling and uncurling the fist, her mouth a thin sharp line.

“Everyone's always fucking acting like they're waiting for the other damn shoe to drop. Like―Like, I'm fucking naive to how awful you can be, have been. And when I finally realize, oh no, he's just the worst, I'll be crushed!”

May looks up at Kass, brows furrowed and jaw taut. “I'm not a fucking baby! I don't need people to take care of me!”

“Keep your voice down,” he hisses, to no avail. She's nearly shouting.

“Like I don't fucking know most of the awful shit you pulled? Like I don't know about when you dislocated Dib's shoulder, or lied to him for months, or sold the kids out to the Foundation, or the thing with O'Malley? Or any of the other terrible things you've done? I fucking know, Kass! These aren't secrets, unfortunately!”

She surprises him―she laughs, bubbling with anger. “But they're not my grudges to hold! Most of this shit is ancient fucking history, and I wasn't there! I have no right to be pissy at you for any of it! And somehow, some-fucking-how, because I don't treat you like roadkill, it means I don't know you're a jerk.”

Here, May's pitch rises into the dramatics, into mockery. Her hands press to her cheeks to add to the theatrics, eyes wide and childlike. “Nooooo, I need to be protected! I need to be warned about the Big, Bad, Kaaaaaass. Fuuuuuck.” This last word is her normal pitch, pouring with exasperation. She presses her fingers into her eyes, groaning.

“You're the fucking same, you know that?” she concludes. “You and him and so many stupid humans―you think you need to teach the softhearted that the world is so much worse than they act like it is. I hate it so much.”

And May is softhearted, that much is true. Kass has lived in this house with her for maybe half a year now, and he knows this much. She is, above all things, kind and optimistic, while simultaneously sarcastic and smug and a small jokester.

Her interactions with him have forced Kass to try to come to terms with the idea that being soft is not nearly the same thing as being weak.

May is quiet for a long, long minute. Kass listens to her inhale deeply, and exhale slowly. He lifts his hand and places it on the crown of her head―it's the closest he can get to a conciliatory gesture. It works―the tension in her shoulders drops, and she inhales another shuddery breath.

“Nn. Fuck. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped so hard. It―it's not okay, and it's not your fault. None of this is your fault,” May adds, pulling her hands from her face, “You were just.... there to take the brunt of it. I'm sorry.”

While mostly caught off guard, Kass can't exactly say his feelings are hurt. Certainly, he doesn't like being assaulted with the fact that most of his dirty laundry has been hung out for curious eyes, and her outburst is certainly a new side to her that's set him on edge, but she's not exactly the most threatening form.

He supposes he's a bit ruffled by the idea that he and Dib have anything in common. Oh, certainly, he'd compared the pair of them before. He'd believed (and he still does to some level, what with being a cynic) Dib would realize how hard the real world was, and would become cold like Kass had to survive it. He'd believed there was no other real way to deal with the harshness―this isn't a kid's show, after all.

But the idea that Dib would do anything Kass might do? The idea he would actually buy into Kass's mindset about the world? Well, that is just about unthinkable, these days, especially with the company he keeps.

They're nothing alike, he tells himself. She's just angry.

“I think I'll survive the sudden shock, tweety bird,” Kass finally says, waving off the apology. Again, he tries to offer the glass, and May accepts it now, pressing the cool condensing side to her cheek. She turns, her brows pinching upward. Already she's got that guilty look he's grown familiar with―she makes it almost immediately after she snaps at him.

“I should go talk to him,” she says, weakly. “I just stormed out in a huff.”

“Give it another minute,” Kass replies, patting her upper arm. “He deserves to feel like shit for a bit longer, don't you think?”

May chuffs, looking up at him. She very nearly smiles, and she looks exhausted. The host has had a long day.

“I'm, um,” she starts, “I'm sorry about this. Again. Um. Was―Was everything okay on your end? I know this isn't really... your cup of tea.”

“I've been to worse.” His mouth is a crooked line, close enough for her to recognize as a smile. “I don't really think I'll ever be at ease in the company of a bunch of monsters, unfortunately.”

She nods, biting her lip. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I forget, sometimes, that you can't really.... turn that off.”

Another inhale, and exhale. Kass pulls his hand back, sticking them both into his pockets. “I'm going to hole up for a bit―I'll come back out before the fireworks. Will you, er, will you be able to manage until then?”

“Yeah,” May says weakly. “Cleanup's almost done. I think I need some alone time, too.”

“Right. I'll see you in a bit.”

“Kass?”

Her smile is weak, a little pained.

“Thank you.”

“...yeah.”

Kass returns to his room. He watches the street from his window, leaving it open to smoke. After a few minutes, he can see the signature lightning bolt as the miniature form of Dib exits the house through the front door, his trench coat blowing back behind him.

Dib turns back to the house and looks up. He squints at Kass's window. Kass closes the blinds.

At every turn, May has defended him. She has repeatedly kept Simon, and Dib, from sticking their noses too deeply into his business. She has gone on the record to say she enjoys his company.

Hell, she got mad at her golden boy over Kass. It's no secret how much May adores Dib, doting on him like a mom friend, and she put that aside to defend Kass's privacy―from the sound of it, multiple times.

He doesn't understand it. She certainly could do better in the way of friends―the girl is a friendly person who manages to get along with most people. Christ, more than that, she deserves better than a drunk, depressed, cynical ex-agent who can count the number of kind deeds he's ever done on his fingers, and still have some to spare.

Christ. She's so painfully loyal.

It's sinking in, more and more. Kass can be... safe, here. He's not convinced that physically he's in the clear, the Foundation looms over him still. Yet the other factors―the itching paranoia, the watchful eyes. The disgust, and the insults. The adventures. He is safe from them. They are things he can choose to stay away from. He's not forced into them by being adjacent to them.

Safe. It's a word that doesn't really fit right in his mouth. He wonders if he'll ever adjust to it.

The shadows are lengthening when Kass creeps out his bedroom. Purple twilight fills the sky, the sun already nearly below the horizon. May is on the roof, staring hard in its direction, drawing with what little light is left.

"That's going to fuck up your eyes, you know."

"They'll just fix themselves," she shoots back, not bothering to look back at him as he approaches. "I wanted to get the cityscape."

Kass sits next to her, his feet hanging over the ledge. She shows him the sketchbook, the crosshatched silhouette of the distant buildings. It's not half bad.

"You patch things up with Constant Vigilance over there?"

"I think so. I actually think I scared him a little bit? He's never really seen me get mad, at him or anybody. I think he's surprised it was at him first."

Kass sniggers. “The little prick had it coming."

"Hush,” she says, with no force behind it.

"I have the right to be vindictive, he was talking smack about yours truly."

"Talking..... smack."

"Technically,” he says, grinning, “the phrase was accurately used."

There is a pause, and then a weary sigh. "Never say that again. Please."

Quiet fills the cool evening air. The sky begins to light up, like artificial stars of a thousand colors. After a little time, the sketchbook is set aside.

"This is a stupid holiday,” Kass says. Just to state the obvious.

"Yeah, I know. But the fireworks are nice."

"Did you bring at least bring gunpowder poppers?”

"No? I know your track record with fire, sir."

"You're no fun."

On the other side of the street, and the street behind them, the air is loud, filled with little bangs and pops and children's screams.

“I'm sorry about what Dib said. I―I'm not going to invade your privacy, that's not fair to you.”

“Don't apologize, birdy. It's his shit to get over, not your problem.”

“But―it's not fair. I can't make him stop. I've tried.”

“I don't expect you to get him to stop. The day the kiddiewink stops squinting at me like I'm going to suddenly spawn cockroaches from every orifice, I'll know he's lost his mind.”

May bites her lip to hide her smile. “You're not mad?”

“Woe is me,” Kass responds flatly. “Dib doesn't trust me and he thinks I'm a handful. I'll never recover from the shame.”

“You are a handful,” she snickers. “Pfft. You're wonderful.”

It always catches him a little off guard when she says that. Even when she insults him, it's with the same cadence of quietly pleased. It's nice.

The air's not very quiet, really. In the distance, there are police sirens. There's the small popping noises, and the distant booms of the fireworks. But they are quiet, watching the world from what seems like many miles away. Miles from the chaos. It is calm, here.

Up until the moment that the backyard of 1, Tesla Drive, is filled with an explosion to rival the fireworks, filling the much closer area with noise and light, and quite possibly fire. In the noise, a familiar wild cackle is heard, loud and maniacal.

The pair on the roof next door have curled away from the sudden heat. They blink at the house, and then each other, as bits of ash and still-burning paper drift through the air. May begins to giggle nervously.

“Let's, uh, let's go back inside."

"Let's."

#birdy blogging #may writes #GOD is this a WALL

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frywen-babbles · 7 years

Text

Rules: fill this out and tag at least one person you’d like to know more about! Or just fill it out! Or don’t! Answer only some of them! Make up your own questions! “What kind of requirement is that”, you ask? A reasonable one! Who am I to tell you what to do? Anything goes!

(Original questions authored by @cavern-of-bells , thank her!)

Tagged by @belxsar , thank you for the tag!

1. What kind of food can’t you stand?: I’m with you @belxsar , eggplant is horrible. It tastes too bitter, as does zucchini. Overcooked bell peppers are also disgusting.

2. If you could choose one minor inconvenience to never have to deal with again, what would you pick?: Packing. I’d love if everything important just packed itself without having to worry about fitting everything in and stressing about forgetting something important. I hate packing.

3. Have you got any useless talents?: I don’t think my talents are useless, but I think lots of people think my profession is useless.

4. If you could be really really good at one thing, what would it be?: Time management.

5. Name a few people you think are extremely good-looking: Otome men?

6. What was your favorite way to pass the time as a kid?: Reading. I was obsessed, I could read several books per day if I just had the time.

7. What is something you’re proud of?: My kids.

8. What’s one character flaw in people that you just can’t tolerate?: Bigotry. In all of its forms, whether it’s terfs, racists, homophobes or neo-nazis.

9. Do you consider yourself to be more of a leader or a follower?: A follower. I only take the lead if no-one else will.

10. What kind of student are/were you?: A decent one? I tried to do my homework on time and had decent grades.

11. Butterfly effect question! Has there ever been a seemingly minor decision you’ve made (at the time) that ended up having a profound influence on your life?: Yes. I went to watch Oscars with some friends and ended up falling in love.

12. Name your most irrational fear/aversion: Like funny irrational or terrifying irrational? I’m scared to put my hands over railings if I’m holding something on my hands or if I have rings because I’m sure I’ll drop everything.

13. Are there any fictional characters you find especially relatable?: From SLBP I find Mitsunari really relatable. I just try to appear nice and hide my tsun.

14. If you drink, what kind of drunk are you? Alternatively, what sort of person are you at parties?: I’m a sociable drunk. I’m one of those introverts that turn into extroverts when they drink. If I can’t drink myself nice, I usually sit in a corner, avoid loud music and prefer talking to 2-3 people.

15. Do you fall in love easily? Or does it usually take a long time for you to trust someone?: I have crushes fairly easily, but I’ve fallen in love head over heels just once. Usually, it takes longer time, but I guess that one time was special?

16. Would you rather have one close friend or 100 casual friends?: One close friend. I’m too introverted to have a large social circle, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy talking to lots of people.

17. Do you consider yourself to be more of a slob or a neat-freak?: I’m both. I’m a horrible slob who likes to keep all closets and drawers neat.

18. Describe a place (imaginary or real) that you would find incredibly cozy: The Shire from Lord of the Rings.

19. Do you have kids? If not, do you want them someday?: I have just the perfect amount of kids.

20. What was your favorite book as a child?: I don’t remember what was my absolute favourite, but the book that I loved and what had most impact me as a person must have been Dealing With Dragons and the entire Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede.

21. Name one thing you just don’t get what all the hype is about: Game of Thrones and other overly violent and dark fantasy series. Give me back Buffy or The Legend of the Seeker or Xena. I had nightmares for a month when I tried to watch GoT.

22. Name one thing that you think is tragically underrated: Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse -series. It’s hilarious and filled with weird pop culture references.

23. If you had to be glued to a person for a month, real or fictional (who you have never met), who would you choose?: It doesn’t matter, I would SUFFER no matter who it was (and probably the other party would too, I’m a really nasty person when I’ve had too much socialising). I can’t even stand hubby for a month.

24. What’s something you’d like the chance to do someday?: Travel more.

25. Do you typically speak your mind when you have a controversial opinion? Or do generally prefer to not rock the boat?: I just loathe silently (but probably not discreetly) everyone around me.

26. What’s the dumbest fad you’ve been caught up in?: All the fads I’ve been caught up in were awesome, I have no regrets <3

27. What’s something you thought was cool as a kid/adolescent, but now cringe at yourself for?: Sexist jokes.

28. What’s a trait you consider to be very admirable?: A passion to want something to happen so much you’re willing to put everything else aside. Like a passion to organise cons. It takes a huge amount of energy and time and still some people do it over and over again without any pay, just because they want other people to be able to enjoy themselves.

29. Is there a particular kind of item people always tend to give you as gifts? (For instance, people always get you things with ducks on them because you like ducks, etc.): I get things with cats on them a lot, I think?

30. Do you speak multiple languages? Which ones?: My mother tongue and English. I barely survive shopping in Swedish and know very little Spanish, Japanese and German.

31. Would you rather live in the big city or the countryside?: Big city, the countryside is awful, everyone knows each other. And all the gossip. Nope.

32. Has there ever been something you were certain you’d hate, but ended up loving?: Winx club. But I didn’t think I’d hate it, just that it wouldn’t be interesting. I teased hubby when he watched it but ended up being totally addicted instead.

33. Do you mind being the center of attention, or do you prefer the spotlight to be on someone else?: I love being at the centre of the attention but at the same time, I’m terrified of it.

34. Favorite holiday?: Christmas.

35. Are you a more go-with-the-flow type of person, or do you need to have things planned meticulously?: I need plans. I hate surprises. Depending on my anxiety level, I need anything from two days to an hour to prepare for small things.

36. Is there something you loved so much you wish you could forget it and experience it all over again? (A tv show, book, series–anything.) : The Lord of the Rings hype when the movies came out. It was awesome, I loved every minute of it.

37. What hobbies do you have?: Writing and playing otome games.

38. If you could have a superpower, but it was only mildly useful, what ability would you want to have?: I’d like to keep house plants alive. Or have birds poop on nasty people.

39. Something people are always surprised to learn about you: IRL people are surprised when I tell I play otome games. Some people find my profession surprising as well as if being a geek and beauty care are somehow exclusionary.

40. Something that took you way too long to figure out: That my body is good enough as it is. Somehow it needed +20kg to realise I wasn’t as fat as I thought I was.

41. Worst injury you’ve had?: Tearing ligaments in my ankle. Twice.

42. Any morbid fascinations?: Like everything? For example, I love songs that are supposed to be nice and calm but instead are about death and misery, like some lullabies and Christmas songs.

43. Describe your sense of humor: Sarcastic and pretty dry. But I also laugh at the stupidest memes.

44. If you had to be born in another era/place, which would you choose?: Good olden days suck. It doesn’t matter, I’d probably be dead anyway.

45. Something you are irredeemably bad at: Time management.

46. Something that sucked but you’re glad you went through: Pregnancy. It majorly sucked both times, but it was still worth it. Every other shit that I’ve gone through I could have lived without. It’s not true that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. What doesn’t kill you may irreparably break and damage you and you might never be over some shit, no matter how hard you tell yourself that you are.

47. Would you rather have a really godawful ugly tattoo in a place that is only slightly inconvenient to conceal with clothing (upper arm, thigh, etc.), or the coolest, most beautiful tattoo ever in the middle of your face? (Neither tattoo can be removed or concealed with makeup, and the ugly tattoo will deeply offend anyone who sees it.): Facial tattoo.

48. Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist?: Optimist, I think. I force myself to have an absolute faith that everything will work out, otherwise, I’d be an anxious mess incapable of doing anything.

49. What would be the most flattering compliment someone could give you?: That they loved my writing. Or that I made them have feels and now they hate me ^^

50. Something you feel people often misunderstand about you: That I actually usually want to talk to them even if I seem standoffish or cold. I’m just not that good at talking to people I don’t know.

Tagging @minnimay17 @i-dont-look-good-i-look-great @wonky-glass-ornament @thedaydreamingotaku @suzunesays

#i'm leaving in few hours #vacation here i come #i hope my bag gets there too unlike last time #i'll be back next week #then i'll try to be more active on tumblr too #tag game #personal

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klaineownsmysoul · 7 years

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What are your headcanons of blaine's family life?

Whoo boy! You’ll have to excuse my sports metaphor here, because I’ve been watching a lot of Australian Open tennis this week, but this one’s an easy lob for me - for a couple of reasons. One is that Blaine Devon Anderson is the light of my life, so therefore I have spent many moons thinking about him and what his home life is like and two is that we had 90 episodes (thanks, IMDB) of Blaine and we got almost less than nothing on his family. One sentence about his dad, one episode with the brother who was never mentioned before and then never mentioned again, and a mother that he had no interaction with at all at his own wedding. To say that’s less than fulfilling is putting it mildly. And its so disappointing because I LOVE BLAINE and yes, I am using the present tense here and they had so many perfect chances to work in some (any!) backstory on him. I’ve never loved a character like I love him and so to fill in the gaps that RIB couldn’t or wouldn’t do for us, I came up with my own views on him. These are solely my own opinions and are based on how I see him and how he responds to the world around him.

I honestly believe that his home life is very lonely and isolated. He probably spent most of his time alone in his room, coming down for meals but that’s about it. Talking to Burt about how he thinks that his dad was hoping that working on a car and getting his hands dirty would “turn him straight” is so sad. He’s just a kid. To me, that means that his father is not accepting of his being gay and therefore, doesn’t seem to figure much in his life, in any capacity. He’s not someone that Blaine would go to with questions or for guidance and he certainly wouldn’t want to discuss anything romantic with him. So like he said, he had to figure it out himself. I don’t know whether his father openly rejects him or just ignores his existence most of the time, but either way, its a hole in his life that no one could fill until he met Burt Hummel. Its why I believe that he spent as much time as humanly possible at the Hummel house because there he found the unconditional love and comfort that he would never get at home.

I have a feeling that his family is fairly wealthy (not sure why, I just do) but they are the kind of parents who would rather throw money at a problem than spend the time and emotions to fix it. Its why they let him transfer from whatever school he was in initially to Dalton - which he openly said to Kurt was expensive. Maybe going to Dalton was the best thing for him, maybe its what he wanted, but it just seemed like an easy fix to me for them. It meant they didn’t really have to deal with the Sadie Hawkins incident; they could just put it behind them and pretend it never happened. I can’t see Blaine’s father storming into the principal’s office after the dance and threatening to bring hellfire down on the school for failing to protect his son - not like Burt did. They care for him because they are legally required to do so, but that seems to be where things end. I get the feeling that Blaine doesn’t really have anyone in his corner. Someone to love him and support him, someone who wants to spend time with him and will listen to him. Someone who is happy to have Blaine in his life - like Kurt. Its obvious from their interactions in “Big Brother” that that person wasn’t Cooper. Their age gap probably had a lot to do with it (who knows why, most people don’t wait 10 or more years to have a second child so perhaps he wasn’t planned?) because what teenager wants an annoying younger brother following them around? But still - I get the feeling that Blaine was a kid who had to learn to amuse himself. Maybe he got into performing because he wanted to be like Cooper and thought that was a way to win his parents’ love? Cooper was the first born, the golden child, the straight son. Maybe Blaine thought that if he followed in his footsteps and emulated Cooper, their parents would pay attention to him. And it just was a happy coincidence that performing came easily to him, it was something he enjoyed and on stage, he could be whoever he wanted to be. He could pour himself into a song and forget about real life for a few moments. And the adulation he received - from both the audience and his teammates - was a substitute for the love he doesn’t get at home. I’m not sure who fawned over Blaine more - the Warblers or me. They revered him, he could do no wrong in their eyes, and while he seemed “to have it all” on the outside, I don’t know how close he really was with them. I think perhaps he was afraid to get too close, even with the zero tolerance policy at Dalton. They knew he was gay and were OK with it, but maybe Blaine didn’t want to push things. It was easier to be the shiny happy lead singer of the Warblers than who he really is. And then he turned around at the bottom of a staircase and saw the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen and it blew a hole right through him.

Blaine doesn’t do anything half way. He is the quintessential “go big or go home” boy. The way he proposed to Kurt is the best example of that. When he loves, its with his whole self and its completely. He loves the way he wants to be loved by his parents. They weren’t there for the milestone moments in his life that most parents wouldn’t miss. They weren’t there when he graduated from high school. They were absent when he proposed to Kurt. I’m sure they bought him a ticket, put him on a plane to New York and told him godspeed. That emptiness is why he would do anything and everything for Kurt. He’d known him for half a second and yet he went with him to a strange school to confront the bully who’d been harassing Kurt. No one had ever needed him before and it must have been quite a heady feeling for Blaine. Here was someone who needed a friend, just as much as he did, and they turned out to be compatible in every possible way. He agreed to go to the prom with Kurt because he could see just how much Kurt wanted to go, and Blaine is nothing if not a people pleaser. And there’s no one on Earth he wants to please more than Kurt. You could see how uncomfortable he got when Kurt mentioned his past experience at the Sadie Hawkins dance in front of his dad and Finn. He kind of curled in on himself a little. But in the end, he loved Kurt more than he was afraid and its what led to that amazing goosebump moment of “excuse me, may I have this dance?”

People seem to think he’s led some kind of charmed magical life and I really don’t think that’s true. He’s an optimist and a really good person (which on this show was hard to find) and he works SO hard. He’s so talented and it looks effortless when he performs but we don’t see all the work he puts into everything. There’s a reason he got into NYADA on his first try. That wasn’t a fluke. He gives so much to everyone around him and gets so little back in return. He genuinely cares about people and just wants to be part of the team. He is not an attention whore and few thing piss me off more than when people referred to him as “the male Rachel.” He wants to belong since its a feeling he never gets at home. Its why he was so frustrated with Finn in season 3 when he was being a complete ass to him for his first few months at McKinley. Its one of the reasons I was so pissed with Glee for leaving him at that hateful school - alone, without Kurt or anyone he had forged any kind of relationship with - for season 4. He was drowning in self hatred and no one cared. No one noticed or offered him a lifeline or a shoulder until Sam talked to him in the hallway. I really liked their friendship at first, but just like with Tina, Glee couldn’t leave well enough alone and felt compelled to ruin a good thing. Where were his friends, his family, when his world fell apart in season 6? He had no one, no one at all; it was like everyone completely forgot that he existed. I’m sure he was grateful to his parents for letting him come home, but I’m also sure it was the last place he wanted to be. My poor baby - utterly and completely heartbroken, forced to go back to that cold, empty house that’s devoid of any warmth, and abandoned by everyone in his life at the precise time he needed someone the most. The number of times I wanted to drive from New Jersey to Ohio so I could give him a hug are too numerous and embarrassing to mention here.

I was so excited when I read that they had cast someone to play Blaine’s mom. I really should have known better by that point because well, season 6, and if there’s one thing Glee was consistently good at, it was making nothing from something. Why did they bother casting Gina Gershon when they gave her 0 things to do? If I didn’t watch everything with the closed captions on, I’m not even sure I would have caught her one background line of “Are you Carole? Hi, I’m Blaine’s mom.” Forgetting the lunacy of the idea of their parents having never met when their children had been involved (more or less) for the past 4 years, that was all we got from her. She ended up spending more time hanging drunkingly off of Puck than anything else. A conversation with her son was too much to ask? Unless she was supposed to be that way and it was Glee’s sneaky way of reinforcing the idea that Blaine’s family sucks? But sadly, I think I am giving them far too much credit and like everything else in that episode, it turned out to be a colossal disappointment.

So those are my thoughts on Blaine and his family or lack thereof. He just wants to be loved and its why marriage is something he holds in the highest regard. The idea of having something permanent that is his - someone to be there when he wakes up in the morning and when he comes home at night and he wants that someone to be Kurt - is comforting to him. Its safety and security and once again, that feeling of belonging.

#blaine anderson #my sweet boy #man its been a while since I cranked out one of these #@Klaine-is-love

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entergamingxp · 4 years

Text

Down and out in Orgrimmar and London • Eurogamer.net

Spend any amount of time on any popular gaming message board when the issue of LGBT+ representation raises its head, and you can guarantee there’ll be someone waiting in the wings to, at the very least, remind LGBT+ players that it’s 2020 and ‘nobody cares they’re gay anymore’ – oh, and ‘Would you mind keeping your sexuality out of my video games?’. It’s not exactly surprising then that countless LGBT+ gamers around the world are still seeking the comfort of like-minded individuals and social spaces, both in-game and in real-life, where they’re free to be themselves without abuse, judgement, or fear of repercussions – and to simply enjoy the games they want to play.

“I think in mainstream culture there is this wishful idea that because we’ve had too many seasons of Will & Grace…things are just fine and dandy for the queers in our society,” Benjamin Bon Temps, founder of the long-running Rough Trade Gaming Community tells me, “Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. While things are better, and the average Bubba Beercan Gamer might be more open-minded and respectful, there is still the same slew of tired asshats firing off verbal fag bombs and ‘this stupid dungeon is gay’ type bullshit.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Matthew Hardwick, co-founder of the on- and offline LGBT+ community London Gaymers; “Online spaces can be generally quite a negative experience for minorities as it is,” he says, “but with insults like ‘fag’, ‘queer’, and ‘gay’ often thrown around in a derogatory manner, it can be particularly hard for LGBT people.” By way of illustration, Hardwick relates one of his own experiences, when someone he’d played online with for over a year immediately bombarded him with abuse on finding out he was gay in party chat. “[He] said I should ‘die of AIDS’ and ‘ass cancer’ before threatening to come to my home to murder me.”

Although Hardwick admits this is one of the more extreme responses he’s encountered, the constant minefield of anti-LGBT+ vitriol can be exhausting for players – and he points to an academic study by Jason Rockwood, backed up by London Gaymers’ own research during MCM panels, which found 80% of people have heard anti-LGBT+ slurs online. When I ask Hardwick to describe these encounters in his own words, he simply responds, “Dehumanising”.

It’s for precisely these reasons that countless LGBT+ gaming communities have been established around the world in an effort to provide a safe, welcoming space for LGBT+ players and allies, and remain as popular as ever. The London Gaymers, for instance, started life as a Reddit community and Google group back in 2012, with the goal of providing a means for LGBT+ players to easily find others to enjoy video games with. “What online spaces existed already were toxic, and not very welcoming to any minority that was open about their identity,” explains Hardwick.

And if proof were needed as to how much demand there still is for welcoming social spaces for LGBT+ players, the London Gaymers has, from its humble beginnings, now grown to over 3,750 people on its Facebook Group and over 1,800 regularly visit its Discord channel. Additionally, it has active guilds and clans hosting regular gaming nights for the likes of Minecraft, Final Fantasy 14, and Sea of Thieves; it has one of the largest LGBT+ WoW guilds in Europe; there’s a dedicated space available for women, including non-LGBT+ players, looking for somewhere to play, and for other women gamers to talk to. And London Gaymers even has a pretty large Animal Crossing Turnip Exchange community too.

“Many LGBT people face an increased risk of Mental Health issues,” explains Hardwick, “Isolation, anxiety, and depression are all issues many LGBT people face. Having a group that can knock down some of the barriers to battling those by providing a friendship group and space to express yourself is important”.

Some of London Gaymers members attending real-world Pride.

Inevitably too, these online communities have gradually spilled out into the real-world, and London Gaymers now hosts LGBT+ nights focussed on everything from board games and ping pong to bowling and laser tag. Crucially, these activities help provide real-world connections and spaces some may struggle to find ordinarily. “They may be feeling isolated or nervous, and not be willing to attend gay bars without people they know they can talk to about things they are interested in,” says Hardwick, “or they may be nervous about their appearance or perception in a traditional gaming space. The group provides that intersection for LGBT people to be themselves in both their nerdy-ness and their queerness.”

These days, thanks to London Gaymers’ size and scope, the group is able to use its influence and community to assist other gaming and LGBT+ organisations. It’s hosted panels on games industry representation at MCM, given talks to studios and government departments, and it regularly embarks on fundraising efforts with its members, for charities including the likes of SpecialEffect, the Terrance Higgins Trust, LGBT Hero/GMFA, and the Albert Kennedy Trust.

In real terms though, the London Gaymers reaches but a small fraction of LGBT+ players online and around the world, and thousands of other LGBT+ gaming communities continue to thrive, each catering to different audiences and niches. One of the oldest and most established of these is the MMO-focussed Rough Trade Gaming Community, described by its founder Benjamin Bon Temps as a “counterpoint to and escape from the general immature, homophobic bro culture that still permeates gaming spaces” and, more importantly, a “fun, safe, relaxing space where people can bring their authentic selves and play together” .

“Any queer can tell you that being seen and accepted feels awesome,” he says, “and we do what we can to help make that happen for our members.”

Real-world events are an important part of London Gaymers activities.

The RTGC had its unofficial beginnings over 17 years ago, when Benjamin joined a Dark Age of Camelot guild “comprised of mostly gay dudes and a few ‘mo-friendly military guys”. The group was eager to move over to superhero MMO City of Heroes but, says Benjamin, “I knew from somewhat bitter experience in DAoC that the gaming community at the time was absolutely rancid with frequent expressions of homophobic slang. Furthermore, there was, and still is, a ‘don’t tell, don’t share’ attitude from players claiming to be tolerant and accepting, yet [who] lose their collective minds if a queer character options or storyline is introduced in their favourite game, or if you reveal the gender of your partner in guild chat.”

“Much of the social aspect in gaming happens during the downtime,” he points out, “waiting on other players, recouping between battles, repairing armour etc., and that’s when chatting about our lives happens. I’ve heard countless stories from other members of RTGC about how they’d have to lie about the gender of their partner and other details so as not to instigate the possibility of harsh comments from other intolerant players.”

While some groups prefer to offer a somewhat sanitised space for their members, Benjamin notes the RTGC is relatively unique in that it has never shied from the subject of sex. “There always seems to be a secondary censoring of queer lives and stories by the mainstream,” he explains, “something along the lines of ‘Okay, you are gay and you can talk about it a little, but nothing about your sexual acts, preferences or fetishes please’…but I’ve always been at least mildly interested in what excites people, whether it be geekery or in the sack or sling.”

And so, from that goal of building a community that didn’t just enjoy games, but celebrated all kinds of sexual expression, the Rough Trade Gaming Community was created as an “unapologetically queer [place to] celebrate geekdom and fetish life.” Benjamin admits the group “might not be everyone’s cup of tea” thanks to its openness to fetish and kink, but says he believes it’s a “good fit for the queer person who may feel too queer, too kinky, too hardcore in mainstream gay social spaces.” What’s more, it happily welcomes “heterosexual-identified players who, because of their own kink, political views, spiritual practices, or whatever else, don’t feel comfortable in standard gaming social spaces” too.

RTGC’s Taint guilds continue to have a significant presence in WoW.

“We’re also a great testing ground for those of us emerging, or considering emerging, from the closet,” says Benjamin, “We are a very welcoming bunch for the most part and online experimentation in a gaming environment can be a fun and safe way to experiment with self-expression.”

It’s a social mix that’s clearly working; the group now organises real-life meets around the likes of San Francisco and New Orleans, and Benjamin is proud to have helped build a community that can cater to both younger gamers and “an older and more mature player”.

These days the RTGC has over 9,000 active users online, split across six officially supported games (World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft Classic, Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, and Phantasy Star Online 2), alongside a variety of forums and social media sites including Facebook. “Our Xtube channel has close to 2 million views,” notes Benjamin, “but honestly most of those are probably from me.”

One of the RTGC’s most high-profile activities comes in the form of Pixel Pride, an annual virtual Pride event that started out back in the group’s City of Heroes days and is now celebrating its 16th year. “We wanted to show how many players in the game were queer,” says Benjamin of that initial event, “so every queer superhero in the game wore the colour red and we flew, leapt, and teleported to a central meeting place, and had a great time.”

These days Pixel Pride takes place every July on World of Warcraft’s Proudmoore server that many of the group’s guilds calls home, and this year’s pride celebrations – which occurred last weekend – passed in a flurry of ‘donations, support, dancing, laughing, flirting, and duelling in their skivvies’.

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“Pixel Pride,” explains Benjamin, “is important because of the ease of accessibility for folks who can’t and don’t want to find parking at real world Prides, for folks who for whatever reasons can’t be fully out in the real world, and to also remind the non-queers on our servers that we are here, and we are legion, and that the toon tanking in your party, or healing your ass in a dungeon, or peeling aggro off you in PvP might be one of us, so watch your fucking language.”

Benjamin also believes Pixel Pride is valuable for those group members in rural areas too. “We know that queers can tend to flock to big cities to find their tribe, but we also have tons of players who live in remote areas as well”, he says. “I’ve heard from folks like that who are grateful for our Pixel Pride celebrations because, due to distance, or being in the closet, or mobility challenges, that is the only Pride they can safely or reasonably attend. This has, of course, become even more important during the current pandemic.”

Yet despite the obvious demand for the kind of LGBT+ communities and spaces fostered by the likes of London Gaymers and the RTGC, resistance still remains in the wider gaming community to the idea that visibility for LGBT+ players is even necessary, usually, and tellingly, alongside the declaration that ‘politics doesn’t belong in video games’.

“In much the same way a fish can’t really tell you what ‘wet’ feels like, because it is all they’ve ever known, straight folk can be blind, and sometimes stubbornly and wilfully so, to how inextricably enmeshed expressions of affection, sexuality, longing, romance etc. are in our everyday lives,” says Benjamin. “It permeates everything we experience, games included. Every game I’ve played has some element of a love interest storyline, an unrequited romance, etc. It is just fair play that some of those reflect our lives as well.”

A note from an RTGC member attesting to the importance of Pixel Pride.

The good news, though, according to London Gaymers’ Matt Hardwick, is that attitudes do slowly seem to be shifting. “Anecdotally, I would say things have improved over the years, certainly within some areas of online gaming,” he tells me, “[but] there is still a long way to go.”

“I think that developers play a big part in this. Weeding out toxic behaviour is something that a few studios say they are dedicated to but is seldom reflected in their feedback loops or reporting processes,” Hardwick continues. “Gamers at large can help by calling out the behaviour when they see or hear it. Remind them that whilst they may think it’s trash talk they have no idea how their words affect those around them. I do however appreciate this is often easier said than done and that’s why spaces like London Gaymers exists – nobody wants to paint a target on their back – but using reporting processes is always one small step that doesn’t require you to interact with trolls.”

Yet while a harmonious gaming future will ultimately benefit everyone, and is a goal worth aiming for, Benjamin doesn’t think it will spell an end to LGBT+ gaming spaces.

“It can obviously be challenging to be your true queer self, in the ‘real’ world and in-game, and a lot of old, tired attitudes and beliefs can get in the way and make that difficult to attain,” he says. “Once we have though, one of the great blessings about being queer, for me anyway, is the ability to be a little left of centre, to be slightly outside what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘average’. I think that is intensely valuable, both for queers and for the heteronormative, relative ‘centre’, to have that perspective and space for folks who don’t feel they fit in with whatever the fuck ‘normal’ is.

“For that reason, I think and hope we’ll always occupy that space, to question and challenge expected norms, ‘common wisdom’ and convention. To not have that, to have everything and everyone in one homogeneous space, would dilute the colourful and diverse part of the human experience and that would just be boring as fuck…Things could be, and certainly might be, better than they are today, but whether that happens or not, the Rough Trade Gaming Community will be here as a space for anyone fun, friendly, and ready to play.”

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/down-and-out-in-orgrimmar-and-london-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=down-and-out-in-orgrimmar-and-london-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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rayaarchive · 4 years

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THINGS RAYA DOES:

1) Raya sneaking up and blowing frost on Fae’s neck after a bath and he’s still damp enough for it to suck 2) Uses fire magic to give rly warm hugs ?? 3) When she has nothing to do: looks for Cole even though she knows she won’t find him while knowing he will just appear in these situations. She just wants to make sure he’s not alone being sad. That’s it. She just talks to him or tried to get him to play a game with him. 4) She can play the Zhaleika… when ever she can find one. 5) She keeps a spoon on her somewhere. Not always in the same place but just somewhere, be it in her braid or shirt or apron.

You might think it’s for cooking but mostly it’s thrown at people. 6) Raya knows everyone's favorites foods and makes them when they're having bad days. Raya doesn't make a whole lot for herself when she's down, but she does make a mess when baking to make herself feel better 7) I’ve thought about this a few times but I’m not sure if it’s a normal thing or just me; my scars r rly sensitive, and since over 50% of Raya’s hands r covered in burn scar, I think her hands r incredibly sensitive and naturally she’d rly like soft things…. so I imagine she loves playing with ppls hairand that’s a big reason y she tries to get Fahleon to bathe, but also it’s just a thing she does to everyone. 8) The Ravens: …. reasonably, Raya has a separate garden full of sunflowers and corn purely for the birds so they don’t eat the stuff she cooks with “A little birdy told me” is a running joke in skyhold because apparently EVERYONE has a bird Raya notices the birds come to the dungeon often and gives them parcels to take down there when she sees them in the ‘bird garden’. She always asks them politely. There is a ‘bird dish’ outside one of the kitchen windoes where Raya has melted the metal and stone togeather so no one can take the bowl away any more. (Bird or person.) and it’s mostly for Ada with meat, but all the animals end up getting to it any how. The cats terrorize the birds n the garden and there isn’t much she can do about it tbh. They also keep the mice away so she won’t shoo them off 9) Medic edition: Oh your hurt? BITE ME. Shut up, im working. Cauterizes wounds with her HANDS. enjoys your pain because fuck you for being stabbed is the most aggressive pacifist ever Completely silent and quick/efficient during this, she knows what shes doing and shes got like 50 things going through her head and probably just as many things going on with her hands doubles the kitchen as a walk in infirmary HOARDS YARROW - DO NOT TOUCH, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT will probably call you a ‘fuck nut’ or something. WILL SMACK THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR WOUND IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO HER. uses the ‘five-flower remidy’ as a cure all tbh [ Clematis, Cherry Plum, Impatiens, Rock Rose, and Star of Bethlehem ]

10) It’s just occurred to me that Raya has no concept of age. It’s pretty much just “it’s a baby”, “old”, “not old” and like, all the vague area inbetween. Like ur either n diapers, ancient, or “not old” and that’s the only concept of age that registers most of the time.

A list of bullshit that is canon: Raya is a ‘hero of ferelden’ fangirl … not high or low key, but like mid-key Actively tries to make the anxiety bomb that is levy, not have anxiety…. by accidentally giving him anxiety Thinks it’s cool that Fahleon is a warden. Thinks he’s a bit of a dolt for not knowing anything about wardens. Finds it absolutely hilarious that blackwall is better at it than Fahleon so says nothing when she catches on that he is n fact not a warden. Even though Raya takes lessons from Morrigan, she’s petrified of her… More so of Vivienne While not in private, Cullen and Raya still act like dicks to eachother. Tossing barbs at eachother has become something like a game. Raya can’t sing to save her life! Her spacial awareness isn’t the greatest She’s not ticklish at all She made Cullen promise to keep ‘them’ a secret… ppl found out any way. She doesn’t trust most people. That’s why she’s so clingy and tolerant of Fahleon: she trusts him. Both enamored by and scared shitless of dragons Likes collecting bones for no real reason Weird = cool Not very smart outside of plant things

about:

Name: Raya Galina

Age: ~19

Race: Half elf

Status: ex-slave / cook

Raya, if nothing else, is bouncy! Bouncy hair, bouncy clothes, bouncy toes! She’s always bouncing about no matter what she’s doing. She’s an ex-slave, born into it because her mother was a city elf owned by a jeweler. Not a kind man in any sense, but Raya grew up helping and wanting to help. She’s mainly a cook, always has been, but cooking requires a good amount of knowledge with herbs and spices, so she’s a fair herbologist as well. Now that she has her freedom, she’s much more ‘exuberant’ than she has been in the past, which causes some problems, but her freedom is new and important and she’s over excited to fight for it and maintain it….

Raya is a half elf (half human). She’s fully aware but doesn’t mention it until someone else does first or its to defend herself / correct someone. She doesn’t hide her more elf like traits and prefers elves to humans for many reasons. She’s fully aware of her advantages and disadvantages to being a mixed breed.

She recognizes how had it is for both the Dalish and the city elves but she does have day dreams of visiting an Alienage to learn more about her mother’s culture. She’s rather disgusted by humanity and parts of their cultures, but knows it’s the easier life to live.

Raya is darker than most humans on Thedas, yet paler than the elves, with ears also somewhere in the middle. Her hair is pale to nearly white like her mothers. She has large ice blue eyes like her mother (sans the color), as she was an elf, yet her nose is more human. She’s a lean girl with small breast and no hips to speak of, yet her arms and core are toned from years of tedious kneeding. Scars cover her back from being punished with a whip for years… she hides them rather easily with her dress though.

Her hands are burnt on the palms and up over the edges where learning to use fire has licked away the definition in contrast to her feet that are callous from never wearing shoes. And her left eye and cheek are covered with a brown tattoo of her patron god.

Raya’s hands might be dainty because she’s small, but they’re leathery and fuck ugly. They’re covered in scars and burns from learning how to cook and do magic at the same time. Plus I think she forgets that real fire burns (as Opposed to fire she makes that will avoid her) Not all her cooking is magic, just the things that don’t take long or take much effort. I.e. would hand cook biscuits and a small bird but anything bigger than a dog gets to go n the oven

Raya is not religious at all. She knows the varying kinds in her world, likes the idea of them, but doesn’t believe what she doesn’t see. She has faith but not in a religious figure. She has faith in the potential of humanity.

She isn’t very smart (unless it involves food/herbs), she’s illiterate, mildly street smart, but runs mostly on intuition / gut feeling. It’s why she steer a clear of Solas and never takes her eyes off when he around. She has no reason not to like him but she doesn’t trust him at all.

She is ALL emotion. She doesn’t think first before displaying them and her heart is in full view. The only emotion she tries to hide is sadness and even then, she only tries so much. She doesn’t believe in hiding or dimming them and her mother is the one who told her never to bottle emotions or they grew out of control. (Can you imagine if she did and how disasterous itd Be?)

) How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy?

Raya has too much energy; she never stops moving. Even when she’s standing still, she’s not still. She’s fidgeting something or another, wether it’s grasping and re grasping or worrying the hymn of her dress or shifting back and forth on her feet. She walks in the same constant movement; her pace is a little off kilter and her speed is inconsistent. She also tends to talk with her hands, either flailing with excitement or her wrists banging her hips when angry.

) How do they present themselves socially? What distinguishes their “persona” from their “true self”, and what causes that difference?

She tries to be very happy for others, and generally is a happy person, and she feels all of an emotion at once. When she’s happy she’s nothing but happy, and nothing but sad when she is, so she hides. She’s incredibly bad at hiding emotion so she will excuse herself with out waiting for an answer if she is upset over something.

) How do they view and feel about relationships, and how might this manifest in how they handle them, if it does?

She doesn’t rly think much about it. If it happens it happens (and she honestly might not notice it happen) but she doesn’t chase it and has no will to chase it. She’d rather have friends than obligations any how.

) What do they wonder about? What sparks their curiosity and imagination, and why? How is this expressed, if it is?

EVERYTHING. She wants to know! If you’re doing something she doesn’t know about she wants to learn, she might not always ask but she will always watch and maybe figure it out herself. She’s also very into animals -accept horses and bats- and isn’t very scared of them at all. She could never tame an animal by waiting because she’s too hyper, but she is persistent enough to in other ways if she can find those other ways.

)How does your character feel about religion? She doesn’t really subscribe to any but she likes both the elven version and the human version(sorta) so when Solas destroys elvish religion, she isn’t all that fucked up over it. Just sad.

)How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations? She’s never been educated? She can’t spell for shit even after she’s thought to read and definitely says “yall” Very much a ‘sound it out’ person.

)Are they holding on to something in the past? Can he or she forgive? She is very much so afraid of her dad and that won’t ever change. She’s terrified of anyone recognizing her and taking her back and it’s partly why she stayed with the inquisition.

)Does your character have a guilty pleasure? this is probably going to sound fucked up, and maybe obvious if you’ve ever seen the stuff where she fights? But the only thing close to a guilty pleasure she has, is being able to decimate her mana supply while fighting. Shes so hyper all the time that being able to expel all her energy feels weirdly good

) What does your character’s name mean? Did you pick it for the symbolism, or did you just like the way it sounded? it actually was one of the possible names for my daughter and I still loved it so i decided to use it for an OC

) What would be their favorite physical trait about themselves? she of course likes her ears because they got a little bit pointy but she wishes they were more, she loves her legs though, she’s gotten compliments on them before and for her that’s a big deal

) Do they have a favorite season? What about a favorite holiday? she likes the spring for the rain :)

) What are your character’s sleeping habits? Heavy or light sleeper? Blanket stealer? One that always rolls onto the floor? Pushes their lover onto the floor? Sleep talker or walker? she likes rly big soft blankets, not rly Cus she needs them but they’re just nice to wrap up in. She isn’t a blanket hog when she’s with someone else, but she definitely burritos herself when alone, and she’s not a heavy sleeper like waking the dead but she’s not a horribly light sleeper who wakes at everything either. If u call her she’ll wake but not from just walking around. Also a very clingy bed mate xP

) In their own words, how would your character describe what their lover is like? “He’s a fully capable fumbling idiot and it’s adorable.”

) Does your character have any medical conditions? Are they serious or minor? Do they affect their day to day life? she’s got some trauma -see horses and scars- but generally she’s alright? Nothing affects her everyday life, just situational.

) Is there a particular event that would emotionally devastate your character? her mom died in front of her, she’s trying really hard to not fall apart because of it so if she had to deal with one more death she’d break entirely

) Is there anything in particular that would ignite your character’s jealousy? Or does your character not get envious? she’s not an overly jealous person but she’s extremely jealous of Dalish’s looks

) If your character confessed love to their crush, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc, what would they say? in general I’m not sure, but specifically Cullen; “…. skip the stuttering and just kiss me? I do have work to do you know.”

1. What techniques or spells do they tend to use a lot?

raising roots to trip people, heating things with her hands and when she figures out how to use a bow and arrow she lights the arrows on fire when they let loose. She constantly regulates her body temperature so that shes comfortable enough to wear a dress, but she can also heat or freeze her body to get people off of her.

10. Are they worried about hurting their allies by accident during combat or is it up to their allies’ responsibility to look after themselves?

If/When she does something beyond her normal skill level, shes terrified, she doesnt know how to work it and she fears hurting people on accident. Shes’s very emotionally run, sadness freezes the air and makes it hard to breath and anger runs hot and you cant get near her or the air stings with heat.

11. What’s a weapon they either won’t use or can’t use?

She cant really use a sword or a maul or anything. shes weak, her arms are strong enough to haul a carcass and pull a bow string, but not enough to draw a sword to proper height.

16. Complaints they might have about their comrades. What annoys them, what endangers them, what don’t they like, etc.

“Sera talks weird and its annoying but shes a good person even if she does hate elves. “Varric should hide less behind stories and ask for help when he needs it rather than busying himself with helping others. The Chargers are loyal only to The Iron Bull and she fears that; she stays on Bull’s good side for it. “Fahleon just needs to speak! He woudnt be so hurt if he just said it!

What would completely break your character?

Being alone. Rejection isn’t the same as being alone, being rejected hurts but it’s not nearly as bad as having no one at all. To have no where to turn and no one to talk to or care about or get advise from. Her biggest fear is to b left alone with nowhere to go and no one to just be with.

What was the best thing in your character’s life?

The affection and attention her mother paid her.

What was the worst thing in your character’s life?

Her mom died in an accident…

What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character?

Her dad winding metal with a fire behind him before he noticed her standing there, and the look on Fahleon’s face when he saw the rip n the sky the ‘first’ time.

Does your character work so that they can support their hobbies or use their hobbies as a way of filling up the time they aren’t working?

She works because she’s a slave. Then because she needs a reason for The inquisition to keep her, and then to make money to keep up the House. But she also enjoys her work…

What is your character reluctant to tell people?

About her dad. Mildly less so that she’s a slave because she’s scared she might be sent back.

How does your character feel about sex?

Doesn’t want it ever again. Will possibly kill u.

How many friends does your character have?

Like 4-5 depending on ur definition.

How many friends does your character want?

All of the friends

What would your character make a scene in public about?

If u shit talk ppl she cares about or if ur hurting someone. Get wreckt

What would your character give their life for?

Her friends or something she sees as a just trade

What are your character’s major flaws?

Doesn’t always understand boundaries or when to shut up. She sees lines that shouldn’t b crossed but doesn’t always realize she’s crossed them herself.

What does your character pretend or try to care about?

Other ppls opinions….

How does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project?

She tries to only show that she’s happy and chipper, as that’s what her master/father wanted for his business, but she is very full of emotion -and over the course of the inquisition she loosens that fake mask a bit- and feels things 100% of the way.

What is your character afraid of?

Other than being alone, horses.

What is something most people in your setting do that your character things is dumb?

Racism n general.

Where would your character fall on a politeness/rudeness scale?

35% polite, 65% BITE ME

Bedrooms Imagine the first time any one tries to find Raya’s bed in Skyhold. They’ve been there for a while and it’s had time to accumulate things. And while she does share a room with other women of the same or similar status, her section is just glaringly different.

Everyone has some personal items and dodads about their space but Raya’s is kind of extra. Not extremely extra, but it’s really not necessary to teather sculls to your bed posts with twine, or have scavenged jewels about. It almoat looks like a stark contrast to the happy person she tries to be.

The near by window sheds light on the fact that she has scribbles all over the floor around her area; or to most people they look like scribbles. They’re protection runes. They keep people off of her things and it becomes very evident that she is, in fact, a home taught mage.

#about

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