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Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

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Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

��I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.

Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

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heresathreebee · 3 years

Text

Garrote part 12

[Starz Power Diego Jimenez X Jazmine Mann (Black!OC)]

Summary: Healy and the Jimenez’ are gearing up for war. Jazmine’s getting antsy waiting for something to go horribly wrong. Previous Masterlist Next

Rating/Warning(s): Mature (+18 or I call the police). post-coitus fluff, swearing, anxiety, time skip, canon typical violence (I think...?), all plot, gringo using google translate Spanish and half remembered high school classes (sorry in advance), mentions of grooming/pedophilia (don’t worry, Porsche’s OK)

Word count: 2.2k words

Author’s Note(s): yeah so I wrote this back in December and just didn’t have the heart to put it out. I wanted to try and finish the other chapters (thinking I’m gonna wrap up at seventeen chapters) and I couldn’t. I have a problem with finishing anything I start, it never feels strong enough. I’m gonna try not to let that stop me though, promise.

Waking up in Diego’s arms, Jazmine never expected to feel so calm. Truth be told she didn't really wake up, but drifted in and out of sweet harmonious consciousness to find Diego, whether he was cradling her or sitting up or rubbing her back. She finally managed to convince herself to get out of bed and by then it was already 2 in the afternoon. Diego had his pants and shoes back on but nothing else, so she relaxed a little.

"You need to eat," he whispered, "come on, get dressed."

Jazmine blinked slowly. "I need a shower. Maybe a wheelchair, too."

She didn't miss the proud smirk that suddenly graced his handsome features. As he put on his shirt, Jazmine glanced past him at the open door of the closet. It was empty inside save for a few hangers, but it left a bad taste in her mouth and a lump in her throat. Diego followed her line of sight and said nothing. He let her shower, never more than five feet away (which is exactly how far the shower curtain is to the bathroom door). They ate somewhere family friendly, a pancake house she barely remembered the name of. Her legs still suffered from tremors and her pelvic region ached, but they were good feelings and she tried to make them last as they put a smile on her face.

It's been about a week and Jazmine has seen neither hide nor hair of Haagen and it's starting to worry her.

The only relief she had been able to accrue these past few days had been Healy's announcement that they had made a huge connection and were in the process of setting up task forces to take Haagen down. Alicia was confident that Haagen knew nothing and was continuing on with business as usual (or so she heard through the grapevine), and even Diego seemed to be relaxed about it.

That was another thing that bothered her. Diego, relaxed. Diego doing more hands on business and clubbing at all hours of the night. He'd barely said two words to her after coming to the rescue and fucking her silly in front of Haagen.

Sitting alone in the penthouse, Jazmine scratched at every itch and tugged on every baby hair like her skin was diseased. She didn't want to go outside, she was too afraid of Haagen's next move. She had been texting her mother regularly again just so she wouldn't call and have to explain why she sounded so nervous. It would have taken LaShawn all of ten seconds to realize something was wrong: so why couldn't anybody else see it?

Maybe she was overreacting. Jazmine drew a hot bath in the jacuzzi sized tub and turned the jets on, finding bubble bath solution and a pink rubber ducky to cradle. The bathroom had a dimmer switch she turned down to near zero and let silky smooth R&B from the 90's wash her worries away. Her fingers worked to squeeze the ducky like a stress ball, and a traitorous part of her brain whispered longing thoughts.

I wish Diego was here to massage my back.

She shushed her thoughts: at least the bath is perfectly hot.

She washed her body and spent the better part of the day deep conditioning her hair and shaving her legs just for the hell of it. The music never stopped, it simply rolled from R&B to classic rock and then back again. Miguel checked in only to make sure she ate, and Jazmine managed to convince him to eat with her and play a co-op mobile game for a few hours. She plucked at the listening device in her ear for the thousandth time and decided to just call Healy.

"Hey can't talk right now," were all the words she got out of him on the second call and then an immediate hang up.

Jazmine growled and crossed her arms, suddenly reminded she was still wearing nothing but a bathrobe. She slipped into a pair of jeans and a tank top, and feeling bold, she marched up to Diego’s room and swiped a black button down that smelled like him. She tucked it unbuttoned into her pants and swanned up to the penthouse roof with a bottle of wine and one glass.

She knew she would miss this level of extravagance. Never worrying about paying for rent or for food or selling her time and labor for someone else and next to nothing pay. Jazmine wondered what Diego would say to becoming her sugar daddy after this whole human trafficking business was over, but shook her head and topped her drink off.

Probably overstayed my welcome, she thinks, that’s why Diego’s been distant lately.

Jazmine was unnaturally quiet on her end, though Healy recognized the tinkling sound of bottle to glass. Probably on her fourth drink if he was counting correctly. No matter– she was safe for now at Diego’s penthouse suite and there were more pressing matters to attend to at the moment. Brasa was leaning over each and every agent sat in the boardroom as if to intimidate them into obeying her every command. She was a good detective, really she was, she just needed to work on trusting the people who trusted her. Her partner Holbrooke was no help at all– selective mutism was a nasty habit to overcome. Brasa had not breathed a word of thanks in Healy’s direction, but he had expected that. This wasn’t about the praise– it was about justice.

When he could finally break away for coffee and a piss, he sent a text to Alicia. No doubt los hermanos Jimenez would be thrilled with the intel– but what would happen next?

The safest place for Jazmine right now is Diego’s place, he thought, but for how much longer?

An address and a transcribed photograph of the documents they came from. Healy had told them that the most likely scenario for Porsche’s whereabouts was ‘adoption’ by people who did not want any adoption documents to surface later on. The family probably has prestige, they may have lost a child recently and are looking to replace it like a goldfish and hope no one notices.

It didn’t stop Diego’s trigger finger from inching closer and closer to his gun at every small pump of the breaks.

“Tranquil, hermano,” Alicia soothed. “We’re almost there. We can kill them after we get la pequena back.”

Diego sniffed and hopped out of the car as soon as it finally parked. Alicia was right behind him, checking her peripherals on the well lit streets of this upscale neighborhood. It was them two and one guard each, a second car bearing two underlings coming in from the back door and four cars with heavily armed back up around the corner in case things went south. Brother and sister climbed the porch steps idly, slipping their guns back into their hidey spots before knocking on the front door…

“Fuck.”

Jazmine’s phone battery flashed at 3%. She didn’t remember finishing the bottle, but she did really have to pee so she stood up from the pool’s edge to relieve herself. Miguel was asleep on the white leather couches in the living room, mouth open and drooling with his gun on the table. The woman’s steps were a little unsteady and her vision came in waves, but she felt that fuzzy warm buzz and decided she had better not drive.

She shook the young man awake with a sigh. “Hey, I left something at my apartment. Can you drive me?”

Miguel pursed his lips. “I don’t think jefe would want–”

“Please,” she said, “it’s important.”

Miguel relented, swiping the keys to a Ferrari from the rack by the elevator and handed Jazmine her coat. Just a few more items she couldn't live without. The way Miguel drove meant they were there in no time at all, and every light they passed by in the dark somehow made Jazmine feel lighter, less jittery and anxious. She had Miguel drop her off by the backside of the apartment and climbed the steps alone after insisting she would only be a minute. All of her doors and windows were locked, the place looked exactly as she had left it.

“Thank god.”

She had to search for her charger, a sparkly teal thing with a cat and an alligator charm on it. She found it hiding under her bed, then found her way into the bathroom to check on her face in the mirror. Jazmine fingered the black hickeys on her neck, smiling to herself. She caught sight of something white hanging out of the trash and dug it out: her Chicago shirt. Stuffing it into her back pocket next to her phone charger, Jazmine took one last look at her apartment and blew a kiss to it.

“Bye,” she whispered, peaking into the dark and lingering on the memories she was about to leave behind forever until finally the lock clicked into place. Oh shit, this was the wrong door. Miguel was waiting out back–

Pop-pop-pop

Gunshots rang out from behind the building, the returning fire was short and stilted, overwhelmed by the repetition of an automatic. Jazmine took to the stairs at the far side of the building and ran down them wishing she was in something other than slippers. Her heart began to pound in her chest and her breath billowed in heavy clouds before disappearing. The second she stepped off of the last stair, she tripped. Her flimsy footwear slid on the thin layer of ice and she fell, her eyes and ears following the clink clink plop noise of her phone literally going down a storm drain.

She barely had time to scramble back to her feet before she heard tires come screeching around the corner down the street and she stumbled into a run.

Jazmine wasn’t sure how far she’d gone, and she can’t recall how many streets she turned on, or even if she was being chased at all. Every sound made her jump, and every car coming her way made her anxious. Her lungs burned for air as she finally collapsed against the window of a minimart. There were tears streaming down her cheeks as she pushed the door open to hide among the tiny rows of snacks and gum and cigarettes and refrigerated beverages. The store owner was wearing headphones and didn't bother looking up. Deep breath in. Exhausted, shaking breath out. Jazmine curled tightly around herself to try and calm down before her heart exploded in her chest.

Alicia and Diego have the father on his knees and bloodied. His wife and children are being held upstairs in one of the bedrooms, terrified. Diego wipes at a small spot of blood from his sister's face.

"Donde esta el bebe?," Diego said, grasping the man's ear and dragging his head back to look at him. "I won't ask you again."

"What baby?" The man coughed dryly, his eyes nearly swollen shut but still glimmering in fear. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Alicia kneeled down in her white pantsuit. "The baby you bought from Jeremy Haagen, Mr. Fletcher. A beautiful little girl with dusky hair and big brown eyes. A baby that belongs to us."

Fletcher squirms under the murderous gaze of los hermanos Jimenez but doesn’t break.

“You know, Diego,” Alicia said leaning on her brother’s shoulder, “I didn’t see a fourth bedroom.”

Diego pursed his lips. “So?”

“So the contract specified a room for our mariposa, and he already has two children. Where’s the other room?” Alicia’s heels clicked as the gear turned in Diego’s head. “I bet la senorita Fletcher might know.”

“No, please,” he begged, “leave my wife out of this– she’s got nothing to do with this!”

“So you do know what we’re talking about,” Diego’s aha motion garnered a vague threat with the point of his gun– gold plated, of course. Emeralds in the hilt this time.

“Secretly adopting a baby girl,” Alicia tsked, kneeling before Fletcher and brandishing a knife, “when you have two perfectly healthy girls of your own? Ay dios mio, what’s the matter? Three’s your lucky number, but your wife doesn’t put out anymore?”

Fletcher stumbled hard over his words and made next to no sense. One thing that did make it clear through the haze of nonsense struck a nerve with the Jimenezes: “I didn’t know she’d be that young!”

Alicia exchanged a queasy look with her brother. She had heard of it before: grooming. Usually starts when a girl is anywhere between nine and eighteen. Fletcher continued to ramble, about hiring a nanny and raising the baby anyway since Haagen didn’t do resales. He was probably just trying to get the baby off his hands…

Before Diego could pull the trigger, his phone rang. So did Alicia’s, both projecting the same number from a burner phone and three emojis to designate the caller: Healy. Alicia answered for Diego, jerking her head towards the door and mouthing, ‘I’ll take care of it from here.’ Diego reluctantly slipped outside, glaring at the nosy neighbors in the window who disappeared in a flash. He put the phone to his ear just in time to hear:

“– I need you to get to Nassau now: Jazmine’s in trouble.”

@mental-bycatch @kid-from-new-zealand @1zashreena1 @girlpornparadise @nicke0115 let me know if I missed anybody, I’m sorry it’s been so long

#Diego Jimenez #diego jimenez x oc #three bees writing #Garrote #🐝🐝🐝✒#Starz Power #angst

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writers-craft · 3 years

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The Pit of Love

story i wrote for my creative writing class, not gonna re-read it, just gonna post it here because why not

Judith French looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. She looked a mess. Her eyes were red and puffy, for she had been crying just moments prior, and her mascara was smeared down to her cheeks, but her hair still looked nice. A few strands were poking out here and there, and it was damp from the water, but her bun stayed intact, despite all that occurred. And crying only emphasized the blueness in her eyes. It was like looking into the ocean, Len always told her. Blood was leaking from her leg—the one that met with the glass—and the inside of her once blue dress was now stained with blood while the outside had darkened with mud. Her bare feet, one on top of the other, had specks of the lake’s bottoms stuck to them. Heavens, she looked a mess. Evelyn Johnson would surely have a mouthful to say if she saw Judith’s appearance, or maybe this would be the one thing to make her go silent. Keith once said the woman would die talking.

“Where are we going?” she asked the driver, but it was not the driver who looked at her. It was his passenger, the man with the gun, but he spoke no words.

It was a Tuesday, Judith French knew, when she realized she utterly despised her husband. Leonard French worked as a travelling salesman. And he enjoyed buying and selling so much, he did it during his free time too. He often came home to Stony Point with a completely different vehicle from the one he left with. Upon her crash, Judith French briefly wondered what his reaction might be when he learned his precious Volkswagen Sedan was currently sinking to the bottom of the lake. He wanted to sell it to Thomas Richfield, a neighbor two houses over.

Neither the driver nor his friend seemed eager to speak to her, so she opted to look out the window instead. They were going so fast it was difficult to see anything but the blur of the grass. It had gotten so long and green this past month, due to all the rain. She could see cows, too, which meant they were nearing Maxwell’s farm. Evelyn Johnson tried to convince everyone last Christmas that Rey Maxwell killed his wife, who coincidentally was also named Judith, but the people of Stony Point knew Judith Maxwell had been sick for years. It was her time.

Judith French looked to the man who sat between her and Keith and glanced down at his watch. Out of the three of them, the driver, the man with the gun, and the one beside her, the one beside her was the biggest and the nicest of them all. He had been the one who helped her out of the lake. He noticed she was looking at his watch and twisted his arm to give her a better view. His watch told her it was a quarter till six. Len would be expecting his dinner on the kitchen table, but his dinner was at the bottom of the lake with his precious Volkswagen.

She nodded her thanks to the man and went back to looking out the window. They were about to drive past the covered bridge. That awful covered bridge. It was red, or at least it had been before the paint had chipped off. It was mostly brown now, and really quite broken. Most of the wood had been broken apart, leaving gaps all around the bridge. The gaps had mostly been boarded up, though, except for the ones too high to fall from. The roof had gaps in it too, but Stony Point did not bother repairing the holes on the roof. Evelyn Johnson claimed her father was mugged as a boy, but it was during a time when Indians and bandits ran wild. She told Judith French the story the night they met, then several other times after, but assured her that the bridge was safe now.

The children at Stony Point High School called the pit beneath the bridge the Pit of Love. Teens would spend most weekends hanging out underneath it. Len said he and Patty Lesley kissed several times under the bridge senior year. Patty Lesley was now Patty Brown and she worked as a middle school teacher. He assured his wife they only kissed in the pit, and nothing more.

Three men had recently died in the Pit of Love. The first was a stranger. Like Len, he was a traveling salesman. It happened while it was raining, no one saw him. They found his car a few miles from the bridge with its gas tank on empty and his keys still in the ignition with a few empty liquor bottles in the passenger’s seat. Keith said he must have lost his footing stumbling drunk and fell through one of the gaps. A young couple visiting the pit found him early the next morning.

It certainly was the topic of discussion for a while in Stony Point. Evelyn Johnson enjoyed talking about it, at least. She said the man committed suicide. She claimed his wife wanted to divorce him and he was so distraught he flung himself off the bridge. But people soon got bored of talking about the dead man. They moved on to the next craze, which was the high school’s undefeated football team.

And then Patrick Walter Mathews Jr., high school senior and football champ, was found dead at the bottom of the pit shortly after. She remembered the day exactly, because she and Keith were at a motel the afternoon the boy’s body was found. It was the day when she accidentally smeared lipstick on Keith’s jacket, and Harriett soon after insisted Keith eat lunch at home.

Keith again labeled the death as an unfortunate accident. The whole town followed the Mathews’ to town hall and demanded they repair the gaps in the bridge. And the next day Rey Maxwell and his boys hammred in thick pieces of wood over all the gaps, the ones they could reach. Evelyn Johnson, of course, praised Rey Maxwell’s actions, claiming she always knew he was a good man, and who would ever think such a man could murder his own wife?

Len had been away when all the chaos occurred, even with the salesman. He said he met the travelling salesman at a conference once. At parties he spoke of him as if it were his brother. Judith French knew his real brother died in Normandy in ’44. He raised his glass to the dead man, and everyone followed suit. For the young football star, he offered his condolences for the boy— “Kid had a damn good arm,” he said to Patrick Walter Mathews Sr.—and then Evelyn Johnson pulled out her bible and said a prayer for both man and boy. Everyone bowed their heads and listened to her prayer, except for Judith French. She looked out the window and watched a little blue car speed pass her home.

“Where are we going?” Judith French repeated her words when they drove over the bridge. They rumbled a bit as the tires hit the wooden bridge surface.

The driver, the boy, glanced briefly at her through the mirror. She saw all of them fully after she escaped the sinking Volkswagen and had made it onto dry land. They were all dressed in nice suits. The driver, the boy, was leaning against his vehicle, shiny, black and long—Len would be able to recognize the type, but Judith French did not bother memorizing vehicle like her husband. He was a boy of about seventeen and small for his age. The man who sat beside him now stood in front of him then like he was his guard. The boy whispered something to him and the man with the gun handed him a cigarette from his inside pocket and lit it for him. The man who was currently seated beside Judith French was beside her; he had helped her reach dry land after the crash.

No one said anything again. Keith attempted to, but the dirty handkerchief around his mouth prevented him from saying anything audible. She took a good look at him. He still had not buttoned his shirt since they last parted, half an hour ago. His white undershirt was now stained with his blood. He was sweaty too. He seemed to have a desperation in his eyes, and she wondered if she would die with him, but more importantly she wondered if she wanted to die with him.

She cleared her throat and turned back to the boy: “You’re quite popular here at Stony Point, you know,” she began. The boy did not look up, but she noticed his ears twitch. She heard Keith mumble something again. “You had us all believing those two men were to blame for their own deaths. I’m astonished, really. None of us ever thought anyone here at Stony Point could murdered.” Keith mumbled something again; she suspected he wanted her stop. “But, then there’s the third man in question. You got sloppy with him, didn’t you?”

The man in the passenger’s seat pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. Keith, at that point, was frantic. The man in between Judith French and Keith had to forcibly hold him down to prevent him from tackling the man with the gun. But the bullet in his stomach soon wore him out and he rested his head on the window and shut his eyes.

The boy chuckled and urged the man to lower his gun. “It’s refreshing to be around someone like you again,” said the boy. It was the first time she had heard him speak. His voice was deeper than she expected it to be, and a lot warmer.

“Someone like me?”

“You know, someone who tries to get to the bottom of things. Someone who cares. Someone good.”

She shook her head. “I’m… I’m not good.”

And he glanced up at her again, lingering a bit longer than last time. His eyes were blue, like hers, but his were lighter.

The third man was found dead in the Pit of Love three weeks ago with a bloodied bullet in his head. Like the salesman, a group of teens found him. She was with Keith when he got the call. Harriett and the boys were at her mothers and Len would not be back until that Tuesday, so they had the weekend to be together. He was not planning on working that night, but Judith urged him to take the call, in case it was Harriett.

She had a strange feeling that Harriett, or Len, would burst through the bedroom door at see them. Keith assured her they were safe, but the presence of Harriett or Len did not scare her; it thrilled her. She wanted them to see. She wanted to get caught.

Keith left quickly, and Judith French did not see him again until the following week. Harriett and the boys delayed their return a week, at Keith’s insistence, and Len arrived home the next day. Evelyn Johnson said there was a serial killer on the loose, and everyone believed her. The police blocked the Pit of Love with yellow tape and had a few officers on guard night and day.

No one knew who the third man was, like the salesman at the beginning. He had no identification on him, nor did his killer leave enough of his face to identify it with, but a woman one town over reported her husband missing shortly after the body was found. She identified the clothing on the corpse to be what she last saw her husband wearing.

The whole town was hysterical, including Len. He cancelled his next two business trips to stay and protect his helpless housewife. Harriett and the boys arrived again soon too. Keith said Harriett was growing suspicious. Judith French had mistakenly left her lipstick in one of her drawers. Keith tried to convince Harriett French it was her lipstick, but Harriet and Judith French did not wear the same colored lipstick.

She met Keith each time it was his shift at the Pit of Love. The officers with him would often give them space, turn their heads and pretend their superior was not with the local travel salesman’s wife. Most of the men on the force knew, but during dinner parties and other town functions, they would act oblivious. Judith French wondered if Keith kept their love affairs quiet, too; an unspoken rule between men and the women they betray their wives with. Judith always wondered if Evelyn Johnson was faithful to Rodger. Rodger Johnson went on business trips into Hughes every few months. Keith later told her that he went there to be with prostitutes. He got in trouble with the Hughes police once and Keith had to go bail him out.

She parked the Volkswagen out of sight, hidden behind bushes and a large ad for Chesterfield cigarettes and met Keith under the bridge. The pit was full of old cigarette butts and broken beer bottles, among other things. There was a sitting area made of old tires and boards of wood painted a faded red, most likely the wood from the bridge. Keith laid his jacket down on it to prevent splinters. And they were quiet, like always. The only sound was the occasional car driving over them. When Keith finished, Judith French fixed up her dress and smoothed out her hair, which was hardly disheveled. Then Keith kissed her goodbye and then she drove to the market.

She saw Mrs. Mathews there. Her hair was down, and she had no lipstick, but she seemed in pleasant spirits, despite everything. Judith French talked to her about her youngest, Carol, who would be singing at some recital later in the month, and her middle, Peter, her last boy, who was thinking about trying out for the high school baseball team. They talked as if her eldest had not been murdered a few months ago. And then Mrs. Mathews asked when she and Len were planning on starting their family, and she laughed and told her hopefully soon, like she always did.

It was on her way home when a sudden burst of emotion filled her, and she had to stop and pull over to collect herself. She sat, her forehead against the steering wheel, bawling her eyes out for no other reason than to get the emotion out. She let the tears fall freely, before drying her eyes and continuing her route home. She imagined Len probably listening to the radio or on the phone talking his way into a new sale, whether it be for business or for pleasure. She took a few deep breaths before continuing her drive home.

The boy’s vehicle appeared so quickly; she hardly saw it at first. She kept taking quick peaks at her rearview mirror, attempting to wipe away the smeared mascara. It was on the fourth or fifth wipe when she looked up and noticed the vehicle about to crash into her. She honked, then swerved quickly and drove into the lake. Her car door would not open, so she had to break the window glass with her heel and crawl out. She cut her leg on shuttered glass on her way out. The boy’s vehicle had stopped and reversed as she was climbing out, and the man in the back hurried to her before the vehicle had gone into a complete stop. She wondered if he was the one who persuaded the boy to stop, or if the boy had stopped on his own account.

She remembered yelling at the boy for his reckless driving. The man beside him grabbed his gun, but the boy stopped him from using it. She fell silent at the sight of it and dropped to her knees, her leg stinging as it collided with rocks and dirt, but she did not stay in that position for long. The man who helped her out of the lake, gently guided her back on her feet.

She caught sight of Keith, gagged and bloodied, as he walked her to the vehicle. Keith was leaning on the window, a bloodied handprint beside him, clutching the open wound on his stomach. For a moment she thought him dead until he turned his head to look at her. His eyes popped open and he tried to mutter something. The man with the gun, who had taken his seat in the passenger’s side by then, reached in the back to hit him. The force of the blow made Keith’s head it against the window hard.

The boy did not stop the car again until the sun, now an assortment of reds and yellows, was merging in with the mountains in the distance. They were in a field far away from Stony Point. No cars were in sight. Judith French watched as boy and his guard exited the vehicle and rummaged around the back trunk. They removed a few items, then the man with the gun opened the door on Keith’s side. Keith, too weak to sit up on his own, fell onto the man. The man kicked him away. The boy opened Judith’s side. He held a larger gun than the other man, but instead of pointing it at her, he held it to his side and offered her his hand. She took it.

There was chill in the air. She stepped onto grass that prickled the bottoms of her bare feet. The other man managed to lift Keith up off the ground. He stood as tall as he could, but the wound on his stomach forced him in a hunching position.

The boy let go of Judith French’s hand and lifted up his gun—Len showed her a similar gun in a photograph before they were married. He had called it a Tom gun, she thought. She felt strong hands on her shoulder and she turned to see the larger man holding her steady. The boy aimed the gun at Keith, and he shuffled a few inches backwards, then started mumbling something underneath his mask but he was quickly silence by the bullets passing through his head. He was now on the ground, no longer murmuring. She felt her heart sink as the boy shifted his focus onto her. The man holding her gently guided her next to Keith’s corpse. The boy again lifted his Tom gun.

“How did you kill the first two?” she asked.

The boy did not answer.

“Poison, wasn’t it? I’d use poison,” she said, “or something else to make it seem like an accident. But I think you’re like me.”

He lowered the Tom gun slightly and smiled. “How so?”

“You want to get caught,” she said.

#story #writing #creative writing #short story #fiction #fictional writing #oc #own characters #this was a year ago so I’d just cringe at the writing

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gayenerd · 3 years

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Green Day Deals with the "Rock Star" Dookie

by Tom Lanham

(First appeared in BAM Magazine, March 10, 1995)

Young, loud, and snotty equals beaucoup bucks? What pencil-pushing, graph-charting trend spotter could've predicted it? But the facts speak for themselves: As of late February, Dookie--the brattish, snap 'n' snarl Reprise salvo from Berkeley's sloppy punk trio, Green Day--has sold six million copies. Six million. Chances are, somebody on your block is jumping up and down in his living room at this very moment to the scrap-metal power chords and ardent apathy of "Longview," "Burnout," "Basket Case," or "When I Come Around" and getting lost in the teen abandon of these testy 22-year-olds--weasel-voiced, Montgomery-Clift-like charismatic singer/guitarist Billie Joe; tom-tom tribal percussionist Tre Cool (of the ever-morphing hair-color fame); and bassist Mike Dirnt (who survived Green Day's appearance at Woodstock '94, although several of his teeth did not).

Yes, punk rock is a marketable phenomenon these days, leaving many involved with the music's initial late-'70s, early-'80s wave scratching their heads, wondering why it didn't take the first time around. Public reaction started as curiosity ("Hey, honey, c'mere and lookit these goofy, green-haired little whippersnappers in an insane asylum on MTV!"), but spiraled up to rock-diet necessity (Green Day just won Grammy and they're nominated for quite a few Bammies as well, including such categories as Outstanding Group, Outstanding Album, and Outstanding Song--"Longview" and "Basket Case"). The fact that they've been nominated at all probably sends a shiver up the old dinosaur backbones of Eddie Money, Huey Lewis, and Boz Scaggs, a time-creepy feeling of "Gee, what the hell do we do now?" Because this isn't just some flash-in-the-pan punk movement, folks--this is a youth movement; Green Day are, as they hiply term it, "bored in the 'burbs," and reaching out, through TV and radio, like some prodigal preachers to other American kids who sense the same slacker ennui. Obviously, we're talking truckloads of kids.

Ironically, the more fame edges into the Green Day ruffians' lives, the more mature they seem to become. They've turned down all interview requests as of late, even People magazine, preferring to lay low until this tide of interest recedes. Billie Joe got married last autumn, and spent his honeymoon--not in any exotic, expensive locale--but in Berkeley's grand old Claremont Hotel. Cool recently became a father, and Billie Joe's child is due any day now. It's a responsibility they've both eagerly undertaken. Rob Cavallo, the boys' coproducer and A&R man at Reprise, swears they're "old souls, the smartest young kids I've ever met." It rings true.

The first time I spoke with Green Day, in January of '94, Cool, Dirnt, and Billie Joe were lazing around their dingy basement apartment in Berkeley, sitting on chairs and couches with potentially painful springs poking through. Rock 'n' roll bubblegum cards were scattered across a coffee table, along with several bongs of various sizes, plus a four-and-a-half foot red plastic pipe dubbed "Bongzilla" leaned against a doorway. The only wall decoration, besides a Ren & Stimpy poster, was a Twister game mat nailed up in its entirety, presumably for high-schoolish humor's sake.

When I'd met Billie Joe a few months earlier at a campus concert, his hair was dyed lime-green and featured squidlike tufts. Now it was dark brown, with only two tufts remaining, and both his ears and nose had piercings. Periodically during the interview, he'd ram a finger into that pierced nostril, rummage around, then stare idly at the resultant booger before flicking it on to the carpet. Cool wandered out of the rec room for several minutes, but returned, red-eyed, to proudly proclaim, "Lookit me! I'm stoned, dude!" Dirnt--when he wasn't strumming an acoustic guitar--kept watching their windowsill Sea Monkey tank, finally noting, "Hey, these Sea Monkeys look just like sperm!"

Despite all these schoolboy, poo-poo wit trappings (dookie, after all, is kiddie slang for excrement), there was a sense of seasoned wisdom about them, a feeling that they were, as Cavallo postulated, truly old souls. Like the class clown who frustrates all of his teachers by also maintaining a 4.0 grade average, Green Day can afford to play because their work--brilliantly skewed three-minute pop songs, delivered with such vehemence and vitriol you don't dare doubt them--certainly speaks for itself. But, sooner or later, of course, the band has to speak for itself, too, so what follows is a set of excerpts from that first ratty-digs meeting, as well as a later chat with Billie Joe, sans sidekicks. How did Green Day take over the rock world in less than a year? That's the six-million-copy question, and hopefully we'll provide a few answers.

* * *

So punk is back, whether America likes it or not?

BILLIE JOE: It's always been around, and everyone has their own interpretation of it. It's weird to actually call it "punk" again, when it's been there all the time.

MIKE DIRNT: It's been springing up in little suburban areas, where people grab it and express themselves.

TRE COOL: It's people who make a point of setting aside all responsibilities and just playing music. And doing fat joint after fat joint--you have to let go of things like paying rent, going to school, having a job.

BJ: And, if you can't tell by my house, we don't have a very high standard of living.

How does today's punk rock differ from its late-'70s cousin?

BJ: I think it was all about art and fashion back then, really, because everyone who was a punk in England was in art school. I read an early interview with Dee Dee Ramone, where he said he wished the Ramones had more of a glamorous appeal, too, instead of playing in jeans and leather jackets. But it was definitely about fashion, until the Clash really brought out the political side. Our music came from being bored in the 'burbs. You get put in this high school situation, where you're learning someone else's rules in a room with 30 other people that you don't really like. There's nothing interesting about it whatsoever, so you pick up a guitar instead.

But you all tried college, at least for awhile, right?

MD: And then we started touring. Constantly.

TC: So most of our reading now comes from highway signs.

MD: It's the old grasshopper and the ant story. The thought of actually working is just so...

TC: Sickening!

MD: Yeah. So we put everything we had into not working. This is what I do best, and I was always told, "If you're gonna do something, do it the best you can." So why not do the best thing you can, too?

You guys--at least Mike and Billie Joe--have known each other since you were 10?

BJ: And the first conversation we ever had was about writing songs. And then we just started playing music.

A lot of the stuff on your early Lookout! records shows what was on your mind at the time--namely, girls.

BJ: That was pretty much the viewpoint of a 16-year-old kid. I don't write stuff like that anymore. The new songs are more about coming of age and being apathetic and neurotic.

Where were your parents when you were touring [at age 16]?

MD: At work, doing their own thing.

BJ: My mom's worked a waitress job for like the past 40 years or something, and whatever I was doing was OK with her.

MD: I moved out when I was 15, and I worked all the way through high school.

BJ: And me, I've never held a job longer than two weeks. I tried to flip pizzas--it didn't work. I tried cleaning toilets in the Red Onion in El Sobrante. Me and TrŽ, we used to work for the SF Chronicle, selling papers. I sold three the first day, and the next day we just smoked pot, and we smoked pot the next day after that. So we had hella extra papers lying around. Our ultimate goal wasn't to get rich or famous or anything like that. It was to not have a regular job and not be miserable.

MD: And I've lived in every city around here, except for Albany. Literally. And one thing we want to establish about ourselves is that we're just a bunch of geeks from the suburbs.

Well, one of the first times I saw you, you guys were closing your set with Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger." That's pretty geeky.

MD: I grew up on radio--that's all I had. When I was a little kid, I couldn't afford records. I'll tell you, I've been down to a dollar in my pocket a lot of times. I've even lived in my truck. I can remember shooting rats with a BB gun in the flat we used to live in, before they'd make it to our food.

BJ: I've always been really good about saving. If I got some money, I'd put it away instead of spending it, and I'd buy ramen.

Why name your disc Dookie?

TC: Warner's said we could do anything we want, as long as we didn't say "Cop Killer."

BJ: Somebody told our manager that the ad for it was the most tasteless thing they'd ever seen in Billboard magazine.

What exactly do you mean on Dookie by "Welcome to Paradise"?

BJ, MD, TC [in unison]: West Oakland!

MD: Living in West Oakland, and going out to parties every night.

So it cost, what, around $100,000 to make Dookie?

MD: Yeah. We kept the advances low, because you gotta pay all that shit back. Everyone knows you can't become an instant millionaire just by signing, because there are so many people that want a piece of you.

BJ: We hang out with mostly punks though, and they don't want anything we have. They could care less. And a lot of our friends don't even agree with us being on a major label.

Is Green Day angry?

BJ: No, I'm not angry, like, walking around all the time with a frown on my face. But the way my music is interpreted is very angry.

MD: When you feel really strongly about something, you want to let it out in the most powerful way possible.

Like the way you baited your old high school principal from the Warfield stage recently?

MD: I think he was an asshole. He treated me with no respect. And for high school initiation, we got our heads shaved--that's the kind of small-town shit we had to deal with! Sometimes they made you push a penny up the street with your nose. But that's life, and anywhere you go, you're gonna hate a lot of shit in your life. You'll be handed

Dookie?

MD: Yeah. Yeah, you'll be handed dookie through all parts of your life. And see, what you need to do is just deal with the dookie, build upon what you have, and make something out of the dookie, you know? Like an adobe dookie building!

* * *

Several months later, and Dookie is oozing its gooey way into the public consciousness big time. The fading summer heat sticks crackling to the Berkeley sidewalks as punks--many sporting monstrous green or fuchsia mohawks--zing by on skateboards by day, and huddle in Telegraph Avenue doorways by night, conserving feral body heat the whole time. It feels like another world here, a throwback to the Bay Area's DIY/hardcore scene of the early '80s, when squatters reigned supreme and burlesque Broadway--fueled by all-ages shows at the Mabuhay Gardens, On Broadway, and even an occasional GBH or UK Subs booking at the Stone--made weekend conversions to "Punk Playground, USA." It was the best of times; it was the worst of times--despite relentless touring, most of these bands sold bupkus in the way of records, and few, save Metallica, ever held pen in shaky hand over a major-label contract.

Billie Joe saunters into the Berkeley coffeehouse in rumpled jeans and a grease-spattered flannel shirt; his once-green-and-tufty tresses have grown out into Wally Cleaver waves and been dyed a Rod Stewarty blond. He looks like one of those feisty punks of yore; like he could hold his own through sheer physical endurance in the wildest of thrash pits. There's a new authority about him, the way he strides confidently to the counter, orders a pint-size glass of coffee, then swims through a sea of late-lunching yuppies to grab a table. The singer doesn't seem to notice them at all. Or maybe he's just too tired from nonstop touring to really give a shit. He smiles a goofy grin, revealing a set of generally crooked or chipped choppers, with an entire half of one front tooth missing. But there's such charisma behind it, the same kind of "Who, me?" innocence that little kids use. Billie Joe, you might say, has quickly become the Bart Simpson of the alternative set.

How else could you explain his uncensored performance at a certain outdoor arena where--in a hyperspeed set lasting only 30 minutes before management threatened to pull the plug--he a) unzipped his fly and paraded his privates around for all to see; b) handed a stunned fan his beat-up, sticker-plastered guitar and urged him to play it; c) destroyed a $600 microphone by smashing it into the stage, then destroyed a second mike he was handed as well; and d) encouraged half the venue to chant, "Rock 'n' roll!" and the other half to respond with, "Shut the fuck up!" He then closed the show with a proposition--"They'll be really angry with us, but what we could do is rip out the seats!" he told the audience, which promptly gave Green Day a standing ovation. Billie Joe not only shrugs off such shenanigans as artistic license, he gets away with them! He's even encouraged to continue by fans who empathize with his uppity "fuck authority" attitude.

But the facts were all on the table as Billie Joe sipped his house blend that afternoon, and it didn't take a fortune teller to read 'em. Green Day was hitting big time. Fast. And the sheer enormity of the undertaking, the weight of all its accordant responsibility, was just beginning to hit him. He looked older, wiser, and spoke in more grownup tones about his future, which then included a pending marriage to longtime girlfriend Adrienne. You could practically feel this new maturity encircling him like some protective aura.

* * *

=Where do all these punks on Telegraph come from? They can't all be local and homeless.

I think Telegraph has just become this cultural mecca for punk rockers, because most of 'em who are on the Avenue aren't even from here. They're from Arizona, Minneapolis, New York, Florida. They just come out and end up squatting in houses in Berkeley. Why here? It's the climate, and the scene itself--Gilman Street and Maximum Rock 'n' Roll are in this area, and have a link to each other. But at the same time, it's separated, because there are so many different factions of punk now. There are the squatters, the pop-cores, the mods, the crusties. And all these types of people come out just to check it out. Plus, there's the best coffee in Berkeley, and a lot of 'em are real super coffee-drinkers, just pounding cup after cup all the time. It's pretty rare to come across a punk who doesn't drink coffee. I can't drink too much coffee myself--it gives me the shakes at night, so I just have a little bit during the day. Then I can smoke dope and go to bed.

=What's the attraction in squatting or homelessness for these kids?

For a lot of 'em, it's the first sense of freedom that they've had. It's like, "You mean I don't have to be home by midnight?" They've pretty much told their families and schools to go fuck themselves, so they go off and do their own thing. When I was 17, I did the same thing. And I had this total sense of freedom, where no one's telling you what to do, you don't have a clock to punch in on, you don't have people breathing down your neck; you don't have any deadlines to meet. You have this endless schedule where you can stay up all night drinking with your friends, or do anything you want.

=But isn't "Coming Clean" about leaving behind your wilder ways?

It's also about coming to grips with your sexuality. There's one line, "Skeletons come to life in my closet." And it's like, "Am I homosexual or heterosexual?" You go through this adolescent stage in your life where you don't really know what you are, and one side is taboo because your parents brought you up to think being gay was wrong. And if you come to grips with yourself, that you happen to be gay or bi or whatever, well, that was one thing about punk that was so accepting--all creeds were welcome, all sexualities, everything.

=Was this something you went through personally?

Yeah, to a certain extent. But I don't want to go around waving a gay flag or anything.

=Well, you had a beautiful girl on your arm backstage at the last Green Day show.

That's Adrienne. She's cool. Actually, we're engaged. That's why it took me so long getting here today--I had to get this! [Rolls sleeve up on tattooed arm, points to a bandaged-on cotton swab] Blood test, dude! We're getting married next week!

=Has anybody tried to tell you you're too young for such a serious move?

Of course. There are a lot of people who've said stuff. My parents have been a little more understanding than her parents. I just called my mom yesterday and said, "Mom, I'm gettin' married," and she said, "That's fine, son. Have fun!" I can hardly surprise my mother nowadays. But [this relationship] has been a recurring thing for the past four years, and we just decided to get serious about it. She's coming out here, and we're moving in together, so it's like, "Why not?" I don't really have any wild oats to sow, or anything like that. I'm not into the "Gettin' chicks all the time" thing.

=I know a lot of girls who'll be really bummed that you're gittin' hitched. They all seem to have developed a crush on you...

Me?! It must be the teeth [grins again].

=OK, so maybe you didn't brush often enough when you were young. But you were busy developing a direction...

I wouldn't necessarily say I had a direction or anything. I just knew I wanted to write songs. It comes from...uh...I don't know. I have no idea. It wasn't any kind of cosmic force or anything like that; it was just a matter of having a guitar around and wanting to play it all the time. I've had the same guitar since I was 11--I bought it off this guy at a guitar store. And I still play it--you know, the blue one with stickers all over it? That's my blue guitar, and, for some reason, things come to life, and everyone calls it "Blue" now--"Where's Blue? Can I pick up Blue and play it?"

=And you let just anybody touch it?

Oh yeah! Blue's not prejudiced.

=It's interesting to note that the general public seems to think Dookie is your debut.

Yeah, but that's just the general public. There are people who've been with us since the beginning, who know how long we've been around, since our first 7-inch came out back in '89.

=And now you can afford to trash pricey microphones.

Actually, Warner Brothers paid for those. It was pretty nice of 'em. They looked really nice--I remember looking at 'em and thinking, "Nice microphones!" They gave me one mike and I took it and threw it down, and they gave me another, and at the end of the set I creamed it pretty hard, I guess. We toured Europe with this band Die Toten Hosen--we played nine dates with 'em--and we got charged for a microphone every night. I dunno, for some reason we just started smashing shit. We'd start throwing equipment around at the end of each set, and these kids would start grabbing Tre's drum set and throwing it, and then they started smashing the microphones too. And the bouncers just couldn't do anything about it.

=And you actually yanked your dick out onstage too?

I did. Totally. It was the real thing. I dunno. The bands that we were playing with were just boring. It was more like making a mockery of the whole thing. The big arena rock thing is just so dated now, like Journey or Queen. Which is why I think punk rock started to begin with--it was this reaction to all the dinosaur bands. So for me, that show was, "How can we make a complete mockery of this but at the same time have fun with it?" I like to leave people guessing, "Did he hate that or did he like that?" It's not that I don't care--it's more that I'm careless. I try to be as happy-go-lucky as I can, but you can become apathetic at the same time.

=Do you feel like Green Day is a part of, or represents, the so-called "slacker generation"?

There's one side of me that doesn't mind it, because it's a generational thing, and another side of me that says, "Fuck that!" The reason I wrote the songs is, I ended up going back to Rodeo, where I'm from, for a week. And then I said, "Fuck it," and left. But I managed to get several good songs out of it. A lot of my friends had just turned into complete burnouts. And these are kids I've known since kindergarten, because it's a small town and you know everybody. And it was all fixing cars, staying up all night on methamphetamines, smoking dope, and finding out all these rumors about people I haven't heard of in 10 years. Like, "Oh, did you hear about so-and-so, who got married, had three kids, and ended up shooting everybody in his family?" And it happened! It was a true story! You're there for one week, and you get caught up in it. You get so bored, all you wanna do is watch television. And there are no record stores, nothing around, so you end up hanging out with all these delinquents who aren't punkers at all, just cultural idiots. So I was watching all these people rot and rotting with them until I realized, "Shit! I gotta get the fuck outta here!"

=As they say, you can never go home again.

Oh yeah, definitely. Unless you get pregnant, like my sister did. Then you have to go. But I quit school my senior year--I just wasn't getting anything out of it. I was taking nine periods a day, plus night classes, which left me no time to smoke dope whatsoever. And my mom even suggested I drop out, because she was a dropout, too. I come from a long line of dropouts. I still have nightmares about being late with my homework assignments. When I finally went in to sign out of high school, the teacher went, "Now, who are you again?"

=And if that teacher could see you now!

A lot of people think you get this big connection with a corporate label, and you make millions of dollars, but they don't understand that you just don't make that much money. And when you do, it's easy to piss it away. I mean, every cent that I've made, I've pissed away. I'm not gonna say how I did it, but I don't have it But I don't think you necessarily have to be a punk to decide to say, "Fuck it." You don't even have to have a direction. It's just a matter of getting the fuck out and exploring things for yourself.

=But didn't you feel abject terror when you first set out on your own?

Nah, I didn't. Because, for some reason, I knew things were gonna be all right. You can create your own future as long as karma's on your side. And I'm a strong believer in karma. I think things can come back to you if you're just willing to give.

* * *

True enough. At least six million times over!

1995 Tom Lanham

#article #interview #articles #billie joe armstrong

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capricornus-rex · 3 years

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A Shadow of What You Used to Be (8)

Chapter 8: Ensnared | Cal Kestis x Irele Skywalker

Summary: There is another! Years after young Anakin Skywalker departed Tatooine, his mother Shmi delivers a second child—this time, a daughter. Whilst the circumstance of the girl’s birth remains unexplained, Irele Skywalker has yet to choose the true path between those laid out for her.

Tags: Fem! OC, Irele Skywalker, Force-sensitive! OC, Anakin’s Younger Sister, Skywalker! OC, Darth Vader’s Secret Apprentice, Long-lost Sibling

A/N: Hi guys, I’m happy that you’re enjoying the story so far! But I have to let you know that I’ll be in a quick pause from publishing chapters for a while because I have to drop off my laptop in the shop again to have my new SSD put in (because I don’t know how to do it myself). They said it might take five working days, but that will still depend on my place in line. So this might be the last chapter for now, but I hope I get this baby back soon!

Requesting to be tagged: @heavenly1927

Also in AO3

Chapters: Prelude – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 | Previous: Part 7 | Next: Part 9 | Masterlist

9 of ?

“Hey, Irele, I got a job for us!” the Twi’lek boy, Frelik, panted as he supported himself on the arch of their door, as if he came sprinting from the town to their house in the salt flats.

“For who? Where? When!?” Irele bombarded back, and luckily Frelik answered all questions.

Irele looked over his shoulder, he had reached her house using the sand skimmer that all five of them worked together on. She told them to wait, hurried back inside, jumping to the floor from the first landing of the stairs to the rotunda and sprinted to her bedroom. She was all over the place—flashing from one side of the room to the other, swiping her pack with her tools and her scarf lying in different spots.

“I’m going out!” she announced in a voice loud enough for Owen and Beru to hear, wherever they were, and there was no time for either husband or wife to respond. They just heard the door whiz open and then shut.

Another wrangling job with her friends. It was a normal day, but it was something she enjoyed.

They’ve traveled about ten miles east of Mos Espa. The skimmer did its job, it resembles perhaps a smaller rendition of the complementary hovercraft that comes with a sail barge. Through his binoculars, Frelik spotted a cluster of brown speckles in the sand—a Bantha herd, he had found. Their quarry.

“Drello, full speed ahead!” cried out the tan-skinned Twi’lek to the human male. The boy cranked the lever of the motor and they pulled forward.

They stopped their skimmer in a safe distance, atop a small hill that overlooks the Banthas gathered around a watering hole—a rare sight in this planet. After peering through the lens, Frelik handed the binoculars to no one in particular, Irele took it out of his hands.

“Those aren’t domesticated, alright,” she panned slightly to her right. “We can slide our way down there. We’ll have enough cover so they won’t be startled by us.”

Before they got themselves on the move, Irele scanned the area for any signs of Tusken Raiders. It was not uncommon to have a run-in with Tuskens who were also trying to wrangle up mounts for their numbers; should that happen, the most logical—and only—move is to try your luck for another herd. A group of adult Tuskens versus a small band of children are in no good odds whatsoever.

“We’re clear. We’re the only ones here,” she reassured then returned the binoculars to Frelik. They sprinted back to the skimmer to retrieve their sleds and boards.

“I’m gonna ruin your win streak today, Irele!” prided Drello.

She clapped back after pulling her goggles down and smirked, “We’ll see about that!”

The children ran to the edge of the slope, the Twi’lek siblings shared a sled, Heeda—the other human female besides Irele—had her own sled that can only fit her. Golden blonde and sandy brown tinted the girl’s hair, and a bright-eyed face that proves her to be the youngest of the group, being only a year behind Irele.

A trail of sand plumed as they zipped down. It was a collective skill for them to resist squealing and cheering in delight as they slide down a two- to three-mile long sand slide. Irele and Drello surfed with a quiet confidence in the middle of this friendly competition between the two of them; sweving and leaving snake-trails along the sand, as one overtook the other.

Show off! Said each teenager in their heads, referring to the other.

Only a few meters remain before the group lands on flat grounds. They hopped out of their rides and hurried behind the rocks.

“I thought you were gonna beat my streak, Drello?” jeered Irele.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever!” the boy chide, and the girl snickered under her breath.

Another cautionary look through the lens before they approach the herd and then they scrambled to their positions. For every job they took together, there was always a harmony amongst them, a testament to their three to four years of friendship forged by their odd job life.

As always, Irele was in charge of the actual wrangling—along with Drello and Frelik. The two other girls’ jobs were to tranquilize the animals should any of them escape or refuse to be mounted.

The three vaulted over the rocks, leaving Heeda and Venee—Frelik’s sister—behind. Producing ropes out of their packs as they prowled quietly in the Banthas’ blind spots. Given the beast’s width, the children are practically invisible if they stay directly behind them. They became slower when they crept slower, the ropes primed into a lasso. In all their years in practice of this dangerous trade, they’ve mastered how to cleanly hoop the rope around the Bantha’s thick, spiraling horns.

A solid tug indicated that their ropes have rung around the base of the horns, they jumped onto the giants’ backs. Drello’s Bantha bucked its massive head, attempting to wriggle the rope off. Unfortunately, the boy had caught perhaps a more aggressive one than the rest of the herd; and to add insult to injury, his ropes have tangled around his leg and a few strands of the Bantha’s fur caught along with it.

“Drello, hold on!”

“Irele!” Drello yelped. “HELP!”

“Stay still!”

Seeing the trouble from their post, Heeda and Venee primed their dart guns.

“Wait for my signal, Heeda,” Venee warned. Fives seconds when they saw a clear shot, “Now!”

Two darts charged with a strong dosage of tranquilizer pierced their way through the Bantha’s curtain of fur and thick hide. The girth of the needle was thick enough to penetrate the animal’s skin. Drello’s Bantha seemed to have slowed down and the boy finally won some control over the beast.

“Troublemaker, are ya?! I’ll sell you to the first butcher I see in town!” grumbled a vexed Drello.

“Aw come on, don’t be like that!”

“What? He was the one who tried to buck me off while my leg’s caught in the rope,”

“Maybe he doesn’t like you,” Frelik suggested jokingly and the rest of the children giggled in agreement.

For the Banthas who didn’t put up much of a fight and were tamer, Irele suggested strapping their skimmer to the beasts.

“Since they got ropes around their horns anyway, we can just tie the other end on the winch!” she suggested, and everyone loved the fun idea.

There were no objections from her friends. In fact, they were all in on it! Heeda and Venee wanted to the ride bareback on the Bantha while the other three would sit in the skimmer. All five teenagers giggled in excitement and delight as their idea is about to be put into play, until Irele’s smile vanished, she flinched when she felt a needle prick the back of her shoulder.

“This is PG-957, target has been found and marked.” a sinister, muffled voice spoke through his comlink gauntlet.

No one noticed the tiny dart that had landed in her shoulder, but she easily swatted it off like it was some kind of debris. Little did she know that the tiny bullet that hit her packed such a punch. In her easterly side, she saw two distant figures calling out to her. The first figure waved a piece of cloth to get her attention, the second cupped their mouth with their hands to amplify their voice.

Irele!! Come quick!

“Hey, Irele, what’s wrong?” Frelik asked as he noticed his friend has suddenly gotten quiet.

“Smoke?” she muttered under her breath.

She squinted her eyes, sheltered her head with her scarf and confirmed that a pillar of smoke was in the distance as the Banthas pulled their skimmer.

“Do you see that?” she asked to no one in particular.

“See what?”

“That! That column of smoke over there!”

Frelik and Drello exchanged confused glances, and then back to Irele who had her back turned to them.

She squinted again, the two figures appeared to have gotten closer to where they are, and she could hear their voices.

IRELE, HURRY, IT’S YOUR FAMILY!!

“My home!” she bursts.

“Whoa, hey, Irele, where are you going!?” Drello tried to stop her by grabbing her sleeve but she slipped away.

Irele literally jumped out of a moving skimmer, taking her things with her as well.

“Irele, hey! Come back!” Heeda screeched.

“Where is she going!?” Venee exclaimed.

“There’s nothing over there!” Frelik insisted to his friend as he—along with his companions—watched her sprint into the distant nothingness.

Irele sprinted as fast as she could, those two figures materialized into a pair of older human males. Her friends literally lost her in the desert just when they were about to make their way back to Mos Espa, where they client awaits.

“I can’t see her anymore! Frelik, can you!?”

The Twi’lek growled in frustration, “No, she went straight into the storm!”

“Is she crazy!?” his sister protested.

“We have to go after her!” Heedra insisted.

“We’re not equipped for a sandstorm, Heeda, we can’t turn around. We have to get back to town and get shelter!” Drello argued.

They have no choice. They continued in their original path but they wordlessly promised that they’d come back for her.

Irele followed the direction of the smoke, knowing that it’s coming from the homestead. The adrenaline made her forget the aching of her legs, exhausted from running. She cared not if her friends didn’t believe her, her vision narrowed to the direction of her house. She didn’t even notice that the two males she followed were out of her sight.

The tower of black smoke got bigger as she closed the distance further. At the top of her parched lungs, she cried out for her family.

“OWEN!! BERU!!” she screeched.

She caught sight of her homestead in flames—or so she thinks—the dirty white dome of her house was charred black, a gaping hole put into the front door, the machines in their rotunda had been blown up, and tattered rags scattered across the front of the house.

“No…” she gasped. “NO!! OWEN! BERU! WHERE ARE YOU!?”

She repeated these three names, but an answer did not come.

Irele… a voice called to her.

“Owen!?”

Irele… do not fight it. It instructed her. It was a deep, ominous voice, and after the last word, a sharp robotic breath followed.

She recognizes that voice anywhere. She’s heard it in her nightmares, during the nights where she cannot sleep.

“No… No… Bring them back!” she cried.

She did not know it was an illusion. The sniper who had planted the needle into her flesh had followed the girl aimlessly going into an incoming sandstorm.

Poor Irele spun around in a panic, thinking that she was standing in the premises of her home, when in fact that she was standing in the first few inches of the storm. It was all a blur in her eyes, but she persisted looking for her family. The sniper, a trooper with a unique black armor, watched the poor girl spin until she got dizzy and weak.

Meanwhile, Darth Vader remained unmoving in his meditation chamber, dead center in the black, cold floor. He could hear Irele’s cries, her screaming of Owen and Beru’s names, and he could feel the hot, prickling wind that swats her face. The leather of his gloves squeaked as he tightened his already-closed fists.

Irele…

“No…” she exhaled one last time. “Bring them… back…”

“Target incapacitated. Requesting transport.” The trooper reported and was answered by an incoming transport craft to retrieve the trooper and a knocked out Irele.

–

The storm had eventually died down, but the teenagers’ anxiety did not.

Once they’ve gotten rid of the Banthas, they instantly hopped back on their skimmer and retraced their steps to the location where they lost Irele.

The sandstorm had erased her tracks, but they followed the direction where she aimlessly ran to.

Frelik heavily relied on his binoculars to find any sign of Irele. They had gotten far enough from the path they took when the Banthas pulled their skimmer. Drello may not be the most skilled wrangler, but he was a good tracker.

“We were here when she started talking funny, saying that she sees smoke when there’s nothing at all,” Drello pointed out the subtle indents of their skimmer and the Banthas’ hooves. He then angled his body to his easterly side, mimicking Irele’s position before she ran off. “And then she ran off there.”

“It’s strange,” Frelik added. “I heard her say the word ‘Home’ before she ran… but her house is in that direction.”

“Maybe the heat got to her?” Heeda theorized.

Frelik shook his head, “We didn’t even stay out that long, Heeda.”

“Come on, talking will take us nowhere!” Venee grunted. “Drello, what can you take from here?”

“We go to that direction,”

The skimmer hovered in a steady, leisurely pace; they were careful not to miss anything. The wind picked up as they got farther, a minor aftermath of the sandstorm in the middle of its calm; on his right, Frelik spotted something fluttering in the distance.

“Look! Drello turn us over there,”

Drello went straight ahead for that fluttering brown shape in the wind. Heeda picked it up and they all gathered around it.

“This is Irele’s scarf,” Venee mumbled pessimistically

“Then she must be close!” Heeda’s hopefulness contrasted the Twi’lek girl’s mood.

With only her lost scarf as a clue, it took the group all day trying to find her. The sunset beckoned them to stop. It never crossed their mind that they have to tell this to Owen and Beru, and they were scrambling over on what to tell them, how to say and explain it all, and that they’ll witness firsthand the wrath of Owen Lars—as well as his grief.

Reluctant, they drove their skimmer to the Lars homestead, with only a piece of Irele to bring home to her family. Up to now, not one of them have decided who will speak to Owen—neither do they have the courage to walk up to the front door.

They agreed that they go together, however, they hesitate to come an inch closer.

Eventually, Owen appeared out of the door.

“Oh, good thing you kids are back before dark.”

Silence from the children. Drello clutched onto Irele’s scarf so hard that it creased.

Owen’s eyes shifted left to right, counting in his mind, and it hit him.

“Where’s Irele?”

The teenagers flinched—shoulders flinched, sweaty fists clenched tighter, and knees were knocking.

Owen repeated the question until he spotted the scarf crumpled up into a ball.

“That’s Irele’s,” he pointed weakly at it. “Where is she!?”

“We… We’re sorry, but we lost her…”

“Lost her? Lost her!? Lost her how?!”

The raising of Owen’s voice attracted Beru—carrying Luke—to go outside. She finds Irele’s group being confronted by her husband.

“Owen, what’s going on here?”

“Irele didn’t come with them.”

“What?!” Beru gasped, her brown eyes widened.

Venee stepped forward, “We were on our way back, honest! But she started acting strange. She looked distraught about your house, she said she spotted smoke coming from here but…”

“What smoke? We were perfectly fine here all day!” Owen interrupted.

The Twi’lek girl continued, alternately looking to her friends. They vouched her every word with nervous yet truthful nods.

“That’s the thing, sir. What’s worse is… she ran into an incoming sandstorm. That’s when we lost her.”

Heeda stepped in Venee’s side, “It’s true what Venee said. We tried to look for her when the storm passed, honest! We just didn’t want to stay until dark because of the Tuskens.”

“We’re sorry,” Frelik said sadly and with a misplaced guilt. “But this is what we can only find of her.”

Drello unfurled the scarf and held it in both hands, presenting it to Irele’s brother. The young boy stepped forward to hand it over to the man who was hesitant to take it from his hands. Unable to accept that this was a rhyme to the fate of his late stepmother.

“No…” Owen’s rage melted into grief and distress. His heart wrenched. “Oh no…”

“Owen…”

Luke tugged the collar of Beru’s jacket and quietly asked, “Aunt Beru, where’s Irele?”

Unable to grasp how Irele’s friends had lost her, neither can Beru explain it to her nephew-in-law.

“Irele’s… Irele won’t be home for a while, dear.”

“Why?”

At a loss, Beru gave up looking for answers, there were no right ones after all.

“I don’t know, darling, I don’t know…”

As soon as Irele’s scarf came to Owen’s hands, he did not care anymore who would see him break down to tears. His knees melted, his back arched as he embraced a remnant of his dear sister—his remaining closest kin next to Luke—as he was fueled by the burning determination to find her.

Even if it meant he will have to repeat his father’s steps in finding Shmi all those years ago, then he would do the same for Irele. But for this night, the dunes heard his sobs and buried them underneath each and every grain of sand.

The next few days seemed desperate and hopeless. Owen had called up every men who were willing to come with him in search of Irele, her friends joined in as well. By the day, their numbers thinned out—majority giving up on the search as they could not find any other relevant leads except the scarf and the girl’s last known position.

“Give it a rest, Owen! The girl’s probably lost, or worse, fallen into a Sarlacc pit while in a heatstroke daze.”

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT ABOUT MY SISTER!” Owen swung with a finger pointed at the man who claimed such an assumption.

Knowing that this was not worth his time and energy anymore, the scout gave up and turned tail. Owen originally rounded up at least fifty men scattered across the outskirts of the major towns, even as far as the Dune Sea; though little by little, they all gave up on the search as well as Owen himself. Some with a heart apologized and wished him luck in finding the teenage girl.

“Oh, Irele…” Owen huffed, exhausted. “Where are you…?”

He was forced to stop the search just a few hours before sunset. He sent her friends home earlier. Upon returning to the house, he watched as Beru quickly walked out of the kitchen with a hopeful face—only for that hopefulness to fade away when she saw that her husband arrived alone.

She awkwardly dismissed herself and returned to the kitchen. Leaving Luke playing with a toy cruiser and shuttle on the table. Owen sat across him, the boy continued playing and reentered the little world he’s created with his ships, accompanied by little scaled figurines carved out of painted wood.

And from that day forward, something in Owen changed. In the following years, he would have grown old and sterner especially towards the remaining youngest family member—his nephew. Never mind if Luke would resent Owen’s ways in disciplining him or keeping him grounded, if it meant keeping him safe and preventing the same fate to happen to the boy, then he would do it.

He cannot afford to lose another part of his family.

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friendlylocalwhumper · 4 years

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the bookshop (lux and emory meet) | flirting over text | this drabble | emory sees scars, lux panic attack | the words

It was going to be a good time. Coffee, maybe some snacks like croissants or muffins, whatever was fresh and warm in the display case. They were going to chat. Get to know each other. There would be soft indie songs playing on speakers out of sight, and they could’ve watched people walking past the coffee shop’s big windows, could’ve guessed what those people were thinking and saying.

They were supposed to meet up at two o’clock. Emory got there five minutes late, so he wouldn’t seem like he was too excited about the date. So he wouldn’t be on display, so it wouldn’t be obvious that he’s catching feelings for this cute guy with curls and a smile that’s hard-won.

And he waited. Waited, alone in that coffee shop, finishing off two drinks at the slowest pace possible until he felt nauseous with embarrassment.

Lux didn’t come. Emory got stood up.

It’s fine, Emory thinks, as he packs up his stuff and slides it into his bag as calmly as he can. No outward frustration. He didn’t care, anyway. He unlocks his phone with one hand, clicks on his most recently opened text notification, and blocks Lux’s number. Easy disconnect, painless. Two hours wasted sitting in a coffee shop isn’t all that bad. If he’s not worth Lux’s time, or even a text giving him a heads up about the date being called off, then he doesn’t care.

It’s evening when there’s a knock on the door. It’s dark out. No one should be knocking, no delivery man or friend. Probably somebody selling something.

He didn’t get the socialization he thought he would today, though, so Emory sighs and gets up off the couch. May as well chat with someone trying to sell him an internet service with cheaper rates or something. They might even be cute enough to flirt with.

Emory goes to the door. Turns the handle, lets it swing open.

There Lux stands, arms flying down to his sides from where they were crossed, looking guilty. Emory doesn’t care.

“I tried to call,” Lux starts, shifting his weight nervously. “I… can I come in, please?”

A twinge of frustration pulls a sigh out of Emory. “Why? It’s fine, you couldn’t make it. I waited. You didn’t text. It’s not a big deal, I didn’t care anyway.”

Lux blinks, shaking some of his curls out of his face. From the light in the hallway shining out, Emory can make out blotchy purple bruising around his eye. Confusion, worry, curiosity flicker across his mind, softening the defensive apathy.

And there’s doubt in Lux’s eyes, anxiety. His arms move slightly to hug himself. Emory starts to wonder why Lux wanted to come inside - if it was more about getting away from something, rather than getting all up in Emory’s space so soon after embarrassing him. “R-, really? You didn’t…? Oh, I, I guess I thought… sorry, I, I thought you were looking forward to it, like, like I was.”

Now something like guilt eats at Emory. Lux is so easily misguided. It doesn’t feel good, convincing him that being left behind didn’t hurt.

“I’m lying,” Emory blurts, and deeper confusion settles over Lux. Emory feels like a bad guy. “I’m just. It sucked, okay? I was excited, and you never came. I was trying to act like I didn’t feel it. But you - you looked like you believed me. You don’t… you’re not hard to confuse, are you?”

Those shoulders scrunch up under sloppy curls. There’s so much emotion in Lux’s eyes, so much shown in his expressions, all the time. No wonder he’s easy to twist around if he’s so open about how he feels. “I, I, I’m not the smartest. Get confused. I, I can explain why I didn’t show up, if you want? But I get it, if you don’t wanna hear excuses. I just - need to come inside, or go.”

Emory tips his head in confusion. “Uh, sure. Come in.” Lux has such a small, unimposing presence that it doesn’t feel weird to let him in, even if they’ve only seen each other twice so far. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to say you’re stupid.”

Timid steps and movements that keep him out of arm’s reach bring Lux inside, head ducked down. He hovers a few feet away, waiting to be shown where he should go. “‘s okay, just am. If, if you wanna confuse me, ‘s not hard to do. I don’t - I won’t lie.”

It is a bit reassuring, to know that Lux doesn’t lie. That doing it would just end up with him confusing himself. It’s an offering, a truth, that makes Emory feel more prepared to listen to him even after being stood up.

He leads Lux inside with a gesture that gets some kind of weird reaction out of the guy. All Emory does is lift his arm to indicate the living room, then start to lead the way - but Lux jerks slightly, steps back, lets more distance fall between them. Everything he does is weird, like he’s been living in a whole different world all his life. Like he expects something other than a calm, if slightly defensive, interaction here.

They sit, Emory on the couch and Lux on the armchair. There’s room on the couch, but he supposes Lux doesn’t really have the body language of a guy who wants to be next to someone he’s hurt, right now.

“So. You were gonna tell me why you didn’t show?”

Curls bounce as Lux nods. He’s avoiding eye contact, twisting his fingers in his hoodie pocket. There’s dirt scraped across his sleeves and pants, Emory notices.

Lux is just a little too real.

“I got jumped,” Answers Lux, with all the quiet shame of someone who got attacked in broad daylight, and none of the showmanship of someone making up a story to escape blame. “...Wasn’t hurt too bad. Just… got, uh, got scared. Nervous. Forgot about the date, ‘cause, ‘cause I - well I had an alarm on my phone for it, but my phone got smashed. Got stomped on. And I couldn’t text you, and then I - I was running, and I got lost, and all stressed out.” His hands come out of his hoodie pocket to show his phone, the screen a thick mess of spiderwebbed cracks, chunks of the glass missing. He clicks the power button to show that the screen lights up, glitches, and don’t respond to touch at all. As he looks up to see if Emory is accepting the proof, Emory catches a better glimpse of that black eye.

The worst part of all this is that Lux is still nervous. He’s not resigned, not laughing it off, not moving past it. He looks and sounds like the last blow of the beating he caught slammed into him no more than sixty seconds ago.

By now, Emory doesn’t blame him at all. Two hours sitting frustrated and embarrassed in a coffee shop isn’t nearly as bad as Lux getting jumped and scared so bad that he ran, phone smashed, excitement over a date erased by fear for his life.

“I’m sorry that happened. I was… not gonna lie, was pretty mad about getting stood up. But not anymore. You didn’t mean to. Are you okay?”

Lux lowers his phone, shrugs one shoulder. “Yeah. Just, feel bad that I ruined it. The date. I know you didn’t care, but -”

“I did care, remember?”

Lux flinches slightly at the interruption. That’s what that movement is, a flinch. Emory frowns as he watches Lux seem to remember. He doesn’t think he’s ever going to lie to Lux again, not if he can help it - seeing him get confused makes Emory feel so wrong inside.

“Oh - oh yeah. Sorry. Do you - can you forgive me?”

Confusion draws Emory’s brows together. “There’s nothing to forgive. It’s fine, Lux, you got jumped. Your phone got wrecked, you couldn’t call me. You came here to say sorry even though you thought I’d be mad at you. You literally did everything right.”

The tense line of Lux’s shoulders loosens. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, what else could you’ve done? Win the fight and run to the coffee shop to get there on time? I’m sure you did your best. Getting out of there in one piece was more important than making it to, like, a second date.”

“We-ell - I could’ve, could’ve tried harder, it’s just they grabbed me and I couldn’t really get free at first.”

“They?”

Lux looks up, blinks. “Yeah. They.”

“More than one guy?”

“Three. I think. There were two, and then I got - my face was shoved down,” Lux explains, shoving his palm toward the floor in gesture, “And then I think there was a third one. Third voice.”

“Woah, wait - three guys? You got jumped by three guys? That’s - that’s different than, like, one who hits you and takes your wallet and lets you go.”

Lux shakes his head. “Yeah, no, wasn’t like that. They just - just hit me. Didn’t ask for a wallet, I didn’t even have money on me. They just, you know. Hit me until I was really scared. And then let me run away, and, and laughed.”

Emory’s mental image of what happened switches from Lux being pinned lightly to an alley wall by a guy with a hand in his pocket pretending to have a gun, to a whole group of guys beating Lux into the ground until he did something like begged or made small sounds. Maybe, fuck, maybe he even cried. Emory definitely would have, if that happened to him.

“And I, the worst part was I, I really wanted to see you.” Those shoulders sag with disappointment. “The coffee shop, it sounded really nice. When I remembered, after I calmed down, it was - I was really upset.”

A new emotion, something like dangerous hope - the opposite of not caring - strikes in Emory’s chest. “Really?”

Lux nods again. “I, mmmh - well, you probably talk to guys a lot. Go on dates and stuff. But I - I never do. I haven’t… I don’t date. So this was really new, and special, and I - you’re nice and you look, look like you do, and it felt like I ruined it all and I’ll never get to try again, with anybody. Nobody would - no one would like me, wouldn’t get asked out again. Won’t. So, I-I’m sorry I messed it up.”

Elbows propped up on his knees, Emory leans forward, his expression one of incredulity. As if someone as handsome, as friendly as Lux doesn’t get asked out all the time. As if getting attacked, getting beaten for no good reason is enough for Emory to throw him out and start over with some other cute guy.

“You didn’t mess anything up. We’re still dating, Lux.”

That gets a sharp reaction out of him. Wide blue eyes, sitting up straight, lips parted slightly in confusion. His hands stop fidgeting in his hoodie pocket. “We - we are?”

“Of course we are. I still like you. Really, how can you think no one would ever ask you out again? Have you seen yourself? I’m lucky I got to you when I did.”

Utter shock strikes, a blush spreading pink across Lux’s face like a blooming dawn horizon. “I - I, don’t know what - I, ‘m not - just, I-I, I’m glad you, you still wanna date me. ‘m glad you wanted to at all.”

Emory smiles, eyes crinkling. Lux is so soft with his words, so easy to flatter. This feels so much better than paying comments to guys he wants to hook up with: Lux doesn’t already know he’s gorgeous, hardly believes it when he’s told. It’s like he’s never dated before, like he forgets about the flirting and just focuses on being honest, being careful, showing trust and hoping to earn it in return. Lux is going about this like he’s seeking friendship, and the compliments, the thrill of being wanted, come as a surprise every time they pop up.

Lux is changing the game that Emory’s been playing for years, and it makes his heart race. Emory wants what Lux is unintentionally stumbling toward with his earnest, humble gestures. Something like friendship, but more.

“Sleep over,” He asks, smiling again. “You can sleep on the couch, here. I won’t make any moves, hand on the Bible. That way we can try for that coffee date again tomorrow, and we can go together. No muggers’ll get you that way.”

That blush deepens, those eyes wide again. He’s so sweet. “I - I guess, I can - I don’t have clothes to change into. And, I don’t - what if you change your mind? What if, what if I’m annoying? You don’t know if I am. You don’t - a whole night, that’s, isn’t that big? I don’t know if I can f-fall asleep in a place if, if I don’t know the, the person that well…” He falls silent, clearly feeling awkward, wringing his hands.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Offers Emory, leaning back to show he’s relaxed. “I’d feel better if you stayed here, though, because you got hurt today, and I don’t see anybody else inviting you over ‘cause they’re worried.”

Lux watches Emory. It seems like he’s trying to decipher what all that means. Could it be misinterpreted, Emory wonders? He can’t imagine how. “I’d like it if you stayed,” He adds, hoping it’ll soften the offer even further. “Because… I care. I care if you like me, I care if you make it to our date tomorrow. I don’t wanna see more bruises on that handsome face.”

If that blush gets any deeper, Lux will go red. He lets out a shaky breath and gives an uncertain smile. “O-okay. I’ll stay.”

#drabble #mine #whump #emory #lux #beaten #bruised #afraid #flinching #stuttering #confused #happy valentine's day!

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starshine583 · 5 years

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Hooked On A Feeling

(Y'all I am like, high off of serotonin, you guys really like this fic that much?? Oh my word??? I can't believe how many notes and responses I am getting! Here's part 8 because you guys are so lovely that I can't possibly say no to giving you more)

Motorcycle Madness (This was part 7)

Marinette heard the roller coasters before she saw them. The rattling of the tracks and the giddy screams was a nice change from the crashing buildings and screams of terror that came from akuma attacks.

The Motorcycle rolled to a stop in the parking lot, and the two climbed off.

“So where did you rent this from?” Marinette asked, handing him his helmet.

“I didn’t.” Damian replied, hanging the helmet on the motorcycle handle and stashing the keys in his back pocket.

“Didn’t?”

“Didn’t rent it.”

Marinette blinked. “Wait, you own this?”

Damian tilted his head from side to side in a “sort of” gesture.

“It’s more of a ‘hand-me-down’, but yes.”

Marinette scoffed. Hand-me-down? This thing is in mint condition!

She ran her hand over the motorcycle in admiration.

“What’s this?”

Near the rear of the motorcycle, resting just underneath the seat, was a yellow R symbol that looked vaguely familiar. Hadn’t she seen it on Robin’s costume?

“Oh that?” Damian asked, following her gaze. “That’s just the brand symbol.”

“Brand symbol..” Marinette repeated under her breath. Why would a hero buy his costume from an ordinary store? What brand sells clothes and vehicles?

Strange..

“Are you ready to go?”

Marinette shook her head, pushing the thoughts to the side and glancing up at Damian with a smile. Robin was on their side, so there was no reason to wonder about simple things like coincidental brand symbols.

She straightened. “Yep! Ready to go when you are. What do you want to do first?”

“Doesn’t matter as long as we do it all.” He smirked, starting the walk into the amusement park.

Naturally, they started with the roller coasters. The spinning ones, the ones with loops, the ones that were so high that they lifted you off of your seat on the way down- they rode them all. Being a weekday, there weren’t as many people crowding the lines. That made it all the easier to ride the rides several times over again.

“Am I supposed to feel sick after a while?” Damian asked as they strolled to the next ride.

Marinette giggled and patted him on the shoulder. “You’ve never been to an amusement park before, have you?”

“I have. Once or twice.” He admitted. “We didn’t get to ride any of the rides though.”

She furrowed her eyebrows. People don’t usually go to amusement parks, and then not ride anything.

“Why not?”

Damian’s gaze flicked to her, oddly distant for a moment.

Then he looked ahead again. “Stuff came up.”

A frown tugged at the corner of her lips. That was an extremely vague answer..

“Do you want to get some water? I’m kind of hungry anyway.” She asked next, directing him towards the food station. She supposed it was rude to pry. So they might as well change the subject.

He appeared to appreciate it, a small smile coming back to his lips along with his shoulders relaxing. “Water should be fine, but I’m hungry too. What food do they have here?”

Marinette snorted. “If you can call it food. They have Cotton Candy, Funnel Cake, Corn Dogs, Popcorn- mostly sugar that has a few extra ingredients to hold it together.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “Well, I don’t want Cotton Candy. What was the other thing you said? Funnel Cake? What is that?”

She gave a blissful, dramatic sigh. “It’s heavenly. I’ll get some to share.”

They found a table near the stand, and Marinette got in line to order. A few minutes later, she gave Damian his water and set the plate of Funnel Cake between them.

“It’s hot, so be careful.” She warned, carefully breaking apart some of the pieces to cool it down faster.

Damian took the water bottle with a “thank you” and opened it.

She flashed him a smile, then picked up a small piece of the Funnel Cake.

“Here, try it.” Marinette said, holding it out to him.

He hesitated, giving her a look.

She rolled her eyes with a chuckle. “Come on, you liked the lattes. Just try it, okay?”

Her smile widened when Damian sighed in resignation. He leaned forward and let her feed him the funnel cake. Marinette flushed from embarrassment as she hadn’t expected to feed it to him herself, but he didn’t seem to think much of it.

“S-so? Your thoughts?” She held back a cringe when she stuttered. Great. Is that how the rest of this night’s gonna go?

Damian hummed.

“It’s okay.”

Marinette shook her head. “You’re so picky.”

The boy scoffed, though his lips held a smile. “You’re allowed to be picky when you have the money for it.”

“True, true.” Marinette agreed.

She almost jumped when an alarm bell started ringing.

The two turned to see a little boy grinning from ear to ear and pointing out which toy he wanted from a game vendor.

“How do they stay in business?” Damian asked, watching the boy tightly hug his new, pink elephant. “The games are too easy to win.”

Marinette couldn’t help laughing. “Too easy to win? Most of those games are rigged for failure. The mom probably paid the vendor to get the stuffed animal.”

Damian gave her an incredulous look. “How? I could win those with my eyes closed.”

Her smile faltered. Is he being cocky or does he actually believe that?

“Why don’t we play them then?”

“What?”

Marinette’s smile returned, this time more sly. “Let’s play the games, if they’re so easy.”

Damian narrowed his gaze at her.

“If you want to.”

“Oh, I definitely want to.”

That’s how the competition began. Play each of the games together, and whoever wins the most, or has the highest scores combined, wins the whole competition.

The first game was ring toss. Damian’s accuracy with the rings was uncanny, Marinette found out. She managed to get one or two, but he was able to throw six at a time without a problem, each landing on a separate bottle.

“How are you that good at ring toss?” She asked. No wonder he thought all of these games were easy!

Damian shrugged. “Practice.”

Practice? Practice? What kind of things do you practice to get that good??

Next game was a water gun game where you shoot the target to raise your icon to a certain point. Marinette had the luck of getting a gun with better water pressure, so she won that round.

“That shouldn’t count! It was pure luck!” Damian protested.

Marinette flashed him a smile. “Miraculous Luck, I’d say. I’m totally counting it, though.”

Third game was Balloon and Dart. This was a close one, but Marinette and Damian ended up tying.

This continued for the next half hour with Marinette and Damian beating each other in different ways. By the time they finished, the sun had set, and the stars were glistening above them.

“What are we going to do with all of the prizes?” Damian asked once they finished the last game, holding up the handful of goods they’d won.

Marinette hummed, plucking a toy yo-yo off of the pile. There were definitely a lot of toys here that they didn’t need.

A soft gasp brought their attention to a little girl who was staring starry-eyed at the pile of toys in Damian’s hands.

The two exchanged a glance, before sharing a smile.

“You want one?” Marinette said sweetly, handing her the yo-yo.

The girl eagerly took it, slipping the string onto her fingers and attempting to swing it around.

“Guess we know what to do with them now.” Damian commented, already starting to hand out the rest of the toys to passing kids.

Marinette smiled, taking half the pile to help. The grins from the kids and appreciative looks from the mother warmed her heart.

“What do you want to do next?” Damian asked after they finished giving away the toys.

Marinette hummed, glancing around the theme park. They’d ridden all of the roller coasters, played all of the games..

“Oh! Let’s ride the Ferris Wheel!” She exclaimed. It’d be a perfect way to end the day!

Damian looked up at the attraction, a small smile crossing his lips. “After you.”

Marinette squealed, excitedly shifting from foot to foot before starting for the Ferris Wheel.

Because it was later in the day and school had long since let out, the amusement park was now packed with people. She could barely hear Damian telling her to slow down over the talking and laughing and screaming, nor did she register how many people she bumped into or squeezed past.

It wasn’t until she felt a light pull on her arm that she turned back around.

“You’re hard to keep up with in a crowd.” Damian said.

Marinette laughed, giving an apologetic smile. Then her eyes trailed to their hands.

Damian glanced down as well, and he started to pull his hand away from hers. “Sorry, I was trying to stay together.”

A blush bloomed across Marinette’s cheeks, and she giggled. He looked so uncertain. It was adorable, really.

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Now it was Damian’s turn to blush, and oh, if that didn’t give her butterflies..

The line for the Ferris Wheel was a bit long, but Marinette felt it went faster with Damian’s hand in hers.

They were still holding hands as they got on the ride and as they got to the top. The stars littered the clear night sky, almost as bright as the shining lights lining the roller coasters.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marinette breathed, completely absorbed in the inky blackness of the night.

She didn’t see the way Damian’s eyes softened, or how his eyes were only on her as he said, “Yeah. It is.”

Tag List: @thebookwormfairy @unholykrow @constancetruggle @vixen-uchiha @derpingrainbow @kceedraws @graduatedmelon @starry-bi-sky @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @sweatyruinsstudentbored @go-n-ef @tinybrie @resignedcatservant @never-neverland @captainmac6 @drama-queen-supreme @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @roseinbloom02 @grimmhallow31 @zazzlejazzle @crazylittlemunchkin @iggy-of-fans @origamieater @kiara-rose-blackthorn @spicybelladonna @redscarlet95 @mooshoon @t-nikki10 @auradonfairy @shamefulllove @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @johnlockfeelz @imfreakingmagical

#Daminette #Damian Wayne #Marinette #so sorry this took so long #writer's block hit me hard fam

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Behind The Album: Appetite For Destruction

In July 1987, Guns N’ Roses released their debut album, Appetite For Destruction. The album would go on to become the biggest selling debut record in music history. Furthermore, it would be the 11th highest selling album of all time in the United States. The strange thing was that the record did not actually achieve this immediate success after its release. Its popularity was a very gradual growth that needed the help of singles, a tour, and music videos including their only number one hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” The record company, Geffen, did not do much in the way of promotion for the band, Critics at the time did not think very much of the album at first, but now they all agree that Appetite For Destruction now represents a classic album that changed music.

The recording sessions began in January 1987 as the band had signed with Geffen Records six months prior. They could have signed with Chrysalis Records for twice the money, but they would not give them complete artistic freedom. For their part, Geffen Records did not have very much faith in the album anyway pushing the band to release the EP Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide the previous December. The executives did not feel that GNR had enough material to make a full album, but they did not want to miss out on the buzz that was building about their live shows. Most of the tracks for the album had been written while playing their club shows primarily in LA from 1985-1986. As stated previously, they produced a wealth of material that actually went on their other albums, G N’ R Lies and Use Your Illusion I and II. For example, “November Rain” was seriously considered for this album, but they only wanted one ballad on there, which became “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” a love letter to Axl’s girlfriend Erin Everly. The band considered several producers to record the album including Paul Stanley of Kiss and Mutt Lang, who had produced Def Leppard. The rejection of Lang really came down to the producer being too expensive. The first producer they worked with, Spencer Proffer, actually recorded nine tracks with the band, but he was ultimately rejected. They finally chose Mike Clink, who had produced several records by the band,Triumph. The album would be mostly recorded at Rumbo Studios in the San Fernando Valley. One of the reasons for this decision represented the fact that the location was away from Los Angeles, which meant the band members could focus a lot more on the music. The distractions of sex and drugs were problematic from the very beginning. The record company from the time they were signed began to fear that the band would not be around long enough to record any album because one of them was probably going to die very soon. Recording was slow at first because Slash needed to work on perfecting the guitar sound for the album. Once he got that down, the album still took quite a bit of time because Axl Rose demanded that his vocals only be recorded one line at a time. Steven Adler would later say that his drum tracks only took six days. As Axl gradually recorded his vocals, the rest of the band stayed completely away from the studio to let him work. A good number of the tracks for the album had actually been written when band members were in other groups. “Rocket Queen” had been a song written by Duff McKagan, Slash, and Stephen Adler when they had the group, The Road Crew. The song “Anything Goes” had been a Hollywood Rose tune. The lyrics reflected personal experiences of the band members. The song, “Welcome to the Jungle” came from Axl hitchhiking to New York. A homeless stranger came up to him upon arrival and said, “Welcome to the jungle you’re gonna die, man.” The song, “Out To Get Me” had been based on Rose’s troubles with the police that essentially forced him to leave Lafayette, Indiana to avoid prosecution. The song, “Mr. Brownstone was a direct reference to their seemingly full-time pastime of doing heroin. The song” “Paradise City” was written just after a disastrous trip to Seattle for one of their first tours. They had been left stranded on the way there needing to ditch much of their equipment just to make the tour. Paradise City emerged as a reference to Los Angeles upon their return.

GNR needed to battle the record company over the original cover art for the album. They had wanted an image of a robotic rapist being punished by a metal avenger, but record stores said they would not sell the album. Band members would later say that the robotic rapist was a symbol for the industrial system polluting our environment. Sometimes when it comes to Guns N’ Roses, you simply could not make this stuff up. A compromise was finally reached to allow the image to be included on the insert. The cover of the album, which is now iconic actually originated from a tattoo Rose had gotten the year before. Along with his tattoo artist, the singer would receive most of the credit for that logo. A little known fact emerges in that the knot symbol in the cross on the logo was actually a reference to Thin Lizzy. Another creative difference that most people may not realize was that the record did not have an A and B side, but a G and R side. The G side represented songs that took on darker themes like drugs and violence, while the R side were the ones about love, sex, and relationships. Originally, Axl had wanted to have a picture of the Challenger space shuttle exploding as the cover of the album, but the record company refused because it would have been in extremely poor taste.

At first, nobody noticed that the album had even been released. For example, in August 1987 Appetite For Destruction was number 182 on the charts, but exactly one year later the album was number one. Author Stephen Davis said that competition from other groups like Aerosmith and Def Leppard at the time hindered the group's ability to effectively promote the album. Slash would recall, "We thought we'd made a record that might do as well as, say, Motörhead, it was totally uncommercial. It took a year for it to even get on the charts. No one wanted to know about it." Another thing that must be noted that absolutely helped the success of Appetite For Destruction was the music video for “Welcome To The Jungle.” MTV had refused to play the video until David Geffen from the record company requested that the channel play it. The video aired for the first time at 4 AM on a Sunday, but some people saw it that lead to a tremendous number of requests for the video. Surprisingly looking back now, but critics absolutely hated the album at first. Dave Ling of Metal Hammer said the band simply copied other groups like Aerosmith, Hanoi Rocks, and AC/DC, and not very well at that. Other critics believed that the band’s popularity could be wholly attributed to their embrace of sex and drugs in their lyrics. They felt the group was glorifying it at a time when America was suffering from the AIDS epidemic and the war on drugs. Now in retrospect, critics undoubtedly keep lavishing praise upon the album being a turning point as rock and roll turned away from hair metal and glam metal to hard rock. Many agree that it represented the best metal record of the late 1980’s, if not the entire decade. Ann Powers of Rolling Stone would write, it “produced a unique mix of different rock values, speed and musicianship, flash and dirt,” that "changed hard rock's sensibilities at the time." Christa Titus of Billboard also noted that overall Appetite For Destruction embraced multiple other sub genres besides what would become hard rock. The album had, “metal's forceful playing, punk rock's rebellious themes, glam metal's aesthetic, and bluesy guitar riffs that appealed to purists." As other critics brought up that the record was more in line with The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith in the 1970’s, rather than any current band. In 1999, Axl Rose with all new members of Guns N’ Roses re-recorded the entire album. His reasoning had been to utilize new recording technology to improve upon the master. This new version was never released to the public, except for the second half of the song, Sweet Child O’ Mine which can be heard in the credits for the film, Big Daddy. In 2018, the band released a deluxe version of the album including early demos recorded at Sound City, Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide remastered, and early versions of the tracks that would eventually land in some form on Use Your Illusion I and II.

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thethiefslore · 3 years

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Canon Lore - Meeting Corey

This is mostly under a cut. It’s not because it’s inappropriate. It’s because it’s 3300 words long, and I don’t want to clog up your dashes!

Corey let several long minutes pass. Nothing but a ticking clock made a steady sound. He sat back in his chair, watching the women in front of him. Both had wrinkled clothes, like they had slept in a car last night. The younger one was a teenager in a solid blue shirt and jeans, her straight, shoulder-length hair framed her face, the brown shade matching her eyes. She was leaning heavily on one arm of the chair, glancing between him, the door, the desk, and the clock on the office wall. The second, a woman who he would place over 30 years, had a dark shirt under a leather jacket. She sat back in her own chair, crossing her legs with her arms on the rests. Her own brown hair had small curls in it, which was far more interesting to look at than the kid’s, in his opinion.

Speaking of the kid, she liked to fidget. She was bouncing her leg first. Then, she shifted her weight in her seat a few times. Fingers started to tap. She looked at the older woman, who hadn't moved much at all. Then, she shifted her weight some more and brushed the hair out of her face a few times.

She was impatient. She would get caught that way.

The older one showed more promise. She'd shifted once to get comfortable and watched him, waiting for him to make the first move here.

These two women had found him somehow. They wanted in on his real business, a crime ring, not the pawnshop they were sitting in now. That they made it this far meant that they - or one of them, at least - might actually know what they were doing, and he was willing to bet it wasn't the kid. She was ready to jump out of her own skin over there, her eyes darting around. He doubted she ever had a job like this before.

At length, Corey sat forward in his chair and nodded at the teen, ready to break the silence. He rested his forearms on the desk, leaning on them. "How old are you?"

She gripped the arms of her chair more tightly, her eyes wide. She glanced at her companion again, begging to be saved.

"It's not a hard question," Corey barked. "It doesn't need teamwork." He raised an eyebrow. "You don't know how old you are?"

The kid looked away with a wince. "I'm, uh, 19," she finally mumbled, wiping her hands on her jeans. She turned her focus on the desk.

That was a distinct accent. Corey crossed his legs. "Look at me. I'm not going to eat you." Not right then, anyways. It took a long second, but she looked up at him. He wanted to laugh. "Where are you from, again?"

"Texas." She sat forward and opened her mouth to give details he didn’t ask for.

Corey spoke up, stopping her. "Lose the accent. If you sound like a hick, people will remember you."

The girl closed her mouth with a scowl, but she nodded. "Yessir." Then, she corrected herself by slowing down so the words didn't blend together. "Yes, sir."

The result wasn't perfect, but it was an improvement. He reached towards the plastic cup on his desk, repurposed to be a pen holder. It was easier to find a pen here than to dig around his messy desk for it. Try finding a pen when there were stacks of paper everywhere. He grabbed a pen and pulled the lid off, sticking it on the back of the pen for safekeeping. He pulled a blank legal pad towards him now. "And your name?"

Her eyes darted to the pen in his hand for a split second before focusing back on his face. "Mari."

Corey raised an eyebrow. "Your full name. Last name and everything."

Mari continued to look between the paper and his face. She swallowed, but gave a full answer this time. "Marian Cochran. Mari with an 'i,'" she corrected, sitting forward herself as Corey wrote. "Like M-a-r-i."

Corey stopped writing to stare at her, his pen held down on the 'y' in 'Mary.' She was that kind of person, huh?

Mari sank back into her seat again. "Because…because I like the 'i' better…." The corners of her mouth twitched up for a second, but he could hardly call that a smile. It trailed away with her words. "It's more…unique, y’know?" If she had more to say about it at that point, she kept it to herself. Either she realized just how stupid she sounded, or she figured out that Corey didn't care. Her fingers started tapping again.

Corey turned his attention to the older woman. She uncrossed her legs and sat up straighter, her dark eyes following him. She was tense, ready to act if something went wrong. Here was the real brain behind these two. The younger woman was just along for the ride, it seemed. "And your name is?" He didn’t need her age. He was sure she was older than 18.

"Viper."

Or maybe they were both stupid. Corey ran his free hand down his face, sighing. "Fuck sake, your real name."

The woman raised her chin. "You'll get it when you hire me. Not before."

Mari sat up. "I could've said no? Why didn't-"

Viper raised a hand, palm towards Mari. Her words died on her lips. That was a nifty trick.

Corey's eyebrow lifted as the hand lowered. "Viper," he said, giving in. "Are you two a packaged deal?"

Viper and Mari both nodded, though Mari did it with all the enthusiasm of the kid she was.

"That sucks." Corey capped the pen and sat back in his chair. “I’m not interested.”

Mari shot up straight in her chair, sucking in a breath before she protested. "But what about us? We need a job!"

"I don't care about you." Corey crossed his arms, grinning. "Imagine that."

"You didn't even give us a chance!"

"I sure didn't."

Viper had covered her mouth with her hand. She watched Mari out of the corners of her eyes. She was wearing a scowl, as far as Corey could tell. He didn’t know if that was for him or for Mari, who didn’t seem to know when to quit.

Mari's cheeks started turning red. "You just asked our names. That's not how job interviews work." She started ticking things off on her fingers as she listed them. "You're supposed to ask questions, figure out our skills, learn about our work ethic, then decide." She raised her hands, almost reaching towards Corey and shaking her head. "You're not being fair!"

Corey, meanwhile, started laughing. "Do you want a handout or something?”

Mari stared at Corey for a long, long second, then slumped back in her chair. Her hands dropped into her lap loudly. “No.”

"This isn't a normal interview." Corey sat forward again, pressing a finger straight down into the desk in front of him. "This isn't a normal job. I'm not risking my livelihood on some kid who's gonna run home to Mommy and Daddy when life gets hard."

Mari sank further in her chair, focusing on the desk. Her eyes glistened, but she stayed quiet at last.

"Is she the only reason you're saying no?"

The snake found her voice. Corey shifted his attention to Viper as she lowered her hand from her face. "No. I don't know you, either."

"But you asked if we were a packaged deal," Viper said. She gestured towards Mari. "So you wanted one of us. I'm just guessing it's me." She lifted one shoulder, then let it drop again. She didn't have the same accent Mari did. He was willing to bet she travelled from place to place before. "What if I told you she can pick locks?"

"So can I. What about it?" He hadn't carried a key to his filing cabinets or desk for years. Lock picking wasn't impressive.

Mari looked up again. Her voice was thick, but she wasn’t crying, to her credit. "I can pick any lock," she said. The poor girl was trying to sell her case. "It's kind of a hobby." She swallowed, shifting to sit up in her chair again. "I can prove it."

Corey sighed. If it got her out of the conversation, he was willing to hold her to that. He turned around in his chair and stretched back, reaching for a combination-locked Vaultz box sitting on top of a low filing cabinet. He picked it up and turned back around, dropping the box on the desk. "There's a few locks in there for testing people. Knock yourself out."

Mari sat up and reached forward, her mouth opening slightly. She took hold of the box and fished out her phone, tapping on the screen to turn on the flashlight and shining it into the lock as she turned the numbers on the combination slowly.

"She's stolen before," Viper said. She smiled as she watched Mari work out the first number and move onto the second. "Broke into a house."

Corey waved at Mari as the box popped open. "Forget about her. Have you been to prison?"

"A few times.” Viper looked at Corey now, raising her chin for a second. “Assault charges. Nothing special."

"Anybody can get assault charges." Corey could just go outside and punch someone random. Assault charges could mean nothing at all. It didn’t make someone a criminal.

Viper didn’t miss a beat. "He was lucky it wasn't a murder charge."

Corey laughed. He'd heard that before. This woman was just talking tough. "Let me guess: you're a highly-trained hitman that used to work for the Russian government or something?"

She gripped the arms of her chair tightly. "I just have a working gun. That's all."

"But you only got an assault charge?"

Viper's jaw tightened this time. "Like I said, he was lucky. I was teaching him a lesson, not trying to kill him."

"Can I borrow a pen?"

Mari's question cut into the discussion. Corey spared her a glance, then had to look more closely for a second. She had already opened three locks. They weren't hard; just normal pin-and-tumbler key locks, but they laid on the desk, turned so that it was obvious they were unlocked. Beside them were two bobby pins Mari had pulled from her hair at some point, bent into a makeshift torsion wrench and a pick. The girl herself was holding a combination lock now, watching him.

"You're not going to pop it?" Corey eyed the lock. It was how most people tried that one.

Mari shook her head. "Don't have a shim." She passed it to her other hand, looking at it. "So I need a pen. I can guess the combination if I push up on the shaft and find where the dial catches.” She stuck a finger through the loop of the shaft and pushed up to demonstrate. “Then, I can just do math to narrow the combinations down after that. You take-"

"Your accent is back," Corey interrupted. He had a feeling that if he didn't, she'd go on for a while.

Mari winced, relieving the tension she had put on the lock shaft. "Sorry."

Corey grunted, but tore a piece of paper from his pad and slid it towards her. He set the pen down on it, then turned back to Viper, ignoring Mari's quiet 'thanks.'

"I told you she was good.” Viper raised her eyebrows, tilting her head towards Mari.

"Picking locks doesn't make a criminal." Corey laced his fingers together, resting them on the desk. If he hired everyone who could pick locks, he would have a bunch of officers and federal agents running around in his ranks.

Viper watched Mari, who turned the combination dial, wrote a number, than turned it again. The kid’s tongue was sticking out of the side of her mouth and everything. "She can learn. She already figured out how to survive in prison."

Corey looked at Mari again. She had the lock in one hand, the pen in the other, and her head cocked as she tried to discreetly listen to them. "Why did you go to prison?"

"Burglary," Mari answered. The pen went still. "I wanted a bracelet."

She paid more attention to her surroundings than he expected her to, at least. "Did your lawyer suck, or-?"

"Got caught in the yard." Mari's cheeks reddened and she ducked her head. "He had me plead guilty. Said it wasn't worth the money my parents would spend on him trying to exonerate me when I'd be charged, anyways."

"Your parents hired your lawyer? Seriously?" She came from a family more affluent than most people he hired, if that were true.

"I was 17." She tapped the tip of the pen on the paper repeatedly and tightened her fingers around the lock.

"Do they know you're here?" Corey raised an eyebrow.

Mari shook her head. She focused on the lock again, scribbling down calculations with far less enthusiasm than before.

"They're back in Texas,” Viper explained, sitting forward in her chair.

"I asked her." Corey didn't even look at Viper. "What happens when they find you? Are you going to go home?"

The pen stopped again. Almost, anyways. It shook as she pressed it into the paper. She shook her head, not looking up. "They cut contact in prison."

Corey started laughing. "So you ran away from home to start a life of crime." It sounded like the most cliché teenager story he had ever heard.

Mari rubbed her thumb in small circles on her fingers around the pen. She either found the paper fascinating, or she didn't want him to see her face right then. Good. He had found a button to push when he needed it.

"Her parents won't come looking." Viper was trying to save Mari from the conversation again. She glanced sideways at the teenager. "They don't care enough."

Mari winced, sinking in on herself.

"That still doesn't make her worth anything," Corey pointed out. He turned away from Mari. She seemed to relax at that, the pen starting to write slowly again.

"I'm going to teach her." Viper gestured towards Mari, smiling. "She's a fast learner."

“You’re going to teach her how to steal how?” Corey furrowed his brow. If all this Viper was good for was fighting and shooting, how could she teach someone to steal anything?

“I haven’t been caught stealing,” Viper said. Her mouth twitched. “Just fighting. It’s more obvious.”

Mari set the pen down to try a combination on the lock. After a good deal of spinning, she pulled on the shaft. Still locked. She picked up the pen and scratched through something.

"You want me to invest money in the hopes that she'll be good someday?" Corey watched as she tried another combination.

"No. I want you to invest in me. She's just a bonus you'll get from it someday."

Corey sat back, watching Mari try combination after combination as he thought. It looked like her math wasn't working as well as she said it would. He rested his hands on his stomach. He didn't know either of these women. Viper looked like she might be worth it, but he couldn't be sure. Mari was most likely useless. Even if she wasn't, coming from a life where she had a silver spoon up her ass for years would be a culture shock. She would probably run back, despite what she and Viper claimed.

Before she did, though, she might get his people into homes without breaking windows and drawing attention. A key lock wasn't much different from a door lock and a deadbolt.

The combination lock opened with a metallic pop. Mari shot Corey a grin, set the lock down, and reached back in the box. She had worked her way through five locks already, but she still wanted another. As she dug out a second combination lock, Corey watched her work this time. She flipped the paper over, scribbling out more math and turning the dial on the lock slowly to get her numbers. After a few minutes of this, Corey spoke up. "That math you're doing doesn't give you the exact combination?"

Mari looked up for a second, then held up the lock. "It does give the exact combination." She shook it a bit. "It just gives me 80 others I have to try, too." She lowered the lock, looking at it. "It's easier checking 80 combinations instead of thousands."

Corey nodded as she went back to her math. Wherever she learned lock picking, she was good at it. Maybe that translated to safes, too. It would be nice to have a safe cracker around. Lord knew he spent hours with a blow torch trying to get into one before. That was a waste of time.

Then there was her friend, this Viper woman. All she claimed was assault charges and owning a gun. He had plenty of people with those qualifications already. Delia, Serina, Mitch, Anthony, hell, even himself, if he had to. That didn’t even cover all of them. The stealing she said she was never caught at sounded like a brag and a half. He was willing to bet that she hadn’t stolen a day in her life. If she had, it was probably something pretty easy to get away with.

What a pity. He could always use more thieves.

Though there was an easy way to tell if Viper was lying. If he gave her a contract that was low-risk for him, but not necessarily easy for her, it should be obvious whether or not she could actually steal anything. Getting a new thief would be a huge boost.

He looked at Viper, then back to Mari, then back at Viper again. "Do you have a burner phone?"

Viper nodded. "Of course."

"Good." Corey sat forward, getting a second pen from the holder and pulling the cap off. "Let's hear it."

Viper's eyes narrowed on him. "Are we hired?"

Mari stopped messing with the lock, looking up to watch them.

"Not officially," Corey said. "But on a trial basis." He glanced at Mari for a second. "I'll have to see how good you two really are, first.” He focused back on Viper. “I need a way to contact you."

After a long moment, Viper let out a sigh and nodded. She listed off a phone number that Corey jotted down. Mari set the combination lock and pen down on the desk as Corey looked up again. "Don't go far. I'll find something for you pretty quickly."

Viper smiled at him for the first time. She stood up, ending the meeting before Corey could. "We'll be waiting."

Mari hopped out of her chair, grinning. “Thank you!” Her voice was a higher pitch now. She clapped her hands together once, then cleared her throat and stood up straighter. She held a hand out to Corey. “Thank you, sir.”

Corey glanced at her hand as he stood up. She dropped it after a long second, taking a step towards Viper and looking at the clock on the wall as she did.

“Don’t thank me,” Corey said. He stepped around his desk and past the women to open the door. She wouldn’t be thanking him if she actually got hired. Nobody ever did. He pulled the door open, then gestured out into the closed pawn shop. The sun had set a while ago. He could be at home right now, watching Wheel of Fortune with his kids. They loved guessing the puzzles before the contestants did. The sooner these women left, the better. He fixed them with a look even as they turned towards him. “Now get out of my shop.”

#writing #writeblr #fiction writing #original writing #thefailingthief #mari's lore

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blog-cosmosuniverse1 · 3 years

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What Have We Done? By E.P. Unum January 21, 2021

Joseph R. Biden was just inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday. I have nothing further to say about this historical event attended primarily by 26,000 National Guard Troops, FBI, NSA, CIA Operatives. That fact alone is a very telling story. Apparently, additional security was deemed necessary for a President-Elect who received allegedly 80 million votes, more than any other person in the history of our country. All of the “peaceful riots” throughout the summer and Fall, where stores and businesses were looted and destroyed, monuments toppled and police and citizens were killed, did not require the assistance of armed troops to quell these “activities”. I also will not comment on the 17 Executive Actions signed by our new President on his first afternoon in office. None of these offer any hope or unity nor are they of any benefit to the American people or to America. Indeed, they will drive us further downward. But here are some lessons we can learn from the new change in leadership to the America we know: Perhaps now you understand why there was never any action against the Clintons or Obama, how they destroyed emails and evidence and phones and servers, how they spied and wiretapped, how they lied to the FISA Court, had conversations on the tarmac, sent emails to cover their rears after key meetings, how Comey and Brennan and Clapper never were brought to any justice, how the FBI and CIA lied, how the Steele Dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, was passed along, how phones got factory reset, how leak after leak to an accomplice corrupt media went unchecked, why George Soros is always in the shadows, why Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and George Bush and John McCain were all involved, why they screamed Russia and pushed a sham impeachment, why no one ever goes to jail, why no one is ever charged, why nothing ever happens.

Perhaps now you know why there was no wrongdoing in the falsification of the FISA Warrants, why the Durham Report was delayed, why Hunter Biden has not been charged, why the FBI sat on his laptop for almost a year while Trump was being impeached on fictitious charges, why the Bidens' connection to China was overlooked as was unleashed the perfect weapon, a virus that was weaponized politically to bring down the greatest ever economy known to man and at the same time usher in an unverifiable and unnecessary system of mail-in voting that corrupted the very foundation of our democracy. Maybe now you can understand why the media is 24/7 propaganda and lies, why up is down and down is up, right is wrong and wrong is right, why social media can now silence the First Amendment and speak over the President of the United States. This has been the plan by the Deep State all along. They didn’t expect Trump to win in 2016. He messed up their plans, and delayed them a little….four years to be exact. They weren’t about to let it happen again. Covid was like manna from heaven for democrats and the socialist left, it was a tool to inject fear into all Americans and it was weaponized Governors who shut down their states and crumbled their economies out of fear. The media, never to let a good crisis go to waste, helped shame and kill the economy, and the super lucky unverifiable mail-in ballots were just the trick to make sure the 47-year career politician, allegedly with hands in Chinese payrolls, the man that couldn’t finish a sentence or collect a crowd, miraculously became the most popular vote recipient of all time. You have just witnessed a silent, bloodless coup, the overthrow of the US free election system, the end of our Constitutional Republic, and the beginning of the downward slide of capitalism and the free enterprise system into the abyss of socialism and communism. What a remarkable achievement! We have sacrificed the greatest engine of freedom, growth, and prosperity known to man on the altar of ignorance and totalitarianism. What will happen next? Well, here's a brief list: · Expect the borders to open up. Increased immigration. · Expect agencies like CBP and INS and Homeland Security to be muzzled or even deleted. · Law enforcement will see continued defunding. · Elimination of the electoral college will be attempted. · History as we know it will be erased. Our children will no longer study the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, II, Korea or Vietnam. These will be replaced with classes on “white priviledge”, “how American racism stole lands from native Indians” and the “need for racial equity” because America is a terrible nation. · The Supreme Court will be packed with liberal judges. · Your 2nd Amendment will be attacked and there may be a gun confiscation or gun buyback programs enacted and you will find it difficult to own a weapon…and ammunition of any kind. · If you have a manufacturing job or oil industry job, get ready to be unemployed. · If you own and run a business, brace for the impact of higher taxes and more governmental regulations. · Maybe you’ll be on the hook for slavery reparations, or have your suburbs turned into Section 8 housing. · Your taxes are going to increase dramatically and businesses will pay more. · We will be paying more for gasoline at the pump and we will soon find ourselves once again dependent on foreign oil.

President Trump made us energy independent. For the first time in our history, the USA became an oil-exporting nation. Biden’s illogical and corrupt dismantling of the Keystone Pipeline not only displaced 42,000 high-paying union jobs but now Canada will sell the oil in Alberta BC to China while we search for new supplies at higher prices. Well done Joe! In a couple of years, we will see the onslaught of inflation, high unemployment, less productivity as more and more people become dependent on the government for subsistence, all of which is the natural course of socialist economies The dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency and America will no longer be the bastion of freedom it once was. America will be overtaken by China as the largest economy in the world and, because we have become so complacent, we will find ourselves in the middle of great turmoil and upheaval with lots of civil strife that will make 2020 look like a walk in the park. I could go on and on. There is no real recovery from this. The national elections from here on will be decided by New York City, Chicago, and California. The Constitutional Republic we created will be dead. Mob rule and appeasement will run rampant. The candidate who offers the most from the Treasury will get the most votes. But the votes cast won’t matter, just the ones received and counted. That precedent has been set. Benjamin Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?’” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Ladies and gentlemen, we have now lost the Republic our forefathers bequeathed to us, the Republic we fought and bled for these past two hundred and forty-five years. Some of you are wondering how this came to pass. The answers are indeed quite simple. We did it to ourselves: · We turned from God. We erased God from our halls of Justice and the Town Square. · We turned from family. · We turned from our country, our Flag, our Monuments to our leaders who paved the way. We denigrated all of these with revisionist history and the tearing down of monuments to our civilization and way of life. · We replaced achievement and recognition by embracing “participation trophies” so that our children can all feel a sense of accomplishment even when there was none. · We embraced degeneracy culture, inviting pornography into our laptops and living rooms. · We became some infatuated with technology that we lost the human touch…we found it easier to send emails or Facebook or twitter posts to a friend or co-worker ten feet away from us rather than walking over to chat with them. We have, in essence, become too high tech and low touch. It sort of begs the question…what does it matter if we wire the entire world if we lose our immortal souls? · We celebrated and looked to fools as our heroes, comedians whose idea of a joke is holding up a bloody head of our President. That’s not funny. It’s sad. · We worshipped ourselves selfishly and took for granted what brave men and women fought and died to give us. Their sacrifices are no longer valued, replaced instead with scorn because they may have committed “transgressions measured by today’s standards, not theirs”.

We disregarded history and all it teaches. On our watch, America just died a little. It’s likely she’ll never be the same again. Not until the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump stand up and shout “we will no longer tolerate this and we want our country back” and do something about it

For starters, get off Twitter and Facebook and refuse to be a part of their efforts to disrespect the First Amendment. I did. And I don’t miss it at all. If companies want to insult all the people who supported President Trump by denying them jobs, fight back. Don’t buy their products. Shun them. Until we take those steps, they will continue to wield their power, but the ultimate power is in your hands…the power of the consumer. We did this to ourselves. We made our bed, now we have to sleep in it….until we get off our asses and remake it. Some of you have no idea what you’ve done. You know now. It is time to do something about it. Sadly, some of you do know what you have done. To them, I say…if you kick a dog long enough, pretty soon he’s gonna bite. I am tired of being kicked and insulted and disregarded as if I don’t matter. We do matter. We are Americans

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thewnchstrs · 5 years

Text

Death Wish

Pairing: SamXReader

Summary: after Sam dies, Y/N knows what she has to do in order to bring him back.

Disclaimers: mentions of death, drinking, crying

Word Count: 3K

M A S T E R L I S T

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I had never heard the bunker so quiet after Sam was gone. I no longer woke up to his soft snoring or the sound of his electric toothbrush from the bathroom. The sound of his typing at his laptop and how every time he would hit the space bar it would click louder than the others, the sound of his sock-clad feet down the hallways on his way to get his morning cup of coffee. It’s hard to notice how loud someone’s presence is until they’re gone.

Dean and I seemed to move in slow motion, our days not even starting until late in the afternoon when we finally decided to get up out of bed. The days following Sam’s death had been unbearably slow, but the nights were even longer.

The endless, aching pain in my chest did nothing to help the fact that I felt as if I couldn’t get out of bed anymore. It felt as if my heart had reached its hands out through my chest and gripped the metal frame of my bed, the same bed I used to share with Sam.

That bed used to seem small. His long legs would always dangle off the end, his wild hair would fan itself across the pillows. He always made sure to leave enough blankets for me to curl myself in.

Now, the bed seems to stretch on for miles, but I never cross the imaginary line where I know Sam would be sleeping if he were here.

I turned away from his side and instead faced our bedside table where a picture of Sam and I sat, a blurry picture from when we went to the Navy Pier while on a hunt in Chicago. We were supposed to be working the case but the temptation to ride the ferris wheel had been too much for us to handle. We were both smiling, frozen mid-laughter at something Dean must’ve said before taking the picture. The sunset made the sky and the water behind us a beautiful orange and red.

My stomach twisted as I laid the picture frame face down. It seemed like everywhere I turned there was something to remind me of him. His razor still sitting on the edge of our bathroom sink, his shirts hanging untouched in our closet. Even when I closed my eyes, the burned image of Sam on the floor of the cabin, a blossom of red on his grey shirt, his eyes dully looking up at the ceiling, his skin cold.

I whipped my eyes open.

Not sleeping.

Definitely not sleeping.

I sat up, pushing my unruly hair out of my face. I needed to face the world today, I needed to get better. This was the first step.

I changed from the clothes I’d been wearing the past three days and took a shower. A long, hot shower that made me forget momentarily about why I was denying doing anything in the first place.

After taming my hair and putting on something other than pajamas, I shuffled to the library where I knew I’d find Dean, most likely drunk to the point of unconsciousness. Sure enough, he was sitting at a table, an empty bottle of whiskey next to him. He stared down into his glass, a miniscule amount of the bitter drink sloshing around as he rotated it. As if staring into the drink would give him all the answers he needed.

I sat in the chair across from him, picking up the whiskey bottle and turned it over, not even a drop came out onto the wood. I set it back down and watched Dean.

“Any left?” I asked, gesturing to the bottle.

He sighed and shook his head. His words came out slurred, “No, that was the last of it.”

I tapped the table with the pads of my fingertips, my eyes flicking up to Dean who continued to stare into his glass. “What are we gonna do?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

Part of me was shocked how careless Dean seemed, as if he didn’t want to bring Sam back at all, “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know, Y/N,” Dean growled, looking up at me now. I’d seen Dean get upset with other like this before but never with me, but I couldn’t care less. I was getting Sam back with Dean’s help or not.

“So, you’re just going to give up?” I asked, my voice breaking. Dean only shook his head. “Just going to throw in the towel, just like that?”

“It’s not like that, Y/N.”

“Then what’s it like, Dean?” I asked, my voice getting louder. “Because it looks to me like you’re not even trying to get him back!”

Dean only scoffed as he brought the glass to his lips and swallowed the last of the whiskey. “You wouldn’t understand.”

My anger boiled out of me, smoke seemed to pour out of my ears and nose, and I acted without thinking when I reached across the table and smacked the glass out of Dean’s hand. The glass flew through the air and shattered into a million pieces once it hit the floor. Dean watched me in disbelief as my chest rose and fell violently in rage.

“We’re getting Sam back,” I panted. “We’re getting him back. I don’t care what we have to do.”

“I’ve tried, Y/N,” he said quietly. I was slightly taken back by how calm his voice was. “I tried so hard these last few days to get him back. I- I called Cas, prayed to Chuck, tried summoning Crowley, Rowena, Death, Billy, everyone. I tried to…I tried to sell my soul for him, but at every crossroad they laughed. I’ve escaped death so many times, I’m an empty promise to them.”

I watched as Dean became unraveled, drunken tears spilled down his cheeks as the confession tumbled from his mouth. My anger began to dissolve as I reached across the table and held onto his calloused hand. “I’m an awful brother. I always said I’d take care of him…watch over him, and I can’t even do that right.”

“Stop it, Dean,” I shook my head. “You’re a good brother – a great brother. And I promise you – we will get Sam back.”

I knew my attempts at reassuring him was close to no help. However, as I tried to console Dean and tried to figure out what we were going to do, I was hit with the overwhelming knowledge of what had to be done. Since Sam died, it was always in the back of my mind, but I never had enough courage to face it head on. I’d seen what it’d done to each of them before. However, I knew this time it was different. I could do it, I knew they’d hate me for it, and I knew they’d be sad once I was gone, but it would be nothing compared to what they were going through now.

They would be okay without me.

I didn’t mention my plan to Dean in fear of him talking me out of it. So, I kept it to myself, just like I did with everything else.

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The last week had been amazing, as if everything Dean and I had gone through didn’t even matter now that Sam was back. They’d thought I had worked up a trade with Death like the one Dean made a few years ago when he was given Death’s job for a day. It didn’t take much convincing with Dean; he was just happy he had Sammy back.

I would always remember that day when I walked through the bunker’s door to see Sam and Dean, deep in the thralls of conversation after I’d done what I had to do. I’d always remember the way Sam turned when he heard me shut the door, the way he smiled up at me.

I looked out the window where the sun’s rays poured through the windows later that day. Any other day it wouldn’t have been anything significant, but for the past week and a half before Sam came back, Lawrence, Kansas was under a flood advisory, as if the sky was sad that Sam was gone, too.

That day was the first day it stopped raining.

Finally, the Sam-shaped hole in my heart was finally filled again, even though I knew what I had done would’ve had Sam at my throat. I’d put him through so much pain already, that just the thought of him knowing what I did would send him into a frenzy. I knew he’d try to bring me back, to save me somehow. I knew the easiest thing for everybody was to just make them believe I couldn’t handle this life anymore – that I needed a way out.

That’s why I knew I had to leave. I tried not to think about what I was doing as I packed my duffel bag, not caring about whether my jeans were folded or if my shirts were creased. I needed to leave, and soon. I’d given myself my final few days with Sam, spending every second by his side because I knew those were the memories I’d have to hang onto.

I stood at the end of the bed Sam and I shared, the letter felt like it was singeing my skin. I itched to leave it on my side of the bed, to get out of there, and to leave Sam behind.

After much deliberation, I lightly set the letter on my pillow and took one last look at Sam and smiled. I knew he would be okay.

Then I left, propelling myself forward so I wouldn’t have the chance to look back. I ran up the metal staircase and out the front door into the cold night.

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9 years, 11 months, and 28 days later.

I looked myself over in the mirror, curling the last piece of hair that framed my face, swaying my hips to the song that was playing through the tiny Bluetooth speaker sitting on the motel sink. I dug around in my makeup bag for my red lipstick, uncapped it, and swiped it over my pale lips. My black dress clung tightly to my body. One of the upsides to being a hunter was that I didn’t have to try too hard to stay in shape.

Tonight, I was going to have fun. That will be my plan for the next three days, to forget about the world for a while. And my impending doom. There was a nightclub within walking distance from the motel I was staying in and it seemed like it was much more fun than I was going to have anywhere else.

Just as I was about to slide my black heels on, a hard knock came from the motel door. I froze in place, one shoe in hand. I set it down quietly as I snuck around to my bed and pulled the gun from under my pillow. Holding the cold metal close to my body, I counted down from three in my head before I swung the door open, the gun cocked in front of me. The sight of the man on the other side of the door made my heart leap, I was surprised the gun didn’t go off from pure shock.

He looked different – much different from when I saw him last. He was taller, if that was possible, and his hair was much longer. He looked older, obviously, but not in the way you’d think. He’d looked like he’d seen some terrible things. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how different I looked to him. I stood back, taking it all in.

Sam freakin’ Winchester stood, his hands up as if to say he wasn’t a threat. I stood frozen again, not sure what to say or think. It’d been so long.

“Y/N?” he asked, dumbfounded, his hands still in the air.

I could hardly find any air, I could only muster up the one word I forbade myself from saying for nearly ten years, “Sam.”

He smiled slightly; his eyes full of confusion as he scanned every part of my face as if he were trying to recognize who I was. I must’ve looked so out of place in my black dress, my hair and makeup done in the middle of a cheap motel room.

When I realized I was still holding the gun, I quickly uncocked it, putting it on the table behind me, “What…what are you doing here?”

He shook his head as if to clear his mind before speaking but he kept his eyes trained on me, “I’m sorry, I- Dean and I, we’re staying next door. He told me to come tell you to turn your music down.”

Realization dawned on me as I heard the roaring music coming from the speaker in the bathroom, “Oh god, I’m sorry-“ I raced to the bathroom and switched it off.

Breathe, Y/N. This all must be an extremely vivid dream. I told myself as I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts. I rested my hands on the porcelain, taking a few breaths before returning to the main room where, a very real Sam, was still standing in the doorway.

My heart skipped a beat at seeing him there, after all these years. My yearning for Sam never went away, and now that he was within arm’s reach, I’d never loved him more than I did right now.

“You can come in,” I said, and he smiled softly.

“You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

I laughed, shaking my head. He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. We both sat at the end of the bed, not looking at each other, just being together.

“Is this where you’ve been the whole time?” he asked suddenly.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye and then down at my hands in my lap. “You know…here, there. Everywhere.”

Sam nodded, knowing all too well the life of a hunter. What surprised me is that he didn’t seem mad. Didn’t hold it against me that I had left him in the middle of the night and god, I deserved that hatred. I deserved it more than anyone.

“You know that I looked for you,” he said. I could feel his eyes on me now. “I looked everywhere.”

“I know.”

“Why’d you do it?” I looked over to him now. His eyes were pleading, I knew he just wanted to understand. “I just…I was heartbroken. That morning when I woke up, I was devastated.”

“Sam, I’m sorry,” I was barely able to choke out the words. “I’m so sorry.”

“I just want to know why. You said you couldn’t live this life anymore, but from the looks of it you didn’t get too far away.”

I tugged at a loose thread in my dress, pulling at it with chipped nails as I looked up at the weapons bag on the table. “I couldn’t live without you.”

“Then why did you leave-“

“Because I made a deal,” I blurted, the words coming out like vomit. I’d never said it out loud before because I knew that saying it sealed my fate.

Sam blinked, “Yeah, I mean, Dean said you made a trade with Death-“

“No,” I said, shaking my head as I confirmed his worst fear. “I made a deal. At the crossroads.”

I didn’t watch him, but I could see his figure slump forward, a hand cascading down his tired face. “Why?”

“Because your life means so much more to me than mine,” I said truthfully. I could already tell he was going to tell me not to think that way. “It’s true, Sam. When I thought of which one of us should be alive, I couldn’t come up with one reason why it should be me when I have a list full of reasons why it should be you.”

Sam bit back tears. “How much longer?”

I knew what he meant. He wanted to know when my time was up. I checked the clock above the door. “Three days.”

He let out a puff of air, his eyes closing momentarily as he reached for my hand and squeezed it gently in his. The touch sent me reeling for more and before I knew it, I enveloped Sam in my arms, my head against his strong chest, his rhythmic heart compelling me to get closer to him. He held me close, kissing the top of my head.

Minutes passed before I pulled away and looked up at him, “You have to promise me something.”

Sam nodded, his eyes red. “Anything.”

I swallowed roughly, “When I go…you can’t try to bring me back.”

Sam’s grip on my hand became tighter as he shook his head, tears threatening to spill over. “I can’t let you go again.”

“Call it a death wish.”

“That’s not funny.”

I swallowed roughly, running my hand over his. We’d both grown, we were no longer those young kids all those years ago. I was coming to the end of my life, but that didn’t mean Sam had to. “You can’t. I- I’m ready. I’ve come to terms with it, and I’m ready. I’m okay with dying.”

“How can you be okay with it?” he asked, and to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure. For a long time, I felt like without Sam I didn’t have anything to live for. I was floating through life, going through the motions until I was nearly three days until my time was up.

“Just…just trust me, okay? And I know it doesn’t mean much since the last time we saw each other I up and left, but this time I’m telling the truth. This is what I want.”

Sam clenched his jaw. I knew he hated that he was agreeing to just let me die without even putting up a fight. He pulled me closer to him again. “Lets just stay like this, okay?”

I nodded, pulling myself as close as I could to him. This would be enough. This would always be enough.

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FOREVER TAG LIST

69 notes · View notes

sirjustice959 · 4 years

Photo

Wheat in in groundnut husks or groundnut with husk and in hay heap makes fab houses when u drop avocado or chop/drop Garlic

When 1 wants to kill u or place u voodoo, kinda, when u think of them u see them in ya dreams as burnt wood or too black something as Abbas black dude synonymous with Japanese who after investigation promoting hooliganism as a sign of their economy dwindling out of artificial made products they produce as liquor, cars and fish. So their money exchange on dollar or Euro high, so many African nations without second thought say they are from their, so they get there as given an upper hand with Visa and send much people to Eu and America to study and work and send money to their own in japan to buy goods the other side and ship to Africa where they sell exorbitantly to gain super-normal profits to put them ahead of other nations so they exchange thing must be corrected or japan harbor direct sending of monies via parcel and online to non-citizens to do the above

The truck container placed in like factory house described above when u trample on ripe mango as step unto it forms set self-ride missiles in basement in such factory houses or on raised alters covering the heap with clothes, trample on rat makes jets, some birds missiles, on paw paw jets as step on it and try bare footed and on socks or shoes and trampling on anything with such heaps on makes another something altogether dude. Give it a trial dude

Online cash when u hear u rush, when being investigated where that cash will get to, when have thwarted the moves of those promised the same, at the bank will be known on which a/c such cash directed and u deemed 4 a shootout, we want no jokes, every1 looks at his own child when the society made better dude as the song links above of Roddy rich

Go to school and if need be leave almost finishing and opt 4 private papers as the school block all ya ways dude, do exam as Kasneb or ABE of the UK.

Looking down when u see a woman standing on ya way means u r up and down 4 investment which aint right to many as looking up means u love kiddish ways which many loves as u can be manipulated. With the former case, kinda, they monitor if u walk bad or bad in solving conflicts and get happy as it can be a chance of ya defeat dude as 1 beat ya face to disqualify ya from getting abroad which they think of many people. Dude as above, we have known ya character with 1, open his windows 4 help yet u have refused and how will u be good in our own nation, it could be prudent if u succeed in ya plots to fail to fail ya deals with us, bro, its 2 fold homey. We make our own artificial flowers by folding photo of the type we need or placing a sample in grass heap or illuminating the same from the computer unto the hay or grass heap cause they exist naturally we dont buy so what u want with us as we benefit from u not as now we got our own internet dude and make your machines as much as our new ones dude

Dude even if i eat food worth $4 what u gonna do if i get not in ya car and argue with ya or walk bad, then we got it, break my house and ambush me as on the roads u want to grab my manhood openly bro liaising with police wanting good life from me dude. Die ya own death bro as in the links below

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/business/worldbusiness/03broadband.html

https://matcha-jp.com/en/9883

They love good things of this life yet purported the other-way thinking they can secure jobs as military men or guards or police and even not loving women as sex and loving kids yet the reverse if they triumph. Pretenders are the worse dude. Dude get it with spies drones which are wireless with camera and night visions eliminates much forces in 90% way as can be even used to track traffic on roads as having speed meter on them to gauge your vehicle speed b4 they came to ya window to talk to ya 4 those that got microphone and speakers or on the tv screen writes a message 4 ya b4 dropping on a receipt or run alongside ya vehicle with city set speed limit to find out if it conquer with yours dude as in the link below dude, think the other way dude and even armored with gun, so if championing crime got to think twice dude, same drone delivers parcel and shopping, exam materials and transport bank cash. What u gon do bro, better relent and accept triumph

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%2Fz%2Fdrone-road-patrol-service-police-istra-russia-may-90728585.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dreamstime.com%2Fphotos-images%2Fpolice-surveillance-drone.html&tbnid=yjkusGWD7YdtjM&vet=10CCgQMyg1ahcKEwiQp875isrsAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw..i&docid=xAzANa-73G127M&w=1300&h=1030&q=police%20traffic%20spie%20drone%20images&client=ms-google-coop&ved=0CCgQMyg1ahcKEwiQp875isrsAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNyB9Gu2aGg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLbvAFxprzw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCvmsEb5yyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqLQOiksdl8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg6_k6nBn70

Made in Nigeria helicopter image link below

https://africachinapresscentre.org/2018/11/16/nigeria-plans-to-manufacture-helicopters-locally/

https://www.nairaland.com/4765281/nigerian-made-helicopter-spotted-abakaliki

M-shwari and other as such even found in the banks promotes hooliganism or ambushing others to get an edge to build the portfolio to qualify 4 much fat cash like killing ya friends so they collect many funerals in base and channel in 1 or 2 M-pesa a/c to qualify 4 such fat loans when not given to every1 to diffuse the puzzle. Any1 above 18 years and having documentation of the country identity can not run from paying such if payment can be made daily dude and even like safcom just giving the real phone or gadgets as can liaise with other shops to people without having the whole cash, maybe just u need to have as 1st payment 5 - 10% of the original price. They plan ya death by disturbing ya which if u get a head they still ya things in open way to quench their disappointment dude. The govt should see into it by lengthening the same benefits to every1 not necessarily having to bank with them but u r a Kenya citizen and got no crime cause if they see u with phones they ambush ya thinking u are due to build ya portfolio and u will be well ahead of them. Others take that cash, be Shylock, which breed a certain unknown spirit b4 getting like 30% profit on free cash in 1 week and b4 lending it to another client in 2 week to pay in 3rd week with 30% profit again as much as in 4 4th week making like 200% profit if all goes okay leaving on others saying hardworking yet lazy which when others wants to venture in the same the resort to absurdities as above dude

Insurance can even be opened with the country giant govt phone company where per day on every airtime u place they take like KHS 5, so in the event that u die or get incapacitated the extend the same benefits to ya without soliciting from friends dude. Got to think wide not colluding with others in ya own made deaths dude. If people can have 1 or 2 kids, then the chance of hating one to use it as a mechanism as other to delude ya from poverty as a dead stock to be killed as raise such funds to build homesteads and start business both 4 the county and the remaining kid will be a thin of the past reason why many having many kids and making those kids to have much friends as they are marked cattle due to be slaughtered to benefit the community. Anyway the above is their to eliminate the vice as a blessing in disguise 4 folks to see dude. The above act done when u die and after ya death ya casket exhumed to support the community in 1 way or another showing compressed economy meaning people much outside maybe houses hot as compared to EU and America dude and most looking 4 good things of life and can only be gotten via bank loans which need a permanent job which feeds the few and with M-shwari as above, they have employed the above vices and bottlenecks to harbor other people from getting that cash to buy at-least what they long 4 in life to make them stay put in their houses without getting outside to increase the outside roaming goat like population dude

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psychosistr · 4 years

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FOWL Facets- Chapter 3

Summary: Left alone with nothing else to talk about, Gandra gets Loony to tell her how exactly she and the rest of the team know Blue Diamond’s strongest and most prized lapis lazuli so well.

Notes: Okay, getting into some backstory finally with this one!

-First Chapter-

Once Domino’s gone, Gandra looks at Loony from her spot against the wall. “So, what’s the deal with you three and this Liquidator guy? I heard he’s Blue Diamond’s favorite lapis lazuli, but I’ve never heard anything about him working for F.O.W.L.”

Loony has a confused look on her face before the realization seems to dawn on her. “Oh riiiiiiiight, that was before you joined.” Her body returns to its usual proportions so that she’s standing by Gandra properly again. “Before the war, Liqui used to go on missions with us all the time!”

Gandra raises an eyebrow curiously at the statement. “So he is a F.O.W.L. agent?”

“Nope.” Lonny shakes her head. “He never joined F.O.W.L., but he does know about it.”

“Wait,” Gandra just looks even more confused by the spinel’s explanation. “If he’s not an agent, then why did he go on missions with you and the guys?”

“Because we were friends!” Loony answers matter-of-factly with a smile. “The four of us used to have so much fun…”

A planet lay in ruins, looking as if it were the scene of a horrible, destructive war. Buildings had been leveled. Bodies lined the streets and fields- all filled with bullet holes or lying with crushed limbs and necks. A good portion of the planet was on fire while the rest had been flooded under their planet’s own sea water.

On the planet’s surface, though, there were only two groups fighting: One was a large army of organic creatures with orange skin, multiple limbs, and three eyes- although their army was huge and their weapons fairly advanced, the bodies strewn across the planet all seemed to be that of their own kind. The other was a small group of four gems venturing further into the enemy’s territory, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake.

At the front of the pack, Loony leapt and stretched all over the battlefield, drawing the enemy’s fire. “Bet you can’t catch me!” She teased, sticking her tongue out at them.

The soldiers tried to fire their weapons at her, but the glowing red shots just bounced off of her skin harmlessly. While they were distracted by Loony, however, the other gems were able to take out the soldiers from behind.

“Incoming!!” One of the soldiers shouted in fear as a blinking red egg-shaped crystal was thrown at them.

The soldiers tried to scatter, but, before they could get far, a large white barrier began to close around them, forming a dome that trapped many of them inside with the crystal. They tried desperately to break through the barrier, both from the inside and the outside, but it was no use. The shield held strong, not even cracking when the crystal turned completely red before detonating in a blinding red light, destroying everything within the dome in a controlled explosion.

“A warning would be appreciated next time.” Domino snapped his fingers, finally letting the barrier drop to reveal the smoking crater within. “I could have made it bigger- then we would have gotten more than half of them.”

“Dom, Dom, Dom,” Steelbeak shook his head from where he stood next to Domino on a floating diamond-shaped platform made of black energy. The melanite’s beak was shorter with a smoother look to it back then. He also sported a yellow bowtie instead of a black one and his eyebrows were a bit less defined. “You’re thinkin’ too small, snowflake. Killin’ ‘em all at once is too easy.” He lobbed another glowing crystal at the scattered soldiers, watching as Domino once again formed a white dome-barrier around the organic creatures to ensure their death. “Where’s the style? Where’s the pizzazz? Where’s the FUN?” He pointed down towards the fourth member of their group on the ground below them, leaning closer to his partner to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “Besides- we gotta keep someone entertained, right?”

Domino glanced down, watching as the water along the battlefield began to recede in preparation for what was to come. “You do have a point there.” He brought his fingers to his beak and whistled, gaining the attention of the spinel still playing around with the soldiers and their futile attempts to shoot her. “Loony, time to go!”

Loony stretched her head up above where her body was grabbing and throwing the organics aside with ease, making it easier for her to shout over to Domino and Steelbeak. “Awww, already?”

“ ‘fraid so, Loons.” Steelbeak nodded behind her poignantly. “It’s drippy’s turn t’ play.”

Loony turned her head to see behind her, her earlier pout quickly turning into an excited smile. “Oooh, that’s gonna be a BIG one!”

With a flick of his fingers, Steelbeak summoned a series of slightly smaller black diamond-shaped platforms between them and Loony. The stretchy spinel was able to stretch and flip up the panels with the ease of ascending a staircase, joining the other gems on the bigger platform high above the battlefield. She got up there just in time, it seemed, as no more than a minute later a roaring tidal wave washed over the ground below them.

Standing on top of the wave was the Liquidator- a tall, buff, intimidating being that looked like a dog made completely out of water with a tear-drop cut royal blue lapis lazuli gemstone visible in his right hand. His outfit consisted mainly of a long royal blue colored robe similar to a yukata with midnight blue trim and a subtle rippling wave-pattern in sapphire blue throughout the garment that culminated around a shining blue diamond-shaped insignia on his chest, the outfit tied shut with a dark oxford blue sash at his waist. The whole outfit appeared to be made of the same water as his body, constantly moving and rippling at the same rate as the rest of his form with the bottom of the robe just being part of the puddle connecting him to the massive wave below him.

The battlefield became part of the ocean that had claimed the planet in virtually no time at all. With a smirk on his face, Liquidator made the water beneath him rise up so that he was level with the other gems. “Feeling drained? Stressed out from the daily grind of grinding down planets for your diamonds and/or shadowy organizations? Then relieve your stress with the fun new game literally sweeping the nation: ‘Skarwal Shooter’!” He did a grand gesture to the drowning soldiers in the water below them. “Grab a gun, line ‘em up, and take a shot at these realistic moving targets! Fun for the whole crew- guaranteed or your money back!” He controlled the water and the bodies in it, juggling them in the air and spinning them around in whirlpools.

“I wanna play!” Loony watched the flipping and flying targets with a look of pure glee and excitement on her face.

Steelbeak chuckled and touched the gem on his chest with both hands. One hand pulled out a gleaming silver tommy-gun with a jet black grip and matching stocks, while the other pulled out a matching long-barreled .38 revolver. He tossed the revolver to Loony so she’d have a weapon of her own, keeping the tommy-gun hoisted up on his shoulder. “Ya know, Liq’s, it’s a good thing we DON’T get paid, or you’d end up with half our money!”

“More than that with the games he talks you two into.” Domino shook his head with a roll of his eyes, pretending to sound annoyed but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes was undeniably fond.

“Ah, the downsides of being a convincing salesman in a society with nothing to sell.” Liquidator chuckled, forming a chair out of the water under him so he could watch the other gems have their fun shooting at the struggling soldiers before joining in as well- shooting bullets made of ice from the tip of his finger while pointing it like a gun. “Still, there are a few things in life we can enjoy- even if I can’t take your paychecks!”

They all smiled and grinned in their own ways while picking off the last of the soldiers, enjoying their sadistic version of “shooting fish in a barrel”.

Hours later, after double and triple checking that the last of the organics had been wiped out, Loony led Liquidator through the ship with her hands covering his eyes. “Alrighty, Liqui, just a liiiiittle further..and remember, no peeking!”

Liquidator chuckled at the spinel’s antics, but obliged and kept his eyes in place behind her grey-gloved hands. “You have the Liquidator-brand 100% peek-free guarantee…but that guarantee is good for a limited time only, so act now.”

“Okaaaaayyy, now!” She removed her hands from in front of his eyes, finally allowing him to see again.

“??” When he opened his eyes and looked in front of him, Liquidator saw the hall holding the other gems’ rooms. His eyes widened when he saw that the door at the end of the hall, which had previously been left blank, now had an image of his own gemstone embedded in it. “Is..Is that…?”

“Yep!” Loony grinned as she grabbed his hand, guiding it over to the panel by the door.

When his hand touched the panel, the door slid open, allowing them to walk in together. He saw Domino and Steelbeak waiting inside, both looking pleased at his reaction.

“Told ya we’d get ‘im good with this one!” Steelbeak grinned smugly, his arms folded in front of his chest. “He didn’t see it comin’ at all!”

Domino sighed and shook his head with an exasperated smile at his partner’s attitude. “That IS the point of a surprise..” He looked back over to Liquidator. “So, what do you think?”

Liquidator looked around the room, fully taking in all the little details. As with most of the rooms, there wasn’t a lot of furniture, but there was still a table carved from light blue crystals with matching chairs that were made to look as if they were carved from ice. The left half of the room had been converted into a small pool filled with crystal clear water, the bottom of it lined with glowing blue crystals that bathed the entire room in a soft, ethereal glow. What made him smile the most, though, was that on the right side of the room on the wall above the table and chairs was a holo-disk displaying an image of the four of them after their first mission together: Liquidator standing in the middle of the image with his arms crossed, Domino on his right, Steelbeak on his left, and Loony stretched up behind him with her hands making shapes behind Domino and Steelbeak’s heads so they looked like they had mammalian ears.

He looked at the trio of darker gems with a grin that was even brighter (and far more genuine) than the one he’d had earlier on the battlefield. “Nine out of ten royal blue lapis lazuli’s agree: This room is perfect.”

“You’d better not be that tenth one, Liq,” Steelbeak teased the lapis lazuli with an equally bright grin. “ ‘cause we ain’t redecoratin’! You’d better appreciate this- we don’t go around givin’ just ANYONE a spot on the crew, ya know?”

“I know.” Liquidator’s grin softened into a smile. “And I appreciate it.”

They all shared a smile over the blue gem’s words. He only dropped the salesman-talk when he was being genuine, something they’d come to understand after many missions together.

“We need to celebrate!” Loony jumped up, wrapping her arms around Liquidator and leaping at the pool. “Pool party!”

They landed with a big splash (a bit too big for Liquidator NOT to have been a part of it). The resulting wave went far enough to wash over both Steelbeak and Domino.

“Hey!” Steelbeak scowled when he got soaked from head to toe, trying to shake the water out of his comb. A mild glare was added to his expression when he looked at his partner and saw that the snowflake obsidian was completely dry thanks to a thin, translucent white shield encasing his entire body. “Really? Ya couldn’t’ve got me, too?”

“I could..” Domino side-eyed his partner with a teasing smirk when his barrier dissipated. “But where’s the FUN in that?” He paraphrased the taller gem’s words with a quiet chuckle.

“Oh, so you actually LIKE havin’ fun, huh?” Steelbeak’s eyes briefly flicked to the pair in the pool, the two gems grinning as they returned the unspoken sentiment in full.

“Well it IS a party, after all.” The loon missed the conspiratorial glances around him. “And what better place to have fun than a party?”

“Yeah, you’re right, it IS a party.” Steelbeak grinned down at the other gem, subtly moving one hand behind his back. With a flick of his fingers, a small black diamond appeared under Domino’s feet. “A POOL party.”

Before the obsidian had time to react, the diamond shaped platform tilted upwards at an angle, sending him off balance. When he tried to regain his footing, he ended up stepping on one of Loony’s outstretched arms and falling backwards into a small wave generated by Liquidator- the wave quickly drawing him back so that he ended up in the pool alongside the other two occupants.

“……” Domino had ended up at the bottom of the pool before slowly floating back to the top, lying on his back on the water’s surface as he calmly spit a small stream of the liquid from his beak. “Alright…” He closed his eyes for a moment, his expression neutral and unreadable as he stood and retrieved his hat from where it was floating nearby. Once it was back in its proper place, he opened his eyes and looked at the rest of the ship’s small crew with a smirk. “If that’s how we’re going to play...” He withdrew one of his pistols from his gem, the barrel inside turning an icy blue color.

“Ice bullets!” Loony shouted while jumping out of the pool. “Run!”

They all ran away from the pool, laughing at the impromptu game of (literal) freeze-tag that had begun. It was a fun and fitting way to welcome their newest official member to the crew…

<-Previous Chapter Next Chapter->

End Notes: This part was a lot of fun to write ^^ The battle scene from the past put all of their skills to good use while the scene with Liquidator’s room got to show a more relaxed side of the team- a good work-life balance, at the end of the day.

#darkwing duck #ducktales #dt17 #FOWL Facets #Steelbeak #Dominic Domino #gandra dee #Loony Toony #liquidator #not my oc #100 follower giveaway!

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