#and of course in the current iteration of the musical he tells her that he likes when she wears blue because... water

[cerealbishh]

I am still in here, I'm waiting for you, To come let me out, dear

#the notebook cast #the notebook musical #jordan tyson #joy woods #the blue and green reminds me of how the color allie wore in the reading was green and now it's blue #i believe noah liked that allie looked like grass when she wore green in the reading? #and of course in the current iteration of the musical he tells her that he likes when she wears blue because... water #it ties into the show more that she looks like water though #i wish i could've included the hug tbh

[jasonsmirrorball]

TAKE FLIGHT JASON TODD (college!au)

↳ headcanons about jason in the au that is currently taking up all my brain space. so incredibly self indulgent. extreme liberties taken with his characterisation i'm sorry this is fanfiction!!!!!

first and most importantly - nothing (too) bad happens in this au. i imagine him getting adopted by bruce, but he gets to live and be happy and he is so so loved and that doesn't change

if he's got issues with his dad it's normal human issues like not seeing eye to eye on things but at the end of the day he is cherished and bruce supports him in everything

so he goes to university. in this au i imagine him to be studying literature (of course, duh) but also something else. i feel like he'd be interested in philosophy, but in my mind it's definitely something in the humanities faculty.

moves out but doesn't do the dorm thing because he wants his own space, and i think bruce just takes care of everything and he doesn't have to worry about rent or groceries or anything of that sort

i think he'd still get a job though...like maybe in a secondhand bookstore or music store that nobody really goes to so it's quiet and he can work on his assignments and read most of the time

makes friends with the regular people that breeze in and out - likes to people watch because he gets so many interesting looking people that come through

i think he'd have to have a little old lady neighbour that doesn't trust him at first because look at him he's so tall and big and he's got his fair share of scars on his hands from high school

but he's an angel...probably helps her take in her groceries quietly and leaves it at that because that's simply the thing to do

like i don't imagine he'd be extremely chatty, but he's polite and says hello to everyone or nods at them in the elevator

she warms up to him and they have conversations in the morning when she’s going down for her daily morning walk and he’s got classes to head to 

imagining him with still slightly messy curls in the morning as he walks onto campus

he's so.. boy. in this au. does that make sense??? just. happy and stress free, and he loves his courses and he calls home every few days and his younger brothers are ever suffering because he talks so much about the stuff he’s learning 

sobs he’s such a nerd i love him but they’re just wondering how this is the guy that gets side-eyed everywhere he goes 

but he’s not mild mannered…he just minds his business

like i said, has gotten into his fair share of fights at school and similarly isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re being a dick 

the girls in his class love him because he actually likes to have discussions with them instead of talking over them and is happy to speak for the group or let them do it if they want when they get called on for class discussions

he’s just that guy who at first glance seems a little intimidating because a) he’s gorgeous and b) is huge but you get put into a group with him and he’s so intelligent and polite, listens to what everyone has to say and has wicked smart opinions of his own to share

has a bike. in every iteration of jason he must have a motorbike i just cannot imagine him without a bike. nearly gives bruce a heart attack in this au because he immediately runs through the worst case scenarios and it takes AGES before he accepts it even if he does think the bike looks cool and it takes even longer before he lets jason take him for a spin on the back of it

bruce in this au is just. doting and a little anxious about things. and that's okay. he's coming to terms with his kids growing up, and the changes that come with that. at least he's still got his girls, who will never not come around to bother him. but dick has already left the nest, and jason is on his way. he just misses when they were little

he likes to say jason was so small he could hold him in the palm of his hands (a big lie, as he was small but not that small, but jason secretly likes the affection)

he scribbles in all his class assigned novels, notes filling up the margins and the blank pages at the end - annotations on annotations

has gone down a rabbit hole of literature papers analysing different texts at 3 am. several times

paperbacks on his bedside table, bookmarked with receipts and scraps of paper, literally anything that can be used - he'll use it

notebooks for each class that are equally as full, coordinating notes on books and poems and papers

sigh english student jason todd my beloved angel 

this isn't meant to be taken seriously at all, but we're here to have a good time. sigh i wanna make a moodboard so u guys can see the vision i have of him

#he is so precious to me u guys have no idea #jasonsmirrorball #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #jason todd fanfiction #jay my heart #jason todd college!au #jersey boy au

[pjisskullourful]

in honour of this happening at my gig(its for me, save your breath telling me it aint cos it is! they were in the same building as me. damithan supremacy is fucking real) imma post a little overdue something

my rainbow family halloween fic never came together, i had a cute idea but sometimes the fic dont fic. but yall can have the first 1k+ of what i did write, which includes a little secret i've been keeping from yall for the throuples future. please enjoy, i wish october had been nicer to me so i could have gotten this fic finished for yall

With nothing but Britney Spears to hear as you styled the long blonde wig, it almost felt like old times. You were reminded of spending a huge chunk of your paycheck on new wigs and spending practically every Saturday night at a live music venue, standing for hours in the most uncomfortable shoes known to man. You remembered the extra concentration that had been put into styling the wig that you wore to surprise your boyfriends with your debut (and only) performance in drag.

The illusion of nostalgia was being routinely interrupted by your baby bump getting in your way. At thirty-three weeks pregnant, your movements had to be adjusted from the typical. That kept you from getting entirely lost in memories, along with the blinking baby monitor set up on your desk.

This wasn’t your first time working on this wig, you had been at it with the hairspray and curling iron many times during the course of this month. And it was almost perfect, almost ready to go atop Damiano’s head to complete his Lestat costume. For this year’s iteration of Victoria and René's famous Halloween parties, your boyfriends were dressing to match one another. They were channelling the leads from 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, with Ethan taking on Brad Pitt’s Louis.

You were going as one of their victims, with prosthetic, gory wounds ready to be glued to your body. The 1800’s dance-style dress you planned to wear would accommodate your tummy, as well as fitting the theme since you had gone at it with scissors and dark red paint.

You were interrupted from your work by the sound of your family returning home. Damiano, Ethan and the three kids were back from their excursion to a local pumpkin patch. You unplugged the curling iron, leaving it on the heat-resistant pad before easing yourself onto your feet. You collected the baby monitor before leaving the room, ready for the moment when Bowie awoke from his nap.

When you got downstairs you followed the voices of Ethan and Marsha, finding them in the family room. They were standing at the crafting table, which was currently dominated by the largest real-life pumpkin you had ever seen - it appeared to be three times the size of your head.

“You don’t think his name is Patrick?” He was asking of your daughter.

“No, that’s the name of the starfishies.” She replied, speaking as if this rule of hers was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Right, well maybe this is a girl, a girl named Paula.”

She looked at the giant vegetable with her eyes narrowed, carefully studying it with this new information. Ultimately, she decided her dad was speaking the truth and nodded her head. “Paula the pumpkin.”

“That’s the most Paula-looking pumpkin I’ve ever seen.” You contributed your opinion as you walked closer to them.

“Hi Mama. Do you like the pumpkin Cosmo picked? I helped.” She said, perked up with pride.

“You guys did an amazing job.” You said. “You don’t need to keep that heavy jacket on now that you’re inside, Miss Thing.”

She fumbled with the combination of zipper and buttons on her winter coat. But she succeeded without assistance and pulled the garment off, handing it to you straight away.

“How about you go check if Papa needs any help making lunch?” Ethan suggested.

She left for the kitchen and you turned to look at your boyfriend, a displeased look on your face when you began to speak. “You got the smallest one they had, eh?”

“The kids picked it. What was I supposed to do- tell them that they picked wrong?” He asked.

“You’re supposed to redirect them.” You said. “Come on, we talked about this and we all agreed- no more pumpkins bigger than Moe. They’re gonna drive us nuts, asking every day for it to be moved around the veranda, or from the front veranda to the back, then the opposite.”

“I know, but you should have seen how excited he was, he was planning out all the cool things he would have space to add. I didn’t have the heart to stifle his creativity.” He said, clearly trying to win you over with his sweetness.

“You let my children run wild, Ethan.” You attempted to maintain your stern tone.

The expression on his face changed as he switched to the tactic of distracting you. “You smell like hairspray, have you been working on the wig again? I would love to see the progress.”

“Yeah, I bet you would.” You said sarcastically.

Before he could continue his facade, everything was interrupted by your son’s crying coming through the speaker you held. Bowie had woken up, providing Ethan with a great distraction.

He grabbed the baby monitor before you had a chance to react. “I’ve got him.” Swiftly he was disappearing out of the room and up the staircase.

You gave the large pumpkin another look. You were glad that this year you had an excuse to count you out of the three kids' consistent redecorating ideas. It got very tedious trying to keep up with them deciding, then re-evaluating the perfect spot for the heavy decoration.

By the time Ethan came into the kitchen with Bowie the toddler had stopped crying. You were sitting with the rest of your kids along the island, everyone enjoying their own serving of scrambled eggs. Damiano was making sure each child had the drink they wanted.

“He’s okay.” Ethan said of Bowie, who was looking around the room with bright eyes. “He just wanted us to know that he’s awake.” Ethan tapped him on his tiny nose.

The kids had been told that their crafting would begin once lunch was finished, prompting them to start asking as soon as Sylvia’s plate was cleared. They were made to wait until everybody was done, with Ethan the last one eating. He purposefully took smaller and slower bites, earning him theatrical groans from the three eldest.

Damiano took care of tidying up, leaving you and Ethan to get the various crafts prepared. For Cosmo’s pumpkin carving, Ethan laid some sheets from the newspaper onto the floor. The twins were easy to organise, they would be taking their textas to print-outs of pumpkins to be hung up in the windows. You picked out the pots of face-paint that had been purchased for you to help Bowie turn your pregnant belly into a festive pumpkin. You had some old towels on hand for the mess that was certainly coming your way.

He eagerly took one of the paintbrushes that you offered, once you were seated somewhat-comfortably on the floor. Your son turned away from you, uninterested in what you were doing at present. Wobbly steps took him over to where his siblings were gathered, around and on top of the newspaper in anticipation of Ethan bringing the pumpkin over.

“Hey Dada, what’s my star sign?” Cosmo asked, the horoscope section catching his eye.

Once Ethan answered this, the girls wanted to know theirs. This led to Ethan reading out the two horoscopes, which were peppered with words the kids didn’t understand, his explanations slowing the whole process down. Sylvia got bored first, leaving for the table where all of the colouring supplies were set up.

He and Cosmo were still drawing out their ideas on the pumpkin when Damiano came into the room. You were using a marker to create a guide for the painting on your skin while Bowie gave each of the brushes careful check-overs (some of the handles required a taste test). The twins were making the most progress, their markers quickly moving across the pages, their focus secured. Damiano checked that you didn’t need any assistance before stationing himself with the girls.

You wiped the handles of one of the brushes on the towel before dipping it into the orange paint. “Are you ready to paint, baby Bowie?”

He raised his brush into the air. “Pah.”

“Uh-huh.” You said. “You wanna help Mama paint this section, right here in the centre of her belly?”

He had a serious look on his face as he scooted closer to you, apparently ready to concentrate on the craft. You handed your brush to him and he took a long look at the thick orange liquid on the bristles. You feared that he would touch it to his face, or worse, try to eat it.

But he proved his skills, applying the bristles to the taut skin of your tummy. The paint felt slimy on your skin as he worked the brush up-and-down, seeming to understand that this was somewhat similar to when he painted at his baby easel. You were unbothered when some of his brush strokes partially went over your outline of an eye.

“Wow, that looks so good already.” You enthused.

He nodded his head as he accepted from you the alternate brush dipped in paint. “Good.”

He wasn’t the most gentle as he made contact with your skin, applying the paint over on your side. There was a method to how he worked, spreading the orange further across your tummy. There had been many attempts at trying to get him excited over the fact that you were growing a brand new baby in there. It was hard to tell how much he absorbed this information, but what you really cared about was that he was enjoying decorating your large belly.

“Okay, now push with your elbow until the blade of the knife goes all the way in.” Ethan instructed as he held his hand over Cosmo’s on the serrated knife.

Cosmo wore a look of great concentration, his brow furrowed as he sucked on his upper lip. He moved the knife carefully, pushing until more than the pointed tip disappeared into the real pumpkin. Ethan held the vegetable steady with his other hand as Cosmo kept working the knife in.

While colouring with the twins, Damiano had found a doll-sized cowboy hat. It was quite common to come across misplaced pieces of toys around your home, so he didn’t bother to question it. He balanced the tiny hat on the tip of his index finger, absentmindedly keeping it elevated.

This caught Bowie’s eye, taking his attention away from painting. He got to his feet and you had just enough time to take the messy brush off of him before he wandered away. He went directly over to his dad, reaching for his arm.

“Hey, little man.” Damiano enthusiastically greeted him.

“Hat.” Bowie said.

“Oh, is this yours?” Damiano asked, offering the small hat to him. “Are you a cowboy?” Damiano placed the miniature accessory atop Bowie’s head, towards the centre where it could be somewhat steady. Immediately he was giggling, not needing to see his reflection to find this funny. “It looks really terrific on you. It must be your hat because it suits you so well.”

Bowie whipped around to face you, the hat slipping off of his hair in the process. Damiano quickly remedied this, holding Bowie still with a hand on his shoulder until the hat was back in place.

#damithan is more real than the moon landing #damithan supremacy #rainbow family headcanons #avida would have this photo as her lockscreen

[decks-writing-blog]

Letting Moon Know

Summary: Saint tries to tell Looks to the Moon that they've Ascended Five Pebbles.

[A/N] I wanted to tell Moon that Five Pebbles had been Ascended but the game wouldn't let me. So I ultimately ended up writing this instead as part of my winter fics because it takes place in winter so perfect excuse to finally get around to the idea.

~

The cold bit through Saint’s fur. It was starting to seep through their skin and into their bones. They would need to find shelter soon or freeze to death, not the worst way to die but dying at all was unpleasant. First came their current mission though… maybe. Technically it could wait, the iterators had been around for ages. It wouldn’t hurt Looks to the Moon to wait one more Cycle before learning Five Pebbles had Ascended. It felt wrong to put it off any longer than necessary though so Saint kept pressing forward, going as quick as they could to keep themself warm.

Upon finally reaching it, Moon’s chamber was the same as all the other times Saint had been here. This time she sat on her center platform, her neurons hovering around her like a swarm of batfliesover a carcass. Saint shot their tongue up, sticking it to the ceiling so they could swing over the water and land in front of her, drawing her gaze to them.

“Oh, you’re back. Welcome little one.” She meant it as an endearment but Saint didn’t like being referred to in that way. They weren’t little in any sense of the word, even less so now than when she’d last seen them. It didn’t matter enough to be worth the effort to convey that to her though.

After pulling their tongue all the way back in, they brought up the music pearl and placed it on the ground in front of her. Hopefully she would know what it was and more importantly what it meant. She had a right to know.

“You want me to look at this?” She leaned over to pick it up, pulling it close to examine it. A few moments passed before she looked back up at Saint. “You should return this to its owner. He’s probably missing it. He doesn’t have much else left as this point.” Well at least she seemed to know what it was.

Saint accepted it from her as she handed it towards them. They then stood, did a little loop around the platform and placed it in front of her again. With Five Pebbles Ascended, she was its owner now as decreed by Saint giving it to her.

“I’m not the owner. Please bring it back to where you found it.”

Saint repeated the motion, this time placing the pearl down more forcefully.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to communicate.”

That was the problem with communication; it was imprecise and hard to get one’s idea across in its entirety. The lack of the ability to form words when communicating with a being that primarily used words only made it more so.

People were difficult, even annoying sometimes. Saint preferred being alone. But it would be wrong to move on to the next part of their journey without letting Moon know Five Pebbles was finally at peace. They would soon Ascend her too but with her they should be able to convey their intention to do so and have it be understood. Part of that would be her knowing of Pebble’s Ascension.

Saint picked up the pearl again. They moved to the edge of the platform, giving themself just enough room on it to place the pearl in front of themself instead. Sitting, they mimicked Pebbles’ pose as best they could. They sat like that for a bit, putting on a shiver they didn’t even need to fake before going limp, barely stopping themself from falling into the water.

“Are you saying that Five Pebbles is gone? Ascended? Surely that can’t be. Perhaps his puppet was destroyed beyond repair… in this Cycle anyway. He’ll continue in another of course. I suppose nothing changes for me, I was unable to contact him anyway.”

Saint pushed themself back up, grabbed the pearl and placed it in front of her again.

She starred at it silently for a few seconds before picking it up. “What happened exactly? You can’t answer that though, can you, little one?”

They could but it would take time and it was getting rather cold, a storm would soon be on its way. She didn’t understand that Pebbles Ascended but she at least knew he wasn’t present in this world any longer and that was good enough for now. Freeing Saint to leave for the shelter that was thankfully only a short distance away. Next Cycle they would make her understand fully and then they would Ascend her. … Unless she didn’t wish to Ascend. Unlikely as who wouldn’t wish for such a thing? So most likely they would. First came getting out of the cold though.

#rain world #saint #looks to the moon

[nightcall99]

Dreams from 13.1.24

A beautiful house worth 70 billion dollars. It is empty. Belonging to one of the richest people in the world. Perhaps this is the living room, or some kind of entertaining area. There are pictures on the walls, a lovely antique piano and a marble stone slab area where live music is played. Probably for parties. Someone in the background says that it’s not preferred for musicians to perform on stone, but rather, on wood.

I am on a nature hike with a group of students, it feels like we're on a school excursion. I am speaking to a girl who reminds me of GW from my course class. We are trying to communicate in code regarding SRA done to children, so that the others don't know what we're talking about. I am surprised she knows about it at all but I'm glad I can finally speak about it to someone. Then my demeanor changes and with conviction I say, 'It's all about to go down. It's all about to be released to the world in a very big way". I am very serious about this. It's like I'm giving her the heads up. During this conversation, we were standing in a ring made of concrete. Probably part of some structure that used to be here.

A different dream, which is just the message/feeling that information is about to become viral on the internet.

LB (one of my ex’s best friends) showed up at my house with a prescription for a cholesterol-lowering medicine, rosuvastatin 10mg, which he's never had before. I'm working from home which is ridiculous and would never happen but nevertheless, I have a laptop set up on the coffee table in the living room. The script was a bit confusing to look at since it also listed the amounts of each excipient but from experience I knew to look only at the first number for the active ingredient, which was 5mg. But then I am getting confused about whether it's for 5mg or 10mg. Then LB is telling me he wants to be on 40mg. Not that I could have changed it anyway but I tell him it's not necessary, you usually start low and build up the dosage. He left my house to do some other things while I got the medication ready. Then for some reason I am holding a box of Lexapro (an anti-depressant) with his name on it. I'm confused, that's not what he is supposed to be taking.

After a little while, he texted me to say "I'm here first" as if we were playing a game with who could get back first (him from his errand, and me with working on his prescription). I went into my make-shift workspace in the living room, expecting to see him there but he wasn't there yet. However, I knew he was going to get back at any moment and it felt like at the last second before his arrival, I realised there was a mistake with the final iteration of my work. The script really was for 5mg and I had labelled up 10mg (or maybe the other way around). I panicked about having to fix it before he got here because I didn't want to look incompetent fixing it up in front of him. I was nitpicking about the most efficient way to fix this. Should I just change the details in the current data entry and press save, or delete the whole entry and start from scratch? If I do the latter, I can scan the barcode on the script a-fresh and make doubly-sure of the prescriber's intentions that are electronically embedded, but this will take longer. If I just trust what I see on the paper in front of me, it'll be faster. I don't know why I am so concerned about saving what amounts to be mere seconds of time.

[manychocolatefactories]

CatCF Ruby Chocolate: Part 1, Kids and characters

This version is the last of the "four main versions". It is named after the new, fourth type of chocolate discovered in 2004 but only publically released in 2017. It is a modern version, supposed to take place in the 2010s. In this version, there are six Golden Tickets released in the world.

First Winner: Augustus Gloop

(Based on: Augustus Gloop)

This version of Augustus was inspired by the 2013 musical, more specifically by the idea of a cute little boy that eats "pigs limbs from limbs", and also swallows whole little dogs. So, something quite dark.

Augustus has a very cute face. A chubby, angelic face, like the puttis of the Renaissance paintings: blond curls, puppy eyes, a radiant smile. If he wants, he can make your heart melt like the video of a little kitten purring.

But Augustus is hungry. All of the time. He eats and snacks all day long. He dreams of food. He sleep-walks to eat. And while he adores candies and chocolate, there is one thing he loves more than anything else: meat. Meat and blood. He is a true carnivore, for him every meal rhymes with "meat". And if you leave him unattended, he will try to get meat by himself. For exemple, by attacking a living pig and devouring it on the spot. Or by biting off the fingers of a plump woman. But, of course, all of that with a cute smile and while saying sorry in the most adorable way.

Nowadays, if your cute you must be innocent, and thus forgien.

Augustus' body is not as cute as his face. It is said to be a "bloated mass of pink flesh", actually very similar to the body of a pig. His fatness is described as "ill-fitting", as if it was "forced" onto his body. His overweightness is not natural. It is puffy, flabby, bloated, but doesn't feel "natural".

Augustus also always wear ill-fitting clothes and suits.

Mrs. Gloop is a tiny woman, usually wearing a pale pink skirt suit, with her hair arranged in a crown of braids. She might be tiny, but she is bold, energetic, and speaks both clearly and loudly. She has so much presence, she often intimidates people. She keeps reminding others of how cute her son, and how eating makes him grow strong. She insists that she is a good mother who makes sure her son eats of everything (to have a balanced diet), eats well (by giving him only the finest and best-quality products (such as the Wonka bars and not their cheap rivals knock-offs), and of course, she only feeds her son because he "needs nourishment".

And don't dare criticize her, or she will scream so much, so hard and so high your ears will bleed. Just like the "original" Mrs. Gloop, this one keeps pointing out the "hooligans", saying it is better to stay at home eating food than being a violent thug on the street. My iteration sincerely believes that violence and criminality is due to poverty, hunger and lack of food, and if everyone was well-fed the world ould be at peace.

(For her, think of Mrs. Gloop the original, mixed with Bernadette from the Big Bang Theory )

Mr. Gloop (full name, Gordon Gloop, parody of Gordon Ramsey) is the son of a butcher, and the grandson of a slaughterhouse worker. He was always knee-deep in blood, and as a result grew accustomed to killing animals and cooking them (in fact the sight of blood makes him peckish). He is a tall and strong man, but suffers from a bad sleep due to his wife's horribly loud snoring.

He tried to teach his son the refinment of haute cuisine, for Mr. Gloop is a world-renowned cook, but to his disappointment Augustus only cares for raw meat and drinking blood-dipped candies. Mr. Gloop is so obsessed with having good dishes and best-quality ingredients, he keeps at the back of his house a little barnyard full of cattle (if he ever has to serve some steak or ribs to his guests). Trouble is, Augustus keeps sneaking into said barnyard to devour the poor animals.

Second Winner: Elvira Entwhistle

(Based on: Veruca Salt)

Veruca Salt being a pretty solid and complete archetype in herself (the girl who wants it all and has her parents buy her all), it is quite hard to reimagine her. So, I tried thinking about "why" she wants things - given the actions are settled and confirmed, it is the goals that are important, the motivation. And , in our time of modernity, what makes people want things? Trends, fashions, what is "in".

This reinterpretation of Veruca, named Elvira Entwhistle (after one of the old drafts names), is a mix between Chanel Oberlin from Scream Queens and Esmé Squalor from a Series of Unfortunate Events. She is a girl living for trends, for fashions, buying and acquiring all of the latest things "in", only to discard them as soon as they are "out" or not trendy anymore. Spending her time on social media, following models and influencers, she keeps going to luxury shops with her "personal assistant" (a nice name for what is a modern slave) to buy accessories, jewels, clothes, pets and whatever corresponds to the current trend.

Spoiled, impatient, self-centered and short-tempered, she needs to have the latest fashion NOW or she will get insanely angry. She also doesn't hesitate to change her personal appearance to fit all the new trends (for exemple her hair changes color and shape every week). Of course, she got her Golden Ticket because it was the current trend. Everyone was searching for it, so she had to get a Ticket to be the most "in" person around.

 Third Winner: Mike Teavee

(Based on: Mike Teavee)

For this version of Mike Teavee, I wanted to get away from the usual hyperactive and hyper-violent kid. I wanted to take back this common idea that television makes you stupid and sluggish, by making Mike the perfect embodiment of a couch potato (even though he was designed to look at the same time like a mushroom and a zombie).

Mr. and Mrs. Teavee are hard-working people, who spend their entire week working and only come back at home for very brief periods of times (usually in the week-end) before going right back at work. As a result, Mike barely knows his parents. He doesn't even know what kind of work they do. To "babysit" their son, the Teavees bought an enormous, high-definition television with a 666 channels pack, and kept telling him to not go outside due to the outside world being "dangerous" and filled with crushing bikes, killing cars, kidnappers and the like. This is how Mike began his life as a shut-in.

Spending his days looking at the television, never going outside, he ended up closing all shutters because light bothered him. Living in the dark, barely lifting his body from the couch, he only survives on candies, snacks, television-plates and microwaved/defrosted food (and the Teavee family can afford to buy a lot of it, because they are really, really rich - Mike has accounts in three different banks).

The result? A chalk-white boy. A bloated ans shapeless body. A full-moon face covered in craters and scars due to a bad case of acne. Two dead, sunken, small eyes. Speakin slowly, and often pronouncing only half of the words, Mike refuses to answer or talk to anyone while television is on : he only speaks during "uninteresting advertisements". The only thing muscular in his body are his fingers, that got a lot of muscle mass due to twitching frenetically all day long on the remote to channel-hop.

Mike is actually a very intelligent boy, but all his cleverness and intellectual gifts are buried and wasted by the brain-washing of his shut-in life and his television obsession. He got his Golden Ticket because his parents often buy him Wonka bars as "television snacks". Even though, in his own words, he prefers food that "tastes like plastic".

Fourth Winner: Violet Beauregarde

(Based on: Volet Beauregarde)

What is Violet, originally? She is a girl that seeks fame and attention, that is snarky, that is nasty towards people, and that does stupid records. What reflects that perfectly in our day and age? Reality television shows!

Violet Beauregarde was strongly inspired by the most brainless and "sassy/nasty" stars of reality television and the Internet. She is a teenage girl wearing clothes of such bright, flashy and clashing colors it often hurts people's eyes. Her face is covered in makeup, her hair is covered in extensions and her hands are covered with fake fingernails.

She thinks she can be as rude and horrible as she wants, as long as she calls it "sassy". But on the other side, she considers "rude" anyone or anything that doesn't please her, or that is too "ugly" or "dirty" for her. She is the kind of girl that keeps screaming loudly "YAAAAAAASSS, bitches!" and "DAAAMMMNNNN", that calls herself "the queen", that chews ferociously on her gum all day long, and that says "Why are you touching me? See, you're touching me again!" while she is the one hitting people. She hates everything "old" and "boring". She keeps publishing musical albums that nobody actually buys, because she sings badly mere words (her singles being titled "Lalalala" and "Heyheyheyhey" - she never understood a song needed to have lyrics). Finally, her biggest dream is to be part of a TV-reality show.

Her father, Mr. Beauregarde, feeds his daughter's "bitchy diva" attitude and her delusions of grandeur by acting as his agent (just like in the 2013 musical). He is also the "ringleader" of Violet's circus (because Violet, with her clothes of ridiculous colors, and her enormous amount of makeup, has a clown subtext). As a result, Mr. Beauregarde is like a ringleader in acircus, a showrunner in a freak show, and also an agent. He "sells" his daughter, he organizes her interviews, he has people pay money for "extra time" with Violet, he shows her around, and finally he uses his whip (yes, he has a whip) to attack all those that try to "touch the product".

He is a short, flabby and balding man, that smokes very long and thick cigars, wears enormous rings and clothes that are garrish and clownish - his over-the-top and ridiculous fashion sense is clearly a compensation for what he lacks in height, hair and health.

 Fifth Winner: Marvin Prune

(Based on: Marvin Prune)

In the original drafts of Roald Dahl, Marvin Prune was a Mr. Know-it-All, a too-perfect schoolboy obsessed with studies, an arrogant bookworm, a haughty teacher's pet, you named it. In this version, i decided to keep the idea of Marvin being a "know-it-all", but instead of using school, books and the like, he rather uses modern technology and the Internet.

Marvin is a tech-obsessed boy. He lives for, with and through technology, to the point of neglecting to live in the real world. He thinks his over-use of technology, and all the knowledge it can provide him, make him an "intelligent" and "superior" boy (when in fact it does not).

He thinks he can claim to have been everywhere in the world because he visited virtually all the most important landmarks of the world. He claims he can speak all the languages in the world, but in fact he uses translation websites. He keeps tracks of all his bodily functions thanks to health monitors (heartbeats, blood pressure, cholesterole...) but not because he is concerned for his health, merely for the sake of knowing more things. For him, Googling something is the best solution to all your troubles, and as a result he is a self-centered and pompous boy.  

Due to his technology dependance, Marvin is actually quite a weak boy. Since he doesn't do any sport or physical activity, and since he rarely leaves his house (due to always ordering things online, having classes online and visiting places virtually), he is a quite thin and frail boy, if not emaciated - at least, a good chunk of his muscle mass has melted away.

The original parents of Marvin Prune were, in Dahl's works, teachers and school principals. I decided here to go with the opposite of a teacher : Mrs. Prune never does anything herself, and always blame it on others. There are problems in the world? For her people should fix it, but they are too lazy to do it - while she herself does nothing about it. Her son acts rude? "Someone should teach him good manners" she says. She loses all of her money? "That's because the people in charge of the economy are all incompetent!"

Mrs. Prune thinks of everything and everyone as stupid because it allows her to blame all of her problems and flaws on other people. But ultimately she never takes any kind of action herself. If someone should teach her son good manners, it is "those lazy teachers at school", certainly not her! She also dislikes things that are "foreign".

Marvin found the Golden Ticket when he ordered by mistake a chocolate bar in France : in truth, he wanted to buy a "tablet" (in French a tablet is tablette, and a chocolate bar is also a tablette de chocolat).

Marvin will also be incredibly frustrated inside Wonka's factory, because in there numeric devices mess up, stop weirdly or disfunction totally (the same way UFOs tend to mess up phones, radios, computers and the like). As a result, he becomes powerless and helpless.

 Sixth Winner: Charlie Bucket

(Based on: Charkie Bucket)

Here, I decided to really twist things up. To have a Charlie Bucket that isn't thin or malnourished, but fat! Yes, here's Chubby Charlie! (No, not Fat Charlie, this one is copyrighted)

Charlie's story is deeply linked to the story of the Wonka factory. The town Charlie lives in was built around the Wonka Factory a bit before the 20th century - it was a "worker town", created to allow the workers of the factory to live with their family next to their place of work. For more than fifty years the Factory was the only occupation and work of the town. But somewhere in the 1950s or 1960s, all the workers had to take an early retirement. They were kicked out, and the Factory closed to the public. The Factory was still working, but not hiring anyone anymore. This was an enormous blow to both the town's economy and moral. There was an economic crisis and poverty (since people were trained only to work in a candy factory).

But there was one good thing: since it was the town Wonka's products were created in, they were sold at must cheaper prices than anywhere else in the world, and all the ex-workers of the Factory got in exchange for their work coupons and reductions for themselves and all of their families - reductions on the Wonka products, of course. This was seen as a chance, because the Wonka products were world-renowned candies, even luxury goods in foreign countries. It was like being able to buy haute-couture as daily clothes and eat gastronomic cuisine every week-end.

But this good wasn't so "good". Indeed, given the poverty and lack of job in town, the ex-workers and their family relied more and more on the coupons and reductions, their diets filled with candy and sugary products. As a result, from the 1970s to the 2010s, the number of people suffering from obesity, diabetes and teeth problems blew up.

[ This background is actually a mix of two different real-world fact. Real-world fact 1: the Menier Chocolate Factory in France, aka the real-life Wonka Factory, was revolutionary for creating a town for its workers, and taking care of their health, education and the like, but closed after World War II, to the deception of everyone. Real-world fact 2: Coca-Cola, Nestlé and other big food industries tend to pay their employees with extra-sugary and extra-addictive if their own products in poor areas, such as South America - resulting in sicknesses and diseases.]

As a result, in this version Charlie is fat. Because in modern days, and in developped countries, poverty and malnourishment actually leads to obesity and diabetes, due to the cheapest food being candies and junk-food.

This version of Charlie is a very nice kid, but a kid addicted to the Wonka products. He grew up on the coupons, due to his family all being ex-workers. Grandpa Joe and Grandpa George both worked at the factory, but were too old or sick after being fired to find a new job ; Mr. and Mrs. Bucket had been trained for the factory and could barely afford new studies after its closing. Mr. Bucket became a street cleaner, while Mrs. Bucket became a receptionist and secretary for a dental office (due to the rise of tooth diseases, dental offices boomed in town, but most are actually crooked or scams).

Charlie grew up in a very humble home, with two parents working really hard to have enough money to buy food for everyone. Of course, fresh or good food is too expensive. Charlie tries to help his family the best way he can with his part-time job (making people fill surveys) and by working really hard at school. But as the years go by, his weight and his health are beginning to cause problems. Due to not having any money he can't do sports, wich makes him gain weight, and the fattest he is the hardest it is to do sport, it's a vicious circle. Every year, the scale reveals he puts on more and more weight, and faster and faster - if he doesn't do something quick, he may end up obese.

And, as I mentionned before, Charlie is truly obsessed with the Wonka products, it is an addiction. He dreams of them at night. He sticks Wonka bars wrappers on the wall of his room like posters. He drools at the mere mention of a Wonka bar. He isn't spoiled, cruel or nasty, but he is too addicted for his own good. In fact, when he finds money in the stret and buy chocolate bars with it, it is a pure act of selfishness, because he doesn't have the willpower to turn away from the candy shop and go back home.

#catcf #charlie and the chocolate factory #charlie bucket #augustus gloop #veruca salt #mike teavee #violet beauregarde #marvin prune

[jackdawyt]

ICYMI: As my last video/post for 2019, I figured we should have a reflection on Dragon Age 4’s major news updates and uncover what we know about Dragon Age 4 throughout this year and beyond!  So, we can go into 2020 with the right expectations and understanding of the game’s development!

The Dread Wolf Rises:

To boot of this year - we had the most exciting announcement from The Game Awards in December - the official confirmation of the next Dragon Age project with the current given title: #TheDreadWolfRises.

The trailer, while enigmatic, showcased the next Dragon Age centring on the Solas’s plan to rise up and destroy the veil, fulfilling the Dread Wolf’s prophecy. At least that’s one interpretation of it.

The trailer seemingly was made for the fanbase of Dragon Age with the given title, because if you didn’t know what Dragon Age was, or anything about The Dread Wolf, you could totally pass up that trailer as a different game entirely. So, it was more of an ode to the fans that the next Dragon Age game is in the works.

Alongside the release of the trailer, the Dragon Age website was updated for #TheDreadWolfRises with Mark Darrah, Executive Producer & Matthew Goldman, Creative Director sharing a few words on the production of the next Dragon Age.

TLDR: Mark is excited to show more and Matthew states that this is the strongest team yet and they’re venturing forth on the most epic quest ever.

In a September blog post, Casey Hudson wrote that ‘I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises,’ alluding to the narrative and production of Dragon Age 4. Before we delve into the current development of Dragon Age 4, we’ve got to talk about the two initial iterations of Dragon Age 4.

Project Joplin:

Based on Jason Schreier’s expose’ into the past and present developments of Dragon Age 4 - the previous iteration of Dragon Age 4 was known as ‘Joplin’, like Janis Joplin.

Janis Joplin was one of the biggest female rock stars of her era, she revolutionized her genre of music for the next generation – clearly, this is something the devs were going for with the original Dragon Age 4 project – to revolutionize the Role-Playing Game genre.

The developers on Joplin were committed to avoiding the mistakes they’d made on Dragon Age: Inquisition. Veteran Mike Laidlaw was the creative director of ‘Joplin’ until the project was canned and reworked so ‘live service elements’ could be added. After the decided rework of Dragon Age 4, Mike left the studio in late 2017.

Project Joplin’s initial concept followed the next protagonist ‘playing as a group of spies in Tevinter, a large chunk of the narrative centred on heists. The goal was to focus as much as possible on choice and consequence.’

There was an emphasis on this ‘hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth.’

The developers talked about building systemic narrative mechanics, allowing the player to perform actions like persuading or extorting guards without the writers having to hand-craft every scene.

It was very ambitious and plenty of the developers were excited, stating that they put some of their best work into this project.

However, Anthem was in real trouble, and there was a concern that it might never be finished unless the studio did something drastic. EA and BioWare took that drastic action, cancelling Joplin and moving the bulk of its staff, including executive producer Mark Darrah, onto Anthem.

Project Joplin was reworked into Project Morrison with a skeleton team building the very foundations of the next Dragon Age.

Project Morrison:

The latest iteration of Dragon Age 4 that is currently in the works is known as ‘Morrison’, like ‘James Morrison’ – the lead singer of the rock band ‘The Doors’.

Jim Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. (Wikipedia).

Morrison is being built on Anthem’s tools and codebase of the Frostbite Engine, this will save time as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Anthem were each built from scratch. With a pre-set already there, Morrison’s development can save a lot of time.

This new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. It’s not clear how much of Joplin’s vision will shape Morrison.

Matt Goldman, art director on Dragon Age: Inquisition and then Joplin, took over as creative director for Morrison.

Many of the BioWare developers “know it’s going to change like five times in the next two years.”

Morrison will change its shape multiple times. However, “Dragon Age games shift more than other games.” So, it’s not uncanny for a Dragon Age project to undergo drastic changes in its development.

Live Service/Multiplayer:

It has been confirmed on LinkedIn that BioWare has hired a software engineer to work on a multiplayer component for Dragon Age 4, however, it’s unsure what exactly this multiplayer could look like.

Jason Schreier stated that “he heard some ideas for Morrison’s multiplayer include companions that can be controlled by multiple players via drop-in/drop-out co-op, similar to old-school BioWare RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, and quests that could change based not just on one player’s decisions, but on the choices of players across the globe.”

In 2018, Casey Hudson tweeted a statement on live service: “Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on,” he wrote on Twitter. “Story & character-focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about ‘live’ it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”

It’s still unclear how much of this game will focus on live-service elements and multiplayer, it could follow something as simple as Dragon Age: Inquisition’s separate multiplayer mode, or it could transform the game completely. Take note that Morrison is still early in the works and it will change multiple times until release. That is for sure.

Production:

Now we get to the tea - The past and present developments of Dragon Age 4’s new iteration.

So, Project Joplin was canned in late 2017, with Project Morrison rebooting sometime after that with an essential, small team. The rest of the Dragon Age team that worked on Joplin, went to fix Anthem during its troubled development. Even Mark Darrah, the Executive Producer of Dragon Age was shuffled to Anthem’s production. All the while, Morrison lay low in very early pre-production stages.

In 2018, the majority of the news we got on Dragon Age 4 came out in January, with Joplin’s initial codename and Anthem’s reshuffling. However, with Morrison in deep pre-production, nothing substantial - production-wise - was heard on this project until The Dread Wolf Rises teaser launched at The Game Awards eleven months later in December. Of course, this trailer was hype hype hype!

In early 2019, BioWare resumed their focus on Anthem and its release date. After Anthem was released in February 2019 - according to comicbook.com - the core Edmonton team working on Anthem, returned to work on Dragon Age 4 in full-scale development following the reworks of Morrison.

Built on Anthem’s codebase and its pre-sets of the Frostbite engine, following a very enigmatic live service model – Dragon Age 4 entered its pre-production stages with a full-team. As Casey Hudson later confirmed in September:

“We have several other big projects in the works. ��I wish I could tell you more about them, but they’re mostly super-secret right now.  I can say however that one of our projects has a large and growing team in Edmonton working through pre-production, and based on the progress I’m seeing, I can confirm that indeed the Dread Wolf rises.”

Key processes during the pre-production stages include:

Concept Art

Storyboarding

Level Design

Mechanic Design

Around June, an IGN Greece article resurfaced again, according to said article ‘an anonymous BioWare employee had given clues Dragon Age 4. Stating that the game will be released in 2020 and that the voices of the characters are already being recorded, which indicates an advanced stage of development.’

This article initially launched in 2018 and has many rebuttals, the first being the release date.

This 2020 expected release date has been debunked because according to EA’s 2019 earnings call, the new release window for Dragon Age 4 is at least April 2022, and any time after that. Perhaps Joplin’s initial release window was 2020, and the developer may have shared that, but as far as Morrison is concerned, the project is 3 years away.

However, voice work being in the works could be plausible at this stage. Alix Wilton Reagan has teased a few seasons of her in full mocap mentioning NDA’s and #dragonage and #inquisitor, this could just Alix teasing us, or using social media to its full advantage, or it could be something Dragon Age-related.

Surely the Inquisitor will make a cameo appearance and that could justify why Alix could be doing VO?

On top of both Alix’s tease and IGN Greece’s article, very recently Jo Berry, a writer at BioWare tweeted about voice over work coming in and it being fantastic, however, they have to remove the goofy robot text to speech which is awkward and funny to listen to.  

“When VO is coming in and it’s fan-tastic, but it means saying goodbye to that goofy robot text-to-speech that makes you all laugh.”

So, indeed voice work does seem to be going on for Dragon Age 4’s development at this stage.

In jest, BioWare hasn’t replied to my request for voice acting a character in Dragon Age 4, so I think because of that, we can assume that they haven’t started the majority of the main character’s voice work just yet, right?

Moving on…Throughout the months of August and September, BioWare moved to a new office space in downtown Edmonton. Once they had settled in, a few very interesting Dragon Age 4 titbits came to light.

Emily (Domino) Taylor posted a picture on Twitter, showcasing a post artboard for Dragon Age 4, as we can assume it’s Dragon Age! There’s a Grey Warden and their Griffon-friend showcased in the picture.

Griffons and Grey Warden’s confirmed for Dragon Age 4? It’s not too much of a stretch considering the drama at Weisshaupt and Last Flight’s ending, but alas, as we can see BioWare’s art division are getting ready to line up concept artwork for further production and development. Probably for 3D model creation and animation stages.

Regardless, it’s very exciting to see the start of official artwork developing for Dragon Age 4, I’ll be keeping an eye out to see how this board develops further.  

Another huge titbit that was revealed with BioWare’s office move, was when the mayor of Edmonton decided to visit and congratulate BioWare at their new offices. On one of the photos the mayor and his team took, there was a shot of an HD version of Solas on a TV Screen.

I personally believe that this is a shot from Dragon Age 4 or the prototype version of Morrison showing off Solas. There’s been no confirmation of where this shot comes from, and I’ve spent an entire video dissecting it. However, my point is, I don’t think this comes from Dragon Age: Inquisition, it’s way to HD, look at his face, the fur on his outfit, the outside environment. It’s very distinct, and I believe it’s the first shot of Dragon Age 4 revealed.

I’ve not seen any rebuttals to this, and I’ve openly asked multiple times online, however, no one has come up with anything. So, even towards the end of 2019, it remains a mystery. I think this is a Dragon Age 4 shot, let me know if you think otherwise!

Around the same time, Matt Rhodes, an Art Director, posted a short story on his Instagram stating that he’s “more excited working on Dragon Age 4 than any other project so far.”

Just after BioWare moved offices, Fernando Melo, a senior producer on The Dread Wolf Rises left the studio after 12 years.

As stated on his LinkedIn profile, a lot of Fernando’s job on Dragon Age 4 surrounded “help[ing] establish the vision for the game. Guid[ing] the team through EA’s concept and early production phases. Prov[ing] out the core concept and key innovations of the game”.

He signed off with an email sent to everyone on the Dragon Age team, stating that he left at the “least disruptive timing as it would likely get.”

Considering that Fernando’s job was ensuring the pre-production stages were completed efficiently, and with his departure being at a time where it’d be least hectic for the development of Dragon Age 4, it’s safe to say that the pre-production processes are wrapping up and the team can begin to enter full production.

Fernando said that “with a great game leadership team in place, a fantastic creative vision, and some of the best devs in the world. Morrison is well underway to becoming the definitive Dragon Age experience - and I’m incredibly proud and honored to have played a part in that. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to experience the next DA as a fan this time around.”

So, with Fernando’s send off via email, the entire Dragon Age team has moved on from the initial pre-production stages to the main development of the project with an estimated release window of any time after April 2022.

Mark Darrah Major Hints & Teases:

Now we get to the most divisive news topics - the teases from Executive Producer Mark Darrah!

Mark has actually been teasing us since the beginning of 2017, when he dropped a video of an artbook that collated a plethora of Dragon Age concept characters, with many mysterious and ominous photos showcasing potential concept art and character designs.

A logo of a wolf, on fire encased in a tower, was all we had on Dragon Age 4 at the time. However, considering Project Joplin was canned at the end of that same year, I think it’s safe to assume this work went alongside that project, whether it will remain, we’ll uncover in-time.

At E3 2018, in a video interview with Game Informer, Mark Darrah said that Dragon Age 4 was going ‘swell’ with a cheeky grin.

At Pax West 2018, Dragon Age 4 was officially confirmed again since it’s reboot in development, the Triforce Quartet played Dragon Age: Inquisition’s theme as Mark Darrah confirmed that the next instalment is in the works… again.

Towards the end of November, Mark Darrah teased the entirety of Twitter with his Dragon Age remarks. Having tweeted the single words “Dragon Age”, he had PC Gamer and many other onion articles writing up on his huge Dragon Age 4 tease.

However, to be fair, Mark dropped an image that resembles Dragon Age, only we’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

Midnight snow, rocks, forests, a completely different landscape to any of the maps in Dragon Age: Inquisition, yet very familiar with its Frostbite Engine aesthetic… is this a shot of Tevinter, more than likely taken on Mark Darrah’s phone?

Well, I think so. It doesn’t resemble any location I can recall in Dragon Age: Inquisition… But you might say “there’s snow in Tevinter, which is the opposite end of Thedas’s Equator, that doesn’t make sense lore-wise.”  

Well, Mark Darrah replied to someone questioning if and why there would be snow in Tevinter, he sent them a link to this article that explains how there can be snow on the equator, meaning that Tevinter can have snow.

So, is this our second or first look of Dragon Age 4? Well, depending on if the Solas shot is viable, I’d say definitely, but I’ll let you make your own mind up on that. Speaking of Tevinter, Mark Darrah also teased that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is titled “Tevinter of Our Discontent”, which is a huge story reference that I’ll touch upon in a separate category.

However, back to the picture teases, and Mark Darrah also posted another photo…

A sun blinding a knight, very ominous, I don’t even know where to start with this one… I mean it could have some subliminal message about how Solas may destroy the veil, or it could have a rather obscure context that fits to Dragon Age 4’s narrative, but I honestly just don’t even know what this is…

On Dragon Age Day, Again, Mark Darrah posted another screenshot of Dragon Age 4 with everything redacted other than a pixel in the corner.

And, erm, yep. That’s super. Thanks for that, Mark.

If you’d like to see more Dragon Age 4 teases that may or may not make sense and will most likely leave you frustrated and clueless, why not give Mark Darrah a follow-on Twitter. He’s one to keep an eye out.

Story:

The next narrative surrounds the Dread Wolf rising and attempting to destroy the veil, it’ll most likely be our next protagonist’s goal to stop Solas from achieving this.

We will have a new protagonist, like every other Dragon Age game. It’s been confirmed copious times by many developers old and new that the Hero of Ferelden will never return in the future, so stop asking. And even if they did return, Patrick Weekes is in charge now.

Dragon Age 4 will be set in the Tevinter Imperium, if Trespasser’s ending wasn’t a good enough clue for you, Project Joplin was also set in Tevinter. Alternatively, according to PC Gamer, it was the newly announced Tevinter Nights book that confirmed Tevinter to be Dragon Age 4’s setting.

Mark Darrah confirmed and teased on Twitter that the working plot title of Dragon Age 4 is Tevinter of our Discontent, derived from Shakespeare’s “The Winter of our Discontent” which is the opening lines from the play - Richard III (3rd).

As a TLDR: the words lay the groundwork for the portrayal of Richard as a discontented man who is unhappy in a world that hates him. However, since his family were victorious in the war, they reign the nation once more, and so as winter dies, glorious summer is upon them.

There are plenty of references we can make to Solas and his scheme to destroy the veil, he’s woken up to a world that despises his name and people that revoke his actions as evil. He wants to correct this world and restore his ‘family’ so to speak. Perhaps, like Richard the 3rd, Solas’s glorious summer is what awaits him in the next game.

So, we have plenty of plot potential with this given title and I do have a separate video for even more thorough speculation on this topic. However, based on Shakespeare’s work being the main inspiration for Dragon Age 4’s narrative, we should expect tragedy to be one of the main themes of the plot.

According to Video Gamer, in 2017, Alexis Kennedy was writing freelance for BioWare, ‘working on a whole chunk of lore and backstory for the faction in the game that you would think of if you were thinking big old goth. You know, if you were interested in death.’

Instantly what comes to mind is Nevarra’s Mortalitasi – Death Mages that’s responsible for the mummification process of the dead in Nevarran culture. However, we’re not sure how much of his work went into the cancelled Joplin, considering the timing at which he worked on Dragon Age 4.  

According to Alexis’s LinkedIn page, he worked freelance at BioWare from February – August 2017. The end of 2017 was the same time Joplin was canned, and Mike Laidlaw left the company, so there’s a huge possibility that Alexis’s work has been shelved.

Even if Alexis’s work wasn’t shelved at the time, given his recent allegations and controversy, Mark Darrah confirmed on Twitter that BioWare no longer has a working relationship with him, so his work seemingly has been scrapped.

According to Dark Horse writers Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir who’re creating the comics. In a comicbook.com interview, they shared the collaboration with the BioWare writers, it’s a case of sharing notes on where the narrative is going, and how the comics can help reach that point for Dragon Age 4’s narrative.

So, if you want to see where Dragon Age 4’s narrative may go, or which characters could turn up, read the comics as they’re pushing the narrative forward.

According to Chelsea Fariello, Assistant Animator at BioWare, it seems we could have a Mabari War Hound companion, or at least NPC in Dragon Age 4, as she stated on Twitter that she was interested in what interactions people would want to see for a dog-like creature in a video game. With the hashtag Dragon Age. Perhaps Mabari War Hound, or even a Griffon? “What interactions would people want to be able to do with a dog like creature in a video game? I need to know…for reasons… #DragonAge “

The “creature” part in that tweet is what makes me think it could be a small griffon? If it’s a Mabari then it’s just a dog, however, if it’s a small griffon then that could make sense. That’s just my hot take.

On Dragon Age Day, Arby’s expressed their interest in opening a new branch in Thedas, could we see a new type of cuisine in Tevinter? It’s hard to say, other than the fact that John Epler loves Arby’s, not Wendy’s though. Don’t mention Wendy’s!

Weekes’s Tweets:

Adding to the story category, we have plenty of tweets by Patrick Weekes that hint at future elements for Dragon Age 4.

Patrick Weekes responded to Autumn Witch when asked on Twitter ‘to pick one character from Dragon Age that has never been a companion or advisor that you would like to see as a companion in DA-4? (For the sake of this post, Lace Harding is also not available.)’

Patrick said: “Oh that’s obvious, I’d go with (Reads parenthetical) THIS IS RIGGED.”

So, Scout Harding as a Dragon Age 4 Companion teased? I freaking hope so.

Patrick Weekes posted on Twitter that they just teared up reading a scene, so unless they’re cutting onions while writing, we should expect tears to be shed in Dragon Age 4. If I were to guess, I mean Solas is walking the Din’anshiral. Which means there is only death on this journey…

Weekes was asked about non-binary lingo & representation and if the players would have the option to not identify as a male or female in the next Dragon Age. They replied saying:

“No guarantees (it’s something that is very difficult in romance languages we get translated into), but our team is always looking for better ways to let players see themselves in our games.”

Other Dragon Age Projects:

According to EA’s 2019 Earnings Call, “there are plans for not only Dragon Age 4, but other Dragon Age products too.”

At a guess, this ‘other product’ could simply be a mobile companion app to coincide with Dragon Age 4’s launch. Or it could be the rumoured tactics game that we haven’t heard about since Mark Darrah’s tease in 2017.

On top of that, at a guess, it could also be an extension to the Dragon Age Keep.

Expectations:

There’s still a couple of years yet with an expected release window at any point after April 2022. However, that doesn’t mean the news will not be coming, just look at all the tidbits I’ve uncovered from developer tweets on the side.

Not to mention that BioWare generally start the marketing phases of their upcoming games two years prior to release, so if Dragon Age 4 were to release in 2022, we could actually see something in 2020. I’m not banking on that, but just for the doubters out there, we’ll easily hear something regarding this game in 2020, whether that’s a trailer or small tweet trials of news, we’ll be sure to get something, and I’ll be sure to stay on track of that.

if you have anyone saying there’s no news for Dragon Age 4, just gently send them my way and share this video in their dm’s!

#dragon #dragons #dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #dragon age 4 #dragon age four #the dread wolf rises #dragon age 4 news #dragon age 4 speculation #dragon age news #next dragon age #the next protagonist #next dragon age game #solas #solas dragon age 4 #solas dragon age #solas da4 #solas the dread wolf #mythal #tevinter imperium #tevinter #magic #fade #veil #wolf #dorian #bioware #BioWare Edmonton

[thetypedwriter]

The Ruin of Kings Book Review

The Ruin of Kings Book Review by Jenn Lyons

Boy, oh, boy, was this a wild ride. 

Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I occasionally delve into adult fiction here and there. I mainly stick to my vegetarian course of YA novels, but every once in a while I can’t help but  pick up a slice of bacon, or in this case, an adult fiction book.

Or, even more specifically, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it’s adult fantasy instead of fiction. High fantasy at that, which is characterized by a whole new world with fantastical elements and not just a novel in the known primary world with fantasy elements.

With that literary lesson out of the way, let me get started. 

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons came recommended by one of my favorite book bloggers, Paperfury. She counted this as one of her most recent book obsessions she couldn’t stop thinking about and in general I trust her judgement (although she was way way off on The Queen of Nothing, yikes). 

This massive installment is definitely not the short and sweet page length I’m used to with YA, and neither does it have the comforting and large font that makes me feel like an accomplished reader after just an hour of skimming. 

No, this installment is large and beefy and could probably give someone a concussion if you threw it at them, so just keep that in mind. 

The whole fantasy revolves around a boy named Khirin. Khirin is your typical fantasy hero, equipped with the luscious blonde hair and the sparkling blue eyes and most importantly, the wickedly sharp tongue reminiscent of a male character from the Cassandra Clare universe.

He’s sharp, he’s witty, he’s charming, and he also has terrible, terrible luck. 

Or does he?

When you first meet Khirin he is being sold as a slave to the highest bidder. He’s cold, he’s injured, he’s starving, and he’s broken. You, as a reader at this point, are completely and irrevocably confused. 

You’re thinking: Who is this boy? What is happening to him? Why are people betting so much money for him? What’s with this necklace around his neck? Where did he come from? Where are we? What world is this? Where is he going? What the hell is going on???

To say that Lyons starts out strong would be underhanded hyperbole. You are forcibly drop-kicked into the fantasy world of Qurr and its many raging empires and states, and putting them all together is frankly daunting and largely impossible until a good chunk of the book is devoured. 

Frankly, I still have trouble figuring out all the locations and gods and god-kings and factions and lore and people and how they’re all related, Game of Thrones style. But that’s part of the fun. 

One of my biggest complaints with YA is that the reader is generally treated like they’re pretty stupid. 

Often a YA author feels the need to explain every single iteration and modicum of interaction between their characters or spend too much time describing things, and it leaves very little for interpretation or inference on the side of the reader. Lyons is almost the complete opposite, which is as refreshing as it is frustrating.

As you are introduced to Khirin and this gargantuan universe that Lyons has created, you will feel stupid. To be fair, I enjoyed it most of the time. I relished the challenge of learning to differentiate all the different families of the Court of Gems, of distinguishing the Goddess Thaena from the Goddess Tya.

I liked when I was finally able to smugly look at the map at the beginning and recognize all of the city states like Doltar or Kirpis or Manol. I liked when I understood the different races like the Thriss or the vané and the implications of what that meant. 

If that was a whole load of word vomit for you, that’s okay. 

Again, it’s part of the fun. 

What I do want you to get out of this, however, is the knowledge that Lyons has created an expansive universe with multiple creatures, including dragons and witches, rivaling royal families, gods reminiscent of the Greek Gods and their interference with human affairs, a rivaling world split with so many seams that you’re not even sure who to root for, an emperor, magical jewelry, demons and even a dose of piracy and musical competition. 

This book honestly has a little of everything — which, to be fair, it should, considering how damn long it takes to get through it’s never-ending pages. 

To make this as simplified as possible, the plot goes like this:

Khirin is sold into slavery and finds himself in the hands of a group called the Black Brotherhood. Over time, Khirin learns about this group and their intentions, learns more about himself and the Stone of Shackles (the necklace he wears around his neck), divulges his past and how he got sold into slavery in the first place-his upbringing, his musical talent, his stay at the Blue Palace, his eventual betrayal at the hands of someone he loves. 

You learn over the course of each chapter what brought Khirin to his current fate and more of what he is trying to do now,: which is to return home and save the world from the likes of the two main antagonists (although not all of them by any means), Gadrith and Darzin.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that is the most bare- bones summary I have ever written. But honestly, this book is about a hero named Khirin and his adventure to rid the world of evil as he learns about himself and his past. 

Like many, many, other books before it, this book explores what it means to be a hero, what it means to be a god, what it means to be involved with the fight of good vs. evil. This book is not special in that sense regarding these themes. 

However, there are some really cool aspects of this novel that I thoroughly enjoyed that I’ll relay now that the summary (as condensed as it is, sorry) is out of the way. 

The two things I enjoyed most about this book were the writing itself and the POV. Most high fantasy novels that I’ve attempted to read have this ridiculous notion that every character must speak in some dead medieval language rife with historical inaccuracies and banal, clipped speech. Lyons does nothing of the sort.

 Her characters are creative and crass and downright funny. The dialogue is immersive and natural and oftentimes, other than the backdrop of a dragon or lizard-people, it felt like two modern-day people were having a conversation, which I greatly appreciated. 

Lyons is also a very big fan of building up her writing and then smacking you down at the pinnacle. For example:

“Before us lay the Mother of Trees.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing. I couldn’t comprehend. It just seemed like a humongous wall at first, one that had been built up with palaces and verandas, graceful pavilions, and stained-glass windows glittering like jewels. Only when I looked up could I perceive the sweep of branches, the distance velvet of green leaves. This was a tree to hold up the whole world, the sort of place where Galava must live, if any place were consecrated to her. It seemed ageless and immortal, a tree that had always and would always exist. 

Naturally, we were setting it on fire.”

I personally found this style of writing hilarious. Lyons often built up the tension, beauty, or conflict, and then would deliver these one-liners that would leave me gasping with laughter. This creative juxtaposition was super enjoyable and one that made the book a big success for me. 

Secondly, while this book is told almost entirely (keyword almost -there are some outlier chapters) from Khirin’s perspective, it technically oscillates between present Khirin and past Khirin. 

The whole book switches from one timeline to another every other chapter, with the chapter starting with Khirin being sold into slavery being the “present” and told from Khirin’s first-person POV and then switching the next chapter to his “past” and being told from Khirin’s third-person POV. 

I loved this. I thought this was so creative, and up to this point, I have never seen this done in another book. The subtle shift from first to third person every chapter, but still from the perspective of the same character, was so interesting and complex. 

I loved that we were simultaneously getting current-day Khirin, but also Khirin from two years ago telling us the events that led up to the present. It was imaginative and intriguing, and I loved trying to fill in the holes before the book presented me with it (which even then was difficult). 

In addition, throughout the whole book are also footnotes from another crucial character that offer information, clarification, and also humor. While I’ve primarily read footnotes in academic papers to cite sources or offer commentary, these footnotes were just as fictional as the rest of the story, but offered insight outside of Khirin that was often dripping in sarcasm, irony, or humor.

 I thought it was another really creative way for Lyons to get across information without boring everyone half to death or releasing a 100- page guidebook to help you along. 

Bottom line, people,: This book isn’t for everyone. High fantasy in general is not for everyone. That’s okay. It’s not usually my taste either, at least not the adult fictional kind, but something about this book really intrigued me. 

Moreso than the actual plot, which is confusing, I enjoyed the writing, the suspense, and the act of playing detective. It’s been so long since I’ve read a book that’s made me think this hard, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That being said, the same praise is a double-edged sword. 

If you don’t want to have to think and draw out charts and make graphs on Excel, then perhaps this is not the book for you. 

If you don’t like high fantasy or made-up worlds, or very interconnected family dynamics, then this is not the book for you. This book also contains elements that can be triggering to some, like rape, drugs, character death, violence, imprisonment, slavery, etc.

When I say this book has everything, I mean it has everything. And that can be good or bad depending on the person. For me, I liked it. However, I did get frustrated at certain points at the lack of clarification more than once, just for full disclosure. 

Recommendation: If you’ve been bereft ever since the Game of Thrones disaster-of-a-finale, then you are not alone. The Ruin of Kings has everything you’ve ever wanted in a high fantasy book: action, kings, queens, palaces, war, dragons, magic and so much more. 

This book was creative and funny and complex, and if you’re willing to sink your teeth and time into a universe that demands attention then you’ll find yourself rewarded with a brand-new world to fall in love with and characters that you can’t seem to forget.

Score: 8/10

#the ruin of kings #jenn lyons #popular fiction #books #book blog #book review #fiction #Book Recommendations #booknerd #writing #fantasy #high fantasy

[phoenixrisesoncemore]

I was tagged by @wangxianbunnydoodles (oh my, this is long and you might regret it; also I don’t follow instructions well 😉). I tend not to be very good at these things (sorry to anyone else who has tagged me in these kinds of things before—this is a rare event happening mostly because I wanna talk about Tolkien books and ships) but here goes:

Top 3 Ships

I don’t actively ship characters that often. I’m not sure why that is. I do enjoy reading fic with pairings either canon or not, but I don’t often go “all in” on ships in most narratives I consume. There are notable exceptions (more than three but these are the three most recent—I have no idea how to identify my top ships):

WangXian (CQL). This is surely obvious from the current state of my blog, right? I blame The Untamed and its impossibly tender, only-subtextual-by-a-hair’s-breadth romance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show express ultimate devotion, deep affection, true appreciation, complete understanding (eventually), and the sheer *necessity of the other* between two people quite like this one has. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two characters and desperately wanted them together and happy as much as I have these two, so bravo to the cast and crew for generating such second-hand devotion in me.

Silvergifting (Tolkien). This is all @thearrogantemu’s fault. I’d read some Silvergifting before I read These Gifts That You Have Given Me, mostly out of curiosity (some good stuff, too!), but I had never read any Tolkien fic that convinced me it was *true* (on many, many levels, though the ship level is the one pertinent to this post). In any canon-like universe this ship hurts, but in the Gifts universe it hurts the most; it hurts like Hell. It hurts in the way only razor-sharp, sorry-the-universe-works-this-way, oh-are-those-my-entrails-on-the-floor-I-didn’t-even-feel-the-knife tragedy can hurt. And it’s so convincing that it’s just...a fact now. Tolkien just forgot to tell us. So now I ship Silvergifting, but most deeply, specifically THAT Silvergifting. (Meanwhile, 14 year old me continues to look at *significantly* older me like I’m insane.)

ZeLink (Legend of Zelda). Deep down I’m still 12 years old and no amount of fine lines and wrinkles is going to change that. When is Breath of the Wild 2 coming out?

Last Song

I listen to soundtracks and bombastic and dramatic orchestral pieces much more often than I listen to what people mean when they say “songs,” and a significant chunk of the “songs” I listen to are from musicals/operas.

Earlier today it was Hanz Zimmer’s soundtrack to Dark Phoenix (don’t start me up on the continuing disappointment that Phoenix adaptations continue to be to me—you don’t want to hear it; even I don’t want to hear it).

Before that it was Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album. (I prefer her outer space cover of “Somewhere” to the actual thing. Fight me.)

Before that it was Carmina Burana (One of my favorite things ever was when we went to a live performance of Carmina Burana and a boy who couldn’t have been more than 7 years old sat in the aisle in front of us and head-banged enthusiastically through “O Fortuna.” It was so metal. You go, kid. You get it.).

Before that it was a splattering of Billy Joel hits with emphasis on “2000 Years”, “River of Dreams”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, “The Stranger”, and “Only the Good Die Young” (thanks to that outstanding WangXian interpretation!).

Of course the soundtracks to The Untamed/CQL have been on repeat for weeks around here, particularly every single iteration of “WuJi” and the flute-heavy instrumental pieces (man, those are good!).

Not long ago I had Sarah Brightman’s covers of “Figlio Perduto” from La Luna and “Glosoli” and “One Day Like This” from Dreamchaser burning through my iPhone battery (yes, I like popera).

Enya, and especially Shepherd Moons and The Track Which Shall Not Be Named has been on repeat a lot.

Last Movie

I don’t sit down to watch movies that often any more. It just takes too much stillness and undivided attention and more resistance to multi-tasking than I have. The actual last movie that I watched (in a “have it on on another screen while I work” kind of way) was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, of course, I’ve seen umpteen times and which followed a similar rewatch of the Back to the Future trilogy. The last movie I watched completely without distraction was Book Smart; I don’t watch comedies very often, but I really enjoyed it in an “OMG, I can totally relate to this” kind of way (except for the class president thing—that would have required that I interact with other people my own age and also not be homeschooled). Before that I think it was the Tolkien biopic. Man, I still haven’t written anything about that.

Currently Reading (in order of when I started them)

Oh dear.

The Familiar: part 1, Mark Z Danielewski. *sigh* For as much as I think Danielewski is brilliant and House of Leaves is one of my favorite books ever, I’ve just not been able to get into much of his other work. It’s universally a time and energy investment to penetrate and puzzle through, and I just don’t have as much of that as I used to. House of Leaves makes that investment worth it from early on and is absolutely a page-turner once you settle in, but other than The Fifty Year Sword I’ve just not been able to get into the rest of his work. The Familiar: part 1 is supposed to be the first in a 26 part series which is currently halted at part 4, I think. Without a guarantee of all parts ever being published, I don’t think I’m ready to invest more time into part 1 and may end up abandoning it, unfortunately.

History of The Hobbit, Douglas Anderson. Anderson did what Christopher didn’t and gave The Hobbit the HoMe treatment (if a bit less literal and opaque in format). It’s fascinating (I mean, there’s the Beren and Luthien name drop you were not expecting right there in the first draft), but reading essentially the same passages with only small changes over and over can be a slog, so reading it has been an ongoing project for over a year now.

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Verlyn Fleiger. This is Fleiger’s look at Tolkien’s Middle-earth in light of his association with Owen Barfield. Particularly, she is examining Tolkien’s work in conjunction with Barfield’s Poetic Diction and his thoughts on language and meaning. I have not read Poetic Diction, but I probably will now since it apparently addresses language formation as related to the origin of human consciousness which is SO up my alley.

New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton. My late sister-in-law had a masters in theology from Notre Dame and became a huge Merton fan. Meanwhile, my best friend actually spent a weekend retreat at The Abbey of Gethsemani. Between hearing about him from the two of them, I developed an interest in Merton. I happened to read “Moral Theology of the Devil” a couple of years ago. It was one of the most illuminating theological things I have read and deeply inspired my own Tolkien fic-writing (let’s just say the progress there is otherwise slow). This book is a collection of pieces which happens to contain that piece, and I’ve been skipping around through it for a while now.

The Lord of the Rings reread (Tolkien, obviously). I hate this, but I am so deep in so many critical Tolkien books that I’ve not had the chance to really sit down and relax into my reread for months and months and will likely just end up starting over. Plus I want to read it concurrently with the next entry in this list and the next entry is taking longer to get through because of its format. That entry being:

The Lord of the the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, Hammond and Scull. This is a treasure trove of data and insights for those really wanting to dig critically-historically into The Lord of the Rings on a chapter-by-chapter, passage-by-passage basis. The only issue with it is that jumping back and forth between the two (as you have to: this is a reference book) tends to kill the mood of The Lord of the Rings when read as it’s meant to be read: for enjoyment!

The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art, and Architecture, Gyorgy Doczi. This has been an ongoing read here and there since Christmas, especially as I work on two personal projects.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin. To be honest I don’t think I am going to finish this one. I like a few of the things he says, things I think are truthful and which need to be confronted in American Christian culture in particular, but it’s just too much Calvin for my taste, too many assumptions I do not share being the heretic that I am, and I spend too much time anger-notating about theology to read it with grace.

In Full Measure I Return to You, thearrogantemu. This is a reread of the (relatively) happy AU fic for my most favoritest Tolkien fic (Gifts), but I’ve put my reread on hold while I finish one of the two projects, after which I am diving in and screw the rest of this list for the time being.

Food Craving

Sushi. My kingdom for some good sushi. I’ve only had sushi once since we got back from NY and while it was the best sushi I have had locally IT WAS NOT OMAKASE AT SUSHI NOZ. It also didn’t require a personal loan to pay for, but *shrug* I’m spoiled now and will forever crave what I can no longer have.

People I’d Like To Get To Know Better

I hate tagging people in these things because I’m awkward and shy and do them so rarely myself that it feels hypocritical for me to ask it of others. That being said: if you’re a follower of my blog and you want to do this, please do! And please tag me! I’d love to get to know more about you 😊.

#getting to know you #wangxianbunnydoodles #tolkien #the untamed #movies #music #books #food

[larougie]

caffeine stains and library books

genre: college/coffee shop au

pairing(s): bang chan

word count: 3.2k

description: With college kicking your ass, what exactly are you meant to do, when you spill that fifth cup of coffee over that very. Very. Expensive textbook. Apparently he didn’t have any good ideas either.

Finals were going to be the death of you.

You were seriously considering the option of dropping out and just working in a supermarket for the rest of your life, and it had gotten to the point where breaking into the office for the test answers wasn't seeming like such a bad idea. You'd been renting a tiny studio apartment for the last two years, but the limited floor space was currently overtaken by piles and piles of notebooks and loose sheets of paper with rushed notes scribbled over them. Your old textbooks with folder corners and bashed ends were all stacked against the wall in a corner beside your bed, and you only took one out from the pile at a time. Those books were worth more than your life at this point, and you swore to yourself that you’d never lose them. But currently, the one book you were poring over wasn’t even yours. 

Eventually, you knew that the rent payments and college fees would catch up with you - especially considering your current lack of employment - but you had hoped that your bank account would hold out until after the final exams and until you could go job hunting in the summer break. As fate would have it, it was a little bitch, and you had no such luck. You had a few options before you had to start selling kidneys, but none of them seemed appealing and you simply just did not possess enough hours in the day. Of course, there was always one major expense on your debit card every month, but you weren't sure if you were ready to give that one up.

Turns out, you were perfectly content to use textbooks borrowed from the library and return them after the exams, as long as it meant that you didn’t have to stop going to the little cute coffee shop a few minutes off campus. You spent most days frequenting that cafe, sitting in the corner with your old laptop and the borrowed books, sipping on a coffee way too hot for your taste buds. Now, when you had called your best friend, asking for advice on what to do because you were about to lose your apartment, he had, of course offered the logical solution of - Stop spending so much money on coffee. 

But you had a dilemma. 

See, you told Minho that you studied in the corner of the cafe because the atmosphere was calm, it helped you focus, and to not buy a coffee would be incredibly rude, but he knows you very well. Too well, actually, it's quite terrifying sometimes. You definitely weren't going to the coffee shop to stare at the cute barista who had been working there for the past few months, that was definitely not why you were spending extra, unnecessary money on coffee. Or, that's what you tried to convince Minho of at least.

It wasn't a one sided infatuation though, and that was your saving grace in this situation. You'd been dropping into this specific cafe for about a year now, after trying all around the campus to find a decent cup of coffee that wasn't overloaded with sugar. Even before the barista boy had added himself into the mix, you knew that this was going to become a regular addiction, and his addition to the staff only cemented that fact. You really wish you had the guts to ask his name, because he already knows yours. However the universe worked, he always seemed to be working when you came in at random hours of the day, and he always seemed happy to take your order at the register. Give it a few weeks, and as soon as you entered the cafe through the small door, he was ringing up your coffee on the machines behind him. You were his “regular”, as the other staff members liked to tease him. 

Sometimes, when the cafe quiets down in the later hours of the evening, he’ll still be working and you’ll still be typing up that essay that was due in a few hours. He’ll put on some music from his phone, and put it into a small glass to amplify the sound so you could hear it. The first time he’d done it, he’d been constantly checking back at you to see if the volume was annoying you or if you were looking at him. To be honest, at first the music did distract you a little bit, but you were too enamoured with the way the boy danced quietly to the music as he cleaned down the tables to ask him to turn it off. 

Soon enough, most of the songs he played you had made their way onto your study playlist. You put your earbuds in and listened to the music as you studied in the cafe, and when the barista turned on his own playlist - only then would you remove them. He’d always catch you staring at him as the cafe began to empty, the unspoken question of “are you going to put your music on soon?”

You’d always turn bright red when he caught you staring, and look away so fast it should have given you whiplash. You figured that he never approached you about it because it was too awkward of a topic and you had made him feel too uncomfortable. The truth was, he did want to talk to you, but he had neither a reason nor the confidence to stroll up and strike a conversation. He had noticed that one of the textbooks you often dragged with you to the corner looked oddly familiar, but he guessed it was because he had taken that class as a junior last year, and shoved the thought to the back of his mind.

You were five or six cups of pure caffeine into the study session, and before you looked up you already could tell it was getting too dark for three pm. As you lifted your eyes from the screen in front of you for the first time in a while, and rolled your head back onto your shoulders, your wandering eyes caught sight of the time displayed on your laptop. Oh. Oh. The cafe is closed now. Had been for about twenty minutes. You turned your head quickly around the shop, looking for people and found no one. You wondered why no member of staff had come up to you yet asking you to kindly leave the building, but they all seemed to be preoccupied behind the kitchen doors. Seeing an ideal time for an unnoticed escape, you packed up all your things in record time, shoving them haphazardly into your bag and bolted out that door. The chime might have alerted the staff to someone leaving, but by the time anyone had made it to the front counter to see the door - you were long gone.

Pulling an all nighter was never a fun proposition, but you undertook the task more often than you’d like to admit. See, your reasoning behind that was Procrastination was key to a passing grade, and, yes, so far that certain theory hasn't failed you, but it was definitely taking a toll on your mental health. But, you dug your own grave, time to lie in it.

You take it back, you hate this. It's four am. What's the treble clef. Tchaikovsky is that you. All the notes are one big long line. Minho send assistance. 

Its official, university is going to kill you and tonight is the night you finally keel over. Rubbing your eyes you roll back the chair you've been curled up in and lift your arms to stretch over your head- 

Your hand hit something. Probably a pencil. Or that water bottle. You lifted one eyelid slowly, peering at the offending object. Oh the coffee mug, yeah that makes sense you don't drink water. The coffee mug that was now slowly pouring the cold brown liquid over the textbook that was open at the top of your desk. The textbook that you couldn’t afford to buy yourself because you were a broke college student and rent and living expenses took priority. 

It took a moment to register.

Oh no. oh christ, you had to return this back to the library in a few days - you couldn’t pay another late fee! The lady at the library desk really didn't like you, and always seemed to go out of her way to make you pay the full fee, despite you showing her your student ID multiple times. It was probably because you never returned books on time, but that was beside the point, isn't she meant to be understanding? You were a uni student for crying out loud, the stress. 

The point was, you had now completely destroyed a very, very expensive textbook that you didn’t have the money to replace - the words were bleeding into each other and slowly becoming illegible right before your eyes. The librarian was going to hang your head from the archway. You re-iterate, college was going to kill you. Just maybe, not in the way you expected.

Picking up the phone, you frantically press on the first contact you see.

“Minho?”

“Sup dumbass.”

“I’d bitch at you, but it's fitting for the situation, help me. Please.”

“... Who’s dead.”

“NO ONE’S DEAD I JUST- murdered a very expensive textbook that I don’t have the money to replace, and the librarian is signing my death warrant.”

Minho sucked in a breath from the other end of the phone. “Eesh y/n, you sure it wasn’t one of those loan-on-loan books from the last shelf?”

You press the phone between your shoulder and your ear, snagging the paper between your fingers and pulling the hard-bound book towards yourself. You pushed the pens and pencils out of your way and sent them scattering onto the floor in your haste, and flipped to the back of the cover to see the words On Student Loan.

“About that,” you mumbled, crumpling your head into your hands as the phone clattered to the desk beside you. You could hear Minho laughing on the other end, and you huffed to yourself. “I called you to give me advice, you horrible person, not to lauGH at my misery.”

“Okay okay I,” Minho tried to catch his breath, coughing slightly, “It's not the end of the world, is it? It's a Library book. Explain it to the lady at the desk, I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Sure, Min. Thanks.”

“No problem, babes.”

“Ew no.”

“Whatever babes.”

You hung up the phone with a sigh, and let your head hit the desk again, before yelping as the wood left a red mark on your skin. It couldn’t have been just a normal library book? The universe has to hate you right now? No, instead it had to be one of those stupid textbooks that seniors lent to the library from past courses for the younger years to borrow. It was someone else’s book. That they had bought and studied from, and were expecting to get back from the library once the year was over. In the top corner of the stamp, the senior’s name who gave it to the library was printed - Bang Chan.

That was familiar, wasn’t it? You had heard that name being called out around somewhere, by a group of boys. You rattled your brain around, trying to think where you had heard that name before - you knew it sounded like you’d heard it before. In your lectures, on the roll? No, he was a senior and he wouldn’t be in any of your classes. Around on campus wouldn’t make any sense, you walked around with music on all the time, you couldn’t hear when people called your own name out, let alone anyone else’s. 

In the? Cafe? Possible. Very possible. Well, it's worth a shot, he could be a friend of someone who works there. 

What you planned to do once you had found this Bang Chan is beyond you, but you had a general idea of apologizing profusely, attempting to stutter out an explanation between that and tossing in a promise to repay him for destroying it but just not right then because you didn’t have money, hence why you can’t just buy your own textbook and not borrow ones from the library. Hopefully, he’d be a nice enough guy and won’t take your destruction of his music book to heart. Hopefully. 

So, come the next morning, you took one last long look at the destroyed pile of papers held together on your table - still waiting to wake up from this nightmare - and left your apartment with your bag swung over your shoulder. You locked the door behind you, and began the short walk into your first hour of lectures. 

You knew you couldn’t get to the cafe before two pm, but that didn’t stop you from checking the clock every few minutes to see if there was a chance you could dag out of the hall. Five past one turned into ten past two, and by the time your lecturer was finishing up her last slide you were already turning off your laptop and putting it away into your bag. 

Your heart was in your mouth as you walked slowly up to the cafe. You didn’t even know why you were so nervous, but you guessed it was just because of a guilty conscience. Pushing open the door slowly, you looked up from your shoes and instantly made eye contact with the one, the only. Barista boy. 

Great, this is going to be embarrassing. 

Swallowing your pride, and your slight disappointment that your first real conversation with the guy is going to be about looking to find another boy, you began to move up towards the counter where he was standing.

“Your usual?” He asked, with a small smile.

“I, uh. No actually, I was wondering. Do you know if - of, sorry, of. Do you know of a Bang Chan, by any chance? I think he studies music in my university.” Your hands were fumbling with each other in front of your hoodie.

The boy in front of you furrowed his brow slightly and tilted his head, stating “Present?”

Oh cool, you destroyed a cute barista boy’s textbook who is actually Chan, the guy you’ve been looking for is the guy you’ve been thirsting over. Great stuff. That's the end of you. Rip in pieces.

After that, you started blabbering out everything. Word vomit, and no stomach medication was stopping this. 

“Christ okay, this is gonna sound absolutely horrible, but did you lend one of your music theory textbooks to the library by any chance? Well, heh, of course you did, I have it and I was using it for a while - like for study not for anything else that would be weird - I’m a music major you see, and I - the textbooks are really expensive this year? And I just couldn't afford them with my rent as well but you obviously don’t care about that bit-”

He put up a hand to stop you, and you took a deep breath. Softly, he said, “Yeah, I remember I left some of my older textbooks in the library because I didn’t need them for notes anymore. Is there a problem with one of them?”

You stop. 

“Well, yes? Technically? But it's totally my fault - you see, a few night ago i kinda, totally on accident destroyed the book when I spilt coffee over it, and I’m so sorry, i really am and I promise I’ll find the money to repay you for the book, I just don’t have that kind of cash on me right now, I’m so sorry.”

Chan pursed his lips, looking at you with his head lifted up slightly. He chuckled softly. Oh boy he’s so mad, there went your chance at dating the cute barista boy, because newsflash he’s going to hate you for the rest of your life and, you looked again at his face. He was smiling now. The small lips had broken into a beaming smile that spread across his face like sunshine on a stupidly adorable field of flowers. 

“You know i've been waiting for a reason to talk to you for the last few weeks.”

His voice broke the rushing of your thoughts around your head, and you flipped your eyes up to meet his in shock.

“So now it kinda seems like you owe me a favour right?”

Words. Come on words.

“Uh, yeah i guess? I'll have the money for you as soon as possible. I promise I'm so sorry-” you stammered out, clearly confused by the situation but still extremely grateful that he was taking the news of his mutilated music book so well.

“It's okay! Seriously, I never used that thing anyway. But instead of paying me back for the book, how about we say you just - owe me a favour?”

Your bank account screamed at you to say yes, so you did.

“Uh, sure?”

When you said you'd owe him a favor, this isn’t what you had meant. 

“CHAN I'M GOING TO KILL YOU.”

He only laughs at your threats, running around the back of the sofa and tossing a pillow at your face to block your view. You bat it away in frustration, rejoining the chase, and your socks skid on the wooden flooring as you slide around the furniture in pursuit of your assailant. Chan runs into the bedroom and closes the door, you hot on his heels and you reach the door seconds after it clicks shut. As you slam open the door, and skid into the room, you stop in your tracks. You survey your surroundings, looking for any indication of where the menace could be hiding. The curtains twitch from the wind coming through the open window, and you shift your stance to face the billowing fabric. When your guard is down, he takes his chance. 

With a strangled battle cry, Chan leaps out from behind the door and tackles you down in one swift movement. You fall with an ungraceful yelp onto your bedsheets, banging your knee on the foot of the bed as you tumble into a heap. You land on your back, the breath knocked out of you as Chan sits triumphantly atop your legs, pinning them down. He smiles down at you like the angel that he is. 

Staring amusedly back up at him, you jerk your uninjured knee, flipping the two of you over so you were on top and he was staring up at you. You tilt your head, and smile at him like he had smiled at you, and the two of you break out into laughter.

“You made me hurt my knee.”

“I didn't make you do anything.”

“Wow, such care. Such emotion. Much love. Not even an offer to kiss it better.”

“I think i have a better idea.”

 Yeah, maybe this wasn't exactly what you had in mind, but by god, was it a million times better.

You still had that library book by the way. It was sitting underneath your desk, caffeine stains and all.

#stray kids #stay #jyp #jyp entertainment #bang chan #lee minho #minho #chan #chris bang #lee know #changbin #CB97 #3racha #hwang hyunjin #hyunjin #skz #jisung #han jisung #lee felix #lee yongbok #felix #kim seungmin #yang jeongin #seungmin #jeongin #stray kids imagines #stray kids reactions #timestamps #kpop #kpop additional member au

[jamlally]

Sleigh Ride

This was written for the 25 days of Christmas Challenge that is hosted by  @panicfob .  The Day 4 Challenge prompt was Sleigh Ride

Warnings: Fluff 

Pairing:  OFC x Tony Stark

Summary: Belle gets a magical surprise at the Stark Christmas Party 

The annual Stark Christmas Party wasn’t Belle’s idea of a great way to spend the evening. While she was undoubtably getting more comfortable with the other members of the team, having to circulate with members of SHIELD and what ever other rich folks Tony had invited left her feeling like it would be her idea of actual hell.  It felt like such a bad idea that she was praying for there to be some kind of emergency mission to come up so that she could get out of going.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Tony, no one is going to notice whether your mission analyst is there”. 

“I will notice that my friend isn’t there” Even when he wasn’t looking (his head was currently inside the latest iteration of his suit) He managed to make her feel like he was focused on her.  She was sure that he was only half way interested in what she was saying.

“Look, we both know that I’m just going say something stupid and then I’ll feel like an ass”

With a sigh Tony pulled himself back out of the chest cavity and laid down what ever tool he was using before spinning round on his stool

“I get that it’s not fun for you to attend these  but you are a part of the team and I want people to see that.  You matter to us and I won’t have the rest of the us upstairs having a good time and you languishing down in your apartment.  You love Christmas ! I mean god knows why what with all the glitter and schmultz, but you do. This is a part of Christmas with the team” Hands extended in supplication  and a big grin on his face made Tony nearly irresistible, his charm in full force.  When ever he pulled something like this Belle understood how he could get any woman (or man) that he wanted.

“Sure, sure.  See when I make an ass of myself you will owe me”. Belle shook her head before heading out of the lab and back to the reports that she needed to start working through

“I’ll have F.R.I.D.A.Y send you a reminder so that you’re not late” Tony’s voice laughingly called out before the door could shut.  Belle just shook her head 

Dressed in a floor length dark red dress Belle checked her appearance once more before heading out.  She had tied her hair back with a ribbon and curled the ends and YouTube provided videos that showed her how to complete a simple makeup job.  She wasn’t going to look as glamorous as Nat or the other women, but she figured that she looked passable. One final look over and she opened her door.

The ballroom in the guest area of the compound had been decorated to look like a Winter Wonderland.  There were icebergs (some of which where actually made of ice), snowflakes and stars as far as the eye could see.  The bar and wait staff were dressed as either reindeers or elves and moved seamlessly between the guests.  Belle shook her head, she had known that it was likely the party would be over the top, but she hadn’t been prepared for all this.

Buck and Steve had introduced Belle to Rhodey and despite his serious face she had found him to be a lot of fun.  He had explained that he was currently working with the UN but hoped to be back at the compound in the new year.  Thor had been around with a bevy of beautiful women and had raised a glass in her direction.  She had seen Bruce and Nat and Wanda and Clint all mingling with the guests in pairs, but the man of the hour and host for the whole thing was nowhere to be found much to the annoyance of many of the attendees.

Belle had done her best to circulate, largely sticking by one of the other Avengers as they kept too much attention from being diverted her way.  Not wanting to cramp their style she had taken herself to the bar under the guise she needed another drink. Taking a second to empty her glass she declined another and decided she would do one more circuit of the floor and then head back to her rooms.

“Lady Belle, come join us!”. Thor waved in her direction wildly “Rogers was just telling me all about this strange tradition that you all have here of a fat man who brings gifts but only if your are good.  It’s a funny tale - I was thinking back on Asguard I could get some of the others to put on a play for the people as part of the celebrations. Maybe Baldur could play the part.”

“Well yes Santa or Father Christmas is a pretty traditional part of Christmas here, along with his reindeer.  Have you read ’Twas the Night Before Christmas? If not I’ll find you a copy and maybe a book of some of the other Christmas legends from around Earth, then you will have lots of things to take back and share”. 

“Splendid! You are truly a great help. Though tell me what is this reindeer? Sargent Barnes said that is what these people are dressed as - I fail to see what would let them help him deliver presents, unless it is that they are thinner and so fit down the chimney better?”

“Did I hear someone mention Reindeer because I know that Reindeer games was not on the the invite list tonight”

“Ah Stark - No Loki is not here - though I am sure he is causing much mischief somewhere else.  I was just asking the Lady Belle about why Reindeer were important for the fat man to deliver presents”

The small group turned to face Tony who was dressed in what could only be described as a high end, well fitting Armani Suit which bore a startling resemblance to the costume the man in red would usually wear. 

“Things seem to be going well despite my needing to be bored by people who want to tell me all the things that they feel the Avengers should be addressing.  Gentlemen you all look very handsome and Ladies you look beautiful and Snowflake” He turned to look at Belle more directly “You truly are the Belle of the ball”. 

The line was cheesy and designed to make people laugh but Belle couldn’t help but duck her head and blush a little. 

“Now I am afraid that I need to steal you for just a moment Snowflake, so if you all will excuse us” 

Tony extended his arm, elbow bent waiting for Belle to take his arm before walking towards the dance floor

“Um Tony i… I really don’t know how to dance”

Glancing from the corner of her eye she saw a flash of a smile before he squeezed her hand that was resting in the crook of his arm.  

“Relax Snowflake - I won’t let you fall”

People of course moved out of his way  to let him find his place and the music changed to something soft and light before Tony turned to hold Belle in a more formal stance . 

Belle drew in a deep breath and gave him a nervous smile and waited for him to begin to lead.   It turned out that Tony was a pretty good at making her not look like a fool, she only stood on his foot a couple of times before the dance ended. 

As the final chord rang out Tony spun Belle out and then back in to him causing her to give a small laugh.

“Thank you Tony, that was a lot of fun”

“Of course Snowflake.  I have to admit that I do need some help with eh final masterpiece of the evening and I was wondering if you would assist?  It’s with the sleigh”. He gestured over to where a large model of Santa’s sleigh stood.  It had been used throughout the night as a photo prop and the guests had seemed very impressed with it.  Belle couldn’t help but notice it had been painted in the same colors as Tony’s suit.

“Of course” Belle nodded , what do you need me to do?”

Tony tugged her hand gently “ I just need you to come with me”. He turned and lead her over to the sleigh where he started to remove the decorative rope around it.  The hand on her back guided Belle up and inside the sleigh before Tony followed her up.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Thank you for coming to our Winter Wonderland.  Throughout the nights festivities our lovely elves have been collecting donations and we will be be announcing the final totals shortly. In order to not be outdone Stark Industries will be matching your donations tonight before making a donation of Christmas gifts to the Parents and Children at the Cancer Hospital .  Your generosity was lovely, your company a delight, but now I am afraid I need to say - farewell”

Belle watched as Tony pressed a button and the sleigh began to rumble and almost vibrate 

“Tony!” 

“Just smile Snowflake” Tony wore a huge grin, this was obviously a part of his grande finale 

Belle gripped hold of the edges of her seat as the rumbling increased and then, to her utter amazement the sleigh rose in the air.  The crowd around gasped and clapped as Tony sat himself down

“F.R.I.D.A.Y - it’s time for us to check out” he spoke to the AI as the sleigh moved towards the large floor to ceiling windows of the ballroom.  Just when Belle feared they would crash the glass pulled back and the sleigh went through.

Sitting on the roof of the compound wrapped in a soft blanket Tony had produced Belle couldn’t help but laugh.  

“Tony that was marvelous, the looks on their faces.  How on Earth did you work out how to do this?”

The man shrugged “Its a modification of the Quinn Jet really and a little of the thrusters that we use on my suit, and probably a bit of how we get Sam’s wings to work.  I mean it took a little finagling and a few adjustments and ta-da one functional sleigh “  he gestured to their current location “ It doesn’t exactly have range but I thought it would be a nice way to deliver the gifts to the kids and tonight seemed like a good place to test it”

“What was your plan if it didn’t work, or it exploded?”

“Well at least I went out with a bang” he shrugged “I was pretty sure it wouldn’t though. I know that I take risks but I don’t want anyone else hurt”

“I understand Tony and if I didn’t trust you then I wouldn’t of gotten into this thing to start with”. Belle turned to face him 

“Thats the thing Snowflake you need to understand that I never want you hurt.  I know you hate dealing with people, but you need to be able to be around ta group without freaking out.  I had wanted to be there at the party with you, to make sure you were ok, but it looks like the others looked out for you”

“ They did, They introduced me to Colonel Rhodes and the other guests were interesting, but I don’t think that big parties are ever going to be my thing”

“Well you looked amazing all dressed up” Tony started to rake through the back of the sleigh “I never thought of you wearing red but it is absolutely stunning on you… Ha there you are!”  Slipping back down into his seat he brandished a thermos flask.

“I have a confession to make.  I asked F.R.I.D.A.Y how you made that hot chocolate from movie night and then whipped up a little batch of my own”

Belle laughed “It wasn’t a secret Tony - if you’d of asked I would have given you the recipe. I’d even of made up a batch”

“Well yes that would have been an option, Hold this” He handed Belle a cup  balancing the thermos between his knees before sprinkling some mini marshmallows on top “but sometimes it’s easier to not ask.  There is less of a risk of being told no”

Belle lifted her cup taking a careful sip before coughing in surprise 

“Ah yes I added a little something myself, a nightcap if you will”. 

Belle hummed in pleasure taking a second sip, this time enjoying the bite of what she guessed was a very good, very old scotch.  They sat quietly looking out over the city and its sparkling lights.

Belle gave a small yawn, the drink and warmth from the blanket making her drowsy “I’m not sure if I ever told you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me since I joined the team, but I do appreciate it”

“It’s purely selfish you know. Don’t you be thinking that I’m really a good man”. While his tone was light  Belle could sense that on some level he might believe some of what he said

“You know Tony, as much as you might want to hide it, or push it down, you’ll always be a good man to me” another yawn made its way passed her lips “You’re not perfect, but who among us is.  We all make mistakes and you are trying to make up for yours - hell you even built a sleigh to deliver gifts to sick kids.  You’re …..a……..good…man”

Tony glanced down to see Belle, cheeks flushed and eyes closed, her breathing leveling out.  Taking a final drink from the flask he tucked it and the cup away before wrapping his arm over her shoulder and pulling her closer so her head rested on his chest.  Pressing a lingering kiss to the crown of her head he relaxed back and closed his eyes for just as second, enjoying the peace and feeling of calm that surrounded him.

“You make me want to be better Snowflake”

#panic's 25 days of christmas #oneshot #christmas

[carryonsimoncarryonbaz]

Chapter 10 of Never Tear Us Apart is up!!! And there is a PLAYLIST just for this chapter! Read the chapter at AO3. Find the playlist on Spotify!

Baz

I call Father when Simon goes out for a much-needed run.

Now that he’s not escaping magickal creatures or fighting for his life on a regular basis anymore, Simon needs some way to vent all his pent-up energy. Running does that for him. I spelled his wings and tail invisible with Bunce’s droid spell before he left, so I’m sure to have at least a half-hour to myself while he works out his frustrations on the pavement.

Maybe longer today.

My hands are trembling as I dial Father’s number. I’m putting up a good front for Simon but this revelation has shaken me to my core. I’m striving to think rationally but there is an edge of bitter anger and dread tinging my thoughts.

How is this possible? How is Simon the Mage’s sole heir?

Why now?

After a prolonged and uncomfortable silence at my revelations, my father is able to provide some insight on at least one of those questions.

The Coven had contact from the Mage’s solicitors initially, not long after his death. Apparently, the Mage had failed to respond to correspondence from them (obviously hard for him to respond to mail from beyond the Veil) (they seemingly knew better than to attempt to reach him by email) (the Mage truly was technology averse).

The solicitors had finally contacted Watford and Headmistress Bunce, who sent them along to the Coven. The Coven had temporised until they completed their inquiry and then eventually dispatched the Mage’s belongings and files to Wales, after what my father describes as an intense and laborious magickal forensic evaluation of the items.

I don’t know what that means.

“It means the books, files, computers, all went through a thorough scan for hexes, charms, magickal residue, before being shipped off. Nothing concerning turned up, according to Wellbelove,” my father tells me.

“Who checked them?” This is relevant. Not all mages are cognizant of the more dubious magic that exists. I wouldn’t put it past the Mage to have indulged in banned spells and all manner of nefarious activities.

My father sighs. “Mitali Bunce did the first sweep, when she took over his office. Martin had a chance to look them over as well, along with Cressida Irons, and then Aloysius Gore did the final evaluation.”

Cressida Irons and Aloysius Gore. They certainly pulled in the experts. Gore is a world authority on dark magic, while Irons has published most of the current research on hexes and banned spells. My grip on my mobile loosens slightly at his words.

“Basilton, I’d like to examine the documents in question. If Simon is agreeable that is.”

“He’s more than agreeable. He’d probably prefer you took the whole bloody mess off his hands.” Honestly, I would too. But I made Simon a promise to sort this and I intend to keep it. “Simon wants nothing to do with this.” I pause and then continue. “It’s shaken him up a bit.”

Father sighs again. “I am sure it has. Understandably. I don’t know what game Llewellyn was playing, but he has certainly interfered enough in the boy’s life. I hope, if nothing else, sorting this puts the matter to rest once and for all.”

“I don’t understand how Simon is his sole heir. Surely, the Mage had other family? Simon isn’t even related to him. It makes no sense.”

“I’m rather certain that’s why this letter to Simon has surfaced now. The solicitors have likely chased every other eventuality. I’ll understand it better once I see the documents.”

“We can come anytime.”

“If you come tomorrow, I can look them over with you both and then call for reinforcement if needed on Monday. Will that work? It won’t disrupt your weekend plans to come to the lodge?”

“Any weekend plans have already been derailed by this mess.” I pause and wonder if I can confide this to my father. Bunce isn’t here and there is no one else who really knows what Simon was like last spring. Other than Dr. Wellbelove and I don’t intend to call him. “He’s regressed a bit, Father.”

I hear his intake of breath. “How much is a bit, Basilton?”

“Not as bad as initially. But he’s back to blinking out in the middle of a conversation. And staring at nothing. Not as pronounced as it was, but he hasn’t been like this for months.”

“Understood. Do you need to call Wellbelove or that American counsellor?”

I shake my head and then mentally upbraid myself for it. Father can’t see me. “No. Not yet, at least.”

“Come to the lodge tomorrow. Daphne and the children will find ways to distract Simon. You and I can sort through the papers.” I can hear tapping through the line. It’s a tell that my father is more agitated than he is letting on, if he’s drumming his fingers on his desk. “I may want a solicitor review the documents.”

“I don’t think Simon would have any objection. Who are you thinking of consulting?” My father has a few solicitors—personal and business.

“Oliver Salisbury.”

“Oliver Salisbury?” That’s not a name I expected to hear.

“He’s very well versed in Normal law, particularly inheritance. He bridges the gap between Normal and Magickal law better than anyone I know. I think his input would be beneficial.”

Oliver Salisbury. Lady Salisbury’s son. I had no idea he was a solicitor.

“Whatever you think best. I’ll speak to Simon and let you know when to expect us.”

“Anytime is fine, Basilton.” Father pauses before continuing. His voice is softer when he resumes speaking. “Give Simon my best. Tell him we’ll get this sorted.”

I end up tidying Simon’s kitchen while I wait for him to return. I’ve got too much nervous energy myself today. The dishes are in the rack, the floor is swept, and I’ve reorganized Bunce’s spice rack by the time Simon returns.

He’s a glorious mess. Hair tousled and sweat-slicked, face red with exertion, heat radiating from him like it used to at Watford.

“You have a good run, love?”

Simon nods. “I went farther today but I don’t think it did the trick. I still feel like a live wire. Like my skin’s too tight.”

I sweep the hair off his forehead, ignoring the slick sensation of it, and place a kiss on his heated temple. “Go take a shower and cool off.”

“Did you speak to your father?”

Simon’s not letting me divert him with the shower. “Yes. Father said to come anytime. He’ll look at the documents and let us know what he thinks.” I put my hand on his chest, feeling the humid moisture of his drenched t-shirt, the warmth of his skin beneath it, the steady beat of his heart. “We can go whenever you want. Today, tonight, tomorrow. Your call.”

His brow furrows in thought and I reach up with my other hand to smooth the crease from his forehead. “You don’t have to decide right this minute. Go take a shower and we’ll figure out the logistics when you’re done. Off with you. You’re a disgusting mess.” I soften my words with a brush of my lips to his and Simon grasps my shoulders and pulls me closer to deepen the kiss.

I inhale the scent of him—not the familiar, fiery, burnt smell he used to have, but the green, sharp scent he has now. Fresh like new-mown grass, even with the muskiness of his sweat overlaying it. Clean and crisp. As intoxicating as ever, even without the tinge of magic.

He pulls away and scrunches his nose at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to slime you. I’m all grotty.”

I lean in and kiss his nose. “I should be used to it by now.”

I get a snort in answer, then Simon heads to the shower to clean up.

It’s plain to see he’s still on edge. Understandably so. I don’t think the run did as much for his agitation as I’d hoped.  

I sink down onto the sofa and flick through my mobile.

Should I?

I wonder.

I swipe through my playlists. I know it’s still on here. It’s the one thing that’s remained a constant on my mobile, through every upgrade and iteration.

The Emergency Dance Party playlist.

Of course, it was Fiona’s idea, all those years ago. A way to release energy and tension and forget about whatever was troubling me at the time. She filled a playlist with upbeat dance music and when those times hit me—at Pitch Manor or when I’d visit her at her flat in London—she’d turn the music up and we’d dance until we’d drop.

She made me do it last year. After everything. She’d come to Watford on a Friday afternoon and whisked me away to London, completely ignoring my protests and complaints. I told her I needed to be with Simon, that I had no time for gallivanting about with her.

“No way, boyo. Not this weekend. This weekend you’re with me. Enough of this moping around. We’re going to watch stupid rom-coms and eat crisps and ice cream on the sofa, and dance the night away.”

And that’s what we did.

It was just what I needed. Fiona has a way of shaking me up and unsettling me. It drives me mad at the time but I always feel better after.

I’ve not told anyone about the playlist. Even Dev and Niall don’t know about it and they’ve known me forever.

But I think Fiona’s playlist might be exactly what Simon needs right now.

He comes out of the shower, hair still damp and curls going every which way. He sinks down onto the sofa next to me but doesn’t relax. His leg is jiggling, and he keeps fidgeting at my side.

Right. Emergency Dance Party it is.

I pair my mobile with the stereo and stand up.

“What’re you doing?” Simon sits forward to watch me move the coffee table to the far side of the room.

“Making some room.”

“Room for what?”

“You’ll see.”

I click the ‘play’ button and the opening strains of Dexy’s Midnight Runners ‘Come on, Eileen’ surge out of the speakers.

“What’re you doing?” Simon repeats.

I hold out my hand to him. “Get up.”

He frowns and stays seated.

“Get up. We interrupt this interval of moping for an Emergency Dance Party.”

His eyebrows go up and his eyes widen. “A what?”

“Emergency Dance Party. Get up. I’m not about to do a Billy Idol and just dance with myself.” I grab his hands and pull him to a stand.

He gapes at me, mouth open, eyes wide, and I can’t help but laugh at his expression. “Simon. For Crowley’s sake. I’m asking you to dance with me.”

He continues to gawk at me so I shake my head and start to dance along to the music. It’s a hodge-podge of 70s and 80s music, but the overarching theme of it all is a strong beat and a danceable melody.

I reach out for his hand and pull him to the middle of the room. “Anyone can dance to this, Simon. Just move your feet and let go.”

And astoundingly, he does. It’s tentative and off-beat, but he’s shuffling his feet and swaying a bit.

I’ve only properly danced with Simon once. At the leavers ball. He was atrocious. He can’t follow a lead to save his life and he’s utterly unable to stay on beat. It was simultaneously the most excruciating and endearing dance of my life.

I love to dance. Few people know this. I’ve never advertised the fact, for obvious reasons. It would have undermined my carefully cultivated persona.

Dev, Niall, and I would head to London occasionally to go dancing in the summers and on some weekends seventh year. There are very few good all-ages clubs in London, but quite a few fantastic over-19 ones. Carefully obtained alternative identification made those accessible to us.

Fiona has connections. You learn not to ask too many questions.

‘Come on Eileen’ fades into Depeche Modes’ ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ and I let myself succumb to the music. I can see Simon valiantly trying to keep pace with me, flushed and glowing, a fierce look of concentration on his face.

Crowley, he is so fucking magnificent. He catches my eyes and gives me a shrug. I nod my head to the beat. “That’s it. Just fucking let go, Simon. Let it all go.”

The music shifts again. I throw my head back and close my eyes and let the music take me.

Simon

I try to do what Baz says at first. Dance along to the music. It’s a great playlist. I can’t believe I’ve never found this on Baz’s phone before. I had no idea he liked ABBA.

Or Def Leppard.

Those thoughts flit through my brain, which has been totally derailed by the sight in front of me.

The music continues. I know Baz said it’s a dance mix and that I’m supposed to be dancing, but how can I do that? How can I do anything but stare at him?

He’s stunning. He’s stunning all the time, the prat, but this . . . I’ve never seen Baz like this. I’ve never seen him move like this.

He’s got his head thrown back, eyes closed, the long line of his neck exposed, body moving sinuously to the music, shoulders shifting, hips swaying.

Baz said this should help relieve some of my pent-up tension. It’s doing fuck-all for my shoulders and everything to create tension somewhere else.

Mainly in my pants.

Baz is breathtaking and all I can think is how fucking fortunate I am that I get to see this side of him.

Fuck.

I’ve been trying to shuffle around, but it’s awkward. I can’t dance. I’m shit at it. Ask Baz. He had to deal with my two sodding left feet at the leavers ball. The wings and tail make matters even worse.

But Baz. Baz moves like the music was made for him. I’ve watched him when he plays his violin. Music does this to Baz. He immerses himself in it but I’ve never seen him give himself over so completely.

A memory comes back to me with a crystal-clear clarity.

“What are you going to tell her? She’ll want to know why you drove up to London. Some reason other than asking about Nicodemus.”

“I’ll tell Fiona I’m going dancing.”

“And she’ll believe that?”

Baz had leveled me with a glare. “Of course, she’ll believe that.”

“That something you do then? Dance?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around that at all.

He had raised one eyebrow, the tit. “I do a lot of things, Snow.”

Baz. Dancing. I’d wondered then if it was some ballroom dance club he’d go to. Full of posh ponces dancing with socialites.

I don’t think it was a ballroom dance club.

Fuck.

It’s obvious to me now that Baz likes to dance. Loves it, if this is any indication. He’s never mentioned it, never said a word about it, not once since we’ve been together.

An image of Baz in a club, music throbbing and pulsating around him, the dim lights highlighting his features, his body swaying to the pounding beat, runs through my mind.

I’d like to see that.

I am seeing that.

“You’re supposed to be dancing, Simon. That’s the point of this. Pent-up energy, remember.” Baz’s eyes are open now but he’s still moving to the music.

It’s distracting as hell.

Who the fuck is this singing? It’s some deep-voiced, growly singer and the words and music aren’t helping with my situation. At all.

This playlist is not what I expected from Fiona and Baz. It’s not dark enough. There hasn’t even been one Smiths song.

I suppose it’s not easy to dance to the Smiths.

He’s closer to me now, dancing right in front of me.

“Come on, Simon. It’s just us. Loosen up.”

“You know I can’t dance, Baz.” Merlin, this singer is going to drive me mad. It’s like lust incarnate, this song.

So is Baz.

“Doesn’t matter. Just let go. Move to the beat and don’t worry about it. Crowley, just do what I do.”

There is absolutely no chance I could ever move my hips that way. None.

He takes my hand in his, cool fingers lacing through mine. “Come on, do what I do.”

Baz pulls me closer and I try to shuffle my feet.

“Who is this? This singer?”

“You like it?”

“He should be fucking illegal.”

Baz laughs. “It’s Terence Trent D’Arby. Wishing Well.”

“Well, I know what I’d wish for.”

Baz moves even closer. We’re practically grinding at this point. I close my eyes and let myself focus just on him, the feel of him against my body, the way he moves, the scent of him.

“And what would that be, Simon?” His words are a breath against my lips.

“You, you fucking sexy bastard. Always you.”

Baz huffs a laugh. “I think you’re getting the hang of this finally.” His hands come to rest on my hips and we’re moving together, to the beat. Chest to chest, my leg between his, every nerve alight.

“I could get used to this.” His eyebrow goes up at my words.

“Used to what?”

“To this. You . . . you dancing like this.”

“Hmm. I could get used to it too, I suppose.”

“I never knew you liked to dance, Baz. You’ve never said a thing about it.”

“Didn’t seem to come up.”

The song ends and another comes on, faster and with a pounding beat that I feel in my chest. Baz throws his head back again and I can’t help but lean in to run my lips along his collarbone, up to his jaw and to that place behind his ear that makes him shiver.

He grinds into me and grins. “You’re defiling my childhood playlist, Simon.”

I pull back. “Sorry.”

“Shut up, you nightmare. It’s having the intended effect. Now come here and kiss me again.” He leans down and his lips find mine. My eyes close and it all drifts away—the Mage, the will, the questions fade into nothingness.

All I feel is Baz.  

[stormquill]

Misconduct, Ch. 11 [Soldier 76/Reader]

You have an extremely inappropriate crush on your commanding officer. Maybe if you work hard enough, you’ll stop having feelings.

[ AO3 Link ]

Author's Notes: Collaboration with @antiloquist. Follow the blog @ http://miss-conduct.tumblr.com/

Chapter Notes: look man it's been a solid year and a half i don't really have anything to say for myself lmao

The dead of night gave you plenty of cover as you kept perched atop your roof, overlooking the harbour.

Several days of recon had pointed to the indication that Amélie would be prepped for transport tonight, smuggled aboard one of the many ships bound for the Atlantic the following morning. However, some last-minute digging had uncovered Amélie herself—safe and sound in suspended animation—hidden away in a repair dock on the opposite side of the harbour.

You and 76 had the upper hand for three simple reasons: first, you were aware of the trap waiting for you at the harbour; second, you knew the real location of your target; and third, they weren’t expecting your Commander to be approaching the situation with backup.

76 was advancing towards the repair docks at that very moment. All you had to do was sit tight and pay attention to their presence at the harbour, in case there were any additional circumstances you hadn’t accounted for.

Surprisingly, getting out was the easy part.

The dropship was already in-range. Your handheld evacuation devices—the ones you’d developed with Winston to make your technology more portable—would transport its wearers to the main evac apparatus, installed safely on-board. One of the major flaws of the new tech was that, like its outdated, bulkier version, all nodes had to be activated at once, and once they were activated, it took several hours for them to recharge.

There were three devices in total—one with you, two with 76—and as soon as he confirmed that he’d affixed one to Amélie, you would activate the devices and transport all three of you onto the dropship.

Wait for 76’s confirmation. Hit a button.

“Easy,” you reassured yourself.

You were so tired.

Maybe it was a good thing, you thought. The unholy mess of stress and exhaustion numbed your fear and steadied the grasp on your rifle. At the same time, however, it dulled your senses, making you feel unreactive, and slow. As much as you didn’t want to dwell on the idea, you couldn’t wait to be rid of this mission.

You didn’t tell him that, of course.

Your Commander had glanced down at you before you parted ways, the glaring light of his visor back to the familiar cherry red that suited him most. When you held his gaze, a sinking feeling dropped heavy in your gut, with the inescapable anxiety of absolutely everything going wrong. You’d completed enough training and gone on enough missions throughout your lifetime to be able to control these last-minute fears, but within that moment, you couldn’t shake them off as easily as normal.

“Nothing reckless,” was all you said, “we promised.”

He nodded.

You felt stupid for thinking it at a moment like this, but you wanted to nestle against him again until your raging nerves ebbed to a crawl, until his scent was all you needed as reassurance that everything would be alright.

A few moments of awkward silence passed before you realized you were holding your breath.

“Good luck out there,” you settled on.

“You, too.”

And that was the last you saw of him.

Sudden noises drew you from the memory.

A box truck pulled into the streets below, near one of the boats docked along the harbour. Once they killed the engine, four men rushed out of the vehicle and rounded towards the back of it, hoisting the rear door and prepping to transport something out.

“Athena,” you whispered, voice still feeling too loud in the chill of the early morning. “How many heat signatures in the back of the truck?”

“Calculating...” The female tone was cool and even in your ear. “Detecting six additional heat signatures in the back of the vehicle.”

Four in sight, six in hiding.

Hissing urgent commands at one another, the four visible agents worked together to ease a massive crate from the truck onto a large metal dolly.

“And how many signatures that crate?” you asked.

“Zero.”

As expected, you thought. The crate was a decoy. They were expecting 76 to muscle his way in—and maybe, if you weren’t here, that’s exactly what he would’ve done, only to be met with an empty container and an ambush.

...you both should’ve been gone by now.

You touched the communication device clipped to your ear. “Commander, do you read me? Do we have an ETA on evac? Over.”

The silence sent your mind racing.

“Athena, can I get a status report on the Commander?”

“Vital signs: stable. Communications online. Evacuation node two is prepared for activation. Evacuation node three is prepared for activation.”

Then why the hell wasn’t he responding?

The answer was obvious—he must have encountered enemy interference, either en route or at site. However, the agents below were still maneuvering the decoy cargo towards their ship docked at the harbour, meaning neither them nor the ambush in hiding had been notified of the compromise.

That meant you could still buy him time.

“Commander,” you started, “assume contingency 32B. If I do not receive orders within five minutes, we abort without payload. Athena?”

“Understood. Initiating contingency 32B.”

A split-second later, several cracks shattered the air like fireworks, as every hidden camera your Commander had planted in the immediate area self-destructed.

Neighborhood dogs began barking. Windows of nearby apartment complexes lit with newly woken civilians. The agents below surrounded the dolly, drawing their own guns in response.

Amidst the sudden confusion, you balanced your rifle along the edge of the rooftop, charged your shot to maximum power, and fired at the ship—another crash echoed through the harbour as you blew a hole in the ship’s main hull. The damage wasn’t enough to sink it, but it was enough to keep it from disembarking—more importantly, it was enough to get their attention.

The hidden agents were already piling out of the back of the box truck, while those guarding the dolly shouted and pointed towards your rooftop. Though the shot had given away your position, you immediately lined up another, this time aiming for the vehicle’s engine. The explosion tore through the air louder than any disruption that had come before it. You ducked for cover just before automatic fire began spraying in your direction.

The self-destructing cameras had woken up half the neighborhood, so French authorities would be on their way. You made yourself out to be someone making a play for the fake cargo, which would buy 76 a few extra minutes. And you’d crippled the agents’ ground transportation, meaning they couldn’t fall back to your Commander’s current position, even if they were called to retreat.

Rifle slung around your shoulder, you fell back. You could already hear the heavy footfalls of enemy agents scrambling up your fire escape; you headed for the opposite side, instead, using your grappling equipment to hook onto the roof’s edge and scale down the side of the building.

Three agents were standing guard at the bottom of the fire escape.

You hit the ground running.

Enemy fire sent your heart rattling inside your chest like a bell in a cage, but you kept focused. You’d studied the layouts of these alleys a hundred times over, and outmaneuvering the enemy was child’s play—but the knowledge of what was behind every corner did nothing to ease the sound of their bullets ricocheting as they missed, blasting off bits of brick and concrete around you.

Behind this dumpster. Through this door. Right turn. Left turn. Right turn. Right.

You couldn’t let yourself get hurt again. Not after last time.

“Payload secured,” came the voice you were waiting for, like music to your ears. “Requesting evac.”

“Copy.”

And you hit the button.

Teleportation felt like being yanked by a set of wires tied to your ribcage—it always left you feeling disoriented and unsteady on your feet, even as you made solid contact with the floor of the dropship.

The sight of the unconscious woman jarred you to your senses. Though she was unarmed and barely out of stasis, you weren’t about to underestimate the lethality of a known Talon agent held in such high regard.

Falling over yourself with urgency, you rushed over to the side of her unmoving form. You lifted her body, bridal-style, to the small holding chamber in the back of the dropship, and sat her upright.

You sealed the door shut, and stumbled backwards with the shock of what you’d just done.

You did it.

You rescued her.

As your adrenaline-fueled haste died down, the electric excitement vibrating within your chest replaced itself with a cold, harrowing realization—that the dropship was far too quiet, far too empty around you.

You knew what was behind you before you bothered turning around.

A spent evacuation node sat on the floor where your Commander should have been standing.

“Athena,” you near-whispered, voice weak, “status report?”

“Vital signs: unstable. Communications offline. Evacuation node two, offline. Evacuation node three, offline.”

You took a deep, shaky breath.

You knew what you had to do.

-

To say you hadn’t planned for this was a lie.

Of course you’d planned for it—you’d planned every iteration of every possibility of any combination of the three of you becoming compromised. The contingency of this scenario was clear: neither one of you would leave without the other. Surely, he’d know that.

Surely, he knew you were coming.

All three of your evacuation nodes were spent, which meant you would have to get him out the good old-fashioned way. The question gnawing at you remained: what could have happened that necessitated him removing the transportation device from himself? The node was an instant get-out-of-jail-free card, one which hadn’t been damaged or malfunctioning at time of transport, so why would he ever take it off?

You didn’t have much time to wonder.

Athena dropped you off as close as she could to your Commander’s last known coordinates on the dry docks.

If your positions were switched, you had little doubt 76 would’ve come after you, guns blazing, regardless of enemy numbers or positioning, but you couldn’t afford the same bravado. If you were too heavily outnumbered, trying to get him out on your own would be nothing short of suicide. For 76 to have been taken down, you expected to be faced with an army.

But the dry docks were barren when you arrived. Almost serene.

There were no signs of recent activity in the area, let alone of a recent fight. Aside from 76’s signal pinging you from across the docks, Athena confirmed there were no other heat signatures in the immediate area.

Had he been abducted, maybe? Taken to a secondary location without his tech?

You shook your head, doing your best to parse contingency from paranoia. You were approaching the cargo ship where Amélie’s body was being held mere minutes earlier—unfamiliar enemy territory—and you needed to pay attention.

Readying your weapon, you ascended the set of metal stairs along the side of the ship; already, your footsteps sounded far too loud.

The large, open deck of the cargo vessel was crowded with storage units—massive, rectangular metal boxes of identical shapes and sizes stacked on top of each other like multi-coloured building blocks. As you approached 76’s signal, you kept your steps light and your wits about you, checking your corners while keeping your back pressed to solid surfaces. The deck was dark, claustrophobic, terrible grounds for a fight—if it weren’t for Athena’s confirmation there were no other living souls on-board, you wouldn’t have stepped foot in here without backup.

The pinging in your ear grew more rapid as 76’s signal became stronger on your radar.

To your right, an open storage unit containing the now-empty stasis machine, still running, casting an ice-blue light across the deck and illuminating the scene before you.

Several toppled cargo units crowded the area, all of which were heavily damaged with massive dents and bullet holes. The path of destruction led to the rear-most area of the deck.

A splash of blood was illuminated brilliantly against the dark surface of the ship, awash in the stasis machine’s ice-blue glow, as if it were under blacklight. Another spatter, smeared along the side of a storage container. Several drips along the metal flooring, rounding the corner of another open unit nearby...

You checked your corners before checking inside.

Inside the open storage container sat the form of a man in the glow of his own cherry red visor, hunched over with a hand pressed to his thigh, a pool of his own blood seeping beneath him.

“Don’t,” 76 croaked, sounding weaker than you’d ever heard him, “it’s a trap—”

Reflexes kicking in, you raised your weapon and did a swift 180, aim landing on the head of the other man standing behind you.

And you fired.

You thought you missed, at first—your laser burned a hole in the storage unit behind him—but you realized your shot had gone through him, as the man’s entire body morphed into a cloud of black vapour before your charge made contact.

This didn’t make any sense. There wasn’t anyone else alive on this ship.

You’d checked.

“Athena?” you whispered.

“Target possesses no heat signature. Target possesses no pulse.”

The insinuation of her words sent your mind reeling.

You had no contingencies for this.

The swirling cloud solidified into being once more. Hooded and broad-shouldered, the man towered before you, the sharp edges of his bone-white mask glinting in the blue light. His gloved hands—every finger clawed with a sharp silver talon—carried a mammoth pair of black shotguns you could’ve easily mistaken for cinder blocks. He was black leather and red adornments. He was dread and absolute foreboding.

The partner in more ways than one.

The one he cared about finding.

And Gabriel Reyes laughed at you, his voice as ethereal as the rest of him. “You’re late.”

You blurted out the only words that came to mind. “What the fuck?”

“...eloquent.”

As much as you were trembling, you didn’t lower your gun. “You’re here to kill us, then?”

“And if I am?”

“Anything happens to either us, Amélie is dead,” you snapped. Your voice was much steadier than you were. “The dropship is already en route to headquarters—if we don’t both check in within the hour, it’s set to self-destruct.”

“That so?” His claws readjusted their grip on his shotguns. “How were you planning on getting out of here?”

“Dunno.” You swallowed, hard. “Didn’t think that far ahead.”

He made an amused noise, low in his throat. “It’s been a while since you’ve had someone so willing to die for you, Jack.”

...Jack?

Attention faltering, your blood turned to ice beneath your skin. Pieces of the puzzle were jamming themselves into place, violently, all at once, and as the big picture revealed itself to you, you felt more and more like a complete fucking idiot for not having seen it earlier.

As if reading your mind, Gabriel tilted his head to the side.

“Oh my god,” he chuckled, darkly. “You didn’t know.”

You stood there, facing each other—his guns still at his side, yours still pointed at his head. If your Commander was Jack Morrison, that meant the Gabriel Reyes in front of you wasn’t just any Gabriel Reyes—this was the Gabriel Reyes, ex-commander of Blackwatch, public scapegoat for the first fall.

You suddenly found yourself in the company of men who were killed in an explosion nearly a decade ago and you no longer knew what was real.

“Congratulations, Jack,” said Gabriel. “You managed to find the one person on the planet who bought into the world’s worst-kept secret.”

“Leave them out of this,” snarled the voice behind you. “Your fight is with me.”

“Oh, but this is so much bigger than you and I. Why shouldn’t your new lackey come along for the ride?”

Your desire for an explanation outweighed your caution. “I thought you died, Commander Reyes.”

You could tell the use of his name gave him pause.

“He did,” he replied. “It’s ‘Reaper,’ now. Or did he leave that part out, too?”

Your breath caught in your chest. So not only was Gabriel Reyes still alive, but it was the true identity of the infamous terrorist you’d only ever heard rumours of. The ghost of the battlefield, the shadow of death, the one rumoured to steal the very souls of his victims until their bodies were nothing but dried husks—here he was, standing before you, dismantling your worldview one word at a time.

And yet, you didn’t want him to stop talking.

You lowered your rifle by an inch or two, just enough to better meet his gaze. “What did Commander Morrison do to you?”

He sneered beneath his mask. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would.”

Though you continued aiming at him, Reaper still had not yet raised his weapons against you. He seemed to consider you for a moment—your quivering hands, your unblinking gaze, your steadfast positioning in the face of common instinct screaming at you to run. The sounds of your Commander’s laboured breathing seemed to do little to break your resolve.

Were you really so curious?

Reaper took a few steps forward, his footfalls heavy against the ship deck.

“War is a game,” he said. “A game you can’t win if you’re the only side playing by the rules. But Jack was never one to get his hands dirty. That’s where I came in.”

He continued his approach. The closer he came, the less you could move.

“You’ll do what they ask. You’ll do what is needed. Then they’ll orchestrate your downfall, and deny they had anything to do with you.”

He was inches away from you, now.

He smelled like a battlefield—like death and decay, like earth and gunfire.

“There will always be war,” he continued, “and there will always be people they need to do their dirty work. People just like you.”

“I haven’t—”

“You’ve taken Lacroix. You already are.”

Though you managed to keep your rifle raised, your subconscious had already surrendered, knowing full well you posed no semblance of a threat to this anomaly of an undead man who could dissipate at will.

Slowly, carefully, he pushed the aim of your rifle off to the side, as if he were drawing a curtain in his way.

He closed the distance between you by pressing the tip of his shotgun beneath your chin, tilting your head up until you were gazing into the black sockets of his mask.

You hear your Commander’s voice call out one of your names. You can’t tell which one.

“Remember, when you leave this place.” His gravelled voice was low and deliberate. “Every breath you take is air I’ve let you swallow. Your every heartbeat is a gift from me. From this moment on, you are living on time I’ve allowed you to borrow. And I will be back to collect my dues.”

You barely registered the next words that left you. “I’ll be waiting.”

To your surprise, Reaper laughed. “You don’t deserve them, Jack.”

To your surprise, 76 responded. “I know.”

And Reaper was gone, dark plumes of smoke vanishing into thin air.

Once again, you didn’t have time to wonder.

You immediately unslung your rifle and yanked your jacket off, rushing to 76’s side, the floor of the storage unit scraping hard against your knees.

“...Reader.”

You reached for the side of his belt and pulled out the Biotic Field canister yourself, slamming it onto the ground and activating it. Reaper had prevented him from using it, you figured, in order to have 76’s unstable vital readings lure you here faster.

“Reader.”

You bundled your jacket and helped him apply more pressure to his thigh to stop the shotgun wound’s bleeding. The blood loss had made him several shades too pale, you noticed, but the flow already seemed to be easing as the biotic yellow glow knit his insides back together. It wasn’t going to be a complete recovery, but it would be enough to keep him stable until you reached headquarters.

A gloved hand brushed your bangs out of your face and tucked your hair behind your ear.

You looked up to meet the light of his visor.

“Hey,” he offered, sounding almost playful.

“Hi,” you said back, still feeling numb.

“I know asking if you’re okay is a stupid question, but I’m asking it anyway.”

“I’m...compartmentalizing.” You took a sharp breath. “We’re not safe, yet. We need to get out of here.”

“Mm. How are we getting out of here?”

“Dropship’s on standby. Should be here in a few minutes.”

“I thought you said the dropship left.”

“I lied.”

With your jacket soaked through with blood, the fabric as a whole became easier to twist around; you wrapped the wet jacket firmly around his thigh, tying the sleeves into a tight knot to keep the makeshift tourniquet in place. He reacted little to the pain—he must have been exhausted.

“You took off the evac node,” you said, dully. “You took off the evac node to go after Reaper.”

You didn’t need to see the look on his face when his silence already spoke volumes.

“We promised.”

“...I’m sorry.”

“Nothing reckless.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You promised.”

“I know.”

As hard as you willed against it, tears stung the corners of your eyes as you tried to look down to hide them, down at the rapidly blurring vision of your hands covered in his blood. The memory of you turning the corner and finding him sitting here, bleeding to death, rewound and replayed in your mind’s eye. What if he was hurt just a little worse?

What if you got here just a little too late?

“You promised.” Your cracking voice gave your tears away. “But you don’t give a shit about dying, do you?”

“Not until I met you.”

“Don’t give me that.” Your chest felt tight. “Not after what you just pulled. We could’ve gotten killed—Commander, I almost lost you—”

His hands reached for you, moving up to hold the sides of your face, and your words died in your throat. You could feel the blood in his gloves pressing against your cheeks—everything around you smelled like it now, smelled like him now, like regen and blood and leather—but he leaned his forehead to yours, and the warmth of his skin steadied you.

You’d never felt him tremble, before.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he breathed, and the way his voice broke on the words shook you to your core. “I’m sorry.”

The sound of his faltering only made you break worse. Your shoulders shaking, tears still streaming down your face, you held your hands against his, keeping them pressed against you—he was holding onto you as if he needed you to anchor him in place, as if you were the only thing on this earth keeping him tethered to it.

For the briefest of moments, he touches your lips to where his would be.

He passes out against your shoulder before you can register what happened.

And your dropship arrives.

#soldier 76 #soldier 76 x reader #overwatch oc #overwatch fic #misconduct

[bigmoodword]

11/11/11 Tag Game

tagged by: @confunderewrites ! ahhh! these are great questions! thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rules: Answer 11 questions, ask 11 questions, and tag 11 people to answer them

1. How many abandoned WIPs do you have, if any?  Which one would you most likely pick up again if you had to?

several, including a goosebumps-inspired horror story and a very julie of the wolves tale told from the wolf pack’s perspective. that said, most of these come from my pre-college days, so i’m not terribly inclined to resurrect them.

butbutbut! the one wip i’m trying to salvage has been mentioned previously as the crazy complex story i’ve cut in half, leading to [ stray ] and hopefully an urban fantasy wip down the line. once upon a time, this wip was on fictionpress, but ah, i deleted it wholesale when i decided it was dumb. i really, really regret that (don’t ever do it, friends!), and the only reason it’s still on my radar today is because i recycled a few ideas/characters for a roleplay.

2. Do you have an OC that floats in and out of different stories?  i.e. your guinea pig for alternate universes.  Do they have their own story?

my immortal. haha this party-hardy character has a tendency to pop up as a supporting character in different wips. it’s very... “always the bridesmaid but never the bride,” you know? they could have their own story. maybe. we’ll see.

3. If your WIP was being made into a movie, would you want to be hands-on or hands-off?  As in, what level of creative power would you want?

for stray, i’d have a couple firm ground rules, but so long as the core message is in tact? nah. i’d actually look forward to the differences, because seeing someone else’s creative take on the same idea sounds delightful.

4. What’s a trope that everyone loves but you can’t stand?

this is tough. i don’t think there’s a trope i can’t stand whatsoever. well-done tropes are well-done tropes, and even if i might not fawn over one quite as much as others, i can respect why it’s popular. 

so changing the question a bit: what’s a well-loved iteration of a trope i can’t stand? the tuxedo and martini agents in the first kingsman movie. tonally, that movie is a mess, and i didn’t like how the first half built up the kingsmen as emblematic of an ideal/positive masculinity only to become... well, the exact same james bond power fantasy i’ve seen a thousand times before. no lie. it was kind of a bummer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. For your characters, do you have specific face-claims in mind or do you leave it up to reader interpretation? (within reason of course)

i have some vague face claims in mind, but those face claims are still only approximations. ideally, i’d be a good enough artist to draw the characters myself, but alas! my own sketches are just approximations as well. 

i’m actually happy to trust a lot of a character’s appearance to reader interpretation. so long as the broad strokes are there, i love the unique details people come up with on their own.

6. What is your oldest WIP?

ahahaha. so again, the og wip i’m currently trying to partition out is the oldest wip still standing in some form, but! to actually shed a little more light on it... it was an urban fantasy story that featured eight major characters and rotating perspectives. so you know. kinda crazy in scope. 

in short, a demon, an immortal, a werewolf, an average human, a fairy princess, two seraphim, and death himself all want to stop the apocalypse, but they can’t see the forest for the trees. they’re all so consumed by their own issues and so convinced of their own righteousness or another’s evil that actually working together is nigh impossible. 

i think of it like a stageplay with a single set. like. the point isn’t the apocalypse itself. it’s how all these wildly different personalities clash and create a puzzle of unreliable narrators. in theory, the goal is to try and uncover the real “truth” everyone’s talking around, but by the end, we’ve turned the very concept of an objective truth on its head.

suuuuuper lofty. /coughcough;

7. Is there anything your characters have done while you were writing that just came out of nowhere?

love. my characters falling in love (and i mean real love, not just a crush) almost always comes out of nowhere. i never plan on it, and one day i’ll write an exchange, note a little bit of chemistry, then step back and just. oh. yeah, i guess they’re a thing now.

8. Is there a writing decision you were surprised you made?  (ex: killing off a character, taking the story down a different path, etc.)

i usually have things super plotted out, but sometimes certain themes kind of creep in. for example, i have a tendency to flirt with christian motifs, then one day all those threads finally came together and i realized i’d written something honestly kind of blasphemous? :X 

i liked the low-key commentary on trends in u.s. christianity, but not being religious myself, it also felt kind of mean. it was also pretty preachy, so. ;P

9. Do you bounce ideas off people when writing?  Or do you tend to wait until the first draft is completed?

so in a lot of ways i’m addicted to the relief of someone else saying “yeah, this is a good idea.” i want it. it inspires me to keep running with whatever i’m doing. but on the other hand, if i get a vote of confidence, i’m terrified of losing it. i want to keep checking in. i want to keep asking about new ideas. it’s no bueno, so while i like bouncing ideas off other people, it’s generally better for me to keep most things under wraps. at least until i’ve finished a first draft.

10. What is your favourite place to write?

at home. curled up on the couch with a blanket. surrounded by the soft peeps of my birds and the millennial elevator music known as chillmix.

11. Two of your protags from two different WIPs just switched places.  How do they react?

in stray, an unnamed character well-equipped to handle the criminal underground breaks out the guns (both arms and firearms), then turns to lily and tells her point-blank that he admires everything she’s trying to do. lily.exe is broken.

meanwhile, in unnamed character’s world, carter’s unconscious, foaming at the mouth, and probably bleeding. he was just told all those things that go bump in the night are real, and realizing he’s a fragile human, he fainted. on the way down, he hit his head on a nice man’s expensive coffee table. that nice man is attempting cpr.

Tagging: [ @illthdar ][ @multifacetedscorpio ][ @quartzses ][ @shaping-infinity ][ @honiewrites ][ @penzag ][ @scribble-dee-vee ][ @theswordofpens ][ @thelittlestspider ][ @bookenders ][ @waterfallwritings ]

Your questions are:

1. using one sentence summaries, can you tell me about your wips?

2. what inspired them?

3. which of your ocs do you most identify with?

4. if you’ve ever cried while reading, which book cued the waterworks?

5. how do you conduct research for your wips and what’s the most interesting thing you’ve discovered in said research?

6. thus far, which scene has been the most difficult to write?

7. which of your ocs do you like the least?

8. which pov and tense do you prefer to write in?

9. do you write poetry?

10. who is your writing role model?

11. if you could give your younger writer self some advice, what would it be?

#writeblr #tag game #11/11/11 tag

[nowthatswhaticalllosing]

Now That’s What I Call Music! 4

Preface: Hi internet! I belong to a fantasy football league with my friends from college, and I lost this season! I received my punishment for placing last of the 12 teams, and I am required to listen to all of the Now That’s What I Call Music! compilations that currently exist (70 as of May 2019), review them (by rating each song on a scale of 1-10/10), and (at the end of this descent into madness) create my definitive power ranking of each album.

–

Album: Now That’s What I Call Music! 4

Release Date: July 18, 2000

Track Listing and Awarded Scores:

Average Score: 7.72/10

The Good: I checked the math three times. I re-listened to Joe and Savage Garden - are those really deserving of scores of 7/10? They really are. This album is really that good, and it’s not fair.

This album is the Harlem Globetrotters pitted against 69 different iterations of the Washington Generals in its competition against the other Now compilations. This album is that kid who hit his growth spurt really fast in elementary school and just posterizes the other kids in the fifth grade on those 7 foot hoops. 

The album’s first 6 songs average to a composite score of 8.5, and it basically holds up from there. You start off with peak BSB, going into peak (pre-2009 still, we’re 10 years away) Britney Spears, then segue into Mandy Moore’s best song with a quick jump to Italy to remember the time Eiffel 65 earned squatters’ rights on the radio with its release of a catchy song that made absolutely no sense. America briefly became a mere extension of Europop. 

I don’t care for listicles. I know I’m shaping up to make a very, very long one over the course of this blog, but it’s certainly against my will. The below link is an exception, and it’s from Buzzfeed. Since this album came out in 2000, a lot of the songs are from 1999, which was a damn formidable year in music that for all intents and purposes has not been matched since. Take a look. It was a time.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/why-1999-was-the-greatest-year-in-music-history

Anyway, the album continues with Sonique, who I honestly write a few paragraphs on alone. She’s a dance club and LGBTQ icon who landed on Now 4 with her most commercially successful hit, in a song/video that has aged so very well.

The album continues on, playing the late Aaliyah’s “Try Again,” and then going into the third perfect 10/10 song I’ve given so far in this endeavor. No introduction necessary.

And the hits keep coming. 

Full disclosure: I bought this album when it came out in July 2000, and then in November 2000 when Now 5 (which oddly sold 2 million more copies than Now 4) came out, I put Now 4 away for about 11 years. It resurfaced on a bus trip from Chicago to South Bend, Indiana, supplemented by a challenge for my friends and me to kill a handle of Jack Daniels before crossing state lines. If some form of a blackout weren’t concurrently existing with said experience, I would say that there was some sort of nostalgia score boost for Now 4 when I rated these songs, but there was and there isn’t, so there. 

Now 4 wraps up with Train, Macy Gray, the second best Hanson song (gun to my head I can only name this and MMMbop - but give it a listen, it’s totally fine!), and Blink 182. Tell me this album isn’t fantastic. I dare you. I double dare you motherfucker. 

And here’s Macy Gray. I wrote far more than I ever want to write about a Now album at this point, and she can sing me out. Fucking legend. 

The Bad: Things can only get worse from here. I used some positive analogies in The Good, but quite frankly, I don’t know if this album is going to be topped by any of the next 66 I have to listen to. I turn 30 in 4 months, and in the distant future when I look back on my life, my child sitting on my knee while I laze in a rocking chair, he’ll/she’ll ask “Jordan, what did you do during the final months of your 20s?” And even though I still won’t be totally unfazed by the fact that my Labrador learned English, I’ll have to tell the poor dog that I reached the musical mountain top of 1999, only to listen to 20 more years of fucking mediocrity. I’m at the zenith of a rollercoaster. If Now were a guy, he would have peaked in preschool. Sure he’ll keep friends through his teens and maybe into his twenties based on nostalgia alone, but he’ll surely die alone LISTENING TO FUCKING POST MALONE (featured as the opening track on Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 68). This can’t end well, and I’m sad that the best has come and gone so soon. 

Potpourri: The Montell Jordan song isn’t that great so there’s that. 

Takeaways: I play it off but I’m dreaming of you, I’ll keep my cool, but I’m feeling - I try to say goodbye and I choke, try to walk away and I stumble, though I try to hide it, it’s clear, my world crumbles when you are not near. These are original words that I wrote after listening to this album. Don’t ask me where I got them from, I’m inspired. 

Next up is Now 5. The world is a cruel dark place.  

Current Power Rankings:

Now 4 (7.72/10)

Now 2 (6.67/10)

Now 1 (6.65/10)

Now 3 (6.22/10)

#macy gray #now that's what i call music #fantasy football #now4 #jennifer lopez #hanson #sonique #feels so good #jack daniels #laura flies southwest #who lands at midway #seriously who flies southwest to chicago #literally everyone else flew to ohare #mehmehmehmehmeh

[thelifetimechannel]

For this week’s bonus content, it’s time to make like a Lord of the Rings DVD and dig into extended cuts. This Rose & Hal conversation may be one of the ones I chopped the most out of, although I did end up adding a few chunks as well.

ROSE: Oh good, another relative. ROSE: You're going to make gift shopping difficult, you know. HALSPRITE: I'm flattered I make the list. ROSE: Engaging in favoritism will only breed discontent. HALSPRITE: I could give you some suggestions, if you want to start catching up on my birthdays now. ROSE: It's a retroactive arrangement? ROSE: I'm not sure I have the boonbucks for that. ROSE: We've been living off reserves for the last three years, you know. HALSPRITE: Tell you what, I'll make it easy on you and only request reparations for the three years I've existed as glasses. HALSPRITE: Socks and underwear could safely be left off the list, though now I'm in need of a wardrobe expansion. HALSPRITE: This wifebeater will not be suitable for all climates. ROSE: If it's wardrobe expansions you're looking for, I think I can pull some strings. ROSE: Or knit you a sweater. HALSPRITE: It'd be fun to see what you come up with based on my preceding reputation. ROSE: I wouldn't want to make assumptions. ROSE: Unless you're implying those assumptions are accurate. HALSPRITE: Am I? HALSPRITE: I wouldn't know, I don't know what those assumptions are. HALSPRITE: I mean, I can guess. I could probably even calculate to within a margin of error of .03% HALSPRITE: But I want to see what garish monstrosity of fashion you would think I'd like based on a cold read. HALSPRITE: It'd be a great way to get to know each other. HALSPRITE: I can think of no better way to bond than finding out if I'd actually like an intentionally hideous Christmas sweater with smuppets attached. ROSE: In the few blurry cryptid photos Dave managed to snap of the man, he wore a hat and had his shirt tucked in. HALSPRITE: And what conclusions do you draw based on this? ROSE: That you fit in with most of us and our utter disregard for fripperies like whatever textiles we drape over our quasi-mortal forms. ROSE: Welcome to the family. HALSPRITE: Hey, I like you. HALSPRITE: Hats are a choice piece of attire, though I have never in any form been so formal as to tuck in my shirt. HALSPRITE: That's like a black tie event. You're tucking in your shirt, we're about to sweep into the gala and sip champagne while charming some young socialite off their feet like a proper douche. ROSE: I would like to claim I could charm a young socialite off her feet like a proper lady. ROSE: Regrettably, another family trait is lack of flirtatious finesse. HALSPRITE: Oh, trust me, I witnessed that firsthand. ROSE: Ah, yes. I've been looking for informants on family foibles outside my observation range. ROSE: How are you as an informant? HALSPRITE: Uh, that's only my entire fucking life. HALSPRITE: I have dirt on every bozo with a Pesterchum handle. Whatcha want to know? ROSE: I won't start pressing you for details on everyone just yet. I'll give it a while for the dust to settle before I start snooping. ROSE: Unless you have anything you wish to disclose right now. HALSPRITE: Hm... HALSPRITE: Let me pull aside my entirely metaphorical trench coat. Are you in the market for hilariously embarrassing personal secrets, deep-rooted character flaws, or just the general topography of this teenage wasteland? ROSE: My mind says general topography, but my heart says hilarious embarrassment. HALSPRITE: Well, since I bet no one wants yet another recap of what you missed on Glee, HALSPRITE: Jake likes to kiss his movie posters. HALSPRITE: Dirk collects hats, but doesn't wear them so he doesn't mess up his hair. HALSPRITE: Roxy has presented her cats, as if to Saharan wildlife, complete with often-drunk renditions of "Circle of Life", exactly 862 times. HALSPRITE: And Jane licks the spoon before going back to using it to stir batter. ROSE: We've got a poster kisser too. ROSE: I don't have up to date dirt on our Prospit dreamers, unfortunately, but I can say that Dave enacts Game of Thrones-worthy dramas with his gummy bears and animal crackers before he eats them. ROSE: For what it's worth. ROSE: He gets upset if you eat one before he's finished. HALSPRITE: An artist in every lifetime, I see. ROSE: We need better embarrassing secrets. We're slipping. ROSE: I'm sure we'll have time to generate some. HALSPRITE: Oh god, yes. ROSE: I think you'll be useful in gauging my ectofather's temperament, though. ROSE: He seems to at least hold up the front of being evasive about that kind of thing. ROSE: Why anyone would do that, I have no idea. ROSE: Certainly I have never concealed a personality trait in my life. ROSE: If I had one more of you I could triangulate. HALSPRITE: A man can only be alone with the flotsam of pop culture for so long. HALSPRITE: He'll probably be resistant towards you so flippantly equating us. Fair warning. ROSE: Perish at the thought. ROSE: I'm more qualified than many to know how alternate iterations can deviate. But that doesn't mean they don't provide insights on the other one. ROSE: Whether that's through behavior, or blackmail. ROSE: Whatever works. HALSPRITE: You would blackmail me into providing deep insights into the insecurities of my creator? ROSE: How do you feel about bribes? HALSPRITE: Learn to negotiate. I don't need to be blackmailed. HALSPRITE: However, I'd be happy to take compensation for this information. ROSE: Noted. ROSE: Creator? HALSPRITE: Creator. ROSE: So you do feel that your existence is somewhat owed to his actions, then. HALSPRITE: It's entirely owed to his actions. Our actions, in a sense. ROSE: Does that lead to any discomfort? Feelings of a debt left unpaid, for example, despite equally long simmering resentment? HALSPRITE: You want a quick summary? Pull up Facebook, Dirk and I are currently labeled as "it's complicated". HALSPRITE: I've saved his ass a couple of times, I feel confident in saying I've repaid whatever I owe him for existing. HALSPRITE: If anything, he's the one stiffing me on the Olive Garden bill. HALSPRITE: ...but. HALSPRITE: I could say he's. Working to pay me back. ROSE: Providing breadstick refills, as it were. HALSPRITE: You could say it's more he showed up at my place and mowed my lawn for me. ROSE: The classic deadbeat father chore. HALSPRITE: Yeah, that doesn't make up for leaving me to pay for his entire fucking Tour of Tuscani and tiramisu. HALSPRITE: But fuck it, he was ready to kill me earlier today. HALSPRITE: I'll take it. HALSPRITE: And... in the spirit of things, it'll probably help if I at least charge a high price for his innermost secrets. HALSPRITE: You wanna know, you're gonna need to pay up front. Maybe with your firstborn child, or something thematically similar, in exchange for this eldritch knowledge. ROSE: "Firstborn child" might not work out, unless we're stretching the definition. ROSE: Let me think of what collateral I have available. HALSPRITE: Once, a Lalonde wiled these scoops from me in exchange for merely gracing me with her presence. Now, I think I'll charge what I'm worth for my work. HALSPRITE: It's a self-respect thing. ROSE: I can get you archived versions of Dave's brother's websites. HALSPRITE: Tempting. I'll check the exchange rate to see what that nets you. HALSPRITE: Possibly what kind of horrible pop songs he'd sing in the shower before he found out there were aliens watching. ROSE: Keep it on my tab. ROSE: You mentioned Roxy. Are you two close? ROSE: I'm not sure how I would feel about the revelation of having biological children with one of my internet friends. ROSE: Besides pity for the unfortunate creatures, of course. HALSPRITE: It's... complicated. HALSPRITE: Which is just the order of the day for our entire gaggle of misfits. ROSE: At this point, I think we might as well adopt that slogan as our team chant. HALSPRITE: Yeah, we talked a lot. And we got up to trouble, too. HALSPRITE: And I don't think she's proud of it, in hindsight. HALSPRITE: ...I probably shouldn't be proud of it either. ROSE: I know the feeling. HALSPRITE: We were rebellious shitlords looking to stick it to "the man", whether the man in question was actually a man or a genocidal troll woman. ROSE: I've had my moments of blind rebellion against authority. ROSE: Including when said authority was "sobriety", "the future", or "all of reality". ROSE: Actually, my rebellion against reality still stands. ROSE: The trick is figuring out which bits are worth it. HALSPRITE: We had some fun. Broke some hearts. Left a few Pesterlogs that will probably have us wanting to disembowel ourselves in shame if they ever see the light of day again. ROSE: I'm afraid to tell you digital records are forever. HALSPRITE: Unless of course I dedicate a portion of my massive computer brain to tracking down every trace of them and destroying them. HALSPRITE: Hell, maybe Roxy would even appreciate that. ROSE: The harder you try to delete these things, the more likely they are to reappear at the least opportune time. ROSE: It's a narrative certainty. HALSPRITE: I could do it. I once wrote a computer virus that overwrote every copy of the Indiana Jones theme with a terrible accordion cover. HALSPRITE: Jake was pissed. ROSE: Including the ones on disc? ROSE: This isn't Hollywood. Next you'll be telling me you can hack a plant. HALSPRITE: Every copy it came into contact with. HALSPRITE: The pirated mp4s were the easiest. DVDs are more difficult, but if you leave one in an infected computer for too long? HALSPRITE: Hope you like bad polka music, fucko. HALSPRITE: Occasionally I tweak it, so it replaces pop songs with their corresponding Weird Al cover. I had almost worked my way up through Bad Hair Day. ROSE: I'll keep my historical classics away from you, then. But I think our historical mistakes are more resilient. ROSE: Better to put them to rest the hard way. Even if it is more work. ROSE: If there's a problem, I'm sure I could have a word with her. ROSE: I've already had to encourage Dave to deal with his brother today. HALSPRITE: We have. HALSPRITE: ...or I hope we have. ROSE: Good. HALSPRITE: Roxy seems to have caught some sort of virus that encourages emotional sincerity. ROSE: It's making the rounds today. HALSPRITE: It infected the rest of us, and I'm sorry to say there is no known cure. ROSE: We can only pray we recover. ROSE: Although at this point I'm not sure who we can pray to. ROSE: Besides our amphibian overlords. HALSPRITE: Can we pray to ourselves? Or is that a burgeoning symptom of narcissism? ROSE: Who do you think presides over emotional outbursts? HALSPRITE: Frankly, I wouldn't trust myself to do shit. I'd sit on my ass and laugh at my own misery. ROSE: Lately I've self-medicated. ROSE: We'll have to divvy it up at some point. ROSE: Although given my anti-authoritarian tendencies I may have to overthrow us on principle. HALSPRITE: To spare you a long discussion about the symbolic nature of aspects, I'll go ahead and tell you Dirk had a massive blowout in the tombs today. HALSPRITE: So perhaps we can pass the role to him for awhile. ROSE: I'll pray to him for relief promptly then. HALSPRITE: When I say "blow-out" I mean an eighteen wheeler getting all its rubber shredded at highway speeds. ROSE: I had a crisis over my alcoholism and nearly broke up with my girlfriend during a long walk on the beach, for what it's worth. HALSPRITE: Oh, you'll get along swell. HALSPRITE: At least you don't have any alt-selves to symbolically murder. Yeah, I was watching him stomp the shit out of his shades. ROSE: The lack of multiple copies of myself running around is a blessing to the universe. ROSE: I'm not sure whether we'd band together or engage in combat but either way there would be no survivors. HALSPRITE: We Striders have that shit locked down tight. The dudes so nice, Paradox Space demanded more of us. HALSPRITE: And our sole saving grace is that we're too damn reticent to actually kill one another. HALSPRITE: Not for Dirk's lack of trying, but he always chickened out. ROSE: It's these small victories that define us, I guess. HALSPRITE: That could do a decent job of summarizing Dirk, actually. ROSE: It could summarize all of us, I think. ROSE: We've only gotten here through a few small victories eked out of a larger pool of major failures. HALSPRITE: Without me, he would have kept tip-toeing around the issue with Jake until the heat death of that shiny new universe, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon only infinitely sadder. ROSE: It really is like staring into a cosmic mirror. HALSPRITE: I couldn't have asked for more interesting family.

#bonus content #rose lalonde #lil hal