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criminalmutantsins · 3 years

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My Top 10 Favorite Ducktales Characters

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NO. 10 Hewey Duck

At number 10 is Huey!

Hewey has been my least favorite triplet for most of the series; it by no means he’s a bad character or any of the sorts, Huey is more down to earth compared to other characters. It’s hard to say much about Hewey other than how he’s a sweet, fun character I’m glad is around.

His development in season three was good, though the weakest of the three. Kinda half-baked and rushed, as if the creators thought, “we have to add some Huey development since this is his season.” With Dewey and Louie’s, it felt like their respective seasons revolved around them instead of the other way around. The only episode I really think perfectly gave Huey development and at the same time move the main plot forward fluidly was the “Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!” with the whole Huey vs. Violet rivalry. Y’know what also sucks. Huey wasn’t even that integral to the finale. That annoys me to no end.

Now, I’m going to end this with positive notes.

What got Huey into the list was his sweet nature and how integral he is to the team’s balance. Every team needs someone who represents order and Huey is just that. Plus, his innocent love for romance is so cute. I love the episode where him and Webby were setting a date up for Fenton and Gandra.

NO. 9 Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge is probably the most interesting protagonist I’ve ever watched. Unlike most of them, he’s more of an anti-hero than a pure hero like Steven Universe or Luz from Owl House.

I don’t really have much to say about him because I don’t love him as much as the characters above him. He probably has the best development- Lena’s rivaling his really well. In the beginning, Scrooge was a grumpy miser but now, thanks to the kids, his heart is softer and more open. His cheapness is annoying, but the good qualities overthrow the bad.

Scrooge most likely would’ve been higher in the list if “The Life & Crimes of Scrooge McDuck” didn’t happen- or at least occurred in season two instead since humility and hard work was the main theme. The writers went overboard showing the audience how bad of a person Scrooge was in the past, especially with him taking advantage of the poor villagers and leaving them in their states-without even helping them. This episode downgraded Scrooge pretty badly.

NO. 8 Donald Duck

Although on the lower half of the list, I still hold so much love and respect for this version of Donald. He’s such a massive improvement from his previous iteration. The creators made him kind and strong-willed but kept his anger issues. Though, they turned that flaw into a more comedic and positive aspect of Donald since he uses that intense anger to protect his family. Speaking of that, his relationship with the triplets is absolutely adorable. He loves and protects them like a great father, and I’m still a bit peeved that characters didn’t acknowledge that more. Instead, their relationship was sidelined and pretty much haphazardly... replaced-I don’t know if that’s the right word- with May and June.

Another thing that annoyed me was Donald’s voice treatment. The creators pretty much portrayed his speaking problem as a joke, which is terrible. I hope to goodness that children with speaking troubles don’t take those “jokes” to heart because there is nothing wrong with having a different voice. It’s also surprising how much characters mostly don’t understand him when I can seventy percent of the time. This complaint is more towards season one since that was the season where most of the jokes happened.

Anyways, I hope this Donald will start a new beginning for the next iterations of him. A nice guy who has anger issues but means well. Same with him and Daisy’s relationship-another massive improvement the writers did. They are such a great couple from the episodes we got with them and this dynamic should continue.

NO. 7 Webby Vanderquack

Another character who was massively improved was the great Webby Vanderquack!

In the original series, she was a boring damsel-in-distress with no personality-pretty much like the earliest Disney princesses. The ‘17 creators did such a great job molding reboot Webby into a character who can kill you with kindness or impressive fighting skills. This pink-loving queen is probably the sweetest character I’ve ever met; I just want to hug her.

I love her optimism and caring personality. She was able to change Lena for the better and not give up on her when almost everyone did. Webby is the best friend you can have.

While I’m not fully on board with the Webby finale twist, I really liked how her interest in the McDucks played some big part of the finale. Do I wish it was in different circumstances? Yes, but I’m still glad Webby got an important moment for herself. That interrogation scene was very emotional; seeing Beakley fully breakdown like she did was shocking and really set the mood of how pivotal that moment. I literally almost cried seeing Webby so heartbroken by her grandmother’s lies- this pink baby deserves all the love in the world. At least she found out the truth and gained a parental figure in her life.

NO. 6 Louie Duck

I’ve gotta admit; I did not like Louie that much at the start of the show. Greedy and selfish characters usually don’t get my love, but season two changed. A lot more depth was added to him such as his insecurities and anxieties. I struggle with these issues and it was nice to see a character show that as well. One of my favorite arcs was Louie’s trouble connecting with Della; it was realistic and not rushed. While watching this season, I was often having trouble connecting with people, even old friends. Sort of having someone experiencing them alongside me made me feel less insecure and lonely.

His development was really good too, from beginning to end. At first, Louie was someone who was willing to execute every angle no matter how much it could hurt his loved ones. Yet, he grew to be a humbler person who now knows the consequences of his angles. A favorite episode of mine is “The Richest Duck in the World” because of this development. Seeing Louie clean the Bombei’s shoes with Scrooge made my heart melt.

What lowered him down to number eight was season three. There were a few episodes that backtracked Louie’s development like “The Trickening” and “The Fight for Castle McDuck” episodes. He was a real jerk towards Huey for no reason. It frustrated me enough to affect this list. And I also prefer other characters more.

NO. 5 Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera

You can’t expect me to not put this quirky and adorable dork in the top five! He’s one of the best boys in the show. Him being voiced by the great Lin-Manuel Miranda does add some bonus points- you can tell I’m a big Hamilton fan.

Like Webby, Fenton was drastically improved. He became this sweet, scatterbrained scientist who only wants to help people. I instantly fell in love with him. And it got even better when Fenton became Gizmoduck- my second favorite DT hero. He deserved so much more screen time, especially in season 3; “Beaks in the Shell” was not a good enough episode for Fenton and his relationship with Gandra. There should’ve been more. The finale moments he had was not satisfying enough, particularly him and DW sort of team up. It was rushed.

If a Darkwing Duck reboot takes place in the ’17 universe then Fenton must be a major character- at least show up in ten episodes a season. A Gizmoduck and Darkwing crossover is essential, and I will riot if it that doesn’t happen. And more Fandra, my fifth -maybe fourth- favorite ship.

I also had a big crush on Fenton back in season one. You can’t help but love him this sweety pie. This pretty much influenced thirty percent of his placement.

NO. 4 Launchpad McQuack

This muscular dummy is amazing! He brings a sense of comedy and light to every episode he is in. It’s infectious as h*ll!

I liked Launchpad instantly. He’s kind and wants the best for people. Optimistic characters are almost the best characters. They are great reminders of how there are still many good people in the world. Whenever I’m down and watch Ducktales, LP makes me feel a lot better with his dumb yet endearing moments. My favorite jokes are literally LP sending Beakley an invitation saying not to come and when he tried to make small talk with Gosalyn at the window; I can never stop laughing at those moments.

There are times when Launchpad’s dumbness irks me, but his good qualities overthrow that. Though, I wish he wasn’t used too much as comedy relief; LP had the potential to gain more development than what he got. I’ll give an example. Learning about his family would’ve been great to know- an appearance wouldn’t have hurt either. It could’ve opened a reason to why LP cares about Scrooge’s opinion and cares about him like a dad. Maybe there’s some bitterness in LP’s relationship with his dad and that’s why he doesn’t talk about his parents. Loopey not being introduced was a missed opportunity. Big brother Launchpad is all I need.

I also have a small crush on Launchpad, though mostly for his personality and voice. He’s still cute *wink.*

NO. 3 Drake Mallard

We made it to the top three! With the dashing caped crusader Darkwing Duck starting us off!

It’s funny how much I love a character who’s only appeared in like five-maybe six- episodes enough to put him in the top three. I had some trouble defining many reasons why I love him; it’s this weird connection I have with DW. He’s this dorky dummy who loved a big part of his childhood enough to make it his reality, yet I love him so much.

I think what made me fall in love with him was how similar we are. Like him, I was a meek person who got pushed a few times- either physically or mentally. Those times also inspired me to grow stronger and be an inspiration for the next generation. I can be pretty clumsy too(lol). Characters I see myself in are usually really high in my love list and it shouldn’t be surprising that Drake is one of them.

His kind and genuine nature was also what drew me in. And, I just made this realization, this is the first time I don’t prefer the original iteration over the latest one. I still love ‘91 Drake but he’s too arrogant.

Unlike the original DW, Drake became a hero to help others- though a wish for glory played a bit of a part too. This clumsy, stuttering actor took a step to become his hero and a future one for children like him. That’s admirable. His lovable personality also being so cute enough for me to want to give a big hug is a good addition.

NO. 2 Lena Sabrewing

Hands down Lena had the best development!

She started off as this distant loner who followed the gray area of morality. Now, Lena is a part of this loving family and her own person. A few of her episodes are my favorites, such as “Friendship Hates Magic!” and “A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill.” They are well-written episodes and hit me in the feels.

Like Louie and Drake, I see myself in Lena. There are times I’ve been afraid I’ll take on my family’s bad habits or turn like them. That’s why I love “A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!” Watching Lena try to be good enough and feeling insecure reminded me of the dark times I usually think about. There are even times I have dreams of these issues. The creators must have been inspired by me (lol). Though, I am kind of jealous of Lena because of how great her friends are. I want friends like Webby and Violet.

Even so, I do have some issues with Lena. Her magic arc was not written as well as her previous arcs. This might be more of a personal opinion than anything, but I’m still going to say it. Lena learned to control her magic too quickly, and it was treated as more like a plot device. And a shaking one at that. For example, in “The Split Sword of Swanstantine” Lena was able to stop time and send her and Huey into his mindscape. But, somehow, she couldn’t conjure a burst of energy to attack Steelbeak; granted, Huey mentioned that, yet Lena’s reasoning was dumb. Attacking someone with magic is way easier than doing what she did. I’m a little lenient on this since that idea lead to more Huey development, though I’m still going to critique it.

A great thing about Lena learning was her temporary outfit change. She looks absolutely amazing in light colors, which I didn’t expect, and her hair design is what I saw she would look good in. The eye shape is kind of weird.

Lena’s magic mode is in my list of cosplays.

NO. 1 Dewey Duck

Finally, number one is Dewey Duck!

Dewey has stolen my heart since the beginning. His positivity and fun nature always make me smile, even during the toughest times.

In my opinion, Dewey has the best arc/development of the triplets. His arc trying to find out what happened to his mother was what kept me watching Ducktales and helped me see why this show is so special. Many of my favorite moments are in season one, specifically ones involving Dewey. For instance, the scene in “The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!” where Dewey was willing to risk his life to get the last piece of paper and possibly solve what happened to Della was emotional. Hearing the desperation in his voice while pleading with Scrooge to tell him what happened hit me hard. I can’t imagine how much pain HDL have gone through not knowing what happened and thinking they aren’t allowed to ask. It would be terrible to experience.

Another moment I loved was in “The Spear of Selene.” It was when Dewey was hesitant to know what happened as the possibility that Della was a bad person grew more prominent. He looked so defeated admitting that realization and it reminded me of myself. There were moments when I realized that my parents were not as good as I thought. It hurt me a lot. At least sweet Dewey didn’t have to go through that. The scene when Dewey started tearing up seeing his mom in the sphere was also heartwarming. I wanted to give him the biggest hug.

Dewey’s insecurities of not being good enough and to be loved is what I struggle with too. Its kind of different because I have trouble believing anyone loves me while he wants everybody to like him. Confidence is not my forte.

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aurorawest · 3 years

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Hi! I really admire your writing, so glad you’ve reached a follower milestone! For the prompt request, I would love some Thor & Loki feels, prompt No. 7 or 9 from Whumptober, with Thor whump. I can’t get enough of Loki’s scheming being derailed when his bro gets hurt. Thanks! :)

Thank you so much!! And I have to sincerely apologize for taking forever to get this written. I’m not sure what it is about me that I can churn through 1000+ words in my longfics every day, but give me a oneshot prompt, and it takes me 2 months. Anyway, here it is. This is probably not exactly what you had in mind (not nearly enough Loki scheming, I’m sorry!), but I still hope you enjoy it! Thanks again for the prompt!

Title: Big Damn Hero Rating: T (some injury description and mentions of blood) Relationships: Loki & Thor Word Count: 3.5k Summary: Thor always has to be the big damn hero. Loki gets stuck cleaning up after.

Thank you to my beta @mareebird! Also, this is technically for Whumptober prompt #7, I’ve Got You, but I’m not sure I can claim that it’s a Whumptober fill here on November 23.

Read it on AO3 or here on tumblr below.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Loki snapped. “Why can’t you ever listen to me?”

“I listen to you all the time,” Thor grunted, his voice tight. “I’ve listened to you and ended up in plenty of bad situations.”

“Yes well, at least those weren’t normally avoidable situations, which this was completely,” Loki said. He glanced at his brother, trying to keep the anger sharper than the worry in his eyes. It wasn’t the battle they’d just fought that had him concerned, nor the possibility their attackers might return. It wasn’t his own wounds that worried him, either. No, it was the fact that as they had fought, the cavern that they were inside had collapsed around them, trapping them in an unstable death trap several hundred feet inside the earth.

Loki had avoided injury.

Thor had not.

Thor’s legs, to be exact, were trapped under several tons of rock. If they were lucky, he was merely incapacitated. If they were unlucky…well.

Thor tilted his head back, letting it hit the ground. His hair was matted with blood from some head wound. It probably wasn’t serious. At least, Loki hoped it wasn’t serious. There was something dripping down the side of his own face too, though whether it was sweat or blood, he didn’t really care to examine. It could easily have been either. When the cavern had collapsed around them, chunks of rock and debris had gone flying, turning blunt force trauma into impalation risks.

And the temperature in the cavern was rising. It already had felt hotter than Helheim in there when they’d been doing battle. Now it was…especially hotter than Helheim.

Something slid down Loki’s eyebrow and dripped into his eye, and he gave in and swiped at it, unable to stop himself from glancing at the side of his hand to see what color it was. There was nothing there except the mealy colored dust of this planet. No blood. Not on his forehead, at least.

“We had to fight back,” Thor said. Was he grimacing? “They were going to destroy that village.”

“So there would be one less village in the universe,” Loki muttered. When Thor glared at him, Loki blasted air out through his nose. “I’m just not sure it’s worth dying over.” The village being wiped out would be regrettable, of course. Thor dying was more on the order of intolerable.

Waving a hand and wincing as he did it, Thor said, “Who said anything about dying? Anyway, risking one’s life is just what heroes do.” There were lines in his forehead, furrows made craggier by the dust caked there. Loki tried to pretend they weren’t because of the several tons of rock sitting on Thor’s legs, though he wasn’t particularly successful at convincing himself.

“Well, no one has ever accused me of being a hero,” Loki said. He was studying the massive column of rock that was on top of Thor. There were spells he could perform to get Thor out, but he was worried it would destabilize the whole cavern and crush them before he was able to call up a shielding spell. Then again, even if he was able to call up said spell, all it would mean was that they would have an even smaller bubble of air to exhaust before asphyxiation. He could rearrange the molecules of all the rock sitting over them, but he would also have to pull Thor behind him while maintaining the spell to make sure they weren’t encased in earth.

“Are you in pain?” Loki asked. Thor looked at him like he was an imbecile. Right. Point taken. Pressing his lips together, Loki cast his eyes over the cavern again. It had been lit by some sort of orange bioluminescence covering the walls before, but the cave-in had destroyed whatever delicate ecosystem had been producing it. There were still a few spots glowing weakly here and there, but the cavern would be shrouded in blackness if not for Loki’s magic. He’d summoned several glowing balls of light which were floating at points around the cavern.

“Will you be alright for a few minutes?” Loki asked. He got the same look in return and rolled his eyes. “Pardon me for attempting to look out for you, brother.”

Thor grimaced, though Loki wasn’t sure if it was because of what Loki had just said or because he was in pain. It could, he supposed, be both. With a grunt, Loki got to his feet, summoning a glowing orb of light to his fingertips as he made a slow circuit of the cavern. The orb inched back along his fingers to his palm, and he held it up, increasing the brightness until as much of the cavern was illuminated as possible.

As he’d suspected. There was no way out.

Swearing under his breath, Loki made his way back to Thor’s side and knelt again. “I have a very bad plan,” he said.

“So,” Thor said, “as usual.”

Normally, Loki would have scowled at him. But Thor was beginning to look pale, wan, almost, and there was sweat standing out on his forehead that Loki didn’t think was solely from the rising heat in the cave. “I have to get you out from under all this rock,” Loki said. “And the only way to do that is with magic.”

There was a silence. Thor blinked at him. “I don’t know if I’d call that a very bad plan,” Thor said.

“Well, good, then we’ll do that bit first, and I’ll tell you the rest of it once we’ve successfully freed you.” Loki could hear how false the cheerfulness in his voice was. He hated this—he was no good at being the chipper one, the optimistic one. Loki had one job in these sorts of situations, and it was to be the bearer of bad news, the one saying I told you so, because he invariably had.

But they were past I told you so now and well into forced optimism. Loki sincerely hoped they didn’t get to the next stage, which was tell me how bad it really is.

“Can you move?” Loki asked, knowing as soon as the words left his mouth what a stupid question it was. “I mean, after I do the spell.”

“Of course,” Thor replied with a confidence that Loki felt was entirely unwarranted.

Gathering his magic, Loki put his palm flat against the column of rock bearing down on Thor. With a slow inhale, he sent the spell into the rock, pushing magic between the molecules of stone and loosening their bonds on each other. He felt the magic flow through the rock, and when it was sufficiently fluid, he said to Thor, “Move. Now.”

Thor did. It was a good thing, because the longer Loki held the spell, the more unstable the column became.

On the other hand, with Thor’s legs no longer crushed under the rock, Loki could see just how badly they were both broken.

Anyone else wouldn’t even have legs. If Thor weren’t Asgardian, all he would currently have was crushed bone and red stains around him that had at one point been his muscle and skin. But Thor was Asgardian, so he merely—merely—had several compound fractures. Not that it wasn’t unsettling to see his brother’s splintered shin bone poking through his skin. But it could have been worse.

Even so, Thor couldn’t walk. It would be entirely up to Loki to get them out of this.

Thor looked paler. Loki knew his brother would never show pain if he could help it, so the fact that there were tight lines around his eyes and mouth made the worried knot in Loki’s stomach tighten. “I’m afraid the only way out of here is doing what I just did,” Loki said. “Only we’ll have to…well, climb out.” When Thor just stared at him, Loki added, “I did say it was a very bad plan.”

“It’s a terrible plan,” Thor said. It was impossible not to miss the strained note in it. “Climb? Climb what?”

“The sides of the passage I create for us,” Loki said with more confidence than he felt. “It’s not like you to balk at something that’s almost certain to get both of us killed, brother. You must have hit your head.”

There was little reaction from Thor, which was worrisome.

Drawing a breath, Loki said, “I know I’m hardly trustworthy, but we don’t have much of a choice. If you were in any state to punch your way through Norns-know-how-many feet of solid rock, I’d certainly let you do it.”

Thor grit his teeth. “What do you mean, you’re hardly trustwor—do you really think I don’t trust you? You think that’s the problem?”

“Well, it’s a problem,” Loki said. “I wouldn’t say it’s the only one, no.”

Breathing in and out deeply, the lines tightening on his face, Thor asked, “What happens if you can’t hold your spell?”

“A quick death, I would think.” Loki glanced up at the rock over their heads. It seemed to be closing in, making the space smaller, though he knew it wasn’t. At least, he thought he knew it wasn’t. He wiped sweat off his forehead again. His eyebrows were saturated with it. “The weight of the stone should crush us instantly.”

Actually, he wasn’t sure of this at all. They were Asgardian, after all. Or, well, one of them was, and Loki was—whatever he was. Jotun and some sort of magical mixture of Asgardian, thanks to his father’s magic. It was possible that their bodies would stand up to the crush of rock long enough for them to suffocate due to the lack of air and the fact that their lungs were being compressed. That would be a far more unpleasant death than every bone in their bodies, including their spinal columns, being broken at once. The latter would end things quickly. If Loki was going to die, he really would prefer it to be quick, though he’d never had much cause to believe that this would be the case—not for him.

Thor propped himself up on his elbows and looked at his legs. His face remained expressionless as he took in the way his splintered bones poked through his skin. Unable to help himself, Loki looked, too. Much of the material of Thor’s pants and boots had been shredded, which put his wounds on full display. Around the punctures, Thor’s skin was purple and swollen, blood oozing out and mixing with the pale dust that covered both of them.

It wasn’t a great look. Loki reminded himself that Thor could survive such an injury. Both of them could. Probably. Loki didn’t particularly want to find out if this was the case for him, as well.

Thor looked up and met Loki’s eyes. “You’ll have to carry me, climb out of here, and do magic.”

“Glad you’re still following along,” Loki said. He was being an arse. It might have been on purpose. It was the only thing he could think of to do.

No reaction to the gibe from Thor. “Is it a difficult spell?”

Loki cast his eyes upward again. Was it a difficult spell? No. Molecular rearrangement of stone was no more difficult than molecular rearrangement of anything else—doors that no one wanted him to walk through, prison walls, metal cages. As long as there was nothing hampering his magic, it wasn’t a challenging spell. The difference between this situation and those others was that typically, he only needed to rearrange a section of material that was a little over six feet high, two feet wide, and a few inches thick at most.

He didn’t know how much rock was sitting over them. He had a vague idea, because he knew roughly how far they’d descended into the cavern as they’d been fighting off their attackers. It was, needless to say, more than a few inches.

“Not terribly,” Loki finally said, deciding to split the difference.

“Don’t lie.”

Loki set his mouth in a line and stared at his brother. “The spell itself isn’t difficult, no. It’s the rest of it, and the length of time I’d be performing the magic. As I said, I know you don’t trust me—”

“It has nothing to do with me not trusting you!” Thor said. His voice was strained. “I don’t want you to get yourself killed trying to save me.”

Loki sucked in a deep breath to argue. “I’m perfectly capable of—er—what?”

Thor rolled his eyes, though the way his hands clenched into tight, bloodless fists rather took the sting out of it. “You can get yourself out of here easily. Right?”

“I…” Loki’s gaping was beginning to make him look like an idiot. Taking a breath, he said, “Yes.”

Jerking his head in a nod, Thor said, “Then you should go.”

Oh. Of course. Right. Big damn hero Thor; he’d sacrifice himself for anyone, even his ne’er-do-well, God of Chaos, Mischief, and Lies brother. “I should go,” Loki repeated flatly. “And what will you do?”

“Loki, I’m not going to let you risk your life for me—”

With an irritated scoff, Loki leaned forward, grabbed Thor under the arms, and said, “Oh, shut up, would you?” He flicked his fingers and a strand of glowing green magic flowed from them, one end looping once around his wrist and the other end looping around Thor’s. “Don’t try to break that connection,” Loki said crossly. “It will make sure my spell encompasses your mass as well as mine, and if you do something stupid in the name of being noble, I will come back for you, so it will be your fault if I die.”

For a moment, Thor stared at the thin twist of green magic around his wrist. Then, he looked at Loki and said, “You’re being stubborn.”

“I am,” Loki agreed. “It’s one of my most annoying qualities, and that’s really saying something.” There was no chance Thor could stand, so Loki wrapped an arm tightly around his shoulder. “Ready?”

There was a long pause. A pointless pause. The longer they dallied, the weaker Thor became, and the more difficult this would be. Perhaps Thor knew that—and perhaps he was more stupid than even Loki thought he was, and actually fancied that Loki would leave him behind if he thought Thor would be a drag on his own escape.

Finally, Thor nodded. “Alright. But if you feel yourself weakening—”

“Thor, shut up.” Loki put a hand out, resting his palm against the column of rock that had so recently been on top of Thor’s legs. A green glow spread from beneath his palm and the surface of rock rippled. Loki could feel the solidness of the rock loosening, the spaces between each atom opening up. He extended the spell as far as he dared, then looked at Thor. “Let’s go,” he said.

Because Thor couldn’t use his legs, this first part was all Loki. One-armed, he heaved Thor into the rock, sparing a second’s thought for the fact that this would probably be a deeply unsettling experience for his brother.

But then there wasn’t time to think. Or—perhaps there was time, but he didn’t have the mental space for it. Climbing the tunnel that he created for them, a foot at a time, was arduous and tense. They made their way up through the column of rock and into the mass of earth sitting over them, and when Loki thought they’d reached the top of it, he sent out a sounding spell to check.

He was right. All he felt to either side was the press of dirt and rock. The tomb imagery was all a bit too apt, so he stayed away from it. He wasn’t particularly claustrophobic, but considering the circumstances, he thought he could be forgiven the flutter of panic in his chest.

He tried to angle their passage, both to make it easier to gain handholds and to give his screaming muscles a bit of a break from bearing most of Thor’s weight. But angling their magical bore-hole increased their time in the earth, and Loki’s magical energy wasn’t infinite. Combined with the physical exertion of carrying Thor, he could feel himself tiring.

And he would not, he would not fail. So he clenched his teeth, pushed his magic out, and tightened his hold on Thor.

When they emerged onto the surface, it took Loki a moment to realize it had even happened. His magic suddenly wasn’t moving rock, and panic clutched at his chest, and he frantically looked at the darkness around them, left, right, upward, where they needed to go—and his eyes fell on three lumpy, shining objects, surrounded by a scattering of pinprick points of light.

Moons. Stars.

The bright, lumpy things were this planet’s three small moons. The rest were the stars of the night sky.

They’d made it.

Loki’s chest heaved as he drew several breaths of clean, fresh air. His arms and legs were trembling with fatigue. His heart was thundering and he realized his entire body under his clothes was slicked in sweat. His clothes were soaked through with it, too, and here on the surface, where the air was cooler, he could feel the clamminess of his damp clothes against his skin.

The line of green magic still connected his wrist to Thor’s. But Thor was prostrate on the ground, unmoving. “Brother?” Loki asked, worry threading through his tone.

Thor groaned and pushed himself onto an elbow, looking up at Loki. “I was thinking,” Thor said.

The worry in Loki’s chest fluttered, then settled back. He allowed the magic to dissolve away into the night air. “Yes?”

A light breeze ruffled Loki’s hair. Thor flopped back to the ground. “Maybe next time we have to fight a group of marauding space pirates, we should do it above ground.”

Loki laughed, which turned into a cough, because he was still gasping for air, his lungs full of dust. “I couldn’t agree more,” he finally said, once he’d stopped choking.

They were hardly in the clear. Thor’s legs were still mangled and they needed to get back to their ship, and there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t face another attack on their way. But with the sky above them and that cool breeze fluttering at Loki’s hair, escape and survival seemed eminently possible. Easy, even. He’d give it a few more moments for them to catch their breath and gather a bit more strength, and then they’d set off.

It occurred to Loki he was going to have to carry Thor. His brother was really going to owe him for this.

The two of them were quiet, their breathing slowing. Loki’s fingers twitched involuntarily in the powdery dust, his exhausted muscles already protesting the further labor he was going to ask of them. The ache in his arms made it tempting to sit there for another hour. Or maybe three. But they needed to go. So finally, Loki groaned and pushed himself to his feet.

“This is going to be very undignified for both of us,” he said warningly. “I’ll never speak of it if you don’t.”

Thor straightened up as best he could. There was an expression on his face that Loki didn’t like—the kind of softness and sincerity that meant something sentimental was about to come out of his brother’s mouth. So Loki held up a hand. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Thor protested.

“You were going to.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.” Huffing, Loki said, “You were going to say something…embarrassing. Something about my better nature.”

In the dark, it was hard to tell if Thor was smirking or just smiling. “Actually, I was going to say—I’m glad you’re here, Loki.”

Loki crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, squinting into the darkness. He would have to light their way with magic. Hopefully he was still up to it. “Only because you’d still be trapped down there without me.”

“No.” Thor managed to get to his knees, and when he held out a hand, Loki thinned his lips, clasped his brother’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. Idiotic. They wouldn’t make it more than three steps this way, not with Thor’s legs in the shape they were. Loki slung Thor’s arm over his shoulders and wrapped one of his own arms around Thor’s midsection, supporting most of his weight. “I was going to say,” Thor said, “that I’m glad we’re together, because there’s no one I’d rather fight side-by-side with.”

Letting out a slow breath, Loki rolled his eyes. He tightened his grip. Then he said, “Shut up, Thor.”

Thor grinned. Loki ignored the fondness in his own voice.

The two of them set off into the night.

#loki odinson #loki laufeyson #thor odinson #loki fanfiction #brodinsons #thor fanfiction #whumptober 2020 #mcu fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #fanfiction #submission

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vake-hunter · 4 years

Text

Acceptance into the House of Chimes results and which Master is playing Chimes in those results

this is fun and cute little details about the Masters

An innocent (Pages)

A fresh face among the jaded horde! No doubt you will achieve great things one day. But watch yourself: in Fallen London, innocence is a commodity like any other.

Mr Chimes glides across the floor and grasps your hand in a spotless white glove. It feels like shaking a branch wound with spider-silk. 'Most optimate friend!' it whispers. 'Welcome to our Chamber of Delicacies!'

An Extraordinary Beauty (Apples/Hearts)

Persuasive 20

That skin! Those eyes! That delightful nose! Nobody can resist you!

Mr Chimes glides across the floor and surveys you up and down. 'My dear, my dear,' it says. 'How very appetising to have you here with us. Will you tilt your head to the right a little? Just so. Just so.'

A Player of Games (Iron)

Watchful 20, the Boatman's Opponent 1

You are an emperor of the chess board. You shuffle tiles and playing cards with dazzling speed. Rumour has it that you have diced with Death itself.

Mr Chimes approaches: the clicking of its boot-heels on the floor is like bone dice thrown on marble. It hands you two mah-jong tiles. Engraved on the back of the Winter tile is the single word 'WELCOME'. On the back of the Plum tile, you read 'LUCK IS THE PREROGATIVE OF VICTORS.'

A noted trainer of Weasels (Apples/Hearts)

1 x Araby Fighting Weasel

The weasel-fanciers of Spite speak highly of your expertise with the genus mustela.

Mr Chimes is suddenly at your elbow. It inhales deeply. 'Oh, toothsome, my dear,' it says. 'Toothsome. Let the little fellows run free, by all means. Someone will manage the results, I assure you.'

A true patriot (Wines)

1 x A Copy of your Patriotic Adventure

Your writings inspire the youth of Fallen London to a frenzy of patriotism!

Mr Chimes takes your arm and guides you into the lobby of the House. Its grasp is like the clutch of a winter tree. 'We respect loyalty to an ideal,' it says. 'One of the more austere forms, perhaps. But a true realisation nevertheless. No?'

A masterful cat-chaser (UH I ACTUALLY DONT KNOW? Veils maybe?)

Shadowy 30

You have honed your skills in pursuit of the city's most evasive felines. They speak your name with respect, if not quite affection.

Mr Chimes steals up on you from behind, but you turn just before its gloved fingers touch your shoulder. It chortles. 'Who can stalk the stalker, eh? Welcome to my House. Ware the Bell!'

Not to be crossed (Iron probably)

Dangerous 20

There is something disquieting about your appearance. It's hard to pin down, exactly. An aura of suppressed violence.

Mr Chimes strides toward you. It holds up a hand in greeting. Or in warning? It nods once; it turns to go. That is all.

A crown in shadows (Wines)

1 Fate

Royal blood? Can it be true? On the wrong side of the blankets, no doubt. But that's what they say.

Mockery or respect?

Mr Chimes steps aside for you and makes the gentlest inclination of its head. 'We will bring you a bottle of something a little special,' it avers. 'We are delighted to add another crownable head to our collection!' Hm.

Allergic to brass? (Spices probably)

1 x Nevercold Brass Sliver

The touch of the stuff hives your skin and blears your eyes. It makes you weep tears of blood. This makes you an object of some fascination at parties.

A bewildered Master

Unthinkable!' the hooded Mr Chimes shrieks. 'Impossible! Unprecedented!' It seems quite cheerful about it, though. It does insist you demonstrate the weeping-blood business, unfortunately.

Exceptionally Talented (Cups/Mirrors. Possibly Hearts/Apples but almost definitely Cups/Mirrors)

10 x Confident Smile, Persuasive 100

Both ladies and gentlemen pause immediately before speaking your name. There is a quality to that pause which is not easily described.

A friendly thing

Mr Chimes' hand spiders along your arm. 'My dear,' it coos. 'If only my tastes ran to... well, perhaps if your blood was a little cooler. No matter, my dear. You will be treasured.'

The Rooftop Dancer (Veils)

Shadowy 60, Route: The Flit 1

You know the ways of the Flit like few others. They say you can reach the summit of All Christs' spire in the space of a single breath. They say you stole a feather from the Topsy King's hat. They call you 'Pussyfoot', but in a good way.

An avuncular approach

Mr Chimes drifts up like a scrap of silk on the wind. 'Good evening! Good evening indeed! You're a swift and circumspect maker of ways, aren't you? You are indeed! How very much to be admired.'

An Unparalelled Grotesque (Maybe Wines because it has blue eyes)

10 x Hard-Earned Lesson

In the decades since the Fall, no-one has ever looked quite like you. Thank God.

A long silence

The bluish glimmer of Mr Chimes' eyes is steady, but you sense an obscure emotion. 'Well,' it says at last, 'why not? Why not indeed.'

A Visionary (Wines. Not Pages due to wording. Royal we makes it Wines)

A Person of Some Importance: A Significant Individual

You have made the Square of Lofty Words your playground. You have cowed the women and men of the University. Your ideas are simple in outline and intricate in implication. They will be remembered, perhaps, when everyone in this room is dead. Except Mr Chimes.

A debatable honour

‘Dear friend,' Mr Chimes murmurs confidentially. 'We have often read the surveillance reports on your speeches. We have commended your texts to the Ministry of Public Decency. We look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.'

A Prisoner of Despair (Fires)

Melancholy 4

Can your misery be so deep and unrelieved that even Mr Chimes has taken pity on you? Or does it simply hope you'll be a diverting mascot?

Mockery, or Hope?

Mr Chimes bears down on you, robe flapping like a tent in a hurricane. Its voice is an alto shriek. 'Come along upstairs! It's warm enough. It'll steam the chill out of your heart. And, here - ' It hands you a candle. 'It'll light you to bed.'

A Speaker of Truth to Power (Iron)

Forceful 3, Subtle 3

You've said the wrong thing to the wrong people once too often. You're going to be a lot of fun.

An ambivalent welcome

Mr Chimes perches on a high carved chair like a black gull on a cliff. A footman approaches with a silver tray bearing a single card. It reads: 'SILENCE'. An announcement? A suggestion? An instruction? Or is Mr Chimes just being difficult for its own inscrutable entertainment?

A Possessor of Impossible Table Habits (Who knows. One who knows table manners I guess)

What are you - no. No! Such things were not to be dreamt of! A fork cannot be put to such uses! Close your mouth! Close his mouth! For the love of all that is holy! DON'T TOUCH THAT SPOON!

Mr Chimes arranges an audition of sorts. You are served a hearty meal of beef-steak and winter vegetables, and provided with all the cutlery you might require. You perform the operations for which you have become notorious. After a suitable time for the onlookers to recover their composure, you are admitted to the House.

Orphaned in a Grisly Accident (I want to say Veils due to what we know of its collections)

Mr Chimes likes tales of blood and terror. It likes tales of butter and whimsy too. Tales of blood, terror, butter and whimsy are like music and water to one dying of thirst in the Desert of Cymbals. The tale of your parents' death at the hands of the Dairy Kings will bring breathless listeners to the fire for a hundred nights.

Not a dry eye

You tell the tale, long and horrible as it is. Mr Chimes convulses with... Mirth? Pity? Fear? Black-liveried footmen watch impassively while its shoulders writhe and roll, and its eyes shimmer like topaz deep in its hood. At last it subsides and you are admitted to the House. 'Step carefully,' Mr Chimes flutes.

An Artist in Ivory (Wines was the Khan of Dreams, but this could be Spices talking. Or Cups/Mirrors.)

a Scholar of the Correspondence 1

You have carved flutes from femurs and trinkets from tibia. Your sigil-circled skull sits in the grandest gallery of Veilgarden. They whisper that when you die for the last time, Mr Cups itself will come for your bones.

A pale horse

‘A little gift,' Mr Chimes informs you. 'Something to recall the Khan of Dreams by. Since you seem so keen to commemorate him.' Do you? Or has Mr Chimes misunderstood the nature of your project?

A wanderer of Parabola (Mirrors)

7 x Memory of Light, A Game of Chess 9, Is Someone There? 10

In your dreams you have seen the Mirror-Marches, the Menagerie of Roses, the Castle of Forests, the nests of the Fingerkings... even though you may forget them when you wake. But there is a light in your eyes.

A light in the darkness

‘Yes,' says the Master quietly. 'The mirrors know your name. The serpents have your scent. The rivers of roses will not drown you. The apples of glass might lie quiet in your hands. If you burn, you burn like a candle. If you die, you die like dawn. You are very delicious.'

A zub-mariner! (Spices from voice but sounds like Fires from excitement about boats)

1 x Zubmarine, An Experienced Zailor 3

You are charting the unknown leagues beneath the zee.

Mr Chimes lopes towards you across the stone floor. 'Marvellous!' it shrills. It pumps your hand excitedly. It's like grabbing a nestful of velvet spiders. 'You'll fit right in here. Grab a seat.'

A killer of renown (Iron)

A Bringer of Death 1, 1 x Ravenglass Knife

Even in Fallen London, where bloodshed is as common as glim-fall, your name is whispered with apprehension.

Mr Chimes approaches in utter silence. It hands you a rostygold knife, hilt-first. Engraved on the blade is the word: MEET. That is all.

A font of devil's tears (Want to say Cups due to smell but could be any)

Connected: Hell 20

Did your masterwork really make a devil weep? It must be true. Mr Chimes has the tears there in a little bottle. Wait. Is it drinking them?

A chuckle in the hood

Mr Chimes drapes a companionable arm across your shoulders. It smells of dust and winter starlight. 'Devils despise that kind of humiliation,' it confides in you. 'I laughed for days. Come on upstairs.'

An Oenologonaut (Spices)

1 x Greyfields 1868 First Sporing, 1 x Greyfields 1879, 1 x Greyfields 1882, 1 x Black Wings Absinthe, 1 x Morelways 1872, 1 x Broken Giant 1844, 1 x Strangling Willow Absinthe, 1 x Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise, 1 x Cellar of Wine

No-one has plumbed the secrets of the grape, the hop and the blood-apple more deeply than you. You can identify the products of vineyards that have no name in any human tongue.

Fond Sighs

Dear one,' says Mr Chimes warmly. 'Pleasure is a wilderness. We are its cartographers. Let us embark, you and I, on the catalogue of delight! Our journey begins here.'

A Liar among Liars (No idea)

1 x Appalling Secret, 1 x Uncanny Incunabula, 1 x Extraordinary Implication, 1 x Searing Enigma, 1 x Whispered Secret, 1 x Cryptic Clue

Who can ever believe your stories? Truth is mingled with falsehood like blood in milk. You are a prince of rumours. Or is it a princess? Who can ever be sure?

An impassive audience

Mr Chimes listens to your stories of star and sea and shadow. It neither nods nor shakes its head when you suggest certain relationships between the Mountain of Light and the troubling thesis of Mr Darwin. It is motionless when you venture a hypothesis as to why only six symbols of the Correspondence can be written together on one paper. When you begin to discuss a matter of wells and candles and the Third City, it raises a finger. 'This is false,' it murmurs. 'Let us ensure it remains that way,'

A Legendary Calumnist (Apples/Hearts)

Scandal 7, Persuasive 100, Watchful 100

Your barbs and insults and the twisting satires you've spawned have been the bane of the lowly and the great alike. All fear the savage edge of your tongue.

A cautious welcome

‘My dear,' Mr Chimes whispers. 'Be kind to the little ones, will you? Not all have your advantages. I admit you only on condition that you choose not to bite.'

‘I know a man.' (Probably Wines)

Connected: the Masters of the Bazaar 5

If it can be called a man. Step aside, peon. I am already welcome here.'

A hearty welcome

Come in, come in! A place by the fire is prepared for you. The table is set. The brandy rises from the cellar like the laughter of friends! Forget the petty troubles without. You have earned this night of peace.'

I will scream until your House rings with the Words of the Thunder! (Probably Wines)

Stormy-Eyed 5, having Recurring Dreams: What the Thunder Said 10

I am the storm, I am the wind, I am the rain! I demand admittance! Defy me and I will blow your House down!

The cloaked thing bows before me!

I fling gusts of squalling rain at its head! Then I race through the dusty corners and crannies of the House of Chimes with a cleansing breeze! I bid lightning spring from its spire in celebration! The Master insists I hang my oilskin on the hatstand before I drip on the carpets!

The Inescapable Arm of the Law (Spices I believe)

investigating the Rubbery Murders 12, ascending the Reliables list of Mr Pages 3, Connected: The Constables 50, Connected: The Great Game 50, Watchful 100, 1 x Antique Constable's Badge

Your eye pursueth the malfeasant as the wrathful eye of God pursued Cain across the desert. You have returned wedding rings to costermongers, cats to dowagers, and stolen hearts to sorrowful tomb-colonists.

A nervous flutter?

We are most pleased to see you here,' Mr Chimes shrills. 'You are an ingeniate of great note! But perhaps you should limit your investigations in this House, eh?'

A Blood-Cousin to Predators (Veils probably)

1 x Ancient Hunting Rifle, a Procurer of Savage Beasts 1, 1 x Fairly Tame Sorrow-Spider, 1 x Bengal Tigress, 1 x Araby Fighting-Weasel, Dangerous 100, Watchful 100, marked by the Eater-of-Chains 3.

You have brought the great beasts low and walked in the footsteps of the fierce. You have turned fang and cunning, spine and venom and brute strength, against the monsters who wield them.

A peculiar passion

Mr Chimes inclines its head to you. 'Beasts. Beasts beasts beasts! So many beasts, such little time. Perhaps you could turn your energies to the pursuit of troublesome humans, hey? Why waste your time hunting those who cannot speak? Or sing? But welcome welcome!'

#fallen london #lore

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nerianasims · 3 years

Text

Billboard #1s 1983

Under the cut.

Toto -- "Africa" -- February 5, 1983

This song becoming massively popular recently sort of mystifies me. But maybe it shouldn't; the music is very pretty, and we've been short on popular music that goes for "pretty" for a long time. The lyrics... I really don't know. The best explanation I've seen was someone joking on Tumblr that maybe the narrator's a werewolf. I'm sure that wasn't the intent, but it's what I'm going with. It is a good song, entirely because of the music.

Patti Austin and James Ingram -- "Baby, Come to Me" -- February 19, 1983

I'm not sure I've ever heard this song before. It's a romantic duet. It's not annoying or anything, it's fine, but now that I've heard it I think I'm probably about to forget it again immediately.

Michael Jackson -- "Billie Jean" -- March 5, 1983

This song, I've heard. A whole hell of a lot. Like everyone else, we had the Thriller album (or tape, rather.) Actually I had it -- for some reason, Thriller was seen as some kind of child's first pop album. Every kid I knew had it. (And since seeing Leaving Neverland, that has been very creepy to me.) As for me, I'd put it on and dance, especially to this song. I pretty much understood what the song was about, and even got the "His eyes looked like mine" line. I didn't have an opinion on whether or not the kid was his son. It didn't matter; it was entirely about the music. Which is truly great.

Dexys Midnight Runners -- "Come On Eileen" -- April 23, 1983

Until the last couple years, I didn't entirely know what this song was about, because I couldn't understand Kevin Rowland's weird singing outside the chorus. I got that he wanted Eileen, and that this was about the combination of arrogance and horniness of youth. I did not know about all the references to the previous generation's pop culture, with an obvious inference that they felt the same way at one time. Also about Margaret Thatcher's intentional destruction of her own country's society. You don't have to think about any of that to enjoy the song if you don't want to, though. It's a fun dance song as well as being complex lyrically.

Michael Jackson -- "Beat It" -- April 30, 1983

This is the Michael Jackson song I remember being played on the radio by far the most when I was a child. It's basically the main background song of a couple years of my childhood. It's a hard-driving song about how you should run away from a physical fight rather than die. "It doesn't matter/ Who's wrong or right." Yes. It's rock, and it's dance, and it's... probably really great? I don't know, some things are too formative.

David Bowie -- "Let's Dance" -- May 21, 1983

"Put on your red shoes and dance the blues" makes no sense. But this is David Bowie; he knew that. It's part of the point. While this song is perfectly feasable to dance to, it's not really a dance song. It's achingly romantic and not the tiniest bit soppy, with music that's both accessible and fascinating. And my god Bowie could sing. I love it so much.

Irene Cara -- "Flashdance... What A Feeling" -- May 28, 1983

I didn't see Flashdance until college, when my roommates decided we would watch a bunch of cheesy 80s movies because it seemed a brilliant thing to do. It was, actually. Some of them even turned out to be good. Not Flashdance. Flashdance is memorably stupid, at least -- it doesn't hold back. It's extremely entertaining because it's deeply unintentionally hilarious. This song, though, I've heard a lot since it came out. The song is much better than the movie. It's got a wide-eyed optimism that's appealing, and the music is fun.

The Police -- "Every Breath You Take" -- July 9, 1983

I remember people periodically insisting that many, many women don't understand this song and think it's just romantic. I have never met any of these women. I have a feeling it was only a few, and that got blown up into some kind of crisis, as things do. Especially when people can imagine angelic airheaded women being dumb and somehow inviting abuse from those scary scary men. That's a favorite hobby for many. Anyway. It's a really good song that gets into the mindset of a really bad man -- or of a man who's currently imagining being really bad but is going to wake up, deal with his hangover, and get on with life. It's not a comfortable song, and that is good. Also Sting's hot.

Eurythmics -- "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" -- September 3, 1983

Usually repetitive songs drive me nuts. This song is incredibly repetitive lyrically. I love the lyrics, though. And musically, it changes up just enough to keep my interest. It's almost hypnotic. Apparently, Annie Lennox can do whatever she likes with me. Speaking of "some of them want to be abused"...

Michael Sembello -- "Maniac" -- September 10, 1983

The original demo of this song was about a serial killer, and it sounds like it, with the Psycho-like musical parts. It's not a dance song at all. Michael Sembello worked with Stevie Wonder during his best years, but he's no Stevie Wonder. He has that 70s light rock white guy voice, and it doesn't fit this song. If he'd handed this to another singer, it would have been better. Though still goofy, because it's music about a serial killer wedded to a story about a dancer. Many of the lines don't seem to have been changed either: "On the ice-blue line of insanity/ Is a place most never see." And okay, that's a good line; I wouldn't want to leave it out either.

Also my aunt is a professional dancer (mostly choreographer now), so I've seen quite a bit into the professional dance world, and it is seriously unhealthy. It seems to be getting better, at least in modern dance, but the reason my aunt didn't go farther as a ballerina and switched to modern dance is that she could not get skinny enough for the fashion in ballet, no matter what she did. We're a muscular family with solid bones, and she couldn't get rid of that. She's got an eating disorder still though. Professional dance is harsh and terrible, and probably kills more women than serial killers do.

That's what I think of when I hear this song.

Billy Joel -- "Tell Her About It" -- September 24, 1983

Billy Joel's best songs didn't make it to #1, but that's almost always the way. This bouncy throwback of a song is still fun. With most excellent advice: "Tell her about it/ Tell her everything you feel/ Give her every reason/ To accept that you're for real." (It occurs to me that my husband is the first guy I dated who did that actually while we were dating, as opposed to waiting until after we broke up. Most of the guys I dated did not take in "I will not get back together with you if we break up." Not my fault; I told them about it.) Anyway, this isn't as good as "Big Shot," or "You May Be Right," or "My Life," or a whole lot of other Billy Joel songs I like a lot better, but it's pretty good.

Bonnie Tyler -- "Total Eclipse of the Heart" -- October 1, 1983

Melodrama, I love it. This song is so Great -- big, fantastical, unembarrassed, and awesome in both meanings of the term. Bonnie Tyler knows her strengths and has no hesitation about using that huge voice, and yet she doesn't oversing, either. The lyrics? Hell if I know. To me, it sounds like that part of a relationship where you're losing yourself and can't think about anything but the other person, and especially about having sex with the other person. But whatever else it is, it's poetry. And big thunder crashes. Which is a lot like falling in love. It's not necessarily happy. It just is.

Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton -- "Islands In the Stream" -- October 29, 1983

Going from "Total Eclipse of the Heart" to this song induces emotional whiplash. The opening goes "Baby, when I met you/ There was peace unknown." That's the exact opposite of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." What is the same as "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is that the lyrics make no actual sense -- but of course they don't, this thing was written by the Bee Gees. Nonsensical lyrics can be poetic, but the Bee Gees didn't do poetry, at least not good poetry. Oh well, it's probably their most tolerable song. It's a sweet and light song, and I'm sure the narrators will be very happy together. They sound exceedingly "emotionally healthy." But as art, I prefer the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" take. Also I think this song might have been better with just Dolly Parton. Kenny Rogers was good, but he couldn't match Dolly.

Lionel Richie -- "All Night Long" -- November 12, 1983

Lionel Richie puts on a fake Jamaican accent for this thing. Also he makes up pseudo-African chants. I'm not going to go all "j'accuse!", at least not of problematicicity. No, I am accusing him instead of being annoying. Also dull. This is a party song, but an extremely boring one. Also Richie kind of tries to do an "ow" thing, obviously inspired by Michael Jackson, but of course it doesn't work. It's still not terrible. Unlike all the gloop Richie made, I can listen to the whole thing. The drums -- or drum machine, rather -- have a neat beat, and there are some good horns and other musical touches.

Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson -- "Say Say Say" -- December 10, 1983

Well this is weird. I can't remember ever having heard this song before. The song is about begging someone not to "play games with my affection." And it sounds like the two men are singing to each other, regardless of the lyric about getting through to a "girl." It's not bad -- Michael Jackson gives Paul McCartney the musical edge that he'd lost as soon as he left the Beatles. Strong beat, harmonica and all. But I'm not going to seek it out, either. I think the beat's too repetitive. Also it feels too busy.

BEST OF 1983 -- "Let's Dance" by David Bowie, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, and "Sweet Dreams" by The Eurythmics. Great year for the pop charts. WORST OF 1983 -- There aren't any that I think are truly terrible this year, so I guess I'll go with "Baby, Come to Me," because as predicted, I have already forgotten it.

#billboard number ones

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oopsabird · 4 years

Text

IFD Author Showcase - oopsabird’s SamiCharlie (Wonder Woman 2017) Works

Hello all! Since today is February 15 was International Fanworks Day, I thought I’d get around to something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, which is a masterpost of all the Wonder Woman (2017) fics I’ve written for the pairing Charlie/Sameer! Yay!! Shamless self-promotion time!!

Click under the cut for all 15 of my works for this ship in the order I originally posted them! Plenty of reading to fill up your reading week or procrastinate whatever you “should” be doing lol

Unfortunately this probably won’t show up in the tags due to the amount of links it has, so reblogs would be super super appreciated, as are comments and kudos from those of you who click through!

These works represent the small public part of the huge amount of writing growth I have had in the last two years, and a big effort to build a ship tag from the ground up with my friends, and I am so so proud of them!! Every word of a comment or kudos means the absolute world to me, as making these fics has helped me rediscover my creative self again after so many years of being estranged from that part of me - they are an expression of creative joy.

Hope you enjoy!

1. And In The Morning [1838 words]

If that snowy night in Veld had been the calm before the storm, this sunrise was the stunned quiet in the wake of the hurricane. The moment to look around and take stock of what made it through the vicious night - and what didn’t.

Missing scene/coda: Sameer at the airfield, after.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Chief, Diana Prince | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 28 Nov 2017

Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Pre-Slash, sober Charlie

2. je le veux [7697 words]

Diana believes in love the same way children believe in fairytales - with optimism and wholehearted conviction.

or;

Over the course of their mission in Belgium, Diana deduces from watching Sameer and Charlie that they obviously must be a devoted married couple. This conclusion would in fact be news to everyone else on the team — including Sameer and Charlie.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Diana Prince, Sameer, Charlie, Etta Candy, Chief | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Diana Prince/Steve Trevor (mentioned), Charlie & Sameer, Etta Candy & Diana, Wonder Squad Found Family Feels | Date Posted: 27 Dec 2017

Addtional Tags: Mutual Pining, Intimacy, cultural misunderstandings (of a sort), Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Recovery, Grieving, well-intentioned meddling friends, Diana Prince vs 20th-century homophobia, aka Truth Coming Out Of Her Well To Shame Mankind, Fluff, Get-Together Fic, Post-Movie, non-explicit references to homophobia, sober Charlie

3. gambit [7390 words]

gambit: in chess, a sacrifice used to gain an early advantage in space or time at the opening of a game.

or;

Sameer does something arguably reckless, and consequences ensue.

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Chief, Etta Candy | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer, Wonder Squad Found Family Feels | Date Posted: 3 Jan 2018

Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, liberal mis-use of historical timelines and the field of medicine, Hurt/Comfort, a dozen tropes stacked together in a trenchcoat, Mission Fic, Minor Injuries, Serious Injuries, Interrogation, Get-Together Fic, Post-Canon, Whump, epilogue compliant, sober Charlie

4. To Burn And Keep Quiet [5660 words]

Sameer and Charlie tell their secrets, yet still keep them secret all the same. Etta gets caught up in the middle of their mess, and prays for patience.

Additional Tags: Mutually Unrequited, Mutual Pining, Friendship, Miscommunication, Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, yes it can be both, oblivious idiots in love, Hospitals, Etta gets caught in a minor moral conundrum, Secrets, Pining, Male-Female Friendship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Period-typical attitudes towards homosexuality, (not Etta because she's a good person), Bisexual Character, Pre-Slash, epilogue compliant, sober Charlie, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism

5. so much like stars [6668 words]

Sameer gets Charlie back from the drink - and all that which comes with him, too.

or;

How the rest of the team spent that night in the village.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Chief | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 31 Jan 2018

Additional Tags: Pining, Canon Compliant, Mid-Canon, Missing Scene, Undressing, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, the result of watching the "evening in Veld" scene way too many times, Friendship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, probably some UST too but it's subtle I think, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Diana/Steve Trevor (mentioned), sober Charlie

6. Next To Me [2604 words]

After the war Charlie's drinking stops, but the nightmares don't. Luckily, he has people who��ll take care of him - if he can learn to let them.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Etta Candy, Chief | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 18 Mar 2018

Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Nightmares, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Angst, Mutual Pining(if you squint), Team as Family, Charlie and the fight against toxic masculinity, epilogue compliant, sober Charlie

7. take my heart (clean apart if it helps yours beat) [4147 words]

This thought more than any other makes Sami’s heart twist in his chest; he wishes he could turn back time, lift the troubles from Charlie’s mind and give him the peace he deserves. Steve says this new mission of theirs could end the war, and while Sami isn’t quite naive enough to wholeheartedly believe this, he quietly hopes that it can be true, because he isn’t sure how much longer they can hold on otherwise. A small group of missing scenes from the last night in London before the mission.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Steve Trevor | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer, Sameer & Steve Trevor | Date Posted: 1 May 2018

Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Missing Scene, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pining, Miscommunication, Etta and Diana appear briefly but not enough to tag

8. a degree of difficulty [2603 words]

Without the drink to cloud his judgement, Charlie finds himself prone to worry.

or;

A small cutscene preceding the battle at the airfield; a moment of reassurance.

Warnings: Chose not to use | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Charlie, Sameer, Chief, Steve Trevor | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer, assorted minor/background team feels and friendships | Date Posted: 27 Aug 2018

Additional Tags: Ficlet, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Friendship, sober Charlie

9. i don’t know if you would listen [2509 words]

After the village battle and before the celebration, Charlie seeks out absolution in Veld's broken church.

Warnings: Chose not to use | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Charlie, Sameer | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 5 Oct 2018

Additional Tags: Character Study, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Religious Discussion, Pre-Slash, Friendship, Sami being beautiful in the twilight (again), Mid-Canon, time to unpack my massive box of Charlie feels (again), Prayer, sober Charlie

10. dìon [1944 words]

dìon — Scottish Gaelic; verb meaning “to protect”, “to safeguard”, or “to shelter”.

or;

Sami vs the forces of winter.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie, Etta Candy | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer, Etta Candy & Sameer, Etta Candy & Charlie | Date Posted: 8 Jan 2019

Additional Tags: Winter, Pre-Slash, mild whump, Fluff, Mutually Oblivious Pining, Sharing Clothes, epilogue compliant, sober Charlie

11. let me come with you [12,013 words]

the woods are lovely, dark and deep (but i have promises to keep)

or;

When things go awry on a mission in Italy, it's Charlie's turn to risk everything for his family, and pray they'll bring him home. Sequel and mirror to gambit.

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Charlie, Sameer, Etta Candy, Chief | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer, Etta Candy & Charlie, Charlie & Chief, Etta Candy & Sameer, Wonder Squad Found Family Feels | Date Posted: 4 Apr 2019

Additonal Tags: Mission Fic, Established Relationship, Action & Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Team as Family, Canon-Typical Violence, (maybe a bit above that), Whump, tropes tropes and more tropes, sober Charlie, Serious Injuries, Post-Canon, epilogue compliant, liberties taken with medical accuracy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Peril, Romance, Multilingual Character, i love Charlie and i am terrible to him, Torture

12. a small enough love [1016 words]

i don’t want to die. i just want a little goddamn rest and a small enough love that i can breathe around it.

Charlie sleeps. Sami keeps watch.

Warnings: N/A | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 20 Aug 2019

Additional Tags: Napping, Pining, Friendship/Love, Pre-Canon

13. (you say it best) when you say nothing at all [2073 words]

Sameer prides himself on knowing over two dozen languages (and counting) — yet somehow, he has never really needed any of them for him and Charlie to understand one another perfectly.

Warnings: Chose not to use | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 14 Oct 2019

Additonal Tags: Post-Canon, Getting Together, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Racism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, mild whump, aka Charlie gets his ass kicked a bit, No Dialogue, sober Charlie, Sameer makes a fuss, Charlie doesn’t actually mind, Angst with a Happy Ending, but like mild angst, Men Crying, Friends to Lovers, First Kiss

14. remedy [4027 words]

Sameer has spent a long time pretending he doesn't hear Charlie's nightmares, both to shelter his friend's pride and hide his own feelings.

Then the war ends, and Charlie gets sober, and damn near everything changes.

Warnings: Chose not to use | Fandom: Wonder Woman (2017) | Characters: Sameer, Charlie | Relationships: Charlie/Sameer, Charlie & Sameer | Date Posted: 12 Nov 2019

Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Post-Canon, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, sober Charlie, Paris (City), Sharing a Bed, Accidental Cuddling, Repressed Idiots, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-War, Tenderness, Mutually oblivious

15. and if the night comes (and the night will come) [2164 words]

well at least the war is over

Charlie isn’t the only one who has his share of nightmares.

Sameer just happens to be a lot quieter about it.

Additional Tags: Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Role Reversal, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Singing, Established Relationship, Post-Canon, Post-War, Cuddling & Snuggling, Multilingual Character, sober Charlie, Sameer is painfully selfless, Charlie is Trying His Best god bless him, Lullabies, Tenderness

If you’ve made it this far and still somehow want more, please go check out the 17 other works for this ship by my dearly beloved friends and muses Elri and Kaye, and my pal Bug. Hell, check it out anyway. Couldn’t have done all this writing without them, I simply couldn’t <3

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homestuck-kinstuff · 4 years

Note

Hey! I was just wondering if I could have a tarot reading for a Gamzee, that being me? I don't remember much but I'm hoping I can help! I just remember being.. pretty much a soft boy, I had Karkat as a moirail and if my memory is working well I also had Equius as a matesprit which explains a few things but I'm hoping a tarot reading would help me remember more! Thank you very much!

Hello Gamzee,

Thank you for writing in. You can absolutely have a reading. And doubly I thank you for your patience in us getting this out to you. I hope you find it helpful. 💜

Your full reading is below the cut:

Beginning

Ace of Swords, Reversed:

The Ace of Swords is a powerful card, usually indicative of one wielding a great power. Reversed as it is, it can imply that the power one holds is being used for less-than-admirable intentions.

With regard to an Alternian upbringing, it's possible the power you held from your caste were not being used the way )(IC intended. It's likely you were using this power a little foolishly, a little selfishly, and it ended up benefiting naught but you and your whims alone.

Middle

8 of Cups, Upright:

Looking back on a situation, you've realized it's toxic nature and have made the difficult decision to leave it behind. However, you've still abandoned something that was once very dear to you, and you feel that loss deeply.

A big theme of this card is disappointment, disillusionment. It's possible at this point in your timeline you decided to move away from your hive, and from your lusus. Possibly moving in with one of your quadrantmates, if they had been established as such at this point in your timeline.

It's also possible you had a less-than-stellar relationship with someone who lived a little closer to you, and you decided it was in your best interests to cut them off.

Whatever the case, this was a difficult time for you, and you likely leaned on the people closest to you to make it through.

Towards the End

The Empress, Upright:

The Empress is representative of all things "womanly." She embodies nurturing, fertile, or motherly concepts, and she is often associated with the planet Venus, or Mother Earth.

The end of your timeline was a time likely ruled by more homely, nurturing things. Your life was more down to earth, and more emotional moments were encouraged and discussed, rather than buried.

It's also possible during this period, your life was strongly impacted by a feminine force or individual. It's possible they had a big influence on your life during this period, be it good or bad. It's also possible this card could represent )(IC. However, intuition dictates that this card representing an individual of any caliber is not very likely.

You

King of Cups, Upright:

The King of Cups is a master of emotion. He is not empty of feeling, rather, he understands when and where they are needed, helpful, and when they do more harm than good. The King is a person of compassion, diplomacy, and generosity.

You are, at your core, someone who is deeply emotional, empathetic, and kind. You love, but you do not overwhelm with it, and your patience for others is seemingly endless. It would be a great joy for anyone to be your friend.

Karkat

Knight of Cups, Upright

The Knight of Cups is very in touch with their emotions and intuition, and are adept at channeling those things into action. They also tend to be romantics. Intuition dictates that this card represented Karkat in your spread.

He was in touch with his feelings, but, moreso, he knew how to use his own feelings to his advantage: as a vehicle for action, for change. Karkat likely brought a lot of that energy into your relationship: pushing you past waiting for change and impassioning you to seize it for yourself.

Your Relationship with Karkat

9 of Wands, Upright:

This is a card representing the last stretch of a time of battle and hard work. You've spent a long, draining time pursuing what you believe to be right, and it's taking it's toll. You are reaching point exhaustion, but there's only a small ways left to go before you achieve what you set out to do.

You were both deeply emotional people. Alternia's culture wasn't very kind to that sort. A big part of your relationship was likely bolstering each other through hard times, reminding each other what you're fighting for.

Equius

The Hierophant, Upright

The Hierophant embodies tradition. The tried-and-true. It's easy to see how this card could represent Equius.

He likely brought a lot of structure and loyalty into your relationship.

Your Relationship with Equius

The Ace of Wands, Upright:

The Ace of Wands is the first step in the act of creation. It represents passion, desire, and firey intention that often sparks new ideas. It acts as a guiding light through the world, to help make your dreams a reality.

This was a very passionate relationship. Every aspect of it was filled with vim and vigor: your togetherness, your disagreements.

Its very likely you guided each other towards your respective hopes and dreams, and well as helped each other discern what it is you truly wanted from this life.

Challenges

The Star, Upright:

The Star represents hope, faith, and rejuvenation. It calls for you to have faith in yourself, and have faith in the way the world works. Trust that everything will turn out fine.

As a major lifelong challenge of yours, it's likely you had a hard time believing things would be okay. When things were bad, you tended to beleive they would stay that way. When things were good, it's likely you couldn't enjoy it fully, often plagued with anticipation for the next 'Bad Thing.'

How you Faced them

4 of Wands, Upright:

This is a lovely card, representing a celebration of harmony, happiness, and good relationships. Usually referring to a larger group of people, this harmony ushers in a time of peace after hard work.

Taking into account the nature of this card and the position it takes in the spread, your quadrants were closely tied to your challenges and the struggle to best them.

Leaning on your friends and quadrants, you were able to regain that spark of hope that can so easily be snuffed out.

Advice

Ace of Cups, Reversed:

The Ace of Cups represents the beginnings of emotional fulfillment. It represents the joy of giving, and getting in return. Reversed as it is, it can represent wasted emotions, blocked creativity or a general feeling of emptiness.

You pour yourself into everything you do. But moderation, I think, is key here my dear.

Save some kindness for yourself, Gamzee. It will help bring you peace, and balance.

The Fool, Reversed:

The fool is representative of absolute optimism, and complete, joyous naivety. Reversed as it is, the dangers of this become apparent.

Excessive eagerness, coupled with absolute blindness to consequences and danger ahead, is a recipe for disaster. But you are not the only one who suffers if dangers befall you.

Winging it, while tempting, is not always the best option. A little structure, a little planning would do you good. 💜

Thank you for taking the time to read all of that, I know I can be quite wordy. I hope this helped to shake some memories loose for you. 👾

As always, you would know your timeline better than I. These are your memories, not mine. If something doesn't feel right, it likely isn't.

If any part of this reading doesn't strike a chord with you, I'd heartily recommend looking into the meaning of the card in question yourself. Tarot cards have many meanings, and another interpretation may make more sense to you. 💜

Kind Regards,

🌹Mod Rose🌹

#homestuck kin #homestuck #hs kin #anon #kin #tarot #mod rose #tarot reading #tarot card readings #hskin #hs kin blog #anonymous #ask #answered #gamzee #gamzee makara kin #gamzee kin #gamzee makara

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kiritella · 5 years

Text

The Long and the Lost [9.5]

Title: The Long and the Lost [9.5]

Words: 1.8k-ish

Pairings: Father!Bucky x Daughter!Reader

Warnings: none

A/N: This one sucks and I am so sorry. It is mostly just details and not really necessary. This series is updated every Saturday at 12 pm CST.

--------------------------------------------

Previously…

The sound of a recording being turned off draws your attention back to the other side of the room where Steve is looking proudly at his phone screen before back up at the two of you, “I’ll send you a copy,” he says to Bucky before walking down the hallway to his room to upload the video to his computer, Sam following behind him.

“Forgot we had an audience,” you mumble, slightly embarrassed but not regretting a single second.

Bucky laughs lightly and looks back at you, “Yeah.”

Shaking your head slightly, you bring yourself back into the present, “Well, what’s the plan for today? Work?”

“Actually, I finished my reports yesterday, so I was thinking we break into Sam’s secret candy stash and have a Star Trek marathon?”

“You grab the goods and I’ll make the popcorn.”

--------------------------------------------

Now…

A smirk forms on Bucky’s lips as he watches you spin on your heels and into the kitchen, damn, you’re even his partner in crime. He slips his way down the hall and around the corner to the very end and lifts a picture frame off the wall, revealing the little, candy-filled cubby-hole Sam had made a few months ago. He grabs and stuffs the items into his pocket as he hears the popping coming from the kitchen before placing the picture back carefully and making his way into the living room and leaving the apartment, heading to the common room to set up the TV.

With your nightmares happening less and less, there have been fewer movie nights. Not that he’s complaining about it, you are getting better. You’ve been sleeping and you haven’t needed to talk to Sam about the nightmares or memories as much, and although you still have panic attacks now and then, they aren’t as frequent or severe. You still flinch a lot, though, loud noises, sharp movements, you’ve even lashed out a few times on accident, left a few bruises on Sam and him, hell, even Nat, but no one can really blame you, especially when you nearly break down in tears apologizing. However, because you are getting better, he’s had less time with you, now that he isn’t needed at your side every minute of the day, he has more time to work, go on more missions. So, he misses you and enjoys these few times that he can just spend the day relaxing with you, getting to know you better outside of your fear.

You shuffle into the common room with a bowl of popcorn and a couple sodas, setting them on the coffee table before plopping onto the couch next to him, “Which one we on now?”

“VI: The Voyage Home, it’s weird, but still a good movie.”

“Hmm, we’ll see,” you mumble while stuffing a handful of popcorn in your mouth as the intro to the movie starts playing. Bucky smiles in amusement when he hears you humming along to the music. He grabs the assortments of candy from his pockets and lays it on the couch between the two of you, Hershey’s, Reese’s, mints, Snickers, Milky Ways, the whole nine yards.

Several hours and a few movies later, you and Bucky are cleaning up your mess, which may or may not include scattered popcorn from when you had a little food fight after a disagreement in the best characters. When you are finished, you both head back to the apartment, grabbing some actual food before settling on the couch, each with a book in hand.

Bucky’s eyes are on the page, but they flick back up to you every now and then, too focused on how relaxed you look to actually be reading, the gentle crease of your brows as you drown in the book, your slightly puckered lips that he swears makes you look like your mom. You’ve come so far since they found you, hell, it’s been almost seven months since you both were prisoners at Hydra, and here you are, becoming a happier person every day, becoming you, not some tool or weapon. His mind drags back memories and he sees you being thrown into the room, blood soaking your clothes and fresh bruises shining on your face. His stomach twists and his grip on the book tightens, he has to remind himself of the present, the reality happening right now. Right now, you are both at the compound, and you’re sitting right on the other side of the couch, safe. Something keeps poking at the back of his mind though, you can move and react better in the dark than he’s ever seen anyone capable of, you can’t stand harsh sunlight, which he could blame on the fact you were isolated in a Hydra base for most of your life, but something is nagging in his gut telling him that’s not the case. Bucky knows you were trained in extensive ways, and according to you, it started very shortly after you were kidnapped, he just doesn’t know the details. No one does, except probably Sam…

“Hey, Doll?” Bucky asks and you hum in response, “Could we talk ‘bout something?”

You peel your eyes from the book and up to Bucky, there is a certain wariness in his eyes that tells you it’s about your past. It has been something you haven’t really spoken to him much about, not that you don’t want to, but you notice how tense he gets, the pain in his eyes when you do, and you figure it would be easier for him not to know. You answer all his questions, however, sometimes giving fewer details, but you don’t want to leave him guessing about certain things.

“Sure…” you say as you rest the book in your lap and move your legs from their curled up position so you could see him a little better.

Bucky shifts and faces you better, a hesitance in his voice as he speaks, “It’s about your training…” he pauses and you nod for him to continue, “You mentioned the Midnight Project, what is that?”

You tilt your head a little and think a second before answering, “The Midnight Project is a training program designed for black-op missions, primarily stealth. The training starts out like any other program, martial arts, endurance, weapons differentiation, examination, and accuracy, then it moves into the stealth aspect. Training to move swiftly and silently, how to incapacitate your enemy in the most efficient and quietest manner, lighting angles, behavioral manipulation, but one of the things that set it apart, was what they called midnight sight. They place a disc behind each of the trainee’s ears,” you say as you move some of your hair and show him the circular scar, two branches breaking off, one leading behind your neck and the other just slightly over the tip of your ear, “When activated, they unravel and a form a protective shield around their eyes and secures itself behind the neck, blinding the trainee until the device is shut off. They will leave it on a few months at a time, forcing the body’s other senses to heighten. They continue the training until the agent can perform blind, it optimizes efficiency for the missions, which were almost always at night. There weren’t many that survived the process, but those that did became some of the most lethal agents Hydra possessed, next to the Winter Soldier program.”

Bucky keeps his eyes set on you the whole time, sometimes nodding with the information, but you notice the darkness and tension in them grow as you speak, “How many others were there?”

“Besides me, there were eight. I was the first and highest ranking agent, so that’s why I received the Midnight name. But in the end, each of us could have torn apart organizations in the dead of night while everyone was sleeping. There were a few attempts at a new generation of Midnight agents, but I hear they didn’t turn out as well as Hydra had hoped. A lot of files were lost after the Howling Commandos and later Shield took out testing bases resulting in a loss of techniques and specifics of the program. As for the originals, Jones, Miller, and Raftire were sent out on a few long-term undercover missions before they were decommissioned. By the time I woke up next, Venhine and Piltor were nearly seventy, I’m not sure what happened to Xander and Tulman, and Alex was…He, uh…” your heart sinks as the image of the ceiling collapsing on the blonde-haired, green-eyed boy resurfaces and you pause a second before clearing your throat, “He died on a retrieval mission.”

Bucky watches as your face flashes from a neutral discomfort to pain then to a walled-up heart, and he recognizes the faraway look in your eyes, “Hey, C’mere,” he says so you scoot closer to him and he wraps an arm around you, “He was important to you, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he was…”

Bucky tightens his hold around you and presses a kiss into your temple, “You okay?”

You nod, “Yeah, talked to Sam ‘bout it. Still hurts, but I’m okay.”

“You know you can talk to me if you want to, right?”

A smile forms on your lips, “I know, Dad.”

Bucky’s heart warms when you call him Dad, it seems so simple, but it is something he never thought he was going to be able to hear again. To have you here in his arms is more than he thought was possible after so long and he has missed it more than he ever realized.

The ring of his phone calls the two of you out of your trance and Bucky groans when he sees Stark’s drunk face pop up on the screen before swiping the answer button, “It’s my day off.” Some muttering is heard on the other end and Bucky’s face twists in disgust, “No, I don’t—Stark—Stark!” The line goes dead and Bucky nearly throws his phone across the room, “That goldfish-brained Romulan.”

You remove yourself from his grasp despite his little pout and look at him curiously, “Gotta go to work?”

Bucky shakes his head before muttering, “Might as well be, Stark is throwing a party tomorrow night and is ordering all Avengers to be there.”

The idea of a party doesn’t seem that bad, if it is like what you’ve read about, so it is a little confusing as to what the problem is, “It’s a party, it can’t be that bad...right?”

A sarcastic chuckle and a shake of his head has your face lighting in confusion but amusement, “You’ve never been to one of Stark’s parties…” he says as he smiles at you but his face falls after a moment, “Wait...you haven’t been to a party.”

You shrug and almost laugh as your Dad’s face lights up instantly, his voice losing every ounce of disdain as he speaks, “Wanna come with me?”

“I-I don’t know…” you stutter, eyes blown wide.

“C’mon, you’ll have fun, and you being there will make it bearable for me. If you don’t like it, it’ll just be a reason to leave early. How ‘bout it?” Bucky practically pleads, his best puppy-dog eyes making it really hard to say no...you thought that was supposed to work on couples, not fathers and daughters.

Your teeth bite into your lower lip and your nervous fingers fiddle with the hem of your shirt, “We can leave if it gets too much?”

“You say the word and we’re gone.”

The anxiety builds in your stomach at the mere thought of going, but you want to see what the fuss is about. Why Stark likes them, why your Dad hates them, why Steve is always on Sam patrol on those seemingly common parties, “Okay.”

--------------------------------

Okay, I know this one was lame, but I have been sick and school is a real pain right now, I am really sorry...

Tags:

@darkphoenixrisingwrites @afictionaladventure16 @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @stop-talking-about-supernatural @avngrsinitiative @death-by-viola @sunnyshoes @jsmith509 @alicat-life

#the long and the lost #bucky #buckybarnes #bucky x abused!reader #bucky x reader #bucky x you #james buchanan barnes #james barnes #bucky x reader protective #father!bucky x reader #fluffy bucky #bucky x reader fluff #bucky fic #dad!bucky x daughter!reader #father!bucky daughter!reader #dad!bucky

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13parkfilter · 4 years

Text

a wangxian playlist no one asked for

These are track notes for a wangxian playlist no one asked for, because CQL / mdzs fandom ate my life and I somehow needed to make a super dramatic 28 song playlist that follows wangxian’s love in (extremely loose) chronological order, from their first meeting as cute battle teens all the way through the depths of angst and eventually to becoming cultivation partners and (I’m positive) really great co-parenting dads.

Because I’m like that ™ , you can find notes for each and every song below. Any weird song choices are entirely my fault. Spoiler alert: Frank Ocean.

This is a real long playlist and you could definitely break it into shorter stretches by mood. For the happiest and most in love vibes, hit the first 6 songs and the last 6 songs. Dramatic Burial Mounds vibes are from 7 to 13. It may be very satisfying to go from the depths of sadness and grief (~16) through to the end.

1. Don’t Know What to Do | BLACKPINK

Inspired, of course, by WYB and XZ’s demonstrated love of Blackpink in the CQL BTS videos. For a little while Stay was on this list instead, but I kept coming back to this song because to me it gets at that excited “everything is new and I’m young and so in love” feeling. Two people could certainly have a playful duel under the moonlight to this song, if they wished.

2. A Loving Feeling | Mitski

Something about Mitski’s melancholy, slightly maudlin and self-deprecating vibe in this song is just peak “I wasn’t flirting… unless…?”

3. Self Control | Frank Ocean

Somehow this playlist ended up structured around two overlapping arcs carried by Frank Ocean and Lykke Li, respectively, which makes no sense in theory but maybe kind of works? Idk, let me know if it works. If it does, maybe it’s because so many Frank Ocean songs are incredibly raw love songs about loss and the work that memory does to keep your love alive, and so many Lykke Li songs are about trying to slog through all the pain and bullshit without losing sight of that kernel of untarnished brightness, whatever it was that made you want to love in the first place.

I love this song for many reasons, but in no small part for the sorry-not-sorry vibe of apologizing for making someone lose their self control.

4. Look After Me | Cub Sport

This song is real honest and tender about people taking care of each other and it messes me up.

“There's something in the way you look at me

Like I've never done wrong

There's something in the way you look at me

When I was wrong all along.”

5. We Could Run | Beth Ditto

Ok, imagine this playing in the background during LWJ and WWX’s first meeting with Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan. A good song to play as you run into the sunset holding hands with your cultivation partner, is what I’m saying.

6. Unconditional Love | 椎名林檎 (Shiina Ringo)

This is just a super sweet and painfully dramatic love song, the kind of song that plays for a man who makes grand unsung gestures like composing magical love songs and secretly adopting your child after you’ve died. This is before the latter part of that, though.

7. Bad Religion | Frank Ocean

This is the first turning point on the list, the fading of youthful optimism and the start of choices that there’s no going back from. This is when you start to realize that you really can’t please everyone, and you can’t do what you believe is right without someone hating you for it. It’s also the point at which your neuroses and blind spots start to go from being quirky and cute to a cage of your own making. You have to deal with the bad shit you inherited from your parents eventually. If you don’t you’ll either make the same mistakes they did or make different mistakes because you’re fighting so hard to keep your head above water.

I really like the part when Frank Ocean asks his taxi driver to outrun the demons. Feels like something a modern AU WWX might say.

8. Silent My Song | Lykke Li

I didn’t want to go full angst here because this playlist is about *cue Westley bellowing in the Princess Bride* TRUE LOVE and so I didn’t go as hard as I could here, but this is the start of the golden core + first Burial Mounds arc.

9. Figure 8 | FKA twigs

I can hear the resentful energy swirling in this one. This is probably the most abstract choice on the list but to me something in it evokes the curdled rage and seething of an unquiet spirit.

10. Fantasmas | Ambar Lucid

This is a song about living with ghosts: of a failed relationship, and the mistakes that it took to get there.

11. Green Grass | Cibelle

I love this song because it’s a little sweet and a little scary at the same time. It’s gentle and haunting and the lyrics are as unforgettable as poetry.

Is this a love song that a corpse is singing to someone visiting their grave? I like to think so.

12. I Bet on Losing Dogs | Mitski

In spite of the dog reference (lol) this whole song is a super WWX trying to live with the Wens in the Burial Mounds mood in my opinion. It has turnip energy. Trampled yet undefeated lotus energy, if you will.

13. Godspeed | Frank Ocean

This song is the essence of heartbreak and knowing that you have to finally let go of someone. Am I imagining LWJ and WWX singing this back and forth to each other at the Burial Mounds, depending on which line it is? Am I crying about it a little? Maybe.

“I let go of my claim on you.”

“There will be mountains you can’t move.”

14. I Know Places | Lykke Li

This is the “Come back to Gusu with me” song, even though it’s coming later in the timeline than it should. (I sort of compressed all the Burial Mounds-set songs together for a better flow). Anyway I feel like this captures all of those unspoken desires, that frustrated feeling of caring about and believing in someone so much without being able to protect them from all the people and powers that want to hurt them. But you have to try.

15. Deeper Than Love | Antony and the Johnsons

This song is almost. Too dramatic. This is meant to be at Nightless City / WWX’s fall. I originally had 2 completely different songs here but I ended up liking the arc of this song and where it ends up. The two songs I originally had here were a much more bitter feeling, but I like that this song is tragic and painful and is still a kind of love song at the same time. I really wanted this playlist to be all love songs, some very different from each other, some more about pain and loss and regret than the good parts of love, but still love songs.

“And I have tried to shine in the darkness

Entertaining vanities in vain…

Hold on

And hold on

And let go

Let go

And fall deeper

Even than love.”

16. Days of Candy | Beach House

To me this song is very evocative of the mingled feelings of grief in the immediate aftermath of a loss. Grief is never a pure, singular feeling, but a sticky amalgam of missing and wanting and sweet memories and a deep pit of pain. The sort of slow, half-asleep sadness full of watery light that this song evokes really takes me there, to the place where the grief is real but the loss is still almost unreal, where the feeling of that person still hasn’t left, your senses are still full of them, you just heard their voice yesterday, they might come into the room at any moment. It’s the almost— joyful?? part of grief that you don’t realize has any joy in it yet because you haven’t yet started to forget. You can’t imagine being able to forget, and you have no idea how much worse it will be when you can’t immediately evoke their presence anymore to comfort yourself. When you can’t pretend anymore that you’ll be able to see them again.

17. Last Song | Gackt

Idk why exactly but Gackt is very yearning LWJ vibes in this song. Is it the earnestness? The intensity? The incredibly romantic lyrics? The deep, smooth voice?.. All of the above?

Anyway, if the previous song was nonverbal grief, this song is the start of the solidifying of grief, moving past rage and disbelief and self-destructive denial and gradually into a crystallization, a narrative of what the loss meant. Instead of a great crushing thing that blots out the sky and swallows your entire life, the grief becomes just another part of you— a defining part, maybe, but still part of a greater whole. And you move on. Or you try to.

18. Sleeping Alone | Lykke Li

This is 13 years of going where the chaos is, searching and playing Inquiry and never giving up, resigned to sleeping alone in strange places but still just never ever giving up.

“Now was not our time, no, I let you down.

Someday, somehow, somewhere down the line… we’ll meet again.”

19. Busby Berkeley Dreams | The Magnetic Fields

Does every deep-voiced man singing a dramatic love song remind me of LWJ now? Maybe. At least I refrained from filling the entire playlist with Stephin Merritt songs.

“I should have forgotten you long ago, but you’re in every song I know” is just… the most Wangxian sentiment.

This is a bit of a modern AU LWJ, one who would definitely cry into his True Romance magazines. I do still think that this song very much captures how he must have felt hearing the song he wrote played on a terrible flute after 13 years, though. It definitely doesn’t have a flute solo in it, either.

20. Ivy | Frank Ocean

This song is peak WWX in a mask, trying to hide from LWJ and his own emotions at the same time. But also, maybe, the start of some emotional awareness and genuine communication. Thanks to Frank Ocean for this entire playlist, practically.

21. Fireworks | Mitski

Another song about memories and dealing with the past even when it comes back to stab you in the side. (s/o to Jin Ling, low key my favorite character, never afraid to cry in any situation)

“I will be married to silence

The gentleman won't say a word

But you know, oh you know in the quiet he holds

Runs a river that'll never find home.”

22. Hell | Waxahatchee

This is a song about apologizing to someone for putting them through hell. To me it’s a very adults-in-love song, and there’s a sort of gentleness to acknowledging the pain and mistakes of the past while still having hope that maybe love is really worth it after all— especially if you’re “one of those who canonize a love so true it never dies.”

23. A letter to my younger self | Ambar Lucid

I have to admit that the title of this song makes me think of yiqie’s truly excellent time travel fic that is very heartbreaking and very beautiful. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read it (go read it), but it’s safe to tell you that it grapples with and transcends all the reasons I usually avoid time travel fics, like the idea of helplessness in the face of fate, and how much control we really have over our own decisions, and what it means to let people make their own mistakes.

24. Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits | The Magnetic Fields

This one really speaks for itself.

Besides, “Let’s pretend we’re bunny rabbits until we pass away” is just a cuter way of saying “Everyday,” right?

25. ”愛してる”からはじめよう (“Let’s start from ‘I love you’”) | Miyavi

I personally feel that Miyavi has big sunshine WWX energy. This is just. A very cute and soft love song. Feels like napping in some tall grass in the summertime. Waking up next to your lifelong crush and remembering how lucky you are. Wandering from town to town with your true love and your donkey. That type of energy.

26. Angels | The xx

The last three songs on this list never fail to give me Big Dramatic Feelings.

I think what this song captures well is the feeling of just drifting along, lost in your thoughts, showing up somewhere— and suddenly seeing the person you know to be the love of your life at an unexpected time or place, and being struck all over again with… all of it. Your heart stutters, everything slows down, and for a second you forget to breathe. Like: Oh yeah. Oh shit. I remember why I love you. I remember how it felt when I was first falling in love with you. And I never want it to stop.

“And with words unspoken, a silent devotion. I know you know what I mean.”

27. Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone | Lykke Li

I think of this as the quintessential WWX love song, from the title to the sentiment of the lyrics to the moody burning joy of the sound of it. It’s demanding and soft and confident and raw all at once.

Props to Lykke Li for the redemption arc of this playlist.

28. Good to Love | FKA twigs

MAKE MY BODY COME ALIVE. This is the song that really says the most to me about the pain and beauty and the vulnerability and intimacy of being in love. What I love about all of FKA twigs’ music is how beautifully she merges and intertwines the messy physical and spiritual aspects of love. Her music is a sexy secular prayer to Eros imo and I’m here for it.

#cql #playlists no one asked for #dramatic love songs #idk #this is how i deal with my obsession #wwx #lwj #wangxian #i guess

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walkingshcdow-a · 4 years

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MASHAP + 11

((The prompt said “A Short Drabble”. 12 Pages Later...))

London, England: 10 years ago

“I’ll tell you a secret.”

The blonde woman is young - not much younger than he is, actually, but she has wide green eyes and Eric is sure she was carded multiple times tonight. They’ve been sitting together in a corner booth, swapping stories, punctuated by the kind of soul-deep, drunken make-outs you think uni has promised for you. Eric is twenty-six and well out of university. He wonders if this girl is. Masha. He likes the way her eyes glitter with warmth and mischief and he really likes her accent, which is warm and vaguely foreign. Sometimes tonight, like now, it starts to slip and he hears Eastern European. He has all kinds of opinions about that, but now isn’t the time for them. He still wonders from which country they hail and if Masha can tell he’ll be finishing up training as a field agent in six weeks. He thinks, drunkenly, that he wouldn’t mind having her hold a gun to his throat if it means she’ll drop the British veneer from that accent she’s trying so hard to hide.

“Go on, then,” he says, roving a hand across her tights. He’s just drunk enough to wish she wasn’t wearing them.

“It’s not my birthday,” she tells him. She takes the garish, pink pin off her dress, and drops it onto the table.

Masha grins at the blond man and the flush of confusion on his face. She can guess what he’s thinking: that she wore it to trick handsome things like him out of a couple of pounds or into bed. Maybe he isn’t entirely wrong and maybe she should feel guilty for it. Instead, she snakes a hand down his chest, playing with the top button of his shirt. He’s sweet and funny in that trying-too-hard-to-be-funny way she’s always found endearing. If she wasn’t leaving in the morning, maybe she’d write her number on his hand or a bar napkin and hope he’d call, even though the odds he would are slim. Why would he call her after they’ve spent an hour talking and probably about another hour making out? Even if they slept together, why would he want to see her again? He knows nothing about her - not really - and she knows less about him. There’s no way he was serious when he said he studied medicine at Oxford. He probably only said it because she told him she was a nurse and he wants to impress her. She thinks, drunkenly, that she’d be impressed to know what he’s like relaxed and at her mercy, if his smile would seem more real. She sighs at the “It’s My Birthday” pin Ruslan clipped to her dress while the two of them and Gleb pre-gamed at the boys’ flat.

“I ship out tomorrow,” she says. “Doctors Without Borders. My friends thought it’d be a good way to spend my last night in London.”

Eric looks beyond her. Her friends have worried him all night - two muscle-bound brunets who have been going shot-for-shot with vodka all night. They don’t look over here often, but when they do, Eric imagines one or both of them is ready to kill him if he does the wrong thing. Masha follows his gaze and waves at her friends. She knows that look on Gleb’s face well - That one? Really, Masha? - and she knows if he was over here, they’d be fighting about how she doesn’t judge him for the fact he won’t ask the pretty girl from his work out, so he should keep his own judgments about who she makes out with in bars to himself.

“Blimey.” Eric looks at the birthday button. “Where are you going?”

She says something and he doesn’t really hear over the music. She smiles a little wistfully for a moment, but then her hands slide down his taut abdomen and she straddles his lap.

“-The way I see it,” she whispers, lips brushing his ear. “Is that I want to make my last night in London really count.”

“Wouldn’t you rather…” His breath hitches. “... make it count with your friends?”

“They’ve been throwing me going away parties all week,” Masha said with a laugh. The tip of her tongue flicks against the outer shell of Eric’s ear and he shivers beneath her. “I want to make it count with you.”

They’re too drunk to do more than make out in the corner booth. In the morning, he sleeps alone in his bed and she applies a tender layer of concealer to a mouth-shaped bruise on her collar bone before calling a taxi to take her to Heathrow.

Caracas, Venezuela: 9 years ago

The Simon Bolivar International Airport thrums with life and malcontent as the storm outside has canceled yet another round of flights. Masha, whose flight was canceled two hours ago, sits in one of the airport bars. The vodka here is disgusting, so she’s spent the last year drinking rum like a local. Her mouth has grown tired of the sweetness. She’s grown tired of Venezuela. It isn’t what they promised her in the brochure. Socio-political unrest has violently punctuated her tenure with Doctors Without Borders. She reads the paper, tries to understand what’s going on, but from everything she’s gathered it is this: the West comes in and puts someone in power that suits them, but not the people. It makes her reexamine what she’s doing - what any of them are doing - traveling with Doctors Without Borders. It makes her feel like even giving vaccinations to children in need makes her a puppet for colonialism. She thinks she will resign when she returns to the UK. Join a regular practice. Become a nurse practitioner. Open her own place in ten years. It’s attractive.

But she gets letters from Gleb, who is in Moscow, and hears how happy he is being anywhere but London. And she gets letters from Ruslan, who is still full of optimism that his military career isn’t just another decrepit arm of the former British empire. And she wants to feel what they do. She does. She does. When she gives a kid a bandaid and a smile, when she runs an ultrasound for a new mother-to-be, when she can confidently tell a family their grandfather’s cancer is in remission, she knows that she’s doing the right thing. A good thing. Even when she has to bear bad news, she supposes the knowing is better than wondering and worrying and watching those last moments of a loved one’s life be painful. That doesn’t make her feel better every time, but as she drinks in a foreign airport with no idea when she’ll go home, it brings her some amount of comfort that she’s doing her best to do good in the world and that maybe the next assignment won’t be so hard. Maybe it’s just this first one.

She’s two drinks in when someone slides into the barstool beside her. She looks at him and he looks familiar. He reminds her of a boy - well, not really a boy, a man - she met once in London. He has the same, laughing blue eyes as he orders a coffee, hot and strong as if he’s flirting with the waitress. Maybe he is. It’s none of her business. She really ought to stop staring.

“Well, hello, there, birthday girl,” he says, turning to look at her, grinning as if he recognizes her. “Small world, isn’t it?”

For a moment she thinks it can’t be. But then she grins and can’t believe he remembers that stupid button she’d been wearing when they met in London. She wonders if he remembers her name. She remembers his.

“Eric!” she says. She sets her drink aside. “Small world, indeed! What brings you to Venezuela?”

“Oh, you know,” he says. “Wanted to do a bit of traveling. Spent the summer fixing jetskis.”

“Mr. I Studied Medicine At Oxford came all the way to Venezuela to fix jetskis,” she teases. “You’ve been here all summer?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Been traveling around with a group of volunteers from Hungary. It’s been a wild summer.”

“Sounds it,” Masha says.

She isn’t sure if she believes him, but it’s a wild lie to make up for a girl you made out with once a year ago. She studies Eric’s face. He’s certainly suntanned, but in the light of day, he looks older than she remembered him being when they met. More tired. Surely fixing jetskis doesn’t make a man the kind of exhausted she feels, unless Eric, too, has been ruminating on whether any good they do for a complicated regime is actually good.

“What about you? Are you still doing Doctors Without Borders?” he asks. The waitress brings his coffee, and he thanks her. When she turns her back, he tips something from a flask into the coffee. “You were all set to save the world last time I saw you.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Masha mumbles. She shakes her head and pulls her drink closer. “But, yes, for now, I am still with Doctors Without Borders.”

“Good for you,” Eric said. “I know it can’t be easy. Especially to have a country like Venezuela as your first assignment…”

“Says the man, fixing sporting equipment for the bourgeoisie.”

Eric laughs and it sounds a little hollow. Masha wants to care that she’s made a conversational faux-pas, but she doesn’t. He deserves to feel uncomfortable if he’s been watching tensions rise from the other side of the socioeconomic scale. It occurs to her again how ridiculous it sounds when he says he’s been fixing jetskis as if he couldn’t do that along the English Channel back home. Maybe they aren’t so different - craving adventure, longing to do good and ending up wistful no matter what. Maybe she’s a little drunk.

“It’s good to see you,” she says to break the tension. “Are you flying back to London?”

“By way of Paris, yes,” he says. “And you?”

“The same. We’re probably on the same, canceled flight.”

He laughs a little more naturally.

“It’s good to see you, too, Masha,” he says. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Like you said, it’s a small world.”

“How long will you be in London for?” he asks. “Before your next assignment?”

“If there is a next one,” Masha sighs. “I don’t know. A few weeks. You?”

“Oh, only about a week or two,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see more of you in London?”

“Are you asking me out?” Masha asks, cocking her head.

“Well, I mean-” He takes a big swig of his coffee. “Only if you’d like-

“Why don’t we give it a trial run here?” she asks. “Have a date in the airport?”

“We could be stuck here for hours or days-”

“So let’s make the most of it,” Masha says. “Finish our drinks and go on a date at all the weird airport shops, have dinner at the food court.”

They drink some more and they talk and they go on a date to a sunglasses shop, a place that sells knick-knacks, and a very out-of-place Hard Rock Cafe. They make out in the terminal and whisper secrets and outrageous stories to each other beneath a giant window with a view of the lightning-streaked sky. When the airline offers hotel vouchers, they agree to take one for the night and swear they’ll date when they reach London, even if it’s only for a week. But morning comes and Eric’s friend, Strahil, is offering him a private flight to Budapest in a helicopter and Masha tells him to take it if it means he’ll get home sooner. When she finally gets a flight into London by way of Paris the next day, she doesn’t want to date Eric for a week or two, anyway.

Marrakech, Morocco: Seven Years Ago

Masha doesn’t mind working a side-gig for a little extra cash. Marrakech is fantastic in some ways - she gets to meet amazing people and work with geniuses and help people and she feels rejuvenated in the desert sun, but she feels judged as she walks the streets - a single woman, an independent woman, a Western woman - and often finds herself wrapping her hair in a headscarf to avoid stares and whispers in the marketplace. It’s only in these little ex-pat communities that she is free from local scrutiny and she knows she can get away with having a second job here because no one here knows she’s supposed to be working a nursing shift in the morning. So she sings jazz standards on stage, husky-voiced and sultry, while patrons from England and America and France drink and half-listen and enjoy themselves. She thinks about leaving nursing to be a performer sometimes. She isn’t half-bad. But she wouldn’t make it back home. She’s smart enough to know that this money - every last penny she earns - will go towards her nurse practitioner degree.

She sings a little Leonard Cohen and goes on break.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world…” a familiar voice says as a hand rests on her lower back and a glass of vodka appears before her in the bar.

“That’s Casablanca, Eric,” she says. “This is Marrakech.”

“But it’s still such a good line,” he says.

Masha picks up her drink. He smells faintly boozy, like he’s been here a while. She wonders how long and if he’s been watching her perform.

“So you gave up Doctors Without Borders,” he says. “And now you’re a lounge singer. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“I can’t understand how I can travel thousands of miles across the globe and run into you, but how we can both be based out of London and I never see you.”

“Masha, I’m sorry-”

“I’m not mad, Eric,” she says. “It’s just odd. You aren’t tailing me, are you?”

“For all I know, you could be tailing me,” he says. “I’ve been in North Africa since last year. When’d you start singing here?”

Masha takes a sip of vodka.

“My supervisor doesn’t know,” she says. “I’m trying to make some extra cash. Seeing the world is great and all, but…”

“But?”

“Don’t you have aspirations?” she asks him. “Things you want for the future?”

“Sure,” he says.

He doesn’t elaborate. Masha sighs. She hates playing chicken with him, but this is how a lot of their conversations feel and have felt over the years. They’ve crossed paths a few times since Venezuela. Every time, it’s like this. She drains her glass and asks the bartender for another.

“What do you want me to say?” Eric asks. “Tell me, Masha, and I’ll say it.”

“I want you to say something true for once,” she says. She clutches her new glass of vodka tightly. She can feel the ice cubes melting from her touch. “Anything true.”

“You sang like an angel tonight.”

She scoffs.

“I’ve been coming for the last three weeks to hear you sing and I’ve been trying to get up the courage to talk to you again.”

“Oh, please, I’m not the scariest thing you’ve seen and we both know it,” Masha says. “We both know you’ve probably stared down the barrel of a gun a hundred times-”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be,” Masha says. “Eric, why are you in Marrakech?”

“I’m on holiday,” he says.

She looks unimpressed.

“I was working security detail for the British Museum,” he says and even though it sounds wild, Masha thinks this is as close to the truth as she’ll get from him. “They’re negotiating the movement of some very old, very expensive artifacts in Cairo. It’s been a tense situation and so now that it’s over, I’m on vacation.”

“In Marrakech?”

“In Marrakech.”

“Why?” Masha asks. “Why not, I don’t know, Casablanca because you love it so much?”

“Well, you’re not in Casablanca.”

Eric turns pink and starts to drink his beer quickly.

“How would you know that?”

“I asked around. Some people owed me some favors.”

“Eric…” Her voice breaks. “You really shouldn’t-”

“If you don’t want to see me, I’ll go,” he says. “But I wanted to see you before my next work trip.”

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t say,” he says softly. “But I didn’t want to go without seeing you one more time.”

“When do you go?”

“Next week.”

Masha wraps a hand around Eric’s. For the first time since she’s known him, he sounds scared. She sets down her glass and runs her cool hand down his cheek.

“I have to sing another set in fifteen minutes. Then I’m done for the night. Will you wait for me?”

“I’m here all week,” Eric jokes. Masha, buzzed, lifts up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his.

“When you come back,” she whispers, “from wherever your work sends you, write to my sister for my location instead. Don’t waste your favors on me.”

“You’re never a waste.”

So she kisses him some more during those fifteen minutes, reapplies her lipstick, and when she sings a few jazz standards about having her lover near, she feels it and watches him across the bar, eager to spend a week wrapped up in his arms, even if a little part of her knows it may be the last time.

Yekaterinburg, Russia: Four Years Ago

Masha presses close to Eric as they sit on her grandmother’s ancient sofa. Her family buzzes around them. Cousins she hasn’t seen in a decade ask over and over if Eric is her boyfriend and Masha, hoping he doesn’t speak Russian, tells them he is because she doesn’t want them to wonder why she’s brought this random Englishman to her grandfather’s funeral. She doesn’t want to explain to them that the man she has brought with her is a British intelligence agent, with whom she has been having an on-and-off affair for six years, and just happened to run into in town mere hours before. Somehow, she doesn’t think that will go over well with her family, who has been scattered during and after the Cold War. It’s strange to see them all together again after so long and she doesn’t think she’d survive a minute of it if it wasn’t for Eric. She wishes she could say that her grandfather would have loved him, but…

“Does it scandalize you to know my grandfather was a communist?” she murmurs against Eric’s jawline. “And a good man, to boot?”

“Politics is complicated,” Eric sighs. He strokes her hair. “But if he was your grandfather, I’m sure he was a wonderful man.”

Masha hums softly. She doesn’t tell him that her mother’s family used to hate her father or that she’d spent her teenage years idealizing and idolizing the man they’d buried today to spite her parents, only to realize that she really did believe strongly in workers’ rights and socialized medicine. Like Eric said: politics is hard. She doesn’t want to complicate their relationship. It’s already complex enough. She only sees him once a year or so and they both move so much that even then, they only see each other for a few weeks at a time, if they’re lucky. Her cousin Nicky brings them each another glass of vodka and tells them to drink. He’s been living in Glasgow for school and so, besides Masha’s siblings and parents, is one of the only ones who talk to Eric in English. He urges him to come drink with the men for a bit and pulls Eric away from Masha. Masha joins her mother and aunts and female cousins in the kitchen. For a while, she is content to watch them descend upon her sister-in-law’s new baby. Little Arkady is subjected to all the cooing from older women, threatening to gobble him up and giving his mother advice. Masha watches and her heart hurts so bad she drinks another glass and a half of vodka without being noticed. She once asked Eric if he had dreams - back in Marrakech, she thinks, or maybe Venezuela, she doesn’t remember any more. It may have been one of the nights when they weren’t drinking, but instead making love against the backdrop of a thousand stars or grabbing a quick lunch in London when they both happened to be home. He never said what his dreams were. Once, when he asked her - maybe that same time, maybe a different one, it all runs together - she said she dreamt of getting her nurse practitioner’s license and didn’t say more because the sad truth, she realizes, is that she dreams of a world where she and Eric met before she’d joined Doctors Without Borders and before he’d taken whatever dubious government job he had and that they’d lived an ordinary life with ordinary careers, made extraordinary only by the fact that she loves him and he loves her. If they had done that, God, how many children would they have now? What would their house look like? How many of their furtive reunions would have been family vacations and second honeymoons? She’s about to finish her second glass when her aunt says, “Mashka will be next. Won’t you? You and your charming Brit?”

“Oh, it’ll be nice to have the family together for a wedding for a change!” her sister-in-law says. “It’s been a few years…”

Masha drains her glass and fills it again.

“What does he do?” her aunt asks. “Can he provide for you?”

“I can provide for myself,” Masha says sharply. She feels sick. She shouldn’t have subjected Eric to this. She shouldn’t have subjected herself to it. She just knew that tonight, it would feel good to escape to his hotel and sleep in his arms, once her grief was drowned by alcohol, and to imagine - imagine- “Excuse me.”

She stumbles from the room with her glass and pours herself another. The bottle suddenly stabilizes and she looks to see Eric steadying it for her.

“Your family is wonderful,” he says. “Nicky and Ivan taught me how to play Bear Paw. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be fun or if it’s only meant to get you really, really drunk…”

Masha laughs a little weakly.

“I had to leave the game, though,” he says, “because being here, with you, and your family, surrounded by all this love and friendship and community… Well, it makes a man think about what he wants to do with the rest of his life.”

Masha feels dizzy. She usually holds her liquor better than this. She looks at Eric and even though, moments ago, she wished they could have been a normal couple, she isn’t sure she wants him to propose to her here and now, while her entire family is present.

“What are you saying?”

“Masha, I finally know what I want and I’m going to go for it,” he says. “Life’s too short not to go after the things you want.”

“Eric, are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more certain of anything,” he says. “Masha, I’m going to open a funeral parlor.”

“I’m sorry… what?”

“You asked me a few years ago what I wanted most out of life, what my dreams for the future are and at the time, I didn’t know. But after spending this week with your family, seeing everyone really come together, I know that I want to give others the gift of comfort and community I’ve seen within your family. It will take a year - year and a half tops - to get my license and then I’ll open a practice. I’m thinking of calling it “Chapman’s”. What do you think?”

“I’m happy for you Eric,” Masha says. She drained her glass of vodka in one, burning gulp. “Really, I am… You’d be an amazing funeral director…”

Eric steadies her as she sways in her heels and he leads her to the sofa.

“Really?” he asks. “I’m glad you think so. I really care about what you think of the whole thing.”

Then Masha bursts into tears. Eric wraps an arm around her and strokes her hair.

“I know, you’re grieving, I should have waited to tell you,” he murmurs. “I dunno why it couldn’t have waited. I’m so sorry Masha, for your loss, for… everything…”

“If you open a funeral parlor, will I ever see you again?” she asks through her broken sobs.

“Oh. Oh. Right. Yes, I mean, I’ll be setting up a permanent base. Though I’m thinking I’ll want someplace quieter than London. What do you think about Salisbury?”

“Salisbury?”

“No, you’re right. Too touristy.” Eric hummed softly in thought. “I’ll get you the address though, wherever it is, so when you’re not saving the world, maybe you can come by for a visit.”

“Visit?”

“Only if you want. I know it isn’t as exciting as making love in the Cambodian rainforest. I’ll miss that bit of all this - you, me, exotic locales, never knowing when we’ll see each other again…”

“Ya lyublyu tebya, ty svoloch’!” she shouts, pushing him off of her. As she slips back into her native Russian words start to fall out of her mouth. “I’ve always loved you and I thought that’s what you were going to tell me but instead you’re opening up a funeral parlor? Are you crazy? You just expect me to be happy for you, when I was hoping you’d just tell me you loved me and I could tell you I loved you and maybe we’d both give up this life and-”

“Hang on, I heard ‘bastard’, ‘crazy’, ‘happy’... That’s all I’ve got. Could you slow down a bit? What’s that word you keep repeating? Lyublyu? Did I say that right?”

A few pairs of eyes are on them now as cousins and other relatives pop their heads into the living room. With everyone staring, Masha can’t yell at Eric the way she wants and as her grasp of English weakens she can’t talk to him like a rational adult. All she can do was straddle his lap and kiss him hard and put up with her family muttering about how she’s never been “a good Russian girl” anyway.

This Week: Piffling Vale, England

“I would have married you in Yekaterinburg,” Masha says.

It’s the middle of the afternoon and she and her husband are wine-wasted on a Sunday. Sunlight streams through the window and she looks up at their intertwined hands. She likes the way his wedding band looks - that it lets everybody on the whole, bloody planet know that Eric Chapman is finally spoken for.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” he says. He buries his face in her hair. “I was a mess. I was about to leave MI-6 and just… you didn’t even know…”

“I knew,” Masha tells him. “I’ve known since Marrakech. Maybe Paris.”

“Which time was Paris?”

“We were sober,” she says. “You took a telephone call while you thought I was asleep.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Why the hell would you have married me back then? I couldn’t have given you…”

He gestures vaguely to indicate the house.

“I didn’t want-” Masha gestures. “I wanted you. Still do.”

“You’re drunk,” Eric says, laughing.

Masha rolls on top of him.

“Maybe,” she says, “but you decided to build all of this after a game of Bear Paw with my cousins. I think I can tell my husband I love him after sharing a bottle of wine with him.”

“Oh, we were sharing?” he teases. “Are you sure that wasn’t your bottle of wine?”

She laughs and the warm sound washes over him. He reaches up and strokes her hair. She kisses his palm.

“Is this how you envisioned our lives back then?” she asks. “Be honest.”

“I’m always honest for you,” he tells her. She scoffs and he rolls her over on the mattress. “It isn’t. This was a surprise. A gift. I didn’t know you wanted to marry me.”

She trails her hands down his chest and plays with the buttons of his shirt. She works them open and kisses his skin.

“I would have married you any time in the last seven years,” she tells him. “We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm.” She hooks her legs around his waist. “How would you feel about making Chapman’s a family business?”

“Much better if you asked me that sober,” he teases, still groaning at the roll of her hips against his. “You will ask me again when you’re sober?”

Masha laughs.

“I promise.”

She looks up at Eric and thinks he looks soft and vulnerable for the first time since they were young and dumb and making out in a bar in London and she thinks ‘This is the man I’ve always been in love with’ with a fond smile before arching up to kiss him for the millionth time. When the telephone rings a few hours later and Eric rushes off to collect a body for work, Masha watches him dress fastidiously and race out the door, certain and grateful now that she will see him again and soon.

#x. asks #x. meme response #hcpebelief

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likeshipsonthesea · 5 years

Note

Sensory prompts: 25 or 55? (or both!) For whatever ship moves you.

thank you for the prompt!! from this list if anyone else wants to send some in. i am in such a frogs-post-college kind of mood so i’m gonna go with 55. Finding old photographs you’d forgotten about and it’s not a ship in particular but a dex-centric poly-frogs-friendship with like a hint of nurseydex kind of thing… enjoy

(after-note: this got.. yeah. warning for homophobia)

(also there is stuff in here that’s my hc for dex and his town, so for reference, this ficlet-y thing is my understanding of dex’s life growing up)

“I don’t even know how you fit all this stuff in your room, dude,” Nursey says, carrying yet another box down the stairs. “It’s, like, a clown car kinda situation up there.”

Dex raises an eyebrow at Nursey, vaguely conscious that he could make a crack about how Nursey’s never had to optimize space before, or that not everyone has walk-in closets like he does. Instead, Dex takes the box from Nursey and says nothing, carrying it into the living room where the rest of his things have already been sorted.

Nursey is right about the number of boxes– they must have gone through about twenty of them by now. They’ve developed an efficient if dragging process of opening a box, cataloging its contents, and sorting them into one of several categories. Dex knows that it would likely be going quicker if it wasn’t for Nursey and Chowder pausing over every peewee hockey trophy and aced spelling test to coo and chirp and generally make Dex blush from head to toe.

Still, Dex thinks as he watches Nursey and Chowder return to their spots on the carpet, jostling each other as they fake-fight over who gets the bigger box, Dex is glad they came. He almost didn’t let them, almost didn’t even tell them he was going back to Maine after graduation to get the rest of his things. Mostly for the same reasons that he’d been dreading the trip himself, but since Chowder and Nursey’d arrived, his parents had mostly steered clear of them, for which the guilty gratefulness and painful ache mixed oddly in Dex’s chest.

“Hey P-Doodle.” Dex blinks. Nursey is grinning at him. “Just gonna stand there and watch or what, slacker?”

Dex scoffs, shaking his head, and plops down next to him on the floor. “You’re calling me a slacker? Me? The second place champion of the 2003 Little Harbor Spelling Bee? I don’t think so.”

Nursey laughs, bright, and listening to the sound bounce around the walls of Dex’s childhood home helps to soothe the ache in Dex’s chest.

“How’d you get second place?” Chowder asks, cutting into the next box with the box-cutter Dex gave a very detailed tutorial on prior to beginning their work.

“Got the i’s and e’s mixed up in ‘believe’.” Dex pulls the other box closer to himself. “Rachel Taylor won with ‘everyone.’“

“Well, ‘everyone’ is obvious,” Chowder says, in that wide-eyed way he has where you can’t quite tell if he’s being sarcastic or sincere. “It’s just two smaller words pushed together.”

Dex squints, suspicious, before taking it as honest and saying, “Thanks, C.”

Chowder’s mouth stretches into a smirk, giving his sarcasm away, and Nursey laughs again as Dex loudly complains that it totally wasn’t fair and that’s when Chowder pulls out the stack of photos.

Dex pauses mid-rant to frown at the top photo in the stack, held together by a cracking pink rubber band. It’s him, he knows that much, and he’s probably about eight, maybe older as he was always small for his age, but he can’t remember ever seeing it before.

“Aw,” Chowder coos, tugging off the elastic. “When is this from?” Dex holds his hand out and Chowder passes over the first photo. Young Dex is on the beach, as they were a lot, being so close to the water. He’s wearing a pair of blue swim shorts that used to be his brother’s, so they’re a little big on him, and he’s staring grumpily back at the camera with a hand fisted in the waistband to keep them from falling. There’s sunscreen smeared on his nose and the beginnings of a sunburn on his shoulders.

“Wow, you were grumpy from the start, huh?” Nursey peers over Dex’s shoulder. Dex can see his smile out of the corner of his eye. “Can I?” He reaches out to take the photo and Dex hands it over, exchanging it for a couple more from Chowder.

They seem to be from the same time, probably all from the same reel of film. The next one is once again at the beach, but Jay– Dex’s brother– is next to him, his arm begrudgingly around Dex’s shoulders. The one after that, they’re both in the water, Dex trailing after Jay and his friends as they roughhouse in the water. The last one at the beach is of Dex, again, building a sandcastle with a brown-haired boy who’s only visible in profile.

“Whose that?” Chowder asks, leaning close, and Dex feels suddenly as if there isn’t enough air.

“Peter,” he says, suddenly remembering that summer. He wasn’t 8, he was 9, and he and Peter fell into each other’s space when they got paired off at Dex’s uncle’s sailing “camp.” They spent long days in the same boat, making up jokes no one else understood and diving into the water whenever Dex’s uncle looked away to splash each other until their laughing mouths tasted of nothing but salt.

“Did anyone in your town not have a biblical name?” Nursey says, snorting, as he takes the photos from Dex to shuffle through. Dex huffs something that might be a laugh back, thinking of Peter and then Luke and–

“He looks nice,” Chowder says, charitably, and looks back at the photos in his hand. Dex nods, dully, at that. Yeah, Peter was nice. He was Dex’s best friend all summer, the two of them inseparable in that adult-eye-rolling kind of way, the “look at how quickly children bond, it’s so sweet, so naive” kind of way, and remembering it now has Dex’s mouth flooding with bitterness.

“Is this your first day of school?” Chowder asks, onto the next photo. He hands it over and it’s Dex, in a smart blue polo that was one of his only non-hand-me-downs. He’s grinning at the camera, thumbs hooked under his backpack straps. He’s still tan from the summer, freckles attacking every inch of bare skin. It was taken on the front porch, almost identical to every other first-day-of-school photo Ma took of him from kindergarten to senior year of high school.

“Fifth grade,” Dex says, in answer. He and Peter were, somewhat coincidentally, in the same fifth grade class. The teacher had to separate them two weeks in because they’d giggle together all class long. At recess they would escape to the outskirts of the playground, make up games where they were pirates away at sea or adventurers exploring the deepest caves on Earth.

After school, they would do homework at each other’s houses, usually Dex’s because Jay was home to watch them. For months the only times they weren’t in each others’ pockets was while they slept, and even then, there were sleepovers when they’d wake up tangled beneath blankets in a shared bed, having stayed up late whispering secrets across the pillows.

“Your birthday!” Nursey reaches across Dex for the photo in Chowder’s hand. “You were ten? Damn you were tiny. The cake is bigger than you are.”

“My uncle went overboard,” Dex says. “Ma freaked about the blue icing. It got everywhere.” Sure enough, the next photo is a grinning Dex with blue smeared all over his mouth. In the background, hovering, is Peter with the same decoration.

Dex remembers what happened after, remembers Peter dragging Dex to the dark, empty backyard to solemnly hand over a present, remembers unwrapping the gift, awkward as Peter’d wrapped it himself and there was too much tape involved, remembers the strange fluttering in his chest when he unveiled the beach-themed dollar-store key chain, the words Best Summer Ever! stretching above a photograph of Dex and Peter with their faces squished so close their grins were distorted.

Dex remembers the fluttery feeling being too much for his small chest to handle, remembers telling Peter thank you, remembers the strange need to tell Peter how pretty he looked in the hazy light of the fading moon. “You’re pretty,” he’d said, remembers distinctly how the words had felt on his tongue, and Peter’s solemn expression curdled, disgusted, and Dex had ruined it, he’d broken, he was broken–

“I have to– I’ll be right back,” Dex says, pushing away the pictures, and Nursey and Chowder pause in their perusal to send him heavy glances but it doesn’t keep him from escaping to the kitchen.

He pours himself a glass of water without paying much attention, muscle-memory even after he hasn’t lived here consistently in four years, and it makes him wonder if moving his things out of this home, moving out of Maine, will really change anything. He is from here, from this house and this town, he was born of the expectations and the assumptions and the need to be silent.

Four years at Samwell and he still came home to the itchy, unfitting hand-me-down of the person his parents want, need, him to be. He’s still quiet, frictionless, unquestioning, when he’s here. Has he really changed when it only takes the confines of his childhood home to undo all of it?

As he shakes under the memory of the weeks following his tenth birthday– the whispers hovering, murky, around his head, the stark emptiness next to him where Peter used to stand, the pervading loneliness of being wrong– he doesn’t notice Nursey and Chowder entering the kitchen until they’re standing in front of him.

“Dex?” Chowder frowns, hovering at the edge of Dex’s space. Nursey breaches it without hesitation, curling a heavy hand around Dex’s shoulder. “What’s– what’s wrong?”

Dex shakes his head, though he doesn’t know if they can tell when his whole body feels like its shaking apart anyway. “I– nothing, I–”

“Dex.”

It’s– it’s firm, and Nursey hardly ever says Dex’s actual name– it’s grounding, the reminder, that he is not Will, he is Dex, Samwell’s Dex. He is the boy who stepped into a kitchen and allowed himself to feel at home there, he is the boy who cared for his friends when they needed and, sometimes, allowed them to care for him, too. He is the boy who learned that the only broken part of him was the chafing of trying to fit himself into something he was not. He was not.

Dex shallows, thick, and nods. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I– memories.”

They could ask, and Dex consciously takes that risk when he explains even the little bit he does. And though Chowder’s eyebrows wrinkle and his lips part, halfway to a question, Nursey stares, unflinching, for maybe two seconds before he nods, resolute.

“Why don’t we take a break?” Nursey asks, and maybe it would’ve sounded patronizing, or pitying, or any number of grating adjectives, if they’d been the people they were their frog year, or even their junior year. But knowing Nursey as Dex does now, knowing the expectations and assumptions and silence that Nursey grew from, it makes it easy, almost, for Dex to nod back.

“Yeah,” he says, repetitive, dizzy. “Yeah.”

“Let’s go check out that ice cream stand,” Chowder suggests, catching up quickly. “You said it’s Harry Potter themed?”

Chowder’s question gets Dex talking, as it was meant to, about the ice cream stand a few streets over. The stand, Dex explains as they walk there, gives a free extra scoop in exchange for a quote from the books or movies. It’s been around all Dex’s life and it was half the reason he read the books on his own before his reading ability had truly reached that level.

At the stand, they all order their treats and recite their quotes, and Dex remembers when he came here as a kid, friends and family typically with him, Peter with him, once or twice, and the memory doesn’t ache the way he’s come to think memories have to.

Dex sits at a picnic table across from Nursey and Chowder as they debate which of the books is the best, the Maine summer sun blistering and familiar, ice cream dripping and sweet, and he feels that odd dissonance of experiencing a forgotten photograph, the memory hazy and the picture stark. The permeating sense of home Dex feels in this moment overlays the hazy memory of disconnection, mingling until the burst of emotion in his chest is melancholic but hopeful.

He smiles, swiping his tongue over his ice cream cone, and allows himself to enjoy it, for now, without question.

#dex #william poindexter #check please #nurseydex #the frogs #tagging as nurseydex bc it's hinted at #also desperate for attention #so yeah #my writing #sort of fic #ficlet #sensory prompts #this isn't so much the frogs fic as dex fic #but idk #enjoy anyway

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anistarrose · 5 years

Text

Some Sunny Day - Chapter 8: It Won’t Be Long (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: Mabel bursts some bubbles, Dipper cracks a code, and Ford makes a wisdom saving throw.

Warnings: manipulation, flashbacks to torture (see note below for more detail)

Previous / Next

The Beginning (see here for AO3 link)

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris, and this chapter was beta’d by @porkpop!)

Given the subject matter, I guess it’s fitting that this fic would appear to die and then unexpectedly rise from the ashes months later, isn’t it? In all seriousness, I’m sorry it took so long (life has been… not exactly conducive to writing multichapter fics lately) and hope this update ends up being worth the wait! Good news, though — I wrote my first draft of Chapter 9 a while back, so the next update should come in a much more timely manner!

Important warning: This chapter contains flashbacks to torture by electrocution. The torture itself isn’t described in particularly graphic detail, but a decent amount of time is spent describing the consequences (there are references to temporary character death as well as to PTSD) so if you don’t want to read those parts but want to continue following the fic, feel free to ask me for a summary of the chapter with potentially upsetting parts omitted.

(On a lighter note, there’s a reference to one of my favorite GF fics in this chapter, so see if you can spot it!)

In another world of shimmering bubbles and wispy pink clouds, deep within a mountaintop temple, an Oracle addressed her patron.

“If he is to remember,” she asked, “it will be soon, won’t it?”

From within one of the bubbles, a frill-wreathed head bounced up and down in a nod. Its voice was musical and ethereal, like the sound of distant wind chimes.

“If you wish to help them, then now is the time.”

Jheselbraum bowed, and departed to an adjacent room of the temple where she kneeled down on a simple, woven mat. Concentrating on a single image — the face shared by two brothers whose destinies were so tightly intertwined with that of a demon, forming tangled loops that crisscrossed all across time and space, spanning eons and dimensions — her eyes blinked closed. When they opened again, they were glowing a faint lilac purple, and watching the events of a dream as it played out within the mindscape of Stanley Pines.

Interacting with the flow of time in such a way that it already knew the results, yet still observing intently, the Axolotl smiled.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Mere moments into her quest to break out of her dream bubble and save Stan, Mabel had an unpleasant realization: this time, she could see no literal bubble to burst — and therefore, no clear way to escape the dream world. No way back to her family.

Oh god, what if she fell back under the bubble’s spell before she could find a way to escape? And what if she didn’t snap out of it the next time —

“Think, Mabel, think,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t panic, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere…”

She heard movement in a nearby room of the Shack, and tiptoed away in the other direction, slipping into the gift shop and hunkering down behind the counter. The scenery around her was a good approximation of how the Shack really looked, but now that she knew she was in an illusion, the only thing that felt real was her pounding heart.

What would Ford want me to do? Stay calm, stay safe, and think through things logically, right?

She took a deep breath. Okay, Mabel, take it from the top. What’s the situation? What do you know?

She was in a dream, created by Stan because he was afraid of Bill. (Well, afraid of something, but what could it possibly be if not Bill?) It didn’t seem like Stan had realized she was aware of being in an illusion, so that was something she had going for her. He probably wouldn’t be actively trying to stop her, at least not yet.

And if she’d gotten here after being doused in the dark water, then Dipper and Soos were probably in dream bubbles of their own — maybe even Ford too, by this point. She had to get back to the regular mindscape, and see if he was alright. Or better yet, find Dipper and Soos’s bubbles and bring them back with her —

Right, she was still technically in the mindscape, wasn’t she? Which meant that if she focused on something hard enough, imagined it vividly enough…

She climbed out from behind the counter and rested her hand on the gift shop’s doorknob, bracing herself to open it and leave the Shack.

Okay, door, listen up, she thought. When I open you, you’re going to take me back to Dipper. In three, two, one…

She swung it open and a freezing black flood rushed in, knocking her backwards. With great effort, she opened her eyes to see the colors of the dream dissolving around her, and reforming new bubbles that floated in the ink-black sea, beckoning her with their colorful fantasies.

There was Ford, safe and holding hands with Stan and eight other familiar faces in a nearly complete circle. Eyes lit up with an optimism she hadn’t seen in him all day, Ford gave her an encouraging smile and reached towards her —

“Just take my hand, and we can complete the Zodiac!” he exclaimed. “We can banish Bill once and for all, together!”

She could feel her hands drifting over, fingers outstretched and ready to wrap around Ford’s own — but she yanked away at the last second, wrapping her arms tight around her shivering chest. A faint glow emanated from the star on her sweater, melting away the icicles on the tips of her numb finger and shining through her foggy, jumbled thoughts like the guiding beam of a lighthouse, exposing the true nature of the treacherous sea surrounding her.

It was never going to be as easy as holding hands, not this time. She knew better than to let any dreams within dreams convince her otherwise.

She took a strenuous step forward against the flow of the current, and the rejected bubbles burst as new illusions appeared in front of her, each singing a different siren song of temptation.

Here, Ford never fell into the portal.

Here, Ford and Stan never argued in the first place.

Here, you never broke your promise to help Dipper with the laptop, and he never got possessed by Bill…

Some of the visions hurt more than others, and she forced herself to look away. “Dipper?” she called out. “Soos? Grunkle Ford?”

There was no reply, except for a new stream of bubbles rising from the depths to float in front of her. In the closest one, she could see Bill Cipher warp and distort, limbs glitching and flickering as his pupil dilated in fear, and Mabel just knew that one good punch was all it would take to shatter that triangle beyond hope of repair —

And it would have been so satisfying, so cathartic, to deliver that punch, but she was painfully aware of it just being fantasy. It was exactly what she had hoped to find, exactly what she had envisioned as a best case scenario — Bill not just weakened, but completely distinct from Stan, easily separated and destroyed — and she couldn’t help but wonder if the illusion had been summoned entirely from Stan’s mind, or from her own.

Something about a larger bubble on her left side caught her attention. It just felt tangibly distinct from the others — still pulling her towards it, but in a different way. She was drawn to this one because it was… well, not entirely real, but more real than anything else around her. It was more familiar, more comforting — and not like the guilt-laced comfort of denial, but like the warm, genuine solace of companionship.

She approached it one step at a time, careful not to let the current around her lift her feet off the ground and wash her out of reach. She was scarcely five feet away when the voice of the bubble suddenly grew clear, and she realized — it wasn’t calling out to her like the other bubbles had, but rather having a conversation with itself.

No, not with itself. With someone already trapped within its illusion.

“All right, we’re rolling in three… two… one…”

“Welcome back to Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Today, we’re coming to you from my uncle’s lab, where we’re running some tests on the ghost we captured last episode! Be sure to check that one out if you missed it, because —”

She could see Dipper now — appearance distorted by the bubble’s convex barrier, but unmistakably (and so relievingly) him. He was in a sophisticated but messy-looking laboratory, Ford smiling proudly at his side and Soos standing behind the camera…

But even a ways outside, and with the current working against her, Mabel could make out a spark of light in Dipper’s eyes that the other two lacked. Relief washed over her as she realized she’d found her real brother — accompanied by no small amount of worry for the real Ford and Soos, still nowhere to be seen.

“Dipper!” she called out. “This isn’t real! You have to get out of there!”

The water garbled her voice, distorting it so much that it sounded unintelligible even to her, but Dipper frowned as she spoke. Glancing between Ford and Soos, he asked:

“Did you guys hear that? Was that an audio glitch or something?”

Both the illusions shook their heads as Mabel spat out water, fighting against the tide to get closer to the bubble.

“Dipper, you’re in Stan’s mindscape, remember? It’s a dream bubble, like — like the one Bill trapped me in last summer!”

This time her words came out clearer, and Dipper turned around, somehow both looking right at her and staring right past her at once.

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “Bill’s gone…”

Ford put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Of course he is. We’re safe from him now — and Stan and Mabel are, too.”

The current around Mabel grew fiercer, threatening to drag her backwards, but she managed to wrap her arms around the bubble, hugging it as tightly as she could.

“We came to Stan’s mind to stop Bill!” she yelled. “You remember that, right?”

Dipper shook his head. “I — I don’t know…”

“You can remember! You can snap out of it — I know you can, because you snapped me out of it last summer! You’re stronger than this cheap trap, I know you are!”

Dipper grabbed his head, shuddering and gritting his teeth as the bubble began to distort. Hand still on Dipper’s shoulder, not-Ford’s eyes turned a dull red.

Please, Dipper, Mabel thought, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on…

The facsimile Ford’s form began to darken — at first fading to a monochrome shadow of his former self, and then melting like tar, liquifying into a shuddering column of darkness that spewed out rivers of black ink all around the lab just as quickly as it spewed out lies.

Do you really want to go back there, Dipper? Back to everyone you love being in grave danger? Back to not understanding what’s happening to them or how to help them? Do you want to go back to that uncertainty, to that fear?

Tendrils of darkness crept towards Dipper from every angle, surrounding him as if preparing for an embrace.

Here, Bill is dead for good. Stan is safe from him, and his mindscape is perfectly normal and healthy. Here we’re all safe, and happy, and living the lives we’ve always wanted. It’s not so hard to pretend —

Dipper finally met Mabel’s eyes, just staring at her for a moment. As the tendrils snaked closer and closer to him, he looked down again and took a deep breath.

“Dipper! Let’s beat Bill and save Stan together!”

He turned back towards Mabel and smiled, extending both arms in her direction.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he whispered.

The tendrils recoiled in shock as Mabel plunged her hands into the bubble, grabbed ahold of her brother, and pulled.

***

Ice-cold waves submerged Dipper like he’d plunged into an Antarctic sea, and a numbness quickly overtook him, paralyzing his chest and racing up his arms to —

It didn’t reach his fingertips. Mabel’s hand was warm even as she released him from her embrace, and Dipper realized that he could see her clearly now — a bright spot in the darkness, radiating determination like a falling star lighting up the endless void of the night.

Instantly, the last wisps of fog clouding his brain evaporated away, and everything fell into place — how it wasn’t Bill trapping them in the bubbles, but Stan himself. How finding and destroying Bill would have to mean finding a way to pierce through Stan’s own denial.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Mabel blurted out, and pulled him back into a hug. “I — I wasn’t sure I could save everyone alone.”

“Well,” he told her as he returned the embrace, “you sure saved me.”

The current raged around them, sending them spinning — but for all its strength, it couldn’t even come close to tearing them apart.

***

Ford stepped out of the portal to a not just familiar, but nostalgic sight — a temple carved of pink-tinted marble stone, craggy mountain peaks peering out from the blanket of clouds beneath them.

“Jheselbraum?” he called out, and the curtains at the entrance to the shine parted, revealing a humanoid figure clad in flowing red and purple robes.

All seven of her eyes blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “Stanford! It’s good to see you again — and you’ve brought friends this time!”

“Sure did!” Stan said. “The guy would be lost without us. I’m Stan, nice to —”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stanley, I know who you are. And you must be Mr. McGucket?”

Distracted for the moment, Fiddleford tapped one of several pink bubbles that had floated out of the shrine. Its shape distorted, but it didn’t burst. “Would you look at that…ah, yes, sorry! McGucket, that’s me alright — though ya can just call me Fiddleford or Fidds. It’s a pleasure to meet ya!”

“Likewise! Would you three like to come inside? I know the view out here is spectacular the first hundred or so times you see it, but it’s honestly even more interesting in there.”

“Of course!”

Ford led the way in, marveling at the richly colored tapestries lining the halls. “Jhes, do you weave these yourself? I don’t think I saw this many the last time I visited.”

“I do! You’ll find some seers and oracles that weave their predictions directly into their tapestries, but I honestly just need to be doing something with my hands while I concentrate on seeing the future.”

“I can relate,” Fiddleford chimed in. “Er, not that I’m a prophet or anythin’, but I can never figure out what’s wrong with my code unless I’m fidgeting with somethin’ in a free hand.”

Something in a room to the side caught Ford’s eye, and he stopped so suddenly that Stan nearly slammed into him from behind. “I never got a chance to ask you before, but — why do you have so many tapestries of axolotls?” He felt like he had a second question on the tip of his tongue, but it stayed stubbornly just out of reach no matter how hard he tried to remember it.

Jheselbraum smiled knowingly, not so much with her mouth as with her eyes. “The Axolotl has always been something of a kindred spirit towards those who seek to see beyond the linear flow of time,” she pronounced, “and I like to show my gratitude this way.”

“The Axolotl, with a capital A…” Ford mused. “I’m sorry, Jhes — just a few weeks ago, I’m sure there was something I was thinking I’d like to ask you, but… it’s escaping me now.”

Jheselbraum put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and a dull purple glow rippled across her eyes, so briefly that Ford would have missed it if he’d blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and echoing, as if originating from the other end of a long hallway — but also more lively, more lifelike, the subtle accent a bit more pronounced and the inflection of her words more rhythmic, more poem-like.

“Did you want to ask why the Axolotl watched over your brother’s house, for all those years? Why it manifested before Stanley, of all people?”

“That’s — I think that’s it, I…” The ground ceased to feel solid beneath Ford’s feet, and a wave of nausea washed over him as he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how sluggish and muddled his thoughts felt, as if stifled by fog. “There’s something — something wrong about this place, isn’t there? What am I… how did I get here? Is —”

“Hey, Sixer! Check out what I found!”

Simply hearing Stan’s voice was an instant relief, a rope he could grab onto and use to pull himself out of the stormy, disorienting sea of uncertainty he’d found himself cast adrift in. “Huh? What is it?”

Stan frowned. “You okay? I’ve never seen you not recognize a D38 at first glance.” Sure enough, he held a thirty-eight sided die in each hand, one purple and the other blue.

“I… it’s just the thin mountain air getting to me, I think. Where did you find those?”

Stan snickered, pulling aside a tapestry that hung over the doorway to a room Ford had passed by. “Oh, you ain’t seen anything yet. Feast your eyes, nerd!”

The room had two sides that were completely open aside from ornate marble guard railings, providing a stellar view as the first of the world’s three purple moons began to rise above the horizon, but Ford’s attention was instead captivated by the table at the center. Crisscrossing gridlines glowed a dull blue-green, dividing the surface into hundreds of tiny squares, and holographic projections cycled through a variety of miniaturized, perfectly adventure-suited environments — a lush oasis within a dust storm-battered desert, a sprawling and bustling space station floating just above the rings of a pink gaseous planet, an impenetrable-seeming castle of gray brick overlooking a murky moat and surrounded by expansive and bountiful farmlands.

“Jheselbraum, have you always had this?” Ford asked. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“The last time you were here, you spent every waking moment either recovering from head injuries or drunk on Cosmic Sand. It hardly would have made for a quality campaign.”

Detachedly, Ford realized that the echo was gone from her voice, but he couldn’t help but pay more attention to Stan, who hoisted himself into the throne-like seat at the head of the table and diabolically rubbed his hands together.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, and I’ve got some big ideas up my sleeve… so, who’s up for a game?”

“Stanley, I can think of literally no better way to spend the next six hours to six weeks of my life,” Ford declared. “I’m in.”

***

“You hear the slappin’ tunes, Mr. Pines? That’s how you know it’s a boss battle!”

“Slappin’? Is that seriously how you people describe music these days? And what’s a boss battle?”

“Well, it’s pretty much what happens when you defeat all the minions of the biggest, baddest dude in the level, so then they finally have to throw down with you themself! Doesn’t look like you’re having any trouble with it, though — you must be some kinda natural, ha ha!”

“You bet I am!” Stan laughed as he dealt the final blow, and tossed the controller down triumphantly. “I’m gonna break the young’s monopoly on gaming skills, just you watch —”

The congratulatory chiptune jingle cut off abruptly, and a pattern of static rippled across the TV set. When it subsided, two new character sprites had appeared — two sprites that Soos knew he’d recognize anywhere no matter how stylized, thanks to that lumberjack hat and shooting star sweater.

“Hey, dudes! I was just teaching Stan how to play some of my favorite games — but how’d you two get in there? You’re looking kinda pixely — what happened?”

“Pixely?” Dipper looked down at his hands for a moment, confused, but then shook his head. “Never mind! Soos, this is all just an illusion! You’ve got to snap out of it!”

“All this is just inside Stan’s mindscape, remember?” Mabel added. “You’ve gotta out of there so you can help us stop Bill and save Stan!”

The ripple of static crossed the TV screen again, but this time it spread out all throughout the room, making the furniture and walls flicker and glitch like they were in a corrupted game. A high-pitched electronic whine prompted Soos to clap his hands over his ears, and the light from Mabel’s sweater pulsed in sync with the sound, like the noise and the static were emanating from her and Dipper somehow. Soos felt like he was missing something — why did the two of them look so distraught, with those pixelated frowny faces?

“Are — are you sure, dudes?” he asked. “Stan said Bill was gone, and we were having a lot of fun here — weren’t we, Mr. Pines?”

“‘Course we were!” Stan gently punched him in the arm — too gently, almost intangibly, like it was just a simulation of the actual sensation — “And do I look like I need saving? I’m doin’ great over here, just having a —”

“You don’t look like it, but you do, Stan!” Mabel cried out. “I know you do, and we can help you, I promise we can — but first you have to admit it!”

“No! I’m fine! We’re all fine!” Stan yelled, but dark red and purple pixels began to flicker at the edges of his form. He looked almost two-dimensional as the glitchy appearance slowly crept up his arms, consuming them and disintegrating them into a sea of dark, flashing rectangles that cascaded towards the ground —

“Mr. Pines?” Soos gasped. “Are — are you okay? How —”

Stan extended what was left of an arm in his direction — and then froze in horror, as he saw what the loss of the pixels had exposed.

Four slender, cartoonishly simple fingers trembled in place just inches from Soos’s shoulder — all of them a smooth and solid black, and wreathed in electric blue sparks.

No! Stan’s voice came out desperate and distorted, crackling and cutting out like a broken speaker. PLEASE, no —

Two pairs of human hands grabbed ahold of Soos from behind and pulled him away from Stan, back towards the television. From all directions at once, his ears were filled with a resounding POP —

And then the three of them tumbled down onto the grayscale yet familiar wooden floor of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, dark clouds above them receding towards the hallway. Just feet away, the vending machine stood shining brighter and bluer than ever, a now all-too-familiar song playing softly from within like the melody from a music box.

Keep smiling through,

Just like you always do,

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

***

An elven wizard resembling Ford, a human bard resembling Fiddleford, and a silver dragonborn paladin with two additional rows of eyes like Jheselbraum forged a path up a mountain, undeterred by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Their route wasn’t particularly steep, but shrubs and small trees grew all over what had once been a trail, making their climb more tedious than Ford had hoped for.

“So Ford, this dungeon — you say no one’s ever returned from it alive?” Fiddleford asked, absentmindedly plucking his banjo to the tune of Country Roads.

“No one has ever returned from it period, dead or alive,” he answered, shoving a branch out of his face. “Necromancy will likely be of little help to us there. But all the divination magic in the world agrees that the depths of Mt. Somnifell hold, and I quote, ‘all the treasure an adventurer could ever dream of.’ You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“More like muddy feet,” Fiddleford groaned, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth with clear visceral disgust as looked down at the ground beneath his shoes. “Are we close yet?”

“Should be.” Three of Jheselbraum’s eyes were directed down at a map, while the other four scanned the surrounding area for landmarks and hazards. “Do you see a crooked tree anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ford replied. He craned his neck up towards the sky, past the transparent storm clouds and into the pink marble room surrounding them. “Stan, are there any landmarks that you forgot to imagine into the game and would like to tell us about?”

Stan snorted and leaned over the table, resting his elbows on a neighboring mountain. “Have a little faith, Poindexter! I may be a first time DM over here, but I think you’ll find that I’m the master of the imagination!”

“Fine, I’ll look somewhere else for your dumb tree,” Ford shot back. “Alright, gang, let’s check some other spots at the same altitude — ugh! What’s going on here?”

A long, brown tendril had wrapped around his left ankle and was binding it in place — the root of a nearby oak, he realized.

“It’s got us too!” Jheselbraum called out, drawing her sword. Without hesitation, Fiddleford whacked the root ensnaring him with his banjo, and it seemed to flinch — as much as a semi-mobile plant could flich, at least — but stayed tightly bound.

“I cast Scorching Ray!” Ford declared, and three yellow-orange bolts flew out from the tip of his wand, one striking each of the three tendrils with impressive precision. Several inches of each root instantly crumbled into ash, and the oak tree that they led back to shuddered, green lights flashing in its leaves as a dark-skinned figure with pointed ears and vivid emerald eyes flickered into view. Immediately, they held up their hands in submission.

“Alright, I’m sorry! You’re stronger than I bargained for. I’ll leave you alone now, I promise.” Their voice held a hint of Stan’s hoarseness, but also a distinct inflection pattern of its own.

“You’re a dryad, I presume?” Ford asked, cautiously lowering his wand. “We’re sorry for trespassing on your territory.”

“I suppose dryad is the closest word to it. Most dryads are only tied to one tree, though — I watch over this whole grove, even though I can only control one tree at a time. You can call me Balsa.”

“You must know this region like the back of your hand, then,” Jheselbraum commented, and Balsa beamed, nodding. “Do you think you could help point us towards a certain landmark?”

Their face immediately fell, and they let out a sigh. “It’s the crooked tree, isn’t it? You’re looking for the entrance to the depths?”

“That’s correct. Is something… wrong with that?”

They shook their head. “No, it’s just that… you seem like half-decent people, you know? Same as a lot of other treasure hunters that I’ve seen vanish into that cavern, and never come out. I try to make the plants overrun the trail, make the crooked tree grow straight again so no one can find this place and go boldly marching to their deaths, but…”

They waved their hand halfheartedly, and a mere five meters away, the undergrowth parted to reveal a crack in the earth — a nearly circular dark chasm that rested in the mountain’s light grey stone just as a black hole might sit in the center of a shining galaxy.

“Why are ya showin’ us this?” Fiddleford asked. “You just said ya wanted us to stay out.”

“It’ll call to you anyway.” Balsa sighed dejectedly. “It always does. Everyone who goes looking finds it eventually.”

“How long have you been trying to keep people out?” Jheselbraum hesitantly stepped towards the edge of the chasm, lower row of eyes blinking as she tried to make out what lay within.

“About a century and a half now,” Balsa told her. “The legend draws people in from all four corners of the world, and everywhere in between — seemingly pleasant people like you three, a lot of the time. People whom I wouldn’t expect to be so driven by greed and the promise of treasure. Are you in debt? What is it that draws you to this… this suicide mission?”

“Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it doesn’t exactly hurt to have it, either,” Ford replied, and above the table Stan stifled a laugh. “But for us three, I think the main thing drawing us in is the thrill of the discovery. We’re not so much treasure hunters as simply adventurers.”

“Well said,” Jheselbraum told him. “Balsa, we appreciate your concern, but we know the risks of this mission and we’ve made according preparations. If we’re ever in grave danger, we’ve prepared spells to teleport out with. ”

Ford nodded. “The depths of Mt. Somnifell are a mystery that we plan to solve, no matter how many expeditions it takes.”

Balsa shook their head. “Well, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure you’ll like the solution to that mystery as much as you expect. Will you really remain so dedicated to the truth, if it starts to look like you’re headed towards answers that you don’t want to hear?”

With that, they turned their back and vanished in a burst of green light.

“That was ominous, wasn’t it?” Fiddleford muttered, and then after a pause added: “Well, who’s jumpin’ down that hole first?”

“I think I’ll try to climb, rather than jump, but I’ll be happy to lead the way.” Ford intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, preparing himself for the descent.

“Be careful,” Jheselbraum warned him. “It doesn’t get any brighter down there, and the air flowing out felt humid. It may be slippery.”

“To quote our infinitely wise DM — have a little faith! For one thing, I have dark vision, and for another, I never said I was climbing the rocks themselves.”

One use of Rope Trick later and Ford’s feet safely struck the damp stone floor, having reached the bottom of a twenty-foot long, near-vertical shaft. Fiddleford was about halfway down and had all four limbs wrapped around the rope for dear life, as Jheselbraum brought up the rear and offered words of reassurance.

“Don’t you even think of explorin’ any further without us, Stanford Pines!” Fiddleford shouted, shrill voice echoing loudly. “You’ll just get yourself killed an’ you know it!”

“Relax!” Ford yelled back. “I’m taking a look around, but I’m not moving any deeper in!”

Once he felt certain Fiddleford was more focused on the climb than on him, he took just a tiny step forwards — and then another, and one more after that, because he really had expected to be able see a bit further down here with his dark vision —

The world around him went white, and two firm hands came out of nowhere to grasp both of his shoulders. Jheselbraum stood facing him in the featureless bright space, once again in a robed human form… and with glowing purple eyes.

“I think something’s wrong with your table, Jhes. This doesn’t look like something that should be happening in a campaign —”

“Ford, please listen to me — you’re falling more deeply entranced by the second. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to you again at this rate — you must snap out of it! I know it’s an upsetting truth to face, but you are strong enough, and so is your family, as long as you all face this together. I believe in —”

Ford blinked, and he was back in the cave. Fiddleford kneeled a few feet behind him, looking relieved enough to kiss the ground if only he could see it in the darkness, and Jheselbraum gracefully leapt down from the rope to land at his side. She didn’t look especially worried, or speak like there was any matter of particular urgency at hand.

“Ford, you’re giving me an… odd look. Is your touted night vision malfunctioning?”

“No, I’m… just thinking.” He’d witnessed something, he knew that, but the memory felt the same way an object might look if viewed through unfocused eyes in the dead of night — blurry and undefined, only straining his brain more and more the harder he tried to focus on making it out.

Oh well, then. No need to hurt myself — it’s just a game. And speaking of which…

“Stan?” he called out, and the roof of the cave grew holographic and transparent, revealing Stan’s face as he watched the party attentively.

“Yeah, Sixer?”

“I have to admit, I had my doubts about you as Dungeon Master, but… I was wrong. This is such a well-crafted, captivating story you’ve created here — you know that, right? I’m really, genuinely enjoying it — keep it up, and I won’t ever want to leave!”

“Yeah.” Stan smiled, but broke eye contact with Ford — was he surprised? embarrassed? guilty? “Yeah, that’s just what I’m shootin’ for. Thanks, Ford.”

***

“Can you hear us, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out. “Where are you?”

No one replied, but the dark clouds in the hallways crept a few inches closer and the piano notes grew slightly fainter.

“Do you think he’s behind the machine?” Soos asked. He took a few steps away from the nearest hallway and towards the kids, nervously scanning the room for any sort of surprise attack.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we might not get another chance to check,” Dipper replied. Dark droplets rained down from a crack in the roof, narrowly missing him and splattering across the vending machine’s glass door.

“You’re right, we should hurry — wait, what?” Mabel gasped as she rushed over to the machine. “Dipper, the buttons are different — it’s some kind of weird code! How are we gonna get in?”

“Let me see. There’s got to be a way… wait, hold on. I… I’ve seen this code before.”

��That’s great! I should’ve known you’d know how to… Dipper? Is something wrong?”

Dipper’s stomach was churning with nausea and he hated it, because he knew it wasn’t a real sensation, a physical sensation, but couldn’t still couldn’t will the feeling to stop. “No, it’s just… this cipher was in the Journal, but I wasn’t able to crack this one until after Weirdmageddon, when all the pages got restored. I don’t think even Ford knows I solved it.”

“So what’s it doing in Stan’s mind?” Soos asked. “Did he crack it, or —”

“Bill was the one who wrote in this code,” Dipper added more quietly. “He used it while he was possessing Ford.”

“Oh… right.”

Dipper took another, more careful look at the keypad, where four buttons were already glowing — corresponding to the letters S, T, A, and N.

Now, if we press B, I, and then L twice…

His hand had barely left the keypad when the machine shuddered, swinging open with a groan to reveal a sight that was both unnervingly alien and chillingly familiar.

Descending beneath them was a staircase, mirroring the design of the stairs beneath the Shack — only these were carved from a shimmering light wood, like the bark of a birch tree. Elliptical knots and whorls covered the walls, slowly swirling and moving and growing as they turned to stare up the steps at Dipper and the others, flickering yellow so faintly you could almost convince yourself you’d imagined it, if only you didn’t know better.

“Oh, fuck this,” Dipper whispered, and neither Mabel nor Soos — the two most profanity-averse people he knew — gave any sign of disagreement.

He did, however, hear a sickening crunch behind him, and turned to see the floorboards on the other end of the room collapsing, dragged down into a slowly widening sinkhole in which dark currents frothed and churned. One at a time, grey planks were ripped away from their neighbors and dragged below as the rupture grew, its edges creeping steadily closer —

“I don’t like the look of that place either, dudes,” Soos told them, “but we might not have a choice…”

“You’re right,” Mabel agreed. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed Dipper and Soos’s hands, and before any of them could lose their will, they barreled down the stairs together.

***

The cavern was sloped downwards with countless twists and turns, and Ford got the impression that the tunnel was slowly snaking its way through just about all the interior volume Mt. Somnifell had to offer. Lurking in the shadows, monsters sprang out to ambush them at surprisingly regular intervals — humanoids with bat-like wings, wolves lacking eyes but with long-reaching claws that more than made up for their blindness, slimes that could precipitate stalactites out of their bodies and hurl them at whoever looked most defenseless — but the party dispatched them all with relative ease, burning through healing potions at only about half the rate Ford had expected, given the dungeon’s reputation.

But the cavern also had some less pleasant surprises in store, as was quickly proven when Ford spotted the first body.

“They’re still breathing,” Jheselbraum reported after he pointed out the dwarf’s unmoving form. “It doesn’t even look like they’ve been knocked unconscious — they’ve simply fallen asleep. And they’re smiling like they’re having a pleasant dream, at that.”

“Huh,” Ford murmured. “Can you tell if the cause is magical, or some kind of ingested or inhaled substance?”

“This might end up provin’ itself to be a stupid question,” Fiddleford chimed in, “but can you, ya know… wake them up?”

Jheselbraum shook the dwarf gently, but they remained limp. “I’m trying to, but it doesn’t seem to be working. But this is a magically induced sleep, Ford, I can tell you that much for certain. We should stay alert — there could be any number of magical traps lying ahead, and we don’t want to get stuck in a slumber like this ourselves.”

“That’s some high-quality armor they’re wearing,” Ford commented. “They must be a serious treasure hunter.”

“We’re not lootin’ an unconscious dwarf, Stanford!”

“I never said we were! I was just wondering if it would be feasible to carry them with us, or if they would be too heavy!”

“Normally, I would hate to leave behind a person defenseless like this, but the monsters seem to be leaving them alone for now,” Jheselbraum cut in. “If we carry them with us, and into more of those ambushes, they might actually be less safe.”

Ford and Fiddleford nodded their agreement, and the trio set off down the tunnel once again. They’d scarcely been walking for five minutes when Ford held up a hand, signaling for the others to stop.

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

Fiddleford cupped a hand around his ear. “Water dripping, and… it sounds like breathing?” he whispered.

Ford nodded. “Heavy breathing, just up ahead — maybe even more than one person.” Readying his wand, he took a few cautious steps forward —

It was a heap of sleeping bodies this time, almost comically mismatched in size but leaning up against each other as they snored. The largest figure wrapped its arms around two smaller ones, one of which had their arm around a fourth figure who was smaller still. They were an orc, a human, an elf, and a halfling, Ford realized — almost certainly a team who’d ventured into the dungeon together.

Jheselbraum closed her eyes for a moment, teeth gritted in concentration, and then opened them again with a gasp. “It’s a very powerful spell affecting them. I tried to dispel it, but the magic… it fought back in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost as if…”

Her voice dropped to a low, uncertain whisper. “...as if the victims didn’t want their curse dispelled?”

“Odd,” Fidds remarked, and gingerly poked the orc’s arm. Their eyes twitched ever so slightly, but stayed closed.

Ford carefully stepped over the human adventurer’s legs, and conjured four small orbs of light, each tinted a slightly different color. They floated down the darkest hallway yet, illuminating a set of straight, carved stone stairs that didn’t at all match the natural, winding paths of the rest of the cavern.

“I’ve found something over here,” he announced. “Not sure if it’s the final stretch before the treasure we’ve been looking for, or simply the start of a more daunting and deadly area, but it definitely seems to suggest the influence of something sentient. This cavern, whatever it is, is more than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

The stairs weren’t especially steep, but walking down them was as exhilarating as sprinting down a hill, like there was nothing in the world that could stop your legs from moving once you began to descend. The smooth, flat walls were damp with condensation, but the droplets of water reflected even less of Ford’s light than the stone did — he only noticed they were there in the first place after he ran his fingers along the wall for a moment, then pulled away to find them cold and wet.

But the condensation seemed to stay off the steps themselves, and when Ford glimpsed a light at the end of the staircase — bright orange, and unlike any of the ones he’d created himself — he broke into a run, startling Jheselbraum and Fiddleford for a moment before they too saw what he’d seen, and rushed to catch up with him. They careened to a stop in front of an ornately carved wooden door, candles on each side of it lighting the hall, and Ford pushed it open to reveal —

An expansive, well-lit library, bookshelves stretching up from a plush-carpeted floor all the way up to the high and majestic painted ceiling, each and every available ledge crammed full of ancient-looking but well-preserved scrolls and tomes. Ford walked in slowly, not out of a lack of interest but out of an indecisiveness regarding where to investigate first — so many of the nearby books looked so enticing, but he was also drawn to the luxurious mahogany desks that seemed to come pre-equipped with inkwells and long, fluffy quill pens, and it was equally hard to tear his eyes off the statues of ancient wizard scholars, lit from behind by elegant, resplendent chandeliers…

As he marveled, Jheselbraum picked a book from the shelf seemingly at random, flipping through it at first but then skimming the pages with a bit more care, eventually sitting down with it and turning back to the beginning to pour over every word.

“This is the work of scholars that have long since been relegated to legend!” she reported. “Knowledge that for centuries, people have accepted as being lost forever! This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

Fiddleford chose another tome and opened it up on one of the desks, pulling a blank scroll out of a drawer and placing them side-by-side in preparation for taking notes. “That is, if you could even catalog all this in a lifetime! I can’t even see the end to some of these shelves!”

It was all so perfect that Ford couldn’t help but laugh — a deep, genuine laugh that the library’s acoustics amplified, bringing smiles to the faces of his companions. Skimming the titles and authors featured on the nearest shelf, he mused: “I wonder if we could find an explanation for why those explorers were asleep. This place surely would have —”

His gaze came to rest on a moderately thick book bound in black-dyed leather, and held closed by a clasp seemingly carved from bone: A History of Earliest Necromancy, Volume 2 — The Rise of Liches and Innovation of Archliches.

“Though really, I don’t think that’s the highest priority in the grand scheme of things.” He immediately curled up in a cozy chair with the volume and opened it to the first chapter, the world outside of the pages becoming effectively nonexistent as far as he cared.

Stan watched the whole scene play out from above, with only the faintest, most easily stifled hint of guilt hidden behind his smile as he saw his brother happily and peacefully settle down to read.

***

The staircase was longer than the one beneath the Shack, and each footstep felt heavier than the last. At some point the stairs began to alternate light and dark colors, as if the white color of the bark had been peeled off every other step, and a faint chime sounded beneath each footfall, harmonizing with the intensifying piano music. Neither the clouds nor the waves appeared to follow them down, as if the brightness of the stairs and the eyes were driving the darkness away.

The end came up on them quickly — Dipper had been expecting another door, some other puzzle, but it seemed that the vending machine had been Bill’s last line of defense. Hallways branched out all around them, winding and turning every which way and lined with doors just like the ones upstairs. Closest to the three of them was the hall labeled Memories, in the same cipher from the vending machine; it was also the hallway from which the music seemed to emanate, growing so clear that Dipper could almost make out a voice singing the accompanying lyrics.

“Do we follow the song?” he asked, and Mabel nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it’s been working so far.”

The patterns in the walls shifted, eyes staying fixed on the trio as they forged ahead.

***

Ford flew through the first book and found the other volumes soon after, all on different shelves yet well within his line of sight, like the library had read his mind and rearranged itself. Every once in a while, he heard a murmur or exclamation from Jheselbraum or Fiddleford, and though a part of him wondered what they were reading, it felt almost like a waste of effort to tear his eyes up from the page. The books were so detailed, so well-researched, that he could almost forget he was playing a game…

“Stanley, do you mind if we stay here just a bit longer?” he asked. “I know you probably have plans for the rest of the campaign, and I don’t want to ruin those by taking too long to move on…”

The roof of the library turned into a magnificent glass window, through which Stan looked back at Ford. “Well, are you having fun down there?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

Stan smiled. “Then you can stay there as long as you feel like! Hell, you can stay forever if you want.”

“That’s considerate of you, thanks! But I think forever is a bit too long, even for me…” Ford turned back to his book and flipped to a new page —

But found that he couldn’t quite pour all of his attention into the words anymore. As interesting as phylacteries and demiliches were, there was something that just didn’t sit right with him — something about Stan’s smile. It had seemed… off. Exaggerated.

A tiny voice in the back of his head (a familiar voice, he realized, somehow reminiscent of both Jheselbraum and Mabel) whispered five simple words to him — five words that every D&D&MD player knew well, but Ford hadn’t yet heard on this adventure:

Make a wisdom saving throw.

Without getting out of his chair, he glanced around the library, and for the first time really thought about how every title he spotted sounded like something he’d happily dedicate hours of his life to reading. He thought about how hard it was to tear his gaze away from those books once you started, how easily they captivated his curiosity — and how effortlessly Stan had woven this entire story, how instantly Ford had found himself enthralled, how frequently he would forget that he was actually in Dimension 52…

And how did we get to Dimension 52, again? Stan helped somehow — right? Before Jhes, there was…

There was…

Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?

Ten minutes. That’s all.

A die fell from his hand and struck not the plush maroon carpet of the library, but rather the color-drained wooden floor of the Mystery Shack, bouncing half a dozen times before it came to a rest wedged between two floorboards. On the uppermost face, glowing blue, was the number 38.

Stan stood alone on the other side of the room, dark fog spilling from the arms of his suit where hands should emerge instead. The clouds sunk low to the ground, creeping forwards like a smoky, immaterial tide, but they stopped at the edge of the circular blue glow that the die cast onto the floor, seeping all around the circumference of the light but unable to move further inwards.

“Why, Ford,” Stan choked out, “did you have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know if the being I’m facing is my real brother,” Ford began softly, and Stan flinched, raising a cloudy tendril to cover his face. “But Stanley, regardless of where you really are — I want to help you. I want to find Bill and stop him, once and for all this time; I want you to be safe —”

“I just want you to be happy!” Stan yelled, and tight cuffs snapped shut around Ford’s wrists. Wisps of fog snaked upwards from his hands, and chains materialized out of them, lifting him off the ground as they grew towards the ceiling —

“But i-if you go looking for Bill…”

In the mind, where anything conceivable is just a few seconds of concentration away from manifesting into existence, a vivid imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy — and Ford couldn’t help but remember, imagine, almost feel the faint sensation of tingling electric shocks at his wrists, of static charges creeping up his arms as his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed involuntarily, bracing himself for the current to intensify…

“If you keep looking, then you won’t be happy,” Stan went on, oblivious to Ford’s panic as he stared down towards the floor with practically glazed-over eyes. “None of us will.”

***

Old, flickering incandescent lightbulbs cast a blue-tinted pallor over everything in the hall, illuminating particles of dust that drifted through the air as if no one had come this way in a very, very long time. Separate hallways branched off every few feet, some behind doors and others not — and many with no visible end in sight.

Dipper and Mabel sneezed with almost perfect synchronicity as they passed by a dimly lit offshoot, ending at a chained-up door with the image of a scalene triangle etched into it. The symbols on the doors grew more familiar the further they explored — glasses, a llama, a bag of ice. The same code labeled every door with a transcription of the symbol, and Dipper flinched, trying to repress a morbid curiosity as they passed Pine Tree, and Question Mark, and Shooting Star…

Then finally, they stumbled upon Sixer.

“Sounds like this is where the music is coming from,” Soos murmured. No one stepped forwards to open the door.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Mabel asked.

“Hopefully Bill,” Dipper replied. The word hopefully felt tainted and wrong in his mouth.

Mabel closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing in concentration. When she opened them again, a water gun-like apparatus had appeared in her hands, just transparent enough for Dipper to tell that it was filled not with liquid, but rather with sparkling bright glitter.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

Soos curled his fingers around an invisible hilt, and a pixelated sword popped into existence, surrounded by equally retro-looking orange flames. “Me too.”

Dipper curled his fingers around the handle, and cringed as a jolt of electricity stung his palm — not strong enough to really hurt, but plenty strong enough to startle him and send his already pounding heart racing even faster. The door swung open with a creak as he recoiled, revealing another hallway lined with more doorways, this time unmarked. The lightbulbs overhead hummed and crackled quietly, blue-white sparks leaping off the sizzling filaments and striking the glass to create a noise that sounded almost intelligible —

(tzxmeaiz jfjlpc ZI afb-wavdiik xlmevmuxvj)

(aesldlk'x ysdb ximaqiu em)

(f'q jg alviq aqeexwoh)

(z'e al wfjzv)

“There’s too much background noise. I can’t tell where the music’s coming from anymore, can you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel rubbed her ears. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere, but also everywhere. I guess we should just… check the doors one by one?”

“I guess.” Dipper’s hand hovered just above a doorknob as he took a deep breath, Soos and Mabel readying their weapons behind him. There was a sickly-sweet smell permeating the air, like sulfur mixed with the scent of a dusty, seldom-used home heater.

(The smell of burning hair, he would realize a few seconds too late.)

“Okay, Bill. Let’s see what you remember about Ford —”

His fingers had hardly brushed the knob when the door exploded. Dust filled his lungs and splinters impaled themselves in his hands, stinging like a million tiny lightning bolts —

But still stinging less than the memory that now played out before him, stripped away of any enciphering, or euphemism, and at last exposed for all to see.

Ford’s limp body was suspended from a dark red brick ceiling, chains fastened around his neck and wrists. He seemed to fade away into the folds of his scorched and tattered trench coat, and his unblinking eyes stayed worryingly blank as wisps of smoke drifted up from his smoldering, ashen hair.

“Oh, WHOOPSIE-DAISY! This was all my bad this time, it really was — I just keep forgetting how sensitive your puny little organs are!”

Bill jabbed a single finger into Ford’s stomach, and Ford swung back and forth like a pendulum, remaining completely limp. “I wonder what circuit blew this time? Bet it was your sentimental, oversized old man heart again, wasn’t it? I’m tellin’ ya, you’d be better off without it — maybe now you’ll consider throwing your lot in with world domination!”

He cackled, loudly and bitterly. “What are you saying, Cipher? Save the spiel for when he’s awake again to hear you, dumbass!”

He snapped his fingers, and a pale yellow glow began to manifest around Ford’s body, starting at the hands and slowly making its way towards his chest. His voice dropped a few full octaves as he went on:

“Now, let’s get you fixed up for ANOTHER ROUND —”

“NO!”

Dipper didn’t have any memory of stepping through the doorway, but he was well-inside the Fearamid now, racing towards Bill as fast as his legs could carry him and fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore!”

What?

Bill’s voice came out different — still an echoing, high-pitched whine like usual, but smaller somehow. It held less brash self-assurance, less of that absurd, larger-than-life personality that the world had come to know and fear — and was more full of uncertainty, of panic.

Less horrifying, and more horrified.

P-P-Pine Tree? No, no, NO —

Why are you — what am I —

What am I DOING?

His eye darted all around the room as his body turned to a screen of static, familiar images flashing inside — a pine tree, a six-fingered hand. A sock puppet, a glowing blue chain.

He grabbed Dipper’s hand, but no cold flames ignited this time. His grip was tight and trembling as his wide, desperate eye met Dipper’s —

Pine Tree, why are we here? What IS this? What’s HAPPENING?

I don’t want to be here, Pine Tree, please —

“Let go of my brother!” A blast of a thousand tiny, glittering yellow and pink stars struck Bill in the eye, knocking him backwards as he howled in pain. “Yeah, that’s what you get for what you did to Grunkle Ford!”

Mabel ran towards where Ford hung, smoking less but still limp. “Are you okay?! We’ll get you out of there, just hold on —”

It’s… it’s not the real Ford, is it?

Bill sat up, blinking slowly as if coming to his senses. His voice still echoed, but it was lower-pitched now, and had an unmistakably familiar hoarseness to it as he turned towards Mabel —

We’re in the past, pumpkin. You can’t undo it —

and

neither

can

***

“Stan,” Ford whispered. don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity —

“I. Need you. To let me go.” He tried to enunciate carefully but overcompensated, the words coming out stiff and robotic. “Please,” he added.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tight around his chest as he shook his head, motions jerking and marionette-like. “No, I — I can’t.”

“Calm down,” Ford told him, even though his voice sounded anything but calm. He could smell the all-too-familiar scent of burning hair and clothes now — was his hair already beginning to smolder, or — no. Ignore your senses if you have to, they’re lying right now. Just talk.

“Stan, look into — look into my eyes. I’m your brother, Stan, you can trust me —”

“But you can’t trust me,” Stan interrupted, still staring straight down. “All this time, I was — you were wrong about me. I’m a horrible brother, and I just tricked you into thinking I wasn’t.”

Something reached its breaking point in Ford’s mind, and tears began to fall from his eyes — an ionic solution, exactly what makes your body such a good conductor of —

“Fuck it, Stan, put me back in your tabletop game if you want, but please, you’ve got to let me out of here or my own mind is going to —”

Stan’s neck flew backwards with a sickening crack, craning towards the ceiling as his eyes flew open, but he still wasn’t looking at Ford — no, he was staring far past him, spheres of blue plasma sizzling where dark brown irises should have been.

WHAT?

Why are you DOWN THERE?

Dipper, NO!

The fire in his eyes moved in cascades, in waves, like static across a television screen.

What am I DOING?

NO, NO NO

Kids, I — oh, pumpkin, it’s not —

I can’t —

I can’t undo it

I CAN’T UNDO IT

He blinked and his eyes were brown again, human again, staring into Ford’s own —

“Stanford, w-what am I DOING?!”

Ford’s chains vanished in a puff of fog, and he tumbled to the ground, landing more softly than the wooden planks beneath him should have allowed for. Stan staggered away from him, raising his hands to cover his mouth as black tears spilled down the left side of his face, leaving dark trails on his cheek and staining his fingers —

While from the corner of his right eye, shimmering crystal blue droplets welled up and dripped down — liquid fire, blazing so bright that it lit the whole room.

“Stanley —!”

In a quick one-two punch, the roof of the Shack buckled and then exploded, as a torrent of water crashed down upon Stan and submerged him instantly. A violent cyclone surrounded him, biting winds slicing through Ford’s coat and stinging his arms as they grew stronger, more desperate —

But Ford could still make out something inside the waterspout, a glow that jumped in jagged paths like lightning one moment, then floated and flickered like tongues of flame the next — a bright blue light, refusing to be drowned out. Refusing to be forgotten.

***

A couple of end notes this time:

-If I did my job as a writer well, this should hopefully be apparent, but because this detail is very important to me and my interpretation of the characters in this context, I just want to clarify: All the electric shocks that (non-memory) Ford felt were due to his own mind/imagination working against him, not due to Stan. Stan, as he now exists, would absolutely never hurt Ford like that — but he was desperate to keep Ford from searching for Bill, and because of that desperation (plus possibly a bit of influence from the Bill memories the kids were rooting around in) he made an unfortunate choice in terms of how to restrain Ford, prompting Ford to flash back to Bill’s torture. Once Stan realizes what’s happening, he’s horrified and immediately wracked with guilt, which we’ll see a bit more of in the next chapter. (finally going back to Stan POV! It’s been so long!)

-If you want a hint for the long code encountered in Bill’s part of the mindscape, hit me up and I’ll be happy to give one!

-For the record, most of my Dungeons and Dragons knowledge comes from listening to podcasts rather than actual playing experience, so if anything doesn’t make sense, let’s just chalk it up to being a difference between D&D and D&D&MD.

-I also threw in a reference to Flat Dreams by Pengychan, which is a Bill-backstory fic that I absolutely love! Of course, you can understand SSD without reading Flat Dreams, but you should totally read Flat Dreams anyway because it’s just that good.

-Last but not least, look out for the next chapter — also known as my favorite chapter — within the next couple of weeks ;) As usual, comments/predictions/etc are welcomed!

#gravity falls #same coin theory #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #mabel pines #dipper pines #soos ramirez #fiddleford mcgucket #jheselbraum #the axolotl #rosalia writes fic #fic: some sunny day #making some minor format changes to how i post these on tumblr #so we'll see how that goes #it's good to back though

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final-fantasy-iii-blog · 5 years

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Thumbnail Blaster Review and Bonus

Welcome to my Thumbnail Blaster Review and Demo YouTube first became popular as an on the net platform for musicians to create a new label for themselves as well as becoming extra views was, whilst still being will be, the ultimate goal intended for video clip content creators. In thumbnail blaster review , people would use deceptive title, tags, and thumbnails to an extent to get additional views and now nights Yahoo and google has won the battle with spam by way of including brand-new voice and graphic recognition technology to have an idea connected with what exactly a video is in relation to in comparison to what the subject material creator claims in often the title, tags, plus outline. This helps to present those that have a much far better consumer experience when looking some thing up on YouTube. Movie content creators are now confronted by having to really make quality video lessons of which people will delight in and in order to get more views, the idea needs to be noticed by adequate shed pounds find the right person who will install the idea on his internet site, or at least share this on Twitter. Correctly consequently, Google's top priority is definitely user experience over often the content provider's check out add up, however some industry experts point out the new changes to be able to this algorithm will cause old videos, that individuals have already observed, drive more moreattract attention than new versions and could actually help to make it complicated for typically the user to find refreshing content in search benefits to get famous search terminology. So, how does a movie content creator in 2011 fights impotence the latest changes for you to typically the YouTube Algorithm? Produce Video clips Like Never In advance of Build a Following Comment Your own Way into the Top Off Site Seo Know Typically the Difference Among Junk mail And even Optimization Generate Movies Such as Never Prior to With YouTube's 92 Billion web site sights a 30 days and even climbing, a online video must be distinctive for it to get hold of acknowledgement. Planning a video and scripting are now a must along using display quality. By comparing often the video clips with millions associated with views for the lesser connected with the tribes, you can see that will high definition and great lighting are two frequent traits shared by the particular just about all viewed videos. This particular doesn't entail you have got to get an expensive HIGH DEFINITION camera to have more views. Dailymotion has a set of format tags, again to support provide a much better user experience. yt: crop=16: in search of yt: stretch=16: 9 yt: quality=high

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drlaurynlax · 6 years

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14 Best Ways to Gain Weight (Without Harmful Effects) 

Gain Weight Without Making Yourself Sick

Move over “GOMAD” (Gallon of Milk A Day) and searching Dr. Google for the answers “how to gain weight fast”…Let these 14 essentials light the way.

So you want to gain weight, but you “can’t.”

Some people call it a “hard gainer,” others call it “genetics,” others call it “not eating enough” or “working out too much,” and others wish they had your problem.

No matter what your theory is behind why you CAN’T seem to gain weight…it sucks.

While the majority of America is seemingly hyper focused on weight loss with 1 in 3 Americans overweight (1) (and more than 85% of all people overweight by 2030 if trends continue, 2), for those who struggle with putting weight on (or keeping it on), it can feel equally disheartening. Being underweight can affect your body image, strength and often times even health.

I get it.

“I’m a Hard Gainer” (Story of my LIFE)

For most of my life I’ve struggled with my weight.

Early Bloomer

My pre-teens were characterized by being a healthy “early bloomer”—one of the tallest in my class, the first to shave my legs and wear a sports bra by age 9, and ranking in the top percentile on the BMI charts for my height and weight.

Chronic Dieting

By age 10, I forcefully put a dramatic halt to this—wanting nothing to do with womanhood, and more than anything, wanting to be considered thin, pretty and popular. My adolescence, teens and early 20’s were spent battling my weight and destroying my metabolism through malnourishment, subsisting on fat free yogurt, baby carrots, apples and deli turkey. I counted calories and fat grams as if it were my job, and there was a time I even feared water.

Force Feeding Weight Gain: Hypermetabolic

Doctors sent me in and out of treatment centers and hosptials, like I was on vacation, and my weight forcefully yo-yoed, as protocols forced me to sit on a couch for 3-9 months at a time, eating Egg McMuffins, Ensure shakes and Pop-tarts to put weight on and keep me alive.

My nutritionists were always “shocked” at how my body would respond to the “absurd” amount of calories and large meal plans they’d put me on, telling me I was “hypermetabolic” due to the years of starvation and metabolic disruption to my system.

Eating a Michael Phelps’ Olympic Diet

Come age 24, when I chose to recover from my 15 years of anorexia and orthorexia, this once more meant fluctuations in my weight—rebounding up from death’s doorstep at 79 pounds and feeling like the walking dead, to a “healthier place” where my body could do things a normal 24-year-old body should do (like menstruate, think clearly,and sweat in yoga class).

Nevertheless, as I once more began the classic re-feeding “weight gain” diet, my body still struggled. At the time, I was in eating disorder treatment, and being fed the equivalent of what Michael Phelps ate to win his dozens of Olympic Medals—from takeout pizza, to milkshakes, ice cream, Snickers bars, peanut butter crackers, bagels and waffles—without burning a calorie or swimming a stroke my metabolism was super fast, and yet the my gain weight process was SUPER SLOW.

For almost a year, constipation and bloating were my daily nemesis, I rarely saw a green vegetable of any sort, and no one cared that I was both lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant, with underlying autoimmune diseases that wreak havoc on the body when fed inflammatory foods. However, as forceful and painful as it felt, I did gain weight, and everyone else (but myself) were happy with the number on the scale.

Confused: Health vs. Unhealthy Weight Gain

Despite wanting to be healthy and also restore healthy weight myself, inside I felt awful. Why did “getting healthy” and having a “healthy body” have to be such a painful, forced process? Why did my body have such a hard time to gain weight? Not once did anyone talk to me about the real reasons why my body struggled so much to put healthy weight on—and be in a healthy place for my body.

Redefining a Healthy Body & Weight for ME

After I got out of treatment and back to the real world, in my new 40+ pound heavier body, I felt like I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz— not in Kansas anymore. In my new skin, and world of new opportunity before me (instead of standing face to face with death), I knew I had one of two choices—move forward or go back to my old ways.

I had no idea what “maintaining” my weight looked like—since for the past 15 years, my world had seemingly revolved around others wanting me to gain weight, and me fearing it so much…but I knew I did NOT want to go back down the road I had traveled.

In my new skin, I did my best to accept myself just as I was, with a few more rolls and much fuller face, without letting the old diet mentality slip back in—making me fear every morsel I put into my mouth.

Thankfully, at this time, I found an amazing CrossFit community that showed me the beauty of being strong, self-confident, and eating real whole foods. I decided to finish my Doctorate in Occupational Therapy and later furthered my education in Nutrition—both of which gave me realistic insight and truth about what holistic health is all about. And my faith and belief in the fact that I am truly fearfully and wonderfully made and here for a greater purpose than my body helped me stand firm.

Weight was seemingly no longer my issue!

Weight Issues Strike Again

Fast forward to age 28-30, my freedom from body image and the never ending struggle to gain weight came back with vengeance. This time, not in the form of an eating disorder, but a little something something known as IBS and SIBO—small intestinal bacterial overgrowth—gut dysfunctions where I could not keep food and nutrients in my body, no matter how much I ate or how healthy I ate. While I was no longer eating a steady diet of baby carrots or the opposite treatment extremes (fast food) at the time, everything I put into my mouth, ended right back up—in the toilet.

Bloating, gas, loose and watery stools and chronic diarrhea struck and lingered for a good 6-months until I really realized something was up beyond “bad digestion.”

In that time, I lost a good 10 to 15 pounds of redefined healthy muscle and feel-good body image I’d begun to find post-treatment and anti-eating disorder.

I felt horrible—inside and out—and self conscious, like people who looked at me, and knew my back story of my eating disorder, saw me right back “there”—at square one in the thick of “ED.”

Several people commented, “You should put on weight.” Others talked about me behind my back, “Lauryn has no right being on a stage talking about her eating disorder past. She doesn’t look healthy and she’s obviously still struggling.” And still others told me straight to my face, “Lauryn, if you’d put more weight on, your words and work you do to help others heal from their own food and body struggles would have more weight.”

An “angel investor” wanted to give me $100,000 to drive my bigger vision forward of helping people on a global scale and opening up a functional medicine center in the heart of Texas…until he met me face to face. He knew my back story—my recovery from a death gripping eating disorder and had seen my news feature on CBS—but after meeting me, he said he’d only fund my business on one condition—I gain about 15-20 pounds.

Will I ALWAYS Struggle with Weight?!

This set me over the edge—frustrated with my body and my weight.

Once I really realized that the SIBO and IBS had taken a toll on my body, I went to work on gaining weight…like it was my full time job.

More than anything, I wanted to help others and see my vision through, and if the only thing I had to do was put on 15-20 pounds….I could do anything right?

Buzz.

Weight gain proved to be harder than ever. No matter how much I ate—upwards of 3000 calories—the weight would not go on. And more and more came out.

About this same time is when I began to get more serious about the practice and art of functional medicine, and I threw myself into both self and formal study—training under some of the top leaders in medicine and the evolving functional medicine field.

Functional medicine is ALL about helping people get to the root of the health struggles, understanding what is going on “under the hood” or what is holding them back from being the healthy, vibrant person they want to be.

And as I began studying to help others…I also began learning and studying and discovering the answers to also helping myself…

Long story short, I discovered several reasons—real reasons—my body has struggled to gain weight for a LONG TIME…and several reasons why your body probably also struggles with weight issues too—both weight gain or weight loss.

You DON’T Have to Struggle with Weight Forever

No matter your personal history and relationship with your body and your weight; and whether you want to gain weight or lose weight, you don’t have to struggle forever—especially when you better understand the root causes driving weight dysfunction for you in the first place.

While I am not 100% where I want to be yet, I am getting there—up almost 8 pounds—and gradually healing the underlying mechanisms that have kept my body from being the optimal healthiest version of myself for YEARS.

If you’re tired of fighting your weight, here are 14 REAL reasons you can’t gain weight (beyond just being a “hard gainer”) and 14 essentials to reverse your struggle.

14 REAL REASONS YOU CAN’T GAIN WEIGHT + 14 ESSENTIALS TO GAIN WEIGHT THE HEALTHY WAY

1. Your Gut Microbiome is Unhealthy

The gut is the gateway to health (healthy weight included). Your gut is home to trillions of gut bacteria (100 trillion to be exact). Your gut bacteria and digestive system as a whole are responsible for: helping your body digest and absorb every single nutrient you eat, using every vitamin and mineral in your food, detoxifying every single toxin that comes in contact with your body, boosting your immune system, telling your neurotransmitters how to “think,” and governing how fast, slow and healthy your metabolism and hormones function.

Gut bacteria can be “good” (healthy), “bad” (pathogenic, infectious) or “commensal” (neither good nor bad. In the case of the weight gain dilemma, if you have a chronic gut infection (like parasites or unhealthy bacteria), bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), yeast or fungal overgrowth, or other “gut problems” (like low stomach acid, IBS, “leaky gut”), then weight gain will be an uphill battle.

Poor gut health is related to malabsorption, nutrient deficiencies, cortisol imbalances (i.e. stress) and a super slow or, in your case, a super fast metabolism.

While most studies around gut bacteria and weight tend to show the healthier your gut bacteria, the healthier your weight is (particularly for those who are overweight and obese), clinical and empirical practice also shows the opposite to be true: the more unhealthy your gut bacteria, the less healthy your body composition and weight (3).

If you are genetically predisposed to be a “hard gainer” already, you can bet your bottom dollar that you will struggle more with your weight if your gut is not healthy in the first place.

Weight Gain Essential: Boost Your Gut Health

Boost your gut health in your daily life with these steps:

Take a daily soil based probiotic and prebiotic

Take 1-2 digestive enzymes with meals

Add apple cider vinegar to water to boost stomach acid, and eat 1-2 spoonfuls of sauerkraut or fermented foods with each day

Consume natural herbs and compounds that boost gut function and heal leaky gut such as: ginger, cilantro, oregano, raw Manuka honey, peppermint, collagen, colostrum, and L-Glutamine powder to add to water.

Eat home cooked meals as much as possible, chew your food

Test, don’t guess. Work with a functional medicine practitioner to look into underlying gut dysfunctions holding you back from being in the healthy body you want to be. This may include stool testing, organic acids urine testing, SIBO breath testing, blood work or a mix of testing essentials.

2. You’re Not Maximizing Your Meals

Eating to gain weight can leave you stuffed—wondering how you can fit more “in”—especially when it seems like your weight is not budging. Everyone has their “sweet spot”—the right amount of foods that their body is able to utilize towards gaining weight, and it can be easy to undershoot this when it seems like you’re already eating all the time.

Your solution? Just suck it up and eat it! When I’ve hit this point, I find that instead of trying to fit in a whole other meal or snack, I instead look to maximize the meals I am already eating—and gradually add just a little bit more, so that my body and gut doesn’t feel overwhelmed.

Weight Gain Essential: Add Just a Little Bit Extra

Boost or maximize the meals you are already eating. Add:

An extra tablespoon of coconut oil to your veggies

A quarter of a cup more of sweet potatoes or squash

An extra ounce of protein

5-6 more raw nuts

A tablespoon of raw honey to your bedtime tea,

Or (my personal fave), a heaping spoonful of Keto-friendly ice cream or homemade coconut ice cream after dinner. Little things can make a big difference.

3. You’re Counting Quantity (Not Quality)

Calories and macros are only half the weight gain battle. Most blogs and articles on weight gain, and even personal trainers, will tell you to focus on “eating more,” “eating big,” “carbing up,” “getting lots of protein,” and healthy fats, but rarely do they talk about the quality of the foods you are eating. You can eat all the Tyson (hormone and antibiotic) raised chicken, pesticide-laden broccoli, and carb-rich rice or pasta in the world, but if the food sources are poor quality foods, you may as well be eating, but starving (at a cellular level).

Perfection and 100% organic foods are not the goal here, but a nutrient-dense diet is. For instance, the time broccoli makes it from the farm to the grocery store shelf, it has already lost well over 70% of its nutrients (4).

What this means for you in your weight gain journey? The less nutrient dense your diet, the less vitamins and minerals your body is able to use to “build on” towards your metabolic goals, at a cellular level, and the less likely your body is to absorb that food in the first place.

Weight Gain Essential: Aim for Quality Nutrients

Choose the best quality foods you can afford and vary up the foods within your diet often. (Eating the same things leaves your body and metabolism starving for certain nutrients—even if you are hitting your calorie or macro goals). Nutrient dense foods include:

Proteins

Pasture-raised poultry

Grass-fed meats

Wild caught fish

Organ Meats

Bone Broth

Vegetables

Organic “Dirty Dozen” at least

Consume veggies within 1-3 days of buying, if possible

Cooked and sautéed veggies (digest best)

Dark leafy greens

Prebiotic fiber rich veggies & tubers (cooked and cooled potatoes/sweet potatoes, cooked and cooled white rice, green plantains, asparagus, onion, garlic, jicama, rutabaga, fennel)

Fresh Fruits

Especially antioxidant rich and digestive boosting fruits like:

Bananas (green tipped)

Blackberry

Blueberries

Cranberries

Cherries

Kiwi

Strawberries

Pineapple

Papaya

Plum

Healthy Fats

Avocado (1 small, 1/2 Medium, 1/3 Large=serving)

Avocado Oil

Beef Tallow

Coconut Butter

Coconut Flakes Unsweetened

Coconut Milk (additive-free; organic caned best)

Coconut Oil

Coconut Yogurt

Duck Fat

Egg Yolks (pasture raised, organic)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Fatty Cold Water Fish (Salmon, Sardines, Cod, Halibut)

Fatty Cuts of Meat (grass-fed, organic, pasture raised)

Flax Oil

Ghee

Goat’s Milk Butter

Grass-fed Butter

Grass-Fed Dairy* (Yogurt, Cream; No sugar, no additives, full-fat, plain; Limit amounts)

Grass-fed Goat’s Milk

Lard, Non-hydrogenated

Mayonnaise (Avoid brands with canola oil or sugar)

Olives

Palm Oil, Red Palm Oil

Palm Shortening (for baking)

Fermented Foods

1-2 condiment sized servings per day

Fermented/Pickled Veggies

Fermented Condiments (Mustard, Ketchup, Relish, Horseradish, Salsas, etc.)

Kefir (Water, Coconut)

Kimchi

Kombucha (low sugar like Health Ade brand—only 2 grams of sugar, or make your own)

Kvass (Beet Kvass)

Miso & Natto (fermented varieties, no-additives)

Sauerkraut

Tempeh

Yogurt (Coconut Yogurt; full-fat grass-fed dairy with “live and active cultures only)

4. You’re Eating Foods You’re Intolerant To

Food intolerances can go undiagnosed for years. Unlike allergies where you get a direct reactive “histamine” response (wheezing, sneezing, watery eyes), food intolerances are less overt—manifesting as other signs and symptoms like malabsorption, bacterial overgrowth, fatigue, chronic stress, skin breakouts, lowered immunity, and metabolic disturbances, including difficulty gaining or losing weight).

Even “healthy” foods can be “trigger foods” for food intolerances if you’re immunity or gut function is not able to handle them. For instance, eggs, nuts, grains, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and even broccoli (FODMAP) are common irritants to individuals with underlying gut issues.

In addition, while foods like gluten get a “bad rep” and many people have chosen to avoid it (because it seems “healthier” all around), there are dozens of other foods with high cross-reactivity to gluten, such as: instant coffee, dairy, rice, buckwheat, tapioca and quinoa (in fact, many of these ingredients are often found in gluten free products).

Weight Gain Essential: Experiment with Foods that Work for Your Body

If you are struggling to put on weight and tend to eat the same things most days, experiment with food variety or eliminating questionable trigger foods for you to see how your body (and weight) respond. The top gut irritating foods many people find they are intolerant to include:

Nuts/Nutbutters

Peanuts/Soy

Grains

Dairy (especially conventional dairy)

Artificial Sweeteners Note: Don’t forget that “cutting out” doesn’t mean “restricting.” Instead replace these foods with other foods, such as tigernuts, pumpkin seeds, sunbutter, and coconut butter for nuts and nut butter; starchy tubers (like butternut squash, sweet potatoes or plantains) for grains; raw honey, xylitol, or pure maple syrup in place of most commercial sweeteners (in protein powders), and coconut milk/yogurt or full fat grassfed kefir and yogurt in place of conventional dairy.

5. You’re Forgetting Vegetables

Just because you’re in “weight gain” mode doesn’t mean that veggies have to go off the table. Vegetables provide your body (and gut) with essential fibers and prebiotics for digesting your food in the first place, as well as help ease digestion (and prevent bloating and constipation). Many people neglect veggies, especially on a weight gain diet, thinking that carrots and greens means eating like a bird. However, the opposite is true. Without veggies in your diet, your body does eat like a bird (not getting the well rounded nutrients you need to build into your cellular function and metabolic processes).

Weight Gain Essential: Taste the Rainbow

Aim for 1-3 veggies with each meal—especially dark leafy greens, prebiotic and soluble fibers (like cooked and cooled potatoes/sweet potatoes, roasted squash, carrots, beets). Preferably cook, sautee, steam or roast your veggies to enhance digestion (and prevent over fullness from raw veggies).

6. You Have a “Hollow Leg” (or Metabolic/Thyroid Imbalance or Mitochondrial Dysfunction)

Do you ever feel like your have a hollow leg—like no matter what you eat or how much you eats, your food goes nowhere? Although this is a funny expression that Uncle Joey used to joke with you about over Thanksgiving turkey, it may not be too far off if you have something else going on “under the hood.”

We briefly discussed the importance of gut health in point #1, but beyond the gut, an underlying dysfunction in your thyroid (metabolic mothership) or mitochondria (cells and cellular processes) can also challenge your weight gain efforts—especially if your body has ever been subjected to chronic stress. Stress wreaks havoc on your body as a whole—from circadian rhythm dysfunction, lack of sleep, poor quality foods, eating the same things every day, overtraining or under-training, antibiotic use, long-term medication use, a history of disordered eating and toxic chemical exposure.

For instance, in a study of individuals in recovery from chronic eating disorders (i.e. individuals with long term stress on their bodies), the subjects’ resting metabolic rate increased upwards of 20% for their height and weight—some needing upwards of 5,000 calories to gain and maintain their weight (5, 6).

This is significant since eating disorders are highly associated with chronic stress, thyroid and mitochondrial disturbances (3). Another example: toxic burden from overexposure to the 85,000+ unregulated chemicals in our plastics, cleaning and hygiene chemicals, toxic beauty products, heavy metals, mold, medications, tap water and pesticides can also wreak havoc on your body at a cellular level if you’ve had your fair share (7).

What this means for your metabolism? If the “balance” of your body’s processes is thrown off, then the last thing your body may want to do is “build” or gain weight. In fact, for some thyroid disturbances or mitochondrial dysfunction can lead to skeletal muscle breakdown, nutrient deficiencies and even unwanted weight loss, as your cells and hormones can become starved at a cellular level.

Weight Gain Essential: Get a Complete Blood Panel Run + Additional Testing (if Needed)

Look under the hood. Work with a practitioner to assess your metabolic health. Get blood work completed, including a complete thyroid panel, as well as complete iron panel (since iron overload and deficiencies can also influence metabolism). Your practitioner should be able to guide you for any further testing as well for things like: mold, autoimmunity, organic acids, and heavy metals if warranted.

Here are the ideal ranges for thyroid markers:

TSH 1-2 UIU/ML or lower (Armour or compounded T3 can artificially suppress TSH) Free T4 >1.1 NG/DL Free T3 > 3.2 PG/ML Reverse T3 less than a 10:1 ratio RT3:FT3 Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPOAb) & Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TgAb) < 4 IU/ML or negative

Here are ideal ranges for iron markers, depending on the season of life you’re in:

Serum Iron Men: 40–135 μg/dL Pre-menopausal Women: 40–135 μg/dL Post-menopausal Women: 40–135 μg/dL

Serum Ferritin Men: 30–200 ng/dL Pre-menopausal women: 30–100 ng/dL Post-menopausal Women: 30–100 ng/dL

Transferrin Saturation Men: 17–45% Pre-menopausal Women: 17–45% Post-menopausal Women: 17–45%

TIBC Men: 275–425 μg/dL Pre-menopausal Women: 275–425 μg/dL Post-menopausal Women: 275–425μg/dL

UIBC Men: 175–350 μg/dL Pre-menopausal Women: 175–350 μg/dL Post-menopausal Women: 175–350 μg/dL

Soluble Transferrin Receptor Men: 14.5–25 nmol/L Pre-menopausal Women: 13–25 nmol/L Post-menopausal Women: 14.5–25 nmol/L

Reticulocyte Hemoglobin Content (CHr) Men: 24.5–31.8 pg Pre-menopausal Women: 24.5–31.8 pg Post-menopausal Women: 24.5–31.8 pg

7. You’re Eating on the Go

Optimal digestion happens in a “parasympathetic state” (rest and digest). Eating on the go, in addition to standing up while eating, distracted eating (watching TV, checking your phone) or eating out at restaurants, (more than eating in) is stressful for the body’s digestive system.Often coupled with this is also the dilemma of not chewing your food enough. The result? Poorly digested and poorly absorbed foods…and lack of weight gain.

Weight Gain Essential : Rest & Digest

Slow down at meal times. Eat your meals seated and preferably not on the go. Cook and prepare your foods as much as possible. Chew your food (really well), and mindfully enjoy your meals (i.e. refrain from distracted eating).

8. You’re Meal Timing is Off

The human body loves balance—especially circadian rhythm balance. Every human has an internal biological clock that operates in tandem with the sun—ideally, we have more energy in the morning as the sun rises, plenty of gusto and energy during the day, then a bell curve dip in the evening, ready to “tuck in” and wind down as the sun goes down. However, if we disturb this circadian function—including our meal timing, then our body and metabolism can get off as well. While there is no perfect time to eat, there are general guidelines and hours during which your body is able to digest best. Eating at the “wrong” time windows also affects your metabolism.

In one study, aimed at determining if time of day affected weight loss in mice, researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center found: Mice on a reduced calorie plan that ate only during their normal feeding/active cycle were the only ones among five groups to lose weight, despite consuming the same amount as another group fed during their rest time in daylight (8).

Weight Gain Essential: Eat with Your Circadian Rhythms

Eat in tune with your circadian rhythms to maximize the fuel you eat.

Here’s a general guide:

6-8 Breakfast/First Meal

10-11 Mid-Morning Snack (if you eat a snack)

12-2 Lunch

3-5 Afternoon Snack (if you snack)

6-8 Dinner

9-10 Bedtime Snack (if you snack)

These guidelines fall in line with the way your body metabolizes food thought the day.

9. Your Body is in “Catabolic Mode”

Catabolism stands for “break down.” Anabolism is exactly the opposite: building up or weight gain. Together, catabolism and anabolism are integral and opposite parts of the metabolic cycle that require ideal balance to maintain a strong body, healthy weight, and muscle mass. If these activities are not in balance, the body can be in a catabolic state. The culprits to balance? Chronic stress, overtraining, prolonged fasting or restrictive diets, chronic infection, such as Lyme disease or H. Pylori, poor quality food intake, major surgery, burning a candle at both ends, lack of sleep, lack of water (dehydration), and beyond.

Excessive or prolonged stress, resulting in catabolism (without adequate compensating anabolism or recovery) has negative consequences for your weight gain goals.

Muscle tissue along and essential body fat throughout the body can become depleted. Without the sufficient anabolic process, the process of growing and repairing tissue doesn’t happen, sending the body into a net negative energy state, defined by gradual weight loss, reduction of muscle mass and healthy body fat.

If not reversed early on, chronic catabolism happens—making you a “hard gainer” with your body constantly trying to catch up and locking your metabolic cycle into a deficit with low energy, failure to gain weight despite excessive caloric intake, unexplained weight loss, hypoglycemia, shortness of breath and inability to take deep respiration, and more.Translation? Adrenal fatigue or “HPA Axis Dysfunction.”

Is this you?

Weight Gain Essential: Don’t Push Your Body

When your body is in a catabolic state, typical measures for weight gain, health and nutrition are not always tolerated. Your body is highly sensitive and may not be able to accept BOTH natural or synthetic anabolic compounds or hacks that have stimulating properties. This may mean taking a step back from high calorie loads, inflammatory foods (dairy, grains, nuts), hard workout sessions and nutritional supplements—all of which can be a “good thing” but cause more stress than good in the catabolic state.

A common error of trying to use more calories or more supplements to reverse the catabolic cycle prematurely (when the body is still in catabolism and yet to stabilize), is that programs that focus primarily on aggressive tactics often fail. In catabolic mode or “adrenal fatigue,: the body is trying to slow down in order to conserve energy because it perceives danger and a threat to survival.

Forcing more food into the body requires the body to use more energy for digestion and metabolite breakdown. And even though nutritional supplements may seem harmless to” boost your adrenals” or immunity, if your body is in “break down mode,” these measures can trigger adrenal crashes. Instead of trying to push your body out of catabolism, here’s how to approach restoring your body to a place where it’s ready to be “pushed” towards health instead:

Step 1: Prevent Catabolism from Worsening

Use basic whole foods nutrition, juiced vegetables, basic movement (walking, yoga), rest and cutting out unnecessary commitments and obligations.

Step 2: Focus on Essential Nutrition

Let food be thy medicine. Before pushing forward into high caloric meal plans once you have a stable foundation, the goal of step 2 is still gradual restoration of total health and function. This is best accomplished by focusing on eating micronutrients through nutrient dense foods (fresh vegetables and fruits, organ meats, fatty fish, grass-fed and pastured proteins, essential fatty acids), and customizing the exact nutrients to your needs. A one size fits all dietary plan is not possible here because of great individual variance. Consider working with a nutritionist to build a balanced, restorative meal plan for you.

Step 3: Proper Supplementation

Once a baseline of health and function is restored and the catabolic state has slowed, supplements may gradually be integrated to boost overall function. Some helpful supports may include: adaptogenic herbs (like ashwaganda, rhodiola, cordyceps or reishi mushroom), essential fatty acids (like cod liver oil), immune-boosting supports (Vitamin C, liposomal curcumin, glutathione and resveratrol). Work with a functional medicine practitioner on this one.

10. You’re Not Recovering Properly

Perhaps you are not all the way into catabolic mode…but you’re heading that way fast if stress (and lack of recovery) are your “norms.” You can eat all the sweet potatoes and ice cream in the world, but if your body is in “stressed out mode,” then you won’t see the labors of your high calorie intake work like they should. Beyond calories, quality sleep, hydration and workout habits are essential for a balanced bod (that can readily accept weight gain). If you under sleep, don’t hydrate or overtrain, then you won’t get anywhere (fast).

Weight Gain Essential:

Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night

Drink half your bodyweight in ounces of filtered water each day (bonus: add lemon)

Balance your workouts: Daily movement is not a bad thing, aim for 3-5 days of strength training, 1-2 days of power (HIIT), yoga or flexibility training, and

11. You’re Trying to Be Arnold

Your body is your body. Arnold’s body is his body. Cindy Crawford’s body is her body. Every BODY is different, and one of the biggest “get ups” in the weight gain game is keeping your eyes everywhere else, but on your own “ball.” The more we look to others’ bodies and characteristics as our own ideal (instead of determining our own), the further from our goals we will continue to be (because we will never fully get there).

Weight Gain Essential: Clearly Define Who Thriving YOU Is

Who is thriving, healthy, body confident you? What does he or she look like, act like, feel like, think like? If you could be the best version of you—not someone else, who would that be and qualities would you possess? Get a clear picture of that girl or that guy. Bullet point your top qualities of who you want to be in your healthy body and healthy mindset, then… put on the “as if” mindset in your own weight gain journey. The “as if” mindset is like putting on a superhero cape or princess dress as a kid and believing you were totally Superman or Belle from :Beauty and the Best.” So as we think therefore we become.

12. You’re on the Wrong Supplements

The supplement industry is a black hole with everything from protein powders to weight gainers, adrenal supports, multi-vitamins, probiotics and beyond. However, not all supplements are created equal, and most all supplements are unregulated—leaving those who are unfamiliar with the differences in strains, types, potencies, company reputations and overall quality of supplements in the dark about the “best” supplements for you.

Hate to break it to you, but many sups are nothing more than placebo effect, overheated during processing and manufacturing, not potent enough to make a difference and/or half-baked marketing lies.

For instance, it’s been estimated that upwards of 90% of probiotics on shelves do not contain the probiotics they claim.While supplements can be beneficial for getting in extra micronutrients you don’t get in your diet, or supporting underlying deficiencies or dysfunctions (such as poor gut health, poor thyroid or metabolic function, “adrenal fatigue,” etc.), it’s best not to go too crazy or depend on supplements too much as the “answer” for your weight gain success.

Weight Gain Essential: Invest in Quality Supps & Get a Plan for You

Less is more, and here are my top 5 weight gain supportive supplements most people can benefit from:

Soil Based Probiotic: Megaspore Biotic (use code “THRIVE” to be able to check out under the Register Tab as a patient)

Prebiotic: Sunfiber (helps digest your probiotic)

Digestive Enzymes: Transformation Enzymes Digest

Quality MultiVitamin: Metabolic Synergy by Designs for Health (use code LAURYNLAX at checkout to have access to check out)

Clean Protein Powder: Equip Foods Prime Protein , Vital Protein CollagenConsult with your healthcare practitioner or get a custom supplement and nutrition plan for you

13. You’re Stressing Out (About Your Weight)

Did we mention stress is the number one culprit working against your weight gain efforts? It is.

Weight Gain Essential: Enjoy the Journey

Health is about the journey—not the destination. Along your weight gain restoration, enjoy the journey of building into your healthy lifestyle, body and mindset. You will get there. Focus on one day and one positive action step at a time.

RESOURCES

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/de06/e7525826f407cbbce56f14ba037f9b190218.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4839080/

http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-779.pdf

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00199/full

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/96/2/333/2709494

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693132/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170718091542.htm

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