#I’m posting this everywhere this took me 7 goddamn hours | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vintagemulti · 4 months

Text

shards and splinters

parings: marc spector x reader , steven grant x reader

desc: apparently what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. now you’ve died and returned alive, perhaps it’s time to test that theory; or risk losing your life once and for all.

warnings: blood, angst, swearing, fighting, guns and gun violence, death descriptions, long as fuck, sex mentions i guess(? if you squint), hurt/comfort, gory i guess (jake🤷🏻‍♀️) writers note: idk how accurate these are bc i’ve been writing this on and off for years but cover all bases i guess xx

a/n: psa to pls reblog anyway she’s BAAAAAACKKK did you miss me ?? i missed youse … if there’s even a moonknight fandom anymore 🫣 i’m so sorry for the 2 years gone from the face of tumblr, i’ve quite honestly had two years from hell and insane writers block so. can anyone even remember this series?? idk maybe you should all reread the first parts 👀👀 anyways. there’ll be one more part to this (will it come this year? next? 2026? who knows…) bc i HATED my original ending and just had to change it. also sorry if this feels rushed or like it jumps around a lot, it’s been written over YEARS, but i’ve tried my best for continuity. also, i know there’s a lot missing in like fight scenes but they are BORING and i hate writing em so i’m not doing it. tried, got half way thru then didn’t touch this for 7 months so.. it’s no fight scene or no part at all. but my last part is pretty much done so hopefully it’ll be posted soon! ill let youse savour this for a while tho lol. on a real note thank you all SO much for all the love, even two years later. it means the world. all my love, all the time x

series masterlist

masterlist

the air felt different now. it was funny; you and marc had been apart hundreds, if not thousands of times, but he had never felt your absence. not like this. no, never like this. it was different now because he knew he could look for you everywhere and you would still be in that room, not breathing, not living.

he could see it all so clearly now. all of what? all of it. everything; life, your life, his life, where everything went wrong, what he should have done, should have said, how he could have saved you.

there was nothing you could have done, marc.

“that’s easy for you to say.” he mumbled, looking down at his hands. “you’re not the one who was halfway through a fucking argument when harrow took her. and if you can remember, harrow took her because of me.”

steven sighed, and went quiet.

“i should’ve died on that fucking alter.”

marc said it over and over, like a prayer, to go back in time and pull the trigger. he was fuck knows where, it looked like the middle of the desert but marc didn’t care enough to question it.

he had walked out of that pyramid and kept on walking - for hours. the hot egyptian sun had began to set, casting a rosy hue on everything. the humidity make marc’s head ache.

steven had gone silent - a small hum of anger in the back of marc’s head. it usually would have surprised marc, for steven to be the angry one. but he wasn’t sure he would never feel surprised again.

are you going to wallow here forever?

marc looked up, low sun glinting in his eyes, making him squint. but he could tell exactly who it was - crescent staff in his peripheral.

“fuck off.”

khonshu laughed. that’s one way to talk to a god.

“fuck off.” he repeated.

and why should i, mortal? why should i listen to you?

“you did this.” it was stiff, cold, a definite statement. “you did this to us.”

khonshu groaned, moving to block the sun from marc’s eyes so he could see him properly. aren’t you going to question how i am here?

“no.”

perhaps you should.

marc could never cope with khonshu’s riddles. they had always infuriated him - never getting a straight answer. but this one, he could tolerate.

“fuck does that mean?” he was looking directly into khonshu’s eyes now - something he had readily avoided for years. “and don’t give me any of your goddamn riddles.”

if you must be so blunt, it would seem like osiris has taken a liking to your poor lady wife. hathor isn’t half fond of her, either. maybe you ought to go back to the pyramid, something tells me your needed.

and he was gone. disappeared with a gust of wind, leaving marc alone in the saharan sunset, shaking and still covered in his wife’s blood.

she’s alive?

“i-” marc looked around. “i don’t-”

his eyes slipped into the back of his head.

steven took a deep breath, swallowing hard. he set off in a run - towards the pyramid.

“this feels so fucking weird.”

you were pressed flat against the wall, peeking around every few seconds to make sure one of harrow’s followers wasn’t coming your way.

i must admit, it’s been a while since i’ve had an avatar.

you let out a breathy laugh. was that your first ever laugh since being revived? you supposed it must be. oh, you wished it was one of steven’s jokes you were laughing at instead.

you didn’t think you’d ever find one of his jokes unfunny again.

“where is he?”

it’s hard to tell. i can’t check, unless i’d like ammit to spot me.

humming, you looked around the corner once again, breath hitching when you saw a shadow come closer.

what made your breath stop completely, however, was the slow, melodic tapping of a cane, following every footstep the person took.

harrow was less than two feet away from you.

swallowing hard, you pushed yourself against the wall even harder, back cold against the concrete. you hoped - prayed with your newfound faith in osiris and his mercy - that harrow would turn back the other way, not hearing your thumping heart.

but your luck had ran out for this lifetime.

the tapping of the cane became louder, until you could see the tip of it in your peripheral, crunching glass finally becoming audible. he was about to come around the corner, and see you. you would be impossible to miss, even the bright red of your new outfit making you stand out.

it seemed like it was impossible to escape harrow, and the tapping of his cane. he had killed you once, what would stop him from doing it again?

apparently, a guardian angel. someone spoke, making harrow turn to look behind him.

this was your chance - to slip away and turn the opposite corner, escape harrow in your new life as you couldn’t in your last.

his voice made you flinch. cool, charming, low. like a snake - exactly like a snake, now you thought about it. the way he slid through life, from the bar all those years ago, to now, awakening a centuries old god, aiming to destroy the world.

you could slither away too, though.

still holding your breath, you sidestepped along the wall, making sure to watch your step over any lose stones, until the wall fell away behind you and led you into another corridor.

as soon as the light from the hall had faded, you let out your breath, hands coming to your forehead and rubbing your eyes.

we have to keep moving. ammit is almost ready to begin.

nodding - although it felt like your brain was rattling around your skull - you looked back up and saw hathor, still looking as beautiful as ever.

this hallway was much dimmer than the last. colder, too. it was like all the light had been blocked, the only thing keeping your vision was the small, fading candles lining the walls every meter or so.

perhaps it was your natural instinct, or a new given sense as an avatar, but you could tell - something wasn’t right. something in the air had shifted, on top of the hot, sticky, egyptian heat, there was something sinister.

your years as a mercenary had taught you to recognise something - blood in the air. and there was certainly blood in the air around you.

“what is harrow’s plan?”

he wants to judge people. through ammit, he believes he can rid the world of everyone bad, even if they aren’t already bad.

“so he’s playing god?” the corridor seemed to go on forever.

he would never admit it, but yes. and ammit is the perfect enabler for him, she’ll know exactly what he’s up to, but because he can give her her power back, she’ll play along.

you scoffed lightly. “harrow isn’t stupid either. he’ll know what she thinks.”

hathor shrugged, a few paces in front of you. only time will tell, my dear.

for a few minutes, the walk along the corridor was silent. the tap of your shoes echoed down the hall, breeze from your passing flickering the candles on the wall.

why did you marry him?

it stopped you in your tracks, hathor stopping too.

“what?”

marc. why did you marry him?

you stuttered for a moment, looking around as if someone would come and help you.

i don’t mean it in a rude way. i’m the goddess of love, it’s natural for me to want to know.

“well,” you paused for a moment and began walking again, slower this time. “we were young when we met, i was coming up for 18 and he was 19.”

and?

“and i knew what i had done to him.” you swallowed. “i felt fucking awful, i thought, maybe if i get to know the guy, and he’s not as much of an ass as everyone makes him out to be, it’ll make it easier for me to forgive myself.”

the corridor kept on, as if it were never ending.

“as you can tell, it didn’t work.”

he wasn’t as much of an asshole as everyone thought?

“no, he was,” you gave a dry smile. “it just so happened that assholes are my type, and i think he worked it out pretty quickly. so after only about two months of knowing each other, he asked me on a date. a real date. it was my first ever date too, god knows anton never took me out. but god, he was such a gentleman.

he picked me up, gave me flowers, wore a fucking tie. and he payed for everything, too. dinner at a four star restaurant, a movie, then out to a bar for drinks.

i knew i had fucked up when he kissed me that night.”

you regret it?

“not for a day. and that’s my mistake- i mean, i was supposed to hate him. i told myself i would hate him. so i wouldn’t feel bad about telling someone to kill him. i didn’t even know how he got out alive- he didn’t tell me about the khonshu shit until after we got married.

oh, our wedding,” you smiled again, a real one. “it was perfect. i was twenty one, marc was twenty three. we were so young. it was a small wedding, just some friends, neither of us invited our family. it was the best night of my life.

it was the night i met steven, too. i think the stress of the day must have triggered it. and that was it- there was marc, and there was steven.”

didn’t it take a while to get used to?

the corridor began to open up, getting slightly wider by the meter. still - there was no end to it in sight.

“it did and it didn’t. i knew for a while there was something happening to him, he would disappear, look confused all the time. i knew it was a matter of time until something changed. and then came steven, perfect steven.

he changed so much- it was like dating all over again. he was even more perfect than marc, stupid english accent included. but, naturally, abuthing that’s perfect must come to an end.”

hathor sighed. and it gave you the impression, just for a moment, that she already knew the whole story. that she was humouring you by letting you tell it. her sigh, sad and resigned, almost confirmed that she knew what was coming.

“the-” you stopped. your voice had broken, and your feet no longer moved. hathor continued for a few paces before looking back at you.

i understand, but if there’s any time you need to tell this, it’s now.

“you know?” you voiced your suspicions.

take into account which god i am, my dear. there is no one else i could chose, but you.

you swallowed. “what’s the point of talking about it if you already know?”

you have been born again. revived. would you like to carry this, this horrible vendetta against someone who has done nothing but love you, for the rest of your new life?

“no.”

then voice it. i can take this pain from you, if you only ask me too. i can help you.

you bit your tongue, looking down at your feet and kicking around a few of the loose rocks. hathor waited.

“the baby was supposed to be born just after my twenty-third birthday.”

a beat. hathor didn’t reply.

“but he didn’t live past twelve weeks.”

you looked back up at hathor, anxious for a reply. she didn’t give you one, only nodding.

“i don’t- i don’t know what i did. i was waiting until i could get a scan, tell marc, have it done properly, you know? but when i went to my appointment, i knew. she didn’t say anything, she just looked. then she left, got the doctor to come in.

he said that the baby had died, that they weren’t sure of the cause, but it was a boy. that my baby boy had died.”

tears threatened your eyes. never - never - had you spoken about this before. not even with marc.

“i went home, with a hatred in my heart. the next few days were the worst. i was grieving a child no one knew i even had. the blood was horrible, it hurt so badly. i told marc i was on my period. fuck, for all he knew i was.

and then my baby was gone. and i hated marc.”

why did you hate him?

you shrugged. “i have no idea. i needed someone to blame and marc was the easiest. that’s when it all went downhill, you know? i wanted him to be there for me, for something he didn’t even know happened. and when he wasn’t, i blew up at him. and he blew up at me.

and that was it, for three years. this horrible hatred towards each other, me hating marc for something he knew nothing about, and marc hating me for every other reason.

he hated me the most for making him stay a mercenary. he wanted out, he wanted a normal life in the suburbs with a dog and a big house and maybe, one day, a child.

but i can’t have that. i don’t want that kind of normal - not when i was so close to it and lost it. so i pushed him into this world. i made him take jobs and work himself to death, even when i found out about khonshu. i made him do it.

and that’s why we’re here. because i told him to follow khonshu here. and now look what i’ve done.”

hathor took two, wide steps towards you, and cradled your face in her hands.

you have done nothing that makes you inhumane. none of this mess is you fault. khonshu would have gotten marc here one way or another. anyone in your shoes would be the same.

her hands were warm. you felt a tear fall, running underneath her fingers. “but i’ve been so horrible. i’m a monster - if not for this, for everything else.”

hathor shook her head. you are a human being.

there was silence as you cried and hathor wiped your tears. at least two minutes passed - but it didn’t matter to you. harrow could come running around the corner and you wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

hathor took a deep breath, looking to her left along the corridor. she opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, another figure appeared.

is now a bad time, human?

you flinched at the rough edge in khonshu’s voice. “what do you want?”

what do i want? there’s a long list.

even through your tears, your patience thinned. “seriously?”

hathor took her hands from your face, turning to look at khonshu. enough of your riddles. just tell her.

the unmistakable sound of footsteps, running, drew your attention. they were getting closer.

i don’t think i have to say a word, actually.

just as khonshu had finished, a figure appeared, coming around the twists and turns of the corridor.

your heart stopped.

marc looked around in a daze, eyes falling first on khonshu, then on hathor, then…

“y/n!”

just as he had stopped running, he started again, coming towards you like a lion out of his cage, wrapping his arms around you and lifting you off of your feet.

“oh baby,” he mumbled into your neck.

you had just reached - wrapping your arms around him in equal tightness, hands flying into his hair. oh, god. his hair - his curls, his skin - you’d never take it for granted again.

he pulled back, hands on your cheeks in a mirror image to hathor. his eyes locked into yours, brown irises melting into his pupils, filling with tears.

marc stuttered, trying to get several sentences out at once, before you hushed him.

“please, marc, we don’t have much time. harrow is gonna-”

“i know,” he nodded, eyes still not breaking from yours. “i know- baby, i know. please- please, just give me a minute. i never- i thought i’d never- oh, baby.”

he leaned in, moving his hands out of the way to rest his forehead against yours. he was hot - sticky with sweat and dirt and, although you didnt want to think about it, your blood.

“i know,” you whispered, closing your eyes. “marc, i know.”

barely having finished your sentence, he leaned in and kissed you.

it was like the first kiss all over again, and you supposed it was. hot, needy, passionate, desperate. you could live in this moment.

but the unmistakable sound of khonshu clearing his throat broke your kiss.

if you wouldn’t mind, harrow is about to release ammit. i’m sure your couples catch-up can wait another hour.

“yeah,” you nodded, breaking away, but marc was far more hesitant to let go.

“i can’t-” he looked around, paranoid. “i can’t do this, y/n. i just lost you, i can’t run the risk of losing you again, i’ve never- y/n, i can’t let you go, you’re everything to me, and if harrow- oh god, what did harrow do to you? i swear to god, the minute i see him, i’m gonna-”

he blinked. a beat.

“paranoid git never did know when to be quiet, did he?”

“oh, steven,” you threw your arms around him again. “fucking hell.”

steven, unlike marc, seemed far more willing to let you go. “love, i know, but if we don’t go now, we’re all gonna end up dead. please, we can do this all after, yeah?”

he took your hands in his, stilling your shaking fingers. he was so warm - always so warm.

“okay,” you nodded, looking between him and the gods beside you. “okay.”

you had severely underestimated how far harrow was willing to go. it had been what felt like hours, an unrelenting fight. you weren’t even sure when layla showed up, hoping to help you in any way she could.

but her attempts were futile; ammit was huge. really - huge, bigger than the pyramid behind her. khonshu had, as usual, gotten involved too, so that meant he was the same size, almost trampling you with every step he took.

you had tried. really, you had. you’d tried to use your new found avatar abilities to at least land something on harrow, but truth be told, you were failing. he’d hit you far more times that you’d even aimed for him, you were covered in cuts and rapidly forming bruises, you were sure your shoulder was dislocated.

but worst of all? your head wasn’t right. you weren’t sure what was wrong with it - it seemed fine every time you focused on identifying the issue, but every time you weren’t paying attention, it was there again. dizzy, a ringing in your eyes, everything a second or two behind; your vision lagging and cloudy. but just as you’d notice it, it was gone.

it was getting worse, too. you could see marc out of the corner of your eye; he was one to one with harrow. it would have made you anxious if you could properly focus on what was going on. but you couldn’t - your thought were scattered, a ringing back tenfold in your ears, the world had gone distant and hazy.

the doctors told you it was a concussion the next morning. layla had actually came in very handy, able to translate the man’s arabic into english for you.

he had told you that you’d sustained a massive head injury - you figured it would have been investigated, if you hadn’t been one of the people there last night.

‘there’ was all people could talk about. first the sky had gone backwards (you’d missed that part, thanks to being dead), then, out of nowhere, two ancient egyptian gods had appeared, destroying all the buildings in their wake, pyramids too.

it wasn’t that you couldn’t remember it. you could - it was clear in every aspect. it just didn’t feel like you’d been there at all. even the build up to it, every moment from when you’d stepped out of that pyramid, hand in hand with steven, hot air hitting your face;

it wasn’t you.

well, obviously it was you. but it wasn’t the same you. everything felt different, you didn’t have the same emotions you did before. the same key ones, yes, like how you felt about marc, and steven, and who you are as a person, but basic thing, like fear, and compassion? it was gone.

you’d have voiced this to a doctor if you could put ‘i died and got brought back to like by an ancient god, but not the same one who destroyed half of your city last night, sorry about that, by the way’ into layman’s terms.

trauma induced dissociation was enough of a label for you. it fit - everything just felt a little hazy, was all. not that you’d asked your doctor, a google search (excluding the resurrection part) had taken you to pages and pages about dissociation and how it’s normal to feel it after a traumatic event. you were pretty sure dying was a traumatic event.

and yes, you could bring it up to your doctor, he was payed to help you, after all. but there was a strange gnawing in the back of your head: that if you voiced this feeling, it would only get worse, and the happy ending you and your husband currently had would be shred in two because you couldn’t feel properly.

so instead, you listened to his professional diagnosis; a severe concussion, fractured rib, dislocated shoulder, several cosmetic wounds, and mental trauma that would be discovered at a later point, if you ever got around to voicing it to a doctor.

what a lovely shopping list, you thought.

it was three days before they let you out, and marc wasn’t getting out for another two after that. you’d had to beg him to even go to the hospital in the first place, but now he was getting the medical attention he’d needed for years, he seemed content in his hospital bed. not that he’d ever admit it.

with two days to yourself (not nights, you’d go back to the hospital and stay with marc), you decided to have the egyptian holiday you had come for.

the first stop was obvious; buy clothes. all of the ones you had were either covered in blood or halfway shredded. once you’d achieved this, in a new white linen sundress (cut below the knees to hide the still raw scars), you felt just slightly lost.

of course, you weren’t lost, you were always quick to get your bearings in new places - mercenary years had left you with a few skills, after all - and you kept yourself in a fairly small area, close to the hospital in case you got an emergency call.

no - the feeling of being lost came from deep down. ever since you’d come back to life it was the same, a strange longing for something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. something you felt you just had to have, maybe not right now, but in the near future. the hazy feeling had already begun to pass, you were sure google had served you well. but it left behind this in its wake, a new, even stranger feeling.

a breeze blew your hair lightly as you looked down the street in front of you. it was picturesque, all kinds of small shops and cafes as far as you could see. you could hear kids playing somewhere, a baby crying in the distance.

the lost-longing feeling piqued at this.

“oh.” you breathed. “oh.”

beside you, hathor, dressed in a golden, floor length dress and looking beautiful as ever, laughed.

oh, indeed. did you forget which god i am?

169 notes · View notes

naruhearts · 3 years

Text

I’m done keeping my composure.

Sorry, this will be a LOADED post! (And I’ll be repeating the points others have made)

for real, to everyone being nasty and telling heartbroken fans that “Dean was always supposed to die get a grip you’re just butthurt etcetera etcetera—” F you royally.

How dare you police the brutal feelings that’s been embroiling us since the Finale That Must Not Be Named aired.

The show you think you all watched, the show you all believe was the same SPN from Season 1-4, changed at some point. Kripke wrote his original vision, put it to screen, saw it through in S5 as he intended, and closed the door on that era.

In 2008, Supernatural was adopted and inherited. As you know, there was a supreme paradigm shift post-Kripke era. The show FLOURISHED (we won’t talk about Gamble thanks). It evolved, transformed, grew beyond trauma-induced self-worthlessness and toxic masculinity and endless death and hegemonic social ideals and conservatism and repressive anti-revolutionary ideas. Castiel, the iconic favourite and beloved staple of the series portrayed by Misha Collins, was introduced in Season 4 as the core lead character, and he ushered in a brand new era of Christian mythos that SPN took advantage of. Longevity SKYROCKETED. Audiences were INTERESTED. SPN amassed an incredibly groundbreaking fanbase infused by non-nuclear principles. A massive subversive wave began, fighting the Status Quo of the times since 2008. It’s precisely why such an abysmal ending to a show of extensive Freud-Jungian metanarratively meta META complex stature and social POWER will render us totally and unbearably broken for years to come.

Point is, DEAN WINCHESTER NO LONGER WANTED TO DIE. HE WANTED TO LIVE. HE WANTED TO SIT ON THE BEACH, PLUNGE HIS TOES IN THE SAND, AND SIP UMBRELLA DRINKS WITH HIS BROTHER AND HIS BEST FRIEND. He said this in Season 13. And then, a season later, he told the ghost of his long-deceased father — the source of his deep-running trauma and the figure of self-reductive authoritarianism permeating his arc since Season 1 — after being questioned why he didn’t pursue the Nuclear Fam, that he already has his own: his brother Sam, his adopted child Jack, and Cas.

Dean’s best friend Cas. Oh god, Cas, who made his inevitably permanent mark on Dean’s soul beyond allyship. Castiel, renamed to Cas, God’s -iel removed by Dean. Dean, the human spark that lit the fire of pre-existing autonomy in the inherently rebellious angel who was, this entire time, the catalyst for free will in God The Writer’s puppet show. Their friendship set on goddamn fire. I can also write paragraph upon paragraph about my love for Cas while devastated tears stream down my face, but I digress—

Cas’ romantic love for Dean pushed our main Heart of SPN to love himself. Love is free will. Free will is also love. Of note, Cas’ love confession in 15x18 was supposed to offset something so vastly important and fundamental...to maybe (read: most likely) pull the trigger on SELF-TRUTHS in conjunction with free will. And The Great Anticipated Follow-Up to the episode penned by the passionate Berens should have included (read: seemed like it was going to be) Dean, closeted trauma survivor in love with his best friend, being given the opportunity to do it right: to SPEAK HIS TRUTH, and then that very singular opportunity was STOLEN so grossly. After poring over it for days, I refuse to believe we made their years-long story up out of thin air, spun it out of fantastical-delusional dream cotton candy, because we DIDN’T. IT WAS REAL.

As I said in another post: “I’ve just been feeling physically ill for the past >40 something hours with the terrible knowledge that 19/20 undid years of vital progression towards healthy interdependence, autonomy, and a positive endgame, where Sam, Dean and Cas close the ring of found family in final empowering self-fulfillment...where Dean, no longer repressed and set free, is able to use his words and speak his truth as a queercoded trauma survivor, henceforth confirming and self-affirming his own bisexuality since S1 by reciprocating — by telling Cas that he always loved him, too, loved him endlessly, which would have altogether divested Supernatural of its cult status and catapulted it into global worldwide significance as the longest running sci-fi genre show in American broadcasting history that actually dared to defy and, by proxy, empower LGBTQ2IA+ everywhere who found profound personal meaning in Destiel through VALIDATION,” — found themselves mirrored in Dean and Cas’ respective character journeys individually and as each other’s queer love interests.

THIS IS WHY DEAN WASN’T MEANT TO DIE.

THEY WERE SO ESSENTIAL, NOT JUST TO THE OVERARCHING STORY AND HEALTHY INTERPERSONAL THEMATICS OF MODERN SPN, BUT ALSO TO THE SOULS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD WHO FOLLOWED THEIR JOURNEYS, HOPED FOR THEM, ASPIRED TO BE LIKE THEM, TREASURED THEM, WEEPED FOR THEM, AND FOUGHT FOR THEM, LIKE YOU AND ME.

Heck, how could anyone think Sam Winchester had a well-deserved characteristic ending? He didn’t. Dean’s brother was shafted so badly. He stopped hunting when seasons ago, he had canonically accepted that he no longer wanted an apple pie life. He simply...turned the lights off in a resoundingly empty bunker and left — abandoning his dead brother’s room — never to return (he did return later to get the Impala, family photos etc, I mean this symbolically)...as if — dare I say it — Supernatural itself eerily told us, in the negative-spaced pitch blackness, that the organic show and the wonderfully complex, matured characters we’ve grown to love weren’t going to survive or be revisited...that it was all going to perish, and that they no longer gave a single shit about their own show, which, to me, is the worst cardinal sin, because how dare they throw Team Free Will, an immovable and indomitable and passionate found family they built from the ground up, a found family CHOCK FULL TO THE BRIM OF LOVE AND LIFE RAGING AGAINST THE AUTHORITARIAN MACHINE IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE FREE WILL, under the bus no matter who is to blame. Growth was stomped on.

Then Sam married a faceless wife who wasn’t his textually established (and deaf) love interest Eileen, named his son Dean Jr., and grew old miserably, still mourning the passing of his older brother, shaken and sombre. Back to square one. IT WAS ALL ANTITHETICAL, even OUTSIDE a shipping context, and I ripped my hair out at this point in sheer disbelief.

This 15x20 ending would have fit somewhere between S4-7. Now? IT DOESN’T FIT. IT’S A JAGGED PUZZLE PIECE THAT DOESN’T BELONG ANYWHERE. IT’S THE FOREBODING UNKNOWN STRANGER IN ITS OWN LAND, BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY. This kind of ending was basically an illogical, unsound cluster of metastasized cells that, to me, ruined the viability of previous seasons to sustain bold praise and respect and dignity and rewatches and classic nostalgia in such insidious ways.

Dean Humanity Winchester and Cas, after everything they’ve been through, were silenced and lost in death, ripped apart from each other, unable to love each other the way they deserved, because of disappointing, vile incompetency and homophobia. The greatest love story ever told, again obliterated in less than 60 hollow minutes.

You know what this tells your audience, CW SPN? Death without self-growth is the way to go, and no one is allowed to forge their own path to freedom.

HOW INSULTINGLY HARMFUL IS THAT?

I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving.

We all deserve answers.

2K notes · View notes

ceruleanchillin · 4 years

Text

Sandalwood (Bakugou x Reader)

A/N: I haven’t gotten super far into MHA, so I’m still learning the characters. I’m also reading the manga. I haven’t officially seen Dabi or Toga’s characters yet, so I’m going off what I’ve read in other fics and a little careful wiki browsing.

I also posted a chapter breaking down the AU on AO3, I’ll probably post it here later.

AO3

The water ran so hot, it began to fog up the small room and disperse the smell of sandalwood throughout it. You eagerly grabbed your loofah, and began scrubbing yourself sudsy. Every pass at your skin, and you felt your humanity being restored. Over your neck, down your arms, across your ribs, everywhere you touched turned to a patch of saccharine velvet.

You hummed, something more akin to a moan actually, and did another full pass just to feel the scalding warmth again. Eyes closed, and toes curled in your shower slippers, your relaxed mind pondered if you had enough time to really style your hair. Afterall, what girl didn’t enjoy a comforting bath ritual?

“Now serving number 1!”

Of course, other’s pampered bathing rituals probably didn’t take place in a supermarket bathroom near dawn.

The bakery section’s automated ticket taker had cut through your hazy thoughts like a knife, and you nearly dropped your loofah. If they were already beginning to receive more customers you didn’t have the bathroom to yourself much longer.

You scrambled to cleanse yourself of all suds, and drained the sink, hoping that would begin to reverse the fogginess.

Shoving all your toiletries into your oversized hobo bag, you ducked into a stall, and began to shove yourself into freshly washed

clothing.

God bless 24/7 laundry mats. Great for junk food dinners, plastic chair naps, and soft, detergent scented kisses with Bakugou at 4 am.

You were pretty sure your sweatshirt was on backwards, and your hair was still sloppily piled on top of your head, waiting to be deconstructed, but you didn’t care to fix either. You’d wasted your safe time, and didn’t want to risk being walked in on. One report by a disgusted customer, and you could kiss your current safe spot goodbye.

You ducked out into the tiny hallway of the restroom area, and smoothed your sweatshirt over your leggings, trying to appear less frantic and out of place.

‘Another successful bath day.’ you smiled, slipping your bag over your head. ‘I’m getting the hang of this.’

You checked the minimal amount of cash you had left, and figured it’d be enough for two muffins and maybe a shared coffee. You had earned it, and you knew your boyfriend would be happy to hear about your appetite balancing out.

Following the warm scents to the bakery section, you remained conscious of the fact that Bakugou would want what was left for gas, and picked with that in mind first.

The feeling of doing something so wholesome, so domestic, as picking up breakfast for your partner hit your person the same way indulging yourself in the bathroom had.

“Eww.” a cruel whisper-laugh made you instinctively turn to look behind you, and regret washed over you almost instantaneously.

Two girls your age stood behind you, eyes trained on your feet. You knew why immediately, but looked down anyways for confirmation you’d forgotten to trade your shower shoes for your slip ons.

‘They can’t know that I..’ you didn’t even finish your thought. Dirty from use as protection from unknown floors, they served their purpose, but betrayed you all the same.

‘Should I change them?’ you wondered, but could only imagine what looks that’d garner, no matter how discreet you could be.

You met their cold eyes, and couldn’t help but think they looked like porcelain dolls.

Three dolls stood at an impasse. Two, very expensive and impossibly perfect, that’d you display for envy. One, lovingly stitched, but you’d forget her in your toy chest.

You quickly turned to face front as your ticket was called and got your purchases. Hurt coursed through you, its white heat branding your insides, and undoing every good thought and feeling it touched.

Retrieving your purchases, and stuffing them into your bag, you headed for the entrance. It wouldn’t be long before Bakugou came to pick you up.

‘He wouldn’t have put up with that’ you thought sourly, frustrated with yourself once again for not possessing the bottomless well of anger your boyfriend pulled his strength from.

You may scold him about it, but you couldn’t deny that at times, it was an asset. However, that just wasn’t your person. You didn’t want to hurt, or be hurt for that matter.

You fought off your tears successfully, but at the cost of stinging sinuses and a minor headache. Wincing as natural light conquered artificial, you stepped out onto the pavement. The parking lot was coming to life compared to when Bakugou dropped you off, and you plopped on the curb to quickly swap out your shoes.

“Cute bag!” a cheery voice chirped, and you noticed a girl next to you.

Had she been there the whole time? You didn’t see how you could’ve missed her, but you had been upset. Blonde spacebuns, dark purple fishnets, and...jesus was she that cold? A heavy red that stretched from cheek to cheek.

You looked at her, thought her eyes looked a little crazed, and then instantly felt bad. Had you not just been shamed based on appearances?

“Thanks.” you responded shyly, trying to straighten your hair. “Thrifted it.”

“Nice!” she screeched, uncaring of the hour. “My stupid friends never wanna go to thriftstores.”

You winced at the volume, but still found her amusing. “You’ve gotta go to Moon Over Mona’s , she’s got the best stuff.”

The girl mouthed the store’s title and rolled her eyes up as if burning it into her brain, before she widened her grin and turned her glazed over eyes back to you. “Noted! I’m Himiko.”

“(Y/N).” you smiled gently

“Oh wow, me too.” she patted your bag softly, as if it were a child, or perhaps a cat.

You tilted your head in question at her odd statement.

“Homeless silly, there’s no hiding things from me.” she rolled her eyes to emphasise the ‘duh’ in her tone. “I mean, I couch hop sometimes, but yeah…..”

You cringed and looked out over the parking lot. You didn’t like to use that word, it made your circumstances seem so ugly, and sounded like something your parents would say to shame you back into their home. But wasn’t that what you, and mostly all of your friends, were?

“It’s not a sweeeear word.” Himiko nudged your knee with her own. “It’s whatever to be free right?”

“That is a...perk I guess.” you chuckled, your inclination towards happier thoughts easily being indulged by talking with the girl.

“Exactly!” she slapped your arm, neon green nails standing out in stark contrast to her threadbare black hoodie.

“Sooooooo listen,” she pressed her pointer fingers together, blush intensifying. “Can I hold a dollar or two? My friend is picking me up here soon, and he’s a super stingy bitch. I want to eat something today.”

She dramatically flopped on the concrete behind her, hands rubbing her thin stomach.

You chewed your lip. Bakugou hated when you were ( a free handed sucker ) too generous. You really should save that remaining 10 dollars to give him for gas.

Himiko popped up onto her knees and gave you puppy eyes. Before long, she began imitating a dog altogether. She panted and lolled her tongue until you were laughing at the display and the sheer ridiculousness of it.

“Ok, ok. “ you laughed, reaching into your bag for your wallet. Neon green nails appeared in your view before they seized the entirety of the wad of bills from your wallet.

The girl bolted the moment her fist clenched around the cash.

“Hey!” you screamed, chest exploding with anxiety, as you took off after her.

One of your slip ons came off, and your bag’s contents took turns beating into your sides every time it came back against your side.

The girl had bolted across the parking lot, and she was faster than you by far. A pickup truck on the far end of the parking lot roared to life, and she’d hopped in by the time you caught up.

“I really do love your bag!” Himiko screamed out of the window as it peeled out of the parking lot.

You dropped to your knees, frantically trying to figure out what just happened.

‘You got robbed you idiot.’ anxiety had wrapped its vice grip around you, and now your thoughts sounded like a drill sergeant with a hard on for you. Had she been planning that all along, or had she’d seen something in you once you started talking? Had she been watching you since you’d gotten dropped off? Your mind raced with the hows and whys, until you thought of your boyfriend.

Once you realized how angry and disappointed Bakugou was going to be, the tears you’d tried to ward off came spilling forth. He was always breaking his back and risking his freedom for what little money you two held between you, and you’d stupidly gone and gotten it stolen. How many times had he’d told you that this wasn’t the first day of kindergarten? How many times had he warned you about befriending strangers?

He was going to finally realize you were more of a burden than a compliment and drop your sorry ass. Your most feared thought only made the tears come harder, and you clutched your bag to yourself pathetically to ground yourself in the swirl of panic.

People warily watched you, taking in your sad appearance. The feeling of their eyes giving you the same looks as those girls was almost too much to bear. Worry, but more so disgust, for the teary eyed girl with one shoe and messy hair. The girl with her life in her bag, crying over money they’d likely spend in their first few minutes of shopping.

“What’s wrong with you goddamned animals!? You see a girl crying in the street and you stare? Braindead, mouth breathing-” the rest of the swear laden rant was lost to you as you leaned into the familiar strength that yanked you from the ground.

“Katsuki.” you murmured appreciatively as he slipped your missing shoe on your barefoot.

“Come on baby.” you knew he was burning with questions, and they would go stalled, not forgotten, as he wanted you away from the now sufficiently shamed onlookers.

The smell of caramel surrounded you, and the morning’s chill began to dissipate in light of the car’s heat. Home.

By the time you were settled in the mustang’s passenger seat, your tears had slowed, but you were still in the trenches of dread.

“Who the hell hurt you?” Bakugou slammed his door, but made no moves to leave the area. You knew he wouldn’t until he got answers.

“What did they do baby? Give me a description of em’. Did you catch a name?”

Your cheeks glistened in the rising sunlight, and for a moment he was struck by how beautiful you were, but that only served to make him madder. He gripped the battered steering wheel, open..close..open...close, so he could try and ease the tremors in his hands. All he could picture was punching some faceless guy’s face into paste on a pavement, and...why the hell weren’t you talking?!

“(Y/N)!”

“It was me!” you cried. “I-”

“What the hell are you talking about?” his scowl scrunched into confusion, before it returned to its previous state. “Don’t you dare start that blaming yourself shit. If somebody hurt you-”

“I tried to give this g-girl two dollars, and she snatched all I had and ran. I think she planned it, there was a p-p-pickup truck. ” you hiccuped, hating every second you had to spend retelling the encounter.

Bakugou stared at you, eyes wide and unbelieving for a moment, and you wished your seat would swallow you whole. It could spit you out anywhere so long as it wasn’t there.

“You what?” he growled lowly.

“Katsuki I-I swear I’m sorry.” the hiccups continued. “I’ll make it back-”

“Dammit (Y/N)!” he slammed his hands on the steering wheel, and another scuff joined the rest. “How many times have I told you?!”

“I know.” you sobbed. “I just...she was so nice-”

“Manners of the fucking year robbing you and all!”

Unable to meet his heated crimson gaze and you leaned against the window. The chill outside pressed against the glass, begging to compete with the heat being generated inside of the car. You pressed your warm face further into its chill, trying to ignore the charged energy emanating from the seat next to you. He must’ve really been pissed not to scold you about doing that to his car baby.

“I’m sorry Katsuki..I just felt like shit and wanted to help somebody.” your words were muffled due to half your mouth being mashed into the glass, but he didn’t ask you to repeat yourself.

He didn’t say anything until a few minutes had passed, and it was you who had to ask him to repeat himself.

“I said...I said I’m getting you a bus ticket home.”

He’d done it. He’d voiced the thing you’d wanted to hear least. You’d rather him yell for hours than talk like this.

“Katsuki...” you peeled yourself from the window and turned to face him. “No!”

“ Yes .” he turned his gaze to you, the red roiling with anger still, but sharing its space with sadness now. “It’s selfish of me to keep you out here, you don’t belong on the streets.”

“I belong wherever you are.” you implored, turning your whole body towards him.

You didn’t like the way he was talking at all. He would sometimes say something about sending you back to your parents, until you’d remind him you were grown and shut him up with a kiss. This felt more final however, and you couldn’t stand it.

“You were crying in the street over 10 damn dollars (Y/N). I’m supposed to take care of you!” Bakugou’s entire being was threaded together by his pride and his word. The whole situation was killing him from one end to the other. His mind was relieved you hadn’t been attacked, screaming at him to find the girl and whoever else was involved, and demanding he scrounge together bus fair and get you the fuck away from him.

“You do!” tears bloomed in your eyes again, this time for entirely different reasons. “ Baby , you do.”

You scrambled into his lap, ignoring your inner thighs getting battered by the console in your haste to surround your man. Bakugou didn’t fight your intrusion, but he wouldn’t meet your gaze again either.

Slim fingers threaded through his wild, ash blond spikes, tugging until he was forced to look you in the eye.

“I’m not going anywhere. You can’t make me leave, I won’ t .” you thumbed his cheekbones. “Tell me you want me gone.”

He didn’t and you both knew he wouldn’t say that, not like that. A frustrated sigh fled his lips as he flexed his fingers. Of course he didn’t want you gone, he barely wanted to leave you alone to take a piss most days.

The fingers of one hand danced across your back gently, before firmly bringing you closer to him. His other hand grasped your chin and so he could press his lips to yours in a kiss. It was angry, but you wanted it all the same, understanding the anger wasn’t for you. You got what you wanted, which was physical comfort and putting to bed any silly ideas of separation.

“I don’t want to see you like that again.” he murmured against your lips. “You deserve better than that. I need to give you better than that.”

“ I need to be with you, that’s what I deserve.” You cupped his cheeks initiating another kiss.

“Yeah, yeah.” he kissed a path over your face, stopping when he reached your temple. “You’re a dumbass for staying, and I’m a dumbass for letting you.”

End Note: This once happened for real, sort of. A girl was having a full on cry fit on the floor of Walmart’s entrance and nobody helped until my mom stepped in and asked what she could do for her. So yeah..if you were wondering why no one helped the reader, I guess sometimes people don’t.

#reader insert #bakugou x reader #BNHA #MHA #Au #mha au #bakugou katsuki

19 notes · View notes

xfanfics · 4 years

Photo

Destiel Fic Rec List Part 7

Last Updated in October 2014. Posted in May 2020 for posterity. Listed in no particular order - the total rec list will have ~250 fics. Header graphic used with permission.

This part of the list contains: 39 fics.

Other Destiel Rec Lists: [1]. [2]. [3]. [4]. [5]. [6]. [7].

Bare Your Throat and Have Me by highermagic E | 4k | AU, PWP, a/b/o

Castiel and Dean have only been mated for a few months, but Dean knows how this goes by now.

Deterioration by highermagic E | 33k | Hot, AU, Cop!Dean, Mystery

Dean has a gift – he can see things. Things that others wouldn't see, motive and calm control between the splatters of blood and fractured mirrors. He solves crimes others simply can't. When bodies are piling up all around him, Dean starts to feel as though he's drowning in it, falling under the weight of his own helpless observations, until he finds something unbreakable. Unwavering. Castiel – if only the man was as good for him as he appears.

Try Something Tuesday by almaasi E | 48k | Fluff, Teacher AU, Librarian Cas

Human AU. Dean Winchester teaches a third-grade class. He's new to this whole ‘bisexual’ thing - but by pure happenstance, he meets Castiel: a particularly dapper male librarian who moonlights as a substitute teacher. Dean's curious and Castiel is willing, so why the hell not? Except, fate never intended it to be one-time-only.

Angel-Cuffed by Luciel89 E | 15k | CANON!verse

Dean wakes up to find himself handcuffed to his angel. Both are annoyed, Sam finds it hilarious and awkward situations await them. But the longer they're tied together, the more things between them start to change...

The Bet List ❤ by StevieCas M | 55k | Fluff, AU, Underage, wing!kink

"That bet list was the worst thing you've ever come up with, Gabe. If it wasn't for it, I would never have thought about such things. It's bad enough being an earthbound angel, it's bad enough being considered a weirdo even by angel standards. Did I have to be gay as well? Do I even represent a minority or is it just me out there?

I love the world of this fic--and Dean and Cas' relationship dynamic is perfect.

Ad Astra ❤ by nhixxie T | 17k | Angst

One day Cas says, "Stars died for you, Dean Winchester", against ruffled hair perched atop sun kissed skin and sleepy eyes. Dean stirs, moving to spread his palms against the contour of Cas’ back, tips of fingers languidly strumming the indentations of his spine. One, two, three, four, he counts, the closest he could get to scientifically studying the anatomy of the human body. "Is this some physics crap again?" He frowns with eyes closed. Cas smiles softly. "Far from it. "Dean’s fingers play at the base of his back, ninth thoracic vertebrae, Cas notes. "Then tell me all about it.”

Read it and weep. If this were published, I would buy it.

Sensitive by nevergotwings E | 1k | wing!kink

Curiosity sparks when Dean gets the urge to touch Castiel's wings.

An Exercise in 'Worthless' ❤ by beastofthesky

M | 26k | AU, Tattoos

"I mean, you’re–" He gestures at Cas, in his neat oxford shirt and nice pants. “–and I’m a high school dropout who tattoos for a living." Wherein Dean makes a hefty living as a tattoo artist who owns the space next to Gabriel's cafe. Sam attends the local university. When Gabe's cousin comes to live with him while starting grad school at Sam's university, Dean thinks for sure that all his negative karma's coming to bite him in the ass because Cas clearly has a thing for Sam. No one would ever choose him over Sam. That's just logic.

Perfection everywhere. Dean's lack of self-worth is explored, and there are tattoos.

Of ties and wings by perpetuallycaffinated E | 4k | Hot, PWP, wing!kink

Jealousy, ties and and impatient angel. Also, wings.

pie | by perpetuallycaffinated E | 3k | Hot, PWP

Dean uses pie to eat out Castiel. That's pretty much it.

I Say, But I Mean by inplayruns T | 4k | Coffee Shop AU

Dean runs a bed & breakfast. Cas works in a coffeeshop.

Heavenly Delights by TamrynEradani T | 2k | Fluff, Coffee Shop AU

Gabriel owns Heavenly Delights, the coffee shop Cas works at and on the day before Thanksgiving, Cas sees someone looking down so he brings him a hot chocolate, and Gabriel conspires to get them together.

New Eyes by ozzutly E | 1k | Canon!Verse

Dean sees Castiel's true form. He decides he likes it.

Resonance by definitely_indecisive G | 1k | Canon!Verse, Soul Bond

The battered and abused presence had poked warily out, almost as if expecting harm. He let his grace drift forward to meet the soul instantly, putting off all of the warmth he could muster. The presence seemed to stutter for a second, before melding itself into Castiel's grace. He allowed the soul to do so, cradling it with his core. He could feel the tiredness and abuse from the poor thing, yet also the amazing light it gave off as it started to slowly heal because of his grace. He could tell this was the most unique soul he had ever met, and that he wouldn't forget the feeling of the presence for all of millennia.

My Roots Take Flight by KismetJeska M | 125k | Reverse!verse, s4 AU

After forty years in Hell, Dean’s more than willing to accept the offer: become a guardian angel and earn his freedom. But his new ward seems destined to hunt alongside Sam, and there are secrets in Heaven that the angels don’t want found out. Dean’s going to have to choose between his duty and the people he loves- and to work out just where Castiel fits in.

Angel Airlines by dancingloki E | 19k | Hot, Airline AU

Dean is an airline pilot with a raging hard-on for his head flight attendant. Fluffy fluffy fluff.

El Tango de Amor by literaryoblivion E | 16k | AU, Fluff, Angst,

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Dean leaves, is gone for two to three hours, and comes home sweaty and exhausted to the apartment he and his brother Sam share. Sam had asked him where he went once, and Dean had said he was working out, which technically wasn’t a lie. What he was doing was definitely giving him a workout, just not in the traditional sense. In all actuality though, Dean was leaving every Tuesday and Thursday for a dance class. A dance class taught by a one Castiel Novak.

Ugly Sweater!Verse ❤ ❤ by nerdylittledude E | 193k | Canon!verse,Fluff, Post s5

If they really go back and think about it... it all started with a tree. A Christmas tree, that is. Castiel is human now, and the apocalypse is not only over, it's been averted. Sam's away at NYU, finally finishing law school, and Dean's stuck in what is probably the most awkward situation of his life. He's not exactly sure how he ended up sharing a flat with Cas in Media, Pennsylvania, but he does know the curious would-be angel is sort of derailing his plans for a life of decadence and booze. Cas is trying to make the best of his humanity by exploring human holidays. Dean can't exactly complain because he's pretty much the reason Cas got his wings clipped in the first place. Dean didn't actually want to fall in love, but how was he supposed to know it would all start with a goddamn tree?

My favorite fic ever. I don't know how many times I've read it. There is switching, fluff, angst, and slow building romance. I will rec this forever.

More Than Alien Mojo by remivel

E | 29k | Men in Black AU, Fluff,

Dean was one of Men in Black's best agents. In fact, he's been knee deep in extraterrestrial crap his whole life, and he's gone through more apocalypses than he could care to remember. He thought he's seen it all-- until he and his partner, Sam, were sent out to a routine meteorite crash inspection. What was supposed to be a meteorite turned out to be a golden spaceship, and instead of hitchhiking intergalactic pathogens, it was an alien that took the form of a human male. A very naked human male. Soon, they discovered that this alien named 'Castiel' was a refugee from a war-torn galaxy.The first of his kind to ever venture to Earth, Castiel agreed to share information about his galaxy and his race in exchange for his relocation on Earth. The only catch was: since Castiel was a new alien species, nobody knew what he was capable of, whether he was as harmless as E.T., or as dangerous as the Predator. And it was Dean's job to keep an eye on him and assess just how much of a threat Castiel could be, and if necessary, eliminate him. It wasn't a job Dean was looking forward to doing. Especially since he couldn't seem to keep his eyes off him, naked or not.

Come On With the Rain by remivel E | 36k | High School AU, dubcon

When Castiel was 15, his life changed. In one tragic instant, he lost his parents, and he was forced to live with his Uncle Bobby in Lawrence, Kansas. There he met the Winchester boys, Sam and Dean, who were living next door. He thought Sam was pleasant, and Dean, well, Dean was special. Three years passed and Castiel’s relationship with the boys developed in an unexpected way. Sam became his best friend. But Dean was a different story. Dean was not Castiel’s friend. He was a neighbor, a classmate, the brother of Castiel’s best friend, and the guy who worked part time at his uncle’s salvage yard. That was all. But on the rare times that Dean asked Castiel for help, Castiel couldn’t find it in him to turn him down. Because this was Dean. And the answer would never be “no” when it came to Dean.

Crossroads State by Mercy M | 51k | AU

Castiel has a nice predictable structured life teaching high school, even if he happens to be overqualified for it. Then this guy moves in around the corner and literally knocks him on his ass.

Heart of Glass by omphalos E | 17k | Canon!Verse

He's the one who was punished, severely, because of his feelings for Dean, but who still gave up everything for him in the end. Surely there should exist between them a better level of comprehension than this.

Domesticated by kototyph E | 15k | AU

Being the only angel in the entire Pacific Northwest can be tiring, even if these days Castiel spends more of his time shoveling manure than fighting off the hordes of hell. It's an occupational hazard, unfortunately; he earns most of his living rehabilitating wild animals a few miles outside Spokane. Wild animals like Dean, for instance— a mountain lion who's entirely too smart for his own good. There's a man in Castiel's dreams named Dean too, but that part's just a huge coincidence.

Excite by perpetuallycaffinated E | 3k | Crack, wing!kink

"Sam Winchester, I am going to carnally worship your brother whether you are in this room or not.

Snapshots 'Verse ❤ by highermagic E | 60k [WIP] | AU, Wing!kink, a/b/o, omega!dean

A series of one-shots following the meeting, courting and eventual love between an Angel doctor named Castiel and an Angel teacher by the name of Dean.

Less of a WIP, more of a series of one-shots. Rowan's worldbuilding is lovely, and the sex is perfect as usual. EDIT: Apparently this has been removed.

Angel's Wild ❤ by riseofthefallenone E | 389k | AU, H/C, Wing!kink

But that’s the whole reason he’s here, isn’t it? He’s not out here hunting Humans. He’s not even hunting deer, or bears, or anything else that featured in Bambi. He’s out here, freezing his nuts off every night, because he’s hunting Angels. Sometimes Dean wishes that Angels were like how they’re described in the Bible. How people from time too old for him to care much about thought Angels were messengers and warriors of God, protectors of Humans. He knows that how they’re really described in the Bible is actually pretty terrifying, but at least they were told by God that they’re supposed to love Humans, right? That’s a thousand times better than what Angels really turned out to be.

Perfection. Go read it now.

Sharing Hands by almaasi E | 6k | Hot, Canon!Verse

Dean feels something strange when he touches himself, and realises Cas has been using him as a vessel ever since he came back from Purgatory.

The Good Samaritan Rule by manic_intent E | 6k | AU, wing!kink

Written for deancaskink: "Dean and Castiel are both angels and brothers-in-arms. During a battle, Cas's wings get hurt and [it's] up to Dean to help him out. In the process, Cas finds out how sensitive his wings are and well Dean is Dean no matter what his form [is], so this leads to lovely first time sex." God never made humans. Instead, he made the angels in his image, and on the sixth day he made the is him, and gave them free will.

How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (accidentally) raised each other (and Sam) ❤ by Vera_Dragonmuse E | 69k | AU, Sam/Gabriel

In which, Gabriel meddles with the time line and Castiel becomes Dean's angel rather sooner than intended.

Out of the Deep ❤ by riseofthefallenone E | 488k | AU, h/c

Stay away from the light-beds. Stay in the deep. It is the first thing hatchlings are taught the moment their fans unfurl and they can swim without their parents to buoy them along. It is the first rule, the first law. It is the beginning of every boogey-monster bedtime story told when they settle against the cliffs to sleep. Castiel should have listened better.

It's long, but worth it.

Feathers by brightly_lit M | 90k | Angst, Wing!kink, D/s

In an alternate season 5 scenario, Dean, Sam, and twenty of their closest hunter friends stopped the apocalypse by closing the gates to heaven, hell, and purgatory. Now working with his former hunter buddies at Ellen's security company, Dean doesn't know what to make of his weird new coworker who always wears a trenchcoat and leaves behind feathers everywhere he goes. He especially doesn't know that, cut off from the power of heaven, the constantly falling feathers mean his new friend is dying. "Creation cried out against the injustice of a righteous man in hell. I answered its cry.

Vita Nuova ❤ by wordaccordingtofangirls M | 61k | Teacher AU

AU. Dean Winchester takes a job as a teaching assistant to get his little brother into a prestigious academy. He doesn't quite expect such long nights and snobby kids, but the real surprise is professor Castiel Novak: or falling in love with him, that is.

Like a Parched Land by twoskeletons E | 8k | reverse!verse

Written for the following prompt: "Reverse!verse: Castiel is the Righteous Man and Dean is the angel who drags his ass out of Hell." This is an AU version of episodes 5x01 through 5x03.

The Cabin by bookkbaby E | 16k | Canon!Verse, Wing!kink

For an angel, the building of a Nest is sacred. Dean doesn't understand. Written for the 2013 DCBB.

Pies and Prejudice by linoresearch E | 97k | AU

Dean didn’t even want to enter this damn competition. He was happy with his life, more or less. It might not look like much from the outside, or to a younger brother headed towards a big time law career, but it wasn’t so bad that Dean needed to scrabble around for any opportunity to make a change – particularly not one as stupid as this. He’s going to throttle Sam the next time he sees him, for getting him involved in this ridiculous Bake-Off TV show. It’s bad enough that Dean has to cook in front of people he doesn’t know; he now has to go through the humiliation of being judged on it too. Its humiliation piled on humiliation, and to make matters worse Dean has to play nice with all the other suckers involved, like that rich dick-bag Castiel Novak. God, he hates that guy, and he hates that someone so awful has such a frustratingly fine ass. Written for the Dean/Castiel Big Bang 2013

The Breath of All Things ❤ by KismetJeska T | 65k | AU, H/C Angst,

Dean Winchester was twenty-six years old when a car accident killed his father and left him paralysed from the waist down. A year and a half later, Dean is in a wheelchair and lives in a care home in Kansas, where he spends his days waiting to die. It's only when Castiel Novak starts volunteering at the care home that Dean starts to wonder if a changed life always equals a ruined one.

So angsty, and so, so perfect.

All the Way ❤ by cadignan E | 81k | College AU

Castiel spends the first two weeks of college in much the same way he spent the previous years: alone with his books. He’s fine with it—he enrolled in college to learn, after all. Then in his first chemistry lab, he has the bad luck of being paired with snide, good-for-nothing Ruby, and the further misfortune of sitting behind Dean Winchester, the world’s most beautiful distraction. Ruby catches Castiel staring at Dean and makes him an offer.

Destiel, Actually by Bloodism E | 15k | Crack Fluff,

Picture your typical rom-com cliché. Now picture Dean stuck in that rom-com cliché. With Castiel. Because that's what happening to him - a crazy whirlwind of your typical-and-not-so-typical cliché's. He's playing the main lead in all of them and Castiel's his counterpart. Of course, the culprit is obvious. Gabe's enjoying himself too much, lying back on his favourite cloud with a tub of salted popcorn. It was about time someone kicked the two knuckleheads into gear.

Suburban War by squeemonster E | 100k | High School AU

Moving to Lawrence with his family is the most significant event of Dean Winchester's life. It brings a stability he's never known, and the only thing to have more of a profound impact on him is Castiel Novak: the two boys become fast friends the day they meet. But as Dean grows older, he dreams for something beyond the monotony and constraints of suburbia, and he is haunted by the inexplicable feeling that he was born for something more than what this life offers. As he struggles to reconcile the person he yearns to be with what his family and friends expect of him, a fateful choice exposes just how fragile his life in the suburbs is, and possibly risks losing the best friend he's ever had.

#destiel #deancas #spn #spn fic rec #destiel fic rec #*#list

14 notes · View notes

squiishiichaos · 5 years

Text

How I Would Revise KH3

I’ve seen quite a few of these going around since the game was released, and I thought of waiting to release it, but since it’s already written--these are just some ideas from one writer to the fandom of changes I, personally, would’ve made in order to make KH3 more epic than it turned out to be.

Please Note: SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

1. I’m sure a lot of people took issue with the teasing Sora took early on from his friends, not to mention the scolding he got from Yen Sid, but it actually sets up nice for scenes later on, explains the Odd Behavior of the Organization toward Sora in this game, and really could’ve been used for some great character and relationship development.

Because after being almost Norted in 3Ds, I believe our Golden Boy would likely have some issues he needs to work through. Beyond getting back all of his main character super powers and becoming the next New True Keyblade Master, he almost became one of the Organization. That has to be a hit for someone who has spent the last 9 games practically the poster boy for Guardian of Light.

Having him feel self-doubt and evolving that for the fights later on in the game would have made him feel less flat as a protagonist.

Especially when we have Marluxia and Larxene showing up everywhere, basically ignoring him like a flea, and telling him, “we’re not here for you.” After all the threat he’s posed to them--after knowing he’s part of the many lights gathering for their clash at the final battle--you’d imagine that they’d be more inclined to engage him and give him a better reason to fight than, “oh, these princesses here may be made of Light, we’re not really sure and we’re kinda just seeing how it goes down.”

Have Sora feel the impact of those interactions. Like, “I’m not even worth their time,” level impact. Hell, have a scene in the gummi ship post world, calling up Kairi on his new phone, saying, “Hey!” And have her immediately dropping the smile she got, putting on a face and asking, “Sora, what’s wrong?” When he tries to say, “I’m fine!” and dismiss it, have her tell him he’s not. Say, “you wouldn’t be calling me if you were.”

Have Sora try to call Riku and not be able to get ahold of him. Just dialing and dialing and dialing, and him feeling neglected and abandoned. Have Kairi speak to Riku on the phone, because it just so happens to be during one of their breaks in the Dark Realm, and her discussing Sora’s odd behavior. Make them care, damn you!

*AHEM* Moving on...

2. Riku & Mickey save Aqua early on. Like, I’m talking Prologue level, KHII.9 early on.

In the realm of darkness, when they run into the Demon tide, after Riku escapes because of his Replica and Mickey gets trounced, have Aqua appear as the master of those Heartless.

Since Mickey is hurt, Riku fights in his place and gets walloped after a short playable fight where you get her to half-lifebar and it ends.

As Aqua goes to finish him off--because new keyblades are hard--Mickey shouts out, “Aqua, don’t! Think of your friends!”

As Aqua gives her monologue about being abandoned and forgotten and alone, have him go, “No one’s forgotten you! Ven and Terra still need you!”

“Need me? Where were they when I needed them?! Where were you?! You don’t know what this pain I feel is like--to be forgotten and dismissed--none of you do!”

Then have Riku chime in, “I do.” As he stands up and readies his keyblade for another battle, have him stare her down and say, “I once gave up everyone I cared about for Darkness, and I struggle every day to keep it at bay. But in every darkness, there’s an even stronger light. If you won’t fight the darkness yourself, then I’ll fight it for you!”

After you finish the initial battle, instead of immediately getting back her light, the duo subdues her and they bring her back to the realm of light.

Have a Futaba (obligatory Persona 5 reference, sorry) moment for Aqua. Let her ascent back to Light mean something!

At first, she feels like she failed Ventus and Terra. Nothing anyone says can help that. And they all are trying to get ahold of Sora, but he’s busy and he needs to be there! When he finally answers his phone in the gummiship, Riku tells him the good news and he hops back to the Tower.

When he arrives, Ven’s heart reacts to Aqua and she immediately reacts. But Mickey, Axel and Kairi don’t know. They’re still riding on the moment Aqua smiled for the first time because she found out that Kairi was okay! That she’d done something right! Maybe she wasn’t a failure?

But then Sora walks in, and she does not trust him. He looks like Vanitas and that face haunts her. After all that darkness, she can’t see him--she only sees those glowing yellow eyes and that sardonic smirk, and it takes all of them holding her back to keep her from casting anything more than a measly couple of low level spells at him before they all tell her it’s okay! That it’s Sora, the key to Ventus’s awakening.

And Aqua goes up to him, and they’re both apprehensive, but eventually she takes a nice long look, sees through the mirage and smiles, tearfully, at him.

They agree to go help Ventus while Mickey and Riku stay behind to help train Kairi and Axel.

****Before we continue, I need to make a minor addendum here.

No Hyperbolic Time Island bullshit for Kairi and Axel.

They are on the fucking ropes to get ready for this shit. Thrown into the literal fucking fire, training day in and day out every second of every day to get ready for the throw down they’re now part of.

Every previous cutscene of them is more emotional because they’re exhausted, slouching against a rock, a wall, a chair, a fucking bed! They don’t even know what time it is, but they’re sitting there, chatting away and crying because this is the hardest they have worked in ages, and they don’t know if they can do it anymore. Merlin is merciless. Yen Sid is biting. They are on a crunch and there is no time for playing around!

****Make those scenes so much better for everyone. They were wonderful, their interactions, but make them real, fuckers! This is a warzone, and this isn’t DBZ!

*AHEM*

3. Aqua awakens Ventus.

After her and Sora find Ven, they begin a ritual of waking, but Vanitas feels Ventus’s heart pulsating inside Sora and he attacks. Sora tells Aqua to keep reaching for the connection while he holds him off.

Obviously, Sora gets his ass kicked. Absolutely destroyed.

Aqua steps in to protect Sora/Ven, and kicks the ever loving shit of Vanitas, but then he fakes his defeat and sneaks up on them as they rush to finish the waking.

As Vanitas goes to strike Aqua, the last vestige of Ven inside Sora commands the teen around and gives him one deciding blow before his heart exits Sora and leaves for its home. Vanitas--knowing he’s finished here--leaves, promising them the fight of their lives come their next meeting.

Ventus awakens and him and Aqua share a cute scene where Aqua tells him she’s sorry for being late and failing to protect him. Ventus is just like, “Aqua...it’s alright. You saved me, and now, we can find Terra together!”

Sora breaks the mood when he swoops in, and Ventus goes apeshit (because it was his heart reacting, not his actual conscious >.>)! Fucking pulls out his keyblade, ready to put down Vanitas for the last time, but Aqua is like, whoa, it’s just Sora! He’s been keeping you safe in his heart this whole time!

And Sora, confused, is like...the fuck?

So, Aqua suggests he go back alone and they’ll follow along soon enough.

4. Back at the tower, Riku asks Sora how it went, and Sora recounts his near death experience at the hands of Ventus while Riku is like, Darkness plays tricks on people, as does sleep. Give them time, they’ll pull through.

5. Now, with 2 out of 3 found, Roxas and Namine (and Xion) still missing, it is crunch time, people! So, I had a few playable options I thought up.

First off: Yen Sid’s tower becomes a hub world. If you leave the hub, you can fly off as Sora to do the Disney worlds and restore balance and peace while he continues to level up his Main Character Plot Armor Powers.

Second Choice: You can choose to bring Riku or Mickey with you on these missions, but they’re just kinda there as links. Like, the Sora, Donald and Goofy screen time should not be revoked, so they’re kind of just finisher commands that show up randomly while the 2 of them are doing recon on the Organization.

Third Choice: You can play as Kairi and Axel and spend ludicrous hours trying to beat Aqua and Ventus while running for your goddamn life at Yen Sid’s tower. Legitimately, I’m talking, Beginning of Birth By Sleep and KH1 style battles. You get a potion or something if you win, and you can kick ass as everyone’s 2 favorite Redheads. *BONUS* Kairi finally gets to be a badass.

6. Once all the remaining Disney worlds are complete, we get to the FINAL PART:

7. PREPARATION TIME, BABY!

For starters, Nomura, show them, ya know, actually preparing!

Ven and Aqua, sweating, clearly having just finished sparring or practicing magic and shit, talk about Terra and have their Wayfinder Moment. I liked their dialogue choices here, so, keep those the same, just make it feel more excited and build the anticipation!

Axel sits on his tower, his new clothes beside him as he contemplates the fact he’s almost earned them. Saix shows up and that all happens, with Axel calling his keyblade on him, and Saix being like, “Yeah, okay, save it for the morning, when you’re at your best.” With a sidelong look at the suitcase he’s clearly ignoring.

Donald and Goofy practice together, and the King arrives to commend them on all their hard work. To be honest, I don’t even remember if there’s a scene between the three of them here, and if there is, cool! If not, then, shit, put one in.

Now. The big shit.

The Destiny Trio.

We cut to them all sparring on the shores of Destiny Islands. Kairi has learned a thing or two from Aqua, but she also packs a real punch. Riku utilizes his dark flare and other like abilities to enhance their light and build resistance to such attacks--teach them how to prepare. Sora is his normal badass self, dodging, attacking, and being a good sport. Mind you, this probably all devolves at some point into a fucking hysterical mess when Kairi drenches the boys with Waterza (which she just learned, the badass), and Sora tackles her into the Ocean as payback while Riku tries really, really hard not to die of laughter.

After they’ve recovered, Riku excuses himself to sit on the beach so he can have his little chat with Repliku while Kairi and Sora go over to the tree and talk.

When Kairi grabs the Paopu fruit, it’s just one--because it says share a paopu fruit, not two, you dipshits--and Sora was about to reach for it, too. The two share a smile as they’re like, “This way, no matter what happens tomorrow, we’ll always have each other.”

They share it, and then Riku--who is a fucking ninja, apparently--shows up and places a hand on both of their shoulders like, “It’s about fucking time.” Sora and Kairi share a impish little smile and together, they hold up the shared Paopu to him. He’s at first taken aback, but he softly smiles and the SCENE ENDS!

8. In the Keyblade Graveyard (I swear I’m almost done), here are the changes I’d make.

First off, when everyone is attacked and whisked off and Sora finally gets that moment where the self-doubt reaches its final form, have him, I dunno, react to losing his friends before Kairi! Like, calling out names and reaching for them and growing increasingly terrified! Especially after he just watched all his friends get wrecked by Terranort.

I would completely erase the Final World Bullshit, because it felt like they just put it in there as a way to explain the fact Sora’s story was coming to an end and Kairi heart stuff when they didn’t know how else to do it, and that just felt sad. BUT IF I MUST KEEP IT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY, then I propose that you don’t talk to Namine in the land of the Dead. You instead talk to Chirithy and Strelitzia or whoever the fuck the other chick was, and then you gather yourself together and Sora tells Chirithy, “my friends are calling me back! I have to go help them!” While Digimon’s Kairi is like, “yeah, cool, but if you die again, ain’t no one coming up here to save you, dude, so don’t be fucking stupid.”

Since Riku has natural resistance to Darkness (thanks to his backstory) and Kairi is apparently God in this game, Sora only saves Donald and Goofy while they save Ventus, Aqua, Axel and Mickey separately. Then, together, the whole group goes back to the graveyard, and instead of going through fucking time travel paradoxes that make no goddamn sense, Nomura, the characters regroup and are like, “okay, now, it’s time for the final showdown!”

9. The Gauntlet of Endless Cutscenes

Riku beats up fake Riku himself without Sora, but Sora shows up in the end to help hold off Xigbar while Repliku tears fake Riku apart for the whole Namine scene. Sora is like, “you good, bro?” and Riku’s like, “Sure, gonna go kill Ansem,” and they part ways.

Aqua and Ventus beat up Terranort themselves. They are the ones who release his soul back to his body as Sora arrives to provide backup against Vanitas. Terra, Ven and Aqua fight Vanitas while they tell Sora to go assist the others.

Axel and Kairi fight together--for real, though.

Give these 2 badass Redheads the chance to kick some serious ass against Xion and Saix.

Sora arrives and they’re both worn out because they’re new to this and keyblades are hard, so he wards off Xion until Saix does his thing, then the rest is PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, except Kairi doesn’t get kidnapped.

Because Roxas, Xion, and Sora stop that shit in their tracks (because I want Kairi to be the Touched by Fire badass she always deserved to be, dammit), but when they fail, Kairi swings at him and Xemnas does his teleportation bullshit and knocks her out because, goddammit, she did her best!

Xion and Roxas tell Sora to go while they beat down Saix, and then there’s the Sea Salt trio’s reunion.

Sora goes to Riku and Mickey (I skipped him because Mickey needs no one’s help, and I would assume Sora went there first to help him and he was like, “the fuck? I don’t need you! Go assist everyone else, ya dunce!”), and when he tells them that Xemnas took Kairi, Riku chastises him for his sloppiness.

Together, they defeat Ansem, Xemnas and Young Xehanort, after which, when Xehanort pulls out Kairi, we get a blast to the past of BBS while the 3 of them try to get her back without delay. But, Xehanort uses his newly forged no name keys to hold them off while he imbues Kairi with a piece of himself for the final showdown (Because I think DarkKairi is the only way you can kill her and it be okay. Also, they did hint at the whole princesses of light choose the light bullshit in the Disney worlds, so fuck it, if Nomura can’t keep his canon right, fuck you, I don’t have to keep it right, either, so there.)

This leads to Sora refusing to fight another of his friends, because he has done enough of that in this revised version, and dammit, he can’t do it again! So, Riku does it for him, because he won’t let anyone else he cares about fall to the darkness.

But he gets his ass handed to him. Sora, seeing this, has to fight. Like the Brother My Brother scene from Pokemon the First Movie (may it rest in peace).

After the ensuing melee forges the final key--because who the fuck needs Xehanort, am I right?--Xehanort (hah) goes to put an end to Riku and Sora, but Kairi steps in and protects them, sacrificing herself in the process.

Devastated, Sora goes after Xehanort while Riku stays behind with the other warriors to stop Kingdom Hearts.

Shit pans out as seen, and after the final battle, Sora mourns Kairi and says he’s gonna go find her. Shit pans out as seen and Riku still tells them to let him go, but he also leaves him with a snarky, “and if you get lost again, I’ll just pull you out like I always do,” roll of the eyes and everything.

BRO HUGS FOR EVERYONE!

10. Okay, so the Ending.

Everything is the same, except that Kairi and Sora both disappear as Riku leaves the others behind on the beach to go see them. Leaning against the branch they sat on, he picks up a fallen paopu, looks off into the distance and there’s a glimmer in his eye before the screen

Cuts

Black

ROLL CREDITS!

#kingdom hearts spoilers #kingdom hearts 3 #kingdom hearts done right #sora #riku #kairi #destiny trio #sea salt trio #wayfinder trio #fuck what was Mickey donald and goofy's trio called?#oh right #Muskateers trio #can you tell that Riku is now best boy?#right behind roxas #kh3spoilers #soriku #sorikai #sokai

15 notes · View notes

kimabutch · 6 years

Text

WARNING: this post contains huge goddamn TAZ: Balance spoilers. It’s also 1800 words long and I’m literally begging for someone to actually read it cause I put 3 hours of work into it.

In my opinion, one of the biggest unanswered questions at the end of TAZ: Balance is whether Lucretia knew that Lup was in the umbrella. It's a compelling question, in my opinion, and I’ve seen a few fic authors explore it. But today, I figured I’d pull an Angus McDonald and lay out all the facts, and see what we get from them. For this analysis, I’m going to be running on the assumption that Griffin knew what he was doing the whole time (even though that’s clearly false) because it’s no fun if you just handwave everything away like that. Also, I’m super grateful to @tazscripts, which was an amazing resource for me while writing this.

To start, let’s go over motivations. Now, there’s lots of reasons to believe that Lucretia wouldn’t want to keep Lup trapped in an umbrella. Apparently, after wiping everyone’s memories, Lucretia “looked everywhere” for Lup and “could hardly bear Lup's absence” (Stolen Century, 7). She clearly feels horribly guilty for not finding her. She says as much to Barry and Taako, explaining that her barrier will protect them all “save for Lup,” because “there was nothing [she] could do” (Lunar Interlude V, 2). And when Lup does emerge from the umbrella, she apologizes and says that “she looked for so long” and that she’s “so happy [Lup’s] back” (Story and Song, 1). It seems very possible that if Lucretia had suspected that Lup was in the umbrella, she would have gotten her out of there as soon as possible, or at the very least tried to confirm whether or not she could be in there.

On the other hand, if Lucretia knew, she might have also felt that, as far as her plans were concerned, Lup being in the umbrella in lich form was safest. Lucretia was already terrified of lich-Barry remembering what she had done to them, and had “to take measures to keep him at arm's length, just in case” (Stolen Century, 7). She was worried, rightly, that Barry would try to stop her, especially if he knew what she did to the others. But she had good reason to suspect that Lup would be even more angry after being trapped in her own umbrella for years, separated from both her love and her brother. Instead of keeping Lup at arm’s length, like Barry, why not just keep her in the umbrella, where she couldn’t interfere with her plans?

So while Lucretia has a good defence — that she loved Lup and wouldn’t have kept her in the umbrella if she had the chance — she also had a very good motivation to keep her in there. The big question then becomes: could she have reasonably known that Lup was in there?

And this is where it gets complicated.

Now, it’s indisputable that Lucretia knew what the umbrella was. She claims, in Moonlighting, that she doesn’t know (Moonlighting, 2), but given that the Starblaster crew spent an entire year working together to make their magical items in the 92nd cycle (Stolen Century, 7), she’d have to be the worst chronicler in the world not to write down what everyone made. Presumably, she feeds some information to Leon the Artificer, since he tells them the obviously fake story of the “Umbra Wizards” who supposedly crafted the item (Moonlighting, 3). Importantly, he calls it the “Umbra Staff,” which is exactly what Lup calls it when she makes the item, and knows exactly what the umbrella does, even though no one but the Starblaster crew would probably have known (Stolen Century, 7). Lucretia clearly recognized that Taako had the “Umbra Staff,” and either told Leon to make up an origin story for this “Umbra Staff,” or actually lied to Leon about its origins.

(This is a little off-topic, but I also think there’s a very real possibility that Lucretia told Leon to ply Taako for information about how he acquired the umbrella, to avoid raising suspicions herself. She herself never asks where Taako got the umbrella (Moonlighting, 2), but Leon does (Moonlighting, 3). I don’t think this actually factors into whether Lucretia is guilty or not, but it’s interesting to think about.)

So, yes, Lucretia knew about the umbrella’s abilities, and she knew that it used to belong to Lup. I’m not sure that this alone could have reasonably allowed Lucretia to even suspect that Lup was inside the umbrella. But let’s look at other information that Lucretia had at her disposable to help her connect the dots.

Firstly — she may have known how Taako acquired the umbrella. I think it’s possible that Leon told her that Taako got it off a “dead guy” “in a cave or something” (Moonlighting, 3), or even that Killian noticed that Taako picked it up in a room with a skeleton in a red robe, and told Lucretia that, although Killian wasn’t in the room when Taako picked it up (Here There Be Gerblins, 5).

Secondly — she may have known that when Lup left the Starblaster, she had her umbrella. I feel like this is something that the Starblaster crew would have noted as they searched for her.

Thirdly — she almost certainly knew a little about how liches work, given that two of her best friends were liches and she lived with them for almost twenty years (Barry and Lup become liches in cycle 82 — Stolen Century, 6). Lucretia is super sharp, and almost definitely knew that liches are basically made up of magical energy, which is exactly what the umbrella sucks up. This is the point that I see lots of fanfiction writers bring up, that these are the dots that she could have easily connected, had she really thought about it. I think there are some problems with people saying this. To begin, I don’t think Lup herself knew that the umbrella posed a danger to her, given that she made the umbrella while she’d already done the whole lich thing (Stolen Century, 7). And then, there’s Barry, who sees Taako holding the umbrella in Crystal Kingdom, hears that Taako “took it off this dead thug with a red robe,” realizes that “dead thug” is Lup, but still doesn’t consider that Lup might be in the umbrella, even though he’s a lich himself (Crystal Kingdom, 7). Shit, Barry literally sees the umbrella suck up Edward in Wonderland and doesn’t begin to consider that the umbrella might have done the same to Lup, even though he knows she died with her umbrella in her hands (Suffering Game, 7). And this is Barry goddamn Bluejeans we’re talking about, the same guy who offers to blow himself up just to hold Lup in her lich form (Story and Song, 1) — you really don’t think that Barry would break the umbrella the second that he suspected Lup was in there?

So in this point, I think it’s fair to say that Lucretia might have connected these dots, but she can’t really be held responsible for not doing so anymore than Barry, in my opinion. They all kinda fucked up on that front.

Lucretia does, however, learn even more information than Barry over the course of the story — extra clues that might have helped her piece everything together.

For one thing, she definitely sees the Test of Initiation, in which Taako inexplicably pulls out the umbrella from his bag and fires a spell that is beyond his capabilities (Moonlighting, 2). I think there’s a reasonable chance that she could recognize Lup’s magic, or at very least have used it as a clue. More importantly, though — she must hear, during Lunar Interlude III, about the giant L-U-P burned into the walls of the cafeteria. She must hear about that and immediately inquire into who was using the cafeteria — I can’t think of why she wouldn’t. And hell, she might even be able to get a first-hand account of what happened from the “kitchen staff cleaning up in the backroom,” who are close enough that Taako “can hear them clinkin’ and clankin’ around back there” (Lunar Interlude III). So she see Lup’s name burned into the walls, knowing that Lup is a goddamn arsonist, almost certainly knowing that this was done by Taako who she knows doesn’t have his memories back, possibly even knowing that his umbrella did this… and she still doesn’t get it? Or else, she does get it, but by now, it really, really is safest just to keep Lup in that umbrella.

I think this might be the single most damning point for her, where it seems like Lucretia either knew, or should have known. There’s only one thing that might save Lucretia here, and that’s this: she set up a pretty powerful anti-lich ward on the Bureau (Lunar Interlude V, 1). She has every reason to think that no lich can get on her moon, at least not in lich form. No reason to think that Lup could have gotten past her protection.

So, in summary: there are a lot of clues that Lup was in the umbrella, many of which Lucretia probably could have noticed, although she is definitely not the only character who didn’t. There’s at least one reason that Lucretia might have ruled out Lup being in the umbrella, but several more reasons for, at the very least, investigating what was going on. Given that Barry also failed to put many of the same pieces together, it seems odd to say that Lucretia must have done so and kept it a secret just because she had a motivation for that. But at the same time, she did have more pieces than him, and more time to put them together (given that he spent most of his year regrowing his body and frantically trying to protect/warn the THB).

To get back to our original question — did Lucretia know that Lup was in the umbrella? I’m don’t think we have an obvious, concrete answer. I think there are still signs pointing all ways, and that all interpretations of it are pretty valid. It’s interesting to think of Lucretia keeping Lup in the umbrella for the same reason that she erases everyone’s memories and sends the THB on near-deadly mission — not because she wants to, but because she feels she has to. It’s also interesting to think of her missing the forest for the trees, of being so caught up with her own personal mission that she doesn’t think to ponder the clues she has right in front of her face. Personally, I think it’s most likely that after Lunar Interlude III, Lucretia has some suspicions or maybe even just subconscious doubts, but doesn’t really indulge them because she was too afraid of knowing how badly she’s fucked Lup over, or of trying to get Lup out of the umbrella with the Hunger looming overhead. I think all of these interpretations both fit within her established character and add to it, in their own ways. All of them, as shown above, fit well within the plot.

But I want to end this post by recalling Lup’s own interpretation of events — that Lucretia absolutely didn’t know she was in the umbrella. That Lup somehow, after everything, “can’t fault” Lucretia “for not looking in [the umbrella]” (Story and Song, 1).

And I think that’s important too.

Thank you so much if you read this far! Please feel free to add to it, I have so many feelings.

#taz balance #the adventure zone #thezonecast #tazcast

214 notes · View notes

crispyimagines17 · 6 years

Photo

A ROAD TRIP WITH TOM HIDDLESTON WOULD INCLUDE...

Written by: Crispy Imagines.

Soundtrack: [including 4DX experience, which means ambient sounds] main theme / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22

Notes: This headcanon is set in summer (in case you’re reading this in other season). If you’d like one set in autumn, let me know by sending a message or an ask. Also, the road trip takes place around European countries like Italy, France and Spain (cause if I look further this would take forever). I swear I could’ve posted my goddamn 6hrs full playlist. No kiddin. <3

Warnings: I don’t truly believe this is a headcanon, it’s more like a story without prose haha. So, it’s a little bit long. That’s the only ‘warning’. Listen with headphones, preferably.

It’s a sunny sunday morning in London. Tom and you are leaning on your bed, holding hands and with all the time in the world to enjoy yourselves. Cause it’s summer; he’s not working, you’re not working. [1]

“Our official first day of vacations”

Both walk down the stairs right to the kitchen and prepare some breakfast; coffee, cranberries’ pancakes, eggs with tomato and a slice of toasted bread. [2]

“Now what?”, Tom repeats Finding Nemo’s dialogue provoking you to laugh.

“Summer vacations, maybe?”

“At home?”

Tom has that playful smile of him, standing up and driving you to the leaving room in excitement. Suddenly, he jumps into the couch with a bright smile and yells;

“Get your luggage ready, honey! We’re leaving to Anywhere!” [3]

Laughing, jumping and running all over the house.

In the closet, Tom takes out a couple of suitcases and leaves you there to run down to the garage.

“Where are we going?”

“Just grab what’s neccessary, not too much things, darling”, his voice screaming and therefore, echoing.

Luggage ready and a bag with secret stuff Tom didn’t wanted you to see.

Driving “to the airport!”

A sense of adventure peeking ahead.

VIP flight tickets.

Holding your hand and that playful smile again. Because this will be the time together both needed after all the hard work.

Airplane take-off. [4]

Adventure mode on.

Wine, laughs, soft kisses and a good movie during the flight. [5]

Landing on Rome. [6]

Rent a car and driving under the city lights towards a hotel.

Leaving your luggage in the suite room and out to walk.

“An evening in Roma”

Dining in a little restaurant/bistro; authentic pizza, italian pasta and a glass of wine.

Italian food = a God’s blessing.

Soft kisses before falling asleep in La Città Eterna.

"Wake up, sunshine”

Italian breakfast down a meson. [7]

“Wait. Aren’t we going to stay?”

That playful smile appearing again over his face.

Changing the car to a Jeep Renegade.

Sunglasses on.

“Ready?”

“For what?”

Tom sits in the driver place and you take the co-driver’s.

Driving towards the highway.

Buying at a convenience store (like 7-eleven) some water, a soda, chocolates, candies, and chips. Just some human energy for a 3 maybe 5-hours road trip.

Opening the M&M’s and placing some on your hand to give them to Tom in his mouth.

Singing old songs and weird songs out loud, gestures and hands dancing included. [8]

“Cause I’m Mr. Brightside!” [9]

Watching the first advertisement announcing the city Tom is driving you to.

“La Toscana! Florencia”

Tom chuckles at your reaction.

Not going right forward to Florencia, but instead visiting a town first.

Finding a beautiful inn owned by a typical italian woman, loving and kind.

Down in the little town, people don’t recognize Tom, which leads you to spend an authetic and beautiful afternoon.

Surprisingly, there’s a wedding being celebrated and both are invited by the landlady.

Being the leading dancing couple when ‘Sway’ is played. [10]

Going to sleep after 3 a.m. because of the party.

“Wake up, love”

Driving to Florencia.

Fancy italian breakfast in a fancy restaurant. [11]

Because Florence is fancy, and beauty. Art, art, art everywhere.

Visiting the daydream art museum ‘Galleria degli Uffizi’, where’s found a collection of priceless works from the Italian Renaissance.

Next stop; Venecia! (Venice)

Towards the highways.

More singing and weird talks about childhood.

Watching the sunset while driving and listening to a beautiful calm song. [12]

Decide to camp in a wonderful meadow that diverted from the highway.

That mysterious bag Tom brought has camping stuff and everything needed.

An improvised picnic at night with food bought in little stores on your way.

Wild kisses. Soft kisses. Midnight talks. [13]

More convenience stores.

Arriving to Venice.

Trying Gelato.

Gelato = a God’s gift to human race.

Enjoying the city through those boats, its magical landscapes, colors, scence and food. [14]

A short escape to Verona.

“I am truly, madly, deeply, foolishly, completely in love with you”

“O Thomas, Thomas, wherefore art thou Thomas?”

Love, Shakespeare and Italy. You never have enough.

Holding hands while walking as a love promise in the ‘City of Lovers’

More driving, but under the night sky with music surrounding you. [15]

Taking shifts to drive. Sometimes he does, sometimes you do.

Tom extending his shift if he feels you’re tired to take yours.

And it doesn’t matter, cause it’s your adventure together.

Again, more convenience stores.

Driving all the way to France without first stopping in Milan to go shopping.

Before leaving, diverting your way for a trip to Bergamo.

Camping near the mountains and waterfalls, into the woods. [main theme]

“Oh, to see without my eyes; the first time that you kissed me.”

Making love under the clear starry sky.

“Wake up, darling”

Bye, Italy. We love you.

“Sicilia! We’re coming back to Italy just to visit Sicilia, that’s for sure.”

“Of couse, darling. It’s Vito Corleone’s land.”

On the road, on the road, the road of your lives. [16]

“Turn right to take the highway to...”

“Now?”

“Yes! Now!”

*Fast & Furious kind of scene*

Sunlight burning you inside because it’s summer.

“Viva la France!” [17]

Arriving to a little town before going to the big french cities.

Showing your french skills.

“Oui”

Trying authentic french macarons.

Staying the night at a beautiful little inn.

Dancing La Valse d’Amelie slowly in your room. [18]

“Bonjour, mon amour.” (Good morning, my love)

French breakfast.

Talking with the landlady about daily life.

Back to the road.

“Are we driving to Paris?”

“Paris in the 20s?”

“Sure! Cause I’m right here in a car with F. Scott Fitzgerald himself!”

Driving through all those daydream valleys and meadows. [19]

Miraculously, you arrive to The City of Love when it’s raining.

Walking along the Seine... Paris in the rain.

Stops raining.

Visiting La Tour Eiffel.

Fancy shopping.

“Au revoir, France!”

Next stop...

“Olé, España!” [20]

Excursion to the Basilica of Montserrat from Barcelona.

Also to La Sagrada Familia.

Acting as locals in a park at Zaragoza.

“Sí, sí, gracias”

Renting a little beach house at Playa de Andrín, Asturias.

Picnic at the beach.

Tom and you playing with water like kids.

Swimming until your body wrinkles by water.

Reading and talking while his head lays on your legs.

Sunset and toast with spanish wine.

Trying paella and falling in love with its delicious mixture of flavors. [21]

Learning to dance Flamenco.

Failing plenty times until you get the rythm.

Conveniences stores (7-eleven) being the best place in the world because of the homemade candies.

“Muchas gracias por todo, España” (Thank you for everything, Spain)

Your last night driving. And it’s towards Madrid, where you’ll later pick up a flight back home.

“Hey, we got to come back!”

Driving at night in the rain. [22]

“Thank you for this, darling”

“I love you, Thomas”

Landing in London.

Of course, along your road trip, both bought several souvenirs and took photographs of every place and landscape.

Also, pictures of you two together, or eating, or sleeping, or doing whatever thing.

Back home.

“Uff”, throwing the luggage and yourselves over the couch.

If you’ve read all of this and still not eager to get out and have all those memories, then you didn’t listen to the whole 22 tracks. If you did, you’ve been a victim of my mental breakdown writing this and I don’t regret it haha

#* sobs*#Headcanon #tom hiddleston #road trip #roadtrip #road trip with tom hiddleston would include #summer with tom hiddleston #roadtrip with tom hiddleston would include #tom hiddleston x reader #imagine tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston x you #tom hiddleston headcanon #tom hiddleston imagine

200 notes · View notes

mcrmadness · 6 years

Text

Bit of anxiety related stuff once in a while...

It’s been a while since I’ve written here and I think the next time is now.

WARNING: Long post is long........................................ *sigh*

It’s the worst time of the year for me here in Finland atm. The seasons change, the darkest time of the year. Here during the darkest months (basically) the day is is just a few hours long (like... 6-8?) and the rest of the day is just dark after dark. The worst part for me is always the time after Christmas and before the days start to really get more bright and when we start to finally get those sunny days. So it’s rare to even see the whole damn sun during this time even tho it’s light outside. It’s still not bright. (And when February and the sun finally arrive, it’s good for my mind but bad for my head as I start to get more headaches and sometimes also migraines just because of how bright everything is.)

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing over here and that’s what affects me also, I treat it with “bright light therapy” which mean I have this bright light thingy at home and I have to sit in front of it. It really does help (it simulates sunlight) but the polar night is never easy for me. Especially when I don’t have enough time for that light as I ALWAYS start to sleep less even tho I’m more tired than during summer. I guess getting up in the morning just annoys me so much that I think to myself the morning comes slower if I go to sleep later. And it’s also making everything worse as I’m so tired 24/7 yet I feel like I just don’t have enough free time in 24 hours and I just keep procrastinating everything.

This also always makes my health anxiety worse and atm it’s pretty bad. I’m really anxious and tense 24/7, the darker it gets, the worse it gets. It does not leave me alone during the daytime either, but somehow the nights are just the worst. I have this congenital heart defect that was operated when I was 3 years old, it’s fine and I don’t need meds but I just need to have it checked every two year. And this is exactly the same situation as it was 2 years ago when I had the check last time. It always gets so worse because I feel like 2 years is so long time and anything is possible. I can’t trust my own body because in my mind I live my life as if I was sick at some part of my body. It changes over time and by whhere I’ve feeling these “symptoms”. But right now my heart is the number one. It has always been somewhere back there in my life and I’ve been to therapy for a year now and now we talk about it as a possible post-traumatic stress disorder caused by my heart surgery. I feel like it defines my whole life. In reality, competitive sports are the only thing that is prohobited for me but it’s okay because I’ve never liked sports. And I start to feel bad about just normal sport (nothing heart related, just the overall feeling of it. I can’t stand heat and I hate sweating and it makes me feel sick. There’s been only one time in my life when sports have caused me to feel the rush of endorphin but usually it just feels bad as I’m a HSP / Higly Sensitive Person.) But the problem here is that my mind doesn’t understand the difference and it thinks I’m mortally ill. Like, I constantly feel like I shouldn’t do this or that because I’m ill and it could kill me. When in reality I’m not ill. Hypochondria, you could say...

It’s really tiring to be this sensitive about your own body functions. And even if I don’t feel anything different I still WAIT for something to happen. I’m just alarmed 24/7, ready to panic and do something if needed. Usually I just go to my parents’ house “to be observed” or try to talk to my siblings and so. I feel like it’s mixture of everything. Bit like OCD but instead of being afraid of illnessess I could get from somewhere, I’m afraid of illnessess that appear out of nowhere _inside of you. The idea of not being able to control your own body is so scary. Your own body could kill you and it’s scary as hell. It’s so scary that I procrastinate about shower and sleeping because I feel like those places are where I’m the most vulnerable. I haven’t showered in couple of days because only time to do so is in the evening (except when I have a day off) and that’s when I get tired and also most anxious and I can’t take a shower because I’m so afraid of my own body and those panic attacks that it’s easier to not go there and just sit here waiting for the possible panic attack, than take a shower and have a panic attack and then try to be as fast as possible because how embarrassing it would be if I needed emergency and I’d be naked when they find me. It’s easier to be fully clothed if needed to leave fast than to be in shower. I’ve also slept couple of days on my cough because falling asleep is scary, or the moment when everything is quiet and it’s just you and your own body and you feel every damn heart beat, every palpation and every beat that is normal, but for some reason it feels through the whole body as if the whole body was shaking to those beats. It’s easier to watch tv and fall asleep “accidentally” when you’re concentrated on something else.

It’s bit like the years 2006/2007 all over again. I had really hard time because of my heart. Only way to me to deal with it was to concentrate on My Chemical Romance’s music and dvd. I shit you not when I tell that I listened to them and watched that goddamned dvd every damn day, literally I heard them 24/7. It helped me to concentrate on something else than my own anxiety. It was all heart related, I was 15 and it was my last class at school and I was so burnt out because of the whole school, I had really hard time sleeping because I was afraid to fall asleep because I was so afraid that I would die in my sleep, I slept with light on so it’s was not only darkness I saw with my eyes closed. In the end I got over it in one night when I realized I was so burnt out and stressed out that I started reacting to that with my body. It tried to tell me to clam the fuck down, to sleep and take days off, I felt it in my heart because it was the only way my body felt it could tell me to stop beating myself up. Even tho I had already given up, I didn’t go to school or anything but it was so bad every day because every morning I knew I SHOULD HAVE GONE and I knew the next day someone would say me that I should go to school, they would call us from the school to tell how I really should be there. I don’t think I got any sick leave either so it was really hard for my diligent personality to have again and again and again one day off school when I basically did that “illegally” and it made me feel even worse even tho I was so tired that my mornings started when I couldn’t sleep anymore as I had already woken up and my heart said hello to me so I got up and with my blanked I always sat down next to the living room’s radiator and I just kept crying because I wasn’t able to leave to school today either.

This is not so bad as back the whole situation was, as now I’m not forced to do anything, but just the way the seasons change affect my mood and anxiety is pretty annoying. It has always changed over time, some years are worse than others but it always gets better somewhere around February or March. January is always really dark month for me, figuratively as well as literally.

I think one reason this gets this bad every second year is the fact I probably start to stress the heart check. (It’s just EKG and ultrasound so nothing huge.) At the same time I’m relieved it’s finally here but also I’m afraid to hear if there’s something wrong. It’s really hard with this type of health anxiety because I don’t really know what I even except. I hope everything is okay but... when it is, it feels good for a while but I know the anxiety will always come back so at the same time it’s not actually that relieving because I know the physical/psychosomatic symptoms will come back eventually. Sooner or later I start to experience palpations and in my head I start to live as something was wrong inside of my body. When everything is okay it’s relieving but I can’t help it, in my head I also always immediately start to question the doctor. What if they just missed something serious? The ultrasound was so quick, how could they see everything in that time? Also my heart NEVER skips a beat or has palpations during EKG or ultrasound. NEVER, I always tell them I have them but they never show up during those tests!!! Atm another big thing for me probably is the fact this time there’s different doctor than what I’ve had ever since I started seeing cardiologists specialized to adult hearts. And as I haven’t seen this cardiologist ever before it of course scares me to hear her thoughts on everything and also I’m afraid if she will notice something the other one never did. If she uses the ultrasound for longer time? What if she sees something new there? What if her opinions differ from the other’s opinions a lot? It’s so scary.

For me, I have trust issues. I feel the same about my heart as I do with my car when I’ve took it to checkup: it was okay by now but did they check everything properly and few months before the next checkup I’m terrified because I’m afraid something might have broken up after the previous checkup and what if my car randomly catches fire or explodes. With my heart, I start to feel “symptoms” that could be severe and with my car I start to smell smoke when there’s no smoke. Nothing is more terrifying than driving long distances and sensing something that causes so horrible panic attack that you will sit so tensed for the rest of the day. Last week I had one, this time about my heart and I was so afraid something would happen and it was dark and in Finland there’s forests between cities and I was so afraid something would happen to me while I’m in the middle of nowhere when it’s pitch black everywhere and if no one finds me. I felt better everytime I saw someone driving behind me because I knew they would notice if something went wrong. But as soon as they drove past me, my anxiety got worse. It’s this “need of eyewitnesses” I have, I need someone to be around when I’m having a panic attack so there would be at least someone to do the emergency call if I can’t do it myself. So far I’ve never done one and I’ve never been to hospital because of my “symptoms” because I’m too deep into this mental illness shit that I keep telling me everything is me just being mental yet at the same time I’m afraid of the thought “what if it is not?” I don’t want to go to hospital just because of my psychosomatic things, it’s be so embarrassing and also there’s real sick people that need their help and I don’t want to waste their time with my bullshit when someone could actually die over there.

I so hope I get to see a psychiatrist soon enough. I still haven’t got any of this diagnosed but I feel like I need SOMETHING because right now I kinda can’t fully believe it’s all just psychosomatic because I has this belief in my mind that I can’t be mentally ill if I don’t have papers for it. Havening it written down would be best thing in the world. I think it would actually make me feel much better than a cardiologist saying “everything is alright”. When obviously SOMETHING is not right SOMEWHERE. Maybe in my body there’s nothing wrong but in my mind there’s so many things so fucked up that I feel like a complete mess. I guess it’s like having papers all over your desk and floor but no one gave you the empty folders where to put them into. I feel that I need those folders so I can arrange my papers and finally have some kind of peace when I know at least something in my mind might finally be in order. I don’t know if it would work like this but I believe it would help, even a little. Actually I think it would make me feel better about myself because right now I feel like I have no right to be who I am because I always am told that I can’t be this and that if I don’t have it diagnosed. Or people ask why you always have to have something wrong when I say something about wanting to have a diagnose. It’s not me wanting something to be wrong but me wanting to name something I already have. Imagine that legs and arms didn’t have any names and try then to tell people that you have these four things, “maybe two of them could be legs but I’m not really sure as no one has really told me what they are so I guess they’re legs but I just hope someone would name them so I didn’t feel so weird walking on two sticks that might or might nor be called legs...”

At least in my country being mentally ill is kinda... taboo? Like, here’s LOTS AND LOTS of us but people are easily ashamed of it and it’s something you don’t really discuss. People don’t wanna talk but even less they wanna hear. For some reason it’s something that is really... awkward subject. And often it feels like people start to see you through their prejudice even if they had known you for years. As if it would change the person. Only thin there has changed is that this other person now knows something they didn’t know 2 seconds ago. Yet the whole person can turn very awkward as if they no longer knew how to act around you. I just would like to have things diagnosed and to be able to tell people about these things that are part of me without being judged by something they don’t even know any facts about.

So my point here was that I meant to take a shower today but I'm too tired and tensed and overstimulated (HSP) that I couldn’t do that even today, so I have to take a shower in the morning. I anyway have therapy tomorrow, so... This Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has also got to this point now where I wouldn’t bother washing my dished either. I should cook something tomorrow but I don’t really think I can manage and do that tomorrow. I should do the dishes first and... nah. But with days like these I always try to tell myself it’s okay to not feel good everyday. It’s okay to be tired and if I don’t manage the dishes, then I don’t. Then I do it the other day but I don’t make it somethig to stress about because it’s just bunch of tableware and not so big deal. I’ll do them eventually but if today’s not the day, then it isn’t and it’s okay.

Btw, talking of MCR, bit over a week ago they uploaded outtake versions of each of their music videos to YT and I watched all of them of course. Well, some of them actually made my anxiety to go away. But some of them, those who I associate with the dvd Life on the Murder Scene the most, actually caused the anxiety to get worse. For the next couple of days I felt the crippling anxiety in my stomach every time I thought about the videos. I guess it was because the last time I’ve actually seen anything about those videos was when I had this rough break down when I was 15/16 and even tho it felt bad watching those, I still watched them. I guess it was bit like violently tearing open the old (mental) wounds. And I have a lot of mental wounds, tbh. I think there’s a lot I have never actually dealth with any of them the way they should be taken care of. I just got so used to negative experiences I took them but just... buried them somewhere and now they’re popping up as memories like some old haunting ghosts. I feel like my whole life is like a sea of old ghosts and that I should go and talk to each of them separately to make them feel better about themselves...

Idk. There’s just so many thoughts right now. Or that’s bit wrong actually, I have always too many thoughts goind around in my head. It never stops. I don’t really know how to start dealing with all this but I feel like by writing this, some of those “papers” in that metaphor back there have already found their places. It’s possible that the shelf containing all those “files”also will be never ending shelf, but I still feel that it’s be better to have those papers in files in a shelf than to have them piling up around you until you drown in them.

Now, I think I go and try to sleep. This wall of text actually made me feel a slightly better already. I just hope somewhere in this world would be something or someone who would have time for things like these. In therapy there’s never enough time. Not even if there’d be some 24/7 therapy and if I get to be there for a week straight, I still think I’d feel like that I’ve not done yet. But anyway, this is enough, for now.

Thanks for reading, if there’s still anyone after this text ends.

#personal #mental health #mental disorder #ocd #gad #health anxiety #hypochondria #congenital heart defect #tetralogy of fallot #mental illness #seasonal affective disorder #panic

2 notes · View notes

kaoruyogi · 7 years

Text

How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 14)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content!

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

I don't usually post on Fridays, but I felt bad not having updated for so long! I had a 7-day work week last week/the week before, and my husband and I are in escrow on a house, so things have been a little hectic in the Yogi household. I'll try to get back on track, but I make no guarantees before the start of next month. Thank you, fair reader, for understanding. ^_^

Chapter 14: Tricks the Mind Plays

Skyhold had never been so empty. Cullen walked through the courtyard wondering where everyone had gone. He passed the sparring ring and the healers’ quarters and saw no one. He meandered into the gardens and the Chantry and saw no one. He wandered around the baths and the kitchens and into the main hall and saw no one.

He heard someone. He heard someone screaming. They were bloodcurdling screams that tore through his mind and made his fingers twitch. They were sobbing screams that cracked and broke but never quieted or waned. They were familiar screams. Even standing in the main hall, even halfway across Skyhold, Cullen knew those screams. He knew where and who they came from, and part of him knew why. It was the part of him that let his gut and his thoughts go cold and the part of him that was terrified.

Terrified though he was, he ran toward the screams. The air was thick with them, and he swam through the main hall and through the rotunda and out onto the battlements. The day was night and the sun was twin moons that beamed down blood red light over the whole of the keep. His hand was on his sword, and it was his sword, and he knew it was his sword as he ran to Belle’s tower door.

Closer now, he could hear the cries between the screams. She wailed and wept and begged please, please, oh God, oh Maker, please, and her voice was in the tower and in his ears and in the air. Her voice was in the stones of the battlements and of the tower, and it was in the grain of the wood of her door as he flung it open. His hand was still on his sword, and it was still his sword, and he knew it was still his sword.

Cullen shouted her name, but nothing left his lips. He shouted her name in silence against the screams that flowed through the tower like water and like air and like blood. The sounds of her pain washed down the stairs and out the door around him, and he ran again. He ran up her wooden stairs and around the sharp corners, and the wooden stairs turned to stone as he ran, and the corners rounded as he ran. His hand was on his sword, and it was not his sword, and he knew it was not his sword. His mantle was gone and his armor was heavy, and he had the youth to run and the vitality to run, and the fear that flowed in his veins was no longer the fear of knowing but the fear of not knowing.

Belle screamed. She screamed and sobbed and wailed and wept and begged please, please, oh God, oh Maker, oh “Cullen,” and her broken voice was close now. She was close and the top of the stairs was close, and he reached the top, and he saw.

She hung by her wrists in the air, suspended by sick and glowing magic, and her robes were soaked through with blood, and her staff lay splintered and shattered on the Harrowing Chamber floor. Demons and abominations circled round her and hissed and growled and were people no longer, and she looked to him with blood and tears in her bruised eyes, and her lips that were like the dusk were torn and swollen and open, and she screamed his name. “Cullen.” It looked like a scream, but the sound was calm. He unsheathed the sword that was not his and willed silence through the room.

A twisted and ugly glow doused his vision and stopped his silence and stilled the sword that was not his. He was trapped. Bodies lay around him everywhere, and blood flowed, and someone crept into his mind like an ooze while he watched Belle scream. He watched her dangle and struggle and die in the air.

He was in Kirkwall, and she wailed and wept and begged please, please, oh God, oh Maker, oh “Cullen,” and he raised the brand, and the explosion and the fire took her.

He was at Haven, and she wailed and wept and begged please, please, oh God, oh Maker, oh “Cullen,” and he reached for her hand, and the red lyrium ripped through her chest, and he cut down the Red Templar with the sword that was once again his.

He was at Adamant, and she lay crushed beneath a stone, and her guts and her brain were no longer in her body, and her eyes bulged from her skull, and still she said, “Cullen.”

“Cullen,” she said again, and he closed his eyes. He could feel her hands in his hair, and he would give into her temptation, and he would love her even as an abomination, and he would love her even as the conjuring of a desire demon. He felt her fingers in his hair and her breath on his forehead, and he knew he must banish those conjurings, and he knew he must save her.

“No,” he said. He could hear it. “No. Leave me. Leave me!”

Cullen opened his eyes when his body jolted. He was met at first with darkness, with night. It was no longer the blood red night, but the blue and silvery night he knew. He was lying down and covered up, and there was skin on his skin.

“Cullen,” said Belle with her voice that was blessed and holy, “you had a nightmare.”

He panted against the flat of her chest, the heat of his breath amplifying the scent of her skin. All he could see was the pale swath of her flesh and the gilt of her neckline shimmering in his periphery. His forehead sat against the column of her throat, his mouth against her sternum, and his chin at the apex of her cleavage. His arms were wrapped tight around her, fingers still shaking and gripping the boning of the corset that clutched at her waist. The fabric was smooth and soft against his bare arms, and it was fine so that his calloused hands could not ruin it with the clawing terror of his dreams.

Her lips rested just above his hairline. “Shh, you’re okay,” she said into his curls. One of her hands massaged the back of his head, fingertips grazing his ear. The other hand skimmed along his naked back in gentle lines. “I’m right here. We’re in Skyhold. We’re safe in your bed. The sun went down an hour ago. The first moon rose about twenty minutes ago. I’m here. I love you. I’m right here.”

Her words slowed his breathing and chased the vestiges of the Fade and its horrors from his mind. She was there. She loved him. Those were the things that were real, as imaginary as they seemed. That she loved him was a figment of his imagination, surely. A final illusion of the Fade.

“I love you,” said Belle again in her sacred voice, and Cullen’s grasp on her bodice loosened and tightened at once. He held her with a different manner of desperation in those moments. She was sacrosanct, and he clung to her as he would to a hallowed totem. She loved him, and she was to be worshipped.

“I love you,” said Cullen against her warm flesh, voice barely a whisper. He watched in the filtered moonlight as her skin prickled under the ghost of his lips and of his breath.

He pressed a kiss to her chest and felt her sigh into his hair. He parted his lips and kissed her again, letting his mouth glide over her taut and sensitive skin. She sighed again, and her touch seemed to grow warmer under his reverence. Her body and her mind and her soul were sanctified, and he would pray in the grace and warmth of her love, and he would exalt and revere her above all others, and he would not be taken from her. And she would not be taken from him.

Cullen prayed into her body as he kissed her chest and her collarbone and her throat. “Lady of Perpetual Victory, your praises I sing.”

He breathed in her scent and swallowed her light into his stomach and into his lungs when his lips found hers, and he said against the corner of her mouth, “Gladly do I accept the gift invaluable of your glory.”

Belle shuddered when his fingers lifted her short dress and unlaced her breeches and slipped into her silken haven. He pressed her to his body, begging the Maker to let them become one. “Let me be the vessel,” he said with his teeth on her earlobe and his hand on her quim. She sighed and her fingernails scraped at his back and his scalp. “Let me be the vessel which bears the light of your promise to the world expectant.”

He prayed in silence then. He prayed into her ear and into her mouth. He prayed into her throat and into the soft swell of her covered bosom. He prayed into her stomach and into her hips. He prayed as he slid her breeches down and away, and he prayed with his lips on her cunt.

He lapped and suckled at the swollen mound that made her breath hitch in her throat and made tiny blessings pour from her mouth. She writhed under his worship, and he held her hip down in one hand and laced her fingers in the other. She panted and quivered and squeezed against his grip. Her slick nectar coated his chin with every sigh and gasp, each subtle sound a benediction. He rolled his hips against his breeches and his mattress. The friction of his movements coupled with the soft sounds of her pleasure redoubled his desire for the benevolence of her body and of her love.

Belle met her end quieter than he had known her to be, though her nails dug into the back of his hand and her breath came in ragged bursts as her toes curled against his ribcage.

Cullen wiped his mouth and chin on the sheets between her legs, remembering her disdain for the taste of herself on his lips. She lay boneless and trembling and half-naked before him, her hand resting on her forehead as each breath sawed and squeaked in and out of her. To truly become one with such divinity, he knew they had to be bare to one another. Skin to skin and flesh to flesh. He doffed his breeches and smallclothes in a series of sloppy maneuvers she did not see in her lax state. He grabbed handfuls of the side of her corset and twisted, loosening bundles of clasps with each motion. She helped him free herself of her remaining garments, pulling fabric out from under her and over her head and snapping apart her odd breastband.

She laid back in his bed against his rumpled sheets, and she was a goddess, and she was the Maker, and she was Andraste. Her breasts were round and full in their liberation, and he felt their soft press against his chest when he wreathed his arms around her and laid over her. His eyes were fixed on her face as he sheathed himself within her. Her sacred lips opened wide in a sigh, and her blessed eyes drifted shut a their joining.

He hilted himself slowly at first, weaving his fingers into the holy fire that was her hair and watching her lidded eyes watch him. Her nails dug into his sides and carved little pilgrimage trails into his muscles when he quickened his pace. They breathed in time with one another as he thrust into her, and he was anointed by her. Every damp and panted breath was holy oil. Every ghost of a kiss was another demon banished from his mind and from his soul by her divine light.

Belle’s hands and thighs shook, and Cullen’s eyes closed, and their foreheads and noses and lips brushed across each other. Words tumbled from his tongue when he felt her meet her end all around him. “For You are the fire at the heart of the world, and comfort is only Yours to give.”

Her eyes opened again, wider then. They glittered up at him while he plundered her blessings from between her thighs. Her hands came to rest around his jaw, and he was exhilarated at her attention. He was afraid in that moment, terrified. He was nothing and she was everything, and he was taking from her. He was stealing the divine light away, a greedy thief grasping at it as he would grasp at coin.

“Cullen,” she said against his lips. The rasp of her voice was boon and a balm. His undoing was not far off. “Tell me my name.”

Confusion clawed at the haze in his mind. She was Andraste and she was the Maker, was she not? Her name laid heavy against his gritted teeth. Andraste. Maker. He would have answered but for her eyes. Her eyes that were like armor and like the sea were Belle’s eyes. He felt his lids flutter and a tear slip free. It caressed her cheek as though she wept for him.

“Tell me my name, Cullen.”

Andraste. Maker. He wanted to say her name. But her eyes were Belle’s eyes. Belle who swore and came and loved him. Belle who was real and beneath him. Belle whom he worshipped. She was neither the Maker nor his bride, and the tricks Cullen’s mind played wafted away with her every breath against his parched lips.

“Belle,” said Cullen. “Belle.”

She smiled. She kissed him. She sealed her name on his tongue.

He unraveled within her. His sins and the demons of his past unfurled into her core, and Belle-whom-he-worshipped clutched him tight. Fingers closed around strands of hair, mouths opened against one another, sweat blended and bled together on skin.

He was home. Home was real, and he was there with her. He was not trapped in the Circle tower in Ferelden. He was not in the Gallows or in the aftermath of the explosion of the Chantry in Kirkwall. He was not in the destruction at Haven. He was not in the mindless chaos and sand at Adamant. He was home. She was his home.

“I love you,” said Cullen, his eyes clamped shut for fear she would not be there when they opened.

“I love you,” said Belle. “Look at me, Cullen.”

He relaxed his eyelids, letting them open in half-measures. The sight of her was a solace immeasurable. She was flushed and kind and worried.

“I love you, okay?” She lifted her eyebrows, and he nodded his answer. “But I’m not Andraste, and I’m not the Maker. My va—Sex with me is not going to cure you of all your problems. I’m not some divine, perfect being, alright?” She cooed her admonishments as she would a gentle reassurance. “Don’t pray to me. Don’t try to give me the faith you give your religion. Give me the faith you give to the person you love. I’ll let you down otherwise, and I can’t stand the idea of letting you down.”

Belle was right. He’d let his faith and his fear and her fealty pollute his perception of reality. It was not the first time this had happened, though the first time was born of guilt and penitence rather than terror and adoration. The Templar with whom he had an arrangement of sorts, Parrow—he never dared called her Keelie—had prayed along with him, her back against a stone wall. She came with a cry of Maker! and swore she loved him. But that had not been their arrangement. She transferred from Kirkwall to Ansburg not a month later.

Belle, however, was different. She was thoughtful as to his lapse. She responded to his misplaced faith with empathy and delicacy, traits Cullen failed to exhibit even as her legs were still wrapped around him, even as her arms still held him close, even as he was still inside of her. All he could manage was a nod in acquiescence.

She smiled softly and washed the shame from his face with her wandering gaze. He curled into her, melted into her. His knees came to rest on either side of her hips and his forehead came to rest in the crook of her neck. He embraced her with a mind never to let go. Her pale breasts and their dusky peaks rose and fell in a soothing rhythm, smooth and supple. Her shimmering fingernails traced shapeless artwork into his scalp, his back, and his arms. Would that she could mark him as her own with that shapeless artwork.

They lay like that long after he softened and slipped out of her. Cullen only moved when he heard an unceremonious growl rise from Belle’s stomach, at which point they laughed and she told him she was fucking starving.

He dressed and descended from his loft to fetch them food, and they fed each other small pieces of bread and meat and cheese pinched between delicate fingers, and he fed her the last of the sweet summer blueberries, and he licked the juice of them from her lips, and they made love in the filtered moonlight of his tower, and Belle-whom-he-worshipped as his love cursed and came and fell asleep in his embrace, and it must have been a dream.

All of this must have been a dream, for he loved her the way only dreamers can love.

*****

It only took a few days for routine to retake Skyhold. Everyone began to move in familiar patterns, and people could be found in the locations and in the states they had been in before Adamant. War council meetings became less burdened, though Max and Josephine’s gazes had taken on a more knowing air. Friends and soldiers were no longer heard crying out their terror in the night. The accursed nobility began to flock to the Inquisitor’s feet in droves once more.

Although the nobility kept Belle busy, and Cullen’s duties likewise occupied him, they’d begun to spend most all of their mutually free moments together. Some days the time seemed fleeting. Other days they had hours to linger in each other’s presence. He began to notice more of her little nuances during their conversations and during the silent moments while they both worked in one of their offices.

He noticed how her eyes lit up when she had occasion to talk about music. He noticed the subtle changes in her posture and how much she used her hands when she mused about various topics. He noticed the way her fingers always seemed to be moving. He noticed that she always seemed to be doing something with her mouth, even when the rest of her was still. She would chew on her lips or touch them or cover them up with whatever cloth she had handy. He also discovered the other things she liked to do with her mouth.

Cullen even managed to get her to sit down for a game of chess in the garden. She was in chess club in junior high school, she told him, though he did not know what junior high school was. He remarked that she must have liked chess very much, and how lucky she must have been to know enough people who also enjoyed it that they could form a group. She laughed her easy laugh and said that she liked it until she realized she fucking sucked. He did not know what that meant until they began to play. She lost swiftly and bitterly, despite his efforts to let her win.

“Fuck,” said Belle as she slapped her thighs. “Welp, I still suck.” She laughed enough to make him smile, which seemed to satisfy her more than winning might have done. “Don’t ask me why I can plan a legal argument and its ramifications forty fucking steps ahead, but I can’t see a knight one move away from checkmate. Maybe it’s the human element.”

He arched a brow. “There is just as much a human element to chess as there is to the work you do, Belle.”

She snorted. “Yeah, you’re right. Except for one major factor.”

He leaned forward, his elbow braced against his knee and his lips curled into a smirk. “And what might that one factor be, my darling?”

Belle leaned forward in answer. Her chin rested in her hand so her forefinger could brush across her sunset lips. “Chaos, m’dear.” Her eyes blew wide behind her glasses when she said it. “Chaos.”

“Oh? I’d say you were fairly chaotic during that game. It did not appear to be a trait in your favor.”

She laughed, exposing her wide teeth and her pointed canines. Maker, how he loved her. “That may be true, but chess has rules. Each piece can only move in Ex possible ways, and that means that there are only Wy possible moves, and Zee possible outcomes.” She moved pieces around on the board in demonstration—a knight here, a pawn there. “But people,” she said as she held up his queen, “are unpredictable.” She threw the queen over her shoulder into a patch of elfroot behind her.

“People will do stupid shit because they can. They’ll burn their own crops and salt their own earth just so you can’t have it. They’ll kill each other for a street corner. They’ll betray their best friends to save themselves from nothing. And they’ll knock all the pieces off a chess board just to prove a point.” She swept her arm across the board, sending all the little wooden pieces tinkling against the stone floor and grinning a salacious grin. “People are chaotic, and I am good at chaos.” Her finger swept to and fro over her lower lip.

Something about her display was at once unnerving and arousing. The heart she made beat for her raced in his chest. “That you are.” She leaned back in her seat, quite satisfied with herself. He was about to speak again when her name was called from nearby.

They turned toward the sound and saw Spencer approaching. He shot Cullen a sheepish and close-lipped smile and bowed his head as he said, “Excuse me, Commander, do you mind if I borrow my sister for a bit?”

Cullen knew Belle had been waiting for her brother to talk to her about Adamant since their return. She had said as much while she stroked Cullen’s hair one night after a nightmare startled both of them awake. She was worried for her brother as she was worried for Cullen, and he could not blame her. The young man had seen horror up close. It bound the two men together in an unenviable fraternity of the traumatized.

“Of course. I have business to which I must attend, in any case.”

Belle shot him a look of gratitude and affection as she stood to follow Spencer toward her tower. Though Cullen had not yet told her the details of his trauma, she knew of its existence. When he felt comfortable, she said, he would tell her. He should tell her.

Cullen watched them go, the two of them almost attached at the hip, and thought of his own siblings as he cleaned up the chess pieces. He wondered if and when a day would come that he could share his experiences with them as Spencer did with Belle. It would lift a weight from about his neck—an albatross, Belle called it—to be able to tell them why he had kept his distance for so many years, why he so rarely wrote. He could not say what needed to be said on parchment. He had held the quill fractions of inches over dozens of missives, but he had never managed to say anything of substance.

He regretted it even more after seeing the way Belle worried after her brother. Mia had always been protective over Cullen, and he held little doubt that she had likely been concerned for his welfare for upwards of ten years. His uncommunicative nature may have dealt irreparable damage to their relationship. He tried to put the thoughts from his mind as he headed toward the armory to ensure the production of new swords to replace those lost in the battle was going as planned. He could not mend his family this day, but he would do his best to ensure it was mended when all of this was over. Once Corypheus was defeated, he would go to South Reach and tell his sisters and brother everything. Perhaps Belle would be there to help him. He hoped as he stepped across the hot threshold into the armory that she would be there. He hoped she would want to be there.

She looked lighter on her feet when she came to his tower to collect him for supper in the Herald’s Rest. She beamed at him as she dragged him from behind his desk and out the door. It was not customary for them to dine there, and he worried his presence would disrupt the merriment that existed in his absence.

However, very little changed when he entered the tavern. Soldiers continued to drink and rabblerouse, and some of them even raised their mugs and glasses to him as he passed. They called out to him and thanked him for various things he’d done and said, “Here, here!” before they drank. His nerves dissolved into a small kind of gratification with every acknowledgement as he passed, and by the time they reached the Inquisitor’s table in the center of the tavern, Cullen was almost comfortable being there.

Joviality was the prevailing attitude at the table for most of the evening. Sera and Iron Bull seemed to be trying to drink each other under the table, though it was clear who was losing that battle. Dorian watched them with an expression he meant to exude disgust but exuded amusement instead. Max and Josephine held hands under the table, and it was obvious despite their poor effort at concealing their contact. Cole was peering about and asking strange questions and saying strange things, but there was nothing new there. Varric’s spirits appeared to have lifted in the wake of Hawke’s death, and he regaled the table with stories of the Champion, bidding everyone to toast in the man’s honor at the end of every tale. Cassandra did toast every time, and she was looking rather flushed midway through the evening. Spencer sat at Belle’s left side while Cullen sat at her right, and her brother looked to be recovering as well. The siblings laughed at every joke, their laughter eerily similar now that Cullen was hearing it in unison. Only Blackwall remained rather mirthless, bowing his head to meet the rim of his mug each time he took a drink. Cullen could understand the man’s plight. He too had seen the organization to which he devoted his life torn down by faithlessness and a false god.

“Spencer,” said Bull, “I’ve heard your sister sing, and she’s got quite the set of lungs. Any chance you can grace us all with a tune of your own?”

“Ooh yeah!” said Sera, the drink slurring even her vowels. “Sssing us a song looky-loo-lookalike-alike!” She chortled and slipped about in her chair. The sound made Cullen’s mind buzz at the memory of the trouble that always followed.

“I’m afraid Belle’s the only one in the family with that particular skill set,” said Spencer. “I can’t carry a tune to save my life.”

Varric’s voice came from across the table. “Oh come on, Fireboy, you can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, but I am.”

Belle leaned away from Cullen to nudge her brother with her shoulder. “But he’s a kickass beatboxer.” Not a single person at that table knew what in the Void that was. “He can make rhythm noises with his mouth.” Upon explanation it was not an impressive talent. Any man worth his boots could muddle his way through a brief bum, bum, bum, bum if pressed.

“I’m not that good of a beatboxer either, Bete. Ricks used to kick my ass at the station.”

“Ah, shut up! You’re the best beatboxer in all of Thedas!”

Spencer snorted. “Gee, thanks.”

Belle’s whole body jerked, startling Cullen as an idea burst into her head and out of her mouth. “Ooh! P! Let’s do the thing!”

“No. Nope. No way. I’m not doing the thing.”

“P.” She leveled her eyes on her brother. “Come on. Do the fucking thing.”

He shook his head. “No, dude.”

“Bro. Do it with me.” She spoke differently to him than she did to everyone else. Cullen suspected it was not just a secret sibling language, but the way many people talked where they came from. When Spencer stared at her in silence, she said, “Fine. I’mma do it by myself. All by my lonesome. Now, this is a story all—”

“Fucking fine!” Spencer slammed his hands on the table, though he failed to interrupt the clamoring cheers rising up from their friends. He cupped his hands over his face muttering a quick “Goddamnit” into them before he began.

Then he started to spit. At least, it sounded like he was spitting. He spat into his hand, and after a moment it began to take on the form of some semblance of rhythm. It was unlike any rhythm any of them had ever heard in Thedosian music, but everyone was enrapt. They watched, some with mouths dangling open, as the soldier spat his strange beat into his palms.

Belle’s torso undulated while she sat in her seat. Cullen recalled seeing her move like that before. Then she began to shout in time with that strange beat. “Now, this is a story all about how my life got flip-turned upside down. And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air.”

Spencer continued to spit into his hands, varying the tempo with little flairs here and there. Belle balled her hands into fists and jutted them out in front of her in wide circles over the table. Cullen felt the stunned smile creeping up his face before he even realized he was amused. She continued those circles for a moment, then Spencer changed the beat back to its original form.

“In West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground was where I spent most of my days. Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool and all shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school. When a couple of guys who were up to no good started makin’ trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and my mom got scared. She said, ‘You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air.’” She kept swinging her arms about, pumping her elbows down toward her body before shaking her finger in the air. Laughter rolled around the table in waves.

She leapt up on the table to thrilled exclamations from nearly everyone. She had a wild grin on her face, and a wicked gleam in her eyes. Nearby soldiers had begun to pay attention to the performance, and some of them were trying to spit in their hands as Spencer was. They all failed. It must have required some measure of skill.

Belle’s boots skittered and skidded across the wooden table as she began to run in place. The table creaked just a bit in protest. Her arms pumped back and forth as her feet moved and kept her in place all at once. When she finished, she raised her hands over her head and began to clap with Spencer’s rhythm. She beckoned everyone with the twinkle of her fingers to join in, and it was not long before more than a dozen people were clapping along with her, including Cullen.

“I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said, ‘FRESH,’ and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare, but I thought, ‘Nah, forget it.’ ‘Yo, home to Bel-Air.’” Spencer made noises Cullen never would have imagined could come from a human mouth.

“I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and I yelled to the cabbie, ‘Yo homes, smell ya later!’ I looked at my kingdom. I was finally there to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.”

She danced about on the table while Spencer got creative with the rhythm for another moment. Everyone kept clapping as she kicked her feet and threw her hands in the air. Cullen wondered if this had been what she meant when she’d told him she was a good dancer back home. She moved in ways he had never seen, moved by the simple sound of her brother spitting into his palms. And she moved with such glee. She pursed her lips and grinned and cackled out her laughter while she gyrated up on that table. Her red curls flew about her face and her shoulders, making her look like a joyous explosion.

When Spencer’s spitting stopped, so did Belle’s dancing. They both panted and laughed as she hopped down from the table to embrace her brother, and soldiers and scouts crowded around them to pat them on the back. Cullen looked on with pride tinged with envy. After seeing her like that, he wanted her all to himself.

He had her to himself after a time. They ambled back to her tower. She was covered in sweat from teaching people how to move like her, and he was covered in sweat from his want of her. He took her against the door the moment it closed behind her. He took her with their clothes on, rushed and ravenous. He took her with his elbows under her knees and her arms around his neck. The door bowed and slammed into its stone frame with his every thrust, and the knowledge that people could hear it only served to fuel his lust further. Belle-whom-he-worshipped keened at the glory that was their joining, and he might have heard other voices outside had he not been so fascinated with making her scream. He took her until they met their ends, and he carried her up to bed. The horrors and demons did not come for him that night.

The next morning, one of Leliana’s scouts shouted up the stairs to wake them. The uncouth intrusion would have been met with fury and a month of nighttime guard duty had the scout not shouted her reason for rousing them so abruptly. Blackwall was gone, and Skyhold’s routine was once more uprooted by anguish and chaos.

There was no rest for the wicked.

*****

Notes: Okay, so you can all thank @kagetsukai for that little interlude in the tavern. XD It was half prompt and half "holy shit this fits perfectly," so I ran with it! <3 And for anyone who didn't grow up in the US with this blessed show, make sure to look up the opening to Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This is the shortened version they showed before most episodes, because that's the one I know! XD

#cullen #cullen rutherford #commander cullen #cullen x belle #belle dolan #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #fanfic #mgit #modern girl in thedas #self indulgence au #htwwain

25 notes · View notes

killanyone4you · 5 years

Text

i hate asking people to ask me questions so here are my answers

this was more fun for me then it will be for you

1. Who was the last person you held hands with? uhh my little brother maybe

2. Are you outgoing or shy? depends on my mood i think.

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing? idk if this counts but i’m seeing the used in july

4. Are you easy to get along with? yes. usually

5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you? i dont drink.

6. What kind of people are you attracted to? all kinds of people. i dont really have a good answer for this. i’m attracted to people i connect with and that’s what i focus on

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now? uhhhh

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind? i cant say or i’ll be heavily judged

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable? no

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? my best friend.

11. What does the most recent text that you sent say? thank you you da best

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now? like, of all time or just like, that i’ve been listening to recently? ima answer both. so my 5 favorite songs of all time in no particular order are: Something Corporate: Ruthless. Something Corporate: Walking By. Good Charlotte: Screamer. The Outfield: Your Love and Fall Out Boy: Young Volcanoes. my top 5 of all time has changed for sure but that’s it right now. and then as far as songs i’ve been listening to non stop recently also in no particular order: LP: Switchblade (also any LP). Taylor Swift: Gorgeous (also any Taylor Swift). Post Malone: Sunflower. Selena Gomez: Back to you. I Prevail: My Heart I Surrender. also bonus jonas: any throwback Jo Bro songs and also their new song. anyway that took longer than i expected.

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair? very much

14. Do you believe in luck and miracles? no not really. shit happens.

15. What good thing happened this summer? it’s not summer yet

16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? sure

17. Do you think there is life on other planets? probs

18. Do you still talk to your first crush? no haha

19. Do you like bubble baths? yes. dont trust anyone who doesn’t like bubble baths

20. Do you like your neighbors? i dont really know them.

21. What are you bad habits? hating myself? idk i’m a hermit person who hides from the world. annddd that’s probably not the best habit

22. Where would you like to travel? everywhere

23. Do you have trust issues? uhhh. i like to think i dont but i probably do

24. Favorite part of your daily routine? sleep

25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with? most of it

26. What do you do when you wake up? pee

27. Do you wish your skin was lighter or darker? i just wish my skin was even. it’s a mess.

28. Who are you most comfortable around? my little brother

29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up? nope. they ran for the fuckin hills yall

30. Do you ever want to get married? maybe

31. If your hair long enough for a pony tail? yus

32. Which celebrities would you have a threesome with? um... i feel like Will Farrell and Danny McBride could get the job done.

33. Spell your name with your chin. hard pass

34. Do you play sports? What sports? no sir.

35. Would you rather live without TV or music? tv

36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them? uh yeah. probs a million times

37. What do you say during awkward silences? unintentionally anything and everything that could possibly make the situation more uncomfortable.

38. Describe your dream girl/guy? to answer this properly i’d have to think about it and i’m really just looking for quick answers here. if someone reads this and truly wants to know send me an ask and i’ll answer for real.

39. What are your favorite stores to shop in? target, the christmas tree shoppe, barnes and noble, michales.

40. What do you want to do after high school? lol i’m old af i’ve been out of high school for 10 years yall

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance? no. some people do.

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean? i’m uncomfortable or i dont know how to say what i’m thinking.

43. Do you smile at strangers? yes. all the time and i hate myself for it.

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean? neither pls both of those things are probably my biggest fears of all time.

45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? the need to piss.

46. What are you paranoid about? losing my job due to illness.

47. Have you ever been high? yes

48. Have you ever been drunk? yes

49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about? yes

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore? grey

51. Ever wished you were someone else? yup.

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself? my plethora of mental illnesses. probably.

53. Favourite makeup brand? i dont wear makeup much anymore. i cant say i have a favorite.

54. Favourite store? the christmas tree shoppe

55. Favourite blog? does anyone have a favorite blog?

56. Favourite colour? grey

57. Favourite food? cheese/

58. Last thing you ate? ice

59. First thing you ate this morning? cake.

60. Ever won a competition? For what? i’ve won writing competitions

61. Been suspended/expelled? For what? fighting.

62. Been arrested? For what? nope/

63. Ever been in love? i can never tell.

64. Tell us the story of your first kiss? well technically my first kiss was in pre school with a boy called tommy but i’m not sure that counts. my first like, real kiss was at a smashing pumpkins concert and i was kind of seeing this guy who was one of my best friends in middle school and we were in that middle place of like, being really good friends but wanting to see if there was more. so we were there with my best friend and his best friend (who i also had a thing for dont fucking judge me) so i was laying in the grass with my head in his lap listening to one of the opening bands (i wanna say it was fuel but i dont remember) and he texted all the people with our group to ask them to leave so all of a sudden they all walk away and once their gone he leans over me spider man style and kisses me. so to be fair it was also his first kiss but it was really awkward and bad and we didn’t talk at all after, we just went back to watching the show and when my friends all came back i got up and forced them to go to the bathroom with me to tell them what happened and to ask them why they abandoned me. later i found out he was super proud of his “slick moves” and did not in any way pick up on how awkward i felt.

65. Are you hungry right now? nope

66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends? i dont really have many of either so eh

67. Facebook or Twitter? facebook. i dont even use twitter.

68. Twitter or Tumblr? ^^

69. Are you watching tv right now? i have youtube on my tv playing music videos.

70. Names of your bestfriends? Jerry

71. Craving something? What? Mexican food

72. What colour are your towels? grey

72. How many pillows do you sleep with? 1

73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? no

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have? a few

75. Favourite animal? elephant

76. What colour is your underwear? grey and white

77. Chocolate or Vanilla? vanilla i guess.

78. Favourite ice cream flavour? raspberry sherbet -

79. What colour shirt are you wearing? black

80. What colour pants? not wearing pants.

81. Favourite tv show? Guys Grocery Games

82. Favourite movie? The Princess Bride or Music and Lyrics or 10 Things I Hate about You

83. Mean Girls or Mean Girls 2? .... this is a dumb fucking question. i shouldn’t even have to say the answer. if you’re in any way questioning the answer dont ever talk to me.

84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street? 21 Jump Street.

85. Favourite character from Mean Girls? She doesn’t even go here!

86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo? Dory

87. First person you talked to today? my cat

88. Last person you talked to today? my mother

89. Name a person you hate? i try not to hate anyone. but i guess it’s safe to say trump

90. Name a person you love? my baby brother

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now? kind of my mom. always trump

92. In a fight with someone? nope i dont do that petty shit.

93. How many sweatpants do you have? i’m not sure any of my pants qualify as sweat pants. i have a lot of leggings and pajama pants.

94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have? a shit ton. 20 or 30. i dont really know.

95. Last movie you watched? i watched most of infinity war earlier because i was bored but i stopped about halfway thru to go masturbate. which wasn’t a result of the movie i was just horny

96. Favourite actress? i dont really have one so i’m going to say Millie Bobby Brown because she’s a sweet baby angel

97. Favourite actor? i also dont have one but Paul Rudd is always on my mind so.

98. Do you tan a lot? no yall i’m sickly white all year round.

99. Have any pets? i have a chonky boi Pogue the black cat

100. How are you feeling? quite indifferent rn actually.

101. Do you type fast? i guess.

102. Do you regret anything from your past? many things

103. Can you spell well? nope i spell like shit,

104. Do you miss anyone from your past? yup

105. Ever been to a bonfire party? many. love good bonfire.

106. Ever broken someone’s heart? i guess.

107. Have you ever been on a horse? yes i am... born of hillbillies. so. we ride horses.

108. What should you be doing? dishessssss

109. Is something irritating you right now? i had plans with my goddamn mother which i partially only made because i wanted her to bring me some things i had mailed to her house and after waiting FIVE HOURS for her to call and tell tell me she was on her wait. she never did so i finally called her and she was like “uhh i said maybe tomorrow.” UGH i wasted half my goddamn day waiting on her ass.

110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt? uh yes. it’s awful

111. Do you have trust issues? you already asked this.

112. Who was the last person you cried in front of? my cat

113. What was your childhood nickname? i dont think i really had one. my stepmom called me kay.

114. Have you ever been out of your province/state? yes

115. Do you play the Wii? i never had a wii but i played it with others

116. Are you listening to music right now? yes. i have a random playlist on youtube playing. rn it’s malibu miley cyrus

117. Do you like chicken noodle soup? with a soda on the side.

118. Do you like Chinese food? yes. it’s probably my second favorite kind of food.

119. Favourite book? well all the harry potter books i think would be my favorite but i hate that answer because it’s not specific so my favorite stand alone book is Ella Enchanted.

120. Are you afraid of the dark? not usually.

121. Are you mean? yeah sometimes.

122. Is cheating ever okay? on a partner? no. on other stuff maybe

123. Can you keep white shoes clean? nope

124. Do you believe in love at first sight? nope

125. Do you believe in true love? nope

126. Are you currently bored? yes. why do you think i’m sitting here answering a hundred and fifty questions for no reason? no one asked for this lol

127. What makes you happy? sleep. books. my cat. music. driving on the highway at night. food. rollercoasters

128. Would you change your name? probably. i hate my name.

129. What your zodiac sign? taurus

130. Do you like subway? yes

131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? my best friend of the opposite sex is gay but if it happened i’d ask him if his feelings would somehow cause us to stop being friends and deal with that accordingly

132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? my sister in law.

133. Favourite lyrics right now? this is hard because there are a shit ton but i guess the one that’s sticking out the most to me rn is “i have a thought of you for every star in the sky”

134. Can you count to one million? i mean, yeah. but why?

135. Dumbest lie you ever told? yall i’ve told so many lies. but the one that just popped into my head is when i was pretty young i was mad at my older brother for who even knows what so i wrote his name on our front door in his hand writing with sharpie. it worked and he got into a lot of trouble

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed? open. my asshole cat doesn’t allow any doors in my apartment to be closed at any time.

137. How tall are you? 5′5

138. Curly or Straight hair? weird waves that dont ever look good

139. Brunette or Blonde? i’m brunette but i dye that shit.

140. Summer or Winter? winter.

141. Night or Day? both for different reasons.

142. Favourite month? i dont have one

143. Are you a vegetarian? no

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate? dark

145. Tea or Coffee? both.

146. Was today a good day? not really.

147. Mars or Snickers? neither

148. What’s your favourite quote? god that’s impossible. there’s no chance i could pick only one quote so i’m just going to drop one from the labyrinth because it’s been on my mind and David Bowie is a sex god. “Just fear me, love me, do as i say and i will be your slave.” like. fucking imagine the Goblin King saying that to you? i'd die. fuck me right here pls i'll do anything you say. pls.

149. Do you believe in ghosts? i dont. but i’m willing to be proven wrong

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page? “That’s all right.” said the Stork, who was flying along beside them. “I always like to help anyone in trouble. But i must go now, for my babies are waiting in the nest for me. I hope you will find the Emerald City and that Oz will help you.”

#questions #no one asked #get to know me #lol #this took so long omg #have fun scrolling past this

0 notes

melorsomething · 7 years

Note

1-20 for the "Asks for fic writers" -whitepip

hoo boy we about to shed some light on the other fandoms i’m in

1. Describe yourself how you would describe a character you’re introducing

Okay this is difficult because I am notorious for not describing characters right away. One time someone told me it was a little upsetting to have gone 10 chapters only to discover that the main character’s hair wasn’t even the color they thought it was because I had never described it… but anyways, if I was describing myself as a character, I guess it’d go something like this???

She gave him a pointed look, eyebrows slightly raised as if to say, ‘Really? That’s what you’re going with?’ At his stuttered protests, she chuckled slightly and said, “No, it’s a good idea. Definitely a good idea. Nothing’s gonna wrong. At all.” The tuft of curly hair atop her otherwise shaved head bobbed with each statement, seeming almost to nod in agreement. He wasn’t sure exactly who this girl thought she was, but he could already tell they weren’t going to get along.

2. Is there any specific ritual you go through while/before/after your writing?

I usually procrastinate it for a while, and then procrastinate some more, and then I write like 100 words, then I cry, and then I finally get some more writing done ;)

3. What is your absolute favorite kind of fic to write?

Literally all of my fics (or anything I write) are very character oriented. I like to focus on the relationships (interactions, not necessarily and not very often romantic) between characters. So basically I write character studies, I guess.

4. Are there any other fic writers you admire? If so, who and why?

Since I’m in so many different fandoms, it’s hard to say since there’s so many different ones, but if anyone else happens to be in the Love Live fandom, I absolutely adore fics by IcarusWings87. They’re great at the sort of character-study fics that I enjoy both reading and writing, and they write very true to the characters, something that I’ve always felt I struggle with.

5. How many words can you write if you sit down and concentrate intensely for an hour?

Uh, not really sure. About a year ago I was focusing on writing a 5k chapter a week for a fic, and I used about 45 minutes of class time a day for that, so that’d be maybe 1300-1400 in an hour. Last NaNoWriMo my record in the word wars I did was 722 in 10 minutes, so I don’t really know. When I was in 8th grade I had a narrative assignment due the next day that I hadn’t even started on, and I cranked out about 11k words in 3-4 hours. So, I guess it just depends on how inspired I’m feeling.

6. First fic/pairing you wrote for? (If no pairing, describe the plot)

Alright friends let’s dive back down the childhood rabbit hole. The first time I can remember really discovering fanfiction as a concept was when my big obsession was House of Anubis. So, naturally, my first fanfic was a HoA fic. I don’t know if any of you remember that show, but anyways, it was a pretty edgy Fabian/OC fic about a mirror in the house that was a link to another dimension and a girl that escaped whatever evil things were happening there or something (idk this was like 8 years ago) by coming through the mirror. I wrote maybe 2000 words of it and then dropped it and forgot all about it.

7. Inspiration, time, or motivation. Choose two.

I prefer to have time and motivation, because inspiration isn’t super necessary to me at the time of writing, since I can plan things out if I get inspiration when I have no time.

8. Why do you choose to write?

Honestly? I have no idea. It’s just something that I’ve always loved. I think it’s a way for me to satisfy the things I wish I could read but no one else writes lmao

9. Do you ever have plans to write anything other than fic?

Definitely! One of my big goals is to write and publish a novel, and I already write a lot of original stuff along with my fics!

10. What inspires you the most?

Pain.

Just kidding. I don’t really know, tbh. Inspiration from me comes from anywhere and everywhere. A lot of the time it comes in the form of fix-its for things that happen on tv shows that I wish went differently, which I then adapt to fit plots and characters that I have. Music is a big one, too, though strangely enough music without lyrics inspires me more than music with lyrics.

11. Weirdest thing you’ve ever written/thought about writing/etc.?

Uh, the squad and me have some pretty… interesting collaborative wizard101 fanfics. Maybe I’ll share them with you one day. But for now, I’ll leave you with some keywords and leave the rest to your imagination.

-Squeaky toys-Anime-Lemons (in many senses of the word)-Vore?-BDSM-Breast…mancing-Mylee

fssdgfsdfg i just remembered i did post one of them to my blog so here u go

12. A fic you wish you had written better, and why?

All of them, because I honestly don’t feel like I’m that good of a writer.

13. Favorite fic from another author?

I mentioned IcarusWings87 before and I stand by that their Thoughts and Insecurities fic is one of the best fics I’ve ever read. If you like Love Live, definitely go check them out.

14. Your favorite side pairings to put in?

I really don’t write a lot of relationships in any of my stories. I guess if there are side pairings it’d be because they are canon and I don’t want to overlook them.

15. Your guilty writing pleasure?

Pain, and I’m not kidding this time. I absolutely love writing/reading stories that would be generally tagged as whump. I’m a goddamn sucker for miscommunication as well.

16. Do you have structured ideas of how your story is supposed to go, or make it up as you write?

It really depends on the story. I generally have an idea of major plot points the story needs to hit, but not always a proper plan. My current longest fic (which is actually for undertale hello yes i’m trash) had virtually no planning and was just me cranking out those 5k chapters and seeing where it took me, whereas Crystal Clear actually has almost every plot point planned out for the first half of the story.

17. Would you describe yourself as a fast writer?

Once I get going, I’m definitely pretty fast, but it takes me a while to get started on things…

18. How old were you when you started writing?

I’ve always enjoyed writing for school assignments and such, but I think that HoA fanfic at age 9 was one of the first things I had ever really written just for the sake of writing it. I might have written a Warrior Cats fanfic too… I’m not too sure if that was just an idea or if it ever came to fruition.

19. Why did you start writing?

I started writing simply because I could, I guess. It was something I had always been told I was pretty good at and since I loved to read, I figured I could make the stories happen as well as consume them.

20. 4 sentences from your work that you’re proud of

Okay back down the trash chute this is from my undertale fic and it’s more than 4 sentences but I was really proud of it okay?

Sans had never been one for hope. He had lived his entire life surrounded by the hope of breaking the barrier and seeing the surface, but he had never experienced this hope. Now, of course, he could hope in the verb sense - it was quite often that he hoped someone would or wouldn’t do something - but that’s not really hope, is it? Such a feeling is more of a desire or a want, and this was the feeling Sans was used to. To him, hope was something you did, not something you had. He had never understood hope as an intangible thing - as some abstract concept that you hold onto just because you can. So, one could imagine his surprise when, as he stood in the shadowed corridor, he felt hopeless.

#about me #writing

3 notes · View notes

pensurfing · 5 years

Text

Caitlin’s Three Things List

Okay, so moments (probably hours by the time I finish this) ago I wrote a goals list that I think is good for self-evaluation. (Keyword: This is what I think. results may vary depending on what you’re looking for.)

I’m going to hop to it and answer some of these that I laid out in hopes of having a better idea of what I want to accomplish.

The Three Things Lists!

1) Three things that went well this year.

* Audience growth

So once upon a time, I grew a pretty decent following due to creating an Inktober Prompt list. My expectations: Maybe two of my friends would do this, maybe. And then one stranger that has followed me for a while. (There are a few followers I recognize their username because if I post something they always like it and for some reason that keeps me going.)

But because of this prompt, I was exposed to MANY new creators and illustrators that I now enjoy chatting with and following! Instagram had the biggest maintained growth. I’m excited to create for an audience that actually expects me to create and not just for friends who see my things “whenever they aren’t busy”. (Not to bash them or anything, just there are a lot where unless I tell them, they don’t see the posts I make.)

Another surge of growth in my audience was due to tabling at conventions this year. I was terrified to show my work let alone attempt to sell it to someone. Tabling at cons not only boosted my confidence but also quieted one of my ever going demons. “YoU sUcK aT dRaWiNg CaItLiN.” “How do you have a degree? oh right, you just barely passed.” I can’t say this is the case, there is an audience that genuinely enjoys my scribbles. So I am forever thankful to Atlanta Comic Con for giving me that chance. It honestly opened a few doors for me.

**Process

I’ve gotten more comfortable with showing my process. It can be messy, crisp, and illogical. But turns out the people who enjoy my content enjoy my scrambled thoughts. It’s something about not being alone in this sort of sense that calms the nerves.

So I can say with chest poked out that sharing process has gotten MUCH better. I can thank a self-help book I bought this year that was a FANTASTIC BUY. Austin Kleon has [two] (currently? If he has more then I’m buying it like people buy a name brand.) books that helped me see that it is GREAT to share not only the process but advice. “Show Your Work” is the book I’m talking about for now. Great tips, the outline is on the back of the book. So if you’re like me, I need to clearly see what I might be getting into, you might have a ball.

And finally, (not calling myself out on this but other) If you’re going to respond to people when they ask you “how do you___?” do not answer “Google it”. That is the rudest thing I’ve seen some of even my FAVORITE illustrators do; that response can burn in hell. PERIODT. (my one typo allowed.)

*** Art Style Exploration

For those who think college will help you establish an art style that you’ll enjoy or help nourish the one you currently have.... Let me save you over 80K.... No, the fuck it won’t.

That was the biggest thought I had going into art school. If anything, it confused me more and utterly destroyed what little confidence I had in my drawing style. After graduating, I had a huge swing from how I used to draw to how my art currently looks. I stopped trying to please the one professor who stood between me and my degree and started drawing to please my tastes. And guess what? That did something. And that something WORKED. I love what I draw now; I see why I chose this as my career path. I’m genuinely happy with how my pieces turn out versus in college just wanting to turn the damn thing in and hoping it isn’t an F.

2) Three things you could have handled better.

* The loss of a good paying client.

Now hear me out when I say this: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL a good client. Say that three times and then exhale.

Back earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with a writer who gave me hell and back. And even that is an understatement. I dealt with her because in school you were taught “if they pay on time, finish the work and get the exposure.”

I’m here to tell you my lesson learned: A good paying client DOES NOT EQUAL good exposure, good pay, a good client.

I was doing the work of three for the price of one and a half. (And was always told I charged too much.) She tried abusing this power with friends of mine, with other illustrators. When things turned out bad, she tried saying it was my fault. She read my contract and then tried telling me I changed the wording, I purposely did this thing, another thing was my fault. I could go on with this story.

The part that I wish I handled better?

How I treated myself afterward. I’m so used to people telling me, “Cait, this is what you do wrong. This is how you fix it.” that I don’t consider my own feelings, and when I bring my feelings into the scenario they no longer matter. Because they tell me they don’t matter. In this case, I wish I had treated me better, because my feelings, my mental health, DOES matter.

**My Patience Getting Into Conventions.

Pretty self-explanatory. I got into one, finished one, and wanted to do eight more in a week. But this sort of thing just takes time and I need to accept that.

***My losses

I had to listen to a Little Mix song to actually learn this one. The context of the song is nowhere near the topic at hand. But a verse from Power feat Stomzy really packs a punch after this year:

“ You look him in the eye and say, "I know I'm not a guy But see there's power in my losses and there's power in my wins" “

I had to look one of my demons in the face, and state something similar. My loses mean I’m trying. My loses piling shows I’m not willing to give up easily, and that is something that took a while to be content with.

3) Three things artistically you want to improve on.

*Composition

It’s not awful, but it can be better.

**Color

I told this BOLDLY if I might add while critiquing someone else’s portfolio; “Your color palette is boring. All your [things] look as if they are from the same universe, during the same time of day, with the same kind of mood. After three photos it’s bland, boring, and understood you have a preference.”

Can you say damn Cait? The statement was, in fact, true, but I certainly could not talk. My color palette is mainly bright, pop, and happy. In order to tell a story, I KNOW it is best told with color. And I failed myself this year. But I sure won’t next year.

***My Damn Tag

Okay, alright. Why is it well-established artists have their tag figured out? Even some who’s art style is so recognizable (I’m looking HEAVILY at you Gabriel Piccolo.) we know it’s theirs, seem to have a tag that suits them and works for them. But more importantly, they put it in A VERY DECENT SPOT. SOMEONE SHARE THIS SCIENCE WITH ME? CAUSE APPARENTLY I DON’T GET IT.

4) Three things you want to focus on trying.

*More backgrounds.

As much as it pains me, I need to improve on backgrounds and perspective. When I do make backgrounds, I’m told I make great pieces. That I should look into becoming a background artist. And don’t get me wrong, I like them. But I don’t like them.

I feel as though I need to improve in that region so that way I don’t feel as though it’s a weakness of mine. My backgrounds are nice, but they aren’t nice to my standards.

**More designs

I love character designs, but let’s be real. If you were to scroll down my site or my Instagram page, or even this Tumblr archive, could you tell?

I draw characters a lot sure, but none are designs. No process, no sheets, no turnarounds, none of that. So that’s a huge goal of mine for 2019.

***Scheduling posting

At one point I was pretty good at this. Live stream in Instagram and Twitter, cool. Videos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Cool. Everywhere gets a photo, everywhere gets a silly one-liner. Yay. I’m not leaving anything out.

Well by the end of this year that totally crumbled.

SO I want to try getting better at that thing there. Because having attempted this at the end of the year was cool, but it still wasn’t enough apparently.

5) Three positive things to tell yourself.

* You are an inspiration. That’s all you wanted to be in life, you did it. I’m proud of you.

**You didn’t kill yourself like you tried to; you opened up about it for once and used that pint up anger creatively. That is very hard to do, trust. I’m proud of you.

***You moved on, matured, and let it go. Even when the goddess inside you told you these peasants didn’t deserve your light, your friendship, your greatness. I’m proud of you.

I’m just proud of me for not snapping when I had every right to; not everything deserves a reaction.

6) Three negative things you want to leave for 2018.

*Comparisons

Oh boy. I am extremely guilty for this: I’ll compare myself to a well-known illustrator my age. I’ll compare myself to friends who are in the field having a blast and getting work; I’ll compare myself to friends who aren’t in the field and they struggle at getting work. I’ll compare myself to the kid I graduated high school with who is traveling the world, is able to eat, come home to his dog and relax because he doesn’t have tuition to pay. I’ll compare myself to these goddamn baby boomers who keep repeating “We didn’t have it hard, you’re just being stupid. Millennials aka our children deserve to starve. We’ll just put our faith in our grandchildren because screw the kids we raised and refuse to pay accordingly. $7 an hour worked in my day, they need to make it work now.” I’ll compare myself to fake people I created in my head and purposely made scenarios and wonder why I’m not like them, said creations I made because I was pretty low for ten minutes...

I just compare myself too much. To any damn body. It’s draining, obnoxious and most of all pointless. My new motto for next year is: “Unless it is helping you grow yourself, your brand, your spirituality, don’t do it.”

I’m not comparing my chapter two to someone’s chapter thirty-five. I’m not even comparing my chapter two to someone else’s chapter two. I need to stop doing that PERIOD! My journey is different, unique, and worth seeing through.

**Listening to negative others.

A couple of years ago, I lost a close friend around the time my aunt passed away. During this time I was hypersensitive to any and everything done or said; I also kept many walls up to hide my mourning. He caught the crossfire of all of that. I kept secrets from him I was too prideful of admitting and lashed out because of the emotional turmoil I kept suppressed. While in the midst of packing his things and leaving my life, he mentioned that I was a failure because I was unemployed and artistically speaking I hadn’t accomplished anything; that I would remain that way because that’s just the person I deserved to be. Now mind you, I graduated college that year; he was a flunk out. I changed my art style dramatically compared to when I started school to pass; he thought just posting crappy pictures of lukewarm sketches were equivalent. I started attempting trends and all he could do was copy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to bash my old friend. If he were to come back into my life and move on like nothing had happened I’d do the same. (With some limitations.)

It’s just while typing out this scenario, of our four-year friendship I can’t think of one nice thing/compliment/gesture he has said to me. That’s my problem.

I can be praised, admired, and look highly upon for years straight. But my problem is I let others negative thinking and comments marinate with me for a long while. Too long of a while.

Another example is my mother’s friend. (My mom has many friends that do this shit, but this one stung more.)

This friend always roots for me; treats me like a person, and encourages my artistic journey. I consider her family before my actual relatives.

We went over for some barbeque the family was having and I was ready. Black Hallmark Cookouts, laughing, good food, good music, shit talking others teams. She asked me a harmless question of when was I going to quit my day job. Seemed like nothing at first, until the added gest of what she continued with. “All I’m saying is you can’t do [your day job] forever. That will get old. If the art thing doesn’t work out next year what’s plan b?”

I’m not a calm person (usually). Normal Caitlin would have cursed her out and mentioned how just because she chose a job to settle and be miserable at for most of her life doesn’t mean I have to follow suit. But again, of all the nice encouraging things she has done, said, and showed, for a while, I couldn’t think of it.

So I pray I let go of this nasty behavior in 2018; it’s going to be hard but it is dire.

***Saying I’m Not Enough

Alright, now put the combination of the two above in a bowl and what do you get? A Caitlin who struggles in interviews and applying for jobs because I let comparisons and negative comments rule my thoughts. This stopped me from applying to jobs I would have been perfect for; internships that could have helped me; posting art online.

We (including me) have to stop thinking that in order to be an illustrator means we have to pass a certain threshold of struggle, success, and a huge number of followers. That isn’t the job description. NO JOB DESCRIPTION has ”must have at least 10K followers on Instagram or Twitter.” nOnE.

So we (including me) need to stop treating ourselves this way. Period.

7) Three things you’re looking forward to in 2019.

*Going to move conventions.

**Adding pieces to my portfolio to try again at job hunting.

***Becoming content with the fact that my current situation isn’t my permanent situation. Unless I laze around and make it so.

Alright, so this was basically me calling myself out on my noise. Lashing out my demons and putting it in writing what I want to accomplish. I hope this inspires you to write yours, even if you keep it private. I hope it guides you and maintains your vision.

I’ll see you in 2019

A new wave

Caitlin xx

#pensurfing #new years #new years resolution

0 notes

aliencrybby · 7 years

Photo

Anxiety got on top of me this weekend and it was the first time in a while for me experiencing that in a public space, so there’s a few misplaced feelings of shame/embarrassment to work through rn. But I’m also really pissed.

I was out for an old pal’s birthday in the area I spent my childhood in Australia, a nice old beachside place I now try to avoid like a plague apart from seeing school friends or going for swims.

I moved at age 7 from the Philippines, where my mother’s family live in pretty harsh circumstances - and my dad, by then a self made rich man, would visit on trips away from his other family in Hong Kong. That itself was a tricky one already, especially at the time, when ideas of white-centric nuclear families with firm gendered roles was being gleefully plugged into the social consciousness. In other words, post colonial ideas ruled my world and there was a lot in mine that didn’t add up. I don’t mean to imply those attitudes are gone by any means - but the visible conversations of dissent weren’t as accessible back then and plus I was a child.

So I came to this country off the back of a kidnapping threat (I couldn’t elaborate on that if I wanted, it’s strangely murky in my parents’ stories) with all kinds of jumbled ideas about class and race to add to the prevailing shitty attitudes about class and race of the time. Mama and I were plopped in the middle of an assimilation-loving, model minority myth-believing, proudly xenophobic area with no relatives and no friends, right as Pauline Hanson’s anti Asian ship was reaching full sail. I don’t know how my mother soldiered on like she did, but she did with softness in her spine as well as steel.

My dad was determined I go to a richy poo primary school. He thought it was the best education I could get and education is access— and I guess he thought I’d be able to form relationships that could help me work for that access. Due to a class intersect and in the rosy promise of early 90s globalisation, there was actually a bit of diversity at that school - and the idea that someone could be different to you and still be a real live human being wasn’t as much of a trippy, new thing there.

But there were still external factors everywhere. I remember a few times thinking how cool it would be to switch with whoever white girl in my class - just for an hour or two. I think I wanted to see how life treated you as one of them. It didn’t help I only really saw myself represented as a sidekick or an afterthought. Insidiously, I got the idea my only role was of comedic relief or antithesis to whatever bland mashup of cultures people presumed ‘Asian’ to be. I was one of the only non white or non white passing person at my high school - def in my year, apart from another SE Asian boy (he bailed in year 10 and we weren’t friends anyway, sad); a First Nations enrolled in the year below for a few terms and left soon after.

Sidenote, my mama did a fucking brill job in never letting me believe I was less. She never slut shamed or body shamed me, though culturally, a lot of titas made a Eurovision week special out of it, espesh at the time. But I always knew there was something about me that people saw as ‘less’. It took me ages to consciously realise it was my Asianness that was the subtracting factor, the thing that took points off me for full benefit of humanness. On top of regular teenage angst and hormonal identity crises, I couldn’t make sense of a lot of this shit, or didn’t want to think about because I didn’t know how.

My early twenties was a slow process of learning and unlearning and it got me angry. Becoming conscious is a raw hot stripping back of the mental skin you spent years putting on. Nothing changes but everything changes. And there was other stuff going on that got me slipping back into old habits, not dealing with how I was feeling properly, but ofc i didn’t know that at the time. It wasn’t always bad but that’s partly why it was so confusing. Lately I’ve been feeling like a fog is being lifted and some things have happened to allow for other things to take place. Things like healing.

Anyway back to this night - what’s been on my mind is that in a way it was part of a process. Nothing really happened. There was the usual white girls going out of their way to walk in my way. One white dude said some bs then aggressively called my friend and I aggressive. Standard. Esp with this particular friend, it’s like people can’t stand to just let us live when we’re together! But nothing out of the usual fuckery happened. No one was physically hurt, which is obviously a cute positive. But it’s always so much more insidious that way isn’t it. I wasn’t born in those parts, my earliest memories are from an ocean away from there. With the exception of the few babes who saw me properly and were my friends, that place never really welcomed me. Not without a caveat, not without proving proximity to whiteness, or more to the point, separation from non whiteness. Not without the cost of the balance. Maybe that was what shook me. I’ve been in that situation so many times, that situation is my goddamn life. I’ve moved around a bit since, some time in the inner city, now in a suburb with heaps of immigrant workers & real diversity - so I don’t go back to the beaches too much anymore. Mama moved too so there’s no home there for me. But it got me that I was back in the place I’d spent time growing up in and I was finding it completely unchanged when in so many ways I saw everything differently. It wasn’t like I expected anything else but at some point, it got to me. I don’t even know what happened, one second I was all ‘leggo peeps, let’s relocate upstairs’ and next thing coming outpour of my mouth is I need to engage in a SWIFT AND TIMELY BAIL and I’m crying. I know I was tired, severely underslept and anxieties kept peaking throughout the night. So rationality is not the game and delirium is. But it was more than that too. It was the sad but inevitable confirmation that I do - not - want - any - part - of that shit any longer. Ever.

I was v v lucky to have pals there that get it. I had my lil moment and they didn’t make me try to explain or drill me about it, just were supportive babes. ILY.

There’s always the assumption you’ll get backlash, that speaking on something will just compound everything and make things worse. Even if you’re literally just responding to something right in front of you. Isn’t that just calling a cunt a cunt? I get so sick of watching the glaze or unmistakable trace defiance flash in people’s eyes at having to hear about “racism” One More Time™, not understanding that it is every millisecond of people’s realities. Not a concept or a debate, our reality. It’s not hypothetical lives being affected, it’s actual real live people. When I hear people say ‘stop talking about it’, I would fucking LOVE to. We would all love to stop having to talk about it. Do something about it on your part so we can PLOISE.

————

#aliencrybby #racism #anxiety #social anxiety #woc #not your chinadoll #exhausted not exotic #wip #colonialism and race #fuck your shitty post colonial gaze #vent #daily dissent #resist! resist! resist!

1 note · View note

inktae · 7 years

Note

oh my god, there’s so much i’ve missed out and want to say to you. my exams (not final though, just counts for like a portion of 10% of my final grade;;) got finally over but there’s one more week of school until summer ;-; I heard that you too have a lot of stuff do as well like finals, and your paid internship (congrats~) all the best for finals (i.e. if it hasn’t happened yet or you’re in the midst of it) or I hope you did well if your finals are over. - (1/?)

it’s good that you’re taking a writing hiatus. You need rest (even though the hiatus is for your said finals and work) first of all, congratulations! FOR HITTING THAT 6,000 FOLLOWERS MARK!!!!!! Oh MY GOSH, the day you posted your first ever follow forever, was the day I was curious about how many followers you have considering the huge response your blog is getting

swear I got a bit teary eyed when I was reading it :’). I STARTED SCREAMING SILENTLY WHEN I SAW YOU MENTIONED ME omg i felt so honored that my little anonie messages made you happy. - (3/?)

Ahem ahem, how DARE YOU OFFEND ME WITH ASTRONOMER TAE;; astronomy is my passion and taehyung my love, JUST THE IDEA OF IT OFFENDS ME;; okay, first of all let me give you a standing ovation *claps cLAps* for writing such a well thought and balanced fic. Like I can’t imagine the amount of thought and time you put into creating such a great fic. That’s one of the reasons why you’re my favorite ff author of all time, like you put so much effort into making sure that the facts are right - (4/?)

and stuff I can’t really put into words but very much can appreciate (like ily in short, okay?) I loved jimin’s character in this I just don’t know why, like he had this really calming presence in this story and ahh~ squish squish everywhere. jin, oh my gosh, jin the amount of pain he had to go through from being rejected by his soulmate to having to run away from his family ;-; im not even going to talk about madscientisttae like im just ded y’all. - (5/?)

and omg now we dream apart was truly unique and wonderful. Honestly soul mate au’s are so versatile and im so in awe that you come up with a new idea turning your usual fic into something beautiful! “it is not your other half, but rather someone who reminds you that you are already whole” :’) wow that was so beautiful, like in most fics (not that im bashing them or anything) would say that your soulmate is your other half but someone who reminds that you’re already whole, idk but - (6/?)

I was so satisfied like that’s what a soulmate should be (in my pov).Im in the midst of reading below thunder shows and im loving every second of it. Sorry it got too long, the message that is. Im so so very excited for your upcoming projects like ot7; requiem of time when there;s so much potential for angst like sign me up! And OH MY LORD, KOE NO KATTACHI AU (+ fantasy aU) WITH JIMIN?! Im reading that manga and I swear its one of the most beautiful mangas - (7/?)

I have ever read in my entire life, like im in chapter 14 and I’ve cried like 4 times already ;-; im planning to watch the movie after I finish (or should I watch it then read the manga?) then, omg the sequel for blue notebooks!! summer just got bearable. Also also (sorry) don’t let the hate get to you. you don’t deserve this at all and I WILL PERSONALLY COME FROM DUBAI TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO DID such mean things and give them a wack in the head because they need it. Just forget about (8/?)

about them and focus on the positive things and the people who loves you (like me for instance xD) btw, tumblr made me wait for an hour before I could send any more messages - (8/8) n.

DUDE I SMILED SO MUCH READING THIS thank you for the asks and for taking the time to send me such a lovely, caring message ❤❤ I am still in the middle of exams and will be studying for a few more weeks still. but I made a studying schedule I’m finally comfortable with, so it’s all good! (I mean.. I am still the grumpiest I have ever been. you don’t want to see how much of an ogre I am during exams season lol). anyway, congrats on finishing your exams, even if they are only a 10%! that’s already a great accomplishment.

and thank you so much, I’m still thrilled that so many people support my works. pjiminnie was.. considerably bigger, but it took me this long to see that that doesn’t matter, as long as I’m happy with what I’m posting :)) and YES I had to mention you!! you are at the top of my mind when it comes to the most supportive followers I have ever had, so believe me when I say I’m genuinely grateful for you and your messages.

and omg you actually read away from the sun and now we dream apart!! thank you!! can you tell I’m very, very trash for soulmate aus LOL and it’s really fun to try and come up with something new every time. it’s like a little challenge. :)

I was going to keep the koe no katachi au strictly as a slice of life (zero magical elements) buuuut I came up with this really cool fantasy idea for it and goddamn it, I know it might sound weird to mix those two aus but I can only hope it turns out alright!! I never read the manga, I just stumbled upon the movie a while ago after seeing some gifs, and I only found out there was a manga after watching it. then again, I checked out the manga’s art afterwards and I can say that the animators did a great job with it, it looks so similar ^^

thank you for your support, I really hope you're okay and that you get to spend a great, relaxing summer! ahhh I seriously smiled so much with your messages so thank you for that hehe ❤

#messages #Anonymous

0 notes

theliterateape · 5 years

Text

Farewell to Chicago [1989–2019]

By Don Hall

Thirty years. Almost to the month. Like my ten years with the Chicago Public Schools (closer to nine), my decade in the public radio mines (shy by two months) and my five years hosting The Moth (just short by a month), I’ll round up and if that bothers you, consider yourself a pedant and kin to that fucker who corrects your grammar while in line at a CVS.

No one in Chicago knew a goddamned thing about me on April 7, 1989. I didn’t know anyone in Chicago that day as I drove my blue and grey 1984 Bronco II onto a crowded Lake Shore Drive in Friday afternoon rush hour. Having spent my years growing up jumping from place to place, new wasn’t intimidating but that traffic was something I had yet to encounter. Christ, it took me two days in Chicago to figure out that when other drivers were honking at you, they weren’t waving but flipping you off.

I had no clue on that day that I’d spend the next thirty years of my life in Chicago.

A recitation of accomplishments, jobs, marriages (three), personal and public wars, and lessons learned easy and hard wouldn’t do it justice. I might as well list the cash amounts paid out to rent and utilities. There are, however, moments that help sum up and define what became known as my Chicago.

1989

“Are you the new librarian?”

“No. I’m the music sub but they didn’t have a music position open so I’m being paid as the library sub.”

“Oh. Well, can you bring the book cart to my classroom at 10:45 anyway?”

“Sure.”

“By the way, you know you can’t sleep in your truck in the school parking lot, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. Got it.”

BIG FISH

1990

Marty DeMaat welcomes the Level One students to the Second City Training Program. I look around at the new faces and see Alida Vitas, whom I steamrolled through in our audition scene a few weeks ago. I wave “Hi” and she smiles. Joe Janes is there. He auditioned right after I did so he was in the room during mine. He seems slightly surprised to see me.

“Oh.” he says drily. “They let you in?”

Weeks later, he and I and a cast of other trainees concoct a sketch show entitled “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman” that we produce in Andersonville later in the year.

1991

“I can’t believe you’ve never had a Lincoln Breakfast,” he mused.

Carey Goldenberg, a Jewish Deadhead who had performed at Second City with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Dan Castelleneta and was now an eighth grade math teacher, sat down at the booth.

“Try the The Monitor Skillet Eggs.”

“Monitor?”

“Named after an Ironsides ship from the Civil War.”

“Oh. Weird.”

“So what’s the big number for the choir next week?”

“We’re doing a tribute to Journey.”

“And the kids dig it?”

“They love it. It’s all new to them. They think ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ was written with them in mind.”

“It kind of was.”

“Yup.”

“You aren't Going to Tell My Mom, are You?"

1992

Jeff Hoover, Joe Janes and I, sitting in the grass just behind the Chicago History Museum. Each of us have cigars and are smoking them.

Weeks earlier, Jeff and I saw “Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack” on Broadway and, in a slightly drunken haze, decided we could could probably do better.

“Let’s call Joe,” Hoover slurred, tipping his Modelo just enough to dribble some on his shoes.

In the grass, amidst the stinky clouds of barely smoked Romeo and Juliettas, the three of us decide to start our own theater company. Weeks later, we hold auditions in the Neo-Futurarium and cast Level 6, an ensemble of improvisers and sketch comedians with aspirations of something more.

Peculiar Journeys Ep. 28

1993

From the Chicago Reader when they reviewed shows every week, every show:

A MEAN WATUSI

Level 6 and Free Pickles

at Shay's

Only suckers and wimps do just one show at a time: that seems to be the spirit behind the two new revues being hosted by the comedy group Level 6, and for chutzpah alone they deserve credit. While running their straight improv show A Mean Watusi every Sunday night at Shay's bar, they've also put together a scripted show, Silence of the Frogs, a so-called "nonrevue of unimprovisation," which they perform Wednesday nights. Unfortunately, the young group's ambition has overreached their talents, and what might make a fresh 90-minute show has been inflated into two overlong evenings.

The group's biggest mistake is failing to isolate its real creative strength. In A Mean Watusi Level 6 shows what it does best with new twists on the standard improvisational games and some quick wit. While not all the scenes are winners, the group's good humor and high energy make the clunky moments easier to take.

SILENCE OF THE FROGS

Level 6

at Puszh Studios

In Silence of the Frogs, the creative limitations of Level 6 really begin to show. One would think the luxury of a script would prompt them to weed out some of the dross, but instead their material only seems worse. After an interesting introduction in which actor Don Hall plays a muted trumpet to an audio background of croaking frogs, the show screeches to a halt in the first scene.

Cliched dialogue, nondescript characters, and half-realized situations, the sketches end before anything really happens. To make things worse, Joe Janes's direction is so uncertain that the actors appear uncomfortable as they carry out silly stage business (such as when the workmen begin scrubbing an el platform, a spectacle I have never witnessed in all my years as a commuter).

The rest of the scripted material suffers from the same problems. The choppy structure and uneven quality of material give the revue a sluggish pace that is often hard to follow. While a lack of communication between people seems to be the vague thematic thread, it is never clearly outlined and comes across as a lazy afterthought. The show picks up, though, after Silence of the Frogs, when the group returns to do some improv.

In their press release, the group makes a revealing statement: "In Silence we're out to create good art. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining, it's just not our primary objective." Maybe they should abandon their pretensions and stick to what they're good at. At least in improvisation there's not enough time to think about making good art.

— Tim Sheridan

Government Cheesh

1994

Closing up the band room after teaching from 7:30am til 3:30pm and then having after school band until 5:00pm. One of my students, a drummer, helps put things away.

“What do you do after school, Mr. Hall?”

“Some nights I have shows with my theater company. Other nights I perform improv comedy with ComedySportz.”

“Ain’t you married?”

“I am.”

“Prolly not for long.”

✶

As one gets older it becomes more difficult to make friends. At least that’s been the case for me. In my experience, the friends whom I can say I’ve cemented a lifelong bond with have all come from making art together. Sure, many have come and gone in that theater immediacy of sort of falling in love with each other during the rehearsals and run of the show, the promises to keep in touch after the show closes, only to move on and be friendly acquaintances. Faceborg connections.

Chicago is one of those places in the world, like the bizarre tourist attractions that give power to Gaiman’s American Gods, that draws amazing artists to her embrace. I have met and worked with so many extraordinary humans within the gates of this town it boggles my mind to reflect upon the sheer number. Because art is a dramatic and contentious preoccupation, there are some whom the explosion of ideas and execution burned away from the raw electricity. The burning of those connections are always a bit sad but the celebration is of the creation.

One friendship that has remained intact and with the gravity of true family across my time in Chicago is that which I have with Joe Janes. He and I have been a part of so many artistic experiments — from the early days of Level 6 to the producing of his first full-length play to the spectacle of putting up all 365 sketches he wrote in a year — despite some dark patches and irreconcilable differences along our nearly thirty years, he is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had. I hope I can convince him to move to Vegas but even if I don’t I will always consider him the best of friends (not to mention one of the kindest humans I’ve ever run across from and the Spock to my Kirk.)

✶

1995

We held a yard sale. We sold bars of chocolate. I managed to snag us an Air Canada sponsorship for ridiculously cheap flights and booked a 17 room three-flat just minutes from the Fringe Central ticket center for around $50.00 per person for the month.

“The Armageddon Radio Hour” and ComedySportz. 26 shows in the month of the largest theater and arts festival in the world. While Chicago roasted that summer, the gang of WNEP Theater performed and saw more awesome, bizarre, experimental stagecraft than we could’ve imagined. We stole so many of those ideas and employed them back in Chicago it is no exaggeration to say that a month at the Edinburgh Fringe is better than a theater degree.

All Sandwiches Matter

1996

Joe Bill (of the Annoyance Theater) and I sit in the court room, waiting for my name to be called. We were there because a few months prior, in an act of guerrilla marketing, I instigated the fly posting of thousands of ‘teaser posters’ for the newest WNEP play and wasn’t smart enough to realize that once we put up the real posters, we’d get busted by the city.

For a few weeks in our little circle of artists and theatergoers, the question was “What the fuck is ‘Metaluna’?” Posters featuring the word and a photo of Sigmund Freud in a slip were plastered everywhere. I had multiple conversations about the mystery always with a smirk in my brain because we were in rehearsals for this ridiculous, massive show that made no sense spawned from the cracked mind of Joe Janes and directed by the equally off-balance Bob Wilson.

Five stages. Two constructed fat suits. Expanding arms. Muttonchops. A theremin. DADA poetry on vaudeville stages. Giant circus-like posters painted by Kevin Colby. It was the most ambitious show we had created to date and caught the eye of Jen Ellison, who after seeing the show, decided she wanted to be the artistic director of the company responsible.

The city fined us $20.00 but warned that they could’ve fined us $10,000. It was not the last time we would come into contention with Chicago but it was definitely the lightest sentence.

In Nonsense Is Strength

1997

Mr. Jose Barrias was the beginning of a trend.

Hired by Sharon Hayes to come in and teach music at District One Middle School, my predominant skill she prized was my tendency to bend both the rules and the expectations placed upon the role of music teacher.

My classroom had no desks or chairs. We had rugs and pillows. We didn’t spend any time learning to play plastic recorders. We listened to and discussed music and musicians and read from my college music history text. I had the HOT ROOM across the hall. I had a wall of gum that the students (not supposed to chew gum in school but did anyway) would add to every day.

In 1996, Sharon left. Barrias was hired. Jose did not appreciate my less than orthodox approach and, while he did his best to get me to follow a more traditional protocol, it didn’t take.

A year later, my teaching career was over. The trend was set — get hired to shake things up creatively, person who hires me leaves, bureaucrat comes in who wants a by-the-book approach, I stay a year longer than I should then split.

Did I Say Hot Room?

1998

“I think I want a divorce. We’ve been this for a while since college and I’m pretty sure you hate Chicago and I love it and we’re both kind of miserable.”

“That’s what my grandma said marriage was.”

“Seriously? I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll probably get a bachelor apartment in a crummy neighborhood, jump right back into another relationship, get marginally suicidal but mom will talk me through it. The theater company will kind of blow up because I’ll spend too much time drinking because the idea of being divorced is a bit intense for me and I’ll be a total fuckwad. We’ll do some shows but I’ll be mailing it in for the most part. It’ll cause a huge rift between Joe and I but we’ll repair it a while later. How about you?”

“I’ll get the fuck out of Chicago, move back to Texas, get remarried, he’ll die a year later but then I’ll meet the man of my dreams, we’ll get married and have two children. Oh, and I’m keeping both the dog and the cat. You can see them on Facebook in ten years.”

1999

FOR WNEP, IT'S `APOCALYPSE' NOT YET

THE FOUR HORSEMEN ARE READY TO RIDE

It was always about Keith Whipple. Sure, we had a massive cast and spent more money on this ridiculous, ambitious monstrosity. Twenty-five working televisions, five VCRs connected, amazing costumes, and a dark satire on Christianity. Cathleen Carr, one of our producers, broke her pelvis during load-in. Joe Kaplan built a set that could actually withstand the apocalypse.

Whipple, however, stood out on Lincoln Avenue before every show improvising riffs on Revelations with a megaphone to an unsuspecting pedestrian audience before crashing the start of the play. He endured eggs thrown at him, physical threats, and the police called on him. And he never once flagged or complained.

✶

The wonderful cesspool that is Chicago holds a special place for the transplant. Sure, there are the diehard Chicago natives, stuck in their neighborhoods and allegiance to their high schools and local digs, but the transplant has this wide open space to navigate. Chicago has been a magical playground, like a hardcore Midwestern Disneyworld with different “lands” to go to and experiment within.

I was always the new kid in school because we moved around a lot. As much as anything else, it is this foundation upon which my many career moves were made while surfing across Lake Michigan’s shores.

Public school music teacher. Off Loop Theater Producer, Director, And Actor. Improvisational Comedian. Playwright. Improv Coach and Teacher. Venue Manager and Landlord. Retail Tobacconist. Massage School Facilities Manager. Public Radio Events Director. NPR House Manager. StorySlam Host. Digital Publisher and Writer. Independent Events Consultant & Producer. Front of House Manager of Millennium Park.

Only in Chicago could I bounce around so sporadically, learning from each experience and growing in my skills. Only in Chicago could I have that many shifts in vocation without adding “Unemployment” or McDonald’s to my resume.

✶

2000

She was both excited and incredulous.

“You signed a lease on a theater?”

“I did. It was about time we had our own clubhouse.”

“Can we afford it?”

“We have to. I mean, we don’t really have a choice now.”

“How much is in the company bank account right now?”

“$18.00.”

“…”

2001

I woke up late. Jen was in the front room. She was crying. I came in and she was staring at the TV. The footage was live and it was off a disaster of some sort in New York. As I sat next to her, neither of us spoke. We sat like that for almost an hour as the non-stop feed kept informing us of the attack.

Later that day, she and I went shopping for props for her one-woman show that was in tech rehearsals. We went to a vintage toy store on Broadway. The streets were mostly deserted.

Later, I started getting emails and phone calls from the cast and crew of “Lives of the Monster Dogs” and “Soiree DADA.” We were scheduled to open the Monster Dog play on September 12. We had a DADA show that night. What were we going to do? Should we cancel the DADA? Should we postpone the play?

Jen was of no help. So I decided. I sent out an email to everyone in the theater company. If people felt strongly enough that they couldn’t perform, that was fine but we would do the shows despite the attack. We would do what we do. We would entertain as best we could.

I’ll never forget Bob Wilson, in full DADA costume, reading the ending monologue from The Armageddon Radio Hour and sending chills throughout the room.

2002

I lived across the street from our theater which meant I was on call whenever any one of the thirteen shows per week was running

A random Friday night. A midnight show by a renting organization. I’m in the back, watching to make sure everything is copacetic. I notice a guy, solo, in the back row. He’s jerking himself off. No one else in the audience or onstage is the wiser.

“Yo. You get two choices, bub. Unclench your pud and quietly get the fuck out of my theater or continue to choke it as I drag your ass out of here by your hair. Choose now.”

Just a day in the life.

Nothing is Sacred. Not Even You

2003

I was upstairs when I got the call. The DoR was downstairs. They wanted to see our Public Place of Amusement license. “It’s on the wall. In the nice frame.” Three minutes later, the phone rang again. There was a problem. I threw on my pants and came downstairs.

The next morning, the Sun-Times ran a short story about the DoR sweep of six or seven small, Off Loop theaters that had been shut down due to licensing violations. We were among the list. Adding insult to injury, our theater was saddled with the only full paragraph and quote, saying that our license had been forged. I called to see what they were talking about. I called my landlords who didn’t return my calls. I called the League of Chicago Theaters and was told they couldn’t help us because it was reported that we — I — had forged the license.

Outside, there was a huge red sticker on our place — CEASE AND DESIST. We were being shuttered. I spoke to an attorney and was cautioned about what I might say to the press. “Don’t piss these people off. Play nice.” I was told. So when I was interviewed for the Reader, I played nice. When I was interviewed on WBEZ, I played nice. I’m not particularly good at playing nice, at watching what I say. And it made me seem guilty. The expectation of those around me was that I wouldn’t sit still for this. That, if I were in the right, I would tear off my shirt, march down to City Hall and raise bloody fucking hell. A natural born brawler, I tried to dance the political Foxtrot.

Three of my best friends — who had stood up with me at my wedding — became convinced that I had, indeed, forged the license. That, while they were performing shows, I was out in a back alley, selling forged documents to strangers using Photoshop and a color printer so kids could get into bars and underage girls could get abortions. They started working with the landlords to transfer the lease to a member of our Board who was ALSO a member of a theater company that had also been shut down.

My books were audited. Every dime, every receipt. It was concluded that everything was kosher — that there was no malfeasance. In fact, it was this audit that uncovered the fact that I had “donated” over $35,000 of my own money over three years to keep the place afloat. But, said my friends, I was pretty clever and could have figured out how to cook the books ahead of time. In the span of a month, I had gone from the guy who made sure the stage was painted and the lights worked to a criminal mastermind. It was like Kafka.

At a meeting of the majority of the 48 members and associates of the theater, I broke down in tears. I felt trapped and maligned. The tears were hot and angry and impotent. I was failing on an epic scale and could not find a way to make things right. The Three Groomsmen had successfully negotiated the transfer of the lease to the other theater behind my back; it was up to us whether or not we wanted to try to fight it out. We didn’t because I didn’t.

Getting Up the Eighth Time

2004

From the New York Times (top of fold on the cover of the Arts Section in the print version):

“John Huston's ''Let There Be Light'' (1946), a meticulously shot government-sponsored documentary that presented psychiatrists curing World War II veterans of mental ailments with such absurd quickness that many suspected it was rehearsed, now appears like more of a piece of propaganda for Freudian psychoanalysis than for the United States military.

Jen Ellison and Dave Stinton's adaptation of this fascinating movie, which was banned by the United States for over three decades, is one of the most curious shows in this year's fringe festival. It's a staged version of a documentary that may have been staged itself. Instead of commenting on or contextualizing the material, the creators of the play, which concentrates on four of the soldiers, play the material as straight as if it were a kitchen-sink drama. While the style can be stiff, the sensitive actors playing the soldiers -- Peter James Zielinski, Peter De Giglio, Chad Reinhart and James Yeater -- manage to tease emotional depth and nuance out of their thinly drawn parts.

Still, the show's optimism about the government's treatment of its veterans is jarring, especially when compared with more cynical recent moves like ''Born on the Fourth of July'' or ''The Manchurian Candidate.'' It's almost comic when Cpl. Joe Hardy (Mr. Reinhart) regains the feeling in his legs after a few moments of hypnosis.

Ms. Ellison and Mr. Stinson seem to acknowledge this anachronism in their one major departure from the film -- Mr. Zielinski's sensitive and beautifully realized portrayal of a depressed grunt who never recovers from an unspecified psychological sickness. He adds a dour tone to the drama, reminding us that the talking cure has its limitations.”

2005

One fall day, I substitute taught at a school in Humboldt Park. It is a neighborhood filled with culture and vibrancy but is one of those in Chicago left mostly out of the resources loop but I discovered that I am, as a teacher at least, at my absolute best when working in the classic "troubled inner-city school" filled with kids who America has chosen to leave behind.

I bopped around the school in the early morning, providing prep periods for fourth and sixth grade teachers - strictly high priced babysitting. Then I landed in Room 102. Seventh Grade Science. For the rest of the day.

Most teachers I know fear nothing more than seventh and eighth grade. The kids are just swimming in the chemical dump of their overloaded hormones and their emotions and bodies are careening at a breakneck pace without the experience to guide it away from the fourth turn wall. I love this age. They crack me up; every time I work with them I have new stories to tell and feel like I successfully navigated a rudderless boat through the most violent of storms and lived to tell about it. (Jesus - a NASCAR metaphor and a sailing metaphor in one paragraph - what you got to say to me now, motherfucker?)

The day was interesting. I had enough time during the day to talk to a couple of the teachers, all of whom looked tired and stretched a bit too thin and who spoke in the slow, hushed tones of the shellshocked. They told me of the gentrification on either side of the local neighborhood and the resulting dramatic rise in drug dealers and gangs in their school over the past few years. They quietly railed against the sense of entitlement their students were trained to have in an environment that dictates that teachers could not punish children in nearly any way whatsoever for increasingly violent behavior - the idea that flunking, suspending, or holding back a kid who has no perceived use for school in the first place is like fighting a wooly mammoth with a loaf of bread. While the kids were away, they would talk with a worn but slightly amused look on their faces which immediately hardened into a disgusted scowl as soon as any kid appeared.

Excerpts of my day include:

"I forgot to tell you," I gleefully stopped the class in the mid-riot of getting prepared to switch classes. "Look at this look on my face." I deadpanned. "It says 'I don't care.' You say you absolutely have. to go to the washroom or you'll die and you must have your friend with you? 'I don't care.' Your friend jabbed you in the eye and you can't see? 'I don't care.' Your teacher said that you sit in the corner with six others while 'doing your science' together? 'I don't care.'" "You say you need to KNOW something or are looking to LEARN something? Then I care."

"Mr. Hall, why are you so happy?" "Because teaching you guys is like a day at the zoo! And who doesn't like the zoo?"

"Pardon me. (a beat) Excuse me. (a beat) I need your attention! (a beat) I don't want to yell over you, folks. (a beat) Excuse me! (a beat) GOOD GOD - THE SKY! LOOK AT THE SKY!! OK, listen up really quickly -" "Mr. Hall - you're weird."

At one point, I run into Antoine. Antoine is a 15-year old, six-foot-three inch, drug dealer's son. He is a huge white kid who somewhere along the line decided he would mimic a stereotyped black kid. He is in the behavior disorder class and, according to his teachers, pretty much has the run of the school. He is what most teachers know to be a hopeless case - no pragmatic use for education, no respect for any adults except those that can pummel him, and the realization that nothing, absolutely nothing can be done to him until he's eighteen.

He came in during a class switch and was chatting up one of the girls. I had no idea he wasn't supposed to be there and was actually mystified that he simply would not shut up for me (I'm actually pretty good at that sort of thing). He literally acted as if I wasn't there. After ten minutes of attempting to explain the science lesson (Matter, Mass, Volume, and Density), he gets up and makes for the door. I intercept.

"Where are you going, Antoine?"

"This ain't my class."

"Then why have you been here for ten minutes?"

"Ah bumbbges digghuff chaetky mumblemumblemumble...."

"What?"

"Nothin. Get out my way."

"How about we wait for the security guard to swing by and take you to the class you're supposed to be in - I don't get a thrill at the prospect of you roaming the hall freely."

"What?" He tries to shove me out of the way of the door, getting right up in my face. "Don't you lay your hands on me!"

This is a trick. Antoine knows that this is the phrase that freezes the blood in most teachers' hearts. In a time where parents file lawsuits against teachers for failing grades, the stigma attached to a corporal punishment charge is career suicide.

"I didn't lay a hand on you, Antoine. In fact, it was you who laid your hands on me. We now have two choices." I get quiet enough for only Antoine to hear. "We can wait for the guard to come by and pick you up and escort you out of here so I can teach some seventh grade science. Or. I'm gonna beat the crap out of you and then have you arrested for assault. Make your choice."

His face reflects a number of conflicting emotions and finally he flashes a shit-eating grin and asks, "We cool. right?"

It turns out that the kids don't really care much for Antoine. They're afraid of him. The teachers are, too. I think it's a shame that things have come to this - it's only October. The atmosphere for the rest of the day slows down to a mere category 2 hurricane and the day breezes by.

✶

In thirty years, I’ve lived in a lot of the neighborhoods in the city. Again, in the laundry list version:

Edgewater Rogers Park Bridgeport Lakeview Avondale Northcenter Portage Park Bucktown Uptown Wicker Park

Every neighborhood has its own flavor and people and businesses. The cornucopia of experiences based entirely upon your immediate surroundings is extraordinary. All of it connected by the train (and busses if you go to where their are fewer rich, white people...)

The best part? Local businesses. My guess is that Vegas will be populated more with chain restaurants, bookstores, etc. It is the local dives and boutiques and coffee shops that make Chicago one of the most amazing places on Earth.

My Chicago is:

The Lincoln Restaurant Haymarket Pub & Brewery The Green Mill The Metro Chicago Comix The Athenaeum Old Town Tobacco Bang Bang Pies The Red Lion Victory Gardens Theater at The Biograph Quenchers The NeoFuturarium G Man Tavern Smoke BBQ The Chopin Theatre Pequod’s Pizza Easy Bar Uncharted Books The Music Box Theatre Empty Bottle Lem’s BBQ Dollop Coffee Black Dog Gelato

Sure there are more but I’m old and can’t remember everything. Calm down.

✶

2006

“Did you hear that Hall kicked Bernie Sahlins out of the Athenaeum lobby last night?”

“What? Why?”

“One of his Chicago Improv Festival stage managers pulled the lights on some Los Angeles group because they were going way over time and Sahlins lost it. Found Don and tried to dress him down in front of a crowd getting tickets. Hall stood by his stage manager and Bernie was not having that. Finally, he snapped an told him to get his old motherfucking ass out of the theater.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, Pitts got heavy pressure from Second City so he had to fire Don.”

“He’s been with CIF for, what, five years?”

“Not any more.”

2007

“Can I ask you a question I’m not legally supposed to ask? You seem like you’d be alright with it but I want to check.”

“Shoot.”

“You’re twenty years older than every other applicant for this job. Why do you want it?”

I laugh. “First, I like Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!” Second, I like NPR and WBEZ. Third, if I do a great job house managing for peanuts, maybe you decide to offer me a full time gig.”

Four months later, he offered the full time gig.

2008

“Are you Jackie’s son? She’s right. You got fat.”

Betrayal in Tornado Alley

2009

Monday morning at WBEZ. Eighteen voicemails. Not so many until you understand that the outgoing message specifically instructs people to NOT leave voice messages and that these eighteen recordings were from the same person.

“Hello! My name is [REDACTED] and I’m here to see “Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!” I have a ticket and I’m at the Chase Bank but I can’t find the auditorium. Can someone call me back?” - “Hello. [REDACTED] again. I’m wandering around the bank and no one seems to know where the show is being taped. Please call me back. I don’t want to miss a minute!” - “I’m in my car right now and I can hear that you’ve started the show! Where am I supposed to go? There are no signs and nothing on the ticket page. Where are you?” - “Goddamn it! I can HEAR THE SHOW RIGHT NOW! LISTEN! Someone needs to call me right the fuck now or I’m going to lose it!”

This went on for an hour, all the way up to voicemail number seventeen which was apoplectic. Voicemail number eighteen was the next day, Sunday.

“Hello. This [REDACTED] and I am so sorry I left all of those messages. Oh my. I’m so embarrassed. My husband pointed out to me that the ticket to your show was for Thursday night, not Saturday morning. I’m so used to hearing it on Saturday, I thought... Well, you can guess what I thought. Please accept my apologies.”

I called her back and gave her tickets to the following Thursday. VIP. But only if I could tell the story.

2010

For part of 2008 and all of 2009, Jen worked with a team of nineteen writers on a project that involved them writing short one-act plays or scenes inspired by the artwork of Edward Hopper.

Following the divorce and her resignation from WNEP Theater, these writers came at me.

“Are we going to do anything with these pieces or was it all just wasted time?”

So I hunkered down, stitched together 24 scenes to create a ridiculously huge theater piece, cast 18 actors, 4 understudies, booked the Storefront Theater on Randolph Street, and hired a few brilliant designers

It was the last show I produced for WNEP. It was the last theater piece I directed for WNEP. Unbeknownst to me, included in the sold out run’s audience were Jen and her new husband, Lois Weisberg, the acting Chairs of the MCA, The Art Institute and the Driehaus Museum, and a woman who hadn’t been in Chicago for very long but heard about the show and came with a friend. This mystery woman also went to the play’s off-night series and reconnected with her college roommate, Scott Whitehair.

Four years later, I’d marry her in Las Vegas.

2011

“There’s no electricity in this warehouse.”

“What? It’s 4:30am. Why are you calling me?”

“The warehouse where I’m supposed to set up the movies, the spoken word, the B-Boy/B-Girl Dance Battles? I have no electricity and the door between spaces is welded shut.”

“The Block Party starts at noon. It’s 20 below zero. What are you going to do?”

“I suppose I’ll find an old breaker box that seems to still be connected to juice and try to hotwire it. I’ll electrocute myself the first time and my fingers will turn black from it. The second try will knock me unconscious for around seven minutes and make my mouth taste like pennies. The third time — because I’m both tenacious and stupid — will work. Though later tonight when I get home, my feet will be bizarrely bruised and look like dark purple beets with toes.”

“Oh. Good plan.”

“Breeze?”

“Yeah?”

“WBEZ doesn’t pay me enough.”

2012

“Your story was amazing. We loved it. We wanted to know if you were interested in hosting the story slam at Haymarket?”

“Hosting? Why not have Tyler do it?”

“He’s the producer. We love him but he’s not really host material.”

“Yeah. OK. Sounds good.”

The back room at the Haymarket Pub & Brewery is packed to the point that people are sitting on the floor. Tyler introduces me with platitudes about being the House Manager for WWDTM — it’s a touchpoint the largely NPR crowd can cheer.

“According to the legend, The American feud begin over notches on the ears of a hog Exchanges of retribution from this humiliating start Gaining traction to equal the obsession of two warring families

The thirst for vengeance, once fomented Is unquenchable, irresistible, all-consuming The Klingons say revenge is a dish best served cold But most of the meal involves the heat of righteous anger.

Someone became stridently political Someone else cheated with your boyfriend Yet another spread rumors about you There is no end to the razor-sharp slights you have endured. Time slipping through your fingers, wasted on rage That thing that got the revenge ball rolling Lost in a cacophony of calls for justice and "It's not right"

Revealed to be, in the end, nothing more than notches on a hog's ear.

Tonight’s theme is GRUDGE. Welcome to The Moth!

Like a Burning Moth Without a Clue as to How He Caught on Fire: A Collection of Word Jazz

Of The Seven, Americans Suffer Sloth More Than the Other Six

✶

The act of reflection upon a thirty year period forces perspective. In writing this, one of the choices to make has been to determine which moments are worth hanging onto and which ones are better left erased. Sure, these erased moments are still visible but like a heavily used white board, the remnants of the words are almost scrubbed off, slightly visible but unimportant.

The odd, highly passionate fights that occurred are not limited to one or two years but peppered throughout like scars that look like faces if you squint. The betrayals are lower in volume, a tune you remember from way back when but can’t quite recall the lyrics. The specifics and details behind divorces and other failed relationships might be juicy in that Buzzfeed sort of view but aren’t truly relevant.

I scaled a mountain and, during the journey, broke few bones, got hypothermia, and lost some of my equipment but no one wants to hear the tale of those things but rather the feeling of epic transformation that such a path includes. I’ll not use my platform for therapy, gang.

I know people who tend to stare back into the rear view mirror and wax nostalgic as if the best times (or worst) are behind them. I am not one of those people. What’s past informs the navigation but does not determine the destination. I have very few regrets and I think that’s the best way to live.

✶

2013

“You were involved with the Global Activism Expo?”

“Yeah. I produced it.”

“The 5K Fun Run with Peter Sagal?”

“Produced it.”

“The Chicago Chef Battle at Kendall College? The WBEZ Day of Service? The Winter Block Party for Chicago’s Hip Hop Arts? The Year in Review at Park West? The Sound Opinions Summer BBQ?”

“Produced them all.”

“Did you have a favorite?”

“Oh yeah. The Richard Steele Holiday Party at House of Blues with featured performers Billy Bragg and the Sons of the Blues. That was seriously one of the highlights of the year.”

2014

“Hey. How about you shut the fuck up?”

Three dates later.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

How to Jump Out of a Plane and Survive

2015

Along the road, there was General Admission. It was a WBEZ podcast co-hosted by my Events Assistant and myself. We interviewed local artists as well as a handful of national talents (including Kate Mulgrew, Steven Yuen, Taylor Mac, and, of course, Henry Rollins.) A true highlight of 2015 was getting to sit down with a personal hero of mine, Chuck Palahniuk, and ask him questions. The interviews for these are long since deleted but the memories remain.

Half a Century

2016

A meeting at the bar below my apartment. Commiseration over the online trolling I’d endured from unfriending a psychopath and her army of aggrieved idiots. A pitch — how about an online magazine? Something cool and interesting and featuring all kinds off writing? Something that Himmel could sink his own Angry White Guy voice into like a fetid beef sandwich with so much mustard it covered up the gristle and the rot?

“Well, I’ve recently updated my 10-year blog (Angry White Guy in Chicago) to something less Trump-centric sounding. I’m calling it Literate Ape. Whaddya think?”

“Sounds perfect.”

2017

“In the nearly five years I've hosted The Moth (58 regular slams, 8 Grand slams and nearly 700 stories in that time) I've had a real ball.

I started every single slam with the admonition that while we are each snowflakes, unique in every way with our individual crystalline natures, we are all just made of fucking snow. With the onslaught of identity politics and partisan bickering, I hope that is something people remember.

I closed every single slam with a quote: "If you want to change the world, have a meal with someone who doesn't look like you." - Chef Coco Winbush.”

Farewell to The Moth

”In parting ways, I can say that my decade working for WBEZ, Vocalo, and especially NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! was thrilling, challenging, inspiring and worth every moment. I got to watch Obama's first speech as president on multiple televisions in a bona fide newsroom. I got to meet Michael Moore, Denis Leary, speak to Bill Clinton and hang out with Tom Hanks. I produced events for as many as 5,000 people (as well as had a hand in producing a record-breaking performance of WWDTM at Millennium Park for 17,000 people). I produced events at the House of Blues, Victory Gardens, Adler Planetarium, Metro Chicago, City Winery, Chicago History Museum, Chopin Theater and hundreds of other excellent venues.

I was there to assist in orchestrating the 10th Anniversary of WWDTM at Adler Planetarium. I was there for Carl Kassell's final show in D.C. I directed Ira Glass, Scott Simon and Peter Sagal in a gala performance. I have been privileged to work with Bill Kurtis. I got to throw Richard Steele and Claude Cunningham their retirement parties. Winter Block Parties with YCA, New Year's Eve Parties with The Moth, Pi Day, the brilliant town hall meetings for the Race Out Loud series. Jim and Greg of Sound Opinionswith Frankie Knuckles on the MCA stage. Drive-In movies in West Chicago. 5K Runs with Peter Sagal. Running front of house for WWDTM with Kate Kinser by my side almost every single night. Laughing and planning things with the amazing Vanessa Harris.

The list of amazing experiences and incredible people is a bit mind-boggling in hindsight. And Good Christ, the Pledge Drives..“

Farewell to the Public Radio Mines

2018

“In the park, there is only one we, the collective patronage of the thousands of multicultural Homo sapiens gathered to hear an orchestra or a jazz ensemble or the blues or a rock band. It is a larger and more lovely we and, therefore, a stronger foundation from which to find solutions to the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to society.”

All the World’s a Stage and Identity is Just Another Costume

“"Tiffany to Don."

The terrible analogue radio crackles in my left ear.

"This is Don. Go."

I'm on the southwest end of the park. It's hot. Really hot. Hot enough that one begins to question the sanity of standing out here, wearing all black, amidst 11,000 people listening to a world-class orchestra play Tchaikovsky. Tiffany is one of my 50 ushers. She has encountered an older couple who came out to the park to hear the music yet hadn't really thought through the difficulties of being post-70 years of age in heat that can only be described as Global Warming Hot as Balls HOT. The gentlemen is so overheated that he can no longer walk. They need a wheelchair.

"Copy that. I'm on my way."

I walk quickly to the Welcome Center on Randolph, check out a wheelchair, then navigate the unwieldy thing through throngs of casual walkers around to the east side of the the stage. It takes me around eight minutes and I'm sweating like I'd been in the volcano room at King Spa. The old man sits in the chair after navigating the fear of just falling on his ass while sitting down. They need to go to their car in the parking garage.

Tiffany shrugs. "I don't drive. I don't know the parking garage."

"I got it," I say with a forced smile.

I wheel the man and his wife through the bowels of the building. We get to the elevator and they can't quite remember what floor they parked on. They left their ticket in the car. We sit for a moment, as the garage is huge and the prospect of finding their vehicle with no concept of even what floor (of the seven levels) it is on is an impossible task.

"It's on three." "How sure are you?" "I'm pretty sure it's on three."

We go to three. No idea what section (3A? 3B? 3C? Jesus Christ…) they give me a description of the car and a license plate number and we set out through each aisle, each row, looking for the car. Thirty-five minutes later — with frequent radio calls for assistance that I direct while seeking an end to the labyrinthian journey I'm on — I spy their ride. They are relieved and thrilled. So am I.

The wife wants to tip me and offers me a dollar. I politely decline and send them on their way. I return just as the concert ends and just in time to set up the two recycling bins in the arcade for the ushers to dispose of the now outdated programs leftover from the weekend.”

Managing a House for 50,000 People

2019

Seven weeks. 2019 in Chicago has been spent doing side gigs, hanging out with people who have meant something to me in the past thirty years, and driving to old neighborhoods and reflecting upon the time here.

My last night in Chicago is spent on the Haymarket Pub & Brewery stage doing BUGHOUSE! And drinking myself stupid on Mathias Ale.

✶

And that, as they say, is that.

If you made it all the way down to this sentence and clicked enough half of the links, I applaud you. Writing this freaking tome took me most of the final seven weeks and occupied more of my brain space than most things I can recall. I’ve spent the entirety of my adult life in Chicago, a feat that I could never have predicted in 1989.

Chicago has shaped me, taking the doughy calzone that crashed upon the shores of Lake Michigan and baking me until I was a golden brown with tons of gooey melted cheese and some questionable meat product. While not born here, I can and do call myself a native. A Chicagoan.

Certainly, I won’t miss the weather — I’m quite certain there is no such thing as dibs or a viable need for shoveling and salting your walk in Las Vegas. There will be things I will be happy to shed my daily grind of: the incredibly high cost of living, the taxes, the corrupt government, the fucking parking issues, the baked-in tribal mentality of neighborhood cultures, the extreme segregation, the crap school system. Dana and I are riding the crest of a wave of deserters as Chicago continues to bleed residents like she goes through restaurants.

I will, however, miss the grit of the people. I’ll miss the almost blissfully ignorant pride in the city. I’ll miss the transit system that binds us together like arteries and the theater and spoken word scene that blossoms even under the auspices of the interminable social justice rage profiteers. I’ll miss my friends especially those who have stood by through good times and harsh times and, while always challenging me, never gave up on me either. Just like the city.

There is so much I did not include in this Dear John letter it’s hard to fathom but that’s the nature of something like this. Plenty left out but always stuck to me.

Just like the city.

#thirty years #Farewell to Chicago #memories

0 notes