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anotherhystericalqueen · 4 years

Text

As Easy as Breathing III

Modern!AU Brian May x OC

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: None

A/N: Part III is here! Please let me know what you guys think, any and all feedback is appreciated. Also a big thanks to @spacedustmazzello for being awesome and a huge help with my writing💕

Part I Part II

Josie woke up early to her alarm going off the next morning. She grabbed her phone and hit the snooze, but that didn’t last long when she saw the text messages and social media notifications flooding her screen.

Brian: Hey, is everything okay?

Brian: You ran off pretty fast last night, is everything alright?

Brain: Josie? I’m getting worried. Please text me back

Roggie: Hey, we didn’t get back until super late so I’m coming in later in the morning. Can we talk later? I promise it isn’t about you and Brian.

John: Want to hang out later? I’ll be at the shop all day with Rog or Freddie if you want to do something.

Brian: I’m stopping by Rag Trade later to drop off my stuff from last night. Are you working today?

Instagram- you were tagged in a post by @Queenmusicofficial

Josie responded to John first. “Yea I’m opening today so I’ll be at the shop until 3-ish so come by the shop whenever. I’m working on a project for Freddie so we can do something afterwards.”

She didn’t check to see if he responded or look at any of the other texts before crawling out of bed and shrugging on her bathrobe. She snuck into the shared bathroom between her and Roger’s bedrooms and fell right into her morning routine.

After a quick but warm shower, some light makeup, and spending 20 minutes trying to find an outfit that met her standards, Josie grabbed her phone and shoulder bag from the end of her bed. The bag was a lot heavier than it usually was as she threw it over her shoulder, and it moved a lot more than a bag should have. Josie flipped open the bag to reveal an orange and white kitten curled up inside, his big green eyes staring up at his owner.

“Chippey,” Josie sighed and picked him up with one hand. “What are you doing in there? You know I can’t take you with me to work.”

The kitten meowed back at her as she placed him back on the floor. He began weaving in between her legs as she walked out to the kitchen area. Chip continued to persistently meow as she pulled up his food bowl along with Delilah and Miko’s and fished through the cabinet below for the cat food. All three cats meowed loudly and rubbed themselves up against her until their food bowls were full and their water was refreshed.

Josie poured herself a bowl of cereal for breakfast so she at least had something to eat before her shift and scrolled through her Instagram, checking the post she was tagged in.

It was a set of photos of the band performing onstage and hanging out backstage before the show. The front one was of the band and Josie in the backstage dressing room before the show, posing for the camera with bright smiles on their faces. She began to think back on what happened after that picture was taken, but was soon pulled out of her thoughts to see Roger standing in the kitchen, digging the kettle out from the top cupboard and filling it with water.

“Morning.” Josie piped up. “Sorry if I was too loud, I didn't mean to wake you.”

The drummer shrugged, grabbing a mug and a bag of his favorite tea. “No worries, I was already awake so you don’t have to apologize. If anything, I guess I am the one that owes you an apology.” He trailed off.

“Rog, it’s fine.” Josie replied. “You don’t have to apologize for something you weren’t aware of.”

“I know, but I wish you had said anything before trying to snog my best friend.”

Josie dropped her phone and glared at her roommate. “It was not my intention to kiss Brian, and you know I didn’t kiss him because you were there. And you didn’t have to run off afterwards if you had a problem.”

“And you didn’t have to run after me.” Roger remarked. “I don’t have a problem with who you can and can’t like, but all I am saying is that it would have been nice to know beforehand.”

“It isn’t your business to know who I do or do not like, even if it was Brian and I am not obligated to tell you anything.” Josie shot up from her seat so fast that both Miko and Chip jumped in surprise. She grabbed her now empty bowl of cereal, rinsed it out, and placed it in the dishwasher.

“I’ll see you at the shop.” She picked up her bag and threw it over her shoulder, not even making eye contact with Roger before heading out the door.”

~~~~~~~~~

The Rag Trade had very slow foot traffic in the morning, which gave Josie time to hang back at the counter and work on finishing Freddie’s jacket before he came in later. John and Roger joined her in the shop two hours later, Roger taking Josie's place behind the counter and John set himself in the back of the store with Josie’s workspace.

“What’d you think of the show last night?’ John asked. “I didn’t get the chance to see you after the show, looked like you were in a bit of a rush when I saw you.”

“It was fun,” The seamstress answered, not breaking concentration from the jacket’s meticulous detail work. “Sorry I couldn’t stay later. Had to get up early to open the shop, can’t make rent if we aren’t open, and also I promised Freddie that his jacket would be done today so I have to finish all this stoning or else I’m gonna get way behind on my schedule. What about you? Have some fun after I left?”

The bassist shook his head, “I guess. None of us were really in much of a partying mood last night.”

Josie looked up from her work, “How come?”

“I don’t know. The show went great but I just felt drained afterwards. And it felt like there was something going on between Brian and Roger after you left.” He explained.

Josie felt her stomach drop to her feet. Brian and Roger were mad at each other, and it was all her fault because she almost kissed Brian and Roger saw it happen. She remembered her and Roger’s conversation that morning. Josie barely knew what was happening between her and the guitarist and for sure wasn’t ready to explain it to Roger. “What do you mean by something going on? Like did they look mad at each other or something else was going on?”

John noticed Josie’s sudden interest in Brian and Roger. “They weren’t mad at each other from what I saw, it was more like they had to talk about something but didn’t want to bring it up in front of me and Freddie.” He shrugged, “My guess is that it was about the setlist, they were arguing about wanting to play some old Smile songs. Brian wanted to add them but Rog was against it and wanted to play more Queen songs.”

The sinking feeling in Josie’s stomach lightened just a bit. Maybe they weren’t mad at each other over her, it was about the setlist and she was just overthinking this whole thing. Josie turned her attention back to finishing Freddie’s jacket, adding plastic rhinestones to the jacket collar. She was over halfway finished and Freddie wasn’t coming in for another two hours, so she would have the heavy work done before Freddie would have a chance to see it for himself.

Josie and John worked in silence for the next two hours, Josie finishing her project and John focusing on his online classes he was taking for the summer. Josie occasionally broke the silence to ask for John’s opinion on her work to see if there was anything that looked out of place or that Freddie wouldn’t like. She would reciprocate with John as another set of ears to listen to him work out a problem.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“It looks like something an angry lizard would wear.” Roger laughed as Josie put it on her canvas mannequin to check the fit and any final touches before Freddie came in.

Josie glared at her roommate as she added the final touches. She had transformed the beat up white leather jacket Freddie had modeled for them two weeks ago into a brand new garment. She kept with the white leather and re-stitched the collar to flare out all the way around and added fake rhinestones to the collar and cuffs of the jacket to add a level of sparkle that only Freddie would deem fashionable.

“As long as Freddie likes it, that’s all that matters.” She defended her creation.

“What’d you use to make it?” Roger wondered.

Josie shrugged. “Some scraps I had from old clothes and fake rhinestones I bought from a previous commission. The jacket itself was easily salvageable but I wanted to make it even better and something that only Freddie would wear.”

“And you did just that!” A voice exclaimed behind them. All three whipped around to see Freddie and Brian standing at the entrance of the shop. Freddie ran up to the jacket and pulled it off the mannequin before putting it on and modeling in the mirror four the others to see. Josie’s face lit up seeing how much Freddie liked it. “Darling this is absolutely stunning!”

“Jo, do you think you can make me one to wear to Sunday church?” Deaky joked, watching Freddie marvel in the mirror at his new garment.

Josie snorted out of laughter. “If you can find me another jacket like that I’ll be more than willing to make you one.”

“I think it looks great Jo.” Brian spoke up. “And like you said, as long as Freddie likes it that’s what really matters.”

Josie blushed at the compliment. “Thanks Bri, I should have yours done soon too.”

Brian waived her off. “No worries, take however much time you need.”

She laughed. “Thanks, I do have the embroidery we talked about sketched out already if you want to come in back and take a look.” She secretly hoped Brian would accept her offer so she would have a reason to talk to him in private about Roger and the after show events from the previous night.

Brian accepted her offer and followed her to the backroom of the shop that Josie claimed as her workspace for client projects and her work she was doing for Queen on the side. Brian’s jacket was spread out on her worktable, the sleeves now significantly lengthened with found denim and a galaxy print that Josie found at a secondhand fabrics store a few shops down from the Rag Trade. She even used the extra fabric to line the inside of the jacket to add some extra warmth to it. Brian couldn’t see the inner lining though because the jacket was flipped over to show the backside, which was stenciled with different planets and constellations that Josie had researched.

“So this is just a sketch of what I have in mind right now, but I can change it if there’s anything you want different.” She handed him the jacket so he could look more closely at the design. “What do you think?”

“It looks great Josie.” Brian marveled at her work. “I love it, and the fabric is a great touch.”

Josie blushed and rocked back on her heels, a nervous habit she had developed in school. “Yeah, I was hoping you would like it. The design is the hard part, so as long as you approve of it the embroidery should only take a couple days for me to do. I already have my threads so I just have to fill everything in.”

“I love it.” Brian grinned, handing the jacket back to her. “I can’t wait to see the end product.”

Josie took it back and played with the collar. “I can’t wait for you to see it either. I can text you when it is done if you want.”

“Yea, I’d like that.” Brian looked at her. “Also, I know we didn’t get to talk last night…...about what happened at the van.”

The sinking feeling returned to Josie. “Yea….”

“Are you mad at me?” Brian asked. “I swear I wasn’t trying to force myself on you, it-”

“Brian I’m not mad at you.” She cut him off. “We both didn’t plan on it happening but it happened. I just don’t know what it means or how to feel about it.”

Brian leaned against Josie’s worktable and ran a hand through his curls, trying to collect his thoughts. “It doesn’t have to mean anything right now if you don’t want it to.”

“I don’t know if I want to call it anything.” She sighed, taking a spot next to Brian. “Roger was upset at me this morning because I didn’t tell him there was anything going on with us. I told him it was none of his business and now I don’t know what to do.”

There was a long pause hanging in the air. Neither of them knew what to say next without it leading to a longer conversation they weren’t ready to have yet. Josie wanted to play it off as a one time thing and it wouldn’t happen again

“You’re right.” Brian spoke up. “This is none of Roger’s business. You don’t have to say anything if you aren’t ready.”

“I’m not. I don’t want to call this anything right now if that’s okay with you.” She replied.

“Fine with me.” Brian smiled. “I’m not going to push you into anything you don't want. And don’t worry about Roger, that’ll sort itself out. Promise.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Freddie took over managing the shop with Josie while John and Brian wandered off to grab lunch for the four of them. Roger made his way out onto the shop floor to try and pick up some business while Josie stepped back to where she kept all the clothes that were saved for Queen shows.

“Okay Jo, spill it.” Freddie said the minute Brian was out of earshot. “What is going on between you two?”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing going on between us.” She answered, turning her attention back to leafing through the rack of stage clothes in front of her.

Freddie rolled his eyes as he sat down on the couch. “Yea right, of course there’s nothing between you two just like there’s nothing between me and Jim.”

“Well then what’s going on with you and Jim then?” She shot back, continuing to focus on the garments in front of her. “You just met him yesterday. Also, what do you think of this?” She pulled out a black flowy button down shirt.

“Give it to Deaky, he liked the last one you gave him so see if he wants it for the next show. And you’re forgetting that Jim and I already have a date planned.” The singer added on. “That’s more than what you and Brian have going on.”

“We don’t have anything going on Freddie.” She rolled her eyes. “I guess we just vibe well together. I’m not looking to date anyone anyway, especially not one of your bandmates.”

Freddie cocked his head to the side at her response. “What do you mean by that? I have no problem if you dated someone in the band and I’m sure Roger or Deaky wouldn’t mind either.”

Josie placed the shirt with the rest of John’s stagewear. “Are you sure about that? I’m not too sure if Roger wouldn’t mind me dating a band member.”

“Now why would you say that?” Freddie asked.

There was a long pause between the two of them. Josie fiddled with a sleeve from another one of John’s shirts and Freddie drummed his fingers on his knee.

Josie took a deep breath. “Okay, if I tell you, you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone. Not Jim, not Deaky, not anyone.” Freddie raised an eyebrow at her request, but he promised not to tell anyone.

“Brian and I almost kissed last night.” She confessed. “After the show in the back of the van. Roger caught us as it was happening and I don’t know for sure what he saw. John said that he and Brian were acting weird after I left and I don’t want to cause drama in the band when you guys are about to take off. I can’t do that to you guys.”

“Why do you think we would disapprove of you and Brian?” Freddie asked. “If anything, I am all for you two getting together, and from what I’ve seen he likes you back.”

Josie laughed. “Of course you would say that, you’re going to need someone to be your double date with you and Jim.”

Freddie jokingly clutched his chest in pretend shock. “How dare you believe I would set you up for my own gain. I would never do such a thing!”

The pair burst into laughter. Freddie always knew how to lighten her mood, and after this morning’s conversation with Roger she definitely needed it. There weren't ever a lot of fights between them but this was different. The thought of what happened deflated her mood and Freddie could see it on her face.

“I heard what happened this morning with you and Roger. He told me last night what happened with you and Brian on our way home.” Freddie confessed. “He isn’t upset at you or Brian.”

Josie scoffed. “It didn’t sound like that this morning. He kept saying that I should have told him, and I have no idea what’s going on myself so why would I tell him in the first place?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just tell him that you needed some time to figure it out yourself before you wanted to tell anyone.”

Josie sighed and sunk into the couch next to Freddie. “You’re right. Brian and I don’t know what we want to call whatever happened last night and I don’t want to call it anything right now.”

“Then that’s what you do.” Freddie replied. “It doesn’t have to be anything if neither of you want it to be anything.”

That advice stuck with Josie. She liked Brian but didn’t want it to be anything at this point in time and that was okay.

“Thanks Fred.” She pulled herself off the couch. “How long are you here today?”

“I’m closing up the shop today, so Jim is picking me up at 7.” He replied.

“Well have fun tonight.” She grinned. “I really hope it goes well, Jim seems like a pretty cool guy and I am really happy for you Fred.”

For the first time that Josie could see, Freddie blushed at the compliment. It was a rare sight but Josie knew this was a good sign. Everything was going to be okay.

#My writing #Brian May #brian may x oc #Queen band #modern au #brian may fic

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davetheshady · 5 years

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🌟 how about chapter 4 of waiting for the bus in the rain 🌟 and only partially because i showed up to yell about the last few paragraphs when it first dropped. also just because i love Julie content and it's the very middle of that fic

::blows dust off inbox:: So! Now that I’ve back from traveling through three countries and recovered from trying to leave most of my arm skin in one of them (PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: don’t go so fast you flip over on the Alpine Slide, particularly if you’re in the actual Alps) here’s some DVD commentary on Chapter 4 of Waiting for the Bus in the Rain! It’s chock full of my stylistic hallmarks, i.e. way longer than I expected.

(Note to my sister: THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS. GO READ MY STORY FIRST YOU LOSER)

There’s a Sheriff’s Secret Police officer outside Julie’s window. Considering she’s in her office on the second floor, this is fairly impressive. But when they scream and scrabble against the glass after accidentally kicking over their ladder for the third time, Julie’s had enough.

Even when they’re not under suspicion of using the scientific method, Julie has to deal with WAY more (attempted) surveillance than Carlos ever does. This is partially because she doesn’t have amazing hair, but also because Cecil doesn’t narrate large chunks of her life over the radio that the SSP can copy down and submit as a report.

vulnerabilities include fire and cold iron

and according to the literature high velocity cheese wedges but i’ve never seen anyone test that

My hand to God. Probably my number one complaint about fantasy as a genre is that everyone takes stuff from Celtic mythology so seriously when half of it is just. Completely bonkers.

Originally, most of the relevant exposition about fairies was provided by a different character entirely: Carlos-f’s misplaced smartphone, an AI who Julie called Hex (yes, like in Discworld, hell yeah science wizards) because she refused to give Julie her name. Hex provided such ringtones as “Dark Horse” and “Double Rainbow” and would occasionally get distracted by lists of numbers. Hmm…

I changed it back because 1) it was a detour and this chapter was long enough already, 2) Julie and Carlos’ friendship is one of the main throughlines and having them talk to each other was better for the story, and 3) him texting during the middle of a battle is hilarious. But as far as I’m concerned, Hex is still canon.

Andre yawns on the other end of the line and asks, “What time is it?”

“Quit whining, it’s only—” Julie looks at the clock.

Shit.

“—3:00 AM,” she finishes defiantly, because she still has her pride. Embarrassment pricks at her like flying embers settling on bare skin, because now Andre knows she was so out of it she didn’t even bother to try keeping track of the time, and he’s going to think she couldn’t sleep because of feelings, which is both correct and incorrect, because she wasn’t even trying to sleep since distracting herself by going over the minutiae of their data while the Sheriff’s Secret Police scream and fall in the bushes is better than listening to her cats prowl around while lying in her quiet apartment by herself, and any moment now he’s going to feel bad and decide to humor her and answer her in a voice filled with cloying pity and say—

“Would Hiram McDaniels count as one respondent, or five?” He yawns again.

A good chunk of Julie’s inner turmoil just, like, boils down to a recurring loop of that Tim Kreider quote about “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” She doesn’t consciously WANT the rewards of being loved, it just kind of… happens… and then she’s stuck with incredibly loyal life-long friends… and now she not only has to deal with her own feelings but theirs too, which is pretty much her worst nightmare…

Fortunately, since she’s already gone through the mortifying ordeal of being known, they do frequently pull through and offer the kind of support she knows how to accept.

“Give TV’s Frank a kiss for me.”

“I’m not kissing my cat for you,” says Julie.

I mean, she’ll kiss the cat. Just not on request.

And yes, all her cats are named after the Mad Scientists’ sidekicks on Mystery Science Theater 3000. ~foreshadowing~

When she opens the door of her workshop later that morning, she finds that someone has been by to leave her a breakfast tray. Well, “tray”, in that it’s a textbook, and “breakfast”, in that it’s a French press, a stale churro, and her blood pressure medication. But the French press is completely full with still-warm coffee, so overall she’s going to count this as a win.

This appeared pretty early in my drafts: it’s just such a funny mental image to me and also encapsulates Julie and Gary’s relationship pretty well, i.e. a string of question marks who somehow get along.

The naturally suspicious part of her wonders if he deliberately provoked her reaction to the flamingo to gather more information about it. The naturally analytical part of her points out that Carlos is more likely to gnaw off his own hand than put someone in danger, especially when he could just put himself in danger instead.

Julie is just a tad cynical, so she’d definitely think of potentially negative interpretations of her friend’s actions. But it’s not actually a possibility she dwells on in any real sense, and every time she interacts with Carlos-f (not to mention Carlos-0) she trusts him implicitly. She wouldn’t admit it in a thousand years, but she considers Carlos one of the few genuinely good people in the world: not because he never makes mistakes or creates personal disasters, but exactly because of those things. She knows he’s a flawed person, and that everyone is flawed, so that makes him genuine – which means every time he’s tried to do the right thing at personal cost, over and over, that was genuine too.

Basically, there’s a reason why in the last chapter she automatically references “scientist means hero” with “Fuck, I’m turning into you!”

“So,” she says. “Nilanjana. Do you need new pronouns, or anything?”

“Does anyone need any pronouns?” asks Gary contemplatively, which Julie takes as a ‘No’.

“Should I drop ‘Gary’ entirely? Do you want me to change your name in our paperwork?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “I don't know, man,” he concludes. “I don’t really believe in labels.”

Gary has galaxy-brained from “gender is a social construct” straight to “identity is a social construct” and beyond.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Julie.

“I think so, Dr. K,” says Gary. “But how will we get three pink flamingos into one pair of capri pants?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-xrnIXQ3iQ

What happens when the wave function ψ is the same as the physical system it describes, and what happens when that physical system collapses?

i.e. what would happen if common misperceptions of the Observer Effect were actually the correct perceptions?

Julie can’t help it: she snorts. “Passionate? Me?”“Well, yeah,” says Romero. “You really care about the things that interest you. You get really involved and angry and never quit or back down.”“Oh,” says Julie, then blurts, “You like that I’m angry?”“I… don’t like it when you’re unhappy?” says Romero. “But – it’s part of you, so… yeah, I guess I do, because it’s how you are. Why? Is – is everything okay?”She’s spent a lifetime having people tell her to stop being angry. No one’s ever told her she’s fine the way she is.

There have been many, many, MANY thinkpieces about how women are socialized not to express anger, often even to themselves. That was never going to work for Julie, who after all is powered by constant low-level rage, but that just means she had to deal with the backlash from not adhering to social programming instead (on top of additional backlash from being a woman in a male-dominated field). Of his own free will, Romero not only rejects that social programming, but also clearly spent time thinking about her empirically to determine that her anger is a positive force instead of a random and horrible personality trait.

He’s a Good Dude.

When she was in elementary school, her third grade teacher had been fond of saying, “If you’re bored, it means you have no imagination,” at least until Julie had decided to deal with her boredom after finishing her science assignment, her homework, and the rest of the textbook by seeing what happened if you jammed a paperclip into the electric socket. (The answer was certainly not boring and, in fact, probably the most exciting and practical thing they learned that year.)

That used to be my aunt’s favorite saying. I personally did not copy Julie’s response, but it is based on research done by one of my friends. (It’s okay, he was very careful about safety and made sure to use rubber-handled scissors to poke random bits of metal into the outlet. Apart from a classmate’s socks catching on fire, everyone was totally fine.)

She wakes to the sound of Cecil talking about the other week’s marathon, which may or may not have been mandatory, whoops. Carlos has texted her an emoji of various hadrosaurids gathered around a campfire singing “We Are the Champions”.

PREVIOUSLY IN NIGHT VALE:

EXT. - THE LABS

Thousands of citizens stream down Main Street, driven relentlessly forward to the Narrow Place. The Harbingers of the Distant Prince hurl themselves towards the building again and again, only to be rebuffed by the wards. Charred corpses lay scattered around the perimeter. Green storm clouds gather overhead as their anger grows.

INT. - LAB ONE

ANDRE

Did you hear something?

JULIE

[not looking up from her welding]

No.

Carlos, meanwhile, has NO idea his emojis are not in fact standard.

“I liked him,” says Josie. [...] “He was trying to do… something, I forget what. I hope he figured it out.” At Julie’s incredulity, she says, “Some people, they’re rough around the edges, but they try. They hope for something better and keep going. That’s important.”

“What if you go where you’re not supposed to?”

“Then you come back and fix what you can,” says Josie.

“What if you can’t?”

“Then you find someone to help you,” Josie replies. “Oh! I love this song.”

She turns up the volume of the radio and treats everyone to the aria from Shastakovich’s Paint Your Wagon.

Vocals by L. Marvin

Angels chilling at your house are, of course, part of the standard retirement package for former Knights of the Church. Old Woman Josie used to carry Esperacchius and passed it on to the Egyptian, after which it went to Sanya. She and Shiro were buds and saw Elvis in Vegas (and also, interestingly, several times in the Ralphs).

Anyway, if you want to suggest that a character is subconsciously mulling over an issue, I recommend having them ask some leading questions without describing their reactions and then change the subject.

“It’s come to my attention,” she begins, then has to stop and clear her throat again. “It’s come to my attention that we have a pretty good thing going on. So I was just wondering if you’d like to keep doing this, you know. For the indefinite future. With me.”When he doesn’t say anything, or look at her, or move at all for that matter, she removes her hand from under her thigh where she’s been sitting on it and points at the lease. “I highlighted where you have to sign,” she says, somewhat unnecessarily. “If you wanted to.”

I think this is the only time we see Julie nervous about anything when her life is not actively in danger.

You can’t write a romance arc without including some degree of emotional vulnerability – it just wouldn’t be satisfying. On the other hand, how that emotional vulnerability manifests is REALLY dependent on the person, and if you don’t base it firmly in their character it wouldn’t be satisfying, either. (I’m REALLY picky about romances in part because of this.) Julie’s not the type to pine or swoon or be filled with self-doubt*, but she is bad at feelings, and unfortunately, she’s determined that an equitable relationship with Romero requires some kind of tangible, committed expression of them. So she does that as best she can. It’s not actively harmful to her, but it does require a stretch out of her comfort zone.

* ::cough::Carlos::cough::

Yes, Julie has technically registered their equipment with City Hall, in that they’re listed as alternatively “electronic abaci” and “databases” and she’s claimed they only use the internet for checking email. Until now, they’ve coasted on general good will towards Carlos/his hair and the fact that all authority figures have been functionally electronically illiterate since the Incident in the community college’s Computer and Fire Sciences building.

Look, I could have SWORN there was an Incident at the Computer and Fire Sciences building specifically mentioned in canon. Can I find it anywhere? No. Did I listen to an episode that was subsequently erased from history? Possibly.

This time, someone picks up. There are a few seconds of sleepy fumbling, followed by “Hello?” in more vocal fry than voice.“Cecil!” she says. “Is Carlos there?”“Are you in fear for your life from the long arm of the law?” Cecil mumbles.

her current ringtone

“Julie, I said hold on!”“I am holding on,” she snarls as the rumbling stops. “It’s a diagnostic. 75% efficiency? Am I the only one who cares about proper maintenance in this town?”

This combines two of my favorite things: people focusing on hilariously inconsequential details during a stressful situation, and Julie lowkey engaging in supervillainy. Nikola Tesla did not design earthquake machines so Night Vale could install shitty ones they can barely use. STANDARDS.

“I probably wouldn’t have destroyed Weeping Miner,” she says eventually.

“I know,” says Carlos.

“I could have, though,” she says.

“I know that too,” says Carlos.

[...] Carlos shifts. She looks over; he briefly catches her eye and says, “So could I.”It’s not the same. Carlos would probably feel bad about it, for one. But she feels some of her anger dissipate anyway. At least she’s not the only one dealing with this bullshit.

Subconscious concern --> conscious concern! Getting back to Julie’s cynicism: she doesn’t think there are very many good people in the world, and that excludes her too. Sure, she’s risked her life to save others, fight baddies, and make sure the dangerous technology she’s developed doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, but she knows she has selfish reasons to do them, like protecting her friends and making sure the town/world isn’t destroyed so she can keep doing her research.

But at the same time, the fact that she has been dwelling on the ethics of her situation ever since Chapter 19 of Love is All You Need, that she is genuinely bothered that she’d consider destroying a neighborhood, and that she’s talking about this with Carlos, who considers them to have a similar dilemma, suggests that deep down she is dissatisfied by her cynical model of the world because the data isn’t quite matching up. Which, of course, means she needs more data in the form of Chapters 6 and 7.

On one side is a large picture of Carrie Fisher giving everyone the finger

I think Space Mom is mandatory at protests now.

This whole section (especially the rain) was heavily influenced by the March for Science, which both Ginipig and I went to in 2017. You too can make a difference and also give yourself writing material!

“Any more words of wisdom, Usidork?” she asks instead.

USIDORE, WIZARD OF THE 12TH REALM OF EPHYSIYIES, MASTER OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, MANIPULATOR OF MAGICAL DELIGHTS, DEVOURER OF CHAOS, CHAMPION OF THE GREAT HALLS OF TERR'AKKAS. THE ELVES KNOW HIM AS FI’ANG YALOK. THE DWARFS KNOW HIM AS ZOENEN HOOGSTANDJES*. HE IS ALSO KNOWN IN THE NORTHEAST AS GAISMUNĒNAS MEISTAR AND HAS MANY OTHER SECRET NAMES WHICH YOU DO NOT… YET… KNOW.

* Hoobastank

He blinks at her in polite incomprehension. “I don’t want to miss the Life Raft Debate,” he says. “It’s important to support your department.”

Several universities hold yearly Raft Debates, where representatives from the different disciplines have a debate about which of their respective areas of study is the most vital for humanity and thus should get to take the one-person life raft back to civilization from the desert island they’ve all gotten stuck on.

I should inform you that at my alma mater the Devil’s Advocate, who argues that none of the subjects are worth saving, has won multiple times.

Without taking her eyes off her opponent, Romanoff thrusts out her hand. Dr. Aluki Robinson (Associate Professor of Ornithology) passes her a harpoon, its ivory barbs almost glowing in the dim light.

Nauja and Aluki are both from Cold Case, because no one deserves to be stuck in Cold Case where we’re apparently supposed to be deeply concerned about the main character’s sexual experience but only vaguely perturbed by the powerful white and white-coded women stealing Native American children to brainwash them to their culture so they can be fed to the system seriously WHAT the FUCK Jimbo

ANYWAY, in this universe the Winter fey of Unalaska are discharging their obligations to help the Winter Court against Outsiders by sending some of their people to monitor the prison in Night Vale. This also gets to highlight the fun of an unreliable narrator! Julie is generally not one of those, because she’s a smart and observant person who will happily question everything, but even she has her limits when she’s out of her element. In the case of this story, there are several minor details to suggest there is some Winter and Summer court drama going on in the background (the chlorofiends, an entire academic department of shapeshifters, Molly and Mab personally overseeing bus routes) and most of it just goes completely over her head.

During his undergraduate career, Gary had elicited a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about his desire to be exempted from lab regulations for wearing appropriate – or any – footwear in the lab, which evolved into a considerable amount of interdepartmental discussion about whether wrapping your feet in duct tape immediately before said lab time constituted appropriate footwear.

This was based on one of my mother’s students, who eventually resolved the situation by commissioning a handmade pair of moccasins he placed on his feet immediately before entering the lab.

“The scientific method is four steps,” says Carlos with a cheerful inevitability as the officers start shouting panicked instructions into their walkie talkies. “One, find an object you want to know more about; two, hook that object up to a machine using wires or tubes; three, write things on a clipboard; four, read the results that the machine prints.”

This is a direct quote from the book. Was this entire subplot about the scientific method ban designed just to come up with a plausible retcon for why someone with actual scientific training would announce this over the radio? It sure was!

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

1. “Step one, cut a hole in the box,” calls Wei.2. “No, step one is collecting underpants,” says Gary.3. “Step four: make a searching and fearless moral inventory,” says Julie.4. “And then step five, acceptance,” Andre finishes.5. “You see, the first level is ennui, or boredom. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific – nostalgia, love-sickness… At more morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for. A sick pining, a vague restlessness. Mental throes. Yearning. And at the scientific method’s deepest and most painful level, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause.”6. “It’s how you decide whether to fix the problem with duct tape or WD-40,” says Julie.7. “I think,” says Osborn, “that it’s a divine machine for making flour, salt, and gold.”

8. “Don’t be absurd,” says Galleti. “The scientific method is two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert!”

9. “And they say the scientific method is—”

“—the quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends,” puts in Dr. Chelsea Dubinski, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

10. “Or is it the special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do?” asks Galleti.

This section was also a chance to write about the rest of Night Vale’s scientists, of whom we still know so very little. There’s enough of them that there’s a whole science district, and the community college seems pretty well staffed, but the fact that Carlos made such an impact when he rolled into town suggests that they were either pretty lowkey or indistinguishably weird from the rest of the town.

“I don't feel alone,” snaps Julie. “I feel like shit, and I know why I feel like shit, and the thought of outlining that in excruciating detail is, oddly enough, not making me feel any better!”

One of the things I wanted to address in this story (inspired by Ghost Stories, which I uhhhhh did not care for) was the shortcomings of a lot of narratives about grief. Because many of them are not only oversimplified, but also not everyone processes grief in the same way. It’s not necessarily a linear narrative of where you go through the five steps and then you’re totally over it: it might take a long time, or you might be fine until some other, unrelated setback triggers you, or it might be a cyclical process as anniversaries roll around. Grief lingers. Related to that, helping people deal with their grief isn’t always as simple as sitting down with them and offering a sympathetic ear. Some people don’t process their feelings well verbally, and the emotional labor of formulating all your grief for another person’s consumption can be nearly as traumatizing as grieving in the first place, and VERY difficult to do when you’re already feeling down.

On top of that, I think general American culture is just. Real bad at dealing with grief. Which means we don’t have many positive models to base our responses on, either as grievers or as people supporting the grieving, and if you don’t fit those models at all it just makes the process that more difficult because everyone’s stumbling around in the dark.

“Does it always feel like this?” she asks.“Which part?” asks Carlos.“We won,” says Julie. “Methods have lived to science another day. We can do our work without interference. All we did was lie about what the name meant, but…” She taps the lab table with a pencil. Another secret violation of the law. “It still feels like we… lost something.”“We did lose something,” says Carlos. “It was just a name, but names are important.”

One of the reasons I love writing Carlos and Julie’s friendship so much is because it’s such a relationship of equals. They’re both hypercompetent, pragmatic, and a little ruthless; their skill sets don’t have much overlap (at least, not yet) and their personalities aren’t at all similar, but they get each other and it’s so sweet. When they wander out of their respective areas of expertise, or stumble across some kind of dilemma, they feel comfortable asking each other for guidance – they can admit their ignorance and drop their public facades of Having Their Shit Together because they trust each other.

“I want—” Her mouth opens and shuts again, wordlessly. Her scowl deepens.Then she narrows her eyes and says, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.”

Molly being a huge Trekkie is pretty much my favorite thing from Ghost Story (not to be confused with Ghost Stories)(although thinking about it, swapping their plots would be kind of amazing??), so of course I wanted her and Julie to interact in a way that showed off what huge nerds they are.

But yet another element I wanted to include in this story is the background detail that ~the masquerade~ must be maintained because it’s too dangerous for humanity as a whole to be fully cognizant of the supernatural – which tends to get a little lost in the sauce, because the supernatural is consistently super duper powerful and our heroes (most of them pretty supernatural themselves) generally avert disaster by the skin of their teeth. But here’s Julie, just a regular human who’s capable of producing terrifying technology, has no concern for the rules and traditions of ancient regimes unless they’re inconveniencing her, and who would be perfectly fine with upending the status quo just to see what happens. Regular humans just aren’t more flexible about change than the supernatural, they’re even curious about it sometimes – which must be terrifying to something like the Winter Court, which has been devoted to maintaining the same strict balance since forever. Regular humans can do stuff like tell a story so well it inspires the Winter Lady to subvert her magical restrictions and remind her of her own humanity.

Julie grumpily emails him a rough summary of her thoughts on Troy Walsh and her conversation with Molly and heads up to her office to pull up everything she has on both the bus garage and the man in the tan jacket.

Bullshit secretkeeping (“I can’t tell the other main character this important plot point, it’s better if they don’t know”) is one of my least favorite tropes and I avoid it at all costs. It’s such a stupid way to add tension. It can maybe work once, but after your character has inevitably watched it backfire spectacularly, you can’t repeat it ever again unless you want to imply they’re a dumbass who never learns from their own mistakes and apparently doesn’t care that it clearly puts everyone in more danger. ::looks pointedly at a certain book series::

Also, it’s almost always much more interesting to have characters try to share important information. If they don’t succeed, it coats everything in ironic horror as the outcomes one person tried to avoid happen despite their best efforts. If they do succeed, it means everyone is fully cognizant of the potential danger even as they are still prevented from acting on it properly, like because they (e.g.) get kidnapped in the middle of the street.

King City is not in the correct dimension. The man in the tan jacket seems to know something about this, but up until a year ago he wasn’t drawing attention to it. He was busy poking his nose into everyone’s business, ingratiating himself with the powerful and the influential, dealing with them in secret…basically, the SOP of your typical Night Vale authority.Like the Night Vale Area Transit Authority, with its bus route to… King City.They had a job and they chose to keep it, Molly said.“Fuck,” says Julie. “He was working for them!”

In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me how much of this fic was powered by spite. Ghost Stories and Cold Case both really bothered me. The resolution of the Man in the Tan Jacket storyline, meanwhile, felt pretty underwhelming – not because what Finknor came up with wasn’t interesting, but because it barely engaged with the few plot points they had already established. Like, when TMITJ shows up in the podcast he interferes with the Mayor, he’s connected to the city under Lane Five, he surfaces during the Strex Corp arc, he interacts with a whole bunch of series regulars in an ominous fashion… Yeah, that probably came from Finknor dropping him in more or less at random, but the end result was that during the first several years of the show it seemed he was an active driver of whatever his plot was supposed to be. In WTNV: The Novel, though, he’s much more reactive and impotent. This wouldn’t necessarily be bad if this change was acknowledged as part of his storyline, but… it’s not…

(And I get that it can be difficult to come up with a plot for an element you didn’t intend to be plotty at all, but like: there wasn’t THAT much material they had to account for. I should know, I had to look it all up to write THIS story.)

I think this was especially frustrating because it ends up feeling like a “have your cake and eat it too” on the part of Finknor: it’s not automatically bad when fans care more about the show’s continuity than the creators (creators have different concerns, and a lot of time that means they’re using the creative latitude to do something neat), but the novel was very much presented as “finally, a resolution to that one mystery you find cool!” which is… pretty much a direct appeal to the fans’ care about the continuity. So to then ignore or retcon so many aspects of the continuity without any story payoff for it feels like a cheat.

(Ultimately, though, my inspiration to actually sit down and write mainly sprang from 1) all the lovely comments about how so many people loved my OFC, which as someone who started lurking in online fandom in the early 2000s was both mind-boggling and heartwarming, and 2) lol those ladies have the same name. I learned nothing.)

She gets the call at 21:27. She goes to the hospital, although there’s not much point. The human mind is the most powerful thing on the planet and it's housed in a fragile casing of meat and bone.

I’ve mentioned a few times (possibly more than a few)(probably more than a few) that I didn’t like the WTNV live ep Ghost Stories, and that’s because the ~big reveal~ is that Cecil’s story was actually about a personal family tragedy, and once he’s able to admit that, everything is hunky-dory. As I recall, it went something like this:

WTNV: hey remember that time your mom died and your family was thrown into chaos

ME: WELL NOW I DO

WTNV: and on that note, good night everyone!

Needless to say, everything was not hunky-dory.

But on top of being emotionally compromised for the whole following week, I was also professionally annoyed. Prior to this live show, we’d had a few cryptic references to Cecil’s mom and could reasonably infer that his relationship with his sister was strained. Critically, though, neither was their own clearly-defined character (compare to the treatment of Janice or Steve Carlsberg), these were not frequently recurring elements that would suggest they weighed heavily on Cecil’s mind, and it wasn’t even obvious that their backstory WAS particularly tragic. So the emotional lynchpin of this live show was mostly new information about Cecil regarding characters the audience had no connection to.

Tragic narratives are powerful not only because they evoke intense emotions, but also because those emotions are supposed to go somewhere and do something: provide catharsis, reinforce the artist’s philosophy, make the audience ponder the meaning of life... In using a tragedy as a plot twist, your ability to give it the proper emotional arc is very limited, because you have to misdirect from its existence while building it up, and then quickly progress from upsetting emotions to those more appropriate for concluding the story. That’s not impossible, but Ghost Stories immediately throws a wrench in the works by splitting the audience’s emotional journey away from Cecil’s: he already knew about the tragedy and the people involved with it, so the plot twist acts as his emotional catharsis... but only his. When the twist itself is the first time the audience realizes there ARE emotions, and that the first 85% of the show was completely unrelated to them, there’s simply not enough time for the audience to have them, process them according to the story’s weird ramblings that kinda imply fiction based on real life is more important than genre fiction like horror (PS: that’s a WEIRD take for a fictional horror podcast), and reach their own kind of catharsis without it being horrifically rushed. Particularly when they’re having a WAY more emotional response than the character due to their own personal tragedies which they were not expecting to have to think about during a fun podcast live show about ghost stories.

As stuff like this points out, you can’t just sprinkle in character deaths and expect quality entertainment to sprout: there has to be a purpose to putting the tragedy in the story (even if that purpose is to highlight how purposeless tragedy can be in real life). I’ve always been VERY critical of the assumption that tragedy is ~more artistic~, both in historical lit and modern pop culture; sad emotions aren’t inherently more meaningful than happy ones. Merely including tragic events isn’t deep; you have to do the work and make it deep, in its context and development.

So: on to ::gestures proudly:: probably the worst thing I’ve ever written!

From an aesthetic standpoint, I leaned into the Night Vale house style in this section because I found it to be really effective at conveying the enormity of the tragedy for Julie: it’s pretty blunt, just like her, but the focus on oddly specific details, the narrative distancing, and the lurking sense of existential horror seemed a fitting demonstration of how badly the emotional gutpunch disrupted her narration/life.

And I really wanted it to be an emotional gutpunch. (But not a surprise: even if I hadn’t warned for it specifically, Julie mentions Romero dying all the way back in Ch. 10 of Love is All You Need.) This is in part a story about grief and mourning, so the loss that caused it needed a central place. I wanted it to be powerful enough to retroactively fit in with how upset Julie is in the opening chapters and to add real tension to the devil’s bargain the feds want to make with her in the next chapter. But most importantly, I wanted it to be so significant to both Julie and the audience that the end of the story has an impact. Loss doesn’t get “cured” – but it seems to me like it’s not supposed to be. Loss is a part of life; love, in whatever form, helps give you strength as you grow and change from the experience into someone new, and this is also a story about the love in friendship.

I think a lot about the ethics of writing tragic stuff, because when you get right down to it, ultimately art boils down to poking your fingers in someone’s feelings and stirring them around. People get really invested in the stuff you are responsible for creating, and making someone feel bad for no reason isn’t being an artist, it’s being a dick. But I’m very happy with how this turned out, and hopefully didn’t traumatize anyone who didn’t want to be traumatized.

(I do feel bad for everyone who was reading as I posted that had to wait an entire year for the next chapter, though. I wanted to get something up sooner, but I had to wait until I sorted Chapter 6 and Chapter 6 was just. The worst. WORDS ARE HARD. People who read WIPs are braver than any Marine.)

hmu for more dvd commentary!

#muggle-the-hat #love is all you need to destroy your enemies #ask dave #welcome to night vale #the dresden files #fic #writing

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