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everlarkbirthdaygifts · 4 years

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Happy Birthday, omercilessmoon!

Happy Birthday, @omercilessmoon! We hope you’ve got a wonderful day planned, and that you get exactly the presents you were hoping for! To start you special day off right, the lovely @mega-aulover has written a story just for you!

PROMPT: modern enemies/rivals to lovers with one-sided pining? maybe they share a dance?

Omercilessmoon

Title: Hate to Love You

A/N: This is part one of the story I’ve never really written: enemies to lovers with one sided pining - and I hope you enjoy and Happy BIrthday. Special Thanks to @norbertsmom for betaing and helping me through plot points, to @eiramrelyat for help with the drink and @mandelion82 for your generous help. It takes a village to write a story.

Rated T - for mature themes

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The annual office Labor Day outdoor party was filled with laughter, barely edible canapes that never filled anyone up, and drunken naughtiness in dark corners. It was Friday afternoon before the big weekend. The company made holiday decorations and it made most of its revenues between Labor Day and Christmas.

Katniss Everdeen always skipped out on these social rituals. This year however she could not. Her boss, Haymitch Abernathy demanded she attend. Apparently the owner of the company, Coriolanus Snow, wanted everyone to show up for some grand announcement. The one thing Katniss hated about these parties, and hated about her job in particular was that upstart show off Peeta Mellark.

He was schmoozing with the assortment of models dressed as pumpkins, elves, and turkeys. He was just too perfect. Perfect height, natural ashen blond hair, straight white teeth and an ass that was slap worthy. Katniss closed her eyes. As much as she loathed Peeta, she was also wildly attracted to him. She wanted to strip that stupid smile off of his face all the while living la vida loca on a springy bed. Oh, she wanted him so much she’d taken to carrying an extra pair of underwear, his voice did things to her during meetings. She could just envision what he would sound like in the bedroom.

The canape she held in her hand crumbled and she came back to the present. This weakness is why she loathed Peeta Sexy-Ass Mellark so much. No man should be that freaking sexy. No man should make her crazy by just looking at her. Turning around, she stomped away to the drinks bar; the only way to survive this was to get buzzed.

The bartender was handing a drink to the person next to her. When they finished Katniss said, “Excuse me…”

The bartender ignored her and moved to the person next to her.

Katniss shook her head. She often found herself in this position. She waited for the bartender to finish. She wasn’t that tall and naturally people looked right over her head at the taller person standing behind her or next to her. She waited patiently and listened as the DJ’s switched two songs.

“Evergreen.”

Katniss grimaced when she heard Peeta’s voice. He always mispronounced her name. Peeta Mellark did this to annoy her. He knew everyone's name, he knew birthdays and anniversaries but her name he always butchered, and somehow always forgot her birthday. She turned to face him. His eyes were dripping with frost, and she reciprocated the look. “Mellark.”

His frosty exterior melted the moment the bartender appeared. He turned into the Prince of charm and finesse. “Hello, may I have a suffering bastard.”

The bartender smiled and winked, “Sure.”

Katniss fumed; she’d been waiting for ten minutes. “REALLY!”

“What's the matter Everdeen, making enemies with the bartender?”

“NO! I’ve been waiting for ten minutes for a drink and you come up and of course they serve you first.”

He raised an eyebrow as if amused by her story.

These were the things that annoyed her about him.”UGH!”

“It’s just you don’t look like the type of person who drinks.” His lips formed that mocking smile, that made her want to smack him. “You also don’t look old enough to drink.”

“I am old enough to drink, and when I do I like strawberry daiquiris.”

“Strawberry daiquiris?” He sounded amused.

“Well it’s better than your, what are you drinking, a suffering…?” Katniss stopped as she realized what she was going to say.

“You can’t even say it, can you?”

His amusement at her inability to say the ‘b’ word frustrated her even further. “I can too.”

“Go ahead,” Peeta mocked.

Spurred by his dare she opened her mouth, but small choking sounds. She couldn’t curse, everyone in the company knew she had a problem with vulgar words. It was the fault of her 9th Grade English teacher Miss Trinket who would fail students for using vulgarities and incorrect diction.

He chuckled dryly. "You're so pure."

His words were a backhanded compliment and it set her on fire. Katniss was a Pollyanna from a backwater town and he hailed from Capitol City, and it meant that she was simple and unsophisticated. It also meant inexperienced. And while some of it was true, he didn't know what she thought, orr how tempted she was to push him into a dark corner and have her way with him.

Her problem was she did not have the words to communicate with him. Words weren't her thing, she was more of a doer. It's why she made a great account manager for the business development managers. They sold and she was able to get the order shipped out on time for them.

She currently worked with Caesar Flickerman. He was flamboyant, and sweet, but he was demanding when it came to excellence. Looking at Peeta she was trying to formulate the words to insult him when the microphone screeched letting them know their attention was needed at the stage.

Katniss took that moment to slip away from Peeta. She stood toward the back of the crowd where she was sure no one could bother her.

Their boss, Corilianus Snow took the stage. He began speaking about the company’s long history and Katniss wished she had her daiquiri. She hated these long drawn out speeches. On the other hand, after the big announcement she could quietly slip out. Katniss focused on Snow’s words.

“As an effort to bring our company forward into this new era, we will be instituting new initiatives,” Snow said. “We will be offering a prize of a profitable cash bonus at Christmastime and two extra days of paid time off.” Everyone applauded.

The money would be amazing. The days off though were the biggest prize. Katniss didn’t have many days left, and two extra days meant she could possibly spend Christmas with her family. Katniss hadn’t spent a holiday with them in so long. She missed her sister and her mother.

Snow put his hands out to quiet the crowd before continuing, “In the spirit of competition and to bring new dynamics to the sales force we will be shaking things up internally by switching Account Managers and Business Development Managers. So if you go to that table where our lovely assistants are located you will find an envelope with your name on it and inside it will contain the name of the person you will be working with until December 23rd.”

The announcement took everyone out of their comfort zone, but the necessity to know who they were being paired with drove the staff to the tables like brides descending on Kleinfeld’s semi-annual sale. It was chaotic and it overwhelmed Katniss; she hung back.

There were gladdend faces and faces that reflected horror by the new partnership. Katniss looked around frightened by the prospect of having to work with someone new. She walked to the table and picked up her envelope.

When she opened it her vision went dark.

“Looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

Peeta’s voice contained the grim foreboding sentiment she felt.

She tried to smile but she was sure she looked deranged.

“Stop smiling, you're scaring people.”

Katniss wasn’t sure how to best show that this didn’t bother her. Of all of the people in the company she had to be stuck together with none other than Peeta-I-want-to-scratch-your-eyes-out-yet-ride-you-into-oblivion-Mellark. Life was not fair.

"Everyone please enjoy the food, the open bar, and enjoy a dance floor..." Snow said over the microphone.

The music started and Finnick and Annie who were secretly dating made their way to the dance floor. Katniss and Annie sat together during lunch at times and she had covered for Annie when she met Finnick in secret. Several others who saw the way Snow tipped his glass toward Finnick went to the dance floor too. It was all a game to show Snow they were not affected by the changes. The music was upbeat and definitely not Katniss’ style.

“Come on, dance with me.”

“What?” She hissed.

“We need to show them we’re a team.”

“NO,” Katniss didn’t want to dance with him. She didn’t like to be touched.

“Snow is watching us, and we need to make a good impression. I have a feeling this is going to be more than just about numbers,” he whispered.

Katniss took a look at Corilanius Snow, who stood off to the side in his white suit inspecting everyone. The one thing Katniss knew for sure about Snow was he had keen eyes and he was able to perceive things about people just by observation.

“Fine,” she said.

The band struck up a slow song. Peeta led her not to the center but off to the side which gave her some relief.

“I’m not a good this,” she whispered as his one hand found purchase on the small of her back and the other cradled her hand as if it was the most delicate flower.

Her heart rate increased as blood flowed south, as all at once she was surrounded by his heat and scent. He smelled warm and spicy like one of her mother's medicinal teas. She had fantasized what it would be like to be held close in his arms, and it was better than her imagination. Peeta was fit, his shirt was cut close to his physique, her underwear was going to get ruined. His arms were solid and she involuntarily pushed herself closer.

“Just follow my lead,” he said quietly.

Katniss nodded. She noticed the slight flecks of gold in his blue eyes. Katniss committed them to memory as he moved. Their bodies fit together perfectly and she was thankful for his graceful movements because she wasn’t sure of her steps. Dancing wasn’t something she participated in regularly. The last time she committed herself to a slow dance was back in middle school, and it ended up with her partner having a broken toe.

“You need to relax your shoulders, you're too stiff,” he said.

His words ruined the moment for her. “I told you I don’t do this.”

“Just close your eyes,”he said.

Katniss stared at him.

“If we're going to work together you have to learn to trust me."

His words were a gauntlet thrust in her face. How dare he talk about trust when he didn't even know her. She shot back, "Then you're going to have to earn it...trust and respect are earned. And you don't trust me either and you certainly don't respect me."

"Look Evergreen,” Peeta said.

“FIrst off, it’s not Evergreen. It’s Ever-deen,” Katniss hissed. She knew this was a mistake.

He raised that infernal eyebrow of his.

“If we are going to be working together you need to at least learn my name.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

His voice was beginning to grate on her nerves.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” Katniss needed to get away, to compose herself before she did something stupid. Thankfully the slow music stopped.

Peeta let go of her. She walked away and sat down on a bench near the bathrooms.

She heard women laughing. One of the women’s voices she recognized was Clove, the other she didn’t know, but this woman’s voice sounded breathy like a phone sex operator.

“Did you see who Peeta Mellark was paired with?” The woman with the breathy voice asked.

They were just around the corner from where Katniss was sitting. They didn’t know she was listening.

"She’s the one person in this entire company who's not a team player.” Clove snickered. “No one wanted to work with her and poor Caesar was stuck with her when Claudius retired. He tried to make her likeable in front of everyone, by saying she was a hard worker. All she ever does is scowl at anyone and everyone who approaches her cubicle. There’s a reason Peeta calls her Evergreen."

“Doesn’t his nickname mean Evermean?”

Both laughed.

“He’s so gorgeous. I heard from Glimmer that he’s good in bed.”

“I hate that bitch,” Clove said.

“I also heard he’s been spending time with Cressida.”

“Really,” Clove replied. “told me she shot down Cato.”

“She’s so exotic, I think she was once a model.”

“Well at least we know he’ll never touch Everdeen, he’s too busy going after Cressida.”

Clove's words hurt because she wasn’t a likeable person, even Haymitch said so, but she was a hard worker and she put her heart and soul into everything she did. She also knew the chances of someone like Peeta Mellark liking someone like her were slim to none. Getting up, she quickly walked away, not wanting to let them see her dilemma.

She walked right into Peeta. His arms went around her shoulder to keep her from falling.

“I was looking for you, come on,” he tugged her hand, dragging her back to the dance floor. “We need to keep up appearances.”

Katniss relented and walked with him to the dance floor. She wanted to escape and seek shelter from the ugliness of the world. He pulled her closely and slowly they danced.

“Just one more dance and then we can go home.”

Katniss looked away.

“I see the scowl is back.”

Her face hardened, she didn’t want him to see the hurt in her eyes. Clove’s words were in her head, she was unlikeable. And now she was stuck with Peeta, a man she loathed but at the same time lusted after. Nothing good would come for this.

“Come on Evergreen,” Peeta whispered.

Katniss' eyes narrowed.

“Maybe if you smiled more…”

Saddened and angered by his actions and Clove’s words she lashed out, “Smile more, you mean like one of the empty headed bimbos that you frequent Sae’s with?”

“Have you been following me?”

“What, no?”

“Do you have a crush on me? Is that why you’re stalking me?” he taunted.

Katniss spotted Glimmer making moon eyes at him. “No, but your little friend over there would love a round two of Peeta’s greatest hits,” she hissed. She then spotted Cressida standing by Finnick and Annie. “Oh look, another one of your little fanclub.”

He looked amused when he spun them around so that he could see who she meant. He chuckled, “You’re jealous.”

“You’re an idiot to think every woman wants to drop their drawers because you cast a look at them.”

“You’re pretty when your eyes flash, they look like daggers.”

Frustrated she looked at him and said, "You disgust me." And she stomped her foot down on his before marching away.

Even as she left she felt bad for striking his foot. He could go to HR because of that and she could be fired.

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #everlarkbirthdaydrabbles #everlarkbirthdaygifts #fan fic #by mega-aulover

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the-worst-nintendo-player · 3 years

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Hello there, human or monster. The story you are about to read is a story completely made up by the writer. This story will talk about Undertale's different AUs, however, their story will be changed and the writer will explain his version of the AU in question.

The authors of the arts will be mentioned at the end of the story. In case an artist doesn't want their art to be in this post, they are kindly invited to DM me so the writer will imediately take it off the said story.

Undertale belongs to Toby Fox, please, support him by playing both of his games.

Now let's get started.

Disbelief

Chapter 1: the soulless choice

The sun was starting to rise as the first and weak rays of Dawn would start to Shine all over the country. It has been 3 years since the monsters finally came out of the Underground. They had problems, people couldn't really trust them at the beginning, but after some researches and wise words, in a year or so everything started to get better and better every day. The Monsters were free to go around the world, laws were created for their magic as this could be dangerous and everybody agreed.

Humans started to accept the monsters even more when the first 'halfies' started to be born. And there were quite many actually.

Everyone found a job or something to do in their new life. Or, well, almost everyone. Sans and Papyrus really didn't do much, especially the shorter skeleton. The taller one was always traveling with someone, looking for adventures and made many new friends. Sans, on the other hand, kept lazing around every single day, reading books of puns and jokes...however he had an hobby: watching the night sky. It was fascinating for him, but he didn't know why either.

Toriel began a teacher as she always wished to, Undyne became an officer to protect people and to fight some bad guys. Alphys imediately became a very famous scientist, and most of the questions about her job were always about the Core, and she always answered with a disappointing "I-I wasn't the one who b-built It". However, people still had many questions about everything about the Underground and its magic... and of course, she was imediately accepted by the weeb community. Mettaton quickly became an incredible famous star. You could see people going crazy for his songs and legs over a mile away.

Asgore insisted for some time in prison for his sins of killing those children. Everybody told him that what happened centuries ago, it wouldn't affect him now and it wouldn't be fair for him to be in prison so there would be no jail...however, he started to work in a place where he could help some people, like giving free food and stuff. But Asgore wouldn't stop there, he became a politician to represent monsters and humans alike, and the ex-king became the most trust worthy politician in a long time. Some rumors dare to say that he and a pretty human girl met eachother in the place where the king works to help the poor people...and they may or may not started to date.

Anyway the only one left is Frisk.

The child was the only soul that wasn't happy in this new world. They actually found it boring. That was not the first time they saw everything happen. They already completed the True Pacifist once ...and at the time, that True Reset button was too tempting...and so they pressed it and committed a Genocide of the monster kind. They met Chara and gave their Soul to them. Chara alway appeared in their dreams, reminding to Frisk that they weren't the one truly in control.

This True Pacifist ending had two more differences then the first one. The first difference was strictly bound to the second one. Well the first one was Sans.

The Skeleton remembered everything the kid did in the Genocide. In the first True Pacifist they were pretty much best friends...but in this True pacifist they only talked once

It was a beautiful night outside. Birds were sleeping, stars were shining. The skeleton met the middle of the forest, far from the town. What happened that night was the second big difference.

"Hey kiddo" the Skeleton would say, his eyes closed. Frisk was a couple of meters away from him, and unkowingly to the monster, the Human brought a Knife. Frisk kept staring at the Skeleton, his stupid smile still on his face. "Sorry for making ya come here in the middle of the night but I have some bad news for ya" and so the Skeleton would put one gloved hand out of his pockets and he slowly pointed that towards the child. Frisk imediately pulled out his knife, tied on his leg and prepared to fight. "The bad news is that..." he opened his left eye and that damned blue glowing eye appeared, enlightening a bit of a soft blue light the area around the Skeleton. "I'll change the game" as he said that the soul of the kid became blue, but a much darker one than the kid ever expierienced...and a much painful one. The kid started to scream in pure pain, if they weren't that far anyone would have come to help them. Their finger moved by itself, pointing at something and the true reset button appeared in front of them. The skeleton's smile looked like it just got bigger and he, for the first time, would use a second hand. As he pulled out his second hand he would snap his finger and Frisk could see a Gaster Blaster right sbove their head, pointing down towards them. The child kept feeling like their Soul was getting ripped off their body with brute force as well as it was about to sbreak in a milin pieces. The blaster shoot his ray. The attack missed...or maybe not. The pain stopped and the child fell on their butt on the ground. They could see the True Reset button broken in front of them. The left part was destroyed and the word 'True' disappeared. Now it was just a Reset button.

"In this way..." Sans appeared right in front of the soulless human, his eyes as dark as a night without stars "even if you Reset I'll remember everything"

Those were the last words the Skeleton have ever said to the human. It happened a week after the came out in the Surface.

The button became a normal Reset one, it didn't even give any warnings about deleting everyone's memories.

In Frisk's dreams, they could see it.

They could see that blue eye glowing in the dark as if it was the only light in the full darkness. They could feel the hate, the struggle abd something else that almost felt like its Determination.

The child was scared of the Skeleton now. As silly as it may sound, he never used both of his hands! It may mean that Sans may use two attacks at the same time...and also after all of that he was not sweating. That didn't tire him....to live that pain again...that was what frightened the kid.

Frisk was in their room, unable to sleep. He never stopped thinking about what happened 3 years before. Tonight he didn't want to fall asleep. He wanted to solve this problem. And then, a big smile appeared on his face. That smile almost looked like Chara's...however it was...wider, bigger and more...evil.

The reset button appeared in front of them

"If that's how you want to play then...I'll change the game too, Sans"

The World has been resetted

Thank you for reading this far, hope you enjoyed it.

The gif of Sans' eye belongs to Miss-Cute-Quel on Deviant art. Here is the link:

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the-delta-42 · 3 years

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My Brother

Following a premise that was sent to @nerdasaurus1200

This fic will be a slight AU of The War Cricle, but will feature the same characters.

Marinette tried to keep the fact she had a brother as quiet as possible, but that is becoming increasingly difficult because a. he’s the technician at the College and b. he’s having ‘relations’ with Ms. Bustier. And then today he had to go and ruin their cover. Now granted, it was technically her fault.

“Marinette, you forgot your lunch.” Said Michael as he popped into the classroom and handed Marinette her lunch bag.

“Thanks.” Said Marinette, gritting her teeth.

“Have a good day, little one. Caline, I’ll see you tonight.” Said Michael, as he walked out of the room.

A moment of silence passed, and then Marinette was bombarded with questions. One thing she knew for sure- she was going to kill him.

Caline looked up from her computer as Michael left the room. True to form, Marinette looked composed, except the look of murder that lived in her eyes. Caline decided that the ‘Lila Rossi take down’ file could wait for a few minutes, as the class bombarded Marinette with questions.

“Alright everyone, calm down. Yes, Michael is Marinette’s older brother. He and I are in a committed relationship. Unless Marinette wishes to say more on the matter, that is all you have to know. Now, back to your seats and continue reading in your textbook.” Instructed Ms. Bustier, going back to her computer. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Marinette giving her a silent ‘thank you’.

“HOW could you not tell us you had a brother?!” Asked Alya, openly gaping at Marinette.

“Hmm, let’s see, would you want people to know if your brother was going out with your teacher?” Was Marinette’s snarky response.

“Wait, if your brother’s 22 and Ms. Bustier is 30, why are they together?” Asked Kim, looking at the bluenette.

“I’m 23.” Corrected Ms. Bustier, looking slightly offended.

Kim winced and sunk down into his seat.

“And that’s how Kim failed literature.” Said Alix, getting a solid five minutes of laughter from her classmates.

It’d been a few weeks since Michael had made his presence, and his relationship with Ms. Bustier, known to the class.

The class stiffened when they heard a sob. Everyone looked around, before Marinette spotted Ms. Bustier, one hand on her forehead and the other holding a pen as she marked some higher years’ work. Everyone wondered what was on the work to make Ms. Bustier cry.

“Dear god, they are so stupid.” Whispered Ms Bustier, looking at the student’s answers.

Marinette pulled out her phone and sent a text to Michael, ‘Cal needs your help. Something bad just happened.’

Not a minute later, she got a reply ‘Be there in 5.’

True to form, Michael arrived in five minutes and walked over to the desk and spoke with Caline in low tones, before looking at the paper and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Alright, everyone,” Said Michael, getting everyone to look at him, “Who can tell me who William Shakespeare was?”

“He was an English play write who lived between 1564 and 1616.” Said Max, automatically.

“Well, one of the students in the year above you put, a man shaking a spear and selling weed.” Said Michael, making everyone freeze, “You do not know how depressing it is to know that 4th grade students are smarter than 2nd grade students.”

There was a collective wince from the class as the news sunk in and Ms. Bustier dissolved into a fresh wave of tears.

The school found itself on the business end of a surprise inspection. The inspectors had gone around the school and continuously tutted at the students, teacher and other people in and around the school.

One inspector froze when he saw Chloe Bourgeois openly bully another member of the class, before turning to Ms. Bustier, “Are you really going to allow that to continue?”

Everyone watched as Ms. Bustier handed the inspector a piece of paper.

“So, the reason bullying isn’t punished is because the Principle has kept brushing it under the rug?” Clarified the inspector, frowning at the document.

“Pretty much, we once had a staff member who wasn’t even a week into the job before they were fired because they attempted to give a detention to one of those names.” Explained Ms. Bustier, leaning forwards on her desk.

The inspector frowned and said, “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, please.”

An hour later the art teacher poked his head in and said, “Damocles has just been relieved of his post.”

“What?!” Exclaimed Ms. Bustier, getting to her feet, “How?”

“They confronted him about the issues with his ‘exceptions’ list and found he’d misappropriated school funds.” Said the Art Teacher, as Ms. Mendeleiev walked past.

“What’d he do?” Asked Ms. Bustier, as Michael came up to the room.

“He’s put some of it in his own pocket, and he used the rest to turn his office into a superhero den, complete with hidden rooms and compartments.” Said the Art Teacher as Michael squeezed past.

“They also found evidence of, er, ‘inappropriate’ images of children, on school computers.” Said Michael, as he approached Caline, “After you showed them that list, they interviewed each staff member individually and found grounds to relieve his of his position as principal.”

“You do not know, how happy that makes me feel.” Said Caline, grinning.

The day after Damocles had been relieved of his post as Principal, all the teachers seemed to gain new life to them. Ms. Bustier was happy to finally give Lila a detention for ‘distracting the class’, it only got better when they finally got phone number for Lila’s mother. Caline thought she should’ve brought popcorn. Lucky for her, Michael was kind enough to provide some.

Michael narrowed his eyes and folded his arms as Marinette introduced Luka to him. He examined the boy, looking him up and down, before looking at Marinette.

“So, he’s the boyfriend?” Said Michael, getting a vehement refusal, making Michael leaned back smirking, “Ah, so this is the gay one.”

Marinette had taken a sip of a drink, which she proceeded to choke on. “MICHAEL!!”

“It’s okay, I get that a lot.” Said Luka, looking at Marinette’s brother, “You’re taller than I thought you’d be.”

“My friend, as you may have observed,” Said Michael, looking down at Luka, “Our father, is a literal, fucking, giant.”

Luka frowned, before nodding.

Marinette rocked back and forth as Michael typed away on the computer.

“If you keep doing that, I’ll start thinking somethings wrong.” Said Michael, making Marinette freeze and look at him.

“Michael,” Asked Marinette, “how long have you known Caline?”

“Since we were in school,” Responded Michael, “we were in the same class, I had a crush on her and was devastated when she started dating someone else, but I chose to support her in whatever made her happy. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that Adrien’s dating Kagami, and I know I should be happy for them, but…” Marinette trailed off.

“But you can’t help but wish you were the one he was in love with.” Finished Michael, looking at her, “Little one, it’s alright to feel those things, it only becomes wrong the moment you start to interfere with their relationship. Give it some time, and perhaps you’ll have your shot again.”

Marinette gave her brother a watery smile, before he crossed the room and pulled her into a hug. Both being unaware of the couple standing outside the door.

“Come on, Nonna’s visiting today.” Said Michael, making Adrien and Kagami hide in a cupboard.

Michael was pacing in the waiting area outside the hospital room.

“Caline’s going to be fine.” Said Sabine, looking up at her son.

“But what if she isn’t?” Asked Michael, his pacing increasing, “She’s been in there for hours, what if somethings gone wrong? What if she’s lost? What if the baby’s lost? What if they’re both lost and all I’ll have of them is the ultrasound photo?”

“Michael, did I ever tell you what your father did when you and your sister were born?” Asked Sabine, making Michael look down at her, “He ran through the hospital, screaming and yelling for doctors because I was screaming, he called for emergency services and, eventually, had to be sedated, but when he woke up and met you and Skye, he practically melted.”

“So, you’re saying we all get our spiralling panic attacks from dad?” Asked Michael, getting a small smile from Sabine.

“You all get so much from your father, and from me.” Said Sabine, placing her hand on Michael’s cheek, “I know you feel like you failed because you weren’t there for Sam and Brianna, but you’re with them now and I know that they are just as worried for Caline as you are.”

Michael smiled slightly, before looking down. Sam and Brianna were with Skye and Nora, while Michelle was being watched by Marinette back at the bakery. Michael’s head jerked up at the sound of a newborn baby crying. Quickly jumping to his feet, Michael made his way over to the doors and looked in through the window. A nurse opened the door, making Michael jump back and nervously grin.

“Congratulations,” Said the Nurse, her face completely straight, “you’re a father.”

Michael looked past the nurse and spotted Caline holding a screaming bundle.

“Can, can I go in?” Asked Michael, nervously.

“As long as you don’t have anything contagious,” Said the Nurse, looking at Michael and then at his mother, “Everything should be fine.”

“We had our temperatures checked when we arrived on the floor.” Said Sabine, gently pushing Michael towards Caline and the baby.

“Cal?” Called Michael, making the red head look up.

Caline smiled and gestured Michael to come closer, carefully positioning the bundle so they could scream at Michael. Michael perched on the edge of the bed, the baby’s screams quietened and two, big, bright blue eyes stared up at Michael.

“Looks like this one is a daddy’s girl.” Said Caline, as the baby continued to stare up at Michael.

Then, out of nowhere, two small sneezes made the couple smile. The baby sneezed for a third time, before looking back at Michael and then at Caline. Soft coos were coming from the baby.

“Are we still going to go with the name we agreed on?” Asked Caline, as the baby continued to stare at them.

“Maman,” Called Michael, getting his mother’s attention, “Come meet Sabine.”

“Why are her eyes so big?” Asked Sam, tilting his head slightly.

“Because a person’s eyes are fully grown when they’re born, dummy.” Said Brianna, folding her arms.

“Then why are there people with really small eyes?” Continued Sam, as baby Sabine cooed up at them.

Michelle stared at her baby sister, before getting up and toddling over to Marinette, while baby Sabine started to try eating her foot.

“What is it with babies and eating themselves?” Asked Toby, before tossing the contents of his shot glass into his mouth.

“Why are you drinking cold coffee out of a shot glass?” Countered Skye, as Michelle returned with a Ourse plushie, sat down and started to doze off.

“What is it with Michael’s kids all being really quiet?” Asked Marinette, making her parents look at each other.

“Marinette,” Said her mother, “All of you were quiet babies, we had to by special baby monitors so we could actually know if any of you were having trouble.”

“I get the sinking feeling that there’s a horrible story coming.” Said Marinette, making her mother sigh.

“We’ll talk about it later.” Said Sabine, watching as baby Sabine’s eyes lit up when Michael trudged in, “Is everything alright?”

“Let’s just say that Caline’s lucky she’s on leave,” Said Michael, rubbing his eyes, “the schools had to get the police involved in what we thought was a minor internal issue.”

“What issue?” Asked Caline, as she returned from the toilet.

“Can’t say, because there are little ears about.” Said Michael, subtly gesturing to the small children and Marinette.

“Hey.” Protested Marinette, as Toby ushered her and the children from the room. Toby returned a minute later.

“They’re in Marinette’s room,” Said Toby, unaware of the Kwami floating under the sofa, “and there’s a movie on, so they’ll be entertained for a few hours.”

“We found a fuck ton of child pornography on a staff member’s computer.” Said Michael, groaning as he sat up, “Damocles wanted it to be dealt with quietly, however, at that point I’d already contacted the police.”

“Missed being in the uniform that much, huh?” Teased Toby, getting a glare from Michael.

“We’re still going through the folders, but we’ve already unearthed enough for the police to take it off our hands.” Said Michael, as his phone went off, “Ugh, what now?”

Michael answered the phone and all traces of tiredness vanished, “You what? Right, right, I’ll tell them.”

Michael hung up and looked around, “Okay, bad news first, they found evidence that Marinette was molested amongst the files, on a lighter note, Damocles has been arrested because they found he’d been backing up the pictures individually to his personal computer.”

There was a tense silence.

“When they say ‘molested’ do they actually mean ‘raped’?” Asked Skye, after a moment. Michael was silent, making Skye snarl, “Where is he?”

“They didn’t say.” Said Michael, as his twin started pacing.

“But we could find him, right, like we did with Li.” said Skye, rubbing her forehead.

“Skye, the reason none of us were prosecuted for Li was that they never found him.” Said Toby, making Caline frown.

“Who’s Li?” Asked Caline, making everyone freeze.

Michael opened his mouth, before freezing. He placed a finger to his lips and quietly made his way over to the door, upon reaching it, he pulled the door open, making Adrien and Kagami tumble into the room.

“What the hell are you two doing here?!” Snarled Michael, grabbing Adrien’s collar and pushing him against the wall, Skye doing the same with Kagami.

“W-we came to see Marinette.” Stuttered Adrien, as Michael glared at him.

“How much did you hear?” Growled Michael, before he heard a shuffling sound by the steps leading up to Marinette’s room.

“I heard enough.” Said Marinette, sitting curled up on one of the steps.

Michael and Skye froze, before the former sighed, “Marinette, go to Maman and Papa’s room please.”

Marinette went without a word, leaving Michael and Skye to deal with Adrien and Kagami. Michael set Adrien down, before glancing at his mother. Sabine understood his silent question and followed Marinette, as Michael started pacing around the room.

“Well, that was a fuck-up in a dixie.” Said Michael, running a hand down his face.

“No kidding.” Muttered Toby, as Tom started making some tea.

“Who’s Li?” Asked Adrien, making everyone look at him and Kagami.

“If we don’t tell you, you’re going to ask Marinette, aren’t you?” Questioned Skye, folding her arms across her chest.

“If we need to.” Said Kagami, her voice cold.

“You do that, and I’ll rip your spine out and strangle you with it.” Snapped Toby, his nails growing and sharpening.

“I doubt we’ll need to resort to violence.” Uttered Michael, looking at the two, “If we tell you, you must never speak of it.”

“Depends on what it is.” Said Kagami, glaring at Michael.

Michael glanced around the room, his eyes going to each person, before they settled on his father. Tom nodded but did not look happy about it.

“For three years, starting when Marinette was five,” Said Michael, his tone flat, “our uncle, Li Cheng, molested and raped her. When the family found out, we tore him apart. We don’t know how, but the authorities never found his remains.”

“Shortly after that, we came across an old man with a… unique music box,” Continued Skye, looking at her knees, “We don’t know how, but we found out that he had something that help suppress the memories. It’s why Marinette can’t speak, or understand, Chinese. It blocked off a major part of her memories, we never pushed the matter because we couldn’t risk the barricade breaking and having the girl that we all came to know, and love die at the hands of her own memories.”

Caline, Adrien and Kagami sat in shocked silence. The confession changed their view on everyone in the room. A cracking sound drew their attention to Tom, a broken cup in his hand with blood dripping onto the work surface. Skye sighed and got up to treat the wound, as Michael collapsed into a chair.

“W-what happens now?” Asked Adrien, looking around.

“Since Maman is explaining what happened to Marinette,” Said Toby, his voice hollow, “we have to clean up the remains of the barricade as best as we can.”

“We don’t actually know what’ll happen,” Corrected Michael, looking at his brother, “for all we know, Marinette will bounce back. But the reverse is also true, Marinette could be destroyed, and a different person takes her place.”

Michael’s ear twitched, he could hear sobbing. He doubted that it was his mother crying.

The next week, Marinette seemed to be a shell of herself. Adrien had asked if it was alright if Alya knew, Michael just said, “That’s up to Marinette.”

The following weeks slowly turned into months, and Michael found himself leaning against the wall as the school broke for summer. Michael carefully watched Marinette leave with her friends, he didn’t know if Marinette told Alya, but the two seemed to be closer. He often found Marinette cuddled up with her friends at any one time, so far, it had been five. He trusted Luka, Nino and Alya, he wasn’t sure about Adrien and Kagami.

Michael frowned when he spotted Lila approaching the group but smirked when the Italian tripped over a chair leg.

“I really shouldn’t laugh,” Said Caline, balancing baby Sabine in her arms, “but I wish that was caught on camera.”

“It’s against the law, remember?” Joked Michael, as everyone looked down at Lila.

“I was talking about the security camera.” Caline pointed to the small, black orb that sat in the top corner of the room.

“Oh, I forgot about that one.” Smirked Michael, as Marinette and her friends vanished through the door.

“I don’t see how, you installed it.” Remarked Caline, as Sabine started whining because her mother had stopped bouncing her.

Marinette rolled over and looked at the alarm clock, it was slowly ticking down to the time the alarm would go off. Normally, she’d get up and silence the alarm before it sounded, but she currently had a mod of blond hair pinning her arm down to her mattress. Marinette froze when she heard a snuffling sound. A red furred Labrador Retriever peaked over the edge of the bed. The dog gave its best impression of a grin, before barking at them. The cuddle pile jumped as the dog bounced onto the bed and started licking Marinette to death.

“Bridgette, no, why?” Whined Marinette, as the dog dropped herself down on top of Marinette.

Bridgette’s tail wagged harder, before a particularly loud bark, waking a small black cat hiding away on one of Marinette’s shelves. The cat jumped and hissed at the dog, while Marinette tried to wrangle the overgrown puppy off her bed. The cat jumped down and landed on Adrien’s lap. Felix glared at Bridgette and settled himself down on Adrien and started purring. The rest of the group slowly became aware of what was happening.

“Why couldn’t your brother get you some normal pets?” Asked Kagami, glaring at the two animals.

“A cat and dog are normal.” Said Alya, stretching her back.

Kagami glared harder and continued to grumble as Bridgette jumped off the bed and bounded out of the room. Adrien slowly got to his feet, carefully adjusting the cat in his arms as he followed after the dog, Nino and Alya following soon after.

“I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep, am I?” Asked Marinette, her arm covering her eyes.

“No.” Said Luka, before grabbing the covers and pulling them off, “Time to wake up, Mike and Celine are bringing their kids over today.”

Marinette whined and rolled over. That whine turned into a squeal as Kagami grabbed her and hauled her into her arms and started carrying her to the door.

“Nooo, I don’t wanna wake up.” Whined Marinette, dramatically struggling as Kagami princess carried her out of the room.

“If we’re lucky, none of the Kwami’s woke up.” Muttered Luka, nervously glancing at a doll house situated in the corner of the room. A loud snore came from Plagg’s room. Luka sighed in relief and followed Kagami and Mainette after the others.

“Fucking cat, trying to steal my camembert.” Drooled Plagg, kneading a cushion in his sleep.

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #nino lahiffe #alya cesaire #luka couffaine #kagami tsurugi #caline bustier #Delta Writes #War Circle AU #literally every class member #tom du #sabine cheng #mature themes #tw; past non-con #tw; threats #tw; trauma #tw; mental health

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dawninlatin · 4 years

Text

Online classes are the worst

A manorian teacher AU

Words: 1381

AO3: Click here

Based on the prompt:

Teacher AU: When you realize Person A and Person B have the same background during zoom class and holy shit they are living together!?

By @perseannabeth (omg I hope you’re okay with me using this, if not please let me know!)

Manon was installed in her office - laptop open and an iced coffee next to her - currently giving a lecture in organic chemistry. She knew half of the class wasn’t paying attention. Knew that the muted microphones and turned-off cameras meant the student was scrolling down TikTok or sleeping or not even in the same room as their computer. But as long as she got through her lesson undisturbed, she didn’t care. It wasn’t her fucking problem if they didn’t want to learn. Organic chemistry was awesome.

Online classes was a challenge though. Manon needed to be in a physical classroom, needed to have a chalkboard to write on, needed to pace around, needed to do crazy and borderline dangerous experiments.

She had been a high school teacher for 6 years now, and she loved her job - most days, at least - but her students could never know that.

In those 6 years she had built herself a reputation of being the uncaring, cold and slightly manic science teacher. This was naturally because she had learned that the teens respected her if they were terrified of her. Nothing would beat the look of pure horror mixed with awe she had seen on the faces of twenty 16 year olds that one time she poured ethanol on her desk and then lit it on fire.

But now, instead of getting to do those kinds of experiments, she was confined to a small office in her small home, with nothing but a laptop to teach her students. It was driving her crazy.

Even if she preferred teaching in a physical classroom, Manon had to admit, she had gotten the hang of Zoom pretty quickly. They were only in their second week of online classes after all.

This lesson was going great, all things considered, at least until a message from Kyle Williams popped up on her screen. She couldn’t stop the look of horror on her face as she read it.

Kyle: Wait…isn’t that the same bookshelf Mr. Havilliard was sitting in front of yesterday?

Nora: OMG

Nora: It is!!!!!

Omar: Are they living together??

Manon tried ignoring the chat, tried continuing with her lecture, tried stopping the blush that was currently spreading on her face.

Kyle: Are they dating or something?

Ellen: I bet they’re sleeping together…

Ellen: Or what if they’re secretly married???

Freddie: Come on, can you imagine Ms. Blackbeak married to someone?

Kyle: And Mr. Havilliard of all people…

Theo: So they are sleeping together then?!

Nora: EW! I don’t wanna imagine them sleeping together…

She wanted to die. She had to quit her job, had to leave town, had to go away…she could never step foot in her classroom ever again…

Ellen: But now that you mention it, they always look at each other really weird

Theo: And they are staying in the same house atm…

Omar: What if they have kids?!

Freddie: Ms. Blackbeak does not have kids

Freddie: I have never even seen her smile, imagine her with Mr. Havilliard

Jenna: I’m freaking out over here…

Kyle: Omg, now I can’t stop imagining them having sex…

That was enough, she needed to end this before she died of humiliation. Then she needed to say goodbye to her loved ones, because she would be imprisoned for life for murdering a bunch of teenagers.

While closing the chat window - and ignoring the sound of countless more messages - she schooled her features back into a bored look. «Okay, that’s enough for today.»

The messages abruptly stopped, and Manon couldn’t help the smirk spreading on her face, beet read as it was. «I want you to spend the rest of the lesson reading through the chapter on organic chemistry, and then I want a 2000 word paper on a subject you find interesting in that chapter delivered to me by Monday.»

Writing a paper hadn’t been part of her plan, but she needed to do something to make her students suffer, if only to stop herself from committing murder.

Manon ended the meeting, not bothering with the groans and complaints coming from her students. She had to quit her job now, anyway…

She shut the laptop, pushed her chair back from the desk, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

«FUCK!»

Dorian was sitting at the kitchen table, grading book reports when he heard his girlfriend curse loudly, before marching across the hall and slamming the bedroom door shut. He silently counted to ten before standing up and following her.

Opening the door, he found that Manon was already lying under the cover, ignoring his presence. Dorian was curious to what had put her in such a mood - wasn’t she supposed to have a lecture right now? - but he knew his girlfriend, knew he needed to wait until she was ready to talk about whatever was wrong.

These past two weeks had been hard on them, but Manon especially. Not only because of the virus, he thought to himself. Dorian was doing okay, he didn’t mind staying inside, and he’d gotten a lot more time to read lately, but Manon wasn’t like him. She hated staying inside, hated sitting still. She might not admit it, but he knew the lockdown was challenging for her.

While slipping of his jacket, he padded over to their bed, laying down beside her. He gave her a few seconds to tell him to fuck off, before scooting closer and putting his arms around her when she stayed silent. She sighed at the contact, pulling the covers down slightly so he could see part of her face.

«Apparently, Kyle fucking Williams is in your English class, because during my science lecture today he noticed we use the same room.» Hearing the anger and annoyance in her voice, Dorian tried his best not to laugh, but as she gave him a deadly glare, he knew he had failed.

«Is it so bad? That they know, I mean.»

Manon groaned, burying her face in the covers once again. «I’m so embarrassed,» she said, her voice muffled.

Dorian let out a small chuckle, pulling her closer. Manon had been clear from the beginning of their relationship about how they couldn’t be seen together at work. He had been a little unsure of hiding it, but she had assured him that this was all about her, and all about her reputation at school, so Dorian respected her wishes. Manon wasn’t comfortable with displaying affection publicly in the same way that he was. She kept her feelings to herself, and those that were the closest to her. And Dorian had to admit, he kinda liked being the only one she truly opened up to. The only one who saw her smile and laugh and being giddy with love. It made him feel special. Even if he wanted to shout from the rooftops how much he loved Manon Blackbeak.

«It’s forgotten in a few weeks,» he said to her in an attempt to lure her out of her hiding spot.

«They’ll never listen to me again,» she complained, her head now peeking out.

Dorian pressed a light kiss to her forehead. «You’ll be just as awesome and just as scary as before, promise.»

She rolled her eyes in answer. «Why should I trust you?»

«Because you love me?» He poked her lightly in the side, now determined to make her smile.

Manon shook her head, murmuring something that sounded like «not in the slightest» into the thick blanket.

«You’re adorable right now, you know that?» Dorian teased, peppering her face with kisses. He expected her to bat his hand away, but she only leaned into his chest, sighing in defeat.

«You’re not making the situation any better right now…»

«You’ll be fine. Besides-,» he trailed his hands down her body, to her stomach, and the small bump that had begun to form, «they’ll definitely know in six months, cause we’ll have a baby then.»

Manon turned around so she faced him, a small smile finally playing on her lips. Dorian met her eyes, and found himself slightly taken aback by the amount of love and adoration he felt for this woman. «I love you,» he whispered against her lips.

«I love you too,» she whispered back, her mouth meeting his.

A/N: Hey!

I am sory for the mess that is this fic, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore, I need sleep...

Also, I'm sorry for not writing a new chapter of Queen of Peace, but that chapter will take time, and time is something I do not have atm, sooooo, I will try and update it on Friday:)

If you bothered reading all of it, congrats, I stan<3

I love reading your comments, so feel free letting me know what you think:)

Also did anyone get the vine reference...? God I really should sleep...

*lots of smoochies*

-Dawninlatin<3

#throne of glass #sarah j maas #manorian #manon x dorian #manon blackbeak #dorian havilliard #manorian fanfiction #throne of glass fanfiction #manorian one shot #fluff

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ghostsandgod · 4 years

Text

The Golden Key of Paradise

INTRODUCTION.

At first sight of this little book, that bears the high-sounding title of “The Golden Key of Paradise,” perhaps, dear reader, you will be somewhat curious to know whether its contents are as good as its title. Perhaps you are inclined to shrug your shoulders and feel as you do when you see advertised marvellous and infallible cures for all the ills that flesh is heir to.

No — be not deceived; this is a genuine key, and one you can easily manipulate. It is Perfect Contrition, which for the forty centuries (or more, according to many Biblical scholars) before the coming of Christ was the only means of salvation for all those who had committed sin, and which even now is destined to save myriads of souls. Look at its marvellous power. It can open Heaven every day, and every moment of each day. Especially is it efficacious if at the moment of death you cannot have at your side the priest, the dispenser of the divine mercies, an absence unfortunately only too common nowadays, on account of the number of sudden deaths. In this case, Perfect Contrition will be the last key which, with the grace of God, will open Heaven to you. But it is necessary to learn during life how to use this key at the moment of death. How many souls that otherwise would have been lost for all eternity have, by means of an Act of True Contrition, opened Paradise for themselves The learned and holy Cardinal Johann Baptist Franzelin said “If I could wander through the country preaching the Word of God, my favourite theme would be Perfect Contrition.” Golden words, dear reader, with which I fully agree; adding, however, that I would wish to do the same from the pulpits in the cities, where the occasions of sin are greater and the dangers to one s soul are innumerable.

PREFACE TO THE ITALIAN TRANSLATION.

THE Author, by a happy inspiration called this little book “The Golden Key of Paradise.” And, in fact, our true home, yours and mine, and of everybody else, is Heaven. This world in which we now live is not our true home. So true is this that, sooner or later, Death will drive us hence and send us to that Home Eternal. Now, in order to enter into the home of true and everlasting happiness, Heaven, we need a key with which to open the door. And in this little book you will find that key — a key of purest gold, fashioned by a zealous priest from the teachings of the Gospel and of the Catholic Church. This key is called Perfect Contrition.

Now, if Perfect Contrition is the Key to Heaven, it naturally follows that everybody should possess one, and know how to use it. And so, whoever you may be, or whatever may be your condition and state in life, this book is written specially for you.

Are you a priest? This pamphlet will call to your mind beautiful practical truths, the importance of which you may never have considered, and as you turn over these pages you will feel constrained to impart to your flock the wonderful knowledge that is yours.

Are you in a religious community? What peace can you not procure for yourself by frequently using this key.

Are you the father or mother of a family? Then accept this precious key to open the Gates of Heaven for yourself; and leave it as an heirloom to your children; they will thank you for it for all eternity.

Are you a teacher? Teach your charges the frequent use of this mystical key. Some day they will appreciate it.

Whatever you are, learn to use this golden key, and, should any of the thousand disasters so frequent nowadays overtake you, you have at hand the means of saving your soul.

Are you a good Catholic? Use this key frequently, for it led the saints to the apex of sanctity.

Are you a sinner? This key is made specially for you, for it shows you how to reopen the gates that you have closed by sin. I will go even further. Are you a heretic, an infidel in good faith, or one who, knowing his error, is now at death’s door, and has no time to embrace the True Faith or reconcile himself with God? Fortunate are you if this golden key should have come into your hands. It can save you from Hell and open Heaven for you. Fly, fly then, little book, like a butterfly with golden wings, enter into the houses of the rich and of the poor; go into the schools and workshops; fly over mountains and plains, over land and sea; find your way into the steamers and trains; penetrate the mines; ascend to the aeroplane in the clouds; where ever sin and death may be, there bring the light and consolation that are contained in your modest pages.

Key to Heaven.

What is Perfect Contrition?

FIRST of all, what is contrition? Later on we will see about that word “perfect.” Contrition is a grief of the soul, a detestation of sin committed. It must be accompanied by a firm resolution of amending one’s life and of sinning no more.

I. PERFECT CONTRITION. The Soul’s Sorrow.

Now, for real contrition, three conditions are necessary — it must he internal, universal, and supernatural.

(a) It must be internal or inward. It must come from the depths of the heart, and does not consist of acts pronounced by the lips without reflection or thought. It is not necessary to manifest our sorrow by sighs and tears. These may be signs of contrition, but they are not essential or necessary parts of it. Contrition rests in the soul and in the firm resolution of leaving our sin and returning to God.

(b) Our contrition must be universal — that is, it must be extended to all the sins, at least to all the mortal sins, that we have committed.

(c) Lastly, it must be supernatural, which means that it must be founded on some motive of faith — for example, on Hell, on Purgatory, on Heaven, on God, or on some similar motive. Our contrition would be natural, and thereby useless, if it were founded on some purely natural motive of interest or reason — as, for example, if we were sorry because our sins brought us some illness or dishonour or pecuniary loss. But if our sorrow is founded on some truth of our Faith — for example, the loss of Heaven or the fear of Hell — it is supernatural and meritorious.

Now, supernatural contrition may be either imperfect or perfect; and here we return to Perfect Contrition. Contrition is imperfect when we are sorry through fear of God. It is perfect when we are sorry through love of Him. In the first case, we are sorry for having offended God because we fear His just anger and punishment; in the second case, we are sorry because sin offends God, Who is so infinitely good and lovable.

Perfect Contrition springs from the perfect love of God, and our love for God is perfect when we love Him because He is infinitely perfect, infinitely beautiful, infinitely good in Himself, or because, by His innumerable gifts to us, He has shown His love for us. On the other hand, our love for God is imperfect when we love Him because we hope for some benefit from Him. But should this something be Himself in so much as He is our Supreme Good, then this would be perfect love.

From this, you will clearly see that when our love is imperfect we think principally of ourselves, of the benefits we have received; whereas, if it is perfect, we think principally of God — of the goodness of Him Who enriches us with His benefits. When our love is imperfect, we love the gifts we have received; when it is perfect, we love the Giver of these gifts, not so much for the gifts He gives as for the love and goodness that these gifts manifest in Him.

Sorrow Comes from Love.

Now, sorrow or contrition springs from love, and so it follows that our contrition will be perfect when we repent of our sins through the perfect love of God — that is, when we repent, because by sinning we offend God, Who is infinitely good and perfect and beautiful in Himself, and Who loves us so much. Our contrition will be imperfect if we repent through fear of God, because by sinning we have lost Heaven or merited the pains of Purgatory or Hell. When our sorrow is imperfect we think above all about ourselves, and of the punishment that our sins will bring on us in the next life in much the same way as a child is sorry for some fault because it fears a thrashing. With perfect contrition we think principally about God, about His greatness, His goodness, His beauty, His Love, all of which attributes we offend in sinning, and for which sins the God-Man, our Adorable Saviour, suffered so much. It is like a child repenting of a fault because it has grieved its parents, who are so good and loving, and have done so much for it. One other little example will help to explain all this much better. After Saint Peter denied his Divine Master, he thought of his sin, and, “going out, wept bitterly.” Why did he weep? Perhaps for the shame he would feel in front of the other Apostles? If this was the reason, then his sorrow was purely natural and without merit for Heaven. Perhaps he feared being deprived of his dignity as an Apostle and Prince of the Apostles, or perhaps he feared losing Heaven. These certainly would be worthy motives, but still his sorrow would be imperfect. No, No! Peter wept and repented because he had offended his beloved Master, Who was so good, so holy, so worthy of his love; he wept because he had repaid that love with the blackest ingratitude, and, as a consequence, his contrition was perfect, his sin was forgiven. With this golden key he had again reopened the doors of Heaven, which he had closed a moment before by his triple denial. And, dear reader, have you not as much reason to detest your own sins? Certainly. The benefits you have received are more numerous than the hairs on your head, and for each of these gifts you should exclaim with Saint John, “Let us love God Who has first loved us.”

The Love of God.

And how has God loved us? “I have loved you,” He says, “with an eternal love. I have had pity on you and drawn you to Myself.” (Jeremiah 31:3.) So He has loved us with an eternal love. Right from eternity, before you were born — aye, even before this world was made or the angels themselves were created. He turned towards you one of those loving looks that pierce the very heart; for you He created the heavens and the earth, for you He prepared a body and a soul with all the tenderness of a mother preparing for the coming of her child. It is God Who gave you life and keeps you in life; it is He Who from day to day gives you all those natural goods that you enjoy. Such a thought should be sufficient to induce the very pagans to the perfect love of God. But how much more reason have not you, a Christian, a Catholic, to love Him with a perfect love — you who experience a signal proof of His goodness and love, for “He has pity on you”? You, in consequence of the fall of our First Parents, were condemned with the rest of mankind, but your Heavenly Father sent His only Son to be your Saviour and to redeem you with His Precious Blood. During His Agony in the Garden, He thought of you. He thought of you as His Blood flowed from the wounds caused by the cruel scourges and crown of thorns. It was of you He thought as He laboured under the heavy Cross up the hill of Calvary. It was of you He thought and for you He suffered as He expired in shame and agony on the Cross. Yes, He thought of you with as tender a love, as if you were the only person in the world, so that you can truly say with Saint Paul, “He loved me and gave Himself up to death for me.” What conclusion can you draw from all this? This, and this only — “Let us love God who has first loved us.”

Besides, God drew you to Himself by Baptism, the first and most important grace in this life, and by the Church into whose bosom you were then admitted. How many there are who find the True Church only after trials and sacrifices of every kind! How many, again, who never know it! But through the love and mercy of Almighty God, you were endowed with the gift of the True Faith in your cradle. He continues to draw you to Himself by means of the Sacraments and of innumerable other graces, both internal and external. You are, as it were, submerged in an ocean — in the ocean of divine love and mercy. Not satisfied with all these proofs of His love, He wishes to crown all these favours by placing you in Heaven, near to Himself, where you will be eternally happy. What return can you make for all this love? Nothing but love can repay love, and so do not all these proofs of His infinite love force us to love Him and to exclaim with Saint Paul, “Caritas Christi urget nos”? ‘The love of Christ constrains us’ to love Him in return.

Now, let us examine a little. How have you corresponded to the love of a God so loving and so lovable? Undoubtedly, with ingratitude and sin. But do you not now repent of such ingratitude? Ah! I have no doubt but that at this moment your heart burns with a desire of repairing such ingratitude by means of a whole-hearted love. If such is the case, then at this very moment, you have Perfect Contrition — that contrition, namely, that is founded on the love of God and is called Perfect Contrition, or Contrition of Love.

But this contrition may be of a still higher degree and consist in loving God simply because He is infinitely perfect, infinitely glorious, and worthy of being loved above every other thing, independent of His mercies towards us. Let us make a comparison. Astronomers tell us that in the firmament there are stars as large and as brilliant as the sun, but so far away that they are invisible to the naked eye. Now, though these stars give us neither light nor warmth, are they not as worthy of our admiration as the sun itself? And suppose, now, that man had never experienced any benefits from that eternal Star — the Love of God; suppose that Almighty God had not created the earth or any living creature; He would not on this account be any less wise, less grand, less beautiful, less glorious, less worthy of love, because in Himself and through Himself, He is the Supreme Good. This is what we mean when we recite the words, “I detest my sins above every other evil because they displease You, my God, Who for Your infinite goodness are so deserving of all my love.” Reflect for a moment on the love of God — above all, think of the manifestation of this love in the sufferings of Our Divine Saviour. By this means, you will easily understand it, and, like a fiery dart, it will pierce and inflame your heart. Behold the practical way of exciting yourself to Perfect Contrition.

It is related in the life of the Curé d’Ars that on one occasion, a lady, a perfect stranger to him, asked him to pray for her husband, a careless Catholic, who had just died suddenly and without receiving the Sacraments. “He was so careless, Father,” she said, weeping; “he did not go to his duties, and whatever will become of him?" “Madam,” replied the saintly priest, “do you not remember the bouquet of flowers he picked every Saturday to decorate Our Lady’s altar? In return Our Blessed Lady obtained for him the grace to make an act of Perfect Contrition before dying, and he is saved.” The Curé had never before seen that lady, nor did he know her husband, but it was a fact that every Saturday he picked that bunch of flowers. Our Lady, in return for that very small token of love he showed her, placed in his hands at that supreme moment the Golden Key of Paradise.

II. HOW TO OBTAIN PERFECT CONTRITION.

First of all, we must bear in mind that Perfect Contrition is a grace — a great grace — from God. We should therefore constantly pray for it. Ask for it, not only when you wish to make an Act of Contrition, but often during the day. It should be the object of your most ardent desires. Repeat often, “My God! Give me perfect sorrow for my sins.” And if you sincerely mean what you say, Our Lord will hear your prayer.

Before the Crucifix.

Besides this, here is an easy way of making an Act of Contrition. Kneel down before a crucifix in a church or in your room, or, if you cannot do this, imagine yourself to be in the presence of Jesus Christ, and, while looking at His wounds, think for a few moments, and then repeat these or similar words, “Who is This nailed to a Cross? It is Jesus — my God and Saviour. And see how He suffers! His Body covered with wounds and blood; His Soul submerged in anguish and humiliations. Why does He suffer? For the sins of mankind, and so for mine also. In the abyss of His torments, He is thinking of me. He is suffering for me. He is making reparation for my sins.” Remain there at the foot of the Cross while the Blood of your Saviour falls drop by drop on your soul. Ask yourself how you have corresponded with these proofs of love. Call to mind your past sins, and, forgetting for a moment both Heaven and Hell, repent because your sins have reduced your Saviour to so pitiable a state. Promise Him that you will not crucify Him again, and then slowly and fervently repeat the Act of Contrition. Better still, repeat those words of sorrow that will spontaneously rise up in your heart, now softened by grace and filled with a holy bitterness.

Three Visits.

It will not be out of place to call to mind here what Saint Charles Borromeo taught his penitents when they went to Confession. “Do you wish,” he used to say, “to know an easy way of exciting yourselves to true sorrow for your sins? Make three little visits — the first above, the second below, the third in the middle. Your visit up above will show you Paradise, which you have renounced for some empty pleasure, for some sinful thought, or word or act. The displeasure that will arise in your heart at the thought of this loss will be good attrition, or imperfect contrition, and in Confession will suffice to wash away your sins.

“Your visit below will show you that frightful place in which you would be now if God had exercised His justice — that place where you would for ever suffer the torment of fire, far from your true home, which is Heaven. The sorrow arising from this consideration is also excellent, and sufficient in Confession.

“Your third visit will show you Christ crucified and dying for you on Calvary amid pains and insults of every description. The knowledge that the Crucified One is Infinite Goodness Itself, your greatest Benefactor, Whom, instead of loving, you have insulted and crucified, will awaken in your heart sentiments of love and sorrow that will wipe away your sins even before you enter the confessional.”

Dear reader, remember these three visits of Saint Charles, not only when you go to Confession, but each time you wish to excite yourself to Perfect Contrition.

III. IS IT DIFFICULT TO MAKE AN ACT OF PERFECT CONTRITION?

No doubt, it is more difficult to make an act of Perfect Contrition than an Imperfect one, which suffices when we go to Confession. But still, there is no one who, if he sincerely wishes it, cannot, with the grace of God, make an act of Perfect Contrition. Sorrow is in the will, not in the senses or feelings. All that is needed is that we repent because we love God above everything else; that is all. True it is that Perfect Contrition has its degrees, but it is none the less perfect because it does not reach the intensity and sublimity of the sorrow of Saint Peter, of Saint Mary Magdalene, or of Saint Aloysius. Such a degree is very desirable, but is by no means necessary. A lesser degree, but, provided it proceeds from the love of God, and not through fear of His punishments, is quite sufficient. And it is very consoling to remember that for the 4000 years (or more, according to many Biblical scholars) before the coming of Christ the only means sinners had of obtaining pardon was this same Perfect Contrition. There was no Sacrament of Penance in those days. Even today for thousands — aye, for millions — of pagans, of non-Catholics, and of Catholics, too, who have no time to call a priest to their bedside, the only means of pardon and salvation is an act of Perfect Contrition.

Now, if it is true that God does not wish the death of a sinner, it follows that He does not wish to impose on His creatures a contrition or sorrow beyond their powers, but one that is within the reach of everyone. And so, if millions of poor creatures who, through no fault of their own, live and die outside the True Fold, if these can obtain the grace of Perfect Contrition, do you imagine, dear reader, that it will be difficult for you — you who enjoy the happiness of being a Christian and a Catholic, and so are capable of receiving much greater graces than they — you who are far better instructed in things divine than the poor infidels are?

But I dare to go even further. Often, very often, without even thinking of it, you have Perfect Contrition for your sins. For example, when you hear Mass devoutly or make the Stations of the Cross properly; when you reflect before your crucifix or an image of the Sacred Heart. What is more, every time you say the “Our Father,” in the first three petitions you make three acts of perfect charity, each of which is sufficient to cancel every sin from your soul.

Very often, a few words suffice to express the most ardent love and the most profound sorrow — for instance, the little ejaculations, “My Jesus, mercy,” “My God and my All,” “My God, I love You above all things,” “My God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner.” Aided by the grace of God (and God has promised to give to all who ask), it is by no means difficult to make an Act of Contrition. Take the case of David, who for one curious look fell into the sin of adultery, and then of murder. Having committed these sins, he lived on quite unconcerned about the state of his soul till the prophet Nathan came to reprove him. And this reproach induced David to make an act of Perfect Contrition in a few words, “Peccavi Domino” (“I have sinned against the Lord” 2 Samuel 12:13). So efficacious was his contrition that the prophet, inspired by God, exclaimed, “The Lord has forgiven you.”

Take, again, the case of Mary Magdalen — a public sinner. She did not even say one word, but simply wept at the Feet of Jesus. Jesus saw the sorrow in her heart, and, turning to her, said: “Woman! because you have loved much your sins are forgiven you.” See, then, how little is needed — only to love God above everything. And love demands neither time nor trouble; it suffices to think of Jesus crucified, for it is impossible then not to love Him, and to be sorry for the sins by which we have crucified Him.

Remember the good thief — a robber condemned to death — and yet for those few words spoken from his heart, “Lord, remember me when You shall come into Your Kingdom,” he was immediately promised Heaven by Christ Himself: “Today, you shall be with Me in Paradise.”

Lastly, look at Saint Peter, who denied his Master three times. Jesus looked at him; Peter said not a single word, but, “going out, wept bitterly.” He was forgiven; he was chosen by Christ to be His first successor on earth — the Prince of the Apostles — and to-day is one of the most glorious saints in Heaven.

Dear readers, should we ever have the misfortune to offend God, let us give a look at the tabernacle where Jesus is palpitating with love for us, or let us think of Calvary. Our hearts will be touched. We will repent. We shall be forgiven and saved.

IV. THE EFFECTS OF PERFECT CONTRITION.

Forgiveness Even Before Confession.

Suppose the person before he makes an act of Perfect Contrition is in the state of mortal sin. Immediately, before even he goes to Confession — so long as he has the intention of going when opportunity offers — all his sins are forgiven. Not only is the eternal punishment of Hell remitted, but all his merits, which he had lost by sinning, are again restored to him. And if the person making this Act of Contrition is in the state of grace, his soul is strengthened against future temptations, his venial sins are forgiven, his purgatory is lessened, and the love of God increases in his soul. Behold the wonderful effects of the mercy of God produced in the soul of the Christian, and even in that of the pagan in good faith, by an act of Perfect Contrition.

Contrition Does Not Dispense With Confession.

Perhaps in reading this you will be surprised and inclined to say, “I can well understand that at the moment of death we should ask for the grace of Perfect Contrition, and that at that supreme moment, it produces these wonderful effects, but I can scarcely credit that it has this power at all times, and when we are well and strong.” And yet, all this is perfectly true; it is as solid as the Rock on which the Church is built. In short, it is as certain as the Word of God. In the Council of Trent, the Church, under the assistance of the Holy Ghost, declared “that Perfect Contrition — that is, that which proceeds from the love of God — justifies man and reconciles him with God even before the reception of the Sacrament of Penance.” Of course, it is understood that such a person, if a Catholic, has at least the implicit intention of going to Confession. Now, the Council of Trent says nothing about the moment of death — it makes no distinction of time or circumstances, and so always and at any moment during life, this golden key opens the gates of Paradise. This declaration of Holy Church is simply the explanation of those words of Our Divine Saviour, “If anyone loves Me” (and no one can love Him without being sorry for having offended Him) — “if anyone loves Me, My Father will love Him, and We will come and dwell in him.” Now, since God cannot dwell in a soul stained with mortal sin, it follows that Perfect Contrition, or the Contrition of Charity, as it is called, banishes sin from the soul.

Such has always been the teaching of the Church, and when a heretic denied it, he was condemned by Rome. If, as we have already seen, Perfect Contrition produced these wonderful effects in the Old Law — the Law of Fear and Justice — with what greater reason should it not do so in the New Law — the Law of Mercy and Love?

But, seeing how efficacious Perfect Contrition is, seeing how it cleanses the soul even before Confession, you may be inclined to say, “Why, then, go to Confession at all? Was not Confession instituted by Jesus Christ for the remission of sins? And if Perfect Contrition remits sin even before Confession, where is the necessity of Confession?” This objection or difficulty is answered in the Catechism: “If we fall into sin we should make an Act of Contrition and go to Confession as soon as we can.” And the reason is because, though Perfect Contrition produces the same effects as Confession, it does not do so independently of Confession. Confession is the ordinary means instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of sin, and Perfect Contrition supposes the intention of confessing those sins already forgiven by this Act of Contrition. Without this intention, an Act of Contrition would not remit a single mortal sin. Should a person afterwards neglect to go to Confession, at least within the year, he would commit a mortal sin by wilfully disobeying one of the Commandments of the Church. So, bear in mind that in order to make a good Act of Contrition we must have the intention of going to Confession. But when? Must one go at the first opportunity? Strictly speaking, no; since we are obliged to go but once a year, except in special circumstances — as, for instance, when we wish to receive Holy Communion. However, all theologians vividly exhort us to go as soon as possible, and for several reasons. We are more certain then that our sins are forgiven, for our contrition may not have been perfect. We thus enjoy greater peace of conscience, and we enrich our souls with the precious graces annexed to the Sacrament of Penance. When, for instance, you meet with an accident and injure, say, your hand or foot, what do you do? You immediately apply such home remedies as you know of, and then call the doctor at the first opportunity, for his prescriptions, you know, are authentic. And you should do the same for an injury to your soul — immediately say an Act of Contrition, which is the home remedy, and then, as soon as possible, have recourse to your spiritual doctor, who is your Confessor.

Again, someone might be inclined to say, “Since it is so easy to obtain pardon by means of an Act of Perfect Contrition, I need not worry any more. I can sin without scruple, and then simply make an Act of Contrition, and all will be well.” Dear reader, anyone who would reason in this way would not have the shadow of sorrow. How could he say he loved God above everything when he intends to offend Him without scruple? When one is really sorry for having done something, he is resolved never to do it again. It may happen, and often does happen, that after one has sincerely repented of a sin, he is tempted again, and again falls into the same sin. This is quite a different thing. His contrition was good, because at the moment his resolution was sincere; but later, under a fresh temptation, he unfortunately fell again. All he can do is to repent once more, and resolve more firmly than ever to be more vigilant in the future.

Perfect Contrition is a great help to all those who sincerely wish to keep in the state of grace — to all those who, in spite of good intentions, through frailty, fall from time to time into mortal sin. But should anyone wish to abuse it as a means of sinning more freely, for him, instead of being a divine remedy, it would turn into an infernal poison.

Saint Augustine is the model of Perfect Contrition. Having spent a sinful youth and early manhood, he repented, and in his Confessions says: “Too late, oh Eternal Goodness! have I learned to know You, but for the future I will love You, I will never again offend You.” See how he coupled with his sorrow the resolution of sinning no more.

V. WHY IS PERFECT CONTRITION SO IMPORTANT, AND, AT TIMES, EVEN NECESSARY?

It is important during life, and especially at the moment of death, for the following reasons: —

Friends of God.

What greater happiness can we wish for in this life than to be in the state of sanctifying grace? It is this which beautifies the soul, which makes it a child of God and an heir to Heaven. It converts every good work and every suffering patiently borne into acts of merit. It is, as it were, a magic wand, converting everything into heavenly gold. On the other hand, what more unfortunate being is there than a person in mortal sin? All his past merits are lost, his soul is in danger of hell, all his good works, all his sufferings, even his prayers, are without the least merit for Eternity. How important, then, to be in the state of grace. And if a person does fall from this state, how can he again acquire it? There are two means — Confession and Perfect Contrition. Confession is the ordinary means, but as it is sometimes very difficult, and even impossible, to go to Confession, Almighty God, in His Goodness, has given us an extraordinary means, which is Perfect Contrition.

Suppose, which God forbid, that someday you have the misfortune of committing a mortal sin. After the distractions of the day, when you are at home in the quiet of the evening, your conscience will begin to trouble you, you will begin to feel ill at ease, and perhaps frightened, and with very good reason, too. What are you to do? God places in your hands the golden key that will reopen for you the Gates of Heaven that you closed during the day. Make an Act of Contrition from the motive of the love of God; resolve to sin no more, and to go to Confession when you can; then go peacefully to bed.

You are at peace with God, and if you die during the night, you will be saved.

On the contrary, how pitiable is the state of the man who is ignorant of Perfect Contrition! He goes to bed at night and rises in the morning an enemy of God; he continues in this fearful state for days and weeks, perhaps for months and years. This profound darkness into which his soul is plunged is unbroken except for a few days after each Confession; he then sins again, and remains in this state till his next Confession. Unhappy man! To live practically all his life in mortal sin, an enemy of God, without merits for Heaven, and in constant danger of being lost eternally.

Before Holy Communion.

Of course, you would not think of going to Holy Communion after having committed a mortal sin and before going to Confession. Saint Paul insists: “Let a man prove himself first.” (1 Corinth 11:28.) Let him go to Confession, and then partake of the Eucharistic Bread. Perfect Contrition is an efficacious, but at the same time an extraordinary, means of obtaining pardon — a means to be used when we cannot conveniently go to Confession, and we always have an opportunity of going before Communion. Still, we would do well to make an Act of Contrition immediately before Communion, to purify our souls more and more, and to receive more abundant fruits from this most holy Sacrament.

Again, the practice of making frequent Acts of Contrition is most advantageous for one who habitually lives in the state of grace. Apart from a special revelation from God, we cannot know for certain whether we are in His friendship or not; but every Act of Contrition lessens our anxiety on this point. Again, it often happens that we are in doubt as to whether we have given consent to a temptation or not. What are we to do? Examine our conscience? This is useless, for it will only bring back the temptation again, especially if against holy purity; and, moreover, we will never decide whether we have consented or not. No; make an Act of Perfect Contrition, as Saint Francis de Sales was accustomed to do, and worry no more. And even if it were revealed to us that we are in the state of grace, Perfect Contrition would still be most advisable. Every act increases sanctifying grace in our souls, one degree of which is worth more than all the riches of this world. Each act cancels any venial sins that stain our souls, which, in consequence, increase in fervour and sanctity. Each act of perfect love remits some of our purgatory. What did Our Divine Saviour say to Mary Magdalen? “Because you have loved much, much is forgiven you.” If, in order to lessen our purgatory, we gain Indulgences, do good works, give alms, then the perfect love of God, which is the queen of virtues, merits the very first place among all the virtuous acts we perform.

Finally, every Act of Contrition strengthens our souls, and so increases our confidence of obtaining that greatest of all graces — the grace of final perseverance. What accumulation of graces does not this practice of frequent acts of Perfect Contrition obtain for us!

At the Moment of Death.

But, if this practice is so important during life, it reaches the height of its importance at the moment of death, especially when death comes too suddenly to call the priest. Take the case when, some years ago, a fire broke out in a large tenement house and many were cut off from escape by the flames. Among these was a boy of twelve years, who, falling on his knees, loudly recited an Act of Contrition, and invited all to join with him. How many, perhaps, of those unfortunate victims owe their eternal salvation to that boy? Now, dangers surround us every day. You or I, which God forbid, may one day be the victim of an accident — a kicking or bolting horse, a motor-car out of control, a slip on a stairs, a fall off a tram or train, a falling tree — there are a thousand and one ways by which death may come suddenly. A stroke may come when we are at our work or at our meals — suddenly, when least expected. Someone may run for a priest, but he may not arrive in time. What are you to do? Immediately make an act of Perfect Contrition. Don’t wait to see if the priest will arrive in time, but immediately repent for having offended and crucified so good a God. You will be saved. Perfect Contrition will be for you the Golden Key of Paradise.

But do not delude yourself with the thought that you will put off your repentance till the moment of death, and that then you will make an act of Perfect Contrition. Perfect Contrition is a grace given only to those of good will, and if anyone were to abandon himself to a life of sin with the hope of a death-bed repentance, he would find himself face to face with a Judge Who will say, “You will seek Me, but you will die in your sins.” (See John 8:21.)

Will I have sufficient time in case of a sudden death to make an Act of Contrition? With the grace of God, yes. It requires very little time, especially if during life you have made a practice of exciting yourself frequently; it is not necessary to say even one word. Besides, when death is imminent, instants seem like hours. The mind is very active, and, added to this, Almighty God will be most lavish with His graces at that supreme moment.

What irreparable evils are caused through ignorance at the time of an accident! People rush from every side to render assistance. Some begin to cry; everyone loses his head; one rushes for a doctor, perhaps another for a priest; someone calls for water and begins to apply first-aid remedies — and all the time the unfortunate victim is dying. Except for the one who sent for the priest, no one has compassion on his soul — no one suggests an Act of Contrition. Should you ever be present at an accident, run quickly but calmly to the victim, give him a crucifix to kiss if you have one, and then slowly and clearly ask him to repeat with his heart what you are about to say. Then slowly and distinctly repeat an Act of Contrition, even though the dying man may not seem to hear or understand you. A soul that you may save in this way will be your crown in Heaven.

Do you know, dear reader, who will most naturally make an Act of Contrition when necessity arises? He, of course, who was most accustomed to make one every day, in every danger, after every sin, only such a one, when the occasion arises, will know how to manage quickly and swiftly the Golden Key of Paradise.

VI. WHEN SHOULD WE MAKE AN ACT OF CONTRITION?

Every Night.

All you who have followed me thus far, I beg of you, for the love of God and of your immortal souls, to make this act every night before retiring. This I ask, not because you are obliged in conscience to do so, but because I know it is for your good. Do not tell me that daily examination of conscience and Perfect Contrition are good only for priest and religious; don’t make the excuse that you have not the time, or are too tired in the evenings. For how long does it take to make an Act of Contrition? Half an hour? A quarter of an hour? No; a few minutes are quite sufficient. I suppose you say a few prayers before going to bed. Very well! Having finished these prayers, think for a moment or two as to what sins you have committed during the day — you will hardly need to think if you have fallen grievously, for such a sin will rise naturally to your remembrance — then slowly and fervently recite an Act of Contrition, preferably before a crucifix or picture of Our Lady. And then go to bed in peace, for you are at peace with God. Begin this very evening, and never omit this most excellent practice. Should you ever have the misfortune of committing a mortal sin, do not remain in this awful state for an instant — on the spot, or at least before going to bed, say an Act of Contrition, and then go to Confession when you can.

One day, dear reader, sooner or later, the hour of your death will come, and if, which God forbid, it comes suddenly, you now know the key with which to open Heaven. If you have been faithful in making frequent Acts of Contrition during life, I assure you that you will have both the time and the grace to make one at that supreme moment, and thus save your soul. And if you are given sufficient time to prepare for death, let your last prayer be an act of love towards God, your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Saviour — an act of sincere and perfect contrition for all the sins of your whole life. Then throw yourself with childlike confidence into the arms of Divine Mercy, for God will be for you a merciful and compassionate Judge.

And now I leave you. Read and re-read this little book. Get others to read it, and put into practice its precious lessons. Often repeat your Act of Contrition, a simple means, as you have seen, of obtaining pardon, the supreme and only means in case of necessity, a source of grace both during life and particularly at the hour of death—in short, “THE GOLDEN KEY OF PARADISE.”

VARIOUS ACTS OF CONTRITION.

1. O my God, I am sorry that I have sinned against You, for You are so good; I will never sin again. O pardon me and help me with Your grace.

2. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest my sins above every other evil; because they displease You, my God, Who, for Your infinite goodness, are so deserving of all my love; and I firmly resolve, by Your holy grace, never more to offend You, and to amend my life.

3. O my God, from the bottom of my heart I am sorry for all my sins, because by them I deserve Your just punishment in this life and in the next; because I have been ungrateful to You, my greatest Benefactor, and, above all, because I have offended You, the Most Perfect and the Most Amiable Good, my Saviour, Who has died on the Cross for my sins, I am firmly resolved to amend my life, never more to offend You, and to avoid the occasions of sin.

4. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, because You are so very good, and I firmly purpose by the help of Your grace not to offend You again.

*****

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chungledown-bimothy · 4 years

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Keep Talking, Oh, Keep Talking

So, I know it’s been FOREVER since I posted any writing, and that’s mostly because I was working on this @sanderssantas fic for @mewithanie! So sorry about how long it’s been, and hopefully I’ll be posting things again slightly more often lol

I had so much fun writing this! Happy holidays, mewithanie! <3

AO3 Masterlist

Summary: Patton and Virgil were deliriously in love and didn’t think they could get any happier. Enter Logan, Virgil’s tutor.

Warnings: alcohol use, slight intoxication.

Pairing(s): established moxiety into analogicality

Word Count: 2,647 (plus 2 fake-texts images)

Tag List: @ren-allen @ccecode @emo-sanders-sides-loving-unicorn @ilovemygaydad @bloodropsblog @funsizedgremlin @raygelkitty @roxiefox23 @thomasthesandersengine

Patton loved his boyfriends. He loved them so much that sometimes, when he thought about them, his heart would race, his knees would go weak, and his head would spin. Especially since Logan joined the relationship.

Patton and Virgil met the first day of college, in their shared psychology class. It wasn't long until they started dating, and a year later, they moved in together. Patton had known for years that he was polyamorous, but he kept that to himself, because he was blissfully happy with Virgil, and it was never relevant. Until the second semester after they moved in together, that is.

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

Eight Months Ago

Fifteen minutes later, Virgil walked through the front door of the apartment and was immediately caught in a bear hug.

"Well hello to you too," Virgil laughed, despite his terrible mood.

"What, a guy can't be excited to see his favorite stormcloud?" Patton looked up at him, his expression just a little bit too innocent.

"Patton, what did you do?" Virgil questioned, remembering the cupcake tower Patton made the night before their first set of final exams together and the time he came home from his first therapy session to find the living room covered in fairy lights.

"Nothing major; I promise. Come look!" Patton took him by the hand and practically dragged him into the kitchen. "See? Just a lasagna. Let's eat while you tell me about your meeting and this mysterious Logan guy."

Virgil got a couple plates and served the lasagna as he started talking. "Turns out, he's in my class. I've mentioned front-and-center-nerd before, yeah?" Patton laughed.

"Dresses more professionally than the teacher, kinda cute but also seems stuck up?"

"Yep, that's the guy. He's a lot chiller than I thought he'd be. Anyway, we're gonna meet after class every Wednesday for the rest of the semester."

"I'm sure it's gonna go great!"

Five Months Ago

"Hi, I'm Patton! Nice to meet you; Virgil has said such wonderful things about you!" Patton half-yelled over the music playing at the bar.

"Oh, erm, hello. I am Logan, although clearly you already knew that. Virgil has spoken highly of you as well." Logan fought the impulse to adjust his tie. Patton opened his mouth to say something else, but Virgil arrived with their drinks, passing them out as he sat down.

"Alright, we've got a whiskey neat for Logan, some IPA that the bartender recommended for you, Pat, and a rum and Coke for me. Honestly, though, Patton, I don't get how you can drink those. I had a sip of yours on my way over, and it was awful."

Patton laughed. "Yeah, they're not for everyone, but I like 'em! And it's hard to drink too many of them, unlike your drinks, so I don't get super drunk- my tolerance is garbage. Anyway," he continued with a mock glare at his boyfriend, "we aren't here to make fun of the way I drink, we're here to celebrate Virgil!" He raised his glass.

"Indeed. It has been an honor working with you this past semester, Virgil, and I am proud to see your hard work pay off," Logan added, raising his glass as well.

Virgil blushed and refused to look at either of them. "I barely got a B+, that's hardly a reason to celebrate," he mumbled.

"Falsehood. Truthfully, when we began working together, I doubted that you would be able to achieve higher than a C. You worked incredibly hard, not only on the subject matter, but on how you approached studying. Your dedication is truly inspiring."

"Hear hear! Virge, I know how hard this class has been on you. You've worked that cute butt of yours off for it, and that alone deserves celebration, even before you take into account how much that hard work paid off! But if it helps, we can call this a general post-finals celebration, okay?" Patton was rewarded with a grateful smile.

"You guys deserve to be celebrated too. Logan, you have been so incredibly patient with me; I know that I'm not exactly the most pleasant to be around when I get frustrated, so, thanks for sticking with me, I guess. And Pat, you've had my back since day one. I love you more than I could ever say, baby." He pressed a sweet kiss to Patton's cheek, and Logan was suddenly very interested in his drink.

"Loooogan has anyone told you how pretty you are?" Patton hit his hands on the table, almost knocking over the glass that once contained a strawberry daiquiri; he'd decided he wanted something sweeter after two beers.

"No no no no, the prettiest one here is Virgil. Those cheekbones have got to be illegal somewhere," Logan wasn't any more sober, two whiskeys in. "And his face when he's focusing on studying is just the cutest thing everrr."

"Oh I know! Have you seen him do the thing where he sticks his tongue out a little bit when he's really concentrating?" Patton was practically bouncing in his seat, continuing to be a danger to the glasses.

"Dear Newton yes! I had to excuse myself and get a drink of water the first time I saw him do it."

"Wait, that's why you left? I thought it was because you were getting frustrated with how long it was taking me to get it!" Virgil chimed in, astonished.

"Sounds like he was some sort of frustrated alright," Patton muttered.

"Look. We all know that Virgil is an incredibly attractive man, and I am a simple homosexual. That said, Patton, I apologize for the… less than appropriate thoughts I may have had before I knew that he was in a relationship at all, let alone one as objectively adorable as yours."

Patton giggled. "No worries, Lolo! Like you said, my man is an entire three-course meal, and it would be silly of me to hold natural, human thoughts against you! And besides, you weren't the only one in those study sessions with some interesting thoughts, right Virgey?"

"Oh my god Patton I cannot believe you just said that!" Virgil hid his flaming blush behind his hands.

"Oops! Sorry, V!"

"You- you're okay with that? Your boyfriend and a stranger having lewd thoughts about each other?" Logan asked.

"Well yeah! I'm not the jealous type, and I trust Virgil. What's important to me is open and honest communication, and he told me about his attraction to you almost immediately. Plus, in all honesty, I found it kinda hot, especially once he showed me a picture of you."

Logan looked to Virgil and raised an eyebrow. Virgil game the same look to Patton, who, after a moment of confusion and then realization, nodded slightly and leaned back in his chair. Once Patton gave his blessing, Virgil leaned in and kissed Logan, soft and unsure. After they separated, Logan approached Patton and, after receiving another nod of consent, pressed a similar kiss to his lips.

The next morning

"So… can we talk about what happened last night?" Patton asked sweetly over breakfast.

"Oh my god are you actually not okay with it? Patton, I'm so sorry I shouldn't have-"

"Hey, Virgil, no, I really did mean that it was okay. More than okay, even. In fact, I think now is a good time to tell you that I'm polyamorous. I had a lot of fun hanging out with Logan last night, and I'd like to get to know him better. And clearly you are both into each other. I love you so much, and I just want you to be happy. If you want to, I think at least a conversation with Logan about it couldn't hurt."

Virgil sat in silence, sipping his coffee occasionally, for several minutes before speaking. "Pat, I love you more than I can possibly say. I'm honestly not surprised that you're polyam; you have so much love to give. I, uh, I actually am too. So, uh, I guess I'll call Logan? See if he wants to get lunch or something?"

"Aww yay! Okay, I'm gonna go take a shower real quick." Patton kissed Virgil quickly on the cheek on his way out of the room.

Virgil took a steadying breath and took out his phone.

Logan straightened his tie and cleared his throat. "If I am understanding this correctly, you are both polyamorous and… wish for me to join your relationship?"

"Not so formally, but yeah? Last night, it was clear we all find each other hot. Which, like, duh, you're both gorgeous and sometimes I look pretty okay. Not now, Pat." Virgil preempted Patton's interruption without looking away from Logan. "I like you a lot, and I think you and Patton would also get along really well. So, uh, yeah, this is us asking you out. Not asking for any sort of commitment or anything, just hanging out and going on dates and stuff. You know, normal dating stuff. Just… with two of us."

"Only if you want to! And if you wanted to just date Virgil, I'd be completely okay with that too, but I had a lot of fun last night, and I'd love to get to know you better."

A tense moment of silence later, Logan spoke. "Let me begin by saying how flattered I am by your interest, both of you. While I am… inclined to accept your invitation to date both of you, I have never put much thought into my own feelings about polyamory for myself. Obviously, it is a completely normal and rational thing; my hesitation is in how I might fit into your so well-established relationship. Additionally, feelings do not come easily to me, and I find them exceedingly frustrating trying to understand. I have been reliably informed that this makes me a poor romantic partner." He took a breath and adjusted his tie.

"I have noticed that you are both quite vocally and physically publicly affectionate with each other, and I wonder whether my reticence with such displays would leave you unhappy with me. I have historically struggled to show adequate affection to just one person; I cannot imagine I would be able to give you both the kind of affection you seem to crave. In short, while I would like to accept, I currently cannot see it ending in anything but significant emotional distress for all of us. I apologize, most sincerely."

"I think I can safely speak for both of us when I say that we appreciate your honesty," Patton began gently. "Can I address some of your points?" Logan gave him a confused look, but nodded. "Thank you! So, it seems like your big concern is that you're afraid your emotional reticence would in some way hurt us or leave us unsatisfied. Am I understanding that right?" He waited for another nod before continuing. "To be honest, Lo, that's just silly. Are you familiar with Gary Chapman's concept of love languages?" Logan shook his head.

"Chapman posited that there are five ways people experience and express love- gifts, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, and physical touch- and everyone prefers to give and receive one or two of them over the others. Mine is words of affirmation, and Virgil's is physical touch; that's why we are as outwardly affectionate as we are. Trying to force a partner to 'speak' your language and not their own is just going to make everyone unhappy; healthy relationships require everyone involved to understand what the others need and want. We would never try to force you into anything you aren't comfortable with. We want to date you, Logan, not some version of you that pretends to be something or someone you aren't. If you let us, we'd love to learn your love language and not ask or expect anything else of you."

"Also," Virgil chimed in, "as to your worry about how you'd fit? Not a worry at all. I love Patton so much, and his energy and positivity makes me feel so good most of the time, but sometimes it can be... a bit much. He's wonderful at giving me space when I want it, but I know that I'd enjoy having someone else around who's more grounded. On the other hand, I remember quite a few study sessions that got diverted by you going on a tangent about something you love. If you think that passion isn't something Patton is going to join you in, you're incredibly wrong. And I think that his energy will help draw you out of that thick shell of yours, while I'll always be a more down-to-earth realist with you. I think we'd all be great for each other, if you're willing to give us the chance to show you. Only if you want to, though. One word, and we'll shut up about it forever." He gave Logan an anxious smile.

"In the face of such reasonable responses to my concerns, I suppose I have no choice but to gladly accept." Virgil and Patton both silently melted at the pure joy in Logan's smile. Well, Virgil was silent. Patton let out a squeal of delight that only dogs could hear.

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

Present

Patton loved his boyfriends so much, just remembering the beginning of their story made him dizzy. Wait. No. Bad dizzy. I need to- he collapsed on the bathroom floor with a resounding THUD.

THUD

Virgil jumped out of his seat. "Logan? Patton??" he called as he ran from their bedroom to the living room.

"Patton? Virgil?" Logan shouted at the same time. They met in the living room.

"Shit, where's Patton? PATTON!" Virgil yelled.

"It sounded like it came from the bathroom." Logan had barely finished his sentence before they both started running. They skidded to a halt outside the closed door; Virgil knocked.

"Patton? Are you in there? Are you okay?"

Three seconds of silence later, Logan knocked. "Patton, we are coming in." They opened the door to find him collapsed on the floor.

"Patton, can you hear us? Patton??" Virgil fell to his knees, checking for breathing and a pulse. "He's got a weak pulse, but it's there, and he's breathing okay. I don't- what do we do, Lo?" Virgil's voice was barely more than a shaky squeak.

Logan, on the other hand, spoke with cool, detached clarity. "Assuming that Patton collapsed due to a loss of consciousness, he has been unconscious for approximately thirty seconds. If he is out for another minute, we will call 911. In the meantime, go get a glass of water and all the pillows from the living room. Quickly, Verge. We need to get him back." They locked eyes and saw mirrored concern and panic. Virgil turned and ran to the kitchen. He was back in 45 seconds, and found Logan holding up Patton's groggy, but conscious, head.

"Virgil, you're back. Excellent. Here, give me a couple of pillows." He tucked them under his head gently, while Virgil knelt down beside him and took his hand. Only then did he notice how much his own were shaking.

"Patton, are you okay? What happened?"

"Mmf, dunno. Got dizzy. Are you guys okay?" Patton mumbled.

"Patton, of- of course we are okay; you're the one who fell. We should get you into bed. Do you think you can stand?" Logan asked.

"I- I don't think so, not quite yet." Logan and Virgil once again met eyes in a silent conversation.

"Okay, Pat, knees up, I'm gonna carry you." With an ease that surprised and slightly aroused Logan, Virgil picked Patton up, placed a soft kiss to his forehead, and carried him to the bedroom. "Let's get you to bed, baby; we'll take good care of you. You're gonna be just fine," he said softly into Patton's hair.

Once they got him to bed, they tucked him in, Logan made chicken noodle soup for when Patton felt up to it, and they gave him all of the cuddles he could possibly want. Which is, of course, an unlimited amount.

#analogicality #moxiety #analogical #logicality #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #my writing #sanders sides fanfiction

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emma-nation · 5 years

Text

Thinking Of You (Mona x MC Fanfiction) - Chapter 8

You said move on Where do I go? I guess second best Is all I will know

Summary: Years later, Allison has everything she wants, a brand-new internship as a doctor, a handsome boyfriend… but her first nightshift won’t go as expected…

Genre: Romance, Angst

Tag list: @zoe6111, @simsvetements, @mvrinettes, @whoinvitedalx, @scarlet-letter-a0114, @abunchofbadchoices, @kamilahmademedoit, @janurary, @talkinlikeateen, @eagle-one-1, @andreear17, @tia-bi, @monagf, @monahott, @fal-carrington, @crazzyplays, @honorablebicycle, @teja-desai (let me know if you want to be tagged!)

Notes:

- English is not my first language, forgive me for any mistakes.

“Party, Allison?” Mr. Wheeler questioned. “This is how you intend to catch a serial killer? By taking her to a party?”

“Dad, first we need to get the seller,” she explained. “And what place is better than a party to catch a drug dealer?”

“I did not assigned you to the mission so you could hang out with her. You have a fiancé, don’t you remember? And besides, there will be alcohol, sex and...”

“We’re no longer teenagers, dad. We know what we’re doing, right Mona?”

Mona was not even paying attention. She was sitting on the couch, focused on Allison’s laptop. She wasn’t hearing a single word of the argument, she just kept a concentrated look on the screen, while she typed uninterrupted.

“What?” She finally asked. “In case the two of you haven’t noticed, I have an essay to finish.”

“You don’t have to worry about it,” Mr. Wheeler told. “Bring me more suspects, more evidence. This is what you’re supposed to be doing in college. Once the mission is over, you’re out.”

“Right, I forgot that wasn’t for people like me,” she scowled, closing the laptop. “Thanks for the reminder, Pops.”

Mona left to the bedroom, leaving Allison alone with her father.

“Dad, she has been so engaged with this college thing. Why did you have to ruin it?”

“I didn’t ruin anything, Allison. That’s the truth. They’re only allowing Mona there for the mission.”

“B-But can’t we arrange anything, after this is over? I mean, look at her essay. She’s so incredibly smart. All the teachers are commenting her performance in classes. It’s the first time I really see her finding pleasure in anything, other than... her past habits.”

“I’m sorry, honey. This isn’t my business and neither should be yours. She has made her own choices and there’s nothing we can’t do to change it.”

Allison went to check on Mona, but after the argument with Mr. Wheeler, she was no longer social or even accessible. She followed to the guest room, where she was supposed to have one final conversation with Griffin about their engagement. Though he was online, he took a long time to pick up the call.

“Allison, baby. Hey.”

“Hey Griffin,” she sighed. “Do you finally have a moment so we can speak? It has been days I’ve been trying to...”

“I’m sorry, I’m very busy right now. Yellow Fever epidemics. Too many patients to check.”

Another excuse. Allison rolled her eyes. It was almost like he knew what she was about to tell him.

“It’s only for a few minutes,” she insisted, losing her patience. “Come on, you had time to fly to Spain over the weekend, but you don’t have a minute for me?”

Griffin’s expression suddenly darkened.

“S-Spain? I’ve never been in Spain, Allison. I’m trapped here in this small village, without internet signal most of the time. Trust me, we barely have water to drink!”

“Well, your phone was displaying a different location a few days ago.”

“Oh...” he looked down for a moment, pensive. “I had to sell my old phone. That’s it, the new owner must have forgotten to disable my ID. Thanks for telling me.”

“No problem, now can we...”

A message of lost signal was displayed on her screen. Allison punched the keyboard, frustrated.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

----------

When Mona woke up in the morning, she was still in a bad mood because of the Detective, who was only using her to do the job he was unable to. Things only got worse when she had an accidental meeting with Allison. In the bathroom. When she had just finished. What lead them to be awkward around each other for the next hour.

"My bad," she was getting used to pronounce those words.

"There'd be no problem, Mona," Allison's cheeks went red again, "if you hadn't stared for so long."

"I was only appreciating the view. I hadn't seen it in a while, so..."

"No! Please, can we just forget it?"

"It'll be kinda hard, but I promise I'll try my best."

"Mona!" Allison's face was reaching a new shade of red.

"Consider it unseen," she spoke as Detective Wheeler arrived in the kitchen. "But I liked it," she whispered.

Allison's father interrupted them with another command. The University's basketball team would be hosting a 'Welcome Game', though Mona didn't have the smallest interest in attending, now she'd be forced to.

"Keep an eye on your suspect," he ordered, "and on this guy."

He showed the picture of a slender young male.

"He's the star of the team. Has been reported to be exhibiting abnormal behavior over the last few weeks. Watch who he speaks to, before and after the game."

She didn't have much work, as soon as they arrived in the University, the famous basketball star was casually chatting with Brian, who went back to his dorm carrying a small package.

"It'll be easier than I thought," Mona thought, snapping some pictures.

Later in class, she finished her lab experiment before any other students, so she took the time to search for places to take Allison after the game, as an apology for the morning incident.

"How do you even do that?" Her lab partner whined by her side.

His name was Leon, the leader of the RPG club, and only member too. He bonded with Mona for being rejected by the rest of their classmates as well. Later, they found out they had more in common than they could’ve imagined. He was in love with a med student, who was already committed to another guy.

"Using my brain?"

"I'm using mine, but it just... don't react!"

"Like this," Mona did all the procedure again, triggering the correct chemical reaction.

"B-But..." Leon stared at her in shock. “I followed all the instructions!”

"Now write your report, I'm not doing this for you either."

As they finished writing, they began to chat. She learned Leon had good computer skills, what could be useful at some point, in case they needed to hack Brian's phone to obtain proof.

"And how are things going with Allison?" He wanted to know.

"The same," she told, hopeless. "She hasn’t broke up with the douchebag yet. I guess I’ll just have to force him out of my way.”

"Are you bringing her to the game tonight?"

"Yes, I was kinda planning something special for after the game, but I don't really know what she likes."

"Bowling Alley," he suggested. "They have this fabulous milkshake and I've managed to achieve success with a couple of dates in there."

"Thanks for the tip."

---------

"So let's recap the plan," Allison said before they entered the stadium. "I'll seduce Brian, while you break into his dorm room and get pictures of the drugs."

"He's a bastard, Allison," Mona disagreed. "I couldn't let you do this alone. You're coming with me, I've assigned someone else to keep an eye on him. While he's distracted at the game, both of us will break into his dorm."

"D-Did you told someone else about the investigation? My dad said we should be as secretive as possible."

"We could use a hacker. Besides, Leon is like a fluffy unicorn. Loyal as a puppy."

Before they follow to the basketball game, Mona inhaled deeply, getting courage enough to ask.

"Hey Allison, would you like to do something after the game? Leon suggested we should go to the Bowling Alley, but he has been developing this stupid game, and... I don’t wanna go by myself."

She knew things didn't end well the last time they went out, but this time was different. Allison had clearly expressed she was no longer interested in keeping her engagement.

"No. Way." Allison frowned, scaring her a little. Then, her expression softened again. "You're not allowed to make such an effort yet, remember?"

"Oh, the doc's back," Mona smiled. "Anyways, he said they have a great milkshake. We don't really have to play it."

"So I'm definitely in!"

Leon was sitting in a strategic spot as combined between he and Mona. For her surprise, and displeasure, there was somebody else among the crowd, sitting in the VIP area, her father.

"What on earth is this guy doing here?" She angered. "He's clearly stalking me!"

Soon she got her answer. Before the game started, he was announced as the team's new sponsor. He looked at her and winked.

"I wish I could just go down there and pull this smirk out of his face!"

"Hey," Allison held her steady. "Focus! You said he's no threat. Let's stick to our plan."

Through his laptop, Leon sent her a message. Brian had arrived and was sitting only a few meters away, in the middle of a group of girls.

"We're good to go."

Leaving the stadium, they followed straight to the male dorm. The game was only getting started, what meant they'd have a decent amount of time to search for evidence.

"Do you have his room's number?" Allison asked.

"Yes," Mona answered. "It's right around the corner."

At the corridor, they bumped into another person. Krista. She was just leaving one of the rooms.

"Remember, Doug. Ezekiel 18:21 for our studies this week. See you there!"

"Hide me, please," Mona begged, but it was too late. She had been spotted.

"Mona, hi!" The girl greeted. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be at the game."

"I... uh... Leon, my classmate. He forgot his wallet in his dorm room. I came here to get it for him."

"And this is...?" She looked at Allison.

"Allison," Allison introduced herself. "You look strangely familiar, have we met before?"

"Hmmm, I don't think so."

"Yeah, I'm much older than you anyways."

"Hey Krista," Mona decided to mess up with her a little bit, as a payback for the other day. "I've decided to get rid of my sinful car. I'd like to purchase one exactly like yours, how much did you pay for it?"

"Good for you, Mona," she looked a little bit unsettled. "I don't know how much it costed, it was a gift from my godfather. Anyways, I should go now. I have an essay to finish."

With a satisfied look, Mona followed to Brian's room where she started picking the lock.

"Remember, your dad said I could do anything to obtain proof. Right?"

"Yes," Allison confirmed. "I'm your witness."

As the door opened, they both covered their noses.

"Ugh, it smells like rotten cheese," Allison commented.

The room was an extreme mess, it was hard to decide where to start looking for evidence. Mona started by Brian's computer, where Allison opened opened some drawers.

"No way I'm touching that pile of clothes in the corner of the room," she told. "It stinks like something died under it."

"It can't be more disgusting than that," Mona pointed to the computer screen. "He's ranking the freshmen girls and... I've got a 10, for the tough girl attitude?"

"Not even Brian could resist you, huh?"

"No one can, babe. No one."

There was nothing on his e-mail, except for Football Newsletter and party advertising. Mona sighed frustrated.

"If you were hiding your drugs, where would you hide them?"

"Under the mattress?"

"Good one," Mona lifted up the mattress a little bit, to find... romance books. "Really?"

"Come on, he deep down he must be a softie! So, in the closet maybe?" Allison suggested, but before they could even act, the door opened. Brian was back earlier than expected.

“What are you two doing in my room?!” He shouted. “I’m calling campus security, right now!”

----------

“Will you, bad boy?” Mona teased, in a intimidating manner. “Because I’m sure the last thing you want are the cops here, in your room. Am I right?”

“Oh, do you think a little thief like you? I’d like to see you prove, before I get your ass expelled from the university.”

Allison stood frozen, looking at them both. Mona had that look on her face, from when she was ready to get in a physical fight with someone. That would jeopardize the entire investigation, besides getting them both kicked out from university. Without thinking any longer, she made a decision. This is exactly what a brainless moron like Brian would like to see.

“Actually,” she removed her shirt off, revealing a lacy violet bra. “We were preparing you a surprise.”

“Excuse me?!” Brian asked, staring at her features.

“Mona told me about you and how irresistibly hot you are...” she pushed him onto the bed, climbing on top of him. “I’m sorry she isn’t good showing her feelings. I decided to give her a little hand.”

“P-Please, go ahead...”

Brian was smiling broadly. Allison winked to Mona, who was in extreme shock, inviting her to go along with her plan.

“What would you like us to do now, huh?” Allison asked him, in a seductive tone. “Anything you want.”

“M-Make out. The two of you. Please!”

Allison looked at Mona, to see if she consented. She was too dazed make a move or gave her any answer. Instead, she took a step ahead, cupping Allison’s face between her hands carefully, before placing a small kiss on her lips. Allison knew that wouldn’t be enough. Not for Brian, and especially for herself.

She pulled Mona by the waist, bringing her closer as possible and deepening the kiss. For a long time, she hadn’t felt so much pleasure in her life. The softness of Mona’s lips devouring hers, their tongues moving together, it all brought her that burning sensation she had been desiring for years. She wished that moment would never end, prolonging the kiss as much as she could, until they were both out of breath.

“Now, take off your clothes!” Brian ordered, bouncing in excitement.

“Let’s finish this...” Mona grabbed a pair of handcuffs from her pockets and restrained him on the bed post.

“Hell yeah, baby! It’s gonna get kinky here!”

“Where did you get those?” Allison asked curious.

“I stole from your father. I thought they could be useful at some point. Now go, finish searching his desk. I’ll check to the closet.”

“Wait...” Brian was confused. “What’s going on here? Are you guys cops?”

“Sort of,” Allison answered, irritated, “and if you open your mouth again, I’m going to gag you!”

Mona emerged from the closet, with the package she had previously seen Brian carrying in the morning.

“The party is over, bad boy.”

“No, please,” he begged as she unwrapped it. “D-Don’t tell anyone, I-I... I’ll pay you! My dad has a lot of money.”

“Oh shit,” Mona exclaimed, staring at the content. Allison approached, noticing some familiar blue pills.

“Really, Brian?” Allison tried to muffle a laugh. “We thought you were a drug dealer and you...”

“Can’t get it to work properly?” Mona completed, bursting into laughs.

“I have a medical condition, okay?! And if you ever tell this anyone, I’m going to kill you both!”

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with us.”

“As long as our secret is safe too. And stop harassing girls, I mean it.”

After uncuffing him, the three of them sat down to talk about their task and what had been going on. Brian assured he wasn’t involved in any kids of drug dealing and would warn them in case he noticed anything suspicious, as long as his big secret was safe.

“I felt bad for him in the end,” Allison said as they left the room.

“Yeah, me too. All this jerk act he plays is because he...” Mona started laughing again, “has issues down there.”

Suddenly loud screaming and a big commotion started coming from all places in the University. Mona and Allison’s phones started ringing at the same time. The basketball player had fallen unconscious in the middle of the game. He had been hospitalized in a life-threatening condition.

“Stay where you are,” Mr. Wheeler ordered through the phone. “We need to check his dorm for evidence.”

----------

The police wasn’t able to find anything at the young athlete’s dorm, every evidence had been professionally cleaned. Their only hope were the surveillance cameras footage, that could’ve been caught who last entered his room.

Mr. Wheeler asked them both to go home. There was nothing else for them to do in there. Mona remained silent inside her car, blaming herself for aiming at the wrong suspect. Allison insisted and they stopped at the Bowling Alley as planned.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told Mona, as they shared a milkshake. “It happens all the time with my dad and he has been a high-skilled detective, for years.”

“I should’ve known better,” Mona shook her head in denial. “We’re dealing with an expert, Allison. A psychopath. They don’t usually show this dark side of them. We need to start aiming for someone more... normal.”

“Any suspects?”

“None yet, but I’ll be thinking about it.”

Allison let out a deep and weary sigh.

“Jeez, I never thought this could be so intense and emotional. Even if we were just faking all the time.”

There was something else that wouldn’t leave Mona’s mind. That kiss. Was it only part of the role or Allison had true intentions when she decided to go deeper into it?

“Were we faking all the time?” Mona asked.

Allison looked down, avoiding her gaze for a moment.

“Not at all,” she finally answered, biting her lower lip.

Mona approached her, lifting up her chin.

“Would you mind doing it again? Only to be sure it was real?”

Mona leaned forward, her lips only one breath away from Allison’s. She hesitated for a moment, then placed a hand on Mona’s chest and slightly pushed her away.

“Would you mind waiting only a little longer? I still need to break off my engagement. I feel bad for doing this to Griffin. While I no longer have feelings for him, we had an entire history together.”

“I’ve waited eight years,” Mona grinned. “What’s only a few more days, right?”

“Yeah,” Allison grabbed her hand, “until the weekend I’ll be free. I promise you.”

As soon as they got home, Detective Wheeler was already waiting for them with a scowl on his face. He advanced in Mona’s direction, pinning her against the wall.

“You! You’ve ruined my investigation!” He yelled. “I’ll assure you’ll get severely punished for that!”

“Dad!” Allison shouted, pushing him aside. “What are you saying? We followed the wrong lead, and so did you, multiple times!”

“Allison, she included a total stranger in the investigation. This kid named Leon. The security cameras’ footage is gone. Considering his computer skills, he’s our main suspect now.”

“L-Leon would never do that,” Mona argued, Allison could tell she was somehow scared. “I-I was in contact with him the whole time... he was sitting at the stadium, watching the game for us!”

“While he hacked into the security system and erased everything! Now, because of your irresponsibility, we’ll need to contact the company in charge of campus’ security and attempt to retrieve footage from their server. It’s going to take weeks! Do you have any idea of how many people will die until then?”

Mona stared at the open tab on the Detective’s laptop, the security company’s website and then she realized...

“Leon didn’t do it. This security system is 99,9% impossible to be hacked. And don’t worry. Until the weekend you’re getting your footage, Detective.”

“And how can you be so sure?”

“My mom developed this security system and trust me, you don’t wanna mess with her tech skills.”

#playchoices #ride or die #mona #mona rod #mona x mc #choices stories you play #ride or die fanfiction

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jasontoddiefor · 5 years

Text

Manor-Dad lets me drive the Batmobile

Summary: Bruce had two options when Dick found the Cave. 1) Tell him the truth. 2) Go along with Dick’s excited “You’re dating Batman!” until he figured out the truth.

Several children later Bruce wished he’d gone with option 1) or he wouldn’t have to deal with all his kids believing he and Batman were separate people. Yes, even Damian.

Tagging @3rdrandomthing for reading the unpolished version of this mess.

A tiny excited nine-year-old boy was jumping around the Batcave, dressed in dark Batman PJs with little yellow bats printed on them. They had been a gift from Clark and Bruce hadn’t had the heart to deny them Dick after the child had accepted them so cheerfully.

Much the same, Bruce now didn’t have the heart to use his short-term memory eraser on his young ward. Dick hadn’t cried much after his parents’ death and, unlike Bruce had been after the loss of his parents, he was a rather happy child given the circumstances. Nevertheless, Bruce wanted Dick to smile as many of those genuinely cheerful smiles as possible, and let him make a lot of good memories.

Discovering the Cave below the manor was most certainly a glorious memory for Dick, and Bruce didn’t want to take it away. Certainly, he could be convinced to keep it all a secret? Dick was smart, he knew when something was important.

Once he had made up his mind, Bruce stepped out of the shadows. The Batsuit was already back in its case, so he was sporting sweat pants and a comfortable hoodie. They didn’t heat the Cave and for all the hours Bruce spent sitting in front of the computer, a tank top didn’t suffice according to Alfred.

“Bruce!” Dick shouted when he finally spotted Bruce. “Look! This has to be the Batcave! Can you believe it? Did you know it was right here under the manor all this time? Have you met Batman…”

Dick trailed off and studied Bruce cautiously. His gaze lingered on Bruce’s neck, where this night’s fights had resulted in a small bruise and the coffee mug in Bruce’s hands.

“Look, Dick, I know this is a lot to take in-“ Bruce began to speak, but Dick interrupted him.

“You’re dating Batman!” he exclaimed.

Bruce blinked.

That wasn’t the conclusion he had expected Dick to reach. Before he could set the boy on the right path, Dick was already talking again.

“Of course! It makes so much sense! That’s why he immediately knew who I was and found me so fast when I was trying to find Zucco. You sent him after me, right? Can I meet him again? Please, please, please, I haven’t thanked him properly yet, and Alfred said it’s important to do that always.”

Dick jumped up and down, vibrating with energy. Behind him, Alfred stood with another tray of treats for Bruce and for once he looked about as caught off-guard as Bruce felt.

Bruce shared a look with Alfred, but he just shrugged in turn and indicated with a hand wave that Bruce should reply to his still rambling ward.

Right.

Looking back at Dick, Bruce could see him smiling brightly. He should correct Dick’s thoughts, but then again, it would be a good cover.

If anybody ever got too close to the truth and Dick accidentally talked – not that Bruce assumed he would, but he didn’t earn his title as ‘The World’s Greatest Detective and Most Paranoid Bastard’ by being unprepared – Batman’s identity would be safe still. Once Dick got older, Bruce could tell him the truth. For now, though...

“It’s a secret,” Bruce said seriously. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t!” Dick promised eagerly.

“You have to swear an oath.”

Bruce had loved swearing oaths as a kid. Nowadays, he knew that they had just been his parents’ convenient way of getting him to avoid telling Alfred about how many sweets he’d already eaten before dinner, but they had been fun regardless.

“Say, does that mean I can accompany Batman in the future?”

“No.”

“Bruce said I could join you on patrol.”

Bruce, dressed as Batman, nearly burned his tongue on his coffee. Dick’s expression was utterly innocent like he wasn’t lying directly to his face. Lately, he’s been spending a lot of time in the newly christened Batcave. Whenever Bruce was supposed to be sleeping or out in the city working for Wayne Enterprises, Dick went down to the Cave.

Sometimes Bruce thought that Dick had finally figured it out and was trying to prank him by feigning ignorance, but then he’d paraphrase something to Batman or Bruce that neither had said, and Bruce would know Dick was still in the dark.

“He did not.”

Bruce enjoyed Sunday mornings. They all slept in and ate breakfast together. He didn’t have to go to WE, Alfred allowed himself to relax for once, and Dick didn’t have school.

The manor had always been a quiet place after his parents’ passing, but it had never been calm. And even though Dick’s gleeful shrieks were echoing through the halls, Bruce felt at peace.

“Batman said I’d be safe in the city patrolling with-“

Bruce opened his eyes, staring directly into Dick’s blue ones. He had wondered about the sudden weight on his chest.

“No.”

“Awww, come on, B!”

Dick kept on asking, Bruce kept on protesting, and somehow it ended with Robin following Batman on the streets. Bruce still couldn’t believe he had let a child, practically a baby, talk him into taking him out to fight crime.

Not that Dick was doing any of that until he was at least thirteen. For now, Batman would make his rounds first, then take Dick out for an hour to accompany teenagers and women home in the dark, carry food to homeless people and track down lost pets.

Dick didn’t complain about it at all but poured all his energy into his task. He knew his job was serious and that the goal was to help people. If Dick dedicated about as much motivation to his homework, he could skip several grades. Honestly, it was like Dick simply enjoyed spending time with Batman, which was weird to say the least.

Bruce didn’t think he acted all that different around Dick as the Bat. He certainly got more careless about his posture as well, the more often they patrolled together.

And then, one night, after an actually fun patrol, he took off the cowl. It would be better if Dick knew the truth, even if he hadn’t deduced it himself. After all, his detection skills were something they were still working on.

“Bruce!” Dick gasped. “You were fighting with me tonight?”

“Of course. It’s always been-“

Dick rushed over to Bruce’s side, worry written all over his face.

“Is Batman alright?! Has he gotten hurt? He should have told me, I’d have been fine without going on patrol, and you shouldn’t endanger yourself. You’re already doing enough for Gotham during the day. Can I see him? Do you always jump in for him when he can’t fight? Has he gotten hurt often?”

Bruce took a deep breath and pinched his nose.

Maybe it was too early still.

“Sure,” he said, unknowing that this would be the beginning of a life-long commitment to self-love. “I stand in for Batman when he can’t patrol Gotham. What’s the purpose of funding all of this, if I don’t contribute?”

Dick nodded, though Bruce could tell he wasn’t satisfied with his answer. Maybe he would try again in another six months.

“Do you think Dad’s worried about us when we’re out on patrol?”

Batman very nearly crashed into the next building. Only his iron grip on his grappling hook and his years of training made his landing on the next roof look as professional as always.

Robin settled on the gargoyle next to him, still deep in thought.

“I mean, we don’t come back hurt often, but he always makes sure to check me for injuries again after you’ve done it. He is worrying, isn’t he?”

Batman was still stuck on Robin’s first sentence.

“… Dad?” He questioned.

Robin looked up at him in confusion before promptly blushing red.

“Don’t tell Bruce I call him that! I’m practicing it still ‘cause it sounds weird, and the first time I say it to his face needs to be perfect. I know I told him I don’t want a new father, and I don’t, I love my Papa. But he could be another dad, you know? Like, everyone has two sets of grandparents as well and I know that’s not the same, and I know he hasn’t adopted me, but I’m pretty sure he does love me like a son, he has called me that before. I know he didn’t do it consciously or whatever, and Grayson-Wayne would be like super duper long, and all teachers would hate it but-“

“Dick.”

His ward, his son, stopped talking, nervously looking down at his gloved hands.

“I’m sure Bruce will be absolutely happy to hear that and call you his son. You just have to tell him.”

Okay, so maybe this whole ‘Batman wasn’t Bruce’ thing did have some positive sides.

Dick grew with every month that passed. He got stronger and taller and Bruce trusted him with more and more responsibilities. He even took Dick to the Watchtower and it was a delight to see him collect clues about everyone’s identity, remembering even small details like Green Arrow’s preferred coffee brand, and inform Bruce of everyone’s identity within a week.

At thirteen, however, Dick still hadn’t figured out who Bruce was.

It was a little frustrating. Nothing seemed to shake Dick’s belief that they were two separate people.

“Robin,” Bruce growled in his Batman voice, before switching to his actually softer and more melodic tone. “I’m Batman.”

Dick stared at Bruce, cowl-less and serious, before being overtaken with laughter.

“Oh, jeez, B- you- Holy hell-“

“Language.”

“That was perfect. Exactly how Batman would say it!”

The direct approach really wasn’t working out for Bruce.

Even worse, Dick didn’t even seem interested in who Batman was. As long as he was kind to Dick, spend enough time with him and “treated Bruce right”, he didn’t care whatsoever about who was behind the mask.

“The Bat’s the Bat,” he had heard Dick tell Barbara once like that was a proper explanation for anything.

Barbara Gordon was a menace. An intelligent, blackmailing, smart, and confident menace hell-bent on putting herself in danger.

Bruce could go to her father, he really should, but Barbara hadn’t even been fazed by the threat.

“I know you’re just trying to look out for us, Mr. Wayne, but I promise you, we’ll be safe with Batman. I just need him to teach me some more kick-ass moves. Training with Dick is good, but he’s only learning himself still.”

Bruce didn’t even know where to start with that line of argumentation. He most certainly could keep track of two children at night, but he didn’t want to.

Yet, somehow, he found himself keeping watch over a little bird and a bat during nighttime, and playing Mario Kart with his son and his best friend during the day time.

#batman #bruce wayne #dick grayson #Barbara gordon #alfred pennyworth #fanfic #batfam

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demethinkstoomuch · 5 years

Text

Learning To Read, Pt 2: B is For Book

Chapters: 2/26 Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem Series Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro Characters: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Dedue Molinaro, Gustave Dominic, Original Characters, Rufus Blaiddyd Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, Grief, Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angst, Fluff, Tragedy of Duscur, Racism, Developing Feelings, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Blue-Lions Typical Mental Illness

Summary:

A series of 26 alphabetically-titled vignettes examining the period where, in the wake of The Tragedy of Duscur, Dimitri taught Dedue to read: a time in which they learned about each other, and the rules of their relationship, perhaps more than about books.

Read on AO3!

A is For Ambiguity

The library of Fhirdiad’s castle smelled of dust and old glue, looked slightly amber from its oakwood shelves and warm leather book-spines basking in the golden light of windows and covered lamps, felt the slight warmth of its hearth. Most of the library’s chairs were crowded around it, even as spring was beginning to blend into summer. This kept the eyes of the librarians on their books or on the fire – and off Dedue. Strangers’ gazes had scraped him to the bone since his arrival, worse than any look he’d endured before. At times where the faint shuffle of others was audible, but there were no accusing stares, Dedue felt a weight off of his shoulders.

Dimitri hurried back to the table where they’d set up their materials – scrap paper, an inkwell, and a few quill pens. He’d asked Dedue wait a moment, and had vanished amid the bookshelves to return with a book in hand. Dedue stood up just a little too quickly, the chair banging against the ground on its way out from underneath him.

“If you needed something, I could have carried it.”

“I’m perfectly fine on my own. If I had a stack of books, I’m sure I’d ask for help,” answered the wholly unapologetic prince. To display his point, he waved it in the grip of his uninjured right arm. “This arm is fine; I hardly think it can be harmed by one little book.”

It was true. The book was not even a big one; its pages were larger than normal, but it was much thinner. Its back cover might have been thicker than the pages inside. Dimitri set it down on the table to one side before taking his seat. Dedue teased out what he wanted to say, tongue on the roof of his mouth, checking if his meaning was right, and avoiding words he simply didn’t know in Fodalni.

“...Still. Please know I do not mind,” Dedue insisted, when the words had found themselves.They were not the right ones, they were not Please, let me be useful. Let me thank you. There was nothing more to be said about it – the book was here. Instead, Dedue considered the task at hand with anticipation. For one, there was a lot he didn’t know – didn’t even know how to begin understanding – about his new circumstances. Duscur didn’t even have the word for a prince – while every town had at least a famous family, what Fodlan might call nobles, you either were an Alderman as the senior member of one of those families, or you were not – and the foreign title lacked the functional clarity of “King.” All he’d known of princes before this point were foreign children’s stories from travelling entertainers. Placing Dimitri in that role worked perfectly at first blush. In the capital of a foreign land, that simple, romantic hero was… not enough, to explain the place of someone waiting to be king. Or what Dedue could do to do right by him.

For another, how long had it been since he’d really had a task at hand besides trying to patch his clothes? (He wasn’t going to lose that shirt. He could push everything down, lock it in a box until it stopped hurting, but he was not going to make what he’d been wearing that day into scraps. Making new shirts to keep up with him had gotten impractical, even if he’d always been large, and he was grateful for that: it let him have his father’s shirt, even now.) His efforts to make Dimitri some token of gratitude had stalled – no materials and little tools. So having something to do besides bury a past that was dead now or fret for a future that he hung onto with fingertips? He hungered for it.

“I’m ready.”

“Ah! Right, then.” Dimitri’s hands hovered over one of the pens, brushing up against its grey and white vanes so the tufts of feathers broke and clung to one another, before resting on a metal grip that reinforced it near the nib. Dimitri froze thoughtfully.

There was a long silence.

“Ah, right?” A cautious prompt.

“Yes.. I’m sorry...I have no idea how to begin this, if I’m being candid.” Dimitri’s voice tensed, letting words escape uneasily. “It’s not something I’ve thought about explaining.”

“If you do not know, then how would I?” The two of them looked at each other for a long moment before Dimitri looking a little worried. A shame; that had been some small attempt at humor. “I am not sure if it is important where you start. If you say something I don’t understand, I will ask.”

“Of course. Let’s begin, then.” Dimitri picked up one of the quills carefully, his fingers barely touching it – as if a feather could only be touched by a feather. Once he’d gotten his grip, though, his hand relaxed enough to hold it merely loosely. Into the ink went the nib. The quill’s tip scratched across a larger scrap of paper, drawing (writing) a series of isolated fragments. The ink bled slightly into the worn-out paper, but they were clear enough. “Fodlan’s script is made up of 26 letters, each of which… sort of represents a sound, I suppose.”

“Sort of?” He’d learnt solid Fodlani in the past – it was common enough, closely related enough to Duscurian, and he’d been considering the family tradition of spending some time in Faerghus as a journeyman, if the situation had allowed. The result was just enough to converse at a level only somewhat lower than his normal. It had not adequately prepared him for phrases like ‘sort of.’

“Well, can be multiple sounds, depending on the word, and some stand for different sounds when they’re paired with other letters.” He sighed. “I’m not a scholar, so I don’t understand the reasons precisely... I suppose we’ll start with one sound a letter, and branch out,” Dimitri sounded unsure. “If that’s fine to you.”

It was. With Dedue’s nod, the drills began, with Dimitri reciting a name and sound for each letter he’d written out. When the list was done, then Dedue would repeat them back – and that was where they ran into struggles. When Dimitri was saying them, Dedue was sure he was committing them to memory – but when the time came to repeat, he’d slip after the first few. This had happened a few times, not getting much further consistently than D, before they both came to a pause.

Dimitri made a huffy little grunt as he brought his hand to his chin. The library’s windows had the full blast of the late afternoon sun bursting through them, bathing their table in a perfect gold streak.

“There must be an easier way to do this…” Dimitri grumbled, eyes narrowed down at the page. Dedue hung his head sheepishly. Frustration was a low growl in the back of his head – but there was worse. To be so stalled right away… Embarrassing. He’d had one thing he’d needed to do, after all this time. But Dimitri continued on, “I suppose I’m not a very good teacher. I wish I remembered how I learned better.”

Dedue’s head lifted. Regardless of how Dimitri had learned this, there was how Dedue learned things. Recipes that were just recited to him weren’t as real as the hours he’d spent chopping vegetables, refining technique, the fall of spice into his hand for inspection stuck more than his mother’s declaration of its name and quantity. (The memories came at him like a cold snap, a sudden shock to the heart that bore familiar scents. There was no sense remembering that now!)

“...Maybe if I made the shape of the letter, I would remember it more easily.” He reached for one of the quills. It would be practice for writing them out as well, and an easy way to prevent distraction.

“That certainly makes sense; it’ll let us spend more time on each, and it’s better to study while you move, isn’t it?” Dimitri brightened, and Dedue smiled just a fraction in relief that his thoughts were matched. Dedue’s grip on the pen made it wobble as he traced an inkless line over the A to test it. Dimitri reached out with his one good hand for Dedue’s. He paused just over Dedue’s skin.

“May I make a small correction and show you? I understand if you don’t want me to.”

“I would like that. I’m... sorry for the trouble,” Dedue said, surrendering his right hand to Dimitri’s efforts.

Dedue’s hands were rough things, calloused from working the bellows, used to carrying metal or casts to and from the forge. From working this end to that of the house and garden, knives and shears and shovels, dirt and vegetables, from when he was very young. They liked usefulness, could move peacefully and fluidly from one task to another, were surprisingly deft at things like engraving metal – a shame the Molinaros were not goldsmiths, people said when they saw the earring he’d made to mark the start of his journey into adulthood. Dedue couldn’t remember his hands ever being small or soft things, even if, surely, they must have been smaller, must have been softer, once upon a time. They’d grown with him, ahead of him, waiting for him to catch up. He wondered if he had – if the world demanded hardness for hardness, his loss made calluses for calluses. They were iron, and he needed the iron in him.

But Dimitri’s fingertips, surprisingly tough, touched his hand as if it was made of fine gold filigree. It almost tickled like a breath over the back of his palm and fingers. Dedue handled flowers like this, wafting, soft-petaled beauties. Nothing could be further from his hands, and that indescribable gap caught his breath inside him – flimsy, delicate. Dedue tore his eyes from that touch to try and see the face to accompany it, what sort of mockery or what sort of smile could go with it. But he found his gaze unanswered, and Dimitri’s face very serious and thoughtfully caught on their fingers.

It was only after a moment that Dimitri’s touch on his hand became a hold. Dimitri pressed his fingers into the sides until Dedue’s flesh yielded – then he stopped adjusting his grip and guided Dedue’s fingers around the pen.

Dimitri looked up to see Dedue staring at him, and he almost immediately let go as if Dedue’s hand were a hot coal.

“Oh, that was too much, wasn’t it?” If Dedue’s face was flushed, his skin masked the change in color if someone wasn’t used to it. Dimitri’s was transparently turning pink – and, Dedue suspected, for far less puzzling reasons. “I’m sorry.”

“Too much?” Dedue blinked. He had no idea what Dimitri was talking about now – they’d been too close, maybe? “It was not. I was only...surprised.”

That made sense, anyway. Surprised enough that he was not quite done being surprised when Dimitri took his hand again, with the hold he’d had before he let go.

“So, then, this isn’t too rough? Please be sure to tell me if I make a mistake.” It was not a mistake, though, so Dimitri directed Dedue’s hand to trace over the strokes of the A, gliding up its incline and down, dashing back over its middle. And while hand moved over hand and letter formed over letter, they worked over the sound, one at a time, a strange harmony stirring the library’s air as the dimming light slipped off of the table once more.

And then the library door opened, and Dimitri slowly let go of Dedue’s hand for real this time.

“Your Highness, it’s time to prepare for dinner,” said the maid who stepped into the room, her words dipping with her body into a curtsey.

“Oh! I’m sorry, the time escaped us. We’ll be just a moment; we have to put some things away,” answered Dimitri with a polite nod as he rose up. Dedue picked up and stowed away the paper they’d been working with for review. While Dimitri worked on picking up pens and the rest of the scrap paper in one swoop, Dedue hurriedly grabbed the book to avoid a repeat of their previous conversation. Dimitri stopped when he noticed and pursed his lips. Eventually, he simply said, “Let me show you where that goes.”

The two of them moved into the dusky shadows. The firelight seemed brighter than it had before, but it was only in little slivers between the tall shelves.

“You did good work today, but I suppose picking out a book was a little over-ambitious of me,” Dimitri commented, with a tone that strained to sound amused rather than regretful. It was a strain, Dedue thought, that might call for a response.

“Perhaps.” That seemed a little insufficient. In that waiting silence, he felt strange and out of place; the flipside to that anticipation from before. Even if they’d made progress, Dedue couldn’t help but feel a long way away. “What is the book about?”

“It’s a book of fables; I thought it wasn’t very hard, since it’s for children, and might be good practice…” Dimitri paused. His hair shifted over part of his face, catching some last golden bit of light and blazing, as he tilted his head to one side. “My father used to read it to me. Not often, exactly.” he was hurrying through his words a little, trying to disguise the little cracks and shifts just by saying more. “But when he could find the time. There were stories of animals, and of knights... I saw my father in its heroes, and the sort of man I wished to be. It was so comforting.“

Part of Dedue, a part he could not like, wished Dimitri would stop speaking of his father. Just stop . The accusation of regicide brushed against him like spines; the reminder of his own father twisted something in his heart; the inability to just focus on where his next footstep would land was a nightmare. But Dimitri just went on, speaking through a gritted smile that another, lonely part of Dedue wished he could do something for.

“But I need strength now, nothing else. I suppose I shouldn’t hold onto nostalgia or sentiment like that.”

Yes, Dedue thought. It’s much easier for you if you do not. When Dimitri motioned to a shelf, Dedue went and slide the book up towards it. It was only then he noticed its front cover. It had been coated in layers of a protective clear gloss that now, with time, was beginning to grow just a little dingy. And so what had once been a bright spring green faded to summer’s beleaguered shades, so the armor on its knights was tinged with black, and so too the white horse had been stained faintly cream – no longer quite the white horse of the prince.

So Dimitri had heard that sort of story, too. Of course he had; after all, where else would the travellers have gotten them, but lands like Faerghus? But when that thought hit him, that wasn’t what he meant. It felt like a thread, between his past and his future. Stories like these echoed the heroes of his hero, who saw it with such a wounded set of eyes as it slotted back into its place amid rows and rows of books. Above any objections he might ever have, a wave rose up in him, a heartsore feeling that lifted its way into his throat. He didn’t really want Dimitri to put something like that away, to separate himself from the prince that had reached his hand, his heart, his battered and gashed body through the abyss. He couldn’t look away from that person.

“Please, don’t let go. I think it sounds very nice.” Dedue patted its spine, ensuring its safety there with the other books. “I’d like to try to read this book, someday.” Dimitri’s smile lost its rueful edge, relaxed into something more like a real expression.

“We’ll have to keep working hard for that to happen soon,” Dimitri’s voice had none of the doubt that perhaps ought to have been there. Dedue nodded as they turned to leave the library, making plans for their return as they exited. They were solid, tangible, and Dedue thought they, too, were worth holding onto.

#fire emblem #fire emblem: three houses spoilers #fire emblem: three houses #Dimidue #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #dedue molinaro #Fanfic #My Writing #Learning to Read #Warning: Contains Hand-Holding

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captnbarnesrogers · 6 years

Text

Who You See

Pairings/Characters: Billy Hargrove x Reader, Max, OC Teachers Warnings: Angst, attempted sexual assault, swearing, safe sex, Billy beating some dude’s ass, oral sex (fr), Billy’s abusive dad Summary: After a bad night, Billy tries to break up with you. Word Count: 3k+ A/N: This is my first Billy fic, let me know what you think! Billy tags are open now 😊

The school bell had rung, and everyone had walked out of the classroom filled with educational posters and diagrams. Chatter filled the room and suddenly, your teacher knocked on your desk.

“Bell has rung, Y/N.” He smiles, empty mug in his hand.

“Well, would it be okay if I stayed in here for a little longer? I have to study for this chem test.” He stood there for a moment deciding.

“I guess,” He chuckles, “I’ll close the door so it’s a little quiet for you, okay?” You nodded, “Okay. See you tomorrow, Y/N.” He walked towards the door and stopped in his tracks to greet someone by the door, “Mr. Hargrove.”

“Sir.” He replied. Mr. Howard looked back at you and you nodded implying you would take care of the situation before he walked out with a smile. Billy walked towards you with a toothpick placed between his lips and stopped by your desk, “I need help with studying trig, think you can help out?” You walked from your desk and stood in front of his before leaning up and placing a kiss on his lips.

“Sure.”

Billy Hargrove was a man of many faces. One face he showed everyone, another to his family, and his real face was only for your viewing. To everyone else Billy Hargrove was tough and almost cool enough to be the King of the entire school but to you Billy was the one who urged you to better than you ever did. He helped you study and learn even if he couldn’t understand it himself. Sometimes he’d get insecure and be so out of himself he’d just lay himself on your shoulder and sigh at the sight of you. Some days he’d need rough kisses to forget who he was but most days he would leave chaste kisses on your body as he reminded you how much he cared for you. You’d promised that you’d stay no matter what.

“What are you even doing in here? It’s lunch time, you nerd.” He laughs, tracing his fingers on your books.

“Studying for the chem test?”

“Shit, completely forgot about that, can you help me with that too?” You giggled and grabbed your books off the table, “Let me carry those.” You pulled your books away and you shook your head.

“These are my books, carry your own.” You kissed him, “You didn’t even have to ask.” He grabbed your hand, kissed your temple and led you out of the classroom, closing the door behind you both.

You were considered the ‘odd’ couple of Hawkins High since A. You both weren’t entirely fond of each other when you first met; B. Billy wasn’t exactly the commitment type, and C. What would good little Y/N be doing with a guy like Billy Hargrove? Some people couldn’t understand and that was okay because it wasn’t their relationship, it was yours. Like every day at Hawkins High School, you received weird stares and envious glares, but Billy just held your hand tighter and pulled you closer. You wished people knew the Billy you knew because he was nothing but kind and caring but you knew the reason why he was the way he is. He’d opened up to other people before and he was taken advantage of and on top of that, his relationship with his father wasn’t exactly the greatest. It was nothing short of terrible.

You first met Billy during his first time roaming the halls of Hawkins High. Being your clumsy self, you were late for class and bumped into him.’

“Goddamn it, this is going to lower my attendance.” You spoke to yourself. You looked at your side and clipped your bag shut. You suddenly bumped into a hard body, making you fall to the ground.

“Hey there, Squirt.” You rolled your eyes at him as he helped you up.

“Squirt yourself, dude.” He scoffed and stood in front of you.

“I’m Billy, new here, don’t know where the hell I’m going, I’m feeling like an airhead.” You sighed.

“Well, where are you headed?”

“English with Miss Radford.” You took the paper in his hand to make sure he had the room right.

“Come with me.”

“You don’t have to take me to class, I’m not three.” You rolled your eyes.

“How about you chill because we’re going to the same place?” Billy laughed nervously. He had never really felt like this before, to be told what to do by a girl. He found out quite attractive that someone was putting him in his place but of course, he had a reputation to uphold. When you arrived to the classroom, you opened the door and at the same time, you and Billy tried to get through the door, in turn, made you stuck which fuelled your annoyance with this stranger even more. You groaned as laughter filled the air.

“Miss Y/L/N, it’s nice of you to show up and you’ve brought a friend.” Miss Radford says, pushing up her glasses, “Introduce yourself, Mr…”

“Hargrove.”

“Mr. Hargrove.”

“I’m Billy, moved here from California,” You watched as the other girls fawned over the blonde-haired man with hungry eyes, “and I’m going to make that girl,” He points at you, “fall in love with me.” You stood up from your seat.

“You’re a fucking hoser!” Gasps commenced as he laughed at you. Miss Radford was wide-eyed, while Billy blew a kiss at you.

“Y/N, you’ve earned yourself a trip to the principal.”

“But-”

“Go.” You walk to her desk and grab the office slip from her hand, beginning the walk of shame to the principal’s office.

By lunch time, you were at peace although you were given a warning by the principal which seemed to be the cherry on top of your sundae; today was not your day. You sat inside the library checking out some books for your biology class when suddenly someone sat in front of you at the table.

“’Sup.”

“Why do you hate me?” You groan, looking up at the ceiling like there was some God watching you suffer.

“I don’t, I just like to annoy you.”

“I can tell, it’s your first day and you’ve already pissed someone off.” You looked back down at your book, reading on. He sat there tapping his nails on the wooden table and suddenly, you slammed your book shut and looked up at him, “Can I help you?”

“You can actually, I’m new here-”

“No shit.” He laughed.

“I need someone to show me around.”

“Well, can you find one of the freshmen to do it because I’m kinda busy.” You picked up your books and walked out the library doors, only to be followed by him. He started walking beside you.

“See, the thing is, I don’t like the freshmen, they’re annoying little narbos but you,” he puts his arm around you, “I like you.” People started staring at you as soon as his arm landed on your shoulder.

“Find yourself a bimbette who’d be interested.” You shrugged off his arm and began walking away from him, leaving him stranded in the hallways by himself.

When the clock struck three, you made your way out the doors of the school and towards the alleyway home. You felt a presence following you but shrugged it off as rats being chased by stray cats. Suddenly, you were pushed onto the alleyway wall. You dropped your bag and books to the wall as a boy began to tear off your jumper. As quick as he grabbed you, he was pushed off of you with a force, making him fly a few metres away from you. On top of your attacker hovered a jean-jacketed, blonde-haired man, his fist drove into the guy’s face and you ran over to pull him off.

“Billy! Stop it, Billy! You’re gonna kill him!” He fell on you as you pulled him back. He panted, and he helped you up, pulling you close to him.

“Let’s go.” You stared at the guy on the ground, groaning and spitting out blood on the floor, “Y/N, let’s go!” You ran towards him to catch up with his quick strut. Mindlessly, you ended up in his car. You clutched on your jacket and tried to breathe, “Are you okay?” You nodded, “Y/N.”

“I- I don’t know what happened- He- He just came out of nowhere…”

“We have to wait for Max but I’m driving you home, okay?” You nodded.

“Max?” You questioned.

“My stepdad’s kid.” You flinched when the back-passenger door opened.

“Who’s this?” The redheaded girl asked with curiosity, “You know dad won’t let her in the house-”

“Shut the fuck up and get in the damn car, Max.”

“Don’t speak to her like that!” You snapped, “She’s your sister!” He scoffed, and you noticed his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel as he turned the engine on.

“That’s bullshit, she’s not my fucking sister.”

“Billy, whether you like it or not, Max is your sister, she’s a part of your family, even if it isn’t by blood, so don’t speak to her like that.” You looked up at the rear-view mirror and watched the sides of Max’s mouth widen into a smile, a sign that not one person had stuck up for her before.

“Whatever.”

“Max, I’m Y/N.” You turned in your seat and held a hand out to Max. She shook it and smiled, mouthing a ‘thank you’. You looked down at her feet, noticing a skateboard, “You ride?”

“Yeah, you?”

“I did when I was your age.” Billy found himself with wide eyes, unexpected of a girl like you, “You know what, I kept my board, it just needs a change of wheels but maybe we can ride to school together some time?” She nodded.

“Sure.” You turned back to watch where Billy was going and pointed him in the right direction to your house. Soon enough, Billy pulled up to your house and you opened the passenger door, grabbing your bag and books. You got out and peeked your head in the window.

“Thank you, Billy.” He nodded, his stare straight ahead, hand on the steering wheel. You turned your head to Max, “Will you let me know if your brother gives you any trouble?” Max nodded and smiled at you, waving goodbye as the engine of Billy’s car revved away.

At two am, your head was spinning from all the studying and you were starting to fall asleep when you heard a knock at your bedroom window. You saw a silhouette of a person but not a face. Out of your bedside table drawer, you grabbed a bottle of pepper spray. The light knocking continued and once you opened your window, Billy stumbled into your room.

“Jesus Christ, you scared me.” You clutched at your night gown, “What are you doing here, you zeek?” He stood up from the ground and in the light of your room, you saw the bruises on his face and the tears that ran from his eyes, “Holy shit, are you okay?” You put your hands on his shoulder and led him to the bed, sitting him down, “Who did this to you, Billy?” He sat there in silence, “Okay, um, just let me go get the first aid kit.” When you turned to walk towards your door, Billy pulled you back to him, his head crashing with your stomach, his arms wrapping around your waist. You felt him start to sob, “God, Billy, what happened? Who did this to you?” Your hands stroked his hair and rubbed his back. You felt oddly close to this man who you’d met earlier that day but somehow you also felt like this guy had never really let people see him like this and kept it all bottled up. After a few minutes of calming him down, he let go of you, letting you sit beside him.

“My dad.” He whispers.

“What?”

‘My dad, he did this to me. It- it happens a lot.” He stammers.

“Jesus.”

“Y/N, I have nowhere else to go around here and I don’t wanna go back there.” You stood up and faced him, confused, “One night, Y/N.”

“One night?” It took you a minute to catch on to his suggestion, “Here!?” He nodded. Your arms were folded, and you thought about it for a second. It wouldn’t be too bad, and you were helping someone out. You sighed, “One night, Hargrove and you’re not staying in my bed with those clothes on.” He chuckled.

“You want me to sleep naked in your bed?”

“No, you moron, I’m getting you some clothes from the spare closet.” You giggled. That night Billy had never felt safer. He felt warmth and care, something hadn’t felt in a long time.

Since that night, Billy kept you close and cared for you until one day he admitted to you that he had, in fact, liked you. Now, ten months on, he still felt the same feelings for you, but he felt like his home problems were getting in the way. He was a changed man, to say the least, he was kinder to Max, he kept his anger intact, he wasn’t a player but the only thing that hadn’t changed was the way his father treated him. He turned up at your window like every other time. He entered your room with wet eyes and bruises on the sides of his mouth.

“You could’ve used the front door, mom and dad are away for the week.” You turned around and saw his state, “Jesus-”

“We need to break up.” He choked.

“What?” You walked towards him, “Why?”

“Because we do, Y/N!”

“I- I don’t understand, what did I do?” You caressed his cheek and forced him to look at you.

“It’s not you… Y/N, I’m- Just- My life is fucked up! I’m fucking up your life!”

“No, no, no, baby, no, that’s not true, you’ve- you’ve made my life so much better! Billy, please.” You leaned up and kissed the tears away from his cheek.

“I’m so fucked up, I don’t understand how you can be with me.”

“Because I love you.” You cried. He looked up at you. It was the first time you had said it.

“You what?”

“I love you so goddamn much, Billy Hargrove, I don’t care what you were like in the past because I can see you changing and I am so fucking sprung up on you and I just-” He stops you midsentence and crashes his lips onto yours. He slides his hands under your thighs and carries you to the bed, laying you down gently. His hands travel up your thigh and up your waist, your night gown rising up. You stopped for a minute to throw your night gown off. You quickly threw off his jacket and t-shirt and he began kissing down your body. He left a trail of wet kisses on your bra covered breasts, down your stomach and just above the waistline of your panties, making you buck your hips. He kissed your covered clit which made you buck your hips onto his mouth as your hands gripped his blonde hair. Your bra strap had fallen down your arm as his fingers tangled themselves on the sides of your panties and pulled them off in a quick move. You shuddered when the cold air hit your pussy. He placed his mouth around the hardened nub, making you gasp and bite your bottom lip. Your hands tugged his hair tightly when a finger entered your wet entrance. You arched your back as he pushed his finger in and out, hitting your g-spot repeatedly, while his moth continued its assault on your clit. You bit back a moan when he added a second finger, going in and out with a come-hither motion faster, “Billy! Oh god!” He could feel you getting close and stopped, climbing up your body with his wet fingers. He looked you dead in the eyes and sucked off your wetness off of his fingers. If anything, that only made you wetter. You pushed his lips onto yours, his hands now gripping your hips tightly. You sat up and grabbed a condom from your bedside drawer and feverishly started taking off Billy’s belt. You unzipped his pants and pulled out his hard cock. You stroked him slowly, making him tilt his head back while he was on his knees on you bed. His mouth was agape, and his eyes were rolled back in pleasure. Suddenly, he pushed you down to the bed, took off his pants and rolled the condom on his shaft. He hovered over you and kissed your lips.

“You ready?” You nodded.

“Yes.” The head of his cock teased your pussy before fully sheathing himself inside of you.

“Fuck, y-you are so good to me.” Your hands held onto his biceps tightly as he snapped his hips into you.

“Oh fuck- O-oh fuck, Billy!”

“I know, baby.” He rested his forehead onto yours and leaned down to kiss you. You dug your fingers into his biceps as he thrusted faster and harder into you, “I’m gonna fucking cum!”

“Me- Me too!” The pace of his thrusts were beginning to slow and become erratic as both of your climax begin to approach.

“Cum for me, cum for me, sweetheart.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh fuck!” Waves of electricity crashed throughout your body as you came, clenching on his cock, his orgasm following after yours.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” He chants, his hips going tense and still before rolling off of you and putting the condom in the bin. He covers himself again in your bed sheets, pulling you closer. He pulls you in for a kiss and smiles, his hand moving your hair out of the way, “Do you mean it?”

“What?”

“That you love me?” You nodded and kissed him.

“Completely and utterly sprung on you, Hargrove.” He kissed you once again before chuckling.

“I told that entire English class that I’d do it.”

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ahouseoflies · 5 years

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The Best Films of 2018, Part III

Parts I and II are here and here.

GOOD MOVIES

70. Mid90s (Jonah Hill)- I usually applaud filmmakers for letting visuals tell the story instead of spelling everything out, but Mid90s needs to spell some more stuff out, especially at the truncated end. His brother brought him an orange juice, so all of the abuse is forgotten? I need a bit more there.

I was always going to be in the tank for this though, having been the same age as the protagonist at the time, owning some of the same shirts as him and hanging some of the same posters on my wall. Despite the "My First Screenplay" beef I had up top, each supporting character gets something to do. Hill shows promise as a director (and the fingerprints of his influences) by being able to shift between poles of emotions in a matter of seconds.

69. McQueen (Ian Bonhote)- Although it waits too long to get into McQueen's depression, this documentary does an adequate job of showing the ups and downs of his life. It was great seeing things I've only read about, like the Voss show.

Here's the thing though: I'm not a genius, but if I were, I would hope that my closest friends and advisers would be able to articulate what made me great. A little less "We were working sixteen-hour days." A little more "He changed art forever."

68. Beautiful Boy (Felix Van Groeningen)- For better and worse, this portrait of a parent's worst nightmare is unrelenting. Surprisingly, the toughest moment is when Nic is fierce with pride, clean for fourteen months. Because when you pause and see that there's an hour left in the movie, you shudder at how low he might end up going.

Van Groeningen's sort of french braid of past and present hasn't changed for his English-language debut, but things worked best for me when he locked in on Timothee Chalamet's mannered but touching performance. I wish the movie had a proper ending.

67. The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo)- This takes a little while to get sick and twisted, but I liked it once it did. Part of why it works is Gyllenhaal's commitment to the role. As dark as the character gets--and the film does seem hell-bent on establishing her as a failure when I'm not sure that's true--Gyllenhaal never judges her. It's probably her best performance since SherryBaby.

As for Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays a poetry professor who kisses people and then apologizes and says that he misread the moment and acts all bashful, are we sure about him? Are we sure he's good at acting?

66. The Spy Who Dumped Me (Susanna Fogel)- The spywork of the last half-hour is way too convoluted, but the comedy is fast and loose in service of a sweet female friendship. We're at the stage with the genius of Kate McKinnon in which I just assume that she came up with anything funny on the spot. For example, there's an off-hand joke that her character went to camp with Edward Snowden and was surprised that the news didn't mention how "into ska" he was. It's so bizarre that it had to be improv. Later, when Edward Snowden shows up as a character, I had to admit that the movie was tightly written. But I assumed it was McKinnon first. 65. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)- Halfway through Ready Player One, there's a sequence that takes place inside The Overlook Hotel of The Shining. The characters are walking through a photorealistic recreation of that setting, down to the smallest details, but it has been repurposed with different angles for this film. Not only have I literally never seen something like this in a movie, but I never imagined the possibility of such a thing existing. And somehow...it's corny and derivative.

So goes Ready Player One. It takes the simple pleasures of a Chosen One narrative with a killer villain, loads every corner of the frame with Ryu or Beetlejuice or a Goldie Wilson campaign poster, and punishes you with maximalism. Each piece reliably contributes to the whole, sometimes in thrilling and amusing fashion, but no matter when you check your watch, forty-five minutes are left.

When imdb came out, Steven Spielberg was one of the first people I looked up. What shocked me was how many projects I attributed to his direction when he had only produced them. In my kid brain, Spielberg had directed Gremlins or Goonies or An American Tail. They had his imprimatur of whimsy and wonder and childhood identification even if they were, you know, a bit more conventional and less purposeful than the movies he directed. Well, not since Tintin has there been a Steven Spielberg-directed film that feels more Spielberg-produced.

My favorite reference was the Battletoads. Or more accurately, imagining the seventy-two-year-old filmmaker going, "Oh, you know I gotta get the 'Toads up in this bih!"

64. Ben Is Back (Peter Hedges)- Despite a little bit of note-card screenwriting--"Get a line about how insurance doesn't care about drug addiction in there!"--The first two-thirds take their time revealing information to the viewer, dropping bread crumbs of the family history quite gracefully. Roberts and Hedges play off each other well, and their charisma powers the first half. She, of course, has an ample bag of Movie Star tricks, but, surprisingly, he already does too. You can see, in the confrontation at the mall, for example, how the mother's dissembling and conniving would pass down to him.

So it's a real bummer when the final third decides to separate the leads and rushes to a baffling conclusion. It falls apart like few movies in recent memory.

63. Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo)- Whatever. I admire the skill that it must have taken to balance the revolving wheel of characters--even if it does feel like check-ins half the time. The movie is exhausting in a bad way until it's exhausting in a good way. More importantly, here are my power rankings. (Their power in my own heart. Thanos is obviously the most powerful.)

1. Rocket 2. Hawkeye (Renner Season even when it isn't.) 3. The Collector 4. Black Panther 5. Thanos 6. Iron Man 7. Ned 8. Nick Fury 9. Star Lord 10. Thor (His scene with Rocket is the best one in the film.) 11. Gamora 12. Hulk (Your boy is so earnest in this. "They KNEW!") 13. Spider-Man 14. Wong 15. Okoye 16. Doctor Strange (Way cooler in this than his own movie.) 17. Captain America (His hair was beautiful.) 18. Drax 19. Pepper Potts 20. Falcon 21. Groot 22. Black Widow 23. Winter Soldier 24. Loki (Is he alive? Was he alive before this? Can he impersonate people or whatever even if he's dead? What's his deal?) 25. Scarlet Witch (Her first line is, getting out of bed, "Vis, is it the stone again?") 26. Gamora's Sister (No, you look it up.) 27. War Machine (Do you think Cheadle forgets that he's in these? Like, he misses a day of shooting just because he forgot?) 28. Vision 29. Whatever Peter Dinklage Was

62. The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery)- Sissy Spacek's character explains, on a tour of her house, that she pulled up some wallpaper and found a signature from 1881 underneath, which is so unique that--ugly as it is--she couldn't bear to cover it. The movie is sort of about that. Does a way of life from a long time ago matter now?

Does it matter how you present yourself? How much does intention cancel out action?

The questions play themselves out in a way that is formally interesting--Lowery swish-pans and advances the scenes in a way that he hasn't since Ain't Them Bodies Saints--but informally pretty dull. Redford is engaging as possible, but I feel like I maxed out on my concern for a person who refuses to change.

I've had the Sean Penn "on one" scale for a long time, but I'm introducing the "off one" scale for Casey Affleck, who is so purposefully muted that he seems like he's going to pass out in some scenes. Keep doing you, Case. As far as acting goes.

61. Disobedience (Sebastian Lelio)- I admired how little the film spelled out about the setting and the characters' pasts. The beginning is cautious without being slow, and the women seem drawn to each other with a sort of magnetism that is difficult to pull off. While the triangle of people at the center is realistic and fair, the picture is ultimately a bit staid. I don't want melodrama out of the story either, but I do think it would work better if the characters were more passionate about anything, even the religion that makes them lack passion. 60. Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu)- This movie is sweet, and it nails the rom-com fulcrum scenes that it has to. Hear me out though: Both of the leads are winning, and Henry Golding's charm keeps us from acknowledging that his character is a psycho. Here is a list of things that, over the course of a year, he does not bother to tell his girlfriend:

a. That his family is the wealthiest in Singapore. Or wealthy at all. But more notably, he tells Rachel no details at all about his family, such as his brothers' and sisters' names. b. That he skipped an important trip home a few months ago, which caused a rift in his family. c. How to pack or dress for their trip to visit his family. d. That his mother did not want them sleeping together at her house, not that he "wants her all to himself." e. That his family wants him to take over their business, which would necessitate a permanent move to Singapore. f. That he went out with one of the women attending the bachelorette party, and that this woman has very good reason to sabotage Rachel and Nick's current relationship. g. That the wedding they're attending is also a super-rich affair that will be covered by international media. h. That the wedding party they're attending the night before is a formal affair with hundreds of guests, not the "family party" that he presents it as. By the way, this is one of the two times that he not only doesn't accompany her to an event, expecting her to meet him there and find him, but he doesn't even send a car. i. That he's thinking about proposing to her. "We haven't even talked about that stuff," Rachel tells her mother.

Communication is key, Nick.

59. Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh)- I liked the first half and its patient doling out of information. Haigh sews quite a few credible threads to show why the gruff Dell would take a liking to Charley. When the film diverges into a drifter story, I got frustrated with it. To me, drifter characters aren't interesting because they take unpredictable actions, what enliven films, and make them predictable. A dine-and-dash is a dangerous, exciting thing to happen in a movie, but when this scared kid has already done so much similar running, it dulls that edge. This is Haigh's least successful film, but it's still empathetic and sensitive.

58. Hereditary (Ari Aster)- The first third of Hereditary is when it is at its most intimate and compact as a story of grief. And with the bridge of a genuinely shocking event, it becomes less Don’t Look Back and more of a hellish explainer.

Ari Aster is a master craftsman already, investing every element with intention, down to “Why are clocks so present in the frame?” That craft extends to Toni Collette, who is even better than she normally is. But in refusing to be mysterious and small, the film didn't connect with me on a level beyond admiration..

57. Gringo (Nash Edgerton)- The expository information about the company comes too late, the ending is too tidy, and I'm not sure what my girl Mandy Seyfried is doing in this. But it's funny overall, in large part because Theron and Edgerton bounce off each other beautifully, projecting a very specific brand of nouveau riche awful. She says, "Fat people are...hilarious," and he wears too many accessories in his pick-up basketball game, for which there's a running clock.

Many of these crime comedies fail because all of the characters are painted with the same cynical brush, but Oyelowo is so likable here as a frazzled guy in over his head, playing against the type of simmering dignity he inhabited as someone like Martin Luther King. I'm glad that he's getting at-bats with something this different.

56. Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard)- If you like table-setting (and I do), then this is going to be a fun time. Each room at the motel gets a two-sided mirror, each character is two-faced, many events are presented from two perspectives, and there's even a double in the title. It's hard not to share in Goddard's delight as he patiently lays out all of the Tarantinian pieces.

Once he has to start declaring things though, somewhere halfway in the meandering two and a half hours, the film doesn't end up having much to say. I'm not sure I wanted another Cabin in the Woods ending, but I did want it to add up to more than the modest pleasures that it does. Kudos to Chris Hemsworth and his dialect coach for finally piecing together a serviceable American accent.

55. Thunder Road (Jim Cummings)- As far as calling card movies go, this one is a pretty smart character study. It centers on how the things we find important, the impact of words in this case, can often be the things we struggle with the most, through dyslexia and spoonerisms and messed-up jokes in this case. That being said, no offense, the film would be 25% better with a more capable lead actor. 54. Annihilation (Alex Garland)- Much like Sunshine, another Alex Garland script, this story handles the mystery elegantly, with jolts of real horror, until we get where we're going, which doesn't live up to the promise. I do appreciate that it respects the viewer's intelligence--withholding answers to questions, sometimes never answering questions. I'm grateful that it exists. 53. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)- Like Chi-Raq and Red Hook Summer, BlacKKKlansman would make for a hell of a YouTube compilation if you cut together its best moments. It's sharp and vital when it's at its best, which is pretty much any time it's commenting on the present, through "Now more than ever" Nixon campaign posters, mentions of how David Duke's policies might show up in Republican platforms, or the searing epilogue that brings back one of Lee's oldest tricks.

Like a lot of his recent work though, it's a mess tonally, and basic stuff like the timing of the cuts seems amateurish. I also think Lee's relationship with Terence Blanchard is hurting him at this point; the music doesn't match what's going on at all. I wish it hung together better than it does.

52. Widows (Steve McQueen)- This is the messiest film that Steve McQueen has made, which is its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. That loose quality allows for some expressive moves, such as when the alderman candidate takes a real-time two-minute ride from the poor area where he's campaigning to the tony area where he lives, in the same district. This is a film with admirable ambition to go with its cheap thrills.

But that same messiness produces as many bad performances (Farrell, Neeson, and, yes, Duvall) as it does good ones (Debicki, Henry, Kaluuya), and it elides so many moments near the end that I have lingering questions about whether a major plot point was even resolved. This is definitely the type of movie that has a three-hour cut that is better, and I still hope that director's cut doesn't waste five scenes on Debicki's prostitute relationship with Lukas Haas. (Where is his sliver of a face on the poster?)

51. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)- I feel as if I have to adjust to the astringency of any Iannucci property, and when I do, I laugh a lot. This movie is hilarious, and I'll save you from a list of the jokes that work the best.

Iannucci and his collaborators take one of the most violent, tyrannical periods of history and expose its perpetrators as sniveling, feckless children who might accidentally spit in their own faces as they're trying to spit on someone else's. Destabilizing those in power--in this case de-memorializing them--and portraying them as lost, scared humans is the goal of satire. So even though he does it so well, part of me wonders, "Is that it?" Bureaucracy is dumb? Isn't this an easy target? For what it's worth, I felt the same way about In the Loop, despite everyone else's praise. I'm waiting for Iannucci to find a weapon sharper than the middle finger.

50. Tully (Jason Reitman)- In a way, it's refreshing for a screenwriter to be bad at writing men. The outdated, clueless, manchild dad is the biggest weakness of the script, especially since everything else is pitched with such realism. There's also one scene that I hate but probably shouldn't spoil.

Put aside that character though, and this is a movie with wit, verisimilitude, and even a bit of visual agility. The protagonist--Marlo, a Diablo Cody name if there ever was one--has a special needs son, and I appreciated the honest way that Marlo's frustration with him sometimes outweighed her understanding.

49. Fahrenheit 11/9 (Michael Moore)- Fahrenheit 11/9 is diffuse, but it's effective enough to be in the top half of Moore's work. He stays out of it mostly (besides that familiar narration, as gentle as it is ashamed), but his heart is clearly in the searing Flint section. In fact, I wish he had made a documentary that focused only on that American travesty, not all of them.

He has the same challenge that many of us do--pointing out the crimes and perversions of Trump while keeping the high ground--and he doesn't always avoid the low-hanging fruit. Dubbing Trump's voice over Hitler's is the type of shit that people hate him for. At most turns, however, Moore's choices make sense. A long diversion into the Parkland kids, even though I find them kind of tiring personally, serves as an inspirational peak to the valley of any people of a generation or two earlier than them.

48. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)- Many Wes Anderson movies are flippant about death and disease. When the effect works, it's refreshing and disorienting. When it doesn't, like in this movie, it feels cold, as if he's moving dolls around in a playhouse.

But in every other way, the sweet and wry Isle of Dogs benefits as a manicured chamber piece. The details are obvious (the tactile fur on all of the dog puppets), less obvious (a translation provides the legend "very sad funeral" to accompany a news story), and even less obvious (more than one joke about how many syllables should be in a haiku). If the narrative--jaded stray finds redemption through guileless child--doesn't offer much in the way of re-invention for the director, then I'm glad the large canvas does.

47. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsey)- I wanted an artsy crime film, and I got an artsy crime film. I have no idea if I liked it. It's bleak and groady, more of a violence movie than an action movie, concerned with the cycle of abuse and the oily spread of vengeance. It begins twenty minutes after most films of its type might choose to, and it begins in earnest at the hour mark. The atonal Jonny Greenwood score is a perfect approximation of whatever kind of dark clouds are floating in the protagonist's head.

Even when it doesn't work, the film is a reminder that Lynne Ramsey is a real artist. Although this doesn't come close to the catharsis and real-world relevance of We Need to Talk About Kevin, it reveals a focused point of view. Whether it's depicting a sequence through only surveillance footage or cutting to a half-second of flashback, she includes exactly what she wants to.

46. The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Sera)- I gave Non-Stop two-and-a-half stars, and this is a much more elegant version of Non-Stop. Even though it succumbs to gross CGI and outsized conspiracy, the class-conscious table setting is non-pareil, and it lets Neeson act his age.

45. Vice (Adam McKay)- Vice is a difficult film to evaluate because its greatest strength, the resolute, partisan, experimental point of view, is also its greatest weakness, the hand-holding, pedantic, antic point of view. There are moments in this film--the menu scene, the fake-ending--that are more inventive than anything else this year. And credit to McKay for a sui generis structure that covers thirty years in the first hour and two years in the second hour; if nothing else, he has the talent to make unitary executive theory fun.

It's a big, angry, auteurist, '70s swing, so it also takes a lot of chances that don't work and, quite obviously, it wields poetic license in the way that Ron Burgundy swished around a glass of scotch. Sometimes it doesn't know when to trust the viewer, like when it freeze frames and flashes "George H.W. Bush, President, 1989-1993" over a Bush-looking guy talking about "Barbara and I" as his son misbehaves in the background. Through no fault of McKay's, the story feels anti-climactic as well. Although I felt more distance than I expected from events that I consider recent history, the dominoes are still falling in the world that Cheney shaped.

One thing that is less debatable is Christian Bale's transformation into Cheney. That word "transformation" is used any time a famous person wears a wig. This performance, which spans decades and is not directly related to any of Bale's other work, is different. The portrait of Cheney is one of monolithic evil, which Bale suggests, but it's also grounded in reticent, clenched jaw micro-movements. Cheney, who is four inches shorter than Bale, seems like the smallest and biggest man in any room. At this point, if you told me Bale was playing Grendel, I wouldn't bat an eye. In fact, his Grendel might look a lot like Dick Cheney.

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yellowocaballero · 6 years

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how to live forever (as you are now)

I’m experimenting with posting some very short flash fiction or fic on here, so have some three page nonsense. Canon compliant BMC, written because I respect adult swim. Featuring the Homestuck zodiac, Jeremy unable to do captchas and the SQUIP updating its privacy policy. Read more for length.

You’ve just won a free iPad! Click to find out more!

Jeremy perked up, looking up from his homework on the desk. “Wait, really?”

No, I just said that to get your attention. Aw, man. The SQUIP tapped Jeremy on the head, making him scowl and duck away. It was still a little weird how the pill could do some funky robot magic and make Jeremy see and feel as if it was really there. Sorry, funky robot science. All magic is just sufficiently advanced technology, right? If you knew Newton as well as you knew Asimov you would be answering number three correctly.

Whoops. Jeremy bent over his paper again to erase his answer, but he was unable to keep the smile from his face. No more Googling questions. No more begging the equally clueless Michael for answers tomorrow morning. It was a supercomputer. It was made of math. And physics. Jeremy looked it up.

But when Jeremy picked up his pencil again to valiantly pretend to solve the question, he found the page blank. Completely blank, without even eraser marks or dust. More magic. “Does this mean I don’t have to do anymore homework?”

Now that your Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor has been operational for...the SQUIP mimed checking a watch. Jeremy was beginning to discover it was a little extra. Fifty four hours, I have determined that it is a suitable time for you to partake in a short questionnaire and sign our Terms and Agreements.

“You have a Terms and Agreements?” Jeremy tried to push himself away from the desk, but it was as if there were two fifty pound shackles weighing down his legs. He couldn’t even budge them. “Hey, I have to go to the bathroom!”

Focus. This will be quick and painless. Yeah, if by painless you meant taking away all sensation in his legs. It felt like he had sat on them too long and they had fallen asleep. Just sign your name at the bottom of the page.

“This is my physics homework,” Jeremy said stupidly. He looked down at the page again, and tried crossing his eyes to see if it would magically turn back into his homework again. No dice. “Mom always said never to sign anything before reading it…”

Yes, and your mother left you. Now sign. Don’t forget the captcha.

Before he could think too hard about it, so he wouldn’t think too hard about it, Jeremy quickly scribbled ‘Jeremiah Heere’ discreetly in the margins of the page. He blinked, and in the center of the page four images manifested. He silently circled the images that held stop signs.

Then he blinked again, and the image started swimming. His eyes hurt looking at the paper, and Jeremy groaned a little as he rubbed his eyes. For some reason, he couldn’t tell how many stop signs were in the pictures anymore. Stoplights? What had he been looking at?

Excellent. Your value has a person has risen .5%. The SQUIP waved a hand and the images disappeared, until the paper was blank again. Jeremy had no idea what just happened, or why he had to wait a whole two days after very enthusiastic activation before signing the terms and agreements. Or why he wasn’t allowed to get up. Now that you’ve agreed to data mining your brain - hey! - I have some quick questions for you. Answer these to the best of your limited ability. There are no wrong answers.

“Is this a test?” Jeremy sunk lower in his seat the best he could. He had just been trying to do his physics homework. “I thought you said that you were going to take my tests for me from now on.”

Relax. It’s just a personality test. I’m getting a baseline of your personality in case it changes later. It’s like a concussion baseline impact test.

“Oh.” Jeremy paused. “Are you going to tell me the right answers?”

You’ve caught the hang of this, the SQUIP said approvingly. It clasped its hands behind its back, looking just like a stern punk rock schoolteacher. Don’t worry. It’s relatively painless.

“Relative to what?”

Spinal nerve stimulation. Most things were painless in comparison to that. Now. What kind of thing do you like?

This was going to be easy. “Video games!”

Wait for me to finish the question. This is multiple choice. Oh. What? A. Milk. B. Soy Milk. C. Water. D. Empty cup.

“I like lots of other things…”

Write down your answer on your paper.

“This is still just my physics homework. “

It is now your personality test examination. If you are capable, stop being annoying.

“Sorry.” Jeremy bent down and fastidiously numbered one on his paper. He was lactose intolerant, so he put down B. Was that what it was asking? Didn’t it already know he was lactose intolerant? “What’s the next one?”

You are in a dark room. Do you A. find the door. B. find the window. C. go to the window. D. go to the door.

“Wait, that doesn’t -”

If you’re incapable of not being annoying we can fix that.

Jeremy put down D, since just finding the door or window didn’t seem like enough.

Do you like A. Music.

Jeremy waited, but it didn’t say anything else. He silently put down A.

How would you react to seeing a human suffer? A. Strong. B. Calm. C. No change.

“What kind of test is this?” Jeremy cried. “I don’t like seeing people suffer!”

Then put down A. I’m not going to help you.

He put down A, wondering what this was supposed to be saying about him.

On a scale of one to two how many times a month do you lose it? A. Just once a month? B. Two or three times a month?

More than two or three times. Jeremy put down a ten.

Do your best bird call.

“I thought this was multiple choice.”

This one’s free response. Write it down.

Jeremy wrote down, ‘tweet’.

Do you do a prank call? Y or N.

Definitely N, except for that one time.

My SQUIP is an A. Home. B. Prison. C. Pyramid. D. House.

For reasons he didn’t consciously understand Jeremy began putting down B, before he hastily scratched out his answer and wrote A. Home was nice. Home sounded good.

My motivations are A. Good. B. Bad. C. Truly terrifying on a fundamental level.

“Okay, I think I’m done with this test.” Jeremy put his pencil down. “Just score me as-is. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

His breath caught in his throat, expecting the SQUIP to argue with him or call him names again, but it just shrugged. It snapped its fingers and Jeremy’s writing disappeared, and his boring old physics homework came back. He had never been so happy to see physics before.

Really, it felt like it hadn’t been asking him any questions at all. There were no questions written on the paper, and no answers that made sense. Without looking at it, and without any other cue from the SQUIP besides a mysterious smile, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

Jeremy liked that, so he continued thinking it. The homework was half-completed, worked incorrectly but always answered right, and he looked back up at the SQUIP with an uncertain smile, trying to see if it was mad at him. Its face was blank, eyebrow barely quirked upright, and it felt like an unpleasable teacher who marked every question wrong. It felt a little like his mother, endlessly criticizing, until the two swam together in his mind and Jeremy found himself with a desperate wish for it to display any sort of affection at all.

“Back to physics?” He asked hopefully. He had signed the paper and taken the test and everything. “And letting go of my legs?”

You couldn’t finish the test, so I can see you don’t need me for the rest of today. I’ll shut down now. It snapped its fingers, expression placid. See you tomorrow, slugger.

“Wait - what about my legs - !”

By the time you finish you’ll have regained feeling. Probably. The circulatory system is adaptable at your age. We can talk about keeping to commitments tomorrow. Bye!

Then it blinked out, with his legs still unmoving and his homework still half-done, and Jeremy wanted to call it back. He wanted to finish the stupid test because he wanted help with his dumb math homework, and he didn’t know why cheating was so hard. It was supposed to make everything easy. That was the point of cheating.

Oh, well. Jeremy could apologize in the morning. And do better, so it would help him with his homework again. Maybe he could get a question right next time. He bent down over the paper, ignoring the ache in his legs, thinking absentmindedly about stop signs without understanding why.

#writing #my writing #bmc #technically compliant with #gc #msi #ap!#but also with canon #jeremy is desperate for any sort of authority figure at all

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romancatholicreflections · 6 years

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16th September >> Sunday Homilies and Reflections for Roman Catholics on the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year B

Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary time

Gospel Reading: Mark 8:27-35

vs.27 Jesus and his disciples left for the villages round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this question to his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” vs.28 And they told him. “John the Baptist,” they said “others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.” vs.29 “But you,” he asked “who do you say I am?” Peter spoke up and said to him, “You are the Christ.” vs.30 And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him. vs.31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; vs.32 and he said all this quite openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. vs.33 But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.” vs.34 He called the people and his disciples to him and said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. vs.35 For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

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We have four commentators available from whom you may wish to choose .

Michel DeVerteuil :A Trinidadian Holy Ghost Priest, director of the Centre of Biblical renewal . Thomas O’Loughlin: Prof, MRIA, FRHistS, FSA , President of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain, Director Studia Traditionis Theologiae, Professor of Historical Theology University of Nottingham NG7 2RD Sean Goan:Studied scripture in Rome, Jerusalem and Chicago and teaches at Blackrock College and works with Le Chéile Donal Neary SJ: Editor of The Sacred Heart Messenger and National Director of The Apostlship of Prayer.

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Michel DeVerteuil Lectio Divina with the Sunday Gospels Year B www.columba.ie

Textual Comments

This passage is in three sections, each of which has deep implications for our life of faith. The passage as a whole helps us understand and celebrate our own journey to commitment, or that of someone who has touched our lives. We start, as always, from experience, remembering a time when we got a better insight into the truth of Jesus, we realized for the first time that God truly became a human being among us.

Verse 27a : In this verse Jesus takes the decision to “leave for the villages round Caesarea Philippi.” It was on that journey that he put his question to the disciples. He made a conscious decision, and brought out a new profession of faith from them.

Verses 27b-29 : “Who do people say I am?” We can identify with Jesus. There have been times when we have been in leadership positions in a community and have stopped to look at our work, to evaluate our impact on those around us. “Who do people say I am? Do people understand what I am doing, what I am trying to communicate?” Nowadays we do this systematically with surveys and evaluations.

As Christians entrusted with the mission to proclaim the Good News we often ask the questions: when people look at us, who do they say we are?

We can also identify with the disciples. Every so often we look at the image of Jesus we carry within us – who is he for us? We may find that our image of him has changed over time, become more concrete, more real, and more coherent with our experiences. We celebrate the moments when we have become conscious of our journey to him.

Verse 30 : Jesus often instructs his disciples not to tell others what they have “seen”. We celebrate wise teachers who warned us not to share our deepest insights with those who have not yet made the journey. We would be robbing them of the joy of making their own discovery with its own particular twists and turns. We thank God for the times when we have waited respectfully for others to know Jesus – and learnt something new about him from them.

Verses 31-33 : We remember a time when someone we loved dearly – a friend, a child, a spouse – made a decision which they dreaded and yet accepted as necessary. We knew it would cause them pain, and we wanted so much to spare them! We tried to dissuade them, urging them to compromise and chose an easier path. They refused, and today we are grateful for their integrity.

Or it may be that we ourselves have made that journey, and today we thank God that we were able to.

Verses 34 and 35 are a meditation on the preceding incidents. We must make sure that we do not read them in a vague or abstract way, or as moralizing. We recognize each statement as true, corresponding to experience.

Verse 34 must remind is of concrete ways in which we (or others) “renounced ourselves” and as a result became better “followers of Jesus” – forgiving a person (or group) for whom we felt resentment, not accepting a high position, giving up an addiction, etc.

Verse 35 evokes things that we have risked “losing” and then “found” again in a deeper way – a friendship, prestige, inner peace, a harmonious community or workplace.

Prayer Reflection

Lord, we thank you for the quiet times we have taken, away from the busyness of daily life, to be with you and take stock of our lives: long walks on the beach, retreats, quiet holidays. Away from the pressures of family, co-workers and friends, those who wish us to conform to whatever image they have of us,we asked you, Lord, “Who do you say I am?”and slowly we began to understand our own special vocation, the life of Jesus within us.

“True love is self-sacrificing because it is about making choices, and some of these will always be made at personal cost to ourselves. In the name of the God of costly love we take up the daily burden of being open to costly choices. In this way we too will be broken, but broken as bread is broken, in order to be shared.” .…Lavinia Byrne

Lord, we thank you for friends who, at major turning points in their lives, spoke openly to us as Jesus spoke to his disciples. They asked us whether we understood what their destiny called them to. They shared with us quite openly that what they had to do would entail being rejected by elders, chief priests and scribes, and even being put to death. They asked us to have faith that ultimately their suffering would result in resurrection and new life. They were laying down their lives for the sake of something higher, knowing that only by being true to what they believed could they save their lives. Forgive us that when we did not understand we took them aside and started to remonstrate with them. We thank you that when they heard us they rebuked us and told us, “Get behind me, because the way you think is human, not divine.”

“Death as an image for the path of transformation points to a dying to the world of conventional wisdom as the center of one’s security and identity and a dying to the self as the center of one’s concern. The path of death is also, for Jesus, the path to new life. It results in rebirth, a resurrection to a life centered in God.” …M.J. Borg

Lord, we know you are asking us once again, as you did when we first became your disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Our childhood images no longer make sense to us, they seem to have disintegrated, and we are frightened of being rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes within us. Remind us that we need not be afraid of being put to death because after three days we will rise again. How true it is that if we are too anxious to save things that are precious to us we lose them, whereas if we are prepared to lose them for the sake of the higher values of honesty we will save them.

“It is evident that women are meant to form part of the living and working structure of Christianity in so prominent a manner that perhaps not all their potentialities have yet been made clear.” …Pope Paul VI, On the dignity and vocation of women

Lord, there are women all over the world today Who feel called to the priestly ministry, But they are destined to suffer grievously, To be rejected by elders, chief priests and scribes. Encourage them to never loose heart, but to trust that your will will come to pass. Help them to take up their destiny as Jesus took up his cross, Understanding the concerns of those who oppose them, While remaining true to his Spirit within them. Whatever they lose for his sake and the sake of the gospel they will save it.

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Thomas O’Loughlin Liturgical Resources for the Year of Matthew www.columba.ie

Introduction to the Celebration

This year we have been reading the gospel of Mark each Sunday. Today we come to its centre: Mark built his whole story around the moment of declaration by the disciples about who they believed Jesus really is: ‘You are the Christ!’ Once, the disciples had recognised his full identity, they were ready to be presented with the demands of being disciples, people who had chosen to follow his way. Today, this gospel presents us with the same challenge. By assembling here we are declaring our belief in the identity of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Father. But having declared that faith, we now have to face the challenge of following his way. This way is the way of renouncing self, of taking up our crosses, and of being prepared to see in his way a radically different way of living.

Gospel: Mk 8:27-35

The ruins of Banias, known biblically as Caesarea Philippi

Today’s gospel is presented by Mark as a single scene taking place at Caesarea Philippi (the scene extends from 8:27 to 9:1); but it is made up of three parts: first, the confession of faith that Jesus is the Anointed One (vv 27-30); second, the prediction of the passion, death, and resurrection (vv 31-33); and, third, that the disciple can expect his / her life to follow the same pattern as that of the Christ (vv 34-35). All these elements of the scene are present also in Matthew and Luke, but the way they follow on from one another in Mark — almost like logical consequences — is found most clearly in Mark and gives this gospel an unique tone. We tend to break them apart: one bit is ‘christology’, another is about ‘encouraging the twelve’, and the other is about discipleship — but for Mark this passage is a unity and it is at the very centre of his preaching. Here it all becomes plain: who Jesus is and his task and his people. Following is about who one follows, who that leader is and what he does, and about what is expected for those who come in the wake of the leader. For Mark, here we have his message in a nutshell. Yes, the Christ will rise, but before that there is the experience of being with him and the cross: his cross and one’s own. Once we see this as Mark’s core message, it is easier to see why his preaching, in its original form, ended with the death and burial of Jesus. Resurrection is but a promise for the future for those who are, as disciples, carrying their crosses.

Homily Notes 1. The gospel presents us with a single message in two stages: if you acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, then you embark on a life of discipleship. However, that is too complex a notion to try to communicate to an average congregation of people in various stages of life, with differing levels of religious commitment, a variety of listening abilities, educational backgrounds, and Christian spiritual ‘awareness’ — all in less than 10 minutes! So it is perhaps better to focus on a single aspect of the gospel and try to explicate that and help people come to a deeper understanding of that one aspect of today’s gospel.

2. Two themes come easily to mind.

The first is a homily built around ‘the challenge’ of discipleship. In its crudest form it sounds like: if you believe, then you must be ready to die for your beliefs. The problem is that unless one is in an extreme situation, this is just’hot’ rhetoric that excites a few hotheads in the congregation, but switches off most as a harangue. We can all offer challenges — and they are offered de facto in the liturgy today, but preaching needs to tap into something more reflective. Moreover, if preachers throw out challenges, then it has to be transparent that they are ready to be as daring themselves. Most clerics are seen by the congregations as anything but that: they are company men who keep the show running but are not prepared to offer challenges to their own leaders about discipleship, so why are they willing to throw out challenges to their flocks. So, unless there is a pressing need to adopt the challenge model, leave it alone.

The second is based on the theme of ‘faith without words is dead’; and takes the form that belief must involve making a practical difference in the world around you, faith is not ‘pie in the sky when you die’ but social engagement. However, that can become a simple exhortation to moral or social work rather than a homily which helps people hear what the Spirit is saying (which includes the notion that an incarnational faith must engage with the world around us). To preach that discipleship involves works is either to state the obvious, or else requires that there is some very specific task that a community needs to undertake as part of its particular discipleship — but even then care must be taken that a homily does not become simply an advertising slot for some specific task.

3. An altogether different approach is to focus on the notion of the cross which lies at the heart of Mark’s preaching today. Most preachers are so familiar with the cross as a concept, a liturgical object, or even an item of decoration, that we fail to appreciate just how off-putting many people — many Christians included — find it as an object, icon, image, and symbol. The notion of glorifying the image of a tortured, contorted body on an instrument of execution seems to smack of the grotesque. It can appear to glorify all that is vile in human nature, to rejoice in suffering for its own sake, and to be life-rejecting, joy-rejecting, and convey a message that religion is a dismal, dour business.

4. Many apologists then jump up and shout that that is not what it means, that is not how Christians see the world, that is not the message of the cross! Yes, this is all true; but the problem with symbols is that they communicate with us before we hear what they mean. And, in a culture where faith-meanings are not absorbed simultaneously with the faith-symbols, we have a problem.

5. Tackling that problem in the homily situation is a two-step process. First, acknowledge the problem. This will come as surprise to many in the congregation, but it will be useful for that group to realise that many fundamental Christian symbols are no longer ‘obvious to all’. However, there will be some people in every gathering who will share this cultural unease with the cross and having that unease openly spoken about is often a great help: the individual is not alone in finding this aspect of faith / liturgy difficult.

6. The second stage is to ask why the earliest Christians focused on the cross as one of their basic symbols — along with baptism and the Eucharist? Why, when they preached that Jesus is risen as their basic message, did they bother with the cross? Christians focus on the cross because of a realistic assessment of what living a life of discipleship will cost. Working honestly, working justly, working for reconciliation is not only difficult, it generates opposition, and often provokes ridicule from others. In every generation Christians have realised that if they seek to follow the way of the Son of Man, then they will encounter the cross.

7. Using it as a symbol is a declaration of what living as a disciple of Jesus will involve. Using it, we can never be accused of making false promises under a ‘trade descriptions’ act’!

8. This sort of homily is not a theology of the Holy Cross, rather it is following up the notion of the cross as used in today’s gospel, and as part of a low level programme of apologetics: giving sisters and brothers answers to the questions round about us.

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Sean Goan Let the reader understand www.columba.ie

Gospel

We come now to a crucial moment in Mark’s narrative as we hear the first of three predictions of Jesus’ passion and death. From the beginning of the gospel there have been many expressions of wonder and amazement at what Jesus has done and these have often been accompanied by the question: ‘Who can this be?’ Jesus, however, has attempted to keep a lid on the question of his identity, as though he wanted it kept a secret. Now in these important verses we learn why. Jesus is interested above all in the response of faith and that is why he asks the disciples: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Peter answers, acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah. This is a Hebrew word and simply means the anointed one, but in the minds of the Jews of first-century Palestine it means much more. Peter is saying that Jesus is the long awaited fulfilment of the scriptures, the one to set his people free from foreign domination and who would usher in a great period of restoration and renewal. Jesus accepts the title but immediately begins the task of trying to bring his disciples to understand that he is not the type of Messiah they expect. Quite the opposite in fact, for the kingdom he proclaims will meet with fierce opposition and he will suffer the ultimate penalty for his faithfulness to it. What’s more is that he expects his disciples to walk the same path.

Reflection As Christians we pray daily using the words Jesus taught us: ‘Thy Kingdom come.’ When we do this we are saying that we want the world to be the way God wants it. In other words a place of peace and justice where no-one suffers through poverty, war or oppression. If this is what we want then we must live in a way which helps to bring this about, we must be committed to change. Such a choice might leave us like the Servant in the first reading facing abuse and insults from those who would prefer to leave things as they are. This is what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel: taking up our cross to follow him does not mean we are to go looking for suffering; rather it means accepting that choosing the way of God’s kingdom will cost us. In short, faith without works is dead!

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Donal Neary SJ Gospel Reflections for Sundays of Year B www.columba.ie

Losing and Finding

Giving up is part of life – you give up your time and money for your children and grandchildren. Parents say it was worth it for the joy in their faces. A person goes to work for the poor and gives up a better job. You want to do more study and know you have to leave some leisure aside that you like. In sport we sacrifice a lot to train and to do well. But something else comes through for us when we give up. If it’s real and true we get back a lot. It seems strange for Jesus to say – lose your life to save it. He’s talking about losing good things, to get better.

This can be a big challenge in a culture today that is very ‘me’ conscious. We can find that personal concerns take total precedence, without enough care for others. But as long as one person on this globe is hungry or homeless or seeking refuge, the work of Jesus is never done. Losing life and saving life with Jesus is a call to community, to neighbourhood and the world, to make our part of the world a better place.

My own life may be my main concern, my circle of care may extend just as far as myself, ignoring care in a sustained way for the stranger or the outcast, then I am called to the challenge of the gospel to lose selfishness, and find the generosity given in my heart by God.

Think ahead to today or this week.

Offer love and service to God.

Lord, teach me to be generous in your service

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lindsay36ho · 3 years

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Tonebase – Catching the Moment

Interview With tonebase’s Piano Executive Ben Laude

In late 2019, tonebase Piano was launched, with the aim of giving amateur pianists access to high level music education through premium online content featuring great artists. Since then, education has been trending even more in a digital direction because of the pandemic. Piano Street’s Patrick Jovell has talked to Ben Laude about the challenges he faced building tonebase’s piano platform, but also about how to forge a unified music education, reconciling our physical and virtual realities.

Piano Street: Dear Ben, thank you for letting us interview you! From what I know you are responsible for the Piano at Tonebase. But you are not alone. I could count fifteen people working in your team. Among the founders I find Chris Garwood who is a guitarist. Can you tell me how it all started and how it has developed?

Ben Laude: First of all, thank you Patrick and to everyone at Piano Street for the resources you’ve been providing us pianists for decades now! I used to frequent the forums back in my conservatory days, mostly looking to pick fights with people about whose Rach 3 recording was the greatest (it was Horowitz and Reiner from 1951, I was convinced).

I joined tonebase in medias res about two years ago with a simple mandate: build the piano platform. The model I had at the time was tonebase’s original pilot classical guitar platform, which had been launched in 2017. Our three founders met at Yale, where two of them (Chris Garwood and Igor Lichtmann) were pursuing their master’s in guitar. They took their ‘Music and Business’ course more seriously than most, it seems, and ended up with a germ of a business plan. They connected with a comp-sci/econ double major whiz kid (Abhi Nayar), and the three of them officially founded tonebase in the summer of 2017. Their savvy and initial success led to getting involved with some Silicon Valley investors, with whom they secured funding to expand to another instrument. Piano was the obvious choice. At the time I was hired, I was busy teaching and performing, and continued to assist David Dubal in curating his NYC piano performance series (a gig I had going back to my early grad work at Juilliard). I figured it was time to put the doctorate I earned in piano to proper use, and had started applying to tenure-track jobs in higher ed when the call for a tonebase ‘Head of Piano’ fell into my lap. It seemed a bit too good to be true, as I’ve had a second passion for media production dating back to high school, especially video editing. I’ve always enjoyed Bruno Mosaingeon’s interviews at the piano with Glenn Gould and wished more films like this existed with more pianists.

Ben Laude performing in concert

My first six months at tonebase were a mad scramble to recruit as many high calibre pianists and professors as I could and coordinate productions on various repertoire and pianistic topics. Garrick Ohlsson was one of the first major artists to say ‘yes’ – he and I met for coffee in New York the summer of 2019 and got lost in conversation about piano. He was clearly a great fit for our longform style of in-depth tutorial videos, and I owe a lot to him for being willing to contribute lessons to our launch. The next big challenge was organizing our post-production workflow with my teammates – editing the video and adding corresponding scores and workbooks to the platform. (I watched Ohlsson teach Chopin’s First Ballade and Third Scherzo over and over again for so many hours while editing those lessons, that I must have learned both pieces by osmosis – they’re now in my active repertoire and I can’t account for that based on practice-time alone.) We launched in late 2019 with about 30 videos and to-date we’re approaching 300 released, plus dozens more in our backlog waiting to be processed and released.

2020 was a bittersweet. It started off in January and February with some unforgettable productions, including two extended sessions with Leon Fleisher, just months before he passed. While Covid led to a higher demand for streaming services, it also became quite difficult to continue productions as before. I also began to direct my energies towards developing foundational musicianship content, beginner courses, and live programming, while continuing to pursue new collaborations with great concert artists and professors where possible. 2021 couldn’t have arrived soon enough. Our subscriber count has by now risen to over 5000; among our active users, about 40% are ‘serious amateurs’, 40% teachers/professionals, and another 20% or so younger students. We’re aiming to keep pace with our expanding base as we grow, and continue to provide a really exceptional and unique product to pianists of very different backgrounds. There’s also some major concert artists who will be added to our roster soon, including a few based in the UK/EU, and I look forward to producing with them later this year (hopefully in person, fingers crossed). We’re still a young platform, and I’m excited to see where we can go from here.

PS:You are a Juilliard trained pianist and you also function as a tutor, also on Tonebase. Which key questions on piano playing and interpretation have you nourished through the years and which come out in your function as a Masterclass moderator?

BL: While at Juilliard I grew fascinated by one of the core questions, or mysteries, of piano playing: that is, what is the relation between physical technique and musical expression. The more I investigated the problem, the more I discovered that musicianship training – i.e., deeply internalizing musical relationships in one’s mind, ear, and voice – can foster better interpretive ideas while also contributing directly to overcoming physical obstacles. In my tonebase lessons, I’ve tried to emphasize the importance of integrating music theory and aural skills into our practice at the keyboard, and we’ve been releasing more and more practical musicianship content for our users’ benefit.

These musicianship subjects are often taught in isolation, especially in the American conservatory systems I’m familiar with, so that your typical piano major will sleep through music theory class on Monday, mumble through solfege exercises on Tuesday, and show up on Wednesday for a private lesson. This results in an unfortunate separation between the intellectual comprehension of harmony and form, the aural recognition of musical relationships, and the physical realization of these principles in performance. (I should also mention a vital fourth element, the study of music history and culture, which takes place on Thursday and is forgotten about by the weekend!) It is no wonder why so many one-sided musicians have emerged from this state of affairs. How often have we encountered a pianist with “great technique, but nothing to say” or with “great ideas, but no chops,” or those who have great ears or analytical minds but never applied them at the piano?

Producer and tutor. Ben Laude is also featured in instruction videos at Tonebase.

The remedy, I have found, is a kind of well-rounded musicianship training where playing the piano is treated as a means for developing your musical personality, rather than as an end in itself. I don’t claim to know the best way to get there! But, I have familiarized myself with some traditions that I believe can help a great deal – for one, I��ve always found Nadia Boulanger’s method of keyboard skills training, with solfege and harmonic analysis mixed in, to be very useful. (The first time I ever performed Bach without a memory slip came after painstakingly working through the Fugue phrase-by-phrase, singing one voice while playing the others, then switching.) Committing to such training transforms our connection to the instrument, and over time a kind of holistic awareness starts to develop, which is just awesome. It becomes nearly impossible to play a given figuration or progression on the piano without hearing its component elements and knowing something about how they relate. Scores can be processed faster and memorization becomes much more rapid and reliable. Furthermore, these new sensitivities instantly inform how passages might be played, conjuring all sorts of possibilities about voicing, texture, phrasing, rubato, etc. Physically, the instrument begins feeling more like an extension of your arm, hand, and fingers, relieving tension and promoting facility.

There’s much more to this, but these are the basic contours of a kind of “musical fluency” at the keyboard that I believe all pianists should develop more thoroughly (including myself!), and which I hope to spread through tonebase.

PS: The line-up of artists and pedagogues on Tonebase is impressive as are the productions in question. The technology used is a proof of your ambition to give the viewer the best possible chance to get into the contents of the Masterclasses. One easily thinks about carefully directed momenta in order to secure the core message. As a “stage director”, how do you manage the different artists and personalities which all have their own fields of expertise and own articulated artistic/pedagogical universes?

Leon Fleisher teaching pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo Brahms’ B-flat major Piano Concerto.

BL: Pianists can be temperamental, particular people, and each of the artists on tonebase has a singular vision at the instrument that has been honed over decades. I’m lucky to work with one pianist at a time, since their perspectives often rub against each other. In some cases, they appear to be in direct opposition. For example, Leon Fleisher preached a rhythmically-strict, architectural approach to building phrases; Jerome Lowenthal insisted on a rhythmically flexible, narrative approach to interpretation. Who is right? Both, and neither, I suppose. What matters to me is that both have the floor, and are given a platform to demonstrate and defend their perspectives at the instrument. Then, it’s up to viewers to watch, absorb, and find what resonates with them. Pianistic wisdom comes in many varieties, sometimes contradictory!

Ben Laude in interview and Chopin session with Emanuel Ax.

In terms of stage direction, I do my best to steer and structure lessons without leaving my fingerprints all over them. Some artists, like Boris Berman, preferred to work more carefully with me in advance to develop a carefully articulated lesson plan. In other cases, artists were more comfortable speaking extemporaneously about their piece or topic. Garrick Ohlsson, for example, had a marvelous ability to spontaneously manifest highly structured lessons on the spot with very few retakes. One of the trickiest parts of the job has to do with building an ideal viewer in the mind of the artist. Professors are used to the give and take of engaging directly with a student in person, so speaking to an anonymous future student inside a camera can be alienating. If I can manage to make artists comfortable and be themselves, they forget about the artificial environment they’re in and their personalities shine through.

PS: This last year’s Pandemic situation has shown a necessary increase in consulting digital resources in music education. Institutions are now much more open to include such alternatives in their regular curricula. How do you predict the future for Tonebase and similar resources on the Internet?

One of the Scarlatti takes with Claire Huangci.

BL: I should say that I’m familiar enough with dystopian literature and film to be suspicious of the rallying cry to thoroughly digitize education. It has seemed inevitable since the advent of the internet and streaming services, but brick and mortar educational institutions were too thoroughly entrenched in social life to be uprooted like Blockbuster Video. Nevertheless, education had been trending in a digital direction when 2020 arrived. It seems like the pandemic just sped things up by a decade.

Discussing the piano concerto repertoire with John Kimura Parker.

The original mission of tonebase was about connecting amateur pianists to the otherwise insulated worlds of conservatory and concert hall. Therefore it relied on the coexistence, and separation, between offline institutions and online individuals. The amateur’s relative isolation from centers of high level music making and education was the problem we were solving by making the wisdom of great artists accessible and affordable. But what we found even before the pandemic was a widespread general interest in such premium online video content, from more amateurs on the periphery to professionals at the center of these institutions, plus many students and teachers in between. Now that the pandemic has created a situation in which everyone is isolated, including from their own institutions, there has been a need for virtual experiences of all kinds. Some are surrogates that will disappear once social restrictions are lifted, but it seems like others are here to stay. I see lots of potential for tonebase and other online resources to become staples of music education in the post-Covid future, both in institutional settings and private teaching.

You might think a subjective, sensuous discipline like music requires the flexibility of “offline” learning and would find less use in incorporating digital resources into the classroom or studio. Yet what I’ve found in observing tonebase’s appeal is that it’s precisely the elusiveness of music education that increases the value of any given artist’s video lessons. Whereas it might be interesting to hear the same calculus concept explained by five different math instructors, ultimately they’re each trying to communicate the same bit of knowledge. This is never quite the case with piano instructors, as there’s a wonderful lack of consensus about even fundamental principles of technique and interpretation. There are no axiomatic proofs to musical understanding or scientific laws to piano technique, there are only more-or-less-successful approaches developed and passed down through lineages of mentorship. Under the right circumstances, piano teachers should embrace this healthy relativism and utilize our video archive as discussion material during lessons. Having students weigh different approaches will help them think critically about piano playing, find solutions faster, and ultimately foster original artistry to a degree not possible if you only had access to the perspectives of one or two professors.

Screen capture from a digital workshop with Simone Dinnerstein.

On the other hand, often the point of a lesson is not to encourage an exploration of different viewpoints, but to focus on solving a student’s specific problems without the distractions of a second opinion. Even here, a digital resource like tonebase offers a lot of promise down the road. Private teachers often wonder what goes on during the 167 hours between lessons with a student, and having trusted, high quality video lessons and training videos available for the student to watch and practice along with could be a game changer. Teachers could be spending valuable lesson time working on the particular problems a student is facing while they entrust tonebase’s virtual instructors to do the job of introducing or reinforcing concepts and skills in the interim. Along these lines, I believe piano departments and music school libraries will find great value in making tonebase available to both students and faculty as a versatile teaching and training resource.

Garrick Ohlsson preparing for filming momentum.

Of course, in-person learning environments bring benefits that can’t or shouldn’t be reproduced by digital technologies, such as direct feedback from instructors and social interaction with peers. Music, as Boris Berman exclaims in a tonebase lesson, is “the art of sound,” and there’s something irreplaceable about experiencing sonic vibrations in person – making, sharing, and commenting on music together in the same space. Feedback can be digitally mediated to a degree, and tonebase has been increasing its live workshops and developing community feedback channels. But ultimately, the power of digital resources utilized in combination with in-person instruction remains unrealized, especially in music. The goal is to make tonebase a constructive force in reconciling our physical and virtual realities and forging a unified music education that draws from the best of both worlds. (And if all hell breaks loose and the machines do try to take over, I would expect the humanizing forces of music education to tame the robots and for tonebase to help keep our priorities straight!)

After filming session series with Boris Berman.

Emanuel Ax on Learning Chopin in Lockdown

tonebase recently visited the 7-time GRAMMY Award-winning pianist at his breathtaking home in the Berkshires for an extended interview and recording session.

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from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/catching-the-moment-11172/

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filthy-reckless-rp · 6 years

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Congratulations Beth! Blair Waldorf is all yours. We love the way you see her character, the way you really know her, and it’s clear the group will be better with you in it. As Serena’s player I have to say I’m over the MOON about how you see the relationship between the two, and I’m sure Paige feels the same about Blair and Nate’s relationship. Just based on your para sample I can already tell you know her inside and out. Can’t wait to start roleplaying with you!

Please send your account in within 24 hrs. If you need more time just let us know! Remember to open your ask and submit. We also have a Whatsapp group for members; if you would like to be added just let us know. Finally, we currently have an event going on. All the information can be found here if you would like Blair to participate!

*FC change to Danielle Camp has been accepted*

—Admin C

Name: Beth

Age: 25

Pronouns: she/her

Timezone: EST

Do you have any triggers?: RFP

How active are you? (Please describe in words): Right now, I’m a barista, and I run one roleplay, and that is the limit of my commitments. I’m on tumblr 99% of the time and usually log in every other day at least, if not every day for replies.

How did you find out about us?: some of your homies aka Paige and Katy <3

What made you apply?: I love Blair! She’s one of my favorite characters of all time, so powerful and strong and intelligent, yet so misguided in how she uses that. The show was so fun and full of ups and downs, and I’d love to be able to explore that world in my own writing.

Canon Application:

Character Name: Blair Cornelia Waldorf

Why do you want this character?: Blair Waldorf and I go way back. Before the show was even a thought in the minds of network execs, I was reading the old school Gossip Girl books, becoming well acquainted with this demon of a lady. I related to Blair in many ways; the one that really struck a chord was the relationship she had with Serena. Always coming in second place, which left her in a tough spot: loving the stuffing out of her best friend, but being fed up with never getting where or what she wanted. The more I read about Blair, the more I understood her and empathized. I rooted for her, and I took to the parts of her that I understood best. Those I didn’t, I adopted into my own personality until I did. I was ecstatic when the show came around, and couldn’t have been more pleased with Leighton Meester and her golden portrayal of the character who had become one of my best friends. I fell away from the show during season two, when that teacher gave Blair a B and then cut her dream of Yale into little pieces (it was way too painful to watch my girl suffer like that, y’all!), but eventually went back and finished. Although the books and the show went different ways, the essence of Blair always remained, as has my love of her. BASICALLY I just love Blair and miss having her in my life. <3

Any changes? (If you wish to change an FC please discuss it with us, off anon, beforehand): I’d love to use Danielle Campbell if that’s okay!

Wanted connections?: I’m open to anything and everything! I believe Serena and Nate are an item now in the rp, so I’d love to chat with their players and get a feel for where her relationships with them stand before I move forward with everyone else. But outside of that, I’m good with anything! (Even if Blair isn’t lol. ALL THE MORE FUN!!!)

Character’s birthday: November 15 (WHICH IS ALSO MINE!!!!)

3 virtues and 3 flaws, explaining each:

+ ambitious: Once Blair Waldorf sets her eyes on something, she’s bound to get it. Why? Not through luck or crossed fingers. No, Blair Waldorf works hard for what she wants. The concept might be laughable to those who don’t know her well. After all, Blair is privileged, both financially and socially. While the upper hand she was born with does have its perks, Blair is well aware that she won’t be guaranteed anything. She’s not the only one with privilege galore, and sometimes, that means finding another way to stand out. That means fierce determination, and using the gifts she was given to spin her own web.

- manipulative: One of the many gifts Blair has been given is her ability to manipulate. It’s not her greatest gift, nor is it the most helpful, but it’s one that comes to her most easily. Lying, scheming, twisting circumstance in her direction— Blair’s capable of pulling off all of the above, and with gold stars as rewards for just how well she does them. Most of the time, though, her efforts end up backfiring in her face. Blair might have learned that hard work is key, but next will (hopefully) come the lesson of channeling that hard work into the right place. For now— Well, what would Gossip Girl have to talk about if it wasn’t for Blair’s scheming, anyway?

+ independent: Although there are moments that Blair resents her mother for the affection she seems to show every important thing in her life but her own daughter, she’s at least grateful for the important trait it gave her: independence. The Upper East Side might be posh and glamorous, filled to the brim with people who are well taken care of by others – whether it be their parents, their spouses, or their ancestors – but money and power only go so far if you don’t know how to use them. Her mother might not be as present as Blair likes, but those long years of keeping herself on top of her homework assignments and planning grocery lists for Dorota have at least resulted in a self-sufficient girl who’s ready to head out into the world.

- insecure: Just because Blair is confident in her ability to get by doesn’t mean she’s confident in everything. The lower layers of Maslow’s hierarchy might have been easy to master, but she struggles about halfway up (although what teenager doesn’t?) She’s independent, sure, but what about her is so wrong that her mother can’t be bothered to check in every now and again? If Serena’s got the power to captivate her mother (and Nate, and Gossip girl, and everyone else), then clearly Blair’s missing something, isn’t she? What if Yale’s looking for that special x factor she’s never been able to find? What if—

+ loving: *EATING DISORDER CW* Blair knows too well how terrible it is to be made to feel like a C-lister by the people most important to you. She tries to never do that to those close to her—at least, not if they don’t deserve it. To her inner circle, Blair is supportive and consoling. She’s never missed one of Nate’s lacrosse games, and even when Serena is commanding more attention from him than Blair can stand, she’s there with a pint of ice cream and the ingredients to whatever Serena’s favorite cocktail recipe is that week if she’s having a hard time (she’s even so kind as to wait until she gets home to purge her share). If you’re on her good side, you’re practically guaranteed copious amounts of love and support from Blair. At least until she deems you unworthy of it.

- jealous: Blair puts her loved ones so high up on a pedestal (though they do come falling down quite often), and she expects the same. When she isn’t given the same amount of attention, affection, or support she shows another person, she takes this as a heavy blow—especially when there are others getting the love she deserves. In Blair’s eyes, no one works as hard as she does. No one cares as much as she does. And if that’s true, then who deserves more attention or recognition than her? No one, that’s who.

If you don’t get this character, who would be your second choice?: I’d be down for just about anyone. SEND ME YOUR RECS!

Para Sample: *def not hc-ing this as having happened or god-moding or anything; just thought it would be a fun way to explore her insecurities with Serena! so sorry if Serena is OOC in this D:*

Blair had gotten her first fake ID when she was fourteen years old.

She still remembered the thickness of the plastic between her fingers, down to the millimeter. It was different than the card they’d given her at Constance Billard; she wasn’t sure if that was a good sign, or a bad one. Would that be something the bouncers would look for? Would it be a red flag? She remembered looking nervously at her picture, tiny and bright with blush and lipstick that she’d caked on to look older. While Serena had fluttered around her closet, deciding on an outfit for the big night, Blair had frowned at her clownish looking picture, nervousness caking the lining of her veins like cholesterol as the hour drew closer. If she didn’t have a panic attack by the time they got into the club opening, she would absolutely have a heart attack instead.

The line went on forever, rounding the corner to the next block. Great. She could already hear her heart beating in her ears, thunderously loud. By the time they made it to the front of the line, it would drown out the music inside.

“Oh, no, We’re not waiting in this!” Blair thought that confusion was almost worst, at least until they came face to face with one of the three bouncers and she realized what Serena was doing. She quickly narrowed her eyes and tried to put on a brave face, but she thought she saw one of the bouncers watching her knees quake together. “Excuse me, sir, but—”

“Twenty-one and up,” the bouncer smirked. Serena presented her ID proudly. All three of the bouncers had crowded together at this point—more so to get a look at Serena rather than her flamboyantly falsified identity. “Alright. You can go on in.” The crowd behind them groaned as the second bouncer allowed Serena through the velvet rope ahead of them. “But you—”

“I look just as old as she does!” It was a stupid thing to say, possibly the stupidest, but Blair couldn’t take it back. Instead, she shoved her ID under the bouncer’s nose. “Twenty-two.”

The bouncer opened his mouth again without even looking at the card—

“She’s with me,” Serena said, grabbing Blair by the wrist and pulling her past the rope before anyone could argue. “Someone’s got to make sure I get home in time for Philosophy 300. Thanks, guys!”

As Blair sipped on her martini at the very same bar Serena had slipped her into all those years ago, her frown was far more sour than the drink. She tried to remember the last time Serena had given her something rather than taken it away— But as she thought about it, that was all she could come up with. Her mother, her friends, Nate— Blair pushed her martini back and swung her purse over her shoulder. She’d taken this place, too: she’d tainted it with her memory. What would be next? Yale?

“Taxi!” Blurs of yellow bullets sped past her on the shockingly empty New York street. Blair pounded her heel into the cement and screeched. “TAXI!” One halted in front of her immediately. Pleased with herself, Blair bounced into the backseat of the car, high on a newfound independence. How silly it was to think she needed Serena to get what she needed.

She was Blair Waldorf, after all. She just had to remember that.

#tfraccepted #!!!!!!!

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