#else for your life you know.... fix your priorities and stop yelling at people... chill some...

[pocketramblr]

Honestly the Bakugou fans that act like that make me ACTIVELY hate him. Like I know it's petty but it's the honest truth. Like he'll never be my favorite character but I can enjoy him. He's over the top in an entertaining way I like his character growth and whatever. But the irritation for that (hopefully small but very vocal) part of the fandom who overlooks his flaws and treats him like a god who can do no wrong is making it so I want to throw things at him every time I see his face.

mood tbh

like i’d love to wholly just enjoy this week’s content of him, but oh does this river of ‘what are the stans going to do with this’ and general salt runs under my skin

#i also doing find him entertaining when hes over the top hes just like. the annoying band kid in my old match class #my eyes glaze over and i wonder why you still manage to focus on 'i better still be stronger than this other person' when fighting someone #else for your life you know.... fix your priorities and stop yelling at people... chill some... #i also dont subscribe to the idea that his quirk 'forces' him to be angry thats a pet peve of mine #its also not... nitroglycerin. it's LIKE nitroglycerin but we have no idea what it actually is made of #why do they go on so much about him smelling like burnt caramel #he probably just smells like sweat and smoke #and maybe a bit of acrid chemicals if you like. diliberately sniffed his hand #but if you did i'd support him in exploding your face #anyway baku stans are weird for sooooo many reasons #i dont get it #and i dont like the loud mean ones #anon #pocket talks to people #salt #* UGH TYPO: 'dont' not 'doing' in the first tag #im not about to fix them all at this point

[gordvendomewhore]

heyo this was supposed to be attached to a reblog of @schoolfullofmorons‘s post but it is so outrageously long and has taken several days and therefore is its own post now LMAO

because this is super long, everything is gonna be under the keep reading thingy teehee

anyway,,, i present to you: all nine preppies, and how they would act during quarantine 

(please note that these are just headcanons and honestly are pretty ooc considering the fact they’re all assholes who would protest quarantine with signs that say “WE WANT HAIRCUTS” but GOD i just wanna pretend they’re decent people for a day or two)

derby:

thinks the virus is a joke and would 100% protest quarantine, but still gets SUPER antsy and jumpy when anyone coughs or sneezes around him

wastes a bunch of water and half a bottle of soap washing his hands for ten minutes straight, but totally not because he’s scared or anything!! the virus still totally isn’t real!!!

since there’s only the household help he can boss around, derby gets bored and lonely pretty quickly, and misses feeling in control.

in attempts to fix this, he tends to call up bif or some of the other preps just to half heartedly yell at them about every little inconvenience that happens in his day to day life, but they’re really dismissive and say things like, “yes, yes, derby, whatever you say.”

(they all know derby is just expressing how he misses them in the only way he knows how.)

derby probably spends a bunch of time lounging around the house, watching the workers do their thing and thinking about how he’s sooooo much better and fancier and richer than them.

however,,,,,, he ends up watching them so often and so intently that the workers get confused and wonder if derby is interested in trying out what they do around the house (cleaning, cooking, gardening, etc.)

so they offer to teach derby, and of course, derby gets wildly upset and most likely threatens both their jobs and their lives haHa

it doesn’t stop him from watching just a tiny bit closer though, you know,,,, just to make sure that these paupers are doing everything to the harrington standard

derby pays off the teachers to keep his grades up and acknowledges school in absolutely no other way.

bif:

while bif is concerned about the virus, he doesn’t really care about school closing down.

school was never his main priority, but he’ll still make sure to tune into a couple of his online classes every week because of the sheer guilt that starts to pile up over time.

however he will NOT do anything with his assignments except read over them, and similar to derby, pays off a nerd to do his homework for him to make it seem like he’s actually doing something.

BUT you can totally bet that bif is one thousand percent upset over the boxing gym being closed down!!

he still has his personal gym in his mansion, which he now uses a lot (partially because he has so much time to kill, but also because he’s still butthurt over jimmy’s scrawny ass beating him)

but it’s not the same because now he can’t train with the other preps!!!!!

how will he know if they’re improving? or if they have the proper stance??? or if they’re swinging with the right force????? or if—

but yeah, bif makes sure to check up on the preps every once in awhile to see their boxing progress

he finds quarantine to be incredibly quiet and empty, in a literal and metaphorical sense.

he isn’t lonely per say, bif actually finds a lot of peace in the silence!

he gets a lot more time to think than he normally does and that’s a gift within itself.

...but his days are usually filled with never ending whining and the loud screaming of faux accents, so the sudden change feels strange, but not unwelcomed.

(plus he still has derby bothering him 24/7 so it’s not like much has changed anyway LMAO)

bif may not admit it out loud, but he misses his prep family clique members a whole lot. :(

gord:

this bitch couldn’t care less about the whole situation.

he spends his days at home binging every movie and tv show known to mankind, expanding on his beauty care regimen, and doing major amounts of online shopping; daddy’s card isn’t gonna just spend itself after all!

he’s actually clearing out the entire aquaberry stock as we speak.

gord is aware of the dangers of the virus, but hey, he’s not stepping a foot outside anytime soon, and he’s always been the hygienic type, so why stress over something out of his control?

this king is absolutely thriving, the outside world truly does not matter to him anymore.

(but did it ever?)

gord will admit that he misses his friends, but it’s not like he has no means of communication with them!

you can bet your ass that every single prep is being hit up with a selfie of gord‘s magnificent face every single day of the WEEK baybee.

gord would also be the time to experiment with new hobbies and activities, yknow like a bunch of random shit like knitting or wood carving just to say he’s actually done something during quarantine.

he’s also the type of person to get really obsessed with social media quarantine too LMAO he probably gained thousands of followers on twt or tiktok or some shit for thirst trapping

gord would 100% open an onlyfans too, but he doesn’t need the money

plus, the world already can’t handle him and he CANNOT be held responsible for the chaos that will ensue if he does more than mere thirst traps

with school, he skips out on the online classes for subjects he doesn’t take an interest in, but rigorously studies for the ones he does care about (especially if they’ll play a big part in law school!!!

tad:

oh poor baby, he’s stuck at home with his horrible excuse of a father.

tad, like the other preps, doesn’t care for school (“money gets you farther in life than education ever will,” derby harrington at some point), but that doesn’t stop him from sucking himself into his education.

he attends all his online classes, does all his homework, studies optional material, does extra credit, anything to keep his mind away and busy from his dad.

(idk what tad’s dad does for a living but let’s just pretend he’s an essential worker and is out of the house often because i do Not Want tad suffering more than he has to)

he’ll take lots of walks around the neighborhood, and spends a lot of time hanging in the park.

plus gord usually calls him every other day or so to keep him company and the two will just chill together and talk.

tad probably gets into some soft hobbies like keeping up a diary, sewing, painting, and maybe even slowly picks up baking again.

gord probably sent him a bunch of tiktoks of people making frog bread and tad knew in his heart that he needed to make frog bread too LMAO

tad is canonically the type of person that would bake for your bday, so he experiments around with cakes and sweet treats in general he thinks the other preps would like.

there’s an Entire Fridge in his house dedicated to his baked goods now. that’s how often tad bakes.

he also looks forward to the day he can see his friends again and plans out all the things they’ll do once they’re reunited.

the preps are more of a loving family than his real family ever was, and tad doesn’t plan to let that fact go by unnoticed in the future :))

parker:

he lowkey goes insane.

parker has no idea what to do with himself now that he’s stuck at home with his parents and sister.

don’t get him wrong, he really loves his family, and genuinely enjoys the family activities his mother forces them to bond over, but what else is there to do?

he’s bored.

plus, parker gets up in his head way too often, and now there’s nothing to distract him.

he never really had any particular hobbies, and you will never catch him doing school work (he pays off his teachers).

and even though being at school sucks because bullworth academy itself sucks, doing things with the other preps made parker forget about his lack self importance and direction in life.

it seems like the end of the world to him, more because of his life and schedule being interrupted rather than the virus itself.

when he’s not with his family, parker spends a lot of time lounging in the mansion’s garden with the garden gnomes, and talks to them pretty often too (we’ve all heard those voice lines LMAO).

parker talks about everything and anything with the gnomes, and allows himself to just rant about life.

and sure, he thinks people who talk themselves 24/7 are hella crazy, but hey!! the gnomes love to listen!!! so therefore parker isn’t crazy!!!!!

he probably ends up doing gardening as a small hobby, and he genuinely likes it!

...even if it does have him down in the dirt and covered in sweat amongst other filth.

parker’s one of the less pretentious preps, so i can see him putting his entitled behavior aside, even if it is only this one time and for this one thing.

after all, his money and status don’t exactly matter anymore; everyone’s busy caring about more dire matters.

after the initial boredom, i can see parker letting loose and maybe even becoming a more decent person while in quarantine.

bryce:

he is 24/7 anxious.

it’s not specifically because of the virus itself, or because of school closing down, but it’s just the whole situation in general that makes him nervous.

bryce is stuck at home with his mother and father, in what bryce likes to call their cozy mansion, but what derby likes to call their oversized blue collar cottage (which bryce finds dumb because his parents don’t even work blue collar jobs).

his father, even during these dire times, is still gambling and wasting their money away, so that just hella adds onto bryce’s anxiety about the situation.

golf & yacht (where bryce canonically works) closes down since it isn’t considered an essential business, and so bryce ends up losing his job.

he’s really desperate to find another place to work, and rightfully so!! he doesn’t want his family to be losing more money than they gain.

bryce probably ends up working somewhere a step above fast food (he isn’t that desperate), like a cafe, since some are still open and surprisingly busy.

because of this, most of his hours are spent split between working and sleeping, and bryce doesn’t exactly have time to think about anything else other than family and money issues (something he thought he’d never have to worry about).

but bryce hides his physical and mental exhaustion quite well, mostly so that his life proceeds without anyone wasting his time with questions of concern.

sometimes the preps that aren’t as judgmental as the others (tad, gord, parker, pinky, bif) will check up on him and even offer to lend his family some money, but bryce knows better than to accept donations of any kind.

he tries to attend the online classes that he can, and does a lot of his homework with tad.

chad:

put simply, chad is fine.

he wasn’t particularly shocked when the virus was reported to be spreading, or when school was closed down, or even when he had to say goodbye to his fellow preps and the harrington house, and leave to his home in old bullworth vale.

chad was never strongly effected by any of this, and honestly is just really relaxed.

chad’s relationship with his parents is quite well (despite their occasional nagging), and he has a lot of hobbies that filled up his time during school and still fill up his time now.

so unlike tad or gord, chad doesn’t go searching for new activities to keep him busy or give him a sense of meaning and accomplishment.

chad wakes up early in the morning, when the sun is still rising, spends his day playing with his dog, chester, jogging around the neighborhood or park, boxing in his home gym, talking with his family, attending his flute lessons (which are now online), and then he goes to sleep with a tired mind, yet a well rested soul.

the only thing he doesn’t do is his school work (he pays off his teachers like derby), but occasionally you’ll see him attend an online class or two.

he lives his life on a clean schedule, and enjoys the alone time he gets during these tough times.

there’s no significant change in how he goes by his days, and chad is perfectly content with that. :)

justin:

he’s vibing.

at the beginning of quarantine, justin probably spent a bunch of time laying in his $10,000 satin sheets, doing nothing but thinking about random shit ranging from whether or not his family should invest in a second jacuzzi, his raging insecurities, how big his muscles are, or if he’ll ever get a chance to talk to the ted thompson himself, but that all gets old REAL quick.

he’s the type of person to be like, “i’m too rich to be sulking around!” even though those two things don’t exactly correlate in this situation LMAO

(but oh well, justin is a prep after all, their whole personalities are based around money.)

similar to bif with his boxing, justin throws himself entirely into swimming!

his family owns an indoor and outdoor pool, but nothing will EVER beat the feeling of swimming in the ocean for him.

there’s just nothing that feels the same, not even a pool with saltwater will ever mimic the feeling.

so justin will often times travel from his cozy home out to the beach just to swim and chill out in the sand for awhile, whether it be for thirty minutes or a whole afternoon.

omg he also gets really into corona virus gossip

*justin the the prep group chat* “guys, i heard that if you put an onion in every corner of your house, you’ll be safe from corona”

“guys did you know that if you drink a shot of vinegar everyday it’ll clean out your immune system?”

“GUYS omg i just heard that if you bathe in a mix of egg yolks and nesquik chocolate milk powder, you’ll be immune to corona!!!”

and everyone is just so tired of him (except for parker who believes almost everything justin says and derby who encourages his behavior on because he lives for chaos)

he pays off his teachers for grades lolol mr. hattrick didn’t get fired for us to just forget these canon facts

honestly justin completely forgets school exists as a whole.

pinky:

pinky is completely sucked into social media.

she has an account on every big platform out there, each one being incredibly active, and each one having a cult following.

and now she gets to be even more active than she was before!!

pinky spends all of her time doing complex photoshoots in her bedroom, experimenting with intricate makeup looks, binging tv shows with gord, and contemplating whether or not she should give herself bangs (you can bet all of this shit and more is going onto her accs too).

pinky also spends a lot of money ordering random shit she doesn’t need and sometimes doesn’t even want, but hey!! it’s free serotonin, and pinky’s therapist says that serotonin is a good thing ahahA

sometimes she’ll even order something and just send it to random addresses just for the fun of it.

pinky is like santa, but with better fashion taste and a little less no slave labor.

speaking of therapy, her sessions are now all online because we practice social distancing in this house teehee

shits and giggles aside however, pinky is thriving!

she’s happy, and healthy, and safe in her mansion, and besides the general feeling of unimportance and lack of meaning during these times where time itself doesn’t feel like it exists at all, she’s fine haHA.

her parents keep nagging her to talk to derby and to “hang out with her future hubby while the streets are empty and there’s free time!” but pinky is NOT breaking quarantine to hang out with a boy who made her wait for a whole three minutes on their date.

(she had a nicer time with jimmy than derby would’ve ever given her anyway.)

surprise surprise! pinky also pays the nerds to do her work, but still attends most of her classes for fun, mostly so she can help tad and bryce with anything if they need it.

real queen shit if you ask me.

whew, thanks for reading all of that if you did!! sorry it was super long but enjoy your preppy food lmao

oh and my anon asks are on now so go ahead and send me some shit if you want to!! headcanon requests, drawing requests, questions in general lol anything

anyway bye byeee uwu

#tag yourself as a quarantine preppy LMAOHSJSKD #jesus fuck why is this post so long #well anyway here she is #i love feeding the community #derby harrington #bif taylor #gord vendome #tad spencer #parker ogilvie #bryce montrose #chad morris #justin vandervelde #pinky gauthier #bully canis canem edit #bully scholarship edition #canis canem edit #bully #mine #writing

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.20: Court Martial

AKA: Photoshop Is Nine-Tenths of the Law 

Our episode begins with a captain’s log telling us that the Enterprise has been through a severe ion storm, which wrecked up the ship and caused one fatality. Bummer. Evidently the damage was so considerable that for once Scotty can’t just fix it on his own, so Kirk’s ordered an unscheduled layover at Starbase 11 for repairs. Aw man, unscheduled layovers are the worst. Hopefully Starbase 11 at least has a good food court.

Kirk also adds that “a full report of damages was made to the commanding officer of Starbase 11—Commodore Stone.” Sure enough, we see Kirk and this Stone guy hanging out in what I presume is Stone’s office, which looks like some pretty sweet digs. Stone calls up the Starbase 11 pit crew and tells them to switch from working on the Intrepid to working on the Enterprise, because the Enterprise is priority one. I dunno what the Intrepid is in for, but I guess her crew will just be forced to chill out at the Starbase for a while longer, which I’m sure they’ll be real broken up over. Meanwhile, Kirk is looking over some papers. That’s right, actual papers, a whole sheaf of them attached to a clipboard. I think this is the first time on the show we’ve seen anyone doing paperwork with real paper. Maybe Stone just likes the aesthetic.

Stone asks if there’s some kind of problem with Kirk’s deposition, because Kirk has reread it three times now. There’s not; Kirk’s just still brooding over losing a crewmember, and from the look of it he’s been fixating on that report more than a little bit, presumably ruminating over whether there could have been a better outcome if he’d done things differently. But, shockingly, obsessively rereading the report doesn’t seem to be helping anything, so Kirk finally hands it over to Stone. Apparently Stone doesn’t run an entirely paper-based office, though, because he also wants the extract from the Enterprise computer log that confirms Kirk’s deposition.

Said computer log is apparently supposed to be in Kirk’s possession by now, but is not, so Kirk pulls out his communicator and calls Uhura to ask where the heck is Spock, who’s supposed to be delivering the thing. Uhura, puzzled, says that Spock should have been there ten minutes ago. That’s a bit concerning, since after all this is Spock we’re talking about. He’s not exactly prone to getting easily distracted. Maybe McCoy flagged him down to have an argument over something.

While they wait for Spock to show up, Stone passes the time by saying that the whole incident is a pity because the service can’t afford to lose men like Lieutenant Commander Finney. I don’t know what was so special about this Finney guy, but the service loses people all the dang time and they seem to be managing okay. Speaking of which, do they have to go through this every time a ‘shirt dies? Imagine how much time that adds up to in-between episodes. Not to mention the time someone died and then came back—I don’t even want to think about the paperwork for that incident.

Anyway Kirk agrees with Stone about Finney and says that he waited until the last possible moment, but eventually the ion storm got too bad and he was forced to jettison the pod that Finney was in. The whole cheerful conversation is interrupted by Spock finally showing up, via a little two-pad transporter platform tucked away in a little alcove in the wall. Man, I guess you really know you’ve made it when you’ve got a personal transporter platform installed directly into your office. Although personally I think I’d prefer an office that people couldn’t teleport directly into.

Spock’s got the computer log on a floppy disc with him, but he’s looking kinda nervous about something. Kirk asks what took him so long and Spock starts to respond, but before he can Stone grabs the floppy right out of his hand and puts it in his computer, which, uh, rude. Then Spock’s immediately cut off again as the door opens and a woman wearing some truly inexplicable clothes comes marching in.

[ID: A young white woman with brown hair partially tied up, walking through a doorway, wearing what looks like a white tank top under a pale blue gauze shirt with bright blue cuffs and bright blue lapels that come down into a kind of bow and a metallic blue skirt split into rectangular strips, over white tights.]

The woman is in a right mood, which, I would be too if I was wearing that outfit, but she’s obviously got something else entirely on her mind. She marches right up to Kirk and angrily declares that “I just wanted one more look at you—the man who killed my father! Prepare to die!” Wait, no. Not that last part. Sorry, force of habit.

Kirk tries to talk the woman—Jame, he calls her (pronounced ‘Jamie’)—down, saying that Finney was his friend and Kirk did not in fact kill him intentionally, but Jame yells back that Kirk did so kill Finney intentionally because he hated Finney all his life, the MURDERER. Look, lady, just because someone died on the Enterprise doesn’t mean they were Kirk’s personal enemy. No one has that many enemies, c’mon.

But Jame’s too worked up to hear it and all this shouting about murder is making things real awkward for everyone, so Stone asks Spock to kindly remove her from the room. Well, actually, he just says, “Spock, please...” which is a sentence that can end a lot of ways, really. “Spock, please, remove this unsightly woman from my presence. Her tears bore me.”

As Spock gently ushers Jame out of the room, Stone asks Kirk, hey, you did say that you jettisoned the pod after the red alert, right? Kirk says that he did, yes, as he, y’know, stated in the deposition that Stone is literally holding right now. “Then, captain,” Stone says ominously, “I must presume that you have committed willful perjury!” DUHN DUHN DUHN.

Yes, it seems that the computer log that Stone is looking at shows that Kirk actually jettisoned the pod before going to red alert, quite the opposite of what he said. While Kirk stands there looking completely stunned, Stone tells him that he’s now confined to the base, pending an inquiry as to whether a full court martial is in order. Gee, I wonder if the episode titled Court Martial will involve a court martial? I’m on the edge of my seat.

After the titles, we get a captain’s log telling us that the Enterprise is still in orbit, being repaired, while Kirk is standing by until the inquiry happens—but he’s confident of the outcome. So confident, he’s going to casually stroll into the starbase bar to get a drink while he waits for them to clear his name and apologize.

But when Kirk, accompanied by McCoy, walks up to a guy he knows and cheerfully remarks “haven’t seen you since the Vulcanian expedition,” he gets the cold shoulder. (As for what ‘the Vulcanian expedition’ was, your guess is as good as mine.) No one else Kirk tries to talk to seems to be in a friendly mood either. One of them says, “I understand you’re laying over for repairs. Big job?” but this seemingly innocuous conversation starter turns out to be a trap. When Kirk replies that they’ll be there for a couple of days, the guy asks if they’ll be moving out after that. Why ask? Oh, he just wondered how long it would take Kirk to get a new records officer.

Ah. I see how it is. So does Kirk. “You can talk plainer than that,” he tells the guy, and the guy sneers that he could, but, “I think the point’s been made. Ben was a friend of ours.” Meanwhile, somewhere in this exchange McCoy, who knows shit about to go down when he sees it, has acquired a drink to better fortify himself for this nonsense. He tries to pull Kirk away from the brewing fight, but Kirk won’t budge. “No, go on, finish,” he says. “Ben was a friend of yours, and...”

McCoy breaks in with a stern “Jim” and hey, if McCoy is telling you an argument has gone too far you know it has really gone too far. Completely ignoring this, Kirk snaps that he’s waiting to hear the rest. Fortunately, McCoy’s other services don’t end up being required; when the guy says, “Why don’t you tell us?” Kirk stops rising to the bait and says there would be no point because they’ve already made up their minds, then turns on his heel and leaves.

Man, word travels fast around this starbase. You wouldn’t think Starfleet would exactly be loose-lipped about an inquiry into possible murder to begin with, but either they were or these guys heard that Finney had died and immediately assumed that Kirk was responsible all on their own. Then again, Kirk mentions that they were all in the Academy together, and Kirk is the only one wearing captain’s stripes; one wonders if there might have been enough resentment there already to make them a bit eager for blood.

As Kirk leaves the bar he bumps into a guy, catching the attention of a woman coming in, who stops and looks at him in surprise. A woman who apparently is just so comfortable and at home at Starbase 11 that she doesn’t feel the need to wear shoes.

[ID: A white woman with short blonde hair pausing and looking around as she enters a crowded room. She’s wearing a kind of open dress/robe that is green and yellow with tie-dye-like splotches, yellow tights, and no shoes.]

McCoy zeroes in on her with remarkable speed. “If you have any doubt, that was indeed Captain James Kirk of the Enterprise,” he says, which is a hell of a way to start a conversation. The woman replies that yes, she knows, and then asks if McCoy is a friend of Kirk’s. ‘Nemesis’ might be a more accurate term, but sure, ‘friend’ will do. Hearing this, the woman introduces herself as Areel Shaw, also a Friend of Kirk.

“All my old friends look like doctors. All of his look like you,” McCoy comments. There’s...there’s a lot going on in that sentence.

Anyway, McCoy and Shaw go off to have a drink and, presumably, commiserate over how much of a pain in the ass it is to be Kirk’s friend. Elsewhere—and later, presumably, since I’m assuming the starbase legal offices aren’t right next to the bar, but hey, who knows—Kirk and Stone meet to begin the inquiry.

After establishing for the record that this is an inquiry to determine whether Kirk is up for a general court-martial, Stone starts out by asking about Kirk’s relationship with Finney. Kirk says Finney was an instructor at the Academy when Kirk was a midshipman, but that “didn’t stand in the way of [them] beginning a close friendship.” Apparently Kirk and Finney wound up becoming so close that Finney even named his daughter Jame, after Kirk, which seems like a rather unfair thing to do to the poor kid. He could have at least spelled it Jamie and spared her what I’m sure has been a lifetime of mispronunciations. Hopefully this was at least after Finney stopped being Kirk’s instructor, because once you’ve named your kid after a student of yours you’ve probably lost the ability to be real objective about their grades.

But alas, this, uh, heartwarming friendship was not to last. Finney and Kirk didn’t just stop being friends, they stopped being friends so hard that Stone says it’s “common knowledge” that they had a falling out. Dang, and after Finney named his kid after Kirk and everything. That’s even worse than breaking up with someone after getting a tattoo of their name.

Kirk explains what happened: the two of them were assigned to the same ship, and one fateful night he came to relieve Finney on watch only to discover “a circuit open to the atomic matter piles that should’ve been closed. Another five minutes, it could’ve blown up the ship.” Dang, and here I had Finney pegged as a paragon of good judgment. Kirk fixed the problem and then, like a responsible crewmember, logged the incident—which of course brought Finney in for a hefty reprimand, and got him kicked to the bottom of the promotion list. Finney dealt with all this reasonably and rationally, by blaming it all on Kirk. It seems Finney already had some issues, because Kirk says that he had been at the Academy as an instructor an unusually long time before being assigned to a starship, and he felt that the delay looked bad on his record. Well, look on the bright side, man—I’m sure no one paid attention to that part of your record after ‘almost accidentally blew up the whole ship’ got on there.

This is the second time we’ve heard something about Academy students or recent graduates being instructors—remember Mitchell talking about Kirk being an instructor back in Where No Man Has Gone Before. The way Kirk talks about Finney spending a “longer than usual” time doing this at the Academy would seem to indicate that it’s normal for you to hang out at the Academy before starting active duty on a ship, but we don’t really get any more information on it than that, and if that reflects any real-life military academy practice I couldn’t find anything about it.

Anyway, Finney’s been resenting Kirk over this ever since. How he wound up assigned to the Enterprise I don’t know, but watching Kirk become captain of one of the most prestigious ships in the fleet and then having to serve under him day after day while Finney was stuck well below on the rank ladder himself presumably ground a steady supply of salt into that open wound. But enough about Finney’s hangups. Backstory established, the inquiry moves on to the matter at hand: how exactly Finney wound up getting ejected into space. Kirk explains that their scan indicated an ion storm up ahead, so Kirk ordered Finney to go man the pod. Stone asks why Kirk picked Finney and Kirk says he didn’t; Finney just happened to be at the top of the duty roster. It was his turn to man the pod, nothing more to it than that. You know what would be really helpful at this point is if anyone would explain what the heck this pod is or why someone needs to be in it during ion storms.

Once they hit the storm, Kirk went to yellow alert, as per procedure. Things weren’t too bad at first, but the storm eventually grew bad enough that he had to go to red alert, and apparently part of red alert involves ejecting this mysterious pod, whether or not there’s someone in it at the time. Finney knew he had only a few seconds to get out of there, Kirk says, and he gave Finney all the time he possibly could...but evidently, it wasn’t enough.

So, why, then, Stone asks, does the computer log show that Kirk ejected the pod while the ship was still at yellow alert—i.e., before ejecting it was necessary, and before Finney would have had time to get out of it. Kirk doesn’t have an answer for him. Stone asks if the computer could be wrong, which seems like something he should have looked up on his own time, and Kirk says that Spock is running a survey at that very moment, but the odds are “next to impossible.”

At this point, Stone stops the recording, comes around the desk to get all up in Kirk’s space, and starts talking about how being a starship captain is a really hard job. Enormous pressure, all the time, far more than any reasonable person could really be expected to take. A man under all that pressure could easily crack, fumble, make a mistake. That’s what happened to Kirk. No malice, no intentional murder, he’s just starting to slip. At least, that’s what Stone will say...if Kirk cooperates. Yeah, I’ll give you three guesses as to whether Kirk’s going to cooperate, and the first two don’t count.

But Stone persists, really laying the pressure on thick. No starship captain has ever stood trial before, he says, and he doesn’t want Kirk to have to be the first. Really? You guys have been doing this boldly going thing for how long and no captain has ever had to stand trial? Surely someone has fucked up in all that time. It kinda makes me wonder just what lengths Starfleet has gone to to avoid putting any captains on trial before this, especially with all the emphasis Stone puts on how he’s concerned for the reputation of Starfleet as a whole and doesn’t want to see it smeared. Kirk demands to know just what Stone thinks Starfleet is going to be smeared by here, and Stone fires back that okay, if you’re really gonna press that, what he’s seeing is a perjurer trying to cover up either bad judgment, cowardice, or something worse. What, you mean like, murder? It’s cool, you can say ‘murder’ on this show. It’s just sex you’re not allowed to talk about.

Kirk insists that he knows damn well what happened, it was the right call, and he’s not stepping down. Stone gives him one more chance, telling Kirk to accept a permanent ground assignment where he can fade away in safe obscurity—otherwise Starfleet’s gonna bring the whole hammer down on him.   Which is quite the tactical error, since presumably ‘permanent ground assignment’ was meant to be the more palatable option. But this is Kirk we’re talking about here. Being permanently grounded is pretty much a fate worse than death for him. Stone might as well have said “you can either stand trial or be thrown out the airlock.”

So obviously, Kirk says he’s going to fight. “Then you draw a general court,” Stone warns. “Draw it?” Kirk yells. “I demand it, and right now, Commodore Stone, right now!”

I get the impression Kirk is just as offended by the idea of Starfleet trying to cover all this up as he is at being accused of this whole thing. He didn’t do this, but if he had done this, he’d damn well expect Starfleet to punish him properly for it. What if there was some much less scrupulous captain in this position, who really did screw up and lie to cover his ass—or worse, intentionally offed one of his own crew over a petty grudge? Would Starfleet give them a quiet out instead of bringing them to justice? You wouldn’t like to think so, would you? That said, while I admire Kirk’s enthusiasm, I don’t think they can hold a general court-martial right now. We gotta at least find an empty room first.

After the break, Kirk gives us a captain’s log saying that the officers who will make up the court-martial board are on their way to Starbase 11. The last court-martial board we saw was comprised of a guy who could only say ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ a guy with the biggest conflict of interest ever, and a guy who didn’t exist, so for Kirk’s sake let’s hope this one is a step up. Meanwhile, repairs on the Enterprise are almost complete. What’s a man to do while he waits for his fate to be decided? Well, I hear there’s quite a popular option involving sorrows and the drowning thereof. Back to the starbase bar it is!

Luckily for Kirk, this time he is greeted not by a posse of passive-aggressiveness but by Areel Shaw, a much better conversational partner. They take a little table by the wall and Kirk, of course, immediately lays on the charm. Though, judging by the concerningly specific answer Shaw gives to his question of “how long has it been?” he’s already done quite a bit of charming there already. He says she hasn’t changed a bit, but she remarks that she can’t say the same for him, presumably meaning that in the sense that Kirk was not up on charges of criminal neglect and possible manslaughter when they last met four years ago. Presumably. I don’t know what they got up to four years ago.

Shaw knows about Kirk’s difficulties because—well, because it’s apparently all over the starbase, for one thing, but more specifically she knows because she’s a lawyer in the judge advocate’s office. Kirk would rather forget about his troubles for the time being and get down to some flirting, but Shaw isn’t easily put off. She comments that Kirk is taking all of this real dang lightly. “The confidence of an innocent man,” he replies breezily. It must be nice to have that much faith in your justice system.

Despite Shaw’s attempts to keep the conversation on track, Kirk is still quite distracted by Shaw herself, while meanwhile I’m distracted by trying to figure out what the hell Shaw is drinking.

[ID: An over-the-shoulder shot of Shaw talking to Kirk, with a drink sitting on the table near the edge of shot, containing an umbrella, a skewer with several brightly-colored cubes stuck on it, and various bits of greenery.]

How was there even room left for the drink in that?

She insists on giving Kirk some advice. The prosecution, she says, is going to build its case on the basis of Kirk vs the computer, and if his attorney tries to defend him on that basis, they won’t have a chance. That’s why he needs a good attorney. Oh, he needs a good attorney? Wow, that is good legal advice. I never would have thought of that. Kirk asks if Shaw herself is game for it and she stumbles a bit and awkwardly says she can’t, she’s busy. Then she reminds him that he really needs to take this whole thing more seriously; his rank is going to have Starfleet looking to come down really hard on him to preserve the reputation of the service. Finally, she gets around to recommending a lawyer: one Samuel T. Cogley. “If anyone can save you, he can,” she says. “He’ll be paying you a visit.” That sounds a wee bit ominous.

Shaw then gets up to go, but Kirk stops her and says she still hasn’t told him how she knows exactly what the prosecution is going to do. She looks at him very sadly and says, “Because, Jim Kirk, my dear old love...I am the prosecution. And I have to do my very best to have you slapped down hard, broken out of the service, in disgrace.” With that she turns and walks out, leaving Kirk to sit there in stunned disbelief that this day actually somehow managed to get worse.

Oof, that’s real rough. Also real conflict-of-interesty. The American Bar Association has a thing or two to say about that, back here in the dark ages of 2019:

The prosecutor should know and abide by the ethical rules regarding conflicts of interest that apply in the jurisdiction, and be sensitive to facts that may raise conflict issues. When a conflict requiring recusal exists and is non-waivable, or informed consent has not been obtained, the prosecutor should recuse from further participation in the matter. The office should not go forward until a non-conflicted prosecutor, or an adequate waiver, is in place.

…

The prosecutor should not participate in a matter in which the prosecutor previously participated, personally and substantially, as a non-prosecutor, unless the appropriate government office, and when necessary a former client, gives informed consent confirmed in writing.

Oh, and:

The prosecutor should not recommend the services of particular defense counsel to accused persons or witnesses in cases being handled by the prosecutor’s office.

But of course, we’re not in America, we’re in SPACE. And who knows how space law works? Maybe conflict of interest regulations were just one of those things we needed to outgrow as a species, like keyboards and amusement parks.

Speaking of things from the past, we then cut to a man sitting in a room, surrounded by old-fashioned, hardbound, made-with-real-paper books. Seriously, he’s got a lot of books in there. Kirk walks into the room and despondently pours himself a drink from one of TOS’s iconic Weirdly Shaped Liquor Bottles. Presumably this is his room, then, and he’s not just wandering around stealing booze from random people. Again. He completely fails to notice that a man with a small library has occupied his quarters until the guy says, “You Kirk?”

[ID: Kirk looking down at a middle-aged white man with receding brown hair, who is sitting in a chair surrounded by stacks of books strewn all over the furniture.]

Kirk wanders over to look over the whole scene with the kind of mild befuddlement of someone who can’t be bothered to be more than mildly befuddled because they’ve had such a long day already that what the hell, this might as well be happening too. “What’s all this?” he asks. “I figured we’d be spending some time together, so I moved in,” the guy replies casually. Wow, sure is easy to just move yourself and an entire small library into a stranger’s room on this starbase. Did we just lose all our door-locking technology at some point in the future? Has mankind just forgotten how to lock things at the same time we forgot how to recuse yourself?

All Kirk has to say about it is a dry, “I hope I’m not crowding you.” The guy asks if Kirk doesn’t like books and Kirk says he likes them just fine, but a computer takes up less space, not realizing that he’s just hit a major conversational tripwire with this dude. He immediately launches into a rant about how he has a computer in his office but never uses it, because he has his own system: “Books, young man, books, thousands of them! This is where the law is. Not in that homogenized, pasteurized, synthesized—do you want to know the law, the ancient concepts in their own language, learn the intent of the men who wrote them, from Moses to the Tribunal of Alpha 3? Books.”

I’m sure this came off differently when it was written, but even by 2019 someone with this attitude would be moving out of “eccentrically but charmingly old-fashioned” and into “straight up bizarre.” Someone in the twenty-third century having this attitude towards computers, outside of some kind of specific religious standpoint or something...it’s difficult to even imagine.

I mean, look, don’t get me wrong, I love books. And I love physical books. Proportionate to the amount of total things that I own, I have a lot of physical books, and they’re dear to me, and I would be very sad at the idea of them becoming obsolete. But the idea that they possess any kind of special magic that makes something any more real or true if it’s written in a physical book versus the same text entered into a computer? No. Of course not. Practically speaking, a computer allows you to access exponentially more information more easily, and a lawyer who chooses to disregard any advantage that big in favor of a personal philosophical preference is not a lawyer I’d trust with my career, any more than I’d trust an ambulance driver who showed up in a horse-drawn cart. Not to mention the practicality of not having to cart so many books around with you everywhere; seriously, if there’s one thing I learned from moving in and out of dorm rooms, it’s how quickly even a small amount of books can become an enormous pain to move back and forth. Heck, I’m amazed that Cogley was able to get so many in here so quickly on his own. Teach me your secrets Cogley.

Of course, at the time of writing, the idea of ebooks and generally accessing information via computers as easily as we do now wasn’t exactly a thing. One could forgive the writers for assuming that Cogley could have a salient point about books being able to store information better than computers—not that he ever makes such a point, or expresses any specific reason why books are better other than that they just are, okay. But it is a bit odd because by this point TOS had already shown us people using the Enterprise computer to read texts (in Where No Man Has Gone Before) or to look up information (in The Conscience of the King) without any problems or limitations with that information being described, unless you count the eye-bleedingly tiny text poor Mitchell was having to deal with. It all adds up to make Cogley seem less like someone whose outlook is unusual but potentially puts him in a position to have insights that others wouldn’t, and more like someone who just hates technology for no real reason.

Also, don’t pasteurize your computer. Bad idea.

Kirk muses that this guy must be either “[insert prejorative term for a mentally ill person here] or Samuel T. Cogley, attorney at law.” “Right on both counts,” Cogley says. “Need a lawyer?” “I’m afraid so.”

They shake hands. Kirk doesn’t look terribly optimistic. But hey, at least they can bond over their middle initials.

With the preliminary shenanigans out of the way, it’s finally time to get this trial started. We cut to Stone hitting a bell with a stick (but like, a ceremonial stick). Along with him, there are three old guys on the board, two in green and one in blue. Stone introduces them as Space Command Representative Lindstrom and starship captains Krasnovsky and Chondra. I don’t know what Space Command is, but it sounds cool.

Stone then tells Kirk that he has the right to ask for substitute officers if he has any objection to the board members, Stone being the president, or Shaw being the prosecutor. This sounds like a great time for Kirk to mention that he and Shaw have personal history and he’d rather she not be the prosecutor, which I’m sure would be a relief to her as much as to him, but of course, he doesn’t, so the trial proceeds.

Everyone sits down, and the computer is turned on to read out the list of charges, because the more things we can have the computer read out for us, the less Throat Coat everyone has to buy afterward. While that’s happening, we see the gallery, such as it is: there’s just some chairs against the back wall where Spock, McCoy, a redshirt woman, and Jame are all sitting. Jame’s still wearing her Sailor Moon getup. Maybe she was in such a hurry to get here and yell at Kirk that she didn’t pack any extra clothes.

The computer asks for the plea and Kirk, of course, says not guilty. For some reason this is followed by a big dramatic chord, even though that’s exactly what we expected him to say. Shaw (who’s wearing a red uniform, which confuses me—is being a prosecuting attorney considered part of Operations?) gets going by calling Spock to the stand. In Starfleet court, the stand is a chair with a glowy circle that you have to put your hand on.

[ID: Spock, in his dress uniform, sitting in a chair and putting his hand on a glowing circle connected to a nearby stand.]

Spock hands over a floppy disc, which I guess is his personal ID floppy, because once it’s put in the computer it reads out all his service info, including all the cool medals he’s received. Shaw then begins the questioning by asking, “As a first officer, you know a great deal about computers, don’t you?” Is that...is that a requirement for being a first officer?

“I know all about them,” Spock replies, a rather sweeping claim to make, but Shaw doesn’t push it. Instead she asks, “It is possible for a computer to malfunction, is it not?”

Okay, I guess Shaw is going to use the tried and true legal strategy of Asking Witnesses To Confirm The Bloody Obvious. While you’ve got him here, why not ask him a few more things, just to be sure? “Is it possible for things to catch on fire if they’re really hot? Can people bleed if you poke them with sharp things? THE COURT NEEDS TO KNOW, MR. SPOCK.”

Once Spock has called upon his extensive expertise with computers to assure us all that yes, they can malfunction, Shaw asks if he knows of any malfunction that’s caused an inaccuracy in the Enterprise computer. Spock says no. You know, aside from last week when we couldn’t get it to stop flirting with people. But when Shaw tries to move on, Spock interrupts to say, “The computer is inaccurate, nevertheless.” Asked to clarify, he says that what the computer is reporting—that Kirk reacted to non-existent emergency—is impossible. He admits that he didn’t see Kirk actually press the button himself since he was occupied at the time. So how, Shaw asks him, can he dispute what the computer says? “I do not dispute it,” Spock says. “I merely state that it is wrong.”

[ID: A screenshot of Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word ‘dispute’. ‘Dispute, verb, disputed, disputing. Definition of dispute (Entry 1 of 2): intransitive verb: to engage in argument: debate. Especially: to argue irritably or with irritating persistence. Transitive verb: 1 a: to make the subject of verbal controversy or disputation//Legislators hotly disputed the bill. 1 b: to call into question or cast doubt upon. //Her honest was never disputed. The witness disputed the defendant’s claim. 2 a: to struggle against: OPPOSE. //disputed the advance of the invaders. 2 b: to contend over// disputing ownership of the land.]

Sure buddy.

Shaw asks where the heck he’s getting this conclusion from, then, and Spock says he knows Kirk. At that point she cuts him off with a request to Stone that the witness be told not to speculate. “I am Vulcanian,” Spock says coolly. “Vulcanians do not speculate.” They can’t decide on what their species is called, but dammit, they don’t speculate!

To prove how logical and detached he is about all this, Spock goes on to give a metaphor about how if you drop a hammer on a planet with gravity you don’t need to see it fall to know that it did, and likewise he doesn’t need to have seen Kirk act to know what he did. “It is impossible to Captain Kirk to act out of panic or malice,” he says. “It is not in his nature.” Debatable.

“In your opinion,” Shaw says. Very, very grudgingly, Spock has to say, “Yes...in my opinion.”

Spock, you enormous dork. Look at him, passionately defending his friend while insisting with so much seriousness that he’s just being logical and this is all a totally scientific, objective viewpoint, because he’s a Vulcan(ian) so he would never speak up for someone just because they’re his friend and he likes and trusts them! Obviously!! God bless you, you incredibly transparent doofus.

Shaw yields the questioning to Cogley, but he says he has no questions, so Spock steps down and Shaw calls the next witness: the redshirt. Turns out she’s the personnel officer for the Enterprise. We aren’t given her name, only her rank—ensign, which seems like kind of a low rank for that position, but who knows how ranks work in Starfleet, honestly. I mean, apparently being the first officer makes you an expert at computers.

Still, I gotta give our nameless ensign this: she’s got some great eyeshadow going on.

[ID: A shot of a young Asian woman in a red uniform with her hair tied up, wearing pale blue and white eyeshadow.]

After confirming that the personnel officer is familiar with the records of everyone on the ship as per her job, Shaw asks her if Finney’s record mentioned a disciplinary action over that whole ‘almost blew up a ship’ thing. Ensign Eyeshadow says yes, and when asked who reported Finney for that, she confirms it was Kirk. That’s right, the same Kirk currently sitting in this very courtroom! Gasp!

With no further questions, Shaw again concedes to Cogley, who again has no questions. On to the next witness: McCoy. Oh man, here we go.

McCoy also hands over his card (these things are completely unmarked—can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if someone dropped a bunch of them?) and the computer identifies him as the ship surgeon, an occasional appellation of TOS’s that never made sense to me. I mean, he is a surgeon, but being the Chief Medical Officer is a bit more than that. It’s like calling Scotty the ship mechanic.

Anyway, whatever his title is, McCoy also has quite a list of commendations read out, so that’s nice. But what Shaw’s interested in isn’t his surgery skills. She wants to talk about psychology, specifically space psychology, which is like regular psychology but in space. No, really—she defines it as the study of what happens when you stick a bunch of people together in the tight confines of a starship for long periods. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of data on it because our space psychologists keep turning into gods and dying.

Shaw asks McCoy to confirm that he is, in fact, an expert in space psychology. “I know something about it,” McCoy says dryly. Oh, stop, you.

“So you just heard the testimony of your own personnel officer that it was an action of the then-ensign Kirk which placed an un-erasable blot on the record of the then-lieutenant Finney,” Shaw says, “Psychologically, doctor, is it possible that Lieutenant Finney blamed Kirk for the incident?” Do you...need to be an expert in psychology to figure that one out? What class is “can people blame other people for things” covered under in psychology school? Seems odd to me, but a minute ago she had a computer expert up there just to testify that computers can malfunction sometimes, so maybe this is just how space law works.

McCoy’s like “uh, yeah, I guess??” because what else are you supposed to say in that situation? Then Shaw asks him, “Is it normal to return affection for hatred?” to which he replies that, well, no, not generally? In other words, Shaw says, once we learn that someone hates us we tend to hate them back, right? You know, just, hypothetically speaking. McCoy’s a bit confused by that one, since his usual reaction to someone hating him is more like “Oh yeah? Well I hated you first. Now shut up while I save your life, possibly at the expense of my own.” But he admits that sure, that other thing could happen too.

So, Shaw says, moving in for the kill, it’s therefore possible that once Kirk realized that Finney had started hating him, he started hating Finney back? At that point McCoy is like NOPE NOPE NOPE, hold the damn phone right there, that is not how Kirk rolls.

“Any normal human, doctor, is it possible?” Shaw presses. “But he’s not that kind of man!” McCoy protests. “Is it theoretically possible, doctor?”

What is going on in this courtroom? This is such an incredibly bizarre line of questioning. “Is it theoretically possible for the defendant to behave in this way?” I mean fuck man, I guess it is, because any permutation of human behavior is theoretically possible! Spontaneously declaring yourself Emperor of the United States and issuing your own currency is a possible human behavior, but that doesn’t make it relevant to the current situation! You could make someone sound guilty of anything if you’re going with that tack. She could get up there and ask if it’s a theoretically possible for any given human to commit murder, arson, tax fraud, any crime you want to pick, and McCoy would have to say yes because, well, it is! And ultimately he has to say—with a great deal of reluctance and frustration—that yes, it is theoretically possible that Kirk hated Finney in return. Cue dramatic musical sting, as if that statement actually meant anything at all.

Once again Cogley says he has no questions, so McCoy steps down, obviously fuming but managing to restrain himself from starting a fight on the witness stand. At this point Stone interjects to ask Cogley what his deal is, since he’s listened to three witnesses by now and not bothered to question any of them. “I’ve been holding back until we get this preliminary business out of the way,” Cogley replies casually. “I’d like to call Captain Kirk to the stand.” Can he...can he do that? I thought it was still the prosecution’s turn to be calling people. Space law is so confusing.

Apparently Cogley can do that, because Kirk goes on up to the chair, hands over his ID floppy, and puts his hand on the Glowing Circle of Truth. Like the other witnesses, the computer reads out his name, rank, ID number, and commendations...all his commendations. And there are a lot of them. Palm Leaf of Axinar Peace Mission, Grand Kite Order of Tactics, Class of Excellence, Frenterus Ribbon of Commendation...it just keeps going and going, while everyone sits there awkwardly.

Eventually Shaw interrupts to say, look, I don’t wish to imply that Captain Kirk is not super great and has the medals to prove it, but now that we’ve established that could we maybe, y’know, skip to the end? Stone asks Cogley about it, since after all it’s his witness, and Cogley says, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to slow the wheels of progress any...” then waits for Shaw to start drawing a sigh of relief before continuing, “BUT I also wouldn’t want them to run over my client!” So they have to sit and listen to more awards. My favorite is the Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry, which makes me wonder just how conspicuous your gallantry has to be for you to get cited for it.

Cogley finally allows them to stop, saying he “wouldn’t want to slow things up too much.” I mean, who knows how long it might take for that list to be fully read out? We could be here all week! Ha ha! Super illustrious career there. Amazing. Totally irrelevant of course, but wow—what a guy, right?

Anyway, onto the actual questioning (finally). Cogley asks if there really was a red alert before Kirk jettisoned the pod, and Kirk says there was, so Cogley asks him to tell them all about it. Kirk starts out talking about the ion storm, but then gets rather sidetracked from giving the actual details to talking about how, despite the charges, there was no malice involved and Finney was treated the same as any member of Kirk’s crew. And no, Kirk did not panic and jettison the pod prematurely either, looking at you up there Stone. This was far from his first crisis and he handled it the same way he handled all the other crises he’s been through: he relied on experience and training and did everything that should have been done when it should have been done. Cool, thanks. That gave us almost no information whatsoever.

Cogley says that Kirk did the right thing...but would he do it again? Kirk says that yes, under those same circumstances, he would, because what he did was necessary to save his ship. “And nothing is more important than my ship,” he adds, which is a line that sure could be misused if taken out of context.

Despite getting a remarkable lack of anything useful out of that testimony, Cogley then cedes the witness to Shaw. Instead of questioning Kirk, though, Shaw opts to show some evidence. About time someone did. I was starting to wonder if this trial was going to consist entirely of vague philosophical arguments.

Specifically, Shaw is presenting the thing that started this whole debacle to being with: the incriminating computer log from the Enterprise. The episode thus far has been rather vague as to the exact nature of this computer log, so you could easily imagine that it was, y’know, an actual log made by the computer of everything that went through it during that particular interval. Nah. Of course not. It’s just footage of the bridge during the incident, because I guess the Enterprise is equipped with security cameras everywhere.

The recording shows us an overhead view of the bridge as Uhura reports an ion storm upcoming. Kirk says they’ll need someone in the pod for recordings. I’m still in the weeds about what exactly the pod is and why someone needs to be in it, but no one feels like explaining. Spock says that Finney is at the top of the duty roster, so Uhura has him report to the pod for “reading of ion slates” which really didn’t clear up my confusion any.

They continue to approach the ion storm, getting increasingly jostled about the closer they get. At this point, Shaw has the video reversed and paused, then magnified to show the panel on Kirk’s chair. That’s some pretty damn impressive magnification, considering that not only did it retain perfect image quality as it zoomed in, it also changed the camera angle.

[ID: 1. A computer screen showing an overhead shot of the bridge, as Shaw says, “Stop.” 2. Shaw saying, “Go forward with the magnification on the panel.” 3. The computer screen again, showing the panel of Kirk’s chair from behind, with five buttons on it; the first three are a yellow one labeled Alert, a red one labeled Alert, a green one labeled Jettison Pod, and the last two are white and unlabeled.]

But more importantly, now that we have a good shot of the panel we can see that not only can Kirk toggle red and yellow alerts directly from it, the ‘jettison pod’ button is RIGHT THERE. Who put that there?! Why? Why would the captain need direct access to that of all possible buttons, and for the love of God, why would you put it somewhere where it could so easily be pressed accidentally?? All it would take is one slip of the thumb and there goes your pod! I’m amazed Starfleet isn’t having more court martials about people being prematurely jettisoned if that’s where you put the button! This is the worst UI ever!

Remarkably, though, Shaw didn’t pause the video just to show us Starfleet’s incredibly bad design policies; she just wanted to point out that Kirk was pressing the yellow alert button, which she carefully describes in case anyone in the courtroom couldn’t figure out that that’s what pressing the yellow button marked ‘alert’ does. Then the log resumes, switching to another camera angle in the process. It sure is nice of the computer to dramatically edit its own footage for us.

Uhura says that there’s a call coming in from the pod, which is just Finney confirming that readings are in progress. Kirk tells Finney to make it fast, because they may have to go to red alert. On cue, the bridge shakes again. Not enough that anyone has to throw themselves across the set, but it’s clearly getting worse. Hanson, at the helm (hey, remember him?), reports that they’re getting “natural vibrations of force two” and then “force three.” That sounds bad. I guess.

Kirk tells engineering to give them more thrust, then calls Finney and tells him to get ready to get out of there because things are looking bad. The shaking gets worse and worse until Hanson is reporting force five. Then, suddenly, we cut back to the chair panel to see Kirk pressing the ‘jettison pod’ button, despite the light still showing only yellow alert. Wow, how convenient that the recording switched camera angles right at that critical moment. I’m sure there’s nothing significant about that.

Shaw freezes the footage there and, as Kirk and Cogley stare in shock, points out to everyone that the ship is clearly not at red alert there. In other words, Kirk jettisoned Finney because of an emergency that didn’t even exist at the time.

All Kirk can do is stare at the frozen image and helplessly whisper, “But that’s not the way it happened.” I dunno, man, that’s what the computer says. Are you saying the computer could be wrong? I don’t see how that could happen.

After the break, we get a nice shot of Starbase Eleven, which contrary to what you may have been imagining is actually on a planet, or at least, some of it is. A very purple planet it is, too.

[ID: A matte painting of a rocky planet with a purple sky and a dim pinkish-purple sun halfway up the horizon, with several tall futuristic buildings in the foreground and a few more scattered across the open plain.]

Visit scenic Starbase Eleven! The premiere place to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder!

Kirk gives us a short, dour captain’s log: “The evidence presented by the visual playback to my general court-martial was damning. I suspect even my attorney has begun to doubt me.”

Cogley is indeed looking pretty grim as he sits in his office/Kirk’s room, playing with a stylus while Kirk paces around the place. “Computers don’t lie,” he says. Boy, for someone who is apparently ready to go into a screed about the inferiority of computers at all times, you’re sure quick to immediately accept their unimpeachable accuracy there, Cogley. Computers, of course, do lie, because computers do whatever you tell them to. Or, to quote another famous sci-fi franchise, “The problem with computers is that they’re very sophisticated idiots.”

“Are you suggesting I did?” Kirk snaps. Cogley hedges that he doesn’t think Kirk lied, but maybe Kirk did have a lapse and make an error. For a moment, Kirk falls into doubt, musing that two days ago he was confident enough in his own judgment to stake anything on it—which is unlikely to be hyperbole since he did indeed put his whole career on the line. But now he’s beginning to be less sure. Is it possible that when the moment came, he really did make that fatal error…?

But Kirk only allows himself to consider that for a moment before shaking away the doubts. No, he says, he knows what he did and he’s standing by it. He tells Cogley that he can back out now if he wants to, but Cogley just shrugs and says there’s nowhere to go except back to the courtroom to hear the verdict.

Shaw made such a big deal about how Cogley was the only person who could win a case against computer evidence, but so far we sure haven’t seen any sign of him living up to that claim. His entire strategy seems to have been to have Kirk testify about his confidence that he didn’t make a mistake, and as soon as the computer log was played—the computer log, need I remind you, that should not have been a surprise to anyone because the fact that it makes Kirk look guilty is the entire reason we’re having this trial in the first place—he’s like “welp, nuthin I can do about that.” I’m kinda thinking it might have been more helpful to get a lawyer who actually knew something about computers other than “they suck and I hate them.”

Kirk’s communicator beeps just then; it’s Spock, calling to say that he’s run “a complete megalyte survey on the computer.” (I’m sorry, megalyte?) “I’ll tell you what you found—nothing, right?” Kirk says.

“...You sound bitter, captain,” Spock replies, and only the public broadcasting standards of 1967 prevent Kirk from saying “no SHIT, Sher-Spock.” But after a moment he says that he’s not bitter enough to forget to thank Spock for all his efforts. “It’s not all bad, Mr. Spock,” he adds. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to beat your next captain at chess.”

Kirk’s attempt at levity falls flat, and not only because he’s talking to Spock; he just can’t muster enough of his usual confidence to make it sound light-hearted instead of tired and, well, bitter. But that joke didn’t die in vain. After Kirk hangs up, we see Spock sitting at his station on the bridge, looking suddenly thoughtful. “Chess,” he says to himself, and then suddenly gets up and leaves.

Unaware that Spock’s having a dramatic revelation, Kirk is all set to get back to moping when Jame bursts into the room. Starting to think that bursting in dramatically is the only way Jame knows how to enter a room. She’s not here to accuse Kirk again, though: instead she makes a beeline for Cogley, ignoring Kirk’s attempt to introduce them, and says, “We’ve got to stop this. Make him take a ground assignment. I realize it wasn’t his fault. I won’t make any trouble. Make him change his plea.”

Well, that’s...quite a turn-around. Kirk gently tells her that it’s too late for that, but he’s glad that at least she doesn’t blame him anymore. She tells him that she’s sorry and that she was so upset at first that she wasn’t thinking when she lashed out at him. She didn’t realize just how close Kirk and Finney were until she was going through his papers and read some letters he had written to her and her mother. And I hope you’re not on the edge of your seat to find out more about Jame’s mom and if she’s alive or dead or divorced or what, because that is the one and only mention of her that we’re going to get for this entire episode.

Anyway, Jame says that she now realizes that the idea of Kirk betraying Finney like she at first believed is ridiculous, and besides, ruining Kirk’s life and career isn’t going to change what happened. Cogley notes that “no use crying over spilled milk” is a bit of an unusual outlook to take towards the guy that, according to all current evidence, probably killed your dad. Kirk shrugs it off completely and says he has to go change since the trial’s resuming soon. “You ready?” he asks Cogley, who presumably feels no such need since he’s been wearing the same clothes for the whole episode.

“No,” Cogley says thoughtfully. “But I may be getting ready...”

Meanwhile, up on the ship, Spock is hanging out in one of the Enterprise’s miscellaneous rooms, playing chess with the computer. Not playing chess on the computer; he’s just sitting with a physical board with the computer reading out its moves to him. You’d think by the 23rd century we’d have better chess programs, but maybe Spock just likes the retro feel.

If Spock was hoping to have a quiet and uninterrupted game of chess, though, he didn’t do a great job picking his spot, because McCoy comes bursting in with a pre-emptive head of steam all built up. He takes one look at Spock and the chessboard and declares, “Well I had to see it to believe it...they’re about to lop off the captain’s professional head and you’re sitting here playing chess with the computer!”

I like the implication here that someone has told on Spock to McCoy. “OMG doctor you’ll never believe what I just saw Mr. Spock doing!” “SPILL THE TEA ENSIGN.”

When Spock doesn’t particularly react to this accusation, McCoy tells him that “you’re the most cold-blooded man I ever met,” which Spock accepts as a compliment. Then, as McCoy is turning to leave—I guess this was just a drive-by call-out—Spock calmly announces that he’s about to win his fourth game. McCoy pauses at the door and says that that’s impossible, but Spock demonstrates his claim by putting the computer into checkmate.

McCoy’s look of open, stunned confusion tells us two things: one, that this is a big deal and shouldn’t be happening (unless Spock is using cheat codes or something) and two, McCoy has a surprisingly thorough understanding of the limitations of the Enterprise chess computer given that we’ve never seen him show any interest in chess whatsoever. Either McCoy plays chess against the computer without telling anyone about it, or Spock talked his ear off about it at some point.

Spock elucidates for us that mechanically, the computer is flawless, so therefore its record of Kirk’s guilt must also be flawless—but, being the super logical and detached person that he is, he just couldn’t accept the reality of that guilt. “So you tested the program bank,” McCoy muses. Exactly, Spock says—he programmed it himself, so he knows that the best he should possibly have been able to achieve was a draw.

So someone tampered with the Enterprise computer log in a way that left no evidence that anything was wrong or out of place with the log, but did make a totally unrelated program malfunction. Sure, that makes sense. You know, the weirdest part about all this to me isn’t even that, it’s that for all everyone talks about the computer log and how the computer doesn’t make mistakes, the computer log in question is, as we’ve discussed, a visual recording. It’s not some kind of hard data entry on what the operations the computer was doing at a certain point, it’s a recording made by a camera! Which means everyone in this episode of a television show is just going around saying “well there’s no possible way to alter an image if that image was recorded onto a computer so I guess that has to be true.” Yes, I realize it was 1967 and they weren’t exactly making this in Final Cut Pro, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take seriously.

McCoy takes a moment to stand there and let this revelation sink in, before redirecting his outrage into demanding to know why Spock is just sitting around with this information. Spock doesn’t deign to answer that, instead calling the transporter room and telling them “Stand by, we’re beaming down.” Note the ‘we’; Spock knows damn well McCoy is coming along whether Spock wants him to or not.

Back on the Starbase, Stone is ringing the ceremonial bell with the ceremonial stick to resume the trial. He announces that “the board will entertain motions before delivering its verdict.” Wow, they really are gonna wrap this whole thing up in all of two sessions, huh. That sure was a quick trial. Then again, I guess there’s not all that much you can do when the defense folded after the first piece of evidence got shown.

Shaw says that the prosecution rests, apparently not even seeing the need to make a closing argument. Cogley stands up next. He tries to come up with something, but all he can manage is to shrug and say, “The defense rests.” Thanks man, you’re a real help. That vague-but-dramatic remark about “I might be getting ready” didn’t come to much, did it?

[ID: Cogley, who is wearing a dark brown corduroy shirt with shiny light brown rounded lapels, two large pockets on either side, and one smaller pocket in the middle of the shirt, standing up at a table  and saying, “Sir...”]

“I OBJECT!” “On what grounds?” “I couldn’t think of anything else to say.”

You know, I’ve been giving Jame grief for the Sailor Moon clothes, but I’d really be remiss to not take a moment here to take Cogley to task for what he’s wearing. We’ve got, like, a turtleneck that just didn’t feel like making an effort that day, over some thing that I’m sure was meant to invoke an eccentric academic tweed-jacket-with-patches-on-the-elbows kind of look, but why does it have one pocket positioned directly over the center of the stomach? And what does he have in it? Is that a nail file? What’s going on here? Tim Gunn would never stand for this, I’ll tell you that.

Well, I guess that’s it for our hero. The trial is over. Kirk is guilty--

[ID: A gif from an Ace Attorney game of someone shouting “HOLD IT!” in large bubble red letters over a white starbust.]

WHAT’S THIS?? Two new witnesses have just run into the courtroom! Spock and McCoy have arrived with crucial information just in the nick of time! What a close call. They couldn’t get there any earlier, of course, because they had to stop and change into their dress shirts first. If you’re gonna dramatically barge into a courtroom, you have to look your best.

McCoy starts talking to Kirk while Spock talks to Cogley. Well, I say ‘talk.’ The scene is clearly aiming for ‘frantic whispering’ but they overshot that a little bit; Spock and McCoy are just moving their mouths while making literally no sound. If there wasn’t other sound going on at the same time I would have thought that my cat had ruined my earbuds. Again.

That other source of sound is Stone, yelling at Cogley, who is not the one causing the disturbance but makes a better target I guess. Cogley quickly breaks off the non-conversation to run up and address the board, saying that some new evidence has just been brought to his attention. HOLD IT! Shaw protests—Cogley’s already rested his case! Thanks Shaw. I bet you were that kid who’d remind the teacher that they hadn’t assigned the homework five minutes before class ends.

Stone asks Cogley what the nature of this evidence is and Cogley says that he can’t tell them, he has to show them. Really? I think you could tell them pretty easily. Here, I’ll give it a shot: “Mr. Spock’s discovered a flaw in the computer that indicates it was tampered with after all.” There, sorted.

Shaw protests that “Mr. Cogley is well known for his theatrics.” “Is saving an innocent man’s career a theatric?!” Cogley demands (theatrically). It’s probably not, mostly because I don’t think you can have just one theatric.

Stone tells the lawyers to stop bickering among themselves and that if they’ve got something to say they can say it to the whole class. Cogley is all too eager to do just that now that he “finally has something to talk about.” By ‘something to talk about’ he does not, of course, mean this new evidence and its significance. Rather, he wants to talk about “Rights, sir, human rights, the Bible, the Code of Hammurabi, and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, fundamental declarations of the Martian Colonies, the statutes of Alpha 3—gentlemen, these documents all speak of rights.”

Yes, yes, nice use of “let me remind you that we’re in the future by listing a bunch of real things along with a couple fictional ones” but WHAT are you TALKING about? You just listed a bunch of things that have laws in them! What does that have to do with anything? Are you just trying to prove that you are so a real lawyer? This is no way to win a court case!

It’s not just me who’s confused, either—look at Spock’s face while all this is happening.

[ID: Spock, wearing his dress uniform, looking off at an angle and frowning in puzzlement.]

Cogley starts talking about the various rights these documents speak of, because all of them definitely cover the same ground, sure, that seems right. Eventually he comes around to some kind of point, which is that these documents all speak of the right for the accused to be confronted by the witnesses against them. Well...the Constitution sure does. The Bible says “I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him.” so I guess that counts. The Magna Carta, on the other hand, basically only says that people (meaning men, of course) have the right to a lawful trial. And the Code of Hammurabi says “If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser,” so I’m not sure how we should go about applying that one here.

But more importantly, you might note that at no point in all this has he mentioned any actual specific current laws of the society they’re in. All he’s said is that some people, at some times, have said that that was a law. You can’t just go around invoking all the laws that anyone’s ever made! It’d be chaos! Alcohol would be simultaneously legal and illegal! Society would collapse!

But before anyone gets the chance to point this out, Cogley barrels right on ahead, declaring that this right—the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him—is a right to which his client has been! DENIED! Shaw jumps up and says that this is ridiculous, which, I mean, yes, for a lot of reasons, but specifically she points out that all the witnesses were produced in court and Cogley had the chance to cross-examine all of them, a chance he didn’t take. Well...technically speaking, everyone Shaw brought to the stand was there to give an expert opinion on something, not because they witnessed the crime. There were no witnesses to the crime, per se. Except for, as Cogley points out...the computer.

“The most devastating witness against my client is not a human being,” he says. “It’s a machine, an information system—the computer log of the Enterprise. And I ask this court adjourn and reconvene aboard that vessel.” Whoa wait what hang on now

Shaw protests this sudden turn of events—not objects, just protests—which makes Cogley start going on about rights again. Kirk has the right to face his accuser, he insists—again, at no point has he cited an actual current legal basis for this right—and if the court doesn’t grant that right, “[they]have brought us down to the level of the machine. Indeed, you have elevated that machine above us. I ask that my motion be granted, and more than that, gentlemen, in the name of humanity, fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it. I demand it!”

“If you don’t run this trial the way I want humanity is doomed” is a rather bold stance to take, but surprisingly the court seems willing to go for it, because after the break Kirk gives a log to tell us “After due consideration, the general court-martial has reconvened on board the Enterprise.” Specifically, it’s reconvened in the briefing room, or maybe one of the briefing rooms, I’m not quite sure how many there actually are. And evidently Kirk, Spock and McCoy took the time to change along the way, since they’re all back to their regular non-dress shirts.

Cogley asks Spock how many games of chess he won against the computer and Spock says “five in all.” That number’s gone up somehow; earlier he told McCoy it was four. Cogley then asks if this is unusual and Spock says yes, because he programmed the computer himself and gave it an understanding of chess equal to his own. Thanks Spock, that was real considerate of you. Did you add any other difficulty levels in there, just in case there’s anyone on the ship who doesn’t want to play on Deity all the time?

“The computer cannot make an error, and assuming that I do not either, the best that could normally be hoped for would be stalemate after stalemate, and yet I beat the machine five times,” Spock goes on. “Someone, either accidentally or deliberately, adjusted the programming, and therefore the memory banks of that computer.” This is so not how computers work. I’m not even sure that’s how chess works.

Could that have an effect on the visual playback, then? Cogley asks. Shaw objects, saying that “the witness would be making a conclusion.” Is that...not something witnesses are allowed to do? What’s the point of having someone testify about their expert knowledge if they can’t make so much as a simple ‘if→ then’ statement? I don’t know, but I guess Stone does, because he sustains the objection, forcing Cogley to switch tacks.

Hypothetically, Cogley says—you can ask anything if you just put ‘hypothetically’ in front of it—hypothetically, if something like this had been done, it would be beyond the capabilities of most people, right? Spock confirms this, so Cogley asks who, aboard this ship, would that not be beyond the capabilities of? That would be Spock, himself, Spock says, the captain, and the records officer. Hang on, the captain? Since when does Kirk have that much knowledge of computers? And do we really not have any other computer experts on this ship? We’ve got a whole engineering department down there to make sure all the components of the ship are working correctly, but if the computer controlling all those components fails, you’ve got all of three people skilled enough to fix it? None of whom even has a position dedicated to that? Wow, what could go wrong here.

Actually, as Cogley points out, at the moment it’s not even three people—it’s two, because they don’t currently have a records officer. The last one died in a tragic accident involving an ion storm and a pod, you may have heard something about it. Cogley then turns to Kirk and asks him to describe the steps he took to find Finney after the storm. Kirk says he instituted a phase one search, which he describes as “a painstaking thorough attempt in and around a ship to find a man who’s presumably injured and unable to respond.” Of course, since the man they were looking for had been ejected from the ship straight into an ion storm, this search unsurprisingly did not turn anything up.

But...what if he wasn’t? This search, Cogley says, “presupposes, does it not, that a man wishes to be found?” Kirk stares back at him blankly, so Cogley has to elaborate—well, when you’re doing this search, you assume the person isn’t deliberately hiding, don’t you? What if they were? On a ship this size, how well could someone evade a search, if they really wanted to?

The penny finally drops. It’s clear from Kirk’s stunned expression that he never once considered this. He really does tend to think the best of people, Kirk does—even knowing how much Finney had hated him, the idea that he might be trying to get revenge on Kirk, that all this could be anything more than a tragic accident, never even crossed Kirk’s mind. Bless.

“Possibly,” he says grimly. Cogley turns triumphantly to the board and says, “Gentlemen, I submit to you that Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney is NOT DEAD!” Oh, the drama of it all!

We then cut—via a screenwipe, unusually for TOS—to the bridge, where the whole group is now camped out, along with Uhura and two helm officers, all of whom are probably feeling pretty dang confused right now. Stone says they’re waiting for proof of what Cogley said in the briefing room. Cogley says that they’ll have their proof, but first he needs the cooperation of the court in conducting an experiment. He then defers to Kirk, who he’s apparently had a conversation with at some point in-between scenes, because Kirk is able to fill in the next steps of the plan: it requires everyone onboard except the command crew and the trial members to leave the ship. So he’s ordering them all to report to the transporter room. Everyone. All 424 of them. And the transporter moves six people at a time. This is gonna take a while.

Oh, and Cogley’s also leaving; he says he has “an errand ashore of vital importance to the purpose of this court, and [he] will return.” The board is remarkably okay with the counsel for the defense up and strolling off in the middle of the trial with essentially no explanation for where he’s going or why, not something I would recommend trying in a real courtroom.

They are, however, a little concerned about this whole “everybody off the ship” business. Stone asks Kirk if he’s at least leaving an engine crew aboard but Kirk says no: the impulse engines have been shut down, and they’re going to maintain orbit purely via momentum. “And when the orbit begins to decay?” one of the board members said, which incidentally is the only line of dialogue any of them besides Stone have for the whole episode. Kirk just says they hope to be finished long before that happens. Seriously, you couldn’t come up with a way to do all this that doesn’t involve just hoping you won’t wind up crashing into a planet? And how many people did it take you to drag Scotty out of Engineering once you told him this plan? Because there’s no way he went willingly.

Sometime later (we’re not told how long that took, but if we generously assume it takes one minute to transport six people, it had to be at least 70 minutes) with just about everyone now off the ship, Kirk begins explaining to the board that the computer has an auditory sensor. “It can, in effect, hear sounds,” he adds, in case they can’t figure out what that means. “By installing a booster, we can increase that capability on the order of one to the fourth power. The computer should be able to bring us every sound occurring on the ship.” One to the fourth power? You mean...one?

Just then, the transporter operator calls in to say that all personnel have left the ship, except for him obviously. Kirk gives Spock the go-ahead, and Spock pushes a button. Suddenly an extremely loud, distorted heartbeat sound fills the bridge. Oh shit. Okay, who murdered a dude and stashed his body under the floorboards? Own up.

Kirk explains—after telling Spock to turn the sound down before eardrums start blowing out-- that the sound is the computer picking up the heartbeats of everyone on the ship. Just their heartbeats, not any other autonomic noises like breathing or digestion, or the sounds of any of the systems still running on the Enterprise. Just heartbeats. That is one selective auditory sensor you’ve got there. He then says that McCoy is going to use a “white sound device,” aka a microphone with a rubber band around it, “to mask out each person’s heartbeat so that it will be eliminated from the sounds we’re hearing” because that’s definitely a thing that makes sense.

McCoy goes around the bridge pointing the microphone at everyone’s chests (including Spock, whose heart would later be revealed to be somewhere else altogether), which causes their heartbeats to go away one by one. Finally McCoy uses the device on himself, leaving only the sound of the transporter operator’s heartbeat. “Mr. Spock, eliminate his heartbeat,” Kirk says. Whoa now, hey, what do you have against the transporter operator—oh. Oh, I see what you meant.

Spock flips a switch (and they said we’d never need an Eliminate Transporter Operator’s Heartbeat switch on the bridge!). Everyone should now be accounted for...but there’s still the sound of a heartbeat coming from somewhere. Stone very slowly gets up, walks across the bridge to find the most dramatic vantage point to stand in, and says, “...Finney.”

Yep, it looks like Finney is still alive and hiding out somewhere on the ship. Either that, or the Enterprise is haunted. 50/50. Kirk tells Spock to localize the sound and Spock says it’s coming from B deck, in or near Engineering. So Kirk has him seal that area of the deck off, and then heads for the lift, but stops because Stone is still standing there.

“So Finney is alive,” he says. Yes, thank you, Commodore Obvious.

“Commodore, this is my problem,” Kirk says. “I would appreciate it if no one left the bridge.” He hops in the lift, and I guess Stone at this point has completely given up on any attempt to exert control over the trial, because he makes no attempt to stop Kirk waltzing off the bridge. But hey, he’s just going off, completely alone, to confront a man so desperately and irrationally vengeful that he faked his own death to set Kirk up for murder—what could possibly go wrong?

So Kirk goes stalking off down the empty corridors, narrating—not giving a log, just narrating-- to us that “Sam Cogley had gone ashore to bring Jame Finney onboard. We both felt that Jame’s presence would make Finney easier to handle in the event Finney really were alive.” Oh, that sounds like a handy thing for Cogley to do. Sure would be nice if there was any sign of that happening right about now. Any...any time now.

Back on the bridge, everyone is listening to Kirk wander around shouting “BEN!” when one of the helm guys says that he’s “encountering variants.” Spock tells him to compensate. Shaw asks what this means, and Stone says it means their orbit is beginning to decay. Well, that was fast. So much for hoping that wouldn’t be an issue!

Kirk is still walking around Engineering yelling for Finney when suddenly he hears a reply: “Hello, captain...nothing to say, captain?” It’s presumably Finney, but there’s still no sign of anyone, no clue as to where the voice is coming from, so we still can’t rule out the “the Enterprise is haunted” angle just yet.

Apparently Kirk is not a proponent of that theory, because he calls back, “I’m glad you’re alive.” “You mean you’re relieved because you think your career is saved,” Finney sneers back. “Well you’re wrong!” He seems nice.

Kirk squeezes through a gap that’s in the wall for some reason and comes out in another part of Engineering, calling to Finney that it’s not too late, they can help him. “Like you helped me all along, kept me down, robbed me of my own command?” Finney says. “I’m a good officer. As good as you. I’ve watched you for years. The great Captain Kirk!”

Then, as Kirk passes along the wall, an arm suddenly comes out of a gap and sticks a phaser in Kirk’s back. Good news, you found Finney! Bad news, well, just one little minor detail, I’m sure we can sort that out.

“They told you to do it to me,” Finney says as he emerges the rest of the wall from his hiding place. I had figured he was talking into an intercom or something, but apparently he just has really good projection. “You all conspired against me, ruined me! But you won’t do it anymore!” Then he takes Kirk’s phaser and throws it away somewhere. I am shocked, shocked, I tell you, that this man would be so careless about gun safety.

Kirk, still looking unperturbed about all this, calmly tells Finney to put the phaser down. Finney says he wouldn’t kill Kirk—oh, no. Kirk’s own death would mean too little to him, which, well, yeah, it’s hard to care about very much after you’re dead. But Kirk’s ship…

[ID: Finney, a white man with graying brown hair, raising one eyebrow in a demented expression and saying, “Oh, I wouldn’t kill you, captain.”]

If you ever find yourself making this expression during an argument, it’s a good sign you may no longer be the more reasonable party.

“What about my ship?” Kirk immediately demands, doing an excellent job of confirming to Finney that he was right on the money with that one. Finney gleefully says that the ship is dead, he killed it. Specifically, he did something to the primary energy circuits. Huh, maybe emptying the entire ship so that the man we suspected to have an irrational grudge so big he would fake his own death over it could have the run of the place wasn’t a great idea.

Kirk runs over to a comm and asks Spock what their orbit status is. Spock and the helm guy confirm that their orbit is decaying fast, much faster than it should, even with the dodgy orbital mechanics in TOS. They’re out of power, Finney says—he knows this ship too, because it should have been his, would have been if Kirk hadn’t kept him from it. Oh, grow up and go to therapy like the rest of us.

Why kill innocent people? Kirk asks Finney. Finney—who started sweating buckets in-between shots—laughs and says there’s no innocents here, just officers and gentlemen, captains all, “except for Finney and his one mistake, a long time ago...but they don’t forget!” And, you know, the transporter officer, communications officer, two helm officers, the first officer and a doctor. Plus everyone on the starbase below, which was probably not built to survive an enormous starship crashing into the planet. But I’m sure Finney’s worked out some way in which they’re all responsible for his misfortunes as well. Kirk tries to take the bullet, telling Finney to place all the blame on him, but Finney says no, everyone’s to blame! Everyone but him! He was a good officer! He loved the service! He’s a completely reasonable, rational man with great judgment, and that’s why an enormous conspiracy involving all of Starfleet is the only possible reason why he hasn’t been promoted any farther yet! Then he starts crying. Great.

Meanwhile on the bridge, Spock and the helm guy are trying to fix their orbit but having no success, so Spock tells everyone they need to get to the transporter room pronto. But Stone cuts in and says, “Mr. Spock, the court has not yet reached a verdict. We’ll hear this witness out.” DUDE. PRIORITIES.

Kirk is still trying to talk Finney down, saying that it’s not too late for him to be helped, but it will be if he kills all these people. Finney insists that it’s only fair because “they killed [him]” which is either the world’s most over the top figure of speech, or he’s forgotten that he’s only pretending to be dead.

But then Kirk finally gets Finney’s attention by asking if Jame’s included in that deal. Finney, horrified, asks what he means by that, and Kirk says she’s onboard by now. Of course, he has no evidence of this, but Finney believes him anyway. “Why did you do that?” he wails. “WHY DID YOU BRING HER HERE?”

Kirk takes advantage of his distraction to rush him. That’s right, it’s FIGHT SCENE TIME. More specifically, it’s Fight Scene With The World’s Most Obvious Stunt Doubles Time. Seriously, it’s amazing.

[ID: Two shots of a pair of men fighting in Engineering. They are very clearly not the original actors.]

After a lot of general thrashing around, Finney gets his hands on a wrench. Not, like, a futuristic space wrench or anything. Just a regular old wrench, which is sitting on its own little wrench pedestal for some reason, like a museum exhibit.

[ID: Finney grabbing a wrench that’s sitting on a gray block built into the wall.]

Finney grabs it and starts going full Bioshock, swinging wildly at Kirk, but Kirk manages to dodge his way out of a serious head injury. Or at least, his stunt double does.

And yes, Kirk gets his shirt ripped.

[ID: Kirk with the front of his shirt ripped completely off his right sleeve, bracing himself as Finney takes a swing at him.]

Eventually, Kirk manages to get Finney up against a wall and clobber him on the jaw a few times, putting him down for the count. Then Kirk resumes his narration, telling us that, “Beaten and sobbing, Finney told me where he had sabotaged the prime energy circuits. The damage he had caused was considerable, but not irreparable. With luck, I would be able to effect repairs before our orbit decayed completely.”

The reason we’re getting this narration is that originally, there would have been a scene actually showing Jame entering Engineering and Finney’s reaction, which was actually shot but cut for time. Without that scene, the question of whether Jame was ever actually on the ship is kind of left open. Cogley says he was going to go get her, but obviously they haven’t returned by the time the whole heartbeat-test thing goes on, we never hear any word from the transporter operator about them coming up after that, and presumably no one would beam them up once they realized the ship was currently crashing. Kirk telling Finney that Jame is onboard “by now” is clearly a shot in the dark, but since Finney accepts this anyway, the whole venture becomes kind of a moot point.

While he’s narrating, we see Kirk climbing up a Jeffries tube, because, sure, he’s an engineer now, why not. His repair job seems to consist entirely of pulling wires out of the wall with his bare hands, but evidently it works because after a bit of shaking back and forth, the helmsman reports that power is returning. They’re able to activate the impulse engines again and stabilize their orbit. You hear that, Scotty? It’s all good. Put the phaser down.

Stone turns to Shaw and says, “Unless the prosecution has an objection, I rule this court to be dismissed.” Shaw says she has absolutely no objection. Stone doesn’t ask the rest of the board, but they don’t seem to have opinions on anything so it’s probably for the best.

Some time later, after everyone’s come back onboard and, presumably, Finney’s been led away to a quiet room somewhere, Kirk is on the bridge having a little soft focus moment with Shaw. She asks when she’ll see him again, and he says that depends on the stars. Poetic. Then she says that Cogley asked her to give Kirk something—a book. “Not a first edition or anything, just a book. Sam says that makes it special, though.” Yeah, well, he would.

Kirk says he didn’t have much chance to thank Cogley, since he just kind of walked off camera and never came back. Shaw says he’s busy on a case: defending Finney, and he says he’ll win, too. Oh yeah, sure. He did such a great job with Kirk’s trial, after all. I’m sure it’ll be a piece of cake defending the guy whom several witnesses heard confessing to his intent to crash a starship and everyone on it into a planet.

“Do you think it would cause a complete breakdown of discipline if a lowly lieutenant kissed a starship captain on the bridge of his ship?” Shaw asks. Oh lord, have you heard the kind of things that go on aboard this ship? A shirtless crewman bursting onto the bridge with a rapier is just another day in the life around here. Making out with the captain doesn’t even rank.

Sure enough, they kiss, and no one takes any notice. Shaw says goodbye, and Kirk wishes her better luck next time. “I had pretty good luck this time,” she replies. “I lost, didn’t I?”

She leaves, and Kirk takes a moment to put his best serious face on, then goes to sit down in his chair.

[ID: 1. Kirk sitting in his chair on the bridge, flanked by Spock and McCoy. Kirk is saying, “She’s a very good lawyer.” 2. Spock replies, “Obviously.” 3. McCoy adds, “Indeed she is.”]

Court Martial is kind of a...scattered episode. It doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with itself. We’ve got all this stuff about the computer, and about the nature of the computer as a witness, which seems to be building up to some big philosophical point. But in the end it all has nothing to do with anything. The computer log is just a piece of evidence which was tampered with, and there’s really nothing deeper to it than that. All of Cogley’s rants about the computer and elevating it above mankind etc etc all have nothing to do with anything, his attitude never gives him any helpful insight, and in the end the computer is used to help prove Kirk innocent without anyone batting an eyelid at the irony. Meanwhile, the whole story about Finney and his years-long grudge has to share time with this, but the themes of those two story threads don’t really have anything in common, so instead of complementing each other they mostly just take focus away from each other.

There was another scene in here that was cut, although I don’t think that one ever got filmed—originally, it was going to be mentioned at some point that while Jame was going through those letters she mentioned, some things her dad said made her realize it was likely he might try something like this, hence her abrupt turn-around towards Kirk halfway through. But we didn’t get that, and we didn’t get her appearing at the end. I think it would have made the story stronger if we had gotten those scenes instead of people talking about the computer so much. Or they could have gone the other way, and focused more on the drama about the computer instead of having Jame show up periodically for ultimately no payoff. Neither of those stories are inherently bad, it’s just that the focus is too divided to do either one justice. It’s not a bad episode, but I think it could have been better.

Trek Trope Tally: The climactic battle with Finney brings our Uniforms Unformed tally up by one, for a total of 5 counts so far. Next time, everything’s gonna be just :) in The Return of the Archons.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek season one #recap tag #star trek TOS recaps #1.20 Court Martial #1.20 Court Martial recap

[hereitalkonandon]

Porgs

I already know you don't put up with nonsense and all of that, what I meant is that maybe you would tone it down two times out of ten, and that you should make it one time out of ten but ideally zero out of ten. I noticed I wrote the fractions wrong last night.

But I already knew you are not a pushover, I can't find that one post of course because it's so old, but it basically said you would sometimes not speak your mind about a stupid compliment because you wanted to be accepted/liked, something like that, by men that you like, I wouldn't know if you meant, admiration or attraction by now since I don't remember the quote, or maybe it was someone else's post and then you added a tag, but it wasn't about them being mean, they were actually thinking they were complimenting you and calling you special by saying you are not like other girls.

So, I was just guessing, that maybe you were only at 90% instead of 100% in that sort of situations, to not be too much until you felt comfortable or maybe to not be mean since their intentions were good even if they were being stupid.

But I would never assume you allow people to walk over you, or that you don't speak your mind most of the time, just that maybe you would ignore a few things that you would rather not ignore.

But I was probably wrong because as I said I have no idea of the way that you behave outside your blog with the people that you respect but that you are not comfortable around, I was only guessing because of that one post and maybe four or five other posts.

I was thinking about me too, I'm a lot for most people, but as man, at worst I would get called overdramatic or too intense, but it's fine, a man can be overdramatic and a man can be too intense, they don't make a big deal out of it.

If they did, I still wouldn't stop, as you probably wouldn't, I've lived at 100% ever since I'm 17 or so and couldn't care less and I never once have tried to tone it down in the slightest. Until I met you, but that's different, I'm just so concerned with not being disrespectful because I've never approached anyone for anything, so I feel, as I said, that it's up to me not to be rude, that it's my responsibility because all of this was unasked for.

But of course I hide so many things when it comes to feelings, but just positive feelings, things that mean I care about something, out of some reputation, but it's not even about being masculine. I used to be so into Hello Kitty, it started at 19 or so and it stopped once my girlfriend left, and I told everyone how into it I was, and then I still like her now I just don't care that much. My room wasn't full of Hello Kitty things or anything but I own all that merchandise still. I've always liked Snoopy better but Hello Kitty merchandise was everywhere. I love Porgs now.

But I don't think the things someone likes make him masculine anyway, most men are so concerned about it. I’m only worried about my principles. I've seen men that are obsessed with superheroes and fighting and they are not masculine at all. And I know it doesn't matter if you are feminine or masculine, but most people would say I'm pretty masculine and I'm usually into cute things. I certainly couldn't care less about violence other than spaceships shooting other ships, lightsabers, and sword fights, and then I know you like superheroes so it isn’t meant as an offense but I find them so boring, and movies about people shooting each other too, I just don’t see the appeal.

I've seen a lot of women that hide all their positive feelings too and I wouldn't say they are being masculine, I just can't think of the word right now but I know that what I'm protecting isn't my masculinity because if I were a woman I would also try to protect whatever reputation I’m protecting, I've just always kept compliments and all that sort of things to myself. I've never hugged anyone, kissed anyone, or told anyone I loved them other than my girlfriend, but I also never felt the need to do those things with other people, I don’t have to hide anything, it’s just not there to begin with. So other than that I always say what I'm thinking and do whatever I want to do.

But even if I didn't mean what you thought I meant, I can assume now that you speak your mind at 100% too no matter what the situation is and that you also do what you want. Other than when you could put your life at risk, but that's just like when you avoid walking alone at night as I've read that you do. Men are awful and that's reality, there's nothing to be gained by ignoring that fact.

And of course you never said anything stupid about my relationship, because everything you said could also apply to someone that had a bond as long as mine if what they truly needed was to move on. Even if we had met at 5 and I were 60 now, and she was over me and truly loved another man and believed he is the love of her life. I would be an idiot to refuse to try to get over her and move on with my life. And anyone with common sense would tell me the same things you told me. It's just that my beliefs are too specific.

What you said about your ex-boyfriend, I understand how our emotions can make us have thoughts that are the opposite of what we truly think a day or two afterwards, even if I'm not impulsive at all, and if I really think before I act, if I'm so stubborn and sure of what I want, it happens to me, just five minutes at a time or so, but I feel it sometimes too.

I have said it before but at this point I highly doubt I love her because of who she is, I probably haven't loved her because of who she is since 2014 or so, at that point it started being as if I were her dad and I owed it to her, but I have never forced myself, it's there.

I don't want her to be someone else but I don't think I'm ever going to say that I can't get over her because there is no one like her. The one thing that I hate about her, other than things that have to do with other men, is how chill she is, it bothers me so much. And I know she will always be that way. And I feel like punching all chill people (not her) but not actually, they just frustrate me when I try to understand how their brains work but I don't feel any hate towards them, they aren't hurting me.

I've never been in a fight. I think you shouldn't hit someone unless they hit you first and no one has tried to hit me yet, and you can't hit women either no matter what of course. 

You have your dumb child and that's what parenthood means. I took care of her for so long, in the sense that I spent so many years worrying about her, the way parents do, to me it makes sense that at some point I ended up just living for her safety and well-being, while I'm so proud and had to put my pride first, therefore we are not in contact anymore.

It's just because I know I wouldn't be able to stop yelling and getting so angry if she started talking about men and it's my right to not want to pretend I care to hear that, but I never told her this when I said I wouldn't be her friend. She knows anyway, it's obvious.

I love her like this because of who I am not because of anything in her. It doesn't mean she is a boring person either, she's not like most people. We were so alike sometimes but I don't think she shaped me or that our memories together shaped me, my love for her is probably what shaped me and it has nothing to do with her.

I don't want children but even if I ever did, I wouldn't dare. I feel like you should only have a child if you can make him your priority in your feelings too, not just with your actions, that you should know you would never love anyone over your child and I've already failed that step without even trying, I know who I am and that I could never put anything over romantic love.

But what you said about it taking you a long time to get over that relationship, after my break up I read that it usually takes you at least half the time that you spent together. So knowing who I am, I always assumed it would take me about ten years anyway, and I'm not who I used to be, my feelings are so strange, but I can't say I feel as awful as when she left, that makes me think that maybe in two years it will be better than now too, whether I still love her or not, because right now I love her just as much, the pain is just different.

I know you aren't normal, I just meant you are able to feel any love at all for your family and for your friends, for your boyfriend even when you don't feel as connected to him as you would like, the fact that you can feel love for anyone other than a soul mate, I know that's normal, but I can't do that anymore.

Other than that you are obviously not like most people, I've seen about half your blog and I've a good memory. The special snowflake jokes people keep making on Tumblr, only make me think that the ones making them truly have no idea that there are people that are just different, and if they were different they would know it themselves.

I know you are not trying to sound edgy, I'm old enough and you are the first person like yourself that I know of. I'm aware though that sometimes they make that sort of jokes about people that choose a lot of weird labels and odd interests just in order to feel special, and I don't mind them but that's stupid, that doesn't say anything about their actual character.

I've never assumed that you were in a position to help me though, I merely noticed that you were helping me anyway, even if I didn't want to, that to keep interacting with someone that I could relate to was fixing something inside me, what you were talking about had nothing to do with it. Just the act itself. 

And the fact that I realized that I'm able to feel all those things again if I ever want to can't be erased, not even if you murdered my entire family and I ended up hating you, which is something stupid, but just so you understand.

Because of you I'm sure it can be done now. That it’s just up to whatever I decide to do. For now I'm perfectly happy being trash but the problem is I keep feeling more like who I used to be before, and I know it's not a bad thing and that it would be an awful thing to fight it, not awful, but that it would be wrong so I don't fight it, but I struggle, because I feel like fighting it often.

Yeah, when I write in my journal no one is reading it and I don't want them to, but I start feeling better just by doing that. But I don't understand why you say that people around you don't care that much for the kind of things you are telling me, I know you must be right if you are seeing it, but they love you, they should care.

At the same time though, people that love me listen to me, but I understand what you mean now that I think about it, it's just that it doesn't bother me. Precisely because I'm messed up and I don't mind anything that isn't about my break up. So I don't feel alone or anything, but I never did even before I met her. I feel misunderstood way too often, though, but again, I don’t mind it.

It bothers me that I don’t feel that people are as intense as me, I know there are a lot of intense people, it doesn’t feel like the same wavelength though, I’m not even talking about likes and thoughts, it’s something different, I’ve never seen it, I wish more fictional characters were like that, I said fictional characters because I know that if I found fifty people that had that thing that I’m talking about but can’t explain I wouldn’t bother with them anyway, I would like them, but I enjoy being alone and not having a social life. I never have enough time, for some reason. I don't actually mind if no one cares about what I have to say or my interests. 

What is new to me is that you aren't often thinking about the other guy, and I thought that maybe you were confused or annoyed because you thought that maybe you could get what you wanted from him. I read the post where you said you were disenchanted when you actually went out with him to eat or something, but I didn't know the reason, so I thought you could still be into it.

I don't know if it was an experiment, but what I know is that it sounds like a terrible idea and I see why you lost your interest. It could be that he kept talking about her because she was such a big part of his past.

For a while now, sometimes I end up talking about her because she has something to do with what I'm saying, she was always in my past, and the point is that if I avoided talking about her, I would have to modify the story or sometimes even lie about it, I don’t lie, I don’t like it. The first letter I wrote to you, it was so long, and it talked about me, I didn’t mention her once and yet, everything I said about her gives you a better description of who I am. I could see how talking about your ex-girlfriend doesn't necessarily mean you aren't over her but I also know that sometimes that's exactly what it means.

So if you say he wasn't over her, he probably even told you himself and it's usually what it means. Maybe one time out of ten it's not what it looks like. 

I enjoy that you talk more about yourself when you answer me, I enjoy your thoughts no matter what they are, but the more you talk about yourself the more I can try to talk less about myself. I sort of always end up doing that.

I spent so much time on your blog, because of you of course, at first you didn't even know I was doing it. So it makes sense that I actually love to know about you. I already know everything about me, I just talk a lot, and I enjoy writing about anything really.

But whenever you write a new letter I read it plenty of times and think about everything you say, and when I don't say anything is just because I would rather not write a forced answer and end up writing something dumb just for the sake of writing it. I wish I had something to add about everything you tell me. 

I've always been too selfish and it suits me. Just not with my ex-girlfriend. I try to not be selfish with you and maybe I fail, I try, not because it makes me feel good about myself, it doesn't because it's not about that (I've always felt good about myself already),but because it makes me feel human.

I told you before that once I start writing something I can't stop until I finish, so that's why I'll actually keep losing sleep if I have to when it comes to sending you an answer. But it's just because of who I am. These two weeks though I haven't been sleepy at all, so I barely sleep and that's why I'm often falling asleep at night when I'm writing to you.

[anon-luv]

Blankets 5FINALE5 [JungkookXReader]

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader (Feat. Rest of BTS)

Genre: Romance/Angst/Smut BadBoyAU!

Summary: A one night stand turned into various visits. No strings attached, or at least that is what you told yourself every time he walked through the door. His first name was the only thing you knew, besides having memorized every sensitive spot that laid upon his skin.

One night you catch a glimpse of his world. One that you had never had the temptation to roam on your free will. Jungkook though was addicting, and your craving for his touches led you to venture into his life. This new found world offering you a freedom you didn’t know existed. The consequences of your actions instead of taking you a step closer to him, formed a barrier. Jungkook’s sweet touches turned rough with rage, his passionate kisses turned possessive, and his comfortable casual talk went to promises/lies of a forever.

Rating: M [Language, Strong Scenes, Drug usage, Sexual Scenes]

Author’s Note: Took me forever.... I AM SO SORRY!!

I lost the original ending because my computer went to laptop heaven so I had to rewrite it. Here you go though. I hope you all like it. I am so nervous about posting this since it was the first fic I have ever written..and to be honest I did not expect anyone to like it lol. Thank you all for your support.

This is the finale, but I do plan to do a small epilogue drabble for this. 

Also I will edit it a bit more later...ignore minor grammar mistakes please

DISCLAIMER I DONT OWN THE LYRICS!!! Credit to people who wrote it. 

Let Go by Hailey....Steinfield? hehehehehe

Love yall!!

Trigger warning: Drugs, alcohol, and Sexual scenes

Not 100% edited yet. Might have minor mistakes :)

Feedback is greatly appreciated! It makes me Happy!

Word Count: 6.2k+

Blankets

.Part 1. .Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.  [Fic Playlist]

MASTERLIST

“I can’t sleep right now, so instead I’ll lie here and imagine better days. Days where I’ll wake up to your arms around me and not your name on my phone. Days where I’ll fall back asleep to the sound of your heartbeat and not the lonely silence of this room. Days where we’ll be together and nothing else will really matter anymore. But should I manage to slip off into a new night of dreams, I hope you know you were the last thing on my mind. You always are.”

 Whoever said Love is a blessing was lying…...Love is a curse. Love is a parasite consuming you from the inside slowly and painfully with no remorse. Love is to lose oneself in a feeling without a guarantee of finding love on the other side. Love is pain. Love is a weakness. Love is succumbing yourself body and soul to another person and giving them the ability to walk away at any given time, leaving you with nothing left. Love…...you were completely in Love with him, and you were starting to despise the ill feeling that had taken over your life.

Your sleeping schedule had adjusted to his, in order to have as much time with him as possible. He had become an addiction, an endless craving.

The way Jungkook kissed you had changed along with your relationship. The kisses seemed to last longer, but they also tended to be a lot rougher. He was not as fond of you spending time with Yoongi or any of the guys on your own. He always managed to keep a hand on you when they were present as if he was marking his territory. You had never witnessed such a possessive trait on Jungkook when he was with Tabi. You knew that what you and Jungkook had was a lot more different and complicated than what theirs had been, but you were slightly taken aback on how needy he had become. You didn’t mind it at all for you were just as needy yourself. Jungkook and you spend most of your time locked inside your apartment talking about everything and anything. The blanket had become your haven, and parting with them was becoming almost physically painful.

Winter had come and gone, and the melting snow had marked your anniversary with Jungkook. The day was colder than usual, and Jungkook had finally managed to keep a stable job for longer than a month. Yoongi had managed to wiggle Jungkook into a paid internship in the music studio. Jungkook had taken advantage of the position and started using the studios to create his own music. His singing had become his number one priority besides you. The hang out spot usually lacked your presence, for most of the time that you weren’t with Jungkook you stayed in your apartment waiting for him to come back. The boys stopped at times to say hello or have dinner with you guys, but you rarely hit the circle to fill up your lungs with smoke now at days.

“I miss you,” Yoongi said through the phone “I see you more at the studio these days than anywhere else. The garage is lonely without your presence. Danielle and Namjoon have been glued at the hip by the way. What’s up with that?”

“He must be doing her good,” you said bursting out into giggles.

You heard a yuck from the other side of the line “Too much info (y/n), I much rather not know which places have been rubbing against each other behind closed doors. Which by the way...are you and Jungkook going to get over this whole humping like bunnies stage...it is growing old”

“Yoongi, we don’t hump all the time… we talk in between breaks” you said teasingly.

“Ok that is it, I am hanging up now,” Yoongi said as your giggle turned uncontrollable.

“See you in a bit Yoongi. I am on my way to the studio” you said as the cold wind blew against your face once again.

“Whatever” you heard him say as his other side went dead.

The chilly winter air was canceled out by the warmth of the building that you had just entered. The area was quite roomy, white, and clean. It looked modern and you felt a bit out of place.

As soon as you entered the premises you quickly scanned for Jungkook in the desk he usually sat at. His lack of presence gave you a weird chill down your spine, sort of like an intuition of something that was about to flip your world upside down. Before you could overthink the feeling Yoongi came out of a door and walked over to you, “Hey, Jungkook is in the back recording some stuff, he asked me to tell you to pop a squat. He shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes”

You nodded and took a seat in one of the white stiff couches in the waiting area, Yoongi smiled at you and turned back to the door he had just come out from. He looked a bit hurried as he basically ran back inside what you assumed was a studio.

It had been an hour. Your phone was at 15% and your foot had tapped annoyingly on the floor for the last 30 minutes or so. Finally, Jungkook stepped out of the room looking quite happy, completely ignoring the fact that he had made you wait for so long. He jumped into the couch next to you making your anger and frustration melt away as his lips captured yours in a surprise lock, something that was not appropriate for the public, but as your hands made their way to his soft locks the rest of the world disappeared.

“Gross” you heard a deep voice say breaking you apart.

“Your ass” Jungkook replied to Yoongi playfully as he managed to pick you up and sit you down on his lap “You are just jealous I own this sexy pair of lips ….and I am not talking just about the ones on her face.

“YAH! Jungkook respect your elders” Yoongi replied, but you could see a flash of a strange emotion in his eyes.

You smacked Jungkook on the chest “Stop it Kook! Or I will ground you”

“Oh, please do,” Jungkook said sexily in your ear.

“Ok time to go home,” you said pulling Jungkook up.

“Oh, please do,” Yoongi said mocking Jungkook’s previous statement.

You walked towards the pale man and pecked his cheek “Stop it Grumpy ass”

Yoongi rolled his eyes clearly blushing. Jungkook gave Yoongi a stare, but he just shrugged off the younger boy as he waved you goodbye.

Before you made it out the door you heard Yoongi yell Jungkook’s name followed by a “Don’t worry about a thing Kookie, we will spread that shit all over the stations”

Jungkook’s previous possessive stare turned to one of excitement as his bunny smile spread taking over his whole face.

Before you could ask what that was about Jungkook was already pulling you away towards the apartment, barely giving you time to breathe as he decided to toss you over his shoulder to get there faster. You laughed the whole way back, not knowing what was about to hit you head on and in all honesty as Jungkook ran back to your apartment while whispering naughty things in your ears, you did not give a single fuck.

  Change. It was bound to come. It always came when you least expected it. It started that fateful night when Jungkook’s possessiveness took an all-time high. All it took was Yoongi’s hand on your lap for Jungkook to snap. Punches, kicks, pushes, split lips, and a bruised eye later you had grown tired of it. When had your relationship turned into this?? The freedom you had felt whenever Jungkook was present had been thrown out the window. As soon as Jimin and Hoseok split the boys up you pulled Jungkook away as if the place was on fire. You needed an explanation of whatever the fuck was going on.

“Okay Jungkook, are you a puppy I need to get fixed or something? what the fuck is wrong with you??” you asked as you gently placed ice on his swollen lip.

“The real question is what the fuck is wrong with you?? Are you some sort of hot potato that my friends can pass around and run their hands all over??? Are you a hoe now?? Is that your goal? am I not good enough??” Jungkook scram in your face as his face grew a gross shade of red.

For the first time throughout your relationship with Jungkook, you were rendered speechless.

The tears threatening to fall not from sadness, but from complete and utmost anger. Who did he think he was? He had turned your life upside down and he thought he had the right to judge you?

“Jungkook, Yoongi and I are friends, you know that we have been close for a while as FRIENDS.” you replied not knowing what to say exactly to please the man-boy. Your mind running about 100 miles per hour. You just wanted to fast forward ahead and get this night over with.

“Yeah friends, sure whatever you say (y/n)” he said grabbing his beanie and stomping away towards the door, the ice on the table melting….forgotten. He turned to look at you one more time and you could see him fighting a battle inside his dark brown orbs. He walked back towards you and captured your lips in a rough yet breathtaking kiss.

Your hands consumed themselves in his broad back pulling him in even closer. You craved his warmth more than anything in the world. He was your safety net, he was your comfort blanket.

Jungkook bit your lower lip causing you to moan into the kiss intensifying it. He walked you backward into your open bedroom door. He laid you down softly on the bed, and he paused looking down at you. His eyes traveling across your face like he wanted to map out every single freckle as if they were stars in the sky and he was about to become a blind man. You scrunched up your nose getting a bit self-conscious. A gentle smile appeared on his face contrasting the previous argument that was no longer existent in your mind.

You whispered, “I love you”

He bends down to capture your lips “I love you too”

His hands peeled your clothes slowly gracing your skin ever so softly. Feathery like kisses sprinkled across your neck traveling down, marking a path to what you knew was going to shoot you up to the stars.

As he lifted your hips to strip off your last piece of clothing you noted a lone tear escaping his eyes, but before you could ask what was wrong, he thrusted deep into you making you swallow down your questions and insecurities.

The blanket now cocooning your bodies as you moved in sync with each other, a sweaty beautiful mess.

You knew something was off when your eyes opened to an empty bed, empty kitchen, and half of an empty closet. Jungkook was nowhere to be found and neither was his clothes. Even the old worn out ones you had treasured from before you both became an item were missing.

Your hands trembled with anxiety as you reached towards your phone. 25 missed called, none from Jungkook. You ignored the notifications and dialed the number you now had as memorized as your own name.

Disconnected. The line had been disconnected. The beep on the other line ringing endlessly, but you didn’t give up. After 50 calls, your neurons decided to assist you, and you dialed Yoongi. After 3 rings he answered sounding worried.

“Hey, how are you doing?? I heard” he asked in a quiet serious tone.

“What happened Yoongi?? Tell me what the fuck is going on??” you asked breaking down in nervous tears.

Yoongi sighed into the phone “I’ll be right there”

“No don’t. Meet me at the studio” you said in a rush and hung up the phone.

  You slammed the door to your car as you turned it on and rushed out of the parking space. Much to your luck, you had gotten stuck at 5 pm traffic. Your anxiety causing you to hyperventilate. You raised the volume of your radio and the ac in your car. Your finger tapping a rhythm against the steering wheel.

You looked anxiously at your watch. It had already been 10 minutes in traffic and the line was still not moving. You regret your decision to take your car.

The radio suddenly caught your interest “And now a brand new song featuring one of our hometown artists who has taken off to the big city with a shiny new contract. We wish you the best of luck!”

Your heart accelerated, Yoongi’s voice telling Jungkook something about a radio station coming into mind, but this couldn’t be Jungkook.

 “You made plans and I, I made problems

We were sleeping back to back

We know this thing wasn't built to last and

Good on paper, picture perfect

Chased the high too far, too fast

Picket white fence, but we paint it black

Ooh, and I wished you had hurt me harder than I hurt you

Ooh, and I wish you wouldn't wait for me but you always do

I've been hoping somebody loves you in the ways I couldn't

Somebody's taking care of all of the mess I've made

Someone you don't have to change

I've been hoping

Someone will love you, let me go” Jungkook’s soft voice blasted through the speakers.

 Your silent tears had become hysterical. The lyrics to the song hitting you like an 18-wheeler ramming head into your small beat up beetle. The song you were assuming had been written about Tabi.

 Arriving at the studio had felt like ages, and when you saw Yoongi waiting for you outside walking aimlessly from side to side as if he was as lost as you, you broke apart in his arms.

He caressed your hair “I promise I had no clue. He said he had told you. He said you were going with him. I even helped him pick out an apartment in the city. He was excited about moving WITH YOU to a new city”

You looked into his sad familiar eyes “Yoongi, how long?”

“What?” he asked confused.

“How long has he known about this? About the city? About the contract?” you asked desperately for answers you knew were just going to hurt you more.

“About 10 months ago, he got scouted by one of our talent agents, and he got asked to write a song and send in a demo. About 3 months ago he started writing a song…….and we finished it 2 weeks ago” he said summarizing the betrayal that had been Jungkook.

Jungkook had never really believed in a future with you. 10 months ago you were celebrating your 2nd month anniversary playing video games with endless pizza and chips, and now as you stared at your broken reflection against Yoongi’s glasses, you came to the realization the song might have been about you.

 Yoongi went back to your apartment and made you a burned toast for dinner. He tried cracking jokes, failing miserably at making you smile. You kicked him out nicely at 12am, as your feet dragged you lifelessly to your once shared bedroom. His belongings completely gone, but the memories more present than ever. You made your way into your bed wrapping the blankets around you from head to toe. His scent strong against your nose. You buried your face in his pillow and screamed as loud as you could. You scram and cried till your eyes gave up, and your heart and brain surrendered into a sleeping coma to let your body rest from all the pain.

  The next morning you were mad. Scratch that; you were furious. The sadness from the previous day had gone down the drain replaced by outrageous rage. The alarm clock turned on the radio station as if on cue playing Jungkook’s now HIT SONG according to the DJ.

You heard knocking on the door and you stomped your way to open it. The anger glowing in your eyes made Yoongi want to hide behind the brown bag full of donuts he had brought to cheer you up.

The tears in your eyes erupting from a dormant volcano as soon as you saw Yoongi at your doorstep, looking fully awake and quite scared instead of his sleepy grumpy self.

You decided at that very moment that you hated change. You hated the red hair that now lay upon your head, you hated the piercing on your tongue, you hated the way Jungkook’s number was no longer a mystery but carved in your memory, you hated how empty your apartment was, but most of all you hated the emptiness in your heart you could’ve avoided by not letting Jungkook in after that first one night stand.

Yoongi walked into your apartment after building courage setting the bag on the table and starting a pot of coffee. Caffeine had always been the best remedy for his everyday problems, and right now it seemed like you needed a bit of a boost.

You frowned at the dark cup of coffee in front of you as you bit at a donut as if it was Jungkook’s head. Yoongi frowned not used to seeing you in such a horrible state.

“Do I look like garbage Yoongi??” you asked the boy sitting across from you.

He set his coffee mug down and looked deep into your eyes.

“No (y/n), you are seriously one of the most beautiful treasures I have been granted in my life, and you are the closest to a best friend that I will ever have. You did not deserve any of this shit, the problem wasn’t you” he said holding your trembling hand in his large calloused one “I am sorry (y/n) I should’ve tried to keep you away, I didn’t think stuff would end up like this. But just a tip…. sometimes showers are good for the soul…..and other things”

“Yoongi you warned me, you warned me several times and it fell on deaf ears. It is not your fault...it is all mine. I fucked up...just like I always do “ you said with a bitter laugh “Karma is a bitch after all”

Yoongi looked at you with saddened eyes, “(Y/n), whatever you are thinking don’t please. I know you must be thinking the worst right now but give life a chance. Sometimes shit happens, but it happens for a reason. You were too good for Kook anyway. You think you are a fuck up?? Then he was times ten.”

You smiled sadly at Yoongi “You think so?”

He stood up and wrapped his arms around you. His warmth reminding you of Jungkook, but you couldn’t help but notice how much bulkier Jungkook’s arms were. Yoongi kissed your cheek shyly “I know so”

A week. It had been a week and no word from your Houdini.

The sheets now lay cold in your bed, the essence of him still lingered for you have not been able to sleep in the bed you had once shared with the person you thought would be the love of your life. You walked aimlessly around your apartment seeking proof that he had existed, the pictures framed on your wall not good enough to satisfy your need for him.

Why would he leave so unexpectedly right after making love?

You sighed completely annoyed at yourself?

You were being weak while he was in his prime, being showered with all kinds of rewards. You looked back at the blankets, your dry tears in your cheeks feeling sticky against your hand.

If he was done with you, you were done with him.

You had already wasted too much time chasing after a person you weren't even sure wanted to be chased in the first place. You were better than this.

Determined and numb to any Jungkook related emotions you marched towards the bed ripping away the sheets in which he used to lay and walked straight out of the apartment.

Half the blanket dragging behind you like a tail, you walked away throwing them out of your life along with your memories of Jungkook.

There on the floor beneath the bed though, a letter that had been wrapped around the blankets went unnoticed, your name scribbled on the front along with a crooked heart.

 ----

“I really do not think you should be doing this” Yoongi said trying to take away the lighter that you grasped tightly in your fist. Yoongi was on his way to your flat when he noticed your figure walking around with your bedsheets. His curiosity allowing you to proceed in your strange endeavors, but as soon as your lighter made an appearance it was game over. The blanket had been placed in your apartment complex’s trash, but even then, the mere thought of the blankets existing irked you. Fire was the only answer to your current predicament, and you did not even care about any future consequences.

You lit the corner of the blanket, and before you knew it, a blaze had ignited setting the rest of the trash surrounding them in different shades of orange.

“Holy Shit” Yoongi whispered as the fumes started to make him cough.

The fire growing faster than you would have imagined causing your neurons to properly function again, you looked at Yoongi completely panicking “What the fuck do you think you are doing?? Call the fire department. I fucked up! “

Yoongi nodded quickly taking out his phone

Not even a minute later the sirens blasted through your neighborhood ready to put out the fire in the trash can. You wondered if you stood right in front of the pressured water hose, would it put out the fire that was burning from within your heart as well??

 Bullshit.

This was utter bullshit.

“One thousand seven hundred dollars!!! What the fuck? All I did was burn some blankets outside” you scram looking at the court fee you had just received in the mail.

 “Well, you did almost light up your apartment building??” Danielle said shaking her head as she sat down in what now was her usual seat aka Namjoon’s lap.

 You rolled your eyes at her, ready to argue your case, but before you could Danielle stood up pulling Namjoon along with her. Her slim figure not giving away the Hulk she has hidden within. Namjoon smiled at her like a love-sick puppy. You gagged playfully as she walked next to you ready to head out the door.

She looked at you suggestively as she gave you a wink “Anyway, we better head out. The rest of the kiddos are waiting for us in the Garage. See you there LATER” she said enunciating the last sentence, not really giving you a choice of whether you would make an appearance or not.

 “You too Yoongi, behave,” she told him as she bit her lip suggestively. The color of your cheeks brightening as you tried hiding the fact that you had noticed her not so subtle hint at Yoongi.

 Yoongi and you had grown closer with the passing months, other than school and work you had spent every waking moment together. The line between friendship and romance growing thinner and thinner by the minute, but when Yoongi tried to jump over the boundary, there was always something holding you back. Jungkook.

Even though he was long gone, you couldn’t shake him off. He was everywhere you looked. He was in the raindrops that kissed your skin in the evenings when memories of him twirling you around as he hummed a song to end it with a slow passionate kiss came to mind. He was in the late mornings when you would wake up at 11, and you would have a tough time deciding whether you wanted a late breakfast or early lunch, when back, when he was around Jungkook, would flip a coin, before you would instead end up having to eat dinner. Jungkook was behind every Superhero movie or comic book, the lines of some memorized due to the endless replays, courtesy of Jungkook. He had become a permanent mark. A tattoo that you thought would wash off with water and soap, but instead, it had turned into a lifetime commitment. Something you sometimes completely despised and regretted while at times you treasured it like it was the most beautiful piece of art.

There were days where you laid in bed, replaying your last day with him over and over again, wondering where you went wrong. Your head commanding your heart to move on, but your heart played deaf not following orders.

Yoongi had been your aloe vera. He had been there for you on your down days when the urge to google Jungkook’s name had become so tempting, you had turned your computer off and on over 100 times. He had studied with you a few hours before your class when you had forgotten to study because Jungkook thoughts had clouded all of your reasoning the night before. He had stood with you in court sharing your punishment over a stupid immature decision because of those stupid blankets. Yoongi had been there, all along from the beginning he had never gone away. Why did your heart keep pining for someone who was no longer there? It was just like chasing a ghost…..

 Yoongi’s head rested on your lap while he scrolled through his phone. His eyes moving slowly from side to side as he read an article that was obviously interesting to him. His facial expressions had become easier to read now, and you could tell he was deeply intrigued. You were but a pillow to him at the moment, so you decided to take the opportunity to admire the man who has stood beside you. His long fingers moving fluidly with ease, you could tell easily he played an instrument. His pouty lips hiding one of the cutest rarest of smiles you had ever seen. His nose a little button that sometimes scrunched up reminding you of a little kid. He was cute. He was handsome. Why couldn’t the butterflies in your belly flutter around for him?

 “You look a little troubled” Yoongi’s deep voice snapped you out of your thoughts. You looked up to stare into his brown eyes that were now leveled with yours.

“I am not...not at all I just…”

“Did you forget I can read you like the back of my hand?” he said pinching your cheek playfully as if you were a little girl.

You gave him a smile, that unwillingly turned into a pout, “I just don’t get it”

“Don’t get what??” he asked tilting his head to the side.

 You stood up from the couch and walked towards the window not daring to make eye contact with him, “Why it still hurts…. Why I can’t move on. Why are there days where I feel perfectly fine like he never existed only to wake up the next feeling like I can’t stand up because I am missing a part of me? I want to know why I did this to myself. I want to know why my brain is telling me to move on, but my heart is not having it. I want to confess that when I look at you I want to love you, but for some reason, something is holding me back….he is holding me back Yoongi, and I don’t know if he will ever let me go”

 Yoongi looked down at his hands, his phone forgotten beside him. He looked up at your now hunched figure across from him. Tears flowing down, something that hasn’t happened in a while, at least not in front of him. Yoongi stands up following your footsteps as he crouches down to level your face with his. His hand caressing the side of your face, wiping a few tears before he tilts your head up to look at him. Your eyes shyly meeting his. His breath hitting lightly on your lips as a scent of mint takes over your senses completely hypnotizing you.

Before you knew it, his hand had fallen away from your face, his wide eyes now focused on the direction of the front door.

“Kook?” he whispered in shock.

Your breathing hitched paralyzing you in place, barely gaining enough momentum to face towards the direction Yoongi was staring at.

Jungkook stood there in one of his usual white shirts, his face completely pale as he took in the sight before him.

He looked from Yoongi’s eyes to yours, a look of absolute betrayal taking over his previous shaken expression.

“THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!?” he scram walking forward completely furious at the man in front of you.

Before Yoongi could react, Jungkook was already holding him by the collar, pulling his fist back to aim a hard blow right upon his face.

You stood up quickly due to the adrenaline rushing through your veins. The confusion in your brain muted, to try and pacify the upcoming fight.

“Jungkook, put him down, nothing was going on,” you said trying to pry his hands off the man’s shirt.

“What are you saying (y/n), I can’t hear you with all that shit pouring out of your mouth,” Jungkook said completely furious.

His eyes practically glowing red with anger.

“Jungkook seriously let him go, we were just talking,” you said as you soothingly touched his neck, “Please babe”

Jungkook took a deep breath as he set Yoongi back down on his feet.

Yoongi looked confused at the younger boy standing in front of him “What the fuck bro! Where did you go? Why didn’t you call or anything?? We were all worried”

“You didn’t seem that worried a minute ago” Jungkook replied looking directly at you accusingly.

“Hey, don’t talk smack, she didn’t have a clue of where you were or what you were doing, you just disappeared,” Yoongi said trying to stand protectively in front of you.

“What are you talking about?? I left her a note. On the bed right before I left. I was scared, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to drag her with me to something that could potentially fall apart and leave us homeless” Jungkook explained.

You stared at him confused “Note??”

“Yes, I left you a letter, right beside where you were sleeping on top of the blankets” he replied, “Wait did you even read the letter? Did you even see it?”

You looked down completely baffled by your own stupidity. You met his eyes and then scurried towards the room you had once shared with him. The urge to look through every corner for the mysterious letter taking a front seat in your mind. It didn’t even take you 10 seconds to find the letter, it was neatly laying underneath your bed as if it was placed there by magic. The urge to facepalm yourself almost winning over your urge to cry in absolute dismay.

This letter right here was about to mend you or break you all over again.

 You looked back towards the door, the two boys standing there frozen in place. You looked at them both as silence took over the room. The letter in your hand felt like it was burning through your emotions. Nothing mattered more than the words written down in that piece of paper.

 Yoongi looked at you for a second and then back at Jungkook. An expression of defeat as he uttered “I think I should go”

You looked at him through your tear-filled eyes “I am sorry Yoongi”

 “Just….call me. Let me know you are okay before you head to bed” he said as he walked off. Not even giving Jungkook a second glance. Yoongi’s heart had been stomped on and it was all your fault.

 “I am sorry Yoongi” you whispered again as your focus went back to the item in your hands.

  (y/n),

I am sorry for taking off without saying goodbye, but I know how much you hate them.

If you take 15+ minutes to hang up on a phone call I would never leave the apartment.

I will be back though I promise. I am leaving without my phone or anything. I want this to be as quick as possible to get back to you. Once I assure this is not a too good to be true gimmick I’ll be back for you my love. We will move to the city together and I will make you mine forever. I love you so much and I am sorry for doing this without any prior notice. We have been through so much together already that a few months will be nothing on us.

You can hit me, scratch me, and make me your sex slave for years to come after I come back, but please do not forget about us. Do not give up. Be strong for me my love, like I’ll be strong for you. Listen to my radio shows and tv interviews, you will be mentioned in each one till I am back in your arms. I LOVE YOU!!!!

 Your KookieMonster

  Jungkook laid in your bed listening to the whole fiasco that had happened while he was gone. A smile of amusement plastered on his face much to your surprise. You were expecting yelling, and an endless number of accusing fingers your way, but all you got were smiles and chuckles in his behalf.

 “Why are you laughing??” you said crossing your arms and pouting “I was broken, I hated you, and I am now 2,000 dollars in debt to the city”

 “I am laughing because you could’ve avoided all this shit if you did your adulting correctly and actually did your bed,” he said as he stood up and walk towards you.

 The tears that you were holding back spilling out like a leaky faucet, “It hurt…. it hurt so much”

 “I know babe, but I am here now,” he says cradling in his arms. Those arms you have missed so much.

 “I love you so much …..so so much” you whispered as you peppered kisses along his face.

 He grasps your face in between his two hands and finally your lips meet. Desperation evident in every lick and bite.

A moan escapes your lips as you let him guide you back into bed. The past is forgotten and ripped away with every piece of clothing that was starting to pile up onto the floor.

 Jungkook backs away after both of your shirts are off, snapping you out of your heated hunger.  Your arms shooting automatically upward to pull him back to you.

“Wait are you sure you want to do this??” he asked with half-lidded eyes.

The same eyes you have dreamt about every night since you have last seen them were in front of you once again……. And your heart...your stupid heart…..is the one you follow as you kiss him again answering his previous question.

He stops you once again causing you to sigh in annoyance.

“Mood killer,” you say playfully as he scurries to get something from his pant’s pocket.

He pops out a ring and lands himself on one knee.

The confusing in your face is quite evident for her tries to explain what is happening before you reject him.

“It is not a wedding proposal….it’s a promise. I know I fucked up when I left you behind. From now on I promise I will never leave your side, and once we are up and not in debt we will do the whole white dress and big party thing” he says reassuring you.

You smile at him replaying his words in your head and then something clicks “Wait, what do you mean in debt??”

He shrugs his shoulders as if he was a child about to be scolded, “Well I kind of broke the contract when I came back here. I just couldn’t stand being without you anymore….I couldn’t so I left”

“Wait….you know you could’ve called me right?” you asked searching his eyes.

He dismissively shook his head “Not the same, plus I doubted you would’ve answered the phone when I didn’t even give you a proper see you later”

You rolled your eyes…..

“(y/n), my knee,” he said making a faint yelp as he tried to keep balanced “It is getting numb”

“Silly, stand up,” you said trying to pull him up.

“NOT TILL YOU ANSWER,” he said in between his teeth clearly in pain but stubborn as hell.

You looked at the boy in front of you. The one that had made you jump through hoops and see the world in a different perspective in a matter of months. The guy who was a complete and utter fuck up just like you.

You kissed him hard letting every emotion out in that kiss.

He looked at you dreamily “Is that a yes??”

“I’ll let you know in the morning,” you said as you grasped him from the arms and pulled him towards you, your new blankets about to be blessed by both your bodies tangling and fusing into one.

Whatever tomorrow brought doesn’t matter as long as there was a Jungkook in your life….. No matter how, where, or when….as long as he was beside you.

#kkreationsnet #kreativewritersnet #networkbangtan #bts fanfic #jungkook fanfic #bts #jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook x you #jungkook badboy #jungkook scenario #jungkook fanfiction #bts fanfictioni #bts angst #bts romance #bts badboy au #jungkook angst #jungkook romance #jungkook fluff #kpop #kpop fanfic #kpop scenario #bts fanfiction

[tohearandbeheard]

Glass House, Brick House

Why couldn’t he read her mind?

Paroxysms of neon light cut through the dark The bass bumped and thumped--a crush of people shook like the skin of a drum in time with the music. They thought along with the lyrics, all in unison:

  Go ahead you've, taken me down now

Give me, give me, give me, give me what you don't know

Go ahead, take me all out now

Get this, get this into your game

  Though Soren didn’t think along with the crowd. His thoughts were fixated on a young woman with raven hair. He bombarded her with questions, propositions, accusations--but she didn’t react. Or wouldn’t answer. They all yelled along, but she just danced.

  You got me in a heading drop

I never wanna come off

You got me with your beat of love

I never wanna come out

She could be ignoring him . . . Though he was practically shouting at her mind. The more immediate puzzle was why he couldn’t see anything inside her head—nothing on the surface, nothing deep. She was opaque, a sealed envelope. Frustrated, he hurled a probe into the mind of the next girl over, a passing waitress. He saw her indignant thoughts swirl around in response like an agitated hive.

 “Hey, get out. I didn’t invite you,” scoffed the waitress. “If you want to place an order, ask nicely.”

He retreated, leaving her mind with a dismissal. She flung after him the image of her middle finger. It was uncouth to read a stranger that deep uninvited--but manners weren’t on his mind. He had to test that it all still worked--that he hadn’t suddenly lost his voice or something. He thought back to the raven-haired woman. More gently this time.

  Think of me

I'll never break your heart

Think of me

You're always in the dark

I am your light, your light, your light

Think of me

You're never in the dark

 Still nothing. He would confront her, then. He would have to talk to her--out loud. But here was no good. Too loud, in both senses of the word. She danced for an unbearably long time. He listened in, and she never once thought along with the music like everyone else, or acknowledged him in any way. Eventually, she’d had her fill and left the club, and so Soren followed.

Only the faintest heartbeat bassline followed them outside. Into the chill night air that swaddled the city street like a wet blanket. The unreadable woman crossed the street as a car turned towards Soren. The headlights crowned her with a flaring halo for the longest second. Beautiful. But her face was blank, expressionless, aloof.

             Soren hurried after her. His thoughts followed her like smoke would a smoker. Other thoughts tangled with his--fired from a homeless man hunched against the translucent panel of a bus stop. 

             “Need help. Spare change. Hard times,” the ragged man was broadcasting.

Soren put up a polite but distracted deflection, “Sorry. No time. Good luck.”

Soren then redoubled his efforts: “Hey, you. With the raven hair. Stop.”

She marched on oblivious and turned down a side street. 

“Hey! Wait up!” he finally called audibly. His voice was so weak, he thought. He didn’t sound like he did in thoughts--confident and full--and that passing car nearly drowned him out. But she’d heard, right--

“Are you… talking to me?” The raven-haired woman had turned around.

Soren almost forgot that talking out loud required a breath--which breath he had lost jogging the last few yards to catch up. 

“Y-yeah. I… Why can’t I read your mind?”

----------

Three days earlier, Soren sat on his front steps reading a book. The cover was a nauseating pastel, with a sweeping title: Be an Empath: Learning to Connect in a Telepathic Age. Beneath the title, a carefree seagull tried his best to mime what empathy must look like to a seagull.

Soren hated reading. So inefficient. It was like talking out loud--it took so much time to form words. Pencil, pen, keyboard, tongue, teeth and lips. They had their place, sure--leave a nice little note for someone, sing a song--but a book was just an information dump. The more transparent it was, the better. And he sure wasn’t seeing through these pages. If only he had money to spare, he’d just go to a conference by the author and tune in to a thought-lecture. Faster, more thorough. He did his best to imagine the smarmy psychologist pictured on the back and what his thoughts would sound like. Nothing like the words, for sure.

“The mind is like a house,” the doctor explained. “You can decorate your exterior. Put things out on your porch. Wave at neighbors down the street. You can clean and organize the interior, and look through photo albums. But anyone can come in. It’s like a glass house, and that means no secrets. Try to be a good neighbor.”

Soren frowned, wishing the words on the pages were thoughts, that the book was a mind that he could ask questions and exchange with. He glanced up briefly, distracted by the sonorous tweets of a passing bird and it’s singular thoughts.

“Information is not connection, nor is communication connection. Just because you hear the words your partner is thinking, you don’t know what those words mean to them emotionally or experientially.” 

“Amen, brother,” Soren nodded, but didn’t actually move his head. 

“Just because they show you an image, doesn’t mean you understand what they mean with that message. Since the turn of the century, humans have been able to read minds, but some of us still struggle with reading hearts. With understanding meaning.”

Soren frowned, and not just at the namby-pamby writing. He still remembered that image, that volcanic culmination. Trisha, his girlfriend, hair and eyes wild. Her nails at his neck, throttling him, shaking him like a ragdoll. She hadn’t done that, of course, but she’d thought it. It didn’t take an empath to know that she was furious. Silly how it had all started. Trisha was his girlfriend, and she lived with him. Good person. Pretty mind. Well-kept. Curated. They got along. Fit like cogs on gears. Most of the time.

She’d wanted a skylight. In the living room, right above the couch.

It had all happened so fast, the meltdown. He had come home, and she had tried to hide the fact that she’d called a contractor. $950 was the quote. Installation, 22 inch by 45 inch. Double-pane glass. That had made him most upset, actually. That she had tried to hide it. Obviously, she couldn’t--and sending her a question called it all up, like a web search query. From there, it was just mismatched priorities, attack and defense. Reaction, thoughts catalyzed by anger.

They hadn’t communicated much at since then--kept their hands and minds to themselves. She still lived in his apartment, but her little brain-house had a big “Stay Out” sign on the front porch. Soren shook his head and closed the book, skeptical there was anything in there that could fix his relationship, or his life. Or anything. 

----------

“Oh that’s just how I am. Strange, huh?” the woman smiled, as if she was laughing at Soren. 

“I don’t…” His mouth pulled apart at the first syllable, air escaping, suddenly truncated twice with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, once for d and once for t. All in the space of a second. Soren had a million questions. He groaned internally when he realized he would have to vocalize them all. 

“And who are you? You aren’t the guy that was staring at me all night, in the club, were you?” 

If he had to guess, her tone was coy? Sarcastic? He felt an anxiety boil up inside him. Was she making fun of him? Did she think he was stalking her? He pried at her mind again, but saw and heard only blank. Her house was shuttered up. 

Soren smiled at last, his mind and heart neck-and-neck in a frantic race to keep it together. 

“I was just, uh, curious. I thought everyone was born a telepath?” “Ask her name. Get off the street?” he thought.

“I guess not,” she shrugged. “Hey, listen. It’s cold, and I’m going for a kip at that cafe right over there.” She paused. “Come with?”

“Come with?” his mind reeled a little. Was that a romantic advance, a test? “She’s so strange--closed mind-- but she’s beautiful-- he still had game, yet-- surprising that she’d be so forward-- what WAS she thinking?” 

“Sure,” said Soren, nonchalant. 

Her name was Penny. She lived on the other side of town. Her parents lived an hour away. They were both telepaths, but somehow she wasn’t. She didn’t know why. 

It was grievously slow going--questions and answers, and they had to stop talking to do things like sip a coffee and nibble at bread.  But it was a tantalizing game. Soren had no idea what Penny was thinking, and he soon trusted that she couldn’t see anything in his mind, either. Soren was terribly anxious to know what she was thinking, but it was strangely freeing to have mental privacy. Penny couldn’t know anything Soren didn’t volunteer, out loud. Notably, Penny didn’t know about Trisha.

Penny was quick. She surprised him several times with a turn of phrase or a joke. She was an editor. Liked to “help people find their voice”. Maybe be a publisher someday. Soren said he loved books. Penny said she was sad people didn’t read anymore, but she had lots at her apartment. Nice wooden shelves, leather bindings. Her apartment was a quick cab away. Did he want to see her books? Yeah. Yeah he did.

Four steps up to her front door, which was a deep blue with a diamond window. Her apartment was cozy and well-decorated. Clean. Smelled warm, like a holiday. Her books were impressive. They were organized by the colors of their covers. It was pretty. Her eyes were pretty, too. 

Her couch was soft. So was the skin along her jaw. Soren kissed her. He had no idea what she was thinking, or what he was thinking for that matter. She pushed him back on the couch.

Soren looked up. There was a great big black rectangle in the ceiling. Penny had a skylight, looking up into the inscrutable night sky.

[notanotherscenarioblog]

I Still Love You

Edited from my past blog. Enjoy!

-

Taekwoon & I have been dating for 3 years & I made him my number one priority. Our first two years flew by but we spent this past year fighting too much. My dancing & his schedules as an artist were getting in the way of us spending quality time together. All of a sudden he broke my heart. His reason? I had no clue. To this day, I still have no clue. I had to move on but I was having trouble.

When I finally decided to attend my dance class, the teacher thought I was dead because I hadn't gone for weeks. I lied & told her I had personal matters to take care of. Boyfriend problems are personal, right? Err, back to my story. I finally talked to my teacher about my problem & she understood. I asked if I was still her first choice to perform at the ADC next month & she said yes. I asked her if she could let me stay in her classroom to practice my dance. She agreed as long as I didn't make a mess & didn't leave too late.

Happily, after class, I started stretching. And while I was doing that, I looked around to find a stereo but to no avail. So I used my phone to play music. As soon as the first song came up, I told my mind to go blank for those 4 minutes and immediately, my body began moving with the music. About 3 hours later, I found myself sweating, panting and in my signature pose.

It was about 10 pm. The moonlight was shining in through the windows and into the dance room, causing the room to give out a haunting glow. I decided to call it quits for tonight and come back the next day. Surely enough, every day, with the help of my teacher, I went back to my dance classes and everyone was happy to see me. Which was weird since I never really talked to my classmates. But I'll take free compliments!

-

December.

The month of the year where I have to get ready for my dance competition. At 7 o' clock pm on the 16th, I was to perform at Seoul Arts Dance Academy Dance Hall to show off what I believe in. Which is dance because its a part of my life - it's a part of me. At age 6, I began dancing as if it was my source of air. I didn't choose dancing, dancing chose me. My mom always believed that.

This is my chance to be accepted into my favorite company. I heard that if I landed in the top 3, I could become a dance teacher. The question now is can I do it?

-

The night of my big performance was fast approaching and I had yet to come up with a routine. I still couldn't think because I received a text from Taekwoon that said to meet him at our usual spot at 7. Our usual spot was in a cafe. The cafe where him & I finally told each other our true feelings. It was also where the two of us would have our small dates when we couldn't go anywhere else because of his promotions or my dance. Now, the cafe will be the place where him & I talk after 2 months of not speaking to each other. Hopefully when this ends, we'll be back where we belong - in each others hearts.

I sat down at our usual table and waited for him. Butterflies were already starting to form in my stomach. I waited for about 20 minutes, when I felt a hand touch my shoulder.

"Hey," he said softly.

I looked up at him & said, "hey"

"How are you?"

"Good."

There was an awkward silence before he spoke.

"Can I sit?" He asked, motioning his hand towards the empty seat in front of me.

"Sure." I said, smiling.

"Listen..." He trailed off.

"I'm sorry for breaking up with you. I thought I was letting you down with me constantly being away and you feeling lonely. I thought that at some point, you would cheat on me or leave me. I didn't want to experience that; it would break my heart. So..I kinda broke your heart instead." He scratched the back of his head & continued, "I know it was wrong, but if you can reconsider taking me back, I'll treat you better. I'll be the man you deserve. I'll be-"

"Woonie I... I don't know." I sighed then continued, "you left me without a goodbye. How do I know this time will be different?"

He cupped my cheek when he noticed I was crying.

"I just...I don't know. I'm sorry." I left without telling him goodbye.

December 16.

5PM.

I was getting ready for my dance performance & was a nervous wreck. After I showered, I was looking through my closet to find something to wear. Luckily, I found this dress & I'm surprised it still fits me. After I got dressed, Taekwoon texted me to meet him inside the dance hall. I looked at the text & continued getting ready. As I was heading out of the door & noticed the rain that pouring down. "It's raining.” I quickly went inside my car & drove off.

When I quickly went inside the venue, I was told that someone special was here to see me. I was told where to meet this someone but I'm not so sure I'm ready to see him again. As I walked into my dressing room, I was immediately pushed inside & lips slammed into mine. I was shocked at first, but then I quickly responded & pulled back.

"Taekwoon what-..how?"

"Ravi told me where'd you'd perform."

I sighed, "of course."

"Listen... If there's any chance we'd get back together."

"Taek-"

He interrupted, coming closer, "That day...you called me Woonie. Please, if there's any chance of us being together-"

"There isn't."

He came closer, "Then say you don't love me. Look me straight in the eye, say you don't love me & I'll leave right now."

I looked at him, my mouth open, but I just couldn't say it. "I..I can't"

I turned around but he turned me back to look at him & kissed me. As he continued kissing me, my hands grabbed his shirt, inching myself closer.

He moaned, "I want you."

"I'm yours."

He kissed me again, his hands sending chills down my spine as they reached the end of my dress & slowly brought it up toward my thighs. My lips trailed from his lips, down to his chin & up his neck, biting it.

"Ow!" He softly yelled.

"Does that hurt oppa?" I asked innocently.

He smirked, "Oh you're gonna get it."

I pushed myself on him but as quickly as I did, he grabbed me by my waist and pushed me down my couch. His fingers started crawling down my thighs & into my panties. I was a moaning mess. He slipped off my panties and penetrated me. He watched my expressions but he was nowhere near satisfied as his fingers moved in slow motion.

"I-I have m-my dance p-performance.." I trailed off, while he tried to find my sweet spot.

I let out a long moan & he smirked. "Then we better make this quick."

His hands ripped off my panties & he hurriedly took off his pants and boxers. He then climbed ontop of me & started teasing me with his hard-on. I screamed once he entered me, his load filling me up & prayed no one could hear us. He kissed me everywhere to try to ease the pain. He was thrusting slow but soon picked up speed, then he started fondling my breasts through my dress & I couldn't take it anymore so I kissed him to try to keep quiet.

"I love you," he said.

"I-I love y-you too."

I still feel the same. Our feelings were mutual every day. His hands were working wonders on my nipples even though they were covered. My moans & his grunts were silenced by our make-out session but that couldn't be said by our skin-slapping. Several pleasureful minutes later, he started thrusting harder & faster, making me release countless moans. He grunted before he released inside me & that was all I needed to hear to make me release on him.

He started riding out our orgasms until he finally stopped, pulling out and collapsing ontop of me. Our breathing was slowly coming back to normal as he collapsed ontop of me, giving me a sweet kiss on my lips.

"W-what time is it?," I asked.

He picked up his watch to check, "6:30"

I panicked, starting to fix myself, "babe I gotta go."

"I know. I love you," he said, kissing me.

"I love you too~"

After a few seconds, I spoke again, "come see my routine."

8:30 PM.

The dance competition ended & I think I did really well. The judges said they'd post the results online tomorrow morning. I looked for Taekwoon, glancing over the large crowds of people just waiting to lock eyes with his. As I saw him, he looked over me & sent me one of his signature smiles.

I ran up to him & he pulled me up to spin me around.

"I'm so proud of you," he smiled, setting me back down.

"Thank you oppa!"

We began walking, hand in hand, enjoying the moment. After a few minutes, I slapped his shoulder, "I could've done better if my legs weren't sore," I blushed towards the end.

"I'm so sorry jagi~" He winked & I knew he was being sarcastic.

After a few seconds, he spoke, grinning, "I love you."

"Oh yeah, how much?," I asked, crossing my arms.

"You'll see," he smirked, picking me up & carrying me bridal style to his car.

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