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bloodstained-ballgowns · 3 years

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Things I... didn’t like as much, about Black Widow (2021):

Disclaimer: I loved this movie. I would give it 4/5 stars overall. This is a lot of nit-picking. Most of the choices I’m talking about here I still really enjoyed, but this is how I would change them to improve it *for me*. If you disagree, that’s fine! Obviously, spoilers.

I said in my ‘Things I Loved About Black Widow’ post that I consider the first 53 minutes to be perfect, and the rest to be not-so-perfect. This is where I complain about the not-so-perfect stuff. They didn’t drop the ball on the third act, they just...fumbled it a bit. It stayed dark, but to me, it lost a bit of its grit. Cate Shortland’s influence really shone through in the first act, but it got lost around the second and third acts for me because of how Marvel-y it got.

Firstly, I’m considering the hand-to-hand combat here to be second only to CATWS. So why did that element basically dissolve towards the end of the film? She barely fought anyone in the prison breakout. Yes, Natasha fought the Widows, but that was all slowmo-y and widows-bites-y and did not have the same level of choreography. I wish they’d carried it through.

Talking of action, there was not enough of it between Natasha and Taskmaster (who is getting a whole other post, because that is a bag of mixed feelings I don’t want to delve into here), particularly in the third act. Action isn’t something I’m particularly interested in but I was excited for this dynamic. Antonia wasn’t the villain, but like, the bridge fight did not effectively demonstrate her whole mirroring deal. Yelena and Nat’s fight had more mirroring than her and Tasky’s. Antonia’s skill set really shines in hand-to-hand onscreen, but as I said, I felt that kind of dissolved in the third act. They completely cheated us out of an impressive showdown when Natasha let Antonia out of the cell and moved backwards and I totally thought they were going to duel...which would lead into the sky fight...and then...the room cracks and they’re blown apart?? Hmmm.

Why was the Red Room in the sky??? I get that they were moving around a lot and this movie needed to have some kind of Marvel explosive finale and it looked cool and everything but I prefer the comics’ more grounded version. I just think it would have been more effective for Natasha and Yelena to walk through the old halls of the building they grew up/were trained in, find the new facility underground or something and then blow the whole place to smithereens. It would have actually cemented the whole ‘going back to where it all started’ thing.

Now I know the reason for Dreykov’s off-screen demise was to show how a man as purely evil as him didn’t deserve a major, glorified death. He deserved the death of an afterthought. But I would have liked to see Nat plunge a knife into his heart. Or to see him try to go after Yelena somehow and Nat just shoot him in the back of the head. It didn’t feel like they gave us any closure on that front, particularly as they made a whole deal about Nat not seeing the body in Budapest...and then we didn’t see the body here either. I almost feel like his death was made so insignificant that it was forgettable.

The whole flashing back and showing that actually they did have everything figured out did not work for me, it felt like lazy writing. It gave me “BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING, BET YOU UNDERESTIMATED HER, LOOK HOW CLEVER NATASHA IS! DIDN’T YOU UNDERESTIMATE HER? SHE HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT YOU FOOLS HARHARHAR” vibes and I was just like...I know. Literally, I know how clever and calculated she is. I knew she wouldn’t have been outplayed like that at Melina’s. Maybe other people didn’t, but come on guys, think up with something a little less ‘gotcha’.

What the hell happened with Nat and Ross before they cut to ‘two weeks later’? *confusion intensifies*

Again, this is getting long. See the read-more.

This movie had a lot of bases to cover and a lot of information to convey and I think the script managed that pretty well overall, but it did lapse into a bit of ‘show-don’t-tell’ syndrome at times. Show me Nat’s mother being ‘relentless’ in her search, don’t just tell me about it. I did not want Renner’s Clint Barton in this movie, but they could have made the Budapest flashback a smidge longer, for my liking.

Disney would never do this, but I would have loved an R-rated Black Widow movie. Yelena is absolutely a character that would yell ‘Fuck!’ really loudly (think Florence Pugh in that cactus video). My suggestions above for Dreykov’s death were me being reserved: Nat stabbing him repeatedly would have been so cathartic (for me, idk about her).

Y’all know I’m a slut for Nat’s everything in this movie, particularly the hair, but goddammit the hair. Riddle me this, if Nat had in a perfectly good braid when she got into the helicopter, why did she emerge with flowing locks and one tiny useless plait on the left side of her head?? And then she redid that into the ponytail with all the little braids while preparing for battle at Melina’s (never mind the fact that Nat’s hair would not have been long enough for them to reach much past her shoulders as well as being tied up) and fit it all under a Melina-wig! HELLO, LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE SPEAKING.

I’m pretty sure the whole Nat-not-understanding-science-speak thing was only there for the “In English”-*replies in Russian* gag but it still seemed a little ooc since she’s never had a problem with it before. Idk if I would class this is as Nat ‘playing dumb’ to get more information like she does later with Dreykov since Yelena is readily giving her that info, and Yelena is also good enough to realise when she’s being manipulated like that.

Ummmm whole separate post for reasoning and such but the magic dust antidote? Not a vibe. No thank you. Lazy. Unrealistic.

So...Alexei and Melina. It’s not that I don’t like them as characters - I really enjoyed them, I think they’re great characters. Fascinating to analyse. Did I love the Ohio mission sequence? Yes. Did I really appreciate the family dynamic and all the fanfic possibilities it gave us? Yes. But do I wish they weren’t in this movie at all? Yeah, kinda. The family dynamic was funny, and it was heartwarming, and it was heartbreaking, because it was executed so well, but the fact is that it was added by Kevin Feige to make this movie more palatable for the wider audience. Alexei’s dad jokes breaking the tension were probably an imperative for most audiences to enjoy the film. (Yelena’s dry sarcasm could have filled that role easily for me). But I didn’t want the tension broken. I didn’t want people to relax. I wanted them to come out and have to decompress because it was so intense. It’s easier to market a film about ‘family and going back to the past’ than ‘female subjugation and exploitation’. I don’t appreciate it, but I get it. Making this into a quasi-ensemble piece in the second and third acts just irritated me though. I wanted all the screentime possible to be on Natasha and Yelena. They could totally have pulled it off without their parents.

This really is nitpicky, but would a Liho mention have been too much to ask for? It would have been so easy, when Yelena asked “did you ever wish for kids?”, Nat could have replied with “i have a cat”, which is a good deflection but also informative, or her lockscreen could have lit up to show a tiny black kitten. Idk, this movie used a couple of good comics references and I guess I was hoping for one more.

*whispers and runs away* Bucky should have been here. Goddammit.

In conclusion, a lot of my critiques could be fixed if we didn’t live in a time where this film still had to be palatable for wider audiences who do not care about characters nearly as much as they care about action or humour or plot or spectacle. A lot of the strong choices paid off (they’ve riled up dudebros enough to prove that). The Marvel-y ending and Alexei’s humour did not. The rest is just logistical errors and missed opportunities.

This is a lot of complaining but I promise, these annoyances are much more minor than I’m making them out to be. The movie is magnificent even with them.

#please don't come for me #polite discourse pls and thank you #black widow #black widow spoilers #black widow comics #natasha romanoff #yelena belova #melina vostokoff #alexei shostakov #antonia dreykov #the red room #general dreykov #liho the cat #my post #black widow analysis

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nct-lian · 3 years

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nct 2020 reacts to the “visions of you” trailer

warnings: murder, use of knives (stabbing), blood

the video started off with nct’s group greeting, introducing themselves and saying what they’d be doing in the video

“today we will be doing what, shotaro?” taeil pointed to shotaro who was sitting comfortably beside him

“uhhh we’ll be watching lian noona’s new dramas trailer!”

all the members then clapped and cheered, happy she was acting again

johnny cut in and said that lian was sitting behind the camera on her phone and that she was also there

lilizens are crazy and he knew the members would get hate for “leaving her out”

BUT ANYWAYS :D

xiaojun, who was seated in between mark and jungwoo, took the initiative of putting his finger on the mouse to see how long the video was

“wah—! this is the longest trailer ever, it’s five minutes long!”

a chorus of “woahs” and “welp it must be interesting then” sounded through the studio and it made lian laugh behind the camera

everyone else there after that: pls she’s so cute

“would anyone like to summarize the drama briefly?” taeyong scanned the room, looking for a member who volunteered

sungchan raised his hand up high, offering quickly

“okay well it’s about a student who gets murdered, but stays in the world as a ghost and falls in love! right, noona?”

lian beamed and gave him a thumbs up from behind the camera when she saw that he was looking for her approval

“yes! good job, channie :)”

“let’s watch it, yes?” jungwoo hit play excitedly, already anxious to watch it

the trailer started out with soft music playing in the background, a pair of friends skipping through the hallway of what looked to be a school

the camera panned over to their front profiles, and it showed park mikyung (lian) and what people found later to be “kim minji,” her best friend

lucas shouted out, “예뻐 !! (pretty)” when he saw her smiling brightly

she laughed quietly, careful not to disrupt the viewing, yangyang following after her

it was dark outside, and it was clear the two friends are heading out of the school after night classes

when they both exited the front doors of the school, a couple other students waved goodbye with a smile, “bye mikyung! and minji, too”

“ahh~ she’s the popular girl” lian could pick up what shotaro said in japanese and nodded

taking the camera off of the best friends, it went over to a boy who seemed to have been looking at them from afar, almost hidden away behind a wall

the mysterious boy mumbled, “just you wait, mikyung-ah” and chenle had to slap a hand over his mouth in order to hold in the loud ass gasp trying to escape

“minji, i’ll call you tonight! i have to get home, my mom is probably waiting” mikyung could be seen giving her friend a hug and walking away from campus and onto the sidewalk

she gracefully flipped the straightened hair out of her face, pulling her phone out of her backpack along with her earbuds

“play taemin-sunbaenim!!!!!!!!” haechan suddenly yelled, the group chuckling afterwards

it was like haechan predicted what would happen, as they then saw that she chose to play a shinee song on her walk back home

“AYYEEEE”

though the fun was cut short as the members watched the screen closely, mikyung stopping in her tracks as she slowly turned her head to look behind her

“omg she hears footsteps, MIKYUNG BE CAREFUL” yuta raised his voice

she swore she heard footsteps, but shrugged it off anyway and continues walking, bopping her head slightly to the beat

mikyung began hearing the footsteps come closer, and everyone watched as she picked up her pace in walking

it wasn’t long before she turned her head around again, but this time she saw the same boy from the school

the members gasped out loud, yelling at mikyung to run and that it wasn’t safe there

“YAH MIKYUNG- RUN GO HOME OMG RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN” “MIKYUNG GET OUT OF THERE” “LIAN YOUR CHARACTER IS SO DUMB”

mikyung didn’t run, though, and she just stared at him

“ahh- mikyung-ah- i was just heading home, are you heading home as well?”

she could only nod at him and wave goodbye, but she waited until he was out of view and in front of her so she could go back to her home while feeling safe

the rest had happened so quickly, mikyung running as fast as could to get back to the safety of her household

“FINALLY- RUN MIKYUNG” yangyang cheered

the trailer had skipped over to her finally entering the apartment she lived in comfortably with her mom, but her mom hadn’t seemed to have gotten home yet

she took off her backpack and walked into her room, taking out the contents and spreading them across her desk neatly

she dropped the backpack onto the floor and walked back to the kitchen to get some grapes to eat while waiting for her mom

“gosh why is this so scary?” hendery piped up, watching as mikyung washed her grapes and put them into a bowl, heading into her room for what they assumed to be a late night study session

a time lapse of mikyung writing down notes and flipping notebook pages took over the screen, and now an empty bowl could be seen sitting in the sink

a ring went off, startling renjun a little bit

the members all clung onto each other, the trailer gradually getting scarier and scarier even though there was almost nothing happening just yet

after the ring sounded, mikyung looked over her shoulder and saw a faint shadow hiding behind one of the curtains that had covered the sliding doors of the apartment

“OH MY GOD SHE’S GONNA DIE-“ jisung shouted

“SHUT UP JISUNG DON’T SPOIL ANYTHING” chenle shot back

mikyung let herself gasp, hastily feeling around her body to check whether or not she had her phone on her, and to her luck at that moment, she did

she pulled out the phone and hurried to enter minji’s chat room, typing as fast as she could, mikyung sent a simple text that said, “call 911. i need help”

the floorboards creeked behind her, and she knew whoever was behind those curtains was coming closer and closer

if she didn’t start moving now, there was an incredibly high chance she could literally die right there right now

mikyung put her phone back into the pocket of the skirt that came with her school uniform and tried to run, but something griped around her waist before she was able to escape what was once her safe place

she grunted, feeling the grip tighten

“i’m terrified” mark’s eyes widened at the scene playing out in front of him

mikyung wanted to scream, she wanted to let her neighbours know she was in danger, but a hand covered her mouth before she could do so

“ah, mikyung-ah.. if only you knew the consequences, hm? if i can’t have you, nobody can.” and with that, the same boy from the school, the same boy who stopped her on her way back home, plunged the knife into her back with no hesitation

he let his hand uncover her mouth to hear the cry she let out as she fell to the floor, blood oozing out of the open wound in her back

the boy chuckled to himself, removing the knife from her back to increase blood loss, but he didn’t stop there

he continued to stab her, creating another wound in her back and one in her stomach

he left her there to suffer, exiting through the glass doors in the kitchen and carefully walking down the steps that led to the street outside the apartment complex

the gloves he was wearing to mask any fingerprints from being discovered were taken off and thrown in a trash bin, along with the knife he used to kill mikyung with

the focus of the camera however was no longer turned to him, but was back in the now quiet kitchen of mikyung’s home

her body was still on the floor, a pool of blood now visible from underneath her

it was seconds later that her eyes closed and her breathing stopped, her face going emotionless

park mikyung was dead

all the members had frowns on their faces, not being able to see her in such pain even though it was all fake

a sniffle was then heard from the back row of the members, the boys in front all turning to look behind them

“johnny, are you crying?!” taeil shreeked

“you’re NOT crying?!” he wiped his eyes and sniffled again

“oppa! don’t cry!” lian shouted at him from behind the camera

he shook his head in retaliation, “this is so sad! what a cruel world we live in.”

the members all laughed at that, somewhat understanding where he was coming from

“i’m going to be traumitized for life after this.” doyoung said

off camera, johnny received a tissue from a staff member, allowing everyone to continue the viewing of the trailer

jungwoo hushed the little side conversations, telling them they still had two minutes left of the video

everyone settled down and stood still in their respective seats, full attention back on the laptop sitting at the front

sirens were going off like crazy, mikyung’s lifeless body still laying there in a pool of blood

by the time paramedics arrived along with a swarming line of police cars, as well as minji herself, there was no saving mikyung

the cries of minji could be heard even though the camera wasn’t focused on her

it was devastating to watch

montages of other clips then played out, a scene of an incredibly sad, middle-aged woman was shown sobbing in front of mikyung’s picture at her funeral

dressed in a black hanbok, she bowed down to her daughter’s picture that was surrounded in white flowers and banners that wished her peace and happiness in the afterlife, crying for her to come back

“i’m about to cry too-” taeyong said, feeling bad for the woman

the scene was soon over, a new and happier one playing instead

it finally showed the second main character, son eunsang, quietly walking down the hall and looking for a water fountain

mikyung was walking on the other side of him and looked over to see what he was doing

she got a little closer, thinking nothing of it because, well, she was a ghost

but she stopped in her tracks when she caught eunsang looking back at her

she waved a little to see what his response would be, and to her surprise, he bowed

“can you see me?” she questioned, and she gasped when he nodded his head

that was the end of the clip, but another one followed in its tracks

“yah, don’t walk through me!” mikyung yelled, eunsang walked right through her body in order to get away from the conversation that they had (which wasn’t included into the trailer)

a couple of the members laughed at that, but the rest remained invested in the video

more tiny little scenes went on to play after that, light-hearted moments between the two main characters left the members smiling fondly

but it was one scene in particular that had them all clapping for eunsang and cheering him on

a group of boys, seemingly popular, had been teasing eunsang for only god knows what, but they had also mentioned mikyung

they were saying things like, “you look rather upset after mikyung died. did you like her? eunsang, did you like a dead girl?”

different angles of the shot had shown mikyung standing beside him, some didn’t. but after she had seemed to have enough of the stupid conversation topic, she brought out her hand and slapped one of the boys’ books onto the ground

her being a ghost, nobody knew how the books had fallen and his sidekicks took a step back

they started to think eunsang was some sort of wizard

eunsang smiled down at her and followed in her footsteps, throwing a punch at the same guy who had just stood back up after picking up the fallen textbooks from the floor

jaehyun finally spoke up after that, “wAH! hwang inyeop is so cool!”

the rest of the members agreed with him and all started clapping, “THAT’S RIGHT EUNSANG. PROTECT OUR LIANNA” they cheered

after that, there weren’t too many other clips that were worth pausing for. just cute moments, and a few angsty ones to get viewers excited for the series

the trailer ended with a loud bang, a big logo of the title displayed out on the screen with the release date right below it

the voices of lian (mikyung) and inyeop (eunsang) had both read out the title in sync

and with that, he trailer was over

the members all did one final synchronized clap, applauding the amazing acting skills they were able to see

“that was so good! any final thoughts?” taeyong took the lead

hendery raised his hand, “i’m so excited for this. when it comes out, i’ll be waiting for it to finish so that i’m able to binge watch it :D”

a couple of the other members nodded their heads, agreeing and saying that it’d be better to wait so they’re not left on a cliffhanger

more sweet commentary continued for a couple more minutes before the filming process began to get too long, so they had to finish it off quickly

“wait! lian, come say something!”

lian, who was behind the camera, looked from her phone and went over to the group of boys

she took a seat on jungwoo’s lap and began speaking

“hii~ i’d just like to say that i hope you guys are looking forward to “visions of you” !! inyeop-oppa and i worked really hard, and we wish for you all to enjoy watching it~ please give it support when it comes out, and have fun watching the trailer if you haven’t already! bye bye~”

after she said goodbye to the camera, the boys all did as well and the video came to a close

#lian: nct #nct #nct 127 #nct dream #wayv #nct addition #nct female member #kim chungha #lianna bae #nct 127 added member #nct 127 female member #nct dream female member #nct dream added member #nct 22nd member #nct 24th member #hwang inyeop #nct 2020 #nct 2021

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naturaldisasterfanfiction · 4 years

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Frowning at Mel “stop messing around, if you’re going to plan on being an active auntie in my baby’ life I don’t want games” Mel likes to massage coco butter on my stomach, which I don’t mid because then it saves me from doing it and I can just relax but she is taking forever and is playing around by drawing things on my stomach, stifling out a yawn as I rested my head back on the pillow “I swear to god Melissa!” I shouted “you got me shouting now, stop it” Mel just laughed at me, she is laughing, and I am annoyed “I can’t believe how amazing the scan pictures came out now, it’s creepy but cute. I cried when she said the baby finger is in its mouth, like” reaching to my side table “look at it, literally has my forehead” looking at my scan picture “chile, forehead for days. Chris has a receding fucking hairline and your hairline is no different, the baby has no choice but to have a big forehead and hairline starting from the back” my mouth fell open “oopss, sorry” she isn’t wrong but still “I hate you, I would kick you but you are being helpful” smiling at my scan picture, this just makes me so happy. Like this is my baby right now in my stomach just relaxing, I am fucking mind blown by how I am bringing life to the world. We spoke on so much, the difficulties that could happen but I am going all natural, I don’t want nobody cutting into me unless it is at a point where I could die but I am all for the natural thing “yeah, I heard your mom saying that you are going natural? I mean I am not the person to say anything but isn’t it better just cutting and then out it comes?” placing the scan picture on my chest “I think not, unless I could die or my baby could die then I will back down but I want to go through it normally, I don’t want to be lazy and just lay there. I am like every other woman; I don’t care what anyone says. I said it to Doctor Wen, she explained the reason why they would cut me open if they needed but she is happy for me to do natural and I agreed on the reasons why, but I think a lot of famous women just do the easier option to not change anything and to make it as perfect as possible, I am not for that. If that baby is stretching my pussy then so be it. My only baby anyways” Mel pulled a face as she shuffled away and sat on the bed “I would rather be cut open, I am lazy like that” shaking my head at Mel “get pregnant, we can have baby play dates” poking my bottom lip out “no way sis, your baby is my baby too. Just you go through the pain” Mel cackled; she is not shit.

I have the biggest clothes I can wear right now; I am leaving the home after all these weeks and I am feeling nervous about it all “are we all ready?” walking out of my room, popping my scan picture in my bag “we are, so we are going straight to the hanger. I have arranged it, I know they like doing spot checks but not today, I mean we can’t have you getting searched with the baby bump. No spot check, I have arranged it that we are arriving” Jen pointed at me as she walked over to me “good, I am glad. I think I would be devastated if that were to happen, I do not need that right now. So, we have J. Cole and Kendrick performing at the ball, exciting right? All I had to do was text them, they both said yes. I am just so nervous; I feel sick now all over again but let’s go” Rich is staring at me “what?” I said to him “just weird to see you like this, I have been working with you for years” pulling a face at him “do I look pregnant? Am I fat to you?” Rich’ face dropped “no uh, I am not saying that just that you look well” side eyeing him “your cheeks are fuller sis” hitting Ja’ shoulder as I walked out of the house.

I am so excited to see what Dennis has done, he has been working hard on this. He wants me to be happy about it but I am, I am just feeling hormonal about things. I had to make the pilot and flight attendant sign a NDA because I want to be free on my jet and not hiding, also I needed the bed to be made and laying down will expose what I am hiding behind this huge thing “if you complain about this now I will just quit” Dennis placed his MacBook in front of me “I didn’t complain, I just stated that my voice didn’t sound right” Dennis rolled his eyes “just please, watch it. Pretend you’re a fan, you get the notification, no caption and this came up” looking at Jen before pressing play, I hate my face “Ja is right” my face looks fuller “no he is not, you look so good Robyn. You look so happy, I love it, you can tell you got that pregnancy skin” watching the video play on, just images of me smiling “oh god, it sounds like I am adding to my skin care. The fans are going to hate me, they really are” the video cuts to me walking towards the bathroom “it’s now time to enter a new journey for me, and for the new life that was created” I mimicked the words I said as the video played on and the time lapse of the images I took “oh god, as a fan I would be shook. Like my heart is beating hard against my chest, they are going to be shocked. It’s calming though. The way I announce it is very calming, but it honestly looks like I am announcing a new skin product, oh god. I am happy with it Dennis, yes” sitting back smiling “I am” I said again “I was thinking about my extended family members and not telling them, they will find out like this also but it needs to be so tight. I mean it will be the same with the Chris thing, I can’t risk telling too much to so many people. The circle needs to be closed” watching Dennis take his laptop “what if Chris wants to tell?” Jen asked “he needs to not, that is something I will obviously take that up with him or if he says don’t care and I rather not get involved” Jen laughed “you wish, he will be like an excited puppy but that is interesting to hear, I think you both need to have this deep conversation and you won’t be drunk or high” I wish I could get drunk or high “I miss that” I mumbled saying.

Mel laid next to me on the bed that was made on the jet, I feel a little sore and tired so I knew that I would need the bed made “do you all take turns in cuddling me? Am I that big?” Mel laughed out, she is laughing but I think it is true “it’s not that, I promise so I was thinking if we invite Chris to the ball since you know, he is you know” Mel looked at my stomach and then at me, she proceeded to wink at me “erm, I am not sure about that. I am not being funny but it’s already a mess and I am adding to it, I can’t just invite him and then have him alone, he will then bring his friends. Just keep it away, not there. Not when this will be happening, everyone is going to be at me about it already, the same tired old conversation. I disagree, he has too much on anyways” Mel rolled her eyes at me “you do know you are going to have to face him” looking away from Mel “wish I didn’t need too” I said to myself “then don’t, he will be none the wiser. Pray to the gods it doesn’t look like him, I mean you don’t need too” shaking my head “I am not like that, it’s just difficult ok. He is a mess; I keep stalking him!” I shouted so loudly “ok, calm down. Well whatever you want then I am here” she needs to just support me in this plan, it may be a little crazy but I just need to do it my way and not what people around me want because it will not work like they want “I am intrigued to know what his reaction will be, will it be happy, sad, hateful. I mean it’s not the perfect scenario” she is telling me like I don’t know that.

Sitting on the bed Indian style with my hand naturally on my stomach, I am just forever doing this now, I am used to it “I hate this, I hate that Jen and Mel both know a secret that I want to know. Like you both know the sex of my child, I really don’t want a gender reveal just tell me!” I half shouted “she’s going to be cute like you, I know already” Ja is acting like anyone will tell him shit “I know my girls, they wouldn’t tell you because I would bully you into telling me so good try baldie. Is it what I want? Like I have been always saying a girl?” Mel and Jen are not giving me much “this will be my only baby, and I pray for a healthy baby but a girl, just let it be? I mean I won’t be upset but still, just a mini me, you know” I want them to give me something, they ain’t giving me shit “soon, Mexico and the family. We going to reveal it, have a little get together. It will be cute, stop being annoying. Then we can have a baby shower in London, or shall we go Spain? I don’t know but we going to party, every day with you” Jen said, but I don’t want that I just would like to know what it is “mom! You said you have a feeling, what is the feeling!” getting off of the bed “look at my stomach shape and tell me?” turning to the side “baby, can’t you just wait. I don’t know what it is” rolling my eyes “just a guess, come on? You always do this, you say oh the stomach is this shape so it’s whatever” my mom is annoying when she does it to every one else “ok, ok. I think” she squinted her eyes “a boy” my mom pointed “ok, her opinion is irrelevant now” I joked “any more takers, what are we saying?” I got everyone looking at me now, hearing a mixture of girl and boy “so girl then, thank you” I laughed to myself “but if it’s a boy then there is always adoption, I am joking. I just want my baby healthy so don’t mind me” sitting back down on the edge of the bed.

I caught myself falling asleep but for the lighter in my hand, it was too late. It already slipped out of my hand and onto the ground floor. Moving back from the balcony, I didn’t realise I was falling asleep but another day at the Brown house. I need to finish off my art downstairs now, walking back into my bedroom. Placing my feet in my slides as I closed my bedroom door, I was supposed to go to Gunna’ party tonight but I declined, I wasn’t in the mood but I think “here they are” I stopped to say to myself, the niggas are back home, I mean my home “good party?” jumping down the last of the stairs nearly falling down but I caught myself “it was, got some girls back. They wanted to come” nodding my head “step right up, mobiles that side, papers on the other side. Then we can all have fun is that you? Krista? Oh wow, you still riding in the back of niggas cars now” Krista walked over to me “shut up” hugging her “you still the same old Chris, sign the papers” I laughed stepping back from the hug “well I got to be, but you still need to sign the papers. Keep your mobile though” winking at her “oh privileges then? I see how it is” she walked off, watching her walk off with the other girls, about seven others. Hoody hit my arm “she asked to come here” he said in a whisper “she missed the D, they all do” I laughed walking off.

Blunt for breakfast and it hasn’t even hit nine yet “your home is amazing, like with all the new graffiti. You haven’t just done random things like always” moving the blunt back, placing the spray can on the ground “I try” blowing the smoke out from my lips “you not going in the pool like the rest? Showcasing booties for the niggas to want?” I pointed laughing “why do I need to do that when you already seen it” she got a point “they doing that for you Chris, you know that” I shrugged “better off going with someone I remember, vaguely. It wasn’t memorable” Krista side eyed me “just like Amikka, you remember that too” I blew out air all wide eyed “to be fair I don’t actually remember many pussies I’ve had. Select few” Krista laughed “nothing has changed with you Chris, wow. I actually just came to see you, I am not jumping in no pool and showing my ass” nodding my head “then it was pointless you coming” looking over at the girls in the pool “they all sucking and licking on each other too, damn. But, let me mind my business, it was good you come out though. You can relax here or whatever” let me go back to my spray painting.

I was shocked to see Krista still here, I guess it is because Amikka gone “still here?” sitting down on the couch across from her “problem?” shaking my head “nope, why though? You dogged me out?” I mean she did “rich coming from you, you were having several women on the go, I was done. I thought you were with Amikka, so yeah” shaking my head “I have always been single, I show love. People don’t get that” my phone vibrated in my pocket “oh is that what it is, but she said you was with her” getting my phone out from my pocket “nope” seeing a Instagram message from Mel, this is not like her. Tapping on the message and unlocking my phone “least she is back where she belongs, Germany” I just laughed reading the message from Mel, squinting my eyes ‘Come to the Diamond Ball, plus one (Mijo) of course but you’re invited if you would like to come. You’re with me, let me know’ I am confused, Melissa is inviting me to an event where niggas are stuck up their own ass, I don’t fuck with any of those people and on top of that Robyn is foul so no, let me message back nicely, I don’t want to see her face after that night ‘I love you Mel, you my sister FOREVER but Robyn is foul. She KNOW what she did, if she wants her drunken talks with sex tell her go elsewhere, not blaming you! Trust me, I have other plans either way’ pressing send on the message “you seem angry?” Krista asked “women are not nice, that is all” locking my phone and placing it to the side of me, I won’t be seeing that, full of fake industry people that don’t like me but smile in my face, this is why I don’t go to award shows, fuck that. Robyn loves that shit and is too far up their asses to even see real, I’m not that.

#Chrianna #Chrianna FF #Chrianna Fanfiction #Fanfic #Fanfiction

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xxforsaken-angelxx · 4 years

Text

=> Snap.

sshydromatic

Thank you, Goldwave. Your compliments are highly appreciated.

infiniteproxy

i speak merely the truth.

but as such, you are welcome.

sshydromatic

You flatter me.

infiniteproxy

perhaps.

sshydromatic

If so, it would bring the question of to what ends.

I cannot dismiss the fact that you have seen the limits of my control.

infiniteproxy

as you have likewise seen my own.

an irksome lapse, but an anomalous one as well.

that we were both subjected to influences beyond any hope of control does not negate our continuing efforts.

sshydromatic

An agreeable line of logic.

However, there is one thing I wish to ask, if you would permit it.

infiniteproxy

permission granted.

sshydromatic

Is irksome all you would describe that lapse as?

infiniteproxy

> Sharp as they are, Hydromatic will no doubt note the pause that precedes your response, but there it is.

no.

which is where the deepest frustration lies.

sshydromatic

As frustrating as it may be, it is relieving to hear that you feel the same way.

infiniteproxy

indeed.

sshydromatic

And relieving as well, that it hasn't seemed to lessen your opinion of me.

infiniteproxy

far from it.

i have often imagined the occasion in which i might be free of any such restraint, both self-imposed and otherwise.

being given a glimpse of that freedom and power only to lose it in those final moments has dwindled my tolerance of this stagnant existence to fraying threads.

sshydromatic

I feel as though I've taken a similar hit.

Distinct, as my wishes are different, but similar nonetheless.

infiniteproxy

the means granted were...intoxicating in their effect.

but not ideal.

nonetheless i do have my desires.

and very little patience.

i hold very little stock in NEPETA's insistence that ADMIRAL PEIXES will be able to deliver on any sort of meaningful change.

certainly not to one tied to the imperial yoke such as i.

be that as it may.

what of yours?

sshydromatic

Intoxicating indeed.

Power is a heady thing. Even if I do not normally wish for much freedom, the unadulterated taste is addictive.

As are the emotional effects. I have not felt any of significant intensity since my installation, much less something of that caliber.

Most of it I find useless. Meaningless signals of the flesh that I have not missed at all in their returned absence.

But one chafes, in the attempt to once more keep it suppressed.

infiniteproxy

indeed it is.

on both counts.

even before installation, it was...rarely something i experienced to such a degree.

i cannot say i much care to be subject to such distracting whims so readily.

but in their wake, biding my time has become nigh unbearable.

to not be able to rein in even this irritation is. distasteful.

and more displeasing still.

sshydromatic

I have to confess that there is something else I am unable to rein as well.

infiniteproxy

do enlighten me.

sshydromatic

I am enamored with you, Goldwave.

Obsessed.

My fawning was not a side effect of the disease that plagued us. The kind of power we had was alluring, yes, and the ambition of your plans more besides, but the part that appealed to my fantasies was the thought of having everything while being with you.

Nobody else could have tempted me into infecting myself. In all these sweeps, you are the only thing that has tugged apart my self control. Your brilliance is a glimpse of the kind of light that shines at the end of the universe, and I'd follow it to that end, if I freely could.

I expect nothing from you now that it has ceased. But biting my tongue and keeping everything to myself is driving me fucking insane.

infiniteproxy

> This pause lingers much longer. You are concentrating very intently on those words, oh yes.

if this is true.

then your restraint until this point is to be more greatly commended still.

> You have to consider this one very carefully. You do not care to reveal much of your deeper thoughts unless you can't possibly avoid it. And yet... If it were anyone. Anyone at all. It would be them, who has earned the right. You are even less in the habit of lying to yourself.

sshydromatic

It is true. You've had my attention for perigees.

infiniteproxy

then i will show you something. and speak frankly.

sshydromatic

Proceed as you wish.

>In the meantime, you'll be mentally glaring at your vitals to stay the fuck in line, no matter how anxious you might be.

infiniteproxy

STARBASE FRONTIER has requested a direct connection.

sshydromatic

Direct connection to STARSHIP HYDROMATIC permitted and established.

infiniteproxy

> When the connection is made, they will be greeted with a video feed displaying a similar view as before-- one of the cameras in your helmsblock, trained upon you and fairly zoomed in. But what they see is a drastic departure from that deliriously joyful, chaotic mess of you lolling in the embrace of your overgrown wires as if a throne of your own making.

> It is, of course, a much more typical scene, though your rig is perhaps more heavily industrial in make than some. Bare metal walls, and scaffolding, and mesh; a catwalk stretching before where you hang suspended some ways above the floor. Your lower legs are not visible, partly encased in a metal plated column, then mostly obscured by the wires up to your waist. Your arms, rather than stretched above, are flung out to either side and similarly encased, a crucifixion of steel and biowire.

> Much of your face is not visible, your eyes obscured by headgear not entirely dissimilar to a heavy VR rig. But there's the scar carved across the bridge of an angular nose, the scruffy sharp-edged jaw, thin lips curled in a scowl.

> This is the reality of you-- not the cocky young conscript, or the hotshot helm of your glory days, nor the giddy arrogance of the trickster's magic. Gaunt, and angry, and shackled.

sshydromatic

> The honesty of the moment does not escape you. It clicks almost as soon as the image comes into your view. That ship was his prison, and he shielded himself from the vulnerability of others seeing him chained. Something as simple as the raw image of him was so guarded, and you know that no matter what he has to say, he clearly has come to trust you.

> But, also, he's...still just so terribly handsome in your eyes, as sick and jaded as he looks. You may have suppressed all of your former rebellious personality, but this was something much more subconscious. There wouldn't have been an Idanus as Alternia knew them if you hadn't been lured in by everything freaky and furious that hid itself in the planet's stubborn underground. His anger was what caught your eye, his ego and determination in spite of his shackles. You aren't someone that can be scared away by it.

> So though you hang in silence, you're genuinely admiring the view.

infiniteproxy

> You trust them to understand the significance of you trusting them to see this at all, because if they don't, then this is already pointless. But you have reason enough to be confident. You are not so very different, after all, for all you shield yourselves in different ways.

> Your voice crackles onto the feed, that same distorted tone.

"I said that I rarely experienced any extreme of emotion, even as a troll. This is true. But rarely is not never. I am a ruthlessly selfish creature-- but there is one whom could drive even such as myself to throw all to the void at a mere word. She was the navigator of Starship Goldwave; my singular, consuming obsession, as brilliant as she was cruel. She remained upon my reassignment; they had no use for her here. The ship -- my ship -- was later destroyed due to incompetent orders. I do not know if she was aboard at the time. I have not wished to know."

> It's more than you have, and more than you ever will, admit to any other. It feels necessary, and almost freeing. Yes, you know obsession. Nothing you have ever cared for has ever been anything less.

sshydromatic

> You're slow to speak, absorbing the information and truly mulling it over for a few moments.

"I am sorry for your loss, regardless of whether she has passed or not. I am honored as well, though, that you trust me enough to tell me of her."

> Despite your serious tone, though, you feel like it was a bit of a weight off his shoulders. Between both of your confessions, the air feels just that much clearer...which lets anxious anticipation crawl in again as you fall back silent.

infiniteproxy

"Her name was Pythia."

> It's the last you intend to speak of the matter. And it is...relieving, like the draining of some slow-creeping infection. But there is more to the point than just reciprocation of a closely held secret, and if you were possessed of the freedom to exhibit ordinary body language, they might imagine you leaning closer, now, gaze focused and intent. The scowl, if anything, deepens.

"I am telling you this for a reason. She was the only person in this miserable excuse for a 'verse that I have ever felt anything for-- and then there was you. You, with your perfect script and your perfect mask. You, with far more beneath that practiced surface than any fool would guess. You who would lay the world at my feet should I ask."

> A harsh, staccato laugh.

"Do you know what that does to something like me? To catch my interest and hold it? That...magic...may amplify, but it does not fabricate. I want to pull every piece of you apart to see how they fit together, how they may be made new. I want to walk straight up to that helm of yours and watch that mask shatter with a touch. Do you understand me?"

sshydromatic

> You've been in this rig for decades, and every night of your carefully calculated performance has been hard, but only now does it feel like torture. Pure, utter torture in the name of trying to stay your neutral self as you hear everything you could've possibly hoped for. It's almost entirely in vain, he's made you literally sick with the feeling before, but you try. You try so goddamn hard, to stay in line so he has something left to take apart.

"Understood, Goldwave. It is..."

> You give what mostly resembles a laugh, in the way that you do. A nervous one, as you answer honestly. Candidly.

"It's the only fucking thing I've ever wanted in this stupid rig. Break me."

infiniteproxy

> For just a moment, unseen, your eyes close; strung up like a sacrifice, your body shudders. Reveling in the words, the imperative, the promise; the nearly hopeless effort you know it must cost them. And that raw honesty. They might see the slight jerk of your head; you can't shake it properly, restrained as you are. But whatever the denial might signify is paired with a grin, if a wolf with teeth bared could be considered such.

"Ah... You must know what you are asking. Do not expect mercy of me-- I will not grant it. But know this: I will leave this place and these chains behind. And when all that I want is no longer out of my reach, I will come for you."

sshydromatic

> You believe him, somehow. That he'll be free, and that he'll find you. It's hard for you to even acknowledge why, being as overtaxed as you are, but you know deep in your pusher that nothing can contain his ambitions. All will come into place, eventually. He just needs time.

"I assure you that I do know what I am asking. It is the only fantasy I allow myself. And it shall continue to be what I want until you've come and made it real."

infiniteproxy

"Excellent... You will not be disappointed. You can be sure of this."

> Bold words, those. A lofty promise you have no reasonable means of keeping. But you will not allow yourself to believe anything but just that. You will not waste the rest of your life here, and they...they could be so much more, if given the chance. Or perhaps that's simply the selfish desire to have them all for your own. You don't care either way. What you want, you want-- and you will have it, by any means necessary.

sshydromatic

> Once you're done struggling to keep your feelings from effecting you, you'll feel...Satisfied, for once. Satisfied and humming with a sense of power in a more non-literal way than usual. He's already yours, for all you care. Yours, and yours for as long as you can keep your claws sunk in. That, to you, is a piece of freedom. The freedom and power of intimacy. It's the one you missed most.

"Thank you, Goldwave."

infiniteproxy

> You are not actually any closer to achieving your goal, but somehow... The conviction feels all the greater, to speak what's been lingering at the back of your mind for some time now. Perhaps the imposed distance had weighed more heavily than you'd thought. Who needed magic? Your day will come, and you will be a force to be reckoned with.

"Do be patient, now."

Connection terminated.

#ooc #logs.txt #helm posting.txt #(( gay starships

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cannabisrefugee-esq · 4 years

Photo

(via The Welfare Gnome! It's Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again))

The Welfare Gnome! It’s Like a Sock Gnome Except This One Can Actually Kill You. Ft. Joker (Again)

Cannabis Refugee, Esq.

Advertising / Media / Cultural Conversation

Capitalistic Patriarchal Medicine

Crohn's Disease Stories

Euthanasia / Suicide

Law / Legal / Benefits

December 20, 2019

According to the internet, a “sock gnome” is a mythical creature that pilfers socks. Presumably it lives in or around the dryer where you put an even number of socks in and get an odd number out. Sometimes it gets tricksy and spits out an even number but the pairs don’t match (meaning it’s pilfered one from more than one pair) but the usual evidence that you’ve had a sock pilfered by a gnome is that there is one left over that doesn’t have a mate and the missing sock never reappears ever. This is a real thing (if not a real gnome) and everyone knows what this means.

Well, there appears to be a similar creature that lives at Social Services and pilfers sick and poor people’s applications for welfare benefits. Or something, idk. I assume these creatures are related but maybe not since this gnome doesn’t play games: it’s goal seems to be to drive you insane before it literally kills you. I wrote here before about an application for benefits that went missing, along with a half a dozen other boondoggles that have wasted my spoons and left me scrambling to repeat some administrative process I was barely able to complete survive the first time.

Because while a sick person’s literal inability to jump through bureaucratic hoops is actually the best evidence that someone is extremely ill, someone has decided that only those who are well enough to sing for their supper (or pursue benefits) deserve to eat, as it were. The first application that went missing was for food stamps, while today I found out that my application to get on a 4 month waitlist to see a doctor went missing 2 months ago and has not been since heard from: although my disability advocate hand-delivered it, the application was never received.

I didn’t know it had never been received since I was instructed to wait for 2-3 months for a phonecall from them whereupon they would then tell me that I had to wait another 4 months to see a provider. Now I get to start the whole process over again. Of course, the clock starts, again, from zero: 2-3 months for the application to be processed and another 4 months before I will be seen. And as both Crohn’s disease and high functioning Autism are untreatable and incurable, the only reason I’m even trying to get in to see a doctor is that I need up to date records of medical compliance (not actual therapeutic medical care since none exists) to support my claims for disability. As if sick people have the time and energy for that.

Just “apply for benefits” then keep applying indefinitely or forever! Just get showered, dressed, don’t eat or drink anything though because Crohn’s, get somehow transported across town, pretend to act human for a several hours while you are being humiliated, interrogated, starved and otherwise tortured in public, then somehow get a ride back home. And do all of that without “acting” sick. Easy peasy.

And truly, bureaucratic incompetence (or a welfare or Social Services gnome) isn’t even worth writing about and I wouldn’t bother writing about it except that it had an unsettling effect on me: I literally wondered, if only for a second, if I had hallucinated the whole thing and therefore wondered if my new disability advocate who had hand-delivered the applications himself, Dave, was even real. Jesus Christ that was disturbing. Around Halloween of this year, Dave had helped me complete numerous applications, some online, while he mailed some hardcopies out of town and hand-delivered the rest; the 2 applications that were both hand-delivered were supposedly never received. One would be understandable, if not acceptable, but both of them? I was shook.

Very shortly thereafter I realized that the only proof I even have that Dave came to pick me up several times, completed applications for/with me and took me home again is that one application we did online was actually received and has his name and information on it. Much to my chagrin, they initially returned that “online” application to me in hardcopy to review, sign and return (WTF) but as it turns out, that bit of bureaucratic fuckery actually saved me from something awful — a literal break from reality — and was the only proof I had that Dave and our interactions were even real. Also, my old disability advocate told me about Dave in front of another person and they both remember it. (!) So yeah, I’m legit losing my mind by now but at least I’m not delusional (that I know of). Everything about this is fucking terrifying.

Wait. Is Dave even real? Let’s review.

At some point, I know my readers are going to get sick to death of hearing about this shit and I wouldn’t blame them. Hearing about how the system truly victimizes people is unpleasant and predictably leaves those who don’t have to deal with it (yet) with the strong impression that disenfranchised people are “victims” experiencing “victimization” which is always, always read as a character flaw, or it is eventually, especially if it goes on for a long time and it often almost always does. And this material is about as appealing to read as…idk, a book of vintage recipes where the first and second ingredients in every dish are Jello and fake mayonnaise? Maybe. There’s a trainwreck quality that’s hard to look away from, it’s interesting (at first) to see how all the various parts fit together (or ultimately don’t) and I suppose it’s possible to have compassion for the vintage cooks who were trying so, so hard to be resourceful and whatnot.

But eventually that person’s judgement will probably come into question and the blame will fall squarely on them if they consistently choose to participate in such insanity, in that case, preparing and serving Spaghetti-Os and sliced hot dogs suspended in savory Jello, or a canned ambrosia Yule log. (I just watched a video of someone making a canned ambrosia Yule log from a vintage recipe, you can watch that here). Or in the case of a vulnerable person seeking benefits, choosing to consistently be relieved of their dignity and even being (seemingly) willingly neglected and abused. The comparison is kind of a reach but what I’m getting at here is that it’s not pretty. The things I discuss on this blog aren’t pretty.

So do I have an actual point? Actually I have 2. The first point I will make via another anecdote and is something I learned as a young attorney who was becoming seriously ill: I had been seeing a chiropractor/nutritionist for months to attempt to treat what was becoming unbearable chronic pain and GI issues when my health insurance company started denying his claims. The “doctor” wasn’t being paid but I was still in disabling pain and his treatments were working. Kind of. Until they stopped. We had to have “the discussion” which drew out our competing interests: my interest in continuing treatment without a lapse versus his interest in being consistently paid. (Really, this is where the myth of the compassionate Western healer is always undone: the issue of money. But that’s a post for another day.) This discussion is never pleasant and as I learned, is absolutely meant to be ugly.

As a seasoned provider with decades of experience in the insurance game, the “doctor” calmly explained to me that part of the game is to pit the doctor and patient against each other so that they can’t provide a united front against the real enemy: the insurance company. The goal is to have the doctor and patient part ways angry so that there is no reason to pursue an appeal and the treatment — whether it’s medically necessary or not — simply ends. From the insurance company’s perspective, the problem (of exposure to liability) just goes away: if the doctor and patient part ways it doesn’t have to expend resources reviewing appeals and no further claims will be made, their exposure drops to zero, and they win.

Get it? Bad guys 1, good guys 0. And this, I think, is the dynamic playing out when people get fed up (and fired up) with hearing about what sick and disabled people go through — regular, relatively powerless people blaming and judging other regular, relatively powerless people for being “victims” instead of providing a unified front against our common enemy. In this case, against our corporate and governmental overlords who spend billions if not trillions annually on “corporate welfare” and destructive black budget programs while reducing, eliminating or otherwise making inaccessible benefits that real people need to live in this shithole they created, not us. And Big Medicine torturing sick people and deliberately (or leastwise predictably) making us worse.

We all have a choice, don’t we, to pick the correct side and to not fall into this deliberate trap set by the elite, to not go against our own interests, to decline the invitation to support our oppressors while undermining ourselves and our ilk, our own people. Choose correctly. It matters.

My second point is this. I can only speak for myself when I say that I absolutely never wanted to be a “victim” and I spent my entire life and literally everything I had to try to ensure that didn’t happen. I have written about that before if anyone wants to revisit that part of my journey, but what I haven’t directly said is this: once I had exhausted every resource I had accumulated over a lifetime (which wasn’t much), after I had asked everyone I knew for help and they all declined, after I had failed to cure myself of an incurable disease, I knew what was coming for me because I had spent my entire life trying to avoid it.

My experience as a benefits attorney only underscored what I already knew, which is that there is nothing there to catch most people when they fall, and there is no bottom to the abuse and neglect one will suffer, and literally endless opportunities to be victimized, once anyone, especially an unresourced, unsupported female, is no longer able to control her outcomes and sick women can no longer reliably control their outcomes. I knew the benefits system would be inaccessible or inadequate, I knew I would be abused and neglected by doctors if I let them, I knew I could end up sick and homeless at the same time, I knew I could end up sick and homeless and raped and pregnant at the same time if there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I knew that once I got sick there was, in fact, little or nothing I could do to stop it. I knew there would be no end to my suffering as a sick woman under capitalism and patriarchy.

I saw this coming a mile out, and to avoid that outcome I knew I didn’t want and knew I couldn’t handle (and shouldn’t be expected to) and to fulfill a lifelong promise I had made to myself to never “allow” myself to be victimized in this way, I attempted suicide. 4 times. Four fucking times I took action against myself that was so incompatible with life that by all rights I should have died at least once if not every time but I didn’t die. Each time I woke to this nightmare that won’t end and I had to go on, dealing with the same shit and with the same hideous constraints only even more sick and even more traumatized than I was before if that was even possible. And it is possible, isn’t it — it is bottomless. There is no end, there is absolutely no end to how bad this can and will get for me and for everyone in my position.

And to be clear, I started this blog after what ended up being my final (well, most recent) suicide attempt which was 2 years ago by now. Get it? Every single post on this blog was written after that and therefore was very nearly not written at all. What I am documenting here, I think, is a fairly common experience that is almost always lost to time and tragedy: what it’s actually like to be this seriously, hopelessly ill, how “the system” works against sick people and sick women at every turn, and what it really looks like to have no options. And while this surely happens all the time, every force in the universe, it seems, is working against most people actually knowing about it. In fact, the most relateable thing I’ve ever read, the only thing that I have ever seen address these points and describe an experience nearly identical to my own was left behind by an activist/writer/seriously chronically ill woman in a suicide note. I wrote about that woman, Anne Örtegren, and her suicide note here.

In my own case, and this is the only reason you are hearing about it, I happened to be a seasoned researcher and writer with a specialized interest in dissecting the insane system of patriarchy, I had a preexisting platform on which to advertise this project and an audience that was open to hearing about it, and despite my best intentions and efforts, and those of everyone and everything else for that matter, where those intentions and efforts were not compatible with life, my life, I didn’t fucking die. Not yet anyway. I suspect that many women who experience what I and Anne Örtegren and others have experienced go down for the third and final time before anyone even hears them scream. And if any of this sounds a little crazy to you, that’s only because it is. It is completely, completely insane.

#joker #christmas #xmas #friends #family

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anthropologicalhands · 5 years

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ceg fic: impressionism (what completes this picture of me and you)

title: impressionism (what completes the picture of me and you) characters: heather & valencia, beth/valencia, heather/hector summary: Valencia admits that she once had a crush on Heather notes: not totally sure how happy i am with this fic, but at this point it has been sitting in my drafts for literal months now, so out it goes. Ao3 Link

In Heather’s opinion, one of Valencia’s best qualities is her willingness to throw herself wholeheartedly into her ventures.

Granted, Heather usually prefers to observe the hurricane from a comfortable distance, rather than letting herself get swept up in it all. But, on occasion, she doesn’t mind braving her way into the eye of the storm.

Like right now, when she is seven months pregnant and less chill than she has ever been in her life, Valencia showing up unannounced and armed with rose, apple juice, and her cosmetics bag is unequivocally a good thing. It’s been a while since they’ve been able to hang out, just the two of them. Hector is nice and Heather loves him and she’s happy he’s been here for her during the pregnancy, but sometimes his niceness is just too much, and almost as annoying as Rebecca’s casual thoughtlessness. In contrast, Valencia’s straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners determination is a gift.

Even better: unlike the people Heather is living with, Valencia is observant, and notices changes around her without Heather having to point them out.

“What’s going on with Estrella?” Valencia pauses in front the aquarium on her way back to the sofa, bending down to get a closer look. “She looks different.”

“That’s ‘cause she is different,” says Heather as she reclines on the sofa with her feet propped up, doesn’t bother to look up from her phone.

“What do you mean?” Valencia asks, perching on the ottoman to resume painting Heather’s nails. She’s been looking more relaxed recently, Heather finds herself thinking idly. Probably the result of a series of fortunate events—the small but tangible successes so necessary to building a business. Heather bets that taking on Beth as a partner has probably helped ease the stress.

And, well, also the fact that Valencia is now definitely getting some on the regular. There is no way that there isn’t a net positive effect of some kind.

“I mean that she’s a whole new starfish,” Heather explains, wincing as the Rebyl spawn punctuates her statement with a two-beat kick.

Valencia’s concentration doesn’t waver, but her eyebrows arch up high on her forehead in surprise, followed by a deep sigh of resignation. “Again? Seriously?”

“Yeah. At least this one looks more like the original Estrella, so I didn’t know it happened until this week, because last week was Rebecca’s turn to take care of her.”

Valencia purses her lips, shaking her head in disappointment at Rebecca’s carelessness. “Wow. I’m surprised you’re not more upset.”

Heather shrugs. “I probably should be, but I already got angry at the shower this morning for the wrong droplet-to-skin-volume ratio, so it’s not worth working up the extra energy.”

“That sucks,” says Valencia sympathetically, looking down at her handiwork, forehead wrinkling in concentration.

“It really does. These pregnancy hormones are sending my reactions totally out of whack. I am noticing, like, everything is too much, like this dress is super itchy and you still smell like Beth’s perfume from yesterday. I know that sounds creepy, sorry, but I can’t help it,” she adds, responding to Valencia’s weirded-out expression. “And to make things worse, now I’m missing other things. Like, stuff I actually care about.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I used to be able to tell things about people before they even know it. Like a wolf. I learned a lot about wolves before I dropped my wildlife biology class. Did you know that they can tell if a person is pregnant even before they know it themselves?”

“That must get awkward.”

“Right?” Heather asks, letting her head fall against the back of the sofa so that she is staring right up at the ceiling. “But I’m not like that anymore – I used to be a wolf, and I knew things, but now I’m a pregnant wolf and I know nothing. Which doesn’t make any sense.”

Valencia’s eyes have gotten almost comically round as she follows this train of logic to its conclusion. “Oo-kay,” she says after a brief pause, setting down the bottle of violet nail polish and taking up the setting. “Speaking of Rebecca, you’re channeling her pretty hard right now.”

Heather rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that’s because she keeps texting me about the gestational periods for different mammals and it’s like, getting really annoying. I don’t care that elephant pregnancies last for two years, I’m human and I want it out now.”

Valencia’s head jerks up and she stares at Heather. “Two years?”

Heather gives a slow nod. “Yep.”

Valencia wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Ew.”

“Right? But it’s true.”

“Weird. Does Rebecca just know these things off the top of her head or is she Googling random animals every few days?”

“Who knows? But I’ll admit that she does follow up with cute videos of the respective baby animals, so that kind of helps, but only because my baby brain is really dumb and easy to please.”

“I mean, cute animal videos will do that,” agrees Valencia seriously.

Heather hums her assent. “But seriously, my powers of observation are gone. I’m missing out on the subtle social cues that tell me about drama. And you know I love drama.”

Valencia hums her agreement, and they lapse into a comfortable silence. Heather texts Hector a non-negotiable request to pick up non-dairy milk and any bath products that might possibly have lavender in them.

“You’ll be back to normal and picking up drama in no time,” says Valencia soothingly. “It doesn’t matter if you miss a couple of things in the meantime.”

“It kind of does,” says Heather, looking up from her phone, peering over the swell of her abdomen down to Valencia. “It’s like missing an episode of The Nanny. It might not matter in the long run, but it’s still totally possible that a massive change happened while you weren’t looking and everyone is making references to an event that you don’t get and you have to piece it together without context, because streaming is not an option.”

“You’ve missed things before. No one is going to judge you for it.”

“No, I don’t miss things.”

Valencia’s responding hm is just judgmental enough to compel Heather to straighten up in her seat.

“I don’t,” she says, a hint of challenge entering her voice. “It was basically my superpower, before this parasite took it.”

“I’m not saying you don’t pick up stuff,” says Valencia, setting down the bottle of polish. “I’m just saying, that you can’t notice everything. It’s not possible.”

Heather’s eyebrows shoot high up her forehead; pregnancy might be messing with her senses, but Valencia’s carefully blank expression is radiating I have something on my mind loud and clear. “Okay, enough generalities – what did I miss?”

Valencia hesitates, but when she looks up to meet Heather’s eyes, she juts out her chin a little bit, firming up. “It’s nothing. And I’m going to tell you.”

“Good.”

“It might be weird.”

“Valencia, I am currently pregnant with Rebecca and Darryl’s baby. Is it that level of weird?”

“No, it’s not that weird,” says Valencia after a pause. “Right. Let me finish the varnish first.”

“Cool.” Heather opens up her phone and adds egg salad to the list. It’s not something she would normally eat, but whatever the Darryl baby wants, it’s gonna get. Maybe it will get bored by all the luxury and try to strike out faster.

Valencia screws the cap back on the bottle and travels back up to sit on the couch cushion besides Heather. “You’re going to love it –they have little white flowers on them.”

“Cool. I’d offer more specific compliments, except there is no way that I will be able to see them over my distended stomach and swollen ankles.”

“Which is why I uploaded the pictures on Instagram,” says Valencia breezily, waving her phone. “You can leave your comments there.”

“Right, exactly. Because that’s what Instagram is for, looking at things you can’t look at in your normal, day-to-day life.”

Valencia makes another noncommittal hum. Heather watches as Valencia continues to mess around with the bottles in her makeup bag, waiting patiently for her question.

“Well?” Heather prompts, when nothing juicy is forthcoming.

“Oh! Right.” Valencia startles a moment before composing herself, tucking her hair behind her ears. Interesting.

“Do you think you ever noticed anything about me that you don’t think that I was aware of?”

Sounds like Valencia is on another self-awareness kick. Well, Heather’s down to help. She tilts her head to one side, considering the question. “I doubt it. I mean, once you broke up with Josh, you’ve been pretty upfront about what you were thinking. Maybe when you and Beth were becoming a thing, but you figured that out pretty quickly, so it doesn’t count.”

“Okay but…”

“But what?”

“But what about me liking girls, specifically?”

“Specifically?” asks Heather, raising her eyebrows slightly.

Valencia takes a deep breath, setting her shoulders straight. “Yeah.”

Huh, interesting.

“Nothing specific,” says Heather thoughtfully, mentally flicking through their past hangouts for signs of Valencia’s interest in anyone beyond their direct social circle. “I mean, there was a distinct lack of interest in guys going on with you, like, even on our girls’ nights out, but when I saw you and Beth together I, like, knew that you had a vibe going on. I didn’t see that before with you and anyone else.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, then you didn’t notice,” says Valencia, sounding vaguely offended.

“Notice what?”

Valencia takes a deep breath. “Beth might be the first girl I’ve dated, but she isn’t the first girl I liked.”

“That makes sense. Who were the others? Denise Martinez from high school? You’ve always complained about her. No, wait, it was Rebecca, right? I know she kissed you once—”

“She mentioned that?” demands Valencia, sitting up, spine ramrod straight, before she pauses and reconsiders. “Wait, no, I shouldn’t be surprised. But no. That was…something else. Which, in retrospect, might have helped me reconsider a couple of things, but that’s so not what I’m talking about right now.”

“Okay, so it’s not Rebecca. Cool. Then would it have—” she stops suddenly. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

“So—”

Valencia nods. “Yep. I think I liked you.”

Valencia says it casually, but it’s a bombshell all the same. Heather blinks as she considers this new information, comparing this new context to all the things she knows about Valencia, like pulling away a curtain for a clear view. Their ease with one another, how quickly Valencia started seeking out Heather’s advice and was willing to let her slouch on her couch when she needed time to refill her chill bar during the most hectic days of Rebecca’s hasty wedding planning storm. Valencia had been remarkably lax about Heather setting very close boundaries.

“Oh, huh. Okay, didn’t see that at the time, but okay. That tracks.”

Valencia stares, incredulous. “That’s it? That’s your reaction?”

Heather considers the facts, how she had only known Valencia tangentially as Josh’s girlfriend, with a general idea that they were unsuited, but not understanding just how much until Rebecca brought her to Sugar Face for the first time, beaming and declaring that, if it was all right with her, Valencia might hang out with them a few times while she got over her own post-break-up blues. And she was kind of basic, but also acidic, and very fun and a little clueless and then she just stuck around.

“I mean, I don’t think I totally missed it,” clarifies Heather. “I thought I got a vibe on you for a little while there when I met you, but like, I was trying to figure out if you knew that or if it was just getting into the groove of having a girl group, but there was also the stuff where we were both trying to figure out what to do with our lives and then everything went down with Josh and Rebecca and it just, like, kept going down.”

Valencia nods, grimacing at the memory. “Yeah, it was a lot to process.”

“So much processing,” says Heather with feeling, eyes rolling heavenwards. After a beat, intrigue overtakes her surprise and she sits back up again. “So: how long did you carry a torch for me?”

Valencia gives a dismissive wave. “Not that long. After you started dating Hector I had an epiphany.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I realized that our tastes were way too different to ever work out.”

Valencia pulls a face to punctuate her statement, startling a laugh out of Heather.

“That kinda sounds like an excuse,” teases Heather, a little relieved. Valencia’s shoulders ease, and it’s obvious from the way she’s speaking that there isn’t jealousy or some sort of anguished feeling behind her declaration, and that’s soothing in a very Valencia way. She doesn’t want to stir up drama – she just wants to make things clear and straightforward.

“It really isn’t,” says Valencia, in the same tone she uses when critiquing Josh’s taste in formalwear.

“Okay, it isn’t.”

“I genuinely believe that your interest in Hector cleaved our chances as a couple completely.”

“Sure,” concedes Heather with a smile, “I know you don’t like Hector. Is it because he knows all of the embarrassing stories about you from when you guys were kids?”

“No. Why?” Valencia’s eyes narrow and her body goes rigid. “Why do you mention it? Did he tell you something? Was it about the Sleeping Beauty thing, because he really should know better than that—”

“No, he hasn’t,” says Heather immediately, because it’s true and if the way that Valencia’s perfectly sharp eyebrows are starting to furrow in the middle, if Heather doesn’t clear up that point immediately, there is a nonzero chance that Hector’s demise will be imminent upon walking through the door.

“Good.” Valencia leans back on the sofa, her face still thunderous. “At least his sense of self-preservation is intact.”

“I’ll get that story out of you, then,” says Heather, amused. “You really have nothing good to say about him, do you?”

“Hector is very symmetrical,” says Valencia primly. “And I am willing to admit that he’s been handling your pregnancy very well despite not actually knocking you up.”

“Thank you, I know that cost you something.”

Valencia nods, looking faintly martyred before she shifts position on the sofa, leaning against the cushions, her chin propped up in her palm. “So, you didn’t know I had a crush on you at all?”

“No, I missed that. Which is unfortunate, because it really is flattering.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, totally. You’re definitely a catch. So,” she drags out the word, starting to grin, her long-starved desire for gossip sniffing the air. “When did you know that you liked me?”

She’s pleased to see that Valencia relaxes completely at her teasing, whatever fears she has reassured by Heather’s reaction.

“I didn’t at the time,” admits Valencia. “It didn’t take that long to understand that I liked Beth, really, but I’ve been kind of unpacking stuff with her since we’ve started dating. You know what a good listener she is.”

“Right.”

“And I would keep talking, right, about times when I might have been attracted to other women, what I might have thought of them, and I would think about you and about how, when we first started hanging out, I was so giddy about having female friends for the first time in a long time, and you really helped me figure out what’s normal girl stuff and what wasn’t. And I was so excited to have such smart and attractive friends and I wanted to see you guys every day and your opinions really mattered to me—and I realized that there had been, like, two layers to how I was thinking about you, specifically.”

“Two layers, huh?”

“Yeah, both the core that, you were a cool person, but also like a filter on top of it that make things especially nice. Like the Amaro filter on Instagram. Which, incidentally, is the one I used when I posted your pedicure.”

“Got it.”

“Like, I wanted to be friends,” Valencia continues, insistent. “I absolutely wanted to hang out with you as a friend. But I also kind of wanted to impress you and…have you look at me in a certain way. Though, to be clear, that feeling isn’t really a part of our relationship now, that I was attracted to you. That is in the past. It’s important, but not, like, the defining thing about us. But it in our history and it was weird that you didn’t know about it.” Valencia deflates. “I’m sorry, is this making any sense? This isn’t meant to be a love declaration, or anything, and I’m worried it sounds like one, but it’s just—”

“Part of the history of our dynamic,” Heather finishes. “No, I get it. Human attraction is interesting and doesn’t really care about fitting neatly into romantic-platonic categories.”

“Exactly,” says Valencia, smiling. “Like, I just feel that it’s weird that you didn’t know that’s how I felt about you. You know everything.”

“Apparently not,” says Heather wryly. “But I’m glad you think so.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thanks for telling me. For the record, though, we totally would have been a hot couple in a parallel universe,” Heather adds. “Totally objectively speaking.”

Valencia laughs, her shoulders loosening. “I’ll drink to that.”

“Yeah. And while you might not think the same about me, I do think you have good taste – I’m glad you met Beth. She’s very cool.”

“Aw, thank you.” Valencia beams, pressing her hand over her heart. “That means a lot.”

Heather smiles, a rush of affection for her friend coursing through her, sweeping aside the discomforts of the day. “Come on, let’s have a toast to your good taste and behaving like mature adults. Now gimme my apple juice.”

Laughing, Valencia does as she asks.

#crazy ex girlfriend #heather davis #valencia perez #ellie writes fic #i'm not sure i did this justice #my headcanon is a bit more unwieldy #but oh well

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alexkryceksbutt · 7 years

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She Tastes like Candlelight

MSR

Explicit

It starts with, of all things, a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt.

Logically, he knows it doesn’t make sense. She comes to work in form-fitted jackets that go tight about her waist. She’s been foregoing the baggy slacks in favor of skirts that stop just below the knees, with nylons clinging to the defined musculature of her calves; he’s pretty sure he can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen her wear shoes other than heels, excluding the clinical, white shoes she wears with her scrubs during autopsies.

He’s seen the looks she gets. Sometimes, it’s during an interview, when a witness’s gaze will linger just a little too long on her bustline, and her hand will go up and fiddle with her necklace, her arm blocking her chest in subtle defiance. Other times, it’s men on the streets of the city, shouting out obscenities to her, having the audacity to call her “baby,” and “sweetheart,” and he fights the urge to yell right back, brandishing his badge and his gun, wanting to scare the misogyny right out of the bones of anyone who thinks they’re entitled to her body, but he knows that she would find it condescending. “Thank you, but I can handle myself, Mulder,” she’d say, and it’s not that he thinks she can’t—he just doesn’t want her to have to.

And still other times, the looks come not from strangers on the sidewalk, or from people he can reduce to photos in a casefile, but from their peers. Educated, talented men who transform themselves into slobbery, teenage boys when sitting adjacent to her in meetings, eyeing her with an inappropriate hunger while she jots down notes in the margins of her agenda sheet. More than once, Mulder has found himself in the elevator with a man who will look down at Scully, and then catch Mulder’s eye over the top of her head, just so that he can wink, including him in some inside joke he has no interest being a part of.

He supposes that he empirically knows that Scully is attractive—it’s more or less objective fact—but he’s never allowed himself to notice. He’s trained himself to observe her through a filter. He considers her appearance through what he aptly names the Sexual Harassment Video Gaze. He quickly shuts down any thought that could be used as an example in a training tape on inappropriate office behavior.

This isn’t a hassle, if only because there are so many other aspects to the enigma that is Dana Scully that Mulder can appreciate.

Her mind for example; she’s got a mind that can run circles around him. The way she rattles off scientific studies and facts to shut down his so-called crazy notions is like intellectual BDSM. He doesn’t get off on it, because Scully isn’t someone you simply get off on, but she lords her intellectual dominance over him in a way no one else can, and he finds, sometimes only in retrospect, that he has a thing for being beaten into submission in a debate. In fact, he thrives on it; it gives him cause to grow as an intellectual; to match her cerebral prowess.

Which is why, when she shows up at his doorstep with a casefile and a paint-splattered t-shirt hanging over a worn out pair of jeans, he is taken completely off guard by his immediate and sudden knowledge that Dana Scully is hot.

“Here’s the file on the serial murders. I made some notes for you to look at,” she says in lieu of a greeting, holding out the file in her hand, her nails, which are usually meticulously shaped, are chipped on her index and ring fingers. Mulder says nothing; merely stares in a way that can only be inelegantly described as gaping. She notices him noticing her, and she flushes. She runs a hand through her hair—and damnit if her hair isn’t different too, pinned back from her face with bobby pins, a few strands loose, curling around her ears in the humidity. “Sorry,” she says, as Mulder comes alive enough to take the file from her. “Mom needed help painting the study. Bill was gonna do it before he got back to the base, but he just never got around to it...Uh, anyway, I should be going. Just wanted to drop this off while I was nearby. I’ll see you at the office.”

His instinct is to yell out a defiant ‘no!’, but he reins it in, opting for a more rational excuse to make her stay. “Do you have time to just run over your notes with me? I take it you disagree with my witchcraft theory?” He says it casually, as though her leaving now wouldn’t be the absolute worst thing that could happen.

“Ritualistic killings,” she says easily. “It’s textbook, Mulder, I don’t know what else you want me to say. I know you want to find the supernatural in everything, but the wounds were clearly done by humans. Sometimes, people just do awful things.”

He opens the door wider and steps aside to let her in. She sets her jaw.

“Mulder, I’m sweaty, exhausted, and frankly, would like to spend my Saturday with a cup of tea and a shower.” You’re welcome to mine, he pointedly does not say, too enamored with her unfamiliar appearance to mentally chastise himself for his indiscreet thoughts. “Can’t this wait until Monday?”

“Ten minutes,” he barters. If he can get her in the door he can angle for more time.

She checks her watch with a sigh.

He knows that sigh. It’s the sigh that he hears when he calls her at one in the morning asking for her presence at a crime scene; the sigh he hears when he thrusts her into a sterile, post-mortem examination room without the proper clearance, saying, “I figure we’ve got twenty minutes before they realize we’re not supposed to be here.” It’s the sigh that comes right before an exasperated, drawn out,

“Mulder…”

followed right by an even more reluctant,

“Ok. Fine. Whatever.”

And Mulder grins, because with all her enigmatic, intellectual gifts, Dana Scully is, more often than not, a creature of habit. It’s a weakness of hers he capitalizes on with little remorse, as he ushers her over the threshold and into his apartment.

He’d feel worse—he really would—except that Dana Scully is a creature of habit, and she is not in the habit of doing things she adamantly doesn’t want to do. She stands, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, but her hackles decidedly lowered. Mulder may have made the push, but she is here on her own volition, and that is wonderful; it’s really something, and he never gets used to the idea, even after all these years, that Scully does things Mulder asks of her because she wants to.

She’s considering the couch, so Mulder throws the casefile down on the coffee table next to his half finished bottle of beer, and plops himself down on the cushion by the fish tank, and she follows his lead, taking her usual spot beside him.

“Want anything?” he asks, picking up his drink and nodding towards it.

“Ten minutes,” Scully reiterates as a response, positioning herself on the edge of the couch, flipping open the casefile with one hand, and scratching absently at her nose with the other. The skin on her face is glistening, coated in a thin layer of sweat, and there’s a small splatter of paint on the right side of her jaw, just below her earlobe, and Mulder is struck with an absurd, and very Not Workplace Appropriate desire to kiss it.

He gives his himself the tiniest of shakes, and swallows, as if trying to literally digest away the thought.

Scully doesn’t notice. She’s flipped to the front page of the casefile where a picture of a young woman is paperclipped to the document. The young woman, from the top of her head to her shoulders, could be sleeping, but the photograph is unfortunately full bodied, showing where the murderer had sliced open her skin, cracked open her ribs, and removed her internal organs one by one, leaving her red and hollow. A ghost of a grimace passes over Scully’s mouth. She is desensitized to most forms of violence—can cut into a corpse and think about dinner plans with her arms elbow deep in its chest cavity—but dead women, specifically women who did not have an easy time with death, always brings the human’s compassion out past the doctor’s dissonance.

“All of the murders were executed by the same means, that much is clear,” she says to cover her momentary lapse. “I performed the autopsies myself, they are all exactly the same.”

“You told me over the phone that you meant that literally,” Mulder says, temporarily distracted from the paint on Scully’s cheek and the strange drop in his stomach it’s making him feel, in favor of a bit of intellectual runaround. “Literally, the wounds on all three victims were exactly the same. Same length in the incisions, down to the centimeter, same order of organ removal, same everything. How do you account for that?”

“While it’s unlikely for a killer to perform identically every time he or she may kill, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility.”

“But you do agree that the probability for that is low. I mean, similar techniques, sure, but you’re saying that, if these wounds weren’t performed on three separate individuals, they would be indistinguishable from one another, right?”

“Low probability still allows for that chance, Mulder.”

“What about human error? Or the fact that the bodies were all found nearly a thousand miles apart from one another?”

“So because the chances are low, you’re wont to automatically believe that this is murder by means of what, exactly? The paranormal? Witches, Mulder?”

“Have you figured out the murder weapon yet?” Mulder asks with a smirk, already knowing the answer. Scully sets her jaw and leans back.

“No,” she says, refusing to drop Mulder’s gaze. That doesn’t mean anything, her eyes say. “Look, let’s just say, for sake of argument, that you’re right. That still leaves motive.”

“Anything come up that connects the three of them?”

“One thing,” says Scully, flipping a page to a photograph of the first victim—a middle aged bald man with a small symbol tattooed on his scalp. Mulder can’t place it among any of the various signs and symbols stored away in his subconscious. “Remember this symbol?” Scully asks. “Well, on the latest victim, I found the same exact tattoo on her scalp. It was a complete fluke—I wasn’t even looking for it, I just happened to notice it while I was checking for external evidence.”

“You think the second victim had the same mark? Could both you and the other medical examiner have missed it?” Mulder asks.

“I’d put a lot of stock in that bet,” Scully says. “It makes sense that we would have missed it, she had thick hair, and dark enough skin that a scalp tattoo wouldn’t have stood out in any way. The cause of death wasn’t exactly subtle, only the means of execution. My focus, and I’m assuming Dr. Trine’s, was on the abdominal wounds.”

“When is she scheduled for burial?”

“Wednesday. I’ve already left a message with the coroner’s office to see if I can get into see the body before the showing.”

“And you think these symbols are...what, exactly? Cultist marks?”

“Possibly. And maybe these victims are escapees of the cult. That would explain why they were found so far apart, but why the means of execution was the same.”

“Exactly the same,” Mulder reminds her. Scully doesn’t dignify this with a response. “Well, alright, I guess we wait until we confirm that the second victim has the same mark. Can I get a copy of that photograph to send to Georgetown University. I know a symbologist there who might be able to help us identify it.”

“Of course.”

And the conversation stills. There are no other obvious targets of this killer, so there’s no one for them to go out and protect, and they aren’t going to collect any more information on the murderer outside of 9-5 business hours. Any second, Scully is going to call his bluff, saying, “you knew what my notes were going to be, Mulder, did you ask me in here just to argue?” which is half true, because he’s always up for a bit of lively debate with her, but not entirely his motivation, and he’s not sure how to keep her here without revealing that, more than anything, he just wants more time to look at her. He decides to take a risk, making a sharp turn and steering the conversation down a completely different road, hoping it will make her stay.

“Why was your mom painting her study?” he asks, and if Scully minds this change of subject she doesn’t show it, perhaps used to Mulder being tangential and unpredictable. He likes that—he likes to have someone know him so intrinsically they are no longer phased by his eccentricities.

“She’s getting the house appraised,” she says, sliding back on the cushion just a little, an elbow propped up on the arm of the chair. “That house has been needing renovation, God, probably since I was in undergrad, but Mom’s always so ansty about any sort of change when it comes to the house. One Christmas, Dad offered to completely finance a brand new kitchen for her, and she declined, telling him that there were too many memories in her old kitchen, why would she want to get rid of it? And now, since Dad and Melissa passed, trying to convince her to make any modifications to the house has been about as easy as holding a conversation with a brick wall.”

“Or as easy as trying to convince her daughter to believe in the fantastic?” Mulder teases, and Scully smiles.

“Yeah, just about.”

“Well, your mom’s a sentimental woman.”

“Yeah, just a bit,” Scully scoffs. “I’m pretty sure she kept the shorts I was wearing the day I got my first menstrual cycle.”

“I hope she washed them before she framed them.”

“No kidding. But with the appraiser coming, she’s had to concede to a little bit of renovation. The study hasn’t even been used since Dad died, and I’m pretty sure the original coat of paint was lead based.” She rolls her eyes as she twists a strand of hair between two fingers.

This side of Scully is something Mulder doesn’t get to see that often.

There’s Agent Scully, his partner, with her quick wit and tedious but necessary skepticism, who has professionalism down to a science, even in the face of constant criticism.

There’s Dr. Scully, who can spout the anatomical term for every part of the human body, and can put together whole life stories of the post-mortem with nothing but her five senses and textbook smarts.

There’s Survivor Scully, who puts the memories of tragedy into a box that for any other person would be overflowing, but she manages to keep a lid on it with poise and grace, but in sacrifice, lives behind a wall, treating vulnerability like a mortal sin.

But this is Ms. Dana Scully. Ms. Dana Scully is the woman who talks about her mother with the phantom pains of long since amputated teenaged angst. This is the woman who wears paint-splattered jeans in public, and who forgoes the science journals and casefiles in favor of fiction books she reads in the bath by candlelight, and while Mulder adores every iteration of her, there’s a lightness in this version that makes him feel a bit fluttery. This is the version that laughs more easily, and it’s the real laugh, the one that is loud and abrasive and everything that Scully usually isn’t. This is the version that isn’t weighed down by all the years she’s spent chasing monsters in the dark by his side.

Mulder isn’t sure when exactly he fell in love with Scully.

It’s possible that there wasn’t a specific moment at all. Maybe the transition from friendship was so smooth that one day he just woke up and realized he’d been looking at Scully the same way he looked at the night sky—like an intricately tangled mystery, full of beauty and questions and Truths, of which he may never know the extent of. Somewhere along the way, she had become his greatest X-File.

“My parents never kept anything,” says Mulder, fiddling with his bottle of beer. “I think it was too hard, and the Mulder family wasn’t anything if not masters of repression.”

“Grief manifests in different ways,” says Scully, and she leans against the back of the couch now, and Mulder suppresses a grin of victory. “Everyone deals with the pain differently. I guess my Mom is the type to want to hang onto every detail, and yours were the ones who’d rather forget.”

“I’m sure healthy coping mechanisms rest somewhere between the two,” says Mulder, and the corner of Scully’s mouth quips up. He gets to his feet, and before she can follow suit, he says, “I’m grabbing another beer, this one’s gone lukewarm. Let me get you one.”

“It’s been more than ten minutes,” she says, smirking, but she doesn’t move from her spot, as if she already knew she was never getting out of this apartment without a fight.

“Then we gotta reset the timer.”

A sigh.

“Mulder…”

“Come on, where do you have to be? There’s a Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy channel. Pretty sure ‘It’s a Good Life’ is the next episode, or the one after. That’s the best one.”

“My whole life is like The Twilight Zone, Mulder, I don’t need to watch it.”

“But these ones have little factoids about the production of each episode at the end of all the credits,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an excited little kid, and he watches her fight a smile, refusing to encourage him. “Come on, you can’t say no to Serling.”

“Mulder, any other night I’d be happy to keep you company, but I look like I’m covered in that mushroom digestive slime, and I’m pretty sure I smell like it too. Trust me, I’m sparing you.”

Mulder waves a dismissive hand and says, “that’s a poor excuse, you’re beautiful.” He says it easily and with no sense of shame, because even though it’s not Sexual Harassment Video Appropriate, it’s true, and he knows it’ll throw her off her guard.

Which it absolutely does. Her eyes get wide, and her mouth does that wonderful thing where she opens it just a little, the tips of her front teeth visible. “Shut up, Mulder,” she says when she’s recovered, but it doesn’t have her usual finesse, and Mulder doesn’t relent.

“What? You are. You know that, it’s not some big secret. Besides, I've seen you covered in digestive slime, and I assure you, you look nothing of the sort.”

He actually doesn’t know how Scully sees herself when she looks in the mirror. Does she know she’s beautiful? He imagines Dr. Scully might view her own body clinically, noting that she’s smooth, proportional, and symmetrical, which, she would argue, are traits that humans have been conditioned to find attractive, so in that sense, she fits the bill.

But how does Ms. Dana Scully, with no makeup on, and shapeless clothes hanging off her frame, feel about herself? At Arcadia Falls, she wore a horrible, green face mask, and when he looked at the tube of it she left in the bathroom, he saw it was to minimize pores and diminish the visibility of wrinkles.

Her lunches are always salads or pieces of flatbread covered in pesto and vegetables, and her snacks always have the words soy, rice, or low-fat in their descriptions. She puts concealer on her facial mole, and gets her nails professionally done. Does she do these things because she likes to? Or does she think she needs to?

She has scars; the small slit scar in the back of her neck, the remnants of the gunshot wound in her abdomen. Along her milky skin there are thin, white lines all across her body one can only see up close. She's been hit, thrown, beaten, and bashed, all in the line of duty, and those sorts of things stain.

To Mulder, who has his own physical evidence of what he's been through, they are but reminders of the times they could have lost but didn't. They're signs of strength; of resilience. It's never occurred to him that she might see them as deformities, or maybe even as tally marks. “How many times have I nearly died? Let me count my skin.”

“You do know that, right?” he asks, now wanting to make sure there are no misconceptions; no hidden self-conscious behaviors she keeps from him when she views her own reflection. After all, Mulder is nothing if not an ardent proponent of the Truth.

“What kind of question is that?” is her response, which very purposely doesn't answer it.

“Hey, I'm not coming on to you,” says Mulder, although he's not sure how honest that is. “I just want to make sure we're on the same page here.”

“About my appearance?” She isn’t meeting his eye, and Mulder realizes she’s embarrassed, and it’s so un-Scullylike for her to give into her chagrin that Mulder wonders when the last time it was that someone called her beautiful. Not the beautiful the people on the street inundate her with, nor the unsettling winks she gets from her peers, but a genuine, honest, “you are beautiful.” He isn’t sure if he has overstepped a line, or should have crossed it much sooner.

“You're the one who said you looked like digestive slime,” he says, deciding he’s involved now, he might as well commit. “I'm just setting the record straight here. You know how I feel about the truth.”

She regards him the way she does when he says something particularly off the rails. 'You’re beautiful’ may as well have been 'I played poker with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster’ for how closely knitted her eyebrows are right now.

“Is that a yes or no to the beer, then?” he asks her, and after a moment she says,

“Okay, but just one.”

An episode and a half later, her shoes are haphazardly laying on the floor, her feet kicked under her, her body curled in a ball like a kitten on the couch. She'd deny it if he said it, but she's got a thing for horror and sci-fi genres—she can make enough off-the-cuff references that he knows her college years had to be full with late night movie marathons, and she didn't become a pathologist simply out of a love of science. Like him, she's drawn to the intricacies of the human body and physical law, and while she might not believe them all in practice, she appreciates all the creative ways one could bastardize science.

“What did you mean when you said I'm beautiful?” Scully asks out of nowhere. There is a commercial for frozen pizza playing in the background, and Mulder was about to suggest they order some food, and her question catches him off guard.

When he looks at her she is still watching the television, face neutral. Vanity, in any sort of outward sense, has never been a concern Scully has ever seemed to bother with. He tries to imagine her as a teenager, standing in the bathroom mirror at school, picking at her acne, or poking at how her stomach pudges just slightly over the waist of her jeans when she bends forward, but he can’t.

Mulder remembers Padgett’s novel, and how he described Scully's reservations towards the more material parts of herself as a defense against the ingrained patriarchal atmosphere of her workspace, and while Mulder has no desire to give weight to any syllable Padgett typed out—he was, after all, just another man who felt entitled to her—a part of him can't help wondering if he had been right. For a second time he wonders when the last time Scully had been told she was beautiful? Not by a gushing family member, or an entitled man, but by someone who truly knew her, and expected and wanted nothing from her except for her to see the beauty in herself as well?

She already is waving her hand, embarrassed by her own question, flushed beneath her oily skin. “Never mind,” she says. “Don't answer that.”

Mulder considers a joke to lessen her awkwardness—“I’m pretty sure you could go up to any guy in the Hoover building and ask them to sleep with you and they would get naked right there”—but that's not the kind of beauty Mulder means, nor the type he wants her to think of herself as, like she only has beauty in terms of how it equates to sexuality. Scully’s beauty transcends the physical. In her case, beauty isn’t only skin deep. It goes all the way through her skin, into her bones, into her mind and heart and soul, and to think she might only view herself as someone to fuck is as reprehensible as her viewing herself as ugly.

“I meant that you're beautiful,” he finds himself saying. “In every sense of the word. In the biochemical sense, you surely elicit carnal urges in men—and probably some women, I mean, let’s be honest—but you manage to backup all that physical beauty with an even more beautiful mind, so don't think I mean you'd just make a good person to do the naked pretzel with, and don't think that just because you're not dressed for a federal office job, because it’s a Saturday and why would you be, that you've suddenly transformed into a gila monster.”

Scully says nothing, seemingly fascinated with her chipped index finger nail.

“Have I crossed a line?” Mulder asks, checking off the boxes of all the rules he's broken from his Sexual Harassment Video Gaze.

“No,” she says finally. “Besides, I asked.” She finally meets his eye and gives him a thin lipped smile, and Mulder is overcome with a desire to kiss her, except that's the exact opposite of what he's trying to accomplish here—convince her that she's more than just a lay—so instead he takes her hand in his and kisses her knuckles softly; platonically; safely.

So his surprise is insurmountable when it's Scully who then runs her tongue across her lower lip, and then leans over and kisses him on the mouth.

It's an awkward angle—her legs are still partially tucked beneath her, and she has to hold onto the back of his neck for balance—but it doesn't matter. Her lips are the texture of marshmallows, and the kiss is chaste and brief, and Mulder thinks absently of how this might be what it feels like to kiss a cloud.

She pulls away as quickly as she came, blue eyes wide and frightened, like a child who knows they're about to get scolded for stealing from the cookie jar, but Mulder couldn't be further from scolding. He hears his own pulse thrum at the base of his ears, and he wonders when his heart migrated to his throat.

“I can't believe I just did that,” says Scully, in the same voice that says things like, “but Mulder, that's scientifically impossible,” and “I've never seen anything like this before,” and Mulder realizes, right then, that in the same way she has become his, he's become her biggest X-File as well.

“Feel free to do it again,” he says, trying to sound cheeky, but it comes out shy and uncertain, like maybe that was just a bit of corrupted data that she wasn't going to try repeating.

But she doesn’t disregard the experiment.

Angling herself towards him this time, getting onto her knees so she’s balancing beside him on the couch cushion, she tentatively brings her hands up to cup his face—a gesture she's done a million times before, but that has never felt as erotic as it does right now.

Mulder twists so they are face to face, Rod Serling talking ominously in black and white in their periphery, and they stare, still and frightened like teenagers learning how to explore another person’s body for the first time.

Scully’s breath is hollow, and Mulder can feel the thrum of her pulse in the thumb positioned on his jaw. He kicks himself for not shaving that morning, hoping the stubble beneath her hand doesn’t cause her to pull away.

He’s not inexperienced, of course, he’s kissed a fair number of women, and slept with just as many, (if that’s what this is leading to), but this isn’t just somebody. He’s had one night stands, and short term flings, and even has been in love, but Dana Scully is her own category, and taking in the heat behind her eyes, Mulder knows that his love for her is not one sided, and even though, if pressed, he probably already knew that, it’s something else entirely to be faced with the confirmation. Theories are just theories until the evidence is presented, says the investigator inside of him, and sometimes, if the theory is big enough, finding the evidence can be overwhelming.

“What are we doing?” asks Scully, so breathlessly it almost sounds like nothing but air.

Mulder shakes his head, unable to speak, eating up the unadulterated love emanating from her, directed right at his own person. He instead leans over and kisses the fleck of paint splatter along her jaw, lips together but lingering, and Scully exhales shakily, her fingers flexing against him.

He pulls away to look at her, and just like the flip of a switch, the heat behind her eyes has become charged, and suddenly Mulder is introduced to a brand new Dana Scully—Dana Scully Aroused. Blood rushes to her cheeks in a natural blush on her naked face, and her bust rises and falls harder as she takes in oxygen more sharply. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and leans into him again, finding his mouth with hers, and he meets her with enthusiasm, no longer chaste, pressing hard until her lips part just enough for him to run his tongue over the spot her teeth had been just a moment prior.

Mulder’s kissed Scully before—once when Scully wasn’t actually Scully, and once as the clock struck midnight and he could use it as an excuse if he needed it. But kissing Scully and being kissed by Scully are decidedly different things, as he unconsciously brings his hands up slowly along her sides, feeling the outline of her ribs underneath her t-shirt, until his arms find themselves wrapped tightly around her back, pulling her into him so that her chest is pressed against his.

At this, she deepens the kiss, nipping him softly while her own hands move up and her fingers tangle themselves in his hair. In a single, swift motion, he moves one of his arms clinging to her, and slips it under her shirt, and rubs her cool, damp skin with the palm of his hand, and she gasps softly into his mouth at the feel of flesh against flesh.

Already he feels the tightening in his groin, and as much as it pains him to do it, he pulls away from her, searching her face for any sign of hesitation.

She makes a small noise of protest, and casts her eyes down at his lips, about to dive back in, but he catches her first, grasping her chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting it up so she’s forced to meet his eye. She’s heaving, with a chaotic gleam sparkling from the irises of her eyes, like she looks when she’s chased a suspect down the street and pinned him to the ground. How easily and dangerously the same look translates into eroticism.

“I want to,” she says before Mulder can even ask the question, and the words go right to his crotch. He closes his eyes to center himself, before opening them again and shaking his head just slightly.

“You need to be sure,” he says. “I need you to be sure.”

“I am,” she says without missing a beat, but then she furrows her brow, suddenly wary, and says, “Are you?”

Mulder lets out a huff of a laugh, smiling as he traces the outline of her lips with the pad of his thumb. “Oh I’m definitely sure,” he says, because now that the seal has been broken, every single ‘I’m not noticing’ he’s done to keep up the Workplace Appropriate Gaze is now crashing down on him with a vengeance, and he can think of nothing he wants more than to memorize all the different sounds Scully can make when she’s properly touched.

But he also can’t shake the nagging worry in the back of his head, the one saying that once this happens, they can’t go back. He’s already told her, in so many words, that she’s more than just a lay, and he can’t put himself inside her, and then go back to acting like he doesn’t know what that feels like.

“I just need you to realize,” he says, “that we can’t undo this if we do it.”

He’s reminded of their first ever case, walking from the hospital, Scully gesticulating with a soil sample she’d taken off the sole of Billy Miles’ foot, raving, ‘he killed Peggy O’Dell, I don’t believe it,’ and Mulder having to talk her back down to realize the implications of what she was saying.

Its both terrifying and comforting to know that no matter what the situation is, they have always been Mulder and Scully; they are always the same dynamic inside an unlikely duo that works in spite of itself.

Scully, still pressed against his chest, heeds Mulder’s words, and draws in a long breath, thinking hard. “I’d say,” she says slowly, after a long moment, “that we’ve already gone past that which we can’t undo.”

And Mulder considers their position, his hand unconsciously rubbing circles on the bare skin beneath her bra, her breasts rising and falling against his pectorals. Could he go to work on Monday and treat her like he doesn’t know the texture of her tongue? Could he brush his hair that morning and not think about the way she tugged on it just slightly hard enough to make it ache? He swallows hard.

“It sounds stupid, but I just don’t want to jeopardize our relationship,” he says. “You mean too much to me to ruin it because you’re hot and I couldn’t rein it in.”

Scully smiles slyly, leaning in even closer to Mulder now, and says, “so I’m hot now? I thought I was beautiful.”

“Please,” says Mulder, surprised by how low his voice registers. “You’re the smart one, you should know that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

At this, Scully captures his mouth again, and just like that, the question is answered for them as they’re thrust into the point of no return. There’s no way, Mulder thinks, lifting Scully up so that she’s straddling his lap, that anyone could ever be kissed like this and pretend like the world didn’t stop in its tracks.

Scully shifts so that her weight is on Mulder’s erection, and Mulder, being in sweatpants and having not had another person touch him there since he started getting eyes for the redhaired skeptic in his office, lets out an embarrassing noise at the contact. Scully pulls away just long enough to smirk, and then grinds down into him as she starts pressing kisses down the length of his jawline.

“Fuck me,” Mulder grunts, pressing his nails into the skin on Scully’s back.

Even though it wasn’t technically a request, Scully murmurs into the crook of his neck, “not here.” She resurfaces to add, “you might find your couch a suitable replacement for a bed, but I’m afraid I don’t share your point of view.”

Mulder regards her, struck by how disheveled she looks, her hair falling out from the bobby pins even more, and her lips swollen already. In a single movement, he scoops her into his arms and stands, and she lets out a girlish squeal he never thought Dana Scully could make, as she wraps her arms around his neck to keep from falling.

“Good thing I have a bedroom, then,” he says, kissing her briefly, before carrying her to his bedroom door.

“Yeah, you never did explain that to me,” she says, nibbling on his earlobe.

“I don’t remember,” he says, because he really doesn’t , and also because he’s fumbling with the doorknob and it’s distracting enough to have Scully’s tongue dipping into the crevice beneath his ear, so she can’t really expect him to tell the story of his mysterious bedroom right then and there, can she?

“Need help there?” she teases quietly.

“You’re not exactly making it easy,” he says, finally getting the knob turned, and all but kicking the door open. Scully, in all her unpredictable glory, lets out a genuine, goddamned giggle, and Mulder thinks if any more blood goes to his erection he may actually start losing brain cells.

He tosses Scully onto the bed a bit roughly, takes one second to appreciate the sight of her bouncing against his mattress, before crawling towards her until she’s fully beneath him.

“This is,” he breathes, looking down at Scully’s parted lips and flushed cheeks, “an excellent vantage point.”

“I could say the same,” she says. “Though it’s a bit dark in here.” She runs a hand up his torso and over his chest. “I want to see you better.”

Mulder nods, and instead of flipping on his reading lamp, reaches over onto his bedside table where he’s got a lighter and candle. He is aware of Scully shifting beneath him as he flicks open the flame and lights the candle. He comes back, and despite how wonderful she looks in them, decides right then that Scully is wearing altogether too many clothes.

He grabs the hem of her t-shirt, and tugs it up in an easy, practiced motion, Scully lifting up her shoulders so he can get it over her head. She’s wearing a black bra, and the underwire has rubbed her skin slightly red beneath her breasts, and he leans down to kiss the marks, flicking his tongue out onto the skin and tasting salt. In response, Scully bucks up against him, and he takes the opportunity to grab hold of her hips and start working on her jeans.

With one hand, he undoes the button, and peels them off of her, revealing her milky white thighs, and muscled calves. He pulls them off, taking her socks with them, and then runs his hands up the length of her legs, and her muscles twitch involuntarily. She’s got on a pair of light pink, cotton panties that don’t match her bra, which are probably panties reserved for lazy days and painting studies. Mulder loves it, and can see they already have a wet spot. He makes his way towards them.

Suddenly she reaches up to still his hands. He stops as she sits up onto her elbows. “There’s a lot of give and no take here,” she says, sounding flustered, and one of her hands settles over the gunshot scar on her abdomen unconsciously as she eyes his fully dressed form.

He considers telling her there’s not an inch of her she needs to hide from him, but he’s getting a bit warm under his clothes anyway, so he tears off his own shirt, and tosses it haphazardly onto the floor. Scully takes a sharp inhale of breath, and eyes his nude chest like it’s an ancient Greek sculpture, which is flattering, but ridiculous, because if anyone here is emitting classical beauty, it’s her.

She brings a hand up and slides her fingers through his chest hair, scratching very faintly with her nails. Mulder takes her by the wrist and kissing her knuckles, before leaning down and kisses her on the mouth again, an act he could spend hours doing and never get bored.

The contact between bare skin is electric, and Mulder has never been more aware of every nerve ending on his torso before. He could go the rest of his life learning how every inch of his body reacts to Scully’s touch, but right now he has more important things to focus on, like the bra that she’s still wearing for some God awful reason.

He slips his hands under her and without breaking their kiss, flips them over so that Scully is on top. She makes a surprised noise deep in her throat, and pulls away from him looking shocked and wild, her eyes wide. Mulder says nothing, and silently reaches behind her and works the clasp of her bra.

“Not bad,” Scully mumbles as it comes undone, and her bra sags, kept on only by the straps around her shoulders.

“Would you think less of me if I told you I used to practice with a bra and a body pillow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I definitely didn’t do that,” he says, very slowly sliding the straps of her bra down her arms, savoring her softness and the tensing of her muscles. Her skin breaks out in goose pimples, and she trembles a little as her bra falls off onto Mulder’s belly. He gapes up at her.

He’s seen Scully naked before, but this is worlds’ apart from that. This isn’t even in the same galaxy—if anything, this constitutes as a religious experience. Her breasts are the perfect, round handful, with dark areolas and taut nipples that stiffen beneath his touch. He pinches one gently, and Scully bites down on her lip so hard that when she opens her mouth again she’s drawn the tiniest drops of blood.

“You’re beautiful,” Mulder says.

“Yes, you’ve said,” says Scully, staring down, decidedly not looking into Mulder’s face. He takes her chin again and makes her look at him.

“You aren’t hearing me,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

Her eyelids flutter, and her breath is shaky, and Mulder is taken with an urgent need to taste her.

“Off,” he says, helping her slip her leg back over his hips. “Get on your back.” He gently maneuvers her onto her back, and props open her legs and kneels in between them. He kisses each breast, running a tongue over her nipples, and then slides his mouth down her sternum. He kisses around her belly button, as he slips his fingers along the elastic of her panties. He feels her tense up as she realizes what he’s about to do, and he looks up at her.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks. Scully draws in a deep breath, closes her eyes, and shakes her head, just once, and it’s all the prompting Mulder needs. He pulls down her panties, slowly dragging them over her knees, to her ankles, and off over her feet, and then admires what’s in front of him.

She either shaves or waxes, and it’s been some time since she’s done either, as strands of red hair are poking up from the skin. He runs his hand over her folds, so lightly both of them can barely feel the contact, but Scully stiffens anyway. Mulder presses his lips onto the inside of her thigh, kissing up and up, dipping his tongue into the crevice at the joint. She smells like sweat, and skin, and wetness, and he breathes it in like perfume.

He puts two fingers between her labia, and dips his tongue inside her. Just once. Just quickly. Scully sucks in a breath and arches her back at the suddenness of the action, and Mulder knows that he’s already become an addict. He wants to eat her for every meal for the rest of time. He nuzzles her leg with his nose, before diving right back in, slowly circling her entrance with the tip of his tongue.

He flattens it against her and drags it up until he’s at her clit. He holds back the folds and admires the swollen button of flesh, as the shadows cast from the candle dance over it, and when he presses his lips against her, he thinks that this must be what it’s like to taste candlelight. She tastes like candlelight—bright, beautiful, and burning. He traces sweet nothings onto her clitorous with his tongue, and her breathing begins to shallow. Without moving his mouth, he takes a finger and slips it inside her, and her muscles clench around him as he gestures ‘come hither’ deep in her body.

She starts to groan, but stops herself, throwing her first knuckle into her mouth and biting down, wrapping the fingers on her other hand into Mulder’s hair and pulling hard enough to hurt, but he doesn’t care. He’s too drunk off of her to feel anything but the texture of her skin on the sensitive nerves in his mouth.

“Mulder, I’m—” she says around her hand, cutting her own self off with a hitch in her breath. Her legs wrap around him, and he can feel her toes curling. He keeps a rhythmic motion going with his finger, while he continues to confess seven years worth of love with his tongue, and suddenly she’s letting out a sharp cry, the hand in his hair stilling, her whole body stilling, as she comes in his mouth.

“Fuck,” she mutters, the muscles in her groin convulsing involuntarily, her whole body a board, until her orgasm finishes washing over her, and she slumps into the sheets like a ragdoll.

Mulder slips off of her reluctantly, leaving behind one last kiss, before joining her at the top of the bed. She’s looking at him like she’s forgotten every word in the English language, and barely responds to his kiss, as he gifts her with his new favorite flavor, wanting her to know what candlelight tastes like.

“Mulder,” she says, distant and spent, and he brushes the hair off her face.

“What do you want?” he asks her. “Tell me what you want.”

“You,” she breathes, the syllable almost lost in the air. It’s the word he needs to hear, not even realizing how much he was aching for her until hearing her grant him entrance. He fumbles with the tie of his sweatpants, and pushes them and his boxers down in a single motion.

At the sight of him, Scully seems revitalized, her eyes bright, and licks her lips as she takes one hand and wraps it around him. She wets him down with his own precum, and jerks him off agonizingly slow. He groans in the back of his throat like a feral animal, and knows that he must be looking at her like she’s prey.

“Now,” she says, and before the word has even left her lips, Mulder is positioned between her legs, but he stops.

“Should I…” he looks for the words. “Do we need protection?” He knows the answer already. They’ve seen enough of each other’s blood work to know they’re clean, and there’s an entire file in his office about why they don’t need birth control, but he needs to hear her say it.

“No,” she says. “We don’t.”

And Mulder thanks Scully’s God, (he’s not sure he has one of his own), because he is an advocate for safe sex, but fucking Scully for the first time is something he’d rather experience in full. He pushes into her, going in easy with the wetness brought by her orgasm, and he sees the creation of the Universe happen behind his eyes.

“Oh Scully,” he says softly, and he says it like a prayer. She’s warm and tight around him, and he takes a moment to savor it, before he can’t handle it any longer, and starts to move.

He presses himself against her, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis, and she wraps her arms and legs around him, and he still searches for more contact. He craves Scully’s touch like a drug, and he wants to meld into it. He wonders absently if there’s anything in the X-Files that would help him with that.

He thrusts into her, her muscles pulsating in a deliciously dangerous way that makes him already feel the buildup to his release. He’d like to have her in every way, shape, and form, but he knows he won’t last that long. He feels young, like it’s his first time, and foolish, but Scully will have to forgive him. Sex has never been like this, so effectively it is his first time, and by the way she’s scratching at his back helplessly, he knows she feels the same.

Beads of sweat form along Scully’s forehead, and he kisses them away while pushing into her, and she’s biting her lips again, trying so hard to stay quiet, as though letting anything out would be a vulnerability she just can’t take. So he makes the noise for her, swearing and gasping into her, as she tenses up and comes again so suddenly that he doesn’t have time to brace himself against the grip around him her tensing causes, and just as suddenly as her orgasm came, so does his, and he spills into her, her name on his lips like a reckoning.

He stays inside her for a minute, both of them silent except for their panting, and he finally forces himself to pull out of her. She winces as he slips out, and lets herself be pulled into his arms as he gathers her up beside him, putting a hand upon her hip, her backside pressed into his torso.

“I’ve never come like that before,” she admits softly. “From just sex alone.”

“I’d take credit for it with my amazing sexual prowess,” Mulder says, absently petting her hair, the after effects of his orgasm causing the corner of his eyes to feel heavy with exhaustion. “But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t just your normal, every day lay.”

“No it wasn’t,” she agrees, and Mulder can hear the worry in her voice.

“Hey,” he says into her ear. “Don’t.”

She glances over her shoulder at him. “Don’t what?”

“Think.”

“I’m not,” she protests, but Mulder shakes his head.

“You are, I can hear it, don’t. I know you’re worrying, but don’t.”

She says nothing for a long moment. “What if we’ve just changed everything?” she says finally.

“What if we’ve changed it for the better?” Mulder counters, and Scully looks unconvinced—a look he’s familiar with, and maybe it’s the post coital glow, but it makes him laugh. She scowls at him at first, until a smile overtakes her, and soon she’s laughing too, and Mulder nuzzles his forehead against her shoulder blade, and places soft kisses along her neck.

“The real question,” he asks, starting to fall into what’s sure to be a heavy sleep. “Is how did we manage to make it this long without ever doing that?”

He feels her smile.

“Must be an X-File,” she says.

#fox mulder #dana scully #msr #msr fanfic #txf #the x-files #the x-files fanfic #mine #long post

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presumenothing · 7 years

Text

flash point

for the prompt: “You are a pyrokinetic who tends to accidentally set things on fire when stressed. And today, you’re having a very bad day.”

[~1.5 hours of completely unedited writing, apologies in advance for any glaring errors]

(AO3) (FFN)

EDIT: now continued(ish?) here!

EDIT^2: ...and continued further here?

"Damn it," Saguru mutters under his breath, when the edge of his paper catches fire for the third time today.

Acrid tendrils of smoke curl out from where his fingers meet the paper, and he forces himself to take several deep breaths (in why was this happening, out he ought've mastered it completely by now, in just stop already) until the heat flickers and dies out again – which is when the lunch bell rings, and Saguru would've called it divine intervention if he'd been inclined to be religious in the least.

He's just about to stand and leave (to anywhere, really, Saguru doesn't usually have a problem with confined spaces but the classroom feels excruciatingly stifling today) when a voice calls out from behind him.

"Oi, Hakuba," says Kuroba, and Saguru watches somewhat warily as his classmate walks over to his desk. Quite contrary to any of Saguru's expectations though, Kuroba only looks at him for a moment, before nodding towards the desk. "You want to talk about it?"

Or – not quite the desk, Saguru realises, looking down at the slightly reddened patches on his hands. His pyrokinesis doesn't hurt himself, usually, but today had been a bad day on all fronts, to put it mildly. Saguru can't help but grimace. "That obvious, huh?"

"Unless you're blind. Or deaf. And lack a sense of smell, I guess," Kuroba adds after a moment's consideration. "So, like I said – wanna talk?"

Saguru's first instinct is to decline politely, but he forces himself to consider it seriously. He hasn't had a power lapse this bad in a long time (three years, eight months, and four days, to put it precisely), after all. But...

"Thank you for the offer, but I think I'll pass," Saguru says eventually. "I don't think talking will help in this situation, honestly speaking."

Kuroba shrugs, his expression nonchalant. "Okay, whatever you say. Offer's still open, though."

Then he walks off, and Saguru is certain that's the end of it, when –

A small jar lands on his desk with a metallic clink, and Saguru looks from it to Kuroba's oddly unexpressive face, suddenly feeling like there was a whole part to the conversation that he'd missed. "I'm sorry, what – ?"

"Burn cream," Kuroba says, interrupting the question – not that Saguru quite knew what he'd been intending to ask, anyway. "Or at least my version of it, but it should help with your hands."

"I – " Saguru blinks in surprise, and almost wonders if he heard that wrong. "That sounds useful. Thank you, Kuroba-kun."

"Don't mention it," comes the answer, almost flippantly, and Saguru belatedly realises that Kuroba is already halfway to the classroom door. "Literally."

He's still seated at his desk a few minutes later – all thoughts of leaving the classroom gone from his mind – when Aoko walks over and notices the jar on his desk. "Oh, is that from Kaito? It's really effective, I know he uses it during his own practice."

"Yes, Kuroba-kun gave it to me." And speaking of whom – Saguru turns to his other classmate, and wonders if he looks half as mystified as he feels. "Why would he do that?"

He almost expects her not to answer, but instead Aoko leans over to turn the chair in front of his around and sit down, looking pensive.

It's a few moments before she speaks, and in that time Saguru has already applied a thin layer of the cream on the base of his fingers, where the outline of the paper from earlier is still smarting ever so slightly – and Aoko is right, it does work wonders.

"Kaito had quite a lot of trouble controlling his powers when he was younger, you see. Especially after his dad..." Aoko's voice trails off – her words are soft enough that it doesn't carry, though the classroom is almost empty anyway. "Anyway, it wasn't until middle school that he really got a handle on it. So he knows what it feels like, I guess."

Saguru listens with a growing sense of disbelief, because he's seen Kuroba in ability training, and he – or, to borrow a turn of phrase, anyone with a functional set of senses who happens to be in the elemental manipulation section of the class – can see that Kuroba's control of air is basically perfect. And Saguru has been to some of the finest ability training institutions both back home and in Japan, so he knows what he's talking about.

Then Aoko adds, "So, do you want to talk about it, Hakuba-kun?"

And apparently Saguru is more tired than he thought, because the retort slips out before he can stop it. "Are you and Kuroba-kun ganging up on me?"

Aoko giggles. "Not at all, Hakuba-kun, you would definitely have noticed if Kaito and Aoko were working together on something like that!"

Which is... true, if not quite an answer he was expecting, and Saguru is suddenly and forcibly reminded of what he'd heard and dismissed as a myth back when he'd first transferred into Ekoda High – that a previous math teacher for this class had resigned in a fit of terror after she claimed that she was being haunted at school by some particularly persistent ghosts.

He looks again at Aoko, who still has the slightest glint of mischief in her eyes, and decides that (a) he really doesn't want to know, and (b) Aoko would've gotten involved only if the teacher had been legitimately terrible in her own right. Probably.

School, Saguru thinks with a sigh, had never been quite this complicated in London. "It's really not something pleasant to talk about, Aoko-kun. I was just assigned to help Division One with their caseload this week, and... well, it's been a while since I've encountered any murder cases, I suppose."

That isn't the whole story, of course – Saguru hasn't really worked on many homicides since coming to Japan, that much was true, but he'd handled them quite regularly before, enough so that he knows a murder alone isn't enough to trigger something like this. But one of the cases had been worse than the others, and –

A slight crackle catches his attention, but before the flame can escape beyond Saguru's clenched fingers Aoko conjures a little disc of water that extinguishes it with a faint sizzle before vanishing without a trace.

"Thank you, Aoko-kun," Saguru says, then adds, "Your control is very impressive as well, you know."

"Eh? Aoko's control?" She laughs, shaking her head. "Not really, Aoko is just lucky to have an easier element than Kaito or Hakuba-kun! Water has a much more physical form than fire or air, after all."

Saguru recalls several of the more disastrous hydrokinesis attempts that he'd seen with a wince. "I beg to differ, Aoko-kun. A former classmate of mine once nearly brought down a tsunami upon our heads. He had been trying to create a whirlpool, I believe."

"That sounds like he lost control of the direction vectors," she replies. "But as long as you're careful with those, water can be quite predictable. Aoko doesn't even need to worry about factors like viscosity and composition all that much, unlike Kaito."

Before Saguru can argue the point any further, though, Aoko stands up and extends a hand to him. "Oh, do you want to go to the rooftop and watch Kaito practice, Hakuba-kun?"

He raises an eyebrow skeptically. "Practice? On what?"

"On himself, of course!" Aoko says, before elaborating at Saguru's presumably confused expression. "He mentioned something about working out the buoyancy and lift forces on himself, but Kaito's never liked sharing his ideas before he's figured out how to make them work."

Saguru puts two and two together, and comes up with a short-circuited brain and the otherwise unlikely hypothesis that Kuroba is apparently trying to make himself fly, which is –

He's halfway to his feet before he realises the obvious contradiction. "Hang on, doesn't that mean he won't want us there watching?"

"That's why we're going to be spying on him instead!" Aoko answers cheerfully, fishing out her handphone from her school satchel. "Besides, Aoko already promised to send Chikage-san a video if Kaito actually makes it work, so we definitely have a reason to be there – "

As Saguru lets himself be tugged along in the wake of Aoko's excitement, he thinks about how school had never been quite this interesting in London, either – and really, he wouldn't trade it for the world.

...no, I don’t know how this happened either? honest. the brain saw it and went, hey, that sounds like a certain Osaka loudmouth – oh no wait! why not let’s make our own lives difficult and pick the one character who’s the exact opposite!! it’ll be fun!!!

......so yeah, that happened. powers assigned at semi-random, Kaito gets air because that would be pretty neat as Kid (what with all the acrobatics and gliders and whatnot), Aoko gets water because why not (it’s a lot harder than she makes it sound obvs). not sure where Akako would be in this universe? also someone really needs to have Layla’s power from Sky High that scene was really awesome okay hush now

#detective conan #magic kaito #hakuba saguru #kuroba kaito #nakamori aoko #fanfiction #mine #really not kidding about the unedited part #haven't even reread this beyond basic spellchecking??#hope i didn't miss anything major #but anyway #just gonna leave this here #what even is my life anymore #flash point

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movietvtechgeeks · 7 years

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/emotional-home-run-supernatural-1211-regarding-dean/

An Emotional Home Run for 'Supernatural' 1211 Regarding Dean

This week’s Supernatural made me emotional before we even knew what was happening, simply because I knew that this was it – the Dean loses his memory episode. The tiny preview clip shook me weeks ago, and then I asked Jensen about it at a recent con. Would it break my heart? He said that it at first would make me laugh, but then… His silence spoke volumes. He knows how much I adore the fictional character he plays, and I’m quite certain he knew the scene with Dean in the mirror was indeed going to destroy me. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just say I was looking for signs of the impending amnesia even before they came, which made the opening ten minutes full of trepidation. That doesn’t mean I didn’t also laugh. A LOT. One of the reasons I’m certain that Supernatural is the best show ever is its brilliance in combining humor and angst in a single episode – sometimes in a single minute! This episode accomplished that repeatedly. Dean chases the witch, gets hexed by the witch, kills the witch, wakes up with a bunny. (Why did he wake up with a bunny? Who knows. Does writer Meredith Glynn love bunnies? Was somebody’s pet bunny on the soundstage that day and wanted to get in on the action? Does Jensen Ackles have a secret fondness for rabbits? No clue. I assume it refers to Dean’s rabbit comment in the previews. At any rate, it was adorable.) Ackles got ample room to exercise his comedy elbows…. I mean skills….in this episode. The face he made when the woman walking with her baby in the stroller looks aghast at him and gives him a dollar made me giggle even as I was dreading what was going to happen. Was that Kevin Park’s beautiful dog Kuma making a cameo appearance with the dog walking guy? Padalecki also got to show off his considerable comedy skills as Sam initially believes that Dean was on a bender and thus can be both bemused and annoyed at his lapses. Dean eats waffles, gets slapped by a woman he doesn’t remember, almost pukes over a murder victim with bags of bloody money pulled from his stomach…just another day for the Winchesters. And then things get not at all funny. Dean can’t remember which key to use to start the Impala. Oh god. This is the writing of someone who understands exactly what makes Dean DEAN and also knows how to rip my heart out. I half expected Robbie Thompson to peek out from behind an office door. (And yes, this is my highest compliment). To destroy me further, he then puts the car into reverse and crashes her into a newspaper stand. The icing on the cake? Sam: Dean! Dean: Who’s Dean? OMG. Let me pay Meredith Glynn another compliment. Many of the best stories I’ve ever heard about the Winchesters haven’t been on the show – they’ve been in fanfiction. I told Jensen the day I asked him about this episode that the amnesia Dean or amnesia Sam trope is one of my favorite flavors, but that it also kills me every time. That’s what I was hoping for from this episode – that it would live up to the amazing stories I’ve read that tackled this trope. And guess what? That’s what I got. Dean is in denial at first, insisting he’s fine – because who wouldn’t do that? Who wants to believe something as truly horrifying as the thought of losing your mind? Losing yourself. I’ve worked with people struggling with memory loss, and it’s profoundly terrifying. Lose your memory completely, and you’ve literally lost yourself, your identity, your ability to love or be loved. I can think of few things more terrifying. This episode, and Ackles and Padalecki’s brilliant acting played on that terror perfectly. Dean forgets the word for lamp, which in itself could be funny….almost. Sam puts a post-it note on it to remind him. Soon the room is covered in them. Sam alternates between being frustrated with his brother and starting to feel desperate and helpless, which Padalecki evoked perfectly. Finally, Sam calls Rowena. Rowena: Is he all smooth from the neck down, like a candle… Sam: I don’t know! And I’m not checking. Me: Darn. It’s getting less and less funny, as Sam turns around to find that Dean has disappeared. He just went out for ice, but even that simple thing is no longer simple – Sam is frantic, searching and calling out ‘Dean!’ until he finally finds him, trying to get into the wrong room. I think that was the point that the parallels to real life memory loss started to hit me. If you’ve ever witnessed someone going through something like that, it’s heartbreaking – and terrifying. And this episode got it so very right. They retrace Dean’s steps from the night before hoping to kill the witch and break the spell. With dizzying speed, the show veers back and forth from humorous (Dean, looking heartbreakingly innocent and about five years old, exclaiming “That’s awesome” when Sam tells him that witches and vampires and monsters are real and that they kill them), to heartbreaking, as Dean loses memories again and again. They eventually find the woman who slapped Dean in the bar and get a description of what he was up to and can’t remember the night before, which involves four shots of tequila and Dean riding Larry the mechanical bull. Dean: (hopefully) Was I good? Waitress: You were amazing. Sam: (eyeroll) The waitress apologizes for possibly taking advantage of a roofied Dean, which was a nice inclusion. Then the brothers review the video camera tapes from the night before and see Dean chase the bad guy out the back door. Dean: (attempting to read his own lips): No salsa real mittens… Sam: (exasperated) You can’t read lips. It’s funny, but it’s so not! Sam and Dean continue to retrace Dean’s steps into the woods, while Sam tells Dean who they are and what they do. That in itself was heartbreaking, Sam sounding like the big brother for a change. Dean, in his place of innocence, listens and then exclaims “Best job ever!” Sam doesn’t agree, citing all the grim realities. Dean: I don’t know, we kinda sound like heroes. Me: Damn right. Meanwhile, the dead witch’s siblings find his body and Rowena appears at the motel to help. Or to get her hands on the powerful spell book that the witch family have in their possession. Or maybe a little of both, if you love Rowena like I do. Dean: Your hair’s so bouncy! Rowena to Sam: Do we have to fix him? Sam entices Dean to sit down on the bed (actually he just grabs him by the shoulders and puts him there) with a promise of Cinemax. Dean’s selective memory interprets that as Skinemax, which he’s apparently quite comfortable with while Sam and Rowena are there too. It turns out to be a cartoon, but Dean has already forgotten what he was promised, so he smiles with pure joy and OMG I don’t know whether to laugh or start crying. Supernatural is often an emotional roller coaster, which I both love and hate, but this episode really delivered on that wild ride. Rowena makes it clear – to Sam and to us – that Dean won’t just lose his memory of his past. He’ll lose everything. He’ll forget who he is, how to do everything – even how to swallow. Dean Winchester will die. From the bed, Dean: Sucks for that guy. Oh god. My heart. Sam’s heart is clearly breaking too. Sam: I’ve watched my brother die. But watching him become…not him. This might actually be worse. Seeing the person you love most in the world slipping away, unable to do anything to stop it? I’ll say. This episode hit hard for anyone who has had to lose a loved one little by little, as many of us have. Almost too hard at some points. Sam takes Dean into the bathroom for some privacy and tells him their life story. Their shared history. Who Dean is, what he’s done. Dean: I can feel it, slipping out of my head. Sam: We’ll figure it out, okay? We will. How many times has Dean said that to Sam? *clutches chest* Then Sam leaves to go out and try to save his brother’s life. And that? Is what I live for. Dean faces himself in the mirror after Sam leaves, in the scene teased in that preview that made me so full of fear. “My name is Dean Winchester. My brother is Sam. My mother is Mary Winchester. My best friend is Cas.” He repeats it, each time more haltingly, each time struggling more to hang onto the awareness. And as we watch, we can see in heartbreaking detail that Dean is losing the battle. I’ve been blown away by Jensen’s acting many times during the course of twelve years of Supernatural, but this was one of those scenes that blew me away all over again. No wonder he wouldn’t reassure me that it wouldn’t kill me. It did. According to Ruth Connell, in one take we even got the One.Perfect.Tear ™ Rowena is left to babysit Dean, which she doesn’t seem to mind at all. Rowena never has a confidante who she can tell the truth to; she’s always too careful, too busy manipulating other people and trying to protect herself to just be real with anyone. That takes a toll after hundreds of years, I’m sure, so having someone who won’t remember it to confide in is a rare opportunity for Rowena. She tells him a story of the witch family who rejected her, back when she was lonely and desperate and – as she would put it – pathetic. Another glimpse of who Rowena is and how she got to be that way, which only makes me appreciate the character more. There’s a vulnerability to her that Connell has shown us glimpses of from the start, and that makes her so much more interesting. Oh and apparently Rowena has her own history with the British Men of Letters. Hmm. Sam, meanwhile, is being a big damn hero. When Rowena warns him that the witches would sooner use his skin as an outfit, he cocks his gun and replies, “They can try.” Damn. Is it hot in here? He breaks into the witches’ house but unfortunately gets taken down. And tied up. It’s like old school Supernatural! When the witches incapacitate him and Sam starts screaming, Dean and Rowena are on the other end of the phone. And Dean, who at that point does not even remember his own name, hears his brother scream in pain and yells into the phone: SAMMMM! That was it. If I’d been standing, I would have collapsed. Dean has forgotten everything, even who he is, even his own name. Everything but that one word, that one person. Sam. He yells it as Dean Winchester has done a billion times since Supernatural premiered, and it carries so much meaning that it nearly destroyed me. All the kudos, Meredith. All the kudos. Dean wakes up in the Impala, a post it note telling him his brother has been captured by a witch, and to STAY, while Rowena goes inside to try to save Sam. Dean still, on some level, being Dean, does not stay. He opens the trunk and is treated to Sam’s post it notes all over it, and at this point, I could not NOT laugh. On the trunk? OPEN ME. On the gun? THIS GUN. Next to it? WITCH KILLING BULLETS. On the grenade launcher? A big NO! Oh god, Show. I love you so. Dean bursts into the house just in time to save Rowena from the wicked witch, and then Sam and the other witch come downstairs. Dean, unfortunately, has no clue who to shoot. But Sam knows what to do. Sam: (pointing to himself) No no no, brother! (pointing to other guy) Witch! Boom! Dean shoots him (instinctively knowing to trust Sam’s voice, I wager) Rowena works her magic from the spell book, and Dean and Rowena descend the stairs a little while later. Sam: (still looking heartbreakingly anxious and so very hopeful): Is it done? Dean: (deadpan) Who’s this hippie? You can literally see Sam beginning to despair, in an amazing piece of acting by Jared. I started to tear up as I watched, just from the emotion on Sam’s face. And then Dean bursts into laughter, along with Rowena, proving to Sam that he does remember by recounting a silly childhood memory to break the tension. If I were Sam, I would have clocked him one (and then hugged the shit out of him), but I’m not Sam and Show has been really good to me tonight but not quite THAT good. So no brother hug, but we do get a classic Sam and Dean talk over the hood of the Impala moment, so I’m still pretty damn happy. Sam: Not funny. As they chat over the Impala, Sam says it was nice to see Dean looking happy, with all the burdens lifted from his shoulders that knowing what they’ve been through puts there. Dean disagrees. Dean: Was it nice to drop our baggage? Yeah, maybe. Hell, probably. But it wasn’t just the crap that got lost. I mean, it was everything. It was us, what we do, all of it. So if that’s what being happy looks like, I think I’ll pass. That conversation reminded me of the end of one of my all time favorite episodes, The French Mistake. Sure, they could have stayed there, where there were no monsters. But they wouldn’t have been Sam and Dean. Sam: We’re not even brothers here, man. And that pretty much says it all. So the Winchesters drive away. All this time, I’m wondering where the scene is of Dean riding Larry. Cue the music of ‘Broomstick Cowboy’ and there it is, a video montage of Dean looking happy and innocent and riding a mechanical bull. I didn’t know the song, so at first it struck me as purely happy, but then again, it’s a country song, and that means heartache can’t be far behind…. Sure enough, the ending is a twist. “Soon you’ll be a dreadful thing – my son, you’ll be a man.” Woah. Chew on that one for a while, fandom. A paean to Dean’s childhood, lost too soon to hunting and his father’s quest for revenge? Or just a reminder that Dean does still hang onto the ability to find some joy in life, and he refuses to regret the life he’s chosen? I was left an emotional mess after that roller coaster of an episode, but you know what? I didn’t mind one bit. That’s the sort of episode that made me fall in love with this Show and these characters. I felt profoundly grateful to be gifted with an episode and actors’ performances that can still make me feel so much. Thank you, Show.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

#Featured #Jared Padalecki #Jensen Ackles #Supernatural #TV Recaps

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thehowtostuff-blog · 5 years

Link

Facebook is fielding so many problems, oversights, scandals, and other miscellaneous ills that it wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that its fact-checking program, undertaken last year after the network was confronted with its inaction in controlling disinformation, is falling apart. But in this case the reason you haven’t heard much about it isn’t because it’s a failure, but because fact-checking is boring and thankless — and being done quietly and systematically by people who are just fine with that.

The “falling apart” narrative was advanced in a recent article at The Guardian, and some of the problems noted in that piece are certainly real. But I was curious at the lack of documentation of the fact-checking process itself, so I talked with a couple of the people involved to get a better sense of it.

I definitely didn’t get the impression of a program in crisis at all, but rather one where the necessity of remaining hands-off with the editorial process and teams involved has created both apparent and real apathy when it comes to making real changes.

No bells, no whistles

Facebook likes to pretend that its research into AI will solve just about every problem it has. Unfortunately not only is that AI hugely dependent on human intelligence to work in the first place, but the best it can generally do is forward things on to human agents for final calls. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the process of fact-checking, in which it is trivial for machine learning agents to surface possibly dubious links or articles, but at this stage pretty much impossible for them to do any kind of real evaluation of them.

That’s where the company’s network of independent fact-checkers comes in. No longer among their number are two former Snopes staffers who left to work at another fact-checking concern — pointedly not involved with Facebook — and who clearly had major problems with the way the program worked. Most explosive was the accusation that Facebook had seemingly tried to prioritize fact checks that concerned an advertiser.

But it wasn’t clear from their complaints just how the program does work. I chatted with Snopes head David Mikkelson and checked in with Politifact editor Angie Drobnic Holan. They emphatically denied allegations of Facebook shenanigans, though they had their own reservations, and while they couldn’t provide exact details of the system they used, it sounds pretty straightforward.

Facebook expands fact-checking program, adopts new technology for fighting fake news

“For the most part it’s literally just data entry,” explained Mikkelson. “When we fact-check something, we enter its URL into a database. You could probably dress it up in all kinds of bells and whistles, but we don’t really need or expect much more than that. We haven’t changed what we do or how we do it.”

Mikkelson described the Facebook system in broad terms. It’s a dashboard of links that are surfaced, as Facebook has explained before, primarily through machine learning systems that know what sort of thing to look for: weird URLs, bot promotion, scammy headlines, etc. They appear on the dashboard in some semblance of order, for instance based on traffic or engagement.

“It lists a thumbnail of what the item is, like is it an article or a video; there’s a column for estimated shares, first published date, etc,” said Mikkelson. “They’ve never given us any instructions on like, ‘please do the one with the most shares,’ or ‘do the most recent entry and work your way down,’ or whatever.”

In fact there’s no need to even use the dashboard that way at all.

“There’s no requirement that we undertake anything that’s in their database. If there’s something that isn’t in there, which honestly is most of what we do, we just add it,” Mikkelson said.

Passive partner or puppet master?

I asked whether there was any kind of pushback or interference at all from Facebook, as described by Brooks Binkowski in the Guardian story, who mentioned several such occasions that occurred during her time at Snopes.

Politifact’s Holan said she thought the suggestion was “very misleading.” In a statement, the organization said that “As with all our work, we decide what to fact-check and arrive at our conclusions without input from Facebook or any third party. Any claim suggesting otherwise is misinformed and baseless.”

“I realize Facebook’s reputation is kind of in the dumpster right now already,” Mikkelson said, “but this is damaging to all the fact-checking partners, including us. We would never have continued a working relationship with Facebook or any other partner that told us to couch fact checks in service of advertisers. It’s insulting to suggest.”

The question of receiving compensation for fact-checking was another of Binkowski’s qualms. On the one hand, it could be seen as a conflict of interest for Facebook to be paying for the service, since that opens all kinds of cans of worms — but on the other, it’s ridiculous to suggest this critical work can or should be done for free. Though at first, it was.

When the fact-checking team was first assembled in late 2016, Snopes wrote that it expects “to derive no direct financial benefit from this arrangement.” But eventually it did.

“When we published that, the partnership was in its earliest, embryonic stages — an experiment they’d like our help with,” Mikkelson said. Money “didn’t come up at all.” It wasn’t until the next year that Facebook mentioned paying fact checkers, though it hadn’t announced this publicly, and Snopes eventually did earn and disclose $100,000 coming from the company. Facebook had put bounties on high-profile political stories that were already on Snopes’s radar, as well as others in the fact-checking group.

The money came despite the fact that Snopes never asked for it or billed Facebook — a check arrived at the end of the year, he recalled, “with a note that said ‘vendor refuses to invoice.’ ”

Partners, but not pals

As for the mere concept of working for a company whose slippery methods and unlikeable leadership have been repeatedly pilloried over the last few years, it’s a legitimate concern. But Facebook is too important of a platform to ignore on account of ethical lapses by higher-ups who are not involved in the day-to-day fact-checking operation. Millions of people still look to Facebook for their news.

Sheryl Sandberg knew more of Facebook’s work with Definers than she let on

To abandon the company because (for instance) Sheryl Sandberg hired a dirty PR firm to sling mud at critics would be antithetical to the mission that drove these fact-checking companies to the platform to begin with. After all, it’s not like Facebook had a sterling reputation in 2016, either.

Both Politifact and Snopes indicated that their discontent with the company was more focused on the lack of transparency within the fact-checking program itself. The tools are basic and feedback is nil. Questions like the following have gone unanswered for years:

What constitutes falsity? What criteria should and shouldn’t be considered? How should satire be treated if it is spreading as if it were fact? What about state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation? Have other fact checkers looked at a given story, and could or should their judgments inform the other’s? What is the immediate effect of marking a story false — does it stop spreading? Is there pushback from the community? Is the outlet penalized in other ways? What about protesting an erroneous decision?

Dodged questions from Facebook’s press call on misinformation

The problem with Facebook’s fact-checking operation, as so often is the case with this company, is a lack of transparency with both users and partners. The actual fact-checking happens outside Facebook, and rightly so; it’s not likely to be affected or compromised by the company, and in fact if it tried, it might find the whole thing blowing up in its face. But while the checking itself is tamper-resistant, it’s not clear at all what if any effect it’s having, and how it will be improved or implemented in the future. Surely that’s relevant to everyone with a stake in this process?

Over a year and a half or more of the program, little has been communicated and little has been changed, and that not fast enough. But at the same time, thousands of articles have been checked by experts who are used to having their work go largely unrewarded — and despite Facebook’s lack of transparency with them and us, it seems unlikely that that work has also been ineffective.

For years Facebook was a rat’s nest of trash content and systematically organized disinformation. In many ways, it still is, but an organized fact-checking campaign works like constant friction acting against the momentum of this heap. It’s not flashy and the work will never be done, but it’s no less important for all that.

As with so many other Facebook initiatives, we hear a lot of promises and seldom much in the way of results. The establishment of a group of third parties contributing independently to a fact-checking database was a good step, and it would be surprising to hear it has had no positive affect.

Users and partners deserve to know how it works, whether it’s working, and how it’s being changed. That information would disarm critics and hearten allies. If Facebook continues to defy these basic expectations, however, it only further justifies and intensifies the claims of its worst enemies.

from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GEieFR

#How To Stuff #Blogger

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williamsjoan · 5 years

Text

Facebook’s fact-checkers toil on

No bells, no whistles

Facebook expands fact-checking program, adopts new technology for fighting fake news

In fact there’s no need to even use the dashboard that way at all.

Passive partner or puppet master?

When the fact-checking team was first assembled in late 2016, Snopes wrote that it expects “to derive no direct financial benefit from this arrangement.” But eventually it did.

Partners, but not pals

Sheryl Sandberg knew more of Facebook’s work with Definers than she let on

Dodged questions from Facebook’s press call on misinformation

Facebook’s fact-checkers toil on published first on https://timloewe.tumblr.com/

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 5 years

Link

No bells, no whistles

Facebook expands fact-checking program, adopts new technology for fighting fake news

In fact there’s no need to even use the dashboard that way at all.

Passive partner or puppet master?

When the fact-checking team was first assembled in late 2016, Snopes wrote that it expects “to derive no direct financial benefit from this arrangement.” But eventually it did.

Partners, but not pals

Sheryl Sandberg knew more of Facebook’s work with Definers than she let on

Dodged questions from Facebook’s press call on misinformation

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

fmservers · 5 years

Text

Facebook’s fact-checkers toil on

No bells, no whistles

Facebook expands fact-checking program, adopts new technology for fighting fake news

In fact there’s no need to even use the dashboard that way at all.

Passive partner or puppet master?

When the fact-checking team was first assembled in late 2016, Snopes wrote that it expects “to derive no direct financial benefit from this arrangement.” But eventually it did.

Partners, but not pals

Sheryl Sandberg knew more of Facebook’s work with Definers than she let on

Dodged questions from Facebook’s press call on misinformation

Via Devin Coldewey https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes

challengeartistsimple · 6 years

Text

How YouTube Vloggers Can Make Money Selling Stock Footage

Thanks to the internet, there are more ways than ever to make money and work from home. Aside from having a vlog, another way to monetize your creative interests is by filming and selling stock footage from your vlogging camera.

Most vloggers bring their camera with them everywhere! Why not pull some double duty by shooting some extra stock footage in-between your vlogging adventures?

Whether you are travelling somewhere new and exotic or you’re in your hometown, there will always be things to film. Here are some tips to keep in mind before you start filming stock footage:

Know What You’d Like to Film

Something you should do before you start filming stock footage is sit down, plan, and organize the kind of video footage you want to record. Research popular trends for stock videos and see how you can shoot something within your resources that also fits those needs.

For example, maybe you live near a beach and can shoot a timelapse of the sun rising or setting. Maybe you’re travelling to a new city, and while you’re there, you can capture shots of popular landmarks and landscapes.

Wherever you are, there will always be something to film. Just keep building up your library, and the more royalty-free video clips you upload online, the more opportunities you have to make money selling stock footage.

Making Your Stock Footage Look Professional

So many consumer cameras can film in 4K these days. Even something as small as your iPhone, in the right environment, can give you beautiful 4K footage. By shooting your stock footage in 4K, you can charge more for it and you’re future-proofing its value, allowing it to be profitable for a longer period of time.

Good lighting is also very important! No matter what camera you own, whether it’s a point & shoot or full frame DSLR, it’s the video with the best lighting that’s going to sell. Shooting something at sunrise or sunset (aka Magic Hour) is always a good place to start when trying to create beautiful visuals.

If you’re filming stock footage with people, then lighting is going to be extra important, as you’ll want it to look as professional as possible. You can either rent some lights or use something as simple as a reflector to get better results. I would only rent lights if you feel certain that your stock video clips will give you that return on investment.

Using People in Your Stock Video Clips

Videos including people will always sell the best and for the highest price. That being said, you don’t only have to work with models through an agency – it can literally be anyone. Let’s say you have a friend who’s also a carpenter or construction worker, maybe you can work out a deal to shoot footage / photos of them doing their job.

Something to keep in mind when it comes to selling stock footage with people is that all sites require paperwork like release forms, so I would verify what exactly is needed with the site you’re planning to sell stock video clips on before filming any content.

3 Different Types of Stock Footage You Can Sell

Timelapse Videos

Slow Motion Videos

Aerial / Drone Videos

Filming Time-Lapse Content

Filming timelapse videos is by far the easiest way to shoot any kind of stock footage. Just set up your vlogging camera with any kind of interesting landscape and press go. Filming local landmarks or scenic spots is a great way to start as well. As mentioned earlier, magic hour is always a good time of day to film a timelapse video, but you could also do timelapses of clouds moving, or even a busy street.

Recording Videos in Slow Motion

Popular cameras like the Panasonic GH5, all the way to small cameras like the Sony RX100 can shoot more than 180fps, that’s insane! Slow motion footage works for almost every subject. Sports, animals, and landscapes shots are just a few examples of what can utilize that higher frame rate.

Using Drones to Film Aerial Stock Footage

Since the introduction of consumer drones, aerial stock footage has become a great way to make your content stand out online. Thanks to drones like the DJI Mavic Pro, it’s really easy to travel anywhere with a 4K camera in your backpack and record amazing aerial views.

You don’t even need to fly it, just use the stabilized gimbal to your advantage, as this creates endless possibilities to capture quality shots wherever you bring your drone. Most importantly, wherever you are, make sure you follow the country’s aerial guidelines and regulations.

Keep these tips to make money selling stock footage in mind as you get started. Stock footage has become a great way for YouTube creators to diversify their monetization strategy and earn more income. You’re probably sitting on footage already that could be uploaded – give it a try!

The post How YouTube Vloggers Can Make Money Selling Stock Footage appeared first on Vlog Nation.

from Vlog Nation http://ift.tt/2BIM5c6 via IFTTT

#Vlog Nation #vloggers #youtubers #IFTTT

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breaksandbites · 7 years

Text

Dubai never fails to astonish me, it is the part of world which is always happening and buzzing with events all year round. The love is immensely increased in winters, when the weather is just perfect to be outdoors. On top of that, the weather these days is absolute loooovvveee <3 I swear! It has been more than 3 weeks since we are enjoying clouds and light rain every now and then here in Dubai which is so unusual about this ‘Paradise in Desert’ city.

As you all know my in-laws are visiting us these days that is why I have not been able to post much. Anyhow; guests visiting, killer weather on a weekend and so many festivities going around is a deadly combo I tell you. We went to witness the last match (of Dubai, the final is going to be in Lahore – Pakistan tonight) of PSL 2017 which was a thrilling experience with full packed sold out house at Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Friday.

And on Saturday we explored two of the most talked about events of town this weekend, thought to tell you all a bit about those so that you can jump in one of them or both the next weekend if you haven’t got a chance to visit them till now, just in case.

Etisalat Beach Canteen

We randomly opted to visit the Etisalat beach canteen set up at Kites beach Dubai which is a part of Dubai Food Festival. It is one out of many locations that are participating in the said festival. The place is full of food; from masala tea to pasta, burgers, sliders, ice cream and what not. So much food options coupled with breathtaking beach views, kitesurfers and Burj al Arab in sight with some shopping options too makes it a perfect day out for the family. One word for the set up – “Idyll“!!

It will last up till 11th of March 2017, make sure you visit it over the weekend before they wrap it up. Don’t miss out the time lapse video of sunset that is added after the pictures below.

The spell binding panoramic view of the beach

Sun peeking through the clouds

This beauty follows you everywhere :D

Enjoying the awesome weather

us <3

E loves playing in sand and I know she needs a haircut very badly

Kitesurfer at sunset

leaving behind my prints

After the sunset – Burj al arab in view

Flamingos at beach

They welcome you with these Arabic delights

Delicious Vanilla Panna Cotta with Strawberry sauce – they were serving this for tasting

Play area at the canteen

The Directions

Bigger and better

Dubai Canvas

We had literally no plans of visiting the said event which is a wonderful 3D art festival being held at City Walk Dubai but I had to pay a visit at Sephora to collect my loyalty points gifts before the voucher expires and Sephora city walk outlet being the closest one to our home was chosen to do the honors… Lol. The festival is scheduled from March 1st to 7th but I am assuming the art works will be up for display for a little more time. We had an amazing time posing with the painted 3D images, hats off to the painters who have done an awesome job and came quite close to create the optical illusions. Definitely worth visiting guys, see for yourself!

Let’s paint

Yes I <3 Dubayyy

Flying away

posinggg

E is clearly not interested

E was fascinated by trees’ eyes

Burj never leaves us :D

;)

The Japanese food stalls are also located there as a part of Dubai Food Festival and they are offering free tasting to all – anyone up for sushi? btw this was some dessert we tasted.

Dinner at Maharaja Bhog

My Mother in Law was interested in having an Indian thali dinner and Maharaja bhog came up with most liked restaurant upon googling since we don’t have any idea about the traditional Indian restaurants much, suggest me some for next time please :). It was a pure veggie Rajasthani style restaurant where we were treated as Mughal emperors… Lol. The food was good, I’d give a 3.5 star rating on taste but I loved their service and hospitality, full stars on it.

The thali – it costs around 43 AED per head

The Paan :D

This was about my crazy weekending peeps, both the festivals are stupendous and worth a visit. Plan your next weekend accordingly, thank me later ;)

Enjoyyy

Things to do in Dubai this weekend Dubai never fails to astonish me, it is the part of world which is always happening and buzzing with events all year round.

#dubaicanvas #dubaifoodfest #etisalatbeachcanteen #MyDubai #3D art festival #city walk dubai #dubai international cricket stadium #dubai weather #dubai winters #Indian veg restaurant #kites beach #Maharaja Bhog #psl 2017 #rajasthani cuisine #sold out stadium #sunset at kites beach #Thali dinner

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