#kind of just slogging through every day at this point and it feels very bad

[katrinawritesthings]

Jonghyun/everyone ; they love him : ) ; PG

Jonghyun wakes up feeling Gross and Bad and spends the day getting cheered up and loved by his babes in their own ways   "We'll go to the pet store on the way there,” Kibum adds. Pet store. Fuck yeah. Jonghyun might be a lot of things, but too depressed to go to the pet store is, thankfully, not one of them. Carefully, with weak arms, he pushes himself onto his knees. "Jinki, thank you," he says quietly. Jinki smiles all eyes and cheeks. Blushing, in love, Jonghyun smooches him.

Written for @rollercoasterwrite jjongsmonth!!! I took the prompt for Mare Cognitum: sea that has become known : )

Jonghyun knows as soon as he wakes up that today is going to be a bad one. It's the drag of his muscles, the ache that seems to emanate from his very bones, the feeling that he could have slept for eight more hours and he would feel just as tired. It's that his first thought besides oof is what do I absolutely need to do.

Medication. He needs to take his meds at the same time every morning or else he'll feel ten times as worse. And in order to take his medication, he needs to eat. And eating will give him nutrients so he doesn't starve. That's also something that he needs. 

He slogs out of bed and to the kitchen. Rifling through the cabinets, he grabs his box of bland cereal. There's no point in picking something he likes or making something fancy today; not when he knows that everything he puts into his mouth is going to taste like nothing and have the consistency of cardboard. 

Jonghyun eats his breakfast, swallows his medication, and shuffles to the bathroom. He does his business, then summons the courage to brush his teeth, and then kind of just stands there for a few minutes trying to will himself into the shower. Eventually, after working through a list of pros and cons, he decides that at least if he washes his hair then he can blow dry it and be soft and warm.

Once he's done with that, it's right back to the bedroom.

Or, almost. He stops at the door to Jinki's room on the way. He usually sleeps alone, but only because he's particular about his sleep ritual. Once he's out then it's impossible to actually wake Jinki up unless he wants to wake up. So Jonghyun slips inside the room and to the bed. As expected, Jinki is flat as a board on his back, his breathing even and his skin a little greasy. Jonghyun gets under the covers with him, snuggling underneath his arm and pushing his face into his chest. 

Cozy, warm, comfortable, Jinki's heartbeat under his ear scent – a little sweaty, a little musky, a little soapy – in his nose, Jonghyun allows himself to relax. He allows himself to sigh. He allows himself to break. 

He allows himself to cry. Quietly, sniffling into Jinki's chest, he lets his guilt and helplessness and disappointment and shame and everything else flood through him and come out of his eyes and soak into a growing wet spot on Jinki's sweater. 

He runs out of tears, lies quietly for a few minutes, and lets the second wave wash over him just like the first. It's then that Jinki wakes up. It's slow; it's always slow when Jinki wakes up. He breathes in deep and heavy first. Inch by inch, he wakes up his body by wiggling his toes, bending his knees, controlling his breathing. Jonghyun knows that his arms will come next so he shifts closer to be sure that he's not in the way.

“Oh?” Jinki takes notice of Jonghyun against him. He wiggles his fingers against Jonghyun's stomach and bends his arm until he can hold Jonghyun close. "Good morning,” he says cutely. 

“Ngh,” Jonghyun mumbles back.

“Mm? Not good?" Jinki asks. Jonghyun shakes his head. Very not good. "Well,” Jinki says. He rolls over and pulls Jonghyun into his arms. "That's okay,” he says. "That happens sometimes. You can stay here with me until it's less not good, or until it's afternoon. Or as long as you want." He brushes a soft kiss to Jonghyun's hair. "I love you,” he murmurs. 

Jonghyun loves him back. He shows it by squeezing Jinki and trusting him to be soft and kind for as long as he needs. 

It's a while; he cries a little more. Jinki sings him a quiet, sleepy song. When he finishes, he digs in his headboard for a snack and munches on it. He offers Jonghyun what's left and when Jonghyun shakes his head, doesn't push. He just puts it back into the headboard, gives Jonghyun another kiss, and sings him another song. The sun rises so high that even with the curtains closed the room becomes fully illuminated. 

Jinki leaves him for just a minute to go to the bathroom and stop by the kitchen and comes back with a handful of tangerines. He sits up in bed and, with Jonghyun's head in his lap, peels them. With one hand, he offers Jonghyun segments while he checks his phone with the other. Jonghyun eats just a few, just to keep him from worrying, but mostly he spends the time with his eyes closed.

A knock on the door and Kibum pops his head in. "Hey," he says, and then, “Jonghyun, come shopping with me. For dinner tonight." 

"Um." Jonghyun shuffles underneath the covers, thinking. Again, he pulls up a list of pros and cons in his head. The fatigue, unenthusiasm, and fear of being a downer against the chance to spend time with Kibum, to let Jinki do something else with his day, and….

"Fresh air," Jinki says, gently encouraging. "And the exercise will be good for you."

"We'll go to the pet store on the way there,” Kibum adds.

Pet store. Fuck yeah. Jonghyun might be a lot of things, but too depressed to go to the pet store is, thankfully, not one of them. Carefully, with weak arms, he pushes himself onto his knees. "Jinki, thank you," he says quietly. Jinki smiles all eyes and cheeks. Blushing, in love, Jonghyun smooches him.

"Let me put on clothes," he tells Kibum, squeezing his arm as he walks past. When he got out of the shower all he did was put back on his boxers and tank top from the night. "I'll meet you outside,” he says, and five minutes later, he does. All he did was put on some sweats and a t-shirt, but that's fine. Kibum is already going to be the most fuckable person in the grocery store and that's something Jonghyun has never been able to beat him at. 

Kibum fills the walk down to the shopping center with talk. Arm linked with Jonghyun’s, Kibum tells him about his tacky drama shows, about the latest fashion trends, and about his water skiing friends down at the river. He doesn't push Jonghyun to reply, but he doesn't discourage him from it, either, and when Jonghyun finds the energy to add to the conversation Kibum gives him his whole attention.

The pet store isn't as fun as it would be if he was feeling 100%, but it's still a hell of a mood booster. They go straight to the puppies as soon as they walk in. Jonghyun can almost physically feel the serotonin shooting through his neurons as he coos and tosses them toys over the enclosure. Kibum wanders off after a while to look at all of the other animals, but he kisses Jonghyun's cheek before he does so. 

By the time he comes back, Jonghyun is sitting in front of the big glass window of the puppy training area applauding every time a little guy does a trick just right. Linking arms with Jonghyun again, Kibum shows him a floppy brown puppy ear headband and then gently puts it on him. "For you," he smiles. "Ready to go?”

"For me,” Jonghyun smiles back. Kibum saw it and thought of Jonghyun and got it for him. He's all aflutter. He’s not technically ready to go, but he is at least willing to part with the puppies for now. Waving goodbye to them, he lets Kibum pull him out of the pet store and into the grocery store across the street. 

It's there, browsing the vegetables for brussel sprouts that are nice and big without being too huge, that Jonghyun pauses for a moment. The puppies were nice, but he's still tired, lethargic, gloomy. Thinking about himself. Thinking about Jinki. He reaches up and rubs his thumb over the fur of his puppy ear headband. A present.

Kibum is methodically checking all of the potatoes on display for bad spots across from Jonghyun. Jonghyun watches him for a moment then lets himself look down, hold his weight on his hands on the vegetable counter, and sigh. "Did Jinki tell you?" he asks quietly.

“Hmm?” Kibum hums absently. He looks up as he puts a potato into a plastic baggie. “Tell me what?"

"That I'm.” Jonghyun's face heats up. “Emo today."

“Oh.” Kibum goes back to the potatoes. “Sort of. Minho was asking where you were in the group chat because you weren't answering his texts and Jinki said that you were in there with him. And I figured, if you weren't checking your phone and you were with Jinki in bed taking a nap at 11 in the morning, then you must not be feeling good." 

Hmm. Well. Jonghyun guesses that's not as bad as he was thinking. Actually, it might be kind of nice. Reassuring, maybe? Yeah. Definitely. 

Kibum loves him. 

Jonghyun loves him back, and he shows it by reaching over the vegetables, grabbing his hand, and kissing the back of it. While Kibum blushes, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks it for the first time today.

Just like Kibum said, he has a couple of texts from Minho. “Hey look it's us” in the morning along with a picture of an Among Us astronaut next to a little baby astronaut, then "do you want to go kick a soccer ball around at the lake later?" 

After that, a few more about who is going to be there and what time Minho wanted to leave. And then in the group chat, "which one of you slept with Jonghyun??? Tell him to reply to me," and then Jinki's reply that Jonghyun is napping with him, and then, "oh okay then well I'll be at the lake if any of you need me." 

"No thanks I'm extra tall people phobic today," he texts to Minho. Smirking to himself at the thought of Minho checking his messages and getting all grumpy in the middle of a game, he puts his phone back into his pocket. 

They roll through the rest of the grocery store getting everything else that Kibum needs for dinner. On the walk home Jonghyun volunteers to carry the bags but when he gets tired halfway through Kibum takes them without complaint. 

Back at home, Jinki and Taemin are on the couch watching TV together. Kibum stops Jonghyun from following him into the kitchen to help put away the groceries by pushing him down in between them instead, ordering him to stay with a pat on the head. Jinki and Taemin keep him from getting up by closing in on him –an arm around his shoulders, a leg thrown over his thighs – and Jonghyun resigns himself to be snuggled and cuddled instead of useful. He won't say it's not a relief.

After a few minutes, Kibum comes back and gives Jonghyun another present: a parfait made with chocolate yogurt, granola, and heaps of berries. He tosses a bag of chips at him as well with a one word order to eat. Grateful, in love, Jonghyun blows him a kiss.

"Where's mine?” Taemin demands, trying to grab at Kibum before he walks away. 

"Make your own, gremlin," Kibum says without a second glance. 

Taemin huffs loudly at his back. He scrumps into a pretzel, arms and legs crossed, face all scrunched up. Chuckling a little bit at the drama of it all, Jonghyun offers him a raspberry from the top of his parfait. Between the two of them plus a couple of bites from Jinki, Jonghyun finishes his food without feeling too gross about it. He puts the mess on the coffee table and curls up, holding on to both of them. 

With Jinki petting his hair and Taemin nuzzling his shoulder, Jonghyun closes his eyes and dozes off. 

He wakes up later on his side with his head in someone's lap. He rubs his face into their leg, stretching out and then turning onto his back and blinking in the light of the room. Slowly, Minho comes into focus above him. One of his arms is over Jonghyun's chest and the other is around his head and he's holding a video game controller, focused on the TV. Jinki and Taemin are gone.

“Oh,” Jonghyun mumbles. Instinctively, he scrunches his nose. "Gross.” 

"Sorry, you'll have to speak up," Minho says. “You're so little I can barely hear your little baby voice.”

Jonghyun knocks the controller out of his hands. He sits up straight while Minho curses and picks it back up. Minho elbows him; Jonghyun elbows him back. They fight back and forth like that for a few seconds before Jonghyun manages to loop his arm around Minho's instead. He's still weak and tired, but he holds on tight enough to get Minho to stop squirming.

Actually, it's more probable that Minho just let him win, but Jonghyun is going to go with the first thing. “How was your sportsball?" he asks. 

"It was fun," Minho shrugs. He's already focused back on his video game. Jonghyun watches for a while, bored, before he realizes that he's frowning at the TV. It's just a soccer game. Minho just spent all afternoon playing soccer.

Jonghyun decides that Minho has had enough soccer for today and gets up. He stands in between Minho and the TV, hands on his hips. 

“Dickhead, move, I'm about to score," Minho snaps.

Jonghyun smirks at him, shaking his head. "If you're so big, why don't you make me,” he teases.

"Oh my fucking god, come on –”

"If I'm such a little baby how come you can't make me?”

"Jonghyun, I fucking swear–” 

"Swear what? That you're a coward and you're all talk and you can't–" 

And the next thing Jonghyun knows, they're rolling around on the carpet trying to wrestle each other into submission. Jonghyun barks with laughter, doing his best to break out of Minho's hands and get on top. What flashes of Minho's face that he gets in between all of their body parts is smiling just as wide.

Minho wins, of course. He traps Jonghyun by sitting on his thighs and pinning his wrists to the ground on either side of his head. Jonghyun struggles feebly, pouting. Minho was barely even trying. He could tell. They might have been play fighting, but Minho was being so soft, so gentle with him and his tired muscles. So he knows that Jonghyun is having a bad energy day and he didn't even let him win. Rude. 

“You're so mean to me," he grumbles. 

Minho smiles down at him even softer than his grip. "You're my favorite," he says. 

A thousand emotions flood through Jonghyun and he laser focuses on the easiest one to deal with: sternness. "You can't have a favorite,” he scolds. “That's fucked up."

“Yeah, you're right," Minho admits, shrugging, completely unbothered. “But you're our honorary favorite." 

"What does that even mean?” Jonghyun asks.

Minho's smile doesn't turn wicked, or smug, or even come close to the slightest hint of a smirk. Instead, even worse, it becomes softer. Warmer. More genuine. He says, "It means we call you our favorite because it makes you blush.” 

He’s fucking right, of fucking course, but that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that he still has Jonghyun's wrists so Jonghyun can't even cover his face. All he can do is go pink underneath Minho and then turn red when Minho leans down and kisses his cheek. “Fuck,” he hisses. Not fair. 

He starts struggling again until Minho gets off of him. Rolling over onto his tummy, he hides his face in his arms, grumpy that Minho made him soft. He hears some shuffling and then a pillow slides underneath his head and Minho starts rubbing his back with his big hands. 

After a minute or two, Jonghyun is feeling sufficiently pampered and calmed down. He turns so just his cheek is in his arms and blinks sleepily at Minho. “How come else I'm your favorite?" he asks. 

Minho smirks. "Good height for an armrest," he says. He doesn't even wince when Jonghyun punches his thigh. "And because you're fun to hang out with. And I really like your laugh. And your butt fits really nice in my hands. And it's really endearing when you act all bratty because I know you just want attention."

Minho goes on, filling Jonghyun with so many compliments that he has no choice but to accept that statistically some of them have to be true. On the TV, his soccer players stand around the field while the opposing team scores goal after goal until the game ends. It's such a nice time that Jonghyun is about to fall asleep again. 

He doesn't want to do that on the floor, though. He's a creaky old gremlin at thirty-something years of age and he knows that will fuck him up big time. Slowly, carefully, he gets to his knees, then sits on his heels and leans on Minho's shoulder. Minho wraps his arms around him, snuggly and warm, the perfect hug, the perfect expression of love.

Jonghyun loves him back, and he shows it by telling him out loud, mumbling the three words into his sweater.

And then, after Minho squeezes him tighter and lets him go, Jonghyun clumsily gets to his feet. "I'm going to go lie down before dinner,” he says.

“Mmkay,” Minho hums. "I'll come find you when it's time.”

Smiling, in love, Jonghyun lets Minho hold his hand until he's too far away.

The plan was to curl up in the bed him, Kibum, and Minho share and maybe mess around on his phone, but halfway down the hallway he hears his name from behind Taemin's bedroom door. Curious and nosy, he stops and listens.

"When I was telling you before, about the microaggression thing, that's something else I learned from Jonghyun," Taemin is saying. "He's so like. He researches things for fun and he's so good at remembering it all? About a lot of different things, not just justice stuff. And if I ever want to ask him something I know he knows all of the big technical words but he still explains it simply for me so I can understand it. And he doesn't make me feel bad about it. It's so impressive." 

It's so fucking flustering, the things he’s saying in there. What the fuck. 

"I know, right?" Taemin laughs. "He likes to be all bratty and childish and fun, but. I've really learned a lot of my maturity from him, too. And honestly, he's childish in, like, a mature way? Like, he chooses to be childish. For fun. Because he can and because he deserves it.” 

This is too much. Jonghyun can't handle Taemin like this. But he can't just walk away from Taemin like this, either. He screams quietly into his hands for a moment, then knocks gently on the door. From inside, he hears, "oh, hold on – yeah?”

Jonghyun pops his head inside. Taemin is on his back in bed, handheld game console in the air above him and headphones connected to his phone next to him. "Hey," he says brightly. "I was just talking about you–” he hesitates for a fraction of a second. Licking his lips, he says, "about how cute your butt is."

"Yeah?” Jonghyun asks, amused. Definitely not surprised.

"Yeah," Taemin says. Then, "what? Oh. Kai says hi.”

“Hi Kai,” Jonghyun chuckles. "I just wanted to –”

“Kai he says hi back.”

"I wanted to lie down for a little bit,” Jonghyun says. "You can keep talking.”

“Oki,” Taemin says. He wiggles over on his bed, making room. Jonghyun heads over and clambers on next to him, lying down on his side. He slides one of his arms underneath Taemin's head and his other over his chest, snuggling in. Just holding Taemin makes him feel better, more put together. He tilts his head forward until he can sniff his hair. Something about the scent, whether it's Taemin's shampoo or Taemin himself, always makes Jonghyun feel at peace.

“Comfy?” Taemin asks. Jonghyun nods. Very. He peeks up at Taemin's game; just a two-player platformer with Kai. Boring. He closes his eyes and relaxes into the comfort of Taemin. 

The thing about Taemin that's different from the others is that for everyone else, snuggling is a shared activity. And that's not a bad thing; of course Jonghyun loves being petted and spoken soft words to and paid attention to. But it's not something that he always wants and needs, and it's not something that Taemin instinctively gives him. Instead, he keeps playing his game, talking and laughing with Kai, and lets Jonghyun exist in silence. No reminder of why he needs comfort, just comfort.

Just absorbing one side of a conversation about nothing important and letting that fill his brain instead of thoughts about himself, his mood, his shame, his guilt, his self-worth. No brain. Just love.

"Oh, he fell asleep," Taemin says. It takes Jonghyun a moment to realize that Taemin means him; by the time he does but before he can make a move to deny it, Taemin continues by saying, "god, he's so fucking cute. Man I like him.” So gently Jonghyun barely even feels it, Taemin smooches the tip of his nose. 

"Yeah, I do," he says, replying to whatever Kai said. Probably teasing, knowing the two of them. "I think he's cute and sweet and funny and kind and –” 

Kai makes exaggerated gagging noises so loud that Jonghyun can hear it through the headphones. Chuckling, Taemin says, "fuck off.” Then, after Kai says something else, Taemin whines, “ because . I'm bad at it, I don't know, I don't know how to do feelings stuff." He's pouting now, his tone unmistakably grumpy. "You know that," he says. “You know how bad I am being emo with you . It's not easier with him just because I put my mouth on his sometimes. It's harder .”

Silence for a reply, and then, offended, "what do you mean, what do I mean? Fuck you. I care about him so much, and I look up to him, and he means so much to me, and I'm supposed to just open my mouth and say soft heartfelt words to him? Like it's no big deal? Not fucking likely." 

This is the other thing about Taemin. He thinks he’s so smooth about it, but Jonghyun knows how shy he is. However much fun Kai is having teasing Taemin about it, Jonghyun doesn't mind. He doesn't need Taemin to tell him all the time. Jonghyun already knows Taemin is in love with him.

Jonghyun loves him back, and he shows it by squeezing Taemin close to his chest and pressing a sloppy, wet smooch to his cheek. 

"Oh my fucking god, he's been awake this whole time," Taemin says loudly. 

The headphones explode with Kai’s laughter. Jonghyun laughs with him, but quieter, more enamored, only a little bit less smug. "Oh my fucking god," Taemin hisses. "I need to leave. I need to go. Kai, I'm hanging up, I'm. I need to go spontaneously combust, goodbye, I'll talk to you later.”

He doesn't even hang up; he just yanks the headphones and throws them and his video game at the foot of the bed. He rolls over to his stomach, then to his side, then back to his back, hiding his crimson face behind his little fists. Trying his very hardest not to keep laughing, Jonghyun picks up his phone. “Bye, Kai,” he smiles into the headphones, hanging up after. 

Taemin’s tantrum doesn't do anything to stop Jonghyun from slithering his arms back around him and nuzzling the side of his head. Grinning, in love, he holds Taemin and just enjoys his presence. 

It's a nice silence, and then it turns into a comfortable silence once Taemin calms down. He turns on his side to face Jonghyun, licks the tip of his nose, and grins when Jonghyun wipes it on the pillows with a grumble. They spend a while like that, grinning and existing together, until there's a knock on the door.

"Dinner's ready,” Minho tells the two of them.

"Hell yeah," Taemin says. “Hungy." He gets up and helps Jonghyun to his feet and the three of them walk to the kitchen together where Jinki and Kibum are serving out the roasted chicken and vegetables from the store earlier. 

Jonghyun takes his seat, more excited to eat than he thought he would be. Today started off rough and he’s still tired in his bones, but after spending time with everyone today, he feels better in his heart.

#jongho #jongtae #jongkey #jongyu #jonghyun #taemin #jinki #minho #kibum #fluff #pg #: )

[aromanticbuck]

Please tell me about mouse and over it some more, I'm invested.

[ song: Over It by Arrows In Action ] [ verse 1 - September 2011 ] [ bridge - November 2011 ]

Of course! I will happily take this to focus on. The song is gonna be on repeat for at least a few days - I don't think I've had a song that makes my serotonin machine work this hard in a while. Potentially the last time AiA released a single? Not relevant but interesting to think about.

Where the first verse was kind of the energy of September of 2011 in my Mouse backstory, the second verse has more October 2011 vibes. So we'll just pick up where we left off. (under a read more again because it's me and I'm gonna babble)

Warnings: Mouse's mommy issues, mentioned homophobia, depression/anxiety

Over all, October really isn't that different from September. Mouse is still going to brunch with his parents semi-regularly (I've never been able to solidify my headcanon on whether they invite him every Sunday or only every other Sunday, or if it just depends, but it's not a super important detail so), and he's still suffering through his mom's stupid comments about meeting her friends' daughters, and basically this denial from both of his parents about his coming out.

It's still this cycle of slogging through a week or two of work and his declining mental health, and then putting on a brave face and pretending that everything is okay and normal for a few hours so that he can keep the time he spends with his parents at an absolute minimum. He's there for the free food, not the conversation or the family connection, because that really was severed the moment that their response to him coming out was to kick him out of the house and not even help him find somewhere else to live.

And Mouse knows that the only good thing in his life at that point is Jay and their friendship, and there's that underlying fear that if he comes out and shares that part of himself with Jay, he'll lose that, too. And he absolutely wouldn't survive that but that's more November than October, so I'll get to that with the bridge.

Kinda wish a friend would text me Feeling like my wallet and my glass half empty

But he's sitting at these regular brunches, absolutely miserable and feeling alone because he's facing his parents without any kind of buffer or support. And he knows that Jay knows exactly where he's at and won't text or call even if it's an emergency, but Mouse definitely wants him to text. No real emergency needed. He'll make one up himself. Just give him the opening and he will happily leave the entire situation and barely look back (until the next time they invite him, because he's still struggling a lot and it's still free food).

Oh, I'm so sorry for the venting I ain't in a rush I'm just ready for the ending

And he complains, of course, because the entire situation was a mess. He can't really say too many details, and he can't tell Jay why they kicked him out in the first place, just something vague like they had a disagreement. Mouse probably brushed it off and said that he was the one who decided to leave so that Jay wouldn't immediately be ready to start a fight over all of it, even without full context.

But complaining helps. It gets some of the frustration out of his system that he'd been bottling up, and it's not a perfect solution, obviously, but it's something. And he feels bad for spending half of the time he spends with Jay just complaining about things, but the situation needs an ending. He needs to get some kind of closure for it - whether that means eventually repairing his very broken relationship with his parents, or cutting them off completely, or somewhere in between - but there's so many variables and things that he can't control that make the kind of closure he needs impossible.

Hate to hang up my complaints Like a showcase on display For a world that wants to break me down

Mouse hates that this is where his life is. He hates that things were so good, or at least not awful, and he ruined it, basically - he didn't, but that's how he sees it. If he had kept his mouth shut and stayed in the closet (even after keeping his sexuality mostly to himself for over a decade at that point, and having all of the internal turmoil that comes with that), things would still be normal.

He wouldn't be struggling to pay rent with a minimum wage job. He wouldn't be relying on his parents for a meal maybe once a week, or hoping Jay doesn't mind paying the tab if they go out for drinks one night. He wouldn't be in the situation he's in if he just kept things to himself, but he changed too much too fast for the people around him, and if he's not careful, everyone will see that his situation is his own fault and he doesn't deserve any of their pity or their help.

#answered #shae tag #lovelymysticmoon #alex says things #mouse gerwitz #greg gerwitz #greg mouse gerwitz #cpd #chicago pd #one chicago #mouse backstory* #alex is a menace about aia always

[wiw3]

Why We Scream

Hi hi! I wish I could actually do a videolized review of this but I’m glued to that new Guillermo del Toro anthology series on Netflix right now, and it’s kind-of the most stimulating horror experience I’ve had in a while. Without spoiling anything, I love the weird horror tropes they play with in this series, all eight episodes of them.

The themes are great as well, at points, it feels as if it’s an after-school special, trying to teach me something with the scary things it pushes forth. I want to go episode-by-episode just because I’ve been being driven fizzucking raczy by this series, for various reasons.

Episode 1 teaches you about not being racist, and warns you against the dangers of being a foolhardy person who doesn’t listen to other people, also a commentary on American greed.

Episode 2 gives you a fantastic commentary on British slumhood and the idea of the black plague, that had been spreading during that period in England, as well. Another commentary on predatory loaning comes here, as well, and the main character owes money, always a good inciting incident to inspire greed or flippantness when it comes to cash m-m-m-m-money.

Episode 3 is my personal favorite when it comes to logic, and how it plays by its own rules. I highly recommend that if any of you are to watch any episode of sweet Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, please watch Episode 3: The Autopsy. You will not regret it, it feels very clever, and I very much so enjoyed my first viewing.

Episode 4 is... weird. I have a personal fondness for Kate Micucci from her Garfunkel & Oates days, and if she’s still making music, all the power to her, but she stars in this gorgeous warning against the idea of conformity over comfort. This girl suffers and suffers and suffers through this episode, but the ending had me... puzzled. It certainly threw me, but I appreciated the artistic value it had, even if I nonetheless still didn’t understand it entirely. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe one of the ways that art could be perceived is that by the end of your path to conformity... you are unrecognizable... a shell of your former self, and entirely foreign to the people watching you from your beginning, but fitting in with a niche group that will abandon you for the next fad... hmm... Maybe it’s better than I thought since I keep writing about it in this long-rant paragraph format. Onward!

Episode 5 is... very fun. I forgot it initially since I tend to get episodes 5 and 6 confused for one another, but it’s a playful romp in an H.P. Lovecraft universe, based on a short story by him, Pickman’s Model, for anyone curious. It made me want to go read every Lovecraft publication, ever. Despite the problematic name of his cat, I still think that, art-from-artist, Lovecraft’s work is at the very least, interesting on the mind from a horror perspective.

Episode 6 made me laugh, unfortunately some of them aren’t very good and I did have to slog through this one so exhaustedly in order to get to the next. I feel bad for not enjoying this one as much as the others since it clearly had a lot of production value. This episode had all of the pieces, it just didn’t know how to put them together. Keziah was... weirdly voiced. Rupert Grint really gives it his all and if you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ll really enjoy the... darker twist on the magical arts that this episode takes. Other than that, as the kids nowadays say, mid.

Episode 7 was amazing. It was a wild trip of cosmic proportions that I watched while high and sleep-deprived. I can’t sing the praises of this goddamn episode anymore, I think. Other than that, the writing felt very excellent. Every word flowed like syrup and I’m pretty sure every line from Steve Agee’s character ‘Guy Landon’ made me laugh. Fantastic monster concept, Eric Andre killed it in his performance. You really feel for the character and when Peter Weller plays a very... flippant, drug-addled billionaire and nails the performance, I think. I’m going to spoil one thing because it made me sad. I’m going to say that I wish that Guy Landon made it out instead of Charlotte. I think you could’ve done much more impressively-horrific things to Charlotte rather than blowing the head off of Steve Agee. That’s my pitch.

Episode 8 bums me out, but also funnily enough, scared me the most out of any of them. The scene of the mom charging forward from the darkness, confronting a naked Nancy in her bathtub had me protecting my vital organs. The sound-design feels good in this final episode, from what little I know of distortion and whining static feedback effects, this episode does decently well at immersing me into the world. That’s what this episode does best for me, at least. It immerses you into the world of two ornithologists who refuse to speak to their mutual and tragic loss... It’s a fantastic tale about the dangers in not letting go. The dangers in not talking about the things that are bothering you, and the dangers of... well, fucking ghosts I guess. Go watch it.

All in all, I love this show! I want more people to watch it despite me having not worked on writing of my own projects in months. I’ve just been working and working and working. And smoking. Although I still want more people to know about this, because it’s good horror, and good horror is hard to find.

#rant #writing #blog post #review #tv review #show review #cabinet of curiosities #guillermo del toro #del toro #toro #guillermo #it's good #i like it #good show #positive review #love this shit

[soulerflaire]

I’ll put a tl;dr at the bottom since this is gonna be kinda long.

So a couple months ago I decided to finally give Final Fantasy XIV a real shot. I kept hearing how amazing a game it was, and I’d been missing playing an MMO since the whole Blizzard fiasco and quitting WoW. It was definitely not what I was used to; completely different aesthetic, a daunting UI, and constant mentions of features I had no concept of. But I stuck with it, and I am so glad I did. The hype is true; this game is a lot of fun, and the story is incredible...once you get past the base game.

FFXIV is divided into five chapters currently. A Realm Reborn is the base game, then the four expansions: Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker. A Realm Reborn’s story is pretty bland and dull. The characters are flat, and some of them are just plain annoying (Alphinaud being famously the most annoying character by far). It’s a real slog to get through, with a lot of the quests being simply “Go here, talk to person.” They focused on story to the exclusion of fun gameplay, except the story isn’t very interesting. There’s also the problem that they seem to expect you to already know all the characters, so they don’t give good introductions to any of them and you never really feel any kind of connection to them.

BUT

That all changes with the very end of A Realm Reborn’s storyline leading into Heavensward. The story picks up, and from then on it’s amazing, with excellent character development for existing characters (Alphinaud becomes one of my favorite characters by the end of Heavensward), really interesting new characters, and quests that actually feel like they matter! And it just keeps going into the next three expansions. There are, as with anything, good and bad points, but overall the story stays strong throughout. Shadowbringers is incredible, honestly my favorite chapter by far. Legit brought me to tears at a couple points. Even the bad guys are well written with interesting motivations and personalities (except Zenos. God I hate that guy, he’s the most boring kind of bad guy. But he’s not the main villain for the most part).

Something else that I have thoroughly enjoyed is that all five chapters, from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker, are part of the one single storyline. Sure it’s got chapters to it, but the entire plot begins with learning about the Ascians and ends with saving the world from an eons-old apocalypse. It’s all one connected story, and it’s just incredible seeing how it all fits together so well. Callbacks to previous story beats that aren’t just “Hey remember this thing that happened?” They’re actual story elements that were planned and incorporated into what is currently happening.

And I mentioned it before but ohhhhhhhh man the character development is so good. Seeing Alphinaud go from spoiled brat with an ego the size of a mountain to a heroic young leader capable of rallying a nation. Seeing Thancred go from outwardly cheerful womanizer who drinks to dull his guilt to a father who fights not just to protect his adopted daughter, but to see her thrive and achieve her goals. I don’t think I’ve ever cared more about NPC companions in a video game than these people. I could go on for days about how much I love all the characters.

I legitimately recommend this game to anyone who loves story, especially Final Fantasy stories. If you played any FF games and enjoyed them, then you will almost certainly enjoy this game as well. You just have to make it though the A Realm Reborn slog first, which is not an easy ask, I know. I nearly quit a couple times during it, tbh. But it’s worth it to get to the rest of the story.

One piece of advice: Don’t read all the text/watch all the cutscenes for side quests. Every single quest, no matter how small or unrelated to the main story, has paragraphs and paragraphs of text with it. It can get very overwhelming trying to read them all, and they don’t matter for the main story. If the game doesn’t require you to do a quest to progress, then you don’t need to read that quest’s text in order to understand the main story. Even if you’re the kind of person who loves doing every side quest and reading every piece of lore, these might get to be too much for you.

TL;DR FFXIV is a fantastic game and I highly recommend giving it a try. It’s free up through level 60, which includes A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, though trial accounts are severely restricted in terms of group play (can’t send or receive mail, can’t trade with other players, can’t join parties, can’t add friends). If you decide to give it a shot, let me know! I’d love to hear what you think of it (and also none of my friends play so I have no one to talk about the game with : p )

[mrmallard]

I'm gonna preface this by saying that #lightningposting is the tag I use to talk about the FF13 games, so if these long-ass rants aren't your cup of tea, you can blacklist that tag so you don't have to see them. I try to pick and choose what I tag with main tags, but some long posts like this might occasionally make it into the main tag. #lightningposting is a surefire way to filter posts like this out of your Tumblr experience.

---

So I made a post earlier about how I had jumped the gun in how I had described Final Fantasy 13-2. I can't describe the impetus for that initial post without spoiling it, but I will say that it had the main villain being a massive hypocrite and it really got on my nerves.

Tonight, I hit a story beat that was not only awesome, but which explained why the main villain reacted the way they did in that instance. And it's not exactly Shakespeare, but it worked for that story arc and to further build an air of mystery that the game wants the main villain to have.

So I'm gonna say something a little less definitive, and just let this opinion ride until I have something else to say about the game.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is kind of like a shonen manga.

It's cheesy and hammy, the characterisation and storytelling is very on-the-nose and there's a lot of filler. But the filler is usually a pretty good distraction from the main story - like the flan subplot I posted about earlier, which was just a silly little diversion where you got to track down some ugly-cute flan monsters - the game is pouring a lot of time and effort into Serah and Noel's relationship and individual characterisation, which goes a long way, and the obligatory boss fights tend to feel creative, over the top and/or fun to varying degrees. Not every boss is created equal, but a lot of the main storyline ones are very good.

I've described the game as being like a TV show - there's even a recap montage that plays whenever you load up your save file to get you back up to speed, just like TV shows back in the day. Every new level (which is actually a new location with a series of different time periods for you to jump back and forth between) either serves the main arc of the game, occasionally spreading the same plotline across multiple locations/time periods; chain together into a loose subplot based on a similar puzzle or task spread throughout them; or function as a one-and-done standalone episode with some additional goodies for you to find in other levels. Every "episode" or "level", as it were, gives you something new.

You could read maybe a hundred chapters of InuYasha, understand the skeleton of the plot and the character motivations of all the major players and stuff, see InuYasha upgrade the Tetsusaiga/Tessaiga to make it stronger and then finally beat the bad guy or whatever - but that manga has hundreds of chapters, and as much of that story is out-and-out filler, there are funny chapters and really tense action-filled chapters and engaging sideplots and arcs and recurring characters etc. that are entertaining whether they advance the main plot or not.

FF13-2 is kind of like that - but with enough fat to add flavour, not so much that you're choking on it. You're not looking at a 600 chapter epic, you're looking at a 50+ hour game with a lot of gameplay freedom and variety - especially compared to the game that came before it.

You can ignore all the side content and do the bare minimum to slog through 13-2's main story - which IMO is a pretty interesting time travel story. It's rooted far more in fantasy, prophecies, mythology and magic than sci-fi. But whether you go for that main story or not, the appeal for me is in the lush selection of different time periods and locations for me to explore, and the stories told within each of them.

You're always doing something. You're always pushing a plot point forward, or uncovering a character moment, or goofing off in a blatant filler level. It's a rich tapestry of different experiences that paint a robust and enjoyable journey for Serah and Noel, like a time-travelling road trip. If you enjoy how the game plays and you're invested in the characters, it can be hard to put the game down.

It can get a little samey, and the dialogue can be a bit flat. But it's such a fun game.

#final fantasy xiii-2 #lightningposting #long post

[mostlymovieswithmax]

Movies I watched in May

Sadly, I kind of skipped writing a post for April. It was a mad month with so much going on: lots of emails sent and lots of stress. I started a new job so I’m getting to grips with that... and even then, I still watched a bunch of movies. But this is about what I watched in May and, yeah… still a bunch. So if you’re looking to get into some other movies - possibly some you’ve thought about watching but didn’t know what they were like, or maybe like the look of something you’ve never heard of - then this may help! So here’s every film I watched from the 1st to the 31st of May 2021 Tenet (2020) - 8/10 This was my third time watching Christopher Nolan’s most Christopher Nolan movie ever and it makes no sense but I still love it. The spectacle of it all is truly like nothing I’ve ever seen. I had also watched it four days prior to this watch also, only this time I had enabled audio description for the visually impaired, thinking it would make it funny… It didn’t.

Nomadland (2020) - 6/10 Chloé Zhao’s new movie got a lot of awards attention. Everyone was hyped for this and when it got put out on Disney+ I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing these real nomads certainly gave the film an authenticity, along with McDormand’s ever-praisable acting. But generally I found it quite underwhelming and lacking a lot in its pacing. Nomadland surely has its moments of captivating cinematography and enticing commentary on the culture of these people, but it felt like it went on forever without any kind of forward direction or goal. The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 6/10 I reviewed this on my podcast, The Sunday Movie Marathon. For what it is, it’s pretty fun but nowhere near as good as some of the best DreamWorks movies.

Chinatown (1974) - 8/10 What a fantastic and wonderfully unpredictable mystery crime film! I regret to say I’ve not seen many Jack Nicholson performances but he steals the show. Despite Polanski’s infamy, it’d be a lie to claim this wasn’t truly masterful. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - 8/10 Admittedly I was half asleep as I curled up on the sofa to watch this again on a whim. I watched this with someone who demanded the dubbed version over the subtitled version and while I objected heavily, I knew I’d seen the movie before so it didn’t matter too much. That person also fell asleep about 20 minutes in, so how pointless an argument it was. Howl’s Moving Castle boasts superb animation, the likes of which I’ve only come to expect of Miyazaki. The story is so unique and the colours are absolutely gorgeous. This may not be my favourite from the legendary director but there’s no denying its splendour.

Bāhubali: The Beginning (2015) - 3/10 The next morning I watched some absolute trash. This crazy, over the top Indian movie is hilarious and I could perhaps recommend it if it weren’t so long. That being said, Bāhubali was not a dumpster fire; it has a lot of good-looking visual effects and it’s easy to see the ambition for this epic story, it just doesn’t come together. There’s fun to be had with how the main character is basically the strongest man in the world and yet still comes across as just a lucky dumbass, along with all the dancing that makes no sense but is still entertaining to watch. Seven Samurai (1954) - 10/10 If it wasn’t obvious already, Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. I reviewed this on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, so more thoughts can be found there. Red Road (2006) - 6/10 Another recommendation on episode 30 of the podcast. Red Road really captures the authentic British working class experience. Before Sunrise (1995) - 10/10 One of the best romances put to film. The first in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is undoubtedly my favourite, despite its counterparts being almost equally as good. It tells the story of a young couple travelling through Europe, who happen to meet on a train and spend the day together. It is gloriously shot on location in Vienna and features some of the most interesting dialogue I’ve ever seen put to film. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Tokyo Story (1953) - 9/10 This Japanese classic - along with being visually and sonically masterful - is a lot about appreciating the people in your life and taking the time to show them that you love them. It’s about knowing it’s never too late to rekindle old relationships if you truly want to, which is something I’ve been able to relate to in recent years. It broke my heart in two. Tokyo Story will make you want to call your mother. Before Sunset (2004) - 10/10 Almost a decade after Sunrise, Sunset carries a sombre yet relieving feeling. Again, the performances from Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke take me away, evoking nostalgic feelings as they stroll through the contemporary Parisian streets. There is no regret in me for buying the Criterion blu-ray boxset for this trilogy. Before Midnight (2013) - 10/10 Here, Linklater cements this trilogy as one of the best in film history. It’s certainly not the ending I expected, yet it’s an ending I appreciate endlessly. Because it doesn’t really end. Midnight shows the troubling times of a strained relationship; one that has endured so long and despite initially feeling almost dreamlike in how idealistically that first encounter was portrayed, the cracks appear as the film forces you to come to terms with the fact that fairy-tale romances just don’t exist. Relationships require effort and sacrifice and sometimes the ones that truly work are those that endure through all the rough patches to emerge stronger. The Holy Mountain (1973) - 10/10 Jodorowsky’s masterpiece is absolute insanity. I talked more about it on The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - 10/10 Another watch for Grand Budapest because I bought the Criterion blu-ray. As unalterably perfect as ever. Blue Jay (2016) - 6/10 Rather good up to a point. My co-hosts and I did not agree on how good this movie was, which is a discussion you can listen to on my podcast. Shadow and Bone: The Afterparty (2021) - 3/10 For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the first season of Shadow and Bone, which is why I wanted to see what ‘The Afterparty’ was about. This could have been a lot better and much less annoying if all those terrible comedians weren’t hosting and telling bad jokes. I don’t want to see Fortune Feimster attempt to tell a joke about oiling her body as the cast of the show sit awkwardly in their homes over Zoom. If it had simply been a half hour, 45 minute chat with the cast and crew about how they made the show and their thoughts on it, a lot of embarrassment and time-wasting could have been spared. Wadjda (2012) - 6/10 Another recommendation discussed at length on The Sunday Movie Marathon. Wadjda was pretty interesting from a cultural perspective but largely familiar in terms of story structure.

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) - 2/10 A truly terrible movie with maybe one or two scenes that stop it from being a complete catastrophe. Tom Green tried to create something that almost holds a middle finger to everyone who watches it and to some that could be a fun experience, but to me it just came across as utterly irritating. It’s simply a bunch of scenes threaded together with an incredibly loose plot. He wears the skin of a dead deer, smacks a disabled woman over and over again on the legs to turn her on, and he swings a newborn baby around a hospital room by its umbilical cord (that part was actually pretty funny). I cannot believe I watched this again, although I think I repressed a lot of it since having seen it for the first time around five years ago. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - (2011) I have to say, these movies seem to get better with each instalment. They’re still not very good though. That being said, I’m amazed at how many times I’ve watched each of the Twilight movies at this point. This time around, I watched Breaking Dawn - Part 1 with a YMS commentary track on YouTube and that made the experience a lot more entertaining. Otherwise, this film is super dumb but pretty entertaining. I would recommend watching these movies with friends. Solaris (1972) - 8/10 Andrei Tarkovsky’s grand sci-fi epic about the emotional crises of a crew on the space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris is much as strange and creepy as you might expect from the master Russian auter. I had wanted to watch this for a while so I bought the Criterion blu-ray and it’s just stunning. It’s clear to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey inspiration but Solaris is quite a different beast entirely. Jaws (1975) - 4/10 I really tried to get into this classic movie, but Jaws exhibits basically everything I don’t like about Steven Spielberg’s directing. For sure, the effects are crazily good but the story itself is poorly handled and largely uninteresting. It was just a massive slog to get through.

Darkman (1990) - 6/10 Sam Raimi’s superhero movie is so much fun, albeit massively stupid. Further discussion on Darkman can be found on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995) - 1/10 Abysmal. I forgot the movie as I watched it. This was part of a marathon my friends and I did for episode 32 of our podcast. Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996) - 1/10 Perhaps this trilogy is not so great after all. Only marginally better than Darkman II but still pretty terrible. More thoughts on episode 32 of my podcast. F For Fake (1973) - 8/10 Rewatching this proved to be a worthwhile decision. Albeit slightly boring, there’s no denying how crazy the story of this documentary about art forgers is. The standout however, is the director himself. Orson Welles makes a lot of this film about himself and how hot his girlfriend is and it is hilarious.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) - 4/10 More style over substance, Sony’s new animated adventure wants so much to be in trend with the current internet culture but it simply doesn’t understand what it’s emulating. There’s a nyan cat reference, for crying out loud. For every joke that works, there are about ten more that do not and were it not for the wonderful animation, it simply wouldn’t be getting so much praise. Taxi Driver (1976) - 10/10 The first movie I’ve seen in a cinema since 2020 and damn it was good to be back! I’ve already reviewed Taxi Driver in my March wrap-up but seeing it in the cinema was a real treat. Irreversible (2002) - 8/10 One of the most viscerally horrendous experiences I’ve ever had while watching a movie. I cannot believe a friend of mine gave me the DVD to watch. More thoughts on episode 32 of The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast. Don’t watch it with the family. The Golden Compass (2007) - 1/10 I had no recollection of this being as bad as it is. The Golden Compass is the definition of a factory mandated movie. Nothing it does on its own is worth any kind of merit. I would say, if you wanted an experience like what this tries to communicate, a better option by far is the BBC series, His Dark Materials. More of my thoughts can be found in the review I wrote on Letterboxd.

Antichrist (2009) - 8/10 Lars von Trier is nothing if not provocative and I can understand why someone would not like Antichrist, but I enjoyed it quite a lot. After watching it, I wrote a slightly disjointed summary of my interpretations of this highly metaphorical movie in the group chat, so fair warning for a bit of spoilers and graphic descriptions: It's like, the patriarchy, man! Oppression! Men are the rational thinkers with big brains and the women just cry and be emotional. So she's seen as crazy when she's smashing his cock and driving a drill through his leg to keep him weighted down. Like, how does he like it, ya know? So then she mutilates herself like she did with him and now they're both wounded, but the animals crowd around her (and the crow that he couldn't kill because it's Mother nature, not Father nature, duh). Then he kills her, even though she could've killed him loads of times but didn't. So it's like "haha big win for the man who was subjected to such horrific torture. Victory!" And then all the women with no faces come out of the woods because it's like a constant cycle. Manchester By The Sea (2016) - 6/10 Great performances in this super sad movie. I can’t say I got too much out of it though. Roar (1981) - 9/10 Watching Roar again was still as terrifying an experience as the first time. If you want to watch something that’s loose on plot with poor acting but with real big cats getting in the way of production and physically attacking people, look no further. This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen because it’s all basically real. Cannot recommend it enough. Eyes Without A Face (1960) - 8/10 I’m glad I checked this old French movie out again. There’s a lot to marvel at in so many aspects, what with the premise itself - a mad surgeon taking the faces from unsuspecting women and transplanting them onto another - being incredibly unique for the time. Short, sweet and entertaining!

Se7en (1995) - 10/10 The first in a David Fincher marathon we did for The Sunday Movie Marathon, episode 33. Zodiac (2007) - 10/10 Second in the marathon, as it was getting late, we decided to watch half that evening and the last half on the following evening. Zodiac is a brilliant movie and you can hear more of my thoughts on the podcast (though I apologise; my audio is not the best in this episode). Gone Girl (2014) - 10/10 My favourite Fincher movie. More insights into this masterpiece in episode 33 of the podcast. Friends: The Reunion (2021) - 6/10 It was heartwarming to see the old actors for this great show together again. I talked about the Friends reunion film at length in episode 33 of my podcast.

Wolfwalkers (2020) - 10/10 I reviewed this in an earlier post but would like to reiterate just how wonderful Wolfwalkers is. If you get the chance, please see it in the cinema. I couldn’t stop crying from how beautiful it was. Raya and The Last Dragon (2021) - 6/10 After watching Wolfwalkers, I decided I didn’t want to go home. So I had lunch in town and booked a ticket for Disney’s Raya and The Last Dragon. A child was coughing directly behind me the entire time. Again, I reviewed this in an earlier post but generally it was decent but I have so many problems with the execution. The Princess Bride (1987) - 9/10 Clearly I underrated this the last time I watched it. The Princess Bride is warm and hilarious with some delightfully memorable characters. A real classic!

The Invisible Kid (1988) - 1/10 About as good as you’d expect a movie with that name to be, The Invisible Kid was a pick for The Sunday Movie Marathon podcast, the discussion for which you can listen to in episode 34. Babel (2006) - 9/10 The same night that I watched The Invisible Kid, I watched a masterful and dour drama from the director of Birdman and The Revenant. Babel calls back to an earlier movie of Iñárritu’s, called Amores Perros and as I was informed while we watched this for the podcast, it turns out Babel is part of a trilogy alongside the aforementioned film. More thoughts in episode 34 of the podcast. Snake Eyes (1998) - 1/10 After feeling thoroughly emotionally wiped out after Babel, we immediately watched another recommendation for the podcast: Snake Eyes, starring Nicolas Cage. This was a truly underwhelming experience and for more of a breakdown into what makes this movie so bad, you can listen to us talk about it on the podcast.

#may #movies #wrap-up #film #follow for more #Twitter: @MHShukster #tenet #nomadland #the prince of egypt #chinatown #howl's moving castle #bahubali: the beginning #seven samurai #red road #before sunrise #tokyo story #before sunset #before midnight #the holy mountain #the grand budapest hotel #blue jay #shadow and bone #shadow and bone: the afterparty #wadjda #freddy got fingered #the twilight saga: breaking dawn - part 1 #solaris #jaws #darkman #darkman ii: the return of durant

[mylordshesacactus]

Unasked-For Writing Tip Of The Day: Action Sequences

Fight scenes, chase sequences, etc. A bunch of people recently have said how much they enjoy me and @alexkablob‘s action writing, and frankly, when we first started writing together we both DREADED action scenes because we weren’t good at them and didn’t have any experience in making them good.

So, here’s the breakthrough we had, because I think it’ll help a lot of people.

If you think you suck at action scenes, what’s actually happening is probably that you’re not writing action scenes that interest you.

I’m serious. If you struggle to write an action sequence, it’s probably not that you’re just “not good at action”. What’s happening is probably that you got to the point in your script/outline/etc where you know there needs to be a fight scene and the only thing you have going for it is “right, I need....a fight scene”.

So here’s the solution: Make it more interesting.

This isn’t me being like....tough love or anything, either. This isn’t “make it more interesting to the reader”. Make it more interesting to YOU. Change something about the scene. If it feels like a slog to get through, if you’re confused or you keep losing track of where people are or you’re bored...change it. Make it not boring. Put a twist in.

Some of the most memorable examples of things we’ve personally done, to help illustrate this.

A generic chase scene through back alleys was going to get repetitive and we were inevitably going to lose track of where everyone was. Well...this was set in the Coruscant underworld. There was no reason to treat it like a modern city layout. We worked in 3D instead, and made it a chase sequence through falling-apart, rusty catwalks and fire escapes. It opened up infinitely more possibilities.

A generic dogfight in space becomes much more interesting when you made the decision earlier in the story to put the protagonists in a ship that doesn’t have any weapons.

At one point, we were going to have no choice but to just have a bog-standard 1v2 lightsaber duel in the middle of an open, featureless plain. So we had the protagonists’ crash-landing throw up a massive white dust cloud! Suddenly, an attack could come from any direction at any time; the featureless plain meant there was nothing for the protagonists to get their back to. Suddenly the miles of featureless grey dust that had promised a really boring writing experience became a) a palpable source of tension, and b) a fascinating playground for us as writers. 

I talked about this at length in another post but, at one point we were just...not really at all excited about the next chapter in a project. It was a 5+1 layout, so we had to get through #4 in order to get to the nemesis battle in 5 that was the climax of the piece; but chapter 4 was just not shaping up to be fun to write. We liked the symbolism of it, but it was going to be a long sequence of the protagnists slowly getting overwhelmed by swarming demons and it was so. repetitive. We knew we needed something to fill the climax of that chapter, and wanted a boss fight...but all the “boss fight” options from canon had been DONE in canon. Finally, we had the lightning-bolt idea of a giant demon walrus (this...makes sense in context). This also gave us the opportunity to figure out how a giant walrus would get into an ice cave, the answer naturally ending up “from under the ice, of course”. And then THAT gave us a pitch-dark ice cavern with a massive hole in the floor, covered in thin ice under which was the freezing black Arctic ocean...

What we’d dreaded as a boring filler chapter ended up being our favorite fight sequence we’ve ever written.

Once we needed to have a ship boarded by Klingons who would then be repelled. Writing a straight firefight wasn’t our idea of fun, and it also didn’t feel like a good payoff; we wanted the Klingons to feel like a genuine threat, and if the solution was “shoot them until they go away” then that victory isn’t satisfying. So we made the B-plot of that episode “the artificial gravity is glitching” and then, in the climax, had the Chief Engineer kill all the lights on the ship. We got a zero-G battle in pitch blackness and it was very, very cool.

You get the idea.

The point is, don’t write action sequences you don’t care about! If YOU’RE not interested in what’s happening...trust me, it always shows. If you’re writing a fight or any other kind of action sequence and you can’t keep track of what’s happening, people keep “teleporting” all over the scene (this is a HUGE PROBLEM in action sequences--you NEED to always be aware of where everyone is in relation to each other and the environment) or it just feels repetitive...change it!

Change things until you find that one little tweak that makes the scene sing for you.

(Fun fact: Literally every piece of “how to write an action sequence” advice also works for sex scenes. And, even better, vice versa.)

Because here’s the thing. When you find that one detail that makes you go “oh, fuck yes I want to see this scene” all the things you’re struggling with...just kind of go away.

Having trouble with blocking (keeping track of where people are in the scene in relation to the rest of it)? Not anymore. Once you get that lightning-bolt detail, the trick here is that the scene becomes cinematic to you. You can SEE what you’re trying to describe, this has suddenly become REAL and visceral. You don’t forget about major players and their locations because you’re equally invested in every part of the sequence--or else, change things until you are.

That repetitive slog and the difficulty conveying the action...well, the purpose of changing things around is so that it no longer feels repetitive. And actions you’re EXCITED about describing flow so much easier.

Basically...if you’re not invested in the action, don’t write it until you are. Find something that makes you suddenly interested. Change the setting, change the setup, change the resources the protagonist has access to. Have them break an arm in the preceding scene and suddenly have to compensate for that during the action. Use the environment to both help and hinder your protagonists--either is great, but BOTH is even better.

You’re not bad at writing action--you just need to write action sequences you like.

[rileymarie]

Buffy Season 8 - Episode 1 Pt. 1

Buffy has just awakened all the potential slayers. How will the gang, and the world, cope with the sudden changes? And what secret is Willow keeping about Tara?

TL;DR I refuse to accept Tara is dead so I’m bringing her back! Get over it!

EXT. HOUSE - DAY

It looks like a nice, normal quiet house on a quiet street.

INT. HOUSE - DAY

Classical music plays.

Spike is sitting on the couch beside Giles. Dawn is on the floor on her computer. It's all quiet and calm as Spike flips through the channels. Suddenly-

SPIKE

(yells loudly)

Hey. Who recorded over passions?! Dawn?!

DAWN

It wasn't me!

Spike turns to Giles, who says nothing for a few moments.

GILES

...There happened to be a very fascinating documentary on Ebola on!

DAWN & SPIKE

Ew.

SPIKE

Great! Now what are we gonna watch?

The door bursts open as Buffy bursts through the door. Spike Giles and Dawn all stand up.

SPIKE

Thank god. Is there any news?

BUFFY

No.

SPIKE

Dammit.

DAWN

Aww.

BUFFY

Hey, I'm doing the best I can here. Does anyone else want to go out there and try and do better?

2.

It's quiet. Spike shakes his head. Dawn shrugs and Giles laughs sardonically.

BUFFY

Alright. Well, we just have to wait. The internet guy should be coming in the morning and hopefully everything will be back up then-

SPIKE

The morning?

DAWN

You're kidding!

BUFFY

Hey, it wasn't my idea to have us move out into the boonies!

(glaring at Giles)

GILES

(sighs)

It was necessary! When Willow activated all those new slayers-

BUFFY

We know the drill, Giles. When Willow activated all the slayers, a ton of mystical forces went kabloo-y-

DAWN

Unbalancing the forces of nature-

SPIKE

Making all those shrouded in mystical whats-it a giant target for evil, uh... forces.

GILES

(sighs)

Right.

BUFFY

Which I still don't think translates into "hide out until things blow over." I should be out there, Giles. Helping the new slayers.

GILES

You and Willow. When evil comes knocking, it's going to be after you two. Which is why we need to keep you safe. Until this all blows over and all the forces-We've got Kennedy and the others to do that. You're the one that started all this Buffy.

3.

Buffy Dawn and Spike look between each other.

GILES

Rebalance themselves.

BUFFY

Which will be...?

Giles frowns.

BUFFY

Guys can you give us a minute?

SPIKE

Sure. Me and little sis need to have a talk anyway. About something I call "unreasonable bathroom time."

He shoves her out of the room with a laugh. Dawn rolls her eyes.

GILES

(sighs, sits down and shrugs)

Willow's plan to activate all the slayers with the scythe, while being an ingenious one, effected the very nature of the slayer line.

BUFFY

It didn't just effect it. It unleashed it, Giles. Every girl who could be -

GILES

Now is, I know. But who knows how many other mythical beings it effected? How many different dimensions it rippled into? We have no idea what she's done-

CUT TO:

4.

INT. UPSTAIRS HALLWAY

Cut to Willow coming down the stairs, stopping in the hall as she overhears them.

GILES

Our world is irrevocably changed now. We don't know how much, how many things are different now.

BUFFY

But it's good, right?

GILES

The coven says that there are more hot spots now than ever.

BUFFY

Hot spots? Meaning-

GILES

Hellmouths. Possibly. I'm afraid activating all the slayers has shifted the scales, yes, but maybe not how we intended.

Willow sighs, looking guilty. This is not the first time she's hearing this, and she knows what's been going on.

BUFFY

It's bad out there Giles. Even here, in the middle of nowhere. Vampires, demons, all the forces out in full force.

Giles seems to notice her for the first time.

GILES

Buffy, are you hurt?

He touches her face where there's a bruise.

BUFFY

I won, but it's getting a little too close for comfort. They're angry. I feel it. They didn't like our little magic spell.

GILES

You need to rest. With all the other slayers, I don't see why you have to-

5.

BUFFY

Just because everyone got activated doesn't mean I got de-activated... I still have to do my part.

GILES

I know, you just seem so...

BUFFY

(looks up in shock)

Don't say old.

GILES

(laughs)

I was going to say tired. I was hoping by bringing us here, you'd get a chance to finally rest. Without, being you know-

BUFFY

Dead?

GILES

(sighs)

Spike, he's been patrolling with you... He's helping?

BUFFY

(she smiles, a soft spot for Spike)

Yeah. He helps.

CUT TO:

INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT

Dawn is sitting on the toilet across from Spike, who sits on the bathtub edge.

SPIKE

And that's why bathroom time is very important, even for vampires.

DAWN

I get it, jeeze, will you -

They turn to see Willow walking by the bathroom.

DAWN

Oh hey! Look, it's Willow!

Willow smiles half-heartedly. She seems drained and depressed.

6.

WILLOW

You showing Dawnie how to flush the toilet again?

DAWN

Hey, I so don't need help with that... Anymore. It's very old fashioned ok!?

(huffs)

Anyway. Think Giles & Buffy are done with their "forces of evil?" talk? I still have a ton of homework to do. Too bad saving the world didn't save me from homework, huh?

She laughs nervously.

WILLOW

(mutters)

Or actually save the world.

She sighs and crosses the hall, goes into her room and sits on the bed. Spike follows her, knocks on the side of the door.

WILLOW

You don't have to knock, you live here, remember?

SPIKE

Yes, well, my new soul comes with all kinds of news manners, turns out.

Willow flips a page in her book, ignoring him.

SPIKE

You alright there, Red? You're looking bluer than usual.

(he smiles at his joke)

You uh, hear all that down there, did you?

WILLOW

How did you? Oh, yeah, vampire. I keep forgetting.

SPIKE

Hey!

7.

WILLOW

Sorry. Don't take it personal. I keep forgetting I'm a powerful witch, what with every spell I do blowing up in my face and all that.

SPIKE

They're just worried, that's all. That don't mean your spell didn't help or nothin, Red.

WILLOW

Really, because it seems like it just made it all a whole lot worse.

SPIKE

It didn't-

WILLOW

It's just, one second you're all white hair and goddessy- connected to everything. And the next you're...

SPIKE

You again?

Willow nods.

SPIKE

If this is about Kennedy, I can go find her, rip her heart out for you. Soul might hurt a little bit, but hell. you know I never really liked her for you anyway. Not like-

He bites his lip, cursing himself.

SPIKE

Well, you know.

WILLOW

Thanks. But it's not all Kennedy's fault. I think she knew something was off... after that spell.

SPIKE

What's that?

WILLOW

When I did the spell, I felt something... I think I felt...

(lowly, almost ashamed)

Tara.

8.

Spike frowns.

WILLOW

Just for a moment... She was there with me...

(starts to cry, coming back to herself)

Anyway, things were never the same after that. Think that's why she decided to become "Sargent General." Give her time away, from me. I don't know. Or maybe she was just scared...

SPIKE

You know you're the reason any of us are even alive right now?

WILLOW

The spell- it went wrong.

SPIKE

Not that spell. The spell you did. Bringing Buffy back.

Cut to Buffy coming up the stairs. She stops in the hall, listening.

SPIKE

You saved her. Saved me that day too. Never properly thanked you for that... But um, you know, if you ever need- If there's anyway I can help you-

WILLOW

You can't. Thank you. But that's the thing about the slayer, about Buffy.

SPIKE

What?

WILLOW

She got to come back.

Buffy looks down sadly.

CUT TO:

9.

INT. HALLWAY STAIRCASE - NIGT

BUFFY

(calling up the stairs)

Guys! Get down here!

We follow her into the kitchen just as everyone comes down the stairs, Dawn, Willow, Spike. Giles comes in from the living room.

WILLOW

What is it?

GILES

Did something happen?

SPIKE

Where's the demon!? I'll kill him!

BUFFY

Oh, uh, sorry to disappoint. It's just dinner!

She points to the pasta she's straining in the sink. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

DAWN

Wow, you actually cooked?

BUFFY

(starting to put the pasta into bowls)

Excuse me, I used to cook all the time...

(to their confused glances)

at the doublemeat palace, remember?!

SPIKE

Sorry love, but I don't really eat past-

Buffy opens and shoves a packet of blood at him. She continues to dish out pasta into bowls.

BUFFY

Now I want everyone to sit down at the table. We're going to have a nice family dinner, without any talk of demons or danger or the forces of evil - for once. Think we can handle that?

They all look at Giles.

10.

GILES

Well, it's not my fault - ! There *Are* mystical forces at wor-

BUFFY

*Giles*

GILES

Fine. But if we die, I'm blaming all of you.

BUFFY

One family dinner isn't going to kill us.

CUT TO:

INT. DINING ROOM - NIGHT

They all sit eating their dinner quietly. It's almost awkward, with Spike slurping his blood.

WILLOW

So uh - Buffy - any word from Xander?

BUFFY

No.

(they all look nervous)

Which is probably good, right? It means his retreat thing is going well... probably.

DAWN

Or it means his retreat thing is going horrible and he met a bunch of demons who want to kill him for helping us activate all the slayers and he's - well, you know.

Buffy's eyes go wide.

DAWN

What!

(crosses her arms)

Everyone else was thinking it.

BUFFY

(smiling dismissively)

No, we weren't. Xander can take care of himself.

(they all look confused about that)

That's what he said anyway. Not like he was listening to reason. After Anya -

11.

(she shakes her head)

It was brutal. I don't think he realized how much...

She looks at Willow and breaks off. Spike smiles sadly at Buffy and squeezes her hand under the table.

GILES

(clearing his throat)

Well, this is delicious Buffy.

DAWN

Yeah. Much better than your doublemeat burgers.

BUFFY

Thank you, I think. So, Dawnie, tell us about your schoolwork. How's online classes going?

DAWN

Oh, you know. A little boring after researching how to kill an unkillable demon for weeks. But I'm getting through the slog.

GILES

(smiles encouragingly)

Well it's great you're getting on with it, Dawn. You know I always say that an educated mind is a-

BUFFY

That's great, Giles. And Will. How, um, are you doing?

Spike raises an eyebrow at Buffy. Willow doesn't look like she heard, just moving the pasta around on a plate. After a few moments of staring, she finally realizes and looks up.

WILLOW

(looking alive)

Hm? Ohhh, me! I'm good. We activated the slayers and we uh - we won the good fight against- Well, I'm not supposed to bring up the forces of evil, but you know! We did it! Horray!

Giles takes his glasses off and wipes them, examining Willow. She takes a sip of her wine.

12.

GILES

If you need to talk Willow-

WILLOW

I don't. Wha - what could there be to talk about?

BUFFY

You don't have to-

WILLOW

Well and what's with the sudden interest in me anyway?! Since when has this been the Willow show, huh?

The wine in her glass starts to shake.

BUFFY

(laughs under her breath)

I mean, it's definitely not "The Willow Show"

SPIKE

I think the Spike show sounds pretty cool actually.

DAWN

Ha, you wish!

BUFFY

All those sound ridiculous.

WILLOW

Thank you for concern. But I'm fine, really. I'm just very thirsty all of a sudden.

(she picks up her glass and drains it)

And now I'm going to go sleep off my inevitable drunk. So...

(still cheery)

Goodnight!

She gets up and leaves. Her glass shatters. Dawn screams.

BUFFY

(sighs)

Well, that went well.

DAWN

I think there's glass in my pasta...

13.

THEME SONG.

INT. HALLWAY - NIGHT

Buffy knocks on Willow's door. She finds Willow sitting on her bed reading.

BUFFY

You ok?

WILLOW

Yes, I told you, I'm fine, Buffy.

BUFFY

You sure cause-

WILLOW

Mhmm. Thanks for dinner.

INT. BUFFY'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Buffy and Spike are unmaking their bed.

BUFFY

I just don't get why she won't talk to me about it. She talked to you about it!

SPIKE

(taking a pillow off his side of the bed)

Knew I smelled you eavesdropping.

BUFFY

Well, duh. You think I make dinner just for fun or something?

(snorts)

It just doesn't make any sense. I'm her best friend! Why would she pick you over me?

SPIKE

You're jealous! Jealous of me and Red.

(snarkily)

We have a connection.

14.

BUFFY

(glares)

That better be a spiritual connection.

SPIKE

(rolls his eyes)

I'm good Buffy, but I don't think I'm that good.

BUFFY

(flirty)

Don't be so sure

SPIKE

Oh yeah?

She shrugs.

SPIKE

Well, maybe it makes more sense than you think, Buffy.

BUFFY

You & Willow!?

SPIKE

(rolls his eyes)

Her talking to me. Confiding in a neutral party and all? Vampire- I do walk between worlds you know?

BUFFY

You walk between worlds? Hello, I died - twice!

SPIKE

Yeah, and do you remember deeply traumatic that was? How you kept it from all of your friends, seeing as it was kind of their fault to begin with?

BUFFY

Ok, now I don't even know where you're going with this.

SPIKE

Did you hear what she said? She must've connected to some mystical whats-it Heaven dimension when she did that All-Mighty Slayer spell, connected to Tara.

15.

BUFFY

(sits on the bed)

Well she didn't do it for me! I mean - I didn't ask her - it's not my fault-

SPIKE

I'm just saying, it seems familiar, that's all.

BUFFY

All the more reason that she should be able to talk to me about it!

SPIKE

(sighs and lays on the bed)

Just give her time.

He pulls Buffy into his arms. She sighs, resting his head on his chest. He kisses her cheek.

SPIKE

Speaking of time?

BUFFY

Oh, I knew you were gonna bring that back around.

SPIKE

It's just- I know what I did to hurt you Buffy. And you know I'd never do that again. And I respect you needing all the time in the world, of course. Hey, all I've got is time.

BUFFY

Yeah, yeah - but?

SPIKE

(planting kisses on her neck and shoulder)

Just seems like this, being here. All disconnected from the world, away from Sunnyhell. Kind of romantic. A chance to start over, that's all.

Buffy smirks and looks up at him, placing her hands on his chest.

BUFFY

Well, it's not like I haven't thought-

16.

Dawn pounds on the wall.

DAWN

Are you guys gonna have sex or what? Cause I swear it's quieter than you talking right now!

BUFFY

(mutters and blushes)

Oh my god.

(looking at Spike)

You were saying something about romance?

He sighs.

BUFFY

And it is so not quieter.

Spike laughs.

CUT TO:

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

Willow is sleeping, dreaming of Tara.

TARA

Find me, Willow.

WILLOW

I'll always find you-

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

Willow wakes up in her bed. She feels the pillow beside her and starts to smile.

WILLOW

Tara-

She opens her eyes and she's alone. She wipes tears off her eyes. She gets angry. Willow, without thinking, mutters something in Latin and a book flies at her. She opens it.

There's a knock at her door. Quickly, Willow hides the book under her covers.

BUFFY

Willow, breakfast.

17.

WILLOW

Be right there.

She looks down at the book, hardly believing what she was doing. She gets up and puts it back in the shelf.

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

Willow comes downstairs to a packed kitchen. Spike's even up, sitting next to Buffy his arm around her waist, well away from the window. Dawn and Giles are chatting happily together.

Buffy, spotting Willow, sits up and brushes Spike's hand off her.

BUFFY

Hey - Willow! Honey - get off!

(she playfully swats Spike's hand away)

WILLOW

It's ok - you guys don't have to-

Buffy sighs defeatedly.

BUFFY

It's just, we don't want you to feel-

WILLOW

It's ok. I'm ok, really. And sorry about last night, you guys. I guess my powers are still a little-

BUFFY

No, don't even worry about it.

DAWN

Yeah, the glass added some much needed crunchiness to the salad!

Willow smiles sheepishly. She feels awkward.

WILLOW

You know, I was actually thinking of getting out a little today. Exploring the town a little.

BUFFY

Oh really? You want some company?

18.

DAWN

Yeah, I'm going a little stir crazy myself.

WILLOW

Uh, actually, I kind of need-

BUFFY

Space, of course! Right.

WILLOW

Yeah. But maybe we could all do something tonight? After you patrol, maybe?

BUFFY

(sighs)

I dunno, all this fighting is kind of wearing me out. I thought Sunnydale was bad. This town is like on crack. Demon crack. Much sore-ness.

SPIKE

(petting her back)

You should take a night off, love. One night off isn't going to end the world.

BUFFY

Tell that to those demons that tried ending the world last week.

GILES

Yes, there's definitely some kind of energy upset now that-

Buffy glares at Giles, who breaks off. Willow frowns.

WILLOW

You're right. We should all do something together today.

BUFFY

Really? What about needing-

WILLOW

Space. Overrated. Who knows what kind of trouble I'll get into on my own anyway?

DAWN

Yeah, you might go evil again and try ending the world or something.

19.

They all look at each other nervously.

DAWN

What? Come on! Too soon!?

Willow sighs shakily and smiles.

INT. BASEMENT - DAY

Some people are gathered around a pentagram holding candles, chanting.

INT. MOVIE THEATER - CONCESSION STAND - DAY

The gang - Giles, Buffy, Willow and Dawn - have their popcorn and candy.

DAWN

Kind of funny Spike couldn't come, but we decided to do the one thing that involved a completely dark windowless room.

BUFFY

Oh yeah.

GILES

Well, if you ask me, it's a good thing. You don't want to become too dependent, Buffy, you are still the

(lowly)

slayer

(regular voice)

after all.

BUFFY

(frowns)

Well, luckily nobody asked you.

DAWN

You guys are spending a lot of time together.

(to Buffy's look)

It's uh, cuteeee!

BUFFY

What, you think we're co-dependent or something?

WILLOW

Careful, Buff. Co-dependence. That's a killer-

20.

She stops dead in her tracks. A woman that looks disturbingly like Tara from behind is examining a poster. Willow's heart skips a beat, until she turns when a guy touches her shoulder and she turns, revealing it's not her. Willow sighs.

BUFFY

This'll be fun! I can't even remember the last time we all hung out and did something fun together.

INT. MOVIE THEATER - DAY

They all sit stunned in the movie theater. Buffy has her hand covered over Dawn's eyes.

GILES

Good lord, did he just -

BUFFY

Ah huh.

WILLOW

I think I'm going barf.

BUFFY

When did movies get so bloody?

DAWN

Let me see!

She moves Buffy's hand away and gasps and brings it back.

BUFFY

Should we leave?

WILLOW

Maybe, let's just give it -

TARA

(O.S.)

Willow?

Willow looks at the screen, where Tara is. She's wearing the outfit she wore when she died. When we cut back to Tara, Buffy and all the others are gone, it's just her alone in the darkness.

WILLOW

T-Tara? Tara? Is that you baby?

TARA

It's me.

21.

WILLOW

N-no, it's a trick. They tricked me, made me believe you -

TARA

Willow, listen carefully. I don't have a lot of time. I'm trapped. I need your help.

Willow stands up.

WILLOW

T-trapped? Trapped where?!

TARA

I don't know. I tried - i tried to get back to you - after- But they wouldn't let me leave.

WILLOW

They? Who?

TARA

The spell. Remember the spell we used to bring Buffy back?

WILLOW

Of course, but-

TARA

That's why this is happening, why all this is all happening. It created s-some kind of divergence, a rift in the timeline-

WILLOW

S- so what does that mean? We have to go back, all Back to the Future style?

TARA

It's too late for that. We've already created a new timeline. Wh- what you did - awakening all the slayers. It also woke up something else. Something very powerful, and dangerous.

WILLOW

I- I did that?

TARA

I was with you. Protecting you. You felt me, didn't you?

22.

WILLOW

Where are you?!

TARA

I have to go. They want me back.

WILLOW

Who? Where are you!?

TARA

Where does all mystical energy go when it's trapped, Will? Think.

WILLOW

Think? I - I can't - Y - you're supposed to give it to the earth - but, your grave, it's back in Sunnydale - I can't get to it, all of that's gone-

TARA

Forget about the body, Will. That it's me. I'm right here.

(she starts to disappear, but her voice echoes)

Come find me.

She disappears, leaving Willow alone and sobbing. Suddenly, the lights come on. Buffy and Giles who were all talking, obviously in a separate dimension from Willow and Tara, all look at Willow. She stops crying and looks angry, determined.

BUFFY

Will? You ok? Will?

She gets up.

EXT. MOVIE THEATER - DAY

Willow is walking out. Buffy following her.

BUFFY

Willow? Where are you going?

Willow doesn't answer. Buffy grabs her arm, stepping in front of her.

BUFFY

Willow, what is going on?! You're scaring me.

23.

WILLOW

She's trapped, Buffy. I have to save her.

BUFFY

Wait - Who? Who's trapped?

WILLOW

Tara.

BUFFY

Tara? You saw Tara.

WILLOW

She spoke to me. Something's wrong, Buffy, I can feel it. She's trapped somewhere, trying to reach me - in some kind of mystical dimension. She said where does mystical energy go when it's trapped - she said-

BUFFY

Willow, think. This could be some kind of trick, you remember what the first did.

WILLOW

It's not the first. It's her, Buffy.

BUFFY

(grabs her arm)

Will-

WILLOW

If you try to stop me -

(she breaks off, not knowing what she's gonna do, probably go evil again)

BUFFY

I'm not gonna stop you. I wanna help. What do we need?

WILLOW

Supplies.

EXT. DOWNTOWN - DAY

Buffy and Willow are walking together. Buffy snaps her cell phone shut.

24.

BUFFY

Giles is gonna take Dawn home. He said to be careful.

WILLOW

That's the problem, isn't it?

BUFFY

What do you mean?

WILLOW

After - what happened... I've been too careful. You were right what you said before, Buffy. About not using my power, about being afraid. I've been so scared this whole time of what might happen... It's stopped me.

BUFFY

(thinking about her and Spike)

Right... I get that.

(swallows)

But we still don't know-

WILLOW

There's no way to. But I already messed everything up, Buffy. The slayers being activated- Giles is right. It's caused some sort of shift. Things that were bad before are just gonna get worse. The playing field is always gonna keep leveling, against us.

BUFFY

You did a thing, Will. Think about how many girls you saved.

WILLOW

Did I? They're still gonna die - And if they don't? What kind of life do they get, Buffy? Brutal. Bloody. You should know better than anyone. I don't know, sometimes I think it would've been better-

BUFFY

What? If we just let everything get sucked into hell? You made a hard choice, Will. We both did.

25.

WILLOW

And the consequences are still coming. Tara - she said she protected me. From something I - we woke up, with the scythe. And now she's trapped, because of me. But I'm gonna get her out.

BUFFY

We both are.

#buffy #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy season 8 #ao3 fanfic #writers of tumblr #fanfic #writeblr #my writing

[wildriot]

Steter Week Day 5

It’s midday Saturday when Scott calls and begs Stiles for a favor.  Stiles, two days into his pre-heat, is fully prepared to deny him, but those puppy eyes are lethal, even through a phone, and he ends up agreeing to swap patrol shifts with Scott.  So he changes his clothes and heads out and is pleased when Peter joins him five minutes is.

It’s stupid, really, and irrational, but of all the alphas and betas in the pack, Peter is the one that gets his proverbial hackles up the least.  Maybe because, unlike the rest, Peter doesn’t use his dynamic as an excuse to act like an asshole – instead relying on his own personal charm to earn the title.

Stiles thinks at some point, a tally of all the shifts he’s spent with Peter running through his mind, that this might not be so bad.

Forty minutes later, they’re running for their lives.

“Fucking hunters,” Stiles growls, slogging his way through the mud.  “Always ruining everything.”

He’s out of breath, legs and lungs protesting the flat out sprint of the last who even knows how long.  The adrenaline’s starting to fade, the tepid beginning’s of exhausting slowly rearing it’s head and, to be perfectly honest, he really doesn’t think he can go much further.

Ahead of him, leading the way and dragging him along, Peter snorts.  “You have awfully low standards.”

Because focusing on Peter is better than thinking about what awaits them if they stop moving, Stiles takes offense.  “Excuse you,” he says, grip tightening on Peter’s hand as something – probably a tree root (they are in the Preserve, after all) – snags his ankle and nearly takes him down.  “I will have you know that my standards are reasonable.  Very reasonable.  So reasonable, in fact, that they spend their time reasoning with everyone else’s stupidly high expectations.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes!”

Peter just hums and Stiles silently flips him off.  In his head, obviously, he’s way too tired to do it for real.  

But Peter must sense his intentions anyway – all that werewolf-ism...ish? – and glances over his shoulder.  His eyes are glowing, too-bright in the darkness, and momentarily leaves Stiles blinking away white spots in his vision, and yet he still catches the tightening of Peter’s mouth, the way he seems to look past Stiles, deeper into the spaces they’ve left behind.

“Can you hear anything?” Stiles asks, trying to ignore the way his heart starts to bleed ice through his veins, sticky and cold.  He doesn’t think Peter can, over the rain and the noises they’re making, and Peter shakes his head.

“No,” he says.  

“But…?”

“But we have no idea what that thing was.  We can’t stop.”

Which is true.  Very true.  Hunters were one thing, but some sort of Lovecraftian hell-spawn was another thing entirely.  Just those few seconds in it’s presence, when it had entered the clearing where Stiles and Peter had been ambushed by a group of hunters, before it turned it’s attention to them and given them the chance to run, had been terrifying.  Stiles couldn’t even describe it.  The monsters they’d faced, human and not so much, had always scared him, but it had been the sort of fear that he could push aside and largely ignore until the problem was dealt with.

This, whatever it’d been?  It’d been fucking primal.

And he never wanted to feel that again.

So he shuts up, digs deep for the extra reserves he totally doesn’t have, and picks up the pace.  He doesn’t drop Peter’s hand.  He tries not to think about how, if Peter hadn’t been so quick to grab him, and Stiles had been left alone to race through the wet gloom of the Preserve, he’d most likely be dead right now.

They run for what could be another ten minutes, could be another hour. Stiles has no way of telling, phone dead and waterlogged in his pocket and he’s struggling.  The wet clothes are weighing him down, feet slipping across the forest floor more than before, and it’s only getting darker.

He’ll be damned if he says anything, though.  He cops enough shit from the pack as it is, being human and omega and thinking that he has what it takes to keep up with werewolves and alphas, because they’re jerks like that and he’s just stubborn enough to deny them the pleasure of being right even if it kills him.

Humans can do incredible things when their lives depend on it.  He saw that youtube video about that women that stopped a car from hitting her kid, yes he did, and he swears to god that if she could do it then so can he--

“Just a little further,” Peter says.

“Thank fucking Christ,” Stiles gasps.

Forget it.  He’s done.  Absolutely done, no energy left, no sir-ee.

Another handful of minutes and then they break through the treeline, staggering out into long grass and open skies.  The rain falls harder here, with no trees to act as a measly cover, which is just perfect, because it means Stiles can go longer than a couple of seconds without blinking the water out of his eyes and wishing his  hair was still short, if only so that it didn’t stick to his face like cold seaweed.  

Then Peter’s tugging him close, almost angling him so that Stiles is tucked into his side, and Stiles looks up, probably to ask him a flat why – they’re both soaked, the gesture is useless – when he sees what else is in the clearing, and instead ends up asking, “What?”

“We should be safe here,” Peter says, and starts forward, like he’s expecting Stiles to be okay camping out in some old house that looks, even in the dark, like it should’ve been torn down years ago for health violations.

Which, fine.  He wouldn’t be wrong – Stiles has always been freakishly adaptable to most things, and running for their lives during a freak storm is definitely a Thing – but, and Stiles is just putting this out there, really?

“With our luck?” He half snorts, half splutters.  “Doubt it.”

“So young,” Peter mutters, shaking his head.  “So cynical.”

“So old,” Stiles parrots, delighting in the way Peter tenses – so predictably – then relaxes.  “Such an asshole.”

Peter barks a laugh that’s drowned out by a sudden deluge.  

By unspoken agreement they both leg it across the remaining bit of what was likely once the front lawn and huddle underneath the overhang.

Stiles hugs his arms around himself while Peter fiddles with the lock. Kicks the toe of his shoe against the ground, bites his lip.

He must zone out, he thinks, because he jumps when the door swings open with a rusty shriek and Peter doesn’t look amused, only concerned, and doesn’t say anything smarmy before ushering Stiles inside.

“It’s safe,” Peter insists again, like he wants Stiles to believe him, and Stiles kind of wonders what his scent must be broadcasting, to get that tone in Peter’s voice.  “I promise.”

So Stiles looks over his shoulder at Peter strangely, a sort of ‘what gives?’ and sets off down the hallway.

The house is clearly old-fashioned.  All narrow and tight instead of the open and spacious.  It’s too dark to make out any detail, the little bit of diluted moonlight painted across the floor through the broken windows glinting dully off what Stiles assumes are bits of glass, maybe some metal fixings.

Peter is a steady presence at his back, a hand on his back.  The alpha is tense, strung tight like he’s on high alert and that’s making Stiles stress out even more, which is not fun and he kind of wants to tell Peter to chill out, only… This is Beacon Hills.  It’s the middle of the night.  Some creepy monster thingy is haunting the Preserve, and they’ve just spent the evening running for their lives.

In a town like this, you relax and you’re dead.  

In fact, a part of Stiles is actually, stupidly, rather pleased with the attention Peter’s giving him.  He feels like a priority, something important and it’s been so long since he felt like that…he just knows that’s the omega in him speaking, and firmly tells himself to knock it off.

“What is this place, anyway?” Stiles asks., figuring that, having nearly a decade and a half on him, Peter probably knows.  He doesn’t mean to be quiet, rarely ever is, yet something about this house reminds him of the Juniper Mausoleum he had to pass every time he went to visit his mom’s grave.

Peter is silent for long enough that Stiles labels it as hesitation, and opens his mouth to pester, when Peter finally talks.

“It’s my grandparent’s house.”

Stiles actually has to repeat the words back to himself before it sinks in.

“Wait what?”

Peter huffs a sigh.  “Of all the things – yes Stiles.  My grandparents lived here.  Happy?”

“No. I’m wet and I’m cold – what the hell happened to this place?”

“…”

“Peter?”

“They died.”

Well, Stiles considered, wincing.  Didn’t that just make him feel like a dick.

“Was it…?”  He isn’t sure what he want’s to ask.  Was it the fire? Hunters?  What?

And it’s like Peter reads his mind.  As the man maneuvers them up a flight of waterlogged stairs and into a room that Stiles is happy to see has all it’s window intact, Peter talks.

“It wasn’t the fire,” he begins.  “Though my father, Talia and I were never completely convinced that Hunter’s weren’t involved. They died when I was twelve.  Car accident, head on collision with a truck.”  He pauses, falling silent, and Stiles stands still as Peter drops his hand and moves away, heading towards what Stiles thinks might be an armchair.  “When they died… there are wards up around the clearing, still are.  When they died, this place, the house, the garden, everything, vanished.  Like it had never been here.  We spent years looking.  We could never find it.”

He watches Peter run his hands over the fabric and imagines the man must be trying to finds hints of familiar scents, doubts he’ll find anything after so long.

Stiles is lost for words.  They’re friends now – inasmuch as they wind up beside each other at pack meetings, and have a joint order at an Italian place that Stiles loves but can’t afford regularly and eats whenever he joins Peter for research at his apartment  – and Stiles has seen him with all manner of expressions and yet, this is maybe the most human Peter has ever been.

So he says, “I’m sorry,” and Peter waves his hand.

“It was a long time ago,” Peter says, voice light in a way that Stiles knows means the total opposite.  Peter pauses, then adds, “My mother was with them, in the car.”

“Jesus,” Stiles mutters before he can stop himself.  “You don’t have to, like, talk about it, or anything, not if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t you want to hear my story, Stiles?”

There’s an edge to his words, somethings Stiles can’t place, which makes him tip up his chin, makes him bristle like he’s been insulted. “Only if you want to tell it,” he says.

And maybe it was the right thing to say, because Peter seems to relax, shoulders no longer hunching forward, and he let’s out a quiet sound that might’ve been a laugh under different circumstances. “What’s a little more tragedy between us, right?”

Stiles snorts, and eases into the room, dropping his worry like yesterday’s laundry by the door.  There’s still a part of him that’s tense, keyed into every sound, every creak, but he’s not alone; he’s got Peter and, honestly?  That’s kind of reassuring.

“I wouldn’t call us tragic.”

“Then what would you call us?”

Stiles shrugs, and blinks and wonders at how everything is full of color, suddenly.  “Misplaced, I guess.”  

The colors makes his eyes hurt.  His head starts throbbing and he misses whatever Peter says when his blood starts rushing loudly through his ears and his fingertips go numb.

It reminds him of coming down from a sugar high as a child.

“Peter,” he says, or thinks he says, thinks he hears himself say, but he’s shaking so hard now he might not have said anything at all.  

And then Peter is right there, filling his vision.  He’s so close Stiles can feel his breath against his cheek but he’s blurry around the edges.  Sort of wobbly.

He swallows, focuses on not throwing up, whines, maybe, and lists forward.  “I don’t feel so good.”

“No,” Peter says.  “I imagine you don’t.  You’ve never Dropped before, have you.”

It’s not a question.  Stiles treats it as one, anyway.  “Almost once,” he says, and grabs onto Peter’s jacket because that is the only thing not spinning right now

He thinks of a funeral and the wreak of alcohol and the smell of a furious alpha.

Thinks of cold tiles and ambulance sirens and the fuzziness of medication. Thinks of being too young to understand what was happening.

“Oh god,” he groans, doesn’t fully register Peter grabbing him and holding him when he starts to sink down, legs folding beneath him. “Is that what this?  This can’t be happening.”

“It’s not ideal,” Peter agrees.  The world lurches, sways, making Stiles bury his face in Peter’s jacket, and the next time he resurfaces, it’s to find Peter has taken a seat in the armchair, and arranged Stiles so that he’s curled up his lap, feet free of his shoes, cold toes tucked between Peter’s thigh and the cushions, back pressed against the armrest.

“Just try and relax, sweetheart.”

And something just… slumps, inside him, goes warm and soft.

“That’s easy for you to say.”

Peter hums and Stiles kind of likes how it echoes through his own body, but then Peter is moving, jostling him around, and Stiles latches on, suddenly unbelievably terrified that he’s about to be displaced.

But Peter’s only awkwardly shrugging out of his jacket, which makes a certain amount of sense, being soaked through and all, and deftly flicking open the buttons of his shirt, baring his chest.

Stiles doesn’t even get the chance to appreciate the view before Peter is doing the same to him, shoving off his hoodie, sliding up his t-shirt.  The chill is immediate but Peter must’ve found a blanket somewhere and now covers him with it.

Stiles is certain he knows what Peter’s doing, positive he’s read about it, at least, and yet his brain isn’t making sense.  His throat is hot, bonding glands feeling swollen and puffy and his limbs basically useless.

“C’mere, sweetheart,” Peter says into his ear and Stiles huffs a whine and falls forward into the alpha’s warmth, into his strong grip.

He shoves his nose into alpha’s neck and inhales rapidly.  It’s maple syrup and warm blankets, sun-warmed soil with the bitter undertone of expensive coffee and something Stiles can’t name but craves anyway.

He probably isn’t under for longer than an hour.  Time passes and his mind… drifts, overcome by instinct and the overwhelming need to feel safe.

It feels like falling asleep, almost, stuck in that in-between where nothing feels real.

Wakefulness returns slowly, seeping in at the edges.  He is conscious of Peter’s hands running up his back, of his own hands curled into Peter’s chest.  The hint purr building in his chest tickles his throat and makes him blush, knowing how intimate that sort of reaction is, how intimate their position is; an unmated omega alone with an unmated alpha.  

His dad would lose his mind if he ever heard of this, which he was never going to if Stiles had anything to do with it.

Aside from their position though, Stiles feels… good.  Not better, still a little unsteady, but it isn’t as bad as before.

His fingers don’t feel like little ice-blocks, for one.  And he’s no longer shaking like some preteen that accidentally wondered into the horror showing in a cinema, which is wonderful, truly wonderful.  

Of course, there is the small matter – very small, certainly not a big deal at all – that he just Dropped for Peter.

Psycho Peter, whom the rest of the pack can’t stand and don’t trust.

Crazy Uncle Peter that pokes and needles until he’s got Derek looking ready to start throwing him through walls again, and drives everybody else insane.

Peter, who…

“Back with me, sweetheart?”

Peter who does things like that.  Calls him sweetheart and touches him like he’s something precious, something cared for, instead of a nuisance that’s too loud or too blunt or just too much.

Peter, who’s never mocked him for his dynamic, or put him down for instincts he can’t help.  Who always buys him his favorite coffee and orders in Italian food for him and never minds when Stiles just happens to fall asleep on his couch during a research binge because the house is empty and he’s so goddamn tired of being alone.

Peter, whom Stiles is just realizing he might be a little bit in love with, while sitting in his lap.

Talk about inopportune moments.

“… this is so embarrassing,” he mutters, feeling stiff and awkward.

Movement, then Peter’s fingers are tangling through his hair and tugging gently, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.

Peter is quiet for awhile.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he says at last, quietly, like if he says it any louder, the meaning won’t be the same, will transform from something that makes Stiles’s heart stutter and race into something shallow and flippant.

Stiles swallows.  “You – you.  I, uh.”  He was not equipped to handle this kind of conversation.  “I am not equipped to handle this kind of conversation.”

“And what conversation would that be?”

Multitudes of snark appeared on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back.  Breaths. Tries to get his thoughts in order.

“...you know very well what kind,” he settles on saying.

Peter doesn’t say anything in response to that.  He just sighs, turns his head so his nose is in Stiles’s hair, and somehow pulls Stiles closer.

It’s nice.  It’s so nice.  It’s the kind of nice that should be illegal and after the shitty night he’s had, Stiles is weak for it.

An illicit thrill runs through him when he thinks of what this would be like if Peter was his mate rather than just an alpha that his omega was sweet on… thinks of a soft bed and pillows that smell of both of them… thinks of purring, something he’s never done in front of anybody else before, ever.

“You are very young,” Peter says, sounding pained.

Stiles worries his bottom lip.  “I’m eighteen in two weeks,” he whispers, voice hitching.  He clears his throat, adds, “Besides. After everything that’s happened, am I really still that young? Are any of us?”

“The pack will never accept it.  Derek won’t accept it.”

“So? It’s none of their business.  I can do what I want.  Just because they don’t personally agree with what I do, doesn’t mean their opinion suddenly matters.”

“And Scott?”

“Scott,” Stiles starts, so sure of what he was going to say only to falter, because… because what if Scott didn’t understand?  Derek and the pack were one thing.  Stiles felt semi-responsible for them, mostly because he’d helped save all of their lives at some point, and that meant something, you know?  But Scott was his brother, they’d grown up together, and Scott still looked at Peter like he was never going to be anything but a spree-killing monster.

He made a helpless sound, frustrated and confused.

Peter soothed him, humming unintelligibly into his hair.  

“Let’s not talk about this now.  You’re e--”

“If you say I’m emotional, I swear to god I will hurt you.”

“-exhausted. Don’t lie to yourself, you’re running on fumes right now, and I am not a good enough man to let you regret anything else you might say tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

“Just because you’re being reasonable.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.  Now, why don’t you try and get some sleep?  The wards won’t let anything through.”

“...why’d it let us through, then?”

“They were once keyed to Hales.  You were with me.”

“So… what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been with you?”

“Likely something suitably horrible.”

“Wow, great.”

****

They don’t ever really talk about it.  The next day, when the storm’s passed and everything is yellow-wet and sweet, Peter steers them through the Preserve, back to town.  They come out two streets over from Stiles’s house.

After… nothing really changes.  They spend time together, do things together.  Nobody notices.  Or, if they do, they don’t say anything.  The Sheriff isn’t home enough to notice how often his son is out, and when he is home, Stiles is careful to not make it so blatantly obvious that he’s spending at least three nights a week in a bed that isn’t his. It’s not like he’s trying to hide anything, exactly.  Just, he knows his dad, okay?  Knows exactly how much he would freak out if he knew what was going on and… well, sue him but he likes what he has now, and he doesn’t want to ruin it.

Outside of that, being with Peter and researching and hanging out with the pack, Stiles graduates, and seriously thinks about what he wants to do with the rest of his life, which leads to him hunting down a mage that’s willing to be his mentor in return for free labor and a research assistant and moving halfway across the country.

Peter is with him every step of the way and officially begins courting him on his twentieth birthday.

By his twenty second, they’re mated and back in Beacon Hills and Stiles is incandescently happy with the way his life is going and Peter is leading him through the Preserve after making him promise to keep his eyes closed.

Stiles does, reluctantly.

It’s spring, the day warm and the woods seemingly come to life with bird song and the quick scamper of small animals across the ground.

Peter’s hand is a familiar weight in his, fingers laced together in a way that should be awkward but isn’t and Stiles is busy cursing how no amount of training will ever make him the kind of graceful that means he isn’t always tripping over himself and--

Peter slows them to a stop, and Stiles has the sense that they’ve come to a clearing, sunlight warm on his face.

The air is filled with the subtle scent of flowers and fresh grass and there’s a sort of hush that’s fallen over the place, like even the birds have gone quiet in anticipation.

Peter steps up behind him, presses against his back, arms going around his waist.  Stiles relaxes against him, not bothering to hide his smile, or the way his scent goes mellow-sweet.

“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” Peter tells him, and Stiles does.

His breath catches.  

“Oh my god,” he says, staring.  He can’t help it.  He’s thought of the house often, wondered what it looked like in the daylight.  In the months after, he’d even thought of asking Peter to take him out again, show him around, but Peter had never mentioned it, not once, and Stiles had figured that it was one of those things that had too many bad memories to outweigh the good but…

“Peter,” he says.  “You…”

“I bought it,” Peter responds.  “Fixed it up.”  Then, while Stiles is still staring and speechless because the house is beautiful and equal parts Peter’s taste in architecture and Stiles’s taste in color, Peter shifts so he can press a kiss to the bondmark on his neck and says, “Consider this my mating gift to you.”

And Stiles breathes in, trying, and probably failing to contain his excitement, and says, “It’s perfect.”

And you know what?  It kind of really is.

#steterweek2020 #Steter Week 2020 #Stiles Stilinski #Peter Hale #steter #omega-verse #A/B/O dynamics #omega stiles #alpha peter #sort of friends to lovers #fluff #unrepentant fluff #idek #it just happened #slave to my impulses #Steter Week Day 5 #visual theme

[seafoamchild]

october 20th

it's been a strange fall so far. the weather has been so warm, and the leaves haven't really changed. a lot of the trees are still green. last year was so much prettier. but i like the warmth. it's also rained a lot. it feels cozy and i don't feel so guilty for staying inside.

i have another half marathon on saturday but i don't think i'll be so nervous about this one. i'm trying to think of it as just another long run. there's no reason to put so much pressure on myself. last time i could barely see straight the day before because i was so anxious. so i don't want to go through that again. i've been training really hard so i think i'm going to do just fine. it's been really enjoyable to run so much. it's so meditative. i just hope i can keep it up over the winter but i really hate the cold.

i finally started working towards getting my skydiving license. it honestly hasn't been a very enjoyable process so far. some of the people at the dropzone aren't very friendly. this one receptionist in particular won't even look at me or acknowledge my existence even though i see her laughing and talking with other people all the time. she literally just ignores me. and some of my instructors have made me feel so dumb. and i have spent so many long hours waiting at the dropzone because they keep filling up all the planes with tandem jumpers. i went on monday and i stayed for almost three hours and i didn't even get to jump because i don't even know why, they just told me there wouldn't be enough time before sunset. and then my instructor told me i should have gotten there earlier. like i know he was kinda joking but OMG i waited three hours for nothing. so it's kind of a shame because it's very expensive and i thought it would be more fun. but when i'm there i feel like i don't matter at all. my brother said it definitely shouldn't be like that and he's sorry i'm being treated so badly, so i know it's not just me. i'm thinking about maybe driving to florida to knock out all the jumps at a skydiving camp over the winter, but we'll see. i've wanted this for so long so i might as well just do it.

school is kind of a slog at this point, it's all online and it kind of doesn't feel real. the teachers seem checked out too - nothing is ever graded on time so i feel like no one even gives a fuck about anything. i do like the classes and i like designing websites, but yeah, it's just weird to do everything remotely at my own pace. it doesn't feel like school. i kind of miss meeting new people. i'm also worried about getting a job. we had to practice writing resumes again and every time i do that i feel bad about myself - my resume is such a jumble of random temporary jobs and i'm just like What IS this??? like how does this add up to anything??? i feel like i'm not marketable because i've just done what i want in life instead of doing what i'm "supposed" to do.

another thing with jobs is that if i end up getting one, or even having to go to an in-person interview somewhere, i have NOTHING to wear. like i mean nothing. none of my clothes are anywhere close to looking semi-professional. i dress like a lesbian lumberjack almost every day. i have no clothes that make me feel pretty. like at all. it's unbelievable. i want to get rid of everything and start over. but all i do is work outside for my job, run, and hang out casually with people, so what reason do i ever have to wear real clothes?

i invested a lot of money the other day so i guess i feel like somewhat of an adult, even though i wore a fuzzy half-zip to the bank because i didn't have anything more formal to put on. i definitely have a habit of correlating my self-worth with the amount of tasks i complete in any given day, as i'm sure most other people struggle with as well. i have to be productive or i'll just die. but i'm also very tired.

#journal

[marmolady]

Reginald

Main Pairings: Aleister x Grace

Summary: Grace and Aleister’s baby boy celebrates his first birthday.

Word Count: 5578

Tagging: @saivilo, @edgydepressedchoicesthot, @sceptilemasterr, @greengroove @mauvecatfic​

Thanks for reading!

“Dada!”

Reggie, sitting up in his cot, waved his arms over his head. His cherubic face was full of delight from the moment his father opened the door. “Dada, up!”

“Time to get up? Yes, I think it might be.”

Aleister scooped his infant son into his arms. The way Reggie held onto him with his small hand, finding comfort in his simple being there, was still a heart-rending thrill.

“It’s a very special day today, my darling boy; do you know what it is?”

“Da!” came the happy squeak of reply. Reggie kicked his legs around happily; there was something that had gotten his father excited, and that good feeling was catching.

“Your very first birthday,” Grace cooed. “One whole year Reggie has been with us! Aren’t we lucky?” She reached and took a tiny waving hand and kissed it. Her eyes were heavy with rings; it had been so late that she’d waited up, hoping for a last-minute reply of some kind-- anything-- from her mother. Still, there was today… but Grace was left feeling, as she so often had, that hell would freeze over before Blaire acknowledged her grandson. There was a unique kind of tiredness that came with a long cry, and Grace was feeling it all over. But this was Reggie’s day; a celebration of the little boy who had quickly become the light of her life-- and Aleister’s. Today was for love and laughter.

The morning routine was as usual; Reggie was changed, then had a feed and cuddle, then the family sat down together for breakfast around the wooden table on their front porch. Iris, of course, was present for the meal, even though she couldn’t physically partake. So much of her own son’s life she’d missed out on, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to be right there cheering on her little grandson as he bravely tried new foods. The hole her untimely death had left in Aleister’s life couldn’t be healed; his childhood had been what it had been, and it gave what they had now, as a loving family, a certain poignancy.

Already, the sun was shining, and the sea sparkling. From their home in the Catalyst village just outside Elyys’tel-- now quiet and usually near-empty-- the family of four could look over the stretch of beach that would take them to a far smaller reincarnation of The Celestial, and hear the distant sounds of Vaanti life going on within the majestic tree just north of them. It was utterly peaceful. On his mother’s knee, Reggie contentedly gummed on a piece of toast, while turning his head to the sights and sounds of La Huerta, all around him. Today, his attention had been caught by a butterfly the size of a tea plate, as it landed on a nearby tree.

“Can you see it, Reggie?” Grace encouraged, pointing her finger. “Big, big butterfly.”

“Fuuh.” Reggie watched, entranced, as the butterfly flew away. “Buh-buh!”

Aleister beamed. It seemed that every day, his young son brought something new. There was so much that Reggie was learning-- soaking in the world around him like a sponge. Aleister couldn’t imagine he’d ever tire of trying to understand the world through Reggie’s eyes; the small things that caught his interest, the actions that made him smile.

“Bye-bye, butterfly!”

“Buh-buh, fuuh!” Reggie cried, his face lighting up as he realised his father understood what he was saying.

Grace kissed his soft, curly hair. “You are such a clever boy…”. Never; not ever, would she ever let it be that her little Reginald didn’t know how proud she was of him… how his every achievement-- however small a thing it was that brought him pride-- would be her happiness to share. He would know he was enough. Always. The thought brought with it another wave of tiredness, of longing for the approval she could tell herself she didn’t need, but still craved nonetheless. But, she told herself, as she had done again and again; Reggie was not missing out by his maternal grandmother being absent. It was better that Blaire Hall stay away than make contact only to cause harm. That kind of toxicity was not what Reggie deserved… and, Grace had to remind herself, it was far less than what she herself deserved too. As Reggie turned around to offer in return a much more slobbery kiss than the one he’d received, Grace couldn’t help but laugh her woes away for the time being. Reggie had that kind of magic effect about him.

  _______________________________

July 2022

 Grace gritted her teeth, and braced herself, curling her small frame inward.

“...you’ll at least consider having a termination, surely?…”

She panted, and her pants became painful groans as her body seemed intent on tearing itself apart. She could do this… she had to do this. Small pants, small pushes, the midwife had said. It was hard, everything in her body screamed to give more.

“...I didn’t pour a small fortune into your education for you to waste the best years of your life chained down with a baby…”

The midwife spoke, her voice coming to Grace as if through a fog, barely cutting through the pain that was now all-encompassing… and the gripping fear of failure, of falling short as she always, always seemed to.

“The head is delivered; now I need you to push really hard. Your baby is almost here.”

Aleister’s voice followed after… warm, and remarkably close to calm, though the way his hands trembled as he stroked Grace’s back gave away his nervous trepidation.

“Darling, you’ve been so strong… heroic. More than I’ve ever believed in anything… I believe in you now. And I’m here, Grace….”

A whimper escaped Grace’s lips. A split-second doubt in herself that flared up, borne of a habit of a lifetime. Panic that faith in her was being woefully misplaced….

“...I’ve become used to you disappointing me, Grace, but this… you’re not the daughter I thought I’d raised…”

With a guttural roar that made Aleister jump in surprise, Grace heaved, pushing down into her body with all her might. This, she was doing for herself. And she was going to kick labour in its ass while she was at it.

“Hold my hand!” she demanded, and Aleister did.

“Grace… you can do this, love.”

Her breath shuddered with the strain of labour, but then Grace’s jaw set with determination. “I know I can do this.”

A tiny, squalling bundle of baby emerged into the world, quickly gathered up by the midwife and placed on Grace’s chest.

“Congratulations! You have a healthy son!”

Aleister’s legs gave way, and it as only with the midwife’s timely assistance that he didn’t collapse straight to the floor.

“We… we have a son…,” he stuttered.

Dazed, Grace gently stroked the infant, their little boy. She’d done it. All those years she’d believed she wasn’t enough… and now there in her arms was indisputable proof that she’d been been sold a terrible falsehood.

“Our little baby…,” she murmured. “Hello, little one. We’ve been so looking forward to meeting you…”.

Any doubts in herself, in the future she’d have with her beautiful family, had washed away, expelled through the screams of a mother bringing forth a new life. As Grace’s senses returned to her, she breathed in her baby’s scent, marveled his perfect, bewildered face, and felt his heartbeat against her own… and she wept.

Aleister tenderly put his arms around her and kissed her damp forehead again and again as she laughed and cried, delirious.

“He’s amazing…,” Grace gushed through her tears. This moment… she had to hold onto it forever; let it be her strength.

No cruel words could reach her now.

  ______________________________

One-year-old children, Aleister had established, had refreshingly simple needs when it came to parties. Though there was a part of him that had been saddened that it wasn’t possible for the extended Catalyst family to be around for baby Reggie’s first birthday, that fact had meant that the occasion could be enjoyed without an excessive hullabaloo. One only had to utter the ‘p’ word around the likes of Raj and a feast would materialise… along with noise, and booze, and more than likely, a cupcake tower. The cupcake tower they’d deigned to keep, but the rest Aleister was quite happy to do without. What mattered was what would make little Reggie happy… even if that meant putting on the most undignified high-pitched sing-song voice he could muster. Again, thank god this thing was being kept small.

Diligently, he put out the necessary play-mats, picnic blankets, chairs, tables, and-- of course-- toys, for the small and simple first birthday celebration in the grass out front of the Rourke-Hall family home.

“What do we think, Reggie?” he asked, taking the time, as he always did, to engage his young son in whatever he was doing. “Not half bad, I’d say. A bit of shade… and perhaps we should bring out the bassinet for Liv, and I believe we’ll have a venue fit for a very special birthday boy.”

“Da!” Reggie cried from his bouncer, strategically placed so he could watch all the goings-on, and his father could in turn watch him.

“Thank you, I thought so. We may not have all the bells and whistles, but a little birdie told me there might just be some wrapping paper on the way… that is your favourite part of any gift, I know.”

Parenting had not been as hard a slog as Aleister had anticipated. Certainly, the broken nights’ sleep had been… less than pleasant, and the tinkling sounds of Reggie’s favourite musical toy were seared into Aleister’s mind, surely to torment him until his dying day; but throughout it all, he knew a most complete happiness, and somehow, he seemed to make his small son happy as well.

Reggie was an easy-going baby. For all that they had felt like torture, those nights of interrupted sleep were short-lived; Reggie settled into the routine with limited fussing. As the months went on, he spent far more time smiling than he did crying; in fact, once he’d started to become more mobile, he barely seemed to cry at all. A little shy with new people-- and overwhelmed by the sheer energy of the Catalysts all gathering together-- Reggie approached the world and people in it with wide-eyed curiosity, and one hand hanging on tight to one of his ‘safe’ people. Aleister was certain his son had inherited that amiable nature from Grace-- the alternative seemed… unlikely. Reggie’s joie de vivre was infectious; seeing that easy contentment, Aleister had to believe that he and Grace must have been doing something right.

  ______________________________

July 2022

 Aleister looked down at the tiny bundle in his arms, and a lump rose in his throat.

“I wonder if he’ll look at all like me,” he pondered out loud. “I think we’ve established that my father’s genes aren’t the strongest; Estela is the image of her mother and I… well, the cloning process must have been a long way south of perfect. I have his build but, to be honest, it ends there.”

Iris smiled. “I don’t doubt he will.” Her eyes sparkled cheekily. “I could go so far as to scan your resemblance, but I feel a mother’s word holds more value. I’d recognise that face anywhere. Baby Reginald Aleister is taking after his daddy.”

The baby grumbled, and a quick check determined that a diaper change was in order.

And so it begins.

Setting down a changing mat on the floor, Aleister’s hands trembled. Who was he kidding to think he was cut out for this? His experiences on the receiving end of parenting had only instructed him in what not to do, and he remained convinced, though Grace demanded otherwise, that he had all the warmth of a polar bear with hypothermia… eating an ice cream.

Noticing her son’s clear apprehension, Iris hovered closer. “It’s truly daunting to bring a child into the world. A whole little life… dependant on you.” She knew the regret would come through in her voice, but she’d always give Aleister honesty. He’d had precious little of that from the man he’d called ‘father’. “The only advice I can give is to break it down. Eighteen years of raising him doesn’t happen all at once… it’s small steps. Changing one nappy at a time.”

Aleister slowly went through the process, one that sounded so simple, but with the significance he placed upon it, it might as well be scaling Atropo.

“Would you believe I do actually know how to put a fresh nappy on a baby?” he said as he powdered Reggie’s bottom. “But I get down here and try to put it into practice-- the simplest of tasks-- and I’m completely hobbled by my own certainty that I’m bound to get it wrong. I don’t know if I’ll break this down small enough that I won’t be daunted. He’s… too important.”

“You mustn’t underestimate how powerful your own intent is. I know without a shadow of a doubt that you will always mind your son… you’ll never let his needs be lost. You love him, and if that’s guiding your path with him, I don’t believe you’ll go far wrong.”

Painstakingly, Aleister fitted a new diaper, adjusting and readjusting when he did it up too tight, and then not tight enough. With the adhesive worn out, he had to move on to a second. Finally, though, baby Reggie was changed, and one significant small step had been taken. With a sigh of release, Aleister got back to his feet, and with utmost care, picked up his son, whose eyelids were now heavy.

“I do appreciate your faith in me, Mother,” he said. “Truly, I do. But I cannot fool myself into believing that my best intentions will prevent me from inflicting harm on my son. We have all seen first-hand just what my best intentions can do.” When he looked up, Aleister saw such sorrow in Iris’ face; in her eyes was an aching desire to hold him-- something that could never be. He reached out his free hand, letting his fingers brush through the projection of hers. “The most terrible, most idiotic thing I’ve ever done was a decision made out of love. Arrogance as well-- I’ll never deny that. But all I wanted was to protect the woman I loved from something too horrifying to even comprehend.”

“My darling,” Iris whispered, “the fact that you care so much makes all the difference in the world. The people you love believe in you; all that’s left is for you to learn to trust yourself.”

Aleister sniffed. “Is that all? Just a bit of crippling self-doubt to conquer? I’ll have that polished off before lunch.” He smiled sadly. When he truly thought about it, he knew that he’d learned from his own mistakes-- the foolish certainty in his own being right, even in the face of those he trusted telling him otherwise. He’d taken their lives in his hands, well-intentioned or not, and they’d suffered for it. If they could all endure that stupidity and everything that came of it… and still manage to regain some belief in him, it seemed the lesson he needed to hear was to place his belief in them right back. “Well,” he said, “I certainly owe it to a lot of people, myself included, not to shy from that challenge.”

Iris’ eyes shone with pride and tenderness. “Reggie is going to have a wonderful father in you.”

And Aleister dared himself to believe it.

  _____________________________

“Reginaaaald!”

At the sound of the cry, Reggie pulled himself up onto his feet, holding onto his mother’s leg while he peered out to the direction of his aunties’ house down the way.

“Oh. Here come the rabble,” Aleister said, bracing himself. Farewell, peace and quiet. It was nice knowing you.

Grace giggled and took her son’s tiny hands. “Who’s that, Reggie? Is that Auntie Taylor?”

“Ah-tah!” Reggie proudly confirmed. “Yah-steh!”

“That’s right, Auntie Taylor and Tia Estela. Do you want to walk to see them?”

Reggie lurched forward, balancing against Grace’s hands as they guided him.

At seeing her nephew’s awkward goose-step in her direction, Estela paused her approach and hunkered down with her arms opened wide. “Look at you go!”

Coming up behind with tiny baby Liv strapped to her chest, Taylor enthusiastically cheered Reggie on.

The toddling infant shrieked with mirth, and his little legs worked all the harder, until Grace let him go, and he collapsed into his aunt’s waiting arms.

“Yah-steh!”

“Happy birthday, mijo!” Estela cried, lifting Reggie in the air and planting a kiss on his face while he giggled. “You are getting to be such a big boy!”

Taylor brought over the much-smaller Liv, who greeted her cousin with wide eyes. Six-weeks-old, she was beginning to take an interest in the people and goings on around her, and Reggie was about the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

“Happy birthday, Reggie!” Taylor said in a sing-song voice, gently waving Liv’s hand. The little boy squealed happily as he waved back, and his aunt grinned from ear to ear.

Estela angled Reggie closer so Taylor could properly greet him with a kiss and a tickle.

“I love you so much, sweetheart. Best. Nephew. Ever!”

“Ba-bee!”

“That’s right, Reggie…baaaay-by,” Taylor said, and she bounced Liv a little closer to her curious cousin. “Baby Liv has come to see you!”

Reggie gently bonked the smaller child on the shoulder, and she blinked at him in fascination.

“Ba-bee, ba.”

In no time at all, a picnic was laid out, and Reggie was merrily tucking into some soft pieces of fruit, and offering up portions to the members of the loving family who had gathered around him. He gave a jolly chortle as Aleister made a big show over just how delicious dragon-fruit was. To his right, his baby cousin was being fed, something that always piqued his curiosity. Liv was something he was still getting his head around. He’d seen other babies in Elyys’tel on occasion, but the fact that this particular baby seemed to be attached to his aunties, made her very interesting. Pouting slightly, he gazed up into his Auntie Taylor’s face as she fed a grumbly rumbly Liv. It didn’t look like he’d have any luck muscling in there… and he already knew that he did not want to make that baby thing start crying. Liv was far too loud for his liking.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Taylor cooed gently, reaching out her free hand to stroke Reggie’s cheek.

That small acknowledgement was all that was needed. Reggie hadn’t been forgotten, and he could get back to cheerily playing with the last scraps of his birthday lunch.

With lunch polished off, it was time for presents. The sight of the bright, colourful packages that Taylor pulled out from her bag made his eyes go wide. More big, crinkly paper? For him?

“This is from us… and this one is from Livi.”

Grace laughed and leaned over to give a fed and contented Liv a kiss on the head. “My word, you are a generous little lady! Thank you both-- so much. I can’t say what it means to us… for our special little boy to be shown so much love.”

By now, Reggie had some understanding of the way this ‘presents’ thing worked. A smiling grown-up would hand him a thing made of colourful paper, and his job was to rip it until something inside fell out. Then, the grown-ups would clap and cheer, and the paper would be free to be further ripped and crinkled and played with. It was a fun game.

Burbling happily to himself, Reggie tugged at the paper until he’d extricated the pesky thing inside, something soft and floppy.

“Oh, look, Reggie!” Grace exclaimed. “It’s Furball! Auntie Taylor must have been very busy sewing for you.”

“Thank heavens it isn’t a spear…,” Aleister muttered.

Estela smirked, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Yeah, I lost rock-paper-scissors. Reggie will get his spear next year. He’ll have stopped putting everything in his mouth by then, right?”

Lord, give me strength. This, Aleister now knew, was the price of family. But it was better, infinitely better, than being without.

  _____________________________

July 2022

 Taylor was a bundle of nerves, and if the uncharacteristic twitchiness was anything to go by, Estela was too. As if to reassure, but taking just as much comfort in return, Taylor grasped her wife’s hand.

“It’s okay, Taylor,” said Estela, softly. “I’m scared too.” She was scared of herself, how she’d feel when she walked in that room and saw Grace and Aleister with their perfect new baby boy. They didn’t deserve the most joyous day of their lives to be clouded by someone else’s envy and longing. Somehow, she and Taylor would have to forget just how much they’d been hoping for that magical day for themselves. Gently, she kissed Taylor’s brow. “Are you ready?”

With a deep breath, Taylor nodded. A piece of the family she’d dreamed of lay just ahead… she was someone’s aunt now, a fact almost incomprehensible when she looked back at what she came from. There was no way in hell she was going to let her own heartache take the shine off this day. “Yeah, I am. Let’s meet that little nephew of ours.”

Aleister opened the door, to find himself pulled straight into one of Taylor’s world-famous hugs. “I really should have braced myself for that, shouldn’t I?”

Estela laughed. The only other time she’d seen her brother so completely helpless in the face of a smile that just wouldn’t leave him was the day of Niala’rei when he’d been wed to Grace. That kind of happiness was impossible not to catch. “Don’t worry; you’ll soon be able to deflect her onto your son.” Oh, what the hell? She joined in the hug, putting both arms around her brother. “Congratulations, hermano!”

“Yes, yes, isn’t it wonderful, et cetera, et cetera…,” Aleister said as he found his way out of the three-way embrace. “If you’ll follow me, Grace and I have someone we’d like to introduce you to.”

Oh my god, Taylor thought to herself, as she trailed after her friend, he is practically skipping!

They came into the neat and tidy lounge room to find Grace gently rocking in the hand-carved nursing chair that had been a gift from Varyyn and Diego. In her arms… a small bundle, wrapped in a soft powder pink blanket.

Grace beamed as Taylor rushed forward, and had to hold back a laugh as her sister-in-law’s mouth fell open. “This is Reginald. Reginald Aleister Hall… but I have a feeling he’s going to go by ‘Reggie’ more often than not.”

“Grace!” Taylor gasped. “He is absolutely gorgeous… oh my god….”

“Isn’t he just? He wasn’t too sure about coming out, but I’m so glad he eventually decided to bless us with his presence. Isn’t that right, little man?” With a great deal of effort, Grace looked up from her newborn son, and noticed a wide-eyed Estela hanging back. “It’s all right; you can come closer.”

Estela swallowed hard. With the relationship she had with her uncle as close as it was, the thought of being someone’s aunt was… overwhelming. And she knew from that first look that she’d willingly move mountains for this kid.

“Hey,” Grace said warmly, “would you like a cuddle?”

Her heart in her throat, Estela allowed Grace to place the baby into her waiting arms. Reggie made a little squeak as he settled into the new embrace, then his body relaxed, safe and secure as his aunt held him. Holy shit. “I… can’t believe I’m his tia. I am so happy to meet you, mijo. You are gonna be so loved.”

Taylor brushed away a tear from her eye. “I think he already is! Oh god, the waterworks just aren’t stopping….”

Grace chuckled, totally content, and smiled as she watched Taylor gently kiss baby Reggie’s soft forehead. “It’s amazing. This kind of love… it’s just taken over my whole body. I can’t imagine feeling happier than this.”

Soft as a murmur, Estela hummed a gentle tune to the baby as she rocked him, and the smile on her face just grew broader and broader. It had cut her to her core to discover that she’d been fathered by the murdering bastard Rourke… and now that connection had given her the chance to be this little one’s aunt, to pay forward the loving care her uncle had lavished on her. There was not a shadow of a doubt in her mind; young Reggie would have his Tia Estela in his corner, ready to hold his hand through whatever life saw to throw at him. She sighed happily. “How about you meet your Auntie Taylor? If she gets any more excited she might just explode. We don’t want that, do we, chiquito?”

“Haha, very funny,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes. “But, yeah, I would love a cuddle.” She inhaled sharply as Estela eased Reggie into her arms. “Oh, little man! You are one handsome little tyke….”

Aleister watched proudly-- and catching himself from hovering too protectively. The way Reggie’s aunts looked at him… it was a look of adoring family. Love was something that little fellow would surely never need yearn for. “Yes,” he said, quietly, “he’s rather perfect.”

 ___________________________

 With full bellies all round, the birthday party had gone on pause for a couple of hours, allowing for desperately-needed naps to be taken. Reggie woke from his afternoon snooze to his home filled with lights and streamers, and even more friendly faces seemingly intent on showering him with affection. He wasn’t completely sure what to make of it all, but it sure was fun.

Birthday cake took the form of cupcakes, of course.

“Quinn Skyped us through the whole thing,” Diego explained. “Obviously, she really wanted to make something for Reggie herself, so we basically ended up being her cupcake-baking puppets.”

“Cupcake-baking, and frosting-licking,” Varyyn corrected. “Quinn was very right when she said that is the best bit.”

Grace smiled from ear to ear. “That was so kind-- of all of you!”

It had been a significant wrench for both herself and Aleister to see their friends return to the States after the reunion a month prior. Life didn’t stop; it couldn’t-- so much had already been upended, and the world outside La Huerta would keep turning, waiting for no one. Grace suspected her longing for her friends’ closeness was tied to the stirring of the wounds she carried over her relationship with her mother. Or… her lack of one. Time had done wonders in healing, but these moments she spent with her precious son had their way of making it so starkly obvious just what was missing. It couldn’t be changed, and she’d woken up that morning with the resolve to stop wasting her energy on wanting that change. Quietly, she re-directed her mind whenever it wandered into destructive territory.

The people who matter won’t let distance keep them from showing their care.

Aleister sunk into the couch and put an arm around his wife.

“That little fellow is going to be out like a night, come bedtime,” he said warmly, looking over Reggie as he toddled between friends with Diego holding his hands. “His legs have barely stopped moving since nap-time.”

Grace sighed happily and cuddled close. “He’d better be able to keep his eyes open long enough for the bedtime group call. Craig will be gutted if he doesn’t get to sing ‘Happy Birthday’.”

“I’m sure Craig would survive, but I have a feeling the sugar from those blasted cakes will see Reggie through just long enough.”

Reggie, indeed riding a slight sugar-high, was showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Everyone wanted his attention, and he was loving it. Varyyn, who was gently bouncing baby Liv in his arms, had made a point of wearing his crown; experience had taught him that the infants were mesmerised by the way the scarlet feathers danced on his head. Between staring up at the elyyshar with wonder, chasing around the colourful holographic projections Iris bounced around the floor, and cheekily prodding Estela into tickling him, Reggie had no shortage of entertainment in the form of his guests, but something from behind Taylor’s chair did catch his eye.

“So,” Taylor said as she pulled out a bulging sack of gifts, “we got left all this to surprise you with. I think everyone just went crazy with gifts; Reggie’s got a lot of love from all his aunts and uncles.”

In no time, Reggie was laughing fit to burst as he crawled through a sea of coloured paper; it was like some kind of wonderland… but emerged from it to see that, for some reason, his mother was… weepy. Concerned, Reggie awkwardly dragged the largest piece of paper he could find, then offered it to Grace as he hoisted himself upright using her leg.

“Mama?” It looked like she was… happy? Really, grown-ups were the strangest things….

Grace chuckled warmly and scooped up her boy. “You, young man, are such a lucky little guy.” She kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him again, until he was once again giggling. Reggie, she knew, was not missing out on anything at all. Her worst fears would come to nothing; her son would forever be loved without conditions… and his mommy and daddy would just have to get used to the fact that they were too.

#endless summer #reginald aleister hall #graleister #playchoices #grace hall #aleister rourke #estela montoya

[bearpillowmonster]

Neo: The World Ends With You

I'm invested in the original game and its characters, I'm invested in this game and its characters. I've had a lot of time for the original game to marinate and I can say that I enjoy pretty much every character and their arc and while I don't exactly feel the same with this one, that's not disappointing to me and this was my most anticipated game of 2021 so I mean that. This is a sequel, I expected as much and it didn't let me down, it's even better than I thought.

This is a NONSPOILER review because I think it's best experienced by actually experiencing it so I'll keep a lot of character, story, and even gameplay details out other than how the very VERY beginning of the game starts out with Rindo and Fret.

Let me give credit where credit is due, Rindo is voiced by Paul Castro Jr. who is a new voice actor and I was honestly impressed by his voice more than anyone else in the game, I love his voice and while Rindo has some pretty big shoes to fill as the main, I think he does it. Rindo seems to act pretty accordingly to the situation he's put in. He's not as edgy as Neku but he has enough push to him to where he would be considered the "negative" of the group but I would rather call it "rational" because he brings up some valid points, stuff that I myself was asking. Putting yourself in his shoes, that seems pretty accurate.

Fret on the other hand is a bit of the opposite, an optimist if you will. He's not really a "bad" character, just in comparison to the others, he's not my favorite. I think that there needs to be someone in his position who tries to uplift the team, but he's just a little annoying about it sometimes. Also get ready to hear "Galaxy Brain, ACTIVATE!!" literally hundreds of times, as much as he talks, you'd think he'd add more variety.

IMPROVEMENTS:

I'm not going to complain about certain gameplay elements or limitations that carried over from the last game except one. The camera. It's fixed to where you have no control over it in the city areas and therefore can't get a proper look at everything, whether that works in its favor, I'm not sure because you get used to it but it's just a small peeve you start out with.

The combat is pretty loyal to the first game which is surprising. I personally didn't like the original gameplay because it was so limited on the DS, a lot of room for error, but having it on console expands the system and lets you use buttons rather than mashing a touch screen, improving on almost, if not all, gameplay fronts. However, because it's based on a game from 2007, the system may seem a little outdated to some, it's really up to you, it made a fan out of me, making it more fun.

I played the original in bites, not because of lack of enjoyment but because I felt like it was a game I could only get into for so long at a time but with this game it's the complete opposite. Maybe it was the DS hardware that hampered the original but I say it's a decent success on this game's part. I also felt that Persona 5 seemed a bit formulaic in its story context and gameplay layout with each castle but this game, while having patterns, it changes before you get the chance to really catch on. I could predict P5 but I couldn't predict this, each day was a mystery, I knew you'd fight people but I didn't always know who or when which is crazy considering that P5 had all the choices!

A small improvement that I'll suggest for combat is having short rhythm based moves or even QTEs, like how in the original Shiki had the directional pad moves which were annoying but still varied from the rest of the gameplay. There are definitely new things that you can do, but there are a few aspects worth complaining about. You can unlock certain abilities and once you enable them, you can't disable them. The only one that it personally applies with is the ability to enable individual health bars for enemies, rather than an overall one. Which sounds good but-

I personally don't like that it's always floating above their heads, if it was on the side screen, that'd be one thing but constantly above their heads? No deal. I actually had to go back and load up an old save to get rid of it. But with unlocking certain abilities comes with quality of life aspects so if you're not in love with the gameplay at first, give it a little bit because you might be able to unlock whatever piece you're missing.

There's also "soundsurfing" that adds to your groove meter that you can use when running around and it said that you press (in my case "X" on PS4) to the beat of the song which is a cool concept but it really isn't clear how to use it because I try matching the beat and I get nothing and have more success just button mashing. The groove meter can drop when it's not supposed to, like when you literally can't attack during the buffering of a special or switching between battles in a chain (The "Get Ready" screen) And if you're in a proper boss battle, you HAVE to fight, it's like a trainer battle in Pokémon which is especially annoying when you accidentally press "retry". It has no reason to be there when I already know that I'm not prepared for the boss and can't back out.

Do the trailers spoil it?

Originally, I only saw the first and or second trailer and knew I wanted it so there was no reason to see any more but it was kind of overwhelming with all the characters they were showing off in just a single trailer. I don't think they needed to go that far but I understand why they did. I understand why they showed a lot of things that they did but I think it's a bit easier to SWALLOW when it's introduced in-game. I even found myself doing all the side-quests and being engaged in the side-stuff in-game. But I knew about people pointing out spoilers so after I finished it, I went back and looked at the other trailers and OH BOY. The final trailer shows some stuff and I'm SO glad I didn't watch it. They straight up show some out of context death scenes as well as different alliances and betrayals, not to mention parts of the freaking ending. The launch trailer is no better, it's just like that trailer but cut down. You may not have context but you can draw some hefty conclusions and that alone makes me question, why? I'm not sure if there are many reveals that they DIDN'T tease, it's like they went out of their way to hit every single one. Whether it's Square or Nintendo, they need to figure out how to cut a trailer, heck, hire me, I at least have the editing skills and know what's interesting enough to show and what's too spoilery not to show, come on!

Is it newcomer friendly?

I heard a lot of things like "it drops you in without mercy so pay very close attention" (in terms of story, that is) so only people who played the original game will be able to get it. But I beg to differ, I think it does a pretty good job of filling you in while putting you in the shoes of a new player (both in the game and out) AND keeping the mystery of whatever happened since the last game coming in small pieces. Most of the dialogue text boxes are voice acted so it's not really a slog to read. To prove my point further, the premise starts out very similar so it should be easy to clue in what exactly happened in the last game. Of course you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if you played the original but I don't think you'd be totally lost if you started with this one and played to right before the ending because then it kinda has to do stuff without preface, so you're going to be confused by much of the emotional weight that it carries. But it still gives you plenty of time to catch up on the original, whether through the game, videos, or lore, this game has you ask the questions, so fill in the blank. It has a nice length to it so you'll have until the ending to figure it out. Also, Final Remix teased stuff that this game makes clarity on but I wouldn't call FR mandatory. (Except maybe no numbers on the hand? Maybe even I missed something there.)

#neo: the world ends with you #neo: twewy #review #game #nonspoiler

[painted-crow]

Submission time #19

so i’ve been spending the last little bit unburning my lion primary. now i’m sort of lost on secondary? i suspect i have bird in there somewhere but i’m having a hard time separating my natural secondary and a model that i really like and find helpful. (or maybe it’s the now-surprisingly-loud lion primary drive for authenticity coming through?) so if it’s okay with you, i’ll take a crack at some of the quiz questions and see if there’s anything of note? spacing might be weird—i’m on mobile :/

Sure thing!

When you succeed, how influential in that success were the people around you?

my answer to this one depends on the day. yes, they’re extremely influential; no, i don’t always like it. not because i don’t appreciate or need the help but because it got into my head in a funny way growing up. i’ve always been tremendously lucky to have people who love and want to help me, but like... it gets to the point where it feels like i’m nothing on my own. how much of this is a favour? what do i owe you? are you just trying to spare my feelings or because i’m related to someone else? i’m desperate to be able to say (and believe) that i’ve done something for myself on my own terms.

Ooh, okay. So, you've maybe got some caretaker Badgers around you, but that's not you--you don't really value this in yourself, even if it's how the community around you works. If you have any Badger secondary, it's anxious.

Do people consider you charismatic?

charisma is SUCH a concept. it gives off such an animal magnetism, face of the revolution vibe, which is not me at all. i have to work hard to be nice bc most people deserve the benefit of the doubt (as i repress the instinct to be judgy and mean LMAO) and also bc it just works better socially? flies and honey and all that. i also have very specific ways of being nice: “mom friend” and “hypercompetent rookie in line of succession” and “spicy and nonjudgmental confidante” which, granted, are already all parts of my personality just emphasized for clarity. i think of it like... personality colour correction, or... code-switching i guess.

You've literally just described Actor Bird. Also, you're not very nice when you describe yourself, are you?

people tend to like me more than i like me, though, and it catches me a little by surprise every time. maybe it’s just because i live in my own head and it’s a lot quieter and more anxious up here. it does suck a little, suddenly being worried that like “ooh ppl only like what u show them but that’s not how u rlly are”

Lions (primary or secondary) and Actor Bird can really clash... it sounds like you're discovering that your primary doesn't like this tactic as it unburns. Also, I think Bird masks just take a lot of energy if used long term. That might be me though.

so i’ll Sprinkle In Some Light Trauma to gauge the reaction (and regret it immediately). the truth is that not many people make it past the social utility part of friendship and so i don’t rlly... feel safe? putting down the masks which are designed to smooth interactions in any case. (so i guess YES but actually no i’m charismatic but also that’s a very different public facing side)

Yeah, this is all Actor Bird so far. Also, hugs.

Do you like going into situations with a plan?

mmm. i don’t think i plan so much as i attempt to see into the future and force my best outcome. i HATE going in blind—if i can a way around something, i will, but if i can’t it has to at least be a good and sensible attempt. most of the plans i usually put together have coping-mechanism, doodling while on a phone call energy: too granular to ever implement, just something to put order to the things you’re thinking.

This is still lots of Bird energy. Plans don't always look the same, you know? And some of us barely use 'em at all.

like, i do have all my degree requirements and preferred classes listed out, because that’s important and i should have that sorted out correctly before declaring my major. but the hour by hour daily schedule is more of a thing to make me feel in control and like i’ve put the work into considering it.

i’m also a stereotypical nerd: i have an english/history brain, i write a lot, i fall down personality inventory rabbit holes for fun, i pick up random things that end up relevant years later, nothing was as distressing as not being able to read for fun bc university was just Too Much—you know the drill.

I do, but not everyone is like this. You're probably a Bird, and I wonder if you're taking your secondary for granted because you feel like it's expected of you.

but for someone who plans as a coping mechanism, it’s also sometimes the best way to put me off. like i don’t know, being friends, which is the only thing in my life where traditional overthinking would RUIN it absolutely.

i know someone who semi-despairingly refers to herself as machiavellian because she interacts with people like it’s 4D chess.

Huh, so your friends don't talk about themselves very nicely either.

collects info, reshapes her entire personality into something designed to appeal to whoever she’s talking to. i tried not to get into motive bc socializing really is like That sometimes, but i couldn’t imagine pulling that off. i talk big game about acting a certain way, but only in ways that are already part of me yk? if i couldn’t believe i was being legit in some way i’m like 97% sure it would show through somehow and make it real weird.

You're still on Actor Bird. Your friend might have a Snake model? but you're an Actor Bird.

How do you feel about shortcuts?

work smart not hard, she says, working hard anyway bc she needs to see all the little things fall into place just to make sure that they do.

seriously though, that is for “important enough” things: i need to see it done to standard. i can rest only with a job well done kind of thing—due diligence so that any tomfoolery that goes down isn’t my fault and therefore no one can get mad at me.

This might be a Badger model, and I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and say you picked this up from your community because it's what they expect of you. You don't seem to take any joy in it, though; it seems like an anxious response.

also i have beef with the idea of being gullible, so i’m gonna see it with my OWN EYES. for less important things, it’s a heart says yes mind says no situation. i love the shortcut that saves time and effort but keeps the quality, which is plentiful when it’s like. pasta sauce, but not when it’s like. the Donner party heading to california. i would love to shorten that stuff, but the consequences of a poorly done shortcut are more painful than the slog.

Bird modeling Badger. Yep.

Do you feel the need to keep the peace?

(it didn’t come up on this run of the quiz but i’ve been mulling over for a while!)

Huh. This question doesn't always come up? I always get it. I have to assume it's the quiz checking for Badger.

i’ve got a fairly bad temper and a transparent face. so no—i’m not much for keeping the peace. i can do it properly if compelled, but it’s exhausting and irritating and only really makes me resentful of the emotional labour.

Whether you can keep the peace is kind of separate from whether you feel you should, but you also really dislike being in that role. You're modeling some Bookkeeper Badger, which doesn't actually make you happy, and you really don't seem to like using Courtier for anything.

does it bother me when people fight? yeah, like most people do when it’s a rift-causing argument in a group they care strongly about, but if i’m not more loyal to one side of the dispute i’m much more likely to take out all the parties and have done with it. i’ve been known to fight back or even start stuff if the cause is important enough, or i have spleen to vent, but i’m a very messy arguer so staying out of it and collecting receipts in the background is much more my style.

Wonder if you've got some Lion secondary hiding out in your Houses. You don't like going into things unprepared, but maybe there's a Lion model you could be nurturing that would make you happier than that Badger mess that's been pushed on you.

anyway. this was long. made me think harder about badger than i thought. lots of feelings, but def not as sad as the ones i typed up and deleted ages ago which i elect to count as progress. thanks for making it this far hahahah

Yay! Progress!

Yeah, I don't think you're a Badger. It really doesn't make you happy. You sound like a Bird to me: actor Bird, rapid fire Bird, but not Badger. Not Snake, either; if you're a rapid fire or actor Bird (or both) you might mis-Sort yourself into Snake, but I'm not getting that from you.

--Paint

#sortinghatchats #submission #ravenclaw secondary #hufflepuff secondary model #rapid fire bird #actor bird #paint speaks

[brightbeautifulthings]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

"'What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?'"

Year Read: 2014, 2020

Rating: 5/5

Context: It's hard to know where to begin writing a review for this book. I read it for the first time in graduate school in about five weeks (alongside everything else I had to do in grad school, so I don't recommend that), and it basically blew my mind. At the same time, it's hard to imagine tackling it any other way for the first time. Despite its difficulty, there are things obsessive and immersive and, appropriately, even addictive about it. Full immersion might be the only way to read it for the first time, and I obsessed about it for months afterward. Since I'm not on any deadlines, I took it more slowly this time (21 weeks) so I could enjoy the writing and the nuances without the pressure to finish. For my less coherent weekly updates in real time, see my blog posts. Trigger warnings: Everything, everything. Death (on-page), child death, animal death, suicide, suicidal ideation, rape, pedophilia, possible incest, child abuse/abusive households, graphic violence/gore, eye horror, severe injury, drug use, addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, depression, OCD, grief, racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, inexplicable hostility toward Canadians.

About: If it's difficult to know how to write a review, it's equally hard to describe what Infinite Jest is about. It's about so many things, tennis, addiction, communication (failures), and entertainment among them, but I'll do my best. Beneath all the numerous characters, timelines, and subplots, the main plot is about a film so entertaining that it kills anyone who watches it, robs them of all desire to do anything but watch it until they die, and what a faction of Canadian assassins will do to possess it. The auteur is James Incandenza, a suicide whose son, Hal, is a prodigy at Enfield Tennis Academy. Next door to E.T.A. is Ennet House, a drug rehabilitation center where Don Gately, former thief and Demerol addict, is taking it day by day to stay sober. Though they don't know it, Hal and Gately are connected, and the deadly Entertainment and those who seek it draw their paths closer and closer together.

Thoughts: It's rare to find a book that is actually as smart as it claims to be, but IJ is--certainly much smarter than I am, despite all my attempts to make sense of it. It starts off strong and doesn't let up for several hundred pages, which is a huge achievement all by itself. Wallace excels at writing extremely polished sections that could almost function alone as short stories, and the first chapter is one of my favorites in all fiction. It's reassuring, I think, to start the book off on a strong note, in case we worried we were in for a thousand pages of tedious slog. It can be both, but it's often heartfelt, insightful, and funny as well, and the payoff is well worth the effort. I don’t know how Wallace manages to pack every page with so much meaning. Anybody can put tedious lists in their books or make reading purposely difficult (and I have attitude about writers who do this for no reason), but there’s nothing haphazard about this book, despite its size and varied focus. Everything seems utterly intentional. The conversations are really top-tier; Wallace has a great ear for how people talk, and it's a fascinating look at how communication works and doesn't work.

Thematically, I think the book succeeds on more than any other level, including plot or structure. If we could say this book is "about" anything, we would almost certainly start with the themes and not the plot, which is often secondary to whatever point Wallace is trying to make at the moment. It takes an in-depth looks at things like addiction, depression, loneliness, failed communication, sincerity v. irony, critiques of postmodernism and metafiction (while being very meta itself, at times), and the very specific selfishness of an American culture that insists on freedom even to the point of self-destruction. At times, it feels a little heavy-handed or like it was yanked right out of an intro to philosophy course, but I suppose something in a thousand pages has to be obvious if we're ever going to pick up on it. A lot of these themes resurface in his other work, from "This is Water" and "E Unibus Pluram" to Orin Incandenza's Brief Interview style Q and A (and he would be a perfectly fitting character in that book).

The characters are some of my favorites in literary fiction as well, particularly the Incandenza family and Don Gately, and to a lesser extent Joelle Van Dyne (although Wallace typically doesn’t write female characters very well, and she comes with some issues). Hal and Gately couldn't be more different; Hal excels at everything he's ever done, and Gately has a record that includes accidental homicide on it. Hal is the hero of non-action, since little that happens in the book is engineered by him, while Gately is closer to the more typical hero of action, who defends the undeserving at great cost to himself. Yet their struggles with addiction are similar, and they both manage to be incredibly sympathetic characters. In my opinion, the book is always at its best when we’re with Hal or Gately, but I’m strongly driven by good characters. Despite being dead, James Incandenza's presence is also felt all over the book, from the Entertainment he created to his haunting ETA and sticking beds to the ceiling (probably the weirdest ghost I've ever seen in fiction). He's a tragic character in a book full of tragic characters. The others are too numerous to name, from the other tennis players at ETA and recovering addicts at Enfield, to the various bystanders populating Boston. We get brief glimpses into almost all of them, and while they may not all feel relevant at the time, most are memorable or heart-wrenching or slapstick funny, or all three. It's a book that contains multitudes.

That's not to say it's always on point though, and it isn't. There are a number of very serious problems with representation in this novel, and they're as bad as its detractors claim. A lot of the 90s humor aged very poorly, but that's not an excuse for some of the unabashedly racist depictions of African Americans, the uncharitable descriptions of Steeply's and Poor Tony's cross-dressing, or--however much I love him as a character--the fact that Mario Incandenza’s descriptions are ableist in just about every possible way. Wallace thinks he's capturing "voice" when he's really encouraging harmful stereotypes. The humor of the novel often doesn’t depend at all on these stereotypes and would in fact, be a lot more funny if I wasn’t spending so much energy cringing at it. So many of the little racist and ableist asides could have easily been edited out of the entire novel to make it less offensive. There are also sections where he seems at pains to be as gross as possible for its own sake. There are plenty of things grim or uncomfortable or flat out distasteful about this book, but sometimes the graphic violence kind of jumps out and stabs you in the eye, say, with a railroad spike.

If there are times when I was totally absorbed in the little tragedies of the Incandenza family or Gately's struggles, there are plenty more where it's like pushing something heavy up a hill. No lie, some of it is slogging through tedious minutiae and various experimental writing styles (some more successful and less offensive than others). Wallace has a gift for purposeful tedium; it’s at its peak in The Pale King, but he gives it a nice warm-up round here. The novel is difficult and meant to be, since Wallace maintained that some of the best pleasures are the ones we have to work for, and he's not totally off base. There's something very satisfying about living, for a time, in a book that spans a thousand pages, that demands focus and perseverance, and manages to give back (almost) as much as it takes. The book is always structurally interesting, but it starts to get more complicated toward the end as various characters and plots begin to almost slide into one another. I forgot how frustrating it was to near the end and realize--again--that it wasn't going to wrap up with any kind of satisfaction; the various plots slide, but they don’t meet. I thought if I paid closer attention on a second read that I would pick up more of the plot things I’d missed on my first, but I think the problem is that those answers simply aren’t to be found in the actual text. Of course, they can point us toward various conclusions, and the novel certainly encourages us to speculate and make connections, but I don’t think the actual answers are there.

That brings me to some of my final thoughts, for now. There's no doubt that this is a hugely successful book, and I believe it accomplished exactly what Wallace meant it to do. He jokingly referred to it as a failed entertainment, much the way Jim considered his lethal Entertainment a failure, but I have the sense that Wallace, unlike Jim, failed on purpose. The book purposely pays more attention to structure and theme than it does to plot or character, yet the plot and characters are hugely compelling for what we see of them. Imagine the book it could have been if he had paid equal attention to all of them. Wallace attempted to create a book that people wouldn't want to stop reading. Reaching the end certainly encourages us to begin again, as the first chapter is actually the last in chronology, but that trick only works the first time. By my second read, I realized that starting over wouldn't help me fill in any of those blanks or answer any of my questions, and I was content to let it go. On the one hand, IJ depends upon its structure to tell the story it's telling. On the other, think of the book it could have been if it spent more time telling a story and developing its characters and less time belaboring a point. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and the tragedy is that I think it could have been even better.

#book review #infinite jest #david foster wallace #literary fiction #adult fiction #5/5 #rating: 5/5 #2020 #bookoween

[unhealthyfanobsession]

Mor and Feyre discuss Nessian (or: me trying to rationalize the rest of Mor’s character with her spitting hatred of Nesta)

“You know that you can’t keep him, right?” Feyre says gently late one night at the house of wind, after everyone else has flown back to the townhouse, pairing off in the tension-filled odd couples that seem to fill their lives.

“I thought you stayed behind to drink with me, not lecture me” Mor grumbles, face falling from its usual bright mask. She runs a hand through knotted golden curls and sighs, refilling her glass. Again.

“It’s not a lecture” Feyre shrugs “but I know you won’t talk about this stuff with anyone else, which is fine. It’s also fine if you want to mope a bit, but I just have to be sure that you know that you can’t keep doing what you’re doing”

Mor grits her teeth, she does not get angry often but little speeches like this set her on edge and she’s had enough of them from Rhys throughout the centuries “look, I’ve never told Azriel that I’m in love with him, I’ve never slept with him, any time he gets too close I make a point of fucking whoever turns the corner next. I love him like a brother and I damn sure can keep him as my best friend! As far as I’m concerned I’ve been pretty clear and he chooses to stick around, so clearly whatever mess we’ve created in the last half millennium is working for him to some degree as well so just-“

“I’m not talking about Azriel. Though... I wouldn’t say any of what you have is working for anyone. Not really.”

“Then who-“

“The 6’3 mass of wings and muscle and easy smiles that you use as a human buffer shield to keep Azriel’s emotions away from you” Mor’s eyes widen just a little and Feyre looks down into her glass “you can’t keep him around forever Mor, and you can’t keep glaring at Nesta and snapping at her every time she so much as looks at him. He isn’t yours.”

She scoffs “I snap at Nesta because she’s a viper that’s going to bite him and leave him dying in the streets, it has nothing to do with-“

“Yes, it does” Feyre’s jaw tightens “Azriel and Elain spend most of every day together and not a word from you. It isn’t because Elain is sweet and kind and you want her for him. It’s because you want Az to find someone. But if Cassian does and Azriel doesn’t... there goes the buffer”

“Do you really think that I am so selfish that I would deny Cassian love if he truly found the right person?”

“I think that you don’t get to decide who the right person is. He does.”

Mor throws back a mouthful of wine, needing to be more numb to handle this conversation “Cassian isn’t choosing anything when it comes to Nesta” the name is like poison on her tongue.

“I get that you don’t like her, hell I don’t like her most of the time. But Nesta... she has her reasons for how she is, and she’s different with him. I know that you see it, it’s why you were all ready to go home tonight and then she asked him to fly her back and your teeth set on edge. It’s why you practically growled that you needed more to drink when he smiled brighter than the sun because she stepped into his arms, and it’s why you nearly cracked that glass when he laughed as they took off.” Feyre pauses, not missing the way Mor’s eyes are narrowed as she speaks “he is happy when he is with her, and he deserves to be happy”

“what you and Rhys have is rare” Morrigan speaks with a level of bitterness that Feyre has seldom heard from her “the mating bond looks for equals and strength. It’s evolutionary. It finds who will have the most powerful offspring. It’s why Rhys is... well, Rhys. His parents were mates because it would result in the most powerful lord in Prythian history, but they were never happy. They were drawn together, crazed into all kinds of wild sex so that they could make Rhys and fulfill their cosmic destiny”

“What does that have to do with anything Mor, I-“

“I’m sure Rhys told you that the bond is hard to sense before it snaps into place. He isn’t wrong, but you’d have to be fucking blind not to see it with those 2” she rolls her eyes “Cassian, Lord of Bloodshed, commander of the Night Court armies, the most powerful warrior in centuries. Who could equal that? Someone who went to war with the Cauldron itself, maybe? Who tore and shredded and fought her way into the kind of pure power that creates and takes away life itself. Cassian doesn’t only walk beside death, he dances with it, teases it, defies it.”

Feyre is silent, still grasping at the pieces of the puzzle Mor is laying out in front of her “but that is only a part of him. He isn’t really that person. The darkest most powerful parts of him are drawn into her. They are both conquerors of death in their own right, and their child... their child would tear worlds apart and build them up from the ground again if it wanted to”

“I’ve seen the mating bond go bad before, and I don’t want that for him. She isn’t right for him and I won’t let some fucked up cosmic power stick him with a cold snake who will never love him, because he loves. He loves so deeply and fully and brightly. It will kill him to constantly be yearning for a woman who can never return that”

Feyre takes a moment to think, not even sure where to start. “It upsets you that the universe might make this decision for him, but why should you know better than the Mother?”

“I’ve seen-“

“The bond go wrong, I know. But those were power hungry people, dark people- at least one of them was.” She speaks over Mor’s muttered ‘my point exactly’ “Nesta isn’t like you, she never will be. She isn’t like Cassian either, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t love him. She almost died for him, Mor. You can’t just cherry pick the facts. Nesta is cold and hard and she doesn’t like very many people, but when she loves...it is with everything she has” Feyre takes a sip of her own drink “Maybe they are mates, and maybe they aren’t. But if they are it won’t be because they are equals only in power. Cassian is a fixer, a protector. He’s been into the dark and come out the other side of it and he will help Nesta do the same. And Nesta... it is exactly someone like Cassian who can hold her heart. She gives her heart to people who aren’t like her. People who are kind and open and light, like Elain. It might be a weird comparison to you who doesn’t know her, but I grew up with Nesta. She loved Elain the second she saw her because she was warm and kind and her spirit stayed so light despite everything we went through-“

“You aren’t going to convince me that she will ever deserve him” Mor’s speech is a little slurred at this point, the wine bottle next to her nearly empty

“And I don’t have to. Because as I said before, it isn’t up to you” Feyre’s voice is firm and Mor sighs loudly at the sound of it

“I know” the words are barely audible, a human never would have picked them up “I know” she pauses, pouting a little “I guess I just always thought that if someone ever came to take him away from me at least it’d be like getting another sister. Like when you came and got Rhys’ sorry ass off my hands” Feyre laughs “it’s like a consolation prize, and... and it would mean that I know I wasn’t going to lose him, that I would still see him. But with her, who knows. What if she hauls him off to her cave and we never see him again”

Feyre giggles a little at the imagery “If Cassian ever ends up in her cave, I don’t think she’d be dragging him there”

“You know what I mean”

Feyre nods “I do. And I haven’t known Cassian as long as you have. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling, but it isn’t going to help the situation if you keep being horrible to her”

“She’s horrible to me” Mor grumbles into her glass

“Yes well Nesta is like that with everyone, people take notice when you are only mean to one person”

“I’m not mean!” Feyre raises her eyebrows and Mor laughs “ok fine. I’ll be nicer to Nesta” she takes her voice up in a whiny mimic, slogging back the last dregs from the bottom of the wine bottle, shrugging “I’ll try, at least.”

#nessian #nestaxcassian #nesta and cassian #morrigan #feyre archeron #cassian #nesta archeron #a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #a court of frost and starlight #sarah j maas #acotar

[cavalierious-whim]

Sylvain sends Felix a very dumb selfie.

#

Remember the last time that I wrote smut for an AU that I wasn't done writing? Well I've done it again. This is part of the Model AU that I will be finishing. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Inspired by this ridiculous art that Sato drew, and a dumb meme that we all remember. You can read here on A03 for better quality. Follow me on Twitter!

#

It starts as a picture or two. Simple snaps of Sylvain’s daily life sent to Felix when he’s away at work.

Felix would much rather prefer to bring Sylvain along but he’s decidedly adamant about keeping his shitty job at the cafe. For some reason he likes being a barista, steaming milk and slogging through orders as customers threaten to dump coffee all over him if he fucks up their drink.

Even though Sylvain can model. That he’s been offered exclusivity rights from top-of-the-line brands like Von Aegir.

They could model together, traveling around, hypnotizing society with their vibrant sexual tension. But, is it sexual tension at this point? Felix and Sylvain have scratched that itch, thoroughly and extensively. Lazy nights and mornings filled with lingering fingers and wandering hands. Of kisses pressed into collarbones and purpling bites left behind in claim.

Felix is lonely on his trips abroad. He’s always had a dislike for his work. Kept it up only because he’s good at it and makes bank. It allows him to live a leisurely life full of pleasure and anything that he wants.

Aside from Sylvain, because he’s stuck somewhere in the butt-fuck middle of nowhere called Gautier. Tucked away high in the mountains where it still snows into the early summer, and the entire industry is dependent on tourism.

So, the pictures. Sylvain sends several each day, tiny little peeks into his relatively monotonous life. They bring a smile to Felix’s face as he zooms in, trying to memorize Sylvain’s smile.

Goddess, he’s whipped. Utterly and entirely. The worst part is that Felix doesn’t really care. Can’t find time to. Would rather pine away at the thought of his delectable boyfriend than try and forget about him.

Annette says it’s a good change. “You’re much more agreeable,” she’d said to him a few weeks back. “Clients are liking it. Amazing, what a good dick can do to you, eh?”

Felix hated the response because of course, she’s right. For the first time in years, he’s relaxed. Pleased with himself. Amiable, even.

It’s most definitely because of Sylvain’s glorious cock.

Then the pictures turned spicier. Sylvain half-naked, abs on display. Sleeves pushed up to his forearms, collar undone and open around the collarbone. Suggestive posing as he flaunts what he has.

Makes Felix go dry in the mouth and his shorts incredibly tight.

It’s why Felix hates being in Adrestia, thousands of miles away from it. Pining for it. Thinking about the damage Sylvain’s cock can do while he’s trying to work. It’s hard to model when your pants are tented like you’re a teenager.

Even worse when it’s for a summer swim line, clad in very little.

Felix sneaks away to carefully snap a picture in his trailer, showing off pale skin and swim trunks that leave nothing to the imagination. It makes work hell but means that Felix can go to bed tired and thinking good thoughts. Palming at himself to the idea that Sylvain might be doing the same.

Sylvain has to be, the insatiable fool that he is.

Felix wakes the next morning to a notification of a new picture. Probably Sylvain laying in bed, on his stomach, sheets pulled back to show off his ass. It’s a favorite of Felix’s and he has a few similar saved into an unlabeled folder on his phone.

It isn’t.

Felix drops his phone, face turning unbearably red. He shouldn’t be embarrassed. He’s seen Sylvain’s dick enough times to know exactly how the weight of it feels in his hand and on his tongue. The way that he tastes, the slight tang of his come, or the sweat on his skin.

This picture is ridiculous in a truly Sylvain-like fashion. He’s half-naked in front of the mirror, clad only in his briefs. His cock rock-hard and tipped to the side, filled entirely and--

There’s a shampoo bottle sitting on it.

It’s so obscenely dumb that Felix can’t help but stare, mouth parting. Tongue sneaking out to lick his lips. Sylvain’s big enough to be impressive, the bottle settling onto its perch with little to no effort. Then there’s the wink, Sylvain’s insufferable cheekiness evident in his expression.

It’s too early in the morning for Felix to be suddenly so horny. He shouldn’t be half-hard at the idea of such a dumb photo. There are less than two hours to be up, showered, and at the shoot location. And that’s if Annette doesn’t show up early to drag him out of bed.

Felix’s hand finds his cock anyway, palming himself over his briefs. This is a really, really bad idea. His hand sneaks into his waistband, circling his length properly. Then Felix slides down his briefs and kicks them out of the way. Truly, the worst plan he’s ever come up with.

And he’s dating Sylvain, so that’s saying something.

Felix throws his head back as he strokes along his dick, now fully hard. All because of Sylvain’s incessant, yet endearing, stupidity.

He certainly doesn’t think of Sylvain’s hands, large and calloused, wrapping around him entirely. In a warm grip. Doesn’t think of the way he whispers dirty things into Felix’s ears as he makes quick work of his cock.

Felix is already leaking at the tip, already feeling that tightly coiled fired deep in his gut. Pathetically close even when he’s only barely begun. He spreads the precome to aid the slide of his fingers, squeezing the crown of his dick on the next upstroke.

“Fuck,” murmurs Felix, looking at the picture again. At Sylvain’s softhearted and kind face, that devilish smirk that’s reserved for only Felix. Where his neck meets his powerful shoulders. His handsome pecs, clearly defined.

And then, of course, the best part; Sylvain’s cock, outlining his briefs so very clearly. Every crease woefully evident where it pulls the cotton fabric taut; the dips and valleys along the length of him.

It makes Felix’s mouth water and his ass clench painfully. Wanton and waiting. Incredibly frustrated.

Felix can end it now or--

He looks at the time and thinks. Then he makes the terrible decision to slip his fingers into his mouth, slicking them with spit. Not as ideal as lube but he’s short on time. Thankfully, he’s still a little loose, pliant from his night before.

Felix fucked himself on his fingers to many a picture in that cursed folder on his phone that remains unnamed. Random and innocent selfies. Slightly spicier, indulgent pieces. The pictures that they sometimes take together while sharing their bed.

Annette calls it his spank bank after accidentally stumbling across it while working. She’d spent a good ten minutes roasting Sylvain’s cock until Felix told her to shut up. Then she’d roasted his instead.

Felix works a finger in slowly. “Dammit,” he says. Sylvain’s ruined him, it seems. In his expectations. Felix’s fingers are slim and dextrous, able to get the job done. They aren’t nearly as long or thick as Sylvain’s. Don’t fill him up the same.

A second joins the first a little bit too soon, but Felix knows what he wants. Impatient at his best, he’s insistent in the way he touches himself. The slight, delicious sting of his fingers as they pull at his rim. The stretch is addicting as he presses them in and out.

Thinking that they’re Sylvain’s, that he’s right here beside Felix instead of across the continent. Whispering dirty, sweet nothings into his ear, his voice pitched dangerously low. Felix climbs that high, panting as he jerks himself off, his fingers sliding deep, angling just so.

The first touch against his prostate sets Felix’s nerves alight. The second turns him into a moaning mess. His dick is slick, his ass tight. Clenching around his fingers as he thinks the dirtiest thoughts that he can muster.

Particularly, Sylvain’s cock and the perfect way that it fills him. How he thrusts into his ass, teasing strokes as his hands grip at Felix’s thighs. The way Sylvain sighs into Felix’s neck as he tries to hold himself back, lasting as long as possible. The way that he watches as he slides in and out, murmuring about how Felix has ruined him forever.

Sylvain frequently worships the way that Felix can bring him to his knees with just a heated gaze.

“Idiot,” says Felix, looking at the picture once more, his face flushed and pink with desire. “Stupid, how much I miss you.”

Felix’s fingers find a good rhythm as they slide in and out, spreading his rim. Intoxicating, the way that pleasure flows through him. He can feel the tendrils of it in every limb. And finally, Felix comes, his cock spilling as cries out Sylvain’s name in a whining moan. Eyes shut tight as he rides that feeling, rides his fingers, rides the memory of what Sylvain would feel like were it him nestled deep inside Felix instead.

He pulls his fingers from himself gingerly and lifts himself onto wobbly legs. Sets about starting a shower. Once in it, he stares at the mini-sized bottle of soap tucked into the corner of the tub.

“Shampoo,” says Felix, still trying to catch his breath. “How utterly embarrassing.” Losing himself entirely to such a moronic selfie. He still saves it to that damned folder on his phone. Knows just how much relief it’ll bring him until he finds his way back home.

It’s a long cool down. Long enough that Annette’s banging on his hotel door once he steps from the bathroom, wrapped in a robe. He used to give her the spare key. Stopped when she walked in on him and Sylvain doing, in her words, dastardly things.

When he opens the door he still isn’t dressed. Annette looks him up and down. Takes in his relaxed and fucked out aura, then smirks knowingly.

Felix tells her to fuck off before letting her in.

She says nothing as he dresses. Only stares as he mills about. Then, when it’s nearly time to head to the shoot, she says, “Well, at least you’ll be pliable today.”

Annette has no idea.

Earlier, Felix took a photo while still in his blissed-out orgasmic haze. One of his cock in his hand and his spend all over his stomach. The mess that he’d made while fingering himself to Sylvain’s supreme idiocy.

He’s never sent something so overtly explicit to Sylvain. Until now. Sylvain must be asleep because he hasn’t responded. Or maybe he’s furiously stroking himself to the sight of it instead.

Either way, Felix can’t wait to see the result.

#sylvain/felix #felix/sylvain #felix x sylvain #fe3h fanfiction