chihiro never forgets her time spent in the spirit world,
because that’s no fun for anyone. she never forgets her friends, how could she?
she holds them all close to her heart, which is where they belong, especially
her beautiful white dragon.
hake is hers as
far as she’s concerned, but she’s his too, so it’s all nice fair. of course,
haku thinks that she doesn’t know he exists, but that’s okay. she’ll go find
him again one day.
because chihiro plans to return to the spirit world. but she
knows the time isn’t right, that if she just goes darting through every place
where the boundary between their worlds runs thin, then nothing will change. as
is, she’s just a little girl, just a helpless little girl who will get lost and
killed in the world of her friends, of her dragon. so she doesn’t go back.
she could. now
that she knows what to look for, she sees entrances to the spirit world
everywhere. they’re rarely in the exact same place twice but she knows what to
look for, how to find them if she wants to, how to get back to rin and kamaji
and zeniba. but she’s not ready yet.
she needs to get stronger.
her family’s not religious, so they’re surprised when she
asks to go visit shrines, but maybe it’s for the history or the culture, or,
they don’t know, the architecture. it’s a simple thing, and so they go.
chihiro keeps her eyes peeled, because she’s looking for something
in particular.
she’s looking for a shrine with a lot of spirits living in
it.
oh, because that’s another thing she can do now.
she can see spirits.
not ghosts, not
the echoes of the dead. but spirits, nature spirits mostly, but tricksters and
guardians, and all sorts, really. so they visit shrine after shrine, and there
are sprits there, of course, but never enough, none of them are there for anything
but the offerings, and that’s not what chihiro is looking for.
it takes months, and she’s already started school, settling
into it easier than she knew she could. after her adventures in the spirit world,
human children are nothing. but one day she visits a shrine, and she knows it’s
the one. it’s small, nothing impressive, all the way at the top of a long hill.
but she knows she’s found what she’s looking for. someone
who can help her.
there’s an old priestess taking care of it all on her own,
and all around her dart spirits, some lingering, some running by and doing
nothing more than patting her on the shoulder or back, but all of them
acknowledging her in some way. she takes one look at chihiro and says, “looking
for an apprenticeship, then?”
her parents start to say no, but she interrupts them, says, “yes,
i am,” and her parents don’t understand, but they have no reason to deny her,
so they don’t.
“it’s been a while since i’ve seen someone else who was
spirit touched,” she says the first day that chihiro returns, this time on her
own.
“what happened to you?” she asks, and knows the old
priestess will understand. those with the ability to interact with the spirit
world aren’t born. they’re made.
“a spirit saved my life as a child,” she answers. “you?”
she grins. “a river spirit saved me. once when i was
younger, and then again just a few months ago. i’m going to back to him.”
“returning willingly to the spirit world is foolish, and
dangerous,” she says, but there’s something like approval in her eyes.
“yes,” she says, “teach me how to survive it.”
so the priestess does. chihiro becomes known to the local
spirits, helping them however she can just like the old woman. plenty of
guardian spirits offer to attach themselves to her, to mark her as under their
protection, but she always refuses. there’s only one spirit who’s mark she’s
willing to carry.
years pass, and chihiro grows, from a girl to a young woman.
she grows up strong, and beautiful, and thanks to her years under the
priestess, she grows up powerful. she learns how to shoot arrows that cut
spirits and to write spells on rice paper, she learns every inch of the forests
around her home and the spirits that dwell there, and on the day she graduates
high school she moves into the temple.
but she’s not planning to stay.
“i hope he’s worth it,” the priestess tells her.
chihiro grins, sharp and eager, and says, “i guess i’m going
to find out.”
she walks into the woods and slips through one of the places
where the border is too thin, and enters the spirit world once more. she has
her bow and her ink, and this time she’s not going to be easy prey, she’s not
going to be someone that has to be saved or coddled.
she’s come here for her dragon, and she won’t let anything
get in her way. it’s haku, and haku alone, who will be able to turn her away.
if he rejects her, she’ll leave. but for no other reason.
it takes her a long time to get to the bathhouse, to fight
and bargain her way there, because before it was an obstacle, so it came to her
easily, but now it’s a goal, so this world holds it back from her. but she won’t
let it stay out of her grasp forever. when she arrives she’s filthy and tired
and half her arrows are missing, her clothes are different, and she’s older. by
how much she doesn’t know, because time isn’t the same in here, but she’s not
the same girl who entered.
the whole realm is talking of her, of the human who walks
among them and won’t be chased away, of the girl who marched across the endless
marshes until she reached the end, something few ever manage, and then just
kept going. who aids those in need and destroys those who stand in her way.
when she walks through the bathhouse doors, haku is there.
“it’s you,” he says, eyes wide, and he looks older too, like
breaking free of yubaba’s curse finally allowed him to grow up. “i didn’t think
it could be. i didn’t think it was possible.”
she marches forward, grinning, and grips the front of his snow
white shirt with her muddy hands. “anything is possible. you taught me that.”
she kisses him, exhausted and filthy and feeling more alive
than she ever has. she kisses him like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do, because
it just might be, because if she angers him, then he could easily kill her.
he doesn’t kill her.
he kisses her back.
chihiro gets exactly what she wanted – her friends, a place
in the spirit world, and a reputation as someone who’s dangerous, even as a
human.
and her dragon husband, of course. she gets that too.
ME, A NORMAL CONTRIBUTOR TO FANDOM: So let’s talk about the pedagogical implications Thanos’s snap would have on the Sesame Street curriculum within the greater MCU.
I don’t know how pedagogical it is, but I guess now I’m thinking about Bert sitting alone in a room, missing Ernie.
That is absolutely the emotional core of what a post-Snap episode of Sesame Street would be about (I feel like Bernice would be missing too, and Bert would try to play chess with Rubber Duckie?), but for the episode to function there needs to be something they’re teaching the audience besides ennui, and that is where I’m really stuck.
Because the emotional core wouldn’t stick if it’s not supported by the structure of the show! But it seems like the Snap destroys basically all structures in place. But that makes the structure of Sesame Street that much more necessary. And then I spiral like this for a while.
Disclaimer: I have not watched a full episode of Sesame Street in a long time
Big Bird has been waiting for the store to open for a very long time now. He’s a patient bird, and he knows about waiting his turn, but his watch has the big hand on the three and the little hand on the nine and he’s pretty sure that Alan usually open the store when the little hand is on the seven.
Finally, when the little hand goes all the way to the four, the door opens.
“Hi, Big Bird,” Chris says, his eyes red and puffy. “We aren’t going to open the store today.”
Big Bird doesn’t understand; Hooper’s store opens every day. “Why aren’t you opening the store, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I need beakpaste, I’m all out.”
Chris just looks sad. “Big Bird, did you hear about The Snap?”
“No,” Big Bird says, and the way Chris is talking is very scary. He feels like he might need to sit down. “I don’t even know how to snap!”
Chris steps out form behind the door and gestures for them to sit on the stoop. When they’re settled, Chris takes a deep breath before he speaks. “Well, a bad man named Thanos came to Earth. Do you know about Thanos?”
“Yes,” Big Bird nods He heard some of the grownups saying that name. “He fought with the Avengers.”
“That’s right,” Chris says. “And the Avengers lost their fight. Sometimes, even when grownups try really hard, they can’t do all the things they want to do, and sometimes that means that bad things happen.”
“Did a bad thing happen?”
“Yes,” Chris says, taking Big Bird’s wing in his hand. “Because of Thanos, a lot of people are missing. And Alan is one of them.”
Big Bird has to think about that for a moment. He went missing one time, when he was a blue bird in a circus, but his friends found him and brought him home. But something about Alan’s face tells Big Bird that this isn’t the kind of missing where your friends can find you.
“Is Alan dead, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I remember when Mr. Hooper died.”
“The honest answer is that we don’t know. He might be. Or he might just be missing.”
Big Bird tries to understand that. “Missing?”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “He might come back some day, and he might not. We just don’t know.”
Big Bird wants to cry. He loves Alan, and he doesn’t want any of his friends to be missing. “Is anyone else missing?”
“Yes,” Chris says. “Some of your friends may be, or their parents, or yours cousins and uncles and aunts. A lot of people are. And it’s very scary.”
“What can we do?”
Chris is crying a little, a few small tears pooling at the side of his eyes, and Big Bird wants to do something, wants to say something, but he kinda feels like crying too, and doesn’t know what will help. “I don’t know,” Chris says. “I think the only thing we can do is be here for each other, and love each other, and take care of each other. When things are scary, and when bad things happen, the most important thing to do is look around at the people who are still here, and try to do your best for them.”
Big Bird nods. “Hey Chris?”
“Yeah, Big Bird?”
“Do you want a hug?”
Chris nods. “I would very much like a hug, thank you.”
Big Bird does the only thing he knows how to do; he opens his wings and wraps them around Chris, doing his best to be there for the people who are still with him.
Hey, quick question, WHAT THE FUCK WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT OH MY GOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDD
sif and valkyrie meet on a lesbian dating app on earth and for the whole date theyre both in disguise as midguardians not realizing that both of them are from asgard
What I love about this is they’d both be terrible at it but for completely opposite reasons.
Sif would try very hard but she is an earnest Old Worlde Asgardian to her bones and would be every alien/timetraveller-fails-to-fit-in cliche at once. “More of your Earth food, please, fellow human” and so forth.
Valkyrie has spent a few thousand years in a cutthroat multicultural urban environment and could probably adapt and pass as human if she actually tried, but instead she’d do the most token effort imaginable. It’s not like any of these Midguardians would recognise alien tech, and changing clothes is effort, etc.
And both of them would be very pleased at how much easier this all was than they were expecting. “I’m doing great!” they would both think, comparing notes on their favourite kind of spaceship (midguardians have spaceships, right?) and having an arm wrestling context where they use 1/10th of their strength, eg enough to break the arm of any actual human.
And then eventually Sif would be overcome with guilt and tearfully explain her Terrible Lie and Valkyrie would go YOU MEAN I PUT ALL THIS EFFORT IN FOR NOTHING and then Sif would die of fangirling because Valkyrie.
And then they’d make out, the end.
um um um SOMEONE WRITE THIS STORY OH MY GOD amazing
wade would die for aunt may, ever since the day they first met and she brushed aside his handshake for a hug and left him speechless, he added may’s house to his regular patrols
wade still doesn’t talk to may as much as peter would like, he still tries to get out of visiting her, but it’s because every time he’s around her it takes everything he’s got just to keep from turning into a sobbing wreck
she’s like the mother he never had, she drops by their place all the time to drop off tupperwares full of food because she’s worried they aren’t eating right, she’s right of course
wade breaks into may’s place to do chores for her when she’s not home, like he used to do for peter before they moved in together, after she found out what wade was doing, she started leaving out plates of snacks and thank you cards that made wade cry, wade’s kept everything single one of those cards in a shoebox in the closet
may once tricked wade into going shopping with her, she said she wanted to get peter something for his birthday and she wanted wade’s help, so of course he couldn’t refuse, but instead of looking for a gift, she took wade to the mall and spent the whole time window shopping with him, she remembered how excited wade was in the lush store and when his birthday came around, he got a basket full of skin creams and lotions and bath bombs, she even beat out peter’s gift that year
the first time may told him he was family, peter was in the avenger’s icu, may had been brought in, and when wade started feeling out of place with everybody hovering over peter, he tried to leave, just to have may grab his hand and tell him to stay because he’s family
when wade decided to ask peter to marry him, he went to may for help, they went to the jewelry store together and picked out a ring, something simple and heartfelt, she helped him pick out a day and a place too
but he and peter got on their knees at the same time and started laughing when they both pulled out the same engagement ring, aunt may had played them both like a f
when they got home there was a gift from may already waiting for them, a note with her congratulations and a carefully wrapped glass, because “it was about time”
Peter Parker: -on meeting Loki, offers his hand- Hi, I’m Peter!
Loki: -shakes his hand- Loki of Asgard.
Peter: Aren’t you like…a bad guy?
Loki: It varies from moment to moment.
Peter: So like…on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst evil imaginable, like…killing puppies, and one being I’ll spit on your hotdog…where are you right now?
Loki: …maybe a three?
Peter: Cool. Lemme know if it gets above a six.
Loki: -thinking- I like him.
It had been a joke, a flippant line, but somehow, Loki found himself taking the youth up on it.
It was hard living around these heroic Avengers, hard trying to stay close to Thor. And when he felt his need for mischief rise too high, when he felt exasperation with these Midgardians turn too close to spite, he would casually say “Six.” to the young man, or sometimes “Seven.”
And Peter would spend the rest of his day with Loki. He would badger him with questions about magic, or drag him across his beloved city to see its entertainments, or take him along stopping petty crimes. He grounded Loki to the here and now, and distracted him from the churning, jagged shards of ice in his mind.
WE NEED LOKI AND PETER FICS
“Brother, why does young Parker have a gravity emulator ball?”
“Why would I know?”
“Because when I asked him, he said you’d told him it was a toy. Loki, that’s a weapon of war.”
“And?”
“Are you trying to usurp Stark as the boy’s mentor?”
Loki looked up from his phone (when did he get one of those?) to take an obnoxious sip from his frappe.
“Look, he’s a smart kid. He can handle it. I really don’t care about it that much.”
There was a loud bang from the other side of the room, and the brothers looked over to see Peter (and the couch) pinned to the ceiling, the gravity orb thauming angrily in midair.
“Mr. Loki? I’m uh. I’m kind of stuck.”
Thor snorted and let a small tongue of lightning flick from his fingers to deactivate the orb, and everything crashed back to the floor. Loki shot up in his seat, peering over to see if the couch had crushed him.
“I’m okay!” Peter yelled
Thor stifled a laugh “You don’t care?”
“Not. A. Word.” Hissed Loki, already planning to stab his brother for the third time that week.
Scooby Doo idea: Daphne Blake as the weird rich kid whose parents signed her up for a shit-ton of rich-kid extracurriculars like polo, fencing, and all of this other shit so they wouldn’t have to deal with her/bolster her college resume. She puts a lot of effort into actually being good at all these extra-curriculars bc she’s competing with all of her ~super successful and talented~ sisters for attention and ends up athletic as hell and socially stunted and like…really aggressive and competitive and never quite satisfied with anything she’s doing. The only other ‘High Society’ kid who can put up with her is Norville “Shaggy” Rogers —an anxious stoner with freaky strict parents whose only friend prior to Daphne was his equally anxious rescue dog—Daphne’s been beating up Shaggy’s bullies for years. Then there’s student council dweeb Fred Jones who’s always been groomed to be this ‘leader’ by his parents and is always pressured to go to these youth leadership things and stuff and yeah he’s pretty good at directing group projects, but really Fred’s kind of shy and more interested in engineering, forensics and maybe criminal justice and he’s been friends with this chick Velma Dinkley in engineering club who’s brilliant but she’s also tactless, awkward and very bitterly sarcastic to cover up for the fact that her book smarts far outweigh her social skills.
So then there’s this mystery downtown and all five of them show up and there’s a mutual, “Oh hey it’s you: The weird kid from my school. What are you doing here?” and everyone goes around. Fred’s like, “Oh I knew the owners of this place and they said they might have to close down because of this ghost and I told Velma about it and Velma thinks we can get to the bottom of this.” And Shaggy’s like, “Scoob and I didn’t want to be home right now and we honestly didn’t know about the ghost but hey Daphne’s here so we feel safe enough to hang out and maybe Scoob can sniff out some clues or something.” And then everyone turns and looks at Daphne and Daphne’s just like, “I want to fight a fucking ghost.”
I appreciate all of this.
fine, you know what, FINE, i’m just going to LEAN INTO being an on-fire garbage can, whatever. this is who i am now. whatever. WHATEVER!!!! death comes for all of us.
Daphne Blake is very good at almost everything. She should be: she practices. Fencing, polo, archery, dance, tennis, volleyball, karate, yoga. She wrings them out of herself minute by minute, gesture by gesture until her muscles have memory.
She doesn’t mind the work. Daphne likes to struggle. She likes the feeling of victory when she gets to the end: learning a music piece, defeating an opponent, adding a language to the résumé she’s been building since she was ten. She doesn’t have to be the best, but she likes to be better.
She likes looking down.
Daisy revolutionized city-based trauma centers, Dawn redefined modeling with her The Body Is Art campaign, Dorothy was the first woman to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport, and Delilah is so highly decorated she’s run out of room on her dress blues.
Daphne’s sisters were born with the promise of one perfect thing written on their palms. Daphne was born with empty hands, and cannot make anything perfect. Daphne is only ever very, very good.
Norville “Shaggy” Rogers is high, right now. He is looking at the spiral of stucco on his ceiling, his dog Scooby’s head on his stomach, one hand in a bag of Cheetos and the other holding a joint. He isn’t floating, but he’s thinking about it.
“Daph,” he says, heavy eyes blinking open. “What time’zit?”
Daphne lowers her epee. She has a national tournament this weekend. Her parents might come.
Then again, Shaggy knows, they might not.
“Four-fifteen,” Daphne tells him. She flicks her red ponytail off her shoulder, adjusting and readjusting her grip on the sword until it meets some unwritten standard. “When you finish your Cheetos we’ll go over to the fair grounds. It won’t open until seven so we can have a look around before it gets busy.”
Daphne is a nationally ranked fencer; captains the Crystal Cove Country Club women’s polo, archery, and tennis teams; speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian; she can even apply eyeliner on a train. Shaggy saw her do it once, in Paris.
Daphne is the child Shaggy thinks his parents probably wanted. Good at everything she tries, and tries at everything she does.
Shaggy had his first panic attack at age nine. He was seated at a piano. It was his first recital and he was going to play a piece by Béla Bartók. He had liked the song while learning it: fast, uneven, somehow new every time, new enough to keep up with the way his brain could never seem to settle. Shaggy liked it because he was never bored playing it, and he was always bored, in a strange way, in a way that made his heart beat fast and, sometimes, his stomach ache as if he was starving. Sometimes he was bored even when he wasn’t bored–sometimes he became distracted and forgot what he was doing. He lost things all the time. It drove his mother crazy. It made his parents yell like the first three bars of the Bartók piece, Norville! focus Norville! sit still Norville! Norville! Norville!
Shaggy fell apart in trembles on the piano bench, in front of everybody, in front of his panicked teacher and his wide-eyed classmates and his father, who only sighed and said he was doing it for attention.
“Shaggy,” Daphne says, and he realizes his eyes have fallen shut again. When he opens them, she’s bent over him, grinning, too sharp. Daphne is always a little too sharp.
“What?”
“You’re not gonna chicken out on me, are you?”
Shaggy thinks about it. He feels good. Calm. Daphne always makes him feel calm. She’s kinetic and sharp-sharp-sharp. She sucks up all the energy in the room and leaves him feeling like he finally has enough room to breathe.
“No,” he decides, “but I’m bringing Scoob and we’re stopping for burgers.”
Fred Jones is an Eagle Scout. The boys on the football team make fun of him, but the boys on the football team also go nuts for the jalapeño cheddar popcorn he sells, so frankly Fred thinks they can shut it. Fred had liked having tasks he had to complete before he became an Eagle. He had liked learning about nature, about how to survive in the woods, about how to build a fire.
He had liked learning how to identify tracks and what a branch looks like when it has been broken by human hands. He’s not going to be a park ranger or anything but he likes knowing how to leave something undisturbed. He likes thinking of nature the way they’d taught him to think of a crime scene at Forensics camp: How are things? How should they be?
Anyway, Fred’s dad had been excited. He likes when Fred gets elected to things–captain of the football team, president of Student Council, Editor-in-Chief of the high school paper.
Fred hadn’t wanted any of those positions, but his dad didn’t get excited about a lot of things, and…it was nice. When he did.
Fred’s phone buzzes. He flicks open the lock screen and reads Velma’s text: meathead bring a flashlight.
hi Velma, Fred types back. my day was great thanks for asking.
Fred has enough time to go to the kitchen and make himself a ham sandwich before Velma replies. The text says neat story. Thirty seconds later, she follows up with, i’m outside.
Fred looks out the window behind the sink. Mrs. Dinkley’s terrible van is idling in their driveway and Velma is already getting out of it, jogging up to Fred’s front door. He shoves his feet into the tennis shoes he’d last abandoned in the foyer and opens the door before Velma can knock, catching her with her hand half-raised.
“Lookit you, eager beaver,” she drawls. “D’you have the flashlight?”
Fred lifts his keychain. It’s got a small but powerful flashlight dangling between his house and locker keys. “Always be prepared,” he recites.
She cranes her neck as she peers over her shoulder. “Is your dad home?” she asks.
“No, he’s got a town hall meeting until dinner. They announced the plans to build a parking structure where the Neubright Community Center is and everyone’s pissed.”
“With great power, etcetera etcetera,” says Velma, then pauses. “Wait, the community center in south Cove? The only one with free daycare and after-school programs?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Like, fuck your dad.”
Fred doesn’t say anything. He knows. He knows. But it’s his dad.
Velma winces into the silence. “Uh. Anyway. We should get going. The fair opens at seven and we want to get there before the crowds move in.”
Velma Dinkley is almost always right, but never says the right thing. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t mean to. Words come tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them, and they almost always lead to that terrible beat of silence where the wrongness hangs, suspended, until someone is gracious enough to speak into it.
Everything lines up in Velma’s head: numbers, logic, equations, puzzles, those stupid Mensa games. But it never comes out right, or at least not just right. Her mother says she gets “a tone” when she speaks sometimes that makes other people feel like she thinks they’re stupid.
First of all, it’s not Velma’s fault if people are stupid, and it’s not her fault if they know it, and it’s not her fault if they find out only in comparison to Velma being smarter than they are.
But of course Velma lives in the world, so it’s not her fault but it is her problem.
She hadn’t meant fuck your dad, for example. What she had meant was: fuck the mayor. The mayor is Fred’s dad but she hadn’t meant to say it like that. Fred idolizes his dad. Velma knows that.
Anyway, Fred never gets mad. Everyone else gets mad eventually but Fred hasn’t, not since they were kids at Forensics camp together and Velma hadn’t had anyone to partner with and had been trying so hard not to show anyone that it bothered her. And then Fred had said, “Hey, we can have three in our group.”
Velma gets things right and people wrong. Her mother says she’ll grow out of it. Velma isn’t sure.
“So what makes you think we can do what the police can’t?” Fred asks, taking a left-handed turn that Velma wouldn’t have risked.
Velma rolls her eyes. “The police said that a ghostpirate tried to commit murder by tampering with a roller coaster, Fred. If our baseline of detection is ‘jinkies! we think a ghost did it,’ I am sure we can find something to bring to the table.”
Fred laughs. “We can put that in our report,” he says.
“Scoob wants a BLT,” Shaggy informs her, and Daphne rolls her eyes.
“Scooby’s a dog, so he’s getting the cheapest thing on the menu,” she says.
Shaggy frowns. “Daph, you’re like, a literal millionaire,” he points out. “And we’re at the drive-thru of a Denny’s. Splurge on the BLT, dude.”
“Potheads who live in four-story houses shouldn’t throw stones,” Daphne snaps back.
“Okay, girl wearing a Burberry tracksuit–”
“Uh, ma’am? Is that all?”
Daphne blows a long breath out of her nose. She glances at Scooby, who is sitting in the back seat but with his head on the arm rest between them. He looks up at her and whuffles what she swears to God sounds like, “please.”
“No,” she tells the machine, sighing. “And a BLT.”
“Sweet!” Shaggy cries and holds his hand up for Scooby to high-five. He ruffles the hair at the top of his dog’s head and beams over at Daphne like she’s won him a prize. “The Scoob looooooooves bacon.”
In the fourth grade, Daphne found Shaggy in the hallway, shaking so hard she thought his teeth might fall out. Some kid from the grade above–Red something–was standing over him, calling him names. Daphne hadn’t really thought about it before punching that kid in the nose. She hadn’t thought about it before crouching down in front of Shaggy and trying to get him to breath steady. She hadn’t known what to say, but Shaggy had joked, “Like, wow, you hit like a girl,” between shuddering breaths and Daphne had laughed.
Nobody in Daphne’s family is good at telling jokes. Not like Shaggy is.
“Eat those quick, you two. I’d hate it if the scent of delicious burgers lured the pirate ghost to us.”
Shaggy swallows a big bite. “Like–you didn’t say there would be a ghost!”
Daphne is neither convinced nor unconvinced of the reality of ghosts, so she shrugs. “I said we were going to check out the fair grounds! I thought you knew they said it was haunted.”
“Like, why would I know that?”
“It was all over the news!”
“I don’t read the news!”
“Well, ghosts probably aren’t real,” Daphne assures him as they pull into the parking lot.
“‘Probably’ is like, not as reassuring as you think it is, Daph,” Shaggy mutters, but gets out of the car and directs Scooby to get out, too. He’s still gently high, and his belly is full, and it’s not dark out yet.
And anyway, Daphne’s here. He’s seen her split an apple with an arrow from across two tennis courts.
“C’mon,” Daphne wheedles. “I’ll make you guys some Scooby snacks when we get home.”
Scooby’s ears perk up.
Shaggy’s about to answer when another car pulls into the lot–with any luck, it will be fairgrounds staff and they’ll be told to leave.
Instead of that, Fred Jones gets out of the car with a girl that Shaggy has Latin class with. Shaggy knows three things about Fred Jones:
His father is the mayor.
His Student Council presidential campaign rested on cafeteria and vending machine reform.
He and Daphne kissed once, in the seventh grade, on a dare.
“Jones, what are you doing here?” Daphne asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
Shaggy guesses it wasn’t a very good kiss.
“Hi, Daphne,” Fred says. He likes Daphne. It’s not that he can’t tell that Daphne basically hates him; he can, but he likes her anyway. He likes what her hair looks like when she sits in front of him, and how she grips her pencils too tightly. As far as he can tell she hates him because he beat her for Most Promising in their freshman year yearbook, which seems unfair because it’s not like Fred voted for himself.
Velma knocks his shoulder with hers. “They’re saying a ghost broke that roller-coaster that fell apart last week,” she says. “We’re going to figure out what really happened.”
“So, like, you don’t think it was a ghost?” asks the guy Daphne’s with, a tall and shaggy-haired kid Fred’s pretty sure is stoned. “Ha, ha. Ghosts. Right?”
“Right,” says Fred, as reassuringly at he can. The guy seems nervous, so Fred puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure it was just mechanical failure.”
“Anyway, what are you doing here?” Velma asks, eyeing Daphne Blake skeptically. Fred had kissed her in the seventh grade and told Velma afterwards that her lips had tasted like clouds. Velma had said that clouds had no taste.
“Scoob and I just came for, like, the free burgers,” says the guy with Daphne, who Velma is pretty sure is named something preposterous like Orville or Neville. “We hunt neither ghosts nor, like, pirates.”
“Well, great news for you: we’re going to prove it wasn’t either of those stupid ideas,” Velma tells him. “Right, Fred?”
“Sure thing,” Fred says.
Daphne snorts, then tightens her ponytail. “Whatever,” she mutters. “Come on, Shaggy.”
Velma frowns. “Wait–you do think it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Roberts?”
“The existence of the afterlife can neither be proven nor disproven,” Daphne says, and throws a grin over her shoulder that’s so sharp Velma feels her lip get bloody from it. “All I’m saying is, if it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Whats-His-Name…” she shrugs, and shoves the sleeves of her track suit up over her elbows. Fred’s smile widens.
“Then I’m gonna fight a fuckingghost.”
“You’re, like. My best friend,” Shaggy says, not looking at her. He pets Scooby’s head. Scooby looks up at him with liquid, dog eyes and whuffles. Daphne puts down the TV remote and turns to look at him, folding her hands into her lap.
“You’re my best friend, too,” she says immediately. “You … know that, right?”
Shaggy nods. He tries to figure out how to say what he wants to say. It’s never hard to talk to Daphne but that doesn’t mean he always gets it right. He knows Daphne better than he knows anybody, which means he knows there’s stuff that he doesn’t get, like how Daphne knows about panic attacks but doesn’t necessarily understand them. Why should she? Daphne can handle anything. She’s trained her whole life.
“It’s okay, Shag,” Daphne tells him. “If it doesn’t come out right, that’s fine. You can try again until it does.”
He breathes out, long and steady, and keeps looking at Scooby. “I just … wanted to say … it’s, like, okay? For you and Velma. I mean–it’s okay that you tell Velma things. Not that you need my permission, it’s just, I know Velma is different from me? Like, you guys have stuff in common that we don’t have?”
When he risks a look at Daphne, she’s frowning, and he knows he hasn’t gotten it right.
“You’re smart, Shaggy. Just because Velma’s more academically ambitious doesn’t mean–” Daphne begins, but Shaggy cuts her off, shaking head head.
“No, not–not that. I mean, yes that,” he corrects, because Velma is indisputably the smartest person he knows, smarter even than Daphne. “But I mean … you can have other friends. You don’t have to only have me. I don’t think it means you–love me less.”
Daphne blinks. Her jaw snaps shut.
It has been so many years, Shaggy thinks, just the two of them, the only two cool people in the world. The only two people worth hanging out with. He’s gotten used to Daphne being only his, to being only Daphne’s. But one person can’t be everything to everybody. They’d both tried so hard.
“I’m lucky to have had you to myself for so long,” Shaggy blurts, not sure he could stop himself even though he’s embarrassed about his own honesty. “But you–it’s good. That you can have other people, too. That we both can.”
Daphne is breathing slowly, in and out. Shaggy realizes that she’s trying not to cry. Horrified, he scrambles to think of something to say, to make it better, but then Daphne is launching herself at him and pulling him tight into a hug. Shaggy wraps his arms around her waist and holds on.
Velma kisses him.
Fred freezes, then tentatively kisses her back, because it seems polite, and because she’s Velma. He trusts her. Velma could tell him to jump into a pool of lava and Fred would swan dive.
She pulls back and looks at him. Fred waits as Velma clearly thinks it through, bringing her fingers up to touch her mouth thoughtfully.
“Hm,” she decides. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?” Fred asks, suddenly nervous. Maybe he really is a bad kisser. No one ever taught him how; he’s been winging it this whole time. “Did you like it?”
“I don’t know,” Velma answers. She meets his eyes. “Did you?”
“Sure,” says Fred. “Kissing’s nice.”
“Kissing anybody, or kissing me in particular?”
Fred is already nodding halfway through the question; he knows Velma prefers precision. “Both,” he decides.
Velma narrows her eyes, studying his face. “Fred, are you attracted to me?”
Fred sits down.
“I’ve never thought about it,” he admits. “You’re Velma.”
He tries to say Velma the way he means it: smart, strong, methodical, determined, heroic. But he can see that she doesn’t understand how precise he’s being; can see she doesn’t hear all the shades of her own name. So he tries again: “I want to see you every day forever. I never worried much about the logistics.”
Velma shakes her head and falls in a heap onto the couch. “How come it’s so easy for you?” she demands, looking up at him. “I think about everything. I have to try so hard to understand what people want and what I want from people.” Then, in a small voice, she adds, “Are you in love with Daphne?”
Fred feels his cheeks get red. “Daphne’s not in love with me,” he says, instead of answering.
Velma glares at him, unfooled. “Are you going to date Daphne? Are you going to holds hands with her and spend every day with her and go to the movies and solve mysteries and–”
“Velma,” Fred interrupts, suddenly understanding. “It doesn’t matter if I do. It doesn’t matter if I date you or I date Daphne or you date Daphne or none of us dates anybody. You’re still Velma.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means you shouldn’t kiss me just because you’re scared that if I kiss somebody else I’ll leave you behind.”
She sucks in a breath and look away. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “I’m not scared. Whatever. Who cares.”
“I care,” Fred says, frowning. “I don’t want you to kiss me unless you want to kiss me.”
“I really want–” Velma cuts off. She swallows a couple times. When she starts again, her voice wobbles. “I really want to be normal.”
“Normal?”
She shrugs. “You–everyone says that we should like each other,” Velma points out. “That’s how it’s supposed to work. I just wanted to be normal in this one thing. I just wanted to get this one thing right.”
Fred is quiet for a long time. He doesn’t want to say anything until he can say something precise. He thinks about Velma believing she needs to kiss him. He thinks about Velma being afraid that if she doesn’t kiss him, someone else will, and it will ruin everything. He thinks about Velma not realizing that she’s perfect as she is.
Finally, he takes her hand and leads her to the couch. He sits her down and kneels in front of her so that she can’t look away.
“Velm,” he says slowly, “if what we have isn’t normal, then I don’t want to be normal. If what you are isn’t normal, then I don’t want a friend who’s normal. You don’t have to be anything other than what you are.”
Velma’s eyes search his face, bright. Then she inhales a quick breath, holds it for a few seconds, and lets it go. She nods and leans forward until her forehead is pressed against his shoulder. “Okay,” she says.
I will never forgive them for cutting out this scene.
Tumblr app doesn’t show this gif set but I already know what it is. No need to hesitate to reblog.
And he did this just before a road trip, stuck in the car with his parents asking what he was thinking.
The look of utter defiance Dudley gives Vernon as he steps over the fence though
And how he does it really slowly as well as if to say “What you gonna do about it huh?”
The phone rings. It was an absurd wedding gift from his father in-law, and one which much to Harry’s surprise, had actually worked when he’d plugged it into the landline. Arthur had taken to phoning him on it, just for the pure novelty of the thing—though how they’d managed to get a BT engineer out to the Burrow without causing an incident, Harry doesn’t know. He’s not sure he wants to.
“Hello?”
“Uhm,, is this…is this the Potter residence?”
There’s a beat of silence as Harry adjusts the receiver against his ear, not quite sure he’s heard who he thinks he has. “…Dudley?”
“Yea…uhm, Harry?”
“Dudley.” Harry repeats numbly, turning to look at Ginny who is looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. “Uh…Christ, Dudley, hi how did…how did you find this number?”
There’s another beat of silence and the crackle of static that might have been a sigh or simply just the line breaking up. “Hi, sorry I know you probably…sorry this was stupid. I uh, I put your name in the computer and this was the only thing that came up.”
“Oh.” Harry breathes, still trying to recover his equilibrium. Ten minutes ago he’d been using his wand to clear away dinner, he’d been getting ready to sit down and read through some reports before putting the kids to bed, and now somehow, he’s talking to his muggle cousin who he hasn’t seen since… “How, how are you?”
“Good, yea” Dudley replies, seeming to rally, “You?”
“Yea, uh, doing well…”
The conversation lasts maybe a half hour, faltering and awkward. But they’re going for a coffee at the end of the week and Harry supposes…that’s…that’s a thing that is happening.
*
“Harry…”
Harry turns and looks up, and looks up some more at the looming figure blocking out the light.
“Dudley,” he says, standing up and hoping the pang of something awful doesn’t show on his face. For a moment he thought he’d been looking at Vernon. “It’s good to see you.”
Dudley gives him a look that says he clearly knows Harry is lying, but is thankful for being humored. “You too, you’re looking good…”
They pass the first few minutes with awkward pleasantries and even more awkward silences. But it’s…nice would be too strong a word, but it’s not bad either. He even manages to get a smile out of him when he calls him Big D, the other man shaking his head with a self depreciating eye roll.
“Dad died,” Dudley says after a while, and Harry feels an icy hot flash go down his spine, curdling in his gut.
“Oh,” he says, not quite sure how he’s supposed to feel about that, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Dudley snorts into his coffee. “Somehow I doubt it.” and it’s not accusing, but Harry still can’t help but feel like he should defend himself. The words they locked me in a cupboard are on the cusp of his tongue but Dudley gets there before him. “There’s a lot of things…looking back…lot of things…” and it’s not an apology, not really. “Took me a long time to realize certain things weren’t right…too long.”
Harry nods at that, because yes, it had also taken him a long time too to understand the full of extent of what had gone on in 4 Privet Drive. He still doesn’t like tight spaces.
“You realize things though, when you have kids,” Dudley carries on, shaking his head, “Like they’re just kids, how can you do that to a kid? They need you for everything.”
And Harry can relate to that too. Lily is three and Ginny is pregnant again and James already has an alarming alacrity for finding trouble and with or without magic Harry doesn’t have enough hands to deal with it all. But he loves it, and he loves them, and the thought of anyone ever treating his children the way he remembers his first eleven years of life is enough to make the electric lights over their head flicker.
“You’ve got kids?”
“Two,” Harry says, “third one on the way. You?”
“Nice. Just the one, so far.” He hands over his phone, the image of a bright young girl with dark skin and tight ringlet curls staring back at him from the grasp of Dudley’s arms. “Effie.” He smiles ruefully at Harry’s obvious surprise. “Dad wasn’t too happy about that either.”
“She’s gorgeous.” Harry says, handing the phone back and pulling out his own wallet to reveal the moving pictures inside.
Dudley flinches a bit at that, but he guffaws broadly when he spies James. “Cor, he don’t half look like you. No glasses though.”
“No,” Harry says, pushing his own glasses back up his nose. “He’s got his mother’s eyes, thankfully.”
“Actually, Harry, there was something I was hoping we could…talk about.”
And ah, there it is. “What about?”
“It’s…it’s about Effie…”
And when he’s done talking Harry just wants to lean back and laugh and laugh and laugh, because of course Vernon Dursley’s granddaughter is a witch, of course she is. But he doesn’t, because Dudley is doing the one thing he can think of to try and help his child, and Harry can’t fault him for that.
*
They keep in touch after that. Christmas cards, postcards—gifts for the kids on birthdays. The year Effie turns eleven—the same as James—Harry drops a casually long thought out text into the familial void.
“Diagon A this weekend, if you’re up for it?”
The text comes back quickly, a little too quickly for the way Dudders pecks at his phone whenever Harry has seen him typing. “Snds gd, 1st pint on u 😉 – Big D 🍺🍺🍺👌👍”
It’ll be painfully awkward, it always is. But it’s something.
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
If creators share their creative work on a platform that enables likes/hearts/kudos and comments, you can be 99.999% sure they will be happy to get any and all likes/hearts/kudos and comments, including many in a row from the same person.
I agree with all the people above, I’m always thrilled to see several kudos from the same person, and I’m happy to get comments saying “I would leave more kudos if I could, so here’s a kudos comment!” I’d also like to say thank you to people who comment on every chapter of a WIP with “chapter kudos!” or something along those lines. It’s so great to get the feedback that people are still following a story. Even if you don’t have a detailed reaction, just knowing you’re there is wonderful.
Fanworks are shared publicly because we want a response. If we don’t, we can lock stories down and/or limit or moderate comments. And people who don’t want responses can easily say so in the author’s notes. So unless you see the author has taken steps to prevent kudos/comments, please assume they’re welcome, and let creators know that you appreciate their work!
wupacing 