@chiaroscuroverse / chiaroscuroverse.tumblr.com
so i’ve seen this around a lot and i always felt like the version i listened to just. didn’t have everything? sO! i edited together my three favourite versions of the tik tok sea shanty! enjoy!!
(listen with headphones if possible!)
(yes i know the ending is bad oKaY-)
find yourself someone who will never take you for granted; find yourself someone who will love you as much as chandler bing loves monica geller
Jodie Whittaker is going to be on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight!! Show starts in 3 minutes!
Shes listed second in the bio so might now be the first guest?
Coming up next after commercials!!!
Congratulations to The Shape of Winner on winning 4 Academy Awards!
“Wedding Day Horizon” - Digital Oil Painting
One life, together, and the endless horizon.
If you like this painting, you can actually buy it on lots of different products from my Zazzle Store! If you enjoy my art, please consider subscribing to my Patreon! I am saving for a wheelchair lift and new battery.
Nine and Rose with their family for @the-untempered-prism
Some of you know that I live in Texas. I’m not very close to the Gulf Coast, and so I was not personally hit by the recent hurricane, but I have family that was, and Corpus Christi in particular is very close to my heart. I have been doing work recently to aid in the relief efforts, so it was top-of-mind when I felt like I had to write something or die, which is why this story exists.
If you want to do something to help (it comes highly recommended), feel free to donate to any of the charities at this link.
All of the places discussed here are real and I have been there. The fish store’s location is changed in this story to protect the innocent (but if you ever go to Corpus, do buy fish from a place in Flour Bluff called The Crab Shack).
It would be cheaper if he didn’t bother opening the shop, Killian knew. There was only one ship that had suffered little enough damage that it was making the fishing runs, so he only had a tiny amount of product- a few pounds of grouper, a pound and a half of orange roughy, and five pounds of the big gulf tails that could rarely compete anymore with the cheaper shrimp from Sri Lanka that were shipped to the grocery stores these days. What he did- buying fish fresh from the boats and selling it from his own wee shack- it was a dying business what with the rise of commercial fisheries and cheap product from Asia flown in every day. Still, Padre Island was a tourist destination, and in a normal year he could have sold the equivalent of today’s meager stock within an hour of unlocking his door, and would have had near twenty times that left still to sell. His work might be a throwback, but it kept the lights on.
2017 wasn’t a normal year, however. The hurricane had hit the southern half of the state like a Mack Truck a week and a half back, and the city was still limping its way awake. The island had only gotten electricity back two days past and no one- absolutely no one, he said to himself sternly- was coming to visit now.
Still, David couldn’t afford for no one to buy his catch- he had a wife and a young son to feed- and Killian did still get his disability cheques from the Navy. He supposed he owed it to the old rogue to help where he could.
That said, he could have kept the lights off and the door to his shop closed. Nothing else was open on the island- too much damage. It was only luck of the draw- being built on the leeward side of one of the great struts for the bridge over from the mainland- that had kept the little hovel he called a store from being blown straight out to sea.
It hadn’t been in his plans to open up shop until the night before when, for the first time since the hurricane had hit, he looked at his calendar and realized the date- the week after Labor Day.
Like most beaches, the height of the tourist season was Memorial Day to Labor Day. The hotels and condos on the island charged a premium for space, and the beaches and bars were always full. After Labor Day, the prices and population dropped, though the temperatures didn’t, and it was the clever tourists who came then- when it was still hot enough to feel like summer, but late enough that they payed as though it were autumn.
For the last five years, it was when She had come.
He still remembered the first time she’d walked through the swinging screen door at the front of his shop. She’d stood for several moments, blinking in the dimness and, getting her bearings.
It wasn’t a pre-possessing place, his shop- one room, scarcely ten feet by ten, and completely overtaken by the coolers in which he kept the day’s catch. It was dark and smelled strongly of fish and salt (he did his own filleting, after all). It wasn’t even easy to get to, requiring a u-turn at the bottom of the bridge to get underneath it, and yet there she was, her hair like a little sun, lighting his shop.
What a grump he’d been then, he remembered with a wince. It had only been a year since he’d lost his hand and Liam and Milah all in one fell swoop, but he still couldn’t remember the interaction without a burn of shame low in his belly.
He hadn’t said anything to her, just glared while those eyes (he hadn’t been able to see their colour, back-lit as she’d been in that moment) traveled around the shop, taking in the hand-lettered signs listing prices- which were the only decorations on the walls- and the half-dozen coolers scattered across two folding banquet tables.
She didn’t say anything either and so, after a few minutes, he’d growled, “waddaya want?” and made her jump. Apparently her light-blind eyes had missed him standing in the shadows in the back of the shop, dressed as he was in black.
“Oh!” she’d said, giving him a nervous smile. “Hi.”
He should have returned the smile, but instead he’d sent her a withering glare. “You here to buy something or not?”
The smile had dropped off her face in a moment, and she should have walked out of the store at that moment, but she didn’t. Instead she’d looked around one more time and said, sounding nervous, “uh…. What’s fresh?”
“I get all my fish from the boats every morning, Lady. Everything’s fresh.”
“Oh… well your sign says that everything on it is subject to availability, so… what do you have in stock?”
He’d rattled off the available product in a single breath, and when her mouth had opened in shock, he’d sighed and said it slower as though she were a child or a mental incompetent.
“Amberjack. Roughy. Grouper. Tarpon. Snapper. Shark. Shrimp.”
She’d given him an icy smile and ordered half a pound of snapper and a pound of shrimp without further dithering.
He’d heard her gasp when she’d noticed his hook, but she didn’t say anything else until she’d asked if he could take plastic. He’d been able to see the slight surprise in her eyes when he had.
She’d left after that, and if the gods were fair, he’d never have seen her again. The gods aren’t fair, however, they’re good, and she’d returned the following day.
“Which is better for grilling, roughy or amberjack?”
And the day after.
“There’s a family who sells tamales out of a cart up the street, do you know if they’re any good?”
And the next day.
“Do you ever get oysters in?”
“No,” he’d muttered, weighing her shrimp in his little scale.
“Where’s the best place to get them then?”
He’d opened his mouth to tell her to go to Scuttlebutt’s, then stopped.
“Depends on what you want, I s'pose.” He looked her over- she wore jean shorts, a tank top with her bathing suit straps showing out the top, and flip flops, like every female on the island. He couldn’t tell what kind of a woman she was, save stubborn enough to continue putting up with his attitude. “The tourists all like Scuttlebutt’s. The clever ones like Laguna Beach.”
She’d blinked in surprise and then, for the first time since the moment she’d walked in his front door three days before, she’d smiled again.
“Where do you like best?”
“Black Diamond, as it’s Thursday,” he’d said, without hesitation. “Water Street if it isn’t.”
She’d raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“Black Diamond has live local bands on Thursdays,” he’d said, surprised at himself for offering information not practically forced out of him.
“Sounds perfect.”
Sometime around 3 AM, Will Scarlett, bartender at the Diamond had called.
“A blonde came into the bar tonight,” he’d said, not bothering to greet his old friend. “She said you’d sent her, so I told her you were standing her drinks.”
Killian had shot up in bed- he hadn’t been asleep, though he’d been trying to get there.
“You did what?”
“Lass has good taste- drank your favorite Dreamshade Rum. You should bring her yourself instead of letting me flirt on your behalf.”
“I should throw you off the end of the pier next time we go fishing.”
He’d expected her in the next afternoon, as had become her habit, but his door had scarcely been unlocked when she’d darkened it, this time dressed in jeans and a silk blouse rather than beach gear.
“I want to apologize if Will made you uncomfortable,” he’d said, wanting to get that out before anything else. “I didn’t tell him to do it, I swear.”
She’d smiled and waved a hand through the air, though if he hadn’t known better, he might have said she looked disappointed.
“It was fine. Will was an absolute gentleman.”
“Oh? Well… that’ll be a first.”
Her smile had deepened at that.
“Erm… can I get you something? We got some kingfish in. It’s good with-”
“I’m leaving, actually. I just came by to… well to say thanks for recommending Black Diamond to me. I had a really great time.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t been able to say anything more than that, as it seemed that there was something obstructing his throat.
“Yeah. So. Thanks for… everything. It was really nice to meet you… Killian.”
Will must have told her his name. She’d been long vanished before his brain had started working sufficiently to realize that he hadn’t ever learned her name.
The next year, the week after Labor Day, she’d been back. This time, when she smiled at him, he’d smiled back.
He’d suggested that she try the new restaurant on the island called Dragonfly, but she’d said that she only went out to a restaurant once on her vacation, and she didn’t want to miss Black Diamond. Before she’d left that year, she’d told him her name was Emma.
The third year, he’d dropped by Black Diamond on the Thursday of her visit and stood her drinks for her on his own account. He found out that she preferred to mix her rum with Diet Dr Pepper, and could almost-but-not-quite drink him under the table.
The fourth year, he’d offered to take her to Dragonfly himself, so as not to disrupt her careful budget. He’d found out that her favorite food was grilled cheese, and that she preferred red wine to white.
The fifth year, he’d woken up in her hotel room the morning after Black Diamond with her already gone. He’d learned from the hotel that her surname was Swan.
He wasn’t expecting her back again after that mistake anyway, and with the hurricane… but he’d flipped the little wooden sign on the front of his shack to say ‘open’ before he could talk himself out of it, and tried not to think about what a fool he was.
He had no customers all day. The only people who came by were other Islanders. The Zavala family, they of the tamale cart, came around noon to give him one of their abuelita’s tortas for lunch. Doc, who ran a little seafood restaurant just in sight of his fish shop stopped by with a couple of beers to wile away an hour or so, and they were joined by Robin from the liquor store and Betsy, who managed one of the condominium complexes along the shore.
Finally, as the light began to fade, he flipped his sign over, though he didn’t bother to lock his door- no one would come. He went into the back of the shop to get the little cooler in which he would take home the pathetic stock of the day to turn into stew- it’d been sitting out too long to do much else with.
When he’d emerged from the back, she’d been there. This time it was he that was back-lit, the sun coming in through the windows in the back of the shop, rather than the front, and she narrowed her eyes at him until he stepped through into the accustomed dimness.
Once she saw him- recognized him- her face went blank with shock. Then, like the sun rising over the ocean, she smiled and, before he could think or say anything, she threw herself into his arms and was kissing him.
“I was so scared,” she said against his lips. “I thought you must have blown away. I didn’t know how to reach you or… or anyone. I’m so glad you made it. I’m so glad you’re safe.”
• Billie is not a sci-fi/fantasy fan even today and likes the exploration of the mundane and domestic. She’d love to do a radio drama with David exploring the life of the human Doctor and Rose in the alternate dimension. She reckons they’d bore their kids with old stories of their adventures!
• Pearl and Billie feel like the abandoned companions should have a Wattsapp group.
LET BILLIE WORK WIH TENNANT AND ALL THE COMPANIONS, PLEASE!!!!
pairing: Jean-François Mercier x Betty rating: mature word count: 4.9 k Genre: WW2 AU, slow build romance, murder mystery
Previous chapters | Ao3 | this chapter on Ao3
Half an hour in the car with Borrel told her that, despite his clean-cut appearance, he hadn’t showered in several days. Even his crisp new suit (bought with Nazi money no doubt) couldn’t hide the sour scent emanating from him. Betty rolled down her window and rested her arms and chin on the ledge.
She’d spent the first part of the ride between panic and self-pity. Now the warm September air, brisk against her cheeks, seemed to slap some sense into her.
I don't know if you actually taking prompts from the sentences post, but if you are, Ten x Rose and 18? If not, nevermind and I will slink off ;p
We are a story slowly unfolding…
Ten x RoseGitF fix-it
“Rose, I have to save her.”
Jealousy clouded her vision and broke her heart. But she nodded, unsure what else to do. The Doctor had to save her, she knew that. Couldn’t go about letting such a famous and important woman such as Madame du Pompadour die at the hands of creepy murderous robots from the 51st century.
She opened her mouth to speak.
I know.orOf course you do.orCome back to me.
What she said was, “All right.” Strangled words that conveyed her jealous heartache more than Rose wished.
What else could she say? She had no hold on him—or his hearts. And after all this time certainly knew the perils of changing history. Rose managed a smile, or hoped she did.
The Doctor turned for the window portal into Versailles and Rose watched him do so. It hurt—her heart, her soul, fear and understanding and heartache choked her. But she didn’t stop him. How could she?
He whirled back to face her and once more took her by the shoulders. All the breath left her in a rush.
The way he looked at her…
It shone in his eyes, a whirl of longing that held her immobile and sent her heart pounding wildly. A depthless darkness, more than love—an adoration, desperation, a sort of worship she’d sometimes wondered if she saw in his gaze but always too quickly covered.
“Doctor.” It was nothing more than a whispered word, so much more than his name, but every ounce of love, every longing touch for more.
“This isn’t the end, Rose Tyler.” He kissed her forehead, a gentle caress of yearning that made her hope. “We are a story slowly unfolding—this isn’t the end of us yet, I promise you.”
Rose caught his hand, though she saw time ticking inevitably away as surely as he did. “Come back to me, Doctor.”
He squeezed her hand. “Always, Rose. Never doubt that.”
Rose watched him leave then, leaping with poor Arthur the horse through the window. “Oh, I hope he didn’t hurt the horse.”
Mickey gave her an odd look but she ignored him.
The Doctor would return. Their story, after all, had only just begun.
Prompt: Minerva & Harry, all the moments the books left out (aka McGonagall is such a wonderful role model/secret mother hen), if that's possible.
The cat glared into the empty space from which the old manhad vanished, the clever witch’s brain working behind those luminous eyes.
“Better that he grow up away from all that,” Dumbledore hadsaid. “Better by far.”
Better for who? McGonagallwondered.
The cat padded up to the bundle of blankets on the doorstepand looked at it for a long moment. Thechild was small, with two arms, two legs, and ten fingers and toes, just as achild should be. He was notextraordinary, save for the scar across his forehead. She then laid down against the child’s back,providing both warmth and support as the woman thought.
She could not help but worry about what kind of child thepeople in the big, square house behind the privet hedges would raise. The child of James and Lily Potter would havebeen clever and compassionate, with an innate sense of fun, a disregard for therules, and the courage of a lion. Minerva wondered, as the baby breathed against her and she purredsoothingly, how much of that was inborn, and how much would have come from hisparents’ careful rearing.
She had watched the family all day. For a witch she had few prejudices aboutmuggles in general. She knew, as so fewof her kind seemed to, that magic did not give a person the keys to intellect,creativity, or goodness, and that a lack of it did not make a person simple,dull, or base.
If anything, in her considerable experience, it was quitethe opposite. Muggles, without the crutchof magic, had progressed the world forward as wizards had not. They had touched the stars and plumbed thedepths of the oceans. They had fed thehungry and healed the sick. They hadmade impossible alliances, and they had broken the world.
In truth, Minerva McGonagall had a great deal of respect forthe power of muggle imagination, and it was imagination which could make agreat wizard.
The trouble was that the people in the house at whichDumbledore had left Lily’s son appeared to be at a complete loss forimagination, seeming only interested in those things no farther than the endsof their own noses.
As the dawn light licked the edges of the world and Minervaknew her time with the baby had come to an end, she comforted herself with thenotion that true cruelty is a product of imagination as well as trueinspiration. The child could livewithout the latter, but he would also not be forced to endure the former, shetold herself as she vanished into the hedges to watch the child’s aunt bringhim inside.
She wished him well, sending up a prayer she’d been taughtas a child to gods she did not believe in that he would be well, and that shewould see him in a few years’ time.
~?~?~?~?~
“He’s starved, Dumbledore. He’s small for his age and he’s obviously hungry. You said you were watching them!”
“And so I have been. Had he been in mortal danger, they would have been stopped
“Mortal danger?” she shrieked, sounding like a bird of preydescending on some poor mouse, in spite of the great respect and love she heldfor the man seated before her. “That wasyour threshold, Albus? Notmistreatment? Not neglect? They had to nearly kill him before you would havestepped in?”
It was guilt that made her speak so to him. James and Sirius had trusted Dumbledore witheverything, but Lily and Remus had come to herin those early days, had asked her to lead them into the fight. Minerva had deferred to Albus- it was he whohad the makings of a general in the war against darkness, he who had foughtbefore, and he who was the greatest magician of the age.
But to see Lily’s son having endured the cruelty that shehad convinced herself that he would not, she wished that she had allowed theheadmaster less reign in such affairs. He had entered the Great Hall and she hadknown him immediately. He looked likehis father, but too thin- two arms spindly, ten fingers thin as spider legs.
“He is with his aunt and uncle for a reason.”
It infuriated her when he used that terribly reasonable tone. It was a tone that said, by its mere timbreand inflection that he was Dumbledore, and hadn’t she always trusted him for areason?
No, shedecided. It wouldn’t work this time.
“Reason,” shespat. “There’s no reason to leave a child with people who mistreat him. There are hundreds of wizarding families whowould take him in. Even the Muggle protectionagencies would have better served him.”
“He is with his aunt to preserve his life.”
Minerva drew up short at this. Her eyes narrowed at the old man behind thedesk, not sure whether she believed this statement. He was not above lying to manipulate hiscase.
“And what is it you think threatens him then?” she asked.
He blinked those cold blue eyes and rested the tips of hisfingers together in front of his mouth, staring at her for a very long moment.
“Lord Voldemort is not dead,” he said softly.
Minerva jumped at the name- she had though never to hear itagain- and the very idea of Dumbledore’s words made her break out in a coldsweat.
“He is not dead,” Dumbledore continued, “and he willreturn. When he does, Harry Potter isbest protected in the home of his aunt, when he cannot be at Hogwarts.”
“Muggles can protect him from… You-Know-Who better thanwizards?” she asked, still not ready to believe him.
He did not smile. “Youmust trust me, Minerva.”
“If we cannot trustDumbledore, we cannot trust anyone.”
She had said that to Lily and Remus all those years ago whenshe had entrusted their safety and her own to the headmaster of Hogwarts. She still believed it, more or less, though thesight of the Potter’s son looking hungry and wan made her want to tellDumbledore precisely where he could store his trust and her job, take the boy-the one who looked so like his father, but without his father’s easy smile, orhis mother’s confident grace- and run.
“If you say so, Albus,” she said instead.
~?~?~?~?~
She watched him carefully for seven years, from the firstday he entered the Great Hall (and every year on that first night she ran hereyes over him more carefully than was, perhaps, perfectly professional, checkinglike a mother that he had all his limbs, all his digits- that he was whole andunharmed) to the day he boarded the train back to the world where she couldn’tprotect him.
She pushed him into Quidditch, remembering the sound of James’laughter when he flew. She challenged himin classes, remembering Lily’s quick wit and James’ talent. She stood- more times than the boy couldpossibly know- between him and Snape’s childish revenge.
Her heart stopped the night that Albus told her that thePotter boy had gone into the Chamber of Secrets after the Weasley girl.
The year that Remus returned to the school, she apologizedto him for not protecting them- Lily, Sirius, James, Peter, and most of allHarry- as he had asked. He told her thatwhen Harry Potter got close to the dementors, he heard Lily dying. She’d cried herself to sleep that night, andwoken determined not to fail him again.
She bit her nails to the quick for every one of the games inthe Tri-Wizard tournament, and when Delores Umbridge began a vendetta againstthe school as a whole and Harry Potter in particular, Minerva stood as a shieldbetween them.
When Dumbledore died, McGonagall rose like a phoenix to takehis place- to protect, to serve, and to stand between Hogwarts and the forcesthat would bring it down. Even as shefailed, she stood, fighting the losing fight on behalf of the forces of thelight.
Then, when Harry Potter- the careless, selfish, foolish,brave child- returned, she fought for him, and pretended she hadn’t been doingso since the beginning.
And when he died- when his body lay broken and beaten, allthe life, the joy, the brilliant, burning potential that he had represented inher mind for so many years finally snuffed out- she shrieked. She had finally and completely failed Lilyand Remus and James and Sirius and Albus and, most egregiously, Harry. And though the fight went on, though she knewshe must push forward with all her strength to keep the darkness at bay, somesmall part of her heart was no longer in it. Some part of her would never be in the fight again.
And when he lived, when he stood before them (her eyes drewdown him once again, like a mother, counting his limbs and digits to be sure hewas whole and healthy) she knew what a phoenix must, to rise from the ashes andlive again.
~?~?~?~?~
She looked at the bundle held out to her, black hair, redface, and so very, terribly, wonderfully familiar.
“We’re calling him James,” Ginevera was saying from acrossthe room as she looked down at the child. “James Sirius.”
“Might as well call him Fred George!” Hagrid boomed.
Minerva looked up from the tiny face into the one had oncelooked so much like the child in his arms. He still had two arms and two legs, and ten fingers and toes. He didn’t need her to count anymore, but shealways would.
She sniffed. “He’llspend his entire Hogwarts career in detention.”
Harry grinned. “Detentionjust means you’re looking out for him.”
SNL 11/12/16 | Cold Open - Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton singing “Hallelujah” by the late Leonard Cohen
Yaovi Mawuli, a high schooler from North Carolina, noticed that a fellow classmate of his had sneakers that were very worn down when other kids in the class made fun of them. In the spirit of the season, Yaovi laced his classmate with a pair of “Concord” Air Jordan 11 lows to “help a brother out” as he stated in a Facebook message.
These are the righteous acts that need to be shown to the world….we need more people like this.
“How do I present i to him without him feeling like I feel sorry for him?” i am crying, he even worried about his classmate reaction and how to make a smooth move instead of try to act like a saviour. This is the type of actions and love we need
AWWWWWWWWW
Angst prompt: Ten/Rose, "Please come get me"
I decided to go with a journal entry by Rose, so I hope it’s okay. I wasn’t quite sure how to format it, so just pretend that any italics or bold phrases are words you’d underline or highlight or somehow emphasize if writing a journal entry of your own.
Thanks to @caedmonfaith for the quick read through.
(AO3)
Day 67
67 more days than I ever thought I’d be here in this parallel universe.
Mum thinks writing down my feelings will help. I don’t think it will, but there are only so many times I can scream into a pillow every day. I don’t know if I can’t cry anymore. Of course, I always wonder that, and then something reminds me of the Doctor or the TARDIS and the best life I’ve ever had and I find a way to cry some more.
Mum… She understands only so much, and now she’s happier than she’s been since Dad died. I don’t really want to bother her any more. I think she feels guilty for being so happy, with me being so sad, but I want her to have this life. She deserves another chance at happiness after all she’s done for me and after everything she’s lost.
And Micks, well. Sometimes I think he expects us to get back together. But I can’t. Not ever.
My heart belongs to the Doctor, and I don’t even know if he knows how I feel. I wanted to say the words so many times, but it never felt like the right moment. Seems strange now, not saying the words. When we kissed, when we shagged, when we held hands. Anytime is better than when it’s too late. Like now.
God, I miss him. Sometimes I can’t breathe, because I left my heart in another universe. This is worse than death, knowing the man I love more than anything in the universe is alive but impossibly separated from me. This is the last thing I expected when I ran into the TARDIS all those years ago. Falling in love with an alien? Falling into a different universe, forever separated from the one I love? I didn’t think this life was possible was possible.
But then I did. Fall in love with an alien. I do love him. Doctor, I love you. And if you don’t find a way back, I’ll never be able to tell you.
Please come get me, Doctor. Please.
I need to tell you.
I don’t know what I’m going to do here without you. Pete’s been taking me to Torchwood with him, and I’ve started the basic agent training, but I’m hoping I don’t have to finish it. I keep telling everyone you’re coming, and the looks they give me are filled with pity. I hate it.
I’m at the top of my class except for weapons training. You taught me there was always another way, and I hate that I have to comply by the rules of the same bloody organization that got me stuck here. Pete keeps telling me it’s for my safety because not everyone has a brilliant Time Lord to keep them safe all the time. Course that just reminded me again that you’re not here.
If you can’t find a way, I’ll figure out how to come back to you.
Somehow, some way.
I can’t stay here forever.
And I promised you forever.
Summary: They all think she’s crazy, but she can’t describe it. He’s always there with her, no matter where she travels to find him again.
Notes: For @timepetalsprompts drabble prompt: “Shadows.” Exactly 100 words. (*raises glass and tips hat to @sequencefairy to gesture “challenge accepted and terms met”)
No matter where the dimension cannon takes her, she knows she isn’t alone. Not in the literal sense, but in her soul. Physically, they are universes apart (or just a few blocks for all she knows), but he is with her. His voice plays in her memory when she tries to form a plan. The ghosts of his fingers sweep through her hair when she desperately needs to fall asleep. And his love for her is just as real as ever. It’s why she’ll never give up. His presence is always there, just out of reach, hiding in the shadows.
