Writerly Recluse

when all was right with the world.

ozai’s ready to conquer the world—nine years earlier than planned, nine years before sozin’s comet was set to arrive.

…

what he did not expect was that the one thing standing in his way of success was his eldest son—in the body of a five-year old.

Ozai: I suggest we send Prince Zuko with the 37th battalion to fight against the Earth rebels.

War General, very concerned: Prince Zuko is a five-year old.

Zuko: I have no idea who posted those wanted posters of my father

Zuko: Nor do I have any idea who keeps harassing him with rotten food

Zuko: And who chooped off his goatee

Zuko, after an hour of low-key arguing with Ozai: I apologize for cutting you off, Father.

Zuko: But can you speak louder?

@aboutiroh this is a beautiful addition. I present this:

Hakoda wasn’t sure what he expected when another Fire Nation ship came into view just seconds after the soldiers stormed down the first one.

“Shit,” he hears Bato mutter behind him.

Hakoda echoed the sentiment albeit silently. Their chances were looking way too grim. He grips his spear tighter. He could only hope Kya, their children, and the rest of tribe could escape safely and make it out alive.

Just as he was about to signal his men to charge, a white flag from the second ship was raised into the air, almost frantically.

Was this the Fire Nation’s new tactic? Hakoda wondered. Lulling their enemies into a false sense of security before ambushing them with greater numbers. He wasn’t going to fall for that. It doesn’t diminish their greater numbers though. The Fire Nation soldiers, loathe he is to admit it, could overpower them at this very moment already, except—

A visible tide of confusion rippled through the first wave of Fire Nation soldiers. They fall back. But not before Hakoda catches whiff of the words, “Dragon of the West”.

Ice washes over Hakoda. It was worse than he thought. He can already see his men hesistating, the younger ones shaking, in his peripheral.

He signals them to wait. Rushing would do them no good. He needed to see the number of men on board before changing strategies.

The hunk of metal docked, creaking grimly before the ramp lowered and hit the ice with a loud thud.

Hakoda blinked.

What came out was a child—likely around Sokka’s age—waving a white flag obviously too big for his body to carry.

The child, seeing that everyone was too stunned to react and attack, gave them a practiced, dimplomatic smile.

- The Gaang is all 10 years younger, except Aang who is still 12. 

- Zuko shows up at the SWT and goes “Chief Hakoda I know this sounds confusing but I need your children to stop my douchebag father and end this war”

- He finds Aang in that iceberg to prove his point “See, I even got the Avatar for you, now can I pleeeaaaase go travel the world with Sokka and Katara” 

- Aang is very confused too but he just rolls with it

- Azula contemplates whether she should continue to try and impress her dad or go with Zuko. She goes with Zuko. 

- Iroh hasn’t started his Siege of Ba Sing Se yet. He’s not post-redemption Iroh, but he’s got it in him somewhere and tiny Zuko awakens it. 

- While they’re traveling on Appa, Zuko sees Toph and goes “WAIT we have to abduct that blind baby playing with the badgermoles” 

- at this point nobody questions him anymore and they get baby Toph on board. She’s two and somehow still the most badass among all of them. 

- Rumors of children being randomly abducted spread like wildfire.

- More so after a child from Kiyoshi Island, despite being neutral to the war, was stolen.

- With the knowledge that the Avatar has, in fact, reappeared, people conclude that the Avatar is a kidnapper.

- After kidnapping Toph, Zuko presents her to Aang saying, “This is you earthbending master.”

- Aang is hesistant. But then he sees baby Toph bend metal (“Uh, Zuko, I don’t think you should buy metal baby toys” “Trust me, Aang. I know what I’m doing”<<He does this because adult!Toph once said that plastic and wooden baby toys were for the weak) and he’s immediately sold.

- Nobody outside the gaang is sure whether or not Aang’s serious about calling a two-year old sifu. Said two year old cackles everytime she’s addressed that way.

- Sokka develops a childhood crush on Suki and bullies her in response. He stops when Suki beats his ass and gives him a stern talk.

- Sokka begins following Suki like a lost puppy.

- Katara first learns waterbending from the swampbenders when Zuko took them on a detour.

- Zuko sends Azula and Ursa letters every now and then, updating them about important stuff. (Dear mother, I am now travelling with a two-year old. Best wishes, Zuko)

- Ursa travels away from the Fire Nation in search of Zuko after Azula ran over to her and began bawling about Zuzu replacing her as his sister.

- Cue mother-daughter bonding as they travel around the Earth Kingdom in disguises in search of Zuko and his gaggle of toddlers. (Azula basks in the attention from her mother that she’s always yearned for.)

- Ursa bumps into Kya and Hakoda and team up. They exchange stories and they all agree that there needs to be a change in Firelord.

- Kya gives Azula candy, Hakoda teaches Azula how to defend herself with a knife, Ursa guides her through firebending katas. Needless to say, Azula is showered in actual love and is happy.

- Team Actually-Trying-To-Be-Good-Parents reunites with the gaang and after a bit of scolding and a fair share of fretting have dinner like one big family.

- To Sokka’s horror, Azula gets along very well with Momo. Azula also proceeds to teach Katara how to fight with a knife.

- Meanwhile, Iroh is travelling the world with Lu Ten after Ozai’s obvious assasination of the late Firelord Azulon. Together, they go through multiple spiritual hijinks, uncover lost civilizations, find themselves embroiled in conspiracies about cabbages, and discover the order of the white lotus.

- Zuko and Iroh’s letter exchanges are wild.

Okay but does Lu Ten end up as Firelord or do they just plop literal gremlin child Zuko on the throne and give him baby Firelord robes

Zuko, a 7-year old: I will ascend the throne.

Everyone: CHILD NO.

The tiny monster’s feet aren’t even touching the ground from where he sits on the throne, but he is nonetheless happily debunking the merits of class-specific household registration and demanding cuts be made to the military budget and when did he even learn those words?!

Lu Ten, of course, is delighted to be his little cousin’s advisor, because from up here he gets to see all the fantastic faces that the royal councillors make when their tiny Firelord talks about things like “our public schooling system is frankly atrocious, Minister Seng, and I will no longer stand idly by while our youth is fed propaganda; here, I’ve put together an overview of the new curriculum, you and the Cabinet of Education are to refine and implement this, effective immediately.”

he baby i love him

right?

please?

at least can AC and PK get a happy ending?

How do they rise up.

How do they rise up.

every three months he'll post and in the author's note there's some shit like "sorry this took a while, i got shot seven times :/" or "i know it's been a minute, i literally got hit by a bus and then stabbed in the leg, but i'm all good!" or sometimes ned would log in and post with a note "hey i'm a friend posting on the author's behalf, they're healing from severe hypothermia but promised an update, so here it is!"

and the fic just gets increasingly more popular for the author notes alone. a good handful of the comments are something along the lines of "i'm not even in the star wars fandom, i'm just here to see if the author is good" or "every update i cheer for another day the author gets to live at this point"

and any reader who is a native new yorker kind of pieces together that holy shit the author might be spider-man because the timeline adds up, and they just fully embrace it. spider-man will stop a robbery and the guy behind the counter will ask when the next chapter will be up. spider-man returns a stolen backpack to a girl and she'll tell him that he "really got poe's voice down so well, it's really impressive."

ned thinks it is hilarious. mj finds out about the fic from twitter, to peter's absolute horror, and changes peter's contact name to "friendly neighborhood ao3 author". but the worst thing to happen is after an avengers battle where peter took a pretty big hit and ends up in med-bay. and during a press conference, when someone asks how spider-man is healing, tony just drops "spidey won't be down for too long. the star wars fic will be updated within the week, probably."

Been done to me by people of both genders. 

Also I have been guilty of doing this, so I apologize. Because I was overly excited and just couldn’t wait to talk…. yeah. 

turtledoves! i need your help.

so, as most of you probably know, i work for a nonprofit here in chicago. one of our partner organizations is proyectos felicidad, a homelessness organization in puerto rico (based in san juan). before hurricane maria, there were 4,400 people experiencing homeless across the island; now, estimates suggest that more than 10,000 people are living in shelters. 1/3 of the population still has no clean water; 81% of the island is still without electricity; estimates of the cost in damage is almost $95 billion, which only sounds like a lot before you consider that 90% of all the homes on the island were somehow damaged during the storm and must be repaired or rebuilt.

but you guys don’t need me to tell you that the situation in puerto rico is bad. we all know it’s so bad. so instead i want to talk a little bit about proyectos felicidad, which was working to end homelessness on the island before the hurricane in their “home is more than a word” campaign, and is still working toward that goal after it. 

people who were experiencing homelessness before the storm have found themselves with even fewer resources than before–most, if not all, of the homeless shelters operating in PR were impacted by the storm, and in a post-maria PR, the number of individuals now entering the homelessness services system after losing their homes has skyrocketed, stretching already-thin resources even thinner.

SO!! here’s my question. i have a lot of followers, and i love all of you, except the pornbots. and i know that we are all donated-out. i know that there have been so many worthy causes. [ETA: apparently GoFundMe has a minimum of $5, so I guess I’m asking for that.] if everyone who follows me donated $5, we would literally net them more than $90k, which is…so much money to directly help to find shelter and supplies for people who desperately need it.

it would mean a great deal to me if this silly blog could in some part contribute to the caretaking of folks in puerto rico who need it. i can’t make physical things as a reward, but!!!

for every $100 added to their campaign i will add to the scooby doo story that i was i wasn’t going to write.

y’all!!!! are!!!! incredible!!!! that’s roughly 11 $100 additions, so here is a little over 1100 more SCOOBY DOO!!

PART 1: the Cove of misfit toys.

PART 2:  3 Barbies and a Ken

Like everyone else in Crystal Cove, Daphne used to live in a place called Coolsville. She was a freshman when the name changed, and doesn’t remember much of it except that it was the platform on which Fred’s dad got elected for the first time and her mother led a woman’s group that debated it. Coolsville was a dated name for a dated town, but Fred’s dad was going to bring the town into the future. New name, new city, new opportunities.

Daphne’s mother’s women’s group loved Mayor Jones. They held fundraisers for his campaign fund. Daphne’s mother says if the people of Ohio know what’s good for them, they’ll elect him governor, and if the people of the United States know what’s good for them, one day they’ll make him president.

Daphne’s mother says that if Daphne knew what was good for her, she’d be better friends with Mayor Jones’s perfect son, Fred, who is on the football team and in the Boy Scouts and has a square jaw. Daphne knows her parents wish that she would be popular like her sisters had been, knows they wish she’d stop hanging out with a boy who voluntarily calls himself “Shaggy.” She knows they used to wish she’d be perfect at something the way her sisters are, but Daphne isn’t, so they stopped wishing and stopped coming to any of her tournaments.

Daphne jiggles the padlock holding together the chain looped around the gates of Thrill Ride Park. It’s a straight shackle padlock, Cisa 285 Lim Series, 84 mm. It’ll be too tough for a bobby pin. Daphne goes back to the car to grab her lockpicking case, the one that Shaggy got her for her thirteenth birthday. It’s purple, Daphne’s favorite color, with her initials monogrammed on the top in cursive.

“Awww, Daph,” Shaggy says, grinning, “You still have them. That’s so, like, nice.”

“Have what?” asks the girl that Perfect Son Fred Jones arrived with. Crystal Cove isn’t a big town but it’s not small, either; Daphne doesn’t know her name. “What are you doing?”

Daphne rolls her eyes. “I’m opening the gate,” she says, drawing out the twist-flex torsion wrench and the offset diamond pick. “Shag, hold this up for me and give me some light.”

“I, like, do not feel great about this,” Shaggy grumbles, but comes over anyway, Scooby trotting at his heels. “I feel like maybe we could wait? Until the fair opens? And there are lots of other people around and no one can yell at us for committing a light B&E?”

Daphne ignores him. She knows it makes Shaggy feel better to say his thoughts out loud. He told her once that when he stays quiet everything he’s thinking starts rattling around inside him until he can feel it as a tingle in his limbs, like they’ve all fallen asleep.

He flicks his phone’s camera light on and holds it above the lock so Daphne can see, and holds it so she can have both hands free. Behind him, Jones and Jones’s girlfriend hover curiously, the girl—significantly shorter than Shaggy—struggling to see what’s happening over his hunched shoulders.

“I didn’t know you could pick locks, Daphne,” says Jones, politely. Jones is always polite to Daphne, which is another reason she finds him irritating. Daphne isn’t polite to Jones, not even when they see each other at the country club events her parents make her go to. But no matter what she says to him, he smiles placidly at her and says things like I can see you feel very passionately about this, that’s very cool, like Daphne needs his approval or cares whether he thinks she’s cool.

Daphne doesn’t need Jones to like her because Daphne doesn’t need anybody to like her, and anyway, she has Shaggy, who is the only person in the world worth hanging out with.

“You don’t know most things about me, Jones,” Daphne mutters. “It’s possible you don’t even know most things, full stop.”

Jones chuckles. “The only thing I know is that I know nothing,” he agrees easily.

Jones’s girlfriend snorts, and from the corner of her eye Daphne can see her hefting a pair of bolt cutters back into the ugly van they came in. “Jinkies, Socrates,” she teases. “Let’s lighten up on Greek philosophy while Criminal Barbie over here gets us into the park.”

Daphne looks up sharply. Jones’s girlfriend is short-ish, clad in a red skirt and orange turtleneck sweater, a color combination that Daphne wouldn’t have recommended but that somehow doesn’t look as appalling on the brunette girl as it would on anybody else. A constellation of freckles smatters her nose and cheeks beneath her glasses, her dark eyes almost covered by straight-across bangs that stopped being a Look in the sixth grade.

Her socks, knee-high, keep slipping down her legs, and she impatiently yanks them back up.

“I’d rather be Criminal Barbie than Colorblind Catholic Schoolgirl Barbie,” Daphne snaps, perhaps a little meanly.

“Her name is Velma,” Jones answers, his tone sharp. Daphne looks up in surprise; she’s never heard Jones sound any way other than gently beige. “And I think she looks nice.”

The girl, Velma, groans a little, her cheeks reddening. She folds her arms self-consciously across her chest, and Daphne feels a stab of guilt, even though she wasn’t the one who started it. “Fred, oh my god,” Velma mutters. “Be cool, meathead.”

Fred frowns, nudging her shoulder. “You do look nice,” he insists.

Daphne gives the lock one last jiggle and it clicks open. Shaggy lets out a soft hoot of triumph and offers her a high-five; at his feet, Scooby sits up and does the same. Daphne holds out both her hands and takes both.

She looks up and reaches out a hand to Velma, still feeling the trill of success. “I’m Daphne,” she says, an olive branch. “Sorry about—I like your sweater, actually. It looks really warm.”

Velma stares for a moment at the outstretched hand. She’s pretty sure this is one of those social things she doesn’t get, that Daphne could call her Colorblind Catholic Schoolgirl Barbie one minute and then say I like your sweater the next.

Velma knows Daphne Blake. Everybody at Crystal Cove High School knows Daphne Blake, whose parents are worth like seventeen bazillion dollars and who is captain of everything that Fred Jones isn’t captain of. Everybody thought they’d be dating by now. Velma knows Fred’s dad wishes they would, and that Fred would stop hanging around with Velma, who doesn’t like his dad and isn’t good at pretending otherwise. He always calls her Valery, which she thinks he knows isn’t her name.

Anyway, Daphne is blinking at her, and up to this point Velma hasn’t really cared to know much more about her than that she’s rude enough to Fred that even Velma notices. But she’s holding the opened lock in her hand, which is a pretty cool skill to have, and Velma can admit she’d maybe been a little rude first. She’d kind of meant Criminal Barbie as a compliment, but most things that Velma says as compliments come out sounding wrong.

Fred nudges her shoulder. Velma takes the proffered hand and says, “Thanks. It is warm.”

“I’m Shaggy,” says the boy next to Daphne. “And this is my dog, Scooby. You’re in my Latin class, right? With Mr. Schaefer?”

Velma frowns. “Your name isn’t Shaggy,” she says suspiciously. Is he playing a trick on her? “It’s like Neville or something.”

Daphne stiffens, but Shaggy slings an arm around her shoulders—he’s much taller than she is, and when he draws her in she fits right into his side. Velma has a hard time, sometimes, reading facial expressions, but she thinks Daphne might relax a little. “It’s Norville on my birth certificate, but Shaggy in my heart,” he says, wincing.

“Hi, Shaggy,” greets Fred easily. “You bought popcorn from me last year.”

“Jalapeno cheddar, baby,” Shaggy agrees. “You’re like, the best popcorn man in town, man. Ten out of ten for cheese and spice.

Fred beams. “Thank you,” he says. “That’s really nice.”

“It’s not like he makes it, Shag,” Daphne mutters. “He’s just a distributor. It’s basically a pyramid scheme.”

“He’s, like, a food entrepreneur, Daph. And you liked the popcorn. I found you at 2a.m. in my kitchen eating it by the handful like a guilty raccoon.”

Daphne’s eyes dart away, but Fred straightens his shoulders a little, brightening. “You liked my popcorn?” he asks. “But when I saw you at your mom’s fundraiser you said—”

“Look,” Velma interrupts, “as much as I love standing around discussing popcorn, time’s a-ticking. Are we gonna solve a mystery or not?” Everyone turns to look at her. Velma squirms under the attention and mutters defensively, “What? I thought Daphne wanted to fight a ghost.”

Daphne grins again. “I thought you said there was no ghost.”

“The existence of the afterlife can neither be proven nor disproven,” Velma lobbies back at her.

Daphne throws her head back and laughs, loud and bright. “Touché,” she giggles. Velma can feel a smile tugging at her mouth and isn’t quite sure why, except she likes the way it feels to volley. Fred, for all that Velma loves him, isn’t very good at the return serve.

“Do we have to fight it, if we find it?” Fred asks. “Maybe it just wants to talk. We could help it pass to the other side, peacefully.”

“I won’t rule out any of our options,” Velma allows, and doesn’t look at Daphne when she says, “But if it is a ghost—which I want to be on record as highly doubting—I do kind of want to see Criminal Barbie fight it.” She chances a glance to her left and sees Daphne grinning at her.

Shaggy sighs. “I’m gonna be Accessory to a Murder Barbie, aren’t I?” he asks, as all four of them—and the dog—push open the fairgrounds’ gate and pass through it.

NEXT TIME ON SCOOBY DOO…

“Like,” Shaggy says, his voice shaking, “I know I smoked earlier today but you’re all seeing what I’m seeing, right?”

“Are you seeing a translucent man in an eyepatch brandishing a sword, who has a hook for a hand?” asks Velma.

“Like, yep,” squeaks Shaggy.

..............but.

There's something deeply compelling to me about horror that twists itself inside out, to reveal the sheer mundanity inside the horror. Or maybe 'after' the horror is a better way to phrase it. I firmly believe that horror is horror until you accommodate it, and then it's just taxes---but the horror also never really leaves. By that I mean The Exorcist where Regan remains possessed, and so her parents are forced to raise a 13 year old who is also somehow a Mesopotamian wind demon. Rosemary's Baby where Rosemary cradles the spawn of Satan to her bosom, is bowed to in the hall, and yet is still expected to do the shopping (Minnie's knees are not what they used to be, dear!) Let the Right One In, but Oskar keeps getting older and older, and though intellectually he knows that Eli is too, it's increasingly strange to him to kiss that little not-a-girl mouth. Girl with All the Gifts, but you're Ms. Justineau, trapped in an airtight cage and teaching your evolutionary replacements how to build a world on top of your bones.

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 ghost pirate 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.

“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.”

They were probably late teens to early 20s, given the time and the description and some Biblical passages.

They were not ancient old men with long beards and wrinkles at the Last Supper.