Who’s going to be reading new Supercat season one fan fics on Xmas day? And who will be enjoying new gif sets and videos from Supergirl S1 on Xmas day?
This person. right here will be! Whoo Hoooo! The suspense is killing me. Will I even be able to sleep? Anyone know what time it will all appear on AO3?
Update: Someone whispered in my ear: midnight on the 25th EST. So if you are staying up Xmas eve to catch a glimpse of Santa, you can enjoy the new works posted.
West coasters in the USA can enjoy them at an earlier hour on Xmas eve. Early presents for you lucky Supercat addicts.
Due to a typo, your local store/mall/etc. put out a request for an appearance by Satan instead of Santa. He follows through with the request.
He shows up and reads through the entire job contract, notes the spelling ‘Santa’ and just corrects each one with a red pen. He eyes the mall representative, who is sweating bullets, but says nothing about the fact that the contracts he’s making are with children, or that they don’t involve souls of any kind. He signs on the bottom line in a strange, bony quill. There’s a strange red flash, and the mall rep is super reluctant to ask. Or touch the contract.
Satan wears the red suit and the hat and the boots, if awkwardly (those cloven hooves, don’tchaknow).
The elves stand well away, but he’s hardly bothered by that, casually waiting on a throne that’s far more cheerful and composed of significantly less bone than the one he’s used to.
The children are hesitant at first, until a little girl marches up, sans-parents, and plops herself on his knee, looking up at him with the set jaw of someone who isn’t interested in this farce.
“I want a pony,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She’s no more than nine. He arches an eyebrow
“Do you?” he asks. She scoffs.
“Tch, no, but you’re just a man in a suit, it’s not like you can’t get me what I want.”
He smiles at her assertiveness and steeples his fingers, careful not to jostle her from her perch.
“Try me.”
She narrows her eyes at him, studying his inscrutable face before folding her arms.
“There’s a bully at my school, and I want him to go away,” she said. His eyebrow arched a little higher and he tilted his head.
“And if I do this, I believe the standard contract is that you will be a ‘good girl’ and behave appropriately towards your most favored parent?’ he replied. The child rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, sure,” she says. He nods and holds out his hand, which curls around hers entirely when she puts hers out.
“It will be done.”
After that, the children are a lot less hesitant, although several adults attempt to leave. Several hundred bargains are made. For toys. For new family. For present family to suffer. For puppies. And kittens. For understanding. For acceptance.
He declines anything borne of pettiness – of momentary squabbles between jealous children – and redirects them towards more productive desires.
He turns away anyone over the age of eighteen, though several adults attempt to approach. Later they are plagued with horrible nightmares.
At the end of each day, he returns to the underworld and assembles teams of demons, handing out assignments to each of them, to be researched heavily and then executed the night of December 24th. The demons are confused, but do as they’re told, because the dark lord’s edicts are undeniable. His secretary gives him an odd look, but Satan is immune to searching looks, and says nothing, just retires to his room, gets up in the morning, has his coffee, and returns to the mall, donning the suit and heading for the chair.
At the end of the week, he has made more than a thousand deals. The demon hordes are scurrying back and forth between hell and the physical plane.
There are many confused parents, come Christmas morning. Some find themselves with various pets they don’t remember registering for. Others with children. Others still find that their children have undergone some sort of personality shift, to the delight of their siblings.
The first girl is bitter in her heart as she opens gifts, until a letter is personally delivered by a strange mailman, detailing the removal of a teacher from the school she attends. She reads and rereads the letter after her parents finish with it, heart beating strangely lighter in her chest. Her parents are bemused and delighted about the hugs she gives them, and about the enthusiasm with which she ravages her other presents.
They are far less bemused by the black, hellfire-maned pony that is left on their doorstep, a tag attached to the pommel of the saddle that reads, ‘To Katie, Regards, Satan’
Have I ever told you guys the true story of the Revolution Christmas Tree?
This one absolutely 100% happened (unlike the drunk zombie geese story which likely only 35% happened, but maybe I’ll tell you about it one day). It happened to my family when I was 4 y/o.
So imagine Evil Commie Land in the late ‘80s: severe food shortages, no heating (seriously, people slept with their stoves on for heat and sometimes the gas was cut off and came back randomly during the night and carbon monoxide poisoning was a thing). Also large, beautiful, historical chunks of our capital city were being bulldozed into oblivion because our megalomaniac shithead supreme leader wanted to build the biggest fucking thing there was. Anyway, it sucked.
On top of that we were also technically not supposed to celebrate Christmas, because religion is the opiate of the masses etc. etc. But we did anyway, every year and with great enthusiasm, running as we did on the sweet fuel of go ahead and tell a motherfucker they’re not allowed to do something.
So. Christmas. The way we did Christmas back in the day was to make it as secular and proletarian as possible: officially no church services, no religious carols, no Jesus thingy, no calling Santa Claus Santa Claus (we called him Old Man Frost idk)
The only thing we did exactly the same as regular Christmas, in the privacy of our homes, was the Christmas tree. This is how you got a Christmas tree:
you went to the marketplace where Christmas tree sellers were
these were not like, official, state-sanctioned commercial workers, but people with the capacity to somehow provide you with 1 pc. coniferous for Proletarian Christmas celebrating purposes
I have no fucking idea who they were or how they got them
anyway, you went to the marketplace where Christmas tree sellers were and you talked to one of them and you told them what kind of Christmas tree you wanted (options were: fir/spruce, medium-ish/small)
you paid them in advance and agreed on a date where you’d come by and pick your Proletarian Christmas tree
you picked up your Proletarian Christmas tree, brought it home to the family and decorated it with stuff you inherited from your great-grandmother or your mom made out of candy wrappers like 15 years before
you celebrated Christmas. Proletarianly.
So along comes 1989. Shit boils over and by December 21st, we have a violent revolution right on the streets of our capital city.
Now, I was 4 and my brother was 6 months old and our parents decided that we absolutely cannot go without a regular Christmas in our house, especially now that the world is about to go to shit. We didn’t have anything, presents or nice food or. Anything? Basically. The one thing we had was dad had arranged to get our Christmas tree on the day. So he tells my mom that he’s going to pick it up, and instead of knocking him cold and chaining him to the radiator, like the sensible woman she usually is, my mom goes ok just put on an extra sweater you don’t want to catch a cold haha right?
Let me break this down for you in case there’s any misunderstanding as to what we’re talking about. Outside:
violent riots
army
snipers
tanks
plainclothes secret police randomly shooting people dead in the street
I seriously cannot stress the snipers enough
So off goes my dad to pick up our Christmas tree. And he’s gone for five hours, on a trip that normally takes like 30 minutes at a casual stroll. And the more time passes, the deeper my mother sinks into an all-out nervous breakdown. She’s barely keeping it together, my grandmother is trying to comfort her, while my brother is sleeping quietly, which is a good thing, because at some point there’s a weird rumbling outside our building.
‘What’s that?’ say I, 4 years old and desperate for some straight, no-bullshit answers
‘Nothing,’ says my mom. ‘Nothing’ is the second stupidest thing to say to an observant, intelligent kid who’s been locked up for a week and kept in the dark about shit that’s very obviously happening just outside.
‘No, really, what is that?’ say I, seriously determined to get a straight, no-bullshit answer.
Years later, after piecing bits of memories together, I realized there are only so many ways to skirt around ‘It’s a tank, dear’, which is the single stupidest thing to say to a child who’s been locked up for a week if you expect them not to run outside because they want to see, damn it.
So when my dad finally comes home five hours later, with the goddamn tree, she’s either too exhausted to say much, or doesn’t want to have that conversation in front of her kid, who is seriously right on the brink of smashing something out of frustration.
It wasn’t until I was in highschool that he told me he’d actually been shot at several times, because sneaking around street corners carrying a large tree is not at all suspicious when everyone is so strung up. Any sniper who might have been around absolutely did not think he was probably a revolutionary agent smuggling weapons or w/e instead of a dad trying to make a nice Christmas for his family BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCK
So this is the story of the Revolution Christmas Tree, aka the story of how my dad almost got shot lugging around an overpriced bit of spruce in the middle of violent street fighting so his kids could have Christmas.
There are some levels of parenting you just can’t beat.
The thing about the holiday window display is that Clarke is—kind of—a real artist. She certainly wants to be a real artist, and is getting her MFA in graphic design, and has even won some contests for her work. She has, not to put too fine a point on it, skills.
Which is why Roan asks her to do the window displays at the store in the first place.
Well, okay, that’s why he says he asks her to do the window displays, but Clarke’s pretty sure about ninety percent of his motivation is that he doesn’t want to do it himself, and he’s just using the art thing to butter her up. But she’d be pissed if he asked any of the other employees, so whatever his motivation, she’s not objecting. She likes doing the window display. It’s fun. Usually, she changes them once a month, with different themes, and everyone agrees she does a good job with that.
But the holiday season is on another level.
“I’m thinking one every week,” she tells Raven. Raven doesn’t actually work at the store, but is dating Roan and therefore hangs out a lot because she likes spending time with him and he gave her the employee wifi password. Clarke considers her a perk of the job.
“You want to do a new display every week?” Raven asks. “Starting when?”
“That’s the question. I’m against holiday creep, but I accept that it’s a thing, and if we don’t go with it, it might hurt business.”
Raven frowns. “Has anyone in the history of the world ever looked at a store, found they don’t have Christmas lights up, and decided not to shop there?”
“There are people who believe the war on Christmas is a real thing,” Clarke points out. “Honestly, anything is possible.”
Question of Smoke 