I once stabbed a guy in the thigh with a unicorn [horn], just because it seemed like the prudent thing to do at the time. Don't pity him too much - he was a rapist.

I think that might have been when I lost my innocence.

Just kidding. I've been roofied, raped, my best friend was murdered, I organized a kinda-sorta kidnapping, I discovered a dead body in an ice machine, my alcoholic mom bailed with my college fund, and that's really just the short list. My innocence is really just a memory, and it's not even mine. It's my dad's. Speaking of which, this one time? I was on a building and this plane blew up, and I thought my dad was in it. It was... bad.

The time I stabbed the guy in the leg, though, that was really when I sort of lost my thing for unicorns. I mean, you're in a room with a sociopath, he's basically telling you his life story and you're just waiting for him to try and rape you and shave your head. Meanwhile, you're surrounded by... unicorns. They sort of lose their magic, especially after the horn-in-the-thigh doesn't actually save your life and you still end up stuffed full of GHB and wondering whether you can make a graceful landing on the pavement two stories down.

I didn't actually get raped that time, thanks to a rape whistle and a really good friend. I have a feeling Mercer probably wasn't so lucky in the long run, and he probably didn't have the benefit of GHB, either.

You know what they say, though.

Karma rules.

You don't know what you've got until it's gone. Sound cliche? Well, maybe a little. But as far as I know, nobody's written a song about knowing exactly what you had all along until the second that you picked it up and threw it out the window. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it just lack romance?

Anyway, cheesy eighties song or no, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that pretty much everything that's happened in the past few years can easily be summed up by Cinderella and their heartfelt howling. I guess it's life, you know, taking things for granted and letting them slip through your fingers, but you'd think I'd have learned by now.

First Lilly, then Mom, my virginity - maybe there weren't warning signs and maybe there wasn't anything I could have done to prevent everything that happened in 2003, but that didn't prevent me wracking my brain for alternatives. It's the whole denial thing, the bargaining. What if, if only, if you make me not be raped, God, I promise to be nice to Logan Echolls for a week.

But bargaining didn't bring Lilly back and it sure as hell didn't restore my hymen to its original and pristine packaging. You'd think, though, after all that I went through, I'd hold on a little bit tighter to the things that mattered most. That maybe, you know, just maybe? I'd not take the little things - or even the big things - for granted.

I mean, I almost lost Wallace. He bailed on me and nobody could blame him. Meg died. Duncan ran off to Australia with Meg's baby. And through everything, all I could do was watch as everyone I cared about slipped away.

And even after everything that had happened, I never appreciated any of it when it was here. Duncan, Meg... even Wallace somehow managed to slip into the background while I continued building walls and just got more and more self-involved. Everything I had always expected to be here vanished, one piece at a time.

And every single time, even though I should have been - in some cases even was - expecting it, it still felt like my heart was getting torn out. It isn't easy to live like that, looking around and seeing nothing but holes where there should be people.

You really don't know what you've got until it's gone. Those empty places stay empty no matter how much you crowd yourself with other people, with jackasses and PCHers and hackers, and no matter how much you care about the new and the old you can't forget about what's missing.

Your friends, your family, pieces of you that have fallen away and will never come back. You carry those scars and you carry that weight.

And if you're lucky - really lucky - you'll learn from your mistakes. I just wish I could figure out how to do that.

Last night I got subjected to a marathon of The Godfather movies. Technically it wasn’t a marathon, I guess, because we only watched the first two, but since together they totaled up to over six hours and I heard the third one sucked anyway, I’m going to go ahead and say whatever to the dictionary definition of “marathon” is and listen instead to the dull throbbing of my rear end.

Logan’s couch? Only comfortable for so long.

Anyway, marathon? Not a marathon? Not really the point. Watching Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and all of those other people that Logan assured me were understated and brilliant despite the fact that they were shooting each other and putting horse’s heads in each other’s beds (!) only really reminded me of one thing.

Neptune.

Oh, it’s not like we’re under mob rule or anything. If the Fitzpatrick family were anything like the Corleones I’d probably be a lot more worried. As a family of crime lords, they’re bordering on third rate.

The Mars family, however – that means me – what an emulation of the Corleones we are! Not that we’re at all tied into the mob or anything. Exactly the opposite! But the similarities between the relationship between Michael and Don Corleone to the relationship between myself and Dad that it’s really striking! I swear!

Michael was Vito’s favorite son. (I am Dad’s favorite daughter. Only, true, but not the point as we are looking for similarities.) Vito wanted his favorite son away from the family business, so he sent him to the army. (Dad wanted favorite [again, only] daughter away from the family business after she almost got herself killed, so he forced me to get a job at Java the Hutt. Or anywhere but Mars Investigations, really.) Vito almost died several times. (Dad almost died several times.) Michael joined the business. (Dad let me start working back at the agency!) Vito died. There, the similarities end.

It’s true that I am comparing the mob to a PI business, but we’ve investigated that kind of thing before. And the army to Java the Hutt. And Vito Corleone to Keith Mars. And Hearst College to the Senate.

But the similarities are there.

Which of course makes Logan Diane Keaton.

And that final piece of the puzzle just makes complete and total sense.

There is no way in which I am not right. Right?

Here’s a little bit of advice from me to you – I won’t even charge you for it. Password-protect your computer. And if you do, do yourself a favor; I know your cat is special to you and that maybe the name of your boyfriend is so obvious that nobody would ever guess it, but pick something that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Here are some examples of passwords that I would never ever use:

Backup
DuncanKane
KaneDuncan
LoganEcholls
EchollsLogan
LillyKane
KaneLilly

Do you see a pattern? Besides, if my password was “DuncanKane” and someone happened to crack it, people might think I was just the eensiest bit obsessed – which is never good. Here are some of my discarded passwords, however, which will help make for a secure computer:

!lb1qvux?p7
222x-qsvu7t,
#9^^vlp/\09
8z86uilm09+++

Don’t use those. Random combinations published on the internet are never the safest bet.

It’s also a good idea to password protect your screensaver, preferably with a different code than the first one. This ensures that if you have to leave your computer for any length of time, and logging out or shutting down is not your favorite option, your files will at least be protected from prying eyes.

Your hidden secrets will remain hidden and nobody will be able to use them against you. Trust me when I say that I learned this the hard way. If I’d password-protected my computer, then Duncan probably never would have run off to Cuba. Then again, Dad probably wouldn’t have chased after him… oh, and mom wouldn’t have run off with our fifty-grand reward.

Leaving your computer unprotected is pretty much equivalent to airing your dirty laundry. Nothing good can come of either.

Muse: Veronica Mars
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Word Count: 283

You miss Lilly – you can’t really figure out how to stop. People think it’s easy, you know, to just pick up and move on after you lose somebody, but here’s the truth: it’s not.

Anticlimactic, you know.

The thing is, after Lilly died, everything changed. Not just changed, fell apart – and not just your life, either. The whole structure of Neptune sort of collapsed, and it stopped being a town that you really actually liked and turned into something that now, you hardly even recognize. Maybe it’s because you had to grow up too fast or maybe it’s because everybody else changed at the same time, but Neptune’s metamorphosed into a completely new and hateful place, and as much as you’d like to place the blame on Logan or Lamb, there’s really no single guilty party.

Probably it’s just that things change. For better, for worse, nothing ever stays the same. You’re okay with that, you can’t really expect it to – all you can do is change with it. So you chop off your hair, you develop a badass attitude and you become someone as new and unrecognizable as Neptune is and you don’t even realize that subconsciously you’re just trying to be Lilly.

Trying but failing. You’ve taken Lilly Kane, your very best friend – your dead best friend – and you’ve buffed away the rough edges and you’ve slipped into an imitation of her. It’s so good that you don’t even notice. If you did, you might stop and realize that not only are you bastardizing her memory but Veronica Mars has gotten completely lost in Veronica Mars version 2.0 – Lilly Kane.

If Lilly were here she’d be delighted – for about five minutes.

And even though you’ve got the whole “being Lilly” thing pretty much down, it takes you a while to figure it out, and when you do – that’s when you start to recognize your betrayal. You love Lilly. You’ll always love Lilly. And she’ll always be a part of you.

But she’s not you, Veronica. You’re alive.

So live.

Everybody who comes into Mars Investigations is looking for something – a long lost friend, a long lost lover, or even a lost pet. But the majority of people who walk into my dad’s office are convinced of one thing: that their significant other is cheating on them, and they’re willing to pay us a good amount of money for proof of their partner’s indiscretion. These people and their all-too-keen senses of betrayal have led to my spending more than one late night parked outside the Camelot, or some other sleazy motel, camera in hand and homework in the passenger seat, waiting patiently for the money shot so that I could go home and crash.

It was rare that the suspicious partner’s fears were unfounded, which really makes the PI business a depressing one to go into. Above all, it paints a really bleak picture of potential healthy relationships – if all of these people can’t succeed in love, what makes me think that there’s hope for me?

I try to be an optimist, really I do. I’ve taken my chance in love more than once, but I don’t exactly have genetics on my side. My mother was just another cheating wife, attempting to hide her secret trysts at the Camelot Motel with her high school sweetheart, Jake Kane. And let’s face it, my track record isn’t exactly perfect, either. I was still dating Leo the day I kissed Logan at – actually, the Camelot.

I believe in monogamy. I believe that if you find somebody that you love, you owe it to them to be faithful to them – or at least to be honest with them and tell them that it’s over before you run away. But in a town like Neptune, full of trophy wives and sleazy businessmen, honesty isn’t exactly anybody’s top priority.

I just know that I don’t want to end up on the other side of Vinnie Van Lowe’s camera lens. I’m better than that.

Muse: Veronica Mars
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Word Count: 327

Everybody's got their breaking point – for some people, the moment is obvious. There's a click, a realization, and it's over just like that. For other people it's not like that. Like for me.

There's this old saying. I'm sure you've heard it: "Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me." Sure there are variations, but no matter how you twist it around, it's true. If somebody screws you over (or just plain screws you) it stands to reason that they're going to do it again and if you're fool enough to hang around and let them do it? Well, that's your problem. Or, my problem, as it goes.

You see, my mother never told me that I could be Duncan Kane's half-sibling. Through the whole time we dated, every day that I spent falling just a little bit more in love with him, coming a little bit closer to losing my virginity to him, mom never said a word. Then Duncan broke things off without telling me why. Hurt me once – shame on you.

I'd like to think that if Lilly hadn't been murdered then things would have happened differently. Duncan wouldn't have retreated into himself the way that he did and we would've gotten through everything together. I mean, we weren't related, not really – no matter what his ice bitch mother was trying to tell him. If he'd just confided in me, all of the issues could have been worked out. But of course he didn't confide in me and Lilly did die and I was ostracized for over a year.

So much for "together forever" and the fairytale I'd let myself believe in.

The issue becomes this: if we'd just broken up and stayed that way, I'm not sure that things wouldn't have turned out a lot better than they did. Maybe if I'd skipped out on Shelly Pomroy's party instead of forcing myself to prove something; I wouldn't have gotten raped - and then "raped" by Duncan (but violation is violation, no matter how you spin it) and my life would have been a little less hellish over the next year

Or maybe it wouldn't have. Who am I to judge?

The thing is, if I'd learned my lesson, you know, tried a little harder to let go – then we never would have gotten back together. Meg would never have been on that bus. She'd still be alive. Duncan would still be here and he'd be with her. I'd probably have something a little less perfect but a little bit more valid and I wouldn't look out at the ocean and wonder where my first love was, and if he was thinking about me.

It took me a long time to find my breaking point – too long. I should have learned my lesson a long time ago.

( This is one of those questions that are just designed to hit close to home. )

Muse: Veronica Mars
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Word Count: 456

( liar, liar - spoilers )

Fandom: Veronica Mars
Character: Veronica Mars
Word Count: 264

115. Write about a time you mocked somebody.

( Love's a battlefield. )

Word count: 164

116. Write about your father.

( Do you not have the book? )

Word count: 282

Topic 118. What does your dream home look like?

( Far, far away from here. )

Word count: 203

119. Have you ever made a complete fool out of yourself?

Yes.

Word count: 1

Fandom: Veronica Mars
Muse: Veronica Mars