#so i did something for like ten minutes (did a fetch quest for the keys‚ turned on the tvs‚ and held a few buttons for a bit)

[existencebringsonlypain]

doing a crime again and having my phone out in mass

[virmillion]

Ibytm - T minus 53 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 3,665

Logan wedges his finger in the impossibly tight space between his neck and the collar of his shirt. Is it normal to be this nervous? He’s just waiting for coffee in front of a museum. It’s not like it’s a date or anything. Of course, that negates Logan’s decision to wear a nicer tie than normal. He could always claim it was laundry day, but laundry day is Sunday, so everything is clean for the upcoming week. Not that Cadmium would know that. Would he? Is he even going to show up? Just because Logan specifically requested Cadmium as his fetch kid, that doesn’t guarantee he’ll get him. Being the creator doesn’t mean pulling every string, but it’s not like it even matters, because Logan doesn’t really care if it’s Cadmium or not, no siree, pure apathy here all the way.

He loosens his collar again, then fidgets with his tie for a few minutes. Covered in a gentle plaid of purple and blue, it’s the only pop of color he allowed himself over a dark grey shirt and khakis. Will Cadmium think Logan is trying too hard to mimic his color scheme from the park? Cadmium will probably hate it, will say Logan’s just some weird guy from a museum tour, that he’s nothing more than his little eccentricities, a light piece of entertainment and nothing more, that—

“It’s not very often that I get special requests for a personal fetch quest fulfillment, you know.” Logan sees Cadmium’s shadow before gathering the courage to meet his eyes, clearing his throat and giving his collar one last tug. “Of course, I thought it couldn’t’ve possibly been you, since I know how much you love my usual drink. Here’s your fancy pants latte with all the fix-ins.” Cadmium thrusts a styrofoam tray at Logan, angling the smaller drink for easier access. His other hand remains behind his back.

“Oh! Oh, yeah, um, right, let me just finalize the—”

Cadmium waves off Logan’s attempts to pay him back for the order. “I stole both your drinks last time, call it even.” His face flushes a soft pink as he seems to realize something. “You, um—you did get the delight one for me, right? I’d hate to just assume—”

“Yeah, no, for sure, that’s all yours. If you want it, I mean.” Logan finally takes his drink in both hands, rocking back and forth on his feet and laughing uncomfortably. Cadmium echoes the sound, looking anywhere but at Logan, who takes the opportunity to admire Cadmium’s outfit. Under the green cardigan from the first time Logan saw him, Cadmium wears a pale grey T-shirt with a pastel alien across the front, paired with skinny jeans that proudly bear no holes. Possibly a first, as far as Logan’s seen. Logan opens his mouth to say something—compliment the outfit, mention the matching shirt colors, something , but Cadmium beats him to the punch.

“Oh! I, ah, I actually did bring something. For you, I mean. If that’s okay, I mean, like, I brought it because I assumed the coffees were, well, you know, so I, um, I just, yeah, you know? I mean, here you go.” Cadmium pulls his other arm out from behind his back, revealing a single red rose in front of an even redder face. “I don’t, like, know anything specific about the color meanings of flowers or whatever, but I thought maybe, I mean, if you didn’t—”

“It’s great,” Logan interrupts, gingerly accepting the flower. “It’s really, really nice.” Cadmium huffs what Logan can only hope is a sigh of relief. “Um, shall we?” Logan gestures toward the entrance doors with his coffee hand, poking out his other elbow—far enough for Cadmium to link in his own if he were comfortable with that, close enough to himself that it could be mistaken for a casually awkward pose. Hopefully.

“Well, how about that?” a familiar voice says at the entrance. Patton scratches the back of his neck with one hand, flicking his wrist to check an imaginary watch with the other. “I never expected to see the famed Virgil here on a day that doesn’t start with ‘T,’ much less with a suitor on his arm!” Cadmium yanks his hand quickly away from the crook of Logan’s elbow, his eyes brimming with panic. Logan busies himself with looking absolutely anywhere else. “So, which of you’s paying for this little date?”

Logan trips over himself to protest how it’s not a date, but once again, Cadmium beats him to the punch, all the panic gone from his face. Or maybe Logan was only imagining it to begin with. Cadmium slips his arm back into Logan’s. “My little nerd here will be paying, as I already did him the honor of getting us drinks. Logan, pay the nice man.” Too numb to do much of anything else, Logan switches his rose to his coffee hand and passes Patton the first bill he finds in his pocket—a gently crumpled twenty.

Patton trades it for a ten and waves them in, laughing to himself. “I’m surprised at you, Virgil. I would’ve thought you’d try to argue that free admission days begin with ‘T,’ and ‘today’ starts with a T, or something like that.”

“Gotta keep ’em on their toes,” Cadmium calls over his shoulder, tugging a dumbfounded Logan inside. Once they’ve burst into the cool air conditioning of the lobby, Cadmium takes a long drink from his cup and stares at Logan. “So I guess that secret’s out, huh?”

“I’ll still call you Cadmium, if you prefer.”

“Nah, nah, it’s out, it’s too late, it’s fine. You were probably gonna find out eventually, right? Plus, I mean, it’s not like you can just walk around calling me a bone-strengthener forever.”

“That’s calcium.”

“Close enough.”

“I mean, not really close at all. Cadmium is usually found in batteries, and—”

“Close enough. Gimme that rose for a sec, would you?”

Logan hands it over and patiently waits for his feet to catch up with his mind as Cadmium—well, Virgil—walks away, fiddling with the stem of the flower. “What’re you—”

“Shh, just hold on. Walk next to me and pretend I just said something really funny.”

Albeit in a confused manner, Logan complies, bumping shoulders with Virgil. “Why did you—”

“One of your coworkers over there, from that first fetch quest at your office.” Logan tracks the angle of Virgil’s jerked chin to see Roman glancing sidelong at them. “Okay, hand out.” Virgil slips the rose—now fashioned into a thorny bracelet—over Logan’s wrist, careful to keep the sleeve between the thorns and his skin. “Here, try to look lovestruck or something.”

“I don’t—”

“Come on, we can pretend we’re on a date, it’ll be fun.” Logan (surprising no one) doesn’t know what to do, so he just stares at the rose. “It’ll screw with your coworker so bad, c’mon.” Taking Logan by the rose-adorned hand, Virgil drags him out of the lobby and into the room opposite from where they first met—well, first made eye contact, anyway, but who’s keeping track? (Logan. Logan is keeping track.) It’s probably just his imagination, but Logan can almost feel Roman’s eyes burning holes into his back.

“Alright, my dude, my guy, my home slice of pineapple and cheese,” Cadmium— Virgil , Logan reminds himself, that’s going to take some getting used to —says . “Walk me through the deeper meaning of this statue here.”

Logan adjusts his glasses, then adjusts them again. It’s admittedly weirder than he expected, being on the other side of this whole tour business. “Right, yes, um, see here, how it’s got blue coloring—”

“Paint,” Virgil corrects.

“Right, so it’s got blue paint along where the front of its teeth should be, and on the CMYK spectrum, blue—”

“Cyan.”

“Is opposite yellow, which represents the sun, and since they don’t have white or yellow on their teeth, but instead yellow’s opposite, it’s implying the absence of sun in their life, which leads to a lack of Vitamin D, the lack of which is a common catalyst for bone pain and muscle weakness. Many people break bones earlier in their life due to being more adventurous, so the artist is lamenting the loss of child-like wonder throughout adulthood by displaying the lack of it in their muse’s smile.”

Virgil rubs the flats of his knuckles along his chin, nodding slowly. “You took more leaps than I’d recommend for a first timer, but it wasn’t entirely terrible.” He angles his head across the room to where a couple of children are complaining loudly about their boredom to an unimpressed chaperone. “Let me show you how it’s done. Don’t take notes, that’s intellectual plagiarism.”

Virgil strolls to the painting just beside the one cluttered with children, folding his hands behind his back and rocking on the balls of his feet. A dumbfounded Logan follows close behind. “You know, Logan,” he says in a much louder voice than necessary, “I always knew it was the adults that were wrong.” The kids seem vaguely disinterested at best, but Virgil continues undeterred. Lots of practice, Logan supposes. “I mean, forcing them to do boring stuff like chores and homework when they have the audacity to do this kind of nonsense for fun?” The kids hardly bother to hide it as they turn to listen. However bored they might be, Virgil’s nonsense is surely more interesting than a soccer mom on her phone.

Logan loses the conversation thread almost as soon as he picks it up, but he’s pretty sure Virgil hits some objectively irrational points, including (but not limited to, because Virgil is apparently nothing if not limitless) nature, sticky glitter, scissors, trampolines, cats, a family-friendly version of a particular being in possession of three separate mammary glands from a particular sixth location with a four mile disaster zone radius, and key lime pie.

Once Virgil finally, finally, finally stops—for a breath or dramatic effect, Logan couldn’t say—he looks expectantly at the kids. Wide eyed and mouths agape, they simply stare at him, waiting for more. Virgil nudges Logan’s shoulder, gesturing vaguely at the mom that is still paying approximately zero iotas of attention. Logan, understandably bewildered and running low on improv-based creativity, crouches down to balance on the balls of his feet, levels his eyes with theirs.

“Do you know how he knows all that?” The smaller one—a girl of a slight build with braids shooting out the sides of her skull—shakes her head slowly. The boy—her brother, probably—just stares back at Logan. Logan leans in closer, willing a mischievous glint into his eyes as he lowers his voice conspiratorially. “It’s ’cause he’s from Neptune.”

The girl nudges the boy, her braids whapping against her face. “That means he’s an alien!” As his face explodes into a grin, the boy knocks his head against the woman’s leg.

“Mom, mom, that guy’s an alien! He told me so!”

“That’s very nice, Virgil. Is this your way of saying you want to see a different exhibit?” As the mom tugs the still stunned kids away, Logan straightens and glances at his companion.

“What’re the odds, huh? Heck of a coincidence.”

“No such thing as coincidences,” Virgil replies. “Just cloning experiments gone wrong.”

“That is quite possibly the most upsetting thing I’ve ever heard out of your mouth that wasn’t part of a tour.”

“How upsetting are my tours?”

“You did find a way to argue that Julius Caesar was responsible for the decrease in skittle flavored chapsticks.”

“One of my best rabbit holes, if I do say so myself.” Virgil glances back toward the lobby and shrugs off his cardigan.

“What’re you—”

“Patton and your coworker dude are both looking over here. Put this on and try to look cute.”

“Try?” Logan pretends not to feel just a little wounded by the implication that he doesn’t already look good and slips the cardigan on over his shirt. Well, he tries to—the bulky sleeves do a remarkable job of getting in the way and preventing literally any leeway past his elbows.

Virgil considers him for a moment before taking the cardigan back. “Got anything on under that shirt?”

“Yeah, an undershirt, but—”

“Sweater off. I’ll hold your bracelet. Quickly, boys, museum’s not open forever.” Logan complies, more out of fear than anything else, and wonders if anyone else has ever gone from ‘fine’ to ‘deeply uncomfortable’ in an art museum before. Mercifully, Virgil is quick as a whip in slipping the cardigan over his bare arms. Logan wonders whether it would be weird to comment on the complete lack of an outstanding smell to mark it as Virgil’s. Rather than supplement the question with evidence, he just watches as Virgil takes his discarded sweater and tugs it over his head.

“Check it out, sweater swap! Here, give me your tie, I want to play with it.” Hardly waiting for permission (which Logan would’ve given anyway), Virgil undoes the tie—a full windsor, if anyone’s curious, which Virgil isn’t and wasn’t—and fashions it into a bracelet. He holds it up to Logan’s rose bracelet and grins. “Matchy matchy?”

Logan huffs a laugh. “Matchy matchy.”

With that fascinating wardrobe change out of the way, Virgil leads Logan into the next room, asking for various opinions about various artworks as he goes. “I’m going to pretend I don’t know you stalk my tours when I tell you this, but the next room has, like, amazing lighting. There’s this pink and orange mosaic that shines on the floor where—”

True to form, Logan loses track of Virgil’s words as his attention turns to the feel of the cardigan against his skin. He only really finds his way back to the physical plane when he feels Virgil’s hand leave his arm.

“Okay,” Virgil says, “stay right there, put your hand on your hip and strike—yes! That’s it, hold it right there.” Virgil switches from framing Logan’s silhouette with his thumbs and index fingers to snapping pictures with his phone. “Look at the second to last painting on the east wall. No, the east wall—okay, that’s south, one more try—hold it! The light here is perfect , Logan, hold still! Oh, perfection.”

Logan wonders idly whether he looks as ridiculous as he feels. Probably. As he drops the pose and joins Virgil in pretending to terrorize a statue for the amusement of more children, he opens the camera on his own phone. Two can play this game, it’s just that Logan can play it better. At least, provided Virgil doesn’t know he’s playing.

At every chance he gets, Logan snaps a candid of Virgil, doing a very poor job of hiding it. Maybe Virgil’s just pretending not to notice. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, since Virgil stops basically every ten feet to demand Logan use the full potential of the environment. Where Virgil’s shots are all artsy and dramatic and well lit, Logan’s are blurry and consist largely of Virgil fidgeting with the tie wrapped around his wrist. Logan can almost see the headlines now— Bigfoot: Spotted en Route to a Job Interview at the Museum!

“Oh my goodness, you two are so cute!” a little old lady exclaims, shuffling over with a pale pink purse clutched to her chest. To Logan’s relief, she interrupts Virgil from noticing Logan taking a picture of how the filtered light washes golden dust over the sleeves of the grey sweater bunched up to his elbows. Pure luck, nothing more. “Are you on a date? Do you boys want me to take a picture for you?” Logan hides his phone as Virgil glances at him suspiciously in response to the mention of a picture being taken. Perhaps not Logan’s best move, but at least he got a good shot out of it.

“That would be wonderful, actually, thank you so much!” Virgil says, stepping beside her. “Okay, so you just press this button here, and—ope, that was a selfie, whoops! Okay, and just—yep, that’s it, and just press the white button!” The lady grins as she holds up the phone between two quivering hands, waiting for Virgil to finish fixing Logan’s sleeves. Once he’s finally content, he wraps an arm around Logan’s waist and hugs him to his side, resting his head atop Logan’s hair. They both flash bright smiles as Logan leans into the embrace, kind of surprised that he doesn’t have to fake the happy expression. The weight on his head is admittedly pretty alien, but by no means unwelcome.

“Alrighty, I think I got it! I might’ve taken too many, though,” the impromptu paparazzi says.

“Nonsense, I’m sure they’re perfect.” Virgil flutters his hands as if to shoo away the preposterous notion, chattering politely as they look through the pictures. Logan busies himself with staring at a painting to keep anyone from noticing how beet red his face is.

“How long have you two been together? It looked like you were still getting to know each other, what with all your picture taking!”

“Ha, yeah, we just met pretty recently, actually! I do tours here sometimes, mostly at a cheaper rate for high schoolers on field trips.”

The lady places a dainty hand over her lips, her eyebrows shooting up. “My word , are you the famous Ya Boi Virgil? My grandson raves about you, he swears you’re the only thing that kept him from failing his art history final!”

Virgil ducks his head, catching Logan’s eye and grinning. “Oh, please, he had it in him the whole time, I’m sure.”

The lady pats his elbow affectionately and sets her sights on Logan. “You better hold onto this boy tight, before someone else snatches him up, y’hear?”

Logan is taken aback, to say the least. “I, uh, yeah. Yes. Um, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.” Nodding like she’s satisfied that Logan can hold onto Virgil long enough to last, she gives both boys a little wave and disappears in the direction of the lobby. Logan sidles up to his companion. “Ya Boy Virgil?”

“Boi, with an I,” Virgil corrects. “‘Mister’ is too official for someone of my caliber, so I modified it to suit my standards. My job here is unofficial, so my title might as well be the same, right?”

“Yeah, speaking of which, what is your job? I mean, do you just talk at teenagers for a living, or what?”

“I don’t know, it just kinda happened out of nowhere, y’know?” Virgil moves on to the next room, still scrolling through the pictures. “I’ve been coming here ever since I was little, and I was basically a talking fixture that would history rant at anyone who would listen. The mid-higher ups just kind of unofficially brought me on board and started advertising my tours to schools, since I was already an unpaid tour guide, so I might as well have been bringing in revenue, y’know? I just do Tuesdays and Thursdays because I don’t love charging kids, but sometimes they’ll give me tips, so I get more than just fun out of it.”

Logan nods, trying to reconcile this information with how he’d been raised—attend college, get a job in a competitive field, rise through the ranks, reach the top, then quit and take half the company with you to start your own business. The real company you’d take along was literally the friends you made along the way. “Does that really net you enough to live off of?”

Virgil seems to stiffen at that, and Logan immediately wishes he were off being the only population on Neptune right now. “The fetch quests help, but I do well enough. Thanks for the assumption that I can’t keep my own life in order, though, I really love being looked at as a child. Because of course anyone without a steady nine to five job must be missing some crucial key necessary for surviving adulthood.”

“I—I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“M-mm,” Virgil interrupts, shaking his head. The seconds of silence stretch on, but Logan doesn’t dare speak again. Finally Virgil continues, “It’s fine. I’ve just had a lot of people get on my case about this stuff, and I didn’t really consider it to be first date discussion territory.” Logan nods, an almost imperceptible dip of his chin as he waits for the tension in the air to suffocate him. At Virgil’s continued silence, it becomes increasingly clear that he won’t be speaking first. Logan exhales.

“I really am sorry.”

Virgil stops walking.

“I promise you, it’s fine,” he says, turning to face Logan. “Not even a thing, as long as you don’t bring it up again. I am perfectly alright, see?” He peels his lips back from his teeth in what might be callously called a smile to prove his point.

“Okay, well, um, I’ve got a topic change for you. We’re at the end of the museum.” Logan gestures to the lobby, where Roman is still loitering. Weird. “I, uh, am I going to see you again? Er, can I?”

Virgil hesitates, then holds out his hand. Logan stares at it. “Phone?”

“Oh. Oh!” Logan unlocks his phone and hands it over, watching Virgil add himself to the contacts list—‘Cadmium,’ followed by a battery emoji.

“And to answer your question, yes, we have to see each other again.” Virgil holds up the tie looped around his wrist. “You’ve still got my headphones and that cardigan, so I’m holding your tie hostage until both items are back in my possession.” With that, Virgil spins on his heel and walks out the front door, waving to Patton as he goes. Patton barely acknowledges it, too absorbed in conversation with Roman, who’s pretending not to stare at Logan. Logan doesn’t notice, his eyes focused on how Virgil’s silhouette is imprinted in the ghost of the sunspots in his eyes.

[ohstardust]

Give Yourself A Try - [B.B AU]

Prompt: A & B once dated, everything turned a little ugly but they go on a bonding camping trip with their friends, they get lost during sunset and talk all the shit out until they’re okay again. A/N: I’ve had this little prompt rattling around in my brain for the past year, originally to be written about Aneurin Barnard but then I had a tonne of Bucky feels to go with it so here you go. Also, this is my very first Marvel piece of writing, I can’t believe it, FINALLY. We all love AU’s right? x Title: Give Yourself A Try by The 1975

The blazing sun had begun to set over the lakeside, the air turning cooler and the humidity easing off. Burnt oranges, rose pinks, sapphire blues bleeding into the skyline, the daylight fading overhead as the group of friends drank and laughed and smiled warm smiles, beer bottles clinked and legs splashed in the lake. The last weekend of August had been their retreat, a relaxed get-together to enjoy the end of summer and to catch up with each others lives, re-tell memories and stories from their past. It had been too long since they last basked in the content comfort of their friends. Tents littered the field surrounding the water, a cluster of coloured canvas brightened up their patch, before long a log fire would need to be lit to lead the way and that’s why Steve took the reins and sent Bucky & Y/n to fetch wood. He’d never admit to the genuine reason for sending the pair out together on this short quest, he had factually told them that everyone else was preoccupied and they were the only ones who hadn’t been dipping their toes in water for the past 3 hours, and he left it at that. It seemed like a crock of horseshit, but Bucky and she were adults and, although they hadn’t directly spoken to each other in over a year, they weren’t about to squabble with Steve over something they could most definitely handle.

Peggy and Natasha’s raucous laughter could be heard in the distance as Bucky and Y/n trudged side by side in silence, the sound upturned her lips slightly and she felt such a fondness for her friends, they’ve been through many tough times together but they always came out stronger because they had each other. They were there to pick each other up, dust them off and push them forward. It’s why they’d remained together over the past ten or so years. The wide expanse of woods before them was daunting and so vast, it extended for miles and it made her fingers twitch to reach out fo Bucky’s as a source of comfort. She never had done well with anything remotely unnerving. But she wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that, it wasn’t the same anymore, they weren’t the same anymore. “Are we gonna stay silent all weekend or are we going to actually be civilised and make small talk?” She tentatively asked, her white plimsoll kicked up some soil and she buried her fists into her sweatshirt pockets. Bucky stilled for a moment, her voice sounding so familiar yet so foreign being directed towards him, his heart clenched and he gruffly exhaled through his nose. “Silence seemed easier, I thought that’s what you wanted.” “I did for a while, but I think I can talk to you without wanting to shake you now, so that must count for something.” Her shoulders shrugged in a feeble attempt to brush the exchange off and she tried to smile a little, make the whole thing seem like a joke. But it wasn’t a joke, what happened hurt too much to be laughed off. “You have every right to want to scream at me or slap me. I deserve it.” “It’s in the past, it doesn’t matter anymore.” “You were right when you left - what you said - you were right.” “Hmm?” Many things had been said the evening she walked out of Bucky’s apartment, so much said yet not enough to understand each other and what they were thinking. Was it how she called him selfish? heartless? secretive? unfaithful? She wasn’t all too sure she wanted an answer if it was the latter. “You are worth more than how I treated you, I handled the whole thing so badly and I fucked up big time,” Bucky rubbed his palm over his face and scraped his hair back as he sighed,” I should have talked to you instead of being so angry.” Her tongue wet her lips and instead of breaking out in a rage like she’d anticipated all those months ago, her voice travelled out quiet and soft, “I never had an explanation, you kept me in the dark, how could I have helped you if you wouldn’t let me in?” “You couldn’t have helped me no matter what I did, I needed to help myself. I just hadn’t thought about how it affected you, I was too caught up in my own head to see what I was doing to you.” “What happened? i’m not saying I deserve to know, because I don’t anymore, but whatever it was affected my life too, regardless of whether I know or not.” Bucky stopped his feet from moving and halted Y/n, he turned to face her to try and explain what he’d done wrong, why he’d ruined a once perfectly good relationship with his own head and grief and frustrations. He needed to make her see that it wasn’t her fault, and in some ways, it wasn’t entirely his too, everything had just become so blurry and mucky and devastating. “I - I was having night terrors about the accident, all I could see was me being thrown from that damn - fucking - motorcycle in slow-motion and, no matter what I did differently, I - every time I ended up with the same injury. I didn’t understand it at first and it made me so angry and infuriated, like this damn thing isn’t already a constant reminder,” Bucky raised his prosthetic arm and dropped it back to swing beside him. “I was too scared to sleep in case I dreamt it again and then it made me cranky and miserable and I took it out on the one person that was just trying to help me, the one person that loved me regardless of how fucked up I was - still am - and I regret it more than I can tell you.” “You could have come to me, I was so confused and upset and so fucking hurt, I blamed myself for so long before I walked out of that door.” “It was never your fault, I know I didn’t make you see otherwise, but you weren’t to blame. This was all me.” “Buck - you went through this alone, I was right beside you the whole time, but you were still alone, and I hate that.” “I felt so ridiculous for feeling that irked by my dreams, it was suffocating and too much. but at the same time it didn’t feel enough to worry anyone. You all care so much about me and worry enough as it is, part of me didn’t want to burden you.” “I was your partner, that’s what I was there for - to share the load and lift some of the weight - Christ, isn’t that part of a relationship?” Y/n’s vision blurred as she bit back a sob. “Yes and no, I’m sorry that I hurt you but I’m not sorry for not dragging you into my head.” “I’d have done anything to help you, to make you feel better. That’s what you do for those you love.” “There was nothing you could have done.” “You didn’t give me the chance, Buck.” She glanced at him and exhaled deeply then show her head and pushed on forward to collect a few scraps of wood that were sufficient enough for their fire. Her mood for a campfire and s’mores had been thoroughly extinguished and she was suddenly so tired, she just wanted to sleep the day off and start fresh tomorrow. Whether she was on speaking terms with her ex-boyfriend or not. Bucky muttered to himself, “It was for your own good.” The pair walked on for a few minutes, back to the tranquil silence that they’d kept half an hour ago, minds ticked like clockwork as they mulled over everything possible to say. Bucky pondered over how badly everything had fallen apart, he’d fucked up the one relationship he’d had since his accident and pushed away the first woman that hadn’t looked the other way once they noticed his artificial limb. She’d embraced it and treated him equally, he hadn’t been used to that since before - since before things had gone to shit. He just couldn’t regret the fact he’d done what he thought was best for her. “Y/n - look - I’m sorry, okay? So stupidly sorry for hurting you.” Her jaw clenched and she willed herself to not cry in front of Bucky, she wanted to be stronger than that, she was stronger than that. Instead she slowed her pace and blinked slowly, “Were you intentionally trying to brush over the fact I basically told you I loved you?” Bucky wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry or drop to one knee and beg for her forgiveness, “I wasn’t taking it too literally.” She met his gaze and pulled her mouth into the closest thing to a genuine smile she’d shot him in so long, “You should have.” Her pace quickened as she noticed Steve and Peggy’s tent approaching and broke out into a jog to join her friends. With a beer in hand and marshmallows roasting over the fire Thor and Carol had started she scanned their group, the wide grins, college sweaters, Scott sassing Sam, Wanda, Bruce, Tony and Clint singing hopelessly off key the more they drank, and Loki sat off to the side, relaxed and laughing at the four of them. She could feel Bucky’s eyes with their pointed stare on her and she shot him a smile and raised her bottle in salute. He mimicked her action and took a mouthful. Later that night, after one too many and a blissed-out warmth settled into her bones, she leant in close to him whilst their friends danced around the fire and whispered, “I miss you, okay? I’m trying to move past what happened and be your friend again, because I love you.”

[purple-spring]

The Christmas Letters - BH one-shot

Merry Christmas, one and all, and particularly to my Bughead Secret Santa @rubyventure!

This is a super fluffy holiday one-shot, one that I absolutely loved writing, and hopefully one that you (and everyone else) will enjoy.

Summary: Jughead hated Christmas traditions. Until he created his own.

Includes: Lots of literary references (including Harry Potter! That one was especially for you, @rubyventure!), Jughead’s Underwood typewriter, and a super sweet surprise at the end.

Fic after the cut. Happy reading!

Jughead Jones hated Christmas traditions. Every single one of them. The caroling, the mistletoe, the eggnog, the trimming of the tree, and especially all the shitty movie reruns (he tried banning all Christmas films at the Twilight during his time there, but Riverdale nearly rioted and Mayor McCoy had to step in).

He liked playing it off as a Grinch-like aversion to anything bright or merry, but the truth was that Jughead was wary of most traditions. Because what else was tradition other than another accepted standard that he and his family would fail to live up to?

The Joneses were a mess most of the time, but they were particularly terrible at Christmas. Dinner was always a sad affair of whatever his mom could cobble together from the pantry, gifts were off the table because they were always broke, and his dad would always drink himself to a stupor. So he hated the whole thing, but he repressed his sad childhood story, and passed off his hatred of the season as a belief that it was nothing more than a cheap excuse for consumerism and manufactured joy.

But one year, that all changed.

Maybe it was the fact that everything he once held to be true was coming apart at the seams - Riverdale, his family, his relationship with Betty - and he wanted something consistent and hopeful to hold on to. Or maybe it was the vintage Underwood that now sat proudly at his desk, reminding him of his love of words and literature. Either way, that year, when the Black Hood terrorised Riverdale, he caved in: he unwittingly created his own Christmas traditions.

It started when he tried to write again. On Christmas Day, Jughead eagerly sat in front of his new typewriter and rolled in a blank sheet of paper, waiting for inspiration to strike. But it was no use. He’d been so out of touch with his novel for so long that he couldn’t even remember the last thing he wrote for it.

There was an old adage for writers that Jughead liked repeating to himself: write what you know. It was the reason why he wrote about Riverdale to begin with. But lately, he had been so isolated from that Riverdale - the Northside he had grown up with - that writing it seemed like a far-fetched idea.

What did he know now? What could he write about?

The Serpents? Out of the question.

His family? Too miserable.

As snow fell outside, Jughead’s fingers hovered over the typewriter keys, eager to write something, anything. What’s the story that I want to tell, the one that’s right under my skin?

Before he knew it, he was typing out a letter to Betty Cooper.

…

My beloved,

If you were here right now, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’d tell me how I’ve misappropriated that word - “beloved” - in the card that accompanied your Christmas present. It’s obviously a beautiful word on its own, but I could almost hear you in my ear, saying that I’ve missed the point, because the word is used in a tragic sense in Toni Morrison’s novel.

I want you to know that I totally get that, and perhaps - in this letter that will probably never see the light of day - I could take the opportunity to explain myself.

I never actually finished the book. It came to me while we were in the middle of being broken up. I knew it was one of your favourites, and one day I came across it in the library. Because I was a sucker for pain, I decided to read it, to try and conjure up a shadow of you to comfort myself.

…which is essentially what Sethe does in the book, right? She meets this young woman, Beloved, and suddenly decides that it’s the daughter that she murdered as a 2-year-old, and spoils and indulges her. She does this because she feels guilty, and also because she misses her.

I don’t know how the story ends, but I know this: that book was a poor substitute for you. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t finish it. Because I realised that I wanted the real Betty Cooper, not just her favourite book.

You are my own beloved - the ghost that I will keep chasing and seeing everywhere until you are mine again.

Merry Christmas. Although I haven’t said this in a while, it still holds true: I love you.

Jug.

…

And so began two Christmas traditions for Jughead.

Every year, come holiday season, he would do two things: on Christmas Eve, he would give Betty a book as a Christmas present. Not just any book, but something that reflected her, or the way that he felt about her. Then, on Christmas Day, he would use his typewriter to write her a letter - one that she would never read - and place it in a box he kept hidden in his room.

The books were easy to explain. Growing up, he and Betty had always loved reading. It was a world of their own that excluded Archie, who found reading difficult and uninteresting. But Jughead’s act of giving her books was more than that: it was a way for him to express how he felt about her through the words of others, when he found his own inadequate.

Which explains the letters.

The letters were Jughead’s own postscript, his crib notes for why he had chosen each book and what it represented of his feelings for Betty. She didn’t know about them, and he imagined that he’d never show her. They were more for his benefit. Through them, he could make sense of how he felt for her, and where their relationship stood during each particular Christmas.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved, given during that first, miserable Christmas, was telling: he missed her, and he had nothing more than the echoes of her to live off.

The following Christmas was better: they were reconciled and thriving after a tumultuous year of working their way back from the fallout of the Black Hood, and he gifted her with his own worn copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Jughead had fond memories of him and Betty sitting quietly in his old treehouse, reading the Harry Potter series together while Archie played with all the other kids in the neighbourhood. At age 12, they raced each other to the end of the series, and debated endlessly about that last sentence (Betty liked it; Jughead thought it was silly and a wasted opportunity).

On Christmas Day that year, he rolled a piece of paper into the Underwood and wrote:

Horcruxes are made out to be this awful, terrible thing in the novel, but in real life, are we not always giving our souls away to different things and different people? This year, I’ve felt mine being stitched back together after all the fracturing that happened last year. And while small pieces of it remain unaccounted for, I can say this wholeheartedly today: so much of it belongs to you, Betty Cooper.

In the Christmas before they went off to college, he gave her a copy of Homer’s Odyssey. Betty was off to Columbia, while he had been accepted to Amherst. Within five minutes of receiving his letter in the mail, he had already mapped out the distance between the two colleges, and calculated the time that it would take for him to drive up to New York during the weekends. They had dreamt of going to college together, but it was not meant to be. That being said, a mere 4-hour drive between Boston and New York on the weekends was the next best thing, and they spent many of their Saturdays over the next four years driving between the two campuses and spending nights at each other’s dorm rooms.

Betty loved his present, saying that Homer’s Odyssey was a quintessential college reading experience. While he agreed with her, that wasn’t the reason he got her the book that year.

In his letter, he wrote, You would think that Odysseus’ story would centre on his heroic role in the Trojan War, in the Iliad, but no: we remember him instead for The Odyssey, for his journey home. For all the hype that Amherst has for me, with my old man proud as punch that I’d be the first in the family to attend college, all I can think of right now is that four-hour drive to New York, climbing the steps up to your dorm room, and knocking on your door. College is my Trojan War, but the true quest for me is the journey home to you.

And on and on it continued, every single year. Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, right before they embarked on an epic road trip to Austin for SXSW. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News the year that she interned for The New York Times. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist when she was struggling with her studies and contemplating switching majors.

Each one was accompanied with a letter that she never saw, carefully typed on Christmas Day and tucked away into the secret box in his room. After he wrote each one, he always briefly contemplated sending them all to her. But to do so would be to break tradition, and if he was to do that, he decided that it would have to be for a very special reason.

…

“I don’t get a book this year?”

Jughead was at the Coopers’ House on Christmas Eve, dropping off presents for the family. Alice and Hal had slowly accepted him into the fold over the past ten years, and this year, he felt more welcome than ever to their home. Betty was pouting at the door as she was seeing him off.

“I’m sorry, love,” Jughead said, kissing her on the temple. “Stupid Amazon couldn’t deliver it on time. Apparently it’s in demand.”

Betty eyed him curiously. “A book that’s in demand this time of year? So… either a new release or some sort of Christmas tale.” She looked triumphant.

“Oh, come on, don’t try to guess. You’ll probably end up figuring it out.”

“Alright then,” she said, tiptoeing to put her arms around his neck. “You’ll be okay to drive home? The roads are a bit icy.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he leaned down to kiss her, then remembered something. “By the way, did you get everything in to Trish for that Lilith end-of-year review?” Betty had just become the news editor for Lilith, an alternative online news and culture website aimed towards young women, and she was thriving, making Jughead proud. She deserved it.

“Ugh. Yes. Believe me, if I see another listicle in this lifetime, I might throw it all in and just run the Riverdale Register.” Jughead chuckled at that. “What about you? Did you have to run anything like that for Slate?”

“No, thank god,” he said. “And somehow, I don’t think anyone wants to see a Top Ten True Crimes list.”

She laughed. “You never know.”

“That’s true,” he said. “I mean, you and I would read it.”

“Yes, but that’s because we grew up in this town.” They both laughed at that. Among many things, Riverdale had gifted them with a macabre sense of humour.

“Alright,” he said. “I better get going. I’ll see you at lunch at ours tomorrow?”

“Yes. Also, you’re 100% sure that Jellybean would like the scarf?”

“Absolutely.” He smiled and gave her a last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you, Jug.”

He walked down to his car and got in, waving at Betty as he drove off. As soon as he turned a corner, he pulled over and called Archie.

“Jug.”

“Hey, Arch. Coast clear?”

“Yep. She just went in. You’re good to go.”

…

At five minutes to midnight, right before Christmas Day, Jughead stood outside Betty’s window.

Snow was starting to fall. He tucked Betty’s Christmas present into his jacket to try and protect it from damage - the one he got her in lieu of a book that year. It was a book, technically, but not quite yet. It was yet to be published. 

Jughead couldn’t help it: he had to look at the manuscript cover again. Just this once. Just so he could believe that this was actually happening.

“Of Bulldogs, Serpents and Vixens. A novel by Jughead Jones.”

After so many years of trying (and failing) to pick up from where he left off with his novel, Jughead had spent the past six months smashing it out on his typewriter like a man possessed by the Muses. His Slate editor, Rick, was positively aghast that he was insisting on the typewritten manuscript (“The fact that there is no soft copy of this is giving me hives, Jughead. HIVES!”), but he was firm: the novel would be written on the Underwood, or not at all.

He hadn’t told Betty about the novel. When he started working on it again, the words flowed too fast that he knew that stopping and showing her would only disrupt his momentum. And in her ignorance, he sensed an opportunity.

Jughead looked down at his watch. Two minutes to go.

He was excited to give Betty his manuscript, but it was only one out of the three presents he was planning to give her that night. As nerve-wracking as it was to give her the manuscript, he was actually more nervous about his second gift. Looking up at her window, he saw it propped up on the seat, wrapped with a large red bow. 

He had bribed Polly’s twins (with an obscene amount of money - they were crafty Blossoms, after all) to take his box of Christmas letters into Betty’s room after she fell asleep, and to place it neatly on her window seat - the very same one he had stepped onto all those years ago, when he first kissed her.  Before handing it over, he made sure that the letters were in the correct order - chronological, with the newest one at the bottom of the pile. He wanted her to read that one last.

He had the letter typed for weeks now, as soon as he had finished the first draft of his manuscript. Unlike the other Christmas letters, which usually took him upwards of an hour to write, this one was written quickly, as if the words were in him all along.

Betty,

This is the gift I wanted to give you this year – the manuscript for my novel, the story I’d been writing since our teens.

It’s the story of our town - or, at least, it started out that way. In the past few months, as each chapter poured out of me as quickly as the rapids of the Sweetwater current, I realised that the story of Riverdale as I saw it was actually OUR story. Of our childhood, of the tenuous beginnings of our relationship, of the rollercoaster it endured, and of how we were brought back together by the sheer force of our love for one another. 

I’ve given you a book each Christmas because I felt as though my words were not enough to express how much I felt for you. But that all changed this year as I gained the inspiration to commit this all to paper, using the typewriter that YOU gave me.

Which is a beautiful metaphor, don’t you think? It is YOU who gives me the words, who inspires me to write, to create. 

This won’t be your last book from me. Tradition demands that I continue to give you one every Christmas. But this is, I believe, the most important one.

This is me asking you to come with me on a new journey, to write a new chapter in our lives together.

To fill the next pages of this book. With new memories, new stories, perhaps even new characters.

With more of us. 

He looked up again at the window.

It really was the perfect spot - symbolic, and practical. His heart started beating faster when he saw the light switch on. The twins were probably bouncing on their aunt’s bed now, screaming that it was Christmas, asking her to open the present on her window seat.

He looked down at his phone. Right on cue, a message came through from Archie. Lights are ready to come on, when you’re ready.

Jughead inhaled sharply, the cold air invigorating him with courage. Hopefully, while sitting there, as she read that final letter, she could see him outside, surrounded by the fairy lights he had set up earlier in the week.

Kneeling in the snow. Holding his third present - the small box inside his jacket pocket.

Asking her to marry him. 

[stompsite]

On The Importance of Caring

Some time ago, I invited a friend over to watch one of my favorite movies with me. I was excited to share one of my favorites, sure that he’d enjoy it. Everything started out great, but my friend received a text, pulled out his phone, started texting back, and then, half an hour into the movie, looked up at me blankly and said ‘I don’t get this. Can we watch something else?’ I wanted to scream. He wasn’t paying attention to the movie! Of course he didn’t get it!

That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates an important point: if people don’t connect with your story, they’ll want to try something else. My friend created his own problem, but he’s far from the only person to struggle with following a movie. Heck, I’m a pretty smart dude who makes a living as a critic and game developer, I went to school to learn how to make and explain movies, and I still struggle to follow what’s going on in some stories.

What’s the point of watching a movie we aren’t connected to? David Mamet, one of the best living playwrights, once said “ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.” He wrote it just like that, in all caps, in a letter to the writers of a television show he was working on.

It’s important to note that your audience doesn’t need to understand your story, and that’s why I haven’t used the word until now. It’s important that they connect to it emotionally. I loved watching Twin Peaks: The Return last summer, but I definitely didn’t understand that final episode. Emotionally, I connected with it, and it left a lasting impression on me, but I can’t tell you what was actually happening in that episode.

We make art for two primary reasons: to teach people things and to process emotions. Most of the former stuff is what you get in school, like “see spot run,” or religious instruction, like Jesus’ parables. Most of the stuff we make is about emotional journeys. You might be watching an exciting action movie or a drama about coping with loss, but whatever the case is, you’re doing it to get some emotional experience out of it. The worst thing that can happen, then, is an emotional disconnect from the work.

The key to connecting to a work is emotional engagement.

So, in fiction, over the millennia, storytellers have developed tools for keeping audiences engaged. Some folks are good at it. Others aren’t. Steven Spielberg is particularly great; Jaws is a masterpiece of tension; we watch it because it excites us, and Spielberg has made dozens of great movies that resonate with audiences around the world.

It’s not a science, though. Emotions aren’t like programs; you can’t input the same information to every human and expect the same output. You can ballpark it, but we’re all going to react in different ways. I can’t really tell you how I feel when watching Alien other than “it always grabs my attention,” but I know some people who roll their eyes at how dumb it is and others who are too scared to watch it all the way through.

We know some stuff works; dogs are good boys, so if a dog dies, the audience will probably be sad. That said, we also know that you have to earn the emotions you want; you can’t just kill a dog and make the audience sad, the audience has to care that the dog. If the dog is a bad junkyard dog that harries our protagonists, we probably aren’t going to be nearly as sad if it dies.

One of the biggest problems in movies is that they forget to earn their emotion. A monster attacking New York is a much bigger-scale problem than a couple in New York going through a divorce, but Godzilla is not as emotionally impactful to most people as Kramer vs Kramer is. We care more about Ted Kramer losing his son than we do about a bunch of people whose names I’ve forgotten facing off against Zilla. That movie was so bad, by the way, that Toho doesn’t even consider Zilla to be a ‘real’ Godzilla.

So it’s hard to get people to care, and a lot of work has to go into making them care, but even if you pull that off, they might struggle anyways. One reason that most television shows weren’t serialized for most of the 20th Century is that people might miss an episode and have no idea what was going on.

Arrested Development was a show that required its audience to watch every episode. The Simpsons works because every episode ends where it began. If a Simpsons season airs out of order or you miss an episode, you can still understand what’s going on. If the same thing happens in Arrested Development, nothing makes sense anymore.

I spoke with a TV writer who worked on Boston Legal, who explained that every episode was an exercise in reintroducing their characters; even non-serialized shows still need to help the audience connect to the characters. You can’t assume anyone knows what’s going on; some of the most successful television shows on the planet are successful because even channel surfers can tune in and grok things.

In games, it can be worse. You can watch a movie in a single sitting; it might take some patience, especially if you’re used to checking your phone every ten minutes, but you can make it through. Procedural TV shows are successful because each episode works as a stand-alone story. In contrast, most games can take days, weeks, and even months to complete. Heck, I started Company of Heroes four years ago and I’m still not finished with it.

That’s a lot of words to make a simple point: all stories need to make sure the audience connects with ‘em on an emotional level, but games need to do it the most, because it’s harder to connect to games emotionally than anything else, because it’s so easy to distract audiences.

If you asked me what I thought of Assassin’s Creed Origins, I’d tell you that it’s one of the best games in the series. If you asked me about the writing, I’d tell you that it’s pretty good; several people in my Twitter feed have noted that Bayek, the game’s protagonist, speaks differently to adults than he does to children, but not in a way that feels condescending. He’s friendly, warm, and open. He’s a good man and father, but one who has been wounded by some ugly circumstances, including the murder of his son.

I like Bayek almost as much as I like Ezio Auditore, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed II, which remains the best game in the series, but more on that in a moment.

Origins has an unfortunate problem, which is in the way it introduces characters.

Since I’m talking about the story of Origins, we’re gonna get into spoiler territory. Normally, I don’t care all that much about issuing spoiler warnings, because my assumption is that if you’re reading criticism of a game, you should expect spoilers, but it’s a recent enough game that I’ll be on the safe side and offer you one now.

The game begins with Bayek assassinating… some guy. We’re not really sure who this guy is or why, but Bayek doesn’t really like him that much. Then he fights his way out of some ruins and meets another guy, who is a friend of some kind. We’re not really sure why they’re friends or what their relationship is, and when that guy dies later in the game, most of us probably didn’t care all that much, because the guy gives us like two early quests, and that’s the extent of our relationship with him.

You know whose death people do care about? Aeris Gainsborough, because we spend a lot of time with her in the game; she’s not just someone we meet once and then forget about on our wacky adventures until she dies, she’s someone we build a relationship with; her death matters because she matters to us.

Some of you might want to protest at this point that Bayek is Bayek and I am Me, and I cannot connect to Bayek’s friends the way he does, and that’s true. Have you ever heard of the rule “show, don’t tell”? That rule exists as a means of leveraging empathy to help people connect to a story. If someone says “Sarah is crying because her dog died,” you might feel nothing, because you don’t know who Sarah is or that her dog died. You can rationally understand that a dog dying is a sad event, but you are unlikely to connect to Sarah on an emotional level. If Sarah is your best friend, and she calls you on the phone in tears because her dog, Spot, who you used to play fetch with in the park, was hit by a car, then you’re going to feel a lot more strongly about it.

So Bayek is angry and he’s talking about some guys with weird animal names and how he’s going to kill them. He talks about how he’s been gone for a while but now he’s back. He talks about being a medjay, which is never really explained in depth, but it sounds like a kind of Egyptian Sheriff, who roams the land righting wrongs.

There are two problems here. First, we’re processing this intellectually, not emotionally, so it doesn’t really resonate with us. Second, the writers appear to be doing their best to approach this realistically. What I mean is, Bayek isn’t like “ugh, I’ve lost my memory, please explain how everything works?” or “hmm, I’ve forgotten you, who are you? Please tell me who you are.” Some games approach this with more subtlety; I love Half-Life because nobody knows what’s going on, not just you. There’s nothing to explain.

Origins clearly understands that awkward exposition can be annoying, so it avoids it and hopes the audience will infer most of what it needs to know… until it decides to flashback back to when Bayek’s son was still alive. Bayek gets to explain a bit about what being a Medjay is to his son, which is a nice, naturalistic way to exposit, and eventually we see how his son was murdered and why he’s mad at all these animal dudes that he’s been killing. Then we’re back in the present, doing more quests. At one point, you stumble across Bayek’s house. I did not realize, for the longest time, that this was Bayek’s house. It was just A House. Then Bayek said something and I was like “ooooh… okay.” But I didn’t feel like it mattered to me.

In an ideal world, the audience emotions are in lockstep with the character emotions. At some point, Bayek decides to go stab some more dudes in the face, and find out how his wife has been doing stabbing some other dudes in the face. We’ve never met her and only heard references to her so far, so when we do finally meet her… well, Bayek seems relieved, but this is our introduction to the character. What we feel about this meeting and what he feels about it are two different things; I’ve never met Aya. She’s a stranger. I feel like a third wheel, disconnected from the experience.

Now, I’m not going to take you through the entirety of the game, but this ends up being a consistent problem. When I met Julius Caesar--you know, that Julius Caesar--I didn’t realize it was him at first. It was just some dude. Then it turns out the villain is actually his… sidekick? There’s this guy we meet in like… one scene in the game? Julius, or Jules, if you’re buds, is like “hey, that guy you want to kill who you thought killed your son? He’s not the dude. Also I don’t want you to kill him, I’m going to arrest him.” The real guy is his bodyguard dude who’s standing next to him. At one point he says something like “yes, Caesar, I will ready the guards” or something, but when it’s revealed that he’s the villain, it’s… it just feels kind of random?

Alpha Protocol did this too; I remember playing that game and finding out that the real big bad was… the guy who helped me put on gear at the start of the game or something. Like, a random guy who was in a couple scenes and just kind of forgettable, the game suddenly states “hey, he’s the bad guy! Mwahahaha!”

I think the game writers believe this is clever. “Wow, that guy in the background was an evil villain the whole time!” But this only works if you actually know the character and don’t suspect them. A forgettable character is not the same thing. No One Lives Forever pulled this off by having a drunkard in every single level; it seemed like a funny gag. Every time you met him, it was like “haha, oh, this guy again.” Then it turned out that he was the villain the entire time. Because you recognized him, the revelation mattered. No other game has done this nearly as well. Origins doesn’t do it well at all.

What’s weird is, so many times, you’re playing the game and it just seems to assume that you know who you’re talking to. When people were saying the guy’s name--and I didn’t encounter it enough times to remember it, despite playing almost nothing but Assassin’s Creed Origins from beginning to end in the span of two weeks--I wasn’t matching the name to the face. I didn’t know who the guy was.

Imagine someone going “wow, Bob? I can’t believe Bob was the villain the whole time!” and I’m over here just wondering who Bob is. Who is it that all these people are talking about? I have no idea.

Origins does that a lot.

It’s hard to care when you can’t put a name to a face. It’s hard to care when you feel like you don’t know what’s going on. It’s hard to care when you aren’t feeling what the protagonist is feeling; the best stories are so often about experiencing the same emotional journey as the characters. We should feel scared when they feel scared, exhilarated when they feel exhilarated, angry when they feel angry. If I feel disinterested when Bayek feels angry, then I’m not going to feel satisfied when I kill the men who murdered his son. Instead, I’m going to feel like I just checked off another item on the list.

DOOM is so satisfying because you feel what Doomguy feels. You’re just as happy to kill demons as he is.

Origins is a huge game; I have like 60 hours in it and have tons of sidequests left to complete and locations left to find. I can’t help but feel that some of the game’s resources could have been better spent trying to introduce things better. Instead of an in media res introduction, what if the game had began with Bayek performing the duties of a Medjay, spending time with his wife, helping his son become a better man… and then losing all of that.

There’s a villain we kill named the Crocodile. We meet a little girl, and later, she gets killed. We find out who did it--the Crocodile’s henchmen. We hunt down those henchmen. We meet an “old friend” (who Bayek knows but we don’t), fight alongside her in the arena, and eventually kill the henchmen. Then suddenly our old friend is… somehow a bodyguard for the Crocodile now? The Crocodile is a random old lady who was in the arena crowds, who we literally never met or even saw before? Seeing the Celts, watching how intimidating they were, and killing them because they hurt a kid we knew mattered.

I ran into the Crocodile’s house and killed her before it even dawned on me that the person she was speaking with was Bayek’s old friend.

How much better would it have been if we knew the Crocodile in her human guise? If we knew our old friend from the time before, then meeting her again would feel relieving; we’d be happy to know someone had our back. Her eventual betrayal and service to the Crocodile would actually matter. As it was, when I killed the Crocodile, my ‘old friend’ simply despawned, and I never saw her again. I think the game wanted me to care that she’d switched sides. I barely knew her and she disappeared when I stabbed the Crocodile with my hidden blade.

Speaking of the hidden blade, it’s weird to me that the game never really goes into its creation; it’s the most iconic thing in the entire series, and it just… kinda happens? Bayek accidentally slices his finger off at one point, the end. Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II both made it out to be this big, important thing. Losing your finger was the mark of becoming an assassin. The blade was part of that identity. In Origins, blink and you’ll miss it.

Normally, when I criticize a game, I try to talk about why something works or doesn’t, but I try not to say “it might be better if they did this or that.” The reason for this is because I don’t know what it was like for the developers to make the game, and hey, the game’s out now, so it’s not like they can change things. Recommendations are for when I’m consulting on a game, not after the fact.

Here, I’ve talked about what Assassin’s Creed Origins could have done to make things better, and that reason is this: because another game already did it.

Assassin’s Creed II begins with you as Ezio Auditore, punk teenager living a life of luxury with his family in Florence. Everything seems nice. When you meet Leonardo da Vinci, the game makes it clear that, hey, this is Leonardo da Vinci. It treats it as sort of a casual thing, but does so in a way that still makes it clear that you’re meeting an important historical character, as opposed to Julius Caesar’s introduction in Origins.

There’s a confidence in Assassin’s Creed II; the game takes it slow. Instead of murdering villainous scum, you beat up a punk who insulted your sister. You help your brother find feathers. You perform errands for your mother. You learn how to do everything in the small sandbox of Florence before the game properly begins, and in doing so, you build relationships with some of the game’s most important characters.

When your father, who seems like a good and honorable man, is unjustly imprisoned, you feel desperate to save him. When your father and brothers are hanged, your mother suffers a mental breakdown, and you and your sister are forced to go on the run, your plight feels dangerous. You feel angry and helpless.

You don’t know the murderer’s name, but you know his face, because you’ve seen him repeatedly throughout the game. Uncovering his identity--Rodrigo Borgia, is a big part of Assassin’s Creed II’s adventure. Every step of the way, Assassin’s Creed II primes you emotionally for what’s to come. When bad things happen to people you’re allied with, you care, because you’ve built relationships with these people. When you take down the Borgias, it’s so satisfying because you knew them.

A random guy who was Caesar’s sidekick is way less satisfying to kill.

Origins plays better, in some ways, than Assassin’s Creed II. The quests are enjoyable. The world design is neat. I love the map. I love the more modern controls. The combat system is undoubtedly better--it’s a very Dark Souls-inspired controller setup. This is a game that has learned so many important lessons from other great games.

I just wish I cared more about the people I met along the way.

I wanted to post this last month, but then I got hospitalized. Oops. Turns out I’m diabetic and I have a heart condition that requires surgery. It took a lot out of me. Really sorry this one’s being posted in April instead of March. I’m hoping to publish a lot more this month, though!