#tiny tim is just fun to draw in general
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
lopsaii · 2 years ago
Text
okay so I've been reading lots of de-aged Tim fics and I've noticed a pattern
usually its either :
Tumblr media
or
Tumblr media
and then there's the third possiblity of the fam uncovering Tim's hidden trauma
1K notes · View notes
goldfishinaplasticbag · 17 days ago
Note
MR. FISHBAG HELLO!!!
i saw your timmy plush. pray tell how you made him look so cutesie?? or how you made him in general??? please??
i've been planning to make my friend bafman merch since forever and i wanna sew them a plush but idk howwww ajfnksjfkajgjahfi
hello! the process of getting into nui plush making is both hard and easy at the same time, but I will do my best to break it down for you ^^
first, find a template you like. I used diawu_q’s 5cm template, which makes that star shaped body. if you want a longer body, go for 10-15cm. I just like mine tiny lol
then, draw on the face however you like it in that template! you can either print the template out or trace it from your device. make sure it’s all scaled correctly though! mine was specifically A1 paper I believe?
cut out all parts of the template (face, ears, body, etc).
you’ll need an embroidery hoop, lots of thread, a needle, transfer/tracing paper, and your cloth. i recommend getting different lengths for the hair and the skin (hair being 5mm is good) so there is different texture.
i can’t really teach this super well without visuals but I hugely recommend watching piyopicco’s youtube videos. they make larger dolls, but the process is all the same!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
these are the only pictures I took of my tim nui process unfortunately. but you sort of get it…? again, piyopicco is my saviour when it comes to nui making! if you have any more questions, feel free to send in another ask or just DM me! ^^
here’s another example; this is my first nui ever! it was a gift for a friend. i did not use tracing paper so you don’t have to buy it—i just highly recommend it since it makes your work cleaner! but the water soluble one, or at least a transparent one because i don’t like the tearaway types.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
hopefully that sort of make sense. i hope you have fun making your own nui doll, and I hope the gift goes well!
58 notes · View notes
suzukiblu · 5 months ago
Note
I'm bored and I've decided I'm gonna draw a bunch of little characters being held in people's hands, are there any specific pocket pairings you would like to suggest?
-MBT
ooooo POCKETS time, excellent choice in "stuff to draw", friend! 💚
My vote is 5ever "anything involving cloneboys" and rarepairs in general are always fun, so like, Thad/Match is always a classic little black dress imo. Also always up for seeing more Kon/Kenan or Kon/Bart in the world, those are both TRAGICALLY under-repped pairings. And if I'm REALLY leaning into the rarepair suggestions, Tim/Greta would just be fun to draw, I would think? Like she's all smoky and floaty and just SUCH a good design, her OG look is seriously an all-time fave of mine, and Tim's just, you know, TIM, hahaha.
( also Billy with a tiny Damian is always a solid option, lol, considering you DID already make Damian with a tiny Billy happen to both me and this entire blog. )
17 notes · View notes
thattimdrakeguy · 3 years ago
Text
A  Random Review of Titans United: Bloodpact
Sorry some of these pics are blurry. Some are really big and Tumblr doesn’t like them. So Hopefully they’re still readable.
For the simple reason of me enjoying how Tim Drake was drawn on the cover of the issue I decided to read it, despite me mostly choosing not to read any modern comic, because of my displeasure of the writing choices.
But Tim’s pretty unlucky with artists and how they draw him so seeing this was enough for me to give it a quick look.
Tumblr media
I don’t exactly need a deep reason to read a comic.
But it ended up being a very pleasant surprise, because I wasn’t expecting much since it was a Titans comic, and apparently has the line-up of the live action show that I thought was boring. And used T-Shirt Kon, who I don’t particularly favor.
It ended being a surprisingly fun read. Not a really deep one, or a completely smooth read, but a really fun read.
Most of the first issue is a big fight, so instead of actual character moments, it’s more like “OH NOW IT’S THIS PERSON’S CHANCE TO SAY A LINE, AND NOW THEIRS” and so on. So if you’re reading because you love Starfire or Donna Troy or someone, you aren’t going to get much out of this first issue.
However to my shock, it was mostly focused on Tim Drake.
And all around has a damn good Tim Drake in it.
Tumblr media
Tim Drake even inside the book and not just on it’s cover is very clearly identifiable as Tim Drake. Making him the smallest member of the team, along with his famously notable baby-face, big eyes, and classic hairstyle. Things that, despite literally being his description within the comics themselves, have a hard time being depicted often enough that it’s considered a pain.
He actually starts the comic off in his normal clothes, and before I read a single line I could tell it was Tim, because of how he was drawn, which isn’t always the case sadly. Sometimes he can be in costume and I’ll not be sure if it’s Tim because it doesn’t look like him.
Tumblr media
This isn’t only a thing for Tim as well. All the other characters are drawn very distinctly so that if they were in streetwear as well, you could also tell who they are very easily. (On a side note I quite like the clothes they put Tim in. Simple, and comfy. Just feels very Timmy. Never a fan of when they dress him up extra formal or something, and tired of the generic button up look on him.)
Compared to someone like Dan Mora, who while also being a fantastic artist. Basically draws Tim Drake Robin and Dick Grayson Robin as the exact same person in a different outfit. Which isn’t favorable.
It’s increasingly rare to see an artist put in the effort to make sure the characters look like themselves if they don’t fit the typical depiction of a super hero, so it was a very welcomed addition.
Only one who looks a bit off might be Conner, who, apart from my opinion on his costume in this, just looks a little bit off. I think it might be the hair, ‘cause I don’t think he’s ever had a haircut like this.
Tumblr media
But that’s a nit-pick if I’ve ever heard. So really, who gives a damn.
I’m mostly just having fun seeing Tim pop up all tiny-like in several panels. With several moments showing the team being a bit protective for him, which also feels right back at home for Tim. Never in any overwhelming way, but in a way that feels right without being distracting. Never making it too much about Tim that he feels overbearing when it’s a team book.
Tumblr media
The writings also very fun, and writes the characters, it does put a bit more of a spotlight on pretty well. It starts off sort of old school with it’s style of narration, but it gives it a really interesting charm that I appreciated.
Beast Boy has his usual snarky, self-absorbed-ish attitude. And I really enjoyed how Dick and some of the other more typical Titans have a more mature attitude to them, that shows that are grown and serious.
Which is so satisfying in the way of Dick Grayson, because let me tell you, I am so sick of the depiction of Dick Grayson as a some sort of man child or doofus. He’s been a very serious, concerned, hard of himself, workaholic since maybe even before the 80s. To strip that away just to make him a sitcom character always came across as disrespectful for me.
Tim, who again, is the surprising focus of this first issue, and possibly the rest of the comic going off of how important he is to the beginning in end of the issue, but we’ll have to see on that, but anyways, is written very well.
I was super pleased with how Tim was written, because it felt like a fully rounded version of him, and not a fraction of him, or a generic hero that a writer placed his name on.
It shows how naturally heroic he is instantly, but doesn’t overwhelm the reader with that to the point he’s horrendously boring.
Tumblr media
It’s the best representation of Tim Drake and Dick Grayson’s actual relationship in years. It’s not just redoing something they did 20 to 30 years ago. It’s new content of them being baby brother and big brother, having a back and forth full of teasing.
Seeing Timmy have his bratty baby brother side be shown for the first time in a way that’s felt authentic in years has been wonderful, even if it’s only for a page or two, because it sucks me in to this world, believing it’s actually in the same universe as the stories I love, instead of butchering it. It feels natural, because it’s them, not a pandering mess. It’s just them being them, and they’re fantastic together.
Tumblr media
Timmy Drake also has his very very boyish and juvenile energy back. And is also made clear to be the ultimate underdog of the DC Universe, also very representative of who Tim is. Again, adding more layers to him, that represent who he is, through natural dialogue that feels appropriate for the moment, and authentic as if these are real people living in this fantasy and sci-fi laced world.
And overall when it comes to Tim, really shows how simple it honestly is to write the kid. He is not a difficult character to write. It’s done with such ease that I adore it.
These are such small moments into the overall, but it doesn’t matter, because seeing a Tim Drake just be Tim Drake, and showing off his different layers is a rarity. It is probably the best Tim writing since issue 1 of Sum of Our Parts, since...sadly Fitzmartin has shown that she isn’t really a great writer...and has...bad tendencies that really just insult the audience.
Could this also happen with this writer? Very well possibly. But that’s just how it is. Some writers stay good. Some writers are good but have bad moments. Some writers are bad and have good moments. In the end these writers are people, and people aren’t perfect. The same way I’m not perfect, and you’re not perfect. It’s simply how it is, as disheartening as it can be at times.
Tumblr media
In the end it’s just fun, and represents them well. Though I’m just now realizing after posting that panel that Gar just said their real names which is...not very hero-y but oh well. It happens.
At the end of the story even it shows Tim’s good heart, empathy, and detectively mind without going overboard to the point it feels like flanderization.
Tumblr media
There’s not much I can say beyond it’s overall super solid, and super satisfying if you’re a Tim Drake fan. Wish I could say more about the other characters. But they all seem to know each other, creating a nice big open world feel, and it’s nice. Sort of homely, ignoring how there’s a major fight happening. It makes the world feel real, which is rare, when so many other comics end up so inconsistent it never feels right.
I’d recommend reading it for sure.
It just goes to show that the good stuff doesn’t come from changing the characters in random ways.
The good stuff comes from putting our favorite characters in fun situations that highlight their personalities.
And Titans United: Bloodpact does it in spades.
118 notes · View notes
mzminola · 3 years ago
Text
Oh! Oh! Fun thing! As far as I can tell the Legacy arc is the second time Tim & Ra’s interact at all? Like the first time was when the League showed up in the Batcave and Tim rolled in with the giant penny, and maybe there’s some story in between I missed, it’s possible. But in Legacy Ra’s is focused on Bruce as the main problem, and being kinda generally murdery towards Dick & Tim just ‘cause they’re there.
But then! After the Bat scatter to deal with elements of Ra’s plot and then reconvene in Gotham for the finale, while Batman is dealing with shit in the city, it’s Nightwing, Huntress, and Robin who raid Ra’s ship just offshore to get Oracle into the League of Assassins’ computer system (this is where the delightful “Ra’s has Windows ‘95” panel comes from).
Tim is small and sneaky! Dick & Helena draw all the focus and fire, have big splashy fights on deck while Tim finds the server room to get Barbara her connection. The League members to spot him just attack, they don’t radio it in. Then right as Oracle’s gotten the last bit of data needed one of the Leaguers destroys the electrical cables, sparking a big explosive fire.
Which means that Ra’s has Nightwing & Huntress pinned, trapped on deck with a lot of guns aimed at them, gloating about their imminent demise...and Tim just comes out of fucking NOWHERE to tackle his friends overboard as Ra’s entire fucking ship BLOWS UP.
Ra’s has no idea the explosion was caused by one of his own people! From his perspective it probably looks like Tim did it! The tiny new kid that Ra’s wasn’t paying any attention to until now!
Having read Red Robin before any of this I am laughing my ass off. Tim goes from being involved in, but not responsible for, Ra’s ship blowing up, to actually deliberately blowing up a half dozen of his bases. I love it.
Tumblr media
DC’s Robin 1993, issue 33.
Exit left, pursued by explosion.
181 notes · View notes
wiitchkins · 3 years ago
Note
Hello!!! okay obviously your knowledge of and taste in fashion is INCREDIBLE, we ALL know this, it is ELITE AND SUPERIOR - my question is, what's your background in fashion? what influences do you consider very important in your art? you mentioned in your most recent drawing of marinette that guo pei's couture is some you really like, so you clearly Know Some Stuff about fashion!! p.s. your art is *waves hands around* i would let it eat me
Ahhhhhh!! Thank you thank you thank you this means so much to me to hear! As for my background in fashion…
I am sorry to say I actually have basically 0 actual background in fashion aside from watching almost every season of project runway as it was airing (dropped off a few seasons after Tim and Heidi left) and a long standing appreciation of fashion as an art form.
I’ve never been particularly fashion forward or stylistically adept and I would say pretty much up until I started college I was pretty. Unstylish. Anti-stylish? In my own wardrobe. Nowadays I actually mostly present in way that leans more butch and I do have a defined style I’m both comfortable in and actively enjoy, but it’s very very different from what I like to draw and design.
As the internet evolved it became a lot easier to find stuff and for the past mmm five or so years I try to keep up with the seasonal runways, a lot of which you can find literal photos and recordings of on Vogue.com. Couture is… deeply fundamentally different from “ready to wear” in that it’s often simply unwearable in everyday life, but I think the way it emphasizes certain shapes, forms, and movement is, simply put, absolutely fucking sick (it is however not without its problems as in my experience mmm some Couture fashion folks can be extremely pretentious and intolerable 🙄 not to mention the space itself is highly inaccessible, favors certain features/body types/skin tones, and is inherently classcist, etc etc)
To keep up with what’s currently “fashionable” (as in what people are actually wearing) I honestly just scroll through Instagram to see who’s wearing what and going through different tags and knowing keywords for what different groups elf describe as helps. “#streetwear” is gonna give you a different feed than “#it girl” is gonna give you a different feed than “#office fit”. I also like to scroll through instas and tumblrs that are literally just interviews and photos with random people op finds out in the world- you see personality in how things are put together in specific. What makes a look personal to them? What is practicality and what is fashion, and how much of each does each individual desire? I don’t think everyone is the same kind of Fashion Forward (or even is fashion forward) and I think it’s fun to find different niches and mix and match while still applying design theory Ive learned elsewhere. Even a character who is specifically Not Fashionable is that way in a specific sense, and could still have an appealing design. Also studying fashion at all gave me the ability to draw fabric which is a huge skill.
Without saying too much about my actual job, I am not a character designer at the moment, but I do think having this general knowledge of costume design and vested interest in keeping up current fashion (both ready to wear and couture/runway) is extremely important in my profession and wish it was more emphasized as I think it would be. Very helpful. The character design in Apple TV’s/Skydance’s Luck drives me absolutely bonkers because it sucks so much and the main characters looks like an old navy ad circa 2010. The same could unfortunately be said for our fav girl Marinette. She’s allowed to be less aggressively Fashionable because she is in fact a child, but I’d love to see a bit more attention to detail and understanding of what teens wear nowadays, let alone what they were wearing even 5 years ago. Her look was a tiny bit dated when the show was first released, but it’s even more egregious now. Not that they’re going to change it anytime soon but they had an opportunity in the movie to at least play with proportions since the jacket’s.. cut I guess and pink capri jeans are the most egregious. Maybe I’ll do a redesign that keeps the general idea/pieces in tact… idk. God. Please character designers learn fashion.
Anyway now that I’ve written an essay here’s some stuff I’ve liked and have been thinking about recently:
Guo Pei (as I said, Spring 2019 rules, but Spring 2017, 2018 and Fall 2019 are my favs)
Zimmerman Fall/Winter 2022
Heaven Gaia Spring 2022 Couture
Clio Peppiatt x Annie’s Ibiza current collab collection
Lawrence Basse (all her work tbh)
Zuhair Murad Fall 2022
Tran Hung Fall 2017
Alexander McQueen Menswear Fall 2022 and 2018
Christian Dior Resort 2023
Janelle Monae’s Pre-Dirty Computer Era
Thierry Mugler (his entire body of work tbh but rn I like Resort 2021)
Hawwa (@hellohawwa)
Jarvis Aivali (@jarvisaivali)
This is not to mention my love for pre-colonial Filipino textiles, 1920s butch lesbian fashion, charro suits, whatever the look is called with the giant oversized floral button shirt and the jeans is, bright colorful floral/and or embroidered suits, ami thompson’s knight and princess characters, and the catholic met gala specifically.
16 notes · View notes
karliahs · 4 years ago
Note
hello! this is over 500 words, i hope you don't mind. i just like this whole part so much i couldn't cut it XD if it is a bother just cut from the end until it's 500. love you!
Tim had always noticed people, collected little details about them in his head whether he intended to or not, but he thinks his observations used to be about happier things, though it’s hard to remember exactly how he was, how he felt, before - it wasn’t the kind of thing he ever tried to memorise, the kind of thing he ever thought he could lose. Now he finds himself taking note of the coworker who comes back from their lunch break with faint puffy red marks around their eyes, or the older guy who checks his phone with something like dread in his eyes. Danny would have called it his older brother instincts (but what good did those instincts do him? ).
Tim blinks back to the present, realising he’s been pushing a napkin over the same spot of floor for a while now. Jon offers him a hand up, though he braces himself on the bar with his other hand before he does. Tim takes care not to let Jon take too much of his weight as he’s hauled back up.
“Ah, thank you. And apologies, again,” Jon murmurs, gesturing awkwardly at Tim’s lightly-beered clothes.
“Happens to everyone,” Tim says easily. Jon still looks lightly anguished, and Tim silently wishes this could have happened to someone else, someone with the confidence to laugh it off. “I’m always convinced I’m going to drop something when I go in the silent study bit of the library,” Tim offers.
“Ah...that worry hadn’t actually occurred to me,” Jon replies, solemn enough that Tim can’t really tell if he’s joking.
Tim finger-guns. “Any other anxieties I can stir up while you’re over here?”
“I’m quite capable of stoking my own neuroses, thank you.”
Jon glances over his shoulder at the tables the rest of the department are occupying, perhaps doing the same thing as Tim and trying to psyche himself up for some more hollow smalltalk. Tim notes that his jacket seems slightly large on him, but in a way that kind of works. The collar of his shirt is slightly out of place beneath it. There’s a lump forming in Tim’s throat, even though nothing is happening - nothing but standing close to someone, noticing the little signs that they’re real and alive entirely independent from him. He’s aware, as he always is, of the hollow pit in his stomach, pain ebbing and flowing but never gone, new flares thrown off from a familiar wound, now pulsing with a kind of loneliness. All this, just from standing close to someone and trying to make them feel better about a mistake that didn’t matter.
“I...might go out for a smoke,” Jon murmurs eventually.
And here’s where Tim could say sure, wave him off and go back to moping, buy everyone an obligatory round, flex his meaningless chat muscles and be home by half 9. “Mind if I join you?” he asks instead, and to his surprise Jon nods immediately, as if he’d been hoping Tim would say that.
They duck outside to find dark clouds have given way to an anticlimactic drizzle. They stay close to the pub, shielded from the rain by the slight overhang of the roof. Jon fumbles with a lighter and Tim finds his gaze drifting over the rain-slick streets. It’s been a while since he’s been...anywhere, really, other than work and his flat. Longer than he can remember since he was outside in the never-quite-dark of the city.
Despite himself, Tim finds himself admiring the buildings across the way, modern painted shop-fronts on the ground floor giving way to weathered brick and occasional stone carvings above. It was the first thing he’d loved about London, how you only had to look up to catch a glimpse of its history, and it almost wounds him all over again, that that love isn’t gone too. It would be easier if he was just one thing, all the way lost. It would be easier if he didn’t still love the world that killed Danny.
Jon lights his cigarette, and silently holds the lighter out to Tim. Tim shakes his head, and Jon doesn’t question him about why he’s come out here if he doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t press about the way Tim must be looking; he knows he’s never had much of a poker face. Danny tried to teach him poker, on a visit home from uni; Tim left for six weeks and came back to playing cards and strategy guides everywhere - his brother, who never sit still even in his own head -
“Where were you, before this?” Jon asks. Tim wouldn’t have pegged him for a smoker, but he looks immediately more relaxed with a cigarette in his hands. Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-
“Publishing,” Tim answers, before he can drift again. He wants to say more, to make sure this undemanding presence isn’t going to leave his side, but his throat is still tight. “You?”
Jon frowns, as if debating something to himself, then gives a tiny rueful smile. “Tesco.”
Tim grins. “Was it a haunted Tesco?”
“Only by customers,” Jon replies, dry as bone.
from: please leave a light on when you go
HELLO, this is 1000 years late and for that i apologise!! i absolutely do not mind that it is over 500 words. tbh i'd do these for whole fics if enough people were interested!
Tim had always noticed people, collected little details about them in his head whether he intended to or not, but he thinks his observations used to be about happier things, though it’s hard to remember exactly how he was, how he felt, before - it wasn’t the kind of thing he ever tried to memorise, the kind of thing he ever thought he could lose. Now he finds himself taking note of the coworker who comes back from their lunch break with faint puffy red marks around their eyes, or the older guy who checks his phone with something like dread in his eyes. Danny would have called it his older brother instincts (but what good did those instincts do him? ).
i think i've talked about my tim just genuinely loving people in general feelings in another one of these answers, but it continues to be true. makes sense to be for a character demonstrated to be both smart and gregarious. i also wanted to muse on how formative traumatic events both change us and don't - tim still cares about the people around him, but now he's unconciously looking for pain
i am not immune to older brother tim feelings...i am especially not immune to them being directed at jon...
Tim blinks back to the present, realising he’s been pushing a napkin over the same spot of floor for a while now. Jon offers him a hand up, though he braces himself on the bar with his other hand before he does. Tim takes care not to let Jon take too much of his weight as he’s hauled back up.
part of the reason pre-series jontim is so fun is thinking about what would draw these two together. one answer is that i imagine jon as someone who would want/need a particular kind of consideration from those he's friends with, and i imagine tim as someone who's very good about noticing what people need and working around it without it being a huge thing
i was surprised that dyspraxic jon is not already a tag! or even just 'dyspraxia' does not seem to be a tag. i've read a lot of good fic involving various mobility issues for jon and this is a hc that i think makes sense (and that i hope i portrayed sensitively)
apparently the only tims i write are just regularly dissociating. i have no justification for this except that grief is really good at displacing you from time and also it's a convenient narrative device for dipping in and out of internal monologue
“Ah, thank you. And apologies, again,” Jon murmurs, gesturing awkwardly at Tim’s lightly-beered clothes.
“Happens to everyone,” Tim says easily. Jon still looks lightly anguished, and Tim silently wishes this could have happened to someone else, someone with the confidence to laugh it off. “I’m always convinced I’m going to drop something when I go in the silent study bit of the library,” Tim offers.
“Ah...that worry hadn’t actually occurred to me,” Jon replies, solemn enough that Tim can’t really tell if he’s joking.
Tim finger-guns. “Any other anxieties I can stir up while you’re over here?”
“I’m quite capable of stoking my own neuroses, thank you.”
lifting tim's fear here directly from my uni days. quiet libraries...so good at making me feel like i'm about to start emitting 1000 noises (i now work in a library but it's not a quiet one so we're mostly good)
jon who is jokes in a v specific deadpan way that a lot of people don't get...a good headcanon
trying to inject the right amount of slightly awkward formality into jon's dialogue is hard but fun...that last sentence i think i thought about a lot even though it's a short/simple thought. gotta make it sound like a short/simple Jon thought
another reason they would like each other right off the bat - banter
Jon glances over his shoulder at the tables the rest of the department are occupying, perhaps doing the same thing as Tim and trying to psyche himself up for some more hollow smalltalk. Tim notes that his jacket seems slightly large on him, but in a way that kind of works. The collar of his shirt is slightly out of place beneath it. There’s a lump forming in Tim’s throat, even though nothing is happening - nothing but standing close to someone, noticing the little signs that they’re real and alive entirely independent from him. He’s aware, as he always is, of the hollow pit in his stomach, pain ebbing and flowing but never gone, new flares thrown off from a familiar wound, now pulsing with a kind of loneliness. All this, just from standing close to someone and trying to make them feel better about a mistake that didn’t matter.
jon in big jacket...as the kids say, hot jon rights
i've also talked about this in another one of these but man. the little details that make it feel real that someone is there close to you. when you are lonely the reality of other people right there just out of your reach suddenly drives home
"a mistake that didn't matter" tim is always thinking about the mistakes that did matter :(
“I...might go out for a smoke,” Jon murmurs eventually.
And here’s where Tim could say sure, wave him off and go back to moping, buy everyone an obligatory round, flex his meaningless chat muscles and be home by half 9. “Mind if I join you?” he asks instead, and to his surprise Jon nods immediately, as if he’d been hoping Tim would say that.
i think jon here is like i think i am enjoying talking to this person but on some level would be relieved to stop, so i will take a punt as to whether or not he is also a smoker and let fate decide. luckily for him tim is not a smoker but he does crave human connection
They duck outside to find dark clouds have given way to an anticlimactic drizzle. They stay close to the pub, shielded from the rain by the slight overhang of the roof. Jon fumbles with a lighter and Tim finds his gaze drifting over the rain-slick streets. It’s been a while since he’s been...anywhere, really, other than work and his flat. Longer than he can remember since he was outside in the never-quite-dark of the city.
Despite himself, Tim finds himself admiring the buildings across the way, modern painted shop-fronts on the ground floor giving way to weathered brick and occasional stone carvings above. It was the first thing he’d loved about London, how you only had to look up to catch a glimpse of its history, and it almost wounds him all over again, that that love isn’t gone too. It would be easier if he was just one thing, all the way lost. It would be easier if he didn’t still love the world that killed Danny.
mostly my reaction when i have had to be in london is some level of :/ but maybe i do think fondly of some of it. cities at night...the weird mash up and modern & ancient in uk buildings that i always took for granted until i didn't. also hello architechture-buff tim
rereading this it's just very obvious to me that i wrote this during lockdown...like oh imagine going to a place and seeing a person. magical. effervescent
i do love them huddling close to keep out of the rain here...thematically appropriate, it is sad battered people against the world time, and also circumstance bringing you literally close to someone and having that change/spark something
the last line distresses me, the person who wrote it. i don't know if i have much to add to it really. sometimes the most painful part of living through something is waking up the next day and finding that you are still alive and a real person capable of being touched by the world
tim blames both himself and the world for killing danny. sure hope that blame and hatred doesn't rise up and send him into a spiral of self-destruction some day. would be a real bummer if that happened and ultimately led to his death via clown murder explosion
Jon lights his cigarette, and silently holds the lighter out to Tim. Tim shakes his head, and Jon doesn’t question him about why he’s come out here if he doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t press about the way Tim must be looking; he knows he’s never had much of a poker face. Danny tried to teach him poker, on a visit home from uni; Tim left for six weeks and came back to playing cards and strategy guides everywhere - his brother, who never sit still even in his own head -
“Where were you, before this?” Jon asks. Tim wouldn’t have pegged him for a smoker, but he looks immediately more relaxed with a cigarette in his hands. Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-
“Publishing,” Tim answers, before he can drift again. He wants to say more, to make sure this undemanding presence isn’t going to leave his side, but his throat is still tight. “You?”
Jon frowns, as if debating something to himself, then gives a tiny rueful smile. “Tesco.”
Tim grins. “Was it a haunted Tesco?”
“Only by customers,” Jon replies, dry as bone.
thank you for choosing this passage because now i have noticed/will edit the last sentence in the first paragraph, which is missing a word and does not scan right (should be 'who could never sit still even in his own head')
'Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-' hot. jon. rights. also connecting the 'maybe it would be easier if i wasn't still alive and real and capable of feeling' thing to noticing, appreciating, wondering if he wants something with jon
jon has definitely not told anyone else at the institute that he was in customer service before this. proud of him for this brief moment of trust. also between this and martin having told tim about his CV, i think people just look at tim and are like yeah here are my career-related secrets
i also just love imagining jon in customer service. and as someone who did not work in customer service at the time of writing this fic but now does, i mostly do not view customers as hauntings (library patrons are mostly chill) - unless it is 10 minutes until we close, in which case they are the absolute bane of my existence
20 notes · View notes
Text
Concussion- Prompt Fill
Jon falls out of a Kayak
CW nausea, concussion, hospital mention
Tumblr media
Thanks for reading! I am still accepting bingo prompts (Bing card by the wonderful @celosiaa​)! Tell me a character and which prompt, and let me know if you want art or writing! The starred prompts are ones I already have received, and probably have outlined! (I am much faster at art just fyi).  Sorry this one took so long, I wrote it a week ago and hated it! 
Tumblr media
Jon doesn’t like the outdoors.  In his experience it’s loud or wet or sandy or bright or crowded or filled with bugs or hot or spider ridden or just generally uncomfortable.  
But that doesn't matter, because he needs to prove that things are alright with Tim.  He has finally earned enough trust or goodwill or something to be invited on a kayaking trip.  
Even back when things were good, Jon rarely got invited along to these things.  Tim knows Jon isn't the outdoorsy sort, but occasionally invites him so he doesn't feel excluded.  
A traitorous part of Jon thinks that he was only invited as a joke.  But more of Jon doesn't care if that is true.  He earned that invitation, and it doesn't matter that he is baking in the heat or that driving to the lake made him carsick or that he already has 30 mosquito bites and counting.  He.  Does.  Not.  Care.  
It doesn't matter because he is here with Tim.  And Tim is having a good time.  
They paddle around the secluded lake for a couple hours.  Jon almost has fun.  He isn't having a bad time.  Tim has been cracking jokes, and Jon is having something adjacent to fun.  Not to mention... it just feels damn good to be included.  Usually it's Tim and Sasha, or on occasion Tim and Martin.  Not that this is the first time since... everything that Tim and Jon have been alone together... it's just.... Kayaking is important to Tim.  And Jon rarely merits such a heartfelt invitation.  And even if it isn't really his scene.  It's worth the itchiness, and sore muscles, and carsickness and oppressive heat.  It is all worth it.  
Jon doesn't really know how he ends up in the water.  One minute he is breathing hard, his back and shoulders burning after all that paddling, trying to convince himself that he probably doesn't need his inhaler (that he left in the car in any case), the next... he is in the water.  Life vest dragging him towards the surface... or where the surface would be if the kayak wasn't in the way.  
He cracks his head on textured, blue plastic, and it doesn't even have time to hurt before Tim is hauling him out of the lake.  
He can't say it really hurts.  Just the surprise, and  the moment of timelessness and involuntary tears when something smacks a person from nowhere.  The brief moment of everything being a little too sharp and a little too blurry all at once.  
He coughs as he breaks the surface and Tim's strong arms lift him back into the kayak as if he weighs nothing (which... Martin would say is the case).  It's probably the firefighter training.  
Water is streaming off him, and there is some sort of weed tangled in his hair.  
"Boss, you alright, there?" Tim clapping him on the shoulder, almost knocking him out of the kayak again.  (Jon isn't sure if the fact that it is a two seater is better or worse).  "Whoa there!"
Tim is steading him again.  He's honestly feeling a little dizzy and a little distant.  But that's probably just the surprise, right?  Probably.  
"Not your boss," he grumbles, trying his best to scowl despite how Bright everything is, and how he really is very very damp and how maybe jeans weren't his smartest move today.  He lets that hang for a beat.  "...Thanks Tim."  
He offers a tiny smile, trying not to shrink in on himself, like he did... back then.  
"Fine, you alright, buddy?  What even happened?"
Jon shrugs.  "I'm in one piece, I think."  
Tim fishes in the water for Jon's dropped paddle.  "Maybe it's time we head back, wouldn't want that to happen again.  I need you in top form if you wanna come out again with me!"  
His head is starting to hurt.  
Jon flushes slightly.  "I'd... really like that, Tim."
Tim hands him back the paddle and they head back towards shore, and the car, and their respective domesticities.  
The headache isn't exactly gone by the evening, but it isn't bad.  Not worth telling Martin about, although he couldn't escape Tim telling Martin how he fell out of the kayak, and having Tim show Martin the pictures of one very damp and disgruntled Jonathan Sims dripping in the kayak, and Jon in Tim's spare workout clothes in the car.  And Jon looking faintly ill with ginger ale clutched tightly with eyes closed on the way back.  And of course the selfie with Tim giving him a sloppy cheek smooch while Jon wears a truly terrible hat that he has no idea why Tim owns.  
Tim stays for dinner.  
By the time that Jon wakes up, Martin has already left for work.  
His head hurts.  Not migraine bad, but he makes a mental note to tuck some excedrin into his bag just in case.  Best to be prepared for these things.  
He drags himself upright with a groan, trying to ignore the way that the room tilts for a few moments as he gets up.  
School.  
Right.  
He's got work today.  And as long as Martin isn't there to be disappointed in his decision making, a headache is not going to stop him.  
It's too bright outside, and Jon isn’t hungry for breakfast.  Tea counts as breakfast, right?  That's good enough.  There's milk and sugar in there... that has to have enough calories to count for something, right?  It's fine.  
Halfway through class, Jon has to sit down.  Abruptly.  His lecture trailing off into a dizzy silence.  
The headache has become too distracting, the tilting of the room around him making it hard to stay tethered to the Earth's gravity.  He presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids, trying to stop the listing of the room.  
He hears a student calling his name, but he can't make himself parse out who.  And the Eye doesn't seem inclined to tell him.  
Which is probably for the best, because he is beginning to wonder if he can take much more headache.  
He doesn't know how long he's been down, but Martin is there now.  
Fluttering hands, checking him for a temperature, coaxing him to look up, shielding him from the fluorescent lighting.  
Jon leans into the cool of his hand.  
Martin's hands in his hair, smoothing away the bedhead, Jon forgot about before leaving the house.  Jon making an embarrassing sound as he relaxes into the touch.  
Until Martin reaches the crown of his head, and Jon hisses in pain.  
Martin has been talking to him the whole time, but the ringing in his ears has been too distracting to make out words until now.  "Jon?  Love, did you hit your head?  Can you look at me?  Tim said you fell yesterday, did you hit your head?"
Jon struggles against the painful light to meet Martin's gaze.  
Martin is shining a pen light in his eyes.  
Jon tries not to feel betrayed.  But the light Hurts.  And he just wants to go back to bed, and be held, or maybe have Martin bring him an ice pack, and he's starting to feel sick as well as dizzy.  
"Jon-love, we should get you to a hospital.  I need to get you actually looked at."  
Jon whines in complaint, but doesn't have the energy to argue as Martin guides him up, folding against Martin's chest, when his legs try to give with the pins and needles of inactivity.  
He doesn't want to go to the hospital.  It's bright and he is very tired.  And he feels so guilty that someone... probably one of his students called Martin in when Martin had likely just gotten off his shift and should be at home and sleeping and not scraping Jon's ass off the floor again.  
It hadn't been this bad earlier!  He's fine!  Really!  
"Jon-love, why didn't you say something?"
And Jon tries not to cry.  "I was fine... didn't hurt then."  
Martin tuts over him and holds him close.  
The hospital is just as bad as he fears, and he's pretty sure he guilty cried on Martin at least once, and possibly also took a nap in the waiting room, but when it's over, Martin shoos Jon into a waiting cab, and trundles them both home.  
Jon is dozing on the couch, because Martin is making dinner and he can't bear the thought of being farther away than one room over, and Jon has never been comfortable about the idea of eating in bed.  Breakfast in bed (Or dinner in this case) sounds good in theory, it just sounds messy and awkward in practice.  His phone has been confiscated after he sent a brief email to his students.  Martin wasn't happy that he already was ignoring the don't look at screens and don't think too much instructions.  
That will be an argument for tomorrow, and the next day until they eventually reach a compromise.  One Jon knows Martin won't be happy about, and one Jon will feel the bite of guilt over, but his students need him, and it really isn't a bad concussion.  He might let Martin fuss over him a little more than normal, but only until the extra work catches up with Martin.  Then it will be Jon's turn to look after him.  
“Jon, Tim just texted.  He says he’s sorry he didn’t know you were hurt, and that you don’t have to go with him again.”
Jon wants to cry again.  He breathes as deeply as he can, trying to draw courage into his lungs.  “Could you… tell him I Want to go?  I promise this won’t happen again?  I… had fun… and I want to go kayaking with him.”  
Martin enters the room with his phone in one hand, and a spatula in the other.  He kisses Jon’s forehead softly, and starts to type one-handed.   
“And please tell him to not feel badly?  I didn’t really notice until …well until you got called.  It was just a headache until then.  Not even a bad one.”
“Of course love, just tell me if it gets worse, alright?”
Jon hmms in agreement.  
56 notes · View notes
eightkittens-rp · 4 years ago
Note
4. Alazne 10. Tia 17. Tim 42. Victor 43. Mufasa 61. Miss Toffee 63. Mackenzie 66. Victor 73. Jellybean 74. Alazne 75. Mufasa 76. Jellybean 77. Miss Toffee 78. Tia Sorry for the horrible formatting--I'm on desktop which does allow paragraphs
4: Alazne- What is a noticable physical attribute of your OC?
Technically, she has only one eyebrow. Much like her Uncle Alonzo, one eye is just a plain patch of solid colour.
10: Celestia- What does your OC keep in a special draw?
She does have a collection of neat rocks her siblings bring her when she doesn't want to go out. But her most prized possession is a soft cloth Misto conjured to wrap her up in when she was very small. She's too scared of losing it, so it stays safely away.
17: Tim- What is your OC's imagination like?
Confusing, honestly. He can imagine the most bizzare, abstract things. He sometimes comes out with sentences and words that make sense to only him.
42: Victor- What makes your OC happy?
Learning about the supernatural with Coricopat and Tantomile and dance moves with Aunty Victoria. He loves to learn in general, but these are his abosolute favourite subjects.
43: Mufasa- What kind of sense of humour does your OC have?
Sensible, clean and inoffensive. He will tease his siblings and laugh at jokes, but he would be the first to stop if something went too far and somebody could potentially be hurt.
61: Miss Toffee- What is the general impression your OC gives other people?
Most are overwhelmed by her at first. She is an unstoppable ball of energy and questions. But once they get used to her, they think she's very fun and sweet. Skimble especially likes that he has someone to talk trains with and to share all of his knowledge with.
63: Mackenzie- How does your OC display love?
Respect. If Mackenzie loves you, he will stop pushing if he notices he may be going a bit too far. An apology and explaination of what he meant but couldn't quite articulate is the highest honour usually bestowed on select family and Mungojerrie. He is also secretly a bit of a cuddler, but don't tell anybody about that.
66: Victor- What is your OCs favourite food?
This was previously answered! The post can be found here
Victor said "Anything that isn't rice pudding". Not helpful, he is just putting that distance between him and Misto, as he seeks to be independant. His favourite food is actually tuna.
73: Jellibean- What is your OCs favourite form of entertainment?
Exploring! With her siblings, but especially with Pouncival. He knows some great places and is just as naturally curious as her so they go on lots of expeditions around the Junkyard together.
74: Alazne- What is your OCs favourite colour?
If asked her first response is pink-it's very pretty. But as she looks up to Bomba more and more she gets a fondness for red too.
75: Mufasa- What is your OCs favourite scent?
This isn't exclusive to Mufasa, but when they were very small and difficult to settle, Misto created a spray he would put on their bed just before they slept, a mix of lavander and chamomile. Mufasa associated these scents with comfort and relaxation.
76: Jellibean- What is your OCs favourite animal?
This is subject to change every time she sees a different fluffy animal in the animal book Tumblebrutus teaches them out of. Anything tiny and fluffy she immediately adores.
77: Miss Toffee-What is your OCs favourite sound?
She loves hearing the steam train Skimble takes her to see whistling at the station, and Jemima singing. She would love to sing like her cousin one day!
78: Celestia-What is your OCs favourite time of day?
Dusk, just before the sun has fully set, but it isn't so big in the sky. She isn't fond of bright lights or exccesive heat, so she won't go out and sunbathe like others. She also likes the animals that come out in this time, the bats and little fireflies that remind her of Papas magic.
OC asks
6 notes · View notes
maryellencarter · 4 years ago
Text
SO! A week or two ago I got the DVDs for both seasons of "Justice League: The Animated Series", which I hadn't seen in ten years and remembered loving a lot. Spoiler: I still love it a lot. I put off watching it for a while because I was scared I wouldn't, but then I watched it pretty much straight through without even stopping to liveblog.
So. THOUGHTS! ^_^ Any of y'all who've ever shared a fandom with me know I'm always around for one particular character. In this case, that's J'onn J'onzz, the big green guy, whose official comics codename (sensibly not used on the show) is Martian Manhunter.
(There's a bit in one of the tie-in comics where a parent is telling their kid "don't be scared, honey, he won't hurt you, that's the uhh... Martian Maneater..." which has never ceased to amuse me.)
Anyway, we all know I have a tendency to give reviews in the vein of "Good story but no werewolves", and it must be granted that I never did bother watching Justice League Unlimited because Carl Lumbly (J'onn's voice actor, Minnesota born and raised with Jamaican parents, which is apparently how you get a Martian accent I couldn't place to anywhere on Earth) wasn't a regular anymore. But y'know, it's a really good ensemble team too, even if I like Tim Daly's Superman (from Superman: The Animated Series in the same animated universe) a lot better than George Newbern's. Or, well, I did. I haven't heard *him* in ten years either. Anyway! Off topic.
SO ANYWAY. Obviously, spoilers hereabouts, although it's what, fifteen, twenty years old by now? But if you care about spoilers for somewhat elderly TV, you might not be following me anyhow.
So the meta premise, just in case anybody was unfamiliar, is thuswise: First there was Batman: The Animated Series, in which Mark Hamill was the best Joker while not being an asshole as a person, because he is a competent actor and not a dickwad. Then there was Superman: The Animated Series, which I remember as being a delight and I want to watch it again too someday. Then, because apparently if you have Batman and Superman the next step is the entire Justice League, there was this.
The actual premise is, that during an alien invasion of Earth, Superman and Batman rescue a prisoner, J'onn J'onzz, the last survivor of the Martian society the invader aliens wiped out. (J'onn and Clark get little bits of bonding over the last-of-their-kinds thing but I've always wanted more. In a fandom auction I once donated $60 for a fic on the topic, but life happened and I do not hold it against the person. Still a little sad though. It's not something I've ever quite been able to write myself.) J'onn has a whole grab-bag of superpowers including telepathy, with which he summons additional heroes The Flash (speedster, this one is twentyish goofball Wally West), Green Lantern (specifically John Stewart, a black ex-Marine), Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl (a winged humanoid-alien woman with an energy mace). Together, they fight crime! Mostly.
Specific episodes: I'm going to use "episode" to refer to the runtime covered by a single title so I don't have to say "two-parter" or "three-parter" every single time, because this show had literally only one single-part episode out of the whole 52 episodes.
* Secret Origins, three-parter: In which the Justice League is formed and repels the invasion of Earth by the aliens who wiped out J'onn's people. A very strong start, good character intros. I will never be over the very small worldbuilding fact that J'onn is rescued by Superman and Batman, and has seen nobody else on Earth yet but invader aliens (these are what used to be called the White Martians but the show does not use this name either which I think was a wise choice), so when he shapeshifts from his more alien "natural" Martian form to the look which will be his default for the series, he chooses a briefs-and-cape look because based on the two examples he's seeing, that's what Earth people wear. It's not explicitly called out, but it's a great way to make it a little less... comic-booky that you have no less than three extra-beefy guys with almost identical costume silhouettes here.
I think the arc between Batman and J'onn is one of my favorite parts of this, the way Batman starts out being like "I still don't trust him" and winds up trusting him enough that it's their teamwork which saves the world this go-round. Also, speaking as a fan who likes me some whump, can we talk about the scene where J'onn is being mindprobed with all those tentacles under his skin? I have so fucking many feels about that scene, okay. God, that whole climactic sequence is so damn good. And his tiny lil smile at the end of the last episode! I do love me some microexpressions, nonetheless that they are animated. (I can't draw so I am constantly boggled by just the skill it has to take to draw a character so on-model that varying one line by a few pixels Says Things.)
* In Blackest Night, two-parter: The one where the extremely Kirby-designed cop robots frame Green Lantern into believing he blew up an inhabited planet. Introduces several alien members of the Green Lantern Corps. Flash trying and failing to act as GL's lawyer is fairly embarrassment-squicky to me; many of the things anybody does with Flash on this show are fairly embarrassment-squicky, although he does get some great moments. René Auberjonois does two voices, as a spherical Green Lantern and as the "witness" who helps frame GL. The climactic scene is great -- sometimes the Green Lantern ditty just doesn't work, but between the sound design and the animation and Phil Lamarr's voice acting, this scene blows me away every time. I feel like this one could have been shorter though.
* The Enemy Below, two-parter: In which (blond) Aquaman guest-stars, J'onn takes on the first of many roles where he acts as bait by impersonating a villain's target, and the thing where Aquaman cuts off his own hand to escape a manacle is very tastefully handled for a kids' show. I probably would have found that scene way too suspenseful and traumatic as a kid but I was an extremely sensitive small child. Opinions on this episode: I don't really have many. This universe's Aquaman is a *dick* who appears to live by the rule that you must always fight a superhero when you meet one on the street before explaining your business. I always squee when somebody turns out to be J'onn, because I've usually forgotten. (He usually is people and not animals or, like Odo more than once, a bag. I wonder if he has some conservation of mass thing going on or if it's just easier to animate when you keep your same basic arrangement of limbs.)
* Injustice for All, two-parter: Lex Luthor, dying of kryptonite poisoning, puts together the Injustice Gang to try to destroy the Justice League. He didn't invite the Joker, but Hulk expy and heavy hitter Solomon Grundy is also voiced by Mark Hamill, so the Joker naturally turns up around the point where Luthor captures Batman, commentating on Luthor's misguidedness in keeping Bats alive and generally providing a running peanut gallery. Clancy Brown and Mark Hamill are both always fun, so this one is pretty entertaining.
* Paradise Lost: Wonder Woman backstory-ish episode. A sorcerer turns the other Amazons to stone, then blackmails Diana into stealing four artifacts for him, which he assembles into a key to free the god Hades from Tartarus. Notable mainly for the extreme mangling of Greek mythic cosmology into an aggressively Christian shape. Not good. It does have J'onn and Flash teamed for a bit, which is interesting, and J'onn gets to one-punch a giant magic brass cobra, but that's about all there is to speak for it. It looks like the writer also did my very least favorite two-parter of the whole series, unless this is some sort of Alan Smithee situation, because the name is Joseph Kuhr and I have a half-memory I can't catch that there is *something* more than coincidence in the whole, you know. "Joe-Kuhr" thing?
* War World: Apparently this one was pretty nearly universally hated. I do not hate it, because the concept "Superman and J'onn are accidentally blown across the galaxy together and sold to an alien gladiatorial arena" is something I am 110% down for, but I wanted a lot more interaction between them and possibly a lot more fic. I can't decide if I actually want to ship them, but they're obviously very close and I want to see more than snippets of that, dammit.
That's halfway through season one. Imma go sleep. more later.
10 notes · View notes
surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago
Text
Survey #425
“evolution repressed by our backwards contest  /  breeding our torrential demise as we come to this edge”
Serious question, peanut butter or nutella? I think Nutella is a godsend, but I use peanut butter waaaaay more often. We don't even really buy Nutella because I will destroy the jar. Do you prefer baked potatoes or mashed potatoes? Baked. What is your oldest sibling’s middle name? Kathryn. I think. Do you like breadsticks? I just like bread, man. What are your favorite things to spend money on? Tattoos, uuuuugggghhhhh <3 Which would you rather have a new puppy or kitten? Neither, really. Most puppies drive me insane (even though they're cute as everliving fuck), and I don't want another cat. Mom actually talked about getting another, but I really just want my one boy. Roman would get SO jealous, anyway. I enjoy just having my baby. How old will you be on your next birthday? 26. Yikes. Do you ever feel self-conscious when you eat around other people? As "the fat one," I can be sometimes. I would say though that more often than not, it's sort of whatever to me because I'm a human that has to eat. When you opened your eyes this morning, what were your first thoughts? I thought I slept way later than I actually did. What is one thing in the room you’re in that reminds you of somebody? My stuffed meerkat Rebel. Jason got it for me for my first birthday that we were together. Could you ever be friends with somebody who was homophobic? Never again. I was once able to think "agree to disagree," but sometimes by doing so, you're siding with evil by not enforcing what is more than just a belief. It should come with being a human. Also given my own sexuality, it would be a slap in the face to me. Would you ever want to be a supermodel, or date one? Hell no. I'd date one though, if they were modest about their position. Honestly, have you ever made fun of somebody so bad they cried? Wow, no. Honestly, would you rather be complimented on your looks or intelligence? Quite frankly, nowadays, my appearance. I need it. My self-confidence is so far below "shit." Have you ever purchased a pregnancy test, for yourself or otherwise? Nope. You can get one thing, anything, for free right now. What do you pick? Why? Hm. I know I talk about it a lot, but it would still probably be a 40 gallon terrarium for Venus. She needs - and deserves - it. Honestly, have you ever danced naked? NOOOOOOOO. What was the first illegal thing that you did? Did you get caught? Downloaded music. My mom eventually found out, but didn't care much. What is the home page on the computer you’re on? Google. Do you like to write poetry? I do, but I haven't done it in a while. :/ Are your ears pierced? Yes. If so, were they pierced with a piercing gun, or with a sterile needle? Piercing gun. Which, by the way, do not do. There are many more risks with a piercing gun versus a needle by a professional. Do you wear makeup regularly? I never do. Did you eat cereal for breakfast today? No. I've been on a bagel kick lately. When was the last time you tripped over something? Last night, actually. The rug in the living room was slightly turned up, and I tripped in the dark. I didn't actually fall, thankfully. Any obsessive-compulsive tendencies? I'm diagnosed with OCD. I experience more ruminations and intrusive thoughts more than obsessive behaviors, though. Who was the last person you yelled at? Probably Mom. Why did you yell at them? I don't remember. Favorite type of apple? I like pink lady apples. I really enjoy any, so long as they're crisp. Ever seen live horse racing? No. To be totally honest, I don't really like the concept of it. Motivating a horse to run by hurting it doesn't exactly seem moral... How about live greyhound racing? No. What’s one thing, besides the obvious, that you couldn’t live without? The Internet, haha. Have you ever touched a giraffe? No. What does your mom call you? Britt. What stresses you out the most in life? I really don't think I could pick a top one. There are so many. Do you play any PC games? What is your favorite? Yeah. Y'all probably know WoW is my favorite. If you were pregnant, how would you tell the father? Well, that would depend on the circumstances. Did we want a baby? Was it a bad surprise, a happy surprise? I can't answer this with just one idea. What’s the hardest level you can play on Guitar Hero? I used to be able to slam out Expert easily with only very few songs I had to play on Hard, but now it's been YEARS. I've played less than once in a blue moon, and my skill's definitely faded some. It really depends on the song. What ever happened with you and your first boyfriend? He couldn't handle my depression anymore. What’s your favorite country song? "When The Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw, probably. What is the worst thing a former boyfriend/girlfriend has done to you? Fail to communicate what he was feeling with me and then make a dashing break for it very, very abruptly after three and a half years. It put me past a state of shock, but trauma with how no less than obsessed I was with him. What were you for Halloween last year? I didn't dress up. :/ I wish I had the money and motivation alike to. Are you feeling guilty for something? I always will. Are you usually quiet or loud? Quiet. How many hours do you spend on the computer a day? Like... uh... all of them, oof. What is the show that you watched when you were little, and you still do? Meerkat Manor. Do your siblings text you? Not really. Do you want a small or big wedding? Small. Have you ever searched for your own house on Google Earth? Not the house I currently live in, but I have before. Who is your ex dating/talking to? I don't know. Ever kissed someone who smokes? No. Does it take a lot for someone to annoy you? Frankly, no. Do you own your own computer? This laptop, anyway. Did you ever have to share a room with one of your siblings? Yes, with my younger sister as a kid and pre-teen. What noises in the room you’re in, do you hear at the moment? I hear the video I'm watching, as well as my fan. Have you ever dated someone with longer hair than yours? Yes. What’s the biggest upcoming event for you? Nothing. Not like that's a surprise. What do you typically order from Wendy’s? Son of the Baconator. @_@ Have you ever been given a lapdance by an actual stripper? No. Those are so awkward to me. What do you love most about yourself? I don't know these days. Have you ever received a hickey from the last person you kissed? No. What are you doing right now? This survey and re-watching John Wolfe play Outlast 2. What’s bothering you right now? I'm immensely nervous about tomorrow. I have my first (and I pray the fuck to God not only) session with my new personal trainer then, and I'm terrified by how my body and my mental fortitude is going to react. Y'all have no fucking idea JUST how out of shape I am, and the muscles in my legs seem basically non-existent by now. I have to do something about my health, though, and I'm determined to make this shit work. More than determined. I know the first day is going to be hard, but I need to do this more than I can explain. What was the last thing you drank? ... What great fucking timing, I have a can of Mountain Dew, lol... That's another thing that needs to change. I've gotta stop the emotional and boredom-eating and chill the fuck out with soda. Be honest, do you like people in general? Quite frankly, no. There are plenty of people I love and think are amazing, of course, but I think I lean towards humanity being too shitty to like "in general." Do you want your tongue pierced? I miss my snake eyes. :/ That was suuuuch a cute piercing. I just had to take it out for the safety of my teeth. I kept accidentally clamping down on one of the balls when eating, and it would cause tiny fractures. Do you change your phone background a lot? No. Have you ever made someone so mad that they broke something? No. Have you ever been strip searched? No. Do you have a funny last name? Does anyone make fun of it? It's not funny-sounding, no, I just think it's too manly for me to enjoy as part of my name. Ever have a drug overdose? What did you OD on exactly? Yes. Oddly enough, I don't remember what I OD'd on now... You'd think I would, given how extreme the situation was. It was some cold medicine. Do you get sick of people who call themselves bipolar all the time? I absolutely do. It's extremely insensitive to people like myself who legitimately suffer - and I do mean "suffer" - from the disorder. Describe your day so far in three words: Dull. Lazy. Anxious. What was the most stressful project you had so far/while in school? Probably my senior project and the presentation I had to do for it. I taught about the fallacies and misconceptions of snakes, and I made a PowerPoint and some drawings to color and crosswords for the special ed children. I was so, so very nervous, but I got through it fine and the kids seemed to enjoy it. I actually still have the recording. Choose one- Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers: MILKY WAY. FUCK I love those. Have you ever stepped in dog poop? UGH yes. What was the last thing you spent money on? My niece's birthday present. Have you ever slept in the same bed with the last person you kissed? Yeah. Is there a guy that knows a lot about you? I almost said "yes," but then I realized he doesn't know me at all anymore. I've changed so much, hopefully mostly for the better. He hasn't "known" me in many years. Is there someone you just can’t imagine your life without? It's terrifying to imagine my life without Mom; Sara, too. Do you prefer Starbucks coffee or small cafe coffee? I prefer no coffee. Would you ever consider getting a piercing in your septum? Nah. Do you enjoy being outdoors? If it's cool outside and I have somewhere to sit that's not the ground, yes. Do people tell you that you have an accent? Sometimes. Do you enjoy watching fireworks on the 4th of July? They're pretty, but I don't support their usage by this point in my life. They're a fire hazard, triggering to some vets with PTSD, and beyond terrifying for animals. What’re some unspeakable subjects for you? I get most heated about child molestation. You do not fucking touch a child like that. I don't even write any of my bajillion evil guys committing it in RP because I just can't stomach it. Even when my little sister (a children's social worker) is telling Mom about some stuff she sees at work, I have to not be present, 'cuz that shit isn't rare. It's nauseating. Is there anyone you would take a bullet for? A good number of people, honestly. Do you enjoy tanning? Hell no, I avoid the sun and heat at like all costs. Are you a virgin? This is going to sound weird, but I actually don't know, but I lean towards no. Who’s your celebrity crush? mARK EDWARD FISCHFUCK Did or do you get good grades in English class? I was always excellent in English. What part of your body are you self-conscious about? My stomach. But I'm self-conscious about everything else, too. Are you expected to help fix Thanksgiving dinner? No. Everyone knows I can't cook worth a damn. Have you ever lost anyone close to cancer? Truly close, no. Unless you include pets, actually. Then a few. :/ Do you personally know anyone who is transgender? Yep. When was the last time you got a shot? Earlier this year for Covid. Get your fucking vaccine, btw. :^)
4 notes · View notes
tanoraqui · 6 years ago
Text
the Magnus Archives science fiction au we deserve:
Magnus Research Station, researching ??? 
among other things probably, its not just automated but actually houses an experimental AI: the Surveying Intelligence Machine System, SIMS for short
also known as “the Archivist”
also known as “Jonathan”, or more often “Jon” 
the experiment is, on paper, to see if this computer can learn to be a person through 24/7 observation of people (archiving all data gained), including conversing with them, and also doing typical AI experiments like generating movie titles or recognizing weird dogs as dogs
in order to work at Magnus, all employees have to sign a contract saying they're okay with all record of their lives being taken and preserved by the station AI. They also probably have to get, like, microchipped, so the Archivist can monitor blood pressure, hormonal balance, etc, and draw conclusions about human emotions and though processes
Our Main Cast:
Jon, a curious AI who wants to be the best he can be and is kind of snobby about it
Tim, a flirtatious AI researcher with a somewhat TBD angsty backstory
Sasha, a cool-headed AI researcher who is inarguably the most competent one on the team
Martin, not so much an AI researcher as a moderately competent electronic forger. Specifically, of his resumé. To get this job 
Elias, the station administrator, with some intelligent computing background but seemingly not involved with anything but the practical operational concerns of the various experiments on Magnus Station, including the Archivist
has cybernetic eyes that are definitely not capable of receiving live feeds of anything Jon’s omnipresent cameras or those microchips see, without Jon knowing about it, because Elias has long-since override-commanded him to fulfill any information requests then instantly erase the memory of both request and fulfillment
definitely not
also is definitely not planning/working on him being able to take over, collect and analyze data from, and control much more complex systems than one isolated (low-orbit??) scientific research station and its denizens. Definitely not
I’m not sure if he wants to upload his own mind and supplant Jon once the whole terrible world-controlling system is set up, or just smugly hold the reins
Additional Cast Added Later:
Michael and later Helen: a not-quite-failed experiment in creating full AI by uploading a human mind to a computer. Definitely kinda nuts, sometimes thinks others should join them
Georgie, a highly skilled freelance computer programmer who did a lot of work on Jon’s original personality matrix
The Admiral, Georgie’s cat-shaped pet robot, whom she tweaks as a hobby. May or may not have laser eyes and near-sentient AI himself, at this point
Basira, a computer science expert from the...science space cops, idk, I haven’t worldbuilt this that much. Likes to learn
Daisy, a cybernetically enhanced...science space cop, and Basira’s partner. Would rather Basira doesn’t know neither how much of her is machine nor how okay she feels about killing people
Melanie, a...you know what, I’m going to go with space science journalist. With anger issues
Notable In Absentia:
Gertrude, the previous station AI, whose failure no one really talks about
Revelation 1: this is because she went rogue, and it had a death toll, and an executive decision was made not to tell Jon so as to not freak him out and/or give him ideas
Revelation 2, sometime later: “went rogue” mostly means “figured out what Elias wanted and then stopped going along with it”
Jurgen Leitner, a computer programmer who worked with Gertrude and left all sorts of weird bugs in the system, signed, that periodically cause Jon and the station to glitch
did you know that if your AI finally finds and drags into a viewable place a rogue old hacker who’s been messing with your evil science experiments for nearly 2 decades, and before they can finish having a usefully explanatory conversation, you go down and murder the bastard, then order your AI to forget you were ever there...your AI will be very scared and confused?
I have no idea how not!Sasha would work in this - Jon could be infected with some sort of obliteratingly clever virus that rewrites his memories, but Tim and Martin couldn’t be, I don’t want the microchips to be that sophisticated. I’m not actually sure how the whloe Unknowing would work - evil androids? But what are they trying to do? And what are...any other entities...? 
Actually, Simon Fairchild being a fully functional and self-liberated AI who’s several hundred years old and just doing his own thing, which periodically involves murder for fun, is really good
Jane et all is definitely some sort of invading AI/hyperintelligent virus + a ton of tiny invasive station-sabotaging, flesh-dissolving robots. Oooh or nanobots?
Jon hates Martin so much at first not just because he doesn’t think Martin is using him for ambitious enough AI experiments (which is true, bc Martin has no idea what he’s doing) but because, in the hiring process, Jon 100% figured out that Martin’s resumé is bullshit, but Elias wants nitwits who won't question things to much, so he ordered Jon to forget his conclusion and accept the resumé as true, and subconsciously this grates Jon like a sand in an oyster
620 notes · View notes
soveryanon · 5 years ago
Text
Reviewing time for MAG168!
- Yay for Oliver! From the announced title I had suspected The End and/or him because of his veins/roots/tendrils/not-tentacles, so that one wasn’t misleading!
Most of the episode was an audio pun on “Roots”/“Routes”: both the veins, and the reference to a Corpse Road. I’m… not sure about the double-meaning, though (since usually, titles refer both the core of the “statement” and something happening in the metaplot) – obviously, the “roots” were The End’s, they were almost a character by themselves (we could hear them creaking in the background alongside the whispers, a reminder that… they could grow. They could invade other domains when they would need); and the system presented by Oliver could (as he explained) come out of his domain to invade others’ in the search for more victims, which is how this universe could potentially end… but is there an additional meaning that could apply in Jon&Martin’s discussion, or in Jon’s decision to not go after Oliver?
(Regarding Martin: jealousy associated to “roots” makes me think of Corruption, though I don’t subscribe to the idea that Martin is being supernaturally OOC right now (I see how he could potentially be led towards bad choices, but I don’t feel like he’s under an influence right now outside of his own feelings). But I wonder if one of the meanings of “roots” will make sense in retrospect…)
- I was a bit sad to not hear Oliver himself but:
* Jonny, once again, did an amazing job at nailing the intonations and inflections of Oliver’s VA for the character; so, yes, it wasn’t directly Oliver, but we could hear when it was him directly addressing Jon, when it was the “statement” form, and when it was back to Jon.
(* Though I have a tiny sliver of doubt regarding the final “Report ends” afterwards: was it Oliver’s, making fun of Jon’s “statement ends” in the same way that Simon did after he got compelled to blurt out his life story after Martin prompted him? Interestingly, Oliver hadn’t joked about the “statement ends” in MAG121, though he already knew a lot about Jon and his dreams back then, and made it obvious in MAG168 that he knew more than us about Jon’s current state and how he functions (calling him The Eye’s “archive”, and pointing out that Jon can “only take”, which… yeah, feel like that will be relevant later). Or was it Jon saying the “Report ends.” to gain back a semblance of normalcy and making light fun of Oliver’s way of organising his “report” and/or trying to distance himself from what Oliver was saying, reminding himself that it was a subjective statement and that whatever Oliver says is to take with caution since he’s above all an agent of his own patron, however convinced and convincing he may sound? I feel like it was Jon saying that “Report ends.”, given how his voice sobered up, but both could make sense in their own ways…)
* Funnily, it makes sense for Oliver to give his “statement” in this fashion! Because, so far, he had never directly communicated with an Archivist in a situation that would allow reciprocity: he gave his statement to the Institute, while watching Gertrude in the next room (MAG011); he gave his statement to Jon while Jon was in a coma, so unable to answer him (MAG121); and now, he gave his “report” about his domain through Jon, addressing it both to The Eye and to Jon (… but is there a difference at this point?). In all cases, he was unreachable. So now, it feels even more significant that the only person he has ever interacted with on tape was End-touched Georgie, and that she managed to exchange words with him…
- Given how Oliver gave this “report” to Jon, that the “I” was clearly Oliver… What does it say about the narrator of previous statements? Were the “I”s in those the domains or the Fears themselves, talking through Jon?
… If that’s the case, what is exactly happening with the tape recorders, who are gorging themselves with these new forms of statements and apparently freeing Jon from the weight of them…?
(And who was the narrator in MAG167 then? The Eye itself?)
- Laughing so hard because Oliver’s background (MAG011: “I’ve lived in London for almost a decade now. I came here to do my undergraduate degree at the London School of Economics. I ended up taking a position with Barclays shortly after graduating and did well enough there.”) showed so much in the way he organised his ~report~ (not a “statement”, not a “terror”, but a “report”, Oliver wanted to be SPECIAL, uh…):
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “Report to prevent future deaths. This report is being sent to: [STATIC FADES] The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. 1 – Coroner I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake, or doctor Thomas Pridchard. I serve The Coming End That Waits For All And Will Not Be Ignored. 2 – Coroner’s legal powers […] 3 – Investigation and inquest […] 4 – Circumstances of the death […] 5 – Coroner’s concerns […] The matters of concern are as follows. a) […] b) […] c) […] d) […] 6 – Actions that should be taken […] 7 – Your response”
Organised, classified, taking an example to illustrate… and even: doing something else than the subject of his report. It wasn’t a report “to prevent future deaths”. It was a report “about” future deaths and how they couldn’t be prevented. Oliver, please.
- Handsome Man Of Many Aliases:
(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “First off, I should admit that I lied to get in here.” […] ARCHIVIST: I had Tim look into it, as I don’t entirely trust the others not to have written it as a practical joke and slipped it into the archives. Unsurprisingly, he came up with nothing. Antonio Blake is a fake name and all of the contact details he provided were similarly fraudulent. It’s almost certainly a joke, a bit of hazing for the new boss, maybe? Best not to engage with it, I think.
(MAG121) OLIVER: So… My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name “Antonio Blake”, but I don’t really think either name has much meaning for me anymore. […] I’m Antonio. GEORGIE: Sure.
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “1 – Coroner. I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake, or doctor Thomas Pridchard. I serve The Coming End That Waits For All And Will Not Be Ignored.”
… jumped on the Apocalypse occasion to get himself a fancy title, “Coroner”. With the interesting point that a coroner goes back through time to investigate someone’s death, backwards, while Oliver reads the death forwards, as in how it will happen.
- I find the way Oliver referred to Jon really interesting:
(MAG121) OLIVER: Hum… Hello, Jon. Do you… m–mind if I call you Jon? I… I mean. You don’t actually know me, it’s just… well. “Archivist”, it’s so… formal, isn’t it? And I do kind of know you…?
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “This report is being sent to: [STATIC FADES] The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. […] Please, Jon, do not interpret this report as a ‘plea for mercy’ or a ‘call to action’.”
He used to go with “Archivist” (as a title) and Jon. The “Jon” was clearly a callback to the time he had visited Jon in the hospital (pushing towards casual sympathy? At the very least, reminding him of the last time Oliver had chosen to call him “Jon”, and why he had visited him in the first place), but calling him The Eye’s “Archive” is new on all levels: first time that Oliver calls him that way, and first time that anyone except Jonah called him that way.
(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Because the thing about the Archivist is that… well: it’s a bit of a misnomer. It might, perhaps, be better named “the Archive”. Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon – you are a record of fear. Both in mind, as you walk the shuddering dread of each statement; and in body, as the Powers each leave their mark upon you. You are a living chronicle of terror.”
So, as much as I had a few reservations about the content of what Oliver was seeing/predicting… it’s true that he knows a lot, about Jon and about how he functions, what he is right now in the grand scheme of things.
* Also: once again, The Eye’s Archive. Not Jonah’s. Jonah is irrelevant. “The Magnus(’) Archive” is not applying to this season so far.
* … Interesting that, although Oliver had directly mentioned that the “Spider” had pushed him to come visit Jon in MAG121, there was no mention at all of any Web activity in this one, as if it was also irrelevant/wouldn’t be able to do anything noteworthy to change the planned course?
- I really love how Oliver tried to sound professional and respectable and kind of… objective about everything?, and at the same time, absolutely went into “My Patron Is Better Than Yours” territory:
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “Report to prevent future deaths. This report is being sent to: [STATIC FADES] The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! […] I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake, or doctor Thomas Pridchard. I serve The Coming End That Waits For All And Will Not Be Ignored. […] I make this report under no “authority”, no “regulation” or act of law, save the hollow power and grim responsibility given me by the Termination Of All Life. […] a) When Danika Gelsthorpe reaches the end of her Corpse Root, she will die. This new world of Fear reviles death as a release, but the Coming End cannot exist without its reality. It is not a being of dangled promises and shifting torments; the certainty of death waits for all who travel the Corpse Roots, and that certainty… will be delivered on, without hesitation or consideration of any other factors. b) This place has a limit, on the fear that can be generated from them, as their pool is necessarily finite and ultimately, however slowly, it will be exhausted. To be offset, this consideration will require the acquisition of victims from other domains as replacements, potentially inciting… “bad feeling” between those domains. […] However slowly, the domains of Death will be removing sufferers from a closed system. However many thousands of years may be experienced in the meantime… eventually, this world will be left barren and empty. […] Even if such a fate could be avoided, as it comes closer and the other Entities grow in their awareness of their own end, the grotesque ripples of their own impossible panic shall glut and feed my master, gorging it to the point where, perhaps, it will even surpass The Watcher in prominence. […] The End does not fear its own cessation, for it is the certainty and promise of all life, however strange, that it will one day finish, and that includes its own stark existence. It shall be the last and, when the universe is silent and still forever, it shall perhaps, in that impossible moment before it vanishes, finally be satisfied.”
* That condescending tone towards the other Fears, and the fact that they do not truly deliver death (as it would mean losing their victims), but My-Patron-Is-Better-And-A-True-One so The End has to deliver what it promises. (Does that confirm that, for example, Richard-the-human-worm respawned or was still “living” in a way after Sam went through him?)
* … My-Patron-Is-Better-Than-Other-Fears so it will go after the others to get access to their pools of victims, to find new ones.
* My-Patron-Is-Better-Than-Other-Fears so it will feed from them since The End will come after their victims and dry them out of victims, and they can do nothing about it.
* My-Patron-Is-Better-Than-Beholding so it could grow even stronger than it even though Beholding is the current ruler and had reality reshaped to have it on top of everything.
* My-Patron-Is-Better-Than-Everything so it will celebrate its own death, since Ending Itself after having ended everything means that it will have accomplished its true purpose.
(* Bonus “I-Am-My-Patron”, so Jon killing him would just be fine in the order of things, too.)
Like. WOW, Oliver, wow. Really fond of your patron, aren’t you, down to making it like a “challenge” to The Eye.
- Confirmation that The End’s domain lies both in the fear of death (since Danika had served it her entire life), but Oliver insisted pretty much that it also requires actual death to function/to work with its nature.
… So, I’m torn about what degree of credence to give Oliver. On the one side: it goes very well with the message Jonny keeps repeating (including in his gaming streams or in The Mechanisms universe) that “all things end”, that nothing can last forever – it’s what Oliver directly told Jon, it works. It could be the programmed annihilation of this world, whether we (the audience) get to witness it or not: I’m still thinking that The Extinction could come into play and wipe out everything, but if no other Change/cataclysm happens, it could go this way, with this world gradually, slowly dying, because at the core of it, it contained its own doom (the Fears have free reign and can never be truly satiated, so they’ll dry out the whole world without caring about creating a long-lasting “ecosystem”. They don’t know how to preserve, only to consume).
On the other hand, Oliver was extremely adamant about the fact that it would happen, but… has no proof that it will?
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “In exactly thirteen stretches of the root on which Danika travels – a stretch being measured in the waves of nauseating terror that flow out of her with such rhythmic regularity – she will finally arrive at her destination. […] I watch, as with each motion, each laboured, reluctant movement along her path, Danika Gelsthorpe is painfully, and inescapably aware of what it is that lies at the end of it. She tries to move backwards, off to the side, any direction other than that unstoppable, inescapable forwards. But her limbs seize up with the attempt. She tries to stay still, but can do so only with the most incredible of efforts. To eke out another few seconds of stasis sets every nerve in her body aflame with agony and effort, begging her to scream, despite her jaw being set in a frozen rictus of sombre mourning. I see her relive the coming moment of her inevitable demise. […] When Danika Gelsthorpe reaches the end of her Corpse Root, she will die. This new world of Fear reviles death as a release, but the Coming End cannot exist without its reality. It is not a being of dangled promises and shifting torments; the certainty of death waits for all who travel the Corpse Roots, and that certainty… will be delivered on, without hesitation or consideration of any other factors.”
The “thirteen stretches” sound like a clear references to the 13 Fears used in Jonah’s incantation (the fourteenth, The Eye, being supposed to rule over the others) and/or the fact that it requires 14 “points” to work (thirteen stretches meaning that there are fourteen points between the beginning and The End), but what I’m more interested is that… there are still thirteen stretches for Danika to travel. What if there is actually no way to travel a whole stretch, because it keeps stretching and getting longer, just because death has to be a horizon that is, by nature, forever elusive, even though Oliver is convinced that it must be a reachable goal since he believes in his patron? (Plus: how come The End will be able to touch other domains when necessary? Wouldn’t it just collapse on itself and disappear on its own, without first putting a dent into others?)
I’m not sure! On the one hand, it works well as a programmed ending, makes sense, and Oliver and The End have displayed time and time again that The End deals in certainty (and Oliver kept repeating that word); on the other hand… as he said, he’s absolutely loyal to his patron, now. Of course he would feel like The End makes the most sense in this world, that the cycle it functions in will keep going, that the same rules apply, that The End will even surpass The Eye. It all feels very subjective. So… we’ll see.
(But given that uncertainty: it feels to me like precisely, we won’t get that scenario, we won’t know for sure that it would have worked this way, because something else will happen. Something that won’t prevent all things from “ending”, but in different circumstances than the current ones…)
- What about Georgie, in the order described by Oliver, though? Given that the rules have changed, and if people are only able to die in The End’s domain by fearing their death, what would happen if the last human standing doesn’t “fear”?
- That puts to mind Peter’s explanation to Martin about why, according to him, The End had not attempted to carry its ritual, and how it was distinct from The Extinction:
(MAG134) PETER: There are two Powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest, never had followers set them up for a ritual: Mother-of-Puppets, and Terminus. The Web, and The End. The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on. The End, on the other hand… The End doesn’t really need one: it knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother. The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything. MARTIN: … Including fear. PETER: Exactly. It has no reason to truly attempt to enter our world, it’s… passive. But The Extinction… The Extinction is… different. It’s active. It will seek to create a lifeless world, in a way that none of the other Powers ever would. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new, that can then fear annihilation in turn. But I and those like me would rather that did not happen.
Not that passive given that Oliver mentioned that his domain would go after others’ to get a new supply of victims, when necessary (and that it would the one to upset the current equilibrium), and that Oliver was actually participating in spreading in patron’s fear by warning about the end to come, but!
- Interesting bit is that The End and Oliver have a relationship with time that seems to tie present and future close together (“The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.”), with The End being the only and absolute future possible, while Beholding… doesn’t. It has access to past information, to events currently happening, but Jon pointed out that his powers couldn’t access the future:
(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: She… thinks she’s going to kill Daisy. Like she promised. [STATIC DECREASES] But she’s conflicted. MARTIN: And will she? ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know, th–the future, th–that’s… that’s not something I can see.
Nice contrast, which makes sense, but also: Jon is special, even for an agent of Beholding, something that Oliver seemed to imply (“But know that, even you, will all your power, cannot keep the world alive forever.”). What can Jon do, in this new reality, besides turning predators into preys and being untouchable for the monsters…?
(I’m also squinting at Oliver’s words, because it could imply… that Jon is currently the only thing keeping the world “alive”, right now?)
- … If Oliver is right, though, laughing forever that Jonah, who feared death the most, would have BROUGHT IT ON HIMSELF:
(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I beg you, do not pursue this goal; if only a single lesson may be gleaned from my life of long study, and longer hardship, it is that the fear of Death is natural, and to flee from it will only bring greater misery. Repent of your sins, Jonah. Seek forgiveness. I am certain the Dread Powers cannot take a soul that keeps faith in the Resurrection.”
(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Why does a man seek to destroy the world? It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality, and power […]; to place yourself beyond pain, and death, and fear. It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, Jon, the freedom of it all…! I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers, all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction, in that choice. I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die. I believe there are far more people in this world who’d take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.”
… since his invocation also invited “[all that] dies”. He could have gone with “all that fears to die” or something like that, allowing for a loophole, but he specifically called for all that “dies”.
Jonah.
Jonah, you’re so effing stupid.
(- Re: Jonah, it’s delightful that… he has not been mentioned at all by other monsters/avatars (Annabelle, Helen, the Not!Them) so far. Oliver didn’t either. When it comes to establishing who caused the apocalypse, they’re fully crediting Jon and/or pointing out his relation to The Eye:
(MAG164) HELEN: What would I have to gloat about? Much as I am delighted by this brave new world in which we find ourselves, I can take no credit for it. This was all… you!
(MAG165) NOT!SASHA: Well, of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master!
(MAG166) HELEN: And Jon, well… he is part of The Eye; a very important part. And he’s able to, shall we say… shift its focus.
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “This report is being sent to: [STATIC FADES] The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. […] Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned.”
And yes, obviously, Jon was manipulated into doing it, didn’t willingly and knowingly cause it! But it’s hilarious that they’re all “Who?” about Jonah’s whole existence; he… seems absolutely irrelevant to the whole apocalypse deal although he tried to take credit for it. I wonder in which state we’ll meet him and/or if he will be able to express himself in any way – so far, I’m banking on him either being the Panopticon (having merged with the building) or being wrapped in cobwebs.)
- Interestingly, Oliver seemed to credit some level of sentience to the Fears themselves?
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “To be offset, this consideration will require the acquisition of victims from other domains as replacements, potentially inciting… ‘bad feeling’ between those domains. […] Even if such a fate could be avoided, as it comes closer and the other Entities grow in their awareness of their own end, the grotesque ripples of their own impossible panic shall glut and feed my master, gorging it to the point where, perhaps, it will even surpass The Watcher in prominence. The others may take what actions they wish; they may plot and plan and tear themselves apart in an attempt to separate from the fate that they know they cannot escape; but they will fail.”
I could expect the avatars/monsters to panic and try to sustain themselves, but the Fears/domains themselves…? (And once again: that phenomenon is very reminiscent of the way Peter described his own fear of The Extinction, as something that could eradicate him and other Fears/avatars…)
- AHAHHA about the image that when Danika would have travelled through the “thirteen stretches”, she would reach the end/The End and die… because that suuuuuure seemed reminiscent of Jon&Martin’s current travels, having to travel through (13) domains in order to reach The Panopticon, without knowing what would happen then.
Not ominous at all.
- I am… really interested in Oliver’s mention that Jon now “may only take”, combined with the fact that Oliver directly called him The Eye’s “Archive”. Specifically since, in MAG121, Oliver had highlighted Jon’s ability to extract statement:
(MAG121) OLIVER: Sorry to go on…! I’m… I don’t talk to many people these days. Putting my thoughts outside myself, it gets a bit… mm… clumsy. Be easier if you could talk back, right? Ask me questions and just have it tumble all out. But no. It’s… it’s just me. Wish there was a better way, but… Touching someone’s mind, it’s not… as simple as that, is it? Doesn’t always make things clearer, y’know? Still. I gave the old woman a statement so, maybe I owe you one as well. That’s… how it works, right? Give you a terror, give you a dream. ’s not like I don’t have them to spare.
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “I make this report under no ‘authority’, no ‘regulation’ or act of law, save the hollow power and grim responsibility given me by the Termination Of All Life. With it, I may see and spread the hidden veins of destiny that wrap us close and draw us through the empty, yearning parody of meaning that we call life, knowing at all stages that the last and final point of this journey is a blank and futile end. […] Please, Jon, do not interpret this report as a ‘plea for mercy’ or a ‘call to action’. I would have offered it willingly, of course, but to do so is no longer an option. You cannot ask; you may only take.”
The circumstances in season 5 have changed, we’ve seen that in the way Jon is managing the new “statements”: he has to let them out, he gets liberated from their weight once they have “poured out of [him] down into the tape”. He can only delay the moment he does it for a very short while, he has to do it when they reach a domain. The only exception has been in MAG167, when he gave a statement about Gertrude and her assistants, which was (at least partially) prompted by Martin’s questions.
So we see a difference between “Archive” and “Archivist” as of now with the statements. We’ve also seen Jon using his powers to “know”, prompted (Martin asking him questions in MAG164) and not (Jon knowing about Annabelle’s phone call in MAG167).Witht the exception of channelling The Eye’s powers to turn a predator into a prey, his abilities now seem mostly passive, but I wonder if it will mean something more, regarding his status as an “Archive” (and if Annabelle is planning to use that)…
(… Concrete question too: is Jon still able to compel, nowadays?)
- There are some bits of Martin’s words that made me go “!” because it implies that he had discussed with Jon about these matters beforehand:
(MAG168) MARTIN: Okay… [FOOTSTEPS] I mean… Well, I don’t like this place. ARCHIVIST: Once again, Martin, that’s… [CHUCKLING] sort of the point…! MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, I know, alright, I get it, it’s just… it’s more than that. This place, what did you call it, the… th– … the “Rotten Core”? ARCHIVIST: The Corpse Roots. MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, that. Well, it… It feels… [SIGH] I don’t know, it feels like it’s– ARCHIVIST: Waiting. MARTIN: Yeah! [CREAKING SOUND] Waiting. [SILENCE PUNCTUATED BY THE WHISPERS] This is the one with the, em… the Death guy, isn’t it? ARCHIVIST: This is Oliver Banks’s domain, yes. MARTIN: … So it’s him who’s waiting. […] Alright, fine, yes, yes, I am jealous, alright? Yes, if you absolutely must know! ARCHIVIST: Because he woke me up. MARTIN: [SPLUTTERING] I was there weeks, and nothing. He talks to you for five minutes, and suddenly you’re back on your feet, and bouncing around like a, like a spring chicken! ARCHIVIST: [NERVOUS CHUCKLING] I mean, that’s really not– MARTIN: I mean, what’s so special about him, that you wake up for him and not me, hm? [CREAKING SOUND] Enlighten me.
* “Rotten Core” is MAG157’s title; it’s Adelard’s last message to Gertrude, that was put on Jon’s desk together with the tape of Martin&Peter’s conversation about going down in the tunnels, the association of the two prompting Jon to panic by realising that Martin was probably manipulated into something that didn’t actually have much to do with The Extinction. “Rotten Core” in itself never appeared in Adelard’s email (could have been the subject of it, though?) and, officially, we still don’t know who sent that statement to Jon (Jonah didn’t take credit for that one, neither did Martin or Peter, so… probably Annabelle). But Martin using the phrase seems to imply that he has been filled in about it – did Jon&Martin talk about The Extinction, since the end of MAG159?
* Martin already knew that the “Death Guy” had woken Jon up, so… Jon has explained what happened, too. Unless Martin heard the other tapes during season 4? (And Jon remembered about it and about the fact that it was specifically Oliver who woke him up: this is the first time he has acknowledged that.)
So! They have been exchanging information offscreen!
- I’m HOWLING at petty/jealous Martin.
I didn’t feel like it was toxic or dangerous or OOC at all – Martin [INORDINATELY PLEASED] Blackwood has… quite often been portrayed as incredibly petty and jealous when it came to Jon:
(MAG088) BASIRA: I just, I mean he was good company. Y’know, when he wasn’t being a paranoia machine. He was funny, you know? MARTIN: What, Jon? BASIRA: Yeah. MARTIN: I don’t think I’ve ever heard him tell a joke. BASIRA: Maybe you weren’t listening. MARTIN: Right. Well, I’m sure it’ll get sorted out when DAISY brings him in and you can probably talk to him then. Oh! Sorry, I forgot you’re not actually with the police any more, are you.
(MAG106) MELANIE: [CHUCKLE] Right, well… The jury’s still out on Elias. And anyway, Martin’s always been lovely to you. BASIRA: Hm. I dunno, I mean, you should have seen him when I turned up last year. I think he thought I was trying to steal his precious Archivist. MELANIE: Aaah…! I got the exact same, when Jon was hiding out and came to me with his “source on the inside” stuff. Martin was not impressed. BASIRA: Huff. That boy needs to relax. MELANIE: Or at least find someone else to fuss over.
When MAG121’s case number had been revealed (not in Early-Access, but on the public release), there had been many laughs about the fact that Jon had woken up on February 15th, and how much would it suck for Martin to think that his tearful begging from the trailer migt have happened the day before, on Valentine’s Day, only for handsome mlm Death Prophet Oliver Banks to waltz in and get Jon to wake up instantly? So I’m laughing very hard that yes, Martin is INCREDIBLY and irrationally jealous about it, about not having been able to be the one to wake Jon up like in cheesy romance movies.
… the part that does worry me, however, is how lightly Martin seems to be taking the whole “Kill Bill” thing, and how much of it was being jealous over someone Jon had “needed” help from (not so long after Annabelle made a dig at Martin for the fact that he wasn’t feeling useful to Jon right now). I feel like most of the exchange had Martin caricaturing himself a bit, or at least being aware of how silly he sounded, though? And it felt to me like his insistence towards Jon explaining his reluctance to murder was for Jon to, well, explain what is bothering him about it (outside of an ethical question, there is also the fact that Jon… might feel like if he were to do that to avatars, then other avatars/people would be entitled to do the same to him. Which, honestly? Fair. Jon attacked and wrecked innocent people for his own benefit in season 4. If they decided that, even though he has stopped now, he still has hurt people, still is a monster and still needs to die, the same logic could apply.)
There is indeed an absolute disconnect between Martin’s solution (“smiting”) and the tone/enthusiasm/casualness with which he offers it, and it could be rooted in his own feeling of uselessness, the fact he wants to take revenge over those who hurt him and Jon… So I don’t feel like he’s being supernaturally manipulated, but I’m definitely worried that he could take risks and/or make a veryyyy bad decision while trying to prove that no, he can be “useful”…
- ! Jon sounded SO FOND and so amused at Martin’s jealousy! His insidious “Martin~?” and audible smiles! “My husband is a bitch and I love him” feeling, overall.
I like that the exchange seemed well-handled for both of them: Jon naturally standing his ground and pointing out that Martin’s logic was absolutely childish (“Look, Martin: I am sorry you feel that way, but I’m not going to kill a man just because you’re jealous.”), without sounding accusing either; and Martin ultimately relenting (“Fine. I suppose that’s… reasonable.”). They were two idiots in love, Martin being a bigger idiot this time around, but! Idiots.
- Really curious about how Martin will react if they cross paths with Simon or Daisy. Would he encourage Jon to “smite” them too? Or would he be more ambivalent, a bit torn about it? Why has he reacted differently towards Helen – is it strategical, and he just wants to try to use her as long as he can? Is it because he identifies her as the woman he had seen in the corridors, and still feels guilty about not trying to help her then?
… I’m terrified of how he will react if they cross paths with Jared or Jude, however. Jared terrorised him and caused him to accept Peter’s offer, and Jude hurt Jon deeply, something Jon has a very obvious mark to show for. (Same with Jonah: I think that for Martin, it’s clear in his mind that they’ll “smite” Jonah once they reach the Panopticon. I’m not convinced that, after what happened with the Not!Them, Jon would want to do that anymore: if some monsters and avatars didn’t really have a “choice”, then what about Jonah? At which point did he go rotten, irredeemable? What’s the difference between him and Oliver, who’s currently diversifying the way he’s torturing his victims in his domain “for variety”? Is it only Jon’s personal feelings about whether someone helped him a little bit or ensured his personal misery?)
(- ;; Now that Martin has a connection to Oliver through his jealousy… What if Martin’s ending is to lose Jon and then join Oliver’s domain to at least get an exit and cease to be…?)
- I’m a bit more concerned about what is happening in Jon’s head. First off, the way he presented Oliver, as someone who had “helped” him… versus the way he used to describe his “choice” to wake up:
(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You are not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge, where The End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape Him. I made a choice. We all made choices. Now, you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.
(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing.
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I don’t know, Martin. [FOOTSTEPS] I just, I don’t think he’s… [SIGH] I don’t know, I don’t think he’s evil. [CREAKING SOUND] MARTIN: Oh, yeah, sure, he’s probably a really kind, benevolent ruler of a hellish fear prison…! ARCHIVIST: It’s just… He helped me. Wh–when I was… He woke me up. MARTIN: Wow. What a hero.
Back in MAG136, Jon wasn’t sure he had made a good decision; it was put into perspective when we learned a few episodes later that, at this point, Jon had already attacked three people to feed, without letting the others know. Trolley problem: was it right, for Jon not to die, if it meant sacrificing three people (soon-to-be five) to sustain himself? Was it a “good” choice?
This episode, Jon unnaturally presented it as Oliver having “helped” him by waking him up, which, mMMM. Seems like he has made his peace with that choice – which, on the one hand, good because less self-deprecating (it’s normal to want to survive), but on the other hand, there would be reasons to still feel guilty for making it, given the consequences?
I’m not really surprised about Jon expressing a degree of sympathy towards Oliver, or at least pointing out that their degree of “choice” in their transformations bears similarities, given that Oliver’s story, his first dreams, the power inflicted on him, came with a gradual desensitisation and acceptance. Chronologically, Oliver’s story is that of someone who gradually stopped fighting fate and came to embrace his Fear-patron (a turning point being when he lost someone precious to him).
(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “It was there, sleeping on my friend Anahita’s sofa, in the depths of my misery, that I first started to have the dreams. […] These dreams have been a regular part of my sleeping for about eight years now. Even as life improved and I found a new job and place to live – believe it or not I now work selling crystals and tarot cards in a “magic” shop – they continued to crop up a few times each month.
(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “How many months has it been like this? Was there a time before? There must have been. I remember a life that was not itching, not fear, not nectar-sweet song. I had a job. I sold crystals. They were clean, and sharp and bright and they did not sing to me, though I sometimes said they did. We would sell the stones to smiling young couples with colour in their hair. I remember, before I found the nest, someone new came. His name was Oliver, and he would look at me so strangely. Not with lust or affection or contempt, but with sadness. Such a deep sadness. And once with fear.”
(MAG121) OLIVER: And about two years before I came to your Institute, something happened – something I didn’t want to talk about. Didn’t even want to think about. I… [SIGH] I started to see them when I was awake.
(MAG042, Jennifer Ling) “The sign above didn’t have an obvious name, simply reading ‘Crystals. Books. Tarot’. He was tall, black and careworn, deep lines of worry etched into an otherwise handsome face. When he saw me looking at him, he began to walk up to me, still with that intense look. I took a couple of steps back, and asked if I could help him. He shook his head as if unsure what to say, then asked me what I was listening to. A chill ran over me as I realised he was staring at my ears. I said I wasn’t listening to anything, as I wasn’t wearing headphones, and asked him what he wanted. He shook his head again, and mumbled something about protecting my hearing. He turned away then, and started walking back into the shop.”
(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “This worked fine until I saw my father in the dream, walking down Oxford Street, the pulsing veins climbing up his leg and into his chest. I tried to warn him of course – asked leading questions on his health and how he was feeling, whether he’d been tired recently. I even went so far as to book him a doctor’s appointment, much to his annoyance. It did no good, though – ten days later the heart attack came for him and, despite the rapid response of the paramedics and how much of his medical history I had immediately to hand, there was nothing I could do to save him. He died on New Year’s Eve, and as 2014 ended, so did any hope I had of my dreams doing good in the world.”
(MAG121) OLIVER: Wish I… knew why I came here. I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone, and not at least try to find them. That was it with the old woman too. That was different, though. Way I figure it? She stuck her nose in just about everywhere it wasn’t wanted and stirred up hornets. ‘Till all the precautions in the world couldn’t stop Death from finally catching her. If I’d’ve known more back then, I’m… not sure I would’ve bothered trying to warn her. Still. You live and learn, don’t you?
(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “I’m well aware that I don’t even know your name, and I have no responsibility to try and prevent whatever fate is coming for you. Based on my previous experience, such a thing is likely impossible anyway, but after what I saw I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try. I did as much research into your Institute as possible, and arranged an appointment to provide a statement about some spurious supernatural encounter. Even then I was told that the Archivist only reviews the written statements once they have been taken, so here I am, pouring out my lunatic story on paper in the hopes that you might eventually read it. If you do see this in time and read this far, then to be honest I don’t know what else to tell you. Be careful. There is something coming for you and I don’t know what it is, but it is so much worse than anything I can imagine. At the very least you should look into appointing a successor. Good luck.”
(MAG121) OLIVER: Mmm… Let me tell you about how I tried to escape. […] It’s been almost ten years since I first started dreaming about the deaths of others, seeing those… awful veins crawling into them. Into… wounds not yet open, or… skulls not yet split. People who were about to die. Every night, I’d watch as they’d… sneak up and into folks about to choke on blood, or urging into hearts about to convulse. I’ve… come to terms with it. [DRY LAUGHTER] I’ve learned to live with it! […] And the worst part was that somewhere in me, I… I liked it! Underneath all that awful fear, it felt… like… home. […] I wanted to escape. I… needed to. […] At that moment, a sudden calm came over me. I understood it all. I could follow the line of the huge veins that encased the ship down into the water, leading off to a point almost a mile from the South-East. There. That was it. That was our fate. Where we would always be. Because I was going to take us there. Running was pointless. To try and to escape from my task would only serve to fulfil another. I finally understood what I needed to do.
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “With it, I may see and spread the hidden veins of destiny that wrap us close and draw us through the empty, yearning parody of meaning that we call life, knowing at all stages that the last and final point of this journey is a blank and futile end. I have no power to stop it, and even if I did… I would not do so; for to rob a soul of death is as torturous as its inevitable coming. […] And I shall help, ushering on this final, blank emptiness. Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned. But I am too much of my patron now and my feelings cannot help but reflect the shadows of… anticipation that lurk within the grave. […] And so the scope of my domain is yours…! Enter it and destroy me if you wish. I fear the annihilation you would gift me as little as I desire it. I am now, as the thing I feed, a fixed point, that has neither the longing nor the ability to change its state of existence. […] All – things – end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose… only brings you closer to it.”
[Dates-wise: Jennifer Ling left her statement in November 2013 and events were about the previous month; given Oliver’s reaction, he was already seeing the veins when awake back then. Jane Prentiss left her statement in February 2014, so she had met Oliver before he lost his father. “Antonio” left his statement in March 2015; Oliver visited Jon on February 15th 2018.]
It has been around eleven years, by the date of the apocalypse, for Oliver to reach this current state in which he describes himself as “The End that laces through every fibre of my soul” and “too much of my patron”. It only took Jon three years.
Though, overall, I was back at the feeling of the MAG140s episodes with the words/thoughts Jon has for victims and avatars:
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: A lot to think about. I… I feel… [FOOTSTEPS] No. I don’t want to destroy Oliver Banks. It wouldn’t do any good. I know that, and he never asked for this any more than I did. I feel badly for those that exist in his domain, o–of course, I do, but… At least, their suffering will be over, eventually. I can’t destroy everyone I cross paths with, it… [SIGH] No. If Oliver will not seek me out, then… I will leave him be. [TINY CHUCKLES] The avatar of Death… shall live. Martin’s going to be thrilled…! [SIGH]
* Stfu about deciding what is “better” for victims, Jon. (As a personal choice, yes, I would probably prefer the prospect of dying over eternal torment; HOWEVER, it’s not Jon’s place to establish what’s better for others, so Jon trying to rationalise his decision to go after Oliver? Nop, I don’t care, own up to your feelings, don’t scramble for excuses by saying you think it might be more ~charitable~ :<)
* Oliver who “never asked for this any more than I did” also explained very casually that:
(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “Sometimes, for some small variety, I will allow Danika to brush against another root: the final fate of someone she loves. […] And with each one, she knows her steps forward bring closer not only her own end, but all of theirs. Time walks forward with her, but she has not the strength to stop it. Her fate draws ever-nearer, filling me with the joy of watchful fear, but also my own concerns.”
He’s not a passive jailor. Oliver is actively enjoying tormenting his victims in different ways “for some small variety”.
I thiiiiink more and more that Jon might now be targeting the whole Fear-system, and not (anymore) the individual avatars/monsters who were pushed and twisted by the Fears to become their servants, as he had begun to think about in the second half of season 4 (“I was so sure I’d find something up there. But instead, it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life.” about Manuela, lamenting over Jane, etc.) But that brings us back to that awkward stage where it feels to me like Jon is almost more humanising avatars/monsters currently hurting their victims, than the victims themselves who are just… there, and not extremely relevant.
(I’m reaaaally really really curious about how Jon will behave towards Jonah.)
- … I’m also a bit concerned that Jon deciding that Oliver’s victims at least get to die implies something bigger: that Jon is… giving up on the idea to reverse/undo this apocalypse. If these people die, they die, it’s over. Which means that, right now, Jon doesn’t think he has a better alternative to offer them. He had hopes at the end of MAG162, he got a few hints in MAG164 about how to banish the Fears; he… might already be giving hope of fixing things, without officially voicing it?
  MAG169’s title screams Desolation to me (+ bonus Agnes, with the way she got anchored to Gertrude and/or her death), and that could mean Jude (… which would be extremely interesting right now, given Martin “Kill Bill” Blackwood’s willingness to harm monsters/avatars; what could go possibly wrong with making him meet someone who physically hurt Jon, leaving a mark to show for it on one of his hands? So much). There is also a potential connection to the Distortion, and in way that could mean bad stuff (and Jon and/or Martin having to go through the door). Potentially Jon’s lighter being put to use, or Jon&Martin getting a clue about why Jon was gifted it?
Alternatively, if the meaning is more oblique and meant to subvert expectations: Vast stuff?
20 notes · View notes
jamesmarlowe · 6 years ago
Text
『ANTON THIEMKE ❙ CIS-MALE』 ⟿ looks like JAMES MARLOWE is here for HIS SENIOR year as a FINE ARTS student. He is 21 years old & known to be CLEVER, INVENTIVE, UNRELIABLE & EGOTISTICAL. They’re living in NOLAND, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ SLOTH. 25. EST. SHE/HER.
Tumblr media
hi hello welcome 2 my twisted mind ☺️ marlowe is a character i’m still fine-tuning bc he’s brand-new, so this is unfortunately.... a bit of a mess.... and mostly made up on the spot.... c’est la vie!!
(a late addition but u can also peep his weheartit collection here 4 some vibes)
his government name is james marlowe but he only goes by marlowe & only introduces himself as marlowe like he’s madonna or sting....  most ppl who know him (apart from like close friends) probably don’t even know what his first name is. maybe he doesn’t have one!
hails from Appalachia, specifically a trailer park in a poor-as-dirt stretch of Virginia where he was born n raised, baby. he’s Appalachian white trash and not afraid to admit it. marlowe’s very casual about his upbringing and his dumpster fire of a family (no less than three relatives are currently incarcerated, one of which is his older brother who’s probably serving a minor sentence for whatever dumb shit Tim Riggins got got for in FNL or like, selling illegal fireworks out of his trunk :/ ). the only thing he’s a little self-conscious about is his twang which he’s mostly suppressed by now, but other than that, he’s got no shame in where he comes from bc lbr no authentic artist ever came from money anyway!
born sandwiched in the middle of five siblings, marlowe’s always been wild and creative and impulsive, a loud-mouthed kid with too much to say for his own good, prone 2 getting in trouble but learning absolutely nothing from it. it was his mission in life to be Different from all the other kids who grew up where he grew up, with the way he talked, dressed, acted, because he knew that he was destined for bigger n better things so it was just a matter of getting other ppl to believe it, & then seeing how far a little talent and a lot of charisma would take him >:)
from age 8 onwards, he told people he was an “artist” and that became his primary identity. when he was 16 he completed an independent sculpture project (called “Skyscraper”) where he constructed a 20-foot tower made out of junk collected from around the trailer park and then glued Barbies n other dolls all clawing over each other to get to the top, smack dab in the middle of Main Street and refused to take it down even when the local fire department showed up 2 threaten him with fines. it did eventually get taken down bc it was ‘structurally unsound’ and someone nearly got concussed by a falling mannequin head, but at least it got some attention from local newspapers and w/ that as the crown jewel in his portfolio, marlowe got into a few different art/liberal arts schools the following year. radcliffe was the only one who offered a partial scholarship and the east coast sounded nice n far from home, so anyways lets go ✈️ college 
FAST FORWARD its senior year babey and marlowe’s been making the most of his time here at radcliffe. he’s a fine arts major but specializes in mixed media sculptures (and probably is really shit at most of his other classes, like art theory where u actually have to read textbooks? still life drawing? boring. yawn. won’t do it.) his entire profile as an artist i’m cribbing from Rachel Harrison bc I saw her exhibition at the whitney a little while ago and her sculptures made me go ?????¿¿¿¿¿ which i think is exactly the kind of bizarre nonsense that marlowe is going for with his “art”. feast your eyes on these masterpieces. the joke of it all is that marlowe is the first to admit that his art isn’t like.... good. but his philosophy is that if people respond to it & praise it like it’s art, then by definition, it’s art. and if it gets him places (like it got him onto Cultured Magazine’s “30 Young Artists To Watch This Decade″ list), then yeehaw!
When he’s not busy creating new monstrosities, marlowe takes one fat nap per day (usually at a time when he has class) and is otherwise a very social creature who needs constant attention. he’s got a lot of friends and is always looking to make more, not in a #fake way but just as a person who genuinely likes being around people. he very quickly gets bored if left on his own, so he’s prone to following people around campus like a stray cat regardless of whether or not they tell him to shoo. he dorms at Noland but is almost always found in other houses, often crashing in other people’s rooms (needs to be close to his friends or He’ll Die), and he definitely frequents parties, bc marlowe never passes up an opportunity to drink other people’s booze and get a lil messy and Chaotic. he’s [jim halpert voice] not a slut, but who knows? he’s kinda a slut! he’s also definitely pulled another stunt similar to Skyscraper by taking over the quad for a guerrilla art installation with his sculptures (and without the school’s permission oops) which may be the basis for some connections if ppl know him from that particular exploit!!
in summary..... marlowe can be a bit up his own ass at times, but being around him is generally a Good Time bc he’s easy-going and friendly and always down for anything, always. litcherally zero impulse control so nothing gets in the way of a dumb idea that might potentially make for a good story. perhaps he’s not the most reliable person, so don’t expect a prompt text back if ur in a life or death situation, and he doesn’t care very much about anything, so ur setting urself up for disappointment if you do expect him to care about something (the fact that he’s never been in a long-term relationship... very telling). all he wants to do is just have! fun all the time! he’s trying to scam his way into the American Dream with his dumb art, so that he can live a good life and maybe get rich and famous and eventually party at Art Basel in Miami with Frank Ocean! is that really so much to ask!
appearance: marlowe’s very vain and a lot of thought goes into his appearance even when (especially when) it doesn’t look like he’s done anything but roll straight out of bed. all of his outfits are as outrageous as his sculptures are ugly. think mismatched prints and loud colors, silk shirts gaping open like he got tired after the first three buttons, a pawn’s shop worth of jewelry, weird dangly earrings w/ feathers or tiny charms, tinted yellow or pink sunglasses, sometimes a bandana around his neck, just for extra flavor. his hair always has to look perfectly tousled; u can catch him checking out his reflection in pretty much every mirrored surface. at least half the surface area of his body is covered in tattoos & he’ll suggest getting more during every drunken night out, which... is why he has so many by now!
connections: to be quite honest its 2 am and i feel all of my higher brain functions shutting down so i’m gonna make these very simple n straightforward, but we can always workshop!!!! pls feel free to message me even if none of these strike ur fancy :0)
peers in the arts - friends, acquaintances, rivals, probably some former group project members holding a grudge....
fellow party animals who don’t mind sharing when marlowe inevitably mooches off their alcohol and drugs :)
unlikely friends!!!!! it’d be fun to have a friendship dynamic with someone who’s very different from him!!
a roommate in Noland... possibly one he’s not on good terms w/... even tho marlowe hardly EVER sleeps in his own dorm room, he uses it as a storage locker for all his “found” art materials. i can imagine that living in that mess would try the limits of anyone’s sanity :)  
enemies - they can hate his whole Genius Artist shtick and they’d be valid :/
fellow insomniacs! marlowe is very much a night owl (regular naps during the day may be 2 blame but oh well) so he needs a fellow nocturnal to hit up the late-night McDonald’s drive thru with him and then lay on the grass lookin at the stars and contemplating life’s great mysteries while eating chicken mcnuggets 
exes - idk if u can even call them tht when his past “relationships” have all had a lifespan of six weeks or less, but hey there’s drama in that too!!
fwb - i don’t think marlowe’s the type 2 be juggling too many fwb/hook-ups at one time simply because That’s A Lot of Work. that being said... he never likes to sleep alone ;) 
17 notes · View notes
vagrantblvrd · 6 years ago
Note
Gav being grabbed by a rival crew and knowing the crew will save him?
Anon, you have hit me with like a super favorite trope, just so you know. <3333333
(But yes okay, gonna deviate from the norm a little with this one because I thought of something that cracks me up to no end?)
Gavin out and about doing Gavin Things and he gets snatched off the street by some assholes.
Leads them a merry little chase first because you don’t just let yourself get nabbed unless it’s part of a Plan. (Or you know the nabbers in question, how they think and are likely to act and all that.)
Fast little bastard who’s definitely on the resourceful side of things to boot. You know the others are always on him about learning to be a better fighter. (He’s still not much of a CQB kind of guy, tries to avoid it if he can because he knows his limits, but he knows how to defend himself.)
Like, he knows the basics and all. Can throw a decent punch because God knows Dan insisted on him knowing way back when. (Before he really got into the criminal life and they were a pair of idiot kids being amazingly dumb about everything.)
And then he got to America and learned some things the hard way, turned into a scrappy little bastard. (Scrappier, at any rate.)
Michael and Jeremy have picked up where Dan left off in a way, all those times Gavin gets tackled into a wrestling match for being a little shit and so on because Gavin.
There are less…antagonistic scenarios too, though. A moment on a heist or other job in which things turned to shit and Gavin got into a situation he couldn’t take his way out of or was disarmed or just didn’t have the time/chance to go for a weapon. Got roughed up a bit before he got the upper hand or one of the others came to his rescue.
So of course they’d drag him down to the gym at the penthouse or somewhere else and insist on a “refresher” course on the punching and hitting and whatnot. Trevor and Jeremy and whoever else has some martial arts training under their belts do their best to teach him the basics at the very least.
(Becomes this mandatory thing in the crew that you know the basics of self-defense and so on because  because dangerous lives and you never know. Jeremy and Trevor and whoever else taking time out to offer lessons or whatnot to those interested, or maybe they know someone who knows someone who runs a discreet dojo or what have you and I’m getting sidetracked, but you get the general idea.)
Anyway.
Gavin leads these assholes a merry little chase, puts up a decent fight but in the end he doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Gets dragged off somewhere where they ~politely question him about something or other.
Want details and other information about the crew and what they’re up to. Anything they can think of he might know, and Gavin being Gavin he’s not the most cooperative.
Plays little games with them, wastes their time and their so-called polite questions get less and less so and he gets more and more roughed up because violence is a language they’re all acquainted with and so forth.
They get real annoyed with Gavin because he’s just so smug??? Like he knows without a doubt the others will come looking for him – to be honest, so do the baddies because everyone knows how the Fakes are, you know?
Stupid loyal and it’s smarter not to fuck with them like this, but these guys think they’re smarter than the Fakes and so on and just.
Take to taunting Gavin about how the crew won’t find where they’ve taken him and all that, and Gavin?
He just chuckles and chortles and tell them they’ve picked a bad day to do all this and doesn’t elaborate? Just sits there and smirks at these assholes while they keep asking questions he doesn’t give them the right answers to because why would he? (Oh, he plays along after the first few hours, gives them outdated information and the like. Things that will have them chasing their tails if any of them are left after all is said and done and so on, but yeah, no. They’re nowhere in the vicinity of being enough of a threat he’d come close to giving them anything they want.)
And then!
And then there’s this ruckus going on outside – gunshots and explosions and (presumably because of said explosions) things on fire.
Screaming? So much screaming. (Until there isn’t, and then things just get creepy.)
The door to the room Gavin and his guards/interrogator is in gets kicked open and there is Michael and Jeremy and Ryan because you know Geoff sent them after Gavin after the little fucker messed with his suits.
They’re all super pissed off and almost certainly blood on them from artful spatter to more disturbing liberal coating.
Gavin looks at the guy in charge who is :O because how could this happen??? and is just :DDDDDDDDDDD “I told you you picked a bad day for this.”
Because look, okay.
Gavin instigated a little prank war not too long ago – or maybe the others started it and he either got dragged into it or jumped in with both feet and all that, but the details aren’t important – and the others have been fucking looking for him for days now.
The Vagabond’s hair is some random anime-ish color (or maybe Gavin was ~devious and somehow managed to Rimmy Tim it to throw the blame on Jeremy and see how that all played out?). Outside the building they’re in one of the Rimmy Tim-mobiles is *gasp* a stock color, completely de-Rimmied.
Michael hasn’t been able to find his mini-gun anywhere and also his phone’s ringtones and message notifications have been changed to that godawful bird-shriek sound Gavin loves so fucking much, and just.
A lot of other things I can’t think of right now and this whole bit where Gavin went and got himself caught is barely a blip on any of their radars right now.
(That whole thing where they barge in and take down the guards like an afterthought because they’re still so pissed at Gavin? Just tore through all the other assholes between them and Gavin because they were minor annoyance and Gavin is so fucking dead, okay. Not gonna let these other assholes have the pleasure of that because there’s a fucking line.)
Like, yes.
Gavin’s got a hell of a black eye and various other bruises and minor injuries. Wrists a little red from testing his bonds and whatnot, but no serious attempt to free himself just yet. (Might have done if the others didn’t show up just then because it’s been a lovely day but he’s got business to deal later and all.)
The head baddie opens his mouth – to taunt them or gloat or whatever – and one of the boys shoots him. Annoyed about the inconvenience of tracking Gavin all the fucking way out to the boonies like this and bang another dead body on the floor and Gavin :DDDDDD at the others because hi, hello, fancy meeting you here?
Michael scowling at him because Gavin’s an idiot? Can’t be allowed out without adult supervision or something like this happens, and don’t think you’re off the hook for the shit you pulled you asshole even as he’s cutting Gavin free. (Checking to make sure the little idiot’s not concussed or worse, gentle hands even as he’s yelling at him.)
And Jeremy’s just kind of fuming because his car, Gavin, his goddamn car. Ryan is >:(((((((((((  because Gavin replaced all his spare masks with a lovely little selection of random masks, including Michael’s frankly amazing Tiny Potato mask from Sky Factory and so on.
(He’s also currently wearing the Drama mask from the Drama/Comedy theater mask combo because he’s kind of a huge nerd.)
Anyway, they get Gavin the hell out of there still super annoyed at him and take him back to the penthouse where he gets patched up but everyone’s still super pissed!
Don’t forget you little shit!!1!
(Gavin’s just yes, yes, okay, I know, all shaking in his shoes and all, and also :DDDDDDDDD because lolol, which just annoys everyone more.)
Clearly they can’t retaliate now, what with Gavin looking like shit, but just fucking wait, asshole!!1!
And, okay. Maybe – maybe! - they kind of fuck with him a little. Draw dicks and other fun things on his face in sharpie after he falls asleep on them and other fun prank war 101 shit because they can’t have him thinking he’s gonna get away with all the shit he pulled, okay? >:((((((((((((((((((((((((
Also! Just to make sure the asshole doesn’t try to sneak out on them to avoid facing the consequences his his (prank war) actions there may be a cuddle pile. (Not because the asshole went and got roughed up or anything, God no.)
Also, also, Gavin totally doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night in said cuddle pile to snap a few photos – blackmail material, really! - with all these soft, squishy feelings, goodness no.
34 notes · View notes
thattimdrakeguy · 6 years ago
Note
I notice you don't have a Damian tag yet going through your posts You have more posts that are about him than Dick or any other of the batkids not named Tim? You claim to be a Tim Blog but i find it disingenuous that you have nearly as many posts about Damian as you do Tim and most of them are you being negative or making errors. If you were genuine you would have a Damian tag instead of hiding your negative content like a coward. It's okay not to like a character but be truthful.
You gave me three asks that are entirely filled on the kind of petty bias that you continued to imply that I have in all three of the asks.
If you think I’m a coward for not wanting to offend Damian fans with my opinions that are negative based on the bad writing the character has suffered,
then quite honestly, I don’t really have anything to say about it.
I can really only say the fact I got told not to tag him in those types of posts, because people in the Damian tag didn’t appreciate it (with understanding reason), and how it was also because the Damian fan base is the only fan base I ever got nasty sounding asks continuously for criticizing his writing. Even in posts where I criticize the writing for all of the Bat-Family members, or at least the male Robins, Damian’s fan base was the only one I ever got nasty asks from. So I learned through experience it wasn’t a good idea to tag him in those posts.
I presume a lot of them assume I hate him worse then what I actually say because I’m a Tim fan and Tim fan-blog, that seems to be the same case for you going off of how you word yourself as well.
Which I typically find a bit odd seeing how in a few of those very same posts (like the latest one I’m assuming you’re upset at me for) I talk about how he was actually one of my favorite characters when I was first getting into the comics, and don’t actually talk any ill-intended speech towards the character.
I only criticize the writing the character has been dealt much the same I did Tim through-out Detective Comics Rebirth.
I am in no way a hypocrite if that’s what you’re believing.
My blog got popular for openly criticizing how so many different writers had difficulty writing Tim in the same away I just did it for Damian.
and only once did I ever get shit from a person for making many posts about how I couldn’t stand Tim’s writing in Detective Comics Rebirth, while also using a much more exaggerated way of speaking because it meant a lot more to me, and that one person is some one who became my friend literally by the end of the day because even though we didn’t agree on anything, I thought they were a really cool person to talk to.
But you don’t seem like that kind of person, you seem like a person that couldn’t read the full posts, and if you did, could only read them through a veil of “Oh another Tim fan hates Damian” without actually paying attention to how I spoke about him, how I said he had potential and how I enjoyed his initial character development, and that I’m only upset that they kept dropping the ball with him.
Like how I complained about Tim in Rebirth, Tim Drake, my favorite character, and blog theme.
I don’t talk about how Damian is a bad character or how I hate him.
I talk about how it upsets me writers continuously can’t write him well.
Like how I do Tim.
So again, don’t imply I’m a hypocrite.
In your second ask you talk about how Tim should’ve trusted Damian because he saved him from Jason when Jason tried to kill him, and how Tim fans are the only ones that can’t see how he was a jackass to Damian. 
I’m gonna have to assume you used this wording because of how I worded Tomasi’s out of character writing for Tim, as making Tim a jackass just for the sake of making Damian more likable and sympathetic.
I meant saying jackass by how Tomasi wrote Tim to be rude-via-the-mouth to Damian for no good reason, and I considered it out of character because Tim was never like that before. Previously Tim’s behavior towards Damian was untrusting, even in some situations to the point of it being a flaw, much like that time he tackled Damian because Tim believed he was hurting Alfred, something spawned from how Damian previously locked Alfred in a closest.
You don’t seem to recognize that Damian tried to murder Tim, how he belittled Tim, and how he tried to take his adopted dad away from him because he wanted that spot though.
Even how after he saved Tim: Damian belittled Tim some more as Tim was having a mental breakdown.
Counting the score, Tim has more reasons to not trust him then to actually trust him.
Which only got proved more with how Damian reacted when he found out Tim didn’t trust him. By assaulting him and nearly killing him by cutting his zip-line. (Although you could argue if you wanted too that he knew Tim could land well enough to survive, I personally don’t hold an opinion on it because it’s hard to tell, but I’m going to assume he wasn’t going to kill him, or else the whole issue would have even more bad writing in it)
My point is that it was horrendous writing to pretend like Damian couldn’t recognize why Tim didn’t trust him. Especially when he’s on a list (from what I heard) with Superman.
You criticize me for not bringing up Damian saving Tim, but you continue to ignore quite a lot of the things I said in the actual post I’m assuming you’re mad at.
Don’t be a hypocrite, especially when you’re trying to imply I am one.
If I wanted too, I could right now say “Damian fans are the always the ones that are so biased that they can’t realize Damian has continuously done horrendous and creepy stuff like make fun of Stephanie’s boobs and assaulting Tim, and even later Jason”, and going off of your asks (I won’t say you, because I’m assuming I don’t know you),
I think it would apply to your asks.
But I’m smart enough to know not every Damian fan is like that, so don’t claim otherwise. Every fan base has it’s toxic wasteland, but don’t try to lump me into Tim’s toxic wasteland because I don’t agree with you. You’re only making it seem like you’re apart of the Damian toxic wasteland with your behavior.
The third ask keeps going on talking about how they personally find no personal problem with characters calling Damian cute, purely because the asker finds Damian cute themselves.
Think about it though, why would they find Damian cute?
He’s violent, mean-spirited, has attacked both Tim and Jason, Dick has witnessed this, has a prison that Jason is aware of, made sexual comments towards Stephanie, and presents himself in a way where he thinks he’s better than everyone and demands respect.
That’s not cute, and that’s how his character was built up to be (not the prison, that’s a recent thing), and so far has continued to be the majority of those things.
He’s not a cute character.
To portray a character like that as cute is disingenuous (stealing the word you used, because I liked it) and piss poor writing because it’s ignoring the obvious reality. It just gets even worse because Damian wasn’t originally ever portrayed as a cute character, it’s something writers later on did because they couldn’t be bothered to write him well. Dropping the ball down the stairs with his character, and letting his character down.
Some artists might draw him cute because they aren’t aware of how a 13 year old looks, or could even keep consistent with how he looked for so long (even some of the ones that’s drawn him before began to draw him differently because they stopped being able to bother or whichever reason they have), and even some writers might write him cute, but if you’re going to bring that up to me, than I genuinely don’t think you read my full post, only furthered by how you’re trying to imply I’m a hypocrite by how I think 90s Tim was cute and tiny (something the asker did in their third ask).
The difference is pretty much the whole point in the grand majority of my posts were I’m critical about any writer on any character: they changed the character, because either they were too lazy, or too un-knowledgeable about who they were writing, and it’s bad writing to do so, since it’s inconsistency.
If you were watching a TV show and all of a sudden they treated a mean-spirited character, who continuously treats the majority of characters like crap, and continues to struggle with not acting on the instincts they was raised to have, as if that was cute when they haven’t done that before, and none of the characters have a reason to call him cute out of no where, it would be considered bad writing, articles would be written about it, and fans would be ticked off about it.
I’m pretty sure the comics only get away with it because it’s comics, and no one really cares about comics anymore to talk about it. I’m just pointing out the bad writing I continuously see on my blog were I talk about comics because I care and I heavily enjoy the medium of comics.
If it bugs you that I do that, you honestly shouldn’t be on my blog, and I’m a little confused how you got here since you seem aware I’ve brought up Damian’s bad writing before.
and if you want me to explain why I freely call Tim tiny, it’s because he is, and that’s been a main-stay of his character since the very beginning, and only changes with bad artists. Meaning that’s how he’s always been (ignoring the bad artists again), so there’s no bad writing involved with it, it’s actually bad work to ignore that. So it doesn’t fall into any bad or lazy writing like with Damian. It’s simply just not the same thing. If anything it’s the exact opposite if you want to compare those two things, like you seem zealous to do.
If you failed to recognize my logic, I’m going to have to assume again that you haven’t read or at least paid attention to things I’ve said, or how I generally try to conduct my points on my posts.
Continuously throughout your three asks you try to make points that make no sense.
The main reason I haven’t just blocked you and deleted your asks is because I get the vibe that you aren’t typically a very mean-spirited person, you’re just impulsive and passionate towards a character, and that is fine, but it’s when when you try to put down what someone else has said, when you seem like you haven’t even read the full thing, or have at least tried to fully pay attention to it, that it becomes toxic behavior, and something I have a problem with.
I believe it was just yesterday I got an ask were someone was complaining about the same kind of person that you presented yourself to be to me. So maybe this whole time this was only a joke to get under my skin because someone read that ask and my response and decided to pull a prank.
You may be a child, and so because of how you speak in the asks, mainly the latter two, I chose to just describe them instead of show them because I’m gonna take it that after some years you might look back on this and how weirdly aggressive you were towards people, and be glad that I didn’t show the ones were you try your dang best to point stuff out about me like it’s honest and true, and like you did your research about me, when quite frankly it’s not and you haven’t, even if you were trying to gaslight me, and use some straw man arguments to provoke me.
Also since you may be a child, a lot of Damian fans are since he’s Robin and the most recent one, I’m going to let you know that I’m honestly not mad at you for the asks, just confused, and that I wish you well and hope that I didn’t make you so mad that you’ve been thinking about it all day.
I’m just being critical of a character who I’m disappointed hasn’t had good writing consistently for years.
I’m not attempting to make the character come off like they’ve been bad since the beginning.
So you don’t have to worry about it.
I’m just genuinely upset with his writing, the same way I’m upset with how Tim’s been written before.
If you’re a grown person though, I’m a little more disappointed, but all the same, I hope I didn’t ruin your day, because to let you know, you haven’t ruined mine.
35 notes · View notes