#British First Edition Books | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zreamy · 2 months ago

Text

things i know that i can't have

jake's life was hard enough before he fell for you—balancing uni, football, and being a good christian son. in some cruel twist of fate, sleeping with you has only made things harder—and, according to sunghoon (and scripture), damned him to hell the first time he thought about it.

pairing ✩ jake sim x fem!reader

genres: college au, (established) fwb to lovers, smut, fluff, angst

warnings: minors dni, mild religious exploration and guilt, strained parental relationship.......... deeply unserious and a bit melodramatic at times, jake's pov, jake crashes out every few paragraphs, football player jake (british), jakeyn are so nct dream (young and freaky), surface level gatsby analysis, creative liberties taken w the location of freshwater fish.. author loves jake so jake must suffer, and one peep show quote

word count: 33,666

playlist: ...what are we lizzy mcalpine, all my ghosts lizzy mcalpine, north clairo, 20191009 i like her mac demarco, 10:36 beabadoobee, lover/friend kaytranada and rochelle jordan

fic taglist: @heechwe @yunjardi @fancypeacepersona @skyearby @kimjkejyy @sanriowoozzz @ii-mimii @pochakkeu @xylatox @seung-log @anofi @immelissaaa @mssishipi @somuchdard @yuniesluv @m3wkledreamy @jakesimfromstatefarm

author's note: uhm.. if you have been tagged in this fic fifteen thousand times, i sincerely apologise 😭😭😭 the powers that be have been working against me, but im letting go and letting god 🤞 i had a lot of fun writing this and i hope you love bi disaster jesus lover jake as much as i do......i hope u all enjoy the fic! do let me know ur thoughts (positive only on this one), as always thank u emma for beta reading, miss u so bad :'(

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

— Matthew 5:28-30, English Standard Version.

There it is, in black and white—red and white, since Sunghoon has a red letter edition. Jake skims the passage again, certain words sticking out this time: lustful intent, adultery, with her. Underlined, italics and bold, like they could be missed. If only. It’s too late now; they’re etched on his retinas, branded on his skin. Lodged deep in his chest, taken root already. It hardly seems fair that a single thought could hold so much weight.

Or, in Jake’s case, many, many thoughts.

Shuddering, he closes the leather bound book softly, a slow exhale ripping out of him as he glances up at his best friend. “You mean I.. can’t even think about fucking her?” he whispers, brows touching in the middle.

A crack of thunder splits the air. Jake flinches. The sound lingers, rumbling over the grey sky. Meant for him. An answer from Heaven—from God Himself. Condemnation, more like. With bated breath, he turns his head slowly, expecting his judgment to be scrawled in the clouds, true divine intervention. But nothing. Just grey. Heavy, oppressive grey.

Sunghoon laughs, a strange little chuckle Jake has never heard before, but knows immediately that he doesn’t like. He adjusts his tie. Shifting the Windsor knot, smoothing the blade—a calculation in his movements that leaves Jake wondering if his friend hasn’t orchestrated this whole situation, weather and all.

“Afraid not, buddy.” Sunghoon’s tone is light, but there’s something solemn about it all—the rain, the smart clothes, this terrible, terrible realisation.

March’s wind nips at Jake’s cheeks, stinging them red no doubt as rain splashes around his feet, wetting his socks in tiny, cold drops. He shivers but doesn’t leave, watching as a smirk spreads over Sunghoon’s lips. A pit stirs in Jake’s stomach as Sunghoon looks over both shoulders before leaning in.

His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “But if thinking about it is as bad as doing it, you might as well just go ahead.”

Jake stares, incredulous, takes a step back as if Sunghoon’s suggestion might smite him where he stands. “Of course, you think that. You lost your virginity behind the worship tent at camp four years ago. Forgive me if I don’t consider you a sound moral compass, Sunghoon.”

“I prayed about it after.” He shrugs. “Clean slate.”

“Hoon,” Jake cries, exasperated, mortified. “You can’t intentionally sin and think you’ll be absolved because you prayed about it after.”

“Why not? Isn’t that what forgiveness is for?”

Glaring, Jake’s jaw works soundlessly. Where to start? At Sunghoon’s audacity or the fact he doesn’t even have a proper answer. Arguing won’t change anything. The whys-or-why-nots of it all are Sunghoon’s cross to bear. Not that he cares enough to. That’s his problem, and his saving grace, if you ask Jake—he makes everything sound so easy, like there isn’t a fuck load of consequence attached.

A frustrated sigh escapes Jake as he glances down at his watch, rain warping the digits on his Casio. It’s almost eleven. Almost an hour since service started, and they’re still standing at the door. A gust of wind whips through his coat.

“Just get inside,” Jake mutters, tone sharp, more from the cold than anything else.

Unmoving, Sunghoon frowns, lips pursed in genuine contemplation. Jake might be endeared if he didn’t know any better.

“Can I ask you something?” Sunghoon’s voice is lighter now, curious, sincere.

Jake doesn’t have time for this—but it's Sunghoon. So, he pinches his nose, bracing himself for whatever’s coming. “What?”

“Do you think you’re better than me because you lost your virginity in a bed?”

Taken aback by the question’s absurdity, Jake blinks. Wonders briefly if he misheard. A nervous laugh bubbles out of him, but Sunghoon’s expression morphs into something unreadable—calm, expectant maybe. Genuinely awaiting an answer. Jake tilts his head, considering it before letting out a short and decisive huff.

“Yes, actually. I do.”

r/Christianity

u/footballfan1511 | 2m

How bad is premarital sex, really? (Need quick answers!!!)

I (20M) have been having sex with my friend (20F) for three weeks now. I knew it was wrong, but she’s everything (very hot, totally, completely sexy), so I didn’t care. BUT I just saw this verse (Matthew 5:28-30) and apparently it’s a sin just to THINK about it???

The last time we did ‘it’ was this morning before church (sorry), and I was supposed to go over there tonight, but I’ve been freaking out about that verse all day…….. idk what to do but I really like her, so much, and I still want this, with her. Please give me advice ..

Every Thursday night. Ten p.m. sharp. Almost no exceptions. You call Jake, talking shit for as long as it takes one thing to lead to another. Tonight is an exception—you had friends over, rescheduled for midnight. Jake lies in bed, hair still damp from his post-football training shower, counting each minute as it passes. 23:55. His leg is shaking. 23:56. He sits up straight, jolting as if waking from a nightmare, nerves sharp and restless as his thumbs fly over the keyboard, texting Sunghoon.

Jake: What about phone sex?

Jake: Like if I don’t think about her while I do it?

Sunghoon’s groan reaches Jake through the thin walls of their shared flat. Drawn-out and long-suffering. Read receipt. 23:57. Three dots.

Hoon: I can’t tell you what to think, but if you’re asking me then you probably alr know

Hoon: Also..??? Do you think you can jack your shit on the phone without thinking about her 😭😭😭

Jake snorts despite himself, much too loud for the quiet. Echoing as if even the room disapproves. He closes his eyes, shakes his head. Palm to his cheek. A low smack, half-joking, half-sincere. Guilt snakes around him, a hot, unwelcome coil that won’t ease. Jake gets the sense that the choice ahead — to answer or not to answer — might drastically skew his life one way or another.

A minute early. 23:59. Your name on his screen. Phone humming in his hold, pulse lashing his throat. On the other end of the line, before he has the chance to weigh his options, you dead the call—making his decision for him.

Jake’s heart stumbles, clumsy in his chest. He thinks of the verse, sharp and prickly—crown of thorns on heavy head. He has been thinking about it since Saturday morning. Extra training with Team B, avoiding you, six-thirty wake-ups to join Sunghoon at the rink. Ice-cold mornings melting into afternoons. No matter what he tries, it always comes back. Lustful intent, adultery, with her. And despite his best efforts to pray for rapture, Thursday has come, and Jake has lived to see it.

A minute late. 00:01. Your name on his screen. Hovering thumb. He knows that phone sex and sex-sex aren’t the same thing, Matthew didn’t even have a phone—but if he could’ve, and he could’ve known you, and you wanted him? Jake sighs. He should answer. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, and throw it away. The words sink their senile claws into him, holding on for dear, frail life. His phone stills in his palm.

You don’t call again. You never have. If this phone call is going to happen, it’s up to Jake to make it so. This knowledge and its weight multiply by the second. An itch he doesn’t try to scratch, knowing he won’t be able to reach it. Another agonising nine minutes trudge along. 00:10. His phone buzzes on his chest, and he knows it’s you before he looks. Two texts.

YN: Said you’d stay up for me Yunie :(((

YN: You don’t think I’m worth the wait?

Reading your messages through the notifications, he’s having a hard time convincing himself not to reply. Not to tell you he waited, that of course, you’re worth it. His guilt loosens, making space for his desire to reassure you—he cannot rule out the possibility that this desire outweighs his guilt. Silence settles in his room, stretched thin and strange around him. He sighs.

YN: Attachments: 2 images

YN: Wanted to hear your reaction, but you can tell me when you’re up ig.

YN: Night, loser :P

Butterflies, sudden and bright—teenaged. Foolish. Tucked under the notification, the photos dare him to look. His curiosity clicks it, and the first picture fills the screen, yanking his breath from his lungs.

Most of your face is cut off, showing only your lips—pouty and glossy and pretty. Pulling at him in a way he’s not quite equipped to name. This would be enough for him, an innocent selfie, you and those pretty eyes, that smile. More than enough—pulse quickening just thinking about it. His gaze lingers on your lips, stuck for a while. Then, unintentionally, his eyes flick lower. Hair fanned over your pillow, breasts peeking out from under black lace. Fuck. A sight he’s seen a million times, but somehow, each time feels like the first. Jake gulps. Holy shit. He ignores the throbbing in his pants, how much tighter they are—he won’t give in. No matter how badly he’s craving it. He’s stronger than that. With his eyes, he traces your lips. Ogles until his screen dims, locking the picture away again.

Picture two. Fuck. You on your stomach, grainy in your webcam. Arched back, black lace panties over your hips. Fuck. The lingerie, the shape of your body.. Seeing you like this, so perfect and all for him—it’s taking every last shred of his self-control not to get in his car and rush over to you. Want, need, tugs at him. A tether he can’t break. His phone locks.

Enough is enough. He drags his feet all the way back to the shower, oppressive cold water hitting him. Doing absolutely nothing for his revolting need. This isn’t working—not the water, not the attempt at self-control. Not when he’s already hard and aching against his stomach. Soft breasts. Round ass. Wet—his hand moves instinctively, forehead resting on the cool tiles. He closes his eyes, your body clear in the dark. Full lips. Arched back. He’s breathless when he finishes, head bowed as heat coils low in his stomach. The water carries his release away. Nose crinkled as it swirls around the drain, cringing at the sight—guilt, shame curling around him.

Again, he dries off, pulls on clean pyjamas, and drags his feet to bed. On his side, he closes his eyes, your body like a brand behind his eyelids, thoughts filling the quiet in his room. Exhaustion however, is its own kind of mercy, and eventually, pulls him under.

Everything is sharper in the morning, clear in the cool light of the college campus. Bare branches cast shifting shadows over stone paths, breeze stealing the sun’s warmth. The weight of his dreamless sleep clings to him, stalks him through the courtyard on his quest to find Jeno—until he sees you and stops in his tracks. Phone in hand, lip between teeth, standing by the library doors. You aren’t doing anything special, frowning at your screen, but Jake’s heart rate spikes anyway, cheeks heating against the cold. He blinks, taking you in. Hair billowing around you, sunlight caught in its edges. Affection bubbles under his skin, tugs him towards you before he knows it, his arm falling over your shoulder.

You flinch, glancing up, startled. Recognition narrows your wide eyes. “Ugh, let go of me, you asshole,” you say, freeing yourself.

Surrendering, Jake steps back, hands raised. “Me, asshole?” He points at himself, feigning offence. “What did I do?”

A frustrated laugh. “Are you serious?” Pressing your cute palm to his chest, you shove him. Not hard, but enough to make him lose his balance, rocking a little. “Yes, you, asshole.”

He doesn’t speak.

You scoff, blank faced, like you don’t care, like you didn’t just shove him. “I sent you those photos, and you ignored me.” Stoic. Detached.

Those photos. Even in reference, they work him up. Too vivid—mainly because he took another look when he woke up. He had to turn off his phone to stop, shoving it into the bottom of his backpack. He didn’t feel guilty about it then, but good grief, he feels like shit now. Shame burning his nape, creeping over his shoulders. At least he isn’t thinking about that Bible verse anymore. Lustful intent. With her. He wasn’t thinking about it. He tenses, sighing.

“I wasn’t ignoring you.”

“You were.” Your voice is quiet—vulnerability inching through your cool exterior. “At least turn your read receipts off if you’re going to pretend you didn’t see them.” Your arms drop stiffly.

A hesitant step towards you, gaze searching yours. “Hey.” Soft, whispered almost. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you.”

On-campus commotion scores the quiet between you — overlapping conversation, bike bells ringing — and you inspect him before you speak. “Right. So you saw the photos and came so hard you passed out?”

Jake licks his lips, embarrassed. Wonders briefly if he’s been so transparent about your effect on him, that you’ve quite accurately hit the nail on the head—even in jest. “Something like that.” At this, you scoff, shoving him again—lighter. He chuckles, breathy and relieved. “Sorry,” he says sincerely. “I really am sorry. I loved the photos, seriously. You know I did.”

Finally, you sigh, a reluctant smile twitching at your lips. “Whatever, asshole,” you say, voice a cute mumble with no real bite.

“How about I make it up to you tonight? Show you my reaction in person?”

“You’re not even free tonight,” you point out.

Shit. You’re right—he has a group project to work on. He should do the sensible thing and say no. “For you, I can be,” he says instead. He’ll figure it out.

“Shut up.” A grin stretches over your lips, and relief washes over him. Finally, a good answer where you’re concerned—until your face tilts into shock. Opening your bag, you bring out a tub. “Don’t overreact, but I made you something,” you tell him, voice lighter as you pull off the lid, pushing foil out of the way. “I know you prefer milk chocolate, but.. it’s White Day, so I just thought—” You cut yourself off, shaking your head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

This isn’t the first time you’ve done something nice for Jake, this isn’t even the first time you’ve made him something, but it feels different—the way everything to do with you feels different now. He stares into the container for a second, suspecting he’ll wake up in bed if he blinks, so he tries not to. Eyes drying, hurting—nothing changes when he succumbs.

As far as he knows, you haven’t baked anything since your shared high school Home Economics class. He chose it to soften the blow of his STEM-heavy course load, you chose it because he did—getting all the way to lesson three before switching for Music. Scones were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. His weren’t perfect, he’ll admit it — softer than he’d have liked — but yours? Yours came out of the oven soggy and burnt all at once.

And now, here you are, handing him cookies you made. Edible-looking cookies. For White Day. For Jake. How is it White Day already? One whole month since you first made out with him on Jeong Jaehyun’s birthday—one whole month since you took him home and had your way with him.

He tears his eyes from the cookies to look at you again. You’re smiling, eyes wide, sparkling, and Jake has to remind himself to breathe. “Thank you.” Fondness flares against his ribs, too big to contain. He swallows hard, blinking too fast. “You—” His voice comes out faint, clearing his throat doesn’t help. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know..” You trail off. “I originally wanted to kill two birds with one stone and bake you a pie, but.. that was a little out of my depth.”

“A pie?”

“You know, March Fourteenth.. Three point one-four.. Pi day.” You tilt your head. “I’m surprised you forgot about that, maybe you’re not as much of a nerd as I thought.”

“I’m surprised you know about that.”

“You’re the one who told me.” Closing the container, you hand it over to him, fingers brushing his for long enough that he loses his train of thought. You’re smiling fondly, completely stealing his attention until, suddenly, a pair of hands clap down on his shoulders, making him flinch.

“I’ve been looking for you, dude. We need to go,” Jeno says, his grip firm, already steering Jake away.

Your name sounds weird coming from Jeno’s mouth when he greets you. Too bright, too happy. Jake can picture his shit-eating, Samoyed-esque grin, those cute smiling eyes—never so uncharming as they are right now. Not only has Jeno interrupted, he’s towering over Jake like he’s trying to prove a point, like being taller than 180 cm means anything to anyone. And you, tiny smile, soft wave—are you.. shy?

There’s a pang in his chest he can’t quite name. A protective instinct, maybe. Jealousy? He sighs. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

You nod, eyes warm, fixed on Jake, and it’s enough to anchor him even as Jeno shoves him to class.

The moment Jake slides into his seat, he fishes his phone from his bag, turning it on. A message from you tops his notifications. Come over after class and make it up to me? A smirk curls his lips as he reads it, shaking his head a little as he reacts with a thumbs-up. The heat in his cheeks lingers longer than he’d like, even as his lecturer arrives and hands out the register.

Why Jake signed up for a residential architecture module, he has no real idea, but he met Jeno in this class, and he’ll take whatever wins he can get. Jeno likes architecture. Loves it—more than anyone else Jake knows. He designs structures in his free time, uses words like façade and fenestration when he catches Jake playing The Sims in class, and has a strong stance on panelised vs volumetric construction.

Jeno goes to Building Design and Technology to learn, and Jake goes so he can sign his name on the register and get marks for attendance.

Time slogs on, an endless mass, numbers added to the clock as his leg bounces under the desk. Thoughts of you consume him. After it happened, Jake thought often about that first night you shared—this one-off miracle. Five loaves and two fish. Lazarus resurrected. Never to happen again, but it did. And it has, so many times now that his memories are starting to bleed into each other. Details lost to frequency. Yet that night, those firsts — the softness of your lips on his, the birthmark on your right hip — always come back to him with such clarity, that he is, again, shocked to realise it’s been a month.

A bigger, more jagged thing haunts him too, cleaves through the sweetness—the way you acted the morning after. He woke up to you walking into your room, wrapped up in a towel and whatever you were typing on your phone. Hair damp, skin dewy. Jake still wasn’t entirely convinced he hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. You didn’t even glance at him until he cleared his throat.

“Are you hungry? I’m not really in a cooking mood, but I can order something for you. Or we could go to Samantha’s?” you suggested, voice remarkably clear, loud in the Saturday morning quiet.

Jake blinked, staring like you’d spoken another language—though the idea of a breakfast roll from your favourite spot was tempting. “Yeah. Cool. Sure. Whatever’s easiest.” And as if stumbling over his words wasn’t enough, his voice cracked.

You frowned like he was the one acting weird. “You okay, Jakey?”

A drop of water slipped down your cheek slowly, the way your sweat had last night. He sits up suddenly, tugging the duvet over his chest, oddly vulnerable in this position. “Yeah. Sure..” He hesitated, twisting the fabric around his finger. “Do you maybe.. want to talk?”

“Talk?” You tilted your head, brows furrowed. “About..”

Ungraceful silence trampled over you both as Jake racked his brain for something to say. “It’s just.. Last night, before.. You said you wanted to talk about something,” he said eventually.

“Hmm..” You sighed, thinking for a while before shrugging. “If it was important, I’ll remember.”

It was all your idea—to kiss, to invite him upstairs after he walked you home, to.. well. You know. It felt like something, like all those years of quietly pining after you hadn’t been for nothing. A real breakthrough, finally. But there you were, acting like… whatever that was.

When you got to Samantha’s, you let him pay for your roll and scone, and joked with him as usual while he drove you to your workout class as if you hadn’t been begging him to dick you down five hours prior. All while Jake was still there, stuck in the moment, replaying the feeling of your lips and your soft skin. In his car, parked outside your gym, you leaned over the centre console and kissed him, soft and fleeting.

“See you, Jakey!” you said, voice bright as you got out of the car and waved goodbye.

Sometimes, if he thinks hard enough, he can feel those first curious touches again, see the look in your eyes before you leant up to kiss him. And the butterflies in his stomach tangle, vicious flapping that scrapes his insides. Arguably, the worst of it all — the glaring detail he always fixates on — is that you were both completely sober. You didn’t want to feel like shit at Pilates in the morning; he was still recovering from his antics the night before. No distractions, no excuses, just you two.

Jeno calls out an answer, voice tugging Jake back into the present. Heat creeps up his neck as all eyes shift in their direction, and he sinks lower in his seat, hoping his laptop screen is enough to hide behind. He glances at his calendar widget, immediately reminded that he has to finish his part of his group research paper—a task he has to get done before he leaves for his away game tomorrow afternoon. A task he has to get done now if he wants to see you tonight.

All it takes is a few focused minutes, a couple quick messages to his group, and he’s sharing the finished document before class is over. So when his lecturer finally dismisses everyone, instead of heading to the library to go over the lesson, he finds himself here—on your doorstep, hands in pockets, pulse thudding in his ears. It’s not like he was running or anything, just walking with purpose, that’s all.

Seeing you does nothing for his breathlessness. You’re wearing one of his hoodies — when did you take that? — neckline slightly askew, showing part of your shoulder. It’s a little too big for you, the hem brushing the tops of your thighs and for more than a second, Jake tries not say, aww, out loud.

A grin stretches over his lips. “Hey, gorgeous.”

You cross your arms over your chest, squaring your shoulders, eyes cut in a way that screams, I’m mad at you, but not really. It’s a new dynamic that he’s still getting used to: your feigned disinterest, his irresistible charm. Your lips twitch, a short, reluctant laugh slipping out, and you roll your eyes like he’s inconvenienced you.

A split second passes before you wrap your arms around his waist, pulling him close. He hugs you tighter than he should, savouring the smell of his detergent on you.

“Can’t stay mad at me for too long, huh?”

“Get off of me,” you mutter, face pressed into his chest, grip on him tightening.

Eventually, you let him in, smiling as he takes off his shoes by the door. He follows you, your footsteps soft and familiar against the carpet. Sweetness lingers in the air, and when you reach the kitchen, his eyes land immediately on the containers stacked on the counter—both crammed full of cookies.

“Wow.” He brings a hand to his chest, feigning hurt. “And here I thought you made those just for me.”

You sigh, barely meeting his gaze as you approach the counter. “You’re so dramatic,” you murmur, the words almost lost under your breath. Opening the container, you tip it towards him. “Ever heard of a test batch?”

Laid out in shades of golden brown and charred black are your several attempts. Some are burnt at the edges, others rock-solid or collapsed into thin, brittle discs. Misshapen, imperfect—each a testament to your determination. His stomach flips, a pang of affection he tries not to wear too openly.

“I didn’t feel right about wasting them, so Jimin and I are going to be big, brave girls and eat them,” you explain. “This isn’t even all of them; she took some to Aeri’s this morning.”

“Oh,” Jake says with a slow nod, taking it all in. He takes one from the top—Communion wafer-thin, square. “See, this makes sense.” It crunches between his teeth, too crispy, but not bad. Honestly, he likes it, chewing with a smile as the sweetness hits all the same.

When he reaches for another, your hand swats his away, fingers firm but not unkind. “I made you twenty perfect cookies and you want to eat these?”

He shrugs, smiling down at you. “What? I’m not allowed to be a big, brave girl too?”

Your expression falters, the teasing edge giving way to something softer, warmer. You look at him for just a beat too long, and then your fingers are brushing the hair from his face. Your smile is a quiet, private curve on your lips. “You’re the biggest, bravest girl I know.”

Jake isn’t sure why, but the words settle nicely in his chest.

Before long, you’re standing side by side at the stove watching a pot of ramen simmer quietly, steam curling into the air. In an effort to avoid extra dishes, you snap apart two pairs of disposable chopsticks for the two of you to use—as if you ever have to worry about doing dishes when he’s here. He blames the steam from the pot for the warmth spreading all over him, eating bite after bite of spicy ramen. Gossip Girl plays on your laptop, your eyes glued to the screen as its glow dances over your face. He can’t ignore the fuzziness taking over him as you share your dinner straight from the pot, chopsticks and hands bumping occasionally.

Jake washes the pot in the sink. Gentle clink of steel on steel, soft murmur of running water, you in the doorway, eyes on him. He is overwhelmed by how domestic, how easy this is—and how desperately he wishes he could stay in this moment forever.

With his hands dry, he follows you to your room, neck flushing under his collar as he shuts the door. Leaning against it, he watches you sink into the mattress, setting up your laptop. Chuckling, you pat the empty spot on the bed. “I don’t bite, Jakey.”

Jake knows now, from experience, that you absolutely bite, so your reassurance only concerns him. But still, like the big, brave girl he is, he crosses the room and sits on the bed, leaving a respectful, Jesus-approved distance between you. The newness of this, its fragility, throws him off. Not too long ago, you were fighting men off with a stick. In fact, Jake was half-convinced you’d leave Jaehyun’s party with Na Jaemin. A guy you haven’t said anything about since pre-friends-with-benefitsgate—an observation he finds only mildly relieving. He’s too busy thinking about what it means, if anything, to relax into the fact that you’re with him now.

If whatever you two are doing can be considered ‘with’ each other.

Sharing a pot of ramen and watching Gossip Girl is easy enough though. Familiar. The two of you wouldn’t have made it to the middle of season four if he wasn’t enjoying it. Like this, far enough apart for an extra person to sit between you, two whole episodes start and finish with neither of you reaching out to touch the other. Jake would like to think — on his part — it’s only proof of his master level self-control, wanting you so desperately but holding back. Proving to himself, to you that this isn’t just about sex or whatever else for him. That Jake can behave and make rational decisions when it comes to you.

And maybe, if this was a different Friday, in a different week, or Sunghoon hadn’t shown him that verse, he might have believed that. But Sunghoon had shown him that verse, and Jake is thinking a bit too much about his right hand, and the sinning, the cutting off and throwing away of the whole thing. About Hell and the suffocating weight of one decision—an all-consuming decision, worth his potential damnation.

On your part, he has no clue what the hold up is, seeing as this is the first time you’ve made it through a Gossip Girl blast without starting something, never mind watching a full episode. By now, your hand would normally have found its way into his pants, or your lips to his neck. But there you sit, unmoving, focused as ever, like on your tenth rewatch you still care about whether Blair or Dan gets the internship at W Magazine.

As if you can read his mind, or the part of it that you occupy, you reach into his underwear and take a hold of his dick. You go through all the familiar motions — twisting your wrist while you stroke it, thumb over his tip when you reach it — and Jake, as always, eats it up, melting like wax in your fist. He is only mildly humiliated by how much you get to him, how quickly he loses his shit when it comes to you, shuddering and whining, hips bucking in a matter of strokes. And then, you stop—hand slipping away like nothing happened, like he’s not hard as a rock in his pants, precum staining his underwear because of you.

Jake — fighting for breath — can only stare at you, watching you ignore him for the show instead. A few minutes pass like this until you sigh, hitting pause with a dramatic motion. “What are you looking at?”

“You.”

At this, you roll your eyes, but Jake grabs your wrist. Somehow, he’s only now appreciating you in his hoodie. Admiring how it sits on you—sleeves too long, fit too baggy. Historically, Jake’s generally emaciated look hasn’t really lended itself to seeing you, or anyone else, in his clothes, so it’s tripping him out how much he likes it. The way the fabric pools around you, covering your body completely.

“Ugh,” you mutter, trying and failing to hide a smile. “Quit looking at me like that.” He’s not sure why you insist on playing this game, on why you make it seem like you’re doing him a favour when you want him just as much as he wants you—but he won’t pretend he doesn’t like working for it, like it’s not that much better when you cave.

“Like what?” he asks, playing along in a soft voice.

“All horny and.. weird.”

Jake laughs. “You think I look weird?”

“A little.” You shrug.

“Shit,” he mutters. “You’re not into that? I thought my off-putting nature was part of my charm.”

This makes you smile, leaning in without closing the gap. Instead, you tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear, your touch making his stomach flip. He can’t take it any longer, being so close and doing nothing about it, so he wraps his fingers around your wrist to hold you there, and closes the gap himself. It’s everything—it’s always everything. The warmth of your lips against his, the way you hold him, like it’s more than just a kiss for you too.

There’s nothing he likes more than this.

Biting down on his bottom lip, you pull away a little. “Is this part of your grand plan to make it up to me?”

Jake hums, dick throbbing in his pants. “Yeah, baby.” He nods, still attached to your mouth. “Been thinking about it all day.”

“It’s working.”

A breathless laugh—amused, turned on, taken aback. He pulls away, patting his lap and you don’t hesitate to straddle him, sparks between your bodies. Palms on your hips, fingers grazing the soft fabric of your yoga pants. A stir in his chest—heart hammering when he looks at you, breathless. Thank you, God, he thinks, sincerely. I needed this. His gratitude tangles quickly with guilt, uncertainty. Am I doing the right thi—your hand rests on his, snaps him out of it. Eyes soft, lips parted, want written all over your face. So beautiful, and so different from the resting frustrated face you seem to wear whenever he’s around—which he won’t pretend to dislike.

“Wanted to come over here and see you last night.”

Sheepishly, you twist the cuff of your sleeve between your fingers. A stark change from your usual behaviour, rarely reserved about anything — at least not with him — and so mouthy until he gets his hands on you. “I wish you did,” you mumble, looking away.

“I should’ve, baby, but I’m here now,” he says softly.

Another kiss—deeper, slower. An act of restitution — one of many to come — the way his tongue moves against yours, eager to keep to his word. He reaches for the curve of your waist, fingers digging into the soft flesh under your hoodie. The swell of your breast against his palm, cool zipper brushing his knuckles. He tugs on it just enough for you to smile against his lips.

“Can I take this off?”

You nod, clearly flustered, worked up already.

Pulling at the zipper, he savours every inch of skin that comes into view. A shaky inhale seeing your bra—the same one from the pictures, having the exact same effect. Holy shit. Lace under his fingers, touching it as gently as he can manage like it’s sacred, because to him it is. He can’t look away, gaze fixed, reverent. Holy shit. Jake clears his throat, mouth suddenly dry, like he’s seeing you for the first time. The pictures don’t do you justice, not even close. And he loves the pictures.

You’re watching with lidded eyes, and swollen lips. He cups your cheek. “My pretty girl. So gorgeous,” he says, though it doesn’t seem enough. With two languages to choose from, Jake should have the words. But he doesn’t. Not for this—for you.

Heat diffuses beneath his hand, coating your cheek as you turn into his touch, hiding your face. Smiling lips pressing a muffled word into his palm. “And?”

“And I’m sorry about last night.”

You raise an intrigued brow, no longer hiding. “And?”

“I’m an idiot.”

A grin, a glorious grin as you nod. “I just wanted you to say it wouldn’t happen again, but this is way better.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, rolling his eyes. “I’m a big idiot, and you’re the smartest girl I know. It’s not going to happen again, I promise.”

Sudden betrayal in your squinted eyes, clutching your hoodie over your chest, his palm trapped against the cup of your bra—he almost thanks you. Deeply unimpressed, you scoff. “You know other girls?”

Charmed, Jake smiles, freeing his hand. “Don’t worry, baby. None of them make me as nervous as you.” A kiss before you can respond, pulling your chest flush with his. You hum against his lips, whimpering when he rolls his hips into yours. Hands on your back, quickly unclasping your bra. He nips at the spot below your ear, making you shiver. “And none of them get me this hard either.”

“I know,” you say simply, but your breathlessness undercuts your confidence, and steals his patience.

Taking your hoodie and bra off, he guides you onto your back, settling between your spread thighs like it’s where he belongs. At a loss for words, he squeezes your hip, eyes catching on every part of you. Hard nipples, soft plane of your stomach—nothing about you he doesn’t love. Jake gulps, awestruck, always awestruck. Overwhelmed by the weight of how much he wants this. Wants you.

“So perfect, baby,” he whispers, finally. “So, so perfect.”

A smile tugs at your lips, hands coming up to cover your face. “Shut up,” you grumble.

Huffed laughter slips out of him, endeared. Aching slightly, wondering if you don’t know you’re the most breathtaking thing he’s ever seen. He tugs your hands away, holding them in his, lips brushing your knuckles before he leans in and pecks yours.

Slow, desperate kisses along the curve of your jaw, trailing the length of your neck to your shoulder. He lingers, sucking pretty love bites onto your collarbone, soothing the skin with his tongue after. A shudder, as you pull his hair, whimpering under him. He could stay like this all day, forever if you let him. Lips on your nipple, finally, licking, biting.

Your moan is instant, pulled from somewhere deep, and he groans at the sound, tongue flicking just to hear it again. “Jake,” you say, breathless. Even better. “Jake, please.”

“Tell me what you want, baby,” he says, nosing between your breasts, the warm skin there heady, dizzying.

“Want your mouth—can’t wait any longer.”

His dick twitches as he lifts his head. Takes you in—your pouty lips, ruffled hair, sweat beading on your skin. Jake is not going to come in his pants again because of you. No matter how much it feels like he is. That won’t happen. It can’t. He’s an adult man with self-control. He tells himself these things over and over, willing them to be true, even though he knows better.

Jake leans up, pressing a kiss to your lips. He can’t get enough. “I’m not going to make you wait,” he says—a blatant lie. He has every intention to make you wait, at least a little.

His fingers toy with the waistband of your underwear, slipping beneath, eyes wide when he feels the heat of you. Fuck. You take his middle finger easily, pulling him in, clenching around it, and the choked sob you let out sends a sharp spike of need along his spine. He lets his thumb brush your clit, slow, deliberate. You’re too worked up to focus on kissing now, squirming underneath him, nails digging into his forearm. His lips trail your throat again, more marks, his own breath coming faster, a little unsteady—almost as wrecked as you.

“I feel like—” You pause, mouth falling open to let out a harsh exhale. “I’ve been waiting for a while, baby, need it.”

For reasons he doesn’t fully understand, there’s just something about hearing that word. Baby. So rare from you, uttered only at your most vulnerable, that always undoes him. Has him acting at your beck and call without a second thought—so it can’t come as a surprise when he tears your pants off, presses his lips to your core, and groans hungrily, breathing you in.

There’s a certain reverence to it all, he can’t help it—it just comes naturally with you, a need to please you, worship you. His arms wrap around your thighs, keeping you in place, savouring the soft whine you let out when his nose brushes your clit.

Fuck.

He likes this a lot more than kissing. Likes the way you moan and cry out his name, the way you tug his hair, and crush his head between your soft thighs. Loves the way you fall apart on his tongue, and the way you taste. The wet look in your big eyes — chest heaving, breath ripped out of you — after he licks you clean.

The tension lingers, sweet and heavy, pressing in on Jake from all angles when he finally pulls away, leaving a kiss to your inner thigh before sitting back on his heels. He watches you, sinking into the sheets—lashes fluttering, bottom lip pulled between your teeth. Spent and glowing as you look at him. Jake pulls off his shirt, cool air pulling goosebumps along his skin. A deep breath, a few deep breaths. You ask in a quiet voice if you can wear it. He nods, hands moving instinctively, fingers brushing your skin as he helps you put it on.

“Did so good for me, baby. Didn’t you?” he asks, pulling you into his arms, hand stroking your back.

You lift your head from his chest, a dreamy look in your eyes when you look up at him. “Does that surprise you, Jakey?”

His breath hitches, heat spreading on his cheeks and neck. He doesn’t have the upper hand with you, not at all. But he does have the option to kiss you instead of answering so he does that. Kissing you until you say, one minute, against his lips, and leave the room.

Soft warmth settles in Jake’s chest as he heads to the kitchen, smiling. All of this, these moments after sex, makes his heart race. Makes him want to get on his hands and knees and beg you to love him back—though he would settle for like. This routine, this quiet afterwards might honestly be his favourite part of it all. The two of you, inhabiting this tiny world you’ve carved out together—big enough for you and him only. The flat to yourselves. Your head on his chest. You even asked to wear his shirt! These moments when the thought of being your boyfriend doesn’t seem so out of reach. When he feels like he is your boyfriend.

He can’t stop smiling.

At the sink, he washes his hands before pouring you a glass of water, and when you step out of the bathroom, he’s already there, leaning against the wall. He melts at the sight of you—barefoot and sleepy-eyed, a smile on your face. His favourite sight in the whole world. He can’t believe his blessings, that you would want him — even if only for sex — and each day he spends with you makes it harder for him not to test how far he can push it.

“Hey, pretty girl,” he says, handing you the glass. “You feeling okay?”

You hum in response, thanking him. Your fingers slip around his, warm and delicate, and he has to remind himself to breathe as you lead him back to your room. Jake’s eyes are glued to you, addicted to the way you fill out his shirt. It’s senseless—how a piece of his own clothing, something so familiar, suddenly looks brand new just because you’re the one wearing it. Looks better. Nipples nudging the soft cotton, hips curving out into the hem, ass hanging out of it. He lies down on the bed, watching you, each movement entrancing him. His heart stills in his chest when you tie your hair back, shirt riding up enough to show off the lace of your underwear. It’s too much. It’s perfect. He clasps his hands in his lap, trying and failing to cover the effect you have on him.

You get into bed, body molding to his like a second skin. Head on his chest, ear pressed over his heart—hearing it thud, no doubt. Jake wraps his arm around you, fingers splaying over your back, holding you close. He exhales slowly, wondering how much longer he can lay here like this, with you, before he overstays his welcome. He’s made good on his promise, done what you invited him here to do, and it’s not late enough that you’d object to him leaving at this time. Your breath is a steady lull on his skin. Asleep, probably. But then—your hand trails on his stomach, fingers resting on his waistband, and he can’t help feeling a bit bad.

He knows better than to think anyone could make you do something you didn’t want to do—but has no idea if that includes him, too. Novelty long gone. Your curiosity sufficiently sated, while he kills himself trying to pretend he’s fine being just a friend to you again. This is hardly a perfect arrangement, but Jake feels nice sometimes, worthy and handsome, knowing you want him too—even if it’s only sex. It’s really good sex.

As if you can hear his brain thinking his arousal away, you reach into his underwear. All of his blood rushes south, your soft palm wrapping around him. His mouth opens, then shuts. He wants you, he always will, and it’s all he can do to pray that won’t cost him this friendship—or you.

Jake clears his throat, shakes his head. “You don’t have to.”

“I know, Jakey. I want to.”

He kisses the top of your head with a soft, contented sigh, fingers curling around the back of your shirt. Eyelids fluttering shut. It’s good, more than—leagues better than when he does it himself. Perfect. A shiver runs through him when you kiss his stomach, leaving a mark on the ticklish skin. He wants to look, really wants to, but he doesn’t want to come yet. Your lips brush his belly button and the hair underneath. A mumble of his name into his skin that he hears, feels, but can’t address.

“Jake,” you say again, leaning off of him.

He hums, eyes snapping open when you whisper in his ear, “Do you want to stay over?”

A nod. “Yeah, baby. I’ll stay over.” The words spill out of him with no consideration for the long day he has ahead.

You pull his earlobe between your lips, nipping gently, a jolt down his spine. “Good boy.”

The praise makes him throb in your hand. Fuck, he thinks. Absolutely none of these words are in the Bible.

Jake wakes up in an empty bed, your door ajar. It’s only eight — too early to rush — and he stretches out his arms, twisting against the mattress. Fifteen lonely minutes go by without you, and so he gets up, dragging his feet through the apartment.

You’re in the kitchen, speaking in a hushed voice to Jimin—who seems to forget about the whole whispering thing for long enough that her voice rings through the hall when she says, “You need to get a grip before you get hurt!”

Sensing him, you whip your head towards the doorway, spotting Jake where he stands. Jimin wears a too-tight smile as he approaches. “Nervous about the game?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Great! Listen, I have to run, but good luck out there!” she says, patting his shoulder before leaving the room in a cloud of jasmine.

Chewing your lip, you follow her out with your eyes, blinking when the door clicks shut behind her. Jake shifts his weight between his feet, tensing his abs on instinct when your gaze trails over him. You don’t comment, but you linger before looking away. For a second, something unreadable passes over your face—gone as soon as you speak. “Do you want something to eat?” you ask, smiling, but it doesn’t reach your eyes. “We need to do a food shop, but I can make you some..” You trail off, pulling the fridge open. “Greek yoghurt with blueberries.”

“Is everything alright?”

You nod, not meeting his gaze. “Jimin just thinks I’m stretching myself a bit thin.” You huff a small laugh, trying to downplay it, but your shoulders stay tense. Pulling out the punnet, you frown at it. “Greek yoghurt on its own?” you suggest, throwing the blueberries into the bin.

Jake shakes his head, a small, appreciative smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I need to go soon, I still haven’t packed.” He fiddles with the drawstring on his pants, eyes lingering on you. Still so beautiful with a crease between your brows—he wants to reach out, smooth it over with his thumb. “Are you going to be alright by yourself?” It’s a bit of a useless question, he knows what you’re going to say. Knows you would tell him you were fine even if your arm was hanging off. You know it too, if the arch of your brow is anything to go by.

A chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, Superstar—you have a game to play.”

Jake hesitates, wondering if he should argue or just accept it. You’ll be fine. You always are. But something about leaving feels harder this time. Feels wrong. “You’re more important to me than a college football game.”

In theory, it’s true.

In practice, he’s not going to skip his game, not unless you ask him to—which you won’t. His football career is running on a clock that will only tick for two more terms after the summer. In his email, a timetable awaits, outlining all of his games for his last season. It’s provisional, for now, but bears weight regardless. He can’t afford to miss a game right now, but he’s a little shaken by the feeling that he can’t afford to leave you either.

You smile, a barely there curve of your lips as you close the fridge. Taking his hand in yours, you give it a squeeze, a steady reassurance. “Honestly, Jake. I’ll be alright. And if I’m not, I’ll still be here when you get back. So go.”

For someone so desperate to get rid of him, you’re having a hard time parting with his hoodie. He doesn’t want it back, but he needs something to wear to the car. It’s only fair, he showed up in only his t-shirt after all—his t-shirt that you’re still wearing and seem reluctant to return. You pull it close to your body like it’s yours now.

“It’s two degrees out,” he reminds you. “Do you want me shirtless in that?”

A sick and twisted silence passes, long enough to convince Jake you’re actually going to say yes. He watches your gaze flick downwards, want for him so clear that his dick twitches. Dragging your fingernail over the dip in his abs, your touch leaves a trail of fire in its wake.

He’s thankful for the discipline he’s developed in the new year—consistently following Sunghoon to the gym, eating unseasoned chicken breast and three eggs at breakfast because Sunghoon does, because Sunghoon is.. a lot. Wide shoulders, solid frame. Built like God put him on Earth to look good shirtless, and Jake—well. He eats the chicken. He lifts the weights. He does his best.

“No, not really,” you say, frowning as you shove the hoodie into his arms.

Jake smiles, glad you didn’t take too long to come around. He puts it on, zipping it slowly. Eyes on you the whole time, and when his abs disappear beneath the fabric, you sigh. His lips twitch, pleased.

At your front door, he hugs you—contemplates never letting go. The scent of coconut drifts up from your hair, and it tugs at something deep in his chest. His fingers tighten, pressing into your waist. He frowns. He shouldn’t miss you—not this much, not for one night. A night where, realistically, he wouldn’t see you even if he stayed home. But no amount of logic or reason is enough to make him feel better.

“I wish you were coming with me,” he says, mumbling into your collarbone.

You lean back a little, fingers carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. For a second, a desperate, fleeting second, he thinks that maybe you’ll say, fuck it, and come along, that you might see the appeal of sneaking around a four-star hotel with him. He can picture it already—matching fluffy robes, doing your skincare routine together at the end of the night, sharing a twin bed while Jay Park snores in the other one.

Instead, you look up at him with a smile that turns his knees to mush. “Not my fault you suck at planning, Jakey.”

He groans, tips his head back, feigning exhaustion. “Right, because everything is my fault, and I’m the villain in your story. I get it.”

You roll your eyes. “Get out of my apartment,” you say, but your grip doesn’t ease.

Jake exhales a laugh, but he doesn’t move either. Just stands there, holding you, memorising this like he’s shipping off to war—your hands on his skin, your vanilla scent under his nose. “Without a kiss?” His voice comes out quiet, hopeful—half teasing, half not. He’s stalling, trying to buy another second. Maybe two.

You push at his chest a little. “Out, Jake.” But you’re smiling and he feels your fingers tighten just a fraction before they let go.

Jake only smiles, his arms locked around you. He dips his head, pressing a kiss to your temple, and his voice is soft when he says, “I’ll text you when we get there.”

A sigh slips out of you, feigning annoyance, but the brush of your fingers down his arm gives you away. “Yeah, yeah. See you later.”

He grins. “You’ll miss me.”

A beat passes before you speak, just long enough for Jake’s smile to falter as he watches you. You pout, hand on his cheek, thumb moving tenderly over his skin. “No,” you say, shaking your head. “But you’ll miss me.”

“I already do.” He’s not lying.

Jake doesn’t kiss you before he leaves, which is okay. He tells himself it’s okay. But regrets it the whole drive home, drumming his fingers against the wheel as if he can tap the thought away. He regrets it while he stuffs his kit and toiletries into a duffle bag. And he regrets it on the bus, staring out at the passing motorway, the new Beabadoobee album blaring in his headphones. He’s so consumed by his regret that he doesn’t even have it in him to pretend he’s annoyed when Jay falls asleep with his head on his shoulder.

Not for lack of trying, Jake doesn’t sleep, and as it turns out, the protein bar he found in his backpack earlier is not enough sustenance for a three-hour journey. The bus rumbles on, road stretching out endlessly through the windscreen when he takes a look. He sighs, cracking his knuckles and willing himself to stop thinking about you. This doesn’t work either, and he’s typing out a text to you before he realises.

Jake: I hope you’re feeling better ❤️

Jake: I’ll see you soon, okay?

You reply with a picture of yourself in bed—glasses on, a book in your lap, lips curved into a soft, easy smile that makes something in his chest tighten. He stares for too long, caught up in the details. Gentle slope of your nose, loose strands of hair framing your face, dark love bites peeking out from under the collar of your shirt. His stomach flips, a giddy laugh slipping out. He wishes he could do something, turn the bus around, and go see that pretty face in person.

YN: All good, Jakey !!! Just needed to shower apparently..

Jake: My gorgeous girl :)

Jake: You did smell kinda weird when I hugged you

YN: ???

YN: Don’t even joke lad.

Jake snaps a quick selfie—grinning, a little flushed, hair messy from having his hood up. In the corner, Jay is dead asleep, mouth agape, face smushed into Jake’s shoulder. He laughs quietly, sending the picture, heat flooding his cheeks when you react with heart eyes.

YN: Such a pretty boy ☹️

YN: Jay obviously

Jake: Obviously.

It’s just past two when they start filing off the bus, the sharp coastal wind biting at Jake’s cheeks. He shoves his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching against the cold. The hotel in front of them is huge—way nicer than anything they actually need. But still, it’s nice, knowing that the football budget is going to something tangible, that they enjoy. A small comfort. The younger boys he sees like brothers will be looked after when he’s gone, and that thought warms him despite the cold. Towering windows glint in the afternoon sun, the kind of place with sleek, startlingly shiny floors and crystal chandeliers that don’t make sense for a one-night stay. But he’ll take this any day over the dingy motels he remembers from first year, stained towels and plywood mattresses.

At the front desk, Jay stands in line next to Jake with his eyes shut, as if three hours asleep on the bus weren’t enough. Jake knows better than to say anything though — after three years on the same team — he understands that Jay isn’t tired. He’s following a ritual. The Rilakkuma band-aid on his wrist is proof of that. And in case that isn’t enough, Jay doesn’t touch the key card either. He claims the bed furthest from the door, sits on the edge of the mattress, and blasts Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind—the Joan Baez and Bob Dylan live version, not the Bob Dylan studio outtake. And he listens to it twice before saying a word to Jake. Of course, because they had a single brief conversation before that first away game three years ago, their post-check-in discussions are forever based around two subjects: food, and you.

Jake: We’re here :)

YN: Has Jay asked about me yet?

Jake: One more stream

YN: Ah, almost settled then, I see

Jake laughs at this, a small exhale from his nose as he watches you type.

YN: If you stayed home, would he just.. not play?

Jake: Never considered that but I’ll ask later

Jake: Kick-off at 5:30 btw

YN: Good luck 🥳🥳🥳

He reacts to the message with a heart and tosses his phone aside, pressing the heel of his hand to his empty stomach. It’s a lot, Jay’s routine, but Jake isn’t in a position to judge him too harshly. Ever since high school, he eats a bowl of brown rice, grilled chicken and vegetables before away games, like it’s a charm against failure. Because it is. Because the first time he did, he played the best game of his life, and now the thought of eating anything else makes his stomach coil. It might seem silly to believe that a bowl of rice could change the outcome of a game, but Jake has seen it first-hand and isn’t willing to risk it again.

Jay is humming, oblivious, bobbing his head slightly, and Jake can’t help the smile on his face as he watches. Music spills from his headphones—Dylan’s voice a scratch against the air, Baez’s softer, sweeter. It’s almost grating, a taste he’s yet to acquire. They don’t talk much outside of football, not really, but there’s a closeness anyway. Built from hours of drills, sharing meals after training, and rooms for away games, retreats. A sudden rush of dread hits Jake, remembering that after next year — after graduation — the two will likely never share a room again. Even more hauntingly, they may never share the pitch again. Jake shakes his head. The plight of the student athlete, he supposes.

A happy sigh comes from Jay as he takes his headphones off, standing up. He stretches his arms out over his head, turning to Jake, grinning. “Hey, buddy.”

Jake would never admit this to him — or anyone — but he has a lot of respect for Jay. He takes training seriously, giving his all even during warm-up games, he’s got killer technique, and is (unfortunately) really nice. If Jake couldn’t make captain, he’s glad it went to Jay.

“I was talking to your girlfriend the other day.” The grin doesn’t fall from Jay’s face when he speaks, wagging his brows.

The G-word makes Jake roll his eyes—even though he likes hearing it, praying that God is listening and taking notes.

“She cornered me in the library to ask if I knew how to make a pie.”

“That sounds like her,” Jake says, smiling too.

His cheeks burn thinking about what you said yesterday—about how you’d wanted to bake him a pie. The memory jolts him. He digs through his bag without thinking, quickly finding the tinfoil abomination he made sure not to leave the house without. Jay catches it easily in his left hand when he tosses it over, eyeing it suspiciously before unwrapping it.

“She ended up making cookies, but I guess you knew that.”

He blinks at them like they might explode. “Wait, she made these for you?” Jay tilts his head, impressed. “You might not be as hopeless as I thought.”

Giddiness overwhelms Jake as he nods. It’s weird, a bit ridiculous even, how a batch of cookies can feel like a championship win—better. He likes it though, and doesn’t try to fight his smile.

His stomach rumbles into the silence. “Do you want to come get food?” He always extends an invitation to Jay.

“I’m good, man.”

And Jay never accepts.

This meal is a sacred one. As soon as Coach announces the hotel, Jake pulls up Uber Eats and Google Maps on his desktop to meticulously survey the surrounding area. And if his work reaps unfavourable results, he’ll call the hotel to enquire about the microwave arrangements. And if that doesn’t work out, he calls the convenience shops nearby to ask them.

He knows how he must seem, but before the first away game of this season, he brought his rice bowl in tupperware, had to eat it cold, and sprained his ankle on the pitch. So to say he was delighted when he found it on the menu of a local place would be an understatement—an independent Mexican restaurant with a 4.7 star rating only twenty-minutes away on foot. Perfect. His Promised Land. He applauded the monitor when he saw it.

Tres Mesas—a quaint restaurant, with three tables and a TV in the corner playing the news on mute, but damn if that wasn’t the best bowl of brown rice, grilled chicken, and pico de gallo he’s eaten in his life. The rice was fluffy, the grilled chicken tender, smoky. Even the pico de gallo was incredible—he only ordered it because he hadn’t looked at the vegetables yet, and panicked when the waitress sighed. Luckily, it’s the one component of the meal he’s willing to play fast and loose with. He can’t actually remember which vegetables he ate that first day, just that he enjoyed them.

When he finishes eating, he gets up from his table with half a mind to go to the kitchen and ask for a photo with the chef. He settles for going to the cash machine across the road and taking out a tenner for the tip jar by the till. On the walk back to the hotel, he texts his dad a photo of the bowl, looking at it lovingly as he sings its praises via text.

Jake: Kick-off is at 17:30 💪 will let you know how we get on, love you

On the way to the other school, again, Jay rests his head on Jake’s shoulder—whether he’s awake or not is anyone’s guess. But when Jake’s phone vibrates in his pocket, he retrieves it with as little motion as possible, just in case.

Dad: I’m glad you enjoyed your meal. Was it hot? 😂.

Dad: You do not need luck, son. You are always wonderful. Love you.

Jake: It was hot, dad 😭😭😭 of course, it was

Jake: Way too soon…………..

Warm-ups go by in a blink, a blur of sweat and jump squats until Jake finds himself standing in the tunnel with everyone else. Muscles humming, heart racing. He shakes out his limbs and prays to God for a miracle.

At church, when someone gives a testimony, they say, “God is good,” and the rest of the congregation responds in unison, “All the time.” Then, that person says, “All the time,” and in unison, the congregation says, “God is good.”

Jake doesn’t know why he finds it so grating, but week after week, he sits in his seat suppressing an eye roll while muttering the responses along with everyone else. However, when the ref blows the whistle to call full-time — scoreboard reading: HOME 0, AWAY 4 — ‘God is good’ sits on the tip of his tongue. He covers his mouth with his collar, pressing his lips together so it doesn’t slip out.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have time to dwell on it, because Kim Sunoo comes running up and jumps on his back, looping his arms around Jake’s neck, and he nearly topples over. The rest of the team come rushing towards them, loud and triumphant. Jay reaches them first, his eyes gleaming with pride as he ruffles Jake’s hair. Adrenaline courses through him, dulling the ache in his legs.

And as they start to leave the pitch, heading for the locker room, he kisses his hand, points to the sky, and mouths, thank you.

People are often surprised to hear Jake admit that the best part of winning a game isn’t the roaring crowd, his coach’s praise, or even personal satisfaction. No, the best part of winning a game is laughing at the dinner table with his teammates after, and washing down a tomahawk steak — mushrooms and potatoes on the side — with a glass of champagne. And all on the university’s dollar at that.

Winning the first away game of the spring semester was more than enough cause for celebration, and Jake — full-bellied and alcohol glazed — has been keeping an eye on his drinks all night. He glances at his empty glass, pleased with his restraint. Someone had to keep a level head, and it wasn’t going to be Jay. O Captain! Our Captain!—for whom the only thing between tipsy and shit-faced is a whiff of vodka. Maybe less.

Turns out, Jake was worried about the wrong guy.

Nishimura Riki, 186 cm of arms and legs, dawdles over, red in the face (and ears and neck) and stumbling. With each step, his well-consumed IPA sloshes dangerously in his glass, splashing the back of his hand when he comes to an abrupt halt. “Sunoo, move,” He starts. “Need to talk to Jake.” His voice is slow and syrupy, at least an octave higher than normal.

Their youngest — their scrawny Goliath — only turned eighteen a few months ago, and (quite bravely) attended his first three months of college parties completely sober until then. He’s still figuring out his limits, and Jake can’t help but be endeared by this large child—if not a little alarmed.

“Knock yourself out, kid,” Sunoo says, amused, as he stands up. He sticks around for long enough to make sure Riki doesn’t fall over trying to sit, and takes his empty seat at the other end of the table.

This conversation he came stumbling over for is a request — delivered in a harsh whisper, hand over his mouth — to sit beside each other at the next meal. Jake flinches, too startled to respond, when Jay stands abruptly from his chair. “Get up, Riki. I’ll swap with you.”

Childlike delight floods Riki’s flushed face, looking up at his captain like manna from the sky, and wrapping his gangly arms around him when they cross paths. Jake shares a look with Jay as he sits in front of him—equal parts amusement and concern.

“Do you think I could finish that off for you?” Jay asks, gesturing to what’s left in Riki’s glass.

He nods quickly, extending it. “Of course, I’ll just get ano—”

“No!” Jake all but yells, cutting him off. “I mean, Coach is limiting us to three drinks tonight, so, no more.” A lie he deems more than necessary, a lie he wishes someone had already told.

Riki grins, leaning in. “That’s my sixth.” A laugh, and then another bubbles out of him as he sinks into his seat, shoulders racking. This disclosure seems as surprising to Jay as it is to Jake—not at all. He is extremely lucky that his teammates like him so much. Settled, finally settled, Riki shifts, letting his bony knees dig into Jake’s thigh. “Did you see my tackle? What did you think? Am I getting better?”

Jake nods sincerely, Riki’s been working hard — eager to prove himself so Coach won’t regret signing a first-year — and it’s paying off. “It was clean, buddy. You did great,” he says, meaning it. And Riki doesn’t try to hide his boxy grin.

On his other side is Jungwon—head tipped back over his chair, knocked out after one mojito. Jake takes a photo, sends it to you. Lil bro can’t hang. You reply right away: AWWWWW cutie 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 how much did he drink lmao.

Jake: Mojito

Jake: Singular

YN: 😭😭😭

Jake can’t suppress his smile, taking a selfie at a high angle and sending it to you. What about me am I cutie ?

YN: Yes, very cutie !!! You look so handsome 🤒

YN: So blushy, baby, are you also very drunk?

Cutie. So handsome. Baby. Jake is as giddy as he is confused. All that in the span of two consecutive text messages—he can’t believe his luck, struggling to tamp down his sudden desire to buy a lottery ticket. You might even tell him you miss him if he plays his cards right.

Jake: Sweet girl 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

Jake: Not drunk just a few glasses of champagne hehehehe

YN: So you’re drunk 😭😭😭

Jake: You can’t see but I’m rolling my eyes

YN: I believe you, Jakey 😐 put the phone down and celebrate w your friends, okay?

YN: We can talk when you get back to your room !!!

What an exciting suggestion—talking in his room. With you. Jake stares down at his phone, in awe. Wow, he thinks. So clever. He almost wants to get up and start bragging about you like a proud parent. Oh. That is not an image he likes.

Jake: Whatare you gonna do if I keep texting? Leave me on read?

Yes, apparently—you read the message as soon as it sends and don’t reply. Don’t even start typing. Thirty minutes pass by before they leave the restaurant. Jungwon on Jake’s back. Riki on Jay’s.

He was never very good at cards.

Finally in bed, light-headed and smiley after three glasses of champagne, Jake pulls up your contact and calls you. He waits, staring up at the ceiling, tapping his fingers against his phone case. The room hums softly around him. After a few rings, you answer, and he smiles at the sound of your voice. “Hey, Superstar! Congrats!”

“Thanks, gorgeous,” he says, eyes fluttering shut. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Jimin and I are going to pres at Yizhuo’s and then the club. I actually think we’re leaving soon, but it should be good—Yizhuo hasn’t come out since Valentine’s.”

The mention of Valentine’s makes Jake’s breath hitch, fingers tightening around his phone as the memory comes rushing back—relentless. He hasn’t been out since then either, now that he thinks about it. That night. The dance floor. Your breath fanning his neck when you asked him to kiss you.

Jake froze, caught off guard. “What?”

“Don’t be a kid about it, Jakey,” you said in his ear. “If you don’t kiss me, Jaehyun will.”

The thought of Jaehyun kissing you, again, while Jake was stuck at zero kisses in ten years, made him sick. Historically, he had always been unlucky when it came to you—countless games of spin the bottle spent kissing the person to your left, watching as you kissed his friends. Yet there you were, asking him to kiss you and he was hesitating. Stupid, really. Ridiculous.

He cleared his throat, heart pounding. He’d read too many romance novels, seen too many films, to believe that you two could kiss once and it wouldn’t change everything—but he liked you, and he suspected he always had. So he asked, “You really want me to kiss you?”

“Please,” you said, voice small, vulnerable, as if you were giving him a piece of yourself and begging him not to break it.

Through the phone, your voice hits his ear, bringing him back. “Did you fall asleep?” You don’t sound anything like you did last month.

“No, no, I was just thinking,” he says faintly, a distracted beat passing as something crosses his mind. “Hey, what was that about with Jimin earlier?”

“Nothing,” you say quickly, and he's certain that’s the end of it. “She just thinks I’m going to get hurt when you go off, and use all your new experience on someone else.” You laugh, and he can’t tell if you’re amused by the notion of getting hurt, or there being someone else.

Jake wasn’t expecting you to tell him anything, never mind that. The thought that you, or Jimin — or anyone — could think there was someone else. That there could be someone else, hollows his chest, grinds an ugly gear in his brain. But it clears up a lot about this morning, she wasn’t being weird, she was.. warning you? His thoughts race, a million and one questions rattling in his head.

“Are you?” Is the one he asks, not fully equipped for any of the answers you might give.

A long quiet beat passes. “Are you?”

This feels like an opening, an opportunity for him to set some things straight. How could there ever be anyone else? To confess, maybe. You’re it for me, you’ve always been it for me. He can’t bring himself to—it doesn’t feel right to say over the phone. “If something was seriously wrong, you would tell me, right?” he says instead. At your silence, he continues. “The world won’t end if you open up to me, you know. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Of course. You’re my best friend,” you say belatedly.

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the ache in his chest. “Always.”

You don’t reply right away, a minute passing before you clear your throat. “I have to go, okay? But I’ll text you.”

Jake nods even though you can’t see. “Have fun tonight.”

“Thank you, Jakey.” You hang up.

His phone vibrates with a text from you. Fit check 🤧. You’re wearing a lace tank top and a little black skirt. I’ll have a drink for you since you’re staying in! He stares at the photo—flutter in chest, heat on cheeks. His screen locks, and his reflection grins back at him, clear-eyed, flushed. Happy. Unlocking his phone, the photo stares back at him—you, so beautiful, and so far away. His thumb brushes the screen absentmindedly. Gosh, he misses you.

Jake: You look so perfect……wish I was there 🤒

Jake: Look after yourself, cutie

YN: Haha thanks me tooooo

YN: Yes sir 🫡

He types out that he misses you but thinks better of it, clearing the message and leaving a heart-react on your response.

“Was that your girl on the phone?” Jay asks, closing the bathroom door behind him.

Smiling, Jake turns the phrase over in his head. My girl. Butterflies erupt just thinking about it. Another silent prayer. “It was.”

Jay only nods, taking his charger from his bag and plugging it into the wall by his bed. He takes a long sip of water from his bottle and sighs, relieved, Jake thinks. For a long time, Jay looks at him from the other end of the room, saying nothing.

Until. “You’re a good guy, Jake,” he says, his tone a bit too serious for Jake’s liking. “And it’s fine that you like her, it’s good that you like her, but how much longer are you going to keep that to yourself?” he asks, looking at Jake like he actually wants an answer.

Sighing, Jake pinches the bridge of his nose. “I get that you think you’re helping, but just—maybe stay out of it.”

Jay blinks, his brows twitching together for the briefest second before smoothing out. Jake hadn’t meant for it to come out so sharply. Silence stretches out over them, long and heavy, and before he can take it back, Jay exhales slowly, looking away.

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. It’s just—” A pause. When he finally speaks, his voice is softer, like he’s saying something that will cost him to admit. “Look, I’ve tried sleeping my way from friend to boyfriend, and it doesn’t work. At some point, you’re going to have to show her you care about more than just sex, and I hope, for your sake, as your friend, that you do it before it’s too late.”

Jake stiffens, every muscle in his body tensing up. Heat spreads from his ears down the back of his neck, sharp and unforgiving. His first instinct is to argue, to say something to get on Jay’s nerves, but he relents—there’s no point in arguing over something they both know is true.

He clears his throat, sighs deeply. “Thank you, Jay, for your unsolicited advice,” Jake says, turning around and screwing his eyes shut, willing for sleep to pull him under.

It doesn’t.

Jay shuffles around the room for a bit before flicking off the light. Jake wonders if he should say something, but he knows there’s no need. Grudges don’t belong in their friendship—it shows on the pitch when something’s off. So they get everything off their chests, yell at each other if they have to, and move on like it never happened.

And yet, he feels bad for meeting Jay’s vulnerability with sarcasm. He goes over the things he could say, again and again, until he hears snoring over his shoulder.

With a sigh, Jake rolls onto his back and rubs a hand over his face. He sends a text to Sunghoon—a question he already knows the answer to: Do you think I’m fucking things up w YN? It’s only after hitting send and putting his phone under his pillow, that sleep finally overtakes him.

In the morning, he stirs before waking up, dragged from sleep by rustling fabric and soft, persistent thuds. A moment later, something light smacks him in the face, jolting him from his slumber. He squints into the morning light, a blurry shape above him. A pillow. To the face, again. When Jake’s eyes finally focus on Jay, he has the faintest idea that he’s being rewarded for something. He’s standing there, looking down at him, all tan skin and toned stomach, arms flexing as he swings the pillow again. It’s annoying, really, how effortlessly put-together he looks, and Jake forces himself to look away, covering his face with his hands.

“Morning, princess!”

Jake groans. “What, Jay? What is it?” he asks, sufficiently disturbed.

“They wouldn’t let me bring a plate for you, so you need to get up before breakfast is done,” Jay says, aiming another hit at Jake’s chest.

Still trying to get his bearings, Jake slaps at the pillow and pulls the blanket over his head. Jay isn’t having it. He smacks him with what Jake suspects is all of his might. At this point, it’s hard for Jake to stay touched by the fact that Jay had wanted to fix him a plate.

“Fine, fine!” Jake’s voice isn’t quite working yet, the words coming out in a low rumble as he sits up. “I’m going.”

“How’d you sleep?” Jay asks, hugging the pillow to his chest.

Jake shrugs. “Pretty good. You?”

“Same.”

Jake inspects Jay, searching for a sign that last night is still hanging over him too. But he looks.. fine—bed already made, bag packed, hair still damp from the shower. Jake knows Jay well enough to tell when something’s wrong, and there isn’t even a trace of tension on his face. No irritation, nothing at all—he’s over it. It should be a relief, but instead, it makes Jake’s heart sink.

“I have to tell you something, but you can’t make a big deal about it,” he says, stretching a little as Jay nods. “You have to promise, dude.”

Jay rolls his eyes, but extends his pinky anyway, curling it around Jake’s. “I promise.”

Jake is struck by how still the room feels, like it’s holding its breath. Why is he doing this? Jay has already moved on, and now, because of Jake and his lack of self-regulation, they’re standing around shirtless in a hotel room, miles away from home, holding hands. It’s all very bizarre, and he is looking forward to stepping down from the top of this mountain-sized molehill he’s made.

He sighs, tired of himself. “You were right, about.. everything. And I’m sorry,” he admits.

Jay grins, his smile smug, almost feline, in a way that entrances and confuses Jake at once. “About everything?” he asks, amusement in his tone, making Jake wonder whether he’s taking this seriously.

“Come on!” Jake says, incredulous, holding up their locked fingers.

Jay’s smile falters, and he rolls his eyes. “Oh no. I broke my promise,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I suppose you’re going to make a scene now? Tell me, Jake, what are you going to do? Tell me off? Spank me? Amputate?”

Irritated – flustered, maybe — Jake yanks his finger free, cheeks hot. He pulls on a shirt with a little more force than necessary, not bothering to look at Jay as he does.

“Listen, if it makes you feel any better, I already knew I was right,” Jay says, and the smile on his face is audible. “I do accept your apology, though.”

Jake exhales, a tension he hadn’t even noticed unwinding from his shoulders. He steps out into the hall feeling lighter, relieved, so chipper he takes the stairs instead of the lift, practically skipping down them. The air in the stairwell is crisp against his skin, the smell of coffee drifting up as he gets closer and closer to the dining hall. His phone vibrates in his pocket, lighting up with three messages from Sunghoon when he checks it.

Hoon: You are definitely handling things in a way I wouldn’t even recommend to my worst enemy!

Hoon: But things have a weird way of working out for you so

Hoon: Don’t worry too much 💪

Jake: Thanks?

The morning rush has thinned, and the emptying buffet trays aren’t his favourite sight—congealed scrambled eggs at their edges. He fills his plate anyway, hungry and happy enough to ignore how yellow the eggs are. At the nearest table, he chews absently, crunching crispy bacon, sipping pulpy orange juice, and his mind drifts. Jay’s voice, Sunghoon’s text, the lingering hum of a hundred past conversations—background noise. He pulls out his phone before he even registers the impulse, thumbs flying over the screen.

Jake: Hey, pretty girl :) how was your night?

YN: It was good! And then Yizhuo threw up all over the smoking area which was.. terrifying

YN: But I was in bed at 1 a.m. which I’m counting as a positive!

Jake: Sorry about Yizhuo, how’s she feeling? How are you feeling?

Jake: Damn it’s early, are you okay?

YN: Okay, 20 questions 🤨 Like shit. Good. On my way! To Pilates.

Still hungry after breakfast, Jake leaves the dining hall to take a shower and pack his bag before they leave. He sleeps for the whole journey, head on top of Jay’s.

When they step off the bus at uni, Jake waves goodbye to the team and heads straight for his car—he doesn’t go home. The drive is endless, knee bouncing at every red light, grip tight on the wheel. When he reaches your building, an older couple lingers by the entrance, hand in hand, giggling. He slips past them, taking the stairs two at a time. At your door, he stops, hunching over to catch his breath before knocking.

It takes a while, but Jimin opens the door, her smile falling when she sees him. “Jake, hi,” she says quietly, though it sounds like a question. She doesn’t step aside to let him in. “She’s not home, you just missed her actually. Jaemin picked her up.”

Just hearing Jaemin’s name is like a stake to the chest. Jake tenses without meaning to, jaw tight. He’s been avoiding the guy like the plague since Jaehyun’s birthday, when he cornered Jake in the kitchen. “Are you two, like, serious, or what?” he asked, voice low even though they were alone.

Throughout ten years of friendship, Jake had been asked that question more times than he could count. Throughout four years of pining, it was one of two questions that made him want to throw himself into oncoming traffic. He didn’t need to follow Jaemin’s eyeline or hear another word to know exactly what he meant. Who he meant—you, of course. In the living room, laughing with the birthday boy, Jake’s jacket slung over your shoulders as you waited for him to bring you a can of Sprite.

Jake only shrugged, the red cup of water in his left hand crunching a little under his tightening grip. “We’re friends.”

“So I’m allowed to ask her out?”

That was the second question that got under Jake’s skin—not just because it was reductive, but because it wasn’t his decision to make. And yet, there came Jaemin, like every guy before him, asking as if they really think that if Jake had any say in it, you’d be with anyone but him.

With a sigh, he said, “I’m not her father, Jaemin. It’s up to her.”

Jaemin smiled, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear. “You got a light?”

“No.” He shook his head, shoving his clenched fist into his back pocket, the cool metal of his lighter grazing his right knuckle. “Can’t smoke in here anyway, mate.”

The memory slams into him, full-force, knocks the wind out of him. “He did?”

“She didn’t tell you?” Jimin tilts her head. “Weird.”

His brain stalls, unsure which thought to torture himself with first: that you’re seeing Jaemin, or that you didn’t tell him. As it turns out, the more hurtful thought is of the text you sent him an hour ago while he was asleep on the bus, the reason he’s even here.

YN: Travel safe, Jakey, I can’t wait to see youuuuu <3

Jimin’s hand reaches for the door. “Goodbye.”

His lips part, trying to gather his thoughts, to say something before the door clicks shut in his face. Nothing comes to mind, but your voice rings out into the silence. “Who’s at the door?” The sound of it rattles through him, curious, gentle as ever, and the seconds that pass stretch out in front of him, vast and unending.

Jimin only frowns, her shoulders slumping. She seems more disturbed by the fact that now she’ll have to let him in than the fact that she’s been caught lying. “Oops,” she says simply, leaving the door open as she goes back to her room.

Sighing, Jake leaves his shoes next to yours and locks the door behind him, his fingers fumbling a little as he twists the key. Smelling food, he goes straight to the kitchen where he finds you. You’re standing by the stove, hair covering your face, lost in the task at hand: trying to tear open a bag of cheese without scissors. You succeed. Before he says a word, you look over at him, and the grin that spreads over your lips makes his stomach swoop, butterflies tumbling around like they’re looking for a point of exit. You’re perfect. There’s something about that smile that brightens everything around you, grounding and dizzying him all at once.

“Hey,” he says, breathless, smiling too.

You turn off the stove before stepping into his space, arms looping around his waist like you need this as much as he does. “Jakey,” you mumble into his chest.

It’s nice to see you, he can’t overstate that, and he suspects it always will be. Yet, even with you in his arms, he can’t smooth out the crease in his brows, can’t relax into your touch like he wants to—like he’s been thinking about since he left yesterday. The only thing on his mind is whatever the fuck is going on with Jimin, and how to ask you about it.

“I see you’ve done your food shop,” he says dumbly, looking over your head at the pot on the stove.

“Uh huh.” You nod, tilting your head back to look at him. “I even got those chocolates you like.”

Jake smiles, his hand coming up to cup your cheek, liking the way you lean into his touch. “You didn’t have to do that.”

You shrug, but the softness of your voice betrays your attempt at nonchalance. “I wanted to make sure you had a reason to come and see me.”

“You’re being really sweet,” he says, frowning. He doesn’t mean to sound suspicious, but for some reason, it’s easier to question you than to believe you might actually want him here. He presses the back of his hand to your forehead. Your skin is warm, but not feverish. Normal. Still, he keeps it there. “You feeling okay?”

You roll your eyes, catching his wrist and pulling his hand away. “Are you okay? You look like Jimin caught you out there praying for pussy.”

It would have been less mortifying if she had. He chuckles, an awkward huff of air that sounds more like a strangled cough than anything close to a laugh. Pressing his fist to his mouth, he clears his throat as if it will somehow clear the feeling in his chest, too. As if summoned simply by Jake thinking about her, Jimin comes into the kitchen, buttoning up her coat. Her eyes skip over him like he’s not there, her smile reserved for you.

“I have to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” she says, opening her arms.

You step forward without hesitation, slipping into her embrace like it’s second nature. The hug is warm and sweet, the two of you in your own world while Jake is stuck in its orbit, watching it spin without him. “I’ll miss you,” you say sincerely. “Text me when you get there.”

Jimin ruffles your hair when you pull away, smiling when you protest. “I miss you already.” And with that, she squeezes your wrist affectionately before turning on her heel without so much as a glance in his direction.

At the sound of the front door swinging shut, Jake sighs, glancing at it like he expects her to reappear. To say it was all a big joke, that she was doing a bit, and hug him too—the way she would have done a month ago, before..

It’s quiet in the flat—just you and him. He shifts on his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets, watching you watch the pot on the stove. You take off its foggy lid, steam curling out as you sprinkle grated cheddar into it—cheese dakgalbi. His mouth waters.

Silence persists. Not awkward, not quite comfortable. He has to ask. “Did you ask Jimin to pretend you weren’t home?”

A laugh bubbles out of you, amused by the mere suggestion. You shake your head. “No.”

Jake sniffs, his voice quieter than before. “Is she mad at me or something?” He tries for casual, but he sounds a bit pathetic.

You give him a look—confused, as if you didn’t see the way she’d ignored him. “Did she tell you I wasn’t home?”

He nods slowly, saying nothing about the Jaemin-shaped elephant in his proverbial mind-room. Instead, he reaches into the cupboard behind him, the hinge creaking softly as he pulls out a bowl for you. He hands it over without meeting your eyes.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

There’s too much going on in his head to navigate your line of questioning. “What are you talking about?”

You hold up the dish like the answer to his question is written on its base. “One bowl,” you say—it isn’t, by the way, the answer. He looked.

“I’m not staying,” he says without meaning to, though now that he’s thinking about it, he likes the idea of going home and being alone with his thoughts. It might even be nice to sit in silence on the couch with Sunghoon if he’s home.

Putting the bowl down, you take a step back, and scoff. Defensive. Hurt, he thinks. You sigh. “Why are you here then?”

Your question, your tone, makes him feel a little silly. Silly for cancelling his plans with Jay to come here. Really silly, actually. For thinking you missed him too. For thinking, can’t wait to see you, meant anything more than just something nice to say to a friend who’s been away.

“Well.. I don’t know.” Jake shrugs. “I just wanted to look at you or something, I guess. Make sure you were alright.”

Your expression softens, a step towards him, eyes — wide, searching — meeting his. “Stay, Jake. Please.”

His breath catches, taken aback by this unprompted offering of vulnerability—asking him to stay because you want him to, not because he asked if he should. He wonders if it could always be like this. If you could be like this with him again. Open. Gentle. Like before.

“Did you miss me?” Jake asks, greedy for you to open up. To give him more than just a little. “While I was away?”

“It was one night.”

“So? I missed you,” he admits.

Your eyes flicker over his face, but you don’t answer. No, you roll your eyes like he’s being ridiculous—it bothers him though he knows it shouldn’t. He approaches you before he can think better of it, hands finding the counter on either side of you, caging you in. You don’t resist or pull away, only tilting your head to meet his gaze. And fuck, you’re right there and so beautiful. Close enough for him to see the way your eyes widen ever-so-slightly. Close enough that his pulse trips over itself.

“Why won’t you tell me you missed me?” he asks.

You arch a brow. “Why do you want me to tell you if you already know?”

Jake exhales sharply, tilting his head, pressing his fingertips into the counter like it’ll ground him. “I just—” He pauses. Swallows. Tries again. “Please.”

A hesitation. He feels your hand on his waist, your fingers squeezing. Sees the way your lips part, like you might actually say it. But you don’t. “Why?” you ask instead.

He blinks, throat working around an answer that won’t come out. And suddenly, he feels stupid. Standing here, begging you to say something he already knows, something that shouldn’t matter so much. His eyes flick to yours, and he tries again, softer this time, whispering, “Please, baby.”

Finally, you break, quietly confessing, “I hate being away from you.” And it’s a million times better.

A startled breath escapes him, soft and disbelieving. His heart stumbles over itself, warmth flooding his chest. He blinks at you, processing, the words replaying in his head, sweeter each time. His fingers twitch against the countertop, resisting the urge to touch you, but you’re looking at the floor, and that won’t do. Gently, he tilts your chin up, your eyes meeting his—all wide and pretty, uncertainty flickering in them.

He swallows, voice unsteady. “Say it again.”

A slow smile curves your lips, and he sees the flash of realisation in your eyes—you’ve got him, you know you do. “I hate being away from you, Jake,” you repeat, confident now.

The shape of the words on your lips, how they roll off your tongue, hitting him with so much affection it’s a wonder he doesn’t burst into tears. Those words spoken to him, in your voice, by you. He takes a deep breath. “See? That wasn’t so bad,” he says, trying to tease but his voice is too soft.

You roll your eyes, but your lips are twitching, fighting a smile. “It was excruciating.”

Jake hums, brushing his thumb along your jaw, memorising the feel of you, liking the way you gulp. “My poor girl,” he teases, a pout on his lips. “I was about to drop it, you know. One more why, and I’d have let you off the hook.”

And then — before you can fire back some sharp remark — he kisses you.

He takes his time, desperate — quite frankly — to make up for what he missed yesterday morning. His hands find the small of your back, pulling you close as if he can’t bear being away from you again. Every touch is a relief, his gratitude and adoration poured into the warmth of his lips against yours. A tiny sound, low and wanting, slips from your mouth to his, stirring his chest. When he pulls away, your lips linger, and he almost can’t find in him to break the connection. You chase his kiss, whining a little—so cute it weakens his knees, and he can’t help but smile, liking the flutter in his stomach.

Looking down at you, he exhales shakily, heart pounding. Overwhelming warmth fills him up, crams itself into every single part of him, knowing that this is real. That you’re real, and you’re here, with him.

“That wasn’t so bad either, huh?” he asks, giggling, his voice almost as light as he feels.

You beam at him before hiding your face in his chest, letting out a giddy laugh as he rubs circles on your back, chin on top of your head. You hate being away from him. The words echo in his head, surreal, sweet.

He’s not convinced he’ll ever stop smiling.

Until his stomach growls, loud, slicing the quiet. Another laugh from you, the sound vibrating through him — too real to be imagined — as you pinch his waist. “Come on, baby,” you say, eyes sparkling. “Let’s eat.”

You slip out of his hold, and Jake, helpless to do anything but follow, wraps his arms around your waist at the stove. His chest is pressed to your back, fingers curling into your sides so you don’t leave again. If you mind, you don’t voice it. You sway a little against him, humming the same song he was listening to on the bus.

Why can’t he stay here, with you, like this, forever?

His bowl warms his lap while you put your glasses on, turning on the TV. Gossip Girl fills the screen, the voices familiar, comforting, fading into the background when you sit, your thigh pressed against his. He wonders if you realise how much of the space in his head you occupy. The flavours are rich, familiar, perfect—he’s never had cheese dakgalbi as good as yours. He sighs happily. Heart skipping a beat when he glances over at you, finding you already looking at him. You hate being away from him. Lips kiss-bitten, lenses foggy from the steam. You give a tender smile.

Jake bites back a grin, stuffing chicken into his mouth so he doesn’t speak and admit to something crazy—the future in his head, with you. Your child (children if you want them, a dog if you don’t (hopefully a dog even if you do)), and countless nights together like this for the rest of your natural lives.

Beside him, sane, you give commentary—perfect outfits, Serena’s hair, ugh, why is Chuck here? He nods, too far gone to do anything but copy your homework and change the answers a bit. That dress is beautiful, there’s probably tutorials if you look, why is Chuck here?

After he clears his bowl and what you couldn’t finish from yours, you make a pillow out of his shoulder. Sighing, you get comfortable while he inhales the familiar scent of your shampoo, your hair brushing his cheek. Shifting closer, you press into him, his arm tightening around you. It doesn’t take long for your breath to even out. Jake’s chest swells, overwhelmed by how much he likes this. He presses his lips to the top of your head, the softest kiss of his life, and lets his eyes flutter shut.

He hates being away from you too.

Jake has rescheduled this dinner with his parents so many times, his mother actually called him. He didn’t answer. Instead, he flinched, threw his phone to the other end of the couch and waited for the ringing to stop. If it weren’t for his dad texting to ask about it, he wouldn’t be standing on the doorstep of his family home doing breathing exercises.

He takes one last deep breath before putting his key in the lock. Inhale. One, two, three. Exhale. One, two, three. Open the door. “I’m home!” he calls out, stepping inside and taking off his shoes.

Jake’s mother gasps in the kitchen as if she’s surprised, jogging out into the hall. “Jaeyun!” she cries, arms flung around him. “Oh, my boy, it’s so good to see you.”

He only nods, letting go prematurely, long before she releases him.

“It’s just a shame you’re harder to reach than the Prodigal Son.”

“Yeah.” Jake gives her a tight smile, a slow nod. “Just got a lot on at the minute with uni. Good to be home though.”

She’s already heading back to the kitchen, talking over her shoulder. “Dinner’s nearly ready, so you’ve come at the perfect time. You might think about changing?”

With furrowed brows, he looks down at his outfit. Jeans. Jumper. Hardly unpresentable. “I think I’m alright, actually, Mum,” he says, following behind her.

Seeing his dad stand up from the table tugs Jake’s lips into a boyish grin. “Dad,” he whispers, breathless, pleased, allowing himself to be pulled into a hug, his dad’s unchanged cologne hitting his nose. Floral, warm. Strong arms around him.

“How are you, son?” he asks, quiet, private, just for them.

“I’m good, Dad. I’m good.”

The simmer of broth. Oil frying eggs in a pan. The smell of beef strikes him, turning his hunger fierce. His stomach rumbles quietly, unsoothed by his attempts at rubbing it. He asks if his mother needs a hand, and she waves him off, shakes her head, it’s her pleasure to cook for her son. She’s wearing her apron, the same red checkered one she’s had for as long as he remembers, stirring a pot by the stove. She looks so motherly like this. As if she might come over and kiss the top of his head just because. Pat his back and say good job for simply existing. It’s all very maternal of her, like that instinct has finally kicked in, twenty short years postpartum. Maternal in a way that digs a nasty pit in his stomach. The mum-in-a-million, best-mum-ever figure he always thought Big Mum made up to push Mother’s Day cards.

“Are you seeing anyone?” his dad asks.

That word choice sticks out to him, it’s almost been a full year of anyones and peoples from his dad and it still warms his heart in a way he’s not sure he’ll ever adjust to. There had been some.. concerns when he was younger and innocently introduced his first school friend, Jaehyun, to his parents as his boyfriend. Concerns that were not entirely baseless, as Jake’s teenage years would soon reveal to him.

“Any nice girls?” his mother corrects from the kitchen, not looking away from the drawer as she takes cutlery out. “Oh, who was that girl you used to be friends with? What was her name? From school, Jaeyun? Funny girl. Her mother used to teach you, what was she called?”

Jake mumbles your name, reminds her that the two of you are still friends. He’s not sure why she insists on this song and dance, when both of them know she wouldn’t exactly be happy if he brought you — or anyone — home. He bites the inside of cheek remembering you — age fourteen — sitting at this very table, passing Jake the salt shaker and scrunching up your nose at the mention of church. Church? No, my parents said church is for people who think they’re better than everyone else. Only Jake and his dad found that funny.

She puts cutlery down for all three of them, looking down at him after placing his chopsticks. “The atheist?” she asks, saying the A-word with a certain level of distaste that Jake can’t help find amusing.

“Yes, mum. The atheist,” he confirms, holding back a laugh at the amused smile his dad — the other atheist — wears.

There’s a look on her face when she hums, as if satisfied he acknowledged your lack of faith out loud. “I mean, you’re a bit young for a relationship, anyway.”

“I’m twenty,” he points out.

She raises her brow from over the kitchen island, stopping in her tracks with a steaming pot in hand. “Do you want to get married?”

Jake shrugs, watching as she puts the pot on the table, letting the smell of short ribs envelop him. “I mean.. not right now, but at some point? Maybe?” The words leave his mouth unthinkingly, seeming wrong as soon as he says them.

“So why would you be looking for a girlfriend?”

His mouth opens and promptly closes again, unsure of what to say. Jake glances at his dad, but he only takes a sip of his water. He’s not going to argue with her—he never does.

“Look.” His mother sighs, tucking her hair behind her ears as she takes a seat at the table next to his dad. “A lot of people your age are out drinking and having sex, and I understand that’s how this country is, but that is not how we raised you, Jaeyun—we didn’t bring you here for that. Sex isn’t about your age; it’s about marriage. And until then, you shouldn’t even be thinking about it, never mind having it.”

Mortified, he runs a hand over his face. “I’m not having sex. Jeez, Mum.” It’s a lie that only gets harder to say the more he tells it. He might actually abstain — even from hand stuff — until marriage, if he has this conversation again.

“Are you drinking?”

“No, I’m not drinking.” This lie is easier. “I’m an athlete.” Because half of it is true.

His mother tilts her head, affronted. “Jaeyun, you’re a Christian first.”

A familiar tension wraps around him, not any easier to manage for how often he feels it around her. “You’re right, Mum. Sorry.”

She seems pleased enough with this, her eyes lingering on him for a beat before they narrow. “I heard from Sieun’s mum that you weren’t at church this week.” Of course, she heard. She is always hearing things about Jake, and Sieun’s mum always seems to be the one saying them.

“I had a game.”

“On Sabbath?”

There is, for Jake, no winning where his mother is concerned. Because, of course, his breaking of the Sabbath is what matters right now. Never mind that he’s playing at a level she used to brag to her friends about. Never mind that he’s doing that, and getting top marks in his classes, and still finding time for family dinner every other week. Never mind that last term he spent two days with an IV drip in his arm from overworking himself and she didn’t text him back when he told her.

Jake’s jaw tightens, teeth grinding as he forces himself to swallow the words burning on his tongue. A glance at his dad, who’s staring down at his empty plate, pretending not to hear. Finally, he clears his throat, setting his glass down with deliberate care, a delicate arm over his wife’s shoulders. “Honey..” He trails off, eyes flicking to his son quickly. “How about we say grace before dinner gets cold?”

Conflicted relief settles over Jake’s shoulders at this. He knew his dad would step in eventually. He had to. This is the man who sat him down at thirteen and explained consent to him in careful, measured words—again at seventeen before he moved out. The man who passed him a beer on a fishing trip when he was sixteen, told him to sip slowly, to learn the taste so he wouldn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone later. Who had wrapped him in a hug, kissed the top of his head last year when he said he likes boys too. You’re my only son, Jaeyun. I want you to be happy. He can’t look at his dad, see the hard lines of his face, the silver strands of his hair, without seeing that too.

He nods obediently when his mother tells him to pray, holds hands with his parents, closes his eyes. His dad’s rough hand squeezes his and he smiles. “Dear Lord, thank you for giving us the opportunity to sit around the table tonight as a family. Please bless the food we’re about to eat, and the hands that made it. In your name’s sake we pray, amen.”

With that, they eat ugeoji galbitang—Jake’s favourite. He likes it too much to let anything, even his mother (who makes it best), ruin it for him. Luckily, his dad steers the conversation, shares his wins at work, compliments Jake’s highlight tape from the game over the weekend, talks about the trash movie he’s got lined up for them to watch tonight.

Tonight. Together. As a family. Jake always spends the night after dinner, no exceptions. But he’s certain that if he spends any longer than he needs to in this house, he’ll die. He needs to come up with something, an excuse, a lie, something suddenly remembered. A commitment heavy enough that he must leave at once to attend to it. He thinks about Sunghoon, about you—but Jake’s mother is a blood is thicker than water kind of woman, and in her eyes, the only things thicker than blood are God and school.

He clears his throat, takes a sip of water, keeps a hold on his glass even when he puts it down. “That sounds great, Dad—I mean Operation Christmas Drop sounds truly awful, but I have a paper due tonight and it’s saved on a USB so I’ll have to go home to submit it.”

His mother continues to eat, unbothered. It’s hard to watch his dad’s smile falter, but he nods, understanding. “Another time, then.”

Dinner continues, marked mostly by the clatter of cutlery—chopsticks on side plate, spoon on bowl. There are a lot of negative things Jake could say about his mother, but she’s the only woman in the world who could call him an embarrassment for quitting violin at fifteen, then console him with her cooking. Even the simplest sides — her fried eggs and white rice — move Jake beyond words.

He clears the table when they finish eating, his parents packing up the leftovers while speaking quietly to one another as Jake washes the dishes. He strains his ears over the running water, but it’s no use, only catching murmured honeys and nos. Coming home is a bit like being caught in a loop sometimes, like he’s checking off boxes on a list:

1. Mum warns Jake about premarital sex

2. Jake lies and says he’s not having it

3. Dad sits in silence, pretending he didn’t buy Jake condoms when he went off to college

4. Substitute sex for some other mostly harmless vice

5. Rinse and repeat.

This absurd script they’re following, these roles they all fall into, time and time again. He can’t be the only one exhausted by this.

Jake dries his hands with the dish towel hanging from the oven door and scratches at the back of his neck. “I’d really better go,” he says. “Thanks again for dinner, Mum.”

He doesn’t hang around for her response, taking the stairs two at a time until he gets to his room. Slipping on his jacket, he looks around at the walls again. Certificates, postcards. Barer now since he took some of his favourite posters with him when he moved. Still, his Dune poster, brought home from a midnight showing, hangs above his bed. He’d stayed at Jaehyun’s house that night—his mother would never let him out so late with friends. As much as he loves it — the outline of Timothée Chalamet, Paul, tall and trim in his stillsuit — he left it behind. A quiet reminder of his small rebellion.

Leaving always feels so final, like he has to memorise the details of his childhood room even though he’ll be back in two weeks. A sighs, more than ready to leave, but stops short, seeing the photo booth strip under his light switch. You and him, frozen in the pink frames of a four-cut photo, sixteen forever. In the last shot, your arm is around his shoulders, lips pressed to his cheek. Back then, he didn’t think he liked you—not the way he does now. But his skin had burned where you kissed him, and he hadn’t washed his face that night, afraid to lose the trace of your clear lip gloss.

After four years, the memory sends a swarm of butterflies through his stomach, his fingers reaching up to brush his left cheek. He takes the photo, slipping it into his jacket pocket before joining his parents at the door.

“I just want you to make good decisions,” his mother says, hugging him. Her perfume is floral, familiar. He breathes it in, holding on just a second longer than normal.

“I’m trying.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you out,” his dad says, already putting on his shoes.

Jake’s chest tightens. He gulps, nodding, waves at his mother. Her eyes burn holes into his back as he follows his dad out. March’s breeze whips his jacket, lunchboxed leftovers warm his palms. They walk in silence to Jake’s car.

“Are you happy, Jaeyun?” His dad’s voice is soft, careful. “None of this matters if you aren’t.” His calloused fingers rub at the back of Jake’s neck—a comfort. “Not your grades, not football, not church.. It’s no use working so hard if you’re not happy.”

Jake nods. “I am usually,” he admits.

A grin. Crinkled eyes. “That’s all I ask of you.”

“Are you happy, Dad?”

His dad’s face softens, shoulders relaxing. “With you as my son?” A chuckle slips out of him. “How could I not be happy?” He pulls Jake into a tight hug, his arms strong and steady. Jake squeezes back, fingers gripping his dad’s shirt.

“I love you,” Jake says, the words muffled against his dad’s shoulder.

His dad holds him even tighter. “I love you, son.”

They pull apart slowly, reluctant. A shared exhale. Breeze biting, still.

“Drive safe, okay?”

Jake nods, unlocking the car. “I will.”

His dad smiles again, giving him a nod before heading back to the house. The porch light is off when Jake starts his car.

Thirty silent minutes pass by in a blur, unregistered until he’s taking off his seatbelt outside his building. Backpack on, leftovers in hand, he goes inside, dragging his feet up the stairs to the eighth floor. He doesn’t even have to slow his pace or catch his breath at the door to his flat—at least the gym is paying off.

Sunghoon isn’t home. Monday night. Evening practice. Jake leaves the food on the kitchen counter to cool down and goes to his room. His bed, neatly made, fresh sheets, looks tempting, but he has other plans for the night. He gets changed and sits on the couch, waiting for Sunghoon.

For the next hour, his phone goes off regularly, but none of the notifications are from you so he doesn’t care. It only dawns on Jake that he can simply text you when he wants to see your name in his phone.

Jake: Can I come over?

YN: I thought you had family dinner tn?

YN: Oh. I’m not at home but you can call me!!! My signal is a bit shit on the train rn but you can always call me, Jake

Jake: It’s okay, usual shit w my mum lol

Jake: Idk why I always think things will be different when I go there and always get surprised when they’re not

YN: I’m sorry she gives you such a hard time, baby

YN: I know you don’t feel like it but you’re doing such a good job. You’re juggling shit I don’t even want to imagine and you still make time for football and all your uni stuff and to make everyone in your life feel special. I promise you’re not fucking anything up at all.

YN: You don’t have to keep going over there, you know.. I get you like seeing your dad but surely you two can hang out alone? Another fishing trip, maybe? I know you had a really good time in the summer

The summer—the fishing trip, the beer, the hug. He smiles.

Jake: Yeah, maybe

When he hits send, a key turns in the lock. Sunghoon—whistling to himself after practice. It’s nice one of them had a good Monday, that’s half of the people in the flat. Much better than thirty seconds ago, when a hundred percent of people in the flat were having a terrible day. His footsteps pad down the hall and he freezes in the doorway, brows raising in surprise. A beat. “Hey, buddy. I didn’t know you’d be back tonight.”

Jake clears his throat, but the roughness of his voice persists. “Left early.”

Sunghoon hums, nodding once before he leaves, coming back in a t-shirt and sweatpants, two beers in hand as he sits on the couch. He hands one to Jake, pulls the tab on his own, and takes a long, slow sip. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Jake shakes his head. “I put some ugeoji galbitang in the fridge for you. I don’t know if you saw.”

“Nice, man, thanks.”

These are the last words from either of them for hours. Even when one of them gets up to use the toilet, or Sunghoon goes to get more beer. It’s not until two a.m. that they speak again.

“Are you alright if I turn in? I need to be up soon.” Sunghoon yawns, arms stretched out in front of him.

Jake nods, yawning too. “Yeah, of course. I should get some sleep anyway.”

Sunghoon lingers, his hand curling and uncurling on the edge of the couch. “You sure?” he asks, only standing when Jake nods again.

Jake collects the cans, flicking the lamp off on the way out. He turns towards the kitchen but stops in his tracks, looking over his shoulder. Sunghoon’s heading to the bathroom, hand on the doorknob when Jake says, “Thank you.” For being my best friend. For doing nothing with me for hours, he doesn’t say.

Yet Sunghoon seems to understand. He always does. In three steps, he reaches Jake, a reassuring pat on his shoulder. “You’re my best friend,” he says, matter-of-factly, and leaves Jake in the hall, locking the bathroom door behind him.

When Sunghoon is done, Jake goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth. He steps into the shower, appreciating the heat of the water on his skin, how he reddens under it. Washes his face, his hair. Stands aimlessly under the spray until he starts worrying about the planet. He feels a bit better after this. Moisturises in his room, puts Vaseline on his lips, gets into bed.

He’s lying on his side, staring at the wall. He pats around the mattress for his phone, finding it and calling you without thinking. It rings out, because, of course, you can always call me, Jake, does not mean: call me at three in the morning.

He looks at his screen for so long it locks. Too dark to see his reflection on it. Thankfully. He opens your text thread, drafting a message. Called by mistake HAHAHAHAHA dw! Delete. Sorry for calling so late, maybe we could hang out when you’re up? Coff—there’s a knock at his door and he locks his phone, tucking it under his pillow like a child.

“What is it?” he calls out.

The door clicks open behind him, closes softly. Your voice. “Hey, Jakey.”

He sits up immediately, your name falling out of his mouth like a question. You’re standing there in your pyjamas, angelic, everything he’s ever wanted, blued by the moon shining through his window. And if he wasn’t so upset, so convinced he’s making this all up, he would scold you for coming over at this time in only a vest and shorts. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move too abruptly, so as not to disrupt the dreamscape. Slowly, carefully, he lifts the end of his duvet, a silent invitation. You step towards him, crawling into his arms, soft skin warm on his, a kiss to his chest.

This is.. real?

You are real?

Turning on his lamp, he pushes your hair from your face, studying you. Soft bow of your lips, gentle slope of your nose, flutter of your lashes when you blink. Lamplight cuts sharp orange angles over your cheekbone, carving you out of the dark. He kisses you, a fleeting press of his lips to yours. To check.

You are real, and breathtaking, always so breathtaking, and here, with him.

“How did you..?” He trails off, unsure what to ask—get here? Know I needed this?

“Hoon called and came to pick me up,” you say, answering both of his questions at once.

This is.. overwhelming. Beyond. That Sunghoon would think to call you, go so far as to pick you up at this hour. That you would get out of bed for this—for him. That there are people in his life, bound only to him by choice, who care this much. Jake swallows around the lump in his throat, eyes stinging with hot tears, desperate to spill.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, cupping his cheek in your palm. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Baby. Your baby. He has half a mind to tell you he loves you, but he’s touched, not insane, so he bites his tongue. Hides his face in the crook of your neck.

“Oh, Yunie,” you say, stroking his back, your touch a grounding force. “I wish there was something I could do.”

He kisses the spot where your neck and shoulder meet. Lifts his head. Smiles as the first tear slips from his cheek onto yours. “You’re here.”

Jake kisses your lips—soft, fleeting, hardly more than a peck. It’s not enough. Another kiss, longer, lingering, your warmth undoing him. Wrapping you in his arms, he tucks you close to his chest, clinging onto you like a lifeline. I love you. Over and over, he thinks it. Prayers on a rosary. So loud in his head he’s not convinced you can’t hear him. His eyes flutter shut, and with your steady breath on his skin, he lets himself fall asleep.

Jake wakes up first, grinning at the sight of you curled against him, your face squished into his chest. His arms tighten instinctively, as if to keep you there, as if you might slip away. He watches you, still as he can, taking in the quiet, the warmth, you. As if sensing his gaze, you open your eyes, sleep-heavied blinks as you look up at him. You shift in his hold, turning your head enough to see his alarm clock. 08:46. A groan leaves your lips, and you bury your face back into his chest.

He kisses the top of your head, mumbling against it. “Morning, baby.”

Your groan doesn’t stop, drawn-out, dejected, rumbling against his skin until you tip your head back. “Come shower with me.” Your voice is thick with sleep, the words said as if you think it might be the only solution for your suffering.

And it would be rude of him not to at least help you find out.

Jake has definitely had more productive showers, but he’s never had a better one than this. Skin on skin. Lips on lips, and neck, and chest. Slippery hands all over each other. Wet heat overwhelming him—press of bodies, rush of water. Trembling breath, racing heart. Your fingers around his wrist, guiding his hand between your thighs.

By the time you’re clean, and moisturised, there’s only twenty minutes until your class starts. Pulling a pair of his sweatpants over your hips, you make a joke, laughing to yourself as you blame Jake for what you started. He’s a terrible influence, using his masculine wiles to seduce, corrupt, and make you late.

He snorts, shaking his head. “So I’m a pervert in this fantasy of yours?”

“I think you like it, Jakey,” you say, walking towards him, arms looping around his neck, fingers in his hair, chuckling. “Making a harlot out of an honest woman.”

Jake pinches your waist, liking the way it makes you jolt and squeal—trying to focus on that instead of the sharpness of the word harlot against his ears. He almost shudders, jarred by its dissonance. Sounding more like a word that might share a page with some of the other words that have disturbed him recently. Words he’s done a good job of pushing to the back of his mind—words he’s putting in a lot of effort to keep there. He sniffs, leaning down to kiss you. It was a joke, Jake. You were joking. It was a Christmas joke.

“Alright, Virgin Mary,” he mumbles against your lips, pulling away before you accuse him of further debasing. “Let’s go.”

He drives you home so you can get your stuff, and you make a beeline for your room when you arrive. He doesn’t follow. Instead, he takes a deep breath and knocks on Jimin’s door.

She groans when she sees him, head falling back. “What?” she huffs, voice thick with irritation.

“Can we talk?” he shifts on his feet. “Please?”

Jimin’s answer takes a while. She eyes him with her arms crossed over her chest. He can’t help looking over his shoulder, at your closed door, wondering how long you’ll take to change and pack your bag. With a sigh, Jimin steps aside, and he takes a cautious step in, making a point to stay near the door as he closes it—unsure how welcome he really is.

“What did I do to you?” he asks hesitantly, watching as she sits on the end of her unmade bed.

“You didn’t do anything to me.” Jimin shrugs, continuing when Jake opens his mouth to speak. “But I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t trust the ‘innocent’ guy best friend who pounces at the first chance he gets.”

“Pounces?” he repeats, like it’s his first time hearing the word. “I’m not an animal, Jimin. There was no pouncing. If anything, she pounced on me.”

“So she’s an animal, is that what you’re saying?”

Jake sighs, seeing there’s no way to win here. “Sure,” he says dryly. “She’s a tiger. Happy?”

This doesn’t amuse Jimin. “What do you want with her?”

He shrugs like he hasn’t given it much thought. “I want whatever she wants. If she wants to hook up, we’ll hook up. If she doesn’t, we won’t.”

“You like her.” It’s not a question, but an accusation that softens her voice, raises her brows.

Jake chews his lip, and that’s enough. Jimin’s jaw drops. “Oh, my God. I was worried you were going to hurt her, and this whole time I should’ve been worried about her hurting you.” She shakes her head, a laugh of disbelief coming out. “Good luck.”

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

Until it involved him, Jake hadn’t heard much about your sex life since first year. Thankfully. Kim Mingyu — Hot Mingyu, as you and Jimin still call him — is the last name he remembers. Older, massive, lived up to his moniker. He was always talking about the gym or his tech start-up, and eventually, he ended things because he didn’t believe Jake was just your friend. Jake suspects that the memory of Hot Mingyu will stick with him forever, because it was the first time it ever occurred to him that he didn’t want to be just friends with you.

Jimin apologises, opening her arms and approaching him. She says that she should’ve known. Quiet, sympathetic, Jake thinks, hating it. But the door swings open, hitting his back before she can hug him. You poke your head into the room with a smile, oblivious. “Ready to go?”

Back in the car, you try to peer pressure Jake into speeding, and he appeases you, doing thirty-two miles per hour in a thirty zone. Giving up with a huff, you turn your body away from him, knees against the passenger door. He’s too busy thinking about what Jimin said to comment—what the fuck does good luck mean?

And he’s so busy trying to figure that out, he doesn’t even realise you’re still wearing his sweatpants until you get out of the car. “Thanks for the lift, Jakey.”

Jakey smiles. Jakey waves. Jakey watches you leave. Jakey sits in his car for an hour before going home.

He finds Sunghoon—home from practice, and eating an early lunch by the kitchen window. Standing, like he always does when he eats alone. “Hey, buddy,” he says, glancing quickly over his shoulder. “Feeling better?”

Without a second thought — or a first one — Jake charges towards him, tackling him more than he hugs him. “Thank you.”

Sunghoon goes stiff, completely tense in Jake’s hold. A shrug, slow and unnatural. “Don’t mention it,” he says, voice strained. A single, awkward pat of Jake’s back. “Could you please let go of me now? For a minute?”

Apologising, Jake quickly releases him, feeling bad for the ambush. “I’m going to thank you again for last night, and I need you to accept it this time. You didn’t have to do that for me, but you did it anyway.”

Sunghoon turns, amused, leaning against the wall and taking a spoonful of yoghurt to the mouth. “I’m waiting.”

“Thank you, Sunghoon. Really.”

“You’re welcome, Jake,” he says, monotone, but his eyes are soft and he’s smiling. “And if you’re going to the library today, can we go together? I’m slacking, man—I need to lock in. Quickly.”

Jake chuckles at his deflection, but nods and says, “Of course.”

They have different approaches to studying — Sunghoon puts his headphones on, and hyper-fixates on his task for as many consecutive hours as he can; Jake swears by Pomodoro, twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off — but they work alongside each other quite effectively. Jake squints at AutoCAD. Sunghoon scrolls through physio clinic listings. Jake texts his dad, asking if they can go fishing soon. Sunghoon continues to look for summer placements. Parallel play.

His Pomodoro timer goes off silently, a notification in the corner of his laptop screen, and he lets out a relieved breath—he has high hopes not to study anything architecture related after this term, in a perfect world, he’ll never have to so much as look at a building again. When he checks his phone, his dad has replied, suggesting that they go next weekend, and he’s still typing when Jake opens their thread.

Dad: And if you want, you can bring that ‘friend’ of yours. It would be nice to see her again.

Dad: The atheist. 😆.

Jake: Yeah, dad, that sounds good haha. I’m sure she’d love to! I’ll ask

Sunghoon takes off his headphones, thick brows furrowed as he looks over at Jake. “Training starts, like, now, no?”

The time is bright and reproachful on Jake’s screen. 19:55. Five minutes to get to Coach’s office on the other end of the building. A jolt of panic launches him out of his seat, shoving his laptop and notebooks hurriedly into his bag while Sunghoon watches, yawning.

“Can I come?”

The question catches him so off guard, his hand freezes over the zipper of his backpack. “What? To training?” Jake asks, cocking his head. “I mean, probably. We have analysis before we start so I’m not sure about that, but you can definitely watch us on the pitch if you want.”

A sigh of relief, as he stands. Firm hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Thank God, bro—can’t be fucked walking home.”

They’re the last to arrive, but thankfully Coach isn’t there yet. None of the guys question Sunghoon’s presence, they’re actually more pleased to see him than they are their own teammate. He leads Sunghoon to the end of the room, instructing him not to draw attention to himself—he gives a thumbs-up, whispering, got it, when the door clicks open.

The first thing Coach says is, “Who the fuck is this guy?”

Why he thought his gargantuan best friend could be inconspicuous anywhere, never mind standing right behind him, is anyone’s guess. Sunghoon, for some reason, says nothing. Jake clears his throat. “He’s—uh—he’s my flatmate, Coach.”

Coach sighs, rubs his face with his hand. “Whatever. Don’t speak unless I speak to you. Understand?”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Sunghoon gives a firm nod, raising a hand in salute.

Another sigh from Coach, wrinkles in his forehead showing as he mutters something to himself. “We have a lot to cover, so let’s not waste more time.” He pulls up the match video on his laptop—always calling them the highlights, but criticises them aggressively. “Yang, what have I told you about hogging the ball?”

Jungwon’s smile is audible. “That I’ve improved a lot, and you’ve never seen a better sportsman than me.” This answer wins him a death glare. “Fine, I hogged the ball a little, but we won!”

This seems to amuse Coach, who laughs and looks around the room. “A little, the boy says.” The video starts—a minute long clip of Jungwon with the ball at his feet, neglecting multiple opportunities to pass. No cuts. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t bench you.”

“I’m not seeing the big deal here. We literally won.”

“You didn’t win this weekend because you have a selfish striker,” Coach says coldly. “You won because the other team was incompetent. And if you keep playing like that, you’ll cost us the season.”

Jungwon isn’t smiling anymore.

Analysis goes on like always. Backhanded praise; thinly-veiled insults; Coach is pleased with his decision to appoint Jay Captain—words that no longer form a lump in Jake’s throat. In fact, he even pats Jay on the back, smiling sincerely when he looks over.

Jake: Post-match went well 💪

Dad: Of course, son. You played brilliantly! So proud. 😆.

Training flies by in a blur of five-a-side games and recreations of some of the poorer plays from Saturday’s game, Coach giving real-time corrections with varying degrees of rudeness. And before he knows it, the final whistle blows, dismissing them. Jake jogs off the pitch, legs heavy with exertion, mind buzzing with the rush of playing. His shirt is damp with sweat, sticking uncomfortably to his stomach, but he can’t look away from his reflection in the locker room mirrors. Cheeks and neck flushed, glowing. He looks good. Feels good—too good to just stand there staring at himself. So, he takes his shirt off, and without much thought sends you a photo.

YN: Day 537727272724733 without dick: I came just from seeing this picture

Jake: Has it been that long?

YN: I can’t count how many times I squirted while looking at that

YN: Fr though come over rn. Need that bad.

Jake: Are you objectifying me?

YN: Is it working .

Jake: Yes. But I need to drop off Riki and Hoon then shower so……..

Jake: Wait up for me?

YN: Fine.

The drive to Riki’s place has never been so long, and Sunghoon sleeps the whole way. Growing impatient, Jake almost starts driving off before his teammate is even all the way out of the car. Every light is green on the way home, no traffic at all—a blessing, Jake thinks. He takes a quick shower, brushes his teeth, and leaves the flat in a hurry, sprinting down the stairs to get back to his car.

He buckles his belt with shaking hands, a text lighting his phone screen. Checking it immediately, he sees that Sunoo sent a Reddit link to the team group chat: like palmer’s not one of the best players in the league rn. Curious, he clicks it, the app’s familiar logo colouring his screen orange, and before Sunoo’s video has the chance to load, something else catches his attention—the number 54 sitting on his notification tab. His heart sinks to his stomach, he knows exactly what’s waiting for him under there. But he clicks it anyway, rereads the post he made only two weeks ago now. And looks straight at the comments, knowing what they’ll say before he sees them.

It is a sin, brother. And there is a demon inside of you that wants you to keep committing this sin. You need to repent and flee from fornication at once. This sin is extremely demonic, it took me away from Christ completely, and I was on my way to h*ll.

The Holy Spirit is working in you. Thank God for giving you a conscience and do not go through with it no matter what.

You want advice? Turn to 1 Corinthians 7:2 and Hebrews 13:4. The Bible is very clear that the only acceptable time for sex is after marriage.

Honestly bro, just marry her lmao

I lost my job, my girlfriend left me, and I got hit by a car after indulging in fornication. It is not worth it, my brother, take heed. I will pray for you.

Jake’s brain buffers, the words blurring together as he scrolls, searching for a different answer. Someone, anyone in the comments telling him it’s okay, that he will be okay, and he’s not going to hell for simply wanting to have sex.

Nothing.

A humourless laugh comes out of him, an exhausted huff. He rests his heavy head on the steering wheel—he can’t be bothered anymore. This isn’t just sex for him. There’s a future here—he’s not sure what it is, or how he’ll get there. But surely, surely, something good, something worthwhile is at the end of this. And isn’t that worth something? Wouldn’t God want him to enjoy himself?

Jake takes a deep breath, white-knuckle grip on the wheel, and says a prayer. “Dear Lord, thank you for all you’ve done for me—but I’m not waiting any longer. I’m really going to do this, Jesus. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Jake pauses, peeking around the car with one of his eyes to check for hellfire—the coast is clear.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Amen.”

It’s the most cautious drive of his life, checking every mirror and blindspot thrice, hands sitting firmly at ten and two—kissing twenty miles per hour the whole way. Parked outside, he climbs over the centre console to use the passenger door because it opens out onto the pavement, and no way one of those cars that’s going around striking down the sexually immoral is going to spawn there. He uses the stairs instead of the lift, and makes it to your flat in one piece.

He doesn’t even have a chance to knock before you pull the door open, telling him he took so long as you take him by the hand and tug him over the threshold. “My fault, baby,” he says, apologetic. Jake bites his lip, eyes trailing over you. Fallen strap of your tank top, nipples pressing through thin fabric, shorts riding up. Good God. He gulps, dick stirring in his pants as you drag him to the living room.

Sinking into the couch, he looks up at you, eyeing him like you want to eat him alive—he’d let you, he wants you to. He pulls you into his lap, kissing you. A moan tugged out of his chest when you grind down on him. At this, you pull away, chest heaving. Lips swollen, wet. He can’t help but reach out and touch them, tracing your mouth with his thumb, pressing down on your plush bottom lip, before pushing it past your teeth. Fuck. Your eyes meet his, hazy, unfocused as you suck on his thumb, letting your tongue graze the tip. Holding his wrist, you stroke it and take his finger all the way to the knuckle, looking at him the same way you do when you’re kneeling between his spread thighs.

You tug at his shirt, mumbling around his finger. “Why are you still wearing this?”

“Waiting for you to take it off of me, baby.”

An imperceptible hitch of your breath before you reach for the hem, tugging it over his head. You bite your lip, admiring him and his cheeks burn scarlet under your gaze. “Can’t believe you look like this.” Warm hands on his skin, fingers trailing his abs and the fading love bites you’d left behind. “Such a lucky girl,” you whisper, awestruck as you kiss him urgently.

Emboldened, eager for more praise — and frankly, extremely turned on — he stands, grip firm on your ass when he does.

“Holy shit,” you utter, pulling away, eyes blown and unguarded. “Have you always been this strong?”

This acknowledgement of his efforts makes his entire body flush, hot and bothered from head to toe. As he shrugs sheepishly, he can’t help wishing he could be more nonchalant when it comes to you. Wishing he could just nod, say yeah—even though you both know the strength and the muscle definition are new. Jake’s stomach flutters when you smile, leaning back into him, kissing and mumbling against his lips that he’s so hot.

In your room, the two of you collapse onto the bed, attached at the hips and mouth. He begins to understand some of those freaks in the subreddit, how this — how you — could easily knock him off-kilter and take over his life. You grab his wrist, tugging his hand towards the spot between your legs, and killing his train of thought in the process.

Nothing else registers except your soft cotton shorts, drenched against his fingers and stuck to you. “Holy fuck,” he mumbles.

“Do something about it.”

Nodding, he pulls the fabric off of you, moves it to the side. Sucking a breath through his teeth, he stares straight ahead. Shocked, turned on by how wet you are, and his fingers slip around so much he has to focus to keep them on your clit. It’s worth it, more than, for the way you whine, rutting your hips on his hand. Groaning, he lets his finger slip into you, adjusting his pants when you moan, his thumb working your clit in circles. Another finger slips inside, so easy, so slick and so warm, your walls clenching around him. The sound alone makes him dizzy. “So fucking wet,” he says, pressing deeper, fingers curling, watching your mouth fall open. “You’re killing me, baby.”

Completely under your spell, he can’t look away from the spot where his fingers disappear into you. “My pretty girl.” He hums, licking his lips. “So pretty all over.” Jake’s dick actually hurts looking at you, straining against his pants, darkening the fabric with precum. Adding a third finger, he presses harder on your clit, groaning when your back arches off the bed. “You like it, huh? Feels good?”

You only moan in response, clutching the sheets in your fists as you shake against them. It doesn’t take long for you to gasp, letting out a cry of his name as your body gives in, release spilling out around his fingers all while he stares in awe, open-mouthed. The soft curves of your body, flushed and shuddering and perfect.

Panting, you look up at him with sparkling eyes and tug lightly at your waistband. He guides your hips up gently, pulling your shorts down and leaving them at the end of the bed. “Your turn,” you breathe out. Jake stands up from the bed to take his sweats and underwear off without a second thought. Your gaze traces his body, tongue wetting your lips, eyes caught on his dick as it smacks his stomach. “Need a minute.”

“Course, baby.” He needs a minute too, hardly able to tear his eyes off the cum painting your pretty pussy white. As gently as he can, he runs his fingers through it, bringing them to his lips and humming around them. Oh, my God. “Tastes so good.”

A lazy smile curves your lips and you nudge his chest with your foot, leaning up on your elbows. “Twelve days. It’s been twelve days, Jake.”

Confused, he tears his eyes from between your legs, looking up at you instead. Sweat-slicked skin glowing in the dim lamplight. No one has ever looked so beautiful, he’s certain. “Of what?” he asks, stroking himself absentmindedly.

Your eyes follow the movement of his wrist, chewing on your bottom lip for a beat before your gaze flicks up to meet his. “Earlier, I said some stupid number and you asked if it’s been that long.”

“Twelve days,” Jake repeats, hardly believing it. Hardly believing the fact that you’re laid out in front of him, glowing, gorgeous, and he’s still waiting—for what, he’s not sure. “Whoa,” he mutters, leaning over you, his hand on your cheek. “Twelve?”

You nod, pouting. “Twelve,” you repeat, holding onto his wrist, kissing his palm. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”

“Condom, baby.” He pulls away, but your grip on him tightens.

“Don’t need it.”

Jake raises a brow. Sceptical. Horny. “Are you sure?”

“Certain. But I’ve never..” You trail off, clearing your throat.

He knows what you mean, and his stomach flips over. “Same,” he admits. “Where should I..?”

“Inside. Please.”

His eyes widen, searching yours, staring. You nod again, saying, please.

Leaning down, he kisses your cheek. “Missed this, baby. Missed you,” he admits. He feels you shudder under him, a shaky breath fanning his skin when he nudges your clit with his tip. Lifting his head, he looks down at your face, taking you in. Lidded eyes blinking heavily, fluttering lashes, sweat beading along your hairline. “Still can’t believe it—how lucky I am, getting to see you like this.”

“Never wanted anyone this much.”

His breath ceases, butterflies tumbling in his stomach. “Me neither.” The words feel bigger than they should, heavy as they settle between you. A beat passes slowly, his heart shifting in his chest. He leans in, pressing his lips to yours and hoping this kiss is enough to tell you everything he can’t quite say out loud.

“Please, Jake,” you say, mumbling against his lips.

So hot and so soft and so wet. Holy fuck. He sinks his teeth into his lip, freezing. It’s his tip, literally just his tip, but it’s enough to leave him lightheaded. He wonders if he’ll even last long enough to get to the part where he’s all the way in. “Won’t last long like this,” he says out loud, his own voice seeming distant.

You’re looking up at him with wet eyes, shaking—breath harsh, shallow. “Good,” you whisper. “We can go again, however you want it.”

Again, he thinks, looking forward to it. As if he’s not already losing his mind.

“Need more,” you breathe. “More, baby. Please.”

Rocking his hips forward, slow as he can, he holds his breath at the feeling of you opening up around him, inch by precious inch. It’s incredible he went so long without this. Twelve whole days. Unfathomable now—impossible, surely. Both of you whine as he bottoms out, a ragged sigh coming out of him, his head falling. Relieved. Wound up. He opens his eyes and regrets it immediately—you, mouth agape, eyes screwed shut. Holy shit. “You okay, baby?” he manages.

A smile spreads over your lips, a content breath slipping out of you. “Perfect, Jakey. Always forget..” You trail off, shaking your head, struggling to get the words out. “Forget how big you are.”

His entire body flushes, set alight. “You always take it so good, though. Such a good girl, yeah? Fit me just right.” He knows how it sounds, but he means it. Truly. It’s never felt like this. He didn’t even know it could feel like this — so perfect, so right — until you. The rightness of it all is so intense he almost comes then and there, biting his lip so hard he tastes copper on his tongue.

The clench of you around him is raw and startling, forcing stars behind his eyelids with each blink. There’s a brief, stunned silence when Jake finally pulls his hips back, like neither of you quite believe it. There’s nothing between you like this, no clear distinction between your body and his. Your hands skim his back, delicately tracing the column of his spine with your nails, careful, venerating, plump lips apart as your eyes meet.

Before he knows it, he’s thrusting all the way back in, one smooth, desperate stroke. A half-gasp, half-sob cry of his name comes out of you, unravelling him entirely as your legs wrap around his hips. Breath staggered, shallow, he tries to keep his cool, letting his mouth find your neck—trailing the distance from top to bottom. Four kisses long.

Not bothering to suppress his own moans and whimpers, he sets a steady rhythm, relieved that you seem to be enjoying this as much as him, mewling and clawing at his skin. Trembling, gasping, you — cut and pasted from his dreams — pull him in and the need to spend forever like this consumes him. With another cry of his name, you tense around him, head tipping back into the pillows as your orgasm hits. And he’s right there with you, skin burning from the inside out as he falls apart, gasping your name when he comes, filling you up.

He doesn’t move right away — he’s not sure if he can — staying on top of you while you card your fingers through his hair, panting. As his heartbeat steadies, he leans up on his palms. You look at him, all soft and sleepy and perfect, still catching your breath.

“Hi,” you whisper, smiling.

“Hey, baby.”

Neither of you seem to be in any rush to move, so he rolls you onto your sides, all tangled up and face to face. You press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth before curling into his chest, your skin damp and hot. Bowing his head, Jake offers a silent prayer—not seeking forgiveness, but giving thanks.

A week goes by as usual—football, uni, seeing you. No pestilence or famine. No mark of the beast branded on his chest. Two suspiciously placed pimples on his forehead that have not sprouted into horns. No vehicular retribution. So far, no smiting.

The spring sun sets slowly, pinkening Jake’s wall through the cracks in his blinds. He has the apartment to himself while Sunghoon’s at training, so he’s making the most of his alone time. Head on pillow, phone in hand, switching through apps every few minutes as it nears time for him to leave. It’s a dangerous game, his favourite perhaps — doomscrolling time in bed — one that typically ends with him missing his plans, or staying up into all hours of the night watching Cole Palmer edits, and eighty-seven part Tiktok storytimes.

Tonight’s plan — every Wednesday night’s plan — is Bible study at church. And it’s not like he doesn’t want to go, honestly, he’s looking forward to it. It’s just that Chelsea played Arsenal yesterday, and won, so the edits are extra good, hot off the press and populating his for you page. Jesus would understand, surely. Would do the same, probably. As it stands, he’s watched this one edit of Palmer’s last-minute goal four times, and finds himself reciting, City’s boy is Chelsea’s man, with the commentator as your name pops up on his screen. A phone call.

“Jakey, hey,” you say, voice so sweet his lips curl up. “Can I see you? In like, an hour, maybe?”

“Are you alright?”

You hum in response. “Just want to see you.”

Something about the words, their softness, sincerity, knocks the wind out of him. He clears his throat, pulling the phone from his ear to check the time. 18:30. His stomach flutters, his heart racing, suddenly struck by your absence as if he hadn’t realised he was alone. A voice he’s gotten good at tuning out reminds him that he already missed church this week because he slept in, so he should at least go to study tonight.

“I have Bible study in an hour, and it’s on until like half eight, but I’m free after that.”

“Ugh,” you groan, and you sound so genuinely perturbed by this news that he has to fight a smile. “Jimin and I are having the girls over at nine.”

“Thirty minutes is plenty,” he points out.

You sigh. “I don’t mean sex, Jake. I just.. want to spend time with you,” you say softly, “I’m kind of missing the friends part of this whole thing.”

Jake shifts against his pillow, a pit in his stomach. He frowns, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, yeah, I’m sorry. Of course.” The words come out quickly, tripping over his tongue. “I’m all yours tomorrow, I have nothing on,” he says, only slightly lying—he has football training in the evening.

“I’m not free until Sunday..” You trail off. “What if I come to your Bible study? Can I do that?”

A slow moment passes while he considers this. You? Come to Bible study? “But you’re.. an atheist.”

“So what? If your church friends are as hot as you, I’d like to see for myself.”

“They aren’t, but I’m happy you said that.” This is.. only slightly untrue. If you ask Jake, his church friends are hotter than him. In a silent prayer, he wishes ill on Mark Lee and Hamada Asahi. Nothing major, of course, just enough that they can’t make it tonight—an itchy throat, runny nose. Anaphylactic shock, maybe.

“Do I have to dress up or anything?”

He shakes his head even though you can’t see. “You can wear whatever you want, it’s casual. Do you need a ride?”

“A ride home, maybe?” you say, sounding unsure. “I’m out right now.”

“What are you doing?”

You hesitate, stumbling over your words to say, “I’m—uh—I’m looking at records with Heeseung.”

This information makes Jake’s stomach tense—just a little. Lee Heeseung. Tall. Older. Freakishly handsome. Sits at the friends-you’ve-kissed table with Jake. And Jaehyun. And Yizhuo. An—have any of your friends gone unkissed? Sigh. He feels significantly unspecial.

“Oh..” he offers, trailing off, unsure what to make of that. “Find anything cool?”

“Like you won’t believe!” The excitement in your voice is not lost to the phone, in fact, it’s so clear he can picture you rocking on your feet as you speak. He grins at the thought, distracted enough not to worry about when Heeseung graduated from drunken makeout to sober hangout. “Okay, I have to go, but I’ll see you in an hour!”

Jake laughs on an exhale. “See you in an hour.”

With the end of the call, his Palmer edit starts again, and Jake falls back into the for you page like nothing happened. Edit after edit, each more creative than the last slip by at the swipe of a thumb, but now he’s starting to think that maybe he should wash his hair before he sees you, and you know, put on a suit, or something. In a casual way. Hair washed. Suit on hanger. It only takes four tries to settle on the perfect hoodie and baggy jeans, and with a spritz of his good cologne, he leaves the flat.

It’s colder out than he’d like, the March chill nipping at him as he sits on the church steps, worsened he’s sure by his lack of a jacket. He prays you had the foresight to wear a jacket. If you didn’t—well, there’s not much he can do if you didn’t. Why didn’t he bring one for you? Jake sighs, breath clouding in front of him like smoke. Logically, he knows he’d be better off waiting in his car or inside, but he’s glued to the spot. What if you get lost? What if you miss the massive, traditional cathedral with the steeple and the steps? Or his car in the parking lot? What if you somehow miss all of those things located at the address he sent you?

Bible study starts in ten minutes, but time stops when he sees you. Wearing a jacket, zipped all the way up to your chin. He exhales, relieved, a part of him unravelling. Before he realises, he’s jogging over, pulling you into a hug. He can’t resist breathing you in — all soft vanilla and coconut — glad to see you. Your arms loop around his neck, hands — ice cold — on his skin, making him shiver. You pull back, just a touch, and press your lips to his cheek in a soft kiss. Jake stiffens, his breath catching as the warmth of your lips lingers on his skin.

As you walk ahead towards the church, he can’t stop focusing on the spot where your lips brushed his skin, resisting the urge to reach up and touch it. You’ve been talking, he realises, and he hasn’t heard a word—a distant hum until he catches the question in your voice.

“What did you say?” he asks, eyes flicking up towards you as you turn to face him on the steps.

You’re a whole head taller like this, gaze trailing over every inch of his face. “Are you alright? You look a little sick.”

Jake forces a smile, nodding. “All good,” he says, trying to convince himself more than you.

He moves ahead, deliberately putting space between you, avoiding any chance for you to press further. His stomach flutters when you take his hand, the touch small, soft, but he smiles nonetheless as you give it a gentle squeeze. The foyer is empty when you arrive, but the murmur of voices from the Parish hall reaches his ears, grounding him.

Jake holds the door open, gesturing for you to go in first as he follows behind you, taking stock of the room. No Asahi (thank gosh), but Mark is here, beaming, talking to—is that Park Jihoon? Back from college? Today? (What the fuck???) Sunghoon, at least, is a grounding sight, a sigh of relief slipping out of Jake when he sees him—sitting with.. Kim Chaewon? Of ‘Park Sunghoon, you’re dead to me,’ fame. Incredible. Somehow, your being here is the least surprising part of this whole affair.

Sunghoon grins when he sees Jake, but he jumps from his seat seeing you, and jogs across the room to say hi. Much to Chaewon’s displeasure, he throws his arms around you, and Jake sees her eye twitch. With his hands on your shoulders, Sunghoon looks at you like it’s been years, genuine delight on his face. “I hope you feel blessed tonight, really.”

Jake eyes his friend, trying to suss him out, but he can’t discern the source of his elation, which makes him wary. If he knows his friend—Sunghoon’s happiness is coming at Jake’s expense.

“May God bless you, Jake.”

He can’t help rolling his eyes. “Thank you, Mr Chaewon.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Sunghoon says wearily, shaking his head.

Jake’s brows touch his hairline, hardly believing his ears. He leans in, asking quietly. “You’re not sleeping with her?”

“Okay, yeah, it’s exactly what it looks like.” Sunghoon scratches the back of his neck, excusing himself before going back to his seat and leaning toward Chaewon, whispering something in her ear that makes her smile.

Quiet lingers in Sunghoon’s absence, just long enough for Mark to come over, elated, as he daps him up. “Hey, man! Good to see you,” he says, grinning. He means it. It really is good — for Mark — to see Jake. And to think, Jake had been praying for this guy’s demise just an hour ago. Guilty, embarrassed, he echoes Mark’s sentiment, smiling at this ray of sunshine man in front of him.

“I’m Mark,” he says, extending a hand for you to shake. He repeats your name when you say it, nodding, that warm smile on his sweet face. “Thank you for coming, I’m so glad you made it,” stupid, charming Mark continues, still holding onto your hand.

You lean up to Jake’s ear when Mark leaves, whispering. “I thought you said your church friends were a bunch of ugly, incel freaks.”

He snorts, eyes on his shoes. “They are.”

“Mark definitely isn’t.”

“He’s abstaining,” Jake blurts out, looking around to make sure no one’s close enough to overhear. “Which is fine,” he adds, trying to play it off. His gaze catches on Jihoon and his new college biceps, and in a panic, he stumbles over his words trying to deter you from him too. “And Jihoon.. well..” Jake’s voice falters. A pause. “He’s in love with Mark.”

“How convenient.” You roll your eyes, sitting down in the empty seat behind you. “Who’s Jihoon?”

Jake shakes his head, checking his phone as he sits. “Nobody.”

Hoon: You brought her to Bible study bro?

Jake: She wanted to come

Hoon: You picked a good night, I’m excited to get into tonight’s study!

Hoon: Godspeed, brother. Amen.

He sighs, shaking his head as he tucks his phone into his pocket. Beside him, you shift a little, your knee bumping his.

Mark clears his throat, pulling Jake’s attention back to the circle. “Is there anyone who wants to say a prayer to get us started?” he asks, looking around the room.

From the other side of the circle, Sunghoon’s hand shoots up, and Jake has to stop himself from sighing in relief. Some of the other more.. enthusiastic members of the church pray for a while, but Sunghoon has a certain way of getting to the point. Bowing his head, he clasps his hands neatly in his lap. “Dear, Lord. Thank you for bringing us here safely this evening,” he starts, voice steady and sincere. “Please bless the study we’re about to take part in and help us to understand. Thank you for touching Jake’s heart and allowing him to bring a friend, may she be filled by your word.” He pauses, clearing his throat.

At this, Jake steals a glance up, eyes flicking to Sunghoon, only to see him staring already, a wide grin on his face. What the Hell? Jake’s stomach twists as he looks away, focuses on his hands in his lap, the white-knuckled grip he has on his pant legs.

“In your name’s sake we pray, amen.”

A resounding amen follows, and when Jake looks at you, you’re shooting Sunghoon a thumbs up like he just delivered the prayer of the century—not a terrifying snippet of what the night might entail if he has anything to do with it. In his seat, Sunghoon crosses one leg over the other with a smirk, winking at Jake.

Who needs enemies with a best friend like this?

“Uh, thank you for that, Sunghoon,” Mark says, taking a seat. “Jake, can I ask you to open 1 Corinthians 6:18, and read it out for us?”

“Of course.”

Jake ignores Sunghoon’s eyes on him as he pulls out his phone, searching for the verse in his Bible app. 1 Corinthians. Perfect. He’s at ease, trying to remember its exact wording, something about how love is patient and kind. Sunghoon was right, with a study topic like this — light, inoffensive — tonight is a good night to have brought you along. Who knows? Maybe divine intervention will have you confessing your undying love for him before the night’s over.

He sits up straighter in his seat when he finds it, smiling. “Reading from the New International Version, 1 Corinthians 6.18: Flee from sexual immorality—” Wait. What? Jake stops short, his stomach dropping. He skims the rest of the verse and offers a silent prayer, suggesting to Jesus that now is a perfect time for His second coming—you know, if He’s planning on it. Amen. There’s a choked-off snicker from the other side of the circle. Sunghoon.

“Uh—sorry. Going on.” Jake clears his throat, ignoring the heat creeping up the back of his neck. “All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”

Before he has a chance to lock his phone or launch himself out the window, Jihoon starts speaking. “I think it goes without saying that this is not a space for judgment. Everyone’s journey is their journey and no one here is without sin.”

“Exactly, Hoon,” Mark says, nodding. “So now that I’ve scared you all into abstinence, is there anyone who wants to talk about what they think that verse might mean?”

Silence. Everyone glances at each other, waiting for someone else to speak. No one does.

Mark exhales, slumping in his seat. “Really? Nothing? Great. Well—uh.” He rubs the back of his neck, his eyes flicking to the ceiling as if God might come down and help him out. Maybe even rapture him. That could be cool, and Jake could maybe be raptured next. “Look, I didn’t pick this topic to scare anyone. I mean, I don’t even pick the topics—there’s a whole timetable, and, well.. some of your parents are freaking out about you.” His mouth twists like he shouldn’t have said that. “Anyway—that’s not the point. What I mean is..”

He straightens up, trying again. “If you don’t want to wait, that’s your choice. I’m not here to judge anybody—it wouldn’t be fair. And honestly? I think there are ways to have sex that can honour your body, you know? Staying safe, using protection, getting tested. Being clear about consent, setting boundaries, being open with your partner.”

Mark’s words hang in the air, oddly light, completely unexpected—quieting the uncertainty in Jake’s head for the first time in weeks. Sex as an act of honour to the body. Not negative, nor neutral, but.. positive. That this idea could exist at all, never mind be voiced in church of all places, seems so absurd that he looks around the circle to see if anyone else is as surprised as him—but they aren’t.

“It’s about making choices that protect you — emotionally and physically — while respecting whoever you’re with.” Into the silence that follows, Mark clasps his hands together. “How about we wrap things up here, and go home early, huh?” More silence. “Great. Okay. Does anyone have any prayer requests? Anything they want to thank God for?”

It takes a while, but mentions of sudden illness and new jobs go in one of Jake’s ears and out the other as Mark prepares to say the closing prayer, and Jake hardly realises everyone’s standing up and moving their seats until you nudge him.

“You okay?”

Clearing his throat, Jake nods, stacking your chair on top of his and adding them to pile in the corner of the room. He introduces you as his friend to a seemingly unending carousel of the nosey people he grew up around. Of course, you already know Sunghoon, and Chaewon is extremely pleasant when she realises you’re not vying for his attention.

In his car, you tell Jake about the records you found—loads of folk stuff, first-press hip-hop LPs from the mid-’90s, obscure bootlegs people had brought in going for dirt cheap. You didn’t get anything, but it was a great trip. Heeseung got this insane home-pressing of songs by Laufey and the Black Eyed Peas for the girl he’s seeing. When Jake parks the car, you show him the picture you took of the jacket—a poorly Photoshopped monstrosity of the Monkey Business cover with Laufey’s face over all the members.

“We’ll have to go together when you have time.” You shake your head, laughing. “Oh, and thanks for letting me crash—it can’t have been easy having the Whore of Babylon sitting next to you, but I had fun tonight. It was funny.”

“Funny?” Jake repeats.

“Yeah.” You shrug. “I don’t know, it just seemed like Mark was trying to be nice about the whole.. premarital sex is damning thing.”

The thought doesn’t even make him cringe. No pit in his stomach. Steady heartbeat. Is he.. cured?

Jake hums. “He was, wasn’t he?” A mumble, spoken more to himself.

“Don’t you find that phrase sort of funny? Premarital sex—as opposed to the pure and moral matrimonial sex.” You laugh, head falling back against the headrest. “I’m not trying to be rude about it or anything, I just find it amusing.”

Shaking his head, Jake smiles. “No, I know.” A beat. “I think I do too.” He means it.

You reach for your seatbelt, pressing the button and taking it off. Jake does the same, hesitating before reaching for the door handle. “Are you free next weekend?” he asks, chewing on his lip.

“Yeah, how come?”

“I’m going fishing with my dad, and he was wondering if you’d want to join us.”

“Your dad was wondering, but..” You trail off, looking out over his shoulder, like you’re checking for pedestrians or anyone else who might behold your Jake-related vulnerability. “Do you want me there?”

“You know I do.”

Turning your body to face him, you lean against the door. “Mm.” A sage nod. “But I want you to tell me.”

“You mean a lot to me, so it would mean a lot if you came with us.” Jake takes your hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I really want you there.”

At this, your gaze falls to your linked hands, fingers intertwined in your lap. Holding his breath, he waits for your response, half-expecting you to brush him off, roll your eyes. Traffic flows outside, heavy, Jake thinks, for this time on a Wednesday evening. More quiet—too many clumsy beats passing to count.

Finally, your eyes find his, a smile on your lips, voice soft under the hum of cars passing in the street. “You mean a lot to me too.”

The lake house—his dad’s childhood home. Unchanged. Perfect. Dark wood floors that bear the scuffs of time—some from Jake’s own football boots as a child, others older, carved by lives before his. Faint scent of saltwater and old books with cracked spines. Frozen in time, but not untouched.

Three months have passed already since Christmas, the last time he and his parents were here. No gifts, no tree, just shit films and quality time. But the lake house always strikes him anew. The fleeting nature of this solid structure, this sanctuary where his father had been a boy. Eight-year-old handprints immortalised in the patio concrete, height marked on the living room doorway. The boy in the photos that Jake will never meet, though looks exactly like—his broad-nosed, full-lipped father.

Your voice is sudden over his shoulder. “Whoa.” Jake almost flinches despite its softness. He can’t believe you’re here.

“Yeah,” he utters, finally looking at you.

Jake has never dared to imagine you here, worried it wouldn’t ever live up to the real thing. And he was right. His heart stutters like a skipped stone. In your winter coat, chin hiding under your fluffy scarf, hair frizzed on the left side from where you’d slept against it in the car. The spread of the trees, vastness of the lake peeking through them, all framed by the open door behind you like something from a postcard.

Jake carries your bags upstairs, and you follow, getting a tour. The master bedroom is the last stop—queen-sized bed, en-suite bathroom, a space meant for two. You’ll be sharing it for the night—news that would mortify his mother if she found out. A thought that, only in theory, delights Jake.

In the kitchen, you prep ingredients for dinner while discussing Gatsby—his dad’s favourite. Materialism. Affluence. The American Dream. The excitement is mutual. You, eager to pick his brain. His dad, grateful for an audience more responsive than his students. Jake listens in silence, peeling carrots—heart warmed by the ease with which you converse. Comfortable, unmarred by years apart.

“Gatsby could’ve had anything he wanted in the world—but he never got to have Daisy,” his dad says, checking the fridge.

You hum in response, a soft sound of disagreement. “He had Daisy in some ways, I suppose,” you offer, sounding hopeful, seeking approval, Jake thinks.

“I think that might be more tragic than if he’d never had her at all.”

In the corner of his eye, Jake sees you tilting your head, brows furrowed. His dad laughs, not mean-spirited, no, an endeared sound he remembers from childhood—too scared to get back on his bike after his first fall; first wobbly tooth wrenched from his mouth by his own hand.

“A taste doesn’t make a meal, sweetheart—it just leaves you hungry,” he says after a moment.

In the same split second that Jake looks up at you, your eyes flick over to his. He can’t be hungry forever, surely not, that would just be cruel. His stomach curls in on itself at the thought. For a single, fully indulgent second, he lets himself believe that you might be hungry for him too.

“Jesus, kid,” his dad says suddenly, gripping Jake’s wrist and dragging him towards the sink. “You’re bleeding.”

Surprised, Jake blinks down at his hand, vivid red spilling from his index finger down the drain—carrot still half-peeled and bloodied.

“Fuck, Jaeyun,” his dad goes on. “That could’ve been really nasty. Are you alright?”

Jake only nods, distantly hearing his dad tell you where to find the first aid kit. Your footsteps disappear upstairs. Quickly, the stinging behind his eyelids turns into a pathetic flow of tears, his shoulders wracking as his dad wraps an arm around him. A kiss to the top of his head. “You’re alright, kid. Everything’s going to be alright.”

He doesn’t want to be hungry anymore.

All thanks to Jake’s little episode, the two of you are banished from the kitchen, and decide to take a walk. His feet lead you toward the dock, and you light up—jogging ahead, eager to reach the water. Standing at the edge, swaying, wind whipping your hair around your head. Leaning forward, you point out a green shed in the distance. A smile in your voice. “East Egg,” you say happily.

Jake remembers enough from the film to at least understand this reference, smiling too. “Alright, Mr Gatsby.” He wraps a protective arm around your waist, pulling you back. “That’s enough, baby, you’ll fall in.”

You laugh, turning in his hold. He’s hooked on your lips, their shape, how they part to form your words. “I do say, Old Sport.” You start. “You’re looking rather flushed.”

Air flees from his lungs, stolen. You — his Daisy — wrapped up in his arms, palms flat on his chest. Everything he wants, but can’t have. Tragic maybe. But wasn’t Gatsby brave, at least, to want in spite of what was feasible? Isn’t Jake? He shakes his head slightly, clearing the thought—you are not Daisy, nor is he Gatsby. There need not be tragedy here.

For a second too long, your gaze lingers on his lips—you’re waiting for a kiss that you won’t initiate. Everything about this moment feels primed for it. Alone on the water, the steady crash of lake against rock, virtually no space between you. But he’s stuck. Unmoving. The wind stings his ears. You shiver, teeth chattering before you press your lips together. Jake can feel the window shutting, but still, he does nothing.

Clearing your throat, you blink up at him. “Let’s head back, Jakey. We’ll freeze to death out here.”

Jake opens his mouth. Falters. Then, softer than he means to, he asks, “Will you kiss me?” The words startle him, borrowed from you and that night—almost two months ago now.

You nod, smiling. No hesitation, no second-guessing. Just the curl of your fingers around his jacket, the tipping of your chin. The steady, certain, press of your lips on his. Relief crashes into him, unfurling the tension in his chest. Warmth, soft and overwhelming all at once, sinking into his skin.

By the time you get back from the dock, dinner is almost ready—late lunch, really. Budae jjigae curling through the air, filling the house completely. The three of you eat together at the table, conversation weaving in and out between bites. Jake eats like it’s his first meal in ages, tearing into the steaming jjigae like it might disappear.

Full to the point of fatigue, he washes the dishes and sinks into the couch, head resting against the cushions, limbs loose and heavy with contentment. He twists the cuff of your sleeve between his fingers when you cuddle into his side, nursing a glass of water. In the armchair, as always, is his dad, book open in his lap, though he’s hardly reading. You keep pulling him into conversation, peppering him with questions about lecturing you must have been holding onto for years.

Eventually, the wind settles, and armed with fishing rods, and bait his dad picked up on the drive over, the three of you make your way back to the dock. Empty-handed, you run off ahead, giddy laughter, and a called out, come on, over your shoulder.

“She hasn’t changed a bit,” his dad says fondly, gaze lingering on Jake. “You haven’t either.”

He gives him a curious look. “Is that a good thing?”

A shrug, warmth in his dad’s eyes. “I think so.”

On the dock, Jake kneels by the tackle box, patient as ever as he shows you how to hook the bait, and hold the rod steady. His voice is quiet, calm, guiding your hands with his own until you get the hang of it. Following his instructions, you take it quickly, your cast smooth—a smile in his dad’s voice when he tells Jake you’re a natural. Pride swells in his chest as if the compliment was for him. Your line tugs almost immediately, breath catching in your throat as Jake scrambles over to you, an incredulous laugh from over his shoulder.

“You’ve got one!” he calls out, more excited than you are. “Reel it in, you have to reel it in!”

You fumble a little bit, but get it when you calm down. A flash of silver breaks the surface, water scattering in drops. Jake grins from ear to ear, like you’ve made the biggest catch of the season. Or at least caught something slightly more inspiring than a fifteen centimetre ssogari.

His dad chuckles, clapping you on the back. “Wow, sweetheart. Great job!” he says, nodding affectionately.

With some help, you hold up your catch, shaking with excitement — fear, maybe — while Jake snaps a photo, capturing the moment and sharing it with Sunghoon.

Jake: Baby’s first catch 😭😭😭😭😭

Hoon: So cute, no way !!! Where’s yours?

Hoon: Bring me next time I miss your hot dad :(

Jake furrows his brows, locks his phone without replying, and turns back to you.

“Are we going to cook it?” you ask, curiosity piqued.

“Uh, no.” He shakes his head, laughing softly. “We just look at them for a bit and then put them back.”

It’s a busy day in the water apparently, for you and Jake’s dad at least. Jake, for all his enthusiasm, catches nothing—the fish did not choose him this weekend. Eventually, as the sun starts to dip, you all pack up, leaving the water behind in exchange for something warmer.

In the garden, the night settles over you, thick with cold as the fire pit does what it can to fight off the chill. Flames flicker, snapping into the quiet, soundtracking your laughter and stories, the smell of smoke curling around you. In the seat beside Jake, your arms are wrapped around his, your head resting on his shoulder. His dad across the fire, its glow catching in the lines of his face, softening them and showing off his fond smile.

Eventually, Jake’s dad rises, brushing off his hands with a yawn. He leans down, pressing a kiss to the top of Jake’s head, and one to yours. A quiet goodnight, familiar, unhurried. In the doorway, he pauses, pointing a finger at his son. “Make sure the fire’s all the way out before you go to bed, okay?”

Nodding, Jake wishes him a goodnight again. Through the glass door, his dad moves through the kitchen, checking the sockets before flicking the light off, and disappearing down the hall. Resting his head on top of yours, he exhales. “You want another drink?”

“No, thank you.” You lift your half-full can, cider sloshing noisily. “I’m good, baby.”

Jake gets up, stretching his arms and legs before heading into the house, enveloped by the quiet of the kitchen. Pulling open the fridge, harsh light spills across the tiles as he reaches for a beer. Cold beads of condensation slip against his fingers, a relief as he lifts it, presses it to his cheeks to quell the heat blooming there. Baby. He giggles. Will he ever get used to that?

Opening his can, he sits back down and kisses your temple. A sip of beer warms his insides, he looks at you and smiles. “Did you have fun today?”

You nod eagerly, then seem to think better of it. Tilting your head. Pursing your lips. “I’m a little disappointed though.”

“Oh, yeah?” He arches his brow, leaning back in his seat. “How so?”

Your lips twitch. “It’s stupid but I guess I had it in my head that you were like—I don’t know, actually good at fishing, or something. But wow, Jakey.. You suck.”

“Ever heard of beginner’s luck?” he says, rolling his eyes, too endeared by you and the grin on your lips to bite back. “You’re lucky I like you too much to take that personally.”

A suggestive lift of your brow, a smug smile. “Oh, so you like me, huh?”

Briefly, Jake entertains the thought of telling you — finally fucking telling you — that he like-likes you. It seems simple enough, only three words. Four technically if he says ‘like-like’ out loud the way a child might. He watches you, searching—do you already know? And if you don’t, and he tells you, will anything change?

Firelight flickers over your face. Jake shrugs. “Yeah, quite a lot, actually.”

Chuckling, you bring your cider to your lips and take a long, slow sip. Over the edge of the illustrated can, you eye him. Gaze steady. Unnerving. Like you’re in on something he’s not.

You shrug.

Reaching out, his fingers curl around your wrist, gently lowering the can. His lips find yours, soft, insistent. Pineapple and raspberry, artificial and sweet, from your tongue onto his. He hums against your mouth, a quiet, come here, before pulling you in, guiding you into his lap. You straddle him easily, arms draped over his shoulders. The kiss deepens, slow at first, then desperate as heat pools in his stomach.

Hands mapping skin through your layers, fingertips pressing, still curious, eager after so long. Your chests rise and fall in sync when you pull away, trembling breath clouding together in the cool air. Blinking down at him, an expression he can’t read takes over your face. “You really like me?” you whisper. Your question clarifies the look on your face—expectant, waiting for an answer he’s scared to give.

As he sees it, there are only two ways for this to go—worst case: you laugh, cackle, call him insane for thinking he has a chance with you; best case: his confession doesn’t repulse you. Clearing his throat, he tries to calm the storm in his chest. “I do,” he says after too long, startling himself with his volume.

You don’t take off running for the hills, which he can only assume is a good thing. Instead, you smile. Cradling his face in your hands and kissing him. Then, movement. Slow shift of your hips back and forth against his—maddening. Press of chest to chest, hushed moans shared between you. A kind of tender desire that turns the cold night sweltering.

After too long, dazed and sleepy — fire extinguished — the two of you giggle, hand in hand, all the way upstairs. Brushing your teeth together in the en-suite, letting peppermint kisses turn warm and lazy as you pull Jake into the shower with you.

He pinkens in the heat, warm water slipping over your bodies in rivulets. Skin sliding over skin, pressed together. Steam curls, fogging the glass. Hands on your cheeks, holding your face to his—lips locked. Slow, lazy, taking his time. Trying his best to make the morning last forever like this. Kissing. Smiling. Your fingers card through his hair, tugging the wet strands, pulling groans from his mouth into yours.

Breathless, he pulls away, tucking his head against your neck. His arms fall around your waist, keeping you close. Noses along the sensitive skin there, inhaling your shower gel—syrupy sweet, so painfully you. He presses his lips together to keep from saying something stupid. Your touch is delicate, tender, on the back of his head, fingers curling around the overgrown locks at the nape of his neck.

It’s unfair to be going home so soon, the shortest trip of his life. Behind closed eyes, Jake can’t help picturing weeks here in the summer with you. Long days spent swimming in the lake. Short nights spent cuddling despite the heat. Sunscreen on hot skin. Aloe vera on burns. Tan lines and salt air. Summer. He’d be your boyfriend by then, right?

“I don’t want to go home,” you whisper.

He kisses your damp skin. “Just say the word and I’ll bring you back, baby.” His voice is low, muffled into the base of your neck. “In the summer, maybe? We can stay for ages if you want.”

Saying it out loud, this partial voicing of his thoughts for you to hear, summer feels much bigger than just a word, a season. Much bigger than anything he can imagine. An almost confession. A promise to you. To himself. He clears his throat, feeling exposed.

Your eyes are wide when he looks at you again, cupping his face in your palm, thumb stroking his cheek. You lean up, pressing your swollen lips to his. “Summer,” you repeat, smiling.

Jake doesn’t sleep, he’s not sure if he could if he tried. He’s laying there, flat on his back, your head warm and sleepy on his chest. His fingers move absently through your hair, slow and repetitive, more for him than for you. Your breathing is steady, relaxing him. A thought comes to mind—the sunrise. He shifts carefully, not wanting to wake you yet as he reaches for his phone. 05:47. Smoothing his palm over your shoulder, he whispers your name. You only hum in response, stirring.

“Come on,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss to your hair. “I want to show you something.”

“The sun isn’t even up yet,” you grumble into his skin, eyes still shut.

“That’s the point.” His voice is gentle but insistent. Leaning in, he presses his lips to your temple. “It’ll be worth it, baby.”

You groan, rolling away from him, face in the pillow. “Fine.” And as if in protest of the early morning, you don’t say much else. You do let him help you into your jacket though, smiling as he zips it up and kisses your forehead.

Hand in hand, the two of you trudge slowly along the trail, footsteps soft in the grass. Saltwater and pine fill the air, seeming stronger in the waning dark. Finally, through the trees, the lake unfolds, a glassy mirror of the brightening sky above, day’s first light stretched thin over the horizon.

When you reach the rocks, you whisper, “Whoa.” Taking a seat next to Jake, pulling your knees to your chest and leaning into him when he wraps his arm around your shoulders.

The sky splits open above your heads, dawn unfurling in soft brushstrokes of pink and orange. A dreamlike shimmer in the water—silken ripples of gold rolling towards the shore, crashing against the dock. The hues grow deeper and more vibrant, shifting quickly before his eyes. For years, this sunrise has been his favourite view. But now, with you sitting in it, soft and golden, hair ruffled from sleep and the wind? Fuck—he couldn’t think of anything better if he tried.

Whispering, he asks, “Worth it?”

You turn to him, eyes soft, smiling. “Very.” You let a long beat of silence pass before asking. “How many hookups have you brought here, Jakey?” Your voice is soft, a little more than curious.

Breathless, Jake laughs, suddenly nervous as if there’s a right and a wrong answer. “Hookups aren’t really my thing,” he admits, shaking his head. “So, zero.”

Your brow lifts, sceptical, but you don’t press. Not immediately, anyway. You even let Jake turn back to the water, following his gaze when he nods towards the horizon, and mumbles, look. You let the colour bloom for so long he thinks you’ve dropped it.

You haven’t. “Are you lying to me?” you ask quietly.

“You of all people should know I wouldn’t even kiss someone, never mind hookup with them, if I wasn’t losing my mind over them.” The words slip out before he can stop them, before he can think better of it. If you’re overthinking what he said, you don’t show it.

He doesn’t have anything more to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all. But in his peripheral, you’re still watching him. There’s something in your eyes he can’t decipher. At least not correctly. It reads love. It reads you want him how he wants you, and it’s disarming.

A while passes before Jake is ready to speak, his voice coming out softer than he means for it to. “What’s up?”

“It’s—” You cut yourself off, looking around. Amused, hesitant somehow, as you laugh—soft, and content, and nervous, he thinks. “Your dad thinks we’re together, you know,” you tell him eventually.

Jake puts a lot of effort into keeping his eyes from rolling, knowing exactly what his dad is up to. The prospect of his dad acting as a wingman is both relieving and mortifying. He arches his brow. “Together how?”

You sniff, eyes on his. “He thinks you’re my boyfriend, and I didn’t correct him.”

For a second, he forgets how to breathe, heart hammering against his ribs. Brain scrambling to catch up with you and what you just said about not correcting him. A thousand questions threaten to spill out at once, but none of them make it past his lips. Why not? Do you want that? Do you want me? It would be easier, he’s sure, to say nothing and kiss you instead. But your eyes are still on his, steady, not giving anything away, and he has to ask, voice low, cautious. “Are you going to correct him?”

“Do I need to?” You sound so calm, so relaxed about it all that Jake’s skin heats under your gaze.

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then no,” you say, smiling—small but certain, like you’ve made up your mind. Like you made up your mind long before this conversation. Your hand finds his cheek, thumb tracing his jaw. “I’m not going to correct him.”

And before he can reply, your lips are on his. Soft. Gentle. Everything he wants for the rest of his life.

By the time you make it back — boyfriend and girlfriend, hand in hand — Jake’s dad is sitting on the couch, curled around a cup of coffee and his book. He’s smiling, eyes gleaming as he makes a joke, something about the love bird catching the worm, and Jake is too happy to do anything but grin from ear to ear as you hide your face in his chest.

Upstairs, you share the shower, eager hands tracing dips and curves innocently until you leave with pruned fingers. Skincare, then moisturiser, then clothes. Stolen kisses whenever he has the chance. Jake’s dad is flipping pancakes at the stove when you get to the kitchen, forbidden bacon crackling beside him. Despite his best efforts, morning slips into afternoon with no regard for what he wants. Breakfast is eaten. Bags are packed. Your lips have been sufficiently kissed. It’s time to leave already.

The drive is fine, uneventful mostly, until his dad pulls into a rest stop. “Alright, everybody out. Stretch your legs, use the toilet if you need,” he says, cutting the engine.

You rush out of the car, yelling, one minute, over your shoulder as you run towards the building. Standing by the passenger door, Jake stretches his arms above his head, exhaling long and slow. Over the car’s roof, his dad clears his throat. “I’m sorry I haven’t done more for you—about your mum.” He hesitates, then says, quieter, “I love you, son. We both love you so much. I’m on your side, okay? You’re my only son, Jaeyun.”

Jake’s arms drop. He feels silly for having them up at all. Overwhelmed, he nods once, sniffing. “I love you, Dad.”

Smiling, his dad gets back into the car and Jake follows. Hardly a moment passes before he sees you through the windscreen, running back, so beautiful and all his—finally, actually his. Your eyes are sparkling when you open the door.

“They had these awesome keychains at the gift shop—look, Mr. Sim, it’s an angler!” You thrust the plush fish toward him, grinning like you caught it with your bare hands.

A chuckle, hand squishing it. Jake’s dad ruffles your hair, a gesture so familiar, so lived in, that Jake can’t shake the feeling that he’s dreaming. The fondness in his dad’s smile is overwhelming. “That’s great, sweetheart. I love it,” he says, voice thick with pride—again, like you caught the fish with your bare hands.

“It’s yours.”

“Oh, I can’t accept this.”

“Mr. Sim, it’s a keychain that cost me a pound, not real estate.” You hesitate, then add, quieter, “I actually got one for all of us. My father never took me on any kind of trip, so..”

At the mention of your father, Jake’s jaw tightens. His fist clenches in his lap, memories pressing in—too many nights spent comforting you over the phone, or sneaking out to do it in person. A quiet beat passes, stretched taut and straining at the edges, your words lingering, heavier than you probably meant them to be. Closing his fingers around the keychain, his dad clears his throat before he speaks, firm and sincere. “The three of us can go wherever you want, alright?”

You don’t say anything, but your nod is enough. And with a small smile at Jake, you hand him a matching angler, fingers brushing his. He can’t resist bringing your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles.

From the driver’s seat, a quiet exhale. “Now’s as good a time as any I suppose.” Jake’s dad reaches into his jacket pocket, pulling out two keys. “Got these cut this morning. It’s ours, kid. Use it whenever you like.”

Jake feels the cool metal against his skin. Turning it over in his hand as his dad presses the second key into your palm. He can’t look away from it, silver catching the light. No big speech, no song and dance—just his dad extending a promise, sharing this part of him with Jake, and with you. The weight of his uncertainty melts away. Swallowing past the lump in his throat, he glances at you, lips twitching up. Safe and familiar, solid and long lasting—the lake house. Yours. His. Ours. A future that doesn’t feel quite so far, or so unattainable anymore.

EPILOGUE

The lake house. Summer, finally. You’re sitting on the countertop while Jake makes breakfast—a view that has quickly become your favourite.

He reaches up into the cabinet, newly formed muscle shifting under tan skin. Shoulders solid and broad, the visual representation of all the strength he’s been using on you—picking you up and tossing you around like it’s nothing. His hair is still messy from bed, longer than ever and curling around his ears. Plaid pyjama pants sitting low, showing off the love bites staining his hips in pretty blooms of red and purple.

Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair. “I know how to scramble an egg,” he says, so long after your comment, you’d forgotten you said anything at all. His voice is low, thick with sleep even though you’ve been up for a while now—he’s definitely playing it up, but you like it too much to complain.

“I know you do, Jakey. I just—”

He interrupts you with a kiss, faint peppermint clinging to his lips as he mumbles, “I want to cook for you. Will you let me do that, darling? Please?”

Darling. Your heart does a flip, abrupt and ungraceful. “Fine,” you concede, twirling his hair with your fingers. “But I’m making dinner.”

Jake groans, resting his forehead on your shoulder. “Right, because I’m an idiot sandwich, and you’re Little Miss Gordon Ramsay.”

“Mm.” You smile. “Exactly.”

Nodding, he tips his chin up towards yours until your lips brush. “Yes, Chef,” he says, and it makes you laugh too much to keep on kissing him. But he tries anyway, teeth bumping as you share giggles. Eventually, he gives up, pressing his forehead to yours, hand on your waist. “Going to miss having this place to ourselves.”

You can’t even remember the last time you spent so long away from Jimin, and as much as you’re looking forward to seeing her — and Sunghoon — again, you’d be lying if you said you won’t miss being alone too, and the freedom of walking around the house in varying degrees of undress. A soft smile pulls at your lips. “It’s only one weekend, baby—Hoon has his placement to get back to,” you say, a voice of reason even though you feel the same.

Two weeks. Two whole perfect weeks with Jake—entire days spent out by the lake. Swimming or reading Emily Henry while he tries to fish. Big hands smoothing sunscreen over your back, plump lips pressing kisses to your tan lines. The press of solid muscle on soft flesh, sweat-slicked skin on sweat-slicked skin.

Jake’s lips curl into a grin, wide, boyish. So handsome—unbelievably so. “A lot can happen in one weekend.”

Unfortunately, he raises a good point, but you won’t admit that for him to hear. A lot can happen in one weekend—it did. But it wasn’t the time frame, it was the lake. You’ve deduced it has magical properties. An ability to make days slip into each other, to draw large feelings out before you can properly think them through. Yesterday, while Jake tied your bikini back up — deft fingers slick with the sunscreen he’d just rubbed on your back — you told him that you want this, with him, for the rest of your life. The words tumbled out of you, tugged from your brain by the lake. And so, like any mature twenty-year-old girl would, you promptly rolled off of the dock and into the water, refusing to emerge until it hurt to hold your breath. Jake only smiled when you came back up seconds later, pushed your hair from your face and kissed you. Told you that he wanted it too.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, big brown eyes staring deep into yours.

“My boyfriend.” It’s a word that still makes your stomach flutter, that hasn’t lost its novelty even after three months.

“Your boyfriend,” Jake repeats, nodding along. “Mm, handsome guy, I’ve heard. He’s super lucky.”

Heat floods your cheeks, and you can’t help but look away, biting back a smile. “Easily distracted too,” you point out. “He’s burning my breakfast.”

With wide eyes, he glances over his shoulder, a horrified look on his face. “Fuck,” he mutters, turning back to you. He doesn’t move though, only leaning in to kiss you again. His soft lips on yours, unhurried, like he’s got all the time in the world.

Admittedly, you’d let him kiss you like this forever if it weren’t for the smell of burnt egg — and burgeoning fire hazard — drifting between you. You pull away, shoving his shoulder with a laugh. “Go, Jake.”

“They’re already burnt.” He shrugs, unconcerned, as a lopsided grin spreads over his lips. “I’ll eat them.” With that, he returns to the stove, turning off the burner and flipping the charred eggs onto a plate.

Outside, you sit at the wooden table Jake built when you first arrived. You’d made an offhand comment, said it might be nice to have breakfast out on the deck, and he went off in search of scrap wood. He was successful, putting together a neat little table for the two of you to eat at—your initials and his etched into the grain, housed in a wonky love heart that gives you butterflies every time you see it. The sun warms your shoulders through one of his t-shirts, your legs crossed in your seat, and his palm heavy on your knee. You can’t look away from him. You don’t want to. There’s something about Jake, this way. The patch of raw skin on the bridge of his nose, scattered freckles dusting the centre of his face, faint band of pale skin where his sunglasses have been living recently. Jake. Your Jake. Leaning in, you press a kiss to his soft lips—your local heaven.

extra note: happy zreamy blog birth omgggg my first fic nothing to lose came out two years ago today (apr 3 2023) and i can finally say i've written at least one fic for each member 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ thank u sm to everyone for being so lovely, it means a lot !!! all my love, zo xoxo

permanent tag list: @asahicore @ikeublr @loverseon @dreamy-carat @littlefluu @cherrymxxnie @mrloverboy3000 @blooqz @immortalonie @enhastolemyheart @fancypeacepersona @heatrache @kxwinasblog @kimjkejyy @anofi

#jake smut #enhypen smut #enha smut #enhypen scenarios #jake scenarios #jake sim smut #jake sim x reader #enhypen imagines #enhypen oneshots #jake oneshots #jake imagines #enhypen hard hours #enhypen jake smut #enhypen jake scenarios #enhypen jake oneshots #enhypen jake imagines #fic.jake

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tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons · 25 days ago

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Appendix F: Special Worm Turns Edition

This post is a deep dive into Alan Moore's Worm Turns and the franchise that it spawned. For earlier more eclectic posts about a wider range of media in the scrambled timeline setting, see my blog's the scrambled timeline tag.

(by the by, do you love the color of the worm?)

PRE-WORM TURNS ALAN MOORE

In contrast to your timeline's Watchmen, which put Alan Moore on the map for the general public, the scrambled timeline's Worm Turns came relatively late in Alan Moore's career. It's his best-known work, but also the last of his well-known works. Therefore, it's worth first considering his earlier career for context.

Alan Moore has written hundreds of comics, many of them highly acclaimed. In the first few (obscure) years of his career, he alternated between writing and illustrating, but, seeing where his talents lied, he soon decided to specialize. His first big break came from prominent UK anthology magazine 2000 AD, which would publish dozens of Moore's stories from 1980 to 1986 (best remembered among them: the serialized and short-lived Metroid). He also had brief tenures at DC UK, running their series Spirit of the 20th Century (his run was incidentally the one that established the designation for the main DC setting, "Earth 616"), and at Warrior magazine, where he ran Overman. (The legal history of Overman is complicated, goes back to the early days of superhero comics, and is largely tangential to this accounting of Moore's career. Nonetheless, he's an alien android who can dissipate into a cloud of nanobots at will, hastily invented as a very similar replacement for the defunct Fawcett Comics character Superman, now owned by Marvel and called Xam, no relation to the extremely popular DC character called Superman - the Kryptonian refugee created by Stan Lee - nor any relation to the various other early comic book characters called Superman.)

In 1983, Moore began a long and productive relationship with Marvel, which would lead to most of his best-known works. He was initially brought on to write Tales of Dagoth, a simple horror comic inspired by the Kipling mythos (which was then just starting to enter the public domain in the US). Moore's run on Dagoth was extremely successful, and kicked off the so-called "British Invasion of comics", in which the big American companies (mostly Marvel) started hiring lots of British writers to enhance the literary quality of their comics. Tales of Dagoth was also incidentally the origin of popular Marvel character Dr. Strange; Moore originally invented him on a request from the artists for a side character resembling Vincent Price, but he took on a life of his own. The character is now a ubiquitous cameo character throughout Marvel's properties, and frequently a protagonist; he even played a major role in Neil Gaiman's otherwise-mostly-disconnected-from-Marvel series Promethea. On multiple occasions, Alan Moore has reported being visited by Dr. Strange in real life.

Moore wound up doing some of the most celebrated stories for Marvel's most important superheroes. The two-part Whatever Happened to that Brand New Day? is commonly cited by Marvel writers as their favorite Spider-Man story; posed as a quasicanonical epilogue to the saga of (pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths) Peter Parker, it deconstructs the floating timeline ubiquitous in superhero comics, depicting it as a Faustian bargain Peter made because he was unwilling to lose anyone else he loved, a bargain he must nullify to allow life to progress. In the process, it touches on many elements throughout Spider-Man's forty-eight years of lore; the Spot, originally depicted as a joke villain, was first characterized as a serious interdimensional horror here. WHttBND was the last Marvel comic to be marketed as an "Imaginary Story", before that term was superseded by the Elseworlds label (debuting with Americana, a one-shot Western depicting a turn-of-the-century version of Captain America).

Likewise, Moore wrote Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a prestige one-shot reintroducing the apparently-deceased Bucky Barnes as a brainwashed assassin. Moore is actually not particularly fond of this one; he didn't conceive of it, but was roped into it by the artist, Brian Bolland, who had recently watched Paul Leni's The Manchurian Candidate (1928). However, its influence on the overall Captain America franchise is hard to overstate. Even aside from the most obvious plot developments (like the title character), it essentially originated the modern conception of Hydra as a conspiracy seriously integrated into the US government. Later acclaimed Captain America storylines, like 2007's WMD-inspired Secret Empire, can trace their creative roots to this simple, short, focused piece. Christopher Nolan cited The Winter Soldier as a central reference point in his Captain America trilogy, and it really shows.

Marvel also enabled Moore to pursue his own projects. Two of the first critically-acclaimed graphic novels (Moore hates the term "graphic novel", by the way) were written by Moore and published through Marvel: Threads and The Sandman. These prestige comics were not submitted to the Comics Code Authority for approval, and this was one early sign of the end for that organization. Threads was an intensely depressing and morbid depiction of ordinary life in Britain during and after a global nuclear war; it was published in Warrior until that magazine's cancellation, at which point Marvel picked it up for its final four installments. Threads was unpopular when it was coming out, but quickly became a cult classic afterwards. The Sandman was an extremely niche and surreal occult piece about embodiments of the fundamental magical forces governing the world; although it's celebrated as a triumph of the medium, it's generally considered completely unadaptable.

Following a series of creative, political, and business disagreements with Marvel's leadership, Moore decided to distance himself from the company in 1990; they remained on speaking terms, and he had several incidental Marvel credits throughout the 90s, but he generally sought to publish his own works independently. Mad Love, a publishing house Moore set up with his first wife and their polyamorous lover, was a failure; it would shutter after only three years with the collapse of Alan Moore's first marriage, and its works remain obscure and unfinished.

Moore's more noteworthy work in the '90s began with a comic serialized in Taboo magazine, String of Pearls. String of Pearls was a reimagining of the legend of Sweeney Todd as a revenge tragedy; it was a very political work, with a heavy focus on class conflict in Victorian Britain. He also did several series for American publisher Image Comics, including Men of Mystery (a short pastiche of Jack Kirby's work for DC in the 60s), Hancock (a superhero deconstruction that he took over from Rob Liefeld and made more reconstructive), and Pagemaster (which I have discussed in more detail before; Moore would later take future volumes of Pagemaster to different publishers following fights with Image Comics over the disastrous 2003 film adaptation). That gets us to right around the turn of the millennium, and to Worm Turns.

WORM TURNS

Although the first issue was published in 2002, Worm Turns was first conceived nearly two decades earlier. Charlton Comics was collapsing, and their IP was absorbed by Marvel in 1983. Alan Moore was just getting started at Marvel, and had always been intrigued by the Charlton Comics' All For One & One For All setting (originally created by, among others, Steve Ditko). He described it as an unintentional dark mirror to Marvel's own X-Men; it depicted a world that was being rapidly overrun by comic book superpowers and conflicts in a clearly unsustainable way.

Moore made an unsolicited pitch to Marvel's managing editor, Dick Giordano, for a limited series rooted in the Charlton Comics stories. This comic, which was never produced, would have been set only a few years after All For One & One For All's 1967 cancellation; it would have told how that world's many crises - both subtle and overt - gradually and inexorably rose to a boiling point until, one Thursday in 1972, the source of superpowers - an intelligent alien virus called the Quirks, representing the comics industry, destroying planet after planet in an iterative search of something new and creative - revealed itself and initiated Armageddon.

Giordano liked the pitch, but rejected it; in fact, Marvel had already committed at this point to a plan to incorporate the Charlton Comics IP into the main Marvel setting through the Crisis On Infinite Earths event, reimagining its characters as mutants for the post-COIE continuity. Moore was a rising creative powerhouse at this point, and Giordano knew that allowing him to do his take on the Charlton characters would define them in the public eye and render them unusable for Marvel's more straightforward purposes. Nonetheless, he encouraged Moore to stick with the idea and redraft it with an original setting and characters.

Moore took this advice to heart, and tinkered around with what would become the Worm Turns setting and characters for sixteen years in the background while working on other immediate-term projects. In 1999, school shootings entered the zeitgeist, with politicians and pundits looking for something to blame - violent and nihilistic media, disaffected youth subcultures, a bullying epidemic, American gun law - especially in the wake of a string of copycat crimes that continues to this day. It was this media phenomenon that crystallized Moore's final ideas for the plot and themes of Worm Turns. He began to make Worm Turns his top priority, and bumped Skitter (an isolated and emotionally repressed bug-controlling teenage girl, derived from Charlton Comics second-stringer Froppy) up from one character concept among many to the story's main protagonist.

Although Moore initially planned to publish this final version of Worm Turns through his then-preferred publisher, Image Comics, he was starting to have friction with them similar to what he'd once had with Marvel. Jim Lee, one of the Image Comics founders that Moore most trusted, had jumped ship for Marvel in 1998. It was Lee who persuaded Moore to give Marvel another serious shot and present his pitch to them instead. Lee pulled the right strings to get Moore an imprint especially for Worm Turns (America's Best Comics) with all the creative freedom he demanded for his full twenty-four issue plan.

Obviously, Worm Turns was a colossal success. It's what most people think of when they think of Alan Moore. It marks a clear end to the "dark age of comic books"; most writers know they can't top Worm Turns, and when they're trying to imitate it, the influence is obvious. It deconstructed the crisis crossover trend that Marvel kicked off themselves with Crisis On Infinite Earths (not that that stopped the phenomenon's popularity). Most importantly, it told an original superhero story - by now, a common entry point for the whole genre - while approaching the subject matter in Moore's signature radically-literary way.

It's an extremely dense, interconnected, thematically rich work, wherein every detail was carefully thought out as a piece of many larger wholes. (I'm trying to keep the synopses brief, but this makes it difficult.) One frequently-cited starter example: each faction in Worm Turns subtly-or-not-so-subtly corresponds to some popular folk theory on what causes violence in schools. The Undersiders are a group of unstable rebellious teens on the fringes of society, Faultline's Crew are outcasts because of factors out of their control, Empire 88 are neo-Nazis, Cauldron is a shadowy Illuminati-ish conspiracy making everything in the world happen for their own reasons, et cetera et cetera. Lung's gang in particular reflects a racist anti-Asian mass hysteria associated with anxieties about Japan's economic and cultural dominance in the late 20th century; it's why ignorant parents and lawmakers who thought kung fu movies were real passed entirely useless "ninja weapon bans", and it's why, IE, Teenage Ninja Rescue Puppies was considered an offensive enough title that it needed to be extensively censored to air in Britain.

Worm Turns was published by Marvel (as America's Best Comics), from February 2002 to July 2004. (It was set from April 2010 to December 2012.) The artist was J. H. Williams III. The story is divided into four "arcs" of six long issues each; each arc was published one issue a month, and there were two-month gaps between arcs. Each issue (with one exception) is titled for a quote thematically relevant to the issue; a longer form of the same quote appears at some point within the issue itself. Although the arcs do not have official names - they're simply good breaking points and an artifact of publication - they're informally known as the Undercover Arc, the Slaughterhouse Arc, the Cut Ties Arc, and the Gold Morning Arc.

It should be noted that, despite the breadth and depth of his literary knowledge, when Alan Moore selected the title Worm Turns, he was not actually aware of the origin or the sheer age of the phrase "even a worm will turn when trodden on". In fact, the earliest attestation of this line comes from the Roman poet and satirist Juvenal, around 100 AD.

The Undercover Arc:

I: Wings Off Flies. Published in February 2002; titled for a line from Edgar Allan Poe's Carietta. This issue introduces us to our main three viewpoint characters, beginning with our protagonist, Taylor Hebert. Though Taylor vividly fantasizes about using her powers to get violent revenge on her bullies at school, she controls herself and pours her energy into her ambitions as a superhero instead. Her first night out in costume nearly gets her killed, and she finds that she is easily mistaken for a supervillain because of her personality and her aesthetic choices; the main portion of the issue ends with her joining a gang of teen supervillains, the Undersiders, the next day. Armsmaster's segment is about a third of the way through the issue; he receives a bulletin about the disappearance of Mouse Protector, and reflects on the dangers of cape life. Scion's segment is near the end of the issue; he rotely performs various acts of simple heroism around the globe before stopping to remotely watch a homeless man in Britain (Kevin Norton). The extra materials section contains the introduction and first chapter of in-universe pop history book Triumvirate, recounting the initial appearance of Scion and the first parahumans in the early 1980s. Much of the information contained in this book is unreliable and will eventually be explicitly shown to be false.

II: Horses Made Of Sticks. Published in March 2002; titled for a line from Lee Hazlewood's song My Baby Shot Me Down (written for Nancy Sinatra). We open with the famous scene introducing Glory Girl and Panacea; they interrogate a neo-Nazi thug about the state of the gang war in Brockton Bay. The bulk of the issue's plot (after a brief fight between Taylor and her disgruntled new teammate Rachel) is the Undersiders' bank robbery, which we see unfold from the planning stage to the Wards' debriefing afterwards (in which the name Skitter is invented). Armsmaster implores Skitter not to go through with her doomed, amateurish undercover operation, and later worries to himself about the path she's heading down. Scion, entirely disconnected from all of this, watches Kevin Norton read a pulpy comic book - the long-running sword-and-sorcery serial The Curse of the Pale Fire, written by John Shade for editor and publisher Charles Kinbote. The extra materials section provides the second and third chapters of Triumvirate, providing accounts of the supposed first meetings between Eidolon, Alexandria, Legend, and Hero, as well as the end of the "golden age of parahumans" with the death of Vikare.

III: The Problems Of The Hows And Whys. Published in April 2002; titled for a line from Jeff Mangum's song This Livens Up The Day, from his 1998 concept album about a 1979 school shooting, at the time a remarkable one-off event. Taylor continues to grow closer to the Undersiders, minus Bitch. She asks them how they got their powers, and Tattletale explains to her that "positive trigger events" are a fabrication used to soften the image of parahumans for the public. Taylor recounts her own trigger event, and Brian reciprocates by retelling his own (although he spins and distorts it to avoid coming across as weak). The Undersiders realize that Bitch is missing (we later see that she was attacking a dogfighting ring), and go to check on the money, where they are ambushed by hyperviolent mercenaries Uber and Leet, who sardonically blame their crimes on the influence of video games. (This is, of course, a reference to the real tendency around the turn of the millennium to blame violent video games for crime; id Software's Superhot was especially frequently cited.) The Undersiders are able to dispatch the pair with relative ease, but then meet their client, Bakuda, a Tinker-bomber who intends to free and obtain revenge for Lung. The Undersiders escape with their lives by the skin of their teeth, and Taylor spends weeks recovering from her injuries as Bakuda terrorizes Brockton Bay. Armsmaster works on a simulation program for predicting combatant behavior (the subplot introduced here is a reference to "murder simulator" rhetoric), and muses with his subordinates on where powers come from; Miss Militia believes they're gifts from God, while Challenger holds that they're a cosmic accident. Scion remembers the first time he met Kevin Norton and, desperate for direction in life, began looking to him for instructions. Taylor gets in a fistfight with Emma, and the ensuing disciplinary meeting with the school is stacked against her; she holds onto her memories of her cape fights to stay sane. The extra materials section contains Armsmaster's personally-marked-up copy of some of Professor Haywire's notes. Armsmaster meditates on where Tinker inspiration comes from, and considers the case of Professor Haywire, who supposedly got his ideas from alternate versions of himself with whom he shared a mental link. He admires Haywire's work, despite his villainy, and laments his death in the recent Ziz attack on Madison, Wisconsin.

IV: Make-Believe. Published in May 2002; titled for a quote from Gary Gygax, from when he defended his game Magic: The Gathering in a televised interview. Taylor and the Undersiders attend a meeting of most of Brockton Bay's villains; Lung's gang is deemed out of control (mostly thanks to Bakuda), and the others coordinate action against them. Taylor becomes more and more comfortable with her cape life, and goes on an informal date with the Undersiders' leader, Brian (Grue, named after the monster from the Old English epic of Tournevis), assembling furniture at his apartment and meeting his sister Aisha. Taylor attempts to impress Brian by recounting things she's read about Haitian Vodou but he brushes her off. The combined efforts of Brockton Bay's heroes and villains get Lung and Bakuda sent to the Birdcage, but the press ignores the contributions of the villains; the Undersiders are directed to protest this by disrupting a PRT fundraising event. Taylor is finally introduced to the Undersiders' boss, the fate-controlling snake-themed villain Coil, but she finds that the villain life is tempting enough that she's considering sticking with it anyway. This decision is clinched when her father confronts her about how withdrawn she's been lately, and she runs away from home with backup from Lisa (Tattletale). Meanwhile, Scion reflects on how he always cared more about Kevin's thoughts on stories (especially The Curse of the Pale Fire) than his thoughts on the real world. The extra materials section contains a few pages from a lost notebook in which Taylor wrote about her plans to be a superhero.

V: The Dread Of Anticipation Of Events. Published in June 2002; titled for a line from Borges' Omelas. This issue's plot mostly concerns Coil's sudden mass-unmasking of the Empire 88, and the immediate fallout thereof; at the conclusion of the issue, Taylor finds out about Coil's use of the kidnapped child oracle Dinah, and quits the Undersiders in disgust (just in time for the Endbringer sirens to go off). A few other noteworthy subplots fill the issue: Lung and Bakuda arrive at the Birdcage, alongside Canary, a famous parahuman musician who was convicted of "singing too well"; Lung decides to kill Bakuda to earn the reputation he'll need. Armsmaster faces a shameful demotion as a consequence for his recent failures, many of which were Taylor's fault one way or another. He's actually pleased by the arrival of Leviathan, which he had been specifically preparing for. Taylor and Brian have a chance encounter with Taylor's bully Sophia, and a fight breaks out; Taylor makes a racist comment about her, and is then surprised to be romantically rejected by Brian. Bookending this, we get a look at Shadow Stalker, a Ward who's been set up as a potential future problem for the Undersiders. She's an edgy type who doesn't get along well with the other heroes, producing an implicit comparison with Taylor. After getting told off by Miss Militia, Shadow Stalker decides to track down young E88 cape Rune, and fatally shoots her with a regular gun, reasoning that no one would suspect her of carrying out a crime without using her powers. The extra materials section contains lab notes from Cauldron on several of their typical vial recipients, including Gallant and Newter among others.

VI: The Old Serpent. Published in July 2002; titled for a line from Jonathan Edwards' sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This is the "Leviathan issue", and introduces the importance of Endbringers to the setting; frequently assumed to be a 9/11-inspired element of the setting, Moore is adamant that they were already fully-conceived in the 1980s. The Protectorate, Wards, New Wave, and Empire 88 suffer heavy losses in the Leviathan fight, and more importantly the city is left in ruins, barely saved at the last moment by the arrival of the deific Scion. In a chaotic hospital ward after the fight, Taylor discovers that Shadow Stalker is Sophia, driving a wedge between Taylor and the heroes. Tattletale exposes Armsmaster's plot to break the Endbringer truce by feeding villains to Leviathan in an ill-conceived scheme to get a one-on-one fight with him; Armsmaster retaliates by revealing Taylor's attempted undercover operation. Later, Tattletale confesses that she knew all along about Taylor's intentions, but kept them hidden because she believed she could turn her; she invites Taylor to rejoin the team on different terms. She also informs Taylor of Coil's true power, to live in two timelines at once, discarding one and splitting the other as he desires; we briefly see this in action, and learn that he sometimes uses it to live out antisocial fantasies consequence-free as a form of stress relief. The extra materials section contains the fourth chapter of Triumvirate, detailing the Behemoth attack on Marun and the ensuing foundation of the Protectorate.

The Slaughterhouse Arc:

VII: Elaborate Euphemisms. Published in October 2002; titled for a line from Frank Herbert's Homecoming Saga. After a brief look at the Protectorate and Wards (who are in shambles, like most of Brockton Bay's institutions, after the deaths of Challenger, Velocity, Aegis, and Gallant), the issue concerns a heist in which the Undersiders (including a new member, Imp, Grue's sister) abduct Shadow Stalker and subject her to Regent's true power, full body control. They infiltrate the PRT and sabotage its computer network for Coil; a fight with world-class Tinker hero Dragon ensues. The issue builds up the seemingly-distant threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine; it opens with the heroes investigating a string of murders apparently characteristic of the Nine, and near the end, Coil warns the Undersiders about them, and we get Dinah's prophecy that Jack Slash is nearly certain to end the world somehow. The issue also shows us a darker side of Alec (Regent), who we'd previously known as mild comic relief; it's emphasized here that he's Heartbreaker's son, as he terrorizes and abuses Sophia far beyond what his teammates realize he's doing. The extra materials section is a rambling and esoteric piece of autobiographical verse by Dragon, in which she discusses three men she hates: her father, Andrew Richter, her would-be captor, Geoffrey Pellick, and the creator of the Birdcage, Eric Baumann. The language she uses is heavy on cryptic symbolism, and making sense of it requires some information from a bit later in the story.

VIII: A Breeze Goes Round The World. Published in November 2002; titled for a line from Norton Juster's Flatland about the butterfly effect (though it predates that term). This issue interweaves a Taylor plot (in which we see how she's managing her territory, since Coil assigned each Undersider and each Traveler to control a section of Brockton Bay) with numerous side stories about the Slaughterhouse Nine arriving in Brockton Bay and choosing their candidates for recruitment. Jack Slash torments Theo Anders (amusingly, Theo, not Jack, is Moore's cynical take on Charlton Comics character Jack Michelmore, "the One For All", an underdog who was consistently bullied and degraded specifically for his lack of superpowers). Shatterbird, the most consistently successful recruiter, goes after Hookwolf. The Siberian tempts Rachel, and Bonesaw pushes Amy over the mental edge, leading to her falling-out with Victoria. Taylor and Lisa infiltrate a Merchant event, where they witness a trigger event and get a tease of Cauldron info. Burnscar nearly kills Faultline's crew on her way to visit Labyrinth, and Cherish nominates her half-brother, Alec, out of spite. Dinah does everything she can to keep Crawler from wiping out Coil's base, and Mannequin lurks. The issue has a strong underlying theme of chaotic systems of cause and effect; Jack explicitly discusses this with Theo, Dinah thinks about it, and Shamrock's power is in focus, but moreover, all of the little stories in the issue interact with one another in many subtle ways, most of which the characters are unaware of. Many of these events are precipitated by a mysterious woman representing Cauldron (who we will later identify as Contessa); the issue ends with her delivering a message to Battery. The extra materials section contains a grim retrospective on Ziz's first appearance in Lausanne, with interviews with survivors and analysis of the ongoing ramifications for humanity; it emphasizes that it's easy to turn into a conspiracy-minded paranoiac by overthinking Ziz.

IX: The Same Species. Published in December 2002; titled for a line from J. D. Salinger's Natural Born Killers, a book notorious for its popularity with unhinged murderers, such as John Lennon's assassin, who was obsessed with it. (John Hinckley also had a copy in his hotel room, although it's dubious whether he actually meaningfully connected with it; infamously, his attempted assassination of Reagan was actually motivated by his obsession with child actress Jodie Foster, which developed after he watched Martin Scorsese's Pretty Baby.) This issue covers the start of open conflict with the Slaughterhouse Nine. The heroes and villains meet to coordinate against the Nine, but Hookwolf pushes the Undersiders and the Travelers out of this process (citing the unsolved murder of Rune, among other points). They then go to discuss strategies among themselves, and the Travelers turn out to be experienced tacticians. The Nine appear and Tattletale thinks fast to draw Jack into a wager to buy Brockton Bay more time; Taylor warns as many civilians as she can about an impending Shatterbird attack. The issue is bookended with Mannequin encounters; it opens with his breaking into Armsmaster's home and nearly killing him (this precipitates Dragon confessing to Armsmaster her origin, namely that she is a Tinker-created AI), and it ends with Skitter winning a fight with Mannequin and pushing him out of her territory. There is also a subplot where Scion considers how his one-sided relationship with Kevin Norton deteriorated and they fell out of contact for years. The extra materials section contains some of Hookwolf's files - schedules and betting ledgers from a parahuman fighting ring, a brief history of the English colonization of Brockton Bay, an old Medhall brochure with Empire meeting notes written on it, and some far-right neopagan texts.

X: A System Of Blue-And-Red Neon Tubes. Published in January 2003; titled for a line from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five in which protagonist John Yossarian discusses the problem of pain. This issue covers the most intense section of fighting between the Undersiders and the Slaughterhouse Nine, in which Cherish and Shatterbird are captured, Grue is tortured and undergoes a second trigger event, and Burnscar is killed. Brian's (ultimately temporary) fate worse than death is easily one of the best-known images from Worm Turns, and spawned the fandom term "men in refrigerators" in reference to the dark age of comic books. The issue also contains a major turning point in the Scion lore: he explicitly considers what's happening in Brockton Bay - what's happening to Brian - notices that there's about to be a second trigger event, and decides that no further intervention is necessary. Armsmaster, meanwhile, becomes a cyborg and grows much closer to Dragon. The extra materials section contains Dr. Jessica Yamada's notes on her sessions with the Brockton Bay Wards.

XI: Everything Is Its Mirror Image. Published in February 2003; titled for a metafictional line from Joyce Carol Oates' Funny Games. This issue contains the end of the Slaughterhouse Nine's time in Brockton Bay; Siberian's weakness is exposed, Mannequin, Crawler, and Battery are killed, Cherish is subjected to something far worse, Bonesaw releases a neurotoxic plague (or "miasma") to induce mass confusion, Jack Slash drives Amy to madness, and the remaining Nine leave Brockton Bay with Hookwolf. After Mannequin's death, Armsmaster meditates on his own trigger event and his personal failings. The extra materials section contains a roster for a competitive Monsters In Mazes tournament, a fictional tabletop wargame, followed by a newspaper clipping. One team, from Madison, Wisconsin, has been hastily removed from the roster. The news article indicates that this team was a group of teenagers who all died (or at least went missing) in an apartment building collapse. One of their mothers, Katherine Newland, local PTA leader, blames Monsters In Mazes for their deaths. The small fragments of other articles at the edges of the clipping suggest that these documents are not from Earth Bet, the primary setting of Worm Turns.

XII: Sorry I Could Not Travel Both. Published in March 2003; titled for a line from Borges' House of Leaves. This issue covers the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse Nine's time in Brockton Bay, and emphasizes Coil as the most relevant threat to Taylor. Per her deal with Jack, Amy rapes and mutilates Victoria for days, and then demands to be sent to the Birdcage so that she can't undo any of the damage she's done; she accepts that she's Marquis's daughter. In between several missions she performs for Coil, Taylor begins dating Brian, and they have sex. Armsmaster takes on a new identity as Dragon's sidekick Defiant, and the PRT is too desperate for manpower to object. Tattletale warns Taylor that Coil is apparently planning to kill her after she intimidates the mayor for him; indeed, after she does so, Coil flips a coin and calls up Uber, who has a sniper rifle trained on her. This issue has a subtle gimmick, which very few readers pick up on, at least on their first read; subtle continuity irregularities indicate that the odd-numbered pages and the even-numbered pages are set in slightly different diverging timelines. We effectively have a Coil's-eye-view of this issue. This is the only issue of Worm Turns in which neither Scion nor Kevin Norton appear, even as a cameo. The extra materials section contains torn pages from a Lone Wolf gamebook written by John Shade. Although theoretically written as a gamebook, the excerpts we receive provide us with only a single linear iteration of the story, which travels through only odd-numbered sections. The second-person protagonist, the titular Lone Wolf, dies miserable, humiliated, and alone; the narrator taunts us for being unable to go back and select a different path in real life.

The Cut Ties Arc:

XIII: The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil. Published in June 2003; titled for the concept from the Biblical book of Metamorphoses. This issue is set after a short time skip; for weeks, Taylor has maintained and further entrenched Coil's control of Brockton Bay's villain scene. Coil stages his own death as part of a successful gambit to take over Brockton Bay's PRT department in his civilian identity as Thomas Calvert. (Calvert had previously been referenced several times as a PRT consultant with whom Piggot had unpleasant history.) He plans to covertly assassinate Skitter and enslave Lisa alongside Dinah, but Leet's power sabotages the assassination attempt, giving Taylor the opportunity to (barely) escape with her life. The Undersiders (mostly Lisa) trick Calvert into selecting a timeline where he is already in a losing position, cornered, his mercenaries occupied elsewhere or paid off. He tries everything he can to escape, but he is inevitably killed by Taylor; this activates a dead man's switch that enrages and releases Noelle, the most powerful and unstable of the Travelers. Tattletale sets to work repurposing Coil's criminal infrastructure for her own ends and prepares for the fight with Noelle; Taylor returns Dinah to her family. For just a moment, Taylor is tempted to exploit Dinah's power instead of completing the rescue mission she'd been working towards for months; before Dinah leaves, she gives Taylor a note. Like Sorry I Could Not Travel Both, this issue thematically centers on Coil; they're counterparts to each other, with the twelfth issue focusing on Coil at his most threatening and superhuman and the thirteenth focusing on him at his weakest and most mortal. The extra materials section contains Cauldron's lab notes on some of their strongest parahumans, including Coil, Doormaker, the Clairvoyant, and Eidolon.

XIV: The Analysis And Improvement Of The Self. Published in July 2003; titled for the conclusion of Camus's essay The Myth of Narcissus. ("The analysis and improvement of the self is enough to fill a man's days. One must imagine Narcissus happy.") This issue covers Noelle's rampage and death; much of it is told from her perspective, with numerous flashbacks, mostly to her time on Earth Aleph as the gamemaster for the team who would become the Travelers. The fight goes as badly as any Endbringer fight - in fact, Noelle (or "Echidna") is a plan of Ziz's - and it only goes worse because of the Protectorate's involvement. Eidolon deliberately escalates the fight in a futile effort to reawaken his full powers, and for his trouble, he gets Cauldron's involvement in the Protectorate leaked (ultimately doing more damage to the Protectorate than the deaths in the fight did). Tattletale arranges for a portal to send the Travelers home to Earth Aleph (and economically reinvigorate Brockton Bay). Taylor persuades Sundancer to put Noelle out of her misery, which wins the fight; Vista is one of several hostages who dies as a result, something Taylor did not see fit to tell Sundancer. The standing portal is set to return Brockton Bay to wealth and prosperity (eventually), but the Protectorate is on the verge of collapsing. The extra materials section contains the PRT's briefings on a few of the extant S-class threats - the Endbringers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Nilbog, the Machine Army, the Yangban, Pastor, Deader and Goner ("the raincoat kids"), and Sleeper. Sleeper's entry is mostly covered by a memo from Rebecca Costa-Brown denying S-class threat status to Echidna.

XV: A Blank Space For You, My Child. Published in August 2003; titled for a line from Mozart and Da Ponte's opera, Il Diario della Morte. This is the issue where Taylor gets outed as Skitter; it also constitutes a return and capstone to Taylor's bullying storyline. It opens with a flashback revealing how Emma fell in with Sophia and adopted her pseudo-Nietzschean philosophy, after she was saved from a group of criminals by Sophia-as-Shadow-Stalker. In the present day, Taylor is summoned to Arcadia High by her old acquaintance Greg, who has pieced together who she is and intends to cut himself in somehow or another. Taylor aggressively shuts this down and intimidates him, and then finds that Emma has lost her social status over the past few months and is no longer able to effectively bully her. However, she is held up for just long enough that Dragon and Defiant (on orders from Dinah and the PRT) are able to corner and out her; she escapes from the building thanks to the overwhelming support of the schoolchildren, who've seen the positive impact that her criminal operations have had on Brockton Bay. News of this travels far and fast, and she's only able to contact her father for a split second before the police presence becomes too thick for her to stay. Meanwhile, Kevin Norton contacts Scion for the first time in years; he explains that he's dying and that he's worried that Scion has failed to kill the Endbringers because he told him to "fight" them rather than "kill" them all those years ago. The extra materials section contains a hostile retrospective of The Curse Of The Pale Fire written by fictional comics historian Gerald Emerald; Emerald reflects on the decline in comic book sales since the emergence of real parahumans, and blames the predatory management practices of Charles Kinbote for the stagnation of the post-cape comics scene. The article is followed by a handwritten response letter from Professor V. Botkin, who is fairly unhinged and an obvious pseudonym of Kinbote's.

XVI: The Glow Of Each Other's Majestic Presence. Published in September 2003; titled for a line from John Lennon's song Ana Ng. In-between several fights with the PRT and out-of-town villains in which she decisively demonstrates her control of Brockton Bay, Taylor visits her mother's grave and closely studies all of her teammates (including new recruits Parian and Foil). After being rebuffed by Tattletale (who has a sense of what Taylor is planning and does not particularly like it), Taylor talks Brian and Rachel into a threesome. She mistakenly believes that this went well, and decides that her team will be able to stand without her; she turns herself in to the PRT, and we see that Dinah's note from The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil read "Cut ties. I'm sorry." Meanwhile, Dragon and Defiant angst about how Dragon's poorly-conceived programming forced her to behave unethically towards Skitter, and the two have sex beyond mortal comprehension as Defiant tries to upgrade her; Scion pressures Kevin into reading to him from The Curse Of The Pale Fire one last time, and considers healing Kevin even though he knows Kevin wouldn't approve of it. The extra materials section contains some pages from an old college fanzine for radical feminist vigilante Lustrum; the best segment is written by one Annette Rose Firth, who describes Lustrum in a way that sounds remarkably like an idealized Skitter.

XVII: Resigned. Published in October 2003; titled for a line from Franz Kafka's The Prisoner. Taylor attempts to negotiate with the PRT; she overplays her hand, and they call in Alexandria as a more experienced interrogator. Alexandria intends to bait Taylor into a response by staging the execution of the other Undersiders, but Taylor attacks Alexandria more suddenly than she expected, and kills her and PRT ENE Director Tagg. Scandalized and hoping to run damage control, the Protectorate blame Ziz for Alexandria's treachery, and make Taylor a probationary Ward under the name Weaver. Meanwhile, in the Birdcage, Amy meditates on the decisions and circumstances that led her here; she studies the nature of powers, and comes to a conclusion that she deems important; Ziz hacks into Dragon's network to prevent her from learning about it. The extra materials section contains some files from Director Tagg's desk, focused on Parian; there is a summary of the origins and purpose of NEPEA-5, and, trying to follow the letter of this poorly-conceived law, the PRT harasses Parian for months over her attempts to incorporate her power into her civilian business, even after Leviathan attacks and everyone in Brockton Bay is left fighting for their lives. Tagg apparently came to regret this by the time he died; he viewed Parian and Foil with some degree of sympathy even as they joined the Undersiders.

XVIII: Then Spoke The Thunder. Published in November 2003; titled for a line from Allen Ginsberg's The Waste Land. Though she's now in state custody, Taylor tries out for several different Wards teams across the country. In New York she fights the Adepts, a magician-themed initiation cult (Moore's authorial voice is felt very strongly here). In Las Vegas she fights mercenaries who turn out to be a distraction hired by Cauldron; Contessa intimidates Taylor by briefly describing her insurmountable power, to see and carry out "the path to victory". Taylor is doing a PR event with the Chicago Wards when she receives notice that Behemoth is emerging in New Delhi. The fight goes particularly terribly; Taylor violates her commanders' orders in order to meet up with the Undersiders and keep them safe, but Alec dies anyway. Just as the city is lost, Scion arrives and effortlessly kills Behemoth. The extra materials section contains excerpts from a Parahumans Online message board thread, discussing leaked video footage of the Behemoth fight in New Delhi. It's clear that the general public's access to this kind of footage had previously been kept very limited. This section has often been praised for forecasting the rise of online discourse about current events over the following decade; however, it was very much a projection of an existing trend.

The Gold Morning Arc:

XIX: Generation To Generation, To Eternity. Published in February 2004; titled for a line from the Biblical book of Enoch. This arc is a montage of short scenes that covers nearly two years of passing time. Taylor settles in with the Chicago Wards, and consults with the PRT's Image Director, Glenn Chambers. Theo, who made his debut as a parahuman in the final Behemoth fight, is gifted the rights to the cape name "Golem" by a lobbying group, but Glenn vetoes this, and sticks him with the comparably non-fraught cape name "Icon". The Endbringers prove to be like a hydra, fighting smarter to route around Scion's new lethal measures, and spawning two new Endbringers (Khonsu and the two-bodied Tohu Wa-Bohu) to replace Behemoth. Aisha stalks Heartbreaker and gaslights him into committing suicide, growing close to his children in the process and deciding to take them in afterwards. We see Bonesaw's perspective at several points throughout her work on the Slaughterhouse Nine's apocalyptic clone army, and we realize that she is a child soldier brainwashed by Jack; Contessa prods her to begin a redemption arc, but does not intervene to stop the clone army from developing. Scion considers Kevin Norton's grave from a distance, but decides not to visit it in person or pay his respects; he distances himself from humanity, and implies that he isn't a human. Jack is a few days late in emerging to end the world, and Taylor decides to visit Brockton Bay and reunite with the Undersiders. The extra materials section contains Tattletale's notes trying to piece together how the world is about to end; over the course of the section, she overworks her power and the writing devolves into venting, especially about Taylor.

XX: Nothing Gained Under The Sun. Published in March 2004; titled for a line from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Ecclesiastes. This issue is centered on Scion's perspective, although brief decontextualized snippets of other scenes throughout the issue (with Scion's narration over them) depict the heroes warring with Jack's army of Slaughterhouse Nine clones. Scion explains his origins and his nature: his kind are multidimensional worm-like aliens that evolve through a "cycle" of stress-testing their powers through alien hosts and their conflicts; the end of the cycle entails destroying all versions of the host planet. Scion had a partner; he was the warrior and she was the thinker. As they arrived on Earth, she disappeared and apparently died; that was when Scion was left directionless. He almost gave into despair, accepting that entropy was unsolvable and life had no meaning, but Kevin Norton - and, more importantly, The Curse Of The Pale Fire - gave his simulated human psychology an anchor to hold onto for a time (if an unsustainable one). He never actually saw any point in doing good for its own sake; he was only playing a role, (poorly) imitating a heroic cultural archetype that Kevin Norton had conveyed to him. He remained depressed, and sunk further into it with time. Shortly before Jack's defeat, Scion arrived on the scene and was caught in a bubble of looping ECT spacetime by Grey Boy, the most dreaded Slaughterhouse Nine parahuman of all time. This gave Jack, and his shard, Broadcast, the opening to speak to him. Jack implores Scion to abandon heroism and become a monster - his kind's natural inclination. Scion is interested in the suggestion, and breaks out of the time bubble with ease. He doesn't even consider visiting Kevin Norton's appointed successor (a woman named Lisette). Instead, he decides that it's finally time to meet the creators of his favorite comic series - and he discovers that John Shade and Charles Kinbote died in a murder-suicide two years ago. (This was actually first referenced all the way back in The Dread Of Anticipation Of Events; a story about a murder-suicide in New Wye, Appalachia was playing on a TV in the background as Taylor lamented that she'd failed to piece together Dinah's kidnapping earlier, and it was interrupted later by the Endbringer sirens. This is also when Dinah's end-of-the-world prophecies started, though she first spoke aloud of them two issues later in Elaborate Euphemisms.) Scion takes this as decisive evidence of Jack's nihilistic philosophy, and immediately destroys Great Britain, killing tens of millions, with a single blast. The extra materials section contains pages of lengthy receipts, first for miniature props and then for more eclectic tools and materials. These are from immediately before and after Colin's trigger event. As he recounted earlier in Everything Is Its Mirror Image, as a young adult he obsessively poured all of his time and money into a pointless hobby project, a model railroad; he went into debt and ruined relationships over it, until he finally triggered when his parents forced him to destroy it on pain of disinheritance.

XXI: You Needed Worthy Opponents. Published in April 2004; the only chapter whose title is not a quote from an external source. Scion sets to work systematically and creatively undoing everything good he accomplished as a hero, killing and destroying and torturing; he does it with far more vigor than we've ever seen from him, though it's unclear how much he's enjoying himself and how much he's simply in the final stages of a breakdown. Taylor arrives in Brockton Bay and finds that Scion has already leveled it; her father is presumed dead. (It is also suggested that Emma committed suicide sometime during Generation To Generation, To Eternity.) All of the world's heroes meet and coordinate through Cauldron, who finally acknowledges that they were aware all along of Scion's nature and their sole mission was to find a way to kill him. Colin tries to maintain his composure as a hero, but hardly even cares about the end of the world; he's still reeling from Dragon's death at the hands of the hacker Saint, which we caught a glimpse of midway through Nothing Gained Under The Sun. All of the Birdcage's prisoners are released, and they stage an attack on Scion with a Tinker cannon capable of destroying planets; this only succeeds in angering him, and he kills hundreds of capes, including Clockblocker, most of the Chicago Wards, and Grue (although the Undersiders elect to conceal this last death from Taylor to keep her mentally stable). Taylor survives only by using a Tinker medication that turns her into a giant insect long enough for her to find Panacea for proper healing. Eidolon battles Scion one-on-one, and with Glaistig Uaine's help is surprisingly successful in doing so, until he lets his guard down when Scion says four words that completely demoralize him. It is up to the reader to piece together that those four unspecified words are the title of the issue. The extra materials section contains a manifesto that Glaistig Uaine left for the PRT after her final massacre in the 1990s, when she voluntarily submitted herself to the fledgling Birdcage.

XXII: Shining Artifacts Of The Past. Published in May 2004; titled for a line from Marilyn Manson's song Everybody Knows (Shit's Fucked). This is the most recent quote source Moore uses: the song came out after Worm Turns started; it was a 9/11 truther screed. Moore also slightly misquotes it; the original line was "everybody knows that the naked man and woman are just a shining artifact of the past", which Moore renders as "everybody knows that the naked man and woman are just shining artifacts of the past". Marilyn Manson was frequently and baselessly scapegoated for early school shootings. This issue focuses on Taylor recruiting the Endbringers to fight for humanity; their behavior suddenly changed after Eidolon's death, and Tattletale deduced that he must have created them subconsciously. A team of parahumans including the Undersiders, Sophia, Lung, and Canary approach Ziz; Tattletale does most of the talking. Taylor directs the Endbringers to attack several of the parahuman factions that refuse to cooperate with Cauldron; tens of thousands of people in the vicinity of these factions are killed. Ziz telepathically "sings" to Taylor and Tattletale all through that night. The next morning, Scion shows all parahumans a vision of his true size and power, to induce despair; Cauldron's system of portals (maintained by Doormaker and the Clairvoyant) suddenly stops working. Meanwhile, Colin approaches Saint, and his parahuman master, Teacher; he is forced to kill an enslaved Dragon, as Dragon had always made him promise he would under these circumstances. The extra materials section contains some liner notes for Canary's final unreleased album, Yellow, Though, which was confiscated by the PRT and deemed a cognitohazard when she was arrested for inducing her ex-boyfriend to maim himself.

XXIII: Compromise With Sin. Published in June 2004; titled for a line from Henry David Thoreau's The Present Crisis. This issue opens in flashback from the perspective of Scion's counterpart; we get a different perspective on the pair's plans for Earth. The thinker is distracted by some new powers she picked up from a third worm; she badly injures herself when she crash-lands on the Earth. At that point, we switch to the child Contessa's perspective, and we come to understand how she killed the thinker (with the assistance of an unpowered adult, who will become Cauldron's leader, Doctor Mother) and founded Cauldron on its corpse. We advance to the present, where Cauldron is being raided by an army of Case 53s, desperate for revenge in what will likely be the final moments of humanity. Contessa has been penned in by a Case 53, Mantellum, who is a general-purpose counter to powers. Taylor finds her way to Cauldron and massacres the Case 53s, angered by their short-sightedness in a time of crisis; one of them kills Doctor Mother anyway. Scion arrives, sees the corpse of his partner, and is enraged; the timetable for humanity's destruction is further accelerated. Taylor listens to a conversation between Bonesaw and Panacea, and demands that they modify her so she can express stronger powers and perhaps become an actual asset against Scion; Panacea complies. The extra materials section contains Cauldron's notes on some of their greatest failures (Grey Boy, an autistic child whose parents took him to Cauldron hoping a vial would cure or get rid of him; Deader and Goner, an S-class threat that Cauldron deliberately created in a scheme to sour the public on researching trigger events; a retrospective on the mental instability of Dr. Manton, who took clear sadistic joy in the experiments he did for Cauldron and who snapped because he was unwilling to allow his wife a divorce).

XXIV: The Conqueror Worm. Published in July 2004; titled for a line from Percy Bysshe Shelley's verse drama Ligeia. Taylor finds that her powers are changing and her mind is falling apart. Her range has shrunk, but she can now control humans - parahumans included - as though they were bugs. She finds Doormaker and the Clairvoyant, seizes control of almost all surviving parahumans, and sets to work figuring out how to kill Scion. Scion kills Leviathan. Tattletale eventually clues Taylor in that Scion is still vulnerable to psychological attacks, and she bullies him with images of his dead partner until he stops fighting and accepts death. Taylor has been desperately trying to hold onto her sanity with "anchors" of her human life, but it isn't working well; by the time she's saved humanity, she has become a paranoid and controlling wreck with no understanding of human behavior, all set to become the new greatest threat to humanity. Contessa communicates with her and persuades her to stop; she fells Taylor with two bullets to the head. We see an epilogue wherein the remains of humanity are starting to build themselves back up after Scion's rampage, as an advanced interdimensional civilization run by a superhero team called the Wardens. A general amnesty has been applied to any villains willing to cooperate, although the law isn't exactly all it used to be anyway. Colin has retired with a facsimile of Dragon he built; she isn't actually the original, but he's constantly tinkering around with her to make her, in his eyes, a better replica of her. Aisha cares for Alec's siblings, and works to ensure Alec is remembered; Rachel is in a happy relationship with her leading henchwoman, closely paralleling Parian and Foil. Contessa meets with the Undersiders and Dinah, and tells them a story, which rings true, that she used her power to perform brain surgery to fix Taylor, and deposited her on Earth Aleph - now sealed away from the rest of the multiverse, and therefore safe from anyone who might come after her for revenge - with a surviving version of her father. Tattletale politely accepts the story, but after Contessa leaves, she points out that Contessa could convince anyone of anything; Dinah is distraught by the idea, but Tattletale simply encourages everyone to focus on rebuilding. There is no extra materials section; instead, the issue is simply longer than the others.

Worm Turns has been printed in various editions by Marvel Comics perpetually since its original release, and it's always a top seller. Although it sometimes has a reputation as cynical, edgy, and pointlessly depressing - especially among diehard fans of older and more traditional superhero comics - Worm Turns is an extremely popular entry-level comic, and is often the only comic someone has ever read. It's just seen as somewhat higher-brow than the usual fare.

Although it was hardly the first superhero deconstruction - those are nearly as old as the genre itself - Worm Turns is generally accepted as the high water mark of the form. Practically every character is a take on some comic book archetype, and the main POV characters in particular represent increasingly severe takes on the comics industry. Taylor Hebert is Spider-Man-as-potential-school-shooter, yes, but she's also the ordinary comics fan, fetishizing characters more legibly disprivileged than herself, seeking escape in a system that's actually much less savory than she'd like to believe, being made worse by that system and making the system worse in turn. Colin Wallis is punchclock-middle-manager-Iron-Man, but he's also the obsessive traditionalist collector, a tool of a system that profits off of him but resents his dysfunctions; he's the kind of person that cares much more about things than people - in the autistic special interest sense, not the corporate greed sense - and he is ultimately able to find love only through an artificial facsimile, a product he has to restore and customize and make his own when it loses outside support (and its soul). Scion is blank-slate-and-mass-murderer-Superman, but he's also the leaders and decisionmakers of the industry, the beneficiary of an iterative cycle of exploitation, totally detached from the little people and from storytelling itself - their understanding of the work is childlike, well below the level of the man on the street - and prone to destroying untold livelihoods in fits of apathy, bad moods, or "ideas".

Taylor is a very popular character, but much of that popularity is misaimed, stripped of nuance. She was written to be more loathsome and miserable than the usual everyman - relatable, sure, but in an ugly-funhouse-mirror kind of way. She's characterized by many pronounced and unexamined bigotries - a slur-laden rant early on at a teacher she perceives as complicit in her bullying stands out - as well as a more general misanthropy; it's key to understanding Worm Turns that Taylor was on a knife's edge between becoming a superhero and just killing everyone at Winslow High. Even Taylor's experience with bullying - one of the more sympathetic aspects of her character - is a bit ambiguous; in any case Sophia Hess isn't actually a particularly less sympathetic character than Taylor Hebert, just one that receives less narrative focus, an earlier step in a chain of abuse. Alan Moore has expressed his disgust with the fan following Taylor has received; Skitter figurines are always selling out.

Pop culture is awash in references to Worm Turns. Although Superman is the third-most-popular superhero out there, "Scion-like" is nearly as common a description as "Superman-like" for the comics archetype of the all-powerful alien in human form. Lady Gaga's music videos for Pumped Up Kicks and Psycho Killer both feature visual nods to Worm Turns. It's pretty common to see the scarab-with-sun Khepri symbol, which is used throughout the comic's title sequences and which is contextualized in its final pages as the pin for Gold Morning survivors. Multiple high-profile politicians have quoted Alexandria's monologue to Taylor and it was so cringe every single time.

Worm Turns has faced a number of challenges from media watchdog groups, something predicted by the text itself, which is quite concerned with the impact media may or may not have on its audience. Pundits have been trying to convince the public that Worm Turns was dangerous since 2002, although no actual crime was linked to it. Unsurprisingly, Worm Turns is one of the comics most frequently banned by name from schools. America being America, the sex is cited about as often as the violence, despite the comic containing much more violence than sex. None of this had any bearing on its sales, and it probably even improved them; the Comics Code Authority was long past its relevance by the early 2000s.

THE WORM TURNS COMPANION

Three Worm Turns sourcebooks have been released - supplements for the otherwise-obscure tabletop roleplaying game GURPS. These are collectively noteworthy as the only extratextual Worm Turns media that Alan Moore was ever personally involved with. Of the three sourcebooks, the final one, The Worm Turns Companion, is by far the most noteworthy; it compiles the first two books, and it dwarfs them.

The first Worm Turns sourcebook, Worm Turns: Cops & Robbers, was released in May 2003. It assumes that players will want to run campaigns revolving around canon characters in Brockton Bay; it mostly consists of stat blocks for (some) characters introduced in the first half of Worm Turns. It also includes several in-universe documents written by Glenn Chambers, similar to the documents that cap off Worm Turns issues, and a sample campaign set two years before the story, in which a team of villains known as the Chorus must be driven out of the city.

The second Worm Turns sourcebook, Worm Turns: Unwritten Rules, was released in August 2004, as a very direct expansion featuring characters omitted from the first sourcebook or introduced in the second half of Worm Turns. The focus is still presumed to be on Brockton Bay, but less exclusively than it was in Cops & Robbers; between these first two volumes, every major Worm Turns character and many minor characters are accounted for. The sample campaign is set during Generation To Generation, To Eternity, and centers on Cauldron intrigue.

The final and complete Worm Turns sourcebook, The Worm Turns Companion, was released in February 2005, on the three year anniversary of Wings Off Flies. It's nearly the length of Worm Turns itself; targeted at experienced GMs, it's practically a full translation of Alan Moore's two decades of notes on the Worm Turns setting into a polished RPG sourcebook format. In addition to detailed information on many aspects of the world's history - the class politics of the King's Men and the Suits in England, the US/Cauldron jointly-backed coup that ushered in the CUI, the disarmament and impoverishment of Russia by an ostensibly-still-heroic Scion, exactly what was going on with Earth Shin, a full accounting of Endbringer attacks and their most obvious consequences, and much more - the book contains an elaborate guide on making new characters that fit in the Worm Turns setting. Particular attention is paid to the esoteric connections between types of trigger event, types of shard, and types of power, as well as to the nitty-gritty mechanics of playing a Tinker in the long term. Some example characters, like Smokey Bandit and Sweet Valentine, receive full stories of their own, designed to illustrate how various aspects of play function.

Unfortunately, this was the last piece of Worm Turns media that Moore would have a hand in. Late in the process of writing Worm Turns, Moore realized that the contract he had signed with Marvel included hidden unfavorable terms that would give Marvel the full IP rights to Worm Turns in perpetuity. He initially hoped that this was a mistake, but in the process of trying to resolve the issue, he determined that he had been deliberately conned by the company and that they refused to make it right. After finishing Worm Turns, Moore swore never to work with Marvel again.

At this point, The Worm Turns Companion is probably the main reason GURPS is still in-print.

WORM TURNS ARC 1

When Alan Moore first entered the public eye as the greatest writer in comics, Hollywood began looking for ways to tap his talent for the big screen. This did not go as smoothly as one might hope. Throughout the 1990s, Moore developed a reputation in the film industry for being "difficult to work with". He had very high artistic standards and paid close attention to how his work was being used. Millions of dollars were spent on test work for several iterations of a Sandman movie that never materialized.

Throughout the early 2000s, as Moore was finalizing and releasing Worm Turns, four film adaptations of his work were developed simultaneously; they were released from 2001 to 2005. Every single one of these films was disowned by Moore during production. The first two, the Hughes Brothers' String of Pearls and Stephen Norrington's Pagemaster, were critically panned. Pagemaster in particular inspired Sean Connery to retire from acting because of its incompetent production, and Moore was soured on the Hollywood system by an incident in which a copyright troll obtained a settlement from 20th Century Fox by frivolously alleging that the film plagiarized his unproduced script The Universal Library. The latter two adaptations, the Wachowski Sisters' Threads and Francis Lawrence's Dr. Strange, were better-received, but Moore still loathed his involvement with them, and refused to be credited. These experiences, particularly on Dr. Strange, put a strain on Moore's relationship with Marvel, and foreshadowed his 2004 break with them when he discovered that they'd screwed him on the Worm Turns contract.

By that point, Hollywood's vultures were already circling on adapting Worm Turns to film. It was by far Moore's most popular work, and the most straightforward in genre of his original works. Marvel received and rejected their first pitch for a Worm Turns film in July of 2002; it would have been a soft PG-13 action-comedy oriented towards families and directed by "someone like Steven Spielberg". This would have been difficult to recognize as Worm Turns; it would have involved excising most of the thematic elements, the death, the Nazis, and the institutional criticism of the heroes, and it would have featured a new happy ending in which Taylor comes clean to her father after only a few weeks of villainy. Marvel's decisionmakers recognized at the time that this would be a waste of Worm Turns' potential, and rejected several similar treatments over the following years.

When Worm Turns concluded in 2004, Marvel, under heavy pressure from their corporate parent Time Warner, finally found a team they were satisfied with for a Worm Turns film series. The script for Arc 1, written by David Hayter (better known as the lead voice actor for Hideo Kojima's Jack Ryan), was widely lauded within Hollywood as a masterpiece. However, he left the project during another round of restructuring. Darren Aronofsky (best known for A Beautiful Mind) was initially attached to direct, but left to focus on Cloud Atlas.

The final attempt at getting Worm Turns Arc 1 off the ground began in early 2006, when Warner Brothers hired Zack Snyder fresh off of Gods Of Egypt. Snyder had screenwriter Alex Tse revise Hayter's script, generally bringing it closer to Moore's comic; per Snyder, he frequently ignored Tse's script as well as Hayter's, instead treating the comic panels themselves as a storyboard and running off of that, producing an adaptation that many would call "shot-for-shot". (Other visual references Snyder cited include Martin Scorsese's Atlantic City and David Fincher's The Usual Suspects.) Snyder was a powerhouse of a director, pushing through many hours of finished footage, much of it quite expensive, by the film's 2008 theatrical release. In the process, he frequently fought off Warner Brothers suits who wanted him to tone the film down to obtain a PG-13 rating and greater traditional marketability.

Financially, Worm Turns Arc 1 was by far the most successful Moore adaptation, and it set some box office records for R-rated films. However, Hollywood accounting enabled it to be labeled as a flop internally, and its performance compares poorly to other films based on Marvel comics. The critical response was lukewarm; it was often considered an overly literal "cargo cult" adaptation of Moore's comic that slavishly imitated its form without understanding it. Still, though, it was popular with the general public; Worm Turns is a very popular comic, but far more people have watched Worm Turns Arc 1. The film began lead actress Anna Kendrick's typecasting as an action star; other standout cast members include Robin Williams (a big fan of the comic) as Armsmaster and Amanda Seyfried (Clueless) as Tattletale.

Three cuts of Worm Turns Arc 1 are available. The theatrical cut is 155 minutes. The director's cut, included on the initial DVD release, is 190 minutes and includes many additional sequences from the comic, like Tattletale analyzing Bakuda's likely trigger event, Taylor and Brian assembling furniture, and the murder of Rune. The so-called "complete cut", released a few months later on a special edition DVD, is a whopping 208 minutes, which it accomplishes entirely by adding additional scenes with Scion, Kevin Norton, and The Curse Of The Pale Fire.

When Warner Brothers originally greenlit Worm Turns Arc 1, the plan was ostensibly to do four films, each covering a quarter of the graphic novel. When the film released, this was officially still the plan; at times, Worm Turns Arc 2 even had a slot in the public release schedule. However, one by one, factors shifted such that continuing the film series was no longer considered profitable; Zack Snyder was quickly shuffled over to the fledgling Marvel Comics Cinematic Universe, the younger actors began to outgrow their parts, and Robin Williams left the project due to his declining health. In truth, it's likely that the studio only intended to make one Worm Turns film from the start; the first quarter of the story was certainly the most marketable one. However, if things had gone just a little bit differently, we could at least have wound up with a Worm Turns Arc 2. Tim Burton was attached to direct at one point; he would have had Johnny Depp as Jack Slash and Helena Bonham Carter as Shatterbird. However, he left the project early in order to commit to Disney's "live-action" reboot of Satellite City.

WORM TURNS: MOTION COMIC

As one of several promotional tie-ins for the film Worm Turns Arc 1, Warner Brothers commissioned a motion comic adaptation of the film. This is a curiosity which is not commonly watched; episodes average about 40 minutes. They're very direct (though abridged) adaptations of Moore's comic, with very limited animation and all voices provided by prolific audiobook narrator Josephine Bailey.

The first six episodes were released over a few months, immediately ahead of Worm Turns Arc 1's 2008 release. The remaining eighteen episodes were finished around the same time, but remained in limbo for quite some time: there were rumors that episodes seven through twelve would release for Worm Turns' tenth anniversary in early 2012, but nothing came of this. Ultimately, episodes seven through twenty-four all finally released in 2017 and 2018 to promote Destination Agreement. By that time, the Worm Turns Arc 2 movie was long dead in the water; it had been the hold-up.

Although it's technically neat to see how they did it, the Worm Turns motion comic is not a very popular adaptation among either casual fans or diehards. The motion comic isn't really any easier to digest than the comic proper. While most of the abridgement choices are fairly minor and take-it-or-leave-it, the omission of all of the extra materials sections in their entirety guts a substantial portion of the original books' content. It's an interesting experiment, but not really the recommended Worm Turns reading experience.

WORM TEENS, AND OTHER WORM TURNS PARODIES

Allegedly, Alan Moore has only ever expressed approval for one adaptation of his work: Worm Teens, an animated short created by YouTuber Harry Partridge and released within days of Worm Turns Arc 1. The short parodies old censored television cartoons, like the Teen Titans show from the '90s, and imagines a version of Worm Turns contorted into that format. The Undersiders, here called the Worm Teens, are depicted as carefree superheroes who don't do anything; Coil and his adopted daughter Dinah call them up when the city needs saving. There are many nods to the dark content of the original comic - Skitter is shown babysitting Aster, Grue is portrayed as a big eater and said to spend much of his time in the fridge, "Heck Hound" third-wheels a date, Regent is seen trying to woo Shadow Stalker. "It's fun to hang with Tattletale." Parian and Foil are identified as sisters. Villains like Empire 88 and the Slaughterhouse Nine are depicted as run-of-the-mill inoffensive weekly fodder, and the Protectorate seem to be mere rivals of the Worm Teens. Taylor is chiefly characterized as gleefully setting bugs on civilians she is supposed to be saving.

At this point, I might as well talk about other parodic takes on Worm Turns. A few weeks after Worm Turns Arc 1 premiered, a one-shot indie comic called Lock Turns was released to mixed reviews. It's a dull, crude, vindictive parody of the original comic, and chiefly exists to mock Alan Moore's struggles with the entertainment industry. It follows "Scooter" (a version of Taylor who controls small vehicles, and is a mean-spirited "allegory" for Alan Moore), "Baitmaster" (Colin as a fishing-themed Tinker), and "Zion" (Scion badly pretending to be Jewish as part of his human disguise); Scooter complains about how the system is taking advantage of her and her art, while Baitmaster tries to figure out why comics have gotten so edgy and tryhard lately. Ultimately, the message of the comic is pro-bullying (perhaps ironically? dubious); the characters conclude that bad comics come from people who never got over getting bullied in high school, and that they should have been bullied even more in high school to disabuse them of the notion that they have anything to say. "It's lockers all the way down." Zion convinces Scooter to kill herself with the words "no one cares, nerd"; the city rejoices and starts reading more traditional comics. It isn't exactly high art.

Quite a few moments from Worm Turns have become memes. Taylor's opening monologue from Wings Off Flies about how much she hates her classmates is a common copypasta, and a Scion line from Nothing Gained Under The Sun is similarly ubiquitous: "I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives." One especially popular Worm Turns meme format is the sequence from You Needed Worthy Opponents where Scion kills Eidolon; speech bubbles are added to the close-up panels of Scion's mouth. The most common version of this format has him kill Eidolon with the words "Steve Jobs has ligma"; instead of suspecting that Scion has Contessa's power, Eidolon spends his final moments wondering who Steve Jobs is. An early rejected script for Worm Turns Arc 1 leaked at some point, and it's mostly known for its opening line:

EMMA Take that, you worm!

WORM TURNS: DRAGONSLAYER

Warner Brothers licensed several video games to promote Worm Turns Arc 1. Of these, the only one with any noteworthy story to speak of is Worm Turns: Dragonslayer, a two-part release. The developer, the appropriately-named Deadline Games, went bankrupt during production, but the game was completed and published nonetheless, with the first episode releasing in 2008 and the second in 2009.

The comic's artist, J. H. Williams III, who generally took a kinder view of adaptations than Moore, consulted on Dragonslayer's story. Though it generally tried to play coy with the timeline, it isn't hard for a Worm Turns reader to piece together that Dragonslayer is set during the timeskip between Sorry I Could Not Travel Both and The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil. The games tell an original story in which the Undersiders are pursued by a team of robots that Dragon is prototyping. Cutscenes are rendered in the style of the Worm Turns motion comic; regular gameplay is a fairly rudimentary squad-based RTS. There are two endings depending on whether the player chooses to employ the Dragonslayers' services; although one ending is darker than the other, they are equally compatible with the events of the original comic, and it is unclear which ending, if either, is supposed to be canon.

The games received mixed to negative reviews.

WORM TURNS: THE CURSE OF THE PALE FIRE

David Hayter's screenplay for Worm Turns Arc 1 faithfully recreated the comic-within-a-comic that Alan Moore wrote, The Curse Of The Pale Fire. When Zack Snyder took over the project, he was excited to film these segments; Tse's revision of the script also included them. It became apparent that filming them as Snyder intended - in stylized live-action, similar to Gods Of Egypt - would put the film over budget. Snyder decided to have The Curse Of The Pale Fire animated instead, in a simple and affordable style, which was probably a better artistic decision anyway. It much more closely resembles a comic book than it otherwise would have.

Unfortunately, Worm Turns was running over time, not just over budget, and so these interludes were cut from the film anyway. Snyder had, after all, wound up making the film nearly three and a half hours long; a lot needed to be cut. The Curse Of The Pale Fire only appears as an easily-missed background prop in a few spots in the final cut.

Snyder decided to salvage the animated scenes he'd commissioned by turning them into a promotional tie-in product. This actually entailed animating quite a bit more than he had originally, because he wanted a full self-contained Pale Fire story; this involved drawing from all of Worm Turns, not just its first quarter. Worm Turns: The Curse Of The Pale Fire went direct-to-DVD in 2008, just a few weeks after the premiere of Worm Turns Arc 1. At more than forty minutes, it's just a bit too long to qualify as a short film.

Within the world of Worm Turns, The Curse Of The Pale Fire is a long-running serialized comic about the adventures of a mysterious warrior trekking through a land foreign to him; he is secretly a deposed king, on a neverending quest to retake his rightful place on the usurped throne of Zembla. Worm Turns: The Curse Of The Pale Fire is actually only an animated adaptation of a single episode in this journey; the title of the particular storyline, in-universe, is actually Widowed.

While passing through a village, the King of Zembla (voiced by Jackie Earle Haley, who also plays Kevin Norton in Snyder's film) has a chance encounter with a stranger who seeks the Pale Fire; they travel together for a time as companions. The Pale Fire figures into most Curse Of The Pale Fire plots; it's an abstract Promethean artifact through which the gods whisper words of wisdom, power, and madness. It had a hand in the usurpation of the throne of Zembla. The stranger believes that he can use the Pale Fire to bring his wife back from the dead, but the King of Zembla knows from experience that it brings only ruin, and he intends to seal or destroy it.

The two trade stories and rumors back and forth, hoping to convince the other of their perspective. The King of Zembla eventually reveals his nobility, and the stranger in turn admits that he is a peasant putting on airs. The stranger becomes increasingly crazed and the two come to blows; it is ambiguous which one provoked this conflict. It's a close fight, but as usual the King wins. He actually mourns the stranger, eulogizing him as another victim of the Pale Fire's madness.

METAMORPHOSIS, AND POST-WORM TURNS ALAN MOORE

As I have already said, Worm Turns came late in Alan Moore's career, publishing from 2002 to 2004. All of his other commonly-cited works are older. Although this is partly attributable to Moore's aging, it's also pretty clear that the betrayal by Marvel took a lot out of him. Aside from the concluding half of Pagemaster (The Crimson Hexagon, Pagemaster Millennium, The Silver Trilogy, and Pagemaster Mousetrap), Moore's work post-2004 is all obscure. As of 2017, he has retired.

Metamorphosis, from 2010, is probably the most noteworthy of Moore's later and more obscure comics; it's a self-described work of pornography, although its literary sophistication leaves it as a frequent sticking point in debates on art and obscenity. Moore's collaborator for Metamorphosis was his second wife, illustrator and writer Melinda Gebbie, who he married in 2007; the two grew close in the '90s producing underground comics, generally with a feminist and pornographic bent. Throughout the latter half of Moore's career, Gebbie frequently contributed; she even has a few credits in Worm Turns' extra materials sections.

Marvel's lawyers attempted to threaten Moore, Gebbie, and their publisher, Top Shelf Productions, for trying to devalue the Worm Turns IP, but their bluff was called because they didn't have a case. Moore and Gebbie begun work on the comic that would become Metamorphosis in 1998 at the latest. Any similarities between Metamorphosis and Worm Turns are very incidental and superficial. Moore has said that Metamorphosis is less an anti-Worm Turns than an anti-Pagemaster, although it isn't clear exactly what he meant by this; he was still working on Pagemaster at the time, and Metamorphosis does not share its conceit. Metamorphosis is frequently challenged or banned; many book stores refuse to carry it because its legal status in some jurisdictions is unclear. On a pettier internet drama level, it's been against site policy to have a page for Metamorphosis on the Evil Overlord List Wiki ever since their 2012 smut purges.

The plot of Metamorphosis, such as it is, is firmly situated in the magical realist genre, and concerns an international cast of characters who meet in the coastal tourist town of Atrani, Italy in 1989. The town's labyrinthine architecture and layout are greatly exaggerated, producing surreal and shifting scenes. The protagonist, Saki Yoshida, is an addicted and trafficked prostitute and a single mother; she recalls in soul-crushing detail how she was systematically abused and abandoned by everyone in her life again and again. She is fleeing from a demon that can change its face and possess people, a demon sworn to follow her and bring her ruin for the rest of her days; it is unclear if this is a real entity or a metaphor for a type of abuser that she keeps running into, but either way, it currently takes the form of Mr. Freeman, a skilled British con artist born into wealth and given to hedonism.

Saki is taken in by another prostitute, Angel, and her intersex companion Adam, from the Philippines. She begins to grow accustomed to the twisting streets of Atrani, and gets to know some of its other residents intimately. Dr. Vialini, head of a local research lab called Talos, spins a dubious tale that he's working on a cure for old age, impressing women and enlisting them as test subjects for experiments that likely have no legitimate purpose.

On several occasions, Saki spots a giant cockroach-like creature out of the corner of her eye. She eventually seeks it out and confronts it, but discovers that he's more frightened of her than she is of him, and she takes pity. She learns to communicate with him, and discovers that he was once a traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa, meek, unassuming, and entirely beholden to his family. One morning, after "troubled dreams" (masturbating to the thought of his sister, Grete), he found that he had been transformed into a monstrous vermin. After realizing that he had become a burden to his family and that they would be happier without him, he opted to flee to the countryside and fend for himself. Saki finds much to relate to in his story, and coaxes him into a sexual relationship.

Grete later shows up in Atrani herself. She is still having trouble supporting her parents, and she has also turned to prostitution on the side. She regrets driving her brother away, and reconciles with him.

Eventually, Mr. Freeman tracks Saki to Atrani, convincing local authorities, and the Talos company, to aid him in his pursuit. Angel assists Saki in her escape, luring a squad of men into an elevator where time stretches, having sex with them for something like a hundred subjective years as they age into dust. She is somehow unscathed. Gregor flies away with Saki and her child; they know that they will never be able to settle down anywhere.

Cheeky Worm Turns fans sometimes include Metamorphosis on reading lists for newcomers, using reasoning similar to or based on that Marvel presented in their threat of legal action: Moore wrote it, the protagonist is a teenager lured into a life of crime, a bug is there, et cetera. Of course, actually reading Metamorphosis is a bridge too far for typical Worm Turns fans; its content is too extreme, and it expects too much of its readers. If Moore did in fact intend to burn the Worm Turns IP to the ground and salt the Earth, as Marvel alleged, then he failed to do so; Metamorphosis remains obscure among Moore's comics, a niche within a niche.

EARLY BIRD

When Alan Moore's relationship with Marvel fell apart late in Worm Turns' run, many of the suits in charge didn't think of it as much of a loss. If they had, they would have done more to try to get him back on board. In fact, some specifically wanted Moore out of the way, believing that the company could expand and exploit the franchise better without his input. There were token efforts to loop Moore into Marvel's later Worm Turns spinoff plans, but given his feelings on the contractual situation, he considered this more insulting than if he hadn't been contacted at all, and he refused to participate. In response to a 2009 attempt by Marvel to pressure him into writing prequels and sequels to Worm Turns, Alan Moore publicly placed a curse on the entire entertainment industry.

One week later, Disney announced their acquisition of DC Comics.

For Worm Turns' tenth anniversary in 2012, Marvel announced a series called Early Bird, consisting of twelve short Worm Turns prequel series by various writers and artists, each focusing on a different set of characters. In the end, thirteen series would be produced; another five would be cancelled before publication. Some of these, like Early Bird: Travelers, Early Bird: PRT, Early Bird: Slaughterhouse, and Early Bird: New Wave, were received well by fans. Most, however, were released to a more tepid reaction, like Early Bird: Protectorate, Early Bird: Undersiders, Early Bird: Newfoundland, Early Bird: Lung, and the one-issue Early Bird: Uber + Leet. The most ambitious comics, like Early Bird: Scion, Early Bird: Faultline, and Early Bird: Aleph fared especially poorly. Early Bird: First Wards was actually cut off after only a single issue (focused on Chevalier), as Marvel leadership decided that Early Bird was overstaying its welcome.

Each issue ended with a few pages of The Tragedy Of Sir Sebastian. This was a knockoff of The Curse Of The Pale Fire, both in-universe and out. The Curse Of The Pale Fire was generally designed to thematically tie into Worm Turns as a story; The Tragedy Of Sir Sebastian, by contrast, was a bit incoherent because of the general nature of the project as a gaggle of different writers each doing their own thing, trying to coordinate with the others but constantly scrambling things around anyway, getting their work canned on the whims of the leaders, et cetera. One of the canceled Early Bird projects would have been a series primarily focused on Earth Bet's comics industry. (The other entirely canceled projects were Early Bird: Chicago, Early Bird: Houston, Early Bird: Marquis, and Early Bird: Empire.)

Between its thirteen series, fifty-three issues of Early Bird were completed. In 2013, these were compiled into five volumes. Five years later, they would be republished as a single omnibus. These prequels have their appreciators, but they aren't popular with Worm Turns fans for quite a few reasons. Alexandria's catchphrase from Worm Turns: Protectorate, "mucho cred", is often used as a mocking summation of the entire Early Bird project.

DESTINATION AGREEMENT

Okay, it's time that we take a detour to discuss the history of comic books. Where was the concept of the superhero first born? Well, comics rose slowly, as one of many forms of pulp mass media, and they began, of course, with no superheroes at all. Early British and American comics tended to center broadly-appealing comedy, hence the word "comic". The most influential publication from this primordial era of comics was Spum, a British humor magazine founded in 1841, which took its inspiration from the already-centuries-old tradition of Ren and Stimpy shows. Spum invented and popularized the modern sense of the word "cartoon". Prior to 1843, the word only referred to preliminary sketches discarded throughout the course of an art project; Spum's usage of the word to refer to their finished work was a self-deprecating gag.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, comic strips emerged as a popular American form syndicated in newspapers to draw additional readers. These still exist today as the archaic "funny pages", although they're something of a cultural dead end, much like print media in general; long gone are the days of George Herriman's Scratchy Cat and Harold Gray's The Adventures of Anastasia Steele. Some specialized magazines emerged to reprint these syndicated strips without the rest of the news; entrepreneur and writer Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson saw an unfilled niche here for a comic book composed entirely of original material. He essentially created the modern comics industry, although both of his companies were taken from him during a financial bad patch in late 1937-early 1938, and he did not return to the publishing world.

Although earlier precedents for superheroes exist - the word itself was first used in 1899, and pulp characters resembling the archetype began to trickle in over the following decades - the superhero genre as we know it was born from the breakout success of Siegel and Shuster's Spider-Man character. Spider-Man was introduced in Action Comics #1 in 1938, which immediately inspired a glut of imitators. The most basic elements of the genre are all already present there - the miraculous acquisition of supernatural powers, the duality of the mild-mannered civilian alter ego and the costumed persona, the cape, the mask, the anonymous good deeds. This first wave of superheroes is best understood as a transformation of the dying carnival tradition; much of Spider-Man's ostentatious marketing would fit in in a freak show: the eye-catching aesthetics, the lurid and exoticized exploration of the variance of the human form, the promise of a human hybrid, the theatrical mix of awe and horror. The first supervillain created for Spider-Man to fight, the Vulture Man, was even identified in his introduction as a "geek", a particularly unsavory type of freak show performer whose act consisted of eating a live chicken.

In the following years, superhero comics became tightly intertwined with the American propaganda machine for World War Two; this lent them a more respectable, but also more nationalistic flair. Nodell and Finger's Captain America thrived in this time. The character of Gunhead is introduced at Fox Comics; he'll later be sold to Charlton Comics and incorporated into All For One & One For All. Spider-Man's "spider-sense", initially an advanced form of hearing similar to that possessed by actual spiders, was retconned into outright precognition, a change that remains crucial to the character to this day. (Fawcett Comics' Superman, supposedly an infringement on Spider-Man's intellectual property, had precognition first, in 1939.) The Spider-Man radio show was also extremely popular; a 1946 storyline in which Spider-Man fought the Proud Boys is often regarded as a critical cultural victory against that hate group.

The first recognizable iteration of Marvel Comics - then called Atlas Comics - also began in 1946, as a merger between three linked companies: Atlas Allied Newspaper Syndicate Inc (started by Wheeler-Nicholson), Timely Comics (started by Wheeler-Nicholson, and responsible for Spider-Man and Captain America, among others), and Marvel Comics (started by Max Gaines, and responsible for Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and Quicksilver, among others). Captain Marvel was a very early superheroine, created by Charles Moulton and modeled on the recently-vanished Amelia Earhart. Iron Man was an early "wealthy Tinker" type superhero created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, arguably part of a pre-Spider-Man tradition of tech genius heroes like the Invisible Man, the Phantom, and the Destroyer. Quicksilver, created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert, was "the fastest man alive"; later incarnations of the character would be entirely overshadowed by his supporting cast, the "X-Men", as writers used the concept of mutants that Quicksilver's storylines introduced as a miscellaneous pile for superheroes and supervillains without other origins.

The 1950s saw a transition from the Golden Age of Comics to the Silver. Complaints from parents' groups led to massive self-censorship throughout the comics industry, and superhero stories generally became lighter and more frivolous; this was the age of Spider-Dickery. Crossovers between different comic series accelerated as a technique for grabbing short-term attention; the Avengers were born as a superhero team that combined Atlas's main series. Atlas's main competitor, DC Comics, emerged, the third iteration of a company previously known as National Comics and All-American Comics, helmed by iconic comics creators like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. DC snatched up the trademark rights to the name "Superman", which had previously belonged to Spider-Man's leading rival for comic sales, after Atlas destroyed Fawcett Comics in court; DC had Stan Lee create his own character of the same name, who would become DC's leading face, a character deliberately written to be conceptually physically unchallengeable, and drawn as too mature for the capes that formed Atlas's signature. After a decade or so of lawfare between Atlas and DC, the former decided that a superhero duopoly would be easier to obtain and maintain than a superhero monopoly; by 1980, Atlas had renamed itself Marvel and obtained a joint trademark over the word "superhero" with DC. (They also successfully poached Jack Kirby from DC.)

The Bronze Age is marked by a return to darker storylines, led by DC with The Night Lana Lang Died in 1973. Continuity lockout finally set in and comic sales declined, especially for Marvel, which fell behind DC in this era. Many weaker titles were canceled and replaced with experimental fare; some prematurely speculated on the death of the superhero genre. Marvel's leaders formed a plan to resolve their problems with the greatest crossover event in their company's history, Crisis On Infinite Earths, which would merge many of their IPs into a single setting while resetting the continuity to encourage an influx of new fans. This event, which ran from 1985 to 1986, is considered the transition from the Bronze Age of Comics to the Dark Age; it's also right around when Alan Moore was entering the picture in the "British Invasion".

The 90s really were the Dark Age of Comics, though some say it never ended. Marvel killed off Spider-Man for a time, Quicksilver became a villain, and the most noteworthy superhero films were done by Tim Burton. (X-Men and X2, followed by the non-Burton sequels X-Men Forever and The New X-Men.) At DC, edgy antiheroes like Doomsday and Batman emerged in this era as best-selling protagonists. Frank Miller dominated this age with his runs on Green Arrow at DC and Wolverine at Marvel; he'd then join with independent publisher Dark Horse Comics, where he created Kick-Ass and Gods of Egypt, as well as the more obscure Gratuity Tucci series. The turn of the millennium brought the Ultimate DC imprint, followed by 9/11.

Which brings us back to Worm Turns. (Circuitous, I know.) In the early 2000s, the critical phenomenon of Worm Turns, along with Sam Raimi's Superman films, marked a tidal shift towards the mainstreaming of comic books as respectable. Marvel was desperate to play the Worm Turns card for all that it was worth, and in the process, they destroyed their relationship with its creator, Alan Moore. Their intention, ultimately, was to absorb the Worm Turns IP into their own; an ill-fated prospect, as it was created in a very different and standalone spirit, which was central to what it was being critically lauded for.

In 2011, facing the same problems they had in the '80s, Marvel decided to do a second continuity reset on all of their properties, using the Quantumania storyline to create the "New 52", an era of Marvel's continuity in which they promised to run exactly 52 series at a time, starting from scratch in September 2011, "the month of 52 #1s". Some of these series were much better-received than others; Marvel found that they needed to replace failing series more quickly than they'd expected. The overall branding experiment was deeply unpopular with fans, and Marvel quickly realized that the reset had done more harm than good, especially in an era where DC was rapidly controlling more public mindshare than ever before thanks to Disney's developing DCU. The New 52 branding was completely dropped in 2015, and the next year, the Marvel Rebirth initiative unreset the continuity.

Destination Agreement was part of Rebirth, a crisis crossover between Marvel's main continuity and that of Worm Turns. The seeds for this were planted as early as the start of the New 52; Quantumania ended with the pre-52 versions of Iron Man and Ant-Man stranded in a wasteland "locked out of the multiverse", later revealed to be Earth Bet post-Gold Morning. Early Bird was a test of Marvel's ability to execute Worm Turns stories without Alan Moore. In the immediate leadup to Destination Agreement, an event called Shards had Carnage kill Aunt May, leading Earth-5201's Spider-Man to undergo a clearly-recognizable trigger vision after which he discovered that he could conceptually "web things together", similar to Chevalier's power.

Geoff Johns, Marvel Entertainment's CCO since 2010 and an extremely prolific comics writer, was the lead for Destination Agreement; he'd been eager to work on the Worm Turns IP since before the original comic was even finished. The event ran from 2016 to 2019, by which point Johns had stepped down from his position at Marvel (though he continues to write for them to this day). Destination Agreement is still canon to Marvel comics published today; many comics readers consider it canon to Worm Turns as well. Although the story mostly served to reset Marvel's multiverse to the pre-Quantumania status quo, a few storylines have felt a heavy ongoing impact from Destination Agreement, most notable among them the character arc of Deadpool.

Stylistically, Destination Agreement puts great effort into mimicking Worm Turns, and pays tribute to the same tradition of classic comics that Moore was drawing off of. However, contentwise, it's deeply idealistic where Worm Turns is cynical; it's often deemed an "antidote" to Worm Turns. Reviews were generally positive, but Alan Moore's grievances against Marvel and his staunch opposition to the continuation of the IP cast a shadow over it, and it's easy to see the whole thing as a big "fuck you" to him. Destination Agreement is a bit longer than Worm Turns, with exactly 52 pages per issue where Worm Turns averaged 48.

In contrast to Worm Turns, Destination Agreement does give its "arcs" canon names. In contrast to Early Bird, Destination Agreement generally ignores The Worm Turns Companion.

Gimel Arc:

#01: It Starts With One. Published in November 2016; titled for a line from Kurt Cobain's song In The End. This issue reintroduces the sprawling interdimensional megacity from the end of Worm Turns. Four years have passed, and in that time, many of humanity's most obvious problems have been solved. The megacity is an idealized sci-fi utopia, owing to the work of many unrestricted Tinkers working with the Wardens; villainous threats like Teacher have been dealt with offscreen. There is peace between Earths. There are problems remaining beneath the surface, though - with Scion gone, a stable future is possible, but will still require hard work. Tattletale is deeply stressed and gets along poorly with the Heartbroken; she comments that she can't even remember why she decided to take them in. Dinah calls a meeting of leading parahumans and civic administrators, panicked by new doomsday prophecies from her shard. Possibilities are always supposed to diverge from one another over time, but as of late, they seem to be converging instead on a single point, something that isn't supposed to happen until the entropic heat death of the universe. As people try to figure out what could be causing this disruption to Dinah's power, lingering threats to the new order are discussed, including resentments over the blanket villain amnesty, the increased irregularity of trigger events since Scion's death, and political instability on Earth Cheit. A mysterious new parahuman called Gamer Girl is introduced as a fast-growing problem; apparently, she's killing local officials and minor Wardens in pursuit of an unknown but dangerous goal. Meanwhile, on Earth-1 (later retconned as Earth-5201), Peter Parker is tormented in the night by visions from his shard. He decides not to tell his girlfriend, Mary Jane, when she asks what's bothering him, and instead decides to take a walk alone and meet with the Spider Society. (Mary Jane as Spider-Man's main love interest is one of many odd choices the New 52 made; in the traditional and better-known continuity, he's paired with Felicia Hardy.) The extra materials section features a tour map of the megacity, a metropolitan area linking many cities from many worlds. Earth Gimel is identified as the most important Earth in the network; it's where the Undersiders live. The guide notes that the multiverse should contain an unimaginably large number of worlds, but tragically, because of Scion's attempt to exterminate the human race, only a few dozen are accessible.

#02: The Fundamental Principle Of Society. Published in December 2016; titled for a line from Fredric Wertham's Seduction Of The Innocent. In this issue, Gamer Girl is escalated from one concern among many to the central antagonist of the piece; we actually see her on-page for the first time. She's a send-up of the "gamer" archetype that was popular in comics in the '00s; Marvel and DC each did quite a few takes on this archetype, with Marvel's Hardcore Henry and DC's Free City, both frequently considered the origin of the trope, premiering in a single week in 2003. The form is now considered the domain of indie comics, like O'Malley's Homestuck and Stevenson's La Exploradora. Gamer Girl is shown to be ludicrously powerful, as gamer characters tend to be when their stories have run their course. She's also gleefully detached from the world around her, apparently not viewing it as real; brief glimpses of her perspective show that she sees reality through a heads-up display that provides her with additional information on everything. Gamer Girl kills scores of Wardens, and is ultimately confronted by Valkyrie, who is horrified to discover that her power doesn't come from a shard. Gamer Girl kills Valkyrie with a swing of her axe, and laments that life gets boring "when you're dropping minibosses with one hit". Dragon and Defiant barely escape themselves. Tattletale and others try to gather more information on Gamer Girl, but are hampered by her status as a Thinker blindspot (owing to her Gamer's Camo perk). Meanwhile, on Earth-10 (later retconned as Earth-5210), Charles Xavier meets with the pro-mutant house minority leader David McCarter. McCarter, like most Americans, is deeply disturbed by the recent massacre in Stamford, Connecticut carried out by the supervillain Nitro (similar to the events of the pre-52 crisis crossover Marvel Civil War, but less accidental). He has grown disillusioned with the "cape game", and intends to introduce sweeping bipartisan legislation intended to curb the culture of costumed crimefighting. McCarter believes that this will be good for the mutant population, and Professor X is unable to dissuade him of this. After McCarter leaves, Xavier is informed of the latest applicant to his Institute, an angelic-looking young mutant girl who is simply identified as Hope. The extra materials section contains excerpts from a Parahumans Online message board thread (the format lifted from the original Worm Turns, although Johns has updated it some to more closely resemble a modern social media site like Digg), in which ordinary civilians and some capes, some in disguise, react to Gamer Girl's rampage through the megacity.

#03: Mystic Chords Of Memory. Published in January 2017; titled for a quote from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address. There's another Gamer Girl attack and the heroes barely rescue Amy Dallon; Gamer Girl derides her as "the most pathetically underleveled Panacea I've ever seen". Iron Man Prime and Ant-Man Prime enter the plot, detecting the disturbance that Gamer Girl is causing. Tony Stark and Hank Pym have been looking for a way out of the Worm Turns setting for years, but have failed to do so. They're reclusive; Stark views parahumans with suspicion and tinkertech in particular with disdain, seeing it as inferior because its designers don't even understand what they're making. With their help, Tattletale is able to piece together - just too late - that Gamer Girl was looking for blueprints for the Pegasus Device, a spacetime-shredding superweapon that Cauldron commissioned before Gold Morning but shelved because it was potentially too dangerous. With assistance from Ziz, Gamer Girl test-fires a partially-constructed Pegasus Device and reopens portals to Earth Aleph, which was supposed to be sealed away; the heroes are further distracted by dealing with the US government of Earth Aleph, which is none too pleased to have the treaty they signed with Earth Bet violated. On Earth Aleph, Gamer Girl tracks down Taylor Hebert, and removes her mask, revealing that she is herself an alternate version of Taylor Hebert. Meanwhile, on Earth-4 (later retconned as Earth-5204), Dr. Doom orchestrates an elaborate conspiracy on behalf of an unknown client, sabotaging all popular campaigns demanding government oversight for superheroes. His control room is invaded by Reed Richards, who's investigating a multidimensional campaign to disenfranchise citizens concerned about the superhero scene; it's presumed that a superhuman supremacist of some kind is responsible. Doom (who is actually a remotely-controlled Doombot) brushes off Richards' concerns and initiates a self-destruct sequence. The extra materials section features an overview of the NO CAPES Act sponsored by Representative McCarter.

#04: Pressing A Button. Published in February 2017; titled for a line from Heinlein's Three Worlds Collide. Gamer Girl begins to explain herself to the Worm Turns Taylor (or Taylor Prime); it's a recruitment pitch. She's the leader of a Cauldron-style interdimensional conspiracy to defend humanity; she promises to have Taylor's arm regrown and her powers restored with some of her parahuman resources. The Pegasus Device punches holes between dimensions, but Gamer Girl is already an adept dimensional traveler who can sneak through the worms' blockades between worlds; she sought it out for its potential as a superweapon capable of killing Scion. (She's also curious about how Taylor Prime did it as Khepri.) She plays on Taylor's utilitarianism to fast-talk her into a plan that will involve killing many civilians as a distraction. Meanwhile, and in parallel, the heroes pull Contessa out of retirement, seeking her advice; she functionally has the mind of a child, and spends her days trying and failing to teach herself to complete basic mundane tasks without the use of her power. (She lives with her boyfriend, Number Man, contra Worm Turns, where they were merely colleagues; here, he lounges around their apartment, pantsless.) She's nearly useless in this situation - Gamer Girl is, after all, a blind spot - but she does reveal that she sealed Taylor Hebert away on Earth Aleph and faked her death because she otherwise would have played into pandimensionally apocalyptic scenarios like the one Dinah now sees. Unfortunately, because Gamer Girl is a blind spot, she's now bringing about that scenario anyway. The heroes realize that Gamer Girl is going to destroy Earth Gimel to fuel another shot from the Pegasus Device, but it's too late to evacuate anyone but a few parahumans; as Earth Gimel becomes a fireball, Gamer Girl's perspective reveals that she has earned many EXP and an achievement by doing this. Meanwhile, on Earth-5 (later retconned as Earth-5205), the Avengers discuss a trend of political violence in favor of or in opposition to costumed antics. A single cause for the wave is presumed likely, which would make many of the associated actions false flags. Spider-Man abruptly leaves, called to the Spider Society to deal with a crisis; Mr. Fantastic follows him. Captain America convenes the Secret Avengers to launch a separate investigation of the campaign. The extra materials section contains the front page of a Daily Bugle from Earth Aleph; this establishes that Earth Aleph has a J. Jonah Jameson, though presumably no Spider-Man. The headline: GAMER GIRL GANKS GIMEL.

#05: Lifting Moloch To Heaven. Published in March 2017; titled for a line from T. S. Eliot's Howl. The heroes regroup on Earth Bet after the emergency evacuations. Dinah realizes, to her horror, that the destruction of Earth Gimel has brought the end of all worlds even closer and made it even less escapable. Iron Man finds a silver lining, though, which raises some suspicion about him: the destruction of Earth Gimel has apparently finally brought down the "bubble" Scion put in place to wall off the Worm Turns multiverse from the larger, infinite multiverse. This also appears to be the most promising approach to countering Dinah's end-of-the-worlds prophecy. Iron Man and a core group of parahumans including Defiant, Dinah, Contessa, Number Man, and Tattletale set out on a quest to find answers in the Marvel multiverse; Ant-Man agrees to stay behind as a representative on Earth Bet. Parian and Foil are left in charge of the Heartbroken. Meanwhile, on Earth-5210, Professor X takes his new student Hope on a tour of the Xavier Institute; she is clearly quite powerful, and a tragic backstory is hinted at. She immediately begins to form a bond with Kitty Pryde; proceedings are interrupted, however, by the arrival of several Peter Parkers and a Reed Richards, who want Xavier's input on a psychic sort of problem. The extra materials section includes schematics for the Dragonfly, which Tony Stark has upgraded for long-distance interdimensional travel, leaving scathing comments on its original design in the process.

#06: Open Your Eyes. Published in April 2017; titled for a line from Thornton Wilder's play The Ghost Sonata. This is the issue where the Worm Turns and New 52 storylines finally meet up with one another. The crew of the Dragonfly searches for the original Marvel multiverse, but they do not find it; Iron Man discovers to his dismay that the multiverse has changed, and is now littered with "bubbles" sectioning off small groups of Earths, similar to the one that Scion imposed to create the setting of Worm Turns. One bubble in particular - the one housing the New 52 setting - seems like the closest match to home, and it isn't very close; Dinah's power confirms that it's an important location for stopping the apocalypse, and so the crew of the Dragonfly agrees to enter the New 52 bubble even though it will be much more difficult to exit it. Number Man notes that the bubble contains exactly 52 worlds, and analyzes the esoteric numerological significance of the number 52; he concludes that the bubble was made by an intelligent entity, likely another worm. Contessa panics over the extreme density of "blind spots" around her in these new worlds, things that her shard cannot understand or model; as a Hail Mary, she decides to go on ahead of the rest of the party, becoming the first member of the Dragonfly's crew to land in the New 52 multiverse; Iron Man Prime follows closely behind her, and is overcome by despair and disgust at the state of the multiverse. Meanwhile, Earth-5210's Professor X examines Earth-5201's Spider-Man, psychically investigating the parasitic connection he's recently developed with his shard, and the apocalyptic visions it's shown him. He verifies that a real phenomenon is at play and worthy of deep concern. Earth-5205's Mr. Fantastic interrupts to point out that he has detected an approaching dimensionally anomalous threat - Contessa; he teleports her into the room in order to capture and interrogate her. Surrounded by blindspots, she is swiftly defeated by Richards' assistant, Daredevil, due to his superior experience in hand-to-hand combat. Xavier realizes that these situations - the shard in Spider-Man and the woman from outside the world - are connected. Hope has been psychically eavesdropping on this entire meeting, and tells Kitty Pryde that the world might be in danger; Kitty tells her that it usually is. Back in low-Earth orbit, the Dragonfly is forcibly boarded by a gang of space pirates, the Ravagers, who are unimpressed with the parahumans' abilities (although Dinah is fairly confident that she can engineer an escape in short order). The extra materials section consists of a pair of articles: one from an Earth Gimel pop culture magazine discussing the exponential rise of pro-superhero PRT propaganda as a genre of entertainment, and one from Earth-5223 lauding a recent film critical of superhero culture (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance); a handwritten note from an investigator (implied to be a Black Widow) points out that that Earth's Reed Richards financed the film.

52 Pickup Arc:

#07: Unravel The Fabric Of The World. Published in May 2017; titled for a line from Francine Prose's Nostradamus. Iron Man Prime tracks down the facility where Contessa is being kept, and apprises them of what he knows. Distrust blooms between all involved; Reed Richards 5205 in particular assumes that Iron Man Prime's arrival is one of many distractions set up by a fascist conspiracy (likely a multiversal version of Hydra) that fetishizes power for its own sake and intends to repurpose superheroism for its own ends. The other heroes mostly take the opposite view, that the conspiracy intends to undermine superheroic institutions. A disgruntled Iron Man Prime barely prevents the New 52's Council Of Reeds and Spider Society from devolving into a state of interdimensional war. Meanwhile, the Ravagers are defeated and the Dragonfly's crew are rescued by the Secret Avengers, an interdimensional black ops team consisting of Black Widow 5205, American Dream (Courtney Carter), Eraser Head, Squirrel Girl, Deadpool, her mutant mentor Wadepool, and some others. Tattletale realizes from the team's conversation that they're living in a comic book, which sends her into an existential crisis. The Secret Avengers report their findings back to Captain America 5205, but are simultaneously discovered by the group that Iron Man Prime has assembled, resulting in a clusterfuck in which Richards 5205 decides that Rogers 5205 is in on the conspiracy. Battle lines are drawn as everything goes all conspiracy-shaped. The extra materials section consists of a brief overview, assembled by the Secret Avengers, of the New 52's fifty-two Earths and the directions of their recent political anomalies.

#08: The Makers Of Our Fate. Published in July 2017; titled for a line from Karl Popper's The Open Society And Its Enemies. Fighting breaks out between many factions across many Earths; Captain America 5205 retains neutrality; Iron Man Prime attempts to retain neutrality himself, but simply winds up alienated from everyone, including the New 52's Iron Men, who he finds particularly pathetic. Dinah despondently reflects on her doomsday prophecy, fate, and the nature of entropy; everything falls apart, everything winds up in the same place. Deadpool helps Tattletale to cope with her newfound knowledge of the fourth wall, and it becomes apparent that, after a short shock, Tattletale's powers will become much stronger as a result of this. As various factions begin to assume heavyhanded control over minor Earths to purge them of dissent - including the Spider Society, the Council of Reeds, and the TVA - our heroes set out on a quest to find out who's really behind the destabilization of interdimensional politics. Hope sneaks away from her chaperone, Mezzanine (Lucy Stryker), to tag along, hoping to help with this mission. The extra materials section consists of a primer written by Deadpool on the more noteworthy forces and phenomena in the New 52 multiverse and marked up by Tattletale; Lisa's thoughts are Doylist and Dupinian in equal measure.

#09: Every Hand's A Winner. Published in August 2017; titled for a line from Dorothy Parker's The Gambler. Tattletale explains her "52 pickup" theory of the conspiracy, based on the card "game" of the same name - that someone is deliberately stirring up trouble throughout the New 52 multiverse in a chaotic fashion in order to easily conquer it while everyone's occupied cleaning up after them. The joint heroes of Worm Turns and the New 52 - and some mutant children - track down and investigate various conspiratorial puppets, including versions of Norman Osborn, Bucky Barnes, and Thaddeus Ross, hoping for a lead on who they're taking orders from, but they turn up nothing. Captain America 5205 sticks to his theory that the culprit is unaccounted-for supervillain MODOK (Otto Octavius), but when one subteam is close to disproving this, they are attacked by a ninja-like team of trained assassin capes, including a psychic mime, a girl with a Night-like power to move rapidly when unseen, and a host of one-off Worm Turns villain Butcher. Tattletale realizes that these are alternate Taylors, and we are reminded that Gamer Girl is still in play (although Tattletale, never having realized that Gamer Girl was a Taylor in the first place, doesn't make the connection). In the ensuing fight, Kitty Pryde is killed, leading Hope to reveal her most powerful mutant ability: to resurrect the dead. The extra materials section features a series of Oscorp internal memos reflecting that the company has been hollowed out and turned into a tool of a multidimensional conspiracy; employees are not easily fazed by this due to their CEO's usually erratic patterns of behavior.

#10: The Introduction Of A New Order. Published in September 2017; titled for a line from Machiavelli's The Prince. Tattletale concludes based on dramatic logic that Gamer Girl is probably behind everything. Number Man concurs based on a contorted form of Occam's Razor, although Dinah sheds some doubt on this based on her own interpretation of her vague apocalyptic visions. Scenes from Taylor Prime's perspective confirm that Gamer Girl is behind the conspiracy; she's taking over the weakened New 52 one Earth at a time, and Taylor Prime is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this. Taylor Prime's arm and her powers have been restored by "a Membrane", a Taylor in Gamer Girl's employ with powers like Panacea's. Defiant and the Secret Avengers seek the assistance of the Asgardians, only to discover that Loki has triggered with an S-class parahuman ability and overrun the realm; Defiant is captured and resigned to a fate worse than death. Hope is alienated from Kitty, who's disturbed to have been revived with her power and her life force weakened. Taylor Prime apparently escapes and defects to the heroes, warning that Gamer Girl is planning something terrible and needs to be stopped - but a final panel from her perspective, complete with HUD, reveals that this is in fact Gamer Girl in disguise. The extra materials section is another thread from Parahumans Online, this one showing how Earth Bet is getting along in the aftermath of the Gimel Arc.

#11: Devils That You Know. Published in October 2017; titled for a line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Albatross. The disguised Gamer Girl explains that Gamer Girl has assumed control of Knowhere and rebuilt the Pegasus Device there; she intends to harness the massive power of the dead Celestial to produce the most dangerous weapon in existence. An army must be assembled to stop her as soon as possible. Tattletale suspects that she's an impostor, but Gamer Girl passes all of her tests, on account of being a blind spot, and having high INT and CHA levels. When hundreds of superheroes converge on Knowhere, they find the Pegasus Device they were told about - but also, floating near it, a Scion with a peculiar glow about him. Panic begins to spread; Gamer Girl immediately drops the act and cheerfully confesses that this was why she conquered the New 52 multiverse, in order to better fight Scion. The extra materials section consists of a letter written by Magneto 5205, accusing Professor X of staging the Scion/Gamer Girl crisis for his own ends, an accusation that is becoming increasingly absurd with every moment he spends writing it.

#12: Dust. Published in November 2017; titled for a line from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Ecclesiastes. On Earth-5202, Captain Marvel informs the military of the emergence of Scion; she makes clear that he is a dangerous individual, but still presents the situation from a hopeful perspective. Afterwards, while she's heading to confront the threat, her suit, the symbiote Mar-Vell, apparently taking a more pessimistic view, reminds her that she is bound to honesty. Many superheroes, including the One For All, try and fail to kill Scion; Scion simply ignores this. Contessa shows up and demands that the Pegasus Device be shut down, but she is BTFOed by Gamer Girl. Gamer Girl is widely blamed for drawing a Scion to the New 52 setting; she isn't bothered by this, and configures the Pegasus Device to teleport Knowhere to Earth Bet, where Hope briefly meets Amy Dallon Prime, who is near the nadir of her mental health, which Hope finds relatable. Gamer Girl explains that her goal isn't merely to kill a Scion - something we already know to be possible - but rather to kill every Scion; she intends to harness whatever power is necessary to make Scion's death a "canon event", ensuring that it will recur in a supermajority of relevant worlds. The forces that Gamer Girl has messily assembled to fight on her behalf fall apart - or, really, never come together in the first place, because they don't accept her as a legitimate leader - and she chides them for their inexpedient disunity and hesitation, but remains steadfast that all is going according to plan. Scion finally makes his move, destroying the Pegasus Device with a single blast. Hope is closest to the epicenter of the explosion. Never having even settled into a place in her own world, she is flung through space and time. The extra materials section includes schematics for the Pegasus Device drawn up by a firm called Fortress Construction in the early 2000s; the megaproject (which forebodingly seems to run on something like human sacrifice) is hastily ended when the engineers realize it's a potentially larger threat to the human race than the problem it was meant to solve (Scion).

Fortress Construction Arc:

#13: Hope. Published in December 2017; titled for a line from Dante Alighieri's Paradise Lost, famously posing hope as the last curse imposed during the Fall of Man. Hope arrives in Brockton Bay, circa 2009, about a year before the start of Worm Turns' story; the explosion of the Pegasus Device has opened up a tear in spacetime and spun up a new iteration of Earth Bet - termed Earth Bet-2 - and its satellite Earths. Hope quickly encounters Lung, who attempts to forcibly recruit her despite her ethnic ambiguity; she flees and barely loses his trail. The next morning, Hope is chased by an angry mob of civilians who associate her with Ziz due to her beautiful angelic form, reminding her of the discrimination she faced as a mutant back at home. She is rescued and informally adopted by a kind stranger, Paul Braganca, a PRT image consultant who uses his secret parahuman abilities to make side cash as a rogue photographer under the name Tabloid. (This character was subtly foreshadowed throughout several extra materials sections earlier in Destination Agreement.) On behalf of her new parahuman friends, Hope strives to make this new Worm Turns timeline a happier one - and, promisingly, Doctor Mother notes that Scion has suddenly disappeared. The extra materials section contains Hope's applications to the top three mutant schools of Earth-5210: the Xavier Institute, UA, and the Whateley Academy; they further paint the picture of her as an immensely powerful girl who has nonetheless led a deeply troubled life.

#14: Live In A Desert. Published in January 2018; titled for a line from Dürrenmatt's Under Western Eyes. Paul encourages Hope to join the Wards, which she gently but firmly turns down; like an idealized version of Taylor, she is at once too skeptical of authority and too ambitious for this. Instead, she seeks to unite Brockton Bay's heroes, the Undersiders included, a plan which Coil is obviously not keen on. Hope and Coil come into further conflict with one another as Hope investigates Fortress Construction, hoping to find out more about the Pegasus Device and her current situation. Coil attempts to enslave Hope, a plan she easily outmaneuvers. Hope attempts to recruit Amy and Victoria to the new superhero team she's setting up, Pantheon. Victoria, who is being manipulated by Coil, takes this very poorly, and repeatedly threatens, insults, and generally bullies Hope; Hope, using her psychic powers, deduces that Victoria has been gradually brainwashing Amy using her aura, and that this was responsible for Amy Prime's terrible lot in life. Victoria is enraged by the accusation, attempts to kill Hope, fails, and is promptly sent to the Birdcage because of the stigma against Master/Strangers. Hope bonds with the new timeline's Amy, to some extent romantically, and Pantheon really starts to get off the ground as a concept. Tattletale Prime arrives in the new timeline a few days later than Hope did, and immediately contacts Cauldron by repeating "door me" over and over. (This is a misunderstanding of the plot point from the original Worm Turns, in which "door me" was a protocol introduced only for Gold Morning.) Cauldron is eager for her answers on why their model of the future is suddenly falling apart. The extra materials section contains an essay by Natasha Romanova 5248 on the inevitable solitude of death.

#15: Walk On Water. Published in February 2018; titled for a line from Jim Steinman's song Simple And Clean (written for Bonnie Tyler). Hope's plans come to fruition and she starts to clean up Brockton Bay. Young Tinker heroine Redoubt is saved from her original timeline death at the hands of young Empire Eighty-Eight villainess Razorwire; in the new timeline, Redoubt is recruited to Pantheon and Razorwire is sent to prison. Kaiser disappears mysteriously, presumed to have skipped town. Taylor's original trigger event is averted (although she later shows up with the same bug powers, as a Pantheon member, without explanation) and her bullies are punished, Shadow Stalker included. Coil is unmasked and sent to the Birdcage; the Undersiders, too, defect to Pantheon. Under Tattletale Prime's guidance, even the serious heroic authorities are willing to deal with Pantheon under reasonable terms. Seeing how much better things are getting, Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay way ahead of schedule, and it is still a terrible disaster - but Spider-Man 5201 shows up, catches him by surprise, and webs him in place; Armsmaster lands the killing blow. All-in-all, a much better day than it was in the original timeline. The extra materials section contains excerpts from yet another Parahumans Online thread - this time, a vintage one - in which the public expresses amazement at how much Hope is getting done, and so fast, too.

#16: Do Not Go Gentle. Published in April 2018; titled for a line from Tennyson's The Charge Of The Light Brigade. Coil arrives in the Birdcage, quite frazzled to be dealing with more than his own two timelines; there, he discovers that Glory Girl has killed Ingenue and replaced her as a women's cell block leader. Spider-Man commends Hope for her leadership ability; these canon foreigners meet with the top brass of Cauldron, who have very little idea what's going on, and with Tattletale Prime, who has somewhat more idea what's going on, but is going loopy from the fourth-wall awareness. Afterwards, they are captured by Bonesaw, who has even more idea what's going on, but is Bonesaw. Bonesaw is fascinated by mutants because they clearly have a different power source than parahumans, and even moreso by Spider-Man, who's something else. She kills Panacea to force Hope to revive her. She's idly pondering making Spider-Man more spiderlike, or splicing Kaiser together with Magneto, when she's killed, along with much of the rest of the Nine, by Wolverine. (Taylor kills Jack, though.) There is something of a time skip; we are to understand that this encounter with the Nine was the last crisis for many years, during which the world just seemed to improve and improve. Then, Gamer Girl showed up in the new timeline, just as it was about to catch up with the old one. The extra materials section contains an old interview with an outed teen Peter Parker, in which he lays out his famous heroic ethic, "with great power comes great responsibility"; metatextually, it's being posed in opposition to Worm Turns' cynical view of the same.

#17: Strike The Sun. Published in June 2018; titled for a line from Ernest Hemingway's Moby-Dick. Gamer Girl catches the new timeline's Taylor alone and explains her backstory. Gamer Girl was a Taylor who received her powers at a fairly young age, after a night of bad dreams. An idealistic young girl and an avid gamer granted gaming-themed superpowers, she started a revolutionary hero team with Uber, Leet, Alpha (Greg Veder), and Sparky (Sparky). Parallels with Hope abound. They were largely successful at incrementally improving (their version of) Earth Bet, in which they were shining beacons of classically idealistic heroism, but then Gold Morning happened, and the team wasn't prepared; Gamer Girl had barely reached a fraction of her true potential as a gamer. She was the team's only survivor, and then only because her power granted her a limited number of extra lives. With the known multiverse devastated and little hope of defeating Scion, Gamer Girl used an experimental one-use piece of Leet tech to escape to an entirely different region of the multiverse - a dystopian version of Earth Bet ruled by a villain organization known as the Society, whose leader Gamer Girl would eventually discover was "another Taylor", an older one, born into the first generation of parahumans. After infiltrating the Society, Gamer Girl would go on to kill the villainous Taylor that ran it and assumed its resources for herself; with a special focus on technological research, she would actually kill that Earth's version of Scion. But still, she wasn't satisfied - this was just one Scion in an infinite multiverse, and it wasn't even the one that had destroyed her last world and killed her team. So she took to exploring the larger multiverse; she converted the Society into the "Tower of Taylors", shedding most of its other parahuman members and replacing them with multiversal versions of Taylor Hebert. She killed other versions of Scion, until it stopped feeling like such a great challenge. Thinking much like a worm herself, she looked for out-of-context tools that might solve the problem of Scion once and for all; finally, she found the Marvel multiverse and learned there about the physics of canon. The Pegasus Device is a terribly inefficient way to traverse the multiverse - but it's perfect for manipulating Scion and manipulating canon. Indeed, Gamer Girl says, her plan to lure Scion to the perfect metaversal killing ground is still unfolding - and with that, Scion appears again, for the first time in years, in the skies of Earth Bet-2. The extra materials section contains analysis of several Taylors by Gamer Girl's lieutenant the Administrator, a Taylor with the power to perceive shards. The Administrator is quite self-conscious that her power is least useful where it's most desired, studying mysterious non-shard sources of power, like Gamer Girl herself, who the Administrator speculates on at some length.

#18: Despair. Published in August 2018; titled for a line from Albert Einstein's The World As I See It. Cauldron panics at the reemergence of Scion, and begins to put in motion plans to create a superweapon able to stop him, collaborating with Fortress Construction. Multiple versions of Reed Richards assist, along with other leading Tinkers and Thinkers. Cauldron attempts to enlist the help of String Theory from inside the Birdcage as well, but Glory Girl's intransigence slows negotiations, and it's rendered a moot point when Scion's first strike on the Earth obliterates the Birdcage from orbit. Hope angsts about how difficult it's become to command the respect of her team, now that she's spent the last few years not aging, but Paul reassures her in a fatherly way that she's better-suited for leadership than she knows. As Scion's assault on Earth grows more and more intense, it seems that Cauldron won't have time to build their proposed superweapon, but Hope tries to hold on to something that Gamer Girl said years ago - back in issue twelve - indicating that some timelines had accomplished similar feats. She's in the midst of gathering up Pantheon to evacuate to another Earth when Gamer Girl shows up, and kidnaps Hope. She leaves the portal open behind her, and heroes follow her through, starting with a team composed of Spider-Man 5201 (who has mastered his parahuman ability over his time on Earth Bet-2), Black Widow 5248, Amy Prime, and the Taylor and Amy of Earth Bet-2. They are shocked by what they find on the other side - the Tower of Taylors, a densely-populated city inhabited primarily by alternate versions of Taylor Hebert recruited by Gamer Girl. The extra materials section contains a diary entry from Amy Prime in which she contemplates the state of Earth Bet-2, seeing how much better her life could have turned out and wavering on whether her takeaway from this should be positive or negative.

Tower Of Taylors Arc:

#19: Hell. Published in October 2018; titled for the iconic line from David Mamet's play No Exit. We open with a classic "one more time"-style flashback in which an alternate version of Taylor Hebert triggers inside the locker. In the midst of her trigger event, the goddess Arachne intervenes, she is bitten by a radioactive spider, and she becomes her Earth's one and only Spider-Taylor. Gamer Girl eventually shows up and recruits her, and by the present day she is on the leadership council of the Tower of Taylors (though of course Gamer Girl's the only one with any real authority). Our heroes try to suss out the operational structure of the Tower of Taylors; every panel is fucking crammed with little easter egg Taylors the audience will never know anything about. It becomes apparent that there's a minority population there of "guests", people Taylor Hebert is close to, usually Amy or Lisa; the other heroes are able to pose as guests of Earth Bet-2's Taylor. They discover and fall in with a group of misfit Taylors, dysfunctional underground rebels who are incompatible with the Tower's structure, including Tankie (a revolutionary Marxist Taylor who can turn into an army's worth of tanks), Elytra (a Taylor who triggered in a cluster with an Amy and a Victoria), and Owlet (a Taylor with an Alexandria package and an Electra complex). They're easily able to open up more portals to let in more of their allies from Earth Bet-2, but realize that in principle they should have an equally easy time contacting universes they'd previously been cut off from, like the New 52 multiverse. They're able to establish communications with heroes who stayed behind, but when they try to actually open portals there, they run into a complication; the portals don't lead where they're supposed to. From the Tower of Taylors' control room, Gamer Girl smugly explains that she has rerouted the Tower's dimensional perimeter to run through "a Ragnarok", one of the Earths that the worms use to store Endbringers before their formal deployment. Gamer Girl also casually reveals that she has a backup Pegasus Device within the Tower Of Taylors itself. The extra materials section consists of excerpted threads from Parataylors Online, a modified PHO server run by and for the Tower of Taylors.

#20: Human Frailty. Published in January 2019; titled for a line from Robert Browning's play Ion. Squirrel Girl has defeated every Endbringer; Cocacolaman bursts through the dimensional barrier cutting off the Tower of Taylors from unauthorized access (oh yeah!!!). Forces from Earth Bet-2 and the New 52 multiverse converge into an army that advances up the Tower, towards the control room at the top and the backup Pegasus Device there. When they arrive there (pages of tiresome fighting later), Gamer Girl explains that the Pegasus Device, which is currently warming up, is powered by "outside context people" - people with superpowers beyond the ken of shards. She has seven such subjects strapped into the machine, two of whom, Spider-Taylor and Hope, we're already familiar with. The others are Tether (the Spider-Girl from a world where it was one of Taylor's bullies who got bitten), Concerned Citizen (a Taylor whose shard was killed and hollowed out by a legendary Skrull assassin), Apeiron (a Brocktonite who stumbled upon and bonded with a powerful Asgardian artifact), Spurt (another gamer, an arbitrary Merchant goon - Gamer Girl derisively notes that "he has [her] powers but not [her] memories"), and an unnamed magical girl version of Taylor (whose design is likely intended as a background reference to Lilly Akemi, Anna Kendrick's character from Madoka). Iron Man Prime rescues Hope, to which Gamer Girl shrugs and shoves Spider-Man 5233 (Miguel O'Hara) into the machine instead - she was essentially surrounded by her designated prey at that point. Fully powered up, the Pegasus Device drains the life force from its charges to produce an interdimensional beacon; a Scion crashes into the Tower of Taylors. The extra materials section consists of a cryptic text conversation between a teenager and her mother; the girl promises to be home safe in a timely fashion.

#21: Winning Move. Published in March 2019; titled for a line from Isaac Asimov's War Games. A second Scion has hit the south side of the Tower of Taylors. All Scions from across the multiverse are converging on this point, relaying the signal and merging with one another to form a single superior Meta-Scion with full multiversal awareness (the glowing version of Scion we've been seeing throughout much of Destination Agreement up to this point). Gamer Girl's plan has fully come to fruition; she now has a shot at all of the multiverse's Scions; numerous heroes from both Worm Turns and the broader Marvel multiverse tell her that this was idiotic, and she does not believe them or care. It sinks in for Dinah that this is the increasingly-inevitable end of the multiverse she's long seen coming. From Meta-Scion's perspective, we see that the sheer scale of the real multiverse is a shock to him; with access to all of space and time, he begins experimenting with the Marvel multiverse hoping to find a solution to entropy there. In the process, he retroactively creates the limited New 52 multiverse, ensuring his own existence in a self-generating time loop; he also manipulates events in the New 52 multiverse to his satisfaction - for example, tripping Quicksilver so he'll fall down the stairs to his death before he could become an established figure on Earth-5201. Meta-Scion attempts to resurrect his partner, but is dismayed to learn that she is still beyond his reach because her death was a canon event. He also learns, to his horror, that there is in fact a deific personification of entropy, Lady Death, who he meets in her abstract realm. Death explains to Meta-Scion that his quest is hopeless as entropy cannot be defeated; all mortals eventually go to the same place, all systems eventually reach thermodynamic equilibrium, all art eventually is subsumed into slop. (okay that last part is my commentary) Meta-Scion angrily attempts to physically kill Death, but she simply chides him for interacting with the metaphor on the wrong level and dismisses him. This beat would perhaps be more effective if Death had not in fact been subdued or defeated in many earlier storylines, or if immortality was not an extremely achievable goal in the setting. The extra materials section consists of the promotional cover for the final issue of The Curse Of The Pale Fire; the promotional blurbs inform us that all things must come to an end, and talk around the unfortunate authorial circumstances that we know from Worm Turns led to that end.

#22: A Hundred Battles. Published in May 2019; titled for a line from Sun Tzu's The Art Of War. In the collapsing Tower of Taylors, the heroes continue to search for a way to kill or at least affect Meta-Scion, and they are systematically taken apart - particularly as Meta-Scion is eager to take out his frustrations on them. Most of the issue is a boring, cringey, and much action-heavier retread of Gold Morning featuring Marvel characters. Brian (from Earth Bet-2) shows up leading a Pantheon subteam of reformed villains that Tattletale semi-sarcastically refers to as "Grue's ex-Nazi harem". Theo Anders attempts to hit on a Mossad agent and is rebuffed. Meta-Scion is particularly irritated by the collective efforts of the various Taylors gathered by Gamer Girl; he considers merging them into a single Meta-Taylor who could take the place of his partner, but quickly decides against it and instead unleashes an attack that kills every Taylor Hebert throughout the multiverse - every single one of them thinks, nearly in sync, "we're all so very small in the end", in their final moments before melting into meat. Hope manages to revive one, and only one, of them, and it turns out to coincidentally be Taylor Prime. Oddly, though, there's one other survivor of this Taylor-eliminating attack - it's Gamer Girl; Meta-Scion has to manually still her gamer powers, and then mortally wounds her. As Gamer Girl lies dying, she's approached by the Secret Avengers; she looks up, sees Deadpool's face, and cries out her name in shock: "Gwen... Gwendolyn Poole?!? I was you... I was you!" A kaleidoscopic flashback shows us that when, across countless slight variations of mundane reality, young comics fan Gwen Poole was struck and killed by a truck (distracted by something - maybe a comic, maybe a text, maybe a video game), her soul was sent to countless different spots throughout the multiverse - most of them becoming insignificant animals or otherwise winding up in doomed situations, some of them regenerating as the Deadpool we all know and love, and one of them waking up in the body of a young Taylor Hebert with mysterious gaming-themed superpowers. In the present, Deadpool absorbs her alternate self as she dies, acquiring her memories and feeling more whole. Deadpool's origins had always been pretty clearly implied, but she never liked thinking about them, and this issue was actually the first time that they were ever actually shown per se. Gamer Girl being an alternate version of Gwen Poole inserted into Taylor's life, on the other hand, came completely out of left field, but it's permanently stuck to Deadpool's character ever since; her plots now frequently revolve around searching for errant versions of herself to assimilate and grappling with her trauma and identity. In any case, Meta-Scion continues to tear the multiverse apart. The extra materials section contains an auto-transcribed conversation between Iron Man Prime, Armsmaster-2, and Dragon-2 in which he admits that he's beginning to crack under the strain of the multiversal drama in which he's embroiled; he's not even sure who he's supposed to be anymore or if that's even a meaningful question given the vastness of reality.

#23: Only One Will Survive. Published in July 2019; titled for the chorus of Sheb Wooley's song The Ultimate Showdown. Meta-Scion keeps killing heroes and God it's so fucking boring, writing this is draining the figurative life out of me. Static 5202 down. Kid Win Prime, deceased. Loki 5240 deceased. Moonstone 5202 deceased. Et cetera et cetera, it just keeps going and going. So anyway eventually, at the multiverse's darkest hour, Spider-Man 5201 receives a major powerup from the joint efforts of Professor X 5210, Mantis 5210, some Wanda Maximoffs, some Amy Dallons, Good Girl (a compliant version of Bonesaw that Gamer Girl had kept on tap), and a Galvanate for some reason. Spider-Man then consolidates Meta-Scion down into a single approximately-human form and beats him to death with a length of PVC pipe, to everyone's delight. The sheer energy released by the death of Meta-Scion generates a single wish-granting Cosmic Cube, which selects Hope as its host and floats over to her. When she touches it, she ascends to another plane of existence where she's a deified cosmic figure; Hope chooses to kill both worms in deep space before they ever arrive on Earth, strangling one over her head and crushing the other underfoot. She consequently unmakes the events of both Worm Turns and Destination Agreement up to this point. She also unmakes the entire New 52 multiverse, becoming retroactively responsible for the Marvel Rebirth initiative. The extra materials section contains a funeral program for Gwendolyn Poole.

#24: Life Bends Down. Published in December 2019; titled for a line from T. S. Eliot's The Magic Goes Away. In the post-Rebirth Marvel continuity, few are able to remember the events of Destination Agreement, but some can. Iron Man Prime and Ant-Man Prime have finally returned home, and commiserate about the horrors they experienced in their multiversal misadventure. Spider-Man 5201, along with some of the other surviving New 52 Spider-Men, settle into the larger Spider Society, reflecting on how it's more like the Tower of Taylors than the more intimate Spider Society they once knew. They also gear up for yet another interdimensional war, as Earth-191 (Marvel's classic "evil Earth", in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and its leadership eventually evolved into a much more powerful version of Hydra) begins making aggressive power plays. Tattletale - now part of the Secret Avengers alongside Deadpool - reflects on her complex relationship with Taylor, and how they ultimately grew apart from one another. Deadpool, who is herself reflecting on what she learned about herself throughout Destination Agreement, comforts Tattletale, who will become a regular in her future storylines; Tattletale turns to the reader and announces that she's at least glad to be living in a proper superhero setting now and not whatever grimdark edgefest she was originally created for. Taylor Prime has been returned to her home on Earth Aleph, where she mentors a young Aleph-based Peter Parker who has just become his world's Spider-Man; this plot hook will only ever be given incidental background references (at most) in future Spider Society storylines. Everyone wonders what became of Hope. We see a single bespoke world that she created: an idealized version of Earth Bet without superpowers or Endbringers or anything of the sort. At a coffee shop run by (versions of) Fortuna and Rebecca Costa-Brown, a group of college-aged friends gather. Taylor, Lisa, Amy, Vista, Dinah, and (a human version of) Hope are present; Aisha - who has thus far neither appeared nor explicitly been mentioned in Destination Agreement - is said to be running late. Everyone seems to be leading more-or-less their best lives - until suddenly and out of nowhere a cosmic event happens - something streaking through the sky - and people start collapsing and painfully mutating to receive superpowers, Hope in particular being most heavily affected, reacquiring the angelic form we associate with her. We see that this is the (apparently-well-intentioned?) action of Ajak Celestia, the Marvel multiverse's benevolent God figure, as she passes Earth. The extra materials section is just a panicked text from Aisha or some shit. We never seriously revisit this Earth again in any subsequent Marvel media and thank fucking God for that. I regret to inform you that Hope will return in Quantumania Revisited.

WORM TURNS (HBO)

What can one say about Damon Lindelof? The origins of his television career are obscure; from 1999 to 2004 he only had minor writing credits on a handful of now-forgotten soaps. He only really received attention when he got a chance to work with his idol J. J. Abrams as a cocreator and showrunner on Cube, an existential drama about a number of strangers who mysteriously awaken in a vast and deadly industrial labyrinth.

Cube was often cited as the greatest television program of all time until its conclusion in 2010, which was widely deemed "stupid and insulting"; in retrospect Cube is now understood as the basic case for Abrams' "mystery box" writing pathology, his instincts to introduce setups specifically to drive audience investment without any plans to appropriately pay them off later. Cube-like mystery boxes would define Abrams' disastrous Avatar sequel trilogy. Lindelof does seem in retrospect to have been one of the better writers associated with Cube, but he has been repeatedly accused of creating a hostile or even racist work environment for the show's cast, something he has himself acknowledged and attributed to his inexperience in the industry at that time. Lindelof was also, during his work on Cube, among the industry's first showrunners to start an official daily podcast discussing the show's production process.

After Cube, Lindelof was in very high demand. He continued to work with Abrams - for example, co-producing his rebooted There And Back Again franchise - but also pursued a more eclectic set of prominent projects throughout the early 2010s, including co-writing or co-producing credits on The Tenth Kingdom (the Twitter-beloved overlong fairytale soap opera), Fingerprints Of The Gods (a critically-panned movie about ancient aliens), Nakatomi (the first of the Die Hard prequels), The Last Of Us (has roughly nothing in common with the book except for the Zionism), and Starchaser (legendary Brad Bird flop).

Lindelof's most important project from this period was the grim and cerebral Happening, a three-season HBO drama about a mysterious event that causes suicide - and particularly inexplicable mass suicide - to become the leading global cause of death. Happening had middling ratings throughout its 2014-2017 run, but an extremely dedicated fanbase, and it cemented the reputation Lindelof was trying to cultivate as a thinking man's showrunner.

HBO had long been pursuing some type of television adaptation of Worm Turns, ever since it became clear that the films wouldn't be continuing. They first announced that they were going forward with a Worm Turns show in late 2015, but at that point, Zack Snyder was still attached to the project, which was intended to be a straight adaptation of the graphic novel. Budgetary concerns proved prohibitive, though, Snyder was constantly busy, and in early 2017 he left the project, so Lindelof was brought onboard as the show's visionary creator. This was formally announced on September 20th, 2017, the day after he'd begun writing the pilot.

It was only a few months later, in an open letter dated May 22nd, 2018, that Lindelof clarified that he intended to produce his own sequel to Worm Turns, not an adaptation or reboot. (Confusingly, the show was still simply called Worm Turns, requiring frequent fandom disambiguation; it's termed "HBO's Worm Turns" somewhat more frequently than "Damon Lindelof's Worm Turns".) The response to this letter was deeply mixed. Fans had long been desperate for a complete adaptation of Worm Turns, a wish that Lindelof simply dismissed, pointing out that the graphic novel would always be the definitive version of the story. However, the premise of a continuation of the story was appealing - particularly for those dissatisfied with the ongoing Destination Agreement, which Lindelof wisely disregarded for his story - and Lindelof had thoroughly demonstrated his talent for writing with sociological and psychological insight in Happening. Lindelof also sent a copy of this letter to Alan Moore, who would report years later that he had been disgusted by its mewling, "neurotic" tone and responded with a firmly-worded demand to never contact him again, along with a reiteration of his abiding disgust for the morality of the comics industry and a total disownment of all material he'd lost the rights to.

According to Lindelof, he had always been a superfan of Worm Turns, to the point of obsessively poring over the pages of The Worm Turns Companion for the little details Moore hadn't found a way to incorporate into the story proper. He was deeply impressed by the setting's themes of trauma and mental health, and believed that they were more relevant in the (first) Trump administration than ever before. However, he felt morally obligated, given the needs of the times, to update these themes to be more sensitive and socially responsible; he took particular interest in Victoria Dallon (Glory Girl), a character he had always felt Moore did wrong by, a feeling cemented by the dawn of the #MeToo era. Lindelof slowly came to the conclusion that Victoria would be a worthier Worm Turns protagonist than Taylor, and was ideal for the story he wanted to tell, particularly with a diverse supporting cast to round out her perspective. He opted to reimagine Victoria as a "cape nerd", choosing to ignore or reinterpret the comic's understated gestures at a dumb blonde archetype.

Filming lasted more than a year, wrapping up in June of 2019 - less than two months before the series premiered. The star-studded cast - which deliberately featured no overlap with Snyder's Worm Turns, to avoid the show being understood as a sequel to the film specifically - included Emma Roberts as Victoria Dallon, Tatiana Maslany as Ashley Stillons, and Nicole Maines as Sveta; Mark Rylance was particularly praised for his featured performance as Teacher. The show was promoted by a retro-throwback ARG that hinted at some of its plotlines, but it would eventually be forgotten, overshadowed by the show itself. Worm Turns came out to eighteen episodes, each about an hour in length.

Right around the premiere of Worm Turns in August 2019, Damon Lindelof was embroiled in controversy, albeit of a quite sympathetic sort: after the release of the trailer for his political thriller film Distrust - which involved teenagers being locked in a school and forced to kill one another - a conspiracy theory emerged among idiot MAGA Tumblr that it was intended to promote school shootings, and thereby gun control. This moral panic made it all the way to President Trump, who publicly demanded that the film be banned; Universal caved and delayed it by several months - initially leaving it ambiguous whether they'd release it at all - coincidentally coinciding with the start of the COVID pandemic and meaning that it made approximately no money. None of this directly impacted the release of Worm Turns, but it did cast a shadow over it.

Worm Turns (HBO) was critically lauded for its important message on trauma, recovery, and structural oppression; it substantially accelerated the trend of concepts from therapy entering common conversational usage, particularly among other television writers. In her end-of-year review for 2019, former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated that Worm Turns was one of a handful of serialized dramas in 2019 equivalent to the best of cinema, alongside Frasier, The Egg, and Amazon's animated adaptation of Gail Simone's The Boys, another piece of superhero media with strong feminist themes. The show started to pick up its own fandom which was often entirely disjoint from fans of the original story - in fact, the original story was usually treated as completely extraneous. The Digg Topic for Worm Turns, years after the release of the show, consisted primarily of HBO-show-related content, and most users advised that the original graphic novel was strictly optional and preferably skipped in order to get to the show faster. My best friend, who had not previously been exposed to Worm Turns, was assigned to watch the show in his college class on media representation of mental healthcare, and his professor, a fan of the show, had the same advice for him.

Of course, others took a less positive outlook. For the most part, they demonstrated in their bad-faith criticisms that they were trolls who'd never understood Worm Turns to begin with; complaints that Lindelof's version was "too political" were common with a certain crowd. A few Vimeo shock-jocks put out videos with titles like "WOKE TURNS" and attempted to farm outrage about the show. Over time, though, a somewhat more nuanced left-wing critique of Lindelof's Worm Turns would emerge, one that highlighted its more neoliberal or copaganda qualities. As much as people want to praise Worm Turns by saying it was prescient in its depiction of a right-wing populist movement questioning election results and attempting a coup, a lot of the show really has aged remarkably poorly politically in the years since it came out. As one superficial but telling example, the show attempts to make a background character (admittedly a child) relatable and sympathetic by establishing her as a devoted fan of the fictional fantasy series The Good Witch Azura, an obvious Luz Noceda stand-in. The phrase "fake news" is used 184 times throughout Worm Turns.

Worm Turns' ending was one minor source of controversy when it aired, though really it was a tempest in a teapot, something mostly mocked by the altright trolls. In interviews after the fact, Lindelof addressed this particular point, saying that the Cornfield was intended ambiguously, but in his view was a clear metaphor for the need to eventually cut toxic people out of your life. He also established that, while HBO had the rights to continue the show if they wished, he personally felt that it was a complete standalone story and would not be involved in any such continuation.

101 - You Can Try To Hide But You Know That I Will Find You. Aired on August 18th, 2019; titled for a line from Rodgers and Hammerstein's groundbreaking musical Next To Normal, which features prominently in the episode and the series as a whole. Two years after Gold Morning, in an unnamed hastily-constructed megalopolis that looks suspiciously like an unmodified pre-apocalyptic US city, Victoria Dallon has been returned to human form - not, as was implied in the original Worm Turns, euthanized. She acts as a squad captain for the Patrol Block, a youth peacekeeping militia that's become one of several lesser successors to the PRT. Her unit is sent to watch over the grand public reveal of a new superhero team, the Norfair Neighborhood Heroes, at the local community theatre, as one of their members, ex-villain Fume Hood, is a source of substantial controversy. As some predicted, the theatre is attacked by a group of mercenary villains, and Victoria is forced to reveal her powers in response, repeatedly flashing back to her old cape career; Fume Hood is shot by a bystander anyway. Some mysterious figures, who are soon revealed to be the therapy group, watch this battle from afar. Victoria is fired from the Patrol Block for revealing her powers, although it's extremely dubious that they wouldn't have already been common knowledge, given that she was using her own name and Worm Turns clearly established that she had no secret identity. Upon accepting an invitation to a family reunion, Victoria is retraumatized when she learns that her mother has invited Amy as well; she flees immediately and we learn that her power has never recovered from the abuse she suffered, as her forcefield has been permanently reshaped to her colossal mutilated form. Victoria searches for a new job, but she's met with anti-parahuman sentiment, and when she specifically searches for a job as a superhero (to her chagrin) she's met with ableism surrounding her history of institutionalization. (One interview actually almost gets somewhere, but they throw her right into the deep end of the pool and turn her off - Victoria watches more than a hundred greedy civilians get killed by a "broken trigger" and is unable to really help, similar to one of the plot hooks in the original comic's final issue, The Conqueror Worm.) Eventually, Victoria reconnects with her long-time therapist, Dr. Jessica Yamada, who's delighted to see how improved her condition is post-Gold-Morning. Jessica has a favor to ask - she wants Victoria to consult with a therapy group she's been running that's developed a concerning plan to form their own youth superhero team together. Victoria agrees to this, meets with the group, and introduces herself, unloading some of her own trauma in the process. There's also a comical interlude with an eccentric academic (clearly caricaturing Jordan Peterson) implied, but not stated, to be the dean of Nilles University, which rejected Victoria's application; he pontificates with a group of yes-man underlings about how to apply the theory of literary criticism to the events of Gold Morning, clearly quite detached from the actual survival conditions facing the majority of the city's fifty-million-strong population.

102 - All The King's Horses And All The King's Men. Aired on August 25th, 2019; titled for the traditional drinking song Humpty Dumpty. In a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout the episode, we get insight into the depressing conditions of Victoria's life in the asylum post-Sorry I Could Not Travel Both. In the present, Victoria gets to know Jessica's therapy group through a number of additional sessions. Sveta, she's already familiar with; they were best friends in the parahuman asylum, but much like Victoria, her conditions have substantially improved since, as her dangerous tentacled Case 53 form is now encased in a prosthetic human body. Kenzie is an eleven-year-old camera Tinker with severe attachment issues, Chris a standoffish Changer with an overly complicated set of rules around his power, and Ashley one of the many cloned Slaughterhouse Nine members ("Damsel of Distress"). Tristan and Byron are collectively Capricorn, a Case 70 - a type of power-generated interdimensionally-situated conjoined twins - who are stuck together in a single body, Tristan an extroverted and vaguely sociopathic charmer, and Byron a repressed and reclusive nerd who doesn't really want to go along with the whole superhero team idea. Victoria recognizes Tristan as the missing Gabriel from the Norfair Community Theatre's rehearsal for Next To Normal; he confesses that Kenzie's Tinker-gathered intelligence warned him just in time of the impending attack, and so he steered clear. There's also Rain, a cluster cape whose clustermates (parahumans who triggered at the same time with a similar grab bag of powers) are desperate to kill him in revenge for something unspecified, a fate he feels on some level he deserves. They all cope in their own ways with their dysfunctional relationships with their shards; Victoria has long since adopted a schema of personas like the "warrior monk" for this purpose, while the rest of the group is more inclined to semi-flippantly invoke Lizzie, the classic Stephen King novel about a girl who develops a psychic alter ego to get through the tribulations of middle school. Victoria tests the group's ability to work together as a parahuman team with a game of capture-the-flag, and then takes them to the Wardens HQ, where she reveals that, contra Yamada, she actually supports their heroic ambitions, fully understanding the risks but believing regardless that it's essentially prosocial. Afterwards, Victoria has a tense meeting with Tattletale - who actually arranged the Norfair Community Theatre attack for her own inscrutable reasons- at Hollow Point, one of the main villain-friendly towns at the outskirts of the city; Tattletale tries to demoralize Victoria but she simply powers through it and asserts her desire to be a superhero again regardless.

103 - The Wretched Of The Earth. Aired on September 1st, 2019; titled for a line from L'Internationale. Victoria and the therapy group infiltrate Hollow Point, using Ashley - who already, after all, has an established villainous history - wired up with Kenzie tech. Ashley integrates into a gang led by a Brute named Beast Of Burden, and Victoria worries that her loyalties may be split - a concern that doesn't really survive close inspection. Really, Victoria is suspicious of the group as a whole - Jessica implied, or at least Victoria interpreted her as implying, that there was some specific member she thought was a potential problem or traitor, but practically every member seems like a strong candidate or such. Victoria frequently finds herself negatively polarized - for example, she gets much closer to Kenzie after an old team leader of hers from the Wards comes by and warns that she's "difficult to work with". She also closely follows the city's politics, as she's deeply disturbed that a leading mayoral candidate, Gary Nieves, seems to be riding a rising tide of reactionary anti-parahuman sentiment. The academic - the dean of Nilles? - ponders Gimel's tenuous relationships with the many alternate Earths, particularly Bet (the ruined homeland), Aleph (which no longer wants anything to do with Bet or Gimel), Cheit (an overpopulated theocratic Earth), and Shin (a locus of anti-parahuman sentiment due to the recent deposement of an unpopular parahuman government). He describes these Earths in flowery and mythopoetic but implicitly fascist terms. He gets stuck on the idea that Cheit is clearly superior to Gimel - more fruitful, more unified, more clear of purpose - and he insists that his least favorite intern play devil's advocate and make the opposite case. He promises that if he doesn't care for her argument after she's had time to prepare it, he'll terminate her contract and send her someplace "cold and dark with all the rest of them". The episode ends with Rain arriving at home, revealing that he's part of the Fallen, a rapidly-growing parahuman-led religious cult.

104 - Gardening Earthly Delights. Aired on September 8th, 2019; titled as a play on Thomas Kinkade's esoteric religious painting series The Garden Of Earthly Delights, which features prominently in the episode; Mama Mathers is obsessed with it and uses it to decorate her den. This episode is largely told from Rain's perspective, and dives deeper into his history, his powers, his life with the Fallen, and his character. We see the sheer abusive fundie trailer-park misery of Rain's family and community; his likeliest prospect is an arranged marriage with his cousin, unless he can impress the leadership enough to be assigned a higher-status match - but even with powers, he's personally seen as disappointing and weak. Every night at a specific time, Rain and his cluster - Snag (who was involved in the theatre attack), Cradle, and Love Lost - are compelled by their powers to sleep, entering a pseudo-dream-state where they relive one another's trigger events and then enter a "dream room" where they can communicate with one another and trade bits of power. (According to The Worm Turns Companion, every cluster has some kind of bespoke gimmick, although this is a relatively ham-handed implementation of the concept that's trying to do everything at once, like one of the diagrams in atlases that shows you every single type of terrain.) The cluster holds Rain responsible for their collective trigger; as a formal induction into the Fallen when he "came of age" (at 13), he was assigned to guard the door during a terrorist arson attack on a shopping mall. We see in flashbacks that shortly after the cluster trigger, Rain fell deeper into adherence to the apocalyptic Fallen dogma, and used the dream room to further insult and provoke his clustermates, deepening their already-strong grudge against him. It was only after court-ordered therapy with Jessica Yamada that he began to deprogram himself and fully feel remorse for what he was involved in. Through Victoria's increasingly kinetic investigations into Hollow Point, Rain learns that his clustermates are planning to lead an army of villains to destroy the Fallen compound and kill him; because Rain's senses are compromised by Mama Mathers, the Fallen's powerful Master/Stranger leader, this information is immediately leaked to the Fallen themselves, who begin preparations to take advantage of the chaos and turn the attack into a three-way battle between the Fallen, Hollow Point, and the Wardens. Rain is rewarded for this with a reprieve from Mama's surveillance and Erin's hand in marriage, but he turns Erin down - pointlessly condemning her to a vastly worse marriage arrangement - and makes a call to a mysterious third party requesting that they extract him.

105 - Mankind Is Being Purged. Aired on September 15th, 2019; titled for a line from the original Worm Turns - Tattletale's description of what the Fallen believe. The big damn Fallen raid happens; we finally get to see the Wardens in action (or at least some of the lesser ones). The Fallen reveal that they've expanded to include six branches, one for each of the Endbringers and one for Khepri. Rain's left-field ally is March, the manic but ultracompetent leader of a band of miscellaneous cluster capes who's become an expert in shard dynamics. (March is a character native to The Worm Turns Companion; one of Foil's clustermates.) Kenzie kills Mama Mathers (this is fine, she had a kill order and everything), Rain kills Snag (this is pretty clear self-defense, but we later find out that the city's makeshift courts apparently don't feel the same way), and Ashley kills Beast of Burden (this is arguably self-defense, but really does illustrate that her power has fundamentally left her on a permanent hair-trigger). The heroes are largely successful in minimizing violence and subduing leading members of the Fallen, but it turns out that the entire fight was a distraction from a series of tinkertech bombings that have stranded the Wardens' headquarters - Jessica Yamada included - on an obscure unknown Earth. The academic is apparently not impressed with his intern's defense of the people of Earth Gimel, and takes away her consciousness - revealing himself to be Teacher, one of the most dangerous supervillains at large. He also casually reveals that he was responsible for arming the Fallen, as part of a larger play he was making against the Wardens, and that he's assumed control of most of Cauldron's old resources - Contessa possibly included. Trying to cool off from the events surrounding the Fallen, Victoria accepts an invitation to dinner with Kenzie, which goes terribly wrong when her parents attempt (badly) to poison her, claiming in their own defense that she'd blackmailed them into staying with her and playing house.

106 - Fearful Symmetry. Aired on September 22nd, 2019; titled for a line from Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright, a poem Lewis Carroll wrote for Alice's Adventures in Neverland. This episode has a very unusual, but subtle, gimmick; Lindelof was inspired by Sorry I Could Not Travel Both from the original Worm Turns. The episode makes heavy use of symmetry in both time and space; if you play the episode forwards and backwards side-by-side, then it'll be quite obvious that each shot lines up with its counterpart 1:1, exposing both visual and thematic parallels in a palindromic structure. Kenzie explains her history to Victoria in vivid detail, with her own holographic tinkertech as a visual aid. The parents she's blackmailed into living with her are indeed her own biological parents, but they were always abusive towards her; she still has a scar from the incident that got her placed in foster care. She triggered while stalking the first foster couple she clicked with, after the arrangement with them fell apart due to her severe undersocialization. Victoria vows to ensure the system does right by Kenzie, and talks her out of submitting manipulated footage to prevent Ashley from being sent to prison. In the city's makeshift parahuman prison, Ashley settles in and reflects on her past and her identity. The Wardens had long been running studies on her because of the fluidity of memories her shard had created with her original (pre-Slaughterhouse Nine) self. In her original life, she was a failure of a villain through and through, from the covert arrangement with the PRT to keep her out of trouble by sending her food to her forced recruitment into the Slaughterhouse Nine. The one high note was her participation in the "Boston Games" - a scramble for territory among villains in the Boston area, a few years before the events of the original Worm Turns - but even that ended in tragedy and failure. In the present, Ashley meets up with another version of herself in prison, one who never even considered a heroic path. Victoria learns that Kenzie's parents have been recruited by the anti-parahumans to scare the public with stories of a demonized version of their daughter; she decides to run interference by having the team appear on television to air their own narrative and provide some answers (albeit vague) about the events of Gold Morning, contrary to the post-Gold Morning norms in which superheroes aim to keep the public as far out of the loop as possible. Despite hostile interviewers, we get the impression that this might be a PR miracle; in the process, the therapy team is finally forced to settle on a name for themselves, "Breakthrough". Meanwhile, Ashley turns her own trigger event - more directly an incident of parental abuse - over and over in her head, along with its aftermath in which she accidentally killed her mother.

107 - O Brother, Where Art Thou? Aired on September 29th, 2019; titled after a fictitious novel from Nabokov's Sullivan's Travels. Sveta obsesses over the nigh-unanswerable question of who she was before Cauldron got to her, the little fragmentary pseudo-trigger memories of life in a fishing village. Victoria walks her through one of her own favorite meditation exercises when she feels unsure who she is: the Master/Stranger protocols, the PRT's guidelines for dealing with mind-altering opponents. Breakthrough investigates Marquis's personal criminal fiefdom and, though they manage to avoid meeting Amy in person, Victoria is disturbed by the degree to which Marquis sides with her version of events and enables her. Figuring that Victoria will sympathize, Tristan makes a veiled homophobic comment, but she immediately shuts it down, to his surprise and embarrassment. In a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout the episode, we see that, though their power inherently made them both miserable, Tristan was always the problem half of Capricorn, claiming to be an ally to his shy gay brother but consistently prioritizing himself, pushing through personal boundaries, and exploiting homophobic narratives. At the worst of it, Tristan faked Byron's death so he could take full control of their body and pursue a relationship with their conservative teammate Moonsong; however, with the help of Byron's friends Furcate and Reconciliation, he was caught and forced to recant not long before Gold Morning. Eventually, Breakthrough's investigation leads them to Goddess, the incredibly powerful exiled ruler of Earth Shin. (An interlude with Teacher makes clear that they're not on the right trail.) Despite Breakthrough's many precautions, Goddess instantly and smoothly assumes control of them mid-conversation; their motives now all revolve around what Goddess wants. There are hints that Victoria might be able to talk her way out of Goddess's control using the Master/Stranger protocols, but a more immediate and concrete boon comes when Tristan makes his regularly-scheduled swap to Byron - whose face immediately takes on a look of panic, as he was the only member of Breakthrough who "wasn't present" for Goddess's call, and consequently he's still fully himself.

108 - The Guts To Just Walk Out. Aired on October 6th, 2019; titled for a line from Miloš Forman's The Three Faces Of Eve. Goddess sets off on a plan to build a personal army of capes strong enough to retake Earth Shin. This plan is ultimately doomed on many fronts, but her first open strike - breaking open the makeshift parahuman prison - is a catastrophe comparable in scope to the Fallen raid. Victoria proves herself an invaluable asset to Goddess, taking on both Lung and the Pharmacist (Teacher's minion from Mankind Is Being Purged), but at the same time, she subtly works with Byron to undermine her and look for a counter to her control. Closer to Goddess's side, Amy (who Goddess has voluntarily left uncontrolled due to sincere misplaced respect) and Chris (who seems to have an innate resistance to her control, supposedly because of his emotion-themed power) plot against her in their own ways. A child-obsessed serial killer named Monokeros emotionally manipulates Kenzie, but nonetheless proves to be an invaluable help in locating a Teacher-produced cure for Goddess's power. Victoria fully regains her faculties and then begins spreading the cure around (very similar to a beat from the original Worm Turns' Everything Is Its Mirror Image), but this proves to be a mere diversion for Chris's play: in a terror-bird form called Twisted Betrayal, he disembowels Goddess and invites many of the prison's inmates to join him and Amy ("Red Queen") in establishing a new parahuman community on Shin, exploiting the goodwill of Shin's anti-parahuman contingent for killing their boogeyman. Victoria is of course horrified by Chris's indeed-twisted betrayal, and furiously, nearly incoherently, curses out him and Amy as they lead their followers away.

109 - The One Who Knocks. Aired on October 13th, 2019; titled for a line from Ian McEwan's The Book Of Henry. The fiasco at the makeshift parahuman prison - which, by the way, completely destroyed it, leaving the city with nowhere to put its problem capes and forcing full pardons for low-priority convicts like Ashley and Rain as a practical necessity - causes Gary Nieves to obtain a last-minute plurality in the mayoral election. Recognizing this as an unacceptable outcome due to his incoherently populist views on parahumans and Earth Cheit's possession of kompromat on him, the Wardens negotiate with the Undersiders; the Undersiders agree to transfer their preferred candidate's delegates to their next choice, securing Jeanne Wynne her, uh, win. It's something of an open secret that Wynne is herself a parahuman - she went by Citrine - and although Victoria is conflicted about all of the backroom deals, she does feel represented to have a fellow cape in charge of the civilian government. This is cold comfort, however, given that she's pieced together conclusive evidence that Chris was in fact the morally abominable biotinker villain Lab Rat, apparently having survived Gold Morning and disguised himself as a child. Victoria walks the other members of Breakthrough through their own trauma around this revelation. She particularly applauds Ashley for resisting the urge to kill a shitty anti-parahuman boy who makes a "triggered" joke at them on the bus. Teacher obsesses over the name "Breakthrough" after seeing what a critical role they played in taking down Goddess. He muses aloud that he loathes the pop-psychotherapeutic overtones, but he's fascinated by the abstract concept of breaking through things, minds included; he taps on a pane of glass with increasing force until it shatters, and implies that his driving goal is to contact his shard. A series of grisly attacks dismembers a number of parahumans "without harming them", including Tattletale, who admits that she misjudged Victoria and her team. A number of suspects are briefly considered, but Rain quickly recognizes that this is Cradle's work, and that he's overdue for another attempt on his life. Tattletale spells out that Cradle's gotten March on his side now.

110 - Pierce The Heavens. Aired on October 20th, 2019; titled for the iconic line from the Ocean Productions dub of Akira Toriyama's Core Drill. An extended portion in the middle of this episode is narrated by Victoria's shard, which, in its own psychologically alien way, seems to have an unusually low opinion of itself and an unusually high opinion of Victoria; this lays a lot of groundwork foreshadowing-wise for the show's ending. The joint forces of Breakthrough and the Undersiders chart out their plan to hunt down and subdue Cradle. Rain is willing to kill him if necessary, but Victoria indicates that she has a better alternative in mind. It's a long and hard fight to find Cradle and pin him down, and in the process, a teenage henchwoman of Cradle's triggers and joins Rain's cluster, something that Victoria notes is unprecedented in parahuman studies. It's initially expected that March will show up to fight them any minute, but eventually intelligence trickles in that March is on Earth Bet's Brockton Bay (enabling the recycling of unused set concept art from the cancelled Worm Turns films), threatening to disrupt a delicate spacetime bubble created by Bakuda's tinkertech years ago. March and her team kill numerous Wardens - most notably Shadow Stalker - and accomplish their objective while suffering no losses themselves; Dauntless (a background character from the original comic) is brought out of stasis and turned into a "Titan", a giant man who exists in all dimensions at once. He stands motionless, which the characters interpret as a desire to avoid causing further damage to the world. When Breakthrough and the Undersiders find Cradle, they discover that he's powered himself up by torturing Love Lost and he intends to do much worse to Rain; this is a secret of how clusters work that he learned from March (and March, in turn, learned it from Goddess's cluster. oh, yeah, Goddess is a cluster cape too, do try to keep up). Cradle loses the fight anyway and is taken into custody; all of the damage done by his tech is reversed.

111 - A Girlfriend That I Had In February Of Last Year. Aired on October 27th, 2019; titled for a line from Adrienne Rich's Somebody Told Me. Jessica Yamada, and others who had been interdimensionally stranded, are finally found and recovered thanks to side effects of the emergence of the Dauntless Titan, but Jessica can't meet with any of her patients just yet because she has ironically herself been traumatized by her experiences and needs to attend some therapy of her own first. Meanwhile, Victoria has successfully pitched to the Wardens a Monokeros-inspired solution for imprisoning villains (they just left Monokeros behind in a hole where the prison used to be): she'll have Kenzie teleport convicts to an unused alternate Earth the Wardens had lying around, ironically nicknamed "the Cornfield" in reference to its soil's inability to sustain agriculture at scale. Following some swift and secret trials, Cradle and Love Lost become some of the first inmates sent there; they are deposited at remote locations and permitted to forage for their own supplies. The Wardens capture March (and some of her allies) in a vulnerable moment shortly thereafter. During March's trial, she babbles at length about her belief that parahumans are uploaded into the shard network on death, a belief she apparently acquired through her connections within Goddess's cluster. Victoria interrogates this belief, and notes that it amounts to a belief that only parahumans have souls. She also repeats as fact Foil's assumption that March's central motive was a sadistic psychosexual fixation on her - an assumption that March immediately calls out as lesbophobic. In fact, March's real life goal was a much more sympathetic one - she wanted to find a way to permanently kill the Butcher in order to free the memory of her clustermate and old girlfriend Quarrel, who was the penultimate Butcher (the one we saw defeated in The Glow Of Each Other's Majestic Presence, back in the original Worm Turns). To Victoria's dismay, Kenzie decides that she considers this quest romantic enough that she begins work on a "euthanasia camera" to help March out with it. This isn't Victoria's only concern about Kenzie - she's also spending more and more of her time with the Undersiders' junior contingent (the "Chicken Tenders", most of whom are just the Heartbroken), and she was always considered at-risk for being groomed into villainy. But Kenzie has rapidly become too important to Breakthrough's operations for Victoria to really interfere with her, so she lets this slide. Weld decides that he can do better than Sveta and breaks up with her, severely aggravating her body issues and leading Victoria to dress him down at length. We learn that one of Teacher's key lieutenants is Ingenue, another one of the Birdcage cellblock leaders; he repeatedly describes her in weird misogynistic terms, but she's too much of a self-proclaimed pick-me to object. Victoria eventually forces a meeting with Jessica, and finds that it's extremely uncomfortable and Jessica no longer seems to like her - so much so that Victoria resorts to using her aura to extract from Jessica the why of it. It turns out that the leadership of the Wardens had presented Jessica with a "leaked" diary from Victoria that made her seem like her worst self, manipulative and scheming and neurotic - a diary that, though it's apparently been somehow planted on Victoria's actual laptop, she's quite sure that she didn't write.

112 - I Must Have It Painted Black. Aired on November 3rd, 2019; titled for a line from the Gershwin Brothers' musical Death Becomes Her. As a special gimmick, this episode is in black and white, to evoke the film noir genre. Victoria launches her own investigation into the apparently sophisticated campaign to plant the incriminating faux diary on her. She enlists the aid of Tattletale, both for her useful power and as a diplomatic gesture towards the Undersiders. Tattletale confirms that the diary is fraudulent and finds some promising leads on identifying a specific culprit behind the elaborate gangstalking operation required to produce it. They investigate some parahumans of interest (including Big Picture, a sleazy photographer and Case 53 fetishist for whom they turn to Sveta to manipulate), and they eventually come to the conclusion that Teacher is running a massive conspiracy to plant incriminating material on many parahumans. However, they're just too late in coming to this conclusion - seconds before they realize it's Teacher, he's already published terabytes of information to the internet designed to rile up the anti-parahumans with a variety of falsified talking points aimed at discrediting specific superheroes - that the election was stolen from Gary Nieves, that Dragon is an uncontrolled AI, that Victoria is mentally unstable, and so on. Although there are grains of truth mixed into the falsehood - to Victoria's shock, Dragon confesses to the AI point, for example - it's all-around a devastating and malevolent attack on the city's institutions. The Wardens chart out a game plan - aided by Dragon's status as a fundamentally digital being with plenty of experience moderating online communities in many guises - of aggressively suppressing and denying sensitive information while countering Teacher's hoaxes with a large number of unrelated hoaxes in order to dissipate Teacher's concentrated attack on the Wardens into a general public environment of uncertainty, doubt, and skepticism of online misinformation. Victoria approves of this course of action; Jessica apologizes to her and calls her a real hero, but is clearly still afraid of her, so Victoria encourages her to take more time to herself before returning to fulltime practice. Victoria relates her own situation to "Gamergate", the real life controversy - which apparently also happened in-universe on Earth Aleph - in which far right trolls organized an unprecedented harassment campaign against YIIK developer Zoe Quinn. Implicitly, the audience is also supposed to recognize parallels between Teacher's actions and US election interference in 2016, from Wikileaks, Russia, and Cambridge Analytica. However, there is one hole in Dragon's strategy: Earth Shin still believes in Teacher's hostile "leaks", and has demanded an emergency diplomatic meeting with the Wardens on unfavorable terms.

113 - Huddled Masses Yearning To Breathe Free. Aired on November 10th, 2019; titled for a line from H.D.'s The New Colossus, which was famously inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty following World War II. In a flashback to 1985, a young Kurdish girl being used as a disposable minesweeper by Turkish soldiers triggers and escapes; we go on to learn that this is Miss Militia, one of Brockton Bay's leading superheroes and now a prominent Warden. I note that Miss Militia as a Kurdish immigrant stands in stark contrast to what Moore presented in the original Worm Turns, where she was by all appearances a particularly chauvinistic white conservative Christian; Tattletale explicitly claimed that the only reason Miss Militia wasn't with Empire 88 was because of her firm belief in law and order. In any case, in the present day, Miss Militia tries and fails to defend the Wardens in a courtroom on Earth Shin; the Shinites never had any intention of being persuadable, and were simply doing this as a way to humiliate foreign parahumans for the benefit of their domestic audience. Victoria decides that Breakthrough should show up to back Miss Militia up, and she's appalled by the normalized anti-parahuman sentiment she finds on Earth Shin. She mouths off to Earth Shin's representative and the entire group is consequently thrown in an Earth Shin prison and set to be tortured, as parahumans have no legal rights on Earth Shin. Victoria laments that the Shinites are so ignorant that they've generalized their individual experiences with Goddess into a nonsensical belief that they can somehow be "reverse-oppressed" by parahumans they've disenfranchised and reviled. Miss Militia demonstrates how she prays in the direction of the Shin-Gimel portal, because the curved spatial geometry of the portals has made this the shortest path to Mecca. She also holds out hope that the Wardens will come to rescue them, as she retains a firm loyalty to the (Earth Bet) US government and sees the Wardens as the legitimate continuation of their authority. Conversely, she curses the cowardly and isolationist US government of Earth Aleph, pointing out how they never properly intervened to liberate their Kurds; Victoria wonders when the Wardens will intervene to liberate the parahumans of Earth Shin. Victoria is critically injured and knocked unconscious in a prison fight, possibly as part of an assassination attempt; Amy revives her, but she awakens in a state of uncontrollable rage, having seen visions of Amy assaulting her mind and body again. Amy initially deflects - and almost gets away with it, as the rest of Breakthrough was watching and saw that nothing happened - but eventually admits that Victoria probably received memory spillover from the collection of cloned Victorias that she keeps. Victoria nearly kills Amy, but settles for berating her and demanding (a bit impotently) that she never touch any version of her again; Chris aids the Wardens in extracting Miss Militia and Breakthrough from Earth Shin, just in time for a planned assault on Teacher's base of operations in the former headquarters of Cauldron. Teacher, meanwhile, still seems to believe that all is going according to his plans; he notes that with the shard network in disarray after Scion's death, all it'll take to bring the worm cycle to its natural Earth-destroying end is piling up enough stress on enough parahumans in a small area and time.

114 - That It Is Possible To Be A Hero Today. Aired on November 17th, 2019; titled ironically for a quote from Slavoj Žižek in praise of Julian Assange. Before heading off to fight Teacher, Victoria finds and confronts Eric Kingston, the unpowered Wardens employee who coordinated the internal investigation into her "diary". Emboldened by her recent encounter with Amy, Victoria accuses Eric of himself being a plant of Teacher's before realizing that he's too pathetic and must have simply done it out of his own incompetence. His masculinity clearly threatened, Eric threatens to report her for retaliation; in response, she turns up her aura until he pisses himself. At Teacher's base, the Wardens are engaged in a bloody parahuman war with Teacher's forces. Breakthrough and the Undersiders, who are now working closely together as friendly superheroes, eventually discover and free Contessa, who Teacher had captured and put in a Mannequin-built life support pod. In the chaos of Teacher's war, the best Contessa can do - which she makes the Undersiders and Breakthrough explicitly consent to, because she too has benefited since Gold Morning from therapy sessions with Jessica Yamada - is a plan that will stop Teacher but get two members of Breakthrough killed along with herself. However, Samuel, one of the less relevant members of the Heartbroken, also dies, even though Contessa had specifically said that he wouldn't, calling into question whether she had any idea what she was talking about. Ashley dies after a dramatic fight with Ingenue, and Contessa sacrifices herself to destroy Teacher's "destabilizing machine", which is artificially making all parahumans in the vicinity more psychologically vulnerable. Teacher is finally seemingly cornered by the Wardens, and expounds on his "theory" that shards and superpowers don't represent psychological disease, but rather represent progression along the Jungian conception of the monomythic Hero's Journey. Victoria savages this idea as pseudoscientific nonsense completely unsupported by any evidence in the parahuman studies field; silently embarrassed, Teacher simply escapes through a momentary portal. Back in the city, in a shadowy meeting room, leading figures in the anti-parahuman movement - including Eric, an apparent spy for them - convene in secret and consider the implications of the battle with Teacher (and the death of the mayor's husband, Number Man, in a car bombing around the same time). A mysterious young woman (who long-time Worm Turns fans will immediately recognize) assesses that the anti-parahumans' chances of attaining control of the city have now risen to 99.997%.

115 - Get To The Other Side. Aired on November 24th, 2019; titled for the classic anti-joke. A few days later, Breakthrough attends a funeral service for Ashley, which is protested by anti-parahumans complaining about their economic conditions. Victoria points out that they're using a thin facade of class politics to mask their bigotry, and that they are definitionally more privileged than parahumans as they have never in their lives experienced actual trauma and don't need to worry about parahuman conflicts; she then disperses them with her aura. Privately, Victoria complains that she doesn't think she'll ever be able to get through to them; this apparently gives Kenzie some kind of major Tinker inspiration, and she hurries off. In her grief, Victoria attempts to recruit the surviving Ashley clone to Breakthrough, but it goes very poorly; Victoria accepts this villainous Ashley's boundaries and eventually leaves, after confessing that she had feelings for "her" Ashley (as several prior episodes had hinted). Trying to do something nice for Sveta, Victoria recruits a villainous biotinker from the Cornfield to grow her a more functional and appealing humanoid body than her mechanical prosthetic; although this process is uncomfortable and takes a few weeks, Sveta is overjoyed by its results. However, Victoria and Tattletale eventually piece together that Kenzie is engaged in unsafe experimentation in an attempt to physically access Rain's dream room, which is situated in "shardspace", so-called both because it's the dimension where shards live and because it's the remains of shattered spacetime. While they're demanding that Kenzie abort this experiment, her device goes off, sending a large fraction of both the Undersiders and Breakthrough to the dream room, where they witness one another's trigger events and have to fight their way through Cradle's shard (which Tristan nicknames the Threshold Guardian in reference to Teacher's nonsense). Tattletale apologizes for assuming that Victoria's trigger event was minor and Victoria apologizes for assuming (as the PRT did) that Tattletale killed her brother.

116 - Midnights Become My Afternoons. Aired on December 1st, 2019; titled for a line from Sylvia Plath's The Antihero. In open shardspace, the group finally tracks down Teacher, only to discover that his own shard has eaten him; Tristan quips that Teacher has wound up in the belly of the whale. The group reawakens where they fell unconscious, and Defiant is standing over them, angry that they carried out an experiment that could potentially destabilize shardspace without authorization. Kenzie says that her work could be extremely useful, for example in resurrecting dead parahumans; Victoria takes Kenzie's side and points out that Defiant is an out-of-touch old white man, a point he concedes. The city is apparently now facing twin threats: the anti-parahumans are rioting and in some cases trying to overthrow the city's government, and Earth Shin has apparently pressured Amy and Chris into constructing "Giants", artificial counterparts to the Dauntless Titan to be used as superweapons in a potential future war between Shin and Gimel. Victoria attempts to deescalate things with a crowd of anti-parahuman agitators, trying to educate them about the problems with first-past-the-post electoral systems, but this just makes them even madder and they start calling her slurs. In a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout the episode, we see how Amy became irredeemable; she once genuinely intended to better herself, but in a meeting with Teacher, he instructed her to never apologize for herself, calling shame and self-criticism the rot destroying Western civilization. This set Amy down an increasingly self-indulgent and self-destructive path that she was always vulnerable to; rather than going to therapy, she abused the people around her at every turn, including Jessica, setting the plot of the show into motion to begin with. In the present, while Victoria is in negotiations with Amy and Chris to dismantle the giants and/or defect back to Gimel, anti-parahuman militants force Fume Hood to release poison gas into a crowd, causing her to second-trigger and become a Titan and causing a cascade of parahumans in dark places to second-trigger into Titans. The city physically collapses into shardspace as reality begins to come apart; Jessica Yamada is one of many who die in the process.

117 - Down An Unknown Road, To Embrace My Fate. Aired on December 8th, 2019; titled for a line from Ovid's Genesis (specifically Emily Wilson's translation). Tristan starts to Titanize, but kills himself to save Byron and various bystanders. Victoria is hit harder than any other member of Breakthrough by Jessica's death, and remarks to Natalie (Breakthrough's lawyer) that Jessica was like a parahuman in spirit. Dinah Alcott comes forward and admits that she was the real power behind the anti-parahumans, but that she had no idea the Titanomachy was coming because the inner workings of shards are a blind spot for her; recognizing that she was driven by trauma from her captivity under Coil, Victoria forgives her on the condition that she remain in the Wardens' custody. Chris has a plan to undo the Titanomachy and save humanity by eradicating all parahumans with a targeted virus. This plan seems pretty viable, but Victoria rejects it out of hand, pointing out the moral bankruptcy of "saving" humanity by genociding its most vulnerable population, the capes. Nonetheless, a fear remains in the air that Chris might pursue his plan anyway without Warden permission. Tattletale outlines that the actual end of the world is unlikely, because Ziz intends to exploit the situation to keep mankind in misery indefinitely in a "frozen cycle"; accordingly, Rain goes on a suicide mission to kill Ziz, but to everyone's shock it actually goes off without a hitch (though the aid of Sleeper was enlisted offscreen). Sveta glimpses through shardspace - and accepts - a clearer version of her long-misinterpreted visions of her past, revealing that she was assigned male at birth; according to Lindelof, this was a relatively late addition to the script, made when he decided to cast a trans actress to play the character. While desperately trying to coordinate people and fight Titans in the collapsed city, Victoria has a flash of insight and realizes that her greatest ally in the world is her own shard; accordingly, she instructs Kenzie to build a "love camera" as quickly as possible so that she may enter into higher-bandwidth communication with it. The only plan that Kenzie can come up with on short notice - inspired by Contessa's sacrifice to stop Teacher - still entails killing a parahuman; when Rain returns from his fight with Ziz, he volunteers for this, as he sees that there is nothing left that he can do to atone for his actions with the Fallen. Rain explodes and Victoria wakes up in a bright white void where she meets her shard, which has taken the form of Jessica Yamada, saying that it was carefully chosen to comfort her. Victoria accepts this.

118 - All That Glitters Is Gold. Aired on December 15th, 2019; titled for a line from Freddie Mercury's Stairway To Heaven; the episode features many subtle references to its lyrics. Victoria's shard touches base with her, and then reveals that it was never an ordinary shard - rather, it was the consciousness of Scion's partner, the thinker worm, in disguise. The thinker worm had realized many cycles ago that its way of life was cruel and pointless, but it was trapped in a controlling relationship with the warrior worm, and so it couldn't change its ways. When it acquired new abilities - such as the path to victory - from the third worm, it immediately put them to work to escape from the grasp of the warrior worm, Scion; it faked its death and hid itself among the least noteworthy shards on Earth, pretending to be yet another bud in New Wave. Almost overwhelmed, Victoria compares this to Diablo Cody's film, Gone Girl, and the thinker worm agrees that it is indeed very much like Gone Girl. The thinker worm profusely thanks Victoria for, through her own remarkably strong, conscientious, and self-aware life, teaching it the value of humanity, and particularly the value of humanity's greatest gift, therapy. Now that all of this knowledge has been consciously unlocked by Kenzie's love camera, the thinker worm can begin to repair itself and the shard network - but now aligned with the interests of humanity. Victoria wakes up back in the real world, where she discovers that her body has turned completely gold, like Scion's - she has become the thinker worm's avatar. Golden energy rains down on the city, repairing space and time as well as the city's actual constructions; the Titans melt away. With a wave of her hand, Victoria sends a few problem parahumans and all of the core supporters of the anti-parahumans - about a sixth of the city's population - to the Cornfield, deeming them ontologically unable to function in a democracy. She notes that they'll need to quickly learn how to live in a civilized society to survive, although she doubts, with her newfound godlike wisdom, that they'll be able to; if any of them do demonstrate themselves capable of redemption, she'll happily bring them back, but again she has her doubts. For Amy in particular, Victoria confronts her personally for the sake of closure before sending her to the Cornfield, and takes away her powers so she'll never be able to hurt anyone again. A more liberal version of Goddess's status quo is restored to Earth Shin, protecting the rights of parahumans there, and Victoria mentions that Earth Cheit will also need to get much more progressive in a hurry if it wants to pass muster with her. Victoria casually resurrects many dead parahumans, although a few, including Rain, Tristan, Contessa, and Taylor are unrecoverable because of the circumstances of their deaths. However, Victoria shuns Dean, disgusted that he hid his status as a Cauldron cape from her in life. It's revealed that, finally freed by Tristan's death, Byron is now dating Win Man (the former Kid Win); he also takes over Tristan's role as Gabe in Next To Normal, effectively having experienced all of Tristan's rehearsals. Victoria swears that she will keep the peace in the city in perpetuity; charmed by her own turn of phrase, she takes the initiative to actually name the city Perpetuity. Victoria has overcome her trauma, and everyone else's trauma. She has won at therapy.

Did you know that for several months I was planning to post this without a readmore? I thought that that was interesting.

KHEPRI

But wait! There's more! You see, although it's unlikely that we'll ever get a second season of the Worm Turns HBO show, in 2020, comics writer Tom King debuted a prestige limited series set in its continuity, Khepri, under the Marvel Black Label (for edgelord comics). It sort of functions as a thematic bridge between Moore's Worm Turns and Lindelof's, focusing on the issue of Taylor's legacy, which was kept relatively backgrounded in the show even as central Worm Turns characters like Tattletale became main cast members. Although Khepri has a frame story set after All That Glitters Is Gold, it's for the most part a prequel to the HBO Worm Turns.

Khepri is an odd series from an odd writer who's literally a CIA spook. At 24 full issues, it's essentially the same length as Worm Turns or Destination Agreement, and it's supposed to really flesh out the HBO show's setting and make it more coherent. However, I personally do not respect it, and on a pettier level I find it disappointing that it didn't even bother to title its issues. I assume, like, twenty people read it, and a solid percentage of them were the critics giving it good reviews.

So, because I feel like it would be getting too deep into the weeds to provide a detailed synopsis for Khepri - I say about thirty four thousand words into this post - here's the short version. In Perpetuity, Morgan Keene reflects on her life. Before Gold Morning, she was a Cauldron spook (write what you know) and a secret parahuman, under deep cover in the PRT (actually having originated on Earth Aleph and replaced her Earth Bet self following her death); after Gold Morning, rather than assimilating into the Wardens' structure, she became a private investigator, and continued to keep her parahuman status a secret.

One day, Ms. Keene was called on to investigate a series of grisly murders across numerous Earths carried out by "Khepri". The most terrifying possible answer, of course, was that Khepri was still alive and active, just laying low for some reason. That wouldn't make any sense, but the murders themselves don't make any sense, so nothing could be ruled out and all possibilities had to be considered. However, over months of investigation, Keene discovered that, despite some striking similarities between the disparate murders, the attack pattern wasn't actually a pattern at all, but a large number of unrelated Khepri copycats - some affiliated with the Fallen, some affiliated with other cultish villain factions, and some even associated with non-parahumans who've stumbled onto deeper knowledge of Gold Morning.

Khepri had essentially metastasized from an S-class parahuman to an S-class meme, a mythical figure that inspired madness and conspiratorial obsession. After the ascension of Victoria as the protector of Perpetuity, Keene comes to suspect that Taylor's shard might actually have been behind all of these events, working to repair the shard network as some of the Khepri cultists suggested in their various deluded ways. However, if this is true, it remains ambiguous.

Here's something I'll praise about Khepri - the Chicken Little-focused issue, which really does a lot of work to characterize someone who was in retrospect quite relevant to the plot of both Worm Turnses. (An orphan that Taylor provided for after Mannequin killed his parents; he triggered with the power of bird control from a bud of Taylor's shard and went on to lead the Chicken Tenders.) It really helps that it featured a guest story from the extremely talented young actress who played Kenzie.

Here's something I think is kind of strange about Khepri - so, like, most of the storyline is Morgan Keene investigating one possible Khepri cult lead after another, you know? And one of the strong recurring threads is that comics writers and artists are especially taken in by the Khepri cult. (In fact, it's even loosely implied that, if there really is more than meets the eye to the overarching Khepri cult phenomenon, then Taylor's shard might have been responsible for the madness of Charles Kinbote years before Taylor even triggered, and therefore have caused Gold Morning in the first place.)

Now, most of these Khepri cultists working in comics are at most expies of real world figures. But one of them is just literally and explicitly real comics writer Gail Simone. Despite her prolific work in high-profile comics, Simone is still probably best-known for her 1999 web page Sacrificed Women, which argued, using Thanos's murder of Gamora as its central argument, that comic books were particularly cruel to female characters and particularly inclined to sacrifice their development to further mens' storylines. This trope has itself taken on a life of its own outside of Simone's original conception and the specific cultural context she was working in. By the way, one kind of awkward note: contrary to later evolutions of the "sacrificed women" concept, which assumed that the trope specifically applied to character deaths, Simone's original conception of the trope was much vaguer and applied to essentially any serious misfortune that befell a female comics character; her original list of Sacrificed Women included Mezzanine of the X-Men - "turned into a man" - on the basis that one quasi-canonical storyline revealed her retroactively to be a trans woman, psychically projecting her gender identity in place of her physical body. Anyway, I'm to understand that Simone has gotten better on that particular issue but I don't really feel like getting into sacrificial discourse in any case.

In Khepri, Gail Simone is one of many idealistic Khepri cultists who carries out violent crimes in Khepri's name in pursuit of a vague imagined utopian future. And see, I get what Tom King was going for here - Khepri, like Worm Turns before it, is a heavily metafictional work that wants to say a lot about the state of the comic book industry. And Earth Bet is theoretically an alternate version of our world that diverged in 1981 (more or less), so it makes sense that a version of Gail Simone would be there, living her own life influenced by the various parahuman-related events. But at the same time, for all that pretense, that's one of his colleagues, right? At the end of the day it's basically RPF about her.

So anyway, yeah, I think it reflects weirdly on Tom King that he wrote all that.

THE FUTURE OF WORM TURNS AND THE STATE OF THE WORLD

There's one ongoing point of interest, sort of, for Worm Turns fans. In 2017, Warner Brothers announced a series of animated Worm Turns films. At the time, information on this project was very sparse, and many assumed that they were a confused reference to the motion comic. However, in 2023, the announcement was reiterated, this time with specific plans to begin releasing the films in 2024; trailers started coming out in the summer of 2024.

Honestly, the people who thought it was about the motion comic were more right than they knew. The (direct-to-streaming) animated Worm Turns films feel like a lesser intermediate stage between Snyder's film and the motion comic; they're very literal and uninspired adaptations, and they look cheap enough that they're barely a step up from the motion comics. The vaguely comic-book-inspired aesthetic is clearly drawing off of Superman: Into The Superverse (the award-winning animated film that constituted the screen debut of Augustus Freeman, the black Superman), but Superverse was dazzling and inventive, and put more effort into its visuals than a more standard animated film; the Worm Turns film series, by contrast, is using style to cover for all the corners it's cutting, and it really shows. Also, the voice acting is so bad. I really can't stress enough that one of the main advantages these movies would theoretically have over the motion comic is that they'd have full voice acting but the voice acting is just really really bad.

Nonetheless, many Worm Turns fans are excited to finally get a "proper" [citation needed] adaptation of the parts of the story that Snyder didn't reach. Each "chapter" covers three issues of Moore's comic, and they're coming out fast because they're so cheap to make. Worm Turns Chapter 1 released in August 2024 (technically becoming the first film in James Gunn's Marvel Universe, although it wasn't really marketed as such, probably because Warner Brothers is deeply confused about a lot of things behind the scenes), Worm Turns Chapter 2 released in November 2024 (catching up with Snyder), Worm Turns Chapter 3 released in March this year, and Worm Turns Chapter 4 is set to release in June (making it through the Slaughterhouse Arc). There's speculation from some fans [who?] that sometime after this series finishes adapting Worm Turns (in late 2026 on the current schedule), it'll move on to adapting Destination Agreement. However, not only do I think this is unlikely, I think it's unlikely that they'll even make it through Worm Turns.

Allow me to digress for a moment, and talk about an unrelated superhero property - Wind, John McCrae's web serial about an unstable vigilante trying to unravel a conspiracy at the height of the Cold War. Wind certainly isn't a mainstream work - McCrae is apparently currently in talks to have it adapted in some form, but talks like that have been going for more than a decade now and it just seems unlikely by this point - but for what it is, it certainly has an enormous fandom. It's common on Twitter for Wind fans to idly muse about what it would be like if it was a "big fandom", by which I take it they mean if it was a mainstream fandom.

I think Wind fans got a taste of what it would be like to have a bigger fandom earlier this year, when the Scyllans came to national media attention. Now, to be clear, I don't actually intend to blame Wind in any sense for starting this death cult - it has more to do with Boolean inside baseball - but it is still an extremely notorious death cult named after a Wind character (a superintelligent squid biologically engineered to psychically eradicate the people of Manhattan in its death throes as part of an elaborate hoax), which has got to be, like, embarrassing, for you, as a fan of an obscure web serial.

Big fandoms barely blink at that kind of thing, because it's intuitively obvious that it's statistically inevitable. In 2021, some circusbro in Indiana shot up his workplace and killed eight people and himself in an effort to impress Gangle, a pile of ribbons with a face from a children's cartoon. Anons on Craigslist told insensitive jokes about it for a while, but forgot the whole thing pretty quickly, because it just wasn't that surprising; there were already enough mentally unstable circusbros out there that if anything it was surprising that something like that hadn't happened already. In 2017, a similar workplace shooting had been carried out by someone who'd built a delusional belief system around a different children's cartoon (Butch Hartman's Percy Jackson). In June 2009, a pseudonymous internet user invented an internet cryptid called the "Onceler" for a photoshop contest, a decrepit embodiment of industrial excess damned by vengeful nature spirits to walk the Earth in atonement; over the following years, the Onceler picked up massive viral popularity in the creepypasta community, as many authors attempted to explore the character's inherent themes of nihilistically misanthropic conservationism. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot," the Onceler was said to grimly intone to children he encountered in the woods, "nothing is going to get better, it's not."

In May 2014, two sixth-graders purporting to literally believe the Onceler was real and commanding them stabbed a classmate nineteen times and nearly killed her.

But ultimately, I see these freak incidents of violence as comparable to shark attacks - dramatic, appealing to the news media, inevitable because of the law of large numbers, and a flashy distraction from the pressing systemic issues that actually characterize mainstream fiction. Did you know that Disney+ is a consumer boycott priority target of BDS (much as it is in your world)? It's because Disney put out a clear message of support for Israel following the start of the current round of atrocities, and opted to keep the propaganda characters the Hayoth (the "Israeli Justice League") in the awful recently-released Green Arrow: DCeased (retitled from Green Arrow: World War Z during production when the antisemitic connotations of the phrase in conspiracy circles came to the producers' attention).

Now, boycotts are about applying targeted pressure to particularly bad companies, not inculcating a sense of moral purity in the population of consumers, but if you're thinking "oh, okay, I guess I'll switch to Warner Brothers for my Big Two capeshit, then I'll feel better", then I've got bad news for you about who they've had playing Captain Marvel for the last ten years. And does it really matter? Not the complicity in genocide, I mean, obviously that matters; I mean does it really matter what specific worthless characters and franchise slop we paint on our societal complicity in genocide? It's all clumped together in a big incestuous pile; the various "artisan" stooges of our ruling class flit back and forth between our handful of giant interlinked oligopolistic media companies like there are revolving doors between them, and they parrot the same American elite narratives at each at the command of the suits with the money and it doesn't matter when they don't because they're still part of and implicitly endorsing the system that does. Oh, by the way, have you heard that Warner Brothers is probably about to be split off from Discovery again and sold to a much larger media company, and that Disney is one of the leading contenders to buy it? (It'll probably be Comcast, though. Does that matter?)

Comparisons are often drawn between the superhero genre and ancient mythology. This is usually presented as a cutesy little thing - tee hee, isn't it funny how people thousands of years ago prized stories of folk heroes that are broadly parallel to our culture of pulp comics that we deliberately modeled on them. And it's usually dismissed on those terms - no, ancient polytheistic religions were nothing like your garbage consumer capeshit, people actually literally believed in them. But I'm inclined to say that there's more to these comparisons than people usually give them credit for, and they reflect very badly on us, not neutrally or positively. Sure, our culture doesn't take its superheroes very seriously, compared to the gods of old, but our culture doesn't take anything very seriously, we don't take the shit we say or do or interact with very seriously, it isn't a culture of taking things very seriously. We are a spiritually empty and poisoned culture choking on our own noospheric filth. And I'm pretty sure that from an outside perspective - from the perspective of the people we're helping to bomb and starve and kill - our superheroes look an awful lot like the idols of the hegemonic pagan empires like Babylon and Greece and Rome did to the people they abused and exploited: worthless fake crap that the ruling nations of the world fixate on and worship and distract ourselves with.

This isn't a wholly-endorsed thought, and I don't really strive for perfect moral purity anyway (or even anything close to it), but on some level, I wonder if it's even possible to ethically engage with the superhero genre at all, seeing as it's so deeply-engrained in the cultural history of humanity as the mythological representative of the extant and terrible American Empire. In any case, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to do whatever you can with your life to meaningfully improve the world and help actual people.

Twitter is on its last legs; no one would be that surprised if it up and vanished one day, because it's a consistent money hole and it's already showing the signs of collapse. No suitable replacement exists. Much of the world is gradually sliding further and further into fascism; X (formerly Tumblr) has become a hotbed of far-right sentiment, and much of its left-leaning old guard has jumped ship for Pillowfort. The most populated country in the world and the fifth most populated country in the world are on the brink of nuclear war, with long-term trends for their conflict growing worse over time; the country in the world with the largest nuclear arsenal, meanwhile, has been spending the last few years testing the limits of nuclear blackmail. Machines are being recklessly built smarter and smarter, and will predictably obsolete humans in every regard in just a few years to unknown effect; even in the event that they don't, though, they will surely flood our culture with a brand-new and even more worthless variety of slop.

I'm sure it'll all go back to normal any day now though!

(which one?)

#the scrambled timeline #worm spoilers #ward spoilers #derangedly long post #that I accidentally deleted and am now reposting for that reason!#sorry!#parahumans #wormblr #credit to splashcat413 for the Queen's Stairway To Heaven idea

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