#Danny witnessed it while being isolated

[tanglepelt]

Dp x dc

The one where Danny is perfect balance. He only has ecto levels when transformed. And doesn’t have any human dna as phantom.

Useful for hiding.

Bad when the anti ecto acts pass and the Giw begin to collect any contaminated citizen. Bigger problem when Danny is the only amity Parker not contaminated.

The GIW had announced they will begin decontamination on the citizens. Danny was held for a while but never showed any signs of contamination.

This leading to Danny being placed in the custody of some unsuspecting outsider.

It’s definitely a coincidence that the new city Danny has been forcefully moved to suddenly has the appearance of phantom. The GIW most wanted.

Definitely not a cause for concern when phantom starts hunting down villians and heros alike trying to convince anyone the GIW is conducting experiments on the contaminated. Not trying to cleanse them like they claimed.

[funny-bat-fruitloop]

I'm making a Vlad/Reader for the depraved, except I'm doing this to practice realistic relationships while keeping the humor and dialogue as close to canon as possible. . Chapter 1 has been released, I'm planning to add more. posting fanfic here as well.

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You were the outsider of your college group. Maddie studied biochemistry, her and Jack both studied mechanical engineering together, Vlad studied both alongside Maddie, and you? You simply studied computer science.

Sure, you later studied robotics and delved more into artificial intelligence, but at the time you were falling behind the trio. What makes matters worse is that you were in love with Vlad. He was too busy being in love with Maddie. Maddie and Jack were too busy with their Science.

You used to be closer during your first years. Then you drifted apart from the group.

Or the group drifted apart from you. But you phrased it the other way to feel better about yourself.

At least Maddie was nice. But it turned out that Maddie had a crush on you. You softly turned her down and told her you did not swing that way. She understood, and Vlad was elated that she stopped focusing on you.

She was surprisingly supportive, though, so she starts being more casual with her physical affections—she leaned against you and gave you hugs, at most, but never kisses of any type. Vlad glared at you every time.

You couldn’t handle Vlad’s glare towards you. You just couldn’t. You were so madly in love with him.

This wasn’t what you wanted for college. You wanted to thrive with less drama, not thrive in the drama of a love square. So you decided to turn it into a love triangle.

How? With distance.

You start making excuses about why you couldn’t hang out with them anymore. Maddie seemed pretty sad that you were becoming distant, and urged you to hang out with them more. Jack gave you puppy eyes, because it turns out that he enjoyed your dry wit and casual gifts—both clothing and food that you made.

Vlad looked...conflicted. As if as he did not know what to do with the slowly growing empty space. Every look he gave you after the start of you leaving seemed like he was having conflicts inside his mind.

But he did nothing. So you continued on with your life.

That was the start of your isolation.

You were pretty depressed now that you did not have anyone to accompany you. For the first few months of your departure from the group, people did not bother to include you in their friend groups due to your relationship with the “resident weirdos”.

You got into a robotics class and was forced to group with 2 other nerds, Gabin and Feen. It turns out, they were gay too. Dating, even.

Then the three of you started becoming closer in a platonic way. You were included in every conversation, arguments, and acted as a mediator for their spats which end up being resolved amongst the three of you.

Until the couple mutually broke up. You were devastated at the news, but it turns out all three of you were better as friends. Gabin turned out to be Bi and married a tall country Bisexual girl, and Feen turned out to be poly and married a few other people.

Even when the friend group grew larger, the three of you kept each other on your toes as you challenged each other to make robots. At some point, you made a lion-sized guard dog that read any sort of unique identification, like a treasured object, and chased intruders out of your home.

You gave this machine to a marketing professor as a joke. It ended up saving his life, which you did not intend to do at all (the machine dog was purposefully made with weak scraps for a chance for the victim to escape, in case it went haywire.) He was so grateful that he got you hired into a major tech company—Wayne Enterprises.

You got an award for it. Something close to a Nobel Prize. You’re pretty sure you were dragged out of the house with a blindfold, and were dropped onto the stage to receive the award. Or maybe you had too much coffee and dissociated the entire time.

Who knows. Photos of you taking your award in smudged eyeliner with a baffled expression became viral years down the line.

Gabin’s girlfriend also went out of the way to teach you “spellcraft”, which you thought was cool. She said that she could sense your “powerful bloodline”, and you entertained her by learning the basics.

You thought it was fun. Until a forced family reunion made you realize that Gabin’s girlfriend was absolutely not joking. Not fun.

Then it was your last year of college. You were forced to take a semester off due to the consequences of that disastrous family reunion. That year, you were having the time of your life while suffering with your thesis and OJT’s.

You almost missed the news of Vlad’s unfortunate accident. When you heard about what happened, your heart dropped to your feet.

Yes, you were trying to get over Vlad, but he did not deserve to almost die. You tried to visit him in the hospital but the nurses pushed you away. He needed something, anything, even if it is just to cheer him up.

You left some tupperware full of menudo and coconut milk pumpkin soup for the nurses to feed him. Nobody bothered to tell you that he left the hospital. He probably did not know that you cooked a large meal for him.

So you continued on with your life. You tried to reach Vlad a few times when you saw him back on the campus hallways, but he seemed too focused on...something. You did not want to bother him.

Life went on, and you managed to graduate in time. For your next couple of years, you worked as a robotics engineer for some more companies. Then you started a company with your friends several years down the line. You sold some patents, kept some patents, and you lived a comfortable life with enough money to support yourself, your needs, and your leisures.

You never got into a relationship, because you never tried. You were too afraid to be hurt.

Vlad Masters simply became Masters. He swindled, scammed, and stole with his newfound powers to become a billionaire. He’s seen some of your inventions sometimes, but what you made never really interested him.

Or rather, he was still conflicted at the thought of you.

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You were dared by one of your socialite friends to post photos of your outfit before your flight to Illinois, and announce your arrival on your barely active social media. You’ve always loved the gothic aesthetic and mastered your outfits throughout the years—though you slowly shifted your outfits to be more modern while retaining the aesthetic.

For some god damned reason, you got a somewhat larger following than you thought—more than 10,000 people were interested in your life. You mostly posted your projects, but your outfits got more attention.

The youth kept calling you “DILF” along with other unholy comments, no matter how much you tried to discourage them. They seemed to flock to your socmed ever since that photo of you receiving your awards became viral. They also kept calling you “pookie bear”, whatever that meant.

You tried to restrict comments, but a few of your friends kept disabling the restrictions. They enjoyed your suffering.

You were beyond your 40’s, sipping a cappuccino as you left the airport while holding your luggage in the other hand. Suddenly, a notification popped up in your phone. The sound from your phone indicated that it was a text message, and not another weird ass comment that required you to say “aren’t you disappointing your parents with these DILF comments?”

Your leg hooked around your luggage as you pick your phone up from your pants with one hand. It’s a message from...Jack Fenton?

0xxx-xxxx-xxxx: Hey Bucko! Remember me? Jack Fenton? Heard you were in Illinois! Do you mind meeting at our place in Amity Park and meet Maddie and I like old times? :-D

Oh shit. It’s your old college friends.

You cringed a little as you remembered the way you ghosted the first two people who were decent towards you. Sure, you had your reasons, but it wasn’t fair to them. You checked the rest of your schedule on your phone and find that you still have free time to spare. A quick google search about the town, and you found that your convention is just at the town next to Amity.

So you made your decision and decided to make this up, let bygones be bygones.

You: Sure! Give me the address and I’ll meet you there!

[k7l4d4]

Danny Phantom AU: ParaNormal

Hello all, I am a huge fan of Danny Phantom, but I often found myself disappointed with how underutilized certain characters and aspects of the show were before its conclusion. This AU is based on how Clockwork, the ghost in charge of overseeing time and the future, witnessing the formation of a NEW Timeline Parallel to the main. Everybody clap your hands!!

The basic premise is based on this: What if the Fentons had support for their research, like a proper laboratory? This is essentially based on the thought that the Fentons managed to publish and profitize some of the side-benefits of their research, such as Ectoplasm powered gear and weaponry, specifically the viability of Ectoplasm as a fuel source itself! After getting this revolution out there, the Fentons managed to reel in some support for their research, even partnering with a few groups in order to conduct more tests than was feasible prior. Let’s be honest here, in canon they were basically operating off of a shoe-string budget and their own ingenuity for their inventions, along with whatever devices they could repurpose to make more.

However, all that success comes at a cost, particularly when it attracts enemies. During a tour of their main lab building by the local elementary school, with support and supervision from local parents and industries, a disgruntled employee decides to cause some trouble after he’s fired for his conduct on the job. He destabilizes the prototype portal, while a young Danny, Sam, and Tucker, all of whom had snuck away from the class for their own reasons, are in the room. The resulting explosion changes everything.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker disappeared that day, presumed dead. The explosion devastated the town, random portals and specters appearing on an almost daily basis. Life as Amity Park had known it was irrevocably altered. A prominent side effect of the explosion was the emergence of Half-sides, people who had been exposed so deeply to ectoplasm that they had become essentially part ghost, though not to the extent that Danny was in Canon. I’ll detail some of the prominent ones below.

Paulina Sanchez: Half-sides typically are regarded with a mix of suspicious caution at best, paranoiac fear at worst. For emergent Social Butterfly Paulina, this essentially crippled her. Paulina has always been lethally self-conscious, particularly about her worth, often seeing herself as nothing without her beauty, the one thing that people outside of her family seemed to care about in regards to her; she wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t a very good student (at the time), she was just the pretty face on the playground. When she became a Half-side, all of that went away. While still extremely self-conscious, Paulina is more comfortable in her own skin, and genuinely kind to others, though she certainly has a vindictive side to those who cross her. Paulina’s primary ability is the ability to travel through mirrors, as well as communicate through them, and store things in them. It’s rare to see her without at least one form of mirror on hand. Paulina is also something of the local conspiracy theorist, albeit one who’s usually right; her ability to spy on others through whatever reasonably reflective surface is nearby aids in this immensely.

Star: While many often confuse her ditzy attitude with genuine unintelligence, Star is sharp as a tack, easily the smartest kid in her generation. She just rarely cares enough to show it, preferring to live life without the extreme expectations of the exceptional burdening her. Star is Paulina’s oldest friend, some have even speculated they might be more, and is always willing to stick up for her when she gets grief for being a Half-side. Star herself possesses an unusual power, in that she can capture past and future events of anyone she takes a picture of. Star is never seen without some form of Image Capturing device, often carting a Polaroid Camera around her neck. She’s occasionally wondered how her powers would interact with film and video, but she so far hasn’t tested it.

Dash Baxter: Once having a future as a promising Athlete, the emergence of his Half-side powers sealed his chances at a successful future. Dash gains in strength, speed, and endurance proportional to his stress or aggression, entering a complete berserker state when sufficiently enraged. The sheer chaos he’s caused in the throws of his anger, as well as the slew of ruined property and broken objects whenever his strength flared up has turned him into a lonely outcast that no one is willing to tolerate being around bar his small circle of friends. Dash occasionally tries to bluster and act like a tough guy, but his isolation has ruined his self-confidence, leaving him starved for interpersonal contact and validation; you could literally just tell him good job, being a random person on the street, and he’ll act like he won the lottery.

Kwan: An all-around nice guy, Kwan has served as the peacekeeper among his peers for years, even as his parents worried about his behavior taking a turn for the worse if he strayed into the wrong crowd. Kwan is a sweetheart, regularly volunteering at local shelters and charities, as well as soup kitchens, he’s single-handedly done more for the reputation of Half-sides than anyone else. Kwan’s power can essentially be summed up as weaponized Empathy; anyone he comes into direct physical contact with feels the accumulated emotions of everyone their actions have negatively impacted from the perspective of said victims. His abilities are so potent that, during an incident in Middle School, when he attempted to stop a man from assaulting a woman, his mere touch sent the man into screaming hysterics as the sheer amount of pain and suffering he had inflicted to others hit him all at once, literally driving him mad. As a result, Kwan always wears a pair of gloves. ALWAYS.

Well, here’s the basic idea. Let me know what you all think!

[multiverseforger]

Born and raised in Greece by his single mother, Michael Morbius experienced an isolated childhood due to his rare blood condition, which contributed to his ugly and unpleasant-looking appearance. But despite his looks, he was an intellectually gifted young man who spent his time reading books and, in time, became a highly respected and Nobel Prize-winning biologist who specialized in the field of human and animal biology. While in New York, after escaping from his home country due to his pseudo-vampiric condition, he attempted to find a cure and to protect his fiancé Martine Bancroft, but he was attacked by the Lizard and defeated when Spider-Man and the Lizard teamed up against him to recover a sample of Morbius's blood in order to cure their own mutated physical conditions before he escaped. The truth behind his horrific condition is that, in order to cure himself of an unknown blood disease which was killing him, Morbius, using his past experience as an expert biochemist, had attempted to cure himself of the disease with an experimental treatment involving vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy. However, he instead became afflicted with a far worse disease called "pseudo-vampirism" that mimicked some of the powers and the bloodlust of supernatural vampirism. Morbius now had to drink blood in order to survive and had a strong aversion to light. His bones became hollow and he gained the ability to fly, as well as gaining superhuman strength, super-speed, and an accelerated healing factor. His appearance, already ugly, now became hideous—his upper canine teeth extended into fangs, his nose flattened to appear more like that of a bat's and his skin became chalk-white. He also gained the ability to turn others into similar "living vampires" like himself by biting them and drinking their blood, infecting them with the disease of pseudo-vampirism.[13] People whom Morbius infected with the disease of pseudo-vampirism did not truly die as a result and they could be cured through an antidote to pseudo-vampirism derived from Morbius's blood that Morbius and Martine had created, although that antidote would not work on Morbius himself. They also did not acquire his ability to fly or his healing factor and any mortal wound could kill them.[14] He later sought a cure for his condition, but battled Spider-Man, the Human Torch, and the original X-Men.[15]Morbius then encountered Barbara Clark and protected her from a demon named Nilrac, but unfortunately after that, Morbius killed her and drank her blood to satisfy his hunger, feeling a strong sense of guilt immediately afterward.[16]

Morbius later rescued Amanda Saint from a Satanic cult known as Demon-Fire and aided her in her quest to find her missing parents.[17] He caused John Jameson to again become the Man-Wolf. Alongside the Man-Wolf, he battled Spider-Man again in another attempt at a cure.[18] He then battled Reverend Daemond and encountered the Caretakers of Arcturus IV. At the same time, he visited both the Land Within, the home of the Cat People, and the planet Arcturus IV, the homeworld of the Caretakers. During this time, he first battled Blade the Vampire-Slayer.[19] He then first battled the Werewolf (Jack Russell)[20] He then first encountered rogue CIA agent Simon Stroud and battled the extra-dimensional demon known as Helleyes.[21] He and Stroud then battled a large group of other pseudo-vampires that had been created by Morbius, destroying them all. One of them, however, who had been taken into police custody, turned Martine into a pseudo-vampire before being destroyed by Morbius, but Morbius (who then turned on Martine and made her a pseudo-vampire again due to his bloodlust overcoming him) and Stroud cured Martine by using the antidote, after which Morbius fled.[14] He then encountered Alicia Twain, a desperate landowner, and tried to help her keep her land; however, she died at the hands of the men trying to steal her land despite Morbius's help, forcing Morbius to kill her murderers.[22] Next, he encountered an enigmatic woman named Morgana St. Clair in England, who aided him and seemed to know all about vampires. This led to Morbius batting - and destroying - the Brotherhood of Judas, another Satanic cult of which St. Clair was a member.[23] Alongside the Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze), the Man-Thing (Ted Sallis), and the Werewolf, he then encountered the Starseed.[24]Morbius then visited his old friend Ronson Slade, a scientist, again hoping to find a cure. Slade, however, had become a werewolf and Morbius was forced to kill him.[25]Morbius then first battled the Thing, then teamed up with him to battle the Living Eraser and escaped to Dimension Z.[26] He later returned to Earth and battled Spider-Man again, this time briefly controlled both physically and mentally by an extra-dimensional humanoid android called the Empathoid, which fed on emotions to survive. Spider-Man destroyed the Empathoid (after the android had left Morbius and possessed him) by causing it to overdose on emotions during an exposure to the crowd at a baseball game in a stadium where he and Morbius had taken their battle, after which both of them left due to the approach of the stadium guards. Morbius then fled and Spider-Man left the Empathoid's body with the Fantastic Four for safekeeping.[27]

He once again fought Spider-Man and tried to drink his radioactive blood, but then he was hit by a lightning bolt at the same time, which cured him of his pseudo-vampirism and made him human again (he still retained a thirst for blood, however).[28] While he was cured, he was charged with the crimes he had committed as a pseudo-vampire and was represented by Jennifer Walters, whose dual identity as the She-Hulk was not yet publicly known at the time. Morbius selflessly saved Walters' life and stabilized her erratic transformations into the She-Hulk with a serum that he had created to cure the remnants of his own transformation.[29] He eventually regained his pseudo-vampiric state and first met Doctor Strange.[30] Alongside Doctor Strange and Brother Voodoo, he battled Marie Laveau and witnessed the return of true vampires.[31] Morbius later battled Spider-Man in the New York sewers.[32]

The Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) and Johnny Blaze searched for Morbius to form the Nine (a.k.a. the Midnight Sons) and stop Lilith the Mother of All Demons and her children the Lilin from taking over the world. When they found Morbius, the pseudo-vampire believed that they would kill him, but the Ghost Rider and Blaze successfully captured him. Doctor Langford, who supposedly tried to heal Morbius's wounds, was actually trying to kill him and was working for Doctor Paine. He made an unknown mutagenic serum that would prove fatal to Morbius. Unknown to Doctor Langford, Fang, one of Lilith's children, was also trying to kill Morbius by adding his own demonic blood to the serum, which would also be fatal to Morbius. When Doctor Langford injected the serum to Morbius, it did not kill him, but instead it mutated him. Morbius's friend, Jacob, was trying to look inside of him and see what he could do about Morbius's condition. After Martine Bancroft, Morbius's ex-fiancé, found out that Langford was trying to kill him, Langford shot her and she bled to death. Morbius found out about this and was enraged to find his ex-fiancé dead. He later avenged the death of Martine by killing Langford and took the beaker which contained the serum.[33] The Ghost Rider and Blaze later found out about Morbius's acts of destruction. The Ghost Rider confronted him and would not tolerate Morbius drinking any more innocent blood. Morbius then vowed he would only drink the blood of the guilty. The Ghost Rider accepted the vow, but warned him not to stray from it. Morbius soon became part of the Midnight Sons.

Later, a new faction of vampires tried to destroy Morbius because he had been genetically manipulated to be the perfect weapon. The chest in which he was to be delivered was intercepted by the Kingpin, Blade and Spider-Man, and he attacked all three. Whatever unknown party manipulated him failed; he collapsed after one battle, possibly dying. With his last breath, he warned Spider-Man to beware of his employer, Senator Stuart Ward.[34]

It was later revealed that Morbius had signed the Superhuman Registration Act and was cooperating with S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to capture Blade.[35] He had also presumably survived his genetic manipulation, as Blade was able to distinguish him as the same Morbius who "took a bite out of [him]" in their previous encounter.[36]

Morbius was next seen as a member of A.R.M.O.R., held captive by the zombie Morbius from the Marvel Zombies universe of Earth-2149.[37] He survived the invasion, killing his zombie counterpart in the process.[38] Shortly after, he formed a new version of the Midnight Sons with Jennifer Kale, Daimon Hellstrom, Jack Russell, and the Man-Thing to contain a zombie outbreak on an isolated island, briefly running afoul of the Hood in the process.[39]

Morbius later helped the Man-Thing re-assemble a decapitated Punisher into a Frankensteinian monster called FrankenCastle.[40]

During The Gauntlet storyline, Morbius was behind the theft of a vial of Spider-Man's blood. Spider-Man, learning that Morbius was planning to use the blood samples to create a cure for Jack Russell, agreed to help Morbius out by giving him more of his blood to help with the cure.[41]

During the Origin of the Species storyline, Morbius was among the supervillains recruited by Doctor Octopus to secure some items for him.[42]

During the events of Spider-Island, it was revealed to the reader that Morbius was the mysterious Number Six working at Horizon Labs. He assisted, wearing a hazmat suit to conceal his identity, in preparing the cure to the spider-powers virus.[43] When Peter Parker tried to investigate the identity of "Number Six", he accidentally provoked Morbius—who had been using the cure to try to develop a basis for a cure for his own condition—into a frenzy, prompting the staff at Horizon to step up building security (making it harder for Peter to enter and exit the building as Spider-Man in the future) and also forcing Morbius to leave, where it was revealed that he had been working with the Lizard, presumably trying to find a cure for both of their conditions. It was also revealed that Morbius was a college friend of Max Modell.[44] Using DNA samples from the corpse of Billy Connors, Morbius was able to create a cure that would restore the Lizard to human form, but he failed to recognize that the Lizard had completely destroyed Curt Connors' human persona.[45] The Lizard was left alone in Morbius's lab, allowing him to release blood into the lab's air supply to provoke the injured Morbius into attacking the other Horizon scientists. This prompted Morbius to flee the lab, with Spider-Man in pursuit.[46] Morbius was captured by Spider-Man and locked up in a cell in the Raft.[47]

When Peter Parker (whose mind was now in Doctor Octopus's dying body) needed some supervillains to help capture Otto Octavius (whose mind was now in Spider-Man's body), Morbius offered to help, but was rejected.[48] Morbius eventually escaped from the Raft[49] and fled to Brownsville.[50]

After some time, he tried to stop some vampires in Barcelona, but got captured by them and locked in a coffin. The vampires wanted to mix their blood with that of Morbius, until he got unintentionally saved by Domino, Diamondback and the Outlaw. After telling them about the vampires' plan, they agree to help him kill King Morbius (a true vampire infected with Morbius's blood). Then after killing him, a vampire hunter tried to kill Morbius, but thanks to Domino, he escaped.[51]

Morbius was later rescued by Agent of Wakanda Wasp from Dracula's Disciples, with assistance from Agents Broo and Man-Wolf. He later informed the Wasp and Director Okoye on the Vampire Civil War

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 30: Tim

Tim still feels guilty a week later.

Not, it has to be said, that anyone is making him feel guilty. Quite the opposite. The group hug in the Primes’ unofficial bedroom seems to have cleared the air. They don’t exactly say anything about forgiveness or accepting one another’s apologies, but Sasha comes with them when they leave work and ends up spending the night; they build a massive fort in the living room using every pillow and blanket in the house, have popcorn and hot chocolate for dinner, and swap stories about their childhoods until way too late in the evening considering they have work the next day. When Martin hesitantly admits the next evening that he’s been having trouble sleeping, Jon reminds him of his promise that Martin doesn’t have to be alone anymore, and the three of them curl up together in Tim’s bed for the first time since Jon’s stabbing, this time with Martin in the middle. They agree after that to assume they’ll keep doing that unless one of them has a genuine need to sleep alone.

But Tim still finds himself occasionally waking up in the middle of the night and studying the peaceful look on Martin’s face as he sleeps, or watching Jon mumble and shift restlessly as he watches whatever horror the Eye is forcing someone to relive, and feeling like the world’s biggest heel. While he knows he doesn’t have anything to do with Jon’s nightmares, he still feels like they’re not so bad when Jon isn’t isolating himself, and God knows Martin’s sleep is probably better when he doesn’t feel like he’s being shut out. And while, again, Jon was the one to insist at first that it would be better for him to sleep alone while he had the stitches in and Martin had quietly gone to his own room as well, Tim still feels like he pushed them away, even if it was unconsciously. He hurt both of them and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He knows he should say something. That’s the whole point of all this; they’re trying to communicate. If something is bothering him, he ought to tell the others. But what he doesn’t want is for Martin—or Jon, for that matter—to spout platitudes and reassurances that he won’t believe. Even though he can tell from their actions that they’re genuine.

At the root of it, that’s the issue. Jon and Martin have forgiven Tim for the way he treated them when he was angry. Tim can’t forgive himself.

Tim taps his pen against his jaw absently as he studies the file in front of him. He’s quizzed Martin Prime on the “feeling” he once mentioned getting about which statements were real or not, and in the last few days he’s been trying his hand at it. It’s slow going, and he knows it’s probably at least partly because he’s resisted the Eye harder than the others, but ever since Sasha’s intervention, he’s decided, screw it. He’s trapped here, for better or for worse, and if it means he maybe gets freaky psychic powers, maybe he can at least use them to help keep his family safe.

This one feels real. It feels bad. Tim hates it on sight, which probably means it’s a Stranger statement; he tends to react badly to those for obvious reasons. And this one deals with taxidermy, which definitely doesn’t help matters. Still, he grits his teeth and digs into it, and what he finds…isn’t comforting. The name Daniel Rawlings is one he remembers—that was one of the people who went missing near Old Fishmarket Close, the very first statement they ever researched that had to go on the tape recorders. And the description of the thing in the basement sounds a hell of a lot like the thing Nathan Watts saw—holding bodies, luring people down with creepy, repetitive phrases. The guy’s lucky to be alive. The fact that the Trophy Room apparently still exists, and is still under Daniel Rawlings’ ownership, is…not great. From a research standpoint, it’s a boon they don’t usually get, but from a practical, this-is-probably-something-set-to-destroy-the-world standpoint, it’s fucking terrifying.

Tim stares at the statement for a long moment. Whether they need to follow up on it or not is almost academic at this point; they will follow up on it, because it’s what they do. They’ll do what they can from the office, but Tim doesn’t need any kind of special powers to know that eventually, someone will go out there to investigate in person. And it’s dangerous. Someone could get seriously hurt.

Which means there’s only one choice, really.

Sasha comes back from her lunch break and smiles at Tim; he smiles reflexively back and goes through the usual routine of how was your lunch, what’s the weather like, anything interesting come up while I was out. He assures Sasha that everything is fine on their end, shuffles the folder under some of the others on his desk under the guise of neatening things up, grabs his jacket, feels to make sure his phone is in the inner pocket, and heads out of the Archives.

It’s the warmest it’s been all month, but there’s just enough of a breeze to keep his jacket on as he walks to the Tube station. Sloane Square is the nearest stop to the Institute, but it’s not on the right line, so he’ll have to change trains at Monumental, and God, this is stupid. Jon hasn’t told him to look into this statement like this, hasn’t sent him to investigate. He doesn’t have to do this, job-wise.

It also occurs to him, belatedly, that he hasn’t told anyone he’s doing this. Well, there’s a reason for that, really; Jon would either try to forbid him from heading out there or insist he bring someone along, neither of which are happening. Tim’s not exposing anyone else on the team to this, even if he’s right there with them. Better that it just be him risking…whatever he’s risking by heading up to Woodside Park. But he should at least warn someone he might be a bit late getting back from lunch. He doesn’t have to say where he’s going exactly, he rationalizes, just say he’s investigating a statement. There are four or five on his desk, and even if Sasha goes snooping through them to see what he’s working on, there’s no way they can be sure this is the one he’s poking into. They’ll probably think it’s any statement but this one. They all know how Tim feels about the Stranger.

When he sits down on the second train just before it pulls out of the station, he reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone. What he pulls out…is not his phone. It’s a small handheld tape recorder, the sort of thing you’d find in an amateur spy kit, looking like it’s brand new out of the package. Tim stares at it in stupefaction for a moment, then quickly pats himself down. His phone is not in his pocket, and he suddenly has a clear and vivid picture in his mind of it sitting on the corner of his desk, charging, because he forgot to plug it in last night.

Great.

For a moment, he’s tempted to go back. Turn around, head back to the Institute, grab his phone, come back another time. Maybe give Jon a heads-up that he’ll be a bit late getting back, if Jon’s back from lunch by the time he gets there. He doesn’t have to say where he’s going, just that he’s following up on a statement or something like that. No need to specify, right?

He doesn’t, though. For one thing, he’s pretty sure if he goes back, he’ll lose his nerve and either not go back or bring someone back with him…or worse, let one of the others go instead. He’ll never be able to live with himself if he puts anyone else in danger like that. And for another, he knows Jon won’t accept a half-explanation. Tim will either have to tell him nothing or everything. And if Tim tells Jon everything, Jon will forbid Tim to come out here.

“I can hear him now,” he mutters, still staring at the recorder in his hand. “‘There’s no need for you to put yourself in that kind of danger, Tim, and certainly no need to expose yourself to that. We can do this over the phone if we have to.’”

Except they can’t; the Stranger is at its best when it’s hidden, so if they’re not looking it in the—well, looking it in the eye, Tim guesses—it’s going to lie to them. It might lie to his face, too, but at least he’ll have the evidence of his senses. And at least he can put it on alert, maybe. The Eye sees you. The Institute is aware of you. Timothy Stoker knows where to find you.

Yeah, right. This is the stupidest thing Tim’s done since he tried to jump off the roof using his grandmother’s umbrella with the bird handle as a parachute.

He turns the recorder over a couple of times in his hands. The Primes mentioned once that their Tim hated these things—the way they kept turning up without warning, the way they would turn themselves on at random times, what they might mean. Tim’s not exactly thrilled about this one just turning up in his pocket either, if it comes down to it, especially in place of his phone. A tape recorder won’t enable him to get in touch with anyone if things go tits-up, or if he’s running late or something. On the other hand…well, it’s better than nothing. And he has to admit it’s a little bit of a comfort to know he’s not technically alone. The Primes both swear they aren’t a tool of the Eye, and he has to admit their logic is sound as to why not, but still, someone or something is listening to him, which means he won’t disappear into nothing. If, God forbid, something goes wrong, at least there will be a record. Some kind of witness.

Tim pats down his pockets and locates a pen, then pops open the recorder. Nestled inside is a microcassette tape, ready and waiting. He considers for a moment, then writes RETURN TO ARCHIVES, THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE, LONDON on the label as neatly as he can. There isn’t anywhere on the recorder’s surface to write, and he doesn’t have any tape or anything, but he hopes that will be sufficient, should someone find it and need to send it back. He considers writing his name and the address of the Institute on his arm or something, the way his parents used to do with him and Danny whenever they went out someplace they might get separated, but decides against it. Based on where he’s going and what he knows about what’s there, the balance of probability is that if he dies, they won’t leave any skin to identify him. He’ll have to settle for tucking his wallet in the same pocket as the recorder and hoping they dispose of his jacket without going through it.

Tim is beginning to wish he put a little more forethought into this. Or, you know, any forethought at all.

Woodside Park is almost at the end of the Northern line, which gives Tim way too much time to think about turning back and consider that there’s no turning back now. He’s the only one who gets off at that stop, which is certainly not eerie at all. Nope, nothing to be concerned about here, perfectly normal. (Logically, it probably is perfectly normal, but Tim is so addled right now that everything looks spooky.) He fishes out the recorder and turns it on.

“Right,” he says. “Uh, this is Timothy Stoker, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, and…if you’re listening to this and don’t know what that is, well, uh, stop listening and get this back to Jonathan Sims, the Head Archivist. You, uh, you should be able to look it up. Stop listening now.” He pauses a second or two, then continues, “Okay, should be Archival staff listening now…Jon, Martin, if it’s you, I’m sorry, but I had to do this. I’m, uh, I’m at Woodside Park right now, I just got off the Tube, and…well, I’m about to go into the Trophy Room. This statement is just…it’s too freaky to leave alone. I can’t risk any of you if it’s something serious and…I’m sorry. Anyway, I’m…going to leave this thing going in my pocket, kind of try to get a recording, so that if I can’t explain for whatever reason, you’ll know what happens. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hopefully nothing too bad, but…well, we’ll see.”

He pauses for a moment, then tucks the recorder back in his pocket and says under his breath, “Fuck.” Then he takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and heads down the block.

The Trophy Room isn’t hard to find. It’s exactly as the taxman described it in his statement—an aged, grimy building with faded gold lettering and a dirt-streaked olive green awning. There’s even a stuffed big cat in the window, and the only reason Tim knows it’s a tiger and not a lion, apart from the statement, is because big cats were something of an obsession of his when he was nine or ten, back when he’d considered a career as a wild animal tamer for a circus, and he made a study of the physiology of them. This is unmistakably a tiger, long-faded stripes notwithstanding. That seems to him a somewhat irresponsible way to care for something you ought to put pride in, but what does Tim know?

The bell over the door clangs raucously when Tim pushes the door open, and he is suddenly confronted by hundreds of staring, glassy eyes. Tim quite likes animals and he’s seen many of the ones in the shop live and in person, including an up-close-and-personal encounter with a moose (this one must be a juvenile, he thinks, a full-grown bull wouldn’t fit in the space it’s crammed into), but the concentration of them looking at him, all at once, is disconcerting, to say the least. But it’s not nearly so disorientating as the smell. Danny once declared he was going to buy their mother something “unique” and purchased a titan arum for her before learning that it was more commonly called a “corpse flower” for a very good reason. This place smells like they’ve got an entire greenhouse of them under the floor.

Which is better than the alternative, really.

A man comes out of the back. True to the description in the statement, he’s a “fresh-faced twenty-something”; if he’s even Jon’s age, Tim will eat the entire taxidermied moose. He raises his eyebrows in Tim’s direction. “Can I help you?”

A nagging, persistent voice in the back of Tim’s head that sounds an awful lot like Martin suggests that declaring himself to be from the Magnus Institute would be the worst decision he’s made all day, which is saying a lot. Time to fake it. Luckily, Tim’s good at that. He switches on his most charming smile. “Hi! I sure hope so. I’m looking for a Christmas present for my sister.”

Is it Tim’s imagination, or does the man he presumes to be Daniel Rawlings relax, just a fraction? “Bit early for that, aren’t you?”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t know if you’d have something on hand or if I’d have to wait for you to get something in or bring something in,” Tim says, waving at the assorted animals. “I mean, she’s kinda picky sometimes. I don’t know how this works.”

“Ah. Well, let’s see what I can do to help you.” The man extends a hand and grins. “I’m Daniel Rawlings. And you are…?”

“Nick DiAngelo.” Tim Anglicizes his grandfather’s name; it feels safer than giving his real one. He accepts Rawlings’ hand; it’s cool, hard, and very dry.

“Mm.” Tim can’t tell if Rawlings believes him or not, but he shakes his hand and lowers it. “Well, all of these pieces are for sale, unless you brought something in. You’re not a…hunter yourself, are you?”

Tim doesn’t like the emphasis Rawlings puts on hunter, but he keeps up his smile. “Nah, not my thing. Never been one for guns or the like. I like my nature alive.”

“But your sister doesn’t?”

“She’s an animal lover, but she can’t have pets at this new place she’s moving to. So, stuffed it is.” Tim waves a hand at the room. “Don’t think there’s room in her flat for a whole moose, of course, but…”

“Of course, of course. Well, feel free to look around and see if anything catches your…eye.”

Tim manages not to react to that word. Instead, he, smiles again and ambles towards a shelf full of squirrels. The animals’ eyes seem to follow him as he walks, and he knows Rawlings’ eyes follow him, too.

“So how long have you been doing this, anyway?” he blurts after a moment, turning back to face Rawlings. “It must have taken ages to do all this.”

“Oh, I inherited it,” Rawlings tells him. “An old friend of my father’s left it to me. Apparently he didn’t have any other family.”

Mentally, Tim ticks off the first item on the list—the stories tally. Which, well, of course they would. “Do you like all this?”

Rawlings shrugs. Tim tries again. “You’re lucky, you know. Falling into a business like this. I’ve been having to work my way up from the bottom. Is it hard?”

“Not so hard as it could be, I suppose.” Rawlings looks around him. “At least it’s a good, steady business. No heavy lifting.” He smiles. “I’ve got people for that.”

“Hey, are you hiring?”

“Hmm.” Rawlings tips his head to one side, studying Tim. A prickle of unease crawls up Tim’s spine. The man won’t make eye contact, but something about that regard unsettles him. “I think we might be able to find a…fitting position for you. If you’re interested.”

Tim pretends to consider it. “Tell you what. I’ll let you know after the new year? Got a big project I’m in the middle of now.”

“Of course. There’s plenty of time.” Rawlings smiles. “It’s not like the animals are going anywhere.”

Tim laughs, despite the creeping feeling of dread. “That would be…strange.”

The word slips out before Tim can stop it, but Rawlings laughs, too. He seems genuinely delighted, and even comes closer. “Here, let me help you find something that would suit your sister.”

He lights a cigarette. Tim raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you worried about these old things going up if you drop that?”

“I’d be desolate if they did.” There’s no doubt about it; Rawlings is dropping those words deliberately, but this time he sounds amused more than taunting. He either realizes Tim knows something, or he’s just showing off his own knowledge. Neither of which is good. “But no, they’re remarkably well-preserved.”

“That’s what they said about our uncle,” Tim quips. He does get another laugh out of Rawlings for that one. “How old are they, anyway? I know you said your dad’s friend did them…”

“He owned the shop. Many hands have worked these creatures.” Rawlings strokes the moose’s nose almost reverently. “Tell me, Mr. DiAngelo, what is your field?”

“History,” Tim lies easily. “Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a focus on arts and industry.”

“Ah.” Rawlings still doesn’t meet his eyes, but there’s a glitter in them. “Then I think I have something worth showing you.” He gestures towards the back.

Tim’s not stupid, despite all current evidence to the contrary. He knows from the statement that the workroom is back there, behind the office. There’s a distinct possibility that he’s letting himself be lured into a deadly trap. But in keeping with his persona, and also in the interest of getting the information he needs, he says brightly, “Great! Lead on, then.”

If he survives this, Jon’s going to kill him.

The office is small, largely dominated by an old oak desk. Seated behind it is a petite woman with close-cropped brown hair, wearing a grey t-shirt and a light jacket, bent over what look like account books. Tim has a nasty feeling he knows who this woman is.

“Sarah,” Rawlings says, confirming Tim’s suspicions-slash-fears, “this is Nick DiAngelo. I brought him back to show him the skins…Mr. DiAngelo, this is Sarah Baldwin, one of my fellow employees.”

“Pleasure,” Tim says cheerfully. This is officially too much, but he’s got to see it through now. The smell of Death By Flowers is stronger here, and he remembers suddenly Melanie King mentioning in her statement that the Sarah Baldwin who did sound work for her Ghost Hunt UK episode had a sharp, faintly floral perfume, or something like that. He wonders if she’s been living here—so to speak—all this time, if the smell of the building has soaked into her skin or if it’s something that comes from her and Rawlings and whatever else might be part of all this.

“Hi,” Sarah says succinctly. Tim also remembers Melanie saying she was a woman of few words.

“Come look at these. She won’t mind,” Rawlings assures Tim. Sure enough, Sarah seems scarcely aware of their presence as Rawlings begins showing Tim the skins hanging on the wall. And if they’re genuine, if he’s telling the truth about their origins—and Tim has no reason to doubt him—they are impressive.

One skin seems to be missing, though. The man from Internal Revenue described a gorilla skin, alleged to be from the fifth century B.C., the oldest bit of taxidermy in the world. There’s nothing like that in this room. Tim’s not sure why that bothers him so much, but reluctantly, he has to admit that he probably shouldn’t ignore it.

“…And this,” Rawlings concludes, indicating a stuffed figure on the desk—a white hare in a waistcoat, “was part of the Great Exhibition of 1851. It helped drive Victorian England mad for the craft.”

Tim doesn’t like the emphasis he puts on mad, but since this is supposed to be his specialty, he says, “I am impressed. There was a lot of fantastic craftwork at the Great Exhibition. I saw a stereoscope card once while I was doing my graduate research, but I never dreamed I would ever see something that was actually displayed there.”

“Would you like to touch it?” Rawlings asks. “You can, you know. It’s quite safe.”

Tim tries very much to look like he’s hesitating out of reverence for the age of the piece and not because he wonders if he’s going to end up poisoned, sucked into an alternate dimension, or triggering a trapdoor to the mouth of a hungry monster, but he can’t actually think of a good reason why a historian would refuse to touch, well, actual history. So he reaches out, slowly, and runs his hand over the hare’s fur. It’s stiff and wiry, the effects of almost two centuries of existence, but still feels mostly soft under his palm. The body is solid and firm. If he didn’t know better, he would swear it has a heartbeat.

“That’s brilliant,” he breathes. Hopefully he still sounds awed and not terrified. He takes a risk. “Is this the oldest piece you have?”

“Wolf,” Sarah grunts, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the wolf pelt hanging on the wall.

“It dates back to the Middle Ages,” Rawlings explains. “We had one even older, but, well, it was stolen some years ago.”

“Stolen?” Tim is genuinely taken aback by this. “Did they ever find it?”

“No, sadly. It was never sold, at least not publicly, so who knows?” Rawlings sighs. “It was a gorilla skin, from Carthage. Brought over by Hammo in the fifth century B.C.”

“It must have been worth a pretty penny,” Tim whistles.

“Its value is immeasurable,” Rawlings says earnestly. “It means the world.”

Something about that phrase makes Tim’s blood run cold. Not it means the world to me, or to my dad’s friend, even though he guesses that’s a fiction. Just it means the world. Whatever that means, it can’t be good for humanity.

“Well,” he says, as sympathetically as he can. “I hope it comes back to you in the fullness of time.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will. If it hasn’t been destroyed…I’m sure there’s someone out there who knows where to look.”

Tim would like to go now, he decides. He’s pretty sure he has all the information he needs, and surely the Primes can fill in anything he’s missing. “I’m glad you showed me these. They’re really impressive. But I’m sure they’re well out of my price range.”

“Maybe,” Rawlings says. “But that could change. We’ll discuss that later, if you’re still interested in that job.”

Tim definitely does not like the sound of that. “I’ll be in touch about that. And I’ll be back for sure about something for my sister, once I’ve had time to…reassess things a little. You know, get an idea about her flat layout and what sort of thing would work best for her.”

Rawlings smiles. It sends chills down Tim’s spine. “Don’t be a stranger.”

He holds out his hand. As they shake again, for the first time, Rawlings looks Tim dead in the eye, and Tim realizes two things. First of all, the taxman wasn’t kidding; Rawlings’ eyes are as dead and lifeless as the animals’, and like theirs are made of glass, fixed in place where his real eyes should be. They should stare without seeing, but unlike Martin Prime’s eyes, which are still warm and expressive but stare right past or through you, these bore into Tim’s and he is one hundred percent aware that Rawlings can see him perfectly clearly.

Second…his eyes are glowing faintly, a deep and vibrant indigo, like they’re lit from within. Which is frankly beyond disturbing.

“I won’t,” Tim assures him, and means it.

He comes out of the office ahead of Rawlings and is about halfway to the door when it happens. The bell jangles again, and two men come in—two men Tim would prefer never to see again, dressed like deliverymen and crossing into the shop.

It’s Breekon and Hope.

One of them notices Tim and stiffens. “Hey, you.”

“What are you doing here?” asks the other, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Come to spy on us?”

“See what we’re doing?”

“What?” Rawlings asks sharply.

Tim bolts. He has surprise on his side and manages to get out the door before anyone can grab him, but unlike the man who gave the statement, he knows they’re not just going to let him get away. He considered a lot of possible fates for himself should he visit the Trophy Room, but somehow, Breekon and Hope turning up while he was there, and recognizing him, never occurred to him. Stupid. Stupid.

It’s a good stretch to the Tube station, and Tim expects every step to feel them on his heels, but either they can’t move as quickly as him or they’re not chasing him for their own reasons. Still, he hears a rumble behind him and doesn’t stop to check if it’s them or not. Instead, he sprints for the entrance to the station and leaps down the steps three at a time. He lands wrong at the bottom and his ankle buckles, but he shakes off the pain and manages to just make it to the train before it pulls out, which at least has the advantage of giving anyone who saw him come flying in a possible explanation for his hurry beyond “being chased by something out of a horror film”.

He collapses into his seat and catches his breath as the train pulls away, heading back towards central London. Once he’s breathing normally, he takes stock. His ankle throbs, but the pain is relatively mild. He’ll live and, most crucially, he’s not in the back of an ersatz delivery van…or worse. Tim honestly can’t say what he would have done if they’d caught him, but he’s glad he doesn’t have to think about it.

After a moment, he reaches into his pocket and checks for the recorder. It’s stopped, which might mean it cut itself off when the danger had passed, or might mean he hit the end of the spool, or might mean he screwed up and turned it off and it didn’t catch what happened in there at all. He’s going to have to hope he got everything, though, because no way is he risking playing this on the train. There are other people here, after all, although not many. He does rewind it, though, and he’s comforted to hear the length of its backwards spool. There’s something on it at least.

He makes the connection with seconds to spare; the Central line is a bit more crowded, so he ends up standing near the door, which does at least mean he’s the first one off at Sloane Square. He tries to hurry without running—the last thing he wants is to draw attention—but even now, he finds himself glancing over his shoulder periodically to see if anyone is following him. Luckily, it appears he’s managed to give them the slip. For now, anyway.

As he gets closer to the Institute, he slows up and tries to straighten up his appearance. The last thing he wants is to make it look like he had to run for his life, or might still be running. He’s got the tape if Jon doesn’t believe what he says, but maybe he’ll get lucky and he can avoid having to play it, so Jon—and Martin, for that matter—don’t have to know how close a shave he just had.

Yeah, right. And maybe he’ll finally get that phone call about his audition for Jersey Boys.

He’s still limping as he reaches the Institute and lets himself in the door to the Archives. For just a minute, he pauses when he comes in, wondering why they swapped out the light bulbs for novelty green ones…but no, he blinks hard and the lighting goes back to normal. Just the regular old Archives, rows of shelves littered with files, pod of desks in the work area, three people grouped around it. Tim’s not sure what’s going on, but from the looks of it, Sasha and Jon are sitting down and Martin is fussing.

Martin looks up as Tim comes closer, and his face goes slack with relief. “Tim!”

Sasha’s head whips around. “Are you all right?” she asks.

Tim tries for a grin. “I’m not dead.”

“Yeah, that’s not exactly comforting. You get why that’s not comforting, right?” Martin tugs at his hair in evident frustration. “Wh—” He stops and presses his lips together tightly for a second.

“You’re late.” Jon’s voice is soft but accusing. He gets to his feet and wobbles for a second before steadying himself against the back of the chair.

Suddenly worried, Tim takes a step towards him. His ankle chooses that moment to remind him that he’s already fucked it up and buckles under him, nearly sending him to the floor. He doesn’t fall far before Martin is there, catching him and half-dragging, half-carrying him over to his chair. “You’re hurt.”

“Master of the obvious,” Tim tries to joke, and then he sees the look on Martin’s face and realizes what’s going on. They’ve all realized that Martin has acquired the ability to compel people to tell him things, especially about how they got hurt or why they’re scared; he’s trying to learn how to control it, just like Jon and Sasha are trying to learn to control their new powers, but Jon Prime warned them already that it will be harder for them to not let it slip in involuntarily when they’re upset or stressed. Martin is trying very hard not to force Tim to tell him anything. It’s a courtesy Tim doesn’t think he deserves, but he swallows down on the guilt. “Just twisted, I think. No big deal.” He eases away from Martin and stands; it hurts a bit, but he’s at least able to do it on his own.

Martin lets him, but he’s still hovering, around both him and Jon. Jon stands facing Tim, looking grim. “You didn’t have your phone with you, Tim. We couldn’t contact you. It’s been two hours.”

Tim winces. “I didn’t realize I’d left it behind until it was too late to come back, and then I just…I thought I’d be back sooner. Sorry, boss. I’ll make up the time.”

“I’m not worried about the time, Tim!” Jon throws his hands up in frustration. “I’m worried about you. You were gone longer than you should have been, and we had no way of getting in touch with you, nor any idea where you were.”

“I—I was going to text you, but—”

“No, Tim, we didn’t know where you were,” Martin emphasizes. “Sasha tried to Know where you’d gone and gave herself a nosebleed. Jon tried and passed out! I-I finally asked downstairs, and all he’d say was that you were safe and on the way back, but that’s really not as comforting as he made it sound.”

“I know how you feel about…all of that,” Jon says, his voice sounding strained, “but we were worried. We were scared. Especially since…” He gestures at the files on Tim’s desk. “I wasn’t sure which one you were investigating.”

And Jon’s avoiding actually asking questions, too, out of fear of forcing Tim to answer against his will. They’re all better than he deserves, he thinks distantly, and it would serve him right if—no. He’s hurt them enough.

“The Trophy Room,” he says quietly. He reaches into his pocket and fishes out the tape recorder, which he hands to Jon. “Pretty sure I got the whole thing on there, but I haven’t had a chance to check.”

“The Trophy Room? The taxidermy shop in Barnet? The one we’re pretty sure is a stronghold for the Stranger?” Martin’s voice rises in pitch. “Are you out of your mind?”

“What were you thinking?” Jon says, clearly upset. “You’ve read that statement, you know how dangerous it is. If I had wanted someone to go there to investigate, I would have sent someone, and you would have been the last person I would choose—”

“I wasn’t going to let any of you go out there,” Tim argues.

“Tim, you’re already marked by the Stranger,” Jon says sharply. “Remember what they said? The marks make you a bigger target. It means they’re more likely to try something on you. That—whatever it was in the basement, the anglerfish thing—if Rawlings had opened the door, it might have lured you down. My God, Tim, you could have been killed and we would have had no idea where you were.”

If Tim did this to make himself feel less guilty, he failed spectacularly. He inhales sharply and tries to meet Jon’s eyes. For just a second, they seem to glow a vivid and vibrant green; Tim blinks and they go back to their normal brown. “I—I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about that, I just—all I could think about was that I needed to protect you all. I knew someone was going to end up investigating all this, we couldn’t get the truth over the phone, and I—I didn’t want to risk one of you going over there. I knew it was dangerous, but…I haven’t done enough, so I thought it had to be me.”

“Tim.” Jon’s jaw works for a moment, and then he just surges forward and hugs Tim tightly.

Tim hugs him back, feeling the tears pricking at his eyes. A moment later he feels the comforting weight and warmth of Martin’s arms around them both, but instead of making him relax, it just makes the tears flow harder. He doesn’t deserve this.

He must say that aloud, because Jon releases him and steps back to frown at him. “Don’t deserve what? What are you talking about?”

“This.” Tim gestures to Jon and Martin hovering around him, then to Sasha, who evidently was part of the hug, too, at least peripherally. “I didn’t—I fucked up, Jon. I shoved you all away and I made you feel—I was hurting, so I hurt you without any reason, and I—”

“We were all hurting,” Martin interrupts him, his face tight with sympathy. “And we all did things to hurt each other—”

“You didn’t,” Sasha points out.

“I could’ve stepped in any time, or spoken up about what was bothering me, instead of acting like I thought you’d hurt me if I tried,” Martin says. “I didn’t. I let myself class you all in the same category as my mother, and that isn’t fair to any of you. I know better. What happened this month between us is as much my fault as anyone else’s and I’m not going to sit by and act like I’m the victim in all this, because that isn’t fair to anyone. Including me.” He takes a deep breath. “We’re a team. We’re a family. We’re supposed to work together, right?”

“Right.” Tim swallows hard and wipes his eyes. “No more unauthorized field trips. Promise.”

Jon nods. “Thank you.” He glances at the tape recorder. “I’ll listen to this later, if you need me to, but meanwhile, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

Tim sighs. “Might want to sit down. This could take a while.”

[gerrydelano]

time for me to get sappy about OCs in fanworks! woo! was just going to lovepost about this nice trend but i accidentally wrote another meta.

CONTENTS (i should do this for all my long posts tbh)

01. OCs are good actually 02. examples of some of my favorite works that do this! (LOVEPOST) 03. a little about how i did it in both of my current fics 04. why i think some of us are scared to do this 05. why we should stop being scared

01. something that makes me really happy is disengaging from the idea that including OCs in your fanworks is “cringe” or something, like. yeah i have my own lines in terms of what’s comfortable to read when something is a major focus, but the basic practice of coloring in blank spaces with OCs is definitely something i think should be encouraged more overall? they can make something so much more organic and so much fuller, like...

people know people? people go to school and live in communities where they cross paths with neighbors and staff at stores they frequent and there will be waitresses they recognize and desk clerks at the dentist and the married couple walking their dog on the road you drive down every day to get to work like SO many people exist and occupy spaces in our lives and they change things? they influence things? we talk to them. we know their names! we don’t know their names, but we know their faces! we hear about them. they matter!

so i think including that element in fic actually makes it easier to get invested? which is why i do it in mine, i just want my writing to be as Natural as possible. focusing just solely on a main character cast has the potential to get very closed off and isolated and rigid. and depending on what you’re trying to accomplish of course it has its merits, make no mistake, i’ve done the same thing with that very intention, but! i have fun getting invested in other people’s OCs!

----------------

02. some of my favorite works are full of this?

head in the lion’s mouth is literally a 16 chapter work in the POV of a character who only gets one mention in one statement in the background And Died. he’s been so thoroughly mapped out into a full presence and maybe might as well be an OC, even if all of those details are extrapolated from the very minor things we get from him in those mentions.

and part of what makes HLM so FULL and TANGIBLE is the presence and importance of the contortionist, of everyone danny knew in the troupe, because there are more people in the circus than just nikola! it gives depth to it and it’s SO EASY to care about it and want to know more!

tim and danny’s mother is also a really important feature here, like. building the characters’ families and backstories is SO useful and necessary so much of the time, don’t be afraid of getting invested! i would be one to talk if i said this wasn’t worth it. i want to KILL farah and the contortionist. make OCs people want to kill.

(small teaser plug: ren is planning an outsider POV companion to HLM after it’s finished. so literally, OCs talking about interacting with this pretty-much-an-OC. and the best part is that ALL OF YOU will want to read it because you got invested in the first guy! it’s!!!! there’s no reason NOT TO.)

road to damascus included PLENTY of OCs in the way of tim interacting with folks while performing Witness Duties and they gave depth to his experience there! hannah and juno in particular were such a big part of parascientific method, concessions and pendulum! not just for filler but to serve a narrative purpose that impacted tim’s whole journey! again, hannah was vaguely mentioned in canon but her personality and speech patterns and the way she interacted with tim was very original and very special! and i care her!

the OCs lent something important! to the work! i remember their names! and not JUST because ren lives with me, but because they’re memorable. mallory, ervina, mira, al (fucker), bella and her dads, william, lupita, they all DID something that mattered.

plague upon the house is from jane’s POV and maybe that’s easier to reconcile because she had one statement of her own but getting into the depth of her feelings and how she would handle different situations required a shitload of extrapolation, too, and a lot of original ideas to fill in her personality and thought process and how she solves problems and falls in love and! aaaah! SHE is CANON but in order to make certain things possible and engaging in another way you have to develop things in a Similar Way to an OC, so this is like, a facet of the general practice.

there is also a sequel, be bold, be bold (but not too bold), that features two AMAZING OCs. i’m DEEPLY invested in nora and cass and you will be, too, when you read! cuz you’re going to read this! this one has only just begun and is off to a STRONG start, specifically due to the involvement and influence of these OCs.

the long road down is an INCREDIBLE fic that would not be even REMOTELY as dynamic and transfixing were it not for the presence of ezra! that’s a whole OC! and they’re extremely fleshed out (haha flesh) and gives SO much depth to the story and also immense PLOT. there are a wealth of other PHENOMENAL OCs in this fic, too, beyond ezra that give it SO much extra, i love emerson SO much i literally cry. phyllis and richard are a Lot to cope with. everybody and their mother has their lukas and fairchild OCs, but morgan and leslie in particular are two of my favorites.

i’ve read some of the upcoming sequel already and it is FANTASTIC, much of it having to do with ezra! i’m invested in ezra! ezra is so fucking cool they’re all so cool read TLRD! (also the literal physical formatting used in this fic is one of the most engaging things i’ve ever seen it’s so worth the read please please please go look at this if you for whatever reason haven’t yet)

bailey school kids is in the POV of an OC who knows gerry and the outside view from THEM gives a lot of insight to how he’s perceived by other people as he is in canon! it’s a really interesting lens to view him from! of COURSE you care about kira and basil and mae and sweet clementine of COURSE you end up invested in them. i literally cried like a baby at this fucking fic! and a lot of it was because of kira’s narrative voice, the very unique and individual way they talk about gerry and the way it gave us a look at someone caring about him without condition! that’s something we always want for gerry, and we have to make up folks in order to get it.

a temporary fix is another Gerry Slice of Life piece that i literally am so invested in that i’m using the lore from it (with enthusiastic permission) to enrich my own work! i’ve mentioned portia in TSP, and she’s going to play an active role very soon! giving him a friend is important - we literally CAN’T write about things he does in between the events in canon without making people up to fill those gaps. without some invention there, he’s so alone! why would we want that! he HAD to KNOW PEOPLE at SOME POINT. he had to have crossed paths with people enough times to recognize who they were! this is one of those examples and it’s SO GOOD!

a better fate than wisdom doesn’t feature OCs as main characters or anything, but the few that are used are very memorable! emily carlisle colors in sasha’s childhood, which helped shape her life and growth! the kid in the bookstore who catches tim and sasha in the back room is HILARIOUS and memorable! tim’s family at his cousin’s wedding gives perspective into who he was surrounded by when he grew up, which tells us more about him and makes us feel more about him! all of it is worth it! all of it matters! 

the library of babel is a lovely agnes fic where she’s listening in on a conversation in a coffee shop, and that conversation between those OCs is the reason her thoughts go where they do, the connections she draws between herself and them, they have a presence and a purpose and even agnes has seen other people and listened to them talk and thinks about what they say not everything is so vacant and empty and limited, EVEN for her and how she was by all accounts completely alone all her life. much to think about! using OCs is the most effective way to give her a glimpse into the world outside of herself.

and on the flip side, there are so many other fics out there that use outside perspectives to look into canon characters/situations, like nor any more youth or age than there is now, and they’re so lovely to read! very endearing because you can achieve that sort of... distant fondness and curiosity and uncertainty about what’s really going on, that you might not always be able to achieve with a canon character who is already personally involved. it’s a really interesting perspective and tone to work with, i wish i could find more of that kind of story around.

----------------

03. and you all know how much i do this in my own work

breathing like i never did was a really short example of OCs having a bearing on the story; georgie wouldn’t have had the same experience coming into the butch identity without meeting another butch, so of course i had to expand on that and make it believable that it would impact her? and so forth.

and two ships passing wouldn’t be even half of what it is without miriam, even just from the perspective of how enjoyable it is for me to write. knowing people care about her and wanted to learn more about her is such a good feeling! like, yes, she exists in canon technically but she’s like danny in that she only gets a few sentences devoted to her, she actually has less backstory afforded to her than he does. i built a lot of crap from the ground up to make her as multidimensional as possible and it’s a fun exercise! and it’s paying off! because it also shapes JON, and shaped gerry, and has an impact on Where the ENTIRE story ends up.

i worked backwards from what jon said about her and gave a Reason for it, and her feelings on it, and how she had been perceiving the situation the entire time - and how that doesn’t mean it aligns with the impact it had. that was my initial motivation in writing her and the further back i went, the more life she took on.

there are literally so many OCs in TSP that really shape what happens? leo and alma give shape to jon’s college experience, mickey is a major part of what happens to him the summer he hurts his knee. gerry is incredibly alone save for the presence of portia as a fixed point he can come and go from.

miriam had a husband, a child, a family once upon a time. to talk about HER life i need to talk about them! ruth and simmy and desmond and ira and the vanishing soldier are all important! you have to care about them to care about her to care about what her presence did to shape jon, it ALL trickles back TO the main characters but every piece is important and comes from a place of love and attention to detail. at least, that’s how i’ve been trying to operate.

i won’t describe all of it here too much when i could just say scene 3 in chapter 13 is one of my easier examples of how i worked this technique into a larger story.

(one fun detail i just want to say i was really excited about, though, was introducing simmy as just “simmy,” giving him shape, and THEN confirming that it’s a nickname based on his surname, which makes you go OH! SIMS!

it was a REALLY fun way of saying “here’s jon’s grandfather” without actually saying This Is Jon’s Grandfather In His Teen Years. more like “ah yes see this guy you now care about? surprise! he was pivotal all along.”

it’s SUCH a fun writing tactic and i was so happy to get to use it, like. there’s LORE there that means something.)

pharos by right isn’t going to have as many new OCs that i’m aware of Yet, save one that actually is already alluded to in TSP (two, actually, one of whom will have an Extreme relevance), and other references to other GTCU recurring characters! leo, alma, portia, kira, miriam, MAYBE even mickey too! who knows! i like establishing things and reusing them, they definitely make it easier to get invested when you see them in more than one place over time. it’s a fun easter egg hunt.

----------------

04. i think a lot of people are scared to put their OCs in things! i know i sometimes get nervous about it, too, like “oh no, is this weird? am i bogging the story down with something that doesn’t need to be there? no one gives a shit about this, they’re here for something else.”

like! would you believe it! REN WAS SCARED TO PUT THE CONTORTIONIST IN HLM... just! imagine what kind of story it’d be without her! you can’t, because it’d be vastly different, and nowhere near as engaging or painful because her presence there makes danny’s struggle that much more tangible and readable as something that anyone who has gone through relationship abuse can relate to. she’s a useful tool for that, and she’s not inherently out of place just because she’s not in the podcast herself; she is drawn up from the source material to shape her, and that’s enough for her to fit in!

even i see something tagged as like “(main character), (OC)” and more often than not just go “eh, maybe not” because i have that same misconception about whether or not i’ll get invested enough to care? and i wish i didn’t, i wish i knew where that idea came from, because! dude! some of my favorite things are built off the backs of OCs. my own fucking work relies HEAVILY on their inclusion!

part of why i wanted to talk about this in general (and honestly a lot of my “metas” aren’t directed at people to Teach Anything or sway them into a belief, most of the time i am just talking to myself and trying to get my thoughts in order and puzzle out why something makes me feel a certain way - in this case happy!) is because i’ve noticed a little influx of people feeling more comfortable doing more work with their OCs in their stuff! ren and i have both been told that seeing our nonsense makes people a little less afraid to put their OCs in their fics, and wow, they turn out so beautifully! and i love seeing them!

i think we should try to train ourselves out of being afraid of sprinkling OCs into things because we don’t want to be judged or we think it’s “cringe” like g-d i HATE that. yeah i might not read a self insert ship fic because that feels kind of funky to me a lot of the time but hey, if OP had a fun time writing it? that’s what matters and there Are people who are out there who like stuff like that because we all tend to projection in a different way.

----------------

05. okay, getting to my point.

i mostly want to encourage people to spice up their stories with OCs and allow yourself to get attached to them and let them flourish and grow! the more depth your OCs have the more they’ll bring to your story, even if they’re only briefly in it; the more you know about them in your head, the better you’ll be able to render how they’d speak or behave, and therefore the more unique the interactions they’re involved in will be. and those interactions can change SO much! you can really surprise yourself mid-story and things can change and sometimes they end up in unexpected territory, and the finished product will just be that much more engaging!

TSP wasn’t intended to be this way! i always wanted to give nuance to miriam, but putting her first POV chapter in there was a complete whim. i was nervous! and then i realized she had a bigger part to play. and then i realized she’s just as much a main character in that story as jon and gerry are; to the point where i could have a four chapter stretch of just her interacting with gerry, no jon physically present, and STILL continue telling an important story. and apparently, people are invested in it! people have shed tears! the response has been SO overwhelmingly positive!

and she’s basically an OC.

so write OCs into your work! give other people’s OCs a chance!

let yourself create and have fun and see where it takes you! get invested and fall in love with them and let other people see the kind of things live in your heart and let them love it, too!

i think it’s worth trying to unlearn this fear and aversion. we owe it to ourselves to disengage from the things we may have picked up on from school experiences with bullying, being silenced by peers, being called annoying, being dismissed by our parents, having different interests from our siblings and maybe not being able to get them interested in your things, all of that.

all of those things do this to us and the result manifests in a lot of ways, and in THIS context, we have that on Top of whatever we’re seeing online about cringe culture and we just get embarrassed and retreat and assume and we shouldn’t.

who’s it hurting? no one. the most that’ll happen is someone chooses to scroll past, and that’s always going to happen to every piece of work put out there. everyone has their own taste and their own reasons for reading whatever they read, and that’s why i’ll reiterate also:

give other people’s OCs a chance, too! help other people to unlearn this fear, too. encourage other people and it’ll come back around. leave a comment and a compliment, pull inspiration from other creators, let them know!

there’s always gonna be stuff out there that isn’t quite for us, but you may be surprised! i will never NOT talk about my friends’ OCs and how much they’ve inspired and influenced me and my own work, too; it’s a big old feedback loop of creativity and that’s a really beautiful, communicative thing that makes me really, really happy.

don’t let a weird unconscious fear stop you from having fun and sharing things you care about! even if you think “fanfiction isn’t the place for OCs” or something, like no one will care, i promise: someone out there will.

[flixls]

FILMS TO WATCH 📽️ ✨

Strange things are afoot and it’s our duty to play our part in social distancing and self-isolation; euphemisms for staying inside. The cabin fever will soon begin to set in with all this free time, so I’ve compiled a list of films to watch to keep from going mad: 

Paterson (2016) - Adam Driver plays a bus driver and poet named Paterson. Set in Paterson, N.J., the film takes place over the course of a week in his life; he goes to work, he writes poetry, he walks his dog, he has a drink at the bar, he goes home. Along the way, we meet the people in his life, such as his loving wife Laura (played by Golshifteh Farahani), who dreams of being a country singer one day, and the next, the owner of a cupcake shop. There’s value in boredom. The film is a love letter to the “mundanities” of every day life.

Begin Again (2013) - Everything will come up roses one day. The film stars Mark Ruffalo as Dan, a once-successful record label executive who struggles to keep up with the changing tides of the music industry. All the while, he’s dealing with issues in his personal life — his relationship with his teenage daughter and his estranged wife. Subsequently fired from his job, he goes on a drinking binge that leads him to a bar where he meets singer-songwriter Greta James (played by Keira Knightley), who has just broken up with her singer-songwriter boyfriend Dave Kohl. Over the course of the summer, taking to rooftops and the streets of New York City, Greta and Dan partner up for the making up of Greta’s first album. A beautiful life-changing friendship blossoms between the two as they gather the broken pieces of their individual lives, piecing together what they can and letting go of what no longer fits. It’s a sweet, feel-good film I’m convinced no one has seen.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) - Paul Newman. Robert Redford. The Old West. Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head. Written by William Goldman, screenwriter of The Princess Bride. Need I say more?

Roman Holiday (1953) - Just like Princess Ann, we’ll all be feeling suffocated with the intense need to escape during this time. Live vicariously through Ann and American reporter Joe Bradley’s escapade through Rome; having gelato on the Spanish Steps, drinking champagne at a sidewalk cafe, riding a Vespa, and dancing under the moonlight.

Labyrinth (1986) - It’s only forever, not long at all. Drama Queen™ Sarah Williams is given 13 hours to solve a labyrinth and save her baby brother Toby after she wishes that the Goblin King would take him away. If cabin fever begins to distort my reality and induce hallucinations, I hope they’re about a dancing goblin king played by David Bowie.

My Cousin Vinny (1992) - There’s no excuse to have never watched this movie. A trial comedy/drama starring Joe freakin’ Pesci as a lawyer from Brooklyn, who defends his cousin and his friend after they’re wrongfully accused of murder in small town Alabama. It’s GOLD. Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for a reason. If you watch one film from this list, it better be this one.

Running on Empty (1988) - Need to cry while Fire and Rain by James Taylor plays in the background? Then, I’ve got the movie for you. Arthur and Annie Pope are fugitives of the law, always on the run due to their antiwar activity during the 1960s. Along with their two children, Harry and Danny, the family is constantly assuming new identities as they relocate to new towns across the country. However, the eldest son, Danny, (played by River Phoenix) yearns to live a more stable life and forge his own path, but it could mean permanent separation from his family. On top of being a beautiful film, each and every performance is top notch. Shout out to Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti, who play Arthur and Annie respectively. 

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) -  Since we’re living through history, might as well watch a film where two slackers travel through history to save their band and, consequently, the world . Bill and Ted would rather pursue the musical endeavor that is their band Wyld Stallyns than focus on school. But the two are failing their history class. Ted’s father threatens to send Ted to military school if he flunks out of high school, ruining their dreams for Wyld Stallyns’ success. But that can’t happen! Their band is destined to bring about world peace, or so says a time-traveller from the future named Rufus (played by George Carlin). Using Rufus’ time-machine, Bill and Ted travel to different points in history, collecting important figures to help them complete their final project. If this sounds wacky, it’s because it is! Party on, dudes!

Practical Magic (1998) -  Witches, whipped cream pentagrams, late night margaritas, cozy cardigans, seaside Victorian home, magical conservatory, a soundtrack that includes Stevie Nicks. If that’s not enough to sell you on this gem, then I don’t know what else to say. 

Rear Window (1954) - Don’t peep out your windows, folks. You might find you’ve just witnessed something you wish you hadn’t. Photojournalist Jeff spends his summer confined to a wheelchair as he recuperates after an accident. As a heat wave hits, his neighbors keep their windows open in an effort to keep cool and he spends his days people-watching to keep from succumbing to boredom. A woman’s scream, the shattering of glass, and his neighbor’s suspicious behavior has him convinced he might have just witnessed a murder.

Enjoy! REMEMBER: Take care, wash your hands, stay home, be positive, call your elders, and don’t be a spreader!

[threewaysdivided]

I saw your conversation about Sam Manson. I was talking to Imekitty about this, but I’ve noticed a few things that (sort of) make Sam’s relationship with her parents seem more like teen-drama than actual hardship. If you look closely, she’s got a lot in common with them: outspoken political-activism, possible shared-interest in vintage clothes, and no shame in saying they don’t like certain people. Also, after the Fentons, they were the first to volunteer to use the Ecto-Skeleton, risks and all.

(In reference to this post.)

It’s been a little while since I rewatched DP so I’m not well-placed to do a detail-analysis implication-breakdown right now, but yeah - that fits with the overall impression I remember getting.  To me they came across as being sort of old fashioned set-in-their-ways conservative and snooty, and maybe a bit too Pleasantville -  but more often in the way of parents who do genuinely want good things for her and to be able to be proud of her despite not really understanding her interests, choices or friends and being very bad at expressing it.  Plus she seems to have her grandmother fully in her corner a lot of the time.

I really wish that the writers had committed to one or the other; either making it clear that Sam’s martyr/ persecution complex is mostly just regular self-inflicted teen-drama BS and giving her an arc addressing it, OR fleshing out the idea that she faces a lot of judgement/ pressure/ control/ nonacceptance in her home life and that her negative traits are a bi-product of defensive/ coping mechanisms resulting from that strained dynamic, rather treating things with Roger Rabbit Rules.  

(Which isn’t to say that a person can’t have similar interests/ personality traits to, and positive interactions with, their parents while still having a strained, broken or even abusive relationship with them on a deeper level, but the show never really goes hard enough in either direction to make it work.)

As mentioned the last post, this is kind of a consistent pattern across DP - the writers tend go with the low-effort first answer for whatever is Funny or Awesome or Convenient in the moment rather than putting in the work to find a solution that’s consistent with the characterisation, themes and world-lore overall.  There’s enough internal contradiction in the show that I don’t think it’s actually possible to take every canon detail as canon without fundamentally breaking things.  And in some ways that’s kind of cool; it makes the series more open to interpretation, and trying to distinguish authorial intent from authorial incompetence and come up with theories that account for as many pieces of canon as possible is really satisfying.  But, you know, it’s also kind of bad writing in general.

I think the thing that bothers me about Sam’s characterisation in particular is that - where it tends to be more obviously out-of-character when it shows up in other places - there’s a pattern to the inconsistency with how the writers handle Sam:

Throughout the series there’s a double standard in how Sam sees herself/ seems to expects others to act, compared to her own behaviour:

Despite being pro-pacifism she’s okay with smacking Tucker and encouraging Danny to destroy the trucks she doesn’t like

Sam values self-expression and is a feminist, but derides other girls for wanting to express themselves in a conventionally feminine way

Sam doesn’t like being forced to conform to others’ values but is okay with forcing others to conform to hers

Despite being anti-consumerist she shows very little discomfort at, or awareness of, her lavish home life and material belongings

She encourages Danny to take the moral high ground towards his bullies but has no problem antagonising and getting into petty verbal spats with Paulina herself

Sam stalks Danny and his love interest out of jealousy/ protectiveness but threatens to end their friendship when he does the same

In Mystery Meat, when Danny tries to express his discomfort/ anxiety, Sam hijacks the conversation to complain about her own parents instead of listening.

In One of a Kind Sam photographs Danny and Tucker hugging in their sleep, without their knowledge, with the stated intent of putting it in the yearbook, then uses it to blackmail them into silence. 

Side note: this joke is also tacky on a meta-level because it boils down to “male intimacy ha ha toxic masculinity no homo amiright?“ Would have been nice if show didn’t use low-key sexist humour as much as it did.

Instead of expressing that she’s hurt by Danny’s “pretty girls” comment in Parental Bonding, Sam retaliates by pushing him to ask Paulina out - a move she knows will most likely result in him getting publicly shut down and humiliated.

Then, after getting the result she wanted, she comes over to gloat and insults Paulina, rather than dropping it now that her point’s been made, which is what ultimately sets off the episode’s subplot.

In Memory Blank Sam permanently physically alters Phantom’s appearance to better suit her tastes while he’s not in a position to understand or give informed consent, then lies when Danny notices and asks about it later.

To be clear this definitely isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of her character and it’s not there 100% of the time - there are plenty of moments when she is loyal and generous and helpful and sincerely kind and where her stubbornness comes in handy.  But it’s the aggregate pattern of all these small instances that drives a crack through the foundation of her character integrity; producing this insidious undercurrent alternate-reading of Sam as someone who, at a deep level, just doesn’t respect or recognise that the emotional needs, pains, opinions, autonomy and boundaries of others are as real and valid as her own, and who responds to criticism with passive-aggressive hostility.

Again, I think that’s why people are so quick to point out that line from Phantom Planet, even though we all know the episode was a complete mess.  None of the examples above are particularly bad in isolation - you can’t really point at any one of them and say “oh no, bad girl” without sounding like you’re making a mountain out of molehill and irrationally hating on her just to hate on her.  It’s an uncomfortable slowburn pattern of subtle micro-transgressions that accumulates across the series - a “you might not notice it but your brain did”.  And it makes sense that it would be the worst-written episode that amplifies and brings that regular bad-writing undercurrent close enough to the surface for people to consciously recognise and use it to articulate those frustrations.

To wit: Not because it’s most telling of her character but because it’s most telling of the specific bad writing that regularly hurts her character. 

And again, from a storytelling point of view, it’s okay for Sam to have flaws.  She’s a teenager!  She’s learning.  She’s allowed to be egocentric and self-important and do things that aren’t the best at times.  It’s okay if these are her character weaknesses and a source of conflict with the rest of the cast.  But again, for that to be satisfying something really should have come of it.  It would have been nice if the writers were willing to have any self-awareness about these flaws being flaws that a person should recognise and grow past in order to have healthy relationships with others.  But they didn’t - because it’s easier to keep her as she is - to the point that they’ll actively bend the narrative to roll back or skip over moments that would have necessitated that growth.  So, even though they call attention to her flaws, the writers end up rewarding and enabling them instead of letting her learn.

And again, this isn’t meant to hate on Sam.  Hanlon’s Razor in full effect: it’s clearly a result of authorial/editorial incompetence rather than deliberate malice.  I know this isn’t the intended interpretation.

My preferred reading of Sam Manson is that she’s a Rosa Hubermann/ Hermione Granger/ YJS1 Artemis Crock-type character.  Someone who’s passionate and forceful and maybe a bit abrasive and hard to love at a glance, but whose core nature is compassionate and sincerely kind and loyal-to-the-death for the people they value.  I wish I could 100% like her without caveats; to be able to say that even if I don’t agree with her flaws I can at least understand that they’re a valid product of the life she lives, that they make her who she is and that she’s trying her best to be a good person who will get better despite them.  

But I can’t because the writers don’t give her that.  They’re always prioritising other things over the integrity of her character.  They don’t give her background enough time and context to make her negative traits feel resonant with it (because that would take time away from the Wicked Cool Radical Ghost-Fighting Superhero Action™) and the framing and plotting doesn’t give her chances to recognise or grow past them (because that would mean character development and those negative traits are an easy source of cheap conflict).  The writers just don’t seem to care all that much about Sam - her actual character, who she is, how she came to be that way, what she wants or how her negative traits would actually play against Danny and the others.

And that sucks.  Because she has a lot of potential to be a well-rounded and great character.  I’ve seen plenty of fics that seize that potential and roll with those gaps and the result is very good.  I wish I could like her canon depiction without feeling like I have to actively ignore a bunch of latent behavioural red flags as the price of entry.

She deserved better.

[yutaya]

Discord was all, “what would Danny be like in an AU where he was CEO instead of the Iron Fist?” and then they were like “What would WARD be like if he was the Iron Fist instead of CEO?”, and I was like “wow interesting question and I kind of want to answer but also I have to go to work ttyl” - and then I didn’t reply for like, a week and a half, but - here we go.

So. A role reversal AU where Danny is the CEO of Rand Enterprises and Ward is the Iron Fist.

So maybe in this universe, it wasn’t Madame Gao who approached Harold with an offer to save him. Maybe it was Harold, desperately searching for any way to prolong his own life, who hears whispers about shadows who don’t die, that there’s an organization, and Harold doesn’t even hesitate to offer them a deal in exchange for immortality. It’s nothing to Harold to dip his company into criminal enterprises, after all. He even suggests a solution to the possibility of his straight-laced business partner hindering their business - a plane crash related solution.

But the Hand likes to believe they control everything, and in this universe, it was not their idea to approach Harold Meachum and acquire Rand as a resource. The audacity! This man thinks he can come and use them, an outsider, using their substance, and doesn’t even have the honor to offer a true sacrifice in return, only that which he wouldn’t mind giving up and which he may even be planning on doing with his company and his business partner anyway?

So the Hand says, interesting proposition, meet us in one of our upcoming base locations where we may be able to discuss terms and your supplying the building for our next facility there, and then just as Harold so eagerly suggested a plane crash for his business partner, he finds his own travel to Anzou cut short.

A plane crash may be too showy for the Hand’s usual tastes, but Madame Gao does appreciate the poetic-ism of it.

In another world, Wendall took Heather and Danny with him on his trip to investigate the Anzou facility. In this world, Harold took Ward, for another “lesson” on “being an effective business man”.

Did he bring Joy as well? Spin it as some family vacation time in China after daddy’s business meeting is through? Intend to have Ward watch her while he conducted the more unsavory parts of his business?

If Joy and Ward are both on the plane:

-A: Joy, like Heather, dies in the plane crash, leaving Ward as sole survivor. This would absolutely devastate Ward, and not really work, I think - maybe it would be convenient to create a whole “fueled solely by revenge and with nothing left to lose, Ward channels all his energy and stubbornness and drive into destroying the Hand who took his baby sister” plot line, but… that’s like, Darkest Timeline content, and it makes me sad to think about, and also Ward is at his core more of a “protector of those he loves” guy than a “dark and vengeful” guy, so.

-B: Both children survive the crash. Their father does not. Joy is devastated, and ten years old, and Ward’s first priority is to prevent his little sister from freezing to death on a snowy mountain top in the fucking Himalayas. So how does this go? Ward and Joy both grow up in K'un Lun. Joy wants to go home to Danny and Heather and Wendall and their company, so when the pass opens fifteen years later, she takes off, and Ward goes with her, because of course he does. 

Maybe in this world they’re closer, still brought together by living through their father’s death and by having to present a united front against the sharks in the water, even if those sharks are monks sneering at the foreigners this time instead of businessmen looking to tear down the children running a company, but without Ward isolating himself, going down a path of drug abuse and mysterious injuries. Without Joy going to college and law school and struggling to prove herself next to her “prodigy” big brother.

These Meachum siblings go back to New York and to a Danny Rand who lost both of his siblings and his uncle in one fell swoop, who was left alone but for his parents. Wendall and Heather, to their credit, are kind and loving parents who hug him and do their best to support their child through the entire family’s grief and talk to him about death and such, but they are still adults with jobs and responsibilities and a whole lot of workload dropped onto their plates in the fallout of the entire Meachum family’s tragic demises.

How does Danny fare, left all alone? He grieves. He’s lonely. He’s angry at the circumstances, at faulty planes, at the shoddy craftsmanship that must have gone into it because it’s easier to rail against that than the idea that sometimes these things just… happen. He’s even guiltily angry with the Meachums, for leaving him. But he’s also Danny Rand, who came out of tragedy and abuse a kung-fu master ball of hope and light.

So Danny makes the best of things. Maybe when he gets a little older, hits his teenager years, he starts going out. Gets really good at slipping away from his security guards - learns to be light on his feet. Goes to skate parks, marvels at some of the tricks the other kids can do, and starts learning a bit of parkour, just because it’s cool. Maybe he explores the city he only really saw before from penthouse balconies - makes friends with hole-in-the-wall restaurant owners and moving company workers and homeless dudes in the park. Maybe he visits Chinatown, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen.

Maybe Danny ends up with connections all across the city, and in this universe, all those Rand Enterprises ads about being “for the family” and “there to support people” are a little more true than in another universe where the Hand was pulling Harold’s was pulling Ward’s strings. Wendall and Heather and business school teach Danny not to just give away all their products at cost when he takes over after Wendall either decides to retire early or just steps down into a lower position as part of a planned, gradual transition for the company, but maybe Danny helps set up programs to help get their product to disadvantaged groups without immediately inviting the board to oust him. 

Maybe Rand is heavily involved in philanthropy. Maybe a certain portion of those funds go to research on aircraft safety, and to families of plane crash victims. Maybe Danny still always separates out brown m&ms.

And then, one day, two adults show up claiming to be the long dead Joy and Ward Meachum, with a fantastical tale about surviving the plane crash and being raised in a monastery, and coming back now to reconnect with their old friend. They do not say that the monastery was part of a village that only connects to the rest of the world every fifteen years, or that the people there are all part of a cult dedicated to fighting a shadow organization of undead ninja criminals, or that, by the way, Ward punched a dragon in the heart and his fist glows now, because they are not idiots, but it still seems a little too good to be true. Danny wants to believe, but his parents caution him, and Danny’s fingerprint in an old ceramic gift won’t necessarily help ID Joy and Ward Meachum. Still, let’s say the Rands are a lot more willing to civilly work to gain proof one way or the other, and Joy and Ward don’t take offense to the need for verification, and somehow they figure it out and commence awkwardly trying to reconnect now that they’re all adults with different life experiences and nothing turned out how they’d expected it would as children.

And maybe the Meachum siblings get wind of the Hand in New York, or the Hand gets wind of the Iron Fist in New York, and they kind of try to keep Danny out of it but HA like that was ever going to work; they finish fending off a group of attackers in their new penthouse living room and once the ninjas disappear through the top-of-a-skyscraper-window they turn to find Danny standing in the doorway with an army’s worth of Chinese take-out in his arms and his mouth gaping.

They try to play it off. Danny points out that he literally just saw them fighting off fucking ninjas who left through the penthouse window and also Ward’s hand was GLOWING. They hesitantly explain, already formulating a backup plan to insist ‘no officer, Danny was super drunk last night, really,’ in case he calls the mental hospital on them. Danny, to their astonishment, listens seriously to their story, nods, and announces that there are some people he thinks they should meet.

CUE DEFENDERS. How does Danny know them in this AU? Probably through Claire, let’s be honest. He probably keeps bringing random bystanders he finds in trouble on the streets to the hospital and paying all their medical bills, managed to make friends with half the nurses in the city, and was super concerned when one of the hospitals was attacked by ninjas and one of his nurse friends died and another abruptly quit and all the officials were being very hush-hush about it, but Danny has connections with the part of the city that people like to ignore, and there were witnesses that night in the homeless and the street kids and the struggling immigrants working night shift across the street, and he tracks down nurse Claire in Harlem to make sure she’s alright (and to gush about her mother’s cooking, wow, Claire, I didn’t know your family owned a restaurant, that’s so cool!)

…and maybe a few days in to the whole “wow some people claiming to be my childhood friends back from the dead have appeared” business he goes to visit his girlfriend at her struggling dojo that she refuses to let him help with and finds! Claire! learning martial arts! Cool!!

And some other shenanigans, idk, how do timelines work, somehow Danny’s protagonist luck and sunshine power means he manages to meet all the other Defenders at least once somewhere in-between starting to sneak out when he’s fifteen and getting himself adopted by the entire city by the time he’s twenty-five, and then all this Meachum-vs-the-Hand stuff is happening and the city’s favorite billionaire is in the thick of it, and lol guess what Danny your girlfriend has secretly been a member of the Hand this entire time, yeah she didn’t have the “Danny hates the Hand” thing as a reason to hesitate on telling him this time but also their relationship was moving a lot slower when he wasn’t hiding in her dojo from hitmen, so forgive her if she hadn’t quite gotten to the family conversation yet -

- but that’s all part of a lovely universe where K'un Lun makes Ward and Joy more of a unit, and Danny was forced to make other friends with a whole city to choose from rather than just an abusive monastery cult and Davos. Let’s rewind.

Fifteen-year-old Ward is on the plane with Harold. Ten-year-old Joy is at home, staying with the Rands for the duration of Daddy’s boring business trip.

The plane goes down.

Ward finds the pilots with black creeping up their veins. He finds Dad, dead in the snow. He’s at a loss, and a little sad, but also, guiltily, relieved.

He’s free.

He’s also stranded on a snowy mountaintop and likely to freeze to death, cold and alone and without ever seeing Joy again.

Ward is stubborn beyond belief. He has an iron core of contrary asshole-ness that got him through 30 years of abuse. He never gives up without a fight. He never gives up, period.

He picks a direction, and starts walking.

There are monks. Maybe he didn’t find his own salvation. Maybe the monks saw the crash and came to investigate, and found a teenager trudging through the snow. But he wasn’t collapsed in the ice. He stubbornly insists that he might have made it on his own, that they didn’t rescue him. He’s not helpless. He’s not.

This one has fight, the monks murmur to each other. There is fire in his spirit.

They take him back to the village, where there is warmth, and food, and dry clothing, and a tree that smells like brown sugar. Ward wants a phone, so he can call the Rands. Explain what happened. Talk to Joy.

We don’t have phones here.

Fair enough, it is a monastery on top of a mountain in the Himalayas. Ward doesn’t know why anyone would want to live in a monastery on top of a mountain in the Himalayas, but he doesn’t really care. There must be a way they get down the mountain, for supplies and stuff. There must be a way people get up the mountain, to visit the monastery. Ward wants to go home.

The pass is closed. K'un Lun sits on another plane of existence. The pass only opens once every fifteen years, and then it is guarded by the Iron Fist, to protect us from the Hand. You can not leave.

Ward has managed to walk himself right into the clutches of a new enemy. These people intend to imprison him.

Ward has never been a planner, but he has tenacity in spades. Over the next month he makes 21 escape attempts.

“There’s no point,” says one of the bratty monk children that’s taken to following him around. Ward knows this one is the child of the head monk here. His father taught him to look out for political details like that. He doesn’t know the kid’s name, and he doesn’t care. David or something. (His father was always disappointed in Ward for failing those lessons too.)

Ward ignores him. He takes off into the snowy wind - walks and walks and nearly freezes in the cold and when he finally spots lights in the distance and makes his way to salvation, it’s just fucking K'un Lun again.

He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t. But. It might be smart to recuperate. Conserve his resources. Break into the monks’ plum wine barrels. Serves them right if their captives steal their stupid wine. Stupid monks.

Some asshole makes a remark about his foreigner status. Ward swings a punch at them. They take him down in two seconds, and laugh about it. They sneer at him, mock him.

He’ll show them.

Ward trains in their stupid kung-fu cult school. The teachers are harsher on him than all of their students, he can tell. They’re trying to break him. Jokes on them, Ward has survived Harold Meachum for fifteen years. In another life, he makes it for thirty, kills the bastard, and thrives. This is nothing.

The harder they try to break him, the stronger the steel in Ward’s spine holds him up. Fuck them, and their fucking pass, and their kung-fu cult, and their pretty little prison. Ward claws his way to the top on pure spite.

He becomes the Iron Fist.

The monks have grown complacent, after fifteen years. They send him outside, into the pass, alone and away from the village even as he’s expected to guard it. The Hand could travel between the outside world and K'un Lun. Anyone could.

Idiots.

A bird flies overhead, and Ward feels triumph.

He’s finally going back to New York.

In New York, at Rand Enterprises, there are Danny and Joy. After the tragic death of her remaining family, Joy is adopted by the Rands. She keeps her last name. She acknowledges Heather and Wendall as her parents, but still calls them by their first names. They all go to visit Harold’s and Ward’s graves every year, on the anniversary, and also on their birthdays, on Father’s Day, sometimes just when they’re passing by or having a bad day, or have life milestone news to share, like when Joy gets into law school, or when Danny is thinking he might want to let Joy and his parents handle the business and become a nurse. 

Both times Joy and Danny get older than Ward ever got to be, they hole up in one of their rooms together and go through 3 bottles of wine, and their parents don’t ground them in the morning. Danny visits Joy on campus, and she rolls her eyes but grins as she introduces him to her friends. Joy holds Danny’s hand while he comes out to his parents as bi. Danny and Joy put all the brown m&ms in a dish in front of an empty seat, for Ward, even though he was never a part of that game with them. When they play monopoly, no one ever uses “Ward’s piece”. In this universe, Joy and Danny are the close siblings - not codependent, like Joy and Ward were, but best friends, in a way that Joy and Ward weren’t.

Joy did not have to fight tooth and claw to prove to herself that she could live up to her father’s legacy or her brother’s reputation. She becomes a cutthroat business woman with a strategic mind, but she also knows how to put away the shark teeth in her personal life. Danny grows up on neither the hope of seeing the rest of his family again nor with the weight of having to start over and make new friends. He, Joy, and Ward were isolated kids, and he and Joy stay fairly isolated once Ward is gone, since they still have each other.

Danny has a sunshine nature, and he still learns the names and faces of all the Rand employees. He still chats cheerfully with all the delivery people and waiters and checkout clerks that cross his path. But - he’s not as lonely, here. He’s more content in his upper-class world, schmoozing at the charity galas even if he’d much rather be camped at the refreshment table, and he talks to the catering staff just as much as the bigwigs he’s supposed to be networking with. He puts on his tuxedo and accompanies Joy to orchestral concerts, and he is absolutely the big gun his family breaks out when they need to show a client someone earnest and hopeful and who truly believes in the good of their company.

When Ward comes back, he may lose his temper on the security team at Rand. Just a little. He’s come so far, and he’s waited so long, and he’s SO CLOSE to seeing his baby sister again, and these idiots think they can stop him?

So maybe he breaks past them. It’s not the smartest move, but. Dad always said Ward didn’t think things through. And Joy is right there, only a few floors away. He won’t be stopped now.

He busts into her office. Joy threatens to call security. Danny rushes in, and they stand side-by-side, a united front, examining this stranger claiming to be their dead brother.

Ward’s goal, all these years, has mostly been about getting back to Joy. But he can’t deny that when he thought about her, sometimes he’d think about Danny, too. It was unavoidable - they share so many memories, after all. It’s always been Joy-and-Danny, and big-brother-Ward, their whole lives. Joy-and-Danny-and-babysitter-Ward. Joy-and-Danny playing make believe and Ward, being an asshole.

So Ward stands frozen in the doorway, and just as he’d exclaimed “Joy!” when he burst in, he now breathes “Danny?”

And Danny and Joy have always been the more hopeful of the three siblings, the two who want to believe, who can look at a package of m&ms and think ’it’s a dream come true.’

They look at the way the stranger hasn’t made any move to hurt them, and the way he looks like Ward, and the way he can’t keep his eyes off of Joy, but not in a creepy way like so many businessmen they’ve had to deal with: in a way that seems so relieved and hopeful - and they run a DNA test. Joy is right there, after all, and there’s no question about her identity. They’re literally standing in their pharmaceutical company. They pop down to one of the labs and Danny asks Eva if she could do him a favor, pretty please with a cherry on top, and Eva laughs and says “you got it, Mr. Rand,” and Danny whines “Eva, I keep telling you, it’s Danny,” and Eva grins and says “whatever you say, Mr. Rand,” and basically Ward is Ward and they’re in for some complications what with all the telling Wendall and Heather they have to do and the reviving Ward legally they have to do, and the getting to know him again after fifteen years of thinking he was dead, and Joy definitely snaps at some point down the line and screams at Ward and cries and hits his chest going “you left, you left, you left,” and Danny had gotten used to telling Ward’s ghost all his woes and relying on an idealized version of him and is now suddenly remembering with trepidation what an asshole Ward actually was, and. it’s gonna be a rough time. It’s gonna be a rough time, but they’ll get through it, because they all refuse not to.

….And maybe we still have to deal with the part where Ward is the Iron Fist, and the Hand are in New York, and maybe Ward doesn’t actually give a flying fuck about stopping the Hand or anything that fucking monk cult kept going on about, but the Hand sure does care about manipulating the Iron Fist into doing its bidding. And Ward may not care about K'un Lun, but like HELL is he going to sit back and twiddle his thumbs when those assholes inevitably threaten his family.

“You will not touch them,” Ward seethes, and suddenly his fist is glowing and he’s beating the assailants up, and his fist is glowing and is that a tattoo, and Ward’s FIST IS GLOWING.

“What the fuck, Ward.”

“Right,” Ward says, pushing back his hair. “There’s something else I should tell you.”

[girlonastring]

List of Future H50 Fic

1) Graceless:

Danny loses visitation/rights until the reassessment of his job adjourns; after discovering Rachel is moving with Stan to Hawaii, he transfers to HPD. No one there knows about Grace (until he knows his fate, talking about her is too painful), not even after joining Five-0.

Until one day, he hears that precious voice say ‘Danno’ and he turns to the best sight in the world: his baby girl.

The bulk of the story will be of that scene, and the events that follow. It’ll have angst, drama, family moments - and pre-Mcdanno. Depending on how long it goes, they may even be starting a relationship. But they are definitely end game.

2) Any Man of Mine:

A combination of Steve things like the song, or the opposite to it. I still haven’t quite worked out all the details for that, but it’s what I’m aiming for. Will start off with a memory of Danny singing along to the song with Grace, and later will have her bringing up the similarities of their song and Steve to Danno, and bonding over that.

It’ll be pre-Mcdanno, but also that lovely trope where they’ve basically been dating for forever, but only one of them really notices it. Which will be Danny! Also, a 5+1 because I LOVE that!

3) Undercover WitSec:

This one is pure indulgence for me. I love the idea of Danny having been undercover when he worked back in Jersey, so in this he’ll have been undercover (thinking maybe with the mob?? Still deciding) and gotten close with a kid (placing this before!Grace, but still with Rachel) and when all is said and done, the kid (an OFC, because I can) is put in witness protection.

Shoot forward however many years, and he’s in Hawaii, and the only ones who know about this girl are Rachel (because she’s a big reason why he wanted a kid) and Grace (honorary big sister no one knows about; why she knows exactly I don’t know?? Haven’t figured that out yet) so when this girl shows up, calling Danny something no one understands in Italian cue the shocked reactions!

The reason she was in witsec is ‘dead’ so she’s back and it’s getting their lives resettled, have some nice pre-Mcdanno going on, then low and behold, the reason is not really dead and we have some action. Ends in established Mcdanno!

4) Serial Revenge:

Thought this one up at work yesterday and I am P U M P E D for it! Still figuring out a lot of the details, so this overview will be even shorter.

Danny is friends with this kid when he’s young, who seems so normal, but one day it’s discovered his parents are dead. Not only dead, but murdered. He has his suspicions about it, but nothing is ever tied together and so the kid (who something is obviously not right about - still figuring out that detail!) is sent to a mental hospital (foster care from there?? Don’t know yet!)

Flash forward and we’re in Hawaii, and there are killing happening that Five-0 dont’ know about until somehow, there’s a Danny connection and HPD calls them in.

Grace is sent away for safety, Danny is living with Steve for the same reason, bodies keep showing up, and it’s a race to figure out who it is, then to prove it AND stop him.

Killer winds up dead in the end, we get Mcdanno happening, and I am so very ready for this fic!

5) Dolled Up Steve:

Steve watching Grace at his house while Danny has to go do - something, and they play tea party and dolls and hey, dress up for the tea party! And when Danny comes back to find Grace doing Steve’s nails, look of intense concentration while she jabs away, and Steve is looking at her like she’s his whole world? So fond and full of love? That is Danny’s ‘oh shit I’m in love with this dumbass moment’.

I have a feeling this will jump from Danny POV, to Steve POV, back to Danny POV.

6) Sunshine & Whiskey:

Follows along with the lyrics that I chose a while back, and most likely will wind up a PWP. Maybe get some lime, maybe get some lemon. Just waiting on it to let me know what we’re doin’!

7) I've Got You Under My Skin:

The sap for this one! Established relationship, living together, and during a tender moment when they’re swaying in the living room/kitchen (haven’t decided;;) along to Frank Sinatra, someone proposes. <3 Then! Another chapter of them slow dancing to the same song at their wedding. <33

8) Pour Some Sugar:

So Danny in a private moment of Rachel’s bachelorette party did a strip routine for her and at a party Kono and Malia find out about it and it turns into him doing a very funny, extra snippet for Kono’s bachelorette party which he then gets to join. No one figures this out until Kono makes a comment about a tattoo that Danny has that’s not exactly public friendly, followed by Danny saying something about bachelorette parties getting crazy.

So Steve and Chin wind up finding out, which of course leads to Steve getting to see the routine in his own private moment, but made different so it’s just for him. And yes, there will be an explanation to why Danny knows how to do a strip routine, lol

9) Pictures Worth:

So Danny overhears Kono and Malia talking about tasteful pictures being done for a wedding gift and tells them “hey, that can be done” And he pulls them aside and shows them photos he took of a high school ex that she had done as a wedding gift for her wife, and “see, tasteful, just do it like that”

They discuss it and he helps them find someone on the island who will do it and be discreet/comfortable. What he doesn’t share is that before he took the ones of his ex, he did practice shots of himself so that he could be sure the gift turned out perfect. No one else knows this - not even Rachel.

I don’t know how Steve and Chin will find out (or why they have to, but I apparently like to involve the team in this set up *shrugs*) and Steve finds out about his private shoot and there’s Mcdanno goodness!

10) Too Close:

Old friends of Danny’s come to the island for a visit, and one night when they’ve had a bit to drink he admits that Too Close by Next makes him think of Steve, talking about the hot and bothered aspect of it - he’s quite smashed at this point. At a party for the old friends to meet the new, Kono and the girl friend (or the girl friend and the guy friend {they’re married!}) are talking about how clueless Steve and Danny are and how they need to get together already etc

Later they’ve had enough and the friend mentions the song mention so Kono sets it as Steve’s tone on Danny’s phone and ‘loses’ the phone so Steve has to call. The rest of the story is dealin’ with the aftermath of that and of course the Mcdanno!

11) It Wasn’t Me:

Danny and maybe Rachel having a normal day when all of a sudden their little angel goes through singing the chorus of the aforementioned song and just flipping their shit.

After finding out that they have Uncle Matty to thank because he thought Gracie was asleep but she wasn’t and having to explain that it wasn’t an appropriate song for her to be singing and something about “Cheating is wrong” so that when Grace finds out about Rachel and Stan and later Danny and Rachel (possibly) its just “so you two are hypocrites” or something.

Essentially I just want that initial freak out, and definitely will be finding some way to put Mcdanno in it!

12) DILF:

So Steve is Grace’s teacher and she overhears him saying that Danny is a DILF and later she asks her dad what that means and the choking on a drink and going bright red and trying to figure out what the heck to do with that, how to answer. The rest is yet to be determined, but of course it will be Mcdanno!

13) Love Bug:

YOU GUYS. I forgot about this one! This is what the title says: people of Hawaii are being bitten by a love bug, and the team is on the case to find out what the heck is going on! The effects can get more dangerous the longer there is no cure, so of course Steve is bitten. Not only that, but he just can’t seem to keep his hands or eyes off of Danny! There’s intrigue, case solving, and awkward I-couldn’t-keep-my-hands-off-you avoidance that all ends in lovely Mcdanno <3

14) Sleepy Prompt #20

“I think your hair is cute when you wake up, if only you could see it the way I did.”

15) Smut Prompt #57

“If we get caught I’m blaming you.”

16) Smut Prompt #59

“Wow, I didn’t realize you were that...flexible.”

17) Whumptober Prompt #7

Isolation

18) Whumptober Prompt #8

Stab Wound

19) Whumptober Prompt #9 

Shackled

20) Whumptober Prompt #10

Unconscious

21) Whumptober Prompt #11

Stitches (continuation of day 3)

22) Whumptober Prompt #12

Don’t Move

23) Whumptober Prompt #13

Adrenaline

24) Whumptober Prompt #16

Pinned Down

25) Whumptober Prompt #18

Wake Up

26) Whumptober Prompt #19

Asphyxiation

27) Whumptober Prompt #20

Trembling

28) Whumptober Prompt #21

Laced Drink

29) Whumptober Prompt #23

Bleeding Out

30) Whumptober Prompt #24

Secret Injury

31) Whumptober Prompt #26

Abandoned 

32) Whumptober Prompt #27

Ransom (continuation of day 26)

33) Whumptober Prompt #28

Beaten

34) Whumptober Prompt #29

Numb (continuation of day 28)

35) Whumptober Prompt #30

Recovery (continuation of day 12)

36) Whumptober Prompt #31

Embrace

37) Sleepy Prompt #34

“Will you carry me to bed?”

38) 5+1 Mistletoe

Basically the 5 kisses Steve shared under the mistletoe that were platonic and the one that meant the most. Gotta find my notes for this!

39) A.D.I.D.A.S.

A 5+1 esque fic of smut scenes!

So there are the ideas so far! A few have been mentioned in previous posts, I just don’t know how to link them in this one. They will be coming out in no particular order, and it will take one time because I will wind up writing multiple ones at once. It’s just a matter of which one is speaking louder to me!

I hope someone else is excited for this with me, and please, feel free to talk to me about any of them! Honestly I am so pumped to write them all, I can’t wait to get them all started! :D

Edit: July 19, 2019  August 21, 2020

[chesteroshea]

( joe cole, twenty-two, cismale, he/him ) Did anyone else just see CHESTER O’SHEA ? I hear for the O’SHEA family they can be a bit UNTAMED  &  NAIVE. But I also heard they can be KINDHEARTED & OPTIMISTIC. If you dare I hear they frequent JAVA ADDICTS in their spare time when they aren’t being an SERVER AT MALNATI PIZZERIA. Tread carefully or else you might be next on their list ! ( danny, 21, they/them )

[[MORE]]

name: Chester Kairell O’Shea
nickname: Ches, Kai, Cheeto
age: twenty-two
date of birth: May 25th
place of birth: Chicago, IL
spoken languages: English
gender: Cismale
sexuality: Bisexual

nationality: American

ethnicity: Irish
hair color: Red
eye color: Blue
skin color: fair
height: 6’0

smokes? Nope
drinks? Heh…yes
drugs? of course

positive traits: Friendly, Kindhearted, Well-Intentioned, Optimistic, Caring, Protective
negative traits: Violent, Immature, Untamed
moral alignment: Chaotic Good
temperament: W I L D

Big ol trigger warning: blood, death, gore (?), depression, abuse

Chester had always been known as a sweet kid. He was always the one to speak up if something was wrong. Even when he was little, he’d beat up a bully on the playground for messing with the scrawny kid and that was the code he lived by—to be the voice to the voiceless and the strength for those who have none. That was something is mother had always taught him. The only problem was…he wasn’t always able to stop himself from going too far. Sure he was protecting his peers but he was beating kids within an inch of their life just for calling someone a mean name. Needless to say this landed him in the principal’s office more than a few times.

Meanwhile at home he was watching his angel of a mother being tossed around like a rag doll. His love for her knew no bounds but he felt completely powerless against the will of his father. And when he followed his mothers advice, when he tried to stand up to him, when he tried to protect her, he was thrown around just as badly. He’d come to school every day with his new bruise or cut. And by the time he’d reached middle school he’d convinced himself that his father was only doing this out of love. That’s why he kept beating the everloving shit out of the kids at school. This was discipline—untamed rage and aggression, teaching every kid a lesson. And even though he only did it to protect the ones he loved—his friends, his family, his peers—he always ended in bruised and bloodied knuckles and a trip to the principals office.

When he turned 13 he had grown stronger both mentally and physically. He knew bruises didn’t mean love, they meant pain. They meant fear and suffering. But his passion for justice had become an ultimate override. He wouldn’t watch his mother be beaten again. He was going to end it himself. So, when he came home from school and witness his father slap his sobbing mother to the floor, he went into a full blind rage. When he woke up he was straddled over his father’s chest, unable to recognize his face anymore. He looked at his hands, his fists dripping with the blood of the man below him. His cheeks were stained with tears and there were more to come. He slowly turned to see his mother behind him, shocked and shaking. To see that fear in her eyes...it broke him. He instantly started to sob, tears streaming down his cheeks and his throbbing fingers coverings his face. He apologized over and over, his conscience finally taking over. What had he done? Suddenly he felt the familiar embrace of his mother, holding him and tell him everything was going to be alright.

Mason was called almost immediately, a house call he called it. Seeing the scene Chester was sure his entire family would hate him. But Mason was just that sweep it under the rug kind of guy, especially after he heard why Chester did what he did. Word had gotten around in the family. Everyone knew Chester did it. And the isolation wasn’t helping him feel any better. No one knew the reason so they just thought sweet little Ches had just...snapped. That he was crazy. He always did have anger issues they’d say.

By the time he’d gotten to high school he was in a fight every other day and in and out of juvie. He was obviously the type to go ballistic, especially if it came to his family. He’d most definitely not been afraid to break a jaw or too after the incident. All the while he had been under the influence of his cousin Finn, not directly, but god did he look up to that guy. He saw Finn as a pillar of strength and bravery and followed everything he did. He wanted to protect his family like he knew Finn could.

Eventually he realized that the only person he had in the world...was him. No more mother, no more father, no more family, no friends, no love. His loneliness consumed him, and without an outlet he reverted back to his old violent ways. He knew he owed a debt to the family after his crimes, so he became a repo man for the O’Shea family. It still felt pretty bad...the way people were so afraid of him. But at least he could put his talents to good use. Although he still was taking things a bit too far, the O’Shea message was clearly received by non-paying clients.

His isolation was telling him he needed a change—that he needed to chill the fuck out if he was ever going to have friends again. So, he started boxing. It was a great way to work out any of his frustration and fear and helped him not act so violently all of the time. He was finally, very slowly, starting to feel at peace. Hopefully this would eventually fix his loneliness issue.

Wanted connections

Someone who makes him soft

This person is someone who he’s fallen for. This is the person who he would do anything for but isn’t a fan of how he handles things. But Ches would change for them, easily. (Preferably someone from a rival family but could be anyone)

Friends, hookups, enemies, boxing buddies

[dp-pastandpresent]

Past and Present: Chapter 24

Clockwork had put Sam down and was floating close to the ground in front of her, trying his best to keep her from freaking out more.

'I should probably calm her down before I go trying to get information.'

He could sense the fear in her and, despite bringing her here to find out what she knew, his instinct told him to hold back.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. It's just dangerous here if you don't know where you're going. You really should have stayed put."

She looked back at him, still shocked by his revelation.

"Excuse me?"

"No, excuse me. I should have given you a proper warning about the consequences of removing my medallion."

'Humans are so hard to read. Why can't she just accept my apology?'

"Proper warning? Ha! That's funny coming from the dude who abducted me!"

Her eyebrows were raised now as she glared her purple eyes into his red ones.

He floated there for a moment, still in his adult form, trying to figure out the best answer to the girl's accusations.

'She is right you know, you did abduct her…'

"And for that, I apologize as well. It's just, you see, you were figuring out too much. About the Ghost Zone. Daniel. Me."

--

Sam stood up, the answer she had known all along finally becoming clear.

'Glowing cogs, changing appearances, finding out his secrets…'

"Clockwork?" she asked, her voice a bit lower than it had been in her previous accusation.

"You hadn't figured that out before? I thought you were smarter than that." He quickly changed to his older form, causing the girl to jolt back once again.

'God, stop doing that!'

Giving herself a second to readjust to his changed form, she looked at him again, trying her hardest to hide the fear building inside her.

"Well, I had a feeling…' She raised her eyebrows.

"And what else do you have a feeling about?'

'That you're an evil, controlling spirit who needs to get a better hobby.'

Despite the thoughts raging in her head, she didn't want to jump to any conclusions out loud for fear of what he could do to her.

She looked down from those glowing eyes, suddenly remembering the medallion around her neck.

"This medallion," she said, holding it up to him. "It's keeping me here?"

The ghost smiled again, this time with a small chuckle.

"In a sense, yes. You see, in the Ghost Zone, humans tend to fall through things."

"The Ghost Zone? You brought me to the Ghost Zone!"

'I should have realized that when I fell through the floor…'

"Well of course dear, where else would I live?"

She was still mad, but needed answers too badly to try and figure out a way to escape

"You live here?"

'Sure looks lonely… Maybe he needs a cat?'

His voice interrupted her thoughts again.

"Here? Yes. This is my realm you see, the Island of Lost Time. And I, Clockwork, watch over all who come and go from this realm."

'Even those who you bring back…'

"Even those like… Danny?"

He became young again at hearing this name, a playful expression on his face.

"Ah, Daniel. Yes, especially him."

--

He had a frustrated look on his face as he flipped through the timelines on his screen, the book in front of him once again open to the usual page.

"There has to be an answer here somewhere! I've reviewed the timelines over and over again! I've questioned – and scared – every ghost who may know anything. I've even tried removing that cursed amulet myself! And yet… nothing."

He looked down at the book again and decided to read the words on its page out loud.

"One day there will come a being strong enough to wield the power of both realms. Upon the removal of the cursed Amulet of Aragon, this being will take its true place amongst both humans and ghosts, freeing the Ghost Zone of the dark power that lingers over it, and taking its place as the protector of both realms. "

He sighed, slamming the book and letting it fall to the ground.

"I watch over the Zone, even that pointless Graveyard, and am constantly reviewing the things those humans do. Why can't I remove that amulet!?"

As if finally answering his questions, the screen in front of him suddenly turned to static.

"That's odd. I can control the time channels with my mind, but I've never had them go to static before…"

But before he could question further, a new scene appeared. The date at the top read 1965.

"Hmm? Why would it go there?"

The scene showed a girl in bed, her face flushed, with an ice pack on her head, her eyes closed. Lying next to her was a boy with the same. Both had black hair; the girl's was down to her shoulders, while the boy's was a messy mop upon his head. As the ghost watched, the girl coughed and the boy looked over at her, reaching out to her. She opened her eyes at this and gave a small smile back.

"Those eyes. I've seen them before? But where…"

He turned from the screen, trying to make sense of what exactly he had just witnessed.

"Such a trivial moment, but it must mean something…"

He walked over to a smaller screen, an idea brewing in his head.

The small screen came to life with a single thought and quickly began to shuffle through scenes as the ghost searched for what he needed.

"I have to find those eyes!"

The screen stopped its shuffle on a still scene, and the ghost's red eyes grew big as he took in what he saw.

A girl and a boy were sitting on a doorstep, each holding an ice cream cone in their hands. The boy's was beginning to melt all over his pants, and the girl had stopped licking her cone to laugh at him.

"Bingo!"

Her eyes were a match for the ones he had just viewed, and yet…

"That's not her…"

While the eyes looked the same, the girl was definitely different. Her hair was shorter and pulled back. She wore a black tank top, a violet skirt, and black bangles on her wrist.

If that wasn't enough to give it away, the time stamp at the top of the screen was… 2019, a year that had yet to happen in normal time..

"She has to be related to the girl from 1965. It would make sense after all, I've checked the 2000's millions of times, I'm sure she's come up before. But why now?"

He examined the still again, looking between the girl and the boy, his eyes getting wide.

"Hold on. . Show the final still from the home screen next to this moment."

He lurched back as the first scene appeared next to the current one, unable to believe was he was seeing.

"It's not possible."

But it was. Somehow, someway, the same boy was in both scenes.

--

"You see, Daniel is…special. I've known this even longer than you've been on Earth."

Clockwork grinned as he let his own memories return.

"His abilities, while he may not know it now, will soon play an important role in the Ghost Zone. A role even more important than the one that I play."

Sam looked up at him in confusion.

"But if you need him so much here, why would you send him out there?"

Clockwork's grin faded as he turned from the girl, trying to hide his frustration.

'Why must she ask so many questions? She can't possibly expect to understand these things!'

"How I chose to test the boy is none of your concern."

Sam got up, wobbling a bit as she realized she wouldn't fall through this time. Crossing her arms, she raised her voice in frustration "Clearly it is, or you wouldn't have dragged me down here against my will!"

'Shut up, girl!'

Clockwork turned back to her, red eyes glowing.

"You cannot possibly expect to understand these things!"

She fell back onto the ground, as if being forced there against her will, but even upon falling, she refused to turn away

"Maybe if you'd TELL ME! The whole reason I'm here is because I got 'too involved' with Danny! Well someone had to, because clearly you weren't!"

It was Clockwork's turn to jolt back, as his eyes dimmed, and he once again changed forms as Sam got back up.

"YOU resurrected him. YOU sent him into my world. But YOU told him NOTHING. NOTHING about what was going to happen. NOTHING about his powers, his destiny. That doesn't sound like someone who watches over things. That sounds like a coward!"

She was livid now, trying to defend the one thing that had kept her sane and safe for the past few weeks.

Clockwork looked at the girl, trying to hide his fear of her.

"STOP!"

She froze as he pointed his staff at her with a small chuckle.

"Oh dear, I forgot to tell you that I have extra power over medallions in my own domain. Oops. Maybe I'll just leave you here for a bit, let you cool off."

He floated back over to his home screen, his mind returning to the main reason he had brought the girl here in the first place.

"If they're as smart as I believe they are, by now they should have found my little 'gift' and initiated the Temporal Isolation Mechanics Executor."

He smiled as his screen lit up with a scene from the Fentons' lab, with Danny and another boy staring at a pixilated map.

"Perfect."

[jennabookish]

Welcome to another WWW Wednesday! This meme is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. To participate, just answer the following three questions: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m currently reading…

The Stranger Inside by Laura Benedict This is a NetGalley ARC for a February release. I haven’t formed an opinion yet, as I’m just getting into it, but it’s a mystery/thriller about a woman who comes home to find a mysterious stranger has moved into her house while she was out of town. (So, it’s similar to Our House, by Louise Candlish, but I’m hoping I’ll like this one more.)

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly This is a WWII historical fiction novel that I’m reading with my book club girls. The story follows three women in very different circumstances during the war, and I’m finding it a really difficult read, which is not to say it’s bad, but definitely raw and real.

I recently finished reading…

Warcross, by Marie Lu (full review here) This sci-fi YA novel had a fun concept, and I wanted to love it, but it was just okay. It definitely doesn’t feel like one of those YA novels that translates well to an adult audience (like Strange the Dreamer, which I will stand by until I’m 80.) I do like what it set up for the sequel, Wildcard, though, so I will be reading the next book. (Side note: I have a signed copy of Wildcard, and as someone who isn’t crazy about the series, I’d rather it end up in the hands of a fan. I may host a giveaway over on my Tumblr or Instagram for both books sometime soon. I’ll update here if/when that happens.)

The Lost Man, by Jane Harper (ARC – Release date February 5, 2019) I just finished this yesterday, and I thought it was phenomenal. It started out slow and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it at all, but if you pick up a copy, do yourself a favor and stick it out through the first third or so. This is a mystery/suspense novel with some family drama aspects to it, with complex, morally gray characters and an interesting exploration of toxic masculinity and violence.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (full review here) This was a reread for my because my book club read it this month, and you all know by now that I love this book to pieces. If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out. I’ve never discussed it with anyone who didn’t absolutely love it, and most of the ladies in my book club said it was their favorite book we’ve read all year.

Killing Adam, by Earik Beann (ARC- Release date January 1st, 2019) I thought I’d love this one, as it had a really interesting take on a kind of Ready Player One scenario. Most of the population is increasingly abandoning real life to spend their time in virtual reality, but in this novel, the protagonist is unable to engage with the software due to a brain anomaly, so he’s left behind and isolated in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, I found the writing kind of underwhelming, and this one ended up being just okay.

Up next…

The Au Pair  by Emma Rous

A grand estate, terrible secrets, and a young woman who bears witness to it all. If V. C. Andrews and Kate Morton had a literary love child, Emma Rous’ The Au Pair would be it.

Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother Danny were born in the middle of summer at their family’s estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair fled, and the village thrilled with whispers of dark cloaks, changelings, and the aloof couple who drew a young nanny into their inner circle.

Now an adult, Seraphine mourns the recent death of her father. While going through his belongings, she uncovers a family photograph that raises dangerous questions. It was taken on the day the twins were born, and in the photo, their mother, surrounded by her husband and her young son, is beautifully dressed, smiling serenely, and holding just one baby.

Who is the child and what really happened that day?

One person knows the truth, if only Seraphine can find her.

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What are you reading this week? Any thoughts on the books listed in this post?  Please feel free to discuss or share WWW links in the comments!

WWW Wednesday 12/19/2018 Welcome to another WWW Wednesday! This meme is hosted by Taking on a World of Words…

[multiverseforger]

Edit

Born and raised in Greece by his single mother, Michael Morbius experienced an isolated childhood due to his rare blood condition, which contributed to his ugly and unpleasant-looking appearance. But despite his looks, he was an intellectually gifted young man who spent his time reading books and, in time, became a highly respected and Nobel Prize-winning biologist who specialized in the field of human and animal biology. While in New York, after escaping from his home country due to his pseudo-vampiric condition, he attempted to find a cure and to protect his fiancé Martine Bancroft, but he was attacked by the Lizard and defeated when Spider-Man and the Lizard teamed up against him to recover a sample of Morbius's blood in order to cure their own mutated physical conditions before he escaped. The truth behind his horrific condition is that, in order to cure himself of an unknown blood disease that was killing him, Morbius, using his past experience as an expert biochemist, had attempted to cure himself of the disease with an experimental treatment involving vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy. However, he instead became afflicted with a far worse disease called "pseudo-vampirism" that mimicked some of the powers and the bloodlust of the supernatural vampirism. Morbius now had to drink blood in order to survive and had a strong aversion to light. His bones became hollow and he gained the ability to fly, as well as gaining superhuman strength, super-speed, and accelerated healing. His appearance, already ugly, now became hideous—his upper canine teeth extended into fangs, his nose flattened to appear more like that of a bat's, and his skin became chalk-white. He also gained the ability to turn others into similar "living vampires" like himself by biting them and drinking their blood, infecting them with the disease of pseudo-vampirism.[13] People whom Morbius infected with the disease of pseudo-vampirism did not truly die as a result and they could be cured through an antidote to pseudo-vampirism derived from Morbius's blood that Morbius and Martine had created, although that antidote would not work on Morbius himself. They also did not acquire his ability to fly or his healing factor and any mortal wound could kill them.[14] He later sought a cure for his condition, but battled Spider-Man, the Human Torch, and the original X-Men.[15]Morbius then encountered Barbara Clark and protected her from a demon named Nilrac, but unfortunately after that, Morbius killed her and drank her blood to satisfy his hunger, feeling a strong sense of guilt immediately afterward.[16]

Morbius later rescued Amanda Saint from a Satanic cult known as Demon-Fire and aided her in her quest to find her missing parents.[17] He caused John Jameson to again become the Man-Wolf. Alongside the Man-Wolf, he battled Spider-Man again in another attempt at a cure.[18] He then battled Reverend Daemond and encountered the Caretakers of Arcturus IV. At the same time, he visited both the Land Within, the home of the Cat People, and the planet Arcturus IV, the homeworld of the Caretakers. During this time, he first battled Blade the Vampire-Slayer.[19] He then first battled the Werewolf (Jack Russell)[20] He then first encountered rogue CIA agent Simon Stroud and battled the extra-dimensional demon known as Helleyes.[21] He and Stroud then battled a large group of other pseudo-vampires that had been created by Morbius, destroying them all. One of them, however, who had been taken into police custody, turned Martine into a pseudo-vampire before being destroyed by Morbius, but Morbius (who then turned on Martine and made her a pseudo-vampire again due to his bloodlust overcoming him) and Stroud cured Martine by using the antidote, after which Morbius fled.[14] He then encountered Alicia Twain, a desperate landowner, and tried to help her keep her land; however, she died at the hands of the men trying to steal her land despite Morbius's help, forcing Morbius to kill her murderers.[22] Next, he encountered an enigmatic woman named Morgana St. Clair in England, who aided him and seemed to know all about vampires. This led to Morbius batting - and destroying - the Brotherhood of Judas, another Satanic cult of which St. Clair was a member.[23] Alongside the Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze), the Man-Thing (Ted Sallis) and the Werewolf, he then encountered the Starseed.[24]Morbius then visited his old friend Ronson Slade, a scientist, again hoping to find a cure. Slade, however, had become a werewolf and Morbius was forced to kill him.[25]Morbius then first battled the Thing, then teamed up with him to battle the Living Eraser and escaped to Dimension Z.[26] He later returned to Earth and battled Spider-Man again, this time briefly controlled both physically and mentally by an extra-dimensional humanoid android called the Empathoid, which fed on emotions to survive. Spider-Man destroyed the Empathoid (after the android had left Morbius and possessed him) by causing it to overdose on emotions during an exposure to the crowd at a baseball game in a stadium where he and Morbius had taken their battle, after which both of them left due to the approach of the stadium guards. Morbius then fled and Spider-Man left the Empathoid's body with the Fantastic Four for safekeeping.[27]

He once again fought Spider-Man and tried to drink his radioactive blood, but then he was hit by a lightning bolt at the same time, which cured him of his pseudo-vampirism and made him human again (he still retained a thirst for blood, however).[28] While he was cured, he was charged with the crimes he had committed as a pseudo-vampire and was represented by Jennifer Walters, whose dual identity as the She-Hulk was not yet publicly known at the time. Morbius selflessly saved Walters' life and stabilized her erratic transformations into the She-Hulk with a serum that he had created to cure the remnants of his own condition.[29] He eventually regained his pseudo-vampiric state and first met Doctor Strange.[30] Alongside Doctor Strange and Brother Voodoo, he battled Marie Laveau and witnessed the return of true vampires.[31] Morbius later battled Spider-Man in the New York sewers.[32]

The Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) and Johnny Blaze searched for Morbius to form the Nine (a.k.a. the Midnight Sons) and stop Lilith the Mother of All Demons and her children the Lilin from taking over the world. When they found Morbius, the pseudo-vampire believed that they would kill him, but the Ghost Rider and Blaze successfully captured him. Doctor Langford, who supposedly tried to heal Morbius's wounds, was actually trying to kill him and was working for Doctor Paine. He made an unknown mutagenic serum that would prove fatal to Morbius. Unknown to Doctor Langford, Fang, one of Lilith's children, was also trying to kill Morbius by adding his own demonic blood to the serum, which would also be fatal to Morbius. When Doctor Langford injected the serum into Morbius, it did not kill him; instead, it mutated him. Morbius's friend, Jacob, was trying to look inside of him and see what he could do about Morbius's condition. After Martine Bancroft, Morbius's ex-fiancé, found out that Langford was trying to kill him, Langford shot her and she bled to death. Morbius found out about this and was enraged to find his ex-fiancé dead. He later avenged the death of Martine by killing Langford and took the beaker which contained the serum.[33] The Ghost Rider and Blaze later found out about Morbius's acts of destruction. The Ghost Rider confronted him and would not tolerate Morbius drinking any more innocent blood. Morbius then vowed he would only drink the blood of the guilty. The Ghost Rider accepted the vow, but warned him not to stray from it. Morbius soon became part of the Midnight Sons.

Later, a new faction of vampires tried to destroy Morbius because he had been genetically manipulated to be the perfect weapon. The chest in which he was to be delivered was intercepted by the Kingpin, Blade and Spider-Man and he attacked all three. Whatever unknown party manipulated him failed; he collapsed after one battle, possibly dying. With his last breath, he warned Spider-Man to beware of his employer, Senator Stuart Ward.[34]

It was later revealed that Morbius had signed the Superhuman Registration Act and was cooperating with S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to capture Blade.[35] He had also presumably survived his genetic manipulation, as Blade was able to distinguish him as the same Morbius who "took a bite out of [him]" in their previous encounter.[36]

Morbius was next seen as a member of A.R.M.O.R., held captive by the zombie Morbius from the Marvel Zombies universe of Earth-2149.[37] He survived the invasion, killing his zombie counterpart in the process.[38] Shortly afterward, he formed a new version of the Midnight Sons with Jennifer Kale, Daimon Hellstrom, Jack Russell and the Man-Thing to contain a zombie outbreak on an isolated island, briefly running afoul of the Hood in the process.[39]

Morbius later helped the Man-Thing re-assemble a decapitated Punisher into a Frankensteinian monster called FrankenCastle.[40]

During The Gauntlet storyline, Morbius was behind the theft of a vial of Spider-Man's blood. Spider-Man, learning that Morbius was planning to use the blood samples to create a cure for Jack Russell, agreed to help Morbius out by giving him more of his blood to help with the cure.[41]

During the Origin of the Species storyline, Morbius was among the supervillains recruited by Doctor Octopus to secure some items for him.[42]

During the events of Spider-Island, it was revealed to the reader that Morbius was the mysterious Number Six working at Horizon Labs. He assisted, wearing a hazmat suit to conceal his identity, in preparing the cure to the spider-powers virus.[43] When Peter Parker tried to investigate the identity of "Number Six", he accidentally provoked Morbius—who had been using the cure to try to develop a basis for a cure for his own condition—into a frenzy, prompting the staff at Horizon to step up building security (making it harder for Peter to enter and exit the building as Spider-Man in the future) and also forcing Morbius to leave, where it was revealed that he had been working with the Lizard, presumably trying to find a cure for both of their conditions. It was also revealed that Morbius was a college friend of Max Modell.[44] Using DNA samples from the corpse of Billy Connors, Morbius was able to create a cure that would restore the Lizard to human form, but he failed to recognize that the Lizard had completely destroyed Curt Connors' human persona.[45] The Lizard was left alone in Morbius's lab, allowing him to release blood into the lab's air supply to provoke the injured Morbius into attacking the other Horizon scientists. This prompted Morbius to flee the lab, with Spider-Man in pursuit.[46] Morbius was captured by Spider-Man and locked up in a cell in the Raft.[47]

When Peter Parker (whose mind was now in Doctor Octopus's dying body) needed some supervillains to help capture Otto Octavius (whose mind was now in Spider-Man's body), Morbius offered to help, but was rejected.[48] Morbius eventually escaped from the Raft[49] and fled to Brownsville.[50]

After some time, he tried to stop some vampires in Barcelona, but got captured by them and locked in a coffin. The vampires wanted to mix their blood with that of Morbius, until he got unintentionally saved by Domino, Diamondback and the Outlaw. After telling them about the vampires' plan, they agree to help him kill King Morbius (a true vampire infected with Morbius's blood). Then after killing him, a vampire hunter tried to kill Morbius, but thanks to Domino, he escaped.[51]

Morbius was later rescued by Agent of Wakanda Wasp from Dracula's Disciples, with assistance from Agents Broo and Man-Wolf. He later informed the Wasp and Director Okoye on the Vampire Civil War.[52

[anamedblog]

A Review of the New ANAMED Exhibition, “Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration”

by Tuğrul Acar, ANAMED PhD Fellow (2021–2022)

The new ANAMED exhibition, Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration, features landscape photographs by the Belgian photographers Bruno Vandermeulen and Danny Veys. The photographs show the historical landscape of the ancient region of Pisidia in today’s southwestern Turkey, including its natural topography with hills and river valleys and what remains of the ancient built environment. 

As stated in the exhibition presentation, the notion of “history-altered landscape” in Pisidia and its surrounding region constitutes the main theme of this exhibition. The accompanying catalogue, The Tortoise Arrived Alone One Day, is published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları and features high-quality reproductions of the photographs that evoke the experience of walking through the impressive Pisidian landscape.

The ancient region of Pisidia is located in today’s southwestern Turkey, north of coastal Pamphylia and Lycia and between the regions of Caria and Isaura. Located in the Taurus mountain range, its topography is composed of plateaus and valleys irrigated by rivers. Historically, while the Pisidian climate was too dry for timber, rivers provided sufficient water to grow crops and fruit trees and manage husbandry. Although this distinctive geography led to its relative isolation from the outside world, the region was able to thrive thanks to its natural resources. Sagalassos, Termessos, and Selge were major cities of the province until the Late Antique period. Sagalassos was one of the greatest Roman cities in Asia Minor, and it is also one of the best-preserved cities, having a nymphaeum, two agoras, and an imperial sanctuary dedicated to Antonius Pious.

Before the age of modern archaeology, several European antiquarians and amateur archaeologists traveled to Pisidia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in search of antique ruins. Among the earliest such travelers was Paul Lucas, who journeyed to southwest Turkey on the order of the French king, Louis XIV. He was the first European to visit the ruins of Sagalassos in 1706. Visitors to the exhibition can see a copy of his travelogue. Later on, the British diplomat, antiquarian, and epigraphist Francis V. J. Arundell (1828) rediscovered the city’s name through its surviving inscriptions and published his findings.

Interestingly, Vandermeulen and Veys’ photographs do not focus on the well-preserved and monumental buildings of Sagalassos or nearby towns; instead, in most of the photographs we see unrecognizable structures and dilapidated buildings. Rather than being the objects of focus for the camera or centerpieces within photographic frames, the photographs capture architectural ruins seamlessly blended with surrounding nature. As such, this exhibition is not about photographs of great ancient monuments from Pisidia, but instead asks: “Can a landscape bear witness to a distant past?” Taking this as a jumping off point, Vandermeulen and Veys use photography to “re-discover” historical layers of the landscape and reflect on how the passing of time left traces on a specific space and altered this built environment.

Accompanying the exhibition are selections from a poem of Judith Desmyttere that bears the same name as the book published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları,  painted in white on the red gallery walls. These texts are like aide-mémoire in that their content speaks to viewers and invites them to think about the multi-sensory experience of a landscape. For example, one wall reads: “This morning I saw the bird and wondered what it would be like to live in the sky instead of on land. Nothing equals the longing for that which can never be. Seeing waves in the mountains, floating in valleys.” These words are intended to help the viewer imagine seeing and experiencing the Pisidian landscape from above and from a bird’s perspective. It reminds them that we as humans are not the only living beings that have inhabited this landscape.

Relatedly, a recurrent theme throughout the exhibition is the interplay between the founding of settlements and their abandonment. While humans had abandoned cities and towns for such varied reasons as war and economic crises, these places continued to be inhabited by other living organisms, and trees and plants grew over them over the years. One such town is Termessos, which is built on top of Mount Solymos at 1000 meters above sea level. The large size of its surviving amphitheater is a witness to the bustling population of the town during its heyday. Yet, it was gradually emptied, and, by the fifth century, encroaching pine forests covered many of its public buildings. Quite distant from urban centers, later builders could not easily access and procure materials from the abandoned city, facilitating the preservation of the town’s architectural heritage. The photograph nicely demonstrates the confluence of nature and time on the one hand and architecture in landscape on the other.

As the following words of the wall text indicate, the exhibition asks the visitors to remember the city: “I see the city. Think about the way it used to be and what remains of it now… Can memory attach itself to the ground or to the things that hide in it?” Architectural remains help us remember not only what the city looked like but also how ancient people lived and interacted socially there, fulfilling a lieux de mémoire for modern visitors. I have been attracted by one tryptic photograph, which shows a beach with people picnicking amongst the scattered blocks of an ancient stone wall. The photograph prompts me to think that some ruins are not left in a distant past and distant locations, but people continue to have contact with such ruins in contemporary times. I was also interested in the notion of time and seasons in the photographs. The artists probably took these photographs in the summer, the usual excavation season. Despite the black and white color, bright meadows and open sky are quite discernable. It is fascinating to see how this landscape appears in the summer and I wonder how it would have been in the winter.

Overall, this exhibition has a very interesting subject and some successful aspects, yet it could have been more informative and could have impressed general audiences more with certain improvements. Wall texts written by Bahattin Öztuncay do a great job of giving explanations of different printing techniques. An average visitor, unknowledgeable about printing techniques, may wonder about how certain levels of brightness and details are achieved in these pictures. I learned about cyanotype and silkscreen techniques and could observe them in the works. The historical and geographic context of Pisidia, however, remains somewhat insufficient and superficial. While I recognize that the main concern of the exhibition is the relationship between landscape and history, an explanation of the political and social transformation of Pisidia from the Bronze Age through the Late Roman periods for a general audience would have offered deeper insight into understanding the history of this region. Likewise, the current explanatory texts on landscape and history next to the photographs could have been more precise. In any event, this exhibition offers Istanbul’s cultural scene a thoughtful meditation on the relationships between landscape, the built environment, history, and memory.

[tygerbloom]

part 2 of tucker foley character analysis/relationship personification in digital art! Or whatever... I wanted to focus on girls that tucker has been shipped with other than sam and valerie..

Soo tucker is really girl crazy and also kind of a creep so he needed to get more character development before I could ship him with anyone! luckily 2 of these girls also had the same amount of character development so it works!

Paulina and tucker is a weird pairing yes but hear me out! Paulina is driven, vain and wants to constantly be the center of attention. Tucker is as invisible as you can get from that school. But with him hanging out with valerie who is friends with star who is friends with paulina. they are bound to cross paths right? Maybe tucker looses his girl crazy tendencies to focus on going with the flow and seeing where this “act like a normal teenager” thing goes while paulina is just there to witness it. She doesn't see tucker in a romantic or sexual way and she knows he likes her but maybe by being let into the popular group or at least being around them they might have moments to connect. Tucker is feeling isolated but I feel like paulina does too. she’s clearly insecure and not very sympathetic but she also has a pretty noticeable  accent that she might of had to overcome the prejudice of by being the prettiest girl in school and not letting anyone make her feel less than.Tucker being black and a nerd could relate to that struggle and he also has his own insecurities to deal with. I just feel like they could be sweet with each other.

Idk why I want star to be a thing but i just do! I just really like she’s friends with valerie after everything okay! But I think I said in on another dp drawing dump that I would want star to be valerie’s tucker/sam. So who better to help her in that role than tucker! They both care about valerie and both are side characters pushed to the side. I think they would get along well enough! Tucker would probably be hesitant to put her in the loop but star is very persuasive.. And scary.. She totally threatened him.

Never shipped Tucker and Jazz. Never got the appeal but I can’t deny that he definitely was more understanding to her about her being part of the ghost hunting gang then sam was... Like why does same hate girls so much... Like she seems to tear down all the other girls in the show especially ones in the way of her and danny like girl check yourself! anyway I feel like their relationship wouldn’t change. I feel like jazz would want to coerce tucker into involving himself in the drama but tucker would definitely fun the other way! But if she needed a shoulder to cry on he would be there for her!