#I just like the idea of the trio ending up in this bizarre new world and needing to adapt

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Valicer In The Dark Vs Baldur's Gate III

Okay, so, yesterday I happened to mention that I'd gotten into Baldur's Gate III -- and that a certain Crime Trio of mine (based on an entirely different RPG, I might add), had decided to lay claim to it as a potential AU of their OWN AU. No, I don't know why I'm like this either. *sigh* Anyway, there's not really that much to it at this point in time -- while I have spoiled myself on the story (and seen a bunch of cutscenes thanks to my friend @gaydragonwizards), I haven't actually played that much of the game itself and thus don't know exactly how the trio would react to EVERY quest and NPC in the game. I do know some basics, though:

-->The AU starts with the Nautiloid happening to pop into the Valicer In The Dark universe by mistake while navigating -- the mind flayers decide they may as well abduct some people while they're here, and unfortunately Victor, Alice, and Smiler, walking the streets of Six Towers, are in range of the tentacles and taken aboard to be infected

-->Smiler wakes up in the canonical pod and finds their way to Us, saving them and immediately bonding with the little intellect devourer ("I'm a they/them too!"); Alice wakes up in a different pod nearby and is the first to meet Lae'zel, and helps her fight the imps; and Victor wakes up in the same room as Shadowheart, and is working on freeing her when the others arrive -- they get her out, get to the helm, and manage to fight their way to the transponder and connect the nerves

-->If you're wondering about potential language barriers, one of the good things about the tadpoles randomly connecting your mind to other people's is that it allows you to pick up Common super fast -- I basically see them getting a bit of an "information dump" on a few key things about the reality they're currently in during the initial connections

-->Also, in the process of freeing Shadowheart, the group find that woman in the other room and mess with her console, accidentally causing her to change -- a creepy moment made even creepier by Victor's Ghost Mind ability letting him briefly see the woman's soul escape...and then burn up as she transforms into a mind flayer. We will come back to this later

-->After the crash landing, Victor, Alice, and Smiler are very confused when they wake up to see a blue sky...and then, after waking up Shadowheart and being told, essentially, "it's blue because it's sunny?" are utterly GOBSMACKED to find themselves in a world with an ACTUAL SUN. Though shock and delight quickly turn to "oh wow, this is actually a lot hotter than we're used to, we need to find lighter clothes fast" XD

-->From there, they pick up the rest of the companions and work their way through the main plot, hoping to both find a way to get the damn tadpoles out of their heads and get home (because as nice as a world with a sun is, it's not Duskwall, and Smiler in particular would like to see their parents again plz)

-->Naturally, being pretty good-hearted people, they do the nice versions of the quests and help people out as much as possible -- though, also being a group of Shadows who nick things and sabotage schemes for their living, I can see them offering tips to the gang of tiefling children thieves and scam artists to help them in their chosen path. XD Also, Alice probably has to be talked out of killing Kagha right then and there when she threatens Arabella, and I'm not sure the snake survives THAT little encounter. Alice has a thing about people threatening children, as you might expect!

-->I foresee a lot of confusion on both sides about how different Duskwall and the Shattered Isles are from Faerun -- not just the sun thing, but also Victor having access to an entirely different form of magic (Gale in particular is like "wtf is this??? This is not Weave???"); the group not knowing what horses or cows are (both animals are extinct in their world) and having to be introduced to them -- while, on the flip side, being perfectly cool with eating rat; and the trio being briefly like "well, it's horrible what happened to that poor woman on the Nautiloid, but at least her ghost won't be slowly going insane and trying to feast on the life essence of the living" and the others being like "what." Leading to Victor, Alice, and Smiler learning that this world has an afterlife and being like D: as it dawns on them that the total destruction of the soul is not an accepted way to keep the world from being riddled from ghosts here. (The others are once again like "what the FUCK is wrong with your reality?")

-->Smiler spends a good portion of the early game looking for Us, before finally accepting sadly that the intellect devourer probably didn't survive the crash...and then they get to the mind flayer colony under Moonrise in Act Two and "Friend! You found the helm!" :D They are beyond happy to see Us and won't hear a word said against them from the other companions (who are naturally BAFFLED as to why Smiler wants an intellect devourer as a pet) -- and Us, for their part, is entirely loyal to their friend Smiler and all THEIR friends, because the kindness Smiler showed to them on the Nautiloid caused them to bond more closely with them than the rest of the hive :) Victor and Alice warm up to the little thing pretty quick, while the others...well, they get used to having a brain wandering around pretending to be a kitty. XD

-->Part of me would like Shar to somehow be responsible for the Shattered Isles no longer having a sun...and thus be real annoyed that people are still living in that world eight hundred and forty-seven years later (as Alice puts it, "you brought the darkness, and we just lit it back up again")

-->And in the "overpowered nonsense that wouldn't make it into any actual story stuff but is fun to think about," I enjoy pondering the possibility of the trio, when faced with the Avatar of Myrkul, using Victor's Whisper ghost-fighting stuff on it -- and successfully forcing it into a spirit bottle. I imagine the other companions would be like "how the FUCK did you bottle part of a GOD?!" while Myrkul would be just "...guess it beats dying again." Oh, and Withers finds it hilarious in his droll way. XD Bonus points for talking to Myrkul about what the damn plan with the Absolute even gets him, Myrkul realizing that he's somehow been had by the Netherbrain, and switching sides against his former compatriots because, yeah, this mind flayer invasion does NOT benefit him in any way, wtf.

-->Or, if you would like DIFFERENT godly intervention, I did have an idea where Mar-Mal is also able to access Faerun through the blessing they gave Smiler, and uses its influence to protect Smiler from the tadpole instead of Smiler having to rely on the Dream Visitor and the artifact. They task Smiler with spreading their influence and getting worshipers so Mar-Mal can do more on this plane, and Smiler happily talks up their god to anyone who will listen (also sharing what samples they have left of their Joy Serum). And fortunately for them, people are willing to throw at least a few prayers the way of a god of pure happiness...meaning that during the endgame, when it's time to fight the Netherbrain, Mar-Mal's gotten just enough power to come into Faerun, filling the sky with spiral clouds as they manifest. The gang still has to fight the Netherbrain, but it's easier as the Netherbrain is, um, a bit distracted trying to not be mindwarped by Mar-Mal! XD And once the threat is defeated, Mar-Mal is able to open up a temporary portal to bring Victor, Alice, and Smiler home. With the implication that they could get back eventually...like, say, in six months to catch up. :p

Whew -- bit more than I expected here! I don't know if anything is actually going to come from this -- I mean, I definitely have to get the REGULAR Valicer In The Dark stuff done first -- but it's fun to think about as I play the game. And it has inspired me to make a few not-incorrect quotes/shitposty scenes...

[sophies-junkyard]

Seeing the new PJO content has me thinking way too hard about growing up. Its crazy because it’s like…. I think that chapter of my life is over? Which is a BIZARRE feeling. It’s all pretty stupid to write out but I’m drinking coffee and staring out the window and don’t have class for another 6 hours so lemme scribble some thoughts.

I read the Percy Jackson books when I was the same age as the characters, and so whenever I look back on those stories I sort of… remember them as peers? I remember how much I related to them and looked up to them. It was the first story that ever told me my ADHD could be a gift, and that it made me just like my heroes. It was so, SO important to me. I JOINED TUMBLR for the PJO fandom! I made camp t-shirts and painted necklace beads! I learned to draw because the fanart inspired me. Those books were such an escape for a lonely kid. The characters grew up right alongside me, and eventually got older than me. So when I picture our trio I still picture people… more competent than me? People I would aspire to be. But seeing that trailer and remembering like… holy fuck they were kids. I was a kid. This is a faithful adaptation because they were TWELVE… where did the time go?

It’s just strange because if you scroll back through my tumblr you’ll find a kid who camped out for the release of HOH. Who saved her allowance for a year to get an autographed copy of the Blood of Olympus. Whose eyes would glaze over in euphoria at the idea of my favorite thing in the world coming to screen. At the idea of a new BOOK!! And from Percy’s perspective?? That girl would’ve exploded. This was HER blog! Push a few buttons and you’ll find her!

So how odd is it that… it’s simply not for me anymore. When I saw that the book was set in Percy’s senior year of high school, I had a tiny flash of disappointment. Obviously I can’t relate to an 18 year old, and I felt myself frowning. “Why isn’t Percy for ME anymore?” I wondered. And I immediately felt silly. The answer is because… I don’t need that world anymore.

They’re not making this show for me. They’re bringing it back for the next generation of kids who need those role models and those stories. When I watched the trailer I thought “oh that’s cool” instead of “oh my god I can’t wait!!” Because it just doesn’t make my brain light up like it used to. I’m never going to relate to it like I once did. Ever. And that’s okay because I’m not that kid anymore! Insane.

It’s not like the series doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. There’s a copy of The Lightning Thief on the bookshelf directly across from me. Its smooshed between The Secret History and a level 4000 Spanish textbook. It’s yellowed with age and shredded around the corners. The first sentence has been underlined repeatedly in smudgy mechanical pencil. There are about a thousand folded pages and the back cover is missing. I don’t remember the last time I opened it, but it’s moved with me for years now and I have no intention of letting it go.

Those stories and that fandom shaped me into the person I am today. I wanted to be brave like Percy and smart like Annabeth. I believed it was possible because I saw myself in them, and it turned out to be true. So while it’s sad to know those days are behind me, I’m so SO glad that other kids will get to have that experience. I hope these stories live on for decades to come.

I don’t really know what the point of writing this was. I think I just wanted to have these thoughts written out somewhere. A sort of acceptance that time goes on and things change, ya know? And to clarify: this is NOT meant to discourage ANYBODY from watching the new series or reading the new book. People should absolutely go back to the things that bring them joy, should discover new worlds to escape to, etc. live your life baby! Hell, I’ll probably end up liking everything PJO related that floats across my dash. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. If you read this entire post I hope you have a great day lmao.

[thebladeblaster]

So umm…somehow I ended up making a VERY bizarre crossover between gen 1-5 and Vanguard

It started off as the random thought of what if Link Joker was in Pokémon and things spiraled out of control after that.

For those not in the know Link Joker is essentially like the Evil Dead but rated E. Basically, it’s like a supernatural infection where if you loses to a reverse fighter in a battle then you become reversed. If a reverse fighter loses then they are freed. It’s like some sort of contract whenever you fight a reverse fighter. You’re staking your soul and freedom to save someone from it. The entity behind this is known as the Void which is putting its essence in people and taking them over. They retain their intelligence (for instance reverse fighters are smart enough to hide that they’re reversed) and parts of their personality. However, their personality is warped. Much like Vanguard when you lose your deck or in this case Pokémon team gets reversed too. They don’t really know this at first though and have to find this out 😅.

As for how reverse Pokémon would function I kinda imagine them like a combination of some sort of evil regional variants and shadow Pokémon.

The reverse units themselves would be UBs along with the Void itself.

So, takes place 3 years after DPPT & HGSS it starts with Olympia having an ominous premonition about Link Joker’s arrival. In preparation she tries to gather the Lake Trio to use against the threat. However, she ends up getting blindsided by Chaos Breaker Dragon. Link Joker literally was able to take over a guy who had a book that could tell him about any possible future so precognition won’t save her.

So, she is defeated and taken over then becomes Link Joker agent much like Takuto. The agent seems to be like the Void’s representative kinda (Vanguard doesn’t explain things well okay). Anyway, if the agent loses then the everyone is freed. Nice, right 🙂? However…whoever beats the agent has the seed of Link Joker enter them which will eventually resurrect Link Joker and make them the new agent. So…not good.

With the protags Lucas was actually the office assistant and Dawn was the protagonist of DPPT. Also Dawn’s in the 1800s rn which honestly is a blessing in disguise considering what’s going to happen 😅. Lucas misses his friend and feels like kinda a fraud. Like his friends saved the world and he’s just like an office assistant. After Dawn went missing he’s been trying to get stronger to pick up the slack and keep Sinnoh safe. He’s been working with Looker off and on and finally got around to getting all eight gym badges.

Ethan is currently in Sinnoh training to get stronger after actually losing to Red. At this point the dude seriously has like 32 gym badges. He’s completed the Hoenn league to train and is on Sinnoh now. He ends up befriending the depressed Lucas and helps him gain some more confidence in himself and helps him get better at battling. Of course he’s having some of his own confidence issues that he won’t share after losing to Red. He has basically forcibly adopted Lucas. He needs it honestly. His dad is Professor Sycamore who is lite too stupid to live as himself without divine intervention. After getting Cynthiaed Lucas and Ethan are having a talk. Then, suddenly Red appears leaving Ethan stunned. He can tell that something is different about him, he has a strange creature with him and he’s acting bizarrely animated. Ethan ends up losing and getting reversed which leaves Lucas sadder, confused, and alone. Cynthia and the Elite Four appear and help Lucas get away.

Brandon has just kinda chilled out and is focused on becoming a rescue worker, he hasn’t actually battled in 6 years. Yes, he’s pulled a Gohan but unlike Gohan he gets it through his skull that he needs to keep training after this happens. He’s still in Hoenn and has absolutely no idea what is about to happen. If he didn’t have trust issues before then he’s going to gain them😅. Brendan is heading home one day as he just starts to notice that something is off but everything seems normal enough. He just thinks he’s being paranoid. He finds his dad being an asshole and is challenged to a battle but his dad is always an ass so he doesn’t notice 🤣. Like my brother in Arceus he put is son in the back on the moving truck with the luggage. You cannot convince me that he’s a good father.

However, he slowly starts to realize he’s in a horror movie. This culminates in him having to battle everyone in Little Root town and having the most desperate battle of his life against reversed May. So, this gives him the wake up call he needed to get back in the game. He becomes determined to find whoever caused this, starts training again, and searches around Hoenn for them. Steven ends up arriving soon after to tell Brandon what’s going on. Essentially the reverse was originally isolated to Sinnoh with it being kept secret to prevent a worldwide panic. However, it seemed one reverse fighter slipped through Hoenn’s defenses.

One important detail to mention is that he released Rayquaza after the game mostly because Rayquaza is a being that performs an important function in protecting to ozone layer and he felt that it wasn’t right to keep Rayquaza for that reason. He gets Rayquaza back later though while Rayquaza and Zygarde are hunting down Link Joker units. I thought that Zygarde should actually do its job so it is😅.

Hilbert is on the other side of the world chilling at Blueberry Academy in the Terrarium and he couldn’t be happier. He has literally no idea that any of this is happening. This is an after he’s beaten N and Ghetsis but hasn’t beaten the Elite Four yet or set out to find N. He appears way later after Alder lets it slip that something weird is happening over in Japan.

Cliff notes version:

Here’s their teams:

Note: Ethan and Hilbert do have Lugia and Zekrom. These are just the versions of their teams without them AKA their casual not saving the world teams. Like let’s be real do you think they’re going to use a Pokémon that could destroy a continent or the world on a normie? This isn’t following game scaling it’s following lore scaling. That’s like using a hydrogen bomb against a coughing baby. That would just be cruel😅. Latios is weaker so Brendan can get away with it. Also I have my own unique idea for the legendaries that make them more god-like and a bit more balanced at the same time but that’s a discussion for another post.

I will talk about the girls in part 2 because I don’t have enough image space left in this post.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

So...Misery style, how would you make Tomione work? (Or how would you do a Tomione story?)

Thanks, Anon, this might be harder than the Dramione one.

Well, again, to please my deranged captor, I'd likely follow the plot of your standard Tomione fic and hope it passes muster. "Oh yeah, Hermione's back in time and she's doing back and forth mind games with Tom and it's really intellectual." With any luck, my feet aren't smashed into oblivion.

But I think you're trying to get at what I would really do if I really had to write Tom/Hermione and I had to make it something I would read. At least, that seems to be the spirit of this ask.

So, we're going the thriller route people. A lot like Misery, actually.

Instead of Ginny, twelve-year-old Hermione picks up the diary. Like Ginny, Hermione quickly becomes besotted with Tom Riddle trapped inside. However, unlike Ginny, Hermione goes straight to the library and starts asking pesky questions.

Hermione's never heard of memories stored in objects before, the theory behind portraits and pensieves are completely different, what spells did Tom use and where did he find them? Did Tom Riddle invent an entirely new branch of magic at the age of 16 without anyone noticing? What was Tom's special service to the school?

Tom starts sweating when it becomes clear that Hermione's stumbling a bit too close to the truth (that this is not ordinary magic and highly dangerous shit) and that she's clearly going to start asking around about Tom Riddle (to Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Hagrid, who were all near Hogwarts at the same time Tom was going to school).

Tom confesses that he may have created the diary using something very... illegal. Hermione is appalled and asks if it was gasp dark magic! He admits it is but points out it's a bit late now, like it or not, he's stuck in the diary and running to Dumbledore isn't going to make that go away any time soon. And it wasn't like Tom asked to be shoved in a diary either.

Hermione's very conflicted, on the one hand, Tom's the first real intellectual friend she's ever had. Harry and Ron are nice, but they're morons and they thinks he's a nerd. Tom encourages her intellectual pursuits and confirms her concern over various what not and what have you happening in Hogwarts.

Eventually, Hermione decides that Tom in the diary can't help being a diary (though the other Tom, the real Tom, she'd have words with), and decides that she'll try to help him get a body.

Great, that's great, Tom says.

But it keeps getting worse.

Tom tries to possess Hermione, but unlike Ginny, Hermione knows that Tom is a dangerous, dark, artifact. If she's suffering negative health effects, losing her memory and ending up in the girl's lavatory, she's going to research this and decide that either a) she's suffering ill effects of using dark magic b) she just got possessed by Tom.

Either way, she tells him she can't use the diary anymore, it's affecting her health and she must research. Well, Hermione researching does Tom no fucking good, but he can't stop her.

The Chamber of Secrets, as a result, is never opened.

Instead, Hermione continues researching, and Harry and Ron... begin to get on her nerves. It's not like last year, there's no Flamel to research, no over-arching mystery, and they seem to be growing tired of her. In turn, Hermione's getting a little tired of quidditch, getting detention, etc.

She's a little tired of Hogwarts, if she's being honest with herself.

Hermione's now had a taste of having a friend who isn't there to simply use her brains. And it's very addicting. She decides not to tell Ron and Harry about Tom, they'd just get needlessly concerned (the irony of this isn't lost on her but what can you do)

In the end, she opens back up the diary, and point blank asks what Tom needs to get a body. Before Tom can tell her, Hermione lists out her own theories. Life cannot be created from nothing, golems and puppets cannot last in the long term, to get a real body... human sacrifice is on the table, isn't it?

Well shit, Tom thinks to himself. He tries to assure Hermione it isn't but ends up confessing that, well, yes, it kind of is.

They have another huge row about it, Hermione slams the diary shut, but the wheels in her brain are spinning.

Does anyone deserve to die?

Hermione, at first, adamantly tells herself the answer is no. No one deserves to be sacrificed. Tom's fate is cruel, but the original Tom made his bed and should lie in it. It's unfortunate, but that's just life. Not the diary's fault, of course, but nothing that can be helped.

But then she keeps thinking about it.

Malfoy struts through the school like a peacock, sneering every time he sees her, laughing every time Snape deducts points from her in Potions for being a 'smarmy know-it-all'. Every time he can get away with it he's shoving her in hallways, calling her a mudblood, and assuring her that she's worth less than the dirt beneath her feet.

She watches as Malfoy torments and bullies Harry, she looks at Draco's father, and she asks herself if the world would really be so much worse off if Draco Malfoy were to disappear?

Draco Malfoy's being groomed to use dark magic, he practically brags about it at every opportunity, why is his life worth more than Tom Riddle's, someone who has paid the price for dark magic?

Isn't Hermione, in a roundabout way, only giving Draco what he deserves? The fate he'd meet at some point in the not so distant future?

Draco does something phenomenally cruel and stupid to the trio, likely to Harry, and that settles it. Hermione's going to murder that motherfucker and get Tom Riddle a body.

Hermione tells Tom the plan, she's passing off the diary to Draco, she has her full blessing, her permission, and whatever help he requires from her to eat Draco Malfoy alive.

Tom is unwillingly impressed, he was a vicious gremlin as a twelve-year-old, but even he wasn't committing murder in cold blood.

Tom's not sure how he feels about murdering a Malfoy, that's bound to get noticed, but Hermione's unyielding. Draco Malfoy, or Hermione goes to Dumbledore.

So, Draco Malfoy it is.

The rest of the year is spent with Tom Riddle murdering Draco Malfoy and coming up with some excuse for his disappearance. The chamber isn't opened as Hermione reminds Tom that this would make it entirely too obvious who is behind this. Instead, Tom likely has Draco partake in increasingly erratic schemes to humiliate Harry Potter that end up endangering himself.

Near the end of school, Draco disappears into the Forbidden Forest to find acromantulas to put in Potter's bed and... never comes back.

A huge search is put on, Draco Malfoy is never found, and the acromantula infestation in the forest is now actively battled by ministry employees. Dumbledore is sacked as headmaster, Hagrid fired for having been responsible for the acromantulas in the first place, and Hogwarts is closed the following year.

Hermione is... conflicted about all of this. She certainly didn't mean to fire Hagrid (had no idea he was even remotely involved with the acromantulas) and certainly not Dumbledore. It wasn't Dumbledore's fault at all.

Tom, who is now a free man but has no idea what to do with himself, meets up with Hermione and points out that Dumbledore should have been sacked ages ago: he let kids get away with this stupidly dangerous shit and the year before actively endangered his students and lured a dark wizard into the castle. As for Hagrid, he raised a dragon illegally on school grounds, did release his pet acromantula into the wild, and more. They were terrible at their jobs.

Hermione, ever so reluctantly, agrees.

It's too bad though, Hagrid was very nice and Dumbledore's a great wizard (don't even get Tom started).

As for Tom, well, he had such dreams. Of course he planned to either meet up with his glorious self or (upon learning that Voldemort was blown up by a toddler) take the mantle of Voldemort for himself. But now that he's out, he has no idea where to start. Murder Harry Potter, certainly, but after that?

Tom only has the vaguest idea of who the original Death Eaters were, and they seem to have effectively scattered. More, how does he go about this? Sure, Tom had ideas when he was in school, but they were just ideas. He's never led a revolution before, has no idea how to impersonate an older, more knowledgeable, version of himself. He barely understands the political climate in this new, post-Voldemort, Britain.

Tom keeps hanging around Hermione because, well, inertia. He has no idea what else to do. (Hermione, while still torn over the consequences of her actions as well as the distant thought that she enabled murder, is quite delighted to have him around).

Tom tries to wheedle Harry's address out of Hermione and gets a lot more information than he bargained for. Harry lives with abusive muggle relatives, Dumbledore is apparently keeping him there, all of this sounds bizarre. Tom is officially weirded out.

Still wants to murder Harry, of course, but also wants to dig into this a little further...

And before this becomes a full on fic outline, eventually this will lead to the murder of Dumbledore, probably the murder of Ron when Ron inadvertently discovers 'the truth', Hermione telling Tom they're now an item, Tom trying to escape the relationship, only to learn there's no escaping Hermione.

Hermione becomes the next dark lord. Tom has no idea how this even happened.

[doodleimprovement]

CSAU :: Moonie Jericho and the Mysterious Case of the Moon-Jumper Mask

At long last, It is finished! Happy Halloween! 

Below the line is a lighthearted fic taking place in the “Coffee Shop” AU (( @doodledrawsthings​ ))with Magic! Family fun! Low stakes! And a gratuitous cameo by my OC because of course Nell is here 

Seriously though this fic is about as lighthearted as it gets. At the end of the fic are a few sketches I drew but didn’t end up coloring. 

((There’s going to be an alternate ending posted separately at a later date, but its not relevant to the fic)) 

Enjoy! 

--

Fall in Subcon Forest came in gently as always, and by the time Halloween rolled around, everyone was firmly in their sweaters and beanies and thick leggings and hiking boots that were only occasionally used for hiking. The leaves of the trees and the shining sun framed the town in such lovely muted colors that it looked like a picture right out of a magazine.

Not that anyone in the Horizon was looking out the window to see it - the curtains were closed in an attempt to not blind the employees and clientele.

It was that time between the end of school but before trick or treating, which meant that all of the teachers and parents were coming into the Horizon with their kids to get the new specialty drinks - well decorated and tasty, and more importantly, not hilariously overpriced. The kids in particular seemed to love the “Ghoulishly White Hot Chocolate”, and the teens flocked to the “Jack-O-Spices Frozen Pumpkin Latte”

Luka was almost certain that the pumpkin spice smell would burn itself so deep into his nose he’d never be able to un-smell it. A small price to pay for the rise in business, he supposed.

“Luka, Two Snatcher-ccinos!” Clover called from the cash register.

“I still hate that!” He responded with a light tone

“Too bad, make ‘em!” She teased back with a light laugh.

“Don’t get all testy, you two! We’re only open for another hour!” MJ called, grinning before turning back to the coffee machine, where they were effortlessly making yet another latte.

“Too long!” Clover argued, grabbing a muffin for a customer from the bakery display

“You’re telling me, and I still have to take Bow and Hattie trick or treating” Luka huffed, finishing up one of the “Snatcher-ccinos” and moving onto the next one.

“WE are!” MJ corrected. Luka just playfully rolled his eyes.

The conversation ended up dying rather quickly as the business went through its last rush, and, at long last, 4 o’clock came, and the store shut down. The three employees did a rather quickly clean up this night around - they were all eager to be anywhere but work that spooky night.

Once in the back of the store, Luka seemed to almost melt in relief, leaning further and further into the wall.

“Ugh, my limbs feel like Jelly” he commented as his voice gained its echo

“For all we know, they are,” Clover teased. “We’re meeting at MJs in an hour, right?” She stretched.

“Yeah.” Luka nodded “Have they already run off?”

“Yup. They’re excited” She chuckled “You gonna get home alright?”

“Yeah, thanks. See you later”

“Later!”

0o0o0o0o0

That stupid, cursed thing of a mask had not moved in weeks since he’d found it, and its stupid grin had started haunting the corner of his vision when ever he was in his studio.

It seems like it's decided that sitting on the desk in his art studio was its happy place. At least it was out of the way, and in a place he didn’t frequent often.

Though its eyes definitely still moved, which gave MJ hives like you would not believe. Why he kept it in his studio he wasn’t sure.

Tim had told him that the thing was mostly harmless, that it just seemed a bit… off, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Timmy even said that he got “good vibes” off of it, which was a strange phrase to use on something that felt at the very least mildly cursed.

Finishing with the caplet for his costume, gently clasping it, he looked in the mirror and gave himself a smile.

It was obscure, sure, but he’d put a lot of work into it! The legend of the “Lonely Man” was well known in these parts, maybe someone would get it. Someone had to.

Whether or not anyone got it, he was still happy with the tattered thing. That faux old age took forever to get right.

As he straightened out his clothes, his eyes caught the mask once more.

His hand picked it up off his desk, and his thumb rubbed on the odd surface. He couldn’t really tell what it was made of, but it was… oddly smooth, he thought. His brow furrowed as he looked at its eyes, a single pupil in its left eye, and a cascade of diamonds in the other. It was certainly an interesting and eye-catching design. He also liked the blue and reds, and that weirdly off-putting grin.

Such an odd thing.

He held it up with one hand over his face - not putting it on, but getting a look in the mirror at how it would look with the outfit.

He found it utterly bizarre that he could see clearly through the eyes despite what seemed like thick paint over it.

The mask itself wasn’t actually that scary when taken all at once. Oddly enough, it seemed to match with his outfit - at least, color wise. It didn’t even seem evil or anything. It seemed… kind.

That was an odd word to use. MJ tended to flip flop on how he feels about the damned thing

Before he could think any more about it, his doorbell rang, and the mask was left on his desk, forgotten the moment company arrived.

“Who is it?” He asked as he approached the door

“The Dread Pirate Roberts!” A little voice announced as the oak opened up.

To his absolute delight, Harriet was dressed indeed the Dread Pirate Roberts, missing nothing but the mask (The town doesn’t allow masks on minors, for some reason. A weird little policy). Next to her stood an excited Bow, grinning from ear to ear. He knew exactly who she was, but still asked-

“And who are you?”

“My name is Inigo Montoya” She said with all the faux-seriousness she could muster, holding up a foam sword “You killed my father, prepare to die!”

“Oh, goodness, the finest swordsperson in the world and The Dread Pirate Roberts have come to my home, I don’t stand a chance!” He moved out of his way as the kids ran into the apartment, and their father walked up behind him.

When his eyes went to Luka, he let out a snort. The man was dressed in a slightly silly looking prince outfit dyed almost completely purple, and his form was mostly purple as well - an energy-saving tactic if ever there was one.

“And you are?”

“He’s the ghost of prince Humperdink” Bow grinned. “This was the best costume we could find for it”

“I honestly think he shoulda died at the end of the movie so I'm cool with it.” Harriet commented as MJ moved to the side and let the group in “Is Clover here yet?”

“Not yet, I’m sure she’ll be here any minute and we can get right along with trick or treating!” MJ announced

“Yay!” the girls responded in unison, taking their place on MJs couch and turning on his old television for a brief moment of entertainment

Mj looked at Luka and grinned “Well, you���re lookin’ spooky, Luka”

“You kind of do too… what do you look like?”

MJ snorted “I’m the ‘Lonely Man of Subcon forest’. Heard of it?”

“Nope, don’t think I’ve been here long enough” Luka shrugged “Does look nice though. Very zombie-ish.”

The two chatted for a bit before there was another ring barely 10 minutes later.

“That must be Clo” MJ pushed himself off of the wall. “Can you get that? I want to grab my wallet so we can get the kids some ice cream before they go running around”

Luka nodded, giving him a grateful smile before turning to the door to greet the final member of the trio

MJ popped back into his studio, grabbing his wallet… and looking again at the mask.

He pocketed his wallet, and picked the mask up again. His thumbs rubbing against the strange texture of the mask’s sides.

He couldn’t help but admit that he was tempted.  Maybe, he could just see what it’d look like, just for a moment. Who knows? Maybe this has all been anxiety for nothing and the mask is just… weird.

He looked back into the mirror, and placed the mask on his face.

There was a moment where he stared amusedly at his reflection - it added a certain air to his outfit. Maybe wearing it out wouldn't be so b-

And then his body seized

He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe. He trembled and a pain started from his head and traveled down his spine. It was like the worst shiver from the cold he’d ever experienced. Like ice was pressed directly against his skin. It dispersed like a fog, freezing freezing, and, suddenly-

It stopped.

Panting heavily, MJ pulled themselves back up to a standing position - when had they bent over like that? - and lifted their head, making eye contact with themselves in the mirror.

“GAH?!”

They were - blue! And - and the mask was very much not a mask!!!

When they blinked, it blinked. When they moved, it moved. When they grimaced, the mouth moved along to create the expression. their eyes scanned over the crescent shape, past their neck and then landed on their-

“H-hands!” They stared - they were missing a finger and - had claws?? They clenched their fists in disbelief, eyes catching on a glinting just under their sleeve.

.. Where had the chains come from?

“MJ? MJ are you okay?”

Clover

“D-don’t come in, its fine!!” They panicked, “I’m uh, just, finishing up and stuff with my costume!”

“It looked finished to me” Luka commented “Did something rip?”

“Y-yes?? yes! Something totally ripped“

“They’re lying!” Hattie pointed out

“Sounds like their lying voice” Bow added.

Curse these adorable, smart little girls!

“I-I’m fine!” They yelled out “Totally fine, just fine”

“... MJ I’m opening the door, be decent”

“No, Clover, I - “

But the door opened anyway

And Clover - dressed up as “Generic princess” - looked in, and … stared.

“.... MJ?”

“.... H-hi, Clover.”

“Clover, what are-” Luka cut himself off “Uh….”

“It’s me! Its MJ, I uh - “ They tried to come up with a succinct explanation for the situation, despite not having any real idea.

“The mask” Luka quickly concluded, recognizing the face after MJs unfortunately previous run-ins.

“I … yes” MJ’s shoulders slumped a bit.

“Hey, at least you still have feet” Luka commented, causing MJ to look down and see that he did in fact still have his shoes on. Thank heaven for small mercies.

“What happened, what is it?!” Harriet pushed her way through, her eyes wide as saucers once they landed on the recently transformed adult “... Whoa”

“I … I put on the mask. I was curious and - and it..” They looked back down at the pale, blue hands, nervously moving the fingers and claws. “I felt like I was freezing, my whole body and then…” They trailed off.

“Whoa..” Harriet approached him slowly “It's like, Majora’s Mask!”

Lukas put his hand on her shoulder to stop her from jumping - now really was not the time “... I suppose that's one way to describe it.” He gave a deliberate, thoughtful face towards his transformed friend.

Bow was very firmly behind the adults, staring rather intently and slightly bewildered. Sure, she had been getting used to Mr. Princeton as a parent but.. This was somehow very different.

“... We need to talk to Tim.” Clover concluded

“Tim’s out of town” Luka reminded the group with a grimace “He and Timmy had some kind of meeting thing with other magical people. We don’t…” Luka huffed, his hair fluffing up a bit “We don’t know anyone else whose adept at magic like they are”

Harriet furrowed her brow a bit, looking at the discomfort that MJ was experiencing, rubbing their hands together. Could they be stuck like that? She wanted to think that maybe this really was like the Zelda game, but who could tell? It's not like they knew anyone….

“Yes we do!” She snapped her fingers“I kinda hate that Mu was right, but there is a witch in town!”

“What?” Lukas’ brow furrowed “Who?”

0o0o0o0o0

Getting to the edge of town was… novel, to put it simply. The group was rather lucky that Luka was used to doing this sort of thing. And he was about 4 times larger than the group, so that helped in flying them around.

With the sun kissing the earth, red rays crawling into the darker sky, they didn’t have too much time, but followed Harriet and Bow as they got past the town center, and led them down to-

“Wait, why are we at Nell’s place?” Clover stared ahead at the Mint-green home, succulents hanging from pots and a radio sitting on the edge of the porch.

“Because Nurse Nell is a witch!” Harriet announced walking up the two steps of the porch.

“What- Harriet!” Luka startled.

“Its true!” Bow defended as Hattie knocked on the door.

“Kids, we’ve known Nell for a long time, she’s not-”

“She is!” Hattie argued “We saw it!”

“She made us promise to keep it a secret!” Bow added.

Said nurse opened the door as MJ tried to speak up

“I wasn’t expecting trick-or treaters,” She greeted before looking out the door, “But I do-” She paused as her eyes landed on the strange group at her front porch.

There was a rather awkward, extended silence as her eyes scanned MJ through her thick lenses with a gaze that conveyed a strange kind of surprise.

“.... Inside, now” She pulled the door open further, leaving no room for argument.

The adults shared a glance, but did as she said, entering her small living room. She greeted them with a nod as they entered, and shut the door behind them, motioning for MJ to approach her.

She didn’t say a word as they did so, and very slowly lifted her hands to their face, holding it steady as she scrutinized. “What happened? Less than 3 sentences” She half asked/half demanded. Her tone wasn’t harsh, but it was serious.

“Uh, I put on a cursed mask and it uh… did this” They tried to sum up.

“Where did you get the mask?”

“I found it in the forest. I thought it was abandoned from the spirit festival”

“And why did you pick up an abandoned mask in the forest?”

They awkwardly didn’t respond. She sighed

“I get it, hun” She responded, resigned. “Stay still”

“I am”

“Stiller”

Clover and Luka watched her with some skepticism, seeing the woman take a deep breath, and as she exhaled, her hands suddenly glowed dimly, tapping at the side of MJs head.

“Hah! See! Told you!” Hattie pointed, jumping slightly

“Shhhhhhhh!” Bow shook her “She’s doin’ magic stuff!”

“Hm…” She masterfully ignored the yelling children “Well, good news is that the magic isn’t very strong, Just… aggressive.” Nell announced. “And it's not malevolent” She let go of their face.

“... I… How can you tell?” MJ asked, their own hand tapping their blue cheek.

“.. Let's say it's a feeling” She summed up. “You can sit down. I need to grab something from my library”

And she left the room

“.... I don’t think I’ve ever seen Nell that serious” Clover spoke out “Also the uh, glowing hands? Didn’t know she could do that”

“How did you not know she had magic?” Luka asked with a rather incredulous tone

“It never came up!” Clover retorted

“How did it never come up?”

“Its cool!” Harriet jumped into the conversation

“It think its cool too” Bow agreed “I always wondered how my paper cuts at school always healed so fast…”

MJ had sat themselves down, hand staying on their head, feeling the strange curve of their forehead with a certain fascination. Nell’s words - said with so much affirmation- did make them feel better about the situation.

The nurse returned, her expression still relatively serious, but calmer as she carried an old, thick book with a rather overly ornate cover in a faded blue.

“You’re lucky I collect these old things” She commented for a moment, sitting down next to MJ. She flipped through the pages, finding a two-page spread with a plain mask listed on it, and text printed so small that MJ just could not read it. “Here we are.”

Harriet climbed up next to her “What's it say? That’s a lot of words!”

Nell chuckled a bit at her eagerness “It is, but... “ she hand rested on the book for a moment, and then she lifted it, and the text glowed, lifting and circling around her hand like a ring.

“Whoa…. It's like the unknown from the Pokémon movie!” Bow jumped, causing Nell to laugh more.

“A little, I suppose” Nell responded, and she looked over at the other two adults, mostly at Clover, whose bewildered stare caused her to laugh again “You okay there?”

“... How did I not know this about you?”

“Never came up, dear. Don’t think too hard about it. You too, “Snatcher”” The woman gave a smirk. Luka cleared his throat. “Now…”

A simple flick of her hand, and the letters were floating around MJ’s head, and some of them glowed just a little bit brighter “Hm….. Alrightie, that's a good sign” She snapped, and the letters, very suddenly disappeared as if popping a bubble. “Well, Give until dawn, and then you should be able to take off the mask. If you can’t, come to me. I don’t work tomorrow”

“Oh… Well, that uh, wasn’t so bad. I’ll be okay?”

“Of course” Nell nodded, shutting the book “I’d’ve called the Kagai’s the moment I let go of your face if I thought otherwise”

“The who?” Hat questioned.

“Another time, Hattie, another time” Nell placated. “Now….” she exhaled, putting the book on her coffee table and clasping her hands together “I just realized I haven’t even said hello to any of you”

Something about that sentence finally broke the tension, getting a laugh out of Clover and Luka, and a snicker out of MJ.

The next ten minutes consisted of Nell reassuring the group that MJ would be fine, and reiterating that they needed to come to her if the mask did not come off by sunrise.

“There’s a lot of magic in this that I can sense. So uh, just be careful.” She warned. “I don’t know a lot about that, so you’ll have to ask Tim”

MJ nodded “Uh, thank you, Nell”

She gave them a kind smile “Don’t mention it. Next time you need me though, have Clover send me a message or just call me, alright?” She looked passed them to Harriet, who gave her a sheepish smile.

“Got it” The transformed barista nodded.

“Oh and, don’t be too worried about people seeing you. Just say it's a costume” She recommended as they walked out with their family waiting just beyond the porch. “Happy Halloween!” She called before abruptly shutting the door

“So……” Bow started

“Can we go trick or treating now??” Hattie finished.

Luka looked up to MJ, who seemed much calmer than before, despite continuing to lift their hand to their weirdly shaped head.

“.. Yeah, yeah i think we can” they gave Luka a grin “And thanks for getting us the help, Hattie” MJ reached down and picked her up “Who knew the Dread Pirate Roberts could be such a help!”

The girl giggled before being put back down “Then let’s go!!”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

MJ was initially a bit tittered when they entered the town, but the moment anyone noticed them, the compliments rolled in.

“Wow! You look like a spooky zombie!”

“What game is that cosplay from?”

“How did you get the prosthetic to look like that, damn!”

“Wow, that is a really cool idea for the Lonely Man!”

MJ was beaming at the semi-undeserved praised as they took the kids from neighborhood to neighborhood, filling their pillow cases close to brimming with so much candy that Luka kept making a face and seemed to be mentally preparing to hide all of it, whispering to Clover and MJ about taking some of the candy so that it wasn’t all in his apartment.

“Seriously, all that candy?? They’re going to get cavities and I cannot pay for dental work like that.” The father aggressed. MJ just laughed a bit, looking ahead at the two girls who were trying to run ahead to the next house.

And then Bow’s foot caught a crack.

“Ah, Bow!” MJ startled, hand reaching out - but there was no way they’d reach her before she fell-

And then, she just stopped falling, stuck in midair as if floating.. But she wasn’t.

Upon closer examination, she was held up by a variety of red strings, connected to MJ’s clawed fingers

“... Uh”

“Whoaaaa” Hattie gaped “Magic! Cool!”

Bow pulled himself up to a standing position, and MJ put their hand down, the strings disappeared

“.. Thanks” Bow cleared her throat “That was really cool”

“It kind of was... “ They commented, looking down at their hands “I’m gonna be having a heck of a long talk with Tim when he gets back from wherever he is”

“Yeah, definitely” Luka nodded in agreement.

Lucky for the group the rest of the night went without incident, with MJ joining Luka at home and the two of them staying up until the sun started showing through the windows.

“Ready?” Luka asked him, the being no longer human shaped, as he’d finally reached his limit

“Yeah.. I think so” MJ took in a breath “She said it can just… come off like how I put it on…”

“Alright….” Luka’s voice trailed off as MJ reached their hands up to their face, thumbs by their cheeks, but then - wait! The edge, the mask! They felt it.

Barely bothering to breath, they mentally counted… 1… 2… 3!

they pulled it off and gasped as that icy feeling went through them even faster than last time, trembling and nearly falling over as Luka kept them up with their tail.

“Hey, hey! You okay MJ?”

MJ looked up, nodding “Yeah, uh, how do I..?”

“You’re back to a nerd, if that's what you’re asking” Luka lightly teased

Their hands went back up to their face, and gasped when they felt their regular skin, and their glasses (Where had they gone? Didn’t matter)

“Oh, thank god” The tired barista flopped onto their partner, “That was exhausting. Thank goodness the Horizon is closed today…”

“Hah, ready to sleep?”

“Oh, definitely” MJ commented, looking down at the mask still in their hand, its smile seeming not nearly as spooky than before.. “Hm..”

“What?”

“.. Why’d it choose me, I wonder” They muttered, sitting up and placing the mask by the window sill “But… we’ll see about finding out more, hm?”

“.. Yeah, we will” Luka confirmed.

MJ gave him a smile, hugging his partner with a slight nuzzle “Come on, we need to sleep. Hattie and Bow-”

“Oh, don’t remind me. We’re in for a hell of an afternoon” Luka groaned, but he was still smiling.

Saying that things were “back to normal” was never correct with this group, but things were still pretty okay. Maybe better, even.

Moonie figured they’d just have to wait and see.

--

BONUS:: 

Costumes! I wasn’t able to finish these in time, but I hope they suffice! 

[zigzagzoom94]

Hey! Do you like tabletop rpg actual-play shows that are equal parts audio drama and improv comedy? You should check out the criminally underrated DnD podcast 'Dice Funk'. It manages to combine the comfy vibe of good friends chilling out together cracking jokes with some legitimately interesting worldbuilding that examines existing DnD lore and conventions to put its own spin on them.

 Each season is a self-contained storyline with new characters so you can jump in at whichever one sounds interesting (you might get spoilered for some stuff 'cos the PCs have a tendency to make world-altering decisions that still have big repercussions, even with the substantial timeskips between seasons, but otherwise they limit any references to earlier seasons to non-essential easter eggs to keep things accessible).

 Personally I started with seasons 3 & 4 and they served as a good introduction to some recurring concepts like "the World of Forms".

 Below the Read More I'll break down each season so you can see what appeals to you:

Season 1, "Stoneroot": A noir-esque black comedy that follows a trio of varying levels of competence attempting to solve a simple missing person case that spirals wildly out of control.

 I kind of think of this as the 'Here There Be Gerblins' of the show since it's the only season with a different GM so it has a pretty different feel to the rest of the show and takes a bit longer to find its feet.

 Personal Highlight: One of the PCs rolls a 3 Intelligence, leading to a running segment where that player brings up monsters from the Monster Manual and asks the other players if they think it has a higher or lower Int than that PC.

 Season 2, "Lorelai": A more lighthearted romp in which a cast of interplanar travellers explore the world trying to figure out the cause of a catastrophic flood and put a stop to it. According to the creators this was conceived as a cross between 'Princess Bride' and 'LoZ: Wind Waker' but morphed into more of a "moist Undertale".

 Personal Highlight: The first time the GM has to portray a mysterious entity making deals with lower life forms he decides to portray them like a wheeling-and-dealing used-car salesman and it honestly made every scene they're in a delight.

 Season 3, "Ilium": The party are trapped in a strange city that people can enter but never leave, taking whatever jobs will make ends meet. Inspired by 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Twin Peaks', this series places a lot of emphasis on how the supernatural elements affect people's normal lives and uncovering the many dark secrets these characters hold.

 Personal Highlight: The GM wrote a custom "Wild Magic" table for the party sorcerer with some absolutely buckwild shit on it. I was on the edge of my seat every time it was rolled.

 Season 4, "Valentine": A cyberpunk urban fantasy with near-future technology levels in which the cast struggle to make ends meet while doing shady jobs for uncaring megacorporations. If your familiar with DnD, this season's based on 'Shadowrun'. Probably the season most explicitly about how capitalism sucks.

 Personal Highlight: One of the PCs is a wizard who uses yugioh-esque trading cards to cast their spells instead of a spellbook. I did not anticipate being so invested in their rivalry with not-Kaiba and neither did the player.

 Season 5, "Markov": If you love unlikely found families then this is the season for you! It's a space-faring sci-fi story in a galaxy reeling from war with the colonialist Mind Flayers, setting the stage for a lot of political turmoil. If you're familiar with DnD, this story's based on 'Spelljammer' and absolutely riffs off of a lot of the bizarre ideas that setting introduced.

 Personal Highlight: The Son Gun. I will not elaborate on what this means but you'll know when you get to it.

 Season 6, "Purgatory": The season opens on a group of mortals who have just been resurrected and tasked with taking up the mantle of the Furies; interplanar assassins who traverse the various afterlives dealing with whichever god-like entities threaten the balance of power between the planes. If you've played 'Planescape: Torment' or are familiar with the city of Sigil you know what to expect.

 I honestly think this might be the best individual season of 'Dice Funk'? Everyone's really firing on all cylinders.

 Personal Highlight: King Badass has my heart. Y'all can't claim to support himbos and then not be supporting my favourite dumbass bae.

Season 7, "Wormwood": After all the previous seasons deconstructed a lot of elements of classic DnD ("what's up with certain species automatically being evil?", "isn't delving into a dungeon to murder its inhabitants and steal their stuff kinda colonialistic and messed up?", "how would access to magic actually affect the way a society functions?", etc.) this seasons brings this all together by having the closest set-up to a conventional DnD adventure. The world is post-apocalyptic and draws a lot of elements from the 'Dark Sun' setting.

 Personal Highlight: Two of the PCs are a cult leader and his follower and I thought I knew exactly what direction that storyline was going...then it absolutely surprised me.

 Season 8, "Grendel": I can't comment on this one yet since it's only just started but so far it has had a very cosy, 'Animal Crossing'-like vibe with a focus on a small community, in contrast to previous seasons' much higher stakes.

[nctsworld]

sweeter than ice cream

✩ mark x reader (ft. jaehyun + johnny) | fluff | 2k 

→ summary: mark’s got a crush on the new local ice cream vendor. when he finally musters up the courage to order ice cream for himself, he messes up and doesn’t grab it by the cone.  → warnings: dripping with fluff, one swear word, mark’s a (loveable) dork/dumbass and talks to himself → prompt: You’re an employee and I have a crush on you so when you hand me the soft serve  ice cream I accidentally grab it by the ice cream instead of the cone

→ gif created by me, please don’t repost or share without credit!

Mark, Jaehyun, and Johnny opt to grab ice cream after dinner, like they often did on hot days after busy schedules. All is well as the three boys laugh down the street without a care in the world, until Mark notices the new ice cream vendor attending the usual stand. 

He can only see the side of your face and a glimpse of your smile that you flash at the departing customer leaving the cart. 

And that’s all it takes for him to stop in his tracks. 

Jaehyun and Johnny are practically at the cart when they take heed at the awestruck one left behind.

“Dude, what do you want?” Johnny calls down the street, unfazed by Mark’s bizarre behaviour. 

His eyes are still fixated on you. It takes a moment for him to realize he isn’t breathing; he gasps sharply in response. 

“I’ll, uh,” Mark quickly glances over at Johnny before turning back to you, but now he realizes you’re staring at him. In your head, you casually label him as the boy down the block, who is technically holding the line because the two guys at the front of the line are waiting for him.

“I’m good actually! I’ll see you guys at home!” he waves and turns around faster than he can even think, leaving the boys to get ice cream by themselves. Johnny and Jaehyun face each other with furrowed eyebrows. 

“Sorry about that. Our friend is a little… weird,” Jaehyun apologizes to you and you shake your head with giggle.

“No worries,” you brush it off as if nothing happened, give them their orders, and resume your shift for the night.

But you can’t help but be a little curious about their weird, yet endearing, friend.

The next time the trio visits you, your stand is on the other end of the block and your shift is in the middle of the day. 

The boys have come back earlier from their schedules than expected and are on their way back to their dorm when Mark freezes again in your presence, especially since you are right in front of him this time. He smiles unknowingly to himself, noting how you shine even more in daylight. 

All the noise surrounding him disappears; his heart’s pounding is deafening in his ears.

This time, since he’s in front of them, Jaehyun and Johnny catch on fast when Mark stops walking because they crash into him. The latter of the two grunts in pain.  

“Why did you stop-” the tallest of the three glances up and sees you directly ahead. The lightbulb goes off, thus Johnny spins Mark around and huddles with him and Jaehyun. 

Wary of how close you are, Johnny spits in a hush, “Mark, do you have a crush on the new ice cream girl?” 

“No, I do not have a crush on the new ice cream girl!” the youngest replies between gritted teeth, fearful that you can hear everything that is happening.

“Then why did you stop?!” Johnny mocks his body language, rebutting with gritted teeth. 

“Because I…” Pausing for a moment, he rolls his eyes to ponder a good excuse. 

“Because you think the new ice cream girl is cute?” Jaehyun interrupts with the truth. 

Mark inhales for a moment, ready to refute, but then sighs heavily, defeated. He grumbles, “Okay, maybe I think she’s sorta cute...” 

“Then talk to her! You get to have ice cream and get to talk to a cute girl. Your two favourite things in the world.” 

“They are not my two-”

“Excuse me.” 

All three of them look at each other with wide eyes prior to turning to face the sweet voice that belongs to you as you call them from a few steps away. 

“Sorry to interrupt, boys, but are you guys going to order anything? There’s a small line forming behind you,” you gesture shyly with your index finger. 

Guiltily, they see how everyone behind them is gawking at them. Without thought, they decide to step closer to the front of your cart, with Mark hovering behind the two taller figures. 

He tries to scan the menu to decide on a flavour, but also wants to steal a glance at you. At the same time, he doesn’t want to steal a glance at you because he knows that he’s going to end up a sadder mess worse than fallen ice cream if you two make eye contact.

“Is there pistachio today by any chance?” Jaehyun asks. 

“No, sorry. We only have green tea again.” 

“Ah, no worries. I’ll get that.”

“I’ll have-”

“Green tea, like last time?” you finish Johnny’s sentence, remembering what he ordered last time, and he grins with an impressed nod. 

Then, all parties face Mark, who simply has his eyes open like a deer in the headlights. Once again, he peers at the menu, but nothing is computing in his brain because he feels your eyes on him. 

“I’ll have, uh…” 

His filler drags on in awkward silence. You pucker your lips to the side of your face, mentally confirming how he truly is indeed endearing and cuter than you expected. Although you want to give him all the time in the world, you, along with his friends, sense those waiting in line boring holes into all of your heads, especially at the droning boy still staring mindlessly at the menu.  

“Uh…” 

Saving the day, Johnny chimes in, “Do you guys happen to have cookies and cream? That’s his favourite flavour.” 

You shake your head with a sad smile, “I’m sorry, we just ran out. Is vanilla okay?” 

Even though his friend is the one speaking for him, you deliberately look at Mark for an answer. It is his order after all. 

Then, he doesn’t think much of it, but he glimpses into your stare and, like he fears, Mark gets lost beyond the stars and galaxies of your eyes. Completely unaware of what is happening, yet all he knows is he’s putty around you. 

You’re unsure if it’s just the weather or the way the boy’s looking at you, but you feel yourself getting a little warmer with each passing second. 

Despite how your question doesn’t register into his brain and he completely has no idea what you said, he still manages to nod. One chuckle from you and a dopey smile forms on Mark’s face as you begin to scoop out the orders. He’s unsure of why, but he’s a little proud of himself that he was able to make you laugh. 

After you hand out the cones to them all and Jaehyun pays for the ice cream, the boys say their thank you’s (well, Mark’s thank you was an inaudible one, but you could tell he was grateful) as the people in line sigh with alleviation. 

During the next order, you peer back and forth between the new customer and the three boys walking down the street. You see the taller boys ruffling the endearing boy’s hair and patting him on the back while they all seem to lick their ice creams in content. 

Hopefully, when, and if, the cute boy comes around again on one of your shifts, you’d hope to have the cookies and cream flavour ready and in stock just for him. 

Over the course of the next few weeks, Mark tries to check out the stand whenever he’s free to see if you’re on duty. For once, he wants to be able to order ice cream from you (and maybe finally talk to you) without the pressure from the others. Unfortunately, you weren’t working the shifts when he came by in previous weeks. Fortunately, he struck gold one Saturday night.

As always, the line is long, but because it’s the weekend, it looks like it would never end. Regardless, Mark would wait forever if it meant he could be in your presence again. Waiting in line, he runs through the script in his head over on replay. 

Is there cookies and cream? No? Okay, I’ll get vanilla. Oh, there is? Cool, cool… 

No, don’t say cool. Awesome? Awesome! 

The line moves a little ahead and Mark treads along as he bounces on the balls of his feet with his hands in his pockets. 

Okay, awesome is worse than cool. Cool is fine. Cool is cool. Cool is good.

I’m cool. So cool. So good. I’m good. I’m goooood. We’re good. Stop saying good. 

God, I wonder what she thinks of me? 

He runs a hand through his hair, knowing that he’s about to be up in front with you. The customer in front of him drifts away from the cart and he drags his feet to make his way towards you. You greet him with your signatory honey smile and he’s already a goner. 

“Hi.” 

A beat. 

Two beaming faces. 

Wasn’t the third time supposed to be easier? 

“Hi,” Mark squeaks.  

Another beat. 

“What can I get you today?” 

Just like I practiced—

“Is there vanilla?” 

Shit. 

“Oh, did you not want-”

“I mean, is there cookies and cream?” 

Both of you talk over one another and giggle in unison. Mark rubs the back of his head. Similarly, you tug a little at your apron. The awkward ice between you two starts to melt. 

You nod, reaching into the freezer and scooping him out almost the last bit of the flavour. It’s not like you’ve been deliberately keeping a bit of cookies and cream ready in case he’d come by during your shifts. 

Handing him the cone, you meet each other once again with deep looks. He’s attractive, way too attractive for his own good, and he has eyes that are calm, yet have an underlying flicker of fierceness too.

Eyes still fixed on you too, entranced by your soft, gentle gaze, Mark grabs the ice cream cone.

Or so he thinks.  

Nope, that isn’t the cone. That is the sticky, dripping ice cream between his fingers, which is now dripping onto the cone and your fingers.

Perhaps he should’ve brought Johnny and Jaehyun around in case things like this happened.

“Oh, my god! I’m so sorry!” Mark bursts in apologies, frantically looking for tissues around to aid in wiping the mess up. He instinctively backs up a bit, then drops the ice cream scoop on his hand down to the sidewalk. 

“Don’t worry,” you drop the cone and manage to find a wet towel behind your counter to wipe yourself up, before you naturally lightly grasp onto his raised wrist to wipe him as well. It’s happening all too fast, but tingles rise in both of your cheeks. “Happens all the time.” 

You almost finish getting in between the crooks of his fingers when he croaks, “Really?” 

Shaking your head with a friendly pout, you reply, “No, not really.” 

As you finish cleaning his hand, you let go of him and rescoop up another cone for him. Thankfully, you have enough for two scoops. 

You raise an eyebrow distrustfully, “Promise not to drop it?” 

Your question may be laced with sarcasm, but you honestly did not have enough cookies and cream for another scoop if he dropped it again. And you didn’t want to see what disappointment looked like on him.  

He chuckles, causing your heart to flare everywhere in adoration, “I promise.” 

With extra effort and careful attention this time, he successfully holds onto the cone and begins to fetch money from his pocket.

You interject before he fishes any money out, “Don’t worry about it; it’s on the house.” 

A puzzled expression falls over him and he stutters, “What, no, it’s okay. I feel bad-” 

At this point, you couldn’t care less about the line of people huffing and groaning behind him. You’ve been waiting for this guy to show up on your shift again for weeks and something had to give.

Leaning a little closer to him on the counter, you whisper, “You just gotta promise me one other thing.” 

He mirrors you, leans a little closer to be almost cheek against cheek with you, as if you were about to tell him the biggest secret in the world, and tilts his head, genuinely unsure of what you’re about to say. 

“What is it?” 

“Next time you come here, and feel free to bring your friends for moral support, but…” he winces at the mention, but you persist, “...You gotta ask me out on a date.” 

Mark breaks away for a second, enough for you to see him nodding to himself. With a lick of his lips, he pierces your gaze, that flicker of fierceness hinted previously burning intensely now, and he whispers—

“I think I can manage that.” 

[iturbide]

Seeing the Sumia breakdown reminded me no one asked about Chrom, so... Chrom character breakdown so the whole trio is together? :D

You know what, you’re right, we do need the whole trio together

How do I feel about this character?

He’s just.  So amazing.  I didn’t go into Awakening completely blind, but I had no idea what Chrom was really like when I started, and within basically five minutes I knew that I wanted to marry him.  (This was a problem because I went with the beanpole on my first run and was playing the game straight, meaning I had no gay romance options; I consider this a travesty and it may have contributed to Future Built).  I showed a friend of mine the opening movies, and when we got to the one with Chrom and Lissa, right after Chrom helped Robin up off the ground and smiled she said, entirely unprompted, “I feel like I’m being seduced.”

And what’s so amazing about him is that it’s entirely uncalculated.  He’s not trying to charm people, he just has that way about him: he’s open and earnest and wants to help people, even if that means getting into dangerous situations -- and on top of that, he wants to trust people even if he’s told he shouldn’t.  He and Lissa might make fun of Frederick and his wariness, but honestly the man has a point; the fact that Chrom would rather let Frederick watch his back for him and give people the benefit of the doubt, rather than letting that mindset infect him and distrusting strangers, is so heartening to me, and one of the many things I really do love about him. 

He’s also flawed, though: he’s by no means a perfect person, and is susceptible to doubt and anger both.  Even if the game doesn’t give it the attention it deserves he has conflicting legacies that he’s trying to measure himself against: his father the warmonger, who he doesn’t want to be like but fears he’s becoming...and his sister the pacifist, who he wants to live up to but fears he’ll never manage.  It makes a fascinating internal character conflict and helps round him out further into his own person, rather than being just another generic blue-haired Lord.

Who do I ship this character with romantically?

ROBIN.  From day one it has always been Robin, because the entire game revolves around the bond between these two people.  Even if you don’t marry Chrom, the fact is that he and Robin trust one another implicitly, such that Lucina’s herself knows that the person he trusted most in the world took his life; she might not immediately put the pieces together, but it speaks volumes for their relationship.  And honestly, the way it’s built, especially in the M!Robin supports, is so incredible: the trust and care between these two people who want to help each other and who can and do rely on one another is incredible, and makes a rock solid foundation for romance down the line.  They’re just amazing together and I love it.

Also I wholeheartedly ship him with Sumia because she’s wonderful and brings an entirely different set of skills and outlooks to the table that I think can and would be very useful to the halidom as it continues to grow under Chrom’s watch.  And yes, it’s improved 5,000% when he’s with both Sumia and Robin together (because I stand by my OT3).

Who is my brOTP for this character?

Sully, hands down.  I’m pretty sure in their supports they talk about how they’ve known each other since they were kids, and I really love the idea of these two growing up together, training together, becoming super tight as friends and being constantly ready to have each other’s backs.  Sully also makes a fantastic wingman for Chrom, let’s be real here.  Vaike is another that I really enjoy, because the idea of them having this friendly rivalry where they’re constantly sparring and trying to one-up each other is really fun.  Having them be just a chaos trio together is one of my favorite things and I really need to find a place to put that in because it’s arguably hilarious to think about Chrom getting terrible advice for how to flirt with someone from Vaike and getting smacked upside the head later by Sully after failing spectacularly with it.

What’s my Unpopular Opinion™ about this character?

He’s really not that dumb, you guys.  Fandom loves to play up that one line from Gaius’ support with Olivia about Chrom eating an unpeeled orange (which may not even be true, it could have just been Gaius trying to make Olivia laugh), and conflating it with the idea that he’s dumb as a box of rocks.  There is very little that frustrates me more than the whole “moronsexual” joke that runs around fandom with regards to him and Robin, and it’s just not fair to Chrom as a person.  He’s not an idiot: he can do dumb things, like most people, but he is also a very capable and considerate person, and an accomplished fighter: if he were really as stupid as fandom likes to play up, he’d have been dead before getting any kind of proficiency with a sword.  Just because he can lose focus and mess up doesn’t mean that he��s a hopeless idiot.

What’s one thing I wish would have happened with this character in canon?

Okay so this is probably weird but I honestly wish that he’d tried to talk to Grima in the end.  Most of the conversation after Validar’s death at the Dragon’s Table is between Robin and Grima, and the final battle starts with the call to arms rather than any attempt to engage with the Fell Dragon; basically Chrom writes Grima off as unreachable and a force that needs to be destroyed based solely on Grima’s words, Lucina’s news of the future, and Naga’s insistence that it has to be done...even though Grima doesn’t actually hurt them at any point before the final battle. 

Do you see how weird that is?  Grima could, logically, have gone ahead and shot Chrom through the heart with a Thoron at the Dragon’s Table, since they state flat-out that they were the one who killed Chrom in Lucina’s timeline and that they share the same Heart of Grima with Robin, so it arguably would have fulfilled the same purpose regardless of whose hand summoned the spell -- but they didn’t.  They talked a big game and the giant dragon came back but Chrom at no point took fire from Grima -- heck, even after raising the dragon form Grima lets them go, flying off past Origin Peak and letting them parley with Naga.

Considering the fact that Chrom made an attempt to talk Walhart into a laying down his arms and forging an alliance, and willingly engaged twice with Validar in good faith (once after the events at Port Ferox, once after returning in hopes of acquiring Sable), it seems bizarre to me that he wouldn’t do the same with Grima.  He’s been trying so hard to hold true to his sister’s virtues of peace, of trying to talk rather than going immediately to arms the way his father would have, that it feels like he’s backsliding in the final battle when his quote facing Grima in combat is literally “I come to end you.”  I just wish he’d remembered Emmeryn’s ways in that moment, and at least tried; even if it failed like it did with Walhart, it would have been a powerful reminder that he’s still trying to live up to the best influence in his life.

Give Me a Character    

[mydearesthrry]

places we won’t walk (chapter one) || peter parker

summary - the doors at midtown seem a little boring, but when you get introduced to someone you seem to remember, what happens when they seem to remember you too?

word count - 2.9k (wow shes gettin better!)

pairings - peter parker x fem!reader

warnings - like mild mention of s*xual assault, angst if you squint really hard, mj being a softy for you, mj being a lowkey bi, peter being stupid as always, y/n calling peter a colonizer.... thats it ok enjoy

a/n: so i know i last updated in october, but as u all saw i have a 25 days of xnas thing going on (PLS I WROTE THE A/N LIKE A MONTH AGO PLUS I FORGOT ABOUT THE XMAS THING DISREGARD) so pwww updates will be slow (as if they werent already omg) but the next chapter will be arriving hopefully, fingers crossed, on xmas eve or xmas! also, are you guys watching the new euphoria episode? also, i’ve stopped using the word ‘stuttering’, as it may be ableist, and i’d never wanna come off as insensitive. anyway lmao, enjoy chapter one, the trials and tribulations of hitting someone in the nuts.

also side note psa: biggest thank you to @blossomparkers for helping me so much w this chapter. i owe it all tooooo u lani yani. thank u for everything !!!!!

series masterlist | regular masterlist | series playlist

(gif not mine!)

when y/n y/m/n stark was in her early years, she was never aware of the impact her father would and did hold over her life, and in turn, the whole world. for the longest time, you’d always assumed that your father wasn’t real, and everything that had been told to you by malicious family members who were jealous over your father’s “successes” had been lies, and you had it believed yourself. no one would even think that you were tony stark’s daughter until it had been mentioned. tony’s snarky attitude had been a character trait that you’d gotten, and you always took pride in your humor and attitude.

the story of your mother and tony had been messy and all over the place. from a drunken hook-up followed by multiple days of morning sickness, to a surprise pregnancy test, the storyline of your parents had been.. well.. interesting to say the least. you never focused on your family’s history, solely based on the fact that you didn’t have two fucks to give about your family history, but you also never knew your father which was-- bizarre. 

when tony had found out about you, he claimed it was a drunken accident, a mistake, and one he made when he was “less responsibly a stark”, which was actually just some fucking bullshit, but he didn’t wanna admit that he hooked up with some random chick at a bar that he thought was hot.

since you had been raised by a mother who was barely there, you had to raise yourself. you were kinda street smart and book smart, and you were always smart when it came to books, because you were the type to want to learn-- unlike others.

when you were in your teen years, you had tabs on you and the media on you 24/7 to make sure you didn’t royally fuck up. the unwanted attention became too much when you started realizing that people didn’t want you for your personality, they wanted you for your title. but this was after you moved from brooklyn. nuvale and peter never saw you as some “movie star”, or some famous person in the media because you weren’t. but when you had grown to learn what your father did, he had forced you to not fuck up to maintain his-- somewhat okay reputation. 

you always wanted that superstar life, as a fantasy of course, but when you got to it, you realized the cliche-y-ness of it all. you’d idolized the famous women in the media-- idolized how they looked like. you realized fairly quick how fucked up the media truly is. you realized how things really aren’t as they seem. its not just the galas that look extravagant, or getting to wear a fancy new gucci outfit every night. it honestly was a whole bunch of other shit you wouldn’t even imagine. it comes with the no privacy thing- people stalking you in public, the death threats, so much shit that wouldn’t happen as common if you were just anonymous.

being an avenger (basically), your dad had natasha teach you the ropes; the basic rules of how to kick someones ass. it was a handbook that the women of the avengers had created, and it had all the rules and regulations of how to spar someone on the team, and basically how to righteously beat someone's ass up. it was never really something you found too important, but as you grew older, you realized that it was very important to know, especially since you were a girl.

despite your harsh remarks and snarky attitude, your father always knew how to hit a sensitive point in you that always managed to break you down. you never quite understood why he would want to make you feel worse about yourself than you already felt, but regardless, you always felt underappreciated by him. being a stark, you were expected to be a genius, get over the top grades, and constantly be able to keep up, but with your luck, you were graced with depression, social anxiety, and a 4.0 gpa. fun, right? 

wrong.

when you were 11, you had made friends with the kids in your apartment halls, and you learned that their names were nuvale jones and peter parker, and you were basically the golden trio. you were hermione, peter was ron, and nuvale was harry. which, now that you look back at it, makes much more sense than any other arrangement. you also had another friend, harry osborn, but once he moved away, there was no way for you to talk to him anymore. he had moved across the country to california, and from then, it was just you, peter, and nuvale. your best friends ha been there for you for what seemed like decades, although you only knew them for about three.

peter was the boy with the rosy cheeks who little 12 year old you would get butterflies in her tummy. or the type of boy to bring you an extra snack if you weren’t able to pack it the night before. he was the type of boy to walk you to the nurses office if you got hit with a dodgeball. he was the type of boy to fall for someone like you. but he didn’t. or so you thought. 

little prebubescent y/n was an awkward girl who thought the world would be on her side when she needed it the most, or that whenever you needed peter or nuva, they would be there. you didn’t think your best friend would stop talking to you after you had moved away. you were too naive to know that peter liked you, and you were too naive to know that he had liked you back, but you wanted to believe what your brain would tell you, so you decided to flush your feelings down the drain and forget about them, which, in hindsight, was a pretty shitty idea. who would’ve known?

your alarm clock blared loudly from beside you, causing you to let out a loud groan in protest. you hit the side of your head angrily, then whining and rubbing the spot which you hit. whines and loud sighs fell from your lips as you rubbed the sleep from your eyes and pulled the covers over your head, knowing what would come next after you would try to snooze your alarm.

“good morning, miss stark, how could i be of service to you this morning?” friday’s voice echoed through your large bedroom. you peaked your eyes and forehead from beneath the covers, your eyes slowly starting to adjust to the light that was pulled through the big blinds which were now open. 

“mmm, fri, just tell happy to get the car ready, ill be ready in a few min- nevermind, tell him to get ready in thirty, im probably gonna fall asleep in the shower.” you croaked, taking your phone from the charger which was on your nightstand. you slipped on your bunny slippers and turned on the heater in your room, the draft filling your room with cold air throughout the night.

-------

once you walked through the large industrial doors of midtown’s cafeteria, everyones voices started to drop into sharp hushed whispers, making you roll your eyes and pull your hood up over your face. you pulled your airpods from your pockets into your ears and tried your best to avoid any and all eye contact with anyone you did end up coming into contact with. you walked over to the food bar where you grabbed a red school tray and plastered on your best smile to the lunch ladies who work oh so hard to make sure you all were fed. as you walked through the line, you could feel the intensified stares on you, making your back erupt in chills. you didn’t like to be watched, and the fact that you were a so-called celebrity didn’t help your cause in any way. 

“hey.” a low voice called from behind you. it was a girl with curly hair with gorgeous light brown skin, and a jawline that would cut you. you were almost astonished by her beauty, but you remembered the facade you had to hold, especially to strangers that you didn’t know.

“hey?” you asked unsurely, wondering if she was with the media or not. which was something that tended to happen quite a bit.

“don’t worry, i’m not with the press. you just seem interesting.” she said in a monotone voice, but still with a strong look of seriousness on her face. you giggled softly when your eyes locked and your faces went totally still, making the girl in front of you laugh as well. she held out her hand in front of you, while also balancing her tray and book in the other hand. you placed yours into hers and shook it, smiling when she told you her name.

“michelle jones.” she smiled, your throat getting a little tight at her last name, and you had to admit that it struck a little chord within you, but you quickly cleared it from your thoughts and introduced yourself as well.

“y/n stark. pleasure to meet you, jones.”

“pleasure to meet you too.”

“so, i get that you’re new here,” she started walking, inviting you to walk along with her. “what- what are you doing here? i mean i get you’re smart and all, but this is a nerd school; you literally could’ve gone anywhere, so, might i ask, why here?”

“hm, interesting question. seriously i don’t know. my dad and i don’t really get along so he makes the decisions and i tell him if i like it or not. which by the way, i’m gonna have to stay near you-- you’re the only one making this bearable for me right now.” you snorted, nudging your elbow to hers. 

“hm, daddy issues. great song, love the artists.” she smirked, making you shoot your head back in loud laughter, gaining some side eyed glances from a few people sitting at the tables around you.

“so, where are we sitting? i usually nev-”

“hey mj!” you were interrupted by a boyish laugh and hoots and hollers coming from a table two tables ahead of you. 

“jesus fucking christ. what? just because i got some and you didn’t doesn’t mean that you have to be that fuckin’ loud about it.” she grumbled, placing her tray down, slinging the backpack on her right shoulder beside her. you looked at her with a nervous but curious glint in your eyes. she gave you a knowing look which said, ‘just go with what i say’, making you nod in understanding.

“woah! holy shit! i m- i mean woah- nice to- nice to meet you!” the boy fumbled over his words, looking at you and michelle in disbelief, shaking his friends shoulder and poking at his cheek.

“nice cut, g. looks nice.” you said to him, giggling as you stuck your straw into the mini juice box.

“o-oh, thanks… g?” he said back to you, observing your looks with a confused expression written on his face making you giggle at his confusion. 

“peter! look! y/n stark is at our table!” he whisper shouted to his friend, making you look at michelle with a smile on your face and playfully rolling your eyes. she looked back at you, rolling her eyes as well, gesturing to her head as if saying ‘idiots’, making you giggle and turn back to them. 

“so, bowl cut dude, what’s your name?” you nodded to him, picking at your salad with the blac spork that was so cordially given to you by mj. 

“n-ned, ned leeds.” he smiled sheepishly.

“and you, colonizer, what’s your name?” you tapped on the table, alerting the boys attention. you could hear michelle and ned hollering and snickering from their seats, but decided to keep your poker face rolling. but i mean, how couldn’t you? the look on his face was absolutely priceless. 

“peter park- wait did you just call me a colonizer?” he cut himself off in his own sentence, looking at his other friends for confirmation, to which they nodded, still cackling at the fact that you had indeed call him a colonizer.

“peter park, hm?” you teased, ignoring the way you hesitated and ignoring the way your chest felt heavy when the name of peter was said.

“n-no thats not my name-” he said, tripping over his words, making you let out a chuckle. 

“i’m messing with you. with what you’ve given me, i could only guess your name is peter parker?” you rested your chin on your hand, engaging in the awkward conversation.

“yeah. thats my name.” he said more confidently, giving you a tight lipped smile.

“nice to meet you, parker.”

“you too, stark, my pleasure.”

----

after the small encounter with your new found friends, you had gone back to your respective classes, which meant that your next class had peter in it. after you had split up, you decided to get there early to avoid any commotion surrounding you.

as the boring class continued, you heard the loud clicking of high heels in the hallways, which had to be one person and one person only.

“stark,” someone shouted from the door which swung open. low and behold, in front of you was the prickly bitch, your principal, mrs cunningham. “come with me, eugene’s parents have requested a meeting with you and your father considering that you had just hit their son in the private areas!” everyone snickered and laughed. finally someone had stood up to flash’s shit. 

“y- you punched flash in the nuts? i thought that was just a rumor?” peter stuttered, looking at you in disbelief.

“yeah, the fuck was i gonna do? let him flirt with me? no. that bitch tried to grab my ass. i’m a stark, i was raised better than that.” you whispered to him, packing your bag as you did so.

“hm, guess you’re right. well, good luck stark.” 

“thanks parker.”

--------

once you arrived in the principals office, you saw what seemed to be his mother in one of the seats decked out in expensive pearls and diamonds. typical.

“little miss over here punched my son in the privates! i will not allow this to happen!” fuck. you thought; another one of those stuck up cunty parents.

“pfft, probably paid to get their son into here.” you muttered under your breath, playing with your protection bracelets incase anything was to ever happen.

“wHAT? mrs cunningham, i will not allow this child to talk about my son this wa-”

“hello! i was called in?” a voice interrupted, one you could only peg as your father.

“ahh! mr stark! you’re finally here!” your hilarious excuse as a principal said cheerfully.

“i am! and i am here to.. come and have a meeting about my daughter's- behavior?” he asked questiongly, already seeing the triumphant and cocky look on your face. he knew you weren’t at fault, and you were gonna lie your pretty ass out of it.

“well, mr stark, we have a student in the nurses room due to the actions of your daughter!” she looked at him menacingly. he shook his head with a smile on his face and walked over to you, grasping your shoulders in his hands.

“well kiddo, wanna explain what and why you did what you did?” he smiled, giving you two taps on your shoulder, already knowing what was next. you two had a pretty good acting schedule when it came to it, when in reality, you despised eachother.

“sure daddy! eugene had been hitting on me for several days now, and even found my private social medias in use to.. how can i say this, use me for my fame? he tried talking to me, very inappropriately on several occasions, and even went as far as to try and grab me in areas in which i find extremely inappropriate, without my consent, might i add, which doesn’t seem okay with me. does it seem exceptional to you, mrs thompson?” you asked, while only keeping your eyes on his mother.

“why, i am so sorry miss stark! his father will be in contact, i did not raise my baby to be this way! im sorry for any inconvenience he may have caused you!” she gasped, raising a hand to her heart. 

“it’s okay, i just request, may this never happen again? i would not like my privacy to be invaded, much less from your son, and can i please ask that he never try to hit on me, nor any girls at this school ever again? i can only imagine how many other girls this may have happened to, mrs thompson.” you sighed, your eyes filling up with fake tears. you reached up to touch your fathers hand, tapping it twice back, knowing that you both had just won.

“never again miss stark, once again, i am so sorry this happened to you.” 

“it’s okay. now mrs cunningham, shall we see our way out?” your father answered for you, looking over at the old white woman who looked like a piece of cheese. she could only nod in awe, giving you the cue to pick up your bags and walk proudly to the door.

“thanks i guess.” you muttered, pulling out your airpods once more, hoping to seal the conversation with your father.

“yeah yeah, no problemo.” he muttered back, avoiding eye contact and stuffing his hands in his  pockets. 

once you reached the door, you remembered that you had left something in your locker, and informed your dad that you’d be going back to get it. he all but nodded and looked back at his shoes before trudging to the car.

once you entered the seemingly halls, much to your surprise, you saw a scrawny teenage boy lifting open a set of lockers, which you didn’t even know was possible, and pulling out a red and blue suit. once you saw who the hands belonged to, your mouth fell agape as you gasped,

“peter?”

[tirorah]

Road to Berlin – The Strike Witches Magnum Opus?

Hello! It’s been a long time. I don’t plan on returning to Tumblr long-term—it simply stole away too much of my time and energy, and I had to do what was best for myself. However, I thought I’d pop in for a very special message.

You see, Strike Witches’ third season, Road to Berlin, has now reached its halfway point. And I need you to watch it.

“Strike Witches?!” I hear you say. “That weird show about girls with no pants that you’re obsessed with for some reason?”

Yes, exactly! Hold on, don’t run away yet! Sit with me for a spell and allow me to explain my boundless love for this silly, emotionally gripping show. Allow me to tell you why it might affect you in the same way, and why Road to Berlin may be the best offering yet.

Welcome to the 501st Joint Fighter Wing

If you’ve heard of this anime, you’ve undoubtedly heard of (or witnessed) its rather infamous claim to fame: a group of teenage soldiers fighting strange creatures in an Alternate Universe World War 2 Europe, flying around with guns and magic-fueled leg machines, and none of them are wearing any decent trousers.

That takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? I’m not going to deny that. But while Strike Witches’ rather peculiar design decisions are inescapable, there’s one thing you need to take into account: Season 1 aired all the way back in 2008. And over those thirteen years, it’s evolved into an experience unlike anything its roots would suggest.

Strike Witches has always been a strange beast. It has a large cast and divides its activities evenly between (light) war drama and slice-of-life shenanigans. And there’s fanservice, lots and lots of it! But the show’s emphasis on risqué camera work, and how that camera work is handled, highly depends on which entry you’re watching.

You see, Strike Witches is strangely ambitious. It could’ve easily taken its bizarre concept and pushed that to its limits, bringing in as much fanservice as possible and playing a simple story in the background as window dressing. But it was never satisfied with just that. Even early on in Season 1, the show deals with heavier themes like pressure, trauma and loss.

And then there are the characters, the undisputed stars of the show. Twelve strong and all with different backgrounds and personal quirks, they may at first seem like TV Tropes come to life. And certainly, sometimes they are. However, as the series progressed, things started to change. Even Season 2, arguably the lightest and silliest of all entries, featured material that built on character development and character growth earned in its predecessor.

With the movie and a trio of OVAs to round out the cast a bit more, the stage was set for Road to Berlin.

The Difficult Road Ahead

When this season was first announced back in 2018, two things stood out to me. First of all, the key visual and promotional video released along with the announcement were much more similar in style to the movies and the OVAs, featuring serious-looking characters and stormy clouds. Secondly, for the first time in Strike Witches history, an entry received a subtitle. Yes, the OVAs were named Operation Victory Arrow, but that was merely wordplay to spell out “OVA.” It wasn’t wholly serious.

Road to Berlin, however, is deadly serious.

Let’s start with an overall theme. The vaunted 501st Joint Fighter Wing has had some major victories, but much of the continent is still under occupation by the Neuroi. The Hive over Berlin is the Wing’s new target, but the journey there is fraught with obstacles. Plans are thwarted and delayed by Neuroi more powerful and far craftier than their 2008 counterparts.

And as the opening song tells us: “We all have flaws.” The Road to Berlin isn’t an entirely literal road; it’s also a metaphorical one. The push to Berlin is their hardest battle yet. Victory can only be achieved if the characters face and overcome their weaknesses. But they’re not alone.

Friendship Is Power

As the characters have long since been established, there’s greater room for growth not just in one character, but also in how that character interacts with others. Road to Berlin chose the best possible route and decided to emphasize character dynamics. Episodes don’t focus on a single character anymore; they focus on relationships, and those relationships are at their peak here.

There’s a newfound maturity to the writing in Road to Berlin, a gentle touch that allows the characters to breathe and be more than their foremost traits. You get a sense that the characters have grown from their experiences; they feel different, more well-rounded, but they still behave exactly as they should. This is difficult to get right, and while I’m sure there might be a few eyebrow-raising moments here and there, the overall result is a cast that continues to improve every week.

Chekhov’s Gun

Underpinning the character work is a highly intriguing execution. Road to Berlin delivers subtle setups and satisfying payoffs in every episode. The pacing is also seriously tight. No moment is left unused, every opportunity for additional development is taken. Even the script itself doesn’t like to waste time; it explains things here and there, but it rightly assumes you know who the characters are and what everything means, so it doesn’t bother with many unnecessary lines.

On top of all that, this season is reaching new heights in confidence and sheer audacity, and it uses that to deliver something truly special. There are interactions here that I never could’ve imagined, twists that genuinely caught me off-guard, moments where I had to sit back and digest what I’d just witnessed.

Not a single episode has been predictable thus far; I’ve had more surprises than I can count. In fact, before I started watching I made a bingo card on a whim, filling it with trends and running gags I’d spotted over the course of the series. Some of those bingo spaces have already been proven wrong, and others are in question. Road to Berlin has done such a spectacular job at simultaneously defying and exceeding my expectations that I honestly have no idea where this journey will take me.

The Fault in Our Stars

Okay, hold up, stop the hype train! I admit, I’m a massive sucker for Strike Witches. One could say this somewhat clouds my judgement. Shocking, I know. So, to make this enthusiastic recommendation fairer, let’s dig into something that I hope to see an improvement on.

There is some terrible imbalance in screen time going on here. I know I said earlier that the cast is great, and it is amazing, but some characters have definitely been favored over others. Yoshika is the main character, of course, so it’s not unreasonable for her to have a large role. Similarly, characters like Minna, Gertrud and Shirley have more experience and higher ranks than the others, which means they have an easier time fitting into scenes.

So, who’s gotten the short end of the stick?

Let’s start with Lynne. She hasn’t had as much of a presence as I’d hoped. The primary reason for this is Shizuka, who’s taken up the role of newbie to the squadron and is often paired with Yoshika because they’re working together. As each episode focuses on the relationships between a select few characters at a time, the others are often relegated to minor roles, and poor Lynne hasn’t had an episode to highlight her yet. I’m sure her moment will come eventually.

I don’t know if the same thing applies to Minna. She’s mostly stuck behind her desk again, it seems, and while she’s definitely had some scenes, her role as Wing Commander hasn’t allowed her as much wiggle room as some of the others. What I want to see from Minna is more time to be a nurturing mom to her girls. The thing is, I’m not sure how they’d accomplish a Minna-centric episode. I suppose they could pair her up with Mio, but even then, I’m uncertain where to take her. It seems redundant to have her be worried out of her mind over Mio again, and she seems to be keeping it together pretty well so far anyway.

In a trend so merciless it’s almost comical, Sanya and Eila seem forever doomed to the peanut gallery. They started out with few lines and have pretty much remained in the background since. Of course, a big factor to it all is their role as the night patrol, which naturally separates their activities from everyone else’s. It’s my current prediction that their relationship is next in line to be showcased. The quality of that episode will likely hinge on how their personalities are tuned, but there’s potential for something great.

And most shocking of all, Mio—She Who Has Practiced Plot Armor Ten Thousand Times—has had the most infinitesimal role of all. I’m of two minds on this. It appears that Road to Berlin has realized that having Mio fly into battle without a shield or Striker Unit is silly, and this is good. On the other hand, Mio is an iconic and beloved character. She deserves some screen time as long as she doesn’t overshadow the others. For now, she seems to be relegated to strategizing and logistics, although I have a hunch that a way to circumvent her newfound vulnerability has already been set up. Time will tell if this ends up being utilized.

Journey’s End

In closing, Road to Berlin highlights the best of what Strike Witches has to offer. It’s striding boldly forward, eager to dazzle us with its animation and audio, grinning as it challenges our preconceptions about where its characters can go and what they can do.

The path to this greatness can be tough. Watching Strike Witches means accepting a number of strange concepts, which can give quite a few viewers a rough start with the series. However, if you made it all the way here and haven’t given Strike Witches a try yet, I sincerely implore you to make the attempt. If you allow the characters to sweep you off your feet, then Road to Berlin could be the apex of a most satisfying viewing experience.

Especially if its second half is as impressive as the first. I, personally, have high hopes. There’s no sky this show can’t conquer.

[the-river-person]

220 Years

“You spend so much of your time studying, and I am truly glad to see you pursuing your interests, my child. But I cannot help but worry that you do not show much interest in other people or other activities.” Toriel was worrying again. She did this sometimes, hovering over his shoulder while he was working through something. It was especially annoying when, like now, he felt that he was just on the edge of finding something. Anything solid enough to hand over to that Scientist. Thus far every trail of clues he’d found just faded into nothing or stopped at a dead end. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, and his mother was really not helping. He glanced up at her. She was wearing her apron and had clearly been baking. But now she stood in the doorway and gazed at him with that slightly worried frown that made him feel both guilty and irritated. “Oh yes,” he said, his tone laced with sarcasm. “I should definitely go and meet new people and travel the world. Both of those are viable options for recreational activity here in the Underground.” “That is not what I meant.” She was doing it again. The disapproving motherly tone that she always took when she wanted him to do things her way and didn’t like that he was resisting. “What did you mean?” he snapped. “Would you rather I go back to being the flower? I’m sure Flowey the Flowery would love to be social and participate in activities. Maybe he could even come up with a few things himself! Oh, but we all know how well that went.” Silence greeted him and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her again. There it was, the gnawing guilt that reappeared every time he lost his temper. He felt her weight suddenly sink into the couch next to him and her hand on his arm. When he still wouldn’t turn and look at her after a moment or two, she spoke. “I am sorry. Even now it is difficult not to push and pry, to try and guide you where I think you should go, even if you don’t always want to be there. Really I only want whatever will grant you a happy and fulfilling life, but I forget sometimes that my views on how to achieve that are not universal. Asriel-” “Realis,” he responded grumpily. He could have stepped back into the role of Asriel, the long dead but miraculously returned prince of the Underground. Tragically transformed into a soulless flower who couldn’t feel and did terrible things, only to be cured one day and was now good and kind and perfect again. For a while he had. A long while. Nearly a hundred years. But it had felt wrong, false. Like wearing a lie. The damned smiley trashbag had found him moping and wandering around Hotland. Sans was... admittedly not that bad. Hey, with his brown overcoat and his mail carrier job he was actually kind of cool. Plus he’d mostly stopped with the awful puns. Plus he’d kind of started to care about the short skeleton. One of the few people who really got it, who understood what it meant to keep reliving the same fragment of time over and over again. Together with Isa they made a pretty awful trio of traumatized idiots. But Sans had more or less strong armed him into coming to Muffet’s Tea Shop and had made him drink. Eventually he’d found himself spilling everything, telling Sans about all the frustrations and the pretending and just feeling guilt all the time because everyone he ran into he’d hurt somehow, even if they didn’t remember or didn’t care anymore. They might have moved on, or forgiven him, but he still had to live with it. No matter what he did or said, he just wasn’t Asriel. Then Sans had rocked his world. Asking, why not be someone else then? Someone new. No one says you have to go back. Bizarre, that’s what the idea was. Ridiculous and weird. But also... right somehow. He’d chosen a new name. Related to Asriel, but scrambled around, changed, new. His parents had been understanding, which wasn’t surprising. Eventually they’d even gotten used to the new name. Mostly. “Ah yes, sorry. You know... it reminds me of your grandmother whenever I hear that name. As you know, my father is the one who was always telling silly jokes and punning with me, but my mother’s sense of humor was... a little drier. She would have been very tickled to learn you gave yourself a name with a two layered grammar joke.” He leaned into her, still not looking at her, but relaxing a little. If things had been different, he might have gotten to know them. The people in her stories. His Grandfather, Grandmother, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins. And of course, if things had been different, there would never have been a barrier to overcome at all, and he would never have met Chara, though he felt certain his grandparents would have loved them just as much as he and his parents did. No one would died trying to free the Underground. He would never have become a soulless flower bent on violence and destruction for the sheer thrill of feeling anything at all. Never have felt the guilt that was gnawing away at his stomach right this very moment. He sighed. “I’m sorry. I can try to take some time and do other things in between working on this.” Toriel kissed his head. “Don’t be sorry. You can spend your time the way you wish. I know that even if you look, and act, like a grumpy teenager-” “Hey!” She laughed at him as he sat upright in mock indignation, unable to keep his mouth from twitching up into an amused smile. “I know that really you are fully grown and much wiser and kinder than you give yourself credit for.” He wasn’t sure he believed that, not really. But still, it was nice to hear her say it.

[tarysande]

Lucifer Fic: Sheet Happens (1/1)

For @thedeckerstarnetwork’s Halloween Challenge. @calia05 asked for “ghost” and “trick,” and said she loved Ella and Azrael. This is the result! <3

Also on AO3

Sheet Happens

Miss Lopez delivered the invitation in typical Miss Lopez fashion: as exuberantly as the world's friendliest golden retriever high on Adderall. Clearly handmade, she’d cut the card into the shape of a cartoonish ghost, white bedsheet and all, and covered it with an absurd amount of silvery glitter. Meaning, of course, that it covered him with an absurd amount of silvery glitter in short order. The sparkles stood out against the black of his suit like snowflakes. Or dandruff. Not that the Devil was in any way personally acquainted with the latter.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, holding the glitter bomb at as close to arm’s length as he could politely get away with.

Miss Lopez wore her every emotion not just on her sleeve, but from the top of her head to the tips of her platformed running shoes. Today’s t-shirt featured a sad ghost with a spilled cup of coffee and the phrase ‘Sheet Happens.’ “So, you’ll come?”

“Ah.” Even as the syllable emerged, Miss Lopez’s face began to fall. “It’s a … popular evening at Lux. I do rather feel I owe my patrons an appearance.”

“Oh,” she said, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand and leaving ghostly glitter behind. “Duh. I should’ve thought of that.”

The glitter was sentient. He could practically feel it creeping up his fingers. He would have to burn the suit; once infected, recovery was impossible. He could only imagine how infested her home must be. The mind behind the creation of the stuff was truly devious; in the darkest of hellscapes, he’d never come across anything quite so … persistent.

“Would you … prefer to offer the invitation to someone else?” he asked, gesturing slightly with the ghost held between the tips of finger and thumb.

This was, evidently, the wrong thing to have said. She wilted, and when she shook her head, even her ponytail seemed sad. “I made it for you,” she tossed over her shoulder, already fleeing back to her lab as fast as her impractically high shoes would allow.

#

“You’re going, Lou.”

Lucifer blinked. Though the music and revelry, sin and sensation raged around him at top volume, the words reached his ears as clearly as if they were spoken into utter silence. Beside him, Azrael slouched, wearing the form so clearly influenced by Miss Lopez.

Or perhaps it was the other way around? The Azrael of old hadn’t slouched. She hadn’t worn bizarre spectacles or sported bowl-cut hair and t-shirts with sayings on them. When she glared up at him, hands planted on hips, her cloak parted wide enough for him to make out today’s offering. In the same cute-cartoon style as Ms. Lopez’s, it depicted a Grim Reaper, coffee in hand and wearing the exhausted expression Lucifer had so often seen on human faces after too little sleep or too much alcohol, next to the words ‘I FEEL LIKE DEATH.’

Lucifer sipped his whiskey to give his hands and his mouth something to do besides reply.

“Not just for Ells. Literally every one of your friends is there.”

He sighed, stepping aside as a tipsy angel with crooked wings tried to press up against his side. The cloying scent of her cheap Victoria’s Secret perfume wasn’t as easy to avoid. Neither was her pout.

“But you’re the Devil,” she whined in a voice he wished he heard much less clearly. “And I’m an angel. It’s sexy.”

“More like incestuous,” Azrael murmured, catching Lucifer so off-guard he choked on his drink. The smug grin she shot him was entirely the Rae-Rae of old. She nudged him with her cloaked elbow. “Still got it.”

He inclined his head at the disappointed angel, sidestepped a werewolf and vampire with tongues so deeply down each other’s throats that witnesses would convert to #TeamWhoNeedsBellaWhenYouHaveEdwardAndJacob at the sight of it, and swiped a bottle of whiskey he refused to see poured for anyone with such undiscerning tastes as the Borat who’d just ordered it. Evidently the bouncers had forgotten the longstanding no-neon-green-mankinis rule.  

Azrael followed on his heels, and though he bloody well knew no one else could see her, somehow the seething crowds parted more easily for her than they had even for him.

“Why are you here instead of there?”

“I—you see how busy—”

“Uh, I see how you haven’t talked to anyone for longer than two minutes, your piano’s nowhere to be seen, and you’re basically oozing sulking-Devil-do-not-approach vibes.”

“You try my patience, Azrael.”

She shrugged. A trio of sexy nurses—or perhaps maids; it was hard to tell given the lack of fabric—contorted themselves into shapes he should have found pleasing to avoid being too near to her. One attempted to fall toward him, but he slid to the side so she ended up grappling with one of the evening’s nineteen (at last count) Captains America.

“Yeah? Well, you’re bugging me too,” she said, evidently oblivious to the effect her presence was having. “You didn’t even read the card, did you?”

“The … excuse me?”

Azrael’s prodigious eye roll involved every muscle in her face. “From Ella?”

A twinge of something like regret turned the whiskey on his tongue to ashes. He’d dropped disco-ghost into an evidence bag before it could do any more damage and left it at the precinct without sparing it a second thought.

Azrael thrust that same evidence bag into his chest hard enough to send him staggering back half a step. Another angel got partway through a curse Lucifer had a hard time imagining any of his siblings speaking before she realized the Devil to whom that curse was directed. He sensed a new rule for the bouncers brewing.

Of course, the most persistent of the angels presently irritating him didn’t obligingly flit off into the crowd at his glower. He’d no idea how someone so vertically challenged could make him feel small, and yet. The evidence bag and its spectral occupant had fluttered to the ground between them, where it lay like a murder victim bathed in blood glittering red from the overhead lighting. Sheet happens.

He bent from the waist, snatching up the invitation and stalking toward the elevator. The sea of demons and various sexy professionals and animals and … bloody hell, Sexy Donald Trump was infinitely worse than the worst mankinied Borat. Some things couldn’t be unseen.

And then he was in the elevator, and it didn’t matter that Azrael wasn’t with him because she’d be waiting for him with her ridiculous fringe and, beneath it, eyes that always reflected the brother he could have been, perhaps, if he didn’t fail so spectacularly so often.

He scanned the room when the elevator door opened but saw nothing out of place, and when he called out, no one answered. Azrael could creep and hide and lurk as effectively as the angelic purpose over which she held dominion, but rarely from him.

He opened the evidence bag and dumped its contents on the bar, releasing the spirit and its miasma of sparkles. The bloody thing looked so bloody cheerful—and not at all like any of the spirits he’d had occasion to meet over the millennia.

Then again, give the thing a spectral ponytail and a cute t-shirt and maybe—

He silenced the thought by reaching for a bottle. He didn’t, at least for the first burning pull, even bother with a glass.

He poured the second drink. By the third, he was ready to open the damned—ha bloody ha—thing. In the ebullient handwriting so familiar from paperwork and post-it notes, Miss Lopez had written, “My brothers made Halloween more about tricks than treats, usually at my expense. It would be ‘boo’tiful if you could come to my party. COSTUMES MANDATORY.” Instead of her name, she’d drawn a pair of ghosts. One was grinning. It had a ponytail. The other was taller; it held a microphone. It also had devil horns and a tail.

It was grinning, too.

Lucifer closed the invitation and pushed it away with trembling fingertips.

“Why aren’t you there, Lou?”

He gripped the edge of the bar until the moment before the marble would have crumbled. “Surely you know better than anyone, sister.”

The sound she made, caught somewhere between a gasp and a cry, was enough to turn his head. “I’m not—Lucifer, you know I’m not—”

“But you will,” he said. “Because they’re human. Because you’re you. And because you will do as you must. So forgive me for choosing to spend this night of specters and shadows amidst those whose deaths, when they come, will not weigh near so heavily.”

Moments stretched into minutes. Azrael’s jaw worked, and her expression said the words she chewed were bitter ones. Finally, narrowing her eyes, she said, “That’s bullshit.”

Unexpected.

A flush rose in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled not with admiration or sisterly love, but with anger. “You’re sad their time is finite, so you’re wasting what time you do have sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Listen to yourself, Lou. No, seriously. Like, stop for one minute and actually hear the crap coming out of your mouth.” She glanced down at her hands like she was trying to figure out just how much damage they were capable of inflicting. “You’re so … dumb. Like. Just … dumb.”

And though he wanted to protest, wanted to explain in painful, specific detail just why death and eternity and banishment from Heaven made his situation so much bloody worse … he didn’t.

Because Miss Lopez had drawn them as grinning ghosts. To her, this night was treats and costumes and friends and, as in so many traditions throughout all of bloody human history, defying the coming dark by facing it head-on. Perhaps the current tradition didn’t involve bonfires or sacrifices, but he’d be bloody damned—more damned—if gorging on candy and gathering in friendship and depicting the things humans knew went bump in the night without truly knowing how to name them as cartoons and bad puns wasn’t the very same flavor of ritual.

He released his grip on the bar. His hands glittered.

“Costumes are mandatory,” Rae-Rae reminded him.

When he glanced over his shoulder again, she was gone.

#

He stood outside, listening to the laughter within, for fifteen minutes. He raised his hand to knock eighteen times. He turned to leave at least seven.

“I’m gonna do it if you don’t, Lou.”

Bloody sisters.

He knocked. Moments stretched into eternities.

The door, decorated with glimmering ghosts and glittering pumpkins, opened, revealing Miss Lopez in all her pool-noodle-turned-double-helix-DNA glory.

For a moment, Miss Lopez’s wide eyes were so like Rae-Rae’s—the same belief in him; the same, dare he say it, love—that Lucifer couldn’t find breath for whatever foolish, nonchalant nonsense he’d usually have opened with. And when those eyes filled with glistening tears to accompany a grin no drawing could possibly capture, he was the first to look away.

“You came! In costume!” Leaning forward, she squinted at him, then reached out and plucked at his costume. “Oh my God, Lucifer, tell me you didn’t cut eyeholes in a freaking silk sheet that probably cost like, a month of paychecks.”

“I do not lie, Miss Lopez, so I can say no such thing.” Though she couldn’t see it, he grinned at the way horror and delight mingled on her features. He brushed close, close enough to give the phantom equivalent of the hugs she handed out so enthusiastically, and pretended not to feel a little teary-eyed himself at how tightly she returned the gesture. “Who am I to defy your command?”

She laughed and punched him on the arm. “Have you met you?”

“Ahh,” he replied gently. “But have you met you?”

This time, the laughter he heard belonged not to Miss Lopez but to his sister. And though she, too, was bound to her commands, as he stepped into the warmth and light and laughter of Miss Lopez’s home, Azrael’s dominion was the very last thing on his mind.

[courtorderedcake]

Majestically Too Far Beyond, CSSNS 2020

Emma Swan is a Witch who has made (And apparently makes) bad decisions. Helping a desperate Witch out of a weird situation doesn't seem like a bad decision, even against her, runes, a tarot reading and her friend's Snow druid intuition - until it is and the consequences are very real.

Killian is a Demon with a long history of persecution against him, and his denizens are not much better off. His Angelic brother is on a mission to rehab Demonic image to prevent violence on the streets of Hyperion Heights, as some sort of Holy mission deeply rooted in millenia of guilt. Witches and Warlocks use them for parts, Werewolves see them as a threat, Angels mostly still hold on to the ancient feud regardless of their treatise, Fae stay chaotic neutral, Vampires don't care for others affairs - it's a perilous world where hate crimes happen without consequence. After a disastrous meeting, he attempts to drown his frustration with a trip to the bottom of a bottle, but ends up falling in bed with a mysterious Witch in her tower home. Soon he's missing a hand, has only the vaguest idea of what happened from the mess of blood he's woken up to, and a mirror shows that some strange, different, Witch is pregnant with his child.

RATED M for Mature Themes.  Written for @cssns​ 2020 Beta’d by The best team ever ( @jarienn972​  @ultraluckycatnd​  @donteattheappleshook​) and Art by @kmomof4​

Read on Ao3 HERE. 1 | 2 | 3

Chapter 3 :  The Beautiful Synchronicity of the Heavenly Trio

Belle's book store was in a quiet part of the city, just before downtown started. It was all dark colors and paneled wood, her fortune well spent on classical decor and furnishings. Vampire regulars read old favorites or exchanged valuable collections knowing that in Belle's care, nothing would ever harm them. 

Belle herself seemed slightly perturbed when Emma, Snow, and David visited. It was raining, adding gloom to the shadowed storefront. Belle, who was usually dressed in the highest of couture with no hair out of place, looked frazzled to say the least. The rich velvet curtains were drawn at the windows, and Emma winced as she stepped onto the alcove just off the stairs. A sudden pain inched up her belly, discomfort making her hiss out a quiet curse. Looking down at her feet, she kicked salt aside, surprised at the cramping pain it had caused. It eased as suddenly as it came, Belle quickly replacing the salt with a disgruntled fierceness. 

Belle ushered them indoors hastily, looking over their shoulder as they moved inside. "He didn't follow you, did he?" she hissed. Her fangs were still bright in the dim light. 

Emma shook her head, confused. "I don't know what you're talking about; we're just here because I thought you might help me summon -" 

Belle growled low in her throat, and Emma took a step back with wide eyes. David stepped in front of her protectively. 

"She's looking for a particular Demon. A Killian, I believe the name was," David stated, and Belle's hostility melted away. 

"I'm sorry, I just - it's complicated but I don't want to lose this round with him," Belle mumbled with a light laugh that had an edge to it. She began to move, picking up books and putting them in David's arms. "Not that you even know what I'm talking about, or who, so just forget about all that shall we? Yes? Alright -" 

"Belle, are you alright -" Snow tried to ask, but Belle whirled to look at her and they all froze. 

"I'm fine. Just dandy. I just - I hate losing, especially to that smug asshole," Belle gritted out. "And if it's not him, it's the other smug bastard, which seems to be my type."

"Um," David gulped, holding the stack. "I thought you liked type O." 

Belle blinked, before breaking into a sincere grin and laughing. "I'm sorry. I am truly - I can't tell you how apologetic I am. When you live as long as I have, things just get… they get complicated. You make deals with people or play stupid games -" 

"And win stupid prizes," Emma finished, looking at her feet. 

"Yeah," Belle sighed. "Let's move this to the back; we can work from there."

Belle nodded to a door, David following them carefully with the stack of books, as they entered a study. Belle waved her hand, conjuring a flame in the fireplace. 

"I never tire of being a Witch and Vampire. This little group of ours is everything I have ever wanted, or needed," Belle murmured, spreading out the books she took from David's arms. "I really don't want that to change, so if anyone asks you about me…" Belle paused and mumbled something, a bag of powder gently floating to the table. "Don't let them know that you know me. Es[ecially if they seem eager, or are a Demon. I'm not losing this time."

"Ohhhh Kay?" David said weakly, looking confused. 

"I wouldn't do that," Emma shrugged, "But for real, are you alright?" 

Snow looked in Belle's direction with the same concern Emma felt. Belle stiffened, then let out a long hiss of air. 

"Let's just say that everyone has their Demons." 

(Emma needed no superpower to hear the truth in her words, or how it applied to all of them) 

They prepared in silence for the most part after that, questions here and there about where to place or pour what or the amount. The circle glowed a slight blue when it was completed, the wood gleaming in its light. 

"Alright. Get ready," Belle whispered. 

Emma, Snow, and David stepped back as Belle stepped forward with her book in hand. 

Her voice rang out in foreign tongue, but not at the same time, a curved slur of words that felt like rain pouring on them inside. Emma could feel the ground pulse, feel the pull of something, more than expectation and more than any sort of connection she had felt before. Falling backwards, David caught her and held her up right, just as Belle's words reached crescendo. 

The room went pitch black, and Emma felt something staring at her, felt it so acutely she could almost make it out in the dark. 

 ( Tall, with raven hair, and she can see him reach forward as if he's trying to grab her hand, his mouth is saying something but she can only see how long his nails are, the flash of dark horn and blue tinted skin that shimmers - ) 

 As if she had blinked, the lights were back and the circle had faded, its light gone. 

Emma looked around, and then to Belle expectantly. 

"What -" Emma squawked out, her mouth suddenly very dry. 

"Did you give me the right name?" Belle asked, her brows furrowed. 

"Yes, I'm sure it was Killian or Florian, or maybe Caspian -" 

"So, you don't actually know then," Belle sighed, her look of annoyance half amused. "Because this should have worked. There's no way to just dismiss a summons. I mean, there is, but it's not something pleasant or that is common. So, we can keep trying with Caspian or Florian, but -" 

"No. No," Emma rubbed her stomach, looking at just how much she had grown. "If he - if it doesn't want the baby, then this is enough."

Belle nodded. "Alright. If you're sure?" 

"I am. I can't - I can't keep doing this."

David pulled her into a hug, Snow and Belle following behind. 

Belle let them out, carefully pouring more salt along the entrance of the door as they left. They took a taxi home, Emma dropped off first at her porch as the taxi bumped down the gravel towards the farm. 

Once inside, Emma took off her shoes and immediately went to the special door she had placed in the hall on the upper level, closing it firmly behind her. Her door. 

(I am enough. I have always had to be enough. This time isn't any different.)

 ﾟ・.  ｡・. *✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ*⛧*.・｡*ﾟ.★.・.・✫*.・。.・゜

 The station provided a safe haven for Emma on days she worked, the work menial and repetitive. Her coworkers were nice, Ruby worked nearby and joined her and Elsa for a weekly lunch, and Emma found enough time to put her feet up if she needed to. The baby made her feel sluggish, exhausted even. Her once daily cup of coffee had switched to a decaf with a splash of regular, and she could feel it. 

It was odd to think that Liam worked in the massive complex, but Emma was thankful for small favors as they came. He either wasn't aware of where she worked, or Graham was keeping him on a short leash as to not alert her coworkers. She could see how the news of the new secretary not only being associated with Demons, but pregnant by one, could put a damper on their current kind behavior. Liam could continue flooding her mailbox with demands to register herself and child on some bizarre list, or his belligerence regarding his insistence she give the child up if she didn't terminate - as long as he stayed the fuck away from them in person. 

When the crackling page system had come through her intercom, Emma had almost jumped a foot in the air in surprise. 

"Miss Swan, to examining room F. Miss Swan, you have pick up in examining room F." 

This was rare, but occasionally she had to walk to pick up files somewhere in the building. Usually it was meeting rooms or HR, but Emma knew where the questioning and examining rooms were - all the way toward the back of the building. 

The hallway was bright, the lights buzzing loudly overhead. Emma's stomach lurched slightly, the feeling of being watched following her to a bathroom where she lost the contents of her stomach. After touching up, the pit in her stomach remained despite its emptiness. Chalking it down to the unease of being watched by something, Emma hurried to pick up her files. Opening the door labeled 'F' and rushing in to examine the table where the files sat, she jumped at the sound of the door closing behind her. 

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to do these files another time, Miss Swan." Liam's wings were flexed, blocking the door completely and corralling her toward the table. She stumbled back to sit on the metal chair there, Liam pulling another over to sit across from her, his eyes all cold fire. "I have some questions for you I'd like answered."

"You can't do this to me, I'm working-" 

"I can, unless you want this to become an arrest." Liam shrugged, crossing his leg. "Do you like jewelry, Miss Swan? My girlfriend, she loves necklaces, but not bracelets. Do you have the desire to make me wait, so you can show up back here in some, let's say, silver cuffs?" 

"I don't know what your problem is with me, Detective, but I am the victim here. I am the one who was pretty much raped, I'm the one dealing with this pregnancy, I'm the one getting yelled at by pre-fall, toga wearing women through someone's dead mom to get a name -" 

"Were you successful? If the father is pre-fall, we're dealing with a very powerful Witch and an ancient Celestial. There are numbered few left, especially amongst High Demons - it narrows the list to handfuls. It's all the more proof that you are lying." He stood, turning to examine something on the evidence board. 

"No. Yes. I don't know. It was a mess, a woman named Milah answered Cora -" 

Liam's head snapped around, his bloodshot eyes bulging as he stalked back toward the table. 

"Milah? Did you say Milah?" 

"Yes, and Cora gave me random information, worse than usual, but -" 

"Sod whoever Cora is - What did Milah say? Tell me!" 

"I am, um -" Emma bit her lip, trying to remember. "She said something about a tower and a mirror, but she was more upset about the father. He had been her lover before she died -" 

"Bloody hell, what - did she say a name? I need a -" 

"Yes. Um, it was unique. I remember that I thought it sounded strong, but beautiful. Florian? No, it started with a hard C, Caspian maybe. Colin?" 

"Killian," Liam breathed out, as if all the air had left his body. 

Emma snapped her fingers, looking at him with surprise. "That's it, Killian. Do you know him? Is it possible that he could be the father? I really did try summoning him, and there are witnesses that will confirm it failed if you need their testimony… " 

Liam didn't answer, his jaw setting as his fists balled. His wings ruffled, spreading wide and his gaze narrowed to stare angrily at her, face transforming into one of pure rage as he threw the table aside, the floor pulling up with it where it had been bolted down. Emma shrieked, shielding herself as Liam moved closer, the heat in the room rising rapidly. 

"You are under arrest, Emma Swan. Know this: if you have harmed my brother, nothing in Heaven or Hell will stop me from tearing you limb from bloody limb."

There was a blinding flash and the sound of a thunderclap that felt like it rattled the earth itself. When Emma's eyes adjusted, she found herself in a windowless concrete cell that was all too familiar. Her whimpers echoed on the walls as she curled up on the uncomfortable plastic cot, gently rubbing her bump, glad only that this time she wasn't alone. 

 ﾟ・.  ｡・. *✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ*⛧*.・｡*ﾟ.★.・.・✫*.・。.・゜

 Emma woke to a door appearing, muffled yelling on the other side of it causing her to cower in alarm on the thin bunk of her cell. When it flung open to reveal Elsa, Graham, and Liam, Emma breathed out a sob of relief as her friend wrapped her in her arms. 

"Shhh, it's okay Emma, it's alright," Elsa whispered, holding tight. She shifted her head slightly, and her voice fell into a low growl. "How dare you. I swear Liam, you are lucky I don't make an inquiry to take your job. I - I can't -" 

"Elsa, she knows where Killian is. If she hurt him, if either of you hurt him I'll…" Liam trailed off, and Elsa let out a disgusted scoff. 

"Emma would never," Graham interjected, his own voice cold with rage. "You are way out of line here, Jones. I've let you work this even with your personal connection, and that's on me, but for you to imprison an innocent, pregnant Witch without any proof?" He ran his hand through his hair shakily, Elsa nodding along with his points. 

"Come on, Emma. It's alright, let's get you home," Elsa murmured, helping her to her feet. Liam made a noise of protest, but Elsa glared at him with such vehemence that it was quickly swallowed. "Graham, take Emma. I'll be along shortly; I just need to tie up some loose ends here."

Graham pulled Emma into his arms, hugging her to him with a firm nod, helping her through the door. They appeared back in her apartment, Emma breaking into tears the moment she felt the cool, non-sterile air hit her face. Her magic roared back to life outside of the cell's confines, the baby immediately pulling it in to itself greedily as Emma fell back onto her couch. 

"Shit, Emma, you don't look so good," Graham said, his eyebrows knitting together in concern. 

"I think I need to eat something," she rasped, pointing to the cupboard. Graham pulled out a lone box of Pop Tarts, wrinkling his nose. 

"You should actually eat something. Not just -" he tried, but she held up a hand without a word as he opened her cupboards. The deep feeling of unease washed over her, the Ghost back again to stare. 

"Uggggh," Emma groaned. "Please, get out and go away, I can't deal with you too!" Graham looked at her quizzically, looking around while he brought them over.

Savoring the fruit filling and frosting of the snack, Emma almost missed Elsa's return from the holding cell. Elsa was always just as guarded as Emma was, a fortress with thick walls that were built from sheer disappointment. It surprised her to see her icy friend smudging her eye makeup in quick swipes, before regaining composure. 

"Elsa?" Emma whispered, watching her friend jolt and rush to her side. "Are you alright?" 

At Elsa's approach, the laser focused ghost burning a hole through her disappeared. 

"Oh, yeah. Don't worry about me, are you okay?" Her dark blue eyes were glassy, lips pressed thinly together. "Liam had no right to do that, Emma. I'm so sorry for ever thinking he was a good or just soul. I never meant to put you at risk."

"I'm just happy to be out of there. I think… I think he thinks that I hurt his, um, brother?" 

"Yes." Elsa hesitated. "His brother is missing. He's been missing for a few weeks now."

"That's awful. I just don't understand why that involves me, unless….?" 

"Liam believes that his brother is in danger, and was taken against his will. With you suddenly pregnant in these bizarre circumstances, he sees you as a common enemy."

"I didn't do anything! The ghost probably has something to do with it or -" Emma protested, before Graham interrupted. 

"Ghost?" He asked, confused. "Emma, there's no Ghost here, I would have felt it or seen it. You're definitely not being haunted." He chuckled quietly as if the notion was ridiculous, stopping to cough when the two women glared at him. 

"Something wrote on my mirror, and keeps watching me, okay? I can feel it watching, it gives me goosebumps!" Emma hissed. 

Elsa's brow knitted in concern. "Emma, you've been under so much stress lately, just - more than anyone deserves. It's alright to not be okay. Everyone knows we Witches got the scraps of the gift barrel with just magic. If Graham didn't see or smell any ecto-" 

"I swear, I'm not imagining things!" Emma gritted out, anger rushing back. 

"No one said you were, OK?" Elsa soothed. "Just, get some rest…?" 

"Fine, just go." Emma mumbled, sitting down into a slump with her head in her hands. 

"Emma, please," Elsa sat next to her, trying to settle her shaking hands. "I'm not trying to make this into an argument, I'm simply worried about you, your baby, is… It's different, and we just don't know so much about it. Liam needs to be stuffed but he's scared, and that in turn scares me. He told me about this bonding, and how much it can change a person - "

"My child is not your concern either, Elsa." Emma hissed, glaring at her friend. "How about all of you stop showing so much concern, especially when it's like this. I mean, who needs enemies! Am I right?" 

Elsa's face fell, her expression cold. Emma knew that her point had hit home, the woman's eyes going glassy. 

"I think I'll just get Miss Frost here home," Graham said after a moment of tense silence. Elsa nodded with a sniff, Graham helping to lead her out of Emma's home. "Call Ruby tomorrow please, she'll probably even come over with bear claws if you do. Not that you need incentive."

Emma smiled thinly, Graham and Elsa stepping outside only to disappear seconds later. If she had the clearance to poof everywhere, would it still seem so obnoxious? Rubbing her stomach, she decided not to dwell on that question or any of her feelings surrounding her friend trying to preach.

(Titania's left tit, drinking sounded nice.) 

(But then again, so did a foot rub, Chinese food, onion rings, and not having to drink ginger potion to hold down her lunches) 

The knock on her door in the later evening should have been enough to dispel any reason to answer, but Emma was spoiling for a fight, ready for Elsa or Snow; or even Regina, Ariel, and Anna to be behind the wood. 

Her breath would not come when Liam's glare was on the other side, waiting for her. 

"I need your expertise." Liam said coldly. 

"And I need you to leave," Emma spat, her knees shaking. "Immediately."

"The father of your child - I believe he is my brother, and I also believe that you are the only one who can help me find him. I need your help -" 

"Do you not have the word leave in your language?" Shouting, Emma felt as if she might snap in two. Her heartbeat physically hurt as it hammered on, as if it was trying to escape her chest. "Get off my porch, and get lost!" 

"This is his. It's his spyglass, and I need you to locate him with it."

"Yeah, about that. I don't feel you're really getting what I'm saying , buddy , so let's go over this again," Emma hissed lowly, advancing on the Angel. "One, I tried to locate the father and summon him, but it failed. If by some miracle your brother knocked me up, this shouldn't work if a summoning didn't. Two, I don't want anything to do with you or your brother. So leave."

"The funny thing is, I have a good friend of the family, a Demon friend of Killian's. He goes by the name Scarlett, and he's well embedded into the courts. He owed me a favor that I have cashed in recently."

"That's nice, but has nothing to do with me. So yet again, please leave immediately - "

"The search warrant for your property will be ready tomorrow, and I would absolutely loathe it if a reformed criminal such as you was found with illegal paraphernalia and contraband. It would be so disappointing for the Storybrooke Coven, don't you think?" 

Emma sputtered, incredulous. "Are you blackmailing me?" 

"I like to think of this as looking out for your best interests."

"I don't even have anything illegal!" Emma squeaked. 

"Sure you don't, but I do ." He smirked, crossing his arms across his chest. "An entire evidence warehouse of it, actually." 

"You bastard!"

"So, Ms. Swan, a location spell if you will."

Emma took the bronze telescope in her hands, the cool smoothness of it tingling in her palms. She sucked in air as it warmed against her fingers, a strange sense of desperation falling over her. Framing magic and molding it around the cylinder, it glowed a gentle blue before floating slowly towards her window where it bumped against the glass. 

Liam nodded. "Alright, let's go." 

"Let's go?" Emma asked, incredulous. She scoffed when he nodded again, gesturing towards the door. 

"After you."

"You must be out of your mind if you think I am going anywhere with you after you arrest me, wrongfully imprisoned me, and now are blackmailing me -" 

"The funny thing about blackmail," Liam interrupted, towering over her, "Is that it still applies to further tasks I ask of you. Are we clear, Ms. Swan?"

Emma glared, brushing past him with her head bowed. Stepping outside into the cool air, she took a steadying breath. 

"You can drive." Liam motioned to her yellow bug, sitting in the dirt patch she called a driveway. "Let's go."

She opened the doors, Liam cramming himself and his wings inside the small car with her. Despite everything, Emma snorted, his scowl and discomfort giving her a small bit of vindictive pleasure. The spyglass sent them through the city's glimmering night scene, winding them towards the segregated neighborhoods, then veered to send them out of the heights and along the thickly wooded coastline. 

Liam became more tense every minute that ticked by, his jaw set as he ground his teeth. He startled when Emma spoke, sending her veering into the next lane before she corrected on the empty stretch of road. 

"Merlin in slippers, what is wrong with you?" Emma panted, gripping the wheel tightly. "I just wanted to tell you that I need to stop and get gas!" 

"Fine, then do it, but bloody well don't kill us!" Liam hissed, mumbling under his breath about how he should have flown. They stopped at a gas station where Emma filled the tank, Liam stretching as she used the restroom and bought herself a candy bar. They were back on the road shortly, veering off onto a dark road. 

Emma chewed her lip nervously, the bug's headlights doing little to cut through the pitch blackness that the canopy of towering trees created. It wound and curved downward until they were in a valley, a rocky wall on one side that curved to reveal a solitary structure bathed in shadow. Nearby, a waterfall roared. A tall tower made of stone jutted up into the night. In the briefest slip of starlight, Emma could see the red shingles at its spire's top, and the moss that grew on them. A light was lit in the only window far above the ground as they pulled up, and Emma's headlights illuminated the base of the pillar. 

Cutting the engine, the spyglass bathed the car in bright blue, desperately bumping against her windshield. 

"I'd safely assume that we're here," Emma whispered, casting a sideways glance at where Liam was prying himself out of her car. He looked at her expectantly, and she sighed, yanking off her seat belt in irritation. The night had gotten colder, her breath standing out against the sky in puffs of vapor. 

"There's no door," Liam grunted, spreading his wings out. "So, shall we?" 

Emma looked at him, realizing what he expected. "No, no, I am nauseous as a default, don't you dare -" 

Liam's arm snaked around her waist as she protested, then they were lifting into the air with one powerful flap of his wings. Emma shrieked, tightly shutting her eyes until her feet found purchase on a smooth floor. She stumbled forward clutching her stomach and heaving. 

"What is wrong with you?" Emma screeched, Liam ducking into the tower behind her. "How dare you -" 

"I would do anything for my brother," Liam hissed. "That's something you will never understand."

A new voice broke into their argument, the shaky exclamation drawing both her attention and Liam's immediately. 

"Thank the bloody stars, Liam is it really you?" 

A Demon stood before her, pushing out of a strung hammock. Emma felt something shift, the air in her lungs leaving in one great whoosh of exhale. 

"Killian," Liam breathed out. 

[ponett]

i was finally able to see the bad star war that everyone said was bad. as it turns out, it was bad. here’s a read more post with my thoughts on it so that i don’t spam my twitter with spoiler tweets

for a baseline: i like the original trilogy, but i don’t think any of those movies are perfect. i think the prequels had some good ideas but i were mostly terrible. i love the clone wars (both versions) and rebels. while i admit that tfa was extremely similar to a new hope, i thought it was executed great and had a wonderful new cast that showed a ton of promise. i liked rogue one, although i found its first act really sloppy. and i have some quibbles about tlj, but it had an incredibly strong vision and actual themes, and i’d consider it my favorite in the series

i’m exactly the kind of person who was always going to hate the rise of skywalker, because it’s basically a bad fanfic written by someone who didn’t like tlj and wanted to “fix” the story. like that bizarre story treatment jenny nicholson read for this movie. the bad one. it was like that

it wasn’t all bad i guess. here are the small things i liked:

some of the new environments were cool. there was cool imagery and practical effects work

i appreciated that the moon of endor where the death star wreckage was wasn’t just the one with the ewoks, and thought the vibe there was cool

zorii bliss’s armor was really cool

the image of the fleet of star destroyers all lined up was striking

i liked that the ghost showed up for the final battle

i liked that ahsoka was one of the jedi voices rey heard, even though that kind of implies that ahsoka is, uh... dead?

while extremely fucking trite and dumb, i’ll admit the closing scene on tatooine got me. yeah, rey has no real connection to this place and it’s just a nostalgic throwback, but i’m a sucker for full circle endings like that

uh. that’s about it

this movie kicks off in the middle of an action scene and just kind of keeps jumping to new setpieces nonstop until it’s over. new characters and locations get introduced and then moved past in the blink of an eye. there’s no time to let any of it sink in. it feels like abrams crammed two movies worth of shit into this one to make up for the the fact that some people didn’t like tlj, and as a result none of it resonates. i just felt so empty throughout most of the film. events were happening on screen and none of it mattered

thoughts about individual elements:

LEIA

putting the scenes with the recycled footage of carrie fisher at the beginning of the film completely took me out of it. it was so obvious that she wasn’t really responding to what was being said, and the conversations had just been built around the limited leia lines they could use

the dialogue scenes with leia felt like a space ghost interview

C-3PO

was in this movie a lot for some reason? i guess abrams wanted to make up for how little c-3po there was in the last two movies. they tried to have that emotional moment where his memory is wiped, but then they just turned his memory loss into a big joke?? and then he got most of his memories back anyway

in general, the movie is afraid to let the audience be uncomfortable for long. 3po’s memory loss. the supposed deaths of chewbacca and babu frik, that sort of thing. you’re not allowed to be sad. after tlj so effectively built tension throughout the film and really pushed the heroes to the brink, this is a disappointment

LANDO

is here because he needed to show up, and because it’s a throwback to have him pilot the falcon again. he’s just kind of there with little to do and no arc

FINN, POE, AND ROSE

before the movie came out, i had low expectations. all i really wanted was to get one last fun adventure with the new characters. when i started to hear about the spoilers, my expectations sank even lower. but maybe i would still get this

nah! rose gets like two minutes of screentime because redditors hated her, and finn and poe are barely even characters. they don’t have arcs in this film, they’re just sidekicks on rey’s journey

finn really hurts. prior to tfa’s release, finn was framed as the new star. this was, of course, a bait and switch, as rey was really the new jedi. (finn apparently IS force sensitive according to this one, but hey! we can only have one big jedi hero, so like leia before him, i guess we’ve gotta wait for some EU novel to give finn a lightsaber)

but finn was still a central character in the last two films, and he had so much potential. he was a stormtrooper who defected! that’s something new! that’s interesting! it complicates the black and white morality of the series. but no. that’s been all but abandoned at this point

many have complained about how tfa establishes that basically all the stormtroopers are people who were kidnapped as children and brainwashed by the first order... but then they still have no qualms about gleefully killing them. in the first two movies i was like “yeah, it sucks that they have to kill those guys, but if it’s to prevent genocide, it’s understandable. that’s just war. maybe they’ll touch on it in the last movie.” so in this one, they kept reminding the audience that the stormtroopers were enslaved as children. jannah is even introduced as another stormtrooper who defected like finn. but then... it goes nowhere. finn doesn’t get any first order troops to defect. they don’t care about the other stormtroopers. how many hundreds of thousands of enslaved soldiers did they kill when they blew up those star destroyers

it was nice to see finn and poe take the charge as leaders in the end, but it also feels like they didn’t take the lessons from tlj to heart. the whole point of that story was that one-in-a-million shot heroic suicide missions aren’t worth it, and that they’re more useful to the resistance alive than they are as martyrs. but then in the climax of this film they take like 30 ships to go fight a fleet of a hundred fucking star destroyers

on the subject of that final battle: i thought that the ending of tlj was so powerful. the resistance was decimated, but they still had hope, because they knew there were others out there who could help. people like rey, or the broom boy, who came from nothing but had good hearts. in this one, though, they say that apparently nobody responded to the leia’s call for help in the entire year since the last film. everyone only shows up during the climax after lando’s like “no, but for real guys, we need help”

and i did think that that sequence was cool. and i did like seeing the ghost among the ships. it was fun. the message that fascists like the first order rule by making people feel isolated, and that they’re defeated by realizing that good people are never alone? that was good. i thought that was a strong message. but it’s such a minor footnote on a movie that’s so bad in so many other ways

oh and they made the latino dude a drug dealer. okay. thanks for that

KYLO REN

i hate that they redeemed kylo and i hate the way they did it

yes, him being coerced to turn to the dark side by snoke (who was apparently just a puppet controlled by palpatine all along (UGH)) as a kid was tragic. but that doesn’t excuse his actions. kylo was given infinite second chances throughout the trilogy, and every time he responded with violence. he killed so many people himself, and willingly took part in a fascist regime that killed billions. yes, his story is sad, but he’s not some poor little boy, he’s thirty fucking years old and he vents his trauma by slaughtering innocent people

literally the entire main trio of the original trilogy died because of this asshole. han tried to talk to him in the first movie, and got stabbed and dropped into a pit. luke died astral projecting to face him in tlj. and now leia just kind of arbitrarily died to flip the switch in his brain from bad to good from across the galaxy. it’s literally as simple as that. he doesn’t have a personal journey here. he just stops being evil because his mom made him through the force

like, again. all those enslaved stormtrooper grunts who had been brainwashed since they were kids? gunned down. but giving kylo endless second chances is the most important thing in the world

and then they end the movie by having this creepy abusive stalker genocidal asshole sadboy kiss rey, retroactively framing their dynamic as a romantic one. just, gross as hell. even in this one, for most of the film, all he does is threaten rey and boss her around

i dunno. i thought the first order were interesting as antagonists. yeah, they were just the empire 2.0. but i thought it was appropriate! the idea was that just because palpatine was dead and gone didn’t mean that fascism was gone. there were still hateful people who wanted to rule the galaxy via genocide. like how we still have nazis in the 21st century. except, oops! palpatine was actually alive and pulling the strings the entire time, so now that theme’s out the window. we just have to kill him again FOR REAL this time and now the galaxy will actually be safe

people wondered where the first order would go after snoke died in tlj. but it was so obvious to me? kylo was in charge. kylo was always the most interesting bad guy. just let him call the shots and be the final adversary. but no. that wasn’t good enough. we had to bring back palpatine as the jrpg final boss to have an epic conclusion

REY

oh, poor rey. youtube critics got mad that a girl could be a strong jedi without being related to some other powerful force user from the old movies, so now she’s stuck being a palpatine forever

i will admit, the protagonist of the new movies being related to palpatine but still being a good person in spite of her heritage... that could have been something. but it’s so clearly not what they had in mind from the start, and it spits in the face of the last movie’s themes. it turns out greatness CAN’T come from anywhere. it has to come from one of these select few Special Bloodlines

oh! and this ALSO reframes rey’s parents abandoning her and selling her into slavery as an act of kindness, because they had to hide her from her spooky evil grandpa. so THAT’S fun. (edit: OH! and luke and leia knew about rey the whole time!!! and didn’t go out and look for her!!!!)

it’s just. it’s so bad what they did to rey. i don’t know if i even have much to elaborate on there, everyone’s already said how stupid it is

---

overall, i still wouldn’t say it’s the WORST star wars movie. it’s more watchable than the phantom menace, that’s for damn sure. the actors put in effort. the sets and practical effects are nice. it’s just so... empty

tros possibly feels the closest to how i imagined the new trilogy would be when it was first announced, but in a bad way. a movie built entirely on established ideas of What Star Wars Is with nothing new to bring to the table. it’s like a bad eu novel. just recycled imagery, cameos from characters we already know, palpatine coming back from the dead, that sort of thing. it’s a movie made by committee to appease reddit. it’s nothing

now i gotta use that free trial of disney plus to watch the mandalorian and wash the taste out of my mouth i guess

[fandomlurker]

A Ponderous Rewatch: Prologue

You know, I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t go into bingeing the 2020 renewal of Animaniacs with the thought “I’m going to watch this and then go and watch the original Pinky and the Brain shorts and spin-off show and do a rewatch and loose analysis on the whole franchise with special attention on queer subtext and themes”. What I initially set out to do was simply watch the renewal and see if it lived up to the show I watched pretty regularly as a kid in the 90s…or at least what I remembered of it through the haze of decades worth of time.

Pinky and the Brain was my favorite set-up on Animaniacs back in the day. Back then I probably wouldn’t even have been able to tell you why beyond “I think it’s funny and the characters are fun to watch as they screw up trying to take over the world”. Other segments were funny to me back in the day, too. Slappy the squirrel was great in that she was basically just like the classic, near-timeless Looney Toons a la Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but as an old lady toon who’s seen it all and tries to relate to the changing world while proving that the ol’ slapstick ways still work. The Goodfeathers were entertaining despite the fact that I was a literal child and didn’t even know that it was a big ol’ spoof of Goodfellas. Hell, I’ve still never seen Goodfellas, but three pigeons trying to carry themselves like macho tough guy mafia folks while being goddamn pigeons is still funny with or without that context. And as for the Warner siblings themselves? Their skits were pretty consistently great as well. Lots of that Bugs Bunny-like energy of putting terrible folks in their place when they annoy you while coupling it with the dynamic of three child siblings who are very, very active and much too clever for the average person. It was fun!

But as I watched the 2020 reboot with its stripped-down cast now largely consisting of just the Warner siblings and Pinky and the Brain segments for the season (And I’ll be honest, some of the segments from the 90s like Katie Kaboom, Buttons and Mindy, and the Hip-Hippos are ones I’ll be happy to never have return because they were godawful even back then), it brought into focus the strength of those segments compared to most of the others from the old 90s line-up: The strong dynamic and chemistry of the relationships between the main characters of those skits. The Warner siblings are a trio of kids who, despite being truly cut from the same wacky cloth as the most beloved of Looney Toon characters, also very much tap into a very realistic depiction of sibling relationships. Sure, they get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Sure, sometimes they have disagreements on how they view a certain situation. At the end of the day, however, they care about each other more than anything else and work in such perfect sync despite differences in who they are individually.  Sure, Yakko is a talkative theater kid jackass who sasses back at the drop of a dime. Sure, Wakko is kinda quiet and spaced-out and he has the appetite of a garbage disposal. Sure, Dot is adorable and witty and loudly and proudly feminist with an oddly feral streak. But if any one of them is inconvenienced or picked on or threatened in any way by someone, even if that someone is a powerful celebrity of some sort? You bet your ass the other two will immediately back their sibling up and make their tormentor’s life a living hell for the next however long the skit lasts. They’re little gremlin children who love one another, and have a surprisingly tragic backstory that actually speaks to a lot of fans on several levels.

But, okay, the bond between the Warner siblings is great and fun. What about Pinky and the Brain? What makes their dynamic stand out?

Folks, that’s where things get a little more…interesting. To me, at least.

So, watching the beginning of the 2020 reboot got me to slowly remember the parts I loved about the Pinky and the Brain skits from Animaniacs…were actually from their spin-off show. And the things I remembered most clearly from the spin-off were the more heartwarming moments that showed how much they cared about and loved one another, despite Brain being exhausted by Pinky’s dimwitted antics at times. And for a supposedly continuity-light cartoon show, there was a surprising amount of consistency to the main duo and their motivations. There was even a handful of reoccurring side characters the audience was expected to recognize from past episodes, as well, which is a bit strange to have for a show that initially seemed to aim to be strictly episodic. I remembered the odd amount of depth there was to the series. Nothing groundbreaking, mind you, but definitely something more than the average comedy cartoon.

So after watching the first few episodes of the reboot, I took to Tumblr to see if anyone remembered the old 90s show and to see how they were reacting to the new one. In doing so, I came across this post:

“i love that ppl make jokes abt a pinky and the brain version of the destiel confession because that. already happened....... the only difference is that brain pulls pinky out of superhell instead of dying on a barn nail”

Now, look, I’ve never watched Supernatural and only know it through Tumblr cultural osmosis, and at the time we were all riding off the high of the madness that was the finale of that show and the fallout from it. But ANYWAY…

This piqued my interest because 1. I didn’t remember watching an episode of Pinky and the Brain where anything like that happened, and 2. I was already picking up strong gay vibes from the reboot only a few episodes in. So, basically, I just had to hunt down this episode to sate my curiosity and see for myself if there was subtext in this 90s cartoon that I hadn’t quite picked up on as a kid.

I found the episode and started watching it. “Wow,” I said to myself, “this is a lot gayer than I remember…” And after finishing the episode, memories came flooding back to me:

That time the Brain fell for a girl mouse that was looked and acted lot like Pinky.

All those moments where Pinky would wear drag to disguise himself as Brain’s significant other in one way or another to further their plans for that episode, and how I could never remember it being ridiculed.

That one time they accidentally had a child together via a science mishap.

The ending of the Christmas special!...

And as I sat there, dumbstruck and searching Tumblr’s tags to see how far this particular rabbit hole (mouse hole?) went, everything finally clicked in my little bisexual mind.

This was one of the big reasons as to why I loved the Pinky and the Brain skits so much above all the others on Animaniacs all those years ago when I was a kid. It was the same sort of thing that subconsciously drew me to many of the cartoons and anime and media in general I loved as a child, back before I had the proper knowledge and self-awareness to know or express it.

Looking back on my life, I’d always gravitated to and resonated the most with stories and media with queer content in text or subtext. And sure, this cartoon was/is no Sailor Moon or Revolutionary Girl Utena with explorations of gender roles and queerness. It’s no Steven Universe or She-Ra with out and proud queer characters. It’s no The Little Mermaid or The Happy Prince where the stories were made by queer authors and subtextually about queer experience.

However…

However…!

I was surprised to find how deep the gay subtext went with Pinky and the Brain. Hell, I still am. This little Warner Brothers, Looney Toons-pedigree, continuity-light show about two lab mice trying to take over the world in bizarre, hilarious ways has such a weirdly continuous, heartfelt, touching, engaging, and sometimes outrageously raunchy queer undercurrent to it. All done in the 90s! It’s kind of baffling.

This is not to say that the creators and writers of the shows deliberately set out to do this. I don’t believe that anyone involved sat down and said to themselves “I’m going to make this so fucking gay!”. Sure, the voice actors of both Pinky and the Brain have said that they played the dynamic with “the energy of an old gay couple” and they’ve said plenty of suggestive or outright not safe for work things in the character’s voices in interviews and at convention panels. I firmly believe that they’re just having fun as the characters, just as much as I believe the writers were probably just having fun and putting in the gay subtext and suggestive lines as a kind of long running joke and seeing how far they could take it.

(By the time of the Pinky and the Brain comics, however, I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff they got away with in those issues is…amazing, to say the least.)

Regardless of actual intent, I think the writers of Pinky and the Brain (both old and new), have accidentally created a sort of subtextual, yet pretty powerful love story. And you know what? I want to rewatch this story for myself and write down my thoughts as I go along. I tried something similar quite a while back with Droids, and while I kind of ran out of steam as my life got busier and never finished, I have time now for something like this.

I should also say that I’m not out here to, like, convert anyone into shipping cartoon mice together. I imagine most people see Pinky and the Brain as nothing other than very close friends, and that’s a completely valid viewpoint to have. I doubt there will ever be some sort of canonization of a gay relationship between the two, as I imagine most of the writers on the new show (and hell, on the old one) are heterosexual themselves and would view such an idea as “ruining the comedy and the dynamic of the characters” or something similar. I’ve been in the fandom game long enough to know better than to hope and expect any media to sincerely tackle queer relationships in stories that only have the subtext there, especially in comedies.

I guess I’m doing this more to explore something I loved as a child and to see if I can find just as much if not more enjoyment from it as an adult, albeit maybe for different reasons. Hell, it’s also an opportunity to peek into a kind of time capsule from the 90s regarding how far queer subtext could be pushed back then, even when heavily couched in comedy. This is just a little project I wanna do for fun in my spare time. And hey, maybe a few of you out there will have some fun reading it too, who knows?

Either way, see you sometime soon in the new year.

[carewyncromwell]

So since the reincarnation squad goes to school in the late 80s early 90s and overlap with the hphm squad, do they ever meet careywyn and crew? Do they meet harry, ron, and hermione? Do they have any idea whats going on with the cursed vaults?

Atticus Lestrange @cursebreakerfarrier, Bartholomew “Barty” Gilbert, Robert Bellamy, and Cecelia “Ceci” Crouch are in the same year as Cedric Diggory...so yes, they know of Carewyn “Cursebreaker” Cromwell and the Cursed Vaults, at least, as well as the Golden Trio.

In the case of the Cursed Vaults, in my continuity, Carewyn and the Circle of Khanna ended up dealing with the Vaults and R by the end of the Reincarnation Squad’s first year. Social butterfly Ceci becomes the most popular girl in her year much the way Cedric becomes the most popular boy, and they also both end up eventually becoming the Hufflepuff Prefects of their year, so I’d say of the Reincarnation Squad, Ceci would’ve been the most likely to interact with new Head Girl Carewyn. Barty admired Carewyn’s efforts to protect Hogwarts, but had a similar brand of hero worship about her as Cedric initially does for MC in the game and never really was brave enough to approach Carewyn himself. (Cedric only joined the Circle because of Ben seeing his dueling talent and inviting him, after all.) Robert himself was sadly a bit more focused on his own issues, since his dreams had become noticeably worse as soon as he arrived at school and met Barty, Cecelia, and Atticus, so the poor Muggle-born was a bit distracted trying to find magical solutions to him waking up his dormmates every other night with his screaming. And as for Atticus, as established, he was more focused on following his father’s direction for how he should live his life than connecting with others, let alone looking into the Cursed Vaults.

The Reincarnation Squad were in their third year when Harry, Ron, and Hermione started school. It was also the same year that Robert became Ravenclaw’s Star Chaser and helped lead Ravenclaw to defeat Gryffindor in the most decisive match in three hundred years and win the Quidditch Cup.

The following year, Quidditch at Hogwarts was cancelled due to the Chamber of Secrets having been reopened -- Robert was just as devastated as Oliver Wood was in the books, as Quidditch had largely been his mental escape during the whole ordeal. Barty, Ceci, and Robert had actually been doing their own quasi-investigation at the time to try to hunt down the Heir of Slytherin, since Barty was terrified that Robert might end up a target. (Barty has always been incredibly protective of Robert, not just because he was one of the first friends he ever had and his closest confidante, but also because of the nightmares Barty started having after meeting Robert, which I will delve into more in the future.) Unfortunately the three didn’t have the final piece Hermione did, as they weren’t friends with Harry and didn’t know he was hearing “a voice” inside the walls, and thus couldn’t have figured out the hissing that supposedly came from the old plumbing was in fact a basilisk. They did, however, find out that Rubeus Hagrid had been arrested for the crime 50 years ago not long after Harry did -- although Barty maintained that such a thing wouldn’t be in Hagrid’s character, Ceci sent a letter to her disgraced uncle Barty Crouch, Sr., who worked at the Ministry of Magic, asking if he knew anything about it. Unfortunately that letter ended up prompting Crouch to discuss the matter with Cornelius Fudge, which -- along with pressure from Lucius Malfoy and the school governors -- convinced the Minister to arrest Hagrid before he’d even been formally charged with opening the Chamber again “just as a precaution.”

The night it was announced that a student had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets and that Hogwarts would be closed, Atticus, Barty, Robert, and Ceci all despaired, for different reasons. For Atticus and Barty, Hogwarts was the only place they’d really ever had any freedom, Atticus from his overbearing and emotionally abusive father and Barty from his overly suffocating, sheltering parents. For Ceci, Hogwarts was where she could socialize and make friends her own age, rather than solely look after her much younger siblings. And for Robert, Hogwarts was not only the first place he’d ever felt like he belonged and made any friends, but he knew it’d be that much harder for his mother and him to climb out of debt, if they couldn’t lean on Hogwarts feeding him and paying for his school supplies for most of the year.

The night Harry, Ron and Lockhart made their way down toward the Chamber of Secrets, Ceci, Barty, and Robert sneaked out of their dorms and met up by the Black Lake, unable to sleep at the thought that they’d soon be separated. At the Lake, they all found themselves faced with a bizarre sense of deja vu -- as if they’d been together on that exact bank at that same time of night before...even though they all knew they never had. Robert found himself humming an old tune he didn’t know all the words to, and both Barty and Ceci -- despite being Purebloods with no experience in the Muggle world -- immediately recognized it. “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” It was that night that they realized that they’d all been having weird dreams featuring each other and (in Robert’s case) a few others. And so the day that Harry and Ron put an end to the mystery of who opened the Chamber of Secrets was also the day that Robert, Barty, and Ceci discovered that they were at the center of their very own mystery.

Now, as seen, in their fifth year circa the events of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Barty, Robert, and Ceci have been trying to sort out what these bizarre dreams mean...and the plot has now thickened with the revelation that their yearmate, Ravenclaw Prefect Atticus Lestrange, has also apparently been having strange dreams featuring someone who resembles Barty.