#I know exactly why I burned out on comics and it was definitely not about being leftist

[ladyloveandjustice]

It’s so funny when people are like ‘superhero comics don’t sell because they’re too leftist’ (comics have leaned left from the beginning, often not radically so and they still don’t, but yeah,that’s what happens when most of the writers from New York) rather than like, the much more obvious reasons of constant reboots and being unable to read any one story without either buying a million comics or spending hours on wikis because of all the crossovers and constant shifting timelines.

The reason manga is selling better is because when you pick up my hero academia or yona of the dawn or something, you get the whole story and it’s consistent and able to build on it’s characters. Even if it ends up being a million volumes, you don’t need a dedicated research team to figure out the story, and even if it ends up being consistently mediocre like my hero academia you can still follow along pretty easily and won’t have to worry about the character suddenly being erased from the story or becoming unrecognizable because of a crossover in some other title. or the writer changing halfway through, or a new company wide initiative. The artists have a little more freedom to tell the complete story they want to tell, to actually pull off a good ending or plot twist that won’t be undone in a few years, there’s usually just one main editor, and they also have anime adaptations to hype them up that are much more similar to the source material than marvel/dc movies are to comics and simpler to get into.Also they’re less expensive. Manga is just more accessible, especially to kids.

 It’s just a solid business model (though it has it’s own problems, mainly the endless greed and enforced overwork from those at the top), while comics run around in circles with constantly changing editors and writers and making snap business decisions. Like isn’t that obviously the culprit here? It’s not rocket science.

[wildestdreamsblog]

Latibule Season 2: II

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader (Mafia/Detective AU)

Summary: In which he lost his latibule.

Warnings: Secret Identity, Yandere behavior, Obsessiveness, Possessiveness, Manipulative behavior, Violence, Mention of death, Disability, Sexual themes, If you’re not 18+ please, PLEASE, do not interact. Be mindful of the warnings. Let me know if I miss anything.

A/N: A late valentine's gift <3 I’m so sorry for taking so long. A lot happened and work is the busiest and and and life.

Masterlist, Latibule 2.I

“Hyung, did you hear me? I said-"

Kim Namjoon sighed from the other line, headache already creeping up his temples from the boatload of information Jimin was dumping on him on the other line. As who he considered to be the only sound and sane one among the seven, Namjoon was accustomed to being the voice of reason, getting the boys out of tight illegal situations, and managing the members. Min Yoongi might be the head of the mafia, but all seven of them were leaders in their own right and fields.

Seokjin was the head of the medical field, Namjoon of the twisted world of law, Jungkook of the technology world.

And this definitely was one of Namjoon’s specialties: stopping the fearless and heart-stricken leader of Bangtan from kidnapping a woman in broad daylight. For fuck’s sake, he wasn’t even against the illegal act itself, but could he just do it when there weren’t eyes watching him?! When the sun wasn’t at its highest?! When he wouldn’t be tomorrow’s headline?!

He ran his hand through his disheveled hair, glaring at the eldest hyung who was chuckling to himself. Seriously, he thought doctors were supposed to have no life and no time to annoy their friends? Why then was the Chief of the hospital barging in his office and lounging on his fancy sofa?

“I’m glad you found this amusing, hyung,” he commented dryly which only made the eldest laughed harder. “This isn’t something to laugh about.”

“What?! We all know something is definitely wrong with Yoongi. This isn’t news to us! This only confirmed our suspicions!”

“You could at least be supportive of what he’s going through right now.”

“Namjoon,” he started when he was finally done laughing, wiping the tears from the side of his eyes. “How do you expect me to be supportive of him right now? He’s on the verge of kidnapping a woman because he thought she looked like her. Does that make sense to you?”

He tilted his head before standing up, his movement elegant as he crossed the room to where Namjoon was sitting behind his desk. He smiled down at him, his hand supporting his weight as he leaned down on his wooden desk. “Dead people don’t exactly come back to life after burning from a fire as immense as that one, do they?” he asked, his tone light yet his eyes held faux curiosity. And at that moment, an air of danger surrounded the office. He could see the coldness that reflected on Jin’s eyes.

Namjoon knew when to back down, especially when Jin was in this mood. It was almost comical how quickly Jin’s emotions could switch, and it was definitely not amusing how bloody the effects could be. He wasn’t exactly the mafia prince for nothing. He, of all people, knew how perceptive and strategic Jin was. Never once did he do anything without a reason. And precisely because of that that it took him a moment before he answered. He lowered his eyes for a second before returning to Jin’s now amused ones. “They don’t, hyung.”

Jin nodded before turning to leave, his hand was in his pocket, his stance relaxed as though nothing was amissed. He had opened the door when he paused as though he remembered something. He twisted his body, his eyes trained on the famous attorney before his lips twisted into an entertained smile. His finger was now resting on his lips.

“Ah, unless they’re actually not dead.”

—-

Min Yoongi was like a man possessed, never leaving any stones unturned as he religiously looked for his angel.

He looked at every single piece of record of the town that the town had, employed several people to look for you, searched every available CCTV to trace any evidence that you existed, that you weren’t merely a figment of his imagination, that you weren’t merely indication of his declining sanity. Yet all roads lead to nothingness.

It was like any leads he got were mere fragments, offering little clarity or direction in the investigation. Likewise, it seemed as if someone was making sure that he’d go nowhere with the little pieces of evidences he was able to gather of your existence.

As days turned to weeks and to months, he was starting to be convinced that you were just his imagination playing tricks on him, that his mind was just too cruel to conjure an image of you, that it was just too sick to think that you came back to him. In this moment of profound longing, when the ache of your absence weighed heavily on his twisted soul, he couldn’t help but ponder about his choices in life.

On some days when he missed you the most, he thought that this must have been his karma for living his fucked-up life brutally. On a day like this when he should have been celebrating your birthday, when you were supposed to turn a year older, when you were supposed to be by his side as you blew your candle, he thought that this must have been his penance, a consequence of the twisted journey he had decided to walk on.

But wasn’t this just too painful?

Wasn’t his punishment too cruel to have the world gave him you, only to wretch you away from his arms?

Wasn’t it too cruel to have loved and lost you?

Yoongi let out a humorless chuckle, the puffs of smoke coming from his lips as he looked at what once was your home. It was your birthday, and tomorrow was your second death anniversary.

How he survived the existence without you, he would never know. He decided that he would never stop looking for you because accepting that you were gone from this fucking earth was not an option. He could feel inside the dead heart of his that yours were still beating. He knew a love as immense as what he felt for you wouldn’t die as easily as that. No.

Min Yoongi would find you.

“Happy birthday, my angel,” he whispered to nothingness, only the moon bore witness to his greeting, the night enveloped him in a solitary embrace. The echoes of his sentiment lingered in the air, hoping that his words reached you where you were.

---

“Happy birthday, eomma,” Jung Hoseok finished the song lightly, clapping the chubby little hands of your son in sync with the tune of the song. Your son was giggling as he bounced him on his lap, looking over his long lashes to Hoseok.

“Careful, the candle’s just in front of you,” he warned before shuffling the cake an inch closer to you. He came home almost an hour ago from his work in the docks with a box of cake in his hands he bought. You could no longer count how many times the three of you moved over the year, the last one being the most suspicious to you when after you came home from the market, he had already packed your bags. Before you knew it, he was already driving away from the town.

You lived in so many places.

You never felt at home in any of them.

It was unfair how you only felt at home when you were in his arms.

You clutched your walking stick on one hand, the other cautiously running your hand on the table to detect the cake’s placement.

“I’m not fully blind yet, Hoseok,” you admonished him teasingly before closing your eyes and wishing with all your heart that your son grew up happy. You wished to the heavens that his fate was kinder to him, that he didn’t have to suffer the way you did. You prayed that his fate was free from the shadows that haunted your own past.

You wished that he could live the life he deserved.

“Eomma,” he called for you, lifting his chubby arms to go to you. Hoseok cooed at him before lifting him to your lap carefully. You felt the warmth of his little arms encircling your neck, tiny lips pressing sweet kisses on your cheeks before erupting into giggles. "Eomma!"

A smile graced your face as you soaked in the pure joy radiating from your beloved child. Leaning in, you planted a loving kiss on the person you now cherished most in the world. His eyes lit up in response, a mirror image of his father's, carrying the same warmth and affection he did when he looked at you.

Hoseok watched the two of you from his seat. It was almost comical how he loathed your son’s father with all his heart, only to love his son with the same intensity. If he couldn’t end that bastard brother of his, if he didn’t have it in him to finish the job and kill you, then he would just take the life Yoongi was supposed to live.

He would never let go of the two of you- not when he found peace in this little family. The only way he would let go of this was if the only person he loved came back to him. But that was impossible, right? After all, Yoongi made sure that she would cease to exist in this world.

Wasn’t this the crueler revenge, he thought. Wasn’t this what Min Yoongi deserved?

It was almost amusing to think how he could have been dead if not for one of his brothers that saved him and you that fateful night. He could have almost missed this little slice of heaven had it not been for his brother, the only one who knew that he was still alive.

---

Almost two years ago, somewhere in a small province of South Korea

You woke up with a start, your heart beating faster as evidenced by the spike in the heart monitor attached on your bruised skin. The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor, attached to your bruised skin, echoed in the room, its pace mirroring the accelerated beat of your heart. The sudden awareness left you momentarily disoriented, and the sterile environment around you hinted at the gravity of the situation. As your senses sharpened, you couldn't shake the feeling that the throbbing in your chest was not only from the abrupt awakening but also from the lingering echoes of a disconcerting dream or a painful reality.

Every single thing that happened went back to you.

Every single detail of that night, of the way he smiled so tenderly at you, of the way he softly told you that he would be back, of the way a strange man entered your house and threatened you.

The recollection was vivid, etched into your consciousness like a haunting melody.

You remembered the way Suga’s face became cold the moment he saw that man. You remembered not seeing even a trace of the man you loved.

You remembered the truth and the pain that came with it, and then you remembered thinking it was your end. Beyond it all, beyond all the betrayal, lies and deceit that unfolded, you remembered wishing that he would be fine after all of that like the fool you were.

Wincing, you lifted your fragile hand to your shoulder, feeling a faint pain where the bullet had pierced your skin.

“Don’t move,” a tired voice sounded on your left. Startled, you turned to look at the source, only to find the man who attempted to kill you leaning against the wall, his own arm bandaged, his handsome face colored with faint bruises.

Hoseok didn’t come out of it unscathed, no. He looked so hallow. It was like he was a lost child, like a man that lost his purpose, like he was a shell of what once was a soul.

He must have seen your alarmed expression. He waved his other arm, his jaw clenching from the events that transpired. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

You blinked at him, never trusting a word that came out of his mouth. It would be difficult for you when you saw how he unleashed hell that night.

“I-I,” you swallowed, your dried throat making it harder to speak. “d-don’t believe y-you.”

He watched you for a moment before nodding his head. That was fair, he thought. “How are you feeling? You’ve been unconscious for almost a month.”

What?

“Y-you waited that long to kill me?” you asked, your voice hoarse as you sat down. If he was going to end you, then you wouldn’t take it lying down.

Wordlessly, he crossed the room, lifting the glass of water on your bedside table, the straw turned to you. “Drink.”

You glared at him, distrust and anger in your eyes as you met his emotionless ones.

“I’m not going to kill you.”

You scoffed, turning your head away from him to look at where on earth you could have been. The hospital room was small, the window offering no clue as to your whereabouts. You wondered where Suga could have been.

Did he make it out alive?

Was he hurt?

Was he looking for you?

Did you want him to after what you knew?

“I do draw the line on killing expectant mothers.”

Latibule 2.III

[essentiallyleaf]

day 07. public sex. with. soojin, zoa.

2388 words.

tags.

kinktober ‘23, idol x idol x male reader, reader has the tiniest hint of rizz, but is still a loser at heart, public sex, double blowjob, standing doggy, pussy eating, fingering, stand & carry, 1mg of rimming, very smut heavy, basically unedited, complete mess.

notes.

horny + tired sounds like a recipe for terrible writing. and i don’t really know if it is, since i basically haven’t read this back :] generically, leaf.

“I need this now” and “Take me here” might be the exact and only two sentences that could get you to do anything, anytime, anywhere. But that’s a hypothetical, and despite the inhibition of three Manhattans and a couple beers, castles in the sky crumble when you hear those exact words come out of those two’s sweetly curled and devilishly full and luscious lips in the middle of the dance floor.

You didn’t really know them that well. They go to the stationery shop you work at fairly frequently (every other Friday between 3 and 5 p.m., they usually hover around the notebook and colored pens sections, try a bunch of them out - like, sooo many, can they not recite the entire color palette by heart yet? - while laughing you can’t really tell at what, then come to the checkout with about exactly one sharpie and two big smiles, and then leave. What? No, you don’t remember them particularly more than any other customer. Why would you?), but you’d never really talked. That’s why you’re surprised when they approach you on a random Saturday night at the club, talking about which their favorite drinks solely based on color are and how, if bonsai are a thing, there must be a way to make humans exist in tiny, and what if they’re out there now, going around untying shoelaces and stealing any small item that falls to the ground? They don’t look drunk, they look happy, which is a different thing. Aren’t they just talking about gnomes, anyway (which, by the way, definitely exist)?

It’s not how they wear those good girl smiles a second before sandwiching you while dancing, their bodies pressed against yours. Soojin from behind, pawing at your pecs and slowly kissing your neck up to the back of your ear, Hyewon in front of you but facing away, her ass literally rubbing against your now visible erection while she takes your hands and moves them from her hips, to her exposed belly, up to her boobs.

It’s not how she turns her head to kiss you and that smile is still there, like she’s playing a game, like this is just harmless fun between friends. Yeah, friends, you think, until the deer eyed girl turns around to face the two of you, her hands reaching around you and landing on Soojin’s ass and switches from your mouth to hers. What made you think they were just friends again? You’d think of an answer, but you’re distracted by the older girl’s hand venture lower towards your dick, which she starts stroking through your pants.

It’s not even how the three of you (and you in particular) now look like a complete mess right in the middle of the club, your bodies rubbing on each other’s in feral hunger, your tongues entangling with burning lust. It’s really not that.

It’s how pairs of eyes turn towards that filthy scene. Initially just a couple passing peeks, then a few more, longer gazes, mixing aversion with slight arousal, until the whole club is aware of the tonguing, the groping and the humping. And while some of them walk away, the people who stay seem turned on by the scene, as if intoxicated by the scent of your libido.

It really should just be embarrassing for you. And at the start, it was. To be left open-mouthed in front of a live audience like a comically fat dead trout in a fishing contest while two, admittedly gorgeous, girls alternately brush, squeeze and hump your dick wasn’t exactly your proudest moment. But somehow, that embarrassment coexisted with a sense of excitement. And as the two keep making a toy for their pleasure out of you, the latter only grows stronger and ends up completely overpowering the former.

That’s why when Soojin asks “Wanna go to the bathroom?”, the only possible answer is “Why not here~?”

“There’s not enough space”

The crowd was in fact big and quite cramped around the three of you. You are left without choice as she takes you and Hyewon by the arm and leads you towards a small black door right by the bar.

The girls throw you into the wall and kneel in front of you before the door even closes. Four hands take your belt off, or rather attempt to for a while before getting it (it probably would have been easier if only one person did it, but you don’t dare suggest it), then pull your pants and your boxers down. You can still hear clearly not only the music, but every scream coming from the room you were just in (these walls suck, even for club bathroom standards).

Your cock, already erect thanks to the scene you three made back there, falls right in the middle of their expecting faces, and all they have to do is stretch their necks a little further to start sprinkling it with wet kisses and short licks and already causing you to shed some precum. They more or less intentionally happen to move towards your base and take a longer lick up to the tip of your dick, where they collect your nectar and meet in a French kiss. Actually, that’s not even a kiss, more like their tongues messily exchanging three people’s fluids while completely outside either’s mouths, and it looks fucking filthy.

Soojin is the first to wrap her lips around your head and start slowly but steadily bobbing, taking a slightly larger portion of you in her mouth each time. Hyewon, leaving no time wasted, travels further towards your balls, first getting them wet with her saliva, then alternatively taking one in her mouth and sucking it hungrily, seemingly having the time of her life. The older girl, despite the small size of her mouth, fits almost three quarters of your length in her cavern, even managing to keep herself there and brush the underside of your cock while sucking.

“Unnie, leave some for me!”

Soojin makes way for her friend/tongue buddy, who seems immediately much more feisty, though likely less experienced, sacrificing technique for power and a much faster pace. The older gathers Hyewon’s hair together in a makeshift ponytail and starts licking from her jaw and cheek to around her ear, while the younger, gifted with a bigger mouth, is basically already deepthroating you. You hold your hands around her head and push the last bit in, her eyes watering a little as you hold position for a good fifteen seconds. And, cut.

“You okay?”

“Fuck, that was fun!”

This deer eyed slut just deepthroated you without you batting an eye (well, you were quite lost in pleasure yourself, your eyes quite literally rolling to the back of your hair, but you know), and you’re surprised that she swears?

People could literally step into the bathroom at any point, but honestly, the thought is not even passing your mind. Actually, some might have even walked beside you while you were filling their mouths with your hardness, it’s honestly just too hard to pay attention to anything else, with these two. That’s why you can’t even fathom worrying about the rest of the people in the club, even with what happens next.

Soojin drops her jeans along with her light blue panties and sits on the long counter that connects all the sinks together, running along the entire length of the bathroom below the mirror, while Hyewon bends over in front of her, glancing at the other girl with a playful smile before feasting on her gorgeous pink pussy. You only need to get behind her, bunch her white tennis skirt up on her waist and pull her black panties down and to the floor. Her lips are fat, her slit clean and shiny. You look back at her underwear, and notice a wet patch in the center, not particularly small, either.

“Did you cum just by humping me back there?”

“Maybee~”

You hold your tongue out and take one long lick across her womanhood as she lets a moan out and into the older girl’s crotch. Her sweet scent, her soft texture, her perfect taste are- fuck it, you need your dick in that pussy. So stand up again, align yourself to her, and push it in. 

Hyewon is tight, but even moreso, she’s warm. Her hole welcomes you like that’s all she was waiting for all night, like you’re her guest and she wants to make sure you know she prepared. And as you slowly thrust into her, making sure to use your hips to hit every little spot, every patch of her pussy, she lets a constant stream of guttural groans into the one she’s eating herself. Soojin can’t help but push the younger’s face into her crotch, stimulated not only by her tongue, taking trips now on her lips, now in her slit, now on top of her pink clit, but also by the vibrations of her lewd sounds, resonating in her cavern and expanding all over her body.

As you grip the girl’s asscheeks tightly, you start picking up the pace, but she immediately reaches a hand behind her and on your wrist. You slow down again, and her whimpers tell you that this is the rhythm she wants you to hold. In fact, her lower abdomen starts tensing up as a sign that her peak is near. She wants something else. She detaches from the older’s pussy, leaving her disappointed and cutely pouting, and takes small quick steps forward towards the counter, until her face is almost reaching the Soojin’s. She then zips her white top fully down. The older, in a better position to take care of it, gets the hint and rids herself of her top as well as her white strapless bra, leaving them beside one of the sinks. Hyewon takes a millisecond after that to attack her friend’s perfectly sized soft tits with her mouth and left hand, and her hole with her right.

The older is completely thrown off by the sudden initiative and the resulting pleasure it brings to her erogenous zones, and she starts moaning uncontrollably. The younger can’t hold it much longer. Her mouth leaves her friend’s boobs to meet her lips in another tongue filled spectacle. Two fingers from her right hand slide in and out of Soojin’s slit, while her thumb circles around her clit. The older’s also so close. But you’re the one who will make the final move.

You bend down towards Hyewon’s body, reach around and under her black one-shoulder top to feel and fondle her big fluffy mounds as you keep pumping your girth into her, and that ends her.

She washes your cock with the whirlwind of her juices while she contracts repeatedly around you and releases the lowest moan of the night. That in turn triggers her friend’s peak, in her case the liquid sprays on the younger’s hand and wrist and her hips buckle as she reaches to the mirror behind her for support.

Hyewon falls to her knees. Both girls are panting for oxygen, but the one you just fucked seems particularly spent from it.

“You good?”

She nods, and shows you her index finger: “One second”

You turn your head back up.

“Can you do it?”

“Can you~?”

This bitch. You step closer to the counter and wrap your hands around the underside of Soojin’s milky, meaty thighs to spread them open even more. You share a glance with her, and she looks fucking obscene. Her hair has lost its parting, her forehead covered in sweat. That lower lip always just kind of hanging there, like she needs something to fill her mouth at all times. So you kiss her hungrily, and she lets your tongue in her mouth like she’s craving it, like she’s begging for it.

Meanwhile, you guide your head to her slit and part it, slowly entering her cavern. She is so tight. She whines softly into your mouth as you get deeper and deeper. Once you’re fully in, you give her a second to get used to your girth.

“My neck. Your arms around my neck”

She obeys as you immediately raise her from the counter and carry her towards the center of the bathroom as you start pumping into her tight heaven.

Who fucking cares at this point, people could walk in on you and you would thank them. They’d love to have a cock big like yours, to have a girl as beautiful as yours, and to fuck the former into the latter like you’re doing right now. No. They’d just have to watch, like some pathetic frat boys peeping at an older girl they couldn’t even pray to get.

Your hands grab onto Soojin’s ass so you can bounce her pelvis on yours while pushing up, accentuating the movement, as she keeps kissing you like her life depends on it. You feel your orgasm building up.

Then, you feel something below you. Hyewon, revitalized after her orgasm, is now kneeling below you, open-mouth kissing your dick, your balls, her friend’s slit and, you guess, anything else she might find in the way. This girl can truly never be idle. Meanwhile, as you get closer and closer, you switch to quick, single, powerful thrusts. One. Two. And-

You feel Hyewon’s tongue brush your asshole. It’s a sensation you never felt before, it kind of tickles, but it almost stings, at the same time. What it surely does, is to make you cum on the spot. You fire multiple shots of white liquid into Soojin’s pussy, the sensation making her scream (they definitely heard this one outside) and triggering her waterfall a second time, and as only so much matter can fill such a tight space, all of her squirt and probably most of your cum end up dripping down and coating Hyewon’s face. Her mouth is promptly open, so she gets to taste your combined fluids.

She shuffles them around her cheeks for a while, then one big swallow.

“Yummy~”

-

“Fuck, Hyewon. Was that on purpose?”

“Huh?”

“Your tongue”

“Oh! Well, did you like iiit?”

“He fucking came as soon as you touched him! What do you think?”

“Well, let’s see if it happens a second time, then”

-

footnotes.

it’s 4am. god. finally, leaf.

[gaykarstaagforever]

I said I was going to read it, and I read it.

And now I know why no one else has in 55 years.

Spoiler Alert: he doesn't actually electrocute Clark, and was never going to. Utter bullshit.

The only cool things about this old guy are 1) his name is Homer Ferret, and 2) he looks like George Burns.

What is uncool about this guy is that he is an optometrist who has been stalking Clark Kent since he was a baby, for reasons he never goes into.

Like, he is just at the Kent's house when Baby Clark does his first heroic thing (pushing a runaway train car off the tracks). He is also suspiciously at the high school when it catches on fire, to see Clark jump into a bush from which Superboy then emerges to blow the fire out.

Did Homer start the fire? If not, why the hell was he hanging out at the high school? We never get answers to these and many other questions.

My favorite part is where he guesses (correctly) that Clark is Superman, based on his glasses. But not in the sane way of noticing that Clark Kent looks exactly like Superman if Superman wore glasses. Remember, no one in the DC Universe can apparently do that. Instead, as the only optometrist in Smallville, he knows Clark Kent never bought glasses from him. Once he has Clark strapped to the chair, he looks at Clark's glasses and realizes the lenses are just fake plastic ones (this was back when glasses actually contained glass).

Clark, as usual, just fucking lies and says he wears fake glasses because he is a giant coward and figured glasses would make kids bully him less. Because that is how that works.

Homer doesn't buy it, either, and so demands Clark admit he is Superman or get juiced. At the last second Clark FINALLY decides to use his X-Ray vision to look through the floor, where he sees that the generator attached to the chair is a low voltage one. Homer throws the switch and it tickles Clark with like 2 volts.

Then Homer admits he wasn't 100% on Clark being Superman after all, so wasn't going to risk killing him. Clark says "oh, you!", and decides to do a Daily Planet report on all the Superman artifacts this clearly dangerous obsessive has collected into a Superman shrine in his basement.

No one gets punched a single time.

The only good thing about this story is this random full page portrait of Clark Kent looking vaguely upset:

The other story in the issue is better, in that it is way, way dumber.

It starts off showing you how YOU TOO can draw Superman!

I feel there are a few steps missing here, but

Jimmy Olsen tells Clark how he is joining an art correspondence school, and Clark IMMEDIATELY decides it is a scam worthy of Superman's attention. And sure, it is definitely a scam being run by mobsters. But the second half of that is not remotely true.

Before he starts using X-Ray vision and perfect recall and telescopic vision and TIME TRAVEL (yes) to "solve" this crime of low-level mail fraud, he has to interview a kid who wants to be a cartoonist at the Daily Planet. Where he says this:

I think I get what he's supposed to be saying in this weird attempt at 60s Mod talk, but it took me awhile. You give it a go.

He also is a total dick about how much this child's comic strip sucks.

I mean it's no Silver Age Superman comic, but they can't all be, Clark. And let's be honest here, the bar is pretty low.

At some point in his "investigation" of this scam art school, Clark decides the best plan is for him to create forgeries of classical Western paintings. By this point he already has more than enough evidence to have these guys arrested, but he didn't get to do any pointless TIME TRAVEL yet (yes), so, priorities.

He flies back in time to study the painting techniques of the great masters. But he is bad at time travel (yes, literally), so he accidentally flies through the tail of Halley's Comet, which makes him 1) 16, and 2) blue.

Then this happens:

Let's unpack this.

1) Superman was the inspiration for Thomas Gainsborough's "Blue Boy," because he at this point is a boy, who is dressed in the mostly-blue Superman costume. ...But also because his skin is blue. You know. Unlike the boy in the painting.

2) Gainsborough uses Superboy as a model, in that he has him pose, holding a hat. But the boy in the painting is wearing a completely different outfit of rumpled velvet. So Gainsborough just did the complex outfit from his imagination, but he needed Superboy to show him what a boy holding a hat looks like? What bizarre level of "master artist" is this?

3) He doesn't paint the Blue Boy's skin, because Superboy has blue skin, and that would be too weird. And while he can obviously do imaginary clothes fine, he needs another model with normal-colored skin to do a face and a hand. ...Even though he only chose Superboy as a model in the first place, partly because he has blue skin, which makes him a 'Blue Boy,' which is what inspired the whole painting in the first place. ...Except he never intended to actually make the Blue Boy blue-skinned. So...

Adult men with families and mortgages wrote this.

After this, Superboy flies back through Halley's Comet's tail, restoring his age and color. Then he goes to visit Rembrandt, where Rembrandt ACTUALLY DRESSES HIM IN A PERIOD OUTFIT, to use him as a model for one of the figures in "The Night Watch". Because Superman is so muscular.

Because, as everyone thinks when they see that painting, "Man. That one guy in the hat is buff as shit." (?)

Notably, yet again, the painter doesn't paint Superman's face, this time because a officer of the REAL Night Guard paid to have his portrait put in the painting. But I guess that guy's body wasn't all swol and hot enough for Rembrandt's painting...of that specific guy.

"WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GETTING THE POLICE TO ARREST THE MOBSTERS RUNNING A SCAM ART SCHOOL??"

Good goddamn question.

Superman comes back to the present and creates perfect forgeries of the two paintings he was inexplicably involved in creating. When the mobsters try to sell them as the real paintings, Clark Kent shows up with the cops and points out how the forgeries aren't actually perfect, he made them slightly different to prove they were fakes.

And this somehow is a crime the mobsters get arrested for. Instead of Clark Kent, who very obviously painted the forgeries so that these guys could sell them. Like, that was their plan, that the heretofore whatever Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent is suddenly such an amazing artist that he can make near-perfect forgeries of great paintings. And Clark went along with it, until he stopped. And this finally proves their art school is a scam. Even though the building they are in literally has trashcans full of art submissions they have thrown out once they take the registration money out of the envelopes. And all the secretaries working for them know the whole plan and have been helping them do it.

I'm not inferring that. That is all specifically shown in the comic.

None of this was necessary. Absolutely none of it.

On the plus side, at the end, the Daily Planet hires that kid to do his monkey comic. But just the writing, because Clark still thinks his art sucks. Jesus Christ, Clark.

Here is an ad for a hobby model of what was at the time an 11 year old station wagon.

I'm not being sarcastic! That's what their ad copy says! That's how they sold this!

There is also a Letters to the Editor feature, which I didn't take a picture of, because they print everyone's full names and hometowns. Yes I know even those kids are probably dead now, but I'm not going to chance it.

At any rate, about half the letters are children telling DC's editors that these Superman stories are stupid and full of inconsistent nonsense. To which the DC editors reply by defensively snapping back at them.

So it's not just us, as adults, now.

They knew. Everyone knew.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

(spoilers for the blurb and the promo pics)

so this is apparently the set-up of the new Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver comic that's coming out in February and we got to see these panels as a teaser:

So in those promo panels, Darcy is holding something that has Wanda and Pietro's (first/civilian) names on it and whatever it is, it seems to make Pietro really angry - the blurb implying that this sets up a pretty big falling out between the twins.

We also know that 3 weeks before the #1 Issue of the series, the #1 Issue of the Ressurection of Magneto is coming out:

and in the blurb for the #2 Issue, we learn that Magneto is dealing with his own past in death:

And we also know that when he died, he was "seeing" Anya -

-the implication then being that he simply saw her because he was dying and likely hallucinating or just imagining.

But if in death Magneto is revisiting his life in some capacity, it might not have been a hallucination at all but something else, some foreshadowing or a first omen (perhaps we might see Anya as some sort of guide?).

Which brings me back to the Wanda and Pietro situation: Something Magneto wrote in that mysterious letter to the twins had the power to both upset Pietro if he found out AND upset him if he found out that Wanda withheld it. We also see that Darcy is holding some sort of box with their names on it - and if we assume this box came with that letter, that means perhaps he left the twins something - left it to the twins specifically, because Lorna's name isn't on the box. Just like the letter was apparently relevant only for both Wanda and Pietro but not for Lorna. So whatever is going on is not a general farewell to all his children. But since it has the power to upset Pietro, it is also not just a personalised goodbye to Wanda with things only relevant to the relationship between Mags and Wanda - but concerning Pietro as well.

I mean, I'm sitting here waiting to be proven wrong in a month and so on, but I feel like this is just.......slightly looking like they might have come up with something to retcon the retcon?

Because Magneto informing the twins that he is their biological father after all would definitely constitute something that Wanda would probably be a lot more positive about than Pietro, going by her latest interactions with Mags. Which would explain why she decided to dispose of the letter and why Pietro would be upset with her for doing that. And if the twins (or at least Wanda) are in the loop about whatever events will lead to Magneto's resurrection, that would be a reason for Wanda to come clean about burning the letter and what it said. And Mags' experiences in the afterlife forcing him to revisit his past would create a stage for us to learn what exactly the newest spin on the story is.

[iamskadhi]

Note: this is the first time I write anything in english so take it more like an idea or whatever. I have no respect for this language, but correct me when I'm wrong, please.

I had this "OC" in my mind for years but I can't recall her name, so you can imagine this is you, you're narrating this story, past tense and present might be a little all over the place, ehe.

I always imagined this like a series of mini comics because it contains some things from Dabi's past like before being Dabi the villain but after the fire that "killed him", I'm just not patient or talented enough to draw all that.

+4000 words.

Warning: it may be boring, you may read some dumb teen behaviour, soft +18 content, slow burn, and some Bella Swan vibes.

Nothing more to say, I hope somebody likes it.

*~~~*~~~*~~~*

I met Dabi when I was barely a teenager; too young, too naive, but also too mad at my parents so I took every chance to be with people I shouldn't be around and that's exactly how I met him. He had a fire quirk that harms his body so he looked like shit, he wasn’t exactly handsome but he was light-hearted.

I noticed he dyed his hair black and I started to help him with it, also helped him cure his skin when he over used his quirk. I don’t know how or when but we became closer.

There was just... something in his eyes. Never seen eyes that color blue. Anybody would think he was a bad influence but it was the other way round. Dabi was such a nice guy, always telling me to go home, go to school, helping me with anything I needed and all I needed was him —with me— all the time.

“I like you” he said, “you’re kind and pretty, also you’re rich, why do you hang around these losers?”

“I like you” I said. I could never forget the smile on his face.

He told me about his past and I thought his future was us, together. We were young, those were the days when you think you know everything but you’re just naïve, too naïve. We would lay down in the grass and tangle up, I usually bring food and beverages for everyone, he’d put his arm around my shoulders and tell everyone not to mess with me, he made me feel special, he made me feel loved and mature.

We invented a signal and we started to meet at midnight, it was easy because I had a quirk that allowed me to teleport. Wherever he strayed, I followed and I would’ve begged for him to hold my hand and never let go.

However, time passed and he and his friends got in big trouble. I knew they were thieves, and then they became murderers and had to take different paths.

“You can’t hide me alone, are you fucked in the head?!” Dabi yelled at me when we had our first big fight because of that. “We need to go and you can’t come with us, your parents will get us caught for kidnapping, this is my last word. You stay, we’ll meet again someday.”

We lost contact before I graduated; he simply disappeared and left me with a broken heart.

I cried my eyes out for a month, but a girl gotta be tough and smart and independent. I moved out of my parents house when I finished high school, thanks to my dad, he rented a whole apartment near college and that was probably the first time in a long time I was grateful to have a wealthy family.

I just had to study and work for the family business and life would be sweet, but then one day I saw him. He walked by the Coffee Shop I used to go. How could I ever forget him? He wasn't exactly my first love but definitely one true love. My heart stopped for a second and then raced like crazy, I got up and out of the place running.

"DABI" I yelled but he kept walking, "Dabi, stop!" He walked around the corner of a dark alley, so I stopped, I doubted:

Should I follow or should I let him go for good? It's been a couple of years, he probably has someone new now, I thought.

Then I heard him:

"It's been a long time" he said from the shadows of that alley, his voice changed a bit, matured, "I was convinced you forgot about me. I missed you"

A tear shed from my left eye when I saw his face, his burned skin looked worse than before.

"What an asshole" I said and ran to his arms, hugged him hard enough for him to moan, "I thought I'd never see you again."

I punched his chest.

"You dumbass, I hate you. I hate you! I should hate you but I'm just mad at you and I just wanna cry and I... I..." words escaped from my mind for a moment, "do you want a coffee or anything?"

He laughed and hugged me gently.

"I'm sorry. I missed you", he said.

For what it felt like an eternity, that was all that he could say. I was confused and happy at the same time, he walked with me to my place, looked up at the building and said something about being too far from his place, he didn't tell me where his place was or what he's been doing. We made a deal to meet at the coffee shop every Wednesday and for a few months that was okay.

“I still like you” he confessed randomly.

“I like you too”

He never told me what he does for a living, but I could imagine it. I felt like the more that he said, the less that I knew about his life and I was okay with that as long as he would stay around.

One day, he didn't show up. The next Wednesday, he came with an excuse about a job I’m sure he made up to keep me happy, to keep me safe.

"Dabi, why don't you come live with me?" I asked one time. His big blue eyes were wide open and I was sure he was gonna say no, so I insisted:

"I don't have a lot of free time lately, this is my senior year and I need to focus but I still want you around, come live with me and I'll see you every night, you don't have to worry about your job, you know you can live rent-free and..."

"No. Stop. No."

"Just come see the apartment, please.” I insisted, I didn’t want to let him go again, “It's big enough I swear and we can..."

"Please, stop. I have pride. I'm still a man."

He talked about how different we were, but I knew it wasn't true, he said maybe if I was less dependent of my parents we could work this out, but I knew that was just an excuse. It took me a couple of months but I made him come into my apartment.

"I just need to pick something real quick, come with me" I said and it wasn't all lie, I needed something it just wouldn't be quick.

He looked around the living room, I went to my bedroom to pick some books and when I walked out, he was looking out the window.

"You have a nice view", he said. I could see his blue eyes reflexing on the window’s glass.

"I know"

I walked to him and hugged him.

"I missed being this close in private.” I whispered.

“The last time we were fifteen", he concurred.

He didn't grow any taller since then, I put my head on his shoulder and felt a shiver. His hands went from my hair down to my shoulders, then down to my back until he touched my ass cheeks. I closed my eyes and left a sigh out.

"You've changed", he whispered, I looked at his face and he had that smile, I'd never forget the smile he had the first time I saw him, or the first time that we had sex.

"We were just kids back then, pretending to be adults"

"I don't regret that" he kissed me slowly.

"Me neither"

He took my clothes off clumsily and I led us to the couch, I could tell he didn't have anything with anybody else and I was so relief about it. I took his jacket off and went straight to his pants; he already had an erection like he was craving for it all this time.

"No more games" he said "let's go to your room"

I took his hand and we went to bed, I laid down and he kissed and touched me viciously, then I remembered I didn't have a condom and pushed him away.

"Do you have...?"

"No" he said, he knew what I meant.

"Damn it!" I cursed; we were already there like that. "I could go..."

"No, don't worry. You had to pick something anyway; we'll do it any other day"

My heart raced. I wanted to take him immediately when he said that, but I just kissed him and made him promise he'd come back. And he did. Over and over.

Until he was practically living there with me. I had him just where I wanted and then, one day, my mother showed up.

"You have to finish this relationship before other people find out. You can't live like this, we raised you better than that. You better not get pregnant or I'll drag you to an abortion clinic myself."

Good thing: that day Dabi wasn't around. Time passed and he was more and more time somewhere far away; I had the feeling he would disappear again, so I had to talk it out but I didn’t know how, I thought he would take it as a sign to completely disappear.

"You could leave a note, you know, or send me a text. Tell me when you're leaving, for how long... I'll graduate soon, I'm busy too but at least I tell you when I'm coming home late."

"I think I can't keep living here" he said "I've been trying to protect you from the things I do, but I think it's catching up. I can't risk you, I can't lose you"

I felt my blood pressure go low.

"So you're leaving me... again"

He did not say anything.

We both knew this day would come around. I just wanted to keep my delusional idea that we would work things out. Run away together, somewhere far from Japan. I even suggested Spanish lessons one night.

"I love you" he whispered in my ear when he hugged me "and I'll find you when I'm done"

"Done with what?"

He kissed me and walked to the door.

"Touya, done with what?!"

I only called him by his real name when I was angry and he knew. His last gaze before closing the door was so sad but I was at the edge of going mad.

"STUPID TODOROKI!"

I threw my phone across the living room. I screamed and kicked the sofa, my tears ricochet and I tried to stop them with my hands but couldn’t; and then I just went to my room and tried to retain it all back inside.

I cried, until my face was red and swollen and couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I looked like a frog whenever I cry this much so I did't get out of bed for a whole day.

I couldn't possibly imagine what he was doing; but every time there was a fire, anything related to blue flames I knew it was him and I kinda knew why. I knew everything about his family, about his father.

All Might retired, so Dabi's father was #1 Hero now. It must have messed with his brain and I wished I could have helped him, but you cannot help someone that doesn't want to be saved.

I did my best to move on. I graduated and started to work at my father's company. I realized Dabi was right about me: I was my father’s daughter and I couldn’t live without his protection; but there was nothing wrong about it, now that I was older, I realized I was lucky for it. I wished he had my luck.

Left the apartment and moved to a different city, my mom was too excited about that, she visited me the first chance she had.

"You know whose hero's agency is really near?" She asked me, "Hawks’ agency, the #2 hero!" She was suspiciously excited about it, "he's so young but so talented and handsome! You know, I could set..."

"Mother, leave"

"What?"

"You do not get to do this, you do not get to set me a blind dates, I don't want you to do that and I don't want you here. I moved so I didn't have to have you around, don't visit me unannounced anymore, please, now leave"

"You ungrateful piece of shit" she started saying something but I wasn’t gonna let her talk:

"Yeah, I know, I know, take your things now and leave"

She started an argument so I just walked to my bedroom and closed the door lock. I assumed she would get tired of talking to the door and leave. I took a sleeping pill; I loved those pills. Then the most unimaginable thing happened when I woke up, there was a chaos outside, too much noise and heat and apparently, there was two heroes fighting a monster, a nomu.

I went inside to check the news, the battle seemed lost but Endeavor managed to win. I fucking hated that guy, but damn he was strong… and so was his son.

I missed Dabi. I kept sending text messages for a while after he left me and he never replied so I stopped, but at that moment I felt the urge to try again.

“Did you watch the news?” I asked.

“What’s your new address?”

“Are you serious, you fucking dork?" I texted back.

"I'll find you, I'm pretty near" he replied. I blushed a little, I felt excited to see him again.

"You better come with a bouquet, coffee and the most dramatic apology you can think of"

“LMAO”, was his last text.

Almost a week later, a bouquet appeared at my entrance.

Holy shit, I thought. There was a note: "I miss you, I’ll be back soon"

Later, after work, I got a free coffee.

"A guy paid for it earlier, he said he knew you, I hope it's okay" said the girl at the counter.

"He had blue eyes and looked like a crispy chip?"

"Mmm, yes" she stuttered.

"It's good, thank you"

“You’re welcome, come back soon!” She sighed in relief.

Then, when I got home the door was open and it made me so angry.

"If this is the best apology you can imagine, you're the biggest asshole...!"

However, there was no one inside. I looked around the house, he wasn't there. I felt insecure so I called a friend, I stayed at her apartment that night and she tried to convince me to call the police.

I said I would, but I called him instead.

He answered.

"Today at my house, was it you?"

"What?" He sounded confuse.

"The door was open but there was no one inside"

"I sent you flowers and coffee but I didn't think of any way to apologize enough to you. I didn't go to your house and I won't go until you let me"

"Okay… I think I'll call the police then, don’t come near"

"Good. Take care."

“I…”

Silence. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t expect him to pick up the phone in the first place. He whispered my name:

“Thank you for loving me this whole time” he said and hung up.

I felt like stupid for not saying anything. I didn’t even said that I loved him, never said it but actions speak for themselves and I couldn’t deny it.

After calling the police, some heroes would walk by my house every damn day; my father visited to make sure they did, my mother was too offended to come with him.

Turned out it was just a robbery case.

“Your mom and I talked about what happened between you two and I have to keep her happy, honey”, he stated “they don’t say ‘happy wife, happy life’ for nothing, I know she hasn’t been the best to you, but she tries”

“She treats me like shit, always have”

“Don’t say that” he sighed. “Let’s make a deal: I will set you a couple of dates just to calm her down and you choose the type of man you want to go to dates with, uh?”

I smiled viciously.

“No criminals!” he immediately said “don’t put yourself in danger just to get to your mother’s nerves, think about me too. There must be some nice guys you’d like to meet.”

“What if I want to date a woman?”

“Fine by me, I like woman too”

“I don’t like woman that way, I just wanted to know if I could.”

He laughed and looked at the time.

“Your mom told me about that hero, Hawks, I met him and he’s not very heroic actually, he’s just lucky he has a useful quirk, I think you’d like him”

“You’re pushing me”

“I’m not. Let’s set this now, you’ll have two dates, one with that hero prick and one with whoever you want, some college colleague preferably”

“Okay, fine, but the second date will be a woman.”

Mother always got what she wanted.

“Excellent, my dear! Send me her profile when you pick one, I’ll set the time and date, you go wherever you want and keep me updated. I gotta go now”

I chose a friend from college my mother never seemed to approve. As soon as I made my choice, my dad did his part.

The day I met Keigo it was rainy, he asked me if I wanted to cancel but I didn’t, I liked rain when it’s calm and I wanted to finish my duty as soon as possible. We went for coffee, watched a movie and then to a nice but not too elegant restaurant for dinner.

When I told him I had no intentions to date him, he told me he had no excuse to reject this date since he took a break from his hero’s agency for personal reasons; he seemed nice, careless and turned out to be easy-going, but he wasn’t Dabi.

I swore I could go home by myself but he insisted and when we were arriving, he put his arms around me.

“Don’t be scared” he said and took fly with me. I teleported back to the ground without thinking and shouted at him:

“What the fuck were you thinking?! What were you trying to do to me, you psycho?!”

He looked down at me and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to use your quirk whenever you want, you’re not a professional hero nor a villain like me” Dabi was by my side and his eyes locked to Keigo’s. He came down with his hands exposed.

“I sensed you following me, I didn’t think you two knew each other” Keigo looked careful now.

“We’re like childhood friends” Dabi said, “I was curious why would someone like her hang around a hero like you”

“It was my mom’s idea” I said, “Dad intervened, long story short, I have to go to blind dates now, it’s none of your business” I looked at Keigo: “now I am curious why you’re not trying to catch him”

“I told you I’m off duty”

“Sure”

Something was off, I knew but I couldn’t tell. Dabi always kept me far enough and safe from his business. These two knew each other, but I couldn’t tell if Dabi was an informant or it was the other way round.

“I’ll take her home now” Dabi said.

“What kind of man would let his date go home with another man?” Keigo smiled.

I felt Dabi’s hand get warmer so I took it off my shoulder.

“I told you I could go home by myself, so I’m leaving. You two can catch up now, it seems like you have something to talk about”

“You’re wrong” Dabi said, “You and I have a lot to catch up”

I looked him in the eyes, it cut deep to know him right to the bone. He came back and he’d go away soon.

“I know that it’s over, Dabi, I don’t need your closure” I said firmly and walked away. It hurted more than I expected, I wasn’t serious, just wanted to mislead Hawks.

The rain came pouring down the closer I got home, it helped me conceal my stupid tears. That night I slept on the couch, I kinda expected Dabi to come but he did not.

Keigo, on the other hand, appeared at my door early in the morning with a nice bouquet.

“You may think I’m not serious,” he said “but I found you amusing”

He accompanied me on the way to work, behave nicely, but I suspected of his true intentions.

“Dabi was a part of a rebel phase when I was younger,” I admitted, he didn’t say anything, neither pretended he didn’t wanna know, “he comes and goes, he may think that I’m bulletproof but I’m not”

“With a quirk like yours, you could easily avoid a bullet” he tried to joke around but I didn’t let it slide.

“I’m conscious that he sees what he does to me, he knows exactly how to ruin a perfect day and I’m sick and tired of that attitude, so whatever you’re trying to do here, end it right now”

His smirk faded.

“Last night you said it was over, but I see it’s not. I won’t annoy you anymore”

His phone ringed, we said goodbye and he left me alone. I knew he just wanted to know if I was involved in anything Dabi was.

Life turned boring for a while and that was okay, but myhouse started to feel too big for me alone. I was considering to move to an apartment or bring a girl friend to live with me when I looked out the window and saw a letter outside the mailbox; when I went out to pick it, looked around but didn’t see anybody.

I knew it was his.

I knew it was a goodbye letter, I had to let him go.

“I won’t make assumptions why you moved to a different city but I think it’s cause of me. I swear I gave my blood, sweat and if I could cry I’d give my tears to protect you from the things that I do but it wasn’t enough, I could never give you peace”, he wrote.

“Deep down I hoped I would never lose you, eventually I did. I’m not your problem anymore. I can’t just show up at your front door and expect you to let me in, but I want to do it anyway.

Now that we don’t talk, I just wanted you to know I wish I was a better man for you.”

Lastly, he wrote:

“I’m sorry that I hurted you, it’s not your fault.”

I never felt so attacked by a piece of paper in my life. I knew I was better alone than needing a man like him, but the heart wants what it wants. Wishing he was a better man wasn’t an option, I loved him for being the man he was, the fact that he didn’t see it my way was painful.

All this time I thought he could see right through me, now I wonder what was he seeing this whole time.

I called him but he didn’t pick up the phone, so I started to write a text message when I heard the door ring bell and he was there standing at my door.

“This is the last time” he said, “I swear this is the last time”

He put his arms around me, he was warm and had that suspicious smell like he over used his quirk.

“You’re an asshole” I mumbled.

“I know”

“I’m tired of this”

“I know”

“I don’t wanna keep secrets just to keep you”

“You won’t have to”

I looked at his face, surprised.

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s go inside, we have a lot to talk about” he walked in.

For the first time, he opened up about everything, I listened carefully; I got worried, even cried a little. I suggested again that we could run away together but he didn’t want to, he was determined to fulfil his revenge against Endeavor even if it killed him in the process.

It made me want to die. I took a deep breath.

“You can’t come here and expect me to accept that you’re willing to die just to expose your father’s shit to everyone in Japan” he opened his mouth but I didn’t let him talk, “you have to choose right now, Touya, you leave now or you stay with me. You can’t just ask a person that loves you to sit and watch you get killed, you’ll have to kill me just the same”

Dabi hugged me gently, kissed me softly.

“Never going to happen”

My heart ached. I knew he’d leave me in the morning, but all I could think about was that I wished I could go back in time and save Touya from that fire. If anybody could go back in time and save him, knowing what I know, even if it meant we wouldn’t meet or be together… that’d be okay.

“Dabi, I’m sorry I didn’t meet you before”

He looked confused.

“I think we never stood a chance, did we? Wanna come to bed?” I asked and he smiled.

“Yeah, ready for it?”

I laughed and took his hand, led him to the bedroom, took his jacket off and appreciated his burned arms for a moment. I touched his burned lip with the tip of my finger.

“I love you” he said.

“Just not enough to stay”

“I…”

I shushed him. Nothing he could say would eased the pain I was feeling that night. I hugged him, kissed him and whispered in his ear:

“I love you too. Now show me your love with actions instead of words”

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 31: On the Scent

If you're on the scent for spoilers, keep reading! If you don't want to know everything about The Wheel of Time, including the books, show, comics, and card game all compressed into like, a couple thousand words inexplicably, definitely don't keep reading. The second you click that button everything will be psychically uploaded to your brain. I mean uh... something on theme... scentically uploaded to your nose.

We have a rising sun chapter as we're still in Cairhien and Thom's not around.

He gave one abrupt shudder and stopped laughing; she left him to crouch over Hurin.

Another not subtle thing to be doing. It's a good thing these Cairhienien are so politically suspicious that they miss the much greater threat right in front of them.

He said he didn’t know it, but he had a smile that shouted ‘lie’ a mile off.

Perrin could probably smell the lies on the dude before he opened his mouth.

I couldn’t hear what she said, but I didn’t know whether his eyes were going to pop out of his head or he was going to swallow his tongue first.

I'm sure that Verin just did the usual Aes Sedai thing and that the specifics aren't important, but it amuses me to imagine that she just told the dude the truth straight out.

He heard gasps from the Cairhienin listening, but he did not care. They could play their Great Game if they wanted, but Ingtar had come, and he was finished with it at last.

This is called dramatic irony and also counting your chickens before they hatch and whatnot.

Rand glanced at Perrin—He’s a sniffer?—and found Perrin studying him in return. He thought Perrin muttered something. Shadowkiller?

Have you boys tried talking to each other about your-

Nope. Can't even pretend to ask with a straight face.

Everyone was watching now—not even Cuale gave any attention to his own burning inn—and Rand thought a little caution might not be amiss after all.

Exactly Rand. You're surrounded by strangers in an immediate sense and surrounded by Darkfriends in a metaphorical sense. No point celebrating being free just yet.

Suddenly he noticed that the others were looking at him, Verin and Ingtar, Mat and Perrin. He realized what he had been doing, and his face colored. “I am sorry, Ingtar. It’s just that I’ve become used to being in charge, I suppose. I’m not trying to take your place.”

It's fascinating, how this boy has to be dragged kicking and screaming into everything, but once he accepts it he just takes to it instantly. A couple weeks' leadership and the boy completely forgets Ingtar's even there.

You can see why Demandred, Sammael, and Etcetera'al got so pissy.

She’s Moiraine’s eyes watching me, Moiraine’s hand trying to pull my strings. But I have cut the strings.

If only Rand had tried to learn about politics while he was here. He might have realized that Verin knowing things doesn't at all mean she's on Moiraine's side.

I guess that would probably have only made him more suspicious.

Also I forgot to mention her directly when taking these notes but Tiedra's plump so we know she's a good innkeeper.

It almost seemed to him that she was in the room with him, that he could smell her perfume, so much so that he looked around, and laughed to find himself alone.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if she had popped in invisibly somehow.

It was him, he thought. Rand is the Shadowkiller. Light, what’s happening to all of us? His hands tightened into fists, large and square. These hands were meant for a smith’s hammer, not an axe.

The duality that Perrin will be grappling with rears its ugly head. At last he already knows the answer. Though that really just makes his plot arc all the more frustrating.

Also, points to Perrin for pulling off having Rand in his POV instead of what usually happens (thus far in the series) and Rand hogging the spotlight. This isn't the first time this has happened (Egwene did it back in Fal Dara), but it does show the transition this series is slowly undergoing.

One of Mat’s eggs hit the floor and cracked. He did not look at it, though. He was looking at Rand, and Ingtar had turned around.

Mat, the so-called idiot, irresponsible fool: Has a tell about Rand's situation but volunteers nothing and doesn't cause any trouble.

Perrin realized he was staring, too. “Well, he did not fly,” he said. “I don’t see any wings. Maybe he has more important things to tell us.” Verin shifted her attention to him, just for a moment. He managed to meet her eyes, but he was the first to look away.

Perrin, the so-called quiet, responsible kid: Tries to get in a fight with a woman several decades his senior over his friend's honor.

“Interesting,” the Aes Sedai said, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I would very much like to meet this girl. If she can use a Portal Stone. . . . Even that name is not very widely known.”

Verin must suspect. How panicked does this make her?

Rand asked the innkeeper if there were any more books, and she brought him The Travels of Jain Farstrider. Perrin liked that one, too, with its stories of adventures among the Sea Folk and journeys to the lands beyond the Aiel Waste, where silk came from.

Is this our first real Shara reference? I think it might be.

The Shienaran played with a slashing, daring style. Perrin had always played doggedly, giving ground reluctantly, but he found himself placing the stones with as much recklessness as Ingtar. Most of the games ended in a draw, but he managed to win as many as Ingtar did.

Ignore the terrible pun and focus on how Perrin is being shifted by his experiences as well. Perhaps this is why he talked back to Verin earlier.

“There are Darkfriends among the high as well as the low,” Verin said smoothly. “The mighty give their souls to the Shadow as often as the weak.” Ingtar scowled as if he did not want to think of that.

Frankly Verin, if there weren't so few Aes Sedai I'd argue the Tower's horrible percentages make the mighty even more frequent donaters. And indeed note that Ingtar isn't "as if" anything. It's exactly the case that he doesn't want to think about noble Darkfriends.

“I know little of Cairhienin,” Ingtar told him, “but I’ve heard enough of Galldrian. He would feast us and thank us for the glory we had brought to Cairhien. He would stuff our pockets with gold and heap honors on our heads. And if we tried to leave with the Horn, he’d cut our honored heads off without pausing to take a breath.”

It's mind-boggling how actively detrimental to the cause of existence most of the modern day royalty proves to be. Like obviously they need to be toppled from their thrones and all that but damn.

There was a dignity to him that Perrin did not remember; Rand was looking at the Aes Sedai and the Shienaran lord as equals.

Well he's found the Horn of Valere twice now, so he's worthy of being a legendary hero even ignoring all the stuff he hasn't done yet. Selene's flirting sadly helped.

It will also help if you remember the way you behaved before the Amyrlin. If you are that arrogant, they will believe you are a lord if you wear rags.

Lan's training paying off in a dozen ways. He'd be so proud if he were here.

“A sa’angreal.” She sounded as if it were really not very important, but Perrin suddenly had the feeling the two of them had entered a private conversation, saying things no one else could hear.

For example, she's basically telling Rand what tools are available to him.

One by itself is powerful enough, but I can think of few women strong enough to survive the flow through the one on Tremalking. The Amyrlin, of course. Moiraine, and Elaida. Perhaps one or two others. And three still in training.

I guess Verin must think Cadsuane dead, since Lelaine and Romanda would make three if she were being counted. How terrifying that at this very point the White Tower has a total of eight, kind of nine women capable of using the Choedan Kal. It should be so much more.

As for Logain, it would have taken all his strength simply to keep from being burned to a cinder, with nothing left for doing anything.

Unless the male statue is quite different and only ever meant for Lews to use, Verin is very mistaken here. Logain is only a step below Rand, and there's sixteen tiers in between him and Moiraine.

She was talking to Rand. Perrin knew it, and from the queasy look in Mat’s eye, he did, too. Even Loial shifted nervously in his chair.

Thank goodness the empath is the POV to confirm that Loial is not blind or stupid but has in fact put two and two together.

Watching Verin’s smile, small and mysterious, Perrin felt a chill. He did not think Rand knew half what he thought he did. Not half.

Perrin you don't even know half of how right you are.

But we'll get to that next time, when our company visits The Huge Toad Crouching in the Night: Lord Barthanes's Manor! (Disclaimer: Toads may be metaphorical or even simileical)

[floralovebot]

What would you write if DC hired you to make a tempest/garth comic? What would be the genre, mood, setting, etc? Would it be plot focused or lore focused?

OH BUDDY

well personally i would end up ignoring n52 and rebirth so,, sorry to the like two rebirth garth stans i know but ajdgjlh

but anyway i've had this idea for a more tempest centric series that feels very like,, scooby doo ish? not full on detective series cause that's not his vibe, but like a mix of stumbling into different magical mysteries, fighting a monster of the week, and discovering different magic things! in my perfect aquafam world, koryak never died and garth got with letifos so both of them would accompany him!

in my head, this series would have to take place after the tempest series and vol 5,, tbh i'm not sure where exactly it would fall on the timeline!! all i know is that it would definitely happen after vol 5

but anyway, the series would start with garth mentally reeling from defeating slizzath, and in a "what the fuck is life about" kind of way, he decides to learn more about shayeris and his family history. at this point, he does know things, but he would want to know more about the day-to-day stuff and the culture, not just the all-powerful wizardy stuff. anyway, letifos wants to go with him <3 they aren't together at this point, but the series would provide a nice slow burn for them to be official by the end. i Know garth usually jumps headfirst into his relationships, but i would want this series to be more introspective so he would be thinking things through a lot more and have some hesitance. Anyway, once he gets to the ruins of the city, some weird ass monster jumps out and they have to fight it!! oh no!!!

i'm thinking that garth doing his little ritual thing either freed other bad guys from the fucking underwater prison dimension OR garth just,, doing magic awakens a bunch of shit cause they go "owo? someone is using powerful magics 👀 time to rise and grind!!" aldgh

so anyway, they just get pulled into fighting random monsters and protecting random people with magic. it would definitely have a silver age vibe with each issue being its own complete story (maybe occasionally spanning two or three). in regard to the overall vibe though,, yknow the vibe of the first live action scooby film? literally that! like it's grown up and there's a lot of dangerous shit going on and it goes into serious topics and has serious, darker moments, but it's also just a little silly goofy aldhg the series would start being dark and angsty then gradually get lighter as garth not only leans more into his magic abilities but also allows himself to be happy and help people the way he wants to.

it would definitely be more lore focused! i would really want to go in on insane atlantean history, magical worldbuilding, etcetc. the aquafam has a lot of good characters for the audience to learn things through, but garth will honestly always be #1 for me in that regard. that's why i would want this series to be a little more scooby doo-ish, so that garth is learning things/figuring shit out at the same pace as the readers!

[1indigoisles]

Chapter 1 - All Excerpts

Who in their right mind would choose to ‘live’ in a graveyard of a town in Rhode Island over one of the sunniest places in the world, Flagstaff, Arizona?

Well, I did.

Lila must think I’m crazy. She definitely did.

My mother (that’s Lila) had always been a traveller, a hare-brained traveller who had once left half of her possessions in the States on an immigration to India for the winter. What happened to that half, you may imagine? Only the unknown force that made Lila my mother knows. Don’t get me wrong, Lila’s the best, but we were less mother and son and more the adventurous traveller and her wary follower.

Why would I choose to travel then, since another option was given to me? Well, I’ll get to that.

My life story was simple. I wasn’t a miracle, but I wasn’t a mistake either. I just happened, and I happened at the wrong time. My father’s name is – or was, I don’t really know – David Garamond and that was pretty much all I knew about him. Lila was efficient in cleaning up mistakes from her past. But she wasn’t the secretive type either; she didn’t mind talking about her past, and would tell me stories about her time with David. She would talk like they were fairy tales, which many real-life love stories are before they burn out into ashes of leftover feelings where the fire of love and hope used to be.

Lila Teigen and David Garamond were high school sweethearts, and were still going on strong well into college. They were a stable couple, which was saying something, considering how young they were. Young love tended to go wrong. But nothing went wrong for them, at least not then.

After completing college, David asked for her hand in marriage, even though he never got the blessing. Both Lila’s and David’s families were against it, and they promised to turn their backs on the pair if they did get married. But that didn’t matter; they were deeply in love, intent on forever happiness, and expecting a child, which was why David had proposed in the first place. Nothing had gone wrong around this part either. David was the guy fantasy talked about, the hero of the story. Lila had really thought that that would be her happily ever after.

But real life doesn’t have a happily ever after. It never did.

And we have now arrived at the part where things went wrong.

David was nowhere to be found on the day before the marriage. He’d gone out on a stormy night, saying he had some last-minute things to take care of and just... vanished.

And that was where the story ended. Lila would tell me nothing about what happened after that, about any of her struggles with being a single mother, if she ever found David again, or even why she took up the habit of travelling around when it was obviously much easier and cheaper to settle down in one place.

No. Fast-forward 16 years as a nomad named Kenneth Teigen on this planet, and I am currently scowling at the million dollar question of where our next voyage will take us while still recovering from the shock of having to answer said question. ‘Most difficult decision of my life’ hadn’t exactly been on my birthday wish list.

And it wasn’t as though we could go just anywhere, either, which actually made things a little easier. Lila’s job as a digital marketing strategist paid well and steadily enough, but I couldn’t exactly suggest we hop on the next plane to Greenland, now could I? Not that I ever would.

No, Lila had narrowed down my choices to two places that contrasted each other so much and were so far apart that I was fairly certain Lila had just dropped the question on my head as an elaborate prank.

"Flagstaff, Arizona, or Knightville, Rhode Island?" Lila had asked me when my school year in DC was over.

"What?" I looked up from my book, The Picture of Dorian Grey.

Lila unceremoniously flopped down onto the red bean-bag chair and regarded me seriously, which would have been comical, had she not said the things she was about to say. "What would you pick," she began again, slower, "Knightville in Rhode Island, or Flagstaff in Arizona?"

I replied, surprised, "And you're asking me this because...?"

"Because this decision is officially yours," Lila said, a smile tugging on her lips as though she were giving me some good news. "You are going to decide where we stay for the next year." There was a glint in her eyes that could only be described as defiance as she pronounced her last statement.

"No," I immediately told her.

The glint died away. "Why not?" she asked, like a child asking her parent why she couldn't get candy even though she'd done her homework.

"Because I have no idea what to choose," I said bluntly.

"But I gave you only two options," she protested. "It can't be that hard!"

"Hard?" I asked incredulously. "You're asking me to choose where we're going to live for the whole of next year!"

"Between just 2 places!"

"Doesn't make it much easier, Lila!"

She looked bewildered, and a little hurt too, for which I felt a poorly disguised twinge of guilt.

Seeing me soften, perhaps, Lila went full-on puppy-dog mode, and while I had seen it coming and should've been able to resist it, I couldn't.

So, cursing the next several generations of Lila's bloodline (which wasn't smart, since I was one of them), I conceded to her wishes with a grumble.

Now, I don’t know why I chose Knightville. It wasn’t as though it was a good travel destination or a hot tourist spot; it was cold, constantly raining and foggy, and the only colors it ever saw were white, black and different shades of grey.

I just felt, I don't know, compelled to choose Knightville, like there was something the remote town whose name I had never heard of before had that much less remote Flagstaff didn't.

I wasn't fond of it.

Nevertheless, the choice was befitting. Apparently my great-aunt Charlotte (late) had once lived in an old, slightly rickety house at the edge of town. Apartments were non-existent in small communities such as this, and it wouldn’t cost Lila a penny (except for maintenance).

Plus, the house was kind of homely.

It was a one-storey dwelling, painted a pale blue, with a brown, slanted roof. The inside was all cream-yellow walls and creaky wooden floors and the smell of good old 1950s vintage.

I didn’t dislike it, so that must have meant something.

Dinner that night consisted of Chinese take-out and ice cream for desert. I hadn’t spoken much till now, sitting in mindless silence, thinking about nothing, and staring at a small, perfectly circular hole (or was it just ink?) in the wooden floor.

“This flavour of ice cream is amazing”, commented Lila. I’d been, after all, silent for an unknown period of time, and a brooding silence of any sort from my end rang alarm-bells in Lila’s mind.

The truth was, I’d had this strange feeling ever since Lila’s car careened into Knightville. I felt... out of my own body, like I was breathing something entirely other than oxygen, that I was eating foreign food, having this foreign food with another person, that I was in another world, with alien roots that ran in alien soil. Like I was someone else. It was a creepy feeling, and it made my skin crawl.

But none of this was real. It was probably my brain’s way of punishing me because I’d intentionally forced myself to survive in a place that I didn’t like when I had total opportunity to live somewhere else.

“It’s pistachio flavoured”, I said, coming back to reality, “one of the worst ice cream flavours invented in the history of bad ice cream flavours”. I scrunched my nose with distaste.

“It is not”, insisted Lila, “you just don’t like it ‘cause it’s weird. I happen to like weird. Quite a few people do. Weird is good. Weird is different.”

But I would not indulge myself in the weirder aspects of life. While Lila was fawning over her God-awful ice cream, I was silently enjoying classic chocolate.

***********

School was due in a week, a week which was spent placing our furniture in the house, a difficult thing for a family of two to accomplish. Still, this was not our first rodeo – we’d done this exactly 14 times now – but regardless, we never got any better at arranging furniture in an apartment, let alone a house. Or faster.

“Well, the bed’s done”, Lila huffed, a hanky tied to her head, rivulets of sweat rolling down the sides of her face.

“Yeah, your bed,” I said, wiping my forehead, mentally accepting my fate. “I’ll have to sleep on the couch, won’t I?”

“For now,” she said sheepishly, off my glare.

I got up from my seat at the floor and declared, “I am officially done with today. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've gotta get out of this house and pray to all the heavens above that it is raining.”

So saying, I saluted in her direction and stalked resolutely down the stairs.

Fortunately, my prayers (which were not yet made) were answered. I stepped out the front doorstep to find rain falling in gentle sheets, letting it progressively wet my clothes as the cool droplets shifted through my hot, sweaty hair. I combed the strands back with my fingers and faced the clouds above, feeling the cold water sting my face like surprises.

I was not, in general a fan of the rain, but I'll admit, it could be beneficial at times.

It was then I noticed a house, a small way across the road, and a girl walking out of it, a black umbrella plopped on her shoulder.

From what I could tell, she had long, straight black hair and wore dark clothing that spanned her entire body. She was walking briskly, like she was on a clock, and kept looking around, her eyes darting everywhere at once before stopping, and lingering on me.

I froze, and felt my heart stop beating for a second. I didn't think about how beautiful she looked, not at that moment at least. I didn't think about how strange it was that she herself froze and stopped to stare at me. I didn't think about how she then abruptly turned around and practically ran down the street, away from her house and my line of sight.

I could only think about her eyes, which were not one, but two colors, for two irises. One was the black of tar and midnight and the other was the blue of clear skies and forget-me-nots. There was no other way to put it; her eyes were beautiful.

Heterochromia was not an unknown concept to me, and for all its uniqueness, it could also look rather plain on some people. But something about the girl's eyes struck me in the strangest way. And it was that strangeness that froze me; I wasn't easily bedazzled.

It felt wrong and right both at the same time, like a sharp needle poking at your skin, but not hard enough for it to bleed.

Her eyes may have been beautiful, but they were hard, reflective, blank, and cold and sharp as shards of ice, like her soul was hidden in walls and walls of titanium, that the blue and black of her eyes were the only walls we saw.

Eyes that I would lay awake at night thinking about.

***********

The few mornings after that were as grey and lifeless as the last one. I wondered as I woke, not for the first time, how the people here could wake up to this almost every morning and still have the energy to start their day and do whatever a regular life demands of them. For even after a good night’s sleep I felt tired, the kind of tired that I wasn’t sure would be easily remedied by a cup of coffee. Maybe half a dozen could work.

I shook my head. I was being pathetic.

I forced myself out of bed and got ready for school.

In the bathroom, I stared at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. Fair skin was part of my genetics, and so was my gangly height of six feet, which did no favours to my breadth. My facial features were too-sharp and my body was lean (the gym and I have a difficult relationship). My hair was an ordinary brown with a coppery tint to it that refused to stay neat, and my eyes, deep-set, were leaf-green.

There was nothing much remarkable about me. I sighed and spit the minty toothpaste out.

Lila, on the other hand, was pretty. She had hair redder than mine, a Madonna-like face with high, sloping cheekbones, and green eyes that were always lively.

When I was done criticizing myself in the bathroom, I took a shower and wore an ordinary faded red sweatshirt and loose jeans.

I went downstairs.

Lila was, naturally, awake, and bustling about the kitchen, performing multiple tasks at once, as was her way, such as juggling her steaming hot cup of coffee in one hand, while trying to explain to her new-found friend, Catherine, who seemed to keep surprisingly military hours, all the reasons why she could go down to the book-store with her after she came back home at eight ‘o’ clock in the evening over the phone, that was, by the way, sandwiched between her ear and her corresponding shoulder. At the same time, she was trying to pack our food (she’d always insisted on home-made for first days at school). It might all end in disaster. No, it probably would end in disaster. It’s Lila we’re talking about, after all.

“Lila, don’t keep your coffee cup so close to the edge of the counter!” I grumbled as she accidentally pushed it off in order to turn to me as I came down the stairs.

The cup made crash-landing, but it was plastic, so it didn’t break. Burning-hot black coffee infiltrated the floor of the kitchen and splashed against the previously pristine white cupboards, curved layers of coffee-brown partially covering them. On the ground, the liquid pooled like water.

Lila, on the other hand, had jumped back five miles, dropped her phone onto a fuzzy carpet, and was looking at me reproachfully.

With a mental curse I said, “oh, god.” And, shaking my head, I came the rest of the way down the stairs, walked past Lila, and opened a cabinet with cleaning towels in it.

I picked a white one with bright red stripes, and handed it to Lila, who gratefully took it.

I picked one out for myself, an orange one with black boats patterned on, and sighed, “come on, Lila.” And after selecting other cleaning weapons of our choice, we dived into the mess.

So obviously, it was with easy conversation and synchronised working that we went our separate ways.

Lila would lock herself up in her office with her laptop and an assortment of files, documents and fidget-toys, whereas I would shimmy on my bike and make my way to Knightville High School.

***********

At the gates of Knightville High School, I stopped.

I looked at my bike, which was parked (squeezed) between two cars, then I gazed back at my new school once more.

The building was greyer and duller than any other building I’d ever seen. It wasn’t too tall, four storeys high, maybe, with Knightville High written in huge red letters at the entrance.

I gulped. Who was I kidding? I was nervous as hell, which was totally idiotic; I’d done this a million times now.

Maybe it was just the fear of being in the spotlight, the downright spooky atmosphere of Knightville, or I was probably just way in over my head, and I suddenly had the totally irrational desire to get on my bike and ride back to DC.

Or, I told myself sternly, I’m overthinking the entire thing, and I should stop dawdling at the front of the school gates and just get it over with already.

So, thinking this, I took a deep breath, and went in.

***********

I’d hoped for a few minutes, at the very least, of peace.

Instead, I was immediately ambushed at the entrance of the main hall of my new school by a girl just a few inches shorter than me, with a bright expression that I would soon come to know was her being cheerful.

At first I’d thought her hair was on fire, and she had galloped to me expecting a waterfall to sprout out of my backpack. A fraction of a second later, though, I realised that that was just the color of the girl’s hair, burning orange, not red, orange, like fire.

Her hair was bright orange. She had hazel eyes with flecks of green and gold in them, sweet pink lips that looked naturally dyed, and freckles that covered the apex of her nose and cheekbones like dust. She wore a white tank top that should be illegal to wear, a brown leather jacket to cover it up, fashionably tattered and faded jeans, and a bright smile that could give the sun and the stars a run for their money.

“Hi,” she said, in a naturally crisp and friendly voice, “I’m Jolene Frost, head of Knightville High’s welcoming committee. Welcome to Knightville High!”

I jumped. “Hello,” I managed to stammer, “I’m Kenneth Teigen.”

Jolene’s eyes flickered almost imperceptibly at ‘Teigen.’

“What?” I asked.

“What ‘what’?” Jolene looked a little bemused.

“Never mind,” I muttered.

She regarded me for a long moment, not like I was acting strangely, but more as though she’d just discovered something about me that told her there was more to discover.

Then she peered over my shoulder as though she’d just spotted someone, and called, “Rowan, Rowan!” I turned around, but I couldn’t be sure who she was calling. A beat passed. No one came, and no one looked at her weirdly for shouting that name, possibly because she was popular and wouldn’t have cared about it anyway. With an exasperated sigh, she flipped out her phone and dialled a number. She held up a finger that told me I should wait a minute and heard the phone ring twice before the person on the other end picked up.

Jolene did not pause to say ‘hello’ to make sure the person on the other end was there, instead immediately speaking into her phone, “Rowan Frost, if you do not emerge from whatever hidey-hole you’ve found for yourself, I will whisper your middle name to the new kid.” She said the last two words as though it would be a treacherous fate for Rowan, who I now realised was Jolene’s brother.

A reply came from the other end. Jolene retorted, “oh, I will, and I will do it seductively for good measure.” She seemed to have either not noticed my slight discomfort at that, or she was ignoring it entirely.

“Relax, I’m here,” came a child-like voice. A boy an inch or so shorter than me approached us, detaching his phone from his ear as he did.

Jolene smiled a winning smile, and leaned in to loudly whisper, “It’s Duncan, by the way.”

“You said you wouldn’t tell,” reproached Rowan while looking affronted, before abruptly grinning slyly, “Mildred.”

Jolene shrugged, clearly not the reaction Rowan had been hoping for. “I have no insecurities about my middle names. No one will ever call me Mildred, unless, of course, they have a death wish.”

“You just said you had no insecurities.”

“Mildred is a disgusting enough name to hate without being insecure about having it.”

“So is Duncan.”

“No, it’s only you who hates it because it’s old-fashioned.”

“I don’t understand why that isn’t a good enough reason on its own.”

While they went on with their incessant banter, I studied Rowan a little more closely. He had ash-blond hair that was more ash than anything really, and big grey eyes that at first seemed to be comparable to the grey of Knightville’s sky, but soon, it would look more like silver, gleaming and refracting in the light.

He had a long, thin face that had a fine sort of bone structure to it, all angles in some places, all softness in others. His body looked wiry and his shoulders were slim, similar to a girl’s. It was then I drew to the conclusion that ‘handsome’ was not a word that could be used to describe him – he looked more... pretty, yes, that’s the word. He was rather pretty.

“Shouldn’t we be showing the new kid around instead of wasting time arguing?” said Rowan a little grumpily, after Jolene had thrown a cutting remark at him.

“Perhaps,” Jolene allowed, “but maybe we could just skip the tour.” She turned to me, “don’t worry, the school layout is really simple. You’ll get it as we go along.”

The Frost siblings then took me along the halls, to my locker, through various classrooms and labs, the library, the canteen, the infirmary, other staffrooms, all while accompanying it with more banter, assurances that I could ask questions if I had any, and other interesting details, like a long crack that spread across the floor in front of the chemistry lab that had always been there. It was thin, but not so much that it wasn’t noticeable – in fact, I’d noticed it before Jolene had told me about it – and pitch black, as though it had been drawn on the ground with a marker of the darkest black, and shaped like real-life lightning, starting and ending abruptly. It was strangely unsettling to look at.

“Following so far?” Jolene asked, when I spent too long looking at the scar on the floor. “Any questions?”

I looked up, and spotted someone, walking briskly down the hallway. “Actually,” I said, nodding my head in that direction, “yes. Who is she?”

***********

It was that girl, the girl I’d seen a few days ago, with the black-and-blue eyes. My neighbour, I thought. Strange to see her here.

It wasn’t as though I was particularly surprised to have spotted her; Knightville High was the only high school in this town.

I just hadn’t expected to see her again so soon.

Even as I asked her the question, I could see Jolene’s expression change ever so slightly when she found who I was referring to, into something that was hard to coin. It was the kind of expression someone would put on to hide what they were truly feeling.

“Scarlett Raynott, I think that’s her name,” Jolene said, her voice a little away from her person. She turned to me.” Why do you want to know?”

“I saw her a couple days ago,” I said, still looking at Scarlett as she disappeared around the corner. “She lives in the house opposite to mine, at the edge of town.”

“You actually live in that rickety old house?” Jolene asked incredulously, though with the thin air of someone trying to change the subject.

“It’s not that old,” I said, frowning a little.

“It’s not the fact that it’s old,” perked up Rowan faintly, who, up until then, had been silently daydreaming, “which it isn’t, really, compared to other houses, it’s just the way it looks old. And not very pleasant. We all call it Bleak House – not a very creative name, sure, but it stuck.”

“And now people actually live in Bleak House,” Jolene mused.

“I think that’s an overstatement,” I said. “It’s not that bleak.”

“Some people died in there, didn’t they?” Rowan asked Jolene.

“What?” My head snapped up.

“Fourteen people, I think, back in ‘95,” Jolene said.

“Fourteen people?” I echoed, horrified.

“All murdered, weren’t they?” Rowan went on, unfazed.

“Police never found out who it was,” Jolene confirmed, shaking her head mournfully.

“Wow, you guys talk about murder with such ease,” I said.

Jolene grinned. “I would be more worried about living in a haunted house, really.”

“My house is not haunted,” I said, trying for a withering look but grinning instead.

“They say that there are fourteen small dots on the floor, the places where those fourteen people had stood when they were killed,” mused Rowan. “They were drawn on by the murderer.”

I shuddered minutely. “They never found him or her?”

“No, and that’s what’s really troubling.” Rowan stopped short, as though that last part was something he hadn’t meant to say.

Jolene, on the other hand, was now staring at the space where Scarlett had last been, before vanishing from view, and I felt I had to ask, “do you know her?”

Jolene’s eyes flashed in understanding. She smiled softly, like she held a secret, close enough to her that no one else could see it, hard as they tried, and answered, “nobody knows her.”

And it was precisely then that the bell rang.

***********

Nobody knows her.

Dear God, why had I said that? Not that it wasn’t true, in a sense. Saying that Scarlett Raynott didn’t trust easily was the understatement of a lifetime. Scarlett had been my best friend and loyal companion ever since we were kids, and even still, I constantly felt as though I didn’t really know all of her secrets; most of them, maybe, but not all.

I pushed that thought away. We, Rowan and I, had bigger things to think about.

Like how Lila and Kenneth Teigen had taken one look at freaking Bleak House and thought, this seems homely, why don’t we move in? Like how they now lived as close to Scarlett and endless danger as they possibly can get. Like how Kenneth had actually seen Scarlett, and recognized her.

Like how the Teigens knew that Knightville existed at all.

If I were normal, I would turn to Rowan, talk about what to do next, maybe even seek assurance that everything would not, in fact, go to hell.

But I was not normal, and you knew you weren’t normal when there was something fundamentally wrong with you and there was no term in psychology or any other science in existence that could describe it.

There had been a time when Rowan could bring me comfort and reassurance, with his simple, meaningful words and the thoughtful arch to his brow. But now, it was all I could do to smile and be playful and take up the role sisters should, to keep the pretence, to maintain what we had as siblings. No, Rowan was no longer my sanctuary, the sanctuary he had been when I was young and normal; he was someone who injured me everyday without even realising it, someone around whom I could never be myself, someone who would turn away with disgust if he knew the truth about me.

The second the bell had rung, Kenneth had taken one look at his time-table, muttered a swift “sorry,” smiled apologetically as he did, and bolted. Rowan had looked thoughtfully at Kenneth’s back then, and I could not help but do the same. Kenneth was never meant to be so... human. He was never meant to have a kind undertone to his deep, forest-green eyes, he was never meant to have such a steady set to his face, the kind that would remain the same even if flames of the tallest heights danced on the water of oceans and turned the earth and everyone on it into ash.

I was never meant to like him in the ten minutes that I knew him.

And as he went, I could not help but notice that he had disappeared around the same corner, where the classrooms began and the main hall ended, as Scarlett had, just moments ago.

I turned to Rowan with a fake smile plastered on my face. “Well, that went well.”

“Spectacularly,” Rowan said seriously, “your acting skills were truly flawless.”

I smiled winningly. I knew he was being sarcastic, but I also knew that going along with his sarcasm threw him. “Why, thank you, kind brother mine,” I said, adding a gallon of sugar to my smile and trying to ignore the sting of the word, ‘brother’.

Sure enough, Rowan narrowed his eyes, and I grinned triumphantly.

But of course, he just had to ask the million-dollar question. “What should we do about Kenneth?”

“No idea whatsoever,” I said cheerfully, as though I wasn’t losing my mind either. On a more serious note, I added, “maybe, for now, we should just keep tabs on Kenneth, what his classes are, where he comes and goes, and try and keep him away from Scarlett in general.”

“So basically stalk him,” Rowan said.

“Got any better ideas?” I asked.

Rowan’s brow suddenly cleared, and I knew what he was about to suggest. “I could always-”

“No,” I said immediately. “You could never go on for that long. It would drain you.”

And I don’t want to see you like that, I almost said, but held my tongue. It might reveal too much.

Unable to look at him any longer, I turned my gaze back to where Scarlett had disappeared, turning my attention to the issue at hand, and the reasons why the situation was this pressing.

Because everyone in this town knew the name 'Teigen.'

And we knew that name because of two people, because of the two people, because of the people who managed to get away.

***********

I was probably the only person ever to get lost in Knightville High School.

It was the middle of the school day, and I’d just spent what Jolene would surely call a productive lunch chattering away about several topics, murder included (I guess the Frost siblings like talking about this stuff). It was also when I discovered that Rowan could paint like Picasso, and Jolene wasn’t a terrible hand at volleyball either.

I look at the Frost siblings – Irish twins, I was told they were – and cannot help but think that they seemed in no way siblings at all. Very good friends, maybe, but not siblings or any blood relation at all. Siblings tend to have an invisible bond to them, something that marked them as a unit, but there was no such tether to Rowan and Jolene.

Even their overall closeness was questionable; Jolene had not caught Rowan’s eye even once throughout our conversations, the way that siblings did when they shared secret opinions. And if Rowan had noticed, then it was something that had been going on a long time, since he hadn’t seemed bemused or bewildered by it in any way.

There was also the matter of how they didn’t look alike at all.

But I could not think about that now. If I did, I was going to be late for English.

I soon realised, rather stupidly, that I’d been close to the classroom all this time. Cursing my idiocy, I made my way to the open door of the classroom as though it led to heaven.

And that was when I bumped straight into a girl.

Our shoulders collided messily, I almost tripped over my clumsy feet, and my copy of King Lear fell spine-first onto the other person’s foot, making them flinch in surprise.

“I am so sorry,” I immediately said, and bent to retrieve my book.

The girl didn’t say anything – just did the same for one of her own things, a leather-bound sketchpad with the silhouette of a crow on it as the cover design.

And it was then, kneeling on the ground and apologizing faintly, that we finally looked at each other.

Scarlett Raynott was staring right at me, her blue-black eyes fixated on mine. Her skin was deathly pale, as though it’d been first drained of all blood and then white-washed for good measure, contrasting starkly with her dark hair. Her blue eye glittered like a gemstone, but her black eye remained stubborn of light, completely dark. Her expression was totally neutral.

And something was wrong.

Something was very wrong.

But before I could name or place what that something was, Scarlett was getting back on her feet, not even sparing me a look as I did the same, and she was stalking away, her shadow clinging to her feet.

It barely registered into my mind that this was the first time we’d actually met, because something more disturbing caught my attention; two identical narrow, white slits at the apex of Scarlett’s shadow, where her head was.

I squinted.

Were those eyes?

I just thought a compilation of all the excerpts of each chapter would be easier to follow, hence this.

Taglist: @jeahreading, @mayaheronthorn, @damn-this-transgirl-hella-gay

[soul-dwelling]

So, Ohkubo is doing character designs on a new anime.

...Meh?

I know I have been the no-fun person for going on ten years (...more like a lifetime...), but the trailer didn't do it for me.

I don't feel like Ohkubo has nailed a consistent style, or, rather, that his style was better right around the Baba Yaga arc, and even that style just doesn't compare to the "skull face / pig noses" designs Studio BONES did on the 2003 anime.

And I'm just burned out on cel-shaded 3D models that look like puppets...

...which, yeah, that is what 3D animation modeling is. But I've seen enough studios make the characters look alive, look animated, look appealing. Between Land of the Lustrous and Trigun Stampede, there is something lacking. When you can make me believe the Muppets are real living creatures and not just puppets alone, I know you can do puppetry that looks more lively than this. And, yeah, there is a difference between physical puppets and CGI animation, that being tangibility, but again, I've seen CGI animation that looks alive (Dragon Ball, Lupin). And then there's this, and it just looks dead. I get that this is a TV budget and not a major franchise. But even when I treat the art in those terms of that financial reality, it still doesn't look good to me.

And I'm looking at just a small trailer, not a full series, so, I'm likely exaggerating apparent flaws.

Plus, and I know it's tiresome to keep beating on Ohkubo when, come on, there are enough strengths to his work--but it's not here in CGI cel animation design. I have heard before, and agreed with this notion, that Ohkubo should be a character designer and illustrator--but those were about video game art, card game design, comics, not necessarily animation (beyond, again, video game art) and definitely not something this...whatever it is. It's another school story, with just typical designs. Maybe that is the point, that you get an illustrator who can go all out with bizarre content, and the trailer just isn't showing it yet, and by the end, you'll get to the stuff that makes you realize why they hired Ohkubo. (...Except, why should I wait to the end to get to the good Ohkubo art design, when I can pick up a manga and get to the good art design at almost any point?).

But this also feels so humdrum, a problem that has been part of animation for a long time, that everything has to be set in a school. I don't know how you top Soul Eater which feels like a series that broke the "it's a story set in a school" idea, especially in NOT, by just flat-out acknowledging, "This is just a conceit, we're not even taking this school stuff seriously, don't worry about it." And, no, a creator shouldn't be expected to just keep topping themselves ("Ugh, you should top yourself over what you did in Soul Eater, everything that comes after is boring!"). They should be expected to create what they want (within reason--*GLARING STILL AT CHAPTER 113*) and earn a living (as I sidestep a rant about capitalism and so on).

What am I trying to get at? What I'm trying to say is, I was hoping to see Ohkubo go all out on weapon designs, on monster designs, to get back to something that was more gothic and spooky like Soul Eater without having to retread that same ground exactly...and instead, it's some CGI school anime? "Ah, this character has sharp teeth, this character has pigtails--classic Ohkubo!" Ugh, spare me.

I hope I'm wrong. But after Fire Force and the still exhausting "REBOOT SOUL EATER!" crap, I'm burned out.

Still, at least Ohkubo is creating. It just isn't for me right now.

[savedpeople]

I haven’t talked much about dead city for the last couple weeks, but here’s some thoughts on tonight’s episode all in one place instead of making separate posts as we go. As usual, spoilers ahead:

SAVIOR NEGAN MY BELOVED. Legit got emotional seeing Lucille again. Savior Negan’s mustache hurts my soul a little but idc he still looks Good. but also gives the possibility of him and Simon having semi-matching mustaches at one point which is extremely funny

Negan designing the walker fence, maybe? That’s kind of what that looked like. If it was, then the walker fence was a relatively new thing when we saw it in the main show, since he already has the Kingdom working for him at this point.

Good to see Simon’s arms have doubled in size since we last saw him, jfc. But seriously, I had the Simon cameo spoiled a while ago but it was so cool to see him again

I love that Neegs is a canon nickname for Negan now lol. How long has the fandom been using that, especially the comic fandom?

Negan wearing two gloves in the flashback implies he either 1. lost a glove at some point, or 2. decided to start only wearing one for The Aesthetic. I’m gonna go with the second option lmao

The hall/room we saw during the flashback scene with the croat is in the sanctuary but isn’t a space we’ve seen before. the basement, maybe? i never considered the factory might have a basement. was way too big to be one of the cells we saw in the main show.

glad they confirmed the croat didn’t “just” kill the kid, but tortured her.

Simon being all “KIDS is a line we don’t cross, we all know that” is hilarious given the entire Oceanside situation. Big possibility is the writers just kinda... forgot about that (especially if they didn’t write for the main how, idk who the writers are), but my in-universe explanation is going to be that Simon is big time sucking up to Negan after being given a second chance. Make him believe he believes that. etc.

Anyone else think the Croat lowkey looks like Simon?? A little bit?? might just be certain facial expressions

Y’all had the opportunity to make my stupid harmonica headcanon canon and and you DIDN’T DO IT. but it’s not not canon, either.

Please not the miscommunication, “if you’d just let me explain” trope. We only have two episodes left there’s not enough time for that

It’s not important but I wonder what the Croat’s real name is

Now why was Croat’s reaction to hearing Negan’s whistle/seeing him again kinda cute

Why do I kind of like the Croat. Only a tiny bit tho

NegaAAAAN

I actually really do like this group Negan and Maggie are with, especially Tommaso and Amaia and the scavenger lady. I forgot her name.

Aaaand that was scavenger lady that just died, wasn’t it

Tommaso definitely got bit, there’s no way he got out of that unscathed 

DID MAGGIE BURN THE DINO PLUSH OR NOT. i’m gonna guess the way ginny’s looking at her + her “i have to tell you something” to Negan is implying she did?

Perhaps I’m stupid but why did the Croat send all those walkers into the arena? Did he know our group was coming? edit: the preview for next ep suggests he did

“Where’s Lucille?” “She’s gone.” 😭😭😭

Did I just add Jerome to my Excel sheet of Saviors? Yes. This tells us that the Croat’s not the only ex-Savior that’s ended up in NY

I like that Negan saved Armstrong. Disappointed but not surprised about Armstrong’s actions once they were alone. Looks like they might have to work together next ep though? I’m hoping Negan tells him why exactly he killed those people.

Eli saying that the Croat was, in a weird way, “Negan’s first kid” despite being older than Negan is soooo idk but it does add something to the way Negan might be feeling about the whole thing

[phantomoftheorpheum]

Ginny & Georgia 1x01 lb (first time watching)

y'all, I know I am a billion years late, but I'm finally going to watch Ginny & Georgia. I quit after the pilot the first time around because I could not handle the secondhand embarrassment, but I've been promising my friend I will watch it with her for years. so... I think I'm going to do small post episode thoughts, nothing lengthy or super in depth like some of my other shows (generally mystery stuff) because I am watching with someone else and I can't really constantly pause to take notes. so this will be more "general impressions."

**Spoilers for Ginny & Georgia 1x01**

Like I said, I've seen the pilot once before, though it is the only episode of the show I have seen. I also have somehow managed to avoid all spoilers of this show, I think because I blacklisted it when I realized I wouldn't be watching anytime soon, and I don't have a Twitter or a Tiktok. ANYWAY, since this is the pilot, I'm going to do general character impressions and predictions, but in the future I will only do specific characters when something has changed in my feelings/opinion. So this will likely be my longest post for season 1.

Ginny - I honestly came out of this pilot with Ginny as a little bit of a question mark. Initially, she definitely gave off early seasons Rory vibes (it's not like we all don't know the concepts of the shows parallel, though handled quite differently), but by the end of the episode she's made a lot of impulsive, messy decisions, so I'm not totally sure what we're in for with her. She has a kind of interesting balance between sometimes seeming sweet/naive/responsible and blunt/cynical/impulsive. If I had to guess, she's going to lean more into the second set of character traits because that is way more drama.

Georgia - Georgia is at the top of the list of characters with big personalities that I currently enjoy, but do wonder if might grate on me eventually. She's super charming and obviously gorgeous, and I didn't remember that we were actually going to see her backstory (totally forgot about that from the first time I saw the pilot) which I think will be a great service to her character, because it means the viewers have extra insight as to why she does what she does and empathizing with her. Georgia is a wildcard, so I'm strapping my seatbelt on with her.

Max - Max is number 2 on the list of characters with big personalities that was fun in 1x01, but that (with her in particular) I wonder might be a bit much at times. She's definitely a comic relief character, and I fully expect her to have some softer and more vulnerable moments to balance out her character a bit. She feels like another character that will really bring the drama.

Marcus - I could be totally off base here, but I feel like I know exactly where they're going with Marcus. Like he is the character, out of everyone, who I feel like having watched a lot of teen dramas is paying off for, because I feel quite confident that I understand him. He's the "will they, won't they" love interest (I mean, physically, they did, but emotionally not so much) who is going to come off as an "apathetic cynical asshole" for some number of episodes, have a traumatic backstory and softer side he struggles to share, and will eventually become a fan favorite. I really think if I'm right about anything, it's this.

Ellen - Ngl, I thought she was going to be a nemesis for Georgia at first, but that was clearly a wrong first impression and I kind of love her immediately. Idk that she will really get her own arc, but I think she's going to be hilarious.

Joe - I honestly don't quite know what to do with Joe. On the one hand, he so clearly fits into the "slow burn, pining/denial, endgame romance" trope as a character, but it's just.... so on the nose Luke from Gilmore Girls that I almost feel like they actively want to subvert that? I don't know. He definitely does give "endgame" romance vibes.

Paul - I'm also not quite sure what to do with Paul yet. I'm inherently suspicious of him, he feels like a character who could come off quite nice and a little oblivious, but then actually have anger issues or be controlling or something. I'm legitimately unsure if he's going to be a protagonist or an antagonist yet.

Cynthia - Mean girl. This is the nemesis I initially thought Ellen was going to be. Right now I could see her being a two dimensional problem Georgia continuously has to deal with, but I also wouldn't be surprised if she gets fleshed out eventually.

Hunter - Oh, Hunter. Poor, sweet Hunter. If you are not the sacrificial lamb of a first love interest, then I don't know what you are. He screams the "first boyfriend" roadblock to a Ginny and Marcus relationship. But props to the actor because I think he's playing it exactly how they want him to. Like they want Hunter to be the logical choice, but he's also an obstacle so they don't want the audience to get too attached to him, so he is also the most awkward/uncomfortable character ever. It's like, he's so nice, but also he makes me want to die of secondhand embarrassment constantly. Anyway, if I've read the Hunter/Ginny/Marcus love triangle wrong, I will be shocked.

Ginny's Other New Friends - I don't have the names down yet, but most of them are pretty unlikable so far. I assume we'll get more layers to this group as we go.

Austin - He's adorable, but I don't feel like I know anything about him yet, except that he loves Harry Potter, so not much to say here.

Zion - I assume we will see present day Zion at some point, since he seems to be a presence in Ginny's life, but I'm not sure when. For now, very little immediate opinion on him.

Okay, that's all the characters I feel like I need to cover under first impressions. I did remember that Georgia had murdered her husband and why (this is honestly the main thing I remembered from the pilot), so that wasn't a shock. I still struggled with the secondhand embarrassment, but I will power through for the sake of my friendship. lol.

This episode is obviously a lot of set up and I feel like by covering the characters, I've pretty much covered the episode, so I will be back with 1x02 shortly. Future episodes will be more bullet points of the my thoughts/feelings as I watch, and not so detailed per character.

[failedinsomniac]

Good Omens S2 Spoilers!!!

Now that the shock & literal physical pain has (somewhat) subsided, random thoughts are beginning to coalesce…

Why the fuck is Hell, of all places, understaffed??? Where is everybody? In S1 it was almost too crowded to walk through; possibly upper management's preoccupation with other matters affecting discipline?

The new demons didn’t seem to exhibit any traces of alternate aspects (snake eyes, flies). I was really looking forward to seeing how Furfur would manifest as a deer.

The Archangels Michael & Uriel were treated like comic relief—completely wasted. I entertained brief suspicions up front about Michael being behind a coup but dismissed them quickly; I didn’t really see anything like their S1 deviousness.

Maggie/Nina was ridiculously forced from the get-go. More background, more set-up please!! Also, Maggie a demon? I think not.

Biggest complaint about S2: Really don’t see Gabriel/Beelz. It needed to be fleshed out a lot more to make any sense at all. I just cannot see how giving AziraCrow’s torturers a simple, sweet send-off was suddenly justified. (Wonder if Anna Maxwell Martin took one look at the script, said “Nope” & booked herself crazy busy. Also unpleasant thoughts about large production companies demanding casting changes for “reasons.”)

On the coffee theory: I posted earlier about religious trauma (here) leading to our unfortunate climax. But I definitely think the Metatron nudged things along, whether via the coffee, a subtle “miracle” or some combination. I also believe that Crowley knew on some level; underneath their pain & anger, as they watched them leave, they knew. They'd have experience of the Metatron's capabilities (a master manipulator--he would've been privy to, if not involved in any angels who fell!). Something to look for in S3…

Something else I’m excited for is Muriel. I think the Metatron seriously underestimated her. My personal head canon is that she’ll read every book in the shop & listen to all of Aziraphale's records; she'll learn to drink tea & consume all manner of gross matter. She’ll interact with Maggie & Nina & the diverse crowds of Soho. She’ll soak up humanity like a sponge. The bookshop is in good hands.

Maybe some of these things are due to the shorter episode lengths, or budget limits. I still rate the season very highly; the writing overall was excellent & the performances were amazing, stunning, jaw-dropping (I know I watched the last few moments, all the way thru the end of the credits, with my mouth hanging open). Tennant & Sheen have never been better & that’s saying A LOT; individually they are incredible but their sum is truly greater than its parts. They made all my quibbles seem inconsequential.

Please let's see this thru. As the planet burns, as civilization crumbles...please let us see this thru. We need to see ourselves & what we are capable of. We need great art now more than ever & that's exactly what this is. Season 3 will be FUCKING BRILLIANT.

The South Downs are waiting.

[faithisforthetranspeople]

Hex's 2021 Media Thread Archive (2021 Part 2)

SSSS.Dynazenon was a fun watch I decided to pick up because I had some friends who were really about it. I had watched Gridman before and that one had a slow start but I loved the heart put into it during the later half with Anti and other characters getting some big moments. This sequel was a lot better overall, although I must regret I don't really remember much about it at this point in time so it didn't stick with me that hard. Like most trigger works for me it's a good and fun watch but won't leave me thinking about it forever :P.

Kamen Rider Blade was a really great watch! Every now and then I'll just binge a Kamen Rider for the hell of it which is how I've gotten a decent knowledge on the series (my favorite is OOO if you were curious) and this one is real special. It introduces maybe my least favorite rider ever who just sucks shit all the time in Mutsuki, who imo doesn't even get that great a resolution, but it also introduces one of my favorite riders ever with Hajime aka Chalice. It's a real slow burn with a lot of ups and downs but the ending is something really special and I just love the suits and belt gimmick of this one :).

Lobotomy Corporation made me really need to get one after playing it. Because this is Tumblr and my friends are LGBT or allies I don't need to talk too in depth about why I love this game because there's hundreds of other women who will snarl and froth over it. If you're curious my favorite Abnormality is Knight of Despair and my favorite character was either Netzach or Chesed.

Lobotomy Corporation: Wonderlab. Even more proof I'm definitely normal, I read this entire thing in a day after finishing Lobcorp. I love and adore the designs in this comic and it's really tragic they ended it so soon. But I'd definitely recommend it if you loved the game!

Blaster Master Zero 3 is one of my favorite games that Inticreates has made. I picked a wonderful time to get into this series as the third game was only a couple months away after I had finished the previous two and it was so exciting actually playing a game the second it released again and going through it all 100% in one sitting. Everything about it just plays so good and I love how well they mixed mechanics with narrative in this one. Also if you know the source of my icon you can tell a certain scene had a big impact on me.

Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster is a great way to play FF1 if you don't want any of the bonus content from the GBA/PSP releases but still want some quality of life such as a minimap and generally easier battles. I think when I go for my inevitable FF1 replays I'll probably aim for PSP just cause I actually like the extra content but this is definitely one of the better deals for the pixel remasters if you're interested in checking the series out :).

Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games I played growing up, and in 2021 I experienced it again using a specific emulator set up to emulate the trilogy and bind your camera movement to the mouse, turning the game into a Mouse and Keyboard style game. While I think the Prime trilogy actually feels like one of the better FPS series to play with controller it was still a fun and easily accessible way to trek through a game I've played before.

Psychonauts 2 is probably one of the games that's closest to being a perfect sequel that I've ever played. Most the time with these revivals of old IPs you have to temper some expectations after so many years have passed and accept some flaws from the process of making a newer more modern entry but for me this game feels exactly like what I'd want from a Psychonauts sequel and it doesn't lose the heart that made the first game (which is one of my favorite games ever) such a special experience. The narrative was really touching and they really knocked all the different level themes out of the park in such a satisfying way. Please play both of these games if you haven't and can tolerate a 3d platformer with some collectathon elements.

No More Heroes 3 is a game I don't know how to go about describing why it's so cool and fun to anyone who doesn't know the series and already get the appeal. Instead of spending forever explaining all that I'll just say the bosses in this one are probably the best in the series in terms of overall quality with no super aggressive difficulty spikes but some can still get you if you're careless. In particular my favorite is the "RPG" boss fight the dialogue is so goofy in that one.

Touhou Luna Nights doesn't try to hide it's inspirations (like all Touhou fangames really) and instead creates a really unique Castlevania-themed game focused around throwing a megaton of knives in various ways and finding out how to interact with everything using time slowdown/stop mechanics. The game can be pretty tricky trying to learn how to manage all your resources but after enough upgrades and time spent it's extremely easy to shred through enemies (and even bosses) in a very satisfying way. Any game where you can stop time and stand on your own knives as platforms will always be cool.

Warioware Get it Together was a fun timesink and had pretty good systems in place to get you to replay a bunch of microgames with its online elements, but unfortunately I never really spent as much time with it as I wanted to. It was very fun with so many ways to complete every microgame with all these characters who play differently and I hope they keep this series going!

Touhou Puppet Dance Performance - Shard of Dreams (Extended) - is the last game I'm going to put on this archive post and it's a real special one. While I adore pokemon as a series and am probably one of the people who can't bring myself to dislike an entry in the series, this game combines it with one of my biggest interests in such a special way that it's probably my favorite Touhou fangame as well as my favorite Pokemon fangame. Even with official content only there's characters from Every Single Game (and even the books!) from Touhou 1 all the way to 12 (15 with shard of dreams), and there's a very high quality mod in SoD Extended that adds in all the missing characters so you can play with all of them, as well as balancing trainers around all the new content they add for these characters and making the game less of a stomp and sometimes an actual real challenge. The customization of a puppets EVs (and eventually IVs) along with being able to freely switch natures and learn/forget moves as long as you have enough points means that there's a very high chance no two playthroughs will ever feel alike, and the typing chart fits in really well with no types feeling too powerful compared to the other cause no matter what there will always be a trainer that just folds one of your puppets out of nowhere. As a bonus while I sign this post off, for my playthrough I used a gimmick team where I could only have one puppet from every 3 games (ex: if i choose sakuya i can't use any other puppets from 4-6, if i choose nazrin that's 10-12, etc.) and it ended up being both a bit of a challenge but also very fun to try and get good type coverage. See y'all in the next archive which should be the final one for 2021!

[secretlystephaniebrown]

Wait, please expand on the Clark and Booster grudge because like… I’m pretty sure I get why but also I want to know exactly why in canon, if you get me?

MY TIME HAS COME

Oh god so okay so the funny thing is that Dan Jurgens is one of the most famous Superman writers and he loves writing Clark? And Booster is his most beloved OC.

And literally since the start, the two of them can't stand each other.

Clark sees right through Booster's bullshit; he recognizes Booster's Flight Ring in particular, since he's familiar with the Legion of Superheroes. Booster is the flashy new hero on the scene soaking up the media attention.

Clark finds Booster immature, irresponsible, and finds his celebrity/social media influencer persona to be incredibly grating. He finds the idea of using heroism to get rich and famous is bad, and he's been open about it from their first meeting. Especially since Skeets spilled the beans about Booster's real backstory immediately.

Booster Gold (1986-1988) #6

They then came to actual blows over an alien invasion!

Aaand Booster then took Lois out for an interview/dinner date. Which Clark was definitely fine with. And he definitely wasn't jealous of Lois finding him interesting. Not at all.

Booster Gold (1986-1988) #7

It got to the point that when Booster was replaced by a robot duplicate after Michelle's funeral and the robot double began to ruin "Superman Day" no one realized that anything was wrong.

Action Comics (1938-2011) #594

By this point Booster was already feeling a bit underappreciated and burned, especially after Michelle's death. He was a bit bitter about Clark's popularity in Metropolis, to the point that he.

Booster Gold (1986-1988) #23

WE know that Booster has a heart of gold and was dealt a really rotten hand. Clark... isn't really up to see it. He sees Booster endangering himself and others to make money, sees his behavior as irresponsible and immature, and frankly? Booster gets under his skin.

Also important to mention something that is completely irrelevant but I find hilarious: Booster is 6'5. Clark is 6'3. You can't convince me that he isn't mad that Booster's taller than him. I won't listen.

And it isn't just in the classic era! Booster would later go on to reveal that Clark was the reason why Booster no longer wore a cape!

Booster Gold (2007-2011) #3

It's been dialed back a lot in recent years; mostly because of 52. During 52, Clark lost his powers, and Booster ended up becoming the guardian of Metropolis twice over; first as himself and secondly as Supernova, a hero who Clark actually came to respect. Clark is one of approximately two people who know that Booster was Supernova, the other being Elastic Man. Who... is dead. They got along pretty well during Time Masters: Vanishing Point (2010-2011) where they teamed up with Rip and Hal Jordan to track down Bruce Wayne, and that's pretty much the status quo where their relationship has been left at when they team up in Jurgens works nowadays such as the Action Comics: Booster Shock arc (2018). (tumblr won't let me attach more images so take my word for it)

So... TECHNICALLY the petty grudge is resolved. However. I find it hilarious and chose to believe that Booster will eventually wear through the good will Supernova earned him and he and Clark will be petty bickering before long again.