#absolutely destroyed the rest of the current mens field

[psychic-waffles]

i've rewatched this program so many times in the last 48 hours, i just can't get over it

[xo-cod]

i love your au! how about hyperfem reader meeting the 141 after ages because she chose to work for the other firm and they're all heartbroken and feeling betrayed :( ❤

aw thank you lovie, hope you enjoy <3 ooc/rushed/might not make sense ☠‼️

today had been a long day and it hadn't even reached noon. there were threats that had been growing alarmingly high, so much so that this job had to include the best of the very best to eliminate the target. you assumed it had been the army forces, the swat team, they were always the ones the first responders for this threat

but how wrong you were

as you walked into the precinct, you hadn't anticipated what would befall you. a sight you almost wished you didn't see, your old members. the 141 who were idly chatting with the rest of your team, going over an escape plan and the targets carefully until you entered the room with another. and it had grown silent, the tension thick enough to penetrate with the gun strapped to your waist.

all four men stood tall, their eyes locked onto your every movement. your current team stood to the side, eyebrows raised but no words spoken. you were in the lions den now, any movements or words would be analysed by the best profilers in the country.

the betrayal they all felt at the sight of you, taking them back to that fateful night your uniform on the bed accompanied with just a sorry note addressed to them all. simon picked it up, battling between wanting to scream and break down. he was silence, apart from the tremble in his hand as he analysed the small note. hoping and praying it was a joke, that you'd burst through the doors laughing at the prank but your belongings had all gone. soap and gaz trying to look for you, price trying to make some calls but you were gone. you packed up and left him, you did that voluntarily he should've listened to his own advice, it was always the ones closest that caused the most pain

all that remained was the pictures he looked at every day only for a few minutes, it was so painful, knowing what you did and yet his heart absolutely yearned for you. you took all the physical items but he was left with all the emotional ones, how was he supposed to pack up the memories and destroy them?

your eyes settle to price first, the captain. he just nodded at first, his head tilted to the side a little. his lips are pressed in a thin line, he doesn't seem outright angry but you know you've lost the bond that you've created with him

in the years you were with the 141 you had never seen johnny so stoic, so angry at the sight of you. you were always his little bonnie, his sweet lass that he teased and laughed with relentlessly.

the same with gaz, he had never been so indifferent towards you. it felt like just yesterday when he had come to playfully tackled you into a hug, teasing you about whatever you had all done that day. he still held that grudge and by the looks of it, you didn't think he would ever let it go. all those promises you spoke of with them two were nothing but broken words laying on the floor, nothing but a jumbled mess of deceit

you could both their faces, the cold expression plastered across the usual smile and happiness they showed to you. their hands gripped firmly the ends of their rifle, they were soldiers to you. nothing more. and then he stands there.

his name, simon, on the tip of your tongue only you don't have the privilege to call him that anymore. he's ghost now, the same cold hearted brutal lieutenant on the field in front of you. his blank stare eyeing you, he doesn't so much as move.

still and silent, observing you. the pain still as clear as the day you left behind his balaclava. you don't have the right to comfort him, to soothe him. everything was revoked the day you left, they deserved a better goodbye and seeing you only served to absolutely shatter him all over again. he thought he was fine but those memories he suppressed, kept tightly locked in a jar was beginning to shake and shatter now. he tried to be nonchalant, holding up the facade that took years to perfect but to a trained eye there were cracks that threatened to swallow him whole.

and you watch with pain, you've lost the privilege to be anything more, call him anything more. his eyes were unblinking though the whirl of hurt flows by them, it's impossible not to notice. his broad shoulders were tense and for a second, you recognise the old emotions that he used to look at you with.

for a fleeting moment, it was as if it had been like before. and then he stiffened up, subtle but you grew used to his every change in movement. you see him recoil away, as if your touch was poisoned. because you knew his pain, you knew how hard it was to trust anyone to let them in. you knew all of it and you still left him.

a crushing weight was felt on his chest with every moment he was in your presence. a burning urge to run as far away as he could or scream all the words that had built up in your absence if gaz and soap had been angry they had nothing on ghost

"and this is agent l/n" your unit chief nods at you before looking over at the 141 again. it takes you everything not to crumble, hearing your new title instead of your callsign from them. price was the first to break the silence, sticking out his hand like he had done with the other members only with yours it's different. he's doing it for the sake of the mission not for you

"pleasure to meet you" he nodded, "likewise" you murmur, unable to meet his eyes as you look onto your joined hands before he removes it away just as quick. and you watch on, every single piece of your heart aching in pure pain.

you just had to remind yourself it was just for the mission, then they'd be gone for good. just like how you left them

[emmi-kat]

SPG Kazooland Master Post

Kazooland is the alternate dimension in the Steam Powered Giraffe Universe.  This post contains various facts and tidbits mentioned by David and Bunny Bennett about it on tumblr and the official SPG websites over the years.  Please feel free to share more information in the reblogs!

Kazooland was named for the mentor of David Bennett, Bunny Bennett, Jon Sprague, Erin Burke, and Bryan Barbarin, Mr.Jerry Hager's mime persona: Kazoo the Mime

By 1897, Peter Walter had unlocked the power of Blue Matter and   subsequently, created an alternate reality he dubbed   Kazooland.

Excerpt from The Story of the Cavalcadium

The Cavalcadium tried to  make a permanent portal to Kazooland in their building, based on Peter Walter I’s studies.

The  Cavalcadium was wiped from existence in an instant, and it took Peter  a few months to realize it had simply vanished. Time and space itself  left a void to forget it ever was.     

The  Cavalcadium building now exists in the seams of Kazooland, and acts  as a hub to many other parts of the dimension. A few doorways even exist on Earth.          

Current link to the map of Kazooland: https://www.thecavalcadium.com/Kazooland.html

Information available about Kazooland as late as 2014

  Asininia*             The dark kingdom of Ignatius Becile. Long having taken refuge from Earth, the   black-handed Becile has built a giant city which is depleting Asininia of its   natural resources and precious rock candy veins. His aim is creating an   unstoppable army of candy-powered automatons to consume the universe.

*name is derived from “asinine”

The 8th Dimension of Absolute and Infinite Terror           The only persistent door to the  terrible 8th dimension. Its history is unclear but it is indeed locked and guarded by Jumbo, The Pink Whale With A Top  Hat.* The 8th dimension is notorious for being the place of fermenting  nightmares and evil Lovecraftian Beasts.

*Jumbo can be found in the album The Vice Quadrant, guarding Commander Cosmo and The Necrostar

Horroria

A jagged mountain range of ash and  death, which is primarily a refuge for monsters. A couple of human  settlements exist, but the majority of inhabitants of the continent  are Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, Zombies, Witches, Cultists,  Poltergeists, Man-Eating Hamburgers, and Hamburger-Eating Men.

Hypexion V     

A presumed alien homeworld of the  Hypexions; thin bipedal humanoids with a sweet tooth.

Ironically Foreboding Shaped Islands     

The Chaos Sea marks these bodies of  land as a legend, but time travelers and fortunate explorers speak of  adventurous sailors, pirates, and buried treasure. It is  believed the famous Captain Albert Alexander was the first to have  sailed the Chaos Sea, yet only stories remain.

Lola     

The Hypexion Moon infested with the  diabolical Moon Worms. The Moon Worm Queen is held responsible for  eating a chunk of Hypexion V before she was destroyed, but a newly  born Moon Worm Queen is the talk among the stars. The   talking stars of course.

Lotsasand     

An ancient dust land belonging to the  ancestors of the Kingdom of Set. Though primarily a land for the  outsourcing of dust and camels, the age old tales of Jackal Men,  Living Mummies, and Scarab People still invoke questions of mysticism  in even the most skeptical of skeptics.

Meh     

An icy northern land of Snow Queens and  Mystical Creatures. Many a wise pipe smoking old bearded man tell  stories about this enchanted place, but few are listened to.

Merveille

Merveille is the remains of the once  great Circus Empire, which exploded eons ago and left a watercolored  land of saturated imagination. The inhabitants are mostly the  Speechless Ones, also known as Mimes. It is often described as a  tangible dream, and artists from all over the multiverse have tapped  into its presence for inspiration and escape.

Cities:                    Bip

The capital of  Merveille was named after its founder, and is a favorite spot for  vacation for Peter Walter VI. It was also in Bip that the Great War of 1823 was ended by a mysterious mime with a magical  kazoo.

New Pieland    

Once a paradise of wilderness, pilgrims  from Old Pieland settled here declaring it New Pieland after their  former continent was completely devoured since it actually lived  up to its namesake. It was quite literally a giant land mass of flaky  crust with a warm gooey appley interior.

New Pieland is home to many American immigrants and many other multiverse settlers.  Humans, Robots, Clowns, Cat People, and Vleeds are just a few of the races you'll find in the melting pot which is New Pieland.

Cities:                    Biscuit Town

Biscuit Town is a famous small  mining town in the eastern part of New Pieland. It is home   primarily to clowns, wizards, and talking animals. Biscuit Town has   been run by Walter Robot The Jon until recently, and was the first  town in New Pieland to elect a robot for Mayor. Currently, in  the Jon's absence the Mayor's Assistant Boft is  struggling with the encroaching rogue nation of Asininia, a  resource-hungry super kingdom of mad scientists and candy-powered  androids.    Preferbia   This large sprawling landscape   of suburbia is a metropolis of 1950's ideals, where the  beautiful residents are protected from the ravages of time by a blue  matter rich force field over the city. Created by a visionary man  from Earth after slipping through an interdimensional rift, Howard  Lloyd saw the potential of the unstable rift and created what some  have called the 1950s utopia of mankind. Those who enter  the city rarely decide to leave the prospect of eternal youth, but  some do choose to escape Preferbia's roving gangs of fish mutants and  frequent attacks by the Hypexion Moon Worms.

Snornia

Snornia is the last remaining haven for  mystical beings. It is cut off from the rest of the world by a  vengeful Dragon God, but those who have seen it speak of a fantastical world of magic and danger, with princesses in towers,   dexterous elves making shoes, and six winged warlocks. Humans  who find ways to enter usually do so to train to become wizards or  dragons, but many are eaten by the Dragon God, and even more give up  and sail to Party Island.

South Adventurica

A largely unexplored tangle of   constantly transforming jungles, swamps, and plains unbound by  any mappable record of time. Adventurers have sought to unlock the   continent's mysteries for years, and its surprises still continue to   surprise avid surprise seekers. Dinosaurs, giant insects, carnivorous   plants, elementals, Forgotten Gods, Bobby Darin, and Santa Claus are   all said to live here, but the only proof of their existence are the   ravaged journals from explorers of the past...

And that captured dinosaur amusement  park off the coast.

Verk     

A rainy settlement of time travelers  from the 1890s. It is separated from the world by an ethereal mist of  aether called "Henry's Breath," long believed to be   generated by the fat ghost of England's Henry the 8th.  Most settlers began traversing the aether via multidimensional  travel from when Colonel P. A. Walter I discovered Blue Matter in  1896, but all matter of being from the multiverse seems to have  leaked through to embrace knowledge, Victorian style, and to tinker with steampunk abominations.

Cities:                    Dandyton

The Capital of Verk is a bustling city  of inventors, scientists, airship pilots, alchemists, airship pilots,  ghosts, and airship pilots. It is home to the Verk Dandy Candy  Factory, many airships, and the Verkian Rift, a dimensional  hub to countless other realities.

The (old) Cavalcadium landing page including links to Worlds (Earth, Kazooland, and the 8th Dimension), Characters, and Species

Characters include (but are not limited to): Beebop, Bip, Boft, Brown Suits, Buster Becile, Captain Albert Alexander, Delilah, Doc Laborday, G. G., Guy Hottie, Hatchworth,The Highwayman, I. M. Becile, Kazoo, Lily Brennan, Lorene Keaton, Norman Becile, Peter Walter I, Peter Walter II, Peter Walter III, Peter Walter IV, Peter Walter V, Peter Walter VI, Rabbit, Rex Marksley, The Jon, The Spine, The Suspender Man, Uncle Ralphie, Upgrade, and Wanda Becile

Species include (but are not limited to): Robots, Samurai, Scarab  People, Seafarers, Steampunks, Talking  Animals, Trolls, Vampires, Vleeds, Warlocks, Werewolfs, Witchs, Wizards, and Zombies

The Temecula Rift

Prior to the 2013 Walter Robotics Expo, an accident occurred while 26 y/o Peter Walter VI accidentally sealed a Blue Matter Rift that he was trying to open for high speed inter-dimensional travel between Earth and Kazooland.  The result was an explosion that singularly hit Peter Walter VI in his face.  He now wears an iconic keyhole mask to hide whatever the results of the explosion may have been.

Links:

https://pawaltervi.tumblr.com/post/49702485000/regarding-the-temecula-rift

https://pawaltervi.tumblr.com/post/51763873084/walter-robotics-owner-peter-walter-vi-hospitalized

https://pawaltervi.tumblr.com/post/52636220497/a-message-from-peter-walter-vi

Audio posts of Isabella Bennett discussing Kazooland Canon circa 2015:

Kazooland Canon 1/3

Kazooland Canon 2/3

Kazooland Canon 3/3

Rabbit’s white faceplates are made from a porcelain-like material from Kazooland called Impossium

[lailoken]

The Coblynau

“Under the general title of Coblynau I class the fairies which haunt the mines, quarries and under- ground regions of Wales, corresponding to the cabalistic Gnomes. The word coblyn has the double meaning of knocker or thumper and sprite or fiend; and may it not be the original of goblin? It is applied by Welsh miners to pigmy fairies which dwell in the mines, and point out, by a peculiar knocking or rapping, rich veins of ore. The faith is extended, in some parts, so as to cover the indication of subterranean treasures generally, in caves and secret places of the mountains. The coblynau are described as being about half a yard in height and very ugly to look upon, but extremely good- natured, and warm friends of the miner. Their dress is a grotesque imitation of the miner's garb, and they carry tiny hammers, picks and lamps.

They work busily, loading ore in buckets, flitting about the shafts, turning tiny windlasses, and pounding away like madmen, but really accomplishing nothing whatever. throw stones at the miners, when enraged at being lightly spoken of; but the stones are harmless. Nevertheless, all miners of a proper spirit refrain from provoking them, because their presence brings good luck. They have been known to

Miners are possibly no more superstitious than other men of equal intelligence; I have heard some of their number repel indignantly the idea that they are superstitious at all; but this would simply be to raise them above the level of our common humanity. There is testimony enough, besides, to support my own conclusions, which accredit a liberal share of credulity to the mining class. The Oswestry Advertiser, a short time ago, recorded the fact that, at Cefn, 'a woman is employed as messenger at one of the collieries, and as she commences her duty early each morning she meets great numbers of colliers going to their work. Some of them, we are gravely assured, consider it a bad omen to meet a woman first thing in the morning; and not having succeeded in deterring her from her work by other means, they waited upon the manager and declared that they should remain at home unless the woman was dismissed.' This was in 1874. In June, 1878, the South Wales Daily News recorded a superstition of the quarrymen at Penrhyn, where some thousands of men refused to work on Ascension Day. This refusal did not arise out of any reverential feeling, but from an old and wide-spread superstition, which has lingered in that district for years, that if work is continued on Ascension Day an accident will certainly follow. A few years ago the agents persuaded the men to break through the superstition, and there were accidents each year-a not unlikely occurrence, seeing the extent of works carried on, and the dangerous nature of the occupation of the men. This year, however, the men, one and all, refused to work.' dealing with considerable numbers of the mining class, and are quoted in this instance as being more significant than individual cases would be. Of these last I have encountered many. Yet I should be sorry if any reader were to conclude from all this that Welsh miners are not in the main intelligent, church-going, newspaper-reading men. so, I think, even beyond the common. Their superstitions, therefore, like those of the rest of us, must be judged as 'a thing apart,' not to be reconciled with intelligence and education, but co-existing with them. Absolute freedom from superstition can come only with a degree of scientific culture not yet reached by mortal man.

It can hardly be cause for wonder that the miner should be superstitious. His life is passed in a dark and gloomy region, fathoms below the earth's green surface, surrounded by walls on which dim lamps shed a fitful light. It is not surprising that imagination (and the Welsh imagination is peculiarly vivid) should conjure up the faces and forms of gnomes and coblynau, of phantoms and fairy men. When they hear the mysterious thumping which they know is not produced by any human being, and when in examining the place where the noise was heard they find there are really valuable indications of ore, the sturdiest incredulity must sometimes be shaken. Science points out that the noise may be produced by the action of water upon the loose stones in fissures and pot-holes of the mountain limestone, and does actually suggest the presence of metals.

In the days before a Priestley had caught and bottled that demon which exists in the shape of carbonic acid gas, when the miner was smitten dead by an invisible foe in the deep bowels of the earth it was natural his awe-struck companions should ascribe the mysterious blow to a supernatural enemy. When the workman was assailed suddenly by what we now call fire-damp, which hurled him and his companions right and left upon the dark rocks, scorching, burning, and killing, those who survived were not likely to question the existence of the mine fiend. Hence arose the superstition—now probably quite extinct—of basilisks in the mines, which destroyed with their terrible gaze. When the explanation came, that the thing which killed the miner was what he breathed, not what he saw; and when chemistry took the fire-damp from the domain of faerie, the basilisk and the fire fiend had not a leg to stand on. The explanation of the Knockers is more recent, and less palpable and convincing.

The Coblynau are always given the form of dwarfs, in the popular fancy; wherever seen or heard, they are believed to have escaped from the mines or the secret regions of the mountains. Their homes are hidden from mortal vision. When encountered, either in the mines or on the mountains, they have strayed from their special abodes, which are as spectral as themselves. There is at least one account extant of their secret territory having been revealed to mortal eyes. I find it in a quaint volume (of which I shall have more to say), printed at Newport, Monmouthshire, in 1813. It relates that one William Evans, of Hafodafel, while crossing the Beacon Mountain very early in the morning, passed a fairy coal mine, where fairies were busily at work. Some were cutting the coal, some carrying it to fill the sacks, some raising the loads upon the horses' backs, and so on; but all in the completest silence. He thought this 'a wonderful extra natural thing,' and was considerably impressed by it, for well he knew that there really was no coal mine at that place. He was a person of undoubted veracity,' and what is more, 'a great man in the world-above telling an untruth.'

That the Coblynau sometimes wandered far from home, the same chronicler testifies; but on these occasions they were taking a holiday. Egbert Williams, 'a pious young gentleman of Denbigh- shire, then at school,' was one day playing in a field called Cae Caled, in the parish of Bodfari, with three girls, one of whom was his sister. Near the stile beyond Lanelwyd House they saw a company of fifteen or sixteen coblynau engaged in dancing madly. They were in the middle of the field, about seventy yards from the spectators, and they danced something after the manner of Morris-dancers, but with a wildness and swiftness in their motions. They were clothed in red like British soldiers, and wore red handkerchiefs spotted with yellow wound round their heads. And a strange circumstance about them was that although they were almost as big as ordinary men, yet they had unmistakably the appearance of dwarfs, and one could call them nothing but dwarfs. Presently one of them left the company and ran towards the group near the stile, who were direfully scared thereby, and scrambled in great fright to go over the stile. Barbara Jones got over first, then her sister, and as Egbert Williams was helping his sister over they saw the coblyn close upon them, and barely got over when his hairy hand was laid on the stile. He stood leaning on it, gazing after them as they ran, with a grim copper-coloured countenance and a fierce look. The young people ran to Lanelwyd House and called the elders out, but though they hurried quickly to the field the dwarfs had already disappeared.

The counterparts of the Coblynau are found in most mining countries. In Germany, the Wichtlein (little Wights) are little old long-bearded men, about three-quarters of an ell high, which haunt the mines of the southern land. The Bohemians call the Wichtlein by the name of Haus-schmiedlein, little House-smiths, from their sometimes making a noise as if labouring hard at the anvil. They are not so popular as in Wales, however, as they predict misfortune or death. They announce the doom of a miner by knocking three times distinctly, and when any lesser evil is about to befall him they are heard digging, pounding, and imitating other kinds of work. In Germany also the kobolds are rather troublesome than otherwise, to the miners, taking pleasure in frustrating their objects, and rendering their toil unfruitful. Sometimes they are down- right malignant, especially if neglected or insulted, but sometimes also they are indulgent to individuals whom they take under their protection. ‘When a miner therefore hit upon a rich vein of ore, the inference commonly was not that he possessed more skill, industry, or even luck than his fellow-workmen, but that the spirits of the mine had directed him to the treasure.'

The intimate connection between mine fairies and the whole race of dwarfs is constantly met through- out the fairy mythology; and the connection of the dwarfs with the mountains is equally universal. God,' says the preface to the Heldenbuch, 'gave the dwarfs being, because the land and the mountains were altogether waste and uncultivated, and there was much store of silver and gold and precious stones and pearls still in the mountains.' From the most ancient times, and in the oldest countries, down to our own time and the new world of America, the traditions are the same. The old Norse belief which made the dwarfs the current machinery of the northern Sagas is echoed in the Catskill Mountains with the rolling of the thunder among the crags where Hendrik Hudson's dwarfs are playing ninepins.”

-

British Goblins

Wirt Sikes, 1880

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Cowboy.”

Wanted to try something new.  Aliens meet different ways of living. Was trying to really capture the small town farming feel in this one. Granted I grew up in and near places like this but was from the burbs technically, so, lol, hopefully I did it justice. 

The sky over Jakar was a light violet purple.

Strings of long striated clouds cut across the sky at intervals looking like the ripples you see on the face of a sand dune. The Sun hadn’t yet risen hiding just below the distant horizon. The air around them was warm, but not tropical, rather moderate.

Standing on the loading ramp to the Harbinger and staring out over the strange moon, they could see for miles and miles onto the unbroken horizon. Under the purple sky, there were no trees or rocks, just acres and acres of evenly spaced crops gently rolling over minute hills and shallow divots in the earth. A gently wind blew up from their front rolling over the ground and bringing with it the cool moist scent of fertile dirt.

The sun inched upwards over the horizon, casting a honeyed yellow glow over an unbroken sea of green. With the engines of the ship off, and not a soul in sight, the scene before them was absolutely silent, almost surreal.

As they watched, a ripple of wind blew up from their right churning the green sea before them into a stormy sea. The plant stalks rolled in waves under the slow push of the wind, which, when it reached them, brought the subtle whisper of leaves brushing over each other.

All together, if they closed their eyes, they could almost imagine the sound of a distant sea.

Both Krill and sunny were riveted to that quiet morning in fascination. 

They had never known a thing to be so beautiful, so quiet.

And even though the land was touched by man, the quiet serenity almost had them forgetting that fact.

They stood like that for many minutes, enjoying the silence until a distant sound rose up from the horizon.

Krill craned his neck and Sunny shaded her eyes.

It can in beats of four, a rhythmic thudding of…. something .

They were alerted by the dust cloud, brown tinged purple rising up from the right.

Looking a little longer,they watched as a very strange creature galloped towards them. The animal had four legs, a long snout, a thick neck, and streams of long hair flying from it’s head and rump. THe joints of its front legs faced the wrong direction.

Krill shifted back up the ramp a little ways.

The beats of the animal’s feet grew louder as it got closer, and only then was Krill able to see that, to his shock and dismay, there was a human riding astride it’s back, just casually sitting atop the one ton beast as if it was nothing bouncing up and down with the animal’s jostling movements.

He stared dumbstruck alongside Sunny as the human pulled to a stop gently tugging at the contraption which had been fixed around the animal’s head.

A familiar tawny, and black dog came chasing after her tail wagging, her ears perked.

Waffles skidded to a slow trot and began frantically sniffing through the nearby plot of plants.

Sunny and Krill stepped forward as the human, turned to look at them, restings his hands against his upper thighs as the beast lowered it’s head to sniff at the ground.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Sunny asked the commander.

“A better question is what the hell are you riding.” Krill could already tell this day was going to make him angry, “Aren't you well aware that falling off that thing could kill you, not to mention if it decided to cave your head in with its feet.”

Commander Vir pulled the patterned cloth triangle down from around his face, eyes mostly shadowed by the brim of the very dorky hat he was wearing. The shirt he had on was long sleeve and mid range blue in color with a collar, and matching jeans with a very strange set of heeled boots.

“Forgot you've never seen a horse before.”

He kicked one of his feet up over the top the back of the creature and let himself gently down onto the dirt.

The large animal turned it’s massive head, nudging him in the chest with it’s soft pink snout.

He smiled and rubbed it’s nose.

“A horse?”

“Yes, one of man’s greatest achievements.”

The horse threw its head up and down as if in agreement.

“A knobby kneed dog creature?”

“No a knobby kneed beast of burden, from the back of which humanity conquered the world. He patted it’s neck, “These guys are the reason humanity got as far as it did, at least one fo the reasons.

Krill stared at the ‘horse’ nervously staring into its wide dark eyes, sensing a hint of cunning intelligence that he did not particularly appreciate. Sunny stepped forward a bit, and the horse lifted it’s head, wide nostrils flaring menacingly. 

It stepped back, and the commander held firm, “Woah, easy girl. It’s just sunny.”

The horse didn’t seem convinced, and Sunny stayed at a polite distance.

“Commander, I must insist, that beast could kick your head in if agitated.”

“Oh I know. Believe you me I know.”

The horse tossed it’s head.

“Can we get back to the important question of….. What the hell are you wearing?”

He looked down, “This, my fine friend is the historic gear of the Cowboy, and early symbol of the west, your rough and tumble man’s man who lived rough, worked hard, and is, arguably the symbol of human manifest destiny.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

The commander sighed, “Look they were total badasses who rode horses, shot guns, and drank too much.”

“Badasses who wore heels?” Sunny wondered 

“Yes, yes they were.”

“And where did you get that outfit exactly?”

He tugged at the shirt rather proudly, “My mother made it for me, you know because that is what she does for a living.”

“Do you often commission really dumb clothing from your mother.” Sunny continued to tease.

“I have an outfit for every major time period from here to to the early Byzantine empire.” He bragged, not that it meant anything.

Her continued teasing was cut off as more noises rose up from the distance, the sound of hooves and the shrill chatter of, what Sunny could only assume was the horses. A larger dust cloud was riding up this time, and as she watched, another group of human came riding down the track. At least three of them riding horseback and wearing outfits much the same as the commander now wore. Though one of them was riding on the front of a strange wooden vehicle pulled by the creatures.

And krill had thought current human technology was primitive.

The two men, and one woman came to a halt just to their side, and looking them over, Krill couldn't help but notice the strange nature of these humans, tanned dark by the sun, their skin tough and calloused, especially about the hands. Though it was early morning they were already covered in dust. One of them touched the brim of his hat upon seeing them and dismounted from his horse walking over to shake the commander’s hand.

“I’m gonna assume your Commander Vir.” He looked around, “Seeing as you’re the only human here.”

“Yes sir.”

His voice was deep, and rather slow with a sort of relaxing quality to it, though there was an edge of steel behind his voice, “Didn’t think you fancy space captains knew how to ride horses.”

“My father worked on one of the farming conglomerates when I was a boy. He made sure we knew how to ride.”

“Smart man.” The old human turned his steely brown eyes on them looking sunny and Krill up and down though he didn’t seem all that surprised. He held out a hand to sunny, “Looks like you’ve got plenty of hands to shake.”

She chirped a laugh and took his hand surprised at how strong  he was, how rough his hands were.

Krill received a nod which was more than alright by him. He turned back and motioned to his companions, “Meet, Jack my son, and Liz y daughter. They volunteered to help out with our little problem.”

“Smugglers you were saying.” 

“Yes. We think they are some of those Tesraki types using our fields as stop points. Wouldn’t mind it so much if they didn’t keep destroying the product. They tend to land where we plant the pink orbs-” He looked at sunny, “Think they are from your planet. A bitch to get to grow here, we have to cut the soil with imported volcanic ash to get them to grow, and every time those bastards show up we lose a yield.” 

His daughter motioned at Sunny and Krill to climb up onto the strange wooden death machine with wheels. At first Krill refused, but sunny grabbed him and hauled him upwards, sitting on one of the  wooden benches. 

Krill reused to sit.

He could see splinters.

“They aren’t supposed to be in for another few days though.” The two men had mounted their horses and were riding side by side now as the ‘what krill learned to be a cart’ started up, rolling over the uneven ground and threatening to rattle his brains out of his head.

“Doesn’t this thing have shocks.” he moaned 

The humans laughed, and the head human turned back to look at him, “Don’t need socks on a wagon…..” He paused, “This one ain’t mch for country livin’”

The commander snorted, “He isn’t much for anything new. Guess you could say he’s a big city surgeon. I don’t think his  species has been without automated assistance for the past ten thousand years. But Sunny there probably gets it, her clan was mainly gatherer types.”

“Yeah, I heard about the Drev. Don’t live so differently from us all told.” beside them lines and lines of crops grew up in the distance, a never ending line broken up by nothing more than a distant building rising many stories above the fields. Massive silver constructions in cylinders with pointy tops.

“What are those?” Sunny asked, pointing.

The daughter looked “Those are silos. Once we harvest the produce, all the food goes in there for storage until we sell it.”

“So much food.” Sunny muttered 

Krill didn’t like the look of them, they appeared dangerous. Up ahead of them, the dog, waffles seemed to be enjoying herself romping about over the dirt road and through the first few lines of plants her tongue lolling her ears up.

“Your Shepherd seems happy.” The man commented, “Better then being cooped up in a flying tin can.”

“Yeah , she doesn’t get to go outside much these days.”

Looking up into the distance, Krill could just make out a slow break on the horizon. They were trees as far as he could tell, which surprised him since they seemed far to big to be here, as unnatural a species as they were.

“Are those oak trees?” The Captain asked, incredulous.

“That they are, got them imported in one of those massive fraighters. Putting them in the ground was complete bullshit, but they took surprisingly well. We wanted the two to be a bit more cozy. 

The closer they got to town the more people they could see. Children ran in and out of the crop lines chasing each other and laughing. 

Women carried baskets with them plucking bright red berries from tall growths of plants turning to wave at them as they passed.

Horses loitered, tied up on the sides of the road next to large, elegant houses in a style Krill had never seen before.

“Wow.” The commander muttered, “This is…. Wow.”

The man smiled, “Much as I love earth, you can’t live like this any more. No more small towns. When I heard how cheep they were selling land up here for, I couldn’t resist. Worked for one of those corporations like your father, and that’s when I heard about the deal going on. Come up here, farm the land and get the property for free.” He motioned to the houses and the barns, “Built most of it with our own two hands. Machinery is a bitch to get out here, so most everything we make by ourselves.”

Krill and sunny stared on in complete fascination. The wooden buildings held together by nothing more than sharp metal spikes, still multiple stories tall and with glass windows. What little technology there was was overshadowed by just how provincial everything was. People carrying buckets of water with their own two hands, polishing boots, and sawing off planks of wood with manual blades.

And despite that, how much more difficult everything probably was, they seemed happy. The people themselves were rough, but well put together, tanned skin, and bright eyes over calloused hands and straight backed postures full of confidence and pride. As they rode past they received nothing but friendly smiles and waved greetings.

Adam was practically a pampered, prim little pretty boy in comparison to the rest, and he was a one eyed, peg legged, space captain for intents and purposes.

A pleasantly plump dark skinned woman waved at them from her porch, where she sat in a very strange looking chair, which instead of legs, had skids? And rocked when she shifted her weight. Which seemed to be the intention.

Sunny and Krill raised their hands back, not sure of what else to do.

The man at the front sighed, “Man you can’t live like this anymore, not on earth anyway.”

Commander vir was looking around with an appreciative smile, “it’s like going back in time. Dam…. it’s nice here.”

“Almost makes you want to get your feet back on solid dirt?” The man wondered 

The commander laughed, “I don’t think so. Your town is great, but there is nothing like the majesty of waking up and seeing the rings of saturn outside our bedroom window, or a nebulae thousands of light years wide, or stepping out of the ship and just…. Floating weightless like nothing can hold you down ever again.”

The man shuttered, “Can’t imagine.”

“Can’t imagine but can’t forget.”

Adam’s horse tossed it’s head and he patted it on the neck.

The other human shook his head, “Cut from a different mold I guess. I’d like nothing more than an honest day’s work under the sun getting my hands dirty. None of that outer space politics.”

Adam laughed, “I suppose I forget about politics most of the time. Honestly consider myself more of an adventurer discovering new planets and new species bravely going where no man has gone before sort of thing.”

The two of them laughed together.

Krill wondered at the strangeness of humanity. Here were two men, one of them a ship captain venturing into the unknown on one of the most advanced pieces of human technology ever created  flying shuttles, talking with aliens and traversing the galaxy, while there was another human a lover of dirt beneath his hands, with no desire to leave his home, or likely even go outside it’s farm’s radius, content with living the same day for the rest of his life, with the same people, building everything with his hands, living without what seemed to be the most basic of human technologies.

And here they were sitting together speaking and laughing.

Getting along despite being so different.

Because humans can just do that.

Humans understand. 

[helpinghanikan]

Public Enemy

X-men x Reader

Sum:  Powers don’t always obey their masters. Sometimes they have their own minds, making problems and causing destruction that you’re left to deal with. When that happens, you’re going to need some help finding a sanctuary. 

an: It’s not specified what Reader’s power is but I was thinking force-fields. I just think Force-field powers are neat. 

Charles Xavier:

Charles’s office, specifically the couch, has been your home for some time. Although it has only been a few days, two at most, but it felt like years. Hours spent sitting specifically in the couch’s corner where anyone entering wouldn’t notice you right away. Reading and taking your place as secretary more seriously makes time move in a slower fashion.

“Would you grab that book for me?” Charles asks, slapping you out of whatever deep thought you were currently drowning in.

At first these little tasks he asks you to do seem to come randomly. As if he just remembered you were there and felt bad. In reality he’s probably been in the outer layer of your mind for longer then you’ve been in the office.

Ignoring these facts, you focused on your work. It had spread quickly through the school that you were open and able to grade anyone’s homework or papers. Like the rest of your current life, these were taken care in Charles’s office. A place you’ve been bent over for hours until a phone call held your attention.

Charles is a pretty decent liar. Between his history with authority and with children, he speaks with enough confidence that it’s not worth thinking about. Obviously he still had his tells, even if the person he was lying wasn’t in front of him, he still looked down and go quiet for a second.

“No, I’m afraid we haven’t heard from her.” When he starts his lie, his tells are typically gone. “Yes, we will absolutely contact you if she comes here. And, in the event of that happening, I ask that consider our relationship before deciding anything.”

You don’t say anything when he hangs up. Instead deciding that to grab that book before he asks you to.

Erik Lehnsherr:

Erik was nice enough not to say or ask anything at first. Your few items in a bag, and all your savings spent on bribing a boat captain to take you here. All this was written on your face, practically screaming that you don’t want to talk about it.

“Is anyone going to be coming?” was the only thing he asked.

Instead of a verbal answer you shrugged with a shake of your head. Maybe…

Erik uses the excuse of an escort to keep a hand on your back, around your shoulders. Even gently on the back of your neck to ask his question in a whisper. Although Genosha was supposedly a sanctuary to all mutants, you were still an outsider. An outsider who had, not only, caused destruction but just might bring down the anger of the world onto them.

“You came here quickly, then.” Erik says, in leadership mode. Sitting across from you, elbows on his knees, looking almost into you.

“You guys aren’t exactly hiding,” It wasn’t a good joke but still you blow air out of your nose, trying to force a tiny laugh.

“Then why come here to hide?” He asks.

When the answer you give is another shrug (I don’t know…) he sighs. Standing and returning with a hot cup of beverage. A kettle had either been set before he stepped out to greet you, or one was constantly kept a little warm. Either way it was somewhere between tea and coffee, but definitely not both.

“What did you do?” he asks.

It took some time to tell the entire story. Skipping too many details about the fear and anger that all came at you at once. Erik has heard it all before in much worse amounts. Only admitting that you were wanted, so many were hurt or completely destroyed by a lapse of control.

He doesn’t interrupt or ask any other questions. He just listens and keeps an ear out for helicopters.

Raven/ Mystique:

At some point you were taken to the hospital with the other survivors. The journey was hard to remember; being placed on a bed and tossed around in the back of an ambulance. Pretending to be just as out of it as the others, really just avoiding eye contact with the paramedics.

It’s nice to think that you had a plan for when you got to the hospital, and you kinda did. With all the people coming in at once there was the chance you’d be left in the hallway or an open area to wait for a bed. In the event of that happening you could just roll over and walk out. Just walk with confidence and make it out the door.

That you were now restrained in a bed in your own room meant that plan was out the window. Laying back and letting the nurses check you out with shaking hands. Just enough to check you over but not enough to pretend to be doing their job.

“It’s fine,” The nurse says, practically slamming the room door shut behind him. It wasn’t a thick door; you could still hear through it. “Please don’t make me go near it again.” He says to someone in the hallway, probably a doctor or some other superior.

It isn’t until their talking has mostly stopped that you bother trying to escape. Your restraints were soft but also tight, something that you couldn’t slide out of easily. Rocking the bed, trying to tip it over, would just leave you dangling off the side. Still strapped in but with bruises and staring at the floor.

While thinking of another dashing escape plan the door opens again. A nurse steps and gently closes the door behind her. This one was a woman nurse, so far you’ve only been dealing with males. It was likely because of the threat you posed that it had only been men. Specifically, the biggest nurses and orderlies that were available.

Because of this you watch the woman as she walks over. She was a small woman with brown hair in a bob cut, the white uniform and a smile she held while pulling the curtain around. You were smart enough not to say anything until she did. Or until she shifts entirely from white uniform into blue skin, immediately pulling at your restraints.

“Hey, Hi. Babe, I’m sorry…” You have a million things to say at once.

All the words fighting to be the first to be said. All ignored by your girl, who just places a gentle hand over your mouth and whispers a shhh. Going back to the restraints and whispering:

“Don’t say anything,” She says, opening the first and reaching over to get the next. “Let’s just get out of here.”

You quickly pulled the faded green scrubs over your clothes. Raven placing a surgical hat on your head and mask over your face was the best she could do. Raven quickly becoming the bobbed hair nurse again. She nods at you, as if to say, “everything will be fine.”

Peter Maximoff:

So much energy coming out at once has to take it out form somewhere. What was a splitting headache a second ago became a massive weight. One that dragged you down from the standing position and towards the floor. Only to be caught by arms that were not there a second ago.

It wasn’t that Peter was “harboring a fugitive,” or was “obstructing justice” he was just helping out his girlfriend. Something that he has argued about with several people.

“I don’t believe this was done on purpose, Ser.” Professor Xavier says into the phone, staring at Peter as he did. “No, she still has yet to reach out to us. To any of us. The moment she does we will tell you.”

Peter makes a face and shrugs when the phone is hung up. “I don’t see why they need her. It’s was an accident, she said sorry, I don’t see what else there is.”

Professor Xavier doesn’t seem to bother asking where you are. Peter wouldn’t tell him, and he could easily find you with cerebro.

“Is she safe?” He asks, wanting whatever truth Peter was willing to give.

“I mean, I don’t know where she is, but she safe. I think, yeah, she’s safe.” He says. Smart enough to help you vanish but not enough to know better then to lie to a telepath.

Hank McCoy:

Like a little kid you’ve chosen the staircase banister to hide behind. Either hand holding onto a separate bar, looking out between them. Your spot was strategically placed far enough away from the door that they wouldn’t see your details through the banister. As far as they were concerned you were just a curious kid. A very big curious kid.

“They” were the people Hank was currently handling at the door. It had been only two days since the incident and it’s amazing it took them this long to reach your door. Three men in suits and a woman in a white coat knocked at your door just after lunch.

Sending the students from the hall Hank took control of the situation. Never outright telling you to leave the main hall but did make a similar “shoo” gesture that he gave the kids while telling them to make their exit.

Although the distance gave you an advantage it also kept you from hearing what was being said. The men on the other side weren’t giving enough body language to tell if they were upset or not. Only one seemed to be talking, the others were moving side to side on their feet. If Hank were to move too far to one side or the other they’d try and make their way inside.

“They don’t have a right to take you, not legally or in anyway.” Hank had reassured you hours earlier.

It started to get tense on the other side of the room. One of the men giving up on waiting for an opening and trying to make one himself.

Hank’s change can happen slow or it can happen so fast you don’t even realize it. The friendly approach of a regular human at the door was abandoned the moment they showed aggression. Blue arms and baring teeth made all three jump, reaching for their hips. The woman in white, the seeming bravest of the group, steps forward. A hand reached out, but the door is slammed in her face.

Jean Gray:

Life is confusing and everyone is screaming.

At first their screams were sympathetic; they were screams of fear and pain. But after hearing them non-stop for several minutes it’s hard to feel bad. It was almost like they were doing it on purpose. Like, if they just shut up for one second you could figure what was happening.

They didn’t, though, they wouldn’t shut up. Distracting you from the indestructible bubbles creating and growing in the walls, machines and skin. Expanding and tearing everything apart.

There’s two other voices among the screaming that stands out: the first is the loudest. It’s the purest form of anger and fear that could ever be made. It was also the most annoying, if that one person would just shut-the-fuck-up you could probably think. The other voice is the only one not screaming. It wasn’t sweet or kind like it was before, it was harsh and stern. Power behind the voice making it louder then a scream ever could be.  

It was pretty obvious whose voice was yours and who’s belonged to Jean.

Jean’s voice was like that. It was powerful, it was a strict father’s and a commanding mother’s combined. If she wanted to, she could make it impossible to escape her voice. She uses this power of voice now: Where your ears can’t take any information, but your mind was burst open and unprotected.

You never understood what she was saying completely. Only that it was nice, and that it made everything go black.

Logan/ Wolverine:

More than half the population of earth is smarter than Logan. He’s more than willing to admit that, but what he did know was not to poke an already agitated bear. That’s all you were in that moment. A very pissed off bear sitting in the corner of a glass square.

It honestly wouldn’t have been that bad if Peter hadn’t compared it to the cages Magneto had been in. That was when everything seemed to become real for you.

This was only way that there wouldn’t be an absolute hunt for mutants. Your containment in exchange for a lie told by the Secretary of Defense to the entire world. That, no, there was not “mutant attack”, this was an unexplained, isolated incident. One that was now being held in the basement of a government building until your fate is decided.

“Are you allowed to smoke in here?” You ask, picking at the bottom of your white scrubs.

“I didn’t see the signs.” He says, waiting for someone to dare and yell at him about the cigar.

Instead of asking for the cigar verbally you raise a hand towards one of the small breathing holes. He slides it towards you, butt first. Only giving a little direction on how to puff the thing instead of straight up inhale it.

Smoking anything while stressed was a good way to start a bad habit. Something Logan tried to keep you from. Given the situation, he allowed the nicotine high you were gonna get from working on the thing. It was another test for this place. A test to see just how long or how many little rules he could break before someone yelled at him.

Not that he would ever use this knowledge for selfish means. It was just good to know when things would start to go south. Not that the Professor gave him permission, he just didn’t tell him not to.

Kurt Wagner:

Any pictures or footage taken of you during the incident were stolen straight from hell. That was the only aspect anyone cared about; the ones where you were wild and there was nothing in your eyes except for uncontrolled power.

No one thought about the few seconds after the incident. That instead of power there was confusion and fear. Staring at your hands and into the world looking for answers.

That scene only lasted a few seconds. Long enough for the blue devil to match your hell appear and disappear with you.

Like a child you went to bed without dinner. Although it was by choice, and this wasn’t your bed. It was a hiding place in the same building that your seekers were searching. But with a protective layer of blankets, and an extra layer of your boy sitting in front of the door, you could enjoy these last few minutes before your life goes to hell.

[365days365movies]

January 26, 2021: The Expendables (2010)

I don’t think you understood how big of a deal this was when it came out, OK? Sylvester Stallone. Dolph Lundgren. Jason Statham. Jet Li. Terry Crews. Randy Couture. Mickey Rooney. In ONE MOVIE? Some of the biggest action stars of all time, in one movie, kicking names and taking ass?

YOU HEARD ME GODDAMIT, IT’S THE EXPENDABLES!

I chose this movie because it contains multiple action stars, rather than just a single one. And since this month started off with Stallone, makes sense to finish with him! Plus, I can also get Statham, Lundgren, and Li in this month! Win-win-win! I’m pumped, no rigamarole needed, LET’S DO IT!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

It’s 2010, and our introductory villains of choice are Somali pirates! Yayyyyyyy. They’re holding hostage some shipmates, and haven’t received any money for them in a while. However, as they’re making a new demands video, they find themselves lit up by laser-sights. 

These lasers are from guns pointed by a group of commandos, sent to deliver the money and rescue the hostages. When they demand more money, one of them fires a warning shot.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

Well…after that, we get an INSANE action sequence, and some one-liners courtesy of the leader. At the end, one of the men, Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), is particularly unhinged. He was the one to fire the warning shot, and he’s about to hang a pirate, which is a little much for this team.

The leader, Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) tells him off, and he’s taken down by Yin Yang (Jet Li), who...YIN YANG??? You CANNOT be serious! REALLY? WHO WROTE THIS???

Anyway, they fire Gunnar, and head home from the mission. Lee Christmas (Mickey Rourke) goes home, only to find that his girlfriend has left him for another, less secretive and murdery man. He catches up with Barney, who’s getting tattoo work done by an old friend, Tool (Mickey Rourke).

The next day, Barney accepts a mission from Mr. Church and Trench Mauser, played by...oh my God.

OH GOD, MY WORLD’S ON FIRE

Anyway, Bruce Willis hires Sylvester Stallone for a job which Arnold Schwarzenegger passes on. And I could use their character names, BUT I PHYSICALLY CANNOT TYPE THEM WHILE THEY’RE TOGETHER. THIS IS ALL I EVER WANTED.

Barney accepts the mission, and is confronted by Gunnar, who’s clearly on something. He wants in on the mission, but Barney can’t trust him any more. He leaves, but quite reluctantly.

The group gets together to discuss the mission. This includes Toll Road (Randy Couture) and...Hale Caesar (Terry Crews). Jesus.

The mission: overthrow General Garza (David Zayaz), corrupt dictator on the South American island of Vilena. They make their way to the islands, posing as ornithologists...and I can’t decide if I’m professionally offended by this or not. I’m, uh...I’m in that field. We’ll see how they handle that.

Lee and Barney go to meet a contact for more information, talking about women on the way. And who should walk in but Sandra (Giselle Itié), who I’m calling as an Inevitable Love Interest right now...although I’m not sure for whom. She describes how Americans came and supplied money to Garza, allowing him to ruin the island and take over.

This American is James Monroe (Eric Roberts), and his henchman...STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN (Stone Cold Steven Austin). Sure, I could call him Dan Paine…but, nah, he’s Stone Bold, baby!

As tensions run high between Munroe and Garza, due to a lack of profit on Garza’s end. Meanwhile, as Barney determines Sandra’s guilt, military men come in to take them all in. It’s revealed that Sandra is the General’s daughter, and the group gets into a fight. The men are, of course, defeated handily, and our three escape before Munroe and Garza get there.

However, Sandra refuses to leave as Lee brings her to the chopper. After taking out some guards, Barney joins him...by jumping into the plane from the dock. But they go back, and Statham fires on Garza’s men.. from the outside of the plane. AND THEN THEY SPRAY PLANE FUEL ON THEM AND SET IT ON FUCKING FIRE

Is this...is this gonna be the whole movie? IS THIS GONNA BE THE WHOLE MOVIE

Anyway, they figure out that Sandra did this immediately, and unambiguously evil Munroe tells Garza to kill his daughter. He also brings in Gunnar, who OF COURSE betrays them. He’s brought in by Roberts, who BY THE WAY, is an ex-FBI agent.

Yup. Apparently, the US Government hired Mr. Church to hire the mercenaries to take care of Munroe, with the assumption that they would die in the process of the mission. So, in other words, they’re like a squad…

Upon learning all of this, the group returns home. Lee goes back to his ex, Lacy (Charisma Carpenter), who’s clearly in an abusive relationship with her current boyfriend. So, Lee does what he does, and BEATS THE EVER-LOVING SHIT OUT OF HIM AND HIS FRIENDS. Barney, meanwhile, goes to talk to Tool, where Mickey Rourke turns in some QUALITY ACTING, LEMME TELL YOU. He talks about a traumatic past mission, and you feel it, lemme tell you.

But back in Vilena, looks like they’re trying to get information out of Sandra via good old-fashioned water boarding! Yaaaaaaaay. It’s not particularly easy to watch. Luckily for her, Barney decides to go back for Sandra, out of guilt. Yang goes along with him this time. However, Gunnar’s been sent to kill them, and this results in a car-gun battle with Barney, Yang, Gunnar, and Monroe’s other men.

They end up in a warehouse, where they engage in a fist fight. As Gunnar’s about to kill Yang, Barney shoots him through the chest. With his last words, Gunnar tells him where to find Munroe. And despite Barney’s initial intent to go alone, the rest of the Expendables go along. 

Meanwhile, in Vilena, Garza now turns against Munroe. Y’know, AFTER the whole water boarding torture thing, which seems a little too late for your daughter, buddy. The Expendables storm the castle, so to speak, and they take out all of the men while destroying the drugs in the building, and…

...I am so bored.

No, really, I mean it! I am INCREDIBLY bored by this movie. I don’t know HOW I could be bored at this movie...but I am! Seriously! I feel...wrong. Like, this should be an amazingly engaging movie, but it just...isn’t.

OK, what’s going on? Right, right, Barney decapitated a man with a single knife stroke, saved Sandra, and then they both got captured. Uh, the other Expendables save him, and Barney’s fighting Stone Cold Steve Austin. Which, again...should be exciting? But somehow, the impact just...isn’t there. Is it me? Is this my fault? Why isn’t this exciting to me?

Garza gives Munroe his money back, sick of the death and destruction, apparently. He almost kills Munroe, but his blade is stilled...by his daughter’s heart? He goes outside, and blames everything on the Americans, which is totally fair. Munroe shoots him dead, then escapes with Sandra, Austin, and the money. And then, they blow up the building.

...Which is somehow boring. What...what is happening to me? WHY AM I NOT ENJOYING THIS?

As the Expendables continue shooting and blowing up the place, I slip into a meditative trance. I think on the nature of the action genre, as Terry Crews destroys three sentry towers with a single big gun. And as I watch these men take out everybody without a SINGLE SCRATCH ON THEM EVER...It dawns on me.

There are absolutely no stakes in this movie. I’m not worried about the Expendables, they’re gonna be fine! And even then, I barely know them! Nothing revealed about their characters has gotten me to root for them or even really LIKE them that much. And even then, I still know that they’re going to succeed.

And as Stallone jump-punches Austin in the face, I continue my meditation. The special effects in this movie are noticeably subpar, as is the fight choreography. The face that these guys are basically supermen is boring. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite DC Comics hero IS SUPERMAN.

As Stone Cold Steve Austin burns to death, it isn’t even Stallone who delivers the final face punch. Instead, it’s Toll, WHOM I DO NOT REALLY KNOW. And as they take down a helicopter using nothing but a single gun and Terry Crews’ muscles, I feel NOTHING.

As Barney confronts Munroe, and Munroe shoots him, I zone out as Munroe monologues, and is summarily shot and stabbed. As expected. And as Barney and Lee trade some more quipped lines, a line of Monroe’s resonates with me. He said that both of them are dead inside, and that’s how this entire movie feels: soulless, without substance or true purpose. It just. Feels. Empty.

Am I numb to the violence? Is it just that it was too much at once? Is it this month, or just this movie? And as Barney and Lee take off into the sunrise and head to Tool’s to celebrate, I...genuinely don’t care. And I also know that I won’t remember ANYTHING in this movie. And then, AND THEN, JUST when I think I couldn’t care less, JUST when I think there were no stakes whatsoever…

GUNNAR’S ALIVE?!? YOU GODDAMN KIDDING ME???

[taffystake]

So......Are you ready for the encore?

Taffy’s Take: Dark Nights Death Metal #1

Written by: Scott “Hallowed Be Thy Name” Snyder

Pencils by: Greg “Panikiller” Capullo

Inks by: Jonathan “Motorbreath” Glapion

Colors by: FCO “Fixxxer” Plascencia

So....it has all finally come to this. The finale. The ultimatum in a long saga of stories that started in the original Dark Nights, began showing its hand in No Justice, and was fully fleshed out with Snyder’s Justice League run. And it opens with a resounding boom that rivets your attention straight to the story and won’t let go until the pages run out. 

We open with Sergeant Rock, preparing himself and an unknown audience for a conflict to come. When or where this is set is somewhat unknown, but the massive futuristic assault rifle he levels to emphasis his last line says that Rock is somewhere in the modern day.

After the credits page, featuring a map of the current world of the DCU and a message that calls Death Metal an “Anti-Crisis”, we cut to Wonder Woman, hard at work deconstructing the invisible jet with a buzzsaw-like device in the literal depths of hell (Originally Themyscira) when someone interrupts her over approaching people. Said person is the flaming, green-covered skeleton that Swamp Thing has become in this world and he says that someone is coming with prisoners. And as Diana walks through her prison to meet these people, we get to see the absolute myriad of villains entombed in the place, including Joker. Once they reach the quartet, we get to meet Batmage, a red-suited Batman, a cloaked figure, and.....Bat-Tyrannosaurus. After some very terse banter, Diana is forced to throw this unknown prisoner into the pits of Tartarus. But before he is cast into the depths, he mutters something to Diana that makes her recognize the person for a moment.

After that, we are shown Castle Bat and given a backstory of a specific field within that area and the rebels who died within the tunnels underneath it before pulling back to a panel of a castle, with The Batman Who Laughs’ twisted Robins and Joker dragons dominating the structure. And then we meet The Batman Who Laughs’ League, composed of pairings of heros and Dark Multiverse Batmen. We have Harley Quinn and Dr Arkham, Aquaman and Bathomet, Wonder Woman and Batmage, and Mister Miracle and Darkfather. With each of them, we get a small question about their current work, with the most noteworthy being Mister Miracle revealing that Superman has almost succumbed to the Anti-Life Equation. Content with their briefings, The Batman Who Laughs begins to explain how Perpetua, the god who created their multiverse, has destroyed another of their universe, leaving only 8 before The Batman Who Laughs and Perpetua can remake the multiverse however they desire. Before we can hear more, we’re dragged into Diana’s perspective as the true Batman engages in a psychic link with her, trying to advocate for a small victory rather than the sweeping final win that Diana desires. As her thoughts turn towards what happened to result in the current state of the universe and her lack of memory about what caused it, The Batman Who Laughs interrupts her as he can tell that she is hiding something.

And at that moment, an explosive arrow fires out of the nearby woods and nearly vaporizes The Batman Who Laughs. Sacrificing one of his Robins, we soon see Bruce stride out to exchange threats with The Batman Who Laughs, who takes with some jest before ordering an entire squadron of Dark Multiverse Batmen to kill Bruce. While the enslaved Justice League does their best to take advantage of the distraction, their Dark Multiverse minders are quick to detain them from any rebellious actions. So Bruce is left alone, simply standing in this field to face down an army. And as The Batman Who Laughs monologues about how disappointed the brave men and women who died in this field would be at Bruce’s actions, he asks him what he would say to justify himself.

His answer?

One word.

“RISE.”

And so, with a BLACK LANTERN RING ON HIS FINGER, BRUCE WAYNE SUMMONS AN ARMY OF UNDEAD REBELS TO FIGHT THE DARK MULTIVERSE BATMEN JUST PURELY TO DEMONSTRATE WHAT HIS METHOD CAN DO TO DIANA BEFORE RIDING OFF ON A SKELETAL MOTORCYCLE AND LEAVING ZOMBIE JONAH HEX TO CONTINUE LEADING THE ASSAULT.

And now, as the audience both in the know about all of that and not in the know but hyped as hell because BRUCE WAYNE WENT FULL FUCKING NECROMANCER sits in the afterglow of that amazing moment, we cut to a single page depicting the planet Ossex as the Main Man, Lobo, unearths something from underneath the living bone of the planet.

Having made it back to Themyscira, Diana is quick to continue with the rebellion, setting off into Tartarus to see who this mystery prisoner is. And its...Wally West, with a Dr Manhattan-style hydrogen atom drawn into the forehead of his costume. And with Wally, we finally get an explanation of what the hell is going on. See, with the traditional multiverses, they are created using the positive energies that were explored in the Justice League run, things like the Speed Force, the Emotional Spectrum, Imagination. The inverse, stuff like chaos magic and the forces of doom that Perpetua wished to bring to power (and succeeded at doing) are what Wally calls Crisis Energy. And whereas the positive energies wish to create a strong united universe, Crisis Energies wish to simply make only one thing, one moment, one person important. And so, when Perpetua was trapped after her attempts to make a universe of war out of crisis energy, she did her best to instigate crises and came back empowered with all that energy. Meanwhile, the league, empowered by the slightly failed efforts of Dr Manhattan to ‘fix’ the multiverse, gathered all the positive energy they could and then, between the last issue of Justice League and Death Metal, the two forces clashed. Which, since they were basically smashing tow inverse forces together, resulted in both sides burning themselves out.

Now, that block of text could be extremely dry feeling, but it works really well in the two page spread, with the word balloons beginning to form an infinity symbol as images of past crises ranging from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths to Emerald Twilight to Dark Nights Metal in the background. 

But back to the story. With that explanation done, Wonder Woman begins to theorize potentially going back to those crises and gathering this information for themselves in order to reshape the universe themselves. Resulting in....”The first Anti-Crisis” The Batman Who Laughs interrupts with, striding into Tartarus to cut his own deal with Wonder Woman to let him take control over Perpetua. If she helps him, she gets all the people Perpetua has trapped and their own planet. And after that, he emphasizes how she can’t out-plan him, how he’s already prepared for her to knock him out, use the invisible jet she was being forced to deconstruct and melt down to give her armor that would render her undetectable. Wonder Woman is quick to counter that despite all the knowledge The Batman Who Laughs says he has, that entire plan is what Bruce would do. So he is quick to counter, stating so then she’d make a weapon, some sort of sword?

But it seems The Batman Who Laughs didn’t account for two things. One, for Diana to have already made her weapon before he showed up. Two, she didn’t need to make a sword. And so, with a pull of its ripcord, THE CHAINSAW OF TRUTH CLEAVES ITS WAY THROUGH THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS IN A SPLASH PAGE OF PURE ENERGY ERUPTING OUT OF THE DEMON WHERE THE CHAINSAW IS CUTTING THROUGH HIM!

The comic ends with two quick one panel stories. The first, with Batmage executing a final plan that The Batman Who Laughs had in place to unleash a final Bruce Wayne. Which only sounds mildly menacing, unti the art shows both a button with a watchmen-style frownie face and the final Bruce Wayne in silhouette, a glowing hydrogen atom on his forehead.

The other is a cut back to Sergeant Rock, still continuing with his tirade from the beginning of the comic before he is taken out of the moment by Batman coming to retrieve him for the big fight. And as Batman promises One last fight with everyone together, we get to see in silhouette that Sergeant Rock is missing his everything below his torso, revealing himself to likely be another resurrection from Bruce’s Black Lantern ring.

So, in summary, IM PUMPED TO SEE WHAT HEIGHTS THIS THING HITS! THE BIG MOMENTS WERE SO DAMNED COOL! THE ART IS STILL THE ABSOLUTE ALL KILLER NO FILLER THAT CAPULLO ROCKED OUT WITH IN THE LAST DARK NIGHTS METAL EVENT AND I CANT WAIT TO SEE WHAT NEW SPORES OF MADNESS HE GETS TO CREATE FOR THIS STORY! 

And while I’d like to be pure hype beast, that feels a little disingenuous when I do have some small moments that seem like they could be tweaked. Both of the long exposition scenes for the Dead Bats and the Positive Energy vs Crisis Energy could have potentially stood for another pass just to really tighten them up, but I will also admit that both those scenes kinda deserve to be long-winded. The Dead Bats to make sure that the setup for Batman with a Black Lantern Ring summoning an army at that point works and the Energy one because its explaining the entire setup for the rest of the event series and it helps lull things down so that the hype of Chainsaw of Truth can hit like it should. 

So yeah, this thing is absolutely something any Scott Snyder fan, any DC fan, heck Id almost venture to say anyone interested in comics read. None of the story elements of the comic intrinsically need you to know the backstory behind them, but there are definitely rewards for knowing DC continuity in general and Scott Snyder’s previous works in this arcing story. So yeah, I am going to sit here, vibrating in anticipation as I await the next issue of Death Metal from the Cowboys From Hell on their encore tour.

[the-omni-princess]

Blood Bound [Chapter Five]

Author: @the-omni-princess

Pairing: Vampire!Bucky x Witch!Reader

Summary: Vampires and witches have been known enemies since the dark ages. Backstabbing, secrets, and magic turned supernatural brethren again each other. As a natural-born witch, you grew up on these stories, your own monsters under your bed. What happens when one of those sworn enemies claims that you are his blood mate, the vampire equivalent of a true mate? Will you give in to this man out of time? Or destroy him for the sake of your Coven?

Word Count: 3.3K

Warnings: fluff, angst, swearing, mentions of death, major character death, talks of death, talks of a historical event with a twist

A/N: So, this was supposed to be for Halloween so Happy Halloween! Lol, this series was supposed to be done by Halloween and I think I’m like halfway through. I had two lab reports and a test today and its two am Im ded

Enjoy!!!

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[Series Masterlist]  [My Masterlist] [Playlist Inspired by the Series]

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Sleep in Bucky’s arms was virtually dreamless, which after the day you had had, was a sweet relief. Once you woke up, you could only remember a fraction of your remaining dream. A peaceful scene, you and Bucky laying in a field of flowers, smiling, talking about nothing in particular. It seemed awfully familiar. Maybe you were really- no. That simply was impossible. There was no way you were reincarnated. But why did everything feel so familiar? Like home?

The sun filtered in through your balcony, the curtains were slightly open. Cool arms were wrapped around you protectively, cool breath fanning against your neck. You bit back a giggle, hearing Bucky snore behind you. His hand shifted slightly lower, resting against your abdomen, sending a wave of flashes before your eyes. Hands. Warm, big, pulling, gentle, soft. Light kisses below your ear. Whispers of love. A murmur of “Sweetling.” Contentment. Sated.

As you gasped softly, the memory fled, slipping through your fingers like sand. Bucky groaned softly behind you, “Are you alright?” Concern laced in his sleep heavy voice.

“It was nothing, I think it was a flash of a memory…” you indulged. Okay, maybe this whole reincarnation theory would explain all of this memory flashes, but it seemed ridiculous.  “Guess, for the time being, we both have memory issues,” you teased. Okay so maybe you were using humor as a coping mechanism but finding out you had a vampire soulmate was a little overwhelming.

You could feel him smiling into your neck as he looked at the glow in the dark stars on your ceiling. “So, I gather you like stars?”

Your pulse beat just inches from his fangs, and yet you felt nothing but absolute trust in the one creature you weren’t supposed to trust. It was alarming how you unequivocally trusted this man. “I love them. The stars guide our everyday lives without even realizing it.”

“Spoken like a true witch,” he sighed softly, unable to stop smiling. “Creeks… you also used to like creeks and springs in the woods,” he murmured. “Right before a storm as the skies darken and the lights leave the forest floor.”

“Mountains,” you mumbled absentmindedly. “You liked the snowy mountains because as spring thawed the ice, it brought me more streams.” You let your eyes close, leaning against his touch. It felt gratifying to remember something. Okay, fine. Maybe you really were Theo. But how?

Bucky tensed behind you, interrupting your existential crisis thoughts, soft growling sounding from the back of his throat, sending shivers down your spine. “Someone’s here.” His grip tightened on you, protective.

“Probably the Coven, Bucky it’s okay, as long as Carol isn’t the one to find us like this.” You turned in his arms, a little surprised to see crimson red eyes staring towards your door. You placed your hand on his chest, feeling a small beat below your fingertips. You quickly moved your hand, that must have been your imagination. Vampires didn’t have heartbeats.

He sat up, tensed, hair standing up on the back of his neck. “It’s not your Coven Sisters. I know their scents, this is different. It smells like witch, and wolf.”

Stretching, you stood, “I think I know who it is, calm down,” you sighed softly. “But he can probably smell you, so you need to hide.” You glanced at the sun floating in through your blinds. “Can you stay quiet up here?”

He smirked, which sent your heart for a ride. “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” he assured with a smile that promised mischief.

“Cool, because when I get back, you and I are having a serious conversation about this whole memory thing,” you tossed the blanket from last night into your hamper, dirt and dry leaves still sticking to it from your run in the woods. “Maybe you can help me look through the books and find that spell you think you performed on your Theo. Figure out if I’m her, or just remember things she knew.”

“Anything you wish, Sweetling,” you didn’t need to turn around to know he was grinning, joyful at a chance to explore this, so you just rolled your eyes affectionately, pulling on a jacket to hide the fact you were wearing the same exact clothes as last night.

Closing the door behind you, you made your way downstairs. As you walked through the living room, three very recognizable voices made their way to your ears. Two of your three guests were expected from what Bucky told you. One of them made your blood start to boil, anxiety and nerves shooting through you. You took a deep breath before rounding the corner to the kitchen, silently praying that Bucky wouldn’t hear your heart rate spike and come down here.

Pepper spotted you first, already having brewed coffee and smiling at you. “Good morning, y/n.”

Smiling back at her, you took the mug of coffee from her gratefully. “Been a few weeks since you visited, Pep. I was wondering if you forgot about me.” You teased before turning to your other guest. “Keeping her busy, I presume?” You smiled at Tony.

The two must have just come back from their Honeymoon, something you knew Pepper was looking forward to. The Coven wasn’t quite the same without your mother hen witch sister. Older than you, she took over as your mother figure rather quickly after finding you. She was the reason your powers were under control most of the time, having taught you everything she knew.

You then turned to your third visitor, “Council Member Pierce, what brings you to my little nitch of the woods?” You gave a polite smile, noticing Tony’s apologetic smile behind the Council member.

“Simply passing through during our investigation of what happened to the Mountain Coven,” he provided. God, you always hated how calculating he sounded, even with simple sentences. Alexander Pierce, one of your least favorite Council Members and the current Head of the Council, and they all inadvertently hated you.

“We heard what happened and wanted to check in on you when we found Council Member Pierce here already on his way,” Pepper, ever the diplomat, supplied you with the missing gap. He probably forced his way into your home or forced Pepper to open the door knowing him. Manipulative and slimy seemed to be common Council member personality traits.

Rubbing the inside of your wrist, you smiled warmly, plastering the fake grin on your features. “Well make yourself at home before continuing on in your journey.”

“Oh, he was just leaving,” Tony snarled lowly. Pepper placed a hand on his shoulder, and he visibly relaxed, yet you could practically see the fumes coming off of him.

Pierce simply stood, “Keep a tighter leash on your dog Ms. Potts,-“

“Potts-Stark,” Tony snarled, eyes narrowing, Pierce ignored him as he continued.

“I will be seeing more of you during the investigation, don’t disappoint Ms. L/n.”

You gave him a fake smile once more, “Have a great day,” he promptly left, and you shut the door none-to-gently behind him.

Sitting back in the kitchen you took a sip of your coffee, letting the scorching liquid boil your insides. You could feel both Starks’ gaze burning into your head as you sighed. “I know you smelled him the second you walked through the door Tony, and thank you for not tell Pierce. Now, tell me what you’re thinking,” you locked eyes onto the werewolf.

“That you’re insane, or that you’re going to get yourself killed, where should I start?” He deadpanned.

You sighed softly, taking another sip of your coffee. “Bucky, you can come down here,” you called softly, knowing he could hear you from your room.

A small gust of wind notified you of his added presence. He placed a hand on your hip possessively, fangs bared as he growled. “Mutt,” he scowled.

“Leech,” Tony responded in kind, baring his own fangs. Pepper shot you a look, one you shrugged off. Both men were confrontational, but you knew Tony since you were younger, and he wouldn’t just hurt another nocturnal without a reason. And Bucky, despite technically barely knowing him, well, he was just a goofball at heart. And you knew he would trust you.

Placing a hand on his shoulder seemed effective, the growling buzzing off softly. Inky black eyes looking at you for an explanation. “Bucky, this is one of my Coven Sisters, Pepper, and her husband, Tony. You two better play nice,” you threatened giving them both a look.

Tony scowled at you, “You dragged a leech into your home and you want me to play nice?!” he fumed. You knew Tony was just trying to protect you but sometimes he did go a bit overboard.

“Yes, wolfie. I have some explaining-“

“Yeah, no shit!” He cried out.

Sighing softly, you headed out towards the library without another word, all three on your heels. You quickly gathered the books you needed, dropping the new additions besides the books on witch and Soul Bound Lore already sitting on your desk. Bucky took an interest in one, in particular, an old relic Wanda had found for you. He gulped faintly, running his fingers through the yellowed pages before looking up at you. Tony and Pepper watched curiously, both noting how the two nocturnals in front of them seemed to gravitate towards each other like magnets.

Grabbing the book, you most frequented about Soul Bound, you slid it towards the couple, taking a deep breath. “Bucky and I are Soul Bound,” you explained in a meek voice.

Both Starks responded at the same time.

“You’re name’s Bucky?!”

“You’re Soul Bound to a vampire?!”

Taking a chance, you gently intertwined your hand in Bucky’s, who seemed quite shocked you would do that. You were positive that if he could, he would be blushing, staring at your hand. Tightening your grip on him you nodded, “Yeah…”

Tony burst into a fit of giggles, making Pepper roll her eyes. “I’m sorry, what kind of old fashion name from a vampire is Bucky,” he continued to laugh.

“Short for Buchanan. My baby sister, Becca, came up with it,” he babbled, swallowing against the bile rising in his throat.

“What happened to her?” Your mouth moved before your brain told it to shut up and not interrogate the man with the missing memories.

He squinted faintly at your interlocked hands, thinking for a moment before replying, “Died of yellow fever when we were young.”

“Wow, we’ve known him for ten minutes and we’re already learning the tragic backstory. Can you believe that, Pep?” Tony interrupted.

Swallowing back the new wave of memories the words ‘yellow fever’ brought into your head, you opened the book in front of you. “I need your help, Pepper. Is there a way to bring someone back to life? You’re the only witch I know who even read the necromancy chapter in school and took it seriously.”

“I mean probably, in theory, that’s the whole point of necromancy, bringing life to the dead and dying.” She shrugged, turning the book towards her. She browsed a few pages, while you ignored Tony’s looks towards your vampire. Wait. When did he become your vampire? “This might be it,” Pepper mumbled, turning the page towards you. Both you and Bucky started skimming through the words. “There’s a difference between bringing back from the brink of death and actual death, but this is the main difference.”

Bucky squeezed your hand faintly, “I did the spell wrong,” his shoulders were hunched, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed harshly. Preoccupied with his reaction, you didn’t notice the rest of your Coven filing through the library doors. They visibly froze at seeing Bucky, Carol’s eyes zeroing in on your intertwined hands.

“Did what spell wrong?” Natasha called, causing you to jump with a small shriek.

“Shit! Nat, don’t scare me like that,” you glared at her. She gave you a self-satisfied smirk in response as you spoke. “Necromancy. Specifically, a spell to bring someone back. Well… we don’t think this is the first life we’ve been tied together.” That was the first time you said it out loud, accepted it. It was terrifying. Liberating.

“First life?” Maria was the one to speak up, sliding into a nearby chair, Sasha happily jumping into her lap. The tabby purred as she rubbed behind her ears as you tried to think about how you could explain this big mess.

Thankfully, Bucky spoke. “I was born in the 1600s, my wife and I moved to a newer colony, and they killed her, Theo, for being a witch. She was my Soul Bound. I… I tried to save her, but I think I used the wrong spell. I think I used a rebirth spell instead of a bringing back from the brink of death spell.”

Carol’s eyes narrowed in on him, “You were a witch too? Convenient if you ask me. Besides, how do we know your ‘Theo’ is y/n?” All the Coven’s (and one amused werewolf’s) eyes were bearing into him.

He held up the hand he was laced into, “This birthmark, Theo had one in the exact spot. Well, her’s was a scar, from when she pricked herself on needles.” He put your hand back down before continuing. “Mint leaves like her, exact same scent,” his vision started to double, and he took a shaky breath, “Same powers, same eyes when she uses said powers, same smile, same kindness towards any creature,” he groaned softly, using his free hand to clutch his temples. “Fuck, not now,” he whimpered.

You helped him take a seat, ignoring your Coven to make sure he was comfortable. “Are you okay? It’s a memory isn’t it?” He nodded weakly, looking up at you, which made you realize your hands had migrated into cupping his cheeks. “I’m right here, Bucky, I’ve got you,” you murmured, moving up to gently rub his temples as he whined. Vulnerable and terrified, soul in your hands, the Coven watched as you guarded over your defenseless vampire.

-

Laughter like honey. Smiles like sugar. Candied hearts, crystallized tears of joy. His Theo. Always his. He was a liar. She was gone. And it was his fault.

He kept running, too slow for the woman – no, creature – beside him, but he no longer cared. Running for far too long. Kill him. He deserved it. He was a monster. He lied. He broke his promise.

Somewhere along the way, a man started to run with him as well. To blind by his own tragedy, he truly didn’t even notice the two vampire companions having a fling. Peggy. She had dragged him away from her death. Now, Steve, was it?, was to lovesick with the older vampire to notice she was stringing him along. She never did like the loneliness of eternity.

Mud, moss, gross green stuff. Bucky no longer cared. That was until the caught up with him. Finally, finish this. Kneeling in the cold mud, freezing rain biting into his skin. A gun pressed to the back of his head to keep him still, but he didn’t care. He begged for it to finally be over.

It was truly ironic, he though at least, that the very judge that passed the sentence that murdered his love, would put the bullet in his head and kill him. A loud shot, and a consuming, blinding pain encompassing his head and body. He couldn’t cry out as he fell onto the mud. Limp, hoping for his death to be just a little quicker, his murderer turned his body over. Through caked vision, he finally understood why he was always so wary of witches.

Judge Armin Zola stood above him, grinning murderously down at him. “Such a shame, Barnes. We could have been great, but you and your Bound were too powerful to control. Don’t take it too personal, after all, we don’t like any Natural Born, not just you.” Tormented, and alone, on his dying breath, Bucky could only think of how he couldn’t wait to see Theo again. And that’s when the burning pain started to shoot through his veins.

-

When Bucky came to, his head was resting on her lap. He practically purred, despite it sounding like a whine, as her hands ran through his hair. Home. Safe. His eyes shot open, scanning the room as he realized they weren’t alone.

“Calm down Count Chocula, y/n explained the memory thing while you were out, and her own issues,” Tony sneered, not looking up from the book he was perusing through.

He shook his head, trying to speak but his brain decided to disconnect with his mouth. “Let me help,” Wanda offered, already sitting beside the pair. “I read minds if you would like, save your strength.”

He looked up towards Theo – no, she’s Y/n now – who nodded, still running her hands through his hair. “You can trust her, I trust her with my life.”

That’s all he really needed. Anyone worthy of her affection earned his own a moment later. She’s all he needs to trust in, his new own personal religion. He nodded towards the red witch, who placed a hand on his shoulder. He felt like he was swimming in reds and burgundies. Wanda gasped softly, lifting her hand away quickly as if his touch burned her. “No way,” she muttered, rushing for a book. She hastily opened it, flipping through pages before freezing on a very specific section. “Look familiar?” She turned it for him to see. The crude drawing looked like his Theo, a noose around her neck, the Judge he saw standing beside her.

“That… that looks like me?” You murmured softly, hands stilling in Bucky’s hair.

The man in question sat up, groggy as the memories started to flash through his eyes, the blurry picture slowly coming into focus. He blinked a few times before pointing towards the Judge. “Him. He killed me ten years after killing you.”

Carol looked a bit skeptically towards them, “Yeah but why would some witch kill you two? Got him mad?”

He tilted his head towards the pages, skimming his finger along with the words. “He wasn’t just some witch.” He closed his eyes, straining to hold onto his racing thoughts before his eyes flashed gold then red again. “He was the Head of the Witch Council.” He turned towards a stunned you. “The Council killed us because we were gaining too much power,” he reached forward across the sofa, taking your hands in his.

“Ten years… you said you died in Queen Anne’s War, and I died ten years before that. My dreams, it's chilly, like October.” Your hands were shaking as your thoughts started to pull the information together, but Bucky’s cool and soft hands were acting as an anchor to this moment.

“Eighteen. They hung eighteen girls that October.” He was starting to connect it together as well.

“Holy shit, I died in the Salem Witch Trials,” your voice rang out throughout the room. Bucky squeezed your hands gently, and you let him act as your tether to the mortal whelm. “We were killed by the very Council that had sworn to protect all witches, and you were saved by the vampires we were told by them to fear.”

“Well, this is just getting deeper and deeper. Before you know it, you’ll be telling me the Coven to the North died because they found out the Council has been killing Naturals.” Tony quipped from the side of the room.

The room froze, taking in the statement. “Well, it would explain a lot,” you murmured. “They were getting powerful, and dominant witches who don’t need as much energy to have magic aren’t easy to control.” That was the last connecting dot. The darkness in the distance wasn’t just some mythical monster. It was the very same man that stood in your living room and drank your tea just an hour ago.

-

Tags:

Permanent Tags:

@minetticatinwonderland  / @lumar014 / @maniacproffesor / @gollyderek / @nerdy-bookworm-1998 / @avengerstones / @momc95 / @loving-life-my-way / @thelibraryoffanfiction / @marvelmaree

Bucky Tags:

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@itz-kira​ / @rinthehufflepuff​ / @evilzinblr​ / @starkrobb​ / @paranoiadestroyah​ / @misplacedorphan / @ladysergeantbarnes​ / @gobemywonderwall​ / @yallneedtrek​

For a tag, just reply/comment, if I don’t see it, just message me. Tell me what you think! Literally, any comment makes me happy! Like, comment, reblog, interact <3

[dune-thedewcollectors]

The Asset codenamed the Waterseller is not a Magnate like Lingar Bewt. But there is more to this city Fremen than meets the eye. "Soo soo sook!" That is the cry of the water venders of the market-place. Havanna, our man in Arrakis, is one such member of a time honoured profession. "Soo soo sook!" The Guild has invested much in this city Fremen. A man with talents like those should be exploited. I have need of this asset's guile and cunning, my own career may profit greatly from it. Some say Havanna has the keys to the city of Arrakeen while others say nothing at the risk of death. Our man is a native of the city and knows little of the ways of his desert cousins, the sietch Fremen. They of the sietch spurn our solari and offers of Guild technology. The city Fremen, however, do not. They make for more than just useful allies in Arrakeen. No one dares interfere with them in the their natural habitat, the urban confines, their sanctuary and home. In the Waterseller we, too, feel we have a significant stakehold in the city. The Asset and his private army of assets provide a personnel of valuable retainers, informers, saboteurs, enforcers, assassins and the support staff that come with such a retinue. Our man, Havanna is not to be underestimated let alone trifled with. Regardless he has served us well and despite the billions invested, the returns have been more than satisfactory. Information brokerage is currently a thriving industry due to his endeavors and success. Spice production and secret stockpiles are a concern for all in the known universe. Obviously more so for my employers. His life is forfeit to all sides, such is the risk of the game we play. Stakes are high. But is Havanna ours to control? "Soo soo sook!" One can never be sure?

Arrakeen was a city under siege from within. Rife in civil strife, borderline anarchy and martial law to boot. The city was a perfect storm of chaos, suitable for those inclined towards espionage and tradecraft. Talents our man Havanna has honed over the last three decades through both covert and overt operations in the field. The Guild funded these, with no expense spared as aforementioned. That is not to say that others had not sponsored these same ventures too, for that is the art of playing both ends and the middle simultaneously . The Waterseller exploits everything and everyone. "Soo soo sook!" The Waterseller is part myth part fable that intelligence services across the universe aspire to, such is his prowess and legend "Soo soo sook!" He once intentionally inflamed racial tensions in alpha sector just to create riots between Giedi Prime and Landsraad youths. This provided the distraction that tied up the garrison units while his city Fremen cohorts emptied the warehouses throughout Arrakeen of the Baron's secret stockpiles of spice. That galled the Baron beyond repair. In response the Harkonnen Public Force sent their best assassin teams after Havanna, one in particular - Bravo squad. Information was conveniently passed on of the Waterseller's whereabouts. The six Bravos disappeared behind the shield wall near the village of Windsack, never to be seen again. The Waterseller never looked back after that. "Soo soo sook!"  

Our man in Arakkis was typical of a water soft Fremen. Pyon (one of the base classes) Fremen were urban dwellers despised and loathed by sietch Fremen. Ultimately, they were shunned by all. Yet the desert Fremen's treatment of the city Fremen over the centuries was appalling at best. Acts of genocide committed were not uncommon. The history of violence between the two was a tale of tragedy and woe that was passed between the generations, each one further victimised and displaced these native people of the cities. Although the non Fremen populations of Arrakeen did not murder the Pyon wholesale, it can not be said that they hated them any less than the desert folk. The engineering class of beta sector comprised mostly of Giedi Prime citizens and the CHOAM/Landsraad residents of alpha and delta constantly harassed the Pyon underclass with racial and bigoted behavior. Havanna, long ago, organized and galvanized the city Fremen. The Waterseller envisioned a city Fremen labour force as something else. Clandestine operatives. "Soo soo Sook." Here was the underclass that proliferated throughout the cities working in menial and domestic tasks, intrinsic in the day to day running of the city. From shadouts to catering to sanitation, there was no corner, nook or cranny that the Asset and his assets did not have eyes and ears on. Indirectly it would seem his power and influence was absolute. Our man had only to click his fingers for his workforce to strike. Arrakeen would cease to function. He had only to clap his hands and riots and crime waves would increase to catastrophic levels. He had only to point his finger at a person, a dossier, a building, a sector and his legion of enforcers, all adept in urban combat and warfare would seek to maim, kill and destroy. The Waterseller knew that people lived and died on his word and together with this ragtag legion of informants and irregulars they would reclaim their world. "Soo soo sook!"

‘Soo soo sook!’ Signified a call to arms or fair warning, even victory. Indeed, the Waterseller was at the height of his powers. He’d fleeced billions of solari over the years from everyone. The Guild mostly, the Emperor almost the same again, even the Baron, supposed Lord and master, felt the pinch, and not excluding Bene Gesserit, CHOAM and Landsraad all of whom also garnered his services. And there he was, in the marketplace, selling his literjons and the wet towels donated by affluent households. No one was the wiser that here was a spymaster general without compare and from the humblest of backgrounds. Still, underestimate our man at your own peril, as many have, even the sietch Fremen. According to reports, on the outskirts of the city, Havanna found himself alone,  momentarily without his security detail when he encountered Mihna youths of the local sietch. Now these Fremen were prospects hoping to initiate into tribal manhood. The worst type to mess with. Young men with something to prove. "Well, water seller, what can we do for you this fine evening?" said the lead Mihna as they formed a triangle around him. The Asset was no warrior but he was no novice either. He primed the bang-flash sheathed on his hip belt throwing it at the feet of the startled trio, a quick roll into their blind spots allowed him to position himself into the correct stance to initiate strikes. One down already, "got him, 'Vanna," snarls the hidden sniper in his earpiece. Our man is on the second, with desert storm speed and from behind, viciously stomped downwards at the back of the Mihna's knee. Snap! The ensuing scream shocked all, and Havanna tossed him unceremoniously towards his stunned and still blinded kin. Havanna wasted no time slipping towards the remaining youth, simultaneously drawing his baradye pistol. But the youth held onto his throat as if trying to plug a collander leaking profusely. Someone had already made quick work of him. "Vanna why do you insist on being the Lone Wolf at the worst times?" sighed Graham, his trusted Lieutenant, relieved that he had returned just in time. Of course, the Waterseller's legend will say how he personally dispatched a dozen Fedaykin that day alone. "Soo soo sook!" 

Our man's reputation came at a price. Such was his success and dominance in the intelligence game it brought ill upon his house and unfortunately his family. Due to a blood feud with one of the deeper desert sietch Fremen his family was kidnapped. No proof of life, their water taken for the tribe. That sietch exists no more. Havanna's stockpile of ordinance was fearsome. A small nuclear device was ignited and the area devastated, never to be entered for another fifty years without the ancient fallout suits. After that day the Asset's life changed. He would never work the field again; he would never take a wife or sire children again and for the rest of his days there remained a price on his head and kill orders from sietch Fremen all across Arrakis. Of course, the incident was covered up. The Baron cared less for thousands of wretched Fremen dead than the loss of face at the Imperial Court. That he could not control the populace and the visible internal turmoil seriously undermined his standing and could have threatened his hold on the spice contract. On the official report an overzealous trooper was turned scapegoat and quickly executed. The atomic explosion put down to an illegal firing of a lasgun on a personal shield and thus a simple Holtzman effect accident. Clearly the Baron needed our man dead too. How the Waterseller survived the onslaught of attempts on his life is a testament to his will and ingenuity. "Soo soo sook!" Havanna withdrew from overground operations and into the waiting protection of his fellow Pyon Fremen whom together became a force to be reckoned with in Arrakeen. The Waterseller could always rely upon their loyalty especially with their hatred for the sietch Fremen, which surpassed even their animosity toward the vile Harkonnen. "Soo soo sook!"  

In the end our man is his own man. And not ours to control. The Asset is still an asset, nonetheless. We have all succumbed to his demands. We tithe heavily and he profits. Havanna ignores the massive Harkonnen Public Force garrisoned at Arrakeen. "' Vanna no show for the dignatories tonight," prides Graham and beams, "the Waterseller has spoken. Soo soo sook!" My service in the Guild as the primary  handler of Havanna codenamed the Waterseller may be held in question? I have long felt the failure of the Asset going rogue. I assert that no intelligence officer could have predicted that outcome, considering the circumstances. That he duped us for so long was unforseen. That he out maneuvered and manipulated the best minds of the known universe the way he did seems an impossibility. How could we have known that when we engaged his services to gather intelligence, he was gathering our own at the same time? That we tithed so wantonly to him showed we had lost control. That we actually funded this superb network of Fremen agents completely proficient in the urban environment beggars belief. Havanna locked us out of our own operations, allowing him to create the tenuous position of him monopolizing all information thus neutralising alternative sources of covert business. He was too well protected, secreted in his city, for any termination orders to be successful. We were disbanded in bandit country. That a Fremen of low status was the architect of our failure in Arrakeen seriously underminined the stability of the tripartite of the Emperor, Landsraad and the spacing Guild. This was a travesty. That the Waterseller and his city Fremen won despite the odds, set our plans back decades, the repercussions, incalculable. "Soo soo sook!"

[monsterywriting]

Demon Boyfriend (Dirrath) - pt 5

previous part

word count: 2,423

You vaguely remember being jostled around, someone shouting ‘be careful.’ You also remember someone spooning food in your mouth, you chewing and miraculously not choking as you faded in and out of consciousness.

When you finally woke again, you were laying in a tent you didn’t recognize, feeling very much as though you’d been dumped off a cliff. It was clearly dark out, a single lamp on a small table next to you that did little to cast light beyond the corner of the tent it occupied.

After trying and failing to convince your body to stand, you resigned yourself to twitching your fingers as you tried to regain feeling in your limbs.

Pushing the limits of magical ability was a risky feat. Performing advanced healing spells on nearly a dozen severely wounded adults after an already strenuous battle was an admittedly stupid endeavor that left you completely drained of any and all energy, magical and physical.

But you’d woken too early. Really, it was a miracle you were even conscious this early in your recuperation.

“You’re one stubborn bitch,” a thoroughly annoyed voice said from the darkness in the far side of the tent just as you were about to close your eyes again and try to go back to sleep.

Had you heard a voice coming from the shadows after just waking up at any other time, you would have jumped clear out of your skin and probably activate some fight or flight response. More likely than not fight.

In your current state, however, the best your body could muster was an agonizingly slow head swivel towards the voice.

Dirrath leaned forward, the lamp casting an orange glow across his features. The shadows and your own exhaustion cast the illusion of his demonic form you’d seen in the Queen’s study those weeks ago, your heart thundering in your ears in terror.

“Are you real or is this a nightmare?” Your voice remained almost unintelligibly raspy even after clearing your throat.

“Did you destroy the last remnant of your mind when you pulled your foolish stunt today?” Dirrath’s mouth twisted into a scowl and you were too weak to even appreciate that you finally elicited the same response in the demon that he had so many times before with you.

“Don’t get your undergarments in a twist,” you huffed, your words became slurred, “I’m not 13 for nothing. Us Princesses’re easily replaced. There’s twelve others. My position’ll be filled again before the end of the season.”

“I don’t care about your sense of martyrdom or death wish or what have you,” Dirrath grunted, his glamor flickering in what you were now certain was not a trick of the eye, his eyes burning red hot and flashes of rows of sharp teeth baring themselves, “I know you don’t care, but I have a deal to fulfill and right now that happens to be getting you to the castle alive. And so help me I will keep you from killing yourself if I have to- Are you even still listening to me?!”

Had you still been listening, you would have answered no. Of course, you were not listening to Dirrath’s lecture so instead you kept your eyes closed and continued willing yourself to fall back into oblivion Though no matter how much you tried, Dirrath’s annoying voice seemed to keep you from slipping into full unconsciousness, as though he was anchoring you in the conscious. Was he anchoring you there?

Before you could ask, a hand suddenly touched your forehead and your body flinched very slowly, your eyes reopening to see Dirrath standing above you. The hand pressed down, growing hotter until the warmth seemed to seep into your entire body, filling you until you felt as though it was searing you. But just as it became unbearable, the hand left your skin and you almost immediately felt the heat drain from you as though it was never there.

“What the fuck!” You howled, shooting up and reaching for Dirrath’s collar.

Dirrath stepped back out of your grasp, a smug expression on the demon’s face as it began to dawn on you that you were currently standing.

“What did you do to me?” You demanded, checking yourself for any sign of injury or magical tampering.

Just as Dirrath opened his mouth to answer, Olek hurtled into the tent, not even bothering to lift the flap and tackling the demon to the ground.

“Are you okay, princess?” Olek asked, his knee pinning Dirrath down while holding Dirrath’s arm twisted behind his back.

You wanted to laugh so badly it hurt, but that soon died in your throat once you noticed Dirrath’s form flickering even more than it had earlier and his expression was clearly murderous.

“You can let him go, Olek,” you intervened quickly, waiting with bated breath as the two men scrambled to their feet unceremoniously until it was clear they wouldn’t start an all out brawl in the tent.

“Olek, how long until sunrise?” You asked, walking towards the tent entrance and stepping out into the cool night air.

The camp was dead, only the patrolling guards up and walking around. You made your way to where the horses were kept for the night. The saddles and bags were often kept nearby in a tent, and you quickly found your bag and grabbed the box with your tent.

You still weren’t sure what Dirrath did to you, but you actually felt rejuvenated. Magically healing wounds always left the person feeling sore, as the physical effect of the magic still expended their energy. And you had been taught that this side effect was inevitable. And any magic healing you in the state you were in very well should have killed you. But you weren’t even so much as tired, sleep the furthest thing from your mind.

“It was actually just sundown a few hours ago, princess,” Olek told you once he caught up with you, arms raised as though expecting you to keel over at any moment.

You didn’t know where Dirrath disappeared off to, though you wouldn’t be surprised if he went to cool off.

“Good. We’ll leave at first light,” You ordered, walking out to find a space to set up.

“But princess, you expended a lot of energy today,” Olek protested, “We’re close to our destination, we can wait until you’ve fully recovered.”

“That’s exactly why I want to leave early,” you replied, stopping at an empty place and carefully opening the box, “The sooner we get to this dumb castle the sooner we can leave this gods forsaken kingdom.”

When Olek still looked unconvinced, you added, keeping an eye on your tent unfurling before your eyes, “I’ll be fine, Olek. It’s a straight shot to the kingdom from here.”

With that, you dismissed the captain and entered your tent, making a beeline to the bath.

The next morning, you were completely fine riding. In fact, you had hardly slept at all the night before, just laying in your bed until you finally decided to just get ready to set out. By the time the rest of the guards were up and beginning to take down their tents, you were packed and ready to go, even having time to take another bath once you ran out of things to do.

Your new burst of energy also meant that you could enjoy the changing scenery. The fields and occasional small villages became more densely populated towns. With these towns came more people, which meant word of the convoy spread like wildfire.

By the time you reached the second town, rows of people lined the street trying to get a glimpse of the foreign convoy escorting an unknown noble traveling through the kingdom. It was a distressing sight for Olek, who immediately tightened the convoy’s formation and remained on edge until the town was out of sight. Of course, the same problem remained in the next town.

You weren’t nearly as worried riding through. It was clear the people had no idea who you were and therefore couldn’t possibly pick you out from the rest of the group.

As evening approached, the rest of the guards had become mostly used to the gawking as the convoy passed yet another crowd of people all craning their necks to see the center of the group. You were more focused on the prospect of finally having a proper meal by this time tomorrow.

“I saw him!” The giggling tone made you turn to look at the two girls that were squealing ahead on the road.

Following their pointing, you realized they were actually referring to Dirrath. Snickering to yourself, you definitely saw why the people had come to the conclusion that the mysterious noble was Dirrath.

He’d stopped wearing his helmet since riding through the towns, and Dirrath definitely had the soft look of nobility thanks to the glamor; the unmarred skin, the long, silky hair—though you supposed that wasn’t actually a part of the illusion.

But the irony of the fact that the people were gushing over a demon of all things was downright hilarious. Fortunately, they were too busy ogling Dirrath to even notice you laughing to yourself.

As though he had a sixth sense for you making fun of him, Dirrath twisted around in his saddle to look back at you, one eyebrow raised in a silent question.

You shook your head, forcing a neutral expression until Dirrath scowled and turned back around. As soon as you were certain he wasn’t going to catch you, you went right back to laughing at his expense.

Once you finally composed yourself, you began to look around at your surroundings, mostly out of boredom. Even though the buildings grew further apart, you were just glad to finally take in something other than the wilderness and countryside that had taken up the majority of the journey.

But one building in particular caught your eye, a plan already formulating in your mind, a plan already formulating in your mind as the convoy passed through the outskirts of town.

“Absolutely not,” Olek said almost as soon as the words were out of your mouth.

“It isn’t up for debate,” you told Olek cheerfully, standing in plain clothes as similar to the ones the townspeople wore you could find in your tent’s wardrobe, “Besides, the humans think Dirrath is me, so any assassination attempts will be on him.”

“As tempting as that sounds, it’s far too dangerous to go into town without weapons,” Olek said, sounding as though he was explaining to a child why they couldn’t have a toy they wanted.

“This isn’t Altruria,” you pointed out, “they were more curious than anything. And I’m sure the tavern won’t turn down the extra business if we show a sign of good faith. A bunch of foreign armed soldiers walking around town at night would call more attention than anything else.”

Olek eventually acquiesced, if only because you were downright determined—and it didn’t hurt the majority of the guard sided with you.

And you were right. The tavern you had seen was more than happy to take your gold—borrowed from the gift wagon—and serve your group all the ale you could want.

Olek and some of the older guards stayed back, most of them wary of the outsiders. You’d been given a strict curfew of two hours, and you’d be damned if you didn’t take full advantage.

Once word spread that the foreigners were back in a more social context, people flooded into the tavern all vying for the attention of your guards.

You clearly turned a blind eye, signaling with an ok sign to the guards that Olek would never hear of their exploits during the next couple of hours.

However, rather than join in on the festivities, you instead opted to remain in the corner learning to play cards with some of the regulars and get drunk.

“You’re terrible at this,” Dirrath said from across from you as you showed your frankly terrible hand.

You hadn’t even noticed when the demon joined in, more interested in your cup than committing the rules to memory.

You stuck your tongue out at Dirrath, “let’s see you do better.”

He turned his cards over with a smile, completely blowing the rest of the players’ hands out of the water. Various curses sounded around the table as the rest threw in their cards and left.

“Ugh, I thought I left Olek back at camp,” you groaned as Dirrath shoved his winnings in his satchel, “do you have to be a buzzkill all the time?”

“You should be thanking me,” Dirrath snorted, “I just earned back the gold you took from Roquechade.”

“I really don’t want to talk about him,” you sighed, sinking deeper into your chair until you were nearly eye level with the table, “And weren’t you surrounded by people earlier?”

“I’m a demon. I just made them believe Garreth was me,” Dirrath replied, pointing to the bar and indeed the guard was surrounded by people.

“Well, Garreth does make a more convincing noble than you,” you joke, not even Dirrath’s usual haughty attitude enough to kill your buzz.

“Why is that?” Dirrath frowned, looking annoyed.

“Besides the fact that you’re a demon?” You snort, looking around in hopes of making eye contact with one of the servers, “You’re hardly the princely type.”

“And what if I was?” Dirrath said after a long pause.

“What? A prince?” You scoffed, “I’ll believe I’m a direct descendant of the First High Queen before I believe that.”

“You know nothing beyond your mortal realm, princess,” Dirrath glowered.

“Ok then, why are you trapped in this mortal realm making deals to escort princesses from one castle to another?” You shot back, satisfied when you saw Dirrath avert his eyes.

“When demons are summoned, they are obligated to forge a contract with the one who summoned them,” Dirrath said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms, clearly moping.

You almost began to feel sorry for him. At the very least, you felt bad that you never considered the possibility that Dirrath had about as much desire to be here as you. Maybe you did owe him a bit of an apology for being forced to help you.

“Hey, can demons get drunk?” You ask instead.

“With your kind’s weak alcohol?” Dirrath gave you a look of pure disgust.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” you grinned, waving down a passing barmaid.

[thethoughtsfromthreeam]

Lady of the Lake

Pairing: Ginger Ale/Elizabeth x Merlin/Hamish

Warnings: None

A/N:  I plugged in the Scottish phrases into google to get a pronunciation and I’m now convinced that Scottish Gaelic is being spoken telepathically because there is no way the words on the screen are matching what I’m hearing.

Reminder: I haven’t seen Kingsman: The Golden Circle, so I’m just using the Wikia, IMDB.com, some gifs, and my own weird ass brain to make up this whole ass story.

Tag List:  @zeldasayer , @romanticgumchewer, @tarrevizslas , @coolmaybelateruniverse , @the-feckless-wonder, @lavenderl3mons , @pascalisthepunkest , @mandoandyodito​ , @randomness501 , @fioccodineveautunnale [please message me to be added or subtracted if you were just here for some Jack Daniels goodness!  I don’t want people being tagged in something they don’t want]

[PART 1]

Part 2 

Building up the Reserves

Merlin walked into the tech room feeling lighter than he had in weeks. The look Shirley gave him during their call the night before told him she meant business when she said to go home and get some sleep.  And he wouldn’t be surprised if she flew the whole four thousand miles to kick his ass over it, too.  He smiled at the thought and felt that Ginger was lucky to have such a friend.

At the thought of her, Merlin felt himself flush with embarrassment. He hadn’t meant to slip and call her m'eudail in front of Shirley, it just sort of. . . came out.  They both had kept their relationship a secret from their co-workers – not out of fear, plenty of Statesman and Kingsman agents and staff were in relationships with each other.  No, they kept it as something they could have all to themselves.  This work of spy businesses took everything from them – their lives, their families, even their names.  No.  This was for him and for her and only for them.  For now.

“It’s getting late, Ginger.  I don’t want to keep you any longer.  Let’s leave, all this will be here tomorrow.”  Merlin stood up from his chair and he could feel his back pop after being hunched over the table for so long.  He was getting a little too old for this and vowed when things returned to normal, he was getting a new desk and a better chair.

Ginger followed suit and as the two stood there stretching, she realized she didn’t know where she was going.  Under normal circumstances, she would have probably stayed at a Kingsman property – akin to staying at Stateman property back home, but they were all destroyed.  And she wasn’t told what, if any, hotel had her reservation.  She stopped and realized that she didn’t even have a cover name to register for one.

“You’ll be coming home with me, Ginger.”  Merlin seemed to sense her dilemma and when she turned to look at him, he smiled.  “It’ll be some time before we have visitor quarters for you to stay at, but my guest bedroom is quite comfy.”

“Merlin, I couldn’t possibly impose!”  She didn’t get very far before he cut her off.

“It’s not.  In fact, I’m glad you’ll be staying with me.  I find these days a little more lonesome than I’d like and having your company around would do me a world of good.”

He smiled shyly at her and Ginger was pretty sure she was going to melt on the spot.  She didn’t care about imposing on his house, she worried that she couldn’t contain herself around him.  But she found herself nodding and they headed to his cottage on the outskirts of the city. It’s only a few days, Elizabeth, you’ll be fine, she thought.

Now if only she would listen.

---***---

Harry Hart walked into the work space, breaking Merlin out of his thoughts and the two men smiled at each other.  They had been agents together since they both were recruited by the organization and Merlin was glad to see his old friend back home.  They had vowed that together they would work to rebuild Kingsman back to its pre-destruction peak.  

The arrival of Statesman agent Tequila in Scotland had been a huge boon to the organization, and he had been training the first round of UK recruits for the last few months.  But to fill their need, junior agents – some ready to rise in the ranks – had been brought over from Statesman.  But they desperately needed senior agents to support Eggsy and Harry.

“Tequila is coming down today to review the new trainees and go over the list that Statesman sent of senior agents that can be transferred here.” Harry set down his stack of papers and he cocked his head while looking at his friend.  “You look rested today.”

“I did.  Shirley Temple from Statesman called to yell at me that I looked like shit and to go to bed.”  Merlin smiled at the memory.  Harry laughed.

“Well, I’m glad she did, you’re stressing yourself too much.  We’re nearly back up to speed tech-wise thanks to you and Ginger Ale’s team has been active in recreating our weapons at a good speed. But I should talk to Champ and her about sending tech people over this way until we can recruit our own specialists.”

“I don’t need help, Harry.” Merlin protested.  The tech room was his only domain now that Tequila had taken over training and he didn’t want people underfoot as he worked.  He could handle it fine, but Harry shook his head.

“No, Hamish.  I’ve been watching you; you need help and that’s final.”  Harry looked down at his friend as Tequila walked in the door with his own large stack of files.  The three men shook hands and sat down to review everything.  After a few hours, it was agreed that Harry would continue seek new recruits in the UK and Tequila would request the transfer of six senior agents from Statesman to help with the growing caseload.

“Do you think the current trainees will be ready for the field by the time the new agents arrive?” Merlin asked.  He was doing calculations for weaponry and realized if these agents were going into the field soon he was absolutely going to need help.  He narrowed his eyes at Harry, who chose to ignore it.

“Some of them will, I got a good batch right now that can be partnered up. But there are two or three that still need a little more time.  But it won’t break the current caseload.” Replied Tequila.  “In fact, I say give it another month and we’ll be set.”

“With the recruits we have coming up, combined with the new agents from Statesman and the ones we have currently, I suspect we’re nearing half capacity.  Still, there is plenty of room to grow.”  Harry looked down at the files. “I’m grateful Statesman has helped with this, Tequila. I think we’re done here, but let’s talk more about UK recruitment at lunch.”

The three men stood up and shook hands again.  As Harry and Tequila left, Merlin went back to his desk and sat down. Pulling out his phone, he messaged Ginger.

Harry wants more tech agents here; can you spare some for a few months?

Sure, but it depends on how many do you want

Three should work for now.

Good, I’ll talk to Champ and we’ll see about getting them out there.  How soon do you need them?

As soon as you can bring them out here.

He paused a moment before he kept writing.

I hope I didn’t embarrass you last night.

What do you mean?

You know what I mean.

You didn’t.  You’ll never embarrass me by calling me that.

Does Shirley know?

Nothing yet.

Okay. Let me know what Champ says about the specialists.

I will, m’eudail.

Tha goal agam ort.

Four thousand miles separated the two of them, but for a single moment they didn’t feel the miles at all. They couldn’t see each other, but they both carried big grins on their faces as they stared at their phones.  I love you.

---***---

Despite her complaints that her staff wasn’t at the size it needed to be, Ginger made the case for Merlin’s request to Champ and Brandy a few days later. She recommended three agents that were already spending time working on Kingsman tech and pointed out that if they went to England even for three months, they’d get more work done and faster. And the faster the work got done, the sooner she could reassign them to Statesman work.  The two agents agreed with her argument and signed the transfer papers for her crew.

As they ended their meeting, Champ asked Ginger to go with her agents to London to help them get settled.  She happily agreed until he told her to take two weeks.  She began to protest that she didn’t need to be away that long, but Champ held up his hand.

“Ginger, you’re going for two weeks and you’re going to make sure your team is representing Statesman admirably.  Chai will be in charge while you are gone, and I’ll make sure the agents know to take good care of their stuff until you come back.”  She huffed a bit but nodded – Champ’s word was final.

After she left, Brandy and Champ discussed new recruiting techniques to find more tech specialists.  They both agreed with such large growth that they needed dedicated support staff like Ginger and her crew.  Once they were satisfied with their new battle plan, Brandy left to review case files. Champ sat back and took a swig of bourbon and thought about Ginger.  He felt fatherly affection for her and wanted her to be happy.  Burning her out wasn’t part of his plan and if he had to force her to take a mini vacation using devious means, then so be it.

He dialed Shirley’s extension and he smiled when she picked up.  “Shirl, I just wanted you to know I’m sending Ginger to England for a couple of weeks with some crew we’re sending over.”

“Two weeks?  You think it will take that long for them to get settled?”

“Naw, the three she’s taking will be fine.”

“Then why send her?”

“She needs a vacation and frankly this is the only way she’ll get the hell out of this building for more than three hours.”  Shirley laughed, but he wasn’t wrong.

“So, you think she’ll actually take some time to relax while she’s over there?”

“I think a certain someone will make sure.”  Both smiled into the phone, knowing Champ was right.

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 29 -- The Hypocritical Oath

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

Several minutes earlier, Pilar and Sasha had just severed every wire they could see coming out of the transmitter, causing some truly abrasive alarms to ring through the facility.

Elsewhere in the facility, there were several dozen fanatically devoted men with guns that had, up to this point, been occupied by the Whiptails. When the alarms sounded, they retreated immediately to seek out the cause of the alarm. Due to their fanatical devotion to Dr. Simon’s cause, to them, protecting Dr. Simon’s escape route was more important to them than their own lives, so they believed that many of them would likely be killed in the attempt to retreat. They were fine with this, so long as at least some of them made it to the transmitter to stop whatever sabotage had been inflicted upon it.

What they did not expect was that Spacebreather, by herself, was far more dangerous than the rest of the Whiptails put together. The majority of the Whiptails had been carefully trained to use only non-lethal force, while Spacebreather was more than willing to kill when necessary, and absolutely overqualified to do so for a person her age. They failed to understand that the men attempting to retreat would be the most likely to live another day, while the men attempting to stop Pilar had likely signed their own death warrant.

Inside the transmitter room, Sasha and Pilar were preparing to fight their way out. Both of them had the same job in this fight: keep the other alive. Sasha kept Pilar alive by immediately patching up any wounds she might receive, and Pilar kept Sasha alive by seriously injuring anyone who attempted to hurt Sasha before they managed to do so.

This was how they had functioned whenever they fought side by side in their pirate careers. This was the first time they’d ever been forced to break this mold.

Approximately 8 seconds after they’d cut the wire, as they prepared to descend from the platform, three dozen armed men stormed into the room. Pilar, having prepared for this possibility, flipped backwards over the ledge and, on the way to the ground, drew two short knives from the strap on her thigh.

She landed on top of one of the men, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. She ensured that the two knives landed directly in the top of two other goons’ skulls. Both of these men were carrying automatic weapons, both of which were in Pilar’s hands by the time her feet touched the ground. She was skilled at avoiding gunfire, having had a lot of practice. Her movements almost looked like a ballet, and none of the projectiles managed to touch her, yet.

She fired six shots from each of her weapons. Twelve headshots in less than a second, a new personal best for her. For a moment, she pondered that she would have to add a tally mark for each of these men to the tattoo on her arm, and hoped she never had so many tally marks that she ran out of space for them.

One of the goons took this moment as an opportunity to throw a plasma grenade in Pilar’s direction. It, unfortunately, would not prove to be the opportunity he expected it to be, as Pilar was fast enough to hit the grenade back at him with the barrel of her rifle. This was unfortunate for this particular henchman for obvious reasons, but since he was wearing a bandolier of other explosives across his chest, it was also unfortunate for the eight henchmen standing closest to him, as all the explosives detonated at once, bringing a quick end to nine more functionally identical henchmen.

“Pilar, catch!” Sasha called down from the ledge. Both sisters were hoping she wouldn’t have to leave her relatively safe cover in order to treat an injury. Both sisters would consequently shortly be disappointed.

Pilar instinctively reached a hand out to catch whatever Sasha had thrown without looking, a skill they’d developed over years of unexpectedly throwing things at each other for kicks. She caught something heavy and apparently made of metal, wrapped in leather.

“Is this…” Pilar asked, ducking behind a pillar to unsheath it, “Where did you find a machete?”

“It was on one of the guards we knocked out on the way in!”

They were only unconscious, but they had no intention of moving them out of the chamber before the failsafe went off, which by Pilar’s best guess was about three minutes and thirty seconds away, so she made a mental note to add two more tally marks to her tattoo.

“Why did he have a machete?” Pilar called back.

“I’m not his mom!” Sasha replied from the balcony, “I don’t really have any more information on that than you do!”

This was a satisfactory answer to Pilar. “Thanks, sis!” Pilar said, unsheathing the large blade and rustling in her pocket until she found a small, round object which she threw to the ground where it exploded with a snap, creating a dense cloud of thick, gray, pungent smoke. Before it cleared, she lunged towards the crowd of remaining henchmen and managed to cut eight throats in only two strokes.

Eight more tally marks.

She then managed to run three of them through with the machete before the smoke fully cleared.

Pilar quickly tried to count her kills, to see how many hostiles were remaining with her visibility impaired. She got through the following thought process in less than a second:

We took out two on the way in then there were thirty-six oh my god have I killed thirty-six people today no there were more I killed some of the guards on the surface this shouldn’t be this easy for me stay focused, thirty-eight hostiles total, two killed on the way in, three more on landing, twelve headshots, that’s seventeen total, then nine more with the grenades, that’s twenty-six, eight slit throats, thirty-four, skewered three more, so that’s thirty-sev—-

It was at this point that one of the rounds fired blindly by the lone remaining henchman managed to find its place, by pure random chance, in Spacebreather’s right shoulder.

“PILAR!” Sasha screamed, and bounded out from behind cover. Sasha had never been a particularly violent person, but when she saw Pilar go down from behind cover, her entire field of vision flashed red and when she came to a second later, she was holding a knife in her left hand, which was wet and warm. She opened her eyes and saw the knife in her hand was also embedded deep in the last henchman’s throat. Her hand was soaked with blood. She had no idea where she’d gotten the knife; she certainly didn’t have it on the balcony. There was an open wound on her right arm where a bullet had grazed her on the way down. This was the first person Sasha ever killed.

She didn’t have time to be traumatized yet, so she resolved to do that later and rushed to her sister’s side.

“You…” Pilar whimpered, “did you just… kill a guy?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” Sasha said calmly, “let’s focus on getting you out of here alive, okay?”

“S-serum,” Pilar sputtered.

“It’s not gonna work on this,” Sasha replied as calmly as her impending panic attack would allow, “not until we get that bullet out of you.”

‘Wh—” Pilar started.

“What kind of asshole uses a physical bullet in this day and age? Good question, I have no idea. Thankfully he has a knife in his throat now,” Sasha tried to keep pressure on the wound and get Pilar over her shoulder. “Come on, we just gotta get you out of here and I can dig that bullet out and then pump you full of serum.”

“Leave me,” Pilar gasped.

“Out of the question,” Sasha replied. “You’ve survived worse than this.”

“Two minutes,” Pilar coughed up blood. “No use in us both dying.”

Sasha looked her sister directly in the eyes as severely as she could. “Don’t be a drama queen,” she said, looking to Pilar as much like their father as she’d seen since the day they lost him, “I just got you back, and I’m not leaving you here.”

“No,” Pilar cried, “no, I won’t have you die because of me, just live your life, keep going strong, keep whatever it is that’s—”

Sasha didn’t need to glance at the clock to know there were only about 45 seconds left. “We don’t have time to argue. As your next of kin, I’m authorizing your doctor to make this decision on your behalf. You’re not allowed to die, so, I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.”

“It already—” Pilar was cut off mid-sentence by Sasha throwing her over her shoulder fireman-style with a roughness that was not by any stretch of the imagination medically advisable, but at this point Sasha felt having a living sister with treatable injuries was better than having a dead sister with only one injury.

They escaped the room approximately fifteen seconds before the failsafe went off, destroying the transmitter completely and wiping away any evidence of the thirty-eight henchmen who’d died attempting to kill them. Sasha and Pilar watched the blue glow eradicate everything in the room, just to be sure their task had been successful, and then they hobbled their way down to the room where they knew Ariadne and Sweettalk to be. Sasha held Pilar’s sidearm in her right hand. She was naturally left-handed, but her left arm was currently supporting someone who was surprisingly heavy for her thin frame.

Pilar noticed the gash on Sasha’s upper arm. “You’re hurt.”

“Just think of it as my first, and hopefully only, tally-mark.”

Pilar’s heart dropped. “You killed a guy,” she said sadly.

“You’re welcome, Sasha, for saving my life,” Sasha smirked sarcastically.

“Isn’t that, like, against the Hypocritical oath?”

“Heh,” Sasha replied.

“What?”

“It’s the Hippocratic oath.”

“Whatever oath,” Pilar groaned.

“‘First, do no harm,’” Sasha pondered, “I don’t remember taking any oath.”

Pilar laughed, which was painful. “What kind of crappy medical school did you go to?”

“Homeschooled,” Sasha laughed, “I said I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up and my sister’s nerdy girlfriend stole me a bunch of medical supplies and textbooks the next day.”

“She sounds hot,” Spacebreather chuckled as lightly as she could without disturbing the bullet lodged in her shoulder, “think you could introduce me?”

“She’s just down the hall,” Sasha could see the door from here, “just get down the hall… of course, you can’t just learn from textbook. My idiot big sister kept getting herself hurt so I had a lot of hands-on practice.”

They both laughed, and it had been a long time since they had really genuinely laughed together like this. It would have been a perfect moment had it not quickly devolved into a coughing fit from Pilar.

“You always took good care of me,” Pilar’s speech was sounding somewhat slurred.

“Hey, stay with me! Just a little bit longer,” Sasha said, “I’ve still gotta take care of you for a long time, okay? I gotta introduce you to that nerd I was telling you about.”

“I love her,” Pilar muttered, “I don’t tell her that enough.”

“Shut up,” Sasha said, “you tell her all the time You have a shirt that says ‘I love my girlfriend’ on it.”

Pilar groaned. “Half the people on the crew have that shirt.”

“Well, there’s a lot of love on our crew,” Sasha explained, “and if you can get like… 50 more feet, the girls we love are right through that door and you can tell her you love her all you want.”

“I’m gonna kiss her,” Pilar muttered.

“You’d better,” Sasha said, “she’ll kill me if she doesn’t get to kiss you again.”

“She’s an amazing kisser,” Pilar slurred.

“That’s really none of my business,” Sasha started.

“I’m proud of you,” Pilar was barely intelligible. “You… she’s really good for you… she really is…”

“Sweettalk?”

“Mgrmph,” Pilar agreed.

“I always thought you didn’t really like her.”

“I didn’t,” Pilar sounded drowsy. It was clear that even with the serum, she was going to need a blood transfusion, “because she was… cocky… smooth-talking… arrogant… I never would’ve gotten to know her if you two didn’t…”

“Stay with me, sis, we’re so close.”

“Now I could… we could be friends… I was wrong about her… She wasn’t… she…”

“She’ll be glad to hear you say that,” Sasha tried to pick up the pace a little, “but she’ll never believe me, so you’d better stay with me long enough to tell her yourself. Remember, you are not allowed to die.”

“Tell me…”

“What do you want to know?” Sasha asked, focusing only on the door.

“Tell me what… you love… why do you love her…”

“She’s smart,” Sasha said, “way too smart, and so fun.”

“Keep going…”

“And yes, she’s an amazing kisser,” Sasha said.

Pilar coughed again. “No… not that… something real…”

Sasha considered this “She’s thoughtful, she��s always getting me little gifts. This robe… well, you’re gonna see it in a few minutes… She’s deep, but she doesn’t like people to know that. And when we’re alone… she’s so sweet that I know she’ll never leave me, even when everyone else is convinced that she betrayed us to the cops to save her own skin, I know she’ll come back for me because…”

Pilar was fading fast. “Because…?”

“Because we can’t live without each other. With all both of us have been through, for me to meet the love of my life so young? I know God put us together for a reason.”

“Don’t let Ariadne hear you say that…”

“Ariadne is the only atheist I know who’s met two different gods,” Sasha rolled her eyes, “you landed the most stubborn girl in the universe.”

“God, I love her so much…”

They were perhaps ten feet from the door now, and Sasha seemed determined to keep talking so that Pilar could focus on her voice and stay conscious. “And I guess I’m not a very good Catholic, I’m pretty sure I just broke the first commandment saying that. And, uh, number five, back there in the, uh… wow, I am gonna need to do a lot of rosaries.”

Pilar chuckled without adding anything to this.

“What’s so funny?” Sasha asked.

“We’re pirates…”

“Yes, we’re pirates. Good memory.”

“No, we… I mean, number seven.”

“Thou shalt not steal? Yeah, I guess we do kinda break that one pretty often,” Sasha said with a great deal of guilt, something all too common amongst those raised Catholic, “I think we’re still good people, though.”

“You are,” Pilar mumbled. “Ariadne too. Sweettalk. Not me… I’m going to hell for sure.”

“I’m pretty sure God will let a few broken commandments go if we were doing it to save hungry and abused children, that’s… kinda his whole deal,” Sasha dropped the sidearm to the ground and struggled to open the door single-handed, “plus, you do a great job with number four.”

They entered the room as Ariadne, Sweettalk, and the Triplets were coming out of the virtual interface. With as much urgency as she could muster, Sasha called to them: “I need your help, she’s been shot!”

“You always have to prove me wrong!” Ariadne rushed over and immediately took Pilar onto her own shoulder so Sasha could get to work on digging the bullet out, “you are not allowed to die.”

“You two have been spending too much time together” Pilar sputtered.

Sasha took out a strip of black fabric and lay it over Pilar’s wound. The fabric swirled and shimmered silver and gold for a moment before the silver parts settled into the shape of the ribcage beneath the skin, and the gold settled into the shape of a bullet, lodged between two ribs, near the heart.

“Is that … the robe I got you?” Sweettalk asked. “You dork, I thought you were kidding about the medical applications of it!”

“Gimme your knife,” Sasha demanded, and Sweettalk complied immediately.

Two minutes later, with the help of their loved ones, the bullet was out. Another minute later, Pilar had taken a dose of the serum and the bullet wound had healed completely.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep 31: Joey’s Dead (Again)

Ah, it is 5 billion degrees and working has been pretty much impossible, so, lets turn on Netflix and...

Thanks, Netflix.

Anyways, time to go see Joey get destroyed by a bird. On screen. This traumatic as hell kid’s show.

Now, usually this kid’s show is very...kid’s show in quality. The animation has exactly what it needs for most children and teens to feel satisfied--and that’s absolutely fine. You don’t have to make everything look like My Hero Academia, youknow? They were not looking for an award.

But this episode, the one where Joey freakin dies, they decided to bring out their A team. This is the best looking episode of Yugioh that I’ve seen so far, and it was freakin shocking how much better the quality was. Like, I dunno what weird blood sacrifice they did to make this episode looks so freakin good, but kudos to them, everything is more fluid, the shots are composed in a really interesting way, and for once, they actually spend the time to let these characters...react to stuff.

The big twist in Yugioh, at least for me, is when it randomly decides to be quality. It doesn’t happen all (most of) the time, but occasionally, Yugioh will just take a quality swing at me and it’s like “the hell was THAT?” Not that this episode is the best animated episode of anything ever made, it still doesn’t hold a candle to shows that are made in order to be beautiful--but for Yugioh, who’s purpose was never to be pretty (point of fact, Bakura’s hair) and who’s main purpose is to sell freakin playing cards...this is a damn pretty episode. 

They just loved Joey that much I guess.

Anyway, onward for what is also the most melodramatic episode of Yugioh I’ve seen. This episode is kind of a gem. I cannot believe I just watched an episode on this show about cards where 3/4 of it was just so many boys full on ugly sobbing into their friend’s comatose body.

(read more under the cut)

Serenity, this small dot in the next cap here, has only made it to.....this part of the island. She has to now run up like 2 miles of tower. Just remember this fact for later.

Yo so...this is a stupid adult question but like who is paying for the healthcare on all these kids in this tourney? Is it just Kaiba? Is Kaiba footing the bill? I mean, it’s a kid’s show so we’ll pretend that hospitals are free (and in Japan it’s like Universal but kinda inbetween, so I’ve heard, so this would be less of a deal) but as an adult American every time they’re in a hospital scene I’m just imagining how crazy that GoFundMe campaign page would look like.

But, as Serenity starts climbing up this monalith, on the roof of said tower, Joey is at max anime. For the first time ever, his hair is drawn as like separate hairs and not as just some weird backwards anteater tail he wears on his head. And youknow what? Joey has a hellton of hair. Your hair has to be realllly long and full to do an anteater and I don’t give him enough credit.

And so after all that, Joey’s like...still up.

(I mean this is as far as I know, I don’t have Jump Force)

Remember how Yugi stood in front of one single fireball so that Joey wouldn’t take one for Mai? Now that we’ve seen how Joey was still standing after bird fire tornado--he...probably would’ve been fine with the fireball. Just conjecture, but I feel like Joey, despite not having any connection to a millennium item, is some sort of escaped X-men.

And then, like everyone on this show is wont to do, he just randomly hallucinates Yugi. What’s great about this episode is that Joey will hallucinate Yugi not once, but twice. (which will come later)

Also, this “Oh yeaaaaaahhhhh” was a super fluid animation that I might just lift because it was so freakin wild. Like it was kind of terrifying how fluid it was. In anime they tend to freelance out different clips to different animators, so they aren’t really all working in the same studio (which is why often anime will have reallllly nice animation in some parts, and then less in others, while in US studios where everyone works on everything, there’s less of that) But whoever got the Joey saying “Oh yeaaaaaaahhhh” scene must’ve been like “this is it, this is my big break” and spent like half a day making it as fluid as they could compared to everything else going on.

They also had enough time for Yugi to partially disrobe for some reason. I guess it looked cool.

Please contrast the twinkly lights and the shimmer sound effect with what follows it:

It’s at this point that Seto Kaiba actually starts to doubt this whole tourney, but not for the reason a normal person would doubt a tourney that has had several apocalypses and mass-murderers involved in it.

Kaiba was Extremely Upset about this revelation.

Anyway, Since Joey is still standing, he pulls a card, realizes it can kill Marik, slaps it on the duel disk, the monster shows up on the field, and--Kaiba either has the fastest elevator in the world, or Serenity runs a 3 minute mile because, guess who made it to the top of this tower of Babel?

That’s right, supportive Sister, here to walk Joey through the hard arduous task of basically pressing “enter” on your keyboard.

RIP again, Joey, RIP again. I mean it’s hard to get too wrapped up in it because I know he already died...this morning...like two hours ago. Like basically he got turned into stone for a bit, and then after coming back to life, took a nap on the blimpjet and then arrived at this island to die yet again. Joey Wheeler has just had such a very intense couple of days and desperately needs a nap.

But, game wise, Joey played a monster, it was on the field--what else would he have done with it???

But because he didn’t say a word loud enough for other people to hear, this didn’t count???

This game is so weird about what rules it decides are binding and which are loosey goosey. There’s absolutely no time limit, you can strap the other person to a weird wall device and throw fireballs at their face, you can sap their life energy with weird fiber optic cables, but if you don’t say the word “Attack” although the monster card is in Attack position--it doesn’t count? There’s nothing else on the field to hit but Marik himself. There’s literally nothing else Joey would have done with that card. He totally won this match but whatever, it’s Yugioh.

And lets give it up for the one and only adult in the room, everybody. Good Job, Roland. Good freakin job.

I get that he’s a butler/pilot/card referee/bodyguard, but who else is freakin there to parent any of these teens? Ishizu? Is that all we have left?

Sorry, I’ve thought more about Roland and his mysterious dodgy character than the people who made this show.

Anyway, it’s at this point that Mokuba decided to climb stuff.

Again, this episode has so many weird animation details that say a lot about the characters--and I’m just not used to this much love and care.

So another wild thing about this episode--I didn’t realize that Joey was even Shadow Realmed when I watched it through. This episode is super vague when it comes to Joey. Everyone is mourning as if he had died, and so for me, the first time watcher (as well as my Bro who saw it once when he was 13), I just assumed this is because they finally got a completely different but very good animation team on this episode. I just figured this was someone high up saying “maybe you should have the characters realistically react to at least a single death on this show where 183 people have died”

But, turns out this is actually a translation error. Because, in the Japanese version, Joey just freakin stopped breathing or something? In the English version that we’re watching, Joey is just in a coma, and it’s a rather pleasant coma (yet still my definition of a death). But, the reason everyone is reacting like...how they should have reacted the previous 182 times, is because Joey was actually legally dead.

Something they censored out to keep the show mystifyingly Y-7 although...I think I’ve said this a million times, but don’t give this show to your 7 year old. Going off of what my Nephews and Nieces like, Yugioh is a pretty far cry from PJ Masks and Monster High.

Anyway, the show goes totally all out, and everyone does a 150% more than what is ever necessary grief cry, and I think the best cry goes to Tristan although Yugi attempted really hard to steal the gold. Thing about Yugi’s grieving is that he was going more for quantity over quality, but they did a really brutal close zoom on Tristan going through the stages of Grief (mostly anger) and it was like...unexpected for a Yugioh episode y’all. I’ve never seen Tristan go that hard...ever. Tristan is usually kind of tertiary but he just came out of nowhere to scream directly at my face and I was not expecting it.

And this episode does something that I like, although it was kind of unusual for Pharaoh and Yugi--and it shows us how they react in a completely opposite way to the same traumatic event. They’ll both get around to crying but Pharaoh will take his time.

Also, we’ve seen indication of Pharaoh’s inward grief before - and it’s something they usually say but don’t show - but this is the first time they’ve actually showed that Pharaoh tends to bottle everything deep, deep down. He’s got maybe a lot of feelings about being a ghost who doesn’t have a body or a history or...anything, and him bottling up Yugi (since Yugi isn’t going to come out for the rest of this episode) is sort of a proof that he’s used to bottling everything.

Cuz outwardly, he’s just like this (and kudos to the art team for leaving a spot where Yugi’s spirit is currently crying over the corpse/coma victim)

And then meanwhile, Kaiba just has no idea what planet he’s even on. Remember that in the Japanese version, Joey freakin died in Seto’s own tournament. This would be a PR disaster, but does Kaiba...know?

(Yes, I keep a draft file that is just every single death so I can keep track of them, and this is the 4th time that Joey has died)

Then this doctor shows up, which is surprising, because I figured Marik knocked this guy out and stuffed him in a broom closet last season. But nah, it’s the same doctor, he’s back. This poor doctor who keeps having to tend Shadow Realm patients while every single person on this blimp is in the same little hospital room with him, just breathing down his neck.

Speaking of, if this doctor has been here this entire time, then why did Serenity just stay directly by Mai’s side?

They have a doctor.

Anyway, originally I thought I’d make this two parts but like...nah, we’ll just have a really long post.

Lets see how Joey’s Shadow Realm is (which, again, it is super unclear if he is or isn’t, and from when I polled you guys it looked like it was sort of like a “don’t think about it” situation of whether this is a dream of Joey’s, or the Shadow Verse)

I’ve made the joke before that you can tell it’s a dream when they’re at school but...we’re back at school. It’s the only time we see Joey in his school uniform.

Thirsty preteens rejoice, they finally removed Joey from his baggy pajama shirt that he’s been stuck in for 2 seasons. Like, do you think when Kaiba was looking at public schools, he saw that this school had not only crazy card people, but also freakin nuts shoulder pads and he just slammed that “enroll” button?

So...does Yugi KNOW that everyone else dreams about him on a regular basis? Like, does he KNOW? I figure Yugi just has sort of a weird tick related to the puzzle that makes it so people are seeing him, but Yugi has no idea that he’s got an inception method ability, right? 

And especially since this is kind of a magic-onset dream, and Yugi really wants to save Joey, it sort of almost looks like Yugi is doing this maybe latently through the puzzle? But...probably not. I don’t really know what’s happening here, other than Joey’s just gonna go peace out and play this confusing card game for eternity.

That would be my Shadow Realm.

Back at our homeslice, Blimpjet, Seto has sent his little brother to deliver all of the bad news for him, knowing that Mokuba is too cute for anyone to do anything about it.

And so Mokuba decides to radio a helicopter to save him because he’s a Kaiba and doesn’t realize that planes/boats exist. Good to see that Mokuba has finally decided to embrace his job as Battle City Commissioner and figure out a solution to transporting/hiding all these bodies.

Honestly, I’m just shook that this blimpjet is not a blimpjetboat.

Bro told me that in the Japanese version, Tristan just straight up punches Joey right near this scene, and like...that’s probably true. Bro has a lot of spicy headcanons but I can see this show doing that. (bro note: that might have been an earlier Joey coma).

Knowing that, it makes this kind of more funny because Yugi is so absorbed in The Crying that I guess he didn’t notice that whole thing go down with Tristan.

I guess they wanted a throwback to S1, but this episode is so extra that Yugi very nearly stops playing cards. Nearly. He’s still gonna play cards, but I guess as a symbol to show that he’s starting to give into just not playing this game anymore, Pharaoh actually takes this weird contraption off his arm.

To do so he has to like remove the battery or something. I didn't even realize what he was doing because it was so un-intuitive, but you have to pull out this 4 inch battery from the back in order to remove the disk.

Can you imagine!???? Can you imagine wearing this thing in real life and shoving a 4 inch 2 lb battery in and out of this hulking thing every time you had to use the toilet?

Which...I guess they haven’t been, right? Like I shouldn’t go down that avenue but like...they haven’t been, right? There are just so many germs on this disk.

And so Pharaoh decides it’s finally time to lose it, maybe because Yugi wants to give up cards, or maybe because there’s no one else around so it’s finally fine for him to shed a masculine tear or two, but it took him I want to say like 20 more minutes than Yugi to finally react to all this.

And then this happens?

Anyway, remember Ishizu’s Millennium Necklace (not to be confused with the Millennium Puzzle with is also a Necklace, which Yugi also has, but he only wears one, because he just doesn’t feel like wearing 2 chokers at once, I guess)

Apparently the reason that Yugi was given the necklace was to get this one vision of the future. Get ready for it, the entire fate of the world rested on Pharaoh getting this one vision.

Yes, the answer was indeed, cards.

On the other end of the blimpjet, Mokuba I guess got tired of Roland’s poor radio skills and has decided to use the radio himself while Roland kind of just stands there and waves his arms around.

Straight up, does Mokuba have a Ham license? Are the Kaiba’s Hams? So like, Bro and I made Ham radio parts as a part time out of college and while I don’t have a license, it just really intrigues me that these boys do and I really wonder if they ever check into the emergency net and do Ham contesting when they aren’t throwing cards around. Ham people are like...really into their rigs so if you had Kaiba money, your rig would reach the curvature of the Earth.

Also, I kinda just assumed that they’re still in Japan, since Japan has a lot of islands connected to it, and the Kaiba Island does look man-made, but...is it not? Why place this factory in the middle of nowhere if you aren’t actually building a merc-for-hire program like Metal Gear? Like I know we just talked about how Gozobura Kaiba was basically Big Boss, but like...was this island made by Master Miller? Why is it in the middle of the ocean???

Big Boss had a reason to build in the sea, because he didn’t actually align with a country, so he had to be in international waters, but Gozobura Kaiba’s company is Japanese, so why go through all the trouble of--whatever I shouldn’t think about it.

So yeah, they’re too far away to radio to Japan although...that doesn’t make sense to me since why would you build a manufacturing plant so far away from your biggest buyer? But plot. Plot reasons, it had to happen this way.

And then this scene happened and it was...SO MUCH.

THIS WAS SO MUCH.

THIS SCENE WAS JUST SO FREAKIN AWKWARD.

Like it may not come through with the caps but this scene was made up to be extremely serious. The music was swelling, Pharaoh was pausing by Joey’s bedside as if to give a speech. The writers were expecting tears to come out of my face when Pharaoh did..........this

Wʜᴏ ᴡʀᴏᴛᴇ ᴛʜɪs.

Y’all I was DYING.

I had to stop the episode and just like...recover. We had to rewind so I could watch this scene twice. I could not stop laughing at the idea that the writers were like “lets take this very serious and heavy content and then make it super emotional and meaningful by SLAPPING A DUEL DISK ON IT.” 

And what makes this scene even better is that like--barely anyone said ANYTHING after Pharaoh did this. He waltzed in there, did this insane thing, and then just waltzed out as if this was completely normal.

What the hell!?!?

And so while I am kind of reeling from Pharaoh just slapping a duel disk onto Joey like it’s a badge of honor and Joey was shot in the line of duty, suddenly--out of nowhere--Tea felt like reminding us that many episodes ago it was super hinted that these two might actually be approaching a relationship.

And so Tea decides to beg Yugi to stop and stay behind as if she’s a wife watching her husband like march off to the front lines or something. It was so melodramatic and just came out of NO WHERE.

Thankfully, as is this show’s custom, every time it looks like this ship might happen, every other available boy on the show must appear out of nowhere to cockblock the situation.

This episode is a lot of watching Pharaoh try his best to navigate a bunch of very delicate and intense social situations and he does so with the elegance and sensitivity of a bologna sandwich.

This shot of Kaiba on top of the tower ps was so freakin rediculous. This show just knows what it is and goes for it. Completely unashamed. I think that’s what I like most about anime--it has absolutely no shame to just be...waaaay too much.

...why THIS episode? Who was it that worked overtime for months and months just to make this one Yugioh episode look so shiny and nice?

And so the episode ends there, and probably all the character development we’ll have for the rest of the season. I cannot believe they gave me that much content in one episode. Damn.

I’m assuming next episode will be entirely cards and I’ll have like 5 caps of content.

Anyway if you just got here, this is a handy link to read these from the beginning.

[mrsrcbinscn]

BDRPWriMo Task #28 - Closet

BDRPWriMo Task #28: Your character’s closet! Or, 15 iconic Franny Robinson outfits 

1-4. Franny’s (four) wedding dresses

Cornelius and Franny’s wedding was heavily influenced by Cambodian wedding traditions. [read here and here, later I’ll post a full HC post about what Khmer traditions they followed and how, and which ones they forwent - like obviously Neil didn’t pay a dowry for Franny] 

A traditional Cambodian wedding is comprised of many ceremonies, music, meals, gifts, and guests lasting for three days and three nights. Cambodians choose the number three because of its relation to “three jewels” of Buddhism: the Buddha, the Sangha, and the Dhamma. So Neil and Franny’s wedding ceremonies lasted three days, only family and close friends were invited to the majority of the ceremonies, with the Actual Wedding and reception happening on day three. 

Neil paid for all of her mother’s surviving (post Khmer Rogue years) siblings and extended family to fly in from Cambodia if they’d remained there, or from the other countries they’d been resettled as refugees to. For some of her siblings and cousins, the lead up to the 2002 wedding was the first time Sophea “Sophie” had seen them since before the fall of Phnom Penh in April 1975. 

They wore traditional Khmer wedding costume for all three days, but Franny changed into a Western style dress shortly after the first dance.

Day 1

Day 2 

Day 3 - The Actual Wedding

Apart from her wedding, she has four aesthetics:

Stage

#vintage

Professional pencil skirts and pantsuits

Dress to DEPRESS

5. Nature Dress

Franny wore this nature scene dress when she accepted her most recent Grammy award.

6. “Who’s This Farmer’s-Wife-Lookin’ Girl?”

... was the first thought Atlanta Jazz Festival 2005 festival goers had when Franny Robinson stepped onstage in a dress and boots straight from her closet.

“I didn’t have things like stylists or sponsored outfits back then,” said Robinson in a 2014 interview. “I’d already made a bit of splash as far as songwriting went; by then I’d had full or partial credit for writing and-or composing twenty-two songs. Mind you, I’d only graduated from NYU with my Bachelors’ in ‘02, and finished my Masters’ in England in ‘04. But as a singer, I had only released an EP and featured on other singers’ tracks. I wasn’t, you know, Franny Robinson yet. The 2005 Atlanta Jazz Festival was the first in a series of test runs.”

When asked why the Atlanta Jazz Festival when she was already living in England at the time, Robinson answered, “Atlanta is my home. The jazz festival was one of my favorite things about growin’ up here, so I wanted to launch my music career here.”

To this day, the outfit remains one of the most iconic Franny Robinson looks. Instagram captions of fans wearing similar outfits often read “channeling my inner Franny Robinson today.”

7. Baby Pink Cherries

In 2009, Franny and her lifelong friend and song-writing partner, bluegrass and folk singer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Maitland (fc: Martin Sensmeier), formed the duo Dara & Danny. 

From an article:

Robinson and Maitland have known each other since middle school, when Maitland moved to her small town outside of Atlanta from Alaska. They started out as fiercely competitive rivals before Maitland proposed they marry their talents and begin playing music together. It was a match made in music heaven. 

Even when Franny went to NYU and Daniel went to East Tennessee State [the only university with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music Studies, which he holds], they remained in steady contact and spent their summers at home playing and writing together. The first few years of their music careers were spent breaking into their respective primary fields - jazz music for Franny, bluegrass and folk for Daniel - and coming together to write music and lyrics for each other.

It was again Maitland who proposed they perform together, this time, professionally. 

Dara & Danny, a duo made up of jazz musician and bluegrass musician, flirts with jazz music but is primarily influenced by bluegrass, folk, and indie rock a la Rilo Kiley. 

“Dara & Danny is where I get to explore the music besides jazz that made me. I grew up in rural Georgia, bluegrass, country, folk music, that was all around me. And I loved it. I love all music,” Robinson said. “Like, I love hip-hop. My husband got a crash course in Outkast and the rest of the Atlanta hip-hop legends when we started seeing each other.” 

The pink cherries dress was worn at the 2010 CMAs when Dara & Danny performed. They weren’t nominated for anything that year, but were super jazzed to have been invited to perform.

Dara & Danny, funnily enough, has been Franny’s most commercially successful project. Meaning, tracks have featured in movies, tv, and its what gets the most radio play. Her work in jazz is more highly critically acclaimed, and she is much more prolific with composing jazz music than anything else, but there are more people who first discover her through Dara & Danny that then find out she’s a world class jazz musician than the other way around.

8. Met Gala 2018

You know, the Catholic-themed one. She wore a dress depicting Adam and Eve.

9. National BIcon Franny Robinson

Franny is known for not changing gender pronouns when she sings songs originally performed by men. Prior to her coming out as bisexual in 2017, Franny dodged the questions by simply saying, “That’s how the song was written.”

In 2018 she appeared in a 1940s aesthetic music video for a song by her friend, fellow jazz singer, and out lesbian Lora Lopez. Franny starred as her love interest. There was seduction, there was making out, there was stealing from men. It was so gay. 

The ‘Making Of’ video is hilarious because Lora kept laughing every time she grabbed Franny and kissed her because the first time she grabbed Franny she was like “oh my god I’m sorry, was that too rough?” and without thinking Franny went “you’re good, I like it rough, you can make it real kinky and slap me if you want.” Because that’s the kind of jokes Franny makes. And for like five takes Lora could not stop laughing when she grabbed her and kissed her.

10. Seoul Hanoi’d at Glastonbury 2016

Franny’s second most active music project - apart from her constant solo work - after Dara & Danny is Seoul Hanoi’d, the best pun I have ever made in my life. She is a founding member and co-lead singer of the band. Seoul Hanoi’d is a genre-bending performance group entirely made up of Asian-diaspora singers and musicians whose main careers are in various genres.

[I’ll make a full hc post about Seoul Hanoi’d later, too!]

The name, a pun on ‘so annoyed’ comes from the capital of South Korea and a city in Vietnam. Seoul Hanoi’d currently consists ethnic Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Mongolian, Kazakh, Chinese, Nepalese, and Thai diaspora who rotate out for live shows as their schedules permit. The "core” members are almost all at every performance. Of the core members, Franny is absent the most however, because of her wildly busy schedule. She has a hand in composing almost every original song, arranging most of the covers, writing a huge chunk of their lyrics, and is the common thread between most of the other musicians, so she is considered the leader of the group.

Franny wore this outfit during their set at Glastonbury 2016, their first year performing there.

11. Swynlake Adult Prom 2019

The Gatsby-themed one? That was Franny’s JAM. She killed it with her art deco dress!

12. Postmodern Jukebox

Franny’s been featured in a Postmodern Jukebox video, and wore this green velvet dress.

13. Twinning Pink Ao Dai at a Vietnamese Festival with a Vietnamese Friend

The co-lead singer of Seoul Hanoi’d is a Vietnamese-American named Vanessa Pham. Franny and Vanessa met when they were students at NYU through their involvement with the university’s Asian Student Union. Franny, a jazz studies and musical theater performance double major from Georgia, and Vanessa, an engineering student from Texas, found that they had a lot in common.

They were both the only daughters of war refugees who came to the United States in the 1970s. They were both from the South. Franny even spoke Vietnamese almost as well as Vanessa, as she spent her first four years living with her mother in the home of a Vietnamese couple who’d taken her mother in when she was pregnant with her. In both Franny’s hometown in Georgia and Vanessa’s in Texas, the small Vietnamese and Cambodian diaspora groups were very interconnected, so each other’s culture was almost as familiar to them as their own. 

They both liked to put bacon in their cheesy grits and put hot sauce on their rice when their moms weren’t looking. They both loved authentic Chinese food as much as the next self-respectin’ first-generation gal, but they also could put away some crab rangoons because cream cheese was truly king. They both could absolutely destroy their older brothers in a fight. They both knew all the worlds to every Dolly, Tanya Tucker, and Dixie Chicks song, but also found their parents’ old Khmer or Vietnamese music comforting.

Franny could count on one hand the number of other Cambodian students she’d met in her time at NYU, so even meeting Vietnamese Vanessa who knew how to order in hesitant, broken Khmer at the Cambodian restaurant they found was exciting. More than that, Vanessa was hilarious! And smart! And such a good, loyal friend. She had a hidden talent as a singer and wanted to do music like Franny, but her parents made her go into STEM for ‘job security.’

Vanessa graduated with her engineering degree and went on to get her masters’, but after working as an engineer for four years she quit to pursue music. It was shortly after she took the leap that Franny approached her to form Seoul Hanoi’d. 

On Franny’s Instagram, there’s a picture of her and Vanessa wearing matching pink ao dai at a Vietnamese culture festival earlier in 2019 with the caption, “Thank you for sharing your beautiful voice, laughter, and culture with me for twenty years and counting!”

“What I love the most about Asian cultures is just how many of them there are.” Robinson said in a 2019 interview. “I love when my Desi friends are like ‘hey! be my plus one at this wedding!’ and they invite me to wear their traditional clothing while celebrating with them. I love learning new Vietnamese phrases from my friends. I’m always so honored when I’m invited to participate in my friends’ cultures, because I know when I invite somebody to Cambodian New Year events, or a traditional wedding, its because I trust them to appreciate this important part of me and participate respectfully. Our cultures are so diverse, and beautiful, and vibrant!”

There’s a similar picture of Vanessa and Franny together at a Cambodian New Year celebration, where Vanessa’s wearing traditional Khmer clothing with Franny.

14. Plaid Dress

Franny wore and performed in this dress at the 2011 International Bluegrass Music Awards when Dara & Danny won the New Artist of the Year, and Song of The Year.

15. That Kickass Outfit

Franny wore this outfit when she attended and performed at the 2015 BRIT Awards, and won Best International Female Solo Artist.

[lovemesomesurveys]

If you were given three things to make you happy, what would these be? Good health (mentally and physically) is really what I would need, but money and a beach home would be nice, too. How would you rank the following in importance: family, career, love life? Family is first and foremost. I’m struggling to rank the other 2. I’m unable to work right now, plus I have no idea what I’d want or could do. It’s not something I’m thinking about right now or actively seeking. Same with my love life, which is currently completely non-existent. I’m not actively seeking that either right now. It’s best for me right now to be single and I’m pretty fine with that at this time. Which would you prefer: having a baby without a partner or a partner without a baby? Partner without a baby. What was your experience about being “mansplained,” and what did you do about it? I’ve dealt with know-it-alls and condescending people, both men and women.   Who was your favorite cartoon character when you were a kid? Hm. Not sure about cartoon character, but I was obsessed with Barney.

Do you think God is real, and why? Yes. Do you believe in giving people second chances, and why? Yeah, generally. In some cases I’ve probably given too many. How would you describe your first crush? I was 9 years old, I really don’t remember much. Do you ever keep a journal? I used to keep physical journals in middle school and early high school, but now this is my journal. Do you think people fall in love because the right person has arrived, or because the time is right (regardless of whom the person is that they fall in love with)? I believe the person themselves is the main thing, but timing does play a role. How do you feel about the #MeToo movement? I think it’s extremely important to speak up and out about sexual harassment and assault. What do you look for in a relationship? Someone who is patient, understanding, caring, and kind is very important. A good sense of humor, too. What is your idea of a perfect date? Just being with the person somewhere where we’re able to talk and enjoy each other’s company. Food and coffee at some point, too. ha. What legacy do you want people to remember about you after you’re gone? I don’t know. I haven’t done anything memorable thus far.

”When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done. Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed. And don’t resent me. And when you’re feeling empty, keep me in your memories, leave out all the rest.” Have you ever asked a guy out on a date? No. What was the most important lesson you’ve learned from your past relationship? Don’t allow someone to play or use you. What book influenced you the most? The Bible. What life-changing event have you experienced? There’s been a few, starting with the one that made me a paraplegic at just 7 months old.  What’s a deal-breaker for you in a relationship? I’d like to think abuse would be. Are you a morning or a night person? I’m barely a person, my guy. How important is trust in a relationship? Extremely. I don’t see how you could have one with someone you don’t even trust. How do you feel about infidelity? I don’t feel great about it. Do you believe that the day will arrive when humans will be replaced by machines in almost all aspects of life? In some ways that’s happened. For example, at the lab office I go to to get blood work done, there aren’t any receptionists at the desk. There’s like an iPad to sign or check in and that’s it. Then of course an actual person calls you back to do the blood work, but yeah. Some fast food places you can order on a machine. Oh, and aren’t there those Amazon grocery stores or something that doesn’t have any registers, checkouts, or cashiers? What do you think is humankind’s greatest invention? There’s been far too many to think of what the greatest one of all would be. Do you think that humans are doing more harm than good to the planet? Definitely. What is your take on telepathy? I don’t believe in it. I think some people can communicate with people they’re really close to with a look or something, or know someone so well that they have a good idea what they might be thinking or feeling, but that’s all it is. What is your favorite workout routine? I don’t workout. Would you rather be called vain or insecure? I mean I am insecure, so.  What important lesson did a close relative teach you? It’s too late to get that deep.

What part of your body do you find attractive? None of it. Which would you choose to be: law-abiding citizen or rule breaker, and why? I consider myself to be more of a law-abiding citizen, but I’m not perfect. What is your ideal vacation? Somewhere with a beach. What superpowers did you wish you had when you were a kid? Teleportation.  Are you a mountain or a beach person? I enjoy both, but the beach is my absolute favorite. What mythical animal do you resonate with, and why? I don’t resonate with any of them. Which member of your family do you feel closest to, and why? My mom and younger brother. Who do you consider your best friend in your workplace? I don’t have a job. What three adjectives would describe you? Blah, blah, and blah. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you choose? Somewhere where it doesn’t have long, miserable summers like where I live now. What are you passionate about in life? :/ What quality in a person do you fall in love with? There’s a few things. Have you had your heart broken before? Yes. What is your take on astrology? I don’t believe in it. What is your life’s soundtrack? Uhhh. When was the last time you spoke with a classmate from high school? It’s been years. Well, apart from “liking” someone’s status on Facebook, maybe a comment now and then, but that’s the extent of it. Are you left- or right-handed, and would you want to switch? Right handed.  What subject were you good at in high school? English and Spanish. What was the most memorable experience you had in elementary school? Some of the teachers and friends I had, field trips, book buddies, field days (the last of school where we did various activities), square dancing in 4th grade (I don’t understand why that was a thing...) the Oregon Trail game... Do you find it difficult to admit that you are wrong, and why? I’m first to admit I’m wrong and always take blame for everything. Do you get excited or scared when meeting new people? I’m very shy and awkward.  What is your secret hobby that others would consider weird? Maybe listening to ASMR. *shrug* How do you cope with stressful situations? Not well. Is there anything that you would like to change about yourself? A lot of things. What musical instrument do you know how to play? None anymore. Who or what inspires you? I haven’t felt inspired in a long time. Which would you prefer in a romantic partner: a dreamer or an achiever? An achiever. What is your favorite part of a house, and why? My bedroom, it’s where I spend majority of my time. Who is the fictional character who closely resembles you in terms of attitude? Hmm. When you were a kid, what did you say you wanted to be when you grew up? A teacher. What was the title of the first movie you watched in a movie theater? I don’t recall what the first movie was, but the first one that always comes to mind is Stuart Little for some reason. And the Rugrats movie. I know those aren’t the first ever, though. When was the last time you slept outdoors? I never have unless you count napping a bit at the beach. What is something that you are proud of about yourself? I don’t feel proud of anything about myself right now. What song do you often sing in the shower? >> Whatever’s playing on my Spotify. <<< Same. I have a whole shower playlist, actually. What do you feel is the right age for people to get married? When they feel it’s right, I guess, as long as they’re both consenting adults. Personally; though, I think 18 is way too young even though they’re legal adults, but that’s just me. What would be your super villain name and your powers? I don’t know. What three non-electric or non-automatic items would you take on a deserted island? Water, a book, and my medicine. That would really, really suck not to have a phone, though... of course being on a deserted island at all would really, really suck, ha. If “hello” were to be replaced by another word as a greeting, what word would that be? ”Hey.” lol. What is the weirdest thing that your family does together? I don’t know? What was the most embarrassing thing that you’ve done for a friend? Nothing comes to mind at the moment. What task would you really fail at doing? A lot of things. What is your definition of a “perfect life”? No such thing in this life, but good health would be pretty great. What would be the title of the movie showing your life from birth up to present? Yikes. Ha, that could work as a title. What fashion piece would you invent for women? I have no idea. What is the single most important thing people should do for the planet? Not trash and destroy it. How do you define evil, and do you believe that a person can be evil? I believe serial killers, rapists, and abusers are pretty evil. What do you think are the two things that prevent people from realizing their dreams? I don’t know. Would you lay down your life for someone? Yes. What word or term do you wish to know the meaning of? >> I mean, if such a word existed, I’d just type it into google and bam! knowledge. <<< lol true. What makes you nostalgic? A lot of things. Do you believe that each of us has a soul mate? I don’t know. How would you live your remaining days if you found out you had only a week to live? Blah. Do you listen to other people’s advice, or do you prefer figuring things out yourself? Really depends. What is your favorite motivational quote? I don’t have one. Imagine that you are tasked to re-design society - what changes would you make? I absolutely would not want to be assigned that task. What’s the perfect day for you? A day at the beach. Would you wait for the sun to rise or for it to set, and why? Set. I can’t stay up late enough to see it rise anymore. If you were born in another era, when would that period in history be and why? I like that I grew up in the 90s. Have you made someone cry? Not intentionally or to be mean, but yes. What is the most astonishing act that a person can do for you? Uhh. What is more important: being true to yourself regardless of who gets hurt or considering the consequences of your actions on other people’s lives? >> I think one can consider the consequences of one’s actions on others without turning into some kind of self-less yes-man. Being true to oneself doesn’t at all mean “fuck everyone else”, and I really don’t know why those two concepts get conflated so much. <<< Well put. I agree. If you die tonight, would you pass away fulfilled or unsatisfied with life? I guess it wouldn’t matter. Thanks for ending with this, though....