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bylertruther · 2 years

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sitting here wondering what they're gonna do with the mind flayer next season considering we were told that vecna was his top general and how that plays into everything and so far here's what's bouncing around my head:

overall:

everything has been vecna's doing thus far, because it was his job to give the mind flayer entry into our world and form a bridge between them (see: the rifts). this would explain why he wasn't panicked or fussed at all over being attacked, claimed that they hadn't won/there's no stopping this, and that this was only the beginning. everything that we've seen so far has been act one of vecna and the mind flayer's master plan.

the mind flayer is going to materialize as the thessalhydra that nancy saw in vecna's vision and THAT'S when shit is ACTUALLY going to get real. we thought that we'd seen the mind flayer's might before, but we haven't seen anything like it yet. monsters as crazed and aggressive as the ones from the prison and the flesh monster from season three will start to breach the rifts and that's when "the beginning of the end" starts. it'll be an all out war man vs monsters style. the details are muddy, but it likely won't be enough to just close the gates anymore. it's either too late for that or they can't get anywhere near it without being torn to shreds.

this is at first of course, because the duffers have said that we pick up in season five right where we left off and i have a feeling that things will start to breach the gate either immediately or really, really early into the season.

still, they will have to close the gates somehow eventually. aside from the one opened by the russian machine, all of the gates (to my knowledge) have been opened due to darkness (trauma, pain, guilt, and fear): eleven and vecna's first fight, eleven being forced to make contact with the demogorgon, vecna kidnapping will, and the four curses that created the rifts.

naturally, the only way to close these gates will be with light (love, acceptance, hope, and solidarity). we've seen this before when eleven thought of her mother while closing the gate in season two with hopper by her side to protect and support her, so the evidence is right there. it's going to be a group effort as it always is, but will is the light and he always has been, and he's also vecna's narrative foil + the only one still cursed ("every ending has a beginning" "it was always you") + the missing tool to vecna's plan to remaking the world (the upside down turned into hawkins when will arrived and is stuck on that same day), so he's probably going to be what closes them or severs the connection.

mike is obviously going to be in trouble, too. his proximity to will, his history of always foiling their plans and finding their weaknesses and how to exploit them, and his previous close calls with death lead to a perfect "third time's the charm" situation. mike is also one of the only other people to have been in direct contact with vecna/the mind flayer (the hospital, the shed, and the battle of starcourt). i don't know if they'll play into the whole "true sight renders you immune to illusions" thing, and feel free to correct me if i'm wrong on that as always, but regardless mike has always been able to pull will back to earth, so they're definitely going to do something with that and him as that obviously won't be a good thing for our bad guys. also, it plays into the "without heart, we all fall apart" thing. i think him injuring his leg would be a cool callback to the tunnel scene in season two, but who knows... maybe he'll injure his arm as a callback to the season three campaign? we'll see. he's definitely getting a sword or some other melee weapon, though, as that seems to be his go-to and what he's always given.

as for the mind flayer:

i'm unsure as to whether they'll give it a moral compass or make it a neutral entity, but i lean towards the latter. vecna tells eleven that the upside down was unspoiled by mankind and that he saw the mind flayer as "a means to realize [his] potential; to transcend [his] human form; to become the predator [he] was always born to be." i could be wrong in two years, but this, paired with the fact that we saw docile demogorgons in the upside down with him before he manipulated it and at the lab when they weren't possessed by the mind flayer, makes me think that it's vecna that makes the mind flayer evil.

the mind flayer is an inconceivably powerful entity that is capable of behaving as a superorganism of sorts by spreading and infecting other organisms to add to the hivemind. like every living thing, it wants to grow and reproduce to increase its fitness. this in and of itself is not an inherently evil thing. the upside was unspoiled by mankind aka unspoiled before vecna came and manipulated it. he turned the mind flayer into that spider-like image he was obsessed with as a child and, considering he's been behind everything on stranger things so far, we know that he used it as a tool to achieve his plans.

i think it's likely that they formed a "deal" of sorts. the mind flayer wants to expand and vecna wants to control the rightside up. it makes sense then that the mind flayer would allow him "to transcend [his] human form" (see: he's no longer human, leeches off of others and the environment to survive, and seemingly regenerates when hurt + god-like powers when wielding the mind flayer) if vecna gave it entryway into the rightside up and formed a bridge between their worlds. everyone gets what they want: the mind flayer can grow its superorganism and vecna can continue to leech off of its power the way he has with literally every other being (the vampire reference was not just a joke) to "remake [the world] into something beautiful" (which is where will comes in).

they most definitely and undoubtedly are going to kill vecna. that much is obvious, i feel. the mind flayer, though... it can be hurt, sure, but can it be killed? or will it be a rehash of seasons two and four: different teams fighting together to weaken it enough that they can force it through the gates? something... like that? i don't know. how do you kill a storm? how do you kill a god? we saw already that you can't fight back infection/possession. so, what can they do?

the more that i think about it, the more likely i think that'll be. they'll be severely weakened and hindered by the monster apocalypse and we know that there will be teams in the upside down, too, so they'll all be fighting for their lives—not just eleven.

The Power Of (Gay) Love will close the gates permanently, because will is eventually going to accept himself and feel so loved that there won't be enough darkness for vecna to draw strength from, effectively starving him out and severing their psychic connection, and also i'm sure some cool freaky shit is gonna go down (which of course includes will pulverizing vecna as he should).

the mind flayer won't just pack its bags and go home afterward, but if will, the shaper of worlds, won't join him then it probably won't survive here because "it likes it cold" and... the world isn't... always cold everywhere? cue will's super cool fireballs shooting it back through the gate into the upside down or something while everyone is fighting with 1 hp and a dream. i don't know the details and i won't pretend that i do. i just know that this is stranger things which means that love is literally what always saves the day, so. 1 + 1 = vecna will perish and the mind flayer will be forced to go through the gates to survive and The Power Of Love will sever the connection between worlds so that they can live in peace. or at least as much peace as you can have after Alla Dat.

#mine #girl help i cannot stop thinking about that gay monster show!!!!!!!!!!!#not rereading this fucking gargantuan post btw if i repeat a sentence or stopped short then oh well. Read My Brain Dump Boy

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cheri-translates · 4 years

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Headcanon: Let’s break up on the 30th of February

This work, 我们 2月30日号分手吧, was originally written by 君兮耶君兮 on Weibo, and she has given me permission to translate it 🌸

[ VICTOR ]

Every failed prank pulled on Victor has only served to embolden you. Once again, you’ve come up with an idea on how to challenge him.

“Victor. After giving it much thought, I've decided to break up with you on the 30th of February.” Exercising your acting skills, you bite your lower lip, standing before him with a pitiful expression. Your eyes are welling with tears as you pretend to be torn between reluctance and resoluteness.

“Mm,” Victor responds simply.

Without lifting his head, he circles some data on your proposal with a red pen, then draws a cross.

Hold on, why is this situation turning out different from what you imagined? Wasn’t he supposed to tug on your hand, begging you not to leave with reddened eyes? Turns out the television dramas lied!

You gripe, pinching his ear. “You actually responded with just a ‘mm’!”

“What else?” He creates some distance between himself and the desk, giving you more space to move. Resigned, he covers his hand over yours, rescuing his poor ear from your clutches.

“Do you not love me anymore? As expected, men don’t know how to treasure what they’ve obtained!” You lunge at him, and the chair swivels backwards along with this action. Fortunately, Victor holds you before you fall.

“Didn’t you say it yourself?” After keeping you steady, he brings you into his arms.

Enraged, you give him glare, climbing up from his body and giving him an angry stomp on the foot. “Who was the one who said he’d never leave me? Now that I want a break up, you aren’t even trying to make me stay.”

Victor’s brows scrunch up in pain. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know that the 30th of February doesn’t exist?”

Seeing that your plot has been unravelled, you chuckle in embarrassment. Trying to placate him, you nuzzle into his arms. “Heheh, Teacher Victor is really smart!”

He encircles his arm around your waist. As though he’s forgiving a playful child for the umpteenth time, he pinches your waist as a small punishment. “Since a certain someone doesn’t have sufficient IQ, I’ll have to make up for her absence of IQ.”

“Victor, there’s no need for personal attacks!

[ GAVIN ]

Having an off day from work, the two of you decide to stay at home instead of heading out.

He’s currently reading a book while you’re scrolling on your phone as usual. All of a sudden, you come across a pretty interesting prank, and decide to use it on Gavin. “Gavin, let’s break up on the 30th of February.

Gavin freezes, the arm around your shoulders loosening by quite a fair amount. He turns his head stiffly towards you, a dash of pain flashing in his dimming amber eyes. “Have you... thought it through?”

“I have. We’ll break up on the 30th of February.” You give him a nod of certainty.

Gavin retracts his right hand which was around you earlier. With his brows tightly knit, he speaks carefully, his tone filled with unease. “Then... before you find someone who can protect you, could I continue protecting you in the meantime?”

Oh my goodness, I forgot how honest this man could be.

“Gav, look at the calendar.” Knowing that you’ve gone too far, you hurriedly tap open the calendar app on your phone.

“I’m not looking! I know that it’s the 26th of February today, and there are four more days till the 30th.” Gavin cranes his neck away, pushing away the phone you’ve brought to him, tone slightly upset. If he had ears on the top of his head, they’d definitely be drooping.

“Why don’t you take another look?” Suppressing your laughter, you push the phone in front of him again.

“I don’t want to!” He squeezes his eyes shut. “You’re going to tell me that it’s a non-leap year, which means there’s a year and four days left. But a year passes by really quickly, and the 30th will arrive soon.”

Oh no, I’ve shocked this poor boy silly.

Not receiving a response from you even after a long time, Gavin opens his eyes to find that you’ve been rendered speechless. He lowers his head with a pout. “Am I wrong?”

With a sigh, you lift his head, giving him a gentle gaze as you explain. “Dear, it’s a non-leap year, but there are only 29 days in February even in a leap year. There will never be a 30th February, which is why I’ll never break up with you in this lifetime.”

“...”

Gavin blinks, reacting only after a long while. Reaching out to encase you back into his arms, his fluffy hair nuzzles the crook of your neck affectionately. “You gave me a scare. In compensation, go stargazing with me tonight.”

[ LUCIEN ]

The bathroom is always the easiest place for inspiration to strike.

“Lucien, I’ve made a decision. I’ll break up with you on the 30th of February.” Your expression is solemn as you step out of the bathroom, looking at Lucien as he reads a book.

The light in Lucien eyes dim, and he sets down the book. With a mellow tone, he asks, “Little Butterfly, are you serious?”

You nod, repeating yourself once more with the acting skills you’ve picked up from actors during filming. “I’m serious. We’ll break up on 30th February.”

Lucien pauses for a moment, then lowers his head in thought. The situation dawns on him, and he releases a sigh, casting you a resigned glance. Tugging on your hand so that you sit in front of the dressing table, he takes out the hair dryer and dries your hair slowly. “Sorry. Even though I know there won’t be a 30th February, I won’t agree to it.”

“Huh? Why not?” You turn your head, speaking loudly amid the whirring wind. “Since you’ve already figured it out, just play along with me!”

He pats your half-dried hair, then turns the hair dryer off. Then, he locates the styling brush and tidies your hair.��“I don’t wish for us to be tainted by the term ‘break up’, even if the chances of that happening is zero.”

Lucien is indeed pretty sensitive when it comes to this matter. Realising this, you obediently sit still on the chair like an elementary school kid, leaving him to tidy your hair. “Okay okay, I was in the wrong. I won’t joke about such things next time. Also, I can promise that the butterfly will never leave her painter in this lifetime.”

“Good.” The corners of Lucien’s lips curl upwards, satisfied.

He picks up the hair dryer again. “Since you’ve admitted your mistake, your punishment will be to make me cream puffs, and accompany me to class tomorrow, in the capacity of a family member.”

[ KIRO ]

Once again catching Kiro red-handed as he steals your snacks, you grab a fistful of his hair angrily. “Kiro, since you’re always taking my snacks, I've decided to break up with you on the 30th of February!”

“Miss Chips, you saw that post too?” Kiro completely ignores the first half of your sentence. As though lacking even a shred of remorse, he places your favourite snack back in its original position, unable to hide it in time. He stands up obediently, the innocent expression on his face causing your anger to dissipate.

“Huh? You already know about it?”

“Of course. There’s nothing Kiro doesn’t know!” Being able to escape unscathed, Kiro’s imaginary tail wags in the air.

You roll your eyes, chasing him away from the snack cupboard. “Boring.”

“But Miss Chips, let’s not say such things in the future. I’ll admit that I was a little frightened earlier.” He lifts his hand, showing you a gap between his thumb and forefinger. “But just a little.”

“Really! Did I really scare you?” Pleasantly surprised, you turn around.

Kiro arches his brows in astonishment, then lowers his head as though upset. “Miss Chips, what’s with that excited expression?”

“Ever since we returned from the haunted house, I’ve always wanted to give you a fright, then snap photographs of your expression and make them into memes,” you laugh, taking out a small box from your pocket. Retrieving the lock from within, you clasp it onto the snack cupboard under Kiro’s shocked gaze.

“Miss Chips!!”

On that day, all the citizens within 10km distance had a discussion online about how they heard a man mimicking the voice of superstar Kiro, but his tone sounded so miserable that it was akin to a squealing pig awaiting its demise.

[ SHAW ]

After who knows how many times of facing Shaw’s mockery, you decide to give him a scare by employing a new prank you learnt on the web.

“Shaw, I’m ending our relationship as girlfriend and boyfriend on the 30th of February!”

Shaw’s eyes flit to you leisurely as he grabs the final chicken cutlet on the coffee table. Revealing a triumphant grin, he begs to be punched as he responds, “Pick another day. There won’t be a 30th February in your lifetime.”

???

Finding this incredulous, your eyes widen. “You little brat - you’re looking forward to the end of our relationship, aren't you?”

“I wouldn't say that I’m ‘looking forward’ to it, but it’s inevitable.”

He doesn’t explain further, licking the corners of his lips. Then, he takes a sip of mixed cola from your coke. The longer you watch him, the more enraged you are. It’s often said that people tend to lose their rationality when angry. Without much thought, the words in your head leap out of your mouth.

“Fine! Since you’re so certain, I’ll end this relationship with your annoying eggplant head today!”

“Sure.” Shaw feels around in his pocket.

You turn around to leave, never wanting to see this eggplant head ever again.

“Hey, wait.” He suddenly calls you. “I haven’t gotten my household register.”

Puzzled, you turn around with a glare. “A break up is just a break up. Why do you need your household register?”

Shaw stares at you as though he’s looking at a blockhead. “We’re ending our relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, so isn’t the next step to start our relationship as husband and wife?”

At this stage, it’s difficult to remain angry. Yet, in order to preserve some dignity, you stutter and stammer, face flushed. “W-who even wants to start a relationship as husband and wife with you!”

“Who else but you?” Shaw digs through the drawer, retrieving both of your household registers. Grabbing your hand, he pulls you out of the house. “Let’s go and get a marriage license.”

–

More translated and original works: here

–

[ Permission to translate ]

君兮耶君兮: You can - just note the source of the author

#mlqc #mlqc gavin #mlqc kiro #mlqc lucien #mlqc shaw #mlqc victor #aeiofjsdklneiowahfsdkl #S H A W

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junikshanasar · 3 years

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bnha Chapter 318 thoughts

?????

Where’s Shouto’s scar Horikoshi?

Nah jk, u can acc see it just barely if you zoom in, the slight discolouration. But like, you can bet my eyes searched for my favourite boy’s smile first when the panel showed up, and this is the only thought runnin’ through my head as I write this, so I hafta to go back and reread the chapter now XD

>>>>>>

All righttttttt, what do I even say? Deku was falling deeper into his spiral of martyrdom, to the point the pro-heroes, and even the vestiges were worried about him:

You can bet I was intrigued at this part, wondering if maybe they would do something to purposely render him unconscious to let him rest or smthing, but man what we got was so much better:

please, Bakugou has no business lookin this pretty.

Anyway, I can’t be the only one who felt such incredible elation at his appearance, and then like a double shot of serotonin: “I found him guys”

the gods answered my prayers for the return of class-1a. Altho, we all totally knew his friends were looking for him, there’s no way they wouldn’t.

There’s not much to analyze this chapter, just reaffirming previous posts, so I might stop these chapter thought posts and save them for when I have actual analysis.

That being said, the recurring symbolism of Deku’s hero costume is used in the above image. As we know, his initial costume that blatantly imitates All Might represents his state of mind/being at the time - that is, an ‘imitation’ of All Might, or an attempt to copy him in order to act as his successor.

As Deku gains his own individuality and style, so does his costume, such as his leg braces, and closer to the beginning of the War arc, we see the influence of figures other than All Might, such as Gran Torino’s expectations shown in the cape Deku gets from him.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Deku’s costume lately has been getting more worn and torn along with his image of a hero, to the point where he notably looks more like a villain. Deku has shrouded himself so deep in the idea of being the hero that we actually haven’t seen his face since the “You’re next” from All for One.

(No the cover of 317 doesn’t count, let me have my cake)

And when Bakugou jumps in, Deku’s face in finally uncovered:

He himself uncovers it (Edit: I’ve been informed it’s the attackers pulling Deku’s mask off XD - either way his face is finally exposed), which we can take as the fact that Midoriya Izuku has finally surfaced from beneath Deku. Yay!

I also wanted to talk about this amazing scene here:

I didn’t notice this until now, despite how blatant it was, but yes, obviously we were all aware of the parallel between One for All and All for One, but my friend actually noted before this chapter came out that Deku is now eerily similar to All for One. And with the release of this chapter, I myself now realize it’s vice versa as well.

Initially, we were under the impression that All for One amassed a buncha other quirks for himself, while One for All shared one quirk amongst a buncha people. However, with new revelations about both abilities, the line between AfO and OfA is blurring.

Midoriya has amassed the quirks of the users that came before him. Notably, he is like AfO in that sense. On the other hand, AfO clearly has the ability to share the quirks he has collected, amongst multiple people, which is notably similar to OfA.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week, to say I’m excited for the next chapter in an understatement ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪

Unfortunately we hafta wait two weeks, but Horikoshi deserves a break because life as a weekly mangaka is tough work, and the art in the Final arc has been so blessed, so I won’t complain!

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forthetherapyy · 3 years

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Fav Larry Fics I Read in Sept 21

Run Away Home - hattalove

Louis is a successful jockey down on his luck, struggling to get his life back on track after an injury. harry has a horse, a house fit for a prince, and a broken heart. It takes them a while to figure out that they need each other. (106k) [This fic ahhh okay slow burn and so much pining it’s delicious.]

Whether Clouds or Clear Skies - onewasturning @onewasturning

“You, young Harold, are a baker among curry houses and vintage clothing stores,” Louis says, and it forces a bark of surprised laughter out of Harry. “I’m a— sorry, what?” “Harry,” Louis says, “last night I had an experience bordering on profound.” “You’re making it sound like you did something sexual with my muffin,” Harry says. Or, Louis gets into the habit of stealing baked goods while Harry’s busy keeping tabs on the weather. (25k) [Beautifully written and just super soft.]

But If This Ends - nonsensedarling @absoloutenonsense

Harry’s life as a vampire is routine. He spends his years moving around from place to place, learning as much as he can, and falling in love whenever the universe sees fit. When he tries to move his casual relationship with Louis to something more, it all gets turned on its head. As they navigate confusing thoughts and complex emotions, Harry finds himself torn between the love he feels for Louis and everything he thought he knew. (106k) [friends with benefits! just loved reading about them and being part of their relationship. also Harry calls Lou ‘sunshine’!]

This Charade (Was Never Going To Last) - scrunchyharry @scrunchyharry

On the surface, CitizenX, an international caritative nonprofit, looked like any other nonprofit, funding humanitarian missions worldwide and striving to make the world a better place, one donation at a time. At least, that was what Harry thought, until he was hired as a computer specialist for a spinoff agency called carish, whose true purpose was to reveal CitizenX’s tangled web of lies. As if the whole ‘industrial spy’ business was not stressful enough, Harry found himself in a hatred-at-first-sight relationship with one of his new coworkers, Louis, a man intent on detesting Harry. When the worst happened and Harry and Louis found themselves thrown together in hiding, with only each other to rely on, Harry never could have predicted the turn their relationship would take. Nor could he anticipate that it would all be taken away from him and he would have to decide how far he was willing to go to get Louis back. (68k) [one of the best enemies to lovers I have read!]

No One Does It Better - nodibs @nodibs-blog

Harry's an alcoholic and Louis is a bartender. The first time they meet isn't the first time they've met. (49k) [so tragically angsty, like unbelievably so. Such a good job at handling amnesia, Lou’s feelings are so realistic, i wouldn’t know where to start.]

After Hours - velvetoscar @mizzwilde

Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are the bane of each other's existences. Unfortunately, they're already in love--even if they aren't completely aware of this minor detail. [A "You've Got Mail" AU] (26k) [okay tho this was based off a movie it was so incredibly original. I adored it, like their work relationship and their messages and their online names, ugh everything]

Amsterdam With You - flamboyo @chrysopon

In Louis’ opinion Amsterdam is so overrated, and now that he moved here he can see all its flaws: it’s always raining (even more than in London), he’s lonely and everyone he meets is unfriendly and distant; but, above all, he misses his family like crazy, confined here. Not surprising how being hit by a bike by a curly, pensive guy is the best thing that happens to him in three months (or maybe even in 27 years). (182k) [I cried so much, this fic man. so sad and heartbreaking. there were times when I had to put it down just so I could breathe.]

His and Mine - glitteredcurls @kissyboystyles

Harry legally isn't supposed to meet his soulmate-- he's rendered physically unable to recognize him even if he did-- but yet, of course, he does. (66k) [this was was an incredible world. such a clever idea, like wow. and lou and harry and the pain, like i wanted to save them]

Some Things Take Root - navigator, quitter

AU. Louis' ex doesn't get jealous of anyone besides Harry. Harry helps Louis use that to his advantage. (50k) [Loved how head over heels Harry was for Lou and how slowly it crept up on Lou.]

Black With Autumn Rain - whimsicule @whimsicule

“Thank you,” Geoff says, taking a sip of his tea. “What did you tell him?” Louis has a sip as well, lets the tea burn down his throat too quickly, too hot, and he feels it all the way down to his stomach. “The truth. Essentially,” he replies after a moment, licking his lips, relishing the slightly bitter taste of the brew that’s never quite strong enough for Louis’ liking. At least it’s not decaf. “That my dog scented it. That I didn’t touch the body. That I came here first thing.” Geoff nods pensively. “Did he believe you?” “Probably not. There’s only so many people who can drown on dry land before it gets fishy.” or: Harry is a journalist, Louis has lots of secrets and the moors aren't exactly the ideal place to rekindle a lost romance. (93k) [this fic is everything i ever want in a fic, exs, fae and lonely louis like?!?]

Never Be - cherrystreet @cherrystreet

The one where Harry Styles moves to Connecticut from England for nine months as a part of a study abroad program, and he just so happens to move in with Louis Tomlinson and family. (117k) [my notes for this fic are just ‘amazing amazing amazing amazing’ so there you go]

The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep - HelloAmHere @helloamhere

Werewolf au, but Louis is lost. (4 part series) [This series is so incredible, I pretty sure I read all four in two days, like I devoured them. and they were delicious.]

#please read them all #they're incredible #larry fic recs #ao3 larry fics #my monthly fic rec #sept 21 fic rec #my fic rec

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boop-le-snoot · 4 years

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If life gives you melons...

Ship: Loki x F!alt! reader

Rating: Explicit / word count 5,5k

Summary: You've heard about meet-cute, how about meet-ugly? Reader has tattoos and a tongue split. There's this joke that "bisexual alt girls go looking for a girlfriend and end up with sad, tall and skinny white bois" and boy did that hit home. Inspired by this cringy video of Hiddles [youtube link].

During a panel at a comic con, Loki notices reader and they go on a date, reader gets railed: top!Loki, choking, rough sex, unprotected sex, all the good stuff. Open ending, with a bonus of reader and Loki pranking Clint.

x. I usually fancy they/them pronouns for Loki but seeing as it's a smut-shot, I decided to go along with he/him for the sake of simplicity. Loki's at least 6'4 tall and you can fight me on that. Also, I write like a Tony stan - I feel the need to apologize to Loki stans for that. I love you guys! 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

The long line of people appeared to be neverending. Loki was an enhanced, as the government recently had adopted a politically correct term for Earth's non-human inhabitants, but even his enhanced endurance had begun waning due to sheer amount of people wanting a piece of memorabilia signed by The God of Mischief. Loki had gained a considerable amount of fans after doing his part in killing the mad titan Thanos and by extension, saving the world. It turned out, humankind was a sucker for a good redemption arc.

Loki's hands ached where they wrapped around the pen that he'd been using for nearly 4 hours to neatly place his name, written in neat runescript, on various pieces of merchandise that his fans (and wasn't that a strange thing!) presented to him. He used to think that he would have actually succeeded conquering the earth if he had a grasp on how to use social media and his charm; now, he just wanted the torture to end. An involuntary sigh left his mouth when he saw another print of himself in full battle gear being placed in front of him by a reasonably attractive young woman.

"Um, thank you," She stammered, giggling softly, and Loki spared her a painstaking smile, scribbling his name once again. The woman briefly caught his eyes. "Um, you're the reason- the inspiration for me. I became a stripper."

Loki blanked, feeling his eyes widen and blink on their own accord a few times. He wasn't sure if he heard the woman correctly, as the unusual statement made his brain freeze.

Loud snickering from behind the blushing woman interrupted the system error that he was experiencing in his head. It wasn't often that somebody managed to render him speechless. It looked like whoever was in line behind the stripper woman had taken advantage of that. Loki's eyes snapped to the short-haired person, who looked torn between cringing and breaking into embarrassed laughter.

The stripper left without a word, and as Loki picked up the cursed writing instrument once again, the short-haired person smiled at him kindly. "That was a little weird," They snorted, "And thanks, have a nice day Mr. Loki."

"When life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic," Another woman, that appeared to be the short haired person's friend, deadpanned and gave a cynical side-eye to the departing stripper. Loki heard snickering coming from the short-haired person and quietly joined himself. The woman noticed it, winking at him as she collected the newly signed t-shirt. "Bye," She smiled kindly.

It was a split second decision, really. Something about the cheeky way she addressed the situation sparked Loki's interest. "Wait, you forgot something, darling," His baritone called out to the departing woman. She turned around, confused, and hastily grabbed the standard issue photo that he was holding out to her. With a final grateful nod, she smiled and left.

If Loki's smile had returned for the time being, none of his teammates made any remarks on it. Only his brother, Thor, gave a couple of knowing looks to the Asgardian sorcerer.

The woman in question didn't think twice about the photo that she stashed in her backpack along with the signed t-shirt. The Comic-Con had been full of people and the lines were unfairly long. The sheer exhaustion after attending a 3-day long convention had set in and she was eager to simply come home back to her apartment and crash on the nearest soft flat surface. Upon arrival, she did exactly that, flopping down gracelessly on the couch, her backpack landing next to her with a careless thud.

Unloading her trophies was a short time affair: a single white tee with a dozen signatures on it, written in what she hoped was waterproof Sharpie; one mug, shaped like an Iron Man helmet; one poster, showing Spider-Man on a picturesque NYC horizon and a signed photo of one Loki. Strangely enough, she did not remember requesting it - not that she was complaining. Free merch was free merch.

The front side wasn't signed whatsoever. Overcome by curiousity, she turned it around. A phone number was written on the back of it, the handwriting neat and the letters obviously being inked out by a thinner, more sophisticated pen than the one Loki had used for scribbling on the tee. The woman gaped silently, not believing her eyes. Did Loki himself had given her his phone number?

One margarita and a hefty helping of Chinese takeout later, the numbers persisted staring back at her mutely, the neat cursive being almost mocking in its quiet. The woman's smartphone had found a comfortable place right next to the photo, equally mum regarding the unusual situation.

An additional margarita was needed to gather the courage required to actually type out the number in the receiver box. Fruity alcoholic concoction in one hand and phone clutched in the other, the woman's eyes squeezed shut tightly as soon as the dreaded "Hey, got your number today! :)" read delivered. She'd typed and erased the message several times, groaning in embarrassment. How the hell does one approach an alien god?

"Hello! May I ask your name?" The response came after a brief moment - a moment the woman had suffered through by taking too haste sips of her drink, her common since screaming her to not overdo it and wait at least a full minute before replying. Everything felt awkward and misplaced.

In no time, she was sending the screenshots of the conversation to her girl-advice group chat that consisted of her closest friends. Chatting with Loki turned out to be surprisingly easy and he was great at upholding conversation, something that couldn't be said about all those Tinder matches she had had back in the day.

Even if using proper grammar during a text message conversation was something she had to reacquaint herself with, she was glad he wasn't just another boring, shalllow, condescending-ass white boy. Despite the cultural differences and his lack of knowledge of things like pop culture and music - something he said he was working on since New Asgard became a sovereign state on Earth - they bonded over music and tattoos and generally being rebellious against society's standarts.

The invitation to dinner didn't come as a surprise for the woman. She agreed happily, looking forward to continue their conversation outside of the internet - if Loki's part of the chat was anything to go by, not only was he charming, but also quite intelligent. And easy on the the eyes, too. They had traded selfies at some point and the Asgardian didn't look any worse in a hoodie and sweatpants than he did in his battle leathers. Loki had appeared to truly have had integrated into Earth's society.

The night of the date, the continuous text exchange did very little to calm her nerves. Loki texted as much as an overeager teenage boy: every now and then he would double-text and grossly overreact to her sending a simple meme. In fact, he smugly conveyed the fact he'd single-handedly started a meme war between the Avengers and even Steve was forced to participate; something that was, allegedly, out of character for the blonde man.

She didn't mind. Not like she had many friends to have so much fun with. Even if it took her twice the time to do her favourite eyeliner style, it was worth it. She hoped Loki would appreciate the bold, but classy make-up and the dress and shoes combo that accentuated her assets. Her date expressed curiousity about her tattoos and the difference between her preferred style and the humans he spent most time with. She guessed secret agents were not particularly fond of anything that made them memorable so she held out quite the hope for... Showing off some of her tattoos in a more private setting.

In other, simpler words, the woman came in prepared for both a friendly, leisurely stroll and a quality night. Either way, it would be a time well spent.

Loki's shiny, raven hair was impossible to miss as he towered over the rest of the people waiting by the restaurant's entrance. He wore tailored black trousers and a simple cashmere sweater, perfect for the evening's damp, cool air. Tall and lithe, Loki was mouthwateringly handsome.

"Come here often?" She wormed her way through the crowd, causing the man to smirk down at her. Her cheeks flared from the tiny gesture alone.

"Just waiting for a friend," Loki uttered lowly, extending an arm towards the woman, which she gracefully accepted as they made way towards the entrance. "Reservation for Loki," The Asgardian stated to the hostess, who, after a rapid doube-take, led them to a private, secluded area in the back of the restaurant.

Loki shouldered the slightly awkward interaction with grace, paying no mind to the girl. His focus was solely on his date and he was nothing but gallant as he took the woman's purse and held out the chair for her to comfortably sit down. As a prince, he was taught well, she mused.

"Usually I would ask 'what brings you to our little ball of water and dirt?' but I think we can skip that part," The woman stated with a sheepish grin, idly flicking through the menu and curiously eyeing the items that were unfamiliar. The desire to try something new fought with the possibility of accidentally ordering something too far out - like snails or other things that rich people fancied, for some reason.

Loki's greens briefly appeared over the top of his menu, grateful and sparkling. "I think it's best if we do just that," For a second, he looked away, before returning to the menu. "I can think of better things to discuss. I recall you didn't finish telling me about that college friend of yours, who was an anarchist... I'm dying to know..."

The waiter came and went, barely noticed by the pair, as they both poked at something that sounded the most familiar for both of them. Stoically, Loki admitted that Tony Stark did the booking for him and the woman reluctantly acquitted she wasn't very familiar with upscale establishments, being of middle-class background and working a middle-class job.

Interrupting the story she began telling hours ago, the woman took the time to point out the things she was familiar with on the menu and advised Loki to stay away from - like the aforementioned snails, and other things, slimy and salty things that she considered to be 'disgusting but rich people liked it for some reason'. The conversation slowly progressed into Loki telling her the mischief he got up to at the feasts Odin threw. The Asgardian shared the woman's disregard for influential people doing gross things to show off.

The food was good - it was really hard to miss with a traditional Italian lasagna - and seeing Loki shovel an obscene amount of food was an experience, but she didn't comment on it, tactful enough to consider his alien biology might have different dietary requirements that her human one. It was great, really, that she could order dessert and not feel guilty about it.

The gelato melted in her mouth like sweet ecstasy and she moaned with her next bite, only partly aware of how obscene really was the noise.

Loki's hand stuttered on it's way to his mouth. Wide-eyed, he stared at her lips, at her mouth, where her tongue lapped up the small drops of dessert from the spoon. "Why the split tongue?" The Asgardian finally gathered his wits, having had a good look of what he was sure was a trick of the eye at first.

She grinned, acutely aware of the effect that particular body modification had on men. "I like being different. I embrace the weird." She giggled, not at all ashamed, sticking out her tongue and wiggling both parts of it teasingly.

Loki's Adam's apple bobbed; "Weird?" He raised his eyebrow, fighting to maintain his previous cool composure.

She nodded. "Weird," She retorted coyly. "I usually don't divulge the details at least until the third date. Wouldn't want to scare my potential suitors off," The playful wink was the proverbial cherry on top. He was hooked, his eyes darkened, following the plump arch of her lips as she took another spoonful of the treat and savoured it, closing her eyes for a brief moment.

It was pornographic.

"Obviously, Midgardians don't know what's good for them," Loki scoffed in his usual bored monotone, fully aware of how fitful his attempt to conceal his excitement was. He sounded needy even to his own ears.

"And you do?" She pushed away the empty plate, chastely patting her mouth with a napkin. The raised eyebrow and the little smirk spoke volumes.

The grin he wore was hardly anything but feral; he asked for the waiter's assistance by flicking his wrist in an impatient fashion. Once the bill was paid and the woman's cardigan found its rightful place on her shoulders, Loki once again took hold of her arm, this time holding her smaller body against his larger one, taking care to slow down and keep his strides shorter.

She found the coolness of his presence refreshing in the moist, heavy air of the New York city.

"Where to, milady?" Loki asked her, looking down at the woman fondly.

"My place is a block away. Walk me, good sir?" She gave a delightfully easy smile in return.

He nodded, letting her lead the way, allowing himself to get a little bit lost in their shared presence, a little bubble of them in the middle of a busy city. It was as if someone had quickly turned down the volume of the honking cars and noisy pedestrians around them, leaving the soft breeze and the sun slowly descending below the skyscrapers. It felt far too short, partaking in the comfortable silence together, skin tingling under the thin layers of cloth where they were touching.

The sun was trapped in the strands of her hair as she smiled at him from her doorway, worrying her lip between her teeth. It was a bittersweet moment.

"A kiss good night for the good sir?" She asked hopefully, eyes darting between his face and his mouth.

Loki obliged, resting his palm flat on the door frame, towering over the woman as he gently slotted his thin, cool lips against her warm ones. The woman stood on her tippy toes, eager, placing a hand on his chest. The pair melted into the kiss - it had no business being this mind-blowing, brain-freezing for two people that have not met until that very day. The woman didn't refuse when Loki probed with his tongue, requesting entrance to her mouth; she licked into his own with fervor, fisting her hands in the soft fabric of his sweater.

With the hand that was free, Loki pulled the woman flush with himself, feeling the heat of her start a fire of its own inside of him. Her breathing rapid, the gesture only served to tighten her hold on his sweater, until a soft, barely audible moan slipped into his mouth, causing his brain to quickly reassess the situation.

Regretfully, Loki pulled away, clearing his throat. "Perhaps we should take this elsewhere," He meaningfully looked at the array of doors around them.

"I thought you'd never ask," She retorted with a fond eyeroll, tightening the grip on his sweater once more, to pull him inside her apartment and shut the door behind her. The awkward moments were few and in between; neither knew who reached for the other first, mashing their mouths with less grace than before, clutching at the other's arms and hips with hunger.

This time, Loki didn't hold back his own muted groans of satisfaction, shivering when the woman's hands snuck under his sweater and the simple tank top he wore underneath. Blunt nails scraped along his abs.

Step by step, she pushed him further inside her apartment, determined in her small quick strides. There was no mistake of their destination; no mistake in her desire: she was as hungry and as impatient as him. The crease between his eyebrows deepened, long arms extending to unzip the top of her dress to reveal a simple but tasteful black lacy bra covering her breasts. The woman barely noticed the action, stepping out of her dress as soon as it hit the floor.

He admired her. Inches of soft skin covered by intricate ink, some patterns bizarre and complicated, some beautiful in their simplicity. Loki couldn't wait to find out about the meaning behind every one of them, to trace the lines with his tongue and sink his teeth into the heated flesh.

The hands that were holding onto him for dear life tugged on his sweater and he chose to simply vanish it, too preoccupied with looking at the view in front of him. She gasped and her eyes met his: uncanny, magnetic emeralds shone with magic and power and desire.

"Fuck," She more mouthed than said, walking backwards in a trance until her shins hit the bed.

Loki grinned, advancing on the panting woman with the grace of a predator. "Darling?" His tone was innocent; his expression was anything but. His large hand encompassesed the side of her face, thumb running over her bottom lip in a possessive gesture that had her squirming in her place. He loved the way she just melted into his touch.

Their lips met again, slower this time. The kiss was once again graceful and unrushed, allowing them to explore the softness of each other's skin, mapping the arches and valleys with gentle strokes of their palms. The broad expanse of Loki's back was uneven, riddled with scars and blemishes, and she mapped every single one, blunt nails raking down it as she pressed into him, arching into his hands where he held her.

The soft flesh of her ass, barely covered by a scrap of black lace, was shamelessly grabbed - the woman didn't doubt there would be marks left - letting her feel his arousal pressed against her belly, hard and twitching. She didn't resist her desire to ge handsy and palmed it, taking note of the gasp and the twitch coming from the man occupied with the clasp of her bra. In no time, it flew away, forgotten somwhere the very moment Loki's palms took over her breasts, running a careful thumb over each nipple.

"Fuck," She parroted her previous statement, equally breathy and considerably more aroused.

"That's the plan," Loki's chuckle was hoarse.

She huffed, biting her bottom lip before reaching out to swiftly pop the button of his trousers, smirking at the hiss the friction of her palm produced against his cock. It shouldn't have surprised her that Loki was a commando kind of guy, but still, she gasped, partially from the ministrations of his clever fingers, partially from the mouthwatering sight in front of her. The thick, flushed length made saliva gather in the corners of her mouth.

He must've heard the audible swallow. "Not so haste, darling," He tutted, giving her relaxed body a gentle push, causing her to land on her back, heated skin against the soft duvet of her bed. "Let me taste you," A thud; Loki had dropped to his knees, using his large palms to spread her legs, opening her up to his eyes.

If his previous work hadn't made her so pliant, so aroused, she'd have been rendered speechless; instead, the woman arched her back, presenting herself and the desire that had pooled down below. The Asgardian chuckled, fingertips soft against the scratchy lace.

"Tease," The woman moaned, outstretching her arm to guide him but quite unable to reach him. She had to settle for squirming in her place, receiving a fraction of the desired traction against her swollen lips.

"Am I, love?" Loki asked her sweetly, caving enough to dip a single finger to run along the outside of her slit. It glided easily thanks to all the moisture gathered there, lips parting easily before his touch. The panties were vanished away promptly, another finger joining in immediately to rub slow, precise circles around her clit.

She keened low and long, fisting the fabric in her hand until her knuckles turned white. Loki knew what he was doing. It didn't take him very long to slide his long digits to the welcoming heat of her opening, dipping them inside until she began to make the noises he so craved. His mouth followed after that, long agile tongue drawing senseless shapes on the inside of her labia and dipping deeper, where her clit stood out engorged and slick.

He could smell the bittersweet of her arousal, mouthwatering and hot.

"Loki, fuck," She moaned, only half-coherent and partially aware of her own hips following his every stroke, every flick. He only advanced, hitting that sweet spot inside her with every stroke; the sparks traveling up her spine quickened with each time she changed his name like a prayer. "Loki, Loki, Loki..."

He growled, attaching his mouth firmly to her clit, and she arched for the final time, coming undone, squeezing around his fingers and gushing in his mouth, the obscene sounds covered by her own scream of delight and his impatient growling. The growling that sent shivers of aftershocks throughout her body.

"Darling, you taste so sweet," Loki groaned, still panting.

She took the time to open her eyes: Loki looked comically out of place in her bedroom, he dwarfed her bed and made her feel small, but it didn't matter at all at that very moment. His erection stood out hard and proud; despite the leg-shaking orgasm just moments ago, she wanted more, she wanted to taste him, she wanted to feel him inside-

With unsurprising agility, one swift motion was all it took for her to rest comfortably against the pillows, his throbbing member resting against the juncture of her thigh. She tasted her own release on his lips, however brief, whispering a weak, "Please," aching to feel the emptiness.

"As my lady wishes," Loki's cool breath ghosted over her cheek. She waited with baited breath until the tip of his manhood breached her, exhaling a moan into his neck and immediately wrapping her lips around a patch of skin as he stretched her so sweet.

Loki's arms shook slightly as he waited for her to adjust. He kissed her, soft and sweet; there was something vulnerable in him, something as sweet as the ache he'd taken away. Once he began to move, slow and fluid, all there was left was an all-consuming need to feel. As graceful as dancer and with a deadly precision, Loki pounded gasps, moans and screams out of the woman's slack mouth, kisses turning hungrier and sloppier by the second.

"So sweet," He cooed, relishing in the snug grip of her cunt around him.

She only keened in approval, too far gone and unused to the intensity of the feelings from a man with centuries of practice and the power of a god.

His thrusts slowed gradually until he was rutting into her, grinding his pelvic bone into her clit. The gasps and screams turned into drawn-out, longing moans; her hips followed his, meeting in a slow, sensual motion.

Loki was not a patient man. He withdrew - she gasped in protest - flipping the woman over on her fours with ease, taking but a split second to admire the curve of her body presented on display for him. Just for him.

With that thought burning in his mind, Loki sheathed his cock deeply inside her spasming cunt. It was nearly unbearably stimulating and only his own desire to prolong the bliss held back his own impending orgasm. That, and his own ego; he was naught if not a generous lover.

She slurred something, quiet and incorrigible, fucking back onto his cock as eagerly as he was plunging into her heat. The hand he'd placed on her shoulder promptly wrapped around her throat in hopes of lifting her close enough for him to hear the words but instead, it sent a full-bodied shiver throughout her. Loki grinned, tugging her that much closer.

The arch in her back looked quite uncomfortable yet she didn't mind; it was the exact opposite, in fact, her cunt tightened around him, drenching his shaft down to his balls. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of his thigh, the sting of pain going straight to his cock-

"Loki, I'm gonna, I'm gonna-" She slurred, gasping for air.

He weakened his hold on her throat enough to let her gulp the so-needed oxygen. It was her undoing: was it the rapid pace of oxygenated blood traveling to her brain or was it his cock, mercilessly pounding against her g-spot - she was violently spasming around his cock, much like she did around his fingers not too long ago.

It felt like ages, her crescendo coming in waves with no signs of stopping any time soon. Loki's continuous thrusts, his hips slamming into hers, her skin feeling like molten lava.

"Gonna fill your sweet cunt with my seed," Loki moaned lowly, holding her up by the throat, the other hand leaving fingertip-shaped bruises on the outside of her hips. "Mark you from the inside out," His voice had gone into primal territory, growling filling up the room.

"Please..." The woman rasped, oversensitive.

And he pleased, with a series of sharp thrusts, he buried himself to the hilt in her, the force of his release making her shudder and moan once against, going limp in his arms. Loki kept her in her place until every drop was inside of her cunt. Nothing was sweeter than that.

The Asgardian didn't bother with getting under the covers to hold her, conjuring a soft, comfortable throw in modest green, to cover their nudity. He didn't need the extra warmth but his companion was by far more fragile and sensitive to these things- Loki's fingertips traced the array of bruises he'd left in the wake of their passion, expression surprised as he found the woman smiling.

"Feels nice," She supplied meekly, eyes half-lidded, face trusting and open towards him.

He gave a small grin in return, placing a chaste kiss atop her head. "Yes, it does, darling."

Time after time, she didn't expect much out if their date. The sex was nice, nice enough for both of them to want seconds and thirds after their rushed first time - but it wasn't like she expected him to hand around. It was a pleasant change from the usual mutual ghosting she'd done with her previous partners, but Loki had texted again and they had resumed their conversation via text like nothing had happened.

No, that would be incorrect. Now, she had a wonderful friend who was a great conversationalist and an even better lover. There was no pressure to put a label on their relationship so the woman didn't bother with it; it didn't seem like Loki cared about the label, either, so she left the topic alone and enjoyed things the way they were. It wasn't like she had a line of suitors anyway.

She couldn't help the smile that creeped onto her face when she unlocked her phone and saw a video call request from other than Loki himself. She still had thirty minutes worth of lunch break to waste and this was a wonderful time to chat with a friend.

"Stark, hand it back or I swear to Norns-" Loki's voice sounded agitated and far away, accompanied by sounds of a struggle; the bearded, smug face on the screen was not who she expected at all. Only years of customer service and low bullshit tolerance combined stopped her from freaking out seeing none other than Tony Stark smirking at her from the screen of her phone.

"Yes?" She arched an eyebrow, taking note of the anger of Loki's tone.

"Hi, I don't think I need to introduce myself," Stark babbled, eyeing her - disheveled and with a wall full of sticky notes and miscellaneous items acting as the background to her video. "Reindeer games refused to show you to us so we decided to persuade him," Tony's grin grew wider, muted whispers being rapidly exchanged in the background all the while Loki screeched "BROTHER!" and various expletives at the top of his lungs.

"You could've, I dunno," She paused, unimpressed. "Asked me to dinner, like a normal person. Instead of stealing, you know, like a thief," The eyeroll that she performed had the team worried her eyes would fall out of their sockets.

"I merely borrowed his phone, don't be dramatic," Stark huffed, and for a moment, she could see various other people trying to look at the screen and by extension, at her. "So, what is it that you do? Because Smurf over there wouldn't..."

"Oops, bad signal. Sorry, can't hear you properly," Her side of the call suddenly shook and in a moment, she ended the call, not at all willing to deal with people that lacked boundaries. Sure, it might have been Iron Man, but if he was planning on being a snooping asshole, she wasn't gonna go down with that easily.

Exactly five minutes after she had clocked out, an incoming call from Loki had her equal parts excited and mortified. What if..? But he was apologetic. And very angry, swearing in his native language - something that he'd promised to teach her at some point.

"So, Clint did it?" She sipped her beverage, strolling home with the phone pressed snugly against her ear.

"Most of it was his fault, yes," Loki grouched on the other end of the call.

"I vote we get back at him. Invite me over, if he's so inclined to see me, and watch him get humiliated in front of everybody," It wasn't a secret she had her own mischievous tendencies.

"As much as I appreciate your vigour, darling, I doubt the Widow will appreciate you verbally castrating the Hawk in public," He replied sourly, his voice still betraying the faint notes of interest.

"I have a backup plan!" She stated without a hitch. "He'll embarrass himself and I'll be your alibi."

"I'm listening," Loki perked up immediately.

They decided to not to stall and schedule the 'family dinner', as Thor himself dubbed it, for the next available weekend. Loki had made sure Tony's AI had been made aware the trickster would be gone all day, and it took him very little magic and effort to pop in and out of the tower for the five minutes that were needed to execute their prank.

His friend barely managed to keep the snickering at bay as they ascended the elevator to the common floor where the dinner was being held. Not only that, but the woman spouted an area of dark purple love marks, barely obscured by the low turtleneck of her blouse.

She made her introductions and they made theirs. "This affair could use some background noise," She remarked off-handedly, casting a meaningful glance at the TV.

Tony Stark was known for being a great host so he entertained her wishes, flicking on the huge flat screen with a flick of his wrist.

The team froze.

"I... -" The woman stared at the screen, mouth hanging wide open at the scenes that played out. "... am not going to kinkshame, but please turn it off," She stated in a small voice, seemingly unable to tear her eyes away from the mass of tentacles commencing erotic assault on a woman's body.

Wordlessly, the TV shut down, immersing the room in stunned silence. Loki face-palmed, the slap of his palm against his face echoing in the eerily quiet room.

"Loki!" Captain America, red as a tomato, instantly accused the most obvious person.

Except, he had forgotten one thing. "Loki was with me all day," The woman replied, unkindly. "Do you need more proof?" She tugged on the hem of her turtleneck, exposing an inch of skin marked blue.

The good Captain's face changed the shade once again, venturing very well into beetroot territory. "Who was the last one to use the TV?" Rogers asked, now with a hint of anger, as he stared at a guffawing Bucky.

"I believe it was Mr. Barton," The AI piped up, mechanical voice sounding almost insinuating. Or, perhaps, it just appeared that way.

#loki x reader #Loki smut #loki x you #loki x y/n #loki fanfiction #loki fanfic #tom hiddleston #it's 4am y'all #we be THIRSTY

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misslilli · 3 years

Text

Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. PG-13. | tagging @today-in-fic | read on AO3

Chapter 21 - The Halloween Fair

[ DS ]

On the afternoon of the Halloween fair, I take out the costume that Miss Hannigan picked out for me from the closet. Ever since I’ve got it, I’m beyond excited to wear it. It’s a black low-cut shirt, a white, checkered suit with a blazer that ties at the waist and a flaring skirt. As I put on the blonde wig and the black beret, I turn to the mirror channeling my best inner Faye Dunaway and say to myself in a breathy, southern lilt: “My, my, don’t you just look dandy, Miss Bonnie Parker!”

My friends have been roped into manning the booths of the fair and somehow, I’ve slipped under the town people’s radars, which leaves me able to roam around the fair, albeit alone. Since I’ve known most people in this town ever since I was little, I’m never actually alone at these happenings, people tend to just pull me into their conversation as I walk by. But as luck will have it, as I’m rounding one of the booths of the fair, I find myself face to face with the one person I had secretly hoped to see.

He’s wearing a brown tweed suit with a matching waistcoat and over the white collared shirt he’s tied an emerald green tie. Perched on his head is a white fedora. ‘Shit. He’s Clyde. What the fuck?’

We stop in our tracks and stare at each other for a moment, taking in our respective costumes. He’s the first one to regain his ability to speak.

“Hey Bonnie, the laws are outside, they’re blockin’ the driveway!” His Warren Beatty impression is perfect right down to the Texan drawl. ‘God help me…’

“Gosh, I hope you’ve parked the getaway car around the corner, Clyde!” I’m putting on my best Faye Dunaway impression again as I add a wink to my statement and just continue to walk past him. My heart thumping hard against my chest betrays my cool exterior, but that’s my secret and my secret alone.

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[ FM ]

When we finally get to the Halloween fair that Felix has roped me into, dressed up in a costume I didn’t even pick myself. We trail the grounds together and we’re drawn to the candy apple booth. Well actually, Felix draws us to this exact booth, the little sneak, but I can’t resist his pout and pleading eyes, so we end up getting an apple each. Munching away happily, his mouth full, he asks the question I’ve been too scared to ask myself: “Hey dad, do you think Miss Scully is here too with her friends?” I hope she is, if only to see what kind of costume she has picked out for herself, but I can’t tell Felix that. Instead, I just shrug and we continue our stroll across the town square.

When we round another booth, we both stop in our tracks as we see a blonde woman appear before us , dressed in a checkered suit and a beret on her head. ‘Bonnie. She’s the freakin’ Bonnie to your Clyde. Your sidekick. No, your partner in crime. The woman you love. In the movie of course. Insert awkward cough.’.

Felix is oblivious of course, he hasn’t seen the movies and I doubt he even knows what my costume is, let alone Miss Scully’s. I scrape together the last braincells that are left in my head and a stupid movie quote is the only thing I can think of at this moment.

“Hey Bonnie, the laws are outside, they’re blockin’ the driveway!” The retort she gives me combined with her wink render me speechless until she’s well past me and Felix, mingling with the small crowd that welcomes her into their midst just a few feet away from us.

Felix does the thing I wish I could bring myself to do, staring at her retreating form in wonder and he also speaks the words that have sprung to my own mind.

“Wow!”

----------

[ DS ]

Countless conversations later and a little tipsy on the delicious apple cider they always serve at the Halloween fair, I wander along the booths when I hear a voice I haven’t heard in over a year. And could’ve gone forever not hearing again. It’s my ex-whatever Steve, talking to one of his friends.

I’m hidden pretty well in the crowd of people due to my shortness but I can still catch flashes of their conversation. When I hear my name, I stop, straining my ears.

“Dana? Oh God, no. She’s not even close to being a serious contender for a relationship.” I wince at his statement as well as the tone of his voice. “She’s just always there, you know? Like a well trained Golden Retriever, I say the word and she comes running. Such an easy lay!” When they share a laugh I can feel the flush of shame and anger crawl up my neck.

The situation he describes is exactly what I’ve spent countless hours in therapy getting over. But what he says next really drives a stake through my heart. “It’s so pathetic, but if it’s what I have to do to get laid, whatever. She’s even dirtier in bed than any hot teacher fantasy you could ever imagine and what they say about good Catholic girls is very, very accurate, if you know what I mean!”

If he weren’t the demon I have to face every time I try to get over my past, I would’ve revealed myself and give his ass a good kicking for talking about me the way he has. But not knowing how I’ll react to being face-to-face with him, I stay hidden behind a group of mummies and zombies like a fucking coward.

I’m so furious with him and myself for not being able to stand up to him. Where the hell are my friends when I need them? I haven’t seen them all evening and I could really use their company to talk some sense into me. Since they’re nowhere to be found, I head towards the bar set up in the back and slide onto a stool, ordering a shot of Tequila. ‘Fuck it! That low-life is not even worth your time of day!’

On the surface, I’m so angry I want to set this whole damn place on fire, but deep down, the past hurt resurfaces to join the hurt from his words I just heard.

By the time I’ve downed my second shot, I’ve repeated the mantra that I’m a strong woman who’s better off without men in my head about a thousand times. I see someone slide onto the stool next to me out of the corner of my eye as I order another shot of Tequila to keep the two empty glasses in front of me company.

“A third shot of Tequila is just asking for trouble, if you ask me.” I turn my head slowly towards my bar-mate to tell him exactly where to shove his smart-ass remark when I’m faced with my supposed partner in crime, the charming one with the disarmingly innocent smile on his stupid face. I’m staring him down defiantly, my eyes never leaving his while the bartender places my glass in front of me and I grab it, downing it in a swift motion, daring him in my mind to say anything else. He doesn’t comment, good for him, and orders a shot for himself, just raising his glass silently and I clink it with my empty one – I’m tipsy, not insane, chasing one shot with another.

We’re staring straight ahead during our conversation, turning our glasses over and over between our fingers.

“Which guy seems to be the problem and how many rounds of ammo do I need to take him out?,” he asks after minutes of silence. I want to lean into him for just assuming that it’s a man that has me sitting here seething, but unfortunately, he’s right. This one time.

“How many rounds you got?” He scoffs at that.

“Plenty. And I know of exactly eleven ways to get rid of a body without raising suspicion.”

“And here I was thinking the FBI frowned upon their employees giving out top-level secrets on how to hide away evidence of a crime committed.”

“I’m not going to tell you, I wouldn’t want you to be held in contempt of Congress when questioned.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t rat you out when questioned by Congress?”

“Just a hunch… Talk to me, Red. What happened tonight?” He turns towards me and I can feel his gaze dancing over the skin of my face.

“You really want to know? Well, turns out the asshole of an ex of mine decided that today might be the perfect time to make an encore appearance in my life and reminded me again why I should’ve kicked him to the curb a long time ago instead of hoping I could change him.” Looking down at the bar, I trace my finger through the condensation drops, my anger slowly dissipating and my voice growing more and more quiet. “I heard him say some pretty awful things about me tonight.”

I relax into his hand when he places it comfortingly on my back, right between my shoulder blades, and huff out a sigh. “I’m sorry.,” is the only thing he says, but doesn’t add anything else, giving me the choice if I wanted to elaborate or not.

“What I witnessed today was the way he’s always been but I just couldn’t see through the masquerade of the sweet guy, he was so kind and said all the right things and he quite literally wooed the pants off me from the get-go.”

“Love bombing.” ‘Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re a profiler. You probably already got one worked out for me, trust-issues, anxious attachment style, possibly daddy issues, in short, a hot mess. Avoid at all costs.’

“Pretty much, yeah. And I was stupid enough to believe it.” I raise my hand to call over the bartender for another round.

“You’re not stupid. It’s hard to tell the difference between genuine interest and love bombing in the beginning.” ‘Yeah, no shit Sherlock. It’s exactly why I’m sitting here torn between wanting you to make a pass at me and being absolutely terrified that you actually will.’

“How about we pass on the shots and get some water instead before calling it a night?”

“I think that’s probably a good idea, Mr. Mulder!”

“You know, after tonight, what do you say we just drop the Mister?” I nods slowly, pursing my lips.

“So just Fox?” He makes a pained face.

“No, please don’t. Just Mulder is fine.”

“Mh-hm. I guess since we’re dropping the titles, that that makes me Scully? Little odd, but alright!”

We get the check and argue back and forth about who gets to pay, him putting an end to it with a firm “Will you give it a rest, you’ll get to pick up the next check!”.

In my attempt to slide off the barstool gracefully despite three tequila shots, my heel catches onto the rail at the bottom and I stumble over the stool, knocking it over in the process. I have only his quick reflexes to thank that I don’t follow suit, his arms catching me around my waist and pulling me upright again.

He has the audacity to laugh, the bastard, and I’m beyond mortified. “Easy there, partner! Do you need a ride home? Felix is at a pajama party at his friend Suzie’s house, so I’m free to be your pumpkin carriage for tonight.” ‘NO! Yes? No. Get your hands off me. Don’t let go just yet.’

I’m so confused at the tug of war in my fuzzy head but I hate getting a cab alone and I’m in heels on top of being tipsy, I don’t want to walk home alone at night.

As we walk out, his hand finds his way to the small of my back guiding me through the crowds while making sure I don’t stumble again.

On the drive to the beach house, I manage not to fall asleep despite how tired I feel, too afraid of snoring or, God forbid, drooling onto myself. His hands find my back again guiding me up the stairs to the front door and I turn to face him at the top, even more nervous.

“Thanks for the ride, Mulder. And for listening.”

“Anytime, Scully. Good night!”

When he leans in, I start to panic that this is it and I think it shows on my face, because he only kisses my cheek, just like I did after the birthday party before getting back in the car and heading home. I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed.

I can’t ignore the flutter of excitement every time his hands land anywhere on my body but what I will absolutely deny, even to myself, is the way my heart constricts in my chest when he gazes at me that way and the sense of comfort that settles over me when we’re together.

Bodily reactions I can deal with, it’s when it comes to emotions is where it gets scary.

I just don’t think my heart can survive another Steve.

#xf #the x files #xf fanfic #msr #felix felicis #🥺

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rallamajoop · 4 years

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...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone.

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery.

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

#Venom: The Hunger #Venom #depression #SSRIs #Symbrock #Venom meta #meta #Venom comics #Len Kaminski

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 4 years

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Chapter 8 – Dream a Little Dream of Me: parallels with Doctor Who

What’s queer film and TV without a bit of Doris Day in your chapter title?

This was never intended to be a chapter by itself, but having seen @tjlcisthenewsexy’s fantastic video on Wholock parallels here X I had to start writing. Full credit for inspiration here to @tjlcisthenewsexy, who has definitely had many of these ideas independently, and I would fully recommend watching the video before you read this. I personally only really buy Moffat era Who as a direct parallel to Sherlock, largely because Moffat wrote both, but also because 2010-17 matches up exactly with our boys. Lots of people have drawn parallels between 2005’s Bad Wolf Bay scene (by Russell T Davies) and the tarmac scene – those parallels are definitely there, but I think they’re more due to common tropes in love-declaration scenes than from intent.

The Doctor Who episodes I’m largely going to be drawing on here are Amy’s Choice, Last Christmas, The Name of the Doctor and A Good Man Goes to War. Others will feature, but if you want a really strong grip on what I’m talking about, I’d recommend taking a look at all of these, or at the very least Amy’s Choice! But now – on with the show.

Time travel has always been possible in dreams. This line comes from The Name of the Doctor, which came out in 2013. The dream in question is a psychic telepathy connecting five of our main characters whilst they sleep, controlled by Madame Vastra. Much has been made of Madame Vastra being an explicit Sherlock mirror (X) with Jenny as her wife and explicit John mirror, so using a dream state to connect people across time should already ring TAB bells. But crucially, we’re not just focusing on telepathy here – we’re focusing on the ability of 19th century characters to use a dream state to connect with the 21st century. Given that we never see where River Song is connecting from, it’s safe to say that it is the 19th – 21st connection between the other characters that is important, like in TAB. The use of the word ‘always’ is really important here – it’s not saying that time travel is possible in dreams in the Whoniverse, but that it has always been possible. There’s an implication here that before time travel was invented, in a non science fiction world, dreams can still do this – and that’s what helps us to jump across to TAB.

In the dream sequence in TNotD, Jenny is supposed to lock up before they go into their trance, but she forgets. Intruders break in, but because Jenny and Vastra are unconscious they can’t defend themselves and so Jenny is murdered. This is the spur for everybody to wake up, to save themselves. Pretty much all of our dream states in Doctor Who are focused on the possibility of dying in the outside world, but TNotD is the one which articulates the problem of EMP theory most specifically. Jenny, our John mirror, dies because her protector’s unconsciousness means that she can’t protect her wife. (Vastra’s Silurian abilities very much put her into the role of protector here – she could save Jenny where Jenny couldn’t save herself, and frequently does.)

Between the time travel and Jenny, then, TNoTD is probably the best framework we get set up for TAB. This came out only a few months before s3, in which EMP began, so it’s safe to say that these ideas are well-formed in Mofftiss’s heads at this stage. However, if we jump all the way back to 2010 and Amy’s Choice, we can see that this has been in the works for a lot longer.

The first point of note here is the casting of Toby Jones as the Dream Lord.

Casting the same actor to play dream merchants, knocking characters unconscious and altering their memories and psyches? The universe is rarely so lazy. Other mirrors in this episode are easy to pull out. The Doctor and Sherlock have long been read as mirrors for each other – characters who have existed for a long time and are constantly evolving through adaptation, super-intelligent loners, but in case that wasn’t obvious, Moffat went to a reasonable effort to style them very similarly when both tenures began.

Both of these are very conscious remodellings of old characters. Much was made of Matt Smith being the youngest Doctor ever (26!), and Cumberbatch’s youth set him apart from the Rathbone/Brett image in everybody’s heads. There’s something young and modern here – but both still dress like they’re slightly ‘out of their time’, which of course they are. Coming to terms with modernity is the central challenge that Sherlock is going to have to face. And then, of course, there’s the hair – instantly recognisable to the character in both cases, yet remarkably similar.

If the Doctor and Sherlock are mirrors, Amy as the Doctor’s companion should be linked to John. Amy ran away on the night before her wedding, and whilst she is reasonably happy with Rory in the long term of the series, this episode is about her making the decision between domesticity and adventure – a pretty clear link to John in s3 and 4. This episode is particularly important for TST however, because Amy is heavily pregnant in the domestic dream – but she is far from enthused, torn between domestic life with Rory and wanting to run off with the Doctor. However, I grant the similarity with Martin Freeman isn’t striking.

Do note, however, the similarly uncomfortable dynamic in both of these photos – hilarious.

The parallel dream!verses created broadly represent John’s dilemma from TST, and if we followed Amy’s Choice as it seems on the surface, we would end up with a pretty straight reading of TST – John spends too much time with Sherlock, they’re all in danger, Mary dies and John is suicidal because of it. Broadly speaking, this works – Rory is killed in the dream (with a really nice visual parallel to TST) and Amy crashes a bus and kills herself because she doesn’t want to live without Rory. Amy picks the domestic sphere and although it takes several more series to play out in full, this is broadly the direction the series takes us in.

In both scenes, Sherlock and the Doctor are left standing off to the right, unsure of what to do – if you watch both scenes in parallel, it’s striking. There’s a great article here talking about how the angle demonstrates the Doctor to be powerless for the first time, amongst other things. X Amy asks the Doctor what is the point of him, and John’s declaration that Sherlock has broken his vow carries similar weight – they were supposed to save them.

The title of the episode is Amy’s Choice, and this, we’re led to believe, is the moment when Amy chooses Rory. I don’t believe this. The Doctor/Rory conflict goes on for a lot longer than this, and it’s far too early in their first series to resolve it. It would leave a lot of later episodes without nearly so much tension. It’s true that Amy does have some agency in choosing – the science is questionable, as the Doctor says they’ve all tapped into some space LSD equivalent from an unmentioned offscreen adventure which has induced a mutual psychic trance, which means that we’re not sure how much agency each of the characters has in this dream. It’s not seeded, and so it sounds like a fudge – deliberately. Because a pseudoscientific explanation like this can’t explain the Dream Lord himself, Amy and Rory point out, and the Doctor admits that the Dream Lord, the architect of the dreams themselves, was actually the Doctor’s psyche. The space LSD sounded like a fudge – and Amy and Rory expose that it wasn’t just a fudge on Moffat’s part, it was a fudge on the Doctor’s part.

And, crucially, what was the first thing the Doctor said about domestic!dream, long before he realised he created it?

“Oh, you’re okay. Oh, thank God. I had a terrible nightmare about you two. That was scary. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. You’re safe now.” X

Later, when asked how he knew that the Dream Lord was him, the Doctor merely says that no one else hates him so much. Domestic!verse, then, is a manifestation of everything that the Doctor dreads – it’s his worst nightmare, being conjured by his subconscious. That nightmare involves Amy’s suicide, Rory’s death because the Doctor can’t protect them – this maps pretty neatly onto EMP theory and TST. Although John doesn’t kill himself, he is rendered suicidal in the domestic nightmare that is left behind. As the previous chapter discusses, Sherlock not being able to protect John is definitely a nightmare, but the nightmare also maps onto reality – John is suicidal, but he’s struggling to work out why, so he has to construct it through a heterosexual lens. John’s potential death and love for Mary are the two things that form the worst nightmare in both dreams, and the nightmarish sense is highlighted in TST by the deep waters metaphor.

At the very end of the episode, the Doctor’s reflection is still the Dream Lord, suggesting that this isn’t some psychic drug phenomenon, an explanation which was frankly crap. The Doctor’s dark side is still inside him. This feels like an allegory for mental illness, and mental illness crops up aplenty in Moffat’s depictions of the Doctor, particularly the later we get – the seeds of it are here. Again, although Sherlock is being killed rather than killing himself, we have seen the suicidal side of him before and it is made clear in TAB that his opinion of himself is low. EMP s4 is about him coming to terms with how he views himself, and the cognitive dissonance that we see in Amy’s Choice is a nice separation of the psyche in two that foreshadows the immense splintering that’s going to come in EMP, but particularly between John, Mycroft and Eurus.

Another nice parallel between s4 and Amy’s Choice is the idea of predictability. Way before we know that this is the Doctor’s dream, the Doctor displays a remarkable ability to finish what the Eknodines say before they do, an ability which becomes an obvious hint in hindsight. Moving over to TLD, Sherlock has similarly ridiculous powers to predict what other people will do; because this underpins TLD, it jumps out as being something that rings very false to me, almost like a parody of who Sherlock Holmes is meant to be, and so we should pay attention to it. An uncanny ability to predict what others will do – yup, that’s a dream world.

One key similarity that Amy’s Choice has with EMP theory is that a false dream premise is set up in both. Amy’s Choice suggests that there are two worlds, and only one is a dream; their survival depends on recognising which is the real one. This is, of course, a lie – both worlds are dreamed, and that false premise is created to trap them in the Doctor’s psyche, presumably until the Doctor dies (although the threat is never clearly explained). TAB sets up a real world in the form of the modern day and a false Victorian age, but the supernatural graveyard scene is the first hint that the reality/dream binary is not real, just like Amy’s Choice. This one scene is not an anomaly – the chronology of the ‘man out of my time’ scene coming after Sherlock gets off the tarmac suggests that such mixing is still going on, and we shouldn’t trust our senses. In case that point needed hammering any more, however, Steven Moffat gave us A Good Man Goes To War.

This episode is the culmination of a series in which Amy is actually an almost-person, and Amy has been dreaming all of their adventures with a flesh avatar actually having them with Rory and the Doctor. Here it is Amy, rather than the Doctor, who is dreaming, which is a little ambiguous, but there are two key aspects that parallel Amy’s Choice. The first is that, like Amy’s Choice, the flesh avatar/dream person threat doesn’t just go away. These words of Madame Kovarian are extremely important:

Fooling you once was a joy, but fooling you twice, the same way? It’s a privilege. X

Exactly what the Dream Lord does in Amy’s Choice. Furthermore, although there’s a later meta in blindness across Doctor Who and Sherlock which at some stage really needs writing, many people have made the point that Sherlock is associated with blindness throughout series 4, and so we should note that the architect of the dream people/flesh avatars is Madame Kovarian, better known (and usually credited) as the Eyepatch Lady. However, there’s one other key message they’re giving us, which comes at the end of the clip linked above – the baby’s not real. Both Amy’s Choice and A Good Man Goes To War feature Amy’s child, and in both cases the plot revolves around the emotional recognition that that world isn’t real. Given that we know that Amy is a John mirror, and that her choice between the domestic and the adventurous is consistently paralleled to John’s choice in Sherlock, this is a pretty huge indicator that something is up with Rosie even if we didn’t know it already. Indeed, the cot and mobile that the child has in Amy’s Choice are similar to Rosie’s. That baby never stood a chance.

The last episode I want to briefly invoke is Last Christmas. If we’re looking for dreams, this episode really goes above and beyond. The premise is that there is an alien species called the dream crab which latches onto your face and dissolves your brain whilst putting you in a dream so that you don’t notice. To make this more confusing, it often places dreams within dreams to confuse you – whilst you’re dying. This episode came out on Christmas Day 2014, so a year after series 3 aired but before TAB, so in Sherlock-time we’ve just entered the mind palace. The title, Last Christmas, is pretty helpful here I think – of course it has relevance within the episode, but this episode should also get us thinking about what was going on this time last year, when Sherlock was airing.

We’re no stranger to dreams within dreams at this stage, but it’s interesting how the saving-the-companion vibe is still going strong here. Ostensibly, that’s not what the episode is about at all – it’s a classic everyone-trapped-on-a-base-working-together episode, but the last five minutes tacked on the end suggests that it’s far more about the Doctor’s relationship with Clara, the episode’s companion, than one might think. In this clip (X) the Doctor thinks he’s broken out of the final dream but goes back to visit Clara and realises that she is now old, and that he’s missed her life. It culminates in him apologising for getting it wrong, for not coming for her in time, for failing her; we get more of this with Clara’s actual death later in the show, but given that it’s a kid’s show and Christmas, this scene is a touch lighter than that. It’s then that Father Christmas comes in to tell the Doctor that he’s still dreaming, he can still save her – and his first word when he wakes up is “Clara”. None of the others trapped in the dream have needed his help to wake from the vision and survive; Clara, who as the companion is our John mirror, specifically needs saving, and the Doctor needs to wake up from his dream within a dream to do that.

Nick Frost’s appearance as Father Christmas gave us all a good laugh, but he was also used as the indicator that the world we were perceiving was a dream world. This was made a bit of a joke of early in the episode – in a sci-fi world like this, are we seriously looking for what’s not realistic as the code to crack the dream? The exact same joke is made in Amy’s Choice, and here we’re hitting a pretty silly version of the show where they joke that just about the only character who can’t be real is Father Christmas. These hints about looking for what’s not real, though, should be taken as just that – hints. From the emergence of ‘something’s fucky’ theories early on in s4, this has been the abiding reasoning for the various forms of EMP theory that have sprung up, and they’re not wrong. However, if I had to put my money on a figure like Santa Claus, something iconic which functions as a kind of dream thermometer, I’d be guessing:

You were there before me. The fucky skull that glows, almost like a warning that this is too mad. Crucially, in Last Christmas they explain that Santa is a warning that your brain is sending you, picking the most unbelievable thing possible so that you know you’re trapped, dying in your brain. Santa Claus? Well, it’s a kid’s show, and it’s Christmas. But if I were picking a dream siren to tell me I was dying, I like to think that my subconscious would pick the glowing skull on the wall; without explanation, it’s an awful lot more direct.

There is more reference than necessary made to dream crabs making one blind, and between Madame Kovarian and the blind Doctor in the later dream episode Extremis, there’s a lot more to unpack there, but I’m going to leave that for sometime down the line, or for someone else to jump into if they would like. I also want to throw out a thought I haven’t quite come to terms with yet – the elephant in the room in Amy’s Choice. Arwel Wyn Jones would be proud of the script for Amy’s Choice – twice, it mentions the elephant in the room, and so I feel I have to do the same. The first time, you could blink and miss it – the Doctor calls pregnant Amy ‘elephanty’. But the second time, we get this exchange:

DOCTOR: Now, we all know there’s an elephant in the room.

AMY: I have to be this size, I’m having a baby.

DOCTOR: No, no. The hormones seem real, but no. Is nobody going to mention Rory’s ponytail? You hold him down, I’ll cut it off? X

The elephant in the room – that the baby’s not real? Possibly, but not what we normally take it to mean. Rory’s ponytail also has not shaving for Sherlock Holmes vibes, but again it’s not quite concrete in my mind. These little bits at the end aren’t quite tied up, and I would love to hear what people have to say about them. That, however, is for another day! The next chapter in this series will be jumping back into episode-by-episode analysis with TLD – see you there.

#emp theory #wholock #tjlc #thewatsonbeekeepers #meta #my meta #mine #bbc sherlock #chapter eight: dream a little dream of me #tjlc is real #johnlock #sherlock holmes #doctor who #steven moffat #mark gatiss

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wrexidentalinsurance · 4 years

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I love you all. Please don’t garrote me for posting this.

I don’t think there is anything more dividing in this fandom than the subject of the Mass Effect endings. They’re all crap. Blue. Control. Okay so you’re TIM now. What happens to Shepard’s consciousness once it’s worn down by the passage of time? Do they decide that only ONE reaper being in the galaxy is enough and eliminate the rest by melting them in the core of a star or black hole? Or do they self-destruct? Or do they keep them all and send them back to the dark pit of space they came from to slumber until a new problem arrives? Is Shepard’s consciousness part of the Reaper code now? There’s so many questions and not enough answers. Sure, they fix the relays and help repair buildings and stuff. But there’s Abominations, Husks, Banshees, and Brutes running around? They used to be part of a family, someone’s family somewhere, and now they’re just dead remnants of themselves with no recollection of who they used to be. Are they hulking around fixing stuff? Is it even guaranteed that Shepard can keep them under control? How much control can one consciousness exert over a hoard that size and not bump into problems like Legion did with the Heretics and overwriting the “error” in the code? What happens when that is the case and Shepard’s code is overwritten by some other AI in the future? What if Shepard becomes Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Too many questions, too much imagination. Red. Destroy. Okay. I like Destroy. But there’s just a few tiny little problems: it undoes the hard work you put into healing the rift between the geth and the quarian and renders Legion’s sacrifice as null and void. Without the geth regulating the Quarians immune system, they have NO shot at inhabiting Rannoch again. So they’re back to square one, waiting for evolution to do its work which will take centuries. And Edi is dead? Joker and the rest of the crew are stranded on some planet. Shepard is probably fucked up for life (if they survive) because hey, they’re loaded down with synthetic coding, which probably came from some old Reaper code. All the Relays are dead. Does that mean all the Turian, Asari, Drell, Hanar, Volus, Elcor, and others starve to death hanging out above Earth while they’re supplies run low? All that hard work, all those lives spared—gone. Earth barely has enough supplies to feed it’s own population (according to the Codex), so where would they get the dextro food for other races from? But in comparison with the others, it looks like a “free will/leave it up to us to decide” kind of choice, which is great if it didn’t come with a kick to the quad. Green. Synthesis. Okay so I know some folks who like it and some who don’t. One of the people who likes Synthesis is a very good friend that has argued for it and we’ve had many talks about our choices, about sacrificing for the whole. She made some interesting points. But I have also seen a lot against convincing arguments against it. I didn’t like it because to me it insinuated forcing ascension onto individual people. Where is the autonomy? The game does not go into explaining what it exactly does to the body, mind, and if it strips people their personalities and choices or rewires them to be more accepting, tolerant, peaceful. You get the vague impression that it does somehow but it’s ambivalent. Knowledge and experience in life is a battle. It’s a choice. It’s something we fight for. Does having interconnectedness with everyone else in the universe strip you of your life choices? Does being part of a collective strip you of individuality? Is it a borg situation or is it a bee situation? Sure, it solves all the problems but what new problems does it open up? Does it force everyone to be peaceful and act with empathy? What exactly is synthesis? Is everyone now a human/machine hybrid? Overall it has left me with more questions than answers and the writers (whether for time or money) leave all of them unanswered. I still don’t know how to process this but maybe I’m not supposed to. Furthermore, your Shepard, after all that hard work and sacrifice, has to sacrifice themselves all over again to bind the entire universe in harmony? No happy endings for Shepard, at all. They’re just fodder and their LIs/found family/real family mourn and all their personal struggles are for nought.The only slightly good ending that gives Shepard a chance to survive is Destroy. Which is horribly unfair considering it fucks up other stuff. Then there’s the non-answer: Do nothing and watch the universe be torn asunder. OF all the fucking things I thought maybe this would be the one to turn the game on its head. You tell the Star Brat, “No, I’m not deciding for everyone”. “Okay, watch your galaxy burn then”. END. What it could have been is: “I’m not playing your shitty game, you reaper pawn. I see through this bullshit.” Star Brat: “Oh fiddlesticks! I can’t compute this noncompliance! Pure Anarchy!” Star Brat short circuits and disappears. Shepard hacks in and takes control of the Crucible. It activates a hundred black boxes and boom, transforms into a massive fucking Reaper killer. You spend a couple hours going on a Reaper Killing spree. You go on missions, every one of your friends and your LI control the individual parts of the unwieldy machine. You punch right through a Reaper hull and ignite it. It blows up slow motions style. You go from planet to planet waging war, rendering them powerless. Maybe even the Arachni help you maintain and repair it while you’re flitting from mission point to mission point. Hackett thinks you’re cool. He gives you a thumbs up from the Fifth Fleet chair. The other fleets are probably performing rescue missions. It’s a long battle with many missions to come but you do it. You obliterate the Reapers and some kind of peace is restored. --- Look, my point is, people are always going to disagree on these endings and that’s fine. I’m just saying maybe we should write our own shit and yeet canon. Or maybe take some of the canon and use it how it fits your story. Because sometimes it’s just bad writing, shortsightedness. They really screwed the pooch with all of these endings and personally, I feel like it was a big fat fuck you to the players.

#Not tagging this #do not click if you don't want to read about the endings to ME #I'm ranting a little #I've seen a lot of discussions for and against #that's fine #I like discussions on it #I have more questions than answers #and a surprise ending #yeet the fucking endings #please don't reblog #feel free to add as many comments as you need or send asks #I'll gladly have convo and look at your comments #send messages too #I will compile them as I collect ideas/data

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blindrapture · 4 years

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It has apparently been long enough now that I can revisit The Parallax and enjoy it wholeheartedly again.

This is normally the one BtBaM album that I’m divided on, as it’s hard for me to synchronize the tone of the music with the tone of the plot-- and even then, the plot requires quite a lot of context to even get to (two tracks from their second album, one track from their fourth album, two tracks from their fifth album, and then the entire Parallax EP all come together just to give the premise to this album). But it’s been nearly ten years now, I have this album memorized like the damn back of my hand, I have a lot of other musical experience behind me, and I am no longer a traumatized teenager.

So. How do I get into The Parallax II: Future Sequence? I treat it like frantic jazz. Every note contributes to a riff or a motif, every riff contributes to a greater rhythm, every greater rhythm and motif contributes to a Moment, every Moment contributes to a Song, some Songs contribute to sequences (ex: “Astral Body” and “Lay Your Ghosts to Rest” form a 15-minute unit which corresponds with “Silent Flight Parliament” at the other end of the album), and all of this makes the album a cohesive piece. This is the same with basically any album, and definitely any BtBaM album. Just.. the style here is frantic jazz, rendered with heavy metal instruments and growling vocals, performing an opera. Coming into this album expecting a familiar aesthetic is tricky, as this album creates its own aesthetic, and.. I’m repeating myself but “frantic” really sums it up best I can.

Furthermore, this “frantic” aesthetic somehow manages to colour the plot. Prospect #2, the main protagonist, has torn his mind apart with the god complex he got from his mission in the EP (to plant new life across the universe). Isolation in his spaceship has incubated this into a legitimate confusion between dream and reality, and the gods themselves have complicated matters by compromising his life in just the right ways to encourage a profound destructive tendency in him. He projects his astral body into space and hears his hands talk to him. His ship contains instructions to fuck with the gravitational orbits of meteors. His home planet is gone, along with the life he had to leave behind. He keeps dreaming of someone who looks exactly like him, and he knows exactly where to find him. Prospect #1, more of a deuteragonist in this opera, is that identical twin. He formerly had some sort of profession feeding lies to people on TV, a job he found so little joy in that he cast his life away by swimming out into the deep ocean. Somewhere along the lines, after a three-day emotional breakdown at sea, he was taken across the universe by the gods just to fuck with him and wound up stranded on an island where he was finally rescued. But this poor fuck, he’s on the wrong planet and doesn’t even know it; there’s no life for him here, and this civilization is still building massive structures from nothing. This world is frantic and hideous and he’s scared. And he keeps dreaming of someone who looks exactly like him, someone who’s coming for him. Prospect 1 has more of a passive role here, as he just wants to find a way to enjoy his new life, but his mirror twin, his mad god from the stars, has had it with humanity and has a mad plan to destroy it. And also, the real gods are owls.

(I did not mention Prospect 2′s wife, nor the Black Mask. That’s another tragedy in itself. Prospect 2 had to go out into space to plant new life as his old planet was dying, and the owls the government insisted he had to leave without telling his wife. He couldn’t go through with that, so he left a note for her explaining his situation before he left. The government was serious, though, so they hired a remorseless assassin to steal the letter and destroy it. What happens to both characters is covered in Future Sequence.)

See, like. ...frankly, that whole plot is awesome??? That’s one of the best damn plots I’ve ever seen to a music album??? But the music itself doesn’t necessarily sound like the “coolest” way to express it. The plot is not covered straightforwardly, the songs rarely stick around in one mood and let it establish some kind of tone. But. But the music sure as hell does do something. It gives that frantic undercurrent, and the plot lines intertwine concurrently to give this impression that the music is trying to tell two stories at the same time, two identical voices trying to express themselves, unable to be contained by the music. I would call this a maximalist metal album, and taken on its own merits, it’s gripping as fuck. It’s metal with xylophones, saxophones, a string quartet, a tuba, and animal noises, and it’s not even clear when most of those instruments are present; they contribute to an undercurrent, like some kind of sub-texture. It’s goddamn jazz.

This is not exactly my favourite Between the Buried and Me album, not even my favourite rock opera of theirs (that’s Automata, on both counts). But it is possibly their most iconic, the most.. blatantly... them. Listening to this album is a fever dream filled with fucking awesome riffs and a showmanship that comes across even without seeing their live performance. (Spoilers: They perform their songs live flawlessly.)

I’ve heard it said that BtBaM is like a fine wine. As much as I feel the two have nothing in common, I.. can still see what that means. And I feel no shame in gushing about them.

Eyes open to the sound of laughter Like a mighty god casting his spells on the world below The man is me

#a gush post #between the buried and me #they've got a new album coming soon which is apparently *longer* than the parallax #i am going to shit

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solkraka · 3 years

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excerpt from On Art // A Hero in Flight

Understanding heroes enables us to understand those aspects of ourselves we agree with most. We tend to ask children what their favourite heroes are, but the qualities of those heroes we idolise as children tend to be those to which we aspire as we grow. This has been the case throughout history; Gilgamesh inspired who knows how many lads to strive towards displaying magnificent feats of strength, Odysseus towards cunning and ingenuity. Tristan and Isolde, with their unyielding love, inspired how many burgeoning couples; how many generations of people were galvanised into adhering to their moral and spiritual law after reading of Moses?

The names and contexts of heroes changes with our understanding of ourselves as a whole – and yet, the hero as the embodiment of our greatest selves remains, a perpetual adaptation. One of the ways in which heroes carry our aspirations is in their ability to fly when we cannot innately do so. Superman speeds his way through the skies in the span of heartbeats; Spider-Man slings his way through a city with (most of the time) grace. Even those who cannot fly innately have their ways of ascending, even if for brief moments: Iron Man has his engineered suits, while the Batman can shoot his way into the sky. Therein lies a nuance of our heroes, then: the way heroes fly indicates something about them, and thus about those who enjoy them.

What started as mere leaps and bounds for Superman evolved eventually into a continuous and autonomous flight. He has become powerful enough to not only outrun and outleap every person on the planet, but to sustainably defy gravity itself. In many ways, it’s more than that. From a practical sense, the best way to explain Superman’s flight is to say that he carries his own gravity relative to himself, which explains his ability to hover, rather than merely leap and descend. Gravity is the weakest of the greatest forces in the cosmos, bending even light to its will – and yet, unlike us, Superman is able to defy it on a whim, enabling him to fly through space, to hover above a city, to catch a crashing plane.

What might be equally fascinating are the implications of Superman’s form when he flies. If you were to don a kid in a cape and ask them to fly as Superman does, they would more than likely extend their fists over the head and zoom onwards. This gesture, throwing up one’s hands in an exhilarating moment, with the feeling of the wind soaring past you, is identical to that of those who have, despite the odds, garnered victory. This in itself seems meaningless; Superman, of all people, deserves to throw up his arms in the sign of victory, for that’s what he does, time and time again. But it is more than that. It’s the fact that emblazoned upon Superman’s chest is – to humans – merely an S, encased in a pentagon; to Superman, however, to the species from which he originates, it is the crest of a family dedicated to hope. That is what people see when Superman flies over them, a victorious symbol of hope. Think of all that makes Superman the superhero he is: his durability, his dependability, his strength – not merely physical, but mental, spiritual.

The embodiment of hope is this durable, potent, impossible, and yet-so-grounded person, this person who is willing to do everything in his power to stop those who literally walk beneath him as he soars to save them from another danger. Until he revealed it recently, no one realised he was just a reporter from a decent newspaper, who was raised in a small country town. He made anyone capable of donning the cape; he is a universal hero. Anyone could be the man saving a skyscraper full of people from a fiery death; anyone could be the man who saved the world. Anyone could be the man who flew. In this way, anyone could be the person to whom they looked up and knew, though something was wrong, it would soon be right again.

The same goes for Spider-Man: all that anyone knew of him was that he was a man, strong and dextrous and lithe, who zipped through the skies and helped anyone who needed it. It is not solely his anonymity which makes Spider-Man so relatable, nor just his quips and snarkiness, but his evident humanity. People have seen him hurt, seen him bleeding, seen his mask torn, his limping gait. There is always the scene from the second Raimi film to recall, when those aboard the train, shocked to find out how young Spider-Man is, make themselves a barrier between the unconscious hero and the villain pursuing him. Even Spider-Man’s tagline shows how close he is to the rest of us – he’s just our friendly neighbourhood superhero, helping people in his spare time. Not because he’s beholden to help others; he does so because he can. He has the ability to do so, and so he does; and, if he can, then why can’t we also help others when we are able?

The way Spider-Man flies originally was an innate aspect of his: he could project web from his wrists. In recent years that was rendered to a web-shooter he wore upon his wrist, but in both cases his webs were triggered by pressing his middle and ring fingers to a pad near the base of his palm. For those unfamiliar, it might not strike as an interesting gesture, but for those who recognise American Sign Language, this is quite the way to fly. Spider-Man flies with a sentence: “I love you.” Examining this closer, we see that it’s through love Spider-Man connects with people – he can use his webbing to bind, to silence, to save, to leave messages. He also uses it to venture from place to place, to avoid obstacles.

Without things that reach towards the sky – whether organically, such as trees, or manmade, such as buildings – Spider-Man loses much of his effectiveness in transport. And sometimes, once he started relying on web-shooters rather than matter within himself, he runs out of that connective tissue, and is no longer able to fly as freely as he can with his webbing. From this we can gather that, while Spider-Man flies with love, if he overextends it, or is without aspirational assistance, even he is left to walk with the rest of us. And though there are other assets of his which have him stand out from a crowd – his strength, durability, ingenuity – these are not what immediately set him apart. Upon the ground, he is still capable of being hurt by all the things that could hurt everyone else.

And, just like everyone else, Spider-Man is well-acquainted with taking the bus, with walking the sidewalks. This cannot be said for those like Iron Man nor the Batman, both of whom are constantly set apart from those they seek to help. Both of these rely upon their ingenuity – the former excels in engineering and physics whereas the latter in strategy – but they also rely upon their astounding wealth to fix their problems. Without the budget either of them have access to, they would not be able to be quite the heroes they are. Iron Man, for example, were he not the extremely rich man he is, would likely find himself limited by the constraints of his wallet, rather than those of his imagination. And the Batman, were he not able to surreptitiously acquire those technologies and gadgets that his inherited company allows, would still be a strategist and fighter of great prowess, sure, but in the city of Gotham, where the divide between haves and have-nots is rigid and immense, how many times would he have died due to a lack of the proper armour and medical technologies?

This is not to say that Iron Man and the Batman aren’t heroes – though it must be mentioned that the latter is much most befitting the antihero, vigilante subset than otherwise – or are somehow lesser in magnitude than Spider-Man and Superman, but to point out the significance in how these humans without innate powers still manage to fly, and what that looks like.

Iron Man uses a propulsion system generated first by the power of his core (which is keeping his heart alive), and later on by an external core. Iron Man has a vast intellect, aside of his resources, and has shown that, in a pinch, he is able to engineer absolute marvels. And the way he flies emanates this: he launches himself through the air, continuously pushing on and onwards, requiring high amounts of energy to do so; he can continuously expend this energy, and increases the efficiency of his suit beyond physics as we understand it. He pushes himself to meet the limit of his imagination – and then pushes further. He is chronically tinkering with his suits, trying to make them – and, likely, himself – better than every previous iteration. He relies on software he’s developed to help with this, to catch things he may not pay attention to, to understand things he might not, to spot trends he has suspicions about but needed verified. Iron Man, rather than hope or love, flies with progression, with the yearning to manufacture better things.

The Batman still has both his tenacity and incredible foresight, and has shown repeatedly that he is capable of standing against all kinds of villainy, with or without access to his gear. But the Batman does not fly to remain in the air; he flies to descend, so that he might see a target better or gain access from a place unforeseen. He relies on his grappling hook to reach high places, where he may perch until it is time to fall upon his prey. And he is always falling, an aspect he prepares for with his cape. He is one who cannot fly, and he has no pretences about it. Considering his style, how this meshes with his archetype, one must realise that the Batman is not one who would fly. Socially, he comes from a place of privilege, from somewhere there is no reason to fly; he has reached the pinnacle of the social classes in Gotham and has no reason to spread his wings. More than that, though, the villains of Gotham are cast as insane, and as severely mentally ill; the Batman comes from a place of relative moral upstanding.

Though he is lost in his grief and driven by his need to make the world one his father would enjoy, though he has severe PTSD and anxiety (and likely paranoia), he has not turned to the dark side in ways of many of his rogues gallery. Yet, because of his own closeness to the madness of those he stalks at night, he is unwaveringly vicious in his handling of them. Of the aforementioned, he has the least restraint when it comes to dispelling crime, stopping only at the line of murder. But the Batman always descends to their level, always meanders the pathways of his rogues’ minds. To understand them better, sure, but in many ways as an effort to distinguish himself from them. It is vital to note, however, that the Batman may descend, but it is always with the goal of dragging himself from the depths and returning to his roost – and that difference, between himself and some of his peers, is all the difference.

#solkraka - on art #april 2021

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renaroo · 5 years

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Showing You Care

Disclaimer: Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: References to the 90s, Death of Superman, Comas Pairings: Boostle Rating: T Synopsis: Ted Kord is not taking care of himself in the aftermath of his confrontation with Doomsday, but he is trying to care for someone else. He’s just very bad at how he goes about it.

A/N: I was rereading 90s JLI mostly for references and inspiration with regards to Bea’s amazing relationship with Booster and for hilarious images of what everyone was wearing at the time, when I came across that period of time just after Doomsday and everyone’s more than a little beat up physically and spiritually, and seeing how defeated and angsty Booster was over not being able to be a superhero without his suit just struck a cord with me. Then it struck a Kord with me, so I wrote this silly bit of nothing.

“So the thought never even crossed your mind before?”

Things were dark to the point of being positively grim in the laboratory. Of course, Ted told himself that it was simply how someone should expect a laboratory to look when deep underground in a fortress-like compound. It helped him think, helped him keep in touch with the side of him that was Ted Kord, Inventor, and away from the young adventurer and hero that Blue Beetle had flatly become over the years.

That’s how his life always was, though — from a childhood between opposing parenting styles to a Jewish kid in a WASPy upper-class high school to a corporate laughing stock with a secret identity self-sabotaging all the things seemingly handed to him — pulled in two directions and never finding his footing for balance.

Brows furrowed in thought, Ted glanced over his shoulder in the dark and looked at the vague outline of his friend and fellow Justice Leaguer.

Had the conversation taken place a few weeks ago, Beatriz would have no doubt lit up her spot in the lab herself, eccentric green flames licking at every piece of equipment around her.

She hadn’t had that sort of control of her supernatural abilities for a while, though. And, despite his promises to her, Ted hadn’t done all that much to help her out.

In Ted’s defense, there was a long list of needs he had from his friends that needed addressing.

Less in his defense, Ted could feel the cold, calming relief of being at least a little bit responsible for some of his friends not being in the field for a little longer. Not getting hurt. Not getting dead.

If Superman could die, who among them was safe anymore?

“The thought of what?” he asked, in spite of himself. This was not really a conversation he was wanting to have. Not with Bea. Not with anybody. “Branching outside of the League?”

He was snappier then he meant to come across, frazzled by the thought.

When that raw nerve was exposed, he liked to direct himself to thoughts of Captain Traitor, but the unfortunate part of having these conversations with Bea was that she had a finger on the pulse of League gossip. And it didn’t take a super-spy to remember it wasn’t that long ago since Ted was brawling with Booster on the floor of the Bug over his departure from the League.

They were good after that. Again. Maybe.

It would have been petty for Ted to hold a grudge still, months after everything was already rectified and the League whole. After they had stood side by side against Doomsday together and were torn apart only to be back at it again.

Almost.

“Not leave the League,” Bea soothed, walking around the lab, toward the walls and feeling around. “Where’s the light switch?”

“It’s not a switch, it’s…” Ted stopped working on the monitor he was repairing and looked around his control panel. With a press of a button, the lights in his lab came on with a flourish. “Ta-da.”

Bea turned and looked at him expectantly, but her attitude seemed to shift in an instant upon making contact. “Jesus, Beetle.”

“What?” he asked her, immediately looking down to his sweater for the ketchup stain from lunch. He’d hoped he got most of it off.

“When’s the last time you shaved?” she asked him.

“I’m thinking of growing a beard,” he answered without a moment’s thought. He reached for the wadded up napkin laying next to the Big Belly Burger trash from his lunch. When he began rubbing at the ketchup stain, Bea, who had somehow closed the distance between them without Ted even realizing it, grabbed his wrist and wrenched it away.

“You are not, you’re just not taking care of yourself,” she said firmly. “I bet you wore that shirt yesterday, too.”

“You have no proof, Fire,” Ted sniffed down his nose at her.

Her eyes sharpened and she tightened her grip on his wrist. “Believe it or not,” she continued, “I’m not pointing any of this out to make you feel bad or to make you question your spot on the League.”

“Oh, well, since those are the only options I can think of, you’re doing a pretty bad job at whatever this is, then,” Ted snapped at her.

“I’m worried about Booster,” she finally announced.

Now that hit Ted like a twenty-pound weight thrown directly at his slightly increasing gut. He looked at her, giving up his meager resistance on her hold, and allowed his emotions to eek through with a strangled, “What? What’s wrong?”

“And you,” Bea finished lamely. As if Ted could share in any concerns for himself in the light of something being seriously wrong with Booster.

“Then why are we worrying about hypotheticals here? Spill it,” Ted demanded.

“Fine, jackass,” Bea hissed back, shoving his wrist and everything attached to it back into Ted’s chest. “Ever since Doomsday shredded Booster’s suit and rendered him powerless, he’s been stomping around the League with almost as much self-loathing and assholery as you have down here in the basement.”

“It’s a laboratory,” Ted whined back. And it was a laboratory — it was part of the incentives package from Max to get him to sign back up, and it was also the one place he could think and tinker and be left alone to wallow in the fact that he woke up from a coma into a whole new, whole worse world. A world without Superman, without hope, without faith that superheroes like them could fill the tremendous hole that a Superman had left behind.

And, despite himself, Ted woke up with a lot of those same feelings as the public at large.

And since Ted hadn’t so much as checked the fitting of his Blue Beetle costume since he woke up from a coma, it did place him much closer to that civilian perspective than anyone else in the League had been for a while.

“And while I sure as hell can agree that we’ve been through enough in all of this to deserve some bad attitudes to a point,” Bea continued, “I think the reason the two of you are quite so obnoxious is because of the separation anxiety.”

Ted squinted at her, not following. “Separation anxiety… from the League?” he asked, genuinely baffled.

Beatriz put the heels of her palms against her eye sockets and looked like she was about to scream. “Idiotas!” She hissed between her teeth. “From each other, Beetle. From each other.”

He looked longways at her, assessing her for some signs of her own mental breakdown or distress from mind control or brainwashing, and then turned back to his monitor. “Are you really so bored up in the embassy right now that you’re trying to dig into trouble?”

“I’m going to torch you and this whole stupid lab,” Bea warned.

Before he could help himself, Ted snorted and put on his soldering goggles to get back to work. “Yeah? With what powers?”

He knew he had to be out of practice because he saw the punch coming from a mile away and still didn’t have the time or wherewithal to block or get out of the way before Bea sent him careening into the control panel next to him.

Blinking a few times, Ted looked at the shaking figure of his friend, noted that steam was quite literally perspiring from her exposed shoulders and neck, then took a moment to reassess whether or not his jaw was attached to his skull. It was.

“Okay,” he responded, “Ow.”

“Do you have any idea how hard the two of you make it to talk to you about anything that matters?” Bea demanded from him. “My god, I have no idea how you two have been together this long. The second the door closes and it’s just the two of you in a room, does it just immediately fall into unending fart jokes and nothing gets done?”

Realizing Bea had no intention of offering him help up, Ted pushed off from the control panel and rubbed his no doubt reddening cheek. “Bea, you’ve known Booster and me for years by now.” He paused, mostly for dramatic effect but also to glance and make sure that she wasn’t close enough for a second shot before he could duck away. “Of course that’s what happens the moment Booster and I are alone in a room.”

“I’m trying to help you!” Bea snarled, throwing up her arms.

“You sure have a funny way of showing it!” Ted yelled back. “And, besides, help what? I’m on the bench until I complete physical therapy. Booster’s benched until he has a solution for his wrecked suit.”

“A solution you’re supposed to be working on,” Bea reminded him. The fact that her own benching was also reliant on Ted goes unspoken, but there was a prickling feeling in Ted’s neck that it was there, under all the layers being hidden by concern for Booster and Ted. “Have you even looked at his suit?”

Ted squinted at her. “Yeah. It’s shredded.”

“And your solution to that is…”

“Working on it,” Ted said so automatically it was as if Booster was in the lab having the conversation again. At least Bea hit him. Booster last time didn’t even bother to turn the lights on.

Just a where’s my super suit and gone the second he wasn’t getting the answer he wanted. Like a child.

“You know what I think, Beetle?” Bea began, slowly, calculated.

“Nope,” Ted answered, running his hands through his equipment for the exact pliers he needed for the monitor.

“I think you’re keeping Booster on the bench as long as you can by not doing a damn thing,” Bea said lowly. “And I think you know that the second Booster figures out that it’s what you’re doing, he’ll blow the top off the whole damn embassy.”

Sick of playing the games, of obfuscating, Ted looked up at her, glowering. “So?”

“That’s not going to fix anything,” she warned him. “The only way you two can stop this and save your relationship is if you talk to each other about it. Not manipulate things behind the scenes to get what you want.”

“So my friends aren’t getting killed out there for people who don’t believe in them for just a little longer!” Ted growled. “I think Booster’ll live. And our relationship—“

The word caught in Ted’s throat. Every emotion was so high, so heartfelt before it that he hadn’t even felt it coming until it was there. And then it was ringing in his ears. He choked a bit, as if it was a Big Belly fry that went down the wrong way, didn’t settle well with him.

If Bea noticed, she was too busy with his other charges. “That isn’t your call, Beetle. God damn it, I felt this was what was going on but I just. I didn’t know for sure until I got down here. And look at you, falling apart, you know it’s not going to fix any of this. You know you’re not supposed to make these decisions on your own!”

Ted grabbed onto the corner of his work table and felt like he needed to catch his breath still. “Wait, wait, hold up!” he called out, using a free hand to try to stress the request. It didn’t do a whole lot of good.

“You’ve had to have noticed it if I’ve noticed that Booster is so wrapped up in getting back out there that he has no sense of personhood outside of his suit,” Bea continued to rant, her hands firing off and twisting in the air with nearly the same speed as her mouth. “And by god, if he tells Skeets to scan his suit for options one more time, I think the little robot’s going to fry him!”

Unable to take it any longer, Ted looked to Bea wildly and smacked the table to get her attention. “Now hold on! You’re firing off some pretty hefty accusations here!” he roared at her, accurately worked up for the circumstances.

She stopped and gave him a look over. “What? You think the little robot’s got enough money to sue for libel?”

“Not about Skeets! About Booster and me!” Ted squeaked, though he liked to reflect on it being a manlier squeak than most.

It was Bea’s turn to squint back at Ted. “What? You don’t think Booster has too much of himself wrapped up in being a superhero?”

“I think you’ve got too much of Booster and I wrapped up with each other,” he growled out. He scoffed. “Relationship. We’re friends.”

Even though Ted was nowhere close to her, Bea staggered back like he had finally punched her back. “What?”

Ted was regaining his composure and able to stand on his own two legs again without leaning on the table. He crossed his arms and looked at Bea confidently, even as the fluttering in his stomach and chest felt like it was going to leave him swaying the moment he no longer had to make a point.

Many emotions seemed to run through Bea before she glanced around and then back at Ted. Quietly, almost worriedly, she asked, “Does Booster know?”

“Yes!” Ted yelled, though a pang of Wait does he? ran through him with a worrying bout of second-guessing everything he thought he knew about himself and his closest friend.

Bea seemed genuinely shook as she stood quietly for a moment, contemplating. She then shook her head in disbelief and glanced at Ted. “Well, it doesn’t matter how close you two really are—“

“It matters!” Ted squeaked again. That time felt significantly less manly.

“Booster needs to hear from someone who loves him that he’s got more than a suit and superhero gig to him,” Bea said more confidently. “He needs to hear it and he needs to see that someone cares so damn much about him that they’re willing to try to stop him from doing something stupid. Like what you’re doing, Beetle. Though, and let’s be clear here, the way you’re doing it is tremendously stupid itself.”

“How are you so good at making everything an accusation?” Ted sighed, rubbing at his eyes.

There was a more tired look at Beatriz’s expectant glare when Ted glanced back at her. She took a deep breath and turned to walk out. “Talk to Booster,” she ordered him on her way out. “And while you’re at it, get some sunlight. And a razor. And a shirt.”

Ted was pretty sure no one had mothered him with contempt and pity in equal amounts since his own mother had died.

***

He had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

That wasn’t entirely true. Reclusive as he might have become in the days after waking from a Doomsday-induced coma, Ted still understood the basics of the Justice League’s base and its layout. He technically understood that the upper levels were filled with space and amenities for his colleagues.

And he also understood that it was the most likely place he could find Booster.

Beyond those fairly basic facts, though, Ted had little to no idea what he was doing. And he could sense his creeping insecurities clawing their way back up to the forefront of his mind.

Therefore, in a far more literal sense, he had no idea what he was doing.

Which made it strangely inconvenient when he made it into the gym and found Booster on a treadmill, his golden robotic companion floating alongside with a countdown timer occupying where Skeets’ frontal display normally was.

Booster was so in the moment, so occupied by his running, that he didn’t seem to notice Ted in the doorway at all. He was gazing straight ahead, cheeks dimpled as his highly controlled breathing rushed air in and out of his mouth.

This must be a fairly intense workout routine, or at least one Booster had been at for a while because Ted knew it took pushing Booster quite a bit for him to get the sheen of sweat that covers his skin. Skin that was highly visible considering Booster was in training shorts and gym shoes without anything else but a headband.

If it were a normal occasion, Ted would already have a couple of dozen jokes at the ready for the headband alone. It was doing nothing to keep back the waterfalls of sweat at that point and seemed mostly to be an aesthetic choice to make up for Booster’s serious lack of recent haircuts.

He had a mane that would make Fabio jealous, that’s for sure.

Ted considered that, all of it, as he watched awkwardly from afar, only to feel an unnatural heat build-up from within his unseasonal turtleneck. Relationship. God, he could have killed Bea for doing that to him. For making him think in such ways he never would have.

He didn’t want to think of his best friend in these ways.

A little too late, Ted realized he also shouldn’t creepily watch his best friend work out more-than-half-naked in the training room either. But that was something, at least, he could confront head-on.

Clearing his throat and making a big production out of stepping into the gym, Ted hoped that it was more than enough to make up for his shadowy leering. Though, if it was, it still wasn’t enough to get Booster to slow down on the treadmill.

Booster did glance to Skeets’ timer and then looked over to Ted, though. So he knew Ted was in there. That had to count for something.

“Hey, Boost,” Ted tried instead. He said it so casually, so naturally, that it took a full moment for him to wonder if it was too much or not. To have a nickname for your friend’s nickname. Was that too familiar? So what if it was?

He was about to have a panic attack and he couldn’t even explain to himself why.

“Did you get something up with the suit?” Booster asked immediately, his eyes darting toward Ted.

And, oh, did that not burn Ted up immediately. For a multitude of reasons. The rudeness, though, was taking front and center, though.

“No, I told you I’d let you know as soon as there was any progress,” Ted countered, sounding nearly as wounded as he felt.

The moment Skeets’ timer hit zero-zero-zero-zero, Booster pushed something on the treadmill that seemed to lower the speed. His high-intensity run began to decrease to a jog. He gripped to the side handles as adjusted with the machine.

“What’re you doing out of the lab?” Booster asked just as snappishly as his first question. He was so focused on Ted’s face that Skeets flew off to the side of the gym without even informing either of them.

That time, Ted could not resist the way his eyes rolled for the back of his head. He crossed his arms defensively. “I’m allowed to leave the lab any time I want,” he hissed back.

“Oh, are you?” Booster countered, slowing to a walk. “Guess that explains the fast-food wrappers I keep finding down there.”

Ted’s head snapped toward Booster, his blood rushing to his face and making him feel immediately hot across his cheeks and forehead. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you trying to gut me?”

“Why are you trying to avoid doing anything actually helpful around here lately?” Booster snapped back, jumping off the treadmill before it was finished up with his cooling-off period. He didn’t even glance in Skeets’ direction as the tiny robot flew in from the side with a towel at the ready.

“Doing anything actually helpful--” Ted repeated, sputtering over the words. “Are you shitting me right now? I’ve been rewiring this entire facility top to bottom and replacing all the standard equipment with updated models. And that’s with doctor’s orders to take it easy with my fatigue.” Then, because he was on a tear and couldn’t stop himself, he looked Booster up and down. “What’ve you done with all your time?”

Booster’s mouth snapped shut and his eyes darkened as he looked at Ted.

It didn’t take an expert in Booster Gold readings to know he was beyond pissed.

“I’m doing my best until you get in gear and fix my shit,” Booster snarled back. “Which, by the way, if you can’t then you need to tell me so I can find someone who can. And I needed to know yesterday.”

“Someone else more qualified to patch it up in this century?” Ted mocked. “Good luck, pal! I’ve helped you with it more than anyone else, and I’m telling you it’s positively trashed! It’s not going to protect you out there.”

Angrily, Booster threw up his arms. “I don’t need protection! I just need to be able to be a hero again!”

“If you need the suit to be a hero, Booster, then you weren’t really a hero to begin with!” Ted erupted at last.

Immediately, the silence became deafening as they stared at each other in shock.

Ted felt like he swallowed an entire lemon in a single go, his whole mouth dried up and his face recoiling back in shock from his own viciousness. He wasn’t even sure where the words came from, they were so callous and cruel. So biting.

Booster was broodingly quiet for a moment, not looking Ted in the face as if the image of him alone was painful. Instead, he looked to the floor or the equipment. He yanked the towel off of Skeets and began roughly rubbing it over his face and neck.

“Jesus christ,” Ted gasped at himself before dragging both of his hands down his face. “I have no idea why I just… Booster, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Sounds like you did,” Booster spat back venomously before balling up the sweat-soaked towel and throwing it right for Ted’s head. “Good talk, Beetle. I’ll stop pestering you about my suit. I’m sending it to STAR.”

“Okay, stop!” Ted growled, yanking the towel off his face and throwing it to the side. “Booster, hold on! Let me apologize!”

When Booster shoulder checked Ted on the way out of the gym, he hit with enough force to push Ted into the wall and took the breath out of him. Apparently Booster had been making a point of hitting the gym for more than just cardio in the past weeks since he lost his suit.

The smart thing to do, based on all of Ted’s long history with Booster, was to back off and let the other hero burn through his temper, work up a good mad without Ted anywhere in the vicinity.

But Ted was apparently a glutton for punishment that day.

He grabbed Booster’s wrist and held it with a vice grip, wrenching Booster back and to turn him around to face him again.

“Don’t touch me!” Booster growled, his mouth turning up in a snarl.

“I said to hold on!” Ted yelled back. “I’m sorry, I’m a dumbass! I don’t know what I was trying to say there, but it wasn’t what came out, okay? Let me just…” He stopped himself and shook his head. He didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish with any of it. He’d made such a good mess from the start.

“Just, what, Ted? Continue to prove that you think I’m some idiot blowhard just like every other person thinks?” Booster demanded. He pulled his hand out from Ted’s grip at last and rubbed his wrist. “I don’t need to hear it. I’ve heard enough of it, thanks!”

“I know you’re not like that, you big idiot, that’s why I’m scared!” Ted exploded, throwing his own arms into the air. “You’re such a hero -- you’re so dedicated to it -- that you’re going to go flinging yourself out into danger the very second I have a prototype that isn’t even tested yet! You’re going to try to save someone, try to prove yourself, and while you’re doing it, I’ll have fucked something up and it’ll fail you and you’re going to die, Booster! You hear me? You’ll get yourself killed!”

Booster stared at him, the anger not dropping even an iota. “Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence!”

Ted let out a frustrated croaking noise from deep within his throat and rubbed at his face. “Goddamn it! Why can’t I say any of this right?”

While Ted was working through his moment, though, Booster was taking a step back, his brows knitted together in thought. Then, crestfallen, he shook his head at Ted.

“You haven’t been working on the suit on purpose,” he surmised.

Closing his eyes, Ted released a deep sigh. “I was trying to come up here to, uh, to talk to you about that. Talk to you about a lot of things relating to that. Because I was talking to Bea and she was worried about you, and me. And it was a lot of stuff that I think we have been sitting on and not dealing with since I woke up.”

Booster stared at him. “Sitting on and not dealing with… like my suit maybe?” his anger was flaring again.

Looking Booster in the eyes, Ted felt his chest clenching tightly. It was painful to see that anger directed his way -- sure if he pranked Booster or poked his buttons on purpose that was one thing. But it was anguish and hurt under that anger that was all radiating directly from Booster to Ted. And he deserved it.

“You’ve got every right to be angry with me,” Ted admitted. “But, goddammit, Booster, hear me out here. I almost died, okay? Some monster out of nowhere came through and busted my head in without a second thought. And I wake up, weeks later, to learn that the same monster that almost finished me off killed Superman. And the first thing my best friends want me to do when I get back to the land of the living is to help them put themselves back on the battlefield? To get themselves killed?”

For a moment, Ted couldn’t tell if his words got to Booster or not. He was glaring at the ground before he snapped back up and pointed at Ted’s chest. “You almost died because I wasn’t able to do anything to help,” Booster growled. “I was there and I watched you hang onto life by a thread, and I couldn’t even get into the fight, couldn’t save the leader of our team, because all I am at the end of the day is a bunch of fancy gadgets I didn’t even make myself. And now you want me to sit on the sidelines and do nothing again?”

“I want you to stay alive, you jackass!” Ted yelled, smacking Booster’s hand down. “I don’t care if you never want to talk to me again afterward! If I kept you alive then I can be happy!”

“Superman died!” Booster burst out like it was an argument or a point or anything really.

“I don’t care who else dies! I won’t let you be one of them!” Ted cried out.

Booster’s eyes widened slightly, taken aback. He looked Ted up and down as if expecting to see the outline of a Starro underneath his turtleneck. Then he squinted in confusion.

Ted, for his part, felt like his heart was going to race directly out of his chest and had to put a hand on it to uselessly attempt to calm it down. He scowled at himself. Still going smooth as desert sand, the two of them.

“Look, I don’t know if what’s wrong with us right now can be fixed by screaming matches in the League gym or not, but I feel like we’re distinctly lacking progress,” Ted noted out loud. He forced himself, with some struggle, to meet Booster’s gaze. “Can we try to talk at normal volumes?”

“You’re the one who keeps screaming and cutting like a knife,” Booster only partially joked. “But, sure, we can try the adult thing.”

“Ugh, the thing I’m worst at,” Ted sighed, pinching at the bridge of his eyes. He looked apologetically to Booster. “Booster, I know you’re a hero, and worst yet you’re a despicably good hero when it comes down to it. Which is why I knew that you weren’t kidding when I was in a hospital bed still and you were already talking about fixing up and updating your equipment. I’ve been a hero for years, and that’s easily the closest to death I have ever been, and here’s my perfectly heroic best friend ready to get back off the bench.”

“I’m a quarterback, I do terrible at sitting on the bench,” Booster huffed, a genuine smirk sneaking into his expression.

Ted shook his head testily. “And, as always, I must remind you that I played chess in high school and that metaphor is so beyond me it’s sad.”

“It’s really sad,” Booster agreed. He paused and looked off, a hand coming up and cover his mouth in thought. “I really did ask you to fix it while you were in your hospital bed, didn’t I? Wow, yeah. That was real bad of me.”

“It normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but,” Ted stopped for a moment and took stock of what he was saying. Thinking before talking. He needed to have been doing that from the start. Even with his heart abnormally racing around Booster for seemingly no reason. “Look, I don’t think it’s like what Bea was saying, but you are easily the most important person to me. I can’t fathom anything bad happening to you, and that’s what I feel like is going to happen if I screw up your suit. Which I feel like I will because that’s just superheroic to a T, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t screw up my suit, that’s why you’re the only person I really trust with it,” Booster replied flippantly, even flicking his wrist as he did so. He hesitated, though, and looked back at Ted seriously. “What do you mean what Bea was saying, though?”

“Oh,” Ted replied, heat rushing back in his face. “It’s really dumb. Stupid. Honestly, really nothing. But she was saying that you and I were acting, well, like kids having tantrums because we weren’t spending any time together and it was giving us, uh, separation anxiety.”

Booster looked at Ted curiously before snorting. “Like chihuahuas left in an apartment too long?”

Laughing, Ted ducked his head down. “Y-yeah. She was, uh, worried about our…” he trailed off, throat tightening at even the notion of repeating it. Does Booster know?

Tilting his head, Booster looked at Ted curiously. “Our what?”

Ted wished he could just go ahead and swallow his entire foot, get it over with. He seemed to like it in his mouth so much lately anyway.

“Our, uh,” Ted, despite himself, caught Booster’s bright blue eyes with his own again. His entire face was threatening to combust. “Our relationship.”

“Relationship?” Booster repeated. The significance seemed lost on him for a moment. His head tilted to the other side in thought and then he looked away in thought. Slowly, though, a hint of red began to grow from Booster’s cheeks, his ears, and even down to his shoulders. He let out a strained laugh. “I mean, we’re not in-in a relationship that way, I thought.”

Blanching, Ted nearly hit the wall behind him again backing up. “What do you mean thought!?” he squeaked out.

“I don’t know! I thought we weren’t? You’re here telling me my death will be worse than Superman’s!” Booster yelled back in response, his own body going stiff as a board as he backed up, too.

“I’m allowed to feel that way without it being that way!” Ted countered. He then reached to his head and yanked on his turtleneck. “Stupid, fucking, heated, useless--”

“What way?” Booster pressed, quiet and thoughtful.

“Oh, god, can we go back to fighting?” Ted begged.

“We may, depending on how this goes!” Booster said. His eyes flickered with something meaningful and unknowable at Ted. “Ted, have we been in a relationship this whole time?”

“If you have to ask, the answer’s probably no,” Ted said, chin down as he glared angrily at his turtleneck. Like it was the cause of everything terrible that had happened that day so far.

“Probably?”

Groaning, Ted scrubbed at his face instead of his turtleneck. He was about to have survived Doomsday only to give in to the elements and melt into a puddle right there in the League’s own property. “I never thought we were. But, when I look at all the things I count as having in a relationship? Like all the time, and the close vicinity, and the -- you know, all the stuff -- when I look at it scientifically, it would appear to most people that we, uh. I can just see where it came from.”

Booster looked unmoved. “What all stuff?”

“Don’t make me--” Ted sighed and rotated one of his hands in a weak gesture. “Booster, the feelings stuff. I care about you, like a lot. To an insane and scary degree. To the point that I do crazy, Mad Scientist Kord things that make no sense to anybody but me. Like sabotaging your chances of going back out there in the field because I’m so goddamn terrified that I’ll lose you.”

Squinting at him, Booster folded his arms across his broad chest. “You’re, what, hurtful because you love me?”

“I mean, statistically looking at my history, it’s just about the only way I know how to love people,” Ted attempted to joke. Badly. “Or I’m just really scared of this side of me and didn’t acknowledge it until about three minutes ago. That, too.”

“This is, by far, the weirdest conversation we’ve had,” Booster noted, almost transfixed.

“I mean, I’m sure we have had to have weirder at some point,” Ted muttered only to go stiff as Booster came in closer. “W-what are you doing?”

Ted wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was not the huge, sweaty embrace of his best friend who he had spent a few weeks sabotaging. Yet, as he was pulled tightly into Booster, he couldn’t help himself from pulling back, from wrapping his arms around Booster and breathing him in.

Somehow he had forgotten how good it felt to just touch someone else, to hug someone and mean it in a way that was so intimate and close. He felt lighter against Booster.

“I love you, too, Ted, you big idiot,” Booster huffed against the top of Ted’s head, his breath tickling the hairs over Ted’s ear. “I’m sorry I’m bad at saying it, too. But I absolutely can’t lose you again, either. And-and I need my suit. I can’t protect you without it.”

Blinking against Booster’s chest, Ted can feel that Booster’s heart is as panicked and erratic as his own.

“Maybe we both should get therapy first,” Ted mused.

“Maybe,” Booster agreed, finally letting Ted go so that they could look at each other. “We should probably, uh, process this thing first, though. Like. We just found out we’ve been kind of married for the past five years.”

Ted went rigid. “You think it’s only been five?”

Booster burst into laughter, which Ted couldn’t keep himself from joining in on. They leaned against each other, slapping arms around each other’s necks for balance as their foreheads rested together. They were ridiculous and sophomoric, and almost everything the others had said about them -- especially that part.

But a weight Ted didn’t know he had been carrying was finally gone, and for the first time in a long time, he realized that perhaps even more than wanting Booster safe, he’d wanted him happy for a long time. At the very least since Ted had woken up from his brush with death.

And, if they were basically in a relationship anyway, he supposed that it was only right that they work on making each other happy anyway.

#Boostle #Ted Kord #Blue Beetle #Booster Gold #Michael Jon Carter #Beatriz da Costa #Fire #JLI #Justice League International #writing #dc fic #jli fic

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