#americans only find it acceptable to be standing when you are being paid for it

[neoyi]

Just came from theaters. Thoughts (spoiler heavy) under the "Keep Reading."

I pretty much expected the narrative to be the safest, straightest Point A-to-Point B plot. Being a ninety minute film (which my bladder thanks, because I can't watch movies past the two hour mark in theaters without rushing to the restroom nowadays), it never stays in one place or dilemma for long; this film is snappy. Everybody takes things at face value amazingly quick and advance the plot with little struggle. It's kind of odd, because normally this would bother me WAY more since the emotional impact of the protagonist's personal arc should have that gravitate (this film needed maybe like, an extra ten minutes), but I think having a paper thin plot that runs entirely in speedrun mode probably saved it more than killed. It is right to the point, says what it needs to, establishes and answers, and then moves on. I think having a laser focus goal (Mario and Luigi ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom, Peach needs to save it from Bowser, they go kick his ass) means all the little scenes that we do are crucial to the overall movie instead of pointless meandering. The action-y part of the film get to linger the most, which are spectacular to see, though I would have sacrificed a few minutes of it for some introspection. I guess I shouldn't have expected much from an Illumination film, let alone Nintendo's default flagship. When you have a brand as big as Mario (he's pretty much gaming's Mickey Mouse, after all), it makes sense this movie is just... the most Okay Thing Ever. At the very least, it does mean the movie didn't get gross out humors or Mario spouting dated catchphrases, though the pop songs playing in the background DO stick out by contrast, even if it's another thing I'd expect from a mainstream western animated movie.

Probably the biggest jaw drop is not the isekai route (I'm 36, I grew up with American Nintendo lore where Mario and Luigi were originally from Brooklyn and I'm still grateful the movie paid tribute to it because damn it, I find that aspect of Mario Lore interesting, non-canonical my ass!) , but that they have... parents. Nay, a FAMILY. Mario and Luigi have always BEEN Mario and Luigi. We see their parents from the knee down and cloaked in shadows in Yoshi's Island, but that was literally a couple of screens post-credit; we never see their faces or catch their names or anything. Even the 1993 Mario movie only had Mario and Luigi - their parents were non-essentials. Imagine my shock to see they have A Mom and Dad. What the fuck? And not just parents, they have a whole extended family living under one roof (like any true Italians, of course.) I wanna know who these other folks are. Uncles? Cousins? There's a baby there. Mario and Luigi's cousin? Is the old guy their grandpa??? Help, I don't know what to do with this information. How do I take in Mario and Luigi having an actual family?

Pauline has a brief speaking role and it looks like she's in an important position. I'm guessing she's NYC's mayor. Does she know Mario in this continuity?

I see you there, Charles Martinet, voicing a character who looks like Mario, but it isn't Mario. ;D

Speaking of family, holy SHIT, this movie also clarified whether Donkey Kong was Cranky's son or grandson. It's the first! Granted, this might be true for THIS film only, but it's nice to hear someone lay out their relationship out loud!

It is absolutely to no one's surprise that the stand-out role is Jack Black's Bowser. Every scene he's in, he nails. He delivers with so much gusto and enthusiasm - this man clearly loved playing this guy. Dude gets a piano solo in the middle of the film (a love song to his beloved Peach, of course) because Christ, man, if you're gonna use Jack Black, then you gotta use every part of that buffalo!

I've already accepted that Peach is just the oddball humanoid out in the Marioverse long before canon established Mario and Luigi as Mushroom Kingdom originators, too. But the movie does something interesting and goes out of their way to explain why she's the only human in a sea of Toads. I imagine this could be potential material for the sequel. Like Mario, it's also hinted she, too is from Earth, before accidentally wandering into the Mushroom Kingdom as a baby. I have so many questions how this kid walked into a pipe located in a very obscure part of the NYC sewers (maybe her parents were very neglectful plumbers) and even more questions on her upbringing So, the Toads decided to just one take her in, raise her, train her, and then... crown her as their princess? This brings up the question on whether the Mushroom Kingdom started as a monarchy because of her or if they were filling in a vacant seat that they felt only she was worthy. It's such a weird, eccentric thing for the Toads to just DO, especially without a feasible explanation, but also, I feel like this is something these mushroom idiots would kind of do. I mean, have you seen them? They're hopeless.

I would have been fine if Mario learned all his acrobatic parkour skills in the training montage alone, but I actually love that he's always been acrobatic just from dodging Brooklyn's many, many, maaaaany obstacles. Is it silly? Yeah, it is, but ya know what, people do parkour in real life every day, so why not?

Mario and Luigi taking off their gloves to reveal their... hands, is weirdly off-putting to me. Like these are just CGi cartoon hands, but they have like nails and creases and stuff. And it sticks out so badly that all I wanted was for them to put the gloves back ON. Which is funny to me because official Mario renders do this all the time. Like look at a recent 3D model of Mario and see the visible strewn of hairs sticking out from his hat. I don't know why the hands don't work for me. Maybe I'm just so used to them wearing gloves 24/7. Kind of like Mario's nipples.

I suspected Luigi wasn't going to do much from the trailers I've seen, and that proved correct in the final film. He does get to use the super star with Mario to beat Bowser, but I feel it went a bit unearned. Look, if there's a choice between Peach getting kidnapped or Luigi, than I'd rather it be the latter. Peach here is leagues better than what she's originally stuck with, and it really was for the better. I just kind of wished Luigi had maybe a moment prior to the final fight where he, I don't know, gain some courage, and try to free himself and all the other prisoners. I mean, the film already squeezed in Donkey Kong's daddy issues for all the five minutes it had, I don't see why they couldn't do the same for Luigi. I feel then his team-up with Mario (which isn't thoroughly unjustified - they are the Mario Bros) would have felt like a gradual step forward with his character. Ahh well, maybe in the sequel. Which probably will happen. It'll be good news for Yoshi fans if it does, if the post-credit tease is anything to go by.

tl;dr: This is a very safe movie, though I expected it as much. It's like, there are all-age films designed for their target audience, but thoroughly enjoyable for older folks, too. And then there are kid's movie which are... just for kids. This movie is the latter. It's either that or designed for longtime/dedicated Mario fans, which I am also the latter.

I'm not entirely sure if I would consider it a fun movie, but it's not bad. Shallow, but not bad. I have no genuine grievance or high praises for it. But I enjoyed my time regardless and didn't feel like it was a waste. And hey, that's fine with me.

I will absolutely be getting this on bluray, are you kidding me? (Funny little ancedote: A kid sitting next to me in theaters was thoroughly disappointed with the movie. Like straight up groaning, because Bowser did not win. It put a smile on my face. You're gonna conquer the world, kid!)

[cyanocardiotype]

Moderately questionable character summaries by AU

SCOUT

.mm: Imagine if your Dad ditched you and wasn't even sorry about it so you had to deal with your flesh just melting sometimes on your own

.sf: Any further allegations of this guy smelling like the ONE werewolf who HASN'T taken a bite at him will result in a lot of yelling and several deaths, even though it's 100% true

.ks: Oh good god the fae genes have made him worse. I didn't know that was possible without making him completely unbearable

.9: Local idiot runs a successful business getting paid to fistfight people in the street; uses proceeds to buy batteries and eat them

.rs: When you think about it a rocket launcher is a lot like a baseball bat and a rocket is a lot like a baseball, except for everything about rockets and rocket launchers, but if you ignore that they're basically identical. Yeah. Do you think we can yell the enemy to death

SOLDIER

.mm: Eight thousand identity crises in a metal box

.sf: Area werewolf gets entangled with local vampire; drinks unusual cocktail; fails to identify flowers he is allergic to; attains magically-mandated fursona. He is inordinately pleased with this

.ks: I don't know what you mean by 'Godly', ALL Americans of any good standing can run on pure patriotism! AMEN!

.9: Do you want to be a vet, just like the rest of all the honourable citizens of this country? Great! Injecting rats with steroids is an excellent way to get started in the profession! You'll have an army in no time :)

.rs: Fire is the greatest American invention, which is why it burns in Red, White and Blue. If you're cold, it's cold; put it on your jacket!

PYRO

.mm: At a certain point you have to accept that there's just no way to prove that you're actually real, and all you can do is move on and do what you feel is right for the situation

.sf: Living for 700 years is really boring. You know what isn't boring? Setting things on fire when you yourself are extremely vulnerable to fire. And grabbing people to yoink their blood but that's a given yknow

.ks: Just because the dragon is DEAD doesn't mean you have to give up on draconic activities. Good grief, what are you, a quitter?

.9: Area man might actually develop pyrokinesis out of sheer frustration if his best friend/longtime crush doesn't stop dancing around the problem and just buy him the goddamned flowers

.rs: 'I am going to cause problems on purpose'

DEMO

.mm: At a certain point destroying yourself will stop being worth it; the only question is whether you've overstepped that point already. Probably. Perhaps it's best not to think too hard about it.

.sf: There are many benefits to being a marine vampire, even if objectively speaking the sequence of events that leads up to such a thing really really really sucked

.ks: Being the only son of a long-standing vampire clan means a lot of things being handed down - traditions, the habit of stabbing other vampires, cool swords, and beef with the Vatican

.9: Guy who kind of longs for the adventure of his youth gets his wish granted when his fertiliser business spontaneously combusts

.rs: You know that comic about the guy who made a sword and was really smug about cutting himself on it because it was so sharp. Yeah

HEAVY:

.mm: The deep-rooted dread of knowing you've surpassed your family completely and utterly and your struggles exist on a scale they can't hope to fight is only matched by the relief that at least you're not an absent father lol

.sf: Once upon a time there were a lot of very evil baby men and then a vampire bird came along and ate all of them. The end

.ks: Come closer. I promise I won't do significant damage to your skeleton with my trusty dwarven tools. I promise I won't tunnel under your house and make the foundations collapse, killing you instantly. I promise my skin is soft and human. Pleeeeease

.9: Imagine you're the only literature teacher in a small town and you're just trying to have a nice day and pretend the Incident didn't happen and then you find out that not only is your brother in law breeding an army of megarats, your boyfriend is the one supplying him with rat steroids

.rs: You know what's good at killing bears? Improvised mega bear traps. You know what's good at killing mercenaries? Improvised mega bear traps also

ENGINEER:

.mm: The flesh is delicate and weak but good lord no I'm not going to upload myself to the cloud, that'd be reckless and stupid. I'm just going to weld some metal onto my skin instead, which is normal and safe

.sf: As per tradition, the Conagher family will now turn its latest scion and hope this one doesn't get staked. Again.

.ks: World's shortest elf (well, quarter-elf) goes into the oil business; decides that the homeland is Texas and promptly gets sort of high just from being in Texas

.9: Area farmsteader has absolutely no bodies buried in the backyard, and absolutely has never asked anyone to help burying any, and absolutely is not guilty about it. He will shoot people over this argument

.rs: Do you ever get the weird feeling that you lucked out tremendously in this world despite not really doing much that's unusual. Weird huh. Anyways who wants a ride with the lasso medigun

MEDIC:

.mm: Unsurprisingly, fucked up robots tend to act a little bit fucked up. Whoops! Better luck next time you bui- oh you're dead. Ok then. Go have fun fucked up robot

.sf: Experimental Log 18 - Five different types of vampire blood and one of werewolf is an acceptable number to have in a human's system, but I do feel like my blood is made of bees

.ks: Have you ever wanted to be Frankenstein AND his monster at the SAME TIME? Or are you a MASSIVE COWARD? That's what I thought

.9: Did you know you can pass off a driver's license with Sharpie corrections off as a medical license around here? Yeah, weird huh. Hm? No, no, you can trust me. I'm a doctor. Here's my medical license

.rs: Be unprofessional enough and it loops around to being efficient again.

SNIPER:

.mm: Area man finds out he's got meat inside him, freaks out, finds out he has metal inside that meat, freaks out, finds out there's meat mixed in with that metal, etc.

.sf: Many things in this world are very obvious, but not worth bringing up when you've finally got a decent number of people who don't mind you chewing on them

.ks: Surely being bitten on the butt by a dingo on a full moon night will have zero lasting consequences. Definitely not worth writing home about. Hahahahahahhaaaaaaaaagh

.9: Guy moves from small town in AUS to small town in the US, swaps bog spiders for mysterious miasma that makes your skin feel like it's being sandpapered off. Is that what they call regret?

.rs: Professionalism is very important when your entire mode of operation involves grabbing someone really close and strangling them. Or maybe just shoot them idk

SPY:

.mm: Man trapped in cage that's like 40% his own making. With pissed off estranged son

.sf: Imagine the biggest asshole you've ever met. Now imagine they ate a god once and won't shut up about it

.ks: Guy who is incapable of lying but so good at twisting the truth that you may as well just give up when he says "Good Morning"

.9: Mentoring the son you ditched while not actually telling him who you are and getting him into the small-town business of causing unsolved crimes is perfectly normal and acceptable behaviour, shut up

.rs: Old man takes advantage of tech to go beyond the speed records of his youth and generally just cause problems and run away from them

[mytruthandbeauty]

11 April 2023

Yesterday at the mini-mart which I often frequent when I don’t need to go to the big supermarket, as I was waiting in line there was a man and two small children ahead of me. A woman who was in front of him was being helped and when the cashier finished with her I expected the man to step up to the counter next, because he was clearly next in line. The little boy who was with him assumed the same thing as me, but the man motioned to him to step aside and he gestured to me to move forward instead. I was surprised but didn’t find this unusual, so I said mucho gracias and moved forward and placed my things on the counter. I loved this small kind gesture and I know it was given because of my gender and not my age because I’m told all the time that I don’t look my age. The civility that Mexicans often display to complete strangers is one of the charms of this place. They help with no thought of reward and they do it without being prompted. For me this is even more remarkable, because I’m a woman of trans experience and when this first happened, I’ll admit it was hard to accept. Mind you I’m not saying that this kind of thing always happens like when I’ve gotten on a crowded city bus I wasn’t always offered a seat and had to stand, so there is that, but in general I’ve found people here to gracious. I’ve watched these TikTok compilations called, If You’re an American living abroad, what’s the First time you realized that America really messed you Up? on YouTube and I have many examples of how America messed me up now that I moved abroad.

As a woman of trans experience healthcare access is vital to my continued health and on an every day basis what that means is that I need uninterrupted access to hormones. I had gone through the vetting process before I was approved to get hormone replacement therapy, so when I moved to Mexico I had been on estrogen for almost nine years. In the states you must have a doctor prescribe them to you and you must see this doctor periodically to have your prescription renewed. Now once you’ve been on them for a while and it’s been confirmed by your doctor that your levels are good and you are satisfied with your results I don’t see why you can’t just go to the pharmacy and purchase them without a renewed prescription from your doctor. It’s not like the doctor is just going to call it in to the pharmacy and you can then pick it up. No, you have to make an appointment, then physically see the doctor then the doctor contacts the pharmacy with your prescription and finally you can pick up your meds from the pharmacy. It’s a ridiculous time consuming and expensive process! I had researched the availability of hormones over-the-counter, otc, in Mexico before moving there and found to my surprise that I could in fact just go to the pharmacy ask for what I needed and purchase it otc no prescription necessary. Of course I still had to try it out in real life and when I did I was honestly a little nervous, but I didn’t have a problem. The brand was different and so was the quantity, but the product was the same, in fact it was better because it contained progesterone which in the states was sold separately. On top of this the price was a tiny fraction of what I would have paid as an uninsured customer in the states. My mind was blown! No wait time, no doctor visit, no prescription and a much less cost, talk about realizing that America had messed me up, well that was just one time of many. And on the subject of medicine I was able to get my hormones and other meds in Ecuador the same way and again the price was far below what they charge in the US. Honestly I only paid a little more than what I paid in the US with my Medicare prescription coverage and in Mexico and Ecuador I was uninsured. In both countries I’ve seen doctors for other concerns with very little wait time and on two of those occasions the doctors made house calls. The costs were not astronomical either and the most expensive was $60.00 USD. For one I had a blood panel done by a phlebotomist at my home and that was the most costly at $100.00 USD, but that was for a number of tests. I’m sorry, but the US healthcare system is a racket. One more point about how I realized how messed up the US is and then I’ll move on.

Here in Mexico I routinely see city police, transit police and the national guard and the national guard can be scary when you first see them. They are dressed in army fatigues with helmets and they carry assault rifles. When I first saw some drive by I didn’t know what to think and of course I thought something terrible was about to happen, but nothing did. They just calmly drove past in their specially designed pickup truck. I’ve even seen them patrolling the beach in small groups and they mind their business and don’t bother anyone. Back in the states the police always made me nervous, because before I transitioned I’d had police stop me arrest me for no reason once and pull their guns on me just because they didn’t like the way I looked I guess, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong. In all my life the only criminal thing I’ve done was enjoying marijuana recreationally and a few other drugs all when I was around twenty years old and that’s all. It’s such a relief to not be worried about the police, that they aren’t going to shoot me because they think I have a gun. I see them and they see me and everyone is fine.

[unluckystreak]

Thinking about how in the USA (and other largely car-dependent places) it’s such a thing in the culture for teenagers to “have their first real taste of independence” when they get a license. I don’t know how to articulate this well but ... I feel like traveling, like literally just HAVING THE ABILITY to go somewhere, is so fundamental to humans in so many ways. Like developmentally, emotionally, physically, socially, it’s important to simply even just have the option. I just really fucking hate that without access to a car, you’re nearly entirely stationary unless someone else forces or permits you to exist somewhere else. It’s extremely ironic to me that cars are touted to youth as the great marker of independence and individualism. To me, there’s nothing more independent or individualist than not being FORCED TO RELY on someone or something else to simply move from one place to another. At a young age where are certainly old enough to be in public by yourself, you do not become independent by having your license and driving -- you are only shifting your dependencies.

[neonponders]

Here’s a prologue for my The Mummy AU!

This all started because of the moodboards above, created by @memes-saved-me and @harringrove000 . I just couldn’t help myself.

Here’s my original post about this au (it includes links to the moodboards) ~

And @hoegrove I know you wanted to see this so 🌹

Read on ao3 ~

• • • • • • •

The overhead bulbs and candlelight cast harsh shadows and warm light throughout the grimy bar. Everyone glistened with sweat from the desert heat. The night brought with it gentle, cool breezes over the Nile, but in this packed place, the occasional thworp of paper and silk fans being thrown open could be heard. Even the swish of luxurious ostrich feathers swayed to cool people off.

Steve moved his legs to cross his knees, the papyrus green trousers brushing against the military beige breeches of the man sitting opposite him at their small, round, gambling table. They had gathered quite an audience; the messy pile of money had long since included bets beyond Steve and this man’s wagers. Steve hadn’t caught his name, but he felt the heat of his body through their trouser fabrics, and more than once caught himself staring at how the light gleamed in that dark blond, honeyed hair.

“You trying to distract me?”

“No,” Steve smirked, “I’m trying to get comfortable.”

“Stressed?” the man crooned.

Steve removed his gaze from those pin-made waves of his hair. They had long since given up their shape to the day’s heat, but a tress outright curled over this handsome bastard’s forehead. Steve dared to think he looked better unkempt. “Not one bit. Play your cards. You’re dressed like you have somewhere to be.”

“I’m in no rush,” he replied lethargically, like this was exactly where he wanted to be.

Steve let his eyes wander him a little more. “You sure? You look like a military man.”

“Honorably discharged.”

“Congratulations.”

Steve knew his eyes were blue, but in this lighting they looked like clear glass over onyx pupils when he tilted his head to look at Steve curiously. The latter retaliated before he even spoke. “Is that a strange thing to say?”

The blond shrugged with a gentle shake of his head as he plucked at his cards, rearranging them in his hand. “Only if you worship at the alter of hyper patriotism and military imperialism.”

Some chuckles sounded around them as harlots shared long, cigarette filter stems with their johns, and the barkeeps made glass clatter. Steve exhaled in a huff. “Whatever that means. I’d like to win, already. Play your cards.”

“You first, dear.”

He did, laying down his fan of cards underneath the row of cards from the dealer. The Madame of the place listened to their exchanges with amusement but kept it professional as she narrated, “Full house. Always something to brag about. And you, Mr. Hargrove?”

Hargrove, huh? Steve mused as he watched for any amount of discomfort on the man’s face. He didn’t get it.

“Straight flush,” the Madame said, aligning the winning cards with those from Steve’s and her own line. Steve had practically given him that win. And more of his father’s allowance than he would ever admit.

Hargrove moved a stack of chips to the Madame’s side of the table for a substantial tip, and then offered that hand to Steve. “Good game, Mr…?”

His eyes lolled under a slow blink before he accepted the hand. “Just Steve. It’s what I get for losing.”

“Let me top off your drink, at least, Steve.”

He took his loss with grace and stood to follow Hargrove to the bar. The crowd separated for him apart from a random slap on the back and long fingers stroking his hair in consolation. Hargrove reached the bar first, and watched all this while leaning back on his elbow. A light overhead moved across the exposed skin of his chest, just as honeyed as the rest of him, and the sparse hair there. Steve discretely lowered his gaze as if to not trip over the tiled stair raising the bar from the regular floor.

“Do you come here often?”

Steve snorted a quiet laugh and lifted his gaze. “You’ve already got me here. Ask me a real question.”

Hargrove smiled as the barkeep approached. “A bottle of red, please. Two glasses. It is a real question. People respond to you as if they know you here.”

Steve mirrored his stance and leaned into his elbow on the bar. “My sister and I come here sometimes. When we want to get away from…all of it.”

Hargrove hummed deep in his chest as the sound of a cork popping briefly diverted their attention. “Sister?”

“Stepsister, if you want to get specific, but she’s not here. You’ve only got little ol’ me.”

The barman poured two glasses without stopping, holding the vessels together with a practiced hand before he set them and the bottle on the bar. Hargrove paid him as he replied, “I have one of those. A stepsister, I mean. Although I don’t know how much it counts if you haven’t seen your so-called family in years.”

Steve reached for his wine and asked before he meant to, “Do you miss her?”

It was a bit too personal of a conversation between strangers. Hargrove’s pause made him quickly add, “You don’t have to answer that.”

“I’ll miss you, depending on how the rest of this night goes.”

Steve coughed on his wine. Hargrove chuckled as he offered a pale blue handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “Are you always this generous to people who’ve lost money to you?”

“Only the ones who are pretty enough to be a prize themselves.”

Steve’s eyes lolled in his head despite the rouge blooming in his cheeks and dusting across this throat. “If I’d known you were so used to winning I might’ve spent my money better.”

Hargrove’s eyes held steadily on him. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

* * *

Steve’s back pressed hard enough against the wall to break the kiss with a huff. He craned his face towards the sky as Hargrove made him shudder with soft lips and prickling stubble on his throat. They could hear the bar’s goings-on just on the other side of the exterior wall, but leaving the humid interior was refreshing on their wine-flushed skin. The darkness of the Cairo alleyway freed Hargrove’s hands to massage Steve’s backside.

As Steve caught his breath, he managed to slip his own hand between them, feeling the muscle of that chest for himself before he ducked to taste Hargrove’s skin. Salt and the neutral sweetness of a man’s skin. He liked the little sounds that Hargrove hummed while making a mess of Steve’s hair.

“I want this hair all over me. Better than silk.”

Steve lifted back up to frame Hargrove’s head in his hands, claiming and tasting and licking into his mouth. The way Hargrove kissed—like Steve was an oasis and honeycomb. Delicious and all his. It made Steve want to have him right here. Better than wine and cigars—intoxicating, having this kind of attention all to himself.

Hargrove hummed again, this time to get Steve’s attention. “Put your arms around me. I’ll do the rest.”

He didn’t fully understand until his trouser buttons slid free with ease. Steve openly moaned in the wake of Hargrove’s hand massaging his front, finding which direction his erection stood and easing it out into the night air. As his warm palm pumped him to aching readiness, Steve’s hands continued to wander Hargrove’s body. The man kissed him in a rush, almost brutally plundering his mouth before releasing to latch onto Steve’s collarbone.

One of Steve’s arms remained anchored around Hargrove’s shoulders. The rest of him rocked gently against the man intent to take him apart in a back alley—not that Steve minded one bit. His other hand pushed aside that half-open shirt to squeeze a nipple. Hargrove groaned deliciously and lifted his head to give Steve’s ear the same tantalizing attention—

Steve frowned a little at the hard and heavy rock of a thing knocking against his hand. It didn’t take much to pry the thing out of Hargrove’s jacket breast pocket. Steve didn’t have the time or the lighting to see what it really was. He had half a mind to hold onto it just out of petty spite. A token for taking so much out of his own wallet.

A reason for Hargrove to find him the next day.

Except a voice made Steve chirp, “Huh?”

And then Hargrove faced him with the same curiosity. They realized together that neither of them had spoken. Gas and oil lanterns were quickly moving through the alleyway, held aloft by harsh voices.

“Shit!” Steve hissed, rapidly putting himself back in his trousers. He yelped a choked sound as Hargrove yanked him out of the alley by his arm.

“We gotta go!”

“No shit!”

“Split up!”

“What?”

“GO.”

With that, Hargrove shoved him right into the vaporous air of a crowded hookah restaurant. Steve could only dodge and duck around rapidly standing patrons as the police flooded inside. The kitchen staff only reacted after he’d already dashed through the room, and by then, the police were too held up to catch up with him. Steve didn’t stop running. He heard yelling and whistles in the streets behind him, but he kept going—Hargrove’s strange stone clutched tight in his hand.

Only once he’d finished a very round-about path back to his lodgings, did he sneak quietly past his sister’s room and light a lamp to see his prize. The octagonal…thing…fit well in his palm. On one face, jagged lines had been finely carved, but all around its edges were familiar hieroglyphics.

“Oh. What the hell—better yet, what is a handsome American in Egypt doing with you in his pocket?”

Steve went over to his writing desk to find his glasses in a drawer. He popped them on and recognized a cartouche when he saw one. “Seti. Pharaoh Seti, huh? Well, Robin’s going to be all over this when she sees it.”

A shrill whistle outside startled him enough to drop it heavily on his floor. The whistle sounded far away, but he remained very still in case the wrath of a woman awoken before dawn barged into his room.

If Robin woke up, Steve remained blissfully unaware. He quickly undressed, washed as much of himself as he was able with the washbasin, and collapsed onto the bed. With Hargrove’s fancy artifact on his bedside table, Steve let the memory of sharp beard stubble and firm hands guide his own down to his cock. He got himself back to standing and finished what Hargrove started quickly.

But it was soft lips, open arms, and steady eyes that eased Steve to longing sleep. A slumber so deep that had his stepsister threw a pillow at him the next morning for oversleeping on her way to work at the National Library.

[cherienymphe]

Saving Grace (Alpha!Thor x Omega!Reader)

WARNINGS: NON-CON, Alpha!Thor 

summary: when an Avenger literally falls out of the sky and into your life, you take it upon yourself to nurse him back to health. It is easier said than done when you must hide your true nature from the blond god

~

It was a quiet night. Most nights were, but sometimes you could hear the faint howling of wolves or the scurrying of some smaller animal outside the cottage. The kettle on the stove was starting to let out a soft whistle, and you knew that it would be ready soon. You could hear a faint rumble from outside, but you paid the thunder no mind.

Your garden could use some rain. You started to undress, staring at the clawfoot tub in the corner with longing. You could practically feel the heated water warming your skin as you watched the steam rise from it while nearing it. You sank into it with a soft sigh, closing your eyes and leaning your head back as you relaxed.

You’d spent most of the day outside, planting some more fruits and vegetables that you’d bought from town. You didn’t get done until late, but that was your fault for waking up much later than you had expected. You were still getting used to the time change and lack of technology, despite how long it’d been since you’d moved here.

You swallowed as you thought of your family and friends and the life you’d left behind. The loneliness of your solitude made your heart clench, but you told yourself that it was for the better. It was safer than the alternative, safer than becoming nothing more than a warm body to some chauvinistic alpha who didn’t value you beyond what was in between your legs.

Both of your parents had been betas. They had often told you they’d thought you’d be no different, but they were wrong. You all were. As soon as you had turned 18, you had experienced the worst pain imaginable that came with your first heat. Your parents had been horrified, distraught even. You had always been their little girl, and the thought of you eventually submitting yourself to an alpha was too much for them.

You had been taken out of school halfway through your senior year, homeschooled through the rest. You hadn’t gone to a campus, instead taking your college courses online. You had never left the house. Instead, you had stayed locked away for years per your parents’ orders…and you didn’t mind.

Growing up, not only had you heard the stories of horrid alphas from your parents, but you’d seen some of the behaviors yourself. You saw how they acted, especially around omegas, how they carried themselves, how they took pride in the emotions they evoked from unmated omegas. You would never forget when a girl in your class had presented during junior year at 16 years old, how the few alpha boys who’d presented early had reacted. How one of the teachers had even reacted…

A shiver ran over you as you recalled that day…how scared that girl had been…how completely unrestrained those alphas had acted… It was a miracle that some other teachers and the school nurse had gotten her off the school grounds unscathed. You knew they weren’t all like that. Even if you’d like to believe so, statistically speaking, they couldn’t all be like that. But enough of them were to scare you.

So when your parents had suggested locking you inside the house for God knows how long, you did not oppose. You were all too happy to stay inside…safe and independent as you possibly could be under the circumstances. However, everything changed when your father died.

It had only been a few months after he died when you experienced one of your heats…the worst you’d ever been through. You couldn’t even recall it, blocking most of it out due to the trauma and pain. You did recall how scared your mother had been though. How worried she had been that you would not make it, that what you normally did to get you through your heats was no longer working. Reluctantly, she began to accept that you would need an alpha after all.

You had begged for otherwise, crying even, and she had cried too, but you could see the genuine fear for your life in her eyes. You had brought up the idea of suppressants, but you had known her answer before she even opened her mouth. They had always been adamantly against them due to the side effects, side effects that you had never given a flying hoot about.

She was determined to find you a nice alpha who would treat you right, who could be trusted with your life and care. You had begged her to reconsider, and she had promised to think about it, but deep down, you knew that her mind was made up. It had taken you less than a day to take her card and buy a plane ticket to Norway. Another two to transfer as much money as you could into an account your parents had opened for you forever ago but had never used. The same day you packed a single bag was the same night you had snuck out to catch the flight.

You were in Norway an entire month before finding a man who sold suppressants. You’d bought as many as possible in bulk, fortune enough to get enough to last for half a year. You’d been in Norway for a year and had only ventured out to buy from him twice. He was a beta and American, and you wondered how much business he got. How many omegas had the same idea as you to hide in the rural land of a foreign country?

The thunder outside rumbled louder now, much louder, and you pulled yourself from the tub just as the kettle began to scream inside the house. You wrapped your towel around you before going to turn it off. It was then that the outside was lit up by lightning, but it flashed in such a way that startled you. You turned to look out of the window, the outside so bright that you could’ve mistaken it for day time.

You heard something hit the ground hard, bringing lightning with it as it struck the earth, shaking the cottage. It was dark again, but you could see a rather large shape prone on the ground outside of your cottage. Your brows furrowed, and you hurried to put on a t-shirt and some pajama bottoms. Hesitantly, you went to open the door, and you gasped as you realized the figure was a man.

Confusion tore through you, but you ran outside anyway. It was lightly raining now, dampening your clothes and hair as you neared him. His golden hair haloed around his head, facial hair consistent and tasteful, and for some reason, he was familiar to you in the darkness. You knelt beside him, looking him over. The only light was the faint light from inside your house that stretched from the window and open door.

You couldn’t see much, but he eventually groaned. He started to sit up, and you recoiled a bit, but he groaned in pain as he did so. He was clearly hurt, and considering you were sure he fell from the sky, that didn’t surprise you.

“Can you stand?”

He mumbled something, and you couldn’t make it out, but he attempted to stand anyway. You helped him up, and it was then, when you were so close, that you recognized him. Your eyes widened, and you rushed to get him inside. It was pouring now.

When you both stumbled inside, you were able to see that he was hurt…badly. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, some more on his arms and neck area, but it seemed that his stomach was the worst of it. Miraculously, you were able to help him to your bed, the queen-sized furniture looking much smaller with his large frame on it. He passed out almost as soon as his back hit the mattress.

You blinked, staring at him in both awe and fear. He was as large and imposing as you always thought he’d be, hair golden and features sharp. You reminded yourself that he was injured, and you struggled to get his shirt off. You recalled seeing him on the news a few times before you’d left, fighting alongside other heroes like Captain America and Iron-Man. You also recalled that he was an alpha.

As you cleaned him up, you also reminded yourself that he was a hero. That he was one of the good guys and his presentation did not negate that. The cut on his stomach wasn’t deep, he’d lost more blood than anything, but you still thought it needed to be stitched. The problem with that was you were in a small cottage practically in the middle of nowhere.

You had a first aid kit lying around and was able to stem the bleeding with some bandages. It would have to do until he woke up. It hadn’t fully hit you yet that a superhero, a god, was lying in your bed, injured. You didn’t know if he was hurt anywhere else, but you decided you weren’t going to check. You’d wait for him to wake. You simply stared at him for a while, unsure of what to do before deciding to sit down in the rocking chair in the corner.

Your emotions were at war with themselves, and you didn’t know how to proceed. This man was a stranger, an alpha at that, and that made you nervous. You couldn’t ignore the small twinge of fear you felt at being in his presence. Sure, you had been on suppressants for a year, but your paranoia couldn’t be helped. On the other hand, he was a hero, loved by all. He was meant to protect, and part of you thought you should feel safer with him in your house.

You didn’t know how long you stared at him, tense and afraid and confused, but you eventually felt your head lolling. The rain outside was soothing, and it calmed your nerves, relaxing you. You succumbed to some much-needed sleep.

You woke up to the sound of a loud deep groan. You stirred a bit, back aching as you moved, confusion filling you. You heard the sound again, and when you blinked your eyes open, it took a moment for your memory to return.

You had an Avenger in your bed.

You sat up as he finally stirred, eyes blinking open to stare up at the ceiling. You glanced outside to see that you’d both slept the night through. You were a bit surprised with yourself that you had grown relaxed enough around him to even fall asleep, let alone sleep so soundly. You winced when you stood, and the movement drew his attention to you. You froze when his bright eyes landed on you, but he didn’t look alarmed…or even worried for that matter.

Why would he? You weren’t a threat in the slightest and he clearly knew that.

“Where am I?” he wondered, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

You reached out before pulling your hands back, unsure if you should help him.

“You’re in Norway,” you answered. “Flekkefjord to be exact.”

His gaze descended, and you followed it to his stomach. The bandages you put over his stomach were lightly stained with blood, but you were relieved to see that you were right: the wound wasn’t that bad. He ran his hand over his abdomen before lifting his gaze to you.

“You bandaged me.”

His voice was deep, like it was full of thunder, and the low timber warmed your body in the way a blanket would. It was strange.

“You were bleeding. I didn’t check to see if you were hurt anywhere else,” you gestured to his bottom half. “I would let you do that when you woke up…”

He pressed his hand to his head, groaning again as he moved to stand. You jumped into action, reaching out to see if he needed help, but he gently waved you off. You swallowed as you eyed him, his large build making your already small cottage look miniscule. He looked around with a hum.

“You fell out of the sky,” you quietly began in case he couldn’t remember. “You almost hit my house…”

He looked at you again, face genuinely apologetic.

“I am sorry,” he apologized although there was no need. “I was…”

He trailed off, seeming to be thinking hard before he slowly rested his hands on his waist, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Loki,” he whispered, disdain and disappointment coloring his tone.

That name was not unfamiliar to you. It wasn’t unfamiliar to anyone who lived in New York for a time or kept up with the news. Your eyes widened, and Thor noticed.

“He will not come here,” he hurried to assure you. “I swear it, Lady…”

You blinked before answering him.

“Y/N,” you told him.

He eyed you for a moment, quickly running his eyes over your frame, and you swallowed under the scrutiny. His nostrils flared.

“Lady Y/N,” he eventually said, resting a hand on your shoulder.

A twinge of discomfort registered in your gut before you noticed him sway slightly. You reached out, placing a hand on his arm and the other on his back as you helped him turn around.

“I don’t think you should be standing.”

“Nonsense,” he chuckled, but sat down anyway. “I am feeling a bit faint is all. Loki did more damage than I initially thought he would.”

You helped him lean back against the headboard, ignoring his inquiring gaze.

“I cleaned the wounds, but if you want a proper bath I can leave for a while. I should probably go into town and get some things for you anyway. I don’t know how long it’ll take for you to fully heal, but it shouldn’t take any longer than a week or so.”

He hummed in agreement.

“You do not seem at all bothered that I fell out of the sky and into your lawn,” he acknowledged.

The corner of your lip curved upwards ever so slightly.

“I was more concerned with your wellbeing at first, but once I recognized you it suddenly made a lot more sense,” you replied.

“Yes, I seem to have a habit of falling out of the sky,” he murmured, sounding a bit annoyed by that.

You turned away from him.

“Let me run you a bath,” you said, nearing the tub. “…and then I’ll get some things from town.”

It didn’t take long for hot water to fill the bathtub, and you suddenly wondered how this giant of a god was going to fit inside. You almost wanted to stick around, sure it would be comical to witness, but truth be told you wanted to get away from him for a bit.

You threw on a jacket and some shoes, realizing that you wouldn’t be able to change into something more presentable, not with Thor here. You worriedly eyed him as you neared the door, and he waved you off.

“I will make it in and out of the bath just fine, Lady Y/N,” he told you.

You pursed your lips before nodding and leaving, feeling his inquiring gaze on you until you shut the door behind you.  

“Your hands are divinely touched, Lady Y/N,” Thor praised.

You threw him a small smile, embarrassment heating your face at his compliment. You both were seated at the table, eating some soup you’d just made. You made sure it included plenty of meat. The blond Avenger had been recuperating at your house for a few days, and in that time, you’d learned quite a bit about him. Notably, that he loved to eat. Especially meat.

“It’s nothing special,” you quietly replied.

“You do that a lot,” he suddenly said.

You frowned at him, pausing in your movements.

“Do what?” you wondered.

“Downplay your talents. You did it the other day when I complimented you on your help with my wound,” he explained.

You didn’t know what to say to that, unaware that you were even doing it. Part of you recognized why though. His compliments and praises made you preen, the omega qualities in you that you’d suppressed for so long rearing their ugly heads. Aside from high school and the occasional passerby in town, you did not interact with alphas. Ever.

You liked his compliments, but you didn’t at the same time. They spoke to a part of you that you wished didn’t exist. Ever since he’d literally fallen into your life, you’d had to up your suppressant intake. You knew the dangers that lied with that, but you didn’t care. Besides, it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing. Just until he was fully healed…

“I hadn’t noticed,” you honestly told him.

You could feel his gaze on you, and when you looked up, you found his brows furrowed. There was that curiosity again, like he was trying to figure you out, and that put you on edge. It seemed like he was always trying to figure you out, eying you and sniffing around you when he thought you didn’t notice. You didn’t think he meant any harm by it, but it still bothered you. He was an alpha, and he couldn’t pick up a scent from you that told him your presentation. You knew that it put his nerves on edge. He’s a hero, a good guy. You had to remind yourself of that. You could trust him, and in a few days, he’d be gone anyway.

“You are all alone out here. Why? Where is your family?”

You set your spoon down.

“My father died some years ago. My mother and the rest of my relatives are back in the states. I just like the solitude,” you shrugged.

It was a lie, and you hoped that he could not tell. He continued to eye you with a hum.

“…but you are completely alone. Surely you get…lonely…”

Again, you shrugged.

“I like being alone,” you simply told him with a small smile.

He returned it, but it did not reach his eyes.

“I am almost healed. It just pains me to leave a fine lady such as yourself out here all alone,” he said.

“That’s sweet, Thor, but I’ve been here for a year now. I’m perfectly happy…and safe.”

You avoided his eyes as you continued eating. You didn’t like all of this questioning, it made you nervous, made your heart race and blood pump faster.

“How’s your stomach?” you asked him, changing the subject.

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and you pretended not to notice.

“It is healing well. I shall help you with the bandages tonight,” he answered.

You stood, grabbing your bowl.

“Are you done?”

“I am,” he said with a grin, watching as you cleared his side of the table.

You heard him stand as you set the dishes in the sink.

“I shall step outside for a stroll. Work to get my strength back,” he told you.

“Okay,” you called over your shoulder, relief coursing through you when he exited.

He always stepped outside for a while so you could bathe. You were sure that he did enjoy being outside, exercising a bit to regain his health, but you also figured it was not needed. You were grateful he awarded you the privacy. It was also when you took the time to take your suppressants. You were downing them twice a day since he’d arrived, just to be on the safe side, and where as you would normally just take them in the early hours of the morning, you now had to sneak them in during the evening too.

The steaming water soothed you, took your mind off of your present worries for a while. You reminded yourself that they wouldn’t last for much longer. You also had to keep reminding yourself that Thor was one of the heroes. He wasn’t like the alphas your parents told you about…or those boys in high school… He was one of the good ones.

You didn’t linger in the water, and you quickly dried yourself after stepping out. You hurried to get dressed, rushing to grab your pills before Thor reentered. You had just swallowed it down with a glass of water when the door opened. You were nonchalant as you closed the bottle back, shooting him a small smile as you went to put them back into your cabinet.

“I’m feeling almost as good as new. Healthy as a horse,” he chuckled. “Tony said that once…”

You laughed with him. Despite your paranoia, Thor was very easy to get along with. He had such a kind easygoing nature, and it was why you were so inclined to trust him. You suddenly thought about something, something you hadn’t considered before, and your heart skipped a beat.

“Do you think they’re looking for you?” you kept your tone light.

He talked about the other Avengers quite often, and it definitely seemed like they would be searching for him. You didn’t need anyone else discovering you.

“More than likely,” he answered as you faced him with new bandages. “…but I shall not remain here for much longer. I shall soon be out of your hair, Lady Y/N.”

You threw him a crooked smile before looking away when he removed his shirt, sitting down.

“You can just call me Y/N. I’ve told you that,” you murmured as you approached him.

His chest shook as he laughed, and you swiftly removed the old bandage. You frowned a bit, noticing that he was practically healed. However, you were no doctor. Thor clearly must still be in some sort of pain and discomfort, so you moved to get some cream to rub over his stomach. You could feel his eyes on you.

“Are you ill, Lady Y/N?”

You briefly glanced up at him and found his gaze on you, blue eyes inquiring. There was something else there, hiding within the curiosity that you could not name.

“No, why do you ask?”

“I saw you ingesting some medicine just before I came in. I want to make sure that you are well…”

Your heart skipped a beat, but you kept your face neutral and voice light as you chuckled.

“It’s just for headaches. I get terrible migraines, and a few years ago it became severe enough where I was prescribed medicine for it. Nothing to worry about,” you told him with a soft smile.

He returned it when you caught his gaze, but again, it did not reach his eyes.

“There! All done,” you said.

He stood, and you stumbled back, unsure if you would ever get used to the sheer size of him. You watched as he began grabbing the blankets and some pillows.

“You really should sleep in the bed, you know,” you sighed. “I really don’t mind sleeping on the floor…”

“Nonsense! I am almost well. You are doing much for me already, the least I can do is let you have your bed,” he replied.

It was similar to what he’d said the third night when he insisted you take the bed. You exhaled in defeat, but eventually nodded. It was almost crazy how quickly you’d grown to be comfortable around the blond Avenger. You didn’t think the paranoia would ever go away, a product of your upbringing, but a good portion of you felt safe around him.

You slid into your bed with ease as he made himself comfortable on the floor beside you. The first two nights, you couldn’t even relax enough to go to sleep until he was, but your body sagged with fatigue as soon as you made yourself comfortable. Sleep claimed you almost as soon as your head hit the pillow.

Thor was awake before you when you finally stirred. The smell of bacon and eggs in the air took you by surprise, and you sat up with a confused smile. You didn’t even know he knew how to use the stove, but you were pleasantly surprised, nonetheless.

“Good morning, Lady Y/N,” he boomed.

“Morning,” you mumbled as you got out of bed.

“This is my show of gratitude for being such a hospitable host,” he said as you neared him. “Sit.”

The command shot straight through you, and you frowned at him, only briefly, but eventually you sat. A plate was sat before you not long after, and you eyed the food, stomach growling.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” you told him as he sat down across from you.

He threw you a playful wink, golden locks brushing his shoulders.

“There are a great many things you do not know of me.”

You chuckled before digging in. You glanced out of the window, noticing the clear sky.

“I believe I shall take my leave tomorrow,” he suddenly said.

You returned your gaze to him, somehow simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

“You’re feeling much better then…”

“I am. It is thanks to you,” he sincerely replied. “I would very much like to spend the day helping you. Whether it be going into town or in the garden.”

You smiled at him.

“Okay.”

The rest of breakfast passed in a comfortable silence. You were all too happy to admit that Thor cooked better than you did. It was enjoyable, and yet, you kept feeling like you were forgetting something. When Thor stood to clear the table, he lingered by your chair. You looked up when his hand landed on your shoulder. You tensed, but his thumb brushed over a place where your shoulder met your neck, and you instinctively relaxed.

“So which shall it be first?”

You were momentarily dazed, blinded by his grin before blinking.

“Uh…the m-market. I need more seeds,” you quietly told him.

He nodded and moved away. It took a moment for you to clear your head. Another to realize he’d eventually stepped out to allow you to get dressed. You did so quickly, still feeling a nagging in your mind that was trying to remind you of something very important.

Thor’s “disguise” in town merely consisted of a dark hoodie and some shades. He didn’t stray from you the entire time, and his constant presence brought out conflicting emotions in you. His hovering unnerved you, but something in your stomach fluttered every time his arm brushed along yours or he touched your shoulder with his hand.

He didn’t relent when you made it back to your cottage. His constant touches and praises were making your heart race. Thor was attractive, anyone could see that, and it wasn’t like you hadn’t noticed, but you found yourself eyeing him more than usual. You found yourself inhaling his scent at times. You didn’t understand where this had come from…until you were soaking in the hot water that night.

You sat up with a shock, water splashing as you stared at the wall in front of you with wide eyes. Your heart felt like it was going jump out of your throat as your eyes slowly trailed to your cabinet. Hurriedly you jumped out of the tub, almost tripping in the process. Water splashed everywhere as you wrapped the towel around you and ran to the cabinet.

Everything was suddenly making sense. You normally took them first thing in the morning, before Thor even woke up, but he’d woken up first this morning and it had slipped your mind. You surmised that your double dosages were the only thing keeping your body somewhat under control. You couldn’t believe that you had forgotten to take them this morning. You couldn’t believe that…they weren’t here.

Frantic, you pushed other bottles and glasses around, but your eyes weren’t playing tricks. They were gone. You heard the door open behind you, and your stomach dropped to your stomach. You spun around to find Thor leaning against the doorjamb, your pills in his hand. He turned them over, eyeing them as he let out a low hum.

“Do you know how dangerous these are?”

You didn’t know what to say, mouth opening and closing.

“Do you have any idea what these do to you?”

Anger coated his tone, and you couldn’t hold in the whimper that climbed out of your throat at his ire. His eyes met yours, and your lower back hit the sink.

“Thor,” you quietly pleaded, all of your parents’ warnings hitting you at once.

He stepped inside, and you flinched.

“I won’t expose you,” he murmured, and you didn’t know if you should be relieved or not. “I would never do that.”

His eyes softened, and your shoulders sagged. Your relief was short lived when he marched towards you though. Frightened, you stumbled away from him, only to realize too late what he was actually doing.

“No,” you cried as he poured them down the sink, reaching for his hand.

He caught yours in an iron grip, pulling you against him. Your lip trembled as he looked down his nose at you, inhaling. You felt warm, and you tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let you.

“…but I don’t want you taking those anymore.”

You glared at him, and a low rumble sounded from within his chest, eating away at your annoyance. Your face fell, tears in your eyes before you eventually nodded. He was leaving tomorrow… After that, you could do whatever you want.

“Okay,” you whispered.

His jaw clenched, and one of his hands came up to rest in the crook of your neck, drawing patterns into the skin.

“Promise me…omega,” he softly said.

A shiver ran down your spine at the command…at what he’d called you. No one had ever referred to you as that before, and it made your stomach clench.

“I promise.”

His eyes narrowed, and for some reason he didn’t seem satisfied, but he relented. His hands landed on your bare shoulders, and you found yourself leaning towards him.

“Get dressed, omega, and get some rest.”

You watched as he left the cottage to give you privacy. Shaky, you eventually dressed yourself. No matter how hard you tried, your hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Thor knew…and he’d gotten rid of your suppressants. You were beyond terrified, but Thor said he wouldn’t out you. To be honest, you could get into a lot of trouble for what you had done, so you wanted to believe him.

It was quiet when he returned, the air tense. You nervously eyed him, and Thor noticed. He heaved a sigh, resting his hand on your head, stroking your hair. It was oddly relaxing.

“It is late, and you must rest. You are safe with me…”

His blue eyes met yours as you mulled over his words. In the days you’d known him, he had never once made you feel unsafe. So, against the odd feeling in your gut, you nodded and made your way to your bed. You could hear Thor gathering his own pillows and such as you made yourself comfortable.

It took you forever to fall asleep, heart racing at the knowledge that this alpha had found you out and gotten rid of your suppressants. That you were alone with him. He’s a hero, one of the good guys. You repeated that to yourself over and over again until you finally drifted into sleep.

It was sometime in the night when you were pulled from sleep. You didn’t know why, but you could faintly feel movement, the bed moving with it. You didn’t understand what was happening at first, not until you felt hands on you. You murmured incoherently, stirring, but your own movements were somewhat restricted. A heat surrounded you that wasn’t your own.

You felt…caged in.

You blinked, eyes fluttering open as your blurry vision finally cleared, colors and shapes separating to make up what was before you. You felt hot, much too hot to be considered normal. You moved again, leg dragging along the bed, but something prevented you from moving them completely. Your own eyes focused in on blue ones, and you gasped.

“Thor,” you mumbled, confusion and sleep still fogging your brain. “What…?”

He shushed you, and his lips brushed against your own. You couldn’t comprehend that your mouth was moving against his, tentatively…unsure. His lips were soft, pillowy even, and you absentmindedly wondered if kissing was always like this. It grew heated, his mouth pressing against yours, almost harshly, and that was when reality hit.

With a horrified yelp, you finally moved to shove against him. It was futile, and you knew this. Thor was a god, literally, and he had the physique of one. Tears kissed your eyes as he didn’t move, instead pressing himself against you more firmly. You protested against his lips.

“Thor-! Stop, stop,” you gasped.

His hands kneaded any part of you they could reach. You were crying now as he tore at your clothes, the sound of tearing fabric reaching your ears. This couldn’t be happening. He was one of the good ones…

“You’ve been poisoning yourself for a year,” he murmured, voice deep and pained.

You shivered beneath him when the cold air hit you, but he was quick to envelope you in his arms. It was then that you realized he was naked, had been since before you awoke it seemed. You felt like you were going to be sick, but that primal part of you, the one that your genetic makeup controlled, did not hold the same sentiments.

“I do not even want to imagine what you have done to your body…my little omega,” he whispered into the darkness.

You frantically shook your head at that, hitting against him now.

“Thor, p-please,” you begged, voice horse. “You said…you said I was safe with you.”

Your tone was accusatory, anger at both him and you filling you. Your parents had been right. They had always been right, and you had even seen it for yourself. Why did you allow yourself to trust him?

The moonlight shed some light into the cottage through the window, and you could see a frown on his handsome features.

“You are safe with me. I shall take care of you from now on…like you should have been cared for all this time,” he responded.

“No, no!”

You punched his chest, nails digging into his skin, and he hissed, eyes flashing dangerously. In one swift movement, he’d flipped you, pressing your chest into the mattress. One hand was pushing into your back while the other pinned one of your wrists down.

You cried harder when his legs made a home in between yours, spreading them apart. You could feel him hard and throbbing against the back of your thigh, and you shook beneath him. He gently shushed you, but it did no good.

You were growing hotter by the minute, and even though you hadn’t experienced one in over a year, you knew what was happening to you. You could feel yourself growing slick, your core hot and aching for only what an alpha could give you.

His lips grazed your cheek as he leaned over you, rubbing the tip of his cock against your wet folds. His chest vibrated against your back, soothing sounds leaving his lips, and you fought against the feeling that threatened to wash over you. You opened your mouth to plead with him, but the only thing that escaped your lips was a pained gasp as he thrust into you.

You whimpered, more tears falling over and nails digging into the pillows. You attempted to crawl away from the pain, away from him, but he followed, twitching inside of you as he did so. His blond hair kissed your cheek as he pressed his forearms into the bed beside your head, caging you in.

You couldn’t feel anything but him, smell anything but him. His presence was everywhere, and it was getting harder to resist your own instincts. You whimpered again as he started to move, fresh tears spilling over.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, my sweet omega.”

You shuddered, clenching around him, and he hissed. Your eyelashes fluttered, feeling as if you could feel him in your stomach. His thrusts were slow and purposeful, each pull of his cock pulling a whine from you. You pressed your forehead against the pillow, breath shallow and lips trembling as you fought between what you wanted and what your body wanted.

The bed began to shake as he started to speed up, and the intensity made you flinch, attempting to get away again. His other hand grabbed your other wrist, and he completely fell against you, rendering you immobile as he rutted into you. Unintelligible noises escaped you, and you realized that you could do nothing but lay there and take his cock.

The noises your slick core made in the quiet cottage embarrassed you, heat flooding your cheeks. Thor moaned above you, lost in the feel of your velvet walls clenching around him again and again. It was only when his teeth grazed along your throat did you start to struggle again.

“No, no,” you screamed, attempting to push your elbows against him.

He only shushed you in what was meant to be a soothing tone. Against your will, you could feel yourself beginning to shake, body seizing up in a way you had never experienced. It was in that moment did you feel his teeth sink into the skin of your neck, where it connected with your shoulder. You screamed again, the yell dying down into sobs as you felt a thin line of blood crawl down your skin. Even worse, you could feel him swelling inside of you.

You wanted to try and crawl away again, away from him and the pain, but you knew how stupid that would be with Thor knotted inside of you. You were practically hysterical now, chest heaving and vision blurry as he remained inside of you. He finally pulled his face away, and you couldn’t hold in the whimper. He ran his tongue over your neck, humming.

Sleep crawled along the peripheral of your mind, and you didn’t know whether to fight against it or accept it with open arms. You didn’t know whether you wanted to fight to get away or give up and come to terms with your new harsh reality. The latter was starting to win.

“I shall have to get Bruce to look over you and make sure you did not do permanent damage to yourself,” he murmured against your skin.

You groaned in response, both the physical and mental assault taking a toll on you.

“Your little cottage shall remain here. We can come to visit and vacation from time to time. I shall want to bask in these memories in the future…”

“Thor,” you pleaded, still unable to move with him inside of you.

“…I am your alpha now. No more of that vile poison and no more fending for yourself. You belong to me now.”

You felt yourself drifting, blinking at the wall, and his lips brushed against yours.

“I shall take care of you as you took care of me.”

 ~

tags: @nerdygirl8203​ @xoxabs88xox​ @mcudarklibrary​ @darkficreposter​ @villanellevi​ @readermia​ @notyourtypicalrose​ @nickyl316h​ @opheliadawnwalker3​ @ne-gans​ @

[togglesbloggle]

How We Decided

The day after tomorrow- that is, February 18, 2021- the Perseverance rover will attempt to land on the surface of Mars.  It will enter the planetary atmosphere at an acute angle, giving it as much time as possible to experience drag and slow down from orbital velocities.  Because Mars’ air is so thin, and the rover is so heavy, this will fail- in the best case, Perseverance would still be going almost a thousand miles an hour when it impacts the surface.  To help save itself, the craft will deploy a parachute of advanced design, seventy feet across and able to withstand supersonic velocities.  This, too, will fail.  Even with a parachute, there is simply not enough air between Perseverance and the Martian surface to slow it down all the way.  So this is where the rockets kick in.  Once air resistance slows the rover to a bit less than two hundred miles per hour, the heavy heat shield will be jettisoned, and a system of secondary rockets will fire against the direction of motion until it slows to near-hovering.  In a final flourish, the rover will descend from the rocket-boosted frame on coiled springs, until it touches down in the western part of Jezero crater in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

As it happens, Perseverance’s destination was one of the very last things we decided about it- not until the craft itself was fairly thoroughly engineered and designed.  Formally, the decision was made by the mission directorate.  In practice, they follow the consensus of the scientific community, which in turn hashes things out at a series of open-invitation workshops.  Things began with a call for white papers- an open suggestion box, basically.  In 2015, the first workshop narrowed things down from thirty serious proposals to eight candidates.  In 2017, the second workshop further winnowed the list down to three.  And in October of 2018, after three days of presentation, debate, and discussion, the final workshop selected Jezero Crater from these final three candidates using a simple vote of all attendees, and passed on the recommendation to the mission leads.

I haven’t been in the business for very long, so the final workshop was the only one of these where I actually participated.  It wasn’t a close vote as such, and I didn’t break any ties, and technically we were just making a strongly worded suggestion.  Nonetheless, my vote is one of the reasons why the Rover will be going to Jezero Crater instead of Syrtis Major or Gusev, and I think I’m entitled to feel ownership of this mission choice, just a little bit.

(This is, of course, terrifying.)

Having gone through the experience, there were a few surprises worth noting.  The first was how small some of the numbers are here.  The conference was not very large: only thirty proposals, debated by just a few hundred attendees.  I’ve seen book review contests with more entries, and that are read by a wider audience.  Which is to say, this is a situation that was, and is, extremely responsive to individual effort.  In that small a room, populated by people that are philosophically committed to changing their minds when they see good evidence or a good argument, one person can stand up and change the future in a very real way.

The second surprise was the attendance requirements.  Or rather, the lack thereof.  The project is public, paid for by American taxpayers, to whom I am profoundly grateful.  And one way the process reflected that public-spiritedness is that this is not a walled garden.  A small attendance fee (iirc, $40?), and you’re in.  You get a vote, if you want to use it.  A few non-scientists even took us up on this; there’s one retiree (a former schoolteacher, I think) that’s attended every major conference I’ve been to in the last few years, and sets up a small table in the back with his home mineral collection just for fun.  In practice this open-door policy is limited by the obscurity of the event itself; if you don’t move in research circles, you have to be something of a space exploration superfan to hear about it.  Still, as symbols go, you could do worse.

And now that we’re coming up on the day itself, the same kind of public-facing mindset is making me think about why I was persuaded to vote for Jezero Crater, what it means to explore there, and how I’d justify that choice to those of you that made the ongoing discovery of Mars possible in the first place.

If you want to know what Perseverance is like, and what you can reasonably do with it, start with Curiosity- the two are built, more or less, on the same chassis.  That means you have a mobile science lab about the size of a Volkswagon Beetle.  Add some mechanical improvements (no more wheel punctures!) and a few bells and whistles (microphone!  helicopter for some reason!).  Trade out some of the scientific instruments- raman spectroscopy instead of a mass spectrometer, for example.  And it’s got these:

That, dear reader, is a sample return canister.  Not to be returned immediately, alas, but to be returned nonetheless.  One of Persevereance’s primary directives is to find interesting rocks, collect them, and leave them in place for a sample return mission in the early 30s.  There’s a ton of work we can do in situ, but there’s even more we can do in a clean lab back home; things like isotopic analysis really need a much more controlled environment than you’ll get in the field.  And so a major, major consideration is to optimize Perseverance’s landing site for cool rocks that we’d like to take back home.

The other thing that Perseverance is really good at is astrobiology.  There’s no such thing as a life sign detector as such, but this rover represents an attempt to approach that ideal: instruments like SHERLOC and SuperCam are adept at finding organic compounds and fine-scale mineralogy and chemistry that might be influenced by microbial metabolism.  This is a natural extension of what we’ve been learning so far: Spirit and Opportunity showed us that Mars formed under the influence of liquid water.  Curiosity showed us that this was not just wet, but actively habitable: lakes and rivers at a neutral pH under a rich and temperate atmosphere.  The next question along this line is the hardest, and the scariest: we know it was habitable, but was it inhabited?

If you’re like me, that question makes you feel weird.  Collecting rocks is one thing, but a fossil?  The mind rebels.  We’ve spent the last two generations of space exploration tempering our expectations, reminding ourselves that the other worlds in our solar system are largely barren and dead, learning again and again how precious life is in the cosmos.  It’s hard to get in the mindset of people back in the 40s and 50s who could, somewhat reasonably, imagine that Mars might not just host life but multicellular life, vegetation and robust macroscopic ecosystems.  We look back at the science fiction of the era, swarthy soldiers hopping from planet to planet in silver rockets, and laugh at the naivete.  A smile at the exuberance of youth, if we’re feeling generous.  When we were first beginning, we may have imagined ancient canals on Mars and crystal cities on Venus, but that was when space was a blank canvas for us to paint our fantasies.  We’ve learned so much since then, and if it was less fun, at least it was true.  We did the hard thing and accepted reality over fantasy.  We accept that extraterrestrial environments are hostile to life- cratered, silent, and still.  We’re grownups now.

Unless…

Unless.

Imagine that we were born just a bit earlier.  Say, three and a half billion years or so.  We raise our telescopes to the sky, and we see a sister-planet.  Not red, but white and blue, with an atmosphere full of clouds and multiple large bodies of water scattered across its surface, prominent ice caps and snow-capped highlands, rivers tracing their way down to the lowlands in the north.  (Maybe the water is all under the ice, not open to the air at the surface; maybe the liquid pools are small and limited to craters, not feeding a large ocean.)  Sober scientists might have suggested we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much- after all, the gravity is much lower, there’s no tectonic recycling, and there’s no protective magnetosphere.  But is sterility really the default assumption we should be making here?  Is ‘we are alone in the cosmos’ really the most sane conclusion to draw from this situation?  Is it not worth, perhaps, sending a rover to go see?

We’ve adapted our sensibilities to a dead solar system because in the moment we’re looking, it kind of is.  We’re hopeful for the icy moons- and the evidence keeps mounting there as well- but the terrestrial planets are a grim reminder of the fragility and contingency of our own world.  The thing is, the more we learn, the more we discover that we’re a bit late to a very, very interesting party.  Venus is a hellscape, but it probably didn’t start that way.  Mars is a desert, but once it was an oasis.  What makes Earth special among the terrestrial worlds isn’t that it developed a temperate climate, but that it kept a temperate climate for more than four billion years.  Stability, not habitability, is the party trick that makes us unique in the solar system.  And if we’re really committed to being grownups, to accepting what’s real instead of what’s easy, we have to learn that lesson too.

And life does not need four billion years to begin.  Not even close.

That brings us to Jezero Crater.  The most interesting feature here is a large river delta- based on some clever geology, we’re pretty sure that a large river emptied into the crater during Mars’ wet period.  When the rapidly-flowing water hit the still water of Lake Jezero, the loose sediments being carried along the current all fell out of suspension at this place, forming a large pile of detritus at the mouth of the river that accumulated over the lifetime of the system.  Even more interesting, check out this geologic map:

See those tiny teal deposits to the right side of the image?  Those are also river delta deposits.  Which means the thing labeled ‘delta’ on this map isn’t the original extent- it used to be much, much larger, at least twice as wide.  Which also means that the outer edge of the ‘delta’ that we see here in this image is actually an erosional surface, and we get a natural cross-section of the thing with the oldest deposits at the bottom and the youngest at the top, just before Mars lost its hydrosphere.  By climbing the outer edge, we can move through time across a large fraction of the habitable period.

Here’s another image I’d like you to see:

The crater I’ve been showing you is the small circle in the lower right- color is elevation, covering a span of about 5 km.  The black line is the watershed of that river, the region of Mars that channeled water to the delta.  In other words, the river delta collects sediments- and potentially, biosignatures- from a region hundreds of kilometers in diameter, and gathers them all in one place, neatly sorted by time.

For this reason, ancient deltas on Earth are a favorite of paleontologists.  In addition to being comfortably wet and active itself- plenty of access to biologically important nutrients, fresh supplies of liquid water, and a nice dynamic environment- deltas do the legwork for us.  Rather than exploring a huge fraction of the planet with a tiny rover, hoping that we stumble upon an ancient life sign, we can position ourselves at the mouth of the proverbial fire hose and let life come to us.

This does come with some tradeoffs.  Most importantly, whatever we find, we won’t know the original geologic setting.  If we find an unambiguous fossil of some kind- a microbial mat, perhaps- then we’ll know less than if we’d found it in its original home.  And if we don’t find life, then the samples we take will be similarly uncertain.  They’ll be defined in time, at least relative to one another, but not in space.  In the case of life signs, this is an important caveat, but the bare fact of proving that extraterrestrial life exists is sufficiently monumental that it’s still a secondary concern.  But if we’re just talking about geology, that’s a hard thing to lose; that terrifying multi-stage descent isn’t the only risk we’re taking.  We’re leaning into the astrobiology mission hard with this one.

And the search for life is, in itself, fraught.  That’s putting it mildly.  There’s every chance that any evidence that’s even slightly marginal is going to touch off decades of debate, rather than being some kind of slam-dunk.  As it should!  Life is such a fuzzy concept, and such an important concept, that it should absolutely be held to the highest degree of scrutiny we can muster.  This is why it matters that Perseverance includes sample return- in the highly likely case that the findings are disputed, we’ll hopefully have the chance to subject those samples to the highest degrees of scrutiny.  So it feels like the right time to go hunting.

On top of that, there’s the ‘evidence of absence’ problem.  Strong biosignatures update our priors very hard in the direction of life on Mars.  But what is the correct amount of evidence necessary to convince us that Mars never was alive?  I’m not sure, but failure to find microbial mats in Jezero probably isn’t enough.  So the search for life can succeed, but if it ‘fails’ that doesn’t necessarily teach us much; the best experiments teach you something no matter what, and ideally a commitment this large would meet that standard.  This is, more or less, baked into the search for extraterrestrial life, and there aren’t too many ways out from under that problem.

That said, Jezero in particular has some compensation.  As I mentioned, we’re collecting a lot of good data regardless; and even without the gologic context, there’s a ton of opportunity to sample different minerals and how they formed, and get a nice broad sample of the Martian surface over time.  And, even better, here’s the location of another interesting potential field site, in northeast Syrtis:

Note the proximity to Jezero crater!  And Syrtis is also a fantastic candidate for a sample return mission.  It has exposed mesas with layered outcrops going all the way back to the earliest days of Mars, and extending (potentially) through many of the most interesting periods.  Now, these are not ideal for the search for life, although they’d give us a ton of technical data about surface chemistry and the behavior of the atmosphere during the early, wet periods; it would go a long way towards resolving arguments about the temperature of the early Martian climate, for example, or tracing the early destabilization and loss of the magnetosphere while teaching us loads about the planet’s core.

Those mesas are still pretty far away.  Too far, probably, for a sensible rover lifespan to make it all the way there.  But there’s a plan- called the ‘Midway’ route, as a nod to the compromise nature of it.  See, halfway between Jezero and these mesas, there are a lot of banded rocks that look suspiciously like they’re sourced from the table mesas in Syrtis.  And those, we can get to, maybe.  If we call a specific deadline on looking for life in Jezero, then we can pivot to Midway and hopefully take a really deep look.  So, in the end, we’re going hard for astrobiology research, but we’re not going all-in.

The importance of the search for life is… well, there are a lot of people out there, and we enter the world in a lot of different ways.  Most of us agree that the existence of extraterrestrial life would be a Big Deal, and we tend to have a lot of different reasons for that.  It’s not a bad subject for a future post or three, in fact.  But there’s one thing lurking in the back of my head that’s a non-obvious reason to go looking.  This wasn’t discussed at the workshop particularly, but it fed into my vote somewhat.  Check the logic of this for me, see if it makes sense:

Worrying about existential risks, we sometimes talk about the ‘great filter’.  That is, the mysterious phenomenon which explains the lack of extraterrestrial civilizations reaching out to us.  Now, maybe we’re in a zoo or a preserve or something, and intelligences are out there watching after all; maybe the Earth really is the center of the cosmos, because of the simulation hypothesis or the various religious explanations.  There’s no real way to know for sure at this point.  But consider the space of very real possibilities where the universe actually is material, and actually is mostly barren.  Why?

Stepping through the sequence, it might be that abiogenesis is really hard- going from a temperate world to a living one is almost (but not quite) impossible.  Maybe there’s some hurdle to clear between genesis and encephalization.  Maybe, given encephalization, civilization and tool-use are almost impossible.  Or maybe there are many civilizations like ours, and the great filter is ahead of us- it is almost impossible for technological civilizations not to self-destruct or turn in to lotus-eaters before they reach interstellar civilization.  There are a lot of possibilities for the filter, and for present purposes we’ll divide them into two categories: those which we would have already passed, and those which are in our future.

And here’s the thing: for each possibility we can exclude from the great filter, all the other possibilities increase commensurately, becoming more likely in our estimation.  (Assuming the exclusion is ‘clean’ and doesn’t favor some other possibility, that is.)  Given that the silence continues, if we could somehow prove that technological self-destruction isn’t a big risk, that would commensurately increase our guesses about how hard abiogenesis is.

Life on Mars, especially if we could be very sure that it evolved independently of Earth life, would be a strong argument against the difficulty of abiogenesis.  One biosphere in the solar system, and nowhere else, might be down to luck.  The one biosphere has to be somewhere, right?  Two in the solar system, and nowhere else, is a good bit less reasonable.  If we find a second genesis on Mars, then we’ve learned that life is not rare.  That the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way are likely host to many billions of different living (or at least once-living) worlds.

And as wonderful as that news is, as much as it makes me so happy that I literally had to take a second to cry on my bed for a bit, it also makes the great silence much, much scarier.  Today, we can reassure ourselves by saying that life may be rare in the universe.  But what if it isn’t?  If the cosmos is full of life, but not full of thought, then…

If this is the case, we need to know.  We need to know as soon as possible, and we need to know it while we’re engaged in the great project of technological development and moral progress.  It’s easy to imagine that this particular mission is one that can be framed in purely positive terms- the joy of discovery, the vastness of truth, the love of how things might be.  But I do also have this sense of civilizational fragility, you know?  And understanding the risks that we face and the chances we’re taking- that’s not idle curiosity.  That’s genuinely urgent.

[boldlyanxious]

Variant

Part of meet cute Mondays

All fic masterlist

This was not good.

Marinette was glad that she was in cute street clothes rather than her old pajamas or something that would stand out. She walked along the path trying to get clues about her current location until she could get answers without drawing attention to herself.

Based on the building clusters and the age of people all around, many with backpacks or textbooks, she thought it had to be a university. But they were speaking English so she wasn't in France. She moved with the crowd and searched until the crowd thinned and she found a deserted spot.

"What happened? Where are we?" Marinette asked urgently.

"I do believe the potion was correct but you also started me as I drank it." Kaalki said.

"I'm sorry. I sneezed. Do you know where we are?"

"I am quite certain it is a variant." Kaalki considered.

"Variant. Where is that? I think the English I heard sounds American."

"I do not know what name would be used to describe it. We are no longer in your world. It is a variation, a different plane of reality. It may look much the same or very different but it exists separately from our realm."

Do you mean like parallel universes? A world that looks the same where there could be another me who may have done things differently or had other things happen?"

"Precisely. But it would not be a good idea to go find her."

"I'm only interested in getting home."

"That would be best. But I will need more potion to accomplish that."

---

She worried about what her friends and family would think the longer she was missing from her life. It was taking longer than she had hoped to gather what she needed without being caught. It had taken her long enough in her own universe to gather the ingredients. Here she knew no one and had started out with no money or even a place to work on it. She also constantly had to worry about a place to stay and finding food. She hated to do it, but she had been managing by stealing. Kaalki had helped her steal a new loadable credit card and had been able to get into the system to trick it into having money. That had felt better to her than taking from an individual. They did the same with a place to stay. The ability to teleport into unoccupied living areas after phasing through to check that it was vacant made that a fairly easy thing to get.

Marinette stayed close to the campus because it was an easy place for her to not look out of place or be questioned. She was the same age as the university students and it was acceptable for her to wander around with a backpack. She kept her interactions with others minimal so she would not need to explain who she was or how she had gotten there. Still after a few weeks she had started to recognize some of the people she would see frequently when she was getting around and trying to find ways to locate what she needed without drawing attention to herself.

She was almost finished. She found how to get a hold of the last ingredient she would need and she excitedly jumped up to head there. It would still take several days to make the potion following very specific and timed out steps. She made sure to get extra of everything just in case she was misremembering the steps she had used the last time or if it didn’t turn out right.

She tried to walk away as she shoved her books back in her bag half failing and almost dumping them before she paused to get them in properly. She zipped it and looked back up before heading off. Good thing she looked first because there was a boy standing in front of her. She would have walked right into him. She looked right up into his eyes and he was looking back at her. She had definitely noticed him before. They had gotten to the point where they would smile and nod when they saw each other but this was the first time they had been this close. He smiled at her and extended his arm until he rested his hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” he said with a slightly husky voice.

Marinette hadn’t paid enough attention to the greeting customs of this reality. Maybe this is how people behave when they first meet someone. She extended her arm and rested it on his arm and repeated the greeting. His smile faltered and he blushed sheepishly. Guess it looked a lot more like she was making fun of him than giving an appropriate greeting. He started to back away a bit. She thought he might be planning on abandoning his plan of meeting her. She should just let him. That would be for the best.

“Wait,” she said as he backed away. She grasped at his arm gently to stop him but without holding him there. “Sorry. I’m not really from around here.”

He tilted his head at her before responding. “I know I’ve seen you around here.”

“You have,” she dropped her hand from his arm, “but I should be going back soon.”

“Before dinner?” he asked.

“No. In a few days, hopefully. It's complicated."

“So you are free tonight then?”

“Well, yeah. I have to do some things and then I will be available.”

“That’s great. I’m Miles.” he grinned at her.

“Marinette.”

“Well, Marinette. We should have dinner together. I know a great spot that is only known to those who have lived here a long time. Can I take you there?”

“I’d like that,” she said smiling back at him.

Tags

@technicallyburninggarden | @emjrabbitwolf | @certainmuffinbagelcalzone | @vixen-uchiha | @theymakeupfairies

[thesquishyrogue]

Rogue's relationships with the rest of the mercs

Scout:

Almost like a brother-sister relationship. They're always goofing off together, joking around, getting on Spy's nerves. Just being the chaotic force of the team. Scout constantly convinces Rogue to play baseball with him, especially after seeing that they both use bats as a weapon (albeit Rogue's has nails driven through it).

Scout: "Aw man, sick bat! Say, you ever actually played baseball? If not I could teach ya. Though, you should probably use a different bat. I'll let ya borrow one of mine!"

Soldier:

He's definitely sort of a weird uncle figure to her. She's always giggling at his ridiculous antics, and he's surprisingly protective of her. Although at the same time he's always impressed by her ability to fend for herself, and fight off men larger than her despite her size.

Soldier: "Hell yeah, look at her go! Kicking ass just like a true American! She makes me proud!"

Pyro:

Oh my goodness. These two. Rogue almost always puts on a tough attitude, especially around the other guys. But around Pyro? They're probably the only person Rogue will be a softie towards. They're constantly seen platonically hugging and cuddling, and Pyro loves when Rogue covers their mask in stickers. They always return the favor by covering her face. Once they come off she treasures them. The others will always comment on how adorable the two are, usually followed by Rogue telling them to fuck off.

Rogue: "If anything were to ever happen to Pyro, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."

Pyro: (灬º‿º灬)

Demoman:

Their relationship is quite explosive, to say the least. When Demo isn't trying to get Rogue to try some of his alcohol (which always results in Rogue gagging and choking from the bitterness) they're always assisting each other on the battlefield. Mostly in the form of Rogue catapultng Demo's bombs at enemies with her slingshot. They always share a laugh when a BLU team member is blown to bits.

Demoman: "Boom, right in the head! Look at all that blood! Yer aim is getting better and better, lassie!"

Heavy:

Just looking at these two stand next to each other is almost laughable. With Heavy being incredibly larger than everyone and Rogue being incredibly smaller, he practically dwarfs her. He's extremely gentle with her though, and takes care of her in sort of a protective big brother kind of way. Whenever the team is lounging around, she's often either cuddled into him or resting her legs in his lap. He doesn't mind it. He's also let her beat him in arm wrestling numerous times. She knows he lets her win, but she still take the opportunity to boast to the other mercs about it.

Heavy: "Little girl is so strong. You've beaten me again."

Rogue: 😏😏😏

Engineer:

He's also like an uncle figure to her. But unlike Soldier, he's more of the chill laid-back uncle that she can go to for advice. And she often does. Sometimes when she's bored she'll go into his workshop and talk with him as he plays his guitar or she helps out with whatever he's working on. Even if that help is something as simple as just handing him tools, he appreciates it. He appreciates the company too.

Engie: "Alright darlin', can you hand me the screwdriver?"

Rogue: "Uh... which one?"

Engie: "The Phillips."

Rogue: "Uh..."

Engie: "The pointy one."

Rogue: "Oh! Yeah sure I knew that."

Medic:

Like with Engie, Rogue will often go into the infirmary to talk with Medic as he works (she also makes sure he takes a break once in a while and doesn't overwork himself). He also does what he can to help with her depression once that's out in the open, prescribing her any antidepressants he can get his hands on. Though when she first joined the team and he gave her her first annual exam, he was astounded by how many fractures and injuries he'd found that were just left to sloppily heal on their own. The sadistic doctor was actually kind of worried for her, though honestly impressed by her high pain tolerance.

Medic: "Goodness fräulein, this is the fifth fracture I've found! How are you even walking?"

Rogue: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sniper:

Despite having quite good aim from using a slingshot for years, Rogue was quite inexperienced with guns (not including when she killed her old caretaker at the end of her fighting days). So naturally, Sniper took it upon himself to teach her. He educates her on different types of guns in order to find what works best for her, and the two partake in target practice together. Of course, the two end up bonding during the lessons. She tells him all about her life in the ring, and he tells her about what life was like back in Australia. One thing that Rogue wasn't anticipating, however, was how strong the recoil of a gun can be. She was so unprepared she was thrown right onto her ass in shock.

Sniper: "Crikey! You alright there, mate?"

Rogue: "Yeah I'm fine... fuck, what was that?!"

Sniper: "Recoil, love. Did you not know guns did that?"

Rogue: "...no..."

Spy:

Although she and Spy certainly took the longest to warm up to each other, the two are as close as can be now. Once they finally accepted each other, Spy took her under his wing as his apprentice. He helps her perfect her thieving skills and educates her on how to take tough situations in stride. She really looks up to him, and they almost have a father-daughter relationship. And of course, when her depression comes to light, he's her biggest means of support. He's always available when she needs him and he does whatever he can for her.

Spy: "You make me so proud, mon cheri. You've captured the intel once again, our training has really paid off. Great job."

Rogue: "Thanks dad."

Spy: "Excuse me, what was that?"

Rogue: "....nothing."

Bonus!

Miss Pauling:

Miss Pauling is literally the first woman Rogue has ever been close to in her life. Throughout her entire childhood she's been surrounded by creepy older men, and even though things are different now with the mercs... they're still men. There are just some things Rogue isn't quite comfortable talking to them about. But with Miss Pauling, going to her for help with things like clothes shopping and feminine problems almost feels natural. Hell, there were so many things Rogue didn't even know about periods until Miss Pauling explained them to her. And of course Miss Pauling takes the time out of her busy work day as often as she can to make sure Rogue is stocked up on sanitary items, and whatever else she needs. Rogue is always extremely greatful for it. And while part of her sees Miss Pauling as sort of a mother figure...another part sort of has a crush on her. Yeah, Miss Pauling was pretty much Rogue's bisexual awakening. But she hasn't said anything about it, one because it would just be awkward and two because she knows Scout also likes her, and she doesn't wanna stand in his way (but little does either of them know, Miss Pauling is a lesbian 👀)

Miss Pauling: "Rogue, honey, you don't even know what a pad is? Or a tampon??? What- what do you do when you get your period?"

Rogue: "What, you mean that weird time of the month that I start bleeding? I just... live with it I guess? Maybe put toilet paper in my panties if it gets too messy-"

Miss Pauling: "Rogue. Come with me, I'll get you stocked up on the things you need. And we'll get you some new panties too."

Rogue: "But don't you have things to do?"

Miss Pauling: "This is more important. You shouldn't have to suffer every month just because no one ever properly taught you about periods. I'll help you out."

Saxton Hale:

Rogue thought he was obnoxious upon first meeting him. Called him a "corporate clown" to the other mercs. But, she had to  earn his approval in order to join the team, so Miss Pauling insisted that she be on her best behavior around him. But, even when on her best behavior her spunkiness still shined through, and Saxton noticed it real quick. However, that spunkiness only raised his interest. He commented on how he, "Hadn't met such a scrappy sheila in a long time." Truth be told, she reminded him a lot of Maggie, but he wasn't about to mention it. During their one on one meeting, he demanded that she punch him in the face to test her strength. After a short hesitation, she did so. Saxton was impressed that she actually hit him hard enough to dislocate his jaw and bust his lip, and gave her the job on the spot with the promise that she keep up that energy (and learn to use some weapons, of course). Miss Pauling and the mercs were shocked to see the two of them come back with Saxton's arm slung around Rogue's shoulders and his face dripping with blood, and the two of them laughing with each other. She took back what she said about him being a corporate clown. Although, the only thing she still doesn't like about him is how he treats Miss Pauling, considering how close she is with her. She has a mind to call him out on it, but Miss Pauling begs her not to.

Saxton: "Let's see just how strong a little gal like you can really be. Go on, hit me RIGHT here! Hard as ya can!"

Rogue: "Uh...Mr. Hale, I really don't-"

Saxton: "Oh don't wuss out on me girly, you want this job or not?!"

Crack.

Rogue: "Oh my god- Mr. Hale! I am so-"

Saxton: "Now that's what I'm talking about! You pack a hard punch for such a cute little thing!"

Rogue: "You're bleeding..."

Saxton: "Consider yourself hired!"

Administrator:

Doesn't trust her. Not one bit. She only respects her because she has to, and even then her "respect" is so shallow that anyone could see right through it. She hates the way she berates, overworks, and oftentimes gaslights Miss Pauling, and the fact that even all the other mercs seem to be intimidated by her concerns her greatly. She knows something's going on with her behind the scenes, and she's determined to figure out what. In the few times she actually saw her in person, Rogue definitely smarted off to her more than once, despite Miss Pauling practically begging her to watch it. The Administrator, however, almost finds it adorable. Almost. She kind of views Rogue as a bratty child. A bratty child with skill and talent that is essential for her team. And for that, she lets the sassiness slide...for now. Luckily these two don't butt heads often though, considering the Administrator is rarely seen.

Administrator, over the loud loudspeaker: "Well done, let's see some more."

Rogue, mumbling: "Bite me..."

[mittensmorgul]

As a European who has been fine with their Samsung for over 4 years now: Why do most Americans keep buying the highly expensive iPhones? I mean I know it to be a status symbol, but there's gotta be sth else right?

i honestly can't speak for anyone but myself, and I'm sure people have a million reasons, but let me clear up one huge misconception here: the iphone and the samsung phone are literally the exact same cost here. so this whole notion that iphones are just super expensive compared to android phones (at least comparing current gen phones available in the US) is just flat wrong.

I used to have a samsung phone, too! like four phones ago lol. I switched to the iphone 6 when it was the current model for one reason: I used to use an ipod. ALL my music was (and still is) on itunes. I don't mean I buy music on itunes, I mean I sat there and ripped over a thousand cd's to itunes. It took like a week. I didn't want to do that again just to have access to my own music on my phone when my old ipod broke and they just weren't being made anymore because everyone just put their music on their phones. And samsung didn't offer an easy way to transfer my entire itunes library to it. They still don't.

So I grudgingly switched to iphone. When that phone died, I got an 8, and when my 8 died this past spring, I got a 12. But I was SERIOUSLY considering getting the Samsung phone instead at that time (again, it was the exact same price as the iphone and perfectly comparable in every other way). Still, it was the music library that was my final sticking point, and I got the iphone.

I mean at a point you're invested in things that make the phone functional for you. Having paid for apps and stuff that would essentially be worthless on an android and have to be re-purchased from the google store... well, it just becomes an annoyance to switch, and phone manufacturers count on that. (yes, even Samsung)

There's other contributing factors, too. I mean, i know android has apps that do things comparable to apple's facetime, but when everyone else in the family has iphones it's just easier to communicate on the shared platform, you know? That's less of an issue in the era of zoom calls but it's still a sticking point for some who are just used to their long-standing tech versus "learning something new." (lol I'm looking at my mom here... we're all just shocked she learned how to use facetime at all. and since I haven't been able to actually see her in person in 2 1/2 years because of this stupid plague, it's nice to actually be able to see her on my phone once in a while...)

it's not a status symbol, more like the status quo in a lot of circles. Like I doubt I'd ever be able to get my mom to switch, just because she doesn't care enough to bother to learn new tech. but for me, for whom it was always really a matter of "i want my music with me without having to pay again to listen to it, or pay for spotify which pretty much every musician will tell you is killing the music industry" (but that's a rant for another post) it's the grudging acceptance that i should probably invest some time in finding an alternative for music that I can live with versus continuing to use apple products going forward.

But the way most cell phone plans work in the US is also set up to lock you into a contract with your provider by using the financing plan of your phone purchase to keep you stuck there for x number of months. I happened to get a REALLY good deal on the cost of the phones, but only if I financed them for 30 months. If I try to pay off the account sooner (which I wanted to do at the time of purchase) or switch to a new carrier before my contract is up, I will have to pay the entire cost of the phones, not the extremely deep discount cost I'm getting by paying the monthly financing. so instead of the $400 I'll pay total for each phone over the course of the contract, I'll have to pay about $900 per phone plus the penalty cancellation fees for each phone (which I think is $300 per phone, because again, we have three phones on our family plan). I just can't afford to be hit with that fee all at once and then immediately also buy ANOTHER new phone while these three phones still function. So like... kudos to people who can afford that sort of pointless protest, but apple will not be hurt by that lil bit of performance art, you know? It's the high tech and very expensive equivalent of "boycotting" starbucks by buying a coffee using the name "merry christmas" to force the starbucks employee to say merry christmas to you. Or protest-buying Lil Nas X sneakers just to burn them or whatever. It's fucking stupid.

One way or the other, Apple already got my money here. There's enough e-waste in the world that I'm not gonna just throw this perfectly functioning device in the trash on some moral statement against the company that made it. I will, however, loudly complain about Apple's draconian morality crusade, and as a customer that likely carries more weight than the same complaints issued by people not even directly affected by those terrible policies.

[phroyd]

I’m not going to pretend that I know how to interpret the jobs and inflation data of the past few months. My view is that this is still an economy warped by the pandemic, and that the dynamics are so strange and so unstable that it will be some time before we know its true state. But the reaction to the early numbers and anecdotes has revealed something deeper and more constant in our politics.

The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response.Reports that low-wage employers were having trouble filling open jobs sent Republican policymakers into a tizzy and led at least 25 Republican governors — and one Democratic governor — to announce plans to cut off expanded unemployment benefits early. Chipotle said that it would increase prices by about 4 percent to cover the cost of higher wages, prompting the National Republican Congressional Committee to issue a blistering response: “Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage, and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill.” The Trumpist outlet The Federalist complained, “Restaurants have had to bribe current and prospective workers with fatter paychecks to lure them off their backsides and back to work.”But it’s not just the right. The financial press, the cable news squawkers and even many on the center-left greet news of labor shortages and price increases with an alarm they rarely bring to the ongoing agonies of poverty or low-wage toil.

As it happened, just as I was watching Republican governors try to immiserate low-wage workers who weren’t yet jumping at the chance to return to poorly ventilated kitchens for $9 an hour, I was sent “A Guaranteed Income for the 21st Century,” a plan that seeks to make poverty a thing of the past. The proposal, developed by Naomi Zewde, Kyle Strickland, Kelly Capatosto, Ari Glogower and Darrick Hamilton for the New School’s Institute on Race and Political Economy, would guarantee a $12,500 annual income for every adult and a $4,500 allowance for every child. It’s what wonks call a “negative income tax” plan — unlike a universal basic income, it phases out as households rise into the middle class.

“With poverty, to address it, you just eliminate it,” Hamilton told me. “You give people enough resources so they’re not poor.” Simple, but not cheap. The team estimates that its proposal would cost $876 billion annually. To give a sense of scale, total federal spending in 2019 was about $4.4 trillion, with $1 trillion of that financing Social Security payments and another $1.1 trillion support Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Beyond writing that the plan “would require new sources of revenue, additional borrowing or trade-offs with other government funding priorities,” Hamilton and his co-authors don’t say how they’d pay for it, and in our conversation, Hamilton was cagey. “There are many ways in which it can be paid for and deficit spending itself is not bad unless there are certain conditions,” he said. I’m less blasé about financing a program that would increase federal spending by almost 20 percent, but at the same time, it’s clearly possible. Even if the entire thing was funded by taxes, it would only bring America’s tax burden to roughly the average of our peer nations.

I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated to by others or live in a miserable state.”

But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices,” Hilary Hoynes, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Opportunity Lab, told me.

This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. We typically frame those reasons as questions of fairness (“Why should I have to pay for someone else’s laziness?”) or tough-minded paternalism (“Work is good for people, and if they can live on the dole, they would”). But there’s more to it than that.

It is true, of course, that some might use a guaranteed income to play video games or melt into Netflix. But why are they the center of this conversation? We know full well that America is full of hardworking people who are kept poor by very low wages and harsh circumstance. We know many who want a job can’t find one, and many of the jobs people can find are cruel in ways that would appall anyone sitting comfortably behind a desk. We know the absence of child care and affordable housing and decent public transit makes work, to say nothing of advancement, impossible for many. We know people lose jobs they value because of mental illness or physical disability or other factors beyond their control. We are not so naïve as to believe near-poverty and joblessness to be a comfortable condition or an attractive choice.

Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor, worries that the economy will be strangled by taxes or deficits, anger that Uber and Lyft rides have gotten more expensive, sympathy for the struggling employers who can’t fill open roles rather than for the workers who had good reason not to take those jobs. These would reflect not America’s love of poverty but opposition to the inconveniences that would accompany its elimination.

Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power. We’d see more investments in automation and possibly in outsourcing. The truth of our politics lies in the risks we refuse to accept, and it is rising worker power, not continued poverty, that we treat as intolerable. You can see it happening right now, driven by policies far smaller and with effects far more modest than a guaranteed income.

Hamilton, to his credit, was honest about these trade-offs. “Progressives don’t like to talk about this,” he told me. “They want this kumbaya moment. They want to say equity is great for everyone when it’s not. We need to shift our values. The capitalist class stands to lose from this policy, that’s unambiguous. They will have better resourced workers they can’t exploit through wages. Their consumer products and services would be more expensive.”

For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isn’t among our priorities.

“Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”

But we should.

Phroyd

[appleflavoredkitkats]

dream smp war 2 updates

doing a second chain post! i thought it would be appropriate if i did since it seems like there’s a new era of wars coming our way. 

(this post will keep updating by reblogged additions, so feel free to save this post somewhere or follow me to check for new updates every now and then!)

and ya’know, i thought wouldn’t be able to do this, but i realize that where else am i gonna infodump but here? so yea. here i go again.

(if you wanna check the first dream smp war post-war updates, it’s here!)

without further ado, time to explain whatever the heck just happened last stream! timeline of events might be funky because a lot of things happened, but i’ll try my best to at least mention everything that went down in the streams.

wilbur, tommy, tubbo, eret, quackity, and a confused hbomb’s stream - september 22

summary: schlatt and quackity win presidency, tommy and wilbur are exiled, some friends have become traitors, some foes have become allies, and technoblade joins the game.

the first streams that came from this honestly were very calm. legit the calm before the storm. tubbo was hanging out with niki, eret, and hbomb and eret reveals to tubbo that his first pufferfish that was stolen by fundy was actually in eret’s possession all along. eret gladly returns the beloved pufferfish to tubbo, and they rename it back to it’s original name “phukkit”.

then, everyone begins going in the server as each campaign stands on the podium waiting for the event to begin. wilbur, tommy, and tubbo first stray away from the group for a bit to watch l’manberg one last time. tubbo introduces to them his secret bunker in the lake for them to seek refuge just in case pog2020 loses. inside the bunker’s chests are some freshly brewed potions for wilbur and tommy to use in the future.

tubbo then brings tommy to the benches outside tommy’s little house and they play one more music disc together. here, tubbo gifts tommy the pufferfish he just gained earlier today, and tommy promised to treasure it dearly.

now, the event begins, and wilbur begins announcing the results. luckily, everyone is here this time. in last place is coconut2020. a funny thing about this is that fundy actually committed tax fraud and got around 100,000+ votes to be counted in the google form just from coding some bot to vote for them. in third place is schlatt, in second is quackity, and pog2020 wins the number one vote.

here’s where the plot twist happens: quackity and schlatt apparently agreed to combine their votes if pog2020 doesn’t win. therefore, quackity and schlatt got 47% of the votes as pog only got 46%, making schlatt and quackity the shared president of l’manberg. tommy protests to these decisions, but wilbur accepts it with ease, and the two merely step down the podium in shame as they watch schlatt take a speech.

schlatt went on full dictator mode-- the first decree he signed as president is to revoke wilbur and tommy’s presence in l’manberg, exiling them. tommy was confused at first before wilbur demanded him to run to the bunker. schlatt immediately conducts a search party for him, electing tubbo as his right hand man to personally hunt the two down. obviously, tubbo would do it hesitantly, and he doesn’t actually get to meet the two in the bunker at all.

a lot of the nation was quite torn from the election results. quackity and george seem to be supportive of schlatt, niki, tubbo, and eret seem to despise schlatt, and fundy and jack seem to just blindly support him as well despite being l’manbergians. punz, ponk, and hbomb were there as well, but it was quite difficult to know who they were siding with since they kinda just got pushed around by everyone at the end.

using invisibility potions, wilbur and tommy escape the bunker to go somewhere in the forest to find their new home. they find a nice hill to make a small house in, and they later name this new nation “pogtopia”. they run into some conflicts though as wilbur and tommy forget to bring an enderchest with them, and they need some of the materials in them now if they want to build up a defense.

and then, in the middle of nowhere, techno tweeted:

wilbur claims he doesn’t want to trust techno right away because he was american, but they do consider having him as an ally later on.

firstly, let’s get back to l’manberg. upon schlatt’s request, the walls of l’manberg are being torn down. i heard somewhere that this might’ve been done thanks to fundy’s suggestion, but i’m not sure. everyone complies, and wilbur and tommy visit l’manberg one last time before it gets taken apart. as they watch fundy and tubbo tear down the wall, wilbur sings the l’manbergs national anthem. (the wall also eventually gets expanded past l’manberg, but i’m not sure how far they’ve built it)

speaking of fundy, fundy’s kind of in a weird place right now. he seems to unhesitantly side with schlatt in this election, and allows his policies easily as if he didn’t care about anyone else in l’manberg. knowing this, wilbur actually disowns fundy. it wasn’t in front of him, but he does say that he is extremely hurt by him in front of techno and tommy.

before i talk about the rescue of techno, we gotta go back to quackity and schlatt for a bit. quackity actually caught tommy visiting his place to get an enderchest, but i believe he doesn’t tell schlatt about it. quackity is quite interesting because while he does believe in some of the policies schlatt believes in, he also believes that schlatt is taking this dictatorship too far. even he thought exiling tommy and wilbur was a big deal, and he aims to be the voice of reason to be able to change schlatt’s mind about his policies. moreover, he wants to discuss matters with tommy and wilbur as well to get on their side too, but wilbur doesn’t wanna talk to quackity because, fourth wall break, he believes they’re progressing far into the story too much if they do, and honestly, valid reason lmao.

do note that quackity is trying his best to tear down schlatt’s evil dictatorship. he’s secretly been advocating for niki and is helping her escape schlatt’s grasp when she needs it, and he eventually talked to schlatt near the end of the stream to be more mindful of quackity’s opinions because without him, schlatt wouldn’t have won. there’s some toxic relationship plot device being used here between schlatt and quackity, and i’m interested to see how this will all play out.

back to tommy and wilbur, they call techno and actually consider his help. tommy says he will run back to spawn and tell him when to join so that he can bring him to their secret base. eret tries to help them and supply them with goods, but tommy and wilbur refuses his help profusely. finally, when tommy reaches spawn, techno joins, and my god, all the three streams i watched just went “TECHNOBLADE????” all at once. 

on schlatt’s end, he claims that techno’s arrival was part of schlatt’s plan all this time. on the other hand, techno claims he’s only here for wilbur and tommy. i fully believe techno would be with wilbur and tommy, but of course, i can never be sure. just don’t discount the possibility of a traitor!techno happening sometime soon.

even if ponk tried to kill techno and tommy as they tried to escape, tommy was able to kill ponk before techno got hurt. they eventually arrived to pogtopia, and there, wilbur declares that he will be a different man from what they know of him pre-election. i’m thinking there’s going to be more violence surrounding the war, and also some strategic planning. they want to get tubbo as a secret agent for them to tear schlatt and quackity apart, eventually leading to the downfall of the dictatorship. niki might also be someone crucial here because she and wilbur have been exchanging messages secretly, so there’s going to be some niki action too.

then, schlatt makes another announcement. after the walls have been torn down, he declares l’manberg gets a new name-- manberg. niki protests, and wilbur and tommy and rightfully disgusted, but schlatt wasn’t going to do anything about it.

everyone in pogtopia, before they can stack up on some resources, have to go back to the dream smp because they comedically have to get a visa for one day for when ninja joins the minecraft server. they were greeted peacefully (and techno steals some potatoes!!!), and it was definitely fun to see so many people in the server all at once. evetually, schlatt does grant them the visa, and they leave. they talk to tubbo one last time, and tubbo warns them about techno being allegedly “paid” by schlatt to betray tommy and wilbur. tommy regards it for now, but after that, they leave to return to pogtopia.

in pogtopia, they begin mining for resources. in the ravine they found below their base, tommy found a strip mine that leads EXACTLY BACK to his bunker. this will be used for a secret passage for them just in case they discreetly want to return to the dream smp.

this is kinda where the main plot stuff ends for wilbur and tommy’s streams, but in eret’s stream, apparently he and bad found pogtopia. they find techno silently, gifting him with potatoes, and leaving promptly after.

on quackity’s end, he’s really trying to convince schlatt to become more open-minded about this entire presidency. there’s some real tension going on between these two, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they break it off for quackity to join pogtopia. it really seems like they’re hinting it to become that way.

now, it seems like everything’s done, but nope. on eret’s stream, fundy single handedly burned down the l’manberg flag that niki built. FUNDY BETRAYAL AND ERET REDEMPTION ARC. niki is LIVID at fundy, but she wasn’t able to talk to him as he left the server immediately. we don’t know what fundy’s true intentions are, but it’s assumed that he’s siding with schlatt for now. eret at least tells niki they’ll try to rebuild it with concrete so it can’t be destroyed.

JUST AS ALL THIS SHIT CONCLUDES, SAPNAP JOINS. he only joins so he can catch up with everything he missed. eret and niki explain everything to him, and sapnap says he will have to talk to dream about this. he then leaves afterwards.

conclusion: BE HYPED. BE HYPED FOR PLOT. SHOW YOUR APPRECIATION TO THE ENTIRETY OF THE DREAM SMP FOR THIS AMAZING PLOT. DON’T SEND THEM HATE; MAKE CONTENT FOR IT INSTEAD. these people probably worked hard improv-ing/making plots for these, so show your love and appreciation for them!!!!!

[weirdfishy]

My Name kdrama thoughts all in one go bc if not i’ll lose them.

damn you can fit a lot in almost 8 hours

fr i thought taejun was boytoy. right when he wasn’t wearing a suit in the first ep, standing next to mujin looking out on the water, i was like, ‘yeah, they fuck’. and honestly they could have.

also the way that love is stored in the chamomile tea— right after pildo gave some to her i abt had it bc jiwoo cared to give mujin tea and then so did pildo for jiwoo, and he didn’t even want her as a partner in the first place 😭

(oh this goes on and on)

very briefly i thought that gangjae was gonna be like bestie as she went through the organization, but then…yeah i couldn’t watch that scene but i liked how those two assholes were used later. plus his route made sense. they both had conviction but for different reasons.

she got the bisexual haircut…or is it just the ‘asian female becomes deadly so she must have an above shoulder bob with fashionable bangs’ ? is that just an american thing?

like the clear ups and downs with mujin and his trust in people and his care for them and his hurt and emotions and— his character was so good

ohgod when mujin called jiwoo to come to the temple after the monk asked him if he trusted anybody— don’t talk to me bc i cried when he was talking to her at the shrine; one bc his speech was like good good, really hitting the feels and two bc i realized that even though he totally thought of her as some sort of daughter/penance at the core of it was him deceiving her and using her

once he excused no telling her with ‘conviction is needed’ and ‘i wanted you to find out for yourself’ i called bullshit bc it fucking is, he just wanted a pawn and she was so ready to become one…if it were someone else, say, a random kid pushed into him and suddenly on their knees, pledging allegiance, what then— she was penance, sure, but she was a deeper revenge bc donghoon’s betrayal was so close- bc they were so close

i wish there was a single english word for seonbae, but istg i heard it before she said thank you to pildo and pulled a fast one on mujin

pildo and jiwoo’s romantic subplot was pretty good i think, but lemme think for a bit

oh them when jiwoo was tirelessly trying to get gangjae, pildo suspicious and she wasn’t really too subtle before pildo knew, that man was a lil whipped i think. then getting out of the car crusher- oof. bc of mujin, driving a car into the machine, all bloody also from gangjae’s interference? ouch. (oh don’t make me think about how mujin sent the owner away on some odd task to get her out of there before he started fighting)

idk if it’s just me thinking abt this but mujin owed donghoon a life debt for that time and then - ignoring the whole he killed donghoon thing other than donghoon now wasn’t around to claim that debt - said life debt is paid thru saving jiwoo from being crushed (tho it could be argued that he saved her life just accepting the plea for revenge and freeing her bc she was on her way to get trafficked with being so desperate and naive). but then she saves him, killing gangjae- he owes her or she’s free of debt. although i admit it is a concept that could’ve been utilized, it would have had no point, with the way the story was written. it’s just me lol

the stuff w her dad— game changer ohmygod the world came down and people were tested and istg i wish it was within mujin’s characterization for him to just deadpan ‘oh fuck’ when he realized that jiwoo only let him go to kill him herself alsjaksk

idk if yk but i live for the things that humanize the bad guy, like the phantom troupe arc is my gd mf favorite bc of the bond all of them are shown to have; that stuff hits hard, and the emotion mujin is shown to have in the whole series? good soup

idk abt anatomy but idk, when she slashed both of taejun’s calves shouldn’t that have reduced his mobility like significantly? same thing with when the top of her thighs got sliced? idk. love the fiction part of fiction

i was delighted to see the butterfly tattoo lady again, that jiwoo helping her would help later

pildo opening jiwoo’s blinds,,, talking to her and trying to open her up,,,, him leaving and her closing the blinds,,,,, sad

then him getting so gd mad at her for betraying them (and *not* stabbing the captain) when he caught her after she- *sobs* she put her father’s ashes in the family grave, even though she’d been holding onto them this whole time- and then pildo being mad at her at the station and in the hospital parking lot. then him giving her the baton *sob* while handcuffed to her (mm the way they dealt with them so well together) after yelling at her, only trying to change her gd mind bc holy shit he understands now. (his voice over at his trust in her and eval of her past actions in relation to the new info,,, *sob* it’s like the only va we get) after masterfully losing their tail taking jiwoo to the fucking beach,,,, gdi pildo you’re whipped, you latched onto the one thing she shared that was hella personal and you followed through when she was a gd fugitive XD

literally he was talking her through being there for her as she made the decision to go the police way, going outside of mujin’s expectations, and then- and then,,, god the slow motion was emotionally brutal, and so was the way her hand shook and moved out from under his cooling hands, immediately leaving 😭 her anger and grief when she confronted mujin bc he took the ppl she loved from her, the one who understood her and the one she had to learn to understand after he passed. don’t talk to me jiwoo and her father and their relationship is so much

i love how i didn’t get it until it was explicitly shown that mujin was the killer 🙄

jiwoo’s nightmares were so visually and audibly well thought out and *chef’s kiss* — sometimes i mourn the effectiveness of some tools in media bc i would love those kinds of freaking out and flipping through images- the things the masterful transitions convey but in writing. but one,i’m not experienced enough to do it enough justice and two, it really just works so much better when it’s heavily visually based.

WHY THE FUCK ARE PPL SHIPPING MUJIN AND JIWOO WHATTHEFUCK ARE YALL BLIND GO FIND A KDRAMA W THAT ACTUALLY HAS THAT BOSS AND DESPERATE NAIVE TURN BADASS ROMANCE DYNAMIC IF YOU WANT IT BC ITS NOT IN MY NAME

hate to see the lack of females in this :)

[phis-corner]

demon’s daughter

I decided to re-open the taglist for this fic because I am sometimes a pushover, so now you can either ask or comment to be on the fic’s taglist or the permanent taglist! 

Additionally, I have no consistent update schedule. My first draft is written by hand- I always like to stay two chapters ahead, so I posted this chapter when I finished copying chapter 5 into a Google Doc and proofreading.

Also, fun fact: I hate chocolate. My senses just do not like it at all. I also have a very sensitive tongue and can taste the barest hint of spiciness in foods, which also means I have zero spice tolerance whatsoever. As a Chinese-American with family in Sichuan, this means I get force-fed a lot of extremely spicy foods anyway.

Masterlist Chapter 1 Chapter 2 [Chapter 3] Chapter 4

“Why are you letting them stay? He tried to kill Dick!” Timothy points at Damian, who glowers at him from across the cave as Alfred stitches Richard’s cuts.

Marinette sighs. “Akhi was not trying to murder Richard. If you paid more attention, you would notice that all of Richard’s wounds are carefully placed in non-lethal areas meant to slow him down instead of severely injuring him.”

Batman does not say a word. He hasn’t spoken since Richard called him to verify their claims.

“They were raised as assassins, Timmy. It’s normal that they’d feel threatened a lot, and act accordingly. They’re family now. Give them a chance.” Richard replies, and Marinette blinks. She did not expect to have Richard defend them so easily.

“Pardon me,” She pipes up. “But ‘they’ are currently present.”

“Right. Sorry.” Richard has the sense to look guilty. Timothy just glares.

Damian squeezes her hand three times, their signal for I would like to leave. Marinette sighs as she exits the Batcave. Being accepted into the family is… a work in progress.

.o0o.

Slade is put into Blackgate not long after with the information Ubu gave after being interrogated by the Bats. Damian and Marinette were not allowed to go. 

Too young, Richard had said. They had interpreted that as You cannot be trusted to keep him alive. He did make the right call though. Damian would have tried extremely hard had he gotten the chance.

Of course, the League did dispose of him not long after anyway, but it was the thought that counted.

Damian and Marinette spent their days in the Manor sparring, reading, or practicing their instruments. Richard, who seemed determined to bond with them, bought them both new sketchbooks, for Damian’s drawings and Marinette’s designs. She had discovered an affinity for clothing design while undercover on a mission, and had been designing ever since.

Cass (she insisted that they call her that instead of Cassandra,) was always happy to spar when asked, and although nobody ever defeated her, it was a welcomed challenge to fight someone who knew your every move, sometimes even before you did. Damian grudgingly admits she is a worthy sister, which makes Marinette smile and Cass beam.

Jason had his own home and only visited every once in a while, and Timothy was rarely seen. It didn’t help that Damian continued to make snarky comments whenever they did see him, but if Timothy was scarce, Father was practically nonexistent.

Since they came to the Manor, their father has said a total of two words to the both of them, and that was just their names when he exited his study as they passed by.

Marinette is determined to make her new family work, and so when she finds Timothy completely by accident, typing away on a laptop in one of the less-used rooms in the Manor, she takes a chance.

“You do know we are not trying to replace you, right?” She asks softly, sitting down in an armchair and deliberately not making eye contact with him. 

Timothy snorts. “But is that not what you’re doing? Bruce chose to take in everyone else. I had to blackmail him into letting me be Robin. And then the biological kids show up, born and raised like fucking royalty, so who would care about Tim Drake? The little kid whose parents didn’t even want him and his neighbor only adopted him because he knew his most well-kept secret.”

“We have more in common than you think.” Marinette says quietly.

“Yeah, right.” Timothy laughs bitterly. “The Princess of the League-”

“I wasn’t.” Marinette interrupts.

“Huh? But-”

“I wasn’t the Princess.” Marinette keeps her voice calm with considerable effort. “As soon as I was born, Ra’s gave me over to Lady Shiva. He declared me unworthy because I was a girl, and I was raised as the lowest-ranked assassin. I may have been Shiva’s protege, but that just meant she went even harder on me. I did not know even my last name until after my first death when I was five. I did not properly meet my brother until last year. Ra’s decided that I could be acknowledged, but maintained his stance on feminine inferiority.”

She chuckles hollowly. “You fear being replaced by your father figure’s biological children, Timothy. But your fear is unwarranted. Bruce Wayne chose to adopt you, because he is a good man with copious amounts of generosity. However, it evidently does not extend to his biological children. Talia dumped us at Batman’s feet and left without another word, without looking back. And Father? We may have been a complete surprise, but he has said two words in total to us since that first night- our names. You need not worry, Timothy. You shall not be replaced.”

Marinette stands, her message conveyed, and pauses in the doorway of the room. 

“Have a good afternoon, Timothy.”

The next day, Marinette and Damian watch on live television as their father is killed by Darkseid.

.o0o.

The funeral for Batman is somber. Everyone cries except for Marinette and Damian.

She thinks they should be crying, but Marinette simply didn’t know her father well enough to really mourn him. Damian squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back. The twins stand, faces carefully blank, shoulders straight and unmoving, like rocks in an ocean of tears.

Crime in Gotham runs rampant when they think Batman is gone, and so Richard becomes Batman out of necessity- and chooses her twin brother as his Robin.

Nobody else sees how it crushes Timothy, because Cass has left for Hong Kong, abandoning Batgirl and making her own identity as Black Bat. Jason is holed up in a safehouse somewhere, Richard and Damian are in their own little world as they prepare for their first patrol together, and Alfred needs time to mourn too.

So she finds herself knocking on the door to Timothy’s room, one hand holding a plate of sandwiches and a freshly brewed coffee because he hasn’t left his room since the funeral. Marinette quietly enters upon his muffled “Come in” and sets the plate down next to Timothy, whose eyes are red-rimmed and have even larger bags than normal, and yet he continues to work.

“I… noticed you have not come out to eat, so I brought some food and fresh coffee. Black.” She adds, after a moment of hesitation.

“Thanks.” Timothy mumbles, immediately going for the coffee. “Why are you doing this?”

Marinette shrugs. “Everyone else was caught up in their own situation and had issues to work through too. I am relatively unaffected by the circumstances and therefore my observation skills have not declined.” She says simply. “You should also eat. I will not stop you from drinking the coffee, but you cannot work on an empty stomach, either.”

He begrudgingly eats a sandwich, still typing away at his laptop all the while. Marinette notes the tension in his frame.

“Would you like to talk about it? I have read that venting is significantly better for one’s mental health than keeping it bottled up.” She offers.

Timothy suddenly slams the laptop shut, hard, but Marinette doesn’t flinch. The reaction was trained out of her a long time ago. 

“It’s not- it’s- my entire life, I’ve been trying to prove myself. Robin was- Robin was special. I wasn’t the first Robin, but it was a reminder that I was worth something to someone, that I could do good and be useful. And then Bruce dies, Dick becomes Batman, and he just names Damian as his Robin like my opinion on the matter meant nothing, booting me out of the position, without any semblance of an explanation and-” He breaks off into sobs.

The sight of somebody crying makes Marinette more than a little awkward, because what is she doing? She doesn’t know how to comfort a crying person, but she does know that Timothy was touch-starved as a child. However, she isn’t the most touchy-feely person on the planet either, so she just settles for rubbing his back as he lets it all out.

Once he’s run out of tears, she silently hands him the tissue box she plucked from his desk. 

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, you are not worthless.” Marinette says sternly. “Nobody is worthless, and you are far from being anywhere near so. You are the cleverest and most intelligent of us all, a capable, quick-thinking strategist, and you have detective skills that rivaled Father’s. I believe Richard chose Damian as Robin because Robin is always supposed to be Batman’s sidekick. He is always taken under Batman’s wing because there are things he hasn’t learned, that Batman can teach him. Richard sees you as an equal, and therefore cannot keep you as his Robin because you have graduated the mantle. It is time you created a new identity and moved on. Do you have anything in mind?”

Timothy sniffs once. “Thank you. I really needed that. And as for the ideas,” He reaches over and pulls out a sketchbook, a smile spreading across his face. “I’ve got a few.”

.o0o.

They brainstorm ideas for almost three hours before Timothy falls asleep. Marinette easily carries his light frame to his bed and drapes a blanket over his shoulders before quietly exiting his room.

Thankfully, she managed to convince Timothy that the cowl was a terrible idea. Marinette returns to her own room for her sketchbook. Batman and Robin will have each other’s backs. But Red Hood works alone, leaving Red Robin with nobody to watch his back.

Timothy is Marinette’s brother too, and everyone else is headed into the field anyway. She, like Damian, also had the phrase ‘justice, not vengeance’ drilled into her head, and Richard had made sure to remind them daily to aim for non-lethal spots. Not that she planned on taking a life ever again anyway.

Marinette flips open her sketchbook to a bookmarked page and smiles. It seems that Starling would be making an appearance very soon.

.o0o.

It is almost time for Richard and Damian’s first patrol as Batman and Robin. Marinette heads downstairs to wish them well, but freezes at the sight of her twin in Timothy’s old suit.

“This is unacceptable!” She screeches, hurrying forward and looking pleadingly at Richard. “You cannot let akhi out into Gotham looking like a traffic light!”

Richard frowns, as does Damian. “But you never had a problem with Tim wearing it.”

“Tt. Timothy had little to no prior experience in combat before being trained as Robin. Damian has been trained to utilize the shadows in combat since birth. Wearing those bright colors will make him stand out and put him at a disadvantage.” Marinette tuts, already scribbling out a new design in her sketchbook.

“Then what do you suggest, ukhti?” Damian asks.

“I have a design in mind. The colors will stay, but the yellow and green will have to be significantly darker, and the red should be dulled as well. Sadly, you will have to wear that monstrosity tonight, but I can have the suit finished in time for patrol tomorrow, as will mine and Timothy’s new suits.” She replies, not glancing up from her book.

“What do you mean, Marinette?” Richard questions, and Marinette feels a tiny twinge of annoyance at how he handled telling Timothy about Robin.

“I mean that Timothy and I have crafted new identities as well. You did not expect him to just stop fighting crime, or for me to just sit at home while everyone else carried out Father’s mission, did you?”

Damian nods, a small smile pulling at his lips. “It will be nice to see you in the field too, ukhti.”

“What will your names be?” Richard prods curiously.

“I will not tell you just yet.” Marinette smirks. She shows her twin the finished design. “Does this look alright, akhi?”

“It looks wonderful, ukhti.” Damian replies. “Thank you.”

She sniffs. “Well, somebody had to fix the lack of fashion sense in this household eventually.”

.o0o.

Everyone else in the family may use capes, but Marinette decided that Richard’s Nightwing suit was by far the best because of its lack of one. Capes were long, heavy, a waste of fabric, and overall useless.

The Starling suit was primarily black, with a dark emerald mask covering the lower half of her face (because why carry a gas mask and rebreather when it can be built in?) with gloves and boots in the same color. A single silver star with curved sides was splayed on her chest, and a dark green utility belt rested on her waist. Her steel war fans had holsters strapped to her thighs.

All in all, the suit was built for the shadows. Marinette had learned to master slipping through the dark, unseen, and Gotham was the perfect place to utilize that. Starling would be nothing more than a ghost, a legend, if she had her way. After all, the less citizens knew, the less likely the information would hit the underworld, and that way, the vigilantes wouldn’t have all their cards out in the open.

Damian looks much better in his new suit as well, and Timothy is also grinning when he steps out of the male’s changing room. (A/N: the new 52 suit. I’m not letting him out of the Cave with that ugly cowl, or the traffic light costume with an extra R. Don’t even get me started on the Drake one.)

Richard, cowl still down, smiles as bright as the sun itself. “Good to see you, Robin. Tim, Marinette, can I ask your names?”

Timothy fastens his domino. “Red Robin.”

Marinette pulls her face mask up and curtsies with perfect posture. “Starling. I wish to work in the shadows, if that is alright.”

Richard puts on the cowl and becomes Batman. “You guys all look amazing.” He grins, and it is unsettling to see Batman smile. Oracle logs into the comms from the Clocktower.

“You all ready?”

They split the city in half. Red Robin and Starling take the North while Batman & Robin will cover the South. 

Starling trails Red Robin from afar, leaping from building to building and only using her grappling hook when the distance is too great to close by foot. They stop four muggings and two attempted assaults, all without Starling being spotted. The criminals think they hit their head on the alley walls or each other instead of her fist from behind.

It’s almost three in the morning when Batman calls it quits and they return to the Cave, changing out of their suits and showering. They are somehow all unharmed, so Alfred sends them up to bed.

Damian and Marinette brush their teeth before climbing into bed and flipping off the lights.

“Tonight was actually quite enjoyable.” Marinette remarks. “It is a nice feeling, to know that you are helping people.”

Damian hums sleepily. “It is good to know that we are continuing Father’s legacy.”

Marinette smiles. “Yes, I suppose so.” She burrows deeper into her blankets. “Sleep well, akhi.”

“The same goes for you, ukhti.”

For once, Marinette doesn’t have a nightmare.

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Note: some of them didn’t work. I am terrible with technology and have no clue how to fix this.

[127-mile]

Welcome to Crystal Lake.

Pairing: Yuta x reader.

Genre: serial killer, summer camp | Fluff, angst.

Warnings: alcohol consumption, blood, like a lot of blood, explicit and non-explicit deaths, stabbing, injuries.

Plot:  Summer has finally arrived, and after a grueling year, you are excited to return to work at camp Crystal Lake where you used to spend your summer vacations as a child. You are all the more excited to see the other councilors again, and to escape the tension of the city for a whole month. 

This is your last time working there, and who knows, it might even be your last summer too.

Word count: +5.1k.

A/N: This was requested by the incredible @neo-cult-ure​ as part of Something in the shadows. My inspiration was American Horror Story 1984 and Friday the 13th. Oh, and happy October 1st

"Alright, listen to me! The rules are not only for the campers, they are for you too!" the new director of the camp says, and you sigh. You are not the only one to be bothered by a change of staff without having been warned, the other counselors are too, and they do not hesitate to show it. Johnny coughs every time she opens her mouth, and Yuta immediately goes to his rescue, speaking way too loudly.

"Mister Suh, should I send you home? You look sick." the director is annoyed, and you nibble on your lower lip so as not to laugh when you see Johnny straightening up, his arms crossed against his chest. "No, everything is fine, but thank you for worrying about my health, that's very kind of you." you roll your eyes, that's so typical of Johnny. "Mr. Suh, this is your first warning, I don't care that you have been working here for 5 years, I will not hesitate to kick you out."

It is true that it is different from the former director. The latter was nice, and much younger, her goal was for the camp to be fun, and for everyone to have a great month. But this one does not seem to have the same ideas. "And what are the rules ?" a voice rises from the crowd of councelors, and the director seems delighted with the question.

"So, the bathroom hours have changed. The girls will shower in the morning, and the boys in the evening, so are you. I refuse the entry of alcohol and any kind of drugs. For anyone. The curfew is now at 10 pm. The electricity will be cut to make sure neither of you decides to go out discreetly, I will give you flashlights to check if all of the children are in the cabins. Of course, it is strictly forbidden to undertake anything loving or sexual between your, or with the campers."

The counselors look at each other, grimacing, the thought of dating a camper has never crossed anyone's minds, knowing that neither of them is of legal age, it's disgusting. "A breach of the rules will give you a strike, after the third, you will be asked to pack your bags and go home, and you will not be paid for the time you have been here."

You frown, and you raise your hand to speak, but when the director looks at you and blatantly ignores you, you open your mouth anyway. "But that last rule doesn't sound very legal to me." the director shrugs her shoulders. "I don't care what's legal or not, you work for me, so I expect you to follow the rules."

"You can leave, the children will be arriving early tomorrow. I want you in front of the camp half an hour before." with these words, the director comes down from her makeshit platform, and she walks to her office, where she will certainly be locked up for the next few hours. Several counselors turn on their heels and go through the camp, but the last boys turn to you, they all have the same expression.

"This is bullshit, dude." Yuta mumbles as he walks over to put un arm around your shoulders. "At least, you're here." he rubs his cheek on top of your head like a cat would, and you laugh softly, pulling away from him. "I need the money man, there's no way I'm following you in the plans you've probably already made to annoy her."

Johnny laughs as he puts his hand on his chest. "You hurt me, Y/n, do you really think I could do something like this ? I didn't think you could be like that." he says, falsely offended, and you sigh. "It's true that you are, Johnny, a real angel. I'm sorry I thought you were able to do such things." Johnny smiles, and you can't help but do the same, and he nods. "Thank you, and I accept your apology."

Idiot, you think.

You take the direction of the caibe you share with several counselors, but before you can put a hand on the hangle, a hand lands on your shoulder. When you turn, you smile when you see Yuta. He hasn't change since last year, except for the color of his hair, he's still handsome. "Do you want to go for a walk ?" you thought you would get a little rest, but you are not going to refuse him, not after he has spent the last few months begging you for some time together.

You appreciate all the counselors, the friends you made over the years working here, and even coming as a camper yourself, but you always had a soft spot for Yuta and his smile. You can't deny him anything, and you know that at some point, it will cause your problems. "Yes ok, but not too long, I don't want to be stuck in the dark when she cuts the electricity." once more, he puts his arm over your shoulders, and he takes the opposite direction to the cabins. "Don't worry, I'm here to protect you."

Yuta takes you to the bridge which overhands the river, and he rests his elbows on the railing, his gaze lost in the sky who are turning a pretty shade of pink. "I can't believe this is our last year here already." Yuta's voice is so low that you have to come closer to hear it, and you nod. "Yeah, but it had to end at some point."

Okay, you really enjoy spending your summers here, but now you can do like all the other adults you know, go on vacantion, and enjoy somewhere quiet without having to worry about the survival of twenty children for which you are responsible.

"I like this place." Yuta begins. "It's like none of the horrors happening outside reach this camp. Nothing can happen to us here." you frown, he is right about the first point. The reason you came back this year, at the last minute, is to escape the tension of the city, but not the tension caused by the tourists and the cars, but because of the lurking killer. In the last few months, several murders with the same patern have been deported by the police, and as Yuta said, nothing is happening here. Nothing can happen in the middle of nowhere.

"Nothing is reaching this camp, but I'm not sure it really makes us safe." Yuta turns his head toward you and he frowns. "Hear me out. Imagine the killer shows up here, or any psychopath from Friday the 13th, ready to battle with the monitors he had some beef with when he was younger. The city is 30 kilometers away, the payphone works one in five times, and we're not going to beat a deadly killer with a plastic baseball bat."

"You really have to stop watching horror movies." Yuta chuckles, and you nod, he is right about that, you create a paranoia for yourself that doesn't have to be with the films you watch. "Anyway, you know, if a killer infiltrates our ranks, you always have to run away from him, and turn right, you never know what's on the left."

The lightness in Yuta's voice prevents you from thinking about the innuendo in his words, so you shrug. Yuta has always had an incredible imagination. "We should go, it's getting dark." he says, and you follow him without a word. The counselors are already all locked in the cabins, either drinking the reserve of alcohol they have hidden in their suitcases, or sleeping. When you stop outside of your door, you turn to Yuta.

"Please, you and the boys, don't do anything that might get you fired by the director. I don't want to be alone for the summer." Yuta laughs, and you can't help but laugh too, it's so infectious. "Do not worry about me." he leans over and places a soft kiss on your cheek before turning on his heels and heading for one of the other cabins. "Remember, always turn right." he yells before disappearing from your field of vision.

Lying in bed, you turn several times. You can't sleep, it's way too hot in the cabin, and one of the girls is sleep-talking, and it's particularly annoying. You end up standing up with a sigh, you are not going to fall asleep, that's for sure.

You get out of bed, and pick up a jack before leaving the cabin. The electricity is not yet cut, maybe the director will give you at least one night without being afraid to go out to the bathroom. At least, it's not difficult for you to find your friends' cabin. The lights are on, you can see shadows begind the dirty curtains hanging on the windows.

You knock on the door, and suddenly, the movements stop. "Open up, you idiots, I know you're not sleeping." the door opens on Taeyong who smiles. His cheeks are already red, and he smells of alcohol, it makes you wince. "Can I come in ?" of course, the question does not arise, he pushes himself and you enter. The boys are either slouched in the beds, or on the floor. They all have a bottle of alcohol in their hand, and you wonder how many they've brought back.

"So my little one, were you already missing up?" Johnny asks, and you roll your eyes as you settle down next to him on his bed. "Yeah, you have no idea." you look around, and you are surprised not to see Yuta. "He's gone to take a shower." Johnny says before you have had the time to open your mouth, so you nod.

"I odn't know what he took, the Yuta, but he said weird things earlier." Jungwoo exclaims, and you turn your head toward him. "Y/n, I think you gave him your fascination for horror movies, because he was clearly off the rails." you sit up, picking up Johnny's beer bottle to take a sip. The liquid is lukewarm, it's disgusting. "Yeah, he told me weird things when we were walking earlier."

Eyes turn to you, and you would like to be swallowed by the mattress if that was possible. "He said you always have to run away from a killer, and turn right, because-" Jungwoo cuts you off. "Because you never know what's on the left." you nod, it's strange.

"No need to worry, it's Yuta, he's always had a weird touch, but we love him anyway." with your eyes closed, you are not sure which boy just spoke up, but you nod, maybe he is right. The cabin is hot, and humid, it's nasty, but you do not move from Johnny's bed, even when he is using your shoulder as a pillow.

"To another successful summer!" you hear a boy sream before a thud is heard, said boy has most definitely tripped over his own feet. You let yourself be lulled by the sound of bottles clinking and the laughter of the boys who are trying to be discreet. Well, that's a fail.

You wake up later that night and you frown when you notice that the cabin is dark except for a flashlight on and riveted to the ground. Johnny is no longer next to you, and when you sit up, you see several bodies near the window. "What is happening ?" a face turns to you, and he puts a fingers to his lips, indicating to be silent.

You get up from the bed, and you walk up to the boys. You question Jungwoo with a simple nod of your head, and he approaches you. "We heard screams." he whispers close to your ear, and your blood freezes. "Is that a joke ?" you ask in a low voice, and he shakes his head. His face is serious, even in the faint flow of the flashlight.

"Turn off the flashlight, turn it off !" you hear Taeyong's distraight voice, and the light goes off, plunging them into total darkness. A shadow appears behind the window, and you all try to make yourself even smaller. You hear movement, and you notice the shape against the door, trying somehow to block the entrance when the handle turns a few times.

You press your hand against your mouth, convinced that the sound of your breathing will be enough to get all caught, but it is nothing compared to the sound of your head pounding in your chest. Lound knocks are given on the door, and you slowly back away, never getting up. Jungwoo grabs your hand, and you try to stay calm. If you had been alone in your cabin, you most likely would have used the back door to run away.

It would've been a silly reaction that could get you killed instantly, you've seen enough movies to know that. But maybe it's just the joke of an instructor, or children who arrived a little earlier. It happened already that parents dropped them off way too early in front of the camp and they been left to fend for themselves until the early hours of the morning, and boredom pushed them to try and scare the counselors.

The banging stops, and you all wait to see if the person behind the door leaves. After a minute, the sound of footsteps echoes on the wooden square, and disappears a little further away, certainly ready to attack in the next cabin. "Yuta." you whisper, looking at the other boys whose eyes you feel are turned toward you. "We have to find him."

You wonder why he hasn't come home from his shower a couple of hours ago, he can't gave gotten lost, he knows the camp like the back of his hand. You wait five more minutes, then the flashlight comes back on and you see Johnny holding it. He gets up, and the others follow suit. "We also have to go see the director." Jungwoo says, and you nod. "We should call the police."

Your hear a sigh next to you, and your gaze meets Doyoung's who shakes his head. "No, we have to wait. If this is just a prank, we're gonna look stupid in front of the police." its true, the police don't like to be disturbed for something as simple as a prank, and even if it was true, they would take too long to arrive. "Y/n, Doyoung and Jungwoo, you're going to get Yuta. Taeyong, Ten and I are going to go see the director and wake the others up."

"Wait at the phone booth as soon as you have Yuta, okay ?" you nod, and you turn to the other two boys. Johnny opens the door and he look each side to make sure no one is waiting for you, and when the way is clear, he opens more to let the three people out. "Stay safe." he says, handing you another flashlight.

The problem with the camp is that it is surrounded by a forest, and the signal is practially non-existent except near the entrance, so you can't use your phone. You leave the cabine, looking around. No one. But the electricity has been cut.

"Come on, let's go to the bathrooms." you run through the camp, with the bathrooms set back a bit to provide campers with a minimum of privacy. You hate this stupid rule. You suddenly stop when a loud cry tears the peaceful silence of the camp. "Help me! He's coming!" Jungwoo is about to walk over to the person calling for help, but Doyoung holds him back, shaking his head. "We have to find Yuta, we'll go see what happened later."

Unfortunately, in this kind of situation, it is personal survival that comes before anything else. In this kind of situation, you have to be selfish, and Jungwoo hates that, you see it on his face. "Come on Woo, we have to go."

You start running again, and soon, you arrive near the bathrooms. You head to the men's side, and showers. No one is there, and you whine weakly. You trail the beam of your flashlight around you, and you suddenly stop on the ground. There's a puddle. It's red, and definitely fresh. Blood.

"Look." your voice is shaky, and you feel bile rising in your throat. The metallic smell is everywhere, or maybe it's just your mind playing a trick on you. "Oh fuck fuck fuck." you hear Doyoung whisper. It's not a joke anymore. You can tell fake blood to real blood, and this is definitely real blood. "We need to find Yuta, especially if he is hurt."

You walk through the showers, following the drops of bloog that have fallen on the tiles that were once white, and you shigh when you come to the door. "He went that way." in front of you, the forest stretches for several miles. "I do not like that one bit, I hate this forest." you feel a hand on your shoulder, and you gasp. "We're together at least, Yuta is alone, and probably scared."

Without a word, you set off to the forest. You find a small path that has been created by the years and the campers who like to venture there at night for a little rush of adrenaline. You are careful with the roots who almost make you trip more than once. You hear noises all around you, the sounds of the forest, the sound of threes moving, and the footsteps of your friends.

"We don't even know where we're going. What if we get lost ?" you ask, and the boys stop walking, they are thinking the same. You have never set food so far in the forest, because of the stories told by the counselors when you were still a young camper. According to them, the spirits of the people who died in the camp remain in the forest, and will attack anyone who dares to disturb their rests. You are not ready to see if that's true or not.

"Maybe we should turn around, maybe Yuta has found a way out of the forest to find the others." you turn to Doyoung and nod. Usually, he is the most reasonable, and the one you trust the most of all the other boys. You turn around, and you waste no time getting out of the forest.

"The infirmary !" you exclaim, and you run to the cabin where all the medical supplies are. You feel stupid for not thinking about it before, maybe you would have found Yuta by now. The door is open, and blood is on the handle. "Look." Doyoung goes first, and once again, you put your hand over your mouth.

What you don't expect is to find the director lying in a pool of her own blood. Her shirt is covered in dark blood, and it was ripped off where the blade of a kinde when through. "Oh no." the director's guts are as much on the outside as they as on the inside of her body, and it is too much for you. Tears run down your face, and you gasp. You need to take a deep breath or you're going to throw up. Seeing guts and so much blood in a movie is nothing for you, but the reality is so much worse.

Another scream snatches you from your torpor, and you turn towards the door. It is too much for Jungwoo who runs out of the infirmary and straight to the origin of the scream. "Jungwoo, no !" but it is too late, he is already out of reach. Doyoung does not waste a second in following him, and soon, you find yourself alone in the infirmary. Well, not really alone, since the director is there too.

You find a lanket and you put it on her body. Anyone who enters will not have to see the horror sight of the mutilated female body. You don't know what you are supposed to do now that you are all apart.

"Okay, think Y/n." you mumble, and you leave the cabin. The silence in the camp has nothing to do with the silence you are used to. The silence is heavy, its patiently waiting for something to happen. And you don't want to be there when it happens, but you have no choice, you can't just leave in the middle of the night without your friends. After a minute, you notice that your legs have led you further into the camp, and you come to a stop when you hear footsteps behind your back.

When you turn around, you open your eyes wide. Taeyong staggers towards you, his face covered in blood, and he is holding is stomach. He puts pressure on a cound. "Taeyong!" you walk up to him and catch him when he falls. "Yuta.." he whispers, and you shake your head. "We haven't found him yet." you pull his hair back from his face, and rest your hand on Taeyong's who cries in pain. Blood is flowing profusely from his wound. He was stabbed a couple of times in the stomach.

"It's okay, Yong, the boys will come back and call for help." you whisper, hoping to be convincing, but the boy shakes his head. His breathing is shallow, you notice it at the way his chest lifts. God knows since when he has been bleeding out, wandering the camp in search of help. "It's all right, I promise." when you can't hear the boy anymore, you look down at him and bite your lip hard enough to draw blood.

Taeyong is there, in your arms, his eyes wide open. If you hadn't noticed that his chest had stopped moving, you would have thought he was admiring the starry sky. But no, he is indeed dead. A sob escapes your lips, and you slowly release yourself from Taeyong's grip. You lay his head on the grass and delicately close his eyes. You'll have plenty of time to mourn him later, you must find the others, and get out of this bloody camp.

You walk through the camp, covered in blood. Covered in Taeyong's blood, but you try not to think about it. You try to clear your mind so that you can no longer hear the screams around you, they are just background noises, nothing more.

Finally, when you look up, you are near the phone booth. Someone is already there, and you tilt your head, narrowing your eyelids. The batteries of your flashlight are already dying, the light is weaker and weaker. "Yuta ?" you ask, and he turns to you. If you thought you were in a bad condition, Yuta is even worse. His hair is red and sticky with blood, his nose is probably broke, and blood is flowing from a bad cut on his forearm.

"Y/n!" he drops the phone and runs to you before hugging you tightly. He runs his hands over your cheeks, leaving a trail of blood at the same time. "The director is dead. Taeyong is dead. And I'm pretty sure the others are dead too." you sigh, and he shakes his head, a smirk on his face. "Yeah, Johnny is dead, Ten is badly injured and I believe Jungwoo fell into the river after being stabbed."

You look up at him, it talks about it in such a light tone, it's almost scary. You shake your head, before hitting his chest with your fists hard enough to make him whine. He grabs your hands to stop you. "Hey, that hurts !" he mumbles. "You moron! We were only there for the damn director, not the others!"

Yuta shrugs, forcing your arms around the back of his neck, his torse pressed to your chest. "Yeah, but I couldn't find you, so I had to keep busy." you roll your eyes, and he leans in to place a long kiss against your lips. It tastes like blood and salty with your tears, but you are used to it. Before you can slide your tongue into his mouth, he breaks the kiss and you frown. "Oh, look who's here."

Before you have time to react, you are turned around. You back makes violent contact with Yuta's chest, and you feel the coldness of a blade against your throat. Your gaze falls on Doyoung who runs toward you. He is limping, and he is holding a knife that he probably got from the kitchen. "One more step, and Y/n dies." Yuta says in a loud voice, and Doyoung stops dead.

You close your eyes, the cold of the blade is pleasant against the burning skin of your throat, but you can't take advantage of it, Doyoung must believe in your little game. You open your eyes, suddenly in pure panic. You try to escape Yuta's grip, but the blade only digs into your skin, making you bleed a little. "Doyoung, help me!"

"Stay calm." Yuta whispers in a voice as shard as his knife, the last thing he wants is for you to hurt yourself trying to lure Doyoung closer.

"Put down the knife, Doie." Yuta asks in a soft voice, and the boy does so before raising his hands prominently. He takes a step towards you, but Yuta tightens his grip around you. He tilts his head. "Why, Yuta ? Why did you do all this ?" Yuta shrughs.

"The director." he begins. "She's my step-mother." he remains silent for a moment, he lets his words weigh on Doyoung. "She cheated on my dad a few months ago, she had to pay." you refrain from rolling your eyes. He would have killed her wether she cheating on his father or not, Yuta always hated her. Even if she only had cross his path at the wrong time, he would have killed her. It's Yuta, he is like that. You learned to know him, adn to accept his quirks.

"But why the others ?" Doyoung asks, his voice broken with a sob. "I was bored." suddenly Yuta straightens up, and he released his hold on you, pushing you away with enough force that you fall onto the grass and Doyoung rushes over to help you. "I'll give you three minutes to run. After that, the hunt will be on."

It was not in the plan, you think.

Doyoung starts running and you follow him, not without picking the knife he had thrown earlier. "We have to find the others and leave before he finds us." Doyoung sayd, breathlessly, and you shake your head. "They're all dead, Doyoung, it's just us and him."

Doyoung stops, suddenly realizing everything. From the death to his friends, to the hunting party that Yuta has just started, and he falls to his knees. You stop in front of him. "Doyoung, we have to go, we can't stay here." you squeeze him, grabbing his arm to stand him up, but he doesn't move. He shakes his head. "What's the point ? If he killed everyone, we're next. Even if we run away, he'll find us." You hear Doyoung's voice dying out, he has lost all of hope of survival.

"Oh Doyoung !" You whine, and he looks up at you. "We can't stay here, we'll find a way to survive, please, I can't do this without you." the sob coming out of Doyoung's bruised lips could almost breah your heart, and he takes your hand which you offer to get up. "We have to get out."

You run nonstop for long minutes, and you start to feel the burn in your lungs, you won't be able to run any longer. But the moment that thought crosses your mind, you see the entrance of the camp.

"We are almost there !" Of course, Yuta is a smart man, he knew you would be heading towards the entrance, so he is already there, his back pressed against a tree trunk, he inspects the blade of his knife. And he smiles when he sees you. "Ah, finally !"

Doyoung stands in front of you, he wants to protect you at all costs, it is admirable. "Kill me, Yuta. But let Y/n leave." the killer laughs heartily, throwing his head back. "One of the rules for surviving an attack is to never turn your back on one of the killers." Doyoung doesn't understand, and he frowns, but when he feels a sharp pain in his back, everything lights up.

The blade of the knife digs into his back, and he crumbles to his kness on the groun, his cry is chokec by the blood pooling in his mouth. You turn around him, and with the tip of your foot, you push him so that he falls to the ground. Yuta stops next to you, his arm around your shoulders, he places a kiss on the top of your head. "You should do it more often, you look very sexy when you kill." You roll your eyes, nudging him slightly.

You retrieve the phone from your pants' pocket, and smile when you see that the signal is back, and you type in the emergency number. After several beeps, a woman answers. "Help me, please!" you scream, fake sobbing. "I'am at Camp Crystal Lake, and one of the monitors killed everyone, come quickly please, he's going to kill us!"

The woman asks you for the exact address of the camp, and you continue to sob under the gaze of Doyoung who is still on the ground, bleeding to death. You do not know if he can understand you because of the pain, but you hope he does. "His name is Kim Doyoung, he's picked on everyone, and.." you yell before hanging up.

Yuta laughs softly when he sees you throwing your phone on the floor hard enough to break it. "See, everything went as planned." the sun is already rising behind the threes in the forest, and you drop to the ground, you are exhausted. Physically, and mentally. You didn't expect to lose your friends tonight.

In less than an hour, the police will face a terrible scene. A massacre. And they will find the two survivors, ready to tell the story of Kim Doyoung, the surviving killer who snapped and decided to kill everyone one summer night.

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: “Morpholomew” (American Dragon Long): Stop Trying to Make Am Drag a Thing (Commisson Done For WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a brand new retrospective/story arc/thing from yours truly, comissoned directly by WeirdKev27. If you’d like to comission your own review or set of reviews like this one, it’s 5 bucks. Just contact me via my ask box or direct messages on this very blog or my discord technicolormuk#6550.

With Shadow Into Light in the books, Kev decided he wanted to comission something not duck related and a bit smaller as a buffer before the next big arc, ALL of three arcs from season 2 of Ducktales, and decided to go with something he suggested to be a while back as a possible future retrospective: The Lilo and Stitch Crossover episodes! 

That’s right for the next three weeks, with TWO reviews this week since I had a spot open up and Kev paid for this one in full and way in advance, we’ll be taking a trip to Hawaii to visit everyone’s faviorte little girl, her best friend/pet/killing machine as they try to find homes for his 625 cousins. 

I loved Lilo and Stitch when I was a kid: Disney admitely got their hooks in me on that one with their cool prequel comics in disney adventures. These comics set up the movie, showing Jumba creating Stitch and the events leading up to both getting captured. The movie did not disapoint with cool character designs, a drop dead gorgeous recreation of Hawaii, and a really heartfelt, heartbreaking and heartpumping story of loss, family, and ving rahmes voicing one of the few heroic child services workers i’ve seen in a medium, a refreshing change of pace. The film is a masterpiece and I really do need to watch it again sometime. 

Given the series was a huge hit and that thsi was before the big lull in the late 2000′s and early 2010′s where Disney refused to make any tv shows based on their movies, a series followed, given a lead in by the direct to video movie Stitch.

The movie set up the basic premise; 624 capsules containing Jumba’s previous experiments, cousins as Stitch calls them, ended up raining over Kauai, awakening when dropped into water or any other liquid. Lilo and Stitch, with help from Jumba, his live in boyfriend Pleakley, her tought but fair sister Nani, and her boyfriend David, who dosen’t show up as much as i’d like but is my boy so he gets a mention here. But anyways our heroes try to reform the various engines of distructoin who all have unique powers and find them their one place they truly belong. 

So yes the show was a Mons-type show clearly captalizing off pokemon.. but the slice of life setting as opposed to the shonen style of most shows following in pokemon’s wake, gave it it’s own unique feel: while our heroes did fight, it was more about shenanigans, adventures and what not with these unique creatures and the purpose is very heartflet: Lilo simply wants to give these guys the same kind of love and support she’s given Stitch and a chance to do good. 

Opposing them is Gantu, the shark bounty hunter from the first film who, now out of a job, is working for Dr. Hamstervile, an imprisoned sceintest and a character I really don’t like that much as he’s not funny or a genuine threat or both and feels like a waste of time. Thankfully he’s not the focus and Gantu is instead partnered with 625, my faviorite Lilo and Stitch character. 625, as the name suggests, is stitch’s immediate prototype.. but unlike Stitch is too lazy and peaceful to be a real threat and isn’t even really a villian despite being on Gantu’s side. He’s busy making samwitches, his calling to the point when he gets a name in the finale movie it’s naturally Ruben, and snarking at gantu. He’s sadly not in this one but hopefully it’s JUST this one. 

As you can tell I liked this show a LOT at the time. I haven’t watched it since, mostly because disney scarely replayed it after it’s run, but it was vibrant, fun and intresting and a nicely laidback and creative take. The fact I came into the franchise with the comics and thus 625, who was introduced there in fact, and had a hunger to know more about the other experiments certainly helped. It was great fun. 

But while I grew up with the show and the four shows it teamed up with, i’ve never seen these episodes before these reviews. I wondered why for years as I caught the tail end of the kim possible one and saw images ocasionally, but never saw them. 

Turns out it’s because in general Season 2 got screwed over. While Season 1 was pushed out the door fast and aired at a rapid pace Season 2.. was portioned out over several years, and the Recess crossover one, the last one aired and the last one i’ll be covering never even got to Disney channel, only airing on ABC kids, DIsney’s saturday morning block at the time I rarely watched. I did watch it’s predecessor one saturday morning though. Good stuff. 

Since I couldn’t find any making of stuff for why these episodes happened, my best guess is DIsney wanted some cross promotion, and the shows used were chosen because they were the most popular at the time and honestly all 4 represent some of disney’s best, with Recess being in heavy reruns at the time, hence i’ts conclusion despite the show being finished before Lilo And Stitch the movie came out, let alone the series. 

So yeah i’m taking this ride for the first time.. but I was happy to. While Kev pays for a lot of my work, I still have to accept the idea.. and this was a great one. It allows me to cover 5 amazing series and gage how much people would want to see reviews of said series on this blog in one fell swoop.

So to kick us off we have American Dragon: Jake Long, a series I waited forever to come to Disney + as I loved it at the time, badly need to rewatch it (Been busy ), and find it genuinely great: It’s a great teen superhero story about the magical protector of new york, with a charming lead, a great setting and horrifcally great villians in the violently racist magic creature hunting huntsclan.. and their top agent who happens to be jake’s love intrest Rose. It’s really excellent and i’m glad it’s now widely avaliable for all to see. I will say ahead that all four shows in this crossover arc are excellent, and were fine choices for this. 

So what happens when an action comedy about a hip hop teenage dragon meets a slice of life show about aliens? Find out under the cut. 

So we open at a fancy hotel where Lilo’s bringing lunch to her sister Nani when she runs into.. Keoni Jameson. 

The second I remembered this kid all the hate just came flooding back, coursing through my veigns. Just pure liquid hatred for this little perosnalitiless little punk. Keoni is Lilo’s crush and local “stupid white audience stand in”. He has no real personality other than “generic cool kid” and “likes skating”, and just sucks the air out of the room anytime he’s in an episode. Keoni is part of a recurring problem in cartoons across the ages, one that’s slowly going away: the bland love intrest. Intorducing a character whose only traits are being cool for the lead to fawn over with usually no intent of either getting the two togehter or just ending it. IT’s annoying, it was in a good chunk of my childhood, I wish it’d stop. I cannot tell you how many shows used this trope. There were exceptions, American Dragon Jake Long actually used it well by not only making Rose a fleshed out character..  but making her jake’s nemisis in their other lives, and thus making things increidbly difficult on both once the truth comes out, with Jake grappling with if he can trust her or not and Rose grappling with the slow relization eveyrthing she was taught her whole life was wrong.

And again I have seen GOOD storylines using this as a tool: Dipper and Wendy ended with her having been aware teh whole time, but simply not knowing how to let him down given the age gap, and Regular Show rebounded the best from it: it turned the stop and start relatoinshpi of Mordecai and Margret’s relationship into a character flaw for him, openly explored it.. and ended up having him work past it and actually date her for a bit. Before she moved away, he got an even better love interest, then they destoryed the relationship in the worst way posisble and I wil lbe getting to that at some point. Some point. 

So yeah even at the time it was done better, hindsight haas only made it worse and it made watching the first few minutes tough because I had to keep pasuing because I hate him so damn much. He just adds NOTHING to the show and is a blank yanwing void from which no good came out of and I was terrified he’d be in the rest of the episode. Thankfully while he drives the plot he’s only in this scene.. but it’s still one more scene than both 625 and Pleakly got. yeah both are missing, as is nani. 

I did uncover one fun fact that made things a bit easier though: The crew ALSO hated Keoni. No really. Disney forced the character on them as they wanted an audience surrogate, and this abomination is what popped out. They DID NOT want him here and likely only used him as mcuh as they did because Disney forced it on them. And Disney would NOT learn from this as Star Vs got saddled with Alphonso and Ferguson soley because of network mandate. The two aren’t TERRIBLE characters but they aren’t great and feel as tacked on as they were. And part of this does fall on the crew: you CAN twist a stupid mandate like this to work well: Joe Murray was asked to add “A female character with a hook”, as in some sort of dumb gimmick to Rocko. He used those words, meant to create a superfical girl power cardboard cutout.. and created the wonderful Dr. Hutchenson, a bright cheery doctor, the series best sidecharacter.. and someone with a hook hand. But I won’t go too hard on them: they probably didn’t have as much room to manuver and the fact Keoni was sitll being shoved into episodes in season 2 tells me they likely had a set number of episodes he had to show up. I’m suprised they didn’t demand they have characters ask “Where’s Keonie?” any time he wasn’t in an episode. He was unecessary and it comes across with a massive chunk of unforutnate implications: that they didn’t think a series with a mostly hawaiann cast would work, that they wanted at least one other “nice” white character to offset myrtle instead of having the only major white character be a bully and antagonist, and that they thought tehir mostly white audience coudln’t enjoy a series without a white character, which as someone who was in the target demo at the time, I call bullshit on. As I said I hated him then, I hate him now and his involvement is the worst aspect of this episode. 

So after Lilo fawns over him for a bit we find out this chonk of wood’s purpose in the episode: to set up the plot. There’s a massive Skate Competition coming to town with the prize being a really cool skateboard.  This plot point itself.. I don’t mind. Jake is a skater, it’s part of his character and one of the things he loves doing in what minsicule spare time he has. And while it was a common trope at the time having a character skateboard really dosen’t harm most works. We’ve gotten great characters like Jake, Jackie Lynn Thomas, Branwen and Ronnie Anne Santiago out of it, and it feels like natural parts of the character, and frankly An Extremley Goofy Movie wouldn’t be NEARLY as awesome without having skateboarding bizzarley attached to the plot via the college x-games. Granted somtimes you get Rocket Power out of the deal but that’s the price you pay for the good stuff. I only regret it’s involved because Keoni has to be there and I had to pause multiple times to get through his scene. He’s just a sampler platter of terrible decisions made in 2000′s cartoons and he irritates me more than this guy. 

And anyone whose read my Loud House reviews can tell you that is a high bar to clear. 

So naturally Lilo wants to enter the Hawiann X-Games to get the board for Keoni. Though I will give the writers credit for having Stitch voice their thoughts and the audiences thoughts by having him take Keoni’s picture and throw it in the garbage. Where he belongs. 

Lilo’s not great at it as they practice.. and said practice naturally ends up waking up a new experiment, 316.. who i’m just going to go ahead and call Morpholomew. Stitch eventually catches him though like many of the experiments he’s not actively malevelolent and is easy enough to get home. 

Jumba gets to his schitck of breaking down what the experiment of the week does: In this case Morpholomew is  a shapeshifter though he has a VERY intresting twist on those powers: while he can naturally morph himself into anything he’s seen or has a picture of, he can do the same to anyone he touches. It dosen’t effect their voices, but otherwise it’s a perfect recreation. 

So Lilo instead of finding him a home right away.. decides to wait until after the compettition because we need him for the plot. 

So at the Skateboard Competittion Lilo tries to enter, but finds she’s too young.. but since she has a picture of Keoni, which is a nice way to use her photo hobby from the movie for plot reasons and thus dosen’t feel like an ass pull. Why Keoni’s not in town to skate is as his dad left because it’d be too crowded.. even though the event is at the resort he owns. 

So while Lilo commits identtity theft, our guest star appears. He’s cool, he’s hot like a frozen son, he’s young and fast he’s the chosen one, people i’m not braggin, i’ts the American Dragon. Jake is here for two reasons: the first is that Grandpa Long got reports of magical creatures out in the open, so naturally they need to look into that. It’s a clever way to get him, along with Grandpa, Fu, Trixie and Spud, over to Hawaii. The Dragon Council would defintely be suspcious hearing about this, and my guess to why they hadn’t sent another dragon over is they simply dont’ have one on the islands. As for why the Huntsclan didn’t get involved in any way, it’s simply too public for them.  With the magical community in new york, they don’t have to worry about exposure because neither side wants it, so neither side can out the other. Here with a bunch of creatures out in the open it runs the risk of the Hunstclan being dragged into the light.. and given the populace dosne’t care about the “magical creatures” alongside them, it would make them look like the monsters they are. 

Spud and Trixie tagging along also makes sense besides “they needed them for the plot”: While they’d obviously want to come to Hawaii, the skate competition is likely Jake’s cover for why he’s there, as well as one for why it’s just him and grandpa going with a couple of his friends so they don’t have to deal with manuvering around jake’s dad. That sad them never TELLING jake’s Dad is it’s own can of worms as it feels cruel, made things harder for jake and there was no real reason not to. At worst he’d want Jake to stop for his own saftey but given ther’es an active threat in  the huntsclan for the first season and a half, NOT helping people would be the right thing and I feel he’s a sensible enough man to understand eventually. 

And it’s stuff like this that already makes this crossover really work for me: they don’t really have to strain to get Jake over there or tell the audience heavily, the blanks fill in themslves. Or I am but that’s because it’s my job and I love doin it. 

So everyone goes off to their corners; Jake to do a few practice runs, Foo Dog to bet on his friend because of course, Trixie and Spud to go to the beach (even though Spud’s terrified of sharks so I question why Trixie needs him for this), and in a delightfully adorable subplot, finds a lady to woo: local fruit stand vendoer and crankly old lady Mrs. Hasagawa. 

I am here for this subplot: While Grandpa not focusing on the mission is weird for him that’s the entire point.. and their just really cute together. He’s smitten with her entirely because he sees her chewing out one of the people running the contest for making her sign too small. And he performs one hell of a romantic gesture by, while everyone’s back is turned, using his dragon fire to make an add for her on the skate ramp itself, and they have a lovely montage of their time together.. which also weirdly includes grandpa using his dragon fire on stage inf ront of everyone which makes no sense for his charcter but is so cute and does feature david I really don’t care. The writers of Lilo and Stitch probably weren’t deeply familiar with the show and likely just wanted a fun gag. Could be wrong there but it’s cute. He continues to act grossly out of character by trying to avoid going home at the end.. but again I find it simply because he’s in love, they have genuine chemstiry and I like to think they stayed in touch and he retired out there at some point once Jake was old enough to handle things himself. This may not be a ship I expected to support going in but I will die for it going out. 

So back to the main plot, Lilo uses Keoni’s body to imitate him which... she’s only loosely called out on and realizes is bad by the end only because she gets stuck in another body. And that’s not even getting into the fact she BREAKS UP WITH KEONI’S GIRLFRIEND. Yes really.. she just does that to get her out of the way. She comes around and realizes she was wrong and tries to fix it which would be fine.. if hte episode didn’t try to cop it out by revealing “Oh she’s not his girlfriend, she’s just someone who keeps telling people that”. It just feels lazy and dumb and a way to keep Lilo’s crush on Keoni for reasons I DO. NOT. GET. But the identity theft is just brushed aside by everyone: Keoni never finds out, and Jake just brushes it off. The real issue is more her trying to bribe keoni into likng her which while something kids need to learn is not the only thing she did wrong here. It feels like they didn’t think all the implications out here and it hampers the episode

Speaking of which as Gantu captures Jake, he sees him transform into dragon mode and assumes he’s the experiment, Jake’s charactization is pretty shallow.  And why yes it DOES feel weird writing sentences about a character with the same name thank you for asking. I wasn’t expecting a deep character piece or anything: This is a guest spot, the writers here are not the same normal ones for American Dragon. That’s fine. The problem.. is that they clearly did not get Jake. Grandpa being partly out of character is half the joke, Trixie actually gets a really nice moment towards the end, and Spud.. is eh. But out of them Jake just feels like a basic character description: He likes hip hop, he likes skateboards, he calls himself Am Drag despite that sounding like a good name for a drag act but a terrible name to shorten your title, he fights.. that’s it. 

While jake is all of that in the main series, he’s also a kind young man who while sometimes irresponsible does the right thing when the chips are down.  He’s someone weighed down by a responsiblity he didn’t ask for, often makes his life more difficult and often finds himself in trouble because his mother and grandfather won’t bother to tell his dad he’s a dragon. Yes that part still bothers me, and I don’t see why we couldn’t just have a superhero show where both parents know. But regardless this just dosen’t feel like Jake , like they just watched the intro and that was it. Jake feels more like a plot device in his own crossover. 

That being said there is some good stuff: The minute Jake realizes some Sci Fi stuff is going on instead of hte normal magic stuff he tells him “The am drag’s show isn’t about sci fi” a nice meta bit and then breaks out. Meanwhile Lilo takes on his form.. and ends up stuck after badly botching her run again, as Gantu finds the real shapeshifter. 

We get the best stretch of the episode from here though: Lilo awkardly tries to play jake and like jake we get a nice meta nod to how diffrent their show is as she’s worried about his belief in magical creatures.. and is startled out of her charade when Foo Dog talks, a really nice bit especially since it’s tame compared to the weirdness he deals with. Spud and Trixie have questions... only for Jake to show up and his agressive behavior leads to the best bit of the episode: Jake Vs Stitch. The catlyst is understandable: jake has no idea why Lilo’s taken his identity and Sttich is just protecting his best friend from harm. The animation is fluid, the fight is fun and quick and uses both’s powers stellarl. Whle “two heroes get into a misunderstanding and then fight” is a well worn cliche at this point, it’s moments like this that show why: you get to see two heroes who in this case never have interacted before or sense, duke it out, why each is special and it’s fun to watch. 

Lilo breaks it up, and admits to the whole thing.. including the whole give Keani the board stuff. While Jake and Spud, being awkard with girls and a loveable moron don’t see the problem with that Trixie gets a moment to shine. As far as I can remember she really didn’t get much on the show proper so it was a nice suprise to see her mentor lilo her, telling her trying to give someone gifts to love you is not okay, she should just be herself all that good stuff. It’s a nice character stuff and tha’ts the kind of character interaction this episode needed more of. 

With the misunderstandings washed away our heroes team up and storm gantu’s ship leading to another great sequence as Stitch rides on Jake’s back while the two keep him busy and Lilo gets turned back, Trixie complimenting her dress “Thanks I have 10 just like it at home”. It’s such a sweet and genuine moment” They head back out and gantu semeingly grabs morpholmew from where they hide.. only to find out when he gets back it’s spud, our adorable little blob monster transforming Gantu into a bunny and our heroes leaving. How does Gantu get out of being a bunny?

But it’s a nice enough gag. So we end the episode. We get another nice gag as grandpa had himself and his lady transformed to try and avoid going home, and Jake is fine with having lost out on the board what matters is he made a friend. Sadly we did not get a followup in ADJL., but spud does name our experiment, Morpholomew. 

We end on Morph getting his home: a costume shop where he gets paid in fried chicken, he was shown to enjoy it throughtout the episode and changes people into things. It’s a nice little button to the episode and one of the funnest parts of the show was figuring out where the experiment would end up at the end. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode is a really mixed bag. There is some good character interactions, two tremendous fight scens and Trixie gets a chance to shine for once if only for a scene or two, and the clashing genres end up making for some great jokes> The shows do go well together as while Lilo and Stitch is more laid back both have slice of life elements. And hasgawa X Grandpa is just oto cute for words. 

The episode is held back by Jake and Lilo’s lackluster characterizatons: Jake is simply the theme song as a character, which in theory is awesome because that theme song slaps but in practice is pretty lame, and Lilo is selfish and irresponsible even for her in a way that dosen’t feel at all convincing. It drags down what’s otherwise a fun crossover and Morpholomew is truly a unique and wonderful experiment. Still if you like either show it’s worth a watch even if you have to suffer through Keoni for it. It’s worth it.. I just wish it was better and hopefully the next 3 will keep the good parts but take out the bad. Granted this was produced last so I could be wrong, but here’s hoping.  Oh this episode also featured Miranda Cosgrove as the girl who claims to be Keoni’s girlfriend. This is also Keoni’s last episode meaning I do NOT have to worry about accidently running into him. Thank fucking christ. 

Next Time On American Dragon Jake Long: Jake’s dad drags him and his friends on a camping trip and Jake ends up encountering the Jersey Devil. Now all they need is a sexy lady devil cake to lure it out... what it worked for the Cake Boss. And yes that happened, Allison Pregler did an episode on that episode. Check it out. 

Next Time On Lilo and Stitch Crossovers: It’s the family, the family, proud familllyyy as the Prouds take a vacation at Peakly and Jumbas bed but not breakfast and we get some kind of squirrel demon for our experiment of the week. We also get Wizard Kelly appearing...

See you at the next rainbow.