#anyways one of my very personal gripes about this book was the focus on the MC being from Salt Lake City

[dawnstarranger]

2.5/5

If you really like thrillers and live on a steady diet of any you can get your hands on, maybe check this out. I personally didn’t love it for a few reasons, some of which are just me personally not liking things lmao so take that with a grain of salt. It does feature some pretty perilous scenes involving a dog so if that’s a turn off for you stay far away.

[rowanul-tyr]

So. Dawntrail.

I finished the 7.0 MSQ roughly a week ago, during the early access period, and overall I had a great time with it! My thoughts on the expansion as a whole have been marinating in the brain pot since then, and I wanted to touch on some of those thoughts and why I think this has been such a great expansion so far, at least story-wise. All under a cut for spoilers, and I’ll honestly be talking mostly vaguely about plot stuff anyway. And I’ll mark anything specific that is spoilers, and dividing things zone by zone.

Anyway.

First and foremost, since I feel like this will help put my overall opinion into perspective, is my ranking of expansions so far.

1: SHB will forever be king to me in a ton of ways; part of it is this was the expansion I started with, but I also just love the story it tells so much and even if I have little gripes, they’re all so minor that it doesn’t really matter

2: a tie between HW and EW, actually--both are excellent, and while I have some issues with parts of them, the positives for the most part outweigh my issues

3: another tie between STB and ARR--I think both of these are good, but have some issues that really can’t be ignored. And they’re only at the bottom because that’s how lists work.

DT is not perfect in my eyes (not by a long shot), but it is giving SHB a true run for its money in terms of how much I liked it. Like I said initially, I don’t think it’s without its problems (no expansion is, even SHB no matter how much I love it), but overall there is just SO much good stuff here that I am 100% willing to forgive it.

Before I get into the details, I want to say: making it clear from the pre-order stuff and Viper and all that this is the FF9 expansion really is important. FF9 begins fairly bright and cheery and its aesthetic lends itself well to hiding what subject matter it tackles, but then it eventually starts dealing with a LOT of heavy topics--and Dawntrail is very much living up to that in my book.

Expansion Start

Going into this expansion I really had no idea what to expect. I admit that the 6.X patch cycle really threw me for a loop once DT was announced, and it felt kind of pointless to be doing so much with the void? I was like, “Why are we spending so much time on this, when we should be looking at things that are relevant to Dawntrail??” because none of it made sense to me.

One of the issues I had with STB for a long time was Lyse. Don’t worry, I’ve come around on her, but it took a while. The biggest issue I had was that the devs tried to take an existing character and turn her into something other than what we knew, and it threw me entirely. I think they learned the lesson from that, which is why the focus is on Wuk Lamat, a new character, and on Krile, an older character we know so that we feel more invested in what is to come.

Another aspect of STB that kind of threw me off was…how little focus it got after the HW story ended? Like we get two patches worth fo story to lead into it, and I 100% think the Ga Bu stuff is important, and obviously the Warriors of Darkness story is important to set up part of SHB, but…everything to set up STB felt…not there? And we meet Lyse properly during 3.55/3.56, just like Wuk Lamat. We don’t have time to get to know her as this new person before we’re dropped into STB proper. And that didn’t help me when it came to bonding with Lyse--it took until the Lakshmi trial before I realized how I was supposed to feel about her my second time playing through Stormblood.

Wuk Lamat won me over really fast, thankfully--she has a certain kind of charm to her that endeared me to her pretty quickly (she’s very Sora from Kingdom Hearts coded in my eyes), and I was quietly interested to see what would happen with her character arc going forward. To be frank, I was more excited about how much better my character looked in game than in the updated benchmark than what little of the story we knew! I also was more invested in Krile than anything else story-wise; she’s always been a low key fave of the Scions for me so it’s nice to see her be much more involved in MSQ this time around.

But then we hit the first city and actually got into the story. Tulliyollal is such a lovely city, and its inn room was the first to make me go “wow” since the Pendants (since the Baldesion Annex was fun but still feels way too cluttered for me). I loved meeting Gulool Ja Ja, and his vibe as a character was excellent. I was surprised by what the rite of succession was shaping up to be, but once you see the Saga monuments and hear the story behind them it pretty quickly clicks as to what the Dawnservant wants the claimants to the throne to learn about during the rite. That was when I rsaw the mentor-type role my character would play, and once I knew what role the WOL plays for Wuk Lamat and in at least the start of Dawntrail’s story, I was in. I was determined to embrace that role in a way I had issues doing when I played through STB initially for Lyse.

One other thing: I was super surprised by Zoraal Ja being the one Wuk Lamat was prioritizing as a threat, and that he was the one who couldn’t be allowed to be Dawnservant. I guess I’d been anticipating the aloof/stern but decent older brother from him based on what I assumed was one of his lines in the launch trailer, so that was a fun surprise.

Zones 1 and 2, first visit

Urqopacha absolutely blows Kozama’uka out of the water for me, but I think both zones do a pretty good job with their first of two feats.

I started with Kozama’uka. The HanuHanu felt straightforward enough, and their feat set Koana up really nicely for what exactly his views are. I was glad to hear that he and Wuk Lamat were on friendly terms right before we left Tulliyollal to start the rite. One of my first thoughts when seeing how he and Wuk Lamat both handled the feat was, “He’s not going to win the rite, but I want him to either be advisor to his sister or for her to invite him to rule together.”

Bakool Ja Ja was fine as the zone’s antagonist, the writers did a good job of setting up his rivalry with Wuk Lamat in the intro so I wasn’t surprised by him trying to cheat his way through things. Wuk Evu was also…um. Not my favorite. I wasn’t super into the “behead me for being rude to the Third Promise” joke being reused over and over and over again…but maybe that’s just me.

As I said, Urqopacha was by far my favorite intro zone for the views, the music, and the overall aetshetic. I really love FF10, so getting to spend so much time with the Pelupelu was excellent. I also loved the zone music and this part really was what got me hooked on this expansion. Working with Mablu to make trades for the saddle was such a great showcase of what exactly the player character is to Wuk Lamat, and really solidified how much I enjoyed her. She is SUCH an orange cat (meaning she is “no thoughts, head empty” in a lot of ways but also just impulsive and can be unpredictable) and I mean that in a very kind way.

This was also where we got to see so much more of what Zoraal Ja’s whole deal was, and once I spent more time hearing him speak I totally understood why Wuk Lamat didn’t want him to be Dawnservant. Also, Mablu is the best and my roommate/best friend who is the biggest FF10/FF10-2 fan I know cried when she saw Tobli (since he’s from 10-2 himself) and the music is so good. So yeah, 10/10 zone.

Zones 1 and 2, second visit, and First Trial

Jumping ahead a teeny bit (since you go back to the capital between these visits). I liked this second set of feats overall! It felt like we were finally making some good progress with Krile’s goals to find out more about the city of gold in addition to moving forward with the rite. I also liked jumping right back into zones we’d already seen instead of waiting for 5+ levels to go back.

I liked how the Moblin feat incorporated the Elezen goldsmith from the boat, and seeing once again just how charismatic and magnetic a personality Wuk Lamat is. Her ability to show so much empathy for people is absolutely her biggest strength, and her desire to understand things--something those helping her with the rite have helped her discover--really start to shine, at least for me. That’s what makes her such a great fit for Dawnservant.

Koana also really was a star in this zone, and I really adore his character archetype and the love he so clearly has for his sister. Working together to rescue Wuk Lamat after Bakool Ja Ja snatches her was a nice change of pace from what we’d had so far from the rite, and that was when my initial impression of what would happen with Koana gained a bit more strength behind it. I was about 90% certain at this point that he wouldn’t win, but would stay at Wuk Lamat’s side to help guide her when she needed it.

I LOVED seeing the Yok Huy and honestly just getting to go back to Urqopacha was a delight. It felt like SO much progress was being made for both the rite and Krile’s goals, and the dungeon was excellent. No notes.

As a quick aside, though, I loved that we got to hear the Yok Huy’s take on death--that those who have died will always live in our memory, and so long as that memory remains, they are not truly gone. I loved this because it fits so well with the lore I have for Rowan regarding the way the Echo manifests for him, and how he cherishes the memories of people he’s lost but has come to move on with his own life. It just…is a very good thing to nail home some of FF14’s broader conversations about remembering and honoring the past, but still turning your focus to the future.

I have gripes with the Valigarmanda trial (I wiped twice on Duty Support :( ) but I appreciated that Wuk Lamat, Koana, and Zoraal Ja ALL came together for the good of their nation. I also liked that Zoraal Ja was cooperating because people dying because Valigarmanda would be bad for his own goals in the end if he won the rite, and also it’s good to see more of him before Things Happen (™).

Zone 3

Basically from here on out I loved every zone.

As a person who loves food and specifically enjoys making food for others, the feat in Iq Braax was a delight. Given that we find out the clan’s leader is Wuk Lamat’s father, it is VERY fitting that the people of the village are much more on the nose about not directly helping the team-up between Wuk Lamat and Koana. In addition, the cooperation between the Second and Third Promises was very clearly there to show 1. how well they work together and 2. what it is that Koana still has to learn, which he very much does by the end of the zone.

I’ve seen in the Disc Horse (™) around DT that Bakool Ja Ja turn in the second half of the zone was weird, but I don’t think it was, not really. By the end of the instanced duty after the X’braal feat, he’s a humiliated mess. Seeing the added context for why the Mamool Ja are the way that they are in the second half of the zone and learning the true cost of the blessed siblings among them, you actually have a reason to offer empathy to a person whose whole life has probably not been great. Wuk Lamat putting aside her anger with Bakool Ja Ja to truly help his people is yet more proof of the things that truly make her a good leader and why she really is the best choice to be Gulool Ja Ja’s heir.

The end of Koana’s arc here is excellent. Wuk Lamat reaching out to him when she needs help finding a way for the Mamool Ja to find ways to thrive outside of the blessed siblings--knowing that he can succeed in an area that is not her forte--is yet MORE proof of her ability to see the best in others and understand their worth. And Koana is genuinely a great brother and partner to work with for her, as his generally calm demeanor evens out her boisterousness very well. The instanced fight against the shade of their father where both groups come together was EXCELLENT.

The end of the Skydeep Cenote and actually finding the city of gold is such a good way to close out the first half of the expansion. We’re left on more intrigue for what is to come in the second half of the expansion, and this was when I got the deep sense of “Okay. But when is the other shoe gonna drop”.

Midpoint, and thoughts on the first half of the expansion

I was so happy with Wuk Lamat’s coronation, and how she outright asked Koana to join her on the throne. Finding a way to truly be their father’s successors by embodying both reason and resolve works out so well in Tural’s favor in the end.

I think the only somewhat negative thing I can say here is that…I was totally thrown by the song that played when the stone monument was revealed, haha. The song is fine on its own, but it was SO weird for me to hear that it did actually kinda take me out of it. But otherwise this turning point for the latter half of the expansion was good. I wasn’t sure how to feel about MSQ going forward, though, because I was like “Wait, where’s the rest of it?”

In terms of my overall thoughts on the first half of this expansion… It’s very good as a way to decompress following the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga that ended in 6.0, and even a good way to relax after everything that happens with Zero and the void.

I know there’s a ton of Disc Horse (™) around this expansion, particularly about Wuk Lamat and the rite and how “slow” the first part is. I have two things that come to mind about it all: this isn’t the Shadowbringers or Endwalker of this next story arc. This is the Realm Reborn to the next arc. Things are definitely going to be a bit slow.

In addition…the WOL may not be the protagonist of this particular part of the story, but that doesn’t mean the first half and dealing with the rite is worthless? The WOL knows by now that they were Azem, the Traveler. Remember, the Traveler part of that convocation title? My BFF/roommate Sarria put it best:

“DT really feels like it's back to our "roots" and I mean like AZEM roots. Being The Traveler, visiting new places and meeting new people and learning about places outside of our known bubble. Listening to people's stories and desires and then being asked to help specifically *because* we listened to and learned from the locals. And I for one really really am loving it. The story doesn't have to be about us - just being there means we have a role. (Also the first half of DT isn't supposed to be about us anyway.)”

I find it so funny that people have such a problem with it--and I won’t lie, I do agree that some of it had slow pacing. But like…I don’t know, this really feels in line for what Azem would do. We are Azem now, we have the crystal and everything. We’re not known in this continent because it’s only been 70 years since the world we know made contact with it--to the point of the guy credited with discovering this “New World” IS STILL ALIVE. There is ample reason why your character is not the focus of the first half of the expansion, and it’s so disheartening to see people just…not get that?

It could be that my overall excitement to explore the new zones laid out before us led me to be much more forgiving of this section, but getting to know the people of Yok Tural was such a treat. I can’t wait for NG+ to come around for 7.0 so I get to explore all of this again.

Okay, back to going zone by zone.

Zone 4, part 1

So as someone who knows the Southwest US fairly well this zone was excellent, I loved the vibes. The overworld music is great.

I will say outright here that I’ve kind of been an Erenville disliker since his introduction in EW. He’s been overhyped for a character who up to DT basically had no personality in my eyes, so I was apprehensive about how this zone would go with him as our only companion. But, credit where it’s due, the writers actually got me to come around on him a little with the background we finally get for him. Not entirely, I still have issues with him, but he’s now more well-rounded.

Seeing the railyard workers actually made me cry, specifically seeing Not!Magnus’ wife. I’m so glad that 1: they were included and 2: explicitly shown to be the exact same as the people we know from the first. My roommate Sarria and I joked several times that this was SHB/Trolleys 2 and it was such a delight getting to laugh about it.

The end point for this visit to the zone was excellent. The dread had been building for me the whole time, knowing that something was around the corner, but no idea what. So the dome appearing and then the aftermath in Tulliyollal was anticipated, but about as brutal as I was expecting.

Tulliyollal revisit and Zone 4, part 2

The destruction of Tulliyollal and trying to aid those we could was done well, to me anyway. The devs handled that sort of thing pretty well in EW, so was glad to see it done again just as well.

Then comes the “cat”valry as I’d like to call it. Honestly, the moment I heard G’raha’s voice and heard Eternal Wind, it was like I could finally breathe. I think that’s the point of him and Y’shtola showing up to give you help for the rest of the expansion--they give a sense of release to all the tension and anxiety players might feel after the attack on Tulliyollal. A mini version of what the low-stakes rite of succession is to the story overall. You have to have a release for tension before building it up again, because building tension with no release just doesn’t work.

The truth of what the golden door is threw me for a loop, because I was NOT expecting it. I imagine it’s what people felt when the SHB launch trailer dropped and the truth about Hydaelyn and Zodiark was given--you’re so shocked that it’s a bit much to process. But I liked the revelations about the golden city and Krile and everything.

The revisit to Shaaloani was a delight, and deciding to blow up the train was exactly the kind of crazy I’d expect from the Source version of the trolley guys from Twine. The song that played during the coronation came back and it felt just as cheesy as before, but I think I’d accepted it by this point? I just let it happen even though it doesn’t really work for me.

And the Vanguard dungeon is SO good. I loved the music--honestly Soken popped off this expansion for the most part.

Zone 5/Second Trial

So I love the aesthetic of this zone in general--thank you for giving us FF10’s Thunder Plains properly this time!!!--but there was a zone where I ever felt like the story was loosing me, it was this one. I wasn’t sure what to make of the time bubble nor the regulators, so it took some time for Heritage Found to find its footing for me.

Sphene also was slightly unsettling, in a way? It was hard to put my finger on whether she was sympathetic or playing you, which I guess is the point.

Solution Nine kind of just…added to my sense of confusion. I was a bit lost on it all, and trying to wrap my head around it. It is also way to big and spread out for my tastes…but oh well.

With all the talk of souls, though, I finally understood why all the Void stuff with Zero in the 6.X patches was actually good to spend so much time with, since it was basically a primer for ALL of this stuff in the latter half of DT. So once NG+ is here for Dawntrail, I may actually start with 6.1 and see how it all flows together.

What finally got me back on loving the plot again was seeing baby Gulool Ja and Otis in the other half of the map, where the ruins of Alexandria are. I haven’t even played FF9 myself, only watched a very abridged playthrough, but the way I instantly knew who Otis was a stand in for made me feel so warm and comforted. Steiner is just so goofy and endearing, and Otis is exactly like him.

Was not surprised by Zoraal Ja making his move, but the cutscene for the defense of Tulliyollal was very good. I was surprised by Sphene both in and out of Solution Nine for that instanced duty, and I think here is where I really started to see the parallels between what I know of FF9 and DT. Sphene is Wuk Lamat’s mirror, at least in a way--loving and compassionate and charismatic (because I’d come to like her quite a bit by the point she outright says she was playing you). She exemplifies the extreme end of Wuk Lamat’s desire for peace, and the need to protect and preserve her people.

The fight against Zoraal Ja is a satisfying one. I am not the person to ask to talk about fight design or anything so will leave that to others. But I thought it was good.

Also liked the revelations after the trial, where Sphene turns on you for real. It did feel like downing Vauthry just to have Emet steal the Exarch again, though maybe not in the same way. Similar dramatic stakes, I guess I’m trying to say.

Zone 6, and the Finale

This zone will always have an interesting flavor to it for me, since I use the Living Memory title for personal WOL lore reasons. But the zone is, I think, such an excellent one for what the expansion as a whole is trying to say.

As I mentioned at the beginning, despite its cheerful colors and friendly looking character design, FF9 is a darker story. It deals with death and the existential. The perfect word to sum up FF9, from what I know, is bittersweet. And I think this zone--and in a way both zones and the city that comprise Alexandria--PERFECTLY handles that bittersweet feeling.

The weather is Reminiscence, bathing everything in this beautiful golden color. It’s full of areas referencing FF9--I recognized Alexandria and the Iifa Tree, but each zone is a call back to 9. The music is this soft, comforting piece that just triggered my nostalgia for a game I haven’t even played. Seeing Otis in his prime again, the tour of the Gardens with Cachuia, letting Krile meet her parents and learn her real name--it’s all so bittersweet.

Every time you turn off a terminal, you get that message of how nothing will go back to what it was. And the part of Living Memory that you shut down is then forever less colorful and lively, and there’s no music (at least when you’re there during this part of MSQ). You’re left with silence. We can always remember it like it was before (or use NG+ to bring it back if you were a dummy like me and didn't gpose there before it went away), but it won't ever be the same now.

I took my time in Living Memory before moving from area to area, and did all aether currents and quests as I could/they became available which only happened AFTER the zone was gone for the quests. So I was doing all this in silence. Left alone with my thoughts on it all and trying to understand what the point was.

Sphene is clinging so much to that nostalgia for a time gone by because of her programming, and it’s sad to have to end it. But to me, she is eerily similar to Emet-Selch: she was clinging to the memory of the dead, desperate to bring them back and keep them alive. But in the end, it was only an imitation that would lead to untold amounts of suffering to others.

All of Living Memory reminded me so much of Amaurot. Sphene letting the Endless explore as they pleased was I think a much kinder version of Emet's magic working on Amaurot, but I couldn't help but see the similarity there.

I did cry in this zone, during G’raha’s talk with the player in the gondola and all the interactions Krile had with her parents. And it’s just…sad. You might feel awful about destroying the Endless once you understand them and their ways, but in the end…they’re only memories of people who died long ago. Their lives continuing are coming at the cost of the future for everyone on the Source and the reflections. It just can’t be sustained as Sphene’s realm continues to grow and more and more is needed to keep things running.

Sphene wanted the best for her people, going as far as she did for them. And I like that she is clearly kind but does a lot of bad things out of love for her people, and the desire to preserve them. But in the end, she had to accept why death is an important part of life.

I loved the Alexandria dungeon, and the trial was excellent. I will say that the intermission was maybe a bit long, but I still liked it tremendously. I’m excited to see what the relic has in store for us, and where the new arc of the story will take us.

Overall thoughts

DT has two very distinct sections, and there are parts I think could be refined to maybe make things go smoother overall, but honestly? I am totally willing to overlook those things because I enjoyed myself as much as I did.

DT, to me, managed to deliver on the summer vacation aspect that was so heavily advertised while also keeping with FF14’s larger ideas about hope persisting in even the hardest of times, and why the connections between people are so important. It also continues to show why it is not just important but also good to remember the past fondly, but it is just as important to keep moving forward in the best interests of all people.

I said it in the part about Living Memory and the finale for DT, but Sphene is very similar to Emet-Selch, and while some of the Heritage Found stuff lost me for a bit, the story did hit its mark where it needed to. The ending zone was not what the Tempest or Ultima Thule were, and I’m glad that it’s not. I’m sad that I’ll have to replay on an alt or when we get DT NG+ to take the pictures I wanted there, but that’s the point. You’re supposed to feel a longing for something that you can never truly get back, and that’s one of the best parts about it. You’re left with this bittersweet feeling as you let go of the past, and these people who are long gone.

DT drove home Venat’s point from EW even more for me. To use Ardbert’s words from SHB, “Joy and sorrow walk hand in hand.” There is joy and sorrow all over the place in Tural’s story and in its peoples, and I loved how every minute went even if sometimes it did feel a bit slow. But not everything needs to be so fast paced, either.

And even in the slower-paced parts, the WOL is really embodying the adventurer spirit we’ve returned to. We’re embracing our Azem roots, and travelling to new lands and meeting new people and coming to enjoy their cultures and presence. That sort of thing is what Venat, the previous Azem, loved so much about the world. And getting to understand her sentiments a bit more was excellent.

All in all, while DT has its faults, I 100% think this a great expansion. I’m excited again to see what is to come from this story, when I was apprehensive at best after 6.X patch story.

[wholelotofweird]

Meowdy, I hope you're ready to take a peek at all of the books I've read the last 3 months!

By read, I do also mean listened to. I'm a huge fan of audiobooks, because my brain is bad.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Benjamin Stevenson

I love a good mystery book, and this is a good mystery book. The narrator has a strong voice and is up-front about their unreliable nature. This book does a great job of making sure you are on the narrator's side, it never feels like they are purposefully keeping readers in the dark in order to pull a gotcha.

Pacing and suspense are SO well balanced to the point where I devoured this book in a day.

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

I was so prepared for this book to lean way more heavily into a fantasy world where I'd have to learn more terms and how social systems work, and just 1000 other things that can put me off of fantasy books. It's part of the reason I put it off for so long after getting it recommended to me (sorry, Ben.)

THIS BOOK, THOUGH, is not that at all. We don't have to learn new names for "church" or "palm tree". The author manages to thread the line between assuming that readers know the world already, and not creating a bunch of buckwild new words. The handholding though the worldbuilding is so light that you almost don't even feel it.

The setting manages to feel modern and fantastic all at once, which is just... The perfect food for me. The pantheon exists, but it isn't the focus.

This is a romance novel but not a bodice ripper, or overly erotic. I feel the depths of the emotions between the two main characters, which is what I really want.

My one gripe is that the final resolution feels very deus ex. Now, if I was going to pull out my fancy degree and analyze this, I could make an argument that the ending is supposed to feel that, for [spoilers]. But... I'm not sure how true that is. Maybe I'll have to re-read the book and keep that argument in mind.

Even with the ending, this book is lovely.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop - Meredith Katz

This book is short and sweet and a lovely look at an ace relationship.

I haven't read a book sub 200 pages in about a billion years, so many modern books are 600+ pages. Some of them! So good! Others!! Painfully long! This book manages to build an amazing world, atmosphere, multiple characters, and a believable romantic relationship all in the space of a few hundred pages.

Not just that, but the story happens to be about grief, and life, and what it is a person really wants. There are a handful of books I've read in my life that I connect with on such a deep level that I feel seen and changed, Convince Store Woman is one, and this is one.

Cults - Max Cutler

Taking a hard swerve into some non-fiction. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure what I was getting into with this one. I'm not HUGE into true crime (anymore, 14 year old me S U P E R was), so I was a little concerned that I was signing up for some grim, overly detailed, look into the crimes.

What I got instead was a thoughtful look at the psychology behind cult leaders. Yeah, there are a few sections that are pretty grim, but the book doesn't revel in them, if that makes sense. There is never a point where I feel like I am supposed to be ENJOYING the crimes being detailed.

The focus on not just the leaders lives pre-cult, but the lives of the cult members does a ton of work to unmythologize (.... new word alert) some of these leaders.

House of Salt and Sorrows - Erin A. Craig

So... I don't know. I didn't dislike this book, but I'm not sure I'm a fan. I will read the second one when I have access to it, but I don't know that I'd read this one again.

Here is a true fact about me - I don't read summaries of books or horror movies. This, as you may imagine, leads me to having to some WILD times with media.

Anyway, the point is: I was expecting a mystery period piece. What I got was a fantasy mystery period piece. It was fun, it was a little overly complicated. At the end of the day, I was definitely not the target audience for this.

I'm Glad My Mom Died - Janette McCurdy

Jesus. Christ.

When i-Carly was popular I was juuuuuust old enough to say I hated it, while watching it with my younger sisters pretty frequently. I didn't make sure to watch any of the big event episodes. I didn't see every episode, but the show was a constant in my life.

To get such a raw look at someone's life who was molded to be a 'peer' was WACK. Jennette doesn't sugar coat anything. Her experiences are raw and honest and it is probably the only way these experiences could be expressed.

Paladin's Strength - T. Kingfisher

You may be asking "why didn't you put this up next to the first book?"

Great question.

I'm putting this list in order that I read them, so like. Ease off.

I equal parts liked this book just as much, and had trouble getting through it. I am once again in love with the world and with the characters. During some of the middle of the book it felt like the book was 600 pages just to be 600 pages, and not because things needed to be said.

When I was in college I was accused of writing too many "stage directions" in my literature. I blame my years of RPing on Gaia Online and fan-fic writing on that. There is a definite style that comes from those writing exercises, a style where you want all of the readers to know everything from point A to point B. The thing is, not all of that is needed. I don't need 200 pages of sexual tension and flirting to believe in the relationship of two people. It's the "show don't tell" rule taken to the extreme.

There are some times when it's okay to tell and not show.

I like this book, I wish it was shorter, I will be reading the next one in the series because, damn it, this series is fun.

The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold

I don't tend to read fantasy books Like This anymore. When I was younger this type of book was my bread and butter. I've found that a lot of them (to me, at my advanced age) are tedious. And I'm tired.

This book! Manages not to be tedious and absolutely cradled me in the arms of fantasy I loved when I was younger. The book isn't, plot wise, comforting and yet I felt comforted reading it. I understand that the sentiment makes little sense. I'll say, though, if you were like me and were/are a big fan of Tamora Pierce's work - I cannot recommend this book enough.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes - Brad Ricca

What is more cool than a woman lawyer, investigator, and social rights advocate in the 1900s? Basically nothing. This is another non-fiction book that truly brought to life the folks it detailed. I am OBSESSED with this woman.

I had never heard of Grace Humiston, which seems like an absolute shame, not just because she was cool as all hell, but because she spent so much time and effort protecting the underserved classes of 1900s New York. She was a lawyer who often worked for free to represent folks who could either not speak or write in English and were being taken advantage of.

She became an investigator, basically, because she knew the police were not putting effort into it.

The Salt Grows Heavy - Cassandra Khaw

This was another one that I didn't read the summary for before jumping in. I knew it was a queer book and I knew there was a mermaid, I didn't need any other convincing.

Here we have another sub 200 page book that tells an amazing love story. A story of personhood and growth and revenge.

It is not an easy read either in content or syntax. I haven't really put any trigger warnings with any of the other books, maybe that's a system I'll implement if anyone is interested. But this one: Body Horror, and Gore. If you have a weak stomach I would, sadly, not recommend this to you.

That said, this book is one of the more poetic ones I've read in a long time. Every word feels purposeful in a way that I don't run into often. Keeping the book short works perfectly for that style. If it were any longer I could easily find myself getting lost in the writing.

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree

This book has been on my TBR for... A While. It took my friend starting it and sending rave reviews for me to pick it up.

Here's another fun fact about me - My brain is broken. I have a hard time engaging with media that I KNOW I will enjoy, simply because. Because why? I don't know. To be contrary? Because I don't want to be disappointed? Because I'm scared I'll like it too much?

Who knows, don't recommend shows or movies to me and expect me to get back to you in a timely manner. You have to wait 3-5 years.

So, knowing that, I am glad I forced myself to pick this up. This is the coffee shop AU that we all love. The creation of this AU was treated with such love and care, it's clear the author knows what's up. All I want is a big strong character to fall in love with a smaller, softer, character and also run a little shop.

This book delivers on that and more. I cannot WAIT for the next book.

Leech - Hiron Ennes

I'm going to start with the easy stuff - This is a wonderfully dark book. I'm not usually a gothic horror reader, but wow. This book is about horror, identity, reclaiming the self. My library had it miss-tagged as romance which??? It is SUPER not.

The harder part is putting into words how I feel about this book. I like this book, it is complex and poetic. There were times where I felt like I was about to crawl out of my skin, in a good way. Emotions are so viscerally described that I could feel them in my gut.

The history of the world feels so deep, and the author does an amazing job at making me feel like that there are things going on outside the view of the character. That is an amazing skill to pull on, making the world around the character feel truly alive.

I told my friends when I finished it that sometimes "u read a book and the book read u."

I haven't put on my literature analysis hat on in nearly a decade. I would LOVE to spend more time to sit with this book and peel back the layers and figure out all of the ways this book makes me feel seen as a queer person. I don't have the words for that right now. Just know that I felt it.

Ghost Eaters - Clay McLeod Chapman

I don't know how I feel about this book. I think, overall, I like it. I think the plot is interesting, but the book isn't really about the plot, it's about the character. It's about grief and relationships and healing.

I felt like the first 200 pages were a real struggle for me. Unlike some of the other books I've read on this list, I did read a blurb about this one. I wonder if that was why the first 3rd of this book was a struggle. I was waiting the hook to find me. Instead, I had pages and pages of character exploration. I don't hate character exploration! But it wasn't what I was expecting.

The end... Left me feeling sad, and a little hopeless. Which, I think is the point. I think is why I don't read a ton of horror books. I love horror movies, I don't mind if the endings of those are bleak and hopeless. I think the difference is time spent. Reading a book takes so much more time and dedication and like... I want to be happy, is the thing.

I like this book, I think it's a wonderfully written look at addiction and grief and the ways those can eat a person alive.

Paladin's Hope - T. Kingfisher

I devoured this book in 5 hours. I... I opened it and did not put it down. I think this one may be my favorite of the three. I think the author managed to strike the exact right balance of tension, romance, and action.

Unlike Paladin's Strength, I never felt that there were these big empty spaces -- There was momentum.

I want to once again say that I LOVE that the characters are into their 30s. As a person also into their 30s it's just nice to see folks who feel real. Maybe I've been reading the wrong books for years, I simply feel a deep connection for characters similar in age who are just so... Normal (ignoring that some of them are paladin's of a dead god... you know what I mean).

[forabetterlifethanthis]

Hoping For Happiness

Today, I felt happiness. I was happy. I felt good about things. I was haplessly happy in a haze of happy happy hope. I know, I know. It won’t last, but the fact that I am still capable of feeling happiness betokens that all is not quite lost. Most still is.

 I haven’t felt this for a long time. I was happy because I had good news about my retinal detachment. I went to a private hospital to see the top retinal consultant in the country, and I now am facing the prospect of three months with no vision as opposed to perpetual blindness. Do you care about the medical side? Probably not.  So I’ll tell you about it. The retinal people I saw yesterday were fairly obdurate that putting oil in my retina was the only option for me. Which would solve the issue of having a detached retina, but would have the mild side-effect of ruining the vision. The wonderful consultant I saw today gave me a different opinion. She thinks the detachment may be able to be ameliorated with a long-lasting gas bubble. She believes the cause of the flashing is fluid I have in the retina which is rubbing on the detached area and causing my brain to not know how to interpret the light signals. The idea is that the gas bubble would protect the area and allow it to heal.  The best part is that it would stop the fluid from excoriating my retina, and so the flashing should stop!  

 The feeling of relief that I felt when I heard this is indescribable. So I’ll describe it. I felt tension in all my muscles just melt away in an instant, and as if a big dark ball in my chest was lifted and floated away. Obviously, things could go wrong. But this was just that little dapple of hope that I needed.  I will grasp it with both hands and gobble it up/down.

 My surgery is booked for 12 days’ time. I am also going to be having my right eye operated on on the same day. I am very excited and hopeful that at least one will work out. I just need to sit tight until then and do my best to ignore the sirens in my head. They are very loud today. Angry and red flashes, as if there is a demon in my head that knows it’s about to be emancipated. The swirling lights are a lot more benign. I can live with them.

 Anyway, that’s good news for you! I’ll be in an unbloggable state after the surgery and so you will get a well-deserved break from me. I hear you crying. Crying hooray! I’ll also endeavor to keep these posts shorter. The last thing I would want would be to bore my dear reader. But after a scary start, my little conquest for better life takes its first few tentative steps forwards. It will be a sinuous and vertiginous road, but one with an ending.  Knowing that and living by it gives me so much strength. That may sound warped to you, but it gives me and my fragile mind a nice sense of equanimity. Even if I’m talking to myself more than anyone, it feels good to me.

 I recall hearing somewhere, “where there is love, there is hope”.  I personally find it a lot easier to love when I have hope. I know that I am loved by many. This will be the oddest gripe you will hear, but I do find this difficult. I feel like I am under pressure to get better, and if I don’t, then I am letting them down.  I suppose one advantage of being unloved is not having to meet the expectations of those that love you.  People say that family and close friends will/should love you unconditionally. I think this is true to a degree, but I do feel from my experiences that they don’t want to talk about the negative parts of life.  We like to focus on the good things and happy moments and the prospect of future happier times.  This makes me feel like nobody wants to hear about my problems. Sometimes I want to scream to someone that everything is really shit right now and for them to just agree with me. But this engenders a fear within me that I will make people distance themselves from me, or get called “toxic” or “triggering”. All of which has happened to me in the past. Ugh.I really don’t understand people.  If someone came to me with their problems I would be touched.  Am I out of touch with people? No, people are out of touch with me.

[prof-peach]

if fans wanted to include peach in stuff they write, would that be okay? and how would they write peach's personality? aside from "FIGHT ME" anyway, i think that much is a given lol. i only really write the anime characters 'cause that's what i know, but it sounds like it'd be kinda fun to try making a version of ash that fits into this blog's universe! nerf'd Obviously, but i think she'd probably appreciate how hands-on he gets when training his pokemon!

Ok, I get a lot of these messages, and I often hear folks wanting to throw peach into their stories and comics and writings, and I will always simply ask that if it’s published online publicly, to be linked to it so I can snoop and enjoy the content too. If someone asks about her in your work, let them know about the blog I guess? But literally I love that people take this stuff, these characters and stories, and make new stuff with it. No ones making money off my work here? So where’s the issue? Go for it buddy, knock yourself out, I’m all for it.

For you, and all the others out there who want to add peach, and other characters to your world building, I will give you a detailed rundown of the main lot, and how they behave, what they do, how they function. You can use that, use bits, or use none of it, I do not mind at all. If you’re creating something, you’re in control, not me.

So, peach doesn’t actually fight people as much as you’d think. She’s very aware most cannot and do not want to do that, and so she likes to keep to herself with regards to that aspect of her life, she doesn’t ask to spar with people, or even bring it up at all, but people ask her all the time, even if they clearly would lose or become hurt should she miscalculate during the fight. She looks at people like they usually create problems, and often has a somewhat reserved nature to other humans. You have to work quite hard to get anything more than formalities out of her. She will dead-pan handle people with blunt and very to-the-point statements, aid whenever possible, but very quickly get back to handling the Pokemon she so carefully tends. Her focus is clear, she’s all about hard work, her very small select family, and the Pokemon.

Her brutal, loud and brash personality only comes out with friends, family, difficult humans, OR any Pokemon. She will joke and laugh and play with Pokemon, but clam up around humans, maintaining tight body language and generally will be a little cold by regular standards. She does however have some weaknesses in this emotionless shield she puts up. When peach was young she was always angry, which swung so fast to sadness, back and forth. Her teenage years it just got worse and worse, it was crippling at points. She is to this day, full of fire and rage, even sadness, but now she has learnt to control it, to use it. When she sees that in others, it’s familiar, and she is pushed to drop the front, and be very real with the person. Underdogs I suppose, people who get bad reps, but deserve the same as everyone else. She can’t ignore it.

Once you start to pry open her personality, you’ll find she’s a lot more laid back and fun than originally appeared, you just have to work hard to find that side of her. She will meme reference, can’t dance to save her life, loves her coffee, and can be caught in quiet contemplation while gardening. This hobby is her calmest, and often is why she can stay so level headed when her quiet rage boils up again. Without time outside she will become grouchy, a little snippy, and lethargic. Will not go in the ocean for any reason other than life or death, is fine with ponds and rivers, or water at wading height. Likes the rain.

With regards to her training others, they usually have to tolerate her somewhat strict nature. She is a little....unforgiving, holds a grudge if you make a lot of mistakes, and has no tolerance for ignorance in the age of information that we all live in. In previous posts I’ve mentioned she’s only recently selected two students, after many years of testing kids who want to learn from her. Hundred tried out, only two have ever been approved. How she teaches is very fast paced, be prepared to get some scrapes and bruises, she will test your physical and emotional tolerances with intense tasks, carefully watching students like a hawk. Bad posture in your stance? She’ll be the first to tell you to sort it out. Not hearing your Pokemon partner? Right, now you spend the day without using words trying to communicate, let’s see how you like not being listened to.

This is a woman who has spent her life saying very little, and watching everything, she watches Pokemon and can see an issue from a mile off, and in battles, her observations are why she can react fast, and chose effective strategy to avoid damage and achieve results. Don’t let her body fool you, her strongest asset is analysing, watching, planning. Those skills have over the years transferred to people too. As a student, mistakes don’t go unnoticed with this professor.

Her methods are harsh but fair, and should you prove yourself, she will protect you with her life.

Because of her disinterest in kids and lots of noise, she does pass the training of students on to the other staff members whenever possible. Grey takes on the lions share of battle lessons, he is far calmer, more open and friendly, with patience for people, and an empathy that peach sometimes struggles to have. When you go through a lot of harsh training, and difficult events, it’s hard to change how you feel or think, with peach, well, she’s been through it. Most do not come out the other end in one piece, but she did, and it made her strong. You may think I mean strong like buff and big, and yeah sure she is, but I mean it mentally more than anything. Peach will not quit. She has learnt to destroy the boundaries that stop people getting hurt, gone is the fear that freezes you in your tracks, that feeling that you’ll pass out if you go one more step. She’s learnt to ignore it.

This means she’s a little forgetful at how it is to be normal, to be vulnerable and soft and squishy like students so usually are.

She has her issues, but for the most part, visitors get a laugh, a smile, a calm assertive confidence, and facts. She will indulge those who have genuine interest, or show a connection with nature, an understanding of the balance that needs to be struck for everyone to live well together.

Despite her many flaws, she’s fiercely protective, and will go above and beyond to defend the island, it’s staff, the Pokemon and the visitors. Injustice is her biggest gripe, along with littering, and she doesn’t stand by quietly if something happens that seems unfair.

You will not see her without Valka, her vulpix, close by. That Pokemon doesn’t like to be touched by strangers, at all, and will run the second someone comes at her with that intent. Peach will scold you for pushing yourself onto her, should you persistently try to get close to pet Val. They are in sync, if peach is sad, Val is sad, if Val is stressed, peach is stressed, and so on. They are inherently connected, it’s just been that long, the psychic bridge between them has been built, and reinforced over the years.

The only other Pokemon who follows her so endlessly is Booker, a teddiursa who’s pretty rough looking. He quietly trots behind, grouchy and stoic, they fight closely together a lot. He lost his mom a long time ago to poachers, and peach took him in, and changed her whole life for him. Not many people know, but Booker was the reason she left the rangers, changed career, and got so strong. Will tolerate people petting him but isn’t keen at all, grumbles a lot and tries to move away.

You may also need to know about the others, for the sake of writing, she here a few more bits that may be important to you, or others wanting to do this.

Grey is very tall, very burly, composed, tells bad dad jokes, is a bit of a goof if allowed to be. If he sees a pun, he’ll say it. Can’t help himself. Very nice guy to work with, good at keeping people calm and grounded. Pokemon are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he gives off warm energy, and has inhuman amounts of patience. If you wrong his family however, he will snap back.

He grew up in the city, loves to swim and hike and cycle, can snowboard, is really sporty. A total brain box with held items, and boosting stats. He will explore many paths, to make sure visitors and students get the information they need, in a way that can be remembered and retained for later. Is a huge guy, but will get on the floor to play with a tiny Pokemon. Treats big “meaner” looking species like babies, very good with all pokemon.

His free time is spent either tinkering, swimming, or trimming his bonsai trees. This guy stares at screens a lot, so appreciates time away from them. Peach built him his own little greenhouse for his trees and tools, which he keeps clean and loves dearly.

His methods as a teacher are built around fun and games, he makes hard work easier to do by distracting trainers from the difficult bits, and focusing in on something more interesting or compelling.

His most commonly seen Pokemon would be a houndoom, Saxon, old battle veteran, retired now to herding and being a good boy. Very gentle, loves a pet.

Pari, now a fully fledged nurse, often oversees the labs front desk and pokecentre features, such as healing pokemon, and informing trainers who come to visit. Her skills with eggs and hatchlings is high, she’s great with younger Pokemon, and hands out good advice to trainers a lot. She’s not a fighter, never was, but can find any file, any study, any book, and any refrence you may need. A true bookworm, loves her romance novels, chat shows and upbeat celebrity gossip mags. Will cry at a lot of stuff, be it sad or happy.

She’s got a seriously upbeat personality, but if caught off guard or shocked, she gets a little flustered. Too much chaos will overwhelm her, but usually she’s on top of things. The years spent on the island have made her better at maintaining composure in emergencies. With lots of siblings, she’s very competent with others, and has a good ability to disarm cagey people with her jolly nature. Because of this, she can sometimes gain information from trainers that some of the more harsh professors may not have access to. Charming is a word for it.

Her partners are an eevee, and a happiny. They are quite sweet and well adjusted, the eevee gets a bit bouncy if you get it too excited.

[gloryofluv]

How the First Four Brothers react to MC with ADHD

Due to my ADHD and knowing the severity of the highs and lows, here’s my take on the boys reacting to such a situation. First Four. Hope you like it.

Here’s the last three brothers and bonus additives!

Lucifer-

Would have found out through Diavolo but didn’t think much of it. His brothers were already ridiculous, it was going to be difficult to deal with a human let alone an idiot human. Cue the grumbling complaints prior to your arrival.

However, after meeting you and realizing you actually did seem to be less of a nitwit, he pays more attention. Fidgeting. Social anxiety that isn’t read in your face but body language. Variation of sleep and forgetfulness, but always so willing to keep trying harder to impress.

Well, that’s a delightful difference. Maybe he needed to understand this a bit better. He sits you down casually and finds a subtle way into the conversation. Maybe mentioning you seem quite talkative at times and tired at others.

Explaining it to him is easy, even if he doesn’t react. He may not fully understand your view, but he can sense it is a topic that makes you uncomfortable. Presses very little. No, instead, this demon will ask Barbatos for information. Probably in a way that might seem insulting. “The human seems to be lacking in a curricular front and I need information on their issue.”

Takes extra care once finding out specific issues and how to alleviate them. Maybe through suggestions. Asking Beelzebub if he’d seen the human eat today. Asking Satan to assist the human in their studies. Pulling every fucking string imaginable to make your life easier in the Devildom. After all, this has to be successful.

Your smile and less socially awkwardness helps too. He enjoys it and soon praise is a regular routine from him with little harsh critique at your failings. Watching you flourish summons feelings in his chest he hadn’t had in eons. He just wants to keep nurturing you… from a distance. Well, he’ll try from a distance.

Mammon-

ADHD boy himself. He hears about it from Satan and snorts it off. Fuck that. Stupid irregular human.

However, after meeting you, this baby boy is hooked. You talk fast when you’re happy, you randomly collect things that don’t make sense to others? Oh, you like to do impulsive shit too? Sign him up. Although it’s always gonna be his idea, no human could ever affect his decisions!

Soon you’re praising him. Patting him on the head when he helps you. Genuinely, you’re the nicest mess he’s ever met. Never bullying him. Always being supportive even if he fucks up. What the fuck? Did he just meet the love of his life? He could kiss you, but you know, you're human!

You never say no to his antics, but definitely don’t let him have everything he wants either. It’s so frustrating and sexy. No way, not sexy. Nope. Just annoying and he loves the way you have a list of things you ask yourself to remember before walking out the door.

You forgot your bag!? Hold on, he’ll get it. He does that a lot too. You forgot your water bottle? Not to worry puny human, the Great Mammon will get you one. You need help cleaning your room for a surprise inspection by Lucifer? Shit, let’s throw everything under the bed and forget it! None of it will matter anyway. That’s tomorrow’s problem.

What gets him the most. THE MOST. Is your sad moods. He gets them too. Instead of being a false ego and vocal, he’ll just crawl on the bed with you and listen to you talk. Cue puppy dog eyes and blushes. He will tell you stories of all the times he fucked up to make you feel less in your feels. Laugh with him and not at him, and he’s a goner.

All in all, he doesn’t get the specifics, but he understands YOU. He may gripe and moan, but this sweet boy will be your best friend, (Maybe more, ya know, if you want?)  through the best and worst times. Just don’t tell him you don’t love him. Rejection like that would crush him as much as it does you.

Leviathan-

Oh geez. Another idiot normie with problems? Don’t sign him up to help.

Finds out you like video games because you get nervous around people and can hyper focus on them if they’re good? Welcome to becoming his best friend! He will encourage you to find  ones you like from his vast collection. He will explain the details of their importance and potentially wreck you in competitive ones.

Totally relates to having a poor sleep schedule. Stays up all night with you on insomnia riddled ones with a fresh anime. Even if you’re not an okatu like him, he will explain the plot and offer his snacks.

Wants you to never leave his room. Don’t join the normies!!! They judge! Stay with the shut-in and have fun, p-please? 

Realizes he probably has several of your problems after you physically stim by twirling your hair or sweater string for hours. Realizes it more when he has to remind you to drink because humans are weak.

Loves. Your. Praise. Won’t praise you back at first until your intimacy level is higher. However, he will always offer to buy you cool things that you couldn’t afford with your impulse buy list on Akuzon. Welcome to Levi’s ultra tight friend circle.

Doesn’t care an iota about your disorder, just knows you understand him and wants to keep you all to himself. Lucifer warned (threatened???) him several times not to hold the human hostage with snacks and video games as bait.

Satan-

ADHD. Ah, a human disorder. Immediately gets all the reading material he can find. Finds out that this is going to be an interesting experiment. Even more intrigued and doesn’t show it, but prepares for all the possible scenarios of how this could go in the Devildom.

When he meets you, he’s standoffish, but not unkind. He knows enough now to know it’s not personal that you don’t want to talk because of anxiety, even with demons. Takes mental notes of everything you do in the first couple of weeks. Sleep schedule, eating habits, hygiene. All the routines that make him your own personal stalker.

When he finally approaches you, it’s when you're huddled in the library at the bay window with the curtain surrounding you. He kindly asks you what you're doing and you say it’s to make you feel less overwhelmed. You have a project due and it’s your first one.

He offers help and a less loud place to do it so you both aren’t interrupted. That’s when he finally gets you alone to talk. While you're doing the project he mentions he’s been brushing up on ADHD. He also asks if he can continue to help you study if you want a companion, knowing it’s more difficult to focus alone.

He is the equivalent of your own personal trainer in a sense. He offers many avenues on how to handle the Devildom and even offers to tap into his contacts if you need anything. Starts to think of you as a cat. No shit. Pats your head when you do well. Makes sure you’re eating, reading, and overall happy.

You still can’t tell if he’s doing it because he’s continuing this odd research or because he wants to. However, even with his masked smile and standoffish nature, you still wheedle into his heart. He could never get angry at someone who just tries SO HARD to impress him. 

Absolutely appreciates that you join him on pranks that have to do with Lucifer. That’s the only impulse he feeds. Well, that and you curling up with him and a book until you are snoozing against him. Yes, he strokes your hair like a cat and smiles.

[witchsheartbooks]

If you aren’t too busy, could you possibly do some headcannons for Claire + the boys with their s/o during a blackout due to a thunderstorm??

Personally I find peace in the rain but I did pepper some variety in there for you, Dear anon so please enjoy.

Claire:

As a loud clap of thunder resonated against the roof of the house you shot up in bed with a start.

You hated thunder storms they always made you anxious. The noises, the flashing lights outside, how rickety everything felt in the house when a storm would get severe enough.

You just did not vibe with any of it at all.

Claire wasn’t exactly fond of storms either, but she didn’t mind them too much. Her only real gripe was the fact that she wouldn’t be able to sit outside and enjoy the flower fields she liked to visit or the garden the two of you shared.

Stirring sleepily in bed her voice groggily carried through the room, “What’s wrong y/n. Did the storm wake you?”

Hearing her voice just made you melt you could never quite describe why Claire made you so relaxed but whatever the reason, you appreciated it none the less.

You glanced at the bedside clock, but the numbers didn’t show. It wasn’t even lit up- fuck a blackout? Really? Right now when you felt your most vulnerable?

Your mind began racing again, thoughts only slowing as Claire drowsily booped your nose with her finger. “Y/N look over here.”

Weird how she was the one redirecting you for once.

You gently took her hand as she was withdrawing it, fingers clasping tightly.

“I’ll hum for you ok, y/n? Then we can go back to sleep.”

Reluctantly, you laid back down, resting your head against her chest so the only sounds you could focus on were her heartbeat and the soft chime of her voice.

You were asleep again in mere moments.

Ashe:

He always found the rain soothing, on nights he could sleep anyway.

Sometimes it quelled the nightmares which often clutched at his heart.

As thunder rumbled, he felt you stir next to him, your arms gripping his midsection in a vice.

“Awake now then, Y/N?” You groan at his statement. Atleast Ashe was warm. Why wasn’t he asleep?

You slowly sit up, rubbing your left eye. You then notice the room is pitch black and the sound of him setting a book aside resounds through the empty room.

That made more sense, seems he couldn’t sleep and chose to read. In the dark…?

“Is the power out?”

He hummed a reply, “Yes, and I was just getting to the interesting part of this citation. Though, perhaps your company will be more interesting, hm?”

The two of you then proceed to talk through the rest of the evening. That book had interested him but any time he had with you was more precious.

Wilardo:

You had been helping Wilardo with the flowers all day and had fallen asleep quite early.

Normally you consider yourself a night owl. You rarely sleep at normal hours but because of the work you did today, you had ended up passing out on a loveseat in the living room.

Wilardo couldn’t bring himself to move you since most of the time you were a light sleeper anyway. He had put a soft blanket on you though.

A thunderclap resounded, shaking the roof of the house which then awoke you with a start.

You didn’t recognize your surroundings at first but before you had a chance to get up a low gravely baritone grasped your attention.

“Yea, that one was pretty fuckin’ loud huh?”

Rising from his spot on the couch, he turned to look over to you. Seems instead of choosing the bed, he laid in wait on the couch closest to you.

Had he intended to sleep there if you hadn’t woken up? That seemed possible.

Wilardo was never really picky about where he slept so long as it was close to you.

He stood from the couch, stretching and with an exhale he crossed the distance between the two of you.

“Power went out bout ten minutes ago. Least the garden will be well watered. We can check any wind or flood damage tomorrow.”

Wilardo had brushed some stray strands of hair from your face, gently stroking backwards to pat your head before withdrawing his hand.

“We can stay up as long as ya need to, y/n. Can even pick the room ya want since the window in this one is so damn large.”

You shake your head, rising to meet him with your blanket draped on your shoulders. Sauntering to the windowsill you sit along it among the cushions.

Sure, the rain was scattering hard across the window, but it was something you enjoyed watching.

The sound of the thunder itself was your only real aggravation when it came to storms.

Wil had followed you, sitting behind you and pulling you back with a tug so you could lay back against him.

Both of you had napped here like this on sunny days, though tonight you both exchanged small stories as you watched the rain paint the window.

Sirius:

You were watching the rain from bed, unable to sleep.

Sirius was asleep next to you, arms curled around your midsection. It’s how he always slept but denied it anytime it was brought up in conversation.

A loud thunder clap resounded outside, with this the lavender went rigid against you.

The two of you may be an item now but he still was rather reluctant to be completely open about his emotions with you.

Thankfully, you were the observant type so this didn’t frustrate you as much as it would for most.

Exhaling, his arms had tightened into a vice, you could tell he was hoping you weren’t awake yet.

Sirius loathed displaying weakness in front of others, especially those he greatly admired.

You counted yourself lucky as being one of very few on that list.

Mocking a yawn, you stretched your back against his chest, a hand reaching back to comb through his hair.

You even went so far as to fake the bleariness of sleep in your voice. “What’s wrong, Sirius?”

He melted into you, rather reluctantly but so long as you didn’t bring it up then it was likely he wouldn’t chastise you for it.

“This bloody storm is making sleep nigh impossible for me.” He grumbled tiredly with a huff.

You let him vent about it, you know storms bothered him; especially if they were loud.

“Mmm, then we could talk until it passes?” You suggested gently. Your goal was to redirect his attention onto something else.

He scoffs, “That isn’t the worst idea. Though it seems you’ll be the one leading the discussion this time, Love. I find myself unable to still my train of thought.”

“Oh? Don’t I lead in most situations anyway?” You couldn’t help but tease him slightly, he had left himself open for such a statement with his phrasing.

You could feel his glare but he only sighed, “Yes well it isn’t as if you’ve complained about it in the past now have you? And you’re rather lucky, I let no one else do anything of the sort.”

He paused, burrowing his face into your shoulder upon realizing what he had said with a loud “Ugh, how is it that you bring out this sort of honesty in me so easily?!”

To this you laugh, “It’s not so bad. Atleast it stays between us. So, I wouldn’t stress so much about it.”

“I suppose you aren’t wrong…it’s simply embarrassing that it happens to begin with.” With this statement, silence carried between the both of you for a few minutes.

That was until thunder clapped again and he tensed against you back.

You roll to face him and bring his face to your chest, “Relax. You’re wound up tighter than a bed spring.”

Sirius grumbled quietly until you began to hum softly.

It took a few minutes but gradually he drifted into a light sleep in your arms.

Noel:

He was always up in the evenings, rain or clear nights it didn’t matter.

You had dozed off next to him, he was already in a down mood from there being no stars that night.

Lightening lit up the sky outside the window and the thunder clapped so hard it shook the house.

Noel’s chest tightened and instinctively he gripped your hand.

Loud sounds bothered him more than he could explain.

He had reacted this way if you ever dropped a pan too. You wondered if it was related.

Stirring from both the sound and pressure of his hand, you recognize the signs and sit up quickly.

You rub his shoulder and hum softly.

He leans into your chest, curling like a cat as you sooth him through his panic attack.

You’d done this before, but in the pitch black like this where only the occasional lightening lit the room.

It felt like you were closer to him than you’ve ever been.

That thought alone brought you peace as you focused on soothing Noel back to his senses.

Gradually he found them, slipping into the depths of sleep against you so very shortly after. ~Mod Sirius

[silvermoongirl10swfics]

Learning to deal with emotionally crippling pain

For @codywanweek 2021 Day 2: AU (Modern University AU.)

You can also read this fic here on A03.

(The title of the fic will make sense after reading the fic.)

This is set at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, where I went to uni. As I wanted to combine the uni I loved going to with one of my favourite ships.

No major warnings, but there is a slight, non-graphic, description of how bodies were buried during the Black Death (this may seem very random, but I don’t want to gross anyone out.)

(I was inspired by @catawampuscorner​ drawing adorable baby clones in animal onesies, the cuteness now lives rent free in my brain and my brain desperately wanted to add baby clones and baby Jedi in animal onesies to this fic due to their wonderful drawings of the baby clones. So, I have referenced codywan and some other clones being youngsters in animal onesies near the end of this fic.)

Also Wolffe and Fox are twins because I thought of the idea about a month ago and loved it so much. 

Cody hefted his kit bag onto his shoulder and nodded in thanks to the bus driver as he stepped off the bus on Oxford Road. He turned hearing a loud thump and rolled his eyes, Fives had, against Cody’s and Rex’s advice, decided to sit on the top deck of the double-decker bus while carrying his heavy rugby kit bag. Unsurprisingly Fives stumbled and hit the wall of the stairs as he tried to walk down the steep steps, his bag over balancing him. Rex threw out an arm to steady their younger brother and then the two of them joined Cody on the pavement.

“We did warn you,” stated Rex with a roll of his eyes.

“Whatever,” griped Fives. Without another word, Fives was walking through All Saints Park, no doubt heading back to the student halls where he shared a flat with his twin Echo and six other first year students.

“I really hope Echo is better soon. I don’t know how much longer I can take Fives in this mood,” sighed Rex shaking his head.

“You and me both,” agreed Cody with a nod of his head at his younger brother.

Cody was the eldest of the four brothers, and was currently in his third and final year of studying his undergraduate history degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. Rex was eleven months younger than him and was in his second year studying law, Echo and Fives were their younger brothers who were twins. The family hadn’t thought that Fives was interested in going to university, which was fine with them as they didn’t want to push him into something he didn’t want. But when Echo announced his intention of going to study mathematics at the same university where Cody and Rex were studying, Fives suddenly announced that he was also going to Man Met to study physiotherapy. The twins were in their first year and two years ago, at eighteen, Cody had thought he would be getting some peace from his three younger brothers, in the end he only got one year of peace before his brothers joined him in quick succession. But thankfully he only had to put up with living with them when they were all home for the holidays. As Cody shared a one-bedroom flat with his long-term boyfriend Obi-Wan who had also chosen to study at Man Met, also in his third year, studying English literature. Obi-Wan and Cody had been best friends since their first day at primary school aged four, later confessing their romantic feelings for each other when they were sixteen, both coming down from the stress of getting their GCSE results. They hadn’t actually told each other where they were applying for university, not wanting to influence each other’s decision. But they still ended up at the same university anyway, not that Cody was complaining.

Like Cody, Obi-Wan had not been able to escape his younger brother. Anakin was friends with Fives and Echo as they were the same age, Anakin was in his first year studying engineering at Man Met. It was funny to Cody, because Echo and Anakin’s subjects were in the same faculty, they often saw each other as their lectures and seminars took place in the John Dalton buildings, whereas Fives went to lectures across the main road on the slightly smaller campus in the Brooks Building. Fives had always been protective of Echo, his reasoning being he was the older twin so had to look out for Echo. But after Echo got hurt in a car accident when they were fifteen driving home with their dad, Fives had grown even more protective, somehow blaming himself because he wasn’t there in the car with Echo. The youngest of the four brothers hadn’t been seriously hurt, but the accident had gained him a constant shadow. So, when the twins applied to the university, they looked at the map of the two campuses and picked Oxford Court for their student halls accommodation because it was pretty much in the middle of where the two of them would have their lectures and seminars.

With another look in the direction Fives had gone, feeling a rare moment of relief at seeing his brother walk away. Cody loved his brothers, but because Echo had gotten injured in their last rugby game, he couldn’t take part in practice and it had left Fives in a mood for the past week. Neither Echo, Cody or Rex could seem to talk Fives out of his mood, leading to Cody thinking he may have to call their parents to talk some sense into Fives. But he didn’t want to worry his mum, which is what would happen if Cody had to tell her Fives still wasn’t okay a week after Echo badly spraining his ankle. So, Cody’s only other option would be to call his twin cousins, Wolffe and Fox who were both in their third and final years of studying at the same university in London. Wolffe was studying sport science, while Fox was studying history like Cody, but with more of a focus on medical history while Cody preferred military history.

Wolffe and Fox were the closest cousins Cody and his brothers had, due to their parents all moving to Britain from New Zealand due to his father and uncle getting jobs with the same tech company before Cody, Wolffe and Fox were born. Leaving the rest of the aunts, uncles and cousins back in New Zealand with their grandparents. Cody then reflected, calling the other twins might not be a bad idea. Wolffe would be gruff but caring in talking to Fives and if that failed, Fox would just beat sense into him either verbally or physically. With there being direct trains from London to Manchester, Cody wouldn’t be surprised if Fox came in person to beat some sense into Fives. Fox had no patience for Fives’ protective older brother routine of Echo and that was down to Wolffe being protective of Fox. Which he hated, but to be fair to Wolffe, he was fully justified going by the amount of coffee and lack of sleep Fox was powering through to work on his assignments and dissertation. Despite the fact it was still January and Fox had three months left until he had to hand in his dissertation.

Thinking of dissertations, Cody waved goodbye to Rex and headed towards the cafeteria in the Business School building to get some tea for his boyfriend. Once he acquired the tea in a take away cup, he went next door to the library where Obi-Wan was working on his dissertation, thankful that their university library allowed food and drink as long as it was silent. Fox was insanely jealous as his university library forbade any food or drink to enter the building, meaning Fox was deprived of his precious coffee. Which was why Wolffe pushed Fox to work in the library as often as he could. Cody didn’t mind plying Obi-Wan with tea, because while he could say Obi-Wan was additive to his tea, he didn’t drink any caffeinated tea two hours before going to bed, unlike Fox who was known to drink a mug of coffee before going to bed if Wolffe hadn’t managed to stop him. It was a wonder Wolffe hadn’t gone grey with the amount of time he spent worrying over his twin brother.

Cody scanned his student card to let him past the barriers and started walking up the two flights of stairs to the floor Obi-Wan liked to work on. The library was massive, with its different wings and five floors, but Cody was glad it was so big because it could be divided into silent study areas and group study areas, where you could talk so long as you were quiet. Obi-Wan, like Cody, hated working in complete silence and in their first year they found a nook between some shelves that had a table where they could bring their own laptops to work on their essays together. But were conveniently close to university computers so they could log on to print their work if needed. It was also a space their brothers had been unable to find them in, although Cody was fairly certain Rex knew where he liked to work, but was kind enough to leave him alone. Anakin, Echo and Fives would not be as considerate.

He walked through the doors into the study area and walked halfway into the big room with its rows of computers and shelves of books, until he found Obi-Wan hunched over his notes and two books he was using for his dissertation. Cody silently reminded himself that he was due to meet with his dissertation supervisor tomorrow to check the progress on his second chapter. He placed the cup of tea on the table beside Obi-Wan’s laptop and pressed a kiss onto the mess of copper hair, noting that his boyfriend hadn’t shaved again, making him wonder if Obi-Wan was committing to growing a beard. If he did, it would be because Obi-Wan was fed up of people thinking he was sixteen or seventeen, rather than being almost twenty-one years old, something that delighted Anakin to no end. Obi-Wan slowly sat up and blinked owlishly at him and rubbed a hand over his face. “Rugby practice is over already?” he asked in confusion as he looked at his watch.

Cody snorted in amusement, “thankfully yes.” Obi-Wan had come to the library just after Cody left their flat for practice, that had been two and half hours ago.

Obi-Wan reached for his tea and sighed in pleasure when he sipped on the hot liquid. “Fives still in a mood then?”

“Yes,” he sighed in exasperation as he sat down beside Obi-Wan and putting his kit bag on the floor with a roll of his shoulder.

Raising a knowing eyebrow over the rim of his cup, Obi-Wan asked. “Are you going to call Wolffe and Fox?” Cody nodded in agreement, smiling to himself, happy at how easily Obi-Wan fit into his family. Obi-Wan, Cody, Wolffe and Fox had all gone through school together. Obi-Wan and Anakin’s dad, Qui-Gon, was a friend of Cody’s parents and often came over for dinner. According to his dad, Cody’s mum and Qui-Gon had been having wine nights when they lamented over their empty nests and how it was unfair how quickly their children were growing up. While Cody’s aunt just laughed at them because Wolffe and Fox had left home for university almost three years before.

They lapsed into silence, and Cody just let himself day dream as he listened to the clack of Obi-Wan’s keyboard. He also ran through a mental list of things he needed to do for his dissertation and thought he could do with another trip down to London to go to the National Archives again for some more primary sources. His phone buzzed and Cody snorted at the text message from Echo.

[Echo] Fives is in SUCH a bad mood! Please help me!

[Cody] Sorry Echo. Rex and I had him for two hours, we need a break.

[Echo] WORST BIG BROTHERS EVER!!!!

[Echo] I hope you marry Obi-Wan so I can adopt him as my favourite older brother.

[Echo] You know what. I’m not waiting until you marry him. He’s my favourite brother now.

Cody chuckled to himself, he couldn’t argue with Echo, Obi-Wan was his favourite person too.

[Cody] What WILL Fives say?

[Echo] Right now I don’t care. He’s driving me INSANE!!!!

[Cody] I was going to call Wolffe and Fox to see if they could help.

[Echo] PLEASE!!! I am BEGGING YOU!!!!

[Echo] You know what?

[Echo] Just skip straight to Fox.

[Echo] And record it. I want to relive that future moment for forever. Fox’s position as my favourite cousin will be secured.

Cody snorted in amusement again, Obi-Wan turned to him in question. So, Cody just showed him the messages and Obi-Wan shook his head in amusement, but he blushed slightly. No doubt due to Echo’s comments on Cody marrying Obi-Wan.

“Echo wishing harm on Fives. I never thought I’d see the day,” commented Obi-Wan, his blue eyes sparkling with laughter. No doubt remembering the times Fox lost his patience with bullies and idiots they went to school with and just went for them. Their aunt had to give Fox the disapproving lecture, but she also slipped Fox money for standing up to bullies for other kids. So, Fox’s handling of bullies and idiots had never been stopped, only been encouraged.

“Oh, Echo can be pushed to it,” chuckled Cody, recalling the few times Fives had made Echo lose his temper. Echo was a nice and quiet person, which also made him one of those people you did not want to make angry, because when his patience snapped. It snapped. He could be worse than Fox, and that said something.

“By the way, your dad text me. He’s invited me to a family reunion dinner in a month’s time. So, is anyone coming over from New Zealand?” Obi-Wan asked as he started to tidy his books away and turn off his laptop.

Cody nodded. “My grandparents are coming over in three weeks and are staying until the summer as they want to be here for mine, Wolffe and Fox’s graduations. Then a few of the cousins are coming over in the summer.” He smiled to himself; it would be nice to see his family members again. They all saw each other every year, one year Cody and his family would fly out to New Zealand and the next year the family would fly over to Britain for a few weeks. With all of the cousins now at university, it made sorting out reunions easier due to the longer holidays they all had.

Obi-Wan’s eyes sparkled with amusement again, “anymore family arguments to look forward to?” he laughed.

“Probably,” Cody sighed as he rolled his eyes. Obi-Wan had come out to New Zealand with him last summer and witnessed some truly spectacular family arguments and rather silly ones as well. The most prominent being about Fox and Echo’s names.

When Fox had been a toddler, he and Wolffe had been put into animal onesies (Cody and his brothers also shared that misfortune with their cousins, but the less said about that the better), Wolffe into a wolf onesie and Fox into a fox onesie. Ever since Fox wanted to be called Fox, as he hated his proper name, the name being Frederick. If anyone ever called him Frederick when he was a small child he bit them, leading to his parents to tell their school when they started that it would be best if they didn’t call Fox Frederick for the safety of their own fingers.

Then when Echo had been four and in school, learning about words that began with the letter E, he heard the word Echo and wanted to call himself that, because he didn’t like being called Eli. Cody’s mum had tried to tell Echo his name was Eli, but Echo said Fox picked his name, so why couldn’t he? Cody’s mum tried her hardest to get Echo to forget about calling himself Echo, seeing as he was named after his mum’s father-in-law Elias and didn’t want to offend him. But Echo just started repeating everything everyone said, until the point their dad begged their mum to just let Echo call himself Echo. Fives didn’t want to be left out, and chose the nickname Fives, but he wasn’t involved in the arguments because he let their grandmother still call him Felix. Echo and Fox on the other hand, both refused to answer to their given names. And Obi-Wan had witnessed their grandmother once again getting annoyed when Echo and Fox didn’t answer her when she called them Eli and Frederick. That was also the visit where Obi-Wan learnt just who Echo and Fox inherited their stubbornness from. Grandpa Elias was not offended and found the whole thing hilarious and continued to congratulate Echo on his name every time he saw Echo. Cody was also convinced, his grandmother only continued the argument for the sake of it, he had seen her handwriting in birthday cards calling Echo and Fox by their chosen names. But she still wrote Eli and Frederick on family Christmas cards, again probably just for the drama.

But some uncles and aunts were not happy with Echo and Fox changing their names, albeit not legally, because other cousins began following their lead. Namely their four cousins who were all siblings (two sets of twins), Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker and Tech. The four of them changing their names and even happily calling themselves the Bad Batch at family gatherings much to the ire of their mother. Fives was blamed for their collective nickname, as Obi-Wan found out and thought it was hilarious. The Bad Batch had invited Echo to play with them when they were small, and Fives who had not been invited to play had been jealous and called them the Bad Batch, the four of them had loved it and adopted it as their group name.

Obi-Wan started to laugh quietly to himself as he put his laptop away in his bag. At Cody’s questioning look he smiled and said. “I’m just wondering who will be the first to say something to disrupt family dinner. Either you, your brothers or your cousins will say something. You have done ever since the first family dinner I was invited to when I was five.”

Cody smirked to himself and nodded, “honestly I’m expecting it to be Fox again. You know he deals with stress in the weirdest ways.”

“You mean like putting everyone else off their food?” teased Obi-Wan, his eyes glinting at the memory of the last dinner everyone had together.

Over the four-week long Christmas holiday, Cody’s parents had hosted numerous family dinners, wanting to spend as much time together as possible. As it was understood with Cody, Obi-Wan, Wolffe and Fox graduating university later that year, they may not get to come home as often anymore. Also, as Cody’s uncle and aunt lived next door to them and Obi-Wan lived five houses further down the road, it was very easy for Cody’s uncle and aunt, Wolffe, Fox, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Anakin to join their family for dinner. Which also meant, Cody and Obi-Wan had to suffer the embarrassment of watching Qui-Gon and Cody’s mum tearfully looking at photos of them growing up, mourning the loss of their ‘little ones’. While Cody’s aunt sipped on her glass of red wine and cackled at them, saying it was better to have both her kids leave the nest at once, as she didn’t have to go through kids moving out more than once.

Cody had also been horrified to learn there existed a photo of him in an animal onesie after all, and to make it worse, he was four in the photo. He was at school, but because his mum wanted a picture of all her boys in their animal onesies, he had been put into his old lion onesie (mane included on the hood) that was getting too small for him. But it had interested him to see it was a group photo of all of them sat on the living room floor. Obi-Wan was also in the photo, in a onesie that resembled the fictional varactyl creature he had been obsessed with when he was four. His unimpressed look matching Cody’s, in the photo both of them had their arms crossed as they glared at their parents off camera. Wolffe and Fox were also in the photo, but too busy pulling on each other’s hoods, Wolffe almost taking off one of Fox’s onesie’s ears. Rex, at three, was happily beaming at their mum in his elephant onesie that included a small trunk attached to the hood. Leaning against Rex on his left was Anakin, who at two, was too busy trying to eat his own foot as he sat in his dog onesie. On Rex’s right was the little twins, Echo beaming at the camera in his giraffe onesie as he lifted a hand up to squeeze the felt face of the giraffe attached to the hood and Fives, in a moose onesie (seriously where had his parents found these?), was busy trying to grab one of his felt antlers and eat it. Apparently, their parents had kept all of the onesies, what they planned to do with them Cody couldn’t guess.

But while the onesie group photo had been embarrassing, it hadn’t put anyone off their food. No, that came when Cody’s dad asked all of them how university was going. Everyone listened as one by one, all the boys explained what they had been doing. The adults patiently listened as Cody, Obi-Wan, Wolffe and Fox talked about their dissertations and skilfully manoeuvring the conversation so as to avoid third year meltdowns as the families had taken to calling their tearful, stressed rants. While Rex, Anakin, Fives and Echo stared at them in dawning horror as they realised what was in their immediate future. Fox had given Cody advice on where to find primary sources, as Fox was writing his ten-thousand-word dissertation on the Black Death and at this point, was basically an expert on where to find medical documents from varying time periods. Which was immensely helpful for Cody because his dissertation was on the treatment of shell shock in the First World War.

Dinner seemed to then settle, with all the boys commenting on funny or interesting things they had heard at university. When Fox piped up, “I was reading a chapter for my dissertation when the author commented that they buried people who had died of the Black Death by lying down a layer of bodies, then a layer of soil, another layer of bodies, more soil, more bodies and then the final layer of soil. It was interesting that the author used the analogy of the bodies been buried like how you make a lasagne.”

Everyone stopped, many of the people gathered around the table stared at Fox, with forks paused in the air. Fox, oblivious continued to eat his dinner with a smile on his face. Which was lasagne. Wolffe just shook his head and sighed in exasperation as he stopped eating his portion of lasagne and instead reached for a piece of garlic bread. Obi-Wan, taking interest in the analogy, was asking Fox if he had come across any other analogies like it. Rex, Echo and Fives dropped their forks and looked at their food in faint disgust. Qui-Gon and Anakin, who normally didn’t find anything disgusting, looked down at the lasagne on their plates in muted horror. Cody’s parents and uncle just sighed, with his uncle massaging his forehead in exasperation, while Cody’s aunt lifted her wine glass up and saluted Fox with it before taking a sip (Fox was a lot like his mother). Cody raised an eyebrow at his cousin, Fox smirked and then reached for the serving dish in the centre of the table. “Oh, no one else wants anymore? Guess I’ll finish the lasagne up then,” Fox stated with a mock innocent look on his face. Wolffe just sighed again and thumped his head down onto the table. Leaving Cody with the impression that Fox was hungry and saw how quickly the food was disappearing and decided to take matters into his own hands.

As Cody and Obi-Wan walked out of the library holding hands, Cody turned to Obi-Wan and smirked. “It is safe to say, lasagne will not be on the menu.”

Obi-Wan laughed loudly as they made their way into the cold air outside, wrapping his scarf tighter around his neck. Obi-Wan also admitted that neither his father nor Anakin, had been able to eat lasagne since that dinner. Anakin had seen lasagne being served for lunch at the university one day and had practically fled the cafeteria.

Together they walked to the bus stop that was less than a minute walk from the library and sat in contented silence as they travelled from campus on the short bus journey to their flat. Their shoulders knocked gently together as they swayed as the bus pulled in and out of bus stops. Their hands were still clasped together, and Obi-Wan was looking out of the window with a smile on his face as he watched people go about their day. Cody found himself unable to tear his gaze away from Obi-Wan’s face, watching as his eyes crinkled as he smiled at the sight of a giggling child play peekaboo with their younger sibling. The bright winter sun turned Obi-Wan’s copper hair into flames and it was a sight that always memorised Cody without fail. It was the sight that led to four-year-old him talking to Obi-Wan on their first day at school because he had never seen someone with the same-coloured hair as Obi-Wan before. Cody only realised they had reached the bus stop they needed when Obi-Wan pressed the button to alert the driver to stop. He reached down for his kit bag and swung it up onto his shoulder, they walked off the bus, thanked the driver and continued walking while holding hands. Obi-Wan began to talk about a book he had had to read for one of his modules and while Cody never heard of the book before, he enjoyed seeing how excited Obi-Wan was about it.

Once they got inside their flat, Obi-Wan put his bag, that contained his laptop and some books, on the floor by the door and went into the kitchen. Cody watched him for a moment, glad to see Obi-Wan was distracted making them both some lunch. Cody sat at their table and turned his laptop on and logged into the website where he was creating a photobook of photos of himself and Obi-Wan throughout their lives as a birthday present. There were hundreds of photos of them together over the years they had known each other, there were photos of primary, secondary and sixth form last days. Seeing how they had changed in those years was endearing and funny at the same time. Cody caught Obi-Wan looking over at him and Cody playfully tilted his laptop screen away from Obi-Wan’s view, not that his boyfriend could see it from where he was anyway. Obi-Wan smiled and then turned back to the sandwiches he was making. Obi-Wan knew he was getting his birthday present, just as Cody was aware Obi-Wan was also organising his birthday present, as Obi-Wan’s birthday was two days before Cody’s.

Cody checked through the photobook one last time and then seeing that everything was as he wanted it, he clicked order and waited for the confirmation email to arrive. Once it had, he closed his laptop down and smiled as Obi-Wan, at that moment, walked up to him and handed him a plate with his sandwich and an apple.

“I love you,” Cody said with a smile.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes fondly, “ah yes. You only love me for my sandwich making skills.”

“You caught me!” chuckled Cody as he held his hands up in defence. They shared a smile and then both began eating their sandwiches in earnest. They chatted about friends from home who had gone to other universities or who went into work, the friends they had made in Manchester, the antics of crazy younger brothers and they also talked about if they wanted to do a Masters degree in their subject and if they did, where should they go? As it wasn’t a question about if they would go together, even if Obi-Wan decided to do a Masters and Cody didn’t, he was still going to move to whichever city Obi-Wan chose to go to for his Masters. But Cody was also liking the idea of doing a history Masters himself. “We could go to London. Wolffe and Fox are both going to do a Masters, we could go to uni with them.”

Obi-Wan frowned at him in amusement. “I thought you loved living in Manchester.”

“I do,” agreed Cody. “But I also want some peace from my brothers.” He added with a faked whining tone.

His boyfriend chuckled and then said. “You could apply to University of Manchester. So, you can stay in the city, but be in a different university to your brothers.”

Cody rolled his eyes. “As if that would stop them just turning up on Uni of’s campus,” he grumbled under his breath. He didn’t even think moving to the moon would stop his brothers from turning up to inconvenience him.

Obi-Wan just chuckled to himself as he shook his head, having to admit that going to Uni of would not stop Rex, Fives and Echo from turning up to see Cody. Within three weeks of starting the academic year, they had already worked out what rooms Cody had his seminars in and at what time they finished, so they could stand outside and wait for him. Despite Cody never once showing them his timetable.

After lunch, Cody began looking through some books for information he could add to his dissertation, while Obi-Wan turned his laptop on to work on one of his assignments. At the sound of an exasperated sigh, Cody looked up with one raised eyebrow to find Obi-Wan glaring at his laptop screen. “Problem?” he prompted lightly.

His boyfriend rolled his eyes and stated, “I hate this. We have a dissertation and other essays we need to complete that count towards our final degree. But then we are asked to write a two-thousand-word essay on the skills we have learnt doing our English degree and how those skills can help us in the workplace. While also having to give examples of jobs that use and need those skills.” Obi-Wan growled in frustration, “it is so pointless, but we have to do it otherwise we can be penalised if we don’t. But it’s wasting our time, we have other more important things to do.”

Cody grimaced and then reached out to squeezed Obi-Wan’s hand. “I totally get your frustration. We have been asked to do the exact same thing.”

Obi-Wan just groaned and thunked his head on the table, “I hate this. This is stress I do not need.” Cody smiled to himself and with his free hand, he ran his fingers through Obi-Wan’s hair, gently scratching at his scalp with his nails.

When Obi-Wan had relaxed, Cody recalled the lecture when he had been told about the assignment and how the career’s department guest lecturer and one of his usual history lecturers asked for people to give examples of skills, they had learnt doing their degree. He must have laughed to himself, because Obi-Wan was turning his head, leaving his face resting against the table top, and gave him an unimpressed glare. “Are you laughing at my pain?”

“No,” soothed Cody, brushing the hair out of Obi-Wan’s eyes. “Just remembering what Bly said in our lecture about the skills we have learnt doing a history degree.”

“Care to share? It might help me out,” asked Obi-Wan.

Cody smirked, “we have learnt to deal with emotionally crippling pain.”

There was a pause, and then Obi-Wan was laughing, his shoulders shaking as he lifted his head up from the table and instead rested it against Cody’s shoulder. “Oh, that’s a good one. I wonder if I could get away with using it?” he mused.

“I have no idea. But like you, I am tempted to use it,” stated Cody, happy to see a bit of life back in Obi-Wan’s eyes. There was nothing more depressing that having to complete a pointless assignment when you had a hundred other things to do that actually mattered for your degree.

They made the collective decision to stop working for the rest of the day, they were both mentally tired and decided they could do with a break. So, they found a film to watch, which led to another film, which led to another, until it was time for them to eat dinner. After they had shared the cooking, eaten and then shared the washing up, they decided to have an early night. Seeing as they both had nine am lectures on campus and arranged to meet in the library afterwards before Cody’s meeting with his dissertation supervisor.

As they stretched out on their bed, Cody pulling Obi-Wan to half lay on top of him, their legs tangled together. Despite the early time of the evening, the warmth and the presence of each other led them both to become drowsy and their eyes flickered heavily.

“Good night Cody,” yawned Obi-Wan, his jaw cracking at the force of the yawn.

“G’night Obi. Love you,” Cody breathed out on a sigh, his eyes closing as he felt himself begin to drift.

“Love you Code,” mumbled Obi-Wan as he pressed his face into the crook of Cody’s neck. With his nose pressed into Obi-Wan’s hair, Cody pressed a kiss against Obi-Wan’s forehead and felt a kiss pressed against his neck in return. With a smile on his face, Cody drifted off into sleep, where university stress faded away until it captured his attention tomorrow, but for now, he was able to sleep peacefully with his boyfriend in his arms.

End note:

I would draw the photo of all the boys in their onesies, but alas I cannot draw so let the image live on in our imaginations. 

Also I really enjoyed writing this AU, so if anyone wants to see more from it (including Rex, Fives, Echo, Wolffe, Fox and Anakin) let me know!

I went to Manchester Metropolitan University and as I loved it there so much, I chose to make it the setting for my AU for codywanweek. The road, buildings, halls and park are real places at the university and writing this fic has just made me want to go back there. I couldn’t come up with a degree for Cody so I just gave him my degree and dissertation focus (so yes there does exist a 10,000-word dissertation on the treatment of shell shock in WWI). At MMU we did call the University of Manchester Uni of, to differentiate between the two universities.

The Black Death lasagne analogy does actually exist in a historical book somewhere. I didn’t actually read it, but one of my flatmates in first year, who also did history, did. He was revising for one of our exams and he excitedly burst into the shared kitchen, saw me and geeked out over the funny analogy, we laughed about it, about how it was such a random analogy to use. (But after a few years I still remember it, so I guess it’s useful.) But then one of our other flatmates, who wasn’t studying history, turned around and complained at us, because she was in the process of making lasagne for her dinner. So, the reactions to Fox’s gleeful explanation of the analogy are based on truth. Our flatmate didn’t want to eat her dinner because of us. As I was writing this fic, the analogy popped back into my head and I felt it would be such a Fox thing to say.

Cody’s line of “we have learnt to deal with emotionally crippling pain” during a career’s lecture. Is something that I heard said in a career’s lecture I had to sit through in my second year. So again, something else in this fic that is based on truth.

[cuntylittlesalmon]

I want ur opinions of casey mcquinston I'm deeply neutral on them but everyone else seems to be obsessed

they are deeeeeply deeply a white millennial liberal and say this with just the most distaste you can muster. red white & royal blue was intended to be a alternate-universe earth “but what if hillary won” type of situation and that is the most liberal ass shit possible, instead of, like, oh i don’t know, not making what is essentially fan fiction of american politics.

i know a lot of her fans / those neutral on them were very up in arms when people pointed out the israel line in RWRB because “books do not always reflect exclusively on the author’s perspective or views”. but when put into context of RWRB supposedly being a progressive utopia, it’s strange, no? included with the one off line about colonialism from the prince of england, it’s a very much performative and liberal look on global politics as well.

and that’s just RWRB. one last stop is strange in reference to jane’s chinese identity, particularly when she wants to go by her real name that’s from her actual culture, but the narration point blank refuses to use the name for her (the narration being august, who is white); and along with that august tells her that “it’s much better now” in terms of racism (as opposed to the seventies)—and while august is given backlash on this, it’s still a little strange for it to have been added in anyways, but, honestly, not at all out of character for CMQ

&& this part is my personal gripe with OLS but sex on the new york subway? and CMQ getting dates wrong in regards to pride events in the seventies, despite one of the characters being a literal transplant from the seventies? it’s very “now, why would you do this 😐”. i don’t think anything she’s done has been with active malice, but it’s been done with extreme ignorance and privilege, and that’s not any better.

all this to say i just think CMQ is a bad writer. even if the other things were not present / didn’t matter (they do matter, but for the hypothetical) their writing is just bad. shara wheeler is extremely difficult to get through because each paragraph seems to have been written separately and later stringed together without really much editing at all. it’s extremely disjointed and simply not an interesting read. prose is extremely obviously not what they focus on and (it hurts me, specifically, because i love prose 🥴). i’m not far enough in it to give a full consensus on what exactly is so wrong with it, but reading some reviews on storygraph i’ve gotten a fair good inkling of an idea (in that, CMQ doesn’t have a grasp on mysteries, chloe (the POV) is tiring to read, the romance doesn’t make sense, and shara as a character is bad and not compelling enough for the literal conceit of the book to happen).

straight up if you want a book surrounding religious gay trauma read the lesbiana’s guide to catholic school

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 45-50

This is the “Soldier of Fortune” arc.  I thought there was a song by this title and there is!    Give it a listen.

This opens with a flashback to Pip Bernadotte’s childhood, where he finds out his whole family is a bunch of mercenaries.    His grandfather confirms it, and I should point out that Grandpa Bernadotte is the most mercenary-looking dude I’ve ever seen.   He’s wearing a friggin’ beret while he tells Pip about how his dad died in some war to raise money while Ma Bernadotte was pregnant with Pip.   Was Pip’s mother a merc too? 

I guess my point is that this whole scene feels really stupid to me.   Kid Pip grew up among mercenaries, but he’s literally the last person in town to find out about it.  How do the kids at school know?   Are the Bernadottes that well-known?   I always assumed mercenaries tried to keep a low profile.   Then again, they are entrepreneurs, so maybe the kids in school found ads about the Bernadottes in the phone book.  

Even so, was Pip’s family trying to keep this a secret from him?  Because Grandpa sure wasn’t.   Not with that beret he’s got on.   It’s like he’s been waiting Pip’s whole life to tell him, so why didn’t he mention it before?  You’d think he’d want to raise the boy to follow in his footsteps, the same as Pip’s dad.  Did Pip’s mom not want him to grow up to be a mercenary?  It just seems like she should have known that wouldn’t work out.  

Anyway, Grandpa Bernadotte waxes philosophical about killing people for money, which doesn’t seem like much of a justification.   Pip was very upset about the whole thing, and I don’t think Grandpa said anything to make him less upset, and then we flash forward to the present day, where Pip’s a mercenary.

I mean, what was the point of that flashback?  Pip was horrified to find out his family kills for profit, and then at some point he got over it and joined the family business.   Why didn’t the flashback show us that moment instead?  It seems more relevant.  

At any rate, I feel like the flashback is overlooking the true point of Pip’s character arc.  He starts out a soldier of fortune like his father and grandfather, but by joining up with Hellsing he’s now fighting for a much nobler cause, ridding the world of unspeakably evil monsters.  He still seems to look at it like just another job, but it’s still important.  His defense of the Hellsing mansion is a lot more heroic because he’s fighting against daunting odds with very little hope of surviving to see another sunrise, let alone his next paycheck.  

Back to the main story, when Millennium’s forces invaded London, they sent a company to the Hellsing HQ on the outskirts of the city.   Zorin Blitz was tasked with leading this group, but she was ordered to hold off on attacking until the Major gave the word.   The Major then fired rockets at the mansion, only for Seras Victoria to shoot the rockets down... and Zorin’s zeppelin.   Now, Zorin is trying to lead a ground attack on the mansion, except Pip has turned the entire yard into a minefield.   

Seras disapproves, but Pip doesn’t care.   In this sort of conflict, he and his men, the Wild Geese, are at a complete disadvantage.   Vampires, even the weaker, artificial vampires of Millennium, are faster, stronger, and harder to kill.  He hints at some sort of vampiric ability to read an opponent’s movements, too, which might have something to do with that whole “third eye” trick Seras and Alucard use.   Against all of that, landmines are a sensible precaution, since they’re powerful enough to kill a vampire in one shot and don’t rely on a human operator with killing intent. Seras can gripe, but if Hellsing had used mines back in volume 2, the Valentine Brothers never would have made it inside.  Pip clearly read up on that debacle, since it must have taken weeks for his men to bury all these mines.

The landmines do kill a lot of Zorin’s troops, and the Wild Geese lay down heavy fire from the mansion to keep up the pressure, but Zorin won’t give up so easily.   She uses he powers to create some sort of zany illusion, where everyone sees a giant Zorin Blitz attacking the mansion.

So what the hell is Zorin Blitz, exactly?   I thought she was a vampire, but reading this manga has revealed that Rip Van WInkle is a werewolf, which led me to suspect Zorin is a werewolf too.   But the manga is silent on Zorin being one or the other.  I check the Hellsing Wiki, but it contends that both women are vampires, and the term “Werewolf” just refers to the group of officers in Millennium.   This group includes literal werewolves like the Captain and Schrodinger, but not Blitz and Rip.   

Maybe it doesn’t matter that much, but I find it a little silly to call all four of those characters “Werewolves” and then only two of them are really werewolves.   Clearly, all four of them are a cut above the Major’s other troops, and none of them show any interest in drinking blood, or any other vampire-exclusive traits.   On the other hand, this whole battle takes place under a full moon, and none of them seem to be affected by it.    Unless the Major chose this particular night to launch his offensive because he wanted them all to be at full power.   Maybe Zorin couldn’t do this illusion thing otherwise.

Anyway, the Wild Geese see this giant woman slashing at them with a scythe, and they all panic.   Seras sees it too, but she somehow intuits that it can’t be real.   Then she sees Alucard, who reminds her of her third eye.   I’m not sure if this is a flashback or Alucard is using telepathy to coach her from the deck of the H.M.S. Eagle.  

Either way, Seras uses her third eye and not only sees through the illusion but lines up a shot on the illusion-caster.  But it only grazes Zorin.   It disrupts the illusion, but it doesn’t end the threat.

And even though the illusion is shattered, it still distracted the Wild Geese long enough for Millennium troops to enter the mansion.   Seras manages to shoot them down, but there’s more where that came from.

Because the Nazi bastards figured out a way past the mines.   They just threw a bunch of knives on the ground and played hopscotch to get across.   I guess this means they can only get in one at a time, but it’s still bad news for the good guys.

So Pip adjusts his tactics accordingly.  He and his men will regroup and hold up in a defensible location, while Seras roams the building to take the fight to the enemy.   I guess the idea is to divide Millennium’s focus.   They can attack the Geese or watch out for Seras, but not both.   For some reason, Seras calls Pip “sir”, like he’s in charge, and maybe that is appropriate in this situation, but I thought Seras was in charge of their training.  

Then one of the Geese pats her on the butt and Pip steals a kiss.   I’m not sure what the hell this is about.   I guess they were trying to lighten the mood before they go to face certain death, but if my life depended on some vampire girl killing all the bad guys before they can rip me to shreds, I probably wouldn’t sexually harass her, or do anything else to tick her off.   But that’s just me.

Pip seems resigned about their chances.  He’s confident in Seras’ ability, but there’s only one of her and like... 30?  Let’s say 30, thirty Nazi Vampires heading their way.  If even one of them gets past Seras, the Geese will all die horribly.   But they took this job and the risks that come with it, and besides, there’s nowhere for them to run anyway.    He seems to accept the situation with a mercenary sense of honor.   Like, a mercenary should expect to die in some unwinnable battle, and they shouldn’t complain about it, since it’s the nature of the business. 

Anyway, it doesn’t go well.   The nature of the comic doesn’t really make it clear how the Wild Geese are operating, but I get the impression that they’re doing sort of a fighting withdrawal concentrating their forces as they give ground.    But they suffer a lot of casualties in the process.

This leads to the Geese holing up in the big conference room where Integra met with the Royal Order of Protestant Knights before the Valentine Bros. attack.   One guy panics and wants to bug out, but Pip reminds him of what I said a minute ago.   They’ve got nowhere else to go, and they all got into this for the action, so they should stick to their principles, even in the face of death.

There’s this one guy from “B-block”, who I guess was covering a certain hallway, but B-Block got cut off before they could join the others in the Round Table room.    Zorin Blitz decides to have some fun with him, so she uses her weird powers to make him see himself back home, with his dead daughter.  

This seems especially cruel, because it’s not like Zorin needed this diversion to kill one dude.   She’s just really sadistic.

Meanwhile, some other Millennium guys are eating the Wild Geese they already killed, and one of them shows off his ability to tell blood types just by taste.   It’s this really sick moment, but at the same time it humanizes the characters, which is a weird thing to say when discussing Nazi vampires, but you know what I mean.

Then Seras blows the dude’s head off, which is extremely satisfying.

So Seras is holding up her end, and growing more resolute with each kill.   She’s really improved a lot since the last time she was in action.    Yeah, these Millennium vampires probably aren’t that much tougher than the vampires she killed back in the summer, but there are a lot more of them, and they’re trained soldiers on top of that, and she doesn’t have Alucard backing her up like she did before.

By now, all that’s left of the Wild Geese are in this barricaded room, and they’ve run low on silver bullets, which means even the few shots that don’t miss will have almost no effect.   Pip is determined to hold out, confident that Seras will save them, but...

She runs out of bullets before she runs out of enemies to kill.   When she arrives to save the day, she’s still has to go through Zorin Blitz.

But Zorin doesn’t see this as a problem, and she uses her freaky mind powers on Seras, forcing her to relive memories of her days at the orphanage.    Yeah, Seras was an orphan, remember?   Alucard asked Walter about her parents a while back, and Walter said they were both dead.  How did they die?

Well, Zorin Blitz is about to find out...

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Okay I was gonna do another SG:WoT post anyway because we’ve got a new King interview but THEN, he released the cover to issue four so you KNOW I gotta geek out about this.

(Sorry that this blog is all SG:WoT, all the time now, but I am just. Insanely excited that Evely is drawing Supergirl. Feel free to block/mute these posts as needed. XD)

Okay, so!

First! The interview!

It’s on (ugh) screenrant so I’m not gonna link, I’m just gonna nab the interesting bits:

On the different direction of the book, and if he wanted to go back to the original Adventure Comics vibes: “So, the idea of this thing was to strip her story down, because Supergirl has a majorly weird history in terms of continuity. At least 13 writers have rewritten her origin over the years. Her dad has 13 origin stories; sometimes he's evil, sometimes he's a robot, sometimes alive, sometimes he's dead. She's changed dramatically in the last 10 years, between coming back to life to the New 52 to Rebirth. She's gone through so much that it's hard to get a hold of her. Not to mention in the '90s, when I was coming up, she was like an ectoplasmic space angel. There's so much there, and I just wanted to take all that stuff off and get to the core of the character; get her out of her normal environments and her normal conflicts. It seems like all our stories are about her dad or her relationship to Superman. Instead, let's see the purity of that character.”

On starting the book the way he did: “...I wanted to start out with a very human moment of a person turning 21 and getting drunk. And a person who is getting drunk because they want to be alone, and they just want to forget about the shit that's happened in their past. That's such a human moment. And the fact that she's Supergirl, so she waits till it's legal - because these super people, they follow the rules. She waited, and now it's legal and she can have this moment. She goes off by herself, with her dog that always follows her, and she has a moment where she can be free. For a lot of people in the US, whether you've been drinking since you were 14 or started that day, your 21st birthday and the day after are days you remember for the rest of your life. It's a day of freedom and consequence, and I wanted to show Supergirl going through that.”

On rising to the challenge of helping Supergirl perform better, sales/popularity-wise: “ When I first got on this book, I called Steve Orlando, who had just written a Supergirl run. And he was the one who opened my eyes to how good the character is. He had such insight into her. He was like, ‘There is a difference between Clark and her, and what she's gone through.’ He just laid it for me.”

On starting the book off with Ruthye’s journey, and gradually building to Kara’s: “ I was like, "Okay, this is going to be from the point of view of someone under Supergirl." And so I switched the point of view to this new brand new character, whose name is Ruthye. And we went from there: we start with Ruthye's story, we see her discover Supergirl, and she's our audience. She's our way in, the way Robin has always been the way into Batman.”

On whether or not other characters will show up, outside of Supergirl and Ruthye: “It's like my Superman: Up in the Sky, where it's a distillation of the character. You'll see other characters, but the focus of every issue will be on Supergirl. And it's something where at the very end, you can be like, "Why is Supergirl great? Why is she important to the DC Universe? What is her future in the DC Universe? Here, read this one trade that can answer all three of those questions at once."So, there will be other characters in the Super universe. But the focus will always be on her; on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. It's her finding out about herself and her own strength.”

On Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow vs. his other titles: “Supergirl is my first 2021 book, or my first book of the 20s. That wrapped up my books of the teens, and now we're in a new generation. God willing, from the moment I started this book, I was like, ‘I'm gonna take a risk, and I'm gonna write books that are a little brighter.’ I know that's coming from me, and it's not to say we're going to avoid conflict or we're not going to explore the depths of the human soul. All that stuff will be in there. But these books are made from a place of joy, not from a place of anger; from a place of hope, not from a place of despair. It very much contrasts to those other books, in my mind.”

On how he thinks folks will react to the Krypto cliffhanger: “I mean, they're gonna think it's a good cliffhanger. That's how I think they're going to react. They're going to say, ‘I want the next issue.’ That's literally my job as written in my contract. Something where at the end of an issue, someone says, ‘I want more.’ So, that's how I hope they react.”

As mentioned, this is not the full interview; the whole thing can be found on screenrant, and I think Tom King shared a link on his twitter. 

And now, as always, SOME THOUGHTS:

I love that he brings up the fact that so many Supergirl stories focus on Zor-El and Clark, and how he was like, ‘let’s not do that.’

That’s my big gripe with modern Supergirl comics; they are trying so hard to make a statement on why we need both a Supergirl AND a Superman, that they end up spending ALL THEIR TIME talking about Clark, instead of, you know. Telling a fun Supergirl story.

Same thing with Zor-El! I know folks love Rebirth--I like it quite a bit myself--but I think the nostalgia goggles prevent folks from remembering that the whole first arc of that book was re-doing the ‘Cyborg Superman’ garbage from the Nu52. 

Speaking of Rebirth, really like that of all the recent SG writers he coulda talked to, he talked to Steve Orlando.

Like, if ya can’t get Gates on the phone, get Orlando.

(I get the sense that Gates doesn’t like this book, actually, based on a vague tweet. But don’t quote me on that.) 

Looks like Ruthye is gonna be our POV/audience insert character for the whole run. I’m...mmmm. I don’t love it, but I understand the logic here. Especially since he compared it to Batman and Robin--how you use Robin as your entry point for a bat book. 

And you know what? Kara’s supporting cast needs some help, so. Welcome to the Superfam, Ruthye.

I also love the explanation behind the drinking thing, as well as the fact that Kara waited until it was 100% legal for her to drink because OF COURSE SHE WOULD.

I am so worried that Krypto is gonna die b/c of what we saw in Future State. I’m over here with my Pepe Silva board like, ‘Well, what if Kara agrees to help Ruthye because Krem MURDERED HER DOG?!?! WHAT IF THIS IS JOHN WICK IN SPACE?!?!?!’

So I am DISMAYED that King does not reassure us AT ALL.

Thus I am forced to cling to this tidbit here: “ But these books are made from a place of joy, not from a place of anger; from a place of hope, not from a place of despair. It very much contrasts to those other books, in my mind.”

Killing the dog would not be joyful. XD So, like. I’m REALLY HOPIN’ HE’LL BE OKAY.

AND LASTLY, (Except not really)

I have some additional, miscellaneous thoughts unrelated to the interview b/c I’m me and I’m loving having a Supergirl comic back on the shelves, however polarizing it may be.

Something I realized, when details started to come out regarding the book, and that other folks have now noted as well: Kara was 16 when Rebirth launched in 2016; she’s just turned 21 in 2021, making her one of the extremely few comic characters to age in real time.

I don’t think that was planned, but it is cool.

It occurred to me on a re-read that Ruthye never calls Kara Kara in her narration, only Supergirl. And I was a little sad! But then I remembered that Kara wouldn’t necessarily reveal her identity to people she’s helping, she would just be ‘Supergirl’ to them. 

I really do love how, so far, there has been NARY A MENTION of Kara angst-ing over being in Clark’s shadow, or being Superman’s cousin.

It appears that her drinking alone on a remote planet is more related to trying to forget her trauma/grief related to Krypton. MAYBE. We don’t know yet.

The Clark thing could still come up. I hope it doesn’t. 

(Interesting to note! Kara recently appeared in Action Comics, helping Clark and Jon investigate some Kryptonian refugees; IDK how closely these books will necessarily ‘work together’ in terms of continuity, but! It’s possible that the discovery of those mysterious refugees was triggering, thus sending her on her way to her own solo title.)

(Well. That’s gonna be my headcanon, anyway. XD)

AND LASTLY, (for real this time)

ISSUE FOUR COVER!!!!

Okay, some immediate thoughts:

GOOD LORD IT’S STUNNING.

I loooooove the fire motif, reminds me of a part from the Rebirth run, where Kara met the Super-Man of China, and they visually referenced All-Star Superman, having the Kryptonians kind of...become the sun.

Also STAR CHART?!?! PIRATE MAP!?!?!?! 

The VIBES I tell you, the VIIIIIIIBES.

Also I love that it’s just Kara.

Don’t get me wrong! I like Ruthye just fine so far! But yeah, yeah, give me some more solo-Kara focus, even if it’s just in the art.

Just realized that once this thing gets collected as a TBP, we might get some Evely art backmatter. OhHhhHHhhH YESSSS. 

Anyways, the long wait for issue 2 begins! 

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

madeline miller’s ‘the song of achilles’

Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus (1855) by Nikolai Ge

What I loved about The Song of Achilles: this and this and this. 

My interest in classics began circa 2005, with Disney’s animated series based off of their rendition of Hercules. Fast forward to several years later, to when I stumbled across one of my grandad’s books; several of my rose-tinted childhood memories would be tainted by the knowledge that the actual Heracles had very little in common with Disney’s adaptation of him. 

The historical period that I was really invested in for most of my preteen and early teenage years were the Dark Ages, and Medieval Europe in general; so my Greek mythology phase was short-lived, and my knowledge of it is… well, I know Dionysus fucked himself with a wooden dildo to fulfil a promise he made, and that he’s perhaps the only decent bloke up there on Olympus (I’d tell Zeus to go fuck himself but he’d probably go through with it), and also that Dionysus is BTS’s best song since Boy Meets Evil, and that Stray Kids did a bangin’ cover of it late last year. 

In other words: vague and superficial. 

But I know enough to tell you that Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles is one of the best books I’ve ever read, hands down. 

The story of Achilles and Patroclus and the Trojan War is pretty common knowledge, I’ll warrant, but just in case: SPOILERS AHEAD. 

Retelling a story almost everyone knows isn’t easy; you’ve got the plot down and how to get there, but you’ve got to write it in a way that doesn’t read like a middle school book report you scrapped together a night before the assignment was due (… not that I know what that’s like, haha). And Miller does an excellent job of it; her diction? Brilliant. Her prose? Incredible. Her characterizations? Completely not ever been done before. 

The Song of Achilles is told in Patroclus’s first-person point of view; most of it is about his early years with Achilles; Patroclus’s banishment to Phthia, meeting Achilles, befriending Achilles, and then both of them being tutored by Chiron (a far cry from Disney’s funny little goat man). The Trojan War takes up less of the book than I thought it would, at first (which, of course, I’m infinitely grateful for- since we all know how THAT ends) (#RIP). 

Which brings me to one of the biggest questions I had up to the last few chapters before the end of the book: how will the story go on after Patroclus dies, since it’s in the first person? (The first-person POV threw me off at first; it’s been a while outside of contemporary YA that I’ve read anything in that POV, and it was a bit jarring- but the further I read, I realized that it was the best option for the book; it gave the story a depth, a level of emotion you couldn’t’ve achieved in the third person.)

And call me a masochist, but Patroclus’s death and the aftermath ended up being my favorite parts of the book. I’ve read stories that have given me actual, physical pain (one of my top two Harry Potter ships is Wolfstar, go figure), but this is the first time I’ve actually read something that made me cry (despite the numerous Ao3 comments I’ve left that are variants of ‘omg I’m crying’). Like, actual, physical tears welling up in my eyes. 

There’s this particular scene, in the ninth chapter, where Chiron is telling Patroclus and Achilles about Heracles, and how he, unlike Disney’s well-intentioned, bumbling himbo, goes insane and kills his family. Achilles, my sweet summer child, is quite reasonably agitated by this; how it was unfair, how Heracles’ wife and children paid for the gods’ tiff with Heracles with their own lives. And Chiron says: 

“… Perhaps it is he greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.” 

Go ahead, Miller; twist the goddamn knife. It’s not like I needed my heart, anyway. 

Also, unrelated, but I find it interesting how countries that are continents apart end up having quite similar legends. My roots are from an entirely different continent than Greece, but we have a folktale quite similar to the legend of Aesclepius. 

But I digress. 

Character-wise: Achilles; half-mortal, hero of the Trojan war, the greatest warrior among men. And despite his demigod status, he remains so human. And this might be controversial, but… he comes off a lot more fleshed-out than Patroclus himself. Which is perhaps my sole gripe with this book. 

Patroclus is… well, he exists. He’s the son his father never wanted. He kills a boy. Falls in love with Achilles. Spends a concerning amount of time describing Achilles’ feet. 

Honestly, up until the chapters in Troy, he doesn’t have much of a personality. And maybe it’s because Miller wanted to remain as true to the Iliad and Odyssey, and, if my memory serves me correct, neither of them give a lot to Patroclus in the way of character development; but still, he comes off a bit- bland. Of course, towards the end, his character gets a bigger role than ‘loves Achilles’; especially seen in how he defies Achilles to spare Briseis, and then dons the armor and subsequently gets himself killed (#ApolloIsOverParty), but up till then, he’s pretty meh. 

Briseis is another one of my favorite characters; it was a bit difficult for me to divorce my perception of her from Emily Hauser’s For the Most Beautiful. Her friendship with Patroclus (and, by extension, Achilles; even if he did screw her over afterwards) was perhaps the only good to come out of the war. 

And then we have the obligatory: fuck Thetis and FUCK Agamemnon (thank you, Clytemnestra).

Achilles and Patroclus’ love was wonderfully written, and I love how them being queer wasn’t the central focus of the story (admittedly, the ancient Greeks were markedly more casual about homosexuality than the bible-belt world we live in today). A lot of the (non-fanfiction) queer lit I’ve read tends to make everything revolve around, “bUt I aM bOy,,, aNd I LiKe bOy,,, bUT hOW???”, and homophobia is the biggest obstacle to their relationship. And those stories are realistic and need to be told- but we need literature with more variety. 

My final verdict: a work of art. I’m going to read Circe and Galatea.

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Reviews: How Santa Stole Christmas! or Scrooge is kind of a dick

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody! Christmas begins on this blog with the last new Ducktales of the season! Time to break out some eggnog, presents and warmth of good family, i’ve got a bushel of Christmas reviews planned for the season, and this one is just the start of htem. As you can probably tell by my enthusasim I love this holiday. Oh sure it has it’s bad sides, paticuarlly several jackasses making huge deals out of the fact some people say happy holidays because “there’s a war on christmas” when really their just petty morons who can’t accept theirs more than one holiday in the month and not everyone likes christmas. I do, but I know not everyone does, and that’s fine. But overall it’s a fine holiday with warmth, cheer, family, generosity and of course, what brings us here today, really damn good episodes and specials of television. It’s just a really warm and cheerful time that , whlie it can bring out the absolute worst in people.. can also bring out the best more often than not. And that’s why I love this holiday. If you don’t that’s just fine, but it’s my blog, I can love what I want. And I love this holiday.. and I loved this episode, a good end to a great run of episodes. So let’s rock around the Christmas tree and find out why Scrooge hates santa, this is How Santa Claus Stole Christmas!

We open with the classic night before Christmas poem.. only naturally since Della is reading it to the boys, it’s Scrooge’s version involving barbed wire and calling the man a traitor because what honestly did you expect. Though I find it ironic a man introduced in a Christmas story has a one-sided blood feud with Santa. The boys are annoyed with this and just want free presents and the presecne of a jolly fat man and don’t get why Scrooge hates him. And yeah.. all of that tracks. They were raised by Donald who, while he clearly spent several years at Scrooges tolerating this feud, likely figured the Feud was just some personal gripe of scrooges and that Santa had done nothing that terrible. Which given Scrooge isn’t personable on the best of days and the episode goes out of it’s way to point out Scrooge has no friends, is entirely accurate and Donald was, as always the sane one in this situation. Plus he was already mad at Scrooge, this was just another way to tell him to go fuck himself. 

The boys hear what they think is Santa on the roof but turns out to be Scrooge, in full Scottish war garb manning traps with webby.. in full chimney camo... putting a knife to Dewey’s throat for siding with santa.. well okay pointing at his throat but still god damn. Every now in then i’m reminded how ready Webby is to murder someone. It never gets easier or less disturbing. The boys.. continue to make a good point: Scrooge says he’s the richest duck in the world and can provide them whatever.. but being Scrooge just gives them itchy hats made of cheap fabric, and bemoans them wanting a trampoline, a new electronic game, and a new phone. And while Scrooge can give them whatever he wants, it’s his money, he also could’ve put some actual thought into it and clearly views the holiday more as a transaction and less for hte acutal sentmient. Instead of giving them personal mementos, or making them personal mementos, or even just simply building them a sled or something, a simpler toy than what they want but still something nice that comes from the heart.. he just gave them the cheapest hat he could find and tries to guilt them for not liking his thoughtless present he probably bought in bulk for everyone in the manor and his employ because he’s kind of a dick sometimes. IT’s good storytelling though as it sets up that Scrooge.. can possibly be int he wrong, so when the main plot comes to his front door, quite literally, there’s some doubt as to wither he or santa is in the wrong. Speaking of which Santa is at the door. So cue the credits and cue the cut for the rest of the plot as is usual. Full spoilers, and full plot under the cut. Ho ho ho. 

First a quick comment on the Holiday version of the theme, the same one from Last Christmas! IT’s really good, a really nice frank sinatra style verison of the theme. Good stuff. My only real complaint is like last time.. there’s nothing unique about it, it’s just the normal season 3 intro but with snowflakes. And that’s.. more on Disney than the creators. If Frank and Matt had the option they would likely do an entirely original intro.. it’s just Disney can be cheap when it comes to intros, see how possesed ludo stayed in the star vs intro long after that plot point was resolved, and only affords one a season. That being said they still have one up on most networks, who, with the exception of Netfix with she ra, never really let intros change more than once, if at all. I mean I get it, budgets are higher here than with anime, they can’t do a new song and intro every half a season.. BUUUT it wouldn’t kill more stuidos to do this more often and do a complete intro overhaul, as it adds freshness, and you can still use the same old theme, just over a new set of pretty images. Most just allow a few swap outs, Disney included, and while I get intros are expensive, this is something you can use for a whole season, or more, why are you like this? 

Anyways one theme song and me complaning about an animation trend I don’t like later, we’re inside the Manor with none of the other adults present because this season hates me. I do actually get it this go round: Besides Della, Donald and Launchpad getting a full subplot in the other holiday episode, they aren’t really needed. In fact most of the episode’s present day is a framing device for the tale of how Scrooge and Santa met and why Scrooge hates him, so for once the minmal use of the supporting cast.. is actually done well. The focus is on Scrooge and Santa, a feud that’s had four years build up in real time, and two years in series and a bunch of months. So yeah, i’m okay with sidelining everyone for once, because this story really needed all of the space and there was no real place for them aside from the climax. This is Scrooge and Santa’s story, with Webby there as an impartial-ish observer. We’ll get to that in a moment.  Also if your curious where in the fuck this episode fits on the series massively warped time scale.. i’m going with this and “The Trickining!” taking place before season 3, since “Astro Boyd” takes place in march, and “Forbidden Fountain” takes place in probably late april, huge thanks to a friend on discord for help with the timeline. Otherwise it just makes no sense whatsover and while it dosen’t TECHINCALLY need to, I prefer the series timeline at least making some rational sense. The world dosen’t have to but time still does. So the boys are at least 12, possibly turning 13. Congrats. Or maybe they just don’t age. I dunno. 

Now time and plot concerns aside, Santa gladly gives the boys their gifts which is.. everything they listed: A mini tramp for Dewey, Legends of Legend-Quest 2 for Huey, and another phone for Louie, which Scrooge dosen’t get. But Louie gets it on 2 levels: One, the one he asked for is probably a nicer model and as someone who just got a very marginally nicer model on insurance, I get it, even if like Scrooge i’m fine as long as mine works, it’s still nice to have more space to do shit. And two, he plans to sell the old one and keep the money. So yeah the boys already loved Santa but now they have every reason to since, you know, Santa actually gave them what they asked for and Scrooge gave them itchy hats because he’s cheap not because he put the slighest thought into it. And no i’m ont letting him get away with that: Again, off list, perfectly fine. Right behind me on my sprawl of book shelves is Weird Al’s biography, a really fun, really intresting book with photos on his career. I did not ask for it, but my mom rightly knew I would love it and got it for me for my birthday, which is very close to christmas, the 16th if you were curious, anyway, and I’ve treasured it since.. and really need to re-read it. My point is you CAN get someone something they didn’t ask for and still have it be something they LIKE. I did that for most of my christmas gifts this year. Scrooge just, as I went on about above, didn’t give a shit and was a bit callous about it so yeah, Santa wins this round.  But Santa naturally needs Scrooge’s help to save Christmas because his ankle’s sprained and he’s out of options. Scrooge.. naturally refuses because, as i’ve made clear this and past episodes, he can be kind of a dick and Santa is one of his worst enemies in his mind. Why help him? So Santa, reluctantly, offers Scrooge the one thing you can get for the man who has everything: An agreement to leave his house alone. The boys aren’t happy about it, but Scrooge reluctantly agrees to the deal. They prepare to mount up though the boys aren’t invited, as Scrooge thinks their too far in the Santa camp and Scrooge does not trust him. Which again is both accurate and fair on their parts as again, he gave them things with well meaning and love, he gave them hats he fished out of the dollar store clearance bin. I mean at least go for the dvd’s and blu rays man. Yeesh. Santa does lightly buy them off by offering them another present if their good boys. Though honestly given Santa in this universe, he probably was going to anyway and this is his nice way of getting them to stay behind to make Scrooge happy. 

So as they take off, while Webby is wary of Santa, she is curious what happened, especially since earlier Scrooge actually did finally voice his gripe, if without any full length explination: Santa took Christmas From him. And Della might know that, Scrooge likely didn’t tell her or Donald the full story and Donald rightly didn’t buy it was that one sided. And it isn’t as we’ll see. Since the episodes divided up into two storylines, i’m once again splitting the difference. This time though I would like to mention the story is beautifully woven in, with both complementing each other: there’s some legit suspense as we wonder if Santa did something really that bad or if he’s lying to webby, or if Scrooge being Scrooge was just exaggerating or holding onto a grudge that was partly his fault. It’s genuinely well done to build up the story and helps really flesh Santa out as a character in both stories. i’m only not doing that because my short term memory, while good enough to hold the story for now can be spotty, and this is a lot less taxing on it. Also parts of this segment happen before the boys leave, but it’s easier this way. Sooooo... 

Times Past: Santa’s Worst Christmas Some time ago... seriously I don’t know. Scrooge was born in the 1800′s and Christmas well existed by then, to the point there’s actually a story starring young scrooge published over seas. Granted the Duck’s are no stranger to christmas, as I already covered Christmas on Bear Mountain for Scrooge’s birthday, and will be covering “A Christmas for Shacktown’ sometime this December. It’s just something worth noting. But given this universe can do whatever it wants, having it invited sometime in the early 1900′s or late 1800s is fine just fine. 

Scrooge is a coal salesman, selling people what they need but getting no shelter as he’s, again, an ass. But in the depths he finds Santa, whose having trouble puling his sleigh, and gets them in the previously closed door with kindess and saying he’s with me. We now get an idea of who Santa truly is: a kind, selfless soul who thinks nothing of himself, and is happy to offer a gift in exchange for something, but does so only in the most well meaning, warmest way possible. In short this Santa really is.. what Santa is at his best in stories; a kind, generous man who just wants to make people happy. He just gave a gift not because he wanted to bribe his way in, but because he was genuinely hoping for some shelter and wanted to be greatful. It also shows that clearly, even if something did happen.. Santa probably isn’t evil. A twist still could’ve come.. but spoilers.. it dosen’t. Santa is genuinely this kind and self sacrificing and noble. He’s just a good person.. and that would ultimately be the problem but we’ve got a lot of subplot to cover.  So Santa parties with what are clearly going to be his elves, and turn out indeed to be elves at the end when the fire goes out and Scrooge is suddenly in buisness.. and he and Santa make a great team, as Santa talks him up and says he can deliver a whole year’s worth of coal all over the world by Christmas Morning, so Christmas DOES exist here, it’s just Santa didn’t which kind of tracks. Well played. I’ll keep my earlier mistake in there though. Keeps me fresh. But Santa offers to help.. after all what are friends for? And Scrooge says their not friends.. their partners. 

And Santa says why not both. And a friendship is forged. And it makes sense.. while i’ts not as tight as it will be, Santa is a warm generous guy who helped Scrooge multiple times just to be kind: He helped him find shelter to repay his kindness helping him.. then helped him sell his coal, when he didn’t have to and while he upsold him on what he could do, did so not out of malice, but so his friend could sell MORE and with eveyr intention of helping. And this friend is someone he just met, is kind of cranky and rude.. but as we all know is a good person underneath and to Santa.. that’s what he sees.. the kind young man who helped him pull his sleigh when he didn’t have to and was already cold and miserable. And that.. that just warms my heart a lot.  But Scrooge being Scrooge has a mystic artifact that could help: The Feliz Navidiamond, a mystic artifact that can seemingly control time he got off a  spanish sailor needing coal. The two head in but encounter it’s guardians. The Magic reindeer! And that’s part of what I love about this episode: besides really getting christmas, we’ll get to that, it has a creative and intresting Santa origin baked into the show’s mythology that also shows off an intresting part of Scrooge’s past. Santa manages to pacify them with jingle bells and our heroes head inside.  In the cavern they find a Giant Snowman.. because this show is fucking awesome and Santa’s attempt to be nice bacfires but Scrooge’s natural paranoia and gumption pull through. It shows off why they make a good team: Santa’s niceties helped them with the reindeer, and netted them future transportation, while Scrooge’s natural grumpus tendencies help when nice just won’t do it. They work well together: one’s a showman and the other hasn’t learned how yet, one is nice the other naughty. It’s easy to see why they worked so well together.. in both senses. They make it past the Snowman and find that the diamond slows down time running on “christmas time!”.. seriously a great pun and one of many this episode. This show had a chance to go all out on holiday puns this go round and they did not blow it. 

But... sadly... and obviously the good times can’t roll forever and when we next return to the story it’s a year later. McDuck and Klaus coal is a MASSIVE concern, and Scrooge is eager to get started... but Santa.. wants to just give gifts instead. To do something Generous. Buisness just isn’t in him and he just wants to do something kind. It’s.. not a bad goal.. i’ts just not Scrooge. To Scrooge it’s a betryal of all he stands for: foreswearing profit to give something for nothing for seemingly no reason and to a younger even meaner scrooge.. it’s an utter betryal.. and a breaking point. Either his daft presents idea.. or Scrooge. And why yes this episode is dripping with ho yay and why yes this does resemble his painful breakups with goldie. And why yes is glorious.. Imean I wasn’t shipping Scrooge with santa before but now? Hot damn. But yeah the two have come to a parting of ways, and Scrooge bitterly leaves, while the elves reveal themselves. And my heart hurts “The Empire Builder from Callisota” bad so thank you and fuck you show.  It also probably shows why Scrooge has exactly one friend, who also works with him so it’s complicated, in present day: He just dosen’t want to let people in... and now we know WHY. The first genuine friend he made, the first person he let into his heart.. betrayed him. It’s no wonder it took decades for Beakly, then the kids to get into his heart again: the guy’s been betrayed by goldie, in his mind betrayed by santa and as we’ve seen his own dad turned against him eventually. He had no one for so long, he built a wall all around him but the wall was too tall and it blocked out all the birds and the son. But this .. is a really damn good story that fleshes Scrooge out and explains his hardness. In the comics it was Glomgold.. here.. it’s much more personal and cuts much deeper. And I absolutely love it. This story could’ve neatly fit into life and times if it made any sense in Rosa’s timeline, and it would be just perfect there. 

PRESENT DAY: Concentrated Awwww

The present day plot is a lot simplier but still fantsatic: Webby slowly warms up to Santa depsite herself.. despite Scrooge clealry seeing she is.. she sees the man is just.. nice. He gives her a new crossbow, a really nice one she probably didn’t even expect to get given you know, everything and knowing scrooge, and appricates the sentiment and slowly sees the man isn’t some monster, but just a jolly old fat man who wants to give presents. Even Scrooge seemingly warms up a little.  We also get tons of cameos during delivery, as they visit tons of supporting cast.. sadly no Darkwing.. but this one was clearly meant to go anywhere and is clealry set before “Let’s Get Dangerous”, but tons of other great bits: We get the Drake recidence with Boyd getting a present.. and somehow also doofus whose filled his stocking full of.. something. I don’t want to know and you can’t make me ask. You can make me ask why the fuck Doofus gets a present, but it could be filled with bees or maybe Santa truly thinks theirs good in him.. which .. yeah tracks. I mean not their being good in him.. I think dr. loomis said it best.. I mean it was about micheal meyers but.. same diffrence minus the patricide?

I mean points for trying though Santa, you mean well you loveable bear in both senses of the word you. But anyways other cameos include Fenton, alsleep with his armor strewn about, aww, with the gizmo armor set to hit people with fruit cake. Thought that was against the geneva convetion but alright. Scrooge’s been hit with worse. We also get them visiting the boat and giving Donald and Della presents, awww. And of course I saved the cameo I put up top for last as Webby visits her closest friend and her gilfriend and gives both an adorable cheek kiss. Though only Lena reacts.. probably because this isn’t the first time Webby’s snuck into their bedroom at night but probably the first time it hasn’t been accidently creepy because she’s still learning boundaries. Also i did not realized they shared a room. Aww. Also it’s the first time we’ve seen their room, which as you’d image from a sorceress and a magical researcher/bookworm, it’s a massive sprawling library from what we see with a skull with a candle in it, a picture of a house, and a calender. IN short it’s perfect and i’m glad we finally saw their room. 

So yeah things are going well and Webby finally realizes “Shit Scrooge is the bad guy in this scenario” at the end of the story, realizing Santa was just as hurt by the split as Scrooge was and that he had to make the harder choihce for the right reasons. Unfortunately, as i’ve said a lot this review, SCrooge is a dick and only coperated, as he wasn’t using the magical present sack, but his own filled with Coal to teach people about responsiblity. Thankfully, Scrooge realizes he’s been a dick to the globe when he happens upon little Jeniffer, a small pig girl who mistakes him from santa and takes his coal, meant to warm her fires.. and makes it into a doll. And resists his attempts to take “Coalette away”... Scrooge then rants and .. we actually get a good reason for why he’s being such a douche... as a kid he had nothing, and a gift of coal for his fires would’ve been welcmoed. He simply just.. dosen’t get the frivolity. He gets the warmth and joy of the season but not the gift part. And it’s only seeing this small, innocent child, play with a doll, he realizes “A warm heart can keep you going through the coldest nights”. And it’s then he finally realizes why his old friend did what he did.. because as i’ve been saying the real gift.. is in the giving.. of giving someone something that makes their memories glow and their heart warm. Even a lump of coal can do that in the right hands... a toy can get someone through the roughest times and it’s the WARMTH of the gift you remember, not the gift itself. I remember that book I mentioned proudly.. as do I remmeber the copy of the art of the venture brothers right next to me, or the copy of the people’s doonesbury my best friend mike bought me, and so on.. not because of the book itself... but because of the thought and warmth of someone getitng something for you because they care, not for their own reward, but just to make you feel nice this holiday season. That’s the true spirit of christmas.  Naturally realizing the errror of his ways in true christmas story fashion, Scrooge is devistated by his own actions. And Santa is PISSED.. but Scrooge is now regretful.. if also pissed because Santa stormed in there and it turns out this was all a ploy to get his friend back... which destroys Scrooge’s anger as he realizes just how much his old friend missed him and how many years he wasted lashing out at him when , in the end, Santa was right. So with only so much Diamond power left, and time running out, what can they do to right this? Simple, Scrooge suggests splitting resources. 

So we get a glorious shot of the three boys, and the twins riding  the reindeer. Also we get Launchpad! 

Who naturally wonders if he can crash a reindeer while Beakly thankfully stops him from murdering Dasher. So Christmas is saved and Scrooge and Santa exchange gifts: For Scrooge, a set of bells with their old company name.. and for Santa? a garage door opener. While Santa’s confused turns out.. it’s to turn off the traps. He’s welcome any time.. just use the front door. Cue a big hug, and Webby narrating us out as Scrooge wishes everyone a merry christmas once again letting people into his heart.  I have.. the approirate response to that. 

Final Thoughts: Excellent, easily one of the best of the season, the series and possibly of chirstmas show episodes all together, we shall see when I put together my list. And given how utterly excellent Last Christmas already is, it was hard to top.. but they did it. This was a warm, wonderful special that gets to the heart of christmas.. and really why I LIKE santa so much. For all the comercailsim around him.. he’ s a kind generous man who gets kids to belivie in magic for a while, wants nothing in return , with the offering of cookies just there to be nice and thank him for being a good person, and just wants best for people. He’s what’s best about christmas rolled into a person. And the series gets that and makes him the kindest guy around. It ends up being a story abotu Scrooge learning the meaning of christmas, an irony that’s not lost on me, but in a way that’s diffrent and unique from last time and works just as well. It’s just a warm wonderful epsiode with plenty of great gags and adventure and a beautiful, unique story at it’s core that could only be told here with tihs cast and this version of scrooge and that’s what makes it so damn magical. Easily a fantastic note to go out on.  Next time on Ducktales: I don’t know! Next time this blog covers ducktales: We’re going back a few seasons to the only episode i’ve never seen, not even a little bit. It’s the treacherous summit of mt neverest!  Until then, if you liked this review, reblog and all that good stuff, follow for more ducks, and if there’s an episode of any show you want me to cover, my cyber monday sale is still going till midnight central, and even past that if you get in a liittle past it, so you can comission a review of any episode for just 3 bucks right now, 5 if you get to this review after monday. So spend if you have it.. and if you don’t.. happy holidays to you anyway. Have a wonderful season. 

[bbq-hawks-wings]

BBQ gripes about fanon Hawks

Not even gonna put this in the character tags aside from the spoiler one I use just for the anime-onlies on my blog. I'm salty. I just wanna vent. I want to keep the general character tags fun because it was awful when I went looking for new content and found so much Not Fun material a while back; and I don’t want to become what I hate. Basic point - my blog, my vent, and unless it’s reblogged (which you are welcome to if you like) this post dies here.

Please know this isn't a callout post or me claiming that others are being fans of Hawks "wrong" because they disagree with me. I am a huge proponent that (with very few exceptions) fiction and fandom should be free to be enjoyed, reinterpreted, or otherwise indulged in however the individual fan prefers; and if I don't like it, I let them have their space and go do my thing elsewhere and leave them alone (hence why this not going in character tags). I just have been annoyed with the rampant mangling of Hawks' canon  personality/characterization - that is, confusing common fanon interpretations of him with how he’s actually written/portrayed and then getting angry (like, actually-angry-spilling-into-publicly-dragging-real-people, not just disappointed) when he acts like canon Hawks in canon. Non-canon is open season and by and large has my blessing, it’s just frustrating when it gets dragged into discussions about the manga. 

This has been going on a long time, but I just want to get it out of my system in my personal space. All this is, is my "Overthinking Tumblr blogger Shakes Fist at Cloud" moment.

#1 Hawks is a sociopath/unempathetic.

I just... I... You can't be reading the same manga I am if you genuinely come to this conclusion about who he is in canon. A man with nothing to gain by looking like this when considering the depths of the suffering inflicted on others that he bears some amount of responsibility in...

...cannot be called unempathetic.

"But he killed Twice and Best Jeanist!"

Twofold counterargument to this one, starting with BJ - we don't actually know he's dead. There's a body, there's a disappearance, and we have no idea wtf happened, but we also don't know wtf happened. It's drastically ooc for Hawks to murder someone in cold blood. For someone who places emphasis on speed specifically "because when two sides keep fighting and won’t give up, someone eventually has to die" it makes no sense for him to not have had a plan and simply ambush a man in his own home - this goes doubly since he was in contact with the HSPC and had time to "premeditate" anyway.

And as for Twice: Hawks ran out of options. He wanted to detain Twice and keep him from escaping and helping the MLA. He was able to do so when alone, but the moment Dabi cornered him Hawks had a choice to make - probably die in the fight and let Jin go or make absolute certain he can’t and still probably end up dying because he's in bad shape and still probably won't make it out of this, regardless. I don't need to harp on this - it's been said a couple different times now by several people. Even in 266 when Dabi initially ambushes Hawks, Hawks thinks to himself that he’ll carry Jin out of the building to keep himself and Jin safe before Twice retaliated and Dabi literally forces Hawks into a corner.

Jin's loss was a blow, but the chips on the table being wagered are human lives, not feelings. Up until that point, Hawks did everything he could despite the weight of his decision. Human life is human life, and Jin’s life isn’t more important than the may more who will be saved by quashing the MLA’s revolution. Simply equating “could kill someone” with “unempathetic” is fundamentally flawed, and mistaking someone who is pushed to kill despite every attempt to avoid it as unempathetic and even sociopathic has missed the point to the extreme - the mere fact he avoided lethal force for so long alone proves he possesses empathy.

#2 Hawks is a compulsive liar.

He is a good liar, but he does not like lying. He does twist the truth, but always when forced to keep a secret. Even then, his lies are predominantly spun from truth and omitted details instead of outright fabrications. He doesn’t gaslight, and he doesn’t make up stories/details if he can help it.

When Hawks told Endeavor his dreams for the future, that was the truth. When he told him he thought he was cool at the hero billboards, that was the truth.  When he tells Tokoyami to focus on his strengths instead of merely covering his weaknesses to be a better hero, that was the truth. When Tokoyami asks Hawks for his weakness and even why he took him on as an intern in the beginning just to ignore him, he tells him the truth.  When he tells Jin he "doesn't belong in a cage" and that he considers him a good person, that was the truth. When he recognizes he’s profoundly wounded Jin for deceiving him for months, he tells Jin the truth. When confronted by Dabi and he doesn’t need to lie anymore in this fight to the death, he tells him the truth despite not actually needing to in hopes to learn the truth behind Dabi and Shigaraki.

I don't have a better segue, so I'll just mention that a lot of folks who believe this also believe the next point.

#3 Hawks is unapologetically emotionally manipulative.

The context makes a huge difference and we need to look at when and why he manipulates others as well as the fact that he does.

At the hero billboards, Hawks plays the heroes on stage as well as the crowd. He's trying to shift the mindset of, "oh yeah, just another hero ranking" to "wake up, mf's, things are changing and you better be ready to change, too!" Rocking the boat is a huge no-no in Japan. Despite being part of his “persona” there is still real social risk involved with this move but one that he deems necessary to turn heads and get gears turning. This is not just an elaborate ploy to get under Endeavor’s skin, but an effort to reach a wider audience while he has them captive.

He does use the public crowd around him and Endeavor before the Hood fight as an excuse for its appearance, but the original intent was to mentally prepare Endeavor for what was potentially (and proved to be) the fight of his life without outright telling him so he could maintain his undercover status. When he realizes he’s part of the reason for Endeavor’s permanent scar and life-threatening injuries, he feels remorse.

He lies to Jin to get information out of him, but linking back to #2, when calls Jin a good person and offers him a way out, he’s telling the truth. He does feel guilt for having to manipulate an otherwise well-meaning person and betraying them, especially given his long-running history of being used and the ongoing issues he suffers from because of it.

When he meets up again with Endeavor to drop his clues about the League’s movements, he squirms when he realizes the interns don’t know him well enough to know he’s blowing smoke because he does NOT want these kids to actually buy what he’s selling. This espionage mission is hard to navigate, and he has to tread carefully lest he setup the dominoes in the wrong places.

This is all to make the point that Hawks is more than capable of emotionally manipulating people, but it’s not in his nature or something he does to any and every person he comes across just because. We haven’t had much opportunity to see him operate outside of the HSPC’s orders which is where the bulk of the instances of his manipulation comes from - those orders requiring him to operate covertly and thus, by nature, necessitate lying, manipulation, and strategically withholding information. 

If anything, when he’s making an appeal to someone else as his own person - not as a hero on a mission- we actually see a level of vulnerability and transparency we don’t otherwise catch.

Though it’s technically canon-adjacent and not necessarily canon in and of itself, in My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission where he works with Bakugo and Midoriya he operates on a level of transparency with them we’re not used to seeing; and my theory is he took it as an opportunity to operate without ulterior motives and build report instead of bucking back against “training up the next generation of heroes” like he initially did with Tokoyami.

Which now actually segues better into the next point.

#4 Hawks never lets people get close to him.

There’s a surprising amount of evidence that Hawks wants the ability to be an open book. Back at Team Up Mission, the restaurant staff note he regularly takes people he likes to their establishment - so we’re basically told outright this is a special place to him reserved for enjoying himself and only people he likes get to share it with him - so we already know what that says about how he sees those two despite their sparse interactions. We already know he’s taken Endeavor there when Endeavor made no move to input as to where he wanted to have the lunch meeting.

Though he kept Tokoyami at arm’s length initially, we have at least three canon instances of him sharing personal interactions with him with other canon-adjacent indications he cares for and values his intern. We’ve readily established that while Endeavor may not consider himself close to Hawks, Hawks does hold Endeavor as near and dear to his heart. While his only mission regarding Twice was to get information out of him, he still made a genuine effort to help and save him because he wanted to and considered him a friend despite the circumstances.

We still don’t know very much of Hawk’s past, his personal relationships outside of work, etc.; but despite the HPSC’s extensive efforts to strip him of his identity he not only possesses a faceted, complicated personality but seems to want to share that with others readily when and in the ways he’s able. Getting into the truly squishy, vulnerable parts of him may take a while, but on a scale of closed to open, he seems to lean towards open.

#5 Hawks is hopelessly in love with Dabi and will abandon everything up to this point for him.

This isn't to throw general DabiHawks shippers under the bus. Most of them know VERY well at this point that canon has sunk that ship, and they're just having fun with it at this point - and you know what, power to you! They look great together! In another life, the character chemistry could have been incredible. There’s a lot of great DabiHawks shipping content I thoroughly enjoy despite not shipping it myself.

It just isn't canon. It never was and never came close. Even now, with the Endeavor reveal being very much imminent, Hawks' view of Dabi is one of a lying, malicious, callous, murderer. Though he’ll likely be crushed at the revelation of what Endeavor’s done, that doesn’t equate to him defecting (especially not immediately) and falling into Dabi’s arms.

And Dabi hates Hawks just as much.

Again, this is not anything against the ship or the shippers - just an annoyance I have with some who were so wrapped up in the ship they were genuinely mad when the ship sank and they dragged that frustration out into the real world against real people when canon didn’t align with fanon. 

Ships are some of the most stupid things to rail against creators and fans over, and the amount of harassment they receive now over shipping has me ripping my hair out when I know it’s a mere fraction of the total pool of shippers who are frothing at the mouth while the rest are super cool and happy doing their own thing and keeping to themselves.

Ship what you want, regardless of “validating evidence” and have fun. Don’t make it others’ problem when it isn’t canonically validated.

#6 Hawks is a dirty cop.

Only half upset with this one because it comes down to the nuance and lack of precise definition of this phrase I have a problem with. Lots of people hate cops for very real, legitimate reasons. Police forces - being a voluntary, government-employed force enforcing government rule - are notoriously prone to corruption of every kind.

It's implied the HPSC is itself corrupt, though to what extent we don't know. (Granted, buying a young child from his family to raise as your personal puppet is pretty high up there.) By continuing to follow orders from the HPSC and not vehemently fighting back, many see him as reinforcing a corrupt institution and at least partially liable for their continued hold on society. 

Fair enough, but... The issue I have with this is it reduces Hawks to his job.

I believe a huge chunk of this take comes from my experience as an armed service member spouse, but it's easy for me to empathize with a guy

Who was promised the moon for himself and his family in exchange for his service not realizing what was actually being asked of him

Is praised outside the organization for "being a hero" and "upholding this country's core values" while first-hand witnessing the corruption of it when inside

Is viewed as a cog valuable only in services rendered instead of being treated like a human by said organization and worked into the ground because of it

Is frustrated by the insistence to keep the status quo instead of improving procedure/infrastructure/environment because egos need to be padded over real, human problems being solved

Has his autonomy or otherwise ability to operate under his own judgement restricted in favor of maintaining organizational control at the cost of effective action

Has DEPENDENTS who rely on his continued work to provide for them and is thus unable to refuse an order, even when it's morally reprehensible and even outright illegal

Whose cries, both those calculated and desperate, to the organization (who have placed themselves as the sole resource he can turn to) for help (even for his own body/mind) fall on deaf ears until he breaks to the point of becoming unusable or dangerous - and even then minimal effort/responsibility is taken in favor of keeping him functioning in the organization as long as possible.

Hawks fights back against the HPSC constantly. He raised concerns over letting civilians suffer to get him in with the League of Villains and then still defied orders by reducing casualties to zero. Despite orders to keep his mission top secret, he's informed Endeavor of his motives/movements independently from the rest of the heroes. He had long refused to take an intern (read: fresh meat for the machine) to train until this year, and even then sought to minimize his encouragement of Tokoyami for as long as possible until he realized Tokoyami was made of the real mettle people needed in a hero and not just another youngster endangering himself on a pipe dream.

He even takes initiative to keep his personal to-do list from the HPSC to a minimum by squashing problems before they come knocking asking him to fix it for them. He knew of the League of Villains and anticipated the escalation of their movements immediately after the USJ incident as well as has a network of informants and connections with local police forces to stay in the know.

His methods for apprehension of criminals are, and continue to be, to react and detain them so quickly they can't retaliate or endanger others in the struggle, thus minimizing human loss and injury despite the insinuation the HPSC has told him that gloves are off in the current situation.

He might be "a cop" depending on the definition we go with, but he isn't a dirty cop. He doesn't plant evidence. He doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn't blindly take orders. He largely doesn't see "villains" as dirt under his shoe but as people pushed to extremes. He's a morally convicted individual trying to rebel within the system instead of tearing it down outright. He may be wrong in the assumption, but he genuinely believes he can do more on the inside of the system than outside.

#7 Hawks is a manwhore.

Ok, this one is not serious and actually just to end this all on a lighter note after ranting until I'm blue in the face. 

I'm 100% guilty of this myself. Something about that chicken makes me and many others salivate - either for themselves or to watch him with someone else. We love dressing him up slutty, portray him as flirting unashamedly, and placing him in as many overtly sexual scenarios possible.

The best part about all of it, though, is that it’s almost the exact opposite of how he dresses/conducts himself in canon. His clothes are loose fitting and high-coverage. He’s personable, but never gives any indication he’s romantically/sexually involved or interested in anyone. The asscourse is real only because we cannot confirm either way due to his baggy clothes. His overall figure/body shape has been hinted at, but only recently confirmed; and his jacket had to be literally be burned off to get a good look at the pattern of his shirt under it!

~~~~~~~

And with that, I release the frustration and move on. 

Enjoy fanon as much as you like - even I do! Just be aware of where canon and fanon diverge, and definitely don’t take the difference out on real people. Please also be aware of how others hold their favorite characters dear before flooding the general tags with negativity and creating a hostile environment for them. People latch onto their “comfort characters” for a plethora of reasons, and when they lose that character to the plot, the fandom, or otherwise, they should still be allowed to grieve and celebrate what they had in a safe environment. 

Retaliation in response to others coming against your favorite is also not acceptable behavior. It sucks, but the most mature thing to do is step away from the general fandom, stick to blogs/spaces you know are safe, and let the storm blow over. Comfort characters do not justify mistreating real people no matter how much they may mean to you.

When “canon gets it wrong” is where fanfiction and pockets of the fandom community comes into play. Leave those people alone and let them be. For those who aligned themselves with canon, they are not free game to take personal frustrations out on. Leave those people alone and let them be. Unfollow the people/tags you need to for your own sake and others’, and the fandom will be a better place all around over time. Venting belongs in controlled spaces away from the rest of the fandom and with enough warning for those who not only don’t want to endure it but who for their own safety shouldn’t.

Fandom is a community, and healthy communities do not endorse members lashing out when they don’t get their way.

[freebooter4ever]

Here is the request, a beautiful heartwarming rendition of Eugene Sledge losing his virginity to Snafu, but set in the AU where Snaf and Sledge met before the war in Mobile while Snaf was working on the docks. Now, two years later they meet again on Pavuvu with Snaf a war-torn experienced marine and new replacement Sledge still very adorable and naive, and after after some brief hostility due to Snaf being an emotionally constipated dumbass, they work out their issues and have some fun. Thanks to @lieblinggs who really wanted to see them meet during the war in this AU and encouraged me.

Apologies in advance, I tried, I’m not sexy, my specialty is fluff and humor you guys....this is the last time anyone’s gonna ask me to write smut ever again lol. The secondhand embarrassment might be Hard with this one.

 Snafu is a ghost after Gloucester. The rain washed away all traces of his personality entirely and left him with very little to work with. He spends his days on Pavuvu avoiding doing anything, and he watches the slow progress of the healing sores on his skin like it's the final lap of the Indy 500.

He doesn't think about the future, all he knows at camp is warmth, his soft pillow, and the food he gets three times a day. After weeks of exhaustion, aches, and cold, he is finally comfortable. There's nothing much else on his mind besides that. 

Then Eugene Sledge walks into his tent.

Eugene Sledge arrives on a ship, and with the ship comes the daily mail bags, and in the mail comes a newspaper clipping from Snafu's home town. As if one helping of guilt wasn't enough and he needs another to balance it. The article from home, delivered minutes before Eugene walked back into his life, only brings half-guilt though. It says nothing of Mairzy, who is probably still safe in Mobile. And instead says everything about Snafu. And his heroism on Gloucester.

That brings a little bit of pride which eases the sting of the guilt over leaving his sister behind.

He tries to focus on the letter and the newspaper clipping instead of the boy standing in his tent, with his crooked helmet hanging off his ginger hair. After Gloucester, Snafu can barely focus on anything at all. The five minutes when Eugene tries to claim a bunk in their tent is an outlier. Snafu's entire reason for being narrows in focus, and it becomes imperative that Eugene not live in the same space. He needs to convince Burgie of this, though Burgie unquestioningly plays along with the disdain Snafu started easily enough.

It's been two years since he saw Eugene Sledge. They did not part well. Snafu isn't so good with goodbyes.

"Understatement," Sledge mutters in the chow line behind Snafu later that day.

Snafu had just got done explaining all this history to Burgie while they waited for their flood, and Snafu hadn't even noticed Eugene was there, eavesdropping on them. Snafu's constant state of physical awareness must be slipping within the relative safety of Pavuvu.

Burgie takes one look at Sledge, and one look at Snafu. "I don't know what this is about and I don't care, but please make sure I still have an entire squad standing and in fighting fit by the end of it," he warns. And with that he collects his food and makes a run for it, leaving Snafu to face the music on his own.

Snafu turns around, and meets Eugene's eyes, and sees blank emptiness. Eugene isn't even angry. Snafu had hoped Eugene would be angry. That he would hate Snafu to the ends of the earth. 

Neither of them say anything. They just engage in a silent stare down until someone behind them in line asks what's the hold up. Eugene turns around to apologize and Snafu ducks underneath the serving table and disappears behind the mess tent.

Snafu is in danger of saying something stupid. He can sense it, bubbling up in him like alka-seltzer in coke. One look in Eugene's damn eyes and he's falling in love all over again.

In retaliation for Eugene sneaking up on him, Snafu finds the skipper who always invents the worst work duties. Sure enough all it takes is some idle chitchat to convince the skipper that now is the time to clean out the oil barrels. Snafu offers to oversee the work, and suggests a couple new Boots to assign the task to, and the rest is history.

Eugene gets angry at him then. He glares prettily at Snafu from underneath his elbow while scrubbing drums. There's something else burning beneath that anger. Snafu can sense it in the way Eugene's gaze lingers on the movement of Snafu's hips - in how sometimes Snafu turns around only to catch Eugene looking away.

Otherwise Snafu avoids Sledge like the plague.

He does a pretty good job of it. Until the day Sledge disappears.

As Snafu walks by a tent he overhears one of the officers complaining that Sledge hasn't been seen since lunch. Apparently the boy skipped out on dinner and coconut detail. Which is an understandable thing to skip - nobody willingly subjects themselves to the smell and texture of rotten coconuts. Sledge's disappearance makes sense. Unless one knows Sledge, and knows he would never shirk duty no matter how unpleasant.

Snafu also knows something else the officer didn't consider and maybe Sledge didn't even know - certain members of How company were scheduled to rotate home this morning. As far as Snafu knew, their ship already left dock. So it doesn't take much to guess where Eugene might be.

He finds Eugene sitting on an empty cot in Phillip's old tent. Eugene is holding a book in his hands but he isn't reading it. His head hangs between his shoulders in defeat. He doesn't acknowledge Snafu when Snafu steps into the tent, even though Snafu's shadow falls over him with the harsh evening light so low in the sky.

Snafu hesitates to enter so he hovers in the doorway. There is a second cot across the room. But there is also a little sliver of space next to Eugene on the first cot that Snafu knows he could squeeze his butt onto if he tried.

"Left alone again?" Snafu asks. He tries to sound sympathetic.

Eugene looks up. He clearly did not expect the person in the doorway to be Snafu. And - oh! - Eugene's eyes are full of hope. Snafu makes his decision. He crosses the room and sits next to Eugene. They're so close there isn't an inch of space between them.

Snafu turns his head and rests his nose on Eugene's shoulder. He closes his eyes, and breathes.

He missed how Eugene smelled

"You'd think I'd be used to being the type to be left behind by now," Eugene gripes.

Snafu snorts. "It ain't you," he mumbles into Eugene's shoulder, "It's us. We're just dicks."

"Sidney is not a dick."

"But I am?"

"Jury's still out on that one"

Snafu grins. He turns his hips in towards Eugene so he can wrap his arms around his waist and press closer in a sort of half hug. "Guess it's a good thing you're fond of my dick, then." He kisses Eugene's neck, "You certainly felt me up enough times. Remember the day under the bridge by your house?"

Eugene sighs in exasperation and tilts his head back, "God, Merriell."

"Jury out on that one too? Cause if you need me to jog your memory…"

"Why didn't you say goodbye?" Eugene interrupts, "Why did I wake up one morning to find your house empty and Mairzy alone?"

Snafu holds Eugene and thinks about that one for a bit. He finally surmises, "You would have asked why I was enlisting."

"Why were you enlisting?" Eugene asks.

"For you," Snafu admits. He turns his face in towards Eugene's neck. Takes another deep breath. If he doesn't face Eugene, Snafu can pretend the man next to him is still the same boy who skipped class every day to bicycle down to the docks where Snafu worked, and kiss him behind the pilings.

"I would have stopped you," Eugene says.

"I know."

They sit in silence for another beat, and then Eugene asks a second question, "You fought in the same battle on Gloucester, you must have some insight. Why didn't Sid tell me goodbye?"

Snafu takes a deep breath and debates giving Eugene the real answer. 

He doesn't think you're going to live. Keeping attachments is a hazard here.

"If you were at those same battles," Snafu concludes quietly, "You'd realize there's no room for thought, and no insight to be had."

Eugene nods, "Guess I'll learn." He sounds scared.

Snafu tightens his hold around Eugene's waist.

During another long silence Snafu works up the courage to ask a question he's been wondering for two years.

"Did you love him?"

The question seems to genuinely startle Eugene. And then the dots connect. "Sid?" Eugene asks, "Of course I loved him. He's my best and oldest friend in the whole world."

It's Snafu's turn to nod, resigned. He rests his forehead on Eugene's back.

"But also…" Eugene says quietly, "No. I didn't love him like I loved you. God Mer, I never loved anyone like I loved you."

Snafu sits up so he can look Eugene in the eye, "You loved me?"

"Yes," Eugene says, smiling back, "Not that you gave me much chance to."

Snafu grins.

"What about you?" Eugene asks, "Still carrying a torch for me or did you find some girl in Melbourne too?"

Snafu leans back, his smile widens, "Who said anything about girls?"

"Sid slept with some woman in Australia," Eugene says.

"You jealous?" Snafu asks.

Eugene ignores him. "Sid claims war is the opposite of that...the opposite of sex, he means. I guess. I wouldn't know anything about either," Eugene says. He sounds grumpy.

Snafu laughs, "Sex ain't all it's cracked up to be."

"You're saying it should be closer on the scale to war?"

"No, I'm saying some parts are great but there's a lot of bullshit that goes with it," Snafu explains, "I wouldn't use it as a benchmark."

"Did you sleep with someone in Melbourne?" 

"I'm not a virgin, Eugene. Not now; not in melbourne; nor was I two years ago when I met you."

Eugene abruptly stands up from the cot. He wipes his hands on his pants. His palms are red and Snafu bets if he touches them, they'd be hot.

Snafu leans back on the cot and surveys Eugene.

"So what part's the bullshit, then?" Eugene demands, "In sex?"

Snafu shrugs nonchalantly, "You try growing up queer in New Orleans where the only men who'll fuck you are the older ones who insist you keep silent about it. Who treat you like the dirt you live in."

"Men who were ashamed of you?" Eugene asks, "Like you accused me of being?"

"Ashamed of me and of themselves," Snafu replies, "Don't care about anyone's pleasure except their own. Can make sex real unpleasant sometimes. And once it gets associated with pain, real hard to seperate it."

"Mer, why would you…?"

"Better than nothing. When you're alone," Snafu kicks his legs onto the cot and lies down with his hands behind his head, "Don't deserve better anyway. I can take the bullshit." He looks at the tent canvas and listens to the sound of the rainstorm pounding hard on the roof.

He can't see Eugene but Eugene doesn't stop watching him.

"So what's at your other end then?" Eugene asks, "For you, what is opposite war on the spectrum of human experience?"

Snafu contemplates quietly for a few minutes and then says, "Do you remember that night I got so drunk that you hunted me down, found me, took me home, and let me sleep in your bed? And you went to school and I stayed under your covers all day? And I didn't have to get up for nothing except to have food served at my door. Just laid in bed for hours and read all your journals."

"You read my journals?" Eugene says incredulously.

"They were enlightening," Snafu turns his head and lifts his chin to smirk at him.

"They were at least ninety percent about botany," Eugene protests, "Completely boring."

"And the other ten percent provided detailed descriptions of every handsome man who ever walked into your life," Snafu claims.

"Sometimes it's easier to describe what I see with words than draw," Eugene says defensively.

"Anyway," Snafu continues and looks back at the ceiling, "I laid around reading your horny thorny journals till you came home. And you crawled into bed with me. And you held me and kissed me. And introduced me to your parents. And they liked me, though I think they liked Mairzy better." He sighs and closes his eyes. He can still smell Eugene's room from that day. "That memory is what's on the other end," Snafu tells him.

"Mer…"

"Ain't ever loved anybody like I loved you," Snafu throws Eugene's own words back at him and smiles.

In a rush, Eugene bends down, grabs the lapels of Snafu's shirt, and kisses him passionately. Snafu barely has time to react. 

"Shit, I forgot. " Too soon Eugene switches gears, wrenches his face away, and drops Snafu like a live grenade. Eugene lunges towards the tent door and knocks it shut. He peers through the mosquito netting before covering it with the canvas flap.

Snafu laughs. "Nobody's gonna be out in this storm. Nothing to be worried about," he says. He lolls his head back and resists rolling his eyes.

"Yeah and who knows how long the rain's gonna last," Eugene says as he unrolls the canvas covers of all the tent windows.

"It's gonna get hot in here if you do that," Snafu points out.

"Do you want to be court martialed?" Eugene asks.

"Depends," Snafu says, "What exactly will we be getting up to in here to merit it? Will it be worth my while?" He waggles his eyebrows.

Eugene finishes the last tent flap, steps over the debris and trash on the floor, and makes his way back to the cot to stand in front of Snafu.

"Before I go to war, I want to know what the other end of the spectrum is like," Eugene announces. He carefully places his hands on Snafu's shoulders, and then straddles his lap.

Snafu sits up, slides his hands over Eugene's hips and along his back.

"Besides, you've been teasing me since the minute I got here," Eugene accuses, "Time to follow through."

Snafu huffs.

"Are you telling me the oil barrels wasn't your idea?" Eugene asks, "And staying to watch me sweat? That was all on you."

"Ain't denying it," Snafu says, leaning in close, his eyes on Eugene's lips.

"So shut up and kiss me, then," Eugene says.

Every single bit of Snafu wants to. He runs his hands around to feel the flat of Eugene's stomach, no longer soft after all that bootcamp training. Slowly Snafu rucks Eugene's shirt up over his head. It gets tossed to the extra cot behind them.

Snafu keeps Eugene in his lap with a steadying hand on the small of his back. With his free hand he lifts the dog tags hanging around Eugene's neck.

"You got what you wanted," Snafu says. He runs his fingers over the name. First Marines. Bondurant.

Eugene smiles thinly and shakes his head, "You're a little behind on your intel." His hand closes around Snafu's hand holding the dog tags. He gently takes them away and swings the chain over his shoulder. "This is what I wanted," Eugene whispers right before he cradles Snafu's face and kisses him.

Snafu kisses back. He kisses back hard enough to drown out all his conflicted thoughts. If Eugene wants this, he can give it to him. And it feels good. He can add this to his list of comfort - warmth, sleep, food, and the feel of Eugene moving in his lap, Eugene's lips on his neck, Eugene's hands in his hair.

Oddly enough it's Eugene who breaks the kiss. Snafu moans as Eugene pulls away and climbs off Snafu's lap. Snafu tries to follow but he doesn't get far. Eugene gently places a hand on his shoulder to stop him. And then steps back.

Snafu watches as Eugene's hands undo his own belt and then the button of his dungarees. Eugene drops the pants to the ground and steps on them to pull them off his feet. He dips his fingers into the waistband of his underwear and slides them along the hem, looking nervous.

"We can stop," Snafu reassures him, "Or you can keep those on and go right back to kissing me. Don't gotta go any further than that."

Eugene silently thumbs the waistband and in one swoop, shoves them to the ground. When he tries to get his feet out of his clothes this time, he stumbles, and Snafu has to catch him before he falls over.

It's the first time Snafu touches Eugene's bare butt. And he can't help but giggle a little.

Eugene smiles too. He stands in front of Snafu and fidgets shyly. Snafu grabs Eugene's bouncing hand and tugs him closer. Closer till Snafu's nose bumps against Eugene's stomach.

"This ok?" Snafu asks. He tilts his head back to look at Eugene while he runs his hand up the inside of Eugene's thigh.

Eugene nods enthusiastically and mutters something under his breath.

"Sorry, couldn't hear that?" Snafu grins. He switches to touching Eugene's other leg - up the thigh and around his butt. Eugene's still got a death grip going on Snafu's right hand.

"Yes, Mer, it's more than okay. I thought you were old hat at this, do I have to spell it out for you or…? Oh!" Eugene shudders into silence.

Snafu's throat is unusually dry whether from anticipation or - dare he say it - nerves. Snafu has to swallow and lick his lips a few times to get everything to go smooth. He's never been nervous going down on someone before, but Eugene is...Eugene. Snafu wants this first time to be as perfect as Gene himself. 

Eugene, for his part, is watching Snafu with heavy lidded awe and looking as if he's about to faint. He groans and starts to sag where he stands.

Snafu pulls off. He gets up and puts his arms around Eugene to stabilize him. "Why don't you lie down?" he suggests.

Instead Eugene kisses him. He grips Snafu's hips, brings them both together, and kisses him desperately until neither of them can breathe.

"Gene…" Snafu smiles, "Gene, lie down. I'll take care of you."

Eugene doesn't listen. He tugs Snafu's shirt off and makes quick work of the button on Snafu's dungarees. Snafu stumbles with his pants around his ankles and Eugene actually fucking lifts Snafu off the ground by his waist so he can kick his legs free.

"Eugene…!" Snafu almost laughs.

"I won't drop you," Eugene promises, still holding him tight. He gets an arm underneath Snafu's ass and hefts him higher.

They kiss again, with Snafu suspended in the air, naked against Gene's body like some dramatic movie ending where the music swells and everything fades to black. 

If this was a movie, they could skip all the ugly parts and he and Gene could go home.

"Lie down, let me take care of you," Snafu repeats. He pulls away from their kiss and stares into Gene's pretty dark eyes and waits for him to listen. Eugene has a habit of giving way to Snafu's expertise.

Sure enough, Eugene reluctantly releases his hold on Snafu and stretches out on the cot. His hands immediately reattach themselves to Snafu's hips when Snafu straddles him. Eugene looks calm and his unfaltering trust is a lot of responsibility laid on Snafu's narrow shoulders.

It takes a minute to line everything up properly. When Snafu sinks down onto Eugene's lap, he screws his eyes shut from the pain, but he hears Gene moan in pleasure. Snafu breathes through it, and keeps going. Till Gene's warm hands interrupt by sliding gently around his waist. Eugene sits up and refuses to let Snafu sink down on him again, holding his body still.

"Mer, are you alright?" Eugene asks.

"'M fine," Snafu mumbles, "Just takes a bit to loosen up. Not a lot to work with here on Pavuvu. Let me go."

"You looked like you were in pain."

"A good kind.."

"No! Merriell...just...stop…I refuse to hurt you" Eugene kisses him tenderly.

Snafu squirms. "Hold on…" Snafu crawls off Gene's lap and staggers to his feet, feeling a little off balance, "You said this was How Company's bunk right?"

"Yeah?" Eugene says, confused.

"Had a buddy in here," Snafu says. He wanders around the tent, kicking at trash and opening boxes, "He might'a left something…"

"A buddy?" Eugene sounds unimpressed.

"Do you want to fuck me or not?" Snafu asks, lifting a small container triumphantly. He tosses it to Eugene who unscrews the lid and looks inside.

"I do," Eugene says.

"Then don't ask about buddys," Snafu replies, "None of them matter. Haven't been with anybody since Gloucester anyway."

"I guess I should be grateful you know what you're doing," Eugene says, handing him the container.

The container is mostly empty, but there's enough to make things slide easy. This time Eugene rolls Snafu over onto his back and settles between his legs. He fucks Snafu slowly, watching his face for the first long while, as if making sure Snafu isn't hiding pain from him again. And oh boy does it feel good now, in a leisurely, drawn out, intense kinda way. Snafu enjoys every minute of it. 

To his surprise. 

It used to be the opposite. With the other guys it was usually quick. The faster he gets this part over, the faster he can jerk himself off and be done with it. But Eugene keeps hitting parts inside him that Snafu did not even know existed. Fuck reading journals, Snafu wants to do this for hours in Eugene's bed instead. Luckily Eugene is in no rush. 

He seems more focused on kissing Snafu than getting off. At one point Gene slips out and he hardly notices, too busy sucking on his face. It's up to Snafu, grinning stupidly, to break the kiss briefly and line him up again.

Snafu hasn't been this sensitive around his ass for ages. All it takes is for Eugene to push up against him even lightly and Snafu is goddamn writhing underneath him. It's ridiculous. Normally he keeps a safe disconnect between that general area and his brain.

But - oh!

Fuck.

Eugene is turning that disconnect into a thing of the past.

Snafu thinks he must have moaned or something because Eugene pauses briefly and holds himself over Snafu, smiling goofily.

"Why'd you stop?" Snafu pants.

"Wanted to watch you," Eugene grins back.

"Fuck, Eugene," Snafu complains, drawing Eugene's name out in a groan, his legs still moving even though Eugene is doing nothing but lying there like a hard slippery dense rock between them.

"I think Sid might be right," Eugene says.

"You are not talking about Sidney Fucking Philips right now…"

"This is the most amazing experience of my life," Eugene brags, leaning in to kiss Snafu's neck and running his hand down Snafu's side as Snafu arches up into the touch.

"Shut the fuck up, Sledge," Snafu gripes.

"Mmm, no, I won't," Eugene hums against Snafu's collarbone, "You love it. I've seen you now. I know."

"Fuck, Gene! Please."

Eugene's hand slides between their bodies and strokes Snafu's cock - fucking adoringly - if a hand job could even be adoring - and, fuck all it takes is one second before Snafu loses total control, and much to everyone's surprise, cum squirts high and shoots far enough to hit Gene in the chin.

Snafu stares at Eugene, wide eyed with shock, and maybe a little embarrassment.

Eugene laughs. He gathers Snafu up even tighter in his arms, buries his face in his hair, and whispers, "I love you," his voice full of delight.

Snafu is slowly drifting back to earth, though he can feel his mouth still gaping like a fish. "You ain't done yet."

"I got too distracted by you," Gene replies. He slowly starts rolling his hips into Snafu again.

Snafu rolls his eyes at the sentiment.

Eugene pistons into him erratically, like he's chasing a high he doesn't quite understand how to reach. Feeling a sudden burst of inspiration, Snafu maneuvers Eugene to where he can hold Gene's face in his hands, wipe off the cum dripping down his neck, and then asks, in a serious voice, "Sledge?"

"Yeah?" Eugene responds.

"Hammer me."

Eugene bites his lip to keep from laughing and he presses his forehead to Snafu's but he starts to go at it a little more rhythmically. Snafu keeps his eyes open to watch it happen. He sees when Sledge hits the tipping point and starts pounding into him desperately. And sees when Eugene finally climaxes in a series of moans and breathy whispers of Snafu's name.

They collapse together in a slippery mess.

As could be predicted, Eugene is a snuggler and he clings to Snafu like a long-limbed sloth. He even falls asleep. And snores. Snafu curls around him and wiggles his fingers through Gene's hair to smooth all the knots out. That takes him a good long while. Eventually the rain stops. Gene sleeps on.

Burgie accidentally steps into the tent for a brief second. After the initial moment of shocked staring, he pivots to face the wall and casts his eyes to the ceiling.

Snafu's fight or flight instinct kicks in because Burgie is not leaving. Despite Sledge's bare ass being on display between Snafu's very naked legs.

"Well, that's a relief," Burgie comments idly, "I take it this means we won't be having any more personal problems among our mortar squad?"

"Right as rain, Burgie," Snafu drawls.

"Good," Burgie nods at the wall, his tone is friendly, "I'll tell the skipper you're both indisposed tonight. See you in the morning, Snaf." And then he leaves, shutting the door tight behind him.

The sound wakes Eugene up, finally.

Gene squints, and looks around himself like he's lost. His eyes finally settle on Snafu and his whole expression goes soft. He melts over Snafu's body languidly and props his chin on Snafu's chest.

"Yeah, after this I'm gonna have to move my benchmark. Take this into consideration as the most amazing indescribable experience ever," Eugene says.

He's looking so full of himself and smiley that Snafu would be tempted to take him down a peg or two if Gene wasn't also so irresistible.

"You can journal about it," Snafu suggests.

Gene snorts a laugh. He kisses Snafu's sternum gently.

Snafu stretches, his body starting to ache from lying around so long. He tickles Eugene's neck till he rolls off him in a fit of giggles. "Gonna have to change my nickname," Snafu says, "SNAFO. Situation Normal All Fucked Out."

"That will never catch on," Eugene argues. His hand starts exploring Snafu's body and is awfully close to reaching between his thighs again.

"Gene!" Snafu laughs. He flexes his hips and hums when Eugege's delicate fingers rub him lightly. He's still soft, but honestly, with Eugene, it probably wouldn't take much. "That wasn't a challenge."

"You sure about that?" Eugene asks impishly, "Cause I'm prepared to take it as one."

Snafu rolls on top of him and sits up. He pins Eugene's arms over his head playfully.

"Least we got a new nickname for you outta this," Snafu points out.

'What's that?" Gene asks.

"Sledgehammer."

"If you dare…" Eugene starts in a mock serious tone, "...to call me that in front of any of the men...I'll...I'll…"

"You'll what?" Snafu taunts.

"I'll kiss you in public," Eugene says, "In full view of everybody."

"You won't," Snafu calls his bluff.

"Maybe not, but I'll want to," Eugene says, "Every time you call me that I'll want to."

"Sledgehammer," Snafu drawls, taunting.

Eugene smiles, pulls him into a kiss, and Eugene's 'first time' quickly transitions into his 'second time'.

Snafu doesn't push the boundaries of the nickname. He only uses it in private, when he can whisper in Eugene's ear and Eugene can bend down to kiss him silly.

They search out places they can be alone. It isn't too difficult to do but the farther they wander from civilization, the less hospitable the environment is. After a few days of discovering how uncomfortable sand can be in sensitive areas of the body, and a few 'times' of almost getting caught by fellow Marines less friendly than Burgin, Snafu comes up with the bright idea to borrow old tent material and use it as a blanket. They hike through the jungle to an isolated beach cove and stretch the stained canvas over the sand.

"Does it keep getting better every time?" Eugene asks Snafu afterwards.

They're lying on top of each other, still naked and sweaty. Snafu is itching for a smoke. He reaches for his pants, but Eugene, knowing exactly what he is going for, places a gentle hand on his shoulder to stop him.

Snafu grunts and shifts so he's nestled more snugly between Eugene's legs. He works out his craving on Eugene's neck, and takes great pleasure in sucking a hickey in a place Eugene can't possibly hide.

"I'm wondering how often I'll need to move that benchmark," Eugene continues.

"As if I'm the expert?" Snafu asks.

"You are the one with more experience here…" Eugene says.

"Not like this," Snafu lifts his head to stare into Gene's eyes, "Never had nothing like this, Sledgehammer."

There's a fire in Snafu and it's not lust. Or maybe partially, but another part, a deeply buried protective streak, desperately wants Eugene to keep this. This warm happy glow around sex. Cause Snafu's benchmark is moving too, in a direction he thought impossible, and the changes make him so dizzy he can barely keep up. Sometimes he forgets there was anything before this. That love and pleasure is as uncomplicated and joyous as Eugene believes it to be - completely unassociated with physical pain, with hatred. A total opposite to the carnage and destructive hell of war. 

The thought of losing Eugene to war makes Snafu nauseous, and yet it's a constant awareness in the back of his mind, coloring everything they do. Eugene, meanwhile, remains blissfully unaware.

And fuck, that's gonna change, and Snafu is powerless to stop it.

They're going into battle tomorrow. This is the last chance he'll get to lay around and relish in the feel of Eugene's bare unblemished skin against his.

Possibly the last chance ever, if Eugene joins ranks with one of the many many statistics.

So he forgoes smoking and pours all his attention into making Eugene moan every chance he gets. Let Eugene have this. Let him hold onto this.

"Sledgehammer," Snafu says when he finds Eugene standing alone on the deck of the ship carrying them into battle. The sun is setting, and Eugene is beautiful.

Gene responds with a kiss intense enough to be worthy of their last kiss. Snafu promises to stick by Eugene's side during the entire campaign. They don't talk about any other possibility.

As it turns out, the first time Snafu uses Eugene's nickname in front of K Company happens after Eugene saves Snafu's life. The minute Snafu says "Sledgehammer" out loud, Eugene looks at him slyly. And in that single glance, Snafu knows they both understand.

tagging request @xmxisxforxmaybe

[aconitemare]

[jaydick] Before That, And Colder

Chapter Four

AO3

Previous Chapter

Dick kicks his foot in the air repeatedly, inspecting the pink flowers on his white Oxfords. He’s pretending to ignore the people around him — possibly, he is actually ignoring them, as the outlines of their bodies blur around his fancy footwear. He leans farther back on Jason’s desk, conjuring the picture of ease. To his left rests Jason’s Red Hood helmet in a gargoyle-fashion. Everyone here knows Jason Todd is the Red Hood, but Dick is just Richie Grayson, D-list celebrity. The sleeves of his pretentiously silk bomber jacket, embroidered with colorful roosters, slip slightly down his shoulder. 

“Is this really the best time to be hiring people? Specifically this person?” This question comes from James — or “Wingman,” as Jason earlier informed him of. James is up-and-coming, bat-themed, Gotham-based vigilante who believes the Red Hood is absolutely critical to public safety. Dick has not yet shared this detail with Batman, having only received it an hour before this current meeting, but he’s hoping they’ll share a good laugh over that.

“No time like the present,” Jason says without much concern. He stands beside the desk, a few feet from Dick. 

Dick catches James crossing his arms from the corner of his eyes. The defensive body language convinces him to focus more on the arrangement of people. Suzie Su still sits on the recliner, seemingly indifferent. Her sisters, one of which Dick recognizes as the waitress who intercepted him and Miguel earlier, flock around Su either on the couch or near her armrest; all except for Night, Dick’s blackjack dealer yesterday, who now occupies a distant corner of the room by herself. Miguel sits in the recliner opposite Suzie Su, playing with his tie. James stands the closest to Dick and Jason and busies himself with looking like he eats nails for breakfast. 

“The son of Bruce Wayne is hardly a sound addition to the Outlaws,” James points out. 

Suzie Su’s head swivels towards Jason. “Oh, no,” she says, suddenly invested, “Whatever ‘the outlaws’ is, count me out of it. I’m going legit, you promised!”

Jason takes a page from Dick’s book and seats himself on the corner of his desk. He grips the edge, knees spread, so that he looks like he’s riding a horse. For an unstably diverse crowd, he’s rather at ease at the head of it, Dick notes. Jason holds up a silencing finger and begins his address, “Firstly, the Outlaws are too legit for any mere mortal to handle, that includes you, Su, so stuff it. Secondly, James, you can also stuff it because no one’s inviting Richie Rich onto the team except you, it would seem.”

So, does that mean I don’t get to see the Super Secret Clubhouse and make friendship bracelets? Dick almost says. Instead, he receives a text alert and checks his phone to see Bruce left him a message. 

What is your plan of action? it reads.

Dick quickly shoots back a non-committal text, wary of Jason sensing Batman’s concern through the phone. Luckily, Jason doesn’t pay Dick’s texting any mind, preoccupied with his stand-off against Wingman. 

James persists, undeterred by Jason’s skilled dismissal. “Batman isn’t exactly in your corner, Todd. He is, however, in Wayne’s pocket. As is Richie Grayson.”

Dick frowns; his current persona is apparently no longer a good fit. He will need to adjust accordingly. Dick sits up straighter on the desk and tucks his legs. “I have my own funds, as a matter of fact,” he speaks up. Jason’s eyes slice into him — oh, right, Dick’s not supposed to talk while meeting the in-laws. Oh, well. He continues, “I work for the Bludhaven Police Department.” 

Dick touches his jacket collar and inspects the interior fabrice. “I try to dress nice when there might be cameras so I don’t make Bruce look bad, but most of it’s bought off-price at Marshalls.” This last part is a lie as he rarely buys his own photo op clothes. Bruce has a personal stylist who keeps everyone’s wardrobe at the Manor stocked. Dick hit up his old bedroom on the way to the hotel. 

“You’re a cop,” James repeats. 

Dick holds back a wince. So much for Agent 37’s kick-ass undercover portfolio. “Every cop’s a little dirty in the ‘Haven,” he says, hopefully smoothly.

Unfortunately, James does not find this comforting. “So not only are you a cop who knows about the Iceberg’s business, but you’re not even a good cop?”

Dick points at Jason. “He murders people,” he deflects. 

Jason sighs obnoxiously loud. “Richie has information and contacts,” Jason increases his volume when James looks like he wants to say something else, “neither of which are anyone’s business at the moment but mine. Believe it or not, but I’m pretty attached to my life, in both a literal and figurative sense, and so if I say the guy from that one lady-service Pantene commercial is going to keep my organs safely inside my body, rest assured, I have done my research.”

This standing ovation inspires Dick to wonder whether Jason saw that commercial on cable or some other venue. He tries and fails to imagine Jason watching Friends reruns. Maybe he caught it off some gun review video on Youtube. This is the kind of media Dick assumes Jason consumes. 

“Great to know,” says Suzie Su flatly. “So, Richie, who’s trying to whack our boss?”

“No one yet. There have been no attempts on his life thus far,” Dick responds. Then, “Also, you can just call me Dick.”

“Shouldn’t be too tough,” Suzie Su remarks.

“The situation will escalate, though,” James states,  “There is no doubt that Red Hood is the final target.”

“Correct. Which is why it’s important that we trust each other,” Dick says. He levels a gaze at everyone in the room except for James, which should indicate to him that he’s the object of criticism without presenting Dick as outwardly hostile. “If we are too busy suspecting each other without any evidence, we allow for outside threats to slip past our radar.” Dick can only hope they will take this to heart; it will be harder for him to investigate Jason’s people if they’re also investigating him.  

“Truth,” Miguel agrees as he stands to his feet and walks towards Dick. “Although it kind of worked out for us this time, right? You following me, us following you?” As he approaches, he extends a hand and Dick dismounts from the desk. “Welcome to the team, Dick,” Miguel says, clapping Dick on the shoulder as they shake. His smile is warm and sincere. Dick feels an equally genuine grin spread across his face. 

“Alright, alright,” Jason says, leaning from his spot on the desk to bat an arm at them. “What did I just say about teams, dude,” he gripes. Miguel shrugs rather blithely before he returns to his chair. Dick appreciates what he hopes will be the one easy-going personality in this tense bunch. 

Jason claps his hands together and stands. “Okay, here’s the deal: I want someone always watching my vehicle for the next, fuck, two weeks, I guess? One week?” He looks to Dick for confirmation. Dick mouths, ‘longer.’ “One week to start, cool,” Jason locks in his answer. “I don’t mean from the cameras, as I really am hoping to catch this person ASAP and get back to my regularly scheduled gangbanging.”

Dick watches the crowd: Miguel gives a whoop, Suzie Su rolls her eyes, one of the sisters not standing in the corner laughs. 

“So, that means I need you,” Jason flourishes his arm in the air and brings it dramatically down like a hammer, finger pointing sharply at Miguel, “to physically be in the parking lot.”

Miguel looks around in bafflement. “I’m the owner. That would look weird,” he says, gesturing towards himself.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure everyone is lining up for your autograph, too, now come off it. No one here is instantly recognizable except for me, and that’s mostly to do with the helmet,” Jason pats the helmet beside him emphatically, “giving me serious red Darth Vader vibes.”

Dick suppresses a laugh. Jason hears him anyway, but that turns out to be not so bad. Jason’s eyes flicker towards him but they’re absent of reproach, which is how Dick realizes he had expected to be growled at for his humor. But Jason made the joke, didn’t he? He goes so far as to smile, not threateningly, but pleasantly. Dick wants to call it soft even. 

Jason’s eyes are back on the ragtag team within the second. He explains properly his reasoning to Miguel. “The subject’s abilities and target range are unknown to us. You’re our safest bet for handling whatever he might be capable of. And you can wear whatever you want.” Dick assumes that last bit is weighted with the implication of a supersuit, although Miguel’s secret identity may very well be known considering the lack of visible confusion on anyone’s face. Of course, that could just be indifference; no one in this room seems particularly interested in each other. 

“If you see someone snooping, wait it out. If you see someone put something on my bike, apprehend them and bring them to me where I can then proceed to shoot their brains out,” Jason instructs. Dick tries to say something, but Jason says over his attempt, “If they’re guilty.”

“Not really the problem,” Dick mutters. 

“The Su Brigade can, I don’t know, keep doing what you’re doing, I guess? Keep an eye on suspicious figures.”

Dick chimes in, “This time, however, immediately report to Jason or myself. Don’t rush in unless the threat is urgent. Don’t,” he motions to James, “text James, or whatever it is you guys did. That was sloppy and uncoordinated.”

James shifts his weight more evenly. Dick instantly recognizes the implicit challenge and straightens his back. “Text you, huh? What, you the boss now?”

Dick files through his possible responses, weighs the best tone to take, the stance to adopt. Should he pick up the gauntlet and try to assert dominance, or go for diplomacy? He doubts this will come to blows, but the direction he takes this could have later consequences, could affect Jason’s safety even in the long-run. 

Dick almost misses the change in Jason’s posture, but it’s instantaneous. “He’s close enough,” Jason has already spoken, no longer leaning against the desk but standing with his hands deceptively plunged into his jeans pockets and his searing green eyes locked on James. “More the boss than you are, at any rate, so yeah, I’d text him.” He sounds almost casual, accent set in a lazy Gotham drawl, yet there’s an angered click to how he sets his teeth. He’s intimidating, alright, the sharp cut of his cheeks complementing his strong jaw. He’s quite Hollwood-esque actually, Dick thinks — at least before he realizes Jason is looking right back at him. Jason raises his eyebrows and spins his fingers in a prompting manner. “Well? Anything else you’d like to derail the meeting with, Dick?”

And just like that, Jason manages to personally undermine the power he just gave him. Dick is bordering on impressed, restrained only by his sudden irritation. Dick simply smiles and says, “You’re the boss.”

“Fantastic. James! How do you feel about interrogating people you can’t beat up?” Jason proposes to the next member of the non-team. 

Dick thinks James could question people without beating them up just fine, especially after the practice he got in while interrogating Dick. James doesn’t comment on whether he’s up to the task, however, but replies, “Who am I interrogating?”

Jason grins and quickly bows his body. “A witness. Exciting, right? Unfortunately, no, not exciting. This will suck for you. Daniel Garcia, the second victim, should be at Gotham General Hospital — fingers crossed he has insurance, because otherwise you’ll have to find out where he lives and talk to him there.”

Dick could be projecting, but he thinks James puffs up his chest at this. “I can find anyone anywhere,” vows James.

“I’ve no doubt, buddy. I just would prefer he not have to relive everything the second he gets home because a stranger wants to hear the gory details,” Jason explains. His tone is slightly scolding. There might be some decency in him yet. Dick immediately feels guilty for being surprised. Jason is a good guy. A good guy. He’s said as much to Bruce. Did he forget to tell himself the same thing?

“Bring some flowers to soften things,” Dick suggests.

“Flowers don’t soften a crowbar, Dick,” Jason disagrees. Still, he adds for James, “But yeah, bring flowers. The family won’t like you for it, but they’ll hate you even more if you don’t.”

“Do we have to do anything?” Suzie Su asks, a little unhappily, it would seem. Dick doesn’t trust her. Then again, would she be so openly disloyal if she was double-crossing? The only person in this room Dick trusts is Miguel — and even then, if there’s one thing Batman has been trying to drill into him for half his life, it’s that trust is a liability. Anyone here could logically be a mole. Anyone here could be loyal, too. 

“No, Suzie Su, I expect absolutely nothing from you and that’s why I dragged you to a staff meeting, so you could sit on your ass and pick at your nails,” Jason intones. Suzie Su drops her manicured nails to her lap and glares at him. Jason sticks his tongue out in response. “You and your lovely sisters of questionable bloodline are my ears to the ground.”

“So, same as before?”

Jason cocks his head, shakes it up and down as if weighing the question, and says, “K-i-i-i-i-nd of? It’s like what you were doing before, but not complete garbage. Need I remind you that you let this idiot into my office.” Jason jabs his thumb in Dick’s direction.

Miguel raises his finger. He’s properly relaxed in his cushiony recliner, legs crossed and arms spilling over the back. “Ah, but you let the idiot stay,” he reminds Jason. 

Dick twists his lips. “Thanks, Miguel. Or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Jason decides. “Alright, everyone out of my office and onto the things I demand of you. Dick, you’re coming with me.”

The crowd is already dispersing. Dick hops off the desk and pats the wrinkles from his pants. “Why’s that? I thought you didn’t want me breathing down your neck.”

Jason’s back is to Dick as he fastens his Red Hood helmet over his head, which tips Dick off that some of his people outside the office might still not know who’s under the mask. Jason’s response is rougher than before. “You saw the tapes, didn’t you?” The energy from only a minute ago has melted from his voice. The helmet lights up then and Jason’s next words are modulated, shrouded in static. “That makes you the expert.”

Dick does not miss the irony of this statement. 

  ___________

  Dick has Jason drive him to Bludhaven. Jason has many cars and not a single one is worth less than $80,000. “How do you blend in?” Dick asked on the way to his shitty apartment across the pond, Jason looking absolutely put-upon by the half-hour drive.  His Red Hood helmet has been stowed away in a personally customized, hidden compartment. “I don’t,” Jason simply replied. Dead guys, according to Jason, don’t need to feign poverty. Especially if those dead guys are better known for their underground empires and resort casinos. However, two rich men in a luxury vehicle don’t have much business commiserating with the family of boys like Terry Weind. So, the two stop by Bludhaven to pick up Dick’s Saturn and allow him to change into less flamboyant clothes. 

Dick chooses a threadbare BPD t-shirt and jeans. Jason stays in his signature ensemble of leather jacket and combat boots. He raises his brows at Dick’s outfit, but Dick insists it’s a good choice. Even if they don’t like the police, he’s still out of uniform and unarmed, and they’ll know this isn’t his territory. He’ll seem like a commuter, which might even win him some subconscious sympathy; many people in downtown Gotham have to commute to Bludhaven, albeit usually for a fishery job and not the police department. 

Jason waits in the car for Dick to come out. Dick invites him in, but secretly he’s relieved. The place is a mess. If how he keeps his office is a hint, Jason’s habits are immaculate. They would put Dick to shame. Dick taps Jason’s window to signal they’re switching to the Saturn. Jason takes an excessively long time to part with his car, all but cooing at it, but does eventually make it over. He settles into the passenger seat, looking Dick up and down.

“What?” Dick asks, perhaps defensively. He should’ve said something like, “Like what you see?” but it’s too late for that. 

Jason shrugs casually, but his eyes flicker to Dick’s hair. “Nothing. You just look normal now.” 

Dick jams his keys into the ignition, because he has to be rough for the car to start, and rolls his eyes. “You mean my hair’s not gay?”

“Eh. Less gay.” And then Jason is reaching out and ruffling his hair, fingers curling through the still-damp waves. Dick stuck his hair under the bathroom sink’s faucet before putting his shirt on. He got water everywhere, but he needed to get the product out. He weirdly hopes Jason doesn’t feel any lingering stickiness, that his hair is soft to touch. 

Jason’s face abruptly screws up in confusion as if he isn’t sure how he got here. Slowly, he retracts his hand and sits straight in his seat. Dick didn’t notice how open Jason’s body language was just a moment ago, but he notices how it closes. His knees no longer point towards Dick but to the windshield; his arms, once extended towards him, now fold across his chest. Dick stares at him for a moment, trying to piece together the puzzle he suspects they almost had. 

Jason’s presence always has that mystifying effect on him, however, like he’s a monument to all the almosts they’ve been. When Jason was Robin, they were almost friends. When he was the Red Hood, they were almost enemies. Then they might have been brothers, could have been, maybe. There had been that night on the rooftop when Dick had managed to slip through Spyral’s many fingers — when Barbara had run away and Damian had embraced him and Tim demanded why, why — Jason had drawn blood as his voice broke because you don’t do that to your. Almost.

They are always on the verge of some new meaning. 

“Well?” asks Jason. “Are you waiting for me to set up the GPS? You know the address, let’s go.”

Dick quickly recovers and begins edging out from his spot between two other parked cars on the street. “What are we, drag racing? Jeesh.” They avoid traffic for the drive over but do swing into a corner store once they’re in Gotham again. Jason buys the most expensive bouquet available while Dick fiddles with a rack of playing cards. Pokémon? Magic? Would Terry care about either of those games? He sees Jason head to the counter and grabs a random card pack to check out. His phone buzzes in his pocket just as he finishes counting off the dollar bills. He hands the cashier $16 and unlocks his phone. It’s from Bruce.

Any progress?

Dick begins typing out an answer when he remembers the boundaries he agreed on with Jason. He said he wouldn’t share any details with Bruce unless Jason okay’d it. He could let Jason know Bruce is asking, but even mentioning Bruce tends to sour him. Dick would rather get through this meeting with Terry Weind first. He makes a mental note to inform Jason later and give Bruce a non-answer if he says no. 

Ten minutes later and they’re standing on narrow porch steps. The wooden planks are dark and splintery and covered in cigarette butts where an ash tray has been knocked down. Dick squats down and picks it up; ceramic, woodsy-green and leaf-shaped. He sets it atop the paint-chipped banister while Jason knocks on the door. The walls are thin enough that Dick can trace the sound of someone walking down the stairs. It’s summery outside today, the earth baked through by the sun, but he’s thinking of winters down here. Even with a good furnace, these walls must let the chill in. 

A woman opens the door in her nightgown, one hand on the knob and the other on the frame. Her eyes are red and the skin beneath them sags. Her skin is almost ashen. She looks tired. She is tired, she’s exhausted, Dick can feel it when he looks at her. Her exhaustion is a heavy substance that spreads out and sinks into his flesh. 

“Are you Terry’s mom?” Jason asks. He has the flowers already at his chest. His voice is stiff with emotion. Dick recalls his comment about Daniel reliving trauma and wonders if that’s what Jason is doing right now. 

The woman nods and says that, yes, she is, but little changes in her expression. Dick had been expecting confusion, but she accepts the flowers without hesitation. Evidently, they are not remotely the first ones to share condolences. “My name’s Laura,” she says, touching the waxy petal of a calla lily. Her voice is soft and deep as if it’s been anchored to the bottom of the ocean.

“I’m Jason.”

“Dick,” Dick says after him. 

Laura opens her mouth silently for a few seconds before carefully telling them, “I appreciate you boys coming here and wishing us well. It’s been hard, but we’re grateful to the community’s response, it’s been wonderful. I hope you don’t mind me not inviting you in, it’s just that I work grave and don’t get much sleep, and Terry’s resting.”

“We understand. But actually, we’re not just here to offer our sympathy — though you do have it, of course,” Dick conveys. He rushes the words of each clause so his speech comes out in quick, nervous chunks. He’s dipping head, taking up as little room as possible while moving closer to her. Jason takes a step back to accommodate him. He wants to represent himself as sincere, perhaps too sincere to the point of being clumsy. People often think inept and trustworthy are the same thing; the logic goes, you can’t be hiding any tricks up your sleeve if you’re more likely to spill them on the floor. 

“If you turn us away, we get it, don’t worry,” assures Dick, “but this is our city and our kids are getting snatched.”

Laura begins shaking her head. “Oh, no, he’s not answering any questions — ”

“We won’t ask as many questions as the police,” Dick hurries to say. “We don’t need to. We,” here, Dick breaks off his speech and looks uncertainly at Jason, feigning hesitance. Then he takes a galvanizing breath, readying for his big leap, this information he’s sharing only with Laura. “I work part-time at the Park Row Memorial. I’m a guard, similar work to what I do with the Bludhaven Police. We have it monitored 24/7 so it doesn’t become a high-crime area again.” Dick sighs in frustration and bites his lips. “Laura,” he says firmly, staring into her eyes. Her pupils have dilated along his story. Good. “I saw Terry that night. The police haven’t even asked Park staff yet, they don’t care. But I saw it happen and I think I can do something about it.”

The best cover story is always based in reality. The best lies are true. 

Laura’s eyes drop the ground as she thinks. She’s also biting her lip. Dick ponders over whether she does that often and Dick got lucky, or if she’s mirroring him. Either way, he’s won her over. She shuffles to the side and waves them in, her movements less languid than before. 

She leads them to the stairwell and says, “If he doesn’t want to answer questions, he doesn’t have to. I’m not going to force him, you got it? Get what you can and hope it’s useful.” With this, she climbs the steps to the second floor, Jason and Dick following at an appropriate distance. They pause at the top step while she enters Terry’s room and explains in hushed tones his guests. She relates Dick’s reason for being here and then there’s a long pause before Dick detects a faint, “Sure.” 

Dick and Jason share a look that confirms: they’re in. Laura places a light hand on Jason’s bicep and guides them to the door. “I’ll stand right here,” she says firmly and waves them forward. Dick looks around for a chair, sees none, and settles on the windowsill facing Terry’s bed. He’s faired better than the next two kids, all injuries considered. He was out of the hospital in a month. He lies in his twin-sized mattress beneath a crisp sheet, a blue comforter shoved to the foot of his bed. A square bandage covers his right cheek, there’s stitching over his right eyebrow, and there’s more stitches on the right side of his skull. His right arm and knee have been set in casts. Dick remembers him curling onto his side at one point in the video. 

In the wake of the other victims’ hospital records (courtesy of Oracle), Terry’s assault had been carried out with perfunctory brutality. Dick recollects the scene but recalls no hesitation in the attacker’s swings, yet their violence has clearly increased. Perhaps they are doing someone else’s dirty work and the job has just now awakened a taste for pain in them. Or maybe it’s one guy after all and they’re adjusting to the role. 

“So, you know the fucker who did this?” Terry speaks up first. His voice is a little rough and definitely fatigued. Despite his current infirmity, Dick can tell he’s a sturdy kid. He’s got the same build Jason had at that age, youthfully broad with natural muscle in the absence of training. A body with room to grow in. 

Dick shrugs. “Not personally. But we hold out hope. What did his face look like? Any defining features?” he attempts, even knowing that Terry’s report claimed to make out nothing from the night of the attack.

Terry was looking at Jason beforehand, which Dick can’t blame him for. Jason takes up most of the room as he stands by Terry’s feet, stock straight with his massive arms folded. Dick has a habit of downsizing Jason in his head. In general, Dick’s guilty of subconsciously diminishing certain people’s threat levels, letting his familiarity with them obscure the danger they still pose. He does his best to put himself in Terry’s shoes and see what he might see; he accomplishes this by summoning the first night he encountered the Red Hood before he was also Jason Todd, fallen boy wonder. Even without the vigilante get-up, the man’s intimidating. 

Now that Dick has asked a question, however, Terry’s eyes appraise him. Dick once again folds in on himself, tucking his arms closer to his sides and leaning back so he’s as out of Terry’s space as he can be. Then Terry’s eyes stray to the floor and he mumbles, “Looked like nothing. It was dark.” But he doesn’t say it like it was nothing. 

“You saw something,” Dick contests. He’s not going to wheedle or coax, he decides, because that would just leave Terry room to equivocate. “You don’t know what you saw, but you saw something, and whatever that is will help us more than pretending there weren’t streetlamps.”

Terry grimaces. The twitch of his battered face reminds Dick of his age and his heart aches. There should be a grace period for children, an exception made for those still new to this earth. He hates that pain is one of the first things they learn. “He was white, I guess,” Terry supplies. His good fingers have found a loose thread on the hem of his pushed-down sheets. He picks at it. “He never said a word the whole time. It was quiet. He — I saw his hands. I thought, I thought the police would find his thumbprints or whatever, on me, but that’s not how it works, they said. They were all fucked up.”

“The hands or the police?” Jason interjects.

Terry doesn’t look up from his loose thread, but one half of his mouth pulls up into a faint, flickering smile. It manages to be bright even so. “The hands. There were old scars all over the knuckles. Dry, too, like he never heard of lotion.”

Dick supposes the attacker could work in manual labor, but it’s unlikely if there were truly that many scars and all old. “Just the knuckles?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Dick guesses he’s experienced with combat. The ugly, close-up kind. Still, just the knuckles, that sounds more like punishment than accident. And the dry skin? That could easily be eczema, although wouldn’t a seasoned killer think to cover up, prevent skin follicles from falling into a lab tech’s hands? It is summer, but Gotham runs more humid than dry, so perhaps they’re dealing with a foreigner. “And the face?” he prompts. 

Terry abruptly drops his hand from the nervous thread and sighs raggedly. “Nothing, man. I couldn’t see anything, okay, it was,” Terry falters, “confusing.”

“Confusing how?” Jason asks.

“I don’t know!” Terry’s voice pitches in frustration. “It was weird, all swirly and shit.”

Dick can hear the criticism leak into Jason’s tone when he curtly repeats, “Swirly.” 

Terry backpedals. “I said I don’t know,” he mutters. 

Swirly voices sound familiar to Dick. He used to have one for a time when he played James Bond for Spyral. “I think we might have a contact, Jay,” Dick muses. 

“Really?” Jason says with noticeable surprise. “Swirly’s our big break?”

“Emphasis on the might and ixnay on the big.” To Terry, he says, “Tell me, does tsuchigumo ring any bells?”

Terry’s face scrunches up. “Does what huh?”

Dick will take that as a no. “Oh, well. Still worth looking into,” he says. Dick stands and retrieves the card pack from his plastic bag. He holds it up for Terry to see before setting it down on the bed. Terry takes it immediately and brings it up to his face for inspection. “Your mom has the flowers. I wasn’t sure what to get you, but let me know if you need or want anything. Oh.” Dick swivels his head around the room. There’s not much to it aside from a bed, a dresser, and a box T.V. collecting dust. “Do you have something I can write my number on?”

Jason chooses that moment to step forward, sliding between Dick and where Terry lies. He leans across, a crisp, laminated paper balanced between his index and middle finger. “Here’s my card. Let me know if you have any more information or if either of you need help,” he explains. Terry sets Dick’s gift down and gingerly accepts the card. He flips it over: no logo, just a phone number.

“That’s it?” says Terry. “What contact? Who did this?”

“It’s too soon to tell. I wish I had more to give you two,” Dick says sympathetically to Terry and Laura, the latter of whom hasn’t left her post by the door. She rests her cheek on the frame and watches on.

Terry has more questions though and he’s edging on excited. “Are you P.I.’s? Why do you even care? I bet you fucking did this, or one of your boys — ”

“I understand your distrust,” Dick says over him. He glances nervously at Laura to gauge what she thinks of the accusation and if she’s about to step in. She’s a little straighter, body no longer depending on the wall, but her face is still impassive if alert. Dick hurries to smooth this over. “You don’t know us well enough to understand why we care. We have to prove ourselves, I get that. And we will. Until then, you’ve got nothing to lose, right? All we know is you didn’t see anything.”

Terry stares at him silently, suspicion darkening his eyes. There is risk in coming here, of course, depending on how well Terry’s attacker can trace Jason’s footsteps. But Dick has already weighed the risks and he’s betting that Terry’s part is done here insofar as the criminal is concerned. Luckily, Terry can’t identify what he’s got to lose or how much he has told them between the lines, so the charges drop like that. 

There’s a few beats of silence before Jason starts fidgeting. “Yea-a-a-h, we’re going to go now,” he announces, pointing over his shoulder towards the window. Dick could cringe, he’s so awkward. 

“Thanks to both of you,” Dick says and smiles as warmly as he can. He trails closely behind Jason who shuffles towards the door, his body too tall and too broad to fit comfortably in the modest room. Unthinking, the pads of Dick’s fingers feather over Jason’s back as if to guide him forward. As Jason moves, Dick lets his fingers linger in the air, covering up the touch with empty space. He curls his fingers in and tucks them behind his back. Laura follows them out. 

“Thank you again,” Dick says at the door. “We’ll be in touch if anything develops,” he promises. And he will be; if not as Dick then certainly as Nightwing. 

Laura thanks them half-heartedly. Dick suddenly feels self-conscious about the Pokémon cards. He may as well have given them a box with nothing inside it or a flashlight without a bulb. He heads back to the car, feeling Laura’s heavy gaze on his shoulders the whole way. 

Dick is buckling himself in when Jason opens the passenger door. “Mind sharing with the class what information was so decisive you had no further questions?” he asks as he climbs into the car. 

“No questions Terry could answer. This is the best we can do for a lead,” Dick explains. He needs to make a call, but that will have to wait until they’re on the road and not idling outside a victim’s house. Maybe he can take them to a restaurant, buy Jason a drink, a friendly gesture. Would Jason want to drink with him though?

“Yeah, about that,” Jason says as the car shoots off, “what lead?”

Scratch the drink; neither of them are lightweights, but on principle, they shouldn’t drink during an ongoing investigation. Still, he could buy them some sub sandwiches. He used to buy food for Tim all the time back in the day, as a reprieve from the typical Batman and Robin style of accidentally fasting until the case is resolved.

They reach a redlight almost immediately. Dick drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Spyral uses this tech called ‘Hypnos 2.0.’ They slide in kind of like contacts? They’re eye implants basically, but they transmit information between your brain and the brain of whoever’s looking at you. Their most common application was hiding your identity. If someone looked at you, they’d just see a scrambled mess instead of a face.”

Jason’s face scrunches up as he stares out the windshield. He scratches his head. “Scrambled like Picasso or.”

The light turns green. “More like a spiral,” Dick says lightly, nodding conversationally. 

“Thematic,” Jason comments. 

“Very. And the uniforms weren’t too shabby either.” He adds the joke more to test the waters than anything, gauge how delicate a topic Spyral is between them. Everyone in their family has a slightly different relationship with Dick’s double life. Bruce and Damian’s have been the easiest, marked by faint curiosity about his activities and begrudging acceptance of help from associated colleagues. The others have been noticeably more dodgy and uncomfortable regarding for Spyral. Dick’s stint as as Agent 37 has made everyone evasive, even for bats. 

If Jason would normally have an emotional reaction to Spyral, he’s too preoccupied for one now. Dick can practically see the gears in his mind turning as his eyes narrow and his chin falls to rest on his hand. Dick feels simultaneously relief and shame; of course, Spyral is just a lead. Spyral may have been Dick’s life at one point, but to Jason, it’s just an organization. At best, contacting Spyral could save his life. At worst, well, Dick’s not expecting Jason to unpack whatever baggage Dick left in Gotham. 

Dick resists the urge to grimace at his own thoughts. He’s overthinking. Can one overthink a ruthless spy agency that up until a year ago controlled his every movement? 

Jason’s voice, slow and thick with the sound of a city that’s always been his, reels Dick back to shore. “Dare I ask what the uniform entailed?”

“Cargo pants,” Dick answers simply. He’s watching the road ahead, but he can hear Jason make a pleasantly surprised noise. They pass a fire hydrant painted to look like a sunflower. Dick thinks it’d be nice for Bludhaven to do that and makes a note to push the idea at city hall after the case. 

“So, you think that this guy is from Spyral?” Jason asks. 

Dick shrugs. “That, or he’s connected enough to snag some tech. We should check first with the other two victims, see if their descriptions match up with Terry’s. If they do, it’s probably Spyral and not some low-grade black market street vendor. Nine of out ten optometrists do not recommend mind control contact lenses.”

Jason slams his hand down on the middle compartment. “Mind control?” he exclaims. When Dick glances at him, Jason’s expression is mostly shock with a sliver of what might be plain rage. But that would be an overreaction considering all the other crimes Spyral is guilty of. All the crimes they’re guilty of, especially Red Hood, although making that argument would be more trouble than it’s worth. 

Dick tries not to let Jason’s sheer judgment weigh on him. Dick has far more pressing guilt elsewhere to torture himself over. Still, it’s hard not to feel righteous rage on Jason’s behalf. He often forgets this part of Jason’s character, this abrupt sense of justice that powers him, but it’s no less prominent than it is in Bruce or himself. It might actually be stronger in Jason, a little left of center, but bleeding red nonetheless. Unfortunately, car safety dictates Dick not be on the receiving end of justice, so he replies as casually as possible, “Well, that’s what Hypnos is, essentially.”

“No way.” Jason points an accusatory finger that Dick sees from his peripheral. A street corner features a hot dog stand. Dick nearly pulls over, but the finger might kill whatever buzz a chili dog can offer. “Don’t ‘that’s-what-Hypnos-is-Jason- obviously ’ me. You just said it transmits info.”

Dick did not think his tone had come off condescending in the least. But if that’s what Jason got from it, then perhaps he missed casual and landed on dismissive. Bludhaven must be eroding his tact already. “Sorry. When I said it transmits information, I meant it as a blanket statement for everything it does. Hypnos can alter memories, which is more-or-less how the identity protection works, by modifying one’s memory of a face. It can send someone a location address or really anything you have stored in your own memory, which is helpful. It can also send orders.”

“Yeah, I bet that’s helpful, too,” Jason derides. He looks like he smelled something bad. Was Dick this perturbed by Hypnos when he first joined Spyral? He doesn’t think so. He had been so quickly embroiled in so many terrible things. What was a little crowd control in the face of cold, efficient, and constant murder? 

The guns. The feel of one is his hand like death itself, how they loomed in his bedroom and among his gear, beckoning him closer to an edge everyone wanted to push him off of. The guns had overshadowed all else for him. 

“Either way,” Dick carries on, “it’s unlikely this guy has his hands on Spyral tech without Spyral knowing something about him. They keep close enough watch over people that have nothing to do with them, let alone people that have access to their technology. He could be anywhere from an engineer to a passing contact, but he’s no ghost.”

“Terrific. Exactly what I need, a mind-controlling stalker from an quasi-omniscient spy organization hellbent running around on the streets of Gotham.”

Dick shrugs. “Gotham’s had it worse.”

“Have I?”

“I don’t know. Have you?” Dick retorts. 

Jason scowls. “Wouldn’t be my first assassination attempt, I suppose,” he concedes.

Dick perks up and offers him a grin. “And it won’t be your last!” he crows. 

Jason just stares at him, utterly perplexed. His brows are furrowed and his mouth is curled above his teeth in bewilderment. 

“Because you’ll be alive,” Dick hurriedly explains. “You know, like, woohoo!” He takes one hand off the wheel to pump the air triumphantly. 

“Woohoo,” Jason repeats hollowly. “Insanity.”

“What?” asks Dick. They will be coming up on the grinder shop soon. Should he suggest lunch to Jason or just drag him in? He’s leaning towards dragging. That seems more effective.

“That we’re all just living to hopefully get killed a day that’s not tomorrow,” Jason observes. 

It’s not more cynical than funny, but something in Jason’s tone — the utter resignation, perhaps — makes Dick laugh anyway. “Everyone on earth’s on borrowed time, really,” he says, not unhappily. Death hasn’t frightened him since he was young. Exposure therapy, he called it once during some Titans mission that feels a lot farther in the past than it is. “The reckless and foolhardy like us, we’re just more aware of it.”

Jason blows air out from his nose in a mix between a snort and a laugh. “And here I thought vigilante-types were less aware of their own mortality.”

“Are you kidding? You have to know you’re walking towards death to find that exact path each night. Snatched purses, drug rings, elitist assassins dressed as owls, fear gas and escaped convicts and murderous clowns — and we run right towards them with open arms,” Dick says, irony guiding his grin as Jason smirks back at him. 

“And open chest cavities, half the the time,” Jason tacks on. 

Dick nods fervently. “Yes, let’s not forget that,” he tries to say seriously, but laughter trips him on the last word. “I don’t know. I think it’s all very sane, actually, to see what’s going on and get involved, do what you can to make everything a little bit better. But too much sanity can look like insanity, for sure.”

Jason does snort this time. “Keep moralizing like that and you’ll sound straight out of a conversation between the Joker and B.”

Dick wrinkles his nose. “Ew. I hope not.”

“‘We’re the same, you and I,’” Jason croons in a wispy, sing-song voice. “‘Sane and in-sane.’”

Dick can make out the small, white-background-red-letters sign of Hester’s Grinders a few yards down the road. There’s just enough room before the fire hydrant — this one plain, chipped red — to safely park. “Alright, alright, I get it. I’ll keep my philosophies to myself. And so long as we’re changing the subject — hungry?”

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