#every legitimate issue with it aside i could not fucking get over the voice of the killer and the fisherprice edition trap explanations

[risaonda]

[xjoonchildx]

guilty | knj x reader | chapter two: incheon mall tube tops

summary: as the man at the top, kim namjoon has almost everything he wants. almost. could a familiar face from the past change his future?

pairing: namjoon x reader

genre: mafia AU, pining, eventual smut

rating: 18+

word count: 4.5K

notes: i really hope you guys are enjoying namjoon’s story! i think there will only be one more chapter after this.  and like a true unfocused writer i started daydreaming about a yoongi one-shot to go with it? gah, nevermind.  i really hope you guys like this and i’d love to hear how you feel one way or another.  a huge thanks to my amazing beta @hobi-gif​ who does a hell of a lot more than just find typos.  and all of my love has to go out to @ladyartemesia​ @ppersonna​ @taetaewonderland​ because all three of you are so much more than tumblr friends.

this fic is a continuation of the Guarded Series but can be read as a standalone piece.

Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | Epilogue

**********************

It didn’t matter how hard you tried to hide your sadness, Namjoon saw it.

It didn’t matter how many hushed calls you tried to sneak, or how many smiles you tried to force -- Namjoon saw right through your act from the very beginning.  He’d seen enough to know that you were facing some kind of personal battle. He understood enough about you to know that you were far too private to bring it up or ask for help.

He should have asked.

The question sat heavy on the tip of his tongue for weeks.  He should have asked on the days he would spot you at your desk, fingers pressed to your temples in frustration.  Or on the days when he would catch you staring out the window, mind a million miles away.

He didn’t.

Instead, he let himself be driven to distraction by the way your blouses fit perfectly against the lines of your body. The way your pencil skirts hugged the curve of your hips. How soft your hair looked pulled into the low, loose knot you favored.

He found himself stumbling over his words when you’d quietly slip into meetings to deliver an urgent message or he’d drift off in the middle of conversations just because he’d caught sight of you outside his office door.

So it wasn’t long before what started as a preoccupation turned into a full-blown fixation.

You’d turn up at his request, poised and professional as always -- and he’d be lost in thought, defiling you a thousand different ways in his head.  Fantasizing about getting his hands on you, his mouth on you, his teeth on you.

You didn’t deserve that.

That’s why Namjoon kept his mouth shut -- stuck in a maddening cycle of wanting to help you, wanting to know you, just wanting you.

All of it made him feel guilty as hell.

*********************

The new girl is a fucking disaster.

Namjoon has yet to figure out how she manages to be underfoot at the most inconvenient times and simultaneously nowhere to be found when she’s needed.  She misplaces files and misses calls and forgets assigned tasks altogether. He’s lost track of the number of times he’s passed her desk to find her taking pictures of herself; lips pouted, angle skewed.

Two weeks ago, she was probably selling tube tops at Incheon Mall and now she’s playing gatekeeper to one of the most powerful men in Seoul.  So it’s not her fault that she’s woefully unprepared for this job.

And it’s not her fault that she’s not you.

Namjoon has spent the better part of the morning debating the call he’s about to make, picking up the phone and setting it back down at least half a dozen times.  But he’s at the end of his rope, running out of patience and options.

So he swallows his pride and picks up the phone just one more time.  

You answer on the first ring.

“Mister Kim.”

God, he’s missed the sound of your voice.  

“Good morning,” he starts carefully, clearing his throat. “I’m certain you have a lot on your plate but I was wondering if you could come sit with the new girl for a few minutes.  She’s struggling a bit.”  

The line is quiet for a moment and Namjoon can practically hear your thoughts on the other end of the line.  The ones that say well that’s what you get for replacing your perfectly competent assistant with a child.

“I left notes,” is the quiet reply that comes instead.

“You did.”

“Detailed notes. Written, detailed notes.”

“Yes,” Namjoon agrees, rubbing his fingers across his mouth.  “I’m certain they were quite detailed.  It’s just that she’s having trouble following those notes because --”  

“Because she can’t read?”

Namjoon cringes.  Any small hope he had that you weren’t taking your reassignment personally dies with the abrupt delivery of that statement.

“Apparently not,” he admits lamely.

He hears the quiet sigh you take in before answering.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

*************************

There’s a moment -- just after Seokjin has walked through his office door -- when Namjoon catches a glimpse of you.

You are leaned over the new girl’s desk, lips pursed, pointing something out on the computer screen.  Namjoon freezes when you look up and lock eyes with him just as the door swings shut.

Christ, is he ever going to be able to look at you without feeling like he’s had the wind knocked out of him?

He turns to find Seokjin staring at him, one brow raised.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon exhales, shoving a hand through his hair as he walks back to his desk.  “I’m fine. You said you wanted to talk about something?”

“I do,” Seokjin starts, helping himself to a seat. “Two things, actually. Both pertaining to the amazing new assistant you so generously gifted me.”

Namjoon’s nails dig into the palm of his hand.

“Go on.”

“Apparently she’s some kind of whiz with numbers,” Seokjin continues, unbothered by his strained response.  “I gave her a few of the books to look over and she already found a couple of our guys in the Songpa district skimming off the top. I’ll bet there’s even more where that came from and she’ll find it.  She’s got a good eye.”

Namjoon feels pride stir in his chest.  Yet again, you exceed expectations.  

“Send Yoongi and Hoseok to Songpa tonight,” he murmurs.  “I’ll be curious to hear what kind of explanation our friends come up with for their lapses in accounting.”

Seokjin nods.

“Will do.  So the other thing --” he pauses for a beat, like he’s trying to figure out how to carefully deliver what he has to say next.  “I know you asked me to try and figure out what’s going on with her and I think I have.  You’re right, she’s struggling with some personal issues.”

Namjoon leans forward in his chair, body rigid.

“Let me hear it.”

*************************

YOU

The new girl is a fucking disaster.

You have yet to figure out why she can’t work the printers or can’t read a simple spreadsheet when you know for fact she knows how to beam her selfies all the way to the goddamned moon.

It’s infuriating.

Just like it’s infuriating to see her seated at what should be your desk, doing what should be your job, working for the man who should be your boss.  

Figure shit out, you’d love to tell her.  Sink or swim, that’s how the real world works.  

The idea of letting her fail so dismally that Namjoon has no choice but to beg for you back is tempting.  But then he’d picked up the phone to personally ask you to help.

And apparently you are incapable of denying that man anything.

You’ve stayed late every day this week to review the spreadsheets Seokjin has given you to audit because of the extra time you’ve had to put aside to help the new girl navigate foreign concepts like filing and scheduling.

The numbers tell an interesting story.

The rumors about Kim Namjoon’s skill as a businessman don’t give him enough credit.  Money is pouring into the Gajog, hand over fist, from every major district in the city.  Billions of won flow into the organization from legitimate and not as legitimate revenue streams alike.  Combine the numbers and Kim Namjoon controls an empire worth trillions.

You stare at the sums and your mind flips back to your unexpected pay raise. It’s no wonder Namjoon can afford to be so generous.

It’s no wonder so many of the street-level men who work for him seem to be helping themselves to more than their fair share.  

It took you a few days to identify the patterns, comparing the new intake sheets to the old ones, but once you did the missing money practically jumped off the page.  Just a few audits in and you’d already been able to find at least 119 million won unaccounted for.

The Kim Namjoon you know is reserved and unflappable -- but this is information that’s bound to piss even him off.  

What is a man like him like when he’s angry?

You shudder at the thought.

Before long, the night sky stares back at you from the window across from your desk and you decide it’s well past time you went home.  You sort everything into neat piles and leave yourself organized notes before packing up to leave.

***************************

There’s no answer from your mother when you call to her from the hallway.  

You frown as you make your way to her bedroom, worry melting away when you find her asleep in her chair.  Her head is bent at a sharp angle, and you immediately move to help her prop her up.

Her eyes open to slits, unfocused from sleep and medication.

“Ttal,” she whispers, grimacing as she straightens out the crick in her neck.

“Eomma,” you whisper in a hushed rebuke. “We’ve talked about this.  You can’t fall asleep in this chair, it’s terrible for you.”

She nods slowly, pointing to a glass of water on her nightstand.  You hand it to her, but it wobbles in her weak grip and you take hold of it to help her drink before setting it aside.

“I’m hurting tonight,” she admits.  

“I know,” you sigh, heart breaking. “Come, let me help you into bed.”

The process is painstaking.  You help hoist her frail frame out of the chair and over to the side of the bed then work carefully to help her lie back.  There’s no meat on her anymore, just skin and bones, so you tuck her blankets carefully around her legs and arms until you’re certain she’s not shivering anymore.

You know this isn’t working.  

It doesn’t matter how many calls you make over the course of a day to check in, or how many well-meaning neighbors drop in to help, leaving your mother alone for hours in this state is a dangerous gamble.  

You fight back tears of frustration.  You grew up without siblings and your father has been gone for years. Being alone is something you’ve had a long time to get used to.  

But you’ve still never felt as alone as you do right now.

You think in the quiet for a while, stroking your fingers across your mother’s upturned palm, unsure of what to say, unsure of what to do.  

Unsure of what comes next.

“Kim Namjoon grew up to be such a handsome man,” your mother rasps.

The steady stroke of your fingers comes to an abrupt halt as the fine hairs on the nape of your neck stand on end.

“Excuse me?”

Your mother doesn’t repeat herself.

“Eomma,” you urge, nudging her hand with yours.  “What is this talk of Kim Namjoon?”

Her lips quirk when she closes her eyes like she’s recalling a pleasant memory.

“His mother was beautiful,” she breathes quietly. “God smiled on that boy. He looks nothing like his father.”

The dull panic that’s already started to pulse in your chest sharpens to a point.

She has to be hallucinating.  

She has to be taking too much medicine because nothing she’s saying makes any sense.  You fumble for the bottles on her nightstand, pulling off the caps and pouring the pills out onto the tabletop.  You count them over and over until you’re satisfied your mother hasn’t taken a dangerous amount of drugs.

“Eomma, why are you talking about Kim Namjoon?” you plead. “Help me understand.”

But when you look back to your mother, you realize your words are already falling on deaf ears. She’s slipped back into a sleep state once again.

If only it were that easy for you.

When you finally get to crawl into bed a short while later, you toss and turn all night.  

Somewhere in the haze between asleep and awake you dream of Kim Namjoon.

*************************

Your mother’s mental clarity is always better in the morning.  

After she’s had a night of rest -- and whatever medicine she’s taken has had some time to wear off -- she’s much more alert, much more like her old self.  But you still weren’t able to get anything by way of answers out of her as you made breakfast this morning.

You’d made her favorite cold cucumber soup before carefully broaching the subject of last night’s strange conversation.  You’d waited patiently for some kind of explanation about why she mentioned a man she hasn’t spoken of in years.

It didn’t come.

There was something odd about the way your mother went completely quiet at your mention of Namjoon.  Something odd about how adamant she was about not having any memory of the conversation at all.

That odd look on her face is the one thought on your mind as you make your way to work in a complete fog.  You slip into an open elevator and hit the button for your floor on autopilot.

You don’t even realize that you’re not alone until a soft voice interrupts your thoughts.

“I remember you.”

Your eyes flick up from their unseeing stare at your shoes to a young woman standing against the elevator’s back wall.  

“Miss Kim,” you breathe, brushing an errant hair out of your face.  Your cheeks are still stinging from the cold. “Good morning.”

Namjoon’s sister is a beautiful woman, without a doubt — but until this moment, you hadn’t realized how much she resembles her brother.  They have the same striking features, the same smooth skin and high cheekbones and full lips.  

They share the same dark, kind eyes.

“I remember you now,” she repeats, mouth curving into a smile.  “I knew I recognized you, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I finally connected the dots.”

“Well, I wasn’t around a lot when we were kids,” you admit shyly. “So that’s certainly understandable.”

“That’s true,” she agrees.  “And I try not to think back to those times a lot but you made an impression on me.  You were always so sweet.”

Your cold cheeks seem to warm at her compliment.

“Thank you.”

The elevator stops at her floor but she seems reluctant to end the conversation.  She leans against the door to prop it open.

“My brother,” she asks carefully, “Is he treating you well?  Is he a fair boss?”

You clear your throat, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“Well, he’s not my boss anymore,” you admit.  “He replaced me not long ago.  But yes, he was very fair when I worked for him.”

Her lips part in a soft gesture of surprise when you deliver that news.  

She’s quiet until the elevator blares a loud reminder that it’s time to close the doors.  She smiles at you on her way out the door, opting not to comment on the quality of her brother’s staffing decisions.  

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmurs. “But I’m still really glad you’re here.”

****************************

An inviting scent is the first thing you notice when you get home that night.  

The second thing you notice are the voices.

You make your way down the long hallway with careful steps, trying to place the sound of the voice coming from your mother’s bedroom.  It doesn’t sound like Mrs. Sim -- in fact, it doesn’t sound like anyone you know.

You stop short at the sight that greets you when you round the corner.

A woman -- a complete stranger is in your mother’s room.

You stand frozen in shock as you watch the stranger read to your mother from her seated position in the chair next to the bed.  She looks up from the page when she realizes you’re there, giving you a better look at her pleasant, aged face.

“Aish,” she startles, clapping a hand over her chest.  “Here I was, worried about scaring you and instead you’re the one giving me a fright.”

It takes you a moment to find your voice.

“Forgive me,” you start weakly, “But who are you?  And how did you get into this house?”

The woman stands to adjust the pillow under your mother’s head before meeting you in the doorway.  “She’s resting now,” she says, nodding at your mother’s still form on the bed.  “Why don’t we talk in the kitchen?”

Should you be screaming right now? Calling the police?  

There’s no good explanation for why you do neither and decide instead to follow this complete stranger into your kitchen instead.  She walks to the stove to stir whatever she has cooking in the pot.

“Get off those feet,” she admonishes kindly. “I’m sure you’ve had a long day.”

Again you comply, inexplicably following orders.  

“I made Budae Jjigae,” she explains, ladling some of the stew into a bowl.  She sets it down in front of you, and you stare back at her like an idiot.  The stew smells amazing, and you’re immediately hit with a well-timed hunger pang.

“Who are you?” you ask again.

“My name is Jinjoo,” she replies sweetly, handing you a spoon.  “And I work for you now.”

“You work for me,” you repeat slowly.

“I do,” Jinjoo nods.  “Mister Kim hired me.”

The spoon clatters loudly against the lip of the bowl when you drop it.  For a moment, it’s hard to breathe. You have to wait for the strange sensation that snakes up your spine to subside before you speak again.

“Mister Kim.”  You echo her again, dumbly.

Jinjoo takes a seat next to you at the table, radiating a patient kindness that makes you want to give into the urge to trust her.  She smiles reassuringly at you, voice soothing when she speaks again.

“Yes. He said you needed help with your mother, and I can understand why.  I nursed in hospitals for decades, dear.  I can see your mother is in a bad way.”

You blink back at Jinjoo in stunned silence.

“I assure you, I’ll give your mother the best quality care,” she vows, patting one of your hands with her own.  “And Mister Kim has already paid me well in advance, so don’t even think about trying to get rid of me.”

That statement almost makes you laugh.  

You don’t want to get rid of Jinjoo at all.  Ten minutes ago you had no idea she existed and in the span of one conversation she’s become one of the most important people you know.  Tears well in your eyes as you stare into your bowl of stew, at a total loss for words.  

Jinjoo seems to sense how overwhelmed you are.  She gives you some space to process what’s going on, stroking one soft hand over your shoulder when she stands to leave.

“Eat something, dear.  I’m gonna go sit with your mother for a while.”

You look up at her with watery eyes and nod, reaching for the spoon.

“This smells really good,” you say softly.

“Well, I’m a great cook.  You’ll see,” she promises.

“Jinjoo -- “ you call out after her as she walks away.  “Thank you,” you manage, voice thick with emotion.  “I can’t thank you enough.”

The corners of her eyes crinkle when her mouth curves into a smile.

“You’re welcome.”

**********************

Jinjoo’s stew was delicious -- not that you had the chance to fully appreciate it.  

You’d sat in that kitchen alone for some time, eating slowly while you tried to process yet another bombshell in what seemed to be a series of them.  Everything that’s happened to you since Namjoon reassigned you has been a whirlwind; from the sudden pay raise to the sudden arrival of Jinjoo.

You eat the last of the stew with your stomach in knots.

Namjoon knows your mother is sick.  And you don’t know how to feel about it.

A part of you feels exposed when you think about him uncovering the sad details of your mother’s health battle. But knowing that he stepped in to help you fight it makes you feel something you haven’t felt in years.  

Cared for.

The sound of laughter from your mother’s bedroom echoes down the hall and you stand to follow it.  

Her favorite variety show is playing on the small TV in front of her bed, and it appears Jinjoo is a fan, too.  You lean in the doorway and watch the women giggle at the silly skit.  It’s been a long time since you’ve heard the sound of your mother’s laugh.  

It makes you smile.

“Jinjoo, could you give us a moment, please?”

You almost hate to interrupt the instant camaraderie between the two women but you recognize that your mother is in the midst of a rare moment of clarity.  You have to strike while the iron is hot.

“Of course,” she agrees, standing.

You wait until the sound of her footsteps fades away before taking her place in the worn chair next to your mother’s bed.  Your mother smiles at you, taking one of your hands into her own.  

You squeeze her fingers gently.

“Eomma, no more secrets,” you murmur.  “Tell me the truth.  Did Kim Namjoon come here?”

Your mother swallows thickly before nodding.

“He asked me not to tell you,” she admits.  “He said he didn’t want you to refuse his help.”

You shut your eyes and imagine Namjoon in your home, in this room. Speaking to your mother.  Making plans to send Jinjoo.  Your chest squeezes so tight that for a moment it’s hard to breathe.

“Okay,” you concede quietly.  You maintain the appearance of careful calm because you don’t want to make your mother feel worse than she already does., “It’s alright Eomma, I’m not angry, I promise.”

A peculiar look passes over her face.  Her eyes dart away from yours and that’s all it takes for you to know you don’t have the full story.  You decide to toughen your stance.

“Look at me, Eomma,” you say firmly.  “If there’s anything I don’t know, you need to tell me right now.  I need to know all of it.  Everything.”

“I -- “

“Just tell me what it is,” you repeat, patience hanging by a thread.

Your mother sighs, lifting one weak hand in the direction of her dresser.  You turn to stare at the pile of papers stacked there, realization dawning in an instant.  You move on unsteady legs to walk over and take hold of them.

Radiology, pulmonology, chemotherapy.  

You know exactly how much is owed on each of those bills because the numbers are burned into your mind. Those numbers are the reason you leave your mother for hours on end every day to go to work.  Those numbers are the reason why it’s so hard to sleep at night.

You don’t realize that your hands are shaking until you hear the papers rustling.

Every bill bears the same neat, handwritten marking.

paid -- knj

***************************

NAMJOON

Namjoon watched his sister leave early tonight with Hoseok. Seokjin is out to dinner with his wife.  And Yoongi is off doing -- well, whatever the hell Yoongi does when he’s not around.

There’s no one here tonight to tell Namjoon to go home.  No one to point out that he’s had too much to drink or that it’s happening far too often.

So he pours another scotch.

The glass sweats in his hand as he stands in front of his window, deep in thought.

Thinking about you.

Thinking about the way you struggled in silence, caring for your mother alone -- too proud to ask for help. The way you catered to Namjoon’s every need and whim without ever making mention of yours.  The way he’d let it go on for far too long, selfishly wrapped up in the way you made him feel.

“That girl is going to get you killed.”

Namjoon tells himself the sound of your voice is a figment of his imagination, an entirely predictable side-effect of too much scotch.  But it’s followed quickly by your soft footsteps against the plush carpet in his office and both sounds are too real to ignore.

He turns to assess you, quietly sipping his drink.

Fuck, you are beautiful.  

You have no right turning up here tonight -- looking like that -- testing him when he is at his weakest.  Your dark eyes flash with something like a challenge and Namjoon feels his blood warm.

“That girl is never at her desk and she has no idea who’s coming or going,” you accuse quietly.  “She’s putting you at risk.”

Namjoon concedes your point with a slow half-smirk that teases the edge of his mouth.

“Perhaps,” he admits.  “But there are different kinds of risk.  Maybe you put me at risk, too.”

He shouldn’t take pleasure from the way your eyes go wide at that statement.  Or from the way you overcompensate by standing taller, chin lifted high.

But he does.

“Mister Kim -- “ you start.

“ -- Namjoon,” he interrupts.  “Don’t you think it’s time you called me Namjoon? Haven’t we known one another since we were kids?”

“Namjoon,” you correct yourself, taking a deep breath. “I know about everything.  Jinjoo, the bills, all of it.”

Namjoon says nothing for a moment, draining his glass before setting it down on his desk with a heavy thud.

“Why?” you ask quietly.  “Why did you do this for me?”

Because I would do anything for you.  

He doesn’t voice that thought out loud.  He knows he shouldn’t.

But he also knows he shouldn’t be closing the distance between you right now, and he’s doing that anyway.  He steps closer, quietly, and you swallow hard, thrown by his silence and his advance.

“That’s not -- that’s not something you do for an employee,” you protest, slowly backing away.  You stop only when the ledge of his desk hits you on the backside.  

“The late nights and the extra hours.  Everything else you did,” Namjoon murmurs, stepping close, chest rising and falling with his deep breaths.  “Did you do that for your boss?  Or did you do that for me?”

He leans closer, caging your body against his desk.  Your lips part in surprise and Namjoon forces himself not to react when your tongue slips out to wet them.

“Namjoon, I -- ” your voice is barely above a whisper when you find it.  “-- I don’t understand you right now.”

“How could I have every resource at my fingertips and not help you?” he asks, reaching one hand out to cup your face.  The pad of his thumb ghosts over your lips and you shudder under his touch.  “Why didn’t you come to me when you knew I could help?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, pupils blown and cheeks flushed.

“You should have come to me,” he admonishes quietly.  You lean into the touch of his hand.  “I would have given you anything you asked for. Anything.”

“I understand that,” you say quietly, the tremor in your voice betraying your attempt at calm.  “Because I would give you anything you asked for, too.”

Something about the way you say that snaps Namjoon back to reality.  

He looks down at you like he’s only just now realized that he’s loaded on scotch, leaning you over his desk -- and well on his way to taking advantage of this situation.  He tenses, pulling away.

“This is -- this is not --” he sputters pathetically for a moment.  “Go home,” he pleads.  “Please.”

He’s never hated himself as much as he does right now -- when you’re looking up at him with hurt and confusion in those wide, dark eyes.

“Go home before I do something I can’t take back.”

************************

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[crusherthedoctor]

Can we have some unpopular Sonic opinions?

I tried to cram in a lot, so I hope this satisfies you. :P I tried to stick to the ones that I haven't brought up quite as often, since by this point, we all know that I think IDW's storytelling is dire, SA2's story is overrated, X Eggman is an embarrassing portrayal (at least from season 2 onwards), Blaze shouldn't be handcuffed to Silver, Shadow's backstory had issues with or without the Black Arms, Neo Metal Sonic looks silly, etc. But anyway, here we go:

- Knuckles may be tricky to incorporate into plots that don't relate to Angel Island, but making him obsessed with his duties is no better than having him forget about Angel Island entirely.

- I like Marine, and never found her annoying. Oh, I understood what they were trying to do with her, but I honestly wasn't put off by her, and found her Aussie lingo more endearing if anything. Since her debut was during the period in my life where where I couldn't stand Sonic himself, I instead thought he was irritating (and hypocritical) for getting annoyed with her for doing shit he would often be guilty of.

- Silver is just as guilty of being shoehorned into games and plots as the Deadly Six are. Having more fans than the latter is irrelevant, since we're still talking about a character who constantly has to time travel in order to be present.

- Speaking of Silver, if he has to stick around, please do something different with him. They've pulled the doomed future routine multiple times now, and it's been boring every single time. I wasn't interested when it involved Iblis. I wasn't interested when it involved Knuckles drinking the edgy Kool Aid. I wasn't interested when it involved a council of dumbasses... give it a rest already.

- The Tails Doll can work as a mildly creepy thing, with maybe more to it than meets the eye when it's time for a boss fight or what have you. But the memes about him stealing your soul are just dumb, and I thought it was dumb even back in my teenage youth.

- “Eggman is supposed to be clownish!” Yeah, well he's also meant to be a genuine villain with a 300 IQ. These qualities don't have to be mutually exclusive.

- “Sonic is supposed to have attitude!” Yeah, well that's not the same thing as being an absolute cunt. Sonic was only ever meant to come off as having an edge compared to Mario. He was never meant to be a GTA-tier protagonist.

- Rouge is not a villain, and never was a villain. Literally the whole point of her role in SA2 was to reveal that she was working against Eggman and Shadow the whole time, albeit using sneakier tactics to do so. You'd think all those people who exult SA2's story would remember this, but apparently not. She barely even qualifies as an anti-hero, since aside from stealing the Master Emerald, she rarely does anything morally questionable otherwise. She's got a lot more good in her than people give her credit for.

- Captain Whisker is a better Eggman Nega than the actual Eggman Nega. And as far as robot characters in this franchise go, Johnny's design is pretty underrated.

- I don't like Iblis or Mephiles, but I DO like Solaris, and it annoys me that it was out of focus for most of the story due to all the time spent on its less interesting halves. Had they kept the backstory with the Duke and his experiments, and worked from there, I think they could have provided an interesting contrast with Chaos (since Solaris can also qualify as a monster with a sympathetic backstory) instead of recycling the surface level schtick.

- Black Doom may technically be just as bad as Mephiles, Nega, Scourge, Mimic, etc, since he's yet another villain with one-note characterization and fucked over Eggman. But because he never gained a disproportionate fandom, he doesn't annoy me to the same extent. It's easier to ignore him by comparison, and his Dr. Claw voice and face shaped like a lady's delicate part make him enjoyable to mock.

- Likewise, while Lyric is also on the same level as these other villains, it's easier to dismiss him because I was never invested in the Boom games anyway, and being an obvious alternate universe (compared to Sonic X or IDW, which retain the Modern designs and plot elements), it never had an effect on the main series. I also unironically like his design, and if nothing else, at least this snake didn't start a hypnotism fetish across the internet.

- Sally - and the rest of the Freedom Fighters for that matter - have had their importance in the franchise severely inflated. They may have been lucky to be the face of popular media (SatAM and Archie), but they're not these magnificent entities that the game characters are but a speck of dust in comparison to. Having a “legacy” doesn't make them more entitled to shit than any other character, old or new.

- Conceptually, the treasure hunting gameplay is one of the better alternate gameplay styles IMO. But it was let down in SA2 by its one track minded radar (the levels may have been big, but I don't think that would have been an issue on its own if the radar was better). If they brought it back and made it more like SA1's treasure hunting, I'd be all for it, although it would probably be better suited for a spinoff title.

- This goes for a lot of games, but when it comes to 2D, I prefer sprites over models. Not that the Rush models are bad (though the ones in Chronicles sure as fuck are), but the sprites in Mania and the Advance trilogy are just so charming and full of character.

- I actually like Marble Zone. Yeah, the level design is a bit blocky, but I love the concept of an underground temple prison, mixed with lava elements in a zone that otherwise isn't a traditional volcano level.

- I also like Sandopolis Zone. Again, completely understand why it's not the most popular zone around, but I've been a sucker for the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic since childhood (you can thank Crash 3 for that), and Act 1 is visually stunning.

- I prefer the JP soundtrack for Sonic CD over the US version overall... but I also prefer Sonic Boom over You Can Do Anything.

- SA2's soundtrack isn't bad by any means - I love Rouge's tracks, and The Last Scene is one of my favourite pieces of music - but as far as variety goes, it's a step down from SA1's soundtrack.

- If Sonic X-Treme had been released, it probably would have been unenjoyable and confusing. Whatever your thoughts on SA1, it was probably the better option between the two as far as Sonic's first legitimate translation into 3D goes.

- I have no qualms with Modern Sonic and the other Modern designs and characters, but I also fully acknowledge that changing gears from Adventure onwards - and doing it with a great amount of fanfare - was always going to create one of the biggest divides in the fandom, and fans shouldn't act surprised that this happened. The fact that they felt the need to hype up a new design and direction in the first place (compared to Mario, who has mostly been the same since the beginning, with only the occasional minor change with little fanfare) also indicates that they weren't confident enough in Sonic and his universe being the way it was, which often gets ignored by all the “SEGA have no confidence!!!” complaints you see with their recent games.

- Unleashed did not deserve the incredibly harsh reviews it received back in the day... but it doesn't deserve its current sacred cow status either. It had more effort put into it than '06 to be sure, and I can respect that, but much of it was misguided effort, and even if you like the Werehog, you have to admit that the idea came at the absolute worst time. The intro cutscene may be awesome, as is the Egg Dragoon fight, but 2% doesn't make up the entire game. Chip was also quite annoying, and I wasn't particularly sad when he pressed F in the chat at the end.

- On the other hand, while Colours definitely has its shortcomings, and people have every right to criticse those shortcomings, a lot of its most vocal detractors tend to have a stick up their arse about the game because people actually enjoyed it, and it had a gimmick that people actually liked. Yes, it may have been the first game to have those writers everyone hates, but then SA1 was the first game to give the characters alternate gameplay styles and have other villains upstage Eggman, so...

- Forces is absolutely not on the level of '06. It's nowhere close. A game being flawed does not make it the next '06, clickbait YouTubers. Or should I say, the game they want to retroactively apply '06's reception to, since they've been trying hard to magically retcon '06's own quality...

- To echo @beevean, ALL of the 3D stories have their issues. SA1 is probably the most well-rounded of them on the whole, but even that one isn't perfect.

- To echo another opinion, although I do love SA1, I'm not crazy over the idea of a remake, and would prefer them to just take Sonic's gameplay from SA1 and work from there. Because with a remake, you're stuck in a hard spot: Do you keep it the way it is bar the expected graphical upgrades, and risk accusations of not doing anything to actually improve the experience? Or do you try to address past criticisms, and risk the wrath of the fans who will inevitably go on a #NotMyAdventure crusade about it? What people fail to consider is that the Crash and Spyro remakes were accepted gracefully because their original iterations were still unanimously beloved for the most part, whereas SA1 - and especially SA2 - have always been divisive, and have only gotten moreso over the years.

- People take their preferences for the character's voice actors too seriously. I have my own favourites like anyone else, but I don't make a big deal out of it.

- And with fandom voice actors, they usually focus too much on doing a basic impression of their preferred official voice actor, and not enough on the acting. So you end up getting a lot of fan voices who sound like decent impressions of Ryan Drummond or Jason Griffith on the surface, but they sound utterly empty beyond that impression, because there's no oomph or depth to the actual emotions. They think about the actor rather than the character, when it should really be the other way around.

- The thing with Ian Flynn is that he is capable of telling a decent story, and he can portray some characters well. But he's proven time and time again that everything will go off the rails if he's given too much freedom (ironic, given how quick he is to point the finger at mandates when something goes wrong).

- Ian Flynn and Shiro Maekawa are not the only people in the world who are allowed to write for Sonic. I understand that one should be cautious when seeking out new writing talent, but for all the fandom's accusations of playing it safe, they sure aren't in a rush to experiment outside of their own comfort zone.

- And of course, the big one: You don't fix the franchise's current problems by crawling back to its previous problems. It's much more helpful and constructive to discuss the good and bad alike with each of the games. Less “THIS GOOD, MODERN BAD”, and more “This could work, but maybe without that part...”

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

Fowl Language || Nate and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Nate’s Apartment PARTIES: @deadicated-nate and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Nate’s birb gotta go :/

After a long few days of trying to get some fresh air, Nate was thrilled to be spending his day off cleaning up around the house and trying to teach Alea some new words. She was an incredibly fast learner, always impressing Nate with how quickly she added new words to her vocabulary. On one of his trips out of the house, Nate had gotten her a whole new gang of toys to reward her and she seemed in good spirits. For the first time in weeks, Nate felt at peace. He opened the blinds, let some sunlight in and brought his feathered friend out into the living room so they could enjoy the golden June sunset. His peace was cut abruptly short at the sound of a loud rap on his door, a sound so out of place that it caused him to jump a good foot and a half in the air. “Someone’s at the door! Someone’s at the door! Uninvited!” Nate cooed at Alea, attempting to calm her before heading over to see who was interrupting him. It wasn’t like Nate got too many visitors. He pulled open the door slowly, peeking around the edge to see who was standing on the other side, his mouth dropping. “Kaden? Problem, officer?”

There was a lot of shit going wrong in Kaden’s life. So much shit. But he could make one thing right. Even if the person in question didn’t want his fucking help, they were going to get it. They’d thank him later. Alright, no, they probably wouldn’t but he could sleep a slight bit better at night. Not that the aravo in Nate’s apartment was really keeping him awake but it was the fucking principle of the matter. He’d gone to the “pet shop” on Amity and sure enough, all monsters, no fuccking legitimate permits to speak of. Kaden was having trouble getting the place completely shut down, but he did at least get the paperwork of the “pets” sold to customers to follow up on. Nate was one of them. Easy enough to get his address and head over there. “I have a warrant for your unlicensed bird,” he said, biting back his smile from being too wide. He was off to a cordial start, really. “Or you can just let me in and we can cut the crap.”

Nate shrunk back, closing the door slightly in front of him. He had the right permits. The shop gave them to him! God, was this dude just a huge dick for no reason?? Nate hadn’t done anything to make him hate him or his poor bird! Not to mention how much good Alea had done him, keeping him company and erasing the sinking loneliness of the home he’d once built for him and his love. “Why?” His eyes were imploring. What did it matter if Alea was an exotic pet? Even if she was illegal, what was it to this guy? What Regan could see in the guy, Nate would never know. Nate pulled himself up, trying to look intimidating and failing. “You can’t.”

Kaden sighed. It was going to be the difficult way, wasn't it? He pulled out the papers and showed the warrant. “I can. That’s how warrants work. Please don’t make this worse.” He had every confidence this was only going to get worse. “I really don’t want to force my way in if I can avoid it. The pet shop you got him from? Illegal business. Sorry, but I need the bird.” The real question was if he was going to be forced to kill it right away or if he could actually cage the thing first. Guess he’d see. He put his hand against the door to make sure it didn’t shut in his face. No pressure on it. Yet. “You been having any issues with your voice?”

Nate’s brows furrowed. Maybe if the guy knew how important Alea was to him, that she wasn’t just some bird, some pet that could be replaced. She was more than family, she was his only true friend. Nate had told her so many things that haunted him, fears he hadn’t told Morgan or even Nell when he was drugged. But he didn’t go against the law. Head falling down, Nate opened the door, allowing the man to enter. But he couldn’t give up without a fight. “Just- leave her,” he croaked. Cocking his head, he furrowed his brows again. “My voice?” Sure, sometimes it was hard to choke out the words he wanted, but it’s not like he had strep or anything. He was just nervous. A lot. And allergies. “No...why?”

Kaden stepped inside and searched for the bird. With the squawks and rustles of feathers, it wasn’t hard to find. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, not wanting to deal with whatever stupid attachment the guy had to the monster in question. It was never fun dealing with beasts that looked like pets, tricked humans into thinking they were friendly. Didn’t change what he had to do. Who knew how many voices this had. “Nothing? Never felt a little hoarse around your bird?” His eyes narrowed at the animal. “Go away! Uninvited!” it squealed out. Not sure why he figured it wouldn't put up a fight. “Just asking because they have uh...” Powers. They had powers. “Well they typically cause most people to have, uh, allergies. You know. All that.”

Nate hovered behind Kaden as he made his way deeper into the house, his eyes fixed on the back of the man’s head. He wondered if it made him feel good to take people’s pets away, members of their family. Just because of some darned paperwork. He tried to give Alea a consoling look, but her feathers were rustled and she was dancing side to side on her perch, clearly not a fan of their visitor either. “No.” He said firmly, crossing his arms. “W-what difference? Hm?” He coughed into his elbow. Summer blooms messing with his lungs. “What difference does that make?” He moved to try to stand between the animal control officer and his new best friend, his face imploring. “She didn’t do anything wrong.” “Nothing wrong! Nothing wrong!” Alea echoed.

Kaden’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the guy, coughing and sputtering a little. It wasn’t a certainty that the bird was stealing his voice, maybe it was just allergies, but that wasn’t a chance he was going to take. He reached out to the creature, but before he could do much of anything, Nate was standing in front of him. He couldn’t help but huff and roll his eyes. The voice that came out of the bird sounded almost human. Right. Nothing wrong. “That doesn’t mean you can keep her. I’m sorry. You got pulled into a scam. I’m just trying to uphold the law.” He tried to keep his tone sincere. And he did mean it. Losing a pet, even if it was a monster, it sucked. And a replacement wasn’t the same. Not when it came to animals. “Please step aside,” he pleaded. Without waiting, the bird cawe, “Nothing wrong!” and leapt from her perch and flew beak first at Kaden, wings sprawled and talons out.

Nate didn’t want to interfere with the law, but he’d already lost so much in this life, couldn’t he have just one thing that was good? One thing that was his? He was about to throw his arms out in protection when Alea rocketed into the air, her claws looking for purchase in Kaden’s skin. “Alea! No! Bad girl!” The bird shrieked and inhuman noise, feathers flying about the room. “Bad! Bad! Bad man!” She shrieked, attacking the officer with a fury Nate had never seen before. He flung himself across the room, trying without success to grab onto her leg. “What’s- Alea! What’s gotten into you!!”

The talons dug into his arm as Kaden tried to shield his face from the attack. He tried to throw his arm away and shake the creature off, blood flying as he yanked it back. Aw, shit, another fucking scar. Or five. Something like that. He took the cage in his other and and whipped it around to try and hit the bird as it squealed in his face. “Nothing wrong, huh?” Kaden yelled as he ducked to avoid another attack, this time with the beak aimed directly at his eyes. When he came there, he had no plans to pull out his knife on the fucking bird in front of Nate but that ship had fucking sailed and reached back for his weapon as blood dripped down to his palm, coating the handle. “This.” He swung out at the bird, blade trying to strike at flesh and not just feathers. “Is why.” The feathers whacked him in the face. “These fucking birds.” Talons by his back, he ducked rolled. “Are illegal!”

Nate flitted around the room, his hands on his head. What the heck was he supposed to do?? Alea had never acted like this before, but she clearly hated this guy. And who wouldn’t?! Before he knew it, Kaden had a flipping knife in his hand and was slashing wildly at his pet. “STOP! Stop what are you doing!!” Nate dropped to the floor as Alea dove over him, narrowly avoiding Kaden’s blade, screaming all the while. “Monster! Monster!!” Tears began to form in the man’s eyes as he watched the scene unfold. Today was supposed to be a relaxing one! Not filled with some asshole trying to kill his pet!

The edge of the knife only struck a small bit of the bird’s flesh but a squeal rang out through the apartment. “It’s attacking me!” Kaden yelled out. And the violence only encouraged the aravo to  strike out at him again. The beak grabbed at his ear and pulled. Kaden screamed out in pain and rammed his knife into the bird and it let go. Putain de merde, that hurt. “Either control your fucking mon-- BIRD or I have to put it down!” He had no hope that Nate would calm this bird down, but in the off chance he could, he’d like to avoid another puncture to his ear. “Stop what are you doing!” The bird’s voice was a mirror of Nate’s for that one moment. Shit. That wasn’t good. Kaden ducked again as the talons swooped towards his back. “Stop your bird or I’ll have to! If you can even talk anymore!”

Nate’s heart was racing, grief and panic washing over him in waves. What the heck was he supposed to do?? He wasn’t cut out for this! He had no idea how to calm Alea down, she’d never acted like this before! “B-because- y-y-y-ou attacked her!!!” Wildly, Nate threw himself around the room after the bird, attempting to grab her without getting himself slashed by her talons. Every swipe she took, however, seemed meticulously calculated so that she only ever nicked Kaden. In a desperate attempt to save his bird’s life, he ran to the couch, grabbing the blanket so that it might be a shield of sorts. He’d seen people on Animal Planet do this kind of thing when they captured thrashing, dangerous animals. “Stop what are you doing!” Nate froze, blanket in hand, at the sound of his own voice. It was eerily similar to his own in a way he hadn’t heard before. “Y-you can’t k-k-kill her!!” He begged, his feet firmly planted in place.

Kaden was thrilled to see that Nate was frozen in place as the bird’s talons dug into his back, ripping through Kaden’s shirt and down into his flesh. He screamed in pain as he tried to duck and roll away, but the damage was already done. Kaden whipped around and yanked at one of the wings, hoping to get more than a fist full of feathers but such was his luck at the moment. Another duck from the claws and this time, when he reached out, he got a sizable piece of the wing, the limb this time. He pulled it down out of the air and dragged it towards him, knife raised and ready to thrust down into the heart. But before he could do that, Kaden caught a glimpse of the guy’s face. Fucking hell. Bleeding goddamn hearts were getting to him. He couldn't do it in front of Nate, not looking like that. His grip pinched the wing, hard, keeping the writhing bird in place and he grabbed the blanket with his free hand to wrap the bird in. “Look, I don’t know how much you know. But this bird is stealing your voice. And it may have stolen others.” The beast was scrambling and squawking under the blanket as Kaden tried to wrap it tightly closed. “The only way to give them back is by killing it. Do you understand?” He tried to keep calm and look Nate in the eye, but he knew there was no way this was sinking in. Not now.

Nate didn’t move when Kaden snatched the blanket out of his hand. His heart sunk as he watched the man tackle his bird, his closest friend and confidante for the past few months, preparing not only to take her away, but apparently to end her life all together. Even if she was illegal, Alea didn’t deserve that. Even if she was- stealing his voice? What was this, a Disney cartoon? Nate wasn’t some animated princess and Kaden certainly wasn’t his prince charming. Since when did prince charming murder your pet in front of you?? Maybe he was taking the metaphor too far… “N-no,” he croaked, his voice still struggled against his body to be heard. But that was because he was distraught, not because his Alea was stealing his words! That would be insane! “That- it’s- not p-possible!”

The bag flew a few feet in the air as the bird inside tried to fight its way out. Kaden would have to make a decision fast. There was no way he could keep the bird trapped in there for too long. Those claws and that beak would poke its way through soon enough. “Do you even hear yourself?” he said, rolling his eyes. ”Your voice is cracking every time you ta--” Kaden didn’t get a chance to finish when a voice that sounded just like Nate’s came from the bag. “His voice is fine.” Fucking aravos. Kaden exchanged a glance with the other man, raising a brow and hoping maybe, just maybe, his point was proven. “You teach her all that? Or did she just learn that all on her own? She’s not even repeating anything you said.” Come. On. “I don’t have to do it here, just let me take her. She’ll leave you once she has your voice and you'll never see her again and you won’t be able to get it back.

Nate sank down onto his couch, his arms falling down in front of him. Crazier things had happened to the man than a bird who could steal voices. But he knew Alea, she was sweet and smart and the best pet he could have asked for...right? But the more she thrashed around in the makeshift bag, spitting out phrases in his own voice, only filled with a venom he could never muster. Hadn’t he lost enough? Somehow, he knew Kaden was right, but for the life of him he didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction. Nate felt his heart breaking with every squawk, but he nodded slowly, consenting for Kaden to do whatever he needed to do. It wasn’t like Nate was in the position to fight him, he knew that was a battle he couldn’t win. “Just...quick, please? F-for her?”

If Kaden had a free hand to rub his face with, he would. This was exhausting. Why was a perfectly routine hunting call so fucking exhausting? He knew. Looking at Nate, he knew. Fuck, when did his heart start bleeding over bullshit like this? “I’ll take her outside, alright? If you want.” It felt like the least he could do. This wasn’t like being there when putting down a dog. This wasn’t the pet and the deep bond that this guy clearly wanted from an animal. Kaden hated how much he could relate. “Look, I know it’s not the same. It’s not. But if you want, I’ll waive the adoption fee at the shelter for you. Any animal. There’s plenty. Who don’t take voices.” And by waived he meant he’d just pay it for him. It still felt cheap and hollow. Animals couldn’t be replaced. Monsters should never be kept as pets and it was an unfortunate situation, but the sentiment remained.

Nate looked up at the man who was about to murder his pet through tear brimmed eyes. He didn’t like this man before, and today was doing no favors for their relationship, but he could see that Kaden at least was trying to make this easier. A little. It was a far cry from just not killing his pet, but Nate didn’t see how he’d be able to change the animal control officer’s mind. Especially after Alea proved rather...terrifyingly vicious. Tears began to spill over onto his cheeks and Nate dropped his head into his hands. “J-just go. P-please.” All he wanted was this nightmare of a day to be over so he could wallow in the loss of his pet alone.

Kaden gave a small nod and awkwardly tried to drag the blanket with the bird as well as the cage he brought with him. It would be great if it were quieter or more graceful but it was the best he could do. Once he was outside, he took the knife and dug it into the bird’s heart. Or where he hoped it was. The struggle ended and Kaden watched as the chet fell and air released from the lungs. The sounds of a handful of voices floated up to the air and then dispersed in all directions. One small breath of voice floated to the door he’d just left. Even if the man inside didn’t appreciate anything he’d just done, Kaden knew something ended well at least. Not much, but it would have to be enough.

[lest-we-be-liars]

Did I just fall in love with a Bucklemming episode?!

YES!!!

I am shocked! SHOOKETH!

It was actually great! Like....I don't know what to think... everything I know is wrong...black is white, up is down....

The Acting!

Chuck always had a weird uncomfortable vibe for me, but he's genuinely starting to give me the willie's. Bravo Rob!

Can we please talk about how well Keith Szarabajka portrayed Donatello being possessed by Chuck? Like, I was blown away. It really felt like Chuck with no trace of the prophet at all. I was more than impressed. Just...ugh....

Ruthie! You goddess, you!

Shoshana, I see you!

J2M, beautiful as always.

But most of all, Jake Motha Effin Abel!!!! I was not excited for this(mostly, because of the writing team) but I'll be damned if the man didn't blow me away! Slipping between two characters like that at such a quick pace is not an easy task, but he nailed it!!! You sir, are fantastic!

The directing!

Dick, you never cease to amaze me. Your episodes are always asthetic wonders. Nothing felt clunky or awkward for me. You are just as good behind the camera as you are in front of it!

The writing itself!

Again. I am shooketh!

It wasn't full of horrible jokes

Two female characters and both of them actually managed to live! Not only that, they were badasses! ( Aside from Eileen being tricked) Neither of them were pathetic damsels in distress! Rowena is actually in a position of power!

There was character development!

It actually flowed!

The dialogue was bearable

No one died! (Well, Lilith...but I mean...they were probably gonna waste that storyline anyway ...)

It didn't bore me to tears or anger me beyond all reason

Canon was still kind of ignored ( Belphagore already told Dean Michael wasn't in the cage anymore, he should have known) but not to the point where it was painful

We finally got some plot development!

Are we sure this was Bucklemming? *Triple checks* yup! SHOOKETH!

The episode itself

Chuck, gambling, like his sister. Okay.

Chuck, going serial killer on every one in the casino. Creepy.

Chuck is actually starting to scare me.

Poor Donatello. He didn't choose the prophet life. Last time he read the tablets, Cas fried his brain crispier than the chicken he was eating. And now God is using him to spy on the guys. His little moment on the phone with Dean while he was seeing all the places Michael was landing had me rolling though. He deserves his bourbon!

Sam being a protective "friend". Sweetie, she's a MOL legacy. She was hunting long before she met you. She's got this. I love it though. It's sweet. He needs to let himself be happy. I want him to be happy damnit! She was brought back for a reason. Don't let Chuck and his crazy ass ruin this for him. Also, free Sam from Chuck! Please and thank you.

Eileen. I love her. I'm glad she's back. I'm sad Chuck used her to trap Sam. Like fuck. Just let them be happy! I know it's supernatural. It's not supposed to be Happy. I know one of the main reasons I love this show is because it doesn't focus solely on romance, but she actually came back! Sam's Dick-O-Death couldn't keep her down. She deserves to stay alive!

ROWENA!!!! I legitimately squeed! I'm not an overly emotional person, but I made a noise so happy when I heard her voice....my dog has been giving me dirty looks ever since. My Goddess! MY QUEEN! The Queen! Of Hell! It's everything she deserves! She has those demons quaking! Not to mention she looks absolutely stunning! And telling Dean and Cas to get their shit together before they die and regret it...

Dean. Encouraging your brother to be happy? Good boy. Admitting you have been in a bad place? Starting a conversation with Cas and showing concern (despite the fact you couldn't look him in the eye)? You genuinely apologized to someone without making it about yourself? Is that character development I'm smelling? So proud. You at least tired to save Adam briefly, and letting him know that you were sorry for what happened to him was a good step. He may not have forgiven you right away, but it was a good step. * Cough* hint*cough*. (Don't get me wrong, they both need to apologise to each other. I'm sick of the snippiness)

Cas! Hunny! I like having the badass he once was slowly leaking back in. Adding the straight up bitch to it is a bonus! "Oh, I'm not here to beg." "You have an entire oak tree shoved up your ass." honestly his whole speech to Micheal was prime sassy Cas! I live! 1 issue: why can he hold his own against and archangel, but demons can kick his ass? And not touching Dean when he healed him? Refusing to look at him? Get over your shit you two! There's a bigger picture here!

Adam. The most well rounded man with Winchester blood.he was locked away for years in Lucifer's cage with every reason to seek revenge and instead he ended up being the voice of reason. He wasn't vengeful or petty....he just wanted food and an apology. Like I have too much to say about him, but I want to focus on the fact that instead of being resentful towards Michael, he made friends with him. like he could have checked out, but he reached out instead. He really is a good man.

Michael. Was not what I expected. I feel sorry for him. Like, yeah he was a little extra, but I can't blame him. He just learned that he was never his father's favorite, that everything he knew was a lie, and everything he's ever fought for is meaningless. I expected him to be big and scary and go evil, and he goes and helps the out instead. I like this Michael. I hope he stays this way. Also again ...his friendship with Adam is refreshing.

Chuck has Sam and I am not okay!

PURGATORY! I always wished they would have made more out of Purgatory! It felt like a wasted opportunity. No maybe a whole ass episode! I have thoughts about what it could mean for Dean, but I will keep them to myself (for now). I'm stoked!

We are finally getting somewhere with this final season!

Over all great episode! 8.9/10. Can't wait until next month!

[lizzybeth1986]

Very Slow Thoughts on TRH Book 1 Chapter 8

• This chapter is meh. It's basically a full chapter of the writers taking the Walker ranch portion of the story, and stretching it like chewing gum at this point. I was pretty much sleepwalking through this one tbh.

• The only interesting bit in this was the Drake childhood scene, but because the initial scenes will always be slight buildup to the actual meat of the backstory - rather than the story itself - its placement in a chapter as dull as this one doesn't exactly do it any favours.

• To avoid seeing these posts on your dash, you can block the following tags: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, #long post

• Screenshot Credits:

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan and the HIMEME YouTube channel

Hana: The Abhirio YouTube channel

I'm sorry I don't have any Maxwell screenshots this time around, since I couldn't find it on YouTube, and I wasn't able to ask permission for screenshots on time. As soon as a video of his route is up on YouTube, I'll try adding the collages with his screenshots up. But I do have a tiny gist of what happens in certain portions of his playthrough, thanks to Tumblr, so I'll put those up as quotes.

• Title: Ride Like The Wind

Alternate Title: There Are Other Things My MC Could Be Riding...But Okay

• We begin with the sisters (yeah Leona and Bianca are back to being sisters now), worrying over how they'll get their cattle to the upcoming auction on time since every ranch hand they'd reached out for help pretty much declined.

• Not only is stubbornness a family trait, but so is the tendency to judge people at face value (I'm looking at you, Leona).

• There are a bunch of parallels between the Walker Ranch situation and the Beaumont house one in Book 1: both for the Regatta and the Beaumont Bash. Only difference is, the writers won't bother to expand much on Beaumont History but throw around every minute detail they can imagine for Drake's family (IIRC, even the mystery in Beaumont House in Book 1 was mostly Savannah related).

• Even in moments of dire need, Leona HAS to slip in snide remarks about people she barely knows.

Slight variation on the third option, if you're married to Drake. The other two highlight either the fact that the MC spent most of her life as a commoner and could think on her feet, and the second establishes that she has at least some riding experience. Leona pokes fun at you for both, but has the sense to not deliver much of her unwanted opinion for the third (besides stating they don't have much of a choice).

• The MC also highlights the benefit of bringing the others along: Hana and Liam have a lot of riding experience, Drake is 'capable' and 'outdoorsy' and for some reason Maxwell is known only for his enthusiasm (even though Beaumont House HAS horses and a stable and the Brothers Beaumont would have had SOME experience at the very least 🤷🏽‍♀ [Didn't the Beaumont Bash involve letting in a couple horses into the house? I doubt those horses would even be there if those two didn't know how to ride and manage them]).

Hands down my favourite line in this chapter (Liam's king voice one comes a close second). I really love this because in stories like TRR/D&D, there's always that divide between nobility vs commoner, aesthetics vs utility...and in dialogues like these you can really see that difference. It reminds me a little of one of my favourite scenes from D&D Book 1, where Briar looks at the MC's embroidery and wonders aloud how a pretty piece like this would be of any use to anyone.

• The suede is fine but there's too much going on with the rest of the outfit for me to really admire it. Our LIs obviously don't agree with me:

Drake and Liam have the same dialogue, Hana and Maxwell have different ones. (in Maxwell's he tells her he is ready to "serenade my amazingly dressed, darlin' wife").

• Everyone gets their horses (Bianca gives King Liam a gentler horse so she doesn't end up indirectly harming a king, and Leona gives Bertrand a rough horse on purpose. Because Bertrand has to be on his best behaviour he agrees despite his initial fears).

• Hmm. Chuck finds out about the lack of help via a rumour. Hmmmm. Bertrand gets as skittish as his horse until the MC and Bianca remind him that they might as well take all the help they need.

• So the task is to ensure that the group reaches the big fair on time (or before) so that the sisters have enough time to prepare for their auction. Since they're short of staff and have a lot of cattle, every minute counts.

• There are roughly 3 tests that can ensure we get there on time if we pass:

- help move a group of stubborn cows from the six dozen we're taking to the auction (you can either say giddyup or scream out silly idioms that they won't understand). If you don't say giddyup, Drake will say it for you.

- Move the herd of cows away from a mud patch on the way. Drake suggests a move he and Savannah used to do as kids called The Cyclone, where 1-2 people get in the way of the herd and the riders come from another side to steer them away. This ensures that they get the cows away from the mud patch. This one is the most time-sensitive of the three, because if we fail this one a lot of time gets spent in getting the cows that fell into the mud patch out of the muck and onto the path again.

- Get a cow wandering through the stream out of it safely using a lasso. The problem arises when the cow starts fidgeting while you're taking them back. Here is where your suede outfit has an advantage, because if you choose "grip the pommel with your hands" and almost fall off the horse, the sturdy outfit will ensure you're safe.

-

All of this results either in you getting the cattle to the auction way before time with an hour to spare, or so late that they reach after the auction itself has begun. In the second option, Leona is nervous about their chances but Bianca insists that they did better than they could have done alone.

• Some stuff that you learn/that happens on the way:

- Chuck calls Leona Miss Walker, so is Walker really Bianca's surname rather than Jackson's? Jackson is also referred to as Jackson Walker. So whose nickname was it initially?

- Wild West Nicknames:

* Maxwell can either be Mad Maxwell or Maxwell 'Calamity' Beaumont. Both nicknames from the MC speak of his tendency to veer towards chaos, or his boundless energy.

* Liam is simply called King Liam because PB is fucking lazy.

* Drake is called The Lone Ranger by Hana, and Hana is called Lucky Lee by Drake.

* The MC can choose her nickname - Cow Boss, Jewel of the Prairie and Wild [Surname]. The second is a nice callback to both one of Valtoria's House mottos (Jewel of the Earth) and a name that Maxwell gives to a caviar dish for the Beaumont Bash (Jewels of the Sea). Personally I think the second one is a better parallel since the Beaumont House situation was already a precursor to what is going on with the Walker Ranch.

-

Well yes Liam, on people.

That aside...Jesus Christ is this man adorable.

- Alright, so much as I can't stand Leona? At least she has a legitimate ax to grind with Cordonian monarchy. Why the hell is CHUCK being like her and acting all condescending?? The closest thing to a 'noble' he's been around was Savannah and they barely even had anything together if we go by what Savannah says. What is he, the shit stirrer of Walker Ranch?

-

I have two points to make about this:

1. Constantine...is a fucking asshole. Most of us knew that. I think TRH just seems to be expanding more on that.

2. Sooo...exactly what was Constantine like before the Nevrakis ppl did what they did coz at this point he sounds like an utter failure in every way imaginable. His wife seems to have serious issues with him at this point, he's too busy fighting to spend any time with his kids (well. at least the one the writers remember), has neglected his friend Hakim, doesn't have good political relations with anyone, screws over the King Guard who he gave a Guardian of the Realm honour to earlier, for saving his life...after the man has died.

3. Leona pretty much doesn't seem to care about anything else besides the money Bianca could have been bringing in. It's the main thing she mentions when we first meet her, and it's the front and center of what she's telling us now. What Bianca was going through, the fact that her kids were left behind in an environment that was seemingly not a good one for them - she hasn't mentioned this so far in any of her more obvious complaints towards the nobility. I mean, is that the first thing you think about when your sister returns to her maternal home after such a devastating tragedy? Really??

4. The other funny thing is...she complains about not getting compensation from the royalty yet forgets that for a whole year or more when Bianca and Leona were not there for her (not their fault obviously, since she likely never told them)...it was a noble family's money that supported Savannah and Bartie. The money of the same Bertrand Leona is now enjoying lording over. I guess she would only know this if she were actually giving her sister's children the time of day, and I have hardly seen her do so, so far.

• Once we reach the fair and the sisters have moved forward to where the auction is happening, we are allowed to check out the rest of the fair. Cue diamond scene!

• I kinda think of this as a Group-LI kind of diamond scene - one where you spend time with the characters, but not separately. In a usual group scene they interact and do stuff together before you get time alone with them, but here, the group interactions are minimal and you get time with each LI in different situations. If you are married to said LI, the dialogues are obviously more romantic.

Drake: Opts for bull riding. He's shocked at the number of waivers he has to sign before participating, has a tough time atop the bull BUT manages to stay on longer than the rest. The rest of the group cheers him on as he comes out victorious, and the MC can either be baffled at his daring, or try it out herself.

The MC who is Drake's wife can opt to kiss him just before he participates and tell him to be safe.

Maxwell: Asks us to join in a tandem pie eating competition with him. The MC and Maxwell can either easily win, or be disqualified for starting a pie fight. Either way, the experience is a blast.

As Maxwell's wife, you get to kiss him after you've won/gotten disqualified, and tell him how his ability to make you laugh and have fun is exactly why your marriage is so amazing. (as Maxwell puts it: "never a dull day and more pie eating contests than you'd expect").

Hana: Has found a dressage-trained horse, and is happily getting the horse to do a perfect figure-eight. What follows is a heartfelt conversation about what home means to her, all the possibilities she can now freely explore, and the changes she has experienced. You can either tell her about her tendency to be competitive (something she apparently did not know herself...uh, yeah, sure), or her love and loyalty towards her friends.

As Hana's wife, you can kiss her, tell her you're falling more and more in love with her each day, and Hana gets to tell you that for her, home is where you are.

Liam: Has learned how to make a lasso from a local at the fair. He speaks of how places like these make him feel like he perhaps may understand his own people better, even if these activities are not what the court would expect or approve of from a king. He can show a few rope tricks to the MC, like catching a chair with a lasso, or be 'captured' by the MC.

As Liam's wife, there's the opportunity to flirt either by using the lasso on Liam, or asking him to tie you up.

• Savannah gives an update from Bertrand on how the cattle drive has gone, and Drake brings along some Texas barbeque. The group love it, but the MC finds it a little too much on the spicier side (bold of you, team TRH, to think I can't handle the seasoning in Texas when I have numbed my tongue on bird's-eye chilis!).

• Gah. The paps again. But this time, we're prepared and able to put a positive spin on our trip to Texas (this is either a romantic getaway to ensure we conceive a child, supporting a local business, attending the wedding of a noble) and the paparazzo runs with it. Chuck comes to our 'rescue' a minute later and Savannah is very appreciative.

• Tensions continue brewing beneath the surface between Bertrand and Chuck. Chuck tries to bond with Bartie, who is naturally a friendly child, and Bertrand isn't able to hide how he feels about this. You get to either deflect the situation by telling Bertrand to show Bartie how a "Beaumont high-five" works, or by telling Chuck not to cut into Bartie's animal petting time.

• Savannah complains. Only improvement is that at least this time she mentions that she's spoken to Bertrand and even then he feels he has something to prove (gee, Savannah, I wonder why. It's not like your AUNT has anything to do with that, for sure!)

• "Whatever's going on with Bertrand, I hope he figures it out before our wedding". 'Because I sure as hell don't care', Savannah forgot to add. Like...the root of his current insecurities is right in front of her. Right in her family. Leona has been rubbing it in that he is a 'useless noble' ever since he's been here (even giving him a skittish horse on purpose) and not once has Savannah ever said a thing - either in front of Bertrand, or secretly to us in all the times she's been complaining about him. That's a...surprisingly cavalier attitude for someone getting married to this guy in a couple days.

• Seeing Bertrand, Savannah and Bartie as a family leads the MC and LI to talk about their own search for a family. Nowadays I generally tap over a scene like this because I personally find the MC having the option to be upset and sorry for herself about not being pregnant, a little annoying. I wouldn't under normal circumstances, considering what this book is about (in fact I would be quite happy) - but I think I'm allowed to feel sore over the fact that the MC unfairly gets the space to feel about this the way others can't. So yeah, for me scenes like these are not worth talking about.

• We're back at the ranch, where the group laughs and reminisces over the last trip some of them (Liam, Drake, Savannah) took to the ranch, and the strongest memory we here about is of Jackson, Drake's father who was once Constantine and Eleanor's security detail.

• In our second childhood diamond scene, we are taken back to their last visit to the ranch, where a rather unwell Eleanor is protected by Jackson, and where the children witness a fight between the king and queen. Drake and Jackson have a conversation in the stables later, where the father evades questions about Constantine and Eleanor from a very worried son, and instead chooses to ask him questions about his future. Here are the things I could glean from the scenes:

- Bianca doesn't get a younger sprite here even though she is present in the scene, and there's a chance that they're maybe saving that for a flashback scene for her (?)

- Eleanor's meant to appear unwell, tired and very unlike herself in this sequence - and even if we've just met her it's quite clear that something is off with her. She is shown looking weary a couple of times, and Jackson says "easy does it" at one point. She shows a lot more frustration towards Constantine than in the last scene, calling him out for his paranoia and asking him if his questions (about her wanting an alliance with Auvernal) are an order from the king rather than a request from her husband. Even Constantine points out that she is not herself.

- Other than Auvernal being her maternal home, what else do we know about her connections there? (besides that telling quote by Bradshaw about Eleanor always graciously welcoming them - which interestingly seems to leave out Constantine). I feel like the upcoming trip there next chapter is going to give us an insight into that.

- There is a heavy emphasis on Liam and Drake's friendship, and Drake's feeling of 'responsibility' towards Liam...which I think is kind of a pointer to the whole question of him returning to court after the assassination and staying with Liam when they're older. Even his conversation with Jackson has the latter mentioning that he would be of the most help if he keeps Liam and his parents happy during their time in the ranch.

- The ending itself shows a significant shift from Drake's attitude towards Liam in the first half (playful, friendly, wants Liam to be safe around his mother's home) to the last (protective, determined to cheer Liam up and more reflective). This scene is clearly a Drake scene through and through and the approach is very different from the first set of childhood scenes. This might be how childhood solo scenes will be dealt with from now on.

- Jackson also mentions not being able to speak openly about the problems between Constantine and Eleanor, and Liam tells us later on that he was kind of a confidant to both of them. Jackson also mentions in the stable scenes that he is responsible for keeping them alive but not for their personal problems. The perfect King Guard. Constantine is an ass for denying his family compensation (but also I wonder if there is more to that story the way they frame it. I hope they don't try to force another of those "it was for the good of Cordoniaaaaa" excuses the writers always keep ready for Constantine.

- If Olivia was so suspicious, why were they leaving her behind?

- There are significant differences between the Drake playthrough and other playthroughs in terms of certain scenes. One lies in the options little Drake can make with regards to his future. The third options in both playthroughs show indicators of his future. If present-day Drake is single in your playthrough, it will focus on his desire for a simpler life. If he is married now, then the flashback will include this:

The other two options are Drake speaking about wanting to be a King Guard like his dad, and wanting to stay Liam's best friend. The King Guard thing obviously doesn't happen, the second one happens because Liam almost died. The third one is more clearly a pointer to Drake's future.

- Another significant variation if you are married to Drake is that you have a conversation with him after the scene is over, about his thoughts on his child becoming an heir to the throne:

Reminds me of the conversation we had at the American bar. On the one hand, I like this because as an outsider in the court and someone close to the security detail at the time, he would think of Liam's life very differently. Kids are impressionable, and ostentatious shows of wealth in front of a kid who cannot afford that much can definitely sting.

- Hmm. Hmm. So Liam's sacrifices only become important to Drake when his own kid might face the same challenges? Until then he will yap about how much luckier Liam is and how everything revolves around Liam? How girls were after Liam and not him (yet the one girl who did like him, he eventually treated like trash)? How he thought of Liam as "leading the MC on" by spending time with her when they first met/during the social season? (that's an actual dialogue he says, in Book 3 Chapter 16). Added to this is the fact that Drake stayed in the palace for free, as Liam's friend, and hardly had to do much (he freely roams around the cities Liam has to visit for diplomatic reasons, he can opt out of court events when he wants, he doesn't even have to dress the way others do - even the MC that doesn't buy outfits has to wear a gown that represents her sponsors/duchy for official events). Now when it's convenient for Drake he chooses to think about the flip side? When that flip side should have been the most obvious to him, the Prince/King's best friend??

• The setup for the next chapter comes in the form of a letter from Auvernal, asking the MC to meet them. Well. It's not Texas, so I'll take it.

General Thoughts:

- I don't have a lot to say about this chapter. There's not much really. It's boring and bland and even the nice Drake childhood scene at the end can't save it.

- Bianca's little line about not wanting to harm a King on her ranch...I feel like part of it may be concern because Liam was after all her son's best friend, and part of it may be wariness because of Constantine? But a lot of this is definitely me reading too much into this one little line 😅

- It does have some decent callbacks though:

* Team TRH FINALLY remembers that Hana has done dressage, which was shown to us as far back as TRR Book 1 Chapter 13. Brava!

* The whole premise of a family struggling with money problems and us offering help and getting the job done, is very reminiscent of the pre-Beaumont Bash sequences where we were scrambling together appetizers, helping with cleaning and setting up the ballroom for the big event. It's kind of ironic because the Beaumonts were in this position once, and now at least 3 books later they are involved in helping the sisters get the cattle drive going.

* The pie fight in Maxwell's section of the diamond scene has some similarities to the food fight in the fondue party scene in Book 2.

* Hana's response to eating barbeque strongly resembles how she approaches eating sloppy joes in Book 1, at the beach party. Back there, she is nervous about sampling the food because it is messy, and here she initially asks about utensils to eat it with, to which Maxwell says "you have ten of them!" referring to her fingers.

* The Jewel nickname for the MC, which we've seen versions of before in Book 1 and Book 3.

* A lighter version of the MC-Drake conversation in the Drake x MC playthrough can be found in the American bar scene in Book 1, where he speaks about how his parents always tried to get him things for his birthday but Liam's parents always went many steps ahead simply because they could afford it.

* Drake being called the Lone Wolf by Hana, which was something the MC could opt to dub herself in her interview at the Derby in Book 1? (a bit of a stretch I know but I'm having fun with this okay 😂)

- Could a kind anon (or not-anon) tell me if there is a reference behind 'Lucky Lee'? In fact behind all the names except maybe the Lone Wolf one for Drake. I couldn't find any hehehe.

- Now that we're going to Auvernal, I think we'll find (paywalled) clues there that might tell us more about Eleanor. Those clues about her changed behaviour and physical condition must have been placed exactly here for a reason.

- Usually Chapters 9 or 10 have been chapters that dealt with some aspect of Constantine and his family (his abdication + news of his impending death in Book 1, discovery of his involvement in the conspiracy in Book 2, and his death in Book 3). So now would be the perfect time to discover the truth about Eleanor and her relationship with Constantine, and what was troubling her.

- One theory I have is that Eleanor's being slow-poisoned, and these may be symptoms of what she is having. @thefirstcourtesan mentioned that pregnancy could be a reason too, and it would be another connecting factor with the MC. One thing that I do feel a little certain about is that this trip to Texas may have been a little while before she died.

- How is it that the narrative has absolutely no memory of the fact that Leo was once heir to the throne? I can imagine him not being very close to Liam-Drake-Maxwell or being a teenager who didn't want to be around his father (esp if that father is acting the way Constantine does in these scenes)...but not even a reference? A mention? You have the time to draw an entire sprite of little Savannah who pretty much has very little to do with this part of the story (or any part of the overall story) but Leo isn't even mentioned? Sounds a little fishy to me.

- I possibly wouldn't have minded Savannah's complaining and lack of proactiveness with the Bertrand situation, if their entire storyline didn't revolve around her being this "perfect angel" Bertrand has to be worthy of, and Bertrand's mistakes repeatedly being pulled up while Savannah doesn't have to answer much for the occasions where she is irrational or hasn't made good decisions. What we're seeing now is just an extension of this particular storyline.

- You can tell that the original epilogue series was meant to revolve around the Walker Ranch coz whatever we're seeing here is probably way way more than we have seen of Cordonia so far. There are frantic attempts to tie this to the overall plotline, but within the larger picture it makes very little sense.

Like I hate the paparazzi in the series and even then I found myself agreeing when he pointed out that it was weird that half the Royal Council was roaming around Texas.

- Speaking of the Council I wonder what the other court ladies were doing while we were at the fair. Sleeping off those hangovers?

- There could be other childhood/flashback scenes coming up. We will need an adult perspective, so Bianca might get one. Olivia needs to be seen as important and relevant to the plot (plus Constantine was shitty to her too), so she will get one.

- I wonder why Bastien had such a loyalty and attachment to Queen Eleanor (as stated in Book 2 by Regina) if he actually wasn't that close to the royal couple then (Jackson seems to fulfill that role here). I'm pretty sure they're probably going to ignore/forget that little detail.

- Will Hana and Maxwell get flashback scenes? They should, and there are ways you could incorporate that even if they weren't involved as much. Maxwell's could (FINALLY) focus on what happened to his family fortunes and you could slip in a little something about the palace there. Hana's could focus on her family and also have Lorelai catch up on Cordonian news/talk to her Cordonian relatives. Liam needs a solo scene of his own too, because after this I'm pretty sure his life takes a turn for the worse. If Hana and Maxwell (but esp Hana) don't get one...that's going to be extremely disheartening because they deserve way more attention than what they're getting now. I'm sincerely hoping we see more of their childhood memories too.

- You know what I'm REALLY looking forward to? Writing TRR 1's Chapter 8 QT. I'm very fond of that chapter and have a whole bunch of points to make about it 😀

- Until the next chapter, everyone!

[randomoranges]

no - i was not convinced yet again that it was the 7th.

luckily i still have an antiquarian post-it with the date written on it.

also, no, i dont still have holiday fics to write.

Happy Birthday

Étienne stared at his laptop screen and let out a frustrated sigh. This was absolutely and utterly ridiculous. He felt like a right old fool and couldn’t believe it had all come down to this. Here he was, sitting in front of his laptop, staring at his screen, completely and unable to hit the “send” button. Letters, he decided, were much easier to write. At least with letters, he could write it, send it off, then forget about it, and not fret over the recipient’s reaction. At least he wouldn’t sit in front of his laptop waiting to see if his friend had seen his message or responded to it (and how he had responded to it.)

But – this was the Right Thing to Do – or whatever. God, and he’d even waited to make sure it was at least January 9th in Edward’s time zone before composing his very short, and very stock standard message to his friend. This was how ridiculous the whole thing was – it had come down to that. And all because he was trying to mend broken bridges – or whatever the expression was. He was trying to do the right thing and put fear aside and be the Bigger Man – or whatever. Whatever! This was dumb!

The great thing about the twenty-first century was that it was oh so convenient to stay in touch with friends who lived far away – the terrible thing about the twenty-first century was that it was oh so convenient to see how Great everyone else’s lives were. Case in point, he now knew for a fact that Edward had gone out with Calvin (woo-fucking-hoo) and that Emma had spent the weekend at the spa with – with Lucas (of all fucking people – he was going to gag). And he had spent a rather lovely (lonely) weekend at home watching television and Not Feeling Sorry for himself. (He was trying to be a Better Person and less of a sad sack – it was a work in progress. He’d actually wanted to stay in and relax – his therapist would be So Proud.)

Anyways.

The point of the matter was that it was Edward’s birthday and he could be a Good Friend and send him a very plain message wishing him a Happy Birthday and move on with his life. He wasn’t even writing anything heartfelt and deep – just a simple “Happy birthday!” – that was it. No emojis – no funny old pictures. Nothing. Hell, he’d even written it in English (because French seemed too loaded for them at this point – English was safe.) All he had to do was hit send and then try to get some sleep (it was 2h30AM – his sleep schedule was still a work of wonder (sadness) and at this point in his life, he was convinced it would never change).

But he didn’t want to seem too … desperate. And logically, he knew he could write out the message later, or at the very least, send it later, but he was afraid he would chicken out later and just – never get it done. And then he’d forget and he’d feel bad and then another day would go by and then Edward would think he had purposely not sent him a birthday message and then it would just – blow out of proportions and where would that even leave him? Letters could only get lost. Much easier to explain.

It was a complicated matter, really.

It’s why he preferred letters. No one would ever know when he’d written the letter or when he’d sent it out.

The thing was – the real issue was that his relationship with Edward had … fizzled out spectacularly – to put it lightly – and well, New Year, new him, or whatever, but he was actually and legitimately trying to mend things, even if he wasn’t sure Edward wanted to and even if he wasn’t sure where he stood with Edward anymore. (That was an entire other complicated matter all to itself. God. Over the past twenty years he could count on one hand the number of times he and Edward had actually had some sort of Actual Conversation and he absolutely fucking hated the thought that one of his oldest friendships could just – be over. It was why he was trying. It was why he had to remind himself that that Edward had sat with him at lunch a while back – that they were talking. That Edward often said hello to him when they ran into each other at meetings (Étienne was still sending Élyse in his place. He hated meetings.))

Hence, the proper thing to do when it was your friend’s birthday was to send them a regular, plain old, happy birthday message on Facebook and just – call it a day. People received dozens of such messages on their birthdays. If he really wanted to go for a more personal approach he would have sent a text message (but he didn’t have Edward’s cell number – so there), or he would have called him (he knew for a fact Edward had the same home number – Edward had told him – when he said he could send him a letter - had reminded him he hadn’t moved) – and he could have sent an e-mail, but that seemed too fastidious for just “Happy Birthday.” (Too much empty blank space where thoughts could spin into words better left unspoken - unwritten.)

But he didn’t want more personal he just wanted to wish his friend a happy birthday and hope that even though Edward had moved on from whatever it was they were back then that they could at least be friends. (Because Étienne realised that he didn’t care if Edward and he never turned into an item again – that  Edward could be with dozens of other men, that he could be married and have children for all he cared, and live the white picket fence dream and it would be fine – so long as they could be friends again. Real friends. Like before, when they could spend time together, laugh at stupid things, and enjoy each other’s company without things being weird between them. That’s what he really missed – the easiness of their friendship. The comfort he had found in Edward.)

And sure – he still had feelings for Edward – and sure, he still thought of his friend every January 9th, but he too had moved on for a while and had explored other venues. If Edward was happy, then he was happy for him– but it didn’t mean that because Edward was seeing someone seriously that he couldn’t spend time with his friends (and if that was the case then Calvin could seriously fuck off.)

Étienne was ready to chuck his laptop out the window. Really, he was. He would throw it out and then go off to live in the forest with the mountain sprites, or something. He was too old for this nonsense. Too old. Too tired. Too afraid – and wasn’t that what was really at play here? He was afraid he would get flushed away. That he would be shelved for good. (Remember, a voice in his head said, Edward was there for your last big birthday. He peeled you an orange. He still speaks to you.)

What if he was wrong?

What if he was right?

Logically, he knew he could send the message, go to bed (or at the very least, close his laptop and do absolutely anything else), and move on. Plus, the chances of Edward even seeing his message at this time were slim. The man had better things to do than sit in front of his phone, or laptop, or tablet, and wait for the birthday messages to pour in. He was probably with Calvin. They might even already be celebrating. Even if it was Thursday. (But Edward had a new life now – so who knew?)

But maybe, by sending the message now, it would get lost in the hoard of messages and then Étienne could live with the satisfaction that he’d actually sent his message instead of being a coward, but he would never know whether or not Edward had seen it. Maybe that was fine. Just sending the message would already be that.

Maybe he should just forget about it. Edward wouldn’t even notice his message. He’d get others. He wouldn’t even notice that he hadn’t sent one. Again. Maybe it was best if he didn’t break the new status-quo.

But he wanted things to change. Étienne was tired with this going around in circles. It had been twenty goddamned years. He wanted a clear answer. He wanted to know. And maybe this message could be the cataclysm to something. Maybe he just had to be a little brave.

So he finally was. (After close to another hour. Details.)

He took a deep breath. Placed the cursor over the “send” button. Held his breath. Closed his eyes. And clicked the button.

It was done.

It was done and it was out of his hands and now Edward could do whatever. He could do whatever. And whatever was to get up, go for a smoke and then maybe a vigorous walk (until he remembered that it was winter and it was cold outside, but frankly, the walk still sounded better – if anything it would give his mind something else to think about. There was too much nervous energy coursing through him. He felt like he was vibrating out of his skin. Good God he was so fucking restless.)

Therefore, he got up and he was about to do everything he had just thought of doing, when he saw he had a little red notification.

Edward a attribué la mention “j’adore” à votre publication.

Maybe – maybe there was hope after all.

[inexchangeforyoursoul]

@nagasleeps​ ... you unknowingly made me sweat blood upon getting the prompts lmfao 😅 (fake dating?? spo rT S??? so many things, none of which I’m into asgdsfafsd,,,) 

Getting over the initial turmoil and the need to hire a deep web hitman to assassinate me, however, I thought about it… and yes, I’ve always liked the aesthetics™ of figure skating and racing, so it wasn’t ~that~ hopeless of a case,,, All in all, I ended up revamping a scene from a half-done fic to feature the LoV (instead of the Todofam bc latter are the og cast in the other thing so they were out of bounds but sssh)

I was vibrating when you reacted to the Happy Feet joke, so I really really hope you’ll enjoy the rest just as much!! ✨ MERRY LATE CRAMPUS AND A HAPPY NEW YEEEEAH

OH right: have an ao3 link that will likely read better lmao

“Can I?”

The question itself takes everyone for a loop, but the real catch that makes heads turn is the barely contained excitement in Hawks’ voice. Then there’s his face, too, which is that of a kid on their first festival.

It quickly turns into an embarrassed blush that he tries to hide behind the collar of his jacket, but the damage has already been done- not only did he speak up like that, but it happened just a split second after everyone has unanimously started to move on.

“Can you?” grunts Dabi into the awkward silence with a raised brow, nodding towards the ice rink. He was a few steps ahead of them already, targeting what seemed to be the nearest punch stall available.

Hawks tagged along for the Christmas fair visit in Deika because he figured he might multitask and try this buddy thing with Jin and also catch a few snippets of info, but watching the kids slipping around on the ice when they stopped by the rink… did things to him. Nostalgic, dangerous things.

“You skate, Hawks?” Himiko asks with a glint in her eye. She also doesn't hesitate to turn back and bounce towards the rink, obviously interested in… either him, the fact, or the place itself. He's yet to get a grasp on the girl.

“ … ” His brows pull up as he sulks on behind the makeshift barrier. “... I could. A little.”

She hops against the railing, balancing over the dangerously unstable structure. “Oooh, that's neat! What are we waiting for then?”

Wait, we?

Hawks is almost surprised enough to say it out loud, which… nice save. That sounds all kinds of counterproductive.

Doesn't help with the emotion reflecting on his face, though.

“What’s that face for?” she asks with a pout, looking almost offended before hopping back down. “I’m not going to pass up some fun, if you’re going, I’m going, too.”

“Ah---”

“Me, too!! Me, too!!!” pops Twice’s head up from nowhere between them.

“--- I see.”

“Well then,” Himiko says, her grump already forgotten as she's planting a hearty pat on Jin's head. “Can you skate, Jin?”

His brows, if they exist, inch closer as he squints, as if thinking… but he also immediately says a plain “Hell no.”

“Want me to teach you, then?”

That one rouses a confident “HELL YEAH!!” on the other hand, and he pulls on the drawstrings of his hoodie with such force that he not only disappears up to the nosetip, but an audible ripping sound also conveys the hoodie’s dislike of the abuse.

“Buckle up, then!" Himiko states with her hands on her hips. "First we’ll need some shoes, though. Also, you should get up from the ground, can’t skate like that.”

The man jumps straight into a salute upon hearing that. Considering that his coat is hanging off his head like a tent, it's quite a sight. “Aye aye, Toga sensei!!”

Hawks can’t help but let the uncertain hum break free; he is not sure he’s ready to make a clown out of himself… or that he could still stand upright at all, as a baby bird he was quite a midget. And a lot closer to the ground in case he hit it, making it less, well, scary.

“Mister, you coming too, right?” asks Himiko turning back to the two leftovers of the group.

“Oh…? Oh, sure! Ha ha…” he starts, the nervousness hardly hidden in his voice.

A stone falls from Hawks’ heart; there’s another clown in the making…

The old man (?) is so full of it, though. Just look at him. The only thing holding him back from stuttering is state of the art bullshitting skills…

“--- it is a highly refined form of showmanship, of course I---” 

“You’re so full of shit, old man.”

… IT WASN’T HIM. IT WASN’T HIM WHO SAID THAT, RIGHT?!

Said old man’s monologue stops with a soft ‘ah’ of mixed shock and horror… followed by both hands pressed tight over his wounded pride and heart. Not even the mask can hide the damage done.

“Dabiii, you can’t just steal the big man’s thunder like that…” speaks up Jin as he peels a hole for himself on the hood to look out of.

Oh, thank GOD.

The offender isn’t shaken by the callout in the least.

“He should just admit he can’t skate,” Dabi shrugs, turning back to wherever he was headed before the minute disturbance began. “Anyway… I’m off to drown myself in mulled wine or whatever they have for sale. Smell y’all later.”

Yeesh… that’s cold.

… actually, getting Dabi alone out of the picture has made this issue of being seen stumbling around half as intimidating. Which Hawks isn’t gonna complain about.

A few minutes later he’s already received his pair of skates and is mentally preparing for the task at hand. And also trying to calm down, because honestly? He’s excited. 

First things first, though, for a change his wings are more of a liability while doing this, so he gets rid of most of the feathers. Only after piling them up in the corner of the coat (more along the lines of 'bag') check room does he try the skates from a few angles on the plastic covered ground. They may be rented, but in comparison to the pair of battered ones he found by a trash container as a kid, few sizes too big then and now just as small, anything shone as long as they fit the task.

With a deep breath, he decides to give this a try and steps into the rink. One leg, then the other… a slow start at low speed, but he’ll have to remember how to stop as well… Yeah, this will do. 

Having gained some confidence on the field, he also manages to get out of the way of Toga and Twice as they burst onto the ice with reckless abandon, the latter obviously having no experience in the rink as he finishes the action mopping up every person and shaved particle in his wake.

Hawks skates up to him with a raised brow as Himiko giggles on and makes her rounds around the sprawling man. "You okay there, mate?"

His face that peeks out of the fluffy hoodie still pulled closely around his head looks either really focused… or 100% out of it. Maybe embarrassed, or having a religious experience. Hawks can't tell. In the end, he summarizes his status as follows:

"... yes."

“I told you, didn't I?” chips in Himiko, too, now that she’s over her giggling fit. “Can’t skate while on the ground. Though, if someone can do it… it’s probably you.”

"I'd say he's still got better chances with the usual method," Hawks muses out loud before offering a hand. (Not the best idea. Jot that down, Hawks: Bubaigawara Jin not only is nimble, but also heavy. Easily two-times-your-weight heavy if wings are not included. Do not engage in close combat.)

Nearly ending up on the ice aside, he notes that the number of people in the rink has dwindled down quite a bit in the past minute. Whether the masses are intimidated, afraid, or just conscious of the dumbassery of the big guns, Hawks doesn’t know.

Nor care about, really- more space for him to fuck around. Speaking of which…

He leaves the two jokers behind as Toga starts to legitimately tell Twice how to stand on the ice, and picks up just enough speed to test whether he can do another thing he usually can’t because of his wings.

The first attempt doesn’t go all that well, as he nearly slips when the skate he’s balancing on hiccups upon a deeper trail cut by others; on the second, he manages to stand on one leg, which is half of the battle, alright. He takes a second of a breather to stretch his legs before taking the route back towards the entrance again, checking in on how Twice is faring while he’s at it; seems to be going well for him. A little shaky, but he doesn’t fall ass backwards anymore.

He takes a deep sigh to collect some second hand inspiration, then shoots off to where Mister Compress’ hat has entered the field.

Hawks lifts a leg again, but this time, he also reaches behind his back to get a hold of the blade that should be riiight about… there!

Just sliding in a straight line and not stretched enough for this shit so it hurts like hell? Yes.

It would hurt even if he had stretched, to be frank.

But!! One day, he’s gonna do a legit Biellmann spin, you just watch.

“Why, Starling…!” Mister calls out with an air of awe, the doom and gloom finally lifting from his stance as the blonde is shaking his leg loose. He does stay suspiciously close to the entrance all along, though. “This comes to you as easy as flying does!”

“Could be worse,” he yells back as the momentum from the bend takes him the opposite direction.

Frankly, some may see it as cheating… but his feathers are an amazing addition he's gonna use to the fullest when on ice. So what if he has sonars to know how and where he’ll touch ground, or where to look for his feet from behind? Anyone with functional legs can do this without the help, they just need a little more practice. And why wouldn’t they? This is as close as anyone else can get to flying themselves, and boy is it a lot of fun!!

In fact, he’s so psyched that he does a pretty decent, simple Axel, nailing the landing after. Nice~

Hawks doesn’t bother opening his eyes for the next few minutes, just enjoying the chilly wind pinching his face and ears even pinker. Only then does he look up when someone with a whiff of some peach flavored alcoholic drink is about to cross his way… and goes as far as holding him by the waist, even if it’s for the fleeting moment he needs to grab his arm and spin them around in a circle.

“Not bad for a chicken.”

What the fuck, it’s Dabi.

The suspiciously happy man smirks over the baffled expression that appears on the hero's face. “You should check whether there’s a Happy Feet on Ice project, you could even make it.” Having said that, he gives Hawks a spin and joins him for the next round across the rink.

Wait a goddamn sec…

The blonde looks around with mild suspicion; he’s just noticed that Dabi is keeping up with him fine, which means… he can skate? “I thought you didn’t do, like, sports?”

He is pretty adamant on whining and moaning whenever the need to do anything but stand around menacingly arises… which is understandable, since, um… isn’t this a little… painful with a Frankensteined body like that?

Actually, it definitely is painful, because there’s one--- scratch that, now it’s two red stains on the white shirt poking out from under that ridiculous coat, and--- and blood dripping from one of his elbows, what the sincere fuck. Can he not feel that?!

“Spiked enough to do some stupid shit,” comes the enlightening sigh of an answer as they take the curve at rather high speeds, the faint smell of something not punch like also apparent on his breath. Makes the fact of him coming up close again less alarming, at the very least; a drunk (if not high as a kite…) Dabi averages out as more annoying, and less of a threat. And double the creepy, but that’s beside the point.

“You ready, birdie?”

… okay, maybe there is some room left for worry.

“Ready fo… huh?” The villain has his hands firmly around Hawks' waist now, as if preparing to--- no, there’s no way, he’s such a stick man, but still, the mere possibility…

“Fly!!!”

“WhaaAA---?!” By the time he realizes that Dabi really has that exact thing on his clearly not quite lucid mind when picking up some more speed on the straight line ahead of them, he’s already airborne. Hell if he’s counting how many turns he is doing, but damn it all, he has bigger problems at hand- first, he's actually getting dizzy, and he’s never dizzy with the exception of concussions and being sick, which is concerning, but maybe it’s due to fear. Second, he needs to recalculate his fall right fucking now, because this cackling asshat has managed to throw him quite high and he's also off-balance. He has trouble landing on solid ground when plucked near clean like this as-is, fuck, he's falling already, fuck fuck fuck fUCK---

It costs him a nearly sprained ankle, some panicked arm and wing flapping and an instant heart attack, but he manages to stick the landing somehow. He’s shaking like jello as Mister claps on and Jin and Himiko cry an awed WOOO HOOO, though. In fact, his legs that he’s using as something to lean on now are about to finally give in under him.

Hawks also just about gives into the temptation of collapsing on the spot as his momentum dies off at last… if not for some fucker capitalizing on the situation and dipping him for good measure.

Dabi also adds a hearty chuckle while doing so, certainly pleased at the mess the other is right now. “And here I thought you couldn’t be shaken.” 

“I saw… my life flashing before my eyes, asshole,” he breathes between wheezes, contemplating whether he should grab onto the guy, because just hanging around doesn’t make for a stable setup and he’d rather not risk one of the concussions he's been thinking of.

A cock of the head aside, all he gets is an eyeroll. “Sure seem happy about it, don't you.”

Well, now that the villain points it out… Hawks certainly is grinning like an idiot, and has been for a while. For whatever reason, he also starts giggling uncontrollably at that.

“Shut up, will you,” he snickers while trying to find something to hang an arm onto.

It’s little use in the end, because Himiko decides to slide right into Dabi’s leg, both ruining a chance for a comeback and collapsing the unbalanced circus act.

He keeps giggling through Dabi’s moans of discontent and more, though. These few minutes were the most fun he’s had in a decade, if not more.

He's coming over tomorrow, too.

[grell-writes-stuff]

Interlude Excerpt

Which is sadder in context, but happy when you look at it alone this way! (Unless you’ve read the first 8 chapters - then it’s still sad).

Tag List: @fenfaerie @arieswriting

We were in middle school. Seventh grade. Before the band, before any and all feuds, during my first therapy stint where I was seeing Kelley regularly, among the carnage and self-destruction brought upon by a divorce, an impromptu two-thousand-mile move, and preteen hormones. Travis and I took the same bus to school, and so, that day, since I felt stable enough to traverse the impossible task of waking up in the morning, dragging myself out of bed, and getting ready, we met and waited at the same stop on the vehicle’s pre-planned route through the mountainous third quadrant of Woodland Hills.

I was dressed in a similar, non-invisible camouflage, but the temperature could justify a hoodie, so no remarks were tossed at me, not that Travis would have gone to that length anyway. Teasing was his specialty, but he somehow always knew, as if it were an instinct programmed into him, what was off-limits. My fragile mental health in a time of such ridiculous crises was legitimate and valid in his eyes and, therefore, a ban on mocking applied to it.

That day, we boarded the bus, him in front of me.

In middle school, Travis was exactly the same. Perhaps exactly is a stretch. His face was the same, if still losing some roundness and sharpening in the transition from child to teen. He was still just growing his hair out for the first time, so it wasn’t long, just shaggy enough to make my mom jokingly complain on a regular basis. Still, inside, he never changed.

I apparently haven’t either. After a long lapse of being okay again, I’m still the same depressed, cynical asshole. That jumped out as Seventh Grade Travis continued to proceed through to the second half of the bus, heading toward the back and right into the line of fire of the eighth graders.

“Dude, no,” I told him, stopped in my tracks in contrast to his struts of sheer determination.

He paused for a moment, flashing the smirk I’d seen a billion times before. “Come on, Morgan,” he said. “Trust me. What did they say in the movie we watched last night, huh? ‘Don’t dream it, be it’. Let’s be the guys who sit in the back of the bus. Prime real estate.”

I felt the need to be stubborn about it, but I chose to think of it as a realist perspective, not the pessimism that Travis decided to see. I gave him a look like he was being absolutely crazy, because I was sure he’d gone insane. I was about a minute away from finding him a straightjacket.

“Trav, we can’t,” I retorted. “Eighth graders sit there. We’ll die.”

He only addressed the first part. He fixated on the can’t. “Yeah we can.” And then, he resumed his pace, not at all annoyed by the pause I’d inflicted.

I followed a few steps only because holding up the line of kids already pissed off about having to wake up in the morning seemed like a worse alternative.

“Taht tuoba erus oot mees uoy.”

His head turned enough so I could see the look in his eye, the grin he held with confidence running through every blood vessel in his body. “Erus ton m’I. Evitisop m’I.” And, just like that, he dropped into the back seat, and shot me this expectant and brave look, like an invitation. An invitation to get my ass kicked by eighth graders right by his side – but slightly more tempting because it was coming from him.

So I took the empty space next to him.

And nothing bad happened on that ride. In part due to Travis’ winning charisma which gave him the skill to carefully talk down a couple of eighth grade kids who were, in fact, about to kick our asses for stepping into their territory. He was an excellent influencer. By the time we got off the vehicle, Travis was friends with the guys. I don’t remember saying anything other than yell-whispering to him that he was an idiot the second they called us out for being in the wrong place, but he took everything in stride. Even if I wasn’t there, he moved on, and always helped me catch up after.

Like at lunch that day.

I’d already missed some school, and what I did attend up until that point pretty much all took place early on in September, and I was unfocused anyway. That same day, after his show of boldness with the intimidating eighth graders, he led me to the cafeteria – another feat I was dreading like a punch to the throat. I complained, not particularly loudly, but certainly out loud, as he dragged me.

“Anywhere else,” I begged, fighting the tempting voice telling me to just go limp.

“Come on,” he urged. “Everyone eats in the cafeteria.”

“Precisely.”

He looked at me, ambition abound and smile as big and bright as always. His eyes practically twinkled. “What are the cons if we go? What’s the worst that can happen?”

I couldn’t believe he had the gall to ask such a dumb and stupid thing.

But it was hard to come up with an answer that he wouldn’t be able to refute. If I said “People will stare at me,” he’d say “No, they won’t,” and he would be right, and I would hate it, but relent. If I threatened to puke – something I’d been doing quite regularly due to my fucked up mental issues – he’d call my bluff, and it wasn’t really something I could do on command. It just happened. And I wasn’t prepared to think about the divorce and my dad’s move deliberately to force myself into blowing chunks all over a lunch table. That would certainly defeat my stay-under-the-radar approach to middle school.

“And,” he continued when I stayed silent, “I can tell you a pro right now. Come on. There are some guys I want you to meet.”

“If they’re eighth graders, I’m killing you before they do.”

He chuckled as he led me in.

A school cafeteria is a step away from a prison cafeteria (and I can definitely tell if it’s above or below), and the one inside of our middle school was no exception. Packed with kids at just about every long, standard table with attached benches – the kind that can be folded, and wheeled elsewhere, but that were permanently stuck in the massive room – not to excuse the horror that is the food. I kept my head down, and fought the urge to flip my hood up to hide myself away. I’d tried that earlier, and Travis had tugged it right back down anyway. There was no way he was letting me sit in my camouflage and pout.

I followed him to the end of one of the long, standard tables with attached benches which was already occupied by three other kids. One of them looked inhumanly tall – maybe already five-foot-eight, even sitting down – but still like he had a ton of growing to do to fit the massive size of his awkward proportions. The one directly across from him was tiny with a mop of light brown curls. The last sat at the small one’s side and looked up at us behind dark hair with blue eyes.

Then two more pairs of eyes followed his and I felt like I’d been shoved into a spotlight and expected to perform Mozart on a fucking bassoon. I’d missed enough school that I was basically a degree away from being a completely new kid arriving part way through a year that had already begun. I became the one thing I wanted to avoid when I already felt like enough of a freakshow: a spectacle.

Just as I felt my stomach reach the middle of my esophagus, the curious stares moved aside.

“S’up, Trav,” the tall one said.

“Hey, man,” he greeted back, plopping down onto the bench like it was familiar, normal, a routine. They bumped fists.

And I felt like an outsider seeing that. Like he’d found these new friends in my absence because he had to – I gave him no other choice. It stuck to the front of my brain: the fear that I would easily be shut out. I was debating just leaving, and going to eat elsewhere like I’d wanted (the list ran through my head: among the stacks of books in the library, in a deserted hallway…). Then, with no effort, no tell to those around us that he’d done it, he kicked me in the ankle, not hard, but just enough.

In the end, he would always, eventually and inevitably, end up going for the ankles.

I swallowed back my gut quietly and took the bench at his side.

The eyes flew to me again.

“Gentlemen,” started Travis with this comic formality peaking out in his cheerful voice, “this is Morgan Scott.”

The tall one shot me a nod, his floppy hair bouncing off his forehead. “S’up, Scott.”

“Uh, hey,” I responded.

Travis’ pointed finger swept around the table as he continued, “This is Cole, Matt, and Bryson. You’ll like them. They’re cool.”

[chrismerle]

OKAY NOW IT’S DONE time for my thoughts, the least spoiler-y part of all my rambling

gameplay: A +. seriously, there are not a lot of games where I’ll contemplate going back once the story is done solely because they’re fun to play. for this one? I will probably wind up playing it more tomorrow just to keep filling in the map and doing side quests. combat is smooth and easy to pull off even when it requires multiple buttons. web-swinging is possibly the best game mechanic I’ve ever experienced. like, I don’t like flight or gliding in games, but I very willingly spent this whole damn game playing The Floor Is Lava until putting my boots on the ground was mandatory. it was good enough that I only used fast travel twice, and one of those times was required by the game tutorial (the other time was because Spidey on the subway is funny as hell). granted, I do still have my complaints. maybe I was just doing it wrong (I was probably doing it wrong), but dodging felt a bit wonky. for a lot of higher tier baddies and bosses, they attacked in volleys, so if you didn’t hammer on the dodge button until your thumb fell off then you were going to take two or three hits or more even if you dodged the initial strike. at higher difficulties, Spidey’s really only got three or four hits in him. also landing could be a bit of an ordeal. I can’t count the amount of times I vaulted straight over a roof I was supposed to land on, back and forth, several times. luckily, you were incapable of accidentally launching yourself to your death, as even jumping off of skyscrapers just resulted in Spidey doing a tuck-and-roll and bouncing to his feet on the ground below. and I wasn’t a huge fan of the stealth mechanics. don’t get me wrong, I loved MJ and Miles, but I’m generally more of a fan of very fast-paced gameplay, and the stealth sections were very slow.

boss fights: on the whole I liked them, but they weren’t perfect. most of them were some variation of ‘do this, kick in face, dodge, repeat half a dozen times, you win.’ it got a little old. especially since, for most of them, the pattern was ‘run/swing/dodge in circles, web up enemy, kick them in the face, retreat, repeat.’ still, it’s a minor complaint. Shocker escaped the pattern. Electro and Vulture were both in an area conducive to swinging the whole time, which made it more exciting. and while Scorpion followed the pattern, Rhino definitely did not, and having to keep an eye on both of them and their methods of defeat kept it interesting. unfortunately, while fighting Mister Negative on the train was entertaining, his later fight felt a bit generic. and the first stage of Doc Ock’s fight was yet another round of ‘run in circles, web, kick, retreat,’ with an added periodic AoE attack that was super annoying and the loss of the ability to customize how you fight. the second stage makes up for it, though, but I’m always a sucker for an overly emotional slug-fest.

interface: not much to say here. it looks clean. it’s pretty well organized. there’s a lot of variation in how you can do things. it’s pretty intuitive, when it comes to upgrading. the map is functional. it’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does its job well and won’t make you rip your hair out.

visuals: the animation was beautiful. fluid. natural. filled with detail and care. the settings were great. for the most part, the people looked great but, and I’m still not letting this go, for whatever reason damn near every character model had eyes too big for their faces. I was legitimately glad that most of the cast wore masks because the ET eyes were genuinely creepy. like, if it had been a stylistic choice, sure, but eyes aside the people were basically photo-realistic. and anytime a photograph showed up, it looked super uncanny. but really, those are basically my only gripes about the visuals. as an added bonus, whatever suit you wear shows wear-and-tear when Spidey gets the shit kicked out of him, which is a nice, unexpected touch.

story/writing: I am so glad this was not another Spidey origin. I have seen too much of the Spidey origin. you have seen too much of the Spidey origin. we have all seen too much of the Spidey origin. I’m not even giving the MCU a pass here: we didn’t see Holland Peter get bit, but he was in every other way a stumbling newbie. so the fact that he’s already been Spidey for 8 years at the start of the game? I am all for it. and I’m glad it was its own thing. it didn’t try to ape the comics. it’s attempting to be its own universe, rather than trying to retell the movies or 616, and it’s compelling as hell to boot in the creative liberties its taken. the dialogue is spot on. this has become my quintessential Peter Parker. you spend the vast majority of the game with him, and you will love him by the end. he’s an endearing wise-ass with a guilt complex the size of Manhattan, and if you are prone to feelings of ‘I like to watch my faves suffer’ or if you enjoy feeling like you want to wrap a character in a blanket, then Pete has got you covered. and while the side villains are a bit neglected, the main villains are definitely not. you know they’re doing bad things, but you can see the twisted logic in it. you can follow the paths their thoughts took to get them where they are, and you can realize that in a twisted way, it all makes sense. and it’s a little chilling. and there were just...so many small moments that made it great. Spidey teaching Miles how to throw a punch, Pete damn near crying when Aunt May gives him money after he gets evicted, the way everyone staying at the homeless shelter is so familiar with Pete so you know he volunteers there a lot, the way civilians react when Spidey’s close by. the world feels just lived in enough to make you care. even the characters who don’t have much to them are still enjoyable. a lot of the villains that show up don’t have much to them. I’ll be upfront about that. they show up. they snark. they fight. they get their asses kicked. but the ways they interact with each other and the details you find in the background still manage to make them compelling. I think it all works well together whether you’re new to the Spidey mythos or not. if this is your first exposure to Spidey, then parts of it may genuinely shock you, and I want you to have that experience. if you already have some idea of the Spidey story, then you get this pit in your stomach as you realize certain things that are going to happen later and then hope to god they don’t. as an admitted nerd, I was very much in camp ‘oh please no.’ but still, it managed to pleasantly surprise me. the writers knew what they were doing. there were aspects I was geared up to complain about--the argument Pete and MJ have for a good portion of the middle of the story, foremost among them--because in the hands of any hack, they would be unbearable Hallmark-esque cliches, and...they weren’t. instead of having some ungodly Third Act Misunderstanding, things I ordinarily would have taken issue with got addressed in ways that made sense. the wind got taken out of my sails on a few occasions, and I was happy for it to happen. my only real gripe is small, and it’s that we don’t really know what happened to Mister Negative. like, did he die? did he get sent back to prison? did they just leave him on the floor? what happened there?

voice acting: someone give Yuri Lowenthal a medal, he was fucking spectacular you see what i did there? eh? eh? but really, every voice was great. Pete was the joking wise-ass who cares too much for his own good that we all love. Otto was the right amount of long-sufferingly paternal. May was an authority figure you wanted to listen to while simultaneously wanting to shake her. Miles was an endearing puppy. MJ was...also kind of a puppy, but a more excited one. JJJ was JJJ. no one’s performance was grating. no one was phoning it in.

aaaand...yeah. I think that covers all of it. I had a good time. maybe I’ll even buy the DLC.

[solivar]

Rattling my tip jar again. This past month and change has been an absolute storm of financial hits. Any donation of any kind will get a ficlet, just message me here.

Also, for your edification: the start of something I was planning to finish before I posted but which you’ll see first now in thanks for your past and present support.

Code Talker:  D Is For Deadlock or Possibly Ah-Da-Ah-Ho-Dzah

It began, as many things involving Overwatch ultimately did, with an anonymous text message dropped in a tipline mailbox (“IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING,” the rallying cry of Homeland Security since at least the mid-Oughts, weaponizing the paranoia of random citizens being a thing that never truly went out of style). It ended, as did many things that eventually came to involve Blackwatch, with small arms fire and carefully orchestrated explosions and interrogation rooms under places not formally known as prisons. In between, there was a mystery.

And if there was anything that Commander Gabriel Reyes absolutely could not resist, it was a mystery. Particularly when the alternative was paperwork.

⧫

“A secretary.”

Gabriel did not look up from the screen he was perusing, primarily because he didn’t want to have to either see or acknowledge the look of supreme despair that he knew would be living on his commanding officer’s face at that moment. “What about him? And it’s ‘administrative aide.’ Get with the proper terminology, Commander.”

“Wait, you actually have one?” That sounded more incredulous than actively despairing and so he chanced a look and found Jack Morrison, Commander of Overwatch, staring at him with unvarnished astonishment naked on his face. Admittedly, the astonishment might have had more to do with the fact that every available horizontal surface in his office was covered in the neatly, precisely arranged by both chronological order and grade of importance stacks of hardcopy and their accompanying workpads that represented eight full months of only dubiously attended paperwork than it did with his actual possession of a administrative aide. Or a secretary. Either/or. “Where is she?”

“Right now?” Gabriel checked the schedule. “Down in the range improving his service pistol marksmanship qualifications to at least expert.”

“...Really. Really, Gabe.” Now there was the absolute despair he had grown to know and love. “Is the kid even field rated? Does he have to be in order to successfully serve as your s -- administrative aide?”

“He will be by the time I’m done with him.” Gabriel replied, evenly, and finished signing off on his segment of a report that might or might not have involved highly sensitive operations currently underway beneath the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica. “And he will also be perfectly competent to put a bullet or two in anybody who tries to walk into or out of this office with something they ought not to be carrying. Or anyone else’s office, once he gets tired of working for me and runs screaming into the night. It’s an all-around win for the organization.”

“You remain the world’s most dedicated troll. I love you, but it’s true.” Jack lifted a stack of something that probably constituted only dubiously actionable intel given its relative proximity to his desk, deposited it neatly on the floor, and pushed the hoverchair previously occupied over, handed a tablet across the desk to take the place of the one he’d just set aside. “I probably shouldn’t distract you from bringing joy to the hearts of filing clerks all over the northern hemisphere but I really think I need to read you in on this one.”

“Do tell.” Gabriel made some space on his desk by virtue of piling three things he absolutely did not want to deal with just then together, opening a drawer, and dropping them inside, where they would molder at least until his aide got back from the firing range.

Jack tapped the pad pointedly. “Two weeks ago, someone texted that to the US Department of Homeland Security office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The tipline mailbox.”

Gabriel inclined a single, are you fucking with me brow and thumbed the tablet open. The message was a precisely arranged block of alphanumeric text followed by twenty pages of increasingly baffled and irritated memos back and forth between the DHS field office, DHS HQ in DC, and, finally, the Overwatch field office just down the hall and three floors up. He paged through them, eyebrows migrating steadily in the direction of his hairline as he went and, when he was finished, he muttered aloud. “What the actual fuck?”

“Cryptanalysis tends to agree with the assessment that it’s a cipher of some kind -- the original thought was a relatively basic transposition variant. The frequency analysis suggested as much. But when they tried to decrypt it on the basis of that theory, not a single attempt produced a readable result.” A wry little smile. “Athena’s been running cipher tables for days and getting nothing.”

“So why exactly are we thinking this is something worth cracking and not just some intensely bored computer science nerd idly trolling the local DHS office?” He could see why they’d thought in that direction, as a part of his brain started working out the math and the transposition modifiers and, even then, saw exactly why it wouldn’t work.

“Because whoever sent the initial message sent it again -- three times in the last three days, a secured line that comprehensively defeated any attempt to trace it back to its source. I know, I know. It doesn’t sound like a particularly good argument in favor of this not being an elaborate snipe hunt to me, either.” He reached over and tapped the screen, pulled up a secondary file. “But the Agent in Charge of the Santa Fe office thinks otherwise -- said they had a similar attempt at communication early last year but the message got fumbled and now she’s wondering if it didn’t have something to do with an incident that went down out in the badlands wilderness area.”

Gabriel disengaged himself from his consideration of the puzzle with an almost physical effort. “What kind of incident?”

“A team of geoscience grad students from California found a mass grave full of relatively fresh corpses, ten in total. Local law enforcement took over and, upon investigating the site, found that the bodies were all members of La Muerte Roja, a local gang known for having not particularly cordial relations with another local gang -- “

“Let me guess! Deadlock.”

“In one. The AiC, Julia Alvarez, thinks someone was trying to tip them off on the location -- either of the grave, or whatever it was that caused those fine upstanding individuals to find their way into it.” A pause. “Admittedly, I’m not so sure I buy that, either. But, since Deadlock pinged the radar recently, I thought it might be worth investigating, if only to rule out the possibility.”

“The possibility that someone is trying to pass coded messages about Deadlock activity to the Department of Homeland Security.” Gabriel’s eyes slid, involuntarily, back to the screen.

“It sounds even stupider when you say it out loud.”

“It’s not stupid. Or at least not stupider than anything else it could possibly be.” He glanced up. “Is that an order, Strike Commander?”

“If you want it to be, Commander Reyes.” Jack stood up, and deposited a fresh stack of paperwork in front of him. “Far be it from me to interfere in any of your more pressing duties.”

Gabriel grinned up at him. “Asshole.”

“Slacker. Get to work.”

⧫

To give the actually and legitimately more pressing duties the full and undivided attention they deserved, he stuck the pad in the desk drawer that contained his current cross-stitch project, a random selection of knitting needles, sixteen legal pads full of random sketches, and every fiddle toy ever gifted to him by the rest of the Overwatch command staff, some of which he occasionally even used. Then he locked it, once the estimable young Master Kestenholz returned from the firing range still smelling slightly of cordite, so as to better concentrate on the things that really required his attention at that very moment. And for at least a handful of hours he was able to firmly push it out of his mind while they rediscovered what the top of his desk and the storage credenza looked like which, considering the sheer volume of crap that needed to be signed, sent, and subsequently filed, he thought was a perfectly adequate day’s work.

“Are you certain, Commander?” And he was so damn young and earnest as he said it, too, all industrious diligence with shining golden curls and huge blue eyes and a charming Swiss accent and Gabriel was briefly convinced that this kid had obviously been vat-grown and programmed specifically to act as his adjunct administrative functions conscience. “It’s only six.”

“Yes, I’m sure -- and you say that now but give it two months.” He grinned and waved off the ensuing objections. “Go home, Kestenholz. And I don’t want to see your face before 0900 tomorrow.”

Which gave him approximately fifteen hours to work on the really classified stuff occupying the futon in the corner, to which he applied a solid six before the itch in the back of his skull grew too insistent to ignore. The rest went into the blastproof, bulletproof storage locker for later and the irresistible puzzle-bearing tablet came out. “Athena.”

The holoscreen occupying the corner of his desk activated itself, displaying Athena’s stylized personal signifier icon, and her voice issued melodiously from the hidden speakers. “Yes, Commander Reyes?”

“May I see the transposition tables you prepared for this communication?” He sent the files to his personal workstation and opened them all in a fan spread alongside the main display, upon which Athena kindly pulled up the decryption attempts she’d prepared. “Thank you. Now...why do you look so familiar?”

And it was familiar, aggravatingly so, mostly because the reason for it danced mockingly just out of reach. It did so for the rest of the night, not a bit of which was spent sacked out on the now-accessible futon, and at breakfast, when he strolled into the officers’ mess with a fresh legal pad covered in scribbles for his first coffee and five thousand calories for the day, and continued itching relentlessly through the remainder of the morning, even as he reviewed paperwork and signed off on reports and piled physical documents to be archived into the arms of his exceedingly cheerful aide.  The bulk of the stuff that Kestenholz could have access to at his current security rating was sitting on a hovercart by just after thirteen hundred, leaving only the still-locked case he’d have to shoot the kid over and two greatly reduced piles of barely-qualifying-as-intel and the small part of his brain currently paying no attention whatsoever to any of it was forcefully dragging the rest away.

“Kestenholz, go and hand that off to Archives, take lunch, and -- “ He pulled up the daily schedule, made an amendment, “go hit the range. We’ll deal with the rest of this after you’ve had the chance to let your arms uncramp.”

“I am feeling a bit peckish.” Kestenholz admitted, with the same unflagging good cheer he’d had on display upon arrival that morning, and Gabriel made a mental note to seriously find out the provenance of that kid and, even if it was an amiable Swiss cloning facility, to write a formal letter of commendation both for his can-do attitude, his ability to keep pace, and his borderline saintly tolerance for terrible paperwork discipline from senior officers. “Would you like me to have the commissary send anything up?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll get something later.” His fingers twitched with the urge to open that file again. “Dismissed, Mr. Kestenholz. Eat a strudel for me.”

Two hours later, he was still gazing, eyes half-focused, at the screens spread out in the air before him, on which six different attempts to decrypt the message according to six separate and distinct methods had produced six different kinds of total gibberish. “I should send you over to Analysis and see what Icebreaker and his pale computer larvae can come up with…”

“Are you talking to me?” The voice was warm, richly amused, and came from the door; he looked over the top of the screen he was currently perusing and found Ana standing there, fist still raised from the knock that he hadn’t heard.

“To myself mostly. What can I do for you?” He rotated the non-solution solution sitting in front of him and spun it, nettled beyond endurance by its ongoing refusal to make sense.

“Oh, nothing really.” Stepped in, closed the door behind her. “It’s just my turn to remind you to eat.”

“I’ve had breakfast. A gigantic breakfast, I assure you, but thank you for your concern.” He laced his fingers together and gave her a Look overtop them; she was not noticeably intimidated.

“It’s fifteen hundred hours, Gabriel.” The gentlest of all possible reproof in her tone. “And it’s also my turn to remind you to sleep.” She came all the way around and very deliberately sat on the edge of his desk, blocking a set of screens from easy view. “You have been sleeping, yes?”

“...For certain values of ‘sleeping.’” Gabriel hedged and turned to face her. “I caught some rest the other day.”

“Which other day? Because it’s Wednesday. And, frankly,” Ana leaned in and smiled beneficently down at him, “you don’t look like you’ve been sleeping. At all.”

“Blame this.” He flicked the screen again and watched its contents spin. “It came in through DHS yesterday afternoon and it’s been eating my goddamned brain.”

Ana caught the edge of the display, considered, and frowned deeply. “A substitution code of some kind?”

“That’s what frequency analysis suggests -- the AiC who sent it seems to think it has something to do with gang-related activity in the southwestern badlands, but nothing I’ve done to spindle, fold, or mutilate it has yielded a coherent message. Not in English, not in Spanish.” He poked the screen again a bit more vengefully. “Even with the Latin alphabet I’m not sure….” It clicked together in his mind. “It’s a Latin alphabet. But it’s not made up of Latin phonemes. There’s more than twenty-six letters, that’s why a standard modular solution doesn’t work.”

“Gabriel?” Ana blinked at him as he stood up, took her gently but firmly by the elbow, and steered her back out the door. “Are you -- “

“Ana, I love you dearly, but get out. I almost have this.” He closed the door, also firmly but gently, in her face.

“I am having food sent up, Gabriel!” Ana shouted, kindly, from the hallway. “And if Athena tells me you haven’t gone back to your quarters by twenty-one hundred I am coming back with my rifle and a tranquilizer dart.”

“You do what you have to do, Ana!” He called back and got to work.

Four hours later, he activated his comm, requested a secure line to the Strike Commander’s office, and waited patiently while it went through. “Gabe?”

“Well, I’m going to tell you right now that the Agent in Charge there in Santa Fe might have been onto something about that earlier message, Jack.” Gabriel replied, by way of greeting. “And she’s completely right about this one.”

“You cracked it?” A pause. “How long have you been working on this? Jesus, Gabe. Have you even slept?”

“Look, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, okay?” He punched open a secure data connection and sent over what he’d found. “Also: whoever sent this is either a math genius, a historian, a linguist, or some combination of thereof. Take a look.”

The line was silent for some moments as Jack opened the file and examined it. “What language is that? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“It’s Navajo. Diné bizaad. The frequency analysis was pinging on the fact that the written language uses a modified Latin alphabet -- but with thirty-six letters instead of twenty-six, which threw any modular mathematical attempt to decipher it off by a factor of ten. It is a relatively simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher, at base.” Gabriel leaned back in his chair. “It’s the translation, in this case, that’s interesting.”

“You’re enjoying this entirely too much.” Jack informed him and he had to allow there was a certain amount of truth to that.

“The message was: Want to help. Text this number when this message is received.”

“...You already texted it, haven’t you.” It wasn’t actually a question.

“I have! And I received a very interesting response, too.” He forwarded the rest of the information: message, translation, satellite overflight maps, preliminary analysis. “In brief: the coordinates translate to a place in the hills near where Alamogordo used to be before the Crisis. I requested any recent satellite overflight images, ran some historical comparisons against archival data, and I do believe what we’re looking at here is a man-made structure. More specifically, it’s a drop point of some kind. And that word, right there, is Deadlock.” He pulled up the video feed so he could watch the information filtering into Jack’s head. “This is me formally requesting permission to detail a Blackwatch operations team to investigate.”

“I never should have given this to you.” Jack looked up from the documentation. “You think there’s something actionable on this? We can spin the DHS field office in Santa Fe passing this along into a de facto request for intervention, if necessary, provided we keep it on the down-low -- Washington’s been getting pretty hissy about having all the legalities tucked neatly in order before they’ll sign off on our involvement in domestic law enforcement issues.”

“The Central American Collective has already formally requested intervention on the issue of cross-border contraband smuggling -- and if the smugglers, and the contraband, originate north of the border, that means the issue has passed domesticity and into our remit.” He laced his fingers together to keep them from fidgeting. “And, yes, I think it’s something. There are roads coming in and out of that place that are visible from orbit, which means they’re traveled semi-frequently. Someone in a position to know where it was reached out about it and the means they used to do so argued that they’re also in a position of risk as well as knowledge. I’m not suggesting we go in guns blazing, but putting some eyes on the situation couldn’t hurt.”

“All right. Pick your team. I’ll cut the orders -- observation only, for the time being. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

[knightofbalance-13]

https://caddeter.tumblr.com/post/174539392695/for-fuck-sake

Dude, I just left the fandom. Why the fuck are you doing this?

KKKoBias, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Depression

Anger issues

A lack of impulse control

Asperger’s

Take your pick

No, seriously, what the fuck?  You harassed someone for an entire week.  You did nothing but attack they’re opinions and the user just because they dared say something mean about RWBY.  You enabled a portion of the FNDM to attack that user and made a bad situation worse.  And then, when people bring that shit back because A. That’s kinda hard to just forget.  B. You still practice the same behavior that almost caused someone to kill themselves. and C. You bring shit back all the time, no matter how legitimate what your saying is(Which knowing you, it isn’t), you try to make it sound like we’re the bad guys?

Funny hyow you don’t bring up the link in question whereas I did.

And do.

https://comments.deviantart.com/1/619991269/4290345087

Probably because if you looked at the comments, you’ll notice something:

A. While the comment chain began on Dec. 22 and ended on Dec. 27...The person in question only responded on Dec.26. Meaning that not only are you two days short but you’re also three days off. Two days of internet arguing is not that bad.

B. I didn’t enable anyone. I posted the link on reddit but I never encouraged anyone to attack them. And looking through the comments, it did NOTHING to the reaction which is mostly positive. I was wrong to post it on reddit yes, but that ISN’T your argument here so it is not correct.

C. I only bring stuff up when someone tries arguing a moral point. Dudeblade calling the CRWBY homophobic looks a lot less convincing when you see he is guilty of the same thing and still acts like he’s better.

D. I’m gonna be blunt: They weren’t gonna kill themselves. Having looked back at the situation in hindsight and discussed the situation: This was just someone trying to use suicide as a way to end an argument. I never told them they were shit or hell, even insulted them in the slightest or implied anything that would trigger such an event. And immediately afterward, they edited their journal entry with lies about the situation. None of this is like what an actual sucidial person would do.

You harassed a DeviantArt user and block evaded for an entire week, always ignoring when they told you to leave them alone.  You brought this into the RWBY reddit, and knowing you, I’ll be my entire house that you did it to tell them “Hey, look at this idiot.” You didn’t even bother to try and apologize until you were told to, like the spoiled, self-righteous child you are.  You called them a member of a fictional terrorist organization just because they said something you didn’t like and stood their ground.   You claimed you wanted to ‘educate’ anyone who disagreed, as in didn’t like, didn’t enjoy, didn’t find interesting or compelling, several emotional responses, completely subjective things, to see things your way.

A. I couldn’t have block evaded for a week if our conversation was only two days long.

B. Already apologized for it and stopped doing it.

C. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/5khw9y/my_thoughts_on_pyrrhas_death_rwby_and_rt_by_jswf/

I never expressed that sentiment here. So do I get the house or do you just give it up?

D.

Being a terrorist isn't the point of the White Fang: It's the fact that they were once peaceful and in the right. Until their own hatred and anger devolved them into being no better than the force they fought. Kind of like what happened to you and your group. To the point that I see you as below me. And considering I think about killing myself, that's pretty fucking low/

Context disagrees with you: I did it to illustrate that he wasn’t any better than what he fought against.

E. Press Ctrl+F and type in the word ‘educate’.

I only said the word once and

And I never said "educate', just show them both sides of the argument. Just like in Civil War, there is no right or wrong here. Just a difference of opinions. I only aimed to give a balanced view.

It was a response to him saying that I was saying that. I never said that: you’re lying.

And you have the god damn nerve to try and say we’re making shit up?

Context, the link you gave never said that and what you’re referring to could just be me pointing out how you people make stuff up about the show, which is seperate from this argument.

jswb wasn’t and isn’t trying to shame people into not speaking against them, neither is the RWDE tag.  You are trying to scare people into not talking.  This has happened multiple times before.  Someone posts something you don’t like, and you stalk and harass them until they delete the post.  You threatened Kidgecat with physical violence over a shit post. The idea that you nearly caused someone to commit suicide isn’t an impossibility.  The only impossibility is the idea that you didn’t. You’re not some grand anti-hero trying to help the FNDM, you never were and never will be.  The first reason for that is that anti-heroes don’t see themselves as heroes.  The second reason is that every time you get involved, a situation goes from bad to worse as you pull out every underhanded trick, every lie you could tell, every alt blog you need to pull out and make, just because someone said, ‘Hey, I kinda don’t like this thing about RWBY.’  Be it an in-depth analysis or a fucking joke, you don’t stop until they concede, till they say your right and give up their opinion for yours.

1.

The guy I've been chatting with Knight of Balance, has basically says he wants to 'educate' everyone who disagrees with the direction the show has been going, insulting me and others who dislike Pyrrha's death and he wants to silence us. I hid his comments so he wouldn't get a chance to 'educate my audience', his words not mine. He says he 'won't let Miles and Kerry bring Pyrrha back'. Oh really? Let's show him that he doesn't control us. Do not be quiet about how awful, insulting, needlessly cruel, and forced Pyrrha's death was. Don't let them get away with it, let them know how disappointed you are and let your voices be heard. People like him think they can control us, let's show them how wrong they are. 

He says this right AFTER blocking me.

I broke down crying, shaking, nearly throwing up, I read all of those hateful, hurtful, cruel, and insulting comments and I replied to the guy's comment with a off-putting all caps reply telling him know that I was breaking down and was about to end myself and when I did that he backed off, probably feeling like he had won, because he said himself that he was 'metaphorically' willing to drag me down to hell. I was a nervous wreck, I was being overwhelmed and felt like I wanted to die. I grabbed some scissors and nearly killed myself but thankfully I was able to remember all of the reasons I have for living like my family, my friends, the stories I write and the fans I've gotten, the stories I want to continue reading or watching, I realized I had so many reasons to live so I was able to stop myself.

To stuff like this:

*Sigh* Look, I never meant for you to get this stressed out. Hell, I understand where your coming from. Thinking about killing myself is such a common occurrence now I'm not even fazed by it anymore. So putting aside my feeling towards you and your conduct, I want you to listen to what i have to say: Your life matters. No matter what you think I've said, no matter what other people have said, no matter what you say, your life matters. You have friends and family who love and care about you and if you kill yourself, all it will do is wound those around you. It's painful I know but it's true. The best thing you can do is seek help above all else. Trust me, psychiatrists maybe be expensive by by divinty' sake they are miracle workers. And I know you're sick of hearing about this anime but really, look up Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. That anime is a large part of why I get out of bed in the morning even thought I know there's a very good chance I'll choke to death on my breakfast, lunch or dinner or that my life probably doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. It taught me to keep moving forward no matter what I lose or what I suffer because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The journey is hard and long but it's worth it. I never intended on hurting you. Had I known you were this psychologically fragile or you were this invested in Pyrrha I would have said nothing. I understand where you are coming from and I'm sorry I did so much damage to you. I was wrong and you were right. Good day.

So I don’t think any of THAT is valid.

2. Link ouright contradicts you...And that was froma YEAR and a HALF ago.

3. And you guys have caused mental damage to several people in teh fandom. However not all of it is your fault because some people are just that way. Your reactions of ‘not my issue/fuck that person’ however...

4. Two points. A. Batman sees himself as a hero and he’s the basis for most anti-heroes. B. I stopped thinking myself as someone right a LONG time ago. I just act in what I think is best and trust that if I’m wrong, I’ll fail. I live by a ‘The right are the strongest’ AKA people who are right will defeat people who are wrong philosophy. People have beaten me before in debates and I have immense respect for them.

5A. Like not linking your proof?

5B. Like making up a quote?

5C. Stopped doing that after people told me it was wrong.

5D. Explain why I personally make an effort to care for certain critics of RWBY. Like @faboover who despite disagreeing with about Volume 4, I personally make an effort to help him and encourage him. Explain the CRTQ blog which I was the most active member of and made quite a few complaints about RWBY. Explain the event of this very situation you quote I NEVER call his opinion wrong, just his actions.

6. Then I wonder why a lot of my friends have differing opinions of RWBY.

You know what, screw it.  Not only is this going in the main tag, it’s only going in the main tag, and I’m doing everything I can to make sure the fandom sees you for the self-important, unrelenting, egotistical, uncaring, and cruel person you are.

So you try arguing a moral position while expressly trying to slander me? ... So you contradict everything you’ve done here?

And you got half of these wrong. I’m self important, I’m not egotistical nor am I uncaring. I am unrelenting though it switches from good to bad at times and I do have a sadistic side.

But here’s teh deal:

jswv is self important in thinking that disagreeing with them is hateful.

Sokumotanaka is egotistical because he thinks all criticisms against him are invalid and his opinion is objective fact,

And Dudeblade,someone I KNOW you personally interact with, is uncaring as he suicide baited an LGBT person after talking about LGBT suicide rates and proceeded to make a backhanded apology.

And the last two are EXCEEDINGLY cruel people, as well as sociopathic and bigoted.

So why don’t you call them out?

Easy: They agree with you. You don’t care about other people if they don’t agree with you. I’d bet if jswv was praising RT and I was arguing about how much of an ass kisser they were: You’d fucking love me.

Not that any of this matters: You people crossed the fucking line with that doxxing incident so i ain’t dealing with your shit anymore.

Go find someone else to call your boogeyman.

[imagine-that-one-thing]

Christmas Rivals.

Authors Note: Character: Y/N and Character: Harry, sworn enemies, are chosen to prepare the company Christmas Party.

Rated M for mature audiences.

Warning: minor smut & swearing.

Prompt found HERE.

Harry Styles, the company's most valued asset, most popular, and best looking, if you challenge everyone who works in the company. If you ask me, he is the most vexatious, obnoxious, man I have come across. I will give him credit though— he is fucking hot. But, putting aside his incredibly good appearances, the grey eyes, and that cocky grin that can bring any woman to their knees, he has this thing about him that I can not stand. The feeling is mutual between us, he doesn't have the most righteous view on me, and he doesn't attempt to deny or suppress things at this point.

My day started off treacherous, we could say. If the freezing weather and compilation of snow weren't enough to put me in a god-awful mood, my lack of coffee was sure to do it. Of course, though, Harry was as felicitous as anything, very chirper and giggly this morning with his bright-eyed smile, perfectly adjusted suit and tie, not to mention his hair.

Oh god, the hair.

It's when he swaggers into in my office with a grim expression that I am caught off guard. He never steps foot in my office and I never step foot in his, it is unknown territory for the both of us.

"Did you get lost?" I snarkily question as I extract my eyes away from the laptop screen, my fingers immediately springing to pat against my desk.

He rolls his eyes, unamused as he strides closer to my desk while his gimlet eyes take note of my office, not that it is at all entertaining. "I only wish," he sighs heavily, "I am assuming you have yet to be informed?" He questions as his eyes stare into me deeply, cutting me at my edge as I feel a sudden hum in my veins.

I clear my throat and disregard the piercing grey eyes, "Yet to be informed of what?" I challenge with an unamused expression. I have not been informed of anything today besides the fact I am presumed to buy yet another fashionable dress to wear to the Christmas Gala that my boss hosts to advertise his ego. I, for one, can not stand the business gatherings, they are forced and fake. Nobody really appreciates them, the boss has a shocking taste with setups and decorations, not to mention the appetizers and desserts he supplies are nevermore delightful.

Harry's forehead puckers and I raise a brow, waiting for him to acquaint me with what it is he is standing in front of me for. Not that I am mourning too much, he is moderately intriguing to observe. "The boss has designated two people to organize his ludicrous excuse of a Christmas business party."

Thank the heavens, finally, maybe this year it won't be so damn boring.

I give him a lacklustre smile, "Yeah, don't grin too much, we are the designated individuals." The moment the words leave his lush lips and comprehend through my mind, my smile congealed and melts to horror.

I stare at Harry, the man I am meant to cooperate with to help with a Christmas party. "You have to be fooling me," my lips screw into irritation. There is no way Harry and I, will manage to survive working together. We can't be left together for more than five minutes without one of us making it known we can't stand each other... His five minutes is about up in my office.

"Do you think I would come in here just to joke? I am not that bored, quite know you can't take a joke," he comments and I roll my eyes at him, "It is tomorrow so we will have to work on it tonight."

"What if I say no?" I cross my arms over my chest as my mind wonders on the many different excuses I can come up with to wiggle my way out of this.

Harry huffs and glances up at the ceiling for a moment, "Well, you can cock your brow and cross your arms over your chest as much as you want, but you have no choice." Harry's voice is austere and full of annoyance, time ticking very thinly as his eyes beam into me.

"I am not working with you," I shake my head, "You're an inconsiderate ass. No."

"Take it up with the boss, trust me, I don't want to work with you anymore you want to work with me. But, there is a Christmas bonus of an extra 4,000 pounds."

"4,000 pounds?" I gasp and he nods, "Fine, but only because I need the money," I mutter to my own distaste.

"Mhm.. I will come back at eight. Try down some coffee by then, you're a grouch without coffee."

"Get fucked,"

He gives me a cocky wink, "Maybe later, love." I roll my eyes at him as I gesture for him to use the door and leave.

*** ***

I smile to myself as my fingers wrap around a glass of champagne, clients, and coworkers around me delighted by everything that Harry and I managed to place together. Despite our bickering at certain times, we did a genuine job on the place. I can't say that we see eye to eye on a lot of things because quite frankly, we are polar opposites with diverse tastes, but I do have to admit that we did pull it all off. It was much simpler once we both got over our pride and resentment towards each other. We managed to get through it all with minimum banter and remarks.

I glance around in an attempt to discover who I want to talk to, most of the time I stay by the bar and let people come to me, mainly because these events tend to be a bust when my boss organises them, but tonight everyone is legitimately relishing themselves and the scene.

My eyes land on him the arrogant yet somewhat charming man I haven't managed to get a break from in the last two days.

Ever notice that some guys just own the room the second that they stride in with such poise? There’s a certain energy that some men draw to a room that has everyone lift their heads and stare. That is Harry, he saunters into a room and immediately the spirits always seem to emanate, the smiles widen, the eyes gleam to him. Harry just dominates the region, his presence can periodically be sensed. At least, Harry's presence can evermore be sensed by myself.

I perceive the energy in the room rise at a high peak, the room feeling brilliant and full of more spirit the moment he enters. If I didn't know better, I would say he was the charming one everyone loves, but he isn't that charming, it is more of a forged impression, a  brightest full-face smile that has everyone locked into him. He works his ways, he works for the crowd, to say the least. He knows what he is doing and he is good at it, probably one of the reasons why he works at the firm and is considered successful.

I make my rounds around, making small talk with colleagues, meeting their significant others and constantly smiling politely and shaking my head when they interrogate me about my not so existent love life. It is somewhat amusing to observe their faces drop when I announce that I am single and have been for a while.

My last relationship was definitely one for the books, my ex really closed me off to the dating world in a sense. He showed me that even when you think you know someone, you really don't. Although he shattered my heart into more pieces than I thought was ever imaginable— he did teach me one thing— how to put up a substantial barricade to shield myself from others. He made me fall in love with him in such a cruel way, slowly, but surely. When he had me wrapped around his finger in what I thought was love, he showed me what it was like to trust someone with your heart, to have them hold it in their hands and compress it to its breaking point. The night he proposed to me was the same night I found out about his mistresses, yes mistresses. He didn't have just one, he had two on the side. While I thought he was in love with me and away on business, he was flying with extra benefits. Since then, I haven't dated or even thought much about dating.

I politely smile while in a small group of colleagues who are overly enthusiastic about the Christmas spirit and holidays, I think they might start singing Christmas Carol's pretty soon. Lord help me if they do.

I don't care about their bright spirit or the fact they admire the effort that I put into the decorations, mainly because it was all Harry who did the effort with the Christmas decorations. I was absolutely fine with throwing tinsel around in random places and calling it day, but he, on the other hand, preferred to make it resemble Christmas fucking galore in here— which is fine— but not for conversation.

My eyes dance around and greet Harry's, a sudden humming in my blood forcing me to glance away from his gaze as his lips touch the rim of his drink. I try my best to not allow my eyes to wander towards him, but for some reason, they stubbornly keep scouring and finding him. He cocks his lips into a small grin as he raises a brow and begins to saunter over here with those hips rolling and undulating.

Fuck.

Of course, at the sight of his appearance and him taking my side, the entire group of colleagues welcomes him enthusiastically like he is a worshipped Greek God of some sort. He clears his throat and his voice sends my nerves into a radiating mayhem as I hear him speak. He sounds so, attractive... Maybe it is the champagne thinking and deluding what my sober self would think.

"Do you mind if I steal this one for a moment, it seems we have an issue with the bartender she hired." The colleagues hold onto every word as they descend from his lips and they all nod simultaneously like compelled humans hailing their leader. I don't know what he does or how he does it, but damn, he can work his way with anyone and do it in a nice manner.

He tenderly draws me away and leads me to the bar, "Jack and Coke on the rocks and whatever the lady would like," Harry orders as he rests one arm on the edge of the bar while cocking his head to me,

"I'll have the same," I respond, catching Harry off guard as he raises a brow, "Is there a problem?"

"No," he shakes his head.

I arch a sly brow, "You brought me over here for a drink?"

"I thought I'd save you from the prying eyes of those mates of yours, you seemed bored and in desperate need," Harry informs me, surprising me that he actually caught a note of my expression.

"Oh, wow. You actually regard me."

He gives me a cocky wink and confident smile, charming me for a split second. I disregard his charm the moment he opens his mouth to speak."Don't be flattered, you're not special."

"But you are a dick with an ego who charms everyone."

He tilts his head to one side while listening. "Everyone, including you." Harry proudly comments, seeming cocky and confident.

I shake my head, "it takes a lot more than that to impress me," I respond as I press my fingers to curl around my class and take a drink.

"You're remarkably entertaining to communicate to but you certainly have to do more than just stand there attractively to impress me. I need to be wowed!" Harry responds after finishing his drink and pressing his glass to the counter.

I tilt my head back with laughter, "No ... You have it wrong. You need to wow me." I shake my head as Harry turns to face me and I cock my head up to gaze at him, taking note of how impressive his eyes sincerely resemble, despite his personality, he is fucking hot, notably in a suit and tie.

'Oh, the things I would like to do with that tie.'

"We're too similar. We'd never get along. So, I can't 'wow' you."

"Why?" I curiously challenge, just wanting to see where the conversation can lead. I don't really care much if we can get along or not, I am just relishing the quality of his voice and his excellent appearances right now. Definitely, the alcohol playing a toll on me.

Harry shrugs, narrowing his eyes onto me, "Because we'd never have anything significant to argue about. So we'd have to make up petty little things to argue about... And I'd always win." Harry's cocky demeanour aggravates me and turns me on at the same time.

He is just so poised with always being correct.

I shake my head, there is no way he would eternally triumph, "No you wouldn't."

"Yes, I would."

"No."

He hums, "You see, we're arguing right now... And you commenced it."

"No, I didn't. You did."

He rolls his shoulders back into a shrug, "Hey, but at least we'd have ideal make-up sex."

I tenderly swat his arm at his remark, "Bold, Styles. Very bold," My words come off as a mutter more than anything.

"Charming, some would say," Harry cockily winks and flashes me that fearless grin, again.

"Don't flatter yourself, you're not special," I respond, using his own words against him as I press my elbow on the bar top and rest my cheek in the palm of my hand.

He lets out a small humph before he leans closer, "Oh, but I am, and you know it." His breath hits the tip of my bare skin and transfers shivers down my back.

‘Oh, boy, do I fucking no it.’

I clear my throat and offer him my sweet smile, I step a little closer caressing my lips to the edge of his ear, well aware of what I’m doing, “don’t get overly confident.” I whisper before I step away.

I clasp my drink with my hands before I nonchalantly wander away from him. I glance over my shoulder and smirk as I observe him staring with a devilish grin painted across his face.

I find myself entangling myself with many different conversations, purposely dancing around Harry and his prying eyes, it’s like they’re always watching and undressing me as he lingers around. I’m not saying I don’t like it because I do.

While Harry watches me intently as he attempts to converse in conversation with some of the richer folks invited tonight, I manage to shift a few strands of her behind my ear and laugh a little louder to purposely grasp his attention and indeed, I do. Nobody can blame me for luring him into my corner— look at him— he’s a sight for sore eyes, a work of art, you could say. If only his personality wasn’t so damn irritating.

Harry makes his way over to my small group, yet again, and benevolently caresses his hand to my arm, “okay, look, we have to go,” he whispers in a tone that makes me weak at my knees, I give him a tender smile and compose my thoughts.

“No,” I bluntly respond, shooting him down. I know what he’s thinking, I can see it in the eye. Fuck, it’s plastered all throughout my eyes too, but I can’t give in. Not that easily. “I’m busy,” I whisper, gently nudging him back towards his friends or clients, whatever the hell they are. My eyes watch him and he glances over at me, licking his lips before I roll my eyes and go back to my conversation.

I’ve never quite understood how people can be so cheery and entertained by the festivities of Christmas, maybe my spirit burned out quicker than it should have.

When Harry first beamed and advocated for all these ornaments, I put up a bit of a fight against them, mainly because I can only handle so much Holiday disposition before I feel like it’s an overload. He persisted and wasn’t going to give up on the decorations and the festivities, for what reason, I do not know. He seemed like a literal kid at Christmas who just craved to observe the light shine in everyone’s eyes at the feel of Christmas spirit being spread across everyone.

I cock my head to the side and come to terms with just how much effort the cocky guy put into all this, just to see everyone’s eyes kindle for the night, quite frankly, it intrigues me.

My eyes dance around the room and cast themselves on the only man that appears to seize my attention in the room, in a sea of business-attired men, he by far, is the most desirable. I can’t help it anymore, there’s a verve burning in me and it’s not dwindling anytime soon.

I excuse myself from my modest assembly and execute my way towards Harry surrounded by men. The gentlemen all glance at me, eying me up and down, not being discreet in the slightest. I disregard them and clasp my hand to Harry’s arm in the same way he did mine. He clears his throat as my heart hammers in my chest, my nerves pulsating rapidly as I abruptly feel lost for words, “sorry to interrupt,” I mutter, “but I need you for a minute, gentlemen, do you mind?” I politely ask, not really wanting their approval but more so just trying not to sound like a bitch.

Harry and I step away and he gazes at me with his lip between his teeth, “can we go?” I softly challenge and he raises a brow.

“Ah, so you like to play hard to get?”

“Did you want me to make it harder?” I respond, my eyes focused on his pink lips and that tie around his neck that is driving me insane.

“Depends on what you’re making harder,” he winks and my eyes grow wide at his remark. Shameless, literally shameless. “C’mon, let’s go.” He gestures towards the comprehensive entries across the room before we find ourselves slithering in and out of people and doing our best to reach the doors without drawing too much attention to ourselves.

The moment we reach the Golden Arches I feel a sigh of relief escape my lips, it felt like we were constantly stuck in a sea of prying associates.

“And where are you two going?” A familiar voice catches me off guard and we both stop and turn around to view our boss. He stares at the two of us and adjusts his tie while awaiting our answer.

Trust him to be the one to be a cock block.

My mind scrambles with one hundred different circumstances to respond, but before I can even think of one, Harry’s voice sounds beside me.

“Y/N isn’t feeling too well, I was just taking her home, sir,” Harry answers the question, of course using that charm of his that undoubtedly is overused.

Our boss frowns for a moment, “you two don’t even like each other.” He’s expeditious to point out our rivalry and banter that seems to travel through the firm. Our boss is swift to remember Harry and me despising each other, but not so quick to remember he still owes me overtime from my last pay.

“Just at work, we don’t get along.” I intervene, wanting to get out of here as promptly as possible. “I’m really not feeling too well, do you mind if we leave?” I bat my eyes to the best of my ability to play the innocent, unwell, woman of the night.

He gives us a nod, “good luck with the roads, it’s terrible out there with the snow, be careful… feel better soon.” He dismisses the two of us and sends us on our way.

The moment Harry and I step outside I feel the intense cold of the typical London weather at this time of year. “Christ, it’s bloody freezing. Where the fuck is your coat?” Harry asks as he instantly takes off his jacket and places it on my shoulders to shield my bare shoulders from the frigid cold.

Sometimes a bulky coat doesn’t go with my dresses, plus I didn’t need one when getting out of the cab and hurrying inside the venue. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

“Didn’t go with my dress,”

“You’re a character, I swear.” Harry murmurs, “my car is right up here, watch your bloody step,” he grasps me with his hands, “for Christ sake, why don’t you just wander straight over Ice?”

“Quit distracting me or I just might.” I mumble, “but thank you,” I softly appreciate him being observant enough to see what I wasn’t paying attention to.

“You’re welcome, kinda want you in one piece,” Harry gingerly wraps an arm around me as we walk, tension building silently and subtly between us. “Here, Love.” Harry stops me in front of a Range Rover that seems like it’s brand new, not one dent or scratch to be seen. These things aren’t cheap, that’s for sure.

He unlocks his car and opens the door for me and making sure I step inside with ease.

The drive from the venue to a hotel wasn’t as grave as I thought, turns out, Harry and I desire the same sort of music and that kept us talking the entire drive to the hotel. Neither of us wanted him driving in this atrocious weather.

Harry gives me a small smile as we walk the lengthy hallway of the hotel, both of our eyes in search for the one particular number, 112. “Ah, here it is, love.” He stops in his tracks and slides the room key to unlock the door, he pushes the door open and gestures his arm forward, “after you.” Wow, he’s hot and a gentlemen. I’m intrigued, even though I really shouldn’t be. Then again, I shouldn’t be in a hotel room with him and yet, here I am. Oh well. I step into the warm hotel room, subtly taking a look around as the door closes behind me and I hear the room key press against the table. Before I can turn around, I feel Harry’s hands gently sliding his jacket away from my shoulders, his small move already sending a sweet shiver down my back. I turn around to face him and my eyes observing the beautiful grin that is painted on the delicate lips I desperately want to kiss. He leans closer and brushed his plump lips against mine in a teasing manner, “May I?” His voice whispers delicately, almost sending me into a crazy frenzy. Just fucking kiss me. I give him a hummed response, granting him permission to kiss me. Then he does. He kisses me. It’s a slow and steady pace as we learn how our tongues work with each other, the two of us tasting the walls and taking advantage of the slowness. His hands gently press to the small of my back and I caress my hands to rest in the crook of his neck. Our body heat begins to rise and I feel an aching tension intensifying between us. A bold caress of his tongue sends me wanting to fall at my knees. Damn, he’s good and he hasn’t done anything but taste the walls of my mouth. My hands move from his neck and begin to feel the thin material of his button up, his body protruding through the material, giving me a sneak peek to what my brazen hands can expect when the material is waddled up on the bedroom floor. My finger tips stumble their way to his tie and for a minute, I feel my heart skip a beat and a small moan escape his breathless lips. He parts our lips and resorts to pressing sweet kisses on my neck. I unravel the tie and allow it to fall from the tips of my fingers to the floor before my brazen hands begin to unbutton his shirt, slowly and teasingly. The touch of his lips on my skin is like no other, they’re delicate and sweet with just enough emotion in them to keep me wanting more. The second the buttons are undone, I push the shirt down his shoulders and expose his beautiful body to my lustful eyes. He really is a masterpiece under the shirt, fuck. I gulp and take a breath, pulling me back to reality as I step out of my heels, his hands becoming antsy as they finally leave their position in the small of my back and take a grab at my behind. He connects the two of us with his lips, again, and with another squeeze of my ass that has been craving his attention, like the rest of me, he hoists me up and my legs wrap around his torso. He escorts us towards the bed as I envelop my arms around his neck and take advantage of the slower paced kissing that pulls our bodies closer and rises our body heat with every passing moment. He sits on the edge of the bed and I find myself straddling him, his hard length bulging against me through his pants.

The tips of my fingers fail to resist themselves and travel around his body of perfect plains and abs, my hands feeling every single inch of his torso.

I know I shouldn’t want to take part in what’s happening between us, but every inch of me wants to feel every inch of him. The fact that we are work rivals makes it even hotter and frowned upon, but I can’t help myself… staring at him with lustful eyes is like waking up on Christmas morning to find the tree with piles of presents— exhilarating and fulfilling.

(I’m not too good with writing actual smut so I’m leaving it to the reader to imagine how they see the night ending). Xx

[mx-requests-forum]

[Fulfilled] Dirty Money

Prompt: changki mafia au! kihyun as a mafia leader and i.m as a poor student who asked for money + sex as payment

Fulfilled by Moderator M~

Words: 3854

Warnings: explicit rating, guns

AO3 Link

The first thing that Changkyun noticed after being tossed head-first onto the floor of the infamous Jwi Gang’s base was that the carpet was surprisingly soft against his face. Of course, this minor detail only passed through his mind for an instant, as he instead brought his attention back to the more pressing matter: that he was surrounded by heavily armed men and currently sprawled helplessly across their floor. Taking a deep, steadying swallow, Changkyun looked up, his eyes searching for the man he was looking for, the man who would save him.

“Who the fuck is this?” a commanding, melodic voice spoke from just beyond Changkyun’s line of sight. Rearing around the huge, gold-plated desk, was Yoo Kihyun, a man Changkyun knew only in local legend and police records to be the leader of the Jwi. He was a lot shorter than Changkyun anticipated, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in cold, heartless stares and incredible taste in fashion. He was dressed to the nines, wearing a form-fitting, dark blue pinstripe suit with slick, pointed shoes, but in his right hand was a pistol, and all distracting thoughts flew straight out of Changkyun’s mind right then and there.

“Some kid called Im Changkyun, he just ran up to us beggin’ to see you. I think he hoped you’d lend him money or somethin’,” the grunt answered, his deep, thick voice loud beside Changkyun. Swallowing, Changkyun looked up into Mr. Yoo’s eyes, a pleading look in them. “Want us to get rid of him?” they asked, and Changkyun felt his heart stop, panic rising in his throat. The armed men along the parameter of Mr. Yoo’s office suddenly moved into action, their guns moving from their sides to aim directly at Changkyun’s head. He scrambled to get up onto his knees, his body moving towards Mr. Yoo’s with an intense desperation.

“Please sir, please! I need money, I need your help! You’re the only person I have left to ask!” Changkyun begged, and tears started falling from his eyes. “My cousin needs a surgery, and I don’t have the money to pay for it alone- you have to help us, please, sir!” Changkyun continued, hoping that by showing that he wasn’t interested in the money for selfish reasons, maybe Mr. Yoo would show a little sympathy.

Quirking a brow in interest, the mafia boss stepped closer to Changkyun, his eyes scanning over the helpless, petite boy. He looked so young, too- definitely in college, if not high school. Kihyun licked the corner of his mouth, watching the way his pretty body trembled with every little cry and shake. Honestly, Kihyun hadn’t had something this out of the ordinary happen in months, and seeing such a beautiful young man on his hands and knees right in front of him was certainly piquing Kihyun’s interest. He raised his right hand, watching the way the young man began shaking in fear.

“I’ll do anything sir, anything,” Changkyun begged, unable to look into Mr. Yoo’s eyes, too scared of seeing the gun pointed at him. He knew there was a risk coming here, he just didn’t realize how high that risk was going to be. Smirking at the display of weakness, and the deliciously vague promise, Kihyun lowered his gun.

“Anything, huh?” he asked, and Changkyun finally looked up, his innocent, dark eyes sparkling with a certain naïve charm that made Kihyun want to absolutely ravage the boy. “Fine, I’ll give you a chance,” he said, and then looked around him, gesturing for the guards to exit. “Men, get out of my sight,” Kihyun ordered, and after a chorus of ‘Yes boss’, the entire room was empty aside from Kihyun and Changkyun. Taking a few steps forward, Kihyun stood directly in front of Changkyun, his legs in a wide stance to display power and confidence.

“So kid, how are you planning on repaying your debt, huh?” Kihyun asked, watching the way Changkyun’s back straightened, as if he had been preparing for this moment for weeks.

“I’ve already applied for six different jobs, I’m going to take at least 2 of them, and within the next 3 years- I’ll be able to pay you back in full,” Changkyun confidently declared, and Kihyun hummed, starting to walk around Changkyun, circling him like a shark.

“And what about with 50% interest?” Kihyun prompted, raising his eyebrows, his gaze never leaving Changkyun’s as he circled the boy. Bristling at the comment, Changkyun swallowed, his gaze flickering down to the carpet.

“M-maybe a little bit longer with interest,” Changkyun replied, and Kihyun cackled out a hyena-like laugh, finally making it back around to Changkyun’s front, leaning his body against his desk and pulling out his gun.

“And what if I’m not willing to wait that long, sweetheart?” Kihyun asked, waggling his gun casually as he spoke. Changkyun swallowed, his eyes widening as he stared up at the intimidating man. He didn’t know what to say, shocked by the question and a bit taken by how attractive Mr. Yoo looked, his gray hair parted down the middle and greasy with hair product. He looked too young and handsome to be such a notorious criminal, and Changkyun swallowed, a bit disturbed by the fact that he still could somehow find this man handsome considering the circumstance and what he was holding in his right hand.

“You’re pretty damn cute, you know that?” Kihyun said, chuckling a bit to himself. Typically, he never gave brats money, because they never repaid him and were ungrateful- but there was something different about this kid. Something that made Kihyun want to help him out, and maybe get a little something in return. He set his gun down, eyeing the young man with a mysterious lust in his eyes- one that made a shiver run down Changkyun’s back.

“I do have one other thing to offer you for my debt,” Changkyun said, swallowing thickly, his cheeks burning at the mere thought. If he was misreading the situation, this could easily get him killed or worse. But if he was right with what he was thinking, then this could be the best way to approach the problem. Kihyun smirked, nodding his head to prompt the boy to continue.

“Go on~” Kihyun said, his fingers running down his thigh, brushing against the luxurious fibers of the tailor-made suit. Changkyun steeled himself, his heart in his throat as he replied.

“My body,” Changkyun said, his demure eyes staring straight into Kihyun’s soul. Busting out into amused laughter, the boss stared, completely impressed, down at the cocky boy kneeling on his floor.

“Really now?” Kihyun asked, wondering if the boy actually knew what he was getting into with such a statement. Swallowing, Changkyun nodded, the gesture soft and nervous.

“Y-You can do anything you want with me,” Changkyun offered, hoping he was attractive and tempting enough to get this man to fall under his spell. He was kinda running out of options here, and right now: prostituting himself was legitimately his best bet.

Kihyun hummed, thinking about his options. Honestly, the kid was only getting cash for an operation- nothing too crazy expensive, at least to Kihyun, who was currently sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold. He licked his lip with an open mouth, staring down at the young man thoughtfully. He’d also be getting a damn good time, considering the way he was staring at Kihyun, like he was some kind of god. It was tempting, for sure.

“Sure kid, show me whatcha got,” Kihyun prompted, chuckling a bit under his breath as he watched the shock and light shine on Changkyun’s face. He looked like he just saw the second coming of Christ, and Kihyun smirked, glad that he could invoke such extreme reactions with just the smallest of phrases.

Changkyun, meanwhile, was completely frozen in shock, eyes wide and unsure of what to do now. He wasn’t going to die, at least for now, but he had to service Kihyun… the only issue was that Changkyun honestly didn’t have that much experience. He’d only had a couple boyfriends, and was definitely not that skilled. Regardless, Changkyun had a job to do. A job that could potentially cost him his life if he didn’t do it right. He swallowed, chewing on his lip adorably as he stared up into Mr. Yoo’s handsome face.

“W-what should I do for you, sir?” Changkyun asked, his body tense with nerves. He didn’t want to fuck this up, and hoped that Mr. Yoo was liking what he was seeing, because Changkyun didn’t really know what else to do without prompt. Kihyun smiled, already enjoying the obedience that Changkyun was displaying. He gestured with his index finger for Changkyun to come hither, and then walked over to his chair, sitting down with his legs spread wide.

“Suck,” Kihyun bluntly ordered, undoing the button of his expensive dress pants and languidly pulling out his cock, feeling a tiny hint of embarrassment at how he was already half-hard. Changkyun nodded eagerly, quickly scrambling to get up and then immediately kneel back at Mr. Yoo’s feet, swallowing thickly at the sight right in front of his eyes: a tough, intimidating mafia boss with his sleek, expensive suit pants open just enough for his cock to stick out- for the sole purpose of Changkyun sucking it.

Licking his lips, Changkyun drew closer to Kihyun’s body, moving a hand to grasp along the girth of the older man’s cock, embarrassment swelling up. Kihyun stared down at the boy with half-lidded eyes, watching the clearly inexperienced actions of the younger with amusement and arousal.

“Have you ever done this before?” Kihyun asked, gripping the armrests of his chair as Changkyun lightly began stroking him. Swallowing nervously, Changkyun couldn’t figure out if he should lie or not, but decided to just tell the truth, his cheeks flushing bright red as he replied.

“N-no,” Changkyun admitted, and Kihyun groaned darkly, moving his hand to rest against the back of the younger man’s head, urging him forward with his trigger finger.

“Even better,” Kihyun said, his voice complimenting and heavy with desire. Changkyun nervously flickered his gaze up into Kihyun’s eyes, startled by the intensity he was met with. Kihyun had the ferocity of a wild animal, and Changkyun was simultaneously intimidated and aroused by that sight.

Upon Kihyun’s urgings, Changkyun lowered his head, darting his tongue out to get a taste of Kihyun’s cock. Changkyun looked absolutely adorable, his little tongue lapping at Kihyun like a lollipop, but Kihyun was quickly getting impatient. He wanted Changkyun to suck, not mess around with this bullshit. Taking matters into his own hands, Kihyun shoved Changkyun’s mouth onto his cock, groaning at the feeling of Changkyun’s wet heat around him.

“Deeper,” Kihyun urged, as he was unable to force Changkyun’s mouth down any more without risking getting his cock bitten or anything worse. Changkyun had to at least get used to the feeling for a little bit on his own, so Kihyun impatiently waited.

Doing as the man asked, Changkyun began tentatively lowering his mouth bit by bit down Kihyun’s cock, fighting back the urge to gag as it hits the back of his throat. He takes it just a bit deeper, and then actually gags, feeling worry bubble up in his throat after doing so.

“You’re doing good,” Kihyun reassured him, and Changkyun nodded, quickly pulling back to thank the scary mob boss for the compliment.

“Thank you, sir,” Changkyun replied, and then immediately returned his mouth to Kihyun’s cock, quickly getting back to work. Smiling crookedly at the cute response, Kihyun exhaled slowly, content to just watch Changkyun as he returned to his slow, steady movements- mesmerized by the way his cock disappeared into the boy’s pretty mouth.

Now getting the hang of it, at least a little bit, Changkyun steadied himself, and then started sucking Kihyun up and down with a steady, fast rhythm, trying to get as much as he could each thrust. Groaning in satisfaction, Kihyun returned his hand to Changkyun’s head, pushing the boy deeper onto his cock.

“All the way,” Kihyun ordered, his cold Rolex watch brushing against Changkyun’s hair. Wanting to obey Kihyun as much as possible, Changkyun choked down the rest of Kihyun’s length, his face flushing at the low, breathy moan that followed his action. He held Kihyun in his mouth for several long seconds, until he physically couldn’t take it anymore, and pulled back in a loud gasp of air. He was about to return his mouth to Kihyun’s cock, when the older man stopped him.

“You did well, let’s do something else now,” Kihyun said, adjusting the edges of his sleeves as he stared down at Changkyun. Nodding eagerly, Changkyun moved back a little, spit dripping down his chin as he stared up into Kihyun’s eyes. “Can you bend over my desk for me? Ass in the air,” Kihyun asked, although it was honestly more like an order, and Changkyun nodded willingly, quickly standing up to do as Kihyun wanted of him.

“And pull down your pants while you’re at it, you’re not gonna need ‘em, heh,” Kihyun said, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of lube. Changkyun’s heart started pounding in his chest, and he did as he was told, slowly pulling his cheap sweatpants and briefs down until they flopped against his ankles. Watching impressedly, Kihyun smirked, his eyes roaming down Changkyun’s exposed backside. Kihyun walked around Changkyun, standing behind the boy with his hard cock still fully on display and sticking out of his fancy slacks. He admired the thick, shapely ass of the younger man, and shook his head, trying to figure out how such a sexy boy was having a hard time earning money.

“Spread you ass for me, babe,” Kihyun said, opening the lid of the lube and squirting out a few pumps onto his hand. Changkyun trembled, and he leaned forward, so that his entire body was now flush against the table.

“Are you going to penetrate me, sir?” Changkyun asked, his nerves getting the best of him. At this point, he was pretty sure Kihyun wasn’t going to kill him- and he had to sufficiently steel his nerves for (what he imagined would be) ruthless pounding. Kihyun hummed, his wet, slick fingers suddenly pressing against Changkyun’s entrance.

“Beautiful and smart? Gosh, you’re the total package, baby,” Kihyun complimented, the tip of his finger entering Changkyun’s ass fairly easily. “I’ll do it if you give me the okay,” Kihyun muttered, his voice a little softer now. Changkyun’s heart pounded, and he bit his lip, surprised with the curtesy. Briefly, Changkyun wondered if Kihyun wasn’t such a bad man after all, and, honestly- he was sexy as hell. Changkyun was truthfully rather attracted to strong, assertive men, and Kihyun was surprisingly gentle with him so far. Changkyun wasn’t really that worried about his life, even if he said no to Kihyun’s order, but he… kinda wanted to. His cock was completely stiff between his legs as it was. Might as well.

“I-I would be honored if sir fucked me,” Changkyun replied, feeling embarrassed with how much he actually meant that statement. He’d never been praised so much by another person before, and it felt so good to be lusted after like this. Changkyun lowered his head, shame washing over him. How could he let himself get to such a degraded state? Practically begging for some mob boss’ cock just so he could get money? At the feeling of Kihyun’s fingers pressing inside his entrance, however, all of Changkyun’s thoughts washed away.

“You’re so interesting,” Kihyun said, chuckling warmly. He was captivated by the strange, unexpected behavior from this boy, and wanted to see more of his sides- preferably, the side with Kihyun’s cock in his ass. But to get there, he would have to sufficiently stretch him out. He wanted this boy putty under his touches and thrusts- not screaming in pain. Inserting two fingers, Kihyun slowly started preparing Changkyun, a little surprised with how easily his fingers were going in.

“Do you touch yourself here, Changkyun-ah?” Kihyun asked, finally saying Changkyun’s name for the first time. Changkyun’s legs spread wide, his ass pressing up higher into the air- utterly embarrassed and completely turned on by the question. Fuck, was he that much of an open book?

“E-Every day,” Changkyun replied in a low, nervous voice, and Kihyun groaned, his cock twitching hard at that confession. Kihyun’s fingers started pumping inside harder and faster, knowing that Changkyun was more than used to this sensation by now.

“That’s so erotic,” Kihyun mumbled, his brain going crazy from that sudden confession. He wanted to see that- ask Changkyun to give him a little masturbation show, but his own weeping erection was distracting him a little too much. He’d definitely get Changkyun to do that for him later though.

Fingering him for a few more seconds, Kihyun added a third finger, groaning at how wet and stretched Changkyun felt- even with three fingers stuffed inside. It was something Kihyun wasn’t expecting to find so sexy, but fuck, it was sexy. He thought about how easy it would be to just slide his cock right inside, to pound the younger man against the desk he worked at every day. It was an overwhelming thought, one that Kihyun couldn’t ignore any longer.

“You ready for my cock?” Kihyun asked, and Changkyun groaned, lifting his hips up to make it that much easier for Kihyun to fuck him.

“Yes, sir,” Changkyun responded, his voice strained and tinged with deep, dark moans. Kihyun nodded, glad to see they were both just as desperate for this, and lined up his cock to Changkyun’s entrance, pressing himself completely inside with one thrust.

“W-whoa,” Kihyun stumbled out, surprised with how tight Changkyun unexpectedly felt around his cock, and Kihyun’s eyes flickered up to the back of Changkyun’s head, giving him an impressed stare.

“You’re so full of surprises, kitten,” Kihyun complimented, and Changkyun flushed at the nickname, finding himself oddly enjoy hearing Kihyun’s sweet voice call him that.

“Is that a good thing, sir?” Changkyun asked, and Kihyun chuckled, pulling his hips back and savoring the tight, constricting feeling around his cock as he did so.

“For me, it’s definitely a good thing,” Kihyun replied, groaning as he pushed his cock back inside Changkyun, starting up a rhythm. Changkyun’s cheeks heated up, and he felt pride swell from within. Glad that he was pleasing Kihyun, Changkyun pressed his ass further against Kihyun’s body, trying to get him deeper. Smacking his ass in appreciation, Kihyun smirked, loving the way Changkyun’s thick booty looked shaking on his cock.

Now that they were outright fucking on Kihyun’s desk, the temperature of the room started to crank up a notch, and Kihyun found that he was actually sweating. Careful not to damage any of his expensive clothes, Kihyun quickly took off his suit jacket, setting it neatly down onto the edge of the desk where Changkyun’s body wasn’t leaning against. He also rolled his sleeves up, exposing his strong, masculine forearms as he gripped Changkyun’s hips, pounding the boy harder and faster.

Beneath him, Changkyun was surprisingly starting to lose control, his cock now steadily dripping precum even though it hadn’t been touched once tonight. Sometimes, when Changkyun jerked off, he never actually touched his dick and was still able to cum. He’d trained himself to do that, and right now, he was actually kinda glad he did. Now he could physically show Kihyun his gratitude, in the form of his incredibly intense orgasm on the man’s cock.

“Sir--” Changkyun stuttered out, drawing the attention of the older man.

“Yes?” Kihyun asked, never ceasing his precise, hard thrusts. Changkyun slipped out a whimper, and he arched his neck down, a fine line of spit trailing out of his mouth.

“I-I’m about to cum on sir’s cock,” Changkyun warned, voice trembling. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer, especially not with how good Kihyun was pounding into him. Smiling excitedly, Kihyun picked up his pace, thrusting his cock in and out of Changkyun with a newfound energy, eager to get the boy to cum from his ass alone. Not only that, but Kihyun himself was also getting rather close to orgasming as well.

Giving his all into one last push, Kihyun pounded into Changkyun’s ass, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh loud in the room. Changkyun began moaning uncontrollably, his voice loud and needy as he came hard- squirting the hot, sticky liquid against the side of Kihyun’s incredibly luxurious desk. He could feel Kihyun still fucking him, but Changkyun’s brain was fried, uncaring as to what happened to him at this point. Behind him, Kihyun quickly pulled out, spilling his load all over the outside of Changkyun’s ass, watching the cum drip down his crack. Gasping several hot, strained moans, Kihyun came down from his orgasm, his breathing heavy from the workout.

After several seconds, Kihyun stepped away from the desk, admiring the younger boy as he trembled on his desk. Smirking, Kihyun walked around to the other side of his desk to grab a cigar from his drawer. Lighting it with a practiced grace, Kihyun took a shallow drag of the cigar, and then exhaled languidly, eyes still roaming over the half-nude form of his newest addiction. He had such a pure, innocent heart- Kihyun oddly found that he wanted it all to himself.

“Kid,” Kihyun said, startling Changkyun out of his orgasm-induced haze. He blearily looked over, still bent over the desk, and blinked nervously, curious to see what the boss had to say to him.

“I’m still gonna have to ask you to repay me in cash,” Kihyun said, taking a deeper drag of his cigar as he sat down onto his desk chair, buttoning up his pants and tucking his cock back inside. Changkyun froze, his heart pounding nervously in his ears. He didn’t dare speak- but felt a little betrayed. He honestly thought that him and Mr. Yoo had shared something a little more intimate than just thoughtless sex, and for him to fuck him over like that… well, let’s just say it kind of hurt Changkyun’s feelings.

“But don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not gonna ask you to pay me any interest. I just want you to learn the value of earning money, and paying for things the right way,” Kihyun continued, exhaling cigar smoke as he spoke, his eyes portraying a sincerity that surprised Changkyun.

“T-thank you, sir,” Changkyun replied, almost wondering why Kihyun wanted to teach him a lesson like that, but not daring to question it. Kihyun nodded, shaking his hand in a dismissive gesture at the thanks.

“I just don’t want you thinkin’ sex is a viable payment for you in the future,” Kihyun explained, his eyes turning a darker, more possessive color as he lowered his hand, his gaze burning straight into Changkyun’s heart.

“Just with me, alright babe?” <3

[calliecat93]

RvB Season 15: Top 3 Worst Things

With Season 16 only weeks away, I’ve been going back over Season 15 a lot the past few days. I’m very late to the party on giving critique because at first, I had zero issues with the season. And overall, I think it’s still a very good one. But... it’s not flawless. There’s definitely a few issues that could bring the season down for some and now that I ave a clearer mind, I can’t ignore it. But I also think that there’s plenty to praise about the season as well, so... I’m going to make two Top 3 Lists, starting with the Worst. Note, this post exists for critical reasons. This is not an attack on Joe, Miles, Burnie, or anyone at Rooster Teeth. There is no reason for it. I want to see Joe improve, not bring him down. SO if you want that, kindly fuck off. For now, lets get into the list!

...that got incredibly long so look under the cut!

Top Three Worst Things ABout RvB15

3. The Film Refrences Are Overly Used

Joe Nicolosi has admitted to being a movie buff, and I always feel like you should use what you like/what you’re good at when making anything. Jax’s character existed to use film humor, and at first it was pretty good. Things like him the Citizen Kane reference and Force Awakens reference in Episode 4, Jax forgetting to record in Episode 5, and his jokes in Episode 7 were legitimately funny. The problem is... they never stopped. It’s perfectly fine to use a running gag, and Hell RvB HAS used pop culture humor multiple times. It’s a show based on Halo after all. But Nicolosi used in in every episode and it stopped being funny. Jax became annoying and while he was helpful in getting footage of Temple’s plans and distracting Lorenzo, he got grating because he wouldn’t shut up. And if you are like me and don’t understand all the references, it’s going to feel like Joe is cramming them down your throat. Fortunately, hes said that he’s going to hold back some in the upcoming season, which is good. He listened, and that's important. I don’t mind this kind of humor at all, just... space it out a little and don’t wear it out. Otherwise, ti just becomes annoying and unbearable and for a show like RvB, that’s something you just can’t afford to do.

2, The Blues and Reds

The idea of using evil versions of characters is always a fun plot. Its a good way to show how the heroic character has grown or even trigger them into growing. For example, in Danny Phantom he’s faced with an evil future version of himself and it is horrifying. It leads to Danny not only maturing a little to not make the mistakes, but he’a chance to fix the damage and does so. It’s a great example of a hero being faced with the worst of himself and choosing to become something better. This idea for RvB was a legit good idea and leads to a lot of possibilities. So the problem? There’s a few...

First, the copies are just exaggerations of the Reds and Blues. They don’t feel like characters aside form Temple, Loco, and Biff and I’ll explain why in a bit. The others feel incredibly shallow. I mean Hell, Simmons’ copy is voiced by Gus still even though everyone else got a different voice actor. I mean it leads to the amazing moment in Episode 20.. but at the same time he still feels less like a character and more like a plot device. The Blues and Reds, aside form the ones I listed, just feel like they’re there because the plot demanded that everyone have some kind of copy. It’same issue I felt Miles had with The CHorus Trilogy, he added a lot of characters but couldn’t do a lot with the majority of them due to time. 

In relation to this... why are they committing to this plan? I know what you’re, “Well Biff was horribly killed and they realized they were pawns”. No. That is Temple’s motivation. He is angry that his best friend was murdered in cold blood and that it was ultimately for no reason. Loco’s motivation is to be Temple’s best friend, but unlike everyone else he has regrets about it and uses his final moments to make it up to Caboose. It gives him a character even if he is more or less a Caboose copy, but it’s something. Biff is dead, but they did take the time to explain why he ended up int he military, why he wanted out, and he was an overall nice guy who isn’t like Grif aside form wanting out of the military, wears orange, and the Sarge copy hating him. Similar want, completely different motivation and character.

Why do Surge, Gene, Lorenzo, Cronut, and Bucky want revenge? Why are they committing to Temple’s insane plan? Why si no one questioning this Did they before? How did Temple convince the Reds into it? Maybe if we saw their reactions when they found the Freelancer Base and the truth, liek we did with our guys, that would be answered. But we don’t know. We don’t knwo why any of them would go along with this, or at least not ask if this is the right thing to do. We know that Temple cared about Biff, but what about Biff’s actual team? Likely he and Gene weren't as close as Grif and Simmons are, but did they have a friendship at all? We saw briefly that Surge may feel bad about Biff’s death, but he doesn't express it and it’s more based on his need to obey orders than anything. We don’t know Biff’s relationship with his team, so you question why they’re going along with it and... do you see what I’m getting at?

The Blues and Reds feel shallow and one-note. A lot of people don’t like Temple because he’s an asshole...a nd he is. But at least they fleshed out his motivation and character so even though you hate him, at least you see why he’s doing what he’s doing. Loco overall i also fine since he differed and did have a conscious. The others though Wasted. They just to because this plot demanded it and nothing is done to make them distinctive. We just want to see them die... okay maybe that was the intent, but still it made them weak villains and I’m not going to be missing them. But hey, we got the moment in Episode 20 due to it so... it’s not all bad.

1. It Was One Season

This is by far the biggest issue with the season. The were a lot of ideas for this season, and you can tell. It was a legit good idea and could have carried two seasons worth of stories... but for some reason they decided to make it a standalone. IDK if it was Joe who decided this or Burnie and Matt did, but it meant that things had to be rushed. You now what I said above? About the villains falling flat? If they had more time, chances are they could have fixed that. But because it was condensed into one season of 21 episodes, they couldn’t.

Now if it had been two seasons, they could have worked on some more things. Like what I said above about the villains and maybe extending the flashback so we could see them discovering the truth. We could have had some mroe solid characterization and understood what was motivating everyone into such drastic actions. Outside that, we could have seen how Red Team was dealing with Grif quitting more and explored things like Donut feeling left out or watching Sarge’s descent into siding with the Blues and Reds. Heck, we could have had Simmons maybe play up siding with the Blues and Reds for an episode, then actually trigger an escape plan that fails, but it would show us that he's what his kissassing ways. Especially if they emphasize on how much worst Gene is at lot and have it be like old Simmons is talking to current Simmons, provoking him further into becoming more independent. That would also justify Gus (who did a great job in the season BTW) being the voice actor for both which let sit feel less like it’s for just a joke and make it even more impactful since it’s current Simmons talking to himself essentially. Which would make the moment in Episode 20 even mroe satisfying. It took me about five minutes to come up with this and in a larger story could have been an effective and if played right funny character arc... but in a one season story, it would have taken up too much time so it wouldn’t be able to be included. But do you see how Simmons would get character development base don both his feelings about losing Grif and for his own benefit? And how it would make Gene a much stronger evil reflection, becoming something for Simmons to overcome and be better than by the end?

I’m saying is’the standalone format caused things to be rushed and ideas to be wasted. As I said, there as enough for two seasons worth. The first season could have the content of... the first fourteen episodes. If you do it as a typical 19 or 20 episode season, you get 5-6 more episodes to play with more ideas. Int he second half, we can start with showing Grif again and bringing Locus back in. Maybe have them go on a little roadtrip where they gather more people like Sister or something, letting her be a regular again and not in just two episodes. You have more room to experiment like show how far Locus has come, have Grif Sibs humor, let Sister have more character and show that she can be clever and resourceful, show more of how Grif’s isolation really affected him and how he needs the others. You can still make all of that both funny and emotional like have Grif and Sister talking about their various shenanigains and Grif is at first complaining about all the shit he goes through. Then he slowly starts talking more slowly about the dumb things and how he hates everyone.. but he also misses them all, feels horrible for walking out like he did, and show how negatively he thinks about himself. Sister, in her own way, makes him feel better. You get comedy, character development, and fun interactions that way. See where I’m going?

There great ideas and opportunities with this season. Hell, the possibility of meeting more Freelancers is pretty cool. But because we only had one season, they had to finish the plot in limited time. They couldn’t explore the opportunity gift-wrapped for them. Int he end they still made a good product, but you still are left feeling like there was so much more that could have been done. Like if I were paid to rewrite Season 15 and was able to make it a two parter, I already have a general idea of what I would do. It is doable.  But if I had only one season... yeah, I’d have to cutback a LOT of it. Like I said, IDK whose idea it was, but it was in hindsight one that hurt the season. Because of this, ti is the worst thing about Season 15.

And there you have it! 'l best another day, typing this took me an hour. And regardless, I really enjoyed the season. It could have bee so much more, but I will gladly take what I got. Joe’s already stated on how he’s read the critiques and will try to improve, and that is important for any content creator. So I wish him the best of luck,a nd now I can feel better now that this is out of my system.

[oranges8hands]

there's only so much silence a home can take (various ages)

totally forgot to move this over sooner // [carpenter verse] // can read on A03 // cw: terrible teacher? (in v.)

summary: Living with other people can be good

 i. medicine delivery

Dean is perhaps not as gentle as he should be when he pushes Cas back into bed, tucking the extra blanket around him and frowning, but this is the fifth time Cas has tried to get up for non-bathroom related reasons and playing corral-the-sick-husband was not a fun game.

Dean points to the tray on the night stand. "Your mint tea, your herbal tea because you couldn't decide, a glass of water, pills and cold medicine, your book from downstairs, and your glasses. I called Naomi and explained your absence. You've emailed your T.A.s' their work. You can get your laptop and cell back in two hours. Take a nap. Read your book. Do not get up unless your bladder is gonna burst."

"You're not the boss of me," Cas says, like he's five, and is asleep three minutes later.

 ii. mice are not pets, they are snake food

Dean is stirring the pot when he hears a loud yelp and then Josephine's voice yelling, "Mr. W!" and Emma's just as loudly calling, "Dad!"

He drops the wooden spoon and races into the living room, where the girls are standing in the corner, Josephine holding up her math book and Emma with the fireplace poker. "What?" he says, glancing around; their bags are by the table and he can see the various crap (papers, books, bag of chips they shouldn't be eating so close to dinner) that surrounded the area where they were sitting while they did their homework, but everything else looks fine. "What is it?"

"We just saw a big ass rat run under the TV unit," Josephine says, and Dean can feel the blood drain out of his head. Fuck.

 iii. um murderers (sorry, I mean "loud noises")

She shouldn't have watched the movie, ok, she admits it, but her Dads were both jam packed with work and she kept the volume on low and Josephine saw it with her older cousins and also are they allowed to show that much blood at 8 o'clock, really aren't there supposed to be family guidelines or something?

The thing is there was a very long hallway between her and her dads' room, and the bathroom door (opened a crack, just enough to see the shower curtain was closed) and the closet door (sure, it should have shelves too stuffed with items to hide a body, but maybe that's just what they want her to think) were between them, and Emma is way too old to be freaked out about the lack of night lights (someone could trip and die! why was her Dad not worried about that!), but also...

Emma pulled the blankets over her head. The main problem is before her Dads’ room, and the bathroom and closet door, and the entrance into the hallway, was that really weird shadow beside her huge dresser, the one that had just enough space between it and the wall to hide Mr. Saw-n-Chains.

She was going to die.

 iv. exhausted bones

Dean cooks 90% of the time. Mostly because he's (way) better at it than Cas, partly because he likes it (and boy did that take awhile for him to admit to), somewhat because he's used to it, and a little bit because he loathes grocery shopping and this seemed like a more than fair exchange of chores with Cas. He likes the routine of it, Emma usually doing homework on the kitchen table while he preps, Cas coming up behind him to lean over and watch his hands work. He was providing for his family, tangible, necessary things that they could enjoy, and Dean liked that even more than just the relaxation of cooking.

But as he's been discovering over the years (and Cas's various insistence into healthy food, non-gluten food, the three weeks of vegetarianism because Hael was his least favorite of Cas's sisters, and that semester Cas was doing his absolute best to avoid writing his second book and insisted on taking over any and all chores in one of the saddest versions of procrastination Dean has ever seen), liking cooking and coming up with a healthy/cheap/different dinner plan every night for years were sometimes two very, very different things.

He checks the clock on the stove, feels the echoing weight from the frankly ridiculous amount of lifting he's had to do today, and calls Cas.

"You're in charge of picking up dinner tonight."

 v. can you believe this shit?

"Michael has not fired him yet," Cas says, setting aside his work bag and crossing into the kitchen to grab a glass of water when he gets home that night. "I'll help you with History in a minute, Emma, I just need to write up my notes about his actions."

"And then I had to spend an hour calming her down," Cas says, stabbing his steak a little too hard at dinner. "She's devastated; all her work wiped out, and it's too late to restart this semester, so she's really losing twelve weeks of work."

"He told me it was 'no biggie'," Cas says, changing out of his day clothes and into his sleep shirt and sweats for bed, the finger quotes obvious even without the accompanying hand gestures. "Like it didn't matter at all."

"He is a prick," Cas says, voice like an announcement on a mountain top, curse word slightly unfamiliar in his mouth. Dean very carefully does not groan into his pillow where two seconds ago he was almost asleep. "He is an absolute prick."

 vi. you scratch my back, I scratch yours

Emma had lice, which was one of those normal kid things Dean half-remembered from his own childhood and definitely remembered from Sam's, like the chickenpox or the idiot who introduces your child to sugar for the first time. (Though, in Sam's case, he was that idiot. In his defense he was also eight and didn't have trouble with the resulting sugar high, having one of his own at the time, but yep, his fault.)

Still, Dean thought, stuffing Emma's pillowcase into the washing machine, trying to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades, this was definitely one of the less fun sides of parenting, like nightmares and bruises. (At least his kid wears a helmet, and Jesus he owes Mary an apology.)

Cas comes in with her towels, probably stuffing the washing machine a little too much but frankly he was foreseeing a lot of laundry in his immediate future and couldn't be assed to care at the moment about one possibly-too-large load. He nudges Cas with his shoulder, presenting his back as he pours out the liquid soap, and Cas scratches with fingernails that should maybe be cut soon.

 vii. the tall bastards club

Dean owns five ladders. One in his house, two at work, one at Gordon's (who borrowed it a million years ago, and will be giving it back probably around the same time Dean returns Gordon’s mom's ceramic pie plate, so never), and one that tended to float around between friends, who had a much better return rate than Gordon and didn't see any reason to have their own. But five ladders, count them, and at least seven people he could borrow one from if all of his magically disappeared.

So why the hell Cas was standing on the kitchen chair (and of course he managed to grab the one Dean hadn't fixed yet, because there were three perfectly good chairs they could use for dinner for their family of three, sue Dean for prioritizing it low, but Heaven forbid Cas use one of those), frowning up at the ceiling, was beyond him.

"Hey, so how many angels does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Dean asks, pulling Cas down from the chair, smiling his best shit-eating grin when Cas turns his scowl on him.

 viii. dancy party

"You don't have to go oh oh oh oh oh,” Dean sings, Emma’s feeding spoon in hand like an imaginary microphone, “you don't have to goooo."

Emma does the drum solo against her high chair table.

Cas is already grinning as they both sing (wildly out of tune from each other and the song) "Ay ay ay ay ay ay."

 ix. my back doesn’t bend that way

By the time Cas comes upstairs, Dean is already laid out on the bed, jeans off and boxers pulled below the curve of his ass, head planted into the pillow. Cas straddles his upper thighs, tweezer in hand.

“So how did you get a splinter in your ass?” Cas asks, and Dean should probably give credit to Cas for managing to get that sentence out with a mostly even voice, but there was a ten-minute laughter spree in the kitchen so fuck him.

Like he fucking knew his jeans had a hole in the ass when he sat on the chair before sanding it.

 x. skin hunger is a legitimate issue

“So how much longer is this?” Dean asks, running his fingers lightly up and down Cas’s neck as he leans into Dean on the couch. He wishes he’d grabbed popcorn or something before they started; salt and butter could only distract so much from people in puffy outfits spouting bad poetry, but better than nothing.

Emma snorts, tilting her head back from where she’s sitting on the floor in front of them, using Dean’s calves as a backrest. “It literally just started, Dad.”

“It is one movie, Dean, while you made me sit through three Star Battles. Be quiet.”

“Oh my God.”