#harry being immortal against his will is so funny

[virgil-anon]

The tomarry micro trope that gets me giggling every time is when Tom is trying to find a way to make Harry immortal with him because he's THAT obsessed and that much of a simp, meanwhile Harry's either knowingly or unknowingly immortal already, either from being Tom's horcrux or being the master of death

And I just love it

Tom: here, I've found a ritual to bind your life to mine so we can both live forever!

Harry:

Harry: Tom I CANT DIE

[lulupen2023]

Barty Crouch Jr/Aro Volturi Harry Potter/Twilight crossover part III (I)/III (II)

thank you sooo much for feedback <3

Summary:

Barty Crouch Junior's (somewhat horrifying) fate seems to have already been written… or maybe not? What if there was someone who has other plans for him?

Summary of the chapter: Barty enjoys his new un-life with Aro in Volterra, before receiving a very special invitation…

III (I): Immortality suits you …

Barty loved Volterra. There was nothing magical about it, of course, but he had never been to Italy. To the contrary, beyond London and Hogwarts, he had been in very few places. Perhaps just in some Missions for his Dark Lord, but those Missions didn’t allow him the luxury of being a tourist.

But it was different here. Feeling comfortable due to the spell that allowed him to go out even during the day without shining in the sun, so as not to draw attention on himself, he could take long walks among the hills and all that greenery reminded him of Hogwarts a little bit. And when he wanted to have some fun, he just had to lure someone, perhaps with the excuse of being a foreign tourist looking for information.  And once they were isolated, all that remained to do was to disapparate with them into the Volturi's Manor.

This was another of those days and he had just apparated in the main hall. He stood in front of the three thrones with Aro, sitting at the central one, looking at him with mock reproach. The only one who was truly reproachful was Jane, standing in the center of the room.

“Barty! Again?" she snapped, moving towards the more inexperienced vampire. "I was bored!" he shrugged as he tied his victim with magic ropes, silencing her with another spell. "You will expose us!" the blonde retorted. "It never happened." "You've only been here with us for three weeks!" "Well, it never happened in three weeks!" he remarked cheekily, snatching a chuckle from Aro. The millennia-old vampire loved his insolence.  

"Sister, never mind!" Alec interjected, with his usual apathetic attitude. "No, I do mind, he has to learn how to behave!" she insisted, ignoring her twin and addressing the newcomer.

"You know the rules. You don't go out hunting. Heidi takes care of bringing us the unaware victims when she organizes her trips, as she did yesterday." Jane retorted. "Oh yes, yesterday was a memorable day!" Barty licked his lips at the memory. "That’s it, you see? That gave us enough sustenance for a month. There is no need for these ... extras. " she mumbled, pointing to the victim. The girl could only look at them with terror in her eyes, tightening the strings each time she struggled. The ropes had already begun to cut her wrists and a few drops of blood spilled on the floor. "But it's funny!" Barty pointed out, bringing the bleeding wrist of the crying girl to his mouth and licking it, without even displaying his canines.

"Impudent! You can't always do as you please!  You deserve a lesson," she decided, staring at him. "Pain!" she exclaimed immediately afterwards.

Barty fell to his knees in excruciating pangs of pain, but still found the strength to pull out his wand. "CRUCIO!" he yelled, pointing it against her. This broke her deadly eye contact. Jane went from being the Executioner, causing deadly pain, to finding herself a victim, cursed by a suffering she had never experienced before. "I appreciate the attempt, pretty girl," Barty said with a smirk, "but I've had a year of tremendous and constant transformations into a guy without a leg and an eye. I'm rather trained in pain." He stood up, continuing his curse. "So what's it like to taste your own medicine?" In response, Jane continued to scream, lying on the ground, convulsing. "Aro, are you going to do something about it or what?" Marcus asked his brother, turning to the raven-haired vampire, bewildered. “Why on earth should I? They are so hilarious, much more than those jesters we had at court!" Aro chuckled. "The jesters didn't make us laugh even once, but they were delicious!" Caius grinned.

Deciding that he had had enough, Barty raised his wand, freeing Jane from his painful influence. Alec immediately went to his sister's rescue. "No one has ever treated me like this before ..." she muttered as Alec helped her up. "What a man!" she sighed in fascination, following Barty with her eyes.

- And he also called me 'pretty girl'! - she gloated to herself .

"And anyway, apart from the little taste I had before, I took her for you, Jane," Barty revealed, freeing the now passed out victim from the magic strings and throwing her into the more than surprised vampire's arms. "Oh!" was all she could say.

"I know you have a soft spot for young female students," the Death Eater murmured, then turned his gaze to Alec. "Next time I'll bring you a young scion." "There will be no next times!" Alec snapped. “There shouldn't have been this time either. Sister, repeat it to him, as well," he sought Jane's support. “Oh, such a fuss, brother, you heard it, right? Barty is cautious, he is discreet, and he takes only one victim at a time. He has not drawn any attention to himself. He will not expose us, ”she said to calm him, but Alec noticed  the smile that Barty gave her. "If you want, I can bring that fainted Muggle back to consciousness so you can have fun with it," he suggested with complicity. "Huh no, thank you. I prefer the old way. Time is not a problem for us." In the midst of this mess Alec felt betrayed and abandoned. "Aro, aren't you going to say anything?" he whimpered, trusting in his Sire’s intervention. "Sure. To you, Alec, I say  "Shut up, you're making a big deal about what is actually a trifle.’" Aro rolled his eyes, before looking at Barty. "To you, puppy, I tell you to follow me in my room. Seeing you at work like that is having a certain effect on me…” Barty rushed at him at supernatural speed, dragging him away with him. The destination was Aro's bedroom. Not that Barty didn't have his own, but mostly he was a regular and very welcome guest of the millennial vampire. "Well, I don't understand your tendency to give gifts to Jane. If you're  trying to get in good with her, I believe that already happened  a while ago," Aro scolded, tugging at his hair, as if to punish him. “Now are you also being nice to Alec? Shall I expect some cuteness of yours also towards Caius and Marcus? " In response Barty laughed, kissing him violently.

“I like you jealous, but you don't have to fear. Mine is just an attempt to integrate. I see Jane as neither more nor less than a sister, which in a certain sense she is… and as the only child I have always been, to me it’s such a new thing to experience. " he commented, snatching a tender murmur from his Sire. But Barty was aiming for nothing tender.

"As for you, I’m not even remotely playing nice!" the Dark Wizard grinned, pushing him onto the bed. A flick of the wand and the noble vampire's clothes dissolved, another spell just whispered and the magic cords imprisoned him to the bed. "If you think this will keep me away from you, you are a little too optimistic, puppy!" Aro growled excitedly, sure he could break the ropes with a few simple tugs, but he was astonished to find that the truth was very different. "They are vampire proof, you would never be able to break them, you would just hurt yourself… not that the prospect of seeing you bleed doesn't excite me!" the Death Eater chuckled, starting to unbutton his shirt very slowly and just a little, to torture him as much as possible. Aro expressed his frustration with a loud growl, further amusing Barty. "I don't need to take off my clothes for the moment," he explained, crawling over him with feline movements. "Now I want to dedicate myself just and only to you." He began with a long and moist kiss, more and more ravenous and voracious, before going down the throat.  There the temptation to pull out the canines was strong, but Barty was able to resist. There would be time.

He continued his kisses on his shoulders, along his arms, he lingered for a considerable time on his nipples, sucking and torturing them a little with his normal teeth. Every groan he drew from Aro was a clear invitation to him to continue. Barty did his utmost to pay attention to every part of the snowy body of the millennial vampire, leaving the showpiece for the last. Aro was by now consumed with impatient desire, but the wait was certainly worth it. Barty began to caress his member, now fully erect and throbbing, for some time, teasing just enough to drive Aro mad with lust. Then he placed delicate kisses on the tip, letting his jerky and quick tongue do the rest.

Aro was in even more raptures when the younger vampire took him in his mouth, gradually, without haste, in a slow and pleasant agony. That was before he felt a stabbing pain that made him scream wildly.

"Barty, did you bite me ... there ?" he asked for explanations. The pain gave way to tantalizing pleasure and an overwhelming orgasm, stronger than any he had previously experienced

"The urge was stronger than me, forgive me ..." Barty tried to apologize, raising his head and licking the remaining drops of blood from his mouth. His elongated canines were still on display as he watched the signs of their intrusion disappear from the offended part. "Puppy, remind me to never put a stop to your initiative!" Aro chuckled, still floating in ecstatic afterglow, and then became more serious. "Barty, what are your feelings towards me?"

Barty lay down next to him, taking a few seconds to collect his ideas. "I find your company very delightful. You keep giving me new stimuli, both as a vampire and as a Dark Wizard. And, last but not least, we have amazing sex!" He made Aro laugh in the last part. "Can this be enough for you, for now, without looking at all costs for the word that begins with L?" Aro stared at him silently and then smiled. "Yes, puppy, that's enough for now." "Either way, you are and will always remain my savior. Maybe it won't be romantic, but it’s very meaningful." Barty murmured, kissing him.

“Happy and proud of it. But now… what about you free me? So I'll show you why it was the right choice!" Aro looked at him and winked. Barty obeyed and quickly realized that Aro wasn't lying about it. --------------------------------------------- The days followed one another, time passing almost without Barty realizing it. Until one day, something most unusual broke the peaceful rhythm. The most recent of the maids that were their servants, a young girl who was about the age of twenty, with an uncertain gait and trembling hands, came into the presence of the Volturi with a letter closed by sealing wax. Miraculously, it did not slip from the silver tray that supported it. Barty was standing beside the wall, looking at the servant and then at his Sire, as if it was a game of ping pong.

"Mis-MisterVolturi, I-I bring you a letter from a certain Mr. Moldevort ..." she stammered in utter confusion, extending the little tray towards him. Aro tore off the sealing wax, but his eyes were on the unfortunate young woman. Barty was also glaring at her. "Sweet Sandra, I guess you meant Lord Voldemort!" Aro corrected her coldly.  

"Y-yes, I'm sorry, pl-please-forgive me!" The unfortunate woman did her best to apologize. "Tsk, tsk, I don't tolerate distraction when communicating with me!" He shook his head, bored. "It will not happen again!" she assured. Aro grinned in a way that froze the blood in her veins. "Oh, but I know it won't happen again," he commented with a chuckle. He turned his bemused gaze to Barty. "I can, can’t I?" the younger asked impatiently, already clutching his wand in one hand.

"Oh yes, puppy.  Have fun as well," his Sire agreed. "I'll have to find a servant who can speak correctly!" he snorted, bored. Barty was already behind the girl, but she didn't dare speak or move. He tugged her violently by the hair, to take her to the adjacent room and from there the others heard only the chilling screams from the unlucky girl and the sadistic laughter from the Death Eater for an indefinite time. "I'd say he's not one of those who get right to the point," Marcus commented. "I find him funny," Caius gave his opinion. "We needed some noise in this house!"

When he decided he had played enough with his victim, Barty unceremoniously cast the Killing Curse and the others noticed the green glow. "I'd say I feel  much better now!" he commented, satisfied, returning to the three thrones. “I told you you were going back to Hogwarts, didn't I? Well, my beloved, the time has come. Voldemort expresses a desire to see you again. We will leave at sunset and do not even try to offer me some of your magical devilry. I travel the old way and you will keep me company," he said firmly, making Barty laugh. "I would even go there on foot, as Muggles step, just to reach that place!" Barty swore. "I know and, yes, you can have his letter," Aro smiled,  anticipating his wishes, and handed it to him. During that same day Barty lost count of how many times he had reread the letter. He stroked the now dried ink of that elegant and majestic handwriting with his fingertips, imagining the tone of his Dark Lord's voice and his mood at the time he had written it. Certainly he would keep it among his fondest mementos. -------------------------------------------------- - The carriage dropped them off at Hogwarts Castle. Lord Voldemort had arranged everything for their arrival. The Dark Lord had recommended that, before reaching his headquarters at the Malfoy mansion, the two should take a tour of the school to see how much things had improved. Everything had been explained in the letter. Barty was delighted to return with Aro to the school that had seen him as a teacher for a year, especially when he found that there were only young Pureblood wizards who were learning the Dark Arts under the guidance of other trusted Death Eaters. He found with pleasure the two Lestrange brothers, Rodolphus and Rabastan, who had recovered from the devastating years of captivity. ------------------------------- Aro was quite nervous when they met Fenrir Greyback. But, rather unusual for the quarrelsome nature of Barty, the young man was able to act as a peacemaker between the two of them and the werewolf. "I'll have to give Voldemort a nice little speech about how inconvenient and very deplorable it is to keep such a fleabag in a public place. It undermines the decent image of Hogwarts," Aro muttered his disappointment, amusing his Childe, as they entered Diagon Alley. Barty had shown his Sire the magical secret passage at the back courtyard of The Leaky Cauldron. "If anything, I don't understand why my Lord entrusted those incompetent Carrows with such tasks, not to mention Lucius!" the young Death Eater growled, deeply annoyed. "You know, Aro, this street was always teeming with people, especially Halfbloods and Mudbloods. Now none of them dare to be seen around here anymore!" he informed his Sire with satisfaction. "If it weren't for the fact that we have already had a large dinner before leaving, it wouldn't cheer me up at all, my dear." “At least Purebloods and Death Eaters are allowed to walk around here. They probably were told of our arrival. They do well to hide," the Dark Wizard grinned proudly. ----------------------------------- Narcissa preferred not to welcome their guests. They were instead entrusted to that coward, Wormtail. He led them to the hall where Voldemort was waiting for them. "Master, I brought you Aro Volturi and Barty, as you wished," said the animagus, looking for approval from his Master.

"Leave us alone, Wormtail," the Dark Lord ordered in a hissing voice. He was sitting with his back to them. He only got up after his servant had taken his leave. 

"Aro, my good friend," he greeted the millennial vampire. They both smiled as Voldemort walked towards him. "I thank you above all for the comfortable journey you arranged for me to have," Aro said. “I had to do something," Voldemort smiled. "You definitely don’t strike me as someone who enjoys trains." "That's true," the millennial vampire proudly agreed.

"And, Barty, my boy!" Voldemort turned his attention to him. The Dark Wizard was looking at him with religious silence, kneeling on the ground and gazing up with adoring eyes. But something was wrong. Voldemort realized that he must have practiced some camouflage spell on himself to change his complexion and eyes. "Ah-ah, Bartemius, no masks with me," he admonished, shaking his head. He gestured to show that the younger man could get up. Then he ran a hand over his adoring face, thus canceling the effects of those spells. Now Voldemort was satisfied. “Were you ashamed of what your new nature is now? You shouldn't. Look at yourself; immortality suits you ... ” If only he was still able to do that again, Barty would have blushed. "My Lord ... you ... you are beautiful," he let out. It was just as Aro had described him to him, even better, those icy eyes that looked at him so deeply then… Barty could have drowned in those eyes. "Keep your enthusiasm in check, my dear fanged boy!" a high-pitched female voice interrupted them. "Idolizing my Dark Lord is my job. I'll take care of it," Bellatrix purred as she moved up to stand next to her Master.

From her sudden entrance, Barty knew she had probably apparated into the room. (End I)

The distracted maid scene is inspired by the hidden scene in Twilight (one of my favorite Aro moments, I had to recreate it … with a few variations that I hope you enjoyed; P)

More, so much more to come and get ready for lots of Bellatrix’s and Barty’s cat and dogs fights XD I just hope you enjoyed so far, pleeeease, let me know

[skadventuretime]

XX

Here’s my piece for the Noragami @millenniumzine ! There are still bundles available at the time of this posting, so have at it.

This covers themes/details from chapter 90 of the manga (and a little before and after), so if you’re still reading through I recommend holding off on this until you’re caught up!

/

Steam drifts from subway vents outside of a downtown arcade. Children laugh as they go inside, fingers curled around an older sibling or parent’s hand, an air of anticipation humming around them. 

Hagusa ghosts in after them, more on a whim than anything. He has a fascination with humans now that he didn't before, a dizzying pull that makes him want to hold something small in his hands, or crush it.

Lights flash in neon patterns, and the smell of popcorn and sweat fills the room. Hagusa watches a girl shoot zombies on one screen for a while before the glitter of the claw machine catches his eye. A boy almost grabs a stuffed Capypa but the claw isn't strong enough or the game is rigged enough that it tumbles, face up, against the glass. A strange emotion tries to worm its way out of Hagusa’s stomach—loss? betrayal?—but disappears when a small child rushes by him on the way to a skee ball machine. Cheeks splotched red with exertion, body tilted forward in the kind of run that only ends in collision; this kid’s on a mission. 

“Slow down, Kai, it’s not a race!” cries a harried looking teen following in his wake. Their facial features are similar and Hagusa has to tamp down the thoughts of his sister. What would it have been like, to have a family who cared?

"C'mon, we gotta play at least one more before Mom makes us go home!"

His sister rolls her eyes. "No way squirt, I'm meeting friends later and I need to get ready. We're going. Now."

Humans. So strange to think that at one point he, too, was flesh and blood, that his future stretched before him as blinding and bittersweet as this small boy’s. He doesn't look any different than Hagusa would have at that age, so why does he get a family? Why does he get to live?

Hagusa’s fists are clenched at his side as the rage bubbles up, searing his not-veins and pooling in his not-stomach. With his fractured memory, this is all he’s ever been; a facsimile, stitched together with the blessing of an immortal being that was supposed to have protected him in life.

[Read the rest below the cut or on AO3.]

When does the shift occur, between being served by the gods and being named by them? Are wishes tied to memory and that's why shinki don't get to make them anymore, stripped as they are of everything that had made them human but their souls?

Hagusa summons the energy to draw a boundary and holds it in his hand. He'd deserved to have his wishes listened to with the same care the gods grant some; he'd deserved a life where his wishes were about comic books or ice cream flavors; and now, he deserves to make sure no one else suffers like he did. 

Energy builds in the room. Kai starts to cry, and his sister rushes over.

“Hey, you okay? Come on, let’s go play a few more rounds. I’ll even get you ice cream on the way home!” Her eyes have a slight glassy sheen.

Kai stops crying. “Even if you're late to meet your friends?”

His sister smiles, and it looks genuine. “Even so.”

They walk away together hand in hand, and some of Hagusa’s anger slips away. That’s right. This is his power now. He might have been cheated by the gods during his life, but he will not allow them to cheat anyone else.

He inhales slowly — funny how he doesn’t need to breathe and yet the motion focuses him, the way eating soothes a part of him that no longer hungers — and casts himself like a net across the city.

Humans fall like snow in his mind’s eye, their souls soft and pulsing with a gentle light. Within each one are tangled threads of anger, love, sadness, and hope, threads he starts to weave. Deep down all humans have the strength to do what’s right; they simply talk themselves out of it. So Hagusa becomes the voice that reminds them of their power, reminds them to protect the young and the vulnerable and to care, just a little, about those other than themselves. 

With each thread he tweaks, he thinks about the true limits of his power. If he can influence people to do the right thing, what use is there for gods? Perhaps the humans will wish the gods away themselves after learning how to pass judgment on their own. They just need to be shown that there’s a better way.

Something glimmers in his mind’s eye. A human man yelling at his wife and small child around a dinner table. The wife’s eyes are dull and the child is crying, but the man keeps yelling. He takes a step forward like he’s going to hit the child and — no, not again, not ever again, there is no more dark dark dark fingers clawing choking—

There is a metallic clang. A steak knife has fallen to the floor and the wife is looking between her shaking hand and the blood blooming from her husband’s chest. Hagusa snaps his net back to himself, and the world becomes small and quiet and whole again.

“Ah, spend a little too much energy?” Footsteps noiseless as always, Father strolls out of a nearby store and comes to stand beside him. “Interesting what your power can do when you put your mind to it.”

“I didn’t do that,” Hagusa says, more sharply than he’d intended. 

“Oh?” Father looks surprised and then thoughtful. “I could have sworn I felt Yuuki’s power being used...but perhaps you were doing something else at the same time.”

“Only people can judge each other,” Hagusa says with as much firmness as he can muster. “I didn’t make her do anything she wasn’t thinking about already. If she thinks it’s a fair judgment, then it must be.”

Father nods along. “Heaven thinks the same of their judgments. Tell me, why do you trust the humans more than your power to make them do what you know is right?"

"Because--" Because if people had looked out for him, maybe he'd still be alive. If people had taken care to notice the bruises on his arms and the dullness in his eyes, maybe he would have been loved instead of abandoned.

"It doesn't matter. I'm a hafuri, right? I just know these things. As long as humans look out for each other, no one will slip through the cracks like they do when the gods look the other way."

Father makes a noncommittal noise. "Well, come along now. I'm sure you're very tired after encouraging people to be their best selves all day."

Hagusa begins to follow Father. In a perfect world, all the wishes humans waste on gods would be spent using their own power to protect and care for one another. But the world isn’t perfect, not at all, so Hagusa will help them find their strength.

After all, humans still need to be judged. 

[maxwell-grant]

The crossover fic + learning he's a favorite of yours has me curious: do you think it would be possible to tell a satisfactory Shadow vs. Mr. Mxyzptlk story? I think he'd fit surprisingly well in that milieu as a credible threat: he's something of an older, mistier, shadowy world, kin to fairies and elves and imps, pixies and sprites and genies, bound by old laws and dressed like a parody of 20s/30s class, beyond The Shadow's usual powers and yet...THAT. There a thematic in to this throwdown?

I had never actually thought of Mxy in that light, even though it's very much in line with what he is, because Mxy is one of those characters I don't tend to think about much. He's one of those ready-made perfect villains who pretty much guarantees a fun and creative time whenever he pops up uninvented. Like The Ventriloquist for Batman, he is so uniquely a product of how Superman works and what his stories allow for, that I can't say I ever thought of taking him for a spin outside of them. But there's definitely stuff to work with in putting him and The Shadow together.

Come to think of it, if there's a Superman villain I think Walter Gibson would have liked to play around with, it would be Mxyzptlk. Mxy stories are fundamentally about Superman being thrust into a position where his only way out is to solve puzzles and turn the tables using nothing but his wits, and Gibson spent the majority of his career before and after The Shadow as a writer of books on magic and puzzles, both of which show up a lot in The Shadow stories. You see it even in several covers which contained clues for the stories within.

To an extent, you could argue that The Shadow might figure out quicker a way to trick Mxy, because The Shadow's already has to utilize a constant amount of trickery and deceit and puzzle-solving in his daily adventures, it comprises almost the majority of what his stories are about under Gibson. The usual Mxyzptlk narrative is one that's well within The Shadow's domain.

But on the other hand, it's definitely some extremely unusual territory for The Shadow, villain-wise. A villain who eclipses his powers and scope to such an extent is completely unheard of. The one time I can think of where he fought a villain this weird and who he was completely powerless against was when he met Suven The Clown King of Venus (who's definitely a character that could show up in this meeting), and even then Suven was just a weird alien who looked gigantic next to the shrunken Shadow. Even on the few occasions where The Shadow encountered other aliens or eldritch monsters, he was able to find a way to stop the threat for the moment or even kill it, which is definitely not happening here, because Mxy is a whole other level.

Superman has the strength and endurance and superpowers to roll with whatever mayhem Mxy throws his way. If Mxy decides that The Shadow’s looking too pale so he's gonna give him a tan by throwing him in the sun, what the hell is he gonna do to stop him? I imagine that Mxy would likely take a different approach to messing with The Shadow, since he can't tank nukes like Supes and he's not really a good sport about the game. 

Fine, whatever, Mxy's a creative sort, he's got a couple of ideas for messing around with Mr Grim-n-Serious over there, show him what an Eldritch Monster looks like past the squid monsters and dragons he may have met.

The idea I'm getting here is, on one hand, Mxy attacking The Shadow with the usual goofiness he brings with him. And on the other, him realizing that messing with The Shadow's dignity isn't as fun as he thought he'd be, so he instead goes full SCP Foundation/Awful Hospital/Ice Cream Man on The Shadow until he's stopped, trapping him in amusing and horrifying eldritch nightmares and situations that he has absolutely no way to escape until he solves the puzzle. 

I mean, he's not fighting Superman here, he can kill this guy with a blink, even just stopping his heart with a thought. No fun in that. He's gotta beat the "Master of Darkness" at his own game. He's got a point to prove.

I imagine that much of the story would play out of The Shadow having to piece together what exactly has gone topsy-turvy in his reality, whether it's Commissioner Weston eating spiders for breakfest or the entirety of Manhattan sans him going blind and all lights going out across the country. And when Mxy comes out with that shrill SURPROISE!!!, assuming The Shadow already knows what he needs to do, then he falls for whatever gambit The Shadow's had to cook up to trick him. 

At the end, Mxy is an arrogant bully who lords power over those that can't fight back, and The Shadow's a master of beating those by turning their arrogance against them. It's Duck Amuck, except Bugs is a mind-breaking sadist and Daffy has to fight back.

I imagine something akin to a particularly funny scene from a story called Face of Doom, where a gangster traps The Shadow in a room surrounded by armed henchman so he can enlist him into taking down the city's leading criminal, The Face. The Shadow unmasks himself as Cranston to gain his trust, and the two proceed to talk plans. I'll post the sequence below

Calmly, The Shadow was removing his slouch hat. His arms spread, the black cloak began to drop from his shoulders. Clipper's nervousness changed to elation. If ever a criminal fooled himself, Clipper did so at that moment.

Though The Shadow voiced no agreement to Clipper's offer, the crook was confident that it was sealed. The Shadow was taking a step that no other criminal had ever witnessed.

When Clipper's squinty eyes saw the hawkish features of Lamont Cranston, the crook displayed another of his downward grins. There wasn't any question about the prisoner really being The Shadow.

"A ritzy mug, ain't you?" voiced Clipper. "Well, that makes you the real McCoy. One thing we'd all figured, Shadow — we guessed you was a high-hat guy.

"'You don't get out of here until The Face is croaked! Say, though — maybe one of your ritzy friends could put up a good front with The Face."

"There are others, who might serve. I have agents, you know."

A shrewd gleam brought new ugliness to Clipper's eyes. He had heard of The Shadow's agents. It would be smart stuff—using them to get The Face, then disposing of them afterward. Clipper couldn't hide the eagerness that betrayed his new scheme.

"Good stuff," agreed Clipper. "But how am I going to reach those guys and get them to work with me? They only take orders from you, don't they?"

In reply, Clipper saw Cranston pick up the black cloak and hat. He handed the garments to the crook. For the moment, Clipper was puzzled; then he saw Cranston's hand extend the discarded gloves.

"I get it," chuckled Clipper. "You want me to rig up like I was you. Then the guys that work for you will listen to me. How do you handle them—with some password?"

"Usually," replied The Shadow. "Try on the cloak and hat first, Clipper. I must study the appearance that you make."

It seemed like a give-away of The Shadow's game. Any one could stage this Shadow stuff. All he had to do was masquerade in black, spring a shivery laugh, and shoot quick with his guns. If Cranston could pull it, Clipper could.

The Shadow spends a couple of paragraphs calmly walking Clipper through the steps necessary to pull off a convincing Shadow performance, almost like he's directing him. And then this happens:

The back of Clipper's neck was exposed. Though The Shadow's voice was still the leisurely tone of Cranston, his left hand had lost its laziness. Behind Clipper's back, that fist whipped an automatic from a shoulder holster. Clipper didn't scent the move until the muzzle of the .45 iced his neck.

"It won't work, Shadow," rasped Clipper. "You know it as well as I do! One pop from that gat of yours, the mob will pile in and croak you! There's a wicket in that door; they'll use it!"

The Shadow had shifted low behind Clipper's back. The crook could no longer observe the reflection of Cranston's face. He could still feel the pressure of the gun muzzle on his flesh. "Climb off my neck, Shadow," warned Clipper. "It ain't getting you nowhere!"

It was getting The Shadow further than Clipper guessed. The gun muzzle was actually gone from Clipper's neck. His impression that it rested there was merely an after effect, from former pressure.

Crouched low, The Shadow had now reached the door. Before Clipper guessed what was up, The Shadow twisted the door knob. Wrenching the door inward, he pulled himself behind it.

At the same moment, The Shadow snapped a quick command, in a rasp that resembled Clipper's own harsh tone:

"The Shadow's yours, gang! Croak him!"

It ends for Clipper about as well as you'd expect.

One of the things I like most about Mxy is that you can't take shortcuts with him. It's not like how it is with Riddler stories, where you can half-ass the riddles because you know Batman's gonna win once he touches Riddler and the story's gonna end in a punch-up, Mxyzptlk is completely invincible unless you solve the puzzle he presents, and you'd think of course that, surely, he can't fall for it this time.

He's a wise guy, see, he's seen all of Superman's tricks by now, and what's that dumb old Shadow gonna do that he can't see a mile away? This is almost too easy.

It's so easy, in fact, that The Shadow even agrees, he's lost it completely, and the way he could possibly beat Mxyzptlk is by calling one of his agents to save him, and he's prepared a list of some of his smartest, cleverest agents for this moment. But, no, he wouldn't dare put them in such danger against this invincible, immortal genius, someone has to take this list from him and run, but ZOINKS, Mxy's taken the list. So he's gonna start seeing who is it that the Shadda thinks is smart enough to take him.

Clyde BurKe? Like some dimestore journalist's gonna have a shot, just cause he solves crossword puzzles. Lamont Cranston, yeah, more like, LAMEONT CRANSTON. Harry VincenT, who, the dumb kid who tried jumping off a bridge once? Come on, you gotta give me a hand here, Shadda! Let's see, Pietro, what, some cook? Ya kidding? Moe ShrevnitZ...actually, Shrevy's allright, scratch that one. ShrevY, hey, come on, that's cheating, ya just put Shrevnitz's name again, ya dum-dum. Mr Xanadu, hmm, catchy name but probably not a real guy. And Margo Lane. Yeah, smart dame that one, she could probably figger something out. And ya keep writing everyone's name's weird - WAIT

I KNOW WHAT YER TRYING TO DO HERE.

I KNOW YOU GOT SOME CLEVER SCHEME HERE, I'D SEEN THIS BEFORE, IT'S AN OLD TRICK.

YOU EMPHASIZED THE LETTERS SO THE REAL SMARTEST GUY YOU KNOW WOULD BE HIDDEN WITHIN THEM, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE COULD FIND HIM.

HAH, THAT'S RICH. THAT'S KID'S PLAY. WHAT, YOU THINK I CAN'T FIND THIS

KLTPZYXM

BY MYSELF?

.

.

.

aw crickets...

[calpops]

the milestone | c.h.

Your daughter reaches a milestone that warms your hearts during the Christmas season.

1.2k words

Day 3 of 12 dates with calmas | dates with cal masterlist

Copyright © 2020 calpops. All rights reserved. This original work is not allowed to be reposted on any platform in any format (translations included).

❅ ❅ ❅

“Five and a half months old,” Calum says in complete disbelief into a tape recorder in his hand, a new habit of keeping voice recordings for Mila forming as a chronicle for her life. Sometimes he speaks directly to the tape, sometimes he speaks to her and lets the tape record, and now he always has the recorder at the ready for the little noises and near laughter that she’s growing into.

Mila lays in his lap while one arm is wrapped around her for support. Calum looks down at her with a grin and discards the tape recorder on the couch cushion next to him. His free hand goes to her, fingertip lightly touching the tip of her nose to elicit the sweetest smile he’ll never tire of. It reminds him of you. For as much as she looks like him, he sees nothing but remnants of you from the inside out in her. Her smiles, the joy she radiates and the strength she has. Calum taps her nose again, watches as her smile grows and feels his own do the same.

“That’s mommy’s smile isn’t it?” he asks as she wiggles a hand and lets out a noise as if to confirm Calum’s statement. “Yeah it is,” he coos and catches her small hand in his, another little noise escaping her as he leans down to kiss the tip of her nose and forehead. “I bet your laugh is going to be just like mommy’s too.”

Mila wiggles again, hand moving in Calum’s delicate hold. Her feet kick just slightly and though Calum doesn’t want time to move so fast he can already envision her walking. She doesn’t even crawl yet, can’t even rock back and forth on hands and knees as a building block to crawling. All of her doctors warned Calum and you that premature babies often need extra time for the fundamentals but with her hand in his and feet kicking he can see it all play out before his eyes. Crawling, walking, talking, growing up.

Calum gives her tummy a light little tickle and her feet kick a little more. Her Christmas pajamas make the ordeal even cuter, printed little reindeer moving with her every motion. He wants to call you out to the living room to see this, to enjoy her while she’s awake but you’re resting in the bedroom after a night without sleep. You still worry about her during nights, the habit nearly broken but coming back together in times of stress. You thought she felt warm, almost feverish, worried she was getting sick, stayed up with her all night and by morning realized she was just fine. So Calum leaves you to your sleep and continues to entertain Mila.

“You know we have another surprise for mommy tomorrow,” Calum tells her, finding that he has casual conversation with her just as much as he would with you or Duke. “Don’t tell, but…” Calum continues and whispers plans for tomorrow to Mila as she continues to grin at the sound of his voice and the compliance of his hand holding her wiggling one. “You two are going to have the best Christmas season ever.”

Once his plans are laid out he dips back down and scoops her up so she rests fully in his arms and it’s not such a long descent to give her full cheeks little kisses. He’s not sure if he’s only convinced himself of it or if she truly does respond with noises and motions to affections. Wrinkling nose, tiny coos and kicking feet. With her in his arms and happy as can be he starts talking to her again, the tape recorder detailing all of the words he tells her for a time she can listen to them again and remember. Amidst the words Calum gives her kisses and tickles and makes funny faces, always chasing a happy reaction from her.

He stops short and falls silent after a sentence and a tap on the nose. Much more than a small noise comes from her, tiny little giggles play Calum’s heartstrings like a symphony. Her laughter is light and delighted, the smile on her face bright and full. The giggles stop after just a moment and Calum has to shake himself to pull himself back to reality and the newfound quiet. For a moment he doesn’t believe what he just heard.

“Did you just laugh?” he asks with furrowed brows. “Was that a real laugh for the first time? Mila! You giggled,” Calum adds on in a breath of enchanted disbelief. A puff of air escapes him and his arms tighten around her to bring her closer to him, to cradle her against his chest and get on the move to find you.

He goes down the hallway without a thought, Mila back to being quiet. The bedroom door is still shut but he opens it to find you sleeping. He hesitates for only a moment; deciding you’d want to be woken for this moment, for this beautiful and heartwarming noise and milestone.

“Sweetheart,” he prods in a gentle voice to rouse you peacefully, though it doesn’t stop you from waking suddenly and startled. He sees the panic on your face immediately and hopes his smile clues you into the fact that nothing bad has happened. Something good. Something worth waking for. “Mila just laughed.”

You rub your eyes and the tiredness away as the news slowly sinks in. “She laughed? Like… laughed laughed?”

“Downright giggled,” Calum answers and steps closer to the bed with a still cheery Mila. “It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Your eyes go wide in shock and then soften to a sadness, Calum realizing you’re upset you missed it. You motion for him to sit with you and ask with your eyes and outstretched arms for Mila to be with you.

“How? Why? What happened?” you ask as he hands you Mila and she gets settled in your hold.

Calum relays the previous events and sidles up to your side so he can face Mila as well. He tickles her tummy and taps her nose and watches you light up with awe as another giggle comes from her. Your smile stretches across your entire face and reaches your eyes with glinting happiness. Calum feels warm from the inside out, heart about ready to burst as he does it all again and another round of giggles comes from her.

“My turn,” you say and Calum watches as you make your baby laugh. Her giggles make you laugh and yours make Calum chuckle. “I didn’t expect her to be laughing like this so soon.”

“It’s all because of you,” Calum responds.

“I’m not the one who got her to.”

“Yes you did. Can’t you hear it? That’s your giggle and she giggles for the same reasons as you,” Calum explains with a growing grin. He reaches for you, fingers lightly tickling you as you laugh. “She got it from you.”

He leaves you with an overjoyed Mila, knowing there’s no way you’ll let her go for at least a while and heads back to the living room. He finds the tape recorder on the couch and realizes it’s still on. Her first laugh is immortalized on tape. He hopes one day that you can all listen to it and laugh again.

—

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[grigori77]

Summer 2021′s Movies - My Top Ten Favourite Films (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10.  WEREWOLVES WITHIN – definitely one of the year’s biggest cinematic surprises so far, this darkly comic supernatural murder mystery from indie horror director Josh Ruben (Scare Me) is based on a video game, but you’d never know it – this bears so little resemblance to the original Ubisoft title that it’s a wonder anyone even bothered to make the connection, but even so, this is now notable for officially being the highest rated video game adaptation in Rotten Tomatoes history, with a Certified Fresh rating of 86%. Certainly it deserves that distinction, but there’s so much more to the film – this is an absolute blood-splattered joy, the title telling you everything you need to know about the story but belying the film’s pure, quirky genius.  Veep’s Sam Richardson is forest ranger Finn Wheeler, a gentle and socially awkward soul who arrives at his new post in the remote small town of Beaverton to discover the few, uniformly weird residents are divided over the oil pipeline proposition of forceful and abrasive businessman Sam Parker (The Hunt’s Wayne Duvall).  As he tries to fit in and find his feet, investigating the disappearance of a local dog while bonding with local mail carrier Cecily Moore (Other Space and This Is Us’ Milana Vayntrub), the discovery of a horribly mutilated human body leads to a standoff between the townsfolk and an enforced lockdown in the town’s ramshackle hotel as they try to work out who amongst them is the “werewolf” they suspect is responsible.  This is frequently hilarious, the offbeat script from appropriately named Mishna Wolff (I’m Down) dropping some absolutely zingers and crafting some enjoyably weird encounters and unexpected twists, while the uniformly excellent cast do much of the heavy-lifting to bring their rich, thoroughly oddball characters to vivid life – Richardson is thoroughly cuddly throughout, while Duvall is pleasingly loathsome, Casual’s Michaela Watkins is pleasingly grating as Trisha, flaky housewife to unrepentant local horn-dog Pete Anderton (Orange is the New Black’s Michael Chernus), and Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story) and Harry Guillen (best known, OF COURSE, as Guillermo in the TV version of What We Do In the Shadows) make an enjoyably spiky double-act as liberal gay couple Devon and Joaquim Wolfson; in the end, though, the film is roundly stolen by Vayntrub, who invests Cecily with a bubbly sweetness and snarky sass that makes it absolutely impossible to not fall completely in love with her (gods know I did).  This is a deeply funny film, packed with proper belly-laughs from start to finish, but like all the best horror comedies it takes its horror elements seriously, delivering some enjoyably effective scares and juicy gore, while the werewolf itself, when finally revealed, is realised through some top-notch prosthetics.  Altogether this was a most welcome under-the-radar surprise for the summer, and SO MUCH MORE than just an unusually great video game adaptation …

9.  THE TOMORROW WAR – although cinemas finally reopened in the UK in early summer, the bite of the COVID lockdown backlog was still very much in effect this blockbuster season, with several studios preferring to hedge their bets and wait for later release dates. Others turned to streaming services, including Paramount, who happily lined up a few heavyweight titles to open on major platforms in lieu of the big screen.  One of the biggest was this intended sci-fi action horror tentpole, meant to give Chris Pratt another potential franchise on top of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, which instead dropped in early July on Amazon Prime.  So, was it worth staying in on a Saturday night instead of heading out for something on the BIG screen?  Mostly yes, although it’s mainly a trashy, guilty pleasure big budget B-picture charm that makes this such a worthwhile experience – the film’s biggest influences are clearly Independence Day and Starship Troopers, two admirably clunky blockbusters that DEFINED prioritising big spectacle and overblown theatrics over intelligent writing and realistic storytelling.  It doesn’t help that the premise is pure bunk – in 2022, a wormhole opens from thirty years in the future, and a plea for help is sent back with a bunch of very young future soldiers.  Seems Earth will become overrun by an unstoppable swarm of nasty alien critters called Whitespikes in 25 years, and the desperate human counteroffensive have no choice but to bring soldiers from our present into the future to help them fight back and save the humanity from imminent extinction.  Less than a year later, the world’s standing armies have been decimated and a worldwide draft has been implemented, with normal everyday adults being sent through for a seven day tour from which very few return.  Pratt plays biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forrester, one of the latest batch of draftees to be sent into the future along with a selection of chefs, soccer moms and other average joes – his own training and experience serves him better than most when the shit hits the fan, but it soon becomes clear that he’s just as out of his depth as everyone else as the sheer enormity of the threat is revealed.  But when he becomes entangled with a desperate research outfit led by Muri (Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski) who seem to be on the verge of a potential world-changing scientific breakthrough, Dan realises there just might be a slender hope for humanity after all … this is every bit as over-the-top gung-ho bonkers as it sounds, and just as much fun.  Director Chris McKay may still be pretty fresh (with only The Lego Batman Movie under his belt to date), but he shows a lot of talent and potential for big budget blockbuster filmmaking here, delivering with guts and bravado on some major action sequences (a fraught ticking-clock SAR operation through a war-torn Miami is the film’s undeniable highlight, but a desperate battle to escape a blazing oil rig also really impresses), as well as handling some impressively complex visual effects work and wrangling some quality performances from his cast (altogether it bodes well for his future, which includes Nightwing and Johnny Quest as future projects).  Chris Pratt can do this kind of stuff in his sleep – Dan is his classic fallible and self-deprecating but ultimately solid and kind-hearted action hero fare, effortlessly likeable and easy to root for – and his supporting cast are equally solid, Strahovsky going toe-to-toe with him in the action sequences while also creating a rewardingly complex smart-woman/badass combo in Muri, while the other real standouts include Sam Richardson (Veep, Werewolves Within) and Edwin Hodge (The Purge movies) as fellow draftees Charlie and Dorian, the former a scared-out-of-his-mind tech geek while the latter is a seriously hardcore veteran serving his THIRD TOUR, and the ever brilliant J.K. Simmonds as Dan’s emotionally scarred estranged Vietnam-vet father, Jim.  Sure, it’s derivative as hell and thoroughly predictable (with more than one big twist you can see coming a mile away), but the pace is brisk, the atmosphere pregnant with a palpable doomed urgency, and the creatures themselves are a genuinely convincing world-ending threat, the design team and visual effects wizards creating genuine nightmare fuel in the feral and unrelenting Whitespikes.  Altogether this WAS an ideal way to spend a comfy Saturday night in, but I think it could have been JUST AS GOOD for a Saturday night OUT at the Pictures …

8.  ARMY OF THE DEAD – another high profile release that went straight to streaming was this genuine monster hit for Netflix from one of this century’s undeniable heavyweight action cinema masters, the indomitable Zack Snyder, who kicked off his career with an audience-dividing (but, as far as I’m concerned, ultimately MASSIVELY successful) remake of George Romero’s immortal Dawn of the Dead, and has finally returned to zombie horror after close to two decades away.  The end result is, undeniably, the biggest cinematic guilty pleasure of the entire summer, a bona fide outbreak horror EPIC in spite of its tightly focused story – Dave Bautista plays mercenary Scott Ward, leader a badass squad of soldiers of fortune who were among the few to escape a deadly outbreak of a zombie virus in the city of Las Vegas, enlisted to break into the vault of one of the Strip’s casinos by owner Bly Tanaka (a fantastically game turn from Hiroyuki Sanada) and rescue $200 million still locked away inside.  So what’s the catch?  Vegas remains ground zero for the outbreak, walled off from the outside world but still heavily infested within, and in less than three days the US military intends to sterilise the site with a tactical nuke.  Simple premise, down and dirty, trashy flick, right?  Wrong – Snyder has never believed in doing things small, having brought us unapologetically BIG cinema with the likes of 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel and, most notably, his version of Justice League, so this is another MASSIVE undertaking, every scene shot for maximum thrills or emotional impact, each set-piece executed with his characteristic militaristic precision and explosive predilection (a harrowing fight for survival against a freshly-awakened zombie horde in tightly packed casino corridors is the film’s undeniable highlight), and the gauzy, dreamlike cinematography gives even simple scenes an intriguing and evocative edge that really does make you feel like you’re watching something BIG.  The characters all feel larger-than-life too – Bautista can seem somewhat cartoonish at times, and this role definitely plays that as a strength, making Scott a rock-hard alpha male in the classic Hollywood mould, but he’s such a great actor that of course he’s able to invest the character with real rewarding complexity beneath the surface; Ana de la Reguera (Eastbound & Down) and Nora Arnezeder (Zoo, Mozart in the Jungle), meanwhile, both bring a healthy dose of oestrogen-fuelled badassery to proceedings as, respectively, Scott’s regular second-in-command, Maria Cruz, and Lilly the Coyote, Power’s Omari Hardwick and Matthias Schweighofer (You Are Wanted) make for a fun odd-couple double act as circular-saw-wielding merc Vanderohe and Dieter, the nervous, nerdy German safecracker brought in to crack the vault, and Fear the Walking Dead’s Garrett Dillahunt channels spectacular scumbag energy as Tanaka’s sleazy former casino boss Martin, while latecomer Tig Notaro (Star Trek Discovery) effortlessly rises above her last-minute-casting controversy to deliver brilliantly as sassy and acerbic chopper pilot Peters.  I think it goes without saying that Snyder can do this in his sleep, but he definitely wasn’t napping here – he pulled out all the stops on this one, delivering a thrilling, darkly comic and endearingly CRACKERS zombie flick that not only compares favourably to his own Dawn but is, undeniably, his best film for AGES.  Netflix certainly seem to be pleased with the results – a spinoff prequel, Army of Thieves, starring Dieter in another heist thriller, is set to drop in October, with an animated series following in the Spring, and there’s already rumours of a sequel in development.  I’m certainly up for more …

7.  BLACK WIDOW – no major blockbuster property was hit harder by COVID than the MCU, which saw its ENTIRE SLATE for 2020 delayed for over a year in the face of Marvel Studios bowing to the inevitability of the Pandemic and unwilling to sacrifice those all-important box-office receipts by just sending their films straight to streaming.  The most frustrating part for hardcore fans of the series was the delay of a standalone film that was already criminally overdue – the solo headlining vehicle of founding Avenger and bona fide female superhero ICON Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow.  Equally frustratingly, then, this film seems set to be overshadowed by real life controversy as star and producer Scarlett Johansson goes head-to-head with Disney in civil court over their breach-of-contract after they hedged their bets by releasing the film simultaneously in cinemas and on their own streaming platform, which has led to poor box office as many of the film’s potential audience chose to watch it at home instead of risk movie theatres with the virus still very much remaining a threat (and Disney have clearly reacted AGAIN, now backtracking on their release policy by instigating a new 45-day cinematic exclusivity window on all their big releases for the immediate future). But what of the film itself?  Well Black Widow is an interesting piece of work, director Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome) and screenwriter Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) delivering a decidedly stripped-back, lean and intellectual beast that bears greater resemblance to the more cerebral work of the Russo Brothers on their Captain America films than the more classically bombastic likes of Iron Man, Thor or the Avengers flicks, concentrating on story and characters over action and spectacle as we wind back the clock to before the events of Infinity War and Endgame, when Romanoff was on the run after Civil War, hunted by the government-appointed forces of US Secretary of State “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) after violating the Sokovia Accords.  Then a mysterious delivery throws her back into the fray as she finds herself targeted by a mysterious assassin, forcing her to team up with her estranged “sister” Yelena Belova (Midsommar’s Florence Pugh), another Black Widow who’s just gone rogue from the same Red Room Natasha escaped years ago, armed with a McGuffin capable of foiling a dastardly plot for world domination.  The reluctant duo need help in this endeavour though, enlisting the aid of their former “parents”, veteran Widow and scientist Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Alexie Shostakov (Stranger Things’ David Harbour), aka the Red Guardian, a Russian super-soldier intended to be their counterpart to Captain America, who’s been languishing in a Siberian gulag for the last twenty years. After the Earth-shaking, universe-changing events of recent MCU events, this film certainly feels like a much more self-contained, modest affair, playing for much smaller stakes, but that doesn��t mean it’s any less worthy of our attention – this is as precision-crafted as anything we’ve seen from Marvel so far, but it also feels like a refreshing change of pace after all those enormous cosmic shenanigans, while the script is as tight as a drum, propelling a taut, suspense-filled thriller that certainly doesn’t scrimp on the action front.  Sure, the set-pieces are very much in service of the story here, but they’re still the pre-requisite MCU rollercoaster rides, a selection of breathless chases and bone-crunching fights that really do play to the strengths of one of our favourite Avengers, but this is definitely one of those films where the real fireworks come when the film focuses on the characters – Johansson is so comfortable with her character she’s basically BECOME Natasha Romanoff, kickass and ruthless and complex and sassy and still just desperate for a family (though she hides it well throughout the film), while Weisz delivers one of her best performances in years as a peerless professional who keeps her emotions tightly reigned in but slowly comes to realise that she was never more happy than when she was pretending to be a simple mother, and Ray Winstone does a genuinely fantastic job of taking a character who could have been one of the MCU’s most disappointingly bland villains, General Dreykov, master of the Red Room, and investing him with enough oily charisma and intense presence to craft something truly memorable (frustratingly, the same cannot be said for the film’s supposed main physical threat, Taskmaster, who performs well in their frustratingly brief appearances but ultimately gets Darth Maul levels of short service).  The true scene-stealers in the film, however, are Alexie and Yelena – Harbour’s clearly having the time of his life hamming it up as a self-important, puffed-up peacock of a superhero who never got his shot and is clearly (rightly) decidedly bitter about it, preferring to relive the life he SHOULD have had instead of remembering the good in the one he got; Pugh, meanwhile, is THE BEST THING IN THE WHOLE MOVIE, easily matching Johanssen scene-for-scene in the action stakes but frequently out-performing her when it comes to acting, investing Yelena with a sweet naivety and innocence and a certain amount of quirky geekiness that makes for one of the year’s most endearing female protagonists (certainly one who, if the character goes the way I think she will, is thoroughly capable of carrying the torch for the foreseeable future).  In the end this is definitely one of the LEAST typical, by-the-numbers MCU films to date, and by delivering something a little different I think they’ve given us just the kind of leftfield swerve the series needs right now.  It’s certainly one of their most fascinating and rewarding films so far, and since it seems to be Johansson’s final tour of duty as the Black Widow, it’s also a most fitting farewell indeed.

6.  WRATH OF MAN – Guy Ritchie’s latest (regarded by many as a triumphant return to form, which I consider unfair since I don’t think he ever went away, especially after 2020’s spectacular The Gentlemen) is BY FAR his darkest film – let’s get this clear from the start.  Anyone who knows his work knows that Ritchie consistently maintains a near flawless balance and humour and seriousness in his films that gives them a welcome quirkiness that is one of his most distinctive trademarks, so for him to suddenly deliver a film which takes itself SO SERIOUSLY is one hell of a departure.  This is a film which almost REVELS in its darkness – Ritchie’s always loved bathing in man’s baser instincts, but Wrath of Man almost makes a kind of twisted VIRTUE out of wallowing in the genuine evils that men are capable of inflicting on each other.  The film certainly kicks off as it means to go on – In a tour-de-force single-shot opening, we watch a daring armoured car robbery on the streets of Los Angeles that goes horrifically wrong, an event which will have devastating consequences in the future.  Five months later, Fortico Security hires taciturn Brit Patrick Hill (Jason Statham) to work as a guard in one of their trucks, and on his first run he single-handedly foils another attempted robbery with genuinely uncanny combat skills. The company is thrilled, amazed by the sheer ability of their new hire, but Hill’s new colleagues are more concerned, wondering exactly what they’ve let themselves in for.  After a second foiled robbery, it becomes clear that Hill’s reputation has grown, but fellow guard Haiden (Holt McCallany), aka “Bullet”, begins to suspect there might be something darker going on … Ritchie is firing on all cylinders here, delivering a PERFECT slow-burn suspense thriller which plays its cards close to its chest and cranks up its piano wire tension with artful skill as it builds to a devastating, knuckle-whitening explosive heist that acts as a cathartic release for everything that’s built up over the past hour and a half.  In typical Ritchie style the narrative is non-linear, the story unfolding in four distinct parts told from clearly differentiated points of view, allowing the clues to be revealed at a trickle that effortlessly draws the viewer in as they fall deeper down the rabbit hole, leading to a harrowing but strangely poignant denouement which is perfectly in tune with everything that’s come before. It’s an immense pleasure finally getting to see Statham working with Ritchie again, and I don’t think he’s ever been better than he is here – he's always been a brilliantly understated actor, but there’s SO MUCH going on under Hill’s supposedly impenetrable calm that every little peek beneath the armour is a REVELATION; McCallany, meanwhile, has landed his best role since his short but VERY sweet supporting turn in Fight Club, seemingly likeable and fallible as the kind of easy-going co-worker anyone in the service industry would be THRILLED to have, but giving Bullet far more going on under the surface, while there are uniformly excellent performances from a top-shelf ensemble supporting cast which includes Josh Hartnett, Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Sicario), Andy Garcia, Laz Alonso (The Boys), Eddie Marsan, Niamh Algar (Raised By Wolves) and Darrell D’Silva (Informer, Domina), and a particularly edgy and intense turn from Scott Eastwood.  This is one of THE BEST thrillers of the year, by far, a masterpiece of mood, pace and plot that ensnares the viewer from its gripping opening and hooks them right up to the close, a triumph of the genre and EASILY Guy Ritchie’s best film since Snatch.  Regardless of whether or not it’s a RETURN to form, we can only hope he continues to deliver fare THIS GOOD in the future …

5.  FEAR STREET (PARTS 1-3) – Netflix have gotten increasingly ambitious with their original filmmaking over the years, and some of this years’ offerings have reached new heights of epic intention.  Their most exciting release of the summer was this adaptation of popular children’s horror author R.L. Stine’s popular book series, a truly gargantuan undertaking as the filmmakers set out to create an entire TRILOGY of films which were then released over three consecutive weekends.  Interestingly, these films are most definitely NOT for kids – this is proper, no-holds-barred supernatural slasher horror, delivering highly calibrated shocks and precision jump scares, a pervading atmosphere of insidious dread and a series of inventively gruesome kills.  The story revolves around two neighbouring small towns which have had vastly different fortunes over more than three centuries of existence – while the residents of Sunnyvale are unusually successful, living idyllic lives in peace and prosperity, luck has always been against the people of Shadyside, who languish in impoverishment, crime and misfortune, while the town has become known as the Murder Capital of the USA due to frequent spree killings.  Some attribute this to the supposed curse of a local urban legend, Sarah Fier, who became known as the Fier Witch after her execution for witchcraft in 1668, but others dismiss this as simple superstition.  Part 1 is set in 1994, as the latest outbreak of serial mayhem begins in Shadyside, dragging a small group of local teens – Deena Johnson (She Never Died’s Kiana Madeira) and Samantha Fraser (Olivia Scott Welch), a young lesbian couple going through a difficult breakup, Deena’s little brother Josh (The Haunted Hathaways’ Benjamin Flores Jr.), a nerdy history geek who spends most of his time playing video games or frequenting violent crime-buff online chatrooms, and their delinquent friends Simon (Eight Grade’s Fred Hechinger) and Kate (Julia Rehwald) – into the age-old ghostly conspiracy as they find themselves besieged by indestructible undead serial killers from the town’s past, reasoning that the only way they can escape with their lives is to solve the mystery and bring the Fier Witch some much needed closure.  Part 2, meanwhile, flashes back to a previous outbreak in 1977, in which local sisters Ziggy (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink) and Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd), together with future Sunnyvale sheriff Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) were among the kids hunted by said killers during a summer camp “colour war”.  As for Part 3, that goes all the way back to 1668 to tell the story of what REALLY happened to Sarah Fier, before wrapping up events in 1994, culminating in a terrifying, adrenaline-fuelled showdown in the Shadyside Mall.  Throughout, the youthful cast are EXCEPTIONAL, Madeira, Welch, Flores Jr., Sink and Rudd particularly impressing, while there are equally strong turns from Ashley Zuckerman (The Code, Designated Survivor) and Community’s Gillian Jacobs as the grown-up versions of two key ’77 kids, and a fun cameo from Maya Hawke in Part 1.  This is most definitely retro horror in the Stranger Things mould, perfectly executed period detail bringing fun nostalgic flavour to all three of the timelines while the peerless direction from Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon) and wire-tight, sharp-witted screenplays from Janiak, Kyle Killen (Lone Star, The Beaver), Phil Graziadel, Zak Olkewicz and Kate Trefry strike a perfect balance between knowing dark humour and knife-edged terror, as well as weaving an intriguingly complex narrative web that pulls the viewer in but never loses them to overcomplication.  The design, meanwhile, is evocative, the cinematography (from Stanger Things’ Caleb Heymann) is daring and magnificently moody, and the killers and other supernatural elements of the film are handled with skill through largely physical effects.  This is definitely not a standard, by-the-numbers slasher property, paying strong homage to the sub-genre’s rules but frequently subverting them with expert skill, and it’s as much fun as it is frightening.  Give us some more like this please, Netflix!

4.  THE SPARKS BROTHERS – those who’ve been following my reviews for a while will known that while I do sometimes shout about documentary films, they tend to show up in my runners-up lists – it’s a great rarity for one to land in one of my top tens.  This lovingly crafted deep-dive homage to cult band Sparks, from self-confessed rabid fanboy Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), is something VERY SPECIAL INDEED, then … there’s a vague possibility some of you may have heard the name before, and many of you will know at least one or two of their biggest hits without knowing it was them (their greatest hit of all time, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, immediately springs to mind), but unless you’re REALLY serious about music it’s quite likely you have no idea who they are, namely two brothers from California, Russell and Ronald Mael, who formed a very sophisticated pop-rock band in the late 60s and then never really went away, having moments of fame but mostly working away in the background and influencing some of the greatest bands and musical artists that followed them, even if many never even knew where that influence originally came from. Wright’s film is an engrossing joy from start to finish (despite clocking in at two hours and twenty minutes), following their eclectic career from obscure inception as Halfnelson, through their first real big break with third album Kimono My Place, subsequent success and then fall from popularity in the mid-70s, through several subsequent revitalisations, all the way up to the present day with their long-awaited cinematic breakthrough, revolutionary musical feature Annette – throughout Wright keeps the tone light and the pace breezy, allowing a strong and endearing sense of irreverence to rule the day as fans, friends and the brothers themselves offer up fun anecdotes and wax lyrical about what is frequently a larger-than-life tragicomic soap opera, utilising fun, crappy animation and idiosyncratic stock footage inserts alongside talking-head interviews that were made with a decidedly tongue-in-cheek style – Mike Myers good-naturedly rants about how we can see his “damned mole” while 80s New Romantic icons Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, while shot together, are each individually labelled as “Duran”.  Ron and Russ themselves, meanwhile, are clearly having huge fun, gently ribbing each other and dropping some fun deadpan zingers throughout proceedings, easily playing to the band’s strong, idiosyncratic sense of hyper-intelligent humour, while the aforementioned celebrity talking-heads are just three amongst a whole wealth of famous faces that may surprise you – there’s even an appearance by Neil Gaiman, guys!  Altogether this is 2+ hours of bright and breezy fun chock full of great music and fascinating information, and even hardcore Sparks fans are likely to learn more than a little over the course of the film, while for those who have never heard of Sparks before it’s a FANTASTIC introduction to one of the greatest ever bands that you’ve never heard of.  With luck there might even be more than a few new fans before the year is out …

3.  GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE – Netflix’ BEST offering of the summer was this surprise hit from Israeli writer-director Navot Papushado (Rabies, Big Bad Wolves), a heavily stylised black comedy action thriller that passes the Bechdel Test with FLYING COLOURS.  Playing like a female-centric John Wick, it follows ice-cold, on-top-of-her-game assassin Sam (Karen Gillan) as her latest assignment has some unfortunate side effects, leading her to take on a reparation job to retrieve some missing cash for the local branch of the Irish Mob.  The only catch is that a group of thugs have kidnapped the original thief’s little girl, 12 year-old Emily (My Spy’s Chloe Coleman), and Sam, in an uncharacteristic moment of sympathy, decides to intervene, only for the money to be accidentally destroyed in the process.  Now she’s got the Mob and her own employers coming after her, and she not only has to save her own skin but also Emily’s, leading her to seek help from the one person she thought she might never see again – her mother, Scarlet (Lena Headey), a master assassin in her own right who’s been hiding from the Mob herself for years.  The plot may be simple but at times also a little over-the-top, but the film is never anything less than a pure, unadulterated pleasure, populated with fascinating, living and breathing characters of real complexity and nuance, while the script (co-written by relative newcomer Ehud Lavski) is tightly-reined and bursting with zingers.  Most importantly, though, Papushado really delivers on the action front – these are some of the best set-pieces I’ve seen this year, Gillan, her co-stars and the various stunt-performers acquitting themselves admirably in a series of spectacular fights, gun battles and a particularly imaginative car chase that would be the envy of many larger, more expensive productions.  Gillan and Coleman have a sweet, awkward chemistry, the MCU star particularly impressing in a subtly nuanced performance that also plays beautifully against Headey’s own tightly controlled turn, while there is awesome support from Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Carla Gugino as Sam’s adoptive aunts Anna May, Florence and Madeleine, a trio of “librarians” who run a fine side-line in illicit weaponry and are capable of unleashing some spectacular violence of their own; the film’s antagonists, on the other hand, are exclusively masculine – the mighty Ralph Inneson is quietly ruthless as Irish boss Jim McAlester, while The Terror’s Adam Nagaitis is considerably more mercurial as his mad dog nephew Virgil, and Paul Giamatti is the stately calm at the centre of the storm as Sam’s employer Nathan, the closest thing she has to a father.  There’s so much to enjoy in this movie, not just the wonderful characters and amazing action but also the singularly engrossing and idiosyncratic style, deeply affecting themes of the bonds of found family and the healing power of forgiveness, and a rewarding through-line of strong women triumphing against the brutalities of toxic masculinity.  I love this film, and I invite you to try it out, cuz I’m sure you will too.

2.  THE SUICIDE SQUAD – the most fun I’ve had at the cinema so far this year is the long-awaited (thanks a bunch, COVID) redress of another frustrating imbalance from the decidedly hit and miss DCEU superhero franchise, in which Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn has finally delivered a PROPER Suicide Squad movie after David Ayer’s painfully compromised first stab at the property back in 2016.  That movie was enjoyable enough and had some great moments, but ultimately it was a clunky mess, and while some of the characters were done (quite) well, others were painfully botched, even ruined entirely.  Thankfully Warner Bros. clearly learned their lesson, giving Gunn free reign to do whatever he wanted, and the end result is about as close to perfect as the DCEU has come to date.  Once again the peerless Viola Davis plays US government official Amanda Waller, head of ARGUS and the undisputable most evil bitch in all the DC Universe, who presides over the metahuman prisoners of the notorious supermax Belle Reve Prison, cherry-picking inmates for her pet project Taskforce X, the titular Suicide Squad sent out to handle the kind of jobs nobody else wants, in exchange for years off their sentences but controlled by explosive implants injected into the base of their skulls.  Their latest mission sees another motley crew of D-bags dispatched to the fictional South African island nation of Corto Maltese to infiltrate Jotunheim, a former Nazi facility in which a dangerous extra-terrestrial entity that’s being developed into a fearful bioweapon, with orders to destroy the project in order to keep it out of the hands of a hostile anti-American regime which has taken control of the island through a violent coup.  Where the first Squad felt like a clumsily-arranged selection of stereotypes with a few genuinely promising characters unsuccessfully moulded into a decidedly forced found family, this new batch are convincingly organic – they may be dysfunctional and they’re all almost universally definitely BAD GUYS, but they WORK, the relationship dynamics that form between them feeling genuinely earned.  Gunn has already proven himself a master of putting a bunch of A-holes together and forging them into band of “heroes”, and he’s certainly pulled the job off again here, dredging the bottom of the DC Rogues Gallery for its most ridiculous Z-listers and somehow managing to make them compelling.  Sure, returning Squad-member Harley Quinn (the incomparable Margot Robbie, magnificent as ever) has already become a fully-realised character thanks to Birds of Prey, so there wasn’t much heavy-lifting to be done here, but Gunn genuinely seems to GET the character, so our favourite pixie-esque Agent of Chaos is an unbridled and thoroughly unpredictable joy here, while fellow veteran Colonel Rick Flagg (a particularly muscular and thoroughly game Joel Kinnaman) has this time received a much needed makeover, Gunn promoting him from being the first film’s sketchily-drawn “Captain Exposition” and turning him into a fully-ledged, well-thought-out human being with all the requisite baggage, including a newfound sense of humour; the newcomers, meanwhile, are a thoroughly fascinating bunch – reluctant “leader” Bloodsport/Robert DuBois (a typically robust and playful Idris Elba), unapologetic douchebag Peacemaker/Christopher Smith (probably the best performance I’ve EVER seen John Cena deliver), and socially awkward and seriously hard-done-by nerd (and by far the most idiotic DC villain of all time) the Polka-Dot Man/Abner Krill (a genuinely heart-breaking hangdog performance from Ant-Man’s David Dastmalchian); meanwhile there’s a fine trio of villainous turns from the film’s resident Big Bads, with Juan Diego Botta (Good Behaviour) and Joaquin Cosio (Quantum of Solace, Narcos: Mexico) making strong impressions as newly-installed dictator Silvio Luna and his corrupt right hand-man General Suarez, although both are EASILY eclipsed by the typically brilliant Peter Capaldi as louche and quietly deranged supervillain The Thinker/Gaius Greives (although the film’s ULTIMATE threat turns out to be something a whole lot bigger and more exotic). The film is ROUNDLY STOLEN, however, by a truly adorable double act (or TRIPLE act, if you want to get technical) – Daniella Melchior makes her breakthrough here in fine style as sweet, principled and kind-hearted narcoleptic second-generation supervillain Ratcatcher II/Cleo Cazo, who has the weird ability to control rats (and who has a pet rat named Sebastian who frequently steals scenes all on his own), while a particular fan-favourite B-lister makes his big screen debut here in the form of King Shark/Nanaue, a barely sentient anthropomorphic Great White “shark god” with an insatiable appetite for flesh and a naturally quizzical nature who was brilliantly mo-capped by Steve Agee (The Sarah Silverman Project, who also plays Waller’s hyperactive assistant John Economos) but then artfully completed with an ingenious vocal turn from Sylvester Stallone. James Gunn has crafted an absolute MASTERPIECE here, EASILY the best film he’s made to date, a riotous cavalcade of exquisitely observed and perfectly delivered dark humour and expertly wrangled narrative chaos that has great fun playing with the narrative flow, injects countless spot-on in-jokes and irreverent but utterly essential throwaway sight-gags, and totally endears us to this glorious gang of utter morons right from the start (in which Gunn delivers what has to be one of the most skilful deep-fakes in cinematic history).  Sure, there’s also plenty of action, and it’s executed with the kind of consummate skill we’ve now come to expect from Gunn (the absolute highlight is a wonderfully bonkers sequence in which Harley expertly rescues herself from captivity), but like everything else it’s predominantly played for laughs, and there’s no getting away from the fact that this film is an absolute RIOT.  By far the funniest thing I’ve seen so far this year, and if I’m honest this is the best of the DCEU offerings to date, too (for me, only the exceptional Birds of Prey can compare) – if Warner Bros. have any sense they’ll give Gunn more to do VERY SOON …

1.  A QUIET PLACE, PART II – while UK cinemas finally reopened in early May, I was determined that my first trip back to the Big Screen for 2021 was gonna be something SPECIAL, and indeed I already knew what that was going to be. Thankfully I was not disappointed by my choice – 2018’s A Quiet Place was MY VERY FAVOURITE horror movie of the 2010s, an undeniable masterclass in suspense and sustained screen terror wrapped around a refreshingly original killer concept, and I was among the many fans hoping we’d see more in the future, especially after the film’s teasingly open ending.  Against the odds (or perhaps not), writer-director/co-star John Krasinski has pulled off the seemingly impossible task of not only following up that high-wire act, but genuinely EQUALLING it in levels of quality – picking up RIGHT where the first film left off (at least after an AMAZING scene-setting opening in which we’re treated to the events of Day 1 of the downfall of humanity), rejoining the remnants of the Abbott family as they’re forced by circumstances to up-sticks from their idyllic farmhouse home and strike out into the outside world once more, painfully aware at all times that they must maintain perfect silence to avoid the ravenous attentions of the lethal blind alien beasties that now sit at the top of the food chain.  Circumstances quickly become dire, however, and embattled mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is forced to ally herself with estranged family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), now a haunted, desperate vagrant eking out a perilous existence in an abandoned factory, in order to safeguard the future of her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe) and their newborn baby brother.  Regan, however, discovers evidence of more survivors, and with her newfound weapon against the aliens she recklessly decides to set off on her own in the hopes of aiding them before it’s too late … it may only be his second major blockbuster as a director, but Krasinski has once again proven he’s a true heavyweight talent, effortlessly carving out fresh ground in this already magnificently well-realised dystopian universe while also playing magnificently to the established strengths of what came before, delivering another peerless thrill-ride of unbearable tension and knuckle-whitening terror.  The central principle of utilising sound at a very strict premium is once again strictly adhered to here, available sources of dialogue once again exploited with consummate skill while sound design and score (another moody triumph from Marco Beltrami) again become THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of the whole production. The ruined world is once again realised beautifully throughout, most notably in the nightmarish environment of a wrecked commuter train, and Krasinski cranks up the tension before unleashing it in merciless explosions in a selection of harrowing encounters which guaranteed to leave viewers in a puddle of sweat.  The director mostly stays behind the camera this time round, but he does (obviously) put in an appearance in the opening flashback as the late Lee Abbott, making a potent impression which leaves a haunting absence that’s keenly felt throughout the remainder of the film, while Blunt continues to display mother lion ferocity as she fights to keep her children safe and Jupe plays crippling fear magnificently but is now starting to show a hidden spine of steel as Marcus finally starts to find his courage; the film once again belongs, however, to Simmonds, the young deaf actress once and for all proving she’s a genuine star in the making as she invests Regan with fierce wilfulness and stubborn determination that remains unshakeable even in the face of unspeakable horrors, and the relationship she develops with Emmett, reluctant as it may be, provides a strong new emotional focus for the story, Murphy bringing an attractive wounded humanity to his role as a man who’s lost anything and is being forced to learn to care for something again.  This is another triumph of the genre AND the artform in general, a masterpiece of atmosphere, performance and storytelling which builds magnificently on the skilful foundations laid by the first film, as well as setting things up perfectly for a third instalment which is all but certain to follow.  I definitely can’t wait.

[secret-engima]

alyss-spazz-penedo

But, but! @secret-engima, please, the CROSSOVER POTENTIAL. Some cult in another franchise standing around a pentagram and chanting, calling for an ancient being of primordial darkness to answer their summons, an unholy Scourge with which to curse upon their enemies--and they get Funny Hat Man.

alyss-spazz-penedo

What I'm saying is that if it's Nox's luck to accidentally trip his way into alternate universes, it is ABSOLUTELY karma for Ardyn's to be being continually summoned into them by people looking for demons and the like but pulling up Ardyn fucking Izunia like a terrible wrong number

Me: How dare you make me ACTUALLY WANT THIS TO BE A THING NOW. Also just- literally the first thing to pop into my head was HP fandom but the SECOND was NETFLIX CASTLEVANIA of all things (I’M NOT EVEN IN THIS FANDOM BECAUSE I HATE VAMPIRES) and now I’m picturing the Trio fighting desperately to prevent some Random Bad Guy Cult from summoning a demon with their Summoning Circle of Evil but the circle glows and there’s an explosion of smoke and-

Funny Hat Man aka Ardyn Izunia aka The Former Accursed Who Is Really Done With This Nonsense Already looks around, adjusts the hat on his head thoughtfully, immediately pegs Sypha as the Only Braincell in the area and calls to her politely, “Excuse me, young lady, can you please explain what’s going on here? I seem to have been summoned by a death cult right before my teatime again. Most inconvenient.”

While Alucard mouths “again?” to himself and Trevor parrots an incredulous “TEATIME?”, Sypha takes a gamble and answers Ardyn’s question, that yes, he has been summoned by a death cult, what is he going to do about it?

Ardyn, who can peg the living Misfit Hero Trope in front of him, purses his lips, eyes the death cult who are now screaming at him to go forth and destroy because they summoned him for this dread purpose-.

Sits down and pulls a book out of armiger, “No.”

Everyone stares. Then someone starts the fight again and Ardyn ignores them all until Sypha takes a hit and a cult member is about to finish her off, then there’s a snap-crack sound of warp and Ardyn has effortlessly beheaded the cultist with his red sword and is already turning around to crush a potion against the startled Sypha’s skin, tutting the entire time about being polite to ladies.

And like- I’m not even in the Castlevania fandom so I’ll move on to some other summoning shenanigans because hgfhgfd this is hilarious.

Ardyn gets summoned by some idiot in HP fandom: “Oh LOOK a tiny new Nephew!!!! What’s your name New Nephew? Harry Potter? Hm, unorthodox name but alright. I’m going to call you Hadrian.” Also Ardyn: Proceeds to effortlessly carve his way through Death Eater ranks to kill Voldemort because honestly you call this immortality? Horcruxs? psh as if he can’t track those down by magical feel and effortlessly destroy them with a stab of his sword and then purify Harry because honestly child that cursed thing in your scar must give you the worst migraines you poor thing.

Ardyn gets summoned by some moron in the DC fandom: “This place looks atrocious and what ARE you wearing? Is that a bat costume? Why a bat? Wouldn’t a demon be more intimidating?”

Ardyn summoned into FFVII by eco-terrorists: How is it your grand solution to save the planet is summon something from another planet. HONESTLY have you know sense I could have been worse then the cure! I’M THE ACCURSED you fools my entire JOB is destroying worlds. Also Ardyn, upon finding Young Aerith: This is my Niece now. If anything were to happen to her I would kill everyone in this city and then plunge the world into eternal night.

Just- Ardyn gets summoned ANYWHERE and it’s always the pattern of everyone being a Clue Screen because UMMMM Funny Hat Man is NOT what they expected when this happened and then Ardyn just sighing in annoyance because Titus is going to throw a FIT when he gets back. Then Ardyn does something Utterly Terrifying and then wanders off to find some Smol Child to claim as Nephew or Niece.

[alipeeps]

New tag game: Post pictures of your first ever (fictional/celeb) crush to the latest one and tag five others to continue the game

Thanks to @minmoyu for tagging me and ooof, are you sure you’re ready for this?!! :D I have been around/in fandom for a loooooong time and at first I thought, okay, no way I can list all my crushes, there have been SO many and we’ll be here all day but then as I started compiling a list I found I was having fun reminiscing and decided, what the heck, yeah, let’s do em all... or at least all I can remember! :D

There have absolutely for sure been other more minor crushes and passing fancies along the way, but these are the big ones that I remember (and that, in more recent years, I can track by going through my posted fanfics on AO3 and even *shudder* FFNET and seeing which shows I was into enough to want to write fic about the characters).

[Quick note: with rare exceptions, for actors I am listing them by the character they played rather than just the actor. Whilst there are actors that I like in multiple roles (and conversely, characters who on paper I would normally be into but are played by actors who do nothing for me, and hence the character generally does nothing for me either), for the most part it is the character I really have the crush on.]

I’m going to put this under a readmore cos it has gotten ridiculously long:

So... without further ado:

1. MORTEN HARKET from a-ha - OKay so, dating myself badly here but... I had the *biggest* crush on Morten Harket when I was a teenager. Pretty much the entirety of my side of the bedroom I shared with my sister was covered in posters of a-ha, and Morten in particular. I even had a heart-shaped Morten Harket pillow! :D I loved a-ha’s music (still do!) and I wanted to go see them in concert when I was 14 but my parents wouldn’t let me (*sob*). I did finally get to see them in concert in the early 2000s and they were BRILLIANT live (and Morten was still very very pretty)! 

2. RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON as MACGYVER - MacGyver is the first tv character I remember being really into and having a crush on, to the extent that I would record episodes of the show off the tv (onto VHS tape - yes, I am *that* old!) so that I could rewatch them (especially the ones where he got hurt - yeah, I was a whumper even then! :D)

3. KEIFER SUTHERLAND - One of my rare exceptions. I think I first saw him in Lost Boys (and loved him in that film) but it was his role as Doc Scurlock in Young Guns that really made me fall for both the character and him. I definitely remember seeking out any and all films he was in and buying any magazine he was interviewed in (and knowing far more facts about him than was probably healthy! :D) and even drawing a fanart portrait of him. :)

4. KYLE MACLACHLAN as SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER - I remember hearing about Twin Peaks before it started airing in the UK and it sounded so different and interesting... I watched it from the very first episode and very quickly developed a crush on Coop.  

5. BRENT SPINER as DATA - I think ST: TNG had been airing for a while before I stumbled across it but I quickly became hooked and Data was my favourite character right from the start. I definitely remember at one point buying an (unofficial) episode guide book so that I could look up which episodes were good Data-focused ones (especially ones where he got hurt! :D) so I could go out and buy the videos that had those episodes on (at the time the show was available to buy on VHS-tape with 2 episodes on each tape).

6. DAVID DUCHOVNY as FOX MULDER - Another show that I heard the buzz about and started watching right from the start and, like so many others, I immediately developed a crush on the snarky, enigmatic, troubled FBI agent with the weird name. The X-Files was the first show I ever tried writing (one, never-finished) fanfic for.

7. PAUL GROSS as BENTON FRASER - Man, Due South was such a good show! It was so quirky and clever and funny and Benton Fraser, with his huge heart and his serious demeanour and his gorgeous blue eyes, was just so darn attractive! He also got whumped a fair bit too! :D Due South was also the show that introduced me to the music of Sarah McLachlan (I was enough of a fan that I bought the show soundtrack on CD).

8. HUGH LAURIE as DR GREGORY HOUSE - This was a bit of an odd one for me because I had grown up knowing Hugh Laurie solely as a comedian/comic actor, known mostly for playing buffoons and genial idiots. And suddenly here he was with stubble, an American accent, and a limp, and he was hawt AF! :D It caused quite the feedback loop in my brain for a while which pretty much went “Wow, House is hot.... but it’s Hugh Laurie... but he’s hot... but it’s HUGH LAURIE!!1!”

I *loved* House (the first few seasons, at least) and oof a character with persistent pain (and a self-destructive streak a mile wide!) was a whumper’s dream. House was the first show for which I wrote - and published online - completed fanfics.

8. JOE FLANIGAN as JOHN SHEPPARD - Stargate Atlantis was my first proper online fandom, the first show I prolifically and repeatedly wrote fanfic for, and the first time I ever met in person an actor I was a big fan of (and while the show was still airing, to boot!). It was also my first introduction to the online community of whumpers! A bunch of us from the Shep Whump thread on Gateworld heard that Joe was going to be at a convention in London and we decided to book hotel rooms and meet up and go to the convention together and it was AWESOME! I can still remember seeing Joe *in person* for the first time and just,,,, struggling to believe he was actually here, in person, in front of me! He was super super lovely and humble too and took time to chat to everyone at the signing table and I clearly remember my brain just pretty much fritzing out during the photo session and being intensely aware of the sensation of Joe’s hand on my shoulder....

It was also super lovely to meet fellow fans, and online friends, in person for the first time and we had so much fun, and it kickstarted me going to lots of other conventions, including specific Stargate/SGA ones where I got to know lots of other lovely fans and online friends. I’ve met Joe about 4 or 5 times in total now and he’s been lovely every time.

9. PAUL BLACKTHORNE as HARRY DRESDEN - Gosh I loved the shortlived tv adaptation of The Dresden Files. I loved the fantasy aspect, the stories, the humour, and I especially loved Harry Dresden and how often he got whumped! :D 

10. DAVID TENNANT as THE 10TH DOCTOR - I had watched the Christopher Ecclestone revival of Doctor Who and enjoyed it well enough but I can clearly remember watching David Tennant’s first episode as The Doctor - on Christmas Day, at my brother-in-law’s house - and being aware, as I watched it that... ooookay, yes, I’m in trouble here... I like him... I like him a lot... :D I mean, I’m sure the fact that he got whumped so thoroughly in his very first episode had nothing to do with how quickly I fell for him... right? :)

11. ALEX O’LAUGHLIN as MICK ST JOHN - Another show that ended far too soon and just as it was getting *seriously* good. But also a prime example of my point about having a crush on the character not the actor. I looooooved Alex as Mick St John... and yet in Hawaii 5.0 he pretty much does nothing for me (the character is too stoic and the whump often too unrealistically glossed over). Anyway, in Moonlight he was my favourite kind of character - angsty, brooding, dangerous AF when he needed to be... and essentially immortal so you could whump the heck out of him and he’d recover so you could whump him again! :D

12. SIMON BAKER as PATRICK JANE - There is so much to love about Patrick Jane... his smarts, his sass, his angst... and Simon is a rare “against type” blonde crush for me (you may have noticed by now that most of my crushes follow a similar physical aesthetic - tall, slim/wiry, and dark-haired) and again here I think my crush is almost all to do with the character rather than the actor.

12. BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as SHERLOCK HOLMES - I’m almost ashamed to admit it, given the clusterfuck that both the show and its fandom became, but in the earlier seasons I had quite the crush on Benedict’s Sherlock (and okay, a little bit on Benedict himself - I did definitely enjoy some of his other roles too). It helps that I was already a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes character (I’ve read all the stories and novels multiple times and was a big fan of the Granada adaptation starring Jeremy Brett - whose Holmes would definitely count as one of my more minor/passing crushes) already. Benedict is another crush that I have met in person, at a (actually, the first!) Sherlock convention and he was lovely in person - very genuine, very articulate and thoughtful.

13. TOM MISON as ICHABOD CRANE - I was excited for Sleepy Hollow as soon as I heard about it and I was SUCH a fan for the first couple of seasons (before TPTB completely destroyed it and it inevitably got cancelled (I didn’t even watch the last season and a half)) and Tom’s Ichabod (and his amazing chemistry with Nicole’s Abbie) was a large part of why. I also quickly became a big fan of Tom himself as he came across as so witty and self-deprecating and *fun* in all the behind the scenes/convention clips etc. I was lucky enough to also meet Tom at a convention and he genuinely is that witty and charming and lovely.

14. TOM WISDOM as ARCHANGEL MICHAEL - I think Dominion was possibly the first show that I got sucked into by seeing whumpy gifsets on tumblr! :D It was such a great show and also to date the most immersive, welcoming, cast-and-crew-interactive fandom I have ever been in. The cast and crew regularly live-tweeted the episodes, and interacted with fans on Twitter, and it was SO much fun. And Tom’s Michael was my favourite character right from the start - seemingly aloof but so much going on under the surface... and some really nice whump, especially in season 2! I was heartbroken when it was cancelled after only 2 seasons (and just as the plot was getting *really* interesting).

15. OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN as LUCAS - I was hooked on Emerald City right from the first episode. It was visually stunning, so atmospheric, and really intruiging. I love love loved Adria Arjona’s Dorothy (ngl, I had a bit of a crush on her too) and she and Lucas together were just... *chef’s kiss*. I mean... what an introduction to a character... she finds him crucified, bleeding, his wrists tied with barbed wire, and amnesiac.... and the whump only gets better and better from there on in! Like the entire first two episodes are just... Lucas whump! :D And his devotion to her... Emerald City was honestly the first show where I really got into a ship. I was *invested* in Dorcas, dammit! Aaaand sadly another excellent show that never made it past its first season.

16. JASON RALPH as QUENTIN COLDWATER - Another show that I watched right from the start, was heavily invested in.... and that the writers absolutely tanked and destroyed in later seasons. *cries* Quentin was such a brilliant viewpoint character for the show and I loved his awkwardness, and his angst, and his enthusiasm, and his adorable floppy hair... and how often he got whumped! 

17. COLIN MORGAN - I fell for Colin in Merlin (which I stumbled upon late, long after it had finished airing, and hence was able to binge-watch the entire 5 seasons!) and liked him enough to seek out his other works, such as The Fall, and Humans, and The Living and the Dead, and he was brilliant (and very pretty) in all of them... and his characters also seem to get whumped quite a lot! :D 

18. MATT LANTER as WYATT LOGAN - Wyatt was another of my favourite archetypes... absolutely badass and competent... but also tortured and angsty and capable of intense devotion. Another show that I watched because of whumpy gifs on tumblr and the second ever show where I actually got invested in a ship - Lyatt all the way, baby!! :D - aaaaaand yet another show cancelled before its time.

19. NOCTIS LUCIS CAELUM from FINAL FANTASY XV - my very first video game crush! I was recommended to play FFXV by fellow whumpers on the whumpshire discord because it was whumpy... and they were not wrong and I loved the game and I absolutely adored Noctis. FFXV is one of very very VERY few video games that I have actually played right through to the end. And possibly the only video game that has ever affected me to such an extent... I became so invested in the characters and their world and I actually found the last couple of chapters really hard to play because it was actually upsetting me emotionally. I had to take a break for a couple of weeks before I could go back and finish it!

20. CONNOR from DETROIT BECOME HUMAN - and from there I jumped straight into another video game crush! DBH was another game recommended to me for its whump potential and I, and many others, immediately fell in love with the quirky, sassy, self-sacrificing (if you play the game right!) “android sent by Cyberlife”. The game itself is really good too... although, I have tried to play through all the different endings to the story but have never yet managed to make myself play the machine Connor storyline.... I want to complete all the story branches... but I also just want Hank and Connor to be friends and to be happy! :D

21. ZHU YILONG - Ahhh... the beginning of the asian drama arc of my fandom life! I first came across Zhu Yilong after getting sucked into watching Guardian because of pretty (and whumpy) gifs on tumblr... and I’ve never looked back. He is one of the rare entries where I am pretty much guaranteed to like him in pretty much anything he does and my crush extends beyond Shen Wei, or his other characters, and into reblogging his fashion shoot photos, and keeping up with news of his work in general. He’s just... so darn pretty! And also so... blur! :D And the behind the scenes stuff and interviews of him with Bai Yu, during the Guardian era, just made me fall for him all the more. He’s also ridiculously talented - not only a fantastic actor, but a really good singer (I love his singing voice), he plays guitar and piano, and he can paint too!!

He’s also pretty much what made me start learning Chinese... because after Guardian I went seeking his other dramas to watch... only to find that many of them are only partially, or not at all, subbed. So I thought... why not try learning Chinese and then I’ll be able to watch his other shows? :D

21. JI CHANG WOOK - My first kdrama crush, and what a good one to start with! Healer was the first drama I ever watched and can you blame me for falling for JCW... especially when I followed up Healer with The K2?! I’ve liked him in pretty much everything I’ve watched him in. Although I do wish he would go back to doing more action-based shows as he is sooo good at them... but he seems to prefer the romcom genre these days, which is something I am nottt always a fan of tbh.

22. JAKE HSU as MENG SHAO FEI - Yet another show that I got sucked into by tumblr - and also one with a great, fun fandom through which I met lots of lovely people who I still follow/am mutuals with to this day. I just *adored* Jake’s character in History and I also loved the ship - Tang Fan and Meng Shaofei were awesome and adorable together and I was totally invested in both the ship and the gangster/cop/what happened years ago story happening alongside the ship. And Jake is just all kinds of cute.

23. XIAO ZHAN - Aaaand we are pretty much up to current day now... where The Untamed took over my life in the summer of 2019 and has yet to let me go. Xiao Zhan is another disgustingly talented human being - a fantastic singer and a really good actor, and also an artist - and he also just comes across as a genuinely sweet and charming person, and a very thoughful and earnest one too. And lbr he is ridiculously pretty, and his smile is just pure sunshine. 

24. LEE DONG WOOK as LEE YEON - The most recent entry to the charts.... a Korean actor I was aware of but whose work I hadn’t watched and whose looks didn’t particularly seem to grab me... until I watched Tale of the Nine Tailed and fell head over heels for Lee Yeon (and daaayum does red hair suit LDW!!) and very quickly began to find LDW’s looks very appealing (and oh my, does Lee Yeon whump well!!). And yes, I have now started watching Goblin. :D

Phew! Aaaand we are done! I’ll admit, I did think of a few more as I was compiling this list but I decided to categorise them as more “minor” crushes and not include them... otherwise we really could be here all day!!

I’m going to tag: @sarah-yyy​, @arlothia​, @howdydowdy​, @thepromiseweheldforlife​ and @the-wandering-whumper​!

[richincolor]

January's New Releases

2021 told 2020 to hold it's beer and what a month January has been! Publishing YA also came out swinging with a slew of new books (many already bestsellers) in what we hope will be another banner year for BIPOC stories. Click below to find books for your TBR list. 

Week of January 5th

The Life I’m In by Sharon G. Flake Scholastic Inc

My feet are heavy as stones when I walk up the block wondering why I can’t find my old self.

In The Skin I’m In, readers saw into the life of Maleeka Madison, a teen who suffered from the ridicule she received because of her dark skin color. For decades fans have wanted to know the fate of the bully who made Maleeka’s life miserable, Char.

Now in Sharon Flake’s latest and unflinching novel, The Life I’m In, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully. Turned out of the only home she has known, Char boards a bus to nowhere where she is lured into the dangerous web of human trafficking. Much is revealed behind the complex system of men who take advantage of vulnerable teens in the underbelly of society. While Char might be frightened, she remains strong and determined to bring herself and her fellow victims out of the dark and back into the light, reminding us why compassion is a powerful cure to the ills of the world.

Sharon Flake’s bestselling, Coretta Scott King Award-winning novel The Skin I’m In was a game changer when it was first published more than twenty years ago. It redefined young adult literature by presenting characters, voices, and real-world experiences that had not been fully seen. Now Flake offers readers another timely and radical story of a girl on the brink and how her choices will lead her to either fall, or fly. — Cover image and summary via Goodreads

Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant Balzer + Bray

Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader.

When Tessa is accepted into the creative writing program of a prestigious art school, she’s excited to finally let her stories shine. But when she goes to her first workshop, the words are just…gone. Fortunately, Caroline has a solution: Tessa just needs to find some inspiration in a real-life love story of her own. And she’s ready with a list of romance novel-inspired steps to a happily ever after. Nico, the brooding artist who looks like he walked out of one of Tessa’s stories, is cast as the perfect Prince Charming.

But as Tessa checks each item off Caroline’s list, she gets further and further away from herself. She risks losing everything she cares about—including the surprising bond she develops with sweet Sam, who lives across the street. She’s well on her way to having her own real-life love story, but is it the one she wants, after all?

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite Inkyard Press

ISN’T BEING HUMAN ENOUGH? When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.

One of the good ones.

Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind–why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?–Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there’s a twist to Kezi’s story that no one could’ve ever expected–one that will change everything all over again.

Roman and Jewel by Dana L. Davis Inkyard Press

If Romeo and Juliet got the Hamilton treatment…who would play the leads? This vividly funny, honest, and charming romantic novel by Dana L. Davis is the story of a girl who thinks she has what it takes…and the world thinks so, too.

Jerzie Jhames will do anything to land the lead role in Broadway’s hottest new show, Roman and Jewel, a Romeo and Juliet inspired hip-hopera featuring a diverse cast and modern twists on the play. But her hopes are crushed when she learns mega-star Cinny won the lead…and Jerzie is her understudy.

Falling for male lead Zeppelin Reid is a terrible idea–especially once Jerzie learns Cinny wants him for herself. Star-crossed love always ends badly. But when a video of Jerzie and Zepp practicing goes viral and the entire world weighs in on who should play Jewel, Jerzie learns that while the price of fame is high, friendship, family, and love are priceless.

The Awakening of Malcom X by Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr)

In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, Malcolm drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken — emerging from prison more than just Malcolm Little: Now, he is Malcolm X.

Here is an intimate look at Malcolm X’s young adult years. While this book chronologically follows X: A Novel, it can be read as a stand-alone historical novel that invites larger discussions on black power, prison reform, and civil rights.

When You Look Like Us by Pamela N. Harris HarperCollins

When you look like us—brown skin, brown eyes, black braids or fades—people think you’re trouble. No one looks twice at a missing black girl from the projects because she must’ve brought whatever happened to her upon herself. I, Jay Murphy, can admit that, for a minute, I thought my sister, Nicole, got too caught up with her boyfriend—a drug dealer—and his friends.

But she’s been gone too long now.

If I hadn’t hung up on her that night, she’d be spending time with our grandma. If I was a better brother, she’d be finishing senior year instead of being another name on a missing persons list. It’s time to step up and do what the Newport News police department won’t.

Week of January 12th

Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne Crown Books for Young Readers

She looks me hard in my eyes & my knees lock into tree trunks My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing They stare straight back hot daggers. I remember things will never be the same. I remember things.

With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend.

The Meet-Cute Project by Rhiannon Richardson Simon & Schuster

Mia’s friends love rom-coms. Mia hates them. They’re silly, contrived, and not at all realistic. Besides, there are more important things to worry about—like how to handle living with her bridezilla sister, Sam, who’s never appreciated Mia, and surviving junior year juggling every school club offered and acing all of her classes.

So when Mia is tasked with finding a date to her sister’s wedding, her options are practically nonexistent.

Mia’s friends, however, have an idea. It’s a little crazy, a little out there, and a lot inspired by the movies they love that Mia begrudgingly watches too.

Mia just needs a meet-cute.

Concrete Rose (The Hate U Give, #0) by Angie Thomas Balzer + Bray

If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison.

Life’s not perfect, but with a fly girlfriend and a cousin who always has his back, Mav’s got everything under control.

Until, that is, Maverick finds out he’s a father.

Suddenly he has a baby, Seven, who depends on him for everything. But it’s not so easy to sling dope, finish school, and raise a child. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. In a world where he’s expected to amount to nothing, maybe Mav can prove he’s different.

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can’t just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

Angel of Greenwood by Randi Pink Feiwel and Friends

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. A passionate follower of WEB. Du Bois, he believes that black people should rise up to claim their place as equals.

Sixteen-year-old Angel Hill is a loner, mostly disregarded by her peers as a goody-goody. Her father is dying, and her family’s financial situation is in turmoil. Also, as a loyal follower of Booker T. Washington, she believes, through education and tolerance, that black people should rise slowly and without forced conflict.

Though they’ve attended the same schools, Isaiah never noticed Angel as anything but a dorky, Bible toting church girl. Then their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library, a three-wheel, two-seater bike. Angel can’t turn down the money and Isaiah is soon eager to be in such close quarters with Angel every afternoon.

But life changes on May 31, 1921 when a vicious white mob storms the community of Greenwood, leaving the town destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Only then, Isaiah, Angel, and their peers realize who their real enemies are.

Week of January 19th

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narváez Varela Cinco Puntos Press

Out of nowhere, a lady comes up to Anamaría and says she’s her, from the future. But Anamaría’s thirteen, she knows better than to talk to some weirdo stranger. Girls need to be careful, especially in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—it’s the 90’s and fear is overtaking her beloved city as cases of kidnapped girls and women become alarmingly common. This thirty-year-old “future” lady doesn’t seem to be dangerous but she won’t stop bothering her, switching between cheesy Hallmark advice about being kind to yourself, and some mysterious talk about saving a girl.

Anamaría definitely doesn’t need any saving, she’s doing just fine. She works hard at her strict, grade-obsessed middle school—so hard that she hardly gets any sleep; so hard that the stress makes her snap not just at mean girls but even her own (few) friends; so hard that when she does sleep she dreams about dying—but she just wants to do the best she can so she can grow up to be successful. Maybe Thirty’s right, maybe she’s not supposed to be so exhausted with her life, but how can she ask for help when her city is mourning the much bigger tragedy of its stolen girls?

This thought-provoking, moving verse novel will lead adult and young adult readers alike to vital discussions on important topics—like dealing with depression and how to recognize this in yourself and others—through the accessible voice of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall Atheneum/Dlouhy

Things can change in a second:

The second Frankie Green gets that scholarship letter, he has his ticket out of Jamaica.

The second his longtime crush, Leah, asks him on a date, he’s in trouble.

The second his father gets shot, suddenly nothing else matters.

And the second Frankie joins his uncle’s gang in exchange for paying for his father’s medical bills, there’s no going back…or is there?

As Frankie does things he never thought he’d be capable of, he’s forced to confront the truth of the family and future he was born into—and the ones he wants to build for himself.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo Dutton Books for Young Readers

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

If I Tell You the Truth by Jasmin Kaur HarperCollins

Told in prose, poetry, and illustration, this heartrending story weaves Kiran’s and Sahaara’s timelines together, showing a teenage Kiran and, later, her high school–aged daughter, Sahaara.

Kiran is a young Punjabi Sikh woman who becomes pregnant after being sexually assaulted by her fiancé’s brother. When her fiancé and family don’t believe her, she flees her home in India to Canada, where she plans to raise the child as a single mother. For Kiran, living undocumented means constant anxiety over finances, work, safety, and whether she’ll be deported back to the dangers that await her in Punjab.

Eighteen years later, Kiran’s daughter, Sahaara, is desperate to help her mother, who has been arrested and is facing deportation. In the aftermath, Kiran reveals the truth about Sahaara’s conception. Horrified, Sahaara encourages Kiran to speak out against the man who raped her—who’s now a popular political figure in Punjab. Sahaara must find the best way to support her mother while also dealing with the revelation about her parents.

We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya #2) by Hafsah Faizal Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The battle on Sharr is over. The dark forest has fallen. Altair may be captive, but Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah are bound for Sultan’s Keep, determined to finish the plan he set in motion: restoring the hearts of the Sisters of Old to the minarets of each caliphate, and finally returning magic to all of Arawiya. But they are low on resources and allies alike, and the kingdom teems with fear of the Lion of the Night’s return.

As the zumra plots to overthrow the kingdom’s darkest threat, Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood. He must learn to hone his power into a weapon, to wield not only against the Lion but against his father, trapped under the Lion’s control. Zafira battles a very different darkness festering in her through her bond with the Jawarat—a darkness that hums with voices, pushing her to the brink of her sanity and to the edge of a chaos she dare not unleash. In spite of the darkness enclosing ever faster, Nasir and Zafira find themselves falling into a love they can’t stand to lose…but time is running out to achieve their ends, and if order is to be restored, drastic sacrifices will have to be made.

Lush and striking, hopeful and devastating, We Free the Stars is the masterful conclusion to the Sands of Arawiya duology by New York Times–bestselling author Hafsah Faizal.

Week of January 26th

Written in Starlight (Woven in Moonlight #2) by Isabel Ibañez Page Street Kids

If the jungle wants you, it will have you…

Catalina Quiroga is a Condesa without a country. She’s lost the Inkasisa throne, the loyalty of her people, and her best friend. Banished to the perilous Yanu Jungle, Catalina knows her chances of survival are slim, but that won’t stop her from trying to escape. It’s her duty to reclaim the throne.

When Manuel, the son of her former general, rescues Catalina from a jaguar, a plan forms. Deep in the jungle, the city of gold is hidden, home to the fierce Illari people, who she could strike an alliance with.

But the elusive Illari are fighting a battle of their own—a mysterious blight is corrupting the jungle, laying waste to everything they hold dear. As a seer, Catalina should be able to help, but her ability to read the future in the stars is as feeble as her survival instincts. While searching for the Illari, Catalina must reckon with her duty and her heart to find her true calling, which could be the key to stopping the corruption before it destroys the jungle completely.

The Knockout by Sajni Patel Flux

If seventeen-year-old Kareena Thakkar is going to alienate herself from the entire Indian community, she might as well do it gloriously. She’s landed the chance of a lifetime, an invitation to the US Muay Thai Open, which could lead to a spot on the first-ever Olympic team. If only her sport wasn’t seen as something too rough for girls, something she’s afraid to share with anyone outside of her family. Despite pleasing her parents, exceling at school, and making plans to get her family out of debt, Kareena’s never felt quite Indian enough, and her training is only making it worse.

Which is inconvenient, since she’s starting to fall for Amit Patel, who just might be the world’s most perfect Indian. Admitting her feelings for Amit will cost Kareena more than just her pride–she’ll have to face his parents’ disapproval, battle her own insecurities, and remain focused for the big fight. Kareena’s bid for the Olympics could very well make history–if she has the courage to go for it.

Wings of Ebony (Wings of Ebony #1) by J. Elle Denene Millner Books/Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

“Make a way out of no way” is just the way of life for Rue. But when her mother is shot dead on her doorstep, life for her and her younger sister changes forever. Rue’s taken from her neighborhood by the father she never knew, forced to leave her little sister behind, and whisked away to Ghizon—a hidden island of magic wielders.

Rue is the only half-god, half-human there, where leaders protect their magical powers at all costs and thrive on human suffering. Miserable and desperate to see her sister on the anniversary of their mother’s death, Rue breaks Ghizon’s sacred Do Not Leave Law and returns to Houston, only to discover that Black kids are being forced into crime and violence. And her sister, Tasha, is in danger of falling sway to the very forces that claimed their mother’s life.

Worse still, evidence mounts that the evil plaguing East Row is the same one that lurks in Ghizon—an evil that will stop at nothing until it has stolen everything from her and everyone she loves. Rue must embrace her true identity and wield the full magnitude of her ancestors’ power to save her neighborhood before the gods burn it to the ground.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Moonchild

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

I feel like this one was inevitable. As soon as I decided to bust open the doors on literary mediums like books and comics, this guy was always going to loom over me. Well, let’s just bite the bullet and talk about him. 

In the final portion of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Centuries, we are introduced to Oliver Haddo’s ultimate creation… a creation he is incredibly disappointed in. You see, the Antichrist or Moonchild is a whiny, miserable young adult strung out on prescription drugs because he went mad after realizing what he was being manipulated into. He is the subject of derision by all who know him, and is treated like a punching bag by most of the narrative, up to and including God literally telling him he’s a bitch. Our villain here is just a miserable, whiny, kind of misogynistic brat who doesn’t even want to be a villain, and in general is just unpleasant and ineffective save for a school massacre he pulls off.

Oh yeah, and his real name is Harry Potter. Kind of an important detail, that.

Motivation/Goals: So as the antichrist, you’d think Mr. Potter might, you know, maybe want to bring about the end of days and all that. But no! He actually pops pills and isolates himself in Grimmauld Place so that he doesn’t do that! He doesn’t want to be the Antichrist and, really, who would? Most of his screentime is thus spent whining, until he ultimately decides to embrace being the Antichrist because he feels  he has no other choice. We’ll get into all of that in a bit, but honestly, his motivation is extremely weak despite the incredibly graphic setup we’re given to his downward spiral: when he first discovered he was being manipulated by Satanists, he went on a magical school shooting, shown to us in a first-person perspective to emulate the games that were often blamed for real school shootings. We get to see Harry slaughter Ron, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, and so on, we get to see what he did to Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts Express, and absolutely none of it is pleasant. 

With setup like that you’d expect maybe a little more intrigue and indecision, maybe some sort of conflict between fate and choice or something beyond Harry sitting around half-naked, high off of antidepressants, being a whiny little bitch, but you might be giving the dude who wrote a porno where the kids from Peter Pan engage in underage incest a bit too much credit. 

Final Fate: So Harry has gone absolutely bonkers and it seems that nothing can possibly stop him; our heroes seem to be written into a corner. So what does Moore do? He has God - who in this universe is Mary Poppins - descend from the heavens and have her say how she protects the imaginations of children and how she just straight up hates Harry. Never mind that Harry is quite literally an abused child who was twisted by the cruel machinations of a body surfing wizard, apparently he’s a child not worth protecting or caring about and is unworthy of sympathy. Anyway, Mary Poppins just turns him into a chalk drawing and that’s the end of that. 

Great writing, Alan Moore, critically acclaimed creator of Watchmen!

Best Scene: Saying Harry here had a ‘best scene’ is seriously pushing it, because literally every moment he’s on the page the comic just beats you over the head with Moore’s biases. I wish I could put the school shooting sequence, because the idea behind it is legitimately intriguing, but the whole sequence is just interwoven with Moore whacking off his hateboner for the series. But on the subject of boners… well, I think there’s only one panel that can truly and adequately sum up this entire character and how much of a miserable failure he is. Those who have followed me for a long time knew this was coming, but for the rest of you, behold - Harry Potter Dick Lightning:

Final Thoughts & Score: Quite frankly, this is the worst thing Alan Moore has ever done.

I’m not even mad as a fan of Harry Potter; Moore was honestly ahead of his time in hating the franchise to this level. The issue I have is that he doesn’t really deconstruct or criticize in any meaningful way, he just is doing edgy “take that” stuff that you’d expect from a chump like Garth Ennis. Like, the concept here is incredibly solid and intriguing - this version of Harry has been groomed from birth by Satanists to become the Antichrist, with all of his adventures fabricated and all of his relationships manufactured to keep him under the illusion he is a hero to mankind. Upon discovering the truth, he snaps, massacres everyone at his school for their role in his manipulations, and went into exile to stave off the apocalypse, although he ultimately and bitterly accepts his role because he feels he was never given a choice… and he wasn’t! He’s an incredibly depressing and miserable deconstruction of the concept of “The Chosen One,” and yet the whole thing falls apart on multiple levels.

The first is that the Harry Potter franchise already deconstructs the concept of “The Chosen One;” the text goes out of its way to point out that Voldemort’s own actions are what is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by targeting someone with the will and drive to fight back against him. Harry’s not so much chosen by fate so much as forcibly chosen by an evil manipulator… and that’s basically what we have here, but with less substance. Moore doesn’t really comment on anything, instead leading into the second big issue - Harry’s whole role is to be a strawman punching bag villain so that Moore can complain about modern fantasy franchises. Moore seems to view Harry as the epitome of the lazy regurgitation of the same story over and over that modern blockbuster culture so often falls into… except that Harry Potter was an original product developed by one person and had no artificial longevity slapped onto the franchise in the form of unneeded sequels or spinoffs to extend the lifespan of the franchise at the time Moore wrote this. Throw in the fact Moore just in general seems extremely contemptuous of any post-70s pop culture in Centuries and how Harry is ultimately taken down by crusty old characters from older literature really just leads to Moore coming across as a grumpy old man who hates anything new, not helped by his tired criticisms of millennials and their perceived lack of culture. Maybe Moore would have had more of a point if he created this storyline today, but he didn’t. Thus, he has no point and he just looks like a miserable old fart.

Sure, you can argue that maybe Moore’s basic parody of the character by exaggerating his tendencies to their logical extreme and attacking elements of the plot that had been criticized to death by fans to begin with has its place, and perhaps you could even say that the take in the comic is just an extreme take on how Harry acted in the fifth book, what with the lashing out at his friends and his general feeling of a lack of control, and there is some merit to that, or there would be if Moore’s own unrepentant bias didn’t undermine everything. Look, you can hate Harry Potter, but then why slap it into your work? It’s supremely cringey when people insert characters they hate into fanfiction and just completely derail their characters so that they can treat them like garbage with the narrative, and is that not what Moore did here? Is League not just public domain fanfiction? There’s a reason why I coined “Harry Potter Dick Lightning” as a phrase used to showcase a moment where a fanwork’s contempt for a character becomes so extreme that it not only jumps the shark, it rockets over it into the upper atmosphere. Any criticisms or messages Moore is trying to convey is tarnished by his blatant, seething contempt for the character, and that gets in the way of good writing and good storytelling. Having two characters express pity at having to murder an abused child who was warped by Satanists into being a tool of the apocalypse does not make up for how the narrative constantly mocks, belittles, and treats him like garbage to the point he really can’t function as an effective villain that can be taken seriously.

All of this adds up to what I’d argue is the absolute worst villain in all of fiction, bar none. There is just not a single redeeming quality about the Antichrist as a character. None. Nothing. I cannot think of another villain that so completely fails on every single level as this one does. He doesn’t work as an antagonist because most of the bad things he does are offscreen and he doesn’t come into conflict with the heroes until the very end, and most of his screentime features him doing nothing of note. He doesn’t work as a critique, because he is acting as a criticism for things his character never really represented in the first place. He only really functions as the sort of garbage you’d see in My Immortal, where the characters you know and love are turned into evil jerks because the writer hates them - but he even fails at being that, because at least My Immortal is funny about it! 

I am going out on a limb and saying that there cannot possibly be a villain that so utterly fails at everything it sets out to be as hard as Harry does. I don’t even want to try and believe it. And so, without hesitation, I am giving Moore’s shallow Potter parody a 0/10. And I pray to Mary Poppins that this is the only one of those I ever dish out, because I really don’t want to imagine what could possibly be worse than Harry Potter Dick Lightning.

[vole-mon-amour]

OTP tag game.

Tagged by @captainjowl. You know for sure than I'm struggling to pick only 10 & fit them in here. But hell, that’s fun, thank you <3

Rules: Choose 10 OTPs BEFORE reading the questions, and then get to answering

1) Harry James Potter & Sirius Orion Black

2) Daniel Le Domas & Grace (Ready or Not 2019)

3) Samuel & Nathan Drake (Uncharted 4)

4) Corvo Attano & The Outsider (+probably Emily Kaldwin; Dishonored series)

5) Steve Grant Rogers & Bucky Buchanan Barnes (Marvel)

6) Tony Edward Stark & Peter Benjamin Parker (Marvel)

7) Handsome Jack & Rhys (Borderlands video game series)

8) Damon Salvatore & Elena Gilbert (TVD Books & a tv show)

9) Batman & Joker (in every universe, really)

10) Adam Jensen x Francis Pritchard (Deus Ex video game series)

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I believe it didn't hit me before Spider-Man: Homecoming. Civil War was about Steve & Bucky for me, but when I saw that growing up Peter with Tony, their dynamic, chemistry. Tom & Robert are really just like that.

2. Have you ever read a fanfic about 2?

Lmao. I've read like 50% of the tag on AO3, I wrote my own & started a few wips on them. They are amazing. Plus, with that shitty canon? We didn't get enough of them & they deserved better, so it's only logical to save yourself with fanfiction.

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr screen saver?

I was living with The Outsider icon on my twitter & tumblr. That one is still my Google profile picture I believe. Don't remember about having an icon with the two of them. Also had The Outsider as my lockscreen on my smartphone for a while.

4. If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

Funny how it fits canon, lmao. Rhys literally tried to erase Jack's AI in TFTBL, so I guess another day on Pandora, nothing new. They torture each other, they kiss each other, they kill other people in the process. It'll be fiiine.

5. Why is 1 so important?

I love them since the first time I met them, which was much more than 10 years ago, I don't even remember when. At some point they were the reason I was waking up & forcing myself to eat just to read more fanfiction & feel something. Even if I was drowning in pain (I was extremely depressed), it was still something. I read every fic I could find at that time. The depression that Harry went through, all these feelings, his love for Sirius. I was living through it, I could relate.

I'm currently drowning in these two again, though in a much healthier & happier state. I see their flaws & I know as much as I can. I see them differently as an adult. They saved me, they keep being my number one, I still consider making a tattoo of Padfoot/Sirius or of both Harry & Sirius together. I have many headcanons, ideas, I write fics about them. They are everything, you see? They were my choice when there was nothing, no one. They are HOME.

6. Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Both. There goes the dynamic of Jack & Rhys: torture, fighting, flirting, a lot of trauma. I'd definitely say that they are wild and comical sometimes, but they are definitely serious. With the Asylum, the mental health issues. There is so much more to it, the complexity of their relationship. The struggle of loving who you probably shouldn't (but hey, when does it work like that?) Thinking about Tettlate's Batman, about Batman: Europa & how Joker was: "You must be crazy, putting me in charge of the plan, letting me decide. Okay, well..."

Nah, they are entertaining, but this is a serious ship.

7. Out of all the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Are you kidding me? They are all the definition of CHEMISTRY. I'd say 5, but then go 2, 6, 7, 8. Come on. I'm not choosing. Most of they are WILD.

9. How many times have you read/watched the 10’s fandom?

The fandom itself? Idk. I found one of my favourite artists through this fandom. If it's about the characters themselves, I played the first game with the DLC from start to beginning, looking around every corner. Spent more than 60 hours in there. Watched a second game (my laptop can't run the game) and the DLC (obviously), since Francis is in the DLC & not in the main game. I have a tag for them on tumblr, I read fanfiction, I tried to write my own. I still follow Elias & want a third game. Elias liked my tweets about Adam and Jensen being an actual couple a few times. I'd say I interacted with all of this a lot? Still do, actually.

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

5. Best friends since childhood, fought & died for each other, still found their way back to each other. "It would break your Captain's heart, to see what they did to you." That only the MENTION of Steve can pull Bucky out of this brain washing(ed?) state, distract him in the middle of a fight. When Steve died in the comics because of Sharon & Tony sent Natasha to take Steve's shield from Bucky because even Tony knew how much Steve means to Bucky. And Bucky was like: "Oh, I see what he did. Not happening!" Fought Natasha (that is his ex in the comics) & kept going for Steve's sake.

Well, you see the point, I can go on and on.

11. How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up?

They're not actually canon so none? They had a few fights: In Civil war (the comics), in Homecoming (the movie).  That only means that they’ve got history & love each other.

12. If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

As fierce Grace is, they wouldn't stand a chance against Damon & Elena. Those two had to deal with worst thing than brainless stupid zombies. On the other hand, if there were no alive humans to drink their blood... It's either an animal diet that Damon hates so much or I don't know? Still, they're faster & more powerful. Their bodies have advantage of healing the wounds as well.

13. Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

From some people, yeah. Don't tell Athena, don't tell Vaughn, don't tell Fiona. Though Rhys wasn't very subtle about it & Jack just doesn't give a fuck. You will probably end up dead if you disagree or bore him, or if you're useless.

"I can take you to the top, but you gotta know where the top is" & Rhys doesn't tell anybody until Jack makes him the President for like whole 20 minutes lol.

Fiona & Sasha: "This can't be happening." Sure it can, darling.

14. Is 4 still together?

I have a headcanon about The Outsider finding Emily & Corvo after Billie frees him from the Void. He doesn't have anybody & they are his only friends aside from a potential friendship with Billie. And if we don't consider TOTO dlc, they definitely are! The Outsider visits them both when they sleep & takes them to the void sometimes. How could he not?

15. Is 10 canon?

Not really but also sort of? Let's say that they really care about each other in canon, despite Adam pushing Francis away because of his trauma & fear that Megan caused him. :/

16. If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

Can you imagine wizards fighting extremely powerful vampires? Superheroes with venom in their bodies that make them super strong with people that made a deal with the Devil himself (hi Le Bail)? 5000 y.o. God and his lover that share his powers and an augmented human protecting his tired IT guy? Combine mental health issues to that, Jack and Rhys with Batman and Joker. Corvo & The Outsider would probably slay them all as Corvo and Emily did in both games with entire islands, though it will still be a slaughter anyway.

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship?

All the fucking time, lmaooo. I’m not even talking about it.

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

I feel like I already did with Steve & Bucky after many Marvel movies (we're not even mentioning Endg*me, I fucking died & was dead for full 4-5 months).

19. Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page?

I used to do that a few years back, but not anymore. There is not much content since the trilogy is finished.

20. If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

1 already went through it & fandom lives, so I'd say maybe 7? Rhys will find a way to bring Jack back & they are both so wild. It’s what happened in canon anyway. Jack kidnapped Lilith & forced her to do Angel's job, so I'd like to see that witch try at first. Jack is an immortal bastard. <3

Now that I think about it, Corvo would also deal with her in seconds as she waits to curse them.

As a conclusion: no one breaks up forever, we're killing the witch.

I tag: @ianmillkovichgallagher​ & @aledbr​

Whoever else wants to join the game, please do.

[inheritorofmemories-archive]

Twitter is not a good place and I have opinions.

Okay so, just visited Twitter to see how they like The Old Guard and please remind to never go there for anything more than artist’s posts and memes.

(This is more of a rant than a cohesive explanation of my thoughts but I won’t lose my time on Twitter for that and I still need to talk about it, so we’re here. Okay, here goes-)

Of course spoiler warning for the whole movie.

"it's bad, it's not creative, it's boring, there's no story apart from bad guys pharma and good guys mercenaries."

Did we watch the same movie?? It's like those Mad Max Fury Road reviews who kept saying "they leave and come back, no plot har har I’m very funny" when the whole point of the movie is about staying where you live and make this place better, not abandoning it because you risk abandoning your true self with the land (amongst other things the movies tries to say).

Yeah maybe the story is a bit seen, pharma and all. But the whole plot revolve around the Old Guards and their emotions. It's about a tired warrior finding hope, and a young immortal finding her place, and how to deal with loss and grief and solitude, it's about finding purpose in helping other because that's what human do, help each other. It's a lot more than fight scenes and bad pharma (which, maybe it's an old trope but it's still very true to this day, please keep portraying pharma CEO as comically bad because they are!)

It's like men can't understand a story unless there's lots of death and unnecessary trauma. Can't you enjoy a story about found family and hope and kindness for one another like everyone else?

Here are the critics I saw, and why I think it’s bullshit, point by point because I’m petty like that:

The characters are flat and two dimensional: I mean, no? Sure, Joe and Nicky are not the center of attention, and we see Booker tired and a traitor, and the human ones are bit glossed over (though we see enough to understand them, Copley and his wife, the scientist that thinks she’s helping humanity, etc.), but Andy and Nile are fully developed? What else do you need?

Andy is a very old, very tired immortal that has a very complicated past (that we see a lot of) and her motivations, state of mind and thoughts are well explained (they all say she’s old, and tired, we know about Quynh; hell, Andy’s first line is about that) and we know she lost purpose, and she finds it within the film! She changes! Her character evolves in interactions to other but mostly Nile. Speaking of her- i know I’m repeating myself but what else do you need to consider a character not flat? She loves her family but doesn’t run to them because she’s not an idiot. She’s a fighter, a marine, a very competent one at that, but she still gets scared by being an immortal, she asks questions, she’s compassionate, she feels! All while being a bad ass fighter. She has agency, makes her own choices and choose her way, she has motivation and she know what she brings to the team and is not afraid of saying her thoughts and needs.

And even Booker and Nicky and Joe have full character, even if shown less. We have Booker’s back story, and we know he cares a lot despite all his hurt (he says he did it to help Andy die, which was still wrong and selfish, but he was genuinely trying to do something because he hurt so much). Nicky and Joe have a softer side, and sure it’s mostly conveyed through their own love story but they hug the other Guards and Nicky brings food for Andy and Joe jokes around (still thinking about that “faster than the elevator” line). Yeah it’s not a deep character study but it’s more than about half action movies today, and it’s enough in the story to make me care about all of them, even Copley. Although a lot of that may come form the actors too.

The fights scenes are bad: apparently they’re boring and do not do justice to the comics. I can’t speak for the last one, but boring? Again, did we watch the same movie? Yeah, there’s no big explosions and fire everywhere and collapsing buildings, but they’re not boring. I’m sorry my tastes are superior but I’d rather be shown the talents of a covert team of immortal warriors though discretion and efficiency. Why would they need explosions when they can juggle swords, axes, rifles and guns so smoothly you don’t even see a shift in their stance? See first fight in South Sudan. Why would I need collapsing buildings when I can have a team of fighters swapping weapons together like nothing? That scene at Merricks’s building where they all reload and change guns and the camera turns around and panel over all of them? That was dope and a very creative way to show how smooth they work together (with Nile added! So way to go to show the new group dynamics.) through a smooth and continuous camera movement. I could go on, but where did you see the boring fight scene. Yes there’s no cool lights and tricks a la John Wick, but if it did they would have complained it was a rip off, so...

The cinematography is bad: Just because it’s more understated doesn’t mean it’s bad. Yes, there’s no neon lights or cool shots like other might have (looking at you John Wick, since everyone seems to compare the two movie) but it serves the story. It’s because it’s so simple visually that you can get into the feelings and story. You don’t look at the light, you look at the actions and the faces. And honestly, I think it suits the Guards better. They look timeless, they fit in everywhere. A photography that’s striped down to the necessary only serves the story. I don’t see them in safe houses with a bunch of lights and modern furniture, just like I don’t see expensive shots and over the top choreography for them. As I said, they’re a covert team, they’re smooth and efficient, I like that the photography align on that and show them in simple shots.

tl;dr: Just because it’s simple doesn't mean it’s bad, sometimes that's what you need to work with the story and its characters and themes.

Not enough story and too much nothing to fill in: I mean, they die 12 minutes in, you get all the stakes, antagonist and themes in like 20 minutes, what else do you need? There’s break in the actions to expose plot and concept, but it never feels wrong or too much of a info dump, it’s fluid and natural because we’re following Nile into the immortal world.

Bad Pharma is Bad: Yeah, let’s talk about that. (Cautions, purely opinions, no real arguments to change someone’s mind here) I don’t care if it’s cliché, not when pharma in the US keep rising the price of Insulin every month, not when pharma all over the world send their faulty medicine to third world country because there’s no one that cares enough there, not when you know they purposefully don’t finance HIV researches because triple therapy gets them a lot of money, not when you hear about the experimentation and how they get their resources and literally everything that I’m not getting into right now. Who cares if they’re show as bad people once again, they are! You think CEO care about anything but money? If it feels wrong in the movie it’s because it is wrong.

Tell me no one in our world would kidnap and torture immortals to find their power. And don’t talk to me about bad representation of CEO and exceptions, I don’t care. One exception doesn’t make all the other suddenly better or worth the wrong they’re doing. So yeah, give me more cliché good guys fight bad CEO, I love it.

They did not use their concept enough: Again, where? To me, they did all they could with that concept, you get all the things you can only get with the concept, interesting and fun one. They are still afraid of dying one day, and even if they’re not (i.e. Andy or Booker) their brand of immortality doesn’t mean they’re not afraid of being captured: the Quynh scene happens literally just before Nicky and Joe are kidnapped exposing us the stake of being immortal, talk about good script work, right? Talking about fun trope: you have the millennium old couple that use to kill each other but now love each other, the classic ennemies to lovers we all love, you have the strategy of using your immortality to your advantage and destabilize your opponent: Nile walking into Merrick’s building and getting herself killed on purpose only to stand again and use the guard’s shock and lack of preparation against them, you have the fun references to real historical figures that comes with immortality: Rodin, Napoleon, etc...

I’ll link to this video I found that talks about this better than me, but basically, they did use their concept, a lot, and well.

The music: I can’t really say anything about that one. Maybe you don’t like the style they used, and that’s fair. To each their own. But it wasn’t too much like other Netflix’s movie (Looking at you 6 Underground. Four (4) song of the same artist in one movie?) but again, it’s Netflix, they use modern songs in their soudtracks, you should expect it. I didn’t bother with the lyrics accuracy to the actions, but each time the music fit well in tune and mood of the scene. And the actual score made for the movie was really good, not too much but still supported the actions and dialogues on screen like it should.

And my favorite yet, we’ve already seen it. I don’t have any smart answer to that apart from I’m sorry you’re a cishet, but found family is the superior trope and I hope you can one day see it too. Who cares if we’ve already seen it, it’s a different flavor! It’s no X-Men flavor, it’s Old Guard flavor and I love it. Have you heard of the Hero’s Journey? How Lord of the Ring, Star Wars and Harry Potter all have the basic same plot? And yet you can like all three of them for different reasons? Because they’re not the same flavors? Well, apply that to the immortal group of fighters and enjoy it.

Okay, that’s most of my thoughts on the film for now, but to make it short: it’s good and those people can’t appreciate good things that are more feelings and humanity than fist fights and nihilism. How dare a movie say we’re good and need each other and not end in a pathetic discovery that all the word deserves to burn.

[thetourguidebarbie]

S4 AU WHERE KC NEEDS TO BE STUCK IN A SAFE HOUSE TOGETHER BECAUSE OF REASONS PLEAAASE!!!

Thank you to @honestgrins for cheerleading. I will be forever grateful. I hope you like it Luiza!!! Smutty. D/s. Etc. Originally for canon-ish day of au week but I had midterms so I’m sorry this is late. There’s an incest mention in this. Nothing super substantive or related to the actual story, but here are the bookends if you want to scroll past.

Begins at: “Everything?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I’m sure there’s some stuff you haven’t done.”

Ends at: “Forget I asked,” Caroline interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ugh. Okay, um…Never have I ever done BDSM stuff.”

————

“This is the safehouse?” Caroline demanded, dropping her suitcase on the faded persian rug in the living room of the cabin.

Yes, the cabin.

Like, as in in a forest.

It was even made of wood, probably.

“Yes, love,” Klaus said, locking the door behind them with a click. She immediately felt the prickle of magic against her skin as the barrier took hold. “Protected with the best magic murder can buy.”

Caroline wrinkled her nose as she took in the room around her. Everything seemed old, but largely in good condition. She had a feeling that Klaus hadn’t had a hand in designing it, since it didn’t even slightly resemble an old-timey cigar lounge. He sunk down on the couch, crossing his legs and setting his boots on the antique-looking coffee table, his eyes fixed on her intently as she took in her surroundings.

“So is the TV in another room, or something?” she asked, walking to peek through one of the two non-outside exits from the room into what looked like a small kitchen. She desperately hoped there was more to the space than she was seeing. The cabin had looked tiny from the outside, but maybe it was magic’d to be bigger on the inside like in Harry Potter, or something.

“No television, unfortunately.”

“What?”

“Can’t risk blowing the fuse, love. We need it to keep the icebox going. Blood spoils.”

“Is there at least somewhere to charge my phone?”

“Phones need to remain off, sweetheart. How difficult do you think it would be to compel your way into one of your privacy-violating apps and find your exact location?”

“Seriously?”

“Indeed.”

“But that means there’s nothing to do,” Caroline complained, sitting on the couch and glaring at the bookshelf, the only entertainment source she could identify as of now, in front of her. “How am I supposed to live like this?”

“I did for over 900 years,” Klaus pointed out, his patience clearly beginning to run out. “At least you’re alive, sweetheart.”

“Honestly, I think I might rather take my chances with Bonnie having to resurrect me than have to go glamping with you.”

“I’m wounded.”

“Is there at least running water?”

“That there is, courtesy of magic,” he reassured her. “We’ll have to share it of course, but I’m sure we’ll manage.”

She grimaced, already knowing that her only-child-ness and the temptation to avoid Klaus was likely not conducive to short showers.

“Okay, where’s my bedroom? Please tell me I at least get my own bed.”

“Of course. Unless you change your mind,” he teased, his cheeks dimpling at the withering glare she shot him.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“Just through there, then,” he said, pointing to the other door.

She left without another word, the small hallway leading to two tiny cramped rooms separated by a bathroom that she could barely move her elbows in, both taken up almost entirely by double beds and an end table. She chose the one with the less ugly duvet and dropped her luggage on top of it.

Ugh. Hopefully Klaus’s witchy friend would come through soon. She had a prom to plan.

————

“How long are we going to be here?”

“Until I take care of the problem.”

“So I’m just stuck locked in a shed in the woods and can’t like, go anywhere or do anything? Or buy entertainment? Or use the internet?”

He chose to ignore her assessment of their accommodations. “Well, the icebox is rather small, so I’ll need to leave to get blood bags every now and again. If you’d like something from town, you need only ask.”

“I can’t come?”

“It wouldn’t be safe, love.”

“Are you saying I wouldn’t be safe with you?” Caroline asked, her barb clearly hitting the mark when his face darkened.

“If I thought all I needed to do to ensure your safety was to keep you by my side, we wouldn’t be here.“

"I thought you were the most powerful being on earth,” she pointed out, not bothering to keep her tone kind.

He didn’t meet her eyes, and she saw the barest movement in his body as he tensed, the twitch of his jaw putting her on edge. “I’m beginning to think that might not be the case.”

It was an admission that she hadn’t expected. Klaus had always seemed to have an endless well of egotism to draw from, had never seemed at all insecure in his power, but everything from the tone of his voice to the way that his eyes kept darting towards the door told her that Klaus was more scared than she’d realized. That put her even further on edge.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not important, love.”

“Um, since you basically kidnapped me and locked me in a shed I’d say that I have a right to know.”

From the look he shot her she had a very good feeling that he was resisting the urge to say that it didn’t matter whether she thought she had the right to know anything, but he wisely refrained from making that particular point. “I’ll tell you when I have more information,” he said finally, a concession that she was pretty sure he hadn’t initially intended to make.

“You can’t just give me the information you have?”

“Silas is a warlock. A very old one,” Klaus said slowly. “Old enough that I was convinced he was a legend.”

“You mean there’s something you didn’t know?” she asked in mock incredulity. “I thought you were friends with all the historians.”

“I thought you said that I didn’t have friends,” he shot back, his eyebrow raised.

“Well, you haven’t been able to prove you have one.”

He didn’t have an answer to that, likely because he knew that mansplaining logical fallacies to her would just get him made fun of, and he retreated back to the subject at hand. “He’s immortal. Truly immortal. After some research I’ve concluded that my mother used a version of the immortality spell he used to create the vampirism ritual.”

“So he’s a vampire?”

“Not exactly,” Klaus said slowly. “Quite honestly I’m not sure to what extent his powers resemble vampirism or vice versa, but I do know that there are elements that are almost certainly shared. Feeding off blood, for example. Likely some sort of power to induce hallucination, similar to the way that we can enter dreams or the thoughts of those who aren’t expecting it.”

“You didn’t even bother to learn about the legend? Aren’t all legends based on truth?”

His lips twitched. “In the interest of honesty, love, I must admit that because I’d never heard of it until I was a few centuries old, I originally assumed that the legend of Silas was based off of me.”

“That’s so arrogant it’s almost funny.”

“It was to my detriment, obviously,” he admitted. “In any case, I’m unsure as to the full extent of his abilities, and that means that he’s dangerous. Too dangerous to risk exposure to him.”

“Exposing me? I didn’t do anything. What’s he going to do, kidnap me to ask me where the cure I hadn’t heard of until two days ago is?”

“No, not you. Me.”

“Then what do I have to do with anything?” she asked impatiently, doing her best to smush down the part of her that was shouting that it knew the answer.

“You know very well what you have to do with this, Caroline,” Klaus said, his tone deceptively light. “If you were put in danger it could easily draw me out.”

She let the confession hang uncomfortably in the air, not quite knowing what to say, how to acknowledge the truth that she hadn’t wanted to accept that he’d set out so plainly. 

“Whatever,” she said finally. “But we need to figure it out fast. I can’t let Patrice takeover prom committee. She thinks that green and brown would be a good color scheme. She calls it ‘forest chic’ but it is not.”

Klaus made a face at that, which was honestly just the kind of vindication she needed. He had like eighty bajillion years of party planning experience, right? He knew a terrible aesthetic choice when he heard one.

“I’ll do my best, love. Anything else or am I free to go?”

“No further questions,” she said dryly.

————

“I’m pretty sure I’ve read every book by now.” Caroline complained.

They’d been in the cabin for about a month, and Klaus had both somehow grown on her and was also deeply irritating, mostly because he was growing on her. He wasn’t exactly open with her, but he wasn’t as irritating as usual. Their cohabitation was actually going peacefully, other than his apparent short supply of shirts, something she had only brought up once and promptly swore to herself to never do it again after Klaus had somehow gotten her to admit it was distracting. She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to infuriate her so much that she wanted to stalk off and risk being kidnapped by witches, but he’d been on his best behavior.

Unfortunately for her, it turned out that Klaus’s best behavior was pretty freaking attractive.

Even more unfortunately, her new-found (fine, newly acknowledged; she could be real with herself inside her own head) attraction for him wasn’t distracting enough to mitigate the fact that she was bored out of her mind.

“I’ll pick up more in town tomorrow,” Klaus promised.

“How will you know what I like, though?”

“Make a list, I suppose.”

“How am I supposed to make a list of things I don’t know exist? Bookstores are for browsing, Klaus.”

“I’ll do my best to make selections to your preferences.”

“Do you even know what I like?” she asked, pausing for dramatic effect before continuing. “Oh wait, I guess you must since you’re a legit stalker who kidnapped me from my home to take me to a remote cabin and wait to be murdered.”

“You make me sound so diabolical.”

“Ugh. You’re impossible.”

“What do you want, Caroline?” he asked, sounding more tired than she’d heard him in awhile. “Believe me when I say that I do want to make this as painless as possible for you. There is no benefit to me to make you hate me more when you know quite well I’d like the opposite.”

“I don’t hate you,” Caroline said, smiling slightly at the look of surprise on Klaus’s face. “What? Didn’t you know that?”

“I didn’t expect you to admit it,” he said, giving her a dimpled grin that screamed smirky jerk. 

It annoyed her enough to make her clarify. “Look, it doesn’t mean much. I’m not exactly a fan of your strategies for keeping me safe, or how you’ve treated my friends, or like…your personality in general.”

“I thought I’d grown on you.”

“I mean, slowly. You’re not exactly easy to get to know.”

He seemed to consider her point for a moment before nodding. “I’ll see what I can find for you, all right?”

————

Klaus had underestimated the amount of books she could read in one day, but he’d luckily also brought home ten bottles of hard liquor, pointing out to her when she saw her face that he’d need to drink at least two full bottles within an hour to actually get past tipsy, and if she wanted to get to know him, what better way than a casual drink?

This quickly turned into her introducing him to the most classic get-to-know-you drinking game she knew.

“Never have I ever eaten a baby,” Caroline joked, slurring slightly.

Klaus snorted, making no move to take the shot. “To my knowledge, only Kol has ever gotten close.”

“Gross. Your turn.”

Klaus sighed. He’d clearly been having difficulty coming up with things he’d never done that it was possible she had. She was already drunk off his never having Instagram and his complete lack of pop culture knowledge (‘never have I ever been able to name all of the Kordashan siblings’ ‘they’re called Kardashians’). They’d agreed to ban any historical figures (‘never have I ever had a one-night stand with a princess’) and school-related questions (‘never have I ever failed a math test’), but anything else was fair game.

“Never have I ever…” he began slowly, swirling the shot glass in his hand. “…had sex with a werewolf.“

"Sex life is off the table,” Caroline declared, pausing after she processed what he’d said. “What, you haven’t?”

“Werewolves and vampires aren’t exactly friendly, and there aren’t all that many wolves in the first place. I kept track of the packs, of course, but I wasn’t about to risk getting bitten before I broke the hybrid curse. It wouldn’t kill me, of course, but I would have had to live with it until it healed. Even as an Original it’s not exactly a speedy process. Kol managed to get himself bitten once and took over six months.”

“That makes sense.”

“Drink though, love.”

“We just said sex life was off the table!” Caroline argued, and Klaus raised an eyebrow. 

“We didn’t say anything. You declared it, and you declared it after I’d already used my turn. Drink.”

“Ugh fine,” she said before knocking a shot back.

“If I may offer some strategic advice however, love–”

“Ugh of course you want to offer strategic advice.”

“It may be best for you to keep the category open.”

Caroline wrinkled her nose. “Are you saying I want to hear about your sexcapades?”

“I’m saying that it’s likely I’ve done almost anything you can think of, and that it’s likely that you haven’t.”

“Are you calling me a prude?” Caroline asked, not sure why she was bristling but still feeling a bit slighted.

“Not at all. You’re simply young,” Klaus said mildly. “You haven’t had the time I had, not that the quarterback or the Lockwood boy seemed all that creative.”

Caroline almost wanted to debate that point–she and Tyler had done one or two things that involved very extensive internet research using an incognito window and ordering sex stuff on amazon using a dummy account to the Lockwood mansion while his mom was in New York to see the new revival of Mamma Mia–but those memories were hers and she didn’t want Klaus to poison them.

Or like, tempt her to do them again, but with him.

And probably better.

“Your advice is duly noted,” she said, trying to keep from slurring her words. “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“All too happy to assist, love.”

“Yeah, I bet you are,” she muttered, reaching for the tequila bottle to fill her shot glass again. “Never have I ever…been to France.”

“I’ll take you,” he teased, bringing her back to that moment at the ball when he’d tried to tempt her. “When this is all over. I’ll take you anywhere.”

“We’ve been over this. You’re not taking me on any vacations after this other than back to my house.”

“I’d be honored to take you back to your place, love.”

“Gross!” she whined, trying to cover up the way that the suggestion made her mind wander. “Stop!”

“As the lady wishes. Now, never have I ever played monopoly.”

Caroline knocked the shot back. “Not only have I played monopoly, but I specialize in winning monopoly.”

“Of course you do,” he drawled. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a keen strategist, love.”

“And my dad and I had a rule that if I could steal from the bank without him noticing then I got to keep the money.”

“That’s just good business, sweetheart.”

“I was also ten and got tantrumy when I didn’t win, but sure.”

“Somehow I’m not at all surprised by that.”

She glared at him. “Never have I ever…” she trailed off, out of ideas. Klaus raised a challenging eyebrow. She swallowed, bracing herself for what would probably give her too many uncomfortably enticing thoughts later that night. “Never have I ever eaten someone out.”

Klaus’s lips curled and he easily threw back the shot, placing the glass down. “Always time to try.”

“I’m surprised you’re advocating having sex with someone else since you’re such a jealous weirdo even when we’re not dating.”

“There’s magic for everything.”

She wasn’t sure if he was joking. She kind of didn’t want him to be. Was that weird? 

“Your turn,” she said quickly.

“Never have I ever eaten a frozen meal.”

“I have never been less surprised by anything. Those aren’t super classy. Stouffer’s mac n cheese is great when you’re hungover though. Um…Never have I ever used restraints during sex.”

He drank. She wished she’d been more specific. Did he tie someone up or let someone else do the tying? Why was her brain imagining both of those scenarios? Why did she like the idea of Klaus tying her up? 

“Never have I ever had a hangover,” he offered, and Caroline groaned, taking another shot.

“They’re the worst. Umm…Never have I ever had a threesome.”

He drank. 

“Never have I ever ridden a roller coaster.”

“Not even once?” Caroline asked after she’d downed the shot.

“No. I have more enjoyable things I could be doing.”

“Like the laundry list of sexcapades you’re trying to get me to guess?”

“That’s one category, yes. I’ve done almost everything, love. It’s a good strategy.”

“Everything?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “I’m sure there’s some stuff you haven’t done.”

“Almost everything you could imagine.”

“Yeah, okay. Never have I ever had sex with my sibling,” Caroline teased, her jaw dropping when Klaus took the shot without missing a beat. “Seriously?”

“We got bored.”

“Who got bored? Which one did you have sex with?”

“You used your turn, love. Never have I ever texted while driving.”

Caroline had downed the shot before he finished speaking, anxious to have her questions answered. “Never have I ever fucked my sister.”

Klaus rolled his eyes, taking the shot.

“Ew!" 

"Rather closed-minded of you, love.”

“She’s your sister. She’s also Rebekah, and therefore the least pleasant person in existence. Both things that should put her off limits.”

“I’ve fucked many unpleasant people. My sister doesn’t rank even close to the top of my list. We’re also a thousand years old with vampiric sex drives,” he said calmly, apparently not at all embarrassed. She wished she could give that few fucks about what taboos people caught her out committing. And also that she could stop imagining it. Imagining her also in that situation. With both of them. 

He was right, Rebekah was not obnoxious enough to not be hot, unfortunately.

“Never have I ever had a job.”

“Seriously? Never? Not even in viking times or whatever?”

“I had, I suppose you’d call them chores, but I didn’t have a job in the sense that they exist now.”

“What did you call them?”

“Sendifer”

“Bless you? Was that a sneeze?”

His lips twitched. “My native language.”

“Native language?”

“You can’t possibly have thought we spoke English?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I guess I never thought about it. How many languages do you speak?”

“Counting languages not in use today?” he asked, clearly already doing a mental calculation.

“Sure.”

“I can manage fairly well in at least fifty or so. I’m likely only fluent in ten or eleven, including my native tongue.”

“That’s a lot.”

He smiled slightly. “We had to learn to adapt.”

“Did you and Rebekah dirty talk each other with your native tongue?” Caroline drawled, the lack of filter from alcohol making her bolder.

Klaus chuckled. “If I said I did other things with–”

“Forget I asked,” Caroline interrupted, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ugh. Okay, um…Never have I ever done BDSM stuff.”

“That’s quite a broad category, love.”

“So that means you’ll drink, right?”

“Not interested as to what aspects?”

Caroline swallowed, her curiosity dueling with her complete certainty that if he told her anything, her traitor brain wouldn’t be able to forget, or to stop itself from imagining what it could be like for him to do those things to her. It only took her a brief moment to make up her mind, the alcohol making her bold, and she shrugged. “Fine. Never have I ever spanked someone during sex.”

He held her gaze as he poured his drink, his irises flashing gold for just a moment before he sipped it much too slowly, his tongue darting over his lips when he’d finished it. Her breath caught at the intensity of it, how he seemed to be cataloguing every little hint of her reaction. She was certain, in that moment, that he was imagining what it would be like to do it to her. It excited her more than it should have, and she tried to rub her thighs together as subtly as possible to soothe the ache. “Your turn,” she breathed, a bit embarrassed by how completely obvious she was being.

She barely registered whatever Klaus said, something about Netflix, and she drank despite not knowing what she was admitting, too distracted by the fantasies already spinning themselves much too easily.

“Never have I ever made someone call me Master during sex.”

He drank.

She was practically bursting with questions now, and she knew he could tell, that he was enjoying that she wanted to know more of what he’d done. An irrational tug of jealousy made itself known in her gut, something about Klaus having done these things with other people unsettling her. It was unfair, since he had to have done it to be able to talk about it, but her fingers twitched with the urge to touch, to claim, to run her tongue along his skin and hear the low rumble in his throat that she’d spent an embarrassing amount of time imagining he’d make if she ever gave in to what they both wanted.

“Ugh, I should stop drinking,” Caroline said, pushing the bottle away with the five others they’d gone through. “This is getting way too into TMI territory.”

“You do know that I’d answer these even if I weren’t drinking, don’t you love?”

“I don’t know if I could ask them sober,” she admitted before she could stop herself. 

He chuckled, making her bristle. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not, love. But out of curiosity, why wouldn’t you?”

“Because then I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. You. What you…what we…” she trailed off, shaking her head determinedly to make herself stop talking. “This is why I shouldn’t drink with you. I’ve already said more than I wanted to.”

“Would it be so bad?” he asked. “To give in? To let yourself have a moment of freedom?”

“What, like a what happens in the cabin stays in the cabin type deal?” she asked, unsure if she should even be considering this.

“If you like,” he said, giving her a nod. “I’ve gotten rather good at keeping secrets over the years, you know. I’d never betray your confidence.”

“How do I know?”

“I give you my word.”

“Full offense, but at this point that doesn’t mean much,” Caroline said, regretting the words at the way his expression tightened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“You did,” he said quietly, the words slow. “And I must admit I haven’t exactly done much to inspire confidence.”

“How hard was that to admit?”

His lips twitched. “To be honest with you, love? Much easier than it typically comes to me.”

He sounded so genuine. It was annoying. She took a deep breath. “You’d promise not to tell?”

He paused for a moment, and she thought he was reconsidering for a moment before he spoke. “You should sleep, sweetheart. I want you to be sure, for your peace of mind. And for mine.”

“Sure that I want to ask questions?”

“Sure that any decisions you make will be entirely your own.”

She took a sharp breath, knowing what decision he was implying she could make. Knowing she probably would if he kept looking at her like that. “Yeah. Good. I mean, sounds good.”

“See you in the morning, love,” he said, hesitating for a moment before pressing a light kiss to her cheek and gathering up the bottles to throw them out, turning away.

“I…good night.”

————

She hadn’t gotten much sleep. Though vampires technically didn’t need any, blood was a valuable commodity, and wasting it just so that they didn’t have to rest seemed unwise. She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning, letting her hands wander beneath the waistband of her shorts and then retreating just as quickly, worried that Klaus would hear, worried that she wanted Klaus to hear.

She’d given in around two in the morning after listening intently for Klaus’s breathing to slow, kicking off her shorts and letting her fingers circle her clit. She let herself get lost in visions of Klaus bending over her, demanding she beg as he fucked her much too slowly, staining her skin with fast-fading red marks when she moaned his name instead of his title. She teased herself, imagining her fingers curled against her walls were his, that he had bid her to hold still and scolding her when she shook against the touch, biting back her moans. Her breathing was ragged when she finally allowed herself release after dragging it out for as long as she dared in case Klaus woke, her imagined order of “come for me, sweetheart” tipping her over the edge.

She made sure to shower before she made her way to the kitchen in the morning, nervous that he’d catch the scent of her arousal, but from the knowing look he shot her, the curve of his lips, she had a feeling he knew anyway. She didn’t mind as much as she thought she would, which was honestly the scariest and yet most exhilarating part. 

“From all the free dirty kindle books I think I’m a sub, just so you know.” She’d waited until he’d taken a sip of blood-laced coffee, mostly to indulge her own enjoyment of watching the look on his face as the (second?) most powerful creature on earth attempted to hold back his cough when the liquid went down the wrong pipe. It was deeply satisfying. 

“Good morning to you too, sweetheart.”

“Good morning! But does that work, or do you prefer subbing? I won’t judge. Plus toxic masculinity is gross and people like what they like.”

“I prefer the dominant role, yes,” he said, looking more amused than anything else now that he’d recovered from his coughing fit. “No offense taken. I’ve tried it.”

“Not a fan?”

He did a surprisingly un-Klaus like grimace, and she wondered if he picked it up from her. “Not at all, no.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

He didn’t question why. “Does that mean you’ve made a decision?”

“I mean, I have more questions first, if that’s okay.”

“Always.”

She peppered him with questions. What kinds of things did he like to do? What were his usual rules for his subs? What punishments did he like to use when they broke them? Did he do that thing in all the books where he makes his subs sit a certain way? What title did he like? Why do people call it playing? Did he make it a requirement to be playing 24/7? 

On and on.

He was patient, answering her questions thoroughly and seemingly honestly. A lot of them were “it depends” followed by examples, and she resisted the urge to ask him more specific things about what he liked to stop him from saying all the words like that. It was just unfair, honestly. She found herself tempted as he painted a picture of what it could be like, his stories more like offers, the way he raked his eyes up and down her body when she rubbed her thighs together and bit her lip a sure indication that he was aware that she was seriously considering it, that he was imagining all the things he’d do to her if she agreed.

“I think I want to,” she admitted finally, her fingers curling around the handle of her mug, the coffee having long gone cold. “Try, I mean.”

“Do you know what sorts of things you’d like to try? Did the, ah…dirty kindle books give you any ideas?”

“I think I probably don’t know a lot of the options,” she admitted. “Being tied up seems fine? I don’t know.”

“What do you think about when you touch yourself?” he asked, as though admitting her fantasies was as easy as breathing. She flushed at his knowing glance, at the way his low tone made her breath catch.

“Getting told what to do, I guess? Being rough with me.”

A predatory smile spread across his face that made her all too aware of how her spine was pressed against the counter, giving her no room to move. It was a surge of adrenaline, the feeling of being hunted even if she’d expected it, wanted it. She let him move closer, let him take the mug out of her hands and set it on the counter before his palms settled on her hips. He glanced at her for a moment, reading her expression, checking for confirmation, and she nodded. He lifted her easily onto the counter, gently pressing her thighs apart, smirking when he saw the damp spot on the cotton of her shorts. “Tell me more, sweetheart.”

She took a deep breath, almost shaking with anticipation as he reached to fiddle with the drawstrings of her shorts, pulling the knots at the ends between his fingers, his knuckles brushing against her bare thigh just below the scalloped hem. She desperately wanted him closer, for his fingers to brush against her already wet center, but she tried to concentrate on what he asked her. They weren’t in play yet, hadn’t even really talked about any real ground rules, but she already didn’t want to disappoint him, wanted the rush of pleasing him. 

“You talk to me,” she offered, feeling her face heat when he smirked, his eyebrows raising.

“I talk to you?”

“You knew I was thinking about you sometimes” she said, trying to sound matter of fact even though she was kind of mortified. “You’re not an idiot.”

“Only sometimes?”

She swallowed. “A lot,” she said, her voice soft. “Probably too much.”

“No such thing,” he murmured, moving forward to gently press his lips against hers, moving his hand to find her clit through the fabric and press down lightly. She moaned into his mouth, her hands moving to rest on his shoulders. She’d imagined what it would be like to kiss Klaus probably hundreds of times, but this was…better. He took his time coaxing her lips to part for him, his tongue sweeping against the seam of them and then sucking her bottom lip lightly, giving a satisfied hum when her hips jerked against his fingers, swallowing her gasp. She felt the lightest brush of fang, not enough to break skin but enough to send a jolt through her that she’d never felt with anyone else. 

Enough to make her want him more. 

“Do you know how long I’ve dreamt of this, Caroline?” he whispered against her lips, the light brushes against her mouth making her shiver. “I stroke my cock imagining the sounds I’ll coax from your pretty lips, how I’ll make you shake for me. I’ve spent far too much time considering what a pretty picture you’d be spread for me on my sheets, your hair tangled in my fingers, just begging to be tugged. I want to tempt you into giving into your filthiest desires, to give yourself to me so that I can grant your every wish. I’ll give it all to you, Caroline. Anything you ask.”

She tipped her head back as he began to press light kisses down her jawline. “Tell me now, love. What do you think about? What do you want?" 

"I…”

“What did you think about last night?” he asked, and she could hear the smugness in his voice. It would have made her want to smack him if his fingers between her legs didn’t feel so fucking good. “I heard your breathing, the rustle of the sheets. What’s on your mind, love?”

“I imagined you behind me,” she began, her voice shaky, almost embarrassed to say the words out loud. “You were pulling my hair and making me beg for you. Teasing me.”

“Begging me for my cock?”

“Yes.”

“Where, Caroline? What was I doing? Was I filling your pussy? Stretching you? Making you ask for me to fuck you faster? Harder?” his voice was a low growl, heavy with lust. She felt his hand leave its place at her center and moaned at the loss of friction, squirming to try and make him go back. He chuckled, sliding his palm beneath her ass and pinching the flesh of it lightly, making her gasp. “Or perhaps I was taking your pretty arse with my cock. Making you beg for me to make you truly submit. Did you ask for me to pull your hair and show you who owns you, Caroline? Do you like being made to admit that you’re mine?”

She knew she was blushing brightly, her breathing labored at the picture he was painting in her mind. She hadn’t considered the possibility somehow, that being claimed like that might turn her on, but she was growing more wet from it, somehow found herself needing it. 

“The first one,” she admitted. “And sometimes I’d call you by your name instead of by your title just to make you spank me.”

“What was I in this fantasy, Caroline?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you call me?”

She inhaled sharply as he squeezed her ass, the bite of his nails making her hips jerk. “Master,” she whispered, the word foreign on her tongue and yet somehow comfortable. Natural. She heard the rumble low in his throat that she’d somehow always known he’d make, the pleased hum of a satisfied predator that had won.

“And you like to be spanked?”

She found herself wanting to push him, to see how far he’d go, whether he’d be as possessive as she’d imagined, as she’d secretly wanted.

“Tyler did spank me once or twice and I liked that. He liked me on my hands and knees before the moon.”

Klaus’s returning snarl made her smile. “Jealous?” she asked, trying not to sound too smug.

The answering rip of fabric exposing her skin making her squeak in surprise. She gasped as Klaus found her wet core, the tips of his fingers dipping into it to make her squirm. “Look at me, Caroline.”

She obeyed, her lips slightly parted, needing him to touch her but unsure how to put it into words without sounding desperate. 

“Beg,” he whispered, the command also a clear warning. Klaus apparently didn’t care if she was desperate, probably wanted her to be, wanted her to crave him the way he’d clearly wanted her. He wanted to know that she wouldn’t be thinking of anyone else.

“Please.”

“You can do better,” he murmured, the implied order making her shiver. Her craving for his approval and his touch warred with the instinct to not give an inch, the worry that she’d embarrass herself. “And address me correctly.”

“Please touch me, Master.”

“More,” he demanded, though he rewarded her with a brush of his thumb against her clit, coaxing out a moan. “Tell me what you want. Perhaps I’ll be kind enough to indulge you.”

“Master, I…please make me come. Please. I need you to touch me.”

“How do you want me to touch you, Caroline? Do you want to my fingers or my cock?”

She swallowed, knowing which she’d prefer, but the word seemed so filthy to say out loud. She bit her lip. “Your fingers, Master.”

“I don’t like it when you lie to me, love.”

She flushed. “Sorry, Master.”

“Say it, sweetheart.”

She rolled her hips, hoping for him to at least let her have another touch, but he withdrew, an eyebrow raised. “I want your cock, Master,” she said finally. “Please.”

“Good,” he praised, pressing a soft kiss to her neck. “And where do you want it?”

“Inside of me.”

She knew she’d been too vague the moment she’d said it and Klaus pulled away, his lips twisted in a wicked smirk. Her reluctance to use words that made her blush was clearly something she’d have to get over.

“Get on your knees, then,” he said, his hands already going for his belt. 

She let her knees hit the tile floor, arching her back to stretch before settling on her elbows, her legs spread. She heard Klaus chuckle behind her, and she looked over her shoulder in confusion, about to ask what was so funny, and her lips parted when she saw him already nude, stroking his cock in his hand, his thumb brushing over the tip of it. She felt her core ache, her walls fluttering in anticipation, needing that feeling of fullness, but he grabbed the nearby kitchen chair and settled into it. “On your knees here,” he corrected, pointing at the tile floor in front of him. “I want to watch you suck my cock. That fulfills your request, doesn’t it? For you to take me in your mouth?”

Technically, she supposed it did. She knew better than to argue anyway. “Yes, Master.”

“Good. Come here. Crawl.”

She was pretty sure that her skin tone had been increasingly approaching tomato-level red, but she was growing too turned on to care, feeling the embarrassment fade as she let herself give in. She crawled the few feet towards him, settling between his legs and keeping her gaze on his as she leant forward. His hand buried in her hair, keeping her in place. “What do you say when I’m kind enough to give you what you so sweetly begged for, love?”

“Thank you, Master.”

“For?”

“Thank you for letting me suck your cock, Master,” she amended, the words becoming easier to say every time she saw Klaus’s eyes darken with lust when he watched her. “May I begin, please?” she added impulsively, drawing on said free kindle books for inspiration, hoping it was the right thing to say. Klaus’s returning dimpled grin told her that it was.

“Good girl,” he murmured, his grip on her hair loosening to allow her to bend forward. She was finding that she liked getting praise from him, that it was immensely satisfying to know that she was doing well, that she was saying the right things. That he wanted her as she was. She wanted more.

She parted her lips, letting her tongue flick against the tip of him, savoring his low groan before wrapping her lips around him, taking as much as she could and hollowing her cheeks as she bobbed up and down his length. She kept her eyes down–Tyler had liked that she had clearly submitted so she assumed Klaus would too–and she felt a light tug on her hair. “Look at me," 

She let her eyes flick up to meet his, found herself almost hypnotized by his gaze in a way that felt entirely different from compulsion. The heady rush of how he was watching her, as though he’d found nothing more mesmerizing in his life than her lips around his cock, was difficult to tear herself away from. So she didn’t. She kept going slowly, teasing him with her tongue and teeth, experimenting to see what he liked. She could feel her pussy ache when he told her how much he loved watching her on her knees for him with her lips around his cock, rubbed her thighs together to relieve the friction there when he told her he could smell it, that he could tell how much she loved being his to command, how much she loved submitting. She reached to use her hands to stroke him where her mouth couldn’t reach when he ordered her to, the sharp tone making her ache. 

He was getting close, she could tell, his lips parting, eyes growing hazy. He bucked against her mouth when she dragged her teeth down his shaft at the same time as she stroked his sac, making her gag loudly. He seemed to like it. She wanted him to come, to watch the original hybrid become putty in her hands. She slowly ran her nail down the patch of skin underneath him that she’d read on the internet once would make most men fall apart.

The internet, as it turned out, was not wrong in this particular case.

She swallowed, pulling away slowly, resisting the urge to lick her lips or wipe her face with the back of her hand, something telling her that Klaus wanted to see her like this. His breathing was heavy, his body relaxed. She practically preened when he reached to stroke her cheek. "I think I like seeing my release cling to your skin, love. Perhaps next time I’ll come on your breasts. Make you leave it there for hours as a reminder of how you were willing to beg for my touch.”

She gasped when he reached to wipe it away with his thumb, holding it in front of her lips as an invitation. Perhaps a command. She ran her tongue slowly along the pad of it to lick it clean, holding his gaze, satisfied at his low groan. She found herself straddling him on the chair a moment later, pressed against his body and fighting to keep herself from grinding her wet core against his hand, the heel of his palm so close to her clit that if she shifted just a bit he might give her the friction she needed. She had a feeling he wouldn’t take kindly to that, though, perhaps even cruelly leave her just on the edge, and she really wanted to come.

“Thank you, Master,” she said again, hoping that remembering that he’d framed it a reward for her would get him to give her what she actually wanted, and he chuckled, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. 

“Do you want to come, Caroline?”

“Yes, please.”

He let one of his hands stroke her spine as he pressed two fingers inside of her, curling them against her walls and beginning to move them slowly, adding a third after she’d adjusted enough. She was vaguely aware that she was begging out loud, barely stopped herself from saying his name more than once, and she heard him murmur pretty words about how delicious he was sure she’d taste, how perhaps next time he’d let her come on his tongue instead and wouldn’t she like that?

“Yes, Master.”

He pressed his thumb to her clit, watching her tip over the edge with an expression that might have been closer to affection than lust. She wondered whether she should be concerned by that, by the fact she’d already admitted deep down that this wasn’t just about sex. 

No, Klaus had lured her in with promises of his touch and his attentions, but that wasn’t really the hook that pulled her towards him. He would entice her by bringing her fantasies to life and making her body crave him. He’d make sure to ruin her for everyone else. But she knew that even if she hadn’t given in, even if she’d remained in denial, he would have inevitably won over her heart just as he did her body. She knew his games, was completely aware that he had an ulterior motive for this, that he likely already knew how close she was to admitting out loud that she wouldn’t mind being his that much. Or at all. 

Klaus generally got what he wanted, stopped at nothing to achieve his goals and obsessed over his projects with an intensity that even she, a certified goal-setter, found vaguely terrifying. 

And she’d never been more sure of anything in her life than that Klaus Mikaelson wanted her, at least for now. 

All she had to decide was whether, or more accurately when, she’d truly give herself to him.

[jane-the-zombie]

Freefalling || Otto & Jane

TIMING: Before mimes. PARTIES: @gravityfissure and @jane-the-zombie SUMMARY: Jane fell off a cliff. RIP. 

When she was off duty and not worried about being stabbed by a mime, Jane was a different person. White Crest, surprisingly, was more dangerous than she had anticipated. Between pieces of shit teenagers jumping in front of her car in the dark, mime stabbings, and the thick wild life… she wasn’t as bored as she was afraid she was going to be when transferred out of the city and to such a small town. Just a normal town, as they said. The rockwall had been found on a previous hike. Raising up about 40-50 feet, she was sure that getting to the top would give her the most glorious view of the ocean. Of course, the view wasn’t what had her attached to the wall, scaling it without any proper safety equipment. Falling didn’t matter. She started the climb probably fifteen minutes ago, leaving her backpack down at the bottom. She grunted quietly, pulling herself further up. Jane glanced down, checking her progress. If she fell from this height, she would die. Jane laughed, pulling herself up further, that fact just made her want to go faster, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and - Her foot slipped off it’s foothold and she was off balance. “Fuck!” Jane swore loudly, trying to correct herself. That just made it worse. Scraping her hands against the rocks, she was suddenly falling backwards and down towards a very unforgiving ground.  

He’d settled faster than he’d anticipated into the small town of White Crest, it had been pure luck and desperation really that he’d fallen into the position he had. He could live off the money he had in the bank from all the jobs he’d pulled for the Tarot but that money had its limitations and he’d rather not splash those funds just yet. So the convenience of a job that somewhat suited his alchemical talents of mixing potions (albeit mixing drinks) with a magical flare helped keep him from worrying too much. It didn’t seem as though anyone had caught on to him here, and that suited him just fine, though it didn’t stop him from wondering just how long it would be before he could go home. To see his family again and pound the streets with those familiar faces. But a quiet voice in the back of his head answered his lingering thoughts, sewing doubts into the subconscious quiet of his mind. Not until you understand. Not until you control. But control was one of those issues. No matter how hard he tried to recreate the complex emotional situation he had yet to feel that surge of power, the tangling of invisible threads that had allowed him to quite literally reverse the forces acting on a bullet meant to take his life. It was this attempt at learning control that explained why he sat staring balefully with an extended hand at a pile of rocks under the shade of the trees. “Fuck!” he grunted at another failed attempt to move them shoving to his feet and stalking to the edge of the small private clearing he utilised for his practise.

It was looking out to the ocean that he suddenly saw something strange. A woman falling, picking up speed towards the ground from a height that would maim if not kill if she hit. The wash of panic and adrenaline that overtook him was instantaneous, his body and mind syncing simultaneously. A violet shimmer washed over his eyes as his hands were thrown up palms facing the sky before curling his fingers into tight fists as though grasping and pulling the air towards him. And suddenly, the woman no longer plummeted, instead, drifting slowly down to the ground as the kinetic energy of her fall was dissipated in a shockwave nearby sending a few stones skittering down the cliff. Otto barely felt the blood trickling from his nose as he skidded down the slope towards the woman, “shit lady, are you okay?”

It was funny. She heard from victims that survived dangerous falls that time seemed to slow down before they crashed to the ground, but not like this. Jane was disoriented when it hit her. She had been falling - plummeting to her ‘death’, really - and then she was… floating? Jane didn’t register that she was safely on the ground, small stones and rocks scattering off the adjacent cliff, until she heard a voice and feet skidding across the rocks. Brow furrowed, she pushed herself up to sitting position and immediately began to check herself over for injuries, confused. She wasn’t… injured, minus the scraping on her palms. That would hurt later, but it certainly wasn’t going to kill her.  Jane realized that her heart was beating fast and she felt great - she never had a rush quite like that before. The feeling of plummeting down to the ground as it got closer and closer and closer until… well. She clearly didn’t die. She wasn’t craving brains, and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t have woken up right away either. She looked up at the man that approached and frowned at him.

“Your nose is bleeding,” Jane pointed at his nose, still slightly dazed and high from whatever the hell just happened, She wondered if she did it again, the same thing would happen. She pushed herself off the ground, her balance wobbly for a moment. Knees weak, probably with fear. Great. She may not fear death, but she wasn’t about to test her luck. Today at least. She went to grab her backpack off the ground. “I’m fine, I guess,” Jane said, looking up at the cliffside she had been trying to climb. “Did you see what happened? What was that?” She was fishing around for something in her pack now - where was it? The first-aid kit. She needed to put bandages on her hands, and rando here’s nose was gushing blood. “Are you alright?” Jane asked, finally pulling it out. “Did something hit you? Bad allergies? Come here.”

Otto knew the rules as well as the next person, but something about this had been instinctual. The shock of seeing someone plummeting to their imminent demise and instinct to act. The need to save them. It stirred lingering feelings of guilt as the memories that plagued him of the day he’d discovered these very abilities rose to the surface. But that was tempered for the time being by the mild horror of someone almost dying. Not to mention lingering underneath those cacophony of emotions was the surprise and returning frustration that he’d managed to summon these powers once more in a situation beyond his control. Was that the key? Shit. He really didn’t want powers that only thought themselves useful when shit was hitting the fan.

“What?” he questioned as he skidded to a stop on a few loose rocks not yet realising the twin streams of crimson trailing down from his nostrils. “You guess? You just fell like forty fucking feet,” he glanced at the cliff in question and then back to her as she shakily got to her feet. “I--” he gaped for a moment, the panic and shock leaving him feeling more than a little light-headed himself. “No idea, no fucking idea I guess… You just got lucky,” what else was there to say? I can do magic and saved your goddamn life and you owe me one for almost giving me a heart attack? He closed his mouth, wiping his nose with a slightly shaking hand and seeing it come away stained crimson he blinked. “Oh, shit” he muttered moving to pinch the bridge of his nose with a wince and leaning forwards slightly to stem the blood. “I’m… fine, this uh… happens when… I’m stressed. And that… was stressful.” He noticed the first aid kit she pulled out, “got any… gauze or something in there by any chance?”

“Well,” Jane considered, looking up at the cliff side, trying to gauge where she had been before she had lost her footing. “It was more like thirty. Maybe thirty-five? I still had a bit to go before I pulled myself up to the top. Ah, well, semantics.” Jane waved it off uncaringly as she brushed a piece of hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. She glanced at him, examining him sharply. Gotten lucky? Lucky? “Lucky is one way of putting it,” she said, doubtfully. Something more was at work, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. It definitely hadn’t been her that slowed herself down. Hours spent grilling her ex-fiancee on what exactly he did to her hadn’t included magic pre-zombie you’re a wizard, harry crap, and from what Jason said, after she became a zombie, none of that shit would impact her anyway. Still, she guessed she was supposed to be thankful she was saved by something, since nobody else knew that dying didn’t really mean what it meant to everyone else. “Good thing, though.” She added, lazily.

Jane held the first aid kit out to him, not wanting to touch the gauze she had with her own bloodied hands. It was funny, he seemed to be more stressed out by her fall than she was. “Here, you need to sit down,” Jane pointed to a nearby rock. “Come on, lean forward and keep pinching your nose like that. Are you sure you’re alright?” He seemed shaken, and she almost felt a little bad. Well, she hadn’t known she was going to fall off a cliff today. “What’s your name?” She asked, casually. “I’m Jane. And what are you doing out here? Hiking? It is a nice day.”

“You don’t seem very fazed by… that, like at all” he waved at the cliff more than a little perturbed by this stranger's apparent lack for care regarding their own well-being. Falling from a height like that should have scared anyone out of their might witless, but this woman seemed more than okay and Otto couldn’t help but side-eye her a little in caution. Either she was some kind of immortal or something else.

As the first aid kit was offered, Otto took a couple of pieces of gauze with his clean hand and brought it under his nose to try and stem the bleeding with a muttered thanks. He nodded mutely, maneuvering himself to sit down on the indicated spot the horizon of his vision swaying a little with the intensity of the magic he’d summoned in such a short period of time. It was exhilarating but equal measures exhausting. “Otto… Name’s Otto,” he answered after a short pause, why had he left his bag up there with his trusty bottle of booze in it? He needed a drink to steady his nerves. “Hiking wha-” the confusion lasted but a moment before he caught on, “oh, uh, yeah… hiking. You know… since the sun’s back.” though in his current jeans and t-shirt he was hardly dressed for a long ‘hike’ through the trails in the region. His eyes flickered back to the cliff once more, “what were you doing? Seems kind of like a death wish to... go up there.”

Jane carefully followed him, waiting for him to take gauze out of the kit before grabbing some herself to treat her hands. Some disinfectant and a couple bandaids and she’d be good as new. She couldn’t believe some man that came across her was bleeding more than her and she had just fallen off a cliff side. “Ah, well… Maybe I’m in shock,” she said, doubtfully. Her legs were still wobbly, doing that damn leg shaky thing people did when they were anxious or hopped of on something. Her adrenaline high was quickly wearing off, probably because she was stuck worrying about a bloody nose - actually, she was kind of worried about the bloody nose because he sort of like… She didn’t know. Not alright. “It’s fine, no one died.” She shrugged.

“Otto…” The name sparked a memory, something that someone said online, but she couldn’t quite remember at that moment. He had faltered with her hiking excuse she fed him, she she raised an eyebrow curiously. And he wasn’t dressed for it either. She raised an eyebrow, and glanced up at the cliff side. “Rock climbing.” Then again, she wasn’t dressed for hardcore rock climbing either. Most people didn’t do that shit in athletic leggings and her old Colby College zip up hoodie. “Freehand. It is dangerous. You shouldn’t try it.” Jane advised. It was okay for her to do this shit, she was the one that would live forever. She rubbed the side of her neck, over the scar. “As you can see why. People fall.” She added.

Perhaps if he wasn’t so distracted by someone nearly splattering themselves across the rocks he would’ve reacted differently and maybe been able to place the name. But as it stood, Otto had other things on his mind and he felt some slight pressure in his temples that made thinking straight harder than it usually was. “That’s not shock,” he cast his gaze back to her, bright but stern blue eyes fixed for a lingering second. He’d seen shock plenty of times before, that definitely wasn’t it. “You could’ve...”

Otto could usually get on the ball rather quickly when he was working at full capacity, but the rush of unexpected and uncontrolled magic had tapped him. Eventually pulling the bloodied gauze away he sniffed, grimacing at the ache in his nose but another touch indicated it wasn’t bleeding anymore. Small mercies. So he looked back to this woman as he announced herself a rock climber, and then in a sense that left him staring at her as if she’d grown another head. “No shit it’s dangerous,” the sarcasm was dry on his voice. Otto narrowed his eyes a fraction standing up a little as he continued to eye her dubiously, the sunlight streaming overhead told him well enough she wasn’t a vampire. So something else or she was simply willing to risk her life for a thrill. When she rubbed her neck his eyes tracked the movement and narrowed further in suspicion, while the mark was a bit obstructed by the hoodie it wasn’t difficult to miss something so distinct. You didn’t grow up in a city filled with eight-million souls and not run into lots of different supernaturals and Otto had run into a fair collection by now. “You get bit?”

“No,” Jane agreed. It wasn’t shock, and by the stern look in his eye, they both knew it. She wasnt’ about to string it along or start pretending like she was in shock now. “I think I’m just grateful I’m okay.” He couldn’t call that a lie, even if it wasn’t necessarily true. “Because you’re right. I could have died. But I didn’t. Thankfully.” She wondered what the process of becoming a zombie was like. If she would just black out and wake up later, hungry for brains. Jason had a normal enough life - normal enough to fool her for years. She supposed it would be the same thing.

Otto didn’t seem to be too pleased with her. Or maybe it was the situation. She tired explaining why she did what she did to her brother and her father - the skydiving, the bungee-jumping, all the dangerous things she signed up for or did without proper safety equipment, and they hadn’t understood. Her little sister called it a midlife crisis and left it be. She watched as he stood, and half stood herself, not sure he was ready to get up yet. “Hey now,” Jane said, cautiously. Wait, what was he doing. “What? Stop looking at me like…. That.” Jane would have called it cop eyes, but he didn’t necessarily have the demeanor of a fellow cop - though she supposed she couldn’t judge a book by a cover, as the old saying went. She frowned slightly, tracking his eyes to her neck, and she let out a sigh. She had been self concious about the stupid scar at first. IT was ugly and noticeable, but once she figured out that she wasn’t about to spend all that cash on makeup and that she could just hide it with a few fancy side braids at work she didn’t care. What was one scar vs. living forever, anyway. “Yeah,” she said finally, settling back on the rock and reaching for her large metal water bottle. She held it out to him. “Got into a fight at my job and he got me,” she said. “Here. For your hand. And face. To get the blood off.”

“Hmph,” his gaze lingered for a moment as she gave her reasoning and he wondered for a moment whether this was the truth. But he couldn’t sense any reason to say that what she said wasn’t true in some regard, she had lived, she was still here and how could anyone not be somewhat thankful for that? “Was gonna say, would be pretty strange to not be thankful for that.” But then in a town like this who could really say what normal was?

Seeing her move to stand he waved his hand a little, slightly dismissive of her coming to his aid. He appreciated it but something about all of this didn’t add up. Though the pieces began to formulate in his mind as he took the situation and incremental bits he was discovering and put them together. “Like what?” an innocuous question by all regards, but the piercing curiosity couldn’t always be tempered or helped. But there was no helping his assessment, and his eyes lingered for a moment or two. Would it be better not to ask? But then again if you never asked the question you never got the answer. As she offered the water canister he took it and washed off his hand and used a clean bit of the gauze to deal with the blood on his face, “thanks,” he said, handing it back but his eyes returned once more to the mark and then the sun that streamed down overhead. His head tilted as she confirmed what he thought the mark to be and there was a stretch of silence. “So what? You’re a werewolf or a zombie?” it had to be one or the other. The other options simply didn’t fit.

It certainly wasn’t that she wasn’t thankful for being alright, it’s just that regardless of how things had plated out, she would have been just fine. She had a few near death experiences before - and hell, she had been shot at on multiple occasions at her job. Jane was indifferent. “Quite strange,” she agreed, going back to tending to her hands. There was the bottle of disinfectant. She grabbed it, putting a little on the gauze as she began dabbing at the scrape. Ouch.

Jane glanced back up at him. “Like that,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes at him. He knew like what. Like that. What he’d just been doing. “Like you’re going to try to interrogate me,” Jane said after a moment. She had continued to dab at her hand, and had just been reaching for the small box of bandaids in the kit when he asked the money question. She looked up at him, startled by the question. There was that damn thing about werewolves again. “Are you fucking with me?” Jane asked, automatically. She certainly wasn’t in denial about what was going to happen to her - she did that song and dance long ago, 5 stages of whatever. But Jason had pleaded with her not to tell anyone. There were people that murdered people like him because they thought he shouldn’t exist. Jane thought that made sense, even if she didn’t agree with it - no one should be murdering anyone. At all. - but zombies got a bad name, considering all the media about them. Other than her ex-fiance being a lying son-of-a-bitch, he was an upstanding citizen. He even paid his taxes. She looked to Otto, before grabbing the box of bandaids to continue what she was doing, thinking carefully. “I don’t know if I should answer that,” Jane finally said, but she held up a bloody hand. Zombies didn’t bleed. “But I’m certainly human.” For now, at least.

Another look was briefly shot over his shoulder to where he’d been working, hopefully no one nicked his stuff in the interim. But he looked back to Jane after a moment while she dabbed at her hand. His eyes remained narrowed, but they eased a fraction as she seemed to grow a little defensive. Understandable, but ultimately they could dance around this in circles all day. It really didn’t mean anything to Otto whether he learned the truth or not, but ultimately having tabs on one more supernatural - if she even was one didn’t hurt. “Depends, that was a pretty hefty fall you survived. Certainly not natural by any means...” he countered evenly as he stood there his posture relaxed as he studied her reaction which in itself was telling. No sort of denial to the fact. Interesting.

“Sure, right now… But a bite like that doesn’t come with some kinda consequence…” he tilted his head to indicate her neck once more. “You ain’t a vamp, you’d be toast by now if you were so it’s one or the other…” A slight sigh through his nose sounded at the evasive response. “Look you can answer it, I’m not gonna go full Van Helsing or Leon S. Kennedy on you if you are… Plenty of people in town are… different and it’s useful to know who you can trust when those people who don’t have quite so many qualms about the issue do decide to not be so liberal and get their weapons out.”

She glanced over to where he kept looking, and finally stood back up once the bandaids were on her hands. They seemed to be tiptoeing around each other, dancing around this hidden truth that none of them were willing to admit. “I would have died,” Jane said, dryly. “I was falling head first, so take that for what it is.” Jane brushed that stray piece of hair out of her face again, folding her arms over her chest, staring at him. Consequence. She knew what her consequence was, and she was fine with it. What human didn’t want to be immortal.

Her eyes narrowed, however, when he continued. Vamps - vampires. Great. So those were things too, apparently. Or the guy was a nutjob. Either one. “You’ll forgive me for being reserved,” she said, a little stiff. She glanced back up the small slope where he had approached from in the first place, gathering her first aid kit back up,and stuffed it back in her pack now that nobody was bleeding profusely anymore. “I’m aware of the town, though I haven’t met too many other who are… Also aware of things.” She eyed him suspiciously, the ‘cop eyes’ now turned on him. “What are you really doing out here? And why do you know about…” Jane gestured vaguely to the side of her neck. “Most people leave it alone when I say I’ve gotten bit. You came from up there, right?” Jane pointed up the slope, ready to go climb up and take a look at it herself. She paused though, to glance at him. “Not… Not a werewolf.” She would give him that to make his own conclusion. It was basically as good as telling him anyhow.

Otto knew the benefit of keeping his opinions about certain things to himself. And on some topics he had a rather lengthy set of opinions and thoughts. But around strangers he tended to err on the side of caution before he started to talk too openly. Though not being straight could often lead to length and time-wasting conversations that could be better spent discussing more relevant matters. So, he braced himself and took the leap of faith he felt was required.

“Well, one of us has to say it or else where are we going to get? I don’t have all day to dance around things...” As she packed up he figured that this would be it and she would go her own way… “Most tend to prefer their privacy… There’s a decent community of supernaturals but Hunters have never been particularly forgiving.” Her own suspicious look caused Otto to stiffen a little himself. “Minding my own until someone needed saving and interrupted me...” he gestured towards the cliff as if to bolster his point. And the moment she started in the direction he’d come from he opened his mouth to protest, before he hurried up after her. “Most people like to stand on precedence and respect people’s privacy… I like to keep myself informed” and alive by proxy of knowing. “Right… Not a werewolf” which was his way of acknowledging he understood what wasn’t being said. A glance to her hands further informed him of her current state, not turned either… Good. So his brains weren’t on the plate.

“I’ve heard of Hunters,” Jane said, a frown on her face. This was the second time she was discussing hunters with someone, even if she truly didn’t understand what they were. Or she hadn’t ever met one. Well, knowingly, at least. It wasn’t smart to shoot your mouth off about killing people in front of a police detective. If you don’t have all day to dance, maybe you shouldn’t ask, was what she wanted to say, but she didn’t because she knew as well as anyone that she would have been asking questions too.

And, well, she was  going to ask questions because she was pretty sure he didn’t want her to go this way, and she was certainly going to do it anyway. “You make it sound like you’re the one that did the saving,” Jane replied back suspiciously as she got to the site and glanced around. Well, at least he wasn’t out here doing some weird cult shit with sacrificing chickens and goats or something. A strange rock circle, and some old books… Jane hummed, kneeling down to poke at them. “Keeping yourself informed is keeping yourself alive,” she reasoned, “So I suppose I can’t really blame you. What are these?” Jane glanced back at him curious if he would answer her or not. He clearly knew about werewolves and zombies and vampires, and she had to wonder if he was one himself. Though, maybe he was just some poor unfortunate human that got thrust with this shit. Then again... She looked between the old books and then back at him. “Out hiking, you said?” she asked, innocently.

“Hearing ‘bout them and experiencing them are two different matters… And if you are what you say you are, turned or not then they’ll be out for your head if they do happen to learn the truth of it.” Perhaps it was ominous or even a harsh reality, but Otto was giving her the cold hard facts of that situation. Whilst he spoke a hand raised to rub at his right forearm. “Just as a word of warning.”

Her suspicions were met with a slightly weary look, he didn’t particularly owe this woman anything to confirm that he’d saved her life though by this point it was pretty much a given. The clues were all there if you wanted to put the pieces together. “The point is, consider the impact your actions are gonna have on other people. I can’t afford the therapy needed for seeing someone’s head smashed in - zombie or not.” When they arrived at the site of his practise and seeing the look this woman gave his books, he narrowed his eyes. A sharp flick of his wrist followed, the cover flipping over and lock on its side snapping tightly shut. “My stuff,” he answered vaguely, going to pick up the books and tuck them into his backpack along with a couple of the focus crystals set out. The question earned a side-eye as he paused in his packing, “uh huh that’s what I said… Hiked out here to read.” Which technically wasn’t a lie.

“I know,” Jane said simply, looking at Otto with a matter of fact look on her face. “That’s usually why I try to keep it under wraps. You know, in case I ever run into one. Warning taken, thank you,” she said with a shrug. She wasn’t concerned about that anymore, however, because now she was more curious about Otto. He laid out the clues in front of her, and as she watched his book snap shut with a wave of his hand, and she concluded in her head. He didn’t really need to say it, just like she didn’t really need to say what she was (or what she was going to be) either.

“Your stuff,” she repeated, “That you lugged all the way out here to read.” She was amused now. Jane stood, hands on her hips as she looked him up and down. “Alright, sure. You hiked out here to read your magic books, where you saw me up there -” Jane pointed back to the cliff she had been scaling. “- did… whatever you did to stop me from smashing my head open. Is that what made your nose bleed?” she asked, curiously. How the hell did that work? How did any of that work? She considered his earlier words about how her actions would impact others, and she scoffed. “I didn’t know you were out here.” She pointed out. “If I had, I would have chosen another spot. But I’m not actively trying to die, you know. I slipped. It was an accident.”

Packing the last of his items away into his bag he side-eyed the woman again for a moment. “Yeah my stuff,” a backpack full of stuff was hardly that suspicious in the grand scheme of things “issue?” Though his eyes thinned for a moment as he shifted the bag up onto his shoulder. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that right?” No clarification was given but she’d figured it out for herself so there was no need for it.

“Magic has its consequences,” was the simplest and most concise response that summed up all the relevant answers into one. “A nosebleed is a rather mundane one.” Hearing her scoff Otto cocked his head to one side. “Yeah, well, how about next time you get some ropes?”

“It’s sort of my job to ask questions,” Jane said, a bit of a smug smile on her face. The truth, though maybe a little extreme in this case. A nosebleed was just a rather mundane consequence, was it? Jane considered asking him if he wanted to try it again, try to stop her fall. It had been fun, looking back at it. Like an extreme form of bungee jumping. Except she wasn’t quite sure he was going to go for that, considering his insistence that she bring ropes and gear the next time she went out.

“Right, ropes,” she said, and then gave a bit of a shrug. “Sure, I’ll definitely do that next time. Probably.” Jane gave him a once over, considering asking something else about magic, before she once again thought better of it. She shifted the bag on her back headed back towards the slope. She raised a hand in goodbye. “Well, have a good rest of your day with your ‘hiking’ and your ‘stuff’. Try not to not get another nose bleed next time.” She skidded down the slope haphazardly, back down towards the path.

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Mon 6 May

MET GALA!!!

The waiting is finally over! Harry graced the pink carpet wearing the most beautiful thing I've ever seen him in, an absolutely ear to ear joyful beaming smile. He looked so happy up there! His outfit ruffled some feathers by, some felt, not ruffling enough feathers, but was it camp? Without question. He embraced an androgynous look with masculine styling set against a high femme sheer blouse, draped trousers, heels and jewelry. Literally anything he could have chosen to wear would have on some level disappointed by cutting off the million possibilities that existed until the moment we saw him in one of them, so there's that right? So it wasn't a dress or a rainbow bear suit BUT! Were his tits out WERE THEY EVER was he in heels YES was it lacy and kind of tacky YES with a drop pearl earring and bejeweled hands YES with his muscles on display and a stubbled face to contrast the feminine elements YES and as for the fact that he actually fucking wore the BIG ASS BEE EARRING well. He Did That.

AND THEN he changed into a clownish ensemble featuring a frilled shirt and cartoonish cross earring and outsized asymmetrical bowtie; an exaggerated send up of baby boybander Harry Edward Styles himself! Y'all: SO CAMP! And like all that wasn't enough he got drunk, introduced Cher with the immortal line, "guys gals and non binary pals," and called everyone bitches multiple times!! (Harry @ cher talking about being poor- "not anymore bitch," damn like u should talk boy!)

Listen: it's funny but also dead on that the most common complaint people had about his black outfit was that he looked the same as always, like y'all are reaaallly missing the point- this kid IS CAMPY like just, all the time! He's camp through and through, he's camp when he's in workout shorts and a beanie or when he's in frills and heels, and he is truly out there living that truth tonight. Would I like to have seen him dressed as the sun king? I mean, yeah, sure! But it's okay. As Harry said when asked about his look, "it's camp." On what camp means to him, he said, "no judgements and having fun with clothes. I think fashion is supposed to be fun." He's having fun tonight and I'm so happy about it!

Anyway there will probably be even more- Harry's out there drunk and wild! there definitely will!- but time zones: the rest will be into tomorrow's post. Until then, bitches!

[qobiin]

weekly fic rec hoard

here's what i've been enjoying reading (and re-reading) this past week for different fandoms across the board! this week features: atla, bnha, good omens, harry potter, marvel, naruto and stranger things  ♡ means: all-time fave, (m) means: 18+ themes 

avatar: the last airbender

♡ first rule of earth kingdom fight club... series by ohmygodwhy  zuko, his stubborn inability to die, and finding himself thru getting his ass kicked 

The Most Ragged Edges by twinfinite  In hindsight, Zuko really should have seen this conversation coming. He can almost hear Li and Lo chanting wickedly about the magic of Ember Island, about waves smoothing away rough edges… 

♡ ribs by ohmygodwhy  The first thing Zuko tells him during their first lesson after the whole Sun Warrior ruins ordeal, is “Fire comes from the breath.” a lesson in learning, and re-learning. 

♡ see your son rising at last by aloneintherain  When Zuko dashes into the sitting room, it is with the same wide-eyed panic that he ran from Azula’s smoking hands when he was a child. Iroh bites down on a smile. Zuko looks the same, even now, a decade later with a scar blossomed over one side of his face, green and brown robes replacing the solitary reds of his childhood. His hair is puffed up around his face. He looks like a very frightened, very windswept turtle-dove. Zuko dives behind Iroh just as Aang breezes to a stop in the doorway. Five times Zuko hid behind Iroh, plus one time Zuko stood proudly in front of him.

♡ the beginning of a new and brighter birth by aloneintherain  “I’m so proud of you, my nephew.” Uncle cups Zuko’s face in his lined hand. The gesture is so tender, his palm so warm, that Zuko has to take a fortifying breath against the sudden swell of emotion in his chest. “I want to be a good leader, Uncle,” Zuko says. “I want to look after my people.” “You will,” Uncle says. “You are, nephew.” In a new era of peace, Zuko works to be a very different Fire Lord than his forefathers.

boku no hero academia 

the stars are floating and we are flying by lunalou  Aizawa starts walking towards the exit, obviously expecting Shouto to follow him, but Shouto's feet are frozen in place. His eyes flicker from the distorted reflection of himself in the ice to where All Might is giving him a long look, eyes kinder than anything Todoroki has ever been deserving of, and he feels sick.  “Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says gently, squeezing his arm in what Shouto presumes is meant to be a reassuring gesture. “It’s going to be okay.” He doesn’t think Midoriya is in any place to tell him what okay is, all things considered, but he chooses to keep quiet on the matter. 

♡ I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind by yabakuboi  For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away. Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood. 

Loose lips Sail ships by Yousayhun  Bakugou is at war with his own fucking mouth and everyone else just seems to be having the time of their lives. 

♡ flare guns go off in my head saying not to call you this late by youreanovelidea  Midoriya beams at him and Tokoyami is suddenly hit with the urge to look away. “So bright,” he mutters under his breath, low enough that Midoriya can’t hear him.  (or, Midoriya is a problem child who just really loves his friends) 

(m) The Devil Blues by iknewaman  The 78th precinct's police captain, Toshinori Yagi, has volunteerd his squad to help implement the mayor's wish of increasing the successful cooperation between the city police and active Pro-Heroes. Each detective is to be assigned a Pro-Hero who will shadow them for two weeks, and the operation has been dubbed the 'Station Cooperation Operation'. Although it is not well-received by those involved, Izuku Midoriya, current detective at the 78th precinct and loyal follower of captain Toshinori's ideals, believes that the operation will be a success. If his captain says it will succeed, there isn't a doubt in Izuku's mind that it will. That is until he meets his assigned Pro-Hero. 

♡ someone is wrong on the internet by rhenna  It’s been a long day. By all rights, Izuku should be falling into bed, half dead. But instead of sleeping, he’s hunched over his laptop at 2 in the morning writing a dissertation about why exactly Ground Zero’s pecs are the best pecs to ever pec, and how dare anyone insinuate that he should lose some of that muscle because don’t you even understand what kind of physique a quirk like that requires? Amateurs.  (Izuku has two jobs in this world: pro-hero and anonymous president of the Ground Zero fan club. What could possibly go wrong?) 

good omens

♡ Divine Intervention (aka God ships it) by TheLadyZepher  There’s a battle strategy devised by humans many millennia ago that's designed to overcome an adversary who is particularly well entrenched. Some walls are too tall and thick for a frontal assault, and must instead be bested through sheer dogged stubbornness. Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t know it, but they were about to be put under siege.  Fed up with an angel and a demon who are still avoiding any talk of Feelings, God starts to interfere. When it comes to the ineffable plan, sometimes things need a bit of a push. 

♡ Slow by write_away  It started like this: A boy with the ability to warp reality met an angel and a demon and he made assumptions.  You might say it started like this: An angel and a demon found a marriage contract hung on the wall of the angel's bookshop. They didn't question it. It also could have started like this: Once upon a time, the angel told the demon he went too fast. The demon took it to heart.  Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves somehow married. Crowley fears going too fast. Aziraphale forges ahead. Neither know how to ask questions of each other. 

♡ Eziraphael’s Gifts: A History of Queer Faith and Longing, by Natasha Marie Johnson (Beacon Press, 2019). by actualbat  "If Eziraphael has come to be known--in today's language--as the 'guardian angel of sad queers,' then it makes sense for him to have shown up more regularly in the past once that became a recognizable historical category." Natasha is really glad that she's given this talk enough times to be able to do it on autopilot, because those two funny-looking men in the back just made the most absurdly astonished faces. (Or: Not all historians ignore gay subtext, and not all immortal celestial beings have their shit together. Also, voodoo.) 

harry potter 

♡ Apple Slices and Cocoa by FeathersMcStrange  Harry Potter is an abused kid with not an adult in the world on his side when Molly Weasley meets him.  She decides right then and there that if nobody else is going to try and take care of this boy, then dammit, she's going to. 

hello goodbye (’twas nice to know you) by tamerofdarkstars  Draco Malfoy thinks he might know whose thoughts are scrawling themselves on his skin, but that's crazy. Impossible, even. It has to be a mistake.  -  Self-indulgent soulmate AU where the thoughts of your soulmate inscribe themselves on your skin in a shifting magic tattoo 

♡ (m) Men Who Love Dragons Too Much by fencer_x, IDoodleForNoodles  ‘Kill Albus Dumbledore’ is less a challenging task and more a suicide mission, so when Draco Malfoy is presented with the option to either dispatch his Headmaster or suffer an excruciating and most ignominious death of his own, along with his parents, he reaches deep into his black little Slytherin heart and manages to scrape together enough courage to go with option C instead: Spend Sixth Year secretly studying Animagecraft in the hopes he’ll turn into something sufficiently imposing even the Dark Lord himself won’t be able to keep Draco under his thumb. But just his luck, his Animagus form turns out to be a dragon, and a rather randy juvenile at that, intent on finding its mate: one Harry James Potter. 

marvel 

♡ Hard to Love by Gruoch  If someone had told May that Iron Man himself would one day occasionally show up uninvited to her quiet little apartment and intrude into her quiet little life, she would have laughed them out of the room. But then her life seems chock-full of unpleasant surprises these days.  Or, Tony Stark wants a bigger piece of the pie. May Parker learns to accept help. Peter just wants to keep the peace. 

♡ Mr. Parker Declined to Comment by apisdn  The events leading up to the embarrassing moments during the Doomed Field trip, and how Peter Parker accidentally ended up in charge of things. All the while the political machine moves on, the Avengers do not kiss and make up, and the future draws ever closer. 

Another No-Good Field Trip by Muimor  Peter Parker is not having a good day. AKA, Where Peter's decathlon team take a field trip to the Avengers Compound, Vision's a menace, and Peter really doesn't want to go.

naruto 

(m) Resonance by flailinginlove  After being hit by a missing-nin's jutsu, Kakashi's chakra is never the same again. 

♡ (m) What Otter Nonsense by DarkAuroran  “Is that an otter?” Iruka asks as large, sable eyes blink at him and a little whiskered nose twitches curiously. “That’s an otter. Why do you have an otter?”  “I can’t tell you,” Kakashi says with a great amount of dignity for a man cradling a baby otter in armoured gloves. “Classified Jounin mission business.”

♡ Learning Curve by ishiryoku  This is the life she chose: the path of the shinobi. It's either roll with the punches or be left behind by her team—and Sakura's not about to let them go off on their own. 

♡ Roots and Wings by ideaoforder  When Naruto is kidnapped from his orphanage at age three, Kakashi is so done with this shit. He gets Naruto back, tells the Hokage where to go (politely, because he isn't suicidal), and raises the boy himself. Or, you know, tries and is proud when there aren't too many explosions. Then everybody starts to copy him and it's a whole thing. 

stranger things

In Which Starcourt Is a Pun by asexual-fandom-queen (writeordietrying)  “Welcome to Scoops Ahoy. Do you know what you want?”  Nancy and Jonathan visit the Starcourt Mall and corner Steve at his place of work with their feelings, but in an awkward, this-is-still-the-1980s-so-we-can't-be-too-direct kind of way. 

♡ my father comes and he goes by mjolnirbreaker  So, for Max, he doesn’t punch Billy Fucking Hargrove. He just sits there in sweltering heat and listens to the C’s being announced, and when parents cheer for their kids he tries not to think about how his parents are currently in Colorado. 

♡ it’s a risk, it’s a gamble by nondz (pinkjook)  “I think we should pretend to date,” Robin says. "What?" Steve answers. 

one of those new wave boys by glorious_spoon  It probably should feel more awkward than it does. (Or: Steve and Robin go on a road-trip, drink, listen to music, and look after each other. And yeah, maybe there's some cuddling involved too.)

wanna rec me something? head over to my ask or submission boxes! message me even, i don't really mind (: 

and to all my fellow authors who may feel a little down about not getting onto rec lists, this is for you: