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mo-mo-and-porkchop · 4 years

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42. "This isnt going to have a happy ending" (Seven)

@youbloodymadgenius

(Sorry this took so long.)

[Ala Alice in borderland on Netflix. ]

Oscar stared at the ceiling of his latest dwelling - a small, studio apartment no bigger than a hotel room. A fan whirled quietly, pushing a small breeze throughout the space. He let his eyes drift to the singular window and out to the roadways and parking lots the complex surrounded. Thin walls allowed him to hear everything his neighbors went through, day in and day out. Drab colors covered the walls making the space even more depressing.

What a shithole.

However it wasn't the worst place work had sent him over the years. Given his station in life he had been required to live in some of the shadier places on Earth. Being a hired hand for the most powerful players meant you went where they sent you. No questions. If he had known his experience in spec ops would turn him into a glorified errand boy he would never have replied to his recruitment.

They're lucky they pay so well.

He sat up with a sigh and forced himself from the futon. A female living to his right was on the phone with, whom he could only assume was a friend, complaining about her most recent bout of dieting. Her cat ate better than she did according to her.

Oscar shuffled to his small bathroom and splashed cool water across his face. He'd been there a month already and his target had yet to show up. He huffed silently to himself. He tried to warn the powers that be to move on from their obsession. After the doctor's botched experiments, they turned all of their attention to a nobody, twenty something.

A fucking kid.

As he dried his face two male voices drifted through his walls, catching his attention. They stood just down the hall and were easily heard. He listened as they discussed benign details of their day and, judging by their voices, they were 409 and 411.

Buzz. Buzz.

He glanced into his apartment at a small kitchen table that doubled as a nightstand. His phone lit up before buzzing once more indicating a text had come through. He tossed the towel onto the edge of the sink and went for his phone.

He swiped up and unlocked his phone to see a picture of Dahlia smiling brightly on the beach. Followed by the question:

[sms: jealous?]

A soft smile tugged at his lips when he saw it was his sister. And yes, he was jealous. He huffed quietly and sent a picture of his current view.

[sms: not really]

[sms: stop bragging] was her reply.

A hard, loud series of knocks at his door pulled him from his phone with a slight start. He wasn't expecting anyone. No one knew he was there, save his sister. And his 'boss' never frequent his residences. They did all their business virtually. The less connected they were physically the better.

The knocking repeated itself and he went to check his doorbell camera. Oddly no one stood there. The hall was empty. Silence began to creep in from all around. Then all power crashed.

All power.

The lights, the camera, the ac, the hall lights. Everything electronic had gone down. Not even his phone was working.

'What the hell?' he asked no one as he tapped the screen and shook it a little.

He wasn't sure what he hoped would have happened by doing it. It was like blowing on the game system when the cartridge didn't work - useless, but somehow hopeful. When nothing else worked he carefully opened his door, peeking through the hall. His unknown knocker was still at large.

Seeing that things were all clear, he went to neighbor's and knocked. Maybe they knew more about what happened. Silence followed. He waited a minute and tried again. Still nothing.

"Hello?" he called through her door.

He knew she was in there. She'd just been bitching to her cat, jealous of his superior meal plan.

"I'm from 408."

Silence.

Odd, but maybe she was cautious of unknown males. Although neighbors they knew neither beyond a simple greeting in passing. Something that happened rarely since he'd arrived.

He left her door and went to his other neighbor's. Repeating the same process, resulting in the same response.

His heart began to race as each and every door on his floor resulted in nothing more than silence. He seemed to be the only person there which was impossible. He rushed down the stairs and to the lobby, finding it eerily empty.

"Hey!" he called throughout the lobby as he searched for someone, anyone. "Hello?!"

Oscar left his complex and headed for the streets - which he found littered with abandoned cars and deserted.

What the fuck?!

"Hey!" he yelled louder, darting from car to car, his search still coming up empty.

At this point it felt as if his heart would break through his chest it was beating so hard. His mind raced. Panic was not something he was used and he handled it very poorly. The only one who was ever able to calm him on the rare occassions it did hit was his sister.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at the black screen. It still wasn't working. He glanced around to try and find his bearings and noticed something.

The marquees had gone black. the street lights were out. Even the cars wouldn't start. Everything electronic was down. Like an EMP had hit, rendering it all useless. But that didn't account for the lack of people. Oscar had no idea what could have caused that since he remained. His mind went to the only explanation he could think of.

This was hell.

But he didn't remember dying. He'd been in his apartment minding his own business. The knocking was the last sound he heard. Not a gun shot or explosion. Just loud, hard knocking.

A month had gone by. In that time he'd searched nearly every part of the city and found nothing. No one. Each building was just as empty as the last. He scavenged supplies as needed and continued searching for anything to explain away this very real feeling delusion.

Suddenly a small tv screen lit up nearby - a lone light in the darkness. He squinted to see it clearer as he neared.

'Game arena this way.'

Game arena? What the hell?

A large arrow pointed to the right and looked where it pointed. As if on cue, a spotlight shown into the sky, illuminating a building a few blocks away. A glance between his phone, which still wasn't working, and the screen was all he took before heading where directed. This was the only thing different to happen since arriving.

He came to an apartment building slightly smaller than his. It too was dark save for the spotlights and some emergency lights running on a gas powered backup generator. It was just as abandoned as the rest of the city.

Cautiously he entered the building. He'd been through a lot of shit in his day, but this was eerier than hell. The silence was nearly driving him mad. Nevertheless he made his way through the hall, arrows leading the way. He finally came to the end of the hallway. A small table with cell phones and an elevator were all that greeted him. The elevator was down and the phones were off, just like the rest of the city.

Great. More nothing.

He tried the nearby doors and found them all locked. He left to backtrack out when he finally ran into others. Instinctively he grabbed one up and held him against the wall, holding his hand out to keep the others at bay.

"What the hell is going on? Who are you?" he asked glancing between the three of them.

They remained silent, but by the looks of thing he wasn't going to get any answers from them. He could almost smell their fear. Once Oscar actually took the time to actually see them he realized he'd overreacted. They were young men. In their mid twenties at best. Kids. He was an ex military turned merc who had done a great job of staying fit. He must have looked like a monster to them. He relaxed his grip and held up both hands in apology, taking a small step backward, keeping them all in his sights.

"Sorry. You're the first people I've found since...getting here and I thought you might have been responsible for whatever is going on," he explained.

They silently shook their heads once they were able to overcome their surge of fear. "We are just as lost as you," one of them said.

He looked at the three of them, studying their body language - which told they were being truthful.

"Do you know what is going on?" a second one asked when the silence became too much for him.

Oscar simply gave him a look to convey how stupid he thought that question was considering their initial meeting.

"Right. Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"We don't know anything," the first one admitted. "We were goofing off and then everything disappeared. It wasn't until dark that we were showed the way here."

Oscar nodded slightly. Aside from the length of time they were here, it was the same as him. "I've been here a month if my count is correct and haven't found shit. Except you guys," he said glancing between them.

The one with the stupid question took a few steps, peeking around the corner. He saw the elevator and table full of phones. His demeanor seemed a bit more hopeful at the sight. "There are phones down here," he said to his friends before taking off for them.

"They don't work," Oscar called out, but the other two had already rushed to join their friend.

When they picked them up the screens woke up. Their faces were scanned and a woman's voice came through - explaining registration was closed in five minutes and the number of participants, which as of now was the three of them.

"What the fuck?" Oscar said picking up a fourth phone. It scanned his face and replayed the same message. "These weren't working when I found them," he said more to himself.

Before they could discuss the recent turn of events a woman emerged from around the corner. She was dressed in business casual attire and looked vastly out of place. She calmly walked toward them and picked up a phone, repeating the process as the rest. This time however the registration time had gone down by two minutes.

"What does that even mean?" the third guy asked when he heard her message. "Registration?"

"Its a game," the woman said, breaking her silence.

"Game? What do you mean game?"

Without a word she pulled out some kind of ID badge and threw it down the hall. They all watched as a lazer shot out and precisely hit the tiny card.

"Once you cross the barrier you have now choice but to play."

"What game?!" the first guy asked again, frustration and worry in his voice.

"We are all in this game," she began to explain. "Each one is different and if you don't complete their tasks you die."

"Their?" Oscar asked.

She shrugged her shoulders "Whoever is running it."

A second girl showed up and when she saw the groups of them she rushed forward, happy to find other humans. The trio of guys tried to stop her, but it was too late and she'd crossed the threshold. Quietly Oscar handed her a phone. After scanning her face the voice rang out that registration was closed and there were six participants. It continued stating the game's name - Dead or Alive - the difficulty - three of clubs, whatever the hell that meant - and the one and only rule:

Pick the right door and exit within the time limit.

Just then the elevator door opened with a sign on it's back wall simply stating 'Start'.

Oscar sighed and quietly told himself "This isn't going to have a happy ending" before heading inside it with the others.

#youbloodymadgenius #alice in borderland #fanfic #fan fiction #fiction #writing #fanfiction #fan fic #original character #canon character #indie #tom hardy

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btsmutimagines · 5 years

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All Tangled Up

A/N: I tried to be cute but I’m too awkward for that... I’m sorry OTL

Request from the old inbox: can I have a Jimin fluff where you both have a Disney movie night and you choose your princess movie (mines is Tangled but you can choose which ever) and the love song comes and Jimin sings to you (like I see the light and when eugene's part plays he sings along) and it's really fluffy?(sorry if it stinks, but I figured I'd give you a non-jungkook request)

Word Count: 1.7K

please take this gif as a peace offering

You groaned to the sound of your ringtone, suddenly waking you up. Refusing to leave the warm bundle of covers you were under; you stretched your hand to grab your buzzing phone off the side table. A string of curses was grumbled as you got up to pick up your phone and answer it.

Who thought it was a good idea to call you now?!

Howdy, girlie! How are you?

Oh, it’s you.

Ouch, no ‘Hello, bestie’? You’re so grouchy.

You could tell that your friend, Hana was pouting on the other end and you rolled your eyes. You weren’t in the particular mood to hold a conversation, let alone the ones that she tends to have. Long, drawn-out and could probably be wrapped up in 10 minutes if she could stay on topic.

Hana, I’m sick.

You are? Why didn’t you tell me?

I did. You even brought me medicine!

I did? Maybe I was drunk…

Anyways, I would like to get back to sleep-

Wait, I need some serious bestie advice and you just happened to be qualified.

Can’t I get a raincheck?

I really like this guy and I think he’s different than the others and…

She roped you into her story before you could even protest. You almost fell asleep a few times, listening to the whole spiel before she called your name.

Yah, Y/N! Did you even listen to a word I said?

Yeah, you think the guy you met last is the one because he took you out to coffee after whatever happened last night, and he’s been texting you a lot? It’s literally been less than 24 hours, how are you this hung up on a dude? You barely know him.

That doesn’t stop love, Y/N.

And I’m done with this conversation.

Don’t be like that, Y/N! It’s different this time, I swear.

Okay, I’m hanging up now. Bye.

You sighed, looking at the time you had your ear pressed to your phone. 40:31. Could you really expect less? Before you could return to bed, there was a knock on your door. Is it national ‘let’s bug a sick girl’ day?

You grabbed a robe, the warm fabric hugging you as you slowly walked to the door. Turning the doorknob, you cracked the door open a bit and your eyes widen as you quickly shut the door.

Park Jimin was standing at your door, in the hallway of your apartment building and you looked like you could scare Death himself to death.

“Y/N? Could you open the door please?”

“J-Just a second.” You said, quickly rushing to the bathroom to brush your teeth and fix your bird nest of hair. You returned to the door, taking a quick breath before opening it up again.

“Hi.”

“That was longer than a second, you know.”

“I didn’t mean it literally, Jimin.”

“May I come in?”

“Oh, right.”

“I heard you were sick, and I figured I would stop by just to check up on you.”

“That’s really sweet of you, Jimin.” You could have sworn you saw him blush, but he coughed, looking away and you tried to fight the smile that wanted to peak through.

Alright, fine, you might have the tiniest, smallest, little crush on Jimin. He always did obnoxiously cute things that you couldn’t help but smile. He was clumsy, at times whiny but he was also really thoughtful, sweet and would always be a shoulder to lean on.

But a guy like Jimin isn’t one that you can keep to yourself- Not that you could do that or something.

“Are you sure you could be out of bed like this? Earth to Y/N?”

“Huh?” Jimin placed the back of his hand on your forehead, your face growing hot and he pulled away.

“Gosh, you’re burning up.” Tell me about it. You cleared your throat.

“Just lay down on the couch, I’m gonna heat up the soup Jin made.”

“Jin made me soup? I should get sick more often.”

“No! I-I mean I helped him out mostly, I really made the soup.”

“Sure, Jimin.”

“Just go lie down, please.” You did as you were told, lying down on the couch.

“Hey, Y/N, where do you keep your blankets?”

“Second door on the left.” He came back with one of your thickest blankets, covering you with it and you looked at him.

“You should take a picture, it would last longer.”

“Shut up. Where’s my soup, Jimin?”

“Oh shoot, I almost forgot.”

“Jimin, please don’t burn down my home.”

“I got this. You just lie there, all pretty and warm- I mean you could be pretty warm with that blanket, right?”

“Smooth.” He winked at you before quickly backing into the kitchen, you covered your mouth to hold in your laughter. So stupid.

You laid there, listening to Jimin opening and closing different cabinets in your kitchen. He came back with a bowl and chopsticks in each hand and you sat up.

“You like coconut curry, right?”

“My favourite soup. Maybe you did help out a little bit.”

“One day I‘ll show you.”

“Looking forward to it, Jimin.”

“Have some, it is for you, you know.” You broke the chopsticks and took a bite, instantly hit with the delectable flavours and couldn’t stop yourself from devouring the whole bowl.

“That good, huh?”

“God, Jin is a cooking prodigy.”

“Let me have a bite.”

“Nuh-uh, you can ask Jin to make some for you when you’re sick.” You said, getting your last bite but Jimin grabbed your hand and fed himself.

“You brat, that was my last bite.” You poked his cheek with your chopsticks while he began chewing.

“Tasted even better knowing that.”

“Is this how you treat the sick and vulnerable, Jimin?”

“Jin made more than one bowl.”

“Fine, you’re temporarily forgiven.”

“Temporarily?”

“I don’t deal with food lightly. Especially really good food.”

“Will you forgive me fully if we watched these together?” He handed you a plastic bag, when did he bring that in?

Your curiosity got the better of you, peering through the content and noticing there were all Disney movies. You enjoyed most of the titles, Bambi, Aladdin, Alice in wonderland but you stop when you pulled out Tangled. The Disney classic was one of your all-time favourites. It was well known amongst your friend group and it’s the only movie you would watch for the rest of your life if you had to.

“You brought these for me?”

“Yeah, I did. Am I fully forgiven?”

“I’ll tell you after the movie.” You snuggled into your blanket, watching Jimin turn on your tv and insert the disc into your DVD player.

“Can you turn off the lights too?”

“Want the whole experience too, huh?”

“It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“The things I do for you.”

“Hush, it’s starting.” You watched the intro of the Disney castle and felt yourself getting giddy. You were easily engrossed in the movie when you felt a warm body close to yourself.

“J-Jimin.”

“I’m feeling cold, do you mind?”

“I could grab another blanket.” You suggested, about to get up but Jimin pulled you closer to him, your body half resting against his.

“No, this is fine.” You turned your attention to the movie, trying to not be so rigid against him and focus.

You quietly sang along with the songs, Jimin laughing with you at all the funny moments and your favourite scene was about to come up.

You began to sing along with Rapunzel, watching the lanterns floating around them.

All those days watching from the windows

All those years outside looking in

All that time never even knowing

Just how blind I've been

Now I'm here blinking in the starlight

Now I'm here suddenly I see

Standing here it's all so clear

I'm where I'm meant to be

And at last I see the light

And it's like the fog has lifted

And at last I see the light

And it's like the sky is new

And it's warm and real and bright

And the world has somehow shifted

All at once everything looks different

Now that I see you

You heard Jimin clearing his throat before singing along to Flynn, you looked at him in surprise.

All those days chasing down a daydream

All those years living in a blur

All that time never truly seeing

Things, the way they were

Now she's here shining in the starlight

Now she's here suddenly I know

If she's here it's crystal clear

I'm where I'm meant to go

He met your eyes, the two of you continue to sing along.

And at last I see the light

And it's like the fog is lifted, Jimin sang

And at last I see the light

And it's like the sky is new, you vocalized before you both sang together once again.

And it's warm and real and bright

And the world has somehow shifted

All at once everything is different

Now that I see you

“I didn’t know you could sing like that.”

“A hidden talent of mine. Your voice is pretty good too.”

“Why, thank you.” You said, turning your attention back to the movie and hearing Jimin let out a sigh. The movie went on, you only got up to stretch when the credits began to roll.

“I guess you’re forgiven, Jimin.”

“Y/N.”

“Oh, okay, why do you sound so serious all of a sudden?”

“Because,” he got up to stand in front of you, all you could muster a look of bewilderment as he took a deep breath before continuing.

“I want you to believe me when I say I like you…”

“You w-what?”

“I like you, okay? Don’t make me repeat it.” Uh, you just did- Wait, that’s not the point, Park Jimin just goddamn confessed to you.

“I know you probably don’t feel the same way, but I can’t keep-”

“Could you stop trying to be cool for two seconds, so I could tell you I like you too?”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m not repeating myself, Jimin.”

“It’s okay I recorded it!” The two of you looked over to see Hana standing behind the couch and she waved.

“How the hell did you get there? Why the hell are you in my house and why did you record that?”

��It’s for my memories, Y/N confessing to Jimin after pining him for months-”

“You have?” Jimin asked, you avoiding his eyes and glaring at Hana. She’s going to get it when you aren’t sick, just she waits.

“Kim Hana, you’re so dead.”

#bts smut #bts fluff #bts angst #jimin smut #jimin #jimin fluff #jimin angst #bts jimin #bts jimin fluff #bts jimin angst #bts jimin fanfic #bts jimin x you #bts jimin x reader #bts x y/n #jimin x you #bts fanfic

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teganberry · 6 years

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The Disney Princess Dilemma

Kingdom Hearts 3 has been a game filled with massive highs and devastating emotional lows. And while the game is both a critical and financial success for Square Enix, the opinions of dedicated fans have been rather divided. Overall the game is an amazing piece of entertainment, but there is one aspect of the narrative that most fans seem to agree is the game’s biggest flaw, the rather weak portrayal of it’s female characters, in particular Kairi.

Now before I dive in any deeper I want to make a few things clear. Kairi is one of my favourite characters in the Kingdom Hearts series, and has been since I first got into the series well over 15 years ago. As such this post is intended as a character study and discussion, not an excuses to bash on Kairi’s character or Nomura’s ability as a writer. I adore Kairi and I’ve got far too much respect for Nomura as a creative to so thoughtlessly throw hate around. Secondly, while I will be referring to certain character’s as being “Princes” and “Princesses”, shipping has got nothing to do with this, they are simply Disney character archetypes I want to explore. There is no hidden agenda here, just an honest discussion. Alrighty, this is going to be a long one, let’s jump in!

As it stands we have no idea what the future plot of the Kingdom Hearts series holds, the only person who does know is Nomura. Perhaps everything we’ve seen so far is all part of a bigger master plan that will one day blow all our collective minds away. But until then when it comes to the problem surrounding Kairi’s portrayal in Kingdom Hearts 3, the best way we can find the answers for where things potentially went wrong is to look back.

Since I completed the game and begun to see many of the complaints surrounding Nomura’s writing of Kairi, I begun to wonder how had it all come to this. A lot of people have concluded the main issue is that Nomura just doesn’t like Kairi anymore and he no longer knows what to do with her. Personally I don’t think that’s the case. If Nomura really was tired of her and she wasn’t working into his long term plans then he would have written her out of the plot a long time ago. But he didn’t. Kairi has continued to make significant appearances in a majority of the titles in the series. She has been front and centre in the promotional material for Kingdom Hearts 3, a great deal of the the game’s opening was focused on her, (even more so than Aqua which really surprised me), and the ending of the game seemingly sets Kairi right at the heart of whatever is about to come next in Sora’s journey. So then what went wrong? If Nomura doesn’t hate Kairi and isn’t bored with her then why was she relegated once again to the role of the damsel in distress? Well I believe it all comes back to her original role in the Kingdom Hearts series, Kairi is Square Enix’s Disney Princess.

One thing we have to keep in mind whenever you consider the development of a Kingdom Hearts game is that Disney is always at the heart of development process. Not just in the creation of the Disney worlds, but in how the original characters are designed, how they act, and how the overall story progresses. Kingdom Hearts is this weirdly impossible mix of JRPG and Disney storytelling that somehow works to create an utterly amazing greater whole. As such each character by design, especially in the case of the original Kingdom Hearts, can be seen as fitting into a number of well known Disney archetypes.

Most classic Disney films have three main character types the plot centres around, the Prince/Hero, the Villain, and the Princess. As the first game in the series, the developers wanted to make sure every aspect of the game was filled with that beloved Disney Magic. We see that Sora, Riku and Kairi were all purposefully written to embody these three classic archetypes. Sora is the daring Prince, he’s our hero and the one we know will save the day no matter what. Likewise Riku comes to embody the role of the Villain, as we constantly see him attempt to get in Sora’s way and undermine his journey. Now before any RIku fans jump down my throat, Riku obviously isn’t the true villain of the game as he also embodies that age old JRPG role of the rival to Sora’s hero. So we always knew Riku would be redeemed by the game’s end, but that doesn’t change the fact that for a time Riku was one of the bad guys. That of course means Kairi is the Princess, but not just any princess, she is purposefully written to embody the traits of a classic Disney Princess.

In Kingdom Hearts lore the original seven Princess of Hearts were comprised of Snow White, Aurora, Cinderella, Jasmine, Belle, Alice and Kairi. The Disney Princess are all very recognisable, and considering they are now the 7th highest grossing media franchise of all time (I’m not kidding! They make more money then the entire Harry Potter/Wizarding World franchise), it makes sense to see them grouped together in Kingdom Hearts. In comparison, at the time Kairi was a brand new character that the player knew very little about, and had never been associated with the Princesses before. So in order for her inclusion as a Princess of Heart in the narrative to work, Nomura needed to develop her character in such a way that the player would see and accept her as essentially a new Disney Princess. The best way to accomplish this then, with perhaps the exception of Alice in Wonderland, was to have Kairi’s role in the game unfold in a similar manner to what we often see occur in the other Princesses’ films, the often helpless Princess being captured or tormented by the villain, then eventually saved by the Prince. That’s why every time we see Kairi’s lifeless body throughout the entire game we can’t help thinking of Sleepy Beauty, because that’s exactly what Nomura want’s us to see. The game directly draws on the plot of Sleeping Beauty, Kairi embodies the sleeping Aurora, Sora is Prince Phillip charging forth with enchanted sword in hand, while Riku is being manipulated by the central villain of Sleepy Beauty herself, Malificent. Nomura’s narrative cements the subliminal suggestions in our minds and archives his goal, Kairi becomes a new kind of Disney Princess.

The narrative of having Kairi saved by Sora worked quite well in the original Kingdom Hearts, because the overall intention of that game was to create an experience reminiscent of the classic Disney films everyone grew up on. And while she was relegated to the role of damsel in destress for a large portion of the story, Kairi does get her moment to shine and show us that there’s more to being a princess than simply waiting to be rescued. Kairi represents the inner strength that balances out Sora and Riku’s outward power. Its a theme that has come to be associated with her character throughout all the main entries in the series.

So what was next for Kairi? Well as it turns out more of the same it seems. Kairi unfortunately finds herself being kidnapped by the villains once again in Kingdom Hearts 2, likely due to Nomura again wanting to make it clear that Kairi is the Princess of this story. But first lets take a look at the development of Kairi’s design over the course of the series. While initially being presented as a rather normal teenage girl in the first game, during the development of Kingdom Hearts 2 there was a conscious push to make Kairi even more Princess like than she had been in previous games. Her hair is longer, she wears a pretty pink dress now rather than shorts and tank tops, and her overall appearance is much more elegant and mature. In a cast interview with Kairi’s then english voice actress, Hayden Panettiere, it’s mentioned that she was often asked to raise her voice a few octaves to make Kairi sound more like a Princess. Kairi’s physical Princess evolution is pushed even further in Kingdom Hearts 3 when she is given a new battle dress and a hair cut that is somewhat reminiscent of Snow White. While this new outfit does appear hardier then her previous design, unlike her fellow Guardians Kairi does not wear any form of gloves or gauntlets to protect her hands, instead only wearing a few bracelets. Comparing her Kingdom Hearts 3 outfit to that of Sora and Riku’s does bring into question it’s overall practicality, but she is a Princess and the design makes that very clear visually.

For the sake of character development and future plot progression it makes sense to bring Kairi’s role as a Princess of Heart to the forefront, as it would soon come to play an even greater part in Kingdom Hearts lore. Having been born with a heart of pure light makes Kairi very unlike any other character in the series. But it seems in order to press upon the player that yes indeed Kairi is a Princess, In Kingdom Hearts 2 Nomura fell back on the old Princess needing to be saved by the Prince plot device in order to drive that home. Thankfully though things are changed up a bit this time around. Kairi is sick of waiting around, and whenever she gets the chance to strike out on her own to find her friends, both before and after being kidnapped, she does so without hesitation. She’s even given a Keyblade and is finally able to fight for herself this time! Hurray! Overall it isn’t great that Nomura chose to make Kairi the old school Disney damsel in distress again, but despite this we do see determination and growth in her character. Perhaps not as much as we see in Sora and Riku, but there is development none the less and by the end most fans were excited to see how she would continue to grow as a character in future instalments.

For a good while it did seem that Nomura was hinting at Kairi taking on a much bigger role in the highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts 3. It was revealed in Dream Drop Distance that Yen Sid intended for her to be trained as a Keyblade Wielder, ensuring she would become one of the Guardians of Light and take part in the second Keyblade War. And as I mentioned previously, Kairi was quite often front and centre in most of Kingdom Hearts 3’s marketing material. Her line “This time, I’ll protect you” was constantly used throughout said marketing for the game. It all looked promising for Kairi! But then we all know what happened.

Now before we jump into Kingdom Hearts 3 itself let’s take a step back to the years following the release of Kingdom Hearts 2, and consider what was happening over at Disney Animation at the time. After nearly a decade of creating films that were mostly considered not up to scratch, Disney decided to go back to their most tried and true formula for creating successful animated films, adapting fairytales, specifically Princess movies. While this was the most sensible choice to make, Disney were also keenly aware that their older brand of Disney Princess film would likely no longer appeal to a modern audience. Today young girls want to look up to brave, strong and charismatic heroines who aren’t afraid to carve out their own path in life. Watching a movie about a Princess waiting to be saved just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So Disney adapted and ever since then we’ve been introduced to an all new kind of Disney Princess, Tiana, Rapunzel, Elsa, Anna and Moana, Princesses who are the hero of their own stories.

This is what audiences have come to expect of the Princesses, to stand proudly on their own two feet, no longer being relegated to position the damsel in distress. So when it was announced that Tangled and Frozen would be brand new worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3 it set an exception in the minds of fans. Here we had two beloved Disney films that feature strong and brave Princesses as the central characters. It only makes sense then that we should expect the same strength to flow through to the wonderful ladies of Kingdom Hearts. But that didn’t happen. Instead nothing really changed for any of them, and instead of pushing Kairi to grow into the modern Princess we all want her to be, Nomura held her back.

Now the question we need to ask here is why? Why did Nomura choose to not follow the new Disney trend when he has stuck so closely to their lead in the past? I suppose the only person who can truly answer that question is the man himself. But lets try and think about this logically, as I can see two likely reasons why this occurred. The first is the fact that overall Square Enix and many other gaming companies still don’t do a great job when it comes to writing realistic and truly relatable female characters. Not to say there are none, but it is still a prevalent problem none the less. Case and point Lunafreya from Final Fantasy XV. The fact that in order to get a true understanding of Lunafreya as a character and her true feelings, we’re going to have to read a novel that acts as an alternate happy ending to the original game says a lot. But I’m getting off topic here! The track record for the development of female characters in games isn’t great, that’s not an excuse and game companies really need to start doing better, but it is a possible explanation for why the plot of Kingdom Hearts 3 unfolded the way it did.

The second and more likely reason to have Kairi play the Princess in distress to Sora’s hero once again was probably due to time constraints. AAA video game production is a massive undertaking with very strict deadlines. As a result developers are often forced to sacrifice interesting story elements and mechanics in order to make sure that a game is able to reach said deadlines in a solid and workable condition. Final Fantasy XV is again an excellent example of this and what can go wrong. In the time since the game’s release it has more or less been confirmed that due to the incredibly strained production of the game a vast majority of story content was cut out, and the game was left in a rather obvious unfinished state narrative wise. We know that the engine swap during the development of Kingdom Hearts 3 from the Luminous to the Unreal engine had a big impact on the game’s development time, and pushed it’s final release date back significantly. So it goes without saying that things would have been cut in order to make up for lost time. The fact Nomura has confirmed that we will be receiving DLC fleshing out Xion’s role in Kingdom Hearts 3 more or less confirms this. At the end of the day Square Enix is a business and sometimes sacrifices need to be made in order to ensure a product can be developed properly and efficiently.

There is every possibility that Nomura had planned a number of different ways for Kairi to develop and grow as a protagonist in Kingdom Hearts 3 before her tragic death occurred, perhaps even fighting back as much as she could before being captured. But the problem lies in just how many loose ends needed to be tied up in the game with the limited development time they had. So much attention need to be paid to as many characters as possible to wrap everything up that you run the risk of the game becoming bloated, or things feeling rushed and unfinished. I’m not saying it was the right choice to cut out Kairi’s potential character growth, but we can see why it was easier for Nomura to fall back on having her be easily kidnapped again to move that part of the plot forward as quickly as possible so the momentum didn’t slow down. She is a Princess after all, right? Well no, that reasoning isn’t an excuse anymore, audiences expect far more from the Princesses and its time for Square Enix to follow Disney’s lead.

So what can be done? If the reason Kairi is being held back is due to her role as a Princess then can it be fixed? The simple answer is yes, it can. Disney have already clearly laid out what they now expect of female heroines and Princesses in their films. With the less than positive critical response to the development of the female protagonists in Kingdom Hearts 3, Square would be crazy not to jump at the chance to give fans what we want to see. Nomura clearly understood what it meant for a character to be a Disney Princess during the development of Kingdom Hearts 1, and I’m sure he’s very aware that audience expectations have changed. What needs to be done now is for Square to take that step forward alongside Disney and allow Kairi move on from her role as a Classic Princess and finally grow into a Modern Disney Princess, not simply fall back on old writing habits out of convenience. By voicing our opinions in an honest and constructive manner on social media platforms such as Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram ect. Square Enix and Nomura will hear us. We need only tell them that not only do we want to see more from Kairi, but that we want her to stand proudly as one of the new Princesses of Heart alongside Elsa, Anna and Rapunzel, a positive embodiment of the new bread of Disney Hero.

#Kingdom Hearts #kairi #kingdom hearts 3 #Sora #riku #disney princess #we just want to see her grow!#That's all we ask!#Please Nomura!

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vividlywriting · 6 years

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Dbh and DND you say....( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Alright, let's try this on for size: the main cast of Detroit: Become Human plays DND? Who plays what class? I imagine Millenial on a Mission Hank DMs but I'd be open to any of them writing a campaign and forcing the others to play

So my partner and I are pretty into DnD, and as he partook in my play through of DBH and listens to all my fanning out I asked his opinion on this prompt. So I will put his additions or contradictions in here as well. This is gonna be a bit long

Let’s start this off right!

DnDBH

Hank Anderson, millennial.

Has played DnD at least once in his life.

It probably wasn’t his forte at the time, likely something his roommate pulled him into, and the campaign was probably a bust as it was.

Has most likely played video games like Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate and liked them.

He’s also played WoW and Guild Wars 2 at different times and for different reasons in his life

neither of which lasted super long, but he did enjoy them at the time

He honest to god hasn’t thought about DnD or anything even similar to it for a couple of decades until Connor found an old set of dice in the spare room (now Connor’s room) at Hank’s place

Now Hank is running a campaign and he has no gods damned idea how he got roped into this

He thinks it’s hilarious when he throws moral quandaries at his players, which all happen to be androids

He once had his players break into a government building to locate a prisoner for information, they were forced to choose between freeing the prisoner and escaping or leaving them behind.

All of their information on the prisoner was shaky at best and they had no way of knowing if the character would turn on them later because they all failed their sense motive checks

He was dumbfounded when they managed to befriend the character, completely ruining the arc that had the character as the big bad

Hank is well over the “I roll to seduce” aspect of the game, and is thankful none of his players tried to do that more than once

The only time an NPC flirts with a player character is when Hank is trying to throw a player off/fuck with them and derives a lot of pleasure from seeing his players stumble and try to get out of it

Except for the time when it backfired on him

He finished two glasses of whiskey after that

Hank will not admit that he enjoys DMing, he often complains it’s a pain in his ass and he can’t wait until the whole thing is over

Hank agreed to test Markus’s homebrew oneshot…once

Hank Anderson, millennial, by Zeke

No bad guy at first but increasingly intricate moral quandaries

Before moral quandaries he forgets he can’t just throw puzzles at the players cause fuckin androids

General DMing

Almost everyone has DMed at one time or another based on their interest

Connor as a DM

Connor’s DMing style is very straight forward

He usually goes with premade campaigns, luckily there are a lot out there

He’s not the best at improv when his players go off the beaten path

But he’s very good at playing NPCs

Probably thanks to his programming as a detective, because he can play the NPCs’ emotions to a T

As a DM he is a little bit of a hardass though

Connor as a Player

Connor style of character play is much different than how he is in real life

He seems to enjoy the fact that he doesn’t have to “complete his mission”

In fact he seems to enjoy causing as much chaos as he can, while still somehow doing what he needs to, and often by accident (or design, no one really knows)

He started with a classic rogue character build

Now he takes characters not often in the rogue class and building them in ways that end to his chaotic play style

Connor is the main reason Hank has had to set off random events or traps, e.g. rocks fall sort of situation, just for annoying him

Connor takes incredible care to keep his characters alive, somehow in spite of the trouble they get into

His character’s tend to have a much higher charisma stat that Connor portrays in real life, he takes it as a challenge for himself more so than his characters

Connor as a Player by Zeke

Likes to play Dex based characters

Likes the concept of spells and often leans towards characters that can do both sneaky stuff and magic

Tried playing evil alignment character once, went balls to the walls and then got banned from playing characters like that because even North was like “wtf”

Markus as a DM

Markus usually starts with a premade campaign

By the time the party gets through the first “dungeon” he’s tossed the script out off the window and is rolling dice and making it up as he goes along

His NPCs often sound a little the same

And when he digs into the homebrew style of DMing he likes to bring in scenarios that either play for or against his players personally

Markus as a Player

Markus avoids leadership character roles like the fucking plague

He actually leans towards the utility characters, buffing and healing the rest of the party

That does not stop the other players from looking to him to be the deciding factor in major decisions of the game

Sometimes he literally just rolls a dice to determine his character’s answer out of frustration

When anyone but Hank DMs he enjoys flirting with most NPCs to try and mess with the DM

He has flirted with enemies before

He has bedded enemies before

It is ridiculous how his lowkey background character playstyle manages to have that much charisma

He is usually the reason Connor doesn’t die in game, and he never lets him live it down

Markus as a Player by Zeke

Every once in a while Markus likes just playing a barbarian and raging

After the first campaign of him ending up as a leader character he just wants to play something simpler

Simon as a DM

Simon is a very thorough DM

He’s very keen on everyone enjoying themselves

But he’s also a very fair DM and if you roll a Nat 1 you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences

He actually really enjoys building homebrews, but he also has a handful of backup plans depending how the players move forward and how much time they have to play

His NPCs have a decent amount of variety, and they often come back into play later whether or not the players realize it at the time

Simon as a Player

Simon is probably the most diplomatic character player you’ve ever seen

His characters are usually quiet, and startlingly efficient

He plays arcane casters usually, and uses it about as equally against enemies as he does against the party to quell the in party bickering that tends to happen

He likes being useful, but more importantly he enjoys the fact that there are many times the party would have been screwed over if he hadn’t stepped up

It took about three sessions before the other players stopped underestimating him and his characters, they tend to be quite lethal

Simon’s characters usually try to solve things without violence, or without deaths

Someone, either player or DM usually makes that impossible

While Simon usually just sighs and says “ok then”, he often laughs at the resulting destruction

He has incredible luck with his dice rolls

Simon as a Player by Zeke

Tries making things with high charisma scores but usually ends up defaulting to Markus’s leadership who just tries to put back to simon

Really good in the cleric/healing character classes

North as a Player

Prefers playing, not DMing, the one time she tried to take over for someone to run a oneshot everyone died.

It did not go well

Most of North’s characters fall somewhere between chaotic neutral to chaotic evil

The others have fallen in the Lawful side of the chart, lawful evil to be exact, and it is terrifying

Her characters change alignment the most as she plays based on how she feels towards other characters and NPCs

Despite that she has yet to fall into the Good column of the chart

Her characters are also either highly destructive or just plain really good at violence/fighting

She doesn’t have a preferred class type, she just likes doing as much damage as possible

North does like playing races that are often less liked in the campaign world

She also likes to retaliate to in game racism and has before collected a small gathering of NPCs she’s helped in someway because of this

As a character player she can be quite cold

She has yet to play a game where the DM included any sort of brothel, unless it is there for the sole purpose of being infiltrated and the workers being saved

Yes that was a game Markus ran

North as a Player by Zeke

Fighter, Ranger, Swashbuckler/Pirate Characters

Josh as a Player

He is just happy being a player

LOOT

This boy will find the loot and you may or may not know about it

He has killed the least number of people than anyone in his party

He prefers to not kill anyone if he can

Leave them out cold, or tied up, he’s even fine with dismemberment so long as they still have their life

When he does have to kill its in either one of two ways

Either he poisons them and they or most characters have no idea he did it

OR he makes it quick and clean

He plays the assassin class very very well, or he would if he actually did his job as an assassin

Josh as a Player by Zeke

Uses the loot for a good cause

Chaotic good or neutral good

Always good and opposite of north, by accident

Monk or brawler and always specifies he is doing non lethal damage

Stealthy monk - josh becomes one punch man

Kara as a Player

Kara is a healer

She’s learned the best builds to give you the best buffs all day long

Her characters are often pretty fragile though so the other players usually have to strategize around her to make sure she lives so she can make sure they deal the most and take the least damage

Her characters have all ended up rescuing someone or something at some point

This has lead to her almost always having a companion animal or favors she can call in from NPCs later in the game

It’s been pretty handy

Kara Player by Zeke

Witch, Druid, Shaman classes

Alice as a player NPC by Both of Us

Was allowed to join to play as an NPC, reprising similar roles, because the first one went over so well

She learned to make stuffed animals just to slam them on the board

They are always too big

It was a dragon

It only happened because she found Hank’s old copy of The Hobbit

When she plays as her NPC she jumped up on her chair and holds up a stuffed animal of a dragon and screamed “I am fire! I am death!” slammed the toy onto the board and yelled “ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!”

Hank’s response was to look at his confused players and say “Well, go on, do it.” because they didn’t think it was serious

Almost no one has it in them to actually kill her characters, even tho they only exist to be fought

So Hank has to come up with “an out” for the NPC baddie to get away

Because of this Alice gets really into high fantasy books and movies

Hank doesn’t mind babysitting her as much now

Luther as a Player by Both of Us

He only plays occasionally

Mostly oneshots not full campaigns

Plays the smallest characters he can

He knows what it’s like to be big, he wants to be smol

He made one min/maxed orc that was too broken to be used more than the one time

He’s a really soft spoken player, he doesn’t say much but he enjoys playing

The Jerry Gaming Collective

Is a thing

Find them on twitch

#dbh #dnd #dndbh #detroit become human #connor #hank anderson #north #markus #simon #josh #luther #kara #alice #jerry #headcanons #hc #asks #hoooo boi this was long #but fun!

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berezina · 3 years

Text

THE FOLLOWING DAY, SATURDAY, JANUARY 12th, I also didn't tweet, and my iCal reminds me why. I had an invite to a glammish Manhattan party. Cocktails at 7pm before guests moved on to dinner. That's the kind of true but implausible detail you cut from a novel.

Not that I'd been invited, exactly. I'd scored a plus-one from the college friend I've called 'Sarah.' For those new around here, Sarah is a type-A daylight creature of the tech-finance woods. Which isn't my main problem with her, though it makes small-talking around our periodic hostilities hard. She's short, blonde, and works out enough to be fit without becoming slender, a frustration she'll only reference in passing because direct conversation about it would make her feel like the wrong sort of woman. She lives on the Williamsburg waterfront in one of those glassy towers that are easy to despise until you're inside a high-floor apartment. The East River Ferry cuts its engine and glides into the dock below… a glass-muted helicopter beats by at eye-level between you and the Midtown skyline. In her apartment I question my life choices, decide it's too late, then think, Is it, though?

It was true that not having Sarah in my life was unthinkable, and also that we were overdue for a breakup. Our friendship endured because a break would be awkward for the mutual friends we both actually liked. She'd done the same math, I was sure. For girls we're both good at math.

The other thing keeping us together I doubt she noticed: her epic drive to avenge her sub-Alice status in college by proving that I was sub-Sarah, now. Which I was on her scale, and sometimes on mine. When I remember that I'm a vocational wreck I want to be Sarah and can imagine doing her job. At a party of strangers, never mind: no Sarah. The plus-one was another demonstration.

So I couldn't tweet that day, obviously. Too busy in the long mirror negging my mild Sarah-friendly dress and shoes and hair, working up the courage to piss Sarah off by putting on a slut show. I did this while preparing answers for Sarah's colleagues, who think it's only polite to ask someone like me, 'What do you do?'

'FBI.'

'FBI in training.'

'Influencer.'

'Like…nothing? I'm just rich.'

*Russian accent* 'I am model.'

(I did the Russian with Sarah in earshot once and she bombed in with 'Alice is an amazing writer,' which flattered me until I realized she just didn't want anyone to think she had a dunce loser friend.)

I remember thinking—maybe it was that day or the next, on the other side of the party—that the root trouble with us is we'd each scripted ourselves into a different buddy comedy. Mine was absurdist in not-good way: two women, neither of whom understand a word the other says, pretending they do so the other won't think she's off the up and up.

Sarah's, like most buddy comedies, had a moral. I'm the amusing flighty spontaneous looks-obsessed one, whose job is to teach my sober hard-working friend to take it easy, bae, have a drink, worry not about her boss's true opinion…because other minds or truth at all are never knowable. (In her movie I'm a philosopher, too.)

In return, Sarah schools me in the happiness that comes from hard work and adult restraint.

Of Sarah's four examples of my looks obsession, three were hookups, not boyfriends, but fine, there was truth to it. The untruthful part, which she must have recognized, was her pretense that our hook-up styles reflect deliberate choices only, not in any way different (however temporary) meat-market values. Sarah, as she'll tell you, is 'buttony' cute. But that's a risky play when you're five-foot-one with a firm thickness everywhere that, sorry, you do kind of deserve for listening to doctors and your Westchester mom, and exercising an hour each day like she does, while ignoring my advice to stop eating like her.

The party was not my worst. As a reward for dressing with cowardly 'taste,' I harvested a bushel of corporate male regard, including the older-male regard I sometimes crave because Daddy blah blah. Wise Sarah would have told me the good news: the harvest meant I could be choosy. I could go on a proper date with the most promising one. But I don't know: the dialectic of desire I inherited was busted, waiting for a spare part that never arrived. When most men at a party or on a scene don't pay court I become indignant and drive off the noble exceptions. Where I'm popular I become less choosy, likelier to run off somewhere to disinhibit with the room's most persistent Regarder. Sarah loves to replay the times my unchoosiness persisted even after the Regarder had showed his hand as a player, mild psycho, or (not defending it) married.

That night Sarah kept me under surveillance. If I wasn't willing to start with a proper date, I would need to submit any potential hookup to the Sarah Test: is this a dude I could remotely imagine dating sometime in the near future, when we were done with our sad business? The answers in this case were nooooooo. Also, the leading contestants were friends, which is gross, somehow. I was pretty sure I said no.

The next morning I woke hungover, confused by a strange bed, and thought, Uh oh. But it was too comfortable to be a man's. I found Sarah in her apartment's kitchen district, in sports spandex. She'd finished in her building's gym, or the micro gym she belonged to as well because it had the better whatever and her employer paid half. One of her little hands dawdled on the island's marble top, enjoying some downtime, while she thumb-scrolled her phone with the other. She made a gesture of 'finishing up' before the needling arrived.

'She wakes! She rises!'

Something like that. I'm not going to pretend I remember exact words in this scene. The point is that my habit of sleeping late fit with my caricature from her movie.

'I smell Venture Capital coffee,' I said.

She poured me a mug's worth, and it was fucken amazing until she ruined it with, 'Did we like the bed?'

'Your sheets are intense.'

'Pillow-wise?'

'I'm not just saying this. You run like the best boutique hotel.' Which was true.

'I'm putting the customer first,' she said.

'It's true.'

It was Sarah's turn to rejoin but she put on a transitional smile instead. 'Remember when you said that to me?'

Yeah, yeah. As I explained at the time, which was college, I was being self-deprecating, not condescending to her business aspirations. 'I could never be good at business' was set up. 'To me, the customer's always wrong.' Pow!

Her memory had done light renovations, updating the quip from a play on the classically servile 'customer's always right' to the equally servile but more Obama-era proactive, 'putting the customer first.' When I pointed out her mistake she said, 'I can't believe you remember that.'

Classic: suggesting I was obsessed with an ancient incident I never would have recalled if she hadn't two seconds ago brought it up.

A cease-fire held as we walked our coffees over to her living room district. We shared the instinct to grab winter sun from her wall of noise-cancelling glass. Even in communion, I thought, we were so different. Her she was caffeinated and high on exercise, her spandex with the sour damp smell of achievement. She took the sun, checking it off her daily list of things to do in January, for Vitamin D. I was dry-mouthed and skullachey in undies and a v-neck, scrounging sun for the same reason I overflirt. I need handfuls of anti-depressant.

We weren't done.

Sarah reminded me that (in college) I'd been defensive at first, accusing her of paranoia before retreating to like, 'I totally get how you'd hear it as condescending, but honestly…'

My college apology had expired. Was I aware that my old tone of condescension persisted? Toward her and, yes, others? She brought a lightly embellished example from the party I couldn't believe she'd overheard. It was with one of the Regarders and she was misunderstanding ironic banter. We'd had that conversation before, too. Anything I say in an old-movie-star voice, as a rule, I told her, is not serious. But no one hears anything. I re-apologized.

'I'm not saying be a different person inside,' Sarah said, in her wise-one conclusion-voice. 'It would be too weird if you weren't arrogant. Seriously, you'd be unrecognizable. [laugh laugh laugh] But you're getting too old to like, radiate arrogance.'

'While living in Queens, you mean.'

'I mean anywhere.'

'Arrogance is not a great look for a nobody is what you're saying.'

'No for anyone.'

Yeah, right.

Having lost my will to exist outside Sarah's judgments, I spent the rest of that Sunday with her and her parents. They showed up at her place exactly at noon, which led me to picture them inside their car in a parking garage, killing time listening to WNYC. Her mother, Jill, greeted me with began sincerely warm on its way to suspiciously long. Sniffing for alcohol? Infusing me with 'support.' Jill used to act testy and competitive toward me in sympathy with her daughter but since the post-college status-reversal I was a poor thing having a rough time and what a pity to throw such a promising life away, a fate pretty much sealed and we could stop discussing now that she's age almost-26. Sarah's kindly, invisible father came over with WNYC still in his ears like the perfume of another woman and told us to sit, sit, while his wife took over the kitchen, to poison us with bagels and cake.

'I will need an update,' Jill warned me, as if she had any intention of giving me time to prepare. 'What's the grad school story?'

'I'mmmm still deciding. Pretty sure I'll apply.'

'Great!' She pointed a cake knife at me. 'But do it this time. Really do it. Yeah?'

'That's always the idea, except—'

'Great.'

It was at a rent-the-back-room dinner she'd treated Sarah and ten of her friends to during our college-graduation week, that I'd told Jill my grad school plans. She'd said, 'Don't waste your time in the Ivory Tower. It's much ado about nothing.' Now I was a good fit.

When Jill wasn't looking, I yanked a strip of lox out from between the overfull bagel buttocks, and ate it like a piece of sashimi. I thought about stuffing the toxic bread product into my bag like after I stayed overnight at their Chappaqua place but decided it would be more fun to feed Jill's condescending concern by leaving them my carb refuse right there on the island. This way she could whisper to Sarah when I stepped into the bathroom, 'Is she eating? She doesn't look great,' and Sarah would tell me the next day, 'My mom asked if you were eating and I told her it was none of her business. But just between us, I hope you're eating.'

~Alice from Queens [source]

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zecretsanta · 7 years

Text

To: @larvaloverlord

From: @kiichu

Here’s a small Bonus Round gift for my Zecret Santa, @larvaloverlord! :)

Ao3

—

“This is… a Christmas tree?” The GAULEM’s eyes practically glowed as she studied the frame of the fir towering well above their heads. The needles were a glittering emerald, brushed with the illusion of fresh frost in the form of some simple paint. A large, red contraption hugged itself around the trunk, the holes in the mechanism showing the water that pooled inside, seeping into the tree when it needed to drink like an IV.

The tree probably looked the same as any other in the forest, but Luna concluded that this was the most beautiful one. According to her, at least, this one was the best and most perfect choice for their makeshift family.

Beside her, the other participants of the Ambidex Game stood as firmly as the tree itself, most of their faces showing a bright expression. Sigma assumed the leader position once more, positioned at the front of the group. The soft wrinkles on his face gently shifted as he smiled, eyes twinkling as he nodded.

The details of how they all made it to earth - even Luna, who shouldn’t have been able to function out of Rhizome-9 - were a complete blur. She recalled the Ambidex Game ending, all of the players surviving, and the truth being revealed to most of them. Dr. Klim’s consciousness returned to his body, and she helped him return to his room to rest. The moment she did, she felt her insides shutting down, a familiar buzzing creeping through her mind. This had happened a few times before, for maintenance and other routine reasons, but she remembered feeling quite unsure, terrified that after she was shut off that final time, she wouldn’t wake up again.

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth, as she’d somehow woken up on an earth none of them recognized - an earth that was clean and healthy.

Dr. Klim, Ms. Kurashiki, and all of the Ambidex Game players had ended up SHIFTing to a world where Radical-6 was never released, and Luna had never seen such a wondrous sight. She didn’t even know it was possible to ever see such a world, one that the AB Garden severely paled to in comparison, much less live in it. Somehow, somehow, they had brought her with them when they SHIFTed - and she didn’t ask the details.

She didn’t want to know how those that did not have a consciousness in this timeline, like Quark and K and Dio, were able to arrive here. She didn’t even bother to wonder if she was still hooked up to the same computer system - the details no longer mattered to her. All was well, and she would be a fool to question things.

Some of the consciousness the humans all SHIFTed into did exist in this world, so it was easy for them to jump. Tenmyouji, for example, had a large furnished home - the Tenmyouji from this timeline had been happy and successful, and dissolved away in favor of the newly-SHIFTed consciousness. Regardless, Tenmyouji still had a house, and let everyone stay in it, citing that he’d be “a bitter old man” otherwise.

She had been more than happy just to be here on earth with everyone, but humans always did want more than they had - not that that was a bad thing in the least for this case. Yes, now they wished to bring their happiness to another level - and take Luna with them.

They proposed they celebrate Christmas, albeit a month late.

Quark was positively ecstatic. The child clearly hadn’t celebrated a proper holiday like this before, as he lived a junk collector’s life with Tenmyouji. Luna felt a comforting sort of warmth in her chest at the thought of Quark being so happy - perhaps it was her motherly programming, but she couldn’t help but want to try in any way possible to get that boy to smile just a bit brighter.

In the end, Tenmyouji and Quark decided to dig through the attic, to see if they could find any decorations.

Clover looked rather melancholy, recollecting all the Christmas traditions she’d done as a child with her brother, but decided to help collect a tree with Alice as a way to honor him. K decided to join them, most likely the strength to carry back any tree they found outside.

Ms. Kurashiki decided to make some tea, and Phi dug through some old Christmas CD albums. Dr. Klim sat quietly, keeping an eye on Dio. Their “unwelcome guest” (Dr. Klim’s words, not Luna’s) had his wrists bound for now, looking very wide-eyed and lost in a world he’d never known. Gone was the rage and hatred he showed in the Ambidex Game, in its place a look of desolation and utter confusion. If she had a heart, the sight of him like that would have twisted it.

An hour later, the group of three had returned with a beautiful fir tree, and placed it in the center of the room in a stand filled with water.

“Luna?”

A voice snapped her out of her reminiscing, turning to glance at the others standing nearby. Everyone looked rather pleased at their find, and were looking at her expectantly.

“U-um, yes? I’m sorry, I spaced out…” she murmured, folding her hands in front of her face timidly.

Dr. Klim smiled warmly - a smile she wanted to keep on his face as long as possible - and handed her a glass star-shaped item. She held it up in front of the tree, watching the green of the needles sparkle through the clear shape of the star. The sight dazzled her, sending another spark of warmth through her circuits.

“It’s beautiful…” she whispered, still in awe.

“Isn’t it?!” Quark cried, shoving Tenmyouji aside to stand in the front of the group. “Me and Grandpa found it upstairs in the attic! I think it’s the prettiest ornament he owns!”

Ah, an ornament - that was right, according to the customs she’d read in books, these were hung from the branches of the Christmas tree. But why was she given the honor of holding Quark’s obviously favorite ornament?

“You should put it on, then,” she insisted, attempting to give it back.

“No, no,” Dr. Klim’s voice was kind, but firm - she retracted her hand, giving him a curious look. “We all agreed to let you put on the star of the tree, Luna. We’ll all put up the lights and more ornaments first, but you can place the star on at the very end to complete the look.”

Luna’s eyes glittered, her ‘heart’ thumping against her chest. The blissful, merry feeling completely overwhelmed her; was this what people meant when they talked about Christmas cheer? Was it really the time of year that brought out such sentiments, or just the selfless deeds of others that created a peaceful atmosphere?

Whatever the case, Luna felt it - she’d never felt anything like it before, and she didn’t want to ever not feel like this. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared up at Dr. Klim, a film of artificial tears pooling under her eyes.

“Thank you. Thank you,” she breathed, stepping forward to wrap her arms around the doctor. He stiffened at her sudden touch, but ultimately relaxed and patted her head like a child. She didn’t care that she was probably staining his shirt - she was just so happy.

When she finally pulled back, she gazed up at the doctor, matching his smile with her own.

A dry tone sounded from beside her. “Um, wow, Luna, way to thank the rest of us,” Phi muttered, and Dr. Klim shifted and gently grabbed her arm; Phi gave a surprised yelp as she was pulled in beside Luna. The two made the structure of an enclosure around Luna, making her feel like a protected child.

“Oh, oh! I want in!” Clover squealed, her pink curls bouncing as she hopped over to join them.

Alice gave a chuckle and casually strolled up to the group next, her heels clicking on the wooden floor. “I suppose there’s no reason not to. Everything seemed to work out, after all.”

Luna smiled and nodded - yes, this timeline seemed to be perfect for everyone, didn’t it? Her pulse sped up as she could feel two new pairs of arms encircle her, the two young women each giving her a wink.

“C’mon, Grandpa!” Quark cried, pushing his way into the group.

Tenmyouji gave a loud sigh. “My, my, we’re awfully huggy today, aren’t we… well, like Alice said, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I guess.”

Two more bodies joined their circle, Quark’s wide smile enough to brighten everyone else’s expressions just that much more.

A muffled chuckle sounded nearby, K’s analytical tone following it. “Ah, I believe this is called a group hug, yes?”

And Dio’s rough hiss: “No shit. Like fuck I’m getting in on that, though.”

“Don’t be like that, Dio - Christmas is supposed to be about love and joy, or so I’ve heard. Come now,” K said, and dragged Dio by the wrist towards the group.

“H-hey! Let me go!” Dio squirmed, trying to pry the metal fingers off him. Luna softly smiled towards him as they approached, trying to get him to relax a bit more; when the blond noticed her smile, he merely grimaced and broke eye contact, but didn’t protest anymore and let himself be placed in the circle.

K stretched his large, mechanical arms around the group, squishing their bodies together in a tight embrace. He was strong enough to lift everyone off the ground as well, the eyes of his mask lighting up as he merrily chuckled. Everyone else laughed, albeit a bit nervously due to the closeness (except Dio, who grumbled), but the atmosphere felt warm and inviting.

Here were a group of people that probably had never celebrated Christmas, much less together, all hugging one another like they were close.

As they parted, Ms. Kurashiki’s raspy voice sounded from behind Luna. She glanced over her shoulder to see the woman with a gentle smile of her own. “We’ve never celebrated Christmas on the moon, so you have much to learn.”

Luna softly giggled. “Yes, I suppose I do. There are so many interesting traditions around this time of year.”

Ms. Kurashiki nodded to herself, as though she was recalling her own traditions of Christmases past. “Indeed. The tree should be decorated, of course, and the star placed on top at the end. Those are all fairly popular customs, but Luna - what do you think we need to have here?”

Tilting her head, the GAULEM asked, “What do you mean, ma’am?”

Dr. Klim stepped in. “Perhaps I can clarify. I think Akane wants to know if - despite the vast amount of traditions across cultures - there’s anything that needs to be present at Christmas. In other words, if there’s something that we can’t afford to forget, no matter what we’re doing.”

“How about a gallon of eggnog…” Tenmyouji muttered, only to get elbowed by Phi.

Blinking, Luna thought about the answer for a moment, her gaze sweeping across those nearby. Nine sets of eyes stared back at her, each holding their own lifelong story.

Quark’s excitement, Tenmyouji’s joy, Clover’s enthusiasm, Alice’s satisfaction, K’s curiosity, Dio’s reluctance, Phi’s acceptance, Dr. Klim’s warmth, Ms. Kurashiki’s approval… everyone had a distinct piece of their personalities - some mixing together well, others clashing, but every piece adding something unique to the group as a whole. It was honestly amazing that they could get together like this, and choose on their own to spend time together recognizing a holiday that was a month late.

They may not feel the same, but Luna could definitely see for herself: their group had the foundations to become something much greater, much closer.

So Luna answered without hesitation.

“Well, Christmas celebrations would need a family,” she murmured, feeling the smiles of the others warm her like a blanket on a cold winter night. “It’s a good thing we have one right here, isn’t it?”

#zero escape #virtue's last reward #larvaloverlord #kiichu #zecret santa 2017 #2017 bonus round #submission

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certifiedskywalker · 7 years

Text

It’s Hard Enough - Cooper!Reader X Jughead Jones - Part 3

I'm obsessed with It’s Hard Enough! I was think you should do a part 3 where like in the episode Jughead gets in a fight with Reggie and reader somehow gets involved...And Alice Cooper is not a fan of their relationship?

I love it's hard enough, could you possibly make a part 3? :3

If you’re new to the series : Part One , Part Two . I kinda took this part in my own way, I hope you like it!

It had been around a week since you shared your first kiss with Jughead Jones and things were going quite well. Betty convinced Jughead to join the school newspaper team, which gave you time to hang out together. Luckily for you, Betty was far too immersed in the Jason Blossom case to notice the stolen glances between you and Jughead. You found yourself spending your time after school in the newsroom, helping Betty sort out papers while simultaneously spending time with your boyfriend. Just thinking of the word, and Jughead, made you feel giddy.

“I don’t think I’ve seen Y/N smile like that in a long time,” Betty teased as you were busy sorting through pictures for the Blue & Gold. You glanced up at your sister, then at Jughead who was staring at you softly. Your felt a blush warm on your cheeks under his gaze and he smiled.

“Don’t you have a murder board to build?” You asked in order to change the subject, get the attention off of yourself. Betty smiled playfully and turned back to Jughead. They started talking quietly about the case, never loud enough for you to hear. You didn’t understand why exactly they tried to hide it from you. You were only a year younger than the two of them. Jughead explained himself one night at the diner. He had said he likes to “keep his work away from his personal life. It makes things less messy.” It was a very cold, business man-like answer that had caught you off guard. The conversation had grown quiet after that, until Jughead spoke up once more.

“It’s a way of keeping you safe,” he had murmured, looking around the diner to see if anyone from school was there. When he realized no one was, he had reached his hand across the table, grabbing yours and gave it a squeeze. You smiled at the memory, the feeling of the skin of his hand against yours.

“I just don’t know Juggie,” Betty said, breaking you from your thoughts. “I think the mystery behind my little sister’s smile is slightly more intriguing to me.” You looked up from the images and saw Betty looking at you again. You could feel Jughead’s eyes on you as you straightened your back to face your sister.

“I’m just happy to be helping you two out. It gets me out of the house, and you’re more than willing to share your friends with me.” You gestured to Jughead who smiled proudly at you. Betty nodded and walked over to you, hugging you tightly.

“I’m glad you’re happy Y/N,” Betty whispered, “with everything going on, Polly, you deserve to be happy.” You wrapped your arms tightly around your sister, returning her hug. From over her shoulder, you noticed Jughead smiling softly at the two of you. You offered a smile to him, hoping that your eyes could convey your thankful message.

“Alright,” Betty said as she pulled away from your embrace. “I gave cheer practice, so you two can either head home or keep working.” Betty walked to her bags and you looked up at Jughead once more. His light eyes were bright and he nodded quickly. You returned his gesture.

“I think I’ll stay and help out Jughead,” you said and Betty smiled as she picked up her bags from cheerleading practice.

“Okay, good luck you two.” With that, your sister walked out the door to the newsroom and left you and Jughead in a brief silence. When the sound of Betty’s footsteps faded down the hall, Jughead darted towards you. His hands grabbed yours, squeezing them gently. You looked down at your joined hands, wondering how on Earth it was humanly possible for someone’s ands to be as cold as his. You looked back up at him, meeting his gaze. You smiled when you noticed how his gaze flickered from your eyes, to your lips and then back again. You leaned up on your tippy toes, pressing a small peck to his lips. You smiled into the soft kiss, and giggled slightly when his chilled hand tickled the sensitive skin of your neck.

“Sorry,” you murmured, “your hands are freezing.” He let out a breathy chuckle, causing you to grin. Your faces remained a mere inches apart as you smiled sickeningly sweet smiles at each other.

“Then you’ll just have to hold them to warm them up.” You let out a forced laugh and he smiled wider.

“You did not just say that,” you said as you rolled eyes.

“Oh I did,” he teased, “and I hate myself because of it.” You laughed, gently hitting his chest. “Wanna go to Pop’s and forget I ever used that awful pick-up line?”

“We have work to do Juggie,” you said, turning back to the pictures you were sorting. Jughead let out a dramatic groan and you hid your smile. You left his arms wrap around your shoulders and part of your chest, pulling your back to his chest.

“Your work ethic is very attractive but I’d much rather spend time with you, Y/N.” You turned around in his arms, facing him now you could see the affection in his eyes.

“Fine,” you said and Jughead smiled. His arms fell and he walked over to the door, holding it open. You smiled when he gave you a goofy look. You grabbed your bag, slinging it over your shoulder and walked towards the door. “Why thank you kindly young sir,” you teased as you walked out of the news room.

“You’re very welcome madam,” you smiled as he played along. One thing you learned when you started hanging out with Jughead was that his humor was light when he was in a happy mood. You felt his hands gently brush against yours as he fell in step beside you. You smiled up at him, feeling the urge to kiss him. You almost stopped him to do so when you heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

“Hey Y/N!” You turned around and sw Kevin making his way towards you. “Do you have a minute to spare?” You glanced at Jughead who looked slightly annoyed, but you nodded anyway.

“Sure Kev, what’s up?” Your friend smiled at you, then glanced at Jughead. When Kevin looked back at you, he raised his eyebrows.

“Um, I need a second pair of eyes for the setup I have,” he paused, “ya know for the Variety Show. I have it set up in the lounge.”

“Oh okay, sure. Can Jughead tag a long?” You asked, causing Kevin to nod slowly. “I mean, he was going to help me out with an English paper at Pop’s so I kinda need him around.”

“Sure I don’t see why not,” Kevin said as he walked off to the lounge. You glanced up at Jughead as you walked and you noticed the smirk on his face. You hit his arm gently and he looked down at you. His smiled widened when he locked eyes with you and he mouthed a ‘nice save’. You rolled your eyes as you followed Kevin into the student lounge.

“This looks great Kev,” you said, looking over the sketches your friend had put together. You turned your head to look at Kevin, but found his gaze still glued to his efforts.

“Be harsh Y/N,” he said, desperate to be wrong. You rolled your eyes, resting a hand on Kevin’s shoulder comfortingly.

“There’s nothing to be harsh about. I can’t wait to see the performers you’ve selected.” You offered him a smile to which Kevin returned. You glanced over your shoulder and your gaze landed on Jughead, who was looking over the magazine collection in the lounge. You smiled at his patience, wondering how you got lucky enough to have someone willing to wait for you.

“So what’s going on with that?” You turned back to Kevin upon hearing his voice.

“Uh what?” Kevin shook his head, giving you a knowing look.

“With you and Riverdale’s biggest mystery boy. Does Betty know?” You slapped his arm, causing Kevin to gasp. You look back over at Jughead, who was now looking in your direction. You gave him a small smile and turned your head back to face Kevin.

“Don’t breath a word of this to anyone,” you whispered.

“Why? He’s only a year older, what’s the big deal?” Before you could answer, your attention was directed to the large group of football players that entered the room.

“Look who decided to show his face again, got too busy picking up after yourself Jones?” You looked towards Jughead, who was already bristling at Reggie’s comment.

“At least I’m trying to help in this towns efforts on finding the killer. What are you doing, trying to decide which cheerleader to play with?” Your eyes widened at Jughead’s tone; he sounded truly hostile. For good reason as well. You heard about the fight Reggie stirred up a few weeks ago with Jughead and Archie. It didn’t end well for anyone, and you felt that this argument may have a worse outcome.

“Jug, let’s just go,” you said, walking in his direction. Jughead turned to you, his face softening when he saw you. You gave him a smile, trying to coax him out of the lounge. He looked like he was about to back down when Reggie spoke up again.

“He’s even hanging out with the Cooper freaks, not a surprise.” You head snapped over, facing the tall football player. You grabbed Jughead arm, trying to pull him away.

“C’mon Jughead,” you whispered, but it was too late. Jughead pulled his arm away from you, darting towards Reggie. He threw his arm back and landed it square against Reggie’s jaw. Gasps let out from the students watching the spectacle. The rest of the football team pulled Reggie back, keeping him from landing a blow on your boyfriend. You ran over, grabbed Jughead’s arm once more and pulled him out of the room.

With the plans to go to Pop’s trashed, along with Jughead’s knuckles, you lead him to your house. Luckily, both of your parents and Betty weren’t home. After an awkward and quiet walk to your house, you pushed through the door and held it open for your boyfriend who was still nursing a now bruising hand. You closed the door and immediately headed towards the kitchen. Jughead followed quietly behind you. You opened the freezer, searching around for an ice pack.

“Y/N,” Jughead started, but you simple continued your search, “please talk to me.” You finally resorted to a bag of frozen peas, handing it to Jughead. He gave you a sorry look as he took the peas and placed them against his purple knuckles.

“That was really stupid,” you said simply. “Betty and I don’t need defending Jug. We can handle ourselves.” You turned to the sink, grabbing a glass to fill with water.

“I just thought that-”

“You weren’t thinking Jughead, that’s just it. You were acting out.” You were face to face with now, the glass of water forgotten on the counter. You were staring into his eyes and in them you saw guilt. You looked down at your shoes then. This was your first fight with him and you already wanted it to end.

“With everything you’re going through Y/N,” Jughead said, breaking the silence, “I just wanted to do something for you.” He reached his unhurt hand up, stroking your cheek gently. You looked back up at his face and you felt your knees wobble a little. The glint in his eyes mirrored that of the night you kissed in the booth. You smiled softly when you noticed he leaned in a little more.

“Even if that something was stupid and you broke your hand?” He smiled and let out a breathy chuckle.

“Yes, even if I broke my hand.” You smiled again, “you deserve happiness, like Betty said. Punching Reggie was my failed attempt at preserving that.” You let out a giggle before pressing your lips to his. You flashed back to the night in the diner, after the hellish morning your mother had put your through; Jughead was there for you, in more ways than one.

“Thank you,” you mumbled against his lips. He pulled back a little, just enough for you to notice a smile on his lips. You leaned in again, capturing his lips once more. He smiled into the kiss, his good hand tickling the skin of your neck. Before it could go any further, the kiss was interrupted.

“Hey Y/N is mom-Oh my god.” You spun around, staring directly at Betty. Her bright blue eyes were wide in shock. You felt your heart rate pick up, desperately thinking of what to say.

“Hey Betts,” Jughead said awkwardly. You turned to look at him, silently asking him what the hell you should be doing. “We uh-”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s just another secret to keep from mom and dad.” You smiled at your sister, walking towards her and wrapping your arms around her waist.

“Thank you Betty,” you whispered and she just shook her head.

“I’m just glad I know who’s been making little Y/N/N so happy.” She turned towards Jughead, giving him a look. “If you ruin this, if you hurt-”

“I won’t,” Jughead said with a smile, “Y/N isn’t the only one who’s finally happy.” You gave him a wide grin. Betty clapped her hands together, giving you both a smile.

“Well then, I’m just going to leave you to it,” she paused, “not like that, I mean-I’m just gonna.” You laughed as she walked up stairs and out of the kitchen. You turned back to Jughead, who had placed the frozen peas on the counter. You walked towards him, smiling brightly.

“Where were we?” He smiled down at you as you spoke.

“Right about here,” he whispered as he pressed his lips to yours once more. You hummed, unable to convey how overwhelming happy you were in the moment. Your life had been hard enough, struggles with your family and fitting in; but now, every heart ache seemed worth it.

#jughead jones #jughead jones imagines #jughead jones x reader #jughead jones x cooper!reader #jughead jones imagine #riverdale #riverdale imagines #alice cooper #betty cooper #kevin keller #reggie mantle

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andromeda3116 · 8 years

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title: honky tonk women rating: t characters/pairings: jyn, cassian, bodhi; some ust between jyn/cassian, but pretty light summary: For as high-tech as Jabba’s casino was, the picture they’d given her of the mark was really terrible quality.

They’d told her that he had dark hair, dark eyes, stubble or a short beard, was of medium height and build, and would have “an accent” -- no specifics given on what kind of accent, thanks for the help -- but the picture was too grainy to reliably make out any features. She had been assured that he was in on the deal; he would lose all but his last chip, and then tip her that chip, which she would then pass along to Jabba, and boom: her debt was gone.

Easy.

a/n: written for @rebelcaptainprompts prompt “luck”. i saw the prompt, thought “casino au” and then every thought got derailed by COWBOY BEBOP COWBOY BEBOP COWBOY BEBOP and so now we are here. this is a one-shot, my friends.

Lady Luck had not been on Jyn’s side in a long time -- as long as she could remember, in fact, since the last time she had actually had a stroke of good fortune, it had been surviving the Astral Gate Accident, albeit by the judicious application of cryogenics. And even that “good” luck had accrued over fifty years of medical bills, leaving her with a literally unfathomable debt.

But still, she got by, more or less. Adjusted to the future -- although having practically zero memories of the past had helped that a bit -- and found herself a niche as a bounty hunter-slash-part-time criminal. It would never give her enough money to pay back the debt, but she figured that she’d be all right as long as she had enough money to continue to outrun it.

Even for her notoriously awful luck, though, this was really something.

She had heard the name Jabba Desilijic Tiure, had heard that he was someone to be avoided, and, looking to prevent any further disasters, had actually avoided him.

But it seemed like he had other ideas.

“They say you’re the reincarnation of Poker Alice,” Jabba’s aide translated, since Jyn didn’t speak his language and he seemed to consider himself above speaking lowly English. “Best card player in the solar system.”

Jyn shrugged. It was true, sort of -- she was a decent player, but a goddamn amazing cheater -- and she was not about to clarify that with people who currently had her in handcuffs in the back room of a casino somewhere in orbit around Mars.

“We have a deal for you,” the aide went on. “You do this job for us -- very simple job,” he added, with an acidic smile, “and Master Jabba will pay off your considerable debts.”

She perked right the hell up at that, and almost asked why they wanted to use her and not one of his own men, but the aide’s smile had told her all she needed to know: plausible deniability. If she got caught, she’d hang on her own and Jabba would come out as squeaky clean as the human slimeball was capable of.

Still, to pay off a debt of nearly half a billion woolongs, she’d pretty much do anything.

“All right,” she said evenly. “What do you want me to do?”

Cassian would be the first to admit that he was not really suited to the bounty hunter’s life. He hadn’t taken on the job by choice, but after certain events in his past, he’d found it prudent to do something mobile, and work with people who did not ask questions. Bounty hunting was the easiest job to maintain, and kept him far from the company of people who knew his name and history.

“Five thousand woolongs,” Bodhi sighed, looking at the data chip. “That’s it. We can’t even fuel up for that.”

Cassian ran a hand through his hair. “What can we do with it?” he asked, and Bodhi made a face.

“We could hit up the, uh, the nearest casino.”

“Bodhi.”

“No, I’m serious,” he countered. “That Martian casino is close enough, I’m great at poker, you… should stay away from blackjack or you’ll get us arrested -- “ Cassian gave him an affronted look, which he shrugged off “ -- I figure, we could at least double this, and that’ll give us enough to put fuel in our ship and maybe a meal.”

“Are there any bounties nearby?” he sighed, and received another shrug in response.

“Maybe, but we’re running on empty and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to eat something for once.”

“We had bell peppers and beef yesterday,” he snapped.

“No, we had bell peppers. There was no beef.”

It… had been a pretty sad meal, that was true.

It had also been the last of the bell peppers, which meant that tonight’s fare was pretty much the memory of food and a longing look at the stove.

Bodhi was a great poker player, and forget what he said about Cassian and blackjack -- he killed it at blackjack, the only thing he would have to do was quit before the casino workers got suspicious. He could easily make a couple thousand before catching anyone’s eye. They could double, or possibly triple, that five thousand woolongs, and eat tonight.

The casino Bodhi had mentioned wasn’t owned by or associated with the Syndicate, or at least it hadn’t been when he’d been involved, and so it was… probably safe, even if it was orbiting Mars and a magnet for organized crime. Besides, he was a dead man; nobody was looking.

It was safer than going hungry or limping to hyperspace with a teaspoon of fuel.

“Fine,” he conceded, grudgingly. “Let’s go play.”

For as high-tech as Jabba’s casino was, the picture they’d given her of the mark was really terrible quality.

Easy.

Jyn was… reasonably certain that he had just sat down at her table. She glanced down at the picture, and it definitely looked like the same guy, if she was looking at him through a dusty window.

“Mind if I join the game?” he asked, and sure enough, he had an accent -- her vague memory said Hispanic, but the present said Martian. Bingo. She dealt him in with a smile.

He watched her carefully through several rounds, in which she made sure he neither won nor lost too much to be anything but chance; he barely spoke, and never looked away from the table even as he amassed a respectable collection of chips.

“What a shame,” he murmured, as she pulled about half of his chips across the table. “Seems like Lady Luck isn’t on my side tonight.”

He was looking at her like he could see right through her; but so what? He knew the game they were playing, his part to play -- or at least, Jabba had said he would. He knew he was supposed to lose, and her job was to make sure he did. It was just… he put her on the defensive with the way he was watching her, eyes on her face rather than her hands as she shuffled. He looked at her like she was an open book that he was very interested in reading, and it unsettled her.

“The last hand,” she said mildly, dealing two cards each to the remaining players, and two for herself. She’d been playing it safe, so dealing herself a blackjack wouldn’t be unbelievable; she made sure that he would bust with the first hit.

“Hmm,” he muttered, looking at the twenty-three he’d gotten.

“Dealer makes twenty-one,” she said, with a flourish, and everyone but him groaned and pushed chips around.

“Looks like I’m down to my last chip,” he said, and she smiled, bowed, held out a hand, but -- “I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir.”

What?

Oh, you have got to be joking. He wasn’t in on it after all? Or he wasn’t the right guy? Or maybe he was drunk and had forgotten?

She forced a smile to stay in place as she ducked away from the table and tracked him down. He seemed to have dropped something and was just standing back up.

“Hey,” she hissed, catching him by the arm, and he turned, eyebrow raised. “You’re supposed to give me that last chip!”

He tilted his head. “You’re awfully brash,” he replied evenly, and loudly. “After you cheated the entire game, and I didn’t say a word?”

People around them started muttering about did you hear that, no wonder I’m broke! and the casino’s guards were walking up; this whole job had gone downhill really, really suddenly.

“Just give me the damn chip,” she snapped, and he held it up for a moment, then made it disappear into his sleeve, looking behind her to the guards. She glanced around and met their eyes.

Jabba was expecting her to turn up with the chip in the next five minutes -- they were coming to take her to him, she was sure of it -- and she somehow doubted that he would buy the guy didn’t give it to me as an excuse. Maybe if she brought him in with her, proved to them that it was just a mistake, she’d had the wrong guy… but he had already melted into the crowd.

“Wait!” she cried, running after him, but he had pulled one hell of a disappearing act.

Time to go.

She pressed a concealed button on her bracelet and said the keyword -- “Showtime” -- to initiate autopilot on her Red Tail. It would hone in on the signal from the bracelet and come right to her.

It might break some things in the process, but at this point, she was so deep in this crap that it didn’t much matter.

Cassian fingered the poker chip thoughtfully; it was heavier than the one he’d had before running into that guy -- a guy who, he couldn’t help but notice, looked passably like himself, probably explaining the cheating dealer’s strange antics. She had some deal worked out to get this chip, but had mistaken him for that guy. What it meant to him was, this chip was probably worth some money.

Maybe he had finally had a stroke of good luck.

And then the dealer showed up again, but running full tilt past him -- in heels and a form-fitting uniform, he had to admit that he was a little impressed -- as the glass windows covering one wall shattered and a small, one-man ship burst through.

He glanced behind him, spotted the guards, and cursed internally.

“Bodhi, we have to go!” he snapped into his comm. Bodhi couldn’t possibly be far.

“Are you kidding me?” his partner replied, but growled. “I’ll meet you at the elevators.”

“Meet me at the ship in the lobby, actually,” he said, following the dealer. It would be the single fastest way to get out of here, and if he’d been caught on-camera at the blackjack table, and recognized… It wasn’t incredibly likely, but Cassian had learned a long time ago that assuming the worst and acting accordingly, particularly when it came to evading the Syndicate, usually paid off.

“What ship -- what? I haven’t cashed in my chips!”

“Leave them!”

Bodhi ran almost directly into him in the lobby; they’d be able to hitch a ride, she was just getting into her ship, and they were right on her heels.

“What’s going on?” Bodhi asked desperately, but Cassian ignored him and shoved him into the little ship, following right behind him just before the door closed. The dealer looked around, horrified.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shrieked, and he glanced through the viewport, the guards pulling out their guns.

“Hitching a ride out of here,” he answered. “You gonna fly, or is cheating at blackjack all you know?”

She glared at him, then cursed under her breath and took off.

“Where can I get rid of you?” she snapped, as soon as they were out of the casino, leaving an impressive array of broken windows and upended landscaping behind them. It wasn’t exactly the smoothest escape he’d ever been involved in, but it would work in a pinch, and if he’d been caught on camera and the Syndicate did recognize him, the dealer would be their first target, and they might even assume that he was associated with Jabba now. It would buy him time, if nothing else.

“Our ship is docked at the north hangar,” he replied. “What’s on the chip?”

She didn’t answer, but she did take them to the north hangar and land within their own airlock, which he closed and locked behind him as soon as they were off. If he wanted to fence this thing, he’d need to know what it was, and to whom it was worth money, and she was the only link he had to either answer.

“Hey!” she yelled, eyes blazing with anger, and stormed out of her little zipcraft. “Let me out of here!”

“What’s on the chip?” he repeated.

“What is going on?” Bodhi moaned.

“Can you take us out of here?” he asked Bodhi, who made a face.

“Yeah, but it’s the last takeoff we can manage with the fuel we’ve got.”

So, basically: wherever they landed, they had to fuel up, or they were grounded. As long as it wasn’t Mars, he wasn’t going to care.

“What do you even care about that stupid chip?” the dealer snarled, following them as they made their way to the cockpit. “You don’t even have it!”

“I don’t?” he said evenly, holding it up and weighing it in his hand. “It’s awfully heavy for a poker chip.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, mouth falling open. “You had it the whole time?” she asked, hands clenching into fists. “Why didn’t you give it to me like you were supposed to?”

“I haven’t had it the whole time,” he admitted, hiding it again in a concealed pocket of his jacket. “Found it on a man who looked a lot like me, though.”

She growled and took a deep breath. “Look, just give it to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I need it, that’s why.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a deal with Jabba,” she articulated through clenched teeth, and he shook his head.

“I don’t know any Jabba,” he lied. “What’s so important about it?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped, holding up her hands in frustration. “I just know that he wants it, and if I give it to him, all my debts go away. So just give me the damn chip!”

“How much are those debts?” he countered, and she glared.

“None of your business.”

“Let me rephrase,” he amended. “How much is this thing worth?”

She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, before giving him an acidic smile. “More than four hundred million woolongs, apparently,” she snarled, and he almost fell over.

Holy shit. Even in his wildest dreams, he hadn’t expected this thing to be worth that much.

(Also, how the hell had she rung up a debt of that size? He made a mental note to hunt down her information.)

He didn’t show his surprise, and instead whistled softly. “So, at least half a billion. You hear that, Bodhi?”

The question was rhetorical; Bodhi was gaping at the dealer.

“We just got rich,” Bodhi breathed.

“No, you didn’t,” the dealer snapped back. “You can’t fence it. It’s worth that much to Jabba, and I don’t know who he’s planning to sell it to.”

“So help us find out,” he said quickly, and she narrowed her eyes. “We’ll cut you in on the profit, you get a third of whatever it gets us.”

She seemed to think it over for a moment, before nodding slowly, eyes calculating. “Okay,” she said, holding out her hand to shake. “We have a deal.”

Yeah, he thought, even as he took her hand. She’s lying.

He told her his name was Joreth, which she tentatively decided was a lie, because she felt like he trusted her roughly as much as she trusted him, which was somewhere between “not at all” and “active sabotage”.

But still, she agreed to act as a go-between for him and Jabba, because it was in her best interest to get that chip into Jabba’s hands, and although she could not give less of a damn whether or not the two guys got paid, she cared significantly more about getting her own debts forgiven than getting revenge on them for manipulating her.

“Ah,” Jabba’s aide said, when she contacted him from the ship’s living area, “Jyn. We were beginning to worry.”

“I don’t buy that,” she replied, deadpan. “Look, I’m on a fishing boat, still in Martian orbit. We have the chip, if we can arrange a trade.”

“We?”

“Long story,” she sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose to stave off a headache. “How much are you willing to pay for it?”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“I’m changing the deal,” she countered coldly. “Instead of Jabba paying my debts,” she explained, even though the words tasted like bile -- not-Joreth was standing on the other side of the camera, watching -- “he pays cold, hard cash.”

Alternatively, she tried to say with her eyes, you could just kill them and we could go back to our old deal.

The aide looked aside, and she heard Jabba say something, before he looked back at her with a thin smile. “Ah, but, you see, Master Jabba never promised to pay your debts, simply to make them go away.”

In other words, they were not about to hand over four hundred million woolongs. It probably had been too much to hope for.

“So,” he went on calmly, “no matter how much you settle with us for, you’ll be taking a loss.”

“How about we discuss this in person?”

“Oh, no,” the aide countered. “You’ve already decided to change the deal. So, we’ll offer you… thirty million woolongs.”

With every fiber of her being, she loathed not-Joreth and his partner for screwing this all up for her. She forced herself to smile.

“Fifty,” she countered.

“Thirty,” he repeated, and she glanced up at not-Joreth, who shrugged.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Thirty million woolongs.”

“Excellent,” the aide said. “We’ll see you at the flight deck of the casino at 2100 hours.”

With that, he cut the feed, and not-Joreth walked around her, again toying with the poker chip. She wanted to throttle him.

“I could have had my debt paid off if you had just -- “

“What’s on the chip?” he cut her off, and she let out a scream of frustration.

“I don’t know!” she snarled, but his expression didn’t flicker.

“Let’s find out,” he said, shrugging, and opened up a panel in the wall, pulling out some kind of device. Bodhi walked in from the cockpit and sat on the couch opposite her as he set it up on the table.

“What have we got?” Bodhi asked, and not-Joreth pursed his lips.

“Thirty million if we trade with Jabba,” he replied, setting the poker chip on the stage of the device. “But I doubt he’ll give us the best price.”

“Thirty million?” Bodhi repeated, but then shrugged. “We’d still be better off.”

Jyn was vibrating with suppressed anger, and there was no way that not-Joreth couldn’t see it. “I’m not better off,” she snarled. “You two are the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I doubt that,” not-Joreth replied mildly. “You were in the Astral Gate accident,” he went on, and she started.

“How do you know that?” she asked, and he didn’t look up.

“I have ways of gathering information,” he answered. Jyn narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been out of cryo for four years, and on the run from your medical bills for three. I doubt we even rank in the top five worst things that have ever happened to you.”

She scowled. “Yeah, thanks for reminding me that I have the worst luck in the solar system,” she snapped, crossing her arms. “I should have killed you and taken the chip for myself.”

He let out a short laugh. “I would love to see you try to kill me,” he said, but didn’t elaborate, looking intently at the screen. In spite of herself, she was curious. He was an enigma, and an attractive one, even if he was an asshole.

“So, what is it?” she asked.

“It’s a chip,” he said, and before she could say yes thank you for stating the obvious, jackass, he went on. “CryptBreaker.”

“What?” Bodhi asked, and he glanced at him.

“It’s a master decryption program,” he answered. “ISSP has been looking for it for years.”

“How much do you think they’d be willing to pay for it?” Jyn asked, and he raised an eyebrow, looking to Bodhi and shrugging. Bodhi looked uncertain.

“I don’t know, I’d have to ask some of my old… colleagues,” he said, wincing.

“More than thirty million?” not-Joreth suggested, and Bodhi made a face.

“Doubt it,” he replied. “You know ISSP, they’d want us to hand it over to be good citizens.”

“I bet the Syndicate would pay good money for it,” Jyn offered, and not-Joreth’s expression turned to ice.

“We are not contacting the Syndicate.”

“Why not?” she countered, raising her chin defiantly and making a mental note of his reaction. “They’re close, and they’ll pay up for a master decryption program. If they find out Jabba’s offering thirty million, they’ll offer us more.”

“No,” he snapped, and her eyes narrowed. Yeah, definitely bad blood between him and the Syndicate.

She wasn’t sure how it would become useful, but she was sure that it could be.

“Fine,” she sighed, crossing her arms and leaning back into the chair. “Jabba it is.”

“You know, she’s probably right about the Syndicate,” Bodhi muttered. “They’d pay at least double what Jabba’s offering.”

Cassian shook his head, watching her tinker with her ship -- he wasn’t fool enough to leave her alone with a comm and the knowledge that he, someone she had reason to want to hurt, had history with Mars’s largest criminal organization. “Not to me, they won’t,” he said, and Bodhi glanced at him.

“What’s your history with them?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “I stay away from them, that’s all that matters.”

She was right, that was true. Draven would pay a lot of hard money for that chip… if anyone except Cassian offered it. But if they found out that Cassian was alive, after all this time, he’d never, ever get free of them again, if they didn’t just kill him outright.

There’d be no payoff, and he’d lose the freedom he’d had to fake his own death to achieve. Not even worth contemplating.

“It’s almost time,” he said, turning on his heel and making for his own ship. “I’m going down to the flight deck, the two of you wait here.” To Bodhi, under his breath: “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Jyn replied sarcastically, and he rolled his eyes as he walked away.

Within ten minutes, he was suited up and landing his ship on the flight deck of the casino; Jabba’s aide was already there, waiting with a briefcase. He stepped out, the magnetic shoes of the space suit keeping him on the surface in the microgravity.

“Thirty million woolongs,” the aide said, holding up the case, and Cassian held up the chip to show him. “On three.”

At the count of three, he threw the chip and the aide threw the case… and then pulled out a gun. By the time he fired, Cassian had already pushed off the flight deck and grabbed a turbine, and managed to pull himself forward in time to catch the chip and knock the aide’s gun away, and then the aide himself off the flight deck.

He was just about to go for the briefcase -- win-win, as far as he was concerned, and all it had cost was sending one of Jabba Desilijic Tiure’s aides into deep space -- when he was almost knocked off his feet by the force of another spaceship landing.

Jyn’s zipcraft. He looked up and met her eyes through the viewport.

She gave him a blinding smile, and used her craft’s claw to pluck the briefcase off the flight deck and pull it up into the ship, then waved merrily at him and flew off.

It had all happened in less than a minute.

Cassian bit his tongue.

To be honest, this was much more in line with how his luck usually went. He should have known that it was too good to be true.

“Well,” Cassian said, placing a bandage over Bodhi’s forehead where Jyn had clocked him with a wrench to get him out of her way, “we can still give it to the ISSP. Maybe they’ll give us enough money to fuel up.”

“I am never taking you to a casino again,” Bodhi grumbled.

#rebelcaptain #rebelcaptainprompts #fanfiction; mine

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solemnlyswearrp-blog1 · 8 years

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I really don't understand how magic can't heal Kai. I feel like that doesn't make sense in the universe. Healers would be able to fix him. I just feel like there wasn't enough research done for that and wouldn't make ANY sense. Y'all should've approved that. And if you did, can you give the reasoning because I really don't get it.

First I want to start this by saying that I cannot stress enough that if you have some issue with anything in the roleplay, your absolute best bet is to come off of anon and contact the main in a mature and private fashion. When you do this, it creates a lot less awkwardness, stress and hostility on the dashboard, and it’s a lot easier for us as admins to address and workout situations when you come to us this way. I also want to apologize for the delay. You were clearly impatient for an answer and thought to go and contact the player about this instead of exercising patience, and for that I am sorry. One of your qualms is that you felt no research went into this decision. I felt the need to do a lot of research into what we know from canon about healing spells and dark magic in order to give you an educated response to something that you have legitimate questions about.

To clarify, the detail in question was not something approved by the admins. While we do ask that players consider discussing large and ambitious plots and details with us, we also support our players having freedom to make decisions for the sake of character development. In this case, our Kai player had contacted the main about the attack and having their character seriously injured as a result, and this plot was approved. We have since spoken about the situation, and while some details have been changed to better fit canon, overall the storyline where Kai’s wounds are not easily healed is going to stay in place. My reasoning, as you so desire, is under the cut as to preserve space on the dashboard. If you have any more questions, consider coming off anon and we can have a discussion on it. Otherwise I think I explain this well enough in my answer below the cut:

Now onto the actual question that’s being posed here: Is it probable that Kai couldn’t be healed by magic? In short, yes… and no. One thing that is very irksome about the universe that JK Rowling created is that there really aren’t very clear rules and limitations to the magic system in her wizarding world. Before you come at me with your pitchforks and torches, let me explain this. While this is a fantastical universe and is in many respects realistic, there are also portions of this universe that don’t entirely make sense and lack proper laws to explain things. Healing Magic and the limitations of it are a huge example of this.

We know that healing magic and potions can be used to fix a large number of things, such as: Broken limbs, illnesses like the common cold and the flu, some (and we stress some) instances of memory loss charms, as well as magical illnesses like Dragon Pox, Spattergroit and Vanishing Sickness. But we also know that there are cases of situations where magic couldn’t fix certain calamities and injuries - some of which kind of go with the aforementioned illnesses that are proven to be fixed by magic.

Confusing? Let me elaborate.

So we know that Hermione’s parents were obliviated by her in 1997 to protect them from Voldemort and his Death Eaters. We also know sometime after the battle in 1998, that she was able to return their memories to them. This is an example of magic (to some capacity) being able to cure memory charms. However, we also know that Gilderoy Lockhart’s memory could not be cured after he used a mangled memory charm on himself. Magic couldn’t fix that case of a memory charm. Vanishing Sickness is an illness that causes a wizard’s body parts to disappear. We know that this is a magical ailment that can be healed, but then you have characters like Mad Eye Moody and George Weasley who lost limbs and weren’t able to regain them.

You’re telling me that in a universe where a potion like Skelegro, which can literally regrow a person’s bones, exists it is also not possible for George Weasley’s ear to have been regrown? Or for Mad Eye Moody’s leg and eye to somehow been charmed back into place? Do you see what I’m getting at here? We’re told that magic can cure a lot of things, even fantastical things like vanishing body parts, but then we’re also told that Bill Weasley’s scarring was irreversible, even though Fenrir Greyback was at the time of the attack just a human man with sharp claws. That’s a mundane thing and yet somehow magic could not cure these scars? Or What about the Longbottoms? Frank and Alice Longbottom remain permanently damaged and legally insane because of magical torture, which cannot be fixed. I mean we also know that Luna’s mother, Pandora Lovegood, died because one of her own experimental spells went terribly wrong. Magic went wrong, and it couldn’t be cured. The point is - there are literally no limitations to what magic can and cannot do. In fact, it’s a very conflicting law because some situations are fixable with just a flick of the wand but then some other similar situations are written off as “incurable with magic”.

But there is a common factor in a lot of these medical cases where magic was unable to fix them - a number of them were caused by dark magic. Suddenly there’s a new factor at play.

So let’s talk the specifics here. Kai is unable to be healed by magic, following an encounter with a dark wizard who used a severing spell with an incantation we all know well - Sectumsempra. Let’s look at the canon and what we know about this curse. This is a curse that was invented by Severus Snape that operates almost like an invisible sword being unleashed from the wand and slashing their opponent in the motion of the wand movement. In canon, this spell was used two times - once against Draco Malfoy in Half Blood Prince and then again against George Weasley in the Battle of the Seven Potters. (the aforementioned ear-losing incident) Now going off these canon incidents, we can come to some conclusions that do in fact support the notion that Kai’s wounds from the curse are unable to be healed by magic. Let me elaborate on these.

We know that when George’s ear was lost in the Battle of the Seven Potters that the Order of the Phoenix was unable to regrow his ear, and for two reasons:

Curse Wounds, especially those in the nature of the Dark Arts, are unable to be healed

The counter curse was unknown

This is a curse invented by Severus Snape, this wasn’t a widely known curse at the time of its use in 1997 - there was no counter curse readily available to them, and wounds inflicted by dark magic are unable to be healed. This explains why magic can’t cure the Longbottoms, why they can’t cure the injuries inflicted by werewolf Greyback on Bill Weasley, and why they cannot cure Mad Eye’s missing limbs - because healing magic cannot heal wounds and injuries that are a result of dark magic. The Sectumsempra spell is dark magic.

Now we have to look at another case where this was used in canon - when it was used against Draco Malfoy. From this encounter between Harry and Draco in Half Blood Prince, we learn a couple things about the treatment of the curse. First we know that the spell can be cursed by vulnera sanentur. Kind of. I’m going off of what I found online due to not having a copy of the book before me, but what we know about this spell as a counter to sectumsempra is that it works in stages. The first usage will stop the blood flow, the second will cause the wounds to knit and close, and the third will remove the “worst effects of the curse”. While this may appear as the end all to healing it, it’s also known that the victim will require further medical treatment even after this spell has been used three times. Scarring can only really be avoided if dittany is used immediately.

This is where that conflicting law comes in. So we are told that the curse can be cured… But that certain side effects of it cannot be reversed. This is again because it’s dark magic, and dark magic has a lot of permanent effects. Once again, George’s ear vs. Draco’s body - One effect of this curse was non-reversible, the other was treatable.

Now comes a question I think a lot of us ask when we discuss these issues - This roleplay is set in 2025 - shouldn’t they have figured out a way to cure it by now? Let’s discuss. This curse was created during Severus Snape’s time at Hogwarts, presumably around his fifth year. That was 1975 for all you Marauder’s Era fans. The curse was used again (twice) in 1996/1997. That’s about 21-22 years later, and at that point, no counter curse was found. Our roleplay takes place in 2025 - that’s 28 years after this curse had been used in those two canon occurrences. Given what we know about dark magic having permanent side effects that are irreversible (remember, the ear) and that 22 years after its initial creation there was still no counter curse…It’s actually not bizarre to assume that a counter curse hasn’t been discovered even in 2025. We’re told 19 years after the defeat of Voldemort that “All Is Well”. Considering this isn’t a well known curse and that shortly after its reemergence in the Second Wizarding War that this community ended up in this peaceful sort of euphoric state, it’s really not a stretch to assume that a counter curse was never created for this. It’s actually pretty accurate to assume this isn’t a very well known curse at all. It’s dark magic, it was invented in the late 20th century and it was rarely ever used. I mean there aren’t really counter-curses for the Unforgivables and they’ve been around (presumably) for centuries. And (once more) we know of occurrences regarding the cruciatus curse where the damage sustained was irreversible. Isn’t it therefore pretty safe to assume that a counter curse and full treatment for sectumsempra hasn’t been found even in 2025? Yeah, I think so. So no, it’s not at all unreasonable to assume that a counter curse hasn’t been found.

Really, looking at canon alone, it’s not far fetched to believe that someone would have a hard time being healed by magic when attacked with a dark curse like that one. It’s actually canon to assume so. Therefore, it’s totally reasonable for Kai to have a tough time being healed, even by magic, after being faced with a dark curse like this one. Now as to whether or not it’s probable for a character to be absolutely incurable through magic - this is obviously a very different scenario. Magic can cure the mundane, but there are limits in response to illness and injury inflicted by magic.

In this case with Kai, we have spoken directly with the player and have made changes that don’t interfere too much with the established threads going on and still follow canon as we know it. Kai’s wounds are not going to easily be healed due to the nature of dark magic. I hope that this makes sense and clarifies any of your concerns. If you have more questions please consider coming off anon and we can continue the discussion.

#answered #faq #anonymous

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trustafarian-theserialfiction · 4 years

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“trustafarian” part 12: delivering the wingier wing March 4, 2016 8:56 pm

The tomato/lentil curry stew thing Bruce made was really hitting the spot. The green stuff was knotweed from someoneother’s window microgreen grow. It went on top with some recently expired plain yogourt Bruce assured him wouldn’t make him sick with some new thing. Dan had seen the container in the second fridge the other day or whenever it had been, and overlooked it after assuming off the bat that, like at his parent’s place, there would be a few mouthfuls of some mouldy leftovers inside. If he’d known it was yogourt he still wouldn’t have gone for it. One it was from the trash, two it was unflavoured, three he didn’t eat yogourt. Wasn’t that for lady tennis players or whatever? But it was good with this. He’d slowly eaten a bowl sitting at the kitchen island while Bruce ran around Painting The Living Room Ready. Or red-y, Dan wasn’t sure what the pun was there; either way it involved rummaging around in the tin box-shed thing built off the back of the skate ramp, and pulling out a big tyedyed sheet. This was followed by a red loveseat that looked like it was just the big square cushions off some larger piece of furniture structured together with single wall sections of milk crates and pallet slats. The sheet went up on the wall by hooking the beam it was all wrapped around and stuck to at one end, onto a latch thing that was on a rope with a pulley dial doohickey up by the ceiling on the wall. Then he pulled out a projector from somewhere inside the halfpipe/shack storehouse of wonders. And lo and behold, appeared the laptop from behind its slider cubby-door in the wall.

It played movies for them all from the projector sitting on a pulled-up barstool, because Mouse had finally reappeared from his little room behind when the food smell got to him. He’d been talking to himself and banging things and listening to some kind of soviet ska since finishing his half-Russian (for all Dan knew) rant about Bruce’s improper labelling on the way in. Dan had been feeling exceptionally magnanimous since eating Bruce’s food again and drinking some filtered water from the pitcher that had been filled, but he’d stayed out of it entirely when Mouse sniped about it again before eating, which seemed fair. At this point, from his point of view, it was really a nonissue and he was happy to not get upset about it by proxy. Turned out he’d just been clowning himself by drinking the water from the sink for hands, which (of course) didn’t have a filter on the tap-end, because (of course) it was for hands, and steaming, and whatever. Bruce said they filtered it again through biochar or some crackpot sounding thing, Dan had been only halfway paying attention to the human attention-craving hummingbird Bruce had become with two somewhat willing, somewhat captive “out-of-actionses” to fuss over, and was more interested in how movies looked on the resplendently ridiculous backdrop of the tyedye. It was like a sunflower field if you looked at the patterns long enough, but all lucky charms colours and every-petal-a-rainbow type sunflower field. For some reason Bruce had decided to show them lawnmower man and was gabbing incessantly about it. The laptop’s audio naturally went through all the various speakers around the place and with the sound too low to really hear over Bruce even though it was everywhere, the effect was a kind of entertainingly lyrical din. A din to which Dan managed to eat more soup, at an increasing rate until he’d blown through several tentatively self-portioned half-bowls. He suspected Bruce being perched on the top of the halfpipe he liked and blowing bags of volcano vape everywhere, was “somehow” giving him an appetite.

Sometime after dark Jean-Paul had shown up, and Dan thought it was because Bruce texted about the predicament of the two lost little lambs. Or, whatever-Mouse-is. A snarling little lamb on a snarled little settee that looks like a llama, honestly. Despite all his rage he was just a guy too high to reasonably leave le Mais-on for the moment on his le Mouse-own. The maze… he squinted through the haze the room had taken on, watching Jean-Paul’s expression.

Dan was feeling a lot better than Mouse seemed to be, and he was glad to see Jean-Paul, who seemed nonplussed by the whole situation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mechanical separation, he thought. Mechanically separated was the only phrase he remembered now from the zine he’d pondered briefly in the kitchen, thinking instead mainly of the pictures. Dan asked himself why, what it was about the phrase. Jean-Paul is explaining about his job: Dan tried to focus. It was riveting really, but he was really unclear on why his friend of lo these ten years had chosen tonight to explain that he ran around having sex for money. And that it ran in the family, so to speak, which explained everything about the weird moment he’d had with Andreah last month and maybe something about why she hadn’t tried to get in touch at all. But that wasn’t the case, he realized, running it by himself a few times; she had played it off really cool, she must have understood that Jean-Paul used to say whatever, to his old friends. People he was scared wouldn’t “get it” or whatever. Dan wasn’t sure he got it. Andreah hadn’t been sure he’d get it, or wasn’t sure she was supposed to tell him. Since he didn’t know. Apparently it wasn’t worth bringing up unless he was all juiced up on The Brew. Maybe he’d seemed relaxed or something. He had felt pretty relaxed, now that he was feeling much less high and much more level. Mouse still seemed agitated as all get-out but hadn’t left, or seemed interested in anything that was going on aside from the movie playing directly over his head and occasionally begrudgingly responding to something Bruce was on about in the background, over all their heads. Jean-Paul had perched himself on the halfpipe itself, in a square he cleared in the rummage against the short pallet wood leg of the second segment of strawberry red “couch” that Dan had been lounging on fully extended for some time before Jean-Paul had arrived. He had been feeling like a big happy cat, all snug in its basket or whatever. The couch was holding together pretty well, like two big armless Adirondack chairs conjoined, it didn’t shift and it sandwiched Dan pleasantly in the middle. He still felt snug, but now it was sort of like, he couldn’t get away if he wanted to. He went about not feeling like he’d rather not bail. "So, I mean, how do you...Did your mom give you like, a welcome basket of …rubber gloves and condoms when you were legal or something?" "What?" He sounded quite scandalized, but amused. Dan guessed this was going better than he’d anticipated. "I was picturing some like, eyes wide shut scenario," he'd never seen it, didn't know how the sexmask club recruited, "or something. With y'know, welcome baskets and… business cards. With italic font...fancy...in cursive..." he waved his hands vaguely, splashing it out in lights: "club ...somethingorother." "The Moulin Rouge," Jean-Paul laughed at him. "Alice linked me up, actually. I mean obviously I always knew, about my mom, like she never hid it from me, but I understood to repeat whatever job she said she had, when it came up. I'd never really thought about following in Ma'mere's footsteps but I'd never thought up any other backup plan for the band manager thing falling through. That was sort of step one in a whole...career I had planned out. Apparently I'm bad with setbacks." Maybe Jean-Paul had secretly been waiting to retire since before even starting. Dan had always wanted to retire, himself. Maybe he'd dropped out of retirement. For the first time. He was technically a freelancer. He was freelancing. If he factored in the cost of his room and board, if it had been in a rentable place of equivalent amenities, he was doing really well. Astronomically well, even. It wasn’t a penthouse downtown or anything but he’d really only been in town three months. Or two months, that always confused him. He counted forward from January on his fingers, and was surprised to find that it had only been two months. "So, how'd it, how'd you end up asking Alice...about it," he frowned at his accidental echo. Go ask Alice, he heard Andre tell him in the past, again, still there, next to the dumpster Bruce was in. The bike was there. "She parties around town, there's places where you meet clients pretty easily, which is to say, where you make friends who look like bankers even naked and they give you various drugs people don’t really do anywhere else, and later you hit them up for rent when they,” he made a noise like was considering how “iffy” to be about it, ”require further service. Female-identifying people get in free so Alice is all over it, I’m not really one for the sex bar scene. I go to my bar, where I know people, with people I know, and I don’t take dates there. Anyway Alice and I have a similar enough client base, or, there's enough overlap where she was able to set me up with a few guys who weren’t looking for what she’s offering now. So there’s a nice wingman thing in it for my friend, too; she gets to say there’s a brand they can switch to, they in turn might forward whoever, to her.”

Well, that seemed to explain that. Dan wasn’t sure where to go from there. Was he supposed to check that Jean-Paul was okay or something? He seemed fine. No more not fine than anyone else he knew. Generally pretty poised and in control. It seemed pretty condescending to get all weird, so he tried “Okay. Well, cool? Are you …all good?”

Jean-Paul laughed and looked at him sidelong. Dan realized there were easy entendres there and he felt his face groan. Graciously Jean-Paul overlooked the joketake and said “overall it’s, ah, quite a fulfilling occupation, actually. I encounter some very,” Dan saw his mouth shimmy as he pursed his lips in a sort of fond way “interesting older gentlemen. All groovy, ground control,” he said.

Bruce screeched “good morning starshine the earth says hellooooo,” over at them, obviously and obnoxiously eavesdropping.

With a wave of his hand, Jean-Paul ignored Bruce and continued, “it’s excellent work, honestly” sounding extremely honest. Dan wasn’t sure whether to believe him, and chose to reserve judgment. He had found the word “overall” dubious. He supposed Jean-Paul’s clients never yelled at him in bars. If anything—Dan cut the power to that thought, blinked and decided the movie was interesting again, because it was a different movie, a movie so interesting he had no idea what he’d been about to think, even, or why that would’ve mattered. Jason was in space in this one, huh?

“Pete says he’ll be here in a couple hours if we order a sumptuous Chinese meal in the betweentime.” Bruce continued to pester-yell, sounding very happy. “I have a twenty I found on the ground! All freaky and new! I think the machine 3d prints them from plastic bag pellets! Don’t quote me! I can get more out if you all are gonna stay away-ay-ayyychk?”

Staying awake for Pete sounded like kind of a-hurdle-too-many for him, but he didn’t want to run away just when Jean-Paul had come out to him or whatever about his line of work. Seemed like that might come off as overly mindboggled about it, which would probably mean he wasn’t really that cool with it, in the light of day. This all swam into his mind as he stared at the projected square on the wall and at everyone, the others. Mouse and Bruce and Jean-Paul, all together in his line of vision, their heads looking sort of cherubic in his fading potion-paisleyed view. He felt a sort of conduit of sympathy between them run in a circuit, then, and breathed out so he didn’t startle, feeling like he might. He had a funny sense of the others as ectoplasms or something, like visible souls. The scene seemed like an apparition of a stage play, with four ghostly players, watching an even ghostlier play as it played out on its own borax box. The space ship or whatever it was, satellite or something, in the movie, reminded him of their house, all compartments of a unit. He was trying not to pry into the others in some way, by focusing away from them. It immediately seemed overly intimate to investigate them too intently. Instead he thought back to the question he’d been asked, so long ago it felt like but it couldn’t have been, Bruce had just asked and was distracted again. They were on the same setting now, it seemed. The same frequency. It came back to him, hadn’t Bruce said something about that on an episode of the podcast? He had intuited what Jean-Paul would think if he bailed, because Jean-Paul was thinking it. And Jean-Paul had realized he’d realized because Dan been thinking it. And the others knew too, or it felt like—it had felt like they had. He felt like the best option was to be circumspect about his drug-fuelled revelations, but, not wanting to bet on being wrong, he finally announced that he couldn’t pitch but had been planning on eating more of what Bruce had made anyway.

“It is very homey,” Jean-Paul commented his way, watching the movie. He had brought his knee up in front of him one at a time, alternating after a while, since sitting, and was now on the left one, hands clasped in front of it.

“Did you just call my cooking HOMELY,” Bruce wailed in feinted anguish. He was rolling around on the strip of halfpipe next to Mouse’s perch, between two pile-esque rows of whatheverthehell (looked like big sheets of fabric, paint rollers, chairs of various folding types, just a bunch of random shit like you’d see in the back of a school multipurpose room or a scout hall, which was probably exactly the type of place it had all come from originally), holding his balloonbag of vapor like an otter with a clam.

“Like home cooking,” Dan clarified redundantly, to contribute some chatter for its own sake. For the sake of homeyness, and homieness, he figured. It kind of felt like Bruce figuring it. He was probably spending enough time around him for it to be catching, he smirked to himself. Thinking of things catching brought him back to the almost electric jolt he’d felt earlier, when he’d had that sensation like they were all conducting something back and forth and it was an impressionistic soup of stuff, and he’d thought about how Jean-Paul was doing, or how he’d feel if Dan left, which brought him back to a half-had idea from before Bruce had distracted him, and he said “I can trade you spots so you’re not on the floor, or move my feet or something,” to Jean-Paul.

Jean-Paul opened his mouth, seeming to reply, but sounding a lot like Bruce cutting him off. “Don’t bother I was gonna-unna go get Pete and me and him some padding. I’ll get you another bowl too so you can stay a warm little patty all sandwichy and full of spices.”

“Are you calling me ginger,” Dan wasn’t heard, or if he was he wasn’t answered. Bruce had bounced his way over the lip of the curved ramp and down the other side, and now he was in the kitchen, bustling. “Thanks,” he told Bruce with feeling, receiving more delicious mush on what he took to be a b-line to the second floor for supplies. Supplies. He’d been thinking about asking about something from in there, but he couldn’t remember what it had been. Somehow, though, it reminded him to ask Jean-Paul for clothes, since he did remember wanting to ask about clothes. He tried to think of what the other thing had been, and amended to ponder it in a shower, after asking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He wasn’t sure whether Jean-Paul would still be upstairs with them when he got out of the shower, and thought that if he wasn’t, if he’d gone back to his own floor, Dan’d do the same, except that his floor was right below where this impromptu slumber party was taking place. Bruce pretty much had him corralled either way, he realized, sudsing his scalp with someone’s old Lush product. It looked filmed in dust enough to belong to no one who was there to care. When he came back out, towelling his hair with a hand-towel while he held a larger towel around his waist with another hand, he spotted the new additions to the landscape he’d been wanting; a change of clothes was on the back edge of the red couch thing. But he also felt himself deflate slightly at Jean-Paul’s absence from the scene. Cast adrift, slightly, he tried not to scurry his way over despite feeling the wintery chill of the evening, wondering where Bruce was as well. Mouse was still posted up on the settee, looking angry and watching the movie. The cloth of the towel felt surreal somehow, like if he’d been higher he’d have taken on its properties and melted. He wanted to have on things that didn’t need holding.

“Uh, did you want more,” he asked Mouse when he came back clothed. “While I’m standing,” he added. It wasn’t his plan to get back up. In fact, he planned to eat another half bowl himself and pass out in the chair thing, so he wouldn’t seem avoidant like it felt going down to his room now would be. He wasn’t sure about being high around Pete, it seemed like it might quickly max out his always taxed ability to tolerate white people. Passing out seemed prudent, and so it was his plan. Otherwise who knew what would happen, maybe Pete would convince him somehow to run out into the night to host some kind of live event only to chide him for never learning to use a turntable.

Looking churlish at best Mouse said “no.” Dan decided Mouse was also reaching max on an always taxed ability of some sort, or, whatever was going on it looked like getting into it would hurt. Like it would result in a fist to his face or something. Mouse seemed to find him as fun as he found Mouse. Not very. But he liked Mouse, also. He didn’t want to be annoying, but he couldn’t become unannoying by going away, because he’d be conspicuous somehow as the hole in the floor, he still felt like. It was at this juncture that Jean-Paul came back, followed by Bruce, both of them lugging spare futon-type things. One seemed to be foams in a duvet cover and the other looked circular but otherwise futonlike. The circle was slotted into a cleared space on the halfpipe next to Mouse, between which and Dan a square longboard had been laid across two milkcrates of some cymbal stand stuff and pedals and random guitar strings and piles of melted wax. The foams in a duvet went up on top of the halfpipe next to the silver vape, that ziggurat of canna-conveyance.

“Can I get that—” Jean-Paul started to say to Bruce.

“I’m on it,” was already being shouted back from behind the divider wall. Bruce was making noise like he was going through the stuff on the back of the divider. He came back in short order, waving a smushy, folded stack of melted-looking clear green plastic. Bouncing up onto the back of the halfpipe from the back end, he appeared like a gargoyle, curling his legs and feet under himself neatly. Dan was impressed by his dexterity and recalled the other day, when he’d turned out to not be two-litre-jug-hoisting strong, lately. He made a raincheck-resolution to make a resolution with himself when the weather changed for real, to get back to normal as soon as humanly possible. He felt vague about what he had intended to do in the intervening time that wasn’t getting back to normal, and it seemed like the answer was, because he had some music to backlog for Bruce first. While the backlogging was good. Before whatever seismic shift in reality that everyone seemed to wait all winter for, occurred. He remembered Andre telling him he should see it in the summer. The pace would change after the lousy smarch weather stopped, he understood, but he wasn’t sure how that new pace looked or what it would mean for him. But it sounded like a lot of distractions. Dan was distracted just now in fact, by Bruce using an attachment to make the volcano inflate the smushy pile, which was an armchair, in fact. He tossed it over Dan in an arc, eventually, and he watched it sail sort of like a forlorn beachball at a very empty, dark rave, over to “JP!” who Bruce reminded “head’s up,” after the fact.

Jean-Paul toed wider the space he was using for seating and dropped the chair into it. It seemed really incongruous to Dan that he’d be using a chair that seemed both conspicuously fragile and attention-grabbingly lacking in taste. In his mind Jean-Paul would leave a room before sitting on a piece of furniture like that—something so contrary to his essence—like tackiness was contagious. That was the same note of surprise he always hit with Jean-Paul, now. Here. Maybe it’ll stop being surprising sometime, he tried to log in his mind, so it’d stick. Jean-Paul made kind of a production out of seeming more fastidious and fancyminded, than he actually was. Dan had no idea why really, it was the opposite of what everyone tried to do in his experience, except for his ex and her family, but that was because she was like that. Bougie. He thought everyone hated that. Everyone who wasn’t like that, anyway. He’d always found it sort of annoying about his ex, himself—and at times acutely mortifying, depending how annoying someone she wasn’t paying attention to found her as they provided some service to her. She was really transactional about everything, he recalled. It seemed like a counter-intuitive affectation to give people the impression that people like his ex were more similar to yourself than they were, particularly in the context at hand, in which Jean-Paul existed as a part of some broadly inclusive “anti-authoritarian” community. Then again, Dan realitychecked himself and noted that for months, he’d been wearing clothes his ex had picked out. And they made him look kind of, if not fancy then different, in a not-homeless way. He had no idea if he looked bougie or not. He knew they wore clean clothes all the time. His ex almost never took laundry out to get it done, she usually just bought another store-washed vintage thing and threw it on one of the piles when she was done. Probably bougie people threw away clothes that needed mending, he realized. Besides, “fitting in” didn’t really seem to be the point of being an anti-authoritarian, so dressing to fit in seemed kind of counter-intuitive, itself. Which meant anyone judging him based on his group sameness score probably fit in less than he did, in the relevant way, so he could forget about what his clothes said and speak for himself. His current wardrobe said, Jean-Paul repainted his place beige at some point, or did something else that got some of his ninja-monochrome clothes smeared in paint. There was a terrycloth hotel robe as well, for extra wrapping. He felt very snug and dry, and the increasingly gentle, circular ribboning of his psychedelic musings was diffusing some edge of tension that apparently had been propping up his eyelids. He felt himself drifting in and out of a hazy sleep, half an ear open to the room as Bruce’s chatter bubbled into it like a pump-looped fountain in a midrange sushi restaurant bathroom. Bruce was intermittently reading through a paper menu he had from some place off St. Clair a few blocks over, and bickering affectionately with Mouse, who sounded impatient about delivery arriving, now, as opposed to ambiently murderous to have found himself on a surprise detour into his brain’s own toon town. Mouse insisted the food was better from the Vietnamese places at the Runnymeade intersection and Bruce insisted Pete hadn’t said a sumptuous Vietnamese meal so they had to order from yum-yums or wherever. So on and so forth. Apparently there was a congee place way further north up Keele that would deliver via some thirdparty courier app, but it was vetoed for hassle despite the nearby place not having congee. Whatever that was. This all reminded him an awful lot of making similar calls with his ex. He tried not to let the remindedness roll in like a fog and contaminate the evening for him. This wasn’t like then. This was an actual gathering of friends being friendly. Which was fun, not fatiguing. Dan was fatigued, but not emotionally. Which was a weightlessness he’d been waiting for possibly forever, but at least since before his relationship had started to hit turbulence. Maybe it was the same feeling has Magic card gatherings in highschool. Sort of closeby, like different tints of the same hue.

By the time Bruce’s chunky old flip-phone was letting them know food was outside by blasting a midi of reggaestep at them indiscriminately, Dan had managed to get all the way over to the other side of the waking divide, and he felt himself swimming back up to the other world ponderously, unsure of the way and feeling like it was easy to get lost somehow. To cul-de-sac in a somnambulistic sub-realm somewhere before where eyes open.

The food-smell did the whole job of getting him online again, and he sat up, watching Bruce spread out the array of vessels. There wasn’t enough space on the longboard and he ended up decamping three items to his perch on the halfpipe. It was precisely at the most convenient time for a buffet haul, and Pete chose it as the time to show up, appearing from the direction of the bedrooms, where he might or might not have been sitting around alone waiting to eat. Dan assumed he’d texted Bruce his part of the order. It looked like more than twenty dollars worth of food and it looked like it was supposed to feed more than just Mouse and Bruce and Pete. This was confirmed for him by Jean-Paul rotating several little cartons toward himself to check the sigil expressing their contents on each, before snagging what seemed to be his own individual order of deep fried tofu in chili sauce. Dan guessed that was his version of junkfood. The rest of the spread was closer to his own, minus what was later revealed to be a container of green beans in sauce, which everyone seemed to treat as what Jean-Paul called a crudité. Dan still wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but it seemed to be small portions of healthy stuff you could eat as finger food. Maybe cooked didn’t count, maybe that was how tapas was different. His ex liked tapas. That was right up her alley; small portions, fancy name. Bougie. She’d have been hard pressed to pick something out of tonight’s line-up, although, she’d have been the only one. There were two kinds of glistening barbecued meats to tantalize the appetite, as well as pineapple fried rice, two orders of fries and three boxes of chicken wings in varying preparations. Bruce had also ordered a bunch of cans of soda even though there was soda down the block for less, and there was water to drink in the Maison. Really going all out hosting the big ball, he thought at Bruce. Just as he thought it, Bruce’s head rotated unerringly toward him and he found himself being beamed at, maximum beam.

“Mange, mange!” Bruce shouted over from his spot, making a rotating eat-eat gesture with his hand in front of his mouth as he did. It reminded him of Andreah ordering take-out on that snowy night in Kensington, and a ghostly gust of cold air made him shiver. He should really do some reaching out textwise before Andreah decided to forget his name when she saw him again. It seemed like only a week ago that they’d had breakfast, less than, even. But no, here it was, days into March. Soon a month would’ve passed since they’d talked. That seemed both wrong in the sense that it was rude or kind of cold or whatever, and in the sense that she was the only person he knew who didn’t live in the same building as him but might be willing to let him stay in hers for whatever arising reasons might be forthcoming but premonitions of which were unforthcoming to Dan in the moment of consideration. He wasn’t sure she was a great escape route but escape routes were the kind of thing you wanted to keep track of, he’d learned that the hard way from his breakup; turned out he’d never even thought about it before needing to, and that Jean-Paul had been his only escape route. He’d been lucky, so lucky, in all this, he re-affirmed to himself. He’d felt a lot less lucky about it since moving in here, but that wasn’t really on the people or the place, since they all seemed to click together tidy-as-all-get-out. Figuratively tidy. Feeling dejected and out of sorts all the time because he found the environment stressful was a stupid way to interface with free housing that had come along when he needed it, Dan made another point of it to himself while he ate his way through a chickenwing. It was sublimely greasy in the most fantastically covert way, the savoury tide of runny melted fat being held around the muscles and bones by a faintly fryer-popped mantle of crisp fried skin that was seasoned delectably with something very salty and faintly sweet, salt and MSG and some kind of spice; he vectored in on it out of appreciation, feeling high on chicken. He was pretty sure there weren’t wings like this for delivery in Vic. The closest thing he could think of was the little deep fried wings at kfc, which came frozen and preseasoned unlike all the other bone-in chicken, and dropped in the fry oil station baskets in the prep area, away from the piece production kitchen. The wings were pointedly small and yet, pointedly expensive, so no one who didn’t eat them for free ever got them, but they were leagues ahead of anything else on the menu in terms of their desirability to Dan and their actual nutritive food-value by weight. And the wings from this place a few blocks away were at least twice as good as those wings, if not three times. And it wasn’t just because they were three times larger for the same price, or that he was embedded currently in the process of wasting away from not eating enough. They were actually just, better. Freshness, he found the attribution. They sell these things all night every night, that’s why it’s perfect.

Pete had been making quick work on his own wingfeast, piling up bones on a container lid as he went, looking pleased. “I know, right,” he said to Dan cordially over the longboard table, as if he’d heard the whole thing, that whole line of thought about the wings. It felt comfortably and uncomfortably like he had. Pete had that way about him, Dan realized. He assumed it was a skill Pete had developed on purpose to keep people on edge, seeming confidently aware of what you were thinking. His older-older sister did it too, she was usually bluffing. Dan knew how to bluff along, he could play it by ear.

“Not the worst wings I ever had,” he agreed back.

“‘Not the worst’,” Pete quoted him, laughing. This made him feel really sharp and conversationally functional for a second before he realized that was stupid and told himself to get a grip and learn to not-care-one-way-or-the-other better. He’d been working on not-caring-one-way-or-the-other for a long time. It should have been paying off, by now. “That’s so, uh, wasp-y, why can’t you guys ever just like things. Openly. Honestly. Directly. This is why you don’t get chicks—if that’s like, something you wonder about.”

“Yeah well, let me know when you figure out how to keep them,” Dan started, and stopped, noticing Pete was not a person with a face like he was having some fun banter with a friend. Mouse, however, suddenly exploded with barks of laughter, spraying micromorsels of sumptuous Chinese meal into the air around him for a few seconds, mercifully derailing whatever horrifying social snafu had been about to go off in place of a spit take with a laugh track.

“I believe you have just gotten served,” Mouse chortled at Pete, clearly annoying him. Bruce seemed to be chiming in with some giggles about it as well. Dan didn’t turn his head to look at Jean-Paul’s read, but interpreted the dense silence near his feet to mean a tongue was being bitten over there, or his friend was just apprehensive about the sudden decline in ambient camaraderie.

“You can make volleyball analogies when you’ve finished highschool equivalency. Or started it,” Pete groused at the small crumple of person just over his left shoulder, sounding like he was trying to land a hit on a sore spot.

“You are a cunt,” Mouse announced back, still sounding amused with himself and the situation. Bruce made hooting noises at them and chanted that they should fight. Dan couldn’t tell if it was serious or not, the goading.

“Takes one to get some,” Pete primly deflected. “Eat some fries, you look thin.” He handed a box of no-longer-steamyfresh fries over. Mouse had only eaten meat so far, picking at each different kind in turn.

“Disgusting,” Mouse told him, eating fries anyway. Dan wasn’t sure he meant the fries. It hadn’t occurred to him before now to wonder about who Mouse thought about dating, if anyone. Now that it had, he assumed it was a short and fraught list, if it existed at all.

So this is it, the thought gelled, this is a night in at Maison Rokkoku. He watched the currently-playing movie for a second, trying to get his bearings in the image as it traversed another image, the sunflowers. He couldn’t make sense of what the action on screen was. A fight or something, or some kind of choreographed routine. Oh it was sports; he finally hit on the swing of things and magic-eye style it all settled into coherence. They were watching some old football team underdog, come-from-behind, island of misfit toys-type romper room feelgood fan favourite or whathaveyou.

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cactusnotes · 5 years

Text

Omissions in Othello - Act 4 Scene 3

I do think it is their husbands' faults If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties, And pour our treasures into foreign laps, Or else break out in peevish jealousies, Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us, Or scant our former having in despite; Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace, Yet have we some revenge.

Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell And have their palates both for sweet and sour, As husbands have. What is it that they do When they change us for others? Is it sport? I think it is: and doth affection breed it? I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs? It is so too: and have not we affections, Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? Then let them use us well: else let them know, The ills we do, their ills instruct us so. - Emilia, Act 4 Scene 3

Emilia’s response to Desdemona’s disbelief of women who would cheat on their husbands is perhaps one of the most striking examples of feminist ideology, long before the movement had even started. For once, the blame is put on the men, and the injustice suffered by Shakespearean women--and women today too--is brought to light.

Certainly from today's perspective, the speech is one of the most important in the play--so it came as a total shock to me personally, and likely many others, when I realised that this speech is entirely cut out of the First Quarto turning twenty lines of powerful criticism of men’s behaviour to two lines essentially translating to ‘yes, there are many women who cheat’.

The First Quarto was published in 1522, approximately 20 years after the play was first performed, and is the first printed and copyrighted version of the play, available to the public. There was a series of First Quartos for many of Shakespeare’s plays, all shorter compared to the later publications of the play, such as the Folio and Second Quarto (the Folio being the next version to be published, containing 160 more lines than the Quarto, while the Quarto contains very few lines not found in the Folio).

It has been recognised that the lines omitted fit broad themes explored in the play: race and gender, and more specifically, how these themes link with sexuality. Issues concerning race are the passages cut out more frequently, so have been the focus of many modern explorations of the two early editions, however I shall focus on the removed passages in Act 4 scene 3.

In terms of what is omitted from this scene: Desdemona’s singing about Willows, Emilia joking about “a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of [Lodovico’s] nether lip”, Desdemona first asking of there are “women do abuse their husbands” and, as mentioned before, Emilia’s defence of women.

In terms of the attitude of the omission of such scenes: Alice Walker said the first Quarto was a corrupt and vulgarising pervasion of Shakespeare’s intentions of the play. Depending on interpretation, one could argue that one of Shakespeare’s aims was to point out the hypocrisy of social stereotypes for women, which is literally deprived in this passage.

There are several explanations for why things are cut. One of which is that the Quartos represent an actual edition used to perform a play, which would have had a time limit, so some sections have to be cut. This is likely the reason why the song was cut: Desdemona would have been played by a young boy, who may have had vocal difficulties for the role. The Quarto edition itself had a limit of size, so some parts had to be cut as ‘dead wood’, meaning it was unimportant to the plot, and perhaps a distraction from the actual plot. A final explanation is that they were actually added in later, perhaps by Shakespeare, perhaps by some ghost writer, to develop an idea or character.

Was Emilia’s speech cut due to it being performed live? The Quarto has more stage directions, indicating it was more likely played live, and also contains less brutish language, which could suggest that play was ‘softened’ to be more palatable to the visiting Spanish ensemble. Specifically relating to the speech, the time coincided with the ‘Acts to Restraine Abuses of Players’, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were edited to ensure the words weren’t too distressing to the men who said them, meaning the speech could have been cut because it was literally against the law, because it was too traumatising for actors to say that women are equal to men.

This highlights how radical and forward-thinking Shakespeare’s ideas actually were: they could have been banned. Several murders and a lot of fighting are perfectly fine, but women having ‘appetites’ and desires was not. That’s how different their mindset was to ours, and the revolutionary nature of Shakespeare’s words can hardly be undermined if the passage was against the law. However, the passage may not have been removed for being against the law, since the act was introduced in 1606, with the play first being performed in 1604, though the passage could have been removed for the same reasons, so the point still stands: it’s simply too advanced for the actors and audience to handle.

The second reason, as suggested by M. R. Ridley is that it was ‘deadwood’, and cut out because it wasn’t seen as necessary to the plot. However, I do not think this is the case, as it is undoubtedly an important part of Emilia’s character, despite it not being inherently important to the plot. Emilia begins as the typical, subservient wife, taking Despemona’s handkerchief due to Iago's orders, and lying about it. However, at the end of the play, she dies in defence of Desdemona, after asserting that she won't go home with her husband. This leap of character would seem almost unrealistic without this scene, where we learn that she is a free thinking individual, who has limits which Iago crosses, and also a strong friendship with Desdemona leading to such a passionate reaction to Desdemona’s death. The scene both makes the women realistic and tragic, and is definitely more important than the comic relief scenes of the clown, which are not cut from the Quarto.

If indeed the speech was cut from the play for being unimportant, it still implies that editors at the time viewed the development of female characters so they actually have depth as less important than comic relief, highlighting what value they gave to women: very little. Another impact and implication is seen in their deaths, as without scenes such as Act 4 scene 3, which lessens the tragedy, and instead makes it more focused on men. Desdemona’s death becomes upsetting solely as it was the result of Othello’s jealousy, rather than because it is not only that, but the loss of an innocent girl who liked to sing, and was still learning about the world. Emilia’s death becomes the angry murder of a disobedient wife, rather than the death of a free-thinking, witty, brilliant friend. It reduces women to be just ‘wives’ and ‘victims’ than actual individuals, each unique and different, and it deprives the audience of the pathos of their deaths.

In the end, this scene is not ‘deadwood’, not to Shakespeare (for else he wouldn’t write it), not to any modern audience (rather, the ‘wood’ is ablaze with light and interest), and can only be considered to unimportant to an editor with the idea that women have limited importance, the very idea Shakespeare seems to be protesting against, and once more, it demonstrates how revolutionary and new Shakespeare’s ideas would have been.

The final explanation for the emission is that it was added in later. This is unlikely, in that both the Quarto and Folio was published after Shakespeare’s death, yet the Folio undoubtedly shows some ‘polishing’ and corrections, suggesting this is somehow a possibility. Shakespeare adding in such moving and important passages could only really be put down to some kind of change in author: either an introduction to some early feminist ideas, or becoming more passionate about some pre-existing ideas, either way, the development of characters in the play would indicate a development of the author outside of the play.

There is the rather disappointing possibility that the speech is an addition by some other author, however the style of writing in terms of complexity and word play is on a similar level, so this is unlikely. Furthermore, the speech doesn’t seem inconsistent regarding Emilia’s character (some may argue that Emilia’s treatment of Bianca suggests it is actually inconsistent, but it is important to remember that Emilia explicitly says “I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring...nor any petty exhibition”, which is technically what Bianca’s job is, so it isn’t hypocritical of Emilia) so the fact that Shakespeare created the base of a character who could give such a modern and interesting speech is an achievement in itself.

To sum up, the omission of multiple parts of Act 4 Scene 3, which focuses on developing female characters, especially Emilia, who reveals some atypical beliefs about women being equal to men, could have several different reasons, with different implications. Perhaps they were added later by Shakespeare, implying he went through some change to end up with such radical beliefs. It could be that they were removed as being ‘deadwood’, which stresses the indifference of society to well developed, individual women, highlighting how unusual Shakespeare’s ideas are.

However the most likely reason is that it was removed as the manuscript the quarto is derived from was written specifically for a performance. This would imply that the speech was too difficult for the actors to take in, to the point where it was actually illegal for them to have to say them, demonstrating how new and unusual the ideas of equality was for the Shakespearean people. Either way, one thing’s for sure: it seems Shakespeare goes up in estimation to a modern audience as, through Emilia, he captured and portrayed the injustice faced by women which, in the end, could not be silenced.

#English Lit / Cactus #Othello / Cactus #Othello #Quarto #Emilia #literary criticism #Shakespeare #William Shakespeare #Feminism #Feminist criticism

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avengerskye · 6 years

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Loving you has consequences

Chapter 02 on AO3

Summary:

It's the first day of senior year and there's a surprise waiting for Robin.

Chapter :

First day back to school, and Robin is not ready. She had successfuly avoided her "friends" during the summer, but now she couldn't do it anymore. A little part of her wished that Alice would be there today. She almost envied the fact that Alice had been homeschooled all her life. At least she didn't have to go through peer pressure. Robin felt like she was the worst part of herself when she was in school. Wrong crowd, wrong attitude, wrong Robin.

She did it anyway. Robin got to her locker, she faked being happy to see the girls again. She gossiped with them, gave them a fake excuse as to why she couldn't see them this summer. And for a moment everything was back to how it always was. Robin sat down in the middle of the classroom with two of her friends, and they talked until the teacher walked in. He started to explain how the school year would go when the principal walked in. Robin's heart almost stopped when she saw Alice's wild blond curls.

"Hello class!" The principal said with a bright smile. "I'm here to introduce you to your new classmate, Alice Jones. Alice, care to introduce yourself please?"

Alice's eyes scanned the class, but when they landed on Robin they stopped. While she was introducing herself, Alice never took her eyes away from Robin. She was introducing herself to the whole class, but somehow it felt like she was only addressing Robin. As for Robin, she couldn't take her own eyes away from Alice. It felt unreal to see her there, at school. Megan nudged Robin to get her attention.

"Why is she looking at you like that? What a weirdo..."

Robin's head turned sharply to face Megan.

"Don't call her that." Robin snapped.

Megan gave Robin a mean smile. "Friend of yours?"

Robin gulped. She should have said no, she was meant to say no, Megan wanted her to say no.

"Yes." Robin simply said.

Megan laughed quietly. "Guess you lowered your standarts this summer. Friends with a Jones? Going to start dating a freak from AV club next?"

Robin wanted to snap back, she wanted to so bad. But an opportunity was offered to her.

"So, Alice where should you sit?" The teacher said while looking at the class.

"I can sit at the empty table on the right." Alice said with a shrug.

"What? No! It's your first day of school, you shouldn't have to sit alone." The teacher said.

"I'll sit with her." Robin offered.

Then every eyes went to Robin. Surprise, worry, joy, amusement... There were lots of emotions around Robin. Most of the students were surprised. Some looked worried. They might think Robin was about to play a sick joke on the new girl. Robin could see joy on the teacher's and Alice's face. And last but not least, Robin could see a sick amusement on Megan's face. Robin wished she could erase that satisfied smile from her face. Megan had always been looking for something to get Robin's place in the school's hierarchy. Now was her chance, but honestly, Robin couldn't care less.

Robin took her books and went to sit at the now occupied table on the right. Alice was already sitting down and she gave Robin the brightest smile. When Robin was finally settled down, the teacher started to explain his class again. Alice leaned toward Robin.

"So, you decided to stop avoiding me,uh?" Alice whispered.

Robin gave Alice a shy smile. "I figured it would be rude after what happened."

Alice hummed and leaned back into her chair, seemingly satisfied with Robin's answer. They stayed quiet through the rest of the class. Alice seemed genuinely interested by what the teacher was saying. And Robin was genuinely interested in looking at Alice. It's only when the bell rang that they spoke again.

"Robin? Can I follow you to our next class?" Alice asked, suddenly shy.

"Yeah, of course. Do you have your books with you?" Robin asked.

"No? I only brought the ones I needed for this one." Alice replied.

They started to walk toward the lockers. Robin decided to give Alice a little bit of advice.

"When you have to classes close to each other, you should bring your books for both. It saves you from going back to your locker."

"Tha makes sense." Alice said.

"So, uh, why are you in school? I thought you were homeschooled so you could travel with your dad."

"Yeah, I was." Alice shrugged. "I've been fighting with him for two years to be able to come to school. He finally gave in this year. I mean, I'll be eighteen at the end of the year so I can stay home while he travels, you know?" Alice said everything with a certain kind of nonchalance that destabilized Robin.

"But... why?" Robin asked, confused. "Why would you want to come here?"

Alice chuckled. "Because, I didn't want to go to college without having set foot in a school Robin."

Robin rolled her eyes. "I guess you have a point."

They stayed silent for a moment after that. Alice got her books from her locker, and Robin waited by her side. When they started to walk again, Robin saw a certain nervousness in Alice.

"Are you okay?" Robin asked.

"I was just...wondering what that girl was saying in class earlier. You don't have to tell me, it's just... you seemed angry."

Robin's face fell. "She said mean things about you."

Alice gave Robin a sheepish smile. "Yeah, that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure."

"I'm so sorry Alice, I wanted to get back at her but..."

Alice interrupted her. "Don't get into trouble because of me. You don't have to change just because I'm here."

Robin felt hurt that Alice thought she was just like Megan. She had avoided Alice, that was right, but she was never mean to her.

"I'm not... That's not me. I'm not like her." Robin said, defensive.

"She's your friend though." Alice said with a shrug.

"Not after what I did this morning." Robin replied with a humorless laugh.

Robin saw the deep frown appear on Alice's face, but she didn't let her think too much. They were standing at their next class' door.

"Welcome to history class Miss Jones." Robin said, motioning for Alice to go in.

Alice's smile is not as bright as her usual smile when she goes inside the class. Something's on her mind and Robin's pretty sure it's her fault.

When Robin got to the cafeteria for lunch, she got a lump in her throat. She saw her table, the one she used to sit at. The table she sat at for the past 4 years. Robin didn't want to sit there. She didn't want to answer questions about Alice, she didn't want to lie, she didn't want to gossip, she didn't want to fake her interest in the football players that would certainly flirt with her. When Megan looked around and locked eyes with Robin, Robin knew that she couldn't do it anymore. Robin turned on her heels and went straight to an unnoccupied table. She sat down and let out a breath. She was making one of most important decision of her last year of high school. By sitting alone, she was making a statement, she wasn't part of a crowd anymore. She was still Robin Mills, one of the most influencial teens in town, but now she wasn't part of the it crowd of the school, and god did it felt good. Robin felt as though a weight had been taken off of her shoulders. Robin had just started to unpack her lunch when she heard a familiar voice.

"Can we sit with you?"

When Robin looked up, she was met by Alice's blue eyes and her bright smile. Robin smiled back almost instantly. She was glad to see a kind face. At her right side was a boy Robin had seen around school before, but she couldn't remember his name. He seemed like a loner. He had wild hair and Robin could swear he was wearing make up around his eyes.

"So, can we?" Alice asked again.

That was when Robin realized she hadn't answered yet. She felt herself blush.

"Yeah, you can."

Alice nodded. "Good!"

Alice sat down right in front of Robin and the boy sat by her side.

"So, do you two know each other?" Alice asked, looking between the boy and Robin.

"Kind of." The boy replied with a shrug. "We were in the same class last year. But I'm pretty sure royalty like Robin Mills wouldn't remember little old me."

Robin felt the embarrassment wash over her. So that was why the boy seemed so familiar. They shared the same class the year before, and Robin couldn't even his name.

"It's Jefferson by the way."

Robin felt so awkward, she had no clue of what she was meant to say.

"It's nice to meet you, I mean, officialy meet you." Robin settled on saying.

"I can't exactly say it back." He said with a guarded look. "I'll see if it's nice or not."

Robin chuckled quietly and shook her head. "I guess it's only fair. I wasn't exactly the best version of myself before."

"Let's just make it clear, I'm only giving you a shot because Alice asked me to and she is too nice for me to say no to her."

Robin looked at Alice, surprised that the blond girl would take her defense like that. They were barely friends after all. They had shared a kiss and Robin had helped Alice get to her classes that morning, but that was it. Alice's faith in people was almost too much. Now Robin was worried she'd let her down.

"Anyway!" Alice decided to step in. "Drama class was awesome! I didn't know school had that kind of classes." Alice frowned. "You're not in drama class Robin, what are you taking instead?"

Robin was glad Alice changed the subject. "I'm in advanced P.E."

Alice grimaced. "Advanced P.E., tell me you didn't choose that."

Robin laughed. "I did actually. I'm on the track team, so advanced P.E is kinda required."

"Track team? Do you do competition and all?

Robin nodded. "Yes, I do."

"I'll have to come and see you in action sometime." Alice said with what Robin could certainly call a flirtacious smile.

Robin nodded, and she wondered what shade of red she was at, at that moment. She decided to just bite her sandwich to herself from saying something stupid. Flirting with Alice in the middle of the cafeteria was certainly not a good idea.

Suddenly, the attention of the whole cafeteria was taken when the football players started to cheer and yell. Robin almost groaned. Those boys were just so loud. A small but muscular boy climbed on one of the cafeteria table.

"Everyone! Shut up!" The boy yelled. "We have an announcement. The soldiers of Storybrook High chose their captain. Make some noise for Nate Rollins!"

Robin saw the boy she had avoided all morning climb on the table with the small boy. Nate Rollins was in love with Robin, every single person in school knew that. What no one knew was that Robin had rejected the boy the year before, but he wasn't about to stop his advance.

"Thank you everyone!" Nate said with his charming smile. His eyes fell on Robin and he smiled a little more. "Everyone, I want your attention! There's a girl that's really special to me. Most people know about that. Today, I want to ask her to be my girlfriend. Should I do it?"

The whole cafeteria went wild. Robin felt her heart drop. He wasn't going to do that, right?

"Robin, you're all pale. Are you okay?"

Robin shook her head. Nate was back on the ground and he was making his way to their table.

"I have to get out of here."

Robin got up and went straight for the door. She heard to voices call her name. Alice and Nate. Robin only stopped running when she was near the bleachers. She took a second to catch her breath, but a hand caught her arm.

"Robin! Why did you run like that?" Said a barely out of breath Alice.

Robin was confused. "How did you keep up with me? I'm the fastest one on the track team!"

"Well, I have my secrets." Alice shrugged. "Did you run because of that guy? Are you the girl he was talking about?"

Robin let out a breath and sat down on the bleachers.

"Yeah."

"I guess it means his feelings are not mutual." Alice said, but it sounded like a question.

"Of course they're not mutual. I told him so! Many times. I'm just not into..." Robin felt nervous to end her sentence. It would be the first time she'd admit it out loud.

"Boys?" Alice decided to help her.

The admition made Robin tear up. Well, that was something she wasn't used to. Crying wasn't something Robin did often. Robin decided to simply nod to answer Alice's question. Alice's hand found Robin's and she squeezed it.

"You know that's okay, right? You have the right to like girls instead of boys. It's totally normal." Alice said, her tone soft.

Robin let out a frustrated laugh. "Yeah, tell that to my mother. I don't think she'd agree."

"She'll get over it eventually. My father did."

Robin quickly looked at Alice, her eyes wide.

"You... you're..." Robin's word all got stuck in her throat.

"Well I'm bi, but he still had to get over the fact that I like girls."

Robin chuckled. "You figured that out before you even had your first kiss, uh?"

Alice laughed. "I met a lot of attractive people during my travels Robin. I didn't need to kiss them to be attracted to them."

Robin swallowed before talking again. "You wanted to kiss me, does that mean something?"

Alice's smile softened. "Yes, it means I'm really attracted to you."

Robin smiled. "Good, because I'm really attracted to you too."

They looked each other in the eyes and it felt like they were having the deepest non-verbal communication ever. After a moment, Alice leaned in and pecked Robin's lips.

"We should get back inside, it's cold here." Alice simply said before getting up and starting to walk.

Robin watched her for a moment. Sometimes it almost felt like Alice was a dream.

#fanfiction #fanfic #once upon a time #ouat #robin mills #alice jones #curious archer

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tessatechaitea · 7 years

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Justice League #32

It looks like Ethan initially drew Wonder Woman having a nip slip and it had to be corrected by an intern with a shitty pencil eraser.

To complete the Alice Cooper part, I added the Alice Cooper facial make-up and carried around the bloody, decapitated head of the white rabbit (a larger (stuffed animal!) rabbit than the one pictured. That one lived). Bonus picture: evidence of my problematic friend Soy Rakelson who I've mentioned numerous times on this blog! Just do a search for "Soy Rakelson" so you can enjoy some Soy stories!

Cyborg is thinking about teams because he needs to get his team, the Justice League, back together. When we last left them at the competent hands of Joshua Williamson (did that come across as an insult?), they had been split up and were each being attacked by a separate Batmonster from the Dark Multiverse. See?! That's why the Batmonsters are going to lose. Because they don't consider working as a team a positive. They each want to prove themselves as individuals and that's a weakness the Justice League will exploit! If the Batmonsters were smart, they would have just all gone to see Flash to make sure he died, then they'd go kill Green Lantern, and finally they'd move on to kill Wonder Woman. I didn't leave anybody of note out of that explanation because Superman and Batman are currently lost in the Dark Multiverse. The first battle that takes place is between Flash and Batflash. Batflash has built a Batflashmobile that runs on the Speed Force. That doesn't just mean it's really fast in the way a person reading a comic book about The Flash having a Flash car would think. No, it means it can do anything the plot demands of it. That's the power of the Speed Force! Man! Don't get me started on the Speed Force! I'll start myself on it! The Speed Force is what happens when comic books begin to take themselves too seriously and people began thinking about the real world implications of The Flash's power. If The Flash runs at such high speeds then that means he needs to think faster than everybody else as well. But if he can think and react that fast, how can anybody defeat him at all? What happens to his body when he runs at top speed? What if that top speed is the speed of light? What if it's faster? What about time travel? What about his clothing? What about how he can constantly communicate with people while running really fast? I think there were probably more concerns but I never read The Flash. I don't even actually know why the Speed Force came about. You probably shouldn't be using me as any kind of a trusted source in comic book knowledge. Just know that the Speed Force is capable of anything because something was needed to make a guy who could move faster than nearly anything in the universe less boring. Or at least seem kind of interesting in a cosmic way? Maybe that's why they also gave him a huge family. Some editor was all, "We thought it was just Barry that made this character boring! But it's the concept! Make Wally more interesting somehow! Let him fuck that hot reporter! And give him space kids! Or time travel children! Or something! And somebody figure out why his face doesn't melt off when he runs fast or what being struck by lightning has to do with being fast. I mean aside from bolts of lightning being incredibly fast. Are they fast? They are, right? Like instantaneous!" He had to ask that because this imaginary moment comes from a time before the Internet. At least a time before the useful Internet that wasn't mostly AOL chatrooms and Neverwinter Nights bankrupting nerds. Cyborg doesn't really know that The Flash is currently being rundown by multiple Flashmobiles inside a giant hourglass so he just keeps thinking about his football team analogy. He's all, "What if the running back can't run faster than the big fat defensive ends?! Then the team needs somebody who's angry!" That's when he starts thinking about Aquaman. Wait. That doesn't make sense. Shouldn't Cyborg think, "If the running back can't score, that's when the team must rely on the most boring player on the roster: the kicker!" Then the scene should shift to Aquaman.

Wouldn't all of sports be better without the guy who plays angry? I know the Justice League would! BROZINGA!

The Drowned turned Mera into a sea monster which somehow turns Aquaman's anger against the Justice League. That's not a confusing conclusion I came to. It's what Cyborg had to say about the angry player. Once the angry player is being used against you (like say, the super villain making fun of Aquaman and Batman snickering so that Aquaman turns on the Justice League screaming, "I know what you all think of me! I FUCKING KNOW!"), it's time for the next player! I hope he doesn't say it's time for the cheerleaders to get the crowd in the game and then start talking about Wonder Woman because I think that would be sexist. Also it's definitely something he won't say. Maybe he'll talk about how the defense will need to step up and then it'll be Green Lantern time. Wonder Woman is probably the halftime orange slices. Instead of continuing with the football metaphor, Cyborg decides to change things up. He says, "Anger can be useful. But the other team can turn it against you. Drag you into a dogfight. When that happens, you brawl." Wait. What? What kind of football do they play in Detroit high schools?! "If we can't run it into the end zone, let's get angry! And if our anger doesn't scare them into letting our running back into the end zone, let's kick their motherloving asses!" When Cyborg thinks of a brainless brawler, he, of course, thinks of Wonder Woman. That seems dumb. I know he wants to save the quarterback position for Batman but let's think this metaphor through. Wouldn't you want, as quarterback, the person who has the most experience on the field who has been trained by immortal football players who have spent all of their immortal lives training for the big game? Wonder Woman should either be the quarterback or the coach. But instead she's the enforcer? Which, you know, is a hockey term but what am I supposed to think? You don't brawl in football. Sometimes you brawl in hockey though! In football, one guy shoves another guy and then the other guy grabs the first guy's facemask and then a whole bunch of old white guys blow whistles and throw their underwear at them. I really don't understand football but I do jerk off to it sometimes. So every member of the home team is getting beat up. The game will be lost shortly unless the coach comes up with a plan. And what better plan when you've got a team than choosing one star player to win the day for you! Oh man! Venditti did the old double loop de loop trick shot on me! He was all, "This is about a team! And teams win by team efforts!" But then he's all, "No, no! Just kidding! It always comes down to the star player and you better believe Hal Jordan is the star player!" I'm not going to ask why Hal Jordan is even in this Metal series. Where are the newbies? It was probably explained earlier but how am I supposed to remember past issues! It's not like I've been rereading my previous commentaries to refresh my memories like I used to. Now I just approach each issue shrugging my shoulders and thinking, "I'll probably remember what was going on by about the sixth or seventh page." Actually, I probably should have read the rest of the issue before commenting on Green Lantern saving the day. Hal only gets one page because the other characters took too much time losing. Thankfully Hal only needs one page to lose (probably because he's the focus of the next chapter, it being in his comic book and all). After that, Cyborg points out that the team was never going to be able to win because the coach (Cyborg) has been compromised by the other team! Shocking twist! So in summary, Cyborg thinks football is won on speed, anger, hiring an ancient Amazonian warrior, and guts. I'm not sure he's as smart as DC wants us to think he is. Justice League #32 Rating: How many of you read that part about me "slipping into a reality where writing a thought in 280 characters is comfortable" and thought, "Fuck you, you long-winded idiot! You've never had a thought that was less than three thousand words and six dick jokes!"?

#Justice League #Darkest Nights #Metal #DC Comics

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